The following is an excerpt from The Next Eco Warriors: 22 Young Women and Men Who Are Saving The Planet, edited by Emily Hunter (Conari Press, 2011).

Eco-Terrorism 101

If you’ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it. —Billy Bragg

It started with a knock on the door. Someone had pounded three times. I turned the knob without looking through the peephole. It must be the landlord, I thought. He had gotten into the habit of arriving unannounced with prospective tenants to show our apartment, one of the freshly renovated studios in a 70-something-year-old building in Chicago. Before I had opened the door, though, I knew it was not Steve the Landlord. Our dogs were barking. Wildly. The dogs, Mindy and Peter, were snarling, and they never snarled, they never growled. I opened the door anyway.

The guys behind it—gruff-looking early-30s guys with manicured goatees, navy suits, ties with outdated geometric patterns, scuffed black shoes, broad shoulders, hardjaw lines, wholesome haircuts, and eyes looking for fights—were just naturally FBI agents. I didn’t even need to see the badges.

I just said I was in a hurry, that I had to get ready for work, and then I started to close the door. The good cop—well, I will call him the good cop, only because he looked less eager to kick my ass—put his left palm on the gray steel door, firmly enough to put pressure but not firmly enough to make any noise. I could either come downstairs, he said, or they could make a visit to my place of work, the Chicago Tribune.

Dogs barked. Panic. I was not afraid of them, but I was afraid of a spectacle in the newsroom. I relented and then closed the door to get ready.

“What’s going on?” my girlfriend, Kamber, asked from the futon, half asleep.

“It’s the FBI,” I said matter-of-factly, as if it had been Steve the Landlord.

A few minutes later, we crammed into the freight elevator, good cop, bad cop, and me. The elevator ground to a halt, the latticework steel door creaked open, and we walked through the dark hallway to the alley. It was a gloriously sunny Chicago summer day, but the sunlight could not overcome the condominium towers of steel and glass, could not swim through the cracks in the walls, and so I stepped into an alley shrouded in gray.

In college, I had learned about government operations like the counter intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), and the FBI’s history of harassing and intimidating political activists. False names, phone taps, bugs, and infiltration were used in attempts to disrupt groups like the Black Panthers, American Indian movement, and Students for a Democratic Society. I had learned from books, professors, and Law & Order episodes that if approached by the FBI, for any reason, you should never talk. Nothing good can come of it.

Both good cop and bad cop had heard that line before. The shorter, “nicer” cop started talking anyway.

“Look, we just want to talk to you,” he said. “We want you to help us out. We can make all this go away.”

—————

Working long hours on the metro desk at the Chicago Tribune, covering shooting after shooting, murder after murder, had turned me into the type of reporter I never wanted to become. I felt detached, apathetic, and cynical. Just before the visit from the FBI, I wrote in my journal, “I’m tired of writing meaningless stories, I’m tired of going to sleep at night feeling like I left the world the same way I saw it in the morning.”

After only a few months at the Tribune, I had already built a spectacular wall of emotional detachment. It felt as if it were made of broken bottles and concrete chunks, sharp and gray. I thought I would never survive this beat, unless i found some way to keep a toehold on my humanity. So I decided to go leafleting.

When I worked at the Texas Observer, I wrote a story about an animal rights activist who was prohibited from protesting fur stores as a condition of her sentence for nonviolent civil disobedience. In my research of other draconian legal attacks on activists, I also learned about Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an international campaign that had formed for the sole purpose of closing the notorious animal-testing lab Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Five undercover investigations had exposed animal welfare violations in the lab. I remember sitting in the Texas observer office, downloading a clip of undercover video filmed inside of Huntingdon. It showed animal experimenters with beagle puppies. The puppies’ veins were too small, and one of the experimenters could not insert a needle. He grew frustrated. He shook the dog and then suddenly punched the puppy in the face, hard enough to knock a grown man down. I will never forget that dog’s punctuating wails.

When if decided I wanted to do something positive to balance out the futility I felt at the Tribune, I decided to leaflet about Huntingdon. one month prior to FBI agents knocking on my door, Kamber and I met six local activists at the a-zone (or autonomous zone) in Chicago, which was part independent bookstore and part rabblerouser gathering place. it offered titles on topics including the Zapatistas, herbal medicine, and bicycle repair, and it smelled like punk rock.

From there, we caravaned to a suburb north of Chicago and the home of a corporate executive with Marsh, Inc., an insurance company for Huntingdon. Once out of the van, I hung leaflets on front doors, urging their Marsh neighbor to cease doing business with Huntingdon Life Sciences. The fliers made no suggestions of violence or property destruction, they made no threats. Instead, they spelled out what went on in the lab, how Marsh is connected, and why readers should ask their neighbor to use his power wisely.

After about twenty minutes of leafleting, police arrived. They radioed back and forth with their headquarters, trying to decide what to do. Then they handcuffed us.

——————

After the FBI agents followed me out of the apartment building and into the alley, bad cop started needling. He asked if I knew the type of people involved in the campaign to close Huntingdon. He said they were “extremists.”

“I can tell you’re a good guy,” he said. “You have a lot going for you.” he said he could tell by the way I dressed, where I lived. “You don’t want this to mess up your life, kid. We need your help.”

He told me I could help them by providing more information about the other defendants and other animal rights groups. I had two days to decide. He gave me a scrap of paper with his phone number, written on it underneath his name, Chris.

“If we don’t hear from you by the first trial date,” he said, “I’ll put you on the domestic terrorist list.”

Wait, what? I felt as if I was staring blankly ahead, but my eyes must have shown fear.

“Now I have your attention, huh?” he said.

Put me on a terrorist list for leafleting?

“Look,” Chris said, “after 9/11, we have a lot more authority now to get things done and get down to business. We can make your life very difficult for you. You work at a newspaper? I can make it so you never work at a newspaper again.”

I replied that people who write letters, who leaflet, are not the same people who break the law. As I walked away, I crumpled his phone number and tossed it in a nearby dumpster, and just before I left the shadows and could reach the sunlight, Chris said, “have a good day at work at the metro desk.

Say hello to your editor, Susan Keaton. And tell Kamber we’ll come see her later.”

I wish I could say the visit did not affect me. But the history nerd in me could not help but think about all the times when the government had targeted political activists. I could not help but think about the deportation of Emma Goldman and the relentless spying and harassment of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I thought of the White Rose, a group of students my age who covertly printed and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets and, when caught, when interrogated and tortured, refused to show fear. They were beheaded. I had always hoped, as we all do after reading stories like this, that if I were ever put in a similar position, I would not flinch.

But I was afraid. Even though I never considered, even for a moment, becoming an informant, I could not stop thinking about how I was on a domestic terrorist list. I was convinced my journalism career was over. Even worse, I was convinced these FBI agents would somehow pass the word to my parents, who would be so disappointed in me, and to my little sister, who would stop looking up to me. These thoughts burrowed somewhere deep behind my eyes and, no matter how irrational they sound, I began to see them as truth.

I did not know it then, but this experience would mark the beginning of both a personal and political journey. After the initial fear subsided, I became obsessed with finding out why I would be targeted as a terrorist for nothing more than leafleting. The focus of my life would shift to investigating how animal rights and environmental activists had become, according to the FBI, the “number one domestic terrorism threat.”

——————–

In hindsight the path from that FBI visit to my current life seems completely straight and natural. In reality, I spent years straddling fences, cautiously poised between “unbiased” reporting and advocacy journalism, between my career and the passions I have labeled side projects.

I made some small efforts to climb down. I left an “unbiased” newspaper job covering politics in Washington, DC, to use my writing for very biased purposes at the American Civil Liberties union, ghostwriting op-eds and speeches on the Patriot Act and government surveillance. At night, I continued researching and writing about activists being labeled terrorists. Through my work at the ACLU, and my freelance reporting, the true scope of the attacks on political activists came into focus.

The environmental movement, like all social movements, has a wide range of elements. There are people who leaflet and write letters. And there are underground groups like the Earth Liberation Front, which have vandalized SUVs, burned ski resorts, and destroyed genetically engineered crops. Even at their most extreme, none of these tactics have injured a single human being. Not one.

Meanwhile, the department of homeland Security does not list right wing terrorists on a list of national security threats, and the FBI omits right wing attacks in its annual terrorism reports. Those groups have been responsible for the Oklahoma city bombing, the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, violence against doctors, and admittedly creating weapons of mass destruction.

Through my reporting, I learned that environmental and animal rights activists are being labeled terrorists not because of violence, but because of their beliefs. Corporations and the politicians who represent them have waged a coordinated campaign to push their political agenda.

They have sent out press releases accusing mainstream organizations like the Sierra club, PETA, and Greenpeace of supporting “eco-terrorism.” the children’s movie Hoot has been dubbed “soft-core eco-terrorism for kids.” American Idol star Carrie Underwood was smeared as supporting terrorists when she encouraged her fans to support the Humane Society.

Examples like this would be funny if they had not worked their way into the top levels of government. In 2006, politicians proposed “eco-terrorism” legislation similar to bills that had been introduced at the state level for years. Because of my reporting, colleagues at the ACLU recommended that I testify at a hearing by the house Judiciary committee. Leading democrats on that committee agreed. Suddenly, the fears that I thought I had overcome began to crawl back into my head.

If I challenged this legislation, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, would I be smeared as an “animal rights terrorist”? Would FBI agents fulfill their promises from years ago and tell members of congress that I am on a domestic terrorist list? Would the representative from Wisconsin turn to me and ask, “Mr. Potter, are you now, or have you ever been, a vegetarian?”

The historian Howard Zinn always advised his students, “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” the committee staff explicitly told me that democratic leadership supported this bill; I was to speak about my reporting but not challenge the legislation. Meanwhile, corporations and industry groups wanted nothing more than for their bill to proceed unchallenged. The train was moving, I thought, whether anyone liked it or not.

I decided I would not be a token gesture of dissent in their spectacle of democracy. Rather than propose modest tweaks to the bill, I testified that lawmakers must reject it in its entirety. I said that scarce terrorism resources should not be exploited to protect corporate interests. In my testimony, I compared the “eco-terrorist” legislation and scare mongering to one of the darkest periods of U.S. history, the communist witch hunts of the Red Scare.

As I awaited questions from members of congress and braced myself for the reaction from the democrats who invited me, I looked down at my notes and at my hands. It struck me that they were perfectly still. It was an empowering feeling, to have my words and my actions completely in line with my beliefs. Never in my life had I felt so calm.

Immediately after the hearing, I began calling activist groups and urged them to notify their members about the legislation. I began to write regularly for a Web site I created, GreenIsTheNewRed.com. And I began speaking at law schools, conferences, churches, potlucks, punk rock shows—anywhere I could to raise awareness about the law and help stop it.

Months later, the law was rushed through the House of Representatives with only six members of congress in the room. Most lawmakers were breaking ground for a new memorial honoring Martin Luther King Jr. when legislation was being passed that labeled King’s tactics—including nonviolent civil disobedience—as terrorism.

It was a major defeat, and for the corporations who supported the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, it was only the beginning. Since then, similar legislation has been introduced in many other states.

In Utah, a lawmaker said legislation is needed to target people like Tim Dechristopher, the University of Utah student who disrupted an oil and gas auction by bidding on parcels of land. In Tennessee, Rep. Frank Niceley argued before the general assembly for eco-terrorism legislation, saying, “Eco-terrorists are left-wing eco-greenies. It’s a different type of terrorism. They don’t have Osama Bin Laden leadin’ them.”

So how have these “eco-terrorism” laws been used? In California, four activists were arrested under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act for protesting animal experimentation outside of the experimenter’s home. Their indictment lists that they chanted, protested, made fliers, and wrote slogans on the ground in children’s sidewalk chalk. As I write this, they are awaiting trial.

For those who have been convicted as “terrorists,” the label follows them from the courtroom into prison. for example, Daniel McGowan was arrested in 2005 for his role in two arsons by the Earth Liberation Front. He targeted genetic engineering and a timber company that logged old-growth forests. In a court hearing, the lead prosecutor called the Earth Liberation Front a terrorist organization and compared the property destruction of McGowan and his codefendants to the violence of the Ku Klux Klan.

McGowan pleaded guilty to his charges and was sentenced to prison as a terrorist. He is now incarcerated in a secretive prison facility on U.S. soil, called a communications management unit (CMU). He was transferred there without notice and without opportunity for appeal.

The CMUs radically restrict prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the Supermax ADX-Florence. Inmates and guards at the CMUs call them “Little Guantanamo.” they have also been described as prisons for “second-tier” terrorists.

