Defending Zionism - Defending the Indefensible

Pro-Zionism: Defending the Indefensible - by Stephen Lendman

This article responds to a March 15 Los Angeles Times Judea Pearl one headlined: "Is anti-Zionism hate?" Pearl teaches computer science at UCLA, is the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. It was "formed....to continue Danny's mission and to address the root causes of this tragedy in the spirit" of the man it represents, including "uncompromised objectivity and integrity....and respect for people of all cultures...."

Some of its honorary board member belie this purpose:

-- former president Bill Clinton, an unindicted war criminal and backer of neoliberal plunder;

-- Elie Wiesel, a shameless self-promoter, "Holocaust" exploiter, and apologist for the most outrageous Israeli crimes;

-- Jordan's Queen Noor, wife of King Abdullah II, who, like his father Hussein, rules with dictatorial police state powers; and

-- Christiane Amanpour and Ted Koppel, two notables in the corporate media who never let facts conflict with their views and support for the powerful.

Pearl calls anti-Zionism "hate more dangerous than anti-Semitism, threatening lives and peace in the Middle East." Zionism is precisely the opposite as numerous Jewish writers, including this one, have addressed.

In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel explained how it fosters "imperialist expansion and militarism (with) signs of the fascist malignancy;" that it turned Israel "into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses" led by terrorists posing as democrats. Kovel's book and his work got him fired from the Bard College faculty effective July 1 when his current contract expires - for daring to criticize Israel, its Zionist ideology, state-sponsored terror, and decades of lawlessness and egregious behavior.

Kovel expressed outrage that institutions like Bard aren't bothered; that they grant Israel impunity, suppress dissent, then marginalize, punish, and remove the "heretics," ones like Kovel who honorably and courageously write truths.

Pearl railed about a UCLA Center for Near East Studies symposium invitation to "four longtime Israel bashers" so they could attack Zionism's legitimacy and "its vision of a two-state solution...." - a scheme to consign Palestinians to isolated cantons and steal their most valuable land.

He equates legitimate Israeli criticism and anti-Zionism with "criminaliz(ing) Israel's existence, distort(ing) its motives and malign(ing) its character, its birth, even its conception." He cites "Jewish leaders (condemning) this hate-fest as a dangerous invitation to anti-Semitic hysteria" even though one has nothing to do with the other and conflating them masks the real issue - Zionism's corrosive effects and the myths on which it's based.

Ones Pearl ignores in stating "Anti-Zionism rejects the very notion that Jews are a nation - a collective bonded by a common history - and, accordingly denies Jews the right to self-determination in their historical birthplace. It seeks the dismantling of the Jewish nation-state: Israel, (what it) 'grants' to other historically bonded collectives (e.g. French, Spanish, Palestinians), the right to nationhood...."

Pearl can't accept the hard facts that Tel Aviv University Professor Shlomo Zand documented in his important 2008 book: "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" It exposes biblical nonsense comprising core Zionist beliefs about Jews:

-- that ancient Romans expelled them;

-- their exodus from Egypt, then left to wander the earth rootless;

-- enslaved, oppressed, and tormented for centuries; and

-- the myth that God bestowed a "Greater Israel" for Jews alone - "A land without people for a people without land."

According to Israeli journalist Tom Segev and others:

-- there never was a Jewish people, just a Jewish religion;

-- there was no exile, therefore no return, and much of the Jewish Diaspora was voluntary; and

-- the story was a Zionist invention, a conspiracy to justify a future Jewish state, and now vilify Palestinian self-determination as a plot to destroy it.

With regard to other "bonded collectives," France, Spain, America and other states are nationalities, not religions. Israel is a Jewish state with rights for Jews alone. They matter. Others don't, and therein lies the difference. Palestinians, in contrast, are occupied, impoverished, oppressed, driven from their land, vilified for being Muslims, and victimized by slow-motion genocide to destroy them and any hope for self-determination.

"Are Jews a nation," asks Pearl? "Some philosophers would argue Jews are a nation first and religion second." He cites the usual mythology:

-- the Exodus and return to the "promised land before they received the Torah at Mt. Sinai;"

-- "the unshaken conviction in their eventual repatriation to (their) birthplace (since) the Roman expulsion;" and

-- their "shared history, not religion (as) the primary uniting force behind the secular, multiethnic society of Israel" - favoring Jews alone in a quasi secular/religious state where practicing another one is dangerous.

The "Jewish identity today feed(s) on Jewish history (more precisely folklore and myths) and its natural derivatives -

-- the state of Israel" despite its illegitimate birth and mythological roots;

-- "its struggle for survival" in spite of being the world's fourth most powerful military, nuclear-armed; with no enemies except the ones it makes; and having a history of aggressive wars; violence over conciliation; confrontation, not diplomacy; and claiming self-defense as justification when there is none;

-- "its cultural and scientific achievements," much of the latter involving militarism and hard line security; and

-- "its relentless drive for peace."

Pearl like most others can't accept the fact that Israel disdains peace, thrives on violence, and needs it as justification. The very notion of peace and conflict resolution terrifies it. What prime minister Yitzhak Shamir once admitted about Israel's 1982 Lebanon war - that there was "terrible danger....not so much a military one as a political one" so a pretext was invented to attack when no threat or justification existed.

It took 18,000 lives and left South Lebanon occupied until Israel Defense Forces withdrew in May 2000, except for the 25 square km Shebaa Farms area illegally retained to this day.

Yet Pearl insists that "anti-Zionism targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people, namely, the Jewish population of Israel, whose physical safety and personal dignity depend crucially on maintaining Israel's sovereignty. Put bluntly, the anti-Zionist 'plan' to do away with Israel condemns 5.5 million human beings, mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal defenselessness in a region where genocidal designs are not uncommon."

He adds that "anti-Zionist rhetoric (shows) academic sophistication and social acceptance in certain extreme yet vocal circles. (It's also) a stab in the back to the Israeli peace camp (and) gives credence (to) the hidden agenda of every Palestinian (for) the eventual elimination of Israel."

Now some facts misrepresented, distorted, or unstated by Pearl and other like-minded apologists:

-- There never was nor is there now an "Israeli peace camp," as explained above.

-- Israel's sovereignty isn't the issue. It exists, is accepted, and anti-Zionists don't dispute it. Further, since at least the late 1980s, Palestinian leaders (including Arafat and Hamas) have been willing to extend recognition. But Israel rejects all peace and reconciliation overtures, yet the dominant media and Zionists won't mention it.

-- Palestinians and other Arabs don't target Israel and haven't since the 1973 war. However, they justifiably defend themselves when attacked as international law allows.

-- Anti-Zionists, like this writer, have no plan or desire to destroy Israel, harm its people, or render them defenseless. Demanded, however, is that Israel behave, act civilized, practice the democracy it preaches, observe international and its own laws, and be held fully accountable when it doesn't, including its leaders for their crimes of war and against humanity to deter future ones from committing similar violations.

-- Israel alone menaces Palestinians and other regional states, including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Those nations, nor any others, threaten Israel, yet again media and Zionist propaganda say otherwise.

-- Zionist ideology is extremist, undemocratic, and hateful. It claims Jewish supremacy, specialness, and uniqueness - God's "chosen people." It harms Jews and non-Jews alike. Former Israeli scholar, critic, and life-long human rights activist, Israel Shahak (1933 - 2001), explained the dangers of Jewish chauvinism, religious fanaticism, and its influence on America's polity.

He called the notion of self-hating Jews "nonsensical" and explained the definition of a Jew:

...."if either their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother (or) great-great-grandmother were Jewesses by religion; or if the person (converted) to Judaism in a way satisfactory to the Israeli authorities, and on condition that the person has not converted from Judaism to another religion." According to the Talmud and post-Talmudic rabbinic law, "conversion (must be) performed by authorized rabbis in a proper manner." For females, it entails an outlandish ritual - "their inspection by three rabbis while naked in a 'bath of purification' " to confirm it.

Shahak wrote extensively on how Israel discriminates in favor of Jews in most every aspect of life, including the three he called most important - "residency rights, the right to work (and to have) equality before the law."

Zionist ideology demeans non-Jews and denies them equal rights in Israel. A body of law enforces it - to legally discriminate against non-Jewish Israeli citizens (for their religion) and Palestinians in the Territories, something unimaginable in all developed states and most others on every continent.

Shahak stated: "The obvious intention of such discriminatory measures is to decrease the number of non-Jewish citizens of Israel (to affirm its existence as a) 'Jewish' state" quite hostile to and demeaning of other religious faiths.

This is the Zionist message and why growing numbers of Jews and many others oppose it. Supporting Zionism is repugnant, indefensible, and equivalent to defending cancer, a malignancy relentlessly destroying its host. It must be exposed, denounced, and once and for all expunged from the body politic. A CIA study suggested the alternative - that beyond 20 years, Israel won't survive in its present form.

The Agency predicts "an inexorable movement away from a two-state to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based on democratic principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter of colonial Apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and 1967 (Palestinian) refugees. The latter (is) the precondition for sustainable peace in the region."

According to international lawyer Franklin Lamb, "the handwriting....is on the wall....history will reject the colonial enterprise sooner or later."

The report also predicts the return of all Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the exodus of two million Israeli Jews to America in the next 15 years. They're fed up and want to leave. Omitted from the report, or at least unrevealed, is that short of an equitable resolution to the long-standing Palestinian conflict, Israel eventually will destroy itself. Nations that live by the sword, die by it, and Israel is no exception.

The alternative is peace and reconciliation, something Israel flatly rejects. Unless that changes, its very existence is at stake, what history teaches but Israel has yet to learn.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12928

Obama's Latest No Banker Left Behind Scheme

Obama's Latest No Banker Left Behind Scheme - by Stephen Lendman

On Wall Street, that is. So hyped by advance fanfare, Timothy Geithner unveiled his Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) on March 23, the latest in a growing alphabet soup of handouts topping $12.5 trillion and counting - so much in so many forms, in "gov-speak" language, with so many changing and moving parts, it's hard for experts to keep up let alone the public, except to sense something is very wrong. They're being fleeced by a finance Ponzi scheme, sheer flimflam, and here's how from what we know:

-- $400 billion in taking over Fannie and Freddie;

-- $42 billion for the auto giants; billions more coming for their suppliers;

-- approaching $200 billion for AIG with more coming on request;

-- $350 billion to Citigroup in handouts and loan guarantees;

-- tens of billions to other banks, including $87 billion to JP Morgan Chase for bad Lehman Brothers trades;

-- $700 billion for TARP I; half the money released under TARP II;

-- over $200 billion and counting for the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to extend government-guaranteed loans for investors to buy "certain AAA-rated asset-backed securities (as a) component" of the Consumer and Business Lending Initiative (CBLI), established under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) of 2008;

-- the $787 billion stimulus under the American Recovery and Relief Act of 2009 (ARRA);

-- around $300 billion under the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan (HASP) - the so-called mortgage bailout plan;

-- $50 billion backing for short-term corporate IOUs held by money market funds - from the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), a vehicle established by a provision in the 1934 Gold Reserve Act for foreign exchange intervention to stabilize the value of the dollar;

-- $500 billion for various credit market rescues;

-- $620 billion for industrial nations' currency swaps;

-- $120 billion for emerging economies' currency swaps;

-- $1.25 trillion for Fannie and Freddie mortgage backed securities;

-- $200 billion for Fannie, Freddie, and Federal Home Loan Bank bonds;

-- way more than the announced $300 billion for longer-term Treasuries (mostly with 7 - 10 year maturities); the Fed's been buying billions of them since last year;

-- Fed-expanded overnight lending to $2.4 trillion - free money at 0% interest;

-- a reported $750 billion for banks in the FY 2010 budget - yet to be voted on and appropriated;

-- a proposed $470 billion increase for the FDIC to borrow from the Treasury;

-- perhaps hundreds of billions more in unannounced or hidden handouts in amounts and to whom the Fed and Treasury won't say; on March 14, AIG named its big counterparties for the first time with firms like Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays showing up prominently; and now

-- PPIP - the latest gift to Wall Street courtesy of taxpayers getting none of the gain and all the pain.

A Treasury Fact Sheet explains it on its web site. In "gov-speak," it cites the "challenge of legacy assets" comprised of (distressed commercial and household) "loans"/mortgages and (toxic) "securities" (mortgage-backed and others) with a new Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) in conjunction with the FDIC and Fed to finance and guarantee it. The idea is to "repair balance sheets," encourage banks to lend, and "help drive us toward recovery." It expands TALF "to bring private investors back into the market" by offering deals too sweet to pass up:

-- a public-private (open-ended) trillion dollar partnership with Washington contributing up to 95-97% of the cash and investors the other 3-5%;

-- the Fed and FDIC (through low-cost loans and guarantees) acting as middlemen to transfer "legacy asset" losses to the public while buyers get government financing and guarantees (for no-risk investments) to purchase them on the cheap for themselves and well above fair value for the banks;

-- PPIP particulars are for $100 billion in mostly TARP and some private capital with Fed and FDIC $500 billion in leverage financing to expand it to $1 trillion or more in purchasing power.

In a March 23 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Geithner called it "My Plan for Bad Bank Assets (to) increase the flow of credit and expand liquidity (and do it by) shar(ing) risk with the private sector (to) rid banks of legacy assets." These "policies will work," says Geithner, even though everything tried to date failed, and the only achievement is what they planned - the greatest ever wealth transfer in the shortest span of time, now increased by another trillion or more through PPIP and whatever else the masters of the universe have in mind.

"Toxic-Asset Plan Lifts Stocks," headlined the Wall Street Journal, after surging around 7% on March 23 with banks and other financials in the lead, buoyed by the prospect of more free money, hundreds of billions for the taking, and plenty more where that came from.

If It Works, A Win-Win for the Money Trust

Here's how economist Jeffrey Sachs explains it:

Geithner's plan will have the Fed and FDIC "subsidize investors to buy toxic assets from the banks at inflated prices." If done, it will be another in a series of massive wealth transfers in the hundreds of billions of dollars "to bank shareholders from taxpayers." If investors incur losses, the Fed and FDIC will absorb them, meaning heads or tails they win.

"The investment funds will have the following balance sheet. For every $1 of toxic assets (bought), the FDIC will lend up to 85.7 cents, and the Treasury and private investors (only) 7.15 cents in equity to cover the remaining balance. FDIC loans will be non-recourse, meaning that if the toxic assets (bought) fall in value below the amount of FDIC loans, the investment funds will default on the loans and the FDIC will end up holding the toxic assets...."

In other words, "The FDIC is giving a 'heads you win, tails the taxpayer loses' offer to private investors.' " Economist Paul Krugman agrees calling it a one-way bet, "a disguised way to subsidize purchases of bad assets."

Economist James Galbraith calls it another massive "ineffective" giveaway to banks with taxpayers getting hosed from a repackaged trash removal scheme that's been around since last fall when Geithner, as New York Fed president, planned it with Wall Street CEOs. They see it as a temporary liquidity problem (which it's not) so the idea is to clean up the system and get banks lending again. But here's the rub:

"If Geithner's plan to fix the banks would also fix the economy," maybe the idea makes sense. "But no smart economist we know thinks that it will." It's a giant swindle, but that aside, Geithner has "five fundamental misconceptions:"

(1) The trouble with the economy is that banks aren't lending, he says.

In fact, it's because businesses and mainly households are way over-extended and "are now collapsing under the weight of it. As consumers retrench (of necessity), companies that sell to them (must also), thus exacerbating the problem. The banks, meanwhile, are lending," just not as much as they used to.

"Also, the shadow banking system (securitization markets), which actually provided more funding to the economy than the banks, has collapsed."

(2) The banks aren't lending because their balance sheets are loaded with 'bad assets.'

In fact, "banks aren't lending (enough) because they have decided to stop making loans to people and companies who can't pay them back" or don't want more loans in the first place. They're also scared that new debt will cause more write-offs, greater losses, and the threat they'll be wiped out entirely. So their strategy is hunker down and wait for a better time to do business.

(3) Bad assets are "bad" because the market doesn't understand how much they're really worth.

In fact, they're bad because "they are worth (lots) less than banks say they are." A major factor is the near-30% drop in house prices wiping out over $5 trillion in valuations. Lenders want households to take losses because if they do it themselves they'll be wiped out. So PPIP arranges it for them.

(4) Once "bad assets" are off balance sheets, banks will start lending again.

In fact, banks will stay cautious until the housing market and economy improve. So far, that's nowhere in sight.

(5) Once banks start lending, the economy will recover.

In fact, house prices are falling, savings have been wiped out, huge job losses are continuing, and "consumers will have debt coming out of their ears" that will take years to work off.

Geithner's plan just shifts debt from lenders to taxpayers "where it will sit until the government finally admits that a major portion will never be paid back." Galbraith's conclusion: Geithner's plan is "extremely dangerous" besides being a scam to cheat the public. Why does Wall Street love it? Because it wrote it in the first place, so the whole scheme is arranged for its benefit - if it works.

It's a big "if" as investors want the lowest possible prices and banks the highest. The question is will they compromise and for what - the better quality junk investors want or the most toxic stuff banks want to offload for whatever they can get.

Even a Wall Street Journal editorial raised doubts about "Geithner's Asset Play. At least it's an attempt to clean up bank balance sheets," it said, but hold the cheers. "The best news (is that Geithner has) a strategy. The uncertainty was almost as toxic as those securities. Now all (he) has to do is find private investors willing to 'partner' with the feds to bid for those rotten assets, coax the banks to sell them at a loss, and hope the economy doesn't keep falling...."

"Other than that, general, how (did) the siege of Moscow" go?

In a front of the paper article, a trio of Journal writers said "visions of vilification of Wall Street executives on Capitol Hill remain fresh in the minds of potential (bad asset) buyers....numerous (ones) express(ing) concern that they, too, might be hauled before Congress for a grilling, or be subjected to new taxes if they profit from partnerships with the federal government."

They quoted Washington lobbyist, Lendall Porterfield, whose clients include hedge funds and banks, saying: "There are still some very serious reservations about doing business with the government, because you don't know what the rules may be tomorrow, next week or next month."

Economist Nouriel Roubini wants two firmly in place:

-- force banks to sell toxic assets at true value and take the losses; and

-- shut down the insolvent ones.

For his part, Financial Times writer Martin Wolf expressed deep concerns about PPIP in his March 25 column headlined: "Successful bank rescue still far away." He's "ever more worried" and says why:

-- he expected a "popular new president to be decisive;"

-- he fears a "Congress indulging in a populist frenzy" and an administration "hoping for the best;"

-- instead of letting businesses succeed or fail on their own, "bailouts have poured staggering sums into the failed institutions that brought the economy down;"

-- PPIP is a "vulture (investor) relief scheme," cash for trash, with Washington putting up most of the money, bearing nearly all the risk, while private parties get all the gain - if the plan works;

-- PPIP masks a "more fundamental problem" of "chronic under-capitalization of US finance" and it may make achieving it harder - given growing public anger, a "timid" president, Congress on the "warpath," and being less likely to put up the kind of money needed to do it;

-- enriching vulture investors may "convince ordinary Americans that their government is a racket run for the benefit of Wall Street;" and

-- when all is said and done, PPIP may not work.

As a result, "Nobody can be confident that the US yet has a workable solution to its banking disaster....If this is not frightening, I do not know what is."

Economist Jack Rasmus calls PPIP a "win they win vs. lose they win proposition -- i.e. free money with which to leverage to make even more money" with government taking nearly all the risk. It's "an offer that no capitalist speculator could ever refuse" with nothing for the public except the bill.

It's why Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, called it "another Rube Goldberg contraption intended to funnel taxpayer dollars to bankrupt banks...." However, the process plays out, "much of the toxic waste (will) stay on the banks' books (since it's) likely that the gap between the asking price and the offer (won't) be closed for a large portion of these assets, even with the government subsidy."

So what's next? "The Obama administration will be forced to go to Congress with yet another bailout proposal. (It's) hard to understand this plan as anything other than a last ditch effort to save Wall Street banks. (Obama) seems prepared to risk his presidency on their behalf" and odds are he'll lose.

Whatever happens going forward, the uncertainties and dangers are enormous:

-- Eurointelligence refers to "Geithner's trillion dollar gamble" despite the positive market reaction;

-- will taxpayers stand for it, how long, and at what cost;

-- will enough buyers settle for the best deals they can get, and/or will banks compromise enough to matter; put another way - will government "grease" attract enough buyers willing to invest at valuations banks will accept; so far, they've stubbornly refused to take losses, preferring instead to keep junk on their books at fictitious values hoping eventually they'll be real or close enough; another disincentive is talk that the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) will ease mark-to-market accounting rules to legitimize fake values;

-- whatever they do, can banks offload enough to matter or are they so over-indebted that nothing can work;

-- how much in the way of deficits, money printing and dollar debasing can the nation stand, and how long will sovereign and private debt buyers put up with it;

-- going forward, how many banks are too weak to survive no matter what's done to save them - that is, ones big enough to matter (like Citigroup), not others targeted to be bought up or closed down - and globally that's what's behind this scheme in the first place;

-- what about the CEOs that caused the global crisis and left their banks insolvent; issues of fraud and bailouts aside, why weren't they fired long ago; why are they still in charge drawing big salaries and bonuses; why wasn't the main demand to fire these guys and replace them with responsible managers; and

-- skeptics call Geithner's plan much like Paulson's, except for some differences in details.

On March 24, Dan Roberts in the London Guardian headlined: "US follows UK - on the wrong road." Geithner's plan "aims to achieve roughly the same as the British government's (bad loans) insurance for the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds. So how do the two schemes compare?"

Details aside, they "work on the same principle: that banks will (behave) normally again and (benefit) the economy (once) they're protected from past mistakes. But these responses underestimate the scale of the crisis." Geithner's plan covers not just toxic assets but many ordinary bank loans as well.

"Similarly, the assets put forward by Lloyds in the UK insurance scheme include every buy-to-let mortgage issued by HBOS, not just the ones already in default. Judge the banks on their actions (not just their words), and you would conclude this crisis has some way to go. Yet both governments assume banks (suffer) from a crisis of confidence (simply cured) by removing (toxic debt) uncertainty. What neither seems willing to acknowledge is the likelihood that much of their lending has gone for good; that this is not a liquidity crisis, but a solvency (one)." Britain's plan didn't work and neither will Washington's.

No comment from the Journal except to say: "Whatever the Geithner plan's pitfalls, we sincerely hope it works. The feds so thoroughly botched the TARP and (other) bailouts that Treasury has few options left."

Indeed so. No accounting magic can erase losses, inspire investors, and turn a sick economy around. Especially since all Washington schemes make it sicker, and now Geithner's thrown more fuel on the fire. Problem one is reducing the huge debt overhang and helping beleaguered households. His solutions:

-- help Wall Street, not people and

-- pile on more debt but hope bank "operating" results improve enough to create an illusion of recovery.

It won't work, and at the same time, the latest Fed Flow of Funds data show trillions in vanished household wealth - $12.9 trillion from real estate, savings, investments, and other personal losses. So while insolvent banks are partying, the crisis is deepening. It's far from being resolved, at best has a long way to run, so Bank of America's Richard Bernstein advised clients to sell bank stocks after their rally because PPIP won't stop their profits from falling.

Worse still, according to financial expert and investor safety advocate Martin Weiss, Washington greatly underestimates the "magnitude of the debt crisis." He cites the following:

-- the current FDIC "Problem List" includes 252 banks with $159 billion in assets;

-- from his analysis, he lists 1568 troubled banks and thrifts by name with $2.32 trillion "at risk of failure" - because of "weak capital, asset quality, earnings, and other factors;"

Last year when TARP was announced, Treasury officials thought it would stabilize the economy and improve the health of recipients like Citigroup. However, it quickly learned that Citi and other major banks needed emergency capital to keep from collapsing - for their credit default swap (CDS) problems alone.

AIG's $2 trillion CDS portfolio triggered a government takeover, but it's not alone. Citi has $2.9 trillion, JP Morgan Chase $9.2 trillion, and the Bank of International Settlements reports a global $57 trillion burden, much of it toxic and plenty to sink holders of enough of it.

The problem in America is so great that "the money available to the government is too small for a crisis of these dimensions." Forced mergers, buyouts and handouts have done "little more than shift toxic assets like DDT up the food chain." Further, Washington's "promises to buy up the toxic paper have done little more than encourage banks to hold on, piling up even bigger losses."

Another CDS is also worrisome, one no one talks about but should, on US sovereign debt - Treasury bills, notes and bonds. "A small but growing number of investors are not only thinking the unthinkable, they're actually spending money on it, bidding up the premiums on Treasury bond (CDSs) to 14 times their 2007 level" because they're worried about the Treasury's credibility and borrowing power.

Their message is clear and important - "there's no free lunch; the government (can't) bail out every failing giant with no consequences; and contrary to popular belief, even Uncle Sam must face his day of reckoning with creditors."

Also, "the public knows intuitively that (too much debt) got us into trouble. Yet the solution being offered is to encourage banks to lend more and people to (save less and) borrow (and spend) more." The only way forward is to change course because there's "no other choice....We have to bite the bullet, pay the penalty for our past mistakes," and make hard sacrifices for a sound recovery.

That includes shuttering insolvent banks and other companies (even big ones), not bail them out. Even Kansas City Fed president Thomas Hoenig recommends that:

"public authorities....declare any financial institution insolvent whenever its capital level falls too low to support its ongoing operations and claims against it, or whenever the market loses confidence in the firm and refuses to provide funding and capital."

The wrong choices are trillions more in handouts, reckless money creation, dollar debasing, and an eventual inflation destroying the purchasing power for millions. So far, that's where Congress and Obama's money managers are heading us, and already the bill for their actions is past due.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12852

Incriminating Evidence of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

Incriminating Evidence of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza - by Stephen Lendman

Throughout its history, Israel has willfully and repeatedly committed crimes of war and against humanity, always with impunity. Yet under customary legal standards and norms (including Geneva, Hague, the UN Charter, S.C. and G.A. resolutions), it's lawless, a serial abuser, a threat to the region and humanity, mostly as an oppressive occupier. Attacking Gaza is the latest episode in its six-decade reign of terror satisfying the definition of genocide against defenseless Palestinian civilians. This article covers more evidence from some disturbing but unsurprising newly published information.

