Postmodern News Archives 5

2006-07-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

Israel, Racism, and the Canadian Media

By Dan Freeman-Maloy
Canadian Dimension
2006

In the Canadian media, Israel is provoked, and then responds. For the military attacks on the Gaza Strip in late June and early July, we are told that the provocation was the June 25 operation by Palestinian resistance fighters against a military outpost near Gaza, and specifically the capture of an Israeli tank gunner.

The Palestinian operation, according to most Canadian media, was unprovoked - it could not have been provoked by the Israeli attacks leading up to the operation, though in June alone these had already killed 49 Palestinians. Nor could it have been provoked by the imprisonment of 359 Palestinian children, 105 Palestinian female adults and another 9000+ Arab males (mostly Palestinians) in Israeli jails, or by the mass starvation of Gaza. As a June 30 editorial in the Globe and Mail put it, “the onus for resolving the confrontation lies with Hamas,” and while Palestinians must quietly endure tank shelling, air strikes and starvation, “Israel is within its right to respond to terrorism and violence.”

Without pause, Israel has since gone on to invade Lebanon, killing hundreds of Lebanese, while Gaza continues to starve. In the Canadian media, Israel was provoked to do so, in this case by the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah.

Hizbollah has not been provoked in the same way the Palestinians have been. So what prompted their action? An obvious possibility is that they were moved to action by the Israeli assault on Gaza. By the time Hizbollah carried out its July 12 attack, the Israeli escalation following June 25 had already claimed another 67 Palestinian lives. More direct grievances with Israel include the continued Israeli imprisonment of many Lebanese, particularly Hizbollah supporters, and the Israeli live ammunition training on the Lebanese border which recently killed several Lebanese villagers. But one could barely begin to consider this on the basis of information provided by Canadian media. No attacks on Israel can have been provoked. All of Israel’s attacks must be provoked and defensive.

On July 13, Prime Minister Stephen Harper revealed the extent to which this logic has come to dominate Canadian diplomacy. With the Israeli military intensifying its assault on the Lebanese population and on critical civilian infrastructure, Harper described the massive attack as a “measured” exercise of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” Mainstream media joined in the chorus: “Faced with such aggression, Israel had no choice but to strike back,” a July 15 Globe and Mail editorial declared. The next day, several Canadians were added to the sky-rocketing death count from Israeli massacres.

Israel’s massacres in Gaza and southern Lebanon coincide with a shift in Canadian foreign policy. Under the past two regimes (Martin’s Liberals and now Harper’s Conservatives), Canada has rapidly shed any pretense of having an independent foreign policy and has aligned itself completely with the United States, Israel’s chief financial backer and arms dealer. Where past Canadian regimes would have settled for silent complicity in war crimes, Harper actively cheers and participates in them. This drastic realignment of Canadian policy happens at a time when the U.S. and Israel are embarking on aggressive, criminal wars involving major human rights violations.

For Canadians to accept this, they will have to consume an equally drastic dose of racism, dehumanization, and distorted understanding. Getting them to do so may be somewhat of a challenge. The Canadian media have taken up the task with gusto.

Aggression and defense

“No nation would stand by while its enemies bombarded its towns and cities.” -Globe and Mail Editorial, July 15

Of course, the Globe’s editors were not talking about the Palestinian nation. The Palestinians are expected to stand by while Israel bombards its towns and cities, as it has been doing continuously for the past six years, with a sharp escalation in June - well before June 25, by which time of the month 49 Palestinians had already been killed. But when Palestinians resist through armed struggle, we read on the Globe and Mail’s editorial pages that Israel’s “right to respond to the latest Palestinian provocations is beyond question.” We cannot expect “superhuman effort” from Israel, the editors explain, and this is what would be required “to resist retaliating.”

Through most of June, the situation was quite different - but then it was only Palestinians who were being killed, only Palestinians who were starving. This was, in the words of the Toronto Star’s Mitch Potter, a period of “relative calm.” For disturbing this calm, Palestinians bear a double responsibility: for aggression against Israel, and for forcing Israel to attack Palestinians in response. As Potter insists on repeating, the ongoing Israeli assault was itself “sparked initially by the June 25 capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants.”

In fact, if the notion of self-defense was applied with any consistency, the operation of June 25 would be beyond reproach. Following an economic siege and recurring air strikes on their communities, Palestinian fighters based in the Gaza Strip initiated an attack against the Israeli military. This is no small feat, since Gaza’s airspace and borders are under tight Israeli control, and it is difficult for a lightly armed popular resistance to bring down F-16s. Nonetheless, the fighters managed to tunnel their way underground for hundreds of metres, deep beneath Israeli fortifications, to reach a military outpost for their raid. Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting, as were two Palestinians, creating a very rare symmetry in the death count. Palestinian fighters also destroyed an Israeli tank, likely one of those that regularly shell Palestinian communities from such outposts. They captured the tank gunner and brought him back to Gaza as a prisoner of war.

The Palestinian resistance thus had one Israeli detainee, as against some 10,000 prisoners on the Israeli side. The resistance group offered a limited exchange. They would release the tank gunner if Israel freed Palestinian child prisoners, female prisoners, and approximately 1,000 “administrative detainees” currently in Israeli prisons without charge. A negotiated settlement reached through conditions of reciprocity and dignity could well have seen the soldier released. But Israel had a different plan.

As former Israeli intelligence director Shlomo Gazit explained, the situation served as a “pretext” for escalating military operations in Gaza. Israeli forces began a series of forceful incursions, destroying critical civilian infrastructure though air strikes, shelling Palestinian communities, and instituting a comprehensive siege on the territory. These escalations quickly revealed the Israeli goal as regime change. The Israeli military rounded up and detained 64 political leaders from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, including elected legislators and a third of the Palestinian Cabinet. It began aerial bombardment of central civilian structures housing the Palestinian Authority.

The Israeli regime responsible for these attacks enjoys thorough support from the Canadian government. Its Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, visited Canada little more than a year ago. During the visit, he received a pledge from the federal government that it would maintain preferential trade policies towards Israel. Olmert also visited Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty at Queen’s Park, where he helped to set up a parallel provincial trade arrangement. Joking with reporters as he presented McGuinty with a gift, Olmert asked: “Do you want us to hug?”[http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=6122&s=1http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=6122&s=1] Olmert and Canadian officials did everything but.

The Harper government strengthened links with Israel further, making Canada still more complicit in ongoing Israeli crimes. As Israeli attacks ravaged Gaza, journalists with concern for ‘balance’ ought to have paid attention to who was doing the killing and who the victims were.

Instead, Canadian media continued shifting focus to Palestinian culpability and encouraging the government’s pro-Israel partisanship. The spin in news coverage was spelled out explicitly on editorial pages. The Toronto Star’s editors called attention to “the folly of what [Palestinians] wrought by electing a Hamas government,” while staking limited optimism on “the hope of a chastened Palestinian Authority.”(June 29) The editors of the National Post and the Globe and Mail held Palestinians directly responsible for Israeli attacks. “That there is a humanitarian tragedy afflicting the Palestinian people there can be no doubt,” a July 29 National Post editorial conceded, “but in the current context it is a tragedy entirely of their own making.” On June 30, the Globe’s editors hammered away at the same theme: “The main responsibility for the death and destruction that has followed [June 25] lies with Palestinian militants and leaders.”

The capture of a tank gunner as a prisoner of war was translated into an act of aggression, a “kidnapping.” Within a couple of weeks, the three leading Anglo Canadian dailies - the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the National Post - had published the name of the captured (”kidnapped”) soldier more than 100 times, often alongside his age and other personal information. The Globe’s Shira Herzog, reflecting a broad journalistic consensus, explained that strong Israeli retaliation was necessary: Israel “is a country that takes collective pride in the sanctity of every life, an ethos that comforts Israeli soldiers in combat who know that no human effort will be spared to rescue even a single one of them from enemy territory, dead or alive.”

As for the apparent contradiction given Israel’s approach to the lives of Palestinian prisoners, the issue could not be ignored entirely. On the thorny issue of child prisoners, the Globe referred readers to a front-page article on the topic it had published on June 19, titled “Getting locked up to get away from it all.” The piece argued that Palestinian children view imprisonment in Israeli jails as “a dream vacation” and are getting themselves imprisoned willfully as part of a Palestinian cultural trend. Regarding female prisoners, the paper published a June 27 report titled “Palestinian female prisoners have ‘blood on their hands.’” The title was based on a quote from the Israeli prison authority, and the article assured readers that those Palestinian women convicted in Israeli military courts were quite guilty and very bad. The Post, for its part, ran an editorial referring without distinction to all the Palestinians whom the resistance was demanding be released - children, women and “administrative detainees” alike - as “fanatics now justifiably languishing in Israeli prisons.”

Canadian media thus followed the Israeli lead, prizing the sanctity of every Israeli life while holding Palestinian lives in utter contempt.

Dehumanizing Palestinians

“It is our duty to prevent any danger of losing a Jewish majority or creating an inseparable bi-national reality in the Land of Israel.” -Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, June 20, 2006 (Speech to the 35th Zionist Congress in Jerusalem)

As disturbing as it is, contempt for Palestinian life on the part of Israel and its supporters is unsurprising. It is, in fact, a necessary cornerstone of the ideology of political Zionism, which guides the Israeli political establishment and determines the core of Israeli policy.

This policy is based on the determination to establish and maintain a state with a Jewish majority on lands that have long been home to a predominantly non-Jewish native population. Pursuit of this goal has involved expelling Palestinians from these lands, prohibiting their right to return to their homes, and encouraging large-scale Zionist settlement from abroad. This is a recipe for perpetual crisis and violence. Israeli forces effectively control all of historic (mandatory) Palestine, the territory stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And despite Israel’s forced exile of millions of Palestinians from these lands, the present inhabitants of this territory are in the majority not Jewish.

For Canadians to support Israel, they must adopt the Israeli perspective regarding the native population of this land, the view that the Palestinian population is an ethnic imbalance to be corrected, a problem to be dealt with, a “demographic threat” to a state which must be made “Jewish” at all costs. This thoroughly racist position frames mainstream Canadian debate.

It is hardly worth quoting the National Post on this, given that the paper is operated by CanWest Global, a media conglomerate founded by two of Canada’s leading Israel lobbyists (Israel Asper and Gerry Schwartz). But the position holds firm on the liberal wing of the Canadian mainstream.

Consider, for example, the work of Mitch Potter, the Toronto Star’s leading Israel-Palestine pundit in recent weeks. Potter is aware that Gaza is not the planet’s most densely-populated area by accident, but largely as a result of the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the 78% of historic Palestine occupied by Zionist forces in 1948 (when Zionists took their first real stab at achieving a Jewish majority). Some 700,000 Palestinians were then expelled from the territory claimed as the State of Israel, forced into either neighboring countries or the 22% of Palestine still outside of Zionist control (the West Bank and Gaza Strip). With respect to the southern Israeli settlement of Ashkelon, for example, Potter offers the following background: “The modern city was formed by Jewish immigrants to Israel in the site of the Arab town of Al-Majdal, whose 11,000 residents were mostly driven into Gaza after the 1948 war.”

Potter does not even feel it necessary to explain why those driven out cannot return to their homes in accord with the basic, inalienable rights of refugees displaced during wartime. Instead, Potter automatically assumes the Israeli perspective. He correctly explains that the Israeli “disengagement” from Gaza was simply an outgrowth of Israel’s agenda of ethnic and national discrimination. For obvious reasons, Israel has been finding it difficult to deny the indigenous presence on the land it has conquered. This difficulty, Potter explained, was addressed through an effort to permanently exclude the Palestinian refugees of Gaza from dominant settler society: “Analysts spoke of an emerging Israeli consensus that understood a bitter pill had to be swallowed once and for all in order for Israel to cure itself of the demographic realities of the burgeoning Palestinian birth rate.”

This is unabashed racism: the native majority population is described as a disease to be treated by state policy, though even conceding Palestinians a stretch of land to starve on is a “bitter pill.” None of the leading Canadian newspapers published a serious challenge to this racism.

Instead, they repeatedly published the flimsy argument that such a challenge would itself be racist. In a rhetorical sleight of hand that has become quite familiar, commentators repeatedly suggested that basic principles of human and national rights must be sacrificed on the altar of political Zionism, and that defending the rights of Palestinians (particularly those in exile) amounts to anti-Jewish racism. The point was put clearly in a July 3 column in the Globe and Mail: “it’s anti-Semitic to call, as CUPE did [http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hanieh310506.htmlhttp://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/hanieh310506.html], for an unconditional right of return of all Palestinian refugees, since such a massive demographic change would mean the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.”

The Globe thus tells us that Palestine’s indigenous population is not only inferior and troublesome, but also oppressively racist by its very presence.

From this perspective, contempt for Palestinian life comes all too naturally. On June 29, the National Post, ever a mouthpiece for Israeli diplomacy, addressed the issue through an interview with Israeli foreign and deputy prime minister Tzipi Livni. For Livni, as reporter Douglas Davis uncritically relayed to readers, international contempt for Palestinian life is still insufficient: “She is particularly irritated by the equivalence given to the deaths of Palestinian and Israeli children . ‘Only when the world sends the right message to the terrorists will they understand that it’s not the same.’” Canada’s leading journalists have already gotten the message.

Consider, again, the work of Mitch Potter, who in his recent position as the Toronto Star’s leading Israel-Palestine pundit is a canary in the mineshaft of liberal Canadian racism. On June 30, just one day after the publication of Livni’s anti-”equivalency” plea, Potter made the following assertion: “Despite five days of international headlines there has been but a single death - that of kidnapped 18-year-old Israeli hitchhiker Eliyahu Asheri.”

Apparently, it was not worth counting the two Palestinian children, aged 2 and 17, who were killed on June 28 by an unexploded Israeli shell in the Gaza community of Khan Yunis (though this had even been reported in the New York Times). Nor was it worth retracting or correcting Potter’s statement in light of the Israeli military’s killing of a Palestinian in nearby Rafah at 2am on the morning of the 30th, or of another in the West Bank city of Nablus a little more than 3 hours later (already by 6:13am, Agence France Press had reported the Nablus killing). There were reports of other deaths during this period, which Potter or his editors could easily have investigated if they took Palestinian life seriously.

Evidently, they do not. As the Palestinian death toll mounted in the following week, denying the fatalities outright became untenable. Instead, Potter reduced Palestinian resistance to stubborn stupidity and described the fallen fighters as animals: “Another batch of Palestinian militants drawn out lemming-like and falling by the dozen to higher-calibre Israeli fire, just like their predecessors.” [For Potter to call Palestinians lemmings is certainly ironic].

Falling, he might have added, to U.S. weapons, with the support of Canadian foreign policy and its loyal pundits.

Whitewashing collective punishment

“Hezbollah and Hamas . triggered the current crisis by staging guerrilla raids into Israel” -Toronto Star, July 19 (reporter Less Whittington)

On July 12, Hizbollah, for decades the main southern Lebanese group in resistance to Israel, captured two Israeli soldiers and killed two more on the Israel-Lebanon border. That day, Israel not only killed 23 Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but also began to bomb Beirut. Israeli military action against Lebanon swiftly escalated. On July 15, for example, Reuters reported that Israel used loudspeakers to order Lebanese civilians to leave the village of Marwaheen. 20 people, including 15 children, got in a van to leave. Israel then bombed the van, killing them all.

Of all of Israel’s international allies, including the United States, the Harper government was widely regarded as the most outspoken diplomatic supporter of escalating Israeli attacks. For Canadian media, fully accustomed to whitewashing Israeli atrocities, this was only appropriate. Massacres and the war crime of collective punishment were sanitized and reduced to offhand euphemisms: “As in the Palestinian territories,” the Globe’s Orly Halpern reported, “Israel is ratcheting up the pressure on the civilian population in an effort to push the Lebanese to reject Hezbollah tactics.”(July 14)

And as in Palestinian territory, the attacks were a matter of defense. On July 15, the Globe editorialized: “The kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers, in a small country that holds the life of every soldier dear, was a grievous provocation. Coming just weeks after the seizing of another soldier by militants at the other end of the country, it looks like a coordinated campaign of intimidation.”

The imputed “coordinated campaign of intimidation,” which Globe editors disapprove of, is not to be confused with Israel’s “ratcheting up the pressure on the civilian population,” with which the Globe raises only strategic objections.

As Israel continued to kill and starve Palestinians, and as the Lebanese death toll from Israeli massacres mounted into the hundreds (with several Canadians killed in the indiscriminate bombardment), Mitch Potter explained that Palestinians now shared blame for the violence - with Hizbollah: “The words Hamas and Hezbollah may sound equally foreboding to most Western ears. And the militant merger of the two has brought the Middle East to the brink of regional war.” (July 16)

Even for the killing of Canadians, Israeli culpability was sidelined: “Lebanon terror hits home,” read a Toronto Star headline on the topic for July 17; “Canadians were killed in crossfire of fight with Hezbollah,” read another headline, this one from the July 18 issue of the Globe and Mail. In much of the coverage, it was as if Canadians were fleeing a natural disaster, not a campaign of collective punishment fully condoned by the Harper government.

The reliance on Israeli sources became almost comical. By July 19, the Lebanese death count from Israeli massacres had reached 312, with more than 100,000 civilians displaced. As Canadians scrambled to leave Lebanon amidst the Israeli assault, the public relations line of the chief Israeli diplomatic to Canada received the widest possible circulation through a story printed by the Canadian Press. Drawing entirely from unsubstantiated claims, the piece ran with the headline “Canadians fleeing Lebanon could be Hezbollah targets: Israeli ambassador.”

Israel has since pledged to continue its invasion of Lebanon for weeks to come, and both the Canadian government and Canadian media are lining up in support. The Toronto Star’s Mitch Potter continues to get front-page attention for his articles, led by prominent cover references to Lebanese “terror” (July 18) and the suggestion that Hizbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah could be the “next Osama bin Laden” (July 19). Potter’s journalism is shallow public relations, most recently for Israeli assassination efforts against Nasrallah. Potter has described the leader as an eloquent, strategic figure with a mass base for regional resistance to Israel. From his vantage point in “the corridors of power” in Israel, Potter notes that “the strategies for Israeli victory are converging on Nasrallah’s head.”

Israel, while pledging a prolonged attack on Lebanon, has continued its atrocities in Gaza and escalated attacks on the West Bank, with incursions into the Palestinian towns of Nablus (where the Israeli military took over the municipality building, smashed cars and shot indiscriminately at residents’ houses), Tulkarem, Bethlehem and Jenin.

The Harper government’s nearly unconditional support for this Israeli aggression is scandalous, matched only by the media’s support for Harper. On July 20, the Globe and Mail’s editors reaffirmed this. The title of the editorial in ‘Canada’s national newspaper,’ which praised Harper for his “refreshing” pro-Israel diplomacy, conveys the general tone of coverage: “Harper is right on the Mideast.”

Mounting a challenge
There are indications that the Canadian population may be lagging behind the political establishment in its contempt for Palestinians. At the end of 2004, the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC) released polls which offer some hope in this regard. They found that prior to the recent intensification of support for Israel, official Canadian pro-Israel partisanship was opposed by majority public opinion. The polls found that the more Canadians learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict, the more they sympathize with the Palestinian cause.

In recent months, this sympathy has found increasingly organized expression. The past week’s massive demonstrations in Montreal come on the heels of various important displays of regional solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. Prominent among these is the decision by the Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE-Ontario), Canada’s largest union of public sector workers, to identify Israel’s regime of systematic ethnic and national discrimination as apartheid, and to join the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until apartheid is dismantled. This movement is continuing to spread, and is picking up momentum within the United Church and elsewhere.

As the Canadian government opts instead for open rejection of the rights of Palestinians (and Lebanese), “Israel advocacy” groups like the Canada-Israel Committee take comfort in support from the mainstream press. When the Harper government became the first of Israel’s allies to support renewed suffocation of the Palestinian economy (in March 2006), CIC communications director Paul Michaels commented happily that the “decision was greeted positively on the editorial pages of most Canadian newspapers.” Again in late June, Canadian media indifference to attacks on Palestinians occasioned the expression of satisfaction on the part of the CIC: “While events on the ground included several Israeli air strikes in which civilians were injured or killed, this week’s media coverage was fairly light.”

With support from the government and the corporate press, Israel’s allies pretend to near universal Canadian representation. They are in turn able to depict Palestine solidarity as a rejection of the popular consensus: “This week,” a Globe article on July 8 declared, “public opinion was inflamed again when, contrary to the outrage [against CUPE for its Palestine work], the Toronto Conference of the United Church of Canada commended CUPE Ontario for its stand, and echoed the union’s call for a boycott of Israeli goods.”

There is no denying the real strength of Canada’s institutional base of support for Israel. However, there is good reason to believe that this does not flow from “popular opinion.” Rather, it results from the eagerness of the Canadian government to harmonize its foreign policy with the U.S., the support of corporate Canada for this agenda, and the strength of Canadian “Israel advocacy” groups which draw support from corporate organization, the United States and Israel itself. Mainstream media are reflecting and shaping the pro-Israel consensus determined by these powerful interests. But they have yet to bring a real public consensus behind them.

In this context, opportunities for a successful challenge to Canadian support for Israel remain very real. But it is only outside of the political establishment that this challenge can be built, and only through alternative information systems that it can be sustained. In any event, it is clear that while genuine awareness of the Israel-Palestine conflict may translate into Palestine solidarity, the mainstream press, far from the solution, is quite near to the core of the problem

2006-07-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

Spinning Media for Government

By Chris Raphael
From CorpWatch
2005

A television pundit gets secret payments to promote a new United States government education policy. Columnists are paid to provide support for a White House marriage stance. Actresses play news reporters to promote drug laws. A system of ranking reporters who criticize official policy. These, and possibly many other public relations stunts, are some examples of publicity contracts paid for by the U.S. government, which has spent more than a quarter billion dollars on public relations in the past four years.

For example Armstrong Williams, a conservative African-American broadcaster, was paid $240,000 to produce advertisements on the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and plug the law in his syndicated television broadcasts. (see Leaving Children Behind)

The deal was brokered by Ketchum public relations, a subsidiary of media giant Omnicom, and approved by the U.S. Department of Education (DoE). In addition to the Williams contract, Ketchum was also paid $700,000 to rate media coverage of NCLB and produce video news releases on the law.

When the news of the Williams deal became public, Democratic members of Congress took a look at government contracts with PR firms, and the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform produced some quick but startling numbers. In a January report, the committee found that federal agencies spent more than $250 million on contracts with PR agencies between 2001 and 2004 – nearly twice as much as the $128 million that Clinton spent between 1997 and 2001.

“There used to be a time when our government would let the facts speak for themselves,” lamented Richard Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, during one Congressional debate. “It apparently is the position of the Bush administration that the facts in and of themselves are not articulate.”

Two more questionable examples have cropped up since the Williams flap. Conservative columnists Maggie Gallagher, whose writing is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate (which also publishes the Dear Abby column and comic strips like Doonesbury, Calvin & Hobbes and Garfield) and Mike McManus (whose work appears in over 50 newspapers like the Birmingham News in Alabama) were exposed as having been on the payroll of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Both columnists agreed to work on behalf of the Bush Administration efforts to promote marriage.

