War–The Fiscal Stimulus of Last Resort

http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/war-the-fiscal-stimulus-of-last-resort
“War! Good God, ya’ll. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!”

So went the anti-Vietnam War protest song popularized by Edwin Starr in 1970 and revived by Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s.

The song echoed popular sentiment. The Vietnam War ended. Then the Cold War ended. Yet military spending remains the government’s number one expenditure. When veterans’ benefits and other past military costs are factored in, half the government’s budget now goes to the military/industrial complex.

After 9/11, the pop hit “War” was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel.

Protesters have been trying to stop the military juggernaut ever since the end of World War II, yet the war machine is more powerful and influential than ever. Why? The veiled powers pulling the strings no doubt have their own dark agenda, but why has our much-trumpeted system of political democracy not been able to stop them?

The answer may involve our individualistic, laissez-faire brand of capitalism, which forbids the government to compete with private business except in cases of “national emergency.” The problem is that private business needs the government to get money into people’s pockets and stimulate demand. The process has to start somewhere, and government has the tools to do it. But in our culture, any hint of “socialism” is anathema. The result has been a state of “national emergency” has had to be declared virtually all of the time, just to get the government’s money into the economy.

Other avenues being blocked, the productive civilian economy has been systematically sucked into the non-productive military sector, until war is now our number one export. War is where the money is and where the jobs are. The United States has been turned into a permanent war economy and military state.

War as Economic Stimulus

The notion that war is good for the economy goes back at least to World War II. Critics of Keynesian-style deficit spending insisted that it was war, not deficit spending, that got the U.S. out of the Great Depression.

But while war may have triggered the surge in productivity that followed, the reason war worked was that it opened the deficit floodgates. The war was a huge stimulus to economic growth, not because it was a cost-effective use of resources, but because nobody worries about deficits in wartime.

In peacetime, on the other hand, the government was not supposed to engage in competitive enterprise. As Nobel Prize winner Frederick Soddy observed:

The old extreme laissez-faire policy of individualistic economics jealously denied to the State the right of competing in any way with individuals in the ownership of productive enterprise, out of which monetary interest or profit can be made . . . .

In the 1930s, the government was allowed to invest in such domestic ventures as the Tennessee Valley Authority, but this was largely because private sector investors did not believe they could turn a sufficient profit on the projects themselves. The upshot was that the years between 1933 and 1937 proved to be the biggest cyclical boom in U.S. history. Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a 12 percent rate and nominal GDP grew at a 14 percent rate. But when the economy appeared to be back on its feet in 1937, Roosevelt was leaned on to cut back on public investment. The result was a surge in unemployment. The economic boom died and the economy slipped back into depression.

World War II reversed this cycle by re-opening the money spigots. “National security” trumped all, as Congress spent with reckless abandon to “preserve our way of life.” The all-out challenge of World War II allowed Congress to fund a flurry of industrial activity, as it ran up a tab on the national credit card that was 120% of GDP.

The government ran up the largest debt in its history. Yet the hyperinflation, currency devaluation, and economic collapse predicted by the deficit hawks did not occur. Rather, the machinery and infrastructure built during that booming period set the nation up to lead the world in productivity for the next half century. By the 1970s, the debt-to-GDP ratio had dropped from 120% to less than 40%, not because people sacrificed to pay back the debt, but because the economy was so productive that GDP rose to close the gap.

Stimulus Without War

World War II may have created jobs; but like all wars, it took a terrible toll. Economist John Maynard Keynes observed:

Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better. [Emphasis added.]

War was the economic stimulus of last resort when politicians were so confused in their understanding of economics that they would not allow the government to go into debt except for national emergencies. But Keynes said there are less destructive ways to get money into people’s pockets and stimulate the economy. Workers could be paid to dig ditches and fill them back up, and it would stimulate the economy. What a lagging economy needed was simply demand (available purchasing power). Demand would then stimulate businesses to produce more “supply”, creating more jobs and driving productivity. The key was that demand (money to spend) must come first.

The Chinese have put workers to work building massive malls and apartment buildings, many of which are standing empty for lack of customers and purchasers. It may be a wasteful use of resources, but it has succeeded in putting wages in workers’ pockets, giving them the purchasing power to spend on products and services, stimulating economic growth; and unlike wasteful war spending, the Chinese approach has not involved death and destruction.

A less costly alternative would be Milton Friedman’s hypothetical solution: simply drop money from helicopters. This has been linked to “quantitative easing” (QE), but QE as currently applied is not what Friedman described. The money has not been showered on the people and the local economy, putting money in people’s pockets, stimulating spending. It has been dropped into the reserve accounts of banks, where it has simply accumulated without reaching the productive economy. “Excess” reserves of $1.6 trillion are now sitting in reserve accounts at the Federal Reserve. A helicopter drop of the sort proposed by Friedman has not been tried.

A Better Solution

War, digging ditches, and dropping money from helicopters could all work to stimulate demand and increase purchasing power, but there are better alternatives. Today we have major unmet needs — infrastructure that is falling apart, overcrowded classrooms, energy systems waiting for development, research labs in need of funding. The most cost-effective solution today would be for the government to stimulate the economy by spending on work that actually improves the standard of living of the people.

This could be done while actually reducing the national debt. In a recent article, David Swanson cites a study by Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe, looking at the $60 billion lost by the Pentagon to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. They calculated that this money could have created 193,000 more jobs than its military use created, if diverted to domestic commercial purposes. Swanson goes on:

There are some other calculations in the same study . . . . If we had spent that $60 billion on clean energy, we would have created (directly or indirectly) 330,000 more jobs. If we’d spent it on healthcare, we’d have created 480,000 more jobs. And if we’d spent it on education, we’d have created 1.05 million more jobs. . . .

Let’s say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That’s 2.9 million each year. Here’s one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There’s an additional 400,000 jobs. Take another $100 billion and move it into clean energy. There’s another 550,000 jobs. And take another $62 billion and turn it into tax cuts, generating an additional 200,000 jobs. Now the military spending in the Department of Energy, the State Department, Homeland Security, and so forth have not been touched. And the Department of Defense has been cut back to about $388 billion, which is to say: more than it was getting 10 years ago when our country went collectively insane.

Labor and resources are sitting idle while the bogeyman of “deficits” deprives the population of the goods and services they could create. Diverting a portion of our massive war spending to peaceful use could add jobs, improve living standards, and add infrastructure, while reducing the national debt and balancing the government’s budget by increasing the tax base and government revenues.

Prepared for “The Military Industrial Complex at 50”, a conference in Charlottesville, VA, September 16-18, 2011.
_______
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://publicbankinginstitute.org/. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://webofdebt.com/ and http://ellenbrown.com/

After Wall Street II Oliver Stone should do JFK II

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/10/28/after-wall-street-ii-oliver-stone-should

After Wall Street II Oliver Stone should do JFK II
The last key witness has finally been found
October 28th, 2010
Roland Michel Tremblay

The last key witness that Oliver Stone mentioned in the film "JFK" (1991), the one who could have solved and proved the conspiracy surrounding JFK's assassination, has finally been found. Her name is Judyth Vary Baker and her 606 page testimony titled "Me & Lee, How I came to know, love and lose Lee Harvey Oswald" has just been published at Trine Day Press. Jim Marrs, the long-time investigator and author of the New York Times bestseller "Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy", upon which the "JFK" film was based, asked in the afterword of Baker's book how she can still be alive today. Good question.