On March 19, in the first of a series of articles, Haaretz headlined: "IDF killed civilians in Gaza under loose rules of engagement." Military correspondent Amos Harel revealed Israeli soldier and pilot ("dirty secret") testimonies of being ordered to kill unarmed civilians and destroy their property - accounts at variance with official claims that only military targets were attacked and that "Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation." Defense Minister Ehud Barak calls the IDF "the most moral army in the world."

"Moral" examples included an infantry squad leader recounting the shooting of a mother and her two children: "There was a house with a family inside....We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family....The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left," after which a rooftop sniper "shot them straight away....I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he (followed orders, and, besides, Palestinian lives are) less important" than our own soldiers.

Other incidents included:

-- a squad leader telling of a company commander ordering an elderly Palestinian woman to be shot and killed;

-- soldiers saying "we should kill everyone (in the center of Gaza); everyone there is a terrorist;"

-- soldiers writing "death to the Arabs on walls" and spitting on family pictures;

-- a squad leader saying: "At the beginning, the directive was to enter a house with an armored vehicle, break the door down, (and) start shooting inside - I call it murder - to shoot at everyone we identify;" commanders called it OK "because everyone left in the city is culpable because they didn't run away;"

-- soldiers ordered to indiscriminately destroy property and farmland;

-- orders given to enter a house, "switch on loudspeakers and tell (occupants) you have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn't will be killed;"

These and other accounts typify regular incidents in occupied Gaza and the West Bank. When revealed, official denials follow or in response to clear evidence, officers, like military advocate general Avichai Mendelblit, say the incidents will be investigated, after which everything is whitewashed, quietly forgotten, none of the guilty are prosecuted, and security forces keep using disproportionate force against defenseless Palestinian civilians.

In a March 19 analysis, Harel concluded that this "happen(s) in the field most of the time (and) as usual, reality is completely different from the gentler version provided by the military commanders to the public and media during (an) operation and after. The soldiers are not lying, for the simple reason that they have no reason to" and every reason to stay silent. The rule is: "You don't ask, we won't tell," but these soldiers, squad leaders, pilots and commanders did.

Further, there's a "continuity of testimony from different sectors that reflects a disturbing and depressing picture" of a rogue military willfully committing war crimes because they know they can get away with them. Harel concluded: "The IDF's ethical problems did not start in 2009." They go back decades, but according to some, military "deterioration" has been continuous from the 1967 war to Operation Cast Lead. Worse still is that Israeli history reveals six decades of relentless and continuous terror. Attacking Gaza for 22 days is just the latest episode.

On March 21, the London Independent's Donald Macintyre wrote: "Israelis (were) told to fight a 'holy war' in Gaza....a religious war" against Arabs, according to a soldier citing "the martial role of military rabbis during the operation." In rabbinate literature distributed to the troops, the message was: "We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land, and now we need to fight to expel the Gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land."

According to the Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, IDF head chaplain, Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, a brigadier general, distributed booklet material saying that it was "terribly immoral" to show mercy to a "cruel enemy" and that soldiers were fighting "murderers." Imagine rabbis claiming to be men of God, yet violating core Jewish dogma by preaching hate, premeditated murder, and lying about innocent civilians they're vilifying. Another example of the viciousness of a so-called civilized state, acting like barbarians (in the name of God) and calling it just.

There's more. On March 22 in Haaretz, Amira Hass headlined: "IDF soldiers ordered to shoot at Gaza rescuers" in citing a Hebrew handwritten document, "Rules of Engagement - Open fire also upon rescue." It confirms numerous reports and testimonies like the above that soldiers shot Palestinian civilians in cold blood, murdered them (and their rescuers), or in cases where they were still alive prevented their evacuation and let them bleed to death.

Hass stated: "The (above-mentioned) document provides written proof that IDF commanders ordered their troops to shoot at rescuers" besides ordering the killing of unarmed civilians and destruction of their property.

On March 22, London Observer writer Peter Beaumont headlined: "Gaza war crime claims gather pace as (still) more troops speak out." He cited a yet to be published "Breaking the Silence" report containing statements from 15 former soldiers. From their contacts with Operation Cast Lead participants, they corroborate the above claims of random killings and vandalism. According to the group's Mikhael Manekin:

"We have spoken to a lot of different people who served in different places in Gaza, including officers. We are not talking about some units being more aggressive than others, but underlying policy. So much so that we are talking to soldiers who said that they were having to restrain the orders given." According to one, Amir Marmor, orders from a Lt. Col. who briefed the troops were: "Shoot and don't worry about the consequences."

On March 20, Haaretz reporter Uri Blau disclosed that IDF soldiers ordered T-shirts marking the end of Operation Cast Lead featuring grotesque images of dead babies, mothers weeping at their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosque, and a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's eye depicted on her stomach with the English slogan, "1 shot, 2 kills."

These aren't just anecdotes from what Ehud Barak calls "the most moral army in the world." On March 22, Haaretz correspondent Gideon Levy wrote: "IDF ceased long ago being 'most moral army in the world.' " Moreover, imagining the military will investigate the charges is "propagandistic, ridiculous (and) meant not only to deceive the public, but also to offer shameless lies" as part of a cover-up the way these revelations are always handled.

These practices have gone on for decades. Orders come right from the top - to kill Arabs and commit atrocities and vandalism, and according to one Operation Cast lead soldier: "That's what is so nice, as it were, about Gaza - You see a person on a road....and you can just shoot him." This message is ingrained in young recruits, to see Jews as superior, Arabs as sub-humans, so it's "morally" OK to slaughter them.

Yet on March 22, Haaretz published GOC Home Front Command General Yair Golan's reply saying: "The reports were exaggerated and any deviations from the IDF's moral standards will be dealt with."

Then on March 23, it added IDF Chief Gabi Ashkenazi's claim that he did not believe Israeli soldiers harmed Palestinian civilians in "cold blood." He and Golan lied the way top commanders and government officials always do.

Yet Ashkenazi echoed Ehud Barak saying that "the IDF is the most moral army in the world" despite volumes of clear evidence to the contrary. He added that any "incidents" were "isolated," but Haaretz stated:

"The soldiers' testimonies run counter to the IDF's claims throughout the operation that troops observed a high level of moral behavior. A number of officers told Haaretz....that the testimonies did not surprise them, as 'anyone with eyes in his head knows that these things happened during the fighting in Gaza,' and they weren't 'isolated' incidents."

Gaza Civilian Testimonies

Documented by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), they recount Operation Cast Lead's horror - highlighted by an Israeli soldier's message on Abu Hajaj's bedroom wall: "Death will find you....Soon."

PCHR noted the importance of finding "sanctuary in the comfort of one's home" at times of trauma, but Gazans lost it for 22 days and still suffer the effects. Briefly some examples:

-- the IDF occupied Mos'ab Dardona's Jabal Al Rayes northeast Gaza home, leaving behind wall drawings of soldiers urinating on toppled mosques and "devouring Palestinians villages;"

-- next door in Ibrahim Dardona's home, instead of using the bathroom, they left behind dozens of bags of feces and crude sexual diagrams on walls;

-- the defacing and other actions show a disturbing picture of racial hatred throughout Israeli society, according to PCHR's democratic development director, Hamdi Shaqqura; PCHR says thousands of Gazans are homeless, displaced, and forced to find shelter with relatives or move back to partially destroyed homes and cope as best they can;

-- in the agricultural area of Johr-ad-Dik, the IDF took over homes, displaced half the 2500 population and maliciously destroyed hundreds of olive and citrus trees;

-- the IDF ordered local residents near Saleh Abu Hajaj's home to leave; Saleh's daughter tied a white scarf to a stick, led out a group of civilians, then along with her mother was shot dead by the military;

-- in the Zeytoun district, IDF desecrated walls with messages like: "Die you all..Make war not peace..Arabs need to die," and on a gravestone "Arabs 1948 - 2009;"

-- inside Rashad Helmi Al Samouni's home, soldiers wrote: "There will be a day when we kill all the Arabs....Bad for the Arabs is good for me....A good Arab is an Arab in the grave (and) Peace now, but between Jews and Jews, not Jews and Arabs."

PCHR's conclusion was that whatever war crimes investigations reveal and what, if anything, follows from them, "it will do little to comfort the thousands of civilians whose sense of safety (in their own homes was) so categorically violated," something they no longer feel and for many never did.

PCHR published the names of 1417 Gazans killed by Israeli forces. It said 926 were civilians, 236 fighters, and 255 others civilian security forces, mostly police. Israel disputes the list claiming most targets "legitimate" despite clear evidence to the contrary, including from its own soldiers. In response, it's preparing its own list identifying most of the slain as "combatants or legitimate targets" without a shred of evidence for proof and plenty to disprove it.

PCHR also reported that in the week ending March 18:

-- IDF forces shot and injured 19 Palestinian civilians, including nine children and a US human rights activist;

-- the Israeli air force bombed selected Gaza sites, forcing civilians to abandon their homes and property in the areas;

-- Israeli forces conducted 39 incursions into West Bank communities, a practice occurring nearly daily; 39 Palestinian civilians were arrested, including six children for the crime of being Arab under Israeli occupation;

-- additional IDF arrests occurred at West Bank checkpoints, and measures to remove East Jerusalem Palestinians continue to make room for new Jewish settlements;

-- five West Bank homes were demolished leaving 49 Palestinians homeless; three other families were ordered from their homes in preparation for demolition;

-- West Bank settlement construction goes on unabated as part of an ethnic cleansing process;

-- settlers regularly attack Palestinians with impunity, and the Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens reported (on March 21) a 1000% rise in 2008 crime rates over 2007 on Israeli Arab citizens; its leader, Jafar Farah, called it a "moral collapse;"

-- Gaza remains under siege with no progress made to end it; and

-- on March 23, PCHR reported that the IDF violated medical ethics during Operation Cast Lead by preventing Palestinian and ICRC medical teams from reaching the wounded; it also said Israel attacked 34 medical facilities, including eight hospitals, killing 16 medics and wounding 25 others.

Meanwhile on March 19, Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, said: "If the (IDF) cannot (distinguish between civilians and military targets), its attack becomes unlawful and constitutes a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law." He added that the UN (and human rights groups like Amnesty International) has clear evidence to support this conclusion and called for a formal investigation of IDF shelling of schools, mosques, ambulances, educational facilities, and homes as well as use of illegal weapons like white phosphorus.

Whatever follows, Gaza remains under siege. Allowed in humanitarian aid falls way short of supplying 1.5 million people with the barest subsistence they need. Through March 2, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that Israeli violence continues and "authorities (still) limit the amount and range of goods allowed into Gaza....A range of essential goods, including supplies and equipment needed for rebuilding, are not being allowed into the territory." They're still kept out.

Basic items like medical equipment, veterinary supplies, macaroni, chickpeas, and lentils were suspended or delayed, and border crossings remain closed, except for brief periods. Like before, everything is in short supply or not available, including essential medical care, food and fuel. Earlier Amnesty International said "Gaza (was) reduced to bare survival." Today, it's no better under a continuing Israeli siege, illegal and brutal in the extreme, yet not denounced by world leaders to give Israel cover to maintain it.

The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel's Position Paper on Israeli Civilian Killings in Gaza

Adalah (meaning justice in Arabic) is a 1996-established independent, non-profit, human rights organization serving Arab Israeli citizens' rights on issues of land, civil, political, cultural, social, religious, and economic matters among others. In February 2009, it examined the legality of Israel's 22 day Gaza attack, specifically the killing of civilian police and bombing of government buildings and Hamas institutions.

In citing the laws of war, it identified four central principles:

-- military necessity - that only those targets intended to "weaken or overcome the enemy or bring the battle to an end may be attacked;"

-- distinction - that must be drawn between combatants and military targets on the one hand, and civilians and non-military objects on the other; international law prohibits attacking the latter; doing so is a war crime; non-combatant civilians are protected by law under all circumstances; also, targets must clearly be military ones and nearby civilians must be warned in advance so they may leave;

-- proportionality - that prohibits disproportionate force likely to cause damage to or loss of human lives or objects; in other words, disproportionate to an intended military objective or that in any way is indiscriminate; and

-- the prevention of unnecessary suffering, especially for non-combatant civilians.

Beginning December 27 and continuing for 22 days, the IDF attacked uniformed police cadets and officers killing them and other civilians. During the period of fighting, non-combatant civilian Hamas members were also struck, including from its government.

International law prohibits attacking non-combatant civilian security forces, especially police whose role is to maintain law enforcement and public order.

Further, and despite using "rocket attacks" as a pretext, Israel attacked preemptively and aggressively, not in response to Hamas-initiated hostilities, and most initial targets were civilian ones. The IDF erroneously claimed that attacking uniformed police was legitimate because their role for 22 days changed from enforcers to combatants. By this logic, all civilians are legitimate targets because under attack they may defend themselves. That, in fact, is what Israel claims.

Under international law, civilians may only be harmed accidently or inadvertently as a result of attacks on legitimate military targets but never for reasons of military necessity, even when large numbers of combatants are present.

Adalah concluded:

"Members of a civilian police should benefit from the protection which is conferred upon them as civilians under customary international law. Given that the conditions for the exception to this rule - i.e., taking a direct part in hostilities at the time of the attack - were not met, the attack ran counter to customary international humanitarian law" and was illegal.

The same holds for attacking government buildings and institutions - a total of 68 buildings plus 31 offices belonging to NGOs, completely destroyed or damaged during the conflict. According to Major Avital Leibovitz, Head of International Communications Section in the IDF's Spokesperson's Office: "Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target," meaning all 1.5 million Gazans, the vast majority being non-combatant civilians, including women, children, and infants.

International law refutes Israeli policy, including under the principles of military necessity and distinction. These principles demand that military targets be differentiated from civilians and civilian objects (including government ones) to prevent deliberate attacks on them.

The only allowed exceptions relate to narrowly defined "vital and immediate military need" to defeat the enemy and end the battle, matters to which Israel didn't comply. Also, Israel ignored the requirement "to take all feasible precautions in attack, in particular the obligation to verify that objects (and individuals) to be attacked are military objectives," legitimate targets under international law.

Again Adalah: "Thus it is apparent that the attack on government buildings and institutions (as well as non-combatant civilians) on the basis of the claim that they formed part of the Hamas regime is illegal" under international law.

"Attacks that fail to distinguish between combatants and military targets and civilians and civilian objects constitute grave breaches of customary international law and are considered as war crimes. Attacks perpetrated against a civilian population may also be considered crimes against humanity if they are committed 'as part of a wide or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.' "

Planned months in advance, Israel's attack was premeditated, and under Article 8(2)(a)(1) and Article 8(2)(b)(1) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) constitutes a war crime. It's also a crime against humanity under the statute's Article 7(1) relating to the deliberate killing of civilians or deliberately attacking non-combatant ones.

Further, attacking government buildings and institutions is also a war crime under Article 8(2)(a)(1), Article 8(2)(b)(8), and Article 8(2)(b)(13) of the Rome Statute that prohibits the destruction of property and civilian objects for non-military necessity reasons.

Even though Israel is not party to the Statute, its Articles 7 and 8, relating to crimes of war and against humanity, reflect customary international law under which Israel, its officials, and military commanders at all levels may and should be held accountable.

Under international law, responsibility relates to perpetration, planning, inciting, and/or ordering a crime to be committed as well as "vicarious" (indirect) responsibility of civilian leaders and commanders for crimes committed by their subordinates. These conditions apply in the case of the 22 day Gaza attack - planned well in advance by high-level government and military officials and launched with overwhelming force against multiple targets on December 27.

Again, the evidence is clear, unequivocal, overwhelming, and conclusive that high-level Israeli government and military officials planned and willfully committed systematic crimes of war and against humanity of such gravity that justice demands they be held to account in an international court of law - either the ICC in the Hague or a special International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI).

Doing so will warn future Israeli governments and all others that no one is exempt from the law and they, too, will be prosecuted if evidence provides justification. The rule of law is sacrosanct, especially for wanton killing that when ongoing for sustained periods satisfies the definition of genocide. Israel long ago passed that threshold. No longer can its lawlessness go unpunished.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12852

"Down the Memory Hole," Alan Greenspan Style

"Down the Memory Hole," Alan Greenspan Style- by Stephen Lendman

He's back and in denial in a March 11 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined: "The Fed Didn't Cause the Housing Bubble." He lied, the way he did throughout his career and for 18.5 years as Fed chairman. How else could he have kept the job, be knighted in the UK for his "contribution to global economic stability, wisdom and skill," then afterwards be extolled by the Money Trust he enriched.

So now he's preserving his "legacy" by expunging its dark side the way Orwell described in 1984 - "down the memory hole," a convenient slot for "any document....due for destruction," politically inconvenient truths to be erased to preserve only sanitized versions for the public. It's called historical revisionism, but even some on the right aren't convinced.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is a libertarian research and educational center espousing the Austrian School economics of its namesake. Robert Murphy is one of its adjunct scholars, and in an April 14, 2008 article he asked: "Did the Fed Cause the Housing Bubble?"

"The case....is straightforward," he stated. "...Greenspan slashed the federal funds target from 6.5% in January 2001 down to a ridiculous 1% by June 2003. After holding rates at 1% for a year, the Fed then steadily ratcheted them back up to 5.25% by June 2006," a pumping and popping process that "seemed to be more than just a coincidence." It led to speculative "malinvestments," then needing a "recession" to correct.

"The Fed's role in the housing boom and bust is a classic illustration of the Austrian business cycle theory," according to Murphy. "Indeed, the Misesian explanation is so compelling that more and more economists and financial analysts are being persuaded." But not Greenspan who made his own case and got the Wall Street Journal to publish it. The problem is what he said, even worse what he omitted.

That as Fed chairman he led a pump and dump scheme, a financial coup d'etat, to defraud the public for Wall Street. It continues unabated, with new schemes, sucking trillions of dollars of wealth from the many to the few through fraudulently engineered housing, asset, and debt bubbles, illegally offshoring vast sums of capital globally, and shifting government assets to private interests, then their liabilities onto the government leaving taxpayers stuck with the bill.

Across the board, his Fed tenure outraged William Greider enough to call him one of "the most duplicitous figures (ever) in modern American government" who used his position to "corrupt the political dialogue" to sell snake oil to Congress and the public and be a willing co-conspirator in the theft of trillions going back to the early 1980s before his Fed days. He championed derivatives, securitization, and deregulation. He believed unfettered markets work best so let them and told a congressional committee in the mid-1990s:

"Risks in financial markets, including derivative markets, are being regulated by private parties. There is nothing involved in federal regulation per se which makes it superior to market regulation." In other words, let capital operate freely, plunder at will, and have no regulatory restraints regardless of the harm caused.

He sanctioned fraud as a tool of the Money Trust, and as Fed chairman engineered multiple bubbles in stocks, housing, mortgages, bonds, derivatives, currencies, and commodities, yet took no responsibility for the fallout. When asked, he said he has "no regrets on any of the Federal Reserve's policies that we initiated." In fact, he championed them.

He let house prices become an $8 trillion wealth bubble, yet had regulatory authority to prevent it. He chided his critics, ignored the public interest, and even encouraged use of risky no down payment adjustable rate mortgages (including subprime ones) at the worst possible time to buy property. He bears full responsibility for the greatest ever economic collapse costing millions their homes, jobs, savings, pensions, and futures - yet he has "no regrets" for any of his actions.

Here's his account of the housing bubble with a warning to the unwary. Take a strong dose of antacid before reading.

Greenspan admits that "lower interest rates spawned the speculative euphoria (but the) rate that matters was not the federal-funds rate. (It was) the rate on long-term, fixed-rate mortgages....The correlation between home prices and mortgage rates was highly significant, and a far better indicator of rising home prices than the fed-funds rate."

While it's true that longer rates affect mortgage ones, as important is how investors view the economy and prospects for inflation. In addition, short rates affect all others. They influence longer rates, including on Treasury notes, bonds and mortgages. Markets set all rates except one, Fed-funds, but it's the prime mover for others with added power from the central bank's bully pulpit.

Significant also is the close correlation between mortgage and Fed-funds rates. From 1971 - 2002, the average spread between them was 2.85%. Thereafter the relationship changed for a reason - because Fed- funds fell so low while mortgage rates bottomed at around 5.75% and didn't top 6% again until the Fed target rate approached 4%. If a 2.85% spread had held, 30-year mortgages would have been sub-4%. Today at 0% Fed-funds, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages are around 5%, and take note - historically the lowest ever 20th and 21st century mortgage rate was around 4.7% right after WW II.

However, in the wake of the Fed's announced intention to buy $1.25 trillion in Freddie and Fannie mortgage backed securities, $200 billion in Freddie, Fannie and Federal Home Loan Bank bonds, and $300 billion in longer-term Treasuries, mortgage rates may challenge or even better the previous low.

Greenspan blamed the housing bubble on success, or in his words: "the tectonic shift in the early 1990s by much of the developing world (away) from central planning to increasingly dynamic, export-led market competition. The result was a surge (in growth) that led to an excess in savings." That, in turn, "propelled global long-term interest rates progressively lower between 2000 and 2005," and guess who takes credit.

The "Maestro," of course, with Greenspan quoting Milton Friedman for support. In evaluating the 1987 - 2005 period, he said: "There is not another period in which the Federal Reserve System has performed so well. It is more than a difference of degree; it approaches a difference of kind." From one defrocked icon about another, his comment rings hollow, and, according to Catherine Austin Fitts, the evidence is compelling from her experience as an insider.

Replying to the Wall Street Journal, she explained that her "company served as lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration between 1994 and 1997. (She) watched both the Administration and (Fed) aggressively implement policies that engineered the housing bubble," and gave an example involving securitizing mortgages for pooling, then repackaging and selling them in tranches to investors.

"Even in 1995, (she) could see that these plans would create unserviceable debt loads in communities struggling with" globalization-caused declining incomes. The fallout would be mortgage defaults combined with mortgage-backed securities (MBS) "drain(ing) retirement savings from 401(k)s and pension plans."

Taxpayers would get the bill "but insiders would make bundle." She accused an administration official involved in the scheme with "planning on issuing more mortgages than there were houses or residents." His reply: "Shut up, this is none of your business."

It gets worse the result of the "long standing partnership of narcotics trafficking and mortgage fraud," then combining them "to target and destroy minority and poor communities with highly profitable economic warfare. The model is global" and very profitable throughout the world and across America with numerous examples as proof. She cited one.

In October 1996, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) released documents showing evidence of CIA links to the South-Central Los Angeles crack epidemic at least since the mid-1980s, attributable to fund-raising efforts for the Nicaraguan Contras.

Fitts wrote in May 1999 that in December 1997, "the CIA Inspector General delivered Volume I of their report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence" on the charges. It documented "the continued (money laundered) flow of an estimated $500 billion - $1 trillion a year....into the US financial system." To placate Waters, Greenspan met with her in January 1998 and "pledged billions (would) come to her district." It began in February when Al Gore announced it "was awarded Empowerment Zone status....and made eligible for $300 million in federal grants and tax benefits."

Fitts called Greenspan a "liar" and accused him of being complicit with the Treasury in engineering the housing bubble "as part of a financial coup d'etat" - documented in her writing "Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. (where she served as a Managing Director and Board member) and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits." She explained how:

"America's aristocracy makes money ensnaring our youth in a pincer movement of drugs and prisons and wins middle class support through (government-funded) contracts for War on Drugs activities at federal, state and local levels. This consensus (is sustained) by the gush of growing debt and derivatives used to bubble the housing and mortgage markets, manipulate the stock and precious metals markets, and finance trillions missing from the US government in the largest pump and dump in history....of the entire economy."

It's "more than a process designed to wipe out the middle class. (It's) genocide - a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by" legions of previous scoundrels. She described a process of insider deals designed to:

-- hollow out America,

-- centralize power and knowledge,

-- shift wealth to the privileged,

-- destroy communities and local infrastructure,

-- create new wealth by rebuilding them, and

-- leave human despair in its wake.

It's no accident that they crushed world economies to enrich the Money Trust, wrecked lives and impoverished millions, and the scheme remains very much ongoing. Yet Greenspan remains unapologetic, indeed smug in his Journal op-ed.

He deflected blame on "global forces beyond the control of domestic monetary policy makers" while claiming that "Global market competition and integration in goods, services and finance have brought unprecedented gains in material well-being." For whom he wouldn't say. He didn't have to, just look at the winners and losers.

Then explain it to the victims, the millions of Americans losing homes, jobs, pensions, savings and futures, the growing numbers with inadequate safety net protection for emergencies. Explain the greatest ever economic collapse, not an accident but willfully engineered, the lack of regulatory restraints that allowed it, and the devastating toll from its fallout.

Tell those affected how "the appropriate policy response is not to bridle financial intermediation with heavy regulation" but free it save for minor reforms too little to matter and simple to remove once the heat's off. Justify the "ret(ention of) a dynamic world economy capable of producing prosperity and future sustainable growth" based on business as usual policies - ones you describe as not "rely(ing) on governments to intermediate saving and investment flows" but freeing capital to grow more of it to enrich the few at the expense of the rest.

Justify the global economic collapse, the billions harmed, the human misery, and the fear that's it's just beginning. Explain how that jibes with democratic freedoms, equal opportunity, and the best of all possible worlds. At age 83 as a prominent figure, a well-paid private advisor and speaker, historical revisionism is how, and let the devil take the hindmost.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12852

Hopeful Change in El Salvador?

Hopeful Change In El Salvador? - by Stephen Lendman

Like other Latin American nations, El Salvador has had a long and troubled history, ruled from one decade to the next by successive military dictatorships, then since 1989 by the right wing National Republican Alliance or ARENA Party.

Long-suffering Salvadorans recall the 1980s struggles when the Farabudo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) failed to end what the civil-military Junta leader, Jose Napoleon Duarte, told New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner in 1980:

"Fifty years of lies, fifty years of injustice, fifty years of frustration. (El Salvador's) history (is pockmarked by) people starving to death, living in misery. For fifty years, the same people had all the power, all the money, all the jobs, all the education, all the opportunities." Finally they rebelled but failed.

Throughout the decade, billions in US aid poured in, including weapons, munitions, training, and US advisors, troops, and CIA operatives on the ground supporting the government against resistance fighters in a struggle they had little chance of winning.