While President George Bush officially denounced the practice of government agencies paying commentators, it is yet to be seen whether the scandal will lead to any lasting ethical change on the part of some in the PR industry, where the need to identify political and ideological allies is routine practice, or on the part of the government, which has been historically concerned with the need to flash “positive” messages – and propaganda -- into what they perceive as a negative and hostile media landscape. Ketchum and the DoE, for instance, initially defended the Williams arrangement.

Ranking Reporters
According to the House report, companies owned by New York-based Omnicom have a virtual monopoly -- 89 percent -- of government PR contracts awarded between 2001 and 2004. The company, whose headquarters are on Madison Avenue, the heart of the advertising industry, reeled in $8.6 billion in revenue in 2003 from clients like Kodak, Dow Chemical and Heinz ketchup.

Ketchum held $97 million, one-third of the total, followed by the Matthews Media Group ($52 million), Fleishman-Hillard ($41 million) and Porter Novelli ($33 million).

While it is not known how many of these contracts involve practices such as the Williams deal, the government seems to take the scandal seriously. The list of agencies looking into PR contracts, in one way or the other, includes the Government Accountability Office, the Inspector General, the Federal Communications Commission, Congress and the Pentagon.

Ketchum, which has earned numerous Silver Anvils (the industry’s highest honor) from the Public Relations Society of America as well as a 2002 “Agency of the Year” award from PR Week, the popular industry magazine, initially responded to the incident via a January 13 PR Week editorial by Ray Kotcher, chief executive officer of Ketchum. In the editorial, Kotcher put a positive spin on the scandal, calling it a “transformational event.” He referred to Williams' behavior as "an oversight" and implied that the scandal was politically motivated.

“It is no coincidence that this activity occurred in Washington,” Kotcher wrote, “where political divisiveness is at an all-time high."

He also suggested the rise of punditry had something to do with the whole affair:

“Williams' unusual role as both a pundit and information source – through his ad-production firm – would seem to blur the lines that once so clearly defined journalism and news organizations,” Kothcer wrote. “I'm not sure even the media itself can agree anymore on how to strictly define and distinguish journalists and news organizations.”

As reporters hounded the firm, Ketchum released a later statement saying it had made a “lapse in judgment” -- but didn’t make the statement available on its website, as Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University noted. In his blog, PressThink, Rosen wrote that Ketchum’s site “shows no awareness at all that it is the ‘live’ public face of a company in the news and under pressure from peers. This would be mildly comical in the case of a chemical company. It is more amusing, and ironic in the instance of a public relations agency fighting for its reputation …”

In another curious development, a site on http://www.ketchum.com that touts the virtues of influencing public opinion leaders – through a special tool Ketchum calls “Influencer Relationship Management” – is no longer working.

Snapshots of the site on Wayback Machine (see http://www.archive.org and type in http://www.ketchum.com/IRM in the search bar) describe how the system works by “influencing the influencers.” The premise of Ketchum’s system, described in a press release and in snapshots of the site on Wayback Machine, is that there are a select group of people – such as elite media and analysts -- who mold public opinion. Through an “IRM portal,” clients can view the opinions of these influencers on an “attitude” scale. A snapshot of an “IRM portal” even seems to promise pictures of who these “influencers” are.

The DoE did not return calls seeking comment on whether they had access to the IRM portal, but Ketchum’s work for the DoE did entail identifying the reporters who routinely covered the NCLB Act, and ranking their stories.

According to documents obtained by People for the American Way, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit, Ketchum produced benchmark media analyses for the DoE showing how different newspapers and reporters in different states covered the NCLB Act. Stories were rated on a scale of 0 to 100 (with 100 being an “ideal media mention”), though some stories – “to allow for negative press,” as Ketchum put it -- earned marks less than zero.

Positive marks were given to stories that, among other things, mentioned that NCLB would "hold schools accountable for student's success," would "close the achievement gap," or generally mentioned that the Bush administration or the Republican party was "committed to education." Negative marks were given to stories which mentioned that 100 percent compliance with NCLB would be unrealistic, that the program is not properly funded, or that the Bush administration was interfering with state education duties.

The media analyses went on to rate the stories of reporters who covered NCLB most often. Low-ranked stories included few positive messages or else quoted NCLB critics, such as the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers. An op-ed by former Education Secretary Rod Paige earned the highest marks. The lowest marks? In one instance, Kenneth Remsen, a school principal who wrote a column for Vermont’s Burlington Free Press, received a mark of -70 for containing “12 negative messages” in an article Ketchum described as “creative conceit.”

This type of ranking isn't new. Former Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary found herself in a major flap in 1995, when it was revealed the Department of Energy hired a public relations firm to rank newspapers and reporters on department coverage. Today, it appears to have become standard practice within many PR firms.

"They [government agencies] can develop any kind of assessment they want," says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She doesn't see the practice of ranking reporters or news coverage as problematic -- unless it leads government agencies to deny reporters access. She noted the case of Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, who has directed his staff and 19 state agencies to stop speaking with two reporters from the Baltimore Sun.

Kevin Elliott, manager of PR giant Hill & Knowlton's San Francisco office, said ratings of media coverage are often produced because, from a public relations perspective, “it’s important to know which reporters to reach out to on a story.”

“A reason an organization might want to rank reporters is to track things like bias, accuracy…to see if the reporter understood the issue and had all the information,” said Mark Weiner, chief executive officer of Delahaye Medialink Worldwide, a media marketing and research firm. Technologies such as news database Lexis-Nexis, he added, have made the news-crunching task easier to perform.

The DoE did not return calls or an e-mail seeking comment, but told the Associated Press that the rankings did not influence how the department treated reporters. The Government Accountability Office is reportedly looking into how the ratings were used.

Reporter Greg Toppo of USA Today, which originally broke the Armstrong Williams story with a Freedom of Information Act request, said he had “no idea” what the DoE “was trying to accomplish.” In one analysis Ketchum produced, Toppo was given a score of 2 points for six articles that he produced between April and June of 2003 on NCLB. George Archibald of The Washington Times received a score of -2 points – “and he’s been generally supportive of NCLB, so the rankings don’t make much sense,” Toppo said.

“I was told that reporters who scored low would be targeted for some type of ‘re-education’ on NCLB, but no one ever contacted me,” Toppo said.

He also noted that the rankings didn’t lead to any kind of denial of access from the DoE -- but access, he said, “was pretty poor to begin with.”

Triangle of Silence
Omnicom, which holds 1,500 subsidiary agencies in public relations, advertising and other media industries, was also silent. A spokesperson in their New York office would only say that Ketchum was bound by Omnicom’s code of conduct, and referred all other calls to Ketchum, which did not return numerous calls and e-mails from CorpWatch. Ketchum has also referred other reporters to the DoE. But the DoE – which has defended the Williams arrangement while simultaneously pledging to get to the bottom of it – also did not return calls for comment.

Jack O’Dwyer, whose PR news website http://www.odwyerpr.com has been reporting on the Williams scandal, said he and his site have been playing the role of a default PR firm for Ketchum and Omnicom. He says has been handling media calls for the company – “supplying basic information, documents, and background including the history of PR and the major trends of the past few decades.” The companies might think twice about letting O’Dwyer handle their PR: He isn’t putting a positive spin on things, harrying both Ketchum and Omnicom in editorials such as “Heads Should Roll.”

PR Industry Denounces Ketchum
While the responses from Ketchum and Omnicom to the scandal were muted, the outcry from some in the PR industry itself was unequivocally clear. Richard Edelman, chief executive officer of Edelman Worldwide, the largest independent public relations firm, called the Williams incident “profoundly depressing.” He noted in his blog that advertising pays for space -- but PR “is supposed to earn it.”

“We are being asked to believe that the problem is convergence," Edelman continued, "that the blurring of the lines between advertising and PR is a function of technology and immediate access to information.” He disagreed with this rational, adding, “the response from several key members of the PR establishment is frankly very disappointing.”

Elliot Sloane, chief executive officer of Sloane & Company public relations, wrote that he withdrew his firm’s membership in the Council of Public Relations Firms after he said the agency laid the blame at Williams’ feet. Sloane called the response “tepid” and “apologetic,” although the Council has since said the kind of arrangement Ketchum had with Williams was “unacceptable.”

The Williams scandal comes at a bad time for the PR industry, which is under pressure from Wall Street to meet monthly financial goals and needs to “produce results almost immediately,” according to Judith Phair, president of the Public Relations Society of America.

At the same time, the industry is dealing with two major over-billing trials involving government agencies. In Los Angeles, John Stodder, a former Fleishman-Hillard senior vice president, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly helping to submit false bills that defrauded $250,000 from the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, which held a $3 million annual contract with Fleishman-Hillard. Stodder has pled not guilty to numerous counts of wire fraud.

Elsewhere, in New York, a trial is underway in which two Ogilvy & Mather employees – Shona Seifert and Thomas Early -- have been accused of helping over-bill PR work to disguise a $3 million shortfall in labor costs on an account for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The government settled a civil case against the firm in 2002 for $1.8 million.

Ketchum’s video news releases (VNRs)

Kechum's VNRs on the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) were found to be “covert propaganda” in a 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Ketchum hired a sub-contractor to produce VNRs for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) in the Health and Human Services Department.

VNRs provide video footage, graphics and audio edited together into a package directly to television stations in a manner that allows them to easily pick any of the component elements and create their own story.

The VNRs even featured a “reporter” – Karen Ryan – who was actually a public relations professional, and the releases contained “a favorable report on the effects [of the law] on Medicare beneficiaries.” Some broadcast stations ran the story unedited.

The GAO determined that although the videos were clearly labeled, the news story inside was produced in such a way that television viewers could not distinguish the “source” of the news. “The entire story package was developed with appropriated funds but [is made to] appear to be an independent news story,” the GAO wrote.

The GAO previously found that video news releases produced for the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) were also propaganda. While both agencies have discontinued their use of the VNRs, the Health and Human Services Department continues to use them, said Bill Pierce, an HHS spokesperson.

“We can’t be responsible for journalistic ethics,” he said. Pierce added that HHS was keeping the GAO findings in mind, though the GAO report didn’t have a “dramatic” effect on the way the department used video releases.

“It’s kind of a dead letter,” said ONDCP spokesperson Tom Riley of the January GAO report which referred to the agency’s VNRs as propaganda. “We stopped doing VNRs last year, haven’t done any since then, and have no plans to use them in the future.”

2006-07-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

French Protest Job Bill

By Jennifer Barnett
From Political Affairs Magazine

After a weekend of protests in which 1.5 million people took to the streets, French labor unions are preparing for a general strike in response to what they call a dangerous and disturbing new law.

The law would allow employers to fire people under age 26 without cause within two years of being hired. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin claims it will ease youth unemployment. But student and labor groups say it will aggravate the problem and allow employers to treat young workers like trash.

The youth unemployment rate in France is 23 percent, more than double the general jobless rate. In the poorest areas youth joblessness is as high as 50 percent.

France’s current, long-standing labor law allows employers just a few months to terminate a new employee without giving a reason. After that, the law sets strict standards for firing employees. Opponents of the so-called “first jobs contract” (CPE) have nicknamed it the “Kleenex contract” because of the disposable workforce it would create.

The new law is to be enacted when signed by President Jacques Chirac next month.

Unions have called for a national day of strike actions on March 28 to protest the plan. Bolstered by this support, student groups called for more large-scale protests March 21 and 23.

Public figures joining protests in 150 cities on March 18 included Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, Socialist Party leader François Hollande, former culture minister Jack Lang and Communist Party leader Marie-George Buffet.

The protest in Paris was marred by minor violence, in which a small number of demonstrators set fire to a police car. In response, police fired tear gas into the crowd. By and large the march was peaceful, though, with a festive atmosphere.

Carole Cases, a nurse who participated in the protest with two of her children, told The New York Times, “I’m sick and tired of all these phony contracts and I want to protect my children’s future. They’re trying to dupe the young.”

Many were upset with the quickness with which the measure passed through the Parliament. Bruno Julliard, a leader of the national student group UNEF, said the government “imposed the jobs plan without consulting anyone.” He said the government only agreed to talks after the large demonstrations. UNEF, in turn, has refused to join talks until the contract is withdrawn.

De Villepin was expected to offer an amended version of the contract, possibly requiring a justification for firing or shortening the trial period during which the young worker could be fired. He has said publicly that he will stand by the law and that it will not be withdrawn.

The CGT, France’s largest union federation, said in a March 21 statement, “This measure, ineffective for employment, offers employers a new means of pressuring employees to renounce most of their rights under the penalty that they will be pushed out the door: it is a welcome to unpaid additional hours, worsened work conditions, lower salaries, sick days not respected, scorned dignity, etc.”

According to the federation, 75 percent of the population wants the CPE to be withdrawn. CGT leader Bernard Thibault said, “If this momentum continues, I think we will quickly get the withdrawal.”

In a January statement, the Communist Party of France stated its opposition to the CPE. Instead, the party proposed “a large progressive reformation of the labor code, aiming for job security … and income for all.” The statement also called for businesses to be socially responsible.

In addition to the planned labor strikes, UNEF has led student strikes at a number of universities. Student groups also worry that the CPE would make housing problems worse for young workers. Many landlords won’t rent to young workers because of their precarious financial situation.

“There is a big housing crisis in France. With this contract, no young workers will be able to get an apartment,” said Julie Coudry, president of the Student Confederation.

The new law is seen as part of pro-corporate “structural reforms” called for by international financial institutions. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said March 20 it was absolutely necessary for European governments to conduct such “reforms.”

Humiliation for French Government

By Caroline Wyatt
From BBC News

Trade unions and protesters in France are claiming victory after the French government performed a complete U-turn on its controversial youth jobs law.

On Monday, the French government said it would withdraw the law, which would have allowed employers to sack anyone under the age of 26 within the first two years of their employment.

The measure had provoked weeks of protests, until finally, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin conceded defeat and said he would find other ways of reducing the numbers of young jobless.

This was a humiliating climbdown for Mr de Villepin, who had staked his political reputation on pushing through what initially seemed like a minor reform to a wider law on equal job opportunities for the disadvantaged.

Vociferous anger
The youth jobs law, the CPE, was aimed at helping youngsters in the troubled suburbs find jobs, after anger over high unemployment exploded into rioting last November.

Yet these reforms unleashed almost equally vociferous anger across France, from mainly middle-class students who feared their future job security - and the jobs for life many of their parents had enjoyed - was being fatally undermined by the French government.

Over the past months, the French trade unions called out millions onto the streets in support of the students, with the demonstrations culminating in what the unions claimed were three million people marching in protest last week, though the police put the figure at half that number.

On this issue, the unions found a new voice, ultimately forcing President Jacques Chirac to back down - and Mr de Villepin with him. On Monday, Mr de Villepin did his best to paint this climbdown as the actions of a government and a prime minister listening to the French people.

'Deep anxiety'
"I wanted to act fast on joblessness, because the dramatic situation and the despair of many young people made it vital," he said.

"Initially, I wanted to put forward a strong solution. Not everyone understood that, and I regret it. The dialogue is now open and we should not close it again. This crisis reveals a deep anxiety in France, as much as a desire for modernisation."

Yet student leaders Victor Vidilles and Nabila Ramdani say Mr de Villepin's withdrawal of the law was only a first step, with more student protests planned for Tuesday to keep up the pressure on the French government as it formulates a new proposal this week. "It's not enough because there is still a high unemployment rate in France," said Mr Vidilles.

"We have to be extremely vigilant, and make sure that the government helps everyone - not just students - overcome the serious problem of unemployment here."

Ms Ramdani was more optimistic, though still guarded. "This is the first battle we have won, but not the whole war," she tells me outside Place de la Sorbonne, which is still fenced off by French police guarding the square against further student sit-ins. "We want to know exactly what proposals will be put forward by the government - and now that a real dialogue is possible, to discuss exactly what future the government can offer to young people."

The French prime minister's own future, however, is now in some doubt. Dominique de Villepin had wanted to show that he was a strong leader, who could push through reform in order to be seen as a serious presidential candidate for the right next year.

With this U-turn, almost all hope of that has now disappeared - along with any belief that Mr Chirac might use the final year of his presidency to try to reform the French economy and to liberalise France's labour market, as many on the right in France believe is necessary.

2006-07-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate

By Naomi Klein
From The Nation

It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George W. Bush's second term, and an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic location. But what was the right backdrop for the infamous "We do not torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team settled on downtown Panama City.
It was certainly bold. An hour and a half's drive from where Bush stood, the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture."

It is here in Panama and, later, at the school's new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the roots of the current torture scandals can be found. According to declassified training manuals, SOA students--military and police officers from across the hemisphere--were instructed in many of the same "coercive interrogation" techniques that have since migrated to Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib: early morning capture to maximize shock, immediate hooding and blindfolding, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sleep and food "manipulation," humiliation, extreme temperatures, isolation, stress positions--and worse. In 1996 President Clinton's Intelligence Oversight Board admitted that US-produced training materials condoned "execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion and false imprisonment."

Some of the Panama school's graduates returned to their countries to commit the continent's greatest war crimes of the past half-century: the murders of Archbishop Oscar Romero and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador, the systematic theft of babies from Argentina's "disappeared" prisoners, the massacre of 900 civilians in El Mozote in El Salvador and military coups too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that choosing Panama to declare "We do not torture" is a little like dropping by a slaughterhouse to pronounce the United States a nation of vegetarians.

And yet when covering the Bush announcement, not a single mainstream news outlet mentioned the sordid history of its location. How could they? To do so would require something totally absent from the current debate: an admission that the embrace of torture by US officials long predates the Bush Administration and has in fact been integral to US foreign policy since the Vietnam War.

It's a history that has been exhaustively documented in an avalanche of books, declassified documents, CIA training manuals, court records and truth commissions. In his upcoming book A Question of Torture, Alfred McCoy synthesizes this unwieldy cache of evidence, producing an indispensable and riveting account of how monstrous CIA-funded experiments on psychiatric patients and prisoners in the 1950s turned into a template for what he calls "no-touch torture," based on sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain. McCoy traces how these methods were field-tested by CIA agents in Vietnam as part of the Phoenix program and then imported to Latin America and Asia under the guise of police training programs.

It's not only apologists for torture who ignore this history when they blame abuses on "a few bad apples"--so too do many of torture's most prominent opponents. Apparently forgetting everything they once knew about US cold war misadventures, a startling number have begun to subscribe to an antihistorical narrative in which the idea of torturing prisoners first occurred to US officials on September 11, 2001, at which point the interrogation methods used in Guantánamo apparently emerged, fully formed, from the sadistic recesses of Dick Cheney's and Donald Rumsfeld's brains. Up until that moment, we are told, America fought its enemies while keeping its humanity intact.

The principal propagator of this narrative (what Garry Wills termed "original sinlessness") is Senator John McCain. Writing recently in Newsweek on the need for a ban on torture, McCain says that when he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi, he held fast to the knowledge "that we were different from our enemies...that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them." It is a stunning historical distortion. By the time McCain was taken captive, the CIA had already launched the Phoenix program and, as McCoy writes, "its agents were operating forty interrogation centers in South Vietnam that killed more than twenty thousand suspects and tortured thousands more," a claim he backs up with pages of quotes from press reports as well as Congressional and Senate probes.

Does it somehow lessen the horrors of today to admit that this is not the first time the US government has used torture to wipe out its political opponents--that it has operated secret prisons before, that it has actively supported regimes that tried to erase the left by dropping students out of airplanes? That, at home, photographs of lynchings were traded and sold as trophies and warnings? Many seem to think so. On November 8 Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott made the astonishing claim to the House of Representatives that "America has never had a question about its moral integrity, until now." Molly Ivins, expressing her shock that the United States is running a prison gulag, wrote that "it's just this one administration...and even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Dick Cheney." And in the November issue of Harper's, William Pfaff argues that what truly sets the Bush Administration apart from its predecessors is "its installation of torture as integral to American military and clandestine operations."

Pfaff acknowledges that long before Abu Ghraib, there were those who claimed that the School of the Americas was a "torture school," but he says that he was "inclined to doubt that it was really so." Perhaps it's time for Pfaff to have a look at the SOA textbooks coaching illegal torture techniques, all readily available in both Spanish and English, as well as the hair-raising list of SOA grads.

Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring "Never again!" Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture crisis by crying "Never Before"? I suspect it has to do with a sincere desire to convey the seriousness of this Administration's crimes. And the Bush Administration's open embrace of torture is indeed unprecedented--but let's be clear about what is unprecedented about it: not the torture but the openness. Past administrations tactfully kept their "black ops" secret; the crimes were sanctioned but they were practiced in the shadows, officially denied and condemned. The Bush Administration has broken this deal: Post-9/11, it demanded the right to torture without shame, legitimized by new definitions and new laws.

Despite all the talk of outsourced torture, the Bush Administration's real innovation has been its in-sourcing, with prisoners being abused by US citizens in US-run prisons and transported to third countries in US planes. It is this departure from clandestine etiquette, more than the actual crimes, that has so much of the military and intelligence community up in arms: By daring to torture unapologetically and out in the open, Bush has robbed everyone of plausible deniability.

For those nervously wondering if it is time to start using alarmist words like totalitarianism, this shift is of huge significance. When torture is covertly practiced but officially and legally repudiated, there is still the hope that if atrocities are exposed, justice could prevail. When torture is pseudo-legal and when those responsible merely deny that it is torture, what dies is what Hannah Arendt called "the juridical person in man"; soon enough, victims no longer bother to search for justice, so sure are they of the futility (and danger) of that quest. This impunity is a mass version of what happens inside the torture chamber, when prisoners are told they can scream all they want because no one can hear them and no one is going to save them.

In Latin America the revelations of US torture in Iraq have not been met with shock and disbelief but with powerful déjà vu and reawakened fears. Hector Mondragon, a Colombian activist who was tortured in the 1970s by an officer trained at the School of the Americas, wrote: "It was hard to see the photos of the torture in Iraq because I too was tortured. I saw myself naked with my feet fastened together and my hands tied behind my back. I saw my own head covered with a cloth bag. I remembered my feelings--the humiliation, pain." Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was brutally tortured in a Guatemalan jail, said, "I could not even stand to look at those photographs...so many of the things in the photographs had also been done to me. I was tortured with a frightening dog and also rats. And they were always filming."

Ortiz has testified that the men who raped her and burned her with cigarettes more than 100 times deferred to a man who spoke Spanish with an American accent whom they called "Boss." It is one of many stories told by prisoners in Latin America of mysterious English-speaking men walking in and out of their torture cells, proposing questions, offering tips. Several of these cases are documented in Jennifer Harbury's powerful new book, Truth, Torture, and the American Way.

Some of the countries that were mauled by US-sponsored torture regimes have tried to repair their social fabric through truth commissions and war crimes trials. In most cases, justice has been elusive, but past abuses have been entered into the official record and entire societies have asked themselves questions not only about individual responsibility but collective complicity. The United States, though an active participant in these "dirty wars," has gone through no parallel process of national soul-searching.

The result is that the memory of US complicity in far-away crimes remains fragile, living on in old newspaper articles, out-of-print books and tenacious grassroots initiatives like the annual protests outside the School of the Americas (which has been renamed but remains largely unchanged). The terrible irony of the anti-historicism of the current torture debate is that in the name of eradicating future abuses, these past crimes are being erased from the record.

Every time Americans repeat the fairy tale about their pre-Cheney innocence, these already hazy memories fade even further. The hard evidence still exists, of course, carefully archived in the tens of thousands of declassified documents available from the National Security Archive. But inside US collective memory, the disappeared are being disappeared all over again.

This casual amnesia does a profound disservice not only to the victims of these crimes but also to the cause of trying to remove torture from the US policy arsenal once and for all. Already there are signs that the Administration will deal with the current torture uproar by returning to the cold war model of plausible deniability. The McCain amendment protects every "individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government"; it says nothing about torture training or buying information from the exploding industry of for-profit interrogators. And in Iraq the dirty work is already being handed over to Iraqi death squads, trained by US commanders like Jim Steele, who prepared for the job by setting up similarly lawless units in El Salvador.

The US role in training and supervising Iraq's Interior Ministry was forgotten, moreover, when 173 prisoners were recently discovered in a Ministry dungeon, some tortured so badly that their skin was falling off. "Look, it's a sovereign country. The Iraqi government exists," Rumsfeld said. He sounded just like the CIA's William Colby, who when asked in a 1971 Congressional probe about the thousands killed under Phoenix--a program he helped launch--replied that it was now "entirely a South Vietnamese program."

And that's the problem with pretending that the Bush Administration invented torture. "If you don't understand the history and the depths of the institutional and public complicity," says McCoy, "then you can't begin to undertake meaningful reforms." Lawmakers will respond to pressure by eliminating one small piece of the torture apparatus--closing a prison, shutting down a program, even demanding the resignation of a really bad apple like Rumsfeld. But, McCoy says, "they will preserve the prerogative to torture."

The Center for American Progress has just launched an advertising campaign called "Torture is not US." The hard truth is that for at least five decades it has been. But it doesn't have to be.

2006-07-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

20 Stories That Made A Difference For Better Or Worse

By Steve Rendall, Peter Hart and Julie Hollar
From Extra!/F.A.I.R
2006

FAIR was founded on the belief that journalism matters—that getting out the truth can improve the world, while news that distorts or denies reality can have terrible consequences.

To illustrate this conviction, we've compiled a list of 20 news stories published since FAIR's 1986 debut that had a major impact on society—for good or for ill. The list is not meant to be a comprehensive collection of the most momentous stories of the past 20 years, but rather to be illustrative of the power of media. Stories that should have led to serious changes, but were underplayed by corporate media, would be an entirely different list, of course.

1. The Contra Resupply Network

The Reagan administration's secret support for Nicaragua's Contras unraveled in 1986 when the Associated Press published stories (e.g., 10/8/86, 10/19/86, 10/27/86) revealing White House links to illegal resupply flights. The Contras, a rebel army created, funded and directed by the CIA, killed thousands of Nicaraguan civilians in a war to bring down the left-leaning, democratically elected Sandinista government. Through interviews and the examination of the log books from a CIA plane shot down by Sandinista forces in October 1986, AP reporter Robert Parry exposed the "Contra" side of the story that would soon be known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

2. The Iranian Arms-for-Hostages Deal

Days after AP's Contra revelations, the "Iran" side of Iran-Contra emerged as the Lebanese weekly Ash Shirra (11/3/86) revealed that the U.S. was secretly selling arms to Iran in hopes of getting U.S. hostages released by pro-Iran militants in Lebanon. The story infuriated President Ronald Reagan, who denied the U.S. was trading arms for hostages and lashed out at the press for spoiling what the White House depicted as an innocent diplomatic effort (Washington Post, 12/1/86): "What is driving me up the wall is that this wasn't a failure until the press got a tip from that rag in Beirut and began to play it up. . . . The press has to take responsibility for what they have done.''

But Reagan's defiance disappeared when digging by U.S. reporters, such as the Washington Post's David Hoffman (11/14/86, 11/16/86), contradicted the White House claims, ultimately revealing that the White House was funneling profits from the Iranian arms sales to the Contras. Iran-Contra, the largest of the Reagan White House's many scandals, would result in more than a dozen indictments and nine convictions.

3. Redlining

"Whites receive five times as many home loans from Atlanta's banks and savings and loans as blacks of the same income," the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution declared on May 1, 1988, "and that gap has been widening each year, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution study of $6.2 billion in lending shows."

So began Bill Dedman's lengthy Pulitzer Prize–winning series, which stands as a testament to the power of first-rate investigative journalism that sets out to measure and document social inequality.

Over four days, the paper detailed its community's discriminatory and illegal lending practices, known as "redlining." The local response was swift: "Within a week, Atlanta's nine largest banks and savings and loans announced they would lend $65 million at interest rates as low as the prime rate for home purchases and home improvements, mostly on the black Southside," the Austin Business Journal reported (2/19/90).

The stories reverberated throughout the country, eliciting calls for a Justice Department inquiry and a Senate Banking Committee investigation. As noted by the Columbia Journalism Review (3–4/95), Dedman's reporting changed the way lending institutions report loan data—a boon to investigators of all sorts, including other reporters.

But as Dedman noted in the documentary Fear and Favor in the Newsroom, some board members at Cox Newspapers, the Journal-Constitution's parent company, were unhappy with the series, feeling that it could harm the paper's advertising base—and the board members' own relationships with the local banking industry.

4. Civil Rights Era Crimes

Jerry Mitchell, a reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, began to seriously investigate unsolved civil rights crimes after watching the film Mississippi Burning. His subsequent reporting has led to criminal prosecutions in some of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era.

Mitchell, for example, tracked down secret documents (10/1/89) that would eventually lead to the arrest of Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Mitchell's investigation (beginning on 12/27/98) into the famous 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner led to the indictment and arrest of Edgar Ray Killen, a key figure in the crime who, according to Mitchell's reporting, whould have been behind bars 30 years ealier on the basis of confessions from two of Killen's co-conspirators.

And Mitchell revealed (7/4/99) that a suspect in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church—which killed four young African-American girls—had provided authorities with a bogus alibi. "For three and a half decades, his alibi had gone unchallenged," Mitchell told American Journalism Review (4–5/05). "It was just Reporting 101."

5. The Kuwaiti Incubators

In the autumn of 1990, a front-page story in the Los Angeles Times (9/17/90) gave a harrowing report of the atrocities being committed by the Iraqi troops occupying Kuwait: "In one case, refugees reported that incubators for premature babies were confiscated by Iraqi troops and the babies inside were piled on the floor and left to die." The Times directly prefaced this with the information that "Western officials" were saying that many of the atrocities "appeared to be well-documented and supported by enough eyewitness accounts that they could be considered true."

A week later, Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland repeated the tale (9/25/90), but the story wouldn't reach its full potential until October 10, when a 15-year-old girl calling herself "Nayirah" told a U.S. congressional caucus: "I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor." Excerpts of Nayirah's address ended up on Larry King Live (10/16/90) and the incubator story flourished in the press (e.g., USA Today, 10/11/90; AP, 10/15/90). President George H.W. Bush cited the incubator claim at least 10 times in his successful attempt to rally Americans and prospective allies to war against Iraq.

There is no doubt that Iraqis committed atrocities in Kuwait, but the incubator story was a hoax. Reporting by Alexander Cockburn (The Nation, 2/4/91), ABC reporter John Martin (World News Tonight, 3/15/91) and John R. MacArthur (Second Front) would show that the incubator stories were fabricated, and Nayirah al-Sabah, in truth the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, was working with public relations giant Hill & Knowlton to agitate for a U.S. war against Iraq.

But a successful hoax it was. In a segment critical of the incubator claims, CBS's 60 Minutes (1/19/92) described Nayirah's story as the "one image, one presence [that] touched American hearts and minds like no other."

6. The Rodney King Video

If George Holliday hadn't shot home video footage of Los Angeles police officers beating an African-American motorist following a high-speed chase, Rodney King would be just another unknown victim of police brutality.

But Holliday's oft-aired footage—first played in its nine-minute-plus entirety over local station KTLA (3/4/91)—turned the event into an iconic moment that focused widespread attention on King's mistreatment and the larger issue of police abuses. When the officers were acquitted on state charges despite the evidence of the tapes, the verdict sparked the L.A. riots (Extra!, 7–8/92) and provoked examination of racism in the criminal justice system. Holliday's video also encouraged an activist movement for grassroots newsgathering and monitoring of police agencies.

7. The Dili Massacre

Following the U.S.-backed Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, U.S. news media maintained a virtual blackout for over 15 years about the occupation and the atrocities occurring in the tiny island country (Extra!, 11–12/93). But in 1991, three journalists forced East Timor back on the media map and into the public consciousness.

On November 12, Allan Nairn of the New Yorker, Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio and British filmmaker Max Stahl attended a peaceful funeral procession in the East Timorese capital of Dili that turned deadly when Indonesian military opened fire on the crowd and killed more than 250. Nairn and Goodman were beaten but managed to escape, as did Stahl, and their eyewitness reports and video of the massacre alerted the Western world to the dire situation in East Timor, sparking a grassroots movement opposing U.S. support for the Indonesian occupation.

Though the mainstream media's newfound attention to East Timor was initially slight, Goodman and Nairn continued to doggedly pursue the story throughout the '90s, with Nairn repeatedly returning to East Timor to file reports despite an Indonesian order barring his entry. His reporting helped to keep the story on the radar, and in 1999, the U.S. finally suspended all military ties with Indonesia, which promptly pulled out from East Timor.

8. Whitewater

New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Gerth (3/8/92) broke the Whitewater "scandal" with the front-page report, "Clintons Joined S&L Operator in an Ozark Real-Estate Venture." The piece, long on insinuation and short on evidence, suggested that Bill and Hillary Clinton traded regulatory favors for a sweetheart deal on a piece of Arkansas real estate known as Whitewater.

The piece was notable for withholding exculpatory information, like the fact that the S&L regulator supposedly appointed as a favor to S&L executive Jim McDougal actually tried to shut down his business. (See Extra!, 11–12/96.) As Gene Lyons, an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist and strong critic of the Times' Whitewater reporting, explained it in his book Fools for Scandal, the public never understood Whitewater because it was "a shaggy dog story"—a tale whose needless complexity conceals its pointlessness.

Nevertheless, Gerth's reporting spawned a cottage industry in Whitewater-related scandals that would eventually lead to Clinton being impeached on oral sex–related charges. As for Whitewater itself, the Clintons were cleared of any wrongdoing—after the Office of the Independent Council had spent 10 years and $73 million (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 3/27/02).

9. USAID Exporting Jobs

Conventional wisdom tells us that journalists should not be advocates. But sometimes great journalism is uncovered first by social justice activists. In 1992, Charles Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee went to several corporate media outlets to share the story he'd uncovered: how the U.S. government was actively luring U.S. companies to move their manufacturing out of the United States.

The program was largely the work of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provided tax breaks and low-interest loans to companies that would move jobs to Central America. The story broke on CBS's 60 Minutes (9/27/92), and included Kernaghan and two other men posing as officials from a bogus textile company. Their hidden cameras recorded a meeting with a USAID official who touted the many virtues of moving production to Honduras.

The story continued the next day in the Los Angeles Times (9/28/92), with the paper crediting Kernaghan ("an intense young union official") for much of the original research. A night later, the story was reprised on ABC's Nightline (9/29/92).

The timing of the story was key, as the country faced the lingering effects of recession and unemployment. As CBS reporter Ed Bradley asked a USAID official, "Do you think that it is in our national interest to create jobs in Central America through U.S. taxpayer money?" The USAID issue became part of the jobs debate that helped swing the 1992 presidential election. Kernaghan went on to generate another iconic moment for the anti-sweatshop movement when popular TV personality Kathie Lee Gifford cried on television (New York Daily News, 5/1/96) in response to his 1996 congressional testimony revealing that her clothing line was manufactured by children in Honduras.

10. The Bell Curve

Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein's 1994 book The Bell Curve did not burst into the public consciousness based on new information or scholarly merit—indeed, the book attempted to recast old, discredited eugenic theories about the inferiority of the poor and non-white—but rather because many prestigious media outlets embraced it. New York Times science writer Malcolm Browne gave it a near-rave review (10/16/94), insisting that the authors were "recognized by colleagues as serious scholars." The Bell Curve, wrote Browne, "makes a strong case that America's population is becoming dangerously polarized between a smart, rich, educated elite and a population of unintelligent, poor and uneducated people." (See Extra! Update, 12/94.)

Respectful treatment by the Times helped set the tone for other media coverage that would follow. And follow it did. The New Republic devoted nearly an entire issue to a debate about the book (10/31/94), with editor Andrew Sullivan justifying the decision by writing, "The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief." As Extra! pointed out at the time (1–2/95), "In fact, the idea that some races are inherently inferior to others is the definition of racism."

The Bell Curve received prominent and serious coverage on such public affairs programs as Nightline (10/21/94), the McLaughlin Group (10/21/94) and the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (10/28/94). The "controversy" also made the cover of Newsweek (10/24/94), while it took up nearly a full op-ed page in the Wall Street Journal (10/10/94).

These discussions were largely uninformed by the considered opinions of scientists in the field, and this was by design: Flouting scientific convention, the authors purposely avoided sending galleys to potentially critical readers. When The Bell Curve was finally scrutinized by scientific experts, it was nearly universally panned for shoddy and biased research (Slate, 1/18/97).

But it was too late to counteract the message put forth by the book's media supporters that racism is a legitimate intellectual position. As Murray wrote in a proposal for the book (New York Times Magazine, 10/9/94), there are "a huge number of well-meaning whites who fear that they are closet racists, and this book tells them they are not. It's going to make them feel better about things they already think but do not know how to say."

11. Death Row Exonerations

In 1996, four African-American men—two of whom were awaiting execution—were released from an Illinois prison after their wrongful convictions were overturned in court. The men had been found guilty of murdering a young couple in 1978. What made their story remarkable was the fact that the move to exonerate the Ford Heights Four was largely the work of journalism students (aided by an earlier investigation by the magazine Chicago Lawyer—7/92). The three students and their Northwestern University journalism professor, David Protess, would soon become the focus of worldwide media exposure.

About one year after Northwestern students were instrumental in exonerating yet another death row prisoner, Illinois Gov. George Ryan in February 2000 announced a death penalty moratorium. Similar hesitations about the death penalty among political elites across the country can be traced in part to the Northwestern students' work.

The fact that Protess was teaching his students about the real-world impact of investigative journalism was not universally appreciated. When several of Protess' students worked to prevent an earlier execution, a Chicago Tribune news article (5/11/95) questioned whether this was appropriate behavior, noting that "it might even give some parents pause about whether their stiff tuition is being appropriately invested."

12. "Saddam Must Go"

In the Weekly Standard's November 17, 1997 cover story, "Saddam Must Go," editor Bill Kristol and contributing editor Robert Kagan called for war against Iraq: "We know it seems unthinkable to propose another ground attack to take Baghdad. But it's time to start thinking the unthinkable." Kristol and Kagan, also the founders of the hawkish group Project for a New American Century, argued that Saddam Hussein had humiliated the United States by expelling U.S. officials from U.N. weapons inspection teams. The editorial cited unspecified sources about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capabilities, and concluded with this dark warning: "If you don't like this option, we've got another one for you: continue along the present course and get ready for the day when Saddam has biological and chemical weapons at the tips of missiles aimed at Israel and at American forces in the Gulf. That day may not be far off."

The article was the first installment in what would be a relentless crusade for war in the Standard's pages. Just two weeks after it was published, the magazine ran "Overthrow Him," by Zalmay Kahlilzad and Paul Wolfowitz (12/1/97), who would both have prominent jobs in the Bush administration. In an In These Times story looking back over the Standard's 10-year history (10/6/05), Craig Aaron reported that the "Saddam Must Go" piece "is widely credited with planting the seeds for the invasion and occupation of Iraq." Indeed, that article, along with the Standard's extended pro-war campaign, are often cited as influencing elite thinking on the decision to go to war (e.g., Washington Post, 1/12/03; New York Times, 2/1/03). The neo-conservative Standard's paleo-conservative rival, the American Conservative (11/21/05), has even referred to the Iraq War as "The Weekly Standard's War."

13. The Contra-Crack Connection

Ten years after Robert Parry and Brian Barger (AP, 12/20/85) exposed the role of the CIA-backed Contras in the cocaine trade—to relatively little public attention—San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb advanced the story, writing an explosive three-part series (8/18–20/96) that documented a connection between Contra-linked cocaine traffickers and the crack explosion of the 1980s.

Webb also cited U.S. law enforcement officials who said the CIA had prevented investigation of the Contra traffickers, effectively protecting the flow of cut-rate cocaine into vulnerable urban centers. The series, initially ignored by other mainstream media but reaching a national audience through the emerging Internet, ignited protests in African-American and progressive communities, eventually forcing a new internal investigation at the CIA.

14. Contra-Crack Backlash

Webb's success in exposing government misdeeds was soon undercut by another feat of journalism: the mainstream media's full-scale assault on Webb. Having spent the previous 10 years either ignoring the Contra-cocaine story or dismissing it as a conspiracy theory, major newspapers seemed furious that a reporter at a small regional paper would challenge their status as the arbiters of truth. The Washington Post (10/4/96), Los Angeles Times (10/20–22/96) and New York Times (10/21/96) devoted much ink to pooh-poohing Webb's story, citing spurious complaints like Webb's referring to the Contras as "the CIA's army" (Extra!, 1–2/97). Webb's own editor, Jerry Ceppos, eventually caved to the pressure, publishing a front-page climb-down (5/11/97) and taking Webb off his beat.

The internal CIA probe sparked by Webb confirmed the substance of his report—that the CIA had known about Contra drug connections from the beginning, and had worked to keep the trafficking under wraps and undisturbed. But the establishment papers managed to squelch both Webb's story and the CIA report, keeping the CIA's deeds from the majority of the public and destroying the career of an outstanding reporter. In 2004, a despondent Webb took his own life.

15. Matthew Shepard

Before Matthew Shepard was beaten and left for dead in Laramie, Wyoming on October 7, 1998, homophobic violence and discrimination received little serious attention in the news or the general public. But the attack on the 21-year-old gay man struck a media nerve—starting with an AP story (10/9/98) whose lead memorably described Shepard as having been "tied to a wooden ranch fence like a scarecrow"—marking the first time an anti-gay attack received extensive and sympathetic coverage.

His orientation aside, Shepard's story had many of the elements that commercial media look for in a crime story: a young, good-looking white victim with a dramatic death (whose crucifixion imagery added poignancy). But some outlets produced remarkably in-depth and reflective journalism that shone a harsh light on homophobia; the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (10/15/98, 1/20/99) singled out the Casper Star-Tribune and the Denver Post in particular for their coverage.

Such reporting did much to transform the rights of the gay and lesbian community into a serious topic of discussion in the media and the public; even President Bill Clinton addressed the attack in a public speech (10/10/98). As a Boston Globe news article remarked (3/7/02), "The homicide that ushered the phrase ‘hate crime' into mainstream parlance has become an emotional and political watershed, the kind of event that stirs strong feelings in people who know none of the parties involved."

16. Trent Lott

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's long-term ties to the racist Council of Conservative Citizens emerged into public view in 1998 because of the dogged reporting of Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall (12/16/98) and New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch (12/30/98), with help from independent researchers (including FAIR—Extra!, 3–4/99). But the rest of the press was slow to catch on to the story, and in the end, Lott managed to survive the scandal with his job.

Then, on December 5, 2002, Lott praised the 1948 segregationist candidacy of retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond at the latter's 100th birthday party: "I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of him. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Lott's retroactive endorsement of a racist campaign, whose chief planks were segregation and opposition to federal anti-lynching legislation, was a dramatic story, particularly in the context of the 1998 reporting. But despite the presence of 12 journalists at the party and its broadcast on C-SPAN, there was little mainstream mention of Lott's comments until five days later. While the press was snoozing, bloggers such as the left-leaning Joshua Micah Marshall (Talking Points Memo, 12/6/02) and right-leaning Andrew Sullivan (12/8/02) kept banging the drum, keeping the story alive until the mainstream media caught up. And when it did—on December 10, all three nightly network shows aired stories—Lott was forced by political pressure to step down from his job as majority leader (Washington Post, 12/16/02).

17. Weapons of Mass Destruction

In its push to sell a "pre-emptive" war against Iraq, the White House of George W. Bush had to convince the public that Iraq harbored dangerous weapons of mass destruction that might result in "a mushroom cloud" if military action were not taken quickly. Instrumental in making that case were mainstream media outlets that played up the Iraq WMD threat, lending credibility to administration claims. No reporter was more influential in that role than the New York Times' Judith Miller.

Miller's prominent stories hyping purported Iraqi weapons go back to 1998 (2/26/98), full of dramatic but unverified claims and unreliable sources. "All of Iraq is one large storage facility" for WMD, she credulously quoted one source (9/8/02). Miller played down skepticism and conflicting evidence, both of which were readily available to any reporter, and in so doing handed the Bush administration crucial support; with the "liberal" New York Times repeatedly trumpeting WMD claims on its front page, skeptics became increasingly marginalized in mainstream discussions.

The New York Times eventually published a lengthy editor's note (5/26/04) conceding that it botched its WMD reporting—but left unmentioned in that mea culpa was the fact that six of the nine faulty articles it examined were either written or co-written by Judith Miller. It took Miller's involvement in the vengeful leak of a CIA officer's name to finally goad the Times into letting her go—reportedly with a hefty severance package.

18. Niger Uranium

To hear former New York Times reporter Judith Miller's most passionate defenders tell it, anonymous sources are the key to breaking big stories. But the case of former diplomat Joe Wilson is an instructive counterexample. Wilson was a source for several reporters in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion (e.g., New York Times, 6/13/03), noting confidentially that the White House should have known that some of its claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were baseless. But it was only when Wilson emerged from the shadows on July 7, 2003, with an op-ed in the New York Times and an appearance on NBC's influential Meet the Press, that his dissenting information began to have an impact.

What Wilson had to say was certainly news—that he was the one sent to investigate rumors about an Iraq-Niger uranium deal, that he had deemed such a transaction unlikely and that his opinion had been shared by other intelligence analysts before his February 2002 trip. Wilson's on-the-record pronouncement caused a media firestorm, with White House officials advising reporters to keep a safe distance from Wilson's claims. Wilson's credibility was assailed by an assortment of pro–White House pundits, and his wife's classified CIA status was revealed by columnist Robert Novak (Washington Post, 7/14/03). The ensuing investigation has put some top administration officials in legal jeopardy; more importantly, the questions that Wilson raised about the White House's mishandling of intelligence have kept the story of how the country was misled into war on the media agenda.