It has not been easy. Baker decided to talk after 36 years of frightened silence, but after being confronted with death threats she had to leave the United States. She returned to the US twice, only to flee overseas due to ongoing stalking, harassment and several hospitalizations caused by what Marrs termed "freak accidents." In 2007 she was accepted as a political asylum seeker in Europe, the first ever non-combatant American woman to succeed in gaining asylum seeker status in the world. She is still struggling with character assassination over the Internet by people intent on destroying her as a credible witness, but her book is out now, and it changes everything. So much so that Oliver Stone could finally do a final and less static version of his film. Instead of telling us about what might have happened, he could now show us what really happened in 1963 in New Orleans and Dallas.

What happened is far more impressive and sinister than anyone could have imagined. Beyond the facts that the death of JFK opened the way to more wars, such as in Vietnam, ostensibly to fight communism while enriching the war industry, with the Mafia free of Bobby Kennedy's pesky presence countering corruption, we now know there is now a whole new angle to the story. And it is perhaps more important and worrying than even the assassination of a beloved President. Behind it all was the development of a biological weapon capable of killing anyone by injecting virulent cancer cells. Any such murder would, of course, look like a natural death.

This is what Lee Harvey Oswald, a US government agent, was working on with Judyth Vary Baker in the summer of 1963 in New Orleans, along with David Ferrie, Dr. Mary Sherman, and Dr. Alton Ochsner from the Ochsner Clinic, with the government and the Mafia waiting in the wings. That fact alone warranted that many witnesses had to be eliminated. If you check carefully, two of these witnesses died of a powerful cancer that spread quickly, without detection, that death ensued soon after its diagnosis -- the assassin of Oswald, Jack Ruby, who claimed to have been injected with cancer cells, and Clay Shaw, the central figure in the Garrison trial in Stone's movie, "JFK", who died in Ochsner's Clinic and was buried within 24 hours. Part of the whole story had been previously published in another significant book -- "Dr. Mary's Monkey" -- written by Edward T. Haslam. "Dr. Mary's Monkey" has become an underground bestseller. Haslam, the son of a prominent New Orleans doctor, wrote the foreword to Baker's book.

The extraordinary story of Judyth Vary Baker certainly came as a surprise to all main investigators, who had never heard of her before, although there are actually many oblique references to her in the extant body of evidence, as well as living witnesses who have verified that she was Oswald's close companion and lover in the months before the JFK assassination. Some still insist she made it all up, while others have concocted see-through lies to discredit her, preferring to protect their own theories and book sales. Strikingly, after nearly 50 years, new evidence and witnesses such as Baker are still being largely ignored in favor of well-financed TV specials and YouTube presentations. Foremost in these efforts is Vincent Bugliosi, who received a million dollars for his book, "Reclaiming History", which supports the Warren Commission's findings, and Gerald Posner (recently indicted for blatant plagiarism). Close at their heels is Gary Mack, whose robust six-figure salary at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas depends on defending the so-called "sniper's nest" theory despite overwhelming new evidence that Kennedy was assassinated by a bullet from the Grassy Knoll. To this day, witnesses such as Baker are still not safe or free to talk, just like most significant classified information about the matter has still been kept from the public.

"How many authors do not dare have book signings?" Baker asked. "For my own safety, I'm unable to do so." Baker has turned down countless requests for interviews: in the past seven years since the History Channel presented Baker's story in a documentary ("The Love Affair"), only Dr. James Fetzer has managed to get an interview with her. Now that Baker's book has been published, it will become evident to all that no one could possibly make this up, especially when it answers and brings together all the pieces of a puzzle that so many have tried, unsuccessfully, to solve over the years. Those who read the book will also understand why so many witnesses died mysteriously, one by one, following the double assassination of JFK and Oswald, and why the various official investigations conducted were charged to convince the public that a demented lone nut -- Lee Harvey Oswald -- was Kennedy's assassin. If Jim Marrs, Edward T. Haslam, Fetzer and the producers of "The Love Affair" were convinced that Judyth Vary Baker was telling the truth, it was because she has told her story with striking candor, with a large amount of evidence supporting her testimony.

Judyth Vary Baker had only one wish when she was a young and promising lab researcher hired by Dr. Ochsner -- to discover a cure for cancer -- and everyone believed then that she could do it. She and her fellow research associates were led to believe that the New Orleans Project -- developing a biological weapon designed to assassinate Fidel Castro -- could have prevented the death of JFK and World War Three. Then, after Kennedy was killed, she was told to keep her mouth shut and to never again work in cancer research. But the little girl from Bradenton Florida still has up-to-date knowledge of the research being done today. "I still believe I could cure certain kinds of soft tissue cancers inexpensively," she says, "within five years, using modified bacteriophages." Bacteriophages are simple viruses that literally 'eat' bacteria, Baker explained, but they could be "genetically altered" to seek out certain cancers and literally eat them alive. "Bacteriophage therapy could also be applied to fight bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis," she said. "Resistance to antibiotics is becoming a problem that bacteriophage research could very possibly solve."

But Baker fears that as long as so much cancer research is financed by private pharmaceutical companies, that expensive chemotherapy will continue to be the center of research efforts, since bacteriophage therapy would be much cheaper and therefore less profitable. "We could have cured cancer decades ago," Baker insists. Because of the "profit factor," Baker believes that "if we ever develop an inexpensive cure for cancer, it will be due to independent research at universities, or in government-funded labs. An inexpensive treatment, such as one involving the direct use of bacteriophage, will not come from Big Pharma."

Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald by Judyth Vary Baker (http://www.judythvarybaker.com/) and Dr. Mary's Monkey by Edward T. Haslam (http://www.doctormarysmonkey.com/) and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs, offer the big picture --and finally link together -- all the major players in the conspiracy surrounding JFK's assassination. It is time for us to appreciate what transpired then and draw parallels as to what is happening today. Oliver Stone should produce "JFK II" so we can be aware and move on to real and tangible change and a durable peace. Such was, after all, the main dream of John F. Kennedy.

Obama Misses the Afghan Exit Ramp

http://consortiumnews.com/2010/062410a.html
Obama Misses the Afghan Exit Ramp
By Ray McGovern
June 24, 2010

Is President Barack Obama so dense that he could not see why Gen. Stanley McChrystal might actually have wanted to be fired — and rescued from the current March of Folly in Afghanistan, a mess much of his own making?

McChrystal leaves behind a long trail of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. For example, there is no real security, at least during the night, in Marja, which McChrystal devoted enormous resources to conquer this spring.

Remember his boast that he would then bring to Marja a “government-in-box” and offer an object lesson regarding what was in store for those pesky Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second largest city?

But it’s now clear that there will be no offensive against Kandahar anytime soon. On its merits, that is surely a good thing, but it is a huge embarrassment for McChrystal and his former boss, the never nonplussed Gen. David Petraeus.

When McChrystal and his undisciplined senior aides let a Rolling Stone reporter know what they really thought of the “intimidated” Obama and most of his national security team, Obama and his advisers rose to the bait.

They let McChrystal fold his tent in the night and steal silently away from the disaster he leaves behind. White House advisers then came up with the idea of replacing McChrystal in Kabul with the straight-arrow Petraeus whose is known for running a tight command.

Since the announcement Wednesday, the Stanley-out/David-in move has been hailed by Official Washington as a political master stroke, but not for the right reasons.

The conventional wisdom holds that Petraeus is the military genius who can still prevail in Afghanistan, but the real cleverness of the choice is that it dumps in Petraeus’s lap a mess that he also helped create, along with McChrystal and Obama (not to mention, Bush, Cheney, et al).

Petraeus gets a mission that virtually everyone but Sens. John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham realizes is an impossible assignment. It also gets Petraeus out of the country and, the Obama folks hope, out of contention for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Instead of possibly running against what a mess Obama has made of Afghanistan, Petraeus has been put in charge of the mess.

