Saturday, August 13, 2005

That Lying Bastard, George Bush


Cindy Sheehan in Dallas

What One Mom has to Say to Bush
MIKE FERNER

CounterPunch.org
August 9, 2005


http://www.militaryproject.org/
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“That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war,” Cindy Sheehan told 200 cheering members of Veterans For Peace at their annual convention in Dallas last Friday evening. She then announced she would go to Bush’s vacation home in nearby Crawford, Texas and camp out until he “tells me why my son died in Iraq. I’ve got the whole month of August off, and so does he.”

Sheehan left the VFP meeting on Saturday morning and is now in Crawford with a couple dozen veterans and local peace activists, waiting for Bush to talk with her. She said in Dallas that if he sends anyone else to see her, as happened when national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin did later that day, she would demand that “You get that maniac out here to talk with me in person.”

She told the audience of veterans from World War Two to today’s war in Iraq, that the two main things she plans to tell the man she holds responsible for son Casey’s death are “Quit saying that U.S. troops died for a noble cause in Iraq, unless you say, ‘well, except for Casey Sheehan.’ Don’t you dare spill any more blood in Casey’s name. You do not have permission to use my son’s name.”

“And the other thing I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism,” she exclaimed.

“There, I used the ‘I’ word – imperialism,” the 48 year-old mother quipped. “And now I’m going to use another ‘I’ word – impeachment – because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.”

As the veterans in Dallas rose to their feet, Sheehan said defiantly, “My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don’t owe you a penny...you give my son back and I’ll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we’ll put this war on trial.”

The co-founder of Gold Star Mothers for Peace objected to hearing that her son was among the soldiers lost in Iraq. “He’s not lost,” she said tearfully. “He’s dead. He became an angel while I was sleeping.”

She railed against the notion expressed by officials in the Bush administration that bringing the troops home now would dishonor the sacrifice of those who have died. “By sending honorable people to die, they so dishonor themselves. They say we must complete our mission…but why would I want one more mother to go through what I have, just because my son is dead?”

The Vacaville, California resident said she first heard of Veterans For Peace in early May last year, during a CNN report about an exhibit of white crosses arranged in rows in the Santa Barbara beach. The exhibit was organized by VFP Chapter 54 to memorialize each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. Her son had died the month before. “I decided there was only one place I wanted to be on Mother’s Day that year, and it was Santa Barbara,” she told the VFP members in Dallas.

Retired Special Forces Sgt. and VFP member, Stan Goff, today initiated a “Talk to Cindy” campaign to get Bush to meet with Sheehan. Contact information for the White House is: (202) 456-1111 or comments@whitehouse.gov

Mike Ferner is a writer in Toledo, Ohio and a member of Veterans for Peace. He can be reached at mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net

Canada, Eh?

Canada, Eh?

C. L. Cook -
It’s difficult to grieve for the loss of a relative you’ve never known. Sure, you feel for the pain of your family remembering ‘Dear Old,’ but the visceral sympathy just isn’t there. Reading today laments from my fellow Canadians of the death of the country they’ve known and loved leaves me feeling much as a funereal interloper; “I never knew the old girl, but I hear she was super.”

www.pej.org


http://www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/cm/
vol10/no16/ourcanadianflagint.jpg

Canada, eh?
C. L. Cook
PEJ News
August 13, 2005

I was born more than forty years past in the epicentre of the country, Toronto (epicentre of the Universe to hear The Rest of Canada squawk about it). Since, I’ve lived on the west coast, watching from afar the doings of one federal potentate after the other as they fall over themselves to best serve the interests of capital and the true Capitol, Washington, D.C.

Some weepy citizen Aunties may wag fingers, begging I recall our national opposition to cousin Sam’s Far East rampages of the Sixties and Seventies, tearfully citing our collective taking-to-bosom of those brave dissenters seeking shelter from America’s bugle call. Difficult to feel the patriotic power of that distant day when this day I watch my fellow countrymen and women marched into the lion’s mouth of Afghanistan in service of yet another call to arms.

Instead, I remember Prime Minister Pearson berated and shaken by the lapels like a recalcitrant delinquent by LBJ, then sent packing back to his northern doghouse with the Butcher of Asia’s reprimand ringing in his ears. “You pissed on my rug.” Instead, I remember the cretin PM’s Mulroney and Chretien who in turn delivered the national economy in perpetuity, then aiding and abetted three illegal wars and a blasphemous decade-long siege of sovereign nations at the behest again of their beltway masters.

Today many(?) Canadians are upset that U.S. State Troopers are training and accompanying the RCMP, presumably to better instruct their harassment of the good citizens as they travel the highways and byways of Canada, (hardly necessary); I hear tut-tuts that American military narcotics agents work in concert with local police to mount sting operations on local illegal drugs peddlers while the U.S. Navy inhabits Canada’s coastal cities for shore leave; I see brows furrowed at “interdiction” policies that refuse political refuge for the world's poor, hungry, and oppressed masses seeking shelter in this country, all on the whims and worries of the United States; I behold red-faced indignation at extradition and "rendition" granted on plainly bogus justifications proffered by American Justice; I watch some sputter rage at the denial of refuge for Iraq war resistors (poor Pearson would roll over in his doghouse); I hear disgust opined as former government ministers enjoin the country be made more “accessible” from their havens in venal multi-national corporate boardrooms; but, I neither fret, furrow, nor redden my mien in frustrated outrage.

Why get upset? The transfer of law, order, money, and people through D.C. diktats is the norm; at least as long as I’ve been here.

Canada today participates and profits the perpetual war economy more than most. Despite conscience soothing platitudes, delivered to salve the Canadian mass, this “country” has long since sold whatever sovereignty it pretended to and is now, truly an adjunct of U.S. policies at home, abroad, and in outer space.

“Poor old Auntie. I would have loved to have known her.”



Chris Cook
hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from CFUV Radio at the University of Victoria, Canada. He also serves as a contributing editor to PEJ News. You can check out the GR Blog at GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com


Annotations

Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty – U.S. State Dept. :
General - http://travel.state.gov/law/info/judicial/judicial_690.html
Canada - http://travel.state.gov/law/info/judicial/judicial_682.html

Jeremy Hinzman - http://www.jeremyhinzman.net/

Kevin Benderman - http://stangoff.com/index.php?p=172

War Resisters Support Campaign (Canada) - http://resisters.ca/index.html

Softwood Lumber Dispute - http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/softwood_lumber/

Marijuana Policy - http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3097&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0

NAFTA and Softwood Ruling 08/2005 - http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1123868371563_119277571/?hub=Canada

Pearson and LBJ - http://www.answers.com/topic/lester-bowles-pearson

Canada to Afghanistan - http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2848

http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2602


Canadian Immigration Policy - http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/42861.php

Canadian Elite’s Sedition - http://www.victoria.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/39182.php

Cindy Screws W.'s Vakay

Tiananmen Ranch
James Moore
The Huffington Post

A close friend of mine went cycling with President Bush on Crawford Ranch last year and described a focused, relentlessly aggressive man on a mountain bike. Bush hammered out a hilly 18 mile course and left behind the guests and secret service agents trying to keep pace with his frenetic pedaling. There was nothing but him and the bike and the road and the pound of his heart. Good athletes are like this. Decent presidents are not.