19. Abu Ghraib

Though human rights groups had been sounding alarms since May 2003 (Wall Street Journal, 5/7/03; New York Times, 5/17/03), and allegations of mistreatment were reported in late 2003 by journalists such as AP's Charles Hanley (11/1/03), torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. personnel received little more than polite mention in U.S. media until April 2004. That's when CBS's 60 Minutes II (4/28/04) aired pictures of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison being sexually humiliated, threatened and attacked by dogs—and even the body of an Iraqi who had been beaten to death. Lamenting how long it had taken for the abuse story to get its due, Hanley told Editor & Publisher (5/13/04): "There seems to be a tendency at times to discount the statements of others—people like Iraqi former detainees—if they are not somehow supported by a U.S. source, or perhaps by some photographs."

Two days after the 60 Minutes II report, veteran reporter Seymour Hersh revealed on the New Yorker's website (4/30/04) the existence of a secret military report concluding that several instances of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuse" had transpired at Abu Ghraib. The report would later come to be known as the Taguba report, after its author, an Army general, who also suggested that ranking military and intelligence officers and private contractors were behind the abuse. Though the scandal has only resulted in low-level prosecutions so far, it has brought widespread condemnation and focused global attention on U.S. disregard for international law.

20. Hurricane Katrina

The first days after Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters swept through New Orleans brought out some of the most honest and affecting journalism the public had seen in a long time. Because officials were nowhere to be found on the ground, reporters were getting their information raw and unfiltered, and they experienced the ravages of the flood and the shocking lack of government response firsthand along with trapped residents.

NBC photojournalist Tony Zumbado was one of the first reporters to visit the New Orleans convention center, where thousands of people had seen no help arrive for over four days. Zumbado delivered an impassioned nine-minute report on MSNBC (9/1/05), with stark footage of the desperate and dying, and heart-wrenching commentary that pointed the finger at the failure of authorities: "There's no support here. There's no foundation. There's no plan B, plan A. These people are very desperate. I saw two gentlemen die in front of me because of dehydration. . . . I just tell you, I couldn't take it."

Zumbado's report and other powerful pieces (Extra! Update, 10/05) were played over and over around the country, arousing enormous public outcry against the government's incompetence, and relief efforts were soon stepped up as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, was forced to step down. Though as the situation normalized and officials regained their footing, journalists gradually shifted back into their usual modes of reporting (Extra!, 11–12/05), for a short time, at least, they doggedly did what journalism is supposed to: hold government officials accountable.

2006-07-28T10:36:00.000-07:00

Toward A New Politics?

After the CAW-NDP Divorce
By Sam Gindin
From Canadian Dimension
2006

On April 21, 2006, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) broke with a tradition that extended over half a century, and voted to leave the New Democratic Party (NDP). A few CAW activists shrugged their shoulders: the impact of the NDP on their daily struggles had been minimal and so setting it aside did not seem to matter much. Others, including a significant section of the Canadian Left, were outraged: leaving was a mistake because electoral politics remains crucial to our lives. We must, they argued, focus our response on getting back in.

A third perspective, which may turn out to be the most lasting and important aspect of the CAW leaving the NDP, was that this exit created an opening for those frustrated with what has recently passed for ‘politics.’ The auto workers have a long history of independent working class activism inside and outside of electoral politics; the break with the NDP poses the question of how today’s activists, confronting new pressures and the disappointments with the NDP, might contribute to creatively and concretely building on that earlier legacy of the union. Before elaborating on this, however, it is useful to return to the CAW’s decision to leave its traditional political home and assess what that move was actually about.

The CAW Exit: A Move to the Left?
The ostensible reason for leaving the Ontario NDP was that the party had unfairly expelled the union leader, Buzz Hargrove, for supporting Liberals during the election. The NDP did indeed act inconsistently; numerous other party members had also supported Liberal candidates without sanctions. Yet, did it make sense to let a particular spat lead to a reversal of an historic commitment to social democracy? If the debate was only over some tactic, then why not, for example, protest the NDP’s decision by withholding dues or by mobilizing to reverse the rather intemperate and daft decision the party had made? The point of course is that something larger was in fact going on: the CAW leadership was clearly moving away from the NDP before the ouster of Hargrove, and the NDP conveniently gave the CAW president the incident to formalize the rupture.

The union did subsequently explain its position in broader terms. It suggested that it had shifted from support for a tepid social democracy and narrow electoralism, toward a more explicit ‘movement politics.’ But the most visible signs of CAW involvement in the election had little to do with education of the members and movement building; rather, the election will be remembered for the presence of Paul Martin at the CAW convention, the smiles and hugs as the CAW president bestowed Martin with a CAW jacket, and the extent to which this left the membership confused, divided, and cynical. In the eyes of many activists — both inside and outside the CAW — the union’s politics are increasingly driven by pragmatism, not an expansive vision. In the auto industry in particular, where the union put its main energy into lobbying for money for the Big Three, the union seems to have gotten uncomfortably close to both the corporations and the Liberals.

In defending his electoral role during the 2006 Federal election, CAW President Buzz Hargrove has been able to call on a resolution passed by national delegates to the CAW Canadian Council. The NDP’s response, Hargrove argued, was therefore not just an attack on him personally, but a direct challenge to the overall union and its democratic autonomy.

It is interesting to note, however, that while the actual resolution explicitly called on delegates to ‘endorse sitting NDP members’ as well as NDP candidates in ‘winnable ridings,’ it stated that in other ridings, ‘the CAW will not endorse any specific candidates.’ In this context, the support given to Liberal candidates Belinda Stronach of Magna and a Toyota executive — both representatives of notoriously anti-union companies — was not only politically questionable in terms of the union’s long-standing challenge to anti-union employers, but debatable even in terms of the wording and intent of the resolution.

The CAW leadership nevertheless insisted that it was in fact moving to the left and pointed to its new internal structures — Union in Politics Committees or UPCs — as the basis for ‘a new way of doing politics’. But the UPCs had in fact been established back in September 2004 (a further reminder that the tensions with the NDP were not new).

In the more than two years since, they have been disappointingly dormant. To be fair, there have been a number of well-received training sessions for these committees; the CAW’s commitment to membership education remains unparalleled, and local CAW activists continue to play impressive roles in specific campaigns such as those around health care. Yet, without a larger overall commitment to challenging the status quo and a clear turn away from elite-oriented politics, the stagnation of the UPCs is virtually inevitable (the staff member assigned to act as a catalyst for the mobilization from below tellingly ended up concentrating his efforts on acting as the union lobbyist in Ottawa).

A ‘new politics’ would have meant more than rejecting the NDP and replacing it with new but lifeless structures. It would have included: ** Actively engaging its members in the process of developing an alternative (anti-capitalist) vision. Overcoming the CAW’s isolation from the rest of the labour movement, without whom any new politics is fundamentally limited. ** Asking what it means to link up with ‘other movements.’ Are they simply ‘others’ or do they speak to other dimensions of our own member’s lives, such as health, the environment, war?

Putting union organizing into the broader context of building the working class as a whole and addressing how to ‘organize’ the members who are already unionized Moving to a platform that included coping with our relationship to the US — an issue that can’t be ignored in any serious reorientation of Canadian society. This would overlap international political issues (the US invasion of Iraq, Canada’s role in Afghanistan, challenging the US-supported Israeli denial of Palestinian national rights); domestic ‘economic’ issues (free trade, democratic control over investment, Canadian energy policy) and domestic human rights issues (immigration and civil rights in the context of the extension into Canada — with the support of the Canadian government - of the US ’security’ state).

In short, raising the possibility of a new politics can’t help but raise rethinking the place of unions within today’s local and global struggle against neoliberalism. And alongside this addressing (a) how unions think about their members and their member’s role in the organization and (b) the adequacy of union’s structures — including structures for democratic debate and participation — to the challenges currently confronting unions and working people.

It is true enough that the NDP had moved to the center. The irony is that in leaving the NDP, the CAW leadership was hardly breaking new ground on the Left, but rather also moving, in its own way, to the center.

Back to the Party?
The frustrations with formal politics are certainly understandable. But bad politics is not a reason to give up on any politics. We take it as obvious that electoral politics and the state are too important to leave to Canada’s elite. And we take it as equally obvious that single-issue lobbying or one-off mass events — as important as they are to an overall politics — do not in themselves really constitute a serious challenge to the status quo. Ignoring the question of political power is therefore suicidal in terms of social progress. The question of how we organize ourselves to simultaneously defend ourselves AND develop the kind of capacities that can eventually address state power is therefore the most important political question we can ask.

However, fighting to get back into the NDP represents a step backwards. The NDP has not and cannot address the political task we face. This is, to begin with, not just a shortcoming in the Canadian NDP but something much more general. It’s a failure that has characterized every social democratic party in the world. Coming to grips with that failure involves recognizing that social democracy is not a milder form of socialism which has lost its way or radicalism, but a political project rooted in a particular vision, ideology, culture, and set of structures and practices. The two inter-related cornerstones of social democracy are that, first, social democracy doesn’t really believe that capitalism can be transformed and second, even if capitalism could be transformed, social democracy doesn’t believe that the working class can ever develop the political will and capacity to play a central role in such a transformation. And so, social democracy is left with the cramped vision of administering neoliberalism with a human face, and the cramped politics of workers’ needing to only know who to vote for.

This failure has a long history but it has been particularly exposed in the neoliberal period. Policy options under capitalism have, over the past quarter century, been polarized: the middle ground has given way. Corporations and their representatives have come to understand this and have responded decisively and aggressively. Social democracy never reached such an understanding — or when it did, it was awed at the implications and retreated.

One result of this was that the political initiative over the past two decades shifted to the non-electoral actions of unions and the social movements (with the CAW playing a very prominent role). This was first seen in the fight against the Canada-USA Free Trade Agreement in the mid-1980s, where it was the unions and movements that led this most political fight with the NDP largely tagging along behind. The political leadership of the unions and the movements was further reinforced in the creative Days of Action in the mid-1990s against the Harris cutbacks, by which time no-one even looked to ‘labour’s political arm’ to lead any non-electoral political mobilization.

There are many on the left who would not disagree with the above analysis yet would insist that since the ‘most advanced’ sections of the working class movement remain in the NDP, that’s where the politics of all progressives must also gravitate. This is an argument that cannot be discounted, especially at a time when no alternative political party seems on the horizon. The NDP is certainly not the enemy and the activists that remain in the NDP must be respected enough to continue to engage them in discussions and debates, to join with them around particular campaigns, and even to vote NDP at election time given the options. But we must do so without any illusions. The reality is that to the extent that many committed activists are in the NDP, the NDP also serves to limit their expectations and to mis-educate them on social possibilities and political potentials.

Taking ‘A New Politics’ Seriously
The issue therefore is not to return to the NDP, but to start addressing how to go beyond the NDP. The political choices we confront today are not real choices because we don’t in fact have the political capacity to implement them and – more distressing — we haven’t figured out a way of developing such capacities. At some point we are going to have to build a new political organization. This doesn’t just mean another party, but a different kind of party. We need a party that addresses how we build our collective political capacities, to not only come to power, but to do so with the intent of using that political power to transform states so they are democratic in the fullest sense - supporting the continued development of our collective capacity to transform and democratize our workplaces and communities and contribute to genuine global solidarity. That is, to move towards replacing capitalism.

What kind of party might this be? What kinds of relationships, structures and struggles should we be creating and experimenting with now, so that kind of party might be possible in the future? How do we bridge our immediate needs for self-defence with such a longer-term project? Might it, for example, make sense to begin by setting up ‘People’s Assemblies’ — regular meetings of representatives of the various progressive groups, including union locals, in each community – to provide mutual support, share and expand resources, determine some common priorities, and work to the development of a common platform?

The CAW’s reasons for leaving the NDP may, as we’ve suggested, have had nothing to do with posing such questions. But the contradictions inherent in the CAW leadership’s determination to leave the NDP may have created an opening for going beyond a return to the NDP. We need to sustain this debate — in the pages of Relay, Canadian Dimension and elsewhere, for the politics of limited social coalitions, social forums, single-issue protests, organized Leninist groups, and hope for a spontaneous anti-globalization rebellion have not formed into alternatives to neoliberalism — and invite fuller discussion of new possibilities.

Sam Gindin is the Packer Chair in Social Justice at York University.

Labour Stands Up Against War

By Geoff Bickerton
Canadian Dimension
2006

The Canadian Labour Congress’s statement on Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan is clear and unequivocal; it calls for the troops to be brought home now. The statement marks a significant step forward for the labour movement concerning the development of policy with respect to the use the Canadian military.

Not only does the CLC demand the “safe and immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan,” it also challenges many of the arguments used by those who would have our troops die and kill to support the American war in the Middle East.

The CLC states, “We do not support the argument that Canadian presence is intended to bring democracy to the people of Afghanistan. Nor do we accept the premise that our presence is intended to put Afghanistan on the road to sustainable development or improve women’s equality in that country. We reject the argument that our presence in Afghanistan will indirectly protect our safety here at home.”

For me, the issue of peace and war has always been a defining issue within the labour movement. In 1984, faced with NATO’s aggressive nuclear build-up and the development of a mass-based peace movement in Canada, the CLC passed a position paper entitled “Peace, Security and Dis-armament: A Canadian Labour Response,” in which the CLC and its affiliates rejected the use of force to resolve political and economic problems.

It has usually been easy for Canadians to be critical of the United States when it has intervened militarily in the affaires of others. But when Canada deploys troops, the debate has always been much more difficult and emotional. Torn between support for the troops and opposition to war, the labour movement has usually been unable to provide any coherent leadership.

At the 1999 CLC convention, there was a long and inconclusive debate on labour’s position concerning Canada’s participation in the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. At that time the convention was evenly split, half demanding an end to the bombing and half supporting the bombing as a means to protect the innocent people of Kosovo. In 2001, response to the involvement of the Canadian military in the invasion of Afghanistan was initially very muted, with a few exceptions. While the Canadian Labour Congress condemned the violent terrorist actions and the outbreak of racism in Canada and other countries, it initially declined to comment about Canadian participation in the war, using the excuse that it had not consulted with the affiliates.

While the CLC remained silent, a few unions did take positions against the war. The Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers both joined peace groups, churches, students and the Council of Canadians to launch The September Eleventh Peace Coalition, in order to oppose military retaliation for the terrorist attacks in the United States.

Now, in 2006, the CLC and the labour movement have taken a strong position against the deployment of Canadian troops in a foreign country. It has done so at a time when none of the major political parties and not one MP (prior to the May 17 parliamentary vote on extension of Canada’s commitment in Afghanistan) had been prepared to call for the withdrawal of our troops.

Sometimes it takes guts to do the right thing, and the CLC and the affiliate leadership should be commended for their stand.

The Dialectics of the Migrant Workers’ Movement

BY James Petras
Canadian Dimension
2006

Between March 25 and May 1, 2006 close to 5 million migrant workers and their supporters marched through nearly 100 cities of the United States. This is the biggest and most sustained workers’ demonstration in the history of the US. In all of its 50-year history, the US trade union confederation, the AFL-CIO has never been capable of mobilizing even a fraction of the workers convoked by the migrant workers movement. The rise and growth of the movement is rooted in the historical experience of the migrant workers (overwhelmingly from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean), the exploitative and racist experience they confront today in the US and the future in which they face imprisonment, expulsion and dispossession.

The migrant workers movement is engaged in an independent political struggle, directed against local, state and particularly the national government. The movement’s immediate objective is to defeat congressional legislation designed to criminalize employed migrant workers and a “compromise” designed to divide recently arrived workers from older workers. The key demand of the migrant workers is the legalization of all workers, new and old.

The choice of direct action methods is a response to the ineffectiveness of the legalistic and lobbying activities of established middle class controlled Latino organizations and the total failure of the labor confederation and its affiliates to organize migrant workers in trade unions or even build solidarity organizations.

To understand the dynamic growth of migrant labor movement in the US and its militancy, it is necessary to analyze the profound structural changes of the 1980’s and 1990’s in Mexico and Central America. NAFTA, Proxy Wars and Free Markets

Beginning in the 1980’s, the US via the IMF, and its client presidents in Mexico (Salinas, Zedillo and Fox) promoted a “free trade” policy codified in the North American Free Trade Area. This policy opened the door to the massive inflow of heavily subsidized US agricultural commodities undermining local small and medium size farmers. Large-scale foreign investments in retail enterprises, banking and finance led to the bankruptcy of millions of small business people.
The growth of free trade industrial zones (maquiladoras) led to the decline of protective social and labor legislation. Foreign debt payments, corrupt privatizations and large-scale growth of precarious employment led to an absolute decline of wage levels, even as the number of Mexican billionaires multiplied. Huge profits and interest payments accruing to US corporations and banks flowed back to the US, as did billions of dollars from corrupt politicians, money laundered by US banks like CITI Corporation.

Displaced and impoverished rural and urban workers soon followed the outward flows of profits and interest. The reasoning according to the “free markets” was that free flows of US capital to Mexico should be accompanied by the free flow of labor, of Mexican workers to the US. But the US did not practice the “free market” doctrine: it pursued a policy of unrestricted entry of capital into Mexico and a restricted policy on labor migration.

The free market policies created a vast reserve army of unemployed and underemployed Mexican labor while the legal restraints on free migration forced the workers to migrate without legal documents.

The huge influx of labor was not simply a result of Mexican or Central American workers seeking higher wages, it was a result of the adverse structural conditions imposed by NAFTA which expelled workers from their workplace. The Mexican free market structure was an ‘empire-centered model of accumulation’, and because it was empire-centered, it became a magnet attracting labor in pursuit of employment in the Empire.

The second major structural feature determining massive migrant worker movements from Central America was the US imperial wars of the 1980’s: the massive US military intervention via proxy armies in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras destroyed the possibility of social reform and viable economies throughout Central America. By financing death squads and promoting “scorched earth” counter-insurgency activity the US drove millions of Central Americans out of the countryside into the squalor of urban slums and overseas to Mexico, the US, Canada and Europe. The US “success” in imposing corrupt right-wing rulers throughout Central America, closed off all options for collective or self-improvement in the domestic economy. The implementation of neo-liberal measures led to even greater unemployment and a sharp decline in social services, forcing many to seek employment in the empire: the source of their misery.

Legacy of Struggle: Migrant Labor Militancy The first wave of immigrants in the 1980’s in the aftermath of the neo-liberal shock and the military terror sought anonymously any kind of work even under the worst conditions; many hid their militant past but did not forget it. As the flow of migrant workers gained momentum, great concentrations of Latino workers settled in major cities of California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. This led to the creation of a dense network of social, cultural and sports clubs and informal organizations based on previous family, neighborhood and regional ties. New small businesses flourished, consumer power increased, children attended school with clear Latino majorities and numerous radio station were directed to the migrant workers in their own language. Quickly the sense of solidarity grew from the strength of numbers, the facility of communication, the proximity of fellow workers, and above all from the common experience of unregulated and unmitigated exploitation at the hardest jobs and the lowest pay, accompanied by racist attitudes from employers, white workers, police and other public authorities.

The decision by the Congress to add the further threat of imprisonment and mass expulsions occurred at the same time in which the social networks and solidarity within the Latino communities was deepening and expanding. The earlier militancy carried over from the mass popular resistance to the death squads in El Salvador, the taste of freedom and dignity during the Sandinista period in Nicaragua, the multiple militant peasant movements in Mexico came out of the closet and found a new social expression in the mass migrant workers movement.

The convergence of submerged or latent militancy and the demands for labor rights and legal recognition in the new exploitative/repressive context created the impetus for social solidarity of entire communities. Participation included whole families, entire neighborhoods and crossed generational boundaries: high school students joined construction workers, gardeners, garment workers and domestics to fill the streets of Dallas, Texas and Los Angeles, California, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, much to the surprise of non-Latino observers ignorant of their historical legacy, their powerful social networks and their decision to draw the line now between social existence and massive expulsion.

In summary we cannot understand the massive labor migration from Mexico without examining the massive flow of US capital to Mexico, its destructive impact on the socio-economic relations and the unregulated outflow or remittance of profits and interests back to the US. Likewise we cannot explain the massive long-term flows of labor migrants from Central America to the US without taking into account the massive flow of US arms to the ruling classes of the region, the large-scale destruction of small scale agriculture, the restoration to power of the kleptocratic oligarchies and the reversal of social reforms, especially in Nicaragua.

Central American and Mexican labor migration is a direct result of the victory of the US-led counter-revolution in the region. The emergence of the mass movement of labor migrants, in a sense, is the replay of the earlier struggles between US capital and Mexican and Central American labor on the new terrain of US state politics and with a new set of issues. The continuity of the struggles, in Central America and Mexico and now in the US is found in the common demands for “self-determination” and the common methods of struggle, direct action. This is reflected in the strong working class or ‘popular’ composition of the struggle, and the historical memory of class solidarity. Significance of the New Mass Migrant Workers Movement (NMMWM) The emergence of the mass migrant workers’ movement opens a new chapter in the working class struggle both in North America, and Central America.

First and foremost it represents the first major upsurge of independent working class struggle in the US after over fifty years of decline, stagnation and retreat by the established trade union confederation. Secondly, NMMWM reveals a new class protagonist (“subject”) as the leading sector in the labor movement, the migrant worker. While in the past the dynamic sectors of organized labor in the private sector (auto, teamsters, steel, and longshore (West Coast)) have lost over 2/3 of their members and now represent only 9% of the private labor force, over 2 million migrant workers demonstrated and manifested the kind of social solidarity, unseen in the US since the 1930’s. Thirdly, NMMWM was organized without a big bureaucratic trade union apparatus, and with a minimum budget on the basis of voluntary workers through horizontal communication. In fact, one of the key factors accounting for the success of the mobilization was that it was largely out of the control of the dead hand of the trade union hierarchy, even as a minority of workers were members of trade unions. Fourthly, the leadership and strategists of the movement were independent of the two major capitalist parties, especially the deadly embrace of the Democratic Party. Because of their political independence, the NMMWM was in the streets, was critical of both Party policies of expulsion of labor migrants and did not confine itself to the futile action of ‘lobbying politicos’ in the corridors of Congress.

The mass migrant workers movement has served, to a certain extent, as a “social pole” attracting and politicizing tens of thousands of high school, community college and even university students especially those of Latin- American origins. In addition, a minority of dissident “Anglo” trade unionists, middle class progressives and clerical liberals has been activated to work with the labor struggles. The NMMWM struggle is political -–directed at influencing political power, national legislation and against the rule of ‘white capital’ directed at criminalizing and expelling ‘brown labor.’

The movement demonstrates the proper approach to combining race and class politics. The emergence of an organized mass labor-based socio-political pole has the potential to create a new political movement, which could challenge the hegemony of the two capitalist parties. The dynamic growth of the migrant workers movement in the US can serve as the basis for an international labor movement (free from the tutelage of the pro-imperialist AFL-CIO) from Panama to the US West, Southwest and southeastern states. Family and ethnic ties can strengthen class solidarity and create the basis of reciprocal support in struggles against the common enemy: the neo-liberal model of capitalism, the repressive state apparatus and legislation South and North.

