RobsRealNews

What minimum wage vote?By Dante Chinni
While Martha was settling in at home and Michael was holding his courtroom pajama party, another morality play was
unfolding in Washington with far fewer cameras and commentary. The Senate last week shot down one bill and passed
another - and the fates of those respective pieces of legislation tell us more about ourselves than all the programming on
the E! network combined.

On Monday, the Senate defeated a bill that would have raised the nation's minimum wage by $2.10 over the next 26
months. The bill was defeated by the Senate Republicans, who argued that the increase would stifle job growth.

That's a legitimate concern, though one that doesn't seem to bear up to scrutiny. The last two times the minimum wage
was increased, in 1996 and 1997, the unemployment rate fell in the following months. And the wage is in need of a bump
- adjusted for inflation, the 1997 $5.15-an-hour wage is worth only $4.33-an-hour in 2005.

Senate GOPers noted that the nation was still coming out of hard economic times, and proposed a more moderate
increase of $1.10 over 18 months. That wasn't an unreasonable alternative, but they crammed their substitute bill with so
many antiworker provisions (restrictions on overtime pay and the ability of states to raises wages for restaurant workers,
for example) that they knew it would fail.

Then, fresh from defeating the minimum wage increase, the Senate on Thursday passed legislation that would change
bankruptcy rules, making it harder for the those who go broke to cancel their debts and start over. Not a bad idea, right?

Well, yes and no. Everyone is for making sure people don't abuse the system and simply declare bankruptcy to get rid of
credit-card bills that were run up on flat-screen TVs and trips to Paris. But the bill does nothing to exempt those who are
stuck with massive debt from healthcare costs - which Congress is doing little to control. It ignored the fact that one-third
of all personal bankruptcies are declared by families that meet the federal definition of poverty. And the legislation does
nothing to punish credit-card companies that offer cards to people they know to be bad risks.

Worst of all, the bill keeps intact the "millionaire's loophole," a provision of the current law used by wealthy individuals as
a shelter from creditors. There are five states that allow people who live anywhere in the country to establish trusts that
cannot be reached by federal bankruptcy proceedings. One amendment proposed limiting what could be sheltered to
$125,000. It was defeated.

So in one week you had the Senate saying, sorry, but the country just isn't in the position to give people working at the
bottom of the pay scale a raise because times are tough, while simultaneously telling those same people that times may
be tough but bankruptcy isn't an option. Oh, yeah, and if you are very wealthy, well, bankruptcy really is an option.

There are no former pop stars or domestic goddesses here, but if these political choices don't offer a revealing look at
our common national values, what does?

And with all the cameras sitting outside a courthouse in California and an estate in Connecticut, there are a few
questions to ponder. At what point does Michael Jackson doing something weird cease to be news? And what exactly can
the trials and tribulations of Martha Stewart - who emerged from prison with a TV deal, a still-massive fortune, and a court
order confining her to the horrors of a 153-acre estate - teach us about anyone other than herself?

Of course, C-SPAN will never have the glitz of E!. But the morality plays in Washington do have one advantage over the
events that are dominating the news today. They impact lives, lots of them. Now if they could just get the interest of the
people and the media.

Maybe Ted Kennedy could wear his pajamas to work next week.

• Dante Chinni is a senior associate with the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. He writes a twice-monthly political
opinion column for the Monitor.

The US needs a gas tax to pay for the war in Iraq. I would call it something like tax for the war fought on behalf of Oil
interests. Those interests being represented by the two criminals in the White House.

Now Israel is building their wall on a route designed to enable them to steal more territory. So what is new. Jews are
genetically programmed to steal everything they can get their hands on. It's not their fault. Jesus came into the world to
tell
the Jews they were fucked up. They didn't want to hear those things so they crucified him.

Since taking office Arnold didn't follow his campaign promise to follow the advice of his financial advisor Warren Buffet.
Instead he has proven to be just another sleazy brain dead conservative crack-pot. If he wanted to be fair he would
realize he was over paid to be a lousy actor in stupid violent films and he, and those in his class, should be subject to a
special wealth tax to pay down the California deficit.

Bush's Assault on the middle class continues apace

President Bush didn't campaign on a promise to make it harder for average Americans to regain their financial footing
after filing for bankruptcy. Even if he had, he probably would have been re-elected anyway.
Most Americans haven't noticed the presidents relentless assault on programs and policies that protect the middle class
against the caprice of the market place. If average Americans are living with a higher degree of financial anxiety, they
blame out sourcing or taxes or illegal immigrants. They haven't recognized that the Republicans have middle America in
their cross hairs and that President Bush has given the order to fire. The war on working- and middle-class America
continued apace last week when apiece of legislation favored by bankers and credit card companies - and pushed by the
president - gained steam in the U.S.
Senate.
The new bankruptcy bill would make it harder for middle- income individuals to file under Chapter 7, which usually allows
some debt-forgiveness. Under the new law, individuals (with very few exceptions) will have to keep working to pay off their
debts, even if it takes several years.
Financial industry lobbyists claim they are only going after deadbeats who can afford to pay, but the research suggests
otherwise. A few deadbeats may file for bankrupcy to get out of paying for cars or big-screen TVs they knew they
couldn't afford. But the vast majority, experts say, have been forced into substantial debt by some unforeseen personal
catastrophe - death of the major breadwinner, job loss or medical crisis, for example.
Meanwhile, the rich will not' be held to the same standard.
senators defeated an amendment that would have closed I loopholes allowing the wealthy to hold onto mansions and
other assets when they file for bankruptcy. They also turned back an I amendment that would prevent I corrupt
companies, like Enron, from sheltering
assets that ought' to go to former employees. And the Senate wouldn't accept an amendment to allow the not rich elderly
to keep their houses if they go bankrupt
More than a hundred bankruptcy experts sent a letter to congress predicting that the people most likely to be hurt by the
new law live in the red states 'that always vote for the GOP, including Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama and
Mississippi. With many of their residents struggling to stay a float, those states have a substantial number of personal
bankruptcy filings. The letter made not one bit of difference.
Years from now, sociologists and political scientists will explain how Republicans persuaded so many voters to act
against their own economic interests. Even as the GOP heaps more and more benefits on the wealthy and big business -
tax breaks, so-called tort reform, anti-union policies and strips them from average workers, the party continues to get
much of its support from those same workers.
It's a mystery. Perhaps it can be partly explained by the virtue of self-reliance, an ethic embedded in the American psyche
that often associated with conservatives. But a sense of invulnerability also has made it easier for the GOP led assault on
average Americans: Most people don't think they will be the victims of a financial crisis until the crisis befalls them.
The rewrite of bankruptcy law comes after a series of other developments have frayed the safety net for average
families. Even as job security declines, unemployment compensation has been reduced. Guaranteed pensions are
disappearing, as is employer-provided health insurance. While wealthy Amercans are coddled, working Americans are
being subjected to the whims of a rapacious capitalism.
But Bush didn't say that during the last campaign. Instead, he talked about an ownership society." He neglect to explain
that most of the owning would be done by the very rich.
..@ 2005, Universal Press Syndicate

Senate near meltdown over judges

A vote on nominee William Myers may be a rehearsal for a next Supreme Court justice.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – Thursday's vote on the first of President Bush's blocked judicial nominees sets up a test of a "nuclear
option" whose fallout could effectively bring the US Senate to a stop for the balance of the 109th Congress - and affect
the balance on US courts for decades.
The pitched partisan battle revolves around a change in rules that seem arcane, but the impact could reach a wide range
of issues before US federal courts, from consumer and environmental protections to civil liberties and the role of
government in the post-9/11 era.

In the Monitor
Wednesday, 03/16/05
Congress as Umpire on Steroids

Given the high stakes, with activists on both sides ramping up this week to urge firmness in party ranks, it appears
unlikely that moderates can avert a showdown.

The focus, for now, is on the nomination of William Myers to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Judiciary Committee
is expected to send his nomination to the full Senate with a 10-8 party-line vote - a signal that Democrats plan to filibuster
the nomination on the floor. When they do, Republicans plan to use their Senate majority to change the rule for ending
debate - killing filibusters with a majority, not the 60 votes now required.

"Both parties understand that this is a dress rehearsal for the Supreme Court," says Sheldon Goldman, a political
scientist and expert on judicial nominations at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "It's been nicknamed the
nuclear option because the fallout would be radioactive as far as our politics goes."

With Chief Justice William Rehnquist expected to retire from the US Supreme Court, the Senate rules on nominations
have immediacy beyond the broader question of the ideological tenor of US courts.

Activists on both sides paint it as an epic event: "As Republican leaders prepare to overturn 200-year-old rules in the
Senate to eradicate the need for bipartisan support and stack the Supreme Court, we've got to show Democratic and
Republican senators that this is a grass-roots issue," said organizers for MoveOn PAC in the run-up to a rally on
Wednesday.

Congress watchers speculated that the defeat of Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle in 2004, largely over alleged
"obstructionism" on judicial nominees and other issues, would temper Democratic opposition to the president's nominees.
Instead, Democrats are closing ranks over the issue. In a March 1 letter, freshman Sen. Ken Salazar (D) of Colorado,
who had been expected to support the Myers nomination, called on Bush to withdraw him and other nominees who have
also been blocked previously on Capitol Hill.

"The decision to renominate these individuals will undoubtedly ... sidetrack our collective efforts to work on other crucial
matters," he wrote. Democratic leaders said Tuesday that if Republicans change filibuster rules, they will use other
procedures to effectively shut down the Senate.

Currently 43 seats lie vacant in the 871-member federal judiciary.

Myers is one of 10 Bush judicial nominees blocked in the 108th Congress by Democrats refusing to allow the nomination
to come to a vote on the floor of the Senate. It's the first time a filibuster has been used to block a judicial nomination
outside the Supreme Court.

"We have to reinstate majority rule in the Senate. The Myers nomination is the test," says Sen. John Cornyn (R) of
Texas. "It is wrong for a partisan minority to argue that a president's judicial nominees must receive a 60 percent vote of
the Senate to be confirmed - when throughout history only a 51 percent vote has been required," he said in remarks
prepared for an address to conservative activists at the Heritage Foundation Tuesday. When the Senate refuses to act
on nominations within a reasonable time, it violates the Senate's constitutional obligation to advise and consent, he adds.

But Republicans blocked dozens of President Clinton's judicial nominees by refusing to let them come to a vote in the
Judiciary Committee. "If you trace it back historically, both parties are at fault," said Senator Specter in a press
conference last month. Democrats, he said, held up the nominees of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. When
Republicans took control of the Senate in 1995, "we slow-walked [Clinton's] nominees," he added.

A former attorney for grazing and mining interests, Myers has fired up opposition from critics who say he is too hostile to
the environment. Specter says he chose Meyers as a first test because he is less controversial than some other
nominees.

Specter and other moderates oppose the nuclear option, arguing that minority rights in the Senate must be preserved.

The American media is silent about the issue of the oil companies failure to plan for sufficient refining capacity because
they're afraid of the criminals in the White House. From the article on the cover of the March 12 Financial Times, "The
reality is that oil consumption has caught up with installed crude and refining capacity." said the Paris based International
Energy Agency. They go on to say, "At the same time, the worlds spare refining capacity has shrunk as demand for oil
products has grown faster than the addition of new capacity.
They can't say the oil companies have intentionally reduced refining capacity in order to drive up gas prices in order to
make record profits.

Robert Reich has said there is nothing wrong with social security. I believe the US should implement an energy tax and
use the proceeds to increase social security benefits.

Bush and Delay are just the latest in a string of white trash hillbillies to come out of Texas.

I heard Bush mention he talked to Silvio Berlasconi, the Italian puppet dictator put in power by the US. Because the
Italians always vote for a communist government, Belasconi, who owns most of the media, is pushing though an agenda
that would give the prime minister absolute power, absolute power to do what the US tells him to do.

The parasite Allan Greenspan should cut his benefits and give all his stolen money to the poor.

You can't expect people like Cheney/Bush who are unfit for their positions to be able to make the right decisions when it
comes to appointing someone to do a job such as his selection of Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. He should have
been exterminated after pushing the country into Iraq. Instead he's given a new job where he can do more damage. What
does one expect out of these ignorant conservative barbarian criminals. I'll retract everything I've said about him if he
converts the loans to grants and writes off all the bad debt. Considering the new bankrupcy laws passed by the ruling
criminals I find it unlikely they will write off third world debt. Considering the IMF intentionally tried to get them to borrow
from them so they could force structural adjustment policies on them. John Perkins, who worked for the NSA, recently
wrote a book called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. In it he describes how it was his job to convince poor countries
to take on debt they could never repay, so that firms like Main, Halliburton, and Bechtel could enjoy lucrative construction
contracts and the US government could leverage its power over the indebted nations. He says at the NSA everyone knew
it was their jobs to carry on the mission of global empire.

Robert Reich said there isn't a problem with social security. He said with normal growth rates the trust fund will be
adequately funded. Robert Kuttner suggested in the event there is a shortage that they be an income tax surcharge.
Robert Kuttner also suggested there be a cap on home mortgage deduction. He also suggested the entire payroll be
subject to the social security tax.
I support granting mortgage interest deductions up to 500,ooo and anything past that there would be no deduction.
I would have a special gas tax to pay down the deficit. Conservative opposition would expose the price gouging on behalf
of the oil
companies that the Bush administration has supported and with which the media has remained complicit. If they really
wanted
people to conserve they would support a gas tax. Conservative opposition to such a proposal exposed the conservatives
real agenda. It simply is to rob everyone via the military, healthcare, and energy complex to maximize their profits.

Allan Greenspans recent feigned empathy for the poor is illustrative with regards to conservative hypocrisy and their true
feeling about the poor. Greenspan says he would like to know viable alternatives to address poverty in this country while
every economic conservative economic initiative he has pushed the past thirty years has increased the poverty. It's a
fact that trickle down implemented under Ronald Reagan increased poverty. It's common sense that deregulation,
dismantling rent controls, failing to raise minimum wages, destroying organized labor, not controlling the cost of
monopolistic industries like energy and healthcare, all the things he has done and failed to do in order to adhere to his
conservative philosophy have perpetuated poverty. If he want to change his colors and push the policies of FDR then
maybe I wouldn't find him a pure hypocrite. But then maybe the powers that be would treat him like Dan Rather.

Rumsfeld the Sadist
I believe the conservatives now say their reason for invading Iraq was to install democracy and overthrow a tyrant.
American troops wouldn't be in Iraq if in fact the US hadn't done the opposite. I'm not exactly a student of history but The
little I know causes me to examine the lies of the US actions in the middle east. The US government has behaved like
authoritarian dictators and sought to assure middle-eastern countries serve our interest by installing authoritarian
dictators
to do our will in the area. It started with the Shah of Iran. Then the people rose up against the American imposed
dictatorship and got the government the people Iran really wanted. They had to overthrow the US backed dictatorship to
get a government that served the Iranian people. Then we supported and armed the Saddam Huissans dictatorship and
used him to attempt to reimpose a US backed dictatorship in Iran and encouraging him to use chemical weapons
on the Iranians. Rumsfeld should have been prosecuted for genocide for this. Then our dictator in Iraq,
Saddam Hussein took offense to the treatment of the Palestinians by the Jews. The Jews who run this country don't want
anyone telling them who they can starve impoverish rob or kill so they have for quite a while been wanting to take
Saddam out. During the great depression, while the people were starving the Jews hoarded all the money so the
Germans had no choice but to seek to exterminate them. It seems the Jews can't change their colors. I believe most Jews
want peace with the Palestinians but our US conservative dictators back the Israeli conservative dictators who, like the
American dictators, enjoy terrorizing, torturing, impoverishing and robbing other peoples or countries. That's the reason
why American taxpayers are blowing billions and Americans dying in Iraq is because of totalitarians like Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz who have always in the past supported dictators like themselves in the region. In the absence of weapons of
mass destruction we now invade in the name of democracy. This wouldn't have happened if we had a real democracy in
this country.

Cheney and Bush's friends in the energy, healthcare and defense industries are robbing the American people blind to
the point a revolution is justified and these criminals hung from the rotunda of the Capital. Yet the media remains silent. If
US oil companies are paying so much for crude why are they making so much money. Because they're charging
monopoly prices at the pump and the criminals in the White House won't do anything about it. The same is true with
regards to healthcare and defense procurement. These criminals from companies like Halliburton get rich off military
contracts in the same manner as Howard Hughes in the hope someone will make a movie about them. We have a
dictatorship of criminals.

Terrie Schiavo is an interesting topic for the universal healthcare coverage debate. The country could easily afford to
provide quality healthcare for all if the profits was taken out of the system. Conservatives won't take the profit out of the
healthcare industry because that's all they really care about. They could care less if forty million people don't have any
healthcare. Now they feign sympathy with Terrie Schiavo and want her to continue getting the most expensive care when
millions of productive Americans lives are ruined for want of care. That's the conservative mind all over.

The economic solution appears relatively simple after I had that econ course at the community college twenty years ago.
You raise capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, inheritance taxes, close loop holes on the wealthy, raise the top rate to
make the income tax more progressive. Then you control the prices of items that are causing inflation like healthcare,
and energy. And you cut defense in half. Keep interest rates low and the economy will take off and the deficit will go
down in no time. The country with the fastest growth in the EU is Sweden for two reasons; they have the highest taxes
and spending. I don't know if they have their own currency and monetary policy.
With regards to the current account deficit. Bring those jobs back to the US and keep out imports that might threaten
those jobs by managing trade. This free trade stuff is ridiculous.

The CIA just forced their proxy conservative government in France to end the mandatory 35 hour work week. A French
parliamentary committee said the 35 hour week costs shareholders 13 billion. With sixty two million people that means it
cost every French person
only 208 dollars a year to have a 35 hour work week. The people of a real democracy would never give up such a deal.

