Life on Food Stamps

Pakistan’s Elite Pay Few Taxes, Widening Gap

Looks like Pakistan has Washington over the proverbial barrel

Much of Pakistan’s capital city looks like a rich Los Angeles suburb. Shiny sport utility vehicles purr down gated driveways. Elegant multistory homes are tended by servants. Laundry is never hung out to dry ...

But behind the opulence lurks a troubling fact. Very few of these households pay income tax.

That is mostly because the politicians who make the rules are also the country’s richest citizens, and are skilled at finding ways to exempt themselves.

That would be a problem in any country. But in Pakistan, the lack of a workable tax system feeds something more menacing: a festering inequality in Pakistani society, where the wealth of its most powerful members is never redistributed or put to use for public good.

That is creating conditions that have helped spread an insurgency that is tormenting the country and complicating American policy in the region.

It is also a sorry performance for a country that is among the largest recipients of American aid, payments of billions of dollars that prop up the country’s finances and are meant to help its leaders fight the insurgency ...

NYT  18 July 2010    

White House shifts Afghanistan strategy towards talks with Taliban

America: hooked on war and getting poorer

America: hooked on war and getting poorer

With record foreclosures and child poverty at a shameful level, can we really afford to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq for 10 years? ...

Why is nobody talking about the Afghanistan adventure as a cause of our plunging recession? Or at least citing the 30-year-old endless war as a major contributory factor in wasting our money to "nation-build" in the Hindu Kush while our own country falls to pieces on food stamps, foreclosures and child poverty – one in five kids – that would put the world's poorest nations to shame?

Iraq was George Bush's war. But, as Republican party chairman Michael Steele correctly says, "Afghanistan is Obama's war of choice", and a losing proposition ...

Our Afghanistan war, which began in 1980 under the Democrats (by weaponising Afghan resistance to the Soviets), and is now truly a bipartisan war, is as bankrupt as our economy. No connection? ...

... hardly anybody in public life dares to make a connection between teachers' pink slips, personal bankruptcies (6,000 a day now), our rotting infrastructure, lengthening queues at unemployment offices, child poverty ... and the war ...

Guardian  13 July 2010    Afghanistan    War on Terror Log

Afghanistan UK soldier deaths

Afghan soldier murders British troops

UN may trim Taliban blacklist

Recovery Slows With Weak Job Creation in June

... the economy needs to add about 130,000 jobs each month just to keep pace with new workers entering the market.

The labor pool is packed with 15 million Americans looking for work, and state and local governments cut another 10,000 jobs in June, cuts likely to accelerate this summer.

The weeks leading up to Friday’s report offered a grim rat-a-tat-tat of statistics pointing to a slowing economy. Auto sales fell, housing sales plunged and unemployment claims rose to a peak higher than is normal for an economic recovery.

And Friday’s labor data offered many more signs of slippage. The labor-force participation rate — that is, the number of workers counted as participating in the national economy — fell by 0.3 percentage point.

And the picture remained unyieldingly grim for the long-term unemployed. The median duration of unemployment rose to 25.5 weeks in June, from 23.2 in May ...

The national economy looks like a slack muscle. Prices and wages are dormant or falling, banks are holding tight to credit, consumers appear fatigued and the stock market is tumbling.

And 3.2 million workers are losing their unemployment benefits because Congress turned down President Obama and declined to authorize an extension ...

NYT  02 July 2010    

The Third Depression

BP boss plumbs depths of contrition

The torrent of abuse directed at Tony Hayward might have been even more telling had we observed similar scenes directed at Union Carbide in the aftermath of the Bhopal catastrophe.

Too many Americans are extraordinarily ill-informed as to their own misdeads on foreign soil, going back to the days when United Fruit treated Latin America as a private fiefdom, and when Col Smedley was making countries like Nicaragua 'safe' for corporate exploitation.

"I think it's really too early to reach conclusions, with respect," attempted Mr Hayward, whose only consolation as the lone witness of the day was occasional sips from a cup of water.

It surely doesn't help him that an oil-man from central casting he is not ...

His hosts were looking for theatre, of course. They have audiences in their home constituencies. But they did get very irritated very quickly.

"Any one of us could do his job," one Congressman blurted caustically as members shuffled out of their seats at the start of one of two recesses ...