Roberto D' Aubuisson founded ARENA in 1981 and was notorious for organizing and leading many of the right-wing death squads that still operate in El Salvador as "hired guns" or criminally embedded elements in the National Civilian Police (PNC), fully supported by Washington and the country's business elites.

They tortured, disappeared, disabled, and murdered tens of thousands of Salvadorans, including Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 for his outspoken Liberation Theology, compassion for the poor and oppressed, and denunciation of the "war of extermination and genocide against a defenseless civilian population." It's now down-shifted to a lower gear but very much an ongoing enterprise.

ARENA took power in 1989 and held it for the past 20 years until March 15 when The New York Times headlined the next day: "Leftist Party Wins Salvadoran Vote" with Mauricio Funes the new president of a country troubled by crime, an epidemic of violence, corruption, deep poverty (between 60 - 70% of the population), and the specter of Washington in the wings. It's why 500 - 700 undocumented Salvadorans come to America daily to earn money to send home to their families.

The FMLN won a plurality and will share power with a right wing National Assembly majority ARENA - PCN (National Conciliation Party) coalition.

It was a dirty campaign, replete with scare tactics, very similar to most others in the region with Washington calling the shots. Funes was called a communist, a foreign agent, and a Hugo Chavez/Castro tool. Bitter vitriol accused them of funding his campaign and plotting a dictatorship with his election.

Around 46 Republicans asked Obama to punish 260,000 undocumented Salvadorans in America, end their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), order them deported, and halt the $3 - 4 billion in annual remittances they send home to their families if Funes wins.

On March 11, Republican Dana Rohrabacher called the FMLN "pro terrorist," and accused them of being "an ally of Al-Qaeda and Iran" for celebrating the 9/11 attack and burning the American flag in response. He cited a "new world reality of terrorism (and) the global offensive waged by terror groups against the United States and free world." He said it's "imperative to review our policies to protect the national security" in light of a possible FMLN victory.

He reflects the worst of American politics determined to deny Funes a moment's peace and subversively plot against him unless he surrenders his government's sovereignty to Washington. More on that below.

For the moment at least, El Salvador's mood was celebratory after the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced the results with over 90% of votes counted - 51.27% for the FMLN v. 48.73% for ARENA, so for the first time in 20 years, Salvadoran politics shifts left, but hardly enough to matter.

Funes promised change, a fresh start, and offered "a new accord on peace and reconciliation." He congratulated ARENA, said they'll now be the opposition, but "in that capacity, rest assured that the party will be respected and heard." He invited social and political groups to improve welfare for the people (with no specifics) and "appeal(ed) to other political forces to work for unity." He promised to make El Salvador "the most dynamic economy in Central America....to be the president of social change and reconstruction (and) leave behind the revenges of the past."

He also assured Washington and El Salvador's elite that he'll "build a dynamic, efficient and competitive economy and promote the creation of a broad business base." He promised to respect "private property (and work for) macroeconomic stability and a responsible fiscal policy." He told the Washington Post that he'll "work to strengthen the relationship with the United Stats, to make the US more of a partner, and I think we will work well together." His economy is closely tied to America, accounting for 60% of its exports with the dollar as its reserve currency.

He promised not to alter US - Salvadoran trade practices under DR-CAFTA or join Venezuela's ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas). He likens himself to Brazil's Lula, not Hugo Chavez or Ecuador's Rafael Correa, and intends to be very friendly to business. Perhaps too much, so it's hard imagining that Salvadorans will benefit from him any more than Americans do under Obama or Brazilians from Lula.

During his campaign, he had right wing support, including from a group called "Amigos de Mauricio Funes," whose members come from El Salvador's ruling elite, and who apparently decided two decades of ARENA were enough and the country needed change, or at least its appearance given the extreme privation and fear it could boil over. For now it's quieted.

Washington agreed, and it showed in a State Department Robert Wood statement "specifically congratulat(ing) Mauricio Funes as the winner of the presidential election....we look forward to working with the new government of El Salvador on our bilateral agenda." US Charge d'Affaires in San Salvador, Robert Blau, added: "We have said many times that our intention is to continue with the good relations with El Salvador from government to government, and from people to people." It's clear Washington is comfortable with Funes, and that should be cause for worry.

In 1992, the party ended its armed struggle, signed a peace accord with ARENA, became the loyal opposition politically, and agreed to a law granting amnesty to its officials and death squad killers. During his campaign, Funes said he'll honor it if elected and (sounding much like Obama) told Tecnovision news that "We have to look to the future; not more to the past. We cannot change the past of hatred, clashes and confrontation. But the future we can build in a different way." That despite last fall others in FLMN demanding that amnesty be repealed so that murderers and torturers will be punished.

No longer in a direct affront to his supporters. Instead he assured business and the ruling elite he's reliable while the message to Salvadorans is that promised change was just talk, not policy once he's in office.

Funes is a political outsider, a new face, a moderate so he says, a former TV host and CNN reporter who gained prominence from his 1980 - 1992 civil war coverage. He's young (age 49), intelligent, articulate and much like Obama in those respects. Last September 28, the FLMN nominated him to run against ARENA's Rodrigo Avila, an establishment figure and former National Police director.

From most early signs, the power structure rests easy knowing Funes represents continuity; business as usual, not hoped for change; so Salvadorans, like Americans, soon enough will know they were fooled again. And if they need more convincing, the painful global economic collapse will be the clincher.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12698

Treatment of Imprisoned Muslims at Terre Haute's Communications Management Unit (CMU)

Treatment of Imprisoned Muslims at Terre Haute's Communications Management Unit (CMU) - by Stephen Lendman

In February 2007, it was learned that Washington had a secret new facility for so-called "high-security risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners in violation of federal law that prohibits severely limiting or cutting them off entirely from other inmates as well as outside contacts and communications. Segregating prisoners by race, national origin, or language violates the Supreme Court's February 2005 decision in Johnson v. California that affirmed 14th Amendment protection against racial discrimination. Specifically, the Court:

"rejected the notion that separate can ever be equal-or 'neutral' - 50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education (this Court repudiated it and) refuses to resurrect it today."

US Prison Bureau regulations also stipulate that "staff shall not discriminate against inmates on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or political belief (including) administrative decisions (involving) access to work, housing and programs." Nonetheless, the Bush administration instituted these practices, and they continue under Barack Obama at the Terre Haute federal prison's Communications Management Unit (CMU). Perhaps at other federal and state facilities as well at a time Muslims are vilified and persecuted.

September 11, 2001 events unleashed a torrent of fear, repression, and a war on Islam, henceforth targeting innocent Muslims as terrorists, Islamofascists, and criminals for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, and/or charity.

Ever since, numerous innocent men and some women have suffered grievously. Besides "unlawful enemy combatants" in global "torture prisons," they've been unfairly harassed, arrested, prosecuted, and interned as political prisoners for being Muslims at the wrong time in America. Most end up in federal facilities like the CMU at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI), Terre Haute, Indiana, established to segregate and discriminate against Muslims and Middle Eastern internees.

Treatment thereafter has been demeaning, unpleasant, and in violation of US Prison Regulations covering normal day-to-day operations. For example, punishment may be ordered for any reason, or none at all. Communications by phone, mail, email, and visitations are monitored and must be in English. The latter, when allowed, are non-contact only. CMU prisoners get an "Institution Supplement" stating that "all contact" between inmates, "persons in the community," or anyone outside it, is restricted and only permissible "according to national policy."

It's so Muslims get fewer rights and privileges than others, including allowable communications. Also:

-- food quality, amount, and that conforms to a strict Muslim diet;

-- medical care; and

-- virtually everything else with prison authorities given much latitude to do as they please.

Early reports were that prison staff were struggling to understand the new rules and make sense of how to apply them. So at first, though segregated and denied privacy, Muslims were mostly treated like other inmates, including allowed free religious practice and a permissible diet.

Recently that changed, and below are some of the ways:

-- food quality has deteriorated; at times it's rotten and inedible; the amount has been reduced, and strict religious diet restrictions aren't being observed;

-- commissary prices have risen sharply, way above the allowed markup;

-- emergency medical care takes days to get; less urgent but needed care takes weeks or months, and inmates aren't informed of any problems;

-- mail is unduly delayed, denied, and like other communications the content may be censored;

-- the entire CMU is monitored with cameras and listening devices; privacy is impossible, even for the most personal and intimate things;

-- mistreatment and disrespect are increasing;

-- prisoner written complaints have risen from very few at first to many about virtually everything;

-- retaliation follows through harassment, intimidation, food rationing, the serving of forbidden-to-eat kinds, frequent "shake-downs" and removal or theft of personal possessions; rejection of simple requests; delay or denial of mail and other communications; and whatever else prison authorities decide ad hoc;

-- CMU tap water is inferior to the rest of the prison; it contains sediment, causing itching after showering, hair loss, and kidney stones in several prisoners;

-- except for poor quality salad and some fruit, all food is processed, never fresh; and

-- prisoner complaints are called obstructing justice and punished.

Given how conditions have deteriorated, prisoners have reason to worry. A new administration is in charge. It vowed to close Guantanamo and end torture. Yet CMU conditions are worse and unaddressed by an uncaring government, no different under Obama than George Bush. It's the wrong time to be Muslim in America.

The "war on terror" continues, yet who but family members, if they're lucky, know how their loved ones are treated - innocent men, some women, targeted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence and charity. This is how America treats the vulnerable - with contempt and disregard for the law. It's vital to denounce it at a time we're all equally at risk.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12698

Monetary and Fiscal Failure, Fraud, and Fear of What's Next

Monetary and Fiscal Failure, Fraud, and Fear of What's Next - by Stephen Lendman

Even the powerful are worried with the IMF on February 7 saying advanced economies are in "depression (and) the worst cannot be ruled out." Forecasting a 2010 recovery is "very uncertain" at this time as further financial turmoil may disrupt it regardless of policies adopted, and trouble is outpacing resources to alleviate it.

On March 10, its Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn forecast "below zero" 2009 global growth - what he termed "the worst performance in most of our lifetimes."

In a March 8, report, the World Bank expressed similar gloom saying:

-- "developing countries face a financing shortfall of $270 - 700 billion this year, as private sector creditors shun emerging markets, and only one quarter of the most vulnerable countries have the resources to prevent a rise in poverty;"

-- international financial institutions alone can't cover the (public, private and trade deficit) shortfalls for these 129 countries, so other help is needed - a "global solution" to prevent an economic catastrophe;

-- the global economy "is likely to shrink this year for the first time since World War Two, with growth at least 5 percentage points below potential;"

-- by mid-2009, global industrial production may be 15% lower than 2008 levels, a shocking differential reminiscent of the 1930s;

-- 2009 "world trade is on track to record its largest decline in 80 years, with the sharpest losses in East Asia;"

-- "the financial crisis will have long-term implications for developing countries" (and developed ones as well); they face higher borrowing costs, lower capital flows, weaker investment, and slower future growth at a very grim time globally.

At the same time, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) reported 2008 shrinkage of over $50 trillion in investor wealth, a shocking decline reflecting financial asset losses in stocks, bonds, currencies, real estate, and various other investments as well as a "surprising run" to the dollar in search of a safe-haven.

ADB said world's financial markets experienced "the most violent shock" since the Great Depression and global economies have rapidly deteriorated. Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda stated: "I'm afraid things may get worse before they get any better," maybe much worse. Yet his solution (like the IMF's and World Bank) is worse than the problem by proposing more debt on top of today's burden. He wants a 200% ADB capitalization increase, similar to though not as extreme as Fed policy, so instead of reducing Asian debt, he wants to increase it, make heavily-indebted nations more indebted, and let taxes, borrowing, and fewer social services bear the burden of a growing calamity the way America is doing it.

The solution to over-indebtedness, of course, is get free of it, but that doesn't work well for bankers, and in the end they generally get what they want, so the rest of us lose out and today's crisis will continue to worsen.

Warren Buffett to the Rescue - Again

It's so bad that Wall Street rolled out Warren Buffett for the second time to do what he rarely does - last October in a New York Times op-ed to calm investors and affirm his faith in "the long-term prosperity of the nation's many sound companies."

On CNBC March 9, he wasn't as sanguine saying the economy has "fallen off a cliff. (It's) in a shambles. Not only has (it) slowed down, people have changed their behavior like nothing I have ever seen (and government policy or at least its message has been) muddled." Then commenting on the importance of personal housing wealth and how much of it's been lost, he went the old adage one better about "the emperor ha(ving) no clothes."

"On top of that," he said, "the emperor doesn't have any underwear either." As a result, "We are in a very, very vicious negative feedback cycle" because people are scared to death and with good reason.

But Buffett didn't do a lengthy Q & A to scare people. He was there as a pitchman, a hawker like in a carnival, and his product is his own company, Berkshire-Hathaway, and America. When asked "Will everything be all right," he responded:

"Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created....(It's because) we ha(ve) a system that work(s). (It's gotten us through) six panics in the 19th century (and) in the 20th century we had the Great Depression and World Wars, all kinds of things. But we have a system, largely free market, rule of law, equality of opportunity (unleashing) human potential (so) your grandchildren will live better than your kids."

"The machine works (and buying) equities (is) the way to (profit from it). If (you) buy the right businesses, (you'll) do very well....American business will be worth more over time....Stocks will be worth more over time. I guarantee you that the Dow will be a lot higher."

Last October in his New York Times op-ed, Buffett said he's "buying American stocks." On March 9, he repeated the message even though the economy "is a shambles." Serious enough to need "the Oracle of Omaha" to save it, or at least try by making a public spectacle of himself on TV, and it wasn't the first time although others were more focused on his business or general view of things.

This time, stressing America's long-term strength, he ignored its fundamental weaknesses and systemic failure at the root of today's problems:

-- a system so unstable, crisis-prone, exploitive, unfair, self-destructive, and corrupted it can't endure;

-- Keynes warning about the consequences of "enterprise becom(ing) the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation;"

-- the inevitable decay that Marx and others predicted;

-- the untenability of great wealth disparities with few having too much and many too little - something untenable in the long run;

-- Lincoln's June 16, 1858 message to the Illinois Republican State Convention - that "A house divided against itself cannot stand;" slavery was the issue then; today it's inequality, human need, and growing poverty under a fundamentally unworkable system favoring wealth over public welfare.

Something else bothered Buffett as well - that Berkshire Hathaway (B-H) stock lost half its value, and the company had its worst ever year in 2008 since Buffett took it over in 1965 when it was a family-run textile maker. He's also not immune to credit default swap (CDS) problems, having increased his position to $14 billion as of year end 2008, and last year took hundreds of millions in write-offs as a result.

Further, some question B-H's health going forward given the current environment, insurance being his main business, and the worrisome CDS spreads on his debt. According to Merrill Lynch's Michaels Hartnett and Penn, they trade at wider spreads than those for Vietnam. They point out that GE is no better off as their swaps are wider than Russia's at a time its economy is reeling like many others.

Through March 11, B-H and GE were two of the six remaining companies rated AAA by S & P, according to CreditGuru.com. The others are ExxonMobil, Toyota, J & J, and ADP. In the late 1970s, 58 companies had the rating. That was then. This is now as two more of the mighty have fallen.

On March 12, the Wall Street Journal online reported that "General Electric Co. and its finance arm (GE Capital) have lost their coveted AAA long-term credit rating from Standard & Poors Ratings Service" when the agency cut it to AA+ in a move many analysts think was long overdue but not enough given the company's troubled state.

On the same day, Bloomberg reported that Fitch Ratings "cited concern about (B-H's) potential for losses on (its) equity and derivatives holdings" in cutting it to AA+ and its senior unsecured debt to AA." Bloomberg added: "Some investors (believe) the derivatives may saddle (B-H) with billions of (future) losses."

Economists and Financial Writers on The Global Research News Hour

Notable ones like F. William Engdahl, Michael Hudson, Ellen Brown, Jack Rasmus, Richard Wolff, John Bellamy Foster, and John Williams continue explaining the nature and consequences of the global economic crisis, and how it affects ordinary people. For example, Rasmus and Williams believe that the economy lost from 800,000 - 1,000,000 jobs for the past four months (not the Labor Department's lower figures) on top of all those lost earlier, and no end to the carnage is in sight.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), over 23 million Americans were either out of work or underemployed in February, and the numbers are growing. In addition, 60.3% of the population has some form of employment, down from 63.4% in December 2006. EPI reported that BLS figures show job openings fell 7.2% in January to three million, down 32% from year end 2007. Currently there are over four unemployed workers for every job, and seekers "are seeing their chances of finding (employment) grow ever dimmer."

Reports are that jobs are being lost at the rate of one every five seconds, and according to Manpower International's US employer survey, hiring plans are the lowest since the company began polling in 1982. A slim 1% of firms expect to hire in Q 2, down from 10% in Q 1 and off 15% from Q 2, 2008. A company official said: "That's about as bad as it gets with our survey," but it looks like worse is still ahead.

Consider the latest initial jobless claim filings for the week ending March 6 - a record 654,000 following the previous week's upwardly revised 645,000. People getting benefits for more than a week increased by 193,000 to 5.3 million, another record high, and it's the sixth time in the past seven weeks that new records have been set. The proportion of the work force getting unemployment benefits is the highest since June 1983 when the economy began emerging from a deep recession. One year ago, only 2.8 million got benefits. Today the numbers are skyrocketing with no end of it in sight. It shows in the monthly payroll data.

In his latest ShadowStats report, Williams said February's payroll loss was 899,999 and unemployment reached 19.1%, when discouraged and involuntary part-time workers are included. He compared it to Great Depression 25% levels but noted then they may have been higher because measures included only non-farm workers at a time agriculture was over one-fourth of the economy and farm labor much greater in numbers than today. According to the US Department of Agriculture, it's now less than 2% of all workers so its impact on employment is marginal.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CG&C) tracks monthly announced job cuts, now making grim reading. On February 4, it reported:

"Company layoff announcements were unusually heavy in January, indicating that the shock to the labor force is increasing in intensity and pointing to severely depressed readings in Friday's employment report." CG&C cited 241,749 compared to 166,348 in December, or the highest figure since the end of the last recession. By comparison, January layoffs a year ago were only 74,986. Of great concern is how much higher numbers will go and for how many more months.

CG&C's February total slipped to 186,350, but it cautioned to "distinguish between layoffs scheduled for the short-term or the long-term, or whether job cuts are handled through attrition or actual layoffs." Most important is the trend, not monthly blips up or down that obscure it, and the latest home foreclosure data aren't reassuring.

On March 11, Dow Jones Newswires reported that completed US foreclosures soared 67% in February over January, putting them at their highest since the start of the crisis, according to Foreclosures.com.

Most worrisome is that they came in spite of Fannie, Freddie, and several major banks putting a temporary halt to the process, yet it persists at severely high levels. In addition, pre-foreclosure filings (an indicator of future foreclosures) jumped 27% to 207,703, topping December's highest ever number by 9%. Three of the hardest-hit states continued impacted with California soaring 67% from January, Florida 42%, and Arizona more than doubling. The data suggest more of the same ahead with perhaps millions more homeowners facing loss of their most valued asset and little in the way of government help to prevent it.

Citigroup on the Ropes, or Are They?

Believe the former despite its CEO saying that January and February were profitable. Take it with a grain of salt given its $37 trillion derivatives portfolio, much of it toxic, and its stock price at a buck - until The New York Times published a "leaked" confidential memo from Vikram Pandit to employees saying the company was on track for its best quarter since late 2007 when the market started to implode.

Left out was how numbers are calculated - based on operating, not reported earnings, excluding lots of write-offs but mostly ones left undeclared hoping investors won't notice and think the bank healthy again. On March 10, the market responded positively with Citi and other financials doing best, but for how long. Nothing changed in a very weak economy, and Citi is among the sickest banks in it, insolvent and on the edge of bankruptcy or being nationalized.

The McKinsey & Company consulting firm may agree in its recent bank profitability forecast. It states "2009 will be unprofitable (and) net investment income "drops dramatically in 2009 as deposit spreads compress (reflecting consumer and commercial), then (begin to recover) going forward. Yet by 2013, McKinsey sees revenues at $142 - 153 billion compared to $156 billion in 2008 with profits beginning to pick up after up after $53 billion in 2009 operating losses. For 2008, McKinsey said banks posted a $1 billion profit, excluding all taken and untaken write-offs. It affirms a very sick industry with no prospect of profits if they're included.

Institutional Risk Analytics co-founder and managing director Chris Whalen agrees in his March 13 analysis titled: "Stress Test Zombies - Not Too Big to Fail? Tough Tootsies Little Banks!" He refers to Bernanke and Geithner "cowardly feed(ing) the zombies." It's "not sustainable financially" nor workable politically and must eventually be changed. At some point, "the Obama administration may need to choose between our (banks and) foreign creditors and American voters."

"The Bernanke/Geithner approach to not dealing with the financial crisis amounts to a hideous public subsidy, a transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to the institutional investors who hold the bonds and derivative obligations tied to the zombie banks, AIG and the GSEs." All these companies will need continued cash subsidies in the trillions of dollars to keep them out of bankruptcy.

Yet imagine, Bernanke and Geithner are proceeding on their own. "No legislation has been passed and no meaningful debate has occurred. The biggest danger facing the markets is that Ben and Tim still do not seem to have a clue what to do about the big banks -- other than to write more checks against the public trust. The conflict over this decision to pass the cost to the taxpayer, between the Fed, Treasury and the Congress, on the one hand, and the Wall Street dealer banks is staggering, yet nothing is said in the Big Media."

The fact is that "bailing out toxic waste sites....could cost trillions of dollars....The only issue is whether we recognize it directly, via a public resolution, or hide (it) via public subsidies and future inflation."

The right strategy is to break up or close down zombie banks, keep taxpayers out of it, and let bond and equity holders absorb the cost of "marking (their) assets to market" and ending the charade that they're profitable or heading toward it.

On March 10, the Wall Street Journal's front page reported that repeated Citi bailouts haven't helped so "US officials are examining what fresh steps they might need to take to stabilize the bank if its problems mount, according to people familiar with the matter....(called) 'contingency planning.' " Weekend discussions were held with Citi officials downplaying their seriousness. But given the bank's condition, profitability claims (the next day) are deceptive, so how long can the charade continue.

Further, on March 12 according to Bloomberg.com, there's more. "Four Citigroup Inc. executives who bought the bank's stock last week have already generated a $2.2 million paper profit, regulatory filings show." Insiders included:

-- director Roberto Hernandez bought six million shares on March 2 at an average $1.25 price; after briefly dipping below $1, it closed on March 5 at $1.52 for a paper profit of $1.7 million;

-- Latin America CEO Manuel Medina-Mora bought 1.5 million shares on March 3 at an average $1.24; and

-- other buyers included vice-chairman Lewis Kaden buying 100,000 shares and controller and chief accounting officer John Gerspach 65,000 shares - in each case ahead of Pandit's profitability claim and the day earlier Wall Street Journal front page story saying Citi is in trouble.

Another key point is that the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934 "prohibit(s) the making of false or misleading statements to a public company's auditors." It's also "a crime to knowingly and willfully make a false or fraudulent statement in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the US government" (18 U.S.C. 1001, January 2007). Further, it's unlawful to mislead investors or violate any provision of the 1934 act. True or false, Pandit's memo was internal and only covered a two-month period, not the full Q 1 filing for after March 31, so likely no violation occurred.

That aside, there's the issue of stock manipulation and insider trading with the above-cited evidence casting suspicion. It's illegal for anyone to buy or sell securities based on non-public information, and those doing it face prosecution if caught. A high-profile case was against former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio - indicted in December 2005 on 42 insider trading counts involving $100 million worth of his company's stock, then convicted on 19 counts in April 2007. He was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to forfeit $52 million in fraudulently earned profits plus a $19 million fine, $1 million for each count.

The Wages of Reckless Spending

They're painful, costly and, according to Michel Chossudovsky, heading the country for "fiscal collapse" in an analysis that's stunning but unsurprising. A "Second New Deal?" Quite the contrary to:

-- continue the most massive wealth transfer in history;

-- achieve it by looting the Treasury;

-- build a crushing debt burden;

-- undertake "the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history;"

-- govern under a war budget directing most revenues for defense, militarism, and foreign wars; trillions for "the Wall Street bank bailout;" and servicing the enormous public debt - in 2008 an astonishing $451 billion;

-- provide no fiscal stimulus for the economy; in fact, do the opposite by requiring no mandate that banks lend; instead, let them speculate and use hundreds of billions to buy real assets (the "real economy") on the cheap after their stock prices have been manipulated to crash;

-- impoverish tens of millions of Americans through reduced social services when they're losing jobs, homes, savings, pensions and futures; and at the same time

-- privatize America to pay for reckless spending - everything: "public services," infrastructure, highways, national parks, various other state assets, the entire State sold on the cheap to plunderers for profit - "the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized;" the public has no idea what's happening or that their government is betraying them.

America is for sale as a commodity. Serfdom is planned for most people, and Obama is as much at fault as Bush so let's be clear. He's either a consenting co-conspirator in the looting of the country or a willing dupe letting it happen in his name. Either way, he's part of a crime syndicate driving world economies and most people everywhere to ruin to enrich and further empower a select Wall Street elite - the same ones and their lobbyists that provided millions for his campaign.

On March 12 at the Business Roundtable, Obama assured attending CEOs that serving corporate America is Priority One, especially the financial elite with as much of the nation's resources as they need. He said that the "only way we can truly unlock credit and heal our financial system for good is to address the state of our banking system. And I know that this crisis is at the top of your immediate concerns - and I promise you, it is at the top of mine as well." He means that he'll continue to:

-- stiff-arm the public with empty rhetoric, hollow promises, and little in the way of real help;

-- strip-mine the nation's wealth for Wall Street and the rest of the FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate); and

-- provide smaller amounts for other business sectors at his discretion but not enough to keep bankers and vulture investors from buying much of it on the cheap.

Follow the data as the plot unfolds. On March 12, the Fed reported that American household net worth plunged by the largest amount in over half a century during 2008 Q 4 - a record 9% from Q 3 and the sixth quarterly drop in a row. Net worth represents total consumer wealth - homes, savings, pensions, investments, and other material assets minus liabilities.