How the ruling criminals justify their thievery.The self serving conservatives probably say that having the oil companies
gouge the consumers is in the best
interest of consumers because they have to learn how to conserve. This thinking is illustrative of the warped twisted
greedy minds of these criminals who run the oil industry. They are giving us European prices for gas but European
consumers have a choice with regards to consumption and most of the price of gas in Europe goes toward the most
efficient public transportation in the world. I used to spend five hours a day commuting to a job in LaBronx Manhattan
from Mont Clair NJ, It took 35 minutes to get there with the car. If every dime of profit went toward giving the US a public
transportation system that was a viable option to the driving then there would be less of a problem with the price of gas in
this country. Right now all the profits from the monopoly prices at the gas pump are going to criminals like Bush and
Cheney.

Raising interest rates to stem inflation caused by rising energy costs shows how brain dead the Fed is. How stupid can
they be.

We should call Dick Cheney Judas. He cut a deal for Halliburton to by Dresser industries with the intent that when he got
back into government he would pass laws to rid Dresser of its asbestos liability to the tune of hundreds of millions.
Millions of people whose only recourse would be to join class action suits will now be denied justice so Dick could make a
few extra million for Halliburton. I was cheated out of justice for a botched back operation because the results of the class
action suit were fixed in the interests of the defendant.

I suppose if executives from these pharmaceutical companies started to disappear something might finally get
done.

Here is an interesting case
Acting as special assistant attorney general, Hagens Berman founding partner Steve Berman has filed a suit on behalf of
the state of Nevada, challenging the drug companies’ practice of charging for Medicare drugs based on Average
Wholesale Price (“AWP”).

This case is brought as a representative action on behalf of thousands of patients and third party payers, and on behalf
of the State of Nevada to obtain equitable and injunctive relief.

Filed against several pharmaceutical manufacturers, including: Abbott Laboratories, Inc.; Baxter Pharmaceutical Products,

Inc.; Bayer Corp.; Bristol-Myers Squibb Company; Dey, Inc.; GlaxoSmithKline Corp.; Glaxo Wellcome, inc.; Pharmacia
Corp.; Pharmacia & Upjohn Company; Smith Kline Beecham Corp.; Tap Holdings, Inc.; Warrick Pharmaceuticals Corp.
and Does 1 through 100.

The complaint alleges that, in many instances, the purported AWP reported by the defendant pharmaceutical
manufacturers bears a minimal relationship to the prices actually paid by physicians or pharmacies and is “made up” by
corporate pricing committees literally out of “thin air” for the purpose of manipulating pharmaceutical markets and
increasing market share.

Similar to the historic tobacco litigation where Hagens Berman represented Nevada, 12 other states and Puerto Rico in
lawsuits against the tobacco industry, this lawsuit filed against major drug companies has nationwide implications, and
other states are expected to file similar litigation. Suits against the tobacco industry resulted in the recovery of $260
billion, the largest settlement in the history of litigation.

The failure of this government to regulate the cost of healthcare and energy on behalf of the people just means they are
intent on impoverishing the people on behalf of investors in these industries.

It appears the ruling barbarians have changed the constitution in Italy in order to establish a dictatorship. They must
believe they are as infallible as the Pope to effect such change.

German corporations are swimming in profits yet they don't create jobs. What is the answer that our infallible
conservative crackpot CIA parasites recommend. They look in their conservative trickle down handbook and it says tax
cuts for the rich fix everything so they recommend more corporate tax cuts. I suppose to get in the CIA one has to take a
test to make sure your insane.

If there is to be any hope of paying down the deficit the fed cannot slow down the economy. There is now no option but to
control inflation by increasing supply or price controls.

I think it great that Chavez is buying weapons. The US has been impoverishing the majority of the people of Latin
America for decades with their crack-pot ideology. They have behaved like brutal barbarians with their right wing
dictators and death squads. If they really care about the poor they should embrace Marxism because their trickle down
has been a disaster for the majority. Maybe those weapons will give the impetus necessary to get things moving in the
right direction. The US was content to keep screwing Venezuela by paying below market rates for their oil. They didn't
change their tune till forced to. You can never count on the US to do the right thing till they have to. You especially can't
count on Americas oil industry to do the right thing until they are forced to. If the US isn't going to do anything to improve
the plight of the people the least they could do is not get in the way of the Marxists who try.
For decades the US has stood by and allowed Korea and Japan to plan their economies for the benefit of their people.
Why did they go and ruin Latin America with forced trickle down when they wished to plan their economies like Japan or
Korea. Probably because they could get way with impoverishing the Latin American people so they did. This proves the
US is run by fuckin barbarians.

Conservatives killed Terrie Shivo by failing to take the profits out of healthcare. If they did this country could easily
provide for everyone and afford to keep Terrie Shivo alive indefinitely. Years ago, before the US began imposing their
ideology on the world the cost of healthcare per capita in Japan was half the cost in the US with greater customer
satisfaction. The US government refuses to regulate the profiteers in the healthcare industry that have made healthcare
unaffordable for millions. Those opposed to regulation killed her. When Hillary Clinton sought national healthcare those
opposed to providing for everyone killed her program. These are the same people who killed Terrie Shivo.

The US puppet government in Germany has cut the corporate tax rate from 25% to 19% while cutting the monthly stipend
to the long term unemployed to 300E. US sadist totalitarians are bringing back the sadistic policies of Nazi Germany.

US conservative crackpots use the EU to force France to eliminate 30,000 hospital beds since 1999 while people need
healthcare and the conservative parasites say the would like to create jobs. These conservative American little dictators
who impose their ideology on the world are deranged. Their need to fuck up the world proves their insanity.

I'd like to comment on the EU Service directive and the fear of low cost social dumping by companies from eastern
Europe operating at lower standards. I'll site two pages from Robert Kuttner's book "The Economic Illusion" page 137 and
144. I believe if the directive passes it will destroy the social bargain that has built the middleclass in western Europe. But
maybe that's the conservatives intent. In Kuttner's words, "According to conventional economics, there is a common
remedy for unemployment, inflation, profit squeeze, and sagging productivity: lower wages. Yet a competitive race to
reduce wages must add up to a worldwide drop in purchasing power. It is as if the Keynesian revolution and the lessons
of the Great Depression never happened. "

If we are to enjoy continuous near-full employment, without changing the institutions and habits of industrial bargaining,
we shall suffer from inflation. It is neither the fault of the trade unions, fulfilling their proper function of demanding a fair
share in rising profits, nor of businessmen trying to preserve profits by raising prices when costs go up. It is the fault of
an economic system inappropriate to the development of the economy. This seems to be dawning at last on official
opinion.
KEYNES OBSERVED, in the famous last sentence of his General Theory, "But soon or later, it is ideas, not vested
interests, which are dangerous for good or evil." Ideas matter. As Keynes's colleague Joan Robinson suggests,
institutions also matter. The kind of industrial-relations culture in a given nation makes an enormous difference in that
nation's ability to broker positive-sum gains in productivity, employment, growth, and distribution. In this chapter, I will
suggest that societies with strong unions and highly refined social bargaining machinery do a much better job of
maintaining full employment, promoting distributive justice, reconciling technological progress with social needs, and
moderating inflation. This conclusion flies in the face of classical economic theory and much conventional wisdom about
the role of unions.
Economists habitually ignore institutions. Their professional training instructs them to pierce the institutional veil and look
beyond institutions to rational, "optimizing" individuals. Social institutions are messy; they resist rigorous quantitative
modeling. Most economists leave the study of institutions to-lesser disciplines, like sociology. However, when individuals
come together to form certain (p137) LABOR institutions such as trade unions, economists suddenly take notice.
Institutions matter after all, and their effect is presumed to be negative..Despite their obvious interest in full employment,
unions are said to be the enemy of full
employment. According to classical economics, this occurs because unions conspire to push wage levels beyond the
point where industry can afford to employ everybody who seeks a job.
When unemployment rates were high and profits low during the Great Depression, orthodox economists therefore
counseled wage reduction. Once wages fell to their natural "market-clearing" level, profit margins would be restored,
industry would resume hiring workers, and the economy would return to equilibrium. Trade unions were wickedly keeping
the market from enforcing necessary wage cuts; unions thus were pricing workers out of jobs and keeping unemployment
high. It fell to Keynes to point out tht wage reduction" in a climate of slack demand simply deepens depression.. In fact,
the Western nations climbed out of depression not by depressing wages, but by stimulating demand. In Germany, the
Nazi regime accomplished this via public works and rearmament. In Britain, a devaluation and controls on imports began
a recovery by the mid 1930s. In Sweden, the government engineered a recovery through domestic public works, budget
deficits, and exports to Germany. In / the United States, the Depression persisted until World War II revived purchase
orders. In all cases, the share of profits rose with recovery not because wages dropped, but because output increased.
Today, profits are again being squeezed and real wages have outrun productivity gains. And there are two new
elements. Unlike in the 1930s, when prices were falling, we now have inflation as well as slow growth (written in 1983);
and unions are held responsible for driving inflation, too. In addition, the rising specter of worldwide competition is said to
make wage discipline all the more urgent. In this context, unions are blamed for pricing the United States (or Britain, or
Germany fill in the name) out of world markets. According to conventional economics, there is a common remedy for
unemployment, inflation, profit squeeze, and sagging productivity: lower wages. Yet a competitive race to reduce wages
must add up to a worldwide drop in purchasing power. It is as if the Keynesian revolution and the lessons of the Great
Depression never happened.
(p144 ECONOMfc ILLUSION)
These labor movements exist in political cultures that are often called corporatist. The term refers not to the influence of
corporations but to a form of social bargaining in which large interest groups are very well organized, represented by
fairly centralized associations, and accorded quasi-official status. Thus, most of Northern Europe has highly developed
labor federations, employers' federations, farmers' associations, religious bodies, and other groups broadly accepted as
representatives of their members' interests, with a mandate and a capacity to bargain effectively with each other at the
national level.

Organized Labor and Corporatism
Corporatism has many faces. In the 1930s, Fascist Italy offered a model of totalitarian corporatism. Roosevelt's brief
experiment with tripartite industry committees through the NRA (National Recovery Administration) attempted to introduce
democratic corporatist institutions to the United States. japan now offers a more or less corporatist model but with weak
labor representation. In the democratic corporatism typical of Northern Euroe unions play a decisive role. Democratlc
corporatism operates not as substitute for parlamemary democracy but as a complement to it. By almost any standard
the nations of Northern Europe are among the world's most democratic. Voting participation is high; the press is free; the
political culture is vigorous and by American standards uncorrupted; democratic participation has been expanded to
economic institutions to a greater extent than in other political democracies; civil liberties are unparalleled. The
centralized nature of interest-group representation does not seem to take a toll on political liberty. Although a high
degree of centralism facilitates bargaining, the nations of Northern Europe are fairly skilled at leaving the details of
bargains to local affiliates; their unions are highly democratic internally. So the undemocratic aspects of centralized
bargaining are substantially leavened by accountability and participation.
In general, this social model seems to work best in countries that are relatively small, with parliamentary and unitary
systems of government. A small, unitary nation is more likely to engage in successful social bargaining for a variety of
reasons; most obviously, a small nation is more manageable; decision makers tend to know each other.
p. 145
And in a unitary and parliamentary system of government, bargains can be negotiated and carried out with a minimum of
extraneous politicking. More subtly, a small nation is liable to be more vulnerable to the international economic system
and doesn't have the luxury of domestic fractiousness. The vulnerability of Switzerland, though a nation that is highly
federated both ethnically and constitutionally, helps explain why that nation has many of the characteristics of corporatist
social bargaining. But the correlation between small size and corporatist characteristics is far from perfect. History and
politics also playa key role. Norway and Sweden have maintained successful social bargaining. But in Denmark, with just
5 million inhabitants, a compact geography, a uniform culture, and a unitary government,
corporatist bargaining has broken down almost totally. West Germany, with 62 million people and a federalist constitution,
is fairly successful at corporatist-style bargaining. So is japan, with a population of 119 million."
In recent years, a number of academic studies have quantified the relative success of different economies in the years
before and after 1973. All have concluded that the "labor-corporatist" or "neocorporatist" nations have been among the
most successful at reconciling high rates of employment, productivity growth, and social equality with low rates of
inflation. This is all the more surprising from the laissez-faire view, since these are the very nations with big public sectors
and strong unions. The success of democratic corporatist economies provides a key illustration of equality and efficiency
working in tandem and of the importance of social institutions in bringing that result about. It refutes the presumption that
the gains of "organized labor" must be losses for the larger society. These positive sum gains reflect the value of strong
and responsible unions as brokering and representational institutions, which look beyond the short term self-interest of
their members. In a society where organized and responsible labor unions are powerful, "efficiency" comes to be defined
as something social and collective as well as individual and economic.

