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The Reporters Who Got Iraq So Wrong

By Peter Hart | FAIR | February 6, 2013

Ten years ago today, Colin Powell made the Bush administration’s case for going to war against Iraq. Much of what he said about Iraq’s threats to the United States was false. But the media coverage gave the opposite impression, and most of the pundits and journalists who promoted the justifications for the war paid no price for their failures.

As FAIR reported at the time, even before the Powell address there were reasons to be skeptical of the administration’s claims.  On February 4, 2003, FAIR published “Iraq’s Hidden Weapons: From Allegation to Fact,” which made the point that “it has not been demonstrated that Iraq continues to hold unconventional weapons.”  FAIR criticized coverage like that of the New York Times (2/2/03), which asserted that “nobody seriously expected Mr. Hussein to lead inspectors to his stash of illegal poisons or rockets, or to let his scientists tell all.”

As the FAIR release concluded:

The media convey to the public the impression that the alleged banned weapons on which the Bush administration rests its case for war are known to exist, and that the question is simply whether inspectors are skillful enough to find them.

Powell’s address was instrumental in pushing a faulty media line on Iraq’s WMDs further. That much was clear in the coverage right after his appearance at the United Nations, as FAIR documented on February 10 in “A Failure of Skepticism in Powell Coverage.”

In Andrea Mitchell‘s report on NBC Nightly News (2/5/03), Powell’s allegations became actual capabilities of the Iraqi military: “Powell played a tape of a Mirage jet retrofitted to spray simulated anthrax, and a model of Iraq’s unmanned drones, capable of spraying chemical or germ weapons within a radius of at least 550 miles.”

Dan Rather, introducing an interview with Powell (60 Minutes II, 2/5/03), shifted from reporting allegations to describing allegations as facts: “Holding a vial of anthrax-like powder, Powell said Saddam might have tens of thousands of liters of anthrax. He showed how Iraqi jets could spray that anthrax and how mobile laboratories are being used to concoct new weapons.” The anthrax supply is appropriately attributed as a claim by Powell, but the mobile laboratories were something that Powell “showed” to be actually operating.

Commentator William Schneider on CNN Live Today (2/6/03) dismissed the possibility that Powell could be doubted: “No one disputes the findings Powell presented at the U.N. that Iraq is essentially guilty of failing to disarm.” When CNN‘s Paula Zahn (2/5/03) interviewed Jamie Rubin, former State Department spokesperson, she prefaced a discussion of Iraq’s response to Powell’s speech thusly: “You’ve got to understand that most Americans watching this were either probably laughing out loud or got sick to their stomach. Which was it for you?”

If you turn to FAIR’s “Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline” (3/19/07), you see that February 6 Washington Post op-ed page had Mary McGrory writing: “I don’t know how the United Nations felt about Colin Powell’s ‘J’accuse’ speech against Saddam Hussein. I can only say that he persuaded me, and I was as tough as France to convince.” She added that she “heard enough to know that Saddam Hussein, with his stockpiles of nerve gas and death-dealing chemicals, is more of a menace than I had thought.”

And Richard Cohen (2/6/03) announced that the debate was over:

 The evidence he presented to the United Nations–some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail–had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool–or possibly a Frenchman–could conclude otherwise.

Obviously, the fools and Frenchmen were correct. And as FAIR documented, independent-minded journalists were reporting that some of the administration’s claims did not stand up to scrutiny. The Associated Press had a detailed look at the state of Iraq intelligence on January 18. The skepticism and good judgment of those reporters (and others) should have been the rule, not the exception, if journalists had been doing their jobs.

But most journalists did a different job. And most of them faced no consequences whatsoever for being so disastrously wrong.

February 6, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Legal Review of Presidential Power to Engage in Preemptive Cyber Strikes to Remain Secret

By Kevin Gosztola | FDL | February 4, 2013

A recently published story from the New York Times reports a “secret legal review” has been conducted on the use of cyber warfare by the United States. It concluded President Barack Obama has “the broad power to order a preemptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad.”

Unnamed officials involved in the review inform that the administration is moving in the coming weeks to “approve the nation’s first rules for how the military can defend, or retaliate, against a major cyber attack.” These rules, according to David Sanger and Thom Shanker, will “govern how the intelligence agencies can carry out searches of faraway computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the United States.” If the president approves a strike, the government will be able to “attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive code — even if there is no declared war.”

It further adds, “The Pentagon would not be involved in defending against ordinary cyberattacks on American companies or individuals, even though it has the largest array of cybertools. Domestically, that responsibility falls to the Department of Homeland Security, and investigations of cyberattacks or theft are carried out by the FBI.”

The Times story points out the rules—like the rules “governing drone strikes”—are highly classified and will be kept secret. The officials from the administration providing details spoke “on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk on the record.” They selectively leaked a scant amount of details on evolving cyber warfare policy to allay concerns about this power the administration is claiming.

One official claimed the US had been “restrained in its use of cyberweapons” and said, “There are levels of cyberwarfare that are far more aggressive than anything that has been used or recommended to be done.” A “senior American official” said cyberweapons were as powerful as nuclear weapons and “should be unleashed only on the direct orders of the commander in chief.” The official added the decision to launch cyber operations will rarely be made by someone at a level “below the president,” which means “‘automatic’ retaliation if a cyber attack on America’s infrastructure is detected” has reportedly been “ruled out.”

The story suggests the Obama administration had their best and brightest minds think about preemptive attack and the ramifications of launching such strikes on a country. “One senior official” said a country could “claim it was innocent” and undermine the “justification for the attack” because it would be “very hard to provide evidence to the world that you hit some deadly dangerous computer code.” They also thought through “‘what constitutes reasonable and proportionate force’ in halting or retaliating against a cyber attack,” according to another official.

