George Monbiot takes up a theme we dealt with here the other day: the centrality of the Pentagon war machine -- and its attendant corporate war profiteers -- in American policy and politics today.
Monbiot's specific subject is the U.S. "missile defense system" -- the greatest boondoggle in human history, and an endless fount of corruption for decades. But he also provides an excellent general description of America's degraded, dysfunctional state, which is never on more naked display than during the quadrennial freak show of a presidential campaign:
If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government's interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be.
I'm afraid this will be the chief question of interest to the next administration as well. As for "missile defense" -- which is now playing a starring role in the new Cold War being avidly fomented by America's bipartisan political elite - Monbiot is worth quoting at length:
The system has been in development since 1946, and so far it has achieved a grand total of nothing....All the trials run so far - successful or otherwise - have been rigged. The target, its type, trajectory and destination, are known before the test begins. Only one enemy missile is used, as the system doesn't have a hope in hell of knocking down two or more. If decoy missiles are deployed, they bear no resemblance to the target and they are identified as decoys in advance. In order to try to enhance the appearance of success, recent flight tests have become even less realistic: the agency has now stopped using decoys altogether when testing its GMD system.
This points to one of the intractable weaknesses of missile defence: it is hard to see how the interceptors could ever outwit enemy attempts to confuse them. As Philip Coyle - formerly a senior official at the Pentagon with responsibility for missile defence - points out, there are endless means by which another state could fool the system. For every real missile it launched, it could dispatch a host of dummies with the same radar and infra-red signatures. Even balloons or bits of metal foil would render anything resembling the current system inoperable. You can reduce a missile's susceptibility to laser penetration by 90% by painting it white. This sophisticated avoidance technology, available from your local hardware shop, makes another multibillion component of the programme obsolete. Or you could simply forget about ballistic missiles and attack using cruise missiles, against which the system is useless.
Monbiot then gets to the corroded heart of the matter: scratch, geetus, moolah, long green. As he notes, the Pentagon and its willing enablers on both sides of the political aisle have come up with a truly artistic budgetary innovation to keep golden goose a-laying: "spiral development." From Monbiot:
The US has spent between $120bn and $150bn on the programme since Ronald Reagan relaunched it in 1983. Under George Bush, the costs have accelerated. The Pentagon has requested $62bn for the next five-year tranche, which means that the total cost between 2003 and 2013 will be $110bn. Yet there are no clear criteria for success. As a recent paper in the journal Defense and Security Analysis shows, the Pentagon invented a new funding system in order to allow the missile defence programme to evade the government's usual accounting standards. It's called spiral development, which is quite appropriate, because it ensures that the costs spiral out of control.
Spiral development means, in the words of a Pentagon directive, that "the end-state requirements are not known at programme initiation". Instead, the system is allowed to develop in whatever way officials think fit. The result is that no one has the faintest idea what the programme is supposed to achieve, or whether it has achieved it. There are no fixed dates, no fixed costs for any component of the programme, no penalties for slippage or failure, no standards of any kind against which the system can be judged. And this monstrous scheme is still incapable of achieving what a few hundred dollars' worth of diplomacy could do in an afternoon.
So why commit endless billions to a programme that is bound to fail? I'll give you a clue: the answer is in the question. It persists because it doesn't work.
US politics, because of the failure by both Republicans and Democrats to deal with the problems of campaign finance, is rotten from head to toe. But under Bush, the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities. Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.
Monbiot also points out the obvious: the nation must be kept in a constant welter of fear and indignation in order to keep the pork flowing:
To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses of those that do. Russia is not without its own corrupting influences. You could see the grim delight of the Russian generals and defence officials last week, who have found in this new deployment an excuse to enhance their power and demand bigger budgets.
Yes, there's nothing inherently American about fearmongering and corruption. The Kremlin knows full well that the missile defense system which Bush is installing in Poland doesn't work. But it looks threatening, and is a handy bogey-man to shake at the Russian people. Then again, the missile base is just a beachhead for the coming horde of NATO forces that will soon be bristling on Russia's border, so the Kremlin's alarm at the placement is not just rabble-rousing. And of course, there is also the fact that the missile base could easily accomodate offensive weapons as well as the boondoggled duds. The threat to Russia from U.S. missiles and NATO encroachments is considerably more real and substantial than the idea that Russia poses any kind of genuine threat to America.
To be sure, Russia, and China, do pose a genuine threat to the American elite's idiotic, arrogant agenda of forcing its will on the entire world. Thus the frothing nonsense and belligerent posturing -- and murderous military adventures -- of our bipartisan foreign policy establishment will go on. But as we've often noted here before, none of this has anything to do with the genuine interests or well-being or security of the American people. That is just not "a question of interest" to our moneyed elites and our ludicrous, "purpose-driven" politicians.
An ex-Hitler Youth certainly knows a thing or two about fascism -- so when Pope Benedict XVI weighed in with a warning about the resurgent state-backed racism and repression in the birthplace of the pernicious right-wing doctrine last Sunday, it provoked a firestorm in Italian politics.