It hit an all-time high of $64.36 trillion in 2007 Q 2, then fell every quarter ever since. Through 2008 Q 4, it's at $51.48, or a drop of 20% from its peak and declining. At the same time, US credit quality is deteriorating as measured by the cost of buying default insurance (CDSs) on government debt - it's soaring as it is for private companies like GE and Berkshire-Hathaway.

It costs US bond investors 98 basis points for protection, up from 7 basis points in late 2007, or a 14-fold increase, and it's no surprise why. Debt creation has skyrocketed to unimaginable levels raising the specter that today's deflation will become tomorrow's inflation, perhaps hyperinflation, and that's bearish for bonds, stocks, the economy, and ordinary people losing purchasing power.

It's got China worried according to a March 13 New York Times report. As the largest US debt holder, Premier Wen Jiabao wants assurance that the investment is safe at a time he has reason to have doubts. "To be honest," he said, "I am definitely a little worried," and why not. Money creation has been excessive. Interest rates are rock bottom, and America is reeling under a mountain of unsustainable debt as it continues to add more of it. According to some, interest rates have only one way to go - up, although it's likely to be a while before it happens.

Bond expert Henry Kaufman (the original "Dr. Doom" for his 1970s and early 1980s bearish bond forecasts) believes the secular bond bull market is over. In a February 14 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he tracked the rise in the cost of long-term government debt from 1946 to its 1981 peak, then down to around 2.5% early this year, "which probably marks the end of this extended wave." Yet conditions today compared to 1946 are "strikingly different" and very worrisome given the private sector debt overload, the federal government issuing an unprecedented volume of new obligations, and the Fed printing money like confetti.

In 1946, "the nation stood on the brink of an unprecedented boom (whereas) today wealth is contracting massively and the economy" teeters on the edge of depression. "Which raises (serious) questions: Why are we so poor at managing our key economic institutions while at the same time so accomplished in medicine, engineering and telecommunications? Why can we land men on the moon with pinpoint accuracy, yet fail to steer our economy away from the rocks? Why do our computers work so well - except when we use them to manage derivatives and hedge funds?"

Securitization, globalization and the explosion of debt changed everything for the worst and "altered financial behavior in ways that econometric models miss....Let's hope that is about to change. A central goal of new financial legislation should be to rein in extreme financial behavior."

What Kaufman left out is that none of this was happenstance. It could never go on without high-level government-institutional complicity, so a good place to start would be to clean out the corruption in Washington. Fire and punish those in charge of running it, and establish a legislative mandate henceforth to serve all Americans, not just Wall Street's criminal class.

For the latter, Philip Stephens, in a March 9 Financial Times op-ed, proposed: "Fix the banks first - and then shoot the bankers" in commenting on the collapsed UK banking system and lack of decisive action to correct it. Sounds like a sensible way to address America's problems as well.

The Thud of More Shoes Dropping

Deteriorating commercial real estate is another with experts saying it resembles the housing decline with about a one-year lag, so right now it's increasingly apparent. Look at the signs.

On January 12, Financial Week headlined: "Banks gird for commercial property collapse (as a) spike in loan defaults batter balance sheets," and it's just beginning. According to Fitch Ratings managing director Eric Rothfeld:

"Loans originated at market peaks experienced from 2005 - 2007 will face increasing defaults as real estate performance declines during the stressed economic climate of 2009 and beyond." More defaults mean greater losses for exposed banks, already reeling from the housing collapse and trillions of toxic debt on their books.

Developers are also hard hit given empty buildings, vacant shopping malls, and for-sale signs everywhere. On March 5, the Washington Post said "Not a single office building has been started in (D.C) since October, a sign that the slowdown that began in the far-out suburbs has now reached prime city locations." According to Gerry Widdicombe, director of economic development for the city's Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District, "Things are frozen. Nobody's doing anything." It's the same most everywhere across the country except for occasional small deals that are owner and investor-financed.

More signs include idle cranes, empty lots, few new tenants, rising evictions, falling rents, a 95% year-over-year drop in commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) issuance, and soaring CMBS delinquencies. The American Institute of Architects reported that its Architecture Billings Index (ABI) hit a historic 33.3 low in January, reflecting the worst conditions seen since the index's 1995 inception.

On March 10, Moody's reported that corporate bond defaults will triple their 2008 level, be 15 times more than in 2007, and said bankruptcies usually follow. They placed 283 companies on its bottom-rung listing, up from 157 last year, and added 73 companies since last reporting.

Well-known companies made the list, including General Motors, Chrysler, Eastman-Kodak, AMR (parent of American Airlines), UAL (parent of United Airlines), AirTran, Advanced Micro Devices, R.H. Donnelly, Rite-Aid, Reader's Digest Association, and numerous top retailers because of reduced consumer spending.

According to experts, many, perhaps all, large US banks are zombies. They're insolvent "dead men walking" and should be on the list as well. So is the US economy suggests Nouriel Roubini in a March 5 Forbes.com article headlined: "The US Financial System is Effectively Insolvent." In it he explains the "grave risk of a global L-shaped depression, (much) worse than the current, painful U-shaped global recession" that's deepening as conditions continue to deteriorate. "Shoot(ing) the bankers" may indeed be a good start to fix it.

Perhaps also help the "1 in 50 children in America (who) are homeless each year" also, according to a new National Center on Family Homelessness report titled: "America's Youngest Outcasts - State Report Card on Child Homelessness." It calls it "unacceptable for one child in the United States to be homeless for even one day, (and says) children without homes are on the frontline of the nation's economic crisis." The problem continues to worsen as foreclosures increase, yet the administration and Congress aren't helping.

"The year 2008 will long be remembered....as a time when grossly overpaid bankers (and) captains of industry....hobbled to Washington (asking) for bailouts (in the billions of dollars). Ignored by....Congress and the media were (many thousands) of children - many still infants and toddlers - who were (and still are) homeless in the midst of this economic (calamity). Without a voice, more than 1.5 million (of them) go to sleep (each night) without a home each year....they endure (too little food), a lack of safety, comfort, privacy....adequate health care, uninterrupted schooling, sustaining relationships, and a sense of community." Their deprivation is inflicting "profound and lasting scars," yet public discourse excludes them from consideration and consigns them to be another lost generation - unwanted, unnoticed and ignored by an uncaring government.

Militarizing America for Business and All Contingencies

Since WW II, America has had contingency plans in case of large-scale disasters or attacks. However, since the late 1960s, at the height of anti-Vietnam war protests, focus has been mainly on controlling dissent.

On October 30, 1969, Richard Nixon signed Executive Order (EO) 11490, "Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions to Federal Departments and Agencies." It consolidated 21 previous emergency preparedness EOs and two Defense Mobilization Orders issued between 1951 - 1966.

In 1976, Gerald Ford signed EO 11921 ordering the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency (FEPA) to let government take over all essential functions in case of an undefined "national emergency." In other words, to give government dictatorial powers by simply seizing them.

In 1979, Jimmie Carter signed EO 12148 establishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to replace FEPA. Clinton later made its director a cabinet position, and Bush gave DHS control under its Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate.

On inception, FEMA mandated an interface with the Defense Department (DOD), appointed an "emergency czar," and authorized the strategic relocation of industries, services, government, and other essential economic activities should conditions warrant. Little known is that FEMA spends most of its budget for "black operations," not disaster relief, although the latter makes headlines. Further, the president has emergency powers to declare martial law, activate FEMA's extraordinary powers, and run the country with other agencies like a police state for no other reason than to quell legitimate dissent - against war, abusive federal power, or an economic depression.

In 1988, Ronald Regan signed EO 12656 empowering the National Security Council as the principal body in charge of emergency powers and let the government increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of US citizens. It also restricted free movement, authorized the seizure of property, construction of detention camps, and isolation of US civilians in them.

Numerous other EOs followed to let government control:

-- all forms of transportation, including highways, airports, rail, seaports, inland waterways, and more;

-- the media and all forms of communication;

-- all forms of energy;

-- food and farms;

-- brigades in which civilians would be placed under government supervision;

-- health, education, and welfare functions;

-- the registration of all persons into a national database;

-- the relocation of communities, areas to be abandoned, and building of new housing in designated places;

-- implementation of all emergency measures in times of international tensions and economic or financial crises; and

-- empowering the Justice Department (DOJ) to operate penal and correctional institutions along with FEMA for its own camps.

The Bush administration funded FEMA with hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit former military bases and construct other facilities as detention camps. According to a November 2008 Wall Street Journal article, "Intelligence Policy (will) Stay Largely Intact" under Obama who recognized and legitimized its existence for use in case of a "national emergency" declarable for any reason, real or contrived.

Currently, over 800 camps are in every state, ready for use if ordered, with enough capacity for many tens of thousands of internees. They're not ordinary in any sense. They're concentration prison camps in the true sense of the term for dissidents or whomever is to be interned for whatever reason, at any time, and for any designated period on command of the president, others he directs, and FEMA as a police state operational arm. Some may turn into Guantanamo on the Mississippi, the Chesapeake Bay, the Lake Michigan lakefront outside Chicago, or neighborhoods anywhere or close by.

Local police have been militarized to help and much more, according to a March 13 Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com article headlined: "Police Trained Nationwide That Informed Americans Are Domestic Terrorists." In other words, enemies of the state are people who know their rights and demand them, who support progressive issues, who want more from government than betrayal, and who believe democracy and the rule of law are sacred and must be defended.

Prison Planet got a copy of a Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) report it described as "outlandish (and) shocking," and most likely it's replicated throughout the country. It concentrated mostly on a so-called "militia movement" but "conflate(d) it with supporters of Ron Paul, Constitution Party presidential nominee Chuck Baldwin, and former congressman Bob Barr as 'militia' influenced terrorists and instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters" of libertarian parties, issues, and people opposed to the North American Union and New World Order.

The MIAC report is similar to a Phoenix FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force one under Clinton that designated constitutional defenders as "right-wing extremists." The MIAC document "expands significantly on the earlier" one and represents the latest example of police state plans under Democrat as well as Republican administrations - a very disturbing prospect at a very grim time for most people.

A Final Comment

Everything discussed above is real and worrisome at a time the greatest ever economic crisis is deepening, government policies are corrupted, broken, and uncaring for deprived millions, so sooner or later public anger will erupt, but when it does severe crackdowns await it.

Obama promised change. Few understood that he meant abandoning the millions who elected him, looting the national wealth for fraudsters, and crushing public dissent should it erupt. Given growing impoverishment and pain, it's hard imagining it won't. It's only a matter of when and how much - but then what.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12698

Updating the Militarization and Annexation of North America

Updating the Militarization and Annexation of North America - by Stephen Lendman

The title refers to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), also known as the North American Union - formerly launched at a March 23, 2005 Waco, Texas meeting attended by George Bush, Mexico's President Vincente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. It's for a tri-national agreement, below the radar, for greater economic, political, and security integration with secret business and government working groups devising binding policies with no public knowledge or legislative debate.

In short, it's a military-backed corporate coup d'etat against the sovereignty of three nations, their populations and legislative bodies. It's a dagger through the heart of democratic freedom in all three, yet the public is largely unaware of what's happening.

Last April, New Orleans hosted the last SPP summit. Ever since, progress may have stalled given the gravity of the global economic crisis and top priority need to address it. Nonetheless, what's known to date is updated below plus some related information.

Last September, the Army Times reported that the 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade Combat Team in Iraq would be re-deployed at home (October 1) as "an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks."

"This marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities."

Then on December 1, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon will deploy 20,000 troops nationwide by 2011 "to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear attack or other domestic catastrophe." Three "rapid-reaction" combat units are planned. Two or more others may follow. They'll be supplemented by 80 smaller National Guard units trained to respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, high-yield explosive, and other domestic "terror" attacks or disturbances. In other words, homeland militarization and occupation are planned using troops trained to kill.

The pretext is national security. In fact, they'll be on-call against another major terrorist attack, real or contrived, as well as civil unrest given the gravity of the economic crisis, its affect on millions, and likelihood that sooner or later they'll react. Armed combat troops will supplement militarized local police in case security crackdowns are ordered or martial law declared.

"Catastrophic Emergency" procedures are in place to react to situations, "natural or manmade," according to DHS/FEMA's March 2008 "Preparedness for the Next Catastrophic Disaster" policy paper. Should conditions warrant, initiatives to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law are in place, but militarizing America for business is also at issue.

Last October 1, the Canadian Action Party posted a "COUP IN USA ALERT" after the Bush administration announced the homeland deployment of troops with "$100 billion (bailout) dollars" to do it.

What's Likely in Prospect

SPP efforts paused during the Bush to Obama transition, but "deep integration" plans remain. On January 19, Ottawa's Carleton University's Centre for Trade Policy and Law outlined an agenda for America and Canada going forward. It called for "early and sustained cooperation" at a time of continuing global crisis, to include security, defense, trade and competitiveness.

It said the "most pressing issue is the need to re-think the architecture for managing North America's common economic space (including) trade liberalization." It used language like "re-imagining (and) modernizing the border" that reads like erasing it and doing the same with Mexico. In a similar vein, it recommends "integrating national regulatory regimes into one that applies on both sides of the border." It called the arrival of a new Washington administration "a golden opportunity" to forge a "mutually beneficial agenda (that) will define global and North American governance for years to come."

It mentioned the specter of protectionism and need to avoid it given the current economic climate. It advocates a "more ambitious Canada-US Partnership" beyond NAFTA," in co-partnership with Mexico.

Titled "North America Next," a recent Arizona State University North American Center for Transborder Studies report called for "sustainable and security competitiveness" and deeper US-Canada-Mexico integration through "sustainable security and effective trade and transportation (to) make (the three nation) North America(n partnership) safer, more economically viable, and more prosperous."

Both Carleton and Arizona State University project participants want SPP initiatives invigorated under a new Washington administration, especially in a climate of global economic crisis when addressing it takes precedence.

Other Issues in Play

"The Canadian's" Mike Finch "North American Union (NAU) watch" reports that US and Canadian organizations want to end free flow Internet information. He cites an "net-neutrality activist group" discovery of "plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada," and by 2012 globally.

Canada's two largest ISPs, Bell Canada and TELUS, are behind a scheme to limit browsing, block out sites, and charge fees on most others as part of a 2012 "planned full (NAU) launching." Web host I Power's Reese Leysen called it "beyond censorship: it is killing the biggest (ever) 'ecosystem' of free expression and freedom of speech." He cited big company inside sources providing information on "exclusivity deals between ISPs and big content providers (like TV studios and video game publishers) "to decide which sites will be in the standard package offered customers, leaving the rest of the Internet unreachable except for fees."

Leysen called his source "100% reliable" and cited similar information from a Dylan Pattyn Time magazine article, based on Bell Canada and TELUS sources. Plans are for "only the top 100 - 200 sites making the cut in the initial subscription package," likely to include major news outlets at the expense of smaller, alternative ones. "The Internet would become a playground for billion-dollar content providers," like cable TV providers, unless efforts are made to stop it.

Leysen thinks US and global ISPs have similar plans that include free speech restrictions and privacy invasions. The stakes are high if he's right. Yet the profit potential is huge and friendly governments may oblige. Also involved are "deceptive marketing and fear tactics" (like citing child pornography threats) to gain public approval for subscription services masquerading as online safety. The time to stop it is now.

Earlier Plans to Rename SPP/NAU

Last March, Canada's Fraser Institute proposed it in an article titled: "Saving the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership" at a time of mounting criticism. It recommended discarding NAU in favor of the "North American Standards and Regulatory Area (NASRA)" to disguise its real purpose. It called the "SPP brand" tarnished so changing it was essential to continue where NAFTA left off by combining security with quality of life issues like food safety, global warming, climate change, and pandemic diseases. It also wants better communications to sell it to the public. Their idea is to fool most people until it's too late to matter.

Rumblings in America at the State Level

Running counter to "deep integration," News with Views (NWV) writer Jim Kouri headlined on February 23: "Individual States Declaring Sovereignty." He cites political strategist Mike Baker saying "Americans are becoming disenchanted with the federal government's lack of perspective on" matters like: "illegal aliens, crime, (and) economic turmoil - while intruding into the private lives of citizens with gun-control laws and other intrusions," issues our Founding Fathers "relegated to the individual states." Bothersome also are unfunded mandates that states can't handle given their over-stretched budgets and need to cut back. In addition, Washington's intrusion into local law enforcement is a big issue.

So far, nine states have declared sovereignty and another dozen or more are considering it. Enacted or proposed legislation varies from all states' rights to selective ones like gun control and abortion.

As of January 30, Washington State is one of the former under House and Senate bill HJM-4009 stating:

"The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States specifically provides that, 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people;' and The Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being those powers specifically granted to it by the Constitution of the United States and no more."

Earlier in January, New Hampshire enacted similar legislation (HCR-6) "affirming States' rights based on Jeffersonian principles." Other states doing it totally or in part include California, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Georgia. In addition, the following states are considering similar measures: Colorado, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Arkansas, Idaho, Alabama, Maine, Nevada, Hawaii and Alaska, and reportedly, Wyoming and Mississippi may as well.

Besides states rights issues, driving the current movement are:

-- the grave and deteriorating economy;

-- Wall Street's harmful control over policy;

-- its effects on checks and balances;

-- excessive bailouts for an insolvent and corrupted banking system at the expense of local state budgets and rights; and

-- reckless and unsustainable spending and national debt levels driving the nation to bankruptcy and placing untenable burdens on states.

Overall, concern is that Washington is complicit in driving the nation to ruin, and they want out or at least lean that way. If this movement gains strength, at the least it will slow "deep integration," stall it for a considerable time, but won't likely halt it. Corporate America wants it, and most often what it wants, it gets.

It may just take longer than planned, much longer given the gravity of the global crisis, how hard it will be to resolve, and how long doing it will take. Some experts predict another Great Depression as bad or worse than the first one and far worse than Japan's "lost decades" - from 1990 to the present.

Top priority in world capitals and corporate boardrooms is preventing it if possible. Except for "national security," other initiatives are secondary.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12593

Health Care Reform, Obama Style

Health Care Reform, Obama Style - by Stephen Lendman

On February 26, The New York Times headlined: "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care....a (down payment $634 billion "reserve fund" for the next decade) toward his goal of covering the uninsured, and he would pay for it in part by cutting federal payments to hospitals, insurance companies and drug companies." More on that below.

Details so far are sketchy, but here's what The Times and others reported:

-- $634 billion as a "down payment....additional funding will be needed;"

-- increased prescription drug premiums for higher income Medicare recipients;

-- $6 billion for cancer research to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), up from last year's $5.6 billion;

-- faster FDA generic biotech drug approvals;

-- increased access to family planning services for low-income women on Medicaid;

-- no information on how the uninsured will be covered with details to be worked out later with Congress; one idea is make it mandatory, but tell that to people who can't afford it or enough of it;

-- drug makers to be required to give Medicaid at least a 22.1% discount, up from the current 15.1%;

-- payment cuts to insurers, hospitals, drug makers, home health agencies, and perhaps doctors;

-- "rebalancing the tax code so that the wealthiest pay more," but not enough;

-- the goal is reduce costs and achieve "universal coverage;" saying it is one thing, achieving it another;

-- eliminating subsidies paid to insurers selling Medicare Advantage plans and opening the process to competitive bidding; and

-- in introducing Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius as HHS secretary and Nancy-Ann DeParle as White House Health Reform director, Obama proposed "affordable health care for every American" while acknowledging no "silver bullet" exists to provide it, but he'll be "flexible" to achieve it, or at least say he is while intending to do nothing to offend a powerful industry.

Sibelius and DeParle - Obama's "Health Reform" Dream Team

After defense (at over $1 trillion annually with all categories included), HHS (Health and Human Services) is the nation's largest federal agency based on its FY 2009 $737 billion budget, of which Medicare and Medicaid comprise 85% of the total. In 1995, Social Security became an independent agency and ranks third with a FY 2009 $695 billion budget.

With little Washington experience, Kathleen Sebelius will head HHS. Her official biography states:

-- in 2003, she became Kansas' 44th governor, and in 2006 was reelected to a second term;

-- her "commitment (is) to growing the Kansas economy and creating jobs, ensuring every Kansas child receives a quality education, (and) improving access to quality, affordable health care;"

-- in 2005, Time magazine named her one of the nation's top five governors;

-- she's served on the National Governors Association Executive Committee and as co-chair of the National Governors Association initiative, Securing a Clean Energy Future; and

-- she's the immediate past chair of the Education Commission of the States as well as past chair of the Democratic Governors Association;

She's also a former Kansas Trial Lawyers Association director (1977 - 1987) and Kansas Insurance Commissioner (1994 - 2002) before being elected governor. Her public statement on health care states: "We are stronger as a nation when our people have access to the highest quality, most affordable health care."

Kansas Republican Party executive director Christian Morgan responded by saying:

With her appointment, Sibelius "leaves behind a long string of broken promises. Chief among these is....to provide health care reform to Kansans - but none ever occurred. Since the governor took office, the number of people covered by commercial health insurance has decreased by approximately 15% while the number covered by Medicaid (rose) 30%. At the same time, the number of uninsured....remained steady. The governor has done nothing to reduce the number of people without health insurance in this state - instead there has been a large increase in the (Medicaid population). She offered no initiatives to make health care insurance more affordable, nor has she created her own plan. (It's) a frightening indication of what is to come" when she's HHS Secretary in Washington.

Morgan left out Sibelius' pro-business agenda of supporting cuts in state corporate income and property taxes and repealing its estate and corporate franchise tax to make Kansas more attractive for investment.

The Wall Street Journal called her administration "notably bipartisan....elected to her first term with a former Republican businessman as her running mate (and to her second) with the former Republican party chairman."

Still, as state insurance commissioner in 2001, she blocked the Indianapolis-based Anthem Insurance Cos.' offer to buy Blue Cross - Blue Shield of Kansas after concluding that premiums would rise under its ownership. She prevailed when the state's high court overturned a lower court ruling that she exceeded her authority. Ever since, she used that victory to promote herself as a staunch consumer advocate who'd stand up to powerful entrenched interests.

Doing it in Kansas is one thing. Washington is another matter where all previous health care reform efforts were defeated, and no wonder as Cornell University Professor Emeritus Rosemary Stevens explained. In her analysis titled: "Health Reform in 2007: What Can We Learn from History," she stated that:

"There is nothing simple and tangible called 'health reform.' The history of American health care is as messy, disjunctive, and complex as is our present health care system. Battalions of lobbyists have argued for different reforms, together with platoons of politicians, skirmishing professionals and a battling throng of others, representing a wide variety of agendas. There is no single narrative of health care....that points to a logical way ahead" or new ways to achieve now what always before failed because reform efforts couldn't muster a congressional majority given the stranglehold business has over lawmakers.

Stevens reviewed our history of successes but overall failure to provide quality coverage for all:

-- as early as 1798, every American ship arriving from a foreign port had to pay 20 cents a month for health care for each merchant seaman;

-- the same 1798 legislation mandated that federally-funded Marine hospitals be set up, and by 1802 they operated in Boston, Norfolk, VA, Newport, RI, and Charleston, SC with plans for more;

-- in 1916, compensation was provided for injured federal workers as in-or-outpatients at Marine hospitals, soon to be called US Public Health Service (PHS) ones;

-- during and after WW I, PHS added new hospitals for veterans, transferred in 1921 to the new Veterans' Bureau; others remained in the PHS;

-- since the 1950s, phasing out PHS hospitals became policy; eight remained by 1981, but the federal model remains with little teeth or funding for enforcement;

-- as early as the 19th century, state and local governments were also involved; they set up mental hospitals for "dangerous and unwanted individuals" in institutions isolated from urban areas; general hospitals also, including special ones for tuberculosis, miners in Pennsylvania, and in cities for the uninsured poor; in some cases, religious or nonsectarian nonprofit organizations ran them;

-- in 1903, the first (public) hospital census showed public subsidies covered 10% or more of their operating costs in 13 states, with wide variations from one to another; concern for a "proper governmental role in hospital care was largely a 20th century phenomenon," when the phrase "socialized medicine" gained it added traction;

-- "cooperative public - private ventures" also played a role as early as 1751 when Benjamin Franklin got a state of Pennsylvania grant to establish the private nonprofit Pennsylvanian Hospital; many other similar examples happened later at a time when there was less of a distinction between "public" and "private;"

-- in the late 1940s, cooperative rural hospitals were established with the help of federal Hill - Burton grants.

US health reform efforts go back to "the health insurance movement of 1913 - 1918" - spurred by the American Association for Labor Legislation to improve industrial workers' health and welfare, and supported at the time by the AMA and other organizations. In 1917, 15 states "introduced a standard health insurance bill (and) eight states set up commissions to study the issue" - to no avail as Colin Gordon's book explained, "Dead on Arrival." Then and later, "proposals were weak on practical details and generated considerable confusion, even among their supporters."

So much so that by 1920, the health insurance movement was dead, despite the poor response to the 1918 - 1919 influenza epidemic. After WW I, doctors settled into private practice, medical specialties expanded, community and university hospitals proliferated, and government's role "was to pick up the slack."

In the 1930 and 1940s, government-sponsored health insurance again surfaced - either in the form of federally-subsidized state programs or through Social Security. By then, the issue was contentious for reasons including medical opposition, a lack of clarity on the advantages or disadvantages for business and labor, private health insurance as an alternative, and concern about "too much government and states' rights."

By 1950, views were changing, given the "rapid growth of (employer-provided) private health insurance, complemented by new and expanding hospitals and a national commitment to (federally funded) biomedical research in cancer and other areas." But what about the retired, disabled, unemployed, or others who for various reasons were uninsured. After years of debate, Medicare and Medicaid emerged in 1965.

Medicare covers the elderly, people with disabilities, and with end-stage renal disease. Medicaid is for the uninsured whose incomes fall below state-specified levels. "In the language of the time, the elderly and poor were to be 'brought into the mainstream.' " In theory at least, they'd be "one, undifferentiated, relatively egalitarian health system in terms of patient status...."