The leaking of details on the “secret legal review” comes just over a week after the Washington Post reported the FBI was engaging in a fishing expedition for journalistic communications as part of an investigation into the sources of leaks on Stuxnet or Olympic Games, the cyber warfare against Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities that was launched by Obama (which Sanger published details on in a major story in June of last year and also described in detail in his book, Confront & Conceal).

It is a bit appalling that officials are speaking without authorization when it is known the FBI has spent the past six or seven months prying into the communications of government employees, who were sources for the Times story.

Back in November, the Post reported the White House was engaged in “the most extensive” effort “to date to wrestle with what constitutes an ‘offensive’ and a ‘defensive’ action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism.” This “secret legal review” may or may not be a result of this effort that was authorized by Presidential Policy Directive 20 to make it possible for the United States military to respond more aggressively to “thwart cyberattacks on the nation’s web of government and private computer networks.” But, given what Ellen Nakashima reported, the secret directive was to “establish” a “broad and strict set of standards to guide the operations of federal agencies.” It was also to, for the first time, make “a distinction between network defense and cyber operations to guide officials charged with making often rapid decisions when confronted with threats.”

As I wrote, the “secret policy” was to map out a process for vetting “operations outside government and defense networks” and ensuring “US citizens’ and foreign allies’ data and privacy are protected and international laws of war are followed.” As one senior administration official told the Post, “What it does, really for the first time, is it explicitly talks about how we will use cyber operations…Network defense is what you’re doing inside your own networks. . . .Cyber operations is stuff outside that space, and recognizing that you could be doing that for what might be called defensive purposes.”

On May 30, 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported the Pentagon had “concluded that computer sabotage from another country” could “constitute an act of war.” WSJ suggested this would open the door to responding to sabotage with “traditional military force.” These details came from a formal cyber strategy the Pentagon had put together for responding to cyber threats to critical infrastructure. One imperious military official was quoted, “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”

About a week ago, the Pentagon announced it would be expanding its “cyber security unit.” Glenn Greenwald detailed how the force that was expected to go from 900 to over 4000 individuals would continue a trend of “disguising aggression as ‘defense.’”

The Pentagon now has a policy, a “cyber security” policy authorized by a presidential directive has now pushed for the development of policy and  a “secret legal review” has grappled with questions and determined preemptive strikes on countries’ infrastructure could be carried out if the president orders such attacks.

What we know about the legal questions Obama has grappled with is all secret. The development of “cybersecurity” policy or cyber warfare policies indicate a further expansion of the body of secret law under Obama.

The government has secret legal opinions on when it can and cannot kill US citizens with drones. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has made requests to view these opinions but the Obama administration has refused to let him see targeted killing memos, even though he is by law supposed to view them so he can conduct oversight. The ACLU has requested these memos be released but a judge ruled that the government was within its right under FOIA to not release the legal interpretations.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court makes rulings authorizing warrantless surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). Despite efforts by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon to amend the reauthorization of the FAA at the end of 2012, this was rejected by the Obama administration (even though the administration had previously indicated to Wyden it would be open to a process of making the court’s secret rulings public in some form).

The government also has secret interpretations of at least one section of the PATRIOT Act—Section 215. The ACLU’s Alexander Abdo said they make it possible for “the government to get secret orders from a special surveillance court (the FISA Court) requiring Internet service providers and other companies to turn over ‘any tangible things.’” (Not to mention the fact that there are national security directives issued by President George W. Bush that to this day remain secret and could have been released at least in summary form.)

The administration’s argument for keeping the “rules” or legal basis is that sources or methods would be revealed that would make it easier for adversaries to attack the United States. That is simply an argument to provide cover for the fact that the government wants wide latitude to be able to respond without being constrained by the law or politics. It is possible to inform the public of when the administration thinks the government has the power to launch attacks and go through several hypothetical scenarios. The reality is the government just does not want to do that because, if the scenario occurred and the administration responded differently, there could be controversy if it was found out they did not follow the “rules.”

Finally, like with the drone program, President Barack Obama is presiding over the creation and development of a power that previous presidents never imagined having. The national security state is effectively appointing him and all future presidents the proverbial judge, jury and executioner when it comes to cyber warfare.

There is no indication that any group of members in Congress or judicial body will have to approve of a preemptive strike before it is carried out. As has become typical, the president wants to be able to conduct war without needing authorization.

The policy will expand the imperial presidency and the public and civil society organizations, which have a distinct interest in knowing what the government is doing, will be kept in the dark on what is legal and illegal in cyber operations. The Congress will barely make any effort to defend its right to provide oversight of this new power. And any future details on this power will mostly come from selective leaks provided by officials, who do not think they will face repercussions for talking to the press. The policy itself, the rules for cyber war, will remain concealed.

February 5, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Fantasies of David Brooks

By JOHN W. FARLEY | CounterPunch | January 17, 2013

David Brooks, conservative pundit at the New York Times, reviewed a new book (The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?) by geographer Jared Diamond in the Sunday January 13 NYT. Under the title Tribal Lessons, Brooks discusses warfare between pre-state tribal societies in New Guinea.  Between April and September 1961, a series of battles between rival tribal alliances, using spears and arrows, killed total of 0.14% of  the total population of the tribal alliances.

Brooks informs the readers of the New York Times that “As a share of the total population, that’s a higher casualty rate than Europe, Japan, China, or America suffered during the world wars.”  Brooks goes on to say that “The highest war-related death rates for modern societies (Russia and Germany during the 20th century) are only a third of the average death rates of tribal societies. Modern societies average war-related death rates that are about one-tenth a high as tribal societies.”

That didn’t sound right to me, so I decided to do some fact checking on Wikipedia, looking up casualties (military and civilian) during the First and Second World War.

During the First World War, many countries suffered losses far greater than Brooks’ 0.14%, including the UK (2.19%), France (4.29%, Germany (3.82%), and the Russian Empire (1.89% to 2.14%). The heaviest percentage losses were suffered by Romania (9.33%), the Ottoman Empire (13.72%) and Serbia (16.11%).  The United States escaped with 0.13%. The Central Powers (Austria-Hungary,  Bulgaria, German Empire, and Ottoman Empire) averaged 5%, while the Entente Powers (including the U.S.) averaged 1.19%. The Second World War was even bloodier: Wikipedia lists casualties for Germany (8 to 10.5%), the Soviet Union (13.88%), Japan (3.67 to 4.37% ), and China (1.93% to 3.86%).

Notice that the combined losses in both world wars for Russia/Soviet Union is 16%, which according to Brooks is “only a third of the average death rates of tribal societies”. That would imply that the death rates of tribal societies at 16% x 3 = 48%, instead of Brooks’ number of 0.14%. Brooks’ error is a factor of 343 (!!)

Brooks’ concludes that “the most obvious difference between us is that pre-state tribal societies are just a lot more violent.”  Not if you do the math right. Actually, the most obvious difference is that modern industrial societies at war are just a whole lot more violent than tribal societies.

The New York Times employs fact-checkers. Did anybody ever fact-check Brooks’ review? Apparently not.

The NYTimes employs statistician Nate Silver, author of the 2012 book The Signal and The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail, But Some Don’t. Mr. Silver can do math, and Silver can pull up Wikipedia on his computer. The Times should hire Nate Silver to babysit for David Brooks.

This is not the first offense for David Brooks. A dozen years ago, Brooks’ 2001 article in the  Atlantic Monthly, “One Nation, Slightly Divisible”  explored the cultural differences between Red State America and Blue State America.  Brooks’ article was widely praised. However, when journalist Sasha Issenberg  fact-checked it in a 2004 article in Philly Magazine, Issenberg found that many of Brooks’ generalizations were false, and much of his “research” was invented out of whole cloth.

January 17, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Iran is guilty because… we say so

left i on the news | January 09, 2013

The U.S. is ramping up pressure on the American public to accept an attack on Iran, with not one but two stories in today’s news. It wasn’t enough to accuse Iran of producing nuclear weapons based on no evidence, now we’re throwing into the mix accusations of cyberattacks and hostage taking as well.In perhaps the more serious charge, an AP story accuses Iran of holding retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in 2007 on an Iranian island. Iran has repeatedly denied holding Levinson, which would seem reasonable on two counts — one, they never denied holding the three American hikers, nor journalist Roxanna Saberi; why would they deny holding Levinson? And two, considering they have made no demands for a “spy swap” or anything of the sort, to what end would they be holding him?

Logic, of course, doesn’t deter the U.S. authorities who planted this story. And what exactly is their “evidence”? “The tradecraft used to send those items [videos and pictures of the hostage] was too good, indicating professional spies were behind them.” An example of that “professional tradecraft”? They used a cybercafe to send the video and never used that email address again! Oh, the amazing professionalism! The wondrous “tradecraft” of anyone who could pull off such a daring feat! Yes, you read right, this is the evidence on which “the U.S. government’s best intelligence analysis” says that Iran is holding Levinson.

The second story comes with an equal lack of significant evidence. The U.S. government (through the accommodating auspices of the New York Times) is accusing Iran of being behind recent DDoS attacks on American online banking sites. And here comes the “evidence”:

American officials have not offered any technical evidence to back up their claims, but computer security experts say the recent attacks showed a level of sophistication far beyond that of amateur hackers. Also, the hackers chose to pursue disruption, not money: another earmark of state-sponsored attacks, the experts said.

Again, two things. One, amateur hackers are pretty much capable of doing anything these days. And two, many amateur hacking attacks, probably most of them, are done for the purpose of disruption, not money.The most interesting aspect of this story is actually this admission:

American intelligence officials…claim Iran is waging the attacks in retaliation for Western economic sanctions and for a series of cyberattacks on its own systems.

Needless to say, Iran would be perfectly justified in doing so, given that the U.S. is waging an all-out non-military war against Iran. It’s no accident that sanctions are referred to as “tightening the noose.” U.S. “officials” even admit that the sanctions are “designed to…threaten the country with economic collapse.” This is war, and Iran would be perfectly justified in retaliating by a lot more serious means than these cyberattacks. That said, it must be noted again that the “evidence” that Iran is behind these attacks borders on the laughable.But the U.S. government is not laughing. It is deadly serious in its intent to bring down the Iranian government, and remove from the world one more pole of independence from imperialism.

January 10, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Brennan’s Support for Torture Is Not an ‘Accusation’

By Jim Naureckas | FAIR | January 7, 2013

The New York Times’ Scott Shane (1/7/13), reporting on the news that President Barack Obama plans to nominate his terrorism adviser John Brennan to be head of the CIA, writes:

The president had considered naming Mr. Brennan to head the CIA when he took office in 2009. But some human rights advocates protested, claiming that as a top agency official under President George W. Bush, Mr. Brennan had supported, or at least had failed to stop, the use of interrogation techniques like waterboarding that are widely considered to be torture. Mr. Brennan denied those accusations but withdrew from consideration, and Mr. Obama gave him the advisory position, which did not require Senate confirmation.

That Brennan was a supporter of torture is not a claim or an accusation, though–it’s a matter of public record. As we pointed out after Brennan’s name was withdrawn in 2009, here’s what he had to say to CBS News in 2007 (Early Show, 11/2/07):

The CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as enhanced interrogation tactics, and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures…. There have been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives. And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.

