FDR's New Deal v. Obamanomics

FDR'S New Deal v. Obamanomics in Their First 100 Days - by Stephen Lendman

With good reason, progressive economists reflect positively on Roosevelt's New Deal even though:

-- it failed to end the Great Depression;

-- had many flaws;

-- did too little for blacks, women, immigrants, small farmers, agricultural workers, and the poor;

-- let blacks be persecuted, discriminated against, and in the South denied their voting rights and lynched;

-- 10 weeks after Pearl Harbor, he signed an Executive Order interning loyal Japanese American citizens because of their ethnicity; smaller numbers of German and Italian Americans as well;

-- despite popular discontent with US broadcasting, he signed the 1934 Communications Act establishing permanent broadcasting law that handed the public airwaves to entrenched interests and laid the foundation for today's corrupted media; he called it a "New Deal in Radio Law," indeed for the broadcasters that profited;

-- his main task was to save capitalism, not remake America into a social democracy beyond what was necessary at the time;

-- like all elected officials, Roosevelt was above all a politician who wanted to be re-elected; and

-- it took a world war to restore prosperity.

Nonetheless, his achievements were impressive, and the differences between then and now are stark - during the two gravest economic periods in US history. Obama embraces the Money Trust. Roosevelt, rhetorically at least, confronted "the unscrupulous money changers."

The problem is what he did, how, what he didn't do; what he could have done better; and if he had, maybe the Great Depression might not have been as Great or, in fact, Great at all.

He failed to do what Jackson and Lincoln did - return money-creation power to the people, as the Constitution mandates, instead leaving it in private hands - the very "moneychangers" he denounced with the Federal Reserve atop its pyramid.

Rather than finance New Deal programs with interest-free money, he chose debt obligations to private bankers, left the Fed's power unchanged, and turned deep recessionary years into the Great Depression.

Government-created money would have eliminated the national debt, income taxes, and most important given the gravity of the crisis, would have produced stable growth and prosperity without needing a world war to get it. Lincoln did it, the Civil War notwithstanding, and so did early colonists with interest-free money. Their decision to break free from the Bank of England (run by bankers) sparked the War of Independence. Britain wanted its power back, colonists resisted, hence the war.

A future article addresses this topic and much more. This one focuses on Roosevelt's first 100 days v. Obama's and the differences in their approaches - helping people, not bankers, the above comments notwithstanding; curbing speculation, not protecting it; imposing regulations and enforcing them, not disdaining them; establishing social services, not ignoring public needs; and much more.

In all, 15 landmark laws were enacted that (imperfections aside) set a standard for dealing with a troubled economy - so grave in March 1933 that (except for the Civil War period), machine guns protected government buildings because the nation's financial system had collapsed, peoples' life savings and jobs were being lost, and it was feared they'd react violently as a result.

The Emergency Banking Act

Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933. The next day (through a special congressional session), he declared a four-day bank holiday. On March 9, the Emergency Banking Act passed that closed insolvent banks, then reorganized and reopened viable ones under Treasury supervision, with federal loans available if needed.

By mid-March, one-half of all banks with 90% of deposits were judged solvent and reopened. Forty-five percent of the others were reorganized under "conservators." The rest were shut down. By mid-April, over 12,800 banks were operating, 4000 fewer by year end after closures and mergers, and by 1935 one-third were nationalized, an idea the Obama administration rejects, but sooner or later will have no alternative but to embrace for the large most troubled ones.

The Bank Act of 1933 - Glass-Steagall

On June 16, the Bank Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall) created the FDIC insuring bank deposits up to $5000 and separated commercial from investment banks and insurance companies, among other provisions to curb speculation. Senator Carter Glass was its prime mover and got Senator Henry Steagall to go along by attaching his amendment to protect deposits. For years, Glass believed bankers should stick to their knitting, not deal in or hold corporate securities. He blamed them for the 1929 crash, the subsequent bank failures, and Great Depression that followed. The Bank Act of 1933 passed quickly to curb them.

Much more as well and largely people-oriented, not Obama's agenda to reward banksters with trillions of public dollars. More on that below.

Other economic measures enacted were:

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)

In 1932, Herbert Hoover created it, but Roosevelt streamlined its bureaucracy and increased its funding to recapitalize troubled banks and corporations. Under Hoover, it had $500 million in capital with authorization to borrow up to $1.5 billion more. In its first six months, it loaned banks over $800 million but didn't halt the crisis. Like today, they retained their reserves, shunned lending, and, besides, public trust was lacking.

Roosevelt's New Deal changed things. Under the 1933 Emergency Banking Act, RFC could buy bank equity and within a year bought more than $1 billion, or about one-third of total banks' capital. At the same time, government measures and oversight restored public confidence enough to attract hundreds of millions in deposits that pumped life into troubled banks if only for starters.

During his tenure, Roosevelt used RFC funding for agencies like the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, Farm Credit Administration, Rural Electrification Administration, Public Works Administration, and others as well as emergency relief loans to states, something Hoover never did, let alone establish New Deal policies to let him.

The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 - Following the Securities Act of 1933

The 1933 law (enacted May 27, 1933) required that offers and sales of securities be registered, pursuant to the Constitution's interstate commerce clause. Previously, they were governed by state laws, known as "blue sky laws" to protect against fraud.

The 1934 law (enacted June 6, 1934) regulates secondary trading of financial securities and established the SEC under Section 4 to enforce the new Act, then later the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the 1940 Investment Company Act and Investment Advisers Act, Sarbanes-Oxley of 2002, and the 2006 Credit Rating Agency Reform Act.

Overall, it's to enforce federal securities laws, the securities industry, the nation's financial and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets unknown in the 1930s along with derivatives and other forms of speculation. Then and now, it's charged with uncovering wrongdoing, assuring investors aren't swindled, and keeping the nation's financial markets free from fraud. At least that was the idea. Eventually, the fulfillment fell far short of the promise.

In the 1930s, regulation worked by requiring that salesmen and brokers be licensed, prospectuses be used, full disclosure provided, and enough enforcement as well to cut fraud significantly. In addition, Glass-Steagall eliminated many 1920s shenanigans, a decade, like today, when Wall Street did as it pleased, created speculative excesses, and caused the inevitable crash.

Reforms were simpler to implement at a time fewer than 5% of the public owned stocks compared to 50% today, and most were sophisticated enough to know what they were doing or thought so. Also, there were no 401ks, IRAs, or a proliferation of mutual and hedge funds like today let alone:

-- securitization/structured finance asset-backed securities (ABSs), mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), collateralized bond obligations (CBOs), credit default swaps (CDSs), and collateralized fund obligations (CFOs) - combined, sliced, diced, packaged, repackaged, and sold in tranches to sophisticated and ordinary investors, many to mutual fund buyers, never knowing they owned any, let alone were being swindled; and

-- derivative futures, options, forwards, swaps, warrants, leaps, baskets, swaptions, and whatever else Wall Street minds can invent, package, and sell in various ways and forms - too much of it not on the up and up as the current crisis revealed.

Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC)

It was established in 1933 under the Homeowners Refinancing Act to refinance homes and prevent foreclosures, something largely missing in Obama's Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, the so-called mortgage bailout. It mainly helps lenders, does nothing for homeowners under water or those with second mortgages. Nor does it address plunging property valuations and its affect on millions.

In contrast, HOLC extended short and longer-term loans for up to 30 years and prevented the loss of over a million homes (about one-fifth of those owned with mortgages, the equivalent of 10 million today) at a time half were in default, and annual mortgage lending and residential construction was down 80%.

States began enacting foreclosure moratoriums at a time the average owner was two years in delinquency and three years behind on property taxes. In today's dollars, relative to current GDP, HOLC was initially authorized to issue $200 billion in bonds, acquire defaulted properties in exchange for them from lenders and investors, then refinance mortgages at lower rates (at a maximum 5%) to keep owners from losing their homes.

An essential HOLC element was for lenders and investors to take losses to provide more affordable mortgages for their holders - something missing in Obama's plan that lets issuers add unpaid balances to principal in return for lower rates and term extensions, meaning defaults are delayed, not stopped, and as valuations keep falling, millions more may lose their homes.

HOLC was hugely successful but not perfect. Given the dire conditions of the times, around 200,000 owners eventually defaulted but 80% were saved, far different from today with over four million foreclosures and 2009 estimates ranging from three million more to much higher numbers, plus many more in 2010.

The Economy Act

It was enacted on March 14, 1933 to deliver on Roosevelt's campaign promise to balance the "regular" non-emergency budget, be fiscally prudent, and do it by cutting government employees' salaries and veterans pensions by 40% for a $500 million savings at the worst possible time to do it. As a candidate, Roosevelt said deficit spending impaired recovery and hurt business confidence. However, as president, New Deal spending took precedence. By 1936, even four million veterans got their $1.5 billion bonus, in Bonus Bill cash and welfare benefits over Roosevelt's veto.

The Beer-Wine Revenue Act

On February 17, 1933, a dismal experiment ended when the Blaine Act repealed Prohibition, the Constitution's 18th Amendment, then formally adopted iti in December under the 21st Amendment.

On March 22, passage of the Beer-Wine Revenue Act levied a $5 tax on every barrel of beer and wine and reenacted parts of the Webb-Kenyon Act to protect states with laws prohibiting alcoholic beverages in excess of 3.2%. States also were left in charge of the sale and distribution of spirits.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

The March 31, 1933 Emergency Conservation Work Act (CCC) put unemployed men to work on numerous projects - building roads, bridges, parts of dams, developing state parks, planting trees, and various forestry and recreational programs for the Forest Service, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Land Management, and Soil Conservation Service.

Reportedly, it was FDR's favorite initiative. On April 5, Executive Order 6101 launched it by appointing a Director of Emergency Conservation Work "By virtue of the authority vested in me by the (CCC) Act of Congress...." It had great public support. By year end 1935, it employed over 600,000 in 2650 camps (including supervisors and administrators) in every state engaged in more than 100 kinds of work.

Civilian Works Administration (CWA)

On May 12, 1933, enactment of the Federal Emergency Relief Act established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) to provide funds to states (from May through December 1935) to reduce unemployment. It set up CWA, supplied over $3 billion for various work and transient projects, created temporary jobs for over 20 million, then was gradually ended in favor of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Before it did, it was considered a significant initiative with Washington taking responsibility for the welfare of millions, both employable and unemployable, at a time of desperate need. Its flexibility and high administrative standards made it a model for later relief efforts.

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)

Passed on June 16, 1933, Roosevelt called it "the most important and far-reaching (law) ever enacted by the American Congress." It established the National Recovery Administration (NRA) as an initiative to revive economic growth, encourage collective bargaining, set maximum work hours, minimum wages, at times prices, and forbid child labor in industry.

Business response was mixed. GE helped write it, and the Chamber of Commerce said it was "a most important step in our progress towards business rehabilitation." In contrast, the National Association of Manufacturers and Henry Ford, among others, opposed it.

So did the Supreme Court unanimously in its Poultry Corp. v. United States (May 1935) ruling that NIRA/NRA "lay outside the authority of Congress," infringed on states' rights, unreasonably stretched the Commerce Clause, and gave legislative powers to the president in violation of the Nondelegation doctrine. It added that "extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional powers."

By then, the Act was increasingly unpopular, and many doubted its effectiveness. Some economists called it counterproductive and damaging to economic stability by weakening antitrust laws and allowing collusion.

Public Works Administration (PWA)

It was created by NIRA for PWA-initiated projects to provide jobs, increase purchasing power, improve public welfare, and help revive the economy. Some called it designed to prime the pump and spend "big bucks on big projects," including electricity-generating dams, airports, schools, hospitals, affordable housing, even aircraft carriers.

While it operated, it spent over $6 billion but did little to lift the economy or reduce unemployment because it didn't do enough toward for either. When the nation moved toward war production, PWA became irrelevant and was ended.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

It was a post-first 100 day initiative funded by the April 1935 Emergency Relief Appropriation Act and launched by Roosevelt's May 6 Executive Order 7034 "to move from the relief rolls to work on (various) projects or in private employment the maximum number of persons in the shortest time possible."

It replaced FERA, CWA and PWA to became the largest New Deal agency, employing millions in every state, especially in rural and western areas - those able to work, not the aged, handicapped or otherwise unemployable to be helped mostly at state and local levels. It and other programs eventually found jobs for about 60% of the nation's unemployed, paying around $50 a month (on WPA jobs) that went a lot further then than now.

WPA focused heavily on construction and developmental programs but also in areas of education, the arts, health, and other community projects for professional and white collar workers as well as efforts to feed children and redistribute food, clothing and provide housing.

Most observers called WPA a success. Others, however, objected to its competing unfairly with business, dispensing jobs as political favors, undercutting prevailing wages, and letting social protest themes be part of various arts projects. Once war production began, WPA shifted focus in that direction. By mid-1943, most alphabet soup agencies ended in favor of business as usual taking over post-war.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

On May 18, 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority Act became law creating TVA as a federally-owned corporation to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, economic development, and promote agriculture in the depression-impacted Tennessee Valley area covering most of Tennessee as well as parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. It was the federal government's largest regional planning agency and remains so.

From 1933 - 1944, it built 16 dams and a steam plant, produced electricity cheaply, and by 1941 was its largest producer in the country. It also established the Electric Home and Farm Authority (EHFA) to help farmers buy major electric appliances with EHFA low-cost financing.

In Ashwander v. TVA (February 1936), the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional, noting that regulating interstate commerce includes doing it for streams. They require flood control for navigability, and electricity generation is a by-product of this effort.

Today, TVA remains America's largest public power company, with over 34,600 megawatts in generating capacity serving about 8.5 million customers.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

Enacted on May 12, 1933, it restricted production by paying farmers to reduce and/or destroy crops and kill livestock at a time millions were impoverished and hungry. The idea was to decrease supply and raise prices (at the worst possible time) with farmers getting government payments for agreeing not to plant specific crops, not produce milk and butter, nor raise pigs and lambs. In addition, the Agriculture Secretary had exclusive powers to license food processors to control supply and raise prices.

In United States v. Butler (January 1936), the Supreme Court ruled that the tax underwriting AAA was unconstitutional because, among other reasons, it assessed one farmer to pay another. Congress later achieved part of AAA's goals through the 1935 Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act until enactment of the second AAA in February 1938. It was funded through general taxation and thus constitutionally acceptable to the High Court.

AAA was conceptually flawed. It ran counter to vitally needed policy to produce low-cost food, make it affordable for millions, and relieve hunger. It also subsidized owners, not tenant farmers or sharecroppers, and ended up depressing incomes and increasing unemployment at the worst possible time.

The Farm Credit Act of 1933

Enacted on June 16, 1933 (the last of FDR's first 100 days), it was established to help farmers refinance mortgages over an extended time at below-market rates, and by so doing, helped them stay solvent and survive. It also created the Farm Credit Administration to make loans for the production and marketing of agricultural products as well as regulate and examine banks, associations, and related Farm Credit System entities - a network of borrower-owned financial institutions to provide credit to farmers, ranchers, and agricultural and rural utility cooperatives.

The May 1933 Emergency Farm Mortgage Act, established during the time of the Dust Bowl, provided refinancing help for farmers facing foreclosure.

An Overall Assessment

Despite its flaws and failures, FDR's New Deal was remarkable in what it accomplished. It helped people, put millions back to work, reinvigorated the national spirit, built or renovated 700,000 miles of roads, 7800 bridges, 45,000 schools, 2500 hospitals, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 1000 airfields, and various other infrastructure, including much of Chicago's lakefront where this writer lives. It cut unemployment from 25% in May 1933 to 11% in 1937, then it spiked before early war production revived economic growth and headed it lower.

The Great Depression was, in fact, two severe recessions:

-- from summer 1929 - March 1933;

-- followed by a 1933 - 1937 recovery; impressive enough for the Dow Industrials to rise from a July 1932 low of 43 to 187 in February 1937 for a near-335% gain; however, the rally followed an 89% decline so even the new top ended up 50% below the 1929 peak of 385, a level it took 25 years to regain; then

-- from May 1937 - June 1938, another slump followed (and a 47% Dow average decline) in response to reduced government spending before early war preparations produced recovery.

It might have been stronger and quicker had Roosevelt embraced all of Keynes' advice in a December 31, 1933 New York Times "Open Letter" (republished on November 25, 2008 in the London Guardian) to:

-- "spend, spend, spend;"

-- supply "cheap and abundant credit;"

-- stress "speed and quick" recovery over reform that can come later;

-- hold back on recovery-impeding reforms initially;

-- direct recovery to "increas(ing) the national output," increasing purchasing power, and "put(ting) more men to work;"

-- let rising output, not government policies, produce price increases; "increasing aggregate purchasing power is the right way to get prices up and not the other way around;"

-- undertake "a large volume of Loan-expenditures under Government auspices" but work cooperatively with business; and

-- concentrate on projects that "can be made to mature quickly on a large scale, as for example the rehabilitation of the physical condition of the railroads."

Roosevelt did much of the above, but not enough of it, then in 1937 declared victory too early and precipitated another downturn. Nonetheless, he deserves praise for what he accomplished during the gravest ever economic period to that time. He confronted it head-on with emergency first 100 days measures and vital reforms, Keynes advice notwithstanding, including:

-- the above-cited "first 100 days" legislation, then later

-- the National Labor Relations Board with the passage of the 1935 Wagner Act, that, for the first time, let labor bargain collectively on equal terms with management - something very much eroded in today's environment;

-- the 1935 Social Security Act that to this day is the single most important federal program responsible for keeping seniors and others eligible out of poverty;

-- unemployment insurance in partnership with the states; by 1935, nearly all the unemployed got social benefit payments;

-- the Revenue Acts of 1934 and 1935, so-called "Soak the Rich" ones to make high income earners pay their fair share;

-- the Revenue Act of 1936 that established an "undistributed profits tax" on corporations;

-- the Revenue Act of 1937 that cracked down on tax evasion;

-- a minimum wage, a 40-hour week, and time-and-a-half for overtime guarantees under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA);

-- public housing under the 1934 National Housing Act (creating the Federal Housing Administration - FHA) to make housing and mortgages more affordable through FHA and Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) financing;

-- the May 1935-established Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to bring electrical power to rural and remote areas;

-- the 1937 Housing Act (Wagner-Steagall Act) providing subsidies to local public housing agencies;

-- the Railroad Retirement System, separate from Social Security, administering a social insurance program for railroad workers and their families;

-- the National Youth Administration (NYA) under WPA to help youth unemployment through grants to high school and college students in return for work; it also aided unemployed young people not in school with on-the-job training in federally-funded work projects to provide marketable future skills; and

-- more initiatives in an effort to reform and revive the economy.

Obamanomics - Obama's Bad Deal

As stated above, Roosevelt confronted "the money changers," even though mostly through rhetoric. Obama, like Bush, embraces them openly to the tune of $12.8 trillion "spent, lent or guaranteed," according to Bloomberg on March 31 while people needs go begging at a time they're most essential. He leads:

-- an imperial enterprise presided over by a war cabinet engaged in unbridled militarism, aggressive wars and occupation with a budget well above $1 trillion annually;

-- a bogus democracy under a homeland police state apparatus;

-- an anti-labor job destruction offensive, from 800,000 - one million a month since his inauguration, compared to FDR creating employment for most workers and reviving the national spirit; and

-- a criminal cabal in charge of the greatest ever wealth transfer in history - from the public to the top 1%, mainly powerful corrupt Wall Street institutions.

As Michel Chossudovsky explains, his budget reflects "the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history." It's a "War Budget (affecting) all major federal (programs except): 1. Defense and the Middle East War(s and whatever new ones are planned); 2. the Wall Street bank bailout, (and) 3. Interest payments (approaching $500 billion annually) on a staggering (growing) public debt."

People needs don't matter. They get little more than lip service, and in his April 14 Georgetown University economic policy speech, Obama promised disappointment. When he should have been Rooseveltian, he defended bank bailouts, suggested more are coming, championed "free market" rubbish, and presented "five pillars (to) make the new century another American (one):"

-- no-teeth financial regulations;

-- education reform, meaning the Bush agenda to end public education;

-- renewable energy and technology investments, likely to be far less than needed and for the wrong things;

-- health care reform minus Medicare-for-all to assure profits trump human need; and

-- "restoring fiscal discipline (by) reduc(ing) discretionary spending for domestic programs" at the same time it's been recklessly abandoned for bankers and militarism....we (cannot solve this problem by trimming a few earmarks; (the) biggest (budget costs) are entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security all of which get more expensive every year....So if we want to get serious about fiscal discipline - and I do - we will have to get serious about entitlement reform" - meaning phase them out in future years, or something close to that.

Unless policies like these are reversed, this agenda is heading the nation toward insolvency, tyranny and ruin with ordinary people hurt most.

Simon Johnson is a former IMF chief economist, now teaching at MIT's Sloan School of Management. His article in the Atlantic's May issue, titled "The Quiet Coup," suggests that Wall Street (a "financial oligarchy") is turning America into a "banana republic," given the depth, similarities and shock "reminiscent of" earlier crises in Southeast Asia, Russia, Latin America, and other developing countries.

His analysis is long and detailed, concluding as follows:

"The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump 'cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.' This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression - because the world is now so much more interconnected and the banking sector so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite."

So far policy is mirror-opposite, hugely destructive, publicly papered over but evident in divergent G 20 views, raging on London and other European streets, to a lesser degree in America, and openly stated by Czech prime minister/EU president Mirek Topolanek calling Washington's stimulus "a way to hell (that will) undermine the stability of" global finance.

Obama is wrecking America. Roosevelt determined to revive it and help people as the way to do it.

He had his "Brain Trust," notable figures like Felix Frankfurter, (a future Supreme Court justice), Justice Louis Brandeis, consumerist/labor supporter Frances Perkins, economist Rexford Tugwell, educator/author Adolph Berle, and close personal confidant Louis Howe, among others - officials and advisors dedicated to reviving the economy by putting people back to work. One other was prominent as well, his wife Eleanor.

Rexford Tugwell said this about her:

"No one who ever saw Eleanor Roosevelt sit down facing her husband, and, holding his eye firmly, say to him, 'Franklin, I think you should....or, 'Franklin, surely you will not....' will ever forget the experience....It would be impossible to say how often and to what extent American governmental processes have been turned in new directions because of her determination."

At first, she worried she'd be marginalized as first lady, unable to speak publicly about causes she championed. But it didn't stop her. She held press conferences for women reporters only; pressed FDR to appoint more women and much more:

-- she urged the creation of the National Youth Administration;

-- became a civil rights champion and pushed for including blacks in government programs;

-- supported the Southern Tenant Farmer's Union;

-- worked with the PWA's Housing Division for planned communities ("greenbelt towns") and slum clearance;

-- backed Federal Arts Projects, even ones with "controversial" themes;

-- supported worker rights and lobbied for the Wagner and Fair Labor Standards Acts;

-- visited coal mines, migrant camps, homes of sharecroppers and slum-dwellers;

-- wrote articles, spoke publicly and on radio;

-- traveled widely to see firsthand how the Depression affected the most vulnerable; and

-- displayed an unmatched spirit, passion and dedication, and, by so doing, set a standard never matched by another first lady; few, in fact, even tried.

That Was Then, This Is Now - A Different Time, A Different President, A Different Agenda

The differences between FDR and Obama are stark during the two gravest economic crises in our history. Obama chose a financial coup d'etat "dream team" to address it. It includes a rogue's gallery of 1990s and earlier retreads, many of them proteges of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who plundered world economies during his tenure, then led Citigroup close to collapse - disciples like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former New York Fed president who partnered with Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson's Treasury-looting under Bush.

Reportedly he was also one of the architects behind the Bear Stearns bailout and various others, including Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and Lehman Bros.' suspicious collapse that shocked financial markets globally. He now runs the Treasury and continues looting on a grander scale on the pretext of reviving the economy. Instead, he's wrecking it - by design.

Others like Lawrence Summers, a former Reaganite and World Bank chief economist before becoming Clinton's Under-Treasury Secretary for International Affairs, then Treasury Secretary from 1999 - 2001. He helped deregulate financial markets and played a key role in the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed Glass-Steagall and opened the door to the kinds of rampant speculation, fraud, and abuse that created today's crisis.

He was also instrumental in the passage of the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernation Act (CFMA). It legitimized "swap agreements" and other "hybrid instruments" at the heart of today's problems by preventing regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging that turned Wall Street into a casino.

Now he's do for Obama what he did earlier - as Director of the National Economic Council where he's part of a criminal cabal triumvirate in charge of economic policies along with Geithner and Bernanke.

Another Rubin protege, Peter Orszag, heads the Office of Management and Budget. Earlier he was on Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, then was Congressional Budget Office Director from early 2007 to late 2008. He's for destroying Social Security through a combination of payroll and "benefits adjustments" as a way of cutting retiree payouts.

Also close to Rubin and for Social Security privatization is Jason Furman, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. In the Clinton administration, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and on the Council of Economic Advisors.

UC Berkeley economist Christina Romer chairs the Council of Economic Advisors where she's close to the president but with less clout than Geithner, Summers and Bernanke. Her idea of good government - the less the better, except for handouts to the rich. In praise of Ronald Reagan she once wrote: "The costly wrong turn in ideas and macropolicy of the 1960s and 1970s has been set right, and the future of stabilization looks bright," meaning, of course, to take from the many for the few.

That's also true for Paul Volker (former Fed chairman, Trilateralist, corporatist and no friend of working people), now serving as 1st Chair of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a position with lots of bark and little bite, but enough to pay attention to nonetheless, especially when he differs on public policy.

Former Washington governor Gary Locke is the new Commerce Secretary, hailed as "safe (and) strait-laced," but his record shows otherwise. He skirted campaign finance laws; handed Boeing a $3.2 billion tax break; paid Boeing's private consultant and outside auditor $715,000; and arranged favors for his brother-in-law's business above and beyond what's ethical.

Former Colorado senator and rancher Ken Salazar heads the Interior Department. He backed the worst of Bush administration appointments, including Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General and right-winger Gale Norton for Interior. He's an anti-environmentist and is staunchly pro-business, clearly why he was appointed in the first place.

That's true as well for Tom Vilsack, former Iowa governor, chair of the right wing Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), now new Agriculture Secretary. Agribusiness loves him. He's for ethanol and other biofuel production, big subsidies for the giants, and the proliferation of harmful GMO seeds.

As new Education Secretary, Arne Duncan will do for the nation what he did to Chicago - preside over public education's destruction by privatizing it for profit, and in the process, destroy the futures of millions of youths in the country.

The 1934 Securities and Exchange Act created an SEC with teeth and, for a while, it worked. At least since the 1980s, it hasn't, and under George Bush it became a travesty of non-enforcement.

Mary Schapiro is its new head, hand-picked by the industry she'll regulate so there's no doubt where her allegiance lies. She's a high-level insider, former FINRA and NASD head and earlier CFTC chairperson. In each job, she was a facilitator, not a regulator, credentials making her perfect for SEC where industry interests matter, not enforcing the nation's securities laws.

Other Obama officials are as tainted - his top team and their underlings. Roosevelt promised change and delivered. So did Obama - for his Wall Street backers and beneficiaries.

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 and listen to The Global Research News Hour on Republic Broadcasting.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=13326

The Global Research News Hour - Media As It Should Be

The Global Research News Hour (GRNH): Media As It Should Be - by Stephen Lendman

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Israeli Use of Palestinians As Human Shields

Israeli Use of Palestinians As Human Shields - by Stephen Lendman

The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights is a Gaza-based Palestinian NGO mandated "to promote, protect and prevent violations of human rights in general, and economic, social and cultural rights in particular, to provide effective aid to those victims of such violations, and to enhance the quality of life of the community in (Gaza's) marginalized sectors."

It monitors and documents violations, provides legal aid and advocacy, and helps Gazans on "fundamental issues such as basic human rights, democracy, and international humanitarian" matters. It also produces reports and publications on its work.

