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Uber-Neocons: The Main Architects of Post-Assad Syria at Work

By Sibel Edmonds | Boiling Frogs Post | May 5, 2013

Bush Era’s Good-Ol’ Familiar Faces Resurface again on Operation Syria

With the approaching Finale for Syria’s Assad the Uber-Neocon architects of US foreign policy have been hard at work. Assuming (albeit knowingly) the certainty of the soon-to-come end for Assad’s government, the neocon architects are drafting and crafting their objectives for the Post-Assad regime in Syria. I know the mainstream and pseudo-alternative media use the term “Neocon” loosely and willy-nilly, but I can assure you this is not the case with my usage of “Uber-Neocons’ here. You will see that clearly after reading the following facts.

Yesterday I found this ‘interesting’ article in the Turkish newspaper Zaman [All Emphasis Mine]:

Analysts Call on US to Cooperate with Turkey Toward New Gov’t in Syria

A group of US foreign policy analysts called on President Barack Obama and his government to work towards drawing a common road map with Turkey that will help ensure the formation of a democratic, impartial government in a post-conflict Syrian.

The US think-tank Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) recently formed its Turkey Task Force, co-chaired by former US Ambassadors to Turkey Mort Abramowitz and Eric Edelman. The task force released on Thursday its first report, which points to a critical need for Turkey and the US to cooperate to ensure the formation of a “stable and decent post-Assad Syria.”

The report also analyzes the differences between Turkish and the US interests in a post-Assad Syria, explaining why it is imperative that the US immediately engage with Turkey in establishing joint principles and plans after a possible ouster of the Assad regime.

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Do you notice how many times the term “Post-Assad” is used? Also, pay attention to the analysts named in the article and note that we are looking at architects rather than analysts.

Immediately after reading the above article I went to Bipartisan Public Center’s website, and found that the Zaman article had missed the highly-important third name of the architects aka analysts who have already moved to phase 2, Post-Assad regime building, obviously due to their confidence of the soon-to-come fall of the current regime [All Emphasis Mine]:

Ridding Syria of President Bashar al-Assad has been the goal of the United States for almost two years. Should this objective be achieved, however, an enormous challenge will still remain: stabilizing and rebuilding Syria in a way that advances U.S. strategic goals and values. However, this will require the cooperation of Turkey—a U.S. ally with keen interests in Syria. Ankara’s interests, however, do not perfectly match Washington’s, posing the challenge for policymakers of finding the right tools to align more closely the two countries’ visions of Syria’s future.

Join BPC as it announces the creation of its Turkey Task Force, co-chaired by former Ambassadors to Turkey Morton Abramowitz and Eric Edelman, and releases a paper on the opportunities and obstacles to U.S.-Turkish cooperation towards a post-Assad Syria.

…

And then, at the bottom, BPC lists the task force principals which includes a third name:

Panel discussion and report release featuring

Mort Abramowitz
Co-chair, BPC Turkey Task Force
Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey

Ambassador Eric S. Edelman
Co-chair, BPC Turkey Task Force
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey

Alan Makovsky
Senior Professional Staff Member, House Foreign Affairs Committee

That’s right. We get an additional name: Alan Makovsky.

Now, let us quickly check out the importance of these three personalities and what they have in common:

Those of you who have been following the Uber-Neocon circle and its Uber-Players should immediately recognize Morton Abramowitz. [All Emphasis Mine]:

Morton Abramowitz, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, establishes a number of blue-ribbon commissions, headed by a select group of foreign policy elite, to create a new post-Cold War foreign policy framework for the US. Some of the group’s members are Madeleine Albright, Henry Cisneros, John Deutch, Richard Holbrooke, Alice Rivlin, David Gergen, Admiral William Crowe, Leon Fuerth, as well as Richard Perle and James Schlesinger, the two token conservatives who quickly resign. The commission will issue a number of policy papers recommending the increased use of military force to intervene in the domestic conflicts of other countries.

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After six years as the Carnegie Endowment’s president, Morton Abramowitz moves on to the Council on Foreign Relations.

…

Check out Abramowitz as a signatory to the infamous PNAC here. Now more on his background:

Morton Abramowitz writes a column in the Wall Street Journal calling for a drastic change in US policy toward Kosovo. Abramowitz is highly influential with the US foreign policy elite (see 1991-1997). He argues that the US should support full independence for Kosovo and outlines options the US should consider including bombing Serbia, removing Milosevic, arming and training the KLA, and turning Kosovo into a NATO protectorate through the use of ground forces.

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I guess you all would agree with me on Abramowitz’ status as one of the crusty Uber-Neocon architects of our dirty foreign policies and even dirtier foreign operations.

Now, let’s move to the next architect, Eric Edelman. A couple of excerpts from an article that was written in 2007:

Edelman has close ties to Vice President Cheney and several other administration hardliners. He served under Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, in the first Bush administration. At that time, Cheney set up a “shop” to “think about American foreign policy after the Cold War, at the grand strategic level.” The project also included Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby. [New Yorker, 4/1/02]

From 2001-2003, Edelman served as a national security adviser to Cheney. In 2003, he was named as U.S. ambassador to Turkey, attempting to convince Turkey to cooperate with the Bush administration’s plans to invade Iraq. Turkish columnist Ibrahim Karagul noted, “Edelman is probably the least-liked and trusted American ambassador in Turkish history.”

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A good thing this was written by staunch Democrats pre the Obama Administration. Considering Edelman’s current roles under the Obama administration we won’t be hearing much from that same group- the beauty of partisanship in the dumb-ification of Americans. Okay, let’s read more from commentaries and articles written by partisans way-back-when it was okay to expose and criticize Neocons:

But now I discover it was Eric Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. That makes a whole lot more sense–and really dictates the proper response. You see, Edelman is kind of a poor man’s Dougie Feith. A total shill–and Cheney asset–though apparently with less flair for propaganda. He’s the bright guy who first suggested leaking Plame’s identity to rebut Joe Wilson. And, as it turns out, he realized after he suggested to Libby that the information in question may have been classified.

After a June 2003 article about Iraq and the uranium issues that caused concern to Edelman and Libby, Edelman asked Libby whether information about how the Wilson trip came about could be shared with the press to rebut allegations that the Vice president sent Wilson. Edelman testified that Libby responded by indicating that there would be “complications” at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly. Ambassador Edelman indicated that he understood that he and Libby could not further discuss the matter because they were speaking on an open telephone line and Edelman understood that this might involve classified information.

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I guess the above facts on Eric Edelman suffice in establishing him as one of the second-generation Uber-Neocons. Are you with me, so far? Good.

Now, let’s move to the down-played third name: Alan Makovsky. Since WINEP (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) shows up as one of the common denominators among the long-term Uber-Neocons, we’ll start with Makovsky’s role there: 

The Turkish Research Program is one of the centers of the institute.[24] The program was founded in 1995. Under the leadership of founding director Alan Makovsky and interim director Helena Kane Finn, the center introduced the Washington policymaking community to Turkey’s leading political, diplomatic, military, and academic figures.

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More general background information on Alan Makovsky:

Alan O. Makovsky, a Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a specialist on Middle Eastern and Turkish affairs. He joined The Washington Institute in May 1994 after eleven years in the U.S. Department of State, where he had served in a variety of capacities, most notably as Special Advisor to Special Middle East Coordinator Dennis Ross in 1993 and in 1992 as State Department liaison officer and political advisor to Operation Provide Comfort.

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And here are a few words on his long-term role in the Turkish-Israeli lobby from an article in NYT:

Probably the most important development in Turkish foreign policy in the last year has been the rapid improvement of its ties with Israel, and this newly strengthened relationship was a topic of much discussion among Turks and Americans at the conference. Alan Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Middle East Politics called the speed with which Turkey and Israel have drawn together ”truly breathtaking” and described it as ”probably the most dramatic strategic development in the Middle East since the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty ended the prospect of a multi-front Arab assault on Israel.”

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Makovsky as an ever-present figure in the infamous Turkish-Israeli Lobby ATC:

Speaking at the ATC meetings, Makovsky argued that the most serious problem between Turkey and the United States may stem from the Greek Cypriots’ possible membership in the EU. Indicating that Greece would tell the EU that if the Greek Cypriots are not admitted into the club, Athens would veto enlargement, Makovsky said Washington would have to make a choice: either support the Greek Cypriots’ membership at the expense of Turkey’s anger or oppose the membership. He stressed that the United Sates should not support the Greek Cypriots’ EU membership bid. He also said that he thought the new administration would endorse the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline project.

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I have to reluctantly include an excerpt from a site and an author I truly dislike. The only reason I am including this is to show you the gang Alan Makovsky is an integral part of, so forgive me for the source:

The new Israeli-Turkish partnership is a great fit internationally as well. Foiled by human rights groups in Europe, and the Greek and Armenian lobbies in the United States, Turkey needs a reliable source of high-technology military equipment. The Israelis, always the odd man out in their region, are now not so much alone. As for the Turks, always relative strangers in Washington, they now have a well-connected ally, of whom they expect a great deal… And Ankara relies not just on Israelis; to make its case, it also counts on American Jews such as Morton Abramowitz, Douglas Feith, Alan Makovsky, Richard Perle, and Harold Rhode, and on institutions such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

…

Now, let me point out another major commonality between Eric Edelman and Alan Makovsky. Last week I wrote an article on the CIA’s Graham Fuller and his role in US BlackOps in Central Asia & the Caucasus, his intimate connections to the Boston Terror Attack, and very importantly, his presence in my State Secrets Privilege Gallery since 2008. It is time to revisit my SSP Gallery again: Click Here

Alan Makovsky and Eric Edelman have both been present together with Graham Fuller in that gallery since 2008.

When we check further we’ll see that Graham Fuller and Morton Abramowitz have also been intimately connected, including their partnership in books and policy paper projects.

There are not many political and intelligence related subjects where I publically engage in and declare ‘absolutism.’ However, there is one point in these areas that has achieved an ‘absolute’ status for me, and that is: There are no coincidences when it comes to the CIA and our foreign policy black deeds. Whether it is CIA’s Graham Fuller’s intimate connections to the Boston Terror Attack, or, Syria-Russia, or the same-old Uber-Neocon architects’ foot-prints and work in the background, a declaration of ‘simple coincidences’ is nothing short of denial.

I have been writing, analyzing and talking about the connections between the Boston Terror, CIA, Graham Fuller, Syria, Russia, and Caucasus-Central Asia. You can read my previous analyses at Boiling Frogs Post, and I encourage you to listen to my recent interview, and watch this video. The operatives and Uber-Neocon architects are now busy preparing the second phase for Syria.

May 6, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

American media distortion on Palestine

By Alison Weir | MEMO | May 1, 2013

Thirteen years ago I knew very little about Israel-Palestine. Like most Americans, this seemed to be a distant, confusing conflict that had little to do with me. I was unaware –again, like most Americans – that American taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day, more than we give to any other nation.

I was unaware that our nation has vetoed numerous United Nations efforts to reign in Israeli aggression; resolutions that were supported by almost every other country around the world. I was unaware that US actions were enabling a massive land theft and ongoing ethnic cleansing that has caused profound tragedy in the Middle East, deep damage to our own nation and endangered American lives.

My personal awakening to these facts and others began in the autumn of 2000 when the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada began and was, for a while at least, in the American news. I grew curious about this conflict, determined to follow the news on it, and noticed quickly how one-sided the news coverage appeared to be. While we heard from and about Israelis frequently, the Palestinian side seemed to be largely glossed over at minimum, and was sometimes completely hidden.

I began searching for additional information on the Internet and was astounded at what I learned. Israeli forces were killing hundreds of largely unarmed Palestinian men, women and children; many of the children were being killed by gunshot wounds to the head.

While some Israelis were also being killed during this period, these deaths were far fewer and virtually invariably occurred after Palestinian deaths. Over 90 Palestinian children were killed before a single Israeli child. Over 140 Palestinian men, women and children living on their own land were killed before anyone in Israel was.

As I learned the nature of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the true history of the region, it began to seem to me that this was the longest and possibly most significant cover-up I had ever come across. I finally decided to quit my job as the editor of a small community newspaper in northern California and go and see for myself what was going on, travelling to Israel-Palestine as a freelance reporter in February and March of 2001.

When I returned I created an organisation called “If Americans Knew” to provide the full facts to my fellow citizens and to study why and how US news coverage was failing to do this.

Israel-centrism and patterns of distortion

We have conducted a number of statistical studies on this issue and found that US media were covering Israeli deaths in far greater detail than they were covering those of Palestinian.

For example, the New York Times was reporting on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate seven times greater than they were covering Palestinian children’s deaths; this didn’t even include the far larger number of words and amount of personal information given about Israeli victims compared to Palestinians. We also found that primetime network news programmes were covering Israeli children’s deaths at rates up to 14 times greater than the coverage given to Palestinians.

I discovered a system of reporting from the region in which a violent conflict between an officially “Jewish state” and the Muslims and Christians it had dispossessed (and was in the process of dispossessing further) was being covered most of the time by journalists with legal, familial or emotional ties to Israel. A great many are Israeli citizens (though this is almost never disclosed) or married to Israelis, their children also being Israeli.

I discovered that the Associated Press control bureau for the region, from which virtually all news reports that appear in US newspapers were transmitted, was located in Israel and was staffed almost entirely by Israeli and Jewish journalists (many of whom had served in the Israeli military).

I learned that the son of the New York Times bureau chief was serving in the Israeli military while his father was reporting on the conflict. In fact, I discovered that it was common for journalists in the region reporting for American media to have close personal ties to the Israeli military; that at least one staff member had been serving in the Israeli military even as he was reporting for the NY Times; that US News & World Report’s senior foreign correspondent, who had covered and written about the Middle East for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli army during the time he was reporting there; that Middle East “pundit” Jeffrey Goldberg, whose commentary pervades both the print and broadcast media, is an Israeli citizen who served in the Israeli military.

I learned that CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer lived in Israel for many years, at one point travelled around the US as the “voice of Israel” and had worked for an Israel lobby publication.

I learned that Time magazine’s bureau chief was an Israeli citizen, and that NPR’s long-time correspondent from the region had an Israeli husband who had served in the military and may be an Israeli citizen herself.

I also discovered that this pattern of Israel-centrism went beyond the regional reporting. In fact, the regional filtering of the news may not even be the most significant factor in the broken media reporting on this issue that Americans receive.

Within US-based journalism per se I discovered patterns of Israel-centrism that were deeply troubling. In some cases I personally experienced the intentional suppression of information on Palestine. Following are a few examples.

San Francisco Chronicle

While I was on my first trip to the Middle East I had met with a managing editor at the San Francisco Chronicle before I left and told him of my intention to report from the region. He had been quite interested and asked me to send him my first-hand reports.

During my trip, despite the difficulties in doing this, I sent him several reports at a time when almost no other American journalists were in the West Bank or, especially, Gaza. None were printed.

Finally, he sent me an email saying that he might be able to publish some of my reports, but that this would be “political”. This was unusually honest but quite troubling. It should not be “political” to publish on-the-scene reporting.

While he never explained the obstacles confronting such reports, I suspect they had to do with the fact that the top editor at the time, Phil Bronstein, tilts toward Israel; that numerous advertisers were pro-Israel; that the pro-Israel power structure is extremely strong in California; that pro-Israel organisations in the US invariably mount protests and boycotts if newspapers stray too far from their preferences; and that others are frequently afraid of being called “anti-Semitic” and of the potential damage honest journalism on this topic could do to their careers.

A few years later a journalist who had worked for the Chronicle for many years, Henry Norr, was fired by Bronstein. While a different rationale was put forward for Norr’s termination, Norr himself believes that the real reason was his activities related to Palestine. He had written a column about an Intel factory constructed illegally on Palestinian land and had also given a lunchtime briefing to staffers about a trip he had taken to the West Bank.

Still another former Chronicle journalist has described the inner workings related to news coverage of Israel-Palestine; that most of those editing wire copy were Israel partisans, that this journalist was largely kept away from editing reports on the issue; and that there was an atmosphere in which anti-Arab cartoons were sometimes posted on a bulletin board.

In 2004 our organisation conducted a statistical study of the Chronicle’s coverage during the first six months of the Second Intifada and discovered that the Chronicle had covered 150 per cent of Israeli children’s deaths and only 5 per cent of Palestinian children’s deaths. Before releasing it to the public I phoned Bronstein to meet with him to present it in person, the normal protocol. He failed to return my phone calls. At a public forum I again requested such a meeting. In front of a large audience Bronstein promised to meet. Yet, he later again refused to return phone calls and this meeting never transpired.

We then released our report publicly and distributed it as widely as possible. In addition, some groups and individuals disseminated thousands of fliers containing some of our key charts and statistics, headlined “What Children Matter?” These activities, of course, received considerable attention, and I feel were far more valuable than a meeting.

Gannett Newspapers

Gannett is one of the top news chains in the US. According to its website, it consists of 82 daily newspapers, including USA TODAY, and it reaches 11.6 million readers every weekday and 12 million readers every Sunday. USA TODAY is the nation’s top newspaper in print circulation, reaching 6.6 million readers daily.

In addition to its newspapers, Gannett owns 23 TV stations, which reach 21 million households, covering 18.2 per cent of the US population. It also delivers news on 9,500 video screens located in elevators of office towers and select hotel lobbies across North America.

In 2001 a Gannett reporter who was writing a series of articles in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, heard about my trip to the region six months before the attacks and phoned me for an interview. He was extremely interested in my story and ended up calling me several more times for follow-up interviews, asked me to send him all my reports from my trip, and upon receiving them he was quite complimentary about their quality.

The reporter then sent a photographer to take pictures of me in my home for the article, had her express mail them to him, and said the story would be coming out soon.

We were in the process of creating the If Americans Knew website at the time and hurried to make this live, since this would be major exposure.

A little later I went on a speaking tour and a reporter from a community newspaper in a tiny newspaper chain in New York State interviewed me for his paper. A few days later he wrote to me saying that the newspaper owner had killed his article. He said this was the first time this had ever happened to him.

I then realised that I had never seen the Gannett newspaper article on me and If Americans Knew. I emailed the reporter, told him about this incident, and asked him if I had missed his article or whether the same thing had happened to him. I hadn’t missed it. He said that his editor had similarly killed the story.

I later saw an article by this reporter about Americans visiting Iraq who were highly critical of the US government. It is interesting that this subject matter was permissible, but not a feature on someone critical of Israel.

National Public Radio – Vermont and Michigan

Several years later I was on a speaking tour in Vermont and New Hampshire and was to be interviewed on a local affiliate of the influential National Public Radio network. When I arrived at the radio station it turned out that the radio host who had agreed to do this was not available and another person was going to do the interview, someone called Neal Charnoff.

Charnoff and the programme producer took me back to the studio where they would record the interview for later broadcast. Oddly, the regular sound engineer was told he could go outside and take a break, and the producer took over.

The host began his first question with a statement that my articles contained “anti-Semitic” overtones. I interrupted him immediately, said this was untrue, and asked him what he was talking about – which specific articles or statements that I had written did he claim were “anti-Semitic”?

He could not answer. I wondered if he had even read anything I had written or whether he was simply repeating the unfounded accusations by the Anti-Defamation League, a fanatically pro-Israel organisation that has been implicated in a vast spying operation on Americans.

Flustered at the embarrassment at having made a statement based on no evidence, he began the interview again in a more normal fashion. I told him about my trip to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and what I had found.

Within a few minutes, and sooner than the scheduled end of the interview, he stopped it. He turned off the equipment and said they would not be airing it.

I was shocked and asked him why not. There was then a brief conversation in which he, and to a lesser extent the producer, defended Israel against the statement of facts I had made about what I had seen. The producer, who seemed to be more reasonable – and who also may have realised that Charnoff’s intention to kill the interview so publicly would reflect badly on the station – said that she was sure they would be able to broadcast something.

They eventually did so. They did not, however, include information on my upcoming talks in the area, information that would normally have been included. I noticed later that Charnoff’s interviews frequently seem to focus on the Jewish experience and that a disproportionate number of the authors, musicians, etc., that he highlights on his programme are Jews.

Another incident took place in another NPR affiliate, this one in Ann Arbor, Michigan, location of the University of Michigan, one of the top public universities in the United States.

One way that we and other groups try to get around the media’s reluctance to report fully and accurately on Palestine is through the placement of paid advertising. Sometimes even this is censored.

WUOM, the largest NPR affiliate in the state of Michigan, apparently at the direction of its head, Steve Schram, refused to run a spot giving the name of our organisation. Then, when we challenged this censorship, the station supplied a number of fraudulent and ever-changing explanations. Only after fighting this over a year and involving the university administration and a small sit-in in the WUOM office were we able to force them to include our name in a paid advertisement.

American History Magazine/Weider History Group

Still another incident occurred when we tried to buy an advertisement in American History magazine. The ad was to promote the autobiography of CNI’s founder, former US Congressman Paul Findley. We were told that the magazine would not publish the advertisement because CNI was “anti-Israel”. In fact, they informed us that none of their other 10 magazines would run the ad either.

We were amazed to learn that almost all the national popular history magazines in the United States are published by the Weider History group; American History, World War II, Military History, Vietnam, Armchair General, the Civil War, etc.

According to its website, the Weider History Group is the largest chain of history magazines in the world, making its pro-Israel bias particularly important. George Orwell’s words suggest the significance of the Weider censorship within its history magazines: “Who controls the past controls the future.”

As their censorship of our ad because they considered us “anti-Israel” would suggest, the Weiders are very close to Israel. The co-founder of the Weider empire is one of six North American chairmen of the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, which takes political leaders, corporate executives, investors and entertainment personages on private trips to Israel to increase their support for the country.

A Weider foundation has given large grants to another Aish HaTorah-connected organisation, the Los Angeles-based American Friends of Aish Hatorah, a nationalistic Israeli organization that promotes Israel in the United States and has a programme to create and equip advocates for Israel on American campuses. Aish has been connected to the production of pseudo-documentaries promoting Islamophobia that were distributed in America.

The Weiders originally brought future movie star and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the US and played a major role in building both his personal and political career. Weider patriarch Joe Weider once proclaimed proudly, “We created Arnold.” As California governor, Schwarzenegger promoted Israel, stating, “I love Israel. When I became governor, Israel was the first country that I visited.”

The Media role in US policy formation

Thirteen years ago when I grew curious about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I had no idea that my questions would lead me to discover such an extraordinary pattern of influence on behalf of a foreign country in the US media.

This influence, I believe, may be the single most significant factor in creating America’s uniquely massive support for Israel. If American news organisations had been reporting fully and accurately on the region; if they had exposed the pro-Israel lobby’s power and manipulation in the United States; if they had covered the damage done to Americans by policies centred on what would “benefit” Israel rather than Americans (though not, I believe, those Israelis dreaming of peace), I have no doubt that US policies would be vastly different than those we see today.

Moreover, I feel that it is US support for Israel that has supplied the economic, military and diplomatic support for Israel to continue with astoundingly aggressive and oppressive policies. As such, exposing and overcoming pro-Israel power over information in the US about Israel-Palestine may, I believe, be the most important activity that those seeking justice and peace in the Middle East can undertake.

Providing Americans with the full facts on the region; on the determining influence on our media, our government and our country by Israel and its partisans; and on the devastating, wide-ranging damage created by the current situation, will eventually, I have no doubt, bring the momentous change that is so urgently needed. In fact, given that the US has a history of being a very changeable country, if enough resources are devoted to this effort, such a transformation could occur in less time that some long-time observers might expect.

~

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and president of the Council for the National Interest. She is the author of Against our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of how the United States was used to create Israel. For copies write to contact@ifamericansknew.org.

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May 5, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

U.S. Seeks to Get Rid of Left Governments in Latin America

By Mark Weisbrot | CEPR | April 20, 2013

Folha de São Paulo – Recent events indicate that the Obama administration has stepped up its strategy of “regime change” against the left-of-center governments in Latin America, promoting conflict in ways not seen since the military coup that Washington supported in Venezuela in 2002.  The most high-profile example is in Venezuela itself, during the past week. As this goes to press, Washington has grown increasingly isolated in its efforts to destabilize the newly elected government of Nicolas Maduro.

But Venezuela is not the only country to fall prey to Washington’s efforts to reverse the electoral results of the past 15 years in Latin America.  It is now clear that last year’s ouster of President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay was also aided and abetted by the United States government. In a brilliant investigative work for Agência Pública, journalist Natalia Viana shows that the Obama administration funded the principal actors involved in the “parliamentary coup” against Lugo.  Washington then helped organize international support for coup.

The U.S. role in Paraguay is similar to its role in the military overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in 2009, where Washington hijacked the Organization of American States (OAS) and used it to fight the efforts of South American governments who wanted to restore democracy.  Zelaya later testified that Washington was also involved in the coup itself.

In Venezuela this past week, Washington could not hijack the OAS but only its Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, who supported the White House (and Venezuela opposition) demand for a “100 percent recount.”  But Insulza had to back down, as did Spain, the United States’ only other significant ally in this nefarious enterprise – because they had no support.

The demand for a “recount” in Venezuela is absurd, since there has already been a recount of the paper ballots for a random sample of 54 percent of the voting machines.  The machine totals were compared with a hand count of the paper ballots in front of witnesses from all sides.  Statistically, there is no practical difference between this enormous audit that has already happened, and the 100 percent audit that the opposition is demanding.  Jimmy Carter called Venezuela’s electoral system “the best in the world,” and there is no doubt about the accuracy of the vote count, even among many in the Venezuelan opposition.

It is good to see Lula denouncing the U.S. for its interference and Dilma joining the rest of South America to defend Venezuela’s right to a free elections.  But it is not just Venezuela and the weaker democracies that are threatened by the United States.  As reported in the pages of this newspaper, in 2005, the U.S. government funded and organized efforts to change the laws in Brazil in order to weaken the Workers’ Party.  This information was discovered in U.S. government documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Most likely Washington has done much more in Brazil that remains secret.

It is clear that Washington did not see the mildly reformist Fernando Lugo as threatening or even radical. It’s just that he was too friendly with the other left governments.  The Obama administration, like that of President Bush, does not accept that the region has changed.  Their goal is to get rid of all of the left-of-center governments, partly because they tend to be more independent from Washington.  Brazil, too, must be vigilant in the face of this threat to the region.

Em Português | En Español

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May 5, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

ISRAEL ATTEMPTS TO PROVOKE HEZBOLLAH

By Damian Lataan | May 05, 2013

It’s clear that Israel’s strategy is to use the Syrian Civil War to deliberately provoke Hezbollah. The provocation is designed to goad Hezbollah into retaliation for over-flying Lebanon while on their way to apparently destroy weapons that the Israelis say are bound for Hezbollah.

The strategy has worked before. In 2006 the Israelis flew low level high speed jet sorties over Lebanon. Hezbollah responded by launching rockets into Israel. The situation then quickly escalated when the Israelis prepared reconnaissance patrols into south Lebanon. This resulted in an Israeli patrol unit being attacked close to the Lebanese border when three Israelis were killed and two others taken either dead or mortally wounded. The result was a war that the Israelis hoped would put an end to Hezbollah once and for all. However, Hezbollah turned out to be far more tenacious than the Israelis imagined and the war ended when the US under Bush and Condoleezza Rice were no longer able to support Israeli aggression due to international pressure to stop the war as hundreds of Lebanese civilians were being killed. 44 Israeli civilians were killed and 121 Israeli military personnel died. While many Lebanese civilians lost their lives and there was horrendous damage done to Lebanon’s infrastructure, Israel, considering its war aims were to destroy Hezbollah and occupy south Lebanon up to the Litani River, suffered a humiliating defeat. Now the Israelis are trying a different tack except this time their war aims are far grander and they hope to include the US.

The Israelis are clearly hoping that Hezbollah will retaliate in some way to Israeli provocation. So far, Hezbollah have resisted the temptation to launch any anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli aircraft overflying Lebanon and/or launch rockets against Israel in an attempt to deter Israel from further aggression.

As for Israel’s claims that their raids against weapons dumps in Syria are aimed at preventing weapons from reaching Hezbollah, this too is simply part of an overall strategy designed to demonise the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance for propaganda purposes for when a wider regional war breaks out. It also provides a reasonable casus belli for when such a full on regional war does break out. The fact is, there would be no way that President al-Assad would want to provoke Israel by allowing any WMDs to be transferred to Hezbollah and Israel knows this. There is also no way that al-Assad would want to incur America’s wrath by using chemical weapons against anyone. Again, the Israelis know this. Yet it is the Israelis that are pushing this right to the very edge.

Israel is desperate to initiate a regional confrontation with all of their enemies that will allow them to pursue their territorial expansionist ambitions which will result in the long term in realising their dreams of a Greater Israel. There are a number of doors through which Israel can pass through in order to kick off their long sought after war. The civil war in Syria is just another door.

May 5, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Argentina: Three Ex Military Sentenced For Crimes Against Humanity in Jujuy

By Denis Culum | The Argentina Independent | May 4, 2013

Three former military officials during the 1976-83 dictatorship were found guilty of crimes against humanity yesterday in the first trial for such crimes in the northwestern province of Jujuy.

The Federal Court of Jujuy (TOF) sentenced two former military officials, Mariano Rafael Braga and José Eduardo Bulgheroni, to life imprisonment. Meanwhile, the third defendant Antonio Orlando Vargas received a sentence of 25 years in prison, according to the Judicial Information Center (CIJ).

The Court found the first two defendants guilty of numerous murders and the third one of illegal deprivation of freedom and aggravated torture in several cases. The heads of trial were judges René Vicente Casas and Marcelo Juárez Almaraz. Before reading the decisive part of the judgment, TOF rejected all the arguments presented by the defendants and considered the facts of the case as “crimes against humanity” and therefore impossible to fall under statute of limitations.

Human rights organisations, relatives and witnesses, were satisfied with the verdict – both in and out of the courtroom. After waiting for 35 years, some 30,000 people gathered around the Court House to celebrate a day of justice with hugs and tears.

Braga will be transferred to the Marcos Paz prison to serve his sentence, Vargas will stay in Ezeiza. Bulgheroni, for health reasons, will go to Prison Unit 7 in the city of Resistencia, Chaco.

Braga and Bulgheroni were military intelligence officers during the military dictatorship, and Vargas worked as a supervisor in the Jujuy Prison, which at the time was serving as a clandestine detention centre.

An estimated 130 people were disappeared in Jujuy during the dictatorship. Alongside this trial, the Ledesma case – investigating the kidnapping of workers at a sugar company based in Jujuy – is looking into civilian involvement in the disappearances.

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May 4, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Criminal Government

By Sheldon Richman | FFF | May 3, 2013

“A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that ‘it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture’ and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.”

So began a page-one story in the New York Times that should have dominated public discussion for days and begun the process of coming to terms with this shameful chapter in American history. Unfortunately, the story ran April 16, the day after the Boston Marathon bombing, and thus got little notice. And just as attention on Boston was waning, the George W. Bush Library and Museum was dedicated in Dallas. Unsurprisingly, neither President Obama nor the ex-presidents assembled to celebrate the event (and the Bush administration), mentioned this “nonpartisan, independent review.”

It’s been pretty much consigned to the memory hole. But maybe it’s not too late to retrieve it.

The review was done by The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, which included members not normally associated with critics of the Bush administration, such as former Republican Rep. Asa Hutchinson (co-chairman), who was an undersecretary in the Bush administration’s Department of Homeland Security and administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The task force concluded that in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and other places, American forces engaged in torture and other practices that violated U.S. laws and international treaties — conduct that has been condemned by the U.S. government when practiced by other governments. Such conduct has long been considered a war crime, the task force noted. While it stopped short of claiming that the highest government leaders explicitly called for the use of torture against detainees, it said the use was a consequence of the administration’s declaration that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people captured in the “war on terror.” (PDF) The report states,

The Task Force believes there was no justification for the responsible government and military leaders to have allowed those lines to be crossed. Doing so damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.

Democracy and torture cannot peacefully coexist in the same body politic. The Task Force also believes and hopes that publicly acknowledging this grave error, however belatedly, may mitigate some of those consequences and help undo some of the damage to our reputation at home and abroad.

The task force also found,

There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable.

It notes that some former officials insist their interrogation techniques were effective, adding, “but those officials say that the evidence of such success may not be disclosed for reasons of national security.” The task force discounts such assertions, however, because the former officials “generally include those people who authorized and implemented the very practices that they now assert to have been valuable tools in fighting terrorism.… It is reasonable to note that those former officials have a substantial reputational stake in their claim being accepted.” The task force went so far as to reject the claim that torture led to the locating of Osama bin Laden, citing the Senate Intelligence Committee finding to that effect. (The fundamental case against torture, of course, is not that it is ineffective, but that it is immoral.)

The task force also called attention to the continuing detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, over half of whom have long been cleared for release. At the moment 100 of the 166 prisoners are conducting a hunger strike, and 21 are being force-fed by nasal tube, which in itself has been called torture and is condemned by the task force. A majority of the task force called for civilian or military trials of some of the detainees and release of others to countries in which they will not be tortured. It continued,

Those prisoners who are deemed to still be a threat to the safety of the U.S. and its citizens and who would be difficult (a) to prosecute because they were subjected to torture or the relevant criminal laws did not apply overseas at the time of their conduct; or (b) to transfer due to lack of suitable receiving country, would be brought to the mainland United States and held in custody until a suitable place to transfer them was found. Their cases would be subject to periodic review.

This recommendation is not good enough. How can men be held indefinitely because the alleged evidence against them was obtained by torture and is inadmissible? That is grounds for release. But even worse is the recommendation from the two-member minority consisting of Hutchinson and Richard Epstein (yes, alas, that Richard Epstein):

As troubling as indefinite detention might be, there are currently no good or feasible alternatives. Those prisoners who are deemed to be a continuing threat to the United States and for whom a trial is not currently feasible, and where there is no other suitable country that will accept them, should remain in detention for the foreseeable future. They should not be brought to the U.S., and Guantánamo remains the best location to hold them.

Justice demands to know why people against whom there is apparently no trial-worthy evidence are to be left to rot in an American prison in Cuba. This is truly a disgrace. And notice the self-reinforcing nature of the argument. These people are said to be a threat, but holding them at Guantanamo sows the seeds of hostility and the desire for revenge. Even if they were tried and acquitted, they might be angry at the U.S. government for the treatment they received. Are they still to be held even if acquitted? (The Bush administration thought that in some cases, yes.)

It’s good to see that the task force report holds the Bush administration lawyers responsible for the mistreatment of detainees:

Lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) repeatedly gave erroneous legal sanction to certain activities that amounted to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in violation of U.S. and international law, and in doing so, did not properly serve their clients: the president and the American people.

Extraordinary rendition, the practice (begun in the Clinton years) of outsourcing torture to foreign governments, and abuse of detainees at secret CIA prisons, or “black sites,” also come in for condemnation as violations of international law. Unfortunately, the task force did not call for an end to turning people over to other governments; it simply recommended that there be more than “diplomatic assurances” that torture will not take place.

Refreshingly, physicians and psychologists are taken to task for their participation, in violation of age-old ethical standards, in the abuse of detainees, both by devising techniques that constituted torture and for failing to report abuses. It’s about time a floodlight was shined on this shameful conduct by medical and so-called mental-health professionals.

Also welcome is the recommendation that “the executive branch should declassify evidence regarding the CIA’s and military’s abuse and torture of captives.” We have a right to know what this lawless government did in our names.

The task force also called on the government to comply with its obligation under the Convention Against Torture to assure “that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation.” Quite the opposite has happened: “The United States has not complied with this requirement, in large part because of the government’s repeated, successful invocation of the state-secrets privilege in lawsuits brought by torture victims.” The Obama administration has been particularly determined to keep such suits out of court. This is a blot on the country.

The report further indicted the government for not complying with its obligation under the Convention Against Torture to “criminalize all acts of torture, attempts to commit torture, or complicity or participation in torture” and “proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.” It notes that “no CIA personnel have been convicted or even charged for numerous instances of torture in CIA custody.” Conspicuous by its absence is the call for prosecution of President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, members of the Office of Legal Counsel who cooked up legal justifications for torture, CIA director George Tenet, and other top officials.

President Obama says “looking backwards” at past conduct is unproductive when it comes to the interrogation of detainees. That’s odd. The government doesn’t find it unproductive to look back when private individuals commit crimes. Why should government officers get special treatment?

We can only hope that someday, when these people are traveling abroad, they will be arrested and brought before the International Criminal Court.

Finally, the task force notes that Obama, despite apparent promises to end the abuses, has not lived up to expectations. Guantanamo is still open (he said this week he would push to close it), and reporter Jeremy Scahill has exposed the CIA’s continued participation in interrogations in a secret prison beneath Somalia’s National Security Agency. Scahill’s reporting reveals that the administration has simply outsourced torture — hardly an improvement over the Bush years. Of course, Obama also claims the power to kill people and to detain them indefinitely in a military prison without due process.

“The Obama administration has ended the most inhumane treatment of detainees,” the report states, “though some troubling questions about current policies remain unanswered. But it is unclear whether it has taken sufficient steps to prevent a future administration from resorting to torture or cruel treatment.”

When it comes to conserving the national-security state, it matters little which party is in power.

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May 4, 2013 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Washington Insider Eduardo Stein Tries to Protect Ríos Montt from the Genocide Trial in Guatemala

By Annie Bird | CEPR | May 3, 2013

On March 19, 2013 Guatemala became the first nation to try a former head of state, Efraín Ríos Montt, for genocide and crimes against humanity in its own courts, an extraordinary achievement that led award-winning investigative journalist Allan Nairn to state that, “Guatemala has reached a higher level of civilization than the United States,” where such a trial would be unthinkable.   Ríos Montt’s power grab in a March 1982 coup, and his brutal military campaign that human rights defenders have characterized as genocidal, received support from President Ronald Regan, though his administration denied it at the time.

Nairn had flown to Guatemala City as a proposed witness but once in Guatemala, he was asked not to testify after another witness, a former soldier, unexpectedly named current President Otto Pérez Molina as responsible for crimes against humanity.  In September 1982, Nairn had interviewed then Major Pérez Molina, a commander in the area where the crimes Ríos Montt is being tried for had occurred.  It appears that his testimony would have implicated the current president in crimes, and the victims’ lawyers were afraid that pushing the political establishment any further would endanger the case.

On April 18, the case was unexpectedly annulled by a judge not overseeing the trial, pre-trial judge Carol Patricia Flores.  She made the illegal ruling two days after former Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein signed a communique published in Guatemalan newspapers, along with 11 other former members of the administration of Álvaro Arzú, calling the charges of genocide against Ríos Montt a “threat to the nation” and suggesting that if a sentence for genocide were handed down it could mean a return to political violence.

Stein, who is a member of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, is now considered to be a consummate Washington insider. For those who follow Honduras, Stein’s position on the Ríos Montt trial may come as no surprise, given that he headed up the one-sided “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” that investigated the Honduran June 28, 2009 coup and its aftermath.  As the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) explained, the Hondurans who were most affected by the coup were excluded from participating in the creation of of the Commission.  Inside sources claim the Commission was actually created in Washington.

Judge Flores has made other rulings that benefit Stein’s political allies.  Stein is reported to be very close to Carlos Vielmann, who served as Minister of Governance while Stein was Vice President to Óscar Berger [2004 to 2008].  Vielmann is currently on trial in Spain, charged with directly undertaking death squad actions in 2005, apparently on behalf of the Gulf Cartel (a major Mexican drug cartel), along with then National Police Director Erwin Sperinsen, simultaneously being tried in Switzerland.  The National Penitentiaries Director Alejandro Giamattei had also been charged for some of the same crimes, but was cleared by Judge Flores of the charges after seeking asylum in the post-coup Honduran embassy. Judge Flores went on to challenge the Guatemalan Attorney General’s decision to not seek Vielmann’s extradition, preferring that he be tried in Spain.

The hearings in Ríos Montt’s genocide case resumed on April 30, after the Constitutional Court resolved some issues raised by Judge Flores’s ruling, but did not directly address the most illegal element of it, the annulment.  This has partially satisfied the needs of the victims and justice advocates, but it leaves the case vulnerable to unresolved technicalities that could later resurface and again undermine the trial.

Guatemala’s UN backed truth commission estimated that over 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during Guatemala’s armed conflict, 93 percent of them at the hands of State security forces, and 3 percent by the guerrillas. The Guatemalan government’s commission established to compensate the victims later estimated that the number of killed or disappeared could be as high as double the UN estimate of 200,000.

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May 4, 2013 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Senator Menendez Meets with President Lobo to Discuss U.S. Funding for Honduras

By Arthur Phillips | CEPR Americas Blog | May 2, 2013

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) met with Honduran president Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo on Wednesday as part of a tour through Central America. According to press reports, Menendez characterized the trip, during which the Senator also visited El Salvador and Guatemala, as an opportunity to evaluate regional counter-narcotics and security initiatives that the U.S. is funding at increasing levels through the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). A Spanish-language press report on the trip quotes Menendez as having said that he intends to “explore the specific points of this funding proposal,” and that he wants to “see what works and what does not.”

The State Department’s 2014 budget proposal, submitted on April 10, requests $161.5 million in funding for CARSI, a $26 million increase from the previous year. The proposal requests $4.5 million in foreign military financing specifically for Honduras, an increase of 450% over the FY2012 total. And Just the Facts, a joint project of nonpartisan groups focused on U.S.-Latin American relations, notes that current budget proposals have total U.S. military and police funding for Honduras in FY2014 at $8.7 million, a 63% increase over 2013 projections. Furthermore, according to a Congressional Research Service report, as of last July the State Department and USAID had planned to allocate a combined $72 million to Honduras in FY2012.

These rising levels of funding for the police and military run counter to the concerns of many lawmakers in Washington around the lack of accountability for U.S. involvement in Honduran security and anti-narcotics operations. It also highlights the seriousness of recent reports that the State Department has been supporting units under the command of National Police Chief Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla, who allegedly ran death-squads a decade ago, and, more broadly, that the police have been accused of continuing to commit death-squad murders today. In December the National Autonomous University, citing the police’s own reports, announced that police had killed 149 civilians in the previous two years.

It is unclear whether or not Menendez raised these concerns while meeting with President Lobo. But Fox News Latino reports that Menendez praised the head of state for helping stabilize the country after the June 2009 coup. Readers who have followed CEPR’s work will remember that Lobo came to power through elections held by the coup regime under a cloud of political repression, which was why the European Union, the Organization of American States, and the Carter Center refused to send election observers. Since then, members of the opposition party and the LGBT community, land rights activists, lawyers and journalists have been murdered with nearly absolute impunity.

In Guatemala, Menendez met with President Otto Pérez Molina and Minister of Governance Mauricio López Bonilla. López Bonilla was part of the six-officer junta that ruled with Efraín Ríos Montt in 1982-3, while Pérez Molina was a commanding officer in the region where the government carried out a campaign of murder, rape and torture. Ríos Montt now faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in a Guatemalan court.

Menendez, meanwhile, is still on the hot seat for having accepted free trips to the Dominican Republic from a major financial backer, Dr. Salomon Melgen. (Menendez has since reimbursed Melgen.) Earlier this year, it was revealed that the senator discouraged U.S. officials from donating port security equipment to the Dominican Republic out of concern that doing so could undermine Melgen’s company’s lucrative contract, though Menendez did not mention the doctor or his company by name. According to federal investigators, Menendez also advocated on Melgen’s behalf to a senior Medicare official regarding the doctor’s reported $8.9 million debt, which he incurred by overbilling the government.

While the Senate Ethics Committee continues to investigate Menendez’s actions, the Washington Post reported on March 14 that a federal grand jury in Miami is also looking into Menendez’s role in advocating for his donor’s financial interests. In response to this news, the New Jersey Star-Ledger’s editorial board said the grand jury investigation undermines “the senator’s credibility and his effectiveness as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations” and urged him to step down from that post.

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May 4, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Guantanamo Bay prison spends $900,000 a year per inmate

Press TV – May 4, 2013

Each inmate at the US’ notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, dubbed as the most expensive jail on Earth, costs Washington some $900,000 annually, a report says.

According to the Pentagon’s estimate, it spends around $150 million every year to run the prison and military court system at the US Naval Base in Cuba, Reuters said in a report on Friday.

With 166 prisoners who are currently in custody in Guantanamo Bay prison, the report adds, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 for each inmate.

Meanwhile, analysts say super-maximum security prisons in the US spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to keep their inmates.

The cost argument comes at a time when the severe budget-cutting process known as ‘sequestration’ is slated to slash some $109 billion in US spending up to the end of September 2013. It has also cut government services small and large.

“It’s extremely inefficient,” said Ken Gude, chief of staff and vice president at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank. He has followed developments at Guantanamo Bay prison since 2005.

“That … may be what finally gets us to actually close the prison. I mean the costs are astronomical, when you compare them to what it would cost to detain somebody in the United States,” Gude added.

He further said although it is difficult to say how much the US has spent overall on the infamous prison, “it is certainly more than $1 billion by a comfortable margin, I would say, probably more than $2 billion.”

Most of the 166 detainees being held at the jail have been cleared for release or were never charged – a situation that has attracted outcry from certain countries and human rights organizations.

Detainees began the hunger strike in February to protest against prison conditions and the detainees’ indefinite confinement. The strike has led to the force-feeding of nearly two dozen of the captives via tubes snaked up their nose and into their stomach.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has urged the US President Barack Obama’s administration to mend the situation in Guantanamo that has compelled prisoners to starve themselves, saying that the act of force-feeding is akin to torture.

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May 4, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Howard Kurtz’s Belated Comeuppance

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | May 3, 2013

For nearly a quarter century, Howard Kurtz has served as hall monitor for Washington’s conventional wisdom, handing out demerits to independent-minded journalists who don’t abide by the mainstream rules. So, there is some understandable pleasure seeing Kurtz face some accountability in his ouster as bureau chief for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

However, the more salient point is that Kurtz, who continues to host CNN’s “Reliable Sources” show, should never have achieved the level of influence in journalism that he did. Throughout his career, he has consistently – and unfairly – punished journalists who had the courage to ask tough questions and pursue truly important stories.

When one looks at the mess that is modern journalism in the United States, a chief culprit has been Howard Kurtz. Yet, his downfall did not come because of his smearing of fellow journalists – like Gary Webb and Helen Thomas – but rather from a blog post that unfairly criticized basketball player Jason Collins after he revealed that he was gay.

Kurtz faulted Collins for supposedly not revealing that he had once been engaged to a woman, but Collins had mentioned those marriage plans. Twitter exploded with comments about Kurtz’s sloppy error. On Thursday, The Daily Beast retracted the post, and the Web site’s editor-in-chief Tina Brown announced that Kurtz would be departing.

However, Kurtz has committed far more serious offenses during his years destroying the careers of journalists who dared make life a bit uncomfortable for Official Washington’s powerful elites. For instance, Kurtz played a key role in the destruction of investigative reporter Gary Webb, who had the courage to revive the long-suppressed Contra-cocaine story in the mid-1990s.

Working at the San Jose Mercury-News, Webb produced a multi-part series in 1996 revealing how cocaine that was smuggled into the United States by operatives connected to the Nicaraguan Contra war of the 1980s had contributed to the “crack cocaine” epidemic that ravaged U.S. cities. Webb’s articles put the major U.S. news media on the spot because most mainstream outlets had dismissed the Contra-cocaine allegations when they first surfaced in the mid-1980s.

My Associated Press colleague Brian Barger and I wrote the first story about the Contra-cocaine scandal in 1985 and our work was met with a mix of condescension and contempt from the New York Times and the Washington Post, where Kurtz worked for many years. Even after an investigation by Sen. John Kerry confirmed – and expanded upon – our work, the big newspapers continued to dismiss and downplay the stories.

It didn’t matter how much evidence was developed on the Contra-cocaine smuggling or on the Reagan administration’s role covering up the crimes; the conventional wisdom was that the scandal must be a “conspiracy theory.” Journalists or government investigators who did their job, looking at the problem objectively, risked losing their job.

Career Consequences

Journalistic up-and-comers, such as Michael Isikoff (then at the Washington Post), advanced their careers by focusing on minor flaws in Kerry’s investigation rather than on major disclosures of high-level government complicity with drug trafficking. Newsweek’s “conventional wisdom watch” mocked Kerry as “a randy conspiracy buff.”

So, when Gary Webb revived the Contra-cocaine scandal in 1996 by pointing out its real-world impact on the emergence of crack cocaine that ravaged inner cities across the United States in the 1980s, his stories were most unwelcome.

At first, the mainstream news media tried to ignore Webb’s work, but African-American lawmakers demanded investigations into the scandal. That prompted a backlash from the major news organizations. Webb’s articles were dissected looking for tiny flaws that could be exploited to again discredit the whole issue.

On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page article knocking down Webb’s series, although acknowledging that some Contra operatives indeed did help the cocaine cartels.

The Post’s approach was twofold: first, the Post presented the Contra-cocaine allegations as old news — “even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers,” the Post sniffed — and second, the Post minimized the importance of the one Contra smuggling channel that Webb had highlighted in his series, saying that it had not “played a major role in the emergence of crack.” A Post sidebar dismissed African-Americans as prone to “conspiracy fears.”

Next, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times weighed in with lengthy articles castigating Webb and his “Dark Alliance” series. The big newspapers made much of the CIA’s internal reviews in 1987 and 1988 — almost a decade earlier — that supposedly had cleared the spy agency of any role in Contra-cocaine smuggling.

But the CIA’s cover-up began to unravel on Oct. 24, 1996, when CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz conceded before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the first CIA probe had lasted only 12 days, and the second only three days. He promised a more thorough review.

Sealing Webb’s Fate

By then, however, Webb had already crossed over from being a serious journalist to an object of ridicule. Washington Post media critic Kurtz effectively sealed Webb’s fate with a series of articles confirming Webb’s new status as a laughable pariah.

For instance, Kurtz mocked Webb for saying in a book proposal that he would explore the possibility that the Contra war was primarily a business to its participants. “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,” Kurtz chortled.

However, Webb’s suspicion was no conspiracy theory. Indeed, White House aide Oliver North’s chief Contra emissary, Robert Owen, had made the same point in a March 17, 1986, message about the Contras leadership. “Few of the so-called leaders of the movement . . . really care about the boys in the field,” Owen wrote. “THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.” [Emphasis in original.]

In other words, Webb was right and Kurtz was wrong. Even Oliver North’s emissary had reported that many Contra leaders treated the conflict as “a business.” But accuracy had ceased to be relevant in the media’s bashing of Gary Webb.

While Webb was held to the strictest standards of journalism, it was entirely all right for Kurtz — the supposed arbiter of journalistic standards — to make judgments based on ignorance. Kurtz faced no repercussions for disparaging an embattled journalist who was factually correct. (Kurtz’s sloppiness regarding Webb was similar to Kurtz’s cavalier approach to Collins’s brave announcement as the first player in a major U.S. team sport to declare that he is gay.)

Yet, with Kurtz’s imprimatur, the Big Three’s assault on Webb — combined with their derogatory tone — had a predictable effect on the executives of the Mercury-News. By early 1997, executive editor Jerry Ceppos, who had his own corporate career to worry about, was in retreat.

Webb was forced out of his job to the satisfaction of Kurtz and many in the mainstream media. Webb’s humiliation served as a vindication to their longstanding dismissive treatment of the Contra-cocaine story.

Even when CIA Inspector General Hitz determined that, indeed, the Contra movement had been permeated with cocaine traffickers and that the CIA had shielded them from law enforcement, the mainstream media’s focus remained the alleged shortcomings in Webb’s journalism. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

So, while Kurtz and other Contra-cocaine “debunkers” saw their careers soar, Webb couldn’t find decent-paying work in his profession. Finally, in December 2004, despondent and in debt, Webb took his own life. Even after his death, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and other major news outlets continued disparaging him. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Warning in Gary Webb’s Death.”]

Hooting at Democracy

As the 1990s ground to a close with the Washington news media obsessing over “important” issues like President Bill Clinton’s failed Whitewater real-estate deal and his sex life, Kurtz and his fellow-travelers were setting the sorry standards for modern U.S. journalism. Many were swooning over the manly man George W. Bush and happily hazing the wonky Al Gore.

Though Gore won the national popular vote in Election 2000 and would have prevailed in the swing state of Florida if all the legal ballots had been counted, five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court stopped that counting and installed George W. Bush in the White House – with little protest from the national news media.

That pro-Bush/anti-Gore attitude grew stronger after the 9/11 attacks when a group of news organizations completed an unofficial tally of the ignored Florida ballots, which showed that Gore would have carried that key state. Yet, instead of simply telling the American people that the wrong guy was in the White House, the major U.S. news outlets twisted their own findings to protect Bush’s fragile “legitimacy.”

Out front defending that journalistic malfeasance was Howard Kurtz. He rallied behind the decision of the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and other heavy-hitters to focus on hypothetical partial recounts rather than what the Florida voters actually voted for, i.e., a Gore victory.

On Nov. 12, 2001, the Post’s headline was “Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush” and Kurtz backed that judgment up by dismissing anyone who actually looked at the statistical findings of the recount as a kook. Kurtz’s sidebar – headlined, “George W. Bush, Now More Than Ever” – ridiculed as “conspiracy theorists” those who thought Gore had won.

“The conspiracy theorists have been out in force, convinced that the media were covering up the Florida election results to protect President Bush,” Kurtz wrote. “That gets put to rest today, with the finding by eight news organizations that Bush would have beaten Gore under both of the recount plans being considered at the time.”

Kurtz also mocked those who believed that winning an election fairly, based on the will of the voters, was important in a democracy. “Now the question is: How many people still care about the election deadlock that last fall felt like the story of the century – and now faintly echoes like some distant Civil War battle?” he wrote.

After reading Kurtz’s dismissive tone, it was a bit jarring to examine the actual results of the statewide review of 175,010 disputed ballots. “Full Review Favors Gore,” the Washington Post admitted in a box buried on page 10, showing that under all standards applied to the ballots, Gore came out on top. The New York Times’ graphic revealed the same outcome.

However, based on the “journalism” promoted by Howard Kurtz, any reporter who actually read and reacted to the real findings would be risking his or her career. Thus, millions of Americans continued to believe that Bush was the legitimate winner in Florida when the facts showed otherwise. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Sandra Day O’Connor’s ‘Maybe’ Regret.”]

Demonizing Helen Thomas

Given Kurtz’s history as hall monitor for the conventional wisdom, it surely should come as no surprise that he would join in the demonization of longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas, known for her courage in asking uncomfortable questions and for her critical views toward Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

When Thomas made an impolitic remark about Israelis leaving what had been Palestine, her mainstream media colleagues joined the loud calls for her career to be brought to an ignominious end, her apology notwithstanding.

Kurtz penned a harsh retrospective on Thomas’s sudden retirement from journalism, giving Thomas’s critics a free shot at denouncing her for an alleged lack of “objectivity” and her supposedly off-the-wall questions to politicians.

“She asked questions no hard-news reporter would ask, that carried an agenda and reflected her point of view and there were some reporters who felt that was inappropriate,” CBS correspondent Mark Knoller was quoted as saying. “Sometimes her questions were embarrassing to others.”

“She’s always said crazy stuff,” added National Review Online columnist Jonah Goldberg, whose “journalism” career was launched as a defender of his mother, Lucianne Goldberg, after she advised disgruntled federal employee Linda Tripp to tape her conversations with President Clinton’s girlfriend Monica Lewinsky and to save the semen-stained blue dress.

“I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton’s trousers,” Goldberg once wrote. So, in the funhouse-mirror world of today’s Washington news media, Goldberg parlayed his time in Clinton’s trousers into a slot as a frequent guest on high-profile TV news shows, such as ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “Nightline,” MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” CNN’s “Larry King Live,” and, of course, many Fox News programs.

As examples of Helen Thomas’s “crazy stuff,” Kurtz cited some of her questions as if the very words proved her unfitness to work as a national journalist. For instance, he wrote: “In 2002, Thomas asked [White House press secretary Ari] Fleischer: ‘Does the president think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of brutal military occupation and suppression?’”

Apparently, no further comment was needed for Washington Post readers to understand how outlandish such a question was. Kurtz continued: “Four years later, Thomas told Fleischer’s successor, Tony Snow, that the United States ‘could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon’ by Israel, but instead had ‘gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine.’ Snow tartly thanked her for ‘the Hezbollah view.’”

Praise for Critics

Kurtz also praised some of Thomas’s colleagues who alerted the world to the dangers of Helen Thomas earlier. He wrote: “A handful of journalists questioned her role over the years. In a 2006 New Republic piece, Jonathan Chait accused Thomas of ‘unhinged rants,’ noting that she had asked such questions as: ‘Why are we killing people in Iraq? Men, women, and children are being killed there … It’s outrageous.’”

Again, Kurtz appeared to believe that the absurdity of Thomas’s statement was self-evident.

Yet, as President George W. Bush’s unprovoked invasion and bloody occupation of Iraq claimed the lives of thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, perhaps the greater absurdity was that Helen Thomas was often alone in asking such impertinent questions.

Thomas also had the integrity to refuse to allow her name and reputation to be used by South Korean theocrat (and right-wing funder) Sun Myung Moon when he took over United Press International in 2000. Then the best-known journalist at UPI, she resigned as an act of principle.

Though Moon was a notorious propagandist who had founded the Washington Times in 1982 as a vehicle for supporting some American politicians (such as Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) and for tearing down others (such as John Kerry, Bill Clinton and Al Gore), much of the “objective” Washington press corps tolerated and even promoted Moon’s curious newspaper.

In the mid-1980s, after Moon’s newspaper signed up for the Associated Press wire service, AP executives told AP staffers, including me, that we were no longer allowed to mention Moon’s connection to the newspaper when we cited the Washington Times’ reporting in AP copy. That policy change meant that readers of AP stories around the world wouldn’t be alerted to the propaganda element of Moon’s operation.

Other respected Washington news figures, such as C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb, actively promoted Moon’s newspaper by hoisting up its articles before viewers, many of whom had no idea that the Times’ owner was a religious cult leader with mysterious ties to foreign intelligence services and to international crime syndicates. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

So, while Moon’s newspaper was influencing the U.S. political debate with propagandistic articles – and while Moon was spreading around money for political and journalism conferences – Helen Thomas was one of the few prominent figures in the Washington press corps to object. (After resigning from UPI, she took a job as a columnist for the Hearst newspapers.)

Nevertheless, at the end of her long and groundbreaking career as one of the first women to operate in the male-dominated Washington press corps, Helen Thomas was the one pilloried as crazy and unprofessional by the arbiter of all that is good in journalism, Howard Kurtz.

~

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

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May 4, 2013 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sorting Theology from “Political Thrust”

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | May 3, 2013

In a fascinating Vox Tablet podcast discussion of the major role of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and his son, Zvi Yehuda, in the history of religious Zionism and the Kooks’ influence on the so-called “settler” movement, Rabbi Shai Held speaks of the dangers of this increasingly influential theology in Israeli politics. Paraphrasing Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Rabbi Held, the co-founder and dean of an egalitarian yeshiva in New York, warns:

This is really dangerous stuff. This is dynamite that you’re playing with. The combination of messianism, a sense of the ontological difference and superiority of the Jews, a sense of the ontological uniqueness of the Land of Israel, the increasing embrace of militarism; all of this, combined, is like a powder keg.

May 3, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The Sub-Prime Queen

An Interview with Tim Anderson on Obama’s Commerce Nominee, Penny Pritzker

By Dennis J. Bernstein | KPFA | April 29, 2013

President Barrack Obama has nominated his long time friend and top fundraiser, Chicago-based Multibillionaire, Penny Pritzker, to be the next Secretary of Commerce. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Pritzker’s nomination could prove controversial. She is on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and… She could also face scrutiny over the collapse of Superior Bank, which was co-owned by her family. The bank, based in Hinsdale, Ill., was involved in subprime mortgage lending, and its failure in 2001 stirred charges of fraud and mismanagement.”

Penny Pritzker, says Chicago-Based independent banking investigator Tim Andersen, played fast and loose with the American Dream. Anderson, who has been investigating for many years Pritzker’s pioneering sub-prime operations, says Superior Bank in Chicago, specifically targeted poor and working class people of color across the country. He asserts that her extreme wealth and privilege has not only made her virtually untouchable by law enforcement, but now her appointment to Sec of Commerce, will allow her to cleanse her  sub-prime banking record by becoming the Secretary of Commerce.

D.B  Let’s start with some deep background on Penny Pritzker and the family holdings…

TA:  There are 11 senior Pritzkers, the descendants of A. M Pritzker, who is  the 11th wealthiest person after Forbes.  But they are different as far as their wealth goes.  Before they broke up the family dynasty because of a suit between two of the junior siblings, they had about 15 billion dollars.  Bloomberg thought it was more like 38 billion because so many of the assets are major companies that are privately owned, it’s hard to evaluate that.

DB:  $38 billion, with a B.

TA:  $38 billion.  One publication listed eight casinos, another listed 13, with each license worth a half a million dollars. There is another $5-7 billion in casinos.  When you own 13 casinos for 5-7 billion, you are a player in the casino business.  That’s just the hotels and casinos.  There are many other companies they own such as the second largest chewing tobacco company, which they sold for 3.5 billion dollars.  They actually owned the second and third largest chewing tobacco company, but have since off-loaded those for billions of dollars.  Many of their assets are not what society considers clean assets, but hey don’t care.  As far as money goes, they want it.  When it comes to casinos or chewing tobacco companies, they don’t care.  Their wealth is almost incalculable, because according to Forbes magazine, they are the only family in America to have off shore tax-free trusts because they were grandfathered in. Their off shore trust can ship money back to their family tax-free.  It was grandfathered in because their grandfather got it through Congress – he was smart to see the future and got it done.  Congress closed the loophole and grandfathered him in.  Forbesmagazine wrote about the Pritzker’s off shore trust, they emphasized that there are over 1000 separate trusts.  Many families have two or three different savings accounts to keep track of what money belongs to who, but when you have over 1000 different trusts to handle the family estate it’s very hard to comprehend how much wealth there is and how many businesses they control.  A few years ago, Penny sold TransUnion, the largest credit reporting agency in America, but there’s a question about whether she sold it to herself by selling it to various hedge funds which her family has a large interest in.  Until she sold it, you could say that Penny Pritzker had more files on every citizen in America than the CIA and FBI combined, because everybody has a credit score and credit report.  Penny Pritzker had the credit scores and report on every single citizen in America.

DB:  That’s amazing because before she had TransUnion, she had Superior Bank, through which she destroyed the credit of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.  You might say she helped destroy the credit of the United States of America.

TA:  She had TransUnion while she had Superior Bank, so she controlled the credit scores of everybody who was getting a subprime loan.  You pay a higher interest on your subprime loan based on your credit score.  Whether or not it was ever brokered between the credit bureau and the bank, we don’t know, but we know the same people control both entities.

DB:  What happened with Superior Bank when Barak Obama was an assemblyman in her district?

TA:  Superior Bank was acquired back in 1989 as part of the original savings and loan giveaway by M, D and E Wall.   As I wrote a in a paper for an economic conference in Denver, Superior Bank was sold to the Pritzkers for 42.5 million dollars.  They changed the name from Lion Savings and Loan to Superior Bank after they acquired it.  Lion Savings and Loan was sold to the Pritzkers just to put up money for the capital.  But as government reports show, they only put up a million dollars cash and pledged their assets as the difference, the capital.  That’s not supposed to be done, but they are privileged people so they get privileged deals. After they acquired this for $1 million they also got $640 million in tax credits.

DB:  So they paid a million bucks and got $640 million in tax credits.

TA:  The tax credits were designed so they could use it in any entity they wanted.  They didn’t have to use it on what they bought.  It could be sold on the open market for value, the credits could be used to file back taxes or warehouse them for future taxes.  So for a million dollars, they got 640 million dollars for agreeing to take over Superior Bank, which they then looted for years then gave it back to the government with an enormous loss to the uninsured depositors and the whole subprime industry.

DB:  And the US taxpayers.

TA:  Oh yes. Taxpayers have lost very, very dearly.  In 2007 and 2008, real estate dropped in value because of the subprime bubble bursting.  Penny Pritzker, who ran Superior Bank, is going to claim she was just a silent investor and chairman.  I gave the Chicago Sun Times a letter on Superior Bank letterhead that they ran, dated May 31, 2001.  Addressed to the management and employees of Superior Bank, it said “with great pleasure…I am able to announce an agreement has been reached with the Office of Supervision for a $351 million plan to recapitalize Superior Bank.  They reached the agreement, but they never paid it.

DB:  So the Pritzkers never paid the $351 million?

TA:  No.  They reached the agreement so they could stay open.  Then three months later they said that’s a bad deal – let’s just reneg on it.   So they told the FDIC, “Here are the keys, you take it.”  During that period of time, this letter, signed by Penny Pritzker, told her people – we are going to regain our prominence in the subprime industry.  She was so proud of her prominence in the subprime industry.  At that time, Wells Fargo, Countrywide and Washington Mutual hadn’t tooled up in the subprime lending as they did later on.  One reason is they didn’t have a staff to do it.  The FDIC closed down Superior Bank with its thousands and thousands and thousands of employees who made originated mortgages through their origination department.  After they were laid off by the close of Superior Bank, they couldn’t work anywhere so they worked for Wells Fargo Countrywide.  The whole tool up of Washington Mutual, Countywide and TransUnion are old Superior workers who were out of a job and knew how to make subprime mortgages.

DB:  When you read the stories of the time, all the reports, including the Wall Street Journal, said the failure of the Superior Bank may have cost taxpayers between 1 and 2 billion dollars.  It’s reported that between 1400 and 1700 savings accounts were gutted at Superior. How many people ended up losing their money at Penny Pritzker’s bank while she was busy working with her people to be sure that Wall Street got in real deep.  She started with Meryl Lynch, which is also gone.

TA:  These are smart people.  Genius doesn’t have a connotation of ethics.  Genius is genius unto itself.  Let’s leave the ethics equation out of being a genius. The Pritzkers are absolute geniuses at understanding the tax system and investing and put it to their benefit.  Warren Buffett is in awe of the Pritzkers.  They gave Warren Buffett their Mermin group to manage for them and then he will buy them out as it performs over the years.

DB:  So Warren Buffett is one of Penny’s managers?

TA:  The Pritzkers, years ago, sold Buffett 40% of the Mermin group with the other 60% acquired by Buffett over a 10 year period based on how well the Mermin group performed. As Warren made the Mermin group more profitable, the Pritzkers got more money, as he had to keep buying it from them.   That’s how they let him manage the asset for them.  You cannot appreciate their sheer genius until you study all the stories about them.  I have run across no family as bright, quick or well connected – with a White House pass.  And any day, Penny Pritzker will probably be nominated as Secretary of Commerce by Congress.

DB:  Some of those hundreds of people who lost their savings at Superior Bank lived in the same neighborhood as Obama.  He knew.  He got complaints from people about what Penny was doing, back in the day.

TA:  Yes.  But Penny and the Pritzkers are a special class of privilege – they are immune.  Some major media are finally picking up on this story, but it got a pass four years ago because of the influence of the Pritzker family, which buys both sides of the isle.  They are non-partisan, neither republican nor democrat.  They will support whoever the incumbent is or is going to be.  They invest in people, many of them being politicians, of course.

DB:  Yes, they do.  Now going back to the first Obama campaign, if the Clintons know they have a subprime bandit running their key opponent’s finances, why didn’t they go after Penny and her subprime operations? But the Clintons had a Pritzker too.

TA:  Penny’s brother was co-chairman for Hilary’s campaign.  I used to joke that it didn’t matter who won.  If Hillary won, her brother would take her to the inaugural ball.  If Barack Obama won, as he did, Hilary could take her brother to the inaugural ball.  The Pritzkers bought both horses in a two-horse race.  It was a no brainer.  Society was fed up with George Bush, Dick Cheney, etc.  Whoever won the democratic nomination was going to be the next president.  The Pritzkers hedged their bet and bet on both horses in a two-horse race.  They had one, and her brother had the other.

DB:  How powerful are the Pritzkers in their hometown of Chicago?

TA:  The Pritzkers have the Pritzker Foundation. The Pritzkers are large contributors to the museum, symphony, opera; anything that they can get their brass plaque above everyone else.  They are golden in Chicago.  They give away the Pritzker architect award, which is considered the Pulitzer of architecture. They have many others – as they curry favor with everybody.  They invest in their own good name.  They are very smart and savvy, disregarding what is good for society.

DB:  Whatever the banks are doing now, they were doing 20 years ago.  She was out of the subprime business by 2001 or 2003 and the FBI decided not to investigate anybody until 2004.  How did that happen?

TA:  That’s the privilege of the Pritzkers.  They are immune to investigation.  When the Pritzkers signed off on the deal on the Superior Bank with the FDIC to pay only some of the money, part of the agreement was that the FDIC, for this agreement, which is public record, would not cooperate with any other government agency without the Pritzkers.  So the Justice Department couldn’t investigate the Pritzkers without the FDIC’s blessing, and the FDIC agreed they wouldn’t do it.  What the Pritzkers did, and they negotiated beautifully, is they negotiated immunity from prosecution for all subprime crimes going back to 2004.  In 2002, when the FDIC took over Superior Bank, they ran it for ten months under their management, using all the employees of Superior Bank and their mortgage originators.  As the Wall Street Journal reported, for ten months the FDIC was the largest subprime lender in the country.  They were taking the mortgages they were making, securitiizing and selling them off.

DB:  Hence the Wall Street connection.

TA:  Yes.  The FDIC ended up working for the Pritzkers.

DB:  Let’s talk about their predatory operations.  There were many leads, examples, stories about what the Pritzker operation was doing to trap poor people, targeting specifically brown and black people for these predatory loans.  They had a whole operation.

TA:  I interviewed the only mortgage originator who went to jail out of the Superior Bank operation.  The only reason he went to jail is that he pled guilty for the Pritzker’s signing the agreement with the FDIC.  All his other cohorts who were going to be indicted were never indicted.  I talked to the FBI, and they were ready to indict 14 people in this area.   But the one guy, Jason Dune pled guilty and got it behind him.  He explained to me that what you do is target a small couple and rip them off by moving the Pritzger subprime loans into their lives.

The subprime people would say they are just giving lower income people and middle America people a chance at the American dream.  But these were not fresh mortgages; they were all refinanced mortgages.  Superior was in the refinance business.  If you had the American dream, the Pritzkers and Superior would push you into an American nightmare.  That’s what they did across the country with lending offices under Alliance Funding.  You can’t appreciate how large and profitable their operation was.  They kept taking all the profits out in distribution dividends for the Pritzkers and then the OTS said, “You are taking so much money out, you are under capitalized.”  But rather than give the money back, they said,  ”OK, you take over the operation.  The subprime business is over and we want out.”  So they got out.  But they got out without having to take any responsibility, and that is the real shame that has never been dealt with.

DB:  So poor Jason Dune told the truth and went to jail for it.  Penny stole zillions and she’s going to be the next Secretary of Commerce.

TA:  That’s up to our Senate.  Does our Senate, in a non-partisan manner, want to stand up and ask Penny a few questions, such as “What was your role in getting subprime mortgage bonds investment grade?” That’s how every pension fund, such as CalPers, the teachers pension fund in California that bought mortgage-backed securities because they were investment grade, lost money.  How did they become investment grade?  The Pritzker’s genius was that if there is a bond with a thousand mortgages in it, and they’re all subprime, it’s a junk bond by definition.   The Pritzkers convinced the rating agencies that if any mortgage goes bad they would take it out of the bond portfolio and put a fresh mortgage in.  So the raters said, “if that’s collateral substitution, the bond can’t default.”  They forgot to ask the one question:  what if you can’t make mortgages anymore?  They couldn’t when they were taken over.  That was the start of the collapse of subprime mortgages.  There never should have been investment grade.  But once it became investment grade, Merrill Lynch was doing it with the Pritzkers, then Countrywide, Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual had to do it because every major pension fund wanted these investment grade subprime mortgages.  They paid a very high yield and knew they were quality because the rating agency said investment grade triple A.  They never were triple A.  We all have hindsight. The Pritzkers created the investment grade for the entire subprime mortgage industry.  Once that collapsed, the worldwide economy collapsed.  And this is the person they want to put as Secretary of Commerce.

DB:  The Pritzkers were doing this beginning in the 40s.  How could the first Obama campaign, when Obama was a newcomer and Penny was the chair of the finance committee, out fund-raise by two to three times what the well-connected Clintons raised?

TA:  The Wall Street Journal wrote a cover story on the genius of what Penny set up.  Besides being able to call all her friends to give money, they set up a system through public relations where people on the street pledged on their credit card to give $10 a month to the Obama campaign.  The credit card was debited for a year and everybody wanted to be a piece of it.  To see the momentum, look at the tapes of inauguration, the night in Chicago when he won the election. There was enormous euphoria in the country.  There was euphoria because people were fed up with Bush.  Nothing has made Bush look better than the last four years with Obama.  Penny, four years later, as Secretary of Commerce, is not going to investigate herself.  The circle closes.  It’s up to the various editors of major newspapers, television and radio stations, to do their research.  It’s all out there and easy to do.  I was able to find information, find the documentation, reports.  They need to do it and contact the various senators on the committee and make them ask Penny the questions.  If Penny can answer the Senate’s questions, the Senate which represents us, then let them vote her in.

DB:  Penny never relents – she’s always moving forward.  There was an excellent picture of Penny as the President of the Pritzker Realty Group which owns the former navy base with David Pace, who is managing her development in Orlando with Orlando mayor Glenda Hood.  She owns a lot of politicians.  What has she been up to?

TA:  Any politician who is for sale knows how to call Penny and ask for money.  What the Pritzkers did in ’01 when the navy decided there would be one recruiting depot in Great Lakes, Chicago-land, the Orlando and San Diego naval bases for recruits were closed.  The Pritzkers were able to acquire 1,093 acres for $6900, under $7,000 an acre.  That was the price they were paying for it.  They were supposed to include some low and moderate-income housing, but after the deal closed, they realized, what a waste, let’s just build million dollar condos and houses.  They were also able to sell back to the government open-space land and never paid a penny.  They used taxpayer money to buy it by selling back land they couldn’t use.  They sold wetlands and swampland as parks.  They either got tax credits, which for the Pritzkers was the same as money, or they actually got cash for selling it back.  They got financed to buy it through the state and the city of Orlando, which is when the politicians came in.  It was a 19 million deal, which became 130 million and they never even used their own money.  You cannot duplicate the deals they pull off.  They are more than wealth – they are privileged.  They can do whatever they want and not be held accountable and the people suffer.  There were 1400 uninsured depositors of Superior Bank – the hubris of Penny.  It would have been peanuts to be sure that Fran Sweet, and the other known excess depositors of over $100,000 were paid back.  They lost their money because they were told the Pritzkers would never let it fail.  They put their money in there, though they were nervous putting $100,000 in.  It would have been so easy for Penny to pay them off.   About a year ago, to get rid of this last debt to the FDIC, the Pritzkers got a discount for paying off their debt to the FDIC early.  So Fran Sweet and 1400 other uninsured depositors will never get all their money back.  The Pritzkers do not pay their bills.  They like to say they pay their debt, but they don’t.  This is just contempt – absolute contempt for society.

DB:  When Obama was elected the first time, one of the first things Penny did was represent all the major, highest end of the corporate interests in Congress to resist any attempt to make it easy for people to unionize.

TA:  One of the largest hotel workers unions, UNITE HERE, is not going to fight this thing with Penny because it would embarrass the president, and since these union people are democrats and love unions and Barak says he loves unions too, they don’t want to jeopardize their relationship with the president.  So UNITE HERE is selling out their own people in Chicago, and the whole Hyatt chain throughout the country, to protect the president.  It’s disgraceful.  They know the story.  I’ve had their people interview me twice.  The union gets abused by the Pritzkers but they take it because they don’t want to hurt their president.  Penny is immune from both sides.  The far right doesn’t touch her because they like the kind of money she makes for them, and the left doesn’t want to fight her because Barak is their candidate.  They know how to play both horses in a race.

DB:  How close is the relationship?  Is it true that Michelle and Penny used to run together?

TA:  I don’t know.  There are stories in the Wall Street Journal and Chicago papers that before Obama was a senator, they used to vacation together in one of Penny’s homes in Michigan.  I think it’s accepted that they are very, very close.  And for the billion dollars that she raised in 2008, she’s even closer.

DB:  Is it true that when Barak Obama was in the Illinois state legislature, he received written complaints from people who were being ripped off by Penny?

TA:  That’s my understanding.

DB:  When people who lost their money in Superior were hustled, such as by the companies selling off the debt to other companies, people didn’t know who they were paying or who owned their property.

TA:  The Pritzkers would sell them into bonds, and they got all their money back, plus a profit when someone else owned the debt.  You made the payments to Superior Bank, but the notes had been sold to other investors – Superior just serviced the debt.  People’s lives were made miserable because they would make a payment, but it would be held until after a due date and then they’d get a penalty.

DB:  They paid the interest for years but could never pay down the loan.

TA:  There’s a whole show of how you run predatory lending.  The Pritzkers are masters. This was known by the government on July 3, 2000.  The NCRC, National Coalition of Reinvestment Act, wrote a letter to the OTS complaining that Superior Bank was the largest predatory lender in the land.   They were complaining about it and talking about how they would book these mortgages and set them up so the people would fail – it was designed to fail so they could foreclose. The report shows how Superior Bank targeted minorities three and four times greater than any other subprime lender.  Superior Bank in 98, 99 and 2000 targeted the minority community for their subprime mortgages – to refinance them and get them into trouble.  No shame whatsoever.

DB:  There were many suits that non-profits took on.

TA: There was one successful guy who represented the James and Irene Phillips family in West Virginia.  They were mentally challenged.

DB:   I read that lawsuit and spoke to their social policy attorney.  They were mostly minors and were targeted by the zip codes.  You could see whole zip codes of houses disappearing because Penny’s front man was saying meet me at McDonalds and people would sign over what their house was worth, 18, 20 30 thousand dollars.  It didn’t matter because the Pritzkers took them all.

TA:  Yes.  It was a very sophisticated con game.  They were the best in the business at hurting the poor people – they did a superb job.  Look at what they’ve done to the middle class, to everyone’s retirement, every pension fund that lost money in ’08, ’09 and 2010.  The Pritzkers destroyed the American economy, which destroyed the world economy.  It’s time for the Senate to ask Penny, when she goes before them, to explain.  Let the staffers do their research, talk to me, you, others who have done the research.  Look at the documentation.  Make Penny answer the questions.

DB:  And she never has.  On September 11, 2001, and this is in no way is to suggest a conspiracy, but she was supposed to testify on the day the twin towers were hit.  She was already in Washington, and that investigation was cancelled. There was never even the beginning of a follow-up.  Tell us about Bert Healy.

TA:  Bert Healy is a well-renowned bank consultant who is quoted in every business publication when they talk about banks.  He, and George Kaufman, professor at Loyola University, and Ellen Sideman, the head of the Office of Supervision, were all sworn in on 9/11, ready to give their testimony.  Healy will tell you the story that they were all there, sworn in, in the cloak room waiting to go back in, when they were told the first building was hit.  When the first building was hit, they didn’t know it was a terrorist attack because we thought one plane had gone off course.  Healy says all of a sudden they are back in the room and staffers are whispering to the senators, then the senators all left, came back, and said “Maybe you people want to leave too.”  That was 9/11.  Then Ellen Salmon wrote their report after the fact, a report that is part of the public record.  I’ve got copies of all their reports.  Penny was on the list to appear, but this was Penny Pritzker.  I don’t know if she was there.  She hires lawyers.  She’s a lawyer; they all are.  The original business of Pritzker and Pritzker was a law firm.  The Forbes magazine story shows that the whole Pritzker enterprise was a Chicago-based law firm.

DB:  They are very secretive folks.  It will be interesting to see her as Secretary of Commerce.  She wants a bit of the high profile now.  We know a lot more about her because her kids sued her.

TA:  Lisa and Matthew, her half brother and sister, sued all the Pritzkers.  That’s how we found out as much as we did, but that left us to uncover more and more and more.  Four years ago she had to decline it  ??? because the family hadn’t been divided.  Now she can fill out a financial statement, which will show that she owns x amount of shares of Bushar-Hathaway, x amount of shares of the Hyatt.  She may or may not disclose how much she owns of the casinos, other shipping companies, etc.  It will all be a great deal of money in trust.  It’s not her wealth but her power and influence – her ability not to be held accountable for the damage that Superior Bank did to our economy that is the real shame.

DB:  Many of the people who lose their money in the casinos are poor and working class folks.  But her first casinos were the banks, in the context of the subprime meltdown.

TA:  All their businesses were casinos, and the house always wins, no matter what business they’re in.  It’s up to the public to pay attention.  Adlei Stevenson the first, the vice presidential candidate, grandfather of the senator and father of the governor, said by and large, the people get exactly what they ask for.  Typically, at the time, they don’t realize that’s what they are asking for.  If the public is upset with our Congress and Senate, they have nobody to blame but themselves. Now it’s up to them to tell their senators, “Before you approve her to be Secretary of Commerce, make her answer the questions about her role, not her wealth, but her role in the subprime securitization mess.”  She needs to answer to her role in the mortgage meltdown which basically destroyed our whole economy.  They need to be prepared to ask her the right questions.  If they don’t, she’ll just walk right through it and get free pass like she’s always gotten.  The burden is on the public.

DB:  This is one of those stories that I refuse to let go of.  I put this story in my book about Henry Hyde, who was part of this Chicago story.  These are not just the 1%, this is privileged wealth, the 1% of the 1%.

TA:  These are the people who are immune from prosecution or any form of accountability.  They are above the Madoffs and the Corzines of the world.  They can do whatever they want, and no one is willing to hold them accountable.

Dennis J. Bernstein  can be contacted at dennisjberstein@gmail.com.

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May 3, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

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