If the words “support” and “torture” have any meaning, then Brennan is supporting torture there. This is another example of how in order to be an “objective” reporter, you have to deny that there’s any such thing as objective reality.

Related article

January 7, 2013 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Latvia’s Economic Disaster as a Neoliberal Success Story

By Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson | Naked Capitalism | January 3, 2013

A generation ago the Chicago Boys and their financial supporters applauded General Pinochet’s anti-labor Chile as a success story, thanks mainly to its transformation of their Social Security into Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) that almost universally were looted by the employer grupos by the end of the 1970s. In the last decade, the Bush Administration, seeking a Trojan Horse to privatize Social Security in the United States, applauded Chile’s disastrous privatization of pension accounts (turning many over to US financial institutions) even as that nation’s voters rejected the Pinochetistas largely out of anger at the vast pension rip-off by high finance.

Today’s most highly celebrated anti-labor success story is Latvia. Latvia is portrayed as the country where labor did not fight back, but simply emigrated politely and quietly. No general strikes, nor destruction of private property or violence, Latvia is presented as a country where labor had the good sense to not make a fuss when faced with austerity.  Latvians gave up protest and simply began voting with their backsides (emigration) as the economy shrank, wage levels were scaled down, and where tax burdens remained decidedly on the backs of labor, even though recent token efforts have been made to increase taxes on real estate. The World Bank applauds Latvia and its Baltic neighbors by placing them high on its list of “business friendly” economies, even though at times scolding their social regimes as even too harsh for the Victorian tastes of the international financial institutions.

Can this really be a model for the United States or Europe’s remaining social democracies? Or is it simply a cruel experiment that cannot readily be emulated in larger countries un-traumatized by Soviet era memories of occupation? One can only dream …

But the dream is attractive enough. In a page one The New York Times feature article accompanying that paper’s celebration of the Obama Administration’s Fiscal Cliff commitment to budget cutting, Andrew Higgins provides the latest attempt to applaud Latvia’s economic and demographic plunge as the “Latvian Miracle.” The newspaper thus has fallen in line with the surrealistic Orwellian attempts to depict Latvia’s austerity and asset stripping as an economic success as rendered in the brochures distributed by the Institute for International Finance (the now notorious Peterson bank lobby “think tank”) and international financial institutions from the IMF to the European Union banking bureaucracy. What they mean by “success” is slashing wage levels and leaving the tax burden primarily on labor and lightly on capital gains, without spurring a revolution or even Greek style general strikes. The success is one of psy-ops and engineering of consent Edward Bernays style, rather than of successful economic policy.

Latvia is the country that has come closest to imposing the Steve Forbes tax and finance model advanced during his failed Presidential campaign: a two-part tax on wages and social benefits that are near the highest in the world, while real estate taxes are well below US and EU averages.  Meanwhile, capital gains are lightly taxed, and the country has become successful as a capital flight and tax avoidance haven for Russians and other post-Soviet kleptocrats that has permitted Latvia to “afford” de-industrialization, depopulation and de-socialization.

Higgins’ article nurtures two enduring misperceptions of the Latvian Crash of 2008 cultivated by its government advisors picked from the ranks of global bank lobbyists and austerity hawks. First, this star pupil of the international financial community “proves” that austerity works. Second, Latvians have accepted austerity at the polls. A Potemkin Village of austerity progress has been built by neoliberal lobbyists such as Anders Aslund for visiting journalists and policymakers.  In the main, these visitors have accepted this Theresienstadt-like “tour” for reality.

Typically trafficked tales of Latvia as a Protestant morality play (an image we presented in our June Financial Times article on Latvia) depict plucky but stoic Balts confronting the crisis and wage reductions not with Mediterranean histrionics, but by getting busy with work. This idea appeals to certain smug middle-class prejudices and stereotypes in countries whose populations have not had to suffer economic experiments in neoliberal horror. While there is some truth in the characterization of Balts as taciturn and slow to protest, the cultural traits argument is a poor attempt at developing a short hand for explaining Latvia’s situation. They are authored by people bereft of an on-the-ground understanding of what has happened to Latvia.  Meanwhile, “work” (employment) would be nice, Latvia’s unemployment remains high at 14.2% despite a significant portion of its population having departed the country.

Anyone with actual experience in Latvia will see the dissonance between myth and reality regarding the government’s response to the crisis. First, Latvians most emphatically did protest both the corruption and proposed austerity following the fall 2008 crash. This was most evident at the massive January 13, 2009 protest in Riga attended by 10,000 people. This was followed by a series of protests by students, teachers, farmers, pensioners and health workers in the next months.

It is not in the character of neoliberal regimes to be sympathetic to such protests, peaceful or not. Committed monetarists, they were not going to yield on policy. So Latvians moved on to the next stage of protest.

‘No People, No Problem’: the Great Latvian Exodus

A harsh austerity regime was imposed and protests did abate. What happened?

In a word, emigration. At least 10% of Latvians have left since EU accession in 2004 and access to the Schengen Zone. This exodus accelerated following the economic crash in late 2008. The problem was evinced in one Latvian student protest placard that read, “the last student out at the airport, please turn off the lights!”  Latvia’s population is small enough for the bigger EU countries to absorb its departing workforce. And on balance, the nation has been experiencing emigration since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, when neoliberal policies replaced a failing Soviet economy. Yet, rather than lessening over time as one would expect, Latvia, which can ill afford emigration, saw people leaving in ever greater numbers nearly two decades out from independence.

