"Black Waters, Black Waters Run Down Through The Land" 51 comments

29 Sep 2007 @ 12:38, by Richard Carlson Nobody sees a flower---really---it is so small it takes time---we haven't time---and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. ---Georgia O'Keeffe Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence. ---Charles Dickens We learn something by doing it. There is no other way. ---John Holt Many of us here in the coal mining regions of Appalachia can hear Jean Ritchie's sweet voice in our imaginations by just reading her lyric in the title up there. Black water refers to the toxic sludge that kills all life in the creeks and streams near mining operations, particularly what's called mountaintop removal. Sometimes whole hillsides of the stuff falls down on top of properties owned by people for generations. Folks have been killed in those landslides, but there's little recourse since Bush made the previously banned practice legal 5 years ago. So when I learn a good Republican Christian boy decided to name his private security company Blackwater, and stick it in North Carolina, I thought there must be some kind of---er---black humor involved. Maybe there is. Erik Prince was making the Navy Seals his career until his mother died and left him the family fortune. His sister was the chairperson of the Republican Party in Michigan, and wife to gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. Erik moved South, set up Blackwater, and also sits on the board of Christian Freedom International, a group helping "Christians who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ". [link] This was 10 years ago, when Erik was 27. Now, we learn, "Blackwater is currently the biggest of the US State Department's three private security contractors. At least 90% of its revenue comes from government contracts, two-thirds of which are no-bid contracts." [link] To be well connected thus seems the best way...and maybe the only way...to really get in to the true American liberty we call global capitalism. Papa Bush introduced it as The New World Order, but wasn't that a mite Roman Empire? So the following presidents just talk about the freedom and democracy of globalization. We know quite a few families have gotten very rich from all this, but many of the rest of us look at our tax bill and feel we're financing the whole thing. Are the returns worth it? Economist Paul Krugman yesterday called global capitalism's need for companies like Blackwater a "Hired Gun Fetish." The New York Times September 28, 2007 Op-Ed Columnist Hired Gun Fetish By PAUL KRUGMAN Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we’ve learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work. Thus, the administration has abandoned the principle of a professional, nonpolitical civil service, stuffing agencies from FEMA to the Justice Department with unqualified cronies. Tax farming — giving individuals the right to collect taxes, in return for a share of the take — went out with the French Revolution; now the tax farmers are back. And so are mercenaries, whom Machiavelli described as “useless and dangerous” more than four centuries ago. As far as I can tell, America has never fought a war in which mercenaries made up a large part of the armed force. But in Iraq, they are so central to the effort that, as Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution points out in a new report, “the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined.” And, yes, the so-called private security contractors are mercenaries. They’re heavily armed. They carry out military missions, but they’re private employees who don’t answer to military discipline. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be accountable to Iraqi or U.S. law, either. And they behave accordingly. We may never know what really happened in a crowded Baghdad square two weeks ago. Employees of Blackwater USA claim that they were attacked by gunmen. Iraqi police and witnesses say that the contractors began firing randomly at a car that didn’t get out of their way. What we do know is that more than 20 civilians were killed, including the couple and child in the car. And the Iraqi version of events is entirely consistent with many other documented incidents involving security contractors. For example, Mr. Singer reminds us that in 2005 “armed contractors from the Zapata firm were detained by U.S. forces, who claimed they saw the private soldiers indiscriminately firing not only at Iraqi civilians, but also U.S. Marines.” The contractors were not charged. In 2006, employees of Aegis, another security firm, posted a “trophy video” on the Internet that showed them shooting civilians, and employees of Triple Canopy, yet another contractor, were fired after alleging that a supervisor engaged in “joy-ride shooting” of Iraqi civilians. Yet even among the contractors, Blackwater has the worst reputation. On Christmas Eve 2006, a drunken Blackwater employee reportedly shot and killed a guard of the Iraqi vice president. (The employee was flown out of the country, and has not been charged.) In May 2007, Blackwater employees reportedly shot an employee of Iraq’s Interior Ministry, leading to an armed standoff between the firm and Iraqi police. Iraqis aren’t the only victims of this behavior. Of the nearly 4,000 American service members who have died in Iraq, scores if not hundreds would surely still be alive if it weren’t for the hatred such incidents engender. Which raises the question, why are Blackwater and other mercenary outfits still playing such a big role in Iraq? Don’t tell me that they are irreplaceable. The Iraq war has now gone on for four and a half years — longer than American participation in World War II. There has been plenty of time for the Bush administration to find a way to do without mercenaries, if it wanted to. And the danger out-of-control military contractors pose to American forces has been obvious at least since March 2004, when four armed Blackwater employees blundered into Fallujah in the middle of a delicate military operation, getting themselves killed and precipitating a crisis that probably ended any chance of an acceptable outcome in Iraq. Yet Blackwater is still there. In fact, last year the State Department gave Blackwater the lead role in diplomatic security in Iraq. Mr. Singer argues that reliance on private military contractors has let the administration avoid making hard political choices, such as admitting that it didn’t send enough troops in the first place. Contractors, he writes, “offered the potential backstop of additional forces, but with no one having to lose any political capital.” That’s undoubtedly part of the story. But it’s also worth noting that the Bush administration has tried to privatize every aspect of the U.S. government it can, using taxpayers’ money to give lucrative contracts to its friends — people like Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, who has strong Republican connections. You might think that national security would take precedence over the fetish for privatization — but remember, President Bush tried to keep airport security in private hands, even after 9/11. So the privatization of war — no matter how badly it works — is just part of the pattern. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company [link] Tomorrow The New York Times Book Review section will offer up opinion on Naomi Klein's view of global capitalism. The work is called "The Shock Doctrine," referring specifically to CIA interrogation techniques, and is reviewed by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a university professor at Columbia, who was awarded the Nobel in economic science in 2001. His latest book is “Making Globalization Work.” The New York Times September 30, 2007 Bleakonomics By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ THE SHOCK DOCTRINE The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. By Naomi Klein. 558 pp. Metropolitan Books. $28. There are no accidents in the world as seen by Naomi Klein. The destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina expelled many poor black residents and allowed most of the city’s public schools to be replaced by privately run charter schools. The torture and killings under Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile and during Argentina’s military dictatorship were a way of breaking down resistance to the free market. The instability in Poland and Russia after the collapse of Communism and in Bolivia after the hyperinflation of the 1980s allowed the governments there to foist unpopular economic “shock therapy” on a resistant population. And then there is “Washington’s game plan for Iraq”: “Shock and terrorize the entire country, deliberately ruin its infrastructure, do nothing while its culture and history are ransacked, then make it all O.K. with an unlimited supply of cheap household appliances and imported junk food,” not to mention a strong stock market and private sector. “The Shock Doctrine” is Klein’s ambitious look at the economic history of the last 50 years and the rise of free-market fundamentalism around the world. “Disaster capitalism,” as she calls it, is a violent system that sometimes requires terror to do its job. Like Pol Pot proclaiming that Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was in Year Zero, extreme capitalism loves a blank slate, often finding its opening after crises or “shocks.” For example, Klein argues, the Asian crisis of 1997 paved the way for the International Monetary Fund to establish programs in the region and for a sell-off of many state-owned enterprises to Western banks and multinationals. The 2004 tsunami enabled the government of Sri Lanka to force the fishermen off beachfront property so it could be sold to hotel developers. The destruction of 9/11 allowed George W. Bush to launch a war aimed at producing a free-market Iraq. In an early chapter, Klein compares radical capitalist economic policy to shock therapy administered by psychiatrists. She interviews Gail Kastner, a victim of covert C.I.A. experiments in interrogation techniques that were carried out by the scientist Ewen Cameron in the 1950s. His idea was to use electroshock therapy to break down patients. Once “complete depatterning” had been achieved, the patients could be reprogrammed. But after breaking down his “patients,” Cameron was never able to build them back up again. The connection with a rogue C.I.A. scientist is overdramatic and unconvincing, but for Klein the larger lessons are clear: “Countries are shocked — by wars, terror attacks, coups d’état and natural disasters.” Then “they are shocked again — by corporations and politicians who exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock therapy.” People who “dare to resist” are shocked for a third time, “by police, soldiers and prison interrogators.” In another introductory chapter, Klein offers an account of Milton Friedman — she calls him “the other doctor shock” — and his battle for the hearts and minds of Latin American economists and economies. In the 1950s, as Cameron was conducting his experiments, the Chicago School was developing the ideas that would eclipse the theories of Raul Prebisch, an advocate of what today would be called the third way, and of other economists fashionable in Latin America at the time. She quotes the Chilean economist Orlando Letelier on the “inner harmony” between the terror of the Pinochet regime and its free-market policies. Letelier said that Milton Friedman shared responsibility for the regime’s crimes, rejecting his argument that he was only offering “technical” advice. Letelier was killed in 1976 by a car bomb planted in Washington by Pinochet’s secret police. For Klein, he was another victim of the “Chicago Boys” who wanted to impose free-market capitalism on the region. “In the Southern Cone, where contemporary capitalism was born, the ‘war on terror’ was a war against all obstacles to the new order,” she writes. One of the world’s most famous antiglobalization activists and the author of the best seller “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies,” Klein provides a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries, and of the human toll. She paints a disturbing portrait of hubris, not only on the part of Friedman but also of those who adopted his doctrines, sometimes to pursue more corporatist objectives. It is striking to be reminded how many of the people involved in the Iraq war were involved earlier in other shameful episodes in United States foreign policy history. She draws a clear line from the torture in Latin America in the 1970s to that at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Klein is not an academic and cannot be judged as one. There are many places in her book where she oversimplifies. But Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification, basing their belief in the perfection of market economies on models that assumed perfect information, perfect competition, perfect risk markets. Indeed, the case against these policies is even stronger than the one Klein makes. They were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets — for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always. Klein isn’t an economist but a journalist, and she travels the world to find out firsthand what really happened on the ground during the privatization of Iraq, the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, the continuing Polish