The positive developments of the NMMWM however face political obstacles to growth and consolidation: First “from the outside” numerous employers fired workers who participated in the first wave of mass demonstrations. Latino workers who were trade unionists received little or no support from the labor bosses. Secondly, after the mass success of the movements, numerous traditional Latino politicos, social workers, professional consultants, non-governmental organizations and clerical notables jumped on the bandwagon and are active in deflecting the movement into the conventional channels of “petitioning” Congress or supporting the “lesser evil” Democratic Party politicians. These middle class collaborators are intent on dividing the movement to serve their purpose of gaining a political platform for career advancement. Finally the movement faces the problem of the uneven development of the struggle within the working class and between regions of the country. Most “Anglo workers” are at best passive while probably over half perceive migrant workers as a threat to their jobs, salaries and neighborhoods. The general absence of any anti-racist, class-based education by the trade union bureaucracy makes working class unity a difficult task. The challenge is for the migrant workers to reach out and build coalitions with black, Puerto Rican and Asian workers – as well as a minority of advanced Anglo trade unionists. There is also the pressure from the leaders of the capitalist parties to divide migrant workers, by passing legislation that favors ‘legal’ versus ‘illegal’ workers, ‘long-term’ versus ‘short-term’ workers, literate versus less literate workers, skilled versus unskilled workers. Finally there is the need to confront the new wave of large-scale police raids at workplaces and neighborhoods, where hundreds of Latino workers are rounded up and expelled.

Today, in Nazi style, entire Latino neighborhoods are closed and the police go on house-to-house searches. The Immigration police have recently escalated their mass ‘round-ups’ at work sites trying to provoke a climate of intimidation. During the week April 21-28, NeoCon Chief of Homeland Security Agency, Michael Chertoff directed the arrest of 1,100 undocumented migrants in 26 states. Despite these challenges the migrant workers movement is in the ascendancy: on March 25 hundreds of thousands demonstrated; on April 10 over 2 million marched and on May 1, millions more will join massive marches and workers strikes. While the reactionary politicians are holed up in Congress, scheming of new ways to divide and conquer the movement, the Latino people by the millions are in the streets…for their rights, their self-determination and their dignity.

Immigration issue draws thousands into streets

LAPD estimates 500,000 at protest
From MSNBC
2006

LOS ANGELES - They surprised the police, and maybe themselves, their T-shirts turning block after block of downtown Los Angeles streets white in a demonstration so massive that few causes in recent U.S. history have matched it.

Police said more than 500,000 people marched Saturday to protest a proposed federal crackdown on illegal immigration. Wearing white as a sign of peace, and waving flags from the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala and other countries, they came to show that illegal immigrants already are part of the American fabric, and want the chance to be legal, law-abiding citizens.

Police used helicopters to come up with the crowd estimate. “I’ve been on the force 38 years and I’ve never seen a rally this big,” said Cmdr. Louis Gray Jr., incident commander for the rally.

2006-07-27T23:54:00.000-07:00

Fela Kuti

From Wikipedia

Fela Anikulapo Kuti, born Oct. 15, 1938, died Aug. 2, 1997. Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist and political maverick.

Fela Kuti was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria to a middle-class family. His mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was a feminist, active in the anti-colonial movement and his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was the first president of the Nigerian Union Of Teachers. He relocated to London in 1958 with the intention of studying medicine, but he decided to study music instead at the Trinity College of Music.

While there, he formed the band Koola Lobitos, playing a style of music Fela called Afrobeat. The style was a fusion of American jazz with West African highlife. In 1961 Fela married his first wife, Remilekun (Remi) Taylor, with whom he would have three children (Femi, Yeni and Sola). In 1963 Fela moved back to Nigeria, re-formed Koola Lobitos and trained as a radio producer for Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1969 Fela took the band to the United States. While there, Fela discovered the black power movement through Sandra Izsadore--a friend of the Black Panther Party--which would heavily influence his music and political views and renamed the band "Nigeria 70". Soon, the Immigration and Naturalization Service were tipped off by a promoter that Fela and his band were in the US without work permits. The band then performed a quick recording session in Los Angeles, which would later be released as "The '69 Los Angeles Sessions".

Fela and his band, renamed "Africa '70" returned to Nigeria. He then formed the Kalakuta Republic, a commune, a recording studio and a home for many connected to the band which he later declared independent from the Nigerian state. Fela set up a nightclub in the Empire Hotel, named the Afro-Spot and then the Shrine, where he performed regularly. Fela also changed his middle name to "Anikulapo" (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch"), stating that his original middle name of Ransome was a slave name. The recordings continued, and the music became more politically motivated. Fela's music became very popular among the Nigerian public and Africans in general. In fact, he made the decision to sing in English so that his music could be enjoyed by individuals all over Africa, where the languages spoken are very diverse and numerous. As popular as Fela's music had become in Nigeria and elsewhere, it was also very unpopular with the ruling government, and raids on the Kalakuta Republic were frequent.

In 1974 the police arrived with a search warrant and a cannabis joint, which they had intended to plant on Fela. He became wise to this and swallowed the joint. In response, the police took him into custody and waited to examine his feces. Fela enlisted the help of his prison mates and gave the police someone else's feces, and Fela was freed. He then recounted this tale in his release "Expensive Shit".

In 1977 Fela and the Afrika 70 released the hit album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the "zombie" metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military. The record was a smash hit with the people and infuriated the government, setting off a vicious attack against the Kalakuta Republic, during which one thousand soldiers attacked the commune. Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. The Kalakuta Republic was burned, and Fela's studio, instruments, and master tapes were destroyed. Fela claimed that he would have been killed if it were not for the intervention of a commanding officer as he was being beaten. Fela's response to the attack was to deliver his mother's coffin to an army barrack and write two songs, "Coffin for Head of State" and "Unknown Soldier," referencing the official inquiry which claimed the commune had been destroyed by an unknown soldier.

Fela and his band then took residence in Crossroads Hotel as the Shrine had been destroyed along with his commune. In 1978 Fela married twenty seven women, many of whom were his dancers and singers to mark the anniversary of the attack on the Kalakuta Republic. The year was also marked by two notorious concerts, the first in Accra in which riots broke out during the song "Zombie" which led to Fela being banned from entering Ghana. The second was at the Berlin Jazz Festival after which most of Fela's musicians deserted him, due to rumors that Fela was planning to use the entirety of the proceeds to fund his presidential campaign.

Despite the massive setbacks, Fela was determined to come back. He formed his own political party, which he called "Movement of the People". In 1979 he put himself forward for President in Nigeria's first elections for more than a decade but his candidature was refused. At this time, Fela created a new band called "Egypt 80" and continued to record albums and tour the country. In 1983 he again ran for President but was again attacked by police, who threw him in prison on a dubious charge of currency smuggling. After twenty months, the regime changed once again and Fela was released from prison. On Fela's release he divorced his twelve remaining wives. Once again, Fela continued to release albums with Egypt 80, made a number of successful tours of the United States and Europe and also continued to be politically active. In 1986, Fela performed in Giants Stadium in New Jersey as part of the Amnesty International "Conspiracy of Hope" concert, sharing the bill with Bono, Carlos Santana, and The Neville Brothers.

His album output slowed in the 1990s, and eventually he stopped releasing albums altogether. This led to rumors that he was suffering from an illness that he was refusing treatment for. It was announced that he died on August 2, 1997 in Lagos, Nigeria. Later, it was revealed that he succumbed to AIDS-related heart failure.

Music
The musical style performed by Fela Kuti was called Afrobeat, which was essentially a fusion of jazz, funk and Traditional African Chant. It was characterized by having African style percussion, vocals, and musical structure, along with jazzy, funky horn sections. The "endless groove" was also used, in which a base rhythm of drums, muted guitar, and bass guitar are repeated throughout the song. This is a common technique in African and African-influenced musical styles, and can be seen in funk and hip-hop. Some elements often present in Fela's music are the call-and-response with the chorus and figurative but simple lyrics. Fela's songs were almost always over ten minutes in length, some reaching the twenty or even thirty minute marks. This was one of many reasons that his music never reached a substantial degree of popularity outside of Africa. His songs were mostly sung in Nigerian pidgin, although he did also perform a few songs in the Yoruba language. Fela's main instruments were the saxophone and the keyboards but he also played the trumpet, horn, guitar and made the occasional drum solo. Fela refused to perform songs again after he had already recorded them, which also hindered his popularity outside Africa. Fela was known for his showmanship, and his concerts were often quite outlandish and wild.

Political views
The American Black Power movement influenced Fela's political views. He was also a supporter of Pan-Africanism and socialism, and called for a united, democratic African republic. He was a fierce supporter of human rights, and many of his songs are direct attacks against dictatorships, specifically the militaristic governments of Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s. He was also a social commentator, and criticized his fellow Africans (especially the upper class) for betraying traditional African culture. The African culture he believed in also included having many wives (polygamy) and the Kalakuta Republic was formed in part as a polygamist colony. Though not part of African culture, it should be noted though that Fela was very liberal when it came to sex, as he portrayed in some of his songs, like "Open and Close." He also expressed views that could be considered sexist.

2006-07-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Big Switch

Vanessa Baird on what it’s going to take to tackle global warming.
From New Internationalist

It was easy. Glued to our screens we saw how easy it was. As the ‘liberators’ looked on – or looked away, or chose to be elsewhere – looters took lifesaving medical equipment from hospitals. Computers, incubators, heart-monitors.

According to some reports, sick and wounded patients were turfed out of their beds so that these could be taken too.

Building after official building received similar treatment in Baghdad’s postinvasion chaos. Centuries of human history, the beginnings of civilization as we know it, lay trashed in Iraq’s National Museum.

Nothing was safe. Well, almost nothing. US marines did guard two official buildings. One was the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. The other – the Ministry of Oil.

The choice was eloquent. No further explication of Allied priorities needed here.

The events of the past few months should leave us in no doubt about the violence, turmoil and insecurity that accompanies our addiction to fossil fuels.

As the ‘great powers’ scramble for the spoils – each ostensibly wanting to ‘help’ the Iraqis rebuild their economy, of course – it looks like more trouble ahead.

The battle for control over the world’s energy reserves is on. And with the knowledge that they are not infinite – oil production is scheduled to peak round about 2015 with significant shortfalls by 2020 as reserves begin to run out – the scramble is likely to get bloodier.

Unless.

Unless the world wakes up to the fact that we shouldn’t be fighting over oil. In fact we probably shouldn’t be doing anything over oil apart from leaving the damn stuff where it is. Under the sand or water or rainforest. Along with other fossil fuels like coal and gas.

A nice, but unrealistic, idea, surely? A massive four-fifths of the energy the world uses comes from carbon-based fossil fuels. They form the basis of our industrial economy.

But if climate scientists are right, being realistic is going to involve breaking that carbon lock. We will have to make the big switch to renewable energy and embrace sustainability – and fast.

Speed up
Why? Because climate change is upon us. Last year was the second hottest on record, pipped only by 1998. Australia experienced devastating droughts and bushfires. Indonesia saw weeks of incessant rain and the worst flooding in decades. In India, 1,000 people died in a heatwave. Rivers burst their banks and crashed through Germany, Russia and the Czech Republic. As temperatures rose in Antarctica, 3,250 square kilometres of the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed. Scientists found that the global icemelt rate had doubled since 1988 and predicted the sea could rise by 27 centimetres by 2100. But already Native Alaskans were having to leave their rapidly shrinking island village of Shishmaref.4 On the opposite side of the world the 10,000 citizens of the lowlying Pacific island of Tuvalu were making plans to emigrate.

The writing is on the wall – and the people pointing to it are not just eco-alarmists or sandwichboard prophets delighting in Cassandrine predictions of doom. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) draws contributions from more than 2,000 scientists from around 100 countries. In their Third Assessment Report (2001) they confirmed that global warming is happening faster than they’d thought, upping their estimates from a rise of 0.45°C to 0.60°C during the 20th century. Early this year, Canadian researcher Nathan Gillet introduced another dimension. He reported that greenhouse gases were not only increasing the earth’s temperature, they were also affecting air pressure.6 This controls the atmosphere’s circulation and can alter rainfall, temperature, winds and storminess. It fits with what we have been seeing.

The consensus of the IPCC scientists is that in order to prevent devastating climate shifts, worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main greenhouse gas – must drop by 60 to 80 per cent below their 1990 level within the next few decades.

That then, at its simplest, is the solution. How we get there is the tricky bit.

Most climate scientists are agreed that the massive 30-per-cent rise in global CO2 since 1750 is mainly due to the human activity of burning fossil fuels. The implications for our carbon-based industrial economy are colossal.

Take the US, the greatest CO2 producer in the world. About a third comes from transport, a third from industrial heating and cooling and a third from generating electricity in fossil-fuel power plants. So changing one sector can’t do the job of producing a 60-to-80-per-cent reduction. Change has to be across the board.

At this point it’s tempting to exclaim ‘It’ll never happen!’ – and disengage.

But stay the course. Because change is possible. We know it is because it’s happening already.

Today, 10 times more electricity is being generated by wind-power than there was a decade ago; seven times more by solar power. Sun and wind power alone have the potential to meet the world’s energy needs several times over – not to mention hydrogen, wave power, tidal power, biomass, micro-hydro and others in a growing host of ‘green’ renewables.

Where can savings be made – and how?

* Energy efficiency can produce savings of 10-50%.

* Car makers could be legally bound to make 5% of new vehicles zeroemission by 2010; 25% by 2015; 50% by 2020 and 100% by 2025.

* Electricity providers could be bound to provide 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2010; 80% by 2025.

* Fiscal measures like scrapping global subsidies on fossil fuels would cut CO2 emissions by 18%(according to the IPCC). Taxing CO2 emissions in Sweden caused an 11% drop.

* Industry accounts for around 30% of CO2 emissions and could make deep cuts through retrofitting for fuelefficiency, sustainable transport and
recycling.

Source: Guy Dauncey with Patrick Mazza, Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (New Society Publishers, 2001).

Millions of people around the world are already tapping that potential and becoming part of the energy revolution. As the rest of this magazine shows, communities and individuals are busy making the future. And making it work – whether they are Californians road-testing new zero-emission hydrogen fuel-cell cars or Solomon Islanders wiring up electricity in their villages for the first time, thanks to solar power.

Efforts on the international stage are, admittedly, more ambiguous. In 1997, under the auspices of the UN, the world got together to try to agree a mechanism for reducing global CO2 emissions. The result: the Kyoto Protocol, ratified last year by 178 countries. The Protocol obliges industrial nations to reduce their CO2 emissions by 5.2 per cent of their 1990 levels by 2012.

But the Protocol is resisted by the oil lobby and right-wingers who see it as an interference. It’s accepted yet despised by many environmentalists who see it as too weak and full of loopholes to do the job of getting anything like the cuts needed. When the US – responsible for a whopping 25 per cent of CO2 emissions – decided the Protocol would harm the American economy and withdrew from it, many wondered if there were any point in continuing.

The decision of another big polluter, Australia, to copy-cat did not help. But other countries did not let the Bush Administration and its oil-company backers kill Kyoto. A favourite argument of the anti-Kyoto lobby was that ‘global warming’ is uncertain and not scientifically proven. It’s true that climate science is complex and its predictions full of variables. No-one can say for sure what will happen in the future – and scientists as a species are perhaps least inclined to do so. With climate science it’s especially hard to predict exactly when something is going to happen.

One of the most confusing – and worrying – factors is what scientists call ‘positive feedback’. This isn’t as nice as it sounds. It refers to factors that accelerate climate change and raise the possibility of a chain reaction in the climate system that could effectively put the problem beyond human control. For example warming decreases soil moisture and this increases the frequency of natural fires which then pump (or ‘feed back’) even more CO2 into the atmosphere.

So things can quite suddenly get very much worse with little or no warning. ‘We are working without a clock – and no-one knows how much time we have left’ is how environmental writer Alexander Evans puts it.8

But uncertainty is no reason for doing nothing. You could think a) it may never happen b) it’s too late so there’s no point in doing anything now. But just how tempting inertia and denial are may depend on where you live in the world and how rich or poor you are.

Climate change ultimately affects us all. But our capacity to withstand its consequences can come down to economics. If you are poor you are far more likely to live in an ecologically vulnerable region. This is true of both rural and city folk. Poor people tend to have less solid houses which are more likely to be destroyed or submerged by storms or mudslides. And they are unlikely to be insured. If global warming brings drought and crop failure, poor communities may have nothing to fall back on. The situation looks most precarious for Pacific islanders living a nearsubsistence existence and now appealing, with limited success, for refuge in New Zealand/Aotearoa and Australia.

This puts a spotlight on the most shameful aspect of climate inequity.

Australia – which seems determined to refuse refugee status to its Pacific neighbours – is a major exporter of fossil fuel in the region. Its CO2 emissions per capita are roughly 34 times greater than those of Pacific islanders who risk losing their homelands to rising tides.

So while rich, industrialized nations pump obscene quantities of CO2 into the world’s atmosphere, the poor reap the consequences. Just to get a sense of scale – as they sit down to their evening meal on 2 January a US family will already have used, per person, the equivalent fossil fuels that a family in Tanzania will depend on for the whole year.

Even rapidly industrializing countries like China, India, Brazil and Mexico are committing a fraction of the damage done by the richest. No wonder Indian environmentalists get incensed when tut-tutting Europeans tell them they really should be watching their emissions or when North Americans wax worried about all those Chinese getting cars.

Fair and feasible
Actually, both China and India have recently strengthened their commitment to renewables. India has one of the largest renewableenergy programmes in the world and is the third-largest producer of solar cells. China has made a big shift away from coal towards less damaging natural gas and renewables, leading to a 3.7-percent reduction in carbon emissions in 1998. The US, on the other hand, saw its CO2 emissions rise by three per cent in 2002 and was the only country in the world to have recorded a decline in wind-power generation in the past decade.1,3 In addition the US is now producing monstrous Sports Utility Vehicles (People Carriers is the twee British term) which are even less fuelefficient than the gas guzzlers of the 1980s.

That the rich world is indebted to the poor world for abusing the earth’s atmosphere is without question.

But exactly how much do we owe? Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation has been adding up. He finds that disasters caused by climate change have risen fivefold in just two decades. In the 1990s such disasters cost the world three times as much as it was owed by the most Heavily Indebted Poor Countries. The case for dropping Third World debt is already strong. Add in the costs of climate damage caused by the rich and it becomes morally irresistible.

But the big question remains: how do we tackle climate change in a way that is both fair and feasible?

Many different proposals are being worked upon. One which is gaining wide support comes from the London-based Global Commons Institute and goes by the somewhat cumbersome title of "Contraction and Convergence". The model is based on equal rights per person. It allows for an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere that would peak at 450 parts per million in 2025 (compared with today’s 370 ppm) and stabilize at an ecologically safe level by 2100.1

While some are trying to find solutions for the mess we are in, others are doing their best to deepen it. The principal culprits are governments without vision – and corporations with dollar signs in their sights. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart.

ExxonMobil (Esso) is not a subtle beast. The world’s biggest oil company recorded profits of $15 billion and put $8 billion into further oil exploration in 2001. Its investment in renewable energy is – zero. It cannot even match the modest gestures made by BP, Shell or Texaco in that direction.

What it did put a lot of money into was the US presidential campaign. Of the $1.3 million Exxon donated to political parties in the 2000 election cycle, 89 per cent went to the Republicans. The company also put money into think tanks and lobby groups that deny global warming is happening.

Solutions that aren't
Here are some desperate measures to tackle global warming – while holding on to fossil and atomic fuels.

Carbon sinks By planting trees or protecting forests we can offset some of the damage caused. This is because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But experts warn against such a simple equation. While, with good management, soils and forests absorb CO2, with bad management they release it. The forest would have to be stable, well managed and monitored over a period of 100 years or more. It might also literally backfire if global warming gets to a point where forest fires become more frequent. The idea of carbon sinks is appealing to richworld polluters though. Under the Kyoto agreement they can get carbon credits by investing in forest and green development projects which can be used to offset their continued pollution or failure to reach targets.

Sequestration This new idea involves capturing the CO2 a power plant creates, separating it from other gases, transporting it to another location and burying it. It’s got oil giants BP, Chevron, Norsk Hydro, Shell, Statoil, Suncor and Texaco excited; they are funding a $20-million project to develop it. The scheme seems costly, complicated and of dubious virtue.

Hydrogen links The hottest idea of the moment is that we use fossil fuels to generate hydrogen – the clean motor (and possibly domestic) fuel of the future. The nuclear energy industry is also muscling in on this one. Neither is likely to save us: the first will still spew significant quantities of CO2; the latter will saddle us with yet more radioactive waste.

Source: Guy Dauncey with Patrick Mazza, Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (New Society Publishers 2001).

Exxon gets a big bang for their buck. The US President did his best to derail the Kyoto Protocol and a secret memo shows that Exxon was behind Bush’s successful push to get climate scientist Robert Watson ousted from the chair of the IPCC.

But most significant of all, ExxonMobil benefits from federal subsidies of about $25 billion a year on fossil fuels – shooting up to $40 billion if you add the defence costs of protecting oil supplies from the Middle East. This is 43 times more public money than has been pledged to clean, renewable technologies.

Exxon is extreme but not alone. The US, too, is extreme but not alone. The pattern is replicated in many parts of the world. The British Government gave $10 billion in public money to the nuclear industry last year. This year, when Tony Blair finally began to honour his election promise to back the green renewable-energy revolution it was with a grant of less than one per cent of that figure and a warning that the industry would have just five years to prove itself or it would be abandoned in favour of... nuclear energy.

How about doing it the other way round? One, polluting industries have to pay a tax for their emissions. Two, subsidies are shifted from the old polluters to renewables. Three, some of the subsidies that have been going to the old polluters get redirected to retraining oil, coal, gas and nuclear workers for more secure and long-term jobs in the new renewable-energy industries.

There is so much governments could be doing to combat global warming. The technology is there. The economics work – or could easily be made to.

But we can’t wait for governments to get real – and luckily many people aren’t. In the US several states are ignoring Bush and setting their own targets for cutting CO2 emissions. In Thailand the people have challenged their government’s energy plans and are demanding wind and solar power instead. Around the world, in ways practical and political, people are resisting the folly of their leaders.

We have a window of opportunity both to halt global warming and to make the world a fairer place. It may not be open very long. We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to make the best of it.

Or else we leave the world to those who would go to war for oil, again and again. To the lethal junkies at the helm of industry and government who can’t kick their fossil habit – and will do their damnedest to make sure that nobody else is given a chance to do so either.