Latvians were reproducing at replacement rates when the USSR collapsed. Its 2.7 million population in 1991 dwindled to an official 2.08 million in 2010 through a combination emigration and a financial environment too precarious to permit marriage and children. And, this “official” number from the 2010 census is quite optimistic. Demographic reports originally showed a figure of 1.88 million in 2010.  Some Latvian demographers even stated their belief that this lower number was inflated.  Latvian demographers report government pressure on census takers to come up with a number above the psychologically significant 2 million threshold. This success (yet another neoliberal Potemkin Village illusion) reportedly was achieved, in part, by using a government website to count Latvians as resident in the country even when they were just visiting to see relatives or check on property.  Regardless of the veracity of the lower or higher numbers, both are unsustainably low and represent a slow euthanizing of the country. While many Russians quickly left at Latvia’s independence, most subsequent emigrants have done so for economic reasons. Within a half-year of the initial protests, emigration accelerated and the number of children born in the country plunged as Latvia’s economy crashed and its government intensified fiscal austerity.

Austerity’s defenders rejoin that the country had two national elections and could have changed economic course. But they spin the details that explain just why Latvia’s policymaking elite have managed to remain remarkably constant over the past twenty years. Latvia’s two parliamentary elections both before and since the crisis have turned on endless ethnic politics. Austerity policy has been associated with mostly ethnic Latvian parties, while more social democratic alternatives have been associated with ethnic Russian parties. To be sure, both ethnic communities were divided over economic policy, but it was mainly the ethnic framing of economic policy that ensured austerity policies would prevail in a country still traumatized by the Soviet occupation and divided over what economic policy to take in the wake of the 2008 crisis.

Latvia’s economic collapse was the deepest of any nation when the financial bubble burst in 2008. Hot money flows had inflated its property markets to world-high levels, thanks to its neoliberal minimal taxation of real estate that was the complemented by onerous taxation of labor. Given how deep the plunge was, there was room for the inevitable bounce up thereafter – hailed as a recovery.

When one looks at the details, the so-called recovery was much centered on four sectors. First, is Latvia’s correspondent (offshore) banking sector that attracts and processes capital flight. Already a site for illicit transfer of Soviet oil and metals to world markets before independence, Latvia became a major destination for oligarch hot money. The Latvian port of Ventspils was an export terminal for Russian oil, providing foreign exchange that was a Soviet and later Russian embezzler’s dream.  Figures such as the notorious Grigory Loutchansky of Latvia and his Nordex became notorious for money laundering.  Even Americans were involved, such as  Loutchansky’s partner, Marc Rich (later pardoned by Bill Clinton) who later took over the Nordex operation. The Latvian government signaled its intentions to defend this offshore banking sector at all costs (including imposing austerity on its people) when it bailed out Latvia’s biggest offshore bank, Parex. European Commission and IMF authorities gave a massive foreign loan for Latvia that in part enabled the government to function after bailing out Parex and thus its correspondent (offshore) accounts and continued payment of above-market interest rates to “favored” (read: “well connected”) customers.

Although not in the league with London, New York and Zurich as a criminogenic flight capital center, Latvia has carved out a substantial niche in the global money laundering system. According to Bloomberg: “As non-European inflows into Cyprus stagnate, about $1.2 billion flooded into Latvia in the first half of the year. Non-resident deposits are now $10 billion, about half the total, regulators say, exceeding 43 percent in Switzerland, according to that nation’s central bank.” These are big amounts in view of the fact that Latvia has only about a quarter of Switzerland’s population and merely a tenth of its GDP.  While this activity might make many bankers rich, it does little to develop Latvia’s economy.  Moreover, it represents a beggar thy neighbor policy that permits Latvia to benefit from taking capital out of developing post-Soviet neighboring countries.

Second, Latvia’s emergency response to the crisis was to ratchet up clear cutting of forests. Latvia inherited massive woodland reserves from the Soviet policy of converting farmland to forest. Export growth in this category reflects asset stripping post-Soviet style. That patrimony is being drawn down. While significant, one must remember that given Latvia’s far northern latitude, it takes fifty to a hundred years to replace trees to maturity. So this resource cannot be indefinitely sustained. Moreover, the move to develop more value-added processing of Latvia’s forests has been frustratingly slow. Promises by the chief consumers of Latvian logs (e.g., Sweden and others) to process logs into timber, paper and other products, have mostly been talk, with little action.

Third, the fact that Latvia’s neoliberalized economy has been de-industrialized over the past two decades means that nearly any increase in post-crash manufacturing represents growth in percentage terms. Latvia has nearly no effective labor protections, and only the weakest unions to advocate for decent working conditions and salaries (or even sometimes to be paid at all). Wages can be pushed down from what already were poverty levels, while businesses deploy labor in any fashion they see fit, without regulatory structures to protect workers. Simultaneously, Latvia’s labor costs are far higher than are economically necessary, thanks to the punishingly high set of labor and social taxes designed to keep capital gains and real estate taxes comparatively low. Even so, wages and “flexibility” have made Latvian labor cheap enough to encourage some enterprise. Yet, there are also real centers of innovation and entrepreneurial talent, but they mostly succeed in spite of Latvian government policy, not by support from it.

Europe’s recent star export performers on a percent basis have been Latvia and Greece – a metric that makes sense only as a bounce up from a big post crash. Latvia’s per capita purchasing power is well below that of even Greece. The modest uptick in manufacturing and exports is positive, but Latvia still is ranked last in Europe for innovation and R&D investment as percentages of GDP. The lack of investment in innovation, combined with anti-labor tax and finance policy, thus limits manufacturing’s potential for much faster growth as Latvian labor costs are higher than needed, due to regressive taxation.

Fourth, there has been growth in the previously underdeveloped agricultural and transit sectors. This has been encouraged by food-price inflation in recent years and better policy and planning from the Ministry of Transportation. Although transit historically has been among the most corrupt parts of the Latvian economy and government, centers of excellence have emerged in that ministry that have leveraged up Latvia’s transit potential. Russia’s agreement to use its rail lines to permit supply of American troops in Afghanistan via Latvian ports hasn’t hurt either.