Independent  18 June 2010    Deepwater Horizon

Obama’s Twist of BP’s Arm

Seven convicted over 1984 Bhopal gas disaster

Former employees of Union Carbide India Ltd guilty of causing death by negligence over disaster that killed at least 15,000 ...

An Indian court today convicted seven former senior employees of Union Carbide's Indian subsidiary of causing "death by negligence" over their part in the Bhopal gas tragedy in which an estimated 15,000 people died more than 25 years ago.

The subsidiary company, Union Carbide India Ltd, which no longer exists, was convicted of the same charge.

The former employees, many now in their 70s, face up to two years in prison. The judge has not yet announced sentences.

Large groups of survivors and relatives, along with rights activists, gathered in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, in central India. They said the verdict was too little, too late.

On 3 December 1984, about 40 tonnes of deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant run by Union Carbide into the air in Bhopal, killing about 4,000 people.

The lingering effects of the poison increased the death toll to about 15,000 over the next few years, according to government estimates.

Local activists insist the actual toll is almost twice as high, and say the company and government have failed to clean up toxic chemicals at the plant, which closed after the incident ...

Union Carbide was bought by the Dow Chemical Co in 2001.

Dow says the legal case was resolved in 1989 when Union Carbide settled with the Indian government for $470m (£326m), and that all responsibility for the factory now rested with the government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, which owns the site.

Guardian  07 June 2010    Corporate Sociopathy Log

Bhopal gas leak convictions not enough

Bhopal's secret disaster

Bhopal disaster

Bhopal

America and the world’s jungle

In a range of countries - Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia - the United States army’s regular forces will now be engaged in a further extension of the "war on terror".

True, it is more than likely that this has been covertly the case for several years; but that the process is now being formalised marks an important moment.

This, moreover, comes at the very time when the US seeks to put multilateral diplomacy and "new partnerships" at the centre of a new natural-security strategy published on 27 May 2010.

Barack Obama's introduction to the sixty-page document even says: "Our long-term security will not come from our ability to instill fear in other peoples but through our capacity to speak to their hopes" ...

The tension between this sentiment and the explicit counterinsurgency directive that preceded it is obvious.

The latter is but one part of a transition which the United States deems necessary if it is to respond successfully to the challenge of irregular or asymmetric warfare in the early 21st century.

In the context of the dominant thinking of the post-cold-war period enunciated so vividly by R James Woolsey, the policy represents a deepening of the desire to "tame the jungle".

It is certain that the jungle will, in due course, find its own ways to adapt and respond.

openDemocracy  27 May 2010    

Afghan Officials Elated by Minerals Report

US special forces 'tried to cover-up' botched Khataba raid

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened ...

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as Nato admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night.

It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies ...

In a statement yesterday, Brigadier-General Eric Tremblay, a Nato spokesman, said: “We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt forever by the families.

“The force went to the compound based on reliable information in search of a Taleban insurgent, and believed that the two men posed a threat to their personal safety. We now understand that the men killed were only trying to protect their families.”

Times  05 April 2010

UN report criticises covert troops

Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants

Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants ...

While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are attacking operatives of Al Qaeda and others through unmanned, remote-controlled drone strikes, some American officials say they became troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. The officials say they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work.

It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. Officials said Mr. Furlong’s secret network might have been improperly financed by diverting money from a program designed to merely gather information about the region.

Moreover, in Pakistan, where Qaeda and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding, the secret use of private contractors may be seen as an attempt to get around the Pakistani government’s prohibition of American military personnel’s operating in the country ...

NYT  14 Mar 2010

Privatising war

Rove 'proud' of US waterboarding terror suspects

A senior adviser to former US President George W Bush has defended tough interrogation techniques, saying their use helped prevent terrorist attacks.

In a BBC interview, Karl Rove, who was known as "Bush's brain", said he "was proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists".

He said waterboarding, which simulates drowning, should not be considered torture ...

Mr Rove has just written a memoir, Courage and Consequence, in which he defends the two terms of the Bush administration as "impressive, durable and significant".

BBC NEWS  12 Mar 2010

'Proud that waterboarding made world safer'

Birth defects 'have risen since US Falluja operation'

A BBC investigation in Iraq has confirmed a disturbingly high number of birth defects among children in the town of Falluja ...

It was hard to find doctors at the brand-new, US-funded hospital in Falluja who were prepared to talk about the problem.