Japan's political structure differs from Northern European corporatism in many respects - Japan's unions are weaker; its
private welfare state (which ties benefits to employment) is far more important. But the Japanese experience does
suggest that corporatist social bargaining can function in a fairly large country.
During the New Deal FDR forced companies to open their books to see what kind of profits they were making. If they
were making to much money he knew they were charging too much at the expense of the recovering economy. Because
money spent by consumers to stimulate the economy was going to the profiteer who were charging too much. Right now
we have a media conspiracy on behalf of the oil companies. The media is saying oil prices are high because the oil
companies have to spend so much more for crude. This is oil company propaganda. You know its a lie simply by
observing the obscene profits the energy industry is making. How stupid do they think we are, this shit instrument of
propaganda called the media. Maybe stupid conservatives believe this crap.
The numbers prove that the conservative parasites that are forcing their ideology on the world are ruining one economy
after another. They don’t care about the factual statistics that show the increase in poverty and dispair and
unemployment in every economy they get their filthy way with. They are driven by an ideology that will bring back the
great depression all over again. They must get their rocks off seeing poor people. No, they don’t even have to see the
results of their devastation. They used to sit in their offices in the World Trade Center oblivious to the lives ruined by
their trickle down policies. They claim they don’t understand why unemployment is up and growth is down in Europe.
They claim to have had nothing to do with it. This article exposes their guilt. They’re profit whores that will destroy the
global economy in the name of capitalism.
Why Europe is in Recession
Financial Times, Friday april 1, 2005
The Coming Powers: how German companies are being bound to the interests of foreign investors
International shareholders have an average of 50 per cent of free float in the companies in the Dax blue chip index. The
clash between long-term and short-term visions can have dramatic
consequences, write Patrick Jenkins and Richard Milne
Four years ago, Werner Seifert, chief executive of Deutsche Borse, was triumphant. The group's €lbn initial public
offering of 28 per cent of its shares had been a success. and three quarters of the demand came from international
investors, The capital that foreign shareholders provided, Mr. Seifert said, could serve as acquisition' currency in the
much-needed consolidation of Europe's stock exchanges.          ,
That optimism has proved sadly misplaced. After one of the biggest shareholder revolts in European capitalism, Anglo-
American investors representing more than 40 per cent of Deutsche Borse's share capital have forced the group to
shelve plans to take over the London Stock Exchange.
Rolf Breuer, the grandfather of German banking and chairman of both Deutsche Bank's and Deutsche Borse's
supervisory boards, said, the rebellion marked a turning point for corporate Germany. "I sense "that quite a few CEOs
and CFOs in German blue/chip. Consider what has happened as an' event of - let me not be too dramatic - historic-
dimension."
The Borse's predicament' is one that German companies increasingly face. Deutschland AG - the network of cross share
holdings and shared non-executive directorships that had insulated corporate Germany from international capitalism
since the second world war - has unravelled rapidly.
The average German, blue chip has undergone a sharp swing in its share- holder base - away from supportive German
investors toward
Short-termist hedge funds see opportunities to make quick gains and foreign private equity firms are taking big
companies private. The development is echoed by the rapidly growing influence of foreign investors in other crannies of
corporate Germany - from bank lending to bad-debt trading.
German chief executives are having to find out what their diverse shareholder bases think, justify their strategies and
modify their approaches to corporate governance. Foreign capital is revolutionizing the way Germans do business, says
Gerhard Cromme, head of the supervisory board at Thyssen-Krupp, the steelmaker.
The trend towards foreign capital began with the unification of west and east Germany 15 years ago. The demand for
capital to acquire state owned assets suddenly outstripped domestic investors' ability to supply it. The process
accelerated as the likes of Deutsche Bank, Daimler and Siemens grew by acquisition in the US, inheriting foreign.
Investors and taking on overseas listings.
But the sell-off of "long-standing cross-shareholdings has really marked the break with the past. As Germany's big banks,
insurance groups and industrial blue chips have liquidated their stakes in each other - making full use of a tax break
introduced in 2001 foreign investment has multiplied.
From a negligible proportion in 1990, non-germans now have an average stake of more than 50 per cent of the free float
in the 30 companies that make up the Dax blue chip index, having dominated the acquisition of billions of euros of
shareholdings divested over the past few years, in particular by Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest, bank,
Commerzbank, its third largest by market capitalisation, and Allianz, Germany's 'biggest insurer,
Sellers rid themselves of the investment volatility that came with holding a clutch of 5 per cent, 10 per cent or 20 per cent
stakes in companies, Five years ago, a third of Allianz's, equities exposure was clustered in big companies in which. it
held stakes of more than 5 per cent., Today that exposure is down to 9 per cent of a smaller, more diversified equity
portfolio, "The old days of buy and hold are gone," says Paul Achleitner, head of investment at Allianz, "Investors,
regulators and international accounting standards demand greater capital efficiency than that. For the companies whose
shares have been divested, - "mainly. to a spread of UK and US funds - the I impact has been more widely felt, "In the
olden days, banks and insurers tended to hold big 'stakes very passively," says-, Mexandra Hartmann" fund manager at
Fidelity Investments, which has a range of German blue chip holdings. "We, on the other hand, are active managers, 'If
we're not impressed by a company's management or their targets, we don't buy the shares,"
The government-backed Cromme commission on corporate governance has spent the past three-and a-half years trying
to promote corporate accountability and transparency in order to reflect and encourage the growing importance of
international investors, New laws have tightened up the requirement for companies to disclose share price-sensitive
information in a timely manner,
Even the cultural taboo surrounding pay is under attack, with a draft law to force executives to disclose renumeration
details tabled by the government in parliament last month. Companies are, opening up more to shareholder- friendly
strategies," says Helming Gebhardt, head of German equities at DWS a German Fund manager. This is particularly
evident in the way companies communicate. Gone are the days when investor relations meant a telephone call between
two chief executives. Instead, investor 'relations teams have grown steadily in the past five years to help companies deal
with global institutional investors. Deutsche Post, which - is still majority-owned by the government, more than quadrupled
the size of its investor - relations team following its partial flotation 10 years ago. MAN, .which has gained hundreds of
new investors since the sale of 24 per cent of its shares by Allianz, Munich Re and Commerzbank two months ago, has
doubled its investor relations team and staged more roadshows.
Hakan Samuelsson, MAN's Swedish chief executive, says: "It was easier..when there were big shareholders, but this is
better. It makes us more transparent. It has forced us to improve our communication as we have hundreds of new
investors,"
Managers also find themselves held to account more often. Hoehtief, Germany's largest building group, was cut free from
RWE, the utility company, a year ago. Within months Hochtief’s Australian subsidiary had issued a profit warning,
triggering one of the sharpest falls in Hochtief's share price.
Hans-Peter Keitel, chief executive, was shocked by how readily new investors sold their shares, in contrast to the longer-
term focus of established investors such as RWE. "It is a learning curve," Mr Keitel admits.
Sometimes, the clash between long and short-term visions can have more dramatic consequences. Deutsche Borse's
cherished strategy of acquiring the LSE had to be shelved in favour of a more immediate demand for cash from hedge
funds and fund managers, Bankers and analysts say an initial disagreement on strategy between management and
shareholders only turned into a crisis. because the group treated its modern-day investors as though they were the same
silent German banks that had owned the exchange before it floated four years ago. Management was headstrong and
the supervisory board – representative of the Borse's pre-float shareholders, not its current ones - did nothing to temper
the executive (see left).
The Borse's pledge to return an estimated €lbn to investors looks like part of a trend, too. Just month alone, Adidas, the
sports goods company, BASF, the chemicals group, and BMW, the carmaker - all companies whose free" float of shares
is dominated by foreign investors - announced share buybacks. (so the foreigners can control them for their benefit)
Other companies are being forced by investors to justify their very structure. They wonder why Linde, a conglomerate,
comprises two divisions gas and fork-lift trucks - that share few synergies. Similarly investors in ThyssenKrupp have
criticised its failure to maximise opportunities in its divisions ranging from shipyards to lifts. .
The danger for corporate executives is that hedge funds or other activist shareholders take big stakes and then dictate
the strategic agenda. Linde, in particular, is seen as vulnerable to a potential buyer keen on breaking it up, because
Allianz, 'Commerzbank and Deutsche - which between them hold a 32 per cent stake in the group - are looking to sell.
A further cause for executive nervousness is the knowledge that private equity groups see big restructuring potential in
German industry. Up to a third of Germany's blue chip companies have become acquisition targets for private equity
firms, according to investment bankers and buyout specialists. Whether such attempts succeed is a different matter, says
Ferdinand Graf von Ballestrem, finance director at MAN. The group, which faced a hostile takeover attempt two years
ago, is a conglomerate with five disparate divisions from trucks to printing machines. But it is so complicated, says Mr von
Ballestrem, that any potential buyer would probably be put off by the difficulty of, digesting the group or selling on all its
divisions. The best defence, he argues, is a rising share price -" and MAN's stock is up threefold over the past two years
because of improved profitability.
The growing influence of foreign "money is as evident in lending as it is in the equity markets" As German banks have
'sold their industrial shareholdings, the lending relationships underpinned by those equity stakes have been unwound.
Renate Krummer, head of development and controlling at Commerzbank, says: “There is no longer any connection
between holding industrial; stakes and making loans. The potelitial synergies, that might have been there 10 or' 15 ,
years ago are gone.
In readiness for Basel II regulations. - which from 2007 will demand that each' credit relationship is backed by appropriate
risk adjusted capital' - German banks no longer appear prepared to subsidize uneconomic lending for old times sake or
in the 'hope of winning other business. As 'local banks shy away from a competitive market in which1 margins are looking
slimmer by the day, corporate lending is 'increasing being granted by foreign banks_ notably the likes of RBS, Citigroup
and BNP Paribas, '.
Old loans, are meanwhile ending up in foreign hands. Several big German banks, led by Dresdner Bank, which is owned
by Allianz and soon to_be joined by HVB, the second' biggest bank by market capitalisation, have begun clearing out old
uneconomic credit business through sales to specialist distressed debt buyers.
Eyen the state owned Landesbanken traditionally the bedrock of lending support for corporate Germany, are pulling
back from risky business. WestLB refused recently to bailout Borussia Dortmund, a troubled local football club, while
LBBW withheld support for Walter Bau, the now defunct construction group. Walter Bau joined a steadily growing list of
big company failures, including the Kirch' media empire and engineering group Babcock Borsig.
Not surprisingly, there are those that resent the increasingly dominant role being played by foreign money in corporate
Germany - whether by equity investors or lenders - and the shift towards a more rational allocation of capital that it
represents. Verdi, the services trade union, captured popular sentiment when it said of Deutsche Bank and its planned
6,400 job cuts recently: "Increasing profits at any cost is unfair, anti-social and irresponsible. Such a cold corporate
strategy is irreconcilable with the foundations of a social market economy."
Nevertheless, the benefits hailed by reformers - greater transparency, a more open capital market and a sharper focus
on performance - appear to be winning the day. "Germany is moving in the right direction," says Lars Kreckel, equity
strategist at ABN Amro in London. "Companies cannot expect to attract international capital without accepting
international standards. But doing so should make investors readier to invest in Germany in future."
Deutsche Borse's proposal to create a merged European stock exchange with the LSE could have been the most
powerful sign yet of the German capital market's international integration. If its attitudes to corporate, governance,
communication and disclosure had been as international as its shareholder base, it might not have failed.

The big story is the opposite of what the media considers the big story. The big story is that the ruling criminal class can
get the media not only not to print the truth on the front page but that the have such absolute control of the media they
get them to print the opposite of the truth. The front page of yesterdays, Aptil 8, Financial Times, quotes the lies of the
IMF, saying the reason for the high price of gasoline is the the shortage of crude to meet the increased demand. The
profits of the oil companies prove this is a lie. The ruling criminals can get the media to print the lies of their criminal
organization, the IMF. The purpose of the IMF, is to make every country open to the criminal activities or the ruling
criminal class; to defend their desire to rob and pillage the world when ever they should desire. The story is they can
even get a publication like the Financial Times to cover up their criminal activity.
The ruling class has justified their invasion of Iraq by pretending that the american consumer's over consumption of oil
forced them to take action in order to meet the demand of the american people. If you see the movie Three Days of the
Condor, at the end the CIA says something like the american people are going to demand we get the oil for them.
Our leaders saw that after the Arab Oil embargo the US consumer adapted to higher oil prices. High oil prices don't hurt
the wealthy. It hurts mostly the poor and the middle class that need to commute long distances to work. The ruling class
says they want americans to consume less oil and they will get them to do that through the monopoly prices of the oil
industry. They have found that demand for oil is inelastic for the most part. People will pay it because they have to get to
work. So high prices are not reducing consumption. They are simply robbing those least able to pay. The way to get
americans to consume less gas is to have a gas tax and apply it toward making public transportation more efficient, as
efficient as Europes' and forcing the auto companies to make more fuel efficient cars. But this doesn't conform to their
crackpot ideology; their self-serving ideology that enables these criminals to rob the people.
An article on page 8 of April 8th of the Financial Times seeks to cover up the fact that the american people are being
robbed by the Pharmaceudical companies. The biggest story is not only are the people being robbed by the healthcare
and energy industries, the economies of the world are being ruined by the ability of the criminals who control these
industries to act unaccountable to the consumers or governments.
It's fitting that Boeing moved to Chicago; the home town of Donald Rumsfeld and the Capital for the conservative
crackpots. The Airbus-Boeing saga is great because it tells the real story why the third world (with the exception of China
that gets away with disobeying the IMF) remains the third world. The reason these countries don't develop modern
economies is the IMF won't allow them to subsidize industries behind protected markets and use product substitution to
make products for their own consumption that might not be competitive at the current period in time. Boeing is telling Air-
bus they can't subsidize their industry. The US was built on closed markets, an industrial strategy and indirectly
subsidized industries. They can't talk about those things or managed trade. The recent idea to slap tariffs on Chinese
good if they don't increase the value of their currency, (raise the value at which it is pegged to the dollar) is the first act of
sanity by a member of our government I've heard in years. It is an attempt to take Trade out of the realm of ideology and
into reality.
I picked up the Wall Street Journal this morning November 4th, (2002-I think was when I wrote this paragraph.) On the
front-page news, it said the Pharmaceutical companies are paying for the campaign commercials of Republicans in order
to assure a Republican congress that will not control healthcare costs. It also said through gerrymandering or
redistricting conservatives have been able to retain the status quo in the house. It also went on to say if Bush wins it will
mean more tax cuts for the rich and no price controls on healthcare and if the democrats win it will mean more money for
education and tax cuts for moderate income Americans. This is the type of information the ruling class keeps off the front
page of the major media because they know if the general public knew such things democrats might win the election. Yet
they allow such decisive simple facts to be front-page news in the business press because they know they already have
conservative readers. No relevant facts or progressive thought is allowed to presented in the major media in a manner
which might be decisive in an election. They want all candidates to move toward the center so they don’t have to worry
about the outcome of elections. Thirty years of killing off or under funding populists like Wellstone has made the two
party so much alike that their aren’t enough liberal democrats to defeat Bush’s tax cut for the rich. Bush almost won in
two thousand because of the votes of uneducated voters and the conservative masters want to keep it that way. Why don’
t 50% of Americans vote? Because the educated voters like myself have no candidate that represents their interests.
Every time I watch "This week with George Stepenopolous George Will lies about something in order to defend the
criminals who are screwing the American people. This morning, April 10th, he said gas prices, adjusted for inflation, were
higher in the 80's under Bush's father. He could say this without any evidence because he knows no one present has the
facts to contradict him. Even if he' right, which I doubt, that under Bush's father the oil companies were robbing the
people more than they are now, is he saying that makes it OK? Why does ABC have such a sick fucking propaganda
minister on a major network political news program.
The Fed's Preemptive War
We're fighting an inflation that's not imminent, and low-income workers are taking the heaviest casualties.
By Robert B. Reich
Web Exclusive: 04.07.05
Print Friendly | Email Article

Just 110,000 jobs were added in March, not nearly enough even to keep up with population growth. Meanwhile, the
wages and benefits of non-supervisory workers -- about 80 percent of the American workforce -- continue to drop, in real
terms. This is unusual for this stage of a so-called recovery.
What's going on? Blame higher interest rates. They're becoming a drag on the economy. The Fed continues to raise
them in order to prevent an outbreak of inflation. But the Fed is fighting a ghost. Inflation is in no danger of getting out of
control.
Alan Greenspan worries that the huge federal budget deficit will bring on inflation. That may be something to worry about
over the long term. But right now, the deficit isn't spurring inflation because there's so much excess capacity in the
economy.
Oil prices are another potential problem, but not yet. Most sellers are still holding the line on their own prices. They don't
want to lose customers, and they know customers have more choices than ever before in this global high-tech
marketplace.
So the Fed's war against inflation is a preemptive one. The Fed wants to tackle inflation before inflation becomes a
problem to be tackled. That might be okay, except for the fact that this preemptive war is imposing a huge toll --
especially on the nation's poor.
When the Fed makes preemptive war against inflation, poorer Americans are almost always the first to be drafted. That's
because when jobs slow, they're hit the hardest. They're at the end of the job line -- the last to be hired, the first to be
fired. They have the lowest job skills and the least attachment to the labor force.
On the other hand, a tight labor market, like the one we had in the late 1990s, has the opposite effect. The poor are the
biggest beneficiaries. Between 1996 and 2000, the earnings of Americans in the bottom fifth grew faster than anyone
else's. That's because employers had so much work for them to do.
But now employers don't have much work for poorer Americans to do because of the Fed's preemptive war against
inflation.
Poorer Americans are paying the price at the very time when the White House is cutting low-income housing, cutting
Medicaid for the poor, cutting child care, and cutting other programs for poor families. The White House is doing this in
order to reduce a budget deficit that Alan Greenspan worries may lead to inflation. That budget deficit, by the way, is due
mainly to big tax cuts for the wealthy.
Message to the Fed: Get real. Inflation isn't real. Widening poverty is. Stop this preemptive war.
Robert B. Reich is co-founder of The American Prospect

WAR CRIMINALS
(ECONOMICS DIVISION): THE DIRTY TWENTY
Edward S. Herman

Identifying any kind of war criminal is tricky. It is common to latch on to the hit men, or the ones issuing the immediate
orders, while ignoring the planners and decision-makers, the funders, and those providing intellectual and moral support.
And of course war criminals (military division [MD]) are always found only on the losing side, when frequently there are
outstanding candidates among the winners. Identifying war criminals is hard to do without an arbitrariness that renders
the whole effort dubious.
As for economics-based criminality, the very idea is anathema to the western establishment, because it points up an area
in which its principals are vulnerable. Just as the West (and especially the United States) fought against incorporating
economic (and social) rights as fundamental rights in post World War II formulations of the International Declaration of
Human Rights, so today it avoids the phrase "class war" as well as the possibility of criminality associated with economic
policy and private economic actions. The western establishment devotedly supports capitalism, which means "economic
freedom," which means the freedom to starve as well as accumulate wealth.
It also means the right of establishment politicians to carry out economic policies that immiserate and kill large numbers of
people, and the right of the corporate elite to fire, exploit, and otherwise mistreat employees within the (flexible) limits of
the law. These rights are fundamental to the system, and spokespersons for contemporary capitalism view any
immiseration produced by its normal operations as inescapable facts of nature, like cosmic rays. As we are in a New
World Order of resurgent corporate power, more aggressive class warfare, an ongoing global redistribution of income
upward, return to "Dickensian" work conditions, and environmental devastation, the notion of economic criminality is
especially dangerous. Immiseration must be normalized, and it is the function of the intellectuals at the Cato, American
Enterprise, Manhattan and other institutes, and economists at the University of Chicago and elsewhere, to extend the
intellectual and moral boundaries of potential immiseration.
The press has the responsibility of keeping such uncomfortable notions as economics-based criminality out of sight.
Each year Oxfam puts out powerful documents on global poverty and the devastating effects of World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies on the world's non-elite billions (a superb illustration is its 1995 The Oxfam
Poverty Report), but these are never reviewed or even reported in the New York Times. Similar suppression or
marginalization is applied to the publications and conferences of Food First, the Development Group for Alternative
Policies, the Global Exchange, PROBE International, and other dissident groups, and to campaigns like last year's "Fifty
Years Are Enough" (celebrating the 50th anniversary of the World Bank).
The media also treat in a very low key the massive looting by western clients like Mobutu, Suharto and the Salinas boys
and their allies, the union busting operations of Caterpillar, and the damage inflicted on the underlying populations by
neoliberalization in countries like Mexico and Chile. I have always thought it enlightening that the great thief, Philippines
dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was treated very gently by the U.S. media until 1986, when he became so weak internally that
he could no longer serve U.S. interests and was written off by U.S. policy-makers, at which point his looting suddenly
became newsworthy!
In addressing economic criminality we run into some of the same kinds of problems that establishment analysts encounter
in identifying military war crimes. Who is "responsible" in a complex system of division of labor? Do we look behind the
middle and top managers to the large shareholders and bankers who may call the shots? Do we stop with the political
leaders who make and execute laws or do we reach back to the election funders, advisers, planners and intellectuals
urging on the criminal projects? Pinning the label of criminality on individuals ignores the systemic element in such
crimes--the fact that they are not only the result of how the system works, but that large numbers share responsibility. It is
true that some can be identified with special discretionary powers and exceptional involvement in war and economic war
crimes, but we still face difficult problems. Information on criminal economic behavior, which extends over the entire
globe, is limited and the actual locus of economic and political decisions if often difficult to establish. In short, our
selection is going to have a strong element of arbitrariness.
Why bother then? As noted earlier, one reason is to highlight the arbitrariness of the establishment's confinement of war
crimes to those that fit its biases and to focus on the immorality and viciousness of important forms of criminal economic
activity. A second is to name names, and to call the scoundrels in question by their deserved name of war criminal--
economics division. They are all quite respectable folk, much honored. A man like Michel Camdessus, a prime war
criminal-ED who heads the International Monetary Fund, considers himself a "socialist" and do-gooder.
Economic crimes deserving attention fall into two categories: first, are those that harm large numbers by enforcing an
economic policy that serves the global elite, as with Camdessus' "structural adjustment" programs for poor countries. A
second form of crime is large scale theft, as in the case of Mobutu, the Western imposed looter in Zaire, and Suharto in
Indonesia. The robbers also help immiserate, but they do it not so much through policy actions as by directly reducing
the GDP available to the populace by their own robbery and that carried out by foreign businesses who have made entry
payoffs. A number of war criminals-ED are also war criminals- MD. Mobutu and Suharto, in addition to looting, have also
participated in large scale repression and murder.