transition to capitalism and the years after the African National Congress took power in South Africa, when it failed to pursue the redistributionist policies enshrined in the Freedom Charter, its statement of core principles. These chapters are the least exciting parts of the book, but they are also the most convincing. In the case of South Africa, she interviews activists and others, only to find there is no one answer. Busy trying to stave off civil war in the early years after the end of apartheid, the A.N.C. didn’t fully understand how important economic policy was. Afraid of scaring off foreign investors, it took the advice of the I.M.F. and the World Bank and instituted a policy of privatization, spending cutbacks, labor flexibility and so on. This didn’t stop two of South Africa’s own major companies, South African Breweries and Anglo-American, from relocating their global headquarters to London. The average growth rate has been a disappointing 5 percent (much lower than in countries in East Asia, which followed a different route); unemployment for the black majority is 48 percent; and the number of people living on less than $1 a day has doubled to four million from two million since 1994, the year the A.N.C. took over. Some readers may see Klein’s findings as evidence of a giant conspiracy, a conclusion she explicitly disavows. It’s not the conspiracies that wreck the world but the series of wrong turns, failed policies, and little and big unfairnesses that add up. Still, those decisions are guided by larger mind-sets. Market fundamentalists never really appreciated the institutions required to make an economy function well, let alone the broader social fabric that civilizations require to prosper and flourish. Klein ends on a hopeful note, describing nongovernmental organizations and activists around the world who are trying to make a difference. After 500 pages of “The Shock Doctrine,” it’s clear they have their work cut out for them. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company [link] As a sort of footnote to how well the United States is managing its liberation of the globe, Jane Goodall this week warned of what many saw as the problem with alternate fuels based on corn crops and such. You want corn? Developers in Brazil will just plow down what remains of the rain forest and plant it for you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jane Goodall Says Biofuel Crops Hurt Rain Forests -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW YORK - Primate scientist Jane Goodall said on Wednesday the race to grow crops for vehicle fuels is damaging rain forests in Asia, Africa and South America and adding to the emissions blamed for global warming. "We're cutting down forests now to grow sugarcane and palm oil for biofuels and our forests are being hacked into by so many interests that it makes them more and more important to save now," Goodall said on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative, former US President Bill Clinton's annual philanthropic meeting. As new oil supplies become harder to find, many countries such as Brazil and Indonesia are racing to grow domestic sources of vehicle fuels, such as ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from palm nuts. The United Nations' climate program considers the fuels to be low in carbon because growing the crops takes in heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide. But critics say demand for the fuels has led companies to cut down and burn forests in order to grow the crops, adding to heat-trapping emissions and leading to erosion and stress on ecosystems. "Biofuel isn't the answer to everything; it depends where it comes from," she said. "All of this means better education on where fuels are coming from are needed." Goodall said the problem is especially bad in the Indonesian rain forest where large amounts of palm nut oil is being made. Growers in Uganda -- where her nonprofit group works to conserve Great Apes -- are also looking to buy large parcels of rain forest and cut them down to grow sugar cane, while in Brazil, forest is cleared to grow sugar cane. The Goodall Institute is working with a recently formed group of eight rain forest nations called the Forest Eight, or F8, led by Indonesia. The group wants to create a system where rich countries would pay them not to chop down rain forests and hopes to unveil the plan at climate talks in Bali in December. Scientists from the forested countries are trying to nail down exactly how much carbon dioxide the ecosystems store, but the amount has been estimated to be about double that which is already in the atmosphere, Goodall said. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner) Story Date: 28/9/2007 © Reuters News Service 2007 [link] Here are the full lyrics to Black Waters~~~ BLACK WATERS (Jean Ritchie) I come from the mountains, Kentucky's my home, Where the wild deer and black bear so lately did roam; By cool rushing waterfalls the wildflowers dream, And through every green valley there runs a clear stream. Now there's scenes of destruction on every hand And only black waters run down through my land. CHORUS Sad scenes of destruction on every hand, Black waters, black waters, run down through my land. O the quail, she's a pretty bird, she sings a sweet tongue; In the roots of tall timbers she nests with her young. But the hillside explodes with the dynamite's roar, And the voices of the small birds will sound there no more; And the hillsides come a—sliding so awful and grand, And the flooding black waters rise over my land. CHORUS Sad scenes of destruction on every hand; Black waters, black waters run down through the land. In the rising of the springtime we planted our corn, In the ending of the springtime we buried a son, In summer come a nice man, said, "Everything's fine— My employer just requires a way to his mine"— Then they threw down my mountain and covered my corn, And the grave on the hillside's a mile deeper down, And the man stands and talks with his hat in his hand As the poisonous water spreads over my land. CHORUS Sad scenes of destruction on every hand; Black waters, black waters run down through the land. Well, I ain't got no money and not much of a home; I own my own land, but my land' s not my own. But if I had ten million thereabouts— I would buy Perry County and I'd run 'em all out! Set down on the bank with my bait in my can, And just watch the clear waters run down through my land! CHORUS Well, wouldn't that be like the old Promised Land? Black waters, black waters no more in my land! Source: Celebration of Life - Jean Ritchie, Geordie Music Publishing © 1971 YouTube has a video of her singing it, with pictures of the Appalachians~~~ [link]