Most endurance athletes discover that their minds, stimulated by endorphins released through exercise, tend to wander across a landscape of subjects. And when you find one that is engaging or significant, solutions and sensitivities unknown are suddenly discovered. That's why I wonder how the president can hit the trails of Prairie Chapel or even linger over his morning coffee and not be fixed on the unrelenting grief and resolve of Cindy Sheehan. She is becoming the symbol of our American Tiananmen.

I met Cindy Sheehan this time last year when she was trying to decide what to do about the loss of her son. We were strangers when we spoke on the phone but she was as honest as she was angry. Before a news conference at the National Press Club, she stood in an anteroom holding a large color poster of her smiling boy and she ran her fingertips over his mouth as though he were alive and could feel this affection. In that moment, I hated my president. And I hate having to hate anyone or anything.

A group of us went to dinner that night across the river in Arlington and Cindy asked me about all the years I had spent being a reporter and all of the sadness and loss I had encountered. She wanted to know what it was like years later for the mothers and fathers and siblings of soldiers I had written about and how they had adjusted or if they ever did. I had to tell her and her daughter sitting across from me that I never met anyone who had reached a point of total acceptance. The most vivid memory I had was of an 82-year-old Texas man whose oldest brother was one of nine boys from the tiny farming village of Praha who left for World War II. All nine of them died in different theaters of battle in the final year. But this 82 year old man said he was still expecting his big brother, who had died over sixty years ago, to come walking in the door looking like he had the day he left.

There are things worth fighting for. And there are even some worth dying for. But Iraq is not one of them. And none of us asked enough questions when it came time to send the Casey Sheehan's of the country into the desert hell of Iraq. More of us ought to be asking the questions now because it is just as important now as it was the day the war was launched. But we at least have Cindy Sheehan to do our asking. There are mothers' sons out there who will live full lives because the pressure being created by Cindy Sheehan will accelerate the end of this absurd American involvement in Iraq.

In every standoff there comes a time when the tide will turn in one direction. In our culture, these moments are palpable because a complicated question has been rendered into a simple confrontation between the just and the unjust, the big guy and the little guy, the powerful and the weak. And we all know who Americans choose in those kinds of fights. Cindy Sheehan, with her soft voice and steely determination, has given us a simple choice. We can stand with a mother who doesn't want other mothers to suffer the way she is suffering; or we can side with a president who offers us platitudes instead of exit strategies and unfounded optimism instead of honest logic. I'm on Cindy's side.

I choose to believe that Cindy Sheehan is proving to us again that America still functions as a democracy. Power and the presidency are still accountable to the Cindy Sheehan's of our country. She is helping a lot of otherwise disconnected people realize that this president has made a mistake with Iraq and his refusal to acknowledge that mistake is leading to more death. And I am certain that Casey is proud of his mother.

Every other American ought to be, too.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Friday, August 12, 2005

Two Tips on Shopping Survival

Ten minutes on a trip to the supermarket can mean the difference between life and death

From Robert Fisk in Baghdad



http://www.motorcycle-accessories-warehouse.co.uk/
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My Iraqi fixer offers to buy groceries for me but I decide I've got to buy them myself. Once you let Iraqis buy your food on the streets, tell you what people are saying, come back to you with their observations, you have entered the pointless hothouse of hotel journalism, the reporter with the mobile phone trapped in his room who might as well be broadcasting or writing from Co Mayo. So we slink off down side streets to the Warda grocery store in Karada.


08/12/05 "The Independent" -- -- It was the same lunatic corkscrew landing in the same little Lebanese plane, barrelling down into the sandstorm of Baghdad airport. Piloting his 20-passenger twin-prop aircraft - from Flying Carpet Airlines, no less - Captain Hussam has three things on his mind: American helicopters, pilotless reconnaissance drones and incoming missiles. So we all scan the dun-coloured runway and terminals and the grotty slums beside the airport road for the tell-tale pink flame surviving pilots have sometimes caught sight of.

But we landed safely and a scruffy bus took us to the terminal where I bid the customs officer Salaam Aleikum and he cheerfully asked me if I was a Muslim. "English," I replied, which seemed to be good enough to him. He couldn't break the airline security string on my bag so he waved me through. Then there came The Airport Road. We all need to put this in capitals these days. As my Iraqi fixer put it very well: "It's really just a matter of luck." Sometimes you glide safely across to the city, sometimes you get caught up in a firefight, sometimes - like poor Marla Ruzicka, the American girl who tried to count casualties - you are too close to a suicide attack. "I'm alive," she cried just before she died.

So we concentrate very hard on The Airport Road. The Americans have put a squadron of Bradley Fighting Vehicles on the central reservation and Iraqi army units on each side of the highway. But they still get bombed. "The Iraqi army's a joke," an American computer salesman in Baghdad tells me. "It was the Iraqi army which kidnapped me near Nasiriyah. They tried to sell me to the insurgents for $10,000. Then one of my employees came and told the officer I was half-Iraqi, taken to America as a child, that I was a member of the Dulaimi clan - and you don't kidnap Dulaimis - and the officer couldn't read English so didn't know my real name."

So I'm not keen on stopping for Iraqi checkpoints. We drive across the Tigris, waved through by a policeman in a hood - cops and insurgents both wear hoods which makes life a little tiring - and arrive at the grim little hotel where The Independent has its office. Extra security now. More armed men on the gates - most are Kurdish - and a guard who wants to search my bag. He, too, cannot cut the airline security string on my bag and waves me through. So a piece of string twice stopped my baggage being searched. Very comforting.

My Iraqi fixer offers to buy groceries for me but I decide I've got to buy them myself. Once you let Iraqis buy your food on the streets, tell you what people are saying, come back to you with their observations, you have entered the pointless hothouse of hotel journalism, the reporter with the mobile phone trapped in his room who might as well be broadcasting or writing from Co Mayo. So we slink off down side streets to the Warda grocery store in Karada. It's a broad street with lots of men languishing on the pavements, many holding mobiles. That's how it's done these days. A guy with a mobile sees an American patrol, a police unit, a foreigner, and squeezes the dial pad and a bunch of gunmen in a car not far away roar round to blow themselves up or kidnap the stranger - for money, for execution, for politics.

The Egyptian diplomat murdered last month had stopped at a newspaper stand. So we say, "10 minutes". That's all I've got in the grocery store. Sugar, Arabic bread - a big queue so I squeeze through and grab two loaves and hear someone mutter ajnabi (foreigner) and I go for the Perrier bottles, the tinned fruits, the sardines, and I push up to the counter.

Eight minutes. "Change in Iraqi money?" Doesn't matter. Wrong reply. Too desperate. Should have said "Iraqi". Three boxes of bottled water. Nine minutes. Your time is up. Out into the oven-like heat, into the car, a sharp turn to the right, into another alleyway. Ten minutes. Made it.

My fixer looks at me from the front of the car - I am in the back, reading an Arabic newspaper to partly conceal my face - and puts his finger in the air. "Another suicide bombing in Baghdad. An attack on a police patrol. Four policemen dead." Welcome back to the city of one thousand and one nights.

It was the same lunatic corkscrew landing in the same little Lebanese plane, barrelling down into the sandstorm of Baghdad airport. Piloting his 20-passenger twin-prop aircraft - from Flying Carpet Airlines, no less - Captain Hussam has three things on his mind: American helicopters, pilotless reconnaissance drones and incoming missiles. So we all scan the dun-coloured runway and terminals and the grotty slums beside the airport road for the tell-tale pink flame surviving pilots have sometimes caught sight of.

