Snapshot on USA

http://firefightersfor911truth.org/

As recently as five years ago, it was not possible to talk seriously about the international system without the premise of an American superpower wielding the power of life and death over the planet.

Today, the simplification works the other way round. It has become common currency that the US is in decline and President Barack Obama represents an America that gladly accepts we live in a multipolar world.

Yet, at the very least, this hypothesis is debatable. If the world is multipolar, it is very imperfectly so, and American diplomacy aims to keep things this way.
Power is currently expressed in terms of three assets: material wealth, without which nothing is technically possible (the collapse of the Soviet Union is a case in point); strategic power, which implies the capacity to project force to one’s periphery and beyond; and, finally, what might be called the power instinct – that is, the will to weigh in on world affairs. This last can be through one’s ideas, capabilities or attractiveness.

The evolution in power relations is most palpable on the material front, even if, contrary to general wisdom, the shift in power from the west to Asia has been a relatively slow process. There are now four great economic centres of power: the US, Europe, China and Japan. They are very distantly followed by India, Brazil and Russia. However, it is important to note that Russia’s gross domestic product, for instance, accounts for only 1 per cent of global GDP, compared to a 22 per cent share for the US. This is a long way from economic multipolarity, which would require that the power of various centres should be roughly equivalent.
On the strategic front, the imbalance is even more striking: there is one military superpower that surpasses all the others by far (the US); a rising power (China); a power that lives on its past and can only maintain its rank by dint of its energy resources (Russia); and a plethora of middle-sized actors whose projection capacity remains very weak.

There is no evidence whatsoever of movement towards strategic multipolarity; aside from China, which has the will and the means, and Russia, which has the will but not necessarily the means, no credible aspiring global power has emerged. Brazil and India are certainly becoming stronger militarily. Their strategic ambitions will, nonetheless, remain regional for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, China’s ascendance might reinforce Japan’s strategic dependence on the US, notwithstanding any short-term rifts in Japanese-American relations.

The same paradigm applies to Europe with regard to the Russian challenge. Europe is the only region in the world that refuses to increase military expenditure, as if Europeans had once and for all decided to outsource defence to the US. TheLisbon treaty will change nothing on this front. Attempts to create a European defence industry have met roadblocks that attest to the countless weaknesses of Europe’s putative power.

Turning to power instinct, while many countries undoubtedly have it, not many have the means to match their ambitions. Russia has an important military arsenal. But power does not simply equate with show of force. It also has to do with attraction. Russia is characterised by its absence of attractiveness to almost everyone in the world, save the regimes that have had a brush with the west.

Meanwhile, Europe runs up against the fact that it is not a state. The only influence it commands is a normative one, a capacity to shape the world through the diffusion of norms in global regulation – finance, environment, food security, and so on. This is far from negligible, but cannot make up for the lack of strategic power.

In any case, it is clear why the US does not embrace the rhetoric of a multipolar world that would place it on an equal footing with other important world actors. There is no reason for Washington to accept such a reconfiguration of the global order when it continues to hold an appreciable advantage over other countries in all three areas. It makes sense that the Obama administration prefers to speak in terms of partnerships rather than multipolarity.

The US does understand that it can no longer dominate the world as it pleases, and that the gap that separates it from the rest has shrunk. As a result, the US needs the rest of the world to maintain its pre-eminence, not to dissolve it. The objective is to select privileged partners for international action, to better maintain leadership in all domains.

The world currently shares three global agendas: the strategic agenda that continues to be massively dominated by the US, the economic agenda, which is more widely distributed, and the climate agenda, where the US is clearly on the defensive.
The Obama administration is attempting to stay at the heart of the game by making room for others while preventing the rise either of a coalition that might force its hand on a particular issue, as recently demonstrated by the Singaporeclimate change declaration, or of a challenger that might take its place (China).

Of course, the structure of the international system is in perpetual evolution and America’s willpower alone will not suffice to freeze the game. It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate American influence, after having grossly overestimated it for so long. An even greater mistake would be to conclude that the US has abandoned its bid to remain master of the game, for all the charm of Mr Obama.

This is Obama’s plan for Afghanistan, a carbon-copy of George Bush’s.

[ It is time that we all recognized, as loudly as possible, the quantity of lies that Obama is spouting to jump-start this escalation. We are there to do what we have done everywhere else we have had the opportunity, destroy and rearrange the Muslim world. Like many of us have been saying all along, ethnic division and civil war have always been America's objectives. This is a criminal policy that relies on state terrorism to create the necessary instability. This one fact makes the United States the primary source of terrorism in the world, at this time. Forget about Iran; it's us!]

The Audacity of Ethnic Cleansing

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5344.shtml

Global Research

“Today, we Afghans remain trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other.” Malalai Joya “A Woman Among the Warlords” Scribner Publishing, New York

The Bush administration never had any intention of liberating Afghanistan or establishing democracy. The real aim was to remove the politically-intractable Taliban and replace them with a puppet regime run by a former-CIA asset. The rest of Afghanistan would be parceled-off to the warlords who assisted in the invasion and who had agreed to do much of the United States dirty-work on the ground. In the eight years of military occupation which followed, that basic strategy has never changed. The U.S. is just as committed now as it was at the war’s inception to establish a beachhead in Central Asia to oversee the growth of China, to execute disruptive/covert operations against Russia, to control vital pipeline routes from the Caspian Basin, and to maintain a heavy military presence in the most critical geopolitical area in the world today.

The objectives were briefly stated in a recent counterpunch article by Tariq Ali:

“It’s now obvious to everyone that this is not a ‘good’ war designed to eliminate the opium trade, discrimination against women and everything bad – apart from poverty, of course. So what is Nato doing in Afghanistan? Has this become a war to save Nato as an institution? Or is it more strategic, as was suggested in the spring 2005 issue of Nato Review:

The centre of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward … The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way … security effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability.” (“Short Cuts in Afghanistan”, Tariq Ali, counterpunch)

President Barak Obama’s speech at West Point was merely a reiteration of US original commitment to strengthen the loose confederation of warlords–many of who are either in the Afghan Parliament or hold high political office–to pacify nationalist elements, and to expand the war into Pakistan. Obama is just a cog in a much larger imperial wheel which moves forward with or without his impressive oratory skills. So far, he has been much more successful in concealing the real motives behind military escalation than his predecessor George W. Bush. It’s doubtful that Obama could stop current operations even if he wanted to, and there is no evidence that he wants to.

The Pentagon has settled on a new counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) which it intends to implement in Afghanistan. The program will integrate psyops, special forces, NGOs, psychologists, media, anthropologists, humanitarian agencies, public relations, reconstruction, and conventional forces to rout the Taliban, assert control over the South and the tribal areas, and to quash any indigenous resistance. Clandestine activity and unmanned drone attacks will increase, while a “civilian surge” will be launched to try to win hearts and minds in the densely populated areas. Militarily, the goal is to pit one ethnicity against the other, to incite civil war, and to split the country in smaller units that can be controlled by warlords working with Washington. Where agricultural specialists, educators, engineers, lawyers, relief agencies and NGOs can be used, they will be. Where results depend on the application of extreme violence; it will also be…unsparingly. This is the plan going forward, a plan designed for conquest, subjugation and resource-stripping. Here is an excerpt from Zoltan Grossman’s article in counterpunch “Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires” which details the balkenization strategy:

“We are arming and financing the same vicious men (the Northern Alliance) who brought fundamentalism to Kabul in the first place….Like the Soviets, the Americans do not understand that the insurgency is driven not only by Islamist fundamentalism, but also by ethnic nationalism. In the case of the Taliban, they are representing the grievances of the Pashtuns who have seen the artificial colonial “Durand Line” divide their homeland between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The best way to defuse the Taliban is to recognize the legitimacy of this historical grievance, and incorporate Pashtun civil society into both governments.

But instead of unifying the different ethnic regions of Afghanistan, the NATO occupation seems headed more toward a de facto partition of these regions. The foreign policy team that President Obama has assembled includes some of the same figures who advocated the ethnic-sectarian partition of Yugoslavia and Iraq. Obama’s Special Envoy to Af-Pak, Richard Holbrooke, authored the agreement that partioned Bosnia into Serb and Muslim-Croat republics in 1995, in effect rubberstamping the ethnic cleansing that had forcibly removed populations during a three-year civil war. He also turned a blind eye when Serb civilians were expelled from Croatia the same year, and from Kosovo in 1999.

President Karzai recently instituted a series of laws on women in Shia communities, causing an outcry from women’s rights groups. Hardly unnoticed was his application of different legal standards to different sectarian territories—a sign of de facto (informal) partition. Various “peace” proposals have advocated ceding control of some Pashtun provinces to the Taliban. Far from bringing peace, such an ethnic-sectarian partition would exacerbate the violent “cleansing” of mixed territories to drive out those civilians who are not of the dominant group—the process that brought the “peace of the graveyard” to Bosnia, Kosovo, and much of Iraq.” ( Zoltan Grossman, “Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires” counterpunch)

If Grossman is correct, than Obama’s professed commitment to Afghan liberation merely masks a vicious counterinsurgency strategy that will ethnically cleanse areas in the south while driving tens of thousands of innocent people from their homes. This is essentially what took place in Baghdad during the so-called “surge”; over a million Sunnis were forced from the city by death squads and Shia militia under the watchful eye of US troops. US counterinsurgency wunderkind Gen Stanley McChrystal played a pivotal role in pacifying Iraq, which is why he was chosen by Obama to oversee military operations in Afghanistan. Here’s a clip from an article by Ulrich Rippert “Europe backs Afghanistan strategy aimed at “regionalization”’ on the World Socialist Web Site which provides more details on the plan to Balkenize Afghanistan:

“During his inaugural visit to Washington, new German defense secretary, Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg said it was necessary to put aside “the romantic idea of democratization of the whole country along the lines of the western model” and instead “transfer control of individual provinces step by step to the Afghan security forces.”

The new strategy of “regionalization” is aimed at dividing Afghanistan into individual cantons—in a similar manner to what took place in Lebanon and the former Yugoslavia. Up to now the US-NATO occupation supported the government of Hamid Karzai and sold the process to the public as “democratization”. However, occupation forces are moving increasingly to hand over power directly to regional warlords and their militias—on the assumption that such regional forces will follow the orders of their imperial masters. As soon as there is no more danger in a specific province, Guttenberg declared, then the international troops should be withdrawn from that area.” (Ulrich Rippert “Europe backs Afghanistan strategy aimed at “regionalization”’, World Socialist Web Site)

Obama’s escalation is not aimed at strengthening democracy, liberating women or bringing an end to the brutal, misogynist rule of religious fanatics. It is pure, unalloyed imperial politics, the rearranging of the map and its people to serve Washington’s interests. As journalist Alex Lantier notes on the World Socialist Web Site, the plan does not end with Afghanistan, but stretches across the globe. The hard-right policymakers behind Obama, still have not abandoned their dream of global rule. Here’s an excerpt:

“As Obama indicated elsewhere in his speech, this escalation is one step in plans for even broader wars. “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,” he said, “and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Mentioning Somalia and Yemen as potential targets, he added, “our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.”

The inclusion of this passage made clear that Obama was basing his Afghan policy on a report issued last month by Anthony Cordesman of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Cordesman wrote: “The President must be frank about the fact that any form of victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be part of a much wider and longer struggle. He must make it clear that the ideological, demographic, governance, economic, and other pressures that divide the Islamic world mean the world will face threats in many other nations that will endure indefinitely into the future. He should mention the risks in Yemen and Somalia, make it clear that the Iraq war is not over, and warn that we will still face both a domestic threat and a combination of insurgency and terrorism that will continue to extend from Morocco to the Philippines, and from Central Asia deep into Africa, regardless of how well we do in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

He added: “…the present level of US, allied, Afghan and Pakistani casualties will almost certainly double and probably more than triple before something approaching victory is won.” (Alex Lantier “Obama’s speech on Afghanistan: A compendium of lies” World Socialist web Site)

In the years ahead, we can expect to see relief and reconstruction efforts stepped up to provide security in the heavily-populated areas while the war in the south is expanded and intensified. Tajiks and Uzbeks, in the Afghan military will be enlisted to fight or expel their Pashtun countrymen, while warlords, druglords and human rights abusers are handed over large swathes of the countryside. 30,000 more troops is not enough to lock-down all of Afghanistan, but it may be enough to force hundreds of thousands of people into regional bantustans where they can be controlled by bloodthirsty chieftains, the very same men who leveled Kabul on April 28, 1992, killing 80,000 Afghan civilians.

This is Obama’s plan for Afghanistan, a carbon-copy of George Bush’s.

Obama and the Same Old Bush Lies, for the Same Reasons

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KL05Df01.html

The war in Afghanistan is being escalated on false pretenses. There is zero chance to “win” the war with the “new” (which is the same old failed) strategy and everybody involved with it knows it. When Obama and McChrystal use the words “win” and “victory,” they are not using the same dictionary used by the rest of the human race. “Victory” to them, means that the greater undefined mission can continue, not come to an end.

Afghanistan, like Iraq, will never see the withdrawal of American/NATO forces; that’s why all the giant super-bases are needed in both countries. That also applies to the massive super-embassy being built in Islamabad. “Victory” is not winning, but is the point in the war when large numbers of troops fighting this war can be safely transferred to the next war. This is what we are seeing in the so-called withdrawal from Iraq and will probably see in the anticipated withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011. There will never be a real American withdrawal from any of these countries, unless it is forced upon them by the people.

Just like Iraq, Afghanistan has been drawn-out until the start of the next war in Pakistan. This is done with the fraudulent war strategy of training replacement armies to fight the enemies which America’s superior forces could not defeat. Switching missions from an offensive war to a training mission merely gives the adversary time to reinforce. All the generals and strategists are aware of this; it is simply a part of the plan. The plan has nothing to do with defeating anyone, except maybe for eventually defeating the Russians. We might also fight for the sake of denying energy resources to our greater adversaries, the Chinese.