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Category: Globalization 

29 Sep 2007 @ 18:16 by quinty : NY Times review
(Well, I wrote the following before seeing the review above..... )

Anyone want to bet the Times will trash Klein's book? Once upon a time they were a respectable reviewer, when the editor was Charles Poore. No more. Having acquaintances on the left whose books were hatcheted by the Times I can vow for their ferocity. Which in lack of truthfulness is really beneath the reputation of the Good Gray Lady. The New York Review of Books is probably more reliable, but we’ll see.

What struck me as odd was that Klein appeared surprised - in that piece she wrote related to the theme of her book - that Capitalism always runs like quick silver in all directions. That is what Capitalism does. It is the economic system of the lowest common denominator and goes wherever new wealth can be gained. Wherever there is an opportunity. That is its much vaunted creativity.

Capitalists are most ingenious about this, which is why some oversight and regulation is required. Of course, if everyone is in league together - the corporate press, the best government money can buy, as well as numerous corporate giants - then we are increasingly at their mercy. And, as we all know, under Bush corporate power has only gained and intensified. The press, the courts, and most people in government have no interest in standing in the way. After all, their careers, fortunes, and good names are at stake. They wouldn’t want to do anything to tarnish or endanger any of that. Better appearances than realities.

Now that the top three Democratic presidential candidates have “seen the light,” and more or less promise to stay in Iraq, the downslide has only increased. And as newborn “realists” they may only be acknowledging the Neocons’ dream of hegemony and “national security” in the Mideast. For “realists” know that we can not appear weak and tightening our hold, like Capitalism, is the approach of the least common denominator. The one most people can understand. Reminds me of the slogan: “These colors don’t run.” It is an election season, after all.

Yes, it is the practical people, all those practical people, who will destroy us after all.

"Tax farming." I had never heard of that before. Just shows that the founders were only a bump on the road so far as human greed is concerned. Like quick silver, there is always a way.

Someone commented that Blackwater mercenaries in uniform look much like American soldiers. And that Arabs, who probably know more about us than we do about them today, could confuse the two. Another disgrace which our callous president undoubtedly doesn't care about.

I share Krugman's despair.  

just who was it sent Mr Marx to Russia to do in the Czar? Heh! The CROWN that's who! And I do not mean the Royals either. And where is the favorite son buried? Ah yes...good old divide and conquer! Give the unwashed a few bones aka Capitalism, Socialism, Communism (Democracy), and they'll kill themselves fighting over those bones while you make off with the loot. Great system...

