US — Venezuela: The Empire Strikes Back (and Loses)
By James Petras | 08.09.2010
Introduction
US policy toward Venezuela has taken many tactical turns, but the objective has been the same: to oust President Chavez, reverse the nationalization of big businesses, abolish the mass community and worker based councils and revert the country into a client-state.
Washington funded and politically backed a military coup in 2002, a bosses’ lockout in 2002-03, a referendum and numerous media, political and NGO efforts to undermine the regime. Up to now all of the White House efforts have been a failure – Chavez has repeatedly won free elections, retained the loyalty of the military and the backing of the vast majority of the urban and rural poor, the bulk of the working class and the public sector middle class.
Washington has not given up nor reconciled itself to coming to terms with the elected government of President Chavez. Instead with each defeat of its internal collaborators, the White House has increasingly turned toward an ‘outsider’ strategy, building up a powerful ‘cordon militaire’, surrounding Venezuela with a large-scale military presence spanning Central America, northern South America and the Caribbean. The Obama White House backed a military coup in Honduras, ousting the democratically elected government of President Zelaya (in June 2009), a Chavez ally, and replacing it with a puppet regime supportive of Washington’s anti-Chavez military policies. The Pentagon secured seven military bases in eastern Colombia (in 2009) facing the Venezuelan frontier, thanks to its client ruler, Alvaro Uribe, the notorious narco-paramilitary President. In mid 2010 Washington secured an unprecedented agreement with the approval of right wing President Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica, to station 7000 US combat troops, over 200 helicopters, and dozens of ships pointing toward Venezuela, under the pretext of pursuing narco-traffickers. Currently the US is negotiating with the rightist regime of President Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, the possibility of re-establishing a military base in the former Canal Zone. Together with the Fourth Fleet patrolling off shore, 20,000 troops in Haiti, and an airbase in Aruba, Washington has encircled Venezuela from the West and North, establishing jumping off positions for a direct intervention if the favorable internal circumstances arise.
The White House’s militarization of its policy toward Latin America, and Venezuela in particular, is part of its global policy of armed confrontation and interventions. Most notably the Obama regime has widened the scope and extent of operations of clandestine death squads now operating in 70 countries on four continents, increased the US combat presence in Afghanistan by over 30,000 troops plus over 100,000 contract mercenaries operating cross border into Pakistan and Iran, and provided material and logistical assistance to Iranian armed terrorists. Obama has escalated provocative military exercises off the coast of North Korea and in the China Sea, evoking protests from Beijing. Equally revealing, the Obama regime has increased the military budget to over a trillion dollars, despite the economic crises, the monstrous deficit and the calls for austerity cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
In other words, Washington’s military posture toward Latin America and especially toward the democratic socialist government of President Chavez is part and parcel of a general military response to any country or movements which refuse to submit to US domination. The question arises – why does the White House rely on the military option? Why militarize foreign policy to gain favorable outcomes in the face of decided opposition? The answer, in part, is that the US has lost most of the economic leverage, which it previously exercised, to secure the ousting or submission of adversary governments. Most Asian and Latin American economies have secured a degree of autonomy. Others do not depend on US-influenced international financial organizations (the IMF, World Bank); they secure commercial loans. Most have diversified their trading and investment partners and deepened regional ties. In some countries, such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru, China has replaced the US as their principal trading partner. Most countries no longer look to US “aid” to stimulate growth, they seek joint ventures with multi-national corporations, frequently based outside of North America. To the extent that economic arm twisting is no longer an effective tool to secure compliance, Washington has resorted more and more to the military option. To the extent that the US financial elite have hollowed out the US industrial sector, Washington has been unable to rebuild its international economic levers.
Major diplomatic failures, resulting from its incapacity to adapt to basic shifts in global power, have also prompted Washington to shift from political negotiations and compromise toward military intervention and confrontation. US policymakers are still frozen in the time warp of the 1980’s and 1990’s, the heyday of client rulers and economic plunder, when Washington secured global support, privatized enterprises, exploited public debt financings and was relatively unchallenged in the world market. By the end of the1990’s, the rise of Asian capitalism, mass anti-neo-liberal uprisings, the ascendancy of center-left regimes in Latin America, the repeated financial crises and stock market crashes in the US and the EU and the increase in commodity prices led to a realignment of global power. Washington’s efforts to pursue policies attuned to the previous decades conflicted with the new realities of diversified markets, newly emerging powers and relatively independent political regimes linked to new mass constituencies.
Washington’s diplomatic proposals to isolate Cuba and Venezuela were rejected by all of the Latin American countries. The effort to revive free trade agreements, which privileged US exporters, were rejected. Unwilling to recognize the limits of imperial diplomatic power and moderate its proposals, the Obama regime turned increasingly toward the military option.
Washington’s struggle to re-assert imperial power, via interventionary politics fared no better than its diplomatic initiatives. The US-backed coups in Venezuela (2002) and Bolivia (2008) were defeated by mass popular mobilizations and the loyalty of the military to the incumbent regimes. Likewise in Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil, post-neo-liberal regimes, backed by industrial, mining and agro-export elites and popular classes were able to beat back traditional pro-US neo-liberal elites rooted in the politics of the 1990’s and earlier. The politics of destabilization failed to dislodge the new governments’ pursuing relatively independent foreign policies and refusing to return to the old order of US supremacy.
Where Washington has regained political terrain with the election of rightist political regimes – it has been through its ability to exploit the ‘exhaustion’ of center-left politics (Chile), political fraud and militarization (Honduras and Mexico), decline of the national popular left (Costa Rica, Panama and Peru) and the consolidation of a highly militarized police state (Colombia). These electoral victories, especially in Colombia, have convinced Washington that the military option, combined with deep intervention and exploitation of open electoral processes, is the way to reverse the left turn in Latin America – especially in Venezuela.
US Policy to Venezuela: Combining Military and Electoral Tactics
US efforts to overthrow President Chavez’s democratic government borrow many of the tactics applied against previous democratic adversaries. These include border incursions by Colombian paramilitary and military forces similar to cross border attacks by the US sponsored “contras” against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua during the 1980’s. The attempt to encircle and isolate Venezuela is similar to Washington’s policy over the past half century against Cuba. The funneling of funds to opposition groups, parties, media and NGO’s via US agencies and “dummy” foundations is a repeat of the tactics applied to destabilize the democratic government of Salvador Allende of Chile 1970-73, Evo Morales in Bolivia 2006-2010 and numerous other governments in the region.
Washington’s multiple track policy, in its current phase, is directed at escalating a war of nerves, by constantly raising security threats. The military provocations, in part, are a ‘testing’ of Venezuela’s security preparations, probing for weaknesses in its ground, air and maritime defenses. These provocations also are part of a strategy of attrition, to force the Chavez government to put its defense forces on “alert” and mobilize the population and then to temporarily reduce the pressure until the next provocation. The purpose is to discredit the government’s constant reference to threats, in order to weaken vigilance and when circumstances allow making an opportune strike.
Washington’s external military build-up is designed to intimidate Caribbean and Central American countries who may be looking toward closer economic relations with Venezuela. The show of force is also designed to encourage the internal opposition toward more aggressive actions. At the same time the confrontational posture is directed at the “weak links” or “moderate” sectors of the Chavista government who are nervous and anxious for “reconciliation” even at the price of unprincipled concessions to the opposition and the new Colombia regime of President Santos. The increasing military presence is designed to slow the internal radicalization process and to preclude Venezuela’s growing ties with Middle Eastern and other regimes, adverse to US hegemony. Washington is betting that a military build-up and psychological warfare linking Venezuela with revolutionary insurgents like the Colombian guerrilla will result in Chavez’s allies and friends in Latin America putting distance toward him. Equally important Washington’s unsubstantiated accusations that Venezuela is harboring FARC guerilla encampments, is meant to pressure Chavez to lessen his support to all social movements in the region, including the landless Rural Workers of Brazil as well as non- violent human rights groups and trade unions in Colombia. Washington wants a military “polarization”: US or Chavez. It rejects the political polarization existing today which pits Washington against MERCOSUR, the organization of economic integration involving Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay with Venezuela in line for membership or ALBA (economic integration involving Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and several Caribbean states.