I was told they were scared to speak because the Iraqi government did not want to create trouble for the Americans.

The official line is that Falluja has only two or three cases of birth defects a year more than normal.

But, in the children's ward, I spoke to a paediatrician who told me he saw as many as two or three cases a day, mainly cardiac defects ...

BBC NEWS  04 Mar 2010

Sarah Palin fires up Tea Party faithful and hints at 2012 run

Sarah Palin took the development of her own political brand to the next level with a speech to the first national gathering of Tea Party conservatives in Nashville in which she poured scorn on the first year of the Obama administration and set herself up as an alternative politician in the mould of Ronald Reagan.

In a 40-minute speech to an audience of about 1,000 drawn from across America, Palin dispelled criticism about the $115,000 she was reported to have been paid amid accusations that she was riding on the back of the populist movement.

She won a succession of standing ovations with pointed attacks on the president, whom she portrayed as being soft on terrorism, elitist and out of touch ...

Palin said that if Obama "played the war card," he could improve his chances of being re-elected. By declaring war on Iran or showing stronger support for Israel, she said she thought the president might convince voters he is tougher than they think on national security ...

Guardian  07 Feb 2010

Sarah Palin

US's strike threat catches China off guard

The United States plans to unveil later this decade a new conventional "Prompt Global Strike" (C-PGS) system. It will enable the US to instantly carry out a massive conventional attack anywhere in the world in an hour or less.

Research and development work by the US Department of Defense (DoD) on C-PGS began almost two decades ago, and this shifted into high gear in 2003.

Instead of delivering a nuclear warhead, a new US-based missile and/or some other unmanned delivery vehicle may carry a conventional warhead that is able to destroy a distant target in less than an hour.

"The US cannot take its current dominance for granted and needs to invest in the programs, platforms, and personnel that will ensure that dominance's persistence," wrote US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a commentary accompanying the 2010 QDR entitled, "A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon For a New Age".

"In the case of China, Beijing's investments in cyberwarfare, anti-satellite warfare, anti-aircraft and anti-ship weaponry, submarines, and ballistic missiles could threaten the United States' primary means to project its power and help its allies in the Pacific: bases, air and sea assets, and the networks that support them.

This will put a premium on the United States' ability to strike from over the horizon and employ missile defenses and will require shifts from short-range to longer-range systems, such as the next-generation bomber." ...

Asia Times  04 Feb 2010

Dalai Lama to meet Barack Obama

The summit’s premise is that the age of heroism is over.

We have entered the age of accomodation. No longer may we live without restraint. No longer may we swing our fists regardless of whose nose might be in the way.

In everything we do we must now be mindful of the lives of others, cautious, constrained, meticulous. We may no longer live in the moment, as if there were no tomorrow.

This is a meeting about chemicals: the greenhouse gases insulating the atmosphere. But it is also a battle between two world views.

The angry men who seek to derail this agreement, and all such limits on their self-fulfilment, have understood this better than we have. A new movement, most visible in North America and Australia, but now apparent everywhere, demands to trample on the lives of others as if this were a human right.

It will not be constrained by taxes, gun laws, regulations, health and safety, especially environmental restraints. It knows that fossil fuels have granted the universal ape amplification beyond its Palaeolithic dreams. For a moment, a marvellous, frontier moment, they allowed us to live in blissful mindlessness.

The angry men know that this golden age has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings ...

Monbiot.com  14 Dec 2009

Can Obama Stop America's Gas-Guzzling Ways?

CEO: Business Lobby Pushing Self-Interest Over Success

Atlas Shrugged

Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.

They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.

But they had psychology credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists. For an administration eager to get tough on those who had killed 3,000 Americans, that was enough ...

In the next few weeks, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to decide whether to begin a criminal torture investigation, in which the psychologists’ role is likely to come under scrutiny.

The Justice Department ethics office is expected to complete a report on the lawyers who pronounced the methods legal. And the C.I.A. will soon release a highly critical 2004 report on the program by the agency’s inspector general ...

NYT  12 August 2009

The US founding fathers had promised fair treatment to Native Americans.

In 1789 Congress declared,

'The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their land and property shall never be taken away from them without their consent.'

Theodore Roosevelt had other ideas, which were widely shared in his time:

Theodore Roosevelt represented the extermination of the American Indians as a selfless service to the cause of civilization:

'The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side: this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game reserve for squalid savages.'