"So I began to admire the Klan... To be part of somethin'. ... The first night I went with the fellas . . . I was led into a large meeting room, and this was the time of my life! It was thrilling. Here's a guy who's worked all his life and struggled all his life to be something, and here's the moment to be something. I will never forget it. Four robed Klansmen led me into the hall. The lights were dim and the only thing you could see was an illuminated cross... After I had taken my oath, there was loud applause goin' throughout the buildin', musta been at least 400 people. For this one little ol person. It was a thrilling moment for C. P. Ellis..." - Studs Terkel

---

The following are issues The Company would rather not confirm or deny:

CIA training of assassins and Latin American death squads. Read anything you can on the School of the Americas (known fondly as The School of Assassins.) You will find alumni such as the illustrious Manuel Noriega.

CIA rigging of elections, especially now in conjunction with the "National Endowment for Democracy" or NED.

The "standard practices" of CIA, including propaganda via "friendly" reporters in the American press, and the publishing of books via CIA proprietary companies that pass themselves off as private commercial enterprises. (Beware especially of former KGB officials who author these pieces of trash as "vigorish" for being allowed to live in the US.)

The subversion of labor, educational, cultural, student, political, and military organizations at home and abroad.

The illegal opening and interception of U.S. citizen's mail and electronic correspondence. In case you're tempted to tell me they are prohibited from doing this domestically, they get around these proscriptions by multi-lateral agreements with the intelligence agencies of other countries. It amounts to "we'll spy on your people and give you the take if you return the favor." So, Britain's GCHQ may intercept your phone call instead of NSA, and everything will be "legal," but your privacy is still violated nonetheless.

CIA dealing in drugs, weapons, money-laundering, and currency speculation on the black markets. This is a handy means of raising operating expenses for projects the Congress is not willing to fund, a la Iran/Contra, or multiplying the funds Congress appropriates. One example of this technique is described in the book Portrait of A Cold Warrior by Joseph B. Smith. He worked for the Company rigging elections in the Philippines. He was instrumental in bringing Ferdinand Marcos to power. He dealt the operating funds sent to him by CIA on the black market until they were multiplied by a factor of 10, then used the take to finance CIA-backed candidates. Imelda needs a new pair of shoes!

The funding of "media magnates" and "stock market wizards." Intelligence agencies provide insider info (their game is espionage, remember?) to their puppets who parlay it into windfalls on the stock market. A percentage of the take is used to promote propaganda, back arms deals, pay bribes, etc.. An example of this is the backing of Robert Maxwell by Mossad. In the US, Howard Hughes was deeply involved with The Company. It's also the reason Robert Vesco will never be extradited to the United States.

 

and here he is, what a cutie!



Don't you just love that eager beaver, come-and-find-me-Daddie, Republican look in his eye? A real Prince, just like Georgie.

Maureen Dowd comments this morning~~~

The New York Times
October 3, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater
By MAUREEN DOWD
Washington

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster,” Nietzsche said. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

We’re gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.

Besides having an army for hire, brave kids who are paid to fight so that most Americans are not personally touched by war, we have the real mercenaries. And they’re a spooky cadre, careening outside the laws of Iraq, the United States and the military.

President Bush continues to preach that we must defeat the “dark ideology” of extremists with “a more hopeful vision.”

But the compromises W. makes to slog on in Iraq, be it with warlords, dictators or out-of-control contractors, are spreading a dark stain on America’s image.

“Blackwater appears to have fostered a culture of shoot first and sometimes kill, and then ask the questions,” said Representative Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, yesterday at a House hearing.

The Times reports today that Blackwater’s explanation of an incident in Baghdad on Sept. 16 that left 17 dead and 24 wounded is sketchy.

It seems as though a bullet struck an Iraqi man driving his mother to pick up his father, a pathologist, at the hospital. The dead man’s weight, The Times reports, “probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward” toward a Blackwater convoy.

Blackwater guards then unleashed a spray of gunfire and explosives, even though witnesses did not see anyone shooting at the American convoy and even though Iraqis were turning their cars around and escaping the scene.

Newsweek quotes the Iraqi national police as saying that Blackwater vehicles “opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason.”

The Blackwater desperados are a sinister symbol of how little progress we’ve made in Iraq, that V.I.P.’s — or “packages,” as the contractors call them — can’t make a move in the country without the high-priced hired guns of the State Department.