However, fulfillment failed its promise. Medicaid and Medicare both had unexpected cost overruns, corruption and fraud charges, and in some states "a backlash against allegedly high, state-mandated income levels for (Medicaid) eligibility." Calls for "reform" resulted while at the same time employer-based insurance weakened "in the face of rising costs (and) shifts in the structure and nature of the job market." In 1993 - 1994, the Clinton administration addressed the issue but failed so today we're approaching 50 million uninsured, tens of millions more underinsured, and many uninsured at some portions of each year.

"The history of health insurance proposals in the United States is....a history of failure if its goal (is to cover) the whole population." However, Medicare and Medicaid so far are successes for having "transform(ed) the lives and health of millions of individuals." Other public health services include SCGIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program), emergency room access, EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act), government-supported clinics, and the VA for veterans.

Yet all these programs "call out for reform - from relieving excess burdens on, and inappropriate use of emergency rooms (to) getting affordable insurance to all those who can pay for it," but what about for those who can't.

Expanding access is one issue. Creating "coordinated care and service organizations" another. "Expanding access to insurance alone does not ensure more efficient or effective care. Quite the reverse in some instances." Medicare and Medicaid "led to huge changes in disconnected aspects of health care provision," including a new nursing home industry, encouraging hospitals and doctors to be more business oriented, and pushing public hospitals to close since Medicare and Medicaid covered seniors and the poor.

By the 1980s, nonprofit hospitals were almost extinct. They and private ones "competed in a single, profit-oriented" market treating health care like any other commodity. Mental health services also suffered when state hospitals for its treatment began closing. Between 1955 - 1973, California reduced its mental hospital population by three-fourths. The chronically ill ended up in nursing homes or all too often on city streets or in prisons.

Today as a result, the "uninsured or underinsured and medically needy patient who is without a family (for help) is at a particularly high risk in the United States." For decades, health reformers addressed the issue without success. So far, reform has been an impossible Gordian Knot to cut.

The 1973 HMO Act tried through federally-subsidized nonprofit health maintenance organizations. By the 1990s, they "became synonymous with managed care" and all the backlash it created by having "gatekeeper" bureaucrats make health decisions, not doctors.

Stevens stressed "the extraordinary hold rhetoric and deep fears have held in health policy debates" over the "dangers of big government" under "socialized medicine," unmindful that it works very well, if imperfectly, in all other western states - where their populations dread the idea of not having it.

In America "inegalitarianism lingers on." Despite the successes of Medicare and Medicaid, little sentiment where it matters most is for similar coverage for all under a single-payer system. The usual arguments say:

-- "reform" is code language for "rationing;"

-- government will end the right to choose providers; and

-- "socialized medicine" will result, a "dreaded" notion in a nation championing the "free market" right to plunder at the expense of people.

In the end, debate creates controversy and produces failure, so another effort to extend quality care to all dies. Changing it will require "lay(ing) aside old doctrines, bugaboos and fears" - to achieve what's been impossible up to now, so don't hold out hope that Obama will do it, or even try, despite all his high-sounding rhetoric saying otherwise. As long as the business of America is business, profits will always trump need, and today more than ever given the nation in economic collapse and most federal revenues going for militarism and to Wall Street.

Look for Nancy-Ann DeParle, Obama's new "health czar," to assure that "health reform" efforts better industry profits, not human health, and a glance at her background shows why. From her close ties to the industry she'll oversee, it wreaks conflict of interest and privilege, not popularism:

-- in 1987, appointed Tennessee Commissioner of Human Services overseeing a 6000-employee agency responsible for cash assistance, food stamps, child welfare, and adult rehabilitation services;

-- from 1993 - 1997, as Associate Director of the Clinton White House Office of Management and Budget overseeing health care policy and other budget issues; and

-- in 1997, as Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Her private sector experience includes employment as managing director at CCMP Capital Advisors, senior advisor at JP Morgan Partners, the Covington & Burling law firm, the boards of Cerner Corporation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the DaVita Corporation, Medco Health Solutions, Boston Scientific, Triad Hospitals, as well as being a health care systems professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Even The New York Times remarked that "Obama (chose) to overlook Ms. DeParle's business ties that have a direct stake in the health-care debate....the White House instantly faced questions about whether her appointment was skirting the spirit, if not the letter, of the president's tough conflict-of-interest policy."

On taking office, Obama laid out rules barring executive branch officials from working on issues "directly and substantially related" to their employers or former clients for at least the past two years. Appointing DeParle crosses the line, even though she's described as competent, non-ideological, honest, and pragmatic. Nonetheless, when asked, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration doesn't view her directorships as a conflict of interest. The president "has confidence in her and her abilities as part of the health care reform effort here."

Perhaps he'll reconsider given the fallout from several of his other appointees, forced to decline for failing to pay back taxes, another with the same problem now Treasury Secretary, one more as well who says he'll pay up, and perhaps other skeletons in all their closets yet to come out.

Big Pharma (PhRMA) on Obama's Plan

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) is the lobbying and trade group for "the country's leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies" under its president and CEO, former congressman (1980 - 2005), Billy Tauzin.

In a March 4 CNBC interview, he expressed optimism over Obama's plan. Think about what it does, he stated:

"This plan talks about providing comprehensive health insurance to people who don't have it - that means to patients who can't take our medicines because they can't afford it. (About) $650 billion spent to better insure Americans for the products we make. That ought to be a very optimistic and positive message for everyone" in our industry.

"Think about this: Almost half of the prescriptions that are written today go unfilled....because people don't have adequate insurance - they have no insurance, or their insurance doesn't cover our products the way it covers hospitalizations."

The more people insured, the more drugs sold so providing them cheaper is good business - more volume, greater profits. The same holds for insurers if universal coverage is required - more customers, greater profits even at lower per policy premiums. Depending on whatever final plan emerges, look for health care providers to get behind this one, and if so, expect people once again to be betrayed.

The White House Health Reform Forum

On March 5, the East Room of the White House was center stage for the first of a series of meetings "to enact comprehensive health reform by the end of this year," according to the president who led the discussion for a who's who of attendees, including politicians, lobbyists, industry representatives, insurers, PhRMA, physicians' groups, labor, and a handful of reform advocates. Below is a partial listing from the roughly 150 participants:

-- AARP president, Bill Novelli;

-- AFL-CIO assistant to the president for governmental affairs, Gerry Shea;

-- America's Health Insurance Plans president and CEO, Karen Ignani;

-- American Cancer Society president, Daniel Smith;

-- American Heart Association president, Timothy Gardner

-- American College of Physicians president, Jeff Harris;

-- American Hospital Association president, Rebecca Patton;

-- American Medical Association president, Nancy Nielsen;

-- Blue Cross Blue Shield Association CEO, Scott Serota;

-- Families USA president, Ron Pollack;

-- General Mills president and CEO, Ken Powell;

-- National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO, John Engler;

-- National Association of Independent Businesses president, Dan Danner;

-- National Association of Public Hospitals president, Larry Gage;

-- Pfizer CEO, Jeffrey Kindler;

-- PhRMA president and CEO, Billy Tauzin;

-- Physicians for a National Health Program president, Dr. Oliver Fein;

-- Planned Parenthood Federation of America president, Cecile Richards;

-- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation president and CEO, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey; and

-- US Chamber of Commerce president, Tom Donohue.

Meetings like these are for show, whereas deals happen behind closed doors to protect the interests of a powerful industry that the Washington Post describes as "one of the mightiest political forces in Washington, spending nearly $1 billion on lobbying and contributing $162 million to candidates of both parties over the past two years." It gave Obama $19 million for his campaign and now wants payback for its investment. It's coming and will be right in line with its wish list.

For one thing, the White House and key congressional members ruled single-payer Canadian-style coverage "off the table," according to Senate Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus. Physicians for a National Health Program's (PNHP) co-founder and director, Dr. David Himmelstein, responded:

"The president once acknowledged that single payer reform was the best option, but now he's caving in to corporate healthcare interests and completely shutting out (chances for) single reform. The majority of Americans favor (it), and it's the most popular reform option among doctors and health economists...."

In addition, "he's appointed as his health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, a woman who has made her living advising health care investors and sits on the board of many for-profit firms that have made billions from Medicare. Her appointment - and the invitation list to the healthcare summit - (are) clear signal(s) that the administration plans to propose a corporate-friendly (plan) that has no chance of actually solving our health care crisis." It likely will make it worse and shows this president serves the powerful, not the people. But based on his ties to Wall Street, we already know that.

PNHP is an independent, non-partisan, voluntary organization supported by dues, contributions, and progressive foundation grants. It accepts no funding from health care industry companies or other for-profit entities. Since 1987, its 15,000 members have advocated for universal, comprehensive, single-payer national coverage from chapters across the country. It's the only national physician organization exclusively dedicated to achieving it. It believes that "high-quality health care is a right of all people and should be provided equitably as a public service rather than bought and sold as a commodity."

Its current president, Dr. Oliver Fein, calls the need for an "expanded Medicare-for-All....more urgently needed (than ever given the severity of the) economic recession....As long as we rely on private health insurers, universal coverage will be unaffordable," and growing millions will lose out.

"Mandates to buy private insurance are not the answer. Experience" shows they don't work, either to achieve universal coverage or contain costs. They also "cherry-pick healthier patients and insist on more than their share of payment."

Medicare-for-All is the only solution, and cost savings will be impressive - around $400 billion annually from reduced administrative overhead. With single-payer national coverage, lifelong, high quality, comprehensive and affordable coverage can be assured for everyone at much less than is spent today.

An Annals of Internal Medicine study shows 59% of US physicians support it, and in a recent AP poll, 65% of respondents backed universal government-run coverage financed by taxes. In the 110th Congress (January 2007 - January 2009), Rep. John Conyers and 93 co-sponsors endorsed HR 676, the US National Health Care Act, the most of any health reform legislation so far but far short of a majority in the House, let alone the Senate where 60 votes are needed to assure passage.

Dr. Fein is a practicing internist and Professor of Clinical Medicine and Clinical Public Health at Weill Medical College, Cornell University, where he also serves as Associate Dean responsible for the Office of Affiliations and the Office of Global Health Education.

He's a longtime advocate for Medicare-for-All. It works. Private for-profit ones don't, except for the dwindling few who can pay the increasingly unaffordable costs - for insurance and all forms of care. The rest are out of luck, on their own, and not included in Obama's proposed "change" - for the usual empowered interests the way it always works in America. So at the other end of the health "reform" debate, the title of Jill Quadagno's 2005 book aptly explains that we'll remain "One Nation Uninsured" without the single-payer kind that matters.

Automatic Savings Under Medicare-for-All

Private insurers add about 15% to health care costs. Under Medicare/Medicaid, it's 2% for a major saving over insurer payments that cost more and provide less. They game the system to crowd out the sick, cherry-pick the healthy, and find ways to choose cheaper treatments over expensive ones, usually to the detriment of patients paying high premiums but losing benefits when they need them most.

Medicare-for-All solves all problems except one - the influence of a powerful industry throwing its weight into the fight to assure in the end it wins. So far, Obama backs it - big insurers, PhRMA, hospitals, the AMA, and other health care providers with enough clout to matter. With those kind of odds, consumers are outgunned, outmatched, and have little hope that this time will be different.

Media Blackout of Single-Payer Healthcare

More evidence is from a new Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) study showing that "in the week leading up to (the White House forum, there was a) media blackout on single-payer healthcare." The major print and electronic media hardly mentioned it, and when they did, it was in hostile op-eds and disparaging on-air comments. Not one single-payer advocate appeared on television, not even on PBS' News Hour With Jim Lehrer that gave plenty of time to the opposition.

Comments from CNN's medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, were typical. On February 26, she said:

"If in time, Americans start to think what president Obama is proposing is some kind of government-run health system - a la Canada, a la England - he will get resistance in the same way that Hillary Clinton (was treated) when she tried to do this in the '90s."

Instead of explaining both sides fully and accurately, the major media ignore public opinion, filter news, suppress truths, marginalize dissent, and support business as usual for the powerful. As a result, Medicare-for-All advocates are shut out and at times ridiculed for suggesting what all other western nations know works best, costs less, and delivers the highest quality health care to everyone - something millions of Americans never had nor will get from an Obama administration, committed to the rich at the expense of the rest.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12593

Guantanamo Under Obama

Guantanamo Under Obama - by Stephen Lendman

As The New York Times reported on January 22, Barack Obama signed Executive Orders (EOs) banning torture and "directing the CIA to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantanamo detention camp within a year, government official said."

The closure EO is titled: "Executive Order -- Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities."

Sec. 3 reads: "Closure of Detention Facilities at Guantanamo. The detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order. If any individuals covered by this order remain, they shall be returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third country, or transferred to another United States detention facility in a manner consistent with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States."

The EO also orders an "immediate review of all" detainees (by the Secretary of Defense within 30 days), diplomatic efforts with other governments relative to this order, halting all proceedings in the "United States Court of Military Commission Review to which charges have been referred but in which no judgment has been rendered," and assuring that "humane standards of confinement" are observed in accordance with international humanitarian laws, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

It prohibits the following:

-- "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

-- outrages of personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;"

-- carrying out sentences or executions "without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples;" and

-- caring for the wounded and sick, including by an impartial body like the ICRC "offer(ing) its services to the Parties to the conflict."

On February 23, the Center for Constitutional Rights published a report titled: "Current Conditions of Confinement at Guantanamo - Still in Violation of the Law." Below is a summary of its findings.

Guantanamo's existence and practices violate the letter and spirit of international and US laws, including the Constitution's First, Fifth, and Eighth Amendments. The latter two prohibit cruel and unusual punishment and protect prisoners against treatment "that shocks the conscience," such as unsafe conditions, denial of social or family contact, and prolonged isolation. The First Amendment assures prisoners are allowed religious texts and books and may observe their faith freely.

Yet for over seven years, 240 men have had no rights and remain under the worst of "inhumane conditions." Most have never been charged and are innocent. Many were seized for bounty, and few have been able to challenge their detention in a habeas hearing, let alone get a fair trial in a US court.

Most are kept in supermax solitary confinement in Camps 5 and 6 or Camp Echo. Treatment is harshly punitive and includes isolation, sensory and sleep deprivation, brutal assaults, forced tube-feeding of hunger strikers, and environmental manipulation that combined gravely impair physical and psychological health and well-being.

Despite Obama's EO, "conditions at Guantanamo have not improved" and continue in violation of the law. Since it opened in 2002, CCR enlisted over 500 pro bono lawyers to represent hundreds of detainees. This report is based on "direct accounts from (them) and their attorneys," as recently as January and February 2009. The results are deeply disturbing.

Current Guantanamo Conditions

In a word, they're unchanged, outrageous, and illegal. Inmates struggle for their sanity and say conditions are like living in a tomb. The Pentagon and Obama administration deny it and describe isolation as greater "privacy" and "single-occupancy cells." Conditions, however, "speak for themselves."

Solitary Confinement

-- inmates spend 20 or more hours daily "confined to small steel and concrete cells (with) virtually no human contact or mental stimulation;"

-- they eat alone;

-- discipline violations result in loss of "privileges" like toothpaste, a toothbrush, soap and blankets that can be denied for any reason or none at all;

-- Camp 6 has no windows facing outside, and Camp 5 "has only a thin opaque window slit in each cell;

-- toilets are just holes;

-- faucets are provided but no wash basins;

-- Camp 5 lights burn 24 hours a day;

-- "recreation" consists of two - four daily hours in an outdoor cell; in Camp 6, it's in a pen surrounded by high mesh wire-topped concrete walls blocking out most sunlight; in Camp 5, it's in a "cage-like pen;" attempts to use "recreation" for exercise result in immediate removal to their cells, at times forcefully; some "recreation" is scheduled late at night, and if declined, inmates stay isolated for days;

-- the penalty for any infraction is 24-hour isolation;

-- except for "the gloved hands of guards," practically no human contact is allowed; and

-- current conditions under Obama are no different than earlier and in some respects are worse.

Sensory Deprivation and Environmental Manipulation

Sensory over and under-stimulation is used as follows:

-- cell temperatures are too cold causing discomfort, health problems, and mental stress;

-- discipline is imposed on any inmate trying to block a/c vents;

-- one inmate described the combination of cold and 24-hour lights as "indirect torture."

Sleep Deprivation

Besides round-the-clock lights, guards routinely kick cell doors and awaken prisoners as late as 2AM for "recreation." In addition, bed sheets are called a privilege to be denied as a disciplinary measure.

Physical Attacks by an "Immediate Reaction Force (IRF)"

Inmates "live in constant fear of physical violence," and anything or nothing may trigger it. Attacks are frequent, violent and spontaneous. One example was as follows after a minor provocation. Guards accused an inmate of attacking them. He did not. They left him in a "recreation" cage as punishment. He fell asleep on the floor, then was awakened by an IRF team in the dark. They shackled and beat him, blocked his nose and mouth to create an asphyxiation effect, hit him repeatedly in the ribs and head, and caused serious injuries. Back in his cell, a guard urinated on his head.

Another inmate described painful forced feedings to hunger strikers, constant IRF cell intrusions inflicting "cruelty, beatings and bodily torture....the administration is giving the soldiers all the authority to practice violence against us....we are in very bad condition, suffering from aggression, beatings and IRF teams, as well as the inability to sleep except for a few hours."

After years of torture and deprivation, some prisoners want to die. In the words of one: "I'm in despair right now and I don't know what to do. I'm going crazy."

Abuse of Psychologically Ill Detainees

According to experts, the combination of torture, sensory deprivation, and a state of constant fear and hopelessness "can cause serious and potentially permanent psychological and physical damage." The former include hallucinations, severe anxiety, hostility, panic attacks, nightmares, confusion, loss of memory and appetite, self-mutilations, profound depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Lawyers and others report these observations. Detainees say many times they tried to harm or kill themselves. Instead of help, "detainees have faced further abuse - gross mistreatment that exacerbates their pain and suffering." Psychiatric visits are few and cursory, and when inmates report problems they're placed in more restricted isolation and punished.

Attempted suicides are downplayed as "manipulative self-injurious behavior." Torture is "enhanced interrogation." Medical staff often are complicit. They impose unwanted care, verbally abuse detainees, and often laugh at their pain. They deny information about medical tests, existing diseases, what drugs are administered and their risks. They ignore the brutalizing effects of mistreatment causing serious physical and emotional harm as well as chronic weight loss, rotted teeth, receded gums, renal pain, and a constant state of emotional stress and ill health.

Washington under Bush and Obama withholds inmate access to independent medical help, leaving them exclusively in prison hands to continue mistreatment or none at all. What happened to Muhammed Khan Tumani is typical.

Imprisoned at age 17, he's been at Guantanamo for a third of his life, separated from his father who's also an inmate. The effect is telling:

-- signs of serious mental trauma;

-- in December 2008, he cut multiple slashes across his inner arm and a vein in his hand;

-- nearby detainees report that he bangs his head against his cell walls and smears them with his excrement;

-- during a recent attorney visit, he was too anxious to concentrate in spite of "his intense desire to challenge his detention;"

-- "in complete despair, he threatened to harm himself again;" the same is true for many others;

-- after cutting himself, Tumani was harshly disciplined; when he failed to clean up his excrement, a ten-guard IRF team severely beat him; sprayed him with tear gas or another noxious substance leaving his skin red and burning days later; and stripped his cell of everything, including a thin sleeping mat; instead of treating his psychotic state, prison personnel beat and punished him.

Hunger Strikes and Force-Feeding

As a result of continued mistreatment, torture, isolation, and deprivation, detainee hunger strikes are common as their only way to protest. The response is to restrain them in chairs, force tubes through their noses and throats abrasively enough to draw blood, and pump food into their stomachs - a procedure causing excruciating pain.

Strikes began as early as February 2002, involving as many as 200 or more prisoners at a time, and continuing on and off for months. Constant abuse sparks them or just an individual act.

Introduced in December 2005, "restraint chairs" are called "padded cell on wheels" because they confine legs, arms, shoulders, and head. A thickness of a finger tube is then forcibly inserted up the nose to the stomach for as much as 1.5 liters of formula, or more than a stomach can hold - causing severe pain, bloating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and shortness of breath.

No sedatives or anesthesia are given, and men are kept strapped in for an hour to prevent purging. The procedure is generally repeated twice daily with the same tubes, covered in blood and stomach bile, reportedly used from one inmate to another with no proper sanitation. "The policy of force-feeding with restraint chairs continues to this day under the Obama administration."

One inmate described the experience as "torture, torture, torture." Another refusing force-feeding was beaten so badly he was hospitalized on January 8, 2009 but failed to receive proper treatment for multiple injuries.

US Bureau of Prison regulations require that force-feeding be humane. The World Medical Association, of which the AMA is part, states that force-feeding violates medical ethics, and when accompanied by "threats, coercion, force, and the use of physical restraints is considered inhuman and degrading treatment." For inmates, it's excruciating torture.

Religious Abuses

They include humiliation, the invasion of privacy, forced nudity, preventing communal prayer, and allowing no Muslim chaplain.

Forced Separation of Family Members and Denial of Adequate Family Communications

Only recently has even "extraordinarily limited" familial telephone access been allowed. For the first six years there was none. Now at most one annual monitored call is permitted compared to Federal Bureau of Prisons regulations requiring at least one a month, and at the Florence, Colorado supermax facility, two a month is procedure. For prisoners under special disciplinary measures, it's one every 90 days.

In the few cases where two family members are detained together, total separation with no communication is enforced, "causing further trauma." In one such instance at Guantanamo, extreme pressure continues to be exerted on a son to provide "evidence" against his father.

Efforts to Whitewash Inhumane Conditions

Like its predecessor, "the Obama administration to date has continued (the same practice of) sanitiz(ing) the conditions for the men detained in the most restrictive facilities (at Camps 5, 6 and Echo)." Deception and deliberate lies suppress the daily brutalization of inmates.

Following Obama's EO to close Guantanamo, officials responded "by instituting minor changes that fail to address the fundamental inhumanity (and daily torment) of this facility." Nothing fundamentally has changed. Nothing from the White House addresses it, and inmates exhibiting the severest psychological trauma face even harsher restrictive and punitive responses. "Inexplicably, their psychological deterioration is presented as a failure to comply with camp rules, rather than a medical issue (demanding) concern and care."

"The most psychologically vulnerable men in the prison are kept in the most coercive and damaging (state) of confinement," further exacerbating their condition. The more traumatized they get, the more they're punished, and Guantanamo's military command has little interest in investigating physical, psychological and religious abuses. Mistreatment instead is whitewashed.

Minor cosmetic changes have done nothing to relieve daily brutality and suffering or the violation of US and international laws. So far, Obama's EO is empty, meaningless, and fails to address similar practices at secret Pentagon/CIA prisons globally, housing "ghost detainees."

Some are on "prison ships," addressed by this writer in July 2008 as follows:

"....in 2005, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism took note. He spoke of 'very, very serious' allegations that the US was secretly detaining terrorist suspects aboard special ships at various locations around the world, notably in the Indian Ocean.

The UK legal action charity, Reprieve, believes up to 17 floating prisons (were and likely still are) involved where detainees are held under torturous conditions and subjected to harsh and brutal treatment, in some cases worse than Guantanamo. Details have emerged from US administration and military sources as well as the Council of Europe, various parliamentary bodies, journalists, and former prisoner testimonies.

The USS Bataan is one ship mentioned, and a former Guantanamo detainee described his treatment on board. About 50 in total were there. They were closed off in the ship's bottom area and beaten more severely than at Camp X-Ray. Reprieve's Director, Clive Stafford Smith, said: 'The US administration chooses ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their human rights.'

'By its own admission (then and likely now), the US government (is detaining up to) 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests that around 80,000 have been 'through the system' since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.' The Bush administration's response (at the time was) silence." So far, it's no different under Obama.

On February 22, the UK Independent's Stephen Foley headlined: "Very Bad News - Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base Will Be Obama's Guantanamo." It's to undergo a $60 million expansion to hold 1100 more prisoners, above the 600 now there, and nearly five times the 240 at Guantanamo. Other than occasional ICRC visits, human rights groups and journalists are barred from a facility notorious for the worst of mistreatment, according to the few former inmates released.

Reprieve's Clive Stafford called the scheme "the Bagram bait and switch....a diversionary tactic in the 'war on terror,' " a willful case of hypocritical deceit to keep thousands of prisoners in illegal black holes and brutalize them to the point of despair or death.

Executive director Tina Foster of the New York-based International Justice Network warned that "leaving Bagram open (let alone tripling its capacity) turns the closure of Guantanamo into essentially a hollow and symbolic gesture." The status quo is unchanged. Bagram prisoners "have been tortured to the point that they have died; it is a rallying cry for those who oppose the US actions in Afghanistan (and a travesty regarding) everything we (say we) stand for as a country."

The Obama administration's justification is that Bagram is a special case in a war theatre. Unmentioned is that US and international laws allow no "special cases" for illegal detentions or torture anywhere, at any time, for any reason with no exceptions ever.

CCR demands better. Prior to Guantanamo's closure, it wants camp conditions improved, legal standards observed, and humane practices restored as stipulated under Geneva, the Constitution, and all applicable international human rights laws. This must be initiated "promptly and thoroughly." Specifically, the following practices must be implemented at Guantanamo and all other US run or supervised detention facilities:

-- solitary confinement must end, and at Guantanamo Camps 5, 6 and Echo closed;

-- religious freedom must be observed;

-- all forms of IRF physical and psychological abuse must cease;

-- force-feeding must stop; forcible medications also;

-- detainees must have immediate access to independent medical and psychological professionals;

-- illegal interrogations must be halted; and

-- independent and international human rights observers must have access to inmates.

Above all, full and unequivocal US and international humanitarian law observance is mandatory immediately. No deviations can be tolerated.

Human Rights Organizations Reveal A Secret Pentagon/CIA Prison Network

CCR, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law, and Amnesty International (AI) released documents revealing secret Pentagon/CIA black sites housing "ghost detainees."

Most of the material contained news articles. Much else was heavily redacted, but reference was made to facilities in Iraq and an undisclosed prison at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.

A Pentagon "Information Paper" dealt with the "Applicability of the Geneva Conventions to 'Ghost Detainees' in Iraq," suggesting that DOD and CIA may conceal their identity if "absolute military security" dictates to facilitate intelligence collection and justify denying ICRC visits "for reasons of imperative military necessity."