The “war on terror” is in reality, a war on mediocrity. We are waging this war in order to maintain our position as “Number One” boss of the world. Our leaders have determined that we cannot accept any other nation becoming our equal, meaning that they would have to share the power that they have accumulated unto themselves. The infamous document from the “neocon” Project for a New American Century, which clearly delineates this triumphal American ideology, is not an expression of a radical minority, but rather, a summation of the single American ideology which is common to both political parties. There are two neoconservative parties in America, masquerading as opposites.

The escalation in southern Afghanistan is embraced by both parties, as American and NATO forces move against local Taliban, hoping to push all the fighters into Balochistan, or back into South Waziristan. The entire war effort has consisted of herding the militants wherever central command planned to go next. This is the reason that many of the posts along the Durand Line were closed before Pakistan moved into S. Waziristan. Who ever heard of military planners opening the back door before coming in the front? How can one pincer by itself perform a pincer movement?

As long as the American people are willing to wage war without defined missions, our so-called leaders will be able to play these dangerous games. One would think that the ever loyal American veterans would grow tired of watching their comrades and their own children die for wars based on nothing but lies. The dishonor they bring upon all servicemen, by not speaking-up for their own, will haunt them until the day they die. Soldiers who are martyred in the liberation of countries are rightly honored, but who will honor those who have given their lives in wars fought to enslave mankind?

The American people were enlisted in this war under the pretense of fighting against a malignant evil, only to see this war hijacked in the service of other causes. The fight against terrorists has become a war against nuclear proliferation, a war for Israel’s security, a war for oil, a war for any reason they dream-up.

What has become of the moral sense of the people of the United States? Has life for us become so hard and uncertain that we will support any effort to merely keep things from getting worse, even if that means turning every country, especially our own, into a police state? We surrender our rights to choose our own destinies when we submit to the extortion that to do otherwise will make things get a lot worse. Isn’t this the same threat that Prince Bandar allegedly made to the British Crown over ending pay-offs–that failing to comply with his demands would mean that the terror against Britain would get a lot worse?

If we don’t support Obama and McChrystal’s surge, then what will happen? They tell us that if we don’t let them have their way, then the terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan will only grow worse. I say that is a total lie. If they do escalate the Special Forces and Predator strikes into Pakistan, launching a powerful counter-insurgency campaign, then I guarantee that everywhere will become like Peshawar is today. Peshawar is bombed daily, because the armies of militants were driven to the city’s doorstep.

Apparently these assholes haven’t figured-out the formula for this war yet—the more innocent people you kill, the more young men will volunteer to fight against the Americans to avenge them. The anti-American terrorism that makes the whole world suffer is not a spontaneous phenomenon; it is a reaction against what we have been doing in that part of the world for a lot longer than this current war has been raging. They fight because we kill their friends and relatives, simple as that.

America’s military leaders act as if they make policy for the politicians, instead of the other way around. They make their plans and tell us that we must stick to them; else our “American way of life” will perish from the face of this earth. Well, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, after all. They don’t bother to own-up to the facts about our precious way of life, even though everything around us screams-out about the utter wrongness of our ways.

The continuing global economic collapse has been precipitated by American greed and profit-takers upsetting the balance of the international economic system. The low-level world war we see before us is a direct result of the many unnecessary low-level wars we have started, trying to preserve our inflated status. One day soon, the world will hold American leaders accountable for what they have done to the world in their greed. But in the end, it will be the American people, who will pay the price for the havoc that has been unleashed, in addition to the hundreds of millions globally who live in our chosen war zones. In the end, America as we know it will cease to exist within the global American empire, or in the catastrophic chaos that will result from failure of the empire. Either way, the America of our youth is no more.

It will only be through our own uprising and chaining these criminal psychopaths who run and ruin our Nation that the world will be spared what is barreling down the road at us. The war in Afghanistan is but an act of very desperate men.

Our Lie-Based Reality

http://www.oilempire.us/worldwar4.html

http://rawstory.com/2009/12/scahill-us-military-in-pakistan/

Our government cannot function without the trust of the people. Without unshakeable faith that the people will allow the government to proceed, the governing coalitions of politicians will not dare to implement their own plans. Fear of popular reprisals (which could diminish their power) restrains even the most devious politicians from acting. Even Hitler himself would not have dared to proceed with his vile plans, if he hadn’t believed that the people would let him get away with it. When government plans are so repulsive that no sane person would support them, then it becomes necessary to construct a false version of reality to spoon-feed the people, in order to gain the requisite trust, and with it, the people’s consent.

This is our current situation in America and throughout the Americanized world.

Government could not function, commerce could not go forward, human interaction would become even more restraineed, if the false “official version” of reality suddenly collapsed. For then, all we would have left is the cold hard reality that our government has necessarily kept from us.

If the official versions of events were blown away, we could clearly see the obvious truths and the absurdity of the lies that concealed them.

Perhaps then, for a brief second, we would laugh at the apparent contradictions in the “magic bullet” official explanation of the single, undamaged bullet, which allegedly killed President Kennedy and wounded Gov. John Connally, a feat which required the bullet to change course in midair.

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that anyone would laugh if we all suddenly admitted to ourselves and to each other the obvious absurdity in claims that kerosene fires reduced concrete and steel into talcum powder in two one-hundred story skyscrapers, which collapsed at freefall speed.

Laughing over the absurdity of the official lies that have been used to justify killing a million or more innocent souls would be a macabre sacrilege, an affront to both God and man. Yet, isn’t that what many of us have been doing all along, as we celebrated our retribution against the official scapegoats, while others revelled in the brutality of our military’s executioners, high-fiving their teammates over missions accomplished?

But none of this is happening; no absurd lies are being exposed. No air is being cleared. For politicians, who are afraid to put-on their pants in the morning, without first testing the political wind, there isn’t the slightest hint of the piles of fetid, rotting flesh that our troops are accumulating in invaded foreign lands, in their missions of “liberation.” They have received no indications that We the People will not continue to allow them to “liberate” our world into a quite real state of slavery.

Operating under the absurd delusion that American and NATO troops (who are destroying multiple nations) are there to “defend America,” throngs of people gather for patriotic parades, heaping piles of honors upon those highly-trained young men who kill for false visions of “God and country.” If only these men who hold honor and service to mankind in such high esteem (even though they are bathed in the blood of innocence) could see beyond the carefully constructed false reality for just a moment, then their own consciences (if they still had them) would probably convince them of their own personal guilt and immorality. If the devil that blinds their eyes could be restrained for but a moment, then perhaps God would come rushing back in.

But that is not happening. As a result, we stand ready to up the ante in Afghanistan, as the American people watch their TV sets and ignore the fact that Obama is about to make our criminal assault on the Pashtun people a whole lot worse. Because Obama’s behavioral specialists have taken America’s temperature and pronounced us willing participants in allowing the escalation of the slaughter, he will hold the banner of righteous retribution over his head, like some black knight in shining armor, leading the charge to slay the great beast called “al Qaida.”

Obama and McChrystal will lead us into Pakistan in hot pursuit of an apparition, chasing the great bloody “Islamist” beast which has so obligingly preceeded us into this prized territory. Wasn’t that convenient, that these evil militants created the conditions for us, which would make it possible to go where we have always wanted to be, Western Pakistan?

This brings us back to the greatest contradictions in the official story of the “war on terror” (despite repeated denials and charges of “ludicrous” and “absurdity”), the militants, who are invariably described as “Islamists,” always create the conditions that will justify American intervention, wherever energy interests crop-up. Claims that we are at war with “militant Islam” justify sending US forces wherever the militants appear, and they always appear in areas where American oil companies are already focused. Isn’t that convenient? ”Islamists” in Central Asia are the vanguard of American expeditionary forces, probing deeply into energy-rich territories of the former Soviet Union. No matter what

western media reports may say to the contrary, rest assured that Russian investigators are aware of all this as they investigate this week’s bombing of the Nevsky Express.

Pakistan, the great prize in the current phase of the Imperial war project, is being pryed open like ripened fruit, to facilitate advancing American forces. The great irony here, is that this is being done for America by Pakistanis. The “Islamists” who are turning the Central Asian states into the next battlegrounds have all received their basic training in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now these black crows have returned home to roost, as they ply their evil trade in the North West Frontier Province and FATA. Safely entrenched there, despite recent pseudo-offensives allegedly launched against them by the Army, the militants perform a carefully choreographed dance with their former trainers, the ISI and the Army. Their dance creates the illusion of tribal war, projecting the image of the Army as the great defenders of the “Land of the Pure,” validating further Army escalations, which, in themselves ,will justify the next phase of the American occupation.

Following the pattern that was set in the very beginning by Pres. Carter and Mr. Brzezinski, a bunch of “stirred-up Muslims” have justified every American intervention in Afghanistan, just as they are now validating steps into Pakistan and into Central Asia. It is a time-tested ploy that has worked on the American people every time it has ever been played. It has been so easy to sell an un-Christian assault against all those scary dark-skinned Muslims to such a bigoted, frightened racist nation as the United States. This is the primary reason that we have been given a black president, to dispute the charge that this is a racist war. How could it be a racist war, if it is being led by a black man? The cleverness of our captors is only exceeded by their audacity. They, like their mentor Hitler, understand fully the meaning of the “big lie” concept–make your lies so big and outrageous that they are beyond the ability of the common man to question them.

Hesitation by Obama as he tried to play the “Islamist” card once again, tells us that rising popular displeasure with this war is undermining confidence within the ruling class that the people will accept much more of this. Hence, before the new escalation was announced, it was revealed that an “exit strategy” was also being sought. This act of misdirection restored the leaders’ confidence that the people would take the bait and swallow this latest escalation whole, hook, line and sinker.

With this renewed confidence in the people continuing to act like sheep being led to the slaughter, Obama is announcing the new exit strategy/escalation before an obedient, if not down-right adoring audience, today at West Point. The only thing that will prevent the unfolding of this premeditated act of mass-murder is a sudden revelation for our secret leaders that the old official lies aren’t going to cut it anymore, that We the Sheeple won’t play along with the usual bullshit anymore. The only thing that will save our rotten souls, is if we all get really mad at ourselves for allowing this travesty of international justice to continue, and convince our overlords that our minds have been changed. First, we must get mad, then, we must convince them just how angry we really are.

We the People are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore!

more about “YouTube – The Beginning…“, posted with vodpod

Scream it from every street corner and every other venue....

Spies for Hire: New Online Database of U.S. Intelligence Contractors

by Tim Shorrock, Special to CorpWatch
November 16th, 2009

CorpWatch Releases Online Database of U.S. Intelligence Contractors
Joint project with SPIES FOR HIRE author Tim Shorrock
Now available at SPIES FOR HIRE.org

Contacts:

• Tim Shorrock: E-mail: timshorrock [at] gmail [dot] com
Tel: +1-901/361-7441

• CorpWatch: Tonya Hennessey: E-mail: tonya [at] corpwatch [dot] org
Tel: +1-650/273-2475

SPIES FOR HIRE CorpWatch press release-FIN.pdf

For immediate release
November 16, 2009
WASHINGTON – Starting today, journalists, activists, and corporate researchers will be able to use the Internet site SpiesForHire.org to track the nation’s most important intelligence contractors.
Increasingly, secret drone attacks in Pakistan, CIA prisons in Guantanamo, and domestic surveillance of American citizens, have drawn public scrutiny to U.S. intelligence. These and other policies have triggered calls for criminal investigations and congressional commissions to investigate possible abuses in the post-9/11 “war on terror.”
But there’s a big piece missing from the national debate about spying: the role of private intelligence contractors. After journalist Tim Shorrock’s 2008 investigation, U.S. officials confirmed that 70 percent of the U.S. intelligence budget goes directly to private companies working under contract to the CIA, the NSA, and other agencies. With the U.S. intelligence budget estimated at $60 billion a year, the outsourced business of intelligence is a $45 billion annual industry.
To help the public and media understand this new phenomenon, CorpWatch is joining today with Shorrock, the first journalist to blow the whistle on the privatization of U.S. intelligence, to create a groundbreaking database focusing on the dozens of corporations that provide classified intelligence services to the United States government.
This database expands on Shorrock’s 2008 book, SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.
SpiesForHire.org’s detailed descriptions and histories of the companies that make up this new class of mercenaries will make it your guide to the new U.S. Intelligence-Industrial Complex.
Included are defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon; lesser-known but still influential companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and CACI International; and dozens of Beltway Bandits that have set up shop in D.C. and environs to feed the government’s insatiable appetite for contract intelligence.
These contractors, database users will find, do it all:
• At the CIA, they conduct interrogations at Guantanamo, run stations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hotspots, and help transport suspected terrorists— including some later found innocent—to countries known to practice torture.
• At the NSA, they work alongside agency employees at listening posts in Maryland, Georgia, Hawaii, the UK, and elsewhere to monitor telephone calls and emails between U.S. citizens and targeted foreigners.
• From bases in Nevada and Virginia, they control the military and CIA Predators that launch missiles at suspected terrorist bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• Contractors also run covert operations, write intelligence reports that are passed up the line of command all the way to the president, and advise agencies on how to spend taxpayer dollars.
SpiesForHire.org is a component of CorpWatch’s existing Crocodyl database on global corporations. Based on Shorrock’s research for his book and for CorpWatch, Salon, Mother Jones, and other publications, the site will feature essential information ab0ut each major contractor, such as its key executives for intelligence operations, its major intelligence clients, and an analysis of its role in the U.S. intelligence system.
The database is an ongoing project. Starting from a base of a dozen companies and intelligence agencies, it will eventually include all the major private sector players in the business of U.S. government spying. Each profile will be regularly updated. Unlike Crocodyl, which registered users can augment, SpiesForHire.org will be edited exclusively by Shorrock and the CorpWatch staff, who will also vet and fact check any volunteer or whistleblower contributions.
Since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government’s use of private sector contractors for tasks of war has made headlines: Halliburton’s lucrative Iraqi reconstruction contracts, CACI International’s civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib, and Blackwater’s (now Xe) shooting of noncombatants in Baghdad—to name a few. Less well known is U.S. contractor involvement in Latin America, for example in executing the U.S. war on drugs in countries like Colombia.
This site will, for the first time, expose the size and scope of the private sector’s influence on U.S. intelligence agencies—and the government’s unsettling efforts to hide the facts.
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A global community of non-profit, independent investigative research, journalism and advocacy around issues of multinational corporate accountability and transparency, the CorpWatch community of sites provides tools and resources for critical vigilance and advocacy through a global effort of NGOs, journalists, activists, whistleblowers and academics. Through its family of websites and social media, we seek to expose multinational corporations that that profit from war, fraud, environmental, human rights and other abuses, and to provide critical information to foster a more informed public and an effective democracy.
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ABOUT TIM SHORROCK
Tim Shorrock is an investigative journalist who has spent a quarter-century researching the intersection of national security and business. SPIES FOR HIRE, his groundbreaking book on the privatization of U.S. intelligence, was published to great acclaim in 2008 bySimon & Schuster, and released in paperback in May 2009. Shorrock’s work has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad, including The Nation, Salon, Mother Jones, Harper’s, Inter Press Service, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, The Journal of Commerce, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Asia Times. He appears frequently as a commentator on U.S intelligence and foreign policy, and has been interviewed on Pacifica’s “Democracy Now,” Air America, and CBS Radio. Shorrock grew up in Japan and South Korea, and now lives in Washington, D.C., where he researches government contracts for an AFL-CIO union representing federal employees.

On ClimateGate

[Environmentalism is a diversion, designed by the ruling elite to distract the antiwar movement. It is much easier to defend the planet than it is to go after the military-industrial-complex that is destroying it. Any movement that embraces the Pentagon as a leading force for environmental awareness, even though it is the environment’s greatest enemy, is a movement based on hypocrisy....]

Israel is a dangerously young and immature nation....

Les juifs sont en Israel uniquement parce que les Occidentaux ont décidé de les y installer.....

http://ziofascism.net/blog/isr-eli-terror/shaped-by-terrorism-nourished-by-blood/

http://filkkaisrael.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post.html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23456

"Secular Jews" think "G_d" gave them the land....?

I guess "G_d" is where you find him... even for people who aren't observant, you can convince them "G_d" owes them something.

All I see is a bunch of bloated Western white guys handing Israel money and weapons hand over fist, indulging all of Israel`s whims, using Israel as a tool and an excuse to brutalize and destabilize the Mideast, as well as using it as an oversized money-laundering scheme.

I guess that makes them "G_d".....

Israel is a dangerously young and immature nation....

Nations are like people. With age and experience, they grow up and mature.... Britain is a hugely old country that has seen empires rise and fall, including its own. It`s self-confident because it once ruled the world, but also rather bitter and liable to criticise itself, because it lost it all.... America is a mature country at the height of its self-confidence, though that may change as it loses world domination.... Israel likes to believe it's an old country, drawing on largely fictitious foundation myths, but in fact it`s a very young country,a creation of the 20th century. Like a lot of teenagers it`s insecure, impulsive, aggressive, confused war crimes machine....filled with murderous assassins, ruled like a mafia...and about what it wants to be, while also energetic and capable of much if it sorts itself out.... The belief that Israel is a three thousand year old continuum is dangerous because it masks this reality even to Israel itself....

There is nowhere written in the Torah that the land was exclusively given to (a) The tribe of Judah (b) the followers of Theodor Herzl.... The Palestinians who rightfully can claim descent both to Abraham AND to Jacob,have the very same right to the land as the present day members of the tribe of Judah. I suggest that both Jews and Palestinians start to accept these facts....

The real reason Israel wants to take out Iran's nuclear capability

The real reason Israel wants to take out Iran's nuclear capability

U.S. intelligence sources have told WMR that the actual reason why Israel is gearing up for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites is because Israel fears that while its own nuclear weapons are degrading, Iran stands a chance of acquiring more potent weapons.

Intelligence sources report that since Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert was damaged in a fuel rod explosion during a refueling operation, its ability to reprocess plutonium for its nuclear weapons stockpile has been severely diminished. The accident occurred because the Israelis overstressed their Fast Breeder Reactor unit, causing it to become unstable. In 1997, a judge in Tel Aviv ordered the government to pay the family of Haim Itah, a worker at Dimona, NIS 2.5 million, because of cancer he contracted due to radiation leaks at the facility. The leaks were reported to have involved at least one accident at Dimona. The court decision also cited the "negligent safety" policies of Dimona's top management.

Israel has also been forced to quietly re-establish its global nuclear smuggling operations, rampant during the 1960s when it was working to acquire nuclear weapons.

Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor capabilities have always been clouded in maximum secrecy. However, the clam that Dimona was upgraded to a 75-megawatt reactor from its original 25-megawatt design came from Seymour Hersh's book "The Samson Option." In actuality, Israel's 25-megawatt power reactor produces up to 75-megawatts of thermal heat or steam due to inefficiencies in heat exchangers and turbine losses. A reactor of this size can only produce about one to two 30-kiloton size bombs per year with a maximum core/pit life, before reprocessing, of six to fourteen years. If the reactor has been operating for about 40 years, then the maximum number of weapons produced would be no greater than sixty 30-kiloton sized weapons. The maximum number of times that a nuclear core/pit can be reprocessed is about two to three times, due to plutonium losses when the core is re-manufactured. This is determined by the purity of the metal, its alloy content, and its designed detonation size. One single 25-megawatt nuclear reactor, during its lifetime, can only maintain approximately thirty to sixty 30-kiloton sized plutonium warheads per reactor.

WMR has learned that the diminished capabilities of the Negev Nuclear Research Center prompted Israel, in the 1990s, to actively smuggle nuclear materials, including enriched plutonium, to Israel. The smuggling operations immediately became known to the CIA's Counterproliferation Division and its non-official cover (NOC) Brewster Jennings & Associates operation headed up by Valerie Plame.

U.S. intelligence has learned that the Israelis are worried about a nuclear weapons gap with both Pakistan and Iran. Although there is no evidence to suggest that Iran has re-started its nuclear weapons development program since ceasing it in 2003, as reported by CIA, if Iran were to re-establish its program, the math has Israel concerned.

The Iranian reactor was originally an American designed 100-megawatt power/300 megawatt thermal reactor provided to the Shah's regime in 1975. The reactor at Bushehr on the Gulf was built by the Germans and completed by the Russians. If it were re-engineered for weapons development, the reactor has the ability to produce up to eight 30-kiloton plutonium weapons per year or about a total of 96 nuclear weapons in a fourteen year cycle before plutonium reprocessing would be necessary. As the Israeli weapons age, their total stockpile will be reduced to less than 30 weapons within fourteen years, while the Iranian stockpile would grow to 96 weapons of equal explosive size. Thus, a nuclear weapons gap would exist between Israel and Iran. The Israelis are in a panic because they are losing the nuclear race with Iran and Pakistan. Therefore, through its influence with the United States, Great Britain, and France, Israel is seeking to destabilize both Iran and Pakistan. In the case of Pakistan, Israel also has the assistance of India. The security and future of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is reportedly, and ironically, on the agenda of talks in Washington between President Obama and Prime Minister Indian Manmohan Singh, even as the United States cements a nuclear cooperation pact with New Delhi, which, like Pakistan and Israel, has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Iran is a signatory of the NPT.