1 Guy Dauncey with Patrick Mazza, Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (New Society Publishers 2001).
2 UN World Meteorological Organization.
3 Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2003.
4 Associated Press, ‘In Alaska an ancestral island home falls victim to global warming’ by Joseph B Verrengia, 10 September 2002.
5 IPCC, Summary for Policymakers, Third Assessment Report, March 2001.
6 Nature (www.nature.com), ‘Global Greenhouse gas affects air pressure’ by Philip Ball, 20 March 2003.
7 Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer, Dead Heat: global justice and global warming (Seven Stories Press 2002).
8 New Economics Foundation, Fresh Air? Options for the future architecture of international climate change policy, report by Alexander Evans, 2002.
9 World Resources Institute, ‘Emissions from Fossil Fuel Burning and Cement Manufacturing’, 2000-01.
10 New Economics Foundation, Balancing the Other Budget, report by Andrew Simms, 2002.
11 Greenpeace www.greenpeace.org/international
12 Ross Gelbspan, ‘ExxonMobil Caves to Science’, www.tompaine.com
13 The Guardian, ‘Five years for green power to prove its worth’ by David Gow, 25 February 2003.

2006-07-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

Some Like It Hot!(excerpt)
Forty public policy groups have this in common: They seek to undermine the scientific consensus that humans are causing the earth to overheat. And they all get money from ExxonMobil.

By Chris Mooney
From Mother Jones Magazine
2005

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are causing global average temperatures to rise. Conservative think tanks are trying to undermine this conclusion with a disinformation campaign employing “reports” designed to look like a counterbalance to peer-reviewed studies, skeptic propaganda masquerading as journalism, and events like the AEI luncheon that Crichton addressed. The think tanks provide both intellectual cover for those who reject what the best science currently tells us, and ammunition for conservative policymakers like Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who calls global warming “a hoax.”

This concerted effort reflects the shared convictions of free-market, and thus antiregulatory, conservatives. But there’s another factor at play. In addition to being supported by like-minded individuals and ideologically sympathetic foundations, these groups are funded by ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company.

Mother Jones has tallied some 40 ExxonMobil-funded organizations that either have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global climate change or have maintained affiliations with a small group of “skeptic” scientists who continue to do so. Beyond think tanks, the count also includes quasi-journalistic outlets like Tech CentralStation.com (a website providing “news, analysis, research, and commentary” that received $95,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003), a FoxNews.com columnist, and even religious and civil rights groups. In total, these organizations received more than $8 million between 2000 and 2003 (the last year for which records are available; all figures below are for that range unless otherwise noted). ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Lee Raymond serves as vice chairman of the board of trustees for the AEI, which received $960,000 in funding from ExxonMobil. The AEI-Brookings Institution Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, which officially hosted Crichton, received another $55,000. When asked about the event, the center’s executive director, Robert Hahn—who’s a fellow with the AEI—defended it, saying, “Climate science is a field in which reasonable experts can disagree.” (By contrast, on the day of the event, the Brookings Institution posted a scathing critique of Crichton’s book.)

During the question-and-answer period following his speech, Crichton drew an analogy between believers in global warming and Nazi eugenicists. “Auschwitz exists because of politicized science,” Crichton asserted, to gasps from some in the crowd. There was no acknowledgment that the AEI event was part of an attempt to do just that: politicize science. The audience at hand was certainly full of partisans. Listening attentively was Myron Ebell, a man recently censured by the British House of Commons for “unfounded and insulting criticism of Sir David King, the Government’s Chief Scientist.” Ebell is the global warming and international policy director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has received a whopping $1,380,000 from ExxonMobil. Sitting in the back of the room was Christopher Horner, the silver-haired counsel to the Cooler Heads Coalition who’s also a CEI senior fellow. Present also was Paul Driessen, a senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($252,000) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise ($40,000 in 2003). Saying he’s “heartened that ExxonMobil and a couple of other groups have stood up and said, ‘this is not science,’” Driessen, who is white, has made it his mission to portray Kyoto-style emissions regulations as an attack on people of color—his recent book is entitled Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (see “Black Gold?”). Driessen has also written about the role that think tanks can play in helping corporations achieve their objectives. Such outlets “can provide research, present credible independent voices on a host of issues, indirectly influence opinion and political leaders, and promote responsible social and economic agendas,” he advised companies in a 2001 essay published in Capital PR News. “They have extensive networks among scholars, academics, scientists, journalists, community leaders and politicians…. You will be amazed at how much they do with so little.”

THIRTY YEARS AGO, the notion that corporations ought to sponsor think tanks that directly support their own political goals—rather than merely fund disinterested research—was far more controversial. But then, in 1977, an associate of the AEI (which was founded as a business association in 1943) came to industry’s rescue. In an essay published in the Wall Street Journal, the influential neoconservative Irving Kristol memorably counseled that “corporate philanthropy should not be, and cannot be, disinterested,” but should serve as a means “to shape or reshape the climate of public opinion.”

Kristol’s advice was heeded, and today many businesses give to public policy groups that support a laissez-faire, antiregulatory agenda. In its giving report, ExxonMobil says it supports public policy groups that are “dedicated to researching free market solutions to policy problems.” What the company doesn’t say is that beyond merely challenging the Kyoto Protocol or the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act on economic grounds, many of these groups explicitly dispute the science of climate change. Generally eschewing peer-reviewed journals, these groups make their challenges in far less stringent arenas, such as the media and public forums.

Pressed on this point, spokeswoman Lauren Kerr says that “ExxonMobil has been quite transparent and vocal regarding the fact that we, as do multiple organizations and respected institutions and researchers, believe that the scientific evidence on greenhouse gas emissions remains inconclusive and that studies must continue.” She also hastens to point out that ExxonMobil generously supports university research programs—for example, the company plans to donate $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project. It even funds the hallowed National Academy of Sciences.

Nevertheless, no company appears to be working harder to support those who debunk global warming. “Many corporations have funded, you know, dribs and drabs here and there, but I would be surprised to learn that there was a bigger one than Exxon,” explains Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which, in 2000 and again in 2003, sued the government to stop the dissemination of a Clinton-era report showing the impact of climate change in the United States. Attorney Christopher Horner—whom you’ll recall from Crichton’s audience—was the lead attorney in both lawsuits and is paid a $60,000 annual consulting fee by the CEI. In 2002, ExxonMobil explicitly earmarked $60,000 for the CEI for “legal activities.”

Ebell denies the sum indicates any sort of quid pro quo. He’s proud of ExxonMobil’s funding and wishes “we could attract more from other companies.” He stresses that the CEI solicits funding for general project areas rather than to carry out specific sponsor requests, but admits being steered (as other public policy groups are steered) to the topics that garner grant money. While noting that the CEI is “adamantly opposed” to the Endangered Species Act, Ebell adds that “we are only working on it in a limited way now, because we couldn’t attract funding.”

EXXONMOBIL’S FUNDING OF THINK TANKS hardly compares with its lobbying expenditures—$55 million over the past six years, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And neither figure takes much of a bite out of the company’s net earnings—$25.3 billion last year. Nevertheless, “ideas lobbying” can have a powerful public policy effect.

Consider attacks by friends of ExxonMobil on the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). A landmark international study that combined the work of some 300 scientists, the ACIA, released last November, had been four years in the making. Commissioned by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that includes the United States, the study warned that the Arctic is warming “at almost twice the rate as that of the rest of the world,” and that early impacts of climate change, such as melting sea ice and glaciers, are already apparent and “will drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, ice-inhabiting seals, and some seabirds, pushing some species toward extinction.” Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) was so troubled by the report that he called for a Senate hearing.

Industry defenders shelled the study, and, with a dearth of science to marshal to their side, used opinion pieces and press releases instead. “Polar Bear Scare on Thin Ice,” blared FoxNews.com columnist Steven Milloy, an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute ($75,000 from ExxonMobil) who also publishes the website JunkScience.com. Two days later the conservative Washington Times published the same column. Neither outlet disclosed that Milloy, who debunks global warming concerns regularly, runs two organizations that receive money from ExxonMobil. Between 2000 and 2003, the company gave $40,000 to the Advancement of Sound Science Center, which is registered to Milloy’s home address in Potomac, Maryland, according to IRS documents. ExxonMobil gave another $50,000 to the Free Enterprise Action Institute—also registered to Milloy’s residence. Under the auspices of the intriguingly like-named Free Enterprise Education Institute, Milloy publishes CSRWatch.com, a site that attacks the corporate social responsibility movement. Milloy did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article; a Fox News spokesman stated that Milloy is “affiliated with several not-for-profit groups that possibly may receive funding from Exxon, but he certainly does not receive funding directly from Exxon.”

Setting aside any questions about Milloy’s journalistic ethics, on a purely scientific level, his attack on the ACIA was comically inept. Citing a single graph from a 146-page overview of a 1,200-plus- page, fully referenced report, Milloy claimed that the document “pretty much debunks itself” because high Arctic temperatures “around 1940” suggest that the current temperature spike could be chalked up to natural variability. “In order to take that position,” counters Harvard biological oceanographer James McCarthy, a lead author of the report, “you have to refute what are hundreds of scientific papers that reconstruct various pieces of this climate puzzle.”

Nevertheless, Milloy’s charges were quickly echoed by other groups. TechCentralStation.com published a letter to Senator McCain from 11 “climate experts,” who asserted that recent Arctic warming was not at all unusual in comparison to “natural variability in centuries past.” Meanwhile, the conservative George C. Marshall Institute ($310,000) issued a press release asserting that the Arctic report was based on “unvalidated climate models and scenarios…that bear little resemblance to reality and how the future is likely to evolve.” In response, McCain said, “General Marshall was a great American. I think he might be very embarrassed to know that his name was being used in this disgraceful fashion.”

The day of McCain’s hearing, the Competitive Enterprise Institute put out its own press release, citing the aforementioned critiques as if they should be considered on a par with the massive, exhaustively reviewed Arctic report: “The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, despite its recent release, has already generated analysis pointing out numerous flaws and distortions.” The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute ($60,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003) also weighed in, calling the Arctic warming report “an excellent example of the favoured scare technique of the anti-energy activists: pumping largely unjustifiable assumptions about the future into simplified computer models to conjure up a laundry list of scary projections.” In the same release, the Fraser Institute declared that “2004 has been one of the cooler years in recent history.” A month later the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization would pronounce 2004 to be “the fourth warmest year in the temperature record since 1861.”

Frank O’Donnell, of Clean Air Watch, likens ExxonMobil’s strategy to that of “a football quarterback who doesn’t want to throw to one receiver, but rather wants to spread it around to a number of different receivers.” In the case of the ACIA, this echo-chamber offense had the effect of creating an appearance of scientific controversy. Senator Inhofe—who received nearly $290,000 from oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, for his 2002 reelection campaign—prominently cited the Marshall Institute’s work in his own critique of the latest science.

TO BE SURE, that science wasn’t always as strong as it is today. And until fairly recently, virtually the entire fossil fuels industry—automakers, utilities, coal companies, even railroads—joined ExxonMobil in challenging it.

The concept of global warming didn’t enter the public consciousness until the 1980s. During a sweltering summer in 1988, pioneering NASA climatologist James Hansen famously told Congress he believed with “99 percent confidence” that a long-term warming trend had begun, probably caused by the greenhouse effect. As environmentalists and some in Congress began to call for reduced emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, industry fought back.

In 1989, the petroleum and automotive industries and the National Association of Manufacturers forged the Global Climate Coalition to oppose mandatory actions to address global warming. Exxon—later ExxonMobil—was a leading member, as was the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization for which Exxon’s CEO Lee Raymond has twice served as chairman. “They were a strong player in the Global Climate Coalition, as were many other sectors of the economy,” says former GCC spokesman Frank Maisano.

Drawing upon a cadre of skeptic scientists, during the early and mid-1990s the GCC sought to emphasize the uncertainties of climate science and attack the mathematical models used to project future climate changes. The group and its proxies challenged the need for action on global warming, called the phenomenon natural rather than man-made, and even flatly denied it was happening. Maisano insists, how ever, that after the Kyoto Protocol emerged in 1997, the group focused its energies on making economic arguments rather than challenging science.

Even as industry mobilized the forces of skepticism, however, an international scientific collaboration emerged that would change the terms of the debate forever. In 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations, scientists and government officials inaugurated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global scientific body that would eventually pull together thousands of experts to evaluate the issue, becoming the gold standard of climate science.

In the IPCC’s first assessment report, published in 1990, the science remained open to reasonable doubt. But the IPCC’s second report, completed in 1995, concluded that amid purely natural factors shaping the climate, humankind’s distinctive fingerprint was evident. And with the release of the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001, a strong consensus had emerged: Notwithstanding some role for natural variability, human-created greenhouse gas emissions could, if left unchecked, ramp up global average temperatures by as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius (or 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. “Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science,” wrote Science Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy in a 2001 editorial.

Even some leading corporations that had previously supported “skepticism” were converted. Major oil companies like Shell, Texaco, and British Petroleum, as well as automobile manufacturers like Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler, abandoned the Global Climate Coalition, which itself became inactive after 2002.

2006-07-26T18:53:00.000-07:00

This just in: Global warming a myth -- National Post

By Donald Gutstein
From NewsWatch Canada
2001

The vast majority of the world's climatologists and every country in the world -- except for the oil- industry controlled US government -- agree that the earth's temperature is increasing. They agree also that the increase is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, and will have serious consequences for humanity.

In Canada, the National Post -- together with its sidekicks at the Fraser Institute -- fight an increasingly lonely rear-guard action against the reality of global warming, continuing to deny any of the consensus propositions regarding climate change reached by over 2000 scientists and 150 countries. In a kind of solarcaust denial, the Post performs a valuable propaganda service for the fossil-fuel industry, the primary source of global warming.

The Post's editorial pages are particularly noteworthy for the consistency of its anti-global warming messaging. Between January 2000 and June 2001, the Post published 53 opinion pieces (unsigned editorials, columns and guest opinion pieces) on climate change and global warming. Of these, three are neutral while 48, or 90 percent, deny that global warming is occurring, that it is caused by burning fossil fuel or that it will have harmful consequences. The two pieces that argue for urgent action on climate change -- one by David Suzuki -- were written in response to earlier diatribes by Terence Corcoran, the Post's resident meister propagandist.

Not surprisingly, Corcoran wrote the most anti-global warming pieces, 12 in all. He took every opportunity to attack the Kyoto Protocol (the agreement to reduce CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels by 2010). In one piece he calls it a massive plot by UN bureaucrats to redistribute wealth from Canada to China and Sudan (29 Mar 2001). And just before Earth Day 2000, Corcoran called Kyoto a Soviet-style exercise in bureaucratic planning that Ottawa is preparing to impose on Canadians (20 Apr 2000).

Many of the anti-global warming pieces are provided by guest writers. One frequent contributor is Patrick Michaels, who earns his living being skeptical about climate change. In Nov. 2000, as 20,000 officials, scientists and observers headed to The Hague, Netherlands to hammer out the specifics of reaching the targets established at Kyoto, Michaels wrote a piece titled "Science tricked again on global warming," charging that negotiators from 150 countries and 2000 scientists on the United Nations-mandated panel which determines the forecasts were 'tricked' by power-hungry UN bureaucrats (4 Nov. 2000).

Thousands of climate scientists have achieved a difficult consensus on climate change. Michaels and a handful of scientists, many not climatologists although Michaels is, claim it is not occurring. They are called 'skeptics' by the media but are usually funded by the fossil-fuel industry, as Michaels is -- 'bought experts' is more accurate. Michaels is funded by Western Fuels, a $400-million coal industry front group, the German Coal Mining Association, the Edison Electric Institute, an association of electric utility companies, and Cyprus Minerals, a backer of the Wise Use movement.

Right-wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute provide a platform for the 'skeptics' to disseminate their views, most usually that global warming is not happening and that any possible future warming will be slight and may even be beneficial. Michaels is a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, which enjoys lavish funding from the energy industry and others, campaigns against "unnecessary and harmful" environmental regulations, and promotes free- market environmentalism.

Corporate news media like the Wall Street Journal and National Post give the doubts raised by the skeptics a status beyond that awarded them within the scientific community itself. This creates a sense that widespread disagreement exists among scientists, exaggerating the uncertainty associated with climate change and leading the public and politicians to conclude that since the global warming debate is not over, action is not yet warranted. And every year action is delayed is another year the fossil-fuel industry can reap its gargantuan profits.

Recently the Post has featured another skeptic, David Wojick, who wrote five pieces over the 18-month period. In one piece he calls Kyoto a license for more federal power and more government spending and a plot by hard-line greens to force wrenching life-style changes they long for people to endure. (19 Oct. 2000) In another, he calls the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a plot by under-developed countries to bring down the Western way of life. (23 Nov. 2000)

The Post calls Wojick a journalist and policy analyst but does not say for whom. In fact, Wojick is a columnist for The Electricity Daily, an industry newspaper which covers the North American electricity market and promotes energy deregulation. And his policy analysis is mainly for the electric power industry, the second largest producer of CO2 emissions.

In the early 1990s Wojick worked with AES Corp., one of the world's largest electricity producers, which owns dozens of coal-fired electricity plants in the US and around the world. In 1995, just after Wojick had completed his work as a "strategic planning consultant" helping to make the company "one of the world's largest independent power producers," Greenpeace wrote a report on this company. It calls AES's track record "a sordid one, filled with illegal dumping, toxic spills, and lawsuits covered by falsified reports, political schmoozing and greenwash. In short, AES tries to buy, deceive, or sue communities to allow it to build and operate dirty, unnecessary power plants that pollute neighbourhoods and endanger the global environment." [http://www.greeneapce.org/~usa/reports/energy/AES.html]

Of course you won't find a word about the Greenpeace study in the Post.

Even in its news stories the Post distorts its coverage. A story in March, 2000 reports a study by the US National Research Council confirming earlier findings that the Earth's surface is warming. But the story gives only three paragraphs to this study and the earlier findings. Most of the story -- ten of 18 paragraphs -- is given over to the skeptics or 'dissenters,' as the story also calls them. The other five paragraphs are neutral or mixed. The story presents the impression that the skeptics and the "adherents of the dominant view" are equals and either viewpoint could be valid. As the headline puts it, "Global warming debate heats up," even though there is no debate among the vast majority of scientists (1 Mar. 2000).

Another story at the end of May was solely about the skeptics, with not one word from the adherents of the dominant view. "Global warming theories criticized; models faulty: scientists," the headline proclaims, as if those who formulate the theories and build the models are not scientists but perhaps something worse, like radical environmentalists. National Post reporter Jan Cienski says that "Global warming is all hot air, according to a group of scientific skeptics who gathered yesterday Š to denounce the climate science that says the world is getting hotter because of greenhouse gases" (31 May 2000). The first skeptic quoted is Richard Courtney, a British energy and environmental consultant, who was already well-known to the Post. On Earth Day 2000 (April 22), the entire business editorial page was turned over to him for a 1900-word anti-global warming rant.

Even when it reported in November 2000 on The Hague meetings, the Post gave most coverage to another skeptic, Julian Morris of the Institute for Economic Affairs, a corporate- backed sponsor of the skeptics in the United Kingdom. Morris complains that there is "so much conflicting data" we shouldn't do anything.

In 2001, the Post provided more coverage to the consequences of climate change, reporting on the melting of the permafrost in the European Alps, droughts on the Canadian Prairies, the extinction of countless species of animals, birds and plant life, the disappearance of the snows of Killimanjaro, a precipitous drop in the number of icebergs in the North Atlantic and a likely increase in the number of monster forest fires in Canada.

But only three stories made the front page, and all three were skeptical of or hostile towards global warming. In one, George W. Bush proclaims that he has no intention of reducing CO2 emissions if it means harming the US economy (30 Mar. 2001). A month later, Dick Cheney, an oil-industry executive who moonlights as Bush's vice president, testily asserts that US consumers do not have to apologize for their gluttonous energy appetites (1 May 2001).

But the Post's anti-environmental agenda was exhibited most clearly on 11 June, 2001, when it gave front-page coverage to a Danish statistician who was once a member of Greenpeace. The reason for the story? He wrote a book.

Thousands of books are written each year. Most are not even reviewed by the Post, let alone reported as front-page news. Titled The Skeptical Environmentalist, this one is news because it attacks environmentalists for being critical of capitalism.

"The book could be the most dangerous tool in a backlash against the green agenda," Post writer Mary Vallis claims, without citing any sources for this proposition. By providing front-page treatment for the story, though, the Post is doing its part to ensure the book becomes such a tool.

Donald Gutstein is writing a book about corporate propaganda in Canada.

2006-07-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

Six Nations have appealed directly to the Queen in trying to settle thier ongoing land claim at Caledonia.

From The First Perspective

Below is the text of the letter,
written on July 17, 2006

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II
Buckingham Palace
London, SW1A1AA

Your Royal Highness,

Scano, (Hello)

I am writing to you with the utmost respect regarding our On gwe ho weh (True people) Territory, Kanenhstaton (The Protected Place) a.k.a. Douglas Creek Lands. Our Nation is in terrible turmoil at the hands of the Canadian Government. The acting officials, Governor General Michelle Jean, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, have shamed and disgraced Canada as they continue to ignore the Haundensaunee Traditional People of Six Nations, as they do not hear our cries. They have been in violation of our Human Rights when it comes to our people for many, endless years.

Our waters are contaminated and are unsafe to drink. In some places we are unable to bathe in the water as it holds so much sulfur that it makes us sick and leaves the color of our white tubs brown. As the filth seeps into the ground, it causes Mother Earth to suffer and when she suffers, we suffer. We become sick with diseases and our skin often breaks out with sores. The pesticides that are being used carries through our women and into our unborn children. Our children suffer the consequences as they are born with deformed limbs. In other Territories there are a high percentage of miscarriages. All these factors serve as genocide against our People.

Our past dealings with the outside world have not changed and, in fact, the mistreatment has gotten worse. This is not a Third World Country, nor are we foreigners to this land. We have Treaties made with King George III, with respect to Your people and His intention was, "to protect us from further harm." Because of our Military Alliance, we defeated Your enemy, making us, "Allies to the Crown." This title we earned with great honor. Together we sealed, The Two Row Wampum, The Covenant Chain and the Peace Treaty. These agreements state that "we travel the same river together, each in our own canoes and we will not steer each others’ vessels." Both of our Ancestors have laid out this path for us to honor and respect each other and to govern ourselves accordingly as we practice peace, power and righteousness.

In 1924, the government forcefully imposed the illegal Elected Band Council on us, which went against our Inherent Rights. Through this act of betrayal, our Traditional Confederacy Council was ignored. Their intention was and has always been, to banish and do away with us. However, our traditions are very much alive today as they were back then, and we are here with that same spirit. We have taken everything that Canada has shoved at us leaving us no other alternatives. As it was foresaid long ago, "There will come a day when we have had enough." Today, we have had enough.

We were meant to enjoy this land, "As long as the water flows, the grass grows, and the sun shines." Through the land comes peace and harmony. Mother Earth is crying and it is our duty to protect her for when she cries, our people cry. We can no longer tolerate having to place a toxic blanket over our loved ones when we place them into the ground. We have been cheated, robbed and molested of our lands and I am reaching out to You so that You hear our cries. We are trusting, caring and loving People of this Earth and we are born natural defenders of the land for which we should be treated with respect and dealt with in an appropriate manner according to "The Great Law.” We have respected Your people throughout.