As we have noted here earlier, that ever-indictable oligarch, Silvio Berlusconi, is back in power once again, and once again he is leading a coalition of corporate cronies, rabid nationalists and factions that proudly proclaim their descent from Benito Mussolini's original fascist party. This time around -- in the brave new post-9/11 world, where Western "democracies" no longer have to disguise their authoritarian tendencies but instead boldly embrace lawless "unitary executive" powers and police-state tactics -- the balding, preening ass of Rome is stepping out in his true colors: basic blackshirt.
At the heart of Europe, police have begun fingerprinting children on the basis of their race - with barely a murmur of protest from European governments. Last week, Silvio Berlusconi's new rightwing Italian administration announced plans to carry out a national registration of all the country's estimated 150,000 Gypsies - Roma and Sinti people - whether Italian-born or migrants. Interior minister and leading light of the xenophobic Northern League, Roberto Maroni, insisted that taking fingerprints of all Roma, including children, was needed to "prevent begging" and, if necessary, remove the children from their parents.
The ethnic fingerprinting drive is part of a broader crackdown on Italy's three-and-a-half million migrants, most of them legal, carried out in an atmosphere of increasingly hysterical rhetoric about crime and security. But the reviled Roma, some of whose families have been in Italy since the middle ages, are taking the brunt of it. The aim is to close 700 Roma squatter camps and force their inhabitants out of the cities or the country....
Official roundups and forced closures of Roma camps have been punctuated with vigilante attacks. In May, rumours of an abduction of a baby girl by a Gypsy woman in Naples triggered an orgy of racist violence against Roma camps by thugs wielding iron bars, who torched caravans and drove Gypsies from their slum homes in dozens of assaults, orchestrated by the local mafia, the Camorra. [More on the Camorra's increasing symbiosis with the state here.] The response of Berlusconi's government to the firebombing and ethnic cleansing? "That is what happens when Gypsies steal babies," shrugged Maroni; while fellow minister and Northern League leader Umberto Bossi declared: "The people do what the political class isn't able to do."
Berlusconi and his neo-fascists routinely make great shows of their deep Catholic piety. (Thank God religion is not cynically exploited in American politics!) But now the Pope -- who as young Joseph Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth then served briefly in the armed forces of Nazi Germany, apparently in a non-combatant role -- has thrown his weight behind a campaign by Italy's top Catholic weekly, Famiglia Cristiana. The Guardian has the story:
In an editorial on Friday, condemning recent government moves against immigrants and Roma, the magazine said it was to be hoped fascism was not "resurfacing in our country under another guise". The jibe outraged Berlusconi's supporters, many of whom are themselves pious Catholics.
The leader of his parliamentary group in the upper house, Maurizio Gasparri, announced he would personally sue the priest who is Famiglia Cristiana's editor while the junior minister with responsibility for family affairs, Carlo Giovanardi, said the magazine was "possessed by ideological malice".
At first Vatican spokemen tried to soothe the troubled waters with a statement that the magazine did not speak for the Pope. But two days later, Herr Ratzinger delivered an address that clearly backed the magazine's message:
Silvio Berlusconi's government was today engaged in a vigorous damage limitation exercise after Pope Benedict appeared to lend his immense moral authority to speculation that Italy was in danger of returning to fascism under the tycoon's hardline, rightwing leadership.
In his customary midday Sunday address, the pontiff expressed concern at "recent examples of racism" and reminded Catholics it was their duty to steer others in society away from "racism, intolerance and [the] exclusion [of others]"....The pope's comments were interpreted by Berlusconi's critics as a signal that the Vatican was not climbing down or distancing itself from Famiglia Cristiana's interpretation.
Benedict cited in his address the story from Matthew's gospel of Jesus's encounter with a pagan woman and how he rose above his initial misgivings to perform a miracle for her daughter.
The pope said: "One of humanity's great conquests is indeed the overcoming of racism. Unfortunately, however, there are new and worrying examples of this in various countries, often linked to social and economic problems that nonetheless can never justify contempt or racial discrimination."
The paper notes a further irony. The Vatican -- led by perhaps the most conservative pope in the last century, a man who once headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (once better known as the Inquisition) -- has mounted a much stronger resistance to Berlusconi's blackshirtism than the political opposition:
So far, church leaders have been far more outspoken in their criticism of the government's policies than Italy's main, centre-left opposition party. Earlier this month, they succeeded in blocking an attempt by the mayor of Rome to pass a measure - seemingly aimed at Gypsies - that banned people from rummaging in garbage containers. In June, Famiglia Cristiana said a government plan to take the fingerprints of Roma children was "indecent".
God knows, one hates to agree with Herr Ratzinger about anything. As The Times noted shortly before his election in 2005: "His condemnations are legion — of women priests, married priests, dissident theologians and homosexuals, whom he has declared to be suffering from an 'objective disorder.'" Of course, Ratzinger is not actually any more hardline and draconian than his predecessor, the media celebrity John Paul II -- after all, it was JP2 who installed Ratzinger as the enforcer of the faith in 1981 and backed his strictures right down the line.
But the Pope's intervention on behalf of the scapegoats of crony capitalism -- not only in Italy, but around the world, where corrupt and greedy elites increasingly try to hide the ruin they have made of their own nations by pointing the finger at Evil Others -- is most welcome.