The Dirty Twenty
I am going to break my list of war criminals-ED into four categories: Government Leaders, Middle Managers,
Businessmen, and Economists-Intellectuals-Advisers. I will include only criminals currently active, so that Margaret
Thatcher, Carlos Salinas, Ronald Reagan and George Bush are excluded, although they would show up in a historical
accounting. I am also going to list only twenty in total, with a very brief explanatory comment, although the potential list
would be of large size. I invite readers to send in their own additions or emendations to my list. Perhaps Z Magazine
should have an annual listing of war criminals-ED, given the unwarranted neglect of this subject by the mainstream media.
Government leaders:
1. Bill Clinton: for his contribution to welfare "reform," for his economic policy of slow growth, tight monetary and fiscal
policy, and trickle-down economics, which has caused insecurity to rise and the income distribution to become more
unequal in his tenure. Also for his support of Yeltsin and Russian "reform," his Iraq policy of holding 18 million people
hostage and subject to an economic boycott, and his general fronting for global neoliberalism and the corporate order.
2. Boris Yeltsin: for his key role in beggaring millions of Russians, in service to a looting economic mafia and the West.
3. General Suharto: one of the great thieves (and mass murderers) of the twentieth century, who created a "favorable
climate of investment" in Indonesia, and is consequently treated in the West as a "moderate" and "modernizer."
4. Mike Harris: the current Progressive [sic] Conservative Premier of Ontario, who relishes putting workers out of work
and poor people out on the streets; a caricature of a rightwing ideologue, with executive power.
5. Sese Seko Mobutu: possibly the greatest thief of the twentieth century in ratio of loot to GDP, with estimated wealth in
excess of $5 billion; put in place by U.S. intervention, supported by the IMF and World Bank, and very solicitous of
creditor claims, if not the basic needs of his people.
6. Ernesto Zedillo: successor to Salinas as head of the PRI, in charge of managing the huge contraction of the Mexican
economy at the expense of the underlying population, to keep payments flowing to Mexico's creditors. Also responsible
for the ongoing repression of peasant and indigenous uprisings.
Middle Managers:
7. Michel Camdessus: long time head of the IMF, whose structural adjustment programs have imposed enormous
burdens on the world's poor, while servicing the demands of the global transnational corporations and banks.
Camdessus is very possibly directly responsible for more human deaths than any person since World War II--the
neoliberal equivalent of Adolph Eichmann.
8. Allan Greenspan: Reaganite head of the Fed has not only managed a monetary policy focusing on inflation control,
slow growth and a sizable reserve army of unemployed, he contributed to the S & L debacle with an adulatory letter of
recommendation for S & L crook Charles Keating, now in jail for fraud.
9. James Wolfensohn: a recently appointed head of the World Bank, who continues to carry out its policies of
environmentally destructive loans for dams, support for leaders like Zedillo, Suharto and Yeltsin, and structural
adjustment programs for countries like Haiti--his job is criminal by structural necessity.
Business leaders:
10. Jim Bob Moffett: chairman of Freeport-McMoRan, a transnational mining company, now famous for its environmental
destruction and criminal abuses of the native population in West Papua, New Guinea (under the rule of Indonesia, the
company assisted by the Indonesian army); also one of the leading polluters in North America.
11. M. A. Van den Bergh, Managing Director of Royal-Dutch-Shell: for his and Shell's role as long-time collaborator with
the Nigerian dictatorship; has abused the Ogoni people's lands for decades, keeping them under control with the help of
the Nigerian military.
12. Donald Fites: the CEO of Caterpillar has set a standard in union busting, with his triumph over the UAW in a four year
strike.
13. Al Dunlap: champion of down-sizing, Dunlap did a major job on Scott Paper employees, and has now been brought in
to kill jobs on behalf of the stockholders at Sunbeam Corporation.
14. Charles Hurwitz: corporate raider, who cost the taxpayer $1.6 billion in S & L losses, is most famous as boss of Pacific
Lumber, owner of the Headwaters Grove, the last major private ancient redwood forest in California. Pacific Lumber has
been notable for ruthless clear cutting of the California redwoods.
15. William Simon: pioneer in the leveraged buyout method of ripoff, which led the way to the Reagan era buyout-merger
frenzy; also a top organizer and subsidizer of neoliberal and rightwing propaganda as head of the Olin Foundation.
Economists and intellectuals:
16. Jeffrey Sachs: Harvard's and the neoliberal world's leading shock therapist, responsible for human devastation in
Bolivia, Poland and Russia. Any failings in these shock treatments were a result of inadequate speed and
comprehensiveness, not Sachs' misunderstanding of institutions, cultures, and economics itself.
17. Arnold Harberger: Chicago School guru who was the leader of the Chicago boys in Chile, and is proud to have
brought free markets to that country (over many thousands of murdered bodies).
18. Robert Bartley: editor of the Wall Street Journal, passionate supporter of supply side economics and all the death
squads necessary to bring it to fruition here and abroad.
19. Charles Murray: author of the antiwelfare classic Losing Ground and the racist classic The Bell Curve, Murray has
been in the intellectual forefront of the attack on the poor, weak and black.
20. Thomas Sowell: Hoover Institution economist, one of three black social scientists (the others: Walter Williams and
Shelby Steele) who have given the Charles Murray slant to affirmative action and welfare state policies in general. Sowell
won a close competition among the three.
This selection can be contested; the potential candidates run into the thousands. The Dirty Twenty are all "good" (i.e.,
despicable) candidates, but in a sense they are symbolic representatives of a large criminal class.

FINANCIAL TIMES   Monday April,II: 1l 2OO5
US has fought war for oil and lost it
From Dr Ian Rutledge,
Sir, Your recent report that oil prices have reached an all-time nominal high and that Goldman Sachs has suggested the
possibility of a "super spike" in prices to as high as $105 per barrel ("Crude at all-time high despite Opec's efforts", April
5) should be of no surprise to anyone who has studied the informed opinions of US energy experts in the period leading
up to the invasion of Iraq. Nor, for that matter, to anyone who has seen my own observations on future world oil prices in
my recent book Addicted to Oil.
In a crucial report to George W, Bush by the US Council on Foreign Relations in April 2001, the president was warned
that: "The world is currently close to utilising all of its' available global oil production capacity, raising the chances of an
oil supply crisis with more substantial consequences than seen in three decades."
. With US oil consumption in 2001 at an all-time high (19,7m b/d), import penetration at 53 per cent and dependence on
Arabian Gulf oil also at "an all-time record (14.1 per cent of total US domestic and foreign supplies), the council stated
that it was absolutely imperative that "political factors do not block the development of new oil fields in the Gulf' and that
"the Department of State, together with the National Security Council", should "develop a strategic plan to encourage
reopening to foreign investment in the important states of the Middle East".
But while the council argued that "there is no question that this investment is vitally important to US interests" it also
acknowledged that "there is strong opposition to any such opening among key segments of the Saudi and Kuwaiti
populations". .However, there was an alternative, In the words of ESA Inc (Boston), the US's leading energy security
analysts: One of the best things for our supply security would be to liberate Iraq,"
Words echoed by William Kristol, the Republican party ideologist, in testimony to the House Subcommittee' on the Middle
East on May 22 2002. He said that as far as oil was concerned, "Iraq is more important than Saudi Arabia". So when,
according to the former head of ExxonMobil's Gulf operations, "Iraqi exiles approached us saying: 'You can have our oil if
we can get back in there,' " the Bush administration decided to use its military might to create a pliant - and dependable -
oil protectorate in the Middle East and achieve that essential "opening" of the Gulf oil fields,
But in the words of another US oil company executive, "it all turned out a lot more complicated than anyone had
expected". Instead of the anticipated post invasion rapid expansion of Iraqi production, the insurgency has prevented
Iraqi exports from even recovering to preinvasion levels. The US appears to have fought a war for oil in the Middle East,
and lost it.
Ian Rutledge,
Chesterfield S40 4TR, UK
For the full version of this letter see www.ft.com/letters
Cheney must search far and wide to find psychos like John Bolton to appoint to important positions like the UN or like
George Bush to be president. Only a sick deranged fuck would appoint genocidal maniacs like Negroponte. Too bad
Negroponte didn't have Cheney and Bush exterminated. The good born again Christian appoints a genocidal maniac to
head the Intelligence community. These sick deranged Christian hypocrites. I'd have a death squad give them at taste of
their own medicine.
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
published in 1982 by South End Press

"In 1976 six National Security States of Latin America- Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay- entered
into a system for the joint monitoring and assassinating of dissident refugees in member countries. The program was
directly initiated under the sponsorship of Chile and its head of the secret police (DINA), Manuel Contreras. Chile
provided the initial funding, organized a series of meetings in Santiago, and provided the computer capacity and
centralized services. However, the United States deserves a great deal of credit for this important development ...
In 1968, U.S. General Robert W. Porter stated that "In order to facilitate the coordinated employment of internal security
forces within and among Latin American countries, we are...endeavoring to foster inter-service and regional cooperation
by assisting in the organization of integrated command and control centers; the establishment of common operating
procedures; and the conduct of joint and combined training exercises."
Operation Condor
South African Transnational Terrorism
Israel's Sacred Terrorism
The Economics of the National Security State
U.S. Sponsorship and Support of the System of National Security States
Terror as an Integral Feature of the National Security State
The Mass Media and the National Security State
Remedies for Terrorism
"The linkages between the United States and the NSSs [National Security States] are clear and powerful ... It is, once
again, a testimonial to the power and patriotism of the Free Press that, not only is the terrorism of the NSSs underrated,
but the role of the United States as the sponsor - the Godfather - of this real terror network is hidden from view ... the
United States is portrayed as an innocent bystander, occasionally making mistakes in its anxiety to protect the citizens of
Latin America from the evils of Communism, but regretful of any excesses that may sometimes occur there. This amazing
pretense is carried through despite the historical record of an openly announced role of Godfather dating back at least to
1823 (the Monroe Doctrine), the more or less steady interventionism since then, the remarkable degree of homogeneity
within the NSSs, and the recent record of our role in sponsoring and managing the terror network."
Operation Condor (Latin America)
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
South End Press

In 1976 six National Security States of Latin America- Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay- entered
into a system for the joint monitoring and assassinating of dissident refugees in member countries. The program was
directly initiated under the sponsorship of Chile and its head of the secret police (DINA), Manuel Contreras. Chile
provided the initial funding, organized a series of meetings in Santiago, and provided the computer capacity and
centralized services. However, the United States deserves a great deal of credit for this important development, partly as
the sponsor and adviser to DINA and other participating security services, but also because Operation Condor
represented a culmination of a long sought U.S. objective-coordination of the struggle against "Communism" and
"subversion." In 1968, U.S. General Robert W. Porter stated that "In order to facilitate the coordinated employment of
internal security forces within and among Latin American countries, we are...endeavoring to foster inter-service and
regional cooperation by assisting in the organization of integrated command and control centers; the establishment of
common operating procedures; and the conduct of joint and combined training exercises." Condor was one of the fruits
of this effort.
Under Operation Condor, political refugees who leave Uruguay and go to Argentina will be identified and kept under
surveillance by Argentinian "security" forces, who will inform Uruguayan "security" forces of the presence of these
individuals. If the Uruguayan security forces wish to murder these refugees in order to preserve western values,
Argentine forces will cooperate. They will keep the Uruguayans informed of the whereabouts of the refugees; they will
allow them to enter and freely move around in Argentina and to take the refugees into custody, torture and murder them;
and the Argentinians will then claim no knowledge of these events. Under this system, two former Uruguayan Senators,
one a former President of the Senate, Zelmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz, were kidnapped and murdered in
Buenos Aires. We also note, just to keep the reader abreast of the quality of this cooperative enterprise, that both
Michelini and Ruiz were tortured before being murdered, and that Michelini's daughter Margarita was also seized and
"disappeared.
By July 1976 some 30 Uruguayan exiles, registered as refugees with U.N. officials in Buenos Aires, had been taken into
custody and disappeared, surely murdered. Subsequently, several hundred more Uruguayans were picked up and have
not been heard from since. Argentine authorities did not acknowledge these arrests, in conformity "with the policy of the
security forces to withhold information on arrests involving investigation of subversion" (Juan de Onis of the New York
Times, parroting the language of fascist terrorism). Many other cross-country disappearances have also occurred. As
reported by de Onis,
"Chilean exiles also were handed across the border to Chilean secret police and have not been heard of since. Gen.
Juan Jose Torres, a former President of Bolivia, was kidnapped in Buenos Aires and found dead in an automobile trunk.
Gen. Carlos Prats Gonzalez, commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army under the late President Salvador Allende
Gossens, was killed by a bomb in Argentina. A similar network of intelligence [sic] operations has also worked between
Brazil and Uruguay. Persons abducted in the southern Brazilian state of Rio do Sul, with cooperation from local political
police, wound up in Uruguayan jails."
Data are sparse, but the six country murder network toll starts with abduction-murders of Uruguayans alone numbering in
excess of two hundred. This terror network threw fear into the hearts of the many thousands of political refugees who had
resettled in the Operation Condor states, as they saw themselves now without a safe haven or any protection by legal
process. They were now benefiting from that "coordinated employment of security forces" that General Porter described
earlier as one of the prime objects of U.S. efforts in Latin America. As this extensive and terrible form of transnational
terrorism flowed from U.S. policy efforts and perceived interests, it has not received much notice in the U.S. mass media.
This murder network soon extended its operations beyond the borders of the six participating countries. A secret report
of an FBI agent assigned to Buenos Aires, describing Operation Condor, called attention to "a more secret phase" which
"involves the formation of special teams from member countries to travel anywhere in the world to non-member countries
to carry out sanctions, [including] assassinations, against terrorists or supporters of a terrorist organization from
Operation Condor member countries." It is worth noting that the FBI agent reporting on this matter not only approves the
enterprise (which he thought "a good operation") but falls easily into accepting the notion that the victims of its murder
squads are "terrorists." Data are lacking on the scope of this global phase of Operation Condor, which is difficult to
distinguish from unilateral international terrorism carried out by the Argentine or Chilean secret police or one of their
contract agents, often members of the Cuban exile terrorist network. Kidnappings, murders and attempted murders in
Mexico and Italy have been proclaimed by the Cuban Squad Zero from 1975 onward, some surely under contract with
DINA, although others were apparently to divert attention from the real (DINA) killers. Orlando Bosch has worked for and
been protected by DINA. The Letelier-Moffitt murders in Washington, D.C. were carried out by a Cuban-Chilean agent
team that may have been part of Operation Condor.
The CIA was well aware of the internal (member country) use and global extension of Operation Condor and headed off
its activities in several allied countries like France and Portugal by informing the authorities. The CIA did not head off the
Moffitt-Letelier murders, although it knew that DINA trigger men had entered the United States. Why? It is possible that
the CIA knew of the prospective murders, and let them happen because it was murder of the right people-people such as
Operation Condor and the Free World's secret police kill daily. It is also conceivable that the CIA suspected something
fishy about to happen, but chose not to inquire, because of their "faith" in the choice of their fascist counterpart. It is also
possible that the CIA bungled and made no inquiry, and that Pinochet and DINA murdered on the streets of Washington,
D.C. assuming that Washington would not mind; after all, both DINA and Operation Condor are U.S. offspring. How was
Pinochet to know that bringing his death squads right into the heart of the Free World was unseemly?
With its hand forced, and obligated to proceed in the case of a well-publicized murder in Washington, the U.S.
government did a great deal to subvert the case. Documents were leaked to the press which linked Letelier to Cuba,
effectively smearing him and creating a false red herring that was used both to justify murder and to divert inquiry away
from our warm friends in Chile. Although the CIA knew from the day of the murder that DINA agents had come in to do a
job, this was hidden from the press and from other parts of the government as long as possible, and the false trail of
suggestions of a left-terrorist murder was pushed by people who knew this was a lie. Thus the prosecution of the
murderers was carried out by a government that was so compromised by its own lies and suppressions and hamstrung
by its own involvement and collaboration with the Cuban and Chilean assassins, that it was inevitable that the case would
be conveniently "lost." The United States government chose not to interfere with the death squad at work on U.S. soil
before the fact-and it was therefore not going to be able to prosecute successfully after the fact. The United States was
one of the sponsors of Operation Condor, had trained the Cuban terrorist trigger man, and had been instrumental in
bringing into existence the Pinochet regime. This set of relationships, with its potential for "gray-mail," and its connection
with our "security interests," means that the terrorists of Operation Condor, like the Cuban refugee terror network are our
progeny. We are not likely to hurt our own.