In April, it published a seven-case study update of its July 2008 report titled: "Hiding Behind Civilians - The Continued Use of Palestinian Civilians as Human Shields by the Israeli Occupation Forces." This article reviews both reports to highlight what international law unequivocally prohibits. Nonetheless, it's customary IDF practice even though Israel's Supreme Court banned it on October 6, 2005.

One Palestinian woman described her experience:

"They handcuffed and blindfolded me. Then, they forced us to move out of the room, pushing me with their hands and guns to move although I was blindfolded and pregnant. I heard them pushing others to hurry up as well. I got exhausted and fell down many times. I told them that I was four months pregnant and couldn't continue but a soldier threatened to shoot me."

Other witness testimonies related similar stories, at times with tragic consequences for its victims. Israel is a party to various human rights laws and conventions. As a result, it's obligated to respect and protect the rights of people it controls.

Under Article 3 of the UN General Assembly's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): "everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."

Under Article 5: "no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Under Article 9: "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."

The General Assembly's 1977 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) affirms the same rights. Under Article 17: "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence."

Both international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) protect life, well-being and dignity. ILH deals with armed conflicts while IHRL applies to peace as well as war. Hague and Geneva Conventions comprise the main body of IHL, and strike a balance between military necessity and humanitarian considerations. As an occupying power, Israel is obligated under them.

Fourth Geneva protects civilians in war time, including those in Occupied Palestine. It restricts the use of force and prohibits seizing non-combatants as hostages, including persons who've laid down their arms or can't fight because of illness, injury or any other reason.

Article 34 states: "the taking of hostages is prohibited." Article 28 states: "the presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." Article 29 states: "the Party to the conflict in whose hands protected persons may be, is responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its agents, irrespective of any individual responsibility which may be incurred."

Protocol I, Article 51, paragraph 7 states: "the presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations." In other words, using civilians as human shields is prohibited under all circumstances.

Further, the International Criminal Court's (ICC) Rome Statute, Article 8 prohibits the "Taking of hostages." Israel isn't a Court member but is obligated under international law. Nonetheless, it flaunts it with impunity.

Al Mezan collected sworn testimonies of people's homes seized and used as military posts for days with their residents confined for prolonged periods, beaten and abused, prevented from normal activities, and put in harm's way.

Another practice was called the "neighbor procedure," later changed to "the prior warning procedure" to get around a Court prohibition. Israel commandeers civilians, has them knock on neighbors' doors, usually at night, to deliver military orders to submit to arrest. Hostages are put in harm's way when violence at times erupts that may result in deaths or injuries.

Finally the practice was banned, but Israel blatantly disregarded its own High Court ruling as well as its clear obligation under IHL. It continues to use civilian men, women and children as human shields.

During the Second Intifada (especially for Israel's large-scale West Bank Operation Defensive Shield incursion), Amnesty International (AI) said the following in October 2005:

AI "investigated tens of cases where the Israeli army used Palestinians, children as well as adults, as 'human shields' during military operations in towns and refugee camps throughout the Occupied Territories. Palestinians were forced to walk in front of Israeli soldiers who, at times, fired their weapons while shielding themselves behind the civilians. As well (they) were made to enter houses ahead of Israeli soldiers to check for explosives or gunmen hiding inside, to inspect suspicious objects, to stay in their houses when Israeli soldiers took them over to use as sniper positions, or to enter the houses of wanted, possibly armed, Palestinians to tell them to surrender to Israeli forces."

B'Tselem reports that Israel routinely uses "human shields (as) an integral part of the orders received by Israeli soldiers...." Al Mezan documented "dozens of cases" in Gaza in spite of specific High Court prohibitions, usually at times of incursions. Case studies below refute Israeli claims about respecting civilians, not using them as shields, and abiding strictly according to international and its own case law.

Israeli officials lie. As standard practice, they seize Palestinian civilians randomly, including women and young children, then force them into harm's way. Usually to:

-- let soldiers commandeer their homes as military posts and for sniper positions;

-- check for possible booby-traps in buildings;

-- order occupants inside to leave;

-- remove suspicious objects anywhere soldiers may go;

-- shield them from gunfire or thrown rocks; and

-- perform whatever other tasks soldiers order under very real threats they'll be shot if they refuse.

Orders to conduct these practices come from top commanders, not soldiers in the field.

Case Study Examples - 2008 and 2009

Number 1

On July 10, 2008, the IDF forced Rana Mofeed Awad An-Nabaheen, age 11, to visit a relative's house delivering orders to leave. On return, she was shot in the stomach by other soldiers, unaware she was acting under orders. Family member Mahir Hamdan Mheisin An-Nabaheen provided eyewitness sworn testimony. At about 4:30AM, vehicles, helicopters and gunfire woke him.

"I peeked through a window and saw Israeli soldiers breaking into my family member's house and forcing them to get out." Rana delivered orders to leave. He then heard heavy gunfire. "I peeked out and saw Rana near the gate screaming and saying: 'I am injured.' I stepped back into the house and gave her my hand....I pulled her back into the house. The gunfire became heavier. I left Rana bleeding and took cover behind a wall. Rana crawled two steps and lay on the floor....I saw her entrails coming out of her abdomen.
A physician in military uniform came, brought a bandage, and put it on her abdomen. The commander fastened Rana to a carrier, then ordered two soldiers to carry her." This case is typical of many others.

Number 2

It involves the arrest of civilians, including a pregnant woman, from the As-Sreij neighborhood in eastern Al-Qarara village in Khan Younis. They were held in an agricultural field and forced to accompany soldiers towards the separation border. The men were detained, women and children ordered to leave. They were shot at en route, then used as human shields during the operation. Out of fear of reprisals, the witness remained anonymous.

On April 3, 2008, at 7:30AM, her husband wasn't answering his mobile at the time an Israeli force entered the area where he was working. She rushed there with his ID card. "When I was on my way, I heard somebody shouting and ordering me to stop and come towards him....I tried to explain that I had come to give my husband his ID card but they threatened to shoot me."

"They led me to a room where I saw seven men and a woman with her two daughters, who were detained. The men were handcuffed and blindfolded. They handcuffed and blindfolded me. Then, they forced us to move out of the room, pushing me with their hands and guns although I was blindfolded and pregnant....They stopped for a while and took off my blindfold....I saw them taking the men across the border, and then heard one of them ordering us to leave the area....I heard heavy gunfire."

"I had to crawl for a long time to leave the area....I found (soldiers) who forced me to stop. I tried to explain what happened but they threatened to shoot me and forced me to sit down with a child of (a) family....One soldier forced the child to take his shirt off and tied his hands with it. There were many explosions and intensive firing."

"I managed to go home at around 13:00 on the same day. My husband returned home at around 21:00 on the same day. I knew he was detained in a military post close to the border line."

This is another human shield example that "demonstrates the complete disregard of the soldiers for the life of a pregnant woman and her unborn child." They were used as cover for Israeli forces to withdraw from the area.

Other cases were of medical teams forced to carry out life-threatening tasks, homes used as military posts and their residents as human shields, and a 14 year old boy used for the same purpose.

On April 9, 2009, Al Mezan presented an updated report, containing seven new case studies "based on comprehensive field investigations and witness statements," these based on incidents during Operation Cast Lead and one earlier in 2008.

"In endangering the lives of civilian men, women and children through systematically using them as human shields, the (IDF committed) crimes against humanity according to IHL." This is one of many violations against non-combatant Palestinian civilians.

Number 1: 15-year-old child used as a human shield

After being used for that purpose, the child was detained in a hole in the ground with about 100 others for four days. He now suffers from serious mental health difficulties and refuses to speak to strangers. With help from his parents, Al Mezan got him to tell his story and presented excepts from it below. At home with his parents, he was terrified by days of conflict.

"I was lying on the floor sheltering with my mother." His uncle then said: 'Come downstairs.' "So we all went downstairs. As soon as we opened the door, I saw a large number of soldiers. One of them was pointing his weapon at me....I saw my uncle and brothers lined up against the wall. I saw the soldier signaling at me to stand beside them. So I did....he wanted me to put my hands up. So I did. Another soldier came and searched me from top to bottom....He tied my hands to the hands of the people next to me."

"I stood by the wall. A few minutes later one of the soldiers came and kicked me. About two hours later, they ordered us to walk....they made us go into Khalil al-Attar's house....Then they told us all go, as a chain, into one of the rooms." They took us outside the house....I heard the sound of a huge explosion in the area. From there they took us to a farm."

"They made us sit on the ground until dawn the following day. Then they took us outside the field (and) blindfolded my eyes....they led us to a low-lying area. They made us sit on the ground....They tied my hands in front of my stomach. They searched me a third time and made me sit on the ground....After they took of my blindfold....I realized where the low-lying area was. It was a hole made by Israeli forces....south of the American school."

"We spent the whole night in this hole. I couldn't sleep. The weather was really cold and I wasn't wearing a lot of clothing. We stayed in this hole for four days....I could hear the sound of shooting and explosions" close by. We got one meal each afternoon...."On the third day I saw a soldier making a wire fence around the hole (and bring) a lot of people to the hole until the number reached around 100. On the morning of the fourth day, an Israeli soldier untied me, my brother Ali, my cousins Hussein and Khalil. They told us and the women to go to Jabalia.

Case 2: Majdi al-Abed Ahmed Abed Rabbo, male, age 40

On January 5 at 9:30AM, he was at home when he heard a loud sound and someone say, "Open the door....I arrived at the door and opened it. I was surprised to see an (IDF) soldier hiding behind a man in his twenties and pointing a gun at me. He said in Arabic, 'Take off your pants.' I took" them off. He ordered him to strip naked, then get dressed. About "15 - 20 Israeli soldiers then entered the courtyard of my house....one grabbed my neck from behind and put his gun to the back of my head."

"Two other soldiers hid behind me....They told me to lead them to the roof, where they searched pigeon coups that I keep in two rooms there." A soldier then asked about the adjacent house, belonging to his cousin and connected to his home by a common roof. "There's no space between the two houses, just the wall."

"After that, one of the soldiers brought a demolition tool and said, 'Drill a hole there.'....Then three soldiers went through the hole to (his cousin's) house." He was told to come as well along with more soldiers, then told, "Get up. Get up," and grabbed violently. "I got up and entered with them through the hole back to my roof, and they all went as a group down the stairs. This happened quickly....The whole group was running."

"The soldiers led me outside. I found myself in a mud road....One of the soldiers was holding me and making me run with him. Another soldier was bringing the young man with him the same way, and (he) had his hands tied. They pushed me in the mosque through its main door to the north....They tied my hands in front of my stomach and tied my legs and sat me down (in one corner). We entered the house adjacent to the mosque. They took us out and turned us toward another house," then sat us down nearby.

In one house, a soldier said, there were gunmen and we killed them. "Go take their clothes off and bring their guns and come back."

"I refused. I asked him to let me return to my family. I said to him:" going into that house "means death, and I don't want to die." The soldier responded, 'You are here to do what we tell you (and said) Go.'

"I walked about 200 meters to the house....I went in...I went alone....but couldn't find anyone. I expected the worst." He encountered three armed men wearing badges saying Al Qassam Brigades. He said he was forced to come. They told him to go back and say what he saw - "three gunmen in the house, still alive....then the soldier said to me, 'The officer says he's crazy and if you are lying to him he swears by his mother he will shoot you."

"A short time later, I heard the sound of heavy gunfire nearby. Twenty minutes passed....and a soldier said to me; 'We killed them now. Go get them.' I refused. I told them that they had told me that if I returned they would kill me, and he shouted at me: 'We killed them.' "

He went again and found one man seriously injured and bleeding and the others alive. He reported back what he saw, then heard heavy gunfire and a very loud explosion. A soldier said; 'Go and make sure they are dead. We bombed the house again with planes...."With difficulty, I entered the apartment. Inside, I saw the three men still living, but they were under the rubble."

Majdi al-Abed Ahmed Abed Rabbo located his wife and children after the IDF released him. His home was totally destroyed by military bulldozers, and he's deeply distressed. Numerous other examples are similar to his account - human shields illegally used by IDF soldiers in violation of international law and Israel's High Court ruling.

Conclusions

The above cases are examples of customary Israeli practice in gross violation of international law and Israel's High Court ruling. They endanger civilian lives and cause "long-lasting psychological trauma."

IHL considers using civilian human shields a war crime and when used systematically against non-combatants a crime against humanity. It's essential to hold parties guilty of these crimes accountable as the way to stop this heinous practice.

Al Mezan condemns Israel's disregard for the law and says that "the continued failure of the international community to fulfill its obligations and its silence on Israeli violations encourages" similar acts in the future - by Israel and others engaged in this outrageous practice.

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=13326

"Hizzhonor:" - Chicago Politics Under Richard M. Daley

"Hizzhonor:" Chicago Politics Under Richard M. Daley - by Stephen Lendman

First the father, Richard J. (mayor from April 20, 1955 - December 20, 1976), now the son. To Chicagoans - "Hizzhonor," and for some - "Hizzhonor Da Mare." Authors Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor called the elder an "American Pharaoh." For former Chicago columnist, Mike Royko, he was "Boss" in his 1971 book by that title. When he died on December 20, 1976, Royko wrote:

"If ever a man reflected a city, it was Richard J. Daley," for better or worse. He was "strong (and) hard-driving" with Texas-sized ambitions, but also "arrogant, crude, conniving, ruthless, suspicious, intolerant, raucous, hot-tempered, devious, big and powerful." He was Chicago.

Now the son - mayor since April 24, 1989. His official biography reads:

Now in his sixth mayoral term, "Richard M. Daley has earned a national reputation for his innovative, community-based programs (on) education, public safety, neighborhood development and other challenges facing American cities." More on that below.

On April 25, 2005. Time magazine called him "the nation's top urban executive." A week earlier, it said:

"He wields near-imperial power" (in) steer(ing) the Windy City into a period of impressive stability, with declining unemployment and splashy growth." Never mind that the facts belie the hyperbole. More on that as well.

Earlier, the Wall Street Journal praised him as "a fix-it, problem-solving man" and most recently in a February 7 interview as: "The President's Mayor....whose personality and history are inseparable from Chicago('s) political culture....successful and enormously popular." He hopes bringing the 2016 Olympics to Chicago will "showcase the city (as a) gleaming tourist destination (and) At this stage in the process, the city's bid is not just Chicago anymore. It's the United States of America." Indeed, and like the nation, Chicago and Illinois reek with problems, corruption, and are for sale to the highest bidders, business ones, of course.

According to the Corporate Crime Reporter, Illinois ranks sixth worst in the nation on corruption after Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama and Ohio. In the wake of the governor Blagojevich scandal, The New York Times (on December 13) said Illinois has "a tradition (since the 19th century) of corruption" (because) the state's unusually lax (campaign finance) laws" allow it, and local citizens say it's just the way it is.

On February 3, Dick Simpson, Thomas Gradel, and Andris Zimelis (below Simpson et al) from the University of Illinois Chicago's Political Science Department published: "Curing Corruption in Illinois - Anti-Corruption Report Number 1."

They call it "an unfortunate aspect of Illinois (and Chicago) politics for a century and a half," in citing one example after another - like former secretary of state Paul Powell's $800,000 stash found in shoe boxes when he died, 13 judges caught for fixing court cases, and a state auditor's embezzlement of over $1.5 million to buy two planes, four cars, and two homes.

Since 1972, three governors (besides Blagojevich), state legislators, two congressmen, 19 Cook County judges, 30 aldermen, and many others were convicted of corruption. In all since 1970, around 1000 public officials and businessmen were caught and convicted.

It's a tradition as far back as the 1860s, and mainly in Chicago where its large immigrant population helped politicians gain power. Needing housing and work, they turned public office into a bizaar. It's called patronage, and in return, politicos got support. Businessmen as well with bribes and payoffs for lucrative contracts, free from "troublesome city inspectors."

Former Chicago alderman Paddy Bauler said it best: "Chicago ain't ready for reform," and he was right. Richard J. Daley modernized machine politics, and while mayor, many of his subordinates were jailed. Under Richard M., the machine "simply adjusted to draw its power from interest groups, corporations, unions, and the global economy instead of ethnic communities." Everything changes, yet stays the same.

The 2004 - 05 Hired Truck Program involved private trucks for city work, but was phased out after a Chicago Sun-Times investigation uncovered companies being paid for little or no work and having mob and city officials' ties. Daley's patronage chief Robert Sorich was involved. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to 46 months in prison with US District Court Judge David Coar saying he ran a corruption operation "with a capital C."

Simpson et al calls Chicago "a one-party system where Democrats control the city" but govern like Republicans. They also explained that while many Daley aides were convicted of corruption, "neither father or son" was ever indicted. Yet, "corruption continues unabated in city, county, suburban, and state" politics. Paddy Bauler was right, and it's no different today. Here's more:

-- the FBI's Operation Safebet investigation into political corruption and organized crime's control of prostitution throughout metropolitan Chicago snared over 75 individuals;

-- Operation Gambat targeted First Ward connections to organized crime with 24 individuals convicted or pleading guilty;

-- Operation Incubator on City Hall corruption involved bribes to win city contracts for collecting unpaid parking tickets and water bills; convicted were four aldermen, a former state senator, a deputy water commissioner, and an aide to former Mayor Harold Washington;

-- Operation Greylord into Chicago's court system netted 87 court personnel and attorney convictions and guilty pleas, including 13 judges;

-- Operation Haunted Hall about City Hall ghost payrolls yielded 38 indictments and 35 convictions, including four aldermen, a Cook County treasurer, and a state senator;

-- Operation Silver Shovel probed city government and netted 18 convictions and guilty pleas from public employees and six aldermen;

-- Operation Board Games into public corruption of insider deals, peddling, and kickbacks involving state government boards; and

-- much more systemic corruption for decades, including under both Daleys.

Simpson et al explained while corruption permeates Illinois, "the most notorious and persistent (kinds are in) Chicago('s) City Council." The guilty aldermen range from "bumblers (to) the most brilliant (and powerful) politicians" like Tom Keane and Richard J. Daley's floor leader, "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak.

In the past 35 years, 30 alderman were indicted and convicted of bribery, extortion, embezzlement, conspiracy, mail fraud, and income tax evasion - three Republicans and 26 Democrats. Three others were indicted. Two died before going to trial, and the other was too sick to proceed. Several others weren't indicted but resigned after media investigations.

"In most cases, the Chicago political machine taught the crooked aldermen the fine art of graft." They learned from the grassroots up. "They saw political officials amass power and get rich over time by playing the game, keeping quiet, and delivering votes and campaign funds for the party." Locally, heads only rolled if exposed in the media. "The Cook County States Attorney or Illinois Attorney General almost never investigated or prosecuted political corruption." The task fell to federal attorneys, postal inspectors, FBI, and IRS agents.

The convicted are a who's who in Chicago and state politics, and the game is as old as the system - "Pay-to-Play" and "quid pro quo" with the latter very hard to prove, but it made millionaires out of the players.

These crimes persisted for decades, so it's clear Chicago and Illinois house "a thriving culture of corruption." Fixing something this embedded will take decades of committed change, no simple task after a century and a half of plundering public coffers for personal gain.

Simpson et al put it this way:

"Corruption is not funny (or) free. It costs taxpayers more than $300 million a year. (What's called) 'The Chicago Way' has also undermined the sense of political efficacy in voters. Why apply for a city or state job if you know only patronage employees or politicians' relatives will be hired anyway? Why report corrupt officials, if you know they won't be punished (unless the Feds do it), and they may turn the powers of government on you?"

Voters become apathetic because they know the "fix is in." After a tradition of corruption, it's time "to become the land of Lincoln rather than the land of "Where's Mine."

Richard M. Daley's Machine

Simpson and four assocates (Ola Adeoye, Daniel Bliss, Kevin Navratil, and Rebecca Raines) wrote earlier about "The New Daley Machine: 1989 - 2004" and compared it to the old one under his father - from 1955 - 1976.

Elder Daley's was characterized by "patronage, slate-making, and alliances" to Chicago's business community. Richard M.'s new version continues some of the old ways, "but patronage precinct captains are supplemented by candidate-based, synthetic campaigns using large sums of money from the global economy to purchase professional political consultants, public opinion polls, paid television ads, and direct mail."

In government, it's enforced by a "rubber stamp city council and public policies that benefit the new global economy more than the older developer" one. From 1955 to the present, two Daleys, father and son, have run Chicago for over 40 years and show no sign of stepping down with Richard M. a still youthful 66 and likely to run for a seventh term in February 2011.

He solidified power with strong business and trade union backing, especially from construction, real estate, finance, law, lobbying, and tourism related interests. His "regime is composed of traditional (rubber stamp city council backing along with) developers, city contractors, construction unions, real estate firms (plus) major contributors from the new global (economy), including banks, lawyers, and international manufacturing firms."

Combined, it's less democracy and more centralized power under the new "Chicago Machine." In city council votes, mayoral support runs about 90%. In elections, it's mainly from Whites and Latinos who are rewarded for their backing.

An old-fashioned political machine runs city precincts and the government, but private business instituted important changes. One is "turning over major public decisions either entirely to the private sector (with minimal government supervision) or to quasi-independent governmental agencies appointed by the mayor and governor."

In the 1990s, Chicago, like other cities, renovated a corporate-centered downtown and expanded its service economy. It became "the Midwest capital of the global economy," for example in tourism and conventions with millions of annual visitors and growing annual tax revenues as a result. "Most tourist, convention, and major development decisions are made behind closed doors with little public input" and considerable private sector influence. On the one hand, business greatly benefits at the discretion of an imperial mayor heading a powerful Chicago Machine.

It's active in elections where it crushes a "poorly organized opposition. In the 2003 aldermanic elections, all but five (of 50) incumbents were re-elected, most by landslide totals, and those that lost (got) tepid machine support in the face of strong community opposition." At the same time, ward committeemen won in "mostly uncontested romps."

With less power than his father, Richard M. still runs Chicago unchallenged. Democrats dominate city politics. The last Republican mayor ("Big Bill" Thompson) left office in 1931. The Great Depression ended their rule when Anton Cermak took over, built a strong constituency among African Americans, and consigned Republicans to small pockets on the city's far northwest side and suburban growth post-war.

As for regaining power in Chicago, they face "the prospect of a long wait," according to one observer. Democrats are well entrenched, and business loves them. Why not, they're more Republican than Republicans and voters hardly notice. They should as topics below explain.

Growing Poverty in Chicago

Last year, the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights (HA) prepared a "2008 Report on Illinois Poverty: Chicago Area Snapshot." It quotes federal poverty monetary threshold guidelines (FPL). In each case, they're woefully inadequate, given the city's true cost of living. FPLs are:

-- $10,400 for a single person;

-- $14,400 for a family of two;

-- $17,600 for three;

-- $21,200 for four; and

-- $24,800 for five.

From 1980 - 2008, greater Chicago experienced a 114.5% increase in poverty. Up to last year, it affected 400,000 suburban residents and over 570,000 Chicagoans or 21.2% of the population. Given the global economic crisis and massive monthly job losses, these numbers are rising dramatically at a time basic necessities like food, housing, health care, energy costs, and more are less affordable for many.

Like most major cities, Chicago is greatly impacted. HA reports 977,320 Chicagoans as low income poor and 1.2 million "at risk of experiencing poverty," meaning they struggle daily to meet basic needs and are dangerously close to the edge. One negative event (like job loss) alone can push them over.

Latinos and especially blacks are far more impoverished than whites. Women are more affected than men. So are children, the disabled, one wage-earner households, and anyone "without education past high school." One-fourth of Chicagoans have no health insurance. Being employed is no guarantee against poverty. Over 56,000 full-time workers are impoverished and nearly 210,000 part-time ones. From 2000 - 2006 alone, when adjusted for inflation, Chicagoans' median annual household income declined by $3515 besides greater erosion since the 1970s. The changing job market and lost benefits are to blame, and conditions keep worsening with one-third of all northeastern Illinois jobs classified as "low-wage service" ones.

Affordable housing is shrinking, and the percent of renters paying over half their income for shelter rose substantially from 2000 - 2006 to around 30% of the population, leaving fewer resources for other needs. Critically important is that "the vast majority" of people needing help get none. Since 2000, under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, welfare rolls dropped 77%, meaning tens of thousands of Chicagoans are on their own and can't make it. Less housing aid is also provided because vouchers from nine of the 12 Public Housing Authorities aren't available. For many, the situation is critical.

The result is extreme poverty is rising. It reached almost 10% in 2006 and now is much higher given the economic crisis. In January, Feeding America (FA) reported that Obama's economic stimulus plan provides nothing for the hungry when growing numbers are needy and desperate.

Chicago and other city food banks report a 30% demand increase for their services. Many are newly unemployed, currently don't qualify for food stamps, or are waiting for benefits to be approved. FA's president, Vicki Escarra, said "Americans are going hungry, we're in crisis," and government help isn't forthcoming. "Food banks are on the front lines feeding people," so they're typically an early warning sign of what's to come. In December, 70% of them couldn't meet community needs, and that percentage is rising as resources can't match demand.

In a December report, Chicago Community Trust reported that local conditions are far worse than a year earlier:

-- 6000 Chicagoans face homelessness each month;

-- 350,000 Cook County residents depend on food pantries to survive; tens of thousands more monthly are joining them; 625,000 rely on food stamps;

-- 440,000 Illinois workers are unemployed and more layoffs are announced daily; and

-- metropolitan area home foreclosures doubled from autumn 2007 to autumn 2008.

The Decline of Public Housing in Chicago

Last July, the Chicago Tribune ran a lengthy report on "Public housing limbo" in which it asked "What went wrong with Chicago's grand experiment." Thousands of families were displaced despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent after the Daley administration let private developers shape public housing's future for the city's poor under the Chicago Housing Authority's (CHA) Plan for Transformation.

CHA calls it "a blueprint for positive change (to) improve the appearance, quality and culture of (Chicago's) public housing." Tribune reporters Jason Grotto, Laurie Cohen and Sara Olkon called it a "virtual giveaway of public land" so real estate developers could displace poor residents and gentrify neighborhoods for profit. In the past decade, Chicago saw a surge in upscale development with many working-class and poor neighborhoods transformed for the well-off.

In the 1960s, sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term "gentrification" to describe the invasion of middle and upper income households into areas no longer affordable for the poor. Upscale condos replaced low-cost housing with people displaced to what Marquitta Campbell discovered - substandard construction, leaky ceilings, mold, awful odors, and much more making new quarters worse than the old ones.

Also low-cost housing proceeded slowly and got bogged down by bureaucracy, politics, and complex financing made all the worse by today's crisis. With a glut of unsold upscale properties, developers won't build low-profit ones for the poor.

The result is thousands of displaced Chicagoans have waited years for new public housing, and since 2001 no new applicants have been accepted. The trend goes far beyond Chicago in the wake of the Bush administration prodding dozens of cities to adopt similar plans to dump their poor, shift them to shoddy new buildings, and concentrate on gentrifying neighborhoods for profit.

Recently, many projects stalled as the economy faltered, but it hit Chicago hardest. Under ambitious Daley plans, it undertook the nation's largest public housing redevelopment with the idea of reshaping the city and enriching builders.

Stateway Gardens was typical. It was once some of the nation's worst public housing. It's demolition made it prime real estate for Allison Davis, a developer with close Daley ties. His Park Boulevard project is close to US Cellular Field, home of the White Sox, but it's in trouble. Construction bogged down and one development team member went bankrupt.

At Plan for Transformation's launching, Daley vowed to replace Chicago public housing eyesores with 25,000 new units for the poor. But housing advocates worried that displacing thousands quickly spelled trouble, and so it has. Horizontal ghettos replaced vertical ones, made up mainly of impoverished black families.

Daley promised to "rebuild lives." Meanwhile, demolition proceeded, new construction slowed, and stringent employment rules and background checks prevented most residents from returning to refurbished neighborhoods. Most took federal housing vouchers, were told they'd be back in five years, were forced to move numerous times since the plan started, and are no closer now to getting new housing than before.

Stateway Gardens was supposed to be a bustling neighborhood with new buildings, businesses, and a renaissance for Chicago's South Side. Instead, most of the 33-acre site is vacant with dirt and brick pallets astride unfinished sidewalks and homes.

The Daley administration approved the plan to mix public housing with for-sale condos in the same buildings. It required selling market-rate homes first. Under financing terms, developers can't build affordable housing until it's pre-sold half its upper-scale units. When housing peaked and imploded, so did construction for the poor.

One development team promised to build 439 public housing units by September 2008. The number so far is 53 and no new development is planned. For its part, Chicago's CHA offered free land and paid to clean up property and tear down old high-rises. The city also spent millions for new roads, water pipes and sewers.

If housing stayed healthy, developers stood to profit handsomely with all kinds of sweeteners at public and former residents' expense. They donate heavily to the Machine and are well compensated in return. As for the poor, Francine Washington summed it up saying: "The only thing wrong with Park Boulevard is the management." City government as well the way it always is.

Chicago: "The National Capital of Police Repression"

That's how Frank Donner characterized Chicago in his 1990 book "Protectors of Privilege." As an ACLU attorney, he explained how city police and US intelligence agencies targeted alleged internal subversion, and while it operated "was the outstanding example of its kind in the United States (in terms of) size, number, and range of targets or operational scope and diversity."

He referred to "wide-open, no-holds-barred style surveillance" unmatched anywhere in the country. For years, "Chicago-style official vigilantism (waged) guerrilla warfare against substantial sectors of the city's population." He called it "institutionalized aggression, unique in the annals of any American city. Its (methods) were flamboyantly illegal and in many instances criminal."

Law enforcement employed intimidation, physical confrontation, and outright abuse. That was then. What about now. CNN reported that between 2002 - 2004 alone, "more than 10,000 complaints - many involving brutality and assault - were filed against Chicago police officers." Yet only 18 of them resulted in disciplinary action, according to attorney Craig Futterman who uncovered the data while researching a client's claim.

Diane Bond sued the city and police on charges physical and sexual assault. The administration settled for $150,000, admitted no wrongdoing, reprimanded no officers, two were later promoted, and this case is typical of many.

For years, community activists accused the Department's Office of Professional Standards (its investigative unit) of indifference and poor oversight. The Daley administration did nothing to change things.

On November 15, 2007, The New York Times headlined: "Chicago Police Cases Exceed Average." Writer Susan Saulny explained that city police "are the subject of more brutality complaints per officer than the national average, and the Police Department is far less likely to pursue" them, according to a University of Chicago report titled "The Chicago Police Department's Broken System."

It's detailed and damning in citing extensive abuse, a broken disciplinary and supervisory system, and a practice of impunity. Under the Daley administration (much like others that preceded him), cops can get away with anything and they do.

Listed were police brutality, illegal searches, false arrests, racial targeting, sexual abuse, shoddy investigations, a culture of silence, and apartheid justice. The data is conclusive. It:

-- "demonstrates the existence of deficient disciplinary and supervisory policies;

-- provides powerful evidence of deliberate indifference - the affirmative efforts that policymakers must make not to know about individual and group patterns of abuse and the egregious harm caused by (it); and

-- supports several theories of causation, including demonstrating that minimally effective practices would have identified and stopped (these things instead of) encourag(ing them through a culture of indifference, silence, and impunity)."

The report called the Chicago Police a "regime of not knowing," and accomplishing that requires considerable effort. "It (takes) a deep commitment to the machinery of denial, including denying incidents of brutality, turning a blind eye to patterns of abuse, refusing to look at data that is just a key stroke or two away, and passively encouraging a culture of silence in the face of abuse perpetrated by officers."

As expected, those most affected are blacks, Latinos, and the city's poor and disadvantaged. The report asks: "Does a different Constitution apply in inner city minority (and poor) communities?....How great is the loss of life, liberty, and property? The loss of hope and opportunity? The loss of family? Loss of justice? Loss of faith in our political institutions?" How important is it that Richard Daley is as silent as the police?

Why is he letting Chicago police equip 500 rank-and-file officers with military assault weapons, according to a March 25 Chicago Public Radio report? In question is the purchase of 500 M-4 semi-automatic rifles powerful enough to penetrate walls and cars, both sides of a military helmet at 600 meters, and travel up to two miles, meaning stray bullets may kill anyone and likely will, especially in poor neighborhoods where they'll be used.

Destroying Public Education in Chicago

Under Richard Daley, Chicago took the lead in destroying public education nationally through privatization schemes for profit. Two previous articles by this writer covered them. Below is material from them.

As Chicago Public Schools (CPS) "CEO" before becoming Obama's Education Secretary, Arne Duncan
led Chicago's Renaissance 2010 Turnaround strategy for 100 new "high-performing" elementary and high schools in the city by that date. Under five year contracts, they'll "be held accountable....to create innovative learning environments" under one of three "governance structures:"

-- charter schools under the 1996 Illinois Charter Schools Law; they're called "public schools of choice, selected by students and parents....to take responsible risks and create new, innovative and more flexible ways of educating children within the public school system;" in 1997, the Illinois General Assembly approved 60 state charter schools; Chicago was authorized 30, the suburbs 15 more, and 15 others downstate. The city bent the rules, initially operated about 53 charter "campuses," and now has nearly 100.

Charter schools aren't magnet ones that require students in some cases to have special skills or pass admissions tests. However, they have specific organizing themes and educational philosophies and may target certain learning problems, development needs, or educational possibilities. In all states, they're legislatively authorized; near-autonomous in their operations; free to choose their students and exclude unwanted ones; and up to now are quasi-public with no religious affiliation. Administration and corporate schemes assure they won't stay that way because that's the sinister plan. Duncan was a key part of it, and so is his successor.

George Bush praised these schools in April 2007 when he declared April 29 through May 5 National Charter Schools Week. He said they provide more "choice," are a "valuable educational alternative," and he thanked "educational entrepreneurs for supporting" these schools around the country.

Here's what the president praised. Lisa Delpit is executive director of the Center for Urban Education & Innovation. In her capacity, she studies charter school performance and cited evidence from a 2005 Department of Education report. Her conclusion: "charter schools....are less likely than public schools to meet state education goals." Case study examples in five states showed they underperform, and are "less likely than traditional public (ones) to employ teachers meeting state certification standards."

Other underperformance evidence came from an unexpected source - an October 1994 Money magazine report on 70 public and private schools. It concluded that "students who attend the best public schools outperform most private school students, that the best public schools offer a more challenging curriculum than most private schools, and that the private school advantage in test scores is due to their selective admission policies."

Clearly a failing grade on what's spreading nationally en route to total privatization and the triumph of the market over educating the nation's youths.

In 1991, Minnesota passed the first charter school law. California followed in 1992, and it's been off to the races since. By 1995, 19 states had them, and in 2007 there were over 4000 charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia with more than one million students in them and growing.

Chicago's two other "governance structures" are:

-- contract (privatized) schools run by "independent nonprofit organizations;" they operate under a Performance Agreement between the "organization" and Board of Education; and

-- performance schools under Chicago Public Schools (CPS) management "with freedom and flexibility on many district initiatives and policies;" unmentioned is Delay's close ties to the Bush and Obama administrations and their preference for marketplace education; the idea isn't new, but it accelerated rapidly in recent years.

Another part of the scheme is also in play, in Chicago and throughout the country. Inner city schools are being closed. Remaining ones are neglected and decrepit. Classroom sizes are increasing, and children and parents are being sacrificed on the alter of marketplace triumphalism.

Consider recent events under Daley. Last February 27, the city's Board of Education unanimously and without discussion voted to close, relocate or otherwise target 19 public schools, fire teachers, and leave students in the cold. Thousands of parents protested, were ignored and denied access to the Board of Ed meeting where the decision came down pro forma and quick. It wasn't the first time and won't be the last. For years under the current mayor, Chicago closed or privatized more schools than anywhere else in the country, and the trend is accelerating. Since July 2001, 59 elementary and secondary schools were closed or replaced with charter or contract ones.

The trend continues in Chicago and across the country to "reform" education nationally, hand it to business profiteers, destroy teacher unions, end public education, commodify it, educate the well-off, cheat underprivileged kids, consign them to low-wage, no benefit service jobs, and end the American dream for millions.

Arne Duncan is doing it as Obama's Education Secretary with schemes like the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) that became law on January 8, 2002. It succeeded the 1994 Goals 2000: Educate America Act that set eight outcomes-based goals for the year 2000 but failed on all counts to meet them. Goals 2000, in turn, goes back to the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and specifically its Title I provisions for funding schools and districts with a high percentage of low-income family students.

NCLB is outrageous, and Duncan administered the worst of it in Chicago. It's long on testing, school choice, and market-based "reforms" but short on real achievement. It's built around rote learning, standardized tests, requiring teachers to "teach to the test," assessing results by Average Yearly Progress (AYP) scores, and punishing failure harshly - firing teachers and principals, closing schools and transforming them from public to charter or for-profit ones.

Critics denounce NCLB as "an endless regimen of test-preparation drills" for poor children. Others call it underfunded and a thinly veiled scheme to privatize education and transfer its costs and responsibilities from Washington to individuals and impoverished school districts. Mostly, it reflects current era thinking that anything government does business does better, so let it. And Democrats (like Obama, Duncan and his successor) are as supportive as Republicans.

So far, NCLB renewal bills are stalled in both Houses, election year politics intervened, and final resolution will be for the new administration and 111th Congress to decide. For critics, that's positive because the law failed to deliver as promised. Its sponsors claimed it would close the achievement gap between inner city and rural schools and more affluent suburban ones. It's real aim, however, is to commodify education, end government responsibility for it, and make it another business profit center.

Obama promised to fix "the broken promises of" NCLB. Whatever's done will affect millions of students already harmed with little chance that the worst of this act will be changed. Nonetheless, National Education Association (NEA) president, Dennis Van Roekel, is hopeful that the new administration will be "the beginning of a promising new period for public education in this country."

Arne Duncan won't let it. He told Congress that NCLB funding "should be doubled within five years, and that the law must be amended to give schools the maximum amount of flexibility possible...." Repealing the law, ending the funding and privatization schemes, and fostering policies to educate all kids equally regardless of socioeconomic status is what's needed. Obama and Arne Duncan won't let it. They've consigned poor kids to the trash bin of no future.

Below are some Duncan policy initiatives, now run by new CPS "CEO," and former Chicago Transit Authority head Ron Huberman:

-- using the CPS's $5.5 billion budget for no-bid contracts to cronies for all sorts of goods and services; Huberman now recommends them to the seven-member board, and nearly always they're approved unanimously with no discussion or debate;

-- militarizing Chicago high schools (perhaps most in the country) on the pretext of offering students "choice;" JROTC programs were institutionalized, and high schools were established entirely for military studies; poor minorities comprise the overwhelming majority of affected students;

-- while still in Chicago, Duncan litigated to be freed from an early 1980s federal desegregation consent decree; he claimed he did everything possible to comply even though city students are predominantly black and over 90% black and Latino; Chicago has over 300 segregated black schools plus 40 or more all-Latino ones;

-- Duncan opposed and litigated against federal oversight of special education programs; he violated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), ignored parents' wishes, the needs of the children, and forced teachers to go along; and

-- Chicago has nearly 100 quasi-private charter schools, many of them run by for-profit companies; less than 10% of them are integrated; the city is notorious for violating the education needs of minority students; their schools are sub-standard and abysmal.

Under "Renaissance 2010," 59 public schools were closed, and 2009 plans call for shuttering at least another 22. In its February issue, Substance News headlined: "End Ren 2010! echoes across city....Chicago protests grow." Backing them against closure and privatization is an alliance of parents, teachers, students, grandparents, and community leaders. Even cold winter mornings and nights haven't kept them off the streets - downtown outside, and inside, the Board of Education headquarters. Their mission - save Chicago public education from a rapacious scheme to privatize it.

With no background or knowledge of education, it's Ron Huberman's job to do it. As new CPS CEO, he's in charge of:

-- gutting the city's public system in favor of privatization schemes for profit;

-- continuing the process of militarizing them;

-- neutralizing the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU);

-- educating the well-off, not minorities or the poor; and

-- wrecking the dream of disadvantaged kids who'll be sacrificed on the alter of marketplace education the way Richard Daley and Washington mandate.

"The President's Mayor," nationally known for his "innovative, community-based programs (on) education, public safety, neighborhood development and other challenges facing American cities." After 20 years in office, he's just months away from equaling his father's reign as Chicago's longest serving mayor.

"Hizzhonor," the most prominent of today's big city bosses with no sign of stepping down or changing decades of Chicago-style politics.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He's lived in Chicago for the past 40 years 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=13225

Media Coverage of Haiti's Sham Elections

Media Coverage of Haiti's Sham Elections - by Stephen Lendman

What if a national election was held and virtually no one showed up? That's precisely what happened in Haiti. On April 19, scheduled senatorial elections were to fill 12 open seats. However, after majority Fanmi Lavalas (FL) candidates were disqualified on a first time ever procedural technicality, party leaders called for a national boycott, and Haitians responded overwhelmingly with estimates of as few as 3% of eligible voters participating.

According to Rene Civil, one of the boycott's leaders:

"What we (saw was) the non-violent resistance of the Haitian people to undemocratic elections. There is no way they will be able to call Senators elected in this process legitimate. You cannot hold elections with the majority political party" excluded.

Ronald Fareau, another leader, added:

"We want to congratulate the international community for their hypocrisy in these elections. They spent over $17 million on another electoral fraud in Haiti while our people continue to suffer from malnutrition and illiteracy."

In 2005, coup-ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said:

"The people of Haiti want life and not death. They want peace and not violence. They want democracy and not repression."

Except briefly under his leadership, they've gotten none of the three, most recently on April 19 when again they lost out, including by distorted media coverage.

AP headlined: "Few Vote in Haiti After Clash in City." In fact, the election was virtually trouble-free, save for sporadic incidents between president Rene Preval's Lespwa party and its rival L'Union in Mirebalais in the Central Plateau region - away from Port-au-Prince and unrelated to FL. Overall, the day was remarkably calm, peaceful, and quiet as nearly everyone stayed home.

One Cite Soleil incident involved a L'Union party member accused of bribing voters with money and food, again unrelated to FL, with no effect on the outcome that's clearly discredited and illegitimate.

However, AP referred to elections "held under the threat of unrest....President Rene Preval's supporters clashed briefly in the capital (the Cite Soleil incident) with backers of a rival party....and hundreds of protesters raided polling places and dumped ballots in Mirebalais," grossly misreporting the Central Plateau incident.

With so few ballots cast, results should be easily tabulated. However, another AP report headlined: "Haiti will likely wait days for election results....an election official said Monday....It will take at least eight days to count ballots trucked in from the countryside," said Jean-Marc Baudot, a Canadian consultant serving as logistics coordinator for Haiti's Provisional Election Council (CEP). He added that officials hadn't been able to gauge turnout, but "it appeared" to be low.

Preval refused to comment until official results are known. US Ambassador Janet Sanderson downplayed the fiasco stating: "Historically, off-year elections in the United States as well as in other countries tend not be be as well-attended as presidential elections. We'll have to see" how this one turns out.

UN paramilitaries said it's hoped that Haitians will "await calmly the publication of results....and that any dispute will be pursued through legal channels." Of course, Haitians have none by Washington-imposed diktats and MINUSTAH blue helmets on the ground as enforcers.

The Voice of America (VOA) reports Washington propaganda to the world. On April 19, it headlined: "Violence Mars Haitian Elections (forcing) Election officials (to) shut down polling places in one of Haiti's 10 administrative regions after protesters....dumped ballots in the streets." It exaggerated the Mirebalais incident, unrelated to Lavalas, with no effect whatever on the results. It was isolated, minor, but unexplained in VOA's report along with other key electoral information - to portray it as ordinary, normal, legitimate, and, of course, "democratic."

The rest of its report said little more than turnout was light, FL candidates had been disqualified, and Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere - suppressing news about Washington's iron fist, its quashing real democracy ruthlessly, and repressing it under military occupation.

Meanwhile, five Lavalas hunger strikers occupied Haiti's parliament protesting their electoral exclusion. Preval ordered them arrested, but thousands of supporters held SWAT teams, Haitian National Police (PNH), and UN paramilitaries at bay. As a result, FL leaders fled to safety and had to hide out to avoid Washington diktats to apprehend them - for daring to support democracy, demand April elections be nullified, and re-held during scheduled national elections in November.

Courageous Haitians pay dearly in their struggle for freedom because America stands relentlessly in their way.

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=13225

Haitians Overwhelmingly Reject Electoral Sham - by Stephen Lendman

Haitians Overwhelmingly Reject Electoral Sham - by Stephen Lendman

On April 19, sham elections were held to fill 12 open seats in the 30-member Haitian Senate, but most Haitians refused to go along.

Earlier in February on procedural grounds, Haiti's Provisional Election Council (CEP) disqualified Fanmi Lavalas (FL) candidates from participating, the party most Haitians support.

Mass outrage and apprehension showed up in Priorities Project (HPP) pre-election polls with only 5% of eligible voters stating an intention to participate.

HPP's Jacob Francois told Inter Press Service (IPS):

"We organized our census primarily through town hall meetings, where organizers spoke to people in groups and individually. From this we tallied the opinions of what we estimated to be 65,000 from an eight million population." From this sampling, a 5% participation rate was calculated.

Francois added: "They just do not learn. They can't exclude a major party," and do it on a first time ever procedural technicality, "that's total exclusion. It will undermine the entire process. In addition, the CEP has no business (interfering with) the internal affairs of Lavalas," or taking orders from Washington to do it.

Secretary General of the Organisation of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, said in a press release:

"I cannot help but express my concern about the possibility that an important group of Haitian citizens might feel that they are not being represented in this process."

In a pre-election radio interview, one Haitian activist said:

"In the matter of elections, basically what you have is a decision to explode Fanmi Lavalas (FL)....with the complicity of President Rene Preval (and the international community)....because everyone knows FL is the majority party in the country."

Meanwhile, the Haiti Information Project (HIP) reported at 3:00PM on April 19 that "today's senatorial elections (are) a total failure." Port-au-Prince polling stations "had more election workers and police than actual voters." Normally busy city streets were "virtually deserted. A rough exit sampling from journalists (on the ground) shows that voter turnout may be as low as 3%."

Astonishing. Imagine holding a national election and virtually no one shows up. Because of clear electoral rigging, FL leaders urged Haitians to support a national boycott. In overwhelming numbers, they complied by staying home and not voting. Whoever wins, it will be impossible to call the results legitimate.

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=13225

Putting Finance Capitalism "Back in Its Box"

Putting Finance Capitalism "Back in Its Box" - by Stephen Lendman

So writes Philip Augar in an April 13 Financial Times (FT) op-ed. He's a former UK investment banker/broker and author of The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, The Greed Merchants, and most recently Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Growth and Unchecked Ambition Ruined the City's Golden Decade. More on his newest book below.

He quotes Nicolas Sarkozy, a questionable choice, at the G 20 summit saying "The all-powerful market that is always right is finished," then on departure adding "a page has been turned." For Augar, that depends on whether a "free-market" successor is constructed, something "entrenched interests in America and Britain would be well-advised to encourage if they wish to remain centre stage."

Things unraveled after Bretton Woods collapsed - the post-war monetary system of convertible currencies, fixed exchange rates, free trade, the dollar as the world's reserve currency linked to gold, and those of other nations fixed to the dollar. Absent that, Chicago School economists "persuade(d) the Reagan and Thatcher administrations to adopt laissez faire policies and deregulation." We then printed money freely, spent and lived beyond our means, and created an illusion of prosperity and wealth that led to the current crisis.

Earlier, academics and consultants embraced "free markets" and built a "coherent" business strategy on them. Regulation-freed investment bankers sold "the whole package" to CEOs. Once "derivatives theory (and securitization took hold, they) opened the door to share options and performance-based compensation (followed by) three decades in which tooth-and-claw capitalism ruled supreme." In other words, anything goes, checks and balances are out the window, let buyers beware, but look what it brought us.

"Conditions are now right for another radical rethink. The old model is busted. The big beasts of free-market economics, Britain and America, are more wounded" than most - among developed nations, that is.

So far, "governments, central banks and regulators (the few of the latter still around) are groping unconvincingly for solutions." It's high time for new ideas. Clearly the current ones don't work and must be replaced by something else. But to happen, Washington must take the lead followed by "a more effective and creative" academic response than we've seen up to now.

It "requires finance to be put back in its box." Knock it off its "commanding heights" under (Goldman Sachs) bankers like Robert Rubin, Jon Corzine and Hank Paulson, who "upheld the American tradition of Wall Street titans taking public office" and engineering disaster while there. The same thing happened in Britain with former investment bankers in high Treasury posts giving advice beneficial to themselves and companies.

In both countries, money bought influence, the way it always works. The more spent, the more other voices got crowded out, again the usual result.

Former government and Wall Street insider turned activist, Catherine Austin Fitts, recalls an Indonesian cab driver asking her: "Why do you let Goldman Sachs run your government?" Until recently, it's hard imagining that comment in America.

Surely not from mainstream academia. Instead of stimulating debate, the majority go along and are well paid for it. The few dissenters are "dismissed by economic liberals as living in the past or told that the new financial system had 'transformed risk' and raised global living standards" - despite clear proof otherwise. Markets were having a party, and nothing would was allowed to interrupt.

Finance capitalism took over at most business schools, training a young cadre of adherents. Wall Street, High Street, and hedge funds recruited academics with quantitative skills with offers of "life-changing sums in consultancy (and compensation) fees." Little wonder then that finance capitalism drew such interest and that "so much academic output" supported it.

Change is now vital lest other nations displace America and Britain with alternative models. In addition, "academics need to recapture their heritage," their integrity, their "independent thinking, and throw off the (pernicious) influence of finance." Short of that, today's financial titans may discover soon enough that "the page has indeed been turned and they are no longer on it."

Augar's new book, Chasing Alpha, attracted considerable UK attention but not in America. A financial definition calls alpha a "coefficient which measures risk-adjusted performance (of a) specific (investment to) the overall market." The higher it is, the lower the risk, the idea being to find the holy grail of high, sustained returns.

London did it for 10 years, but it's now chastened by a dark era replacing its "golden" one. How spectacular it was while it lasted, and the same is true for America and elsewhere.

The Sunday Times' David Smith expects many books on the global crisis, but Augar's "distinguishes itself by tracking the rise of the City's various components," including its prestigious High Street addresses favored by the financial community.

When Labour took office in 1997, London was booming, and it looked like the good times would last forever - buoyed by a strong pound, a supportive media, and the City's new hero class, its bankers. Real estate took off. Asset prices rose, and deregulation was the order of the day. Forgotten was the early 1990s "trials" when the insurance market was in trouble. So was Barings from the Nick Leeson scandal, and "Morgan Grenfell, one of the City's oldest and proudest names, (was) mired in a messy legal dispute."

New Labour at first was feared, yet inaugurated what Augar called "the most prosperous period in (London's) history....The (City's) hedge fund business came out of nowhere; between 2003 and 2006, more than 200 new firms and more than 600 new funds were established." Finance capitalism was on a roll with domestic and foreign-owned banks enjoying unprecedented prosperity until mid-2007 when it hit a wall. The scheme for sustainable growth couldn't last. Some officials noticed but not all.

In June 2007, new prime minister Gordon Brown congratulated London on its "global preeminence and saw it continuing thanks to 'light-touch regulation, a competitive tax environment, and flexibility." As finance minister in 2004, he told an audience of bankers: "What you have achieved for the financial services sector, we as a country now aspire to achieve for the whole of the British economy." He'll be living down that comment forever.

In contrast, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King was circumspect. He cautioned about risky financial instruments and the rise of leveraged debt. "Excessive leverage is the common theme of many (past) financial crises," he said. Are we so much cleverer than the financiers of the past?" Indeed not, and perhaps King knew something ordinary investors didn't, but wasn't letting on at the time.

Soon enough he had to as the global crisis emerged. Northern Rock was early victim enough for Britain to have its first bank run in 150 years. Others followed, big names, forcing Labour to take controlling stakes in much of Britain's banking sector. "The game was up, certainly for investment banks and many hedge funds (and unknown then) for most banks" needing government prop them up - in Britain, America, across Europe, and elsewhere.

It was big enough for Augar to produce "a useful contribution....about the biggest financial crisis for decades," a story of greed, excess, and fraud by an insider willing to take the gloss off a "busted model" and suggest something more workable in its place.

Given today's crisis, The UK Guardian's Larry Elliot headlined his April 4 commentary "We're doomed: he told us so," referring to Vince Cable's new book, The Storm: The World Crisis & What It Means. He cites finance minister Gordon Brown (in November 2003) praising Britain for avoiding the worst of the dot.com debacle, claiming finance capitalism "abolished boom and bust," and took aim at nay-sayers for their skepticism.

Cable is a British MP, the former Liberal Democrats leader, and, as a former Shell Oil Company chief economist, its main financial spokesman since 2003. In Parliament, he suggested that Britain's prosperity was illusory based on consumer borrow and spend binging, like in America. He spotted trouble early on and used his public stage to expose it.

His book isn't an "I told you so" exercise, but is full of scathing comments like:

"Without diminishing in any way the global origins and nature of the crisis, it is also necessary to debunk the self-serving myth that Britain has, in Gordon Brown's words, created an economic environment of 'no more boom and bust,' and that the country is uniquely well placed to ride out the global storm."

On the contrary, it's reeling under it and in grave trouble, the result of the same excesses as America's and larger-scale than for other developed countries. Being over-dependent on banking and financial services exposed Britain to the "full force of the gale that is blowing through international finance markets."

Both Conservatives and Labour embraced the notion that High Street was the future and manufacturing the past, the same sin America committed, and both are paying the price. According to Cable, a "brutal reappraisal" is now underway.

High Street wizards have been defrocked. These "brilliant financial innovators have been recognised as greedy or reckless or incompetent, or all three. Self-proclained, buccaneering entrepreneurs in the banking industry have been reduced to rattling a begging bowl and (now depend on) government (to bail) them out."

Looking ahead, Cable says reformists are in three camps:

-- "New Interventionists" citing Washington Consensus neoliberalism, deregulation, and privatization as the villain and wanting to replace it with a 1950s - 1960s mixed economy;

-- "Old Liberals" who want regulatory reform, but, on balance, "good markets" outweigh "bad" ones; and

-- Cable's view that markets repeatedly produce bubbles, panics, and crashes, but produce benefits as well; in other words, "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater," but what else would a former corporate official and politician say.

Nonetheless, Cable wants real reform, such as:

-- banks required to hold more reserves in good times to limit excess and reckless lending;

-- the Bank of England "leaning against the wind" on interest rates; former Fed chairman William McChesney Martin's notion of "taking away the punch bowl" when the party got going; in other words, raise interest rates when it's unpopular but prudent; and

-- splitting Britain's banking sector into highly regulated High Street banks on the one hand and riskier investment ones, hedge funds, and shadow banks on the other with no state guarantees as backup; in other words, no bailouts if they get in trouble, a very sensible idea indeed.

Cable is unforgiving of "wheelerdealers" like Northern Rock's Adam Applegarth and Royal Bank of Scotland's Fred Goodwin and asks why were "these pillars of respectability" allowed to let their banks become "debt factories" placing their shareholders and the nation at risk. As a result, he wants banks to become "safe but boring," the equivalent of highly regulated utilities, their traditional role in the first place and not the casinos they've become.

On one other point he's hard line. After 16 years of prosperity, Britain is now in decline. "We placed out trust in housing equity (now evaporating), lavish public services (now unaffordable), an independent central bank (now discredited), a debt economy (now demanding repayment), and financial services (now bust)."

The good years were for naught. We're back to square one, says Cable, and have to rebuild from the wreckage. Income redistribution should be a component to help the needy and reduce wealth extremes. He also finds it ironic that New Labour ministers "who once read Trotsky" let finance capitalism run wild. All of Britain is now paying the price.

In his April 14 Financial Times column, Martin Wolf asked if America is the new Russia given the strength of its "financial oligarchy." He cites the sector's "massive rise," as reflected by its percent of US corporate profits in a deregulatory environment that sustained it while it lasted. Decisive "restructuring is (now) necessary" for two purposes:

-- to make financial institutions "credibly solvent;" and

-- assure that "no profit-making private institution (is) too big to fail....bankruptcy must be a part of any durable solution;" short of that, "the resolution of this crisis can only be the harbinger of the next."

On April 16, even the Wall Street Journal stepped out of character in publishing "Reverend Billy's Bailout - One Street Preacher Makes the Case for Propping Up Community Banks."

"Would Jesus take a bailout," asked Billy? Reformers have a "once-in-a-century choice," to either prop up financial supermarkets or "lift up community banks and street-level economies."

Reverend Billy Talen leads the Church of Stop Shopping and says "government has a moral obligation to support communities (over) big banks." They're so broken that even Journal writer David Weidner says "Billy may be on to something....It's hard to argue against the system he envisions....neighborhood banks (lending) to local businesses (so) profits could stay in the community..The most basic and sound form of risk management" is knowing your customers and living near them.

Billy is no longer a fringe figure. A Wall Street feature story shows he's mainstream enough to run for New York City mayor on the Green Party ticket, campaigning on a community-first platform - support them over a bubble and bust economy. It's gaining resonance but way short of enough to depose Wall Street dominance.

That and a lot more is needed, including exposing financial fraud, huge cash rewards in spite of it, and deceptive quarterly sales and profits reports to present an illusion they're working.

Case in point is Goldman Sach's April 13 Q 1 profits - according to Bloomberg $1.81 billion "as a surge in trading revenue outweighed asset write-downs, beating" consensus forecasts by a wide margin. Unreported was how they did it - by changing their reporting periods to a calendar year beginning in the current period.

FY 2008 ended in November making December an "orphan month" so results reflected a January - March quarter. At the same time, Goldman took a large year end $1.3 billion write-off handled legally in a separate filing, but the business media headlined the good news, not the bad - conveniently at the same time a new stock offering was announced to enhance its attractiveness to the public.

The New York Times Floyd Norris cited Goldman's report in his April 14 blog. Titled "Case of the Missing Month," he asked: "Would the firm have had a profit if it had stuck to its old calendar, and had to include December and exclude March?" Clearly Goldman acted in its own self-interest and presented a deceptive picture of its health.

So did Wells Fargo (WFC) in its latest announcement - that it expects to earn a record $3 billion in Q 1 2009, putting a brave face on a troubled bank according to analyst Dave Krantzler in an article headlined: "Wells Fargo revisited - A Case of Unmistaken Fraud." He cites deteriorating assets and states:

-- "WFC will be forced to incur at least $283 billion in future asset write-downs and will thus require at least that much in capital to service the corresponding liabilities....(its) CEO fraudulently conveyed the financial position of the bank he runs," and Street analysts let him get away with it.

It's these type shenanigans that get Augar and others to call "the old model busted" and needing reform. Better yet, scrap it for a radical new one. Make no mistake. "Tooth-and-claw" capitalism is pernicious and toxic. End it or it'll destroy us. What better proof than the current crisis heading America for neo-feudal bondage unless a mass-awakening comes soon enough to stop it.

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=13225

Barack Obama: Crime Boss

Barack Obama: Crime Boss - by Stephen Lendman

Since taking office, Obama, wittingly or otherwise, has headed the largest criminal enterprise in history - the mass looting of national wealth to enrich his Wall Street benefactors. He assembled a rogue economic team of Clinton/Robert Rubin retreads - to fix the current crisis they engineered.

In a March 13 article, (author and former Republican strategist) Kevin Phillips called them "recycled senior (Clinton administration) Democrats (responsible for the) tech mania, deregulation binge and (1997 - 2000) stock market bubble and crash. (Obama) extend(ed) the (disastrous) mismanagement and pro-Wall Street bias of the 2008 Bush regime bailout."

He called Geithner and Bernanke "hapless," the result of their ruinous misjudgments (and, along with Alan Greenspan, complicit) with finance-sector malfeasance."

He said Summers will be "remembered for helping to block federal regulation of financial derivatives and orchestrat(ing) the 1999" Glass-Steagall repeal, among his other "achievements." He went down the list of key economic officials and trashed them all as the very types to be avoided, not appointed.

He noted that Bernanke was chairman of George Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and added: "Imagine if FDR had retained Herbert Hoover's chief economic advisor and loyal Republican Fed Chairman in 1933....To think that the pussycat Fed (would become) a saber-toothed tiger is a deception." Worse still, ruinous economic policies "could prove fatal" if White House policies favor "Wall Street but not the national economy or American people" - the very direction they've now taken.

In a follow-up April 7 article, Phillips highlighted "The Disaster Stage of US Financialization....a much grander-scale disaster than anything that happened in 1929 - 1933. Worse, it dwarfs the abuses of debt, finance and financialization that brought down previous leading world economic powers like Britain and Holland."

Today's crisis represents "the bursting of the huge 25-year, almost $50 trillion debt bubble that helped underwrite the hijacking of the US economy by a rabid financial sector...." It's realigning global power with America losing its economic leadership won in WW II.

"The ignominy deserved by Wall Street after 1929-1933 is peanuts compared with the opprobrium the US financial sector and its political and regulatory allies deserve this time." Financialized America radically transformed the country, now "doubly staggering because of the crushing burden of its collapse."

Yet major media pundits and reporters barely noticed and now claim relief is just a few quarters away - ignoring a metastasizing cancer, a national disaster, while policy makers heap fuel on a raging blaze now consuming us, yet too little public rage confronts them.

A Former Insider Speaks Out

Economics Professor William Black is a former senior bank regulator and Savings and Loan prosecutor, currently teaching economics and law at the University of Missouri. In an April 13 Barrons interview, he referred to "failed bankers (advising) failed regulators on how to deal with failed assets" they all had a hand in creating and proliferating.

His conclusion: "How can it result in anything but failure." He called the scale of financial fraud "immense," and said "Unless the current administration changes course pretty drastically, the scandal will destroy Barack Obama's presidency," besides what it's doing to the country, global economies, and many millions of people here and abroad.

He scathed Summers and Geithner, both "important architects of (today's) problems," and the latter as a failed and dishonest regulator, yet "numbering himself among those who convey tough medicine when he's really pandering to the interests of a select group of banks." No need to mention which ones.

The law mandates corrective action, the kind FDR took in the 1930s. He, Bernanke and Summers flout the law, "in naked violation, in order to pursue the kind of favoritism that the law was designed to prevent." They've turned taxpayers into "suckers" who'll pay dearly for decades, maybe generations.

His refusal to put insolvent banks into receivership, resorting to deceptive language like "legacy assets," and pursuing the worst of Chicago School economics "is positively Orwellian....If cheaters prosper, (they'll) dominate. It's like Gresham's law: Bad money drives out the good. Well, bad behavior" does the same thing "without good enforcement."

His bailout plans are disastrous. They prop up zombie banks by "mispricing toxic assets....The last thing we need is a further drain on our resources....by promoting this toxic asset market (and notions of) too-big-to-fail."

With most, perhaps all, the big banks insolvent (a polite term for bankrupt), what's going on is "a multi-trillion dollar cover-up by publicly traded (enterprises), which amounts to felony securities fraud on a massive scale."

Ultimately, these firms will be forced into receivership, their "managements and boards stripped of office, title, and compensation." What's needed is a 1930s-style Pecora investigation to get to the bottom of their fraud, deceit, and cover-up, along with government complicity to hide it. More on that below.

Black cited billions to AIG as the single worst abuse so far - to bail out their counterparties like Switzerland's UBS at the same time we were prosecuting it for tax fraud. As bad was following Goldman Sachs' advice to direct a $13 billion counterparty windfall to itself.

The whole process reeks of corruption. It must be stopped, and a new direction instituted under a reformist economic team - one that will admit the nature and depth of the problem, cut the tie to Wall Street, and take corrective action the law mandates. That's "precisely what isn't happening."

Washington is "wedded to the bad idea of bigness" and power of Wall Street. In today's America, financialization is predominant. It's a cancer eating away at the fabric of the nation and many millions affected, the result of the grandest of grand thefts.

A good start would be to break up the financial giants into more effectively managed and less powerful units - maybe the way Standard Oil was dismantled through a simple share spinoff. In addition, "a new seriousness must be put into regulation," and a new resolve to enforce it.

Today, the whole system encourages fraud, one based on results at any cost, so "fudging the numbers" becomes de rigueur and global bigness the holy grail. It sends the wrong message - play or pay with your job and future on Wall Street. "The basis for all regulation and white-collar crime is to take the competitive advantage away from the cheats, so the good guys can prevail. We need to get back to that." It's been decades since we've been there and high time we took it seriously. Job one is a thorough housecleaning and new direction, much like what's described below.

On April 3, Black appeared on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS and explained what's briefly enumerated below. From his experience as a regulator and prosecutor, he said:

-- fraud is initiated in boardrooms and CEO offices by making "really bad loans, because they pay better;"

-- then grow them like a Ponzi scheme multiplied through leverage; it's hugely profitable early on, then inevitably creates "disaster down the road;"

-- dismantling regulation makes it possible;

-- one scheme was subprime, Alt-A , and even prime "liars' loans" - meaning no checks are made on income, jobs, ability to repay, and the more they're inflated the more profitable they are; the amount of them was enormous - for one company alone, they generated as many losses as the entire S & L scandal;

-- toxic products were willfully created to scam borrowers for big profits;

-- rating agencies went along by appraising junk as AAA instead of doing it honestly;

-- in September 2004, the FBI warned about a mortgage fraud epidemic, but nothing was done to stop it; so now we have a crisis hundreds of times greater than the S & L one and bad policy in play to address it;

-- as in Barrons, he accused top Bush and Obama officials of a cover-up - to conceal the insolvency of all major banks and by so doing broke the law established after the S & L crisis, the Prompt Corrective Action Law that mandates insolvent banks be shut down and/or placed in receivership; and

-- this is the greatest financial scandal in history - swept under the rug by top government officials of both parties; it's legally and morally indefensible, and it's wrecking the country.

In an April 6 article, Black calls ongoing "stress tests a complete sham....to fool people....make us chumps" and essentially say 'If we lie and they believe us, all will be well" when, in fact, it's not. It's part of the giant cover-up and greatest ever criminal fraud - by bankers and complicit government officials.

On April 13, Nouriel Roubini shared Black's view. He cited the stress test "spin machine" leaking stories to the press that all 19 banks in question will pass. None will fail. If more "exceptional assistance" is needed, Washington will provide it.

However, Q 1 macro data tells another story as growth, unemployment, and falling home prices alone "are worse than those in FDIC's baseline scenario for 2009 AND even worse than those for the more adverse stressed scenario for 2009. Thus, the stress test results are meaningless" as worsening data are outdistancing "the worst case scenario."

In other words, test results "are not worth the paper (they'll be) written on" as their assumptions are fraudulently based. They're "fudge tests....blatantly rigged" to put a brave face on a very bleak economic picture.

They're in addition to other changes, including the recent Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) ruling. It's responsible for developing "generally accepted accounting principles" known as GAAP. On April 3, it changed so-called "mark-to-market" standards to "mark-to-make believe" ones. It also voted to allow banks to book smaller impaired asset losses to paint a brighter profits picture. It let Wells Fargo, for example, claim a Q 1 profit when it's drowning in losses, ones it can hide and not take.

Also likely coming is restoration of the "uptick rule" that prohibited short-selling in a down market. Established in 1938 to prevent disorderly selling, it allows shorts only when shares trade up. In June 2007, it was removed. Re-introductory proposals are now being considered to artificially boost prices.

Roubini calls it "a form of legalized manipulation of the stock market by regulators....to prevent short-sellers (from doing) their job, i.e. make stock prices reflect fundamentals and prevent bubbles."

Overall, alarm bells should be warning about reckless monetary and fiscal policies, but perverse market reaction was relief that's wildly premature according to some like Roubini. Others see a protracted downturn, a prolonged winter, and if conditions deteriorate enough perhaps a nuclear one, unlike anything before seen, and why not:

-- world economies are plummeting at depression-level speed by all key measures - production, consumption, trade, profits, asset values, capital flows, and more;

-- unemployment is soaring; in America close to 20% with all excluded and understated categories included;

-- pensions have been lost along with benefits;

-- homelessness is rising sharply, the result of over six million foreclosures; tent cities are appearing across the country;

-- recent data shows soaring foreclosures up 24% in Q 1 2009; in March alone, 46% higher than a year earlier - alone providing clear evidence of serious trouble; and

-- desperation is fueling anger and despair as conditions keep deteriorating absent sound policies to address them.

On April 6, Professor Vernon Smith (a 2002 economics Nobel laureate) and research associate Steven Gjerstad headlined a Wall Street Journal op-ed: "From Bubble to Depression?" They asked:

-- what creates bubbles?

-- why does a large one, like the dot.com bubble, do no damage to the financial system while another (housing) caused collapse?

They believe "events of the past 10 years have an eerie similarity to the period leading up to the Great Depression," including rising mortgage debt and speculation, then asked:

Had banking system difficulties "been caused by losses on brokers loans for margin purchases in 1929, the results should have been felt in the banks immediately after the stock market crash." But they weren't apparent until fall 1930, a year later.

Further, if money supply contraction caused bank failures, why haven't massive infusions today prevented the crisis? They conclude that conventional wisdom needs reassessing and believe "excessive consumer debt - especially mortgage debt - was transmitted into the financial sector" causing the Great Depression.

Their hypothesis "is that a financial crisis (originating) in consumer debt, concentrated at the low end of the wealth and income distribution (affecting so many households), can be transmitted quickly and forcefully into the financial system....we're witnessing the second great consumer debt crash, the end of a massive consumption binge," but want more study to prove it.

However, much more than that is needed - real reform, a complete reversal from current policy of the kind addressed below. Also, Smith and Gjerstad omitted a crucial fact - how misdirected today's massive infusions have been. Instead of helping beleaguered households, they've gone mostly to bankers for purposes other than economic recovery; namely, recapitalizations, for acquisitions, and big bonuses at the same time they fire thousands of lower level staff.

The 1930s Pecora Commission

On March 4, 1932 (one year to the day before FDR took office), a majority-Republican Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee established it to investigate the causes of the 1929 crash. It was little more than a fig leaf until Democrats took over, appointed Ferdinand Pecora as special counsel, and made a real effort for banking and regulatory reform.

Straightaway, Pecora looked into Wall Street's seamy underside by placing powerful bankers in the dock, holding them accountable for their actions, and doing through hearings what would have been impossible in open court given their ability to "buy" justice.

He confronted Wall Street's biggest names:

-- Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange;

-- noted investment bankers, including Thomas Lamont, Otto Kahn, Charles E. Mitchell, Albert Wiggin, and JP Morgan, Jr., scion of the man who dominated the Street for decades as its boss and de facto Fed chairman before the central bank was established; and

-- market speculators like Arthur Cutten.

He got Morgan to admit that he and his 20 partners paid no income taxes in 1931 and 1932. Neither did its Philadelphia operation, Drexel and Co., in the same years and way underpaid them in previous ones. It made headlines, was stunning, and galvanized critics to demand reform.

Pecora went further. He questioned Morgan and others on various matters, including sweetheart deals for political figures and insider ones for Wall Street cronies, similar shenanigans to today but not on the same scale, and under a president then who cared once Roosevelt took office. He directed "pitiless publicity" on Street corruption, what they easily got away with under Republicans.

Pecora was a former New York district attorney, an Eliot Spitzer-type with a reputation for toughness and fearlessness, but one serving at the behest of the President. He established straightaway that some of Wall Street's most powerful lied to their shareholders, manipulated stocks to their advantage, and profited hugely through malfeasance.

Roosevelt encouraged him in his March 4, 1933 inaugural address saying:

"there must be a 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....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 stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men...."

"They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We must now restore that temple to the ancient truths. (Doing it requires) apply(ing) social values more noble than mere monetary profit."

Imagine Obama saying this, followed by strong policies for enforcement under Roosevelt-style officials. Men like Pecora who asked tough questions and demanded answers, including on the House of Morgan's operations, something unimaginable today under any leadership. Morgan's counsel, John W. Davis, called Pecora's questions outrageous, but Morgan had to answer in detail enough to shake the "secret government's" foundations.

Pecora's staff examined company records that revealed financial manipulations among the Street's powerful to reap enormous profits - enough for Morgan to gain control of most US industry, buy politicians and diplomats, and effectively control the most powerful banks in the country.

Years later in his book, Wall Street Under Fire, Pecora wrote:

"Undoubtedly, this small group of highly placed financiers, controlling the very springs of economic activity, holds more real power than any similar group in the United States." Morgan called it performing a "service" and exercising no more control than through "argument and persuasion."

His managing partner, Thomas Lamont, told the committee that the firm only offered advice that clients could accept or reject. Pecora learned otherwise as he peeled away the layers of company power and influence. He discovered "preferred clients" and friends of the bank lists in two tiers - special allies, operatives, and cronies and a "fishing list" from which new ones were recruited. In total, it showed Morgan was more powerful than Washington - that the firm effectively controlled a network of companies that made US financial policy for over three decades plus leading politicians and much of the federal bench.

Pecora discovered what's as true today - that a select group of giant banks run things. They set policy, rig the game to their advantage, buy politicians the way Morgan did, and pretty much run the country and the world.

Again Pecora from his book:

Morgan's power was "a stark fact. It was a great stream that was fed by many sources; by its deposits, by its loans, by its promotions, by its directorships, by its pre-eminent position as investment bankers, by its control of holding companies which, in turn, controlled scores of subsidiaries, and by its silken bonds of gratitude in which it skillfully enmeshed the chosen ranks of the 'preferred lists.' It reached into every corner of the nation and penetrated in public, as well as business affairs. The problems raised by such an institution go far beyond banking regulation in the narrow sense. It might be a formidable rival to the government itself."

Pecora proceeded from Morgan to others, powerful bankers in their own right like Kuhn, Loeb's Otto Kahn. Roosevelt championed the hearings and from them came legislative reforms, the kinds so desperately needed now but nowhere in sight by an administration totally subservient to money and power and thoroughly corrupted by them - after a scant three months in office.

Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) Calls for Sweeping Changes

Its head, Elizabeth Warren, called on the Treasury to get tough on TARP recipients, including:

-- questioning the "dangers inherent" in its strategy; the idea of "open-ended subsidies (to giant institutions) without adequately weighing potential pitfalls;"

-- acknowledging that it has no historical precedent and faint hope of succeeding;

-- leveraging the $700 billion in TARP funds well beyond what Congress appropriated - to an amount exceeding $4 trillion and smacking of high-level corruption;

-- firing top executives of failed institutions like Citigroup, Bank of America and AIG; "the very notion that anyone would infuse money into a financially troubled entity without demanding (management) changes is preposterous;"

-- shareholders to be wiped out; "it is crucial (for this) to happen;"

-- choosing among three alternatives for insolvent banks: "liquidation, receivership, or subsidization;" Geithner's plan is none of the above and essentially unworkable; it fails to acknowledge the decline's depth and degree to which troubled assets low valuations accurately reflect their worth;

-- if the downturn gets greater than forecast, "very different actions" will be needed "to restore financial stability."

Given the extent and long-term nature of today's crisis, it's shocking that bad policy practically assures the worst outcome. Maybe a government/Wall Street cabal prefers it to capitalize on the wreckage at fire sale prices, at home and globally, as part of a long-term process of sucking wealth to the top while ignoring its fallout, both human and economic. Those calculations don't enter their sophisticated models, only bottom line ones they can bank on.

Other Bank Bailout Critics

Willem Buiter was a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (1997 - 2000). He's now has a Maverecon blog and is a Financial Times (FT) regular. He's also a fierce critic of bank bailouts, a policy he says wastes good time and money and is destined to fail.

"The good bank solution and slaughter of the unsecured creditors should have been pursued actively as soon as it became clear that most (US international banks were) insolvent." Soon enough it will be apparent anyway, before year end. "At that point, (their) de facto insolvency will be so self-evident that even the joint and several obfuscation of banks and Treasury will be unable to deny the obvious." And they'll be no fiscal resources to the rescue. "The likelihood of Congress voting even a nickel in additional financial support for the banks is zero."

Joseph Stiglitz was even blunter in an April 17 Bloomberg interview headlined: "Stiglitz Says White House Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue." He accused the administration of bailing out bankers at the expense of the economy. "All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing" ones. The people who created this monster are "either in the pocket of the banks or they're incompetent."

"We don't have enough money, they don't want to go back to Congress, they don't want to do it in an open way, and they" won't act responsibly and place the banks in receivership where they belong and let shareholders, not taxpayers take the pain. This policy guarantees failure. It's "an absolute mess." It's a strategy to re-inflate a bubble that will do nothing to speed recovery. "It's a recipe for Japanese-style malaise."

Financial expert and investor safety advocate Martin Weiss is most critical of all. He calls bank stress tests "FLIM-FLAM" in accusing Washington of hiding the true condition of the nation's 19 largest banks.

Key economic indicators like GDP contraction and unemployment are far worse than stress test parameters. "Our own government is clearly cooking the books - using (false) criteria to deceive you; hoping you'll trust banks that are clearly hanging by a thread."

On May 4, they'll announce the results - jerry-rigged to present an illusion of solvency, but clearly a deceptive lie. The economy is sinking, not stabilizing, let alone recovering. The administration is bailing out bankers while wrecking the economy and millions of households. Why isn't Washington addressing the tough questions, he asks. Because the answers have them "terrified," so they play for time while home foreclosures are exploding, factories are sitting idle, consumption keeps falling, yet they hope conditions will improve.

No one asks:

-- what if states and cities can't provide vital services;

-- hospitals have to close down "due to disruptions in insurance payments;"

-- "supermarket shelves are emptied because trucking companies can't get short-term loans to stay in business;"

-- utilities "are crippled as the crisis kills the revenues they count on from corporations;" and

-- "soaring deficits drive interest rates sky-high and gut the dollar, driving the cost of living through the roof."

What if one day we discover America is no longer America. What if we realize that day is today.

Another Day, Another Scheme

The latest one lets ordinary people participate in Geithner's Public-Private Partnership Program (PPIP) that sounds suspiciously like "liars' loan" fraud, except this time "investments" in worthless junk are involved that will separate fools from their money.

The New York Times headlined the plan by comparing it to WW I Liberty Bonds that helped the country win the war. Now it's "to come to the aid of their banks - with the added inducement of possibly making some money...." The idea is for "large investment companies to create the financial-crisis equivalent of war bonds: bailout funds" to sucker the unwary to "invest" and, simultaneously, quiet opposition to the handouts.

According to money management firm BlackRock director Steven Baffico: "It's giving the guy on Main Street an equal seat at the table next to the big guys." Pimco's Bill Gross called it a "win-win-win policy." Absolutely for him so he loves it.

Plans are still being discussed. They won't likely be announced for several months, but already the scheme is apparent. It's to offload toxic junk on the public, let unwary investors take losses, relieve troubled banks of more of them, and arrange for investment fund issuers (like Pimco and BlackRock) to reap healthy fees if enough suckers can be enlisted to go along.

As troublesome is FDIC's role in the scam - through its transformation from insuring depositors to a much greater one guaranteeing over $1 trillion in junk assets, way over its charter $30 billion limit by twisting the rules to arrange it.

Its charter allows extraordinary steps to be taken when an "emergency determination by secretary of the Treasury" is made to mitigate "systemic risk." However, its Section 14 Borrowing Authority states:

"The Corporation is authorized to borrow from the Treasury....for insurance purposes (not speculation, bailouts, or other schemes, an amount) not exceeding in the aggregate $30,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time....Any such loan shall be used by the Corporation solely in carrying out its functions with respect to such insurance (of bank deposits, then up to $5000, now temporarily at $250,000)...."

"Before issuing an obligation or making a guarantee, the Corporation shall estimate the cost of such obligations (as well as market value)....the Corporation may not issue or incur any obligation, if, after (so doing) the aggregate amount of obligations of the Deposit Insurance Fund (exceeds) the total of the amounts authorized ($30 billion under) section 14(a)."

PPIP violates FDIC rules. If it's opened to the public, greater fraud will result with ordinary people hit hardest as usual, the best reason to avoid this and alert others to be as prudent. It's another dubious scheme to separate the unwary from their money and redirect it to the top - to the same fraudsters responsible for the crisis and their investment company partners going along with the scam.

The Treasury extended the deadline for PPIP participants (to April 24) and loosened some of its guidelines - suggesting that investor support has been less than expected.

However, on April 2, the Financial Times (FT) headlined: "Bailed-out banks eye toxic asset buys." Giants like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs "are considering buying (each other's) toxic assets," and why not when it's a win-win way to offload each other's junk, do it at inflated prices, and stick taxpayers with the risk. New York University's Stern School of Business Professor Lawrence White put it this way:

"I'm worried about the following scenario: You and I have troubled assets, I buy assets from you, you buy them them from me, and at the end of the day it (looks) suspiciously like you bought assets from yourself" with Treasury funds.

PPIP prohibits banks from buying their own assets but lets them do it from other firms, either directly or through investment funds set up for that purpose, and according to Treasury: "It's an open program designed to get markets going."

On April 3, Reuters reported that "US regulators may be open to letting TARP recipients participate in the new program," and already Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley suggested they'll do it. Others expressed interest in what some observers call a giant money laundering scheme compounding the colossal flimflam that in the end most likely won't work - except to extract multi-trillions from the public to banksters with Washington acting complicitly as transfer agent.

Meanwhile economic fundamentals are deteriorating at depression-level speed and depth while Obama remains in denial. On April 2 at the G 20, he cited "a very productive summit that will be, I believe, a turning point in our pursuit of global economic recovery" when, in fact, it produced nothing beyond the usual hype - plus this time the quadrupling of the IMF's budget to inflict debt bondage on its willing partakers.

We're clearly in early stage unchartered waters of what Michel Chossudovsky calls "The Great Depression of the 21st Century" heading America for "fiscal collapse" because of policies amounting to "the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history" - directing most of it for militarism and foreign wars, Wall Street bailouts, and half a trillion for public debt service.

In an April 12 commentary, longtime, well-respected Chicago financial journalist Terry Savage headlined "Social Security Myth" in reporting on some of the fallout. Someone has to pay for "fixes" and militarism, that someone is us, and target one is Social Security. According to Savage:

"Most likely, Social Security will become a "needs-based" payout to low income, elderly recipients - not a return of the 'investments' you made with all those FICA deductions from your pay check every month over your working career." In other words, Washington intends to renege on the 74-year old promise FDR announced to the nation on August 14, 1935:

"Today a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled....This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens (now over 56 million, including Supplement Security Income recipients) who will reap direct benefits....This law represents a cornerstone in a structure....by no means complete. (It) will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness. (The passage of this bill marks) a historic (achievement) for all time."

It's now in jeopardy, so here's what Savage advises. Prepare. "Save more money, (and) start from an honest assessment" of what's coming. What FDR gave will be taken away. "And that's The Savage Truth." A disturbing and outrageous one as well as all the other ways we've been betrayed.

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=13225

Electoral Sham in Haiti

Electoral Sham in Haiti - by Stephen Lendman

Few people anywhere have suffered more for so long, yet endure and keep struggling for change. For brief periods under Jean-Bertand Aristide, they got it until a US-led February 29, 2004 coup d'etat forced him into exile where he remains Haiti's symbolic leader - for his supporters, still head of the Fanmi Lavalas (FL) party he founded in 1996 to reestablish links between local Lavalas branches and its parliamentary representatives.

From then to now, nothing has been the same. UN paramilitaries occupy the country. Washington effectively controls it. President Rene Preval got a choice - go along or pay the price. He submitted knowing what awaits him if he resists. Nonetheless, he's disappointed bitterly.

Haitians suffered dearly as a result, deeply impoverished, at times starving, denied the most basic essentials, plagued by violence, a brutal occupier, police repression, an odious and onerous debt, and exploitive sweatshop conditions for those lucky enough to have a job in a country plagued by unemployment and deprivation.

Elections, however, are regularly scheduled and held, the latest for April 19 - democratic in name only, this time for Haiti's senate. Here's the problem. On February 7, AP headlined: "Aristide Allies, Ex-Rebel Barred from Haiti Vote." It refers to Haiti's Provisional Election Council's (CEP) February 6 disqualification of Fanmi Lavalas candidates on procedural grounds. At stake are 12 open seats in the 30-member body, ones vacant since early last year after 2007 elections were postponed when Preval dissolved the CEP because of infighting. Delays persisted after food riots, a prime ministerial ouster, parliamentary wrangles, and last summer's catastrophic hurricanes from which the country has yet to recover.

Radio Metropole reported that "at least 40 of the 105 (registered) candidates....were rejected" with CEP officials unavailable for comment. Expecting protests, it barricaded its headquarters in anticipation.

On March 9, a Haitian judge ruled the CEP's action invalid at the same time thousands of FL supporters demonstrated in Port-au-Prince during Bill Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's visit. They demanded reinstatement of FL candidates and reintegration of the party overall, the one Haitians support overwhelmingly and want elected to serve them.

A week earlier, FL sued the CEP for excluding its candidates on grounds that their registration papers lacked Aristide's signature, a first-time ever technicality. Judge Jean-Claude Douyon agreed in stating: "The political rights of the Lavalas have been violated" and ordered their "reintegration," provided "each individually meets legal standards."

They had, and according to one of their lawyers, Camille Leblanc: The CEP "had no justification for its arbitrary decision of exclusion, since the Lavalas political organization had fulfilled all the requirements to participate." At the time, it was unclear if CEP would yield. Constitutionally, it's the "final arbiter" on all election matters and in the past ignored court orders.

At the same time, huge crowds massed in front of the National Palace awaiting a Clinton, Ban Ki-moon, Preval press conference. They had signs, banners, and T-shirts displaying Aristide's image, and from a sound truck asked Clinton to tell Obama that since the "kidnapping of our president....(our) situation has only worsened." One demonstrator told Haiti Liberte: "We are waiting for the soonest possible return of the president....and if Lavalas is not part of the elections, free and fair (ones) will not take place." In addition, Preval was denounced as a traitor, and repeated chants were "Down with the MINUSTAH," the UN paramilitary occupiers.

Clinton and Ban Ki-moon were there for a purpose - to bolster Washington's control, support the military occupation, encourage local sweatshop industry, boost Rene Preval, keep him weak and subservient, diffuse popular anger, put a friendly face on a repressive MINUSTAH, and convince Haitians that jobs and aid are coming, repeatedly promised in the past, then reneged on so Haitians expect nothing this time. It's why they support Lavalas, denounce Preval, and demand Aristide's return.

On April 3, they were reminded again when Preval's Justice Minister, Jean-Joseph Exume, fired Judge Douyon, accusing him of corruption in an unrelated case in retribution and as an excuse to ignore his decision. However, Douyon responded that Exume threatened him not to hear the case saying that Haitian courts have no authority to overrule the CEP. As a result, Preval's handpicked Council is "final arbiter," meaning Lavalas is excluded and Haiti's democracy is an illusion.

Earlier, the coup-installed Latortue regime tried a similar stunt to prevent Preval's 2006 election and almost succeeded. Only massive street protests forced it's hand to let Preval's victory stand - a very dubious one considering how impotent he's been ever since, enough to arouse Haitians openly to denounce him with just cause.

Sham elections will be held on April 19, shamefully with Preval's approval. Once again, Haitians will lose out. Their long overdue rights will be denied, the result of Obama continuing the same hard line policies as George Bush.

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=13139

Investigating Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

Investigating Israeli War Crimes in Gaza - by Stephen Lendman

Independent investigations and convincing testimonies, on both sides, provide compelling evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. It's time to hold the guilty accountable.

In February, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights showed conclusively how Israel violated core international law principles by indiscriminately attacking civilians in spite of IDF claims such instances were justified.

Amnesty International accused Israel of war crimes and called on the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has a long record of acting as an imperial agent even while at times fulfilling its mandate "to protect the human rights of people around the world....stand with (them) and uphold political freedom (by) bring(ing) offenders to justice."

It partly did this in a report titled "Rain of Fire" by citing "Israel's Unlawful Use of White Phosphorous in Gaza....over populated areas, killing and injuring civilians, and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital."

The IDF also used "missiles, bombs, heavy artillery, tank shells, and small arms fire in densely populated neighborhoods, including downtown Gaza City (in violation of) international humanitarian law (and laws of war) which require taking all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm and prohibits indiscriminate attacks."

HRW called the use of white phosphorous "indiscriminate, deliberate (and) reckless." It said America supplied the weapons and needs to answer for its actions. It called on the UN Security Council or Secretary-General to appoint an independent international commission to investigate credible war crimes allegations, including use of illegal weapons.

Omitted from the report were over six decades of mass slaughter and destruction, a process amounting to genocide. Also not mentioned was the full impact of 22 days of attacks, Gaza still under siege, and the West Bank under military occupation. Unlisted was the death and injury toll; civilian shootings in cold blood; the vast number of homes, government buildings, hospitals, ambulances, fishing boats, crops, schools, mosques, businesses, UN buildings and shelters, entire infrastructure and neighborhoods, and all other wanton destruction. Silence as well on the incalculable toll on 1.5 million Gazans and continued assaults against them.

On April 6, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) compiled detailed evidence of war crimes in a lengthy report - from Gazan and medical staff testimonies of wounded being denied care, shot in cold blood at close range, prevented from being evacuated, and being terrorized "without mercy." A team of international independent legal, health, and medical experts conducted the investigation.

PHRI executive director Hadas Ziv said: "One of the difficult things in the report is clear harm to innocent people....(the unleashing of) such fire power among the population." It documented 44 civilian testimonies and took samples of tissue, soil, water, swamp grass, suspected infected ammunition, and chemical weapons, then sent them to the UK and South Africa for testing and evaluation.

Al-Haq on Operation Cast Lead

Al-Haq is an independent Palestinian NGO based in Ramallah, West Bank, established in 1979 to "protect and promote human rights and the rule of law" in Occupied Palestine.

In April, it issued a position paper titled: "Operation Cast Lead and the Distortion of International Law - A Legal Analysis of Israel's Claim to Self-Defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter." The justification is preposterous by a nation absolving itself of compelling war crimes evidence.

Nonetheless, on March 30 (after 11 days), the IDF closed its inquiry into military misconduct allegations with judge advocate general, Avichai Mendelblit, dismissively calling them "heresay" based on no substantiating evidence. "They were based on rumors (and) did not reflect the operational circumstances which had actually taken place on the ground." This is typical Israeli stonewalling whenever it's caught red-handed along with blaming victims for its own crimes.

On March 31, a Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) press release stated:

PCHR "believes that the speed with which this inquiry was concluded illustrates the consistent failure of the (IDF) to genuinely investigate crimes (its soldiers regularly commit) against Palestinian civilians. Investigations of this nature do not meet international standards of independence and transparency, and obstruct justice."

Al-Haq reviewed 22 days of "unrelenting aerial attacks coupled with intensive ground incursions" as well as the deaths, injuries, and destruction they caused. Yet, incredibly, in the morning before the attack, Israel's UN ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, informed the Secretary-General:

"After a long period of utmost restraint, the government of Israel decided to exercise, as of this morning, its right of self-defense....as enshrined in Article 51 of the (UN) Charter."

Its basis was legally untenable on at least two counts:

-- that Gaza remains effectively occupied and Israel bears full responsibility for it; and

-- Israel's attack was unprovoked, preemptive, and related to the broader occupation and conflict matching the world's fourth most powerful military against a defenseless civilian population with only small arms and homemade weapons for defense.

Gaza's Legal Status

Despite its 2005 disengagement, Gaza remains occupied. Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations states that:

"territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised."

Legally, "effective control" exists if adversarial military forces can "at any time they desire assume physical control of any part of the country." In addition, whether an "occupying power" has enough "force" or "capacity" to make its power felt. Israel's disengagement plan asserts its right to "guard and monitor (Gaza's) external land perimeter and will continue to maintain exclusive authority (of its) air space" and coast line. It also allows troop deployments inside the Territory and right to control the population administratively through the tax and revenue system, civil population registry, and exclusive regulation of all goods and people traffic in and out.

Self-Defense under International Law

The UN Charter's Article 2(4) declares that all Member States "shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any manner inconsistent with the purpose of the United Nations."

However, the Charter permits armed force under two conditions - when authorized by the Security Council or under Article 51 authorizing the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain peace and security."

Operation Cast Lead was unprovoked aggression in the context of 42 years of occupation and conflict, and as such is "regulated exclusively by international humanitarian law," not the whim of the occupier to twist it.

As an occupying power, Article 51 doesn't apply, since Israel is bound by international humanitarian laws, including Fourth Geneva Convention provisions. It has specific legal obligations over Gaza and the West Bank:

-- to treat civilians humanely;

-- refrain from violence of any kind;

-- care for the sick and wounded;

-- ensure adequate food and medical supplies;

-- afford judicial guarantees; and

-- look after "protected persons" under its control in all other respects.

International law also restricts combat methods and means employed by all parties. Legally, only narrowly defined "military necessity" justifies an attack - on targets intended to weaken or overcome the enemy or bring conflict to an end. Even then, the principles of distinction and proportionality apply:

-- distinction between combatants and military targets vs. civilians and non-military ones; attacking the latter is a war crime; and

-- proportionality prohibitions against disproportionate, indiscriminate force likely to cause damage to or loss of lives or objects.

Prior to an attack, Israel is also obligated to provide "effective advance warning" to alert civilians, then take all measures possible to minimize non-combatant casualties. Under Fourth Geneva, "neutralized zones" protect them to assure they're free from harm as much as possible during conflict.

Israel violated the rules of war and occupation and committed crimes of war and against humanity. It attacked civilians disproportionately without distinction, including in densely populated areas. It made no effort to distinguish between military and civilian targets. It willfully targeted the entire Gaza population, its property and infrastructure - indiscriminately in grave breach of Geneva and other international humanitarian laws. The laws of war as well. As such, its officials and commanders are criminally liable and should be held accountable for their actions.

Al-Haq concluded:

"Israel's reliance on self-defence misconstrues international law in an attempt to evade (its) international legal obligations...." Its self-defense justification under Article 51 is fraudulent on its face and "holds no validity under international law."

UN Gaza War Crimes Inquiry

On April 3, the UN announced Richard Goldstone's appointment to head a Gaza fact-finding investigation into alleged Gaza war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. Martin Uhomoibhi, president of the UN Human Rights Council, said an independent team of experts will conduct the mission after discussing it in Geneva for the next few weeks.

Goldstone is a respected jurist, having been a justice for nine years on South Africa's Constitutional Court. He also served as chief prosecutor for the Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals and is a Hebrew University board member. As a Jew, he was "shocked" to be appointed but promised to be fair and even-handed. He "hope(s) that the findings....will make a meaningful contribution to the peace process....and provide justice for the victims."

On March 17, he was one of 16 international figures, including Archbishop Desmund Tutu, calling for a war crimes investigation. His mandate is to focus on Palestinian victims of the recent Gaza war but will investigate all alleged violations before, during, and after the conflict.

Earlier, Israel refused to participate in previous Council investigations, calling them biased. It's unclear if it will cooperate now after Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said "This committee is instructed not to seek out the truth but to single out Israel for alleged crimes." He accused the Council of having "practically (no) credibility at all."

Goldstone is currently a Spinoza Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in The Hague. He's received several human rights awards, most recently the MacArthur Foundation Award for International Justice to be awarded at The Hague on May 25, 2009.

On May 3, 2007, he was unequivocal as one of four panel members on the topic of whether war crimes trials do more harm than good. When asked to participate, he said "organizers must have known that I would be saying they do more good than harm and that, of course, is my view."

He cited Nuremberg successes as "the first attempt to hold individual criminals liable for violating international criminal law. It was the first recognition that the rule of law could be applied internationally" but did it through a "fair trial" exposing "the most appalling war crimes" by focusing on "the victims....They know what happened to them. They don't need to go to court and hear evidence....but they want official acknowledgment (as) the beginning of their healing process....I have no doubt that the world is a better place today (as a result of) the rapid growth of international criminal justice" and the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court.

B'Tselem's Guidelines to Investigate Operation Cast Lead

B'Tselem is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. It's part of a coalition of Israeli human rights organizations pressing Israel to investigate allegations of its war crimes thoroughly and fairly. Of course, we now know it whitewashed them, much like it's done in the past.

Nonetheless, B'Tselem cites the enormity of lost lives, injuries, destruction, homelessness, and irrevocable human loss and suffering demanding full accountability. It prepared a document "to lay out the principal questions" regarding Israel's conduct and outlined guidelines to investigate it.

Firing at Civilians

Civilians were willfully targeted in violation of international law, and the vast majority of deaths and injuries were non-combatants. B'Tselem documented numerous incidents "in which young men not involved in hostilities were killed" or wounded.

"Examination of the (IDF's) conduct during the operation raises (serious) concerns as to the extent (it) complied with its obligations under international humanitarian law." Compelling evidence, by any standard or measures, indicates systematic and grievous war crimes.

During the conflict, B'Tselem got "particularly grave reports of soldiers intentionally aiming gunfire directly at civilian" non-combatants. They must be thoroughly investigated to learn if commanders ordered these actions or if troops acted on their own.

Lack of Protection of Civilians

Israel willfully trapped 1.5 million Gazans during the conflict. Border crossings were closed, and Egypt (in compliance with Israel and Washington) refused to open the Rafah one. Israel claimed dropping flyers was enough. False. International law requires that advance warning be given and all precautions taken to protect civilians. Instead they were targeted in their homes, schools, mosques, work places, and UNRWA shelters.

B'Tselem got testimonies that the IDF also used Palestinians as human shields. They were ordered into buildings ahead of soldiers to assure they weren't booby-trapped. Also to remove suspicious objects on roads and stand in front of troops so they wouldn't be shot. Fourth Geneva's Article 28 bans the practice and states:

"The presence of a protected person may not be used to render points or areas immune from military operations." In other words, act as human shields. In Adalah et al v. OC Central Command et al, Israel's Supreme Court prohibited the practice in any form for any purpose.

Targeting Symbols of Government

During the conflict, the IDF bombed hundreds of civilian targets, including homes, hospitals, schools, mosques and government buildings - in clear violation of international law. Israel's response: Targets "support(ing) the financing, planning, and carrying out terrorist acts" were struck. Other statements were similar but failed to say anything about these structures being for military purposes. B'Tselem concluded that "the reason for striking these targets was not related to the purposes for which they were being used" and thus were off-limits to attack.

For its part, Israel claimed everything related to Hamas was a legitimate target. Deputy chief of staff general Dan Harel stated:

"We are striking not only terrorists and launchers, but the entire Hamas administration, and all its arms. We are striking government buildings, manufacturing plants, security branches, and so forth. We demand governmental responsibility from Hamas and we do not distinguish between the various branches. Following the operation, no Hamas building will be left standing." Presumably he included hospitals, schools, mosques and private homes.

Another official statement said:

"When a terrorist organization controls the government, all government ministries are used to fulfill the objectives of the terrorist organization. Why do you assume that the Palestinian transportation ministry serves only to set bus routes? Maybe it serves other purposes. Hamas does not make the separation that is customary in an orderly-run country." Maybe also surgeons, teachers, women, and infants are covert suicide bombers and thus legitimate targets.

B'Tselem wrote to Israel's attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, "demanding clarifications on the attacks on civilian objects." The response "completely ignored the questions raised...."

Evacuation of Wounded and Attacks on Medical Teams

Numerous reports were that IDF forces targeted hospitals, ambulances, and medical workers, and "that soldiers (prevented) wounded persons from getting to hospitals." In some cases, they were fired on at close range or left stranded to bleed to death. Once Israel invaded, medical teams movement was impossible "as was access to hospitals in (Gaza's) central section...at least 16 medical-team personnel were (targeted and) killed during the operation."

The ICRC deviated from its normal procedure by stating that Israel violated international humanitarian law that requires treatment and evacuation of wounded persons, and that prevention or delays were illegal and unacceptable.

On January 6, eight human rights organizations petitioned the Supreme Court "demanding that the military permit medical teams and ambulances to move about in (Gaza) and enable evacuation of wounded to hospitals." Israel claimed it gave unequivocal instructions to refrain from attacking medical teams and ambulances and let the wounded be evacuated to hospitals. It then qualified the statement saying:

"Reports (received) indicate clearly and unequivocally that the terrorist activities sometimes use ambulances to carry out terrorist acts, and also disguise themselves as medical-team personnel. This is a mode of operation, rather than isolated and exceptional incidents."

This is a typical Israeli defense to justify its most outrageous crimes of war and against humanity. It's a fictitious legal shield dismissed by international jurists. They're based on supposition, not facts, and would be thrown out of any legitimate court as unfounded and unproved.

International law is clear and unequivocal. Civilian hospitals, medical personnel, and all others tending to the wounded "may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict." Israel blamed Hamas instead of taking full responsibility for its actions.

Collapse of Civilian Infrastructure and Public Services

During the conflict, Gaza's civilian infrastructure and public services "collapsed almost completely." Its power station ran out of fuel and shut down. Residents got only 25% of the electricity they needed. Water and sewage systems were impaired. At the peak of fighting, over 800,000 people had no running water. Sewage flowed onto farmland and flooded Beit Hanun streets. Hospitals had to run on generators. They also suffered shortages of virtually everything necessary to function. Food and other essentials were in short supply. Bakeries shut down for lack of flour, cooking gas and electricity. International agencies weren't able to distribute food and other supplies.

The result was a human catastrophe compounded by 18 months under siege. Two weeks before the conflict, an OCHA report said Gaza was in crisis, and its residents struggled daily to meet basic needs and survive - like get enough food, water, fuel and medical care. Most of them felt trapped "physically, mentally, and emotionally."

According to OCHA, in Q 2 2008, unemployment reached 50%, and in 2007, 79% of households lived in poverty and for 70% it was "deep." This was Gaza on the eve of conflict. Today it's far worse after so much destruction.

Conclusion

"The extent of the harm to the civilian population during Operation Cast Lead is unprecedented. Only now is the full magnitude of the destruction coming to light" with further evidence from newly revealed testimonies. Entire families were killed. Parents were helpless to prevent their children from dying. Others were powerless to prevent loved ones from bleeding to death. These are permanent scars, forever etched in the collective memory of a tortured people - isolated, uncared for, and ignored by world leaders.

Human rights groups and others demand full accountability "for the gravest of crimes." Israel claims its military acted properly. Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the IDF "the most moral army in the world....(that it) employed every possible means to avoid injuring people." The IDF's judge advocate general, Avichai Mandelblit, told B'Tselem:

"While we regret, of course, any harm to civilians, we emphasize again that the responsibility for that lies solely at the doorstep of the Hamas organization...."

B'Tselem was unforgiving in calling Israel's actions "unacceptable." International law protects civilians from the "horrendous effects of war....Using ambiguous terminology (and unwarranted justifications to condone) such grave harm to civilians, in an attempt to create a semblance of compliance with the law, constitutes" blatant deceit of the highest order.

Israel's conduct "raises grave suspicion that soldiers and commanders breached international humanitarian law" willfully and repeatedly. "In light of this, a public reckoning....is crucial....The scope and severity of the violations can be determined only in the framework of a comprehensive investigation - (one that is) independent, effective, open to public review, and conducted within a reasonable time."

B'Tselem calls on Israel to do it. It never has and won't now beyond claiming to have examined allegations and determined them to be unfounded. Only an independent body should be tasked. It remains to be seen if the UN Human Rights Council team under Richard Goldstone is up to the job. The whole world is watching.

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.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13139

ICRC's Damning Expose of US Torture

ICRC's Damning Expose of US Torture - by Stephen Lendman

On March 12, Mark Danner, in a New York Times op-ed and The New York Review of Books, wrote about the ICRC's revelations of "US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites." He said George Bush (in 2007) "informed the world that the United States had created a dark and secret universe to hold and interrogate captured 'terrorists,' " - at locations outside America, Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Operated by the CIA, it "used an alternative set of procedures....designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful."

He lied to conceal what this writer called "Torture As Official US Policy" in a July 18, 2008 article. It was authorized at the highest government levels and confirmed by a virtual blizzard of official documents beginning with a September 17, 2001 secret finding empowering CIA to "Capture, Kill, or Interrogate Al-Queda Leaders." It authorized establishing a secret global network of facilities to detain and interrogate them without guidelines on proper treatment.

It was followed on November 13 by Military Order Number 1 that amounted to a coup d'etat on constitutional freedoms and hinted at what would follow. It let the president, on his say alone, capture, kidnap or arrest anyone, anywhere in the world, then hold them indefinitely in secret locations, without charge, evidence, or due process in a court of law.

Various other documents, findings, Executive Orders, and memos authorized interrogation practices amounting to torture. Most infamous were two memos by John Yoo (as deputy assistant attorney general), Alberto Gonzales (as White House counsel), Jay Bybee (now a federal judge), and David Addington (as Dick Cheney's chief of staff and legal counsel).

On August 2, 2002, they argued for letting interrogators use harsh measures amounting to torture, OK'd them against "terrorists" during wartime, and said US and international laws don't apply for overseas interrogations.

On March 14, 2003, the same quartet issued another memo titled "Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States." It became known as the "Torture Memo" because it erased all legal restraints and authorized military interrogators to use extreme measures amounting to torture. It also gave the president "the fullest range of power....to protect the nation (and stated he) enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his authority in conducting operations against hostile forces."

In December 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, as Defense Secretary, approved a menu of illegal interrogation techniques consisting of anything short of what would cause organ failure. He issued direct orders to military commanders to conduct them against "suspected terrorists," meaning anyone in their custody.

Under George Bush, torture was official policy. It remains so under Barack Obama in defiance of US and international laws that prohibit it under all circumstances, at all times, with no exceptions allowed ever. Under the Constitution's Article VI (the supremacy clause), international law is part of US law, and US presidents take an oath under Article II, Section 1, Clause 7 to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Article II, Section 3 requires the president to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully exercised."

The US Code's Title 18, Chapter 113C (2340) defines torture as follows:

-- any "act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering....upon another person within his custody or physical control;"

-- it includes "infliction or threatened infliction" of severe mental or physical pain and suffering, including use of "mind-altering substances;"

-- threatening "imminent death;" and/or

-- "the threat that another person" will be subjected to any or all of the above listed offenses.

Various US laws prohibit torture in any form for any purpose, including the 1994 Torture Statute and 1996 War Crimes Act. Numerous international laws do as well, including the:

-- (US 1994 ratified) Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment;

-- four Geneva Conventions; the first two protect the sick and wounded in battle; the third defines who is a prisoner of war and establishes minimum treatment standards, and the fourth protects civilians and requires that they be treated humanely - not falsely called "unlawful enemy combatants" to get around the law, which doesn't apply anyway as all forms of torture and mistreatment are strictly banned.

The four conventions have a Common Article Three that prohibits all forms of "violence to life and person," including cruel abuse, torture, and all types of humiliating and degrading treatment among other provisions.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

Established in 1863, it states its purpose as follows:

The ICRC "is an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims or war and internal violence and to provide them with assistance." It also strives "to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles." It has a "legal mandate" to do so under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

The ICRC report was labeled "confidential" and intended only for senior US officials. On February 14, 2007, it was sent to John Rizzo, the CIA's acting general counsel. Danner got hold of it, reported individual accounts in the The New York Review of Books, and stated:

"Because these stories were taken down confidentially in (detainee) interviews by (ICRC) professionals, and not intended for public consumption, they have an unusual claim to authenticity" - all the more so because all prisoners were isolated, yet corroborated each other's accounts.

On April 9, The New York Review of Books published the full report of what ICRC interviewers learned from visitations with 14 CIA-held "high value detainees" transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006. This article summarizes its findings and recommendations.

It's Titled: "ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen 'High Value Detainees' in CIA Custody"

The ICRC "consistently expressed its grave concern over the humanitarian consequences and legal implications of (America's practice) of holding persons in undisclosed detention in the context of the fight against terrorism."

Beginning in 2002, it made regular "written and oral" requests for information on them - to "various levels of the US Government" without response.

On September 6, 2006, George Bush publicly announced that 14 "high value" detainees were transferred to the Guantanamo-based, CIA-run High Value Detainee Program. Earlier they were at undisclosed locations. Prior to this announcement, ICRC had no knowledge of them or a CIA detention program - even though it requested information on 13 by name.

From October 6 - 11, 2006, ICRC met with all 14 in private for the first time, then again from December 4 - 14. This report described their arrests, transfers, incommunicado detention, and treatment in detail, initially and later on. It also explained their health care, the role of the medical staff, legal ramifications of secret incarcerations, other CIA detainees, and the "future use of the CIA detention program." The Defense Department got a separate report.

Main Elements of the CIA Detention Program

All 14 prisoners described harsh treatment, from the start, lasting for days or months, amounting to physical and psychological torture - "with the aim of obtaining compliance and extracting information." When considered in total and for their duration, the evidence is "all the more disturbing." In addition, all 14 accounts were consistent, adding to their credibility. By "ill-treatment," ICRC meant, singly or in combination, they "amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

Arrest and Transfer

Listed by name, they were arrested in four different countries (Pakistan, Thailand, Dubai and Djibouti) between March 2002 and May 2005, reportedly by their police or security forces, sometimes in the presence of US agents. They were initially held by the arresting country, then transferred elsewhere (reportedly Afghanistan), then on to other nations. US and/or national authorities interrogated them, but America controlled the process. They were in up to 10 locations prior to Guantanamo.

Transfer procedure was as follows:

-- detainees were photographed clothed and naked prior to and after transfer;

-- body cavity checks were conducted;

-- in some cases suppositories were administered;

-- diapers and tracksuits were worn;

-- earphones were used through which loud music was sometimes played;

-- blindfolds and black goggles were applied and, in some cases, cotton was taped over their eyes; in one case, the head gear was so tight it caused wounds to the nose and ears;

-- hands and feet were shackled;

-- sitting positions were reclined with hands shackled in front;

-- trips lasted for one to 30 hours;

-- toilet visits were denied for their entirety so necessary urination and defecation were into diapers;

-- some transport placed detainees flat on the plane's floor with their hands cuffed behind their backs; it caused severe pain and discomfort; and

-- the entire experience was disorienting and created feelings of futility, isolation, and helplessness "making them more vulnerable" to the torture described.

Continuous Solitary Confinement and Incommunicado Detention

Throughout their incarceration (lasting 16 months to four and a half years), all 14 were in solitary confinement. "They had no knowledge of where they were (and had) no contact with persons other than their interrogators or guards." They had no legal or family contacts or access to news from outside, except for some later on. They were effectively disappeared.

Other Ill-Treatment Methods

It was especially harsh during the first few days or months and included:

-- waterboarding "suffocation by water poured over a cloth placed over the nose and mouth, alleged by three of the fourteen;"

-- prolonged stressed standing, naked, with arms extended and chained above their heads, alleged by 10 of the 14, continuously for two or three days, and intermittently up to three months;

-- beatings by use of a collar around their necks used to forcefully bang their heads and bodies against the wall, alleged by six of the 14;

-- beating, kicking, slapping, punching to the body and face, alleged by nine of the 14;

-- confinement in a severely restricting box, alleged by one detainee;

-- prolonged nudity from several weeks to several months, alleged by 11 of the 14;

-- sleep deprivation lasting days, alleged by 11 of the 14;

-- forced stress positions, standing or sitting, cold water, and use of repetitive loud noise or music, alleged by 11 or the 14;

-- exposure to cold temperature, in cells and interrogation rooms, alleged by most of the 14; three had cold water poured over their bodies;

-- prolonged shackling of hands and/or feet, alleged by most detainees;

-- threats of ill-treatment to them and their families, alleged by nine of the 14;

-- forced head and beards shaving, alleged by two of the 14;

-- deprivation and restrictions of solid food from 3 days to a month after arrest, alleged by eight of the 14; and

-- also deprived of access to open air, exercise, appropriate hygiene facilities, and other basic items as well as restricted Koran usage.