Americans have been antimercenary since the British sent 30,000 German Hessians after George Washington in the Revolutionary War.

But W. outsourced his presidency to Cheney and Rummy, and Cheney and Rummy went to war on the cheap and outsourced large chunks of the Iraq occupation to Halliburton and Blackwater. The American taxpayer got gouged, and so did the American reputation.

The mercenaries inflame Iraqis even as Gen. David Petraeus tries to win their trust.

Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, summoned the 38-year-old crew-cut chairman of Blackwater, Erik Prince, to defend his private security company yesterday.

Once there was the military-industrial complex. Now we have the mercenary-evangelical complex.

Mr. Prince, a former intern to the first President Bush and a former Navy Seal, is from a well-to-do and well-connected Republican family from Michigan.

He and his father both have close ties to conservative Christian groups. His sister was a Pioneer for W., raising $100,000 in 2004, and Erik Prince has given more than $225,000 to Republicans.

Blackwater, in turn, has been the beneficiary of $1 billion in federal contracts, including a no-bid contract with the State Department worth hundreds of millions.

Mr. Waxman yesterday called the State Department “Blackwater’s enabler.” His committee staff summarized State Department reports revealing a cascade of Blackwater trouble.

“In a high-profile incident in December 2006, a drunken Blackwater contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi. Within 36 hours after the shooting, the State Department had allowed Blackwater to transport the Blackwater contractor out of Iraq.”

The State Department chargé d’affaires “suggested a $250,000 payment to the guard’s family, but the Department’s Diplomatic Security Service said this was too much and could cause Iraqis to ‘try to get killed.’ ” In the end, they agreed on a $15,000 payment.

“The State Department took a similar approach,” the report stated, “upon receiving reports that Blackwater shooters killed an innocent Iraqi, except that in this case, the State Department requested only a $5,000 payment to ‘put this unfortunate matter behind us quickly.’ ”

Mr. Prince was pressed by Representative Paul Hodes about the penalty paid by the Blackwater employee who, while drunk and off-duty at a Christmas party, killed the Iraqi guard.

The man was fired. And he had to pay his own airfare home and forfeit his bonuses, amounting to a loss of about $14,697 — slightly less than the amount paid to the family of the Iraqi he blew away.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
[link]

On a similar note, is there a single soul in America who can find anything thrilling or even newsworthy about the Democratic presidential "race." Are we really supposed to cheer for these 2 turtles, while Rove the Rabbit is off somewhere planning dirty tricks? Are headlines about which one raised the most money yesterday supposed to involve us in issues? What are they supposed to be doing at this early date? Have they gotten rid of Bush? Have they gotten any legislation passed? (To hell with worthless "resolutions!") Have they inspired even any hot congressional hearings? Thank god for the major league playoffs, or there'd be no competition anywhere in this dull, dry season. Here's Barbara Ehrenreich on the situation~~~
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Nation
Clinton and Obama: Running on Ambien
by BARBARA EHRENREICH
[posted online on October 1, 2007]

Just a year ago the hot question was, Is America ready for a black or female President? As the campaigns wear on, the question has shifted to, Can America survive the tedium of its black and female candidates?

Obama, for example, hasn't turned out to be any more challenging to white America than re-runs of the Cosby Show. He was slow to pick up on the Jena 6 case and never showed up at the rally--although, to be fair, neither did Clinton or Edwards. Like the others, he has refrained from noting that Rudy Giuliani, in addition to being a cellphone exhibitionist and a 9/11-abuser, presided over a New York City police department famed for its torture and killing of young black males.

But it's Hillary who's causing the citzenry's heads to pitch forward and collapse on their chests. Every time she opens her mouth, her flat, monotonic voice lays out yards of opaque white gauze, muffling any possibility of "discourse." Where does she stand? Over here, and a little to the side, and maybe a few steps to the right. Hers is known as the "flawless" campaign, but no one in it seems to be able to turn off the endlessly triangulating tape in her head.

Lately she's taken to emitting to sudden, inexplicable, bursts of deep laughter--known in the media as "the cackle." Whether this is a deliberate "humanizing" touch or a glitch in the computer program no one knows. According to the New York Times, the "weirdest moment" came in response to a question from Bob Schieffer about Republican charges that her health plan would lead to "socialized medicine." As the Times reports, "She giggled, giggled some more, could not seem to stop giggling--'Sorry, Bob,' she said--and finally unleashed the full Cackle."