Fifteen years ago, the shrewd developers, Don and Ron Henning of Henco Industries, Inc., bought a parcel of land along side the Haldimand Tract. Who they purchased this land from is unknown to us and they have never shown us a Title. These developers knew this land was under dispute because three years prior, Henco Industries placed a proposal on the table for discussions with the Six Nations Elected Band Council and our Council never responded to Henco. The Henning brothers took it upon themselves to proceed with a multi-million dollar development investment that would eventually place as many as 50,000 families upon the land. The People of Six Nations have been concerned about where we are going to house our own future generations as we are running out of space.

This is unfair and unjust as it suppresses our extended families and their given right to stay with us on our lands. In the meantime, we hold title to this land through Sir Frederick Haldimand and the Royal Proclamation affirms this. We are aware that our Ancestors gave away title to a small portion of land on the tract as gifts and also agreed to lease some of the land for 99 years with stipulations. These agreements have been broken by settlers and yet, we as a People, made no attempt to remove anyone, though the leases have been expired for some time now.

On February 28, 2006, we made a long overdue stand for our land rights and it has been quite the journey we have taken and one we are proud of. On March 7, 2006, Judge David Marshall of the Cayuga Court placed illegal court injunctions upon our People. Judge Marshall’s intention is to remove us off our land with whatever force necessary, as we have had threats made against us to call in the Army. We have asked Judge Marshall to step down on several occasions as he has a biased opinion in that he claims he has title to property along the Grand River (the Haldimand Proclamation.) Judge Marshall states in his book written in 2002 that he is, "an Honorary Chief to the Six Nations," and to us this means he was adopted into our Nation. Again, Judge Marshall stands in a conflict of interest in that he is rendering a judgment against his own "family members."

We have served papers addressing our rights to Judge Marshall, the OPP, RCMP, Henco’s lawyer, Michael Bruder and to all officials involved who have taken an oath, "to protect Her Majesty’s interests."” This case is not a criminal matter. This is an International matter that concerns all of us regarding who we are as Six Nations people and what we represent. We have been unwillingly placed in the middle of psychological warfare. Mr. Bruder has threatened to file a lawsuit against the OPP.

Judge Marshall threatens to hold the OPP in contempt of Court for not removing our people from our own lands. The OPP came in upon our unarmed people on April 20, 2006 and attacked them while they slept at 4:45 AM. The OPP came in with guns drawn; tear gas and tasers were used with as many as eight officers on one of our people. For simply standing up for our given rights, many of our people were placed under arrest with absurd charges. In the meantime, our Confederacy Chiefs were at the negotiation table and were told that as long as talks were taking place, they would not come in and try to remove us. They lied.

When the OPP came in upon our people, they placed barricades up so the media, and hence, the world communities, could not witness the savagely brutal attacks against us. They act like terrorists as they inflict terror upon our people. We replaced the barricades with palisades for the safety of the people from any further attacks.

This caused major conflict with some of the Caledonia residents who only thought of themselves as far as their local economy and convenience of travel were concerned. Many of the local residents must have believed we were going to evict them from our land. Racist people from Caledonia and outside communities were brought in to insight hate crimes and throw rocks at our people while trying to entice us to step outside of the boundary lines. We have been treated badly and given poor representation in the media who continuously slander our names in their newspapers and broadcasts while not speaking the truth anywhere.

This has not been an easy ordeal trying to maintain peace while such volatile language and abuse is thrown at us. Nor has it been easy trying to keep our children from becoming just as hateful as the non-natives around us while we continue to make a stand for our birthrights. We stated from the start, "We are peaceful, unified and unarmed," and, "We do NOT declare War." We believe Canada has no intention of upholding and honoring the Treaties. Therefore, I am asking, no I am begging You, on behalf of our People, that You step in so that we can continue to have peace, Nation to Nation.

Nya weh (thank you)
Jacqueline House

2006-07-26T14:31:00.000-07:00

When “Old News” Has Never Been Told

U.S. media produce excuses, not stories, on Downing Street Memo
By Julie Hollar and Peter Hart
From Extra!
2005

Journalists typically condemn attempts to force their colleagues to disclose anonymous sources, saying that subpoenaing reporters will discourage efforts to expose government wrongdoing. But such warnings seem like self-puffery after one watches contemporary journalism in action: When clear evidence of wrongdoing emerges, with no anonymous sources required, major news outlets can still virtually ignore it.

A leaked British government document that first appeared in a London newspaper (Sunday Times, 5/1/05) bluntly stated that U.S. intelligence on Iraq was shaped to support the drive for war. Though the information rocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s re-election campaign when it was exposed, for weeks it received little attention in the U.S. media.

What was dubbed the Downing Street Memo was a record of a July 23, 2002 meeting in Blair’s Downing Street office with the prime minister’s top advisors. The meeting was held to discuss Bush administration policy on Iraq, and the likelihood that Britain would support a U.S. invasion. “It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided,” the minutes state.

The document also recounts the findings of Richard Dearlove, the head of the British intelligence service MI6, who had just returned from a visit to Washington: “There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Low interest in “fixed” facts
That last sentence is striking, to say the least, indicating that the policy of invading Iraq was determining what the Bush administration was presenting as “facts” derived from intelligence. But it provoked little media follow-up in the United States. The first substantial story in the mainstream press here came from the Knight Ridder wire service (5/6/05), which quoted an anonymous former U.S. official saying the memo was “an absolutely accurate description of what transpired” during Dearlove’s meetings in Washington.

The report came the day after Rep. John Conyers (D.-Mich.) sent a letter signed by 89 House Democrats to Bush, asking him to respond to the questions raised by the memo. But despite the new hook, few other outlets showed any interest in pursuing the leaked memo’s key charges. The Charleston (W.V.) Gazette (5/5/05) wrote an editorial about the memo and the Iraq War. A columnist for the Cox News Service (5/8/05) also mentioned the memo, as did columnist Molly Ivins (Chicago Tribune, 5/12/05).

While the mainstream media kept quiet, the Sunday Times report was circulating on the Internet, and citizens started to make some noise. In a brief segment on hot topics in the blogosphere (5/6/05), CNN correspondent Jackie Schechner reported that the memo was receiving attention on various websites, where bloggers were “wondering why it’s not getting more coverage in the U.S. media.” (Acknowledging the lack of coverage didn’t mean CNN was doing any better, though; the network had mentioned the memo in only two earlier stories, both about Blair’s re-election campaign—5/1/05, 5/2/05.)

It wasn’t hard to gauge the media’s interest in the Downing Street story: At the first Bush press conference (5/31/05) since the memo was leaked, not one of the nearly 20 reporters called on asked Bush to respond to its damning contents. And that was part of a pattern—as Salon’s Eric Boehlert pointed out (6/9/05), over a month after the Times broke the story:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan has held 19 daily briefings, at which he has fielded approximately 940 questions from reporters, according to the White House’s online archives. Exactly two of those questions have been about the Downing Street Memo and the White House’s reported effort to fix prewar intelligence.

Even direct questioning yielded some peculiar responses: When finally confronted by CNN (5/16/05), McClellan claimed he hadn’t seen the memo, but that nonetheless “the reports” about it were “flat-out wrong.”

Two weeks to the front page
Following calls by FAIR (5/10/05, 5/20/05) and other progressive groups for more mainstream coverage of the Downing Street Memo, a few major outlets published reports—first the Los Angeles Times on page 3 (5/12/05), then the Washington Post on page 18 (5/13/05). The Minneapolis Star Tribune (5/13/05) ran a piece headlined, “U.S. Anger Over War Memo Is Slight: The Report of a Secret British Document Was Explosive There, but Americans Aren’t Dwelling on the Debate Over Invading Iraq.” Star Tribune readers might have been surprised that their lack of anger was news, since up until that day they wouldn’t have known from reading their paper what they might have to be angry about.

Finally, more than two weeks after it broke in Britain, the Downing Street Memo made the front page of a major U.S. newspaper, the Chicago Tribune (5/17/05).

Other outlets took even longer. After referring to the memo (5/2/05) in a story on the British electoral campaign, the New York Times didn’t report on the document’s implications about the Bush administration until May 20; that one-column story didn’t mention the manipulation of intelligence until the eighth paragraph. (Times columnist Paul Krugman also discussed the memo on the paper’s opinion page on May 16, as did fellow columnist Bob Herbert on June 2.)

The smattering of coverage in print and on CNN did not inspire the broadcast networks to break their near silence on the issue. The first mention of the memo FAIR found on the major networks came on ABC’s Sunday morning show This Week (5/15/05), in which host George Stephanopoulos questioned Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) about it. When McCain declared that he didn’t “agree with it” and defended the Bush administration’s decision to go to war, Stephanopoulos dropped the subject.

Three weeks later, when Republican Party chair Ken Mehlman appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, host Tim Russert (6/5/05) brought up what he called the “now-famous Downing Street Memo”—a peculiar characterization, considering that it was the first time the “famous” memo had been mentioned on NBC.

Media self-defense
The sustained activism around the Downing Street Memo compelled some in the media to explore why it had elicited such little coverage. The New York Times’ new public editor, Byron Calame, took up the case in his first foray into representing readers (NYTimes.com, 5/20/05), prompted by what he called “a flood of reader email.”

According to Calame, Times Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman explained that he felt the Downing Street Memo was simply the “interpretation” of the British head of intelligence and therefore “not a smoking gun that proved that Bush, Tenet and others were distorting intelligence to support the case for war.” Calame deemed Taubman’s defense “holding fast to a high reporting standard.” Given the extremely flimsy evidence the Times required for stories that supported the Bush administration’s drive for war, that would seem to be not a high standard but a double standard.

NPR cast a more critical eye on the Times’ coverage of the memo. On the May 22 Weekend Edition, NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr called the memo “the under-covered story of the year,” singling out the New York Times for its failure to “get around to reporting it until last week and on an inside page, apparently no big deal.” While the criticism is on target, it’s a curious exercise in finger-pointing, since the story was apparently even less of a big deal at NPR, which had run exactly zero reports on the memo up to that point—a fact that went unmentioned in Schorr’s report.

Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler (5/8/05) initially noted that Post readers had complained about the lack of reporting on the memo, but offered no explanation for why the paper virtually ignored the story; the next week, after FAIR referred in a media advisory (5/10/05) to Getler’s lack of comment, he revisited the issue (5/15/05) in much more detail. (The ombud gave backhanded credit to FAIR and the group Media Matters for America—both “self-described media watchdog organizations”—for prompting him to delve into the story.)

In his second column on the subject, Getler wrote that Post editors initially told him they didn’t pursue the story because they were “tied up with [British] election coverage”—despite the fact that the leaked memo was a major election story in Britain and likely contributed to the weak returns for Tony Blair’s Labor Party. When Getler questioned editors again after his first column, he wrote, they “agreed that this story should be covered and said they were going to go back and do that”; the Post’s May 13 story followed.

Getler called investigation of the memo’s conclusions “journalistically mandatory” and suggested that the Post story should have been placed on the front page.

The Chicago Tribune (5/17/05) named several factors that had caused “less than a robust discussion” of the British memo: Aside from the White House’s denials, and the media’s slow reaction, the paper asserted that “the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war.” Of course, it’s hard to judge the public’s interest in a story the media have largely shielded them from.

The dog ate my exposé

A breakthrough of sorts came on June 7, when Blair and Bush held a joint press conference at the White House. The press conference marked the first occasion that Bush was asked directly about the memo, presenting media outlets with a curious dilemma: how to cover new developments in a month-old story that they had largely ignored.

USA Today’s June 8 story, “‘Downing Street Memo’ Gets Fresh Attention,” was actually the paper’s first mention of the story. “USA Today chose not to publish anything about the memo before today for several reasons,” the paper explained, with senior assignment editor for foreign news Jim Cox giving a rather unusual defense: “We could not obtain the memo or a copy of it from a reliable source. There was no explicit confirmation of its authenticity from [Blair’s office]. And it was disclosed four days before the British elections, raising concerns about the timing.”

The full text of the memo—which has never been disavowed by the Blair government—was widely available, first published by the Sunday Times with their May 1 article and posted immediately to their website. The memo’s emergence just before the British election made it more newsworthy, not less—unless one maintains that something likely to influence world events should therefore receive less media attention.

Several papers—including the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Portland Oregonian and USA Today—tried to shift the blame for their lack of coverage to the Associated Press, which provides many of their national and international stories, and which didn’t put a Downing Street Memo story on the wire for more than a month (6/7/05). AP explained (Salon, 6/14/05) that editors “didn’t necessarily see the document as a clear-cut case of proving the manipulation of intelligence” and that “the demands of other important stories kept diverting them.”

Man bites dog bites man

Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank (6/8/05), who referred to progressive activists trying to bring media attention to the memo as “wing nuts,” wrote that Bush being asked a question about the memo “ended a slightly strange episode in the American media in which the potentially explosive report out of London had become a seldom acknowledged elephant in the room.” Milbank offered a variety of explanations for that odd phenomenon:

In part, the memo never gained traction here because, unlike in Britain, it wasn’t election season, and the war is not as unpopular here. In part, it’s also because the notion that Bush was intent on military action in Iraq had been widely reported here before, in accounts from Paul O’Neill and Bob Woodward, among others. The memo was also more newsworthy across the Atlantic because it reinforced the notion there that Blair has been acting as Bush’s “poodle.”

This catalog of rationalizations deserves some scrutiny. Milbank had reported the same day (6/8/05) that his paper’s latest poll showed that only 41 percent of Americans approved of the Iraq war—leading one to wonder when exactly the war would cross the threshold and become unpopular enough to report on honestly.

Milbank’s second defense—that the memo isn’t news because similar stories had been “widely reported”—would seem to contradict his third explanation, that the memo was news in the U.K. because it confirmed existing suspicions.

Los Angeles Times editorial page editor Michael Kinsley opted for sarcasm over serious discussion (6/12/05), deriding activists for sending him emails “demanding that I cease my personal cover-up of something called the Downing Street Memo.” Kinsley, tongue planted firmly in cheek, thought all the fuss was a good sign for the left: “Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes ideological self-confidence.”

Kinsley’s mockery seemed to serve no purpose, since he retreated to what had by then become a familiar media defense: “Of course, you don’t need a secret memo to know” that the Bush administration wanted war, so this simply isn’t news. In short, people who demand more coverage of the memo have a “paranoid theory” that accurately portrays White House decision-making on Iraq.

“Not the Dead Sea Scrolls”

The New York Times’ Todd Purdum (6/14/05) echoed the “we-already-knew-this” angle. Though Bush and Blair opponents “see the documents as proof that both men misled their countries into war,” Purdum argued, “the documents are not quite so shocking. . . . The memos are not the Dead Sea Scrolls.” The notion that Bush was determined to oust Hussein, he explained, was “conventional wisdom” at the time the memos were written, and “there has been ample evidence for many months, and even years, that top Bush administration figures saw war as inevitable by the summer of 2002.”

Purdum’s argument, like the similar arguments of his colleagues, is revealing: By acknowledging the “ample evidence” that indicates a secret, publicly denied Bush administration decision to invade Iraq, but then dismissing it as old news, journalists manage to avoid saying that the Bush administration lied to the American public—something they are exceedingly reluctant to do (Extra!, 1–2/05).

Salon columnist Joe Conason (5/6/05) posed this question about the story:

Are Americans so jaded about the deceptions perpetrated by our own government to lead us into war in Iraq that we are no longer interested in fresh and damning evidence of those lies? Or are the editors and producers who oversee the American news industry simply too timid to report that proof on the evening broadcasts and front pages?

The answer to Conason’s second question would seem to be yes. A May 8 New York Times news article asserted that “critics who accused the Bush administration of improperly using political influence to shape intelligence assessments have, for the most part, failed to make the charge stick.” It’s hard for charges to stick when major media are determined to ignore the evidence behind them—and call people “nuts” when they insist that media pay attention.

2006-07-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

The "Big Business Bang" Theory

Social, economic, environmental ills all have the same cause
By Ed Finn
From CCPA Monitor
2005

After nearly 12 years of editing and writing articles for The CCPA Monitor—about 3,000 of them so far—I’ve come to divide our contributors into two broad categories. Finding suitable one-word labels for them, however, is difficult without being guilty of generalizing. They all concern themselves in some way with social, economic, political, and environmental issues and the struggle for global justice, but some—let’s call them the “specialists”—focus on one particular problem. There’s poverty, pollution, inequality, and war, the myriad problems with health care, child care, education, trade, labour, politics, the tax system, civil liberties, agriculture, and the media. On all of these and many other ills besetting our troubled world, Monitor writers have provided thoughtful, well-documented, often brilliant diagnoses and suggested remedies.

Then there are the writers and thinkers who try to connect these problems and see them all as symptoms of one overall global malaise. Privately, I think of these analysts as “world-viewers.” That’s not a satisfactory label, by any means, but it does reflect the holistic approach they take. (If there were a personal noun—holist? holisticist?—I’d use it, but the lexicographers haven’t yet provided one. So “world-viewer” will have to do.)

Again, a caution against generalizing. Most of our “specialists” are not so fixated on their particular problem that they see it in isolation from everything else. They do see the connections, especially the economic and political ones. Nor do all our “world-viewers” ignore the localized symptoms. They often focus on individual problem areas before taking the global perspective.

The point I want to emphasize is that, in our struggle for a better world, we need both specialists and world-viewers. They complement one another. Without the specialists, the world-viewers would lack the specific information they need to map an effective survival strategy. Without the world-viewers, the specialists would lack a broader framework into which their specific findings could be interlocked and acted upon.

In each issue of The Monitor, we try to offer space to both kinds of commentators. We need contributors who care deeply about a particular social or economic injustice. We need the writers and activists who are passionate about protecting Medicare, about eradicating poverty, about cleaning up the environment, about preventing wars, about developing renewable forms of energy, about saving the rainforests, about replacing free trade with fair trade, about serious political reform. At the same time, we need writers who look at the bigger picture, who see the accumulation of all these separate problems worsening to the point where the very survival of planetary life is at stake.

As someone who has read and edited thousands of articles and essays of both kinds over the past dozen years—and who, as an editor, has occasionally been chided by readers for “filling The Monitor with doom and gloom”—I think we have done a reasonably good job of exposing and describing the problems, but not such a good job on the solution front. Not, mind you, that we’ve neglected the need for alternative policies—that’s what the CCPA is all about, after all—but that perhaps we haven’t made “the one big connection” as effectively as we should.

Is there one big connection between all the social, economic, environmental, and political problems we are concerned about? If we were to take a cause-and-effect approach, could we identify one overriding cause of all the troubles that plague us? If we could, it would certainly simplify, solidify, and intensify our remedial efforts. Instead of dissipating our resources trying to tackle each of the many problems separately, we could come together in a concerted campaign to get rid of their common catalyst. That, in turn, would also avert the looming global collapse.

At the risk of being branded a monomaniac or a simpleton or a crazy conspiracy theorist—or all three—let me give you this common cause: excessive and destructive corporate power. Call it corporatism, neoliberalism, ultraconservatism, laissez-faire capitalism, corporate globalization, the corporate agenda, private enterprise, right-wing fundamentalism, the Washington Consensus, or any of the other descriptive tags applied to a world overwhelmingly dominated by Big Business. Whatever you call it, you’ll find it to be the root cause of virtually every social, economic, political, and environmental problem we are now grappling with. And, by extension, it’s also the primary cause of the rapidly worsening global crisis.

I’ve been nattering on about the damaging effects of corporate power for quite some time, but, on flipping back over the pages of The Monitor for the past few years, I was struck anew by the number of articles on a wide range of issues that did indeed—directly or implicitly--expose corporate blame. Let’s recap some of them:

Health care: Many writers on this subject have traced the deterioration of Medicare to its deliberate sabotage through underfunding and understaffing by politicians eager to justify opening this vital service to private for-profit operators. But, as one headline put it, “Privatization is a health problem, not a solution.” Experts on prescription drugs also question the benefits of the $18 billion a year that Canadians are spending on the products of the big pharmaceutical drug companies, which, as one writer noted, “are hooked on ever-rising profits.”

Poverty: Countless articles have cited the many broken promises by Canadian governments to eradicate poverty, notably the all-party pledge in Parliament in 1989 to eliminate child poverty by 2000. Instead, the rates of poverty and homelessness have soared. Why? Because these social blights stem from the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, which in turn is an inevitable result of an economic system that glorifies greed and bars a more equitable distribution of income. No wonder, as one of our writers put it, “we now live in an era of inequality that is historically unprecedented.”

Pollution: Hardly an issue of The Monitor goes out that doesn’t contain an article deploring the contamination of our air, water, soil, and food by industrial toxins. The release of these pollutants—few of which are tested or regulated—cause most of the cancers that afflict us, but are treated by their corporate makers and dispensers as “just another cost of doing business.” On a larger scale, of course, pollution of this magnitude threatens the viability of the biosphere itself.

War and peace: A recent Monitor index revealed that the arms sales of the top 100 manufacturers of weapons now total more than $236 billion a year. As our writers have explained, wars have become very profitable, so we should expect more of them. At least one-third of the multi-billion-dollar cost of the Iraq war, for example, is swelling the coffers of the big arms corporations. One headline declared that “War is driving the economic agenda we’re fighting.”

Trade: Many experts in this field have described NAFTA and WTO trade deals as essentially “charters of rights and freedoms” for transnational corporations, extending their power and influence to encompass the globe. Far from helping to boost employment and economic prosperity for everyone, these one-sided treaties have worsened poverty and inequality while creating obscene riches for a privileged minority. We now have a global economic system in which the pursuit of profits is unconstrained by any concern for the public good—“a world in which 20% of the people consume 80% of the resources.”

Labour: Corporate leaders have always been anti-labour, accepting unions only grudgingly and always looking for ways to oppose and undermine them. As corporate power has increased—especially the ability to move jobs to regions with the lowest wages, taxes, and environmental laws—so has the corporate attack on organized labour. It’s an attack that has been avidly supported by most governments in Canada, which have not only failed to protect and promote collective bargaining rights, but—as our labour relations writers emphasize--have repeatedly violated these rights themselves.

Taxes: Reductions in taxes on business and the rich, along with lavish tax breaks for these élites, have highlighted the budgets of the federal and most provincial governments over the past 20 years. The non-collection of these billions in corporate tax revenue has unfairly shifted the cost of public services and programs to lower-income taxpayers, while providing governments with a handy excuse for cutting these programs. Globally, we have a tax system that, as a recent Monitor report revealed, allows transnational corporations to hide over $600 billion in tax [evasion] havens.

Agriculture: The plight of our family farms, many thousands already bankrupted or gobbled up by the big agribusiness firms, has been the subject of many Monitor features. The main thrust of our stories has been to stress that the cause of the “farm crisis” and the decline of rural communities has not been the alleged “inefficiency” of small farmers, but rather the failure of the current agricultural system to give them a fair return for their crops. “Farm crisis caused by greedy corporations,” said the headline of one article, which noted that, although the price of a loaf of bread has risen from 50 cents to about $1.30, the share going to the grain farmer--after the millers, bakers, retailers, and other corporate middlemen grab their shares—is still only a nickel.