Suffocation by Water

Alleged by three of the 14, it was done as follows: they were strapped to a tilting bed with a cloth over their face, nose and mouth. Water was then continuously poured over the cloth, saturating it so they couldn't breathe to create the effect of suffocation, panic, and feeling they would die. At an appropriate point, the cloth was removed and bed rotated into a head-up, vertical position with the person left hanging by straps securing him to the bed. The procedure was repeated two or more times during interrogation and again in subsequent sessions.

Prolonged Stress Standing

Alleged by 10 of the 14, their wrists were shackled to a bar or hook in the ceiling above the head continuously for up to three days and intermittently for two to three months. They were naked throughout the process. Some were allowed to defecate in a bucket. Others at times wore a diaper, had to urinate and defecate in it, and not have it changed.

Detainees said the procedure caused their legs and ankles to swell. For the most part, they couldn't sleep, but when they did it let their full body weight be suspended, causing added pain to their arms and shoulders.

Beating by Use of A Collar

Alleged by six of the 14, a thick collar/neck roll was placed around their necks, then used to slam them against walls, often concrete. The process was done repeatedly during interrogation and in corridors en route to it.

Beating and Kicking

Alleged by nine of the 14, it involved body and face slapping, punching, kicking, and having their heads banged against solid objects, initially for days, and severe enough to cause bleeding and bruising. It continued for about 30 minutes, then repeated throughout the day and on subsequent days. The technique continued for up to three months.

Confinement in a Box

Alleged by one of the 14, it was specially designed to constrain movement. One was tall and narrow, another shorter, forcing him to crouch down. The stress on legs was very painful, and inside it was hard to breathe. The combination of sweat, pain, and friction from the slightest movement made it even more uncomfortable. The process was repeated for about a week in combination with other forms of torture.

Prolonged Nudity

Alleged by 11 of the 14, it continued for extended periods for up to several months intermittently, during interrogation and regular detention. Detainees said being allowed clothing depended on their degree of cooperation.

Sleep Deprivation and Use of Loud Music

Alleged by 11 of the 14, it was used during initial interrogation for seven continuous days, then intermittently for up to three months. It was done in various ways, including loud repetitive noise or music, long interrogation sessions, prolonged stress standing, and/or spraying with cold water.

Exposure to Cold Temperature and Cold Water

During their initial months, they were kept naked in extremely cold cells and interrogation rooms. Requests for clothing and blankets were denied. Cold water dousing was also used - with buckets or by a hose-pipe while they were in a stress standing position with their arms shackled above their heads for prolonged periods.

Prolonged Use of Handcuffs and Shackles

Detainees reported they were used continuously for long periods, even inside their cells, and in one case for six months.

Threats

Alleged by nine of the 14, they were against them and their families. They threatened waterboarding, electric shock, infection with HIV/AIDS, sodomy, arrest and rape of his family, torture to the point of death, and "no rules applied" interrogations.

Forced Head and Beard Shaving

Alleged by two of the 14, it was done abusively, and according to one, made to look undignified.

Deprivation/Restricted Provision of Solid Food

Alleged by eight of the 14, they got none for up to a month. After that, it was restricted, limited, and given as an incentive for cooperation. Items included rice and potatoes or bread and gravy.

Further Elements of Detention

Done to increase its harshness, they included continuous solitary confinement, incommunicado detention, no contact with family or third parties, and other above-listed elements. In combination, it made conditions intolerable.

Basic items were denied, including toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, towels, showers, toilets, toilet paper, clothes, underwear, blankets, and for up to three months mattresses. Things then provided depended on cooperation, but were removed to apply more pressure or for no reason at all. In addition, their prayer schedule and Korans were restricted or denied.

Conditions of Later Stage Detention

To some degree, they improved, depending again on cooperation. Also, after the initial interrogation stages, they got clean clothes on a weekly basis, solid food one to three times a day but of poor quality and in limited amounts. Some got English or their native language books and magazines.

After about eight months of detention, they got in-cell toilet facilities, washbasins, and showers weekly or more often. After several months to up to two and a half years, they could move from their cells to closed indoor areas to use exercise machines. Cell temperatures were also at proper temperatures, and in their final detention period prior to being transferred to Guantanamo, some could watch a weekly film and/or use a portable DVD. Although an improvement from earlier months, they still endured harsh confinement.

Health Provision and the Role of Medical Staff

Detainees said medical personnel:

-- monitored their regular torture and directly participated in the use of certain methods; they also instructed interrogators to continue, adjust, or at times stop particular procedures; they told detainees that treatment depended on their cooperation; condoning and participating in torture is a serious breach of medical ethics;

-- performed medical checks before and right after each transfer; and

-- treated the effects of torture as well as ailments and injuries during incarceration.

Legal Aspects in Relation to Undisclosed Detention

The report noted "a basic tenet of international law" - that "any person deprived of liberty must be registered and held in an officially recognized place of detention," not somewhere in secret. International humanitarian law has provisions for registering persons deprived of their liberty. It requires that organizations like ICRC get access and prohibits forced disappearances.

The 14 in question were denied these rights "outside the protection of the law during the time they spent in CIA custody." They had no access to judicial or administrative review, were denied contacts with their families, and had no idea why they were held or so badly treated. "The totality of the circumstances in which the fourteen were held effectively amounted to an arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance, in contravention of international law."
Their treatment was "severe and multifaceted," absent any "scrutiny by an independent entity, including the ICRC."

Fate of Other Persons Who Passed Through the CIA Detention Program

Post-9/11, many hundreds of them were victimized like the 14 here in question. Some were returned to their home countries "for prosecution or detention by their governments," according to George Bush. Washington provided ICRC no information about them so it's unable to monitor their treatment and "ensure communication with their families."

Given how the above 14 were treated, ICRC expressed grave concerns that many others were subjected to similar tortures and mistreatment.

Future Use of the CIA Detention Program

US authorities told ICRC that "no persons were held in the (program) as of October 2006." Such claims are false given that George Bush (in September 2006) said CIA detentions hadn't been discontinued and could be used at any time in the future.

The same holds under Obama. He pledged to protect CIA, military and Bush officials from investigation and prosecution as well as continue its foreign wars and occupation. The CIA's Director of Public Affairs, Mark Mansfield, told The New York Times that agency chief Leon Panetta said "repeatedly that no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished."

Now it's policy in Panetta's April 9 internal memo announcing the administration's blanket amnesty for all Bush officials torturers and war criminals. It's the same position Obama took on ABC's January 11 This Week that he intends "to look forward as opposed to looking backward....we have to focus on getting things right in the future (not) looking at what we got wrong in the past."

He assured continuity from one administration to the next, repeated violations of domestic and international laws, and torture remaining official US policy along with foreign wars, occupation, counterterrorism, and subversion with the largest ever FY 2010 defense budget to pursue them, way exceeding $1 trillion, and excluding extras, 78% more than for FY 2000 at a time America has no enemies.

Conclusion

The above 14 prisoners:

-- "were subjected to (numerous transfers to) unknown locations and continuous solitary confinement and incommunicado detention throughout" their entire captivity;

-- they were force disappeared and deprived of their liberty and rights "in contravention of international law;"

-- "they were subjected to systematic physical and/or psychological" torture and mistreatment;

-- they endured "severe physical and mental pain and suffering" as well as loss of their human dignity; and

-- participation of medical personnel in their treatment "constituted a gross breach of medical ethics" and lawlessness.

"In light of the above, the ICRC remains gravely concerned (for) the fate of" other CIA detainees, "who remain unaccounted for." It also worries that Washington intends to continue its current practices, in secret, with no accountability, or respect for the law.

It urged the Bush administration to reverse this decision and recommended the following:

-- end secret detentions and use of torture and mistreatment;

-- act humanely at all times in accordance with the law;

-- let detainees communicate with their families;

-- assure they have legal representation;

-- notify ICRC of all arrests;

-- grant it access to all persons held;

-- assure allegations of torture and mistreatment are properly investigated, and "take steps to punish the perpetrators;" and

-- provide all names of those held under CIA detention; if appropriate, the countries where they were sent, and "other relevant details to allow the ICRC to seek access to these persons."

The report's Annex I provided verbatim detainee statements as evidence of their gross mistreatment. Abu Zubaydah's was one of them. He's an alleged high-ranking Al-Queda member supposedly close to Osama bin Laden. Excerpts are as follows:

"I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room (about 4m x 4m). The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room." After several days, "I was transferred to a chair where I was kept, shackled by hands and feet for what I think was the next 2 to 3 weeks....I developed blisters (under) my legs due to constant sitting."

A bucket was his toilet. Water for cleaning was from a plastic bottle. "I was given no solid food during the first two or three weeks." His liquid food at first made him vomit until he accustomed to it.

"The cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold. Very loud, shouting type music was constantly playing....twenty-four hours a day," sometimes "replaced by a loud hissing or crackling noise." Guards, not interrogators, wore masks. "I could not sleep at all for the first two to three weeks (as) guards would come and spray water in my face" if I tried.

"After about two or three weeks, I began to receive food, rice (once daily). I could eat with my hand, but I was not allowed to wash....I remained naked and in shackles, but I could sleep a little. It went on like this for about another one and a half months."

He went on to describe torture and mistreatment of the kinds described above. Only later did conditions improve somewhat.

ICRC revelations heighten the need to hold Bush administration torturers (and war criminals) accountable and for Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent special prosecutor to do it. Jameel Jaffer, ACLU National Security Project director called it an "imperative" and said: "Government officials who violated the law should not be shielded from investigation." It starts at the top, including George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, complicit White House officials, ones in the Justice Department, and all others criminally involved.

A Spanish court took the first step by initiating (torture charge) proceedings against Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Douglas Feith, David Addington, Jay Bybee, and William Haynes. It's time for Obama to stop stonewalling and do it as well - against all parties guilty of torture and war crimes.

On April 7, The New York Times reported that "A three-judge panel of Peru's Supreme Court convicted former president Alberto Fujimori of human rights abuses and sentenced him to 25 years in prison" - on charges of murder, aggravated kidnapping, battery, and crimes against humanity. Should we in America expect less!

A Final Comment

On April 9, The New York Times Scott Shane headlined: "CIA to Close Secret Prisons, Scenes of Harsh Interrogations." He cites CIA claiming it'll "decommission the secret overseas prisons (infamous for their) brutal interrogation methods, bringing to a symbolic close the most controversial counterterrorism program of the Bush administration."

This announcement flies in the face of clear evidence that refutes it. In his confirmation hearings, new CIA director Leon Panetta told senators "extraordinary renditions" will continue, and no-holds barred interrogations remain policy for anyone and in any situations warranting them.

Despite Obama's pledge to end torture and close Guantanamo, conditions at the prison are unchanged. Further, Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base is undergoing a $60 million expansion to hold 1100 more prisoners, above the 600 now there. Also, other detainees are likely held at any number of the hundreds of US bases globally plus a fleet of at least 17 prison ships - out of sight, anywhere at sea, holding unnamed detainees, and subjecting them to the same harsh and brutal treatment.

Closing Guantanamo, Thai, Polish, and other offshore prisons means moving their detainees elsewhere, not ending the "war on terror" or ways chosen to pursue it. Nothing short of that is acceptable.

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=13139

Obama's New World Order

Obama's New World Order - by Stephen Lendman

This article addresses Washington's financial coup d'etat in the context of discussing Michael Hudson's important, very lengthy and detailed April 5 Global Research.ca one titled: "The Financial War Against Iceland - Being defeated by debt is as deadly as outright military warfare." It reviews its key information in advance of Hudson's April 15 scheduled appearance on The Global Research News Hour to discuss.

What's true for Iceland holds everywhere, including the developed world, the idea being to enrich finance capitalism through state-sponsored debt bondage and neo-feudal impoverishment. The global economic crisis was no accident. It was long ago hatched, and has been brewing for years, gestating, percolating, then bubbling into the 2000 tech crash, a mere prelude for today's greater one spreading everywhere like a cancer but hitting the developing world and most indebted nations hardest.

Hudson: "Iceland is under attack - not militarily but financially."

Like many others, "It owes more than it can pay" and is bankrupt. It was planned that way, and the idea is to strip-mine the nation and its people of their resources, enterprises, assets, land, homes, jobs and futures through perpetual debt bondage. Bankers get enriched. Nations and people, however, are discarded like trash, with the IMF as enforcer, to be reinvigorated with an additional (G 20-pledged) $750 billion, quadrupling its resources to $1 trillion if fulfilled.

Wall Street and Western European bankers planned it and now ordered the government "to sell off the nation's public domain, its natural resources and public enterprises to pay (its) financial gambling debts." Also, raise permanent taxes at the worst possible time, then suck the maximum wealth from the country leaving behind an empty hulk and impoverished, desparate population. It's called dystopia Merriam-Webster defines as: "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives," the opposite of utopia under conditions of deprivation, poverty, disease, violence, oppression, and terror, much like in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Permanent debt bondage "is as deadly as outright military" defeat. Loss of livelihoods and assets leave people vulnerable to sickness, despair, and early deaths, much like what happened to post-Soviet Russia under Washington-imposed "shock therapy:"

-- 80% of farmers went bankrupt;

-- around 70,000 state factories closed;

-- unemployment became epidemic;

-- a permanent underclass was created;

-- poverty rose from two million in 1989 to 74 million by the mid-1990s, and in half the cases it was desperate;

-- alcoholism and drug abuse soared;

-- so did HIV/AIDS 20-fold;

-- suicides also and violent crime four-fold; and

-- the population declined by 700,000 a year; by 2007 it was 10% lower than in 1989 because of sharply reduced life expectancies.

Iceland, the developing world, and the West take note. This cancer is heading everywhere, courtesy of banker-imposed diktats, mainly from America and the UK. They insist Iceland "impoverish its citizens by paying debts in ways (they'd) never follow" even though the government has no way to do it.

No matter. "They are quite willing to take payment in the form of foreclosure on the nation's natural resources, land and housing, and a mortgage on the next few centuries of its future" - perpetual debt bondage no different than the spoils of war under permanent occupation.

However, in this case, debtors are convinced to pay voluntarily "to put creditor interests above the economy's prosperity (and) national interest." Their indebtedness comes at a huge cost - "chronic currency depreciation (and) domestic price inflation for many decades to come."

Contrast this to how developed countries, like America, handle debt - by inflating (not deflating) their way out to pay it off with cheap (reduced purchasing power) money because inflation erodes its value. It's simple - by printing money and running budget deficits the way Washington did after Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, ended the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, and no longer let dollars be backed by gold or converted into it in international markets. A new monetary system creates money like confetti, and lets us spend and live beyond our means, then have developing and indebted nations pay the price.

In recent years, dollar weakness and price inflation "wiped out much of the US international debt." The Iceland model turns "this inflationary solution inside out....in violation of traditional credit practice." Instead of currency inflation, Iceland "inflate(d) its way into debt, not out of it, (by) indexing (it) to the rate of inflation," thus guaranteeing "a unique windfall for banks at the expense of wage earners and industrial profits." The result: destruction of its traditional way of life.

Iceland must "repudiate this debt bomb" to escape. It's indexed to inflation and "will never lose value." It's caught in a destructive whirlpool creating economic shrinkage, falling assets and wages in the face of perpetually burgeoning debt, the same global model needing to be exposed and renounced "now." Otherwise, economies will be hollowed out, "capital formation will plunge," people will be impoverished, and many won't survive.

Hudson's Background

His expertise comes from "having been an insider to imperial-style plundering....for forty years" - as an economist for Chase Manhattan Bank, Arthur Andersen, and the UN Institute for Training and Development (UNITAR). He's also taught economics since 1969, heads a Harvard-based economic and financial history group, is a Research Professor at the University of Missouri, and organized the first sovereign-debt fund in 1990 at Scudder, Stevens and Clark.

"All these jobs (except his current professorship) involved analyzing the limited ability of debtor countries to pay - how much could be extracted from them through foreign-currency loans and how much public infrastructure (could) be sold off (through) voluntary virtual foreclosure (under) creditor-dictated rules."

He advises countries not to borrow in foreign currencies, instead "monetize their own credit for domestic spending and investment." Iceland broke "the cardinal rule of international finance: Never borrow in a foreign currency for credit" that can freely be created at home. "Governments can inflate their way out of domestic debt," not the foreign kind.

Post-Soviet economies did it the wrong way, now suffer, and recent riots highlight their problems. "Instead of helping them industrialize and become more efficient," Western bankers loaded them with debt and exploited them - not for manufacturing and infrastructure development, as loans against existing real estate and infrastructure, to suck as much wealth out quickly.

It produced "bubble economies built on debt-financed real estate and stock market inflation," illusory wealth "bubbles (that) always burst." The only sustainable financing of imports is through enough exports for a favorable balance of trade.

De-industrialization destroys economies by shrinking them, the result of plunging property valuations, rental income, and exchange rates. Foreign currency mortgage costs exceed property values producing defaults and losses for lenders.

It's hitting Sweden, Austria and leading creditor states like America and the UK. Real estate, stock market and employment are declining "in a straight line unprecedented even in the Great Depression." It's turned neoliberalism into a nightmare.

"Just as individuals can't live off a credit card forever, neither can nations. As any classical economist knows, societies that only manufacture debt are unsustainable." Eventually they collapse into bankruptcy just like a business or household. The old saying applies. Things that can't go on forever, won't.

No matter. Predator banks want to prolong the game as long as possible, grab all the wealth they can, force debtor nations to sell state enterprises at distress prices, then get new business by lending to investors who buy them on the cheap. Will it work? Only if targeted countries go along. In the case of Iceland, its very future is at stake.

Sound v. Imprudent Banking

For centuries, banks created credit responsibly - loaning money for sound investments to debtors able to repay with interest. No one imagined a world like today's with massive defaults occurring globally. In America, one-third of home mortgages are in "Negative Equity;" that is, "the mortgage exceeds the (property's) market price pledged as collateral."

US national debt tripled in one year, from $5 - $15 trillion, and according to some economists like John Williams, it's much higher under GAAP accounting - including unfunded liabilities around $65.5 trillion, an amount exceeding world GDP through FY 2008, meaning America is bankrupt. Williams also puts unemployment at 19.8% by reengineering it to include discouraged and involuntary part-time workers and excluding fictitious birth-death rate ratio inclusions.

Blunt Truths about the "Dismantling of Industrial Capitalism"

Instead of extending credit to construct and grow them, financial oligarchs turned indebted nations into "casinos (through) debt-leveraged gambles," redistributing wealth upward and creating "debt peonage for most citizens." Even in America, nearly half the population has no net worth, and the gulf between richest and the rest is unprecedented.

"This is the unfair system that the world's top creditors would export to Iceland - if they can convince its voters (and leaders) to accept neoliberal debt pyramiding as a way to get rich." It's not working throughout post-Soviet states that see it as the road to hell, if public riots are a gauge.

"Better alternatives (are) the only defense" as it's impossible for "astronomically indebted economies to 'work their way out of debt.' " Trying will "collapse the currency's exchange rate," divert huge amounts of revenue and property to creditors, and produce "a new kind of post-capitalist (unjust, unsustainable) non-production/consumpton economy" too gruesome to imagine or tolerate.

Iceland's financial crisis is the result of lawless predation, an "international (austerity demanding) Ponzi scheme" under rigged market rules imposing public and private "asset stripping" to pay debt. A simple scheme transfers wealth.

Economies and populations are trapped on a "debt treadmill from which there is no escape. (Lenders) pile on credit and let debts grow (through) the 'magic of compound interest,' knowing that loans cannot be repaid - except by asset sell-offs." They're strip-mined through unending debt service so the parasite keeps feeding on its food source. The idea is to get it all, leaving empty hulks behind, then on to the new victims. It's "euphemistically dubbed post-industrial wealth creation," the kind that's collapsing economies globally and destroying people. Obama is commander-in-chief of the process.

America as Lead Predator

It's a viciously ugly scheme that's "trapped other countries into a nightmarish system in which (they're practically forced) to recycle their excess balance-of-payment dollar inflows back to the US," mainly as loans to the Treasury.

"When foreign central banks receive dollars for their exports (or asset sales)," their choices are limited. "Congress won't let them buy important domestic companies or resources," or get paid with US gold reserves. The alternative is buy Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities like Fannie and Freddie debt.

Icelanders and other nations must remember that America is the world's largest debtor, and as Adam Smith explained in The Wealth of Nations - "no nation ever repaid its debt," and he never envisioned one large as America's. We grow it by issuing paper for real assets and services. Until other countries demand more than confetti, this "Madoff-Ponzi scheme" will persist - for tiny states like Iceland (population 319,000 as of January 2009) until nothing is left to hand over.

Today's road to riches isn't through capital investment. It's by "foreclos(ing) at pennies on the dollar and mak(ing) 'capital gains' by flipping property onto (central bank-inflated) world financial markets." In a word, socializing risks, privatizing profits, preying on the weak, and getting "a free lunch" at public expense.

It's a zero-sum game. One side's gain is another's loss, and when it matches America against Iceland, it's easy exerting pressure, but no certainty it'll prevail. As a sovereign state, Iceland can choose. More on that below.

Throughout the process, "financialized wealth is extractive, not productive....because loans, stocks and bonds are claims on wealth," not the kind produced by making things.

This is Iceland's dilemma. "Homeowners are paying tribute, not in taxes to (an occupier), in interest to (debt pyramid, international creditor) sponsors of "over-financialization," aiming to strip-mine the country of everything, the way it's worked in many developing states. "Yet many Icelanders are heading into this future voluntarily" with little understanding of the trap, propelling them toward debt peonage destitution under the guise of an IMF rescuer - like a spider to a fly.

It shouldn't happen and won't if countries refuse to be trapped and extricate themselves in time. Iceland is at a crossroads, still able to avoid what ruined Russia, other post-Soviet states, South Africa, and many other nations misjudging America and the IMF are saviors, not world class predators.

"Back to the Future" - A New Age of Neo-feudal Debt Bondage

Conventional banking works by extending credit in the form of interest-bearing loans and seizing collateral only in cases of default. Central banks were created to finance governments and commercial ones to "expand trade, related infrastructure, mining and shipping," and develop other forms of business and industry.

More recently, "financial managers persuaded many countries to sell off public enterprises, like their water or energy supplies, mainly to pay debts or cut taxes" for the rich. It's turned debtor nations into "tollbooth economies in which basic services become a vehicle to extract greater and greater portions of national income and wealth for the benefit of the few."

It's the opposite of how classical economists define "free markets." Today, financial interests control them to extract labor and capital investment-produced surpluses - for themselves under the guise of "economic democracy." The result "pushed much of the Third World into poverty since the 1960s," and now the same cancer is heading everywhere.

Financial Warfare As Deadly As by Armies

Today's financial strategy is "multilateral (with) the IMF (and World Bank) act(ing) as enforcer(s) for global creditors to appropriate the income of real estate, national infrastructure and industry" by masquerading as a helping hand and seducing borrowers to believe it.

Here's how neo-feudal banking works. It doesn't create credit for manufacturing. Retained earnings and equity do it. It "create(s) credit primarily against (existing) collateral, and by so doing, "extract(s) money from the economy (and) undercuts industrial growth for "short-term speculative gains." This hegemony "took thousands of years to achieve," and it wasn't easy inducing nations into poverty through "debt pyramiding as good economic strategy." It's like prescribing gorging as a way to lose weight or a junk food diet to stay healthy.

Iceland made it worse by "protecting the claims of creditors against debtors," including most wage-earners. As post-bubble home prices plunged, creditors held their own and even "strengthen(ed) their hand by increasing their take," thus making a bad situation worse. Its people own a shrinking equity in their homes vis-a-vis bankers having the lion's share. Its law shifts homeowners to "Negative Equity," and it works by keeping people in the dark.

But it's much the same in the US to hide the root cause of today's crisis - Wall Street/Washington's engineered housing and debt bubble fraud amounting to financial piracy of the greatest magnitude. In America, Iceland, and elsewhere it's turned "ownership" societies into "loanship" debt trap ones. Until recently, it was unthinkable to let economies be crippled by interest payments. Now it's de rigueur through clever manipulation to convince people and nations to go along with their own demise.

For Iceland, its debt burden threatens its national identity and "loss of its future" the way Adam Smith explained - through bankruptcy when it's too great to repay. "Today, creditors and bondholders care about foreign economies only to the extent that they can charge (enough) interest (to) absorb their entire economic surplus." Getting it all is today's credo, and nothing too outlandish is irresponsible. Get in trouble. Socialism comes to the rescue, for bankers, not people or easy targets like Iceland.

Its "ethic is mutual aid and prosperity for all....a highly socialized attitude (yet how tragic that it's) lead the nation to (buy into) the snake oil (of) debt peonage." Economic growth never keeps pace with accruing debts that get recycled into greater ones, but end games are the same. "Debts that can't be paid, won't be," while bankers too big to fail get bailed out at the expense of public interests and sound economics. Yet Hudson explains: "Creditor mismanagement is the most important problem that any country should strive to avert."

Most important is to foster a free and open market of ideas, to extract the best and discard the others. But that's not how Western societies work, especially banker-run ones. A "free market" for them is "free" of ideas laying bare their snake oil.

"Most societies throughout history provide(d) credit.... without oligarchy." Today it's the opposite. Predatory finance erased centuries of reform and did it at warp speed. As a result, our freedom is threatened and very close to being lost.

What's needed is a return to "basics, and a call for transparent statistics," socially progressive ideas "of a just society free of economic privilege, free of prices in excess of socially necessary costs of production and of rentier income and wealth without effort," earned "in their sleep," not through their labor.

It means wealth should be based on "what one creates - not land and natural resources, or monopoly privileges to extract income via control of roads, the right to create money and other natural monopolies." Reform depends on purging this privilege. "The way to do it is to treat banking like transportation and broadcasting, as a public utility," not something privatized for "rentiers (to) tax society" for what rightfully belongs to everyone.

In the hands of predators, progressive reforms are impossible as financial giants "preserve their special privileges by law, minimizing taxes on themselves by shifting the burden onto labor and industry." Financialization:

-- "raise(s) the cost of living (and) doing business;"

-- frees bankers' "major customers - mortgage borrowers - from taxation to leave (maximum) surplus (for) interest;"

-- collects public sector revenue "by capitalizing it into interest charges" and inflating housing, other real estate, and other business prices;

-- "shift(s) taxes onto labor and industry, thereby raising prices and undermining the competitive power of financialized economies."

This is predation, the very opposite of "classical free market policy." Keynes concluded his General Theory by calling for "euthanasia of the rentier." His followers advocate banking as a public utility "to steer debt creation to fund growth in the means of production, not economic overhead by inflating property bubbles." None of that's in sight. Maybe someday after the inevitable demise of the current system that will eventually crumble under its own weight.

Lessons for Iceland and Other Nations

Iceland "is under financial attack from outside as well as within - by foreigners supported by a domestic banking class. To succeed (they need) to convince the population that all debt is productive, and that the economy benefits to the extent that its net worth rises (that is, make its asset values appear greater than its debt)."

The fact is that prices don't fall, "and if they do, debts should (remain), even (at the expense of) negative equity." Icelanders are being manipulated to believe they have "no alternative but to pay debts that a few insiders (accumulated, ones) that accrue interest when (they're) unpaid." In fact, demanded debt amounts exceed what the country can pay, but the strategy is to conceal this as long as possible "to proceed with the foreclosure and voluntary pre-bankruptcy sell-off of national assets to pay" predators.

What's true for Iceland, holds everywhere Wall Street and the IMF target, and here's the scheme:

-- shrink economies;

-- shift wealth and property upwards to a financial oligarchy; and

-- price "labor and industry out of world markets as a result of the heavy financial charges built into (the) pricing system."

Iceland is a "model test case for economic justice." Hopefully it will "confront reality sooner than later" and not get trapped into perpetual debt bondage by succumbing to global creditor pressure or seduction. What benefits them harms people, and everyone needs to know it. Bankers "aim (for) a return to 'normalcy,' defined as new exponential (debt volume) growth" producing more destructive bubbles like the last ones.

Iceland must reject Wall Street's medicine or perish, and the same holds elsewhere, including in America. Bankers, not nations or people, should take the pain. Hudson asks: "How can Iceland (or Hungary, Latvia, Ukraine, or many other nations) pay its debts without bankrupting itself, (in Iceland's case) abandoning its social democracy and polarizing its (people) between a tiny creditor oligarchy and" everyone else? They're threatened by "a new ruling class that will control (their) destiny for the next century" or beyond. It's their choice to reject it and stay free.

Their "foreign currency loans should be denominated in domestic currency at written-down (and de-indexed) interest rates, or repudiated outright." The guiding principle should be to annul debts taken out under (destructive and extractive) terms benefitting creditors at the expense of their prey.

They aim to dominate societies - "above all....to maximize the power of debt over labor. The worse the economy does, the stronger" they get. It's a vicious cycle "recipe for economic suicide (from perpetual) debt peonage." Iceland can be a test case model against it. It comes down to whether it will back its people or, like America, surrender to financial predators. It's much the same globally, the result of the greatest ever economic crisis opportunity for plunder. The perpetrators love it. It's high time they got their comeuppance.

Imagine tiny Iceland taking the lead and fighting back against what another former high-level Wall Street and government insider warns - Catherine Austin Fitts, Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner under GHW Bush and Dillon Read & Co. Managing Director and board member.

In her latest quarterly review, she predicts that "Obama will do more to help bankers achieve centralized control and one world government than any (previous) US politician." In less than three months in office, he's shown bankers they can count on him - to the tune of trillions of dollars, further open-ended checkbook amounts on request, and global "diplomatic" pressure on targeted nations to surrender. It's for public rage, tiny Iceland, and other over-indebted nations to demand "no more." Hopefully enough of them have backbone to do it.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcgobal.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=13048

Daniel McGowan - Another "War on Terrorism" Victim

Daniel McGowan, Another "War on Terrorism" Victim - by Stephen Lendman

Of so-called "eco-terrorism" in his case, a term believed coined by Ron Arnold, executive director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE), a radical right wing group established on July 4, 1976 "to continue (the) Revolution of liberty, free enterprise and individual initiative....without hindrance by government."

According to Sourcewatch:

"Arnold blurred the boundaries between nonviolent civil disobedience and more contentious tactics such as vandalism and sabotage," (mostly rejected by environmentalists) by equating property damage to "terrorism as a societal threat."

More recently, he linked up with self-styled "eco-terrorism" expert Barry Clausen and Nick Nichols, retired chairman of the PR firm Nichols-Dezenhall. They were instrumental in initiating the (stalled in committees) 2004 Ecoterrorism Prevention Act that led to the passage of the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). In broad and vague language, it criminalizes First Amendment activities advocating for animal rights like peaceful protests, leafleting, undercover investigations, whistleblowing and boycotts, and made it easier to call civil disobedience "eco-terrorism" with far stiffer penalties for comparable offenses under other laws.

In the late 1980s, Arnold also founded the so-called Wise Use movement - a pro-business funded anti-environmentalist group, mainly involved with western timber and mining issues.

In December 1991, he told New York Times reporter Tim Egan: "We want to destroy environmentalists by taking away their money and members." Days later, to Toronto Star writer Katherine Long, he said "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We're mad as hell. We're not going to take it anymore. We're dead serious, we're going to destroy them. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain...."

Environmental studies professor Bron Taylor contends that "Radical environmentalism is best understood as a new religious movement that views environmental degradation as an assault on a sacred, natural world." Nonetheless, he concluded in a 1998 Terrorism and Political Violence journal paper that:

"there is, even after 18 years of radical environmental action, little evidence that radical environmentalists intend to maim and kill their adversaries or foster 'terror' among the general population."

Fronting for corporate America, right wing groups like the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Wise Use, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and their lobbyists and PR flacks claim otherwise in their relentless war on the greens, backed by federal and state authorities calling saving the earth "eco-terrorism" and managing to get activists like Daniel McGowan sent to prison.

Some Brief Background on McGowan

Born in Queens, New York, he was active in sports in high school, then attended the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo where he received a BA in business administration and Southeast Asian studies. After several months in Asia, he worked in New York as a paid and volunteer for various environmental and non-profit organizations, then in 1998 relocated to the Pacific Northwest to continue his environmental and social justice work.

Back home in 2002, he worked as a web and office administrator for Rainforest Foundation US and became active in projects for rainforest preservation, national forest protection, and biodiversity.

In 2005, he entered a Tri-State College of Acupuncture graduate program to become a healing practitioner, to be able to offer it free or at low cost to make it affordable for everyone. At the same time, he worked for Womenslaw.org, a non-profit organization helping battered women through legal recourse. His activism also included support for political prisoners, human rights, social justice, and involvement in numerous local events, dedicated to helping people.

Those who know him say he's one of "the most wonderful, expressive, caring, thoughtful and compassionate people in this world" - yet Bush prosecutors targeted, incarcerated, and made him a political prisoner through a gross miscarriage of justice.

The Support for Daniel McGowan Web Site - A Resource for Information on His Case

McGowan was victimized by "green scare," a term likely first used in 2002, referring to legal and extralegal government actions against animal liberation and environmental activists. The Spirit of Freedom prisoner support network defines it as "tactics the government and (their enforcement agencies use) to attack ELF/ALF (Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front members) and specifically those who publicly support them."

The term also refers to the 2005 arrests, indictments and convictions from the FBI's Operation Backfire (OB) against alleged ELF/ALF activists - charging them with damaging property, conspiracy, arson, and using destructive devices. The FBI included these organizations among their top domestic threats, calling them "eco-terrorists."

The 2001 USA Patriot Act created the federal crime of "domestic terrorism," broadening the definition and applying it to US citizens as well as aliens. It let OB target McGowan on December 7, 2005 when federal agents arrested him at the WomensLaw.org office, then imprison him in the "terror wing" of lower Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC).

On the same day, New York Indymedia reported:

"Federal marshals arrested six environmental activists (today) in a series of coordinated raids in four states in apparent response to a string of arsons in Oregon and Washington attributed to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), including simultaneous attacks in 2001 at the University of Washington's Urban Horticulture Center and the Jefferson Poplar Farms in Clatskanie, Oregon. Daniel McGowan, 31, was arrested in New York City. Authorities also stated that there will be more arrests, with at least one indictment immediately outstanding."

McGowan was held pending his extradition to Eugene, OR for his arraignment. Without evidence, prosecutors alleged he was an ELF member, a group dedicated to saving the earth pro-actively. More recently it abandoned arson as "a dangerous and irrational strategy," and now works "within the system (to) "build consensus and public support (for) a better world and future." Its unofficial motto: "ELF Resistance Forever....Live on....No Evil."

The evening of his arrest, agents raided McGowan's apartment seizing computers, personal photographs, tax records, textbooks, school work, videotapes, DVDs and more. The next day, he appeared in US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, after which he endured a two week odyssey taking him to federal detention facilities in Oklahoma, California and Sheridan, Oregon.

After his January 25, 2006 hearing, he was released on $1.6 million bail, spent the next seven months under house arrest, on November 9 pled guilty to minor charges, then on June 4, 2007 was sentenced (without trial) to seven years in prison - for offenses warranting no more than a fine and suspended sentence.

Charges in "United States of America v. Daniel Gerard McGowan" and Twelve Other Defendants

After initially being charged on December 19, 2005, a superseding May 18, 2006 indictment (against him and 12 others) accused them of "willfully and knowingly conspir(ing) and agree(ing) to commit the following offenses against the United States:"

Count 1

-- "On or about January 2, 2001, at Glendale, Douglas County, Oregon," four of the defendants, including McGowan, "unlawfully and willfully caused and aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, and procured the malicious damaging and destroying, by means of fire and an explosive, of a building and other real and personal property used in interstate commerce and used in activities affecting interstate commerce, namely, a building and its contents located at Superior Lumber Company (in) Glendale, Douglas County, Oregon;"

-- these same defendants "traveled in separate vehicles to a predetermined staging area....where they dressed in dark clothing and put on their radio earpieces and masks;"

-- they "traveled to Superior Lumber Company building, set up lookouts, positioned the 'pick-up' vehicle, placed the time-delayed incendiary devices, and returned to the staging area;"

-- there they disposed of their dark clothing; and

-- McGowan and seven others "unlawfully and willfully caused and aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, and procured the malicious damaging and destroying, by means of fire and an explosive, of buildings, vehicles and other real and personal property used in interstate commerce....at Jefferson Poplar Farm (in) Clatskanie, Columbia County, Oregon.

Count 2

Said defendants, including McGowan, conspired "to commit arson and destruction of an energy facility" by the manner and means so outlined, "to influence and affect the conduct of government, commerce, private business and others in the civilian population by means of force, violence, sabotage, mass destruction, intimidation and coercion...." By so doing, they endangered "human life and property that constituted violations of the criminal laws of the United States and of individual states."

Counts 3 - 13

Excluded McGowan of charges for various other incidents.

Count 14 and 15

Pertained to the January 2001 Superior Lumber Company destruction.

Counts 16 - 52

Excluded McGowan.

Count 53

Charged him with "using and carrying a destructive device in relation to a crime of violence (pertaining to) Jefferson Poplar Farm."

Count 54

Charged him with arson at the Jefferson Poplar Farm Vehicle Shop.

Count 55

Charged him with arson at the Jefferson Poplar Farm shop and office.

Count 56

Charged him with arson of a Jefferson Poplar Farm vehicle.

Counts 57 - 65

Charged him in more detail for the vehicle arson.

Signed:

Kirk A. Engdall
Assistant United States Attorney

In total, McGowan was charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit arson, 14 counts of arson, and two counts of use or possession of a destructive device. If tried and convicted of the latter two, he faced a minimum 30 year sentence. For all counts, he faced a mandatory life sentence - even though he neither hurt or intended to hurt any person or animal and acted only to defend the earth against real environmental terrorists against whom no charges were brought.

Given the possibility of life in prison, McGowan pled guilty to minor arson offenses against Jefferson Poplar Farm and Superior Lumber in return for the Justice Department dropping the more serious charges, including using destructive devices.

He did so on condition that he wouldn't implicate or identify anyone but himself. Three other co-defendants did the same. In his statement to the judge he "accept(ed) full responsibility for (his) actions and at the same time remain(s) true to (his) strongly held beliefs."

He said his "actions were not those of (a) terrorist but of a concerned young man who was deeply troubled by the destruction of Oregon's beautiful old-growth forests and the dangers of genetically modified trees." Yet he realized after participating in two actions that "burning things down (violated his) visions or belief about how to create a better world. So (he) stopped committing these crimes."

He "never intended to hurt people (and expressed) great remorse....for the harm that (he) caused." He then thanked the court for letting him express his thoughts and feelings. His role was to be a lookout on one of the incidents. On the other, he helped set the fire.

His lawyers asked for a maximum 63 months imprisonment, or no more than 18 months higher than for another co-defendant. On June 4, 2007, McGowan was sentenced to seven years, and is now at the newest Communications Management Unit (CMU) at the US Penitentiary (USP), Marion, IL.

US Federal Prison Communication Management Units (CMUs)

Several times, this writer addressed the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI), Terre Haute, IN's CMU, most recently on March 18, and described it as a 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.

US Prison Bureau regulations ban the practice, and so did the Supreme Court in Johnson v. California (February 2005). Nonetheless, it exists. The Bush Department of Justice established it. Obama's has done nothing to address it.

In early 2007, it was learned that FCI Terre Haute had a CMU. Now, so does US Penitentiary (USP), Marion, IL. Because they're illegal, they're kept secret so perhaps others also exist in federal and/or state facilities. And for cover, they include one or more non-Muslims like McGowan, briefly held at Terre Haute and since early February at Marion. He, like them, was investigated, arrested, prosecuted, and interned as a political prisoner. They for being Muslims at the wrong time in America. He as a victim of USA Patriot Act "justice" that established the crime of "domestic terrorism" and included "eco-terrorism" as an offense.

At Marion, like at Terre Haute, he's segregated from the general prison population and treated like a terrorist, which he is not, nor is he violent. He also comes under special rules for CMU prisoners that violate Federal Bureau of Prison regulations.

He's subjected to severe communication restrictions - with family, friends, and, at the discretion of prison authorities, other inmates, as follows:

-- all communications are monitored and copied;

-- outgoing and incoming mail and emails are delayed and censored;

-- visitations must be approved, are non-contact only through a glass partition, and restricted to twice monthly two hour sessions compared to other prisoners getting weekly or bi-weekly all-day visitations; according to McGowan, "The most depressing part of the CMU is not being able to hug and kiss your wife" and, of course, children and other loved ones;

-- other prisoners are allowed 300 phone minutes a month; CMU inmates only one 15 minute call a week on weekdays between 8AM - 2PM (when children are in school) with no exceptions made for holidays, birthdays or other special occasions;

-- communications must be in English;

-- prisoners sleep on thin mattresses atop concrete slabs; and

-- prison officials have ad hoc authority to bend rules as they please, be more or less lenient, but generally impose added hardships or punishment for any reason or none at all;

-- according to Eugene Weekly's Camilla Mortensen, McGowan was the first environmental activist in a "terrorist" unit where he was transferred for stating his beliefs at the low security FCI Sandstone, MN prison. Also for being the subject of a documentary film and appearing on a calendar featuring political prisoners; she also reported that media access to him was denied, including from the LA Times;

-- CMU conditions are harsh with regard to rules and punishment imposed, food quality and amount, medical care, and the ability of prison officials to do as they please in an environment conducive to toughness; and

-- according to McGowan, "I object to the way I was sent here (in the middle of the night with no notice); I object as well to the institution itself, as I find it to be either a Muslim unit and we are there to give them some credibility in denying it or it's just a plain old political prison." Correct on both counts and the reason these units are secret and illegal.

Readers are encouraged to visit the supportdaniel.org web site for photos and more information about him, his case, and how to help. US federal and state prisons are full of inmates like him, interned for their beliefs, activism, and commitment to social justice, not their supposed crimes.

Given the severe economic crisis, its toll on growing millions, and likely civil disobedience in response, the nation has been militarized with combat troop readiness and over 800 FEMA detention camps in every state. It means defending our rights or the earth is now hazardous and a crime at a time we're all Daniel McGowans.

A Personal Note and Related Comments

In October 2008, I wrote about Seyed Mousavi: Guilty of Being Muslim in Police State America. Until late March, he was incarcerated at Terre Haute federal prison's CMU. He's now in Marion's segregated facility along with other Muslims and McGowan. He's innocent, a "war on terror" victim, and my friend since we established regular contact and now exchange emails as prison officials allow.

Recently, a group of supporters came together in his behalf. Below are edited portions of his response:

"My dear friends and Justice Seekers

Thank you very much for coming together and supporting me and my family. This gives me hope and makes me believe the truth will come out and justice will take place.

Our message today is very clear.

The government must know:

-- You reject what they did to us and our families;

-- They must stop setting up plots and terrorizing people;

-- They must stop framing innocent people and destroying their families;

-- They must stop politicizing the justice system;

-- They must stop targeting the Muslim community and its organizations, centers and Mosques;

-- They must stop jailing peaceful family men for election propaganda;

-- They must stop wasting your tax money by following, watching and wiretapping law-abiding people.

There is no room in this country for secret courts and secret evidence.

It's the duty of government to protect citizens and legal residents; to protect the law and Constitution; protect peoples' rights, freedoms and property.

Muslims must have the right to practice their religion freely and not live in fear.

The courts must remain independent and protect people, not be government tools; they must correct their mistakes for the sake of justice.

We must renounce war; all nations must live together in peace; America must lead by example, not force.

Again, thank you very much for your time and support. Please stay committed for freedom and justice.

May Allah bless you all."

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 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=13048

Obama's War on Labor

Obama's War on Labor - by Stephen Lendman

Voters expecting change keep getting rude reminders of what kind, none they can believe in reiterated again on March 30 in Obama's remarks to the auto giants. While stating "We cannot....must not (and) will not let (this) industry vanish," he laid down a clear marker. Labor, not business, is targeted. More on that below.

"We (won't) excuse poor decisions," he said. "We cannot make the survival of our auto industry dependent on an unending flow of taxpayer dollars." In rejecting their aid request, he added: "These companies - and this industry - must ultimately stand on their own, not as wards of the state....What we are asking is difficult. It will require hard choices by the companies. (Their plan doesn't go) far enough to warrant the substantial new investments these companies are requesting."

Imagine the hypocrisy - open-checkbook trillions for Wall Street criminals v. a thinly disguised war on organized labor by scolding the auto giants for not forcing their workers to make greater sacrifices.

They're needed, said Obama. Their "best chance for success" is a "surgical" bankruptcy lasting for as little as 30 days - meaning workers will lose everything while CEOs get seven-figure compensation for betraying them.

A March 31 New York Times Michael de la Merced/Johathan Glater article suggested that Washington may seek a "controlled" bankruptcy - somewhere between "prepackaged (and) court chaos by persuading creditors to agree" to divide GM in two pieces, sort of like a good and bad bank to create a healthier company, free of its troubled assets and liabilities.

Under the plan, GM would declare a prearranged bankruptcy. Then, the bankruptcy code's Section 363 would authorize selling off desirable assets to a new government-financed company. Details are being discussed so it looks like a done deal, either prepackaged or through a bankruptcy court, either way very worker-adverse with UAW bosses pressured to go along, take it or leave it.

The administration also decided Chrysler can't survive alone. It was given 30 days to ally with Fiat SpA or with another automaker if that fails, even though such a deal may combine two dogs into a bigger one with even greater problems than going it on their own.

Obama drew a line in the sand for "workers who have already made painful concessions to make even more" through additional restructuring sacrifices, including:

-- permanent job losses;

-- lower wages;

-- gutted work rules, including health and safety protection on the job;

-- forfeited security through lost benefits and pensions, including for retirees, on top of everything given up in fall 2007 negotiations when the UAW leadership surrendered to management, then muscled the rank and file to go along; and

-- more sacrifices the Bush $25 billion bailout demanded, unreported in the mainstream: banned GM and Chrysler strikes, meaning effectively on the big three; more wage and benefits cuts; ending the UAW's "jobs bank" that provided help to furloughed workers and more.

It's a dark age for US auto workers and a prelude for what's coming - compared to earlier times when they earned substantial wages, got cost of living and productivity increases, and had impressive benefits, including medical coverage with defined extras, employer-funded pensions, improved safety and health benefits, paid vacations, and supplemental unemployment insurance guaranteeing up to 95% of pay if laid off.

Replacing them was a two-tiered wage and benefit package with new skilled hires getting little more half the previous arrangement and for a new non-core category even less.

Much more was lost as well:

-- plant closures resulting in permanent job losses; for GM alone it meant 85% fewer production jobs than in 1990 over a period when high-paying manufacturing ones disappeared, offshored, or were replaced by machines;

-- for new hires, an ill-conceived 401k arrangement replacing employer-paid pensions with one dollar invested in company stock for each hour worked that turned out to be worthless two years later as the companies head for bankruptcy;

-- major health care concessions under a union-run VEBA (voluntary employee beneficiary association) putting UAW bosses in the healthcare business for potential big profits at the expense reduced worker benefits and companies relieved of their obligations after putting up an initially-funded amount;

-- employee buyouts, early retirements and other downsizing efforts to replace high-wage workers with cheaper new ones; and

-- Chrysler workers getting even less overall than their GM and Ford counterparts.

A final coup de grace is planned with disturbing implications for all workers - after decades of hard won gains. The UAW alone lost almost one million jobs from 1979 through 2007 (from 1.5 million to about 512,000). At yearend 2008, membership stood at 431,000, and tens of thousands more may now go given industry conditions and administration demands. In addition, more major concessions are coming through the back door - by a prepackaged bankruptcy or court-appointed judge to relieve Obama of responsibility.

If GM and/or Chrysler go down either way, prearrangers or the court will do the honors. The current union contract will be replaced by new demands, meaning 60 years of gains will be lost with the stroke of a pen, and no negotiations can mitigate them. It gets worse.

Whatever's decided will be a model for all industry. The idea isn't to end unions, just neutralize them, then leave workers out in the cold with poor wages, few if any benefits, self-funded only retirement plans if any, and other management-demanded concessions in a new dark age for labor heading it back to its earliest days when all gains gotten were hard won and few achieved until the mid-1930s under the Wagner Act.

Labor always struggled and learned the hard way that winning meant organizing, pressing their demands, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces supporting management, and paying with their blood and lives to get results.

They were impressive - an eight-hour day, a living wage, generous increases, good benefits, and pensions because strong unions went head-to-head with management and won. It's world's different today with government in bed with business, Democrats as bad as Republicans, weak unions under corrupted bosses, millions of high-paying jobs already lost, and a global economic crisis stripping workers of all bargaining power and heading them for sweatshop serfdom under a leader even more anti-labor than his predecessor.

He appointed an auto task force (headed by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers) to be judge, jury and executioner, then let them (quietly) or a bankruptcy judge pull the switch to absolve him of responsibility, be able to declare victory, and apply the same terms across industry as every sector struggles to survive, the result of a Washington/Wall Street-created crisis.

Their scheme is to:

-- crush world economies;

-- recapitalize the IMF to entrap developing ones in perpetual debt bondage, neo-feudalism, a virtual dystopia;

-- structurally adjust their populations to a living hell - impoverishment through "shock therapy" loss of employment, essential benefits, and democratic freedoms;

-- tank financial markets;

-- destroy competitors;

-- use trillions of taxpayer dollars to consolidate the FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate);

-- buy other assets on the cheap;

-- toxic ones from each other, mostly with public money paying the cost and assuming the risk;

-- declare war on labor; and

-- force companies to downsize, then strip workers of their rights and futures.

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next to supply more funds for Wall Street, selected corporate favorites, and generous amounts for military adventurism, global imperialism, and a homeland police state apparatus to quell restive opposition when it erupts. Obama's promised change is betrayal of the constituency that elected him. Looking ahead, things appear very grim.

Promised Hope from the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)

EFCA legislation was first introduced on November 21, 2003 in the 108th Congress as S. 1925 (with 37 co-sponsors) to: "amend the 1935 National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes." It was referred to the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee but never passed.

It was reintroduced on April 19, 2005 in the 109th Congress as HR 1696 (with 215 co-sponsors) for the same purpose. It got as far as the Employer-Employee Relations Subcommittee but not passed.

It was again introduced on March 1, 2007 in the 110th Congress as HR 800 for the same purpose. It easily passed in the House (241 - 185), then was blocked in the Senate when supporters couldn't get the required 60 votes to end debate and bring it to a vote.

On March 10, the 111th Congress revived it for the fourth time as S. 560 (with 39 co-sponsors), again for the same purpose. It's been read twice and referred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee where it's pending.

Facts about EFCA

Change to Win aims "to unite the 50 million workers whose jobs cannot be outsourced and who are vital to the global economy. (It represents) seven unions and six million workers united....to build a new movement of working people to meet the challenges of the global economy and restore the American Dream (for) a paycheck that supports a family, universal health care, a secure retirement, and the freedom to form a union to give workers a voice on the job." It strongly backs EFCA and states:

"EFCA respects that the right to join a union is a fundamental freedom, just like freedom of speech or religion, and that employees should be able to do so without interference from management (or government)."

If enacted, it will change federal law for the better at a time worker rights are in tatters. Overall, it would be a boon for organizing with a free and fair "card check" system under which workers merely sign them in support of a union. They may do it openly or in secret, their choice free of company coercion or intimidation. If a majority do, companies must recognize it. Unlike current rules, they presumably can't veto the decision, coerce or bribe employees to vote "no," or fire those who do.

Current law requires good faith bargaining. But it's eroded to near worthlessness and become a mere shadow of the landmark Wagner Act. It guaranteed workers the right:

"to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection." In other words, it leveled the playing field to let workers bargain on equal terms with management, but never easily.

From the start, its provisions were attacked, then severely restricted under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. In the "national interest," it lets presidents stop strikes by court-ordered injunctions for 80 days, and it's been done numerous times, 10 alone by Harry Truman who opposed the law but used it against organized labor.

It also allows stiff penalties for union violations but minimal ones for companies. It enacted a list of "unfair (union) practices prohibiting jurisdictional strikes (relating to worker job assignments), secondary boycotts (against firms doing business with others struck), wildcat strikes, sit-downs, slow-downs, mass-picketing against scabs, closed shops (in which employees must join unions), and more while legalizing employer anti-organizing interventions.

It eroded worker power that continues to this day. It's so weak that employers can (illegally) fire union sympathizers with only minor fines if proved. They can fire workers for any reason or none at all, and, of course, offshore high-paid jobs, freely move to low-wage "right-to-work" law states that restrict organizing under Taft-Hartley, and use those threats to extract more concessions from unions, easily intimidated or coerced to go along.

The result is that union membership declined steadily from the 1950s, and since the 1970s, worker wages and benefits have eroded under rigged market-based rules against them.

EFCA aims to restore labor rights affirmed by the Supreme Court in decisions like Virginian Railway Co. v. Railway Employees (March 29, 1937) when it ruled that "employees (have) the right to organize and bargain collectively through a representative of their own selection, doing away with company interference and 'company union.' "

It reaffirmed the right in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation (April 12, 1937) by ruling: "the corporation (engaged in unfair labor practices by) discriminating against members of the union with regard to hire and tenure of employment, and was coercing and intimidating its employees in order to interfere with their self-organization."

It added that:

"Employees have as clear a right to organize and select their representatives for lawful purposes as the respondent has to organize its business and select its own officers and agents. Discrimination and coercion to prevent the free exercise of employees to self-organization and representation is a proper subject for condemnation by competent legislative authority. Long ago we stated (that) labor organizations were organized (of necessity); that a single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer; that union (representation) was essential (to resist unfair treatment and) give laborers opportunity to deal on an equality with their employer."

We've come a long way from a friendly High Court. The current Roberts one is "supremely" pro-business. It's why passing EFCA is essential even given enough congressional votes to kill it and an anti-labor president who won't mind.

Today, over 90% of employers oppose unions with government on their side. Nearly 50% threaten to close plants or other work sites. Many coerce, threaten and/or bribe workers to be union-free, and around 30% illegally fire pro-union employees and get away with it.

Current election law mandates secret ballots one month after organizers collect enough signatures, but in the interim, companies can discourage, threaten and/or coerce employees to vote "no." They can also deny union recognition even if 100% of them want it.

EFCA turns the tables by enforcing fair collective bargaining under the following procedure. Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) arbitrators get to write first contracts (for a two-year period) covering wages, benefits, and work rules. NLRB union certification will be based on "card check" majority votes. Employers must then make "every reasonable effort to conclude and sign a collective bargaining agreement" within 10 days of the union's request. If none is reached in 90 days, either party may ask FMCS to intervene. If resolution fails after 30 days, an arbitration board "renders a decision settling the dispute" - binding for two years, unless both sides agree in writing to amend the contract.

The NLRB will be empowered to take legal action to immediately reinstate workers fired for union activity and enforce triple damages on companies.