According to the Bureau of Prisons, these inmates “do not rise to the same degree of potential risk to national security” as other terrorism inmates. Most prisoners are Muslim, and the secretive prisons have also housed Andrew Stepanian, an animal rights activist convicted of “animal enterprise terrorism” charges.

Through interviews with attorneys, family members, and a current prisoner, it is clear that these units have been created not for violent and dangerous “terrorists,” but for political cases the government would like to keep secret.

——————-

My experiences with the FBI pales in comparison to what many activists have endured, both during this “Green Scare” and in other eras of government repression. I have not been threatened with prison time, terrorism enhancement penalties, or anything like that. However, my experience has prompted the stark realization that the overly broad use of the word terrorism affects many more people than those who set foot in a courtroom.

Few activists will be visited by the FBI, even fewer will be arrested. The real purpose of all this—the FBI visits, the public relations campaigns, the legislation—is to instill fear and make everyday people afraid of speaking up for their beliefs. The scare-mongering has had what attorneys call a chilling effect: it has made everyday people feel as if they must choose between their activism and being labeled a terrorist, and that is not a choice anyone should have to make.

It can be unsettling and frightening to learn how far the government has gone to attack political activists, and sometimes I wonder if spreading this information simply makes more people afraid. But time and again, in dozens of venues, from the New York City Bar Association to anarchist bookstores, I have seen an incredible thing happen when people learn about these issues and then turn to their neighbors. Their conversations are never about how they are afraid; they are about how they are angry and want to take action.

The best way to handle the fear these scare tactics create, I learned, is to confront it head on. “Never turn your back on fear,” Hunter S. Thompson wrote. “It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.”

——————–

The leafleting case in Chicago was eventually dismissed, and we decided to move back to Texas. Kamber and I packed our few belongings and prepared for the journey home. I dreaded moving day. Not because of any attachment to the city, but because I did not want to walk downstairs, through the marble lobby with its Corinthian columns and Victorian couches, and enter Steve the Landlord’s office to turn in our keys. He knew, I thought. He must.

The building was old, but secure. The FBI agents did not kick down any doors when they visited our apartment. They flashed badges and were escorted inside. They probably told Steve that Kamber and I were suspected terrorists, and that this was a national security matter that needed urgent attention. Perhaps they showed him my photo, film noir style. Would he even buzz me into his office? I wondered. Would he ask me to slide the keys under the door, to keep me at a safe distance? Would he refuse to return my security deposit, because there was a “no terrorist” clause in the fine print of the lease?

I opened his door and walked up to his desk as he spoke with a couple of prospective tenants. I tried to silently slip the keys across the desk, but they jangled like jailer’s keys, and the sound of metal on wood echoed up into the vaulted ceiling. I turned, exhaled, and walked away. He called after me when I was almost to the doorway. Here it comes, I thought. Steve the Landlord is going to say how disappointed he is in both of us. How he is going to take custody of the dogs because they should not live with such terrorist scum.

“Hey, will,” he said. I turned to face him. “Give ’em hell.”

Support AlterNet by purchasing your copy of The Next Eco Warriors: 22 Young Women and Men Who Are Saving The Planet through our partner, Powell’s, an independent bookstore.

Will Potter is an award-winning independent journalist based in Washington, DC. He has just released his first book, Green Is The New Red, from City Lights Books.

Countercurrents.org

Mention fascism and most peoples’ minds turn to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Japanese Fascism, Papadopoulos’ Greece and South Africa’s Apartheid regime. However, most people are blissfully unaware of a rising form of fascism, more virulent than all past fascist regimes combined. Its aim is to subjugate the entire planet and its resources to U.S. corporate interests.

It is true that German Fascism, was evil, but it is also true that its evilness has been exploited, even exaggerated by one powerful Zionist entity and its supporters to justify the persecution and dispossession of the Palestinian people. German Fascism has diversified and mutated into super fascism supported by regimes claim to be “liberal democracies”.

The word Fascism originated from the Latin ‘Fasces’, means a bundle of sticks tied together to represent the ruling élite. At the heart of fascist ideology are corporatism, militarism, nationalism, racism and total control of citizens. Fascism is, “ a political system or regime with a tendency toward or actual exercise of Fascism ” [Webster's Dictionary]. Unfortunately, many opportunists and apologists for Israel-U.S. crimes use the word fascism as a name-calling, carelessly thrown it around to demonise others in order to mislead the public.

In his 2003 essay Fascism Anyone ? , the British writer, Laurence W. Britt, identifies fourteen characteristics of fascism common to past fascist regimes. Are they common and shared by regimes today? The purpose of this essay is to seriously inform people of the growing danger of fascism today, using the fourteen characteristics as a matchup.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism . Fascism is deeply rooted in a profound form of nationalism based on an illusion of race superiority, “white supremacy”. The Patriotic Act, “Anti-terrorism” laws, flag-waving, promotion of militarism and mass recitation of “Pledge of Allegiance” to promote war are common characteristics of xenophobic nationalism in the U.S., Israel, Europe and Australia. The American historian Howard Zinn writes: “ Is not nationalism – hat devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder – one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking–cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on–have been useful to those in power and deadly for those out of power”. Negative nationalism, including “patriotism”, is the greatest danger to civilisation.

In Europe, nationalism – once had plunged Europeans into protracted and barbaric wars –, is on the rise and it is threatening the survival of the European Union itself. It is a deadly virus spreading like fire throughout Europe, while the U.S. looks on happily. As nationalism spread, the fate of minorities is at the mercy of racist and populist sentiments.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights . Human rights are nothing more than pretext to enforce Western domination on the rest of the world. The U.S., Israel and Britain see human rights as an obstacle to their expansionist ideology and no country in the world in contempt of international human rights law than the U.S., Israel and Britain. The U.S. and Israel, in particular, are serial violators of human rights law. When European and U.S. politicians visited the Gaza Concentration Camp in Israel-occupied Palestine, the only prisoner they expressed concern about is an Israeli POW who has been accorded all his human rights under the Geneva Conventions by his Palestinian captors. They totally ignored some 11000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and children, who are subjected to gross human rights violations, including torture by the Israeli Gestapo. “Through clever use of propaganda by marginalizing and demonizing those being targeted, the population was brought to accept human rights violations, including torture and sexual abuses. When the abuses were egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation”, writes Laurence. Human rights abuses, including torture, are part of America’s violent history. The U.S. aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan exposed America’s dark history of torture and flagrant abuses of human rights.

Prisoners of war and detainees (many without charges) were incarcerated, abused and tortured in global gulags and concentration camps around the world. From Guantánamo Bay Camp in Cuba to Afghanistan to Iraq and to countless “black sites” prisons, innocent men, women and children have been subjected to injustice, human rights abuses and torture. In Iraq, there are hundreds of known and secret concentration camps and prisons, where innocent Iraqi civilians are being detained under deplorable conditions without being charged with any crime. Tens of thousands have been detained for years and an equal number have disappeared, possibly unlawfully executed. There are no charges, no due process and no justice. The situation in U.S.-NATO-occupied Afghanistan is even worse than in Iraq. Both nations were illegally invaded and have endured oppression, human rights abuses, injustice, torture, rape, and looting. One wonders why the Noble Prize Committee has no concern for Muslim prisoners’ welfare.

It is well-documented that the justice system in the U.S. is a travesty of justice. Guantánamo Bay Camp is considered “outside U.S. legal jurisdiction” despite it is located on a U.S. Navy base in Cuba. This flawed argument designed to deny justice to illegally detained men in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and international human rights law. The Camp has become as notorious as, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram Base in Afghanistan. Prisoners, including male children are denied their human rights, abused and tortured, and some have been executed. Many have been destroyed mentally, although they have committed no crimes. For example, Omar Khadr, an Afghan-Canadian (child soldier) prisoner of war in Guantánamo Bay Camp since he was 15 years old is a case of naked hypocrisy. Khadr was tortured and coerced (forced to sign a confession) into plea-bargain and sentenced to 40 years in prison for allegedly killing a U.S. soldier on the battlefield while defending his country against an illegal foreign invasion, while U.S. and Western leader who committed heinous war crimes remain free and unindicted.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause . The most common characteristic of fascism is scapegoating of people from minorities. Even before 9/11, Muslims were identified as enemies, accused of ‘taking-over’ Europe. The event of 9/11 was an opportunity to justify attacking the scapegoats, Islam and Muslims. In Europe and many parts of the U.S., Canada and Australia, Muslims are often unfairly depicted as terrorists, anti-women and violent in order to justify racism and injustices. False flag terrorist acts orchestrated by Western governments to justify gross injustice and stirrup xenophobic fear against Muslims.

Most importantly, the rise of Islamophobia in the U.S. and Europe is fuelling the war on Islam and Muslim nations. In all these countries the population are feed (by the media) a daily diet of racism to improve their support for an aggressive war being waged by the U.S. and its allies against the Islam and Muslims. In Australia, anti-Muslims hatred and bigotry have infected every Australian institution. Racial profiling of Muslims has become a cancerous disease speeding rabidly into Australian government agencies, universities and even schools.

In the U.S., the war on Muslims is worsening and provides ammunition to America’s war on Islamic nations abroad. Islamophobia has become a fully-fledged Zionist industry that promotes fear of Muslims as part of U.S. war. The enemies of Israel are the enemies of the ruling élite. “ Much of this bigotry and misinformation can be traced directly to what I am calling the infrastructure of hate, an industry which connects venomous anti-Islamic blogs, wealthy [Jewish] donors, powerful think tanks, and influential media commentators, journalists, and politicians”, writes Frankie Martin, the Ibn Khaldun Chair Research Fellow at American University’s School of International Service in Washington DC ( Washington Post , 27 October 2010) .

Europe has become a bastion of Islamophobia. Clones of Adolf Hitler are sprouting like wild mushrooms all over Europe. Their fascist policies have become part of Europe’s mainstream politics. Many of these small clones have said that they are proud to be compared to Adolf Hitler. Their support is growing alarmingly in countries with an ugly history of collaboration with Nazi Germany. In the so-called “open” and “tolerant” societies of Austria, Belgium, Britain, Croatia, Denmark, France, Holland, Hungry, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland fascist forces are on the rise with a Zionist and militarist agenda.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism . The military industrial complex is the most powerful corporate industry in the U.S. The U.S. military budget is a phenomenal. It is estimated that the U.S. spend $623 billion – not includes $3 billion military aid to Israel – on military in 2008. U.S. military spending exceed the rest of the world’s spending combined. U.S. military feeds on the largest budget and resources, even when more than fifty million Americans are in desperate needs and the country is drowning in debt. Billions of U.S. tax payer dollars are spent on the military every day. As pointed out by Laurence; “The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling élite ”. The U.S. has access to the largest stockpiles of nuclear, biological, and chemical of weapons in the world that Hitler didn’t have. The world’s most militarised society is also ruled by a wealthy Zionist and neo-fascist ruling élite that could blow up the world at any time .

In addition to this giant monster, the world largest military organisation, NATO, is under the control of US generals and remains an instrument of the U.S. militarism. “The alliance itself is an excrescence of the U.S. military-industrial complex. For sixty years, military procurements and Pentagon contracts have been an essential source of industrial research, profits, jobs, Congressional careers, even university funding. The interplay of these varied interests converges to determine an implicit U.S. strategy of world conquest”, writes Diana Johnstone, author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions .  This offensive military “alliance” continues to expand in dangerous direction.

Under the rubric of “Western shared values and common interests”, the U.S. has assembled the biggest imperialist military force in history. Threatened and coerced, regimes from around the world are joining in drove with “slavish devotion” to U.S. wars. As mentioned earlier, fascism protects corporate interests and the ruling élite . It is not difficult to argue why so many regimes are joining U.S. aggressive wars. If they cannot join U.S war because of domestic pressure, they open their nations’ door’ to U.S. military. The U.S. military has more than 1000 fortified military bases (large and small) in countries around the world. They are not only used as launch pads for aggression against other nations, but also protecting hideous and corrupt dictators in most countries where they are based. Most of these bases are installed against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the local populations.

In a recent interview on 29 November 2010, U.S. ADM. James Stavridis, NATO supreme allied commander and U.S. European Command chief, told Defense News : “NATO is ‘a wealthy alliance’ with a $31 trillion collective GDP. It is a ‘big and capable alliance’ with 7 million troops and 3,400 ships”. It is a truly super fascist alliance. Its new concept of “expeditionary operations” means attacking nations beyond NATO territories, known that there is no other nation or groups of nations that pose any serious threat to this super fascist force. The existence of this militarised and “wealthy alliance” depends on unprovoked aggression and manufactured pretexts for war.