Israel's search for replacement enriched plutonium hit pay-dirt when its intelligence service discovered that the Pantex nuclear facility near Amarillo, Texas, stores enriched plutonium fuel that is 99 percent pure plutonium that does not require reprocessing for another 60 to 90 years. However, the Department of Energy has plans to store much of the nuclear fuel now at Pantex at the very secure Yucca Mountain storage complex within the Nevada Test Site. WMR previously reported that Mossad agents are extremely active at military and nuclear sites in Nevada, including the Nevada Test Site. However, Israeli scientists may have already penetrated the security at the Nevada Test Site through a joint operation with the United States. WMR has learned that U.S. and Israeli scientists are co-testing newer electromagnetic core/pit compression techniques that does not use conventional explosives as the weapon detonator. Instead, the fuel is magnetically compressed. The technique overcomes the plutonium aging issue while allowing for the development of micro-nuclear weaponry.For example, 650 grams of force per square centimeter is all that is required to compress a plutonium core into a critical state. 750 grams is the minimum amount of plutonium that is needed in order to produce a nuclear explosion. One kilogram of plutonium produces an explosive yield equal to one kiloton of TNT.

The Israelis discovered that only U.S. nuclear cores composed of plutonium alloys were ripe for theft at Pantex. The 99 percent plutonium fuel was more well-guarded. Because the older plutonium cores required refrigeration to keep them cooler than 150 degrees, the Israelis used refrigeration trucks to move the cores through the post of Houston and into refrigeration containers loaded on board ships belonging to Zim-American Israeli Shipping Company, a firm with close links to the Mossad. From Houston, the plutonium alloy cores were shipped to Israel and Dimona.

One individual who had the port of Houston under close scrutiny was CIA contractor/informant/source Roland "Tony" Carnaby. Carnaby had set up a number of video surveillance cameras at the port of Houston and routinely uploaded the stored videos from the camera units to his Macintosh computer. In April 2008, Carnaby was shot to death by two Houston police officers after what was reported to have been a high-speed chase by police. After he was killed, the Houston police took possession of Carnaby's Macintosh computer. WMR previously reported that Carnaby kept Israeli intelligence assets and agents under close scrutiny in Houston and that he had a strange encounter with an Israeli Consulate General official the evening before he was shot. WMR also previously reported on Mossad's penetration of the Houston Police Department and the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Harris County Sheriff Adrien Garcia has visited Israel and is considered close to the Israeli intelligence operation in Houston. Garcia's overall agenda was also never trusted by Carnaby, according to our sources in Houston. Conveniently, security for the port of Houston comes under Harris County and Garcia. Radiation detectors routinely scan containers at Houston for the presence of nuclear materials, hence, it is important for the Mossad to counteract security at the port.

On August 13, 2008, WMR reported: "WMR previously reported that slain retired CIA station chief in Houston, Roland 'Tony' Carnaby, gunned down gangland-style on April 29 by Houston police after his vehicle ran out of gas, not after a 'high-speed chase' as alleged by Houston police, had a tepid and wary relationship with Israeli intelligence operatives in Houston. Carnaby was contracted to the Port of Houston, as well as the two Houston area international airports, to provide security consultative services. An Israeli firm, Orsus, is currently installing an integrated security monitoring system that will link video surveillance, visitor control, and police dispatch systems to a 24-hour Port Coordination Center. It is known that Carnaby used a number of cell phones to dial into port video cameras to turn them on, stop them, and download captured video data. The Israeli firm was scheduled to begin installation of its system this month.The financial backers of Orsus include ComSor Venture Fund LDC, a joint operation of Comverse Technology, which includes its subsidiary Verint Systems, and Soros Fund Management's Quantum Industrial Holdings Ltd. Other investors in Orsus include Israel's Koor Industries, the leading shareholder of Tadiran, the Israeli defense electronics firm; Cial Industries and Investment, an Israeli holding company; the Cedar Fund, an 'Israeli-related' venture capital firm; Israel Infinity Venture Capital Fund; and Poalim Capital Markets, a subsidiary of Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank."

Carnaby was, reportedly, working with the FBI on the Israeli nuclear smuggling issue and the FBI office in Houston requested that the Houston police call off their chase of Carnaby. WMR has also learned that one of the Israeli agents involved in the Pantex smuggling is the agent known as "Stinky" by FBI surveillance teams. He is called "Stinky" because of his obeseness and sloppy eating habits. "Stinky" was linked to the clubbing death of CIA missile expert William Bennett in Landsdowne, Virginia, near Leesburg, in March of this year and the assassination of weapons developer Gerald Bull in 1990 in Brussels. Bennett had uncovered evidence that Israel had shared with or sold to China and Russia classified U.S. Patriot missile and stealth technology with China and Russia.

Stinky has been seen in the Amarillo area with a crew from New Jersey and he is believed to have re-entered the United States, after the hit on Bennett, on a false Canadian passport.

Just a few sobering and random thoughts for recognition-seeking Indians.....and a whole host of others..... especially ARABS.........

ANALYSIS
Just a few sobering and random thoughts for recognition-seeking Indians.....and a whole host of others..... especially ARABS.........

Insightful article. But just don't stop there.....read it ALL.

The challenge is how to leverage this "beautiful friendship" into Indian strategic gain to become the unquestioned hemegon in the region. Anything less would be a disaster for India. India has two choices a) assert control, by force if required, and bring the region back into an 'indic" civilizational fold or b) allow Wahabbi Islam to gain ascendency throughout the region, including India. Sorry for putting these into "mathematical" whatever, but it cannot get any CLEARER than this.

Regarding the article. We Americans certainly know how to "use" our friendship. Starting from the kindergarten level, we teach our children "what is in it for me?" In short, what we do get out of this friendship. We do not teach them to "obey" us parents, we teach them to "negotiate" with us showing them how best they can leverage the discussions to their advantage -from when they are in their terrible twos.

So behind that innocuous NGO facade, there is a hidden-agenda which we always maintain discreetly. Please do not take our friendship for granted. Permanent friends vs. interests yada yada...! You will be made to pay the price of that friendship each and every time. The question for India is the level of friendship you wish to seek with us. You can either approach us as Pakistanis or the Chinese. Either you open your arms or your ...s! It is not surprising that Pakistanis feel like "used condoms" every time we 'engage' with them.

Also remember, Americans respect strength. If you show no self-respect and come to us groveling and on your knees, there will be a natural tendency of us to kick where it hurts most. Watch our Sports?game/Hunting/Fishing shows on American TV channels. You will know what I mean. This should be made mandatory for Indian babus to watch these shows. Watch the intensity, respect, and the interaction that American hunter expresses towards his "sport" and you will get a fairly good idea how Americans foreign policy is conducted. Even the staid PBS National Geographic shows on African wildlife is depicted as a fight for space and survival between the hunter and the hunted. This is classic American approach to foreign policy. I teach at a local American post-secondary educational institution. When asked how we should deal with AfPak, almost 100% of the students express "nuke 'em sons-of-bitches. Nuke 'em all!" The sober ones suggest creating a wall around them with no interaction with the outside world and letting themselves kill each other (pheasant hunting season is in full swing locally and people are just loving it!) For the record, this statement was made a day after the Fort Hood carnage. I am not here to debate what is right and wrong It is just the way it is!