[4]

The key to understanding America lies in its history, and especially "the frontier", with its overtones that resonate down to the present day:

The first settlers who arrived on the east coast in the 17th century acted and thought like Europeans. They encountered a new environmental challenge that was quite different from what they had known.

The most important difference was vast amounts of unused high quality farmland (some of which was used by a few thousand Indians for hunting grounds.)

They adapted to the new environment in certain ways — the sum of all the adaptations over the years would make them Americans. The next generation moved further inland.

It discarded more European aspects that were no longer useful, for example established churches, established aristocracies, intrusive government, and control of the best land by a small gentry class. Every generation moved further west and became more American, and the settlers became more democratic and less tolerant of hierarchy.

They became more violent, more individualistic, more distrustful of authority, less artistic, less scientific, and more dependent on ad-hoc organizations they formed themselves. In broad terms, the further west, the more American the community.

The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was a substantial alteration (called an "amendment") of the Monroe Doctrine by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Roosevelt's extension of the Monroe Doctrine asserted the right of the United States to intervene in Latin American nations' affairs. In its altered state, the Monroe Doctrine would now consider Latin America as an agency for expanding U.S. commercial interests in the region, along with its original stated purpose of keeping European hegemony from the hemisphere. In addition, the corollary proclaimed the explicit right of the United States to intervene in Latin American conflicts exercising an international police power. ...

Taft continued and expanded [The Roosevelt Corollary], starting in Central America, where he justified it as a means of protecting the Panama Canal. In 1909, he attempted unsuccessfully to establish control over Honduras by buying up its debt to British bankers. Dollar Diplomacy was not always peaceful. In Nicaragua, U.S. "intervention involved participating in the overthrow of one government and the military support" of another. When a revolt broke out in Nicaragua in 1912, the Taft administration quickly sided with the insurgents (who had been instigated by U.S. mining interests) and sent U.S. troops into the country to seize the customs houses. As soon as the U.S. consolidated control over the country, Knox encouraged U.S. bankers to move into the country and offer substantial loans to the new regime, thus increasing U.S. financial leverage over the country. Within two years, however, the new pro-U.S. regime faced a revolt of its own; and, once again, the administration landed U.S. troops in Nicaragua, this time to protect the tottering, corrupt U.S. regime. U.S. troops remained there for over a decade.

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

"In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

"I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.

"I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

"I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

"I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912.

"I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916.

"I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.

"In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested."

Wikipedia

A US banana company has agreed to pay a $25m (£13m) fine after admitting it paid terrorists for protection in a volatile farming region of Colombia. The settlement resolves a lengthy justice department investigation into the company's financial dealings with rightwing paramilitaries and leftist rebels that the US government deems terrorist groups.

In court documents filed on Wednesday federal prosecutors said Chiquita Brands International and several corporate officers paid about $1.7m between 1997 and 2004 to the rightwing United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC). The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for much of the country's cocaine exports. Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers ...

Guardian 16 March 2007

Banana Massacre

GUATEMALA CITY -- Day and night, workers at the port of Quetzal on Guatemala's Pacific coast load fruit from surrounding plantations and clothing stitched in local factories onto freighters bound for Long Beach, Calif., a flow of goods that has swelled since a Central American trade agreement with the United States took force last year.

Under a provision that was crucial to getting the deal through Congress, working conditions for the longshoremen, along with laborers throughout Central America, were supposed to improve. Governments promised to strengthen labor laws, and the Bush administration pledged money to help.

But on the evening of Jan. 15, the head of the port workers union became a symbol of the risks that still confront workers who press their rights in Guatemala.

Pedro Zamora, then in the midst of contentious negotiations with management, was driving on the dusty road through his village, his two sons at his side, when gunmen shot him at least 20 times, killing him, said prosecutors in Guatemala City. One boy was grazed in the knee by a bullet; the other was unharmed.

Nearly two years have passed since the countries of Central America vowed to strengthen worker rights as they sought votes in Congress for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. Yet there has been little if any progress, according to diplomats, labor inspectors, workers and managers.

"The situation is the same now as it was," said Homero Fuentes, director of the Commission for the Verification of Codes of Conduct, a Guatemalan group hired by multinational companies to inspect local factories and plantations. "The law hasn't been reformed, and people just don't obey the law. There's a culture of impunity."

Listen to the apostles of free trade, and you'll learn that once consumer choice comes to authoritarian regimes, democracy is sure to follow. Call it the Starbucks rule: Situate enough Starbucks around Shanghai, and the Communist Party's control will crumble like dunked biscotti.

As a theory of revolution, the Starbucks rule leaves a lot to be desired.

Shanghai is swimming in Starbucks, yet, as James Mann notes in "The China Fantasy," his new book on the non-democratization of China, the regime soldiers on.

Conversely, the American farmers who made our revolution didn't have much in the way of consumer choice, yet they managed to free themselves from the British.

In New England, however, they did have town meetings, which may be a surer guide to the coming of democratic change.

It's a growing civil society -- a sphere where people can deliberate and decide on more than their coffee -- that more characteristically sounds the death knell of dictatorships.

Which is why the conduct of America's corporate titans in China is so disquieting. There, since March of last year, the government has been considering a labor law that promises a smidgen of increase in workers' rights. And since March of last year, the American businesses so mightily invested in China have mightily fought it.

Beyond the Starbucks of Shanghai, the China of workers and peasants is a sea of unrest, roiled by thousands of strikes and protests that the regime routinely represses. Cognizant that they need to do something to quell the causes of unrest, some of China's rulers have entertained modest changes to the country's labor law. The legislation wouldn't allow workers to form independent trade unions or grant them the right to strike -- this is, after all, a communist regime.

It would, however, require employers to provide employees, either individually or collectively, with written contracts. It would allow employees to change jobs within their industries or get jobs in related industries in other regions; employers have hitherto been able to thwart this by invoking statutes on proprietary information. It would also require that companies bargain with worker representatives over health and safety conditions.

It's not as if Chinese unions would use these laws to run roughshod over employers. Chinese unions are not, strictly speaking, unions at all. They remain controlled by the Communist Party. Their locals can be and frequently are headed by plant managers, whether the workers want them or not. And yet, these changes proved too radical for America's leading corporations.

As documented by Global Labor Strategies, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization headed by longtime labor activists, the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the U.S.-China Business Council embarked on a major campaign to kill these tepid reforms.

Last April, one month after the legislation was first floated, the chamber sent a 42-page document to the Chinese government on behalf of its 1,300 members -- including General Electric, Microsoft, Dell, Ford and dozens of other household brand names -- objecting to these minimal increases in worker power. In its public comments on the proposed law, GE declared that it strongly preferred "consultation" with workers to "securing worker representative approval" on a range of its labor practices.

Based on a second draft of the law, completed in December, it looks like American businesses have substantially prevailed. Key provisions were weakened; if an employer elects not to issue written contracts, workers are guaranteed only the wages of similar employees -- with the employer apparently free to define who, exactly, is similar. Business is relieved: Facing "increased pressure to allow the establishment of unions in companies," Andreas Lauff, a Hong Kong-based corporate attorney, wrote in the Jan. 30 Financial Times, "comments from the business community appear to have had an impact."

The new draft "scaled back protections for employees and sharply curtailed the role of unions."

Phew!

Admittedly, a few nettlesome issues remain.

First, about one-fourth of the global labor force is in China.

Opposing steps toward the formation of unions there suppresses the wages of so many workers that its effect is felt worldwide.

Second, since authoritarian China remains an adversary of the United States and a backer of some genuinely dangerous authoritarian regimes, blocking even the most modest steps toward the development of a civil society and democratic rights there poses a threat to U.S. security interests.

Third, since the Bush administration champions the spread of democracy globally, why hasn't it taken America's leading corporations to task for retarding democracy's growth in China?

And fourth, since preserving our national security should require executives at companies such as GE to answer for their conduct, where's the House Un-American Activities Committee now that we really need it?

Harold Meyerson Washington Post - Wednesday, April 4, 2007

The historian lives for the revelatory document. He spends long days in the libraries and the archives, turning pages, poring over routine correspondence, in the hope of striking golden words - a single magical page that, as he turns it, unveils the elusive past. I have found at least one such document for every book I have written. And I still remember each one with almost photographic clarity. ...

I had something of that same excitement as I read the Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing for ISN 10024, otherwise known as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda leader captured in Pakistan in 2003. For this document, released by the Pentagon last week, tells us more about the true nature of the war on terror than any other single document I have read. In particular, it shows us how the combatants in this war are in subtle ways growing alike. ...

What is obviously sensational about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's statement before the tribunal is the sheer scale of the terrorist campaign he claims to have masterminded. ...

Not only does the court president implicitly acknowledge that the prisoner before him has been tortured in the past. He also makes it clear that the prisoner is being denied proper legal representation; he has only a US Air Force lieutenant-colonel to act as his "personal representative".

Everyone in the courtroom except the prisoner and the translator is an American military officer. Mohammed's request for two fellow prisoners to be summoned as witnesses is denied. He is informed at the end of the hearing that he will almost certainly remain in captivity for an indefinite period. ...

The Blogs in response to Prof Ferguson's article are essential reading.

In November 2004 the US - with British support - launched a massive assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The scale of the attack - and its effect on civilians - was unprecedented in the bloody history of the invasion and occupation, yet the crimes committed in Fallujah received little attention here and have quickly been forgotten. One year on, we look back at the events leading up to the assault, the attack itself, and how the lack of effective global protest led to many other towns and cities in Iraq facing similar treatment. ...

· British soldier's death in Iraq 'entirely avoidable'

· Widow speaks of feeling badly let down by US

The killing of a British soldier in Iraq by an American pilot was a "criminal, unlawful act" that was tantamount to manslaughter, a coroner ruled yesterday.

The family of Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, who died in March 2003, wept as they were told at the inquest in Oxford that it was "an entirely avoidable tragedy". ...

The coroner, Andrew Walker, was damning in his appraisal of the way the Hull family had been treated. "They, despite request after request, have been, as this court has been, denied access to evidence that would provide the fullest explanation to help understand the sequence of events that led to and caused the tragic loss of LCoH Hull's life."

He added: "I have no doubt of how much pain and suffering they have been put through during this inquisition process and to my mind that is inexcusable."

No American witness gave evidence at the inquest, and defence chiefs refused to allow the coroner access to their forces' rules of engagement. The family believes that withholding of key documents and evidence was a bid to cover up mistakes. ...

Audrey Gillan, The Guardian 17 March 2007

... A year after Katrina, New Orleans remains submerged in bureaucracy, paralysed by failed politics, and alarmingly vulnerable.

Much of the money needed to repair essential infrastructure has not yet materialised, and some $2 billion has vanished in fraud or waste.

The city is operating on about one quarter of its pre-Katrina revenue because so many businesses remain closed and only half the city’s residents have returned. ...

Katrina exposed rank inefficiency, some traditional corruption and an apparent lack of concern summed up in President Bush’s words to his emergency management director Michael Brown — “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” — just before he was sacked.

Above all, it exposed the disproportionate suffering of the poor and black residents of New Orleans, vividly reflected in Spike Lee’s angry new documentary, When the Levees Broke.

Many blame the US Corps of Engineers for failing to design and maintain adequate defences. Those with longer memories blame the French for building a city on a swamp, much of it below sea level.

The excuses and recriminations will continue to ebb and flow. Guilt and innocence are never clearly defined in the vaporous atmosphere of New Orleans. What is inexcusable, amid the shifting responsibilities and accusations, is the failure to address with sufficient urgency how the city should be protected in the future. ...

The Times August 25, 2006

Casualties of Katrina

Poll: Katrina Response Inadequate

New Orleans Insanity

The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box. This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the US government's calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: businesses do disaster better.

"It's all going to be private enterprise before it's over," Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for tropical storm Ernesto, said in April. "They've got the expertise. They've got the resources." But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it's time to take a look at where the privatisation of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead. ...

Naomi Klein, The Guardian 30 August 2006

The country is indeed in the grip of extremists who are determined to act out the biblical climax--the saving of the chosen and the burning of the masses--but without any divine intervention. Heaven can wait. Thanks to the booming business of privatized disaster services, we're getting the Rapture right here on earth.

Just look at what is happening in Southern California. Even as wildfires devoured whole swaths of the region, some homes in the heart of the inferno were left intact, as if saved by a higher power. But it wasn't the hand of God; in several cases it was the handiwork of Firebreak Spray Systems. Firebreak is a special service offered to customers of insurance giant American International Group (AIG)--but only if they happen to live in the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country. Members of the company's Private Client Group pay an average of $19,000 to have their homes sprayed with fire retardant. During the wildfires, the "mobile units"--racing around in red firetrucks--even extinguished fires for their clients.

One customer described a scene of modern-day Revelation. "Just picture it. Here you are in that raging wildfire. Smoke everywhere. Flames everywhere. Plumes of smoke coming up over the hills," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Here's a couple guys showing up in what looks like a firetruck who are experts trained in fighting wildfire and they're there specifically to protect your home."

And your home alone. "There were a few instances," one of the private firefighters told Bloomberg News, "where we were spraying and the neighbor's house went up like a candle." With public fire departments cut to the bone, gone are the days of Rapid Response, when everyone was entitled to equal protection. Now, increasingly intense natural disasters will be met with the new model: Rapture Response.

During last year's hurricane season, Florida homeowners were offered similarly high-priced salvation by HelpJet, a travel agency launched with promises to turn "a hurricane evacuation into a jet-setter vacation." For an annual fee, a company concierge takes care of everything: transport to the air terminal, luxurious travel, bookings at five-star resorts. Most of all, HelpJet is an escape hatch from the kind of government failure on display during Katrina. "No standing in lines, no hassle with crowds, just a first class experience." ...

The Nation 01 November 2007

Zygmunt Bauman sees a "Hobbesian" United States which, like Rome, can only expand:

" ... to sustain its imperial position the empire must time and again put its weapons on public and spectacular, and so convincing, display."

Or, as President Bush put it:

"Victory in Iraq is vital for the security of a generation of Americans who are coming up," he said. "And so we will stay in Iraq, we will fight in Iraq and we will win in Iraq."

America lives with the legacy of isolation, believing that it:

" ... should keep others at a distance .. Should beware false, shifty and unreliable friends … more than … explicit enemies - since there is no telling how long the friendship … will be on offer … "

It's opinion of Europe is disdainful, as in Donald Rumsfeld's dismissal of "old Europe" - a toothless geriatric.

Like it or not, Europe - for the first time in its history - lives in the shadow of a greater power:

"On a Fukuyama/Hobbesian planet, USA military might … (the) police force of global capitalism can deliver blows at will and at random … fearing little and hoping to emerge from the short, sharp encounter undamaged; … In its triumphant seemingly unstoppable march through the planetary casino, capital confronts instead numerous competitors eager to play the same game … One variety of adversaries that capital does not come across are the proponents of and realistic embodiments of an alternative form of life that would entail the abolition of the casino … "

Bauman quotes Robert Kagan:

Europeans ...

... believe they are moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and co-operation ...

whereas the United States

... remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international rules are unreliable and where security and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.

Trapped in the legacy of The Frontier? Kagan, according to Bauman, would not agree - believing that:

Europe's Kantian order depends on the United States using power according to the old Hobbesian rules.

Thus Europe remains trapped, and the globalised dystopia is safe.

A Marine corporal testifying in a court-martial said Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqis after officers ordered them to ``crank up the violence level.''

Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo testified Saturday at the murder trial of Cpl. Trent D. Thomas.

`"We were told to crank up the violence level," said Lopezromo, testifying for the defense.

When a juror asked for further explanation, Lopezromo said: "We beat people, sir."

Within weeks of allegedly being scolded, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent ... [who] ... was known to his neighbors as the "prince of jihad," and had been arrested several times and later released by the Iraqi legal system.

Unable to find him, the Marines and corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot him, and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it appear he had been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony. ...

The Observer 15 July 2007

The US military has established a new command structure in Africa, signalling the continent’s increased strategic importance for Washington. This caps five years of growing military engagement, with a focus on counter-terrorism. An improvement in the security environment could, conceivably, give a leg-up to Africa’s economies; the fear is that the growing US military presence will crowd out other actors, and that security calculations will trump efforts to promote democratisation and good governance.

The US this month established a new Unified Combatant Command (Cocom) dedicated solely to the African continent (excluding Egypt), Africa Command (Africom). Africom is as a sub-unified command under the US European Command (Eucom) in Stuttgart, Germany, and is currently in the process of establishing its mission and operations. It is expected to be fully operational and stand-alone by the end of 2008. ...

The combined effects of global terrorism and the increasingly important role of West African oil producers ensure a greater US military role in the continent in the coming years. The greatest dangers posed by the changes in US policy towards Africa are likely to be reminiscent of US policies during the Cold War period, when states deemed to be strategically important were not held to account for lack of political reform, human rights abuses and corruption or poor governance. As a result, tensions could potentially arise between the US military on one hand, and development agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF and USAID on the other, as their respective strategic objectives come into conflict. The pledge by the US military to have learned the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan that the most effective way of combating terrorism is to eliminate the root causes of poverty, poor governance and insecurity is not without merit or legitimacy, but in the short term military expediency may not allow for such a holistic approach in Africa. ...

The Economist 31 October 2007

Blood Is Thicker Than Blackwater

Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans

Blackwater Shot Down in Federal Court

Mercenary Jackpot

Mercenaries Second Largest Force In Iraq

Mercenaries and Torture in Iraq

Blackwater Chief Defends Firm

Other Killings By Blackwater Staff Detailed

Blackwater Faced Bedlam, Embassy Finds

Blackwater USA

Sourcewatch

Unity Resources Group

HERE'S a startling statistic. By the time the average US schoolchild leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed more than 8000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on television. If the child also has access to violent computer games or films, or cable TV, these figures will be far, far higher. Anyone who claims that art reflects society might want to take a good hard look at their neighbourhood.

Yet every time a study claims to have found a link between aggression, violence, educational or behavioural problems and TV programmes or computer games, there are cries of incredulity, even (ironically) anger. People seem to doubt that such a link exists, or think the evidence is generally weak.

That view is not shared by the vast majority of researchers who study the subject. They see a clear link between media consumption and aggression, and also mounting evidence for an increased risk of attentional, behavioural and educational problems with extended exposure to TV and computer games. They have been in little doubt for around half a century (see "Mind-altering media"), and over that time scientific confidence in the detrimental effects of media violence has only increased. Why, then, the disconnect with public perception?

Any criticism of a multibillion-dollar business is bound to provoke a sharp rebuttal. Scientists involved in the violence debate regularly draw parallels between the tactics of the film industry and those of tobacco companies, which continued to deny a link between smoking and lung cancer long after the scientific case was firmly established. The film industry has funded books, legal defences and interpretations of research that routinely deny any ill effects of on-screen violence. ...

Just as in the climate change debate, public confidence in a scientific conclusion backed by overwhelming evidence is being undermined by naysayers who point out minor errors and inconsistencies. ...

Here's one way to weigh up the evidence. Meta-analysis shows that the statistical correlation between exposure to media violence and aggression is not quite as strong as that linking smoking to an increased risk of lung cancer. It is, however, double the strength of the correlation between passive smoking and lung cancer, twice as strong as the link between condom use and reduction in risk of catching HIV, about three times the strength of the idea that calcium increases bone strength, and more than three times as strong as the correlation between time spent doing homework and academic achievement. ...

The film and gaming industries are not about to go away, and indeed, in a free society, why should they? But we can all make choices as individuals and parents. Each time you bawl out a stranger over the phone, or lose it with another driver from the safety of your car, consider that these too are aggressive acts which studies have shown are more likely after repeated exposure to on-screen violence; the impact is not limited to assault and murder. It seems inappropriate to keep calling this harmless entertainment.

New Scientist 21 April 2007

Sir: American culture has produced a particular type of macho over-assertive aggressive male who believes that might is always right and that the way to decide a disagreement is to beat down your opponent either verbally or physically.

This type is found in other cultures as well but nowhere is it the national archetype as it is in the United States. The violent aggressive male is the central character in most Hollywood movies. He makes his way in the world by killing with firearms or any other weapon and usually emerges as the hero no matter how much blood is shed.

Even debating with American academic colleagues I was often offended by the way they would settle even complex intellectual disagreements by simply shouting me down. And many Americans have told me they consider non-violent European males, who do not show loud-mouthed assertiveness, to be merely effeminate.

Winning at all costs, even using violence if they have to, is a central American theme. It is not surprising then, given this constant exposure to the approval of male violence in American life and culture that the US has so much violent crime. How could it not have?

This machismo is not limited to individuals. It extends to the US government itself. Its record since the Second World War has been one long sequence of military actions over smaller and weaker nations with colossal loss of life. What is so surprising about the Americans is not that they have so many enemies, but that they have any friends at all.

CHRIS PAYNE

PLESIDY, FRANCE

The Independent 18 April 2007