Naked Aggression

Militarism and aggression go hand in hand, like a parasite and its host. Nazi Germany, Fascist Japan and Apartheid South Africa were notorious examples. Today, the U.S., Britain and Israel are leading the way. In fact, there are striking similarities between the past three regimes and the current three regimes. Naked aggression has been integrated into U.S.-Western corporate culture.

Since World War Two, the U.S. – supported by the like of Britain, Israel Canada and Australia – has massacred more civilians and destroyed more nations than all past fascist regimes combined. It is rightly argued that every U.S. government (including every U.S. president) since 1945, is guilty of war crimes and flagrant violation of international law . Any nation that refuses to submit to U.S.-Zionist ideology and U.S. dictate is threatened with violence. “You’re either with us or against us”, said George W. Bush. There is no neutrality, and nations’ sovereignty has become obsolete.

Even a great nation like China is threatened. If China “refuses” to submit to Western dictate, we must be prepared to use force (i.e., aggression), said Kevin Rudd, former prime minister (now foreign minister) of Australia, the U.S. “staunch” vassal in Asia-Pacific. You think Rudd, who claims to be an “expert” on China, thinks twice before making such an unwise statement. “Every 10 years or so the U.S. needs to pick up some [defenceless] little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business”, writes Michael Ledeen, a U.S. Zionist propagandist. Every country that has been invaded by the U.S. military was left a shattered graveyard and a humanitarian misery. The aim is to instil fear in the world’s population, dominate the world and force U.S. dictate onto another people.

It is vitally important to highlight few recent examples of U.S. aggression and flagrant violation of international law. The U.S. war on Korea (1950-1953) caused the unnecessary death of some 3 million Koreans and destroyed every city and village in North Korea or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Since 1953, the DPRK has been defending itself against U.S. aggression and ongoing false propaganda. The 1953 armistice designed to justify U.S. military presence in the region and threatened neighbouring nations.

A decade after the aggression against North Korea, the U.S. began another decade-long criminal aggression against the people of Vietnam that caused the death of more than 3 million innocent civilians and contaminated the country with biological and chemical agents, including napalm. Despite its military superiority, unlimited resources and indiscriminate violence, the U.S.-imperialism was defeated by a peasant society. In 1991, the U.S. began a criminal aggression against Iraq to “eradicate” its defeat in Vietnam and remove the so-called the “Vietnam syndrome”.

It is estimated that t he 1990 U.S.-Britain enforced genocidal sanctions caused the death of more than 2 million innocent Iraqi civilians, including the death of more than 600,000 infants under the age of five. On 15 December, 2010, the UN Security Council – chaired by no other than U.S. Vice-President, the Zionist Joe Biden – voted to “end” the sanctions on Iraq after the puppet government accepted U.S. conditions, including long-lasting colonial occupation. According to John Mueller and Karl Mueller, the brutal and inhumane sanctions against the Iraqi people have caused far more deaths over time than the combined use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the two world wars (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999). Asked whether this was worth the death of half a million children, Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. Ambassador to the UN replied: “We think the price is worth it”. The genocidal sanctions followed by the 2003 criminal U.S.-British aggression. The unprovoked aggression is the most barbaric aggression in the history of barbarism; a supreme international war crime. It was premeditated aggression against a defenceless people under genocidal siege. Despite the suffering inflicted on the Iraqi people, the crimes were covered-up by the media. (For more on U.S. crimes in Iraq, see: Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions , Harvard, 2010).

In 2001, the U.S. began replicating the atrocities in Vietnam are being replicated in Afghanistan. Since 2001, U.S. and NATO force have occupied and terrorise the nation of Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed by U.S.-NATO indiscriminate and relentless U.S. aerial bombing and strafing, including the illegal and criminal drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan that caused the death of more than 2000 Pakistani civilians. For the people of Afghanistan, living conditions and security have deteriorated beyond belief under a new form of Western colonialism. Like all U.S. aggressions, the war on Afghanistan is a crime against humanity. It is vitally important to note that; ”all the war crimes the U. S. has committed against other peoples were not planned and carried out by sadistic thugs or xenophobic right-wingers but by ordinary folks who come from solid family backgrounds, are well mannered, display elevated cultural taste, and may even be informed by good intentions, writes Boggs. And the planners of these horrendous crimes are mostly so-called whiz kids liberal, cultured, urbane, visionary government officials and many celebrated academics from the Ivy League Schools”, writes Carl Boggs, a Professor of Social Sciences at National University in Los Angeles .

According to a report entitled Project for the New American Century authored by a gang of U.S. Zionists and neo-fascists, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Kagan, which was published 2008, the fall of Communism is an opportunity for the U.S. to rule the world militarily and establish a new worldwide empire through aggression and permanent war, using international organisations such as, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to provide cover and legitimacy for U.S. crimes, mostly committed in broad daylight.

In October 2001, then U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney said that U.S. “war on terror” was “different” from other wars: “in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime”. In other words, the U.S. is in perpetual war of aggression against countries and people the U.S. ruling élite deemed to be counters to U.S. imperialism.

5. Rampant sexism . The ruling élite of fascist regimes tend to be male-dominated. Fascism mobilise masculine virile energy in time of war. One of the lies used to justify U.S. aggression against defenceless people is the “liberation” of women. In fascist regimes, women are seen as less aggressive, gay-sympathisers and tend to be anti-abortion, although not all women are anti-abortion. In most U.S.-led Western societies, the political and economic establishments are still very male-dominated. Women are considered less intelligent and lack the ‘ethics’ of strong male leaders. Treated as second-class citizens, women play a secondary role. Violence, including sexual violence, against women is as high as U.S. skyscrapers. The current trends of using women as “seductive” tools to win votes for a particular male-dominated party are a tragedy not an advancement in gender equality.

6. A controlled mass media. The media and the “entertainment” industry important tasks are the coercion and indoctrination of the population from early childhood. Zionist propagandists called this the “intelligent manipulation of the masses”. It is a formidable achievement with truly global results. Just take a look at the tens of thousands of Australians flocked to Sydney Harbour to see Oprah Winfrey.

Objectivity doesn’t exist in corporate media, and “free speech” is free if the ruling élite like it. Today’s propaganda is more superior and more efficient than at any time in history of propaganda. it is a global propaganda rife with distortion, slander, cover-ups and outright lies. The main players are the U.S. government and wealthy U.S. Zionists with a complete monopoly on mainstream media. From TV channels such as, CNN, CBS, Fox News, BBC and print media like Murdoch Press and the New York Times to Internet web sites like Google, Facebook and YouTube, all owned by pro-Israel Zionist Jews. According to Canadian journalist, Eric Walberg; ”Google co-founder and billionaire Sergei Brin is a big supporter financially of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that funds Jewish immigrants to settle in Israel” on Palestinian land. In addition, the U.S. corporate élite and wealthy U.S. Zionists have a total control on the “entertainment” industry, including Hollywood, which plays an important role in spreading pro-U.S. Zionist propaganda.

While the rhetoric of “free media” is prevalent in most Western countries, a culture of censorship is widespread even by the most “independent” and “alternative” media outlets. Journalists and reporters have to abide by and adhere to a one-sided framework that promotes U.S.-Western fascist policies. Because if they deviates from this ‘ doctrinal framework’ or from the line of serving power, they wouldn ‘ t get their work published. Propagandists and apologists (i.e., accomplices in war crimes) are rewarded and elevated to iconic status in the media in order to be perceived by the public as even-handed “intellectuals”. Anyone deviates from this fascist framework risks persecution and character assassination.

The ongoing criminal attacks by Western politicians and the corporate media on WikilLeaks for daring to release a large cache of U.S. “diplomatic” cables. U.S. politicians and commentator in the corporate media have called WikilLeaks a terrorist organisation and are calling for its co-founder, Julian Assange, to be thrown in Guantánamo Bay Camp or killed by Special Forces. A former assistant to Canadian prime minister the extremist Stephen Harper has proposed assassination as the best way to remove Assange. T he primary aim of this violent thinking is to warn and blackmail others. It is also possible that the U.S. and its allies are using WikilLeaks to justify silencing dissident media, particularly in the Internet.

While the WikilLeaks disclosure is a welcome relief, the mainstream and corporate media have selected few cables to promote U.S. war on Iran and North Korea and undermine the impact of the leaked information. As one of the New York Times mindless propagandists, David Brooks writes: “ The Times has thus erected a series of filters between the 250,000 raw documents that WikilLeaks obtained and complete public exposure. The paper has released only a tiny percentage of the cables. Information that might endanger informants has been redacted. Specific cables have been put into context with broader reporting” ( NYT 29 November 2010). Where are the lies used to justify the U.S. aggression against Iraq? Exposure of these lies will strengthen the case of war crimes against the perpetrators of the war and the deaths of more than a million innocent Iraqis . Does WikiLeaks have anything related to Israel’s serious war crimes and terrorist acts? In reality, a lot of the leaked cables are dubious in nature and benefits Israel’s fascist agenda more than and undermining U.S. imperialism and threatening U.S. national security.

7. Obsession with national security . The so-called “war on terrorism” is meaningless. First, it is a manufactured catchall phrase to label and demonise the enemy and protect the ruling élite; and second, it is a pretext to justify aggressive wars and control the population through draconian laws and repressive measures. The Washington Post (20 December 2010) reports that since 9/11 the U.S. “ is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators”. The U.S. claim that it needs the information to protect the population from acts of terrorism is ironic. The U.S. is the world’s biggest exporter of terrorism and a source of instability everywhere. In the new age of “security”, police and security guards littered the streets of Western cities and towns ready for every move. Peaceful protesters are attacked with rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray. If arrested, protestors risk criminal charges and imprisonment.

In the U.S., presidential directives allow police and security agents (CIA and FBI) to abduct, kidnap, detain indefinitely and torture people suspected of planning “terrorism”. In February 2010, President Obama signed a one-year extension of three provisions of the Patriotic Act to allow the government “to obtain roving wiretaps over multiple communication devices, seize suspects’ records without their knowledge ” ( Christian Science Monitor , 01 March, 2010). Americans have been told to spy on their neighbours, a despicable act which was used by the Nazis.

In the current case of WikilLeaks, a number of U.S. Congressmen and journalists have called for the prosecution of Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act for breaching U.S. security. This is not something out of the blue, but has been used in the past to prosecute American citizens. It is reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s prosecution of people – labelled “traitors” – who criticised the Nazi Party or made joke about the F u ehrer.

In the U.S. and in Europe, communities and entire cities have been subjected to 24-hours camera surveillance – a form of repression. Large metropolitan cities like London, New York and Chicago have become forests of surveillance cameras and by far the most camera-surveilled cities in the world. One quarter of the world’s surveillance cameras are in Britain. Citizens are watched around the clock and their movements are recorded and tracked (through a series of ID cards and credit cards) as they go about their daily business. In addition, many cities in the U.S. have begun using iris scanning technology, an invasive form of identification. Fear is forcing people to make more concessions.

According to civil rights groups and privacy advocates, the growing culture of surveillance posed great threat to civil liberties and personal freedom of citizens. The aim is to have a total control of society by whatever means, and force people to submit to draconian laws. Furthermore, the obsession with national security is also a corporate business that benefits the manufacturers of surveillance cameras, iris scanners and their Congressional lobbyists. Security is simply a pretext for no personal security.

8. Religion and ruling élite tied together . George W. Bush justified his criminal wars as a “message from God”. Hence, opposing Bush’s war crimes was considered an attack on God, Bush’s God. The U.S. is not exceptional, most regimes (even the most unreligious) use religion to rally support for a godless ruling élite .

The U.S is one of the most religious countries in the world, almost fanatical. Successive U.S. regimes attached themselves to the state predominant religion, Christianity. Furthermore, a large segment of the American population, including more than fifty million (and growing) Evangelical Christian-fascists are religious fanatics that form the political base of the Republicans Party.

No other nation uses religion to justify war crimes than the state of Israel in Palestine. The Zionist entity is forcing the rest of the world to recognise it as a “Jewish state”, so it can commit more crimes.

9. Power of corporations protected . Fascism is characterised by a “corporatist approach to economics”, as in the U.S. and major Western states today. Indeed, protection of corporate power is an essential part of fascism. It is not secret, what is good for IBM and Boeing is good for the country. According to a new report by the New York Times , even the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is increasingly defending and siding with corporate interests. The ruling élite “have chosen to serve the narrowest possible private minority interests of transnational financial and industrial corporations”, writes Susan George of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Hence, fascism is corporatism. The ruling élite write the rules in ways to benefit the few (owners of corporations) at the expense of the majority. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised.

The ruling élite see the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production, but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic élite were often pampered by the political élite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of the “have-not” citizens. The ruling-corporate élites are so powerful, even if a change in the White House doesn’t lead to a change in policy. The Obama Administration proposal of a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers while leaving Wall Street and corporate CEOs continue to make record profits and bonuses through tax cuts and bail-out is a case in point. In his recent fiscal deal with the Republicans, President Obama cut the net earnings of the lowest-paid workers and passed them to the wealthiest 1 per cent Americans. In other words , Obama agreed to extend George W. Bush tax cut to the wealthiest Americans.

10. Power of labour suppressed or eliminated . Under fascist regimes, unions and organised labour considered enemy of the state. In the U.S, the working-class or public workers have been decimated by successive U.S. regimes on behalf of big wealthy corporations.

In most Western countries striking union workers were attacked and organized labour was crashed by the ruling élite and its corporate allies. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Australian prime minister, the bigoted John Howard were vicious enemies of unions and the working-class. In Germany, France, Spain and Greece, anti-labour laws are on the rise.

One of the major reasons Western powerful corporations have relocated their export industries off-shore to China and elsewhere is to exploit the labour there and ineffective regulations in host countries. The high profits operations have destroyed organised labour at home, in the U.S., Europe, Japan and South Korea. Economic ‘globalisation’, a variant of U.S. imperialism, has perpetuated workers exploitation.

Local workers (“Third World” workers) are forced to work under criminal and inhumane conditions, and paid poverty-level- wages. If they protested, they will be dealt with severely. The recent case in Chittagong, Bangladesh when police fired on striking garment workers killing 4 workers and injured more than 150 workers is a case in point.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts . “Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes”, writes Laurence. In fascist regimes, ignorance is encouraged while intellectualism and awareness were discouraged. Intellectuals and the arts are promoted and encouraged as far as they provide needed propaganda.

In the U.S., the McCarthyism era was followed by different forms of repression. People who question or doubt the official story of 9/11 are demonised and depicted as anti-American “conspirators”. The event was used as an opportunity for the U.S. government to crackdown on dissent, including students’ protest and academic freedom.

Through tight control of intellectual and academic freedom, universities have turned into right-wing think tanks and racist laboratories of citizens’ indoctrination. Universities have become powerful and privileged corporations that seemed far removed from the daily life of ordinary people. Academics are paid propagandists spreading false propaganda to manipulate the masses.

Terry Eagleton, who was forced to retire from his post as John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at Manchester University writes: “By and large, academic institutions have shifted from being the accusers of corporate capitalism to being its accomplices? They are intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries”. As Laurence writes; “Politically independent academics harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed”.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment . The U.S. is leading the world in incarceration rate and the prison industry is one of the largest “growth” industries. The U.S. has more prisoners than anywhere on the planet. Nearly 10% of the population or one in 100 adults in the U.S. is in jail or prison. On average, one in every 20 American men is behind bars or “being monitored”. In 2008, about 5.1 million people were on probation or parole. Most of those incarcerated are African-Americans and Latinos caught in an unjust and corrupt justice system. According to the Washington Post (29 February 2008); “ One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group”.

Police power is sacrosanct and promoted to the point of encouraging abuse of people from minorities. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuses. Petty crimes is exaggerated and used and as an excuse for more police power. With the help of the media and Hollywood, crimes have also become an obsession of the majority. The ruling élite like to talk tough every time they talk about crimes, but not their own.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption . The U.S. and Israel are ranked very high amongst the most corrupt nations in the world. The economic and the ruling élite used their positions to enrich themselves and their cronies. “Corruption worked both ways; the ruling élite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic élite , who in turn would gain the benefit of government favouritism”, writes Laurence.

In general, cronyism and corruption are widespread in most Western countries, but it is cleverly covered-up and normalised in the media and in ruling élite circles. For example, in Australia, cronyism and corruption are parts of the Australian culture and deeply embedded in every government, public and private institution. Privileged employment and positions are all in the hands of white Australians and it is a well fenced territory. There is no exception throughout Australia, one state is more corrupt and more prejudice than the other.

The same rampant culture of cronyism and corruption is also exported world-wide, particularly, to countries occupied by Western forces. After the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. authorities began an expensive campaign to promote cronyism and corruption among the ruling élite, the puppet governments. The aim is to demonise the nations and cover-up the crimes of the occupying forces. It is no coincidence that Afghanistan and Iraq are amongst the most corrupt nations in the world today.

14. Fraudulent elections . Former U.S. president George W. Bush was an illegitimate president for two terms having arrived at the White House through well-known rigged elections. In general, U.S. elections are nothing more than a marketing campaign to manipulate and deceive the public because the U.S. is ruled by a powerful unelected ruling class. It is a plutocracy masquerading as democracy. The so-called, two-party system is a fraud. It is a one-party with two branches system that serves corporate interest. It doesn’t matter who occupy the White House.

The U.S. love affair with fraudulent elections in countries ruled by murderous dictators and corrupt despots is not secret. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Kosovo to Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan to Egypt and to Honduras and Haiti, the U.S. record of financing and staging fraudulent elections is staggering. Moreover, U.S. role in “colour revolutions” – in Uzbekistan, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan – produced the kind of despots that the U.S. ruling élite love to support. In reality, the U.S. is a leading exporter of fraudulent elections and an arch enemy of democracy. Throughout the world, the U.S. interference designed to promote instability and exploit local conflicts to expand U.S. imperialism.

In most European countries that pretend to be “liberal democracies”, elections lack transparency and accountability which undermines democracy and gives rise to cynicism and mistrust. They are becoming increasingly authoritarian. It is true, people have to vote, but their votes are meaningless. It is always, the same old wine in new bottle. All over Europe, elections are used to manipulate and con the population. “The European Union is not a democratic entity”, writes Susan George. It is an authoritarian state. “Anti-democratic values are taking hold. We have become stakeholders instead of citizens, consumers instead of sovereign people, we are offered consultation rather than real participation”, she added.

Writing in The New York Review of Books in 1995 , the Italian writer and academic Umberto Eco, also identified fourteen “features that are typical” of what Eco called “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism”. Umberto noted that not all of the fourteen features have to be present at the same time for a regime to be called fascist, and “many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it” . Umberto writes: “Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes [Croatia]. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound [the American expatriate fascist]. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola”. Like the above matchup of fourteen characteristics, Umberto argued that all fourteen features that he identified applied to the U.S. regime to some degree.

Finally, the U.S. and many U.S. allies – Britain and Israel, to name two – have already entered a moment with all the characteristics of fascist regimes. With a complete monopoly on military power, violence and the media, the U.S. is a super fascist state , proliferating and propping-up smaller fascist states . It has become clear that, world order is no longer governed by international law and civilised norms, nor by treaties based on peaceful and multilateral agreements, but is based on the U.S. use of military threat and violence in pursuit of a fascist ideology to dominate the on behalf of U.S. ruling-corporate élite .

It is not difficult to predict the future under U.S. fascist domination. Fascism is not the way to defend freedom, promote democracy and provide security, adherence to the rules of law and civilised norms is. It is the duty of conscious people to dissent together against a U.S.-led super fascism on behalf of humanity.

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia.

http://www.alternet.org/story/149226/

The severe economic crisis, now in its fourth year, is being used to batter the remnants of the social welfare state. Having decimated aid to the poor over the last 30 years, especially in the United States, the economic and political elite are now intent on strangling middle-class benefits, namely state-provided pensions, health care and education.

The initial neoliberal assault under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher reorganized the capitalist economy and hammered private-sector unions into submission. This was accomplished by putting labor back into competition with itself by off-shoring industrial production, through deregulation and with frontal assaults on labor rights, organizing and solidarity.

Similarly, the current attack is a two-pronged effort to reorganize state social services, either by eliminating or privatizing them, and decimate public-sector unions whose workers provide those services. While the safety net is being withered by attrition, police and spying agencies are getting more powers and funding, and the wealth of the super-rich and record corporate profits are deemed off-limits to taxation to close any government budget gap.

Simply put, the elderly are superfluous to capitalism. With high rates of joblessness the “new norm,” more and more people are being made disposable. This leads to an efficient if brutal logic: cutting old-age income and health care will make it easier to scrap old, useless workers. In fact, this reality is already coming to pass. One study published in 2008 found that over a 16-year period life expectancy had declined for many poor American women — precisely those who are disproportionately represented among the elderly heavily dependent on Social Security and Medicare.

Slashing social services affects everyone by increasing the pool of workers desperate for any sort of paying job, pushing down wages and benefits. This will all be pushed under the rubric of “personal responsibility,” and it will probably be successful as long as opposition is weak and divided. The main beneficiaries will be the super-wealthy who gain both from tax cuts as the social sector is chopped up and higher corporate profits as wages and benefits are slashed more deeply.

The attack on pensions is mainly occurring in the West and those countries close to its orbit. So while the United States, Greece, Ireland, Japan, France, Turkey, Spain, Poland and Latvia have been cutting or trying to squeeze state-run pensions, others such as Bolivia, China and Venezuela have been increasing funding of old-age pensions in recent years (though within these countries the picture is more complicated because social spending may be declining overall and inflation increasing).

The Right has stridently opposed Social Security since it was enacted in 1935, but the modern attack on pensions originated during the Reagan-Thatcher era. While he proposed making Social Security voluntary during the 1964 Goldwater campaign, when he reached office Reagan temporarily froze cost-of-living adjustments, raised the future retirement age to 67, taxed benefits of higher-income earners, made it more difficult for the disabled to claim benefits and forced the self-employed to pay 100 percent of payroll taxes. Then under Clinton, according to some economists, inflation was understated to suppress cost-of-living adjustments, resulting in benefits that should be 50 percent higher than the current average of $1,072 a month. Thatcher and Tony Blair formed the same one-two punch as Reagan and Clinton, but they went further by partially privatizing much of the state-run pension system.

The second historical component is the current crisis, which is severely widening the economic chasm. According to the New York Times, corporate profits “have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history,” hitting a record of $1.66 trillion on an annual basis. Taking advantage of Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury monies, Wall Street has notched record profits over the last two years. And the top one percent actually increased their share of the wealth through the end of 2009.

As for the overall economic picture, industrial production is back to where it was in 2000 and the all-important capacity utilization rate – which measures how much of existing manufacturing plants are actually operating – is below 75 percent, compared to a level above 80 percent before the crash. This is like saying more than one-fourth of factories are idle. The trade deficit is at 3.7 percent of the gross domestic product. Only 874,000 jobs were created during the first 10 months of 2010, well short of the 1.2 million needed to keep up with population growth, and some 260,000 state workers lost their jobs during this period, leaving 7.5 million fewer jobs than when the recession began.

The household picture is even grimmer: family income shrank more than 4 percent in 2008 and 2009; the official poverty rate of 14.3 is the highest since 1994; 13.5 percent of home mortgages are in delinquency or foreclosure; the percentage of people receiving health insurance through their employer has dropped by 13 percent over the last decade and the real unemployment rate — the “U6 rate” which includes those who have given up looking for work — is at 17 percent. Household debt stands at 118 percent of after-tax income.

Most economists say there are really only four sources of potential growth in our economy: consumer spending, business investment, trade and government. As the data above indicates, the first three are on life support, while the Obama White House bungled the stimulus plan, helping the right in discrediting government intervention, which is still the only remaining option. These economic conditions prevail throughout the West, which is the backdrop for the global assault on pension plans. Thus the conclusion is stark: there is no functioning engine to drive economic growth.  

With so much idle productive capacity, the bromide of giving tax breaks to spur business investment is little more than throwing away money. With American families drowning in debt, getting smacked with rising healthcare costs, having lost $15.8 trillion in wealth and fearing joining the armies of unemployed, they are incapable of pulling the economy out of its funk with increased consumption. Increased trade is one possibility, which would require a weaker dollar to make U.S. exports more competitive. But, as Paul Krugman points out, this is opposed by Republicans who believe continued economic decline will enhance their electoral chances in 2012. Despite investment money pouring into the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – agricultural commodities and precious metals, these markets are too narrow and shallow to form a new asset bubble, such as the ones in tech and housing that fueled economic growth for nearly two decades. And in any case, we know how well those bubbles worked out.

When business investment, consumption, trade, debt and speculation all falter, that leaves government as the only sector that can revive a capitalist economy. But, as I first pointed out in December 2008, the Obama administration knew the stimulus was almost certain to fail because the downturn was sapping a staggering $1 trillion a year from the economy at that point, while the plan offered a relatively meager $787 billion. Of that, only $600 billion of stimulus money was spent in the last two years and, according to Paul Krugman, more than 40 percent of that was in tax breaks that tend to offer the least bang for the buck. So in early 2009, faced with an economy leaking 7 percent of the GDP a year, Obama offers a plan that plugs 1 to 2 percent a year.

In the final equation, the Obama stimulus only covered some of the shortfall in state and local budgets. But that money is drying up, and that, to a large degree, is the reason state services and workers are now under attack.

But now we are in for more bloodletting of social services and government workers because the failed stimulus has legitimized the establishment hysteria over the federal debt. Debt matters but the simplest way to reduce it is by a combination of economic growth and inflation. This is what happened to U.S. debt after WW2, which peaked at about 120 percent of GDP, far more than today even with the economic depression and bailouts. Instead, the right is pushing policies that may result in a worst-case scenario. Cutting spending and taxes –which Obama has endorsed – could lead to further economic contraction and deflation. This will make federal debt payments doubly onerous because tax revenues will shrink as the dollar strengthens.

There is another solution to reviving the economy without piling on debt: tax the wealth of the elite. According to economist Rick Wolff, “high-net-worth” Americans have around $12 trillion in investable assets, which excludes the value of their homes. A 13 percent wealth tax would wipe out the entire 2010 federal budget deficit of $1.56 trillion while doing little to crimp the economy because this money is literally lying around.

Yet Obama never seriously considered even the Keynesian policy of debt-driven financing for national re-industrialization because he was the darling of Wall Street – and number one recipient of its dollars – for his unwavering support of the Bush bailout in September 2008 and by taking counsel from Larry Summers and Tim Geithner during the campaign. Once in the White House Obama shunned jobs programs on a massive enough scale to revive the economy because the indirect method of debt-driven financing would shore up benefits, wages and labor bargaining power, thus cutting into corporate profits, while the direct financing method, taxing the rich, would mean they would have to pay for programs that would eventually cut into their profits.

The Obama administration has consistently fought for policies that involve weakening labor — such as its attacks on auto workers and teachers and the cynical gesture of calling for a freeze on the pay of federal workers– driving down wages, letting unemployment rise, and squeezing social services and benefits, all to transfer more wealth upward.

The wealthy have profited three times off the crisis: from the bubble itself, during the bailouts and from government bonds sold to them to pay for the bailouts. Putting pensions on the chopping block would give them a fourth opportunity to profit off the same crisis.

If debt is a problem, then bondholders should take a haircut because they took the risk. Of course, that’s not how capitalism works. So, in the case of Social Security, which has nearly $2.6 trillion in its trust fund and can meet ALL obligations through 2037 even assuming no changes are made, the plan is to raid it to pay off bondholders.

That’s why a crisis is being manufactured. Obama’s deal to reduce payroll tax by two percentage points will pilfer an estimated $120 billion from the trust fund that will supposedly be paid back by revenues from the general treasury. This means the deficit will increase, feeding into the fabricated panic over Social Security and debt.

For any country, cutting pensions is disastrous to long-term economic health. In the United States, Social Security accounts for 40 percent of the income of the population over 65 and nearly 50 percent for women in this group. It would also leave more people in the workforce as older workers delay retirement. Because the elderly tend to spend their benefits right away, on housing, food, transportation and medical services this means less demand and lower economic activity. And combining all this with trying to crush public workers also means more unemployed, less tax revenue and a shrinking economy.

It all adds up to a recipe for a depression. Two conclusions are inescapable: Obama is far more Herbert Hoover than FDR, and change will only come from creative independent movements instead of marching into the tomb of the Democratic Party.

Arun Gupta is a founding editor and the publisher of The Indypendent newspaper. He is writing a book on the politics of food for Haymarket Books.

Countercurrents.org

Project Censored’s top 2010 story was “US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street,” highlighting that since 2001, “eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties.” It’s no surprise that they own them, what Wall Street Watch.org showed in a March 2009 Essential Information and Consumer Education Foundation report titled,”Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America.”

The accompanying press release said:

Over the past decade, “$5 billion in political contributions bought Wall Street freedom from regulation, (and) restraint.” From 1998 – 2008, “Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates (the FIRE sector)” spent over $1.7 billion in political contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, in return for which:

– they were freed from regulation;

– could speculate on financial derivatives and an alphabet soup of securitized garbage, including asset-backed securities (ABSs), mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), collateralized bond obligations (CBOs), credit default swaps (CDSs), and collateralized fund obligations (CFOs) – combined, sliced, diced, packaged, repackaged, and sold in tranches to sophisticated and ordinary investors, many unwittingly through mutual funds, 401(k)s, pensions, and the like;

– could merge commercial and investment banking and insurance operations;

– bilk investors and the public through fraudulent schemes; and

– get trillions of bailout dollars when the economy crashed.

For decades, Wall Street and successive governments colluded to defraud the public, using various schemes to transfer wealth from them to the privileged. Carter spearheaded deregulation Nixon and Ford began by hiring Alfred Kahn to head the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). The 1978 Airline Deregulation Act followed. It dissolved the CAB, removed industry restraints, eased consolidation, and subsequent bills deregulated trucking and railroads – the 1980 Motor Carrier Act and 1980 Staggers Rail Act, following the 1976 Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act.

Carter also phased out interest rate deposit ceilings, and gave the Fed more power through the 1980 Depository Institutions and Monetary Control Act, removing New Deal restraints and enabling subsequent administrations to go further.

Under Reagan, energy deregulation followed, notably oil and gas, then electric utilities under GHW Bush and Clinton, the result being high prices, brownouts, and Enron-like scandals. In the 1980s, the 1982 Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act led to exotic feature mortgages with adjustable rates or interest-only. They carry low “teaser” rates for several years, after which they’re adjusted much higher, often making loans unaffordable, especially for low-income, high-risk borrowers using subprime and Alt-A loans.

The 1982 Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act deregulated thrifts and fueled fraud, so much that the Savings and Loan crisis followed, hundreds of banks failed, and taxpayers got stuck with most of the $160 billion cost. In 1987, the Government Accountability Office (GOA) declared the S & L deposit insurance fund insolvent because of mounting bank failures.

In 1988, global regulators imposed minimum bank capital requirements, known as the Basel Accord or Basel I, enforced in the G-10 countries.

In 1989, the Financial Institutions Reform and Recovery Act abolished the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and FSLIC, transferring them to the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and FDIC. It also created the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) to liquidate troubled assets, assume Federal Home Loan Bank Board insurance functions, and clean up a troubled system.

Clinton era telecommunications deregulation let media and telecommunication giants consolidate, gave new digital television broadcast spectrum space to current TV station owners, and let cable companies increase their local monopoly positions.

His 1994 Reigle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act let bank holding companies operate in more than one state. In 1996, the Fed reinterpreted Glass-Steagall to let bank holding companies earn up to 25% of their revenue from investment banking. The 1998 Citicorp-Travelers merger followed, combining a commercial/investment bank with an insurance company ahead of the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, also called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) authorizing it.

Some Background

During the Great Depression, the Bank Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall) created the FDIC, insuring bank deposits up to $5,000 and separating commercial from investment banks and insurance companies, among other provisions to curb speculation. Senator Carter Glass was its prime mover and got Senator Henry Steagall to go along by including his amendment to protect deposits. Glass believed banks should stick to lending, not speculate, deal, or hold corporate securities. He blamed them for the 1929 crash, subsequent bank failures, and the Great Depression. The Bank Act of 1933 passed quickly to curb them.

No Longer since the Neoliberal 1990s

Later weakened, it still curbed abusive practices until GLBA repealed it, let commercial and investment banks and insurance companies combine, and facilitated consolidated power, fraud and abuse that followed. Other deregulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting to let banks hide liabilities.

In 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) passed, legitimizing swap agreements and other hybrid instruments, at the heart of today’s problems by ending regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging that turned Wall Street more than ever into a casino.

In her book “It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street,” former insider Nomi Prins explained CFMA as follows:

“That act ushered in tremendous growth of unregulated commodity trades through its “Enron Loophole (for its Enron On-Line, the first Internet-based commodity transactions system to let companies) trade energy and other commodity futures on unregulated exchanges.”

“It also sparked growth in the unregulated credit derivatives trades that bet on defaults of corporations or loans, which became the main ingredient in the hot new Wall Street financial gumbo. Credit derivatives were a type of insurance contract written against not just one corporation or loan but on investments that scarfed up bunches of subprime loans (junk) and stuffed them into the unregulated CDOs that imploded and hastened the greater lending crisis.”

Credit default swaps became the most widely traded credit derivative. As unregulated insurance bets between two parties on whether or not a company’s bonds would default, financial writer Ellen Brown asked in her April 11, 2008 article titled, “Credit Default Swaps: Evolving Financial Meltdown and Derivative Disaster Du Jour:”

What if “the smartest guys in the room designed their credit default swaps (but) forgot to ask one thing – what if the parties on the other side of the bet don’t have the money to pay up?” In late 2007, when the financial crisis hit, they didn’t, causing a “supersized bubble” to deflate.

New Deal reforms were enacted to prevent it. Deregulatory madness made it inevitable and the subsequent global economic fallout that continues – compounded by what Danny Schechter explained in his book, titled “The Crime of Our Time,” calling the financial collapse “a crime story (involving) high status white-collar crooks.” Their schemes included:

– “Fraud and control frauds;

– Insider trading;

– Theft and conspiracy;

– Misrepresentation;

– Ponzi schemes;

– False accounting;

– Embezzling;

– Diverting funds into obscenely high salaries and obscene bonuses;

– Bilking investors, customers and homeowners;

– Conflicts of interest;

– Mesmerizing regulators;

– Manipulating markets;

– Tax frauds;

– Making loans and then arranging that they fail;

– Engineering phony financial products: (and)

– Misleading the public.”

Worst of all, they got away with it, still do, and got trillions of dollars in bailout money as a bonus, free money from the Fed plus interest on Fed held reserves.

The Absence of Regulatory Oversight

Earlier New Deal reforms were long gone, but for the most part worked when in place. The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 followed the Securities Act of 1933, requiring offers and security sales to be registered, pursuant to the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause. Previously, they were governed by state laws, so-called “blue sky laws” to protect against fraud.

The 1934 law regulated secondary trading of financial securities and established the SEC under Section 4 to enforce the new Act, later under the 1939 Trust Indenture Act, the 1940 Investment Company Act, the Investment Advisors Act the same year, Sarbanes-Oxley of 2002, and the 2006 Credit Rating Agency Reform Act.

The SEC was established to enforce federal securities laws, the security industry, the nation’s financial and options exchanges, and other electronic securities markets and instruments unknown in the 1930s, including derivatives and other forms of speculation. In principle, it’s charged with uncovering wrongdoing, assuring investors aren’t swindled, and keeping the nation’s financial markets free from fraud and other abuses.

That was then, but no longer. Under George Bush, the SEC was more facilitator than enforcer, a paper tiger, not a guardian of the public trust. It:

– turned a blind eye to fraud and abuse;

– protected Wall Street, not investors;

– neutered its enforcement staff’s authority;

– adopted voluntary regulation;

– let investment banks hold less reserve capital;

– freely use leverage;

– incur much higher debt levels; and

– pretty much do what they pleased, only occasionally punishing an offender with a wrist-slap.

Financial fraud prosecutions dropped sharply, practically never against powerful, well-connected firms, the Bernie Madoff exception because he confessed to his sons, and they turned him in for running what he called a “giant Ponzi scheme.”

Obama exacerbated the worst bad practices. Wall gets a free ride. Foxes guard the hen house. Inmates run the asylum. Regulators don’t regulate. Investigations aren’t conducted. Criminal fraud is ignored. Nothing is done to curb it, and except for Madoff, only small fries need worry. Washington protects the big ones, Obama assigning Mary Schapiro the task as his SEC chief.

She’s a consummate insider, spent years promoting Wall Street self-regulation, headed the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), was the National Association of Securities Dealers’ (NASD) chairman, president, and CEO, ran the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and is expert at quashing fraud investigations. Except for high profile cases too big to hide (like Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo and Texas financier Robert Allen Sanford), she’s treaded lightly on the rich and powerful, is doing nothing to curb insider trading, front-running, market manipulation, and other abuses.

Even the Wall Street Journal, commenting on her appointment, said her regulatory record “shows she has infrequently pursued tough action against big Wall Street firms.” A year later, her job performance proves it, made easier by decades of deregulation.

In 2003, the Controller of the Currency, John Hawke, Jr. preempted state predatory lending laws (in violation of the 10th Amendment), meaning nationally chartered banks (including the nation’s biggest) would come under federal standards, not more stringent state ones. According to former New York Attorney General and Governor, Eliot Spitzer:

“Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.”

In 2004, Basel II replaced Basel I with more comprehensive guidelines, ostensibly to ensure banks hold capital reserves appropriate to their lending and investment practices. In other words, the more risk, the greater the reserves, but given lax regulatory oversight, banks pretty much do what they want, and Obama gives them free reign, all the easier with trillions in bailout dollars.