Maybe she has a better sense of humor than I'd imagined, because the thought that her plan to turn healthcare over to the private insurance companies might be "socialist" has me rolling on the floor too.

I just wish I could work up the same degree of enthusiasm for Hillary as my friend Katha Pollitt, who recently told the Times: "If people don't stop saying incredibly sexist things about Hillary Clinton, I may just have to vote for her." But what are these incredibly sexist things? True, there was the whole faux "cleavage" issue, and the occasional wack-job who writes to enlighten me about Clinton's bisexuality or Chelsea's true daddy.

Then, in of all places--feminist Maureen Dowd's column on Sunday--I found a genuinely sexist comment about Hillary. Dowd apparently approvingly quotes Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, saying that Clinton is "like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won't stop nagging you until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn President, just leave me alone."

Now I'm all for having literary editors, poetry editors and the like commenting on our political process, but the "nagging housewife" image is not only a sexist stereotype--it's about fifty years out of date, stemming from an era when most married women were financially dependent on their mates. Besides, male politicians are never likened to stereotypical husbands, even though some of them can be equally hard to dislodge from the recliner in front of the TV or, as the case may be, the Oval Office.

But the "hellish housewife" comment does not make Hillary a feminist martyr, nor does it make me any more willing to listen to her, either now or for the next five years. Trying to say nothing to offend, she ends up saying nothing to inspire or even inform, and Obama, though still far more engaged and human-like, risks ending up with another Ambien candidacy.

Part of the problem is structural. We make our presidential candidates campaign for at least a year at a stretch. Take a normal person and subject him or her to month after month of trail mix and chicken Caesars, sleep deprivation and the need to be "on," smiling and handshaking, sixteen hours a day. No solitary moments of reflection, no walks in the park, no escape into thrillers. What do you get after a few months of this? A golem, the artificial, man-like creature of Kabalistic lore, a personoid incapable of normal responses.

So yes, America is ready for a black or a female President. Just be sure to wake us up when it happens.

[link]  

right.

"Nobody sees a flower---really---it is so small it takes time---we haven't time---and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time." - Georgia O'Keeffe

[link]

And a letter to the American People:

[link]

Not that any of this would 'concern' anyone in the New Civilization at all. After all Aushvitz is just a very dim memory if remembered at all and Treblinka? Right.

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and Georgia in 1918...so easy to befriend~~~



---jazzolog  

Write him a note and let him know that someone cares and, if possible, read his site. Seems our jazzolog is of the opinion that there is no proof at this 'internet rant.'

Well, read the site (Pretty please.), how long can that take, and discover the proof. This man is not alone and it is a total disgrace for all Americans that such is allowed to happen. Remember Jessica Lynch?

The main site: [link] and I know what you're thinking. But he is redesigning the site and his story is really worth a read. If you get time send him a dollar.

 

you didn't write that but I don't believe I mentioned any email. However it would be really nice if you would write to him and let him know how you feel about the general layout and give a tip or two, as a writer, that the real message he has to offer might be better 'framed' thus reaching more people.

Or, if you get the time, you could write to me and I'll write to him and he'll go crazier than he already thinks he is. Or let General Alexander handle it all.

Remember that Fascism is only in it's budding stage now but in 347 years this Galaxy, if we allow it now, will be controlled completely by Fascism!

You do, of course, remember the real definition of "Fascism?" And Ikes' warning to We-The-People? Oh, it's all in the frame. ;) And please don't feel slighted because of my quip.

===

"Now that every citizen is a soldier, we need to make sure that all Americans have the weapons necessary to fight -- and win -- this new war. Expensive missile systems deployed in Afghanistan will only serve to rearrange the rubble of an already devestated country. But citizen-soldiers can be nearly invulnerable with some relatively modest investments." - President George W. Bush

===

THE STRANGER - Rudyard Kipling

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk —
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell.
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy and sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control —
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf —
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

===

"So, I am not advocating anything except that in 1996, whoever is in office now should be thrown out, and that we should start over again.

"That means that you must go to town council meetings, PTA meetings, school board meetings - everybody needs to get involved. Get off your ass, turn off the TV and get out there and speak.

"Tell your Congressman, "look, if you bullshit us once, you're out of here. We're tired of this."

"We are now legally, under the UN, a natural resource. Parts of the US are going to be withdrawn from human use. What are they going to do with the people that are in these areas? We have already lost part of
Yellowstone, and as I have said, other areas in the US have been nominated.