The most revealing part of the New York Times’ mostly puff piece on behalf of budget cutting that can be seen as a model for America to grin and bear the coming austerity, only comes in the concluding comments by economists in Latvia who reported: “The idea of a Latvian ‘success story’ is ridiculous.” “Latvia is not a model for anybody.” “You can only do this in a country that is willing to take serious pain for some time and has a dramatic flexibility in the labor market.” In short, it can’t be done in any real democracy.

For governments able to ignore the will of the people (an expanding trend in rich developed countries), the Latvian model can only be applied if one’s country is:

– Small enough, willing enough, and able to let at least 10% of population emigrate, headed by the most talented and multilingual freshly minted graduates;

– Demographically secure enough to see family formation, marriage and birth rates plummet;

– An ethnically divided population that enables politicians to play the ethnic card to distract population from economic issues; and

– A depoliticized Post-Soviet population willing to give up protest after short period.

Any larger country attempting this level of austerity would need to find an outlet for the some 10% of its people leaving. For the United States, that would mean countries willing to take 20 million American workers. Last time the authors checked, neither Canada nor Mexico had the willingness or capacity to take these numbers, and not enough American students have yet studied Mandarin to do China’s laundry.

Latvia still has a well-educated population with highly developed design sensibilities. Its skilled workers are known for their creativity and attention to detail.  With better economic policy, less anti-labor tax policy, less subsidy of real estate and finance and more investment in innovation – the opposite of what The New York Times celebrates as Latvia’s success story – it could replicate the successes of its Scandinavian neighbors. The alternative is for its neoliberalized economy to produce “recovery” in a way reminiscent of Tacitus’ characterization, put in the mouth of the Celtic chieftain Calgacus before the battle of Mons Graupius: Rome’s victories “make a desert and they call it peace.” Neoliberals call austerity and emigration “stability” and even economic growth and recovery, as long as people don’t complain or demand an alternative.

Michael Hudson was Professor of Economics and Director of Research at the Riga Graduate School of Law. He is a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His book summarizing his economic theories, The Bubble and Beyond, is available on Amazon. His latest book is Finance Capitalism and Its Discontents.  He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com

Jeffrey Sommers is visiting faculty at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. He is an Associate Professor of Political Economy & Public Policy at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.

The authors have advised Latvian politicians and government officials up to the Prime Minister level.  Both have published extensively in the Latvian press.  Additionally, they have written for  The Financial Times, The Guardian, and several other text, radio, and television media.

Sommers is co-editor and author with Charles Woolfson for the forthcoming Routledge Press volume, The Contradictions of Austerity:  The Socio-Economic Costs of the Neoliberal Baltic Model, of which Hudson has a contributing chapter.

January 3, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Does Hugo Chavez Keep Fooling Venezuelans?

By Peter Hart – FAIR – December 13, 2012

The New York Times updates readers today (12/13/12) on the health status of left-wing Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and the political implications for his country. But the paper starts out by suggesting that the people who keep electing him must have some kind of problem.

According to the Times’ William Neuman, life in Venezuela is pretty dismal. Christmas tree shipments were fouled up, a government ice cream factory closed down,  and “all of this happened while the economy was growing — before the slowdown many predict next year.”

He writes:

Such frustrations are typical in Venezuela, for rich and poor alike, and yet President Hugo Chávez has managed to stay in office for nearly 14 years, winning over a significant majority of the public with his outsize personality, his free-spending of state resources and his ability to convince Venezuelans that the Socialist revolution he envisions will make their lives better.

So people believe that, somewhere in the future, life will get better thanks to Chávez? But it’s already happened for the majority of Venezuelans. As Mark Weisbrot wrote (Guardian, 10/3/12):

Since 2004, when the government gained control over the oil industry and the economy had recovered from the devastating, extra-legal attempts to overthrow it (including the 2002 US-backed military coup and oil strike of 2002-2003), poverty has been cut in half and extreme poverty by 70%. And this measures only cash income. Millions have access to healthcare for the first time, and college enrolment has doubled, with free tuition for many students. Inequality has also been considerably reduced. By contrast, the two decades that preceded Chávez amount to one of the worst economic failures in Latin America, with real income per person actually falling by 14% between 1980 and 1998.

It’s not that Neuman is unaware of this. Deep in the piece– after saying that “Mr. Chávez’s own record is mixed”– he admits, in between all the hand-waving and caveats, that maybe there’s something that explains Chávez’s popularity:

He has used price controls to make food affordable for the poor, but that has contributed to shortages in basic goods. He created a popular program of neighborhood clinics often staffed by Cuban doctors, but hospitals frequently lack basic equipment.

There is no doubt that living conditions have improved for the poor under Mr. Chávez, and that is the greatest source of his popularity. But the improvements came at a time when high oil prices were pouring money into the country and fueling economic growth, which some analysts say would have led to similar improvements under many leaders, even some with more market-friendly policies.

So life is better for the vast majority of the country. That’s a far cry from the point he stressed at the beginning, that Chávez has somehow sold people on the questionable idea that the outlook would someday improve. The Times has to downplay that reality so you’ll take away the message:  things are bad there. Or, if they’re not, someone else with superior, “market-friendly policies” could have achieved the same results, if not better.

December 14, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NYT Undercounts Drone Deaths in Pakistan

By Peter Hart | FAIR | November 30, 2012

The New York Times editorial page (11/30/12) weighs in on the Obama administration’s drone policies. What the paper wants is more accountability: The government “must stay within formal guidelines based on the rule of law.”

That’s all well and good–but the paper should do a better job of counting the innocents killed by drone attacks. The Times explains that aspect of the story this way:

For eight years, the United States has conducted but never formally acknowledged a program to kill terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban away from the battlefield in Afghanistan. Using drones, the Central Intelligence Agency has made 320 strikes in Pakistan since 2004, killing 2,560 or more people, including at least 139 civilians, according to the Long War Journal, a website that tracks counterterrorism operations.