When it comes to determining the true thrust and implication of world events, the old adage is still valid: "Follow the money."
The lust for long green is not the sole determinant of state policies, of course. For example, there are also the psychosexual anxieties of blustering elites, the soul-corroding pathology of political ambition, the ignorance and arrogance of the powerful and the privileged, the herd instinct that can drive whole populations into self-deluding frenzies of nationalistic fervor -- all kinds of factors in the mix. But money is never not in the center of things.
This is especially true in systems where war and rumors of war have become the foundation of the national economy. This is the ultimate condition of every empire (or rather the penultimate position; the ultimate position is the inevitable decline and fall). And the United States, with its globe-spanning military empire, is no exception. Here we have a nation that has stripped its own industrial base, brutally neglected its educational system, allowed its physical infrastructure to rot, and driven its small-holding farmers from the land, dispossessing its own citizens and degrading their communities, all for the short-term profit of a moneyed elite -- and, what's more, has based its prosperity on the profligate and disproportionate use of a finite resource which it cannot produce in sufficient quantities within its own borders.
Andrew Bacevich discusses this latter point this way in his new book, The Limits of Power, in a passage picked out by Bill Moyers which puts the American people in the frame along with our predatory elite:
"The pursuit of freedom, as defined in an age of consumerism, has induced a condition of dependence on imported goods, on imported oil, and on credit. The chief desire of the American people is that nothing should disrupt their access to these goods, that oil, and that credit. The chief aim of the U.S. government is to satisfy that desire, which it does in part of through the distribution of largesse here at home, and in part through the pursuit of imperial ambitions abroad."
The decades-long quest for military-enforced dominance of geopolitical affairs has been both producer and product of this ravenous system. And now, the war machine is pretty much the only thing left. It has eaten all our seed corn, and must keep prowling constantly in foreign lands to feast on the resources of others. So war and the ever-present threat of war will continue to be the driving forces of American policy, at home and abroad, both in the public and private sectors – because that's where the money is. Big money, gargantuan money, money out the wazoo. And what's more, it's free money – because most of it comes from the taxpayers, through insider sweetheart deals that very often guarantee profits for the crony contractor. No muss, no fuss, no risk – just gravy.
And so the Russian response to Georgia's attack on South Ossetia – "Six Days That Changed the World!" as the deathless (or rather, death-filled) headlines proclaim – has been the usual win-win situation for the war-profiteers in the cockpit of the American corruptocracy, as the Wall Street Journal reports. The Journal writes for those who really count in American society – the movers and shakers and shifters of Big Money – so you can often get a better analysis of what's really going on than you would from, say, the New York Times, with all its weighty think-tank lumber. The headline from Saturday's WSJ story says it all: Attack on Georgia Gives Boost To Big U.S. Weapons Programs.
Just as the rash and bloody deed of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili – who assaulted South Ossetia in a ferocious sneak attack -- gave the Kremlin war machine the excuse it needed to flex its muscles, so the Russian response has been a godsend for the Pentagon. Now you see why we need all them big new weapons we've been hankering for, say the boys from Hell's Bottom: we got to keep them Russkies down. And of course, in keeping with the noble tradition of our bipartisan foreign policy establishment, a top Democrat (an erstwhile hero of the "anti-war" movement, no less), is in the forefront of the Pentagon's fear-mongering gobble at the pork barrel. From the Journal:
Russia's attack on Georgia has become an unexpected source of support for big U.S. weapons programs, including flashy fighter jets and high-tech destroyers, that have had to battle for funding this year because they appear obsolete for today's conflicts with insurgent opponents.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has spent much of the year attempting to rein in some of the military's most expensive and ambitious weapons systems -- like the $143 million F-22 Raptor jet -- because he thinks they are unsuitable for the lightly armed and hard-to-find militias, warlords and terrorist groups the U.S. faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been opposed by an array of political interests and defense companies that want to preserve these multibillion-dollar programs and the jobs they create.
When Russia's invading forces choked roads into Georgia with columns of armored vehicles and struck targets from the air, it instantly bolstered the case being made by some that the Defense Department isn't taking the threat from Russia and China seriously enough. If the conflict in Georgia continues and intensifies, it could make it easier for defense companies to ensure the long-term funding of their big-ticket items.
For example, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. John Murtha, quickly seized on the Russia situation this week, saying that it indicates the Russians see the toll that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking on the U.S. military. "We've spent so many resources and so much attention on Iraq that we've lost sight of future threats down the road. The current conflict between Russia and Georgia is a perfect example," said Rep. Murtha during a recent visit to his district.
Go tell it, Brother John! Ivan's on the march, and he's headed straight for downtown Latrobe. If we don't get them Raptors up pronto, they'll be dishing up borschtburgers at McDonald's next week. [Bernard Chazelle has a somewhat different take on Russia's motivations over at A Tiny Revolution.]
But behind all the bull-roaring in the Beltway, the Journal cuts to the chase with admirable dispatch:
Some Wall Street stock analysts early on saw the invasion as reason to make bullish calls on the defense sector. A report from JSA Research in Newport, R.I., earlier in the week called the invasion "a bell-ringer for defense stocks."