Vietnamistan

Still, the White House maneuver is too clever by half — and is extremely dangerous. It also makes the prospects dimmer for Obama executing a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan beginning in July 2011, as some of the relative doves in his administration had hoped.

In replacing McChrystal with the popular Petraeus, who outnumbers Obama 100 to zero in the merit badges on his left breast, the President has given the sainted general the option of calling for more and more troops and firepower lest we “lose” in Vietnamistan — sorry, Afghanistan.

But where would the additional troops come from, and what would they be able to do that is not already being done?

For those old enough to remember a similar stage in the “counterinsurgency” operation in Vietnam, the ramrod image of Petraeus evokes shivers. He resembles much too closely the American commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland, an equally handsome gent decked out with all manner of ribbons and medals with which to dazzle Congress in a way that President Lyndon Johnson could not.

A lawsuit after the war demonstrated that Westmoreland deliberately misled Congress by insisting that there were only half as many Vietnamese Communists under arms as his intelligence analysts knew there were.

Westmoreland’s periodic appeals for more and more troops – as he pursued the light at the end of the tunnel – built U.S. forces up to 536,000.

Finally, in early 1968, President Johnson convened more sober and honest advisers who told him Vietnam was a fool’s errand. Johnson finally told Westmoreland “no,” but it was too late. Johnson wound up losing the presidency as well as the war, opening the door to Richard Nixon and all that followed.

In later mea culpas, Johnson’s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara bemoaned the fact that as many as three million Vietnamese were killed, as well as over 58,000 American troops. As the contemporary song went, “When will they ever learn?”

Rock and Hard Place

Obama’s main dilemma now is likely to be how to say “no” when, as seems inevitable, Westmoreland — sorry, Petraeus — makes requests for more “surges” of troops into Afghanistan.

Petraeus is likely to tell Obama he must have additional forces, or he will go the way of McChrystal and invite removal — and then possibly run for president in 2012. In that case, Obama’s political advisers would probably say send more troops from wherever they might be scrounged up.

Casualties would rise exponentially; there would never be enough troops; most of those NATO allies that have not already withdrawn their troops would do so. The remaining “coalition forces” would not “prevail” (whatever that means).

And by the end of 2011, the Teflon-as-well-as-merit-badge-clad Petraeus might well quit anyway and join McChrystal in blaming the carnage on the “clowns” around President Obama.

We may well end up with either a President Petraeus or another President Clinton in the person of Obama’s hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was one official praised by McChrystal’s wild-boy crew because she favored giving the general whatever troops he wanted.

A McChrystal aide is quoted as saying, “She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.’”

Is it possible that Obama can be blissfully unaware of the dangerous political kill zone into which he has maneuvered his presidency?

The tragedy is that all this is unnecessary. If President Obama could get beyond these ill-conceived short-term political considerations, he already has available some well-reasoned guidance as to how to extricate the United States from the Afghanistan morass.

He got solid advice last fall from retired Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, his ambassador in Kabul, who knows more about Afghanistan than Petraeus, McChrystal and special envoy Richard Holbrooke do, put together.

And that knowledge and experience shows through clearly in sensitive cables Eikenberry sent to Washington in early November 2009. It’s telling that the New York Times editorialists have suggested that Obama should include Eikenberry in a “wider housecleaning” of the administration’s Afghan brain trust.

The news columns of the Times, however, do deserve credit for having published the text of Eikenberry’s cables, posted online. To the credit of the Times’ source (reportedly a U.S. official), he/she was able to do a truly patriotic thing to ensure that those interested could learn about what Eikenberry really thought, especially his doubts about the effectiveness of a military escalation.

Clearly, the source saw what ethicists call a “supervening value” in making that unauthorized disclosure to the Times.

Nevertheless, last fall, President Obama apparently put his finger to the prevailing political winds of Washington and chose to go with McChrystal’s counterinsurgency “surge” rather than the advice from Eikenberry and from Vice President Joe Biden, who also opposed the escalation.

Obama sided with McChrystal, Petraeus and Clinton (as well as Defense Secretary Robert Gates), agreeing to triple the U.S. troop levels to about 100,000. In the months that have passed, the levels of American casualties have jumped but the prospects for victory (or some modicum of success) remain stuck in a deepening quagmire.

Now, with some indiscreet comments to Rolling Stone magazine, McChrystal has managed to get plucked from the swamp as if some “deus ex machina” derrick from a Greek tragedy had appeared magically behind stage and lifted the hero out of an impossible situation.

Obama now has turned to what might be called “Petraeus ex machina” to salvage his benighted strategy in Afghanistan, but this new device is unlikely to lift the larger military cause out of grave danger. Instead, many of the U.S. troops committed to this dubious plan seem doomed in what is becoming a real-life tragedy.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early Sixties and then as a CIA analyst for the next 27 years. He is now a member of the Standing Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

A Heartbeat and a Guitar

http://www.nationbooks.org/book/196/A%20Heartbeat%20and%20a%20Guitar

A Heartbeat and a Guitar
Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears
Antonino D'Ambrosio
October 2009 ISBN: 1568584075

Johnny Cash recorded Bitter Tears in 1964, four years before his live performance at Folsom Prison and six years before he recorded Man in Black. More importantly, Cash placed himself in the middle of the fervent social upheavals gripping the nation at the time–the civil rights movement was rising, the Vietnam War was escalating, the anti-nuclear weapons campaign was galvanizing and the free speech and women's movement starting to bloom. One year removed from his monumental hit Ring of Fire, Cash was facing censorship and an angry backlash from radio stations, DJs, and fans, for speaking out on behalf of Native people. Cash decided to fight back.

A Heartbeat and a Guitar tells of the collaboration of two distinct yet connected musicians–iconoclast Johnny Cash and little known folk artist Peter LaFarge–and the album they created, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. It also tells of the unique personal, political and cultural struggles that informed this album–especially the fight for Native people's rights–one that has influenced scores of musicians and activists, from Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan to American Indian Movement co-founder Dennis Banks and Native activist-artist John Trudell.

Weaving multiple narrative threads and bringing in the stories of the long forgotten Native war hero Ira Hayes (immortalized in the Iwo Jima flag-raising photo), legendary musicians and producers, courageous Native activists, polarizing political leaders and outspoken citizen-artists, D'Ambrosio's A Heartbeat and a Guitar tells a sweeping story of an untold moment in Cash's career. In this inimitable account–which includes 34 never before seen photos by photographs by Jim Marshall and Diana Davies–A Heartbeat and a Guitar strays out of the recording studio and into the presidential campaigns, government halls, Indian reservations, picket lines, bohemian cafes, university campuses, factory lines, civil rights marches, fish-ins and anti-war protests.

What readers are saying

"Antonino D'Ambrosio has really done his homework like no one ever before. I performed with Cash for 40 years and have read every book written about him yet D'Ambrosio astonishingly reveals another side of Cash framed around perhaps his most important work, Bitter Tears. A Heartbeat and a Guitar is a rare and extraordinary work, thanks to D'Ambrosio's exceptional and masterful storytelling. This book must be read, not just by Cash fans, but everyone who loves music and believes in its power and spirit. D'Ambrosio's work, like Cash himself, is highly original and a force to be reckoned with."
–Johnny Western, musician and longtime emcee of The Johnny Cash Show.