Real Terror Network
South African Transnational Terrorism
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
South End Press

South Africa, by itself, has very probably killed more people in the course of its "secret" warfare on its neighbors during
the 1970s than the PLO, Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhof gang, Carlos, Cuba and Libya taken together. In a single raid
on the Namibian refugee camp of Kassinga on May 4, 1978, South African forces killed over 600 people, a large
proportion women and children. Many hundreds have been killed in Angola in search and destroy operations aimed at
"the deliberate killing and terrorizing of Angolan civilians in any area where SWAPO might find support or help." The
ruthlessness of these operations, with the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children, the burning down of all
houses, the destruction of mission hospitals, staggers the imagination, although once again the Free Press has kept this
largely under cover, preferring to concentrate on Soviet maneuvers on the Polish borders rather than actual invasions of
African states by the apartheid regime.
Much of this destruction was carried out by hundreds of mercenaries, although regular South African forces have also
been involved. According to one defector, who became "disgusted and tired of killing civilians."
"Our main job is to take an area and clear it. We sweep through it and we kill everything in front of us, cattle, goats,
people, everything. We are out to stop SWAPO and so we stop them getting into the villages for food and water. But half
the time the locals don't know what's going on. We're just fucking them up and it gets out of hand. Some of the guys get a
bit carried away.
[He describes an operation in southern Angola during which two children appeared and started to run.] "... They'd taken
their clothes off to show they weren't armed. We shot this young girl. She must have been about five. And we shot her
father. We shot about nine in all.
I don't know how, but somehow this girl's mother and her sister didn't get shot. Well, we left them there and carried on
with our patrol. She followed us: This mother and her little kid. She followed us all day, just walked along about 100
meters behind us. She didn't cry or say anything. This freaked me out."
Other defectors, some of them former white mercenaries from Rhodesia, have confirmed these accounts of merciless
killing of civilians and scorched earth policies that have caused massive destruction in southern Angola. The Angolan
government itself estimates that just during the 18 month period ending in December 1980, the South Africans mounted
13 major air and land assaults as well as numerous small-scale attacks.
Similar South African operations have been carried out on a hit-and-run basis in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Their
purpose has been clear. South Africa intends to continue its wholly illegal occupation of Namibia, as a buffer and plunder
state, and its murderous attacks on the black front-line states are partly to destroy SWAPO bases and sources of
assistance, partly to injure and weaken countries on its border and on the border of Namibia that would be likely to aid
Namibian independence. As is noted in a Wall Street Journal report,
South Africa waits, scuttling peace initiatives like the all-party conference in Geneva last winter and waging a generally
low-level guerrilla war that costs it little- given Namibia's diamond, uranium and copper wealth- and gives its troops some
counterinsurgency training in the bargain.
This Journal report also calls attention to the great "encourage meet" given South Africa's escalated violence against
Angola by the new anti-terrorist Reagan administration-indirectly in its obvious toleration/sanction of the Israeli bombing
raid on Iraq in the new anti-Libyan campaign, and more directly in Washington's warmth and understanding of the
"context" that may be impelling the apartheid regime to occupy Namibia illegally and to kill black Africans without restraint.
The Reagan administration's role in the (recent) sharp escalation of South African terrorism can hardly be overstated.
Only the Free Press and the most supine or reactionary leaders of the Free World could fail to see that code words like
"realism," "understanding of the problems," "context," and "quiet diplomacy" mean that "we are behind you all the way;
understand that any criticisms we make are strictly PR, to allow our allies to pretend that we object to your assaults on
your neighbors (or your own black majority). " Even before Reagan, U.S. business had found South Africa profitable and
therefore good, and our military-intelligence apparatus has long had the warmest relations with BOSS; but under liberal
administrations, and even under Nixon and Ford, the loss of national prestige from open alliance with apartheid and
Namibian aggression had a constraining effect. With the extreme right now exercising significant power in Washington
(sharing it with the traditional conservative business interests), the bars are down-the formerly muted alliances with South
African racism and Third World fascists have now become open and warm.
The mass media have played a strategic role in covering up the massive transnational violence of the apartheid regime.
First and foremost, they have suppressed the facts. These are available and can be found in black African, radical,
underground, and, to a lesser extent, liberal-left European publications. Extensive and horrifying details were given in the
British Guardian series, cited above, based on on-the-spot reporting and interviews with a number of South African
mercenary defectors. This series has not been reprinted in the United States, summaries have not been made available,
and similar on-the-spot coverage in Angola is not provided. As in the case of East Timor following its invasion by our
client state Indonesia, the Free Press does not go to the victims-government or refugees-it gets its information from the
propaganda services of the invader. In connection with this open invasion of Angola, the New York Times has carried two
front page and two second page articles based on South African handouts, describing "captured Soviet advisers," the
view of the war as seen from South Africa, and a portrayal of the loot captured by the South Africans. Nothing from the
end of the Angolan victims.
What makes the "Soviet adviser" gambit doubly dishonest is that the Cubans and Russians are in Angola mainly because
South Africa's incursions and support of Savimbi pose a serious threat to the Angolan regime. The Wall Street Journal
account cited earlier points out that
Both publicly and in private talks with western governments, Angola insists it would order the Cubans to withdraw if it were
assured of an end to South African raids. Conversely, it warns that further attacks could force it to reach out even further
to the Soviets, who seek political gain in the turbulence and instability of southern Africa.
This highlights once again the monumental hypocrisy of the west in its pretense at concern over terrorism, with its
apologetics for preferred terror in terms of a Soviet presence! The preferred terror is also not only large scale and
extremely ugly, it is in support of aggression in Namibia and protection of the cruel system of apartheid in South Africa
itself.
Israel's Sacred Terrorism
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
South End Press

Among the recipients of U.S. military and economic aid and diplomatic support, Israel occupies a unique place. Israel is
generally portrayed by the U.S. mass media as the victim of terrorism, a characterization that is in part correct. Its own
role as a major perpetrator of state terrorism is consistently downplayed or ignored, in accordance with the general
principle, discussed earlier, that violence employed by ourselves or by our friends is excluded from the category of
terrorism, by definition. The record of Israeli terrorism, however, is substantial, far too extensive even to attempt to
sample here. A small glimpse into the reality was given by Prime Minister Menahem Begin in a letter published in the
Israeli press in August 1981, written in response to what he regarded as hypocritical criticism of the Israeli bombing of
Beirut, which killed hundreds of civilians Begin offered a "partial list" of military attacks on Arab civilians under the Labor
governments, which included over 30 separate episodes that left many civilians dead. He concluded that "under the
Alignment government, there were regular retaliatory actions against civilian Arab populations; the air force operated
against them; the damage was directed against such structures as the canal, bridges and transport." "The picture that
emerges," former UN Ambassador and Foreign Minister Abba Eban wrote in response, "is of an Israel wantonly inflicting
every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr.
Begin nor I would dare to mention by name." Eban is harshly critical of Begin's letter because of the support it gives to
Arab propaganda; he does not contest the facts. He even defends the earlier Israeli attacks on civilians with the exact
logic which orthodox analysts of terrorism attribute to-and use to condemn-retail terrorists namely, that deliberate attacks
may properly be made on innocent parties in order to achieve higher ends. Eban writes that "there was a rational
prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that afflicted populations [i.e., innocent civilians deliberately bombed] would exert pressure
for the cessation of hostilities."
Begin's list is indeed "partial." It is supplemented by former Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur, who stated that "For 30 years,
from the War of Independence until today, we have been fighting against a population that lives in villages and cities,"
offering as examples the bombardments that cleared the Jordan Valley of all inhabitants and that drove a million and a
half civilians from the Suez Canal area in 1970, among others. The Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff summarized
General Gur's comments as follows: "In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they
deserved it...the importance of Gur's remarks is the admission that the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations,
purposely and consciously...the Army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets... [but] purposely
attacked civilian targets even when Israeli settlements had not been struck."
There are other examples that might be cited, among them, the terrorist attacks against civilian targets (including U.S.
installations) in Cairo and Alexandria in 1954 carried out in an effort to poison relations between the United States and
Egypt; the murderous attacks on the villages of Qibya, Kafr Kassem, and others; the shooting down of a Libyan airliner in
1973 with 110 killed as it was attempting to return to Cairo after having overflown the Sinai in a sandstorm; and many
others. Lebanon has been a regular target of Israeli terrorism, including direct invasion and systematic bombardment of
cities, villages and rural areas that has caused hundreds of thousands of refugees and many thousands of casualties.
Still another dimension of state terrorism is the brutal treatment of the civilian population in the occupied territories, and
the murder of Palestinians in the interchange of terror that has been proceeding in Europe for many years. Terrorism in
the pre-state period was also extensive, another story that is largely unknown in the United States, where commentators
like to pretend that terrorism is an invention of the Palestinians.
The Diary of former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett is a major source of evidence for a conscious policy of
deliberate, unprovoked cross-border attacks, in which advantage was taken of superior military power and a servile
western propaganda machine, with the intent of destabilizing neighboring states and provoking them into military
responses. Sharett was a footdragger in these enterprises, often shaken by the ruthlessness of the military
establishment-"the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invented, and so many clashes we have
provoked;" the "narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness of our military leaders" [who] "seem to presume that the State
of Israel may-or even must-behave in the realm of international relations according to the laws of the jungle." Sharett
himself referred to this long effort as a "sacred terrorism."
Where Israeli state terrorism is acknowledged in the United States, it is almost invariably described as "retaliatory," hence
not criminal even if regrettable. To cite only one example, consider the laudatory article by Amos Perlmutter on General
Ariel Sharon in the New York Times Magazine. Commenting on Sharon's exploits as the commander of Unit 101 in the
early 1950s, Perlmutter writes that "Every time terrorists were captured in Israel, they would be interrogated to
determined where they had come from. Then an Israeli force would return to the terrorists' villages and retaliate against
them, an eye for an eye- or, more often, two eyes for an eye." Perlmutter is a knowledgeable military historian, who
certainly knows that this is an outrageous falsehood. The "retaliatory actions" of Unit 101 were characteristically directed
against completely innocent civilians in villages that had no known relation to terrorist acts, for example, Qibya, where 66
civilians were massacred in October 1953 in the first major operation of Sharon's Unit 101. There was no known
connection between the villagers of Qibya and any terrorist actions against Israel. Israel angrily denied charges that its
military forces were responsible for this massacre, pretending that the "retaliation act" was carried out by "border settlers
in Israel, mostly refugees, people from Arab countries and survivors from the Nazi concentration camps..." Commenting
on this fabrication in his diary, Prime Minister Moshe Sharett observed that "Such a version will make us appear
ridiculous; any child would say that this was a military operation," as was tacitly conceded much later. He writes that in the
cabinet meeting following the massacre, "I condemned the Qibya affair that exposed us in front of the whole world as a
gang of bloodsuckers, capable of mass massacres regardless, it seems, of whether their actions may lead to war. I
warned that this stain will stick to us and will not be washed away for many years to come." Sharett was wrong in thinking
that "this stain will stick to us." The typical response is falsification of the sort practiced by Perlmutter in the New York
Times. A critical commentary on Perlmutter's whitewash of the bloodthirsty General Sharon in The Nation fails to mention
this remarkable suppression and distortion of the historical record. This single example is, unfortunately, quite typical of a
long and ugly story of atrocities and cover-ups.
The Economics of the
National Security State
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
South End Press

The development model espoused by the leaders of the National Security States (NSSs), (and their external business
and intellectual allies) is a free market model which allows for a government role only in creating a favorable investment
climate. This may include subsidies and tax concessions to business firms, which increase their willingness to invest, but
it excludes any largess to the non-propertied classes, which would worsen the investment climate. For the leaders of
NSSs the end sought is not human welfare; in Cardoso's words, "bureaucratic-authoritarianism was not launched to
assure the well-being of the people. The explicit aim is "national power," although, no doubt coincidentally, the immediate
and only observable beneficiaries are the ruling economic and military elites. According to the NSS development model,
the national welfare (= national power) is best served by rapid economic growth. Rapid growth, in turn, requires extreme
generosity to entrepreneurs, local and foreign, operating under free labor market and business entry conditions. Free
labor markets means an atomized or nonunion condition or unionization under government control and a plentiful
"reserve army" of workers. It is assumed that free business entry, which includes that of foreign firms, will stimulate a
restructuring of industry and agriculture in accordance with comparative advantage. It will also presumably induce capital
to exploit domestic resources fully. GNP growth and national power will thus be maximized.
*****
The observed income distribution effects of NSS development are exactly what we would expect from a growth process
controlled by small elite minorities who have resorted to machine guns. There has been a major trickle-up, and even
where GNP growth has been rapid the impoverished majority has in most cases derived marginal benefits at best. Latin
America has an exceptional degree of inequality of income distribution, in comparison not only with less developed
countries in Europe (both capitalist and socialist), but even in contrast with the Less Developed Countries (LDCs) of
Africa and Asia. Central America may be the world leader in inequality, with the lower 50% of income receiving units
getting only 13% of all income and the upper 5% obtaining a staggering 35% of total income in the mid -1970s.
In the advanced countries there was an increase in inequality during the early stages of modern industrial growth, but
inequality diminished in most of them during the twentieth century. In Latin America, growth has not led toward any
noticeable trend toward greater equality even over long time periods with high growth rates. There was an interlude of
modest reduction in inequality between 1930 and 1950, based on a reduced rate of growth (and a relatively great fall of
profits), a spurt of trade union growth and power, and an increase in welfare state benefits. But the post-1945 era of
more rapid growth brought with it a sharp turn once again toward increased inequality, a repudiation by experience of the
notion that growth and higher per capita income would surely reduce the massive inequalities of the old order. A huge
400% increase in GNP in Latin America between 1950 and 1975 was accompanied by a sharp increase in inequality, and
in circumstances where very large numbers were still hungry, malnourished, and suffering from curable illnesses, and
where many were experiencing absolute reductions in real income. The trickle-down effect in Latin America has been
modest at best, even though those at the top, who keep getting the bulk of any gains, are well-off even by U. S.
standards, while those at the bottom are in dire straits.
*****
In NSS budgets, military expenditures tend to exceed those for both education and public health, despite the absence in
most cases of any external security threat and despite the huge deficits in education and health that would press for
solution if human needs were given any serious weight. Thus a sample of 10 NSSs in 1978, with the data probably
understating military-related expenditures, shows that for seven of the ten states military outlays equaled or exceeded
education expenditures; for nine out of ten military expenditures exceeded public health outlays. This is a dismal record
even in comparison with the more militarized democracies of the west; and it suffers by contrast with socialist states. In
only three of the eight socialist states of Eastern Europe did military outlays equal or exceed educational outlays; and in
only in five of the eight did military expenditures exceed public health outlays.
The Third World client states of the west contain vast pools of human misery that persist and even grow in absolute size.
The International Labor Office (ILO) estimates that a huge 73 million people, or 27% of the population of Latin America,
could be classified as "destitute" in the early 1970s, with destitute defined as having a per capita real income of $90 or
under per year. An enormous 118 million Latins (43% of the total) were "seriously poor," meaning with a per capita
income of under $ 180 per year. The ILO also claims that the absolute number of destitute people increased in Latin
America during the growth decade 19631972. These extremely low incomes for scores of millions are associated with
high rates of unemployment (or underemployment), low levels of food intake and high malnutrition rates, poor health care
services and high levels of preventable and curable diseases, poor educational facilities and high rates of illiteracy, and
high mortality rates.
*****
U.S. Sponsorship and Support of the System of National Security States
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
South End Press

The establishment analysts of terrorism have strained hard to find ties and surrogates that would link the assorted retail
terrorists of the left to the Soviet Union. Their job would have been so much easier if they had looked at the acres of
terrorist diamonds in their own backyards! The linkages between the United States and the NSSs are clear and powerful-
one can show interest and purpose on the part of the superpower, ideological harmony, and a flow of training and
material aid that is both massive and purposeful. It is, once again, a testimonial to the power and patriotism of the Free
Press that, not only is the terrorism of the NSSs underrated, but the role of the United States as the sponsor-the
Godfather-of this real terror network is hidden from view. ... the United States is portrayed as an innocent bystander,
occasionally making mistakes in its anxiety to protect the citizens of Latin America from the evils of Communism, but
regretful of any excesses that may sometimes occur-there. This amazing pretense is carried through despite the
historical record of an openly announced role of Godfather dating back at least to 1823 (the Monroe Doctrine), the more
or less steady interventionism since then, the remarkable degree of homogeneity within the NSSs, and the recent record
of our role in sponsoring and managing the terror network.
*****
Robert McNamara argued in 1962 that U.S. training of the Latin military would be a "democratizing" force. The 18 military
coups in Latin America between 1960 and 1968 suggest the enormity of McNamara's misperception of reality (or
deception of Congress). There is a large body of evidence showing that U.S. training has given not the slightest nod
toward either democratic values or human rights; instead, it has provided all the essentials of NSS ideology, plus the
encouragement, means and support to put the NSS in place. The intent and effect of the U.S. training programs was to
elevate the status, self-esteem and confidence of the Latin military and to politicize it in conservative directions. Frederick
Nunn has stated that "subject to United States military influence on anticommunism the professional army officer became
hostile to any sort of populism." The fundamentals of National Security ideology as regards the omnipresence of the
subversive (communist) threat, total war between the forces of good and evil, and the importance of the military-security
forces as protectors of Christianity, Democracy and the Free World is extremely close to the substance of thought of the
U.S. military-security complex. This makes it more comprehensible that the NSS ideology blossomed in Latin America in
parallel with U.S. training inputs and that relations between the U.S. military establishment and its counterparts in Latin
America have been close and warm.
*****
The NSS was an intended outcome of U.S. efforts to contain popular forces and preserve a favorable investment climate.
This conclusion follows from the open design to build up the Latin American military as a political force, the nature of the
training which tended to make already conservative military personnel into reactionaries and zealots, and the general
approval and support of the NSSs that emerged from that process. This conclusion is in no way qualified by the limited
slaps on the wrist applied at one time or another to some of the most grotesque fascist excesses.
There is ... a large body of evidence that U.S. training and aid programs directly and indirectly encouraged and promoted
death squads and torture. First, there is the stress on the great desirability of foreign investment, and therefore of a
favorable investment climate for economic growth. Second, there is the focus on subversion, counterinsurgency, and a
holy war against an insidious Communist enemy who comes in many guises, and who actually hates our beloved
protector, the Godfather! This provided the spiritual backup to torture. Third, there is a great deal of evidence of U. S.
provision of torture technology and training, which have been diffused among a great variety of client states. Electronic
methods of torture, used extensively in the field and in the Provincial Interrogation Centers in South Vietnam, have
spread throughout the system of U.S. clients. A.J. Langguth claims that the CIA advised Brazilian torturers using field
telephones as to the permissible limits that would avoid premature death. Klare and Arnson show that U.S. firms and
agencies are providing CN and CS gas grenades, anti-riot gear, fingerprint computers, thumbscrews, leg-irons and
electronic "Shok-Batons" among a huge flow of "equipment, training, and technical support to the police and paramilitary
forces most directly involved in the torture, assassination, and abuse of civilian dissidents." Langguth also notes that one
of the pioneer death squads in Brazil, Operacao Bandierantes (OBAN) was financed through the auspices of a local
business man widely thought to be a CIA agent, with encouragement given to U. S. local corporate funding by the U.S.
consulate. And one of the most notorious Brazilian torturers and death squad organizers, Sergio Fleury, was introduced
to the Uruguayan police through CIA contacts.
As the United States has supported torture directly via training programs and the implements of torture, and indirectly by
means of its sponsorship of the NSS, it is natural that it also protects the torturers by apologetics and silence. This being
official U.S. policy, the mass media have done the same. In Paraguay, for example, Al points out that although
"Stroessner has said that he considers the American Ambassador to be an ex officio member of his Cabinet, the U.S. has
never officially acknowledged or taken steps to prevent the use of torture by a government which appears to be very
much within its sphere of influence". In Greece, to take another interesting case, torture on an administrative basis was
introduced in 1967 with the takeover by the U.S.-trained, supplied and supported colonels. Al noted in its 1974 Report on
Torture that "In terms of power and influence the U.S. government plays the predominant role in Greece." Al also points
out, however, that U.S. criteria of acceptability and serviceability seem to be confined to strategic interests and a
"congenial environment of political stability." Since the Greek torture regime met these criteria, other matters were of little
account, and U.S. policy on Greek torture "as expressed in official statements and of official testimony has been to deny
it where possible and minimize it, where denial was not possible. This policy flowed naturally from general support for the
military regime.
Al has pointed out "a seeming paradox" in the fact that "never has there been a stronger or more universal consensus on
the total inadmissability of the practice of torture: at the same time the practice of torture has reached epidemic
proportions. This paradox is resolved by the fact that the greatest superpower on earth finds regimes that torture useful,
and thus torture thrives and the Free World has learned to look the other way ...
.... the United States has also "voted" with its guns and money for the death squad. It can be seen in this table that all ten
countries in which death squads made their appearance, or were active in the 1970s, were recipients of extensive
training by U.S. military and police experts, and that except for Mexico (whose death squads have been the least
conspicuous of the ten) all have been heavily subsidized militarily. Perhaps when McNamara spoke of our "democratizing"
impact he was referring to the democratization of death. We may note also that in the four cases where the U.S. played a
leading role in the introduction of the responsible government, death squads appeared very quickly and were of major
importance in the repressive operations of the newly established NSSs. Again, the U.S. role, at a minimum, was support
of the states using death squads, and thus indirect responsibility for the death squads themselves. But U. S.
responsibility runs deeper when we recognize the extent of overall domination exercised by the United States over this
region (considered further in the next section). On one of the principles employed to justify U.S. assistance-that it would
allow greater "influence" by the supplier- we must conclude that the death squad is a manifestation of U.S. influence.
Torture and the death squad are as U.S.-related-American as apple pie.
Terror as an Integral Feature of the National Security State
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
South End Press

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that terror is a built-in feature of the NSS, firmly grounded in its ends and in the
objective situation with which it was designed to cope. ... its objectives are those of a small elite minority, who need and
use the NSS to implement a system of permanent class warfare. The economic model of Third World development
favored by the west does not say "use terror," but the policies that are favored, which would encourage foreign
investment and keep wages and welfare outlays under close control, could often not be put into place without it. Privilege
cannot be maintained and enlarged from already high levels if "the people" are allowed to organize, vote, and exercise
any substantial power. As was pointed out by Martinez de Hoz, the top financial minister of the Argentine military
government, in arguing for his 1976-1977 economic plan, "We enjoy the economic stability that the Armed Forces
guarantee us. This plan can be fulfilled despite its lack of popular support. It has sufficient political support...that provided
by the Armed Forces."
With undeviating regularity, the imposition of a NSS is accompanied by a rapid dismantling, or other mode of
neutralization-frequently by killing, imprisoning or exiling the leadership-of working class and peasant organizations, like
unions, cooperatives, leagues, and political groupings. The heart of NSS economics is wage control, and the introduction
of each NSS has been followed by a sharp fall in real wages and dramatic increase in the rate of unemployment. This is
one of those special Freedoms brought by machine guns, which has its own Orwellian Chicago School designation in the
NSS: Thus in explaining the shooting of a trade union leader speaking in favor of a strike, an Argentine army
communiqué of 1977 stated that "the legal forces acted in accordance with orders designed to guarantee freedom of
employment." In addition to Freedom of Employment there is also a rapid transformation of the government budget,
enlarging "security" expenditures, tax incentives and infrastructure investments that serve the joint venture partners, and
a contraction of public outlays for the majority. This could not be accomplished without force and violence.
A primary characteristic of the NSS is, therefore, exceptional numbers, activities, power and rewards of the military and
police establishments. The Brazilian military tripled its real budgetary allocations in the decade following the coup of
1964, and the Brazilian generals live well, with butlers, chalets, expense accounts, and substantial returns from their
public salaries and private business participations. In Uruguay, the coming of the NSS resulted in a fall in educational
outlays from 21% of the national budget in the early 1960s to little more than 13% in 1980. Military expenditures jumped
sharply to over half the national budget, and by 1980 one of every 30 citizens of Montevideo was employed in the
National Security apparatus.
With the coming into power of forces that explicitly set aside the rule of law in favor of a "state of siege," the potential for
serious terror is high. The military-security presence is felt by the population of the NSSs in a pervasive use of informers
and by the application of violence that has gone beyond the traditional brutalities of Latin America in both scope and
quality. It varies partly in accordance with the level of violence needed for the proper degree of intimidation. But this level
is often exceeded by the fanaticism and self-interested bureaucratic desires of the newly dominant "security" forces. In
Chile, where class conflict was sharp, and ideological frenzy in the military was deliberately intensified by extreme right
factions and the CIA, exceptional violence was unleashed. In Argentina and Uruguay, also, fanaticism and self-interest
give NSS violence special momentum. The security forces of the NSSs are given a dirty job, and it frequently grows on
them.
In performing their function of returning the majority to a state of apathy, and keeping them there, it is possible that once
the leadership of popular organizations is decimated and an environment of fear and hopelessness is created through
years of direct violence, that tacit threats alone will suffice. If, however, the very logic of the system is to depress the
masses-politically and economically-to allow unconstrained pursuit of elite benefits, to protect an increasing income gap,
and to keep costs down in a competitive world, permanent immiseration and permanent repression may be required. This
would seem to be implicit in a development model which "creates a revolution that did not previously exist;" that is, which
has a special capacity to generate misery and protest which will necessitate repression. Furthermore, where the NSS
managers are ideologically conditioned to regard all dissent, protests and lower class (majority) organizational efforts as
Communist subversion, a self-perpetuating mechanism of permanent terror is built-in.
... the scope and quality of intimidation under NSS conditions ... quickly overwhelms the reader by the horror of the
multitudinous details of pain or the incomprehensibility of the aggregates of numbers tortured, killed and frightened into
silence. It is important to understand that the NSS unleashed more sophisticated forms of violence, beyond traditional
bloodbaths and intimidation, based on more modern technologies and theories and ideologies of counterinsurgency and
Communist omnipresence and total evil, that made for uglier and more ruthless forms of terrorization.
Human torture, for example, only came into widespread and institutionalized use as the NSSs emerged and matured in
the 1960s and 1970s. By institutionalized I mean employed as standard operating procedure in multiple detention centers
(as many as 60 in Argentina, 33 in Colombia), applicable to hundreds of detainees, and used with the approval and
intent of the highest authorities. ... 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as a dozen other countries in
the U.S. sphere of influence, were using torture as a mode of governance, on an institutionalized and administrative
basis, in the early 1970s. The extent of concentration of this violence in the NSSs of Latin America is evidenced by the
fact that 80% of Amnesty International's "urgent cases" of torture by the mid-1970s were coming out of these states. As
torture spread through the NSS system a fairly standardized core of electronic and medical technology was used that
allowed the victims to be carried to a more severe state of pain and dehumanization just short of death. The fearfulness
of the violence imposed on the tortured thousands in the NSSs has been documented extensively, although, ... this
evidence has been muted by the Free Press.
*****
The numbers that have been subjected to torture in the NSSs is, of course, impossible to determine with even
approximate accuracy, and it varies in severity. Detainees have been subjected to torture ranging from brief and slight to
a long and intense use that is continued till death. Frequently torture has been applied automatically to virtually all
political prisoners (as in Argentina and Chile immediately after their military coupe), but this is not always the case. Al
describes it as used in "the majority of interrogations" in post-1964 Brazil; Zelmar Michelini estimated that of 40,000
political prisoners in Uruguay up to 1974, only 5000 were tortured (although he may have meant tortured severely). A
more recent witness, Victor LaBorda Baffico, a defecting military officer, reported in 1981 that everyone detained in
Uruguay regardless of age, sex, or crime is routinely tortured. (Baffico, the fourth such defector-witness from Uruguay in
the last year or two, has not yet attracted the attention of the Free Press.)
The numbers imprisoned for political reasons in the NSSs of Latin America, if we include all who are picked up and taken
to police stations for "questioning," probably greatly exceeded a million for the period 1960-1980. In Sao Paulo, Brazil,
28,000 were picked up for questioning as possible subversives in the year 1977 alone. Over 100,000 were detained for
political reasons in Chile during the post-coup period of 1973- 1976. Of these, a large fraction were killed (over 20,000),
and a still larger fraction were subjected to torture. Given the high rates of torture of political prisoners in the larger
states like Brazil, Argentina and Chile, the numbers tortured in the NSSs, 1960-1980, run into the hundreds of thousands.
This is terrorism in a form that retail terrorists cannot duplicate. Applicable as a mode of governance in more than a
dozen NSSs, it is an important part of a real terror network that the Free Press pretends does not exist.
*****
The "death squad" has been an equally noteworthy aspect of NSS terror, complementing the seizure, torture and killing
activities by the regular police, army and security forces(As can be seen on Table 3-3,)death squads came into existence
in ten separate states of Latin America during the past two decades. Usually they are composed of regular military, police
and intelligence personnel working in "off-duty" functions. According to AI, in Argentina:
Each sector of the armed forces has established a small operational force for this specific purpose [the eradication of
"subversion"]. To carry out the kidnappings, they use stolen vehicles; to evade detection they have false identity papers;
and although they can act with autonomy, they have to make daily reports to their superiors about the prisoners they
have taken. At times these groups indulge, for personal gain, in kidnappings for ransom.
In other NSSs, while the death squads are often official personnel working secretly, sometimes they are made up of
former police or military personnel; or they may be mainly civilian paramilitary right-wing groups who kill people the NSS
wants, or doesn't mind being, killed. In almost all cases the activities of death squads are under the direct supervision of
the authorities in their political kidnapping and murder activities. In Central America, paramilitary groups of the extreme
right are more common than in South America, but even here they are often organized by the official forces (as with
Orden in El Salvador) and, "Despite protests to the contrary by the governments concerned, they operate with impunity,
outside the law but fully integrated into the regular security network."
The idea that the "death squads" are "out of control" is, of course, part of the NSS apologetics and part of the reason for
the very existence of the death squad. Its separation from the regular forces allows systematic murder to be carried out
for which the state may wish to deny knowledge and responsibility. A corollary is that its allies abroad who like the NSS,
and their mass media parrots, will also be able to use "plausible denial" as a defense. It is not very plausible, but Jeane
Kirkpatrick waxes indignant at the outrageous notion that the governments of the NSSs condone the nasty doings of the
death squads!
The NSSs exterminate a great many dissident guerrillas; i.e., a left "out of control." That right-wing killers out of control
could not be similarly exterminated if they were felt detrimental seems unlikely. That they have emerged "out of control"
so regularly is also remarkable. That they are composed of people who, either right now or in the past were "under
control," that they kill the same kind of people as the official forces of the NSSs, that they operate in broad daylight and
are never apprehended-all suggest a simpler hypothesis-that the death squads are under good control and do what the
leaders of the NSSs want done. As indicated above, there is a great deal of evidence that they are usually quite definite
parts of the organized military forces; where they are not, they are usually still under official control.
Death squad murders in Latin America have been a daily occurrence now for several decades. In the Dominican
Republic where the La Banda death squad was "openly tolerated and supported by the National Police" in the early
1970s, there was an average of one disappearance per day. In Argentina, after the 1976 coup the daily average of
disappearances was five or more for an extended period. In Guatemala death squad murders averaged almost ten a day
through the first half of the 1970s. The total numbers kidnapped and murdered by NSS death squads over the past two
decades is not known, and is somewhat ambiguous as the distinction between regular force/death squad abductions and
murders is vague, possibly untenable. A sizable fraction of the "disappeared" have been victims of death squads but
many death squad victims have not disappeared. The estimate of numbers of disappeared in Latin America given at the
First Congress of Relatives of the Disappeared, 90,000, is nevertheless a rough order of magnitude figure for death
squad victims, comparable to estimates that can be built up from individual country values.
Important characteristics of death squad activities in Latin America, which bear on the nature and purposes of the NSS
have been their sadism and their tie-in with ordinary illegal activities like theft, kidnappings for ransom and the drug
trade. They are serviced by thugs. In Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala death squads rarely just kill;
they rape, torture and mutilate. Al mentions the fact that the security operations of Paraguay are "carried out by teams
whose members include the mentally deficient and the sexually disturbed." And fanaticism and pathology are evident
throughout the NSS system in the cigarette burnings, amputations, and sexual violence and mutilations. Al notes, for
example, that "It is invariably reported in the Guatemalan press that [death squad victims] show signs of having been
tortured and mutilated before death. Raids by death squads, and for that matter regular security forces, are very often
looting expeditions in the NSSs, and there have been numerous cases of kidnappings quite plainly for pure ransom.
Lernoux quotes the head of a large U.S. subsidiary in Buenos Aires, acquainted with a jeweler whose daughter was
abducted while the "security forces" ransacked his apartment for money and jewels, who told Penny Lernoux that
"stealing is officially approved as a means of encouraging these thugs.''
The thugs have a role to play in the NSS-they eliminate "subversives" and intimidate and create anxiety in the rest of the
population, all potential subversives.
The Role of the Mass Media
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
South End Press

Introduction
The mass media of the United States are a part of the 4 national power structure and they therefore reflect its biases and
a, mobilize popular opinion to serve its interests. This is not accomplished by any conspiratorial plotting or explicit
censorship-it is built into the structure of the system, and flows naturally and easily from the assorted ownership,
sponsor, governmental and other interest group pressures that set limits within which media personnel can operate, and
from the nature of the sources on which the media depend for their steady flow of news.(As we have seen) these interest
groups find the National Security State (NSS) good, and this preference underlies U.S. sponsorship and support of this
terror network. We would therefore expect the mass media to treat the NSS kindly and deflect attention from its abuses.
Any other route would be very surprising as the "national interest" itself has long been defined by the very forces that
cause the country to support the NSS.
If we examine the larger patterns of selection by the mass media, one of its most notable characteristics is stress on
"enemy" misbehavior and problems and a corresponding de-emphasis of misbehavior and problems of "friends." Terror
abroad can be classified roughly but usefully as constructive, benign and nefarious. Constructive terror is defined as that
which positively serves important domestic interests; benign terror is that which is of little direct interest to the U.S. elite
but may sometimes serve the interests of a friendly client; and nefarious terror is that committed by enemy states (or by
bearers of hostile ideologies).
Constructive terror would include the holocaust in Indonesia in 1965-1966 and the large scale political murders in Chile in
1973-1974, where the terror in both instances decimated a political opposition deemed threatening to U.S. and western
interests, and was quickly followed by an opening of the door to relatively free western economic penetration. In such
cases, where business and government like the political outcome, and in fact make notable contributions to the
origination and implementation of the terror,' the mass media play down the violence irrespective of its level. Reports on
the scope and character of the terror are few and antiseptic, details of the human suffering involved are sparse,
indignation and rage at the human agony are rare, and no sustained campaign of daily information or appeals for
intervention is mounted. Government attitudes range from mild expressions of regret at the alleged excesses,
interspersed with a hard-headed recognition of the (implicitly) just grievances that led to the violence, (communist
provocations and threats), to even more explicit apologetics. Thus, Robert McNamara, the U. S. Secretary of Defense at
the time of the 1965- 1966 Indonesian coup and massacre of an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 people, described these
events as a "dividend" showing that our military aid and training there "was well justified." James Reston of the New York
Times wrote of "A Gleam of Light" rising in Indonesia as a result of "developments" in process there. It is worth noting and
reflecting on the fact that the numbers slaughtered in cold blood in Indonesia in 1965-1966 exceed by a substantial
factor any official U.S. or scholarly estimate of numbers deliberately killed in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. As regards
the Chilean massacres of 1973-1974, probably in excess of 20,000, William Colby, then CIA head and formerly manager
of a national system of death squads in South Vietnam, explained to a Congressional committee in late 1973 that the
ongoing mass murder by the Chilean junta was a "good" thing, as it was "rooting out Marxist influence" and reducing the
possibility of a civil war which might otherwise have taken place.
Benign terror is well exemplified by the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor from 1975 up to the present
time. As Indonesia is a friendly client, its aggression in East Timor aroused negligible interest in the west (with the
exception of neighboring Australia), because the health and welfare of the Indonesian NSS was important to western
interests (notably those of the United States and Japan), whereas East Timor was otherwise of little concern. The
Indonesian invasion was a blatant act of aggression that resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 100,000 and
200,000 victims. U. S. arms were extensively employed in this invasion and occupation, in violation of U.S. law, but U.S.
officials, including Presidents Ford and Carter, Vice President Mondale, and Secretary of State Kissinger, colluded with
the Indonesian generals in playing down the aggression, its illegalities and its savagery. In fact, during the Carter years
1977-1978 arms flows to Indonesia were sharply increased, facilitating the huge massacres of that period. It has been
shown in detail elsewhere that, given western support of the Indonesian NSS, and thus the "benign" character of the
terror brought to East Timor by the Indonesian military, this quite brutal and illegal state terrorism was off-the-agenda for
the western mass media. And just as the media played down this terror, similarly, any explanations and questions about
the selective suppression were also duly suppressed!
In sharp, even startling, contrast with western media silence on the events in East Timor was the attention given to
Cambodia. There undoubtedly was a holocaust in Cambodia during the same period in which Indonesia was invading and
attempting to subjugate East Timor, with many thousands executed and a great many more dying of disease and
starvation. A question that western patriots hate to confront, however, is: why the immense attention to the Cambodian
violence and the virtually total suppression of discussion of the Indonesian violence in East Timor? It should be noted
that the indignation over Cambodia had no practical significance for the victims, as events in that country were beyond
western influence after April 1975, and no useful suggestions for alleviating Cambodian misery were even put forward;
whereas, in contrast, East Timorese deaths were being carried out in the U.S. sphere of influence, with U.S. weapons,
and therefore under circumstances where western indignation and pressure might have had an impact. (It may also be
asked, similarly, how we reconcile the outpouring of compassion and indignation over Cambodia and the placidity and
apologetics about dividends and the gleam of new light in reference to the even larger massacre in Indonesia in 1965-
1966?) Patriots react negatively to a focus on this selectivity of concern because it obviously compromises the idea that
western benevolence is pure-or perhaps even real-and suggests essentially political definitions of worthy victims, and a
large measure of hypocrisy. Precisely. This is not to imply that many individuals concerned about Cambodian violence
were not sincere and honorable. What happens, however, is that the more powerful forces in the system succeed in
mobilizing human decency in a highly selective and politically skewed manner. Sometimes decent things are done for
those selected as worthy victims. But victims of benign terror (East Timorese) or constructive terror (500,000 or more
Indonesians, 20,000 or more Chileans, many millions of dispossessed and abused peasants in Brazil, Chile, Paraguay,
Indonesia and the Philippines) are frozen out of this system of channeled benevolence.
*****
Western "ignorance" about East Timor can hardly be advanced as a serious explanation of non-concern-this differential
knowledgeability is precisely what has to be explained. Cambodia is a very remote and small country, and U.S. citizens
could have been allowed to remain in ignorance of the sequel of events there (as they have about events in, say, Burma,
or Thailand since 1975). What is more, media attention to East Timor was not negligible in 1974-1975, during the period
of Portuguese withdrawal, when the fate of Timor was of some interest to the west. East Timor became "remote" after the
Indonesian invasion, and western media coverage was inversely related to the extent of the Indonesian massacre.
It is clear, then, that if the Readers Digest, Time, the New York Times, the U.S. government, or important businessmen in
the United States had concluded that the Indonesian invasion of East Timor was detrimental to U.S. interests, or that
political capital could be extracted from focusing on its victims, the U.S. public would have become quickly
"knowledgeable." But the important power interests in the United States, including multinational investors and the military-
security complex, were closely tied to the Indonesian invaders, and there was certainly no political advantage to be
gained from focusing on the abuses of a NSS. U.S. policy, in fact, was supportive of the invasion and the massacre, both
in the U.N. and via arms transfers (provided in violation of U.S. and international law). The mass media saw things in the
same light, and decided to "lay off." This was helped along by the fact that primary government sources also clammed
up, provided no news, and were obviously interested in coverup-which ensued.
*****
... what the general public knows and is interested in is managed. A small elite sets the agenda for discussion, and while
there are limits on its ability to make people think in a certain way, through the mass media it is "stunningly successful in
telling [the public]...what to think about."" The U.S. people knew about and were interested in Cambodian atrocities
because the mass media latched on to Cambodian violence and made it familiar ground (although the level of distortion
was extraordinarily high). They are able to prove the evils of Communism by focusing attention on negative events in
Poland, and by simultaneously "blacking out" the facts on the literal murder of hundreds of trade union leaders and
permanent martial law of varying levels of intensity in more than a score of western client states. This is a system of self-
fulfilling "news interest management" in which constructive and benign terror are never allowed to become the subject of
intense scrutiny and concern.

As the NSS has come into being and is protected and supported by the economic and political elite that defines the
national interest, its ugly proclivities produce "dividends" and are "constructive." As was the case with the huge bloodbath
in Indonesia, therefore, the mass media of the United States will not characterize its organizers as madmen, mass
murderers and terrorists. By one route or other the Suhartos, Pinochets, Stroessners and their NSS colleagues and
operatives will be protected. ...
*****
The Mass Media as Protectors of the Real Terror Network
Bias is built-in by a number of basic structural facts. One is the close relationship and literal overlap between the leaders
of I the mass media and the businessmen and officials who like the NSS. The dozen or so top level mass media
enterprises that have real clout ~ 2 are all large, profit-seeking businesses, with boards of directors that interlock with the
rest of the business community. Most of them have diversified out of single media operations, some of them out of
exclusive media activity, so that they are generally business conglomerates. Some of them are in the defense business
(most notably, RCA, the parent of NBC), and a number have substantial foreign interests that make them dependent on
the goodwill of host governments. The second tier of mass media enterprises includes even more diversified, defense-
oriented and multinational enterprises-most significantly Westinghouse, General Electric, Avco and Kaiser Industries.
This commonality of corporate purpose, structure of interlocks, and geographic and product divers)fication make it likely
that the mass media leaders will have the same values and the same vision of the national interest as the general
community of large corporations. Eric Barnouw goes farther in his survey of TV, the most powerful of all media forms.
The symbiotic growth of American television and global enterprise has made them so interrelated that they cannot be
thought of as separate. They are essentially the same phenomenon. Preceded far and wide by military advisers,
lobbyists, equipment salesmen, advertising specialists, merchandising experts, and telefilm salesmen as advance agents,
the enterprise penetrates much of the non-socialist world. Television is simply its most visible portion.
A second structural fact is the importance of the sponsor. The mass media depend heavily on advertising, which
produces well over 50% of their gross revenue. Advertisers are mainly business firms, although the NSS governments
also advertise fairly heavily with large ads and supplements in newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street
Journal and business-oriented publications like Business Week. The general interest and even the specific interests of
these advertisers are likely to have an impact on mass media selection processes. Thus, during ITTs time of troubles in
the early 1970s, sponsorship of its Big Blue Marble program on TV led to a significant drop-off in mention of ITT on TV
news programs. Far more important, however, is the general effect of sponsorship as the prime source of TV revenue-
the need to produce programs that will not seriously offend sponsors, and the mutual interest of network and sponsor in
providing an environment congenial to selling advertised goods. CBS president Frank Stanton explained in 1960 that
"Since we are advertiser-supported we must take into account the general objectives and desires of advertisers as a
whole. Barnouw gives persuasive evidence that the sponsor exercises a huge influence on TV programming.
Their influence over it is spearheaded by "commercials"-the "focal point of creative effort"; protected by "entertainment"
designed to fit sponsor needs; bordered by a fringe of successfully neutralized "public service" elements; and by a buffer
zone of approved "culture.
Barnouw uses as an illustration of sponsor impact the long-time suppression by the TV networks of any negative or
minimally objective analysis of the implications of nuclear power. Until the end of the 1960s, "nothing seen or heard on
television could lead viewers to think that atomic energy involved risks of any serious kind. Documentaries and public
service messages had come overwhelmingly, perhaps exclusively, from those who had a stake in promoting the industry;"
and, "As in the early stages of the Vietnam war, the medium had served largely as a transmission belt for official and
corporate promotion, closely coordinated."
On foreign news and conditions in the NSSs, the situation tends to be even worse than in the handling of domestic issues
like nuclear power, as negative impacts on distant peasants have no political consequences in the home country. As
Time, Readers Digest and dozens of U.S. multinational banks and non-financial corporations have extensive interests in
Brazil, built up under the auspices of the hospitable generals ruling that NSS, these important members of the mass
media and powerful advertisers have an important vested interest in the NSS status quo. The mass media may
occasionally bite the hands that feed them, but not very hard or long, and they more than make up for these small falls
from grace. They do not focus on dispossessed Brazilian peasants.
The ideological range of the top media leadership extends from enlightened cold war and corporate liberalism to militant
conservative or reactionary. For the latter, in large circulation publications like Readers Digest, TV-Guide and within the
Hearst and Luce empires, news and opinion bias is blatant and oriented to conservative ideological mobilization. In these
publications, the death squads of Latin America, the systematic torture, the looting, and the condition and treatment of
the lower 80% of the population, are for all practical purposes completely suppressed. Retail terror and Communist
abuses are given enormous and highly emotional play. The Readers Digest, for example, over the decade 1971-1980,
had more articles on Castro's Cuba than it did on all 26 U.S. client states that were using torture on an administrative
basis in the early and mid-1970s.
This large and blatant brainwashing by the right has no counterpart on the left in the United States-the "left" in the mass
media is cold-war liberalism, strongly pro-free enterprise and devoted to the national interest as it would be defined by
the progressive managements of large multinational corporations such as IBM or Bank of America. Not exactly a real left
in the sense of a critical opposition. Therefore, in the mainstream respectable mass media, abuses in the NSSs are
mentioned, and on rare occasion are even highlighted, but always episodically, never in a sustained manner that would
build up public indignation and bring political consequences. Relatively miniscule abuses in the Soviet Union can produce
day-in-day-out coverage in the mass media; huge and sustained abuses in the NSSs cannot.' That the NSS abuses were
a result of U.S. intervention, as in Guatemala, where the ClA-sponsored coup, military aid and training, and the huge U.S.-
managed counterinsurgency operations of 1966-1968 were absolutely decisive factors in maintaining 27 years of
rightwing terror, is rarely noted and never given its proper weight.
A third structural constraint is the nature of mass media sources. Analysts of the mass media point out that they need
steady and reliable sources to meet their day-by-day demands for news, and that the only sources that can produce
large volumes with some minimal credibility are very powerful and rich entities-like governments and, secondarily,
business firms. Thus, 46.5% of the information sources for stories appearing in the New York Times and Washington
Post between 1949 and 1969 were U.S. government officials and agencies, and the trend toward reliance on government
sources during that period was upward. The business community is the next most important information source. Foreign
news is even more thoroughly dominated by a small and powerful group with vested interests in the NSS-U.S.
government officials, the three western news services (A.P., U.P.I. and Reuters), businesses operating abroad and
foreign governments. The big news services rely heavily on the local governments for news about events in the NSSs, as
do the small contingent of western reporters located there. The news services depend on these governments not only for
news, but they also sell news to these governments, who are frequently owners of large media units. The news services
are also sold to private NSS media. Any sustained focus by the media on torture, or on the parlous state of the NSS
peasantry, would jeopardize relationships with primary and efficient news sources (and, for the wire services, buyers of
news services). The U.S. government and businesses operating in the NSSs are the other leading news sources-the
former is the Godfather; the latter are the Godfather's progeny obtaining the benefits of the immiserating economic
growth in the NSS's.
The lower echelons of the mass media are given a fair amount of freedom of action by the top managements. The top
managements themselves, or at least some of them, accept an ideology of staff freedom to do things based on news
value, postulated as an objective standard. Is it not possible that this ideology allows reporters, writers, editors, analysts,
researchers and broadcasters to disseminate a broad range of views, some hostile to establishment interests? There is
some truth in this, and I have noted that NSS abuses can be aired-it is a question of how frequently and in what terms
relative to the newsworthiness and human values involved. The terror that has engulfed Guatemala under the Garcia
regime (to go back no farther in time) has involved thousands of-deaths, unimaginable violence against ordinary civilians-
in a region of predominant U.S. influence and frequent intervention. Trade union leaders have been murdered by the
hundreds, peasants have been killed, robbed and pushed off their lands by the thousands with Nazi-like ruthlessness;
the center parties have been decimated by scores of murders. By any standard of human values and responsibility
Guatemala deserves more indignation than Poland. I have offered the simple and obvious explanation of the lack of
attention and indignation in the U.S. mass media: these terrible events and large social processes of abuse in states like
Guatemala are serviceable to important domestic economic interests. The abused do not advertise, vote, threaten or
complain in ways that can be heard; Bank of America, Dow, GM, Westinghouse, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the
U.S. government can be heard, often and with compelling force. In the face of this complex of interests, well intentioned
individuals in the mass media, while they can occasionally help lift the lid a little, can have only marginal impact; they
cannot alter the overall drift of mass media priorities, which rests on basic structural facts and constraints.
Media staff are also predominantly middle class people who tend to share the values of the corporate leadership, and
they are affected by the fact that approval, advancement and even job survival depend on acceptance of certain
priorities. The biases at the top are filtered down by long term penalties and rewards. The mass media top leadership
puts into key positions individuals who reflect their values: "I surround myself with people who generally see the way I
do...," says Otis Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Bias is also a consequence of the nature of mass media
news sources and the subtle impact of depending on and entering into relationships with them. In the NSSs primary news
sources are government officials and local and multinational businessmen, not peasants or disaffected intellectuals.
Newspeople who actively sought out abused people would run into difficulties: (I)They would weaken their links to primary
sources in these states. (2)This might result not only in loss of availability of ready information but possibly also
complaints to the head office, ouster and even physical damage. (3) They would have to work harder, in contrast with the
case of reliance on official sources. (4) Their stories might well be rejected at the top as (a) too controversial; (b) lacking
in adequate source confirmation; or (c) not of general interest. Reports seriously critical of the NSSs would elicit flak from
the powerful friends of the NSS, including enforcers like Accuracy in Media, Freedom House, the U.S. government, the
governments of the NSSs, businesses end banks operating there, and advertising firms and their customers who have
relationships with the NSSs. In consequence, the sources for stories describing abuses must be extra authoritative. But
most dissident sources are inherently unauthoritative and will be contradicted by official sources. The Latin Church is, of
course, an exception-a credible source of abuses-which is why it is feared and persecuted by the NSSs, and why it is
under increasing attack by current U.S. leaders now aggressively protecting NSS terrorism. It takes a combination of
extreme abuse, exceptional reporters and receptive home office people in the media agency for such news to surface.
Since this kind of news does not surface that often, it tends to be unfamiliar and is therefore not of "general interest."
Thus we have a full circle, in which NSS abuses are suppressed by a built-in process.
My conclusions then, are first, that most members of the mass media avoid a focus on NSS terror for ideological reasons;
terror that is "constructive" from the standpoint of important U. S. interests is seen as a regrettable necessity serving the
"national interests." And although some of the leaders and a still larger number of the lower echelons of the mass media
find the reality of terror reprehensible and push for some coverage, since terror is a regrettable necessity, the primary
route taken is looking the other way. Second, this ideological bias is strongly reinforced by the fact that primary sources
of information on which the mass media depend are either pro-NSS or have ties of interest and reciprocity that
compromise any ability to focus on serious abuses. Third, as the generation and production of information on abuses
would involve extra costs in search, and assured negative repercussions from the vocal supporters of the NSS, even
episodic treatment of NSS abuses is further constrained, and tends to be handled with a balance and a degree of
understatement that is not required of enemy terror. Fourth, this system of watered-down and episodic treatment of
terror, in the larger context of mass media protectiveness of the NSS, may actually serve the interests of the real terror
network. The muted treatment of friendly terror gives the mass media more credibility as purveyors of "all the news that's
fit to print" than would total suppression. The dispensing of small doses of the uglier aspects of the NSSs makes the
central apologetic and diversionary role of the mass media less obvious. This allows the more liberal western elites to
deceive themselves into thinking that the United States has been a neutral bystander, not an active sponsor of these
unfortunate NSS "abuses," which are discussed and debated so openly here at home. We may even be too harsh in
criticizing human rights violations which seem to arise so naturally in these I backward cultures.
*****
Remedies for Terrorism
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman

If "terrorism" means "intimidation by violence or the threat of violence," and if we allow the definition to include violence by
states and agents of states, then it is these, not isolated individuals or small groups, that are the important terrorists in
the world. If terrorist violence is measured by the extent of politically motivated torture and murder, ... it is in the U.S.-
sponsored and protected "authoritarian" states-the real terror network-that these forms of violence have reached a high
crescendo in recent decades.
*****
With the coming into power of the Reagan-Haig-Kirkpatrick team, the veneer of do-goodism has been stripped away from
the underlying primary force of economic interest-the basis for the long-standing U.S. acceptance of terror-and the
common elements of ideology between the U.S. right-wing and the leaders of the NSSs have become explicit. The new
team makes no pretense at support for an enfeebled center (as well as right) or for a pallid reformism, or even for the
forms of democracy. It has shown not the slightest interest in bolstering up a floundering Costa Rican democracy,
Kirkpatrick even suggesting that what Costa Rica needs is a good dose of militarization, and under Reagan influence the
U.S.-dominated InterAmerican Development Bank has sharply reduced its aid to Costa Rica. Nicaragua, where for the
first time in almost a half century terror has abated and pluralism, participation by the masses, and a concern by the
political leadership for the welfare of the "oxen" are on display, the Reagan team is aghast and is not merely destabilizing
economically as best it can, but is openly encouraging and threatening military intervention. On the other hand, Garcia,
Pinochet, Stroessner, Turbay Ayala, the El Salvador junta, Botha, are all being treated with warm understanding and as
prized friends and allies.
In short, with Reagan-Haig-Kirkpatrick U.S. policy has reached this stage: (1) there is indifference at best to democratic
forms and civil liberties in the Third World; (2) there is active hostility and repugnance toward any manifestations of non-
elite and human needs objectives oriented to the majority; (3) there is a pro-fascist bias in a literal sense, in which
warmth and understanding appear to be roughly but directly proportional to the ruthlessness of the controlling elite and
the magnitude of its terroristic behavior as measured by body count.
*****
Solutions
I have distinguished in this book between state (wholesale) terror, and the terror of isolated individuals and small groups
(retail terror). It has been argued here, further, that the latter is overrated in relative importance, although many
individual acts carried out by these terrorists have caused great pain and suffering and have involved serious injustices
to the victims. Retail terror is overblown for political reasons, to distract attention from more substantial terror, and to
allow a manipulation of public fears and a more efficient "engineering of consent." Insofar as this is the case, "terrorism"
will only recede when the government and mass media decide (or are forced) to terminate their use of the Red Menace.
This occurred in 1955, when the political elite decided that Senator Joe McCarthy had satisfactorily completed his job of
disrupting the New Deal consensus and was now actually threatening the unity of the Republican Party! All of a sudden,
McCarthy and his demagogic red herrings ceased being newsworthy. In the early 1980s, however, retail terror in the form
of phantom "Libyan hit squads" and mythical Cuban troops in El Salvador was still serving an elite purpose; but when
(and if) the bubble is finally pricked, the inflated balloon of retail terrorism will collapse to very small size.
It is, of course, impossible to eliminate entirely individual acts of terror-they are inescapable in a complex, dynamic world
in which means of destruction are readily available to the alienated and oppressed. But a substantial fraction of real acts
of retail terror arise out of world failures to alleviate widespread misery and injustice and to deal intelligently and
humanely with local and regional grievances (Northern Ireland, Israel-Palestine). These more important causes of retail
terrorism could be alleviated by responsible policies addressed to sources of endemic conflict and mass distress. A large
part of the responsibility for resolving these problems falls to the west, which contains the wealthiest and most dynamic
states, who are most closely linked to the poor and troubled enclaves of the world, and whose power of initiative has
been maintained up to the present day.
The west has done poorly in addressing world conflict and misery, and the conservative drift of western politics bodes ill
for the future. With the advent of the Reagan team, all adverse conflict-misery trends are likely to be accelerated. To a
world imperiled by a nuclear arms race, by the impoverished state of the majority and by serious environmental and
ecological threats posed by technological advance and uncontrolled growth, the Reagan administration now offers
deliberately stoked international tension, remilitarization, the "free market," and an aggressive application of national
power to serve parochial U.S. ends. Instead of providing even the beginning of solutions, the United States itself is very
much part of the problem. It has become the big bull in the China shop, threatening the shop as well as the china. Under
Reagan, in consequence, "terrorism" (retail) is sure to increase. This natural result of greed, shortsightedness and
stupidity will then be used to justify greater state violence, which will be wrapped up in an "anti-terrorist" flag. Right-wing
ideologues create retail terrorists and are then quite prepared to kill them.
State terrorism, the quantitatively important terrorism, has escalated in scope and violence in recent decades. This is
evidenced in the rise of torture as a serious problem, death squad murders, and the use of direct state violence to
intimidate millions. While this is a global development, a very sizable proportion, of this growth has taken place in the
western sphere of influence ... there is a system of terrorisstic states - the real terror network ... that has spread
throughout Latin America and elsewhere over the past several decades, and which is deeply rooted in the corporate
interest and sustaining political-military-financial-propaganda mechanisms of the United States and its allies in the Free
World. The mechanisms that protect this network are extremely potent, combining military force, economic power and
coercion, and a vast apparatus serving to engineer consent. The United States has needed Polish martial law, Gulag and
other Soviet sphere crimes and abuses to distract attention from the escalating reign of terror under its own sponsorship.
But the contrast between the actuality of Polish terror and the volume of propaganda outpourings-versus the far more
extensive and deadly reality and relative silence and non-indignation as regards terror in Turkey, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Colombia and the host of other protected fascist states-should raise questions in the mind of any observer
with eyes not closed tightly by nationalistic blinders.
*****
... anticommunism, the "terrorist" threat, and militarism are being used to cover over savagely inhumane policies at home
and even more scandalous policies abroad. Bank of America, Citibank, General Electric, Westinghouse, ITT and United
Technologies may like tight money at home and in Brazil and Chile, and the supportive arms budgets and NSS
repression, but what is good for these companies is bad for the majorities of people in Brazil, Chile, the United States,
Western Europe and the rest of the world. Insisting on a single standard to be applied to terrorism in Poland, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Turkey and Uruguay will quickly demonstrate that the real terror network is white, not red. There is a huge
world commonalty of interest in containing repression and an arms race designed to keep the home population quiet and
to allow Marcos, Pinochet and the rest of the Third World mafia to provide a favorable investment climate for multinational
corporate interests.
More immediately, the situation in Central America is strikingly reminiscent of the crisis period 1952-1954, which
culminated in the overthrow of the last democratic government of Guatemala by means of armed aggression organized
by the Republican administration of that day. That armed attack was preceded and accompanied by a flood of deliberate
propaganda fabrications alleging Guatemala's threats to its neighbors! During 1981-1982 we have witnessed an almost
complete rerun of the earlier scenario in the stream of claims by Alexander Haig on the "Nicaraguan menace," designed
to obscure the real ongoing efforts by the Reagan administration to subvert Nicaragua. As described earlier, the U. S.
termination of Guatemalan democracy in 1954 was followed by 27 years of escalating state violence that reached new
heights in the early 1980s. Now, the Nicaraguans having finally thrown off their yoke of Somozan terror-a yoke provided
earlier by U.S. intervention in the 1930s-the Reagan team is attempting to do for Nicaragua what we did for Guatemala in
1954. In contrast with the earlier situation, however, the Central American crisis is now wider and deeper, with large
numbers struggling against the massive injustices and exceptionally cruel and violent state terrorism in both Guatemala
and El Salvador. The Reagan administration is increasing its support for the state terrorists of El Salvador and
Guatemala, at the same time reducing aid to the struggling democracy of Costa Rica and escalating its threats of
violence against the first non-terrorist government of Nicaragua in 45 years. The Reagan bias toward death and
immiseration is highlighted by the fact the Inter-American Development Bank, itself, noted in 1978 that between 1965 and
1975 the extent of child malnutrition rose markedly in all countries in Central America except Costa Rica-the average
increase in the Reagan favorites was 80%.
The Reagan-Haig team will continue to escalate the violence in Central America to whatever level is required to preserve
military mafia/ oligarchic control if they can get away with it. They have shown themselves to be not only quite comfortable
with rule by the most ruthless killers in the hemisphere but entirely unconcerned with the indiscriminate and wholesale
murder of civilians. This administration will only be slowed down and reversed in its intervention by a serious and
determined opposition. The 1960s demonstrated that ordinary people, organizing and acting at the grassroots, can affect
policy. The moral demands and economic and political basis for action were never more clear or of greater urgency.

By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr.
Viewpoint
Ensuring Voting Rights
As OUR NATION HAS WITNESSED IN THE DEMOCracy debacle of the last two American presidential elections-in which
the loser won and the
winner lost-the right to vote preserves all other rights. Officials elected by the citizens or ones appointed by elected
officials set public policy in all spheres of
American life. Accordingly, how election rules are set, who is permitted to cast votes, and by what means votes are
counted determine public policy-domestically and internationally.
On March 6 Americans observed the 40-year anniversary of the historic "Bloody Sunday" march, which resulted in the
passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act implemented non-discriminatory voting rights provisions for people of
color, particularly in Southern states where race-conscious election practices were rampant. Because celebration without
substance is superstition, we must call on the government to reauthorize the 1965 Voting Rights Act and fill the gaping
hole in our democracy by enacting a constitutional amendment for the individual and federally protected right to vote for
all citizens.
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is working with a coalition of civil, labor and women's rights organizations, along with church
denominations, to launch a national campaign to secure 1 million signatures in support of this reauthorization, including
enforcement provisions such as Section 203 (which provides language and other assistance) and Section 5 (pre-
clearance of state voting plans by the U.S. Department of Justice). The deadline for collecting signatures will be August
6, 2005, the 40th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, after which this
petition would be delivered to the White House and Congress.
In conjunction, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IlI.) and a host of voting rights organizations are leading the Amendment
Project, which aims to secure a constitutional amendment that protects all Americans' individual right to vote. Most
Americans believe that the "legal right to vote" in our democracy is explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution and national
law. However, the Constitution only explicitly provides for non-discrimination in voting on the basis of race, sex and age in
the 15th, 19th and 26th Amendments, respectively.
Even though the "vote of the people" is perceived as supreme in our democracy (after all, voting rights protect all other
rights), as Justice Scalia in Bush v. Gore
constantly reminded Al Gore's lawyers, the Constitution contains no explicit or fundamental right to suffrage. The
Supreme Court majority concluded: "The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the
President of the United States: Voting in the United States is instead based on the
constitutional principle of "states' rights:' The 10th Amendment to the Constitution states: "The powers not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people:' Since the word "vote" appears in the Constitution only with respect to non-discrimination, the so-called "right to
vote" is a "state right:'
Under our current states' rights voting system, there are approximately 13,000 separately administered voting
jurisdictions in the United States, which are structured to be separate and unequal. According to a study by the Caltech
and MIT Voting Rights Project, somewhere between 4 and 6 million votes were not counted in 2000 because many states
had voting rights irregularities similar to what occurred in Florida.
Without the constitutional right to vote, Congress is only able to pass legislation regulating voting. While Rep. Jackson's
proposal supports progressive electoral reform legislation, it leaves the "states' rights" system in place. Currently,
Congress mostly uses financial and other incentives to entice the states to cooperate and comply with the law. That's one
reason there have been so many problems with the recently passed Help America Vote Act and why many states still
have not fully complied with the law.
To fulfill the democratic ideal, we need a constitutional amendment that affirms voting rights. According to Alexander
Keyssar, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, 108 of the 119 nations in the world that elect their representatives to
all levels of government in some democratic fashion explicitly guarantee their citizens the right to vote in their
constitutions. Both Afghanistan's constitution and Iraq's interim legal document contain an explicit right to vote.
The United States is one of the 11 democratic nations in the world whose constitution provides no such thing. Such a
gaping hole in American democracy affects other critical issues, such as public education, the right of American workers
to organize, a living wage and universal healthcare for all Americans, regardless of resources.
Only through a coalition of conscience, which includes a progressive media unfettered by corporate coffers, can the
critical issues of our time come to resolution for the benefit of "We, the People:'
Keep Hope Alive! .

Because celebration without
substance is superstition, we must call on the
government to reauthorize the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

_ REV. Jesse L. JACKSON SR.
is the founder and president of the Chicago-based Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition.

Don't Ask, and We Won't Tell
It helps to have friends in high places. An investigation conducted by Rep.
Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has revealed that Pentagon officials withheld information from international auditors on behalf
of Halliburton.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR told Pentagon investigators that it would make numerous redactions of an embarrassing audit
that was to be reviewed by
the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB); The IAMB was created by the United Nations to monitor the
Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), the successor to the U.N. Oil for Food" Program. KBR's redactions violated U.N,
Security Council Resolution 1483, which requires all DFI-related funds to be administered "in a transparent manner.""
When the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) conducted " audits of Halliburton's no-bid contracts in
2003, it raised concerns about the prices, the company charged for its oil-related work in Iraq, including the more than,
$27 million it billed for transporting $82,000 worth of fuel from Kuwait to Iraq. " ,"
On September 28, 2004, Halliburton sent a letter in response to the Army Corps of Engineers describing how "KBR has
redacted the information that KBR considers to be a disclosure of its proprietary policies, procedures, and accounting
information." The letter added, "'We have redacted the statements of DCAA that we believe are factually incorrect or
misleading and could be used by a competitor to damage KBR's ability to win and negotiate new work."
Harold C. Relyea of the Congressional Research Service told Waxman's office that overcharge amounts are hardly
proprietary information" and noted that it would be "a terrible abrogation of responsibility" for the government to adopt a
company's redactions without making its own assessment of their validity.
In a letter to President Bush, Waxman asked, "What steps you will take to recover the overcharges and put the interests
of the U.S. taxpayer and the, Iraqi people ahead of the profits of Halliburton?"
Of course a born again idiot criminal like Bush won't do anything. That's why the criminals picked him.
-------- _-- _---_------- ----------
THE TAXONOMIST
They Make It Up. You Decide.
BY ROBERT S. McINTYRE
LAST FALL, AFTER MY GROUP PUT OUT A STUDY detailing widespread tax avoidance by America's largest and most
profitable corporations, the right-wing Heritage Foundation published a screed attacking us. It was one blatant
misstatement after another. I e-mailed
the author, Norbert Michel, to point out his many factual errors, but he declined to correct them. At that point, I was willing
to ignore his criticism -after all, why give publicity to patently baseless charges?
This March, however, a shortened version of Michel's claptrap appeared on the Web site of Heritage's ally, the FOX
News Channel (which, of course, never asked for a "fair and balanced" reply). We soon started getting negative e-mails.
Some were from typical FOX News aficionados-e.g., "Are you people morons?"- but others came from folks who usually
find us trustworthy-e.g., "I find [one of Michel's points] troubling." So I've decided to go public with my response.
Michel called his initial salvo "Anything But Avoidance: Citizens for Tax Justice's Blundering Corporate Tax Report:' Even
the title is a joke. By 2002 and 2003, corporate taxes had fallen to their lowest sustained level as a share of the economy
since World War II. If that's not rampant tax avoidance, what would be? Indeed, lobbyists are frequently quoted in the
newspapers crowing about how low they've-brought corporate tax bills.
When he gets to the details, Michel is no more convincing. He starts by complaining that our study failed to note that tax
reporting and shareholder reporting are different. Yipes! That was exactly our point! Due to loopholes, shelters, and so
forth, the profits that companies report to their shareholders are much larger than what they report to the Internal
Revenue Service. That's why so many corporations pay little or nothing in income taxes.
Michel also criticized us for an older analysis showing that Enron didn't pay any federal income tax in four out of five
years between 1996 and 2000. That revelation led to a congressional inquiry into Enron's tax returns, which confirmed
that we were right: Enron paid no tax in four out of the five years. To be sure, as Michel notes, there were minor
differences between Enron's financial statements (which we relied on) and its actual tax returns-not shocking for a
notoriously crooked company like Enron.
But the bottom-line story was the same. (P.S. to Michel: Relying on Enron to make your case is weird.)
In his FOX News Channel piece, Michel charged that our February 2005 study on the avoidance of state corporate
income tax failed to alert our readers to the fact that companies report only their total state income tax payments, without
details by state. Jeez Louise! We didn't just make that clear; we strongly recommended that state-by-state tax disclosures
be required in the future.
Finally, and perhaps most plausible to the uninitiated, Michel asserted that we'd "estimated" companies' income taxes.
Well, no. We got the tax data straight out of corporate annual reports. This information exists because some dedicated
crusaders in the 1970s, led by a group named Tax Analysts and Advocates, persuaded the government to make the
companies tell us. Corporate apologists like The Heritage Foundation may wish that corporations don't have to disclose
their actual tax payments, but they do.
Compiling corporate taxes based on annual reports has a long history. The staff of Congress' Joint Committee on
Taxation used the same approach in a number of corporate tax studies it prepared from the mid-'70s to the early '80s at
the request of then-Representative Charlie Yanik. Likewise, Tax Analysts published several similar but more detailed
reports during the same period. Citizens for Tax Justice picked up the torch starting in 1984, when our first corporate-tax
study helped persuade President Ronald Reagan to abandon his earlier loophole-laden tax policies and support the
major tax reforms enacted in 1986. We've published nine other corporate-tax reports since then. They've all been heavily
scrutinized, and have stood up well.
That's our record. As for Michel, well, before Heritage he worked for   Entergy, a profitable Louisiana-based electric utility
that not only paid no federal income tax in 2003 but also received a huge tax rebate. (You can look it up on page 67 of
Entergy's 2003 report.)     Corresponding with Michel last fall, I was tempted to paraphrase Mary McCarthy's nasty quip
about Lillian Hellman: "Norbert, every word you write is a lie, including 'and' and 'the:" Trying to be polite, I demurred. But
no more. Norbert Michel and your Heritage pals, consider it said. TAP
Robert S. McIntyre is the director of Citizens for Tax Justice.
WWW.PROSPECT.ORG

A Culture of Death, Not Life
By FRANK RICH

Published: April 10, 2005

T takes planning to produce a classic chapter in television history. "We've rehearsed," Thom Bird, a Fox News producer,
bragged to Variety before Pope John Paul II died. "We will pull out all the stops on this story."
He wasn't kidding. On the same day that boast saw print, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, solemnly told the world that "facts
are facts" and "it is now our understanding the pope has died." Unfortunately, this understanding was reached 26 hours
before the pope actually did die, but as Mr. Smith would explain, he had been misled by "Italian reports." (Namely from a
producer for Sky Italia, another fair-and-balanced fief of Rupert Murdoch.) Fox's false bulletin - soon apotheosized by Jon
Stewart, now immortalized on the Internet - followed the proud tradition of its sister news organization, The New York
Post, which last year had the scoop on John Kerry's anointment of Dick Gephardt as his running mate.
Yet you could also argue that Fox's howler was in its way the most honest barometer of this entire cultural moment. The
network was pulling out all the stops to give the audience what it craved: a fresh, heaping serving of death. Mr. Smith had
a point when he later noted that "the exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment."
Certainly not to a public clamoring for him to bring it on.
Mortality - the more graphic, the merrier - is the biggest thing going in America. Between Terri Schiavo and the pope,
we've feasted on decomposing bodies for almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of
Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their ubiquity rivaled that of TV's top
entertainment franchise, the all-forensics-all-the-time "CSI." To help us visualize the dying John Paul, another Fox star,
Geraldo Rivera, brought on Dr. Michael Baden, the go-to cadaver expert from the JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy and
Laci Peterson mediathons, to contrast His Holiness's cortex with Ms. Schiavo's.
As sponsors line up to buy time on "CSI," so celebrity deaths have become a marvelous opportunity for beatific self-
promotion by news and political stars alike. Tim Russert showed a video of his papal encounter on a "Meet the Press"
where one of the guests, unchallenged, gave John Paul an A-plus for his handling of the church's sex abuse scandal.
Jesse Jackson, staking out a new career as the angel of deathotainment, hit the trifecta: in rapid succession he appeared
with the Schindlers at their daughter's hospice in Florida, eulogized Johnnie Cochran on "Larry King Live" and reminisced
about his own papal audience with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.
What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to
sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of
death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.
When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding
John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose
abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and
Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS
cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-
conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.
This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more
of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all
but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The
Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the
hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original
series' 60 million.

When you consider the fact that an oil refinery hasn't been built in the US since Ronald Reagan took office and the
implications of the following article where VW, probably because of the influence of the CIA, has decided not to bring to
market a car that would get 100 KM per litre, you realize the oil companies are robbing everyone in the world with their
monopoly prices. GM recently pulled an electric car off the market that would have helped the country conserve
petroleum. They are using this war in the middle east and the shortages they have created to justify driving up oil prices
and robbing the people.
VW cancels its 'one-litre car project Financial Times 4/14/05
Volkswagen, Europe's biggest car maker, has cancelled one of its most high-profile projects, Bernd Pischetsrieder, the
group's chief executive, announced yesterday.The car, which would have needed only one litre of fuel to travel 100 km,
would cost too much to produce, according to Mr Pischetsrieder.The model, which would have cost at least €20,OOO
($25,800) to buy, would have been too expensive for most customers, according to the group. The disappointing sales of
the Audi A2 3L and Lupo, which need threelitres of fuel for 100 km, have not justified the cost of developing the cars and
the group hopes to avoid a similar scenario with the one.litre car. In spite of the high petrol"prices and environment tax,
customers are reluctant to pay €15,000 for the Lupo or €19,OOO for the A2.. "Everyone thinks it is good that the three-
litre engine cars are available but no one drives one," a spokesperson for VW said.
Guido Reinking, Hamburg
Guess who this is.

You may contact Robert Jastrebski at:
Rjastrebski@peoplepc.com