Media Lens - Afghanistan "Big Beasts", Big Bloodbath

Closing The Loop

The “big beasts” of the pre-digital media age are in big trouble, the Guardian tells us. In the last year, they have faced, not only structural challenges but the worst recession for a generation:

“As advertising revenues dried up, newspaper, television and radio owners – especially those in local media – faced a stark challenge: adapt or die.

“The result was tens of thousands of job losses and unprecedented uncertainty over how the media landscape will look in just a few years' time. How many national newspapers will survive? Can commercial radio avoid complete meltdown? How much are people prepared to pay for content online – if at all?” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/10/overview-mediaguardian-100-2009)

At the heart of the uncertainty lies the internet and how to make it pay. For 100 years the corporate mass media has flourished thanks to its monopoly of the means of mass communication. Reviewing the history of the British media, James Curran and Jean Seaton write that the industrialisation of the press in the early twentieth century triggered “a progressive transfer of power from the working class to wealthy businessmen, while dependence on advertising encouraged the absorption or elimination of the early radical press and stunted its subsequent development before the First World War." (Curran and Seaton, Power Without Responsibility - The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, Routledge, Fourth Edition, 1991, p.47)

The effect of advertising was dramatic: "one of four things happened to national radical papers that failed to meet the requirements of advertisers. They either closed down; accommodated to advertising pressure by moving up-market; stayed in a small audience ghetto with manageable losses; or accepted an alternative source of institutional patronage." (Ibid, p.43)

Unable to compete on price and outreach, the radical press was pushed to the margins. Hard to believe now, but there were once 325 newspapers and magazines published by supporters of the US Socialist Party, reaching 2 million subscribers.

A torrent of propaganda has poured out of the corporate media monopoly. Former BBC Controller, Stuart Hood, argued that both the BBC and commercial TV have always "interpreted impartiality as the acceptance of that segment of opinion which constitutes parliamentary consensus. Opinion that falls outside that consensus has difficulty in finding expression". (Ibid, p.200)

But if media “impartiality” is based on the “parliamentary consensus” then, by definition, even highly rational challenges to that consensus will be rejected as “biased” and will “find difficulty in finding expression”. An example was provided in 2006 by the BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent Bridget Kendall:

"There's still bitter disagreement over invading Iraq. Was it justified or a disastrous miscalculation?" (Kendall, BBC Six O'Clock News, March 20, 2006)

The “parliamentary consensus” does indeed limit thinkable thought between the two poles arguing that the invasion was either “justified” or, at worst, a “miscalculation”. The far more reasonable argument - that the invasion was a war crime - is usually ignored because it falls beyond “that segment of opinion which constitutes parliamentary consensus”.

Amazingly, then, parliament is, in effect, granted the right to define reality, with the media acting in support to affirm the definition. If this sounds fantastical, consider comments made in 2004 by Nick Robinson, then political editor at ITV news, in the Times:

"In the run-up to the conflict, I and many of my colleagues, were bombarded with complaints that we were acting as mouthpieces for Mr Blair. Why, the complainants demanded to know, did we report without question his warning that Saddam was a threat? Hadn't we read what Scott Ritter had said or Hans Blix? I always replied in the same way. It was my job to report what those in power were doing or thinking... That is all someone in my sort of job can do. We are not investigative reporters." (Robinson, ‘“Remember the last time you shouted like that?” I asked the spin doctor,’ The Times, July 16, 2004)

Thus, the media act as intellectual filters, reinforcing the consensus view and ignoring or attacking challenges to it. If it turns out that parliament is in thrall to elite interests offering a Tweedledum/Twiddledee no-choice, then the media will promote, rather than expose, this empty shell of a democracy. And this, of course, is exactly the situation we are in: politics and media work together to insulate power from rational thought and public interference.

The corporate media got away with its role in this closed-loop oppression for so long by simple virtue of its monopoly power to suppress dissent. But the world has changed. The internet allows non-corporate journalists and commentators to bypass the corporate gatekeepers and communicate to a global audience, instantly, at almost zero cost. These analysts generally do not charge for their work - almost all radical material is freely available on the internet.

And here is the rub for the mainstream: this non-corporate journalism is unconstrained by the distorting influence of wealthy owners and parent companies with busy fingers in any number of economic and political pies. It is unconstrained by the reliance of corporate journalists on corporate advertising, with all that that implies. It is uncompromised by the insidious dependence on government and other official sources for cheap news; by thoughts of career progression in the revolving door between journalism, public relations and government.

The result is really beyond argument: dissident reporting and commentary is rational, honest and, therefore, interesting, in a way that corporate journalism can never be. This has struck us with very great force, many times. In researching specialist issues relating, for example, to Haiti, Iran, Korea and the financial crisis, we constantly find ourselves unable to make sense of the mainstream version of events, which is compromised and distorted to the point of incomprehensibility. By contrast, when we turn to independent, non-corporate expert opinion, we are quickly able to understand what is happening and why. (The specialists cited in our recent media alert, ‘Cartoon Korea’, provide an excellent example of this: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/09/090608_cartoon_korea_filtered.php) The mainstream is just not able to compete on honesty and rationality. And, crucially, it needs to charge for its extremely poor product.

The deceptiveness of the corporate media version of the world is all around us, rendered invisible (like the nose on our face) only by its omnipresence. In announcing MediaGuardian’s latest annual list of the 100 “most powerful people” in the media, the Guardian boldly declares of itself:

“The paper is the voice of the left in the British press."
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/10/alan-rusbridger-mediaguardian-100-2009)

Evidence for the claim is proffered: “a Guardian leader last month said Labour should replace Gordon Brown as its party leader and prime minister. ‘The truth is there is no vision from him, no plan, no argument for the future and no support,’ it said.” (Ibid)

This is the Guardian’s idea of speaking up for the left!

At 51 on the Guardian list, the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson is a fiercely challenging interviewer, we are to believe. He “can have earned no higher accolade than that afforded him before Barack Obama's first appearance before the British press. He has ‘generally considered the most important job in British political journalism’, said a briefing prepared for the president by US intelligence officials. It added that he has ‘carved out a niche as a persistent irritant to world leaders’.”

Again, an example is given. Robinson proved his mettle by “stumping the normally word-perfect Obama with a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Robinson, with his trademark glasses and bald pate, presumably won't have to be pointed out to the president next time.”
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/10/nick-robinson-mediaguardian-100-2009)

This is the anaemic version of dissent sold by an industry whose priority is “the smooth operation of the machinery of everyday life and the perpetuation of the present arrangement of wealth and power,” as Howard Zinn has noted. (The Zinn Reader - Writings on Disobedience and Democracy, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.339)

In January 2003, Robinson told ITV news anchor Nicholas Owen:

"However, Nick, +they+ look at these things in a slightly different way in Downing Street. +Yes+, almost two-thirds of the public say they're not convinced of the case for war, that it hasn't yet been made, but Tony Blair would probably say the same - he would say we're not +yet+ making the case for war, we're making the case that you have to be ready for war otherwise Saddam Hussein won't back down. The difficulty, as one Downing Street insider put it to me, is we're more in a parallel with 1930 than with 1939. In other words, this isn't a dictator who's already attacked another country; it's a dictator who +might+ do something, who's got potential. His [Blair's] message, very simply, Nick, is we +have+ to confront this man - we can't back down." (Robinson, ITV News, 12:30, January 13, 2003)

Robinson later described how hundreds of British troops were “risking their lives to bring peace and security to the streets of Iraq". (Robinson, ITV News, September 8, 2003)

The MediaGuardian 100 list at least provides some insight into the world of the “big beasts” who control what we know and think. Consider number 8 on the list, Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade), editor of the Sun and chief executive elect of News International:

“Married last month to her second husband, horse trainer Charlie Brooks, the guest list at the wedding was like a who's who of Westminster, Fleet Street and the City including Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Jeremy Clarkson, Carphone Warehouse boss Charles Dunstone, and the extended Murdoch family, including Rupert, James, Elisabeth and her husband, Matthew Freud. The Daily Telegraph editor, Will Lewis, was the best man.

“A feature in Tatler magazine last month described how the pair liked to rise early ‘at their two-bedroom taupe-painted barn outside Chipping Norton’ to fly to Venice by private jet for lunch at Harry's Bar before returning to central London for dinner at Wilton's restaurant in Jermyn Street.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/11/rebekah-wade-mediaguardian-100-2009)


Afghanistan - “The Verbiage About ‘Democracy‘s War’”

The latest manifestation of the media monopoly reinforcing a “parliamentary consensus” involves the US-UK war on Afghanistan. In an article entitled, ‘Back our boys - they fight for your lives,’ Sue Carroll asks in the Mirror:

“Enjoy your barbecue at the weekend? Sleep easy in your bed last night? Get to work without any problems? I trust you did because this is what liberty is all about. The right to live safely in a civilised community free from the oppression of thugs and fanatics who wouldn’t think twice about crushing our democracy and slaughtering us as we sleep.

“It’s hard-earned, this easy living. Millions of men have died for our freedom and more are losing their lives in Afghanistan to protect us. So less of the hand-wringing please about whether we should or should not be fighting a war against the Taliban. It’s a no-brainer.” (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/sue-carroll/2009/07/14/back-our-boys-they-fight-for-your-lives-115875-21517939/)

This is the approved propaganda view, not just of the current conflict, but of every war throughout history. The Telegraph comments:

“The conflict in Afghanistan is complex and difficult but it is, on balance, a war worth fighting to crush the camps which train terrorists for assaults on Western cities.” (Leading article, ‘Our troops in Afghanistan need the right tools for the job,’ Daily Telegraph, July 10, 2009)

There are problems, in fact absurdities, but conveniently, the Telegraph reminds us, “The Obama surge is addressing all that.” (Ibid) Indeed, the Telegraph did a good job of explaining Obama’s utility and popularity right across the political spectrum:

“If this anti-Iraq war disciple of ‘soft power’ feels the need to put 20,000 more American troops in harm's way, there surely must be good reason for concern.” (Irwin Stelzer, ‘A lesson from history that goes unheeded; Great leaders can see the bigger picture; in times of conflict,’ Daily Telegraph, July 15, 2009)

We can be sure Obama knows best. Curiously, the disciple of “soft power” has (“temporarily”) increased the size of the US Army by 22,000 soldiers, raising the total number of active US soldiers from 547,000 to 569,000. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8160110.stm)

In 2004, an Egyptian academic described how hatred of the US is rooted in its support for "every possible anti-democratic government in the Arab-Islamic world... When we hear American officials speaking of freedom, democracy and such values, they make terms like these sound obscene." (Quoted Noam Chomsky, Hegemony Or Survival, Hamish Hamilton, 2003, p.215)

The Financial Times reported: "while only might can destroy al-Qaeda, its expanding support base can be eroded only by policies Arabs and Muslims see as just". Destroying al-Qaeda will therefore have little effect if "the underlying conditions that facilitated the group's emergence and popularity - political oppression and economic marginalisation - will persist". (Editorial, Financial Times, May 14, 2003)

Two political scientists commented:

"Delicate social and political problems cannot be bombed or 'missiled' out of existence... Violence can be likened to a virus; the more you bombard it, the more it spreads." (James Bill and Rebecca Bill Chavez, Middle East Journal, autumn 2002)

Ami Ayalon, the head of Israel's General Security Service (Shabak) from 1996 to 2000, has suggested that "those who want victory" against terror without addressing underlying grievances "want an unending war". (Quoted, Chomsky, op., cit, p.213)

This appeared to be obvious to the editors of the Guardian in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. On September 15, 2001, a Guardian editorial observed:

“But America's dilemma, once the verbiage about ‘democracy's war’ and ‘freedom's brightest beacon’ is cut away, is that its military options, to the extent that they are currently understood, are largely unsuited to the task in hand.

“Indeed, much of what appears to be under contemplation will just make matters worse. For consider: any major air and/or ground attack mounted against Afghanistan in pursuit of prime suspect Osama bin Laden will certainly produce civilian casualties. It may not produce Bin Laden (who may not even be there). Such an attack would inflame Muslim opinion and hand the terrorists a second triumph: following Manhattan, here would be the ‘holy war’ they have long sought to provoke.“ (Leading article: ‘The penknife and the bomb: Brute force is not the way to defeat the terrorist threat,’ The Guardian, September 15, 2001; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/15/september11.usa)

Consider how the ideological blinkers had fallen over the Guardian’s eyes by 2006 in relation to “democracy’s war”, when it referred to “the foreigners helping steer this long-suffering country towards stability and democracy.” (Leