We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia's largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 50 acres* -- the size of 20 soccer fields. The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 1,500 foot rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tons of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East. Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13-million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 7.5 million acres of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world's most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

What you can do on March 20

The March 20 National March on Washington to demand "U.S. Out of Afghanistan and Iraq Now" is shaping up to be a dramatic and highly significant demonstration.

People will be coming to D.C. by bus, van, car, train, plane and metro from over 50 different cities and towns across the East Coast, South and Midwest. Large numbers of veterans, service members, and their families; members of the Arab and Muslim community; students and teachers; representatives of local anti-war and peace groups; and many others are mobilizing to join the demonstration.

We will gather at 12 noon at the White House (Lafayette Park on the north side).

We will march from the White House, making stops at the offices of Halliburton, Washington Post, Mortgage Bankers Association of America, National Endowment for Democracy, a military recruitment center and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

On the march, we will carry hundreds of coffins representing the victims of war from Iraq to Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen, and the U.S. GIs who have been killed in the various fronts of these wars of aggression. We will deliver the coffins to the doorsteps of those who profit from and promote these wars.

There are several ways that you can be a part of this important action:

1) Be part of a team that carries a coffin in the march
2) Bring a coffin to carry in the march
3) Participate in the worksession to prepare the coffins

White House (start and end of the march)
The White House is the decision-making center of the U.S. empire, where all high-level decision on war and occupation are ultimately made.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Faced with few and inadequate services, veterans are increasingly left to cope with the devastating psychological and physical impact of war on their own. Soldier suicides now surpass combat-related deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Military Recruitment Center
As school funds are slashed across the country, recruitment centers are hard at work luring youth to kill and be killed in wars of aggression with false promises of money, education and job opportunities.

Halliburton
Once headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney, Halliburton has become synonymous with war profiteering.

Washington Post
This "independent media" has been a staunch supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and continues to operate as an apologist for U.S. aggression.

National Endowment for Democracy
As NED founder Allen Weinstein put it, the NED does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly. The NED has been responsible for numerous government destabilization operations in Latin America over the past three decades.

Mortgage Bankers Association of America
While war rages abroad, it also wages against working people at home. The housing crisis, driven by speculation from mortgage bankers, made the profits-over-people orientation of Wall Street and Washington clearer than ever.

Please make an urgently needed donation to support our March 20 student travel fund!

Make a generous donation to help high school students travel to Washington D.C. for the March on Washington. It costs a lot for organizations to rent buses and for individuals to buy tickets to come to Washington, D.C. We are setting up a scholarship fund to help cover the transportation costs for high school students. How much we can provide will be based on how much we raise. Please click here to make a generous donation and help a new generation of activists take their place in today's anti-war movement.

More information about March 20 is available at www.AnswerCoalition.org.

Help build the March 20 March on Washington!

Find out about transportation from around the country

Organize Transportation

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Endorse March 20

See the list of endorsers

Toyota announced plans to close its New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont, Calif. on April 1. The closure of the NUMMI plant will put 4,700 workers out of work, and into the growing mass of recently unemployed workers struggling to survive the economic crisis. According to a state commission, the NUMMI closure will affect 25,000 additional workers who work at suppliers that conduct business with the plant.

Some ruling-class politicians and state government officials have implored Toyota to keep the plant open. California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said the closure would cost taxpayers an estimated $2.3 billion and further damage the state’s already crippled economy.

Bob King, vice president of the United Auto Workers, has taken a tougher stance, calling for a boycott of Toyota until the company reverses its decision.

The NUMMI case shows just how irrational, wasteful and undemocratic capitalism really is. The factory works fine, the workers are ready and willing to work, and its closure will have a devastating impact on the local economy. Under such conditions, no rational economic and political system would allow the plant to simply be shut down.

Economic decisions of this magnitude impact millions of working-class people, yet they have no say in them. For that matter, neither do politicians, as the unheeded supplications of Californian government officials have shown. Under capitalism, a tiny minority of super-rich corporate executives beholden only to investors rules over the economy.

These individuals have no obligation, either morally or legally, to make a decision in the interest of the majority. Quite the contrary: Extensive legislation mandates that corporate executives put the interests of investors above all other considerations. It does not matter if the NUMMI factory is still turning a profit. As long as the capitalists believe they can make a greater profit somewhere else, they will shut it down.

At this point, it appears that Toyota will, in fact, close NUMMI on April 1. Progressive organizations and individuals must continue to mobilize and pressure on Toyota to prevent this from happening. We must forcefully reject the corporate owners’ attempts to blame workers and their union for the company’s problems.

Above all, the case of NUMMI shows the necessity of building a militant labor movement, which will strike and occupy workplaces and mobilize affected communities to keep them open. It also is a lesson in why capitalism must be replaced with socialism—a social system that removes economic decision-making from the hands of the few, and gives it to the class that does all the work.

IMEMC
Five Palestinians women preferred to go home rather than heading to an Israeli prison to visit their detailed family members after Israeli soldiers stationed at a Roadblock near the central West Bank city of Ramallah demanded to strip-search them.

Qaddoura Fares, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, stated at a press conference on Tuesday that this is one of the illegal means Israel is using to target the detainees and their families.

He added that the families of the detainees decided to strike for a month in April to protest the illegal Israeli measures. They will not be visiting their detained family members and would be holding protests in front of the Red cross.

Israel is also denying 1200 detainees from any visitations as they are classified as “security risk”...

Palestinian Minister of Detainees, Issa Qaraqe’, said that Israel is always trying to strip-search the families of the detainees, especially the women, and that such demands are mainly made at the prisons.
He added that this is a direct violation to the Fourth Geneva Conventions, and all related human rights laws.

Qaraqe’ said that women and children are subjected to humiliation by the soldiers at different roadblocks, and are asked to strip in order to be searched, an issue which pushes them to return home instead of continuing their way to visit their detained family members.

He further stated that the strike comes in solidarity with the detainees from the Gaza Strip as their families were not able to visit them since more than three years.

Dozens of detainees are deprived from perusing education in prison, while Israel is also not allowing the entry of books, educational materials and even clothes. Full story

Video on stripsearching women and children:



Partial list of Israeli strip searches


Democracy Now fails to cover Israeli strip searches

A judge in the northern Israeli city of Haifa was due to be presented with evidence that 23-year-old Corrie was killed unlawfully as she stood in the path of the bulldozer, trying to prevent it from demolishing Palestinian homes in Rafah.

Corrie’s parents, Craig and Cindy, who arrived in Israel on Saturday, said they hoped their civil action would shed new light on their daughter’s killing and finally lead to Israel’s being held responsible for her death. They are also seeking damages that could amount to millions of dollars if the court finds in their favour.

An internal army investigation was closed shortly after Corrie’s death, exonerating both the bulldozer driver and the commanders who oversaw the operation.

Three Britons and one US citizen, who were standing close to Corrie when she was killed, are expected to challenge Israel’s version of events, arguing that the bulldozer driver knew Corrie was there when he ran her over.

The Israeli government had sought to block the activists from entering Israel for the hearing but finally relented three weeks ago, when Britain and the US exerted strong pressure.

The four, like Corrie, belonged to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which brings activists to Israel to resist the occupation non-violently alongside Palestinians.

Cindy Corrie, from Olympia, Washington, said: “My family and I are still searching for justice. The brutal death of my daughter should never have happened. We believe the Israeli army must be held accountable for her unlawful killing.”

For many observers, Rachel Corrie’s death in March 2003 rapidly came to symbolise the injustices of Israel’s occupation. Diary entries, many of them written while she was living with Palestinian families, were adapted into a play that has been performed around the world.

However, as one Israeli commentator noted in the liberal daily newspaper Haaretz on the first anniversary of her death: “In Israel, her name has been all but forgotten.”

Corrie’s family hopes the court case will rectify that.

Rachel, a film released last year about her life and the events in Rafah, is due to be screened in Tel Aviv on March 16, on the seventh anniversary of her death and in the midst of the legal proceedings.

Until the court case in Haifa, the Corrie family had run into a series of administrative and legal brick walls in trying to get their daughter’s death independently investigated and to hold those responsible to account.

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister at the time of Corrie’s death, promised a “thorough, credible and transparent investigation” would be conducted.

But an internal military inquiry clearing the two soldiers operating the bulldozer was widely criticised, including by US officials. Human Rights Watch said it “fell far short of the transparency, impartiality and thoroughness required by international law”.

The army’s report claimed that Corrie had been “hidden from view” behind a mound of earth and that the bulldozer had never come into contact with her. It concluded that “Corrie was struck by dirt and a slab of concrete” as earth slipped on top of her.

The four former ISM activists due to appear in court this week have been told not to comment before giving their testimonies.

But previous witness statements, backed by photographic evidence, have questioned the army’s account. Photographs show Corrie, wearing an orange fluorescent jacket and holding a megaphone, confronting the bulldozer over several hours. They also show the bulldozer’s track marks over Corrie’s body moments after she was crushed.

Tom Dale, a British activist who was next to Corrie when she was killed, wrote two days later that she had climbed on top of a mound of earth as activists nearby shouted at the bulldozer driver to stop.

The bulldozer, he wrote, “pushed Rachel, first beneath the scoop, then beneath the blade, then continued till her body was beneath the cockpit. They waited over her for a few seconds, before reversing. They reversed with the blade pressed down, so it scraped over her body a second time.”

In 2007 a US court denied the Corrie family the right to sue the Caterpillar company, which supplies the Israeli army with the special D-9 bulldozers that killed their daughter and that Israel regularly uses to demolish Palestinian homes.

This week’s hearing is the outcome of a private lawsuit filed by the Corries in March 2005, at the suggestion of the US state department.

Mrs Corrie said: “We hope this trial will also illustrate the need for accountability for thousands of lives lost, or indelibly injured, by the Israeli occupation and bring attention to the assault on non-violent human-rights defenders.”

Mr Corrie added that the family had had to endure “lies and misrepresentations” about the circumstances of their daughter’s death. The family also accused Israel of resorting to procedural delays to drag the case out.

Although Israel has agreed to let in the four ISM witnesses, it has refused to allow Ahmed Abu Nakira, a doctor in Gaza who treated Corrie, to attend the hearing or to be questioned over a video link.

The lawsuit accuses the Israeli government of being responsible either for Corrie’s intentional killing or for the negligent conduct of its soldiers towards unarmed demonstrators.

Israel claims it is not liable because the army’s actions were “acts of war” and because Corrie recklessly endangered herself.

Around the time Corrie was killed, three Britons — Iain Hook, Tom Hurndall and James Millar — were fatally shot by Israeli soldiers. Only in the case of Hurndall, another ISM volunteer who was shot in Rafah a month after Corrie, did an investigation lead to a soldier being found guilty and jailed.

Hussein Abu Hussein, the Corrie family’s lawyer, said they were seeking $324,000 compensation for specific costs related to Corrie’s death, including the funeral, legal expenses and flights. In addition, the family will ask for general compensation for their suffering and Rachel’s loss of earnings, and punitive damages from the state.

In recent weeks the ISM’s office in the West Bank has been raided several times by the Israeli army, with computers and documents taken.

Mr Abu Hussein said he would be arguing in court that the D-9’s manual specifically states that work must not be carried out with civilians nearby, and that the state ignored a judicial decision that a US embassy representative be present at Corrie’s autopsy.

Source

Also view this short video….

Filed under: Activism, Assassinations, Gaza, Israel, Rachel Corrie

As you’ll see in our upcoming newsletter (just went to the printer, hooray!) Ruth has spent a lot of time breaking down how much of your tax bill goes to funding the military. It’s worth taking a moment to look at exactly how poorly the Pentagon spends that money.

As Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent documents this morning, systemic failures in the military contracting process mean that a certain notorious private security company may still be on the federal payroll:

By March 24, the private security corporation formerly known as Blackwater — last seen in Afghanistan shooting civilians and stealing weapons intended for the Afghan police — may win a new Defense Department contract to train the Afghan police. And nearly no one in the government wants to own up to how it could happen.

Interviews over the past week with numerous Pentagon officials and military officers in Washington and Kabul have presented a portrait of a contracting process in which it is remarkably difficult to deny a contract to a security company involved in numerous civilian deaths and possible fraud.

The whole article is worth a read.

Filed under: Budget, Peaceful Prevention Tagged: blackwater, defense spending, Xe

By John Ryskamp, an attorney and author of The Eminent Domain Revolt

Why, in their article on Latvia’s austerity budget, are Marshall Auerback and Robert Parenteau giving Latvia credit for warm, fuzzy feelings? Especially in the context of Draconian cuts? It’s because Auerback and Parenteau don’t know what they want—their emotions are not grounded in any articulated policies. So they sound friendly. But are they friendly?

Let’s take a look. Maybe they just haven’t got their terms straight. For example, they say: “Mainstream economics insists that one path to full employment is via lower wages.” No, that’s not mainstream economics—that’s police state economics. That’s simply liquidation. They seem blithely unaware that since the power structure in America decided the suburbanization binge was over—that our suburban cow had ceased to be a profit center and had turned into a cash guzzler—America is no longer a paying proposition. So power is taking its flunkey, Uncle Sam, out of government.

That’s liquidation: power is withdrawing government from American society—and right on cue, the rest of the world is following suit, including Latvia.

Memories are short—and sometimes, even truncated. Just because World War II cut short Mellonesque liquidation, don’t for a minute buy the argument that somehow it wasn’t still policy right through the Roosevelt Administration—or that it isn’t always waiting in the wings, asserting itself all the time against countervailing forces (we shall return to those forces).

Liquidation is what is going on in Latvia. There is no attempt to achieve full employment or any other level of employment. Check out liquidation’s repertoire of techniques:

1. monetization
2. cartelization
3. currency race to the bottom gambits
4. credit contraction
5. induced supply chain collapse

and that’s just a very few of them—including, of course, shrinking the budget. The problem is that we don’t have a SINGLE academic study of liquidation as a sociopathology. When and why is each technique picked up and put down by liquidation? We just don’t know. Indeed, according to a supply chain management professor in the UK, to whom I put this question, there is no academic study of supply chain deterioration.

Power goes to power. Power is the assumption AND deduction of power. Power is the means AND the end of power. So Andrew Mellon would have had us believe, and when the going gets tough guess what? We believe it. They seem to have swallowed it in Latvia, and in the United States. I see no evidence of tax strikes, uprisings or any organization revolutionary movement, calling liquidation what it is. The protests are as vague and helpless as the implied protests of Auerback and Parenteau. We must toughen our minds.

Look what Auerback and Parenteau say is the motive of the powerful in Latvia (and their superiors elsewhere). They say the policy of power is to “internally deflate.” This is imprecise. Latvia is liquidating, but also somehow the policy is to maintain full employment. Huh? For them, Latvia is acting “under the mistaken assumption that the [currency peg] was inviolable,” and then they go on to cite the numerous problems with a currency peg.

But it’s not a problem if liquidation is your goal, and looting the population is one way you go about it. I don’t think the powerful in Latvia were under any assumption, mistaken or otherwise, about a currency peg. It is a liquidation technique, a technique for looting—it is not tenable to believe it is invoked without knowing why it exists and what it does.

They call a “hidden assumption”—unknown to the powers in Latvia which provoked collapsing labor costs and prices—the idea that “a debt deflation spiral does not do the host country in as domestic private incomes are deflated.” It is not credible that anyone in a position to invoke a collapse in income, demand and prices, does not know the point of these gambits. It is liquidation. Nor do Auerback and Parenteau show any evidence that the powerful in Latvia share their concerns and are simply naïve, or wrongheaded.

Look at the other thoughts they put in the heads of the powerful in Latvia: “Policy makers have tied both their hands and their feet behind their backs so that markets could work their self-adjusting magic.” Where is the evidence that the powerful in Latvia believe there is such a thing as a market, much less that it is self-adjusting? There is none. Indeed, all the evidence Auerback and Parenteau put forward is that the powerful in Latvia are putting forward all the liquidationist tricks put forward under any police state, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin—you name it.

There is nothing magical, and no mystery, about a police state. What is mysterious is constantly imputing benign motives to people when the evidence shows they are carrying out police state acts.

Here’s another one: “In each of these nations, if the private sector is retrenching already, and the public sector tries to retrench on top of that, unless a massive swing in foreign trade can be accomplished, policy makers are unwittingly inviting falling private nominal incomes and private debt distress into the picture as they reverse fiscal stimulus.” Perhaps the problem with this notion is that Auerback and Parenteau regard as stimulus, bailing out bankrupt Ponzi schemes. Co-conspiring is stimulus? A new definition of the word “stimulus,” to quote the guy in Rules of the Game. But then, I guess if you believe it isn’t, then the logical conclusion is that those who promote “stimulus” are capable of doing things “unwittingly.”

In short, Auerback and Parenteau impute good faith where all the evidence shows there is only liquidation. Why? Because they’re soft on rights. Almost everyone else is, too. The day we gave the political system near absolute power over facts (we did it here in 1937 with West Coast Hotel v. Parrish), and thereby denied ourselves any rights, we let the political system define all the terms. In return for a middle class existence, we surrendered our right to find out the facts. It’s called “health and welfare.” We let the political system decide that. We are not allowed to intervene as individuals.

So we haven’t really inquired into the facts, and we’ve sort of lost the ability to inquire into the facts. Auerback and Parenteau are examples of this. It sounds like their approach tolerates “some” liquidation, “some” level of unemployment. They don’t really understand that the countervailing force to power, is rights. For example, the authors of the U.S. Constitution see only two forces. They see the police state (which wanted to hang them all), and important facts.

Important facts are unchanging facts of human experience, facts which history has demonstrated, are robust and resilient in the face of attempts to affect them. For the Founders, these facts included protected speech. For us—or at any rate, for those of us who have persisted in factual investigations—these facts also include housing, liberty, maintenance, education and medical care.

When important facts are defended, power weakens; when important facts are not defended, power strengthens. That’s the sum total of the Constitution. How can you defend important facts against assault, when you can’t provide the evidence that they are important, because you don’t know that the issue is importance?

Police states know perfectly what important facts are—and they hate them. Does that put you, reader, in the crosshairs? Gee, d’ya think?

It would clarify the thinking of Auerback and Parenteau, and clarify our response to what they write, if they could tell us with regard to two facts they consider so important in their article—income and employment—whether they think those are important facts as defined above.

I think they are indicia or aspects of maintenance, and I think maintenance turns back attacks by interrelating maintenance with income and employment—and also with housing! And also with protected speech! The maintenance of important facts—which, according to this analysis, is what the law does, and only what it does—is a complex, ongoing venture which requires vigilance—political, and intellectual and observational vigilance.

If you practice this vigilance, you really see what Latvia is doing, even according to the generous (naïve?) interpretation of Auerback and Parenteau. It is saying that income and employment are goals, not facts. It is saying that income is maintained by destroying income, and employment is maintained by destroying income. In short, complete nonsense. The evidence shows that income and employment ARE facts, are important facts, not goals, and not policy.

This is why I say that the only response to liquidation, is individually enforceable rights. And that’s why I wrote the New Bill of Rights. It says:

No individual shall be involuntarily deprived of liberty;
No individual shall be involuntarily deprived of housing;
No individual shall be involuntarily deprived of maintenance;
No individual shall be involuntarily deprived of medical care;
No individual shall be involuntarily deprived of education.

If this was the law in Latvia, could the cuts described by Auerback and Parenteau, occur? No.

Is this a laundry list of worthy goals, a grab bag of ideals? No. It is the progress we have made—exercising the individually enforceable rights we have—toward investigating the facts of human experience. We have pretty conclusively demonstrated, with regard to the facts above, that they are important facts.

You only have to understand the issue, to find that this process of evaluation is continually going on. For example, is property an important fact. It may interest you to know that the investigation is inconclusive so far. Also, we are revisiting the settled principle that an exercise of religion is an important fact. Who knew?

If you want to see a perfect example of this investigation going on with respect to a fact—from an initial point of view that it should be left to politics, to a point of view that individuals have control over it—look at the new right to education in the state of New Jersey. I suggest you go to www.edlawcenter.org, to understand the exacting—but exactly vital—process we have to go through, in order to fight liquidation.

Update – March 8: Many thanks to 420 of you who have donated; your support is greatly appreciated! Please help us reach our 1000 donations benchmark.

Update – March 3: We are one third of the way there; 700 more needed! We can do it – together.

In October 2009 I launched Boiling Frogs Post with one purpose in mind: To establish a venue for investigative articles, editorials, analyses, discussions, and interviews on issues largely censored and blacked out by the media. After four months of a successful trial phase this venue is now ready to enter its next stage, and for that it needs your support.

Boiling Frogs Post is solely dependent on its readers, and has no ties to any institution, foundation, organization or corporation. This is the only model I see fit to be called an independent news and views venue, untainted by external pressures, special interests or partisan flavoring.

Our authors and analysts present their work, not agenda scripts or special recipes handed to them for creation of a particular propaganda to serve a particular interest. And, our weekly commercial-free Podcast Show hosts the voices of noteworthy guests on topics long-muffled and quashed by the mainstream media and their minions on lower levels posing as alternatives.

I’m happy to report that in the four months since the launching of Boiling Frogs Post we have accomplished and delivered every single objective set prior to the launching this site. I am proud to have established a distinguished team of journalists, analysts, authors, and an editorial cartoonist whose work is based on truth and real issues.

Whether it is going after hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy practices, the ever revolving doors of foreign lobbies, or our stomped upon and continuously assaulted civil liberties, our work transcends the webs put in place by partisanship and special interests and agendas.

Here are a few examples of our work:

Sibel Edmonds- The Makings of a Police State Series

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed- Yemen, Energy Crisis & the Nigerian Crutch Bomber Series

Mizgin Yilmaz- Richard Armitage Series

Dr. William Weaver – The Impulse to Secrecy: The Glomar Response

Peter Lance: Fort Hood & the KSM Trial Series

Sibel Edmonds- Op-ed Series

In this short time span the Boiling Frogs Show has been able to present you with over 20 distinguished experts and whistleblowers from the fields of journalism, intelligence, grassroots activism, academia, and foreign policy. Here is a list of select interviews:

James Bamford on NSA & Illegal Domestic Wiretapping

Pepe Escobar on the Current Energy Crisis & the Quest for Central Asia-Caspian Region

Russ Baker on the Concept of Shadow Government and the Real Power Centers in the US

Daniel Ellsberg on Obama Presidency & Whistleblowers

Andy Worthington on America’s Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay

Chris Hedges on the US Media & the Empire of Illusion

Coleen Rowley on Accountability, Whistleblowers & Activism

I believe during this four-month trial phase Boiling Frogs Post has established a solid track record with what it has accomplished, and a view of what it can accomplish given your support and backing. We are now ready to begin our next phase, during which we will continue to provide what you have seen, read, and listened to thus far, and additionally, will present exclusive video clips and investigative stories.

This site will continue and expand only with your direct support. I am asking every one of you to consider yourself as the one who can make this possible, that without your active support this real alternative site will not continue or exist, and that without your help those who consider truly independent channels like this ‘impossible to survive and flourish’ will be proven right, and with that we will all lose. So please do your share, and contribute whatever you can now.

Our countdown to receive your support and donations begins today. No donation is either too small or too large. Please donate what you can to keep this home of the irate minority alive, and thank you for all you do.

Sibel Edmonds

Founder & Publisher, Boiling Frogs Post

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A post by Edward Harrison

About a month ago I wrote a post called “The coming wave of second mortgage writedowns” the gist of which was that the big four banks (Citi, JP, BofA, and Wells) had a shed load of exposure to now worthless second mortgages. With many first mortgages now hopelessly underwater, it stands to reason that second mortgages on those same properties have zero value.

The big four are certainly well aware of this problem and are looking for ways to extend the wherewithal of underwater borrowers and pretend they don’t need to take losses on these loans. On paper, these companies are very well capitalized. However, in the real world, the likely losses they must eventually take on loans already on their books would probably render them insolvent. This is what I hinted yesterday in my post on the stress tests.

I said:

I would say the stress tests were a mock exercise to instil confidence in the capital markets. This was important first and foremost because it would induce private investors to pay for bank recapitalization instead of taxpayers. But it was also important for the economy as a whole as the sick banking sector was dragging the whole economy down. The key, however, is that the tests were a mock exercise. Despite the additional capital, banks are still hiding hundreds of billions of dollars in losses in level three, hold to maturity, and off balance sheet asset pools. If asset prices fall and/or the economy weakens, all of this subterfuge would be for nought.

-Geithner: jusqu’ici tout va bien

And when I use the phrase ‘mock exercise,’ by mock, I mean fake. Mike Konczal has done a remarkable job of putting these two concepts – the worthless second mortgages and the stress tests – together.

He writes in a recent post:

Let’s talk specifics: Last June I made a DIY Stress Test, using values reversed-engineered from the public documents, where you could play around with the values online or download an excel spreadsheet yourself (it’s still one of my favorite blogging items). The backbone of the overview of results, page 9 from the Federal Reserve’s document, looks like this:

I’m going to isolate the four largest banks Frank questioned about second-liens, along with their loses as they’ve legally sworn to being accurate during the stress test:

Again, this is data as reported to the government by the major banks during the stress test of 2009. So what’s going on here? The four major banks have about $477 billion in junior liens, either in the form of a second mortgage or a home equity line of credit. If you go to the Fed Funds data online, you’d see that there’s about a trillion dollars of 2nd/Juniors out there, so the four major players have about half the market.

The four major players each report that they expect to have a 13-14% loss on these items under an “adverse scenario”, with Citi reporting a 20% loss under an adverse scenario. That means of the $477bn, $68.4 bn is junk that’ll never be collected on. This, combined with all the other expected losses (see the link to the stress test for the rest) meant that the four biggest players needed around $53bn to be raised.

Notice how Frank’s letter, and pretty much anyone you’d speak to who isn’t working for the four largest banks, assume that second liens in the country aren’t worth 86% of their value (for a 14% loss). You see in Frank’s letter “no economic value.” Huh. Well, that’s a problem.

Let’s look at these values again, assuming that the expected total loss would be 40%, and then 60%.

So the original loss from second-liens, as reported by the stress tests, was $68.4 billion for the four largest banks. If you look at those numbers again, and assume a loss of 40% to 60%, numbers that are not absurd by any means, you suddenly are talking a loss of between $190 billion and $285 billion. Which means if the stress tests were done with terrible 2nd lien performance in mind, there would have been an extra $150 billion dollar hole in the balance sheet of the four largest banks. Major action would have been taken against the four largest banks if this was the case.

See what I mean by fake?  The point is this whole charade is transparent to anyone who actually runs the numbers. Yet, you have people like John Cassidy spreading disinformation in the New Yorker, writing puff pieces of zero negative value with drivel like this:

Other critics dismissed the tests as a sham, arguing that the economic assumptions underpinning them were too benign. As the tests unfolded, however, it became evident that the government’s loss projections were quite high, and that many banks would be forced to raise considerable sums of money—in some cases, more than ten billion dollars.

Baloney. Run the numbers like Mike did, John; and then you wouldn’t make such asinine comments. Of course the stress tests were a sham.  They were a confidence trick to raise more capital and buy time for the banks to earn yet more still. The point was to allow the banks to ease into their losses. And that’s exactly what’s been happening for the past year.

The problem with the stress tests, however, is they gave the banks a way to get from under the yoke of the government’s TARP program. The banks said, “look, we are now well-capitalized even in the worst case scenario of the stress test. We want out of TARP.”

This is bad for three reasons.

The real question is: why is the Obama Administration running victory laps, unrolling the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner on the credit crisis, as Mike Konczal describes it? I suspect this is just a political stunt to provide cover in the mid-term elections to somehow demonstrate that the Democrats fixed the problem which the Republicans created. 

I think it could backfire if only because the underemployment rate is still 17%. Nobody wants to hear the “I saved the economy routine” when they’re unemployed and losing their home.

As much local politics as humanly possible. Send your tips, releases, stories, events, etc. to lips@washingtoncitypaper.com. And get LL Daily sent straight to your inbox every morning!

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT---'Rhee’s Magazine Comments Draw Lawsuit; and tweets galore!

Morning all. The D.C. Council's finance and revenue committee---er, Jack Evans---held a hearing yesterday on the $25M Northrop Grumman incentive package. No one from Northrop, or anyone besides DMPED who would stump for the deal, showed up. But there were plenty of folks who came to grouse about a prime example of corporate welfare. And Nikita Stewart reports in WaPo that the bid 'is unraveling' as CMs question the wisdom of the deal. Among them: Mary Cheh, who 'said she is now undecided because the council recently approved tax breaks for other companies without an overall plan or cost-benefits analysis. "I don't think we can keep doing this bit by bit," she said. "I like the idea of using the incentives to lure these companies here, but I am uneasy."' WBJ's Jonathan O'Connell details the objections aired at the hearing, from the likes of Andy Shallal of Busboys & Poets, the Latino Economic Development Corp., the Center for Corporate Policy and CODEPINK. Add to that an ex-LL ('Elissa Silverman, from the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute...brought a handful of studies touting evidence that tax incentives do little to influence corporate relocations') and this sucker's dead in the water.

AFTER THE JUMP---Northrop's decision may not come till June; independent evaluation of DCPS begins; Pershing Park settlement filed; developers try to move ahead in Shaw; Red Line crash cost Metro $25M to start; RIP Maurice Williams and Mack Cantrell

ON THE PLUS LEDGER---'Evans said the city ought to go after the company because of the jobs it would provide, the charitable contributions it would likely make and the city’s existing lack of corporate headquarters,' and noted the company has expressed interest in Southwest real estate. DMPED rep points out that 'the company’s charitable foundation and its employees had made more than $11 million in charitable donations in 2009 and that District nonprofits could expect similar gifts should the company move to D.C.'

ALSO---Sarah Krouse, citing sources 'familiar with the negotiations,' reports in WBJ that Northrop might put off its decision until June. And O'Connell notes that the deal sets up a Jack vs. Kwame dynamic: 'Presiding over whatever subsidies Northrop Grumman will get are two councilmen...who may well be campaigning against each other shortly to become chairman of the council....Both are well-known to industry, as Evans chairs the Finance and Revenue Committee and [Kwame Brown] chairs the Economic Development Committee. Brown could have more of a say over the proceedings than he would even a week ago. Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. of Ward 5 is now a member of the finance committee (he replaced Marion Barry) and is more likely to vote with Brown on many issues than with Evans.'

INCIDENTALLY---In the course of reporting (and correcting) his item, O'Connell learned this: 'Gray chief of staff Dawn Slonneger: Chairman [Vincent Gray] will finish term whether or not he decides to run for mayor.'

Office of Employee Appeals backlog has led to exorbitant back-pay awards for successful appellants, Michael Neibauer reports in Examiner. OEA 'has a backlog of 533 cases, only four administrative judges on staff and finances so depleted that it can't even hire court reporters, agency leaders say. Cases stemming from basic budget-related layoffs to terminations for cause often drag on for years, and those workers who successfully appeal are ultimately paid "to take a long vacation," said [Mary Cheh], government operations committee chairwoman....Four months into the current fiscal year, the office has nearly as many appeals (290) as it did in all last fiscal year (299). In 2009, OEA judges ordered 38 workers reinstated and reimbursed $3.4 million in back pay and benefits. Of the 42 orders issued since Oct. 1, 13 have gone in favor of the employee — or 30 percent.' Neibauer recounts the story of a cop caught driving drunk in 2004; he appealed successfully and was awarded more than four years of back pay and benefits.

Metro has tallied the infrastructural costs of the Red Line disaster: It's $25.5M, per a memo obtained by Examiner's Kytja Weir. 'The memo says four rail cars were destroyed at a cost of $12 million, while the other cars involved had $3 million worth of damage. Metro spent another $3 million to run shuttle buses when that section of track was closed. Other costs came in for maintenance and cleanup, police security of the accident scene, and overtime. Metro is trying to recoup about $24 million through its property insurance and has said it plans to hire a forensic accountant to develop its claim. But officials acknowledge they are on the hook for at least $1.5 million in uninsured track structure work and system maintenance associated with the crash. The agency also has a $1 million deductible to pay.' Legal fees, lost revenue, etc. are not counted.

ALSO---Weir reports on the tough sell that transit advocates are attempting in local jurisdictions: Convince local policymakers to increase WMATA subsidies to avoid service cuts and fare hikes. Good luck with that.

Confirmed: 18 DCPS employees have been fired from the central office's special education department, Bill Turque reports at WaPo Schools Insider, confirming Candi Peterson's weekend reports. 'No details yet on what jobs they held or what exactly drove the dismissals, although spending pressures seem to be in the mix. Spokeswoman Jennifer Calloway said Sunday evening that "in an effort to control costs and improve operations OSE made personnel decisions based on each of their department's overarching goals and initiatives."' Also Examiner. Meanwhile, Peterson claims the firings didn't end with the 18.

The long-awaited 'independent evaluation' of DCPS reform kicked off yesterday, Turque reports, with a joint public panel featuring Michelle Rhee, Victor Reinoso, Kerri Briggs, and...Vince Gray. 'On Monday, all four speakers said they welcomed the NRC inquiry, and committee members asked them what questions they would like to see answered by the study. Rhee asked the panel to assess whether her "theory of change," about the District overhaul, which has emphasized raising the quality and effectiveness of teachers, was on target. She also asked the panel to reflect on whether there were organizational changes to be made "to better set ourselves up to be successful." Without explicitly criticizing the arrangement, she mentioned that the DCPS general counsel reports to D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles, and that the agency's chief financial officer reports to D.C. chief financial officer Natwar M. Gandhi. The soft-spoken Reinoso asked that the panel not make final judgments about the failure or success of an effort that he said will be under way for many years. "I don't think that the standard should be, 'Have we crossed the finish line?'" he said. Gray urged the panel not neglect special education and career and technical education when looking at what the District has or has not accomplished.' The budget has been scaled back from $1.5M to $750K; an interim report is expected by fall.

The WaPo editorial board, meanwhile, calls for teacher discipline to be addressed in any new contract proposal: 'District law considers it a crime when doctors betray a trust and have sex with patients, no matter their age. Ditto for hospital volunteers, ambulance drivers and other people entrusted with caring for others. But, for reasons that no one can really explain, this common-sense protection doesn't apply to teachers and students. It's an anomaly that needs to be addressed as officials assess how well the system deals with teacher misconduct.'

IN CASE YOU'RE WONDERING---The DCPS performance oversight hearing is next Monday, March 15.

The D.C. Council's cigar-smoking exemption antics are covered in WaPo by Ann Marimow: 'Angela Bradbery, co-founder of Smokefree DC, urged [Fenty] in a letter Monday to veto the legislation that she said would force workers to choose between their health and a paycheck; open the door for other organizations to request exemptions; and send a message that "it's okay to break the law if you're on the council or a buddy of a council member." Evans, who has attended the annual dinner for at least the past 10 years but does not light up, said his bill is "perfectly appropriate for both organizations."....A hearing on Evans's subsequent bill to make a permanent exception for the Friendly Sons was canceled on Monday. An aide to [David Catania] said the council member thought it was best to first review results from the one-year waiver before deciding whether to move ahead with a comprehensive measure.'

Pershing Park settlement is filed, Legal Times reports: 'Under the roughly $8.25 million settlement in Barham v. Ramsey, the District would pay $5.64 million to marchers who were arrested en masse and detained for hours during a 2002 International Monetary Fund and World Bank protest. Another $2.46 million would go to cover attorney fees and costs incurred by the plaintiffs’ lawyers from Washington’s Partnership for Civil Justice. Another $150,000 would be used to administer the fund....The settlement also requires the District’s police to adopt improved document management standards.'

Both WaPo and ABC News cover the impending nuptials of Angelisa Young and Sinjoyla Townsend---the first gay couple to apply for a D.C. marriage license.

A rare LLD link to WaPo's Federal Page: Columnist Joe Davidson notes how the federal government isn't doing squat for gay couples newly married in the District: 'When Lorilyn "Candy" Holmes and Darlene Garner get married Tuesday, it will be a joyous and historic occasion. But an uninvited uncle will lurk among the well-wishers....Uncle Sam doesn't like the Holmes-Garner wedding because the couple are the same sex. Though he does not have the power to stop the nuptials, he does have the ability, like a meddlesome relative, to make his displeasure known. While Sam provides a nice package of benefits that cover spouses of his staff members, he's not going to give that wedding gift to Holmes, who has served him for 33 years, and Garner.'

More on the Stephanie Stephens death from WTTG-TV: 'The two ambulance medics who allegedly refused to transport the toddler are at the center of a discipline investigation. However, FOX 5 has learned that others in a supervisory position on a fire truck may have arrived first, but never went inside the Southern Avenue home....The internal documents obtained exclusively by FOX 5 seem to contradict the city's account. They are the automated time stamps generated by a computer showing the history of the fire units. The documents clearly show Engine 33 with a paramedic on board arrives first at 4:56:45 a.m. on February 10, 2010. Medic 33 arrived at the Southern Avenue address at 4:58:28 a.m., nearly two minutes later, but they were the only ones to go inside. So the question is, why didn't the higher ranking paramedic on engine 33-- who arrived first-- make the evaluation on the little girl, and if he was there, why did he not intervene when medics decided not to transport the child? More importantly, why is the engine 33 paramedic still on the job?'

WAMU-FM's Patrick Madden > interviews council budget guru Eric Goulet about what lies in store for FY2011: One word: 'bleak.'

DCmud covers the Media Center One project after Radio One's exit: 'Ellis Development Group, Jarvis Company, LLC and Four Points...are modifying their plans and seeking official permission to extend their development timeline. The current approved Planned Unit Development is coming up on its two-year deadline, the requested two-year extension would give the developers time to regroup after recent setbacks.' And square footage is being scaled back. Question is: Will the council be willing keep debt tied up doing nothing for another two years?

Police identify jogger struck and killed Saturday morning at 14th and Constitution NW as Debra Ann Schiebel, 51, of Logan Circle. Reports WaPo: 'Police said Monday that the owner of the tractor-trailer [that struck Schiebel] contacted them Saturday night. It appeared that the driver of the vehicle was unaware that anyone had been hit, police said. They said no charges were pending against the driver, who was not identified....Preliminary information indicated that the woman was in the roadway and crossing against the light when she was struck, police said.' Also NC8, WTTG-TV, WUSA-TV, WRC-TV.

Joseph Harrington, 31, has pleaded guilty to the 2007 stabbing murder of Charles Smith, WaPo reports---'just one day before he was scheduled to face a retrial in the case. The first case was dismissed because an assistant U.S. attorney admitted withholding evidence from defense attorneys.' Harrington faces up to eight years.

Mark your calendars: 'A prosecutors’ request to introduce evidence that police found a collection of S&M devices in the home of three gay men implicated in the 2006 murder of Washington attorney Robert Wone is expected to be debated Friday during a D.C. Superior Court hearing,' DC Agenda reports.

And now, a note from Allen Sessoms: 'Today, you will start seeing a series of print, broadcast and online advertisements designed to get the word out on all the great things going on in the University System of the District of Columbia. This is the most aggressive effort in the history of this institution to promote itself. The goals of this campaign are – of course – to increase enrollment, but we are also lifting the image and public perception of the community college as well as UDC, including the law school.'

Missing six-year-old is promptly found.

WUSA-TV, WTTG-TV cover the enviro-impacts of snowmelt on the Anacostia River.

Mark Katz is new chair of Arent Fox.

Man arrested for entering zoo's elephant enclosure.

ALSO---Panda-mama: Not preggers.

Don Peebles is gala chair for the 100 Black Men of Greater Washington's April 9 Legacy Awards Gala. Ben’s Chili Bowl will be honored as Small Business of the Year.

Dish wants to know: 'Vincent Gray in Georgetown: kibbitzing or campaigning?'

TODAY IN HISTORY---In 1977, Hanafi Muslims stormed the District Building, wounding Marion Barry and killing WHUR-FM reporter Maurice Williams and security guard Mack Cantrell. May they rest in peace. (Read WaPo's next-day story, by Bob Kaiser and Milt Coleman.)

D.C. COUNCIL TODAY---10 a.m.: Special Committee on the D.C. Taxicab Commission performance oversight hearing, JAWB 500; 10:30 a.m.: Committee on Government Operations and the Environment agency performance oversight hearing on Office of the Inspector General, District of Columbia Retirement Board, Office of Campaign Finance, and Board of Elections and Ethics, JAWB 412; 2 p.m.: Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary meeting (scheduled), JAWB 120; 4 p.m.: Committee on Libraries, Parks, and Recreation meeting (scheduled), JAWB 120.

ADRIAN FENTY TODAY---9:30 a.m.: attendee, education budget hearing, Smothers ES, 4400 Brooks St. NE; 11 a.m.: attendee, same-sex marriage celebration, Human Rights Campaign Equality Center, 1640 Rhode Island Ave. NW.

To combat global warming, forests must be part of the solution. How can we make good forest stewardship a reality?

2010 is a crucial year for forests. In March, major donor countries and forest-rich countries will meet in Paris, Nairobi and Manila, each grappling with the same question: how can efforts to reduce deforestation also help tackle climate change? Their decisions, and those following in the next six to twelve months, could channel substantial amounts of money to protect forests. Manish Bapna, Managing Director of the World Resources Institute, answers questions about the current window of opportunity to address both forest loss and climate change, and what is at stake in getting these mechanisms right.

Forests are one of the greatest environmental challenges—and opportunities—facing the world in the 21st century. Forests are well known for their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, but when they are destroyed they release CO2 into the air. This helps explain why Indonesia, a developing country with high rates of deforestation, now has one of the highest emissions rates in the world.

Forest loss contributes as much as 12-15% to annual greenhouse gas emissions, about the same as the entire global transportation sector. It will be practically impossible to avoid dangerous climate change without addressing this problem. That is why forests must be part of the solution.

REDD stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.” A REDD mechanism would seek to provide incentives for developing countries to make those reductions. Right now, forest areas are often worth more harvested than left standing. At its core, REDD aims to change incentive structures in favor of protecting forests.

A REDD mechanism could provide compensation to governments, communities, companies or individuals if they have taken actions to reduce emissions from forest loss below an established reference level. The sustainable management of forests then becomes a smart economic decision, as well as a smart decision for the environment.

Although funding towards REDD will likely take many different forms, one option that is often discussed is to link REDD to carbon markets in developed countries. Companies could then meet their emission reduction commitments by channeling funding to REDD in forest-rich countries. Carbon markets would generate significant funding for REDD – at a scale rarely seen before. There is a risk, though. If REDD does not work as intended, its failure could reduce or even eliminate reduction efforts in developed countries.

In Copenhagen, countries agreed to the “immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus” to tackle emissions from deforestation. What this means in practice, though, has not been entirely clear. The idea of supporting countries to protect their forests sounds simple. But governments have only limited control over many of the drivers of deforestation. There are a number of difficult questions that have yet to be fully answered.

How do you ensure that REDD leads to emissions reductions that are “real and additional,” meaning they would not have happened without a REDD program?

How do you know that reducing deforestation in one place will not cause increased deforestation in another? This is what is called “leakage.”

How do you know that REDD will not just be a temporary fix, but rather will protect forests permanently?

How do you ensure that REDD will not adversely impact the rights and livelihoods of the millions of people who live in or around forests, especially in poorly governed states?

How do you measure, report and verify emission reductions from forests? This is especially challenging for measuring reductions in forest degradation.

These are just a few of the questions that arise, and they do not have easy answers. This helps explain why the possible mechanisms for achieving REDD have aroused such debate.

Money on its own cannot solve the deforestation challenge. History has proven this point time and time again.

Deforestation is as much an issue of poor forest governance – the processes, policies, and laws by which decisions that impact forests are made – as it is an issue of misaligned economic incentives. When you look at the main drivers of deforestation, such as agricultural expansion, logging, and infrastructure development, they are often symptoms of a larger failure of governance. Many forest-rich countries do not have strong enough institutions and processes needed to value and protect forests and people who depend on them. They will not be able to manage their forests until these factors improve.

REDD cannot be removed from this context. Without effective governance, money distributed through REDD could lead to some of the perverse outcomes I mentioned before. This issue could be further complicated by carbon markets because of the significant additional funding such markets could unleash. It could lead to a kind of “resource curse,” in which large inflows of funding can actually fuel corruption and bad governance. That’s why any approach to reducing deforestation, including a REDD mechanism, has to promote and support improvements in forest governance if it is to be successful.

We must start with an understanding of what makes for good governance of forests. This is a question that WRI has grappled with over the past two years. We have developed a methodology, called the Governance of Forests Initiative (GFI) indicator framework that can help governments, civil society and other stakeholders assess the strengths and weaknesses of forest governance in their countries. This type of diagnostic can serve as a starting point for reform, uniquely tailored to each country.

Going forward, international efforts must focus on supporting developing countries to strengthen forest-related institutions, build participatory processes, and ensure proper social and environmental safeguards are in place.

The stakes are high this year. We are going to see how US climate legislation moves forward and how it incorporates REDD. The European Union will decide whether to include REDD in the next phase of its emissions trading scheme. Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will decide how to ultimately operationalize REDD in a global climate deal. These decisions are going to shape global efforts to protect forests. 2010 is the year in which the momentum to address the interlinked challenges of forest loss and global warming can either lead to real change or fade away.

Armenian and Azerbaijani forces are spread across a ceasefire line in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, often facing each other at close range, with shootings reported as common. Last week an Armenian soldier was killed.

PARWAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Task Force Cyclone Human Terrain Team’s, 1st Lt. Raphael Howard, research manager, speaks with village members of Shaykh Ali, Parwan province, Afghanistan, Dec. 19, 2009. (Photo by U.S. Army Spc. William E. Henry, Task Force Cyclone, 38th Infantry Division)

It is increasingly apparent that even if TRADOC’s Human Terrain System were to simply be deleted, that would not spell the end of the human terrain doctrine, the military application of social science, and the applied study of “culture” in American counterinsurgency. In the previous report, “Mapping the Terrain of War Corporatism: The Human Terrain System within the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex,” we find that some companies do not directly service the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System as much as producing their own variant, one example being SCIA Solutions/Earl Industries which runs its own training classes at George Mason University.

It is even possible that the absence of the program we know as HTS would open up new defense contracting opportunities for such companies, or increase what they have already gained.

In “Social Scientists Under Fire: How anthropology and other social sciences are transforming the American way of war in Afghanistan” (Miller-McCune, 17 February 2010), David Axe says that the “original versions of the so-called ‘Human Terrain Teams’— the basic units of the Human Terrain System—are now slowly going defunct. From one point of view, they have been rendered redundant, as the philosophy and practices they espoused spread throughout the military mainstream. But seen from another direction, the Human Terrain System is on the cusp of a much-deserved breakthrough into the military mainstream, and, after a rocky start, the social-science teams are primed for a speedy rise up the military hierarchy.” In fact, some of the changes internal to HTS over the past year have helped to further this trend, Axe argues. The deaths of Bhatia, Suveges, and Loyd prompted a gradual “hardening” of HTS: “The [Human Terrain] teams began to include a greater proportion of current and former military personnel. And even those team members who weren’t military started acting and looking more like soldiers. Some of the civilian social scientists now carry weapons.” Moreover, with HTS’ retired army/social scientist contractors being incorporated as government employees last summer, this has “hastened the militarization of the Human Terrain System.”

More than the above, however, is the growing realization within the U.S. military that what HTS offers is not so unique that only HTS can provide it. One former HTS employee, turned critic, quoted by Axe stated: “for 99 percent of what HTS does, it can be done by soldiers filling out survey forms and reporting back to a research center in the U.S. There’s no need to have these mostly crap teams out there not really doing anything besides getting in people’s ways.”

Indeed, Axe found military units that had never heard of HTS, and yet were doing the same work in Afghanistan regardless:

“Though they might not have heard of the Human Terrain System, Shepard’s troops were actively engaged in studying and exploiting the human terrain. They just used different terminology. Lt. Col. Thomas Gukeisen, Shepard’s beefy, gravel-voiced boss, described his strategy in Logar as an attempt to build ’security bubbles’ in the communities that are most amenable to a U.S. troop presence. Deciding where to focus security efforts requires daily close contact with Afghans. ‘The security bubble is the human-terrain piece,’ Gukeisen said.”

Axe concludes that, “Soldiers are capable of the cultural interactions that are supposed to be the HTS’s exclusive domain”:

The Human Terrain System and less formal human-terrain efforts boil down to single conversations between two people from very different cultures, speaking different languages. Whether it’s conducted by a highly trained, highly paid civilian academic or a young soldier, the mapping of human terrain is mostly a common-sense effort that requires patience, respect and courtesy.

[Lt. Sean Mahard:] “We’re not really trained for this. The majority of our training is in infantry tactics,” he said, and then shrugged. “But if you can interact with people, you can be successful.”

Whether in the battle zone, or in the class room, the human terrain doctrine seems to be undergoing expansion, paradoxically at the same time that HTS seems to be buried under the weight of criticisms from many different quarters, including within the military itself. Paula Holmes-Eber is an anthropologist with a specialization in the Middle East, a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and was formerly an assistant professor in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After spending time as a visiting scholar in Middle East Studies and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, she took up a position teaching “operational culture” at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. National Public Radio, in a story titled “In Class, Marines Learn Cultural Cost Of Conflict” (09 January 2010), describes the following:

The students in front of Paula Holmes-Eber wear camouflage and have close-cropped hair. Most of them are Marine officers, and many of them have already been to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re here to learn the consequences of their actions.

“Should we change another culture?” she asks the class. “The reality is, the second you land on the ground with 100,000 troops eating and using the materials of the area, you’ve changed the economy; you’ve changed the environment.”

“It’s not should we,” she tells them, “it’s what are we doing—and is that what we want to be doing?”

An anthropologist, Holmes-Eber trains American warriors to be sensitive to other cultures. She teaches operational culture at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Va. It’s her job to get soldiers to think through how every move they make on the battlefield has a consequence—not just for enemy forces, but for ordinary people.

Given the “bloody, horrible, protracted” history of conflict in Afghanistan, Holmes-Eber would like to see American troops in the region take a different path—and that means understanding local culture well enough to build cooperative relationships.

“The goal is mission effectiveness,” she explains. “If they fail because they don’t understand the culture, then they didn’t do what we asked them to do. So it’s not about being touchy-feely and sweet and ‘don’t we like the natives.’ “

“I really hope that we don’t kill as many people this way.”

The rest of the story can be heard here:

The basic principles voiced by Holmes-Eber are essentially the same we have been hearing from HTS propagandists, framing warfare in “culturally sensitive” terms, understanding local culture, building relationships with locals, and “saving lives” (which simply means killing, but not as much). Look past the gloss, and you see one face of counterinsurgency (the other is great violence, the face that tends to shy away from photos ops for the mainstream media back home)–it does not have to be untrue to be any less of an insidious attempt to subvert local societies and bend their people’s minds toward accommodation with empire.

“The new emphasis being given to tribal engagement in counterinsurgency signifies that such tribal studies are highly relevant to the various military and civilian government agencies tasked to implement this new approach. Repeated public statements by US military and civilian leaders now downplay military operations in favor of gaining the support of local communities, not only by bringing tangible benefits, but also by acting in a manner acceptable to tribal people.In order to accomplish this mandate, we believe it is essential to understand tribal culture and society as a prerequisite to productive interaction.”–Tribal Analysis Center

A number of companies and research programs have been building their own “human terrain” programs. One of these is the Tribal Analysis Center (TAC). The TAC notes that “Traditional anthropological research conducted among tribes inhabiting remote areas where insurgents and criminals operate has become increasingly difficult to implement. Studies carried out among people living in small-scale societies now are nearly impossible due to the physical dangers associated with the civil and religious unrest found in those areas.” Indeed, this is a recurring theme across TAC’s pages: doing anthropology in Afghanistan is too dangerous.Thus the TAC adopts an “indirect approach,” which means using research from a variety of disciplines, collecting and analyzing data obtained from others, in the past and present. This is revamped armchair anthropology, the late 1800s dusted off for the early 2000s: “We assume that much can be gleaned from well-informed observers who are not anthropologists, ranging from journalists and travelers to government officials.”

TAC speaks highly and repeatedly about anthropology: “Although we value highly anthropological research and publications, none of us are full-time anthropologists.” The one TAC editor with a background in anthropology, a M.A. to be exact, is Arturo G. Munoz: “he applied anthropology to intelligence analysis and wrote intelligence assessments on various Latin American issues….he conducted counterterrorism, counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations in diverse countries….In February of 2009, Munoz joined the RAND Corporation as a Senior Political Scientist. Working out of the Washington Office, he specializes in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism issues, focusing currently on Afghanistan.” It is no wonder then that, despite TAC’s open acknowledgment of anthropologists’ criticisms of work such as its staff conduct, and especially noting the ethnical problems, they proceed nonetheless–in the final analysis, with experience such as that of Munoz, where else can such individuals be employed? They are tied to the “terror” system of empire, because that is the side on which their bread is buttered.

But the bread has not been as buttered as TAC would like. At present, the TAC appears to lack any government contract, with its work done on a part-time and pro bono basis: “Some of us are employed full-time with various government agencies, others with private companies, or, are retired and do contracting as consultants or researchers for various clients. Our main source of funding at present is from the sale of books and teaching of courses.” In line with the latter, the TAC has set up the rudiments of an online course program through its Tribal Analysis University, which quite appropriately opens with a quote from none other than Rudyard Kipling himself, great visionary of the “white man’s burden.”

The Program for Culture & Conflict Studies is premised on the belief that the United States must understand the cultures and societies of the world to effectively interact with local people. It is dedicated to the study of anthropological, ethnographic, social, political, and economic data to inform US policies at both the strategic and operational levels.CCS is the result of a collaborative effort to provide current open source information to Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), mission commanders, academics, and the general public. Covering tribes, politics, trends, and people, this website – a 21st century gazetteer, provides data, analysis, and maps not available anywhere else.–Program for Culture and Conflict Studies at NPS

At the Naval Postgraduate School the Program for Culture and Conflict Studies seems to be virtually duplicating some of the intended functions of HTS, led by Thomas H. Johnson–”Under his direction, the program coordinates anthropological research activities on the human terrain of Central and South Asia.” According to one report, Johnson was supposed to “develop a database for the Human Terrain Teams,” which suggests a close working relationship that the others do not seem to have, and some online commentators insist, along with Newsweek, that Johnson not only served on a pilot Human Terrain Team in Afghanistan, but that he was also later fired from the program, all of which was flatly denied by HTS’ Montgomery McFate. In terms of “advising the troops,” which HTS claims to do, it seems that PCCS does so as well, only at much higher levels, and away from the battle zone: “Canadian Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard and a dozen top officers of his Joint Task Force-Afghanistan took time in their pressing schedules preparing to take charge of NATO operations in Kandahar, the center of gravity for the Pashtun insurgency, to attend the Conference on Culture and Counterinsurgency in Southern Afghanistan hosted by the NPS Program for Culture and Conflict Studies (CCS), Aug. 25-27 [2009],” with the goal of the conference being “to paint a clear picture of the battle space the Canadian Task Force was about to enter, enabling its members to better understand the institutions, organizations and individuals affecting conditions on the ground in their area of responsibility” (“University Experts Brief Canada’s New Afghanistan Task Force Commander on Winning ‘Mission Impossible’“). That was not the only such event.

It also clearly shows that what HTS boasts about, providing cultural knowledge, does not require a presence in the battlefield. HTS also does little/nothing to shape policy when it is focused on those lower down in the military food chain, whereas PCCS is clearly advising and engaging with those at the higher levels of command. In terms of mapping, PCCS also provides “tribal maps” on its website (anthropologists laugh out loud when they read such things) as well as tribe and clan genealogies.

Dartmouth College’s Laboratory for Human Terrain is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of the diffusion and appropriation of the human terrain concept. They produce lots of diagrams of boxes and arrows and balloons, so you know they’re busy producing real knowledge. They have three team members and have produced roughly a half dozen articles. The background of George Cybenko, the first person listed, is in mathematics. The others have backgrounds in mathematics, electrical engineering, and computer science — in other words, all the right disciplines for understanding human social relationships and meanings.

Roberto J. González’s article in Anthropology Today (Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2009), “Going ‘tribal’: Notes on pacification in the 21st century,” begins with an important, basic observation:

“Few anthropologists today would consider using the term ‘tribe’ as an analytical category, or even as a concept for practical application. Years ago, Morton Fried observed that ‘many anthropologists have attempted to avoid the word, or deliberately isolate it in inverted commas’ because of its persistent ambiguities.” (p. 15)

Lured by the simplicity of synchronic, static, functionalist snap shots, ludicrously conceiving human objects in the form of maps, it is not surprising that the human terrain cartographers either miss or cannot grasp the fact that the Taliban are a post-tribal phenomenon. The presence of the Taliban in every part of Afghanistan should suggest, to any reasonable people, that they simply cannot be equated with or tied to any “tribe.” It does not even seem that the military understands what “tribe” is supposed to mean, usually conflating (as González found) tribe with chiefdom. In the meantime in U.S. and NATO articles and photo essays, not to mention a plethora of dependent mainstream media recitations, tend to “also suggest – in Orientalist fashion – that ‘tribesmen’ are traditional or pre-modern people unfamiliar with Western ways.” González adds: “Official Defense Department photos depict US soldiers sitting on cushions and drinking tea with ‘tribal’ leaders, as if participating in such a ritual is enough to earn their trust and co-operation. Such images are reminiscent of Orientalist paintings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Capt. Duke Reim, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment, Charlie Company commander, and Human Terrain Team members talk with a local village elder during a village assessment. The Human Terrain Team embeds anthropologists and other social scientists with combat units in the field. 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment Photo by Staff Sgt. Justin Weaver

I am thinking that the implication is also that these “tribal elders” are simpletons–show them enough kindness and respect, and they’re yours. In portraying locals as easily manipulated hicks (just flash the right cultural signs and provide some Western goodies on the side), the authors of such portraits reveal themselves to be by far the greater of the simpletons. If there is one thing that Afghans are experts on, it is modernity, and they have known it longer and know it better than their American occupiers. Afghanistan has met almost every major empire of the past two thousand years. The so-called “ancient” and “biblical” wilderness that some U.S. troops claim to be seeing in Afghanistan, is often the destroyed ruin of an American or Soviet development project. Tribal Afghanistan is a Western projection, of remoteness, isolation, backwardness and primitiveness. One must wonder how using flawed paradigms, and deploying them in complex armed conflicts, is supposed to “do good” and “save lives.” But that is not the point–the point is to make a sale to the Army:

“And what are we to make of the peculiar use of the outdated ‘tribe’ concept by militarized social scientists? It appears that these technicians are not concerned about the ambiguity of ‘tribes’ because they are in the business (literally) of providing tools to help military commanders achieve immediate objectives. Short-term ‘mission success’ trumps all other considerations. In the current context, US military forces have been asked to carry out a quintessentially imperial mission – pacification of Iraq and Afghanistan – and the technicians have been quick to provide the necessary instruments, from tribal maps to hints for dividing and conquering….Social science can easily become a ‘martial art’ under these conditions.” (González, 2009, pp. 18, 19)

Permanent War–Catherine Lutz, speaking to the Canadian Anthropology Society in 2008 (see: Catherine Lutz, “Anthropology in an Era of Permanent War,” Anthropologica, 51 [2], 2009: 367-379), described the extent to which the American nation-state is one marked by permanent war. Permanent war began in 1947 with the passage of the National Security Act, and the creation of what is effectively a second, shadow state organization that includes the National Security Organization (NSA), the National Security Council (NSC), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to which we can now add several more. The head of this second state, as Lutz puts it (among others, such as Andrew Bacevich), is an imperial President, with ever expanding powers. The U.S. has the largest military budget in recorded history, regardless of the end of the Cold War. This goes beyond published figures, as there is also a “black budget” whose funds are kept secret even from Congress. The Pentagon’s black budget reached $32 billion a year under Bush and “billions more in black funds go to the CIA and NSA, whose budgets are completely classified, disguised as seemingly unrelated line items in the budgets of other government departments, which sometimes even Congress does not realize” (p. 368). In 2009, $1.2 trillion was spent on military matters, including the off-budget costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, debt payments for past wars, and allocations for veteran care.

In terms of global reach, the U.S. now has over 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees in 909 military facilities in 46 countries and territories, with bases located on 795,000 acres of land owned or rented by the U.S., housing over 26,000 buildings and structures, figures that obviously do not include secret and other unacknowledged installations (p. 368). The U.S. military rents or owns 28 million acres in total (43,750 square miles).

The U.S. military has become the biggest employer in the U.S., paying the wages of 2.3 million soldiers and 700,000 civilians, with even the largest private corporations dwarfed by comparison. This in a country where politicians and public commentators shriek at any hint of “socialism,” yet remain largely mute in the face of such massive state expenditures and social regimentation. Having remodeled itself, as Lutz says, after neoliberal business restructuring, the U.S. military now has as many temporary employees as permanent ones: 1.4 million are permanent employees in the regular branches of the military, with another 0.9 million in the Reserves and National Guard. Millions more Americans receive paycheques through defense contracting. Taking all of this into account, Lutz shows that military labour constitutes 5% of the total U.S. workforce (p. 369). One quarter of scientists and technicians in the U.S. work on military contracts. Now, work that was once done within the military is now contracted out to private firms.

This is the world into which the Human Terrain System fits, as well as the other human terrain variants, and the dozens of private corporations contracted for human terrain work, with more standing in the wings waiting. This is a world of lucrative military contracts, of militarized labour, and the development of mentalities regimented by the national security state. While Americans are so quick to colonize others, they do so having first colonized themselves massively. That is a nation whose first face shown to the world is a military one, where even handing out water bottles to Haitians is done by gloved hands protruding from camouflage fatigues. Popular culture is amply militarized as well, from Hollywood movies to video games, cultural militarism is a major growth industry, one of America’s few. The social scientists joining creatures such as HTS not only fail to critique such facts, they seem to be oblivious to the structures they actively choose to reinforce and which they validate and justify, at the cost of both democracy at home, peace abroad, and an independent intellect that takes itself seriously.

Filed under: COLONIALISM/IMPERIALISM, HEGEMONY Tagged: Arturo G. Munoz, catherine lutz, Dartmouth College, George Cybenko, HTS, HTT, human terrain, imperialism, Laboratory for the Human Terrain, Marine Corps University, militarism, militarization, national security state, Naval Postgraduate School, Paula Holmes-Eber, permanent war, Program for Culture and Conflict Studies, Roberto J. González, Thomas Johnson, Tribal Analysis Center, war corporatism

Hours after our interview, at 2am, Israeli soldiers would break into the house, snatch Amir from his bed, threaten his parents with death by gunfire if they tried to protect him, and take him downstairs under the stairwell. They would beat him so badly that he would bleed internally into his abdomen, necessitating overnight hospitalization. In complete shock and distress, Amir would not open his mouth to speak for another day and a half.

In our interview that afternoon before the brutal assault, Amir said that on the 28th, he was playing in the street near the Ibrahimi Mosque, on his way with Hasan to see their aunt.

“Two of the soldiers stopped us and handcuffed us,” Amir said. “They brought us to two separate jeeps. They took me to the settlement and put me in a corner. I still had handcuffs on. They put a dog next to me. I said that I wanted to go home. They said no, and told me I would stay here forever. They refused to let me use the bathroom. They wouldn’t let me call my mother. They blindfolded me and I stayed there like that until my father was able to come and get me late at night.”

Amir’s detention inside the settlement lasted nearly ten hours. “The only thing that I thought about was how afraid I was, especially with the dog beside me. I wanted to run away and go back to my house,” he said.

Amir and Hasan’s mother, Mukarrem, told me that Amir immediately displayed signs of trauma when he returned home. “He was trying to tell me a joke, and trying to laugh. But it was not normal laughter. He was happy and terrified at the same time,” she said. “He wet himself at some point during the detention. He was extremely afraid.”

Amir revealed that he hadn’t been able to sleep in the nights following his detention, worried sick about his brother in jail and extremely afraid that the soldiers would come back (which, eventually, they did). Today, approximately 350 children are languishing inside Israeli prisons and detention camps, enduring interrogation, torture and indefinite sentences, sometimes without charge. The number fluctuates constantly, but thousands of Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 16 have moved through the Israeli military judicial system over the past decade since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. Israel designates 18 as the age of adulthood for its own citizens, but through a military order, and against international law, Israel mandates 16 as the age of adulthood for Palestinians. Additionally, Israel has special military orders (#1644 and #132) to be able to arrest and judge Palestinian children — termed “juvenile delinquents” — as young as 12 years old.

“This way, they have a ‘legal’ cover for what they are doing, even though this is against international laws,” said Abed Jamal, a researcher at Defence for Children International-Palestine Section’s (DCI-PS) Hebron office. “However, in Amir’s case, they broke even their own laws by arresting and detaining him as a ten-year-old boy. These laws are obviously changeable according to Israel’s whim. We have yet to see a prosecution for crimes such as these.”

I asked Amir and Hasan’s father, Fadel, to describe how one is able to parent effectively under this kind of constant siege.

“It’s not safe for the children to go outside because we’ve faced constant attacks by the settlers and the soldiers,” he explained. “This by itself is unimaginable for us. And now, we have one son in jail and another traumatized … they’re so young.”

On Sunday, 7 March, exactly a week after Hasan’s arrest and Amir’s detention, the family and members of the local media made an early-morning journey to Ofer prison where Hasan had been held since his initial arrest. After a lengthy process in which the Israeli military judge admitted that the boy was too young to stay in prison, Hasan was released on the condition that he would come back to the court to finish the trial at a later date. This trial followed the initial hearing last Wednesday at Ofer, where Maan News Agency reported that the judge insisted that Fadel pay the court 2,000 shekels ($530) for Hasan’s bail. According to Maan, Fadel then publicly asked the court, “What law allows a child to be tried in court and then asks his father to pay a fine? I will not pay the fine, and you have to release my child … This is the law of Israel’s occupation.”

Consumed by their sons’ situations, Mukarrem and Fadel say they are trying to do the best for their family under attack. “What can we do?” asked Fadel. “We lock the doors. We lock the windows. We have nothing with which to protect our family and our neighbors from the soldiers or the settlers. If a Palestinian kidnapped and beat and jailed an Israeli child, the whole world would be up in arms about it. It would be all over the media. But the Israelis, they come into our communities with jeeps and tanks and bulldozers, they take our children and throw them into prison, and no one cares.”

DCI-PS’s Jamal reiterates the point that international laws made to protect children under military occupation have been ignored by Israel since the occupation began in 1967. “Most of the time, we try to do our best to use the law, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child as weapons against this brutality,” said Jamal. “All of these laws exist, but Israel uses their own military laws as excuses to defy international law. As Palestinians, we have to work together to create solidarity against this brutality. Through our work, we try to tell the international community what’s going on with Palestinian children to create a wide berth of support against this situation. We believe that the only way this will stop is through the support of the international community.”

Amir slowly began speaking again 36 hours after the beating by Israeli soldiers. Zahira Meshaal, a Bethlehem-based social worker specializing in the effects of trauma in children, said that Amir’s “elective mutism,” a symptom of extreme psychological shock caused by his beating and detention, is a common response, but that it is a good sign that he began talking again. “This is a reaction of fear on many levels. Amir’s house and his family are his only source of security,” said Meshaal. “This was taken away from him the moment the soldiers invaded his home. It’s easy to attend to the immediate trauma, but the long-term effects will undoubtedly be difficult to address. He’ll need a lot of mental health services from now on.”

Meshaal comments on the nature of this attack in the context of the unraveling situation inside Hebron. “We are talking about a place that is on the front lines of trauma,” she said. “This is an ongoing and growing injury to the entire community. Parents have to be a center of security for their children, but that’s being taken away from them. Especially in Hebron, the Israeli settlers and soldiers know this, and use this tactic to force people to leave the area. It’s a war of psychology. This is a deliberate act to make the children afraid and force people to leave so that their children can feel safer.”

At the end of our interview last Thursday, Amir sent a message to American children. “We are kids, just like you. We have the right to play, to move freely. I want to tell the world that there are so many kids inside the Israeli jails. We just want to have freedom of movement, the freedom to play.” Amir said that he wants to be a heart surgeon when he grows up. His mother and father told me that they hope Amir’s own heart — and theirs — heals from last week’s repetitive and cumulative trauma at the hands of the interminable Israeli occupation.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is the co-host and Senior Producer of Flashpoints, a daily investigative newsmagazine on Pacifica Radio. She is also a correspondent for Inter Press Service. She regularly reports from Palestine, where she also runs media workshops for youth in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

Filed under: Israel, Occupied West Bank, Palestine, Soldier Brutality, Torture, zionist harassment

From our partners at The Agonist

Mar 8

Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a “city of 80,000 people” as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand.

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict. ~ Gareth Porter

See Marjah ~ Google Earth/Maplandia

US keeps secret anti-Taliban militia on a bright leash

They are a secret tribal militia, the controversial creation of US commanders in Afghanistan eager to buttress local opposition to the Taliban. So clandestine are the units formed to protect villages in a critical valley in southern Afghanistan that US officials and special forces commanders in Kabul refuse to discuss them.

But the Guardian has learned that in one important regard, the Local Defence Initiative forces are not so secretive after all. As they patrol villages close to the key southern city of Kandahar, the fighters are being forced to wear bright yellow reflector belts so that their special forces mentors do not mistake them for Taliban.

** Iraq election turnout 62%, officials say
** Years before US can judge Iraq success: Odierno
** Britain won respect in Middle East over Iraq: Miliband
** Rethink Afghanistan

please check comments for updates and related articles

In Baghdad, mortar rounds mark Iraq election day

Dozens of mortar rounds thudded across Baghdad on Sunday morning and at least 12 people were killed as Iraqis went to the polls in an election testing the stability of the country’s still-fragile democracy.

Insurgents had vowed to disrupt the elections — which they see as validating the Shiite-led government and the U.S. presence — with violence in order to increase uncertainty over a looming U.S. troop drawdown and widen still jagged sectarian divisions.

As the polls opened at 7 a.m., bombs began exploding and mortar rounds landing across the city.

** Live-Blogging the Iraqi Elections
** U.S. adopts hands-off approach to Iraqi vote
** Iraq parliamentary election hit by insurgent attacks(pic-BBC)
** A look at the major coalitions in Iraq’s election
** Sadr urges Iraqis to vote to help end U.S. “occupation”
** Sunday Iraq vote culminates seven years of sacrifice
** Could US troops remain in Iraq?

Iran’s Ahmadinejad to visit Afghanistan on Monday

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travels to neighboring Afghanistan on Monday for talks with his counterpart Hamid Karzai, an Iranian news agency reported on Sunday.

The semi-official Mehr news agency said the one-day trip to Kabul would be Ahmadinejad’s first visit to Afghanistan since both he and Karzai were re-elected last year.

Karzai had invited Ahmadinejad and the visit was aimed at expanding bilateral ties, Mehr added. They would also discuss “solutions for settling the problems” in Afghanistan.

** Female Marines set to win over rural women’s hearts, minds in Afghanistan
** Rethink Afghanistan
** US military deaths in Afghan region at 930

Colorado isn’t waiting for Washington to move aggressively on clean energy, as CAP Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy explains here.

On March 5, the state Senate approved a measure to increase Colorado’s renewable energy standard (RES) to 30% by 2020, and on March 8th, the House finalized the bill, sending it to Gov. Bill Ritter for his signature.

The legislation confirms Colorado’s leadership in nurturing the development of clean, renewable energy just six years after voters approved the state’s first RES – 10% by 2015. In 2006 the state legislature doubled the RES to 20% by 2020, and with enactment of the latest measure only California will have a set a more ambitious state requirement than Colorado, 33% by 2020.

As State Rep. Max Tyler wrote in Sunday’s Denver Post, “There’s new energy in town, and it’s powering a boom that will make Colorado a leader in recovering from this financial downturn. This clean renewable energy will grow Colorado’s economy and lead to a brighter future.”

The 30% renewables mandate, which covers large investor-owned utilities, also requires those utilities to get 3% of their power from distributed generation – rooftop solar and other small solar and wind sources owned by individuals, small businesses and communities. That requirement is expected to boost Colorado’s solar energy economy, which already includes 230 companies employing more than 2,500 people.

According to a new report by Vote Solar and Environment Colorado, a 3% distributed generation standard that is expanded to include all of the state’s utilities would mean 1,000 megawatts of distributed power generation and create 3,333 construction period jobs per year, save 6.8 billion gallons of water and avoid emissions of 30 million tons of CO2 – the equivalent of taking nearly 670,000 cars off the road.

The new, higher RES, wrote Tyler, “will continue to encourage the creation of our own energy businesses as well as drawing new energy companies and investment capital to Colorado. Good new jobs will be created for folks from engineers to construction workers. We will increase our energy independence, protect our environment, and cement Colorado as a leader in America’s clean energy revolution.”

– Tom Kenworthy

Internal CIA documents reveal a meticulous protocol that was far more brutal than Dick Cheney's "dunk in the water" Self-proclaimed waterboarding fan Dick Cheney called it a no-brainer in a 2006 radio interview: Terror suspects should get a "a dunk in the water." But recently released internal documents reveal the controversial "enhanced interrogation" practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney's description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty. Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney "specially designed" to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner's nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking - and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing. The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding "session." Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to "dam the runoff" and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee's mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second "applications" of liquid in each two-hour session - and could dump water over a detainee's nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session - a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding - the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus. "This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing," said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. "The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, 'This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.' It just sounds like lunacy," he said. "This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine."

George W. Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove claims “one of the biggest mistakes” of that presidency was not aggressively challenging critics who charged that Bush “lied” to the American people about the reasons for the Iraq War, an accusation that Rove insists was false and unfair. In his forthcoming book, Courage and Consequence, Rove calls the “lie” charge “a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency” and blames himself for “a weak response” that underestimated “how damaging this assault was.” But the problem with Rove’s account is that not only did Bush oversee the twisting of intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003 but he subsequently lied – and lied repeatedly – about how Iraq had responded to United Nations inspection demands. So, while it may be impossible to say for certain what Bush believed about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction, it can’t be argued that Bush didn’t know that Iraq declared that it had destroyed its WMD stockpiles and let U.N. inspectors in to see for themselves in the months before the invasion. Nevertheless, Bush followed up his false pre-war claims about Iraq’s WMD with a post-invasion insistence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had…

喬姆斯基:美帝衰弱後, 世界更多元 作者:李雪莉 　出處:天下雜誌 409期 2008/11 今年八十歲的他，依舊精神奕奕，每天親自閱讀數百封電子郵件。 喬姆斯基的辦公室位於ＭＩＴ的代表建築 Stata Center 以其不對稱的怪異造型聞名，一個有名的迷宮建築。他的辦公室32-D840更是一個找不到的住址，只有語言所的人知道其所在。據說，這是為了避免每天絡繹不絕的不速之客。 十月初的秋天午後，喬姆斯基在他的辦公室接受首次的中文媒體專訪。在他的辦公室裡，除了滿屋的書，最顯眼的就是門邊的羅素肖像，代表他對這位英國哲學家與諾貝爾獎得主致力社會改革的敬意。

頂著滿頭白髮的他，待人和煦溫柔，完全沒有大師身段。他說理清晰、冷靜自持，即使在提出最嚴厲的批評時，也像是在你耳邊呢喃一般。終身信奉和平主義、無政府主義的他，早已將其信念實踐在他的生命裡。 在訪談中，他批判美國的戰爭惡行、美國民主的淺薄化。同時，他也展現了廣博的歷史知識、對時局的精準掌握，與《天下》分享他對金融危機、市場經濟、新世界秩序的觀察： （以下為專訪QA） 李雪莉：隨著金融危機的出現，從華爾街到一般人民都受到衝擊。在你看來，哪裡出了錯？ 喬姆斯基：其實沒有哪裡出錯，市場正是依據它的設計在運作。市場制度有眾人稱道的效率，但是，市場制度本來就蘊藏很大的風險，只是現在爆發了。 金融機構的本質就是要承擔風險的，這就是它該做的工作。 金融機構本來就沒有考量到轉嫁到他人的外部性。而金融機構失靈的結果，會帶給他人嚴重的後果。以經濟學家的術語來說，這代表風險被低估了。 市場經濟的嚴重弊病 八○年代開始金融自由化，一開始就很清楚，金融危機會是一個更頻繁而且更巨大的挑戰，這就是現在發生的狀況。 問：這個危機衝擊了全世界，資本主義市場未來會如何運作？ 答：很多人覺得市場是很有效率的，其實正好相反，它有很嚴重的無效率。 這就是為何沒有一個社會是完全按照自由市場原則運作的，除非是在外強逼迫下才採取自由市場。 為何台灣發展起來，而拉丁美洲沒有？因為拉丁美洲遵行市場開放原則。像台灣、南韓、日本等東亞國家並沒有完全開放市場，東亞政府很實質介入、建立一個可供發展的環境，並以種種方式投資特定科技產業，才讓東亞國家發展起來。 歐美強權卻會逼迫殖民地國家接受自由市場原則，所以它們才淪為第三世界。看看現代史，歐美之外的後起國家，能發展成先進國家的只有一個，日本。 這並不是偶然的。這都是有跡可循的。只要你看看為何富有的國家發展起來，而貧窮的國家淪為第三世界，你就知道市場原則不是好答案。 富有國家並不遵從市場規則。對它們而言，自由市場是權宜之計，只有對自己有利時才主張。 美國帝國主義加速瓦解 李雪莉：美國將有新的總統，而你怎麼看待布希政府過去八年的亂象？ 喬姆斯基：有一個趣事。兩千年的時候，我的一位好友反諷地呼籲大家應該投票給布希，因為由布希當總統，美國帝國主義會瓦解得更快。但這過程付出很多代價：許多人的生命受到傷害、美國的國際聲譽跌到谷底、國內經濟窮困。 少數的有錢人不受影響，但是大多數的人薪資成長停滯，甚至嚴重下滑，他們在布希任內付出很大的代價。 現在美國國債驚人，八年前布希上任時國庫還有盈餘，如今美國在全球開戰，世界更紛亂，我會說這是很糟糕的成績。 問：你認為這次的金融危機，會影響美國的世界地位，美國帝國會瓦解嗎？ 答：我不認為美帝會瓦解。美國有非常龐大的資源。很多人談論新興國家的崛起，例如中國的崛起，但是要注意，中國內部有很多問題是美國沒有的，例如大規模的貧窮問題，嚴重的生態問題，如何控制人口的問題。 以聯合國的人力資源指標來說，這是可以大略比較各國人力資源的指標，上次我看的時候，中國大概排第八十名，印度則大概是一百三十名。這些新興力量還是有很多問題的。 在我看來，中國是比印度好些，不幸地，原因正是中國是極權政府，它讓中國可以集中全力發展，因此做得比印度好。 在文化大革命期間，毛澤東政權下死了很多人。但印度死了更多人，有一億人，他們純粹是因為糧食與醫療資源不足死亡的。但相較當時中國，印度的經濟反而自由。 儘管毛的文革政策是那麼殘酷，但他的政策卻讓中國少死了一些人口，而且創造了一個讓發展得以進行的框架。這些是事實，儘管是讓人不舒服的事實。 世界會更多元 李雪莉：你認為世界秩序與版圖會出現什麼樣的改變？ 喬姆斯基：這個世界會更多元化。在二次大戰結束後，美國的強大超越任何過往的強權，美國掌握了全球一半的財富，沒有其他的工業國可以跟其匹敵。 美國的國防力量無人能比，控制了海洋、控制了天空、控制自然資源。但這種權力是不可能長久的。
如果把時間拉長，看看十七與十八世紀，那時的世界強權是中國，是印度，他們產業更發達，更先進，市場制度更健全。 而當時的歐洲，歐洲歷史學家證實，歐洲當時的暴力文化是更先進的，他們先進的地方就是他們是野蠻人，就像亞洲的蒙古人一樣，彼此爭戰，所以他們能征服世界。英國以武力征服印度，也以同樣的方式征服中國，都是依靠先進的暴力文化。這種文化感染了其他國家，如日本與法國，也進來分一杯羹。 現在，中國與印度的資本發展起來了。日本、新加坡、波斯灣周邊的國家也累積了相當的資本；巴西與其他南美洲的國家也發展起來了，不再仰美國鼻息，所以歐美國家才對委內瑞拉與玻利維亞那麼憤怒。美國憤怒是因為覺得這些南美國家不該尋求自主，應該是美國的奴隸才對。
但是，南美洲國家會繼續發展下去，中國也是，世界會更多元化。 美國國力會相對式微，但，美國還是擁有相當大的優勢的。它還是世界最富有的國家，擁有廣大的領土，有自然資源與廣大的內需市場，而且美國是個很同質的社會。 美國之所以同質性很高，理由很簡單，因為歐洲來的人滅絕了美國原住民。而歐洲本土卻很多元，因為彼此沒有被滅絕。 華盛頓就說，美國天生就是個帝國。美國是世界上唯一一建國就是帝國的國家。美國在領土上一直擴張。傑佛遜，最自由派的美國開國元勳之一，也宣稱我們要拿下西部的所有領土。 歐洲整體經濟還能跟美國抗衡，但是軍事上，美國的軍事支出是全球其他國家的總合。沒有人能跟美國在軍事上匹敵。 但可預見的是，經濟上，美國已經不是獨大了。世界上已有三個經濟中心：以美國為中心的北美圈、以德法為主的歐洲，以及中國、日本、南韓、台灣為主的東亞。 問：這樣更多元的世界，你認為更好嗎？ 答：我無法預言。以現在的金融危機而言，沒人知道會如何發展下去。這個發展態勢也很有可能會導向類似三○年代的大蕭條。 嚴肅地看，當初大蕭條帶來什麼？法西斯主義與獨裁者。想想看二○年代的德國，那是當時最民主的國家，是人類文明的巔峰，其科學、文學、藝術都是最頂尖的。結果不到十年，變成人類史上最殘暴的國家。大蕭條是原因之一。 挑戰更大，因為利害關係更大 問：該如何面對這些不確定呢？ 答：我們現在比二○年代的德國有更多優勢。我們有選擇、機會和選項來面對危機。大致上，美國人對於這些危機的態度還算穩定。 問：你經歷過美國最動盪的時代，你覺得這個時代挑戰更大嗎？ 答：六○年代是很多挑戰，光是一個越南戰爭就夠糟了，死了大概四百萬人。古巴危機時，我們真的是在戰爭的邊緣。 現在的喬治亞戰爭，如果喬治亞是北約（ＮＡＴＯ）的成員國（這是美國一直想做的），我們現在已經開戰了，我們今天也不會在這裡聊天。 小布希現在推動喬治亞入北約，然後將飛彈防禦系統設置在捷克與波蘭，這是對俄羅斯的大威脅。結果現在俄羅斯反彈了，開始增加國防軍費，建構軍事力量。 美國參議院現在討論提供印度軍事技術，這是嚴重違反禁止核武擴散條約。這個效應立即可見，法國現在也要提供印度相關科技。一旦你破壞了條約，整個系統就瓦解了。 這個時代挑戰更大，因為利害關係更大。

By Tom Adams, an attorney and former monoline executive

I’m usually cynical about these “genius of Wall Street” articles, but the Vanity Fair article “Larry Fink’s $12 Trillion Shadow” by Suzanna Andrews, about the head of the world’s largest money manager, BlackRock, raises the cliche to another level. My skepticism results both from the disconnect between the glowing tone of the article versus some of the information presented, as well as how the depiction of BlackRock is at odds with my own observations of the firm.

Let’s go past the puffery and do some quick computations:

I count losses on over $12 billion dollars of CDOs and CMBS plus losses on other large investments during the crisis in this article, which i suspect misses several billion of dollars of other losses elsewhere in the portfolio.

I count dozens of highly questionable conflicts of interest combined with a seriously problematic Fed (and Geithner, once again) refusing to disclose critical information about such for conflicts. David Patterson is in hot water over $6000 in yankee tickets and about $20,000 in conflicted horse racing fees, but Blackrock can receive hundreds of millions of dollars on two sides of a deal while getting paid for dozens of other highly conflicted, government related companies. On what planet does this make sense?

I count repeated examples of an egomaniac consolidating a dangerous level of power and doubling down on its level of too big to fail with a total disregard for the any sort of systemic risk this might present.

The article also makes much of the Aladdin model, which has proven a very effective marketing tool for the firm:

But while its size was impressive, what would distinguish BlackRock was its state- of-the-art system for evaluating and managing risk. With 5,000 computers running 24 hours a day, overseen by a team of engineers, mathematicians, analysts, and programmers, BlackRock’s “computer farm” could monitor millions of daily trades and scrutinize every single security in its clients’ investment portfolios to see how they would be affected by even the most minor changes in the economy. Churning through 200 million calculations each week, its computers could simulate every imaginable shift in interest rates, every conceivable change in the financial markets, and stress-test the performance of hundreds of thousands of securities in numerous global-crisis scenarios.

Let’s start with a simple observation: did the use of Aladdin model save any of BlackRock’s clients during the upheaval of 2007 and 2008? Exactly how well did those models anticipate the market perturbations that we saw? Pretty much every quant based model performed poorly during this period. But the article is silent on this point, which is telling. If Aladdin miraculously outdid the other strictly math-based risk models, one would expect Fink would have made sure to stress this point. There’s every reason to suspect that Aladdin is yet another example of what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls statistically-based risk models: “non-performing airbags”. They do a great job of measuring day to day risk, and a poor one of preparing users for the sort of price movements that will kill investors using leverage. And now this model and this analysis is effectively the new monopolistic rating agency for government controlled investment portfolios while displaying even less transparency than Moody’s and S&P did when their opinions dominated the market.

The article similarly has a very curious discussion of how Fink was on a short list to head of Merrill, and lost out to John Thain. The most obvious reason is massive conflicts of interest, since as the piece notes, Merrill owned 40% of BlackRock, but the story features this tidbit first:

Fink would tell people that Merrill’s board had virtually assured him that the job was his, but that the offer evaporated after he demanded he first be allowed to perform a full analysis of

the bank’s mammoth subprime portfolio to gauge the extent of its problems.

How would BlackRock not know how much crap was in Merrill’s portfolio? Even if he wasn’t sure on the ownership of the many crappy CDO deals that Merrill had originated, wouldn’t his knowledge of AIG’s portfolio (which indicated who each counterparty was) have given him a pretty good clue to Merrill’s distribution strategy? i mean, if a lowly guy like me had heard back in March of 2007 that Merrill was stuck with over $20 billion of MBS and CDO bonds, how is it this supposed genius of Wall Street seemed so unaware that he would want to be head of an insolvent company?

Similarly, how the heck did Blackrock sign up for billions of dollars of Stuyvesant Town exposure at the absolute top of the market, based on the assumption that the investors could kick out rent regulated tenants, raise rents and bring in new higher paying tenants in an environment where real estate prices (including apartment rents) were very likely soon to be plummeting? How many bad (and obvious) assumptions went into that deal that Aladdin seemed to miss? Had anyone at Blackrock ever actually picked up a local paper in the last twenty five years, which might have given them some sense of the relationship that rent regulated tenants had with their landlords? On top of which – a multibillion dollar deal entirely within one zip code? Do you really need 600 people, running 5000 computers, 24 hours a day to come up with that analysis?

So why is Larry Fink and his company the subject of such a glowing article? I had actually thought he was a pretty good businessman before I read this but he comes off looking like a bad analyst, a vengeful ratfink and a parasite who made most of his and his company’s money through government connections, blatant breaches of conflict and rule bending (oh, but he does fly commercial, so he must be a real down to earth guy). Seriously, from the time of the S&L crisis, has he ever not had a big government contract to keep the lights on, while submitting million dollar a day contracts which the government then fights to keep secret in flagrant violation of all established practices?

Where would Blackrock be without the FDIC, the RTC, LTMC, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, dozens of desperate state pension funds? When will someone audit their fees and assess what exactly it is they get paid for and why it is Palooka Bank in Iowa couldn’t do a better job? At least Palooka Bank would probably know better than to bet billions of dollars of its own and other people’s money on a New York City landlords being able to magically toss tenants out on the street.

Perhaps articles like these, which are so wildly out of tune with the current popular attitudes towards Wall Street genius, are finally reaching a saturation point with journalists and publications. Even as they try to celebrate one of the great bankers, they seem to run short of noteworthy accomplishments beyond cozying up to the great government fee paying machine.

The interview with Rep. Kucinich starts about 4 minutes into the 10 minute video. Rep. Kucinich clearly outlines his position on health care reform, saying that the bill should include a "robust" public option, as it's defined here and here. A "robust" public option would offer all Americans, regardless of their state residency, the option to opt into a single payer system, like Medicare for all.

In addition, Rep. Kucinich reinforced his position that the health care reform bill shouldn't prohibit states from doing their own "single-payer" systems through the "ERISA exemptions," as noted by Rep. Tammy Baldwin, in 2007:

"Clearly, on the subject of health care for all, we're not at a loss for words or ideas, but we still haven't figured out how to get the job done," she said. "But where we are seeing the job get done is at the state level. Innovative proposals in states such as Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Oregon, California and Wisconsin demonstrate a clear desire on the part of the states to reach an agreement and move forward," she noted. She added, though, that states are constrained by federal laws and regulations.

( click title for more )

A reader writes:

What I would really like to talk about is intermarriage. I have come to greatly abhor tribalism of all kinds, fueled most of all by this very conflict.  That is why I firmly believe that intermarriage should be encouraged strongly, to just short of making it mandatory.  If love isn’t everything, then love is nothing.  But most important of all, the ’silent holocausters’ need to be stopped.

It is forward of me to say this, but rip all vestiges of guilt you feel about it out of you.  Not only is it unhealthy, it only serves to help those who see identity as more important than happiness, even to the point of unending war.

Am I insensitive to their strongly held beliefs?  Maybe, but it’s not like I’m throwing white phosphorous at them or anything.

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Alex Kane at the Indypendent has a report on the silent march tonight by hundreds outside the Waldorf, where an IDF fundraiser featured the Israeli military’s chief of general staff, Gabi Ashkenazi:

“Our idea is to show the totally atrocious contradiction of having a $1,000 a plate dinner for people who a year ago killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians,” said Dorothy Zellner, a founding member of Jews Say No!  “People who commit these kind of war crimes should not be celebrated and should not be welcome here in our city.”

Many lamented the fact that while [dinner speaker and IDF chief of general staff Gabi] Ashkenazi may be fearful of being arrested in European countries that adhere to the principle of universal jurisdiction, he is worry free about the United States.

“A terrorist, a war criminal, should not be dining in the streets of New York.  He belongs in jail,” said Dima Abisaab, a Lebanese-American activist with Al-Awda New York:  The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, which organized a separate rally across the street from the Waldorf…

Amer Shurrab, a Palestinian from the Gazan city of Khan Younis and a graduate of Middlebury College, participated in the silent protest.

“I’m here for my two brothers, who were shot at by the Israeli army over a year ago.  They were shot at, left to bleed to death by the Israeli army and denied medical help,” he said.  “I’m here for them, and I’m here for the over 1,400 innocent civilians who suffered the same fate and were subject to Israeli army war crimes.”

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The day before Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Israel — supposedly on a mission to help kick-start peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians — the Netanyahu government made its contempt for the Obama administration clear by approving new settlement construction.

They were quick to take offense — they being the Israelis!

“While we welcome Vice President Biden, a longtime friend and supporter of Israel,” Danny Danon, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, told the Washington Post, “we see it as nothing short of an insult that President Obama himself is not coming.”

Washington on the other hand had no interest in creating a fuss about settlement growth — its impotence on that particular issue has already been amply demonstrated. Pushing for a real settlement freeze is passé. The new game is proximity talks and shuttle diplomacy.

After 17 years of direct talks it’s now time to talk from a distance and have George Mitchell like an Energizer bunny going back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Irrespective of how much life there might be in his batteries, the Arab League has thankfully imposed a four-month deadline on this charade.

If the latest “initiative” seems like an exercise in atmospherics, an Israeli official was straightforward enough to confirm the fact when he told Ynet that resuming talks with the Palestinians “would create an atmosphere in the Arab world and the international community that would allow the world to focus on the real threat – Iran.”

George Mitchell is going to allow the Israelis to talk to the Palestinians so that the world can focus on Iran.

It’s not a novel idea. It came up three-and-a-half years ago in Washington when Philip Zelikow, Special Counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, caused a stir by making a similar linkage between the threat from Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The controversy in Zelikow’s suggestion was that it hinted that the Bush administration might defy Tel Aviv and remove the peace process from its preservative, but Zelikow’s concern was the same as that of the Israelis now: how to mount pressure on Iran. This depended, he said, on strengthening an anti-Iran coalition.

What would bind that coalition and help keep them together is a sense that the Arab-Israeli issues are being addressed, that they see a common determination to sustain an active policy that tries to deal with the problems of Israel and the Palestinians. We don’t want this issue … [to] have the real corrosive effects that it has, or the symbolic corrosive effects that it causes in undermining some of the friends we need [as] friends to confront some of the serious dangers we must face together.

Note that Zelikow was not pushing for anything so grand as a resolution to the conflict, merely that an effort be made to create “a sense” that the issues were being addressed.

Initiatives, summits, and dark-suited earnestness with a liberal sprinkling of handshakes — we all know the routine. “What will they ask Israel to do? Meet with Abu Mazen? – so you’ll meet with Abu Mazen,” one Washington hand told Haaretz at the time.

That was 2006. Now in 2010 the Israelis don’t even need to inconvenience themselves by sitting in the same room as the Palestinians, even though Netanyahu would be happy to be granted the photo-op of face-to-face talks — talks that he can be confident will be fruitless.

The anti-Iran coalition might still be rather shaky but there is another coalition that has proved to be durable and near universal: the coalition of states who remain content to pay lip-service to the Palestinian issue; the political leaders who gladly shake hands with Mahmoud Abbas as though having Ramallah’s jaded political leaders received in global capitals was all the Palestinians could ever have aspired for.

But when it comes to dealing with the Israelis no one has a better understanding than the Israelis themselves. Jewish settlers in the West Bank insist that if they are uprooted, others will be forced to pay the “price tag.”

President Obama on the other hand insists that for Israel “the status quo is unsustainable” but neither he nor any of the other political leaders who profess some level of concern for the Palestinians have been willing to exact a price for Israeli intransigence. Until a price tag is applied effectively, Israel can remain confident in the durability of the status quo.

This is a cross-post from Woodward’s site, War in Context.

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Having spent most of the day stressing "his personal love for the Jewish state as well as the ‘unshakable’ commitment of the United States to Israel’s security," Vice President Biden in return was granted a special surprise by Israel’s right-wing religious Interior Minister, Eli Yishai – the announcement of 1,600 more housing units to be built at the Ultra-Orthodox settlement of Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem.

Having recently been dragged into negotiations with Israel kicking and screaming, the Palestinians were naturally apoplectic.

Nabil Abu-Rudeina, spokesman for the Palestinian government, called the new housing announcement “a dangerous decision that will torpedo the negotiations and sentence the American efforts to complete failure,” adding that “it is now clear that the Israeli government is not interested in negotiating nor is it interested in peace. The American administration must respond to this provocation with actual measures, as it is no longer possible to just turn the other cheek, and massive American pressure is required in order to compel Israel to abandon its peace destroying behavior.”

The White House, clearly upset, had press chief Robert Gibbs condemn the move.

Applying the usual diplomatic slap on the wrist for such actions, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Tel Aviv said "the United States opposed unilateral actions that prejudiced the outcome of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority aimed at creating two states, and this was such an action."

Biden, perhaps realizing he had been obviously humiliated by the extremist Yishai, felt compelled to release the following statement:

I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem. The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel. We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them. This announcement underscores the need to get negotiations under way that can resolve all the outstanding issues of the conflict. The United States recognizes that Jerusalem is a deeply important issue for Israelis and Palestinians and for Jews, Muslims and Christians. We believe that through good faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome that realizes the aspirations of both parties for Jerusalem and safeguards its status for people around the world. Unilateral action taken by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations on permanent status issues. As George Mitchell said in announcing the proximity talks, "we encourage the parties and all concerned to refrain from any statements or actions which may inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of these talks.

The text may have started out strong, but sounded rather Bidenesque by the end.

Ethan Bronner of the New York Times seemed stunned in his report, writing that "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clearly embarrassed at the move by his interior minister." As one of the commenters here remarked, "Bronner on the Biden Insult: Gee, how embarrassing! "

Earlier in the day, Biden expressed America’s "absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security." At one point he turned to Prime Minister Netanyahu and declared,

"Bibi you heard me say before, progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the US and Israel. There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security."

Whether there is any space between US and Israel, what is becoming obvious to everyone but the Obama Administration is that there will soon be no space left in East Jerusalem for a Palestinian capital, Netanyahu’s imaginary freeze notwithstanding.

Not knowing what was later in store for him, Biden tried to end the day on a sentimental note. "Netanyahu gave Biden a certificate saying that a ring of trees was planted in memory of his mother, Catherine Eugenia Jean Finnegan Biden, who passed away in January at the age of 92." Biden received the certificate with these words,

"My love for your country was watered by this Irish lady, who was proudest of me when I was working with and for the security of Israel."

If true, his mother must have been smiling on Joe today. But Eli Yishai had the last laugh of the day.
 