The FARC Factor
Obama and now ex-President Uribe accused Venezuela of offering sanctuary for Colombian guerillas (FARC and ELN). In reality this is a ploy to pressure President Chavez to denounce or at a minimum demand that the FARC give up their armed struggle on terms dictated by the US and Colombian regime.
Contrary to President Uribe and the State Department’s boasts that the FARC is a declining, isolated and defeated fragment of the past, as a result of their successful counter-insurgency campaigns, a recent detailed field study by a Colombian researcher La guerra contra las FARC y la guerra de las FARC demonstrates that in the last 2 years the guerrillas have consolidated their influence over one-third of the country, and that the regime in Bogota controls only half the country. After suffering major defeats in 2008, the FARC and ELN have steadily advanced throughout 2009-2010 inflicting over 1300 military casualties last year and probably near double this year. (La Jornada 8/6/2010). The resurgence and advance of the FARC has crucial importance as far as Washington’s military campaign again Venezuela. It also affects the position of its “strategic ally” – Santos regime. First it demonstrates that despite $6 billion plus in US military aid to Colombia, its counter-insurgency campaign to “exterminate” the FARC has failed. Secondly, the FARC’s offensive opens a “second front” in Colombia, weakening any effort to launch an invasion of Venezuela using Colombia as a “springboard”. Thirdly, faced with a growing internal class war, the new President Santos is more likely to seek to lessen tensions with Venezuela, hoping to relocate troops from the frontier of its neighbor toward the growing guerilla insurgency. In a sense, despite Chavez misgivings about the guerrillas and outspoken calls for ending the guerrilla struggle, the resurgence of the armed movements are likely a prime factor in lessening the prospects of a US directed intervention.
Conclusion
Washington’s multi-track policy directed at destabilizing the Venezuelan government has by and large been counter-productive, suffering major failures and few successes.
The hard line toward Venezuela has failed to “line up” any support in the major countries of Latin America, with the exception of Colombia. It has isolated Washington not Caracas. The military threats may have radicalized the socio-economic measures adopted by Chavez not moderated them. The threats and accusations emanating from Colombia have strengthened internal cohesion in Venezuela, except among the hard-core opposition groups. They have also led to Venezuela’s upgrading its intelligence, police and military operations. The Colombian provocations have led to a break in relations and an 80% decline in the multi-billion dollar cross border trade, bankrupting numerous Colombian firms, as Venezuela substitutes Brazilian and Argentine industrial and agrarian imports. The effects of the policies of tension and the “war of attrition” are hard to measure, especially in terms of their impact on the forthcoming crucial legislative elections on September 26, 2010. No doubt, Venezuela’s failure to regulate and control the multi-million flow of US funds to its Venezuelan collaborators has made a significant impact on their organizational capability. No doubt the economic downturn has had some effect in limiting public spending on new social programs. Likewise, the incompetence and corruption of several top Chavista officials, especially in public food distribution, housing and public safety will have an electoral impact.
It is likely that these “internal” factors are much more influential in shaping the alignment of Venezuela’s electoral outcome, than the aggressive confrontational politics adopted by Washington. Nevertheless, if the pro-US opposition substantially increases its legislative presence in the September 26 elections – beyond one-third of the Congress people – they will attempt to block social changes and economic stimulus policies. The US will intensify its efforts to pressure Venezuela to divert resources to security issues in order to undermine social-economic expenditures which sustain the support of the lower 60% of the Venezuelan population.
Up to now, White House policy based on greater militarization and virtually no new economic initiatives has been a failure. It has encouraged the larger Latin American countries to increase regional integration, as witnessed by new custom and tariff agreements taken at the MERCOSUR meeting in early August of this year. It has not led to any diminuation of hostilities between the US and the ALBA countries. It has not increased US influence. Instead Latin America has moved toward a new regional political organization UNASUR (which excludes the US), downgrading the Organization of American States which the US uses to push its agenda. Ironically, the only bright lights, favoring US influence, comes from internal, electoral processes. Rightist candidate Jose Serra is running a strong race in the upcoming Brazilian Presidential elections. In Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia the pro-US right is regrouping and hoping to return to power.
What Washington fails to understand is that across the political spectrum from the left to the center-right, political leaders are appalled and opposed to the US push and promotion of the military option as the centerpiece of policy. Practically all political leaders have unpleasant memories of exile and persecution from the previous cycle of US backed military regimes. The self-proclaimed extra-territorial reach of the US military, operating out of its seven bases in Colombia, has widened the breach between the centrist and center-left democratic regimes and the Obama White House. In other words, Latin America perceives US military aggression toward Venezuela as a “first step” southward toward their countries. That, and the drive for greater political independence and more diversified markets, have weakened Washington’s diplomatic and political attempts to isolate Venezuela.
Colombia’s new President Santos, made out of the same rightist mold as his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, faces a difficult choice – continuing as an instrument of US military confrontation and destabilization of Venezuela at the cost of several billion dollars in trade losses and isolation from the rest of Latin America or lessening border tensions and incursions, dropping the provocative rhetoric and normalizing relations with Venezuela. If the latter takes place, the US will lose its last best instrument for its external strategy of “tensions” and psych warfare. Washington will be left with two options: a unilateral direct military intervention or funding of political warfare through its domestic collaborators.
In the meantime President Chavez and his supporters would do well to concentrate on pulling the economy out of recession, tackling state corruption and monumental inefficiency and empowering the community and factory-based councils to play a greater role in everything from increasing productivity to public safety. Ultimately Venezuela’s long term security from the long and pervasive reach of the US Empire depends on the strength of the organized mass organizations sustaining the Chavez government.
Nuclear U
The University of California and the Nuclear Weapons Business
By NORMAN SOLOMON | August 7, 2010
On my way to the Los Alamos National Laboratory a few years ago, I found it listed in a New Mexico phone book—under “University of California.”
Since the early 1940s, UC has managed the nation’s top laboratories for designing nuclear bombs. Today, California’s public university system is still immersed in the nuclear weapons business.
Sixty-five years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, the University of California imprimatur is an air freshener for the stench of preparations for global annihilation. Nuclear war planners have been pleased to exploit UC’s vast technical expertise and its image of high-minded academic purpose.
During most of WWII, scientists labored in strict secrecy at the isolated Los Alamos lab in the New Mexico desert, making possible the first nuclear weaponry. After the atomic bombings of Japan, UC continued to manage Los Alamos. And in 1952, when the government opened a second nuclear bomb generator, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of San Francisco, UC won the prize to manage operations there, too.
A few years into the 21st century, security scandals caused a shakeup. UC lost its exclusive management slots at Los Alamos and Livermore, but retained major roles at both laboratories.
In mid-2006, the Los Alamos lab went under a new management structure, widened to also include Bechtel and a couple of other private firms. A year later, a similar team, likewise including UC and Bechtel, won a deal to jointly manage Livermore.
At Los Alamos, I learned that the new management team was, legally speaking, an LLC, a limited liability corporation. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of “limited liability” for managers of a laboratory that designs nuclear weapons.
Weird, huh? But not any stranger than having the state of California’s top system of higher education devoted to R&D for designing better ways to blow up the planet.
Yes, those laboratories do some nifty ecological research and other laudable things. But nuclear weapons remain central to the labs’ mission. And, lofty rhetoric aside, the federal government is pouring billions more dollars into the continuous high-tech pursuit of nuclear weapons “modernization.”
Last spring, the White House announced plans for this decade that include investing $80 billion “to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex”—in addition to “well over $100 billion in nuclear delivery systems to sustain existing capabilities and modernize some strategic systems.”
In fact, the U.S. government is now on a jag to boost spending for its nuclear arsenal. As the Livermore-based organization Tri-Valley CAREs noted weeks ago, “the 2011 budget request for nuclear weapons is the largest in our nation’s history; bigger than under George W. Bush and a whopping 40 percent higher than the amount spent for nuclear weapons activities on average during the Cold War.”
Credit where due: the UC-managed laboratories for nuclear bombs have been on the cutting edge of digital advancement. Their record recalls a comment from Martin Luther King Jr., who noted the proliferation of “guided missiles and misguided men.”
When I interviewed Los Alamos press officer Kevin Roark, he explained that “this laboratory has been at the forefront of computing research and development” from the Manhattan Project days of slide rules and punch cards to the lab’s present-day computers, with one able to do upwards of 100 trillion calculations per second.
An official website of the University of California boasts that “UC has been involved in the management of these laboratories since their inception—a relationship spanning seven decades—as a public service to the nation.” With a lab on the UC Berkeley campus included in the mix, “the three laboratories have a combined workforce of more than 21,000 and operate on federally financed budgets totaling more than $4 billion.”
For sure, there’s plenty of money sloshing around to reward the masters—and academic servants—of the nuclear weapons industry. But should the University of California be managing laboratories that design the latest technologies for nuclear holocaust?
The U.S. and Yemen’s President: A Lethal Cocktail
By Conn Hallinan | Foreign Policy In Focus | August 5, 2010
How involved is the U.S. military in Yemen, and is the Obama Administration laying the groundwork for a new foreign adventure? According to several news agencies, including Agence France Presse, UPI and the Washington Post, very involved and likely to be more so in the future.
“U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops,” says Dana Priest, the Post’s ace intelligence and military affairs reporter, including “the U.S. military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command, whose main mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists.”
The quarry of these assassination teams are supposed leaders of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), but the deepening U.S. alliance with the authoritarian government of Yemen may soon entangle it in two complex civil wars—a rising by disenfranchised Shiites in the north, and an increasingly powerful secession movement in the country’s south.
According to UPI, the White House is quietly expanding “the footprint” of “elite forces inside Yemen.” One military official told the news agency, “The numbers are definitely going to grow.” The Obama administration increased “security” funds for Yemen from $67 million to $150 million.
Navy Seals, Delta Force troops, and intelligence units are working closely with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, providing weapons, training and intelligence. And sometimes more.
On Dec. 17, 2009, a U.S. BGM-109D Tomahawk cruise missile attacked the village of al-Maajala in south Yemen, killing 55 people, the bulk of them women and children. The Tomahawk—launched from a U.S. surface ship or submarine— was armed with a cluster warhead that spread a storm of razor sharp steel and incendiary material over 500 square feet.
Amnesty International’s Mike Lewis said his organization was “gravely concerned by evidence that cluster munitions appear to have been used in Yemen,” because “cluster munitions have indiscriminate effects and unexploded bomblets threaten lives and livelihoods for years afterwards.”
The target was a supposed al-Qaeda training camp, but the Saleh government draws no distinction between AQAP and the Southern Movement (SM), a group advocating an independent south Yemen. The SM has a long list of grievances reflecting problems going back to 1990 when North Yemen and the southern Democratic People’s Republic of Yemen were unified.
That merger between the conservative north and the better educated and socialist south was never a comfortable one and led to a particularly nasty civil war in 1994. The north won that war by using jihadists freshly returned from fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Since the end of that four-month war, the SM charges that the north siphons off the south’s oil without adequate compensation, discriminates against southerners on access to jobs, and has cornered the country’s vanishing water supplies. Southern protests are met with tear gas and guns, and, according to SM leaders, some 1,500 “secessionists” have been imprisoned and more than a hundred killed.
According to UPI, “The [Saleh] regime’s heavy-handed response to the southerners has only fueled the demand for independence and encouraged the disparate southern groups to come together.”
Saleh claims the SM is closely tied to AQAP, which immediately gets Washington’s attention, and has allowed his government to tap into the resources of the American “war on terrorism.” Southern independence leaders, like Tariq al-Fadhli, deny any ties to AQAP and say the Southern Movement is non-violent. Whether it will remain so under the Saleh government’s continued assaults is an open question. The December cruise missile strike is not likely to encourage pacifism.
The fighting in the north between the Saleh government based in the capital, Sanaa, and the Shiite Houthi, who inhabit the north’s forbidding terrain, is long-standing. While Saleh and his supporters in Saudi Arabia say Iran is stirring up the trouble, there is no evidence for ties between Iran and the Houthi. The tensions between the Saleh government and the Houthi are local and generally have to do with access to political power. But by bringing Iran into the picture, Saleh can claim he is fighting terrorism, thus making his regime eligible for arms, intelligence, and training.
The U.S. is ratcheting up the use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) worldwide. The administration has increased the number of countries in which SOFs are deployed from 60 to 75, and upped the SOF budget 5.7% to $6.3 billion for 2011. The White House also added an additional $3.5 billion for SOFs to its 2010 budget.
One military official told the Washington Post that the Obama administration had given the military “more access” than former President George W. Bush. “They [the Obama administration] are talking publicly much less but they are acting more. They are willing to get aggressive much more quickly.”
In a recent talk that sounded very much like the Bush administration’s doctrine of pre-emptive war, the White House’s counterterrorism expert John Q. Brennan said that U.S. strategy was not to just “respond after the fact to terrorism,” but to “take the fight to al-Qaeda and its extremist affiliates, whether they plot and train in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and beyond.”
If the U.S. does increase its military footprint in Yemen, it will be expending hundreds of millions of dollars in the poorest country in the region, a country where 40 percent of its 22 million residents are jobless and where water is becoming a scare commodity. The U.S. shares much of the blame for the current economic crisis in Yemen. When Yemen refused to support the 1991 Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia expelled 850,000 Yemeni workers, and the U.S. cut $70 million in foreign aid. The effect of both actions was catastrophic, and Yemen never recovered from the one-two blow.
U.S. support for the Saleh regime will inevitably draw it into the conflicts in the north and the south, with disastrous results for all parties.
“In Yemen the U.S. will be intervening on one side in a country which is always in danger of sliding into a civil war,” says the Independent’s Middle East reporter Patrick Cockburn. “This has happened before. In Iraq the U.S. was the supporter of the Shia Arabs and Kurds against the Sunni Arabs. In Afghanistan it is the ally of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara against the Pushtun community. Whatever the intentions of Washington, its participation in these civil conflicts destabilizes the country because one side becomes labeled as the quisling supporter of a foreign invader. Communal and nationalist antipathies combine to create a lethal blend.”
US INTERFERENCE IN VENEZUELA KEEPS GROWING
Broken Promises
By Eva Golinger – August 05, 2010
Despite President Obama’s promise to President Chavez that his administration wouldn’t interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs, the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is channeling millions into anti-Chavez groups.
Foreign intervention is not only executed through military force. The funding of “civil society” groups and media outlets to promote political agendas and influence the “hearts and minds” of the people is one of the more widely used mechanisms by the US government to achieve its strategic objetives.
In Venezuela, the US has been supporting anti-Chavez groups for over 8 years, including those that executed the coup d’etat against President Chavez in April 2002. Since then, the funding has increased substantially. A May 2010 report evaluating foreign assistance to political groups in Venezuela, commissioned by the National Endowment for Democracy, revealed that more than $40 million USD annually is channeled to anti-Chavez groups, the majority from US agencies.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created by congressional legislation on November 6, 1982. It’s mandate was anti-communist and anti-socialist and its first mission, ordered by President Ronald Reagan, was to support anti-Sandinista groups in Nicaragua in order to remove that government from power. NED reached its goal after 7 years and more than $1 billion in funding to build an anti-Sandinista political coalition that achieved power.
Today, NED’s annual budget, allocated under the Department of State, exceeds $132 million. NED operates in over 70 countries worldwide. Allen Weinstein, one of NED’s original founders, revealed once to the Washington Post, “What we do today was done clandestinely 25 years ago by the CIA…”
VENEZUELA
Venezuela stands out as the Latin American nation where NED has most invested funding in opposition groups during 2009, with $1,818,473 USD, more than double from the year before.
In a sinister attempt to censure the destination of funds in Venezuela, NED excluded a majority of names of Venezuelan groups receiving funding from its annual report. Nonetheless, other official documents, such as NED’s tax declarations and internal memos obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, have disclosed the names of those receiving its million dollar funding in Venezuela.
Of the more than $2.6 million USD given by NED to Venezuelan groups during 2008-2009, a majority of funds have gone to organizations relatively unknown in Venezuela. With the exception of some more known groups, such as CEDICE, Sumate, Consorcio Justicia and CESAP, the organizations receiving more than $2 million in funding appear to be mere façades and channels to distribute these millions to anti-Chavez groups.
Unknown entities such as the Center for Leadership Formation for Peace and Social Development received $39.954 (2008) and $39.955 (2009) to “strengthen the capacity of community leaders to participate in local democratic processes”.
For several years, the Civil Association Kapé Kapé, which no one knows in Venezuela, has received grants ranging from $45,000 (2008) to $56,875 (2009) to “empower indigenous communities and strengthen their knowledge of human rights, democracy and the international organizations and mechanisms available to protect them”. In a clear example of foreign interference, NED funds were used to “create a document detailing the human rights violations perpetrated against them and denounce them before international organizations”. In other words, the US funded efforts inside Venezuela to aid Venezuelans in denouncing their government before international entities.
FUNDING STUDENT MOVEMENTS
A large part of NED funds in Venezuela have been invested in “forming student movements” and “building democratic leadership amongst youth”, from a US perspective and with US values. This includes programs that “strengthen the leadership capabilities of students and youth and enhance their ability to interact effectively in their communities and promote democratic values”. Two jesuit organizations have been the channels for this funding, Huellas ($49,950 2008 and $50,000 2009) and the Gumilla Center Foundation ($63,000).
Others, such as the ‘Miguel Otero Silva’ Cultural Foundation ($51,500 2008 and $60.900 2009) and the unknown Judicial Proposal Association ($30,300 2008), have used NED funds to “conduct communications campaigns via local newspapers, radio stations, text messaging, and Internet, and distribute posters and flyers”.
In the last three years, an opposition student/youth movement has been created with funding from various US and European agencies. More than 32% of USAID funding, for example, has gone to “training youth and students in the use of innovative media technologies to spread political messages and campaigns”, such as on Twitter and Facebook.
FUNDING MEDIA AND JOURNALISTS
NED has also funded several media organizations in Venezuela, to aid in training journalists and designing political messages against the Venezuelan government. Two of those are the Institute for Press and Society (IPyS) and Espacio Publico (Public Space), which have gotten multimillion dollar funding from NED, USAID, and the Department of State during the past three years to “foster media freedom” in Venezuela.
What these organizations really do is promote anti-Chavez messages on television and in international press, as well as distort and manipulate facts and events in the country in order to negatively portray the Chavez administration.
The Washington Post recently published an article on USAID funding of media and journalists in Afghanistan (Post, Tuesday, August 3, 2010), an echo of what US agencies are doing in Venezuela. Yet such funding is clearly illegal and a violation of journalist ethics. Foreign government funding of “independent” journalists or media outlets is an act of mass deception, propaganda and a violation of sovereignty.
US funding of opposition groups and media inside Venezuela not only violates Venezuelan law, but also is an effort to feed an internal conflict and prop up political parties that long ago lost credibility. This type of subversion has become a business and source of primary income for political actors promoting US agenda abroad.
BAD DIPLOMACY
On Tuesday, statements made by designated US Ambassador to Venezuela, Larry Palmer, on Venezuelan affairs were leaked to the press. Palmer, not yet confirmed by the Senate, showed low signs of diplomacy by claiming democracy in Venezuela was “under threat” and that Venezuela’s armed forces had “low morale”, implying a lack of loyalty to the Chavez administration.
Palmer additionally stated he had “deep concerns” about “freedom of the press” and “freedom of expression” in Venezuela and mentioned the legal cases of several corrupt businessmen and a judge, which Palmer claimed were signs of “political persecution”.
Palmer questioned the credibility of Venezuela’s electoral system, leading up to September’s legislative elections, and said he would “closely monitor threats to human rights and fundamental freedoms”. He also stated the unfounded and unsubstantiated claims made by Colombia of “terrorist training camps” in Venezuela was a “serious” and real fact obligating Venezuela to respond.
Palmer affirmed he would “work closely to support civil society” groups in Venezuela, indicating an intention to continue US funding of the opposition, which the US consistently has referred to as “civil society”.
These statements are a clear example of interference in internal affairs in Venezuela and an obvious showing that Obama has no intention of following through on his promises.
ACLU, CCR seek to have Obama enjoined from killing Awlaki without due process
By Glenn Greenwald | August 3, 2010
A major legal challenge to one of the Obama administration’s most radical assertions of executive power began this morning in a federal courthouse in Washington, DC. Early last month, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights were retained by Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of Obama assassination target (and U.S. citizen) Anwar al-Awlaki, to seek a federal court order restraining the Obama administration from killing his son without due process of law. But then, a significant and extraordinary problem arose: regulations promulgated several years ago by the Treasury Department prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions with individuals labeled by the Government as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” and those regulations specifically bar lawyers from providing legal services to such individuals without a special “license” from the Treasury Department specifically allowing such representation.
On July 16 — roughly two weeks after Awlaki’s father retained the ACLU and CCR to file suit — the Treasury Department slapped that label on Awlaki. That action would have made it a criminal offense for those organizations to file suit on behalf of Awlaki or otherwise provide legal representation to him without express permission from the U.S. Government. On July 23, the two groups submitted a request for such a license with the Treasury Department, and when doing so, conveyed the extreme time-urgency involved: namely, that there is an ongoing governmental effort to kill Awlaki and any delay in granting this “license” could cause him to be killed without these claims being heard by a court. Despite that, the Treasury Department failed even to respond to the request.
Left with no choice, the ACLU and CCR this morning filed a lawsuit on their own behalf against Timothy Geithner and the Treasury Department. The suit argues that Treasury has no statutory authority under the law it invokes — The International Emergency Economic Powers Act — to bar American lawyers from representing American citizens on an uncompensated basis. It further argues what ought to be a completely uncontroversial point: that even if Congress had vested Treasury with this authority, it is blatantly unconstitutional to deny American citizens the right to have a lawyer, and to deny American lawyers the right to represent clients, without first obtaining a permission slip from Executive Branch officials (the Complaint is here). As the ACLU/CCR Brief puts it: “The notion that the government can compel a citizen to seek its permission before challenging the constitutionality of its actions in court is wholly foreign to our constitutional system” and “[a]s non-profit organizations dedicated to protecting civil liberties and human rights, Plaintiffs have a First Amendment right to represent clients in litigation consistent with their organizational missions.” The Brief also argues that it is a violation of Separation of Powers to allow the Executive Branch to determine in its sole discretion who can and cannot appear in and have access to a federal court.
Today’s lawsuit seeks, on an emergency basis, an Order declaring the Treasury Department’s asserted power to be without statutory authority and/or in violation of the U.S. Constitution, and to bar the U.S. Government from imposing any penalties whatsoever (criminal or otherwise) on the ACLU and CCR for providing legal representation to Awlaki. Assuming the court issues such an order, the next step will be for a lawsuit to be quickly filed on Awlaki’s behalf to enjoin his targeted assassination.
It’s rather amazing that the Federal Government asserts the right to require U.S. citizens and American lawyers to obtain government permission before entering into an attorney-client relationship — all because these officials decided on their own, with no process, to call the citizen a “Global Terrorist.” It’s difficult to imagine a more blatantly unconstitutional power than that. What kind of an American would think the Government has the power to decide whether citizens may or may not be represented by lawyers? Then again, this is an administration that asserts the power to choose American citizens for targeted killings far from any battlefield with no due process of any kind — and plenty of its supporters are perfectly content with this — so nothing should really be surprising.
If one really thinks about it, it’s an incredible spectacle that a lawsuit is being filed with the aim of having Barack Obama enjoined by a Federal Court from killing an American citizen, far away from any battlefield, without any due process whatsoever. That such a suit was never filed during the Bush years, but is now necessary under the rule of this Constitutional Scholar almost a decade after the 9/11 attack, speaks volumes about many important facts.
The Awlaki lawsuit, if it can proceed, will likely face serious obstacles, beginning with the same warped tactic which both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly invoked to shield illegal surveillance and torture from judicial scrutiny: first, refuse to confirm whether such a program exists (notwithstanding public admissions that it does) on the ground such matters are “state secrets,” and then, with Kafkaesque perfection, insist that the lawsuit must be dismissed because (thanks to the Government’s refusal to acknowledge it) there is no evidence that Awlaki is subject to such an assassination program and thus lacks “standing” to sue. It’s also possible that a federal judge will be highly reluctant to restrain the President from targeting alleged Terrorists, or will view the AUMF as constituting Congressional authorization for the President to kill anyone who is allegedly associated with Al Qaeda no matter where they are found (on the ground that the whole world is a “battlefield”), particularly if they’re alleged (without proferred evidence) to be involved in ongoing, imminent Terrorist plots.
But whatever anyone thinks of those issues, it should offend every American that the Government purports to have the power to ban lawyers from representing citizens without its permission, which (as it’s doing here) it can withhold without explanation and in its sole discretion. Does any American want the Government to have that power with respect to citizens: to bar lawyers, under the threat of criminal prosecution, from representing you if the Government calls you a Terrorist? That’s the power the Obama administration is asserting and, in this case, actively wielding. A court will now decide if it has the legal authority to do that, and if the court decides it does not, the next step will be a lawsuit brought on behalf of Awlaki contesting Obama’s authority to order American citizens killed without any criminal charges or due process. The Obama administration should be very proud of itself.
Obama’s top Iran official resigns
Press TV – August 1, 2010
Head of the US State Department’s Iran desk, John Limbert, has resigned from his post due to disillusionment with the Obama administration’s “outreach” to Tehran.
US President Barack Obama assigned the retired diplomat, who was one of the 52 Americans held captive in Tehran following the 1979 Revolution, to the Iran desk nine months ago.
“The Obama administration has been in office now for over a year and a half and I think everyone thought we would be in a better place with Iran,” Limbert told NPR on Saturday — one day after stepping down.
He added that few current US officials understand the Iranian culture and speak the language, describing three decades of hostility as “ghosts” impeding diplomatic dialogue.
Obama named Philo L. Dibble as Limbert’s successor. Analysts have viewed the change as a shift in Washington’s Iran policy.
The resignation comes amid a standoff over Iran’s nuclear program over accusations that Tehran is pursuing a military nuclear program.
Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has the right to peaceful nuclear technology.
In line with measures adopted by the US, the European Union, Canada and Australia on Monday imposed unilateral sanctions against Iran’s energy industry.
The new sanctions come one month after the UN Security Council approved a US-drafted sanctions resolution targeting the country’s financial and military sectors.
Recent reports, however, suggest the US and Israel are preparing for an attack on the Islamic Republic.
The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told NBC on Sunday that the US military is prepared to attack Iran and stop it from building “weapons.” Mullen, however, expressed concern about the possible repercussions of such a strike.
On Friday, a Jerusalem-based open intelligence source website reported that Israel is currently simulating attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The military drills dubbed “Blue Sky 2010,” are underway in Romania.
An Anti-War Movement That Won’t Cave to Obama or Israel
By Glen Ford — 07/28/2010
For at least two years, there has been no anti-war “movement” worthy of the term – one that calls the aggressor by his name (starts with “O”) and gives no pass to apartheid Israel. There’s good reason to believe a corner has been turned, with last weekend’s anti-war conference in Albany, New York.
A renewed anti-war movement is under construction, one that breaks decisively from the Cult of Obama, demands an end to all U.S. aid to the Israeli “apartheid regime,” and calls for “immediate, total and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and the immediate closing of all U.S. bases in those countries.”
Nearly 600 delegates – twice the initial expectations – took part in the United National Anti-War Conference, held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Albany, New York, July 23 through 25. The mission: to rescue the anti-war movement from the rubble of its collapse with the ascent of Black Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency.
As George Bush exited the White House, the phony anti-war forces – people and groups that only oppose Republican wars – exited the movement. Activist and author David Swanson’s list of those that have made their peace with Obama’s wars include: Campaign for America’s Future, the Center for American Progress, DailyKos, Democracy for America, Moveon.org, National Organization for Women, Open Left, the Out of Iraq Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, the Network of Spiritual Progressives, Talking Points Memo, True Majority.
Black America, historically the most anti-war of all major U.S. demographic groups, remains emotionally invested in the First Black President – if not in his foreign and domestic policies. The great confusion in African American ranks over the true nature of Obama’s policies represents a huge problem for the Left – especially the Black Left. Yet, that façade, too, will crumble under the weight of events.
Organized labor’s reflexive instinct is also to back the Democrat in office, even when that means backing into a knife. But the reality of Obama, Inc. is by now inescapable to every honest unionist – and the anti-war movement only has need of the honest ones.
The conference voted to support the October 2 March for Jobs in Washington, DC, sponsored by the NAACP and both feuding wings of organized labor, as well as Rev. Jesse Jackson’s joint venture with the United Auto Workers for an August 28 mobilization in Detroit.
This writer pressed union-affiliated attendees on whether, in the end, labor and the NAACP will turn the October 2 march into a “rah-rah” session for Obama and the Democrats? “Not this time,” said a Black labor activist from upstate New York.
We shall see. Conference organizers were determined that there be a large and vocal anti-war contingent to the October 2 action. Leaders of the Black is Back Coalition say they intend to take part, as well, unless march organizers impose political conditions that make it impossible.
In the longer run, a “bi-coastal mass spring mobilization” is planned for New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles on April 9, 2011. Organizers envision actions in the interim that build momentum to the big events, when once again the anti-war movement might put many thousands of peaceful “boots on the ground.” To accomplish this, the scope of organizing must be widened. “A prime component of these mobilizations will be major efforts to include broad new forces from youth to veterans to trade unionists to civil and human rights groups to the Arab, Muslim and other oppressed communities to environmental organizations, social justice and faith-based groups.”
In addition to the demand for unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, the Conference called for:
“The allocation of the trillions spent on wars and corporate bailouts to massive programs for jobs, education, health care, housing and the environment. Compensation to be paid to the peoples whose countries the U.S. attacked and occupied for the loss of lives and massive destruction they suffered,” and
“Reverse and end all foreclosures. Stop the government attacks on trade unions, civil and democratic rights, and immigrant communities.”
Conferees endorsed a flurry of other “action plans,” from opposition to U.S. military intervention in Africa, to “no war or sanctions against Iran,” to the “immediate freedom” of imprisoned human rights lawyer Lynn Stewart.
U.S. aid to Israel was the most contentious issue to arise at the conference. Israel supporters employed delaying tactics in an attempt to derail the Palestine Solidarity Caucus’s proposal for an “end to U.S. aid to Israel – military, economic, and diplomatic. End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the blockade of Gaza.” Opponents claimed inclusion of the resolution would make it impossible for them to recruit labor activists into anti-war ranks – as if Zionists rule everywhere in the House of Labor. After a series of dilatory maneuvers by the pro-Israel faction, the Conference overwhelming endorsed the Palestine Solidarity Caucus position.
Perhaps the most poignant moment of the weekend came when Ralph Poynter read a letter from his companion in struggle for nearly fifty years, Lynne Stewart, who had been part of the conference steering committee. “I have been out of the steering apparatus due to my unavailability,” she wrote. “Serve the people with honesty, kindness and respect. Love the struggle.”
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
U.S. to pay for Israeli long range missile supremacy
By Reuters and Haaretz Service | July 25, 2010
Israel and the United States have signed an agreement to make the Arrow II ballistic shield capable of shooting down missiles at a higher altitude, the Israeli Defense Ministry said on Sunday.
