EPISODE BREAKDOWN: On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin takes an in depth look at the lawsuit against the National Defense Authorization Act’s indefinite detention clause, starting with a short look at just how many people actually know about it. Abby then talks to one of the plaintiffs spearheading the lawsuit, Tangerine Bolen, about how the suit came to be, and why the corporate media has not picked up the story, Abby also talks to former whistleblower, Jesselyn Radack, about the extent and reach of the NDAA as it applies to journalists, activists and whistleblowers. BTS wraps up the show with an interview with journalist, author and lead plaintiff in the case against indefinite detention, Chris Hedges, about the historical precedent the NDAA lawsuit sets, and why every American should care.
Philadelphia Daily News scribe Will Bunch, writing at his blog, Attytood:
Obama’s expanded, top-secret drone war has allowed the U.S. to kill high-level members of al-Qaeda without the risks that ground troops have faced in Iraq or Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been fighting more than 11 years.
But in doing so, a president who promised “the most open and transparent administration in history” has gone to Nixonian lengths to hide its actions from the American people and from Congress. He’s ordered missile attacks on countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia with which the nation is not at war – drone strikes that in addition to its targets have killed as many as 1,000 innocent civilians, including women and children.
And according to a White House white paper obtained by NBC News, Obama has claimed a power never even envisioned during the waterboarding-drenched years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney – the ability to order the assassination of an American citizen believed to be engaged with al-Qaeda at a high level, even if that citizen is not currently plotting against the U.S.
The West is worried about the rise of Islamism in Africa. There are two big fears — one is that there is a new international terror network that will come and attack Europe and America. The other is that sneaky Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood will get themselves elected — and then promptly abolish democracy.
But behind these fears is an incredibly simplified — almost fictional — vision of the world. It possesses the minds of many western politicians, journalists and associated think tank “experts”. And at its heart is a kind of filter that wipes away anything complex about power and the struggles for power in African countries — and replaces that with a simple picture of the world as divided between goodies (us in the west) and dangerous frightening baddies who are out to destroy us.
It’s both blind and arrogant. And it’s terribly dangerous.
Curtis also features a clip from a documentary about the U.S. intervention in Somalia under Bill Clinton, filmed by British journalist Richard Dowden and featuring, from Mogadishu,
“a US marine interviewed on the street who puts it all so clearly:
“the place is filling up with American contractors all bidding to rebuild this joint. That’s all the Defence Department is. We’re bodyguards for American contractors ……………… You should know that – you’ve been to college.”
Sometimes two items just seem to go together, especially for a blog that’s devoted some attention to AFRICOM and its links to Pentagon plans to exercise military suzerainty over resources in times to crisis.
First, consider the latest move to bolster AFRICOM, the command spawned by a general who’s since become a private sector agrofuel and security consultant.
From Eric Schmitt of the New York Times:
The United States military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.
For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.
>snip<
A new drone base in northwest Africa would join a constellation of small airstrips in recent years on the continent, including in Ethiopia, for surveillance missions flown by drones or turboprop planes designed to look like civilian aircraft.
In light of the above, consider this question from Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard, in a blog post headlined “Top ten tough questions for Hillary Clinton”:
U.S. military forces are now organized in various regional combatant commands, each under a designated regional “commander-in-chief” or CINC. These regional CINCs have a vast array of military, intelligence, and other assets at their disposal, and the resources they can bring to bear far exceed those of the State Department. For this reason, foreign governments often pay as much or more attention to the CINCs as they do to the U.S. ambassador, for the simple reason that the CinCs can do more for or against them. Here’s my question: if you were an ambitious young person who wanted to make a mark on U.S. foreign policy, why go to a nice four-year college and then join the Foreign Service? Wouldn’t it make more sense to go to West Point, Annapolis, or Colorado Springs and try to become a senior military leader instead?
From former Defense Department senior analyst Franklin (Chuck) Spinney, writing in Time:
American politics continues to repeat the practice of buying domestic power by inflicting misery and destruction on third world nations. In my view, Obama’s own contribution to statecraft in this regard has been his ability to lobotomize almost the entire Democratic base. The same people who were screaming about Bush’s illegal wars, unconstitutional surveillance, lack of due process, etc., are now silent or singing Obama’s greatness.
Even when Democrats can see how Mr. Obama has disappointed them, the insanity of Republican politicians provides the Democrats a ready rationale to excuse Obama. (By the way, does anyone notice that if Hagel is confirmed it means two of Obama’s three SecDefs will have been Republicans?)