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All who draw the sword will die by the sword. -- Yeshua Ha-Notsri, Palestinian dissident, c. 33 CE.

I.
As we all know – or rather, as everyone but those who climb and claw their way to the top of power's greasy pole knows – the effects of war are vast, unforeseeable, long-lasting -- and uncontrollable. The far-reaching ripples of the turbulence will churn against distant shores and hidden corners, then roil back upon you in ways you could never imagine, for generations, even centuries.

Nor is "victory" in war proof against these deleterious effects. For the brutalization, moral coarsening, corruption and concentration of elite power that attend every war do not simply disappear from a society when the fighting stops. They persist, like microbes, in myriad forms, working with slow, corrosive force to degrade and deform the victors. Indeed, victory in battle often leads a society to enshrine war's most pernicious attributes: violence is ennobled, and becomes entrenched as an ever-ready instrument of national policy. Militarism is exalted, the way of peace dishonored: cries of "Appeasers! Cowards! Traitors!" greet every approach that fails to brandish the threat of extreme violence, that fails to "keep all options on the table."

The apparent "lesson" of victory – that there can be no right without armed might to win and safeguard it – quickly degenerates into the belief  that armed might is right. (William Astore has an excellent article here on how the collision with Nazi Germany infected America's military with a continuing admiration for the German war machine.) Military power becomes equated with moral worth, and the ability to wreak savage, unimaginable destruction through armed violence -- via thoughtless obedience to the orders of "superiors" – becomes a cherished attribute of society.

War is no longer seen as a vast, horrific failure of the human spirit, a scandalous betrayal of our common humanity, a sickening tragedy of irrevocable loss and inconsolable suffering – although this is its inescapable reality, even in a "good" war, for a "just" cause. (And of course no nation or faction has ever gone to war without declaring that its cause is just.) Instead of lamenting war, and girding for it, if at all, only in the most dire circumstances, with the most extreme reluctance, the infected society celebrates it at every turn. No national occasion – even a sporting event! – is complete without bristling displays of military firepower, and pious tributes to those wreaking violence around the world in blind obedience to their superiors.

Oddly enough, when a modern nation consciously adopts a "warrior ethos," it casts aside -- openly, even gleefully -- whatever virtue that ethos has historically claimed for itself, such as courage in battle and honor toward adversaries. In its place come the adulation of overwhelming technological firepower and the rabid demonization of the enemy (or the perceived enemy, or even the "suspected" enemy), who is stripped of all rights, all human dignity, and subject to "whatever it takes" to break him down or destroy him.

Thus our American militarists exult in the advanced hardware that allows "soldiers" to slaughter people from thousands of miles away, with missiles, bombs and bullets fired from lurking, unreachable drones high in the sky. (A recent study shows that even by the most conservative reckoning of who is or isn't a "militant," at least one third of the hundreds killed in the Bush-Obama drone campaigns in Pakistan are clearly civilians.) The drone "warriors" -- often living in complete safety and comfort -- see nothing but a bloodless image on a screen; they face no physical threat at all. This is assassination, not combat; it reeks of cowardice, and dehumanizes everyone it touches, the victims and the button-pushers alike. Yet our militarists -- most of whom, of course, have somehow never found the time to fight the wars they cheer for -- wax orgasmic about this craven weaponry. In the transvaluation of values that militarism produces, cowardice becomes a martial virtue.

Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Laureate, pushes forward with plans for the "Prompt Global Strike" system of "conventional" super-missiles that can rain down massive death -- unstoppable, undeterrable, without warning -- anywhere on the planet within an hour. All this, while expanding shorter-range missile "defense" systems that bristle with blatantly offensive potential, and intent, all over the world. Plus spending billions to "modernize" the nuclear arsenal, ensuring that it stays effective enough to murder the entire earth, while weeding out some "redundant" warheads as a PR gesture.

Meanwhile, the drone programs -- emblazoned with names that proudly proclaim their savage nature: "Predators" and "Reapers," launching "Hellfire" missiles into sleeping villages -- keep expanding relentlessly. As noted by Nick Turse -- who is doing invaluable work detailing the deadly nuts and bolts of the militarist empire and its profiteers -- the Pentagon is drooling over visions of vast robotic forces filling the heavens and roaming the earth, even down to the smallest crevice. He rightly notes the main purpose of this massively funded R&D: to make war "easier," less deadly to "our side," and thus more palatable to the public:

This means bigger, badder, faster drones – armed to the teeth – with sensor systems to monitor wide swathes of territory and the ability to loiter overhead for days on end waiting for human targets to appear and, in due course, be vaporized by high-powered munitions. It’s a future built upon advanced technologies designed to make targeted killings – remote-controlled assassinations – ever more effortless.

... For the Air Force, such a prospect is the stuff of dreams, a bright future for unmanned, hypersonic lethality; for the rest of the planet, it’s a potential nightmare from which there may be no waking.

But while Turse outlines this potential nightmare in grim detail (the whole piece should be read in full), we are of course beset by present nightmares in horrific plenty. And few are more chilling than the ruling establishment's astonishingly swift acceptance of outright torture as an open tool of national policy. This acceptance not only includes the increasingly frenzied praise and championing of torture by the circle of war criminals and accomplices led by Dick Cheney; in slightly more restrained tones, it goes right across the board among the political and media elite. Torture is now nothing more than a topic for "debate" -- debates which center largely on the relative "effectiveness" of various torture techniques, or else on mindless (not to mention heartless) hairsplitting over the meaning of the word "torture."

There is of course a myth that Barack Obama has "ended" the practice of torture. This is not even remotely true. For one thing, as we have often noted here, the Army Field Manual that Obama has adopted as his interrogation standard permits many practices that any rational person would consider torture. For another, we have no way of verifying what techniques are actually being used by the government's innumerable "security" and intelligence agencies, by the covert units of the military -- and by other entities whose very existence is still unknown. These agencies are almost entirely self-policed; they investigate themselves, they report on themselves to the toothless Congressional "oversight" committees; we simply have to take these organizations -- whose entire raison d'etre is deceit, deception, lawlessness and subterfuge -- at their word. And of course, we have no way of knowing what is being done in the torture chambers of foreign lands where the United States often "outsources" its captives, including American citizens.

Finally, even if the comforting bedtime story of Obama's ban of torture techniques in interrogation were true, there remains his ardent championing of the right to seize anyone on earth -- without a warrant, without producing any evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing -- and hold them indefinitely, often for years on end, in a legal limbo, with no inherent rights whatsoever, beyond whatever narrowly constricted, ever-changing, legally baseless and often farcical "hearings" and tribunals the captors deign to allow them. Incarceration under these conditions is itself an horrendous act of torture, no matter what else might happen to the captive. Yet Obama has actively, avidly applied this torture, and has gone to court numerous times to defend this torture, and to expand the use of this torture.

Many thousands of innocent people have already been forced through the meat grinder of this torture -- at one point early in the Iraq War, the Red Cross estimated that 70-90 percent of the more than 20,000 Iraqis being held by the Americans as "suspected terrorists" were not guilty of any crime whatsoever, much less 'terrorism'. And that is just a single snapshot, at a single point in time, of the vast gulag that America has wrapped around the earth -- a gulag where many have been murdered outright, not just tortured or unjustly imprisoned. And it is still going on, with scarcely a demur across the bipartisan establishment. The heinous and dishonorable practice of torture, physical and psychological, is now an intrinsic, openly established element of American society.

Murder, cowardice, torture, dishonor: these are fruits -- and the distinguishing characteristics -- of the militarized society. What Americans once would not do even to Nazis with the blood of millions on their hands, they now do routinely to weak and wretched captives seized on little or no evidence of wrongdoing at all. We are deep in the darkness, and hurtling deeper, headlong, all the time.

II.
Let's not kid ourselves, however. The militarism that has now gained such a strangulating ascendancy over American life did not drop down suddenly from the sky (or arrive on the hijacked bus that Bush and Cheney drove to the White House). Although this militarism has now reached unprecedented levels of institutional and political dominance, there has always been a strong warlike strain running through American history -- indeed, through its pre-history as well, as Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton demonstrate in their book, Dominion of War, detailing the decisive influence of war and imperialism on America's development over the past 500 years.

Nor is it a peculiarly American problem. As Caroline Alexander notes in her remarkable new work, The War That Killed Achilles:

If we took any period of a hundred years in the last five thousand, it has been calculated, we could expect, on average, 94 of those years to be occupied with large-scale conflicts in one or more parts of the world. This enduring, seemingly ineradicable fact of war is ... as intrinsic and tragic a component of the human condition as our very mortality.

We human beings have been shaped by millions of years of genetic breakage and mutation, all of which is still on-going. We are compounds of chaos, ignorance and error. Our psyches are frail and variegated things, isolated, with each individual consciousness formed from a unique and ever-shifting coalescence of billions of brain cells firing (and misfiring) in infinite, unrepeatable combinations. Beneath this electrical superstructure lie mechanical rhythms and erratic surges of instinct and impulse, dark, hormonal tides and drives that never reach the plane of awareness.

In the infancy of our species we began to cling -- fiercely, in fear and desire -- to patterns of behavior, emotion and thought that seemed to bring some sort of order, some containment of the whirlwind within us, and some protection from the dangers, known and unknown, that lurked outside. We began to do "whatever it takes" to preserve these patterns from the ever-present threat of their dissolution in the whirlwind, to impose them, by violence if necessary, on the recalcitrant material of reality -- including the always-unknowable, impenetrable reality of the Other, those mysterious combinations outside our isolated consciousness.

The patterns become ingrained, they sink into the substrate where they operate unquestioned and unseen, they become "natural," the way that things must be. Domination and obedience are among the strongest, and most enduring, of these patterns, taking multitudinous forms -- a "local habitation and a name" -- in the ever-changing circumstances of existence. War is their expression writ large. It is in us, it comes from us.

But to acknowledge war's intrinsic, universal character does not absolve us of the need to resist it. To say, "Oh, that's just human nature; it's always been this way and always will be this way," is not only a lazy, timorous acquiescence to base instinct, it also posits a settled, even eternal quality to human nature and human consciousness that simply does not and cannot exist. To go against war, to step outside the ingrained behavioral patterns of domination and obedience is indeed an "unnatural" act -- and it feels unnatural, it feels strange, and raw, and frightening. But the deeper fear -- of psychic and physical dissolution -- that lies at the foundation of these ever-more destructive patterns can only be faced down, changed, and wrenched into some more benevolent pattern by embracing the risk and discomfort of stepping forth, of stepping beyond -- literally, "transgressing" -- the boundaries of a wholly imaginary (or even hallucinatory) "human nature."

The whirlwind that characterizes the imperfect, breaking, misfiring, evolving reality of human consciousness is not only a producer of (very understandable) deep-seated fears; it is also a force for liberation. Because our nature is not ultimately fixed, we can, literally and figuratively, burn new connections in our brains, we can enlarge our consciousness and extend our empathetic understanding of those strange Others. And we have been doing this, in fits and starts, in lurches and staggers, with much backsliding and many wrong turns -- indeed, in ignorance and error -- for as long as we have been creatures cursed and gifted with self-awareness. We do have the capacity, the space, to resist the patterns of domination and obedience, to seek out new ways of seeing the world, of being in the world, of communing with others.

This seems, to me, a worthwhile thing to be getting on with during our painfully brief time on the earth, during our infinitesimal window of opportunity to make some small contribution toward pushing the project of being human -- or rather, becoming human -- down the road, at least a few more steps, in the direction of a better understanding, a broader consciousness, a greater enlightenment.

1. Occupational Hazards
As'ad AbuKhalil's headline on his brief post says it all: "Tragic accidents happen – every single day." He is referring to the latest killing of civilians by American occupation troops – not in Afghanistan this time, but in the now-forgotten war in Iraq, where death, corruption, repression and blowback are still raging.

2. Tony Blair: Liar, No. 876
It turns out that Tony Blair was told years before the Iraq invasion – in fact, even before the 9/11 attacks "that changed the world" and "made everything different" – that invading Iraq would be illegal (i.e., a Nuremberg-level war crime), as well as costly, destablizing and ineffective. This is revealed in documents from 2000 which the Independent has obtained, even though the "blue-ribbon" Chilcot Inquiry has refused to release it. What's more, the documents give the lie to Blair's recent testimony to the panel, and his claims elsewhere, that he had never discussed using troops to remove Saddam Hussein until after 9/11. Tony Blair, a liar? Imagine that!

3. All the Warmongering That's Fit to Print
Peter Casey at Antiwar.com does a remarkable thing: he actually reads the recent IAEA report, and finds that the New York Times deliberately distorted, even falsified the report's findings, in order to demonize Iran and mendaciously inflame fears of mad mullahs dropping nukes on America's holy heartland, and its plucky little outpost over in Israel. The NYT, plumping for imperial war? Imagine that!

4. Suburban Warfare
The Los Angeles Times brings us yet another story about America's brave, brave long-distance warriors: the Homeric heroes who sit in front of computer screens 10,000 miles away from battle, push buttons to kill people with robot-fired weapons, then go home to cozy suburban homes. Naturally, the story focuses on the great stress suffered by these bold 'soldiers,' as they go from shredding the viscera of some ragged Afghan walking around in his native land to pitching a ball with Junior in the backyard. In 10 years time, or less, most of our imperial slaughter will be carried out this way: no muss, no fuss, no risk, no mess – except for those piles of viscera on the other end.

5. Package Deal
Chris Hedges reminds us of why we should boycott FedEx, and how the unchallenged ascendancy of corporate power is, literally, crippling and killing working folk.

6. The Bitter End
Juan Cole brings word of a learned Theban at Harvard who has come up with a novel solution for the Middle East crisis: stop feeding the Palestinians, so they will quit breeding. Harvard Fellow Martin Kramer goes on to laud Israel's strangulation of Gaza for helping "break Gaza's runaway population growth." It is of course superfluous in us to point out that the deliberate decimation of a people by starvation and neglect is not unknown in recent history, and was in fact the first fatal step toward a somewhat more – how to put it? – final solution to a religio-ethnic conflict. The ironies here, as in so many policies of the plucky little outpost, are the bitterest imaginable.