EFCA levels the playing field by letting workers vote up or down on whether to form a union - freely by majority vote without fear of employer retribution. Overall, it's the first pro-labor law since Wagner, if only a first step at a time their rights are greatly eroded. It's high time Congress reinstated them, but don't bet on it or that Obama will exert pressure to do it. Business fiercely opposes it with good reason. They've got it all their own way and resist change. EFCA will force it for the better at a crucial time for workers.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Center of 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=13048

GMO Proliferation Bills

GMO Proliferation Bills - by Stephen Lendman

Four in all so far plus another authorizing funding under a 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act. One is HR 875: "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009." Introduced in the House on February 4 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, (D, CT) whose husband has ties to Monsanto, with 39 co-sponsors, it's been referred to the Agriculture and Energy and Commerce Committees for consideration as follows:

-- discussion,

-- possible hearings,

-- "mark-up" to make changes and add amendments,

-- then a vote on further action - to either table or send to the full chamber for a vote, the regular procedure for House and Senate legislation.

The bill's text is deceptively innocuous. Its header reads:

"To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illnesses, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes."

Related bills include:

S 425: "Food Safety and Tracking Improving Act." Introduced on February 12 and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. It purports: "To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for the establishment of a traceability system for food, to amend the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Inspections Act, the Egg Products Inspection Act. and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for improved public health and food safety through enhanced enforcement, and for other purposes."

HR 814: "Trace Act of 2009." Introduced on February 3 and referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It's: "To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Inspection Act, and the Egg Products Inspection Act to improve the safety of food, meat, and poultry products through enhanced traceability, and for other purposes."

HR 759: "Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2009." Introduced on January 28 and referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It's: "To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to improved the safety of food, drugs, devices, and cosmetics in the global market, and for other purposes."

If its critics are right, HR 875 (and the others) are what Linn Cohen-Cole calls "Monsanto's dream bill" to proliferate the world with GMO contamination and control its entire food supply.

In 2007, F. William Engdahl wrote an important book on the topic called "Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation." He explained how Washington and four agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting all life forms to control food production globally - everything, crops and animals.

In 2003, Jeffrey Smith's "Seeds of Deception" explained the dangers of untested and unregulated GM foods exposing those who eat them to potential health risks. Reliable studies show that rats fed GM potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles, brains, damaged immune systems, and showed structural changes in their white blood cells making them more susceptible to infection and disease than other rats fed non-GM potatoes. They also had thymus and spleen damage, enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines, liver atrophy, and other serious problems.

Humans may be harmed the same way because GMOs saturate our diet. Over 80% of all processed foods contain them as well as rice, corn, soybeans, soy products, vegetable oils, soft drinks, salad dressings, vegetables, fruits, dairy products, meat, and other animal products plus an array of hidden additives and ingredients in products like tomato sauce, ice cream and peanut butter.

Because labeling in America is prohibited, consumers don't know what they're eating or the risks from foods they believe safe. It makes everyone part of a mass human experiment, the results of which are unknown. Health problems may take years to show up. They'll be no way to trace the cause, and they may be serious, irreversible, and potentially life threatening.

Wheat so far is GM-free, and according to an April 1 Reuters report, Monsanto formally withdrew "submissions for its genetically modified wheat from all regulatory agencies except the US Food and Drug Administration, a company spokeswoman said. The withdrawal is the last step in Monsanto's (earlier) announcement that it would" delay but not shelve plans to introduce the world's first GM wheat.

Monsanto sought approval in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa and Colombia. It's now delayed, not halted. The company wants GM control over wheat and all other foods, but its official pronouncements deny it.

Monsanto Answers Its Critics

"Monsanto According to Monsanto" is a company blog site. Responding to critics on March 20, it headlined, "HR 875: Monsanto's Dream Bill - Or Just a Hallucination?" It dismisses the notion that it's behind the bill that will "give incredible power to Monsanto by criminalizing seed banking, requiring 24 hour GPS tracking of animals, stripping away of property rights, and forcing industrialized farming on America."

Not so it says or that "Monsanto is behind the bill. (Further), nowhere is there any mention of seed banks, loss of property rights, or GPS tracking of animals. The bill seems to be nothing more egregious than a well-intentioned effort to improve food safety laws and processes."

The bill's presumed intentions will be discussed below, but one thing is clear. Businesses, not politicians, write and/or control virtually all legislation affecting them to assure their interests are served. Monsanto is an influential Ag giant, directly involved in all food-related laws, the company's denials notwithstanding. It's so powerful, it has virtual veto power over anything related to its operations and laws affecting them.

Yet it dismissively claims that the bill stems from "public concerns with relatively recent incidents with peanut butter, ground beef, (and) spinach, etc." False. The way to deal with these and related problems is simply enforce existing laws, not enact new ones. They're not because food giants object at a time they matter, not public health and safety that's of no concern to lawmakers.

Case in point: the USDA is woefully understaffed, under-budgeted, and only perfunctorily carries out inspections. A recent OMB Watch report highlights the problem. Headlined, "Federal Meat Inspectors Spread Thin as Recalls Rise," it explains that USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is charged with ensuring safe meat, poultry and eggs, but its budget and staff haven't kept pace with its mandate.

In FY 1981, it had about 190 workers per billion pounds of meat and poultry inspected. By FY 2007, it was fewer than 88 or less than half as many. Yet under federal law, FSIS must inspect all meat, poultry, and egg products intended for commercial use. Its web site states: "Slaughter facilities cannot operate if FSIS inspection personnel are not present (and) Only Federally inspected establishments can produce products that are destined to enter commerce."

Reality, however, belies the mandate as processors and manufacturers easily circumvent procedures, and according to inspectors interviewed, understaffing and lax policies contribute to the problem. An unsafe food supply results. Government policy is to blame, and current legislation is for other purposes, not a way to fix things. HR 875 and companion bills are for agribusiness, not improved food safety.

Some Likely Truths about HR 875

Several recent articles and the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) offered their analyses. They believe this and companion bills are vehicles to let agribusiness control the entire US food supply, destroy independent local farming, and end the production of healthy organic food. They may be right.

Linn Cohen-Cole calls HR 875 "monstrous on level after level - the power it would give to Monsanto (and other Ag giants), the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hour GPS tracking of animals, the easement on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition (of) "industrial" standards, (and) planned elimination of (independent) farmers through all (the above) means."

It's no secret that Ag giants want all foods to be GMOs so they have total control. It's an agenda going back decades that Engdahl explained in his book. The science came out of US research labs in the 1970s when no one noticed or paid attention. It became apparent when the Reagan administration decided to make America dominant in a friendly unregulated environment, unmindful of safety and public health concerns, that's persisted ever since under Republican and Democrat administrations.

Monsanto is the dominant producer, a company with a long record of fraud, cover-up, bribery, deceit, and disdain for the public interest, yet it has enormous clout in Washington. In the 1980s, and especially under GHW Bush, it got unregulated free reign for its operations. A Bush Executive Order assured it. It ruled GMO plants and food to be "substantially equivalent" to ordinary ones of the same varieties, such as corn, wheat or rice. "Substantial equivalence" became the standard for the GMO revolution by sweeping away all regulatory restraints in spite of early concerns about safety that were confirmed overwhelmingly later on.

PASA says don't be fooled by the bill's deceptive language that hides its true intentions. Code words like "traceability, source verification, and best farming practices with proven scientific results" will force farmers to tag every animal (the requirement for industrial farms is one per 800,000) and use drugs, pesticides and GM seeds.

Already an Ohio state agricultural department swat team raided an organic food coop. The same thing happened to Pennsylvania Mennonite farmers and Wisconsin Amish ones. Other independents have been terrorized by home break-ins, burglaries, and treetop helicopter over-flights scaring animals to death. Conventional seed farmers like North Dakota's Rodney Nelson have been sued by Monsanto for infringing on its patent rights because wind currents landed GM seeds on his land. In Poland, pro-agribusiness laws eliminated 60% of small farmers. Ones in the UK led to 60 suicides and in India to over 180,000.

From 1996 - 2004, worldwide GMO plantings expanded to 167 million acres, a 40-fold increase on 25% of global arable land. Over two-thirds of US farmland grows GMOs, more than 106 million acres. Argentina has 34 million acres, and production is expanding in Brazil, China, Canada, South Africa, Indonesia, Spain, Eastern Europe, and wherever else Ag giants have clout. They want it all, everywhere, and have complicit government allies to help them, here and abroad.

In Iraq, Paul Bremer's Order 81 covers patents, their duration, and stated: "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any (designated) variety." It gave Ag giants absolute control over farmers' seed usage for 20 years. They're now GMO, owned by the transnationals, and Iraqi farmers had to sign an agreement to pay a "technology fee" as well as an annual license fee. Plant Variety Protection (PVP) made seed saving and reuse illegal, and even "similar" seed plantings can result in severe fines and imprisonment. Agribusiness wants the same rights everywhere, including in America. If they get it, the future of organic and independent farming will be threatened.

PASA says HR 875 doesn't regulate, prohibit or penalize private gardens or farmers markets directly. It focuses solely on ensuring supermarket food safety. But it regulates seeds, harvesting, transporting, seed storage facilities, and seed cleaning equipment under "food safety" provisions to prevent contamination - from agricultural water and manure, not pesticides, fertilizers, or unsafe GM seeds.

Seed cleaning equipment is crucial as it's how organic seed is saved. It's used after plants "go to seed" to separate them from plant material so farmers can harvest and store them for future plantings. HR 875 doesn't mention seeds but PASA believes its intent is to criminalize their banking through code language and bill provisions. Already, some areas of the country ban seed cleaning. Monsanto is likely involved, and the scheme is to claim the equipment produces contamination.

To prevent it, Ag giants want provisions that require expensive storage facilities, per line of seed. Organic farmers can't afford them, and this has nothing to do with food safety. But HR 875 claims it does.

PASA says FDA and USDA targeted organic and other independent farmers for years, at least since the early 1980s when high interest rates drove many out of business. Today, pro-industry laws have the same effect because Ag giants like Monsanto demand them. If they succeed, biodiversity and organic farming are at risk along with public health and safety to a greater degree than already given the amount of tainted and dangerous foods allowed, not addressed in HR 875.

While bill language doesn't prohibit organic or independent farming, that's the likely aim. Its provisions are Ag business-friendly, but destructive to small competitors by establishing heavy fines, imprisonment, onerous rules, and letting regulators interpret them as they wish.

Bill language also doesn't mandate a national animal ID system (NAIS) but does it by claiming it's in current law. It's so deceptive that Congress and consumer and food safety groups support it. But some are industry funded so look the other way when they should know better.

HR 875 and its companion bills are under consideration in committees, not yet voted into law. Activists feel now is the time to stop them before it's too late. Agribusiness wants total control over every step in the production, processing, distribution, storage, and marketing of foods to consumers.

Using the ruse of food safety and security, they aim to eliminate competition to have it all and replace wholesome foods with unsafe GMOs. Congress is willing to go along. And why not. Representatives like DeLauro get large Ag business contributions. In return, they assure bills like HR 875 are passed. It's for concerned people to stop them.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Center of 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.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12923

Israel's Illegal Annexation of East Jerusalem

Israel's Illegal Annexation of East Jerusalem - by Stephen Lendman

So says a confidential EU report revealed on March 7 by The London Guardian's Rory McCarthy. It accuses Israel "of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank (Separation) barrier as a way of 'actively pursuing the illegal annexation' of East Jerusalem." More still, including restrictive permits, "closure of Palestinian institutions," and various other ways to "increase Jewish presence in" the city, "impede Palestinian urban development, and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank" incrementally to annex it.

It says plans are now accelerated and have undermined the Palestinian Authority's (PA) credibility as well as weakened support for peace. It calls "Israel's actions in and around Jerusalem....one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making (yet) have limited security justifications." In addition, they're illegal.

Israel dismissed the criticisms as "a disinformation campaign" and claimed that "mayor Nir Barkat continues to promote investments in infrastructure, construction and education in East Jerusalem, while at the same time upholding the law throughout West and East Jerusalem equally without bias." Those comments, of course, have no basis in fact nor do any from Israeli officials with regard to Palestinians.

The EU report cites Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibits "Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory...." Neither shall "The Occupying Power....deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." In addition, numerous UN resolutions established "no legal validity" for settlement building or for East Jerusalem's annexation.

Yet settlement expansions continue at a "rapid pace" - in the past year alone with nearly 5500 new units submitted for public review, 3000 of which have been approved. Through yearend 2008, they number in total around 470,000, including 190,000 in Arab East Jerusalem.

Of particular concern are "settlements inside the Old City, where there were plans (for) 35 housing units in the Muslim quarter, as well as (more) for Silwan, just outside the Old City walls" - the idea being to connect East Jerusalem with Old City settlements, then "sever" them from the West Bank.

The Guardian's McCarthy states:

"There are plans for 3500 housing units, an industrial park, two police stations and other infrastructure in a controversial area known as E1, between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Adumin, home to 31,000 settlers." The EU report called Israeli E1 measures "one of the most significant challenges to the....peace process."

Israel responded as expected - that it's "committed to the continued development of the city for the benefits of all its population," and that East Jerusalem Palestinians are better off than those in the West Bank," according to Olmert spokesman, Mark Regev. The EU clearly disagrees. So do human rights activists and Palestinians throughout the Territories living under an oppressive military occupation where international laws are debased so none of their rights are observed.

More from the "EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem"

No longer confidential, the reports documents numerous abuses in spite of Israeli denials to the contrary. Besides the above:

-- in October 2008, a new synagogue was inaugurated "in the immediate vicinity of the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount" raising Palestinian concerns about Israel's plans to take over the sanctuary as extremist settlers are promoting;

-- the recent "Mufti's Grove" confiscation of 29 dunums (around seven acres) for settler development;

-- increased settler incursions into the Haram Al Sharif on the Temple Mount, at times protected by Israeli security forces;

-- Palestinian properties are being targeted and families evicted from their homes;

-- provocative settlement expansions are continuing "in the heart of the Palestinian population;"

-- Palestinian urban development is being impeded "by depriving East Jerusalem of most of the still vacant areas available for economic and demographic growth;"

-- land is being confiscated for road construction;

-- the Separation Wall and "permit regime" cause "serious humanitarian, social and economic impact on Palestinian life;" in addition, 86% of it is on stolen land inside the Green Line; "the Wall in the Jerusalem area de facto annexes 3.9% of the West Bank" and extends Israel's border illegally; by including "illegal settlements, (the Wall) cuts off 285,000 Palestinians," including East Jerusalem, from the West Bank creating enormous hardships as a result;

-- as more of the Wall is completed, "the checkpoint and permit regime imposed on West Bankers is being tightened;" only around 20% of farmers have permits for their land; the impact on their lives is "serious;" once the Wall is completed, it's "estimated that 35,000 Palestinians will need permits for their own homes" with no assurance they'll get them;

-- East Jerusalem's Al Quds University's Beit Hanina Campus is also affected; it reports a 70% drop in students;

-- fewer Palestinian Christians and Muslims have access to religious sites;

-- West Bank and East Jerusalem economies have declined with customers cut off from markets and services;

-- East Jerusalem hospitals providing specialist healthcare face "increasing difficulties providing services for (West Bank) patients" who can't access it without permits;

-- East Jerusalemities get miniscule budgets that greatly restrict essential public services - "in sharp contrast to areas where Israelis live both in West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem settlements;"

-- severe municipality restrictions impede "the building of Palestinian housing in East Jerusalem;" very few permits are issued for it;

-- "since Israel annexed East Jerusalem, more than 35% of its territory has been expropriated (more than 24 sq. km);" of the remainder, much is unzoned and off limits for construction; even in zoned areas, "development has been artificially 'capped,' leaving only 12% of East Jerusalem (mostly originally Palestinian owned land) for Palestinian residential purposes;"

-- building anywhere without permits means likely demolition, but getting one is onerous; authorities issue fewer than 200 a year, and "even these require a wait of several years and are usually a costly affair;"

-- various other obstacles and restrictions make life for East Jerusalem Palestinians difficult to impossible, yet Israel finds new ways of imposing them.

Bricup's "Report on East Jerusalem"

Bricup is the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine, "an organisation set up in response to the Palestinian Call for Academic Boycott" - with twin missions:

-- "to support Palestinian universities, staff and students," and

-- "to oppose the continued illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands with its concomitant breaches of international conventions of human rights, its refusal to accept UN resolutions or rulings of the International Court (ICJ), and its persistent suppression of Palestinian academic freedom."

Undated but likely from mid to late 2005, its report calls "East Jerusalem....of central importance to the Palestinians in political, economic, social and religious terms. Several inter-linked Israeli policies are reducing the possibility of reaching a final status agreement on Jerusalem," and show Israel's clear intent to make its East Jerusalem annexation "a concrete fact" by:

-- completing the Separation Wall to encircle the city;

-- continuing illegal settlement expansions;

-- annexing East Jerusalem one demolished home at a time;

-- strictly enforcing rules separating East Jerusalem Palestinians from those in the West Bank, including by a reduced number of work permits; and

-- the Jerusalem municipality's discriminatory taxation, expenditure, and building permit policies.

Along with continued home demolitions, expanding the Ma'aleh Adumin settlement into area E1 threatens to completely encircle the city with Jewish settlements and split the West Bank in two. Once the Separation Wall is completed, East Jerusalem will be isolated physically, politically, commercially and socially. With justification, Palestinians fear that Israel will "get away with it," seriously erode any chance for peace, and radicalize "the hitherto relatively quiescent " East Jerusalem population.

Jerusalem remains one of the thorniest issues in reaching an equitable resolution to the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, yet Tel Aviv appears determined to make it harder. EU policy is based (if not enforced) on the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 242 (November 1967) that calls for "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." As a result, EU member states (nominally at least) reject East Jerusalem's annexation or any measures to change its status. Nonetheless, Israel continues to violate international laws, and as a result, creates huge humanitarian and political fallout, so far with impunity.

Bricup wants but hasn't gotten clear EU and Quartet statements for Israel to desist from all illegal and disruptive policies or face political consequences if it refuses. As long as that persists, resolution to the long-running conflict remains stymied with Israel in command and Palestinians faced with the continued loss of their rights and land.

Historical Background and Basic Information on Occupied Palestine and Jerusalem

In November 1947, six months before Israel became a state, the General Assembly Partition Plan (Resolution 181) gave Jews 56% of historic Palestine, Palestinians 42%, with 2% kept under internationalized trusteeship, including Jerusalem. Israel's 1948 War of Independence seized 78%. Then in December, UN Resolution 194 mandated free access to Jerusalem, other holy places, and granted Palestinians the right of return.

In May 1949, UN Resolution 273 gave Israel UN membership conditional on it accepting resolutions 181 and 194 and "unreservedly (agreeing to honor) the obligations of the United Nations Charter." However, earlier in June 1948, the Israeli cabinet (with no formal vote) barred Palestinian refugees from returning and adopted "Israelification" and "De-Arabization" as policy, especially with regard to Jerusalem. The same policy holds today to preserve Israel's "Jewish character" and confine Palestinians to isolation, confinement, and continued oppression under military occupation.

From May 1948 until June 1967, Israel controlled West Jerusalem's 38 square kilometers while Jordan governed East Jerusalem's six square km area. After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel annexed 70 square West Bank km, including East Jerusalem, 28 Palestinian villages, and parts of Bethlehem and Beit Jala's municipalities to make Jerusalem Israel's largest city. Also its most controversial by creating a Jewish majority to solidify Israeli sovereignty over the city henceforth.

Palestinian villages were divided to exclude heavily-populated areas, and much of their land was expropriated for Jews. Remaining Palestinians became "permanent residents:"

-- unwanted on their own land;

-- treated like foreign immigrants;

-- denied most citizenship rights, even for native Jerusalemites with roots going back generations or longer; and

-- targeted by Israel for removal - one home demolition at a time to make way for new Jewish settlements.

As of year end 2005, Jerusalem's population was 723,700, according to B'Tselem - 482,000 Jews (67%) and 241,000 Palestinians (33%). The Jewish Virtual Library's numbers are even more one-sided at 582,700 Jews (69%), 240,900 Palestinians (29%), and 15,700 Christians (2%) for an 839,300 total.

Israel constrains a faster-growing Palestinian population by:

-- expropriating Palestinian land, by individual seizures and the Separation Wall;

-- physically isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank;

-- employing discriminatory policies, including land expropriation, home demolitions, building restrictions including denial of permits, and other restrictive measures;

-- revoking residency and other benefits of Palestinians who stay abroad for seven years or who can't prove that Jerusalem is their home; and

-- providing East Jerusalem few services to cause severe deprivation and encourage its residents to leave; sanitation facilities are sorely lacking; sewage and drainage infrastructure is grossly inadequate; infrastructure overall is in disrepair; trash goes uncollected and piles up in streets; the postal service barely functions; few neighborhoods get fresh water; educational facilities are few and deplorable, and much more;

-- raising poverty to outlandish levels; in 2003, Central Bureau of Statistics data showed the damage - 64% of East Jerusalem Palestinians lived in poverty; for children, it was 76%; today the numbers are likely higher; and

-- using police and security force harshness to exacerbate conditions through harassment, violence, terror, and killings.

East Jerusalem remains illegally annexed and occupied. In addition, all the above infringements violate Fourth Geneva law that requires an occupying power to provide essential goods and services and do nothing to restrict them. It also prohibits "violence to life and person (including) murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture (and) outrages upon personal dignity." It designates everyone under occupation as "protected persons" fully covered by law. It bans "Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons (anywhere) or transfer (of) parts of its own population into the territory it occupies." Israel is in violation on all counts, and consider others as well below.

Obstacles to Palestinian Family Unification

Until May 2002, Israeli citizens, including Arabs, married to Palestinians in the Territories could live with their spouses in Israel, after completing a lengthy Ministry of Interior process to OK it. No longer after the government froze the application process and on July 31, 2003 passed the Nationality and Entry into Israel (Temporary Order) Law, 5763 - 2003. Thereafter, it was renewed.

The statute henceforth prohibits Israelis from bringing their Territory spouses into Israel, and children as well are harmed. Those residing in East Jerusalem who were born in the Territories are barred from residency in Israel.

As a result, tens of thousands are affected. Couples violating the law risk serious recriminations if caught, even in East Jerusalem, the West Bank or Gaza. Without a special permit, Israelis are forbidden to enter Gaza or Area A in the West Bank. However, couples who married before the law's enactment, in cases where Territory spouses hadn't yet received permanent Israeli status, may live together provided the Civil Administration issues a permit, something extremely hard to get and often cancelled.

Israel's "demographic bomb" is the problem - meaning the time when a faster-growing Palestinian population becomes a majority and threatens the Jewish State's character. Israel's solution is repressive laws and violent ethnic cleansing to prevent it, in Israel and the Territories.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, some Knesset members, and couples harmed by the law petitioned the Supreme Court to void it. However, on May 14, 2006, Israel's High Court of Justice upheld it in spite of several UN agencies (UNHRC, UNCERD, and UNCEDAW) and human rights organizations calling for its revocation.

Its opponents call it discriminatory, racist, and in violation of international law for infringing on family life, privacy, dignity, and equality by treating Jews one way and Palestinians another. Various international conventions to which Israel is a signatory prohibit the practice, including the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the Convention for the Rights of the Child. Nonetheless, so far it stands.

Annexation Through One Home Demolition at A Time

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) helps rebuild homes. It also resists "land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of 'closure' and 'separation,' " destruction of agricultural land and crops, and the repressive effects of occupation, but its original mission was to oppose and resist house demolitions in the Occupied Territories.

From 1967 through December 2008, ICAHD estimates that 23,535 Palestinian homes overall have been destroyed from information gotten from the Israeli Ministry of Interior, the Jerusalem Municipality, the Civil Administration, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA), other UN sources, Palestinian human rights groups, Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW), and other sources. It classifies types of demolitions as:

-- punitive as punishment for actions associated with the houses (around 8.7%);

-- administrative for lack of a building permit (around 26.7%);

-- land-clearing and by the military to clear land for any reason, achieve an IDF goal, or accompany extrajudicial assassinations (about 64.5%); and

-- other reasons so far undefined.

Below is an account of one for lack of a permit - a clear testimony to the harshness of the practice.

On July 28, 2008, Hiba al-Almi gave this account about her family's dream to buy a home. In 2002, her father spent $200,000 for an apartment, "all his savings. The contractor showed him the building permit he had received" to reassure him. In June 2006, "we moved in. The next day, policemen and Jerusalem Municipality officials came and handed us a demolition order." The building permit apparently wasn't valid.

On October 18, 2006, final demolition orders were posted on the building, "and we began to remove our furniture." With legal help, the order was postponed, and by November her family moved back. In July 2008, "teams of inspectors and Border Police forces came to the house a few times." They photographed the building without explanation.

On July 27 at around 11:30AM, "my parents were abroad and I was home alone. The bell rang and when I opened the door, I saw three Jerusalem Municipality inspectors and a Border Police officer with high ranking insignias on his shoulder." They entered and inspected room to room.

Hiba slept that night at her aunt's house as she didn't want to be at home alone. At around 1AM, a neighbor called, said police might return that night, so "Around 2, I returned home with my aunt....Around 3:30AM, I heard" stun gun grenades exploding, then banging on the door. "When I opened (it), a few policemen burst in with black masks on their faces," accompanied by "five huge dogs...."

She and her aunt were ordered out of the building "immediately," not allowed to get dressed, sworn at, slapped, hit in the back, threatened by one of the dogs, then grabbed by the hair, thrown to the ground, and kicked. A policeman then pushed her out of the apartment and down the stairs. Other police were in the stairway, and they hit and punched her as well. She begged them to let her go back to retrieve valuables and a school project on her computer. They refused and said everything would be brought out with the furniture.

Her father returned the next day at 11:30AM but was prevented from entering the building. At around 6:30PM, there was a loud explosion after which the "whole building collapsed, and my life was buried with it. All my mementos and pictures of the family were buried in the ruins." All the furniture and much other property and valuables were lost. The family now lives in a rented house, deeply scarred by the incident, that's repeated many times throughout the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

Denial of Social Rights to East Jerusalem Palestinians

To receive them, including health coverage, individuals must be an "Israeli resident." East Jerusalem Palestinians are not so are lawfully excluded from entitlements. Especially suspect are East Jerusalemites married to non-resident Palestinians so nearly always allotment request investigations are conducted to check their validity - to verify if applicants live in Jerusalem lawfully. They take months and are often denied in violation of residents' rights. When resident parents want to register children, additional investigations are begun that again take months so that thousands of resident minors end up denied services.

The idea is to toughen policies against East Jerusalem Palestinians and make their lives as harsh as possible toward the goal of reducing their numbers to provide more areas for Jews.

A Final Comment

Early in its history, Zionists chose confrontation over conciliation and used violence to achieve political aims. Thereafter came wars, state-sponsored terrorism, military occupation, ethnic cleansing, land theft, police state justice, and slow motion genocide to rid "Greater Israel" of Arabs and solidify its character as a Jewish state - most of all in Jerusalem, a "sacred city" for Zionists with lots of biblical nonsense and myths for support.

Ever since, Palestinians have suffered grievously for over six decades and under occupation since 1967. Sabbah Haitham's blog says it well:

"YOU take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bomb my country, starve us all, humiliate us all....BUT....I am to blame: I shot a rocket back."

Nothing on the horizon promises Sabbah relief because world leaders, above all in America, exempt Israel from international law and give its government license to plunder, oppress, and terrorize defenseless Palestinians with impunity, separate them in isolated cantons, keep them under military occupation, starve them to death in Gaza under siege and ruthless bombings, and purge them relentlessly from the "sacred city" of Jerusalem.

That's where things stand today under new leadership in Tel Aviv, Washington, and a complicit West Bank coup d'etat Palestinian government serving Israel as its enforcer and in the process betraying its own people.

When will it end? When people everywhere say enough is enough and join the Global BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) Movement to punish Israel until it complies with international law, recognizes Palestinian self-determination, ends its illegal occupation, disbands its settlements, demolishes the Separation Wall, grants Israeli Arabs equal rights as Jews, recognizes the right of return, and gives Palestinians their legal claim to Jerusalem for their capital. Global grassroots movements are determined to make it happen.

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 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.

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