In 2007, the Fed’s Term Auction Facility extended loans to depository institutions with no public disclosure, unlike its discount window operations. In addition, global regulators let commercial banks set their own capital requirements, based on internal “risk-assessment models.”

Regulators ignored predatory lending practices. They:

– overrode state consumer protection laws to curb exploitive lending and other abuses;

– prevented victims from suing predatory loan issuing firms;

– freed Fannie, Freddie and giant Wall Street players to operate recklessly;

– let them hide toxic assets by off-balance sheet accounting; Financial Accounting Standards Board rules allow it, and the Security Industry and Financial Markets Association and the American Securitization Forum have lobbied furiously to keep them unchanged; in other words, to deceive the public by letting insolvent institutions look healthy;

– let them eliminate some of their own (Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros. and Merrill Lynch) to remove competition;

– abandoned antitrust and other regulatory principles;

– created too-big-to-fail institutions; and

– let them do anything they wished, free from meaningful oversight.

Credit rating agencies played their part as well because of their relationship with issuers. They ignored high-risk financial instruments, rated them highly, and duped investors to believe they were safe. The SEC could have intervened but didn’t. The 2006 Credit Rating Agencies Reform Act requires regulators to establish clear guidelines to determine which ones qualify as NRSROs (Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations).

The SEC is supposed to monitor their internal record-keeping and prevent conflicts of interest, but can’t regulate their methodology and must approve their standards even knowing they’re flawed.

One hand thus feeds the other. Conspiratorially, the regulator and credit agencies turn a blind eye to abuses, cry foul when it’s too late, then promise greater diligence next time. Change, of course, never comes, so next time is like last time until so extreme the whole system collapses, harming ordinary people the most.

After the 2008 Bear Stearns collapse, special lending facilities opened the discount window to investment banks, accepting a broad range of asset-backed securities, principally toxic ones, as collateral – what economist Michael Hudson called “cash for trash.” Numerous other programs followed, including:

– the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (ESSA) establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to trade bad assets for good ones;

– the 2008 New York Fed administered Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to lend up to $1 trillion on a non-recourse basis to holders of certain AAA-rated asset-backed securities (ABS) backed by newly and recently originated consumer and small business loans;

– Fed purchases of money market instruments;

– the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) to subsidize toxic asset purchases with government guarantees; and

– trillions of dollars in bank bailouts; according to Neil Barofsky, the Special Treasury Department’s TARP Inspector General, banks got or were pledged up to $23.7 trillion, or the equivalent of an $80,000 liability for every American; in March 2009, Bloomberg reported that the Treasury and Fed “spent, lent, or committed $12.8 trillion” up to that point, and more was available for the asking, besides other free money at near zero percent rates plus interest on reserves held by the Fed.

Wall Street never had it so good. For the public, hard times are worsening as America sinks deeper into depression, a protracted one according to some experts hitting the needy and disadvantaged hardest. The land of the free is now the most callous, the result of what former Wall Street and government insider Catherine Austin Fitts calls a “financial coup d’etat.”

She explains the “pump(ing) and dump(ing) of the entire American economy,” duping the public, fleecing trillions of dollars, and it’s more than just “a process (to destroy) the middle class. (It’s) genocide (by other means) – a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts.”

The scheme includes abusive market manipulation, “fraudulent housing (and other bubbles), pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active intervention in the markets by the government and central bank” along with insiders trading on privileged information unavailable to the public. It’s part of a government – business partnership for enormous profits through “legislation, contracts, regulat(ory laxness), financing, (and) subsidies” – a conspiratorial plot to transfer household wealth to powerful special interests.

Here’s a taste of the consequences, courtesy of economist David Rosenberg on February 16.

He reported that “credit contraction continues unabated,” and the numbers are staggering:

– $30 billion in the past week;

– $100 billion in the first six weeks of 2010, “a historic 16% annualized decline;”

– since the crisis erupted in fall 2007, $740 billion, “a record 10% decline;” and

– “The fact that credit has dropped at a 16% annual rate since the turn of the year is testament to how the credit contraction is actually accelerating.”

And it’s broad-based:

– consumer loans down at a 12% annual rate year to date;

– real estate down 13.5% annualized;

– commercial and industrial loans down at a 19.3% annual rate; and

– short-term business credit down $14 billion year to date.

Rosenberg calls it “alarming,” especially “since the bulk of the fiscal and US dollar stimulus is behind us, not ahead of us….The era of the ‘green shoots’ is officially dead.”

Europe is mired in recession. Britain faces a possible 2010 sovereign debt crisis, spiking yields and raising borrowing costs, according to Morgan Stanley. Eastern European nations teeter on the brink of debt default. So do Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland. A January 14 George Magnus Financial Times article titled, “Sovereign default risks loom” said:

“There is no peacetime precedent for the current speed and scale of public debt accumulation….The spectre of sovereign default, therefore, has returned to the rich world,” sparking fears of nonpayment, paying less than face amount, inflation, capital controls, special taxes that break private contracts, and/or currency devaluations, measures also threatening America given its crushing debt burden.

Yet according to Rosenberg, “the consensus community has no clue as to what the future holds,” forecasting rosy scenarios while Rome burns.

In fact, “the depression is ongoing even if the most recent recession has faded; and in our view, the next one is not too far away especially now that the stimulus is soon to subside.” The contagion will be global, the fallout catastrophic because the worst is yet to come, what economist Michael Hudson foresaw in early 2009 saying:

“The (US) economy has reached its debt limit and is entering its insolvency phase. We are not in a cycle but (at) the end of an era. The old world of debt pyramiding to a fraudulent degree cannot be restored,” only delayed for a more painful day of reckoning. It’s coming according to Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881 – 1973) because:

“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.” It’s only a matter of sooner “or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

Expect a deepening global depression; protracted economic, political, social, and institutional upheaval; mass unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and hunger; and severe repression to curb public anger. Blame it on decades of political influence buying yielding unprecedented returns for the privileged, but economic wreckage and catastrophic life changes for the rest. The price of excess is pain, lots of it for the world’s disadvantaged, the ones who always pay for rich peoples’ sins.

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

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

WE HAVE a problem. Despite broad and sustained scientific consensus about the growing incapacity of the planet to sustain us and the threat posed by climate change, our elected decision makers and key corporate players seem incapable of doing enough of what is required, to avert the coming crisis.

This has caused despair among many of the climate scientists who convened earlier this year in Copenhagen. Nine out of 10 of those polled by The Guardian newspaper said they had lost faith in the ability of decision makers to take the action necessary to restrict global temperature.

The failure was variously blamed on political constraints, social inertia and the psychological inability of human society to manage the complexity, uncertainty and enormity of the issue. “I thought that we could convince people,” said one. “But I fear that society is not up to the challenge of a crisis like this.”

Some Australian scientists are similarly despondent. Having witnessed the failure of empirical data and reason to persuade, academics such as Graeme Pearman are now trying to unearth the elements of human nature that make it, in his words, “so difficult for us to respond”.

But while such an approach is understandable and may have merit, I worry about the conceptualisation of the inaction problem as one of understanding (because everyone knows that when reasonable people understand something, they act on it). Also concerning is the tendency to define the problem as one caused solely by others, rather than by advocates themselves.

This is particularly seen in the absence of critical reflection on the communication strategies climate scientists and activists have employed to date to provoke action on climate change.

There is good evidence that the Australian public is concerned about climate change and wants decision makers to act.

Newspaper polls show readers nominating the problem as that posing the greatest risk to their quality of life. A 2007 international poll found 92 per cent of Australians favoured measures to combat global warming, putting them first among the 12 nations surveyed.

Yet, as social psychologists and marketers know, there is no straight line, and often only a tenuous relationship, between what we know and what we do. Staggeringly, few of the efforts designed to mobilise action on climate change appear to be underpinned by proper national research on public motivation and, subsequent to this, communications framing. This is the case even where significant money has been poured into public information campaigns (the UK), and where a government report on climate change communications strategy cannot be accessed (Australia). This is particularly concerning given that poorly crafted communications efforts can have the opposite of the intended effect.

Recent analysis of the apocalyptic headlines and catastrophic images that constitute the mainstay of much climate communications shows that, in the majority, they provoke feelings of powerlessness rather than a desire to act. Fear, guilt, anger, defiance, a desire to blame others and feelings of exhaustion or irritation are also among the responses the climate change message can provoke when poorly framed.

A more self-critical examination of what might be going wrong with efforts to persuade might also consider the uncomfortable yet potent observations made by philosopher Sarah Bachelard.

Bachelard, herself an activist, says that the sanctimoniousness of some of her peers can impede successful communication and action for change: “There can be a tone of self-righteousness, a kind of shrill moral indignation, in the speech of those of us who protest and campaign … We know that we are on the side of the angels, and in our own way we can fail to do justice to the complex reality of most human action and motivation. We get something out of ‘being right’ … (and) satisfaction from making those who do not agree with us wrong.”

Finally, any effective campaign for change must recognise that reason has as little hold on key decision makers as it does on the average punter.

In a study that revolutionised the field of international relations, political scientist Graham Allison demonstrated that government decisions are not the result of considered choices made by rational actors but the result of consensus building by leaders trying to satisfy a range of political, personal and ideological agendas.

This implies that whatever the facts or rectitude of the case for change, government action on the climate issue will be characterised by incrementalism and compromise.

The sooner this is recognised, and strategy and tactics are geared to account for it – something that does not appear to have been done by some environmental groups, nor by the Australian Greens senators, with respect to the emissions trading scheme – the more likely advocates will be able to capitalise on the opportunities for change that do exist.

A failure of communication and tactics, not of understanding may be the cause of inaction on climate change. Until these problems are acknowledged and tackled, climate advocates, however well-meaning, may be part of the problem, not the solution.

Dr Leslie Cannold is an ethicist, author and researcher, and adjunct senior lecturer at Monash University.

Reprinted from The Age.

March 2, 2009

This 20-page report says that adult African Americans were arrested on drug charges at rates that were 2.8 to 5.5 times as high as those of white adults in every year from 1980 through 2007, the last year for which complete data were available. About one in three of the more than 25.4 million adult drug arrestees during that period was African American.

Overview

New national drug arrest data illuminate the persistence and extent of racial disparities in the “war on drugs” in the United States. According to Human Rights Watch’s analysis of arrest data obtained from the FBI:

1. In every year from 1980 to 2007, blacks were arrested nationwide on drug charges at rates relative to population that were 2.8 to 5.5 times higher than white arrest rates.[1]
2. State-by-state data from 2006 show that blacks were arrested for drug offenses at rates in individual states that were 2 to 11.3 times greater than the rate for whites.[2]

The data also shed light on the persistence and extent of arrests for drug possession rather than sales:

1. In every year between 1980 and 2007, arrests for drug possession have constituted 64 percent or more of all drug arrests. From 1999 through 2007, 80 percent or more of all drug arrests were for possession.[3]

The higher rates of black drug arrests do not reflect higher rates of black drug offending. Indeed, as detailed in our May 2008 report, Targeting Blacks: Drug Law Enforcement and Race in the United States, blacks and whites engage in drug offenses-possession and sales-at roughly comparable rates. But because black drug offenders are the principal targets in the “war on drugs,” the burden of drug arrests and incarceration falls disproportionately on black men and women, their families and neighborhoods. The human as well as social, economic and political toll is as incalculable as it is unjust.

Racial disparities in drug arrests reflect a history of complex political, criminal justice and socio-economic dynamics, each individually and cumulatively affected by racial concerns and tensions. Reducing the disparities is imperative, but should not be accomplished simply by increasing the rate of white drug arrests. A fresh and evidence-based rethinking of the drug war paradigm is needed. We urge local, state, and the federal governments to:

• restructure funding and resource allocation priorities to place more emphasis on substance abuse treatment and prevention outreach, and less on drug law enforcement;
• review and revise drug sentencing laws to increase the use of community-based sanctions for drug offenses and to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for them;
• conduct comprehensive analyses of racial disparities in all phases of drug law enforcement to devise ways to ensure the enforcement of drug laws does not disproportionately burden black communities;
• assess the extent to which considerations of race may influence police decision-making, including decisions regarding the neighborhoods in which police are deployed for drug law enforcement purposes and whom to arrest, particularly for low level offenses such as simple drug possession; and
• monitor patterns in pedestrian and vehicle stops and other police activities to determine if unwarranted racial disparities exist that suggest racial profiling or other race-based decision-making and to take appropriate action to eliminate racially disparate treatment.

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Purchase a printed copy of this report

New Haven, Conn.-Organizations in the United States that are at the highest risk of sustaining damage from climate change are not adapting enough to the dangers posed by rising temperatures, according to a Yale report.

“Despite a half century of climate change that has already significantly affected temperature and precipitation patterns and has already had widespread ecological and hydrological impacts, and despite a near certainty that the United States will experience at least as much climate change in the coming decades just as a result of current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, little adaptation has occurred,” says Robert Repetto, author of “The Climate Crisis and the Adaptation Myth” and a senior fellow of the United Nations Foundation.

Repetto says that private- and public-sector organizations face significant obstacles to adaptation because of uncertainties over the occurrence of climate change at the regional and local levels, over the future frequency of extreme weather events, and over the ecological, economic and other impacts of climate change.

In addition, organizations lack relevant data for planning and forecasting, and the data that are available are typically outdated and unrepresentative of future conditions. Other institutional barriers to adaptation are overcoming or revising codes, rules and regulations that impede change; the lack of clear directions and mandates to take action; political or ideological resistance to the need for responsiveness to climate change; the preoccupation with near-term challenges and priorities and the lingering perception that climate change is a concern only for sometime in the future; and the inertia created by a business-as-usual assumption that future conditions will be like those of the past.

“Those organizations in the public and private sectors that are most at risk, that are making long-term investments and commitments and that have the planning, forecasting and institutional capacity to adapt, have not yet done so,” says Repetto, who until recently was a professor in the practice of economics and sustainable development at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “There have been very few changes in forecasts, plans, investment decisions, budgets or staffing patterns in response to climate risks.”

The report cites:

• New York City’s 40-year-old building codes that require structures to withstand only 110 mph winds, when climate change is causing more intense hurricanes that could bring speeds of up to 135 mph, and its flood maps that are based on historical data and not on climate change modeling data. Increases in sea levels and surges associated with severe storms would likely inundate Kennedy Airport and lower Manhattan, including the subway entrances and tunnels into Manhattan.
• Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, where water supply is critical and climate change is not factored into state agencies’ current water management plans.
• A 2007 GAO report that land and resource managers for the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service have ignored a directive by the Interior Department to consider climate change in their management plans.
• Federal planning guidelines that states and municipalities must follow to receive funding for transportation investments that do not require consideration of climate change in the design and siting of highways and rail lines.
• Municipal public health agencies in Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia, among others, that have not factored climate change into plans for confronting public health risks, despite the belief that climate change will increase the incidence and severity of vector-borne diseases and respiratory illnesses.

“To say that the United States has the technological, economic and human capacity to adapt to climate change does not imply that the United States will adapt,” said Repetto. “Without national leadership and concerted efforts to remove these barriers and obstacles, adaptation to climate change is likely to continue to lag.”

###

The report, “The Climate Crisis and the Adaptation Myth,” is published by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and is available at www.environment.yale.edu/publication-series/climate_change/.

The researchers used the following analogy to make their point. Imagine taking a vacation to Cancun sometime in the future. If the vacation is six months away, the traveler is probably thinking about beaches, sunsets, and other abstract information. On the other hand, if the vacation begins the following week, the traveler is thinking about taxi cabs, boarding passes, and specific, concrete concerns.

In similar fashion, a voter facing a choice in the distant future is less interested in particular plans and policies than in broad, abstract themes. It is only as the election gets closer do voters start paying attention to details of the candidate’s positions on issues of importance to them. The study authors demonstrate this effect in a series of studies and further observe that it is relatively uninformed voters who are subject to this effect. That is, while informed voters are not affected by abstract or concrete information nor how distant the election is, political novices tend to be more persuaded by abstract messages when the choice is far in the future, and by concrete messages when the choice is in the near future.

The researchers observe that, while their experiments focused on political contexts, the underlying argument applies equally well to many consumption contexts such as deciding which college to attend, which automobile to purchase when one graduates from college, or where to live when one retires.

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Hakkyun Kim, Akshay R. Rao, Angela Y. Lee, “It’s Time to Vote: The Effect of Matching Message Orientation and Temporal Frame on Political Persuasion” Journal of Consumer Research: April 2009.

Reprinted from University of Chicago Press Journals.

In May 2005, FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism John Lewis told a Senate panel that ecoterrorism is “one of today’s most serious domestic terrorism threats.” Then the FBI’s James Jarboe estimated that two organizations (the Earth Liberation Front – ELF and Animal Liberation Front – ALF) committed over 600 criminal acts since 1996, causing over $43 million in damage. For his part, Lewis said both groups committed more than 1100 such acts since 1976, “conservatively” resulting in around $110 million in damages.

What’s going on, and is there anything to these charges? Coming from FBI sources makes them highly suspect, especially when there are two types of documented cases:

– people guilty of non-violent offenses called “terrorism” and given excessively harsh sentences; and most disturbing

– innocent people targeted, accused, convicted and sentenced to hard time for environmental activism or supporting animal rights; and that’s on top of hundreds of other political persecutions and many thousands of innocent people (or petty criminals) in US prisons.

This behavior isn’t new in America, but things heated up after 9/11 with the administration wasting no time getting going. That evening, George Bush addressed the nation and declared a “war against terrorism,” asked for world support, and began the government’s “emergency (preventive war strategy) response plans.” It was planned and ready before 9/11 as a “war of terrorism” to defile the law, wage aggressive wars, usurp unprecedented powers, destroy our civil liberties, and convince the public to sacrifice freedom for the security they never got. In addition, the October 2001 USA Patriot Act (written well before 9/11) created the federal crime of “domestic terrorism” that broadened the definition and applied it to US citizens as well as aliens.

When John Lewis addressed another Senate panel in May 2004, he stated that “the FBI divides the terrorist threat facing (the country) into two broad categories, international and domestic….and during the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the nature of the domestic terrorist threat.” For a while “right-wing extremism” (loosely defined as the militia movement) overtook left-wing terrorism (but in) the past several years….special interest extremism (from groups like) the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and related extremists, has emerged as a serious domestic terrorist threat.” That view is amplified on the FBI’s web site that states the Bureau “is part of a vast national and international campaign dedicated to defeating terrorism” with ecoterrorism a key part of it.

The FBI defined it in 2002 to mean: “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.”

Activists refer to a tactic called “monkeywrenching” from the 1985 Dave Foreman/Bill Haywood-edited book “Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching.” It describes it as:

– “nonviolent resistance to the destruction of natural diversity and wilderness (and) never directed against human beings or other forms of life;

– strategic….thoughtful (and) deliberate in order to succeed;

– individual or very small (group actions) of people who have known each other for years (and have) trust and a good working relationship;

– targeted (because) mindless, erratic vandalism is counterproductive as well as unethical;

– timely (and) not….when there is a nonviolent civil disobedience action;

– dispersed (to) hasten overall industrial retreat from wild areas;

– fun (even though it’s) serious and potentially dangerous;

– not revolutionary….to overthrow any social, political, or economic system;

– simple (with) elaborate commando operations generally avoided; and

– deliberate and ethical (by being) the most moral of all actions: protecting life, defending Earth.”

The Earth First Journal defines the practice as: “Ecotage (environmentally-motivated sabotage), ecodefense, billboard bandit(ry by sawing offensive ones down), road reclamation (to remediate environmental damage), tree spiking (with nails to discourage destructive logging), even fire.” These are unlawful sabotage acts “of industrial extraction and development equipment, as a means of striking at the Earth’s destroyers where they commit their crimes and hitting them where they feel it most – in their profit margins.” It goes “beyond civil disobedience. It is nonviolent, aimed only at inanimate objects. It is one of the last steps in defense of the wild….by an Earth defender when almost all other measures have failed.”

In May 2004, Republican George Nethercutt targeted them by introducing the Ecoterrorism Prevention Act of 2004, but it didn’t pass. If it had, it would have made a federal crime: “certain violent, threatening, obstructive, and destructive conduct that is intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with plant and animal enterprises, and for other purposes.”

Republicans tried again in July with the Terrorism Against Animal-Use Entities Prohibition Improvement Act that would have amended the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act and made it harsher. It also failed to pass, but defeat was only temporary.

On November 27, 2006, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) amended the 1992 act and became law with very harsh provisions. It’s language is broad and vague, but it criminalizes First Amendment activities that advocate for animal rights like peaceful protests, leafleting, undercover investigations, whistleblowing and boycotts.

The new law updates the earlier act with penalties far exceeding comparable offenses under other laws. It also goes much further. It allows expanded surveillance of animal rights organizations, including criminal wiretapping, and makes it easier for a court to find probable cause for the vague crime of economic damage or disruption than for one requiring hard evidence a person or group plans to commit these acts.

The bill exempts “lawful public, governmental or business reaction to the disclosure of information about an animal enterprise,” but that only applies to economic disruption claims, not damage, and makes it hard to distinguish between the two. It also:

– expands the kinds of facilities covered by adding ones that use or sell animals and animal products;

– covers any person, entity or organization connected to an animal enterprise;

– applies to any form of advocacy;

– criminalizes threatening conduct and protected speech as well as communication with anyone engaging in these practices;

– protects corporate animal abusers with a vested interest in silencing dissent; and

– targets any form of civil disobedience or protest activity and designates animal advocates as terrorists even when they cause no physical harm; in addition, the bill’s language is so broad and vague (by design), it’s hard to know the difference between legal and illegal behavior; it’s an act of green scare state terrorism that, in fact, can be used against anyone.

Green Scare – A Definition

Activists equate it to earlier Red Scare periods after WW I and II when the government used various schemes to incite fear, sanction witch hunt prosecutions, and win widespread public approval for them. The term may first have been used in 2002 and refers to legal and extralegal government actions against animal liberation and environmental activists. The Spirit of Freedom prisoner support network defines it as “tactics the government and (their enforcement agencies use) to attack the ELF/ALF (Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front) and specifically those who publicly support them.”

The term also refers to the 2005 arrests, indictments and convictions from the FBI’s Operation Backfire against alleged ELF/ALF activists. It charged them with damaging property, conspiracy, arson and using destructive devices.

The Operation was the FBI’s code name for its ten year domestic “war on terrorism” that’s, in fact, a war on dissent. It resulted in 17 Pacific Northwest arson indictments with evidence that was very suspect. It came from a heroin-addicted self-professed serial arsonist whose former girl friend mentioned him in a grand jury proceeding. On December 7, 2005, it culminated when federal and local law enforcement agents began the largest ever roundup of alleged environmental and animal liberation activists. Seven arrests were made in four states, others got grand jury subpoenas, and people seized were charged with various acts of destroying property as part of ELF and ALF efforts.

Those arrested faced potential unprecendented sentences for non-violent acts from which no one was harmed. In some cases, they could be mandatory 30 year periods and in others life if found guilty on all counts. That compares to a median sentence of five years for arson.

With that as a threat, all but four defendants testified against the others in return for leniency. The remaining four struck plea bargains to admit responsibility but incriminate no one else. At sentencing in June 2007, the presiding judge was harsh. He included Terrorism Enhancements (TE) that are used when the justice department decides a crime aimed to influence or coerce government policy. It means sentences may be longer, and the Bureau of Prisons gets greater latitude in assigning prisoners that may be to “supermax” facilities for the most violent offenders.

In this case, sentences ranged from three years, one month to 13 years with most defendants getting added TEs. In addition, on October 26, 2007, FBI informant and serial arsonist Jacob Ferguson pleaded guilty to one count of arson and an additional count of attempted arson. According to his plea bargain, he won’t be charged for his other offenses. Further, he’s required to make no restitution, his formal sentencing keeps being postponed, it may come up ahead, but prosecutors recommend he spend no time in prison, receive no fines, and be able to keep the $50,000 or more he was paid for cooperating.

That’s the state of things today where anything goes in the “war on terrorism” and publicizing arrests and convictions takes precedence over justice. Unless stopped, things will only get worse.

ELF and ALF – A Brief Description

On its web site, ELF describes itself as “an underground movement with no leadership, membership or official spokesperson” and uses its site “to inform and chronicle issues related to ELF.” It further states:

– “Any individuals who committed arson or any other illegal acts under the ELF name….choose to do so….and do so only driven by their personal conscience;

– These choices are not endorsed, encouraged, or approved of by this web site’s management, webmasters, affiliates, or other participants;

– The intention of this web site is journalistic in intent only to inform and chronicle issues related to ELF;

– The owners, management, webmasters, affiliates, or other participants of this website are not spokespersons, members, or affiliates of The Earth Liberation Front in any way; nor do the opinions of anyone acting in the name of The Earth Liberation Front or ELF, represent the opinions of” those affiliated with this site.

Others refer to the ELF as a collective of autonomous individuals or cells that use “economic sabotage and guerrilla war to stop the exploitation and destruction of the natural environment.” The organization was founded in Brighton, England in 1992, spread across Europe by 1994, and is now an international movement in over a dozen countries. The FBI designated ELF its top domestic terror threat in March 2001 and called the group “ecoterrorists.”