…The change in administration [after the 2008 election] comes at a time of record profits and sales in the industry, reflecting historic highs in defense spending. Yet budget pressure is already undeniable. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan require laying out almost $12 billion a month and the Pentagon faces a massive tab for repairing and overhauling equipment when troops start coming home.
Now, the Russian situation makes the debate over the equipping of the U.S. military a front-burner issue. "The threat always drives procurement," said a defense-industry official. "It doesn't matter what party is in office."
And here our candid if unnamed war-profit maven has neatly encapsulated both the last century of American policy – and the next century as well: "The threat always drives procurement. It doesn't matter what party is in office." His vatic pronouncement should be emblazoned on billboards, streamed constantly beneath the natterers on TV news, and chiseled in marble on the Capitol Dome. For it is, in a very real sense, what America is about today: Threat. War. Procurement. Profit.
And never doubt the bipartisan nature of this self-devouring system. For even as Democratic "anti-war" icon John Murtha is saber-rattling at Moscow, Democratic "anti-war" icon Barack Obama is saber-rattling at Tehran in the official party platform that his aides have just completed. As Jonathan Schwarz reports, Obama's platform insists that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program – despite the finding by the Bush Administration's own intelligence agencies that it does not. And of course, it goes without saying that this non-existent program is such an overwhelming threat that Obama has pledged that he will be – wait for it – "keeping all options on the table." From Schwarz (see original for links):
Sure, America's intelligence agencies concluded last year December that Iran no longer has a nuclear weapons program. But what do they know? Surely the Democratic Party is far more informed about the situation than them, which is why the Democrats refer to Iran's "nuclear weapons program" in their just-finalized 2008 platform:
Prevent Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons The world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That starts with tougher sanctions and aggressive, principled, and direct high-level diplomacy, without preconditions…. We will present Iran with a clear choice: if you abandon your nuclear weapons program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, you will receive meaningful incentives; so long as you refuse, the United States and the international community will further ratchet up the pressure, with stronger unilateral sanctions; stronger multilateral sanctions inside and outside the U.N. Security Council, and sustained action to isolate the Iranian regime… By going the extra diplomatic mile, while keeping all options on the table, we make it more likely the rest of the world will stand with us to increase pressure on Iran, if diplomacy is failing.
Note also that the Democrats are going to be "keeping all options on the table." I've always wondered whether this phrase includes the possibility of America and Israel giving up all their nuclear weapons. I mean, that's an option—surely if all options on the table, that means our complete nuclear disarmament is there on the table with all the rest of them.
So the beat – and the beat-downs – will keep going on, around the world, and fear will keep driving procurement, no matter what party is in office. As long as we want to guzzle and glut and "project dominance" in every corner of the world, war is all we've got.
First Georgia, now Poland. The Bush Administration announced Thursday that American soldiers will begin manning missile sites in Poland -- part of an agreement that surpasses even the NATO treaty in binding Washington to an armed response to any attack on Polish soil.
Spokesminions for President George Butt-Thumper said the installation of the missile base is designed to protect Poland from an intercontinental missile attack from Iran. (The perfidious Persians' long-standing plans to conquer Poland are well-known, of course.) The minions say that the missiles and troops are not at all intended as a threat to Russia, which is being slowly encircled by NATO bases and American missiles -- despite solemn promises from Washington to refrain from, er, encircling Russia with NATO bases and American missiles.
But while Butt-Thumper was playing coy about the latest interjection of American cannon fodder into the now-roiling region, the Poles were admirably frank: they wanted a signed, ironclad deal that would force Americans to fight for them -- unlike the hapless Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili, who depended on a nod and a wink from militarist factions along the Potomac (apparently John McCain and his neocon crowd) when launching his own sneak attack on South Ossetia. [Justin Raimondo has more on this.]
As we all know, Misha was left up Saakashvili Creek without a paddle when the U.S. cavalry failed to ride to his rescue as expected. (Can there be any other explanation as to why he would launch his tiny military on a reckless adventure that was certain to provoke a massive Russian response? Obviously he thought Uncle Butt-Thumper would back him up.)
But there was none of that boneheaded shilly-shally for the Poles. They took advantage of the Bush Regime's panicky anxiety to look big and tough in front of the Russians and quickly sealed the missile base deal, wringing concessions that Washington had been resisting for 18 months.
The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, put plainly what his country wanted out of the agreement: “Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later — it is no good when assistance comes to dead people. Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of — knock on wood — any possible conflict.”
Poland has an understandable fear of Russia, which has invaded and occupied its territory several times -- most recently, of course, in collaboration with the Bush Family's old business partners, Nazi Germany. Then again, Poland invaded and occupied Russia a few times too, back when it was a major power. Major powers tend to do that kind of thing. Which is why, as I noted in a recent comment exchange, one should be eternally suspicious of any person or group who takes control of massive, inhuman structures like states, because of our common human propensity to abuse power -- and to justify those abuses by claiming they are done in the name of some higher ideal. This applies no matter what system a particular state is based upon: capitalism, communism, theocracy -- or the grotesque chimera that now holds sway in both the United States and Russia: lawless, militarist authoritarian corporate-cronyism.