The Arrow III will allow Israel “to deal with the threat of ballistic missiles with long range” and will give it “the ability to shoot down weapons of mass destruction outside the atmosphere”, the ministry said in a statement.
Israel, which describes its Arrow system as a defense against Iran, says the upgraded version will cap off its multi-tier air defenses.
The Arrow is jointly produced by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and the American firm Boeing Co. and has absorbed close to e1 billion in direct U.S. funds since its 1988 inception.
Israel’s defense forces have been planning to eventually operate three anti-missile systems: Iron Dome to tackle rockets with a shorter range of up to 60 kilometers; David’s Sling – known also as Magic Wand – which has a range of hundreds of kilometers; while the Arrow 3 is designed to shoot down missiles outside the earth’s atmosphere.
All three will be operated by anti-aircraft units of the IAF, which has been working to coordinate the functioning of its layer-cake air defenses.
Last year, the air force said that the Arrow III would take more than four years to complete and that would depend on what resources were made available for the project.
Two weeks ago U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Andrew J. Shapiro said the United States intended to expand its military aid to Israel in the hopes that such aid would allow Israel to reach tough decisions in its peace talks with the Palestinians.
Speaking at the Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington D.C., the assistant secretary spoke of the administration’s intention to enhance the annual security aid it provides Israel, saying that in “2010, the administration requested [from Congress] $2.775 billion in security assistance funding specifically for Israel, the largest such request in U.S. history.”
Specifically mentioning the in-development Arrow missile defense system, Shapiro had said that “given the threat Israel faces from short- and medium-range missiles, Israeli air and missile defense systems are an area of particular focus, including the Arrow Weapon System to counter long-range ballistic missile threats and David’s Sling to defend against short-range ballistic missiles.”
“For our part, we are working with Israel to upgrade its Patriot Air and Missile Defense System, which was first deployed during the Gulf War, and have installed advanced radar systems to provide Israel early warning of incoming missiles,” Shapiro added.
A day before that, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said that the United States would continue to maintain Israel’s military advantage as well as protect it in the diplomatic arena, adding that the American commitment to Israel’s security was “not negotiable.”
A time for sticks
By Diana Buttu | Bittermelons | July 12, 2010
Many critics are perfectly content to be proven right when their critique of current affairs meets their low expectations. For such critics, being right demonstrates that their criticism and knowledge of political events are sound and well placed. But, for Palestinian critics, there is little joy in being proven right because it means that the political situation is just as grim as predicted.
Such is the case with the much-hyped “row” between Israel and the United States back in March following the announcement of 1,600 new housing units in the Israeli colony of Ramat Shlomo. While much was made of US President Barack Obama’s subsequent shunning of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House during their last meeting–including the unspeakable decision not to hold a joint press conference or even allow photographers to capture the meeting–critics properly noted that there was much ado about nothing. Alas, the critics were correct.
The latest, cordial, meeting between Netanyahu and Obama comes as little surprise. Palestinians have grown accustomed to seeing Israeli leaders warmly received in the White House, irrespective of the crimes perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians. Broad smiles have always greeted Israeli officials, even when Israel’s insatiable appetite for Palestinian land flies in the face of international demands for a freeze on settlement activity. Indeed, the White House always reminds us of the “unshakeable bond” between Israel and the United States even as Palestinian homes continue to be demolished.
But what many had not expected was the over-the-top nature of the reception Obama afforded Netanyahu in the face of Israel’s actions toward US citizens. Perhaps Obama forgot that just a month earlier, Israel carried out a brutal raid on a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla attempting to break the illegal Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Perhaps he forgot that a young American citizen was killed, execution-style, on board the lead ship, with one bullet to the chest and four, at close range, to the head. Perhaps he missed that the next day another young American, Emily Henochowicz, had her eye shot out by an Israeli-fired tear gas canister as she peacefully protested the flotilla raid. Perhaps he also forgot that, days later, a Palestinian man married to an American woman was executed after what appears to have been a traffic accident at an Israeli checkpoint.
Obama did not demand accountability for these acts of violence. Instead, he greeted Netanyahu with the usual broad smile, strong handshake and warm words that every US president has offered every Israeli leader, irrespective of Israel’s actions. The message: Israel will never be held accountable for its actions, whether toward Palestinians or toward any individual trying to protect Palestinians.
Some pundits may pontificate that this is merely a change in tactics on the part of Obama, that he is moving from the “stick” to the “carrot” in the hope that Israel will see the error of its ways, change course and become a law-abiding actor. But on this, the pundits and Obama should take some lessons from the Palestinian Authority, which has spent the last 17 years offering carrots to successive Israeli administrations (from changing the discourse to focus on Israeli security rather than Palestinian freedom to actually serving as Israel’s security subcontractor) in the mistaken belief that somehow if we Palestinians offer enough carrots to Israel, its appetite for Palestinian land will be sated. For all these carrots, Palestinians have achieved nothing and instead a fatter, more emboldened “rabbit” has emerged demanding even more concessions from the Palestinian people.
The pundits will argue that the carrots are working and will point to Netanyahu’s recent statements in which he indicated that he is willing to take “bold steps” for an undefined, conditional “peace” and even pressed for direct rather than indirect talks with the PLO. But the pundits will ignore reality: the peace process has only ever served to provide Israel with legitimacy while masking its ongoing violations of human rights. From 1993 to 2000, for example, as the world greeted the peace process with great fanfare and 34 countries established diplomatic ties with Israel, it carried out the largest expansion of the settlement enterprise in its history, including a doubling of its settler population as well as one of the largest revocations of residency rights of Palestinian Jerusalemites. In short, while the world focused on handshakes, Israel continued to carry out its policies of replacing one people with another. And on this path, Israel will continue.
Indeed, for all of his talk of “peace”, Netanyahu has also indicated that he will not halt settlement activity and home demolitions will continue as planned. The blockade will continue and Palestinians will continue to be imprisoned in large Bantustans. In short, Israel continues to act as it always has, unless it sees a stick. And the time for sticks is now.
But the US is too afraid to use its annual three-billion-dollars-US-assistance-to-Israel stick. Instead, it will continue to turn a blind eye to Israel’s colonization, while promising an increasingly compliant and complacent Palestinian leadership that, for domestic reasons, the Palestinians will have to wait until mid-term elections, or maybe second-term elections before the stick will be used against Israel.
All the while, Palestinian critics will continue to watch the handshakes and smiles, with that sickening feeling that we know we are right but wish we were wrong.
© bitterlemons.org
Diana Buttu is a human rights lawyer and a former legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team.
Democrats: Guantanamo Closure ‘Not a Priority’
Steny Hoyer: Then and now
By Glenn Greenwald | July 21, 2010
Letter signed by Steny Hoyer to George Bush, June 29, 2007, demanding closing of Guantanamo:
Holding prisoners for an indefinite period of time, without charging them with a crime goes against our values, ideals and principles as a nation governed by the rule of law. Further, Guantanamo Bay has a become a liability in the broader global war on terror, as allegations of torture, the indefinite detention of innocent men, and international objections to the treatment of enemy combatants has hurt our credibility as the beacon for freedom and justice. Its continued operation also threatens the safety of U.S. citizens and military personnel detained abroad. . . . A liability of our own creation, the existence of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay is defeating our effort to ensure that the principles of freedom, justice and human rights are spread throughout the world.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, today:
Gitmo shut-down not a priority, top Dem says
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer acknowledged Tuesday that closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison is not a top priority for congressional Democrats.
In response to a question from a reporter about where shutting down Gitmo stands, Hoyer said, “I think that’s not an item, as you point out, of real current discussion. There’s some very big issues confronting us – dealing with growing the economy and Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Hoyer added, “I think you’re not going to see it discussed very broadly in the near term.”
How can it be that it’s not a priority to end something which — as Hoyer put it in 2007 — “threatens the safety of U.S. citizens and military personnel detained abroad”? Why would Democrats like Hoyer be so willing to jeopardize the safety of American citizens and the lives of Our Troops abroad by de-prioritizing something which (at least if the 2007 Hoyer was to be believed) directly threatens them? Also, we had wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2007 along with a whole variety of other problems — if those issues now justify de-prioritizing the closing of Guantanamo, why wasn’t that also true in 2007 when Hoyer (and most other Democrats ) were vocally demanding that Bush close the camp?