"This book is a truly fascinating journey, charting the historical and social context of a courageous musical statement by one of our greatest rebel voices."
–Jim Jarmusch, filmmaker

"[The book] is a rich history, not only of Johnny Cash's life, but of the Indian struggle for justice... full of fascinating character sketches of the great folk singers of the Sixties, and their part in the social movements of that exciting era. I believe D'Ambrosio has made an important contribution to the cultural history of our time."
–Howard Zinn

"Antonino D'Ambrosio is the voice of a new generation–passionate, intelligent and fierce–whose work educates and inspires. He now brings his unique voice to tell a unique story of Johnny Cash's recording of the protest record Bitter Tears. It's the album no one knows about but is perhaps Cash's greatest record–and Antonino proves it."
–Chuck D of Public Enemy

About the Authors

Antonino D'Ambrosio is a writer, filmmaker, photographer and musician. He is the founder and director of La Lutta New Media Collective, a media activism and documentary film production group based in New York City. His writing has appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, Monthly Review, Color Lines, New Labor Forum and other publications. His recent documentaries include Desaparecidos and Piccolo Colli: The People of Russell Street. D'Ambrosio is the author of Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Politics of Joe Strummer; the film version features original art and animation by Shepard Fairey and original music from a wide range of musicians including Antibalas, Saul Williams, Chuck D and Thievery Corporation. His most recent short film is No Free Lunch, starring comedian Lewis Black.

Ventura Delivers Some 9/11 Truth On Larry King Live

http://www.prisonplanet.com/ventura-delivers-some-911-truth-on-larry-king-live.html

Ventura Delivers Some 9/11 Truth On Larry King Live
“Why is it off limits to question and ask questions?”
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009

Former Governor of Minnesota, ex-Navy SEAL and retired pro-wrestler Jesse Ventura raised some important unanswered questions regarding the 9/11 attacks in an interview with Larry King on CNN last night.

Ventura spoke about and gave a sneak peak of his new Tru TV show, Conspiracy Theory, set to air Wednesday night.

Footage from the 9/11 based episode showed Ventura attempting to gain access to the infamous hanger 17 at Kennedy International Airport where debris from the World Trade Center is kept away from public scrutiny.

“The 9/11 conspiracy is simply that the government hasn’t been truthful with us.” Ventura stated.

“I mean, Larry, a couple weeks ago, the head of the 9/11 Commission legal, I believe former attorney general Farmer from New Jersey, came out publicly and stated unequivocally that at some point the government decided that the American citizens would not hear the truth about 9/11. I find that very disturbing.” he continued.

“I find it very difficult that those buildings could fall at the speed of gravity without being assisted in some way. And I used to do demolition for a living. And how could those buildings fall as fast as I used to freefall out of an airplane?”

“If you took a billiard ball and dropped it the height of the twin towers and you just merely stopped it and started it every floor in freefall, it would take over a minute and a half to reach the ground. The buildings were down in ten seconds.”

“So you think there was something on the inside.” King replied.

“Here is the big point I make on 9/11,” Ventura asserted.

“Why is it off limits to talk about it? Why is it off limits to question and ask questions? You know when I went through Navy SEAL training I was taught in demolition that there is no dumb question, that if you don’t understand it then it is not dumb. That’s how I have lived my life and I have a lot of questions that the government refuses to answer.”

King also asked Ventura his opinion on the troop escalation in Afghanistan:

“It angers me because it reminds me a great deal of Vietnam.” Ventura answered.

“I mean, the Russians couldn’t beat them, the English couldn’t beat them over there. You are not going to get a military solution in my opinion in Afghanistan. It’s impossible, yet we’re just like in Vietnam, are we propping up a phony government, like we did in Vietnam?”

“Remember, the United States blocked free elections in Vietnam. Had there been elections in Vietnam, Ho Chi Min would have won in a landslide. Well is this the same thing going on?”

“I would pull out of Afghanistan and I would pull out of Iraq and I would bring our boys home. It is our job to protect their safety, and not be sending them off to wars. What are we accomplishing there? I look at it from a personal point of view. I don’t see how these two wars have helped Jesse Ventura or the USA one bit, other than to drain our economy.” Ventura fumed.

How McNamara Lost World War II

How McNamara Lost World War II
by Greg Palast

It's been a good week. Robert McNamara's dead and my book, Armed Madhouse, was released in translation in Vietnam.

I don't blame McNamara for losing the war in Vietnam. After all, the good guys won. I do, however, blame him for losing World War II.

In 1995, in Chicago, veterans of Silver Post No. 282 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their victory over Japan, marching around a catering hall wearing their old service caps, pins, ribbons and medals. My father sat at his table, silent. He did not wear his medals.

He had given them to me thirty years earlier. I can figure it exactly: March 8, 1965. That day, like every other, we walked to the newsstand near the dime store to get the LA Times. He was a Times man. Never read the Examiner.

He looked at the headline: U.S. Marines had landed on the beach at Danang, Vietnam.

Vietnamese gun boats had attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Times said so. President Johnson said so. His Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said so.

But on the Oval Office tapes, Johnson said, "Hell, those damn stupid [US] sailors were just shooting at flying fish." McNamara corrected him later. They were shooting at their own "sonar shadow." But that, of course, wouldn't be mentioned in the Times.

My dad didn't need LBJ's tape to know: they lied.

As a kid, I was fascinated by my dad's medals. One, embossed with an eagle and soldiers under a palm tree, said "Asiatic Pacific Campaign." It had three bronze stars and an arrowhead.

My father always found flag-wavers a bit suspect. But he was a patriot, nurturing this deep and intelligent patriotism. To him, America stood for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms.

My father's army had liberated Hitler's concentration camps and later protected Martin Luther King's marchers on the road to Birmingham. His America put its strong arm around the world's shoulder as protector. On the back of the medal, it read "Freedom from Want and Fear."

His victory over Japan was a victory of principles over imperial power, of freedom over tyranny, of right over Japan's raw military might. A song he taught me from the early days of the war, when Japan had the guns and we had only ideals, went,

We have no bombers to attack with . . .
But Eagles, American Eagles,
fight for the rights we adore!

"That's it," he said that day in 1965, and folded the newspaper.

The politicians had ordered his army, with its fierce postwar industrial killing machines, to set upon Asia's poor. Too well read in history and too experienced in battle, he knew what was coming. He could see right then what it would take other Americans ten years of that war in Vietnam to see: American bombers dropping napalm on straw huts, burning the same villages Hirohito's invaders had burned twenty years earlier.

Johnson and McNamara had taken away his victory over Japan.

They stole his victory over tyranny. When we returned home, he dropped his medals into my twelve-year-old hands to play with and to lose among my toys.

A few years ago, my wife Linda and I went to Vietnam to help out rural credit unions lending a few dollars to farmers so they could buy pigs and chickens.

On March 8, 1995, while in Danang, I walked up a long stone stairway from the beach to a shrine where Vietnamese honor their parents and ancestors.

Halfway up, a man about my age had stopped to rest, exhausted from his difficult, hot climb on one leg and crutches. I sat next to him, but he turned his head away, ashamed of his ragged clothes, parts of an old, dirty uniform.

The two of us watched the fishermen at work on the boats below. I put one of my father's medals down next to him. I don't know what he thought I was doing. I don't know myself.

In '45, on the battleship Missouri, Douglas MacArthur accepted the surrender of Imperial Japan. I never thought much of General MacArthur, but he said something that stuck with me. "It is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone benefits the sacred purposes we are about to serve."

Excerpted from "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (Penguin 2003).
*****
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.

Palast has just released a new film on DVD, 'Palast Investigates: From 8-Mile to the Amazon, on the trail of the financial marauders,' a collection of his latest reports for BBC Television's Newsnight and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

Subscribe to Palast's investigative reports at GregPalast.com.

World For Press Freedom

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/united-states-ranked-36th_n_136788.html

World For Press Freedom
Danny Shea
October 22, 2008

The United States is ranked 36th in the world in terms of press freedom, up from 48th last year, according to a report released Wednesday by Reporters Sans Frontieres.