But we landed safely and a scruffy bus took us to the terminal where I bid the customs officer Salaam Aleikum and he cheerfully asked me if I was a Muslim. "English," I replied, which seemed to be good enough to him. He couldn't break the airline security string on my bag so he waved me through. Then there came The Airport Road. We all need to put this in capitals these days. As my Iraqi fixer put it very well: "It's really just a matter of luck." Sometimes you glide safely across to the city, sometimes you get caught up in a firefight, sometimes - like poor Marla Ruzicka, the American girl who tried to count casualties - you are too close to a suicide attack. "I'm alive," she cried just before she died.

So we concentrate very hard on The Airport Road. The Americans have put a squadron of Bradley Fighting Vehicles on the central reservation and Iraqi army units on each side of the highway. But they still get bombed. "The Iraqi army's a joke," an American computer salesman in Baghdad tells me. "It was the Iraqi army which kidnapped me near Nasiriyah. They tried to sell me to the insurgents for $10,000. Then one of my employees came and told the officer I was half-Iraqi, taken to America as a child, that I was a member of the Dulaimi clan - and you don't kidnap Dulaimis - and the officer couldn't read English so didn't know my real name."

So I'm not keen on stopping for Iraqi checkpoints. We drive across the Tigris, waved through by a policeman in a hood - cops and insurgents both wear hoods which makes life a little tiring - and arrive at the grim little hotel where The Independent has its office. Extra security now. More armed men on the gates - most are Kurdish - and a guard who wants to search my bag. He, too, cannot cut the airline security string on my bag and waves me through. So a piece of string twice stopped my baggage being searched. Very comforting.

My Iraqi fixer offers to buy groceries for me but I decide I've got to buy them myself. Once you let Iraqis buy your food on the streets, tell you what people are saying, come back to you with their observations, you have entered the pointless hothouse of hotel journalism, the reporter with the mobile phone trapped in his room who might as well be broadcasting or writing from Co Mayo. So we slink off down side streets to the Warda grocery store in Karada. It's a broad street with lots of men languishing on the pavements, many holding mobiles. That's how it's done these days. A guy with a mobile sees an American patrol, a police unit, a foreigner, and squeezes the dial pad and a bunch of gunmen in a car not far away roar round to blow themselves up or kidnap the stranger - for money, for execution, for politics.

The Egyptian diplomat murdered last month had stopped at a newspaper stand. So we say, "10 minutes". That's all I've got in the grocery store. Sugar, Arabic bread - a big queue so I squeeze through and grab two loaves and hear someone mutter ajnabi (foreigner) and I go for the Perrier bottles, the tinned fruits, the sardines, and I push up to the counter.

Eight minutes. "Change in Iraqi money?" Doesn't matter. Wrong reply. Too desperate. Should have said "Iraqi". Three boxes of bottled water. Nine minutes. Your time is up. Out into the oven-like heat, into the car, a sharp turn to the right, into another alleyway. Ten minutes. Made it.

My fixer looks at me from the front of the car - I am in the back, reading an Arabic newspaper to partly conceal my face - and puts his finger in the air. "Another suicide bombing in Baghdad. An attack on a police patrol. Four policemen dead." Welcome back to the city of one thousand and one nights.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Back to Our Future: 1974 Revisted


http://www.superseventies.com
/1974news.gif




Many of the trends evident today in 2005 find phantom mirror-image precedents in the early years of the seventies. It involves radical global economic and military policy and the formation of a plan to replace western democracy with a police state under the guise of anti-terrorism. -ape




In the Cause of Labour
Chapter 22

The Turning Point
Marxist.com

1974 proved to be a turning point not only for Britain, but also for world politics and the world economy. The world slump of that year was the biggest since 1929. The post war economic upswing, fuelled by the expansion of world trade, had dramatically come to an end in the first simultaneous world downturn since the Thirties. Industrial production in the advanced capitalist countries fell by a massive ten per cent between July 1974 and April 1975. In the first half of 1975 output was three-and-a-half per cent down on the previous year, and international trade was 13 per cent lower. The crisis indicated that the "Golden Age" of capitalist expansion was over. Capitalism would never again be able to attain the growth rates of the 25-year upswing.

This slump in turn ushered in a new period of political, social and industrial turmoil throughout the capitalist world. The ruling class was seized with a deep sense of foreboding for the future of their system. "For years the gold enthusiasts have been regarded as barbarians", noted The Economist. "Now that it is fashionable to talk of the imminent collapse of civilisation, their day has come on Wall Street." (1)

1974 was a year of revolution. Portugal was rocked by a revolutionary movement of workers, soldiers, sailors and peasants, which succeeded in sweeping away the hated dictatorship of Caetano. In Southern Africa, the events in Portugal resulted in profound revolutionary changes in Angola, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique. In Ethiopia the removal of emperor Haile Selassie ended up in the nationalisation of the economy. In Spain, the dying Franco regime was met with an explosion of opposition and mass strikes. The overthrow of the Greek Junta produced a pre-revolutionary crisis in the country.


This was the most disturbed period faced by capitalism since the inter-war years. The strategists of capital, terrified by the scale of revolutionary events, began to make serious preparations for civil war to defend themselves and their system. The movement in the direction of revolution produced its opposite in the form of counterrevolutionary plots and conspiracies, like the "Gladio Conspiracy" that came to light at the time. It revealed the existence of secret military plans for the instalment of military police dictatorships throughout Europe. The ramifications of this made themselves felt in Britain too.

After the miners' strike had brought down the Heath government, the question of a military "solution" to the problems of capitalism was not only discussed in the smoke-filled clubs and boardrooms of big business, but was openly debated in the "quality" press. The Times carried a series of articles on contingency measures to deal with a possible general strike situation, drawing on experiences such as the Kapp putsch in Germany in 1920. However, this was not a very pleasant analogy. General Kapp had marched at the head of his army into Berlin but was met with a spontaneous general strike. Unable to find a single stenographer to take down his decrees he eventually marched ignominiously out of the capital, impotent in face of the power of the German workers.




http://www.publiceye.org/
gallery/repression/Nixon_Hoover.GIF


Military exercises took place at Heathrow airport under the guise of "counter-terrorism". Brian Crozier, the MI6 and CIA "alongsider", gave regular talks to groups of army officers warning of the possibility of military intervention in British politics. On one occasion, he recalls an audience of officers were so enthusiastic about such a scenario, that they "rose as one man, cheering and clapping for fully five minutes." (2)

The ruling class were preparing for a showdown with organised Labour. The Tory theoretician and MP Ian Gilmour wrote a theoretical justification for doing away with democracy if it ever posed a threat to the capitalist system. Gilmour was no right-wing crank or obscure figure, but a leading Tory who became a minister in the Thatcher government. In his well-known book, Inside Right, Gilmour showed admirable frankness when describing the real attitude of the ruling class to democratic rights and the rule of the majority:

"Conservatives do not worship democracy. For them, majority rule is a device… Rational, economic, utilitarian man exists only in the imagination of some economists and philosophers. Similarly, majorities do not always see where their best interests lie and then act upon their understanding. For Conservatives, therefore, democracy is a means to an end not an end in itself. In Dr Hayek's words, democracy ‘is not an ultimate or absolute value and must be judged by what it will achieve'. And if it is leading to an end that is undesirable or is inconsistent with itself, then there is a theoretical case for ending it…

‘Numbers in a state', said Burke, ‘are always of consideration, but they are not the whole consideration.' In practice, no alternative to majority rule exists, though it has to be used in conjunction with other devices. And in the Conservative Party, unlike the Labour Party, there is no extreme wing which hankers after the death of parliamentary democracy and the imposition of a dictatorship. If our free institutions are overthrown or totally perverted, the Left not the Right will be responsible. There is no danger of a right-wing coup. Only if the constitution had already been destroyed by the Left, might the Right react and the Left find itself overthrown in its turn by a counter-coup from the Right." (3)

Stripped of its rhetoric about the dangers of a so-called "left dictatorship", these authoritarian views represented a dire warning to the trade union and Labour movement. It was clear that if capitalism was in any way threatened by a left Labour government, despite being elected through the ballot-box, it would be faced with a conspiracy and overthrow by reactionary forces, as happened in Chile in September 1973, when the socialist government of Allende was overthrown in a military coup led by General Pinochet, backed by British and US capitalism.

In the aftermath of this coup, 30,000 Chilean workers were murdered in cold blood. Now the US imperialists try to distance themselves from the Pinochet regime and the coup, but at the time Henry Kissinger, a leading member of the Nixon administration and a Nobel Peace Prize winner (!) declared: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." The CIA, with the authorisation of Dr Kissinger, spent eight million dollars between 1970 and 1973 to destabilise the Chilean economy, sending money to right-wing strikers to bring down the Allende government. (4) In Britain, The Times, echoing the real feelings of the ruling class, welcomed the Pinochet coup: "there is a limit to the ruin a country can be expected to tolerate… The circumstances were such that a reasonable military man could in good faith have thought it his constitutional duty to intervene." (5)

Ulster workers council

A few months later the potential power of the trade unions was demonstrated once more, although in a distorted and reactionary manner. In May 1974 there was a "general strike" in the North of Ireland, called by the sectarian Ulster Workers' Council against the "power-sharing" Executive established by the Sunningdale Agreement. Despite the fact that this was a reactionary sectarian strike, involving threats and physical intimidation by Protestant paramilitary groups, it nevertheless showed the power of the organised working class. Workplace after workplace was shut down and the government was impotent to do anything about it. Faced with a strike of power engineers and technicians, the military tried to employ naval technicians to run the power stations, but they were completely baffled by the voluminous instruction manuals! "The army therefore concluded they could do nothing to maintain the power system in Northern Ireland, and by inference anywhere else in the United Kingdom", stated Robert Fisk in his book The Point of No Return. After a fortnight of trying to use troops to break the strike, the Tories were forced to back down, demonstrating how ineffective military intervention was in any large-scale industrial stoppage.

Following the successful 1972 miners' strike, the Tories established the secret Civil Contingencies Unit, a government anti-strike operation. This body had direct links with the heads of the military establishment, who had been drawn into, and were a vital component of the government's strikebreaking plans. At this time, the military top brass, together with high-ranking civil servants, businessmen and politicians were in constant discussions about the dangers of revolution in Britain. To their utter dismay, left-wing "subversives" had come into positions of influence in both the unions and Labour Party.

Brigadier-General Sir Frank Kitson became the focal point for the military option. In his book, Low Intensity Operations, he argued that the main role of the British Army was not abroad, but increasingly at home dealing with social disorder: "If a genuine and serious grievance arose, such as might result from a significant drop in the standard of living, all those who now dissipate their protest over a wide variety of causes might concentrate their efforts and produce a situation which was beyond the power of the police to handle. Should this happen the army would be required to restore the position rapidly." The Tory Minister of State for Defence, Lord Balniel, rather than condemn it, recommended Kitson's book in the House of Commons. He said that it was viewed as an official manual, "regarded as being of valuable assistance to our troops."

Paramilitary solutions

It subsequently emerged that senior army officers were considering military intervention in the event of the situation "deteriorating". But the more sober, and far-sighted sections of the ruling class were not amused. Lord Carver, Chief of the Defence Staff in 1974, recalled that he personally intervened "to make certain nobody was so stupid as to go around saying those things." That is to say, the problem was not the idea itself but that it should not be publicly expressed. They preferred such plans to be kept under wraps until needed. Carver was also reported to have used his influence at the time to prevent army officers openly establishing right-wing paramilitary organisations. (6) Not that he was against these initiatives in principle, but for the moment they proved counterproductive and highly provocative to the Labour movement.

The industrial battles of the early 1970s resulted in a number of important victories for the working class. Real take-home pay increased by 3.5 per cent a year between 1970 and 1973, four times the rate achieved under the 1964-70 Labour government. The miners' strikes, in particular, had given rise to increased self-confidence among workers. This had wrong-footed the ruling class. But these successes also served to produce a semi-syndicalist mood amongst certain sections of union militants – who regarded the trade union struggle alone as sufficient in dealing with the Tories and the employers. The fall of the Heath government certainly tended to reinforce this outlook.

Nevertheless, the election of the Labour government in 1974, despite being in a minority position, created high expectations from the working class. The new intake of Labour MPs was also clearly to the left, the majority being aligned to the Tribune Group in Parliament, which had doubled in size in comparison to the period 1964-70. Although the new Wilson administration was right wing, both Michael Foot and Tony Benn were included in the Cabinet, at the Department of Employment and the Department of Industry respectively. The first real task of the government was to produce a settlement with the miners. They were eventually awarded wage increases ranging from 22-32 per cent. Within a week of the election, industry was back to five-day working and the crisis was resolved.

The Labour government began by introducing a series of welcome reforms: it raised old age pensions, increased food and rent subsidies, cut the rate of VAT, and encouraged the building of council houses. To the great relief of the Labour movement, the government repealed the hated Industrial Relations Act, abolished the Pay Board and scrapped Heath's statutory incomes policy. The Housing Finance Act was also repealed and a rent freeze was introduced. As promised, the Labour government introduced gift and wealth taxes, although not as much as to make the rich squeak too loudly. The granting of these reforms produced a honeymoon period for the Wilson government, which appeared at long last to be carrying out a radical programme.

From the beginning, the Labour government was under colossal pressure from both the working class and the capitalist class. At first, it attempted to appease the workers with reforms, which worked for a period as workers were prepared to extend credit to the new government. For big business, however, these reforms were a source of major irritation and annoyance. But for the moment the capitalists were forced to bide their time. Within months Wilson was compelled to go for a second general election in October 1974 in an attempt to gain a working majority in the Commons. Despite these hopes, Labour still only managed to secure a small overall majority, and remained vulnerable.

The Labour government had come to power at a time of a new world slump. Throughout 1974 industrial production declined in the face of a deepening economic slowdown. It was the first generalised worldwide slump since the Second World War. In Britain, unemployment began to climb insatiably towards the politically sensitive figure of one million, reaching 1,319,000 by the third quarter of 1976. Orders for steel products in western Europe during the first quarter of 1975 were down 33 per cent from the same period in 1974. The same was true of shipbuilding, aeronautics, electronics, textiles, automobiles, construction, and electrical appliances. The number of bankruptcies in the United States rose by more than 30 per cent during 1974-75, and in Britain by more than 60 per cent.

Bourgeois economists attempted to explain away the slump as a consequence of the quadrupling of oil prices, but this was a shallow argument. The rise in oil prices certainly aggravated the crisis, but it did not cause it. It simply accentuated the trends that were already present. The elements of overproduction existed prior to the rise in oil prices. The boom and slump cycle was always present under capitalism but the fluctuations were hardly noticed in the unprecedented post war upswing. Now the situation was entirely different, and more like the slumps of the past that were explained by Karl Marx:

"Too many commodities are produced to permit of a realisation and conversion into new capital of the value and surplus value contained in them under the conditions of distribution and consumption peculiar to capitalist production, i.e., too many to permit of the consumption of this process without constantly recurring explosions",

stated Marx in volume three of Capital. The crisis arose out of overproduction, as Marx had explained over 100 years previously, and would reoccur periodically in 1979-81, 1990-92, and 2001-2. This fact alone shows that the slump of 1974-75 was not the product of an accidental rise in oil prices, but the re-emergence of the boom/slump cycle.

In Britain, inflation rose to nearly 20 per cent, which served to erode living standards very quickly. The economists ironically dubbed the situation "slumpflation", reflecting a new disease of world capitalism – a combination of slump and inflation. In order to stand still, unions had to fight for sizable wage increases, which averaged 25.4 per cent by the end of the year. At the same time, pre-tax profits fell from 7.2 per cent in 1973 to 4 per cent a year later, and then continued to decline. This fall was primarily due to the tendency in capitalism for the rate of profit to decline. This tendency arose from the accumulation of capital, greater resources ploughed into constant capital (materials and machinery) relative to that invested in variable capital (wages). As the only source of surplus value comes from variable capital, the rate of profit tends to decline. To counter this decline, which would eventually affect the mass of profits, the capitalists are forced to take measures to increase the exploitation of labour power and increase their margins. In particular, they demanded that the Labour government cut public expenditure, hold back wages and stop all state interference.

According to the Financial Times, "the CBI told Mr. Wilson that there was absolutely no room for compromise or negotiation about further state intervention in industry and further nationalisation". (7) Two days before the November Budget, the Director General of the CBI sent Wilson an open letter threatening drastic action if the government did not toe the pro-business line. Just after the general election, big business had begun a "strike of capital" with the announcement by Pilkingtons that their £150 million investment would be shelved "until such time as essential changes are made in taxation and price control". As in October 1964, Wilson was again faced with the blackmail and sabotage of Britain's ruling class. As then, the Labour government had a choice: either capitulate to big business or act against these powerful interests. There was no middle road. Wilson decided to bend the knee to capital. Once again he came forward with an incomes policy to restore profitability, known as the "Social Contract", but later dubbed the "Social Con-trick".

The Left on the TUC General Council, headed by Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, also faced a stark choice, either back Wilson or fight for the alternative of socialist policies. But like the Left union leaders in 1926, they looked over the abyss and stepped back. These left leaders had built up a powerful reputation and massive support amongst workers because of the militant role they had played between 1968-74. But now, lacking a clear perspective and policy, they recoiled from an all-out struggle with the Labour government. Instead, they used their colossal authority to back Wilson's policies. In September, the TUC, with the full backing of Scanlon and Jones, accepted a "Social Contract" with the Labour government. The government, in turn, leaned upon the trade union leadership to deliver the support from the rank and file for this wages' policy.

The problem was that it is not possible to serve two masters and the Wilson government had already surrendered to the blackmail of the City of London. The 1974 November Budget proved a watershed for the government. The Chancellor announced measures to increase profitability: reduction of corporation tax, less stringent price controls, and state handouts for industry. Healey also announced restrictions on public expenditure for the duration of the government. As in the past, this signalled a continuation of orthodox economic policies, and as usual the working class was being asked to pay for the crisis of capitalism.

Wage Restraint

In spite of the "Social Contract", the initial TUC guidelines on wages were quite vague. In fact real wages grew by eight per cent between April and December 1974. However, by the spring of 1975, with the acceleration of inflation, real take-home pay began to decline. By June real wages were nine per cent lower than December 1974, and living standards were falling. Wages were chasing higher prices and falling behind. Yet the economists who had the ear of the Labour government argued that prices were following wages, and that the latter had to be controlled to halt inflation.

At this point the government used the sterling crisis to turn its policy firmly to the right, to the delight of big business. Denis Healey announced that he intended to reduce inflation – which was around 30 per cent – to 10 per cent by the following wage round, and to single figures by the end of 1976. Since the government regarded wages as the main cause of inflation, pay increases would have to be dramatically curtailed.

Wilson's economic arguments, supplied by bourgeois economists, were bogus. In reality the inflation of the 1970s was not caused by wage increases, but by the colossal sums of speculative fictitious capital that had been injected into the system as a result of decades of Keynesian deficit financing. The propaganda about "excessive" wage rises causing inflation was used as a pretext to boost profits at the expense of wages.

The Wilson government put forward a voluntary incomes policy in co-operation with the TUC based on raises of 10 per cent. However, Wilson warned that if this proved unworkable, a statutory limit would be imposed. As was to be expected, the TUC readily acquiesced to the government's wage controls and published guidelines for voluntary restraint with a £6 limit on all settlements prior to August 1976:

"The £6 policy was accepted by the General Council at its meeting in July but only narrowly, nineteen votes to thirteen", recalls Jack Jones. "I urged those who opposed the policy not to push the government to the point where it might fall… Whatever my misgivings I was determined to back the government, ‘warts and all'." (8)

Although it meant a cut in real wages, the £6 limit was agreed at both the TUC, on a resolution proposed by Jack Jones, and the Labour Party Conference. When left-winger Ian Mikardo attacked the decision at the Tribune meeting at Labour Conference, Jones shouted across the platform, "I object to these attacks like this!" Hugh Scanlon also supported Jack Jones' stance. The Labour movement demonstrated tremendous loyalty to its leaders, and the incomes policy of Wilson and Callaghan was taken on trust. The Labour leaders demanded sacrifices to overcome "the legacy left by the Tories", and, without any alternative being offered by the Lefts, this was accepted as a necessary price to be paid for a Labour government.

But when a "Phase Two" followed "Phase One" of the incomes policy, there was a growing disquiet in the Labour movement. As a concession to the government (which wanted a three per cent limit), the TUC offered its own voluntary five per cent norm, with a lower limit of £2.50 and an upper limit of £4. A special TUC conference adopted this policy by a massive majority of 17 to 1. But this decision was to have grave effects on the living standards of ordinary workers. In fact, between 1974 and 1977, the Labour government was to preside over the largest fall in real wages than at any comparable period in British history.

The sterling crisis of early 1976 forced the Labour government to go cap in hand to the IMF. But the IMF would only grant these loans on condition that a £3 billion cut was made in public expenditure over the following two years. The Cabinet reluctantly accepted this IMF proposal.

Anthony Crosland later told Labour Party Conference, to everybody's astonishment that "the party was over". Callaghan also stated that Keynesianism was dead and that no government could now spend itself out of a crisis. "We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending," stated Callaghan to the 1976 Labour conference. "I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists and that insofar as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment at the next step". In all, over the following period, the government was to slash public expenditure by an estimated £8 billion. This proved to be the thin end of the wedge.

When Wilson resigned the premiership, Callaghan took his place as prime minister. Labour had now lost its overall majority. There was a growing sense of political instability. The following year, in order to get a working majority, the Labour government entered into a formal "Lib-Lab" pact with the Liberals. This retreat, which gave rise to despondency in the rank and file, sealed the fate of the government.

Around this time, a bitter industrial dispute at Grunwick, a photographic processing business in North West London hit the headlines. Mass picketing took place in an attempt to gain the reinstatement of sacked women, mainly Asian workers. The dispute was led by the APEX union, and attracted widespread support. Postal workers refused to handle mail, a key to the company's business survival. The right-wing National Association for Freedom rushed to the owners' support in organising alternative deliveries. "I gave NAFF as much support as I could", stated Margaret Thatcher.

It was the Grunwick dispute that caused Margaret Thatcher to began to formulate her future plans to cripple the trade unions:

"Yet, for all that, Grunwick was not limited to the closed shop; it was about the sheer power of the unions", wrote Thatcher. "Appalled as I was by what was happening at Grunwick, I did not believe that the time was yet ripe to depart from the cautious line about trade union reform (which I had agreed with Jim Prior) in order to mount radical attack on the closed shop. We had to consider a much wider raft of questions, ranging from the unions' immunity under civil law, to violence and intimidation which only escaped the criminal law because they came under the guise of lawful picketing. Until we had begun to solve some of these problems, we could not effectively outlaw the closed shop." (9)

As might be expected, the World Bank and the IMF took a hard view of the Labour government – given its links with the unions and the presence of a left wing inside the party. They correctly feared that the intense pressure of the working class could force Labour to take measures against big business.

"As I saw it, it was a choice between Britain remaining in the liberal financial system of the West as opposed to a radical change of course because we were concerned about Tony Benn precipitating a policy decision by Britain to turn its back on the IMF", stated William Rogers from the US State Department. "I think if that had happened the whole system would have begun to come apart... it would have had great political consequences. So we tended to see it in cosmic terms." (10)

The strategists of capital were alarmed by these dangers and called for disciplinary action against the Labour Left, which according to them, was subverting the Labour Party from within: "Moderates in the constituencies must be organised to combat the activities not just of the undemocratic sectarian left, but of the more numerous, less sinister supporters of the Tribune group whose leaders effectively control the NEC", urged The Economist. "The sensible leaders among Britain's larger trade unions must be persuaded to purge the national executive." (11) At all costs, the Labour Party had to be kept in reliable (that is, pro-capitalist) hands, and that was a job for the right-wing trade union leaders.

The cuts in public expenditure were followed by a further stage – Phase Three of the incomes policy. This now stipulated a ten per cent limit on wages rises. But for the working class, this phase proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Enough was enough! Asking for a further round of restraint was simply adding insult to injury. Under pressure, the TUC voted to reject the incomes policy and demanded an immediate return to free collective bargaining. Jack Jones realised the game was up when the vote went against him at the TGWU national conference. In November, 80,000 trade unionists lobbied Parliament against the government's incomes policy. Callaghan's attempt to impose a wage limit in the public sector simply pushed "moderate" sections into industrial action. Although strikes were limited in the first period of the Labour government, things began to come to a head at the end of 1977.

In early November, a special conference of the Fire Brigades Union voted to take industrial action (against the wishes of its Executive Council) in pursuit of a 30 per cent wage rise and a reduction in hours from 48 to 42. It was to herald the first national fire brigades' strike in British history. In spite of the attacks by the press and the use of troops to break the strike, the action remained solid for over two months. Despite the Home Secretary's hand wringing at the potential loss of life, Merlyn Rees' over-riding principle was to maintain the government's pay policy.

Despite widespread sympathy for the striking firefighters, the TUC refused to endorse the dispute. At a special FBU conference in January 1978, 70 per cent of the delegates voted to accept an immediate ten per cent offer, with a new pay formula that was to link firefighters' pay to manual workers. To the government's dismay, the 1977 firefighters' strike served to break the dam of wage-restraint and open the floodgates for other workers.

Winter of Discontent

It was the beginning of the end for the government's incomes policy. Within a matter of months, the "Winter of Discontent" had commenced. This movement was initially sparked off by an announcement by James Callaghan of a further round of wage restraint. But the prime minister had misjudged the mood entirely. Workers had reached their limit and were not prepared to tow the line any longer. With the TUC in opposition, the incomes policy was dead in the water. Callaghan's wages proposal was again rejected by the full TUC conference in September 1978.

This signalled a general offensive by the trade unions keen to get back the ground they had lost. Between October 1978 and March 1979 some ten million working days were lost through industrial action. Perhaps the most significant strike was at the Ford Motor Company in 1978, where after seven weeks on strike workers won a 17 per cent increase in wages. In the course of this dispute, the Labour Party Conference also voted against the Labour government's new five per cent pay policy. This represented a mortal blow for the government. The vote reflected an important shift to the left within the unions and Labour Party. The workers had needed time to digest the lessons of the past period. Now consciousness began very quickly to catch up with reality. By the end of 1978, all hell was let loose.

It is a social law that discontent within the working class finds its expression within the official mass organisations, and this is above all true in Britain. Opposition tends to develop first in the trade unions, then with a certain delay, in the Labour Party, which is historically the political expression of the unions. If their leaders, as in the 1950s and early 1960s, block the workers from taking official action they will tend to take unofficial action. Nevertheless, this accumulated resentment will ultimately find its expression within the trade unions – as is currently taking place today – and also inside the Labour Party.

Local authority manual workers, who were one of the poorest paid sections, took widespread action in support of their wage claim, beginning with a major one-day strike on 22 January 1979. Talks finally broke down at the end of January and half a million workers took strike action in the first week of February. These workers were subjected to a smear campaign in the press, with lurid stories of dead bodies being left unburied and rats in the streets, but they managed to hold out until a revised offer of nine per cent was made at the end of the month.

In a remarkable show of militancy 185,000 TGWU lorry drivers won their first national strike for 50 years through effective picketing. Strike committees were established to run the strike, which vetted transport needs, permitting emergency and essential deliveries, but stopping all others. It was once again a demonstration of the potential power of the workers, and an echo of the Councils of Action of the 1920s. These committees constituted elements of "dual power" in the strike, as they challenged the prerogatives of employers and the state. Thatcher, who was horrified at this display of union strength, declared in the Commons,

"Now we find that the place is practically being run by strikers' committees... They are ‘allowing' access to food. They are ‘allowing' certain lorries to go through... They have no right to prevent them from going through."

Other low-paid sections, like ambulance workers also followed suit. Although troops were brought in to deal with the dispute, the government made an improved offer of nine per cent plus the promise of pay comparability. On the basis of the revised offer the strike was called off. The struggle of these low paid workers – predominantly women workers – brought them into the trades unions in droves. Membership of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE), for instance, swelled from 256,000 in 1968 to 693,000 a decade later! Total union membership in 1979 reached unprecedented levels, embracing some 13.3 million or 55 per cent of the workforce. It was an incredible figure and a historic high point of trade union organisation.

The tremendous strike wave of 1978-79 was largely a product of the wage restraint of 1974-77. Workers were prepared to make sacrifices for the Labour government, but were now no longer prepared to see a dramatic fall in their living standards. After months of dithering, in May 1979, Callaghan decided to call a general election. This was a bad miscalculation. As in 1964-70, the counter-reforms of the Labour government had created widespread despondency and disillusionment. On 28 March the government lost a vote of confidence in the Commons by 312 to 311, and Callaghan was forced to dissolveParliament. In the ensuing general election on 3 May, the Callaghan government was defeated. The Tory leader, Margaret Thatcher, became the first woman Prime Minister in history. She would end up also as being the most hated.