"I don't own a gun, but do not allow Congress to take apart the Bill of Rights. If you live by the sword, you die by it - sometimes you die
without a sword. If I choose to have a gun, though, I want the right to go and get it." - The Andromeda Letters


Obstructing Justice
Vanity Fair's David Rose explores how the free-for-all fraud by military contractors in Iraq has surpassed former levels of Defense Department corruption by decimal points. Most enlightening has been the highly unusual practice by the U.S. Department of Justice in helping companies like Halliburton to conceal a level of illegal profiteering that hasn't been seen since the Civil War.

# posted by Spartacus O'Neal

[link]



Halliburton. WuHu!  

You saw undoubtedly the New York Times article about Blackwater's media response to all this criticism? Of course we expect retaliation from the New World Order, but will the innocent consumer see through the swift boat attack? "Blackwater is pursuing a bold legal strategy, going so far in a North Carolina case as to seek a gag order on the lawyers for the families of four Blackwater employees killed in an ambush in Falluja in 2004. The company argues that the dead men had signed contracts that prohibited them from talking to the press about Blackwater and that this restriction extended to their lawyers and their estates even after death." [link]



Interestingly, the Sydney Morning Herald (you remember Australia: our big ally?) on Halloween carried a special report from its correspondent in the States about America's leadership in torture around the world. The information source is one Manfred Nowak, an Austrian human rights attorney and professor at the University of Vienna. He also maintains a post with the United Nations for which he travels around the world investigating incidents of torture carried out by various governments. Last year he said torture in Iraq, including that done by our private contractors (hello Blackwater), is worse now than under Saddam Hussein's regime. [link] The Herald article hones in on American tactics specifically~~~

US accused of torture
Ian Munro Herald Correspondent in New York
October 31, 2007

THE United States's willingness to resort to harsh interrogation techniques in its so-called war on terror undermined human rights and the international ban on torture, a United Nations spokesman says.

Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on torture, said the US's standing and importance meant it was a model to other countries which queried why they were subject to scrutiny when the US resorted to measures witnessed at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison.

Mr Nowak was speaking after releasing his finding that the use of torture was routine and widespread in Sri Lanka ,despite laws against it.

"I am very concerned about the undermining of the absolute prohibition of torture by interrogation methods themselves in Abu Grahib, in Guantanamo Bay and others, but also by rendition and the whole CIA secret places of detention. All that is really undermining the international rule of law in general and human rights but also the prohibition of torture," said Mr Nowak.

"(Other countries) say why are you criticising us if the US, the most democratic country with the oldest history of human rights, if they are torturing you should first go there. It has a negative effect because the US is a very powerful and important country and many other countries take the US as a model."

His comments come amid continuing controversy over whether the use of waterboarding - which simulates drowning - is torture. US senators are threatening to stop the appointment of Michael Mukasey, President Bush's new nominee for Attorney-General, following Mr Mukasey's refusal to condemn waterboarding at judiciary committee hearings recently.

Reports have linked CIA interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects, including alleged 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to the technique.

President Bush has said the US does not restort to torture, but his administation has refused to say if waterboarding has been used. During waterboarding a cloth is used to cover a prisoner's mouth and water poured over it, triggering the gag reflex.

Commenting on his investigation into Sri Lanka, Mr Nowak said that the use of torture in counter-terrorism operations was prone to become routine.

During his visit there this month he received many "consistent and credible" allegations from detainees who claimed they were ill-treated by police.

He said that he was alerted to a new form of torture which his medical aide had initially thought was impossible. It involved individuals being suspended only by their thumbs which were bound together so they could be hoisted into the air.

He said he had received two independent accounts of its use in Army camps. The effects were verified by medical examination. Six months after the alleged incidents the individuals had not regained use of their thumbs.

Mr Nowak said that Italy and Germany had shown in the 1970s and 1980s that terrorism could be beaten within the rule of law.

"Certain human rights such as the prohibition on torture are absolute. It doesn't matter how dangerous a person is, governments have an absolute obligation never to resort to torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment," said Mr Nowak.

"In my opinion, this ill-conceived, security oriented counter terrorism strategy is having a very, very negative effect, not only on human rights in the USA, but for the first time I would say in a long period of time, the US is really engaging in systematic violation of human rights, but also a very negative effect on many other countries."

Mr Nowak is next month to investigate complaints of torture in Indonesia. He said that he expected the use of torture to have diminished following action by the Indonesian government but would not discuss the nature of the allegations until after his inquiries.
[link]