An American military move into Poland is the height of folly -- then again, we have been living on those dizzy heights for a number of years now, so there's nothing new in that.
But speaking of business partners, so much of the current unpleasantness would never have arisen if the dastard Putin had not begun hoarding Russia's natural resources for his cronies instead of giving it away to Butt-Thumper's buds. One recalls those halcyon days of yore when BP and Shell were striking fat oil and gas deals with Russian partners. Back then, Putin was Butt-Thumper's "soulmate," invited down for barbecues in Crawford. Back then, Putin was praised in the American media as the strong, steady hand that Russia needed, "a man we can do business with." Back then, Putin's astonishingly savage rampage through Chechnya and his installation of a regime of brutal thugs to preside over its remains were lauded as part of the war against Islamofascist terror.
But that was then and this is now. In the past few years, as the Kremlin has tightened its grip on Russia's oil and gas reserves and its indispensable pipelines to Europe, as it has grown rich from the spike in oil prices sparked by Bush's wars and threats of war, as its has rolled back Big Oil's presence in Russia -- often in harsh and humiliating ways -- Putin has steadily emerged in Western eyes as a tyrant, a bully, an ogre who threatens the stability of the entire world. (How long will it be before he is dubbed "the New Hitler"?)
The actual nature of Putin's regime has never mattered to our freedom-loving elites. The only "foreign policy" question they have is this: "Will they play ball? Will they fork over?" If Putin had only let the Western elite have a nice juicy slice of the Russian pie -- and maybe joined in one or two of Butt-Thumper's wars -- why, he could have romped and scampered around the region all he liked. But he didn't, and so now we have a "new Cold War," with Washington pouring oil on the fires in the Caucus and stirring the embers of fear and suspicion on the Russian-Polish frontier.
What next? Landing an expeditionary force in Vladivostok?
UPDATE: As'ad AbuKhalil weighs in with these observations (in separate posts, here and here):
My favorite thing about the whole coverage of the Georgia situation in the U.S. is the way the White House and media are feigning outrage over Russian actions. They just are aghast that a country can send its troops (across the border) under pretext of national security and defense. I mean, the U.S. would never ever send troops, say 10, 000 miles away from its border, under those pretexts. Never.
If I were Putin, I would have toppled the Georgian government, and installed a puppet government and then I would have said: We are here in Georgia at the invitation of the "democratically-elected" government of Georgia, and we will stay in Georgia as long as we are needed, and not one day longer. And I will make decisions on the basis of my military commanders on the ground, and in consultation with the new government of Georgia."
Time pressures preclude proper blogging today, but as our astute commenter Scott Douglas notes, Seamus Milne has an excellent commentary on Georgia and Russia in today's Guardian, so I'm just going to expropriate great swathes of it here:
The outcome of six grim days of bloodshed in the Caucasus has triggered an outpouring of the most nauseating hypocrisy from western politicians and their captive media. As talking heads thundered against Russian imperialism and brutal disproportionality, US vice-president Dick Cheney, faithfully echoed by Gordon Brown and David Miliband, declared that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered". George Bush denounced Russia for having "invaded a sovereign neighbouring state" and threatening "a democratic government". Such an action, he insisted, "is unacceptable in the 21st century".
Could these by any chance be the leaders of the same governments that in 2003 invaded and occupied - along with Georgia, as luck would have it - the sovereign state of Iraq on a false pretext at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives? Or even the two governments that blocked a ceasefire in the summer of 2006 as Israel pulverised Lebanon's infrastructure and killed more than a thousand civilians in retaliation for the capture or killing of five soldiers?
You'd be hard put to recall after all the fury over Russian aggression that it was actually Georgia that began the war last Thursday with an all-out attack on South Ossetia to "restore constitutional order" - in other words, rule over an area it has never controlled since the collapse of the Soviet Union.....
Might it be because Georgia is what Jim Murphy, Britain's minister for Europe, called a "small beautiful democracy". Well it's certainly small and beautiful, but both the current president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and his predecessor came to power in western-backed coups, the most recent prettified as a "Rose revolution". Saakashvili was then initially rubber-stamped into office with 96% of the vote before establishing what the International Crisis Group recently described as an "increasingly authoritarian" government, violently cracking down on opposition dissent and independent media last November. "Democratic" simply seems to mean "pro-western" in these cases.
The long-running dispute over South Ossetia - as well as Abkhazia, the other contested region of Georgia - is the inevitable consequence of the breakup of the Soviet Union. As in the case of Yugoslavia, minorities who were happy enough to live on either side of an internal boundary that made little difference to their lives feel quite differently when they find themselves on the wrong side of an international state border.
Such problems would be hard enough to settle through negotiation in any circumstances. But add in the tireless US promotion of Georgia as a pro-western, anti-Russian forward base in the region, its efforts to bring Georgia into Nato, the routing of a key Caspian oil pipeline through its territory aimed at weakening Russia's control of energy supplies, and the US-sponsored recognition of the independence of Kosovo - whose status Russia had explicitly linked to that of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - and conflict was only a matter of time.