The pundits blamed the 1979 defeat on the "Winter of Discontent" and the militant actions of the working class. This is fundamentally false. It was not the struggle for decent pay that caused the defeat, but the growing alienation of workers fed up with the counter-reforms of the Labour government. It was this mood of widespread apathy and abstention amongst Labour voters that led to the electoral debacle. "Disillusion with the Callaghan government was almost complete. Once again, a Labour administration had lost touch with its own supporters", stated Eric Heffer. (12) Even Denis Healey concurred, "Jim himself was badly out of touch with popular feeling." (13) The same process had resulted earlier in Labour's defeat of 1970, a lesson that was not lost on the rank and file of the labour movement.

The coming to power of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 was to pose a new and dangerous threat to organised Labour. The strategy of the Tory Party, developed while in opposition, was to break the power of the unions and to seek revenge for the humiliations of the past. This, in turn, was born out of the special crisis of British capitalism and the need to tame the working class. Thatcherism, which represented capitalism "red in tooth and claw", was to prove the greatest of test for the trade union movement for more than half a century.

[Back to In Defence of Marxism] [Back to "In the cause of Labour"] [Forward to next chapter]



Notes

1- The Economist, 16 February 1974

2- Quoted in Seumas Milne, The Enemy Within, p.275, London 1994

3- Gilmour, op. cit, p.211-12.

4- Chile, the State and Revolution, ed. M. Gonzales, p.152, London 1977

5- The Times, 15 September 1973

6- See Steve Peak, Troops in Strikes, p.122, London 1984

7- The Financial Times, 16 October 1974

8- Jones, op. cit, p. 298

9- Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power, p.401, London 1995

10- Quoted in Glynn and Harrison, The British Economic Disaster, p.97, London 1980

11- The Economist, 11 December 1976

12- Eric Heffer, Labour's Future, Socialist or SDP Mark Two, p.16, London 1986

13 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life, p.463, London 1991

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

A Matter of Loot

Global Eye
Blood and Gravy

By Chris Floyd
August 5, 2005


http://www.npr.org/programs/totn/
features/2005/falcon/falcon200-2.jpg



It's easy to forget sometimes -- amid all the lofty talk of geopolitics, of apocalyptic clashes between good and evil, of terror, liberty, security and God -- that the war on Iraq is "largely a matter of loot," as Kasper Gutman so aptly described the Crusades in that seminal treatise on human nature, "The Maltese Falcon." And nowhere is this more evident than in the festering, oozing imposthume of corruption centered around the Gutman-like figure of Vice President Dick Cheney.




Yes, it's once more unto the breach with Halliburton, the gargantuan government contractor that still pays Cheney, its former CEO, enormous annual sums in "deferred compensation" and stock options -- even while he presides over a White House war council that has steered more than $10 billion in no-bid Iraqi war contracts back to his corporate paymaster. This is rainmaking of monsoon proportions. Indeed, the company's military servicing wing announced a second-quarter profit spike of 284 percent last week -- a feast of blood and gravy that will send Cheney's stock options soaring into the stratosphere.


But although Halliburton has already entered the American lexicon as a byword for rampant cronyism, the true extent of its dense and deadly web of graft is only now emerging, most recently in a remarkable public hearing that revealed some of the corporation's standard business practices in Iraq: fraud, extortion, brutality, pilferage, theft -- even serving rotten food to U.S. soldiers in the battle zone.

By piecing together bits from the fiercely suppressed reports of a few honest Pentagon auditors and investigators, a joint House-Senate minority committee (the Bushist majority refused to take part) has unearthed at least $1.4 billion in fraudulent overcharges and unsourced billing by Cheney's company in Iraq. Testimony from Pentagon whistleblowers, former Halliburton officials and fellow contractors revealed the grim picture of a rogue operation, power-drunk and arrogant, beyond the reach of law, secure in the protection of its White House sugar daddy.

One tale is particularly instructive: Halliburton's strenuous efforts to prevent a company hired by the Iraqis, Lloyd-Owen International, from delivering gasoline into the conquered land from Kuwait for 18 cents a gallon. Why? Because LOI's cost-efficient operation undercuts Halliburton's highway-robbery price of $1.30 a gallon for the exact same service.

But how is Halliburton able to interfere with the sacred process of free enterprise? Well, it seems that Cheney's firm, a private company, has control over the U.S. military checkpoint on the volatile Iraq-Kuwait border, and it also has the authority to grant -- or withhold -- the Pentagon ID cards that are indispensable for contractors operating in Iraq. (Even contractors who, like LOI, are working for the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government.) Halliburton used these powers to block LOI's access to the military crossing -- which provides quick, safe delivery of the fuel -- for months. Then the game got rougher.

In June, Cheney's boys blackmailed LOI into delivering some construction materials to a Halliburton project in the friendly confines of Fallujah: no delivery, no "golden ticket" Pentagon card, said Halliburton. They neglected to tell LOI that convoys on the route had been repeatedly hit by insurgents in recent days. And sure enough, LOI's delivery trucks were ripped to shreds just outside a Halliburton-operated military base. Three men were killed and seven wounded. But that's not all. An e-mail obtained by investigators revealed that Halliburton brass had expressly prohibited company employees from offering any assistance to the shattered convoy.

Halliburton extended this milk of human kindness to its food services as well. The firm had to bring in Turkish and Filipino guest workers to feed U.S. soldiers, because the happily liberated Iraqis couldn't be trusted not to blow up their benefactors. The Cheneymen treated these coolies as befitted their lowly station: They packed them into tents with sand floors and no beds, and literally fed them scraps from the garbage. When the peons complained, Halliburton sacked the subcontractor, who had been buying bargain produce and meat from the locals, and hired an American crony to ship in food all the way from Philadelphia.

U.S. soldiers weren't treated much better. Employees testified that Halliburton brass had ordered them to serve spoiled and rotten food to soldiers, day in and day out. Meanwhile, Halliburton brass were reserving choice cuts for the big beer-soaked barbecues they threw for themselves two or three times a week. They also billed the taxpayer for 10,000 "ghost meals" per day at a single base: The food was phantom, but the rake-off was real. Meanwhile, any employee who made noises about exposing the fraud to auditors was threatened with transfer to a red-hot fire zone, like Fallujah or Saddam's hometown, Tikrit.

All of this criminal katzenjammer -- and much, much more -- was authorized at the highest levels, as top procurement brass and Pentagon officials confirmed. Cheney's office kept tabs on Halliburton's bids while Pentagon warlord Don Rumsfeld "violated federal law," the committee noted, by directly intervening in the procurement process to eliminate all possible rivals and to make sure Cheney's employer got the guaranteed-profit gig. Rumsfeld's office also removed oversight procedures for the dirty deals and ignored repeated warnings from Pentagon auditors about Halliburton's blatant, persistent, pervasive fraud. And the money keeps rolling in. Just last month, Don and Dick ladled another $1.75 billion dollop of pork gravy into Halliburton's bowl.

For this they have made a holocaust in the desert sands, sacrificing tens of thousands of innocent lives: for cheap, greasy graft; for grubby pilfering; for the personal profit of Richard B. Cheney and the whole pack of Bushist jackals gorging themselves on blood money.