The US is tied with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan in the 36th spot. Iceland, Luxembourg, and Norway are tied for first. Iran, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea are all featured among the ten lowest-ranked countries.

According to the survey, the index "measures the state of press freedom in the world. It reflects the degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom."

The ranking examines "every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment). And it includes the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these press freedom violations."

Self-censorship, financial pressure, the legal framework of the media, and the level of independence of the public media are also taken into account.

The report explains the United States' rise from 48th to 36th:

The release of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj after six years in the Guantanamo Bay military base contributed to this improvement. Although the absence of a federal "shield law" means the confidentiality of sources is still threatened by federal courts, the number of journalists being subpoenaed or forced to reveal their sources has declined in recent months and none has been sent to prison. But the August 2007 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey in Oakland, California, is still unpunished a year later. The way the investigation into his murder has become enmeshed in local conflicts of interest and the lack of federal judicial intervention also help to explain why the United States did not get a higher ranking. Account was also taken of the many arrests of journalists during the Democratic and Republican conventions.

WAR MADE EASY

WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
Disinfo.com

In the critically-acclaimed and highly compelling film, WAR MADE EASY, a disturbing 50-year pattern of government deception is uncovered. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, and based on the book by nationally-renowned media columnist Norman Solomon, this documentary is a scathing indictment of five decades of U.S. media coverage of American-led military interventions, and the pro-war spoon-feeding by both journalists and politicans to the American public. Marking the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, this film hailed by critics — called “a superb form of visual investigation” by noted author Howard Zinn — is more timely than ever for its release on DVD from The Disinformation Company.

How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death

Giving special attention to parallels between Vietnam and Iraq, WAR MADE EASY sets government spin and media collusion from the present, alongside virtually identical patterns from the past, guided by Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis. Rare footage of political leaders and journalists from the past includes Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer. According to Solomon, whose work has been praised by The Los Angeles Times as “brutally persuasive,” the positive attention the film has received may indicate a new willingness to counter years of pro-war media spin and government deception. “These deep patterns of ongoing ‘perception management’ must be demystified and decoded if we're going to move beyond the horrors of perpetual war,” he said. “The way War Made Easy is being embraced could be an important step in that direction.”

An Official Selection of 2007’s International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and the 2007 Montreal and Vancouver International Film Festivals, WAR MADE EASY, directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp, is an invaluable introduction to war propaganda and public relations that transcends partisan politics, and raises serious questions about the role of journalism and political communication in our society.

Available for interview: Norman Solomon

Solomon is a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics, as well as the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts. He has been writing the weekly “Media Beat” column since 1992. The book on which the film was based, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, was published in 2005 and The Los Angeles Times called it “a must-read for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee, or to arm themselves for the debates about Iraq that are still to come.” His latest book is Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State (October 2007).

About The Disinformation Company

The Disinformation Company Ltd is active in documentary production, book publishing and home entertainment. It is most widely recognized for its publishing and distribution efforts on subjects not usually covered by the traditional media. Recent DVD exclusives from The Disinformation Company include the best-selling Robert Greenwald documentaries Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, and Unconstitutional: The War on our Civil Liberties, as well as Robert Baer’s The Cult of the Suicide Bomber, and Greg Palast’s Bush Family Fortunes.

Jack Kirby, Conspiracy Theorist

When Steamshovel Press editor Kenn Thomas speaks on “JFK to UFO” at RetroCon, his prefatory remarks will concern “Jack Kirby, Conspiracy Theorist”. Thomas looks at the famous comic book artist’s interest in parapolitics as well as the possibilities that Kirby had back channel sources within the world of covert intelligence. Richard Hoagland speculated that the secret space program gave Kirby information leading to the artist’s 1958 comic book story, “The Face On Mars”--an anomaly that did not become part of the conspiracy lexicon until the Viking probe’s Cydonia photographs of 1976. Thomas examines the history of this as well as Kirby’s prescient forecasts of American involvement in World War II and Vietnam; the use of conspiracy themes in his 1970s comics; and his documented involvement with a CIA rescue operation during the 1980 Iranian crisis. How does central intelligence shape our view of conspiracies in the popular culture? Find out at RetroCon, at the Integratron in Landers, CA, April 26 and 27.

“Not your typical UFO convention.”

Retroufo.com
Steamshovelpress.com






Ruby shoots Oswald; as envisioned by Jack Kirby; and as envisioned by Chauncey Holt, suspected mystery tramp at the grassy knoll.

The Summer of Love Breeds a Season of Hate

The Summer of Love Breeds a Season of Hate:
The Effects of the Manson Murders on Public Perceptions of the Hippie Lifestyle
by Curt Rowlett

At the time of this writing, interesting recent press coverage hearkens back to two of 1969s most notorious events.

The first story concerns the new search for possible Manson family murder victims long rumored to have been buried in the desert near Manson’s old hideout at Barker Ranch in California’s Death Valley. This theory of unknown murder victims stems from a statement attributed to Manson family member Susan Atkins, who allegedly told a fellow inmate she was incarcerated with that there were "three people out in the desert that they done in," referring to other possible victims during the Manson family’s spree of killings during the summer of 1969. As reported by the press, a team of forensic scientists have traveled recently to Barker Ranch and used cadaver dogs, ground penetrating radar and other equipment in an attempt to locate these possible victims. According to the report, the scientists located “three large areas of interest.”

The story second concerns a BBC News report that details the revelation from the FBI’s own files that the Hell’s Angels may have actually tried to assassinate Mick Jagger at his rented home in Long Island, New York in retaliation for Jagger’s comments following the disastrous concert at Altamont in late 1969. The murder attempt supposedly failed after the boat carrying the would-be assassins foundered during a storm, almost drowning them.

That these two stories continue to resonate in modern times in not such a surprise. The article below discusses the detrimental effects that the Manson murders, the ill-fated concert at Altamont, and numerous other crimes that the press of the day dubbed “hippie murders,” had on the hippie image.

--Curt Rowlett

Note: Curt Rowlett is a researcher and writer with a penchant for the mystical, mysterious, and macabre.He is also: a serious student of the paranormal and unexplained, a former merchant marine who has traveled all over the world, an ex-rock musician, and an old-fashioned, southern gentleman. His work has appeared in the books Popular Paranoia, Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy, and the magazines Fortean Times, Paranoia Magazine, Steamshovel Press and Strange Magazine. Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy is available at Lulu.com:

http://my.lulu.com/content/156897

And at Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Labyrinth13-Tales-Occult-Crime-Conspiracy/dp/1411660838

Curt’s website can be reached at:

http://labyrinth13.com

“You play the game of money. As long as you can sell a newspaper, some sensationalism, and you can laugh at someone and joke at someone and look down at someone, you know. You just sell those newspapers for public opinion, just like you are all hung on public opinion, and none of you have any idea what you are doing. You are just doing what you are doing for the money, for a little bit of attention from someone.”
Statement made by Charles Manson, while testifying at the Tate-LaBianca murder trial
§
“This will be remembered as the first of the acid murders . . . we’re on the brink of a whole new concept of violence . . . perpetrated against society by people who have reached a different plateau of reality through LSD.”
Statement made by Manson family attorney Paul Fitzgerald, while discussing the Tate-LaBianca murders with the press
§
“Acid is groovy, kill the pigs.”
Words allegedly chanted by hippie thrill killers during the 1970 bludgeoning and stabbing murders of the Jeffrey MacDonald family
§
In much the same way as the “satanic panic” hit in the 1980’s, a wave of “hippie cult hysteria” flourished in the wake of the 1969 Manson murders. Subsequently, public perceptions of the hippies as a non-violent, peace-loving subculture began to shift dramatically.

Many hippies who were involved in the original “counterculture” during that time period had stories to tell about negative fallout from a public who had begun to associate the hippie lifestyle with a series of horrifyingly violent, drug-induced crimes that occurred across America toward the end of the 1960’s. As a result, the Manson murders, being only the first to be so publicized, later became linked to a greater cultural fear aided by numerous shocking and widely reported similar crimes. (Along with the Manson case, there were many other grisly and highly publicized murders and other crimes that had either been committed by or linked in the public mind to “hippie” elements or to so-called “drug crazed cultists” living in communal settings).

These events, played for full sensational effect in the media, would occur within such short time frames from each other that for awhile, the public was literally bombarded with a shocking portrait of the hippie community, one that shifted from the old view of hippies as the epitome of passive gentleness into a new, frighteningly savage image.

The fallout was swift and all-encompassing. And in much the same vein, this media-constructed image of the drug-crazed, murderous hippie was no different than the way veterans returning from the Vietnam War would also be stereotyped in the mid-1970’s, both by the press and Hollywood. That exploitation included fostering the image of Vietnam vets as war-traumatized, unstable individuals, likely to snap and go on a violent rampage at any given moment. (I can recall only too well how many television programs and B-movies of that era exploited not only the image of Vietnam vets, but also by catering to public fears about such things as roving bands of “psychopathic” biker gangs, angry black power “militants” with guns, and of course, exploitation films about sex-crazed, blood-thirsty hippies living in spaced-out drug communes)….

The rest of this article is available at steamshovelpress.com.

Appeals court rejects Agent Orange suits

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/02/22/appeals_court_rejects_agent_orange_suits/3246/

Appeals court rejects Agent Orange suits

NEW YORK, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- A U.S. appeals court has upheld the dismissal of lawsuits by veterans, their families and Vietnamese nationals over the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York issued three opinions affirming lower court ruling that dismissed 16 civil actions against Dow Chemical Co., Monsanto Co. and other chemical makers.

The three-judge panel said makers of herbicides that comprised Agent Orange were protected by the "military contractor defense," which shields independent contractors from liability when fulfilling government procurement contracts.

In one of the cases the court rejected claims by the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin that the use of Agent Orange was a violation of international law.

The court said the use of Agent Orange was lawful because the herbicide was not used as a weapon against people, but rather was used to clear vegetation to protect U.S. troops from ambush.

Puffing Up John McCain, POW

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20080205

02/05/2008
Puffing Up John McCain, POW

MOBILE, ALABAMA--"A proven leader, and a man of integrity," the New York Post called John McCain in its editorial endorsement. "A naval aviator shot down over North Vietnam and held as a POW, McCain knew that freedom was his for the taking. All he had to do was denounce his country. He refused--and, as a consequence, suffered years of unrelenting torture."

This standard summary of McCain's five and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton, repeated in thousands of media accounts during his 2000 campaign and again this election year, is the founding myth of his political career. The tale of John McCain, War Hero prompts a lot of people turned off by his politics--liberals and traditional conservatives alike--to support him. Who cares that he "doesn't really understand economics"? He's got a great story to tell.

Scratch the surface of McCain's captivity narrative, however, and a funny thing happens: his heroism blows away like the rust from a vintage POW bracelet.

In the fall of 1967 McCain was flying bombing runs over North Vietnam from the U.S.S. Oriskany, an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. On October 26, the 31-year-old pilot was part of a 20-plane squadron assigned to destroy infrastructure in the North Vietnamese capital. He flew his A-4 Skyhawk over downtown Hanoi toward his target, a power plant. As he pulled up after releasing his bombs, his fighter jet was hit by a surface-to-air missile. A wing came off. McCain's plane plunged into Truc Bach Lake.

Mai Van On, a 50-year-old resident of Hanoi, watch the crash and left the safety of his air-raid shelter to rescue him. Other Vietnamese tried to stop him. "Why do you want to go out and rescue our enemy?" they yelled. Ignoring his countrymen, On grabbed a pole and swam to the spot where McCain's plane had gone down in 16 feet of water. McCain had managed to free himself from the wrecked plane but was stuck underwater, ensnared by his parachute. On used his pole to untangle the ropes and pull the semi-conscious pilot to the surface. McCain was in bad shape, having broken his arm and a leg in several places.

McCain is lucky the locals didn't finish him off. U.S. bombs had killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, many in Hanoi. Ultimately between one and two million innocents would be shredded, impaled, blown to bits and dissolved by American bombs. Now that one of their tormentors had fallen into their hands, they had a rare chance to get even. "About 40 people were standing there," On later recalled. "They were about to rush him with their fists and stones. I asked them not to kill him. He was beaten for a while before I could stop them." He was turned over to local policemen, who transferred him to the military.

What if one of the hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center had somehow crash-landed in the Hudson River? How long would he have lasted? Would anyone have risked his life to rescue him?

An impolite question: If a war is immoral, can those who fight in it--even those who demonstrate courage--be heroes? If the answer is yes, was Reagan wrong to honor the SS buried at Bitburg? No less than Iraq, Vietnam was an undeclared, illegal war of aggression that did nothing to keep America safe. Tens of millions of Americans felt that way. Millions marched against the war; tens of thousands of young men fled the country to avoid the draft. McCain, on the other hand, volunteered.

McCain knew that what he was doing was wrong. Three months before he fell into that Hanoi lake, he barely survived when his fellow sailors accidentally fired a missile at his plane while it was getting ready to take off from his ship. The blast set off bombs and ordnance across the deck of the aircraft carrier. The conflagration, which took 24 hours to bring under control, killed 132 sailors. A few days later, a shaken McCain told a New York Times reporter in Saigon: "Now that I've seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam."

Yet he did.

"I am a war criminal," McCain said on "60 Minutes" in 1997. "I bombed innocent women and children." Although it came too late to save the Vietnamese he'd killed 30 years earlier, it was a brave statement. Nevertheless, he smiles agreeably as he hears himself described as a "war hero" as he arrives at rallies in a bus marked "No Surrender."

McCain's tragic flaw: He knows the right thing. He often sets out to do the right thing. But he doesn't follow through. We saw McCain's weak character in 2000, when the Bush campaign defeated him in the crucial South Carolina primary by smearing his family. Placing his presidential ambitions first, he swallowed his pride, set aside his honor, and campaigned for Bush against Al Gore. It came up again in 2005, when McCain used his POW experience as a POW to convince Congress to pass, and Bush to sign, a law outlawing torture of detainees at Guantánamo and other camps. But when Bush issued one of his infamous "signing statements" giving himself the right to continue torturing--in effect, negating McCain's law--he remained silent, sucking up to Bush again.

McCain's North Vietnamese captors demanded that he confess to war crimes. "Every two hours," according to a 2007 profile in the Arizona Republic, "one guard would hold McCain while two others beat him. They kept it up for four days...His right leg, injured when he was shot down, was horribly swollen. A guard yanked him to his feet and threw him down. His left arm smashed against a bucket and broke again."

McCain later recalled that he was at the point of suicide. But he was no Jean Moulin, the French Resistance leader who refused to talk under torture, and killed himself. According to "The Nightingale's Song," a book by Robert Timberg, "[McCain] looked at the louvered cell window high above his head, then at the small stool in the room." He took off his dark blue prison shirt, rolled it like a rope, draped one end over his shoulder near his neck, began feeding the other end through the louvers." He was too slow. A guard entered and pulled him away from the window.

I've never been tortured. I have no idea what I'd do. Of course, I'd like to think that I could resist or at least commit suicide before giving up information. Odds are, however, that I'd crack. Most people do. And so did McCain. "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate," McCain wrote in his confession. "I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."