The CIA has in fact been closely involved in Georgia since the Soviet collapse. But under the Bush administration, Georgia has become a fully fledged US satellite. Georgia's forces are armed and trained by the US and Israel. It has the third-largest military contingent in Iraq - hence the US need to airlift 800 of them back to fight the Russians at the weekend. Saakashvili's links with the neoconservatives in Washington are particularly close...[See our previous post on this subject here.]
But underlying the conflict of the past week has also been the Bush administration's wider, explicit determination to enforce US global hegemony and prevent any regional challenge, particularly from a resurgent Russia. That aim was first spelled out when Cheney was defence secretary under Bush's father [more on this here], but its full impact has only been felt as Russia has begun to recover from the disintegration of the 1990s.
Over the past decade, Nato's relentless eastward expansion has brought the western military alliance hard up against Russia's borders and deep into former Soviet territory. American military bases have spread across eastern Europe and central Asia, as the US has helped install one anti-Russian client government after another through a series of colour-coded revolutions. Now the Bush administration is preparing to site a missile defence system in eastern Europe transparently targeted at Russia.
By any sensible reckoning, this is not a story of Russian aggression, but of US imperial expansion and ever tighter encirclement of Russia by a potentially hostile power....
Ah yes, but "sensible reckonings" are in short supply these days, especially among the courtiers and scribes of the Potomac Empire. Bush's insertion of American troops into Georgia, ostensibly to deliver humanitarian aid, is a dangerous and completely unnecessary intervention. (Is it really not possible to get humanitarian aid into a European country without U.S. military assistance?) It also a perfect illustration of Milne's observation of the obvious fact that American foreign policy is driven by the elite's compulsion for "unipolar domination" of world affairs, as we noted here yesterday.
You can see this in the braggadocio of a "senior Pentagon official" who inadvertantly gave the game away about the true nature of the "humanitarian" mission. He told the New York Times that the "relief effort" was meant to "show to Russia that we can come to the aid of a European ally, and that we can do it at will, whenever and wherever we want."
This is not the language of sober professionals guiding the affairs of a great nation, but the schoolyard bluster of two-bit bullies, seeking to allay their own weakness and anxiety with apish displays of force.
II. But while Bush and Co. strut and swagger with tough Cold War talk aimed at Russia, their ongoing destruction of the American Republic continues unabated -- assisted, as it has been every step of the way, by the very institutions that are meant to preserve American liberty and keep a check on tyranny.
Winter Patriot has the goods on a recent federal court ruling that absolves all government personnel of guilt for any crime they may commit on the public payroll. As WP notes, the ruling goes beyond the "Nuremberg defense" favored by Nazis and accomplices in crime and atrocity the world over -- "I was only following orders" -- to add a whole new line of justification: "I was only giving orders."
The ruling, by Appeals Court Chief Judge David Sentelle -- a long-time right-wing apparatchik -- must be seen to be believed. As Reuters reports:
Government employees who engage in questionable acts, such as abusing prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay facility or engaging in defamatory speech, cannot be held individually liable if they are carrying out official duties, the court said.
"The conduct, then, was in the defendants' scope of employment regardless of whether it was unlawful or contrary to the national security of the United States," Appeals Court Chief Judge David Sentelle wrote in the opinion.
WP's excellent analysis of the ruling and its implications should be read in full. But here is a taste, from his conclusion:
So let's recap, shall we? A Federal court has ruled that some of the highest officials in our government are not accountable for their acts of treason, mass murder, war crimes, and crimes against humanity -- not because they were following orders (for surely some of them, especially Karl Rove and Dick Cheney [photo], were giving the orders); not because they thought they were doing something righteous or Blessed by God; but simply because they held positions in the United States government -- regardless of the fact that these actions violated the most serious federal and international laws, regardless of the fact that they all knew their actions were deeply illegal, and regardless of the fact that they were never legitimately elected to those government positions in the first place -- or legitimately re-elected in the second place.
Furthermore, the court decrees, this immunity applies not only to the principals in this case but to all manner of American government officials committing all manner of horrific crimes -- including torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Did you get that? Do you finally get it now?
And these are the people who preach to the world about democracy and freedom and rule of law.
Priming the Pump With Missle Defense: Empty Gestures Full of Blood to Richard Ryckoff --
Smedley Butler talked about that thing you're observing, as did Ike Eisenhower on his last speech as POTUS. Many since those two have commented on the fraud of Star Wars, not the least of which is the problem of space junk pi...
Any Pope in a Storm: Benny Bashes Berlusconi's Neo-Fascism Say what you will about America (and I'm not an American fanboy, wingnut or liberal), at least it doesn't have the kind of openly and unapologetic, far-right, fascist, racist political parties that actually win elections and seats that Europe does. ...
Any Pope in a Storm: Benny Bashes Berlusconi's Neo-Fascism Say what you will about America (and I'm not an American fanboy, wingnut or liberal), at least it doesn't have the kind of openly and unapologetic, far-right, fascist, racist political parties that actually win elections and seats that Europe does. ...