Annotations

Halliburton's Questioned and Unsupported Costs in Iraq Exceed $1.4 Billion
House-Senate Minority Staff Repot, June 27, 2005

Halliburton Overcharges in Iraq: Transcript of Hearing
Federal News Service, June 27, 2005

Halliburton announces 284 percent increase in war profits
Halliburton Watch, July 25, 2005 http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/earnings072205.html

Contract Abuse Alleged in Iraq
Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2005

Cheney's Boundless War Profiteering
The Age (Australia), July 30, 2005

Monday, August 08, 2005

It's All Gravy

Global Eye

Blood and Gravy
By Chris Floyd
the moscowtimes.colm
August 5, 2005


It's easy to forget sometimes -- amid all the lofty talk of geopolitics, of apocalyptic clashes between good and evil, of terror, liberty, security and God -- that the war on Iraq is "largely a matter of loot," as Kasper Gutman so aptly described the Crusades in that seminal treatise on human nature, "The Maltese Falcon." And nowhere is this more evident than in the festering, oozing imposthume of corruption centered around the Gutman-like figure of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Yes, it's once more unto the breach with Halliburton, the gargantuan government contractor that still pays Cheney, its former CEO, enormous annual sums in "deferred compensation" and stock options -- even while he presides over a White House war council that has steered more than $10 billion in no-bid Iraqi war contracts back to his corporate paymaster. This is rainmaking of monsoon proportions. Indeed, the company's military servicing wing announced a second-quarter profit spike of 284 percent last week -- a feast of blood and gravy that will send Cheney's stock options soaring into the stratosphere.



But although Halliburton has already entered the American lexicon as a byword for rampant cronyism, the true extent of its dense and deadly web of graft is only now emerging, most recently in a remarkable public hearing that revealed some of the corporation's standard business practices in Iraq: fraud, extortion, brutality, pilferage, theft -- even serving rotten food to U.S. soldiers in the battle zone.

By piecing together bits from the fiercely suppressed reports of a few honest Pentagon auditors and investigators, a joint House-Senate minority committee (the Bushist majority refused to take part) has unearthed at least $1.4 billion in fraudulent overcharges and unsourced billing by Cheney's company in Iraq. Testimony from Pentagon whistleblowers, former Halliburton officials and fellow contractors revealed the grim picture of a rogue operation, power-drunk and arrogant, beyond the reach of law, secure in the protection of its White House sugar daddy.

One tale is particularly instructive: Halliburton's strenuous efforts to prevent a company hired by the Iraqis, Lloyd-Owen International, from delivering gasoline into the conquered land from Kuwait for 18 cents a gallon. Why? Because LOI's cost-efficient operation undercuts Halliburton's highway-robbery price of $1.30 a gallon for the exact same service.

But how is Halliburton able to interfere with the sacred process of free enterprise? Well, it seems that Cheney's firm, a private company, has control over the U.S. military checkpoint on the volatile Iraq-Kuwait border, and it also has the authority to grant -- or withhold -- the Pentagon ID cards that are indispensable for contractors operating in Iraq. (Even contractors who, like LOI, are working for the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government.) Halliburton used these powers to block LOI's access to the military crossing -- which provides quick, safe delivery of the fuel -- for months. Then the game got rougher.

In June, Cheney's boys blackmailed LOI into delivering some construction materials to a Halliburton project in the friendly confines of Fallujah: no delivery, no "golden ticket" Pentagon card, said Halliburton. They neglected to tell LOI that convoys on the route had been repeatedly hit by insurgents in recent days. And sure enough, LOI's delivery trucks were ripped to shreds just outside a Halliburton-operated military base. Three men were killed and seven wounded. But that's not all. An e-mail obtained by investigators revealed that Halliburton brass had expressly prohibited company employees from offering any assistance to the shattered convoy.

Halliburton extended this milk of human kindness to its food services as well. The firm had to bring in Turkish and Filipino guest workers to feed U.S. soldiers, because the happily liberated Iraqis couldn't be trusted not to blow up their benefactors. The Cheneymen treated these coolies as befitted their lowly station: They packed them into tents with sand floors and no beds, and literally fed them scraps from the garbage. When the peons complained, Halliburton sacked the subcontractor, who had been buying bargain produce and meat from the locals, and hired an American crony to ship in food all the way from Philadelphia.

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U.S. soldiers weren't treated much better. Employees testified that Halliburton brass had ordered them to serve spoiled and rotten food to soldiers, day in and day out. Meanwhile, Halliburton brass were reserving choice cuts for the big beer-soaked barbecues they threw for themselves two or three times a week. They also billed the taxpayer for 10,000 "ghost meals" per day at a single base: The food was phantom, but the rake-off was real. Meanwhile, any employee who made noises about exposing the fraud to auditors was threatened with transfer to a red-hot fire zone, like Fallujah or Saddam's hometown, Tikrit.

All of this criminal katzenjammer -- and much, much more -- was authorized at the highest levels, as top procurement brass and Pentagon officials confirmed. Cheney's office kept tabs on Halliburton's bids while Pentagon warlord Don Rumsfeld "violated federal law," the committee noted, by directly intervening in the procurement process to eliminate all possible rivals and to make sure Cheney's employer got the guaranteed-profit gig. Rumsfeld's office also removed oversight procedures for the dirty deals and ignored repeated warnings from Pentagon auditors about Halliburton's blatant, persistent, pervasive fraud. And the money keeps rolling in. Just last month, Don and Dick ladled another $1.75 billion dollop of pork gravy into Halliburton's bowl.

For this they have made a holocaust in the desert sands, sacrificing tens of thousands of innocent lives: for cheap, greasy graft; for grubby pilfering; for the personal profit of Richard B. Cheney and the whole pack of Bushist jackals gorging themselves on blood money.



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Halliburton's Questioned and Unsupported Costs in Iraq Exceed $1.4 Billion
House-Senate Minority Staff Repot, June 27, 2005

Halliburton Overcharges in Iraq: Transcript of Hearing
Federal News Service, June 27, 2005

Halliburton announces 284 percent increase in war profits
Halliburton Watch, July 25, 2005 http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/earnings072205.html

Contract Abuse Alleged in Iraq
Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2005

Cheney's Boundless War Profiteering
The Age (Australia), July 30, 2005

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Discovery's Test Tonight


Discovery's Test Tonight


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Astronauts on the shuttle Discovery are preparing for re-entry into Earth's atmosphere early on Monday.


The shuttle is expected to land early on Monday morning at Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral. The touchdown time, weather permitting, has been set for 0446 EDT (0946 BST; 0846 GMT).

Nasa has declared the shuttle safe to withstand the burning descent that shattered Columbia in February 2003. On Saturday, Discovery undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) before flying around the space lab to check it for wear and tear. 'Mission accomplished'

"I think Discovery is in absolutely great shape," said Discovery Commander Eileen Collins on Sunday. "It performed well in ascent.

"This morning we did a flight control system checkout. Everything checked out fine. I'm pretty confident about re-entry, I'm thinking about the landing.

"We're going to have thoughts about Columbia, but we'll be very focused on the job at hand."
Flight director LeRoy Cain said the weather forecast looked good for Monday's pre-dawn landing at Cape Canaveral.

It is Nasa's first landing since Columbia broke apart on re-entry as a result of damage sustained during its launch. But Mr Cain said Nasa cannot dwell on Columbia's failure. "We're looking forward, we're not looking back," he said.

Crew members and Nasa manager hailed what they said was the complete success of the mission, largely aimed at testing changes made to the spacecraft since Columbia. Discovery's visit to the ISS may be the last shuttle mission for some time. Nasa has grounded the fleet until it fixes the flying debris problem, which destroyed Columbia and resurfaced at Discovery's launch on 26 July.

Because of safety measures put in place after Columbia, Discovery has been videotaped, photographed and laser-inspected. In a shuttle program first, it has also been repaired by Steve Robinson and Japanese crew member Soichi Noguchi during one of their three spacewalks.
The men removed two loose cloth strips, which were protruding from the shuttle's belly.