The ALF is an international animal liberation organization with roots in the 19th century and with no formal membership or leadership. Its web site defines “animal rights” as “the philosophy of allowing nonhuman animals to have the basic rights that all sentient beings desire; freedom to live a natural life, free from human exploitation, unnecessary pain and suffering, and premature death.” It believes animals aren’t property any more than humans are and asks if animal rights will become the “next great social justice movement.” It cites President of the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) David Weisbrot saying treating animals is increasingly becoming a social and legal issue as well as an important economic one.

Its members engage in direct action on behalf of animals, including removing them from laboratories and fur farms (they call liberation, not theft) and sabotaging animal testing and industry animal-based facilities. Its statements affirm it supports any acts that further animal liberation where reasonable precautions are taken not to endanger life. Its covert cells operate in dozens of countries clandestinely and independently of each other. In January 2005, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated ALF a domestic terrorist threat.

Examples of Witch Hunt Convictions

Many can be cited, but Jeff Luers’ case is typical. In June 2001, he was sentenced to 22 years, eight months for burning three SUVs to raise awareness of global warming and how these gas-guzzlers contribute to it. No one was hurt, $40,000 in damages resulted, and the vehicles were refurbished and subsequently sold. Jeff is a political prisoner, and his sentence exceeds that for murder, kidnapping and rape under Oregon law where he resides. He appealed in January 2002, the hearing was held in November 2005, and on February 14, 2007 the Appeals Court remanded his case to the Circuit Court for resentencing. The case was heard on February 28, 2008 after which his sentence was reduced to 10 years.

Josh Harper is another political prisoner who committed no crime. He’s an activist believer in animal liberation, preserving the wilderness, and participated in human freedom projects for over 10 years. In 1997, he co-created Breaking Free Video magazine and went on speaking tours in 1999. He also sabotaged a whale hunt, defied grand juries, and contributed to confrontational protest campaigns. It made him a target and got him indicted for violating the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA).

Evidence at his trial was mostly from two of his speeches in 2001 and 2002. He spoke about already committed political sabotage acts as well as European anti-vivisection campaigns he supported. He also ended one speech by demonstrating how to participate in a form of electronic civil disobedience called “black faxing” that involves sending multiple black paper sheets through an opponent’s fax machine. It got him arrested, charged and convicted.

He was one of six animal rights activists in the so-called SHAC 7 (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) case. Charges against one of the original 7 were dropped. SHAC is an international animal rights campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) – one of the world’s largest contract research organizations, UK based, and operating on three continents. It’s also Europe’s largest contract animal-testing laboratory and uses around 75,000 animals each year in its operations.

UK-based activists established SHAC in 1999 and successfully closed down two animal-testing operations in their country. It’s now a worldwide campaign, the first of its kind, and it operates in the UK, US, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy as well as many other countries. It calls its campaign “innovative” and states it doesn’t “encourage or incite illegal activity.”

On March 2, 2006, Harper and his co-defendants were charged and convicted of conspiracy to violate AETA (and several other charges) and got sentences of from four to six years. The case was an appalling miscarriage of justice for violating the defendants’ First Amendment rights that AETA repealed for these activists. The defendants weren’t charged with violent or threatening acts. Instead, the case was based on the notion that animal rights organizers are responsible for actions others take that the prosecution equated to a global conspiracy.

Briana Waters is another example of gross injustice. She’s an innocent woman charged and convicted. On March 30, 2006, she was arrested and accused of being a lookout in connection with an alleged 2001 arson at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture. Waters is a California resident, violin teacher and mother of a young child. She was indicted, then reindicted with other defendants on May 10 on charges that included using a destructive device that carries a mandatory 30 year sentence.

On December 26, 2007, her lawyers filed a motion accusing the Justice Department of concealing vital exculpatory information as well as producing a fraudulent FBI report. The agency is infamous for creating “evidence” out of whole cloth and getting manipulated informants to state it. Nonetheless, a hostile federal judge denied defense’s motion and went further as well. He ruled against allowing a defense expert to rebut government “evidence” that a delayed incendiary device was a bomb.

One of Waters’ attorneys expressed outrage over a common federal practice of “The government hand-picking (the) judge (and) manipulating court procedures. This is a classic case of a corrupt prosecution, and a judge who apparently chooses to look the other way.” It’s no surprise at a time two-thirds of all federal judges are from or affiliated with the extremist Federalist Society. It advocates rolling back civil liberties; ending New Deal social policies; opposing reproductive choice, government regulations, labor rights and environmental protections; and subverting justice in defense of privilege.

Waters was up against this when her trial began on February 11, 2008. She was further disadvantaged by the government’s case being based on two informants who struck a plea bargain by pleading guilty to conspiracy, arson and destructive devices in return for leniency. On March 6, Waters was convicted on two arson counts, but the jury deadlocked on the more serious charges of a destructive device and conspiracy. Despite prosecution claims, no devices were found nor was there evidence of conspiracy. That raises serious questions of the government’s falsifying evidence and lying to the jury about it. Again, no surprise under witch hunt justice with innocent people like Briana being harmed.

Her case also featured circumstantial evidence, including a folder containing radical pamphlets with a note on the cover from Waters to one of the informants. She testified that she didn’t write them or subscribe to their views. The prosecution claimed otherwise. Her defense also argued that Waters knew nothing about the materials, they were substituted for ones she put in the folder, and her fingerprints weren’t on the ones in it for proof.

Civil rights attorney Ben Rosenfeld said the “government’s case was primarily based on character assassination and guilt by association (and that) evidence of other people’s writings should never have been allowed to be used against her.” He also denounced former Attorney General Gonzales for proclaiming Waters guilty in the media after she was indicted. He harmed her chances at the outset and showed convictions count more than justice, especially when charges of terrorism are raised. Waters strongly defends her innocence and will likely appeal the verdict. Sentencing is on May 30.

A Look Ahead

Post-9/11, future prospects look grim with fear prevailing over reason, a bipartisan effort exploiting it, and convictions more important than justice. If friends of the earth and animal rights champions are targeted, so can anyone. Governments today won’t protect us and neither do courts that defer to their lawlessness. As a result, expect lots more innocent people hurt because those in power want unlimited amounts of it and won’t let anyone stop them from getting it. It means hard times ahead when the law won’t protect us, dissent is a crime, and the greater good is sacrificed to benefit the privileged.

What to do? Get active, organize, speak out, resist, and use the law for whatever justice is still under it. Things are very dire, change isn’t coming next year, and, more than ever, apathy isn’t an option. In America’s “war on terrorism,” we’re all potential targets.

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

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM – 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8806

© Copyright Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2008

WASHINGTON (April 23, 2008) – An investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency released today found that 889 of nearly 1,600 staff scientists reported that they experienced political interference in their work over the last five years. The study, by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), follows previous UCS investigations of the Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and climate scientists at seven federal agencies, which also found significant administration manipulation of federal science.

“Our investigation found an agency in crisis,” said Francesca Grifo, director of UCS’s Scientific Integrity Program. “Nearly 900 EPA scientists reported political interference in their scientific work. That’s 900 too many. Distorting science to accommodate a narrow political agenda threatens our environment, our health, and our democracy itself.”

The UCS report comes amidst a flurry of controversial activity swirling around the EPA. Congress is currently investigating administration interference in a new chemical toxicity review process as well as California’s request to regulate tailpipe emissions. And in early May, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to hold a hearing on political interference in the new EPA ground-level ozone pollution standard. 

Today’s UCS investigation included dozens of interviews with current and former EPA staff members, analysis of government documents, and a questionnaire sent to 5,419 EPA scientists by Iowa State University’s Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology. The questionnaire generated responses from 1,586 scientists, but not all of the respondents answered every question. (For the report, “Interference at EPA: Science and Politics at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” go to www.ucsusa.org/EPAscience.)

Among the UCS report’s top findings:

- 889 scientists (60 percent) said they had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the last five years.

- 394 scientists (31 percent) personally experienced frequent or occasional “statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientists’ findings.”

- 285 scientists (22 percent) said they frequently or occasionally personally experienced “selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome.”

- 224 scientists (17 percent) said they had been “directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document.”

- Of the 969 agency veterans with more than 10 years of EPA experience, 409 scientists (43 percent) said interference has occurred more often in the past five years than in the previous five-year period. Only 43 scientists (4 percent) said interference occurred less often.

- Hundreds of scientists reported being unable to openly express concerns about the EPA’s work without fear of retaliation; 492 (31 percent) felt they could not speak candidly within the agency and 382 (24 percent) felt they could not do so outside the agency.

UCS’s investigation revealed political interference is most pronounced in offices where scientists write regulations and at the National Center for Environmental Assessment, where scientists conduct risk assessments that could lead to strengthened regulations.

“The investigation shows researchers are generally continuing to do their work,” said Dr. Grifo. “But their scientific findings are tossed aside when it comes time to write regulations.” 

Nearly 100 scientists identified the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as the primary culprit. In scientists’ responses to an essay question, “How could the integrity of scientific work produced by the EPA best be improved?,” OMB took center stage:

- “Currently, OMB is allowed to force or make changes as they want, and rules are held hostage until this happens,” said a scientist at the agency’s Office of Air and Radiation. “OMB’s power needs to be checked as time after time they weaken rulemakings and policy decisions to favor industry.”

- “OMB and the White House have, in some cases, compromised the integrity of EPA rules and policies; their influence, largely hidden from the public and driven by industry lobbying, has decreased the stringency of proposed regulations for non-scientific, political reasons,” said a scientist from one of the agency’s regional offices. “Because the real reasons can’t be stated, the regulations contain a scientific rationale with little or no merit.”

- “They [OMB] … have inappropriately stopped agency work that has been in progress for years due to their lack of scientific understanding,” said a scientist at the agency’s Office of Research and Development.

The UCS investigation also revealed that EPA scientists cannot freely communicate their findings to the media, public or colleagues. Seven-hundred-eighty-three respondents (51 percent) said EPA policies do not let scientists speak freely to the news media about their findings. Scientists also shared anecdotes about being barred from presenting their research at conferences and their difficulties clearing research publication articles with EPA managers.

“Scientific integrity is the bedrock on which the federal science establishment must rest,” said Bill Hirzy, an EPA senior scientist and senior vice president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Chapter 280, the union that represents EPA scientists. “Too many EPA scientists have had to fight interference from political or private sector interests and fear retaliation for speaking out.”

Previous UCS investigations of other federal agencies show that the problem of political interference is not unique to the EPA. These investigations recently prompted a group of prominent scientists – organized by UCS – to call on the next president and Congress to strengthen protections for all federal scientists. The statement urges them to ensure that federal scientists have the freedom to publicly communicate their findings; publish their work; disclose misrepresentation, censorship or other abuses; and have their technical work evaluated by peers – all without fear of retribution. (For the statement, go to http://ucsusa.org/scientificfreedom.)

Click here to download a pdf of the report.

Reprinted from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Although science is rarely the only factor driving public policy, scientific input should always be weighed from an impartial perspective. Unfortunately, numerous independent investigations have documented the suppression, manipulation, and distortion of federal science before it enters the policy process. Political interference in science has indeed become pervasive.

Furthermore, recent changes in the structure of the federal government impair the ability of federal scientists to fulfill their responsibility to serve their agencies and the public interest.

Federal scientists find themselves under growing surveillance and control.  Administration officials have curtailed public access to scientific information, and subtle systemic changes have sidelined scientists and advisory committees that previously helped inform the policy-making process. In too many cases, these officials use tainted science to justify misguided policies.

The consequences of these practices are profound. Policy makers cannot make informed decisions without access to the best available scientific information. Even worse, the misuse of science threatens our nation’s ability to respond to increasingly complex public health, environmental, and security challenges. Such interference significantly decreases the effectiveness of federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency. It risks demoralizing the federal scientific workforce and raises the possibility of lasting harm to the federal scientific enterprise. And it makes our government less accountable to the citizens it is supposed to serve.

To restore scientific integrity to federal policy making, we need to open up the decisionmaking process to scrutiny. We need to protect the ability of federal scientists to fulfill their responsibilities without interference. To do so, Congress and the president must institutionalize the independence of the federal scientific community and its advice.

Chapter 1 of this report briefly explores the ways that the administration has directly misused science. Chapter 2 delves into the systemic changes that have made it more difficult for federal scientists to serve the public interest. Chapter 3 prescribes specific steps needed to bring scientific integrity and accountability back to federal decision making.

This report is intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive. Improving the way that science informs the decision-making process will require the persistent and energetic engagement of Congress, the executive branch, the scientific community, and the public.

For more information, download the executive summary or full report.

Reprinted from the Union of Concerned Scientists.