The Republican party, with a few exceptions, is so visibly crazy that they have become an indispensable foil that permits Obama to govern as he does. The conventional wisdom of liberals is that Obama’s heart is in the right place, but he is conflict averse and therefore must govern as a centrist (really a center-rightist), because the GOP is crazy and intransigent. But in reality, Obama actually is a center-rightist who uses his image as a diffident compromiser as a cloak to hide his pro-corporatocracy given aways. And because most people prefer center-right governance to out-and-out fascism, the GOP plays an essential role as a “bad cop” to the center-right “good cop,” which is why Democrats went along with Obama’s plan to enshrine the Bush tax cuts for the bottom 99.3%, and a huge giveaway on the estate tax, in perpetuity. My fear is that, in the same way, Democrats will go along with Obama’s inflated defense budgets and his permanent conflict foreign policy.
First, consider this excerpt from his final speech, delivered at Mason Temple in Memphis 3 April 1968, the night before his assassination. Then consider the deplorable record of the Obama administration:
Next, consider this speech, delivered almost exactly a year earlier [4 April 1967] to the gathering of meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in Manhattan, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence.” Then consider the case of a chief executive who arrogates to himself the powers of judge, jury, and executioner of those he declares enemies of the state:
As we reported in detail last February, UC Berkeley is at the forefront of the government’s push to develop more efficient ways of using rare earths that are key to a range of so-called “clean energy” technologies, including one especially critical element, dysprosium.
From a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announcement we included in a post last February:
Belonging to a family of elements known as lanthanides—also called rare earths—dysprosium and other rare earths are used in almost every high-tech gadget and clean energy technology invented in the last 30 years, from smart phones to wind turbines to hybrid cars. Although the United States was self-sufficient in rare earths or obtained them on the free market until the early 2000s, the vast majority are now mined in China and the supply has been subject to fluctuations. The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) aims to change the status quo by reviving the study of these critical materials to better understand how to extract them, use them more efficiently, reuse and recycle them and find substitutes for them.
With most of the world’s developed dysprosium supplies in China, along with other critical rare earths, the Obama administration has launched a major military shift, concentrating American naval forces in the Pacific while using legal pressure to force China to part with more of its stockpiles, resources critical for American high tech industry.
Now comes a new report from the Department of Energy revealing that no matter how much of China’s dysprosium goes on the market, it’s not going to be enough.
Figure 4-4 illustrates the ranges of projections of global requirements for dysprosium oxide in magnets for wind turbines and vehicles, as well as non-clean energy use during the period of 2010–2025. These amounts are given in terms of dysprosium oxide because it is the commercial feedstock from which dysprosium metal is refined and NdFeB magnets are fabricated. Also included in Figure 4-4 are supply estimates for 2010 and 2010 plus additional individual mines, as well as an estimate for 2015 supply.
Figure 4-4 shows that the basic availability of dysprosium oxide is tight in the short term. Anticipated new mines will provide relatively little new supply—an additional 10%—by 2015. Global demand meets or exceeds projected 2015 supply under all four trajectories in the beginning of the medium term. Non-clean energy demand alone will lead to a supply-demand mismatch by the middle of the medium term under the assumed trajectory, highlighting the need for corresponding material intensity improvements or substitutes in non-clean energy technologies. Clean energy demand makes up a growing share of global dysprosium demand, increasing from 11% in 2010 to 52% in 2025 under Trajectory C. Demand for dysprosium oxide is roughly four-times as much for vehicles compared to wind turbines in 2025. In order to meet demand under Trajectory C, global production of dysprosium oxide needs to more than double by 2025. The developing supply-demand imbalance in the medium term under all trajectories highlights the importance of R&D on alternative approaches to heat management (a main function of the dysprosium content) in magnets or substitutes for NdFeB magnets in general in clean energy technologies.
From Journeyman Pictures [You Tube channel here] for Australia’s ABC television network, a disturbing look at the increasingly ubiquitous drones that threaten to to end what little privacy we have left:
From Journeyman Pictures:
Most people see drones as a controversial weapon prowling over foreign battlegrounds. But as America’s military campaigns wind down, these machines are coming home and set to change civilian lives forever.
“This is a powerful technology. No amount of hand-wringing is going to stop it”, says drone expert, Peter Singer. Whether it’s a floating TV station streaming live to the web, the prying lens of the paparazzi, the police chasing a criminal or a government agency spying, small domestic drones are experiencing an exponential growth. At the world’s largest drone convention in Las Vegas a salesman tells the crowd, “this can be used in law enforcement, disaster relief and industrial applications. It’s also very good at dusting floors. Every home owner should have one”. And as the technology advances at a frightening speed, anyone with a few hundred dollars can buy one over the counter. These hobby drones can fly for miles and provide sharp video feedback to the pilot. “I wouldn’t cheat on your wife!”, laughs columnist Charles Krauthammer. But jokes aside, there are real fears over the “political, legal and ethical issues that play out with this”, argues Singer. In 3 years time an order from the US congress will see tens of thousands of drones legally occupy an already crowded sky, raising numerous questions about basic safety, terrorism and civil liberty. As companies rush to cash in on this new billion dollar industry, experts warn, “we’re not ready for this”.
From Harvard international relations professor Stephen M. Walt, writing in Foreign Policy:
Neoconservatism’s final strand of twisted genius is its imperviousness to contrary evidence. Because most of their prescriptions are so extreme, they can explain away failure by claiming that the country just didn’t follow their advice with sufficient enthusiasm. If we lost in Iraq, that’s because Bush didn’t attack Iran and Syria too, or it’s because Obama decided to withdraw before the job was really done. (Such claims are mostly nonsense, of course, but who cares?) If Afghanistan turned into a costly quagmire on Bush’s watch, it’s because Clinton and Bush refused to ramp up defense spending as much as the neocons wanted. If we now headed for the exit with little show for our effort, it’s because we didn’t send a big enough Afghan surge in 2009-2010. For neocons, policy failure can always be explained by saying that feckless politicians just didn’t go as far as the neocons demanded, which means their advice can never be fully discredited.
To be sure, neoconservatives are not the only people who employ the latter tactic. Liberal economist Paul Krugman famously argues that Obama’s stimulus package failed to produce the desired results because wasn’t big or bold enough; the difference between Krugman and most neocons is that Krugman may well be right. By contrast, there’s hardly any evidence to suggest that the United States would be better off if it had done all of the things that neoconservatives advised; all we can say with confidence is that the country would now be poorer, less popular around the world, and more American soldiers would now be dead or grievously wounded.
In this sense, neoconservatives are like someone who is constantly telling you to jump off a twenty story building, and promising that if you do, you’ll fly. If you decide to be prudent and jump from the 10th floor instead, and find yourself plummeting toward earth, they’ll just say you failed because you didn’t follow their advice to the letter.
The presidential foreign policy debate was dominated by one single issue: Whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama would do the most for Israel.
As Stephen Colbert commented the next day, “I was playing a drinking game last night where I took a shot of Manischevitz every time someone said Israel, and by the end of the debate I was totally diabetic.”
So today we offer videos offering alternative views on that most contentious of issues.
How We Can Solve The Palestinian Israeli Problem
Sami Moukaddem, a writer and musician born in Lebanon and trained in psychology at Trinity College Dublin, writes that “In 2009 I bought a video camera with no training in film making and embarked upon making a documentary on the Palestinian/Israel problem.”
This film is about equality, which makes me on everybody’s side. It’s my belief that oppression harms the humanity of the oppressed as well as the humanity of the oppressor. While this happens in different ways, ultimately, I believe we’re all in this together.
While emotionally I resonate more with the oppressed, my aim is to find ways to empower the oppressed, and also inspire both societies of the oppressor and colluding societies, so that all are moving towards equality.
Among the interviewees are Denis J. Halliday [former United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq], British journalist Jonathan Cooke, Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, Israeli economist Shir Hever, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire, Noam Chomsky, former British intelligence [MI6] officer Alastair Crooke, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, and Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer [who draws some ominous historical parallels].
It’s a warm, poignant, and ultimately hopeful story, and well worth your time.
H/T to Moussequetaire.
America’s Secretary of State, Benjamin Netanyahu?
A remarkable video featuring University of Chicago political scientist and international relations expert John J. Mearsheimer examining the sad subservience of Barack Obama to the agenda set by the Israeli prime minister.
The talk was delivered earlier this month at Koç University in Istanbul.
It’s a stunning and informative talk, revealing the extent of a foreign power’s control over the American foreign policy agenda, and the abject surrender of the national political establishment.
Mearsheimer also delivered a second address at the university, “Realism and the Rise of China,” which can be viewed here.
And a bonus video. . .
Here’s a White House video from May, 2011, of Obama and Netayahu illustrating Mearsheimer’s remarks. Pay close attention to the body language, both postures and gestures.
From economists Simon Luechinger and Christoph Moser, writing in VOX about the stock market boosts accompanying appointments of defense contractor executives to positions in the Department of Defense:
In a recent study, we explicitly look at the value of the revolving door by using unique data on corporate affiliations and announcements of all Senate-confirmed US Defense Department appointees of six administrations. According to the results, investors clearly expect firms to profit from their political connections. The one- and two-day average cumulative abnormal returns amount to 0.82% and 0.84%. These estimates are not driven by important observations, volatile stocks, or industry-wide developments, and placebo events yield no effects. Effects are larger for top government positions and less anticipated announcements, i.e., announcements for which the actual nominee was not rumoured to be the main candidate. Figure 1 below displays the baseline results and the results for the less anticipated events together with the temporal pattern of average cumulative abnormal returns for the four trading weeks prior to and after the announcement day.
Living Under Drones, a just-released and stunning report on America’s drone wars from the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School and the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law, offers a scathing debunking of the “death from above” strategy of “targeted killings” so eagerly embraced by both George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
First, a video featuring interviews with researchers and survivors from Brave New Foundation:
Rather than describe the report, here’s the first part of the Executive Summary and Recommendations, featuring a sharp, critical debunking of the rationale embraced by both administrations:
In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling “targeted killing” of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts.
This narrative is false.
Following nine months of intensive research—including two investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting—this report presents evidence of the damaging and counterproductive effects of current US drone strike policies. Based on extensive interviews with Pakistanis living in the regions directly affected, as well as humanitarian and medical workers, this report provides new and firsthand testimony about the negative impacts US policies are having on the civilians living under drones.
Real threats to US security and to Pakistani civilians exist in the Pakistani border areas now targeted by drones. It is crucial that the US be able to protect itself from terrorist threats, and that the great harm caused by terrorists to Pakistani civilians be addressed. However, in light of significant evidence of harmful impacts to Pakistani civilians and to US interests, current policies to address terrorism through targeted killings and drone strikes must be carefully re-evaluated.
It is essential that public debate about US policies take the negative effects of current policies into account.
First, while civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians. In public statements, the US states that there have been “no” or “single digit” civilian casualties.” It is difficult to obtain data on strike casualties because of US efforts to shield the drone program from democratic accountability, compounded by the obstacles to independent investigation of strikes in North Waziristan. The best currently available public aggregate data on drone strikes are provided by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), an independent journalist organization. TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228-1,362 individuals. Where media accounts do report civilian casualties, rarely is any information provided about the victims or the communities they leave behind. This report includes the harrowing narratives of many survivors, witnesses, and family members who provided evidence of civilian injuries and deaths in drone strikes to our research team. It also presents detailed accounts of three separate strikes, for which there is evidence of civilian deaths and injuries, including a March 2011 strike on a meeting of tribal elders that killed some 40 individuals.
Second, US drone strike policies cause considerable and under-accounted-for harm to the daily lives of ordinary civilians, beyond death and physical injury. Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior. The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may Continue reading →
While officers of the Portuguese military are warning that they might intervene against the austerity regime being forced on an increasingly angry nation, the military threat in Spain comes from the opposite direction, invoking the ghost of fascist dictator Francisco Franco.
The threat from Col. Francisco Alamán Castro was buried at the very bottom of a report on the secession movement in Catalonia by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph. Why it wasn’t the lead is simply beyond our ken:
A serving army officer, Colonel Francisco Alaman, has fuelled the flames by comparing the crisis with 1936 – when Gen Francisco Franco seized power – and by vowing to crush Catalan nationalists, described as “vultures”.
“Independence for Catalunya? Over my dead body [Spanish original "per sobre del meu cadàver" — esnl]. Spain is not Yugoslavia or Belgium. Even if the lion is sleeping, don’t provoke the lion, because he will show the ferocity proven over centuries,” he said.
Retired Lt-Gen Pedro Pitarch, a former army chief, said the words reflect “deeply-rooted thinking in large parts of the armed forces”. He also accused Madrid of bungling the Catalan drama disastrously.
“Are we looking at a failed state?” he asked. Investors holding Spanish debt are listening carefully.
The Catalonian independence is becoming a formidable force, able to mobilize millions to march for their cause, ad they did earlier this month.
Here’s a video from the movement produced and aired before the 11 September march:
And here’s a brief video made on the day of the march, featuring interviews with English-speakers:
The movement also boasts an English-language website, Help Catalonia.
And in this remarkable October 2011 video, the late veteran socialist jurist and politician Gregorio Peces-Barba, one of the principal authors of the post-Franco constitution, jokes about bombing the Catalonian capital, Barcelona:
Here’s the quote, from the Help Catalonia website:
I believe that we’ll be in a better position than in the past. I don’t know how many times we had to bomb Barcelona in the past, but next time we’ll be able to find a solution that does not involve bombing that city.
For many centuries now, that has been Spain’s main concern regarding this issue, ever since Count-Duke Olivares had to confront the Portuguese and Catalan uprising. By the way, it seems to me that Catalans celebrate a defeat on their so called national day.
At that point in history a decision was made, namely, letting go of the Portuguese and retaining the Catalans. I always like to joke about this. What would have happened had we retained the Portuguese, but let the Catalans go? Perhaps it would have been a better deal for us. Well, that’s all in the past now, we can’t… anyway, it might’ve been a huge problem. We wouldn’t have had Madrid vs. Barcelona soccer matches. Of course, that’s always of the utmost importance.
There’s a certain irony in a man who professes to be a socialist harkening back to the bombing carried out by Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
Before Franco’s victory, the Second Spanish Republic had granted regional autonomy to Catalonia, which was quickly abolished by Franco after his victory, along with the use of the Catalonian dialect.
Unlike Greece, where the military has consistently veered to the right, seizing power when it perceived a government as too leftist, the Portuguese military leans toward the left.
And now it’s threatening a coup to overthrow the austerian regime of Social Democrat Prime Minister Pedro Manuel Mamede Passos Coelho.
Like most of Europe’s other so-called social democratic and socialist parties, Coelho and his clique have fully embraced the neoliberalism of Reagan and Thatcher, impoverishing their peoples so that investment banksters can reap their full returns on speculative investments.
From Greece and World:
Portugal, for the first time after the “carnation revolution”, is driven in an emergency situation by the Armed Forces of the country who threaten with a military movement and intervention in political life, if the policy of Memorandum that has impoverished the Portuguese (too) continues. They call the prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho to resign (actually he is asked to “migrate”)!
In its communication, the Associação de Praças (AP) is accusing the Portuguese government coalition that is “destroying the country” and that “the people turned into guinea pigs for social experiments with the new austerity measures!”.
“It is clear that the policies imposed by this government have failed. Have focused on dissolution of the workers and social rights by imposing more and more austerity, more unemployment and more insecurity ” among other highlights in communication the Associação de Praças (AP).
But the Union of Portuguese military armed forces goes one step further outside of recommendations: It warns the government that they will not stand still in the new wave of austerity sweeping the Portuguese society!
Maju, a Spanish Basque who blogs at For what we are… they will be, explains the key difference between the Portuguese military and Spain’s — and, by extension, the right wing Greek military:
Unlike in Spain, where the Armed Forces’ officialdom are an extremely reactionary and closed caste, consolidated as such under the Fascist regime, in Portugal, after many sufferings in the colonial independence wars in Africa, the Army took part in the Carnation Revolution, which deposed the military fascist regime, re-established the Republic and accepted the self-determination of the former Portuguese colonies of Africa.
Communicated Officers Association of the Portuguese Armed Forces 14 September 2012
“The Armed Forces, from here, reiterate their firm conviction that the military can never be an instrument of repression for their fellow citizens, because according to the Constitution we swore to defend them.”
“People are showing their displeasure with regard to the measures that are being implemented, which can be seen in the statements of different multiple personalities of political and social sectors, so that, by this means, we want to extend our warmest Portuguese solidarity with all who are suffering the weight of the terrible sacrifices that are being imposed, as we did in 2011. We have to keep in mind, first, that people are being subjected to unfair and painful measures , being decided by those who, constitutionally, should ensure the common good, using the excuse that it’s the only way to remedy situations penalized in that they have no responsibility, and that has led them to be the first beneficiaries. “
“Being a citizen is not exclusively belong to the Portuguese society, but should also involve the participation of the same, by some mechanism, in its own transformation. Therefore express our solidarity with all initiatives, in the exercise of the right every citizen, serve to end the unfair practices of some who have the same goals under the guise of noble, when in fact what they are doing is:
Cheat by using fear and making promises that will not be met, knowing that people are defenseless against it.
Justify absurd solutions that are based on the constant repetition of the only possibilities are responsible, so irrefutable, even though the facts show just the opposite.