That way I admire the ISI/Pak army chutzpah for having the tenacity to play this charade for the past sixty years. Unbeknownst to the Americans, it is the tail which has been wagging the dog - and continues to do so!

If India cannot call this bluff off, or confront it head-on, it just validates the fundamental weakness of the Indian foreign policy.

Just a couple of Google searches and some other random thoughts...

Indians need to think what constitutes friendship. Americans and Indians have very different concept of such terms. Words like "sharing," "secular," "friendship," "interesting," etc. have very different connotation and meaning in the USA and India.

To wit:

a) "Sharing": When I first arrived in the USA, the local church would always invite me to "share." Of course, "sharing" to them meant for me to accept their God and Jesus Christ (and reject mine). They were such party-poopers when they wouldn't allow me to "share" my God Krishna (Reggie hurt!). So never consider "sharing" as a equal-equal reciprocal arrangement in the American context. More likely, sharing in the USA means "I am allowing you to become/partake a part of me/goods and services on my terms and conditions (and you better be grateful about it!)." There is a reason why Africans say, in reference to the Europeans, "When they came, we had the land, they had the bible; when we converted, we had the bible, and they had the land." Just wanted to put that cautionary sign on.

b) "Secular": The most recent faux pax was the Indian General's speech at Yudh Abhyas, Babina. He extolled the virtues and commonality of India and USA as both being "secular." This sort of nonsense and lack of knowledge extends within the highest reaches of the GoI and its officials (who was the MEA babu coordinating this show? Must be sacked). The word "secular" has ABSOLUTELY different meaning in the USA vis-a-vis India. What do you think I as an American general/top brass for the Babina show, thinking? Driving from Agra to Babina, seeing the filth, dirt and poverty, I was quite probably whispering to myself, "these heathens, if only they accept Jesus Christ in their lives, they would not be rotting in this squalor."

c) "Equal": It is very difficult for an American to be view things from an "equal" standpoint. From an American viewpoint, some things/people are more equal than others, or they simply just don't care! Indians need to be aware of this. Case in point. Interview with one Stryker soldier the day Yudh Abhyas commenced at Babina about his views on the Indian army. His response: "frankly, until yesterday, I had no idea Indians had a mechanized army." (it is there on YouTube). Think of it, the Yudh Abhyas was in planning for over six months. Both the armies/soldiers knew, anticipated and planned for this joint-exercise for over a period of time and this Stryker soldier has absolutely no frigging idea he is about to engage with a 'mechanized" IA? The U.S. commander/office-in-charge responsible for Yudh Abhyas should be sacked due to his failure to properly educate his troops. No wonder we seem so clueless going into Iraq/Afghanistan.

c) "Negotiating": Save a few IFS babus on an individual level, as an institution/system, MEA/Indian babus lack the basic knowledge and tools in dealings with Americans officials; last time while I was prepping the Chicago Consul General before meeting a top Iowa politician, he bombastically remarked, "arre, ek baar unse mila dejiye, dekhyie unko hum badal denge." What bombast, what arrogance! Each American politician has an army of staff/aides who provide the "intellectual" background and counsel to the politician. One meeting does not a policy change! Worse, he had absolutely NO idea of Tom Harkin's position on India. He looked at me with "hairyaanniat" when I explained Senator Harkin's extremely rigid reflexive anti-Indian stand. And here he is, the Consul General of India going into a meeting with a strident anti-Indian senator without ANY prior background information about him. One would think before leaving his Chicago office, he would have printed a one page "dossier" about Senator Harkin and brushed up on the piece of information on the flight or the morning of the meeting. Do the MEA babus prepare such "briefs?" In any case, the babus cannot be blamed as their time is consumed in more important and irrelevant frivolous pursuits like making all sorts of "arrangements" for some two-bit visiting Indian politician. Where would they have the time to do the sort of professional work the citizens of India actually pay them to do?

d)"Interesting": Ask an American upon his/her return from India. "Hey, how was the trip?" Most likely, he will say, "interesting." At this point, the Indian starts feeling all giddy thinking that the American has had a terrific time in India. When the American says "interesting," he is being rather polite. What, most likely, he is trying to say is that the trip was nauseating (even the "hey, how was the trip?" is American lingo. The Indian way to ask this question (frame the question) is "How did you like India?" leaving the tourist with little or no choice to express anything negative about the country.

d) "Friendship": With all the bonhomie, let me put things in a somewhat realistic perspective.

Another sticking point is that despite several reminders US has refused to alter its entities list, or the black list that bans trade in sensitive technology for some Indian companies, including a dozen key government companies like Indian Space Research Organization and Defense. This is despite the fact that the matter has been raised several times with the US as India is in dubious company of countries like North Korea, Pakistan and China that have a past track record of proliferation.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/69704/Column:%20The%20Raisina%20Insider/US+refuses+to+take+ISRO+and+DRDO+off+Black+list:+Strategic+relationship+under+strain.html

Just a few sobering and random thoughts for recognition-seeking Indians.....and a whole host of others..... especially ARABS.........

Fascism, Socialism or Capitalism

Sunday, October 25, 2009

What is the current American economy: capitalism, socialism or fascism?

Socialism

Many people call the Bush and Obama administration's approach to the economic crisis "socialism".

Are they right? Here is some US blatant Propaganda....

http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf

Well, Nouriel Roubini writes in a recent essay:

This is a crisis of solvency, not just liquidity, but true deleveraging has not begun yet because the losses of financial institutions have been socialised and put on government balance sheets. This limits the ability of banks to lend, households to spend and companies to invest...

The releveraging of the public sector through its build-up of large fiscal deficits risks crowding out a recovery in private sector spending.

Roubini has previously written:

We're essentially continuing a system where profits are privatized and...losses socialized.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb says the same thing:

After finishing The Black Swan, I realized there was a cancer. The cancer was a huge buildup of risk-taking based on the lack of understanding of reality. The second problem is the hidden risk with new financial products. And the third is the interdependence among financial institutions.

[Interviewer]: But aren't those the very problems we're supposed to be fixing?

NT: They're all still here. Today we still have the same amount of debt, but it belongs to governments. Normally debt would get destroyed and turn to air. Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer. But the government is socializing all these losses by transforming them into liabilities for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. What is the effect? The doctor has shown up and relieved the patient's symptoms – and transformed the tumour into a metastatic tumour. We still have the same disease. We still have too much debt, too many big banks, too much state sponsorship of risk-taking. And now we have six million more Americans who are unemployed – a lot more than that if you count hidden unemployment.

[Interviewer]: Are you saying the U.S. shouldn't have done all those bailouts? What was the alternative?