Politics: Corporations have always wielded a great deal of political clout, being the major funders of most politicians’ election campaigns and being free to propagandize their views during elections and finance strong lobbying pressure between elections. With the even greater power bestowed on them by free trade and deregulation, they now effectively dictate government policies—to the point where some observers fear the conversion of our governance to a form of fascism. As one headline reads, “Governments now see themselves as the political arms of business.” And another heading concludes that “the business of government has become the government of business.”

The media: Numerous Monitor articles have remarked on the transformation of the commercial media into propaganda organs for corporations and their free-market dogma. This is hardly surprising, since the privately-owned newspapers, TV and radio networks are owned by and operated as profit-making corporations themselves. In addition, of course, they depend for most of their profits on the corporate ads that fill their pages and air-time. Little wonder that our media articles carried headlines such as “Commercial press lacks balance and fairness,” and “Democracy can’t work if corporate propaganda prevails.”

* * *

I could go on to cite the damaging effects of corporate influence on our education system, monetary policy, natural resources, civil liberties, science, and a host of other sectors. But I think I’ve made my point that, no matter which social, economic, political, or environmental problem you happen to be mostly concerned about, its origin (and aggravation) can be traced to some aspect of corporate rule.

Isn’t it time, then, to at least think about developing a unified effort to address the common corporate cause of all our problems, including the biggest problem of all, which is the threat to our very survival? (This assumes, of course, that our species deserves to survive, which is not at all a given, and it also assumes my “Big Business Bang Theory” has some credibility. Whatever.)

The "Big Business Bang" Theory II

If unbridled capitalism is the problem, what’s the solution?
By Ed Finn
From CCPA Monitor
2006

If you agree with the case I’ve made that almost all our most pressing social, economic, and environmental problems are caused and perpetuated by unbridled corporate power, the obvious question that arises is: how can that horribly misused power be tamed? How can the barbaric economic system spawned by that power be civilized?

Before any effective reform can even be considered, two prerequisites must be met. First, there will have to be a fairly widespread public awareness of the urgent need to curb corporate influence—an awakening that would-be reformers can build upon. And secondly, the movement to challenge the predominant business élite will need to be soundly led and coordinated.

I’m beginning to think the first requirement has come close to being achieved. The scores of thinkers and activists whose critiques of corporate rule have graced the pages of The Monitor for more than a decade are now more mainstream critics than mavericks. Anti-corporate articles and op-eds similar to those elsewhere in this issue by Maude Barlow, John McMurtry, Naomi Klein and Vandana Shiva are popping up in magazines, journals, and some newspapers all over the world--and of course even more frequently on the Internet.

Corporations and their CEOs are now commonly portrayed as villains in movies, TV shows, and books. The blatant greed and corruption that brought down Enron and other big companies, and the proliferation of insider-trading and other “white-collar” crimes make front-page news. Few people have escaped some personal bad experience with a business project or investment—and most are now aware that by far the biggest polluters of the environment are the industrial corporations and the products they make.

I just finished reading Forty Signs of Rain, a science-fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson about the imminence of catastrophic climate change. In it, his protagonist, an environmental activist named Charlie Quibler, writes an angry memo to the executive director of the National Science Foundation, which merits quoting:

“Humanity is exceeding the planet’s carrying capacity for our species, badly damaging the biosphere. Neoclassical economics cannot cope with this situation, and indeed, with its falsely exteriorized costs, was designed in part to disguise it. If the Earth were to suffer a catastrophic anthropogenic extinction event over the next ten years, which it will, American business would continue to focus on its quarterly profit and loss. There is no economic mechanism for dealing with catastrophe. And yet government and the scientific community are not tackling this situation either; indeed both have consented to be run by neoclassical economics, an obvious pseudo-science. We might as well agree to be governed by astrologers. . . Free market fundamentalists are dragging us back to some dismal feudal eternity and destroying everything in the process, and yet we have the technological means to feed everyone, house everyone, clothe everyone, educate everyone, doctor everyone. The ability to end suffering and want, as well as ecological collapse, is right at hand, and yet the NSF continues to dole out its little grants, fiddling while Rome burns!”

Granted, this outburst came from a fictional character, but I’m convinced now that the frustration it reflects is shared by most real-life scientists and activists. They know the gravity of the economic, social, and ecological crises we’re facing; they know what needs to be done to avert the calamity Charlie Quibler is ranting about; but they are just as much at a loss as he is about how to jolt corporate and political decision-makers out of their complacent reliance on a fatally flawed economic system.

This complacency, of course, stems from their belief that, with the demise of communism, capitalism has become the only economic game in town. (Future historians may trace the inevitable collapse of capitalism—whether through economic reform or ecological cataclysm--to the earlier collapse of communism, since that historic event led to the uncontrolled cancerous growth of a globalized free-market system.)

One of our members in Saskatchewan called to speculate that many CEOs might secretly want governments to re-impose regulatory restraints on their business operations. None of them individually can opt out of the current cutthroat system, he pointed out, since that would trigger a shareholder revolt or a hostile takeover, but they might welcome a government “restraining order” that applied to all of them.

There may indeed be some rational business leaders of this kind out there—CEOs who can see past the next quarterly report to the yawning abyss they are careening toward. There may even be some rational politicians who can see past the next election to the disastrous consequences of continuing to serve solely corporate interests. But, regrettably, if such wise corporate and business paragons are to be found, they have yet to make their appearance. All the indicators cast doubt on their existence, and thus on the likelihood of voluntary economic reform.

The desperately needed changes in policies and priorities apparently will only come from the application of strong political pressure—pressure that is strategically focused, concentrated, and unrelenting. Sporadic lobbying will not suffice, nor will the extraction of election promises, nor the currying of favour with MPs and senior mandarins. All of these activities have been carried on by thousands of progressive individuals and organizations for many years, with little or no effect. Only a powerful concerted campaign involving and supported by all the members and groups in civil society will have a chance of succeeding.

And that’s the rub. A few years ago, Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians—recent winners of an “Alternative Nobel Prize”—convened a meeting of the leaders of Canada’s major NGOs and unions. Their aim was to do exactly what I’ve been talking about: persuade these social, economic, labour, and environmental leaders to pool their resources--to join together in one big overall campaign to supplant corporate rule with true democracy and a more equitable economic system.

The civil society delegates were verbally supportive. They acknowledged the need for a joint effort. They talked vaguely about bringing it about. But in the two years that have since elapsed, they are all still acting independently and are no closer to forging a common front.

This tendency for each NGO or union to follow its own agenda, and to unite with others only occasionally for demonstrations and meetings, has long been a deterrent to more effective collaboration. I’ve bemoaned this dissipation of effort many times. A column I wrote on the subject nearly ten years ago still applies, and I quote from it in the next several paragraphs.

* * *

The present situation has been likened to a river in which many people—old, young, men, women, white, black, Aboriginal, etc.—are being swept downstream. Strung out along each bank are various rescue teams, one for each category of victims. The anti-poverty group tries to save the poor, the seniors’ group tries to pull out the seniors, the women’s group concentrates on the drowning women, and so on. It’s an evocative metaphor.

Each organization has strong swimmers, and is equipped with ropes, lifebuoys, nets, poles, and other rescue equipment. It prides itself on how many people it saves. Not all of them, of course. Many are carried away out of sight and drown. But to rescue even some is considered a great achievement.

These organizations exist to pull people out of the river, or at least make the attempt. That is their raison d’etre. Their activities are reactive, not pro-active. This is not to say that their leaders are unaware that somewhere upstream there are other groups--the chuckers or flingers or heavers--whose purpose is to throw people into the river. They know that, and sometimes they will even go and try to persuade the chuckers to stop chucking. (They call it “lobbying.”) But that is as far as they will go. They know why the chucking and heaving is going on, and who is responsible. They know that there is a privileged powerful minority whose members are never in any danger of getting wet themselves—so rich that they can easily afford to pay the heavers and chuckers (sometimes called “politicians”) to do their dirty work for them. The more people who get thrown in the river, you see, the fewer left to share the nation’s wealth.

It’s a pathetic sight when the rescue group leaders hike up the river to remonstrate with the political heavers. “Please stop throwing so many of our members in the river,” they beg. Usually on bended knee. The politicians promise to stop eventually. Maybe next year. Or the year after that. But they never do. Or they say they have no choice but to keep filling the river with throwaway people because, after the rich and powerful finish gorging themselves, there’s not enough food or shelter or work for everyone in a system based on the survival of the fittest. Some have to be discarded, and it’s only fitting that they be the weakest and the most vulnerable.

The rich and ruthless élite will sometimes fool the would-be rescuers by replacing one bunch of chuckers with another. The flingers take over from the heavers, or the slingers take over from the hurlers. “Surely,” the rescue groups reassure themselves, “surely this new gang of people-drowners won’t throw in as many as the last crowd.” And they don’t. They throw in more.

It never seems to occur to the rescue organizations to blame the economic system itself for all the drowning victims, or to wonder why the people with the most money and power are never among those sacrificed.

Maybe it’s because the rescuers are so busy saving as many victims as they can, so busy collecting donations to buy their nets and ropes and lifebuoys, that they don’t have time to think about changing a system that is so harmful to so many. Or maybe it’s because they are now so accustomed to their role of rescuers, and so organizationally structured, that they can’t even conceive of a river into which nobody is thrown. How, then, could they justify their existence? On what basis could they continue to appeal for donations?

Now, admittedly, saving people from drowning (or from poverty and hunger) is a noble pursuit. But surely preventing them from being tossed into the river in the first place would be even nobler.

Could it be done? We’ll never know as long as groups concerned about the drowning of the weak and poor confine their activities to pulling them out, instead of joining together to confront and foil their corporate and political assailants.

To desist from such a preventive approach is in effect to tolerate a system in which civility and compassion have been displaced by the law of the jungle. It is to concede that there is nothing to be done to change this brutal system except to rescue and comfort its victims.

* * *

Not much has changed in the decade since I penned those words. If anything, the number of “drowning” victims has doubled or even tripled, as have the number and size of the rescue groups. And the rescuers have come no closer to forging a broad and more reform-minded alliance.

It’s not that they are resigned to a system so unfair that the need for charity becomes permanent. In its latest annual report, for example, the Canadian Association of Food Banks (see Page ) clearly would prefer that hunger be eliminated by political reform so all the food banks could be closed.

Not all the charitable organizations, however, seem so anxious to make themselves redundant. If you read David Ransom’s critical assessment of NGOs (starting on Page ), you’ll see that there’s some legitimate concern about their approach to making the world a better place. Ransom takes them to task for not being as politically active as they could and should be. “Avoidable starvation, preventable illness, and predictable disaster are supremely political events,” he argues. “They result in good measure from people being forced to consume the poisonous brew of free-market economics and fake democracy that is concocted by corporate globalization and neoliberal politics.” What are the NGOs doing, he asks, to find and apply an antidote to this venomous concoction?

Not nearly enough, it seems. Yes, each in its own way, they are doing a great deal to mitigate the hardships inflicted by free-market economics and corporate greed--but that’s still an exercise in trying to save and comfort the victims. It’s still pulling people out of the neoliberal river instead of preventing them from being thrown in.

The rescuers will remain indispensable as long as the current economic and political barbarism prevails. Much more urgently needed today, however, are NGOs committed to pooling their resources in a determined, coordinated, all-out effort to achieve economic reforms--reforms that, if successful, will make their rescue operations (and their very organizational existence) unnecessary.

Might I suggest that Tony and Maude call another meeting of civil society and labour leaders? Maybe they’re finally ready to launch a collective effort to prevent economic victimization rather than trying separately to cope with it.

Maybe they’ll agree it’s time to give solidarity—real solidarity--a chance.

The Big Business Bang Theory (III)

A Canada with Scandinavian-style equality is achievable
By Ed Finn
From CCPA Monitor
2006

Several e-mails have reached me from readers who agree with my “Big Business Bang Theory” and with my call for a united civil society crusade to curb corporate power. But nearly all of them ended by asking how I envisioned a society freed from neoliberalism and how, in a practical way, it could be achieved. A few of the more pessimistic correspondents were skeptical that such an egalitarian system could ever be created—that corporate power has now escalated to the level of invincibility. To think that the bastions of Bay Street can be successfully challenged, said one reader, is to “live in a world of fantasy and wishful thinking

I wrote back to remind her that the same gloomy view prevailed not too long ago about the invulnerability of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall. Victory in a struggle against the might of corporatism will be elusive, but surely not pre-doomed to failure. That sort of thinking can only lead to apathy and despair.

It’s not as if we need to obliterate capitalism. Properly regulated, taxed, and forced to operate in the public interest, business firms can fit constructively into a just society. The wealth that their workers produce can be more fairly distributed. This is evident in several parts of Europe, notably in the Scandinavian nations, where capitalism still thrives. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland may not have developed idyllic societies—but their economies are far more equitable than Canada’s and far less blighted by poverty, hunger, and homelessness. (See the article on Finland on Page , written by a visiting American journalist.) Business firms operate freely and profitably in these countries, but under constraints that make them good corporate citizens.

Nor do the benefits of more generous social programs make such countries “uncompetitive” in the global marketplace. On the contrary, the Scandinavian welfare states are among the most effective economic competitors in the global marketplace.

The trouble with Canada stems from our proximity to the United States, arguably the most socially and environmentally backward industrialized country in the world (as well as the most bellicose). We have allowed our economy to be dominated by U.S. corporations and our natural resources to be pillaged by them. We have bowed to American pressure to “harmonize” our social programs with their far less generous U.S. counterparts. In the process, much of our sovereignty has been eroded, and, with the business Quislings among us pushing for even more subservience to U.S. trade and security demands, we stand in danger of becoming a de facto colony of the American empire.

We can be grateful that the Stephen Harper-led Conservatives did not win a majority in the January election. If they had, the Americanization of Canada would probably have passed the point of no return before their five-year wrecking spree could be halted. The Liberals did a lot of damage in their decade-long majority tenure, too, but a made-in-Canada-for-Canadians approach was still achievable, and will remain within reach even under minority Tory rule.

The tragedy for Canada is that a more equitable Scandinavian-style society has always been achievable, given the resources, the skills, and the values that we share. Ours is—or used to be before U.S. neo-colonialization—a self-sustaining country. Now that we have become one big resource grab-bag for the Americans—shipping them so much of our oil and gas, for example, that we have to import nearly half of what we need for ourselves from abroad—our self-reliance has been lost. It could be regained, of course, but only by political leaders with the requisite courage and patriotism.

Politically, the biggest barrier we face is our outdated, undemocratic, first-past-the-post electoral system, which effectively disenfranchises the millions who cast their ballots for losing candidates. The ensuing allocation of seats in Parliament distorts voters’ intent. Had we voted on January 23 under some form of proportional representation (PR), the NDP would now have 59 MPs instead of 29, and the Greens would have a dozen instead of none.

It is no coincidence that, in the Scandinavian and other European countries with the most equitable societies, elections are held on some PR basis. This democratic system produces parliaments that truly reflect the wishes of all voters, not just the majority or plurality. And the governments that emerge tend to be coalitions of the more progressive parties and movements. (Green MPs have even served as Environment Ministers in several European countries.)

A switch to PR in Canada is long overdue. Ours is one of the few major Western nations that still cling to the undemocratic winner-takes-all system. A PR process would open the door to the formation, sooner or later, of a strong left-of-centre coalition government in Ottawa.

How far and how fast such an administration could remodel our society along Scandinavian lines is debatable. Undoubtedly its proposed social and economic reforms would be warmly welcomed by most Canadians, but they would be fiercely opposed by the business community and the wealthiest among us wanting to maintain their privileged status. The commercial media could be expected to fulminate against “tax-and-spend socialists” and cradle-to-grave coddling. But the most formidable and hostile reaction would surely come from our next-door neighbouring superpower.

The United States would not meekly accept the rise of a strong, independent, decidedly left-leaning government sharing its northern border. Especially not one bent on wresting control of its economy and resources from U.S. corporations and creating a Scandinavian-style welfare state that could make low-income Americans envious and politically restive.

The extent of U.S. antagonism could be tempered if a less belligerent administration were to succeed that of the would-be world emperor George W. Bush. The Pentagon was recently found to have devised a detailed plan for invading and occupying Canada in the event of a communist or socialist revolution here. The strategy was first developed in the 1930s, but has allegedly been kept updated. This should come as no surprise. The U.S., under its infamous “Munroe Doctrine,” has long maintained hegemony over all of North and South America, and to enforce it has invaded or bombed almost every other country in the hemisphere (including Canada) at least once over the past 150 years.

Realistically, however, an American military attack on Canada in the 21st century would have to be regarded as highly unlikely. Even a Bush-like administration, no matter how provoked it might be by a government of Canadian “neo-commies,” would surely not incur the universal public and UN condemnation that such an assault on Canada would generate.

Or am I being naive? Perhaps. Widespread public opprobrium hasn’t had much deterrent effect on Bush’s other international escapades. But I think it’s still safe to assume that no regime in Washington would consider a military reprisal when it has such strong economic and financial weapons it can being to bear on an “unfriendly” and uppity neighbour.

Undoubtedly, the U.S. could make life very unpleasant for any Canadian government—and for most Canadians—without firing a single shot at us. The U.S. wields enormous economic power. It virtually runs the World Bank and the IMF. Its transnational corporations control global markets, and their takeover of key areas of Canada’s industry and resources gives them a stranglehold on our economy. Our options are also narrowly limited by the one-sided terms of NAFTA, which lock Canada into the role of U.S. economic vassal.

This huge imbalance in economic and military power has kept Canadian governments dutifully compliant with U.S. demands and needs--even at the expense of neglecting Canadian needs. None of our governments, federal or provincial, left or right, has dared defy Washington on major economic issues. The Americanization of our economy—if not our culture and values—has been accomplished with hardly a peep of protest from our politicians.

So a sharp reversal of this subordinate role and a repossession of Canadian economic control will be a formidable undertaking. No federal government, no matter how determined, will succeed in such a frontal challenge of U.S. might without a vast wellspring of grit, strategic dexterity, and public and civil service support. Even with all these assets, the struggle will tap the hardihood and nationalist spirit of Canadians to the utmost.

What we have going for us, in addition to these intangibles, is the potential economic self-sufficiency I alluded to earlier. We’re no longer self-sufficient in some essentials, including the vital resource of energy, because we’re exporting so much to the U.S., but we could reclaim our required domestic supplies by abrogating NAFTA and tailoring our exports to real surplus limits. Indeed, getting out of NAFTA would have to be the No. 1 priority of any genuinely nationalist national government.

A trading war with the U.S., once we were freed of NAFTA’s shackles, would not necessarily be weighted in Washington’s favour. The Americans need our oil, gas, electricity, lumber, minerals, and other resources more than we need their TV sets, oranges, and Hollywood movies. Most of the goods we import from the U.S. could in fact be obtained from Japan, China, and Europe, if not quite so cheaply. These countries would not hesitate to flout a U.S. embargo on Canada like the one that has been maintained against Cuba for the past half-century.

Where the U.S. could hurt us, and badly, would be by deploying the combined might of the banks, the money traders, the credit-rating agencies, the WTO, the World Bank and IMF, and of course—and with the most devastating impact—the American transnational corporations, which already own so much of our economy. We could expect an immediate threat of mass business shutdowns, layoffs, and outsourcing. If we stood firm and refused to buckle, our economy could be seriously detabilized, our currency devalued, our unemployment rate tripled. Capital strikes and flights could precipitate a crippling depression.

Could we survive such an assault? Yes, we could—if we had a government and a citizenry committed to defending our country at any cost, any sacrifice. We could, with some effort and some help from other countries, again become internally self-reliant. If Cuba could do it, with far less abundant resources than we have, we too could resist the worst American economic sanctions. Deprived of our oil and gas, which they desperately need to fuel their vast military-industrial complex, the Americans might even capitulate before we would.

* * *

What I’ve been projecting here, of course, is a future that may never become a reality. But I’m convinced it could. In fact, if it doesn’t—if no such genuinely pro-Canada government emerges, and if no overpowering public demand for social justice, democracy, and national identity develops—then my pessimistic e-mail correspondent will be justified in her despair. Because that will mean that I am indeed living in “a world of wish and fantasy.”

Somehow I don’t think I am. I think that most Canadians believe in and yearn for a better country and a better world, that we favour fair-sharing over greed, compassion over indifference, peace over war, Canadianism over Americanism.

What we lack is a political system and a political movement that will give voice to our values and reshape our society to embody them.

This is a vacuum that must be filled. If all of us who hold these noble aspirations work together to harness and empower them, we could surprise ourselves with what we can collectively accomplish.

(Ed Finn is the CCPA's Senior Editor.)

2006-07-26T01:07:00.001-07:00

Dark Alliance
(Book Review)
From Amazon.com

In July 1995, San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb found the Big One--the blockbuster story every journalist secretly dreams about--without even looking for it.

A simple phone call concerning an unexceptional pending drug trial turned into a massive conspiracy involving the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, L.A. and Bay Area crack cocaine dealers, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

For several years during the 1980s, Webb discovered, Contra elements shuttled thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States, with the profits going toward the funding of Contra rebels attempting a counterrevolution in their Nicaraguan homeland. Even more chilling, Webb quickly realized, was that the massive drug-dealing operation had the implicit approval--and occasional outright support--of the CIA, the very organization entrusted to prevent illegal drugs from being brought into the United States.

Within the pages of Dark Alliance, Webb produces a massive amount of evidence that suggests that such a scenario did take place, and more disturbing evidence that the powers that be that allowed such an alliance are still determined to ruthlessly guard their secrets.

Webb's research is impeccable--names, dates, places, and dollar amounts gather and mount with every page, eventually building a towering wall of evidence in support of his theories. After the original series of articles ran in the Mercury-News in late 1996, both Webb and his paper were so severely criticized by political commentators, government officials, and other members of the press that his own newspaper decided it best not to stand behind the series, in effect apologizing for the assertions and disavowing his work. Webb quit the paper in disgust in November 1997.

His book serves as both a complex memoir of the time of the Contras and an indictment of the current state of America's press; Dark Alliance is as necessary and valuable as it is horrifying and grim. --Tjames Madison -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

The following is an excerpt from the book Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and The Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb.
Copyright ©1998 Gary Webb

"This, sadly, is a true story. It is based upon a controversial series I wrote for the San Jose Mercury News in the summer of 1996 about the origins of the crack plague in South Central Los Angeles.

Unlike other books that purport to tell the inside story of America's most futile war (Kings of Cocaine by Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen and Desperados by Elaine Shannon spring to mind), Dark Alliance was not written with the assistance, cooperation or encouragement of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or any federal law enforcement agency.

In fact, the opposite is true. Every Freedom of Information Act request I filed was rejected on national security or privacy grounds, was ignored, or was responded to with documents so heavily censored they must have been the source of much hilarity down at the FOIA offices. The sole exception was the National Archives and Records Administration.

Dark Alliance does not propound a conspiracy theory; there is nothing theoretical about history. In this case, it is undeniable that a wildly successful conspiracy to import cocaine existed for many years, and that innumerable American citizens--most of them poor and black--paid an enormous price as a result. This book was written for them, so that they may know upon what altars their communities were sacrificed."

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