Insist again and again that we must accept the imposition of sacrifice to get a supposed solution is just around the corner, just past, re-fold the dose of these sacrifices, without reaching those solutions, making pay always consequences to the same, while at the same time, either in Portugal or elsewhere, accumulate wealth without limit, preventing others can getting fair wages they deserve for their work.
“In this situation, in which can be recognized that social tensions are extremely serious and are causing protests and demonstrations in which citizens express the way the Constitution stipulates, their outrage, Association Forces Officers Armed reiterates its firm commitment to the military, constitutionally recognized as an autonomous body, will never accept the use of repression against the citizens they swore to defend, the same way as was expressed by his Excellency, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces.”
The President,
Manuel Martins Pereira Cracel (Colonel TPAA).
An important report from former Berkeley Community Access journalist Abby Martin on her new RT series, Breaking the Set, featuring a former New York Times foreign correspondent on the paper’s relentless pushing of the Washington line in its Middle East coverage.
As a veteran of 47 years covering the news, we can say Martin’s exactly right when she called his former post “a dream job.”
A foreign correspondent traditionally had far greater freedom in covering stories in the full breadth, knowing that there was little risk in stepping on advertiser toes of those of the publisher’s club buddies [always a hazard when writing about things closer to home].
Another former Times foreign correspondent lost his job over Mideast issue, but Chris Hedges was sidelined for participating in a demonstration against America’s Mideast military adventurism — and participating in any kind of demonstration would get most reporters fired from most American newspapers, since the ethics of American journalism require a reporter conceal her honest opinions.
But Daniel Simpson quit his job, and as any honest journalist will tell you these days, finding new jobs is a hard thing to do in the days of rampant downsizing and newspaper revenue collapse. [We also quit a job at a well-known paper for similar reasons, the suppression of this story.]
When he joined the paper in 2002 — when the Times was publishing “fake intelligence information to promote the war in Iraq” — he was stationed in the Balkans where, he said, he was supposed to be reporting on another fake war created by false intelligence against manufactured enemies [Serbs].
In the paper’s “fixed narrative line,” the U.S. was “portrayed as the good guys who had gone in to fix a problem.
At one point, he says, fellow Times reporter Judith Miller — the conduit for all those false spook-and-White-House-spun stories about Iraqi WMDs — tried to get him to report that Serbs were trying to sell Iraq WMD delivery systems [actually, spare parts for planes].
Senior staff at the Times, he says, thinks exactly the same way as the people in power, the very sources they’re told to cultivate.
Abby Martin discusses the ongoing narrative of sweeping generalizations resounding in the establishment following the wave of protests spreading across the Muslim world. BTS then interviews former New York Times journalist, Daniel Simpson, about his choice to leave the famous newspaper after citing war propaganda in its publications. Abby wraps up the show with a look at the United States’ notorious international military training facility ‘the School of the Americas’, with interviews from peace activist Father Roy Bourgeois, and takes a closer look at US foreign Policy in Latin America with a discussion with RT Producer, Rachel Kurzius.
A superb interview by RT’s Marina Portnaya of veteran New York Times and CBS journalist Jere Van Dyke on the Taliban, the Afghan War, and the deeper political and cultural context of a war the U.S. can never win — in part because the war is being fought against forces the U.S. itself created.
Van Dyke, a graduate of the University of Oregon and a military veteran, was held captive by the Taliban for 45 days, then released without explanation.
The takeaway: The war against the Taliban is something very different than is portrayed so glibly by American politicians, and one that could never be won, as so many other empires found at great cost.
We’re also very impressed with Portnaya, a young journalist whose sharp skills are growing ever-keener.
Her first question, asking Van Dyk what the war on terror looks like through the eyes of the Taliban, drew this response: “No one has ever asked me that. Very, very good question, very interesting question.” Coming from a journalist with Van Dyk’s credentials, that’s high praise indeed.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency proudly released a video of it’s latest record-breaking achievement Thursday, a robot that can outrun the world’s fastest human.
DARPA explains on its You Tube post:
DARPA’s Cheetah robot—already the fastest legged robot in history—just broke its own land speed record of 18 miles per hour (mph). In the process, Cheetah also surpassed another very fast mover: Usain Bolt. According to the International Association of Athletics Federations, Bolt set the world speed record for a human in 2009 when he reached a peak speed of 27.78 mph for a 20-meter split during the 100-meter sprint. Cheetah was recently clocked at 28.3 mph for a 20-meter split. The Cheetah had a slight advantage over Bolt as it ran on a treadmill, the equivalent of a 28.3 mph tail wind, but most of the power Cheetah used was to swing its legs fast enough, not to propel itself forward.