Any Pope in a Storm: Benny Bashes Berlusconi's Neo-Fascism Nice summary Chris. Dan Mcdougall at the Guardian has more on the two Gypsy children that drowned. An excerpt:
[url]http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/18475[/url]
[quote]On the morning of 17 July, Cristina and Violetta, along with the...
Any Pope in a Storm: Benny Bashes Berlusconi's Neo-Fascism "He may be a bastard murderous pope, but he's *our* bastard murderous pope"
Now if we could just get him to adjudicate (pontificate?) how many houses Jesus owned, we could work out whether he was elitist or not.
Priming the Pump With Missle Defense: Empty Gestures Full of Blood Government by insiders. Government as "this thing of ours." You in on this thing? You're set for life. You outside this thing? Listen, you and your grandkids have got to pay for this thing. It sure ain't free.
Great bubbling chunks of the American p...
Priming the Pump With Missle Defense: Empty Gestures Full of Blood Suggestion: Gather all the wives and children of all Raytheon staff and shareholders at 870 Winter Street
Waltham, MA 02451, and invite the Russians to lob a few ICBMs at that target. Then we will know how effective Patriot missiles are, and how safe...
Priming the Pump With Missle Defense: Empty Gestures Full of Blood Paul Craig Roberts recently published a piece in which he tells that his graduate-school mentor told him point-blank that foreign countries do Uncle Sam's bidding because Uncle Sam pays them to do so. The example he offered is Tony Blair, who, even t...
Fun in the Sun: Gitmo Gets Makeover as R&R Resort
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Flowers, fishies, frogs and dolphins, and the most precious, cutesy color printing you ever saw: "Someone who loved me got me this t-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba!"
You can pick up one of these sparkly items for the kids – along with stuffed iguanas, decorated coffee mugs ("Kisses from Guantanamo Bay!"), snazzy keyrings ("It don't GITMO better than this!") and all manner of bric-a-brac from the sun-drenched heaven that bills itself as "Taliban Towers, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort." Yes, the Pentagon has turned the Terror War concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay into a luxurious vacation spot for military personnel and their families – and military contractors, too, of course!
As the Daily Mail reported recently, the Pentagon has splashed out for white sand beaches, a golf course, movie theaters, a bowling alley, restaurants – even a Wal-Mart – right next to the holding pens where Terror War captives have languished in limbo for years, enduring endless isolation,"harsh interrogation techniques" and other holiday amusements.
We don't mean to imply that the serious business going on at Gitmo is ignored, however. Far from it. The gift shop features several items that make antic hay of the concentration camp's dread purpose. Barbed wire and guard towers are a prevalent motif on various cups and shirts, for example. You can sip your beachside latte in a cup that tells the world that the Bush gulag is "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom." And if you find froggies and dolphins a bit too frilly, you can always prepare your kids to take their rightful place in the Terror War imperium with a t-shirt emblazoned "Future Behavior Modification Instructor." It makes learning fun!
Here's more from the Daily Mail (via the Angry Arab):
The Guantanamo holiday trade was exposed by Zachary Katznelson, a British-based human rights lawyer and spokesman for Reprieve, the group leading the international campaign against the camp. "When I see the conditions the prisoners have to cope with and then think of the T-shirt slogans, I am appalled," he said. "To say I am repulsed is an understatement. Unbelievable as it may seem, the US authorities are proud of the 'souvenirs' and what they are doing."
Mr Katznelson represents 28 of the detainees and makes regular visits to the prison. "The military keeps a tight hold on everything that is available in Guantanamo Bay and someone senior has given their approval for this disgusting nonsense," he said…
His anger is shared by other human rights campaigners. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said Guantanamo represents a shameful chapter in American history. Amnesty International said: "These supposedly 'fun' souvenirs are in grotesquely bad taste and the fact that they are on sale at the camp quite frankly beggars belief."
There are currently 280 prisoners sweltering in cages in temperatures of up to 100F (38C). The camp, where 7,000 soldiers are stationed, was established in 2002 following the invasion of Afghanistan…
"The majority are kept in isolation in cells that are no bigger than a toilet," said Katznelson. "There is no sea view. Instead, if they have a window, it looks out on to a bleak corridor. The cells are lined with steel from floor to ceiling, including the toilet, sink and bed base. There is a popular misconception that these men have had trials and been found guilty. Nothing is further from the truth. Not one of them has…
Katznelson continued: "Inmates are offered three meals a day, but there are eight prisoners who have been on hunger strike for over a year asking either for a trial or to be set free. These men are force-fed twice a day. First they are strapped down with 16 different restrictions, including one that jerks their head back. Then a tube is fed through their nose and down into their stomach. The guards don't always use lubrication and regularly use the same tube for several different prisoners without bothering to clean it."
You can read more about the amenities enjoyed by the non-paying guests at Gitmo in this piece, which points you to a mass of material detailing their treatment, including the landmark series from McClatchy Newspapers. ***
In addition to the disgusting gift shop is all of the building that is going on at the base by a construction company with a name that I keep forgetting to look up every time I get back from the base (I too represent detainees) the company is called something like "bremcorp" I will double check when I am back in July. They are building like there is no tomorrow (yikes...maybe they know something) and it looks to me like they do in fact have fun in the sum on their little corporate pea brains... either that or they are making room for the rest of us.