NT: Blood, sweat and tears. A lot of the growth of the past few years was fake growth from debt. So swallow the losses, be dignified and move on. Suck it up. I gather you're not too impressed with the folks in Washington who are handling this crisis.

Ben Bernanke saved nothing! He shouldn't be allowed in Washington. He's like a doctor who misses the metastatic tumour and says the patient is doing very well.

This is socialism . . . at least for the too big to fails.

Socialism is apparently a broad concept with many different schools. Socialists argue - at least on paper - that both losses and gains should be public. However, communism under the USSR or Mao's China was obviously very different from the stated socialist ideals. If you believe this essay unfairly portrays socialism (I have received many such comments), you are welcome to substitute the phrase "Soviet-style communism" for "socialism" in this essay.

Fascism?

Some, however, argue that the economy is more like fascism than socialism. For example, leading journalist Robert Scheer writes:

What is proposed is not the nationalization of private corporations but rather a corporate takeover of government. The marriage of highly concentrated corporate power with an authoritarian state that services the politico-economic elite at the expense of the people is more accurately referred to as "financial fascism" [than socialism]. After all, even Hitler never nationalized the Mercedes-Benz company but rather entered into a very profitable partnership with the current car company's corporate ancestor, which made out quite well until Hitler's bubble burst.

And Italian historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social" (page 416).

This perfectly mirrors Roubini's statement about the American government's bailout plan.

Remember that one of the best definitions of fascism - the one used by Mussolini - is the "merger of state and corporate power".

That could never happen in America, right?

Consider:

• The government has given trillions in bailout or other emergency funds to private companies, but is largely refusing to disclose to either the media, the American people or even Congress where the money went

• Congress has largely been bought and paid for, and two powerful congressmen have said that banks run Congress

• The head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the former Vice President of the Dallas Federal Reserve, and two top IMF officials have all said that we have - or are in danger of having - oligarchy in the U.S.

• Economist Dean Baker says that the real purpose of bank rescue plans was "A massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives"

• The big banks killed any real chance for financial reform months ago

Looting

As Examiner.com pointed out in May (it is worth quoting the essay at some length, as this is an important concept), looting has replaced free market capitalism:

Nobel prize-winning economist George Akerlof co-wrote a paper in 1993 describing
the causes of the S&L crisis and other financial meltdowns. As summarized
by the New York Times:

In the paper, they argued that several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government. The investors had borrowed huge amounts of money, made big profits when times were good and then left the government holding the bag for their eventual (and predictable) losses.

In a word, the investors looted. Someone trying to make an honest profit, Professors Akerlof and Romer [co-author of the paper, and himself a leading expert on economic growth] said, would have operated in a completely different manner. The investors displayed a “total disregard for even the most basic principles of lending,” failing to verify standard information about their borrowers or, in some cases, even to ask for that information.

The investors “acted as if future losses were somebody else’s problem,” the economists wrote. “They were right.”

The Times does a good job of explaining the looting
dynamic:

The paper’s message is that the promise of government bailouts isn’t merely one aspect of the problem. It is the core problem.

Promised bailouts mean that anyone lending money to Wall Street — ranging from small-time savers like you and me to the Chinese government — doesn’t have to worry about losing that money. The United States Treasury (which, in the end, is also you and me) will cover the losses. In fact, it has to cover the losses, to prevent a cascade of worldwide losses and panic that would make today’s crisis look tame.

But the knowledge among lenders that their money will ultimately be returned, no matter what, clearly brings a terrible downside. It keeps the lenders from asking tough questions about how their money is being used. Looters — savings and loans and Texas developers in the 1980s; the American International Group, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and the rest in this decade — can then act as if their future losses are indeed somebody else’s problem.

Do you remember the mea culpa that Alan Greesnspan, Mr. Bernanke’s predecessor, delivered on Capitol Hill last fall? He said that he was “in a state of shocked disbelief” that “the self-interest” of Wall Street bankers hadn’t prevented this mess.

He shouldn’t have been. The looting theory explains why his laissez-faire theory didn’t hold up. The bankers were acting in their self-interest, after all...Think about the so-called liars’ loans from recent years: like those Texas real estate loans from the 1980s, they never had a chance of paying off. Sure, they would deliver big profits for a while, so long as the bubble kept inflating. But when they inevitably imploded, the losses would overwhelm the gains...

What happened? Banks borrowed money from lenders around the world. The bankers then kept a big chunk of that money for themselves, calling it “management fees” or “performance bonuses.” Once the investments were exposed as hopeless, the lenders — ordinary savers, foreign countries, other banks, you name it — were repaid with government bailouts.

In effect, the bankers had siphoned off this bailout money in advance, years before the government had spent it...Either way, the bottom line is the same: given an incentive to loot, Wall Street did so. “If you think of the financial system as a whole,” Mr. Romer said, “it actually has an incentive to trigger the rare occasions in which tens or hundreds of billions of dollars come flowing out of the Treasury.”

In fact, the big banks and sellers of exotic instruments pretended that the boom would last forever, siphoning off huge profits during the boom with the knowledge that - when the bust ultimately happened - the governments of the world would bail them out.

As Akerlof wrote in his paper:

[Looting is the] common thread [when] countries took on excessive
foreign debt, governments had to bail out insolvent financial institutions, real estate prices increased dramatically and then fell, or new financial markets experienced a boom and bust...Our theoretical analysis shows that an economic underground can come to life if firms have an incentive to go broke for profit at society's expense (to loot) instead of to go for broke (to gamble on success). Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations.

Indeed, Akerlof predicted in 1993 that the next form the looting dynamic would take was through credit default swaps - then a very-obscure financial instrument (indeed, one interpretation of why CDS have been so deadly is that they were the simply the favored instrument for the current round of looting).

Is Looting A Thing of the Past?

Now that Wall Street has been humbled by this financial crash, and the dangers of CDS are widely known, are we past the bad old days of looting?

Unfortunately, as the Times points out, the answer is no:

At a time like this, when trust in financial markets is so scant, it may be hard to imagine that looting will ever be a problem again. But it will be. If we don’t get rid of the incentive to loot, the only question is what form the next round of looting will take.

Bottom Line

So what do we really have: socialism-for-the-giants, fascism or an economy which calls itself "capitalism" but which allows looting?

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. They are just different brand names for the same basic type of economy. All three systems allow giant businesses which are friendly to the government to keep enormous private profits but to pass the losses on to the government and ultimately the citizens.

Whether we use the terminology regarding socialism-for-the-giants ("socialized losses"), of fascism ("public and social losses"), or of looting ("left the government holding the bag for their eventual and predictable losses"), it amounts to the exact same thing.

Whatever we have, it isn't free market capitalism.

Note: Yves Smith has called the financial services pay arrangement of "heads I win, tails you lose" looting, and has also argued that our form of capitalism is evolving into Mussolini style corpocracy, meaning fascism. But the label most often pinned on the Obama administration is socialism.

The bottom line is that I don't put much stock in what socialists might label a system, any more than what fascists or corporate looters would label a system. Whatever you call it, if the giants get all the benefits and pawn all of the losses off on the public, it is a very dangerous system.