Cheetah is being developed and tested under DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program by Boston Dynamics. The increase in speed since results were last reported in March 2012 is due to improved control algorithms and a more powerful pump.
DARPA’s intent with the Cheetah bot and its other robotics programs is to attempt to understand and engineer into robots certain core capabilities that living organisms have refined over millennia of evolution: efficient locomotion, manipulation of objects and adaptability to environments. By drawing inspiration from nature, DARPA gains technological building blocks that create possibilities for a whole range of robots suited to future Department of Defense missions.
“Modeling the robot after a cheetah is evocative and inspiring, but our goal is not to copy nature. What DARPA is doing with its robotics programs is attempting to understand and engineer into robots certain core capabilities that living organisms have refined over millennia of evolution: efficient locomotion, manipulation of objects and adaptability to environments,” said Gill Pratt, DARPA program manager. “Cheetahs happen to be beautiful examples of how natural engineering has created speed and agility across rough terrain. Our Cheetah bot borrows ideas from nature’s design to inform stride patterns, flexing and unflexing of parts like the back, placement of limbs and stability. What we gain through Cheetah and related research efforts are technological building blocks that create possibilities for a whole range of robots suited to future Department of Defense missions.”
“Department of Defense missions”? Hmmm. Wonder what that could mean.
Fortunately, the BBC asked the right question:
Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, has mixed feelings about the development.
“It’s an incredible technical achievement, but it’s unfortunate that it’s going to be used to kill people,” he suggested.
“It’s going to be used for chasing people across the desert, I would imagine. I can’t think of many civilian applications – maybe for hunting, or farming, for rounding up sheep.
“But of course if it’s used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it’s not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers.”
While the rest of Europe convulses, Greece continues to sink ever deeper into the austerian trap.
We open with a creative response in the form of the growing number of barter markets appearing across the country, catch the latest round of austerity cuts just rubber-stamped by the cabinet, get the latest placebo prime ministerial pronouncement, learn of an ironic declaration by the IMF, and note Greece role in U.S. presidential politics.
A German Greek-basher says stop bashing Greece, but most Germans don’t agree.
We turn to the latest round in the war of words between the coalition and parliament’s second-largest party, follow with a report on the delayed paychecks private workers aren’t getting, and catch reports on the Greek worker’s diminished purchasing power, the curious choice of the new European currency, and an upcoming anti-austerity rally of police and the military.
Barter economy arises as crisis deepens
A video report from Ireland’s Occupy Dame Street:
As Greece enters its second year in financial trouble, more and more people are trading goods and services without using money.
More than a hundred networks which deal in what are called non-currency transactions have sprung up across the country.
From Athens, Malcolm Brabant reports on Greece’s alternative economy.
Cuts get the coalition nod
Desperate to get that next round of the bailout, the coalition government headed by conservative New Democracy’s Antonis Samaras sucked it up, held their noses, and gave their approval to those billions in cuts demanded by the Troika.
From Antoniou of Greek Reporter:
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ Cabinet met on Aug. 31 to rubber stamp more than $14.7 billion in cuts demanded by international lenders in return for continued aid, with salaries and pensions again at the top of the list amid speculation there could be as much as another $2.3 billion in cuts coming.
The budget for 2013-14 will end the annual two months holiday bonuses given workers at Easter, summer and Christmas, which is bad news for retailers with the holidays a few months off as some 68,000 have already closed because of previous austerity measures. Already battered by big pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions, Greeks will now face increases for public transportation as well.
The plan is expected to get its final okay on Sept. 3, two days before inspectors from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) return to Athens to check progress on reforms. The Troika will decide whether it is satisfied before releasing a last loan installment, of $38.8 billion, from a first bailout of $152 billion in rescue loans next month, and a pending second package of $173 billion, without which Greece will go broke.
>snip<
The measures reported include a $4.4 billion cut to pensions, health cuts of $1.84 billion, and a $649.5 reduction in defense spending. ”This list did not come from us,” a Finance Ministry source told the newspaper Kathimerini, declining to comment on the figures. Under the package, public-sector wage expenditure will be cut by $4.14 billion by slashing 12 percent from so-called “special salaries” for categories such as uniformed officers, judges, diplomats and academics, and eliminating what’s left of the holiday bonuses that had already been cut up to 68 percent. A unified pay scale for all civil servants will be introduced a year earlier than planned, which will result in $150.7 million in savings.