This, needless to say, is par for the course: policies which establishment Democrats pretended to vehemently oppose when out of power magically transformed into policies they embrace when in power. Ironically, in response to the 2007 Hoyer letter, a Bush spokesperson “said the letter was received and noted that Bush has said he wants to close Guantanamo. ‘A number of steps need to take place before that can happen, and we’re continuing to work on those,’ she said.” Sound familiar? Recall, too, that even the Obama plan to move the camp to Illinois would have entailed preserving one of the core factors condemned by Hoyer (“Holding prisoners for an indefinite period of time, without charging them with a crime goes against our values, ideals and principles as a nation governed by the rule of law”).
Along these same lines, a provision in the new Intelligence Authorization Act which would provide for substantially greater oversight of the intelligence community has now disappeared from the bill in the face of a threat from the Obama White House to veto any bill containing it. I wrote before about the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent greater oversight of covert intelligence programs — greater oversight also used to be an advocated Democratic policy — but it’s particularly ironic that Obama succeeded in quashing further oversight on the exact day that The Washington Post documents the completely out-of-control, unaccountable, secret world of the National Security and Surveillance State. Allowing an audit of these intelligence programs by the General Accounting Office to ensure compliance with the law — something Nancy Pelosi was pushing — would have been one mild means of ensuring at least a marginal degree of accountability over Top Secret America. Yet it looks likely even that will not happen because Obama is threatening a veto to prevent it. I wonder why he would do that?
The Real U.S. Government
By Glenn Greenwald | July 19, 2010
The Washington Post‘s Dana Priest demonstrates once again why she’s easily one of the best investigative journalists in the nation — if not the best — with the publication of Part I of her series, co-written with William Arkin, detailing the sprawling, unaccountable, inexorably growing secret U.S. Government: what the article calls “Top Secret America.” To the extent the series receives much substantive attention (and I doubt it will), the focus will likely be on the bureaucratic problems it documents: the massive redundancies, overlap, waste, and inefficiencies which plague this “hidden world, growing beyond control” — as though everything would better if Top Secret America just functioned a bit more effectively. But the far more significant fact so compellingly illustrated by this first installment is the one I described last week when writing about the Obama administration’s escalating war on whistle blowers:
Most of what the U.S. Government does of any significance — literally — occurs behind a vast wall of secrecy, completely unknown to the citizenry. . . . Secrecy is the religion of the political class, and the prime enabler of its corruption. That’s why whistle blowers are among the most hated heretics. They’re one of the very few classes of people able to shed a small amount of light on what actually takes place.
Virtually every fact Priest and Arkin disclose underscores this point. Here is their first sentence: “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.” This all “amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight.” We chirp endlessly about the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Democrats and Republicans, but this is the Real U.S. Government: functioning in total darkness, beyond elections and parties, so secret, vast and powerful that it evades the control or knowledge of any one person or even any organization.
Anyone who thinks that’s hyperbole should just read some of what Priest and Arkin chronicle. Consider this: “Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.” To call that an out-of-control, privacy-destroying Surveillance State is to understate the case. Equally understated is the observation that we have become a militarized nation living under an omnipotent, self-perpetuating, bankrupting National Security State. Here’s but one flavoring anecdote:
Command centers, internal television networks, video walls, armored SUVs and personal security guards have also become the bling of national security.
“You can’t find a four-star general without a security detail,” said one three-star general now posted in Washington after years abroad. “Fear has caused everyone to have stuff. Then comes, ‘If he has one, then I have to have one.’ It’s become a status symbol.”
What’s most noteworthy about all of this is that the objective endlessly invoked for why we must acquiesce to all of this — National Security — is not only unfulfilled by “Top Secret America,” but actively subverted by it. During the FISA debate of 2008 — when Democrats and Republicans joined together to legalize the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping program and vastly expand the NSA’s authority to spy on the communications of Americans without judicial oversight — it was constantly claimed that the Government must have greater domestic surveillance powers in order to Keep Us Safe. Thus, anyone who opposed the new spying law was accused of excessively valuing privacy and civil liberties at the expense of what, we are always told, matters most: Staying Safe. […]
Long before the Priest/Arkin article, Tim Shorrock has been documenting this sprawling, secretive, merged public/private world that combines unchecked surveillance and national security powers with enormous corporate profits. So long as the word Terrorism continues to be able to strike fear in the hearts of enough citizens and media stars — as Communism did before it — the political class, no matter who is elected, will be petrified to oppose any of this, even if they wanted to, and why would they want to? They wouldn’t and they don’t. And it thus grows and becomes more powerful, all justified by endless appeals to The Terrorists.
That’s why it is difficult to imagine — short of some severe citizen unrest — how any of this will be brought under control. One of the few scenarios one can envision for such unrest involves growing wealth disparities and increasingly conspicuous elite corruption. In The New York Times today, investment banker and former Clinton Treasury official Roger Altman announced that the alleged “tension between President Obama and the business community” can be solved only if the political class is willing to “fix Social Security” — i.e., to slash Americans’ retirement security. Sooner or later (probably sooner), one way or another (probably this way), that’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. As George Carlin put it several years ago, in an amazingly succinct summary of so many things:
And now, they’re coming for your Social Security money – they want your fucking retirement money – they want it back – so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later. Because they own this fucking place. It’s a Big Club: and you’re not in it.
That’s really the only relevant question: how much longer will Americans sit by passively and watch as a tiny elite become more bloated, more powerful, greedier, more corrupt and more unaccountable — as the little economic security, privacy and freedom most citizens possess vanish further still?
How long can this be sustained, where more and more money is poured into Endless War, a military that almost spends more than the rest of the world combined, where close to 50% of all U.S. tax revenue goes to military and intelligence spending, where the rich-poor gap grows seemingly without end, and the very people who virtually destroyed the world economy wallow in greater rewards than ever, all while the public infrastructure (both figuratively and literally) crumbles and the ruling class is openly collaborating on a bipartisan, public-private basis even to cut Social Security benefits?
The answer, unfortunately, is probably this: a lot longer. And one primary reason is that our media-shaped political discourse is so alternatively distracted and distorted that even shining light on all of this matters little. The New York Times‘ Peter Baker had a good article this weekend on how totally inconsequential squabbles dominate the news more or less continuously: last week’s riveting drama was the bickering between the White House and Nancy Pelosi over Robert Gibbs’ warning that Democratic control of the House was endangered. Baker quotes Democratic strategist Chris Lehane as follows: “Politics in D.C. have become Seinfeldesque. Fights about nothing.”
If you read and write about politics full-time and are thus forced to subject yourself to the political media — as I am — what’s most striking aren’t the outrages and corruptions, but the overwhelming, suffocating, numbing stream of stupidity and triviality that floods the brain. One has to battle the temptation to just turn away and ignore it all. Every day, day after day, is consumed by some totally irrelevant though distracting melodrama: what Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook page, some “outrageous” snippet of a comment made by John Boehner or Harry Reid, some “crazy,” attention-attracting statement from some fringe idiot-figure or TV blowhard that is exploited for superficial partisan gain or distraction value (hey, look over there: I think Michelle Bachmann just said something outrageous!!!!). I can’t recall an incident that better captures our political culture than this, from a Politico report on one of last week’s fascinating Royal Court dramas — the insult-trading between Palin and Mitt Romney:
Asked about the comments by POLITICO, a longtime Palin aide unloaded on Romney’s staff. . . . “For Washington consultants to sit around and personally disparage the governor anonymously to reporters is unfortunate and counterproductive and frankly immature,” said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A Palin aide, hiding behind Politico-granted anonymity, complaining that petty comments were made anonymously by a Romney aide: a perfect expression of what our politics are. The Drudge and Politico sewers still rule our world — “fights over nothing” — and happily distract us from Top Secret America, what it does and what it takes.
And whatever these petty distractions fail to achieve, active media distortion takes care of the rest. This superb article by Mark Prendergast, the Ombudsman for Stars & Stripes, details the billions of dollars secretly (and probably illegally) spent by the Pentagon — much of it on private contractors — to subject not only foreign nationals but also American citizens to pure propaganda campaigns. The Pentagon propaganda program exposed by David Barstow is but a representative sliver of the weapons used by the National Security State and its private partners to control media behavior and shape public opinion. Billions upon billions of dollars are spent for this propagandistic purpose at exactly the time that real journalistic outlets are failing. Television journalists think they’re covering war zones when they submit to Pentagon embedding and then broadcast what they’re allowed to see, while repeating government lies about war without challenge. And when all else fails, we’re told to look over there at all those Bad, Evil things done by those Other Countries (hey, look at Pakistan, whose citizens are pumped full of myths and disinformation while their wealthy manipulate the law so as to not pay their fair share of taxes!! — and Iran detains people without charges and China tortures!! — can you believe them?).
Meanwhile, the Real U.S. Government — the network of secret public and private organizations which comprise the National Security and Surveillance State — expands and surveils and pilfers and destroys without much attention and with virtually no real oversight or accountability. It sucks up the vast bulk of national resources and re-directs the rest to those who own and control it. To their immense credit, Dana Priest and William Arkin will spend the week disclosing the details of what they learned over the past two years investigating all of this, but the core concepts have long been glaringly evident. But Sarah Palin’s Twitter malapropism from yesterday will almost certainly receive far more attention than anything exposed by the Priest/Arkin investigation. So we’ll continue to fixate on the trappings and theater of government while The Real Government churns blissfully in the dark — bombing and detaining and abducting and spying and even assassinating — without much bother from anyone.
Qualitative Military Edge — assuring Israeli capacity for brutality with impunity
By Paul Woodward on July 19, 2010
On October 15, 2008, just three weeks before the US presidential election, George Bush signed into law the Naval Vessel Transfer Act which had been sponsored by one of Israel’s most loyal supporters in the US Congress, Rep. Howard Berman.
The new law, which from its title might have been assumed to relate primarily to the sale of ships from the US Navy to foreign governments, actually had a much more important purpose: to place every American president under a legal obligation to ensure that Israel maintains its military dominance over the Middle East.
What had previously been a matter of foreign policy, suddenly became law — law written to meet the interests of a foreign government.
Israel’s regional hegemony is legally enshrined in the concept of Israel’s “Qualitative Military Edge” (QME). The US Government must now guarantee that “the sale or export of the defense articles or defense services will not adversely affect Israel’s qualitative military edge over military threats to Israel.”
The law states:
[T]he term ‘qualitative military edge’ means the ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors. [Emphasis mine.]
Andrew J Shapiro is the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs. One of his primary responsibilities is to ensure that Israel maintains its qualitative military edge. Does he serve the US government or the Israeli government? It’s far from clear.
This is how he presented the United States’ obligation to serve Israel’s interests in a speech he delivered at the Brookings Institute in Washington on Friday:
For decades, the cornerstone of our security commitment to Israel has been an assurance that the United States would help Israel uphold its qualitative military edge — a commitment that was written into law in 2008. Israel’s QME is its ability to counter and defeat credible military threats from any individual state, coalition of states, or non-state actor, while sustaining minimal damages or casualties. The Obama Administration has demonstrated its commitment to Israel’s QME by not only sustaining and building upon practices established by prior administrations, but also undertaking new initiatives to make our security relationship more intimate than ever before.
Each and every security assistance request from the Israeli Government is evaluated in light of our policy to uphold Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge. At the same time, QME considerations extend to our decisions on defense cooperation with all other governments in the region. This means that as a matter of policy, we will not proceed with any release of military equipment or services that may pose a risk to allies or contribute to regional insecurity in the Middle East.
The primary tool that the United States uses to ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge is security assistance. For some three decades, Israel has been the leading beneficiary of U.S. security assistance through the Foreign Military Financing program, or FMF. Currently, Israel receives almost $3 billion per year in U.S. funding for training and equipment under FMF. The total FMF account is $5 billion annually and is distributed among some 70 countries. So it is a testament to our special security relationship that each year Israel accounts for just over 50 percent of U.S. security assistance funding distributed through FMF.
The Obama Administration is proud to carry on the legacy of robust U.S. security assistance for Israel. Indeed, we are carrying this legacy to new heights at a time when Israel needs our support to address the multifaceted threats it faces.
For Fiscal Year 2010, the Administration requested $2.775 billion in security assistance funding specifically for Israel, the largest such request in U.S. history. Congress fully funded our request for FY 2010, and we have requested even more — $3.0 billion — for FY 2011. These requests fulfill the Administration’s commitment to implementing the 2007 memorandum of understanding with Israel to provide $30 billion in security assistance over 10 years.
This commitment directly supports Israel’s security, as it allows Israel to purchase the sophisticated defense equipment it needs to protect itself, deter aggressors, and maintain its qualitative military edge. Today, I can assure you that — even in challenging budgetary times — this Administration will continue to honor this 10-year, $30 billion commitment in future fiscal years. [Emphasis mine.]
Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin challenged Shapiro during Q&A:
[I]t pains me to hear you sound more like an agent of the Israeli government than a U.S. representative because as you travel around the world you see that this “special relationship” really endangers us, makes us more hated around the world. So I wonder if you would be willing to step in other shoes and go to Gaza, see the results of the Israeli invasion there, see the destruction, talk to people in Gaza, talk to the elected government, which is Hamas. You don’t have to like them to talk to them. I also wonder if you’ve spent any time with people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to see what it feels like for Palestinians, the daily humiliations they suffer.
And I also wonder, given the financial crisis here at home and the great needs of impoverished nations around the world, couldn’t you think of a better use of $3 billion than giving it to a wealthy country like Israel that is abusing the human rights of Palestinians on a daily basis?
Benjamin drew a round of applause — Shapiro declined to respond directly to her challenge.
As Shapiro noted, the concept of Israel’s QME has been in use for decades, but it was only when the Bush administration let Israel draft American law, that QME turned into a license to use force with impunity.
In January 2008, William Wunderle, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and Andre Briere, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, wrote in a paper for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy:
The US commitment to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME) is a long-standing tradition that every president since Lyndon Johnson has maintained and reiterated. The basic principle behind this commitment is simple: Israel is a bastion of liberal representative government in the Middle East, and, as such, its continued survival is a vital national interest of the United States. To ensure this longtime ally’s continued existence in a sea of nations that reflexively call for its destruction, Israel must be able to defend itself militarily and deter potential aggression. In this effort, Israel will always be militarily outnumbered with regard to the artillery, tanks, and combat aircraft that can be deployed by a coalition of Arab states. Israel’s continued survival can be ensured only if it is able to maintain qualitative military superiority, relying on superior weaponry, tactics, training, leadership, and other factors of military effectiveness to deter or defeat its numerically superior adversaries in the Middle East.
In other words, the US policy advocated that Israel should be able to counter a quantitative disadvantage with a qualitative advantage. It said nothing about supporting Israel’s use of that advantage at minimal cost. The expression after all was qualitative military edge — not supremacy.
These analysts noted however that:
Israel defines QME as “the ability to sustain credible military advantage that provides deterrence and, if need be, the ability to rapidly achieve superiority on the battlefield against any foreseeable combination of forces with minimal damage and casualties.”
The Israeli phrasing went straight into US law which says that Israel must maintain the ability to use military force “while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.”
Let’s put that in context. The law was signed just two years after Israel had visibly lost its qualitative military edge in Lebanon in 2006 when it faced Hezbollah, and less than three months before it used the assault on Gaza to once again demonstrate its ability to wreak massive destruction while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.
The war on Gaza, which President-elect Obama watched in silence, showed not merely the brutality that Israel is willing to use under America’s political protection, but the extent to which Israel’s military agenda is empowered through its ability to control the United States Government.
The war on Gaza was QME in action.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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