Reference is made to "spies and saboteurs; persons who have committed such acts (and have) forfeited the rights of communication." A partly redacted email cites the "need to definitely think about hold(ing) off (bad press by delaying inmate releases) for 45 days or so until things cool down." CCR attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez called it "astonishing that the government (might delay) releasing men from Guantanamo (or elsewhere) to avoid bad press." Obama vowed to close black sites. So far, his words are an empty gesture.

ACLU Report of US Prisoners Tortured to Death

On February 11, the ACLU released previously classified documents concerning "abusive" interrogation practices (to the point of death) in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. The report referred to "clearly abusive (behavior), clearly not in keeping with any approved interrogation policy or guidance." It noted instances of "deaths follow(ing) interrogation sessions in which unauthorized techniques were allegedly employed, but (in two cases cited) these sessions were followed by further alleged abusive behavior outside of the interrogation booth."

Deaths took place in Iraq and Afghanistan:

-- two at Bagram "determined to have been killed by pulmonary embolism caused as a result of standing chained in place, sleep deprivation and dozens of beatings by guards and possibly interrogators;" other evidence reveals torture at Guantanamo and American-Afghan prisons in Kabul;

-- a homicide or involuntary manslaughter of detainee Dilar Dababa by US forces in Iraq;

-- torture and abuse at the US Special Operations Force Compound at Mosul Airfield, Mosul, Iraq;

-- torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib; and

-- causing death to a detainee by asphyxiation.

Torture was official policy under George Bush through numerous "findings," Military and Executive Orders, memoranda, and memos like the infamous March 14, 2003 "Torture Memo," written by John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales (as White House counsel), Jay Bybee (now a federal judge), and David Addington. It bypassed existing laws, sanctioned all interrogation methods short of producing organ failure, and legalized everything in the "war on terror," including supreme presidential power.

On January 22, Obama signed a series of Executive Orders, including the banning of torture. The proof of the pudding is in the execution, and so far very little is in sight, including at Guantanamo where the worst of abuses continue.

Most important is accountability - prosecuting Bush administration officials for crimes of war and against humanity, including the practice of torture. CCR states:

"Evidence of the criminal activities of the Bush administration is exceedingly well documented. It is apparent in (its) memos," various memoranda and other internal papers, "FOIA documents, congressional hearings, court documents, the testimony of victims, innumerable investigative news articles and books and direct admissions by intelligence, military and administration officials."

The evidence points right to the top, including the president, vice-president, two defense and state secretaries, and heads of CIA among others. Given volumes of damning evidence, "now is the time for accountability (to) hold these officials (liable) for their (crimes) and dissuade future government officials" from committing them again knowing full well the consequences if they do.

It's critical for the Obama administration to "reassert the rule of law," affirm that no one is exempt, and set an example that lawlessness no longer will be tolerated. Nothing less is acceptable.

Military officials like Major General Antonio Taguba and retired judge and head of the Guantanamo military commissions, Susan Crawford, acknowledged high official guilt. Taguba said:

"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current (Bush) administration has committed war crimes. The only question....is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

The Convention Against Torture's Article 4 requires the Obama administration to convene a criminal investigation to hold those responsible accountable. Torture is prohibited under all circumstances, at all times, with no exceptions allowed ever. Those in violation must be investigated, tried, prosecuted and sentenced in accordance with the law. Nothing short of full and meaningful justice is acceptable, and no administration promising change can do less.

Adds CCR president Michael Ratner:

"The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they were not held accountable."

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12593

Modern Slavery in America

Modern Slavery in America - by Stephen Lendman

Called human trafficking or forced labor, modern slavery thrives in America, largely below the radar. A 2004 UC Berkeley study cites it mainly in five sectors:

-- prostitution and sex services - 46%;

-- domestic service - 27%;

-- agriculture - 10%;

-- sweatshops or factories - 5%;

-- restaurant and hotel work - 4%; with the remainder coming from:

-- sexual exploitation of children, entertainment, and mail-order brides.

It persists for lack of regulation, work condition monitoring, and a growing demand for cheap labor enabling unscrupulous employers and criminal networks to exploit powerless workers for profit.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) defines forced labor as:

"....all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which said person has not offered himself voluntarily."

Forced child labor is:

"(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;"

"(b) the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;"

"(c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;" and

"(d) work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children."

The Free the Slaves.net's definition is being "forced to work without pay under threat of violence and unable to walk away." It reports:

-- an estimated 27 million people are enslaved globally, more than at any other time previously;

-- thousands annually trafficked in America in over 90 cities; around 17,000 by some estimates and up to 50,000 according to the CIA, either from abroad or affecting US citizens or residents as forced labor or sexual servitude;

-- the global market value is over $9.5 billion annually, according to Mark Taylor, senior coordinator for the State Department's Office to Monitor;

-- victims are often women and children;

-- the majority are in India and African countries;

-- slavery is illegal but happens "everywhere;"

-- slaves work in agriculture, homes, mines, restaurants, brothels, or wherever traffickers can employ them; they're cheap, plentiful, disposable, and replaceable;

-- "$90 is the average cost of a human slave around the world" compared to the 1850 $40,000 equivalent in today's dollars;

-- common terminology includes debt bondage, bonded labor, attached labor, restavec (or de facto bondage for Haitian children sent to households of strangers), forced labor, indentured servitude, and human trafficking;

-- explosive population growth, mostly to urban centers without safety net or job security protections, facilitates the practice; and

-- government corruption, lack of monitoring, and indifference does as well.

American Anti-Trafficking Efforts

US laws prohibit all forms of human trafficking through statutes created or strengthened by the 2000 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) with imprisonment for up to 20 years or longer as well as other penalties.

In April 2003, the Protect Act was passed (Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today Act). The law protects children and severely punishes offenders when enforced. It's to prosecute American citizens and legal permanent residents who travel abroad for purposes of sexually trafficking minors without having to prove prior intent to commit the crime.

The 2000 law (reauthorized in 2005) provides tools to combat trafficking offenders worldwide. It also establishes the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) and the President's Interagency Task Force to help coordinate anti-trafficking efforts. The State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) also is for victim protection. In addition, various other US agencies are involved, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through its Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking public awareness campaign and by identifying victims.

The Department of Justice handles prosecutions, and along with DHS and the State Department, addresses various trafficking issues through the interagency Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center. Still, enforcement is often is lax or absent, at both federal and state levels, because offenders are powerful and those harmed are the "wretched of the earth," mostly poor blacks, Latinos and Asians. As a result, the practice is rampant and growing. Below are examples of its forms.

Farmworker Slavery

In a March 2004 report, Oxfam America highlighted the growing problem in a report titled "Like Machines in the Fields: Workers without Rights in American Agriculture." It's a shocking account of how "Behind the shiny, happy images promoted by the fast-food industry with its never-ending commercials, there is another reality:"

-- nearly two million overworked farmworkers living in "sub-poverty misery, without benefits, without the right to overtime," a living wage, or other job protections, including for children;

-- in Florida, it's not uncommon to find instances of workers chained to poles, locked in trucks, physically beaten, and cheated out of pay; it's pervasive enough for a federal prosecutor to have called the state "ground zero for modern-day slavery" in a New Yorker magazine article;

-- John Bowe, author of "Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy," calls Florida agriculture "an unsavory world" where workers like Adan Ortiz fear talking about their bosses because he has nightmares that they might "come after me with machetes and stuff;"

-- basic US labor laws exclude farmworkers, including the right to organize; laws like the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRB) and 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA); also OSHA protections are lacking; the 1983 Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (AWPA or MSPA) provided modest but inadequate relief and none at all when it isn't enforced; Oxfam reported that, except in California to a modest degree, "state laws perpetuate inequality," especially in Florida and North Carolina;

-- overall, enforcement at both federal and state levels is lax and has weakened in recent years; most notable are the lack of investigations, prosecutions, and resources allocated for either; in the case of undocumented workers, nothing in the law protects them;

-- many serve as forced labor against their will in a modern-day version of slavery: terrorized by violent employers, watched by armed guards under conditions of near-incarceration, living overcrowded in "severely inadequate" barracks or trailers, often plagued with rust, mildew, filth, broken appliances, sagging or leaky roofs, non-working showers, and multiple occupants being over-charged up to $200 a week by unscrupulous employers; yet workers put up with it because in the words of one: "If we don't work, we don't eat;"

-- the commercial power of giant buyers and retailers like Wal-Mart (selling 19% of US groceries) and Yum Brands (the world's largest fast-food company) squeeze growers and suppliers for the lowest prices;

-- increased competition from imports have had a similar effect, especially in winter months;

-- yet while wages and prices to producers are squeezed, profits are passed up the distribution chain to corporate giants at the top.

Farmworkers have been punished as a result and are perhaps the poorest and most abused laborers in America. Around half of them earn less than $7500 annually. Lucky ones earn up to $10,000, in either case it's far below the federal poverty threshold, and their wages have been stagnant since the 1970s.

Doing some of the worst and most dangerous jobs in America (from exposure to toxic chemicals and workplace accidents), poverty has forced them into sub-standing housing, temporary jobs, increased migrancy, and family separation.

Besides sub-poverty wages, around 95% get no Social Security, disability, or medical insurance benefits (let alone vacations or pensions) for themselves or their families. Women farmworkers face other abuses like male dominance, sexual harassment, or worse, while at the same time remain primary family caregivers.

Crop and livestock agricultural jobs exist throughout the country, but over half are concentrated in California, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Washington. Most farmworkers are young (between 18 - 44 or younger), male (about 80%), and Latino. They have little education, and many are recent undocumented immigrants (mostly from Mexico) forced north because of destructive trade laws like NAFTA.

Organizing efforts have won important victories but not enough to increase workers' bargaining power under a fundamentally unfair system. So while achievements of organizations like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida (with over 2000 members) are impressive, they're no match against agribusiness giants or Wal-Mart.

Nor can they ameliorate conditions in one of the country's most hazardous occupations. Farmworker disability rates are three times than for the greater population. Around 300,000 laborers suffer pesticide poisoning annually, and many others endure accidents, musculoskeletal, and other type injuries (some chronic).

A 1990 North Carolina study found only 4% of workers had access to drinking water, hand-washing, and toilet facilities, a particularly dangerous situation for children and pregnant women.

Oxfam calls farmworker conditions today the equivalent of a "19th century plantation-style" model relying on field hands, rudimentary equipment, long hours, little pay, no benefits, under a basically "inhumane, anachronistic (system crying) out for reform." But how when all levels of government turn a blind eye to the worst of abuses, and for the undocumented blame them for their own plight.

Domestic Servitude in America

Each year, many thousands, mostly women, arrive in America with temporary visas to work as live-in domestic workers - for the wealthy, foreign diplomats, or other domestic or foreign officials. They come to escape poverty or to earn money to send home to families. Often they're exploited or victimized by unscrupulous traffickers who hold them in forced servitude, work them up to 19 hours a day, keep them practically incarcerated, pay them $100 or less a month, and often subject them to sexual abuse.

Undocumented workers have no protection, but even legal entrants have few. Because visas are employment-based, they're obliged to one employer no matter how abusive, and if leave they lose their immigration status and are deported. As a result, few do or file complaints. Some who do are rarely protected because government agencies are lax in their monitoring and enforcement.

Live-in domestic workers are also excluded from labor law protections with regard to overtime pay and right to organize, strike, and bargain collectively. In addition, they're unprotected by OSHA and against sexual harassment under Title VII workplace safeguards as it applies only to employers with 15 or more workers. In cases of foreign employers, they enjoy diplomatic immunity, even from criminal, civil, or administrative prosecutions.

As a result, special visa domestics endure human rights violations. Employers are immunized while workers are powerless to stop abuses like:

-- assault and battery, including physical beatings and threats of serious harm;

-- limited freedom of movement, including arbitrary and enforced loss of liberty by use of locks, bars, confiscation of passports and travel documents, chains, and threats of retaliation against other family members;

-- health and safety issues, including unhealthy sleeping situations in basements, utility rooms, or other unsatisfactory places; unsafe working conditions endangering health; denial of food or proper nutrition; and refusal to provide medical care and having to work when ill;

-- wage and amount of work concerns - US labor laws afford no protections so long hours, little rest, and low pay are common;

-- privacy invasions - the UN General Assembly's December 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that "(n)o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence;" it applies to everyone, even live-in domestics on visas; nonetheless violations of ICCPR are common and migrants get no redress;

-- psychological abuse - often highlighting employer superiority and worker inferiority to enforce control and render employees powerless; other abuses include insults, food restrictions, denying proper clothing, and various other demeaning practices; and

-- servitude, forced labor, and trafficking - ICCPR and other international laws and instruments prohibit it, yet don't effectively define "servitude" as distinguished from slavery; as a result, abusive labor relationships are inevitable; trafficking is specifically prohibited under the UN's Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the (UN-adopted 2000) Convention against Transnational Organized Crime; nonetheless, the practice is rampant and growing; in the case of migrant domestic workers, abuse is widespread and greatly underreported.

Sex Slavery in America

It's the largest category of forced labor in America and with good reason:

-- it's tied to organized crime and highly profitable;

-- the demand for sex services, including from children, is high and growing; and

-- the lack of safe and legal migration facilitates it.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) states that the average entry prostitution age is between 12 - 14. Shared Hope International documents modern-day sex trafficking and examines conditions under which it exists. It confirms that most victims are underage girls. A congressional finding estimated that between 100,000 - 300,000 children are at risk at any time. A DOJ assessment was that pimps control at least 75% of exploited minors by targeting vulnerable children using violence and psychological intimidation to hold them.

The Internet is a frequent recruitment tool. Other vulnerable victims are shelter and street youths, including runaways. An estimated 2.8 million children live on city streets, a third of whom are lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. Familial prostitution is also common and involves the selling of a family member for drugs, shelter, and/or money.

The market includes prostitution, including with children, pornography, striptease, erotic dancing, and peep shows, often controlled by organized crime. The combination of legal and illegal sex generally is part of a larger portfolio of products and services that include drugs and drugs trafficking.

Sex traffickers usually recruit victims of their own nationality or ethnicity, and migrant smuggling facilitates it. In addition, state and federal laws too often conflict enough to withhold victim status from the abused, impede prosecutions, and result in too lenient sentences when they occur. Also, rarely are prostitution purchasers (including from children) arrested or prosecuted, and overall, law enforcement agencies face legal and systemic challenges that interfere with their ability or inclination to go after buyers. Society provides few protections for victims, including custodial shelters for young children, and as a result, sex services in America thrive.

Sweatshops and Factories

According to the Union of Needle Trades and Industrial Textile Employees, 75% of New York garment factories are sweatshops. The US Department of Labor says over 50% of all US-based ones are, the majority in the apparel centers of New York, California, Dallas, Miami, and Atlanta but others located offshore as well in American territories like Saipan, Guam and American Samoa where merchandise produced is labeled "Made in the USA."

Competing with low-wage offshore producers pressures US producers to cut labor costs to a minimum, even by breaking the law, sometimes egregiously through forced labor. Like agriculture and domestic service, the sector is especially vulnerable as it often operates within the informal economy where regulatory enforcement is lax or absent. As a result, worker exploitation persists. Wages are sub-poverty. Overtime compensation is the exception, and work environments generally are poor to hazardous. Workers who complain or try to organize usually are fired and replaced by more amenable ones.

Starvation wages, long hours, unsafe working conditions, and no protections are standard practice in an industry long known for its labor abuses.

In 1995, two major scandals made headlines, one at home, the other offshore. On August 2, police raided an El Monte, California apartment complex in which 72 undocumented Thai immigrants were kept in forced bondage behind razor wire and a chain link fence. They'd been there for up to 17 years sewing clothes for some of the nation's top manufacturers and retailers.

They were housed in crowded, squalid quarters. Armed guards imposed discipline, pressuring and intimidating them to work every day, around 84 hours a week for 70 cents an hour. Workers were forced to work, eat, sleep, and live in captivity. No unmonitored phone calls or uncensored letters were allowed, and everything bought came only from their captors at highly inflated prices. Seven operators were arrested and later convicted of conspiracy, kidnapping, involuntary servitude, smuggling, and harboring illegal immigrants.

Also in 1995, National Labor Committee investigators found teenage women, as young as 13, sewing clothing for Kathy Lee Gifford's Global Fashion plant in Honduras. Pay was from 9 - 16 cents an hour under oppressive working conditions. Forced overtime was imposed to meet deadlines. Only two daily bathroom visits were allowed. Supervisors and armed guards applied pressure and intimidation to work faster on machines that were rust laden and prone to accidents. Attempts by the women to demand their legal rights were thwarted. Merchandise produced was for major US retailers like Wal-Mart.

American restaurant and hotel workers also work under onerous conditions and are underpaid. In hotels, nearly all housekeepers are women who are required to clean 15 or more rooms a day. Often they must skip meals and rest periods, work off the clock to meet quotas, and have a 40% higher injury rate than service workers overall as a result. According to US Department of Labor figures, they earn an average $8.67 an hour or about $17, 340 annually provided they work full-time.

Immigrants, mainly women, are especially vulnerable in hotels and restaurants. A June 2005 ACLU press release highlighted one example among many pertaining to a law suit brought by two immigrant waitresses against a New Jersey Chinese restaurant charging sex discrimination and labor exploitation.

Filed in June 2003, Mei Ying Liu and Shu Fang Chen charged that from May 2000 - November 2001 they were completely controlled by their employers, forced to work an average 80 hours a week, paid no wages or overtime, had to pay a kickback from tips received, faced gender and ethnic discrimination, were housed in an overcrowded, vermin-filled apartment, and were threatened with death when stopped working at the restaurant.

Guest Worker Trafficking on US Military Bases

Besides Halliburton's exploited army of tens of thousands of foreign nationals in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the National Labor Committee (NLC) reported last July that "hundreds of thousands of foreign guest workers - among them 240,000 Bangladeshis - have been trafficked to Kuwait (under false promises of well-paid jobs, and) forced to work seven days a week (11 hours a day) at a US military base" under horrific conditions.

Stripped of their passports on arrival, they're housed in overcrowded, squalid dorms with eight workers sharing small 10 x 10 rooms, paid 14 - 36 cents an hour, beaten and threatened with arrest when they complained, forced to use most of their wages for high-priced food, and the case of "Mr. Sabur" is typical. Hired by the Kuwait Waste Collection and Recycling Company to work at the Pentagon's Camp Arifjan, his job was to clean the base - everything from offices and living spaces to tanks, rocket launchers and missiles.

He worked an 11-hour shift seven days a week and got a one-hour midnight break for supper. For this, he earned $34.72 a week, far less than he was promised, and he had to pay a Bangladesh employment agency 185,000 taka ($2697) for his three-year contracted job. His family sold everything possible for the money, still came up short, and had to borrow the rest from a neighbor.

On the job, the Kuwaiti company illegally withheld his first three months wages, forcing him to borrow money to survive. When he asked to be paid, he was beaten, and after an 80,000 worker strike, he was arrested, incarcerated for five days, beaten in prison, then deported to Bangladesh still wearing his torn, blood-stained clothing.

He was owed but never paid thousands of promised dollars in back wages, and he's typical. NLC estimates that all 240,000 Bangladeshis have been cheated out of $1.2 billion, and the Pentagon is complicit in the crime. These same abuses are common on US bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, and likely other offshore locations as well. In the words of one Sri Lankan laborer for a Halliburton subcontractor in Iraq: "They promised us the moon and stars," but instead gave us dirty work, low pay, long hours, bad food, and for the first three months held us in windowless warehouses near Baghdad's airport with no money, and for some of them afterwards in tents even worse than the warehouses.

A Final Comment

This is the plight of America's vulnerable and those we exploit abroad, whether in restaurants, hotels, agriculture, domestic work, the sex trade, or on US offshore military bases, and seldom do courts provide justice. It's America's dark side along with an appalling record of crimes and abuses, including imperial wars, torture, and looting the national wealth for criminal bankers and the rich at the expense of growing millions in need left wanting at the most perilous economic time in our history. America's long and disturbing legacy, not at all one to be proud of.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12494

Human Rights in Israel and Palestine

Human Rights in Israel and Occupied Palestine - by Stephen Lendman

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) publishes annual reports on "The State of Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories." This article reviews its December 2008 one as human rights activists commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on December 10.

ACRI is Israel's leading human and civil rights organization and the only one addressing all liberty and rights issues. It was founded in 1972, is independent and nonpartisan, believes human and civil rights are universal, and leads the struggle for these issues in Israel and Occupied Palestine (OPT) through litigation, legal advocacy, education, and public outreach.

Ten years ago on UDHR's 50th anniversary, ACRI assessed the status of human rights in Israel and discovered some troubling phenomena and trends:

-- inequality,

-- social gaps,

-- human rights violations in the OPT,

-- eroding social rights,

-- increasing privatization of social services, and more.

Even so, ACRI noted that "The State of Israel has impressive achievements in the field of human rights." A decade later, ACRI concludes that troubling 1997 trends are now worse. Human rights aren't in a constitution. Israel has none. Only some are in the Basic Laws, and those apply only for Jews. Israeli Arab citizens have no rights whatever.

"The State of Israel has increasingly shirked its responsibility to ensure its citizens the most fundamental rights:"

-- to health,

-- education,

-- housing, and

-- to live in dignity.

Quite the opposite:

-- inequality is growing,

-- socioeconomic gaps are widening,

-- free expression and privacy are threatened,

-- racist trends are more common,

-- so are ones that limit basic freedoms and endanger human and civil rights; legislation for them has been tabled in the Knesset,

-- judicial equity is eroding,

-- so is democracy,

-- civil society organizations and activists are threatened,

-- institutionalized discrimination exists,

-- Arab Israelis are disadvantaged, persecuted, endangered, and live under third-world conditions, especially in "unrecognized villages" in the Negev and Galilee;

-- the gap between Arabs and Jews has widened, and

-- all of the above is in Israel.

In Occupied Palestine, conditions are far worse and oppressive. "For forty-one years, Israel has denied fundamental rights to four million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza," effectively controlling their lives, and repressively denying them their rights under military occupation:

-- to life,

-- liberty,

-- personal security,

-- free movement and expression,

-- to earn a living,

-- to health,

-- education,

-- to basic dignity, and much more.

ACRI compiled its data from numerous and varied sources:

-- non-governmental organizations,

-- newspapers,

-- Knesset deliberations and documents, and

-- Israeli published material and court proceedings.

Its report covers equality, civil, and social rights.

The Right to Equality

Sixty years after the UDHR and establishment of the State of Israel, these rights have no "constitutional anchoring." No institutions are empowered to apply them, and Arab Israelis and Palestinians are fundamentally denied them in all respects.

In addition, Israeli laws and policies reflect institutionalized discrimination favoring Jews alone - no others, including Christians. Those most aggrieved are the Palestinians in the OPT. For Jews, however, laws have been passed to guarantee equality even though they're loosely enforced and are seriously eroding:

-- the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (1988) prohibits employment discrimination (in theory) with regard to nationality, country of origin, age, gender, family status, sexual orientation, faith, opinion, and party affiliation;

-- the Equal Rights for People with Disabilities Law (1998) affirms their right to be integrated into society, to equality of employment, and to accessibility; in practice, it's loosely enforced and doesn't work;

-- the Prohibition of Discrimination in Products, Services and Entry into Places of Entertainment and Public Places Law (2000) prevents discrimination by private individuals; again, enforcement is lax;

-- various amendments to the State Service Law assures fair representation of women, the disabled, Arab citizens, and Ethiopian immigrants in public bodies; they don't work; and

-- many judicial rulings on equality and against discrimination; they, too, end up nonstarters.

Inequality and discrimination persist because they're hard to prove and Israeli society never internalized these values in practice. It shows in the Israel Democracy Institute's 2008 Democracy Index in which 83% agreed that "every person should have the same rights," but only 56% want full equality for all citizens, including Arabs and women.

The Status of Women

In Israel's labor market, women are judged inferior to men. They earn the lowest wages, are promoted least, very few are managers, and most "work in a rather narrow band of 'women's professions' " reflecting these conditions. Many have part-time jobs, and female unemployment is higher than for men.

They're also sexually harassed and burdened (according to men) by getting pregnant, becoming mothers, and being viewed mainly as homemakers. Women are poorly represented in the Israeli Knesset and in academia at about 10% less than in EU countries. In contrast, they represent 51% of the judiciary, their same proportion as in the population.

Jewish and Muslim religious laws also disfavor women with respect to marriage and divorce, the distribution of assets when it happens, child custody and maintenance. Too little attention is also afforded sexually assaulted, battered women, and those victimized by trafficking.

Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African Origin)

Socioeconomic gaps (based on education, income, professions and job status) between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi European Jews have widened, even though no institutionalized discrimination exists between them.

Arab Israeli Citizens

Though legally entitled to full equality, they're effectively victimized by institutional discrimination "deriving from the concept of the State and its actual policies:"

-- Judaizing the Negev and Galilee, for example;

-- legislation favoring Jews over Arabs, such as the right to citizenship;

-- anachronistic institutions since the founding of the State that strictly serve Jewish majority interests in all respects;

-- laws, court rulings, government policies, and official documents discriminate against Arab citizens.

In November 2000 at the beginning of the Second Intifada, the Or Commission was established to investigate Israeli security force killings of Arab Israelis and Palestinians. In September 2003, it published its findings and concluded that:

"The State was not doing enough and was not making a sufficient effort to provide equality to Arab citizens and to remove the phenomena of discrimination and deprivation....It must be a fundamental aim of the State's actions to achieve true equality for its Arab citizens....To this end, the State must promote, develop, and introduce plans to close the gaps, putting emphasis on the budgetary areas, in all aspects of education, housing, industrial development, employment, and services. Special attention should be paid to the living conditions and plight of the Arab Bedouin."