It wasn't the first time McCain broke under pressure. After his capture, wrote the Republic, "He was placed in a cell and told he would not receive any medical treatment until he gave military information. McCain refused and was beaten unconscious. On the fourth day, two guards entered McCain's cell. One pulled back the blanket to reveal McCain's injured knee. 'It was about the size, shape and color of a football,' McCain recalled. Fearful of blood poisoning that would lead to death, McCain told his captors he would talk if they took him to a hospital."

McCain has always been truthful about his behavior as a POW, but he has been more than willing to allow others to lie on his behalf. "A proven leader, and a man of integrity," The New York Post says, and he's happy to take it. "All he had to do was denounce his country. He refused..." Not really. He did denounce his country. But he didn't demand a retraction.

It's the old tragic flaw: McCain knows what he ought to do. He starts to do the right thing. But John McCain is a weak man who puts his career goals first.

(Ted Rall is the author of the book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)

Kerry Vows to Disprove Swift Boat Claims

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071116/D8SUVVKG1.html

Kerry Vows to Disprove Swift Boat Claims
Nov 16, 2007
By GLEN JOHNSON

BOSTON (AP) - Sen. John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential campaign was torpedoed by critics of his Vietnam War record, said Friday he has personally accepted a Texas oilman's offer to pay $1 million to anyone who can disprove even a single charge of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

In a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the Massachusetts Democrat wrote: "While I am prepared to show they lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false. I am prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt."

Kerry, a Navy veteran and former prosecutor, said he was willing to present his case directly to Pickens, who provided $3 million to bankroll the group during Kerry's race against President Bush.

Kerry said he would donate any proceeds to the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

The senator said Pickens issued the challenge Nov. 6 in Washington, while serving as chairman of a 40th anniversary gala for American Spectator magazine.

In the letter, Kerry offered to travel to Dallas to meet with Pickens in a public forum or to invite him to come to Massachusetts. He suggested the two could visit the Paralyzed Veterans of America in Norwood to see firsthand how Pickens' money could be used to help veterans. A copy of the letter was provided to The Associated Press.

Pickens spokesman Jay Rosser asked to review the letter before commenting.

First in the book "Unfit for Command," and then in a series of television commercials, Kerry's critics challenged the circumstances for his military awards, accused him of doctoring reports and argued he never traveled into Cambodia as claimed.

While fellow veterans and reporters disproved many of the group's claims at the time, Kerry refused to air ads responding to the criticism. His own response was muted for fear of legitimizing his critics' attacks. The senator conceded after losing to Bush that his lackluster response likely cost him the election.

Ever since, Kerry has worked to lay the criticisms to rest.

In May 2005, he began allowing reporters access to his full Navy personnel and medical records - something he refused to do during the campaign.

Those records mostly duplicated documents Kerry released during the 2004 campaign. In addition, they included numerous commendations from commanders who criticized Kerry's service during the presidential race.

That disclosure renewed questions about why Kerry did not respond more forcefully with control over the White House at stake.

Kerry decided against launching a second bid for president, but vowed to defend his record and prevent other candidates from being "Swift-boated."

In his letter to Pickens, the senator challenged the billionaire's honor.

`"I trust that you are a man of your word, having made a very public challenge at a major Washington dinner, and look forward to taking you up on this challenge," Kerry wrote.

Republicans vs. Supporting Our Troops

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1420

Waterboarding Republicans vs. Supporting Our Troops
11/06/2007
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Stephen Crockett

You cannot honestly say you are supporting American soldiers if you support the use of torture techniques such as waterboarding. By any objective definition, waterboarding is torture. The technique is a type of simulated drowning of a prisoner who has their limbs bound.

The use of simulated drowning is not new. The Nazis used it in World War II. The Iranian secret police used it under the Shah. It was used in the Vietnam War. Dictators in South America have used this kind of torture. It causes severe psychological damage in most cases and has caused deaths. The Bush Administration claims that it is not torture but the claim is false.

The Bush Republicans defending the use of waterboarding are being dishonest with the American people. Torture usually produces very poor quality information. People will say anything to stop torture. Prisoners will confess to crimes they did not commit. They will implicate innocent people. They will invent fictional plots, fictional conspiracies, and fictional dangers. In military and national security terms, torture is not effective. Morally, it is simply wrong.

Torture between international combatants has been outlawed by international law and treaties. Use of torture makes the user a war criminal. The United States has long supported this position to prevent American soldiers from being tortured. American government policies, under Bush, concerning the use of torture put American soldiers at grave risk. We will have great difficulty prosecuting enemies who torture our soldiers if we engage in torture ourselves.

For those Republicans (or Democrats) who defend waterboarding as something less than torture, whenever a Bush Administration official is called before the House or Senate to testify, they should be waterboarded the entire time they are testifying. The technique, according to the Bush Republicans, elicits honest answers and does not amount to torture. According to these Bush Republicans, waterboarding does not cause any lasting damage.

The Bush Republicans are not correct in their position about waterboarding. However, if the Bush Republicans are sincere in their stated beliefs, we should give them an opportunity to prove it. Cabinet officers, White House staffers, Republican Senators, Bush, Cheney, Rove, Bush appointees such as Mukasey and other Bush Administration personnel should all be given personal opportunities to prove that waterboarding is not torture and is effective in providing honest answers to questions.

It is a much better idea to waterboard Bush Republican leaders (who support waterboarding) to prove waterboarding is not torture than to put our soldiers at risk of being tortured. All of them would quickly conclude waterboarding is torture, illegal, dangerous, and ineffective.

In the Dark Ages, they had a version of waterboarding. It was called "dunking." It was a sadistic kind of torture. Naturally, this type of sadistic, ineffective torture still has a strong appeal to certain types of barbaric Republicans!

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Written by Stephen Crockett -- co-host of Democratic Talk Radio [1] and Editor of Mid-Atlantic Labor [2].
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Does Merle Haggard Speak for America?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670184,00.html

Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007
Does Merle Haggard Speak for America?
By Joe Klein

Merle Haggard has always had his guitar hardwired to the gutbucket pulse of Middle America. Back in the Vietnam era, he seemed the essence of a historic political migration: white males fleeing the feminized, antiwar, politically correct Democratic Party. He was your basic Reagan Democrat, fully loaded with a resonant, iron-edged voice and the ability to write razor lyrics that stuck in the mind and the craw. His brilliant anthem—Okie from Muskogee—became a rallying cry for those who were disgusted by the "hippies out in San Francisco" smoking marijuana and burning draft cards. His next patriotic volley had this chorus: "When they're runnin' down my country, man, you're walkin' on the fightin' side of me." And so when I heard that Haggard had written a song endorsing Hillary Clinton for President, which you can hear him sing on TIME.com, I was more than curious about the motivation for his apparent left turn. And Merle let me know that he was more than happy to talk politics, given that he has a new album, The Bluegrass Sessions, which seems a political and musical return to his family's Okie and New Deal Democratic roots.

He picked me up at the Holiday Inn in Redding, Calif., a wizened guy in a black T shirt and jeans driving a politically incorrect white Hummer. "Believe it or not, this is a pretty nice little town," he said as we headed out to his ranch, past a bleak, unending landscape of big-box stores that brought to mind a recent Haggard lyric: "Everything Wal-Mart all the time, no more mom and pop five and dimes... What happened, where did America go?" A vague populist annoyance with big stores and big shots is one of the themes that have led Haggard to "change labels," as he told me with a laugh. "The folks don't have a say-so anymore. They're being force-fed—music, yeah, but every other darn thing too. I supported George W. I'm not exactly a liberal. But I know how that Texas thing works, who those oil folks are and what they wanted in Iraq... I'm a born-again Christian too, but the longer I live, the more afraid I get of some of these religious groups that have so much influence on the Republicans and want to tell us how to live our lives."