So Gitmo is now America's version of Theresienstadt -- the showcase Jewish concentration camp built by Nazis to convince the rest of the world that their treatment of the Jews was benevolent. I won't be surprised if we someday soon see a film depicting happy prisoners attending Muslim religious services, eating a nice Muslim diet, doing arts and crafts, and reading the poetry of Omar Khayyam, while American guards walk through the happy crowds throwing chocolate bars to the children. . . .
I've been worried about these next few months for some time now. It's kind of hard to imagine Dick Cheney packing up his desk, shrugging, and shambling off into the sunset.
Thank you for the historical reference, jimmythem. It doesn't sound like there are any efforts here "to convince the rest of the world that treatment of the [Guantanamo prisoners is] benevolent." Instead, the message seems to be that the U.S. can exceed the cruelty of the Nazis and laugh about it, mocking international law, centuries of human rights progress, and due process here in the U.S.
Where does such a repugnant attitude towards human life and dignity originate from? It's certainly trademark of the Machiavellian-inspired neocons. On a more personal note, it conjures up the memory of Tucker Carlson's interview with George W. Bush, as he mocked the clemency pleas of TX death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker. "Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me." Yet Disney GITMO is far more disgusting: they never sold t-shirts and coffee mugs making light of Karla Tucker's execution at the Texas Capitol.
The penitentiary at Alcatraz Island serves as a kind of historical monument which is the antithesis of Guantanamo. In more enlightened times, when Alcatraz was closed in 1963, there was a shift towards prisoner rehabilitation rather than punishment in supermax facilities. Since then, the transmogrification of the justice system back into a revenge system has not only eroded Constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment, but even basic principles such as the Presumption of Innocence, and adherence to international law such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly Articles 4-12. Many books, movies, and videos have been produced documenting the abuse of prisoners at Alcatraz. A Google search of "Alcatraz gift shop" turned up a few prison-style t-shirts and coffee mugs, but nothing like the sick souvenirs that celebrate the ongoing torture and human rights crimes at Guantanamo. (Though Guantanamo has always been a sort of Alcatraz on steroids.)
Unfortunately the mindset of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World seems to be contagious in police state Amerika. Part of Alcatraz prison is also set to be converted to a hotel: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...hotel.html
Here's a challenge for the morally bankrupt who cannot grasp the depth of this depravity. Send a proposal to the ADL touting luxury hotels and irreverent souvenirs at the Dachau or Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps, and see what kind of response you get. In all fairness, the ADL did commend the recent Supreme Court decision upholding habeas corpus for Guantanamo prisoners; it would be encouraging if they denounced Disney GITMO as well, but don't hold your breath. Hopefully this tourist claptrap and grift shoppe will be exposed and closed for the shameful, embarrassing icon it is.
The Daily Mail published this nearly 2 months ago on May 5, 2008. More nauseating than the report itself is the gleeful reaction from the fright wing cheerleaders of the "War on Terra." Seeing the child in that t-shirt reminded me of this pic from Mother Jones:
This ray of sunshine remains me of the photos of the happy campers who were employees of the Nazi Concentration Camps. So good to see that the powers that be have got the PR working, much like the cigarette companies and their emulators Big Oil in climate change denialism.
Big problem there will be some unhappy campers who will be so severely distressed at what they have witnessed or done that they will denied the light of day, or at least not be seen or heard on the ever, happy, panglossian Corporate Media.
OK, 420, I'll argue it this way. Theresienstadt was a cynical Germanic expression of the cynical American thought that's responsible for the Gitmo gift shop. The Nazis surely laughed at Theresienstadt for the same reason some Americans will laugh at those Gitmo T-shirts.
I'm surprised they don't give the vacationing families tours of the facilities, perhaps a "ride" of some sort, where they can wheel through the halls, stopping a various torture rooms for a little glimpse of keeping the Homeland safe with harsh interrogations, pausing to watch the "Islamofascists" feeding, rolling past cell after cell, thrilling to the vision of American Might & Righteousness in action. The Tour ends at the lovely Gift Shoppe, while everybody's still throbbing with Patriotism. Why not? When you turn a concentration camp into a vacation spot, why fuck around?
I think we've hit some new levels here, with this novel conflation of sun, surf, barbed wire, and the screams of the tortured in the background, and all the old pejoratives pale into nothing before the spectacle of Empire frolicking on a beach in Hell....
I foresee a TV series. It'll depict comedic aspects of life for prisoners in a place like Devil's Island when the island is governed by types like Gilligan and the Skipper (Cast Adam Sandler and Jack Black). Instead of "Hogan's Heroes" we'll get "Hussein's Villains"?
When it comes to determining the true thrust and implication of world events, the old adage is still valid: "Follow the money."
Flowers, fishies, frogs and dolphins, and the most precious, cutesy color printing you ever saw: "Someone who loved me got me this t-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba!" 
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