Five years later, "nothing has been done to improve the status (and welfare)" of Israel's Arab population. For example:

-- discriminatory legislation continues, including bills and laws that delegitimize Arab Israelis, deny them equal rights, and treat them as enemies;

-- the Citizenship and Entry into Law denies Palestinian citizenship to spouses of Israeli citizens, their right to reside in Israel, permission to stay in the country, and those already there must leave; in July 2008, the law was extended for another year;

-- in June 2008, a Basic Law amendment now denies candidacy for the Knesset to anyone who visited a "hostile" country (meaning Occupied Palestine) without a permit; though worded in "neutral" language, it's directly solely at Arab legislative members to reduce their already limited numbers;

-- Israel continues to institutionalize discrimination through increasing numbers of new laws;

-- they affect land distribution and planning egregiously; since the founding of the State, the Arab population has grown sevenfold, yet Israel expropriated half of formerly Arab-owned lands and hasn't established a single new Arab town; in contrast, 600 new Jewish ones have been built; Israeli Arabs comprise 20% of the population, yet live on and have jurisdiction over only 2.5% of the land; also, Arab citizens can't acquire or lease land in over 80% of State territory;

-- Bedouin Arabs are severely discriminated against in so-called "unrecognized villages," mainly in the Galilee and Negev desert; in 1965, Israel delegitimized their villages, zoned them to benefit Jews and expel Arabs, forbade unlicensed construction, banned it on agricultural land, and stipulated where Jews and Arabs could live; the law made Bedouins internal refugees and trespassers on their own land; they still are as ethnic cleansing continues;

-- so-called mixed towns are where 90,000 Arab citizens live in separate neighborhoods from Jews; differences between them are pronounced; Arab ones suffer from neglect, are in disrepair, lack public services, and are deprived of or are severely lacking in essential ones like education, health care and housing; others as well like public transport, proper roads, banks, post office branches, local government offices, community or commercial centers, help for the elderly, indigent or unemployed, garbage collection, lighting, and more.

Persons with Disabilities

Discrimination exists despite the 1998 Equal Rights for People with Disabilities Law applying to all kinds of disabilities - physical, sensory, cognitive, mental, and psychological as well as to temporary or permanent ones. Human dignity is the law's core principle - not just against discrimination but for equality in employment, accessibility to transport services, and for all public services and places to be accessible to the disabled.

Nonetheless, the proportion of employed disabled people is extremely low. In addition, their economic situation is the worst of all western countries and deteriorating. It's especially true for the least educated.
Disabled children face systemic obstacles to being integrated into the general education system. Inadequate budgeting is provided for them.

More than half the population needing mental health care, and over two-thirds who are minors, don't get it. The situation shows that laws alone aren't enough since in practice they're not applied or enforced.

Immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - Former Soviet Republics

Many, even professionals, have fewer opportunities, get lower wages, and have inferior status. As they fully integrate over time, they're gradually less exploited, and those best educated get professional opportunities with chances for better ones. Still, employers generally prefer native Israelis and discriminate against immigrants. Their representation in public service institutions (aside from medical) is substantially lower than their proportion in the population.

Ethiopian Immigrants

Over 20 years since their mass immigration, they've never fully integrated and face considerable discrimination. According to the Israeli Association for Ethiopian Jews, factors impeding them include:

-- their family framework disintegration;

-- their unfamiliarity with formal western society structures and a lack of cultural sensitivity toward them;

-- their being forced to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods and be socially isolated;

-- the grudging acceptance of these out-of-the-mainstream Jews by some; many others who question their Jewishness and show overt racism; and

-- too little effort by the government on their behalf in spite of "no lack of good intentions."

As a result, they're disadvantaged by less education. Most are forced into lower paying jobs. Around 72% of Ethiopian children grow up in families living below the poverty line, and over 70% (in their early development years) grow up in caravan parks, absorption centers, and poor neighborhoods. It shows in high school graduation rates at about 39% compared to 63.8 % for the Jewish population as a whole. Also in higher family violence rates, more youth crime, and a greater use of alcohol and drugs. In May 2008 (covering the January - October 2007 period), The State Comptroller's Report showed that Ethiopian immigrant needs aren't properly understood and "not enough has been done" to bridge the cultural gap and help them acclimate to Israeli society.

Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgenders

Compared to most countries, Israel is relatively progressive on this issue. Since the 1988 ban on homosexuality ended, major achievements have been made in respecting the rights of these individuals, both legally and in daily life. Since the 2005 Supreme Court decision on letting a lesbian adopt the biological children of her partner, legal developments have advanced the parenthood rights of same-sex couples. The Court's position is that sexual preference and parenthood are matters of culture and personal choice, not something for the law to decide.

The Occupied Territories: Violation of the Right to Equality of Palestinian Residents

Two people live in the West Bank. One is occupied, the other free. Each is subject to a separate legal system and infrastructure. Jews are treated preferentially on occupied land and are separated from the Palestinian population in isolated cantons. They're under an illegal, repressive military occupation, have no rights, and live in fear.

If Jews commit a crime, they're fully protected under Israeli law and are entitled to a civil trial. Palestinians have no rights and face harsh military justice in military courts. Israelis have special roads, protections, privileges and advantages. Palestinians face gross discrimination in every facet of their lives with no legal protections under Israeli law. This is a "blatant violation of the principle of equality, and is in many ways reminiscent of the Apartheid regime in South Africa." In many respects, it's far worse. It also violates the spirit and letter of international law that defines Palestinians as a protected civilian population in an occupied territory.

In its 36 year history, ACRI has promoted equality in numerous ways and has impressive achievements for its efforts - for Palestinians, women, Arab Israelis, same-sex couples, and various initiatives for the disadvantaged. Nonetheless, it works against long odds. Its progress is painfully slow, and it's never enough.

The Right to Life and Personal Security

The UDHR's Article 3 states that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." For its Arab citizens and Palestinians, Israel defiles it.

The Killing of Arab Citizens by Security Forces

After the Second Intifada's late September 2000 onset, Israeli security forces killed 13 Arabs in October - 12 Israeli citizens and one Palestinian. Despite the Or Commission's harsh criticism, no one was held to account and all files were eventually closed. This and similar incidents deepen the hostility between Jews and Arabs. Jewish lives have worth. Arab ones don't, and rarely are charges brought when they're taken.

The Occupied Territories: Violation of the Right to Life and Personal Security

Israeli incursions into the Territories are routine, frequent, hostile and destructive. Many Palestinian lives are lost. Many others are wounded, and the entire population suffers under a brutal occupation showing neither respect or mercy for the people it controls. From January through October 2008 alone, B'Tselem and the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported 430 West Bank and Gaza deaths, over 1150 wounded, and extensive property damage and destruction - all of it, of course, in violation of international law.

In June 2008, a bill cleared its first Knesset hurdle that aims to prevent Palestinians from claiming compensation for damage to their person or property when caused by Israeli security forces. Settler violence and harassment also goes unaddressed even after the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled (in June 2006) that the IDF must safeguard the security and property of Palestinian farmers. They don't. Violence, destruction, and land takeovers continue, and in the past year have increased dramatically. In addition, most incidents aren't investigated. Those that are rarely yield indictments, and Palestinians remain vulnerable and are on their own to fend for themselves. ACRI and other human rights organizations have undertaken numerous initiatives on their behalf. It's no simple task when Israeli justice is stacked against them.

The Prohibition of Torture

UDHR's Article 5 states that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Yet Israel inflicts it extensively against Palestinian Arabs as official policy.

The Occupied Territories: Abuse of Prisoners and Violation of the Prohibition on Torture

International law is clear and unequivocal on prisoner abuse, torture, and cruel and degrading treatment. It's strictly prohibited at all times, in all places, under all conditions, for any reasons with no allowed exceptions. Israel defiles the law and routinely engages in these practices. Using the defense of a "ticking bomb" as justification is unacceptable and illegal.

Secret Evidence - Its Increased and Problematic Use

As in American courts against so-called "terrorist" defendants, Israel treats secret or classified evidence (unavailable to the defense) as factual. Courts in both countries go along while paying lip service in expressing cautiousness to the practice and to the right of due process.

More troublesome in Israel is the increased "anchoring in legislation" of the right to hold court sessions in the presence of one side only and use secret evidence (as in America) at such times with defense counsel having no ability to refute it.

Legislation Harming the Right to Liberty and Due Process

In recent years, new Israeli laws permit suspending an individual's personal liberty for "preventive" purposes without a criminal proceeding. The Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law (2002) was amended in August 2008 to allow indefinite administrative detentions if secret evidence shows a "reasonable basis to assume" a person took part in a hostile act against Israel "directly or indirectly" or belongs to a "militia" engaging in such activity.

Legal counsel may be denied for up to 21 days, and "insubmissible" evidence or hearsay is allowed. Israel's Supreme Court affirmed the law but not for Israeli citizens or residents, only "outside elements" meaning Palestinians.

The 2006 Criminal Procedures Law (for Detainees Suspected of Security Offenses) denies these individuals minimal protections. It lets authorities delay judicial hearings for up to 96 hours; in certain circumstances to hold them longer "in the absence of the suspect;" extend detention periods without counsel; and thus let interrogators engage in unlawful practices, including abuse and torture. In March 2008, ACRI and other human rights organizations petitioned Israel's High Court to rule against the law. No decision so far has been rendered.

Incarceration Conditions of Prisoners and Detainees

Israel's Office of Public Defender and the Israeli Bar Association reveal disturbing violations of fundamental prisoner rights, including excessive force and brutal conduct of guards - against Jews.

Common prisoner complaints included violence, threats, humiliating and contemptuous guard behavior, invasive and degrading searches, disproportionate discipline, illegal restraints, and minors weren't exempted.

As bad is the deplorable conditions in many Israeli prisons:

-- extreme overcrowding;

-- poor hygienic and sanitary conditions;

-- inadequate ventilation;

-- suffocating heat;

-- no separation between toilets and showers; and

-- a shortage of basic equipment such as heaters, clothing and blankets.

The Occupied Territories: Violation of the Right to Due Process

Israeli and OPT laws permit arrest by administrative order (based on secret or classified evidence) for up to six months, but this may be repeatedly renewed and made indefinite - with no judicial review or due process in court. This practice is routinely and extensively used for Palestinians, but rarely against Jews. It's highly problematic, morally and legally, but Israel's High Court allows it. It's often used when inadequate evidence exists, so administrative detention becomes punishment without trial, and detainees have no legal redress.

The Military Court System

For four decades, Israel's legal system has been dual and discriminatory. Israelis must be brought before a judge within 24 hours and be tried in a civil court. Palestinians can be detained for eight days, only then be brought before a judge, and then tried by military court under much harsher rules:

-- defense counsels are severely constrained and limited in representing their clients effectively; their visitations are restricted to impede preparing a proper defense; they receive investigative material only after indictment, written in Hebrew, not Arabic; they're denied anything considered secret and classified;

-- proceedings are entirely in Hebrew with inadequate translation;

-- public scrutiny of court proceedings is greatly restricted and verdicts aren't published for examination, review or proper appeal;

-- legal proceedings are long and drawn out;

-- evidentiary hearings rarely happen;

-- the best to hope for is a plea bargain;

-- the notion of innocent until proved guilty is lacking; and

-- minors are treated no differently than adults and tried in regular military courts under the same harsh rules.

Conditions of Incarceration

In a word, they're disgraceful, inhumane, and much worse than for Jews:

-- severe overcrowding;

-- access to toilets is denied;

-- cells have no ventilation;

-- summer heat is suffocating;

-- winter cold is oppressive;

-- meals and drinking water are inadequate;

-- medical care is lacking;

-- meetings with counsel are too few and under unreasonable conditions; and

-- prisoners are routinely abused and tortured.

The Right to Privacy

Israel's Basic Law states that "all persons have the right to privacy and to intimacy, (and that) there shall be no violation of the confidentiality of the spoken utterances, writings or records of a person." Other Israeli laws allow exceptions, and new technologies make it easy to compromise computerized data banks, spy, and otherwise invade a person's privacy legally or illegally.

In June 2008, the Communication Data Law (called the "Big Brother Law) took effect. It gives police and investigative authorities unrestricted access to cell phone company and internet provider records on anyone for any reason. ACRI petitioned for restricting this law, and it's currently pending before the High Court.

In October 2008, another dangerous bill passed its "first reading" in the Knesset - to establish a "biometric data bank" to include fingerprints and facial features of Israeli citizens and residents. If such information gets in the wrong hands, or if authorities use it improperly, damage caused may be irreversible.

Other concerns are raised over a proposed "National Medical Record" database with such information on all Israelis. If established, it will be another invasion of privacy and may cause considerable harm in the wrong hands.

Employee and job seeker privacy is routinely compromised. Examples include:

-- demanding they sign a sweeping waiver of medical privilege if employed;

-- waive their right to examine test results of placement agencies;

-- be subjected to eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails;

-- compulsory polygraph tests of employees and job seekers even though their results are wholly invalid;

-- work place surveillance cameras; and

-- existing laws provide little chance to contest any of the above.

Free Movement

Israeli Jews can move freely throughout the country and on special OPT roads. Israeli Arabs are greatly restricted, and so are Palestinians in the Territories.

The Occupied Territories: Violation of Freedom of Movement

Palestinians are greatly impeded in their own country on their own land, and "in their own homes" in spite of being "protected persons" under international law for whom the occupying power must safeguard their rights. In fact, they're routinely and willfully denied as follows:

-- by physical obstacles: checkpoints, blockades (concrete blocks, trenches, fences, earth mounds), and the Separation Wall; Palestinians are enclosed in segregated cantons; separated from their land and isolated from other communities;

-- movement is severely restricted; special roads are for Jews only; they're forbidden from entering settlements, their surrounding land, or closed military zones; most may not leave the OPT or travel abroad even to study and for Gazans to get critically needed medical care;

- Israel's High Court condones discrimination in violation of international law;

-- in the so-called "seam zone" between the Green Line and Separation Wall, a "permits regime" exists that makes some Palestinians illegal residents in their own homes; they need an army permit to be there and to work their own land; when granted they're for short periods and must continually be renewed;

-- Israeli Jews in settlements are unrestricted and can do as they please, including abuse Palestinians;

-- Palestinians have no possibility of a normal life; according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Palestinians are trapped under an "entrenched multi-layered system of obstacles and restrictions (that has transformed) the West Bank and Jerusalem towards a more permanent fragmentation;" and

-- in spite of "disengaging" from Gaza in summer 2005, Israel maintains full control of the Territory's land, air space and coastal waters, and continues it under siege following 22 days of war; border crossings are sealed; virtually nothing gets in or out except for wholly inadequate occasional relief; and Palestinians have been grievously harmed as a result.

The Right to Political Asylum

Israel fails to meet its obligations under the 1951 International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees to which it's a signatory. It has no clear policy or procedures with regard to refugees or asylum seekers. As a result, Israel's rate of recognizing refugees is among the lowest in the West even though the country depends on Jewish immigrants to grow its population and make up for growing numbers who leave.

Refugees and asylum seekers let in are poorly treated as a way to deter others from coming. They're ignored, neglected, isolated, and given temporary and inadequate arrangements. Measures include "senseless incarceration" and other harshness.

According to a State Comptroller May 2008 report, Israeli policies violate the rights of refugees to work and receive health and welfare benefits. Also in May, a government-sponsored Prevention of Infiltration Law passed its first Knesset reading. It proposes that anyone entering Israel without permission faces up to five years imprisonment and for some countries like Sudan seven years. It treats these people as "security threats" unless they're Jews, of course.

They're continually sought, may immigrate freely under the Law of Return, and are automatically granted citizenship. Non-Jews aren't wanted or tolerated in violation of international law requiring that asylum seekers be treated humanely. Israel defiles the law and pays it no heed.

The Right to Family Life

On all matters regarding personal status, religious law prevails in Israel unlike in the West where church and state are separate and distinct, and secular law prevails.

Not in Israel where there's no civil marriage or divorce. Only Orthodox courts and rabbis have jurisdiction in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This constitutes an unjustifiable infringement of free religious expression, conscience, the right to family life, and equal rights.

Israel does recognize civil marriages certified abroad, and as a result, couples who can afford it and so wish leave the country to marry. Many less able simply live together as common-law couples to avoid needing a rabbi's permission to marry and having to follow Jewish law to do it.

Israeli Citizens Married to Foreigners

The Interior Ministry has a "deliberate policy of preventing non-Jews from becoming naturalized citizens, even when this severely harms couples and families." Those wishing to realize their right to family life must go through long years of bureaucratic arbitrariness, including delays, restrictions, demands, appeals, and more that often are more trouble than they're worth - this from a "civilized" state that practices institutionalized incivility.

Israeli Citizens with Palestinian Partners or Partners from Muslim Countries

This presents a near-impossible situation for Israeli Arabs who are prevented from living with Palestinian spouses inside Israel. And for the past six years, Palestinian spouses of Jewish citizens haven't had their in-country status legalized.

The policy comes from the Interior Ministry, other government decisions, and since 2003 is anchored in the Citizenship Law that mainly harms Israeli Arabs. The law is severely punitive. It's currently temporary and illegal because it denies Israeli citizens the right to family life and equality. In May 2008, Justice Minister Daniel Friedman tabled an amendment to the Basic Law to deny judicial review of laws pertaining to entry, residency and citizenship. If enacted, it will make the Citizenship Law permanent.

Migrant Workers

Israel disdains "all human and natural aspects" of its migrant workers to prevent their "taking root" in the country. They want them temporarily, only to work, and when no longer needed to leave. The State also prohibits migrant worker entry with their "first-order" family members - parents, children and spouses. If two members of the same family are discovered, automatic visa revocation and expulsion follows.

The Occupied Territories: Violation of the Right to Family Life

Movement restrictions place inordinate impediments to a normal family life. For example, Palestinian women who wish to go from Gaza to the West Bank to marry must deposit a large (often unaffordable) sum of money and promise to return to Gaza after the ceremony. Further, Gaza residents in the West Bank must carry a "Permit for Judea and Samaria," and to get one, must request it from the army, meet stringent criteria, and if granted, it's only valid for three months.

These and other impediments make family life onerous or impossible for families with some members in Gaza and others in the West Bank, and with Gaza under siege, Israel now prevents any movement between the Territories with very few exceptions. Separated families thus have one choice. To live together, they must move to Gaza and renounce any hope of returning to the West Bank - again in gross violation of international law.

In addition, for the past seven years, Israel has prevented OPT residents from legalizing their spouses and children's status in the Territories unless they already live there. In other words, Palestinians with foreign citizenships are denied. Since the early 2000s, Israel froze all applications. Palestinians with expired visas won't get them renewed. They have no legal status, will be deported, and not allowed to return.

Freedom of Expression

From its founding, Israel recognized free expression as a basic right, but, in fact, it's seriously restricted and threatened. Moreover, in the past year, Israeli Arabs have seen their rights impeded with regard to political actions and protest.

Israel's General Security Service (GSS) calls its Arab citizens existential dangers to the State, and believes it must "thwart the subversive activities of those who would undermine the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic country, even if their activities are carried out using tools provided by democracy." As a result, and with support from the Attorney General, GSS has been interrogating journalists, human rights and political activists, and others whose public actions are deemed unacceptable.

It's even worse for Israeli Arabs. They're terrorized and threatened with having criminal charges brought against them unless they cease their objectionable free expression rights. The Jewish-owned commercial media greatly restrict them, and in the past two years even Internet communication is endangered.

In March 2008, a Knesset committee considered a bill requiring Internet site operators to be held responsible for Internet surfer responses (the so-called "Talkback Law). The bill was frozen in July after the Israeli Internet Association proposed a self-regulatory compromise that also impedes free expression.

A February 2008 Internet censoring law, the first ever, passed its first reading. It seeks to filter online content on the pretext of removing harmful juvenile material and do so under government control. It would create a censorship apparatus under the Communications Ministry, no different than in a police state, as a first step toward eliminating any information the State wants to suppress for any reason.

Public demonstration rights are also at risk when authorities call them illegal, controversial, and unlicensed, including peaceful protest rallies and vigils. In early 2008, the Knesset Constitution Committee considered bills to restrict Jerusalem marches and processions that offend public or religious values or feelings.

The Occupied Territories: Violations of the Right to Demonstrate

OPT demonstration restrictions are much more stringent than in Israel, and, when they happen, Israeli security forces treat participants violently and with intolerance. In the past few years especially, numerous deaths and injuries have become commonplace. Measures used include tear gas, crowd dispersal skunk bombs, physical assault, rubber bullets that can injure and kill, and often live rounds that do it more effectively.

Freedom of Information

In 1998, the Knesset passed the Freedom of Information Law at the behest of a coalition of associations, including ACRI. The law insures citizens' rights to get information from authorities on matters of public and personal interest. Ten years later, enforcement is lax and State authorities make it hard for anyone to access information as the law requires.

They delay requests, impose obstacles, and many government bodies never disclose basic information that should be made available routinely. A May 2008 State Comptroller Report indicated that half of the authorities examined denied public scrutiny of their internal procedures. Most also don't publish effectively on their Internet sites.

The situation is especially bleak in State archives, most of all for the IDF. Security forces are secretive and restrictive. Transparency is a non-starter. Archives are abysmal. "The restrictions on access to materials in the archives lead to a perversion of historical research, the collective memory, the cultural heritage of the State of Israel, and hinder the democratic public discourse on security and political issues."

Freedom of Association

Israel mostly, but not entirely, protects this right:

-- the executive branch may declare a group a prohibited association or terrorist organization without judicial review;

-- the Registrar of Parties may refuse to register a party it claims opposes Israel as a Jewish state; ACRI calls this a grave violation of free association, expression and democracy;

-- each year, non-profit organizations must submit to the Registrar of Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) in the Justice Ministry audited financial reports, signed general meeting minutes, details about principal donors, and more;

-- in June 2007, a Knesset amendment to the Amutot Law increased the State's supervisory powers over NPOs; they now must report verbally as well on their activities, organization structure, and officers in charge;

-- in recent decades, privatization has increased and labor associations have been harmed, including their right to organize and strike; from the 1980s to the present, worker organization representation dropped from 85% to 32% in 2003; as in America, business has the upper hand in Israel;

-- practicing law in Israel requires membership in the Israel Bar Association; this requirement doesn't apply for doctors or accountants;

The Right to a Dignified Existence and Adequate Standard of Living

Poverty and Social Gaps

For Jews alone, Israel was once one of the most egalitarian western countries in terms of income distribution. No longer. Today it's second only to America in inequality. In 2007, household poverty stood at 20.5% and the incidence for children is 35.9%. Among families with four or more children, it's 60%.

Social spending is declining as policy focuses increasingly on economic growth and benefitting business. Essential needs are thus less addressed for health care, education, housing, pensions, and much more.

Among the poor are many thousands employed by service contractors. They're terribly exploited, yet authorities turn a blind eye. As in America, Israel now blames poor people for their own plight, and conditions continue to deteriorate.

East Jerusalem: Neglect and Discrimination

As an occupier and according to State and international law, Israel is obligated to treat the Palestinian population equitably. Since 1967, however, it's seized Palestinian land, expanded a Jewish population, and inadequately provided for the Arab minority. As a result, East Jerusalem residents live in dire straits, and their condition continues to worsen.

Family poverty is 67% and for children it's 77.2%. Virtually all needs are inadequately or totally unaddressed in areas such as:

-- poor sanitation facilities;

-- trash piles in streets;

-- roads in disrepair and so are the few sidewalks;

-- the postal service barely functions;

-- welfare services are in a state of collapse;

-- education and health services are inadequate to deplorable;

-- construction permits are denied;

-- home demolitions are frequent;

-- overcrowding is a major problem;

-- so is a lack of fresh drinking water; over half the population lacks a regular supply; and

-- the threat of infectious disease contagion is serious;

Life in East Jerusalem is deplorable because of willful state policy.

Living Conditions in the Unrecognized Bedouin Villages: 60 Years of Disgrace

Many thousands of Bedouin Arabs live in them - in the Negev and Galiee. For Israel, their settlements are illegal and their residents nonpersons. Land is seized, homes demolished, construction denied, and so are basic services like clean drinking water, electricity, roads, transport, sanitation, education, healthcare, postal and telephone service, and more. Harassment is severe and living conditions deplorable. Israel wants their land for Jewish-only development and is driving the Arabs away.

The Occupied Territories: Violation of the Right to a Dignified Existence

Gaza under siege is most gravely impacted in terms of poverty, unemployment, basic services, and even enough food for sustenance. After the war, the Territory is in a state of collapse and continues to deteriorate further. The situation is grave and worsening.

Conditions are also poor in the West Bank but to a lesser degree than in Gaza. Poverty and unemployment are problematic, and because of high food prices alone, the World Bank reported that 75% of Palestinians eat less and buy lower quality food than in the past.

Worker Rights

While Israel's labor laws are progressive, changing conditions over time empowered employers at the expense of workers. It's led to:

-- increased inequality between categories of employees;

-- the spread of harmful and exploitive employment practices;

-- significant erosion of worker rights; and

-- a greater potential for exploiting unempowered workers - especially for contractor-controlled service ones who've seen their rights erode.

Overall, however, employers take advantage because of minimal government oversight and enforcement. They routinely:

-- violate labor laws;

-- pay below minimum wage;

-- delay paying wages;

-- provide no overtime or for Sabbath work as the law requires;

-- fine employees to reduce pay;

-- dock workers for convalescence, leave, and holidays;

-- deny seniority;

-- fail to inform employees of their rights;

-- fire without severance pay; and more.

Migrant Workers

Overall, Israel treats migrant workers deplorably. In March 2006, however, the High Court of Justice ruled that arrangements in agriculture, nursing and industry under which migrant workers are "bound" to employers violate their basic rights and must be revoked. Two and a half years later, they still exist because enforcement is lax or non-existent.

Broker fees are another problem for those who want work in Israel. Contractors charge exorbitant amounts, regulations are lax, and in the past two years charges are 10% higher. They force workers to assume high-interest loans, jeopardize their welfare, and still end up with low-paying jobs.

The Right to Health

In 1994, Israel enacted a National Health Insurance Law. It promised health services to Israelis according to principles of justice, equality, and mutual assistance. Yet things haven't turned out as planned. Rights have eroded, budgets have been cut, privatization increased, and successive Israeli governments and the Ministry of Finance have weakened the law and left low-income Israelis uncovered.

They have only the public health system to rely on, yet its quality and breath of services have eroded. As in America, Israel provides dual systems - one for the rich and another for the poor and most vulnerable.