Cutting the salaries of 68,000 employees in public utilities companies, known as DEKO, by 30 percent will result in $344.2 million in savings over the next two years, along with a reduction in state subsidies to these companies, but are likely to be met with fierce resistance. There are also plans to lay off 30-35,000 public workers at further reduced pay for an undetermined time and then firing them. The Troika wants 150,000 gone. A freeze on all promotions in the military and police will save $207.3 million. Savings are also planned from cutting the monthly bonus benefits enjoyed by department heads in ministries – which currently range from $314-$1,130, larger than most workers salaries.
After those northward treks by the prime minister and his finance minister, Samaras says the threat of a Grexit is growing fainter.
And despite the rebuffs, he says he’s still hopeful the Troika will delay the full implementation of all those cuts his cabinet just approved.
Given the recent softening of some of the cold rhetorical winds from the North, maybe there’s a chance.
From Capital.gr:
The risk of Greece leaving the euro zone has diminished in recent weeks, the country’s Prime Minister said Friday, as Athens pushes ahead with a diplomatic drive aimed at softening the terms of its second 173 billion ($217 billion) euro bailout.
“The risk of a euro exit has become a bit more remote, our negotiating position has become a bit stronger,” spokesman Simos Kedikoglou cited Mr. Samaras as telling his ministers at a cabinet meeting Friday, Wall Street Journal reported citing Dow Jones Newswires.
The cabinet meeting was the first since Prime Minister Antonis Samaras returned from high-level talks last week with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande where Mr. Samaras raised the issue of giving Greece more time to enact spending cuts the country has promised its creditors.
The stench of hypocrisy permits their call, given that the International Monetary Fund is a pillar of that very same Troika that imposed the austerity memorandum.
Greece’s austerity measures must be carried out in a way that “helps to protect the most vulnerable groups,” an International Monetary Fund spokesman said on Thursday.
An IMF mission will return to Athens next week, fund spokesman Gerry Rice said at a briefing with reporters in Washington. He said Greece faces “a major challenge” implementing its reforms.
Europe’s economic slump is deepening as governments struggle to restore investor confidence and companies eliminate jobs. Economies are stalling or contracting amid concern about a possible Greek exit from the euro and the ability of Spain and Italy to service their debts.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde spoke with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras by telephone on Wednesday to discuss the economy in Greece and the euro area, Rice said.
Romney throws a little cold water of Greece
For the Republican presidential nominee, Greece has its uses: Most notably, as a bad example.
From Andy Dabilis of Greek Reporter:
U.S. Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, accepting the party’s nomination at his convention in Tampa, Florida, said he wants to restore America’s economy and cited Greece as an example of what happens when it goes wrong.
Referring to his plan to create 12 million jobs, Romney declared that every business person who creates positions will not disappear like those in Greece, where 68,000 businesses have closed, and help reduce America’s deficit. “We will put America on course to a budget that is balanced,” he said. Greece is drowning in nearly $460 billion in debt, while the U.S. has a debt of nearly $16 trillion.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Friday called for an end to ”Greek bashing” and said he had confidence that Athens would Continue reading →
From documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras for the New York Times, a short and chilling documentary on the National Security Agency’s massive Stellar Wind surveillance system and its growing ability to capture and keep all electronic communications and automatically create profiles of the actions of every American. And they are building the capacity to capture a century’s worth of the full electronic spectrum of all our phone calls, emails, texts, and other communications.
The video features NSA whistleblower William Binney, who worked for the agency for 32 years and has revealed the existence of Stellar Wind, the ultimate Big Brotherish domestic surveillance program that uses technology Binney developed during the Cold War for spying on the Soviet Union.
Poitras, a New York documentarian, isn’t afraid of controversial subjects, and this documentary was created for incorporation into a trio of films she’s making about post-9/11 America.
Her choice of material has provoked considerable interest from the government, as she writes in the Times op-ed accompanying the film:
To those who understand state surveillance as an abstraction, I will try to describe a little about how it has affected me. The United States apparently placed me on a “watch-list” in 2006 after I completed a film about the Iraq war. I have been detained at the border more than 40 times. Once, in 2011, when I was stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and asserted my First Amendment right not to answer questions about my work, the border agent replied, “If you don’t answer our questions, we’ll find our answers on your electronics.”’ As a filmmaker and journalist entrusted to protect the people who share information with me, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to work in the United States. Although I take every effort to secure my material, I know the N.S.A. has technical abilities that are nearly impossible to defend against if you are targeted.