But Haggard's greatest complaint is a matter of pride—and pride, in his hardscrabble past and his country, has always been his favorite song. "The thing that gets under my skin most about George W. is his intention to install fear in people," he said, after walking me down a hallway lined with gold and platinum records. "This is America. We're proud. We're not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We're changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other's dresses. Fear's the only issue the Republican Party has. Vote for them, or the terrorists will win. That's not what Reagan was about. I hate to think about our soldiers over in Iraq fighting for a country that's slipping away."

So, the question: Is Merle Haggard indicative of a larger movement among his white male country brethren? This is a key to the next election, the subject of a new book by David Paul Kuhn, The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma. Kuhn accurately links the Republican dominance of the past 40 years to the loss of the Haggard vote. The percentage of white males identifying themselves as Democrats has declined from 47% in 1952 to about 25% in 2004. Much of that decline was an unavoidable consequence of two honorable positions the party took in the 1960s: in favor of civil rights and against the war in Vietnam. But civil rights slid into special preferences (for everyone, it seemed, but white men), and Vietnam slouched, all too often, into reflexive pacifism and a distrust of the military. Is it possible now, with the Republicans diving into foolish militarism and the indulgence of Thou-shalt-not killjoys, that Reagan Democrats might be tempted to come home?

They will have to be wooed, of course. Kuhn wisely suggests a ploy similar to John Kennedy's in 1960: Make the argument that we're weaker because of the Republicans.

But there is also a matter of style, of political correctness. Haggard sensed a certain reluctance among the Hillarians to embrace his endorsement—in part, I imagine, because he's not shy about saying that one of the biggest things Hillary has going for her is Bill, who ranks up with Reagan in the Haggard pantheon and not only because the former President used to have a pickup truck with Astroturf in the back. "He cared about this country, about our problems," Haggard said, with a twinkle. "And I figure that whatever she doesn't know, he does."

Paul Krugman: Time to Take a Stand

http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/09/paul-krugman-time-to-take-stand.html

Thursday, September 06, 2007
Paul Krugman: Time to Take a Stand

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds.

Senator Exposes Bloody Hands on Capitol Hill

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1177

From the Grave, a Senator Exposes Bloody Hands on Capitol Hill
Created 07/20/2007
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
By Norman Solomon

It was a chilling moment on a split-screen of history. While the Senate debated the Iraq war on Tuesday night, a long-dead senator again renounced a chronic lie about congressional options and presidential power.

The Senate was in the final hours of another failure to impede the momentum of war. As The New York Times was to report, President Bush "essentially won the added time he said he needed to demonstrate that his troop buildup was succeeding."

Meanwhile, inside a movie theater on the opposite coast, the thunderous voice of Senator Wayne Morse spoke to 140 people at an event organized by the activist group Sacramento for Democracy. The extraordinary senator was speaking in May 1964 -- and in July 2007.

A typical dash of media conventional wisdom had set him off. The moderator of the CBS program "Face the Nation," journalist Peter Lisagor, told the guest: "Senator, the Constitution gives to the president of the United States the sole responsibility for the conduct of foreign policy."

"Couldn't be more wrong," Morse shot back. "You couldn't make a more unsound legal statement than the one you have just made. This is the promulgation of an old fallacy that foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States. That's nonsense."

Lisagor sounded a bit exasperated: "To whom does it belong, then, Senator?"

Again, Morse didn't hesitate. "It belongs to the American people," the senator fired back. And he added: "What I'm saying is -- under our Constitution all the president is, is the administrator of the people's foreign policy, those are his prerogatives, and I'm pleading that the American people be given the facts about foreign policy --"

"You know, Senator, that the American people cannot formulate and execute foreign policy --"

"Why do you say that? Why, you're a man of little faith in democracy if you make that kind of comment," Morse retorted. "I have complete faith in the ability of the American people to follow the facts if you'll give them. And my charge against my government is we're not giving the American people the facts."

As Wayne Morse spoke, applause pulsed through the theater. I've seen the same thing happen many times this summer -- whether in New York or D.C. or San Luis Obispo or Sacramento -- with audiences suddenly bursting into loud applause when they hear Morse near the end of the documentary film ("War Made Easy," based on my book of the same name).

Even most antiwar activists don't seem to know anything about Wayne Morse. Whited out of political memory and media history, he was long ago banished to an Orwellian vacuum tube.

Compared to Morse -- even today, more than four years into the horrendous Iraq war -- almost every "antiwar" member of the U.S. Senate is restrained and unduly deferential to presidential war-making power. If you doubt that, consider the Senate's 97-0 vote in mid-July that laid a flagstone on a path toward military confrontation with yet another country: warning Iran that it would be held accountable for an alleged role in attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Morse's exchange with the "Face the Nation" host on May 24, 1964, occurred more than two months before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution sailed through Congress on the basis of presidential lies about a supposed unprovoked attack on U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf. Morse was one of only two members of the entire Congress to vote against that resolution, which served as a green light for massive escalation of the Vietnam War.

As the years of carnage went by, Senator Morse never let up. And so, when a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee neared a close on February 27, 1968, Morse said -- on the record -- that he did not "intend to put the blood of this war on my hands."

A big media lie is that members of Congress are doing all they can when they try and fail to pass measures that would impose a schedule for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The Constitution gives Congress the power to pay for war -- and to stop a war by refusing to appropriate money for it. Every vote to pay for more war is soaked with blood.

Wayne Morse knew that truth -- and said it out loud. Today, few senators come close.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

The new documentary film "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" is based on Norman Solomon's book of the same title. Grassroots groups have begun to show the DVD around the country. For information about the full-length movie, produced by the Media Education Foundation and narrated by Sean Penn, go to:

WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org

Gruesome 'Rambo' Trailer Slays on Internet

http://news.aol.com/entertainment/movies/articles/_a/gruesome-rambo-trailer-slays-on-internet/20070523131209990001

Gruesome 'Rambo' Trailer Slays on Internet
Moviefone
5-23-2007

When a movie series has been dormant for nearly 20 years, what's the best way to resurrect it? For 'Rambo,' it's with cartoonish violence and tons of viral buzz.

The trailer for 'John Rambo,' the newest installation in Sylvester Stallone 's Vietnam Vet-turned-vigilante series, was posted online earlier this week, and has generated movie Internet buzz akin to the "Snakes on a Plane" phenomenon. On Youtube, the two clips have garnered more than a million views.

The footage in the trailer is more "Grindhouse" than "Platoon," showing Stallone as John Rambo ripping out a man's throat, gunning a man in a truck to pulp, decapitating another and disemboweling a foe in the gruesome 3 1/2 minute clip.

The Hollywood Reporter hints that Stallone and 'John Rambo' could hit a ratings snag unless they tone down the violence a bit, as the Motion Picture Association of America could slap the film with the dreaded NC-17 rating.

"If they end up cutting back on the violence, what will the reaction be? There could be an interesting backlash," author Eric Lichtenfeld told the Hollywood Reporter.

Another hurdle "John Rambo" may face is the same fate that "Snakes on a Plane" suffered -- lots of pre-release Internet buzz without the box office results to back it up. And with the release date for "Rambo" set for May 25 of 2008, there could be too much time for fans to tire out of the gory hype.

Besides "Rambo," Stallone has had other things on his mind lately. He recently plead guilty to illegally importing muscle-building human growth hormones into Australia, and was slapped with a fine for the offense.