Shortcomings of the National Health Insurance Law and the Erosion of the Health Basket

From inception, the law was flawed. It excludes dental, mental health, and nursing care. In addition, special needs for the elderly, such as hearing aids, walkers, and more, and also certain health requirements of women.

Existing services have also eroded by 44% from 1994 to 2007, and the trend continues. Health services need annual updating to reflect population changes, technology, new drugs, procedures, and more. In June 2008, a proposed bill to do it at a fixed 2% rate annually passed its first Knesset reading. It's an important step, but given the government's resistance, it's doubtful a bill will pass, and if it does, it may be too weak to matter.

Increase in Private Expenditures on Health Services

As government funding erodes, households have to fund more of their own burden - for insurance, co-payments, and various services for those who want them.

In 1994, the government's share of health expenditure spending was 50%, and households bore 24%. In 2006, government spending eroded to 38%, and families had to pay 33%. Those with less resources are most impacted, and according to an Israeli Medical Association April 2008 survey, almost one-third (31%) of Israelis go without at least one type of service. Deteriorating health has resulted for 37% of the population, and Arab citizens are harmed the most. In addition, 43% of respondents overall fear they'll be unable to pay for services they need.

It's likely given that privatization is increasing, so are costs, and services once provided by the Ministry of Health are now in private hands. Inequality is growing, and treatment more than ever depends on affordability.

Israel's Arrangement Law exacerbates things. It lets the government make far-reaching economic changes without proper legislation or serious discussion of their implications. Since 1994, this law allowed over 300 changes to national health insurance, most of which weakened it for the insured. Currently, a 2009 Arrangements Law is before the Knesset. It includes a proposal to collect a uniform minimum health tax from all insured, including housewives. If passed, it'll violate the principles of universality and equality that underlie the National Health Insurance law and thus further curtail health services accessibility to all Israelis.

Differences in Health Indices and Discrimination in Access to Health Services

Accessibility of health services and population health indices highlight widening inequality and gaps between various groups and geographic areas within Israel.

It shows up in life expectancy, infant mortality rates, and morbidity rates for a wide variety of illnesses - by socioeconomic status, educational level, and national or ethnic origin. Needless to say, Israeli Arabs and poor Jews are worst off. Also, residents in more central Israel are better served than those on the periphery.

A Knesset Research and Information Center March 2008 document showed only 9% of hospital beds are in the southern region where 14% of the population lives. Southern and northern areas also rank last in number of professional physicians. The same is true for special medical equipment. The situation is serious given that a concentration of vulnerable people live in these areas, entirely dependent on public health.

Israel's Arab minority is especially harmed. Besides being disadvantaged in virtually all other ways, they're least able to access health services, and it shows in their poor state of health relative to Jews.

The Occupied Territories: Violation of the Right to Health

Overall, it's woefully less accessible than in Israel. Movement restrictions impede it in the West Bank - from checkpoints, roadblocks, poor roads, and harassment. Medical equipment and medicines shortages are also troubling. For example, an August 2008 OCHA report showed 73 of 416 essential medicines weren't available and stocks of 45 others were running low.

Conditions in Gaza under siege and after war are far worse and at times critical. Nearly all hospital needs are lacking, so heath care depends on accessing it elsewhere. Doing it requires a permit. Bureaucratic procedures are mind-numbing, and too few Gazans work through it. Even the very ill are on their own and unable to be treated.

According to a Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) July 2008 report, 200 patients died while waiting to be treated outside Gaza, 45 of whom were children and 75 women. Conditions have now worsened, but even earlier PHR warned of a new GSS policy requiring patients to be interrogated at Erez crossing, asked to provide information or become collaborators for an exit permit, and be able to leave and receive treatment.

The Right to Housing

Israel has no clear housing policy anchored in law. It's thus easy for the State to evade its responsibility, more than ever in recent years. As a result, adequate housing is denied to increasing numbers in the country, and many have none at all.

Israel encourages private ownership as a solution even for the poor. It stopped providing grants and significantly lowered mortgage subsidies. Renting is thus the only option, but given the shortage of apartments, prices have risen sharply, and those with the fewest resources can't afford them.

Tenant protection is also lacking, and landlords take full advantage. Israel is one of the few developed countries in which the State won't intervene on the terms of rental contracts, rent levels, or how often and high rents can be raised.

Public housing was once a model for low-income families and new immigrants. Now it's disappearing. New construction stopped, and the available number of apartments is at its lowest ever level - about 1600 units for over 50,000 eligible people.

Neighborhoods formerly comprised households from all or most socioeconomic classes. Now they're just for the rich as entire areas are being gentrified for profit. Not only won't the State intervene, it's pushing out residents, separating them them from their communities, and actively issuing demolition and eviction notices. Homelessness is thus growing, and those at society's bottom require charity when available or be left out entirely.

Discrimination against the Arab Minority and Demolition of Homes

Discrimination against Israeli Arabs is severe and unrelenting. Town plans for them don't exist nor are their basic housing needs met. Things are so dire in some areas, like the Negev, that thousands of families have no homes or fear the ones they have will be demolished. This is policy by design - to ethnically cleanse the country of its unwanted population. Israeli Arabs know it and fend for themselves as best they can.

In the Occupied Territories: Violation of the Right to Housing

Israel controls large parts of the West Bank. In the so-called Area C, it has authority for planning, and keeps the out-dated Mandatory regional plan and Jordanian planning laws in place. As a result, large areas are zoned for agriculture only with little or no construction permitted. Building requires a permit. According to OCHA data, 94% of Area C applications between January 2000 and September 2007 were rejected.

Palestinians must build anyway and risk being vulnerable to demolition. According to Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights, the Civil Administration issued such orders for 4820 structures in Area C; 1600 were destroyed; as of May 2008, 3000 others were pending, and when they come they're swift, unannounced, often at odd hours, and without notice. Throughout the West Bank, at least 10 small communities are in jeopardy of near total removal and their people left homeless - on their own land in their own country with nothing they can access for protection.

A Final Comment

On December 15, Haaretz reported that Israel expelled Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council's (UNHRC) special investigator on Israeli actions in the OPT. He was detained at Jerusalem's airport on December 14 and deported back to the US. Foreign Minister (and acting Prime Minister at the time) Tzipi Livni, said that Falk was "unwelcome in Israel" and his visit was uncoordinated and unauthorized. Earlier, he infuriated Israelis when he accurately compared Israeli treatment of the Palestinians to what Nazis once did to Jews.

UN General Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann also criticized Israel in the past and said Israel made a "dangerous decision....to rebuff UN mandates and UN-appointed mandate holders." He explained that Falk's position is to investigate "human rights violations (affecting) the protected civilian population of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem." The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is especially urgent. Israel suppresses its gravity.

ACRI, however, does not and ended its report with The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in an Appendix. It was adopted and proclaimed on December 10, 1948 and just recently commemorated its 60th anniversary. Israel, like America, disdains it, and therein lies the problem.

It ignores what the Preamble states: that "Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms (and that) a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge."

UDHR laid them all out in its 30 Articles, including:

-- "the right to life, liberty and security of person (with no distinction of any kind for) race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."

-- the prohibition of slavery or servitude in all forms; by implication, employer exploitation;

-- of torture as well as "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;"

-- recognizing everyone equally before the law without discrimination and with equal protection;

-- the right to free movement, privacy, and to leave any country and return;

-- to seek and enjoy asylum;

-- to own property and not arbitrarily be deprived of it;

-- to free thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression without interference;

-- to peaceful assembly and association;

-- to have genuine elections by universal and equal suffrage;

-- to work, have free choice of employment, protection against unemployment, equal pay for equal work, and to form and join trade unions;

-- to a standard of living adequate for health;

-- to education; much more, and for nothing in the Declaration to let a State, group or person do anything aimed at destroying "the rights and freedoms set forth herein."

For nearly 61 years and over 41 in the OPT, Israel has willfully and systematically defiled all of the above, so far with impunity. When will the world community take notice? When will it enforce this Declaration for the Palestinian people and Israeli Arabs? When will such gross injustice end?

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman,blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national topics. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11494

Systemic Failure: Capitalism "Lays an Egg"

Systemic Failure: Capitalism "Lays An Egg" - by Stephen Lendman

After the 1929 October 24, 28 and 29 market crash, the weekly entertainment industry magazine Variety (on October 30) published its most famous ever headline: "Wall Street Lays an Egg." In October 2008, history repeated, and since the October 2007 peak, equity prices plunged over 50% after the Dow and S & P (in February) posted their second worst ever monthly percentage declines - topped only in 1933 during the depths of the Great Depression. So far, the current market drop matches its 1929 - 1932 pace, and like then, shows no signs of abating.

With world economies collapsing, stocks are still overvalued by every metric - dividends, price to book, sales, free cash flow, or earnings based on GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principals) or "reported" earnings, not "operating" ones, easily manipulated to exclude "write-offs." By the mid-late 1990s, companies switched to the latter method to hide over-valuations. The practice still continues to let expensive stocks masquerade as cheap ones and make the market overall look attractive to the unwary.

After the 1929 crash, newspapers reflected the mood like the Chicago Tribune headlining: "Roaring Twenties grind to a halt and a new era of hard times begins." Variety reported that "Broadway T(ook) the Slap" and New York "nite clubs, speaks & dives (echoed) market cataclysm." Its Cairo correspondent cabled that a "cinema had finally been wired in Alexandria, Egypt, Cleopatra's hometown," so the paper quipped: "Only Sodom and Gomorrah remain(ed) to be heard from."

The comment resonates today on a global scale when never have such best and brightest teams done so much for so few, so little for so many, and so greatly harmed world economies in the process - for eight years under George Bush, now continuing under Obama with no end to it in sight. The result - a likely Great Depression II that will match or surpass the worst of the first one. What Michel Chossudovsky calls "The Great Depression of the 21st Century: Collapse of the Real Economy (affecting) all sectors" globally because solutions are contributing to "further collapse," too many "experts" remain in denial, and bad policies follow failed ones.

On February 28, Warren Buffett told shareholders that 2008 was Berkshire Hathaway's worst year, and he's "certain that the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 - and, for that matter, probably well beyond...." As for government responses so far, his comment reflected gloom: "Economic medicine previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once-unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome aftereffects."

Perhaps this is what he has in mind: Given current conditions and the pace of continued decline, America and world economies face a possible synchronized global collapse, yet few come out publicly and say it.

Marx did in foreseeing much of what's happening today:

-- the inevitable monopoly control of production, commerce, and finance;

-- a reserve army of exploited low-paid labor;

-- a class struggle between "haves" and "have-nots;"

-- capitalism's internal contradictions: exploiting and alienating the many for the few;

-- its crisis-prone nature: unstable, "anarchic," ungovernable, self-destructive with booms creating bubbles creating busts, then depressions; and ultimately

-- its inevitable decay and demise because a system so corrupted can't endure; a socialist revolution (he believed) will replace it based on greater freedom, inclusion, and equality.

During the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt delivered his March 4, 1933 inaugural address and said what applies to today:

"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today....Values have shrunken to fantastic levels....our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side....the savings of many years of thousands of families are gone."

"More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment."

"Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men....Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money (and exhortations) to follow their false leadership. They have no vision, and when there is (none) the people perish."

"The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore (it. Doing it will involve) the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit....there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often (results in) callous and selfish wrongdoing. (We need) action and now....to put people to work....(by redistributing land to those) best fitted (to use it (and) by preventing the tragedy of....foreclosure of our small homes and our farms."

We need in place "safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency....For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less."

Roosevelt later saw poverty's spreading scourge, "millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster (hung) over them day by day....one-third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished." The same specter haunts millions today, but there's no Rooseveltian leadership to address it.

On February 21, Reuters reported that George Soros said the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, and there's no prospect of near-term crisis resolution. He called the turbulence worse than in the Great Depression and said Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was a turning point in "the collapse of the financial system. It was placed on life support, and it's still (there)."

On the same day at a Columbia University conference, Paul Volker couldn't "remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world." He cited industrial production falling faster globally than in America because of the fallout from unbridled financial markets. "It's broken down in the face of almost all expectation and prediction," and greater regulation is coming as a result.

"In the future, we are going to need a financial system which is not going to be so prone to crisis and certainly not prone to the severity of a crisis of this sort. (It will) be different from the (one) that has developed in the last 20 years." Its "primary characteristic (should be) a strong, traditional, commercial banking-type system....to service customers, individuals, businesses and governments by providing outlets for their money and by providing credit."

This should be their core business, the same as in America 30 years ago and under closer regulation. Risky "entrepreneurial activity" should be out. Big and small commercial banks must stick to their knitting and not operate like hedge funds or casinos. Mostly what's needed is stability in place of recklessly pursuing profits at the risk of a global economic collapse.

Obama Responds

Since taking office on January 20, Obama has been a caricature of a leader, a Manchurian candidate president, a front man for a criminal Wall Street - government partnership. The latest Zogby poll showed only 27% believe his stimulus will help them, and just 23% have confidence in either party.

In Obama's nationally televised February 24 address to a joint session of Congress, contrast his comments to FDR's, He:

-- downplayed the crisis;

-- vowed "We will rebuild, we will recover, we will emerge stronger than before;"

-- cited our unique greatness - "the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history;"

-- defended trillions for bankers with "more (coming) than we've already set aside:" from a TARP II providing "commitments exceeding $2 trillion" plus another trillion or more from a so-called Public-Private Investment Fund (PPIF) offering sweetheart deal guarantees and financing to investors to buy toxic bank assets at bargain basement prices;

-- ignored the most serious unaddressed problems: decades of accumulated debt and the bad asset overhang in the hundreds of trillions that all proposed plans barely dent;

-- blamed "people" for "spend(ing) more money and pil(ing) up more debt....than ever before;"

-- ignored Wall Street's criminal excess and fraud, and
the looting of the Treasury to reward them; said nothing about a corrupted system that should be scrapped for a fair one;

-- offered nothing in the way of a New Deal approach; instead offered an anti-New Deal by promising to shrink the deficit to $533 billion, or 3% of GDP, by 2013; doing it means cutting social programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; what FDR provided, Obama may take away;

-- defended his counterproductive policies with new ones piling more abuses on the others and increasing the debt burden instead of reducing it;

-- lied that they're "not about helping banks - (they're) about helping people;" and

-- was silent on his hidden agenda for business at the expense of working Americans and the millions criminally defrauded out of jobs, savings, homes, pensions, and futures.

In today's popular jargon, America failed its "stress test."

Yet, Obama audaciously ended by saying:

"....some day, years from now, our children can tell their children that this was the time when we performed, in the words that are carved into this very chamber, "something worthy to be remembered."

His comments followed Fed chairman Bernanke's earlier in the day's prepared semi-annual monetary policy report to Congress saying:

"If actions taken by the Administration, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve are successful in restoring some measure of financial stability....there is a reasonable prospect that the current 'recession' will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery."

He also said the nation's largest banks aren't "zombies" when, in fact, at least the top 20 are insolvent and need bailout help to keep operating. Earlier, he saw no market bubbles and said high home prices reflected a strong economy.

A Planned Public Response

On April 3 and 4, the Bail Out the People Movement" plans a national march on Wall Street on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. His message was:

"Rise up against wars of colonial conquest.

Fight for the right of all to a job or an income."

Nationally, more than 50 organizing centers are involved in response to the growing crisis; an absence of leadership in Washington; and an agenda of foreign wars, occupation, and rewarding criminal bankers and the rich at the expense of millions of distressed households.

"Working people must organize independently to Bail Out People, Not Banks. It's time to march on Wall Street," to denounce this injustice and act.

Visit www.BailOutPeople.org for full information on getting involved, a list of endorsing organizations, and information on organizing centers in a growing number of states, including New York, California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, and Ohio.

In Denial Over the "D" Word

In the dominant media, inconvenient truths are suppressed, denied or delayed until they're too explosive to ignore. Even then, coverage is way short of explaining that we're in the early stages of the greatest ever economic decline. Policy makers are flying blind to contain it. They can't grasp its gravity. All measures tried have failed, and capitalism's ideological roots are at stake. For economist Richard Wolff - "Capitalism Hit the Fan," unworkable, unjust, and spreading global chaos everywhere with frightening speed.

What began as a financial crisis has now exploded with even some mainstream economists predicting a global "depression," and IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn saying advanced economies are already in one.

Perhaps others will admit it after the UK Telegraph's February 26 headline: "Moody's predicts default rate will exceed peaks hit in Great Depression" when it reached 15.4%. The risks are enormous because "we are in unchartered territory....If the economy deteriorates more than expected," the rate could top 20% and be even higher in Europe - for all "non-investment grade issuers."

Merrill Lynch's David Rosenberg used the "D" word earlier in his end of January commentary titled: "Some inconvenient truths."

Not your father's recession he said, but "maybe your grandfather's....We are likely enduring a depression today," and while there are no official definitions, we've had them before - four in the 19th century and a great one in the 20th.

Recessions are generally defined as two or more consecutive GDP contracting quarters although some economists prefer measures of the relative strength or weakness of production, employment, retail sales, and so forth.

For economist John Williams, a depression is a period where inflation-adjusted peak-to-trough contraction exceeds 10%, and in a great one it's 25%.

Duration is also important. On average, recessions last about 18 months. For Rosenberg, depressions last "anywhere from three to seven years" or longer "and tend to follow years of leveraged prosperity proportions" like the period between 2002 - 2007.

Recessions are typically "inventory cycles," while depressions feature "balance sheet compression and deleveraging: debt elimination, asset liquidation, and rising savings rates." When credit expansion becomes a bubble, "the distance to the mean is longer and deeper" with upside excesses producing comparable or greater ones on the downside.

Clearly, we're way beyond a classic recession after a year and a half of massive stimulus, capital injections, "unprecedented interest rate relief," and various other measures producing no end in sight "or any signs of normalcy returning to credit."

Based on reverse-engineering the data, Williams guages unemployment at 18% when discouraged and part-time workers are included. Rosenberg says 13.5%, but either figure far exceeds the official fictitious 7.6%. Rosenberg also places idle manufacturing capacity at 30%, a level reached only once previously in the past five decades.

As for stimulus, Rosenberg sees little impact either from tax cuts or infrastructure spending. The latter "comes with a long gestation period" unlikely to be felt until "well into 2010." It also falls short of boosting long-term growth. With all proposed monetary and fiscal stimulus, the economy will still "be saddled with roughly $1 trillion of excess capacity" by year end.

So far, around $1 trillion in debt has been written off. It's not enough. We're "still in the early stages of credit contraction (and) have no idea when the credit cycle will hit bottom." Before it does, "more than $6 trillion in private sector debt must be eliminated." Time, likely years, are needed for resolution, but the Obama administration plans don't address it.

Going forward, households, especially "boomers," will stress "frugality," not "frivolity." Apres le deluge, saving for retirement is crucial as deflated assets and lost pensions won't provide it.

Here's more:

-- Federal Reserve surveys show household credit demand declining to the lowest level on record while debt is at "near-record levels relative to after-tax incomes" and so is the debt-servicing burden;

-- 10% of borrowers are in arrears or foreclosure;

-- bank delinquency rates are the highest in 15 years and rising; the earlier S & L crisis was pocket change compared to now;

-- credit card delinquencies are at an all-time high at a time the overall credit quality index "collapsed to an all-time low;"

-- this begs the question: how can banks lend when households can't and won't borrow; "bringing households to the well doesn't mean they will drink;"

-- despite much lower home prices, affordability ratios the best in over 35 years, and attractive mortgage rates, the record low National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) homebuilding index showed "residential real estate (perceptions) have changed;"

-- on February 24, the latest Conference Board consumer confidence index explained why; it plunged from 37 in January to 25 in February, its worst reading ever, and one year ago it was 76; the Economic Outlook Group's Bernard Baumohl called it a "catastrophic collapse of confidence in the economy" even after all measures the Obama administration announced;

-- it also explains "a secular (attitude) change toward consumption;" after peaking last summer, it declined at a 15% annual rate; even food is affected with consumers choosing tuna over trout and spaghetti or Spam over steak or shrimp;

-- households have been devastated by a 20% hole in their balance sheets, or a cumulative $13 trillion net worth loss as of January 1; it's the first time this happened since the 1930s; Rosenberg sees it hitting $20 trillion by year-end 2009, a level on a par with the Great Depression with no end of this in sight; this "permanent shock" is a harbinger of "sustained consumer contraction in coming years;"

-- household savings are rising but still unsustainably low (at under 3%) and will likely head toward earlier 10 - 12% levels; "there are no more rabbits to be pulled out of the hat" to encourage spending; the effect will be powerfully deflationary "for some time."

Paulson and Geithner's Violation of US Law

Specifically - Title 12, Chapter 16, Sec. 1831o of the US Code collection that Economics Professor and former Senior government regulator during the earlier troubled S & L period William K. Black discussed in his February 23 Huffington Post article titled: "Why Is Geithner Continuing Paulson's Policy of Violating the Law?"

Well before they're insolvent or when serious problems are suspected, US law "mandat(es) that the administration place troubled banks....in receivership, appoint competent managers, and restrain senior executive compensation" to prevent bonuses, huge salaries, raises, and undeserved benefits from being paid.

No provision says taxpayers should bail out bankers. Yet Paulson and now Geithner keep doing it, using vast sums kept secret - both in amounts and to whom beyond the handful of big names made public.

Geithner was at it under Bush. As New York Fed president, his responsibility was "to regulate many of the largest bank holding companies in the United States. Far too many of (them) are deeply insolvent because" they own insolvent banks. "The law mandates that" they be placed in receivership, yet as Treasury Secretary Geithner continues to violate it.

Under George Bush, congressional oversight largely stopped at the cost of today's crisis. According to some, the worst is yet to come because of criminal negligence and complicity at the highest levels of government.

"Secretaries Paulson and Geithner subverted the law by allowing failed banks to engage in massive accounting fraud (including securities fraud)."

In a follow-up February 25 article, Black explained that the FBI warned of a mortgage fraud "epidemic" in September 2004 and reported that "lenders initiated 80% of these frauds....Financial control frauds' 'weapon of choice' is accounting." It flourishes in a deregulatory climate when (as the title of Wheeler and Rothman's 1982 book suggests): "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One."

The FBI spotted it in time to stop it. Nonprime lenders were the main culprit with Wall Street deeply involved. The fraud was so extensive, it was easy to spot. Instead, banks, rating agencies, and buyers "operated on a 'don't ask; don't tell' policy." While it lasted, profits were huge, and few were the wiser. Today, "many (likely all) the big banks are deeply insolvent due to severe credit losses." They and the Treasury aren't even sure to what degree, but the amounts are staggering in size. "A 'stress test' can't remedy the banks' problem - they don't have the loan files" for documentation.

Under Bush and Obama, banks are licensed to steal. The ("quantitative") looting of the Treasury continues, and global economies sink deeper into a black hole of depression with the public as always the big loser.

The End Game to Economic Ruin?

Who can know, but look what casino capitalism brought us. In December 2006, John Bellamy Foster discussed "monopoly capital's" evolution in commemorating the 40th anniversary of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy's classic work: "Monopoly Capital - An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order." In his new book, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, he discusses the legacy it left us.

Giant corporations arose early in the last century followed by wars, depression, and more wars. Post-WW II, "capitalism was fully consolidated, particularly within the United States, the most advanced capitalist economy," and for some years thereafter the only healthy major one unravaged by the war.

As a result, corporate America flourished, grew larger and more dominant. Profit-making oligopolies and monopolies resulted "competing not on price but mainly in the areas of cost-cutting and the sales effort." Out of this grew "surpluses, and the economy's problem was to absorb it to avoid stagnation."

It led to overcapacity, so key was "to find additional outlets....beyond capitalist consumption and investment" or face "economic malaise." Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, financialization came to the rescue, and "to some extent (shifted) control over the economy from corporate boardrooms to the financial markets. Corporations were increasingly seen as bundles of assets, the more liquid the better." A new "monopoly finance" capitalism was advanced to exploit it.

It produced new outlets for surplus in the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate), mostly for speculation, not capital goods investments in plant and equipment, transportation, and public utilities that earlier fueled business cycle expansions. It kicked off a "whole new historical period" that wasn't apparent before the late 1960s. But the implications were huge and today have backfired.

The 1980s saw "an unprecedented upsurge of debt in the economy." In the 1970s, it was about one-and-a-half times GDP. By 1985, it was double, and by 2005 it was three-and-a-times GDP, rising, and approaching "the $44 trillion (level) for the entire world." Ever since, "the way was open for a proliferation of financial instruments and markets, which (until the present) proved to be literally unlimited."

Much earlier, Keynes warned about "enterprise becom(ing) the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation" like in the 1920s, the price being the Great Depression.

Beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s, the process began repeating as "economic malaise" needed new stimulus. "Unable to find profitable outlets....within the productive economy, corporations/capitalists sought" opportunities through financialization, speculation, casino capitalism, "while the financial system responded with a bewildering array of new financial instruments - including stock futures, options, derivatives, hedge funds, etc." As a result, a "financial superstructure...took on a life of its own" that today is consuming world economies.

Back then was different. "New Economy" notions took hold. The sky was the limit, but bubbles eventually grow and always burst. Minor by comparison, the 1997-98 Asian crisis showed how fast contagion can spread. Today it's global and out-of-control. No one's sure how to contain it, so bankers are getting trillions in a desperate attempt to socializing losses, privatize profits, and pump life back into a corpse through a sort of shell game or grandest of grand theft process of sucking wealth from the public to the top in hopes enough of it will work.

Speculation and debt need more of it to prosper, but in the end it's a losing game. The greater the expansion, the harder it falls - especially when not making things and working Americans are exploited. Since the 1970s, wages stagnated and lost purchasing power as inflation rose. So did benefits like health care and pensions. Household debt rose to compensate. Two wage-earner households as well. It let "monopoly-finance capital (produce) an accumulation of misery" now exploding since 2008's global collapse, exposing capitalism's dark side and destructive contradictions, particularly its financialization form.

Foster quoted Baran and Sweezy's response to an "irrational system." What's needed is "our moral obligation to (fight) against an evil and destructive system which maims, oppresses, and dishonors those who live under it, and which threatens devastation and death to millions....around the globe." Today, the threat is real, growing, and becoming greater than most anyone imagined, remembers, or has any sure way to contain.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on Republic Broadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

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