That’s an astonishingly low rate of civilian deaths. And it’s fiercely contested by researchers who have tracked the CIA drone program.

The British Bureau of Investigate Journalism estimates the civilian death toll is at least four times greater. Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.

So why would the Times use what would appear to be one of the lowest estimates of the civilian toll? The paper is aware of the Bureau’s work. In February, the Times reported on their research–but, for the sake of “balance,” allowed an anonymous U.S. government source smear the Bureau as Al Qaeda sympathizers.

The Long War Journal, the Times failed to tell readers, is a project of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, whose advisers include William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Joe Lieberman and Iran/Contra conspirator Robert McFarlane.

In the end, the editorial’s call for the government to give a clearer picture of the drone policy is undercut by the fact that the paper does not seem all that interested in knowing how many innocents that policy has killed.

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December 1, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s Endless Kill List

Codifying Murder

By BEN SCHREINER | October 24, 2012

Of the three presidential debates, Monday’s saw the only mention of U.S. drone warfare.  But after the challenger Romney quickly affirmed his support of President Obama’s drone program, stating that it is “absolutely the right thing to do,” the issue was summarily dropped by moderator Bob Schieffer.  The president thus skirted having to account for the most controversial facet of his foreign policy.

Of course, the clear bipartisan support for the administration’s ongoing campaign of assassinations can only portend a future of expanded drone warfare and U.S. administered terror the world over—no matter the outcome of the presidential election.

Indeed, a Tuesday report in the Washington Post laid bare the Obama administration’s plans to ensure that any future administration seamlessly continues its drone program.  As the Post reports, “Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.”

The process of streamlining the administration’s program of “targeted” killings has reportedly led to the creation of a “disposition matrix,” comprised of both the names of suspected terrorists and the resources expended on their targeting.  This matrix, the Post reports, “is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.”

Such efforts to expedite the worldwide campaign of terror have reportedly left the administration buoyant on the prospects of the program’s indefinite continuation.  Officials, the Post reports, “seem confident that they have devised an approach that is so bureaucratically, legally and morally sound that future administrations will follow suit.”

“The United States’ conventional wars are winding down,” the Post thus concludes, “but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.”

Sure enough, as the Post revealed in a separate report published last week, the C.I.A. has sent a formal request to the White House appealing for an additional ten drones to supplement its current fleet of over 30.  If approved, the paper reported, the request would “extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force.”

Yet, as the Obama administration works to extent the reach of its aerial assassins into every last crevice of the world, its claims regarding to the drone program’s effectiveness and “targeted” nature remain in doubt.

According to a September report on U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, conducted by researchers at the N.Y.U. School of Law and Stanford University Law School, evidence that the program has made the U.S. safer is “ambiguous at best.”  Moreover, despite administration claims of that there have been “no” civilian causalities, the report marshals substantial evidence to the contrary.

Assessments from U.S. officials regarding the “collateral damage” from drones, though, are heavily skewed by the administration’s definition of combatants.

Remarkably, as the New York Times piece first revealing the existence of an administration “kill list” noted, the U.S. “counts all military age males in a strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

Kill first, we see, then ask questions.

Needless to say, all such reports ought to serve—at the very minimum—as an impetus for an independent review of the the drone program.  But as the Post reports: “Internal doubts about the effectiveness of the drone campaign are almost nonexistent.”

The callous absence of doubt is evidently just as prevalent amongst the elite U.S. media.  For instance, in an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday, Time columnist Joe Klein chillingly sought to justify the gravest horrors of the Obama drone program.

In a debate over drones with right-wing host Joe Scarborough, Klein went on to aver, “The bottom line, in the end, is: Whose four-year-old gets killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that four-year-olds here are going to get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”

The very fact that rationalizing the killing of children can freely emanate from amongst “respectable” circles in Washington is indicative of the severe moral deterioration from which the Obama administration’s drone program was born.

Of course, the very fact that the defining program of Obama’s foreign policy was discussed in far greater detail on a cable talk show sponsored by Starbucks than it was in all three presidential debates is quite revealing of the decay afflicting the nation’s political system.  It’s such a rotted system, though, that perpetuates our present class of amoral and unaccountable elites who so readily wage a global campaign of terror.

The twilight of the American Empire, it thus appears, will be remembered for its endless kill lists and its codification of murder.

Source

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October 24, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran not to hold “independent” nuclear talks with U.S. outside P5+1: FM

Xinhua | October 21, 2012

TEHRAN — Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said Sunday that Iran will not hold “independent” talks with the United States outside the framework of nuclear negotiations with six world powers, dubbed P5+1, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

“We don’t have something to be named talks with the United States,” said Salehi when asked about the recent media reports that Iran and the United States have agreed to hold direct talks over Iran’s nuclear issue.

“We will talk (with the U.S.) within the framework of P5+1 … and we don’t have (other nuclear) talks independent from that,” he was quoted as saying.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the United States and Iran had agreed for the first time to have one-on-one talks over the latter’s controversial nuclear program after the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.

The paper said the agreement was the result of intense and secret exchanges between officials of the two countries, which began almost immediately after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

The White House on Saturday denied the press report. “It’s not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections,” Tommy Vietor, spokesman of the National Security Council, said in a statement.

“We continue to work with the P5+1 on a diplomatic solution and have said from the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally,” he said

October 22, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran dismisses claims it plotted to kill Saudi envoy to U.S.

Mehr News Agency | October 20, 2012

TEHRAN – The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman once again dismissed the claims that the Iranian government had been involved in an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington in 2011, the Tehran Times reported.

Ramin Mehmanparast made the remarks on Saturday in response to the fact that an Iranian-born Texas man, named Mansour J. Arbabsiar, who had been charged in a plot to kill Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in 2011, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy and other counts in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

According to the New York Times, Arbabsiar, a used-car salesman, had been accused of conspiring to hire assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million to kill the ambassador.

At the time the charges were announced, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that the plot had been “directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government.”

Mehmanparast dismissed the scenario as “laughable”, noting that the U.S. is using its judicial system as a tool to devise “crude” scenarios against other countries.

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October 20, 2012 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

How Western press distorts Venezuela

By Aaron Benedek | Green Left | October 14, 2012

“Venezuela Elections ‘Free, But Not Fair’”, was Germany’s Spiegel Online headline on a piece about Venezuela’s October 7 presidential poll, won by socialist President Hugo Chavez by more than 55% of the vote. “Chavismo wins, Venezuela loses”, was The Wall Street Journal’s take.

Compared with such headlines, the Sydney Morning Herald’s reprint of a New York Times article “Socialist Chavez hangs onto Power in Venezuela” by William Neuman might seem a reasonably balanced report. It is not.

Note that politicians in Australia or the US get re-elected, but if you’re a socialist in Latin America you “hold onto power”.

Then there is the article’s very first clause, where we learn that Chavez is a “fiery foe of Washington”. Although no doubt a badge of honour for many, this language still paints Chavez as impassioned rather than considered.

This, along with the article’s other main Chavez descriptor of “polarising”,  conveys an image of him being unreasonably confrontational and divisive in a way that the also accurate “a democratic leader who has withstood Washington orchestrated violence and sabotage” does not.

And then there is the assumption that the first thing to mention in an article about a Venezuelan election is Washington. The pitfalls of your reportage coming from the New York Times perhaps.

The article does convey a sense of joy on the street following Chavez’s re-election, but it’s always “his … revolution”, “his version of socialism”.

That a large section of the population feel some kind of ownership over the process of social transformation in Venezuela is never acknowledged. The Venezuelan people have agency in Neuman’s writing only if they’re part of the opposition.

Moreover, in selecting quotes and comments about Chavez “reigning forever”, “guns being fired into the air” and Chavez being a “former soldier”, some sense of violence and dictatorship is still conveyed. This comes straight after Chavez and his supporters once again peacefully won what in any other Western country would be referred to as a landslide electoral victory.

By contrast, we are informed of the opposition’s “democratic temperament” via the one full quote the re-elected president is afforded in the article.

What about a quote interpreting the election result and the future for Venezuela? Well there is one, just not from Chavez. It’s from Henrique Capriles, the opposition candidate who was resoundingly defeated.

After the election, we’re told Chavez is “ailing and politically weakened”, despite being re-elected for a fourth presidential term by 11 percentage points and holding a majority in the National Assembly.

It is said the opposition “raised the possibility that an upset victory was within reach”. To what extent the opposition relied on reprints of biased NYT articles about Venezuela to raise this sense of “possibility” is difficult to quantify.

Chavez, we’re told, will now move forward “even more aggressively … although his pledges were short on specifics”. For Neuman, the specifics detailed in the million or so copies of the 39-page plan for deepening popular participation and human-centred development over the next six years that were distributed for mass discussion, amendment and ratification by the Venezuelan National Assembly early next year do not count.

And how specific was the opposition’s plan? Capriles’ pledge to maintain the Chavez government’s social programs ― the same ones the opposition have violently opposed for a decade, but now pledge to improve.

We are informed, as always, that Chavez’s “health is a question mark”. Maybe he is going to die soon! And maybe the mainstream media will start showing some human decency and ease up on the celebrations when an elected leader gets cancer, but I would not hold my breath for either.

“Facing pressure from Mr Capriles,” Neuman says, “[Chavez] pledged to … pay more attention to the quality of government programs such as education.”

In reality, the popularity of the government’s social programs is such that Capriles had to publicly say the opposition was in favour of them, but leaked opposition documents revealed his plan to dismantle them.

Capriles had to pitch himself as a leftist and the opposition was forced to accept the election results due to the painstaking efforts to institute a transparent electoral system with unprecedented international supervision. But we are told it was Capriles who pressured Chavez.

And better still, the same opposition that denigrated the literacy and other mass education campaigns of the past decade is said to have forced the government “to pay attention to quality education”.

We are told Chavez spent much of the year insulting “Capriles and his followers” as “squalid good-for-nothings, little Yankees and fascists”. Left out is the  opposition’s regular jibes about Chavez’s  African facial features, his “common” way of speaking or his hilarious cancer-induced baldness.

And anyway, was it really the “Yankee and fascist” credentials of the opposition (that is, organising a fascist coup and getting funding from Washington) that “represented nearly half the electorate” as Neuman claimed? Or did those that voted for Capriles do so for a range of other reasons, not least among them that the private media sold him as a progressive left-wing candidate?

At any rate, Chavez’s insults, we’re told, “seemed to lose their sting” as the campaign went on (he can’t even insult effectively!) under the weight of the opposition’s growing “momentum”. The Chavez campaign filling Caracas’s seven major avenues with almost certainly the largest demonstration in Venezuela’s history three days before the vote clearly does not constitute momentum worth mentioning for Neuman.

Through selection of evidence, biased language, omission, and unsubstantiated claims, Neuman paints a false picture ― and this is an article that, by comparison with other Western media coverage, is relatively generous towards the Bolivarian process that has halved poverty in Venezuela.

Serious journalism regarding Venezuela requires covering the significant social achievements of the revolution and an informed discussion of its many shortcomings. Unfortunately, if Neuman’s article is anything to go by, the liberal corporate media will not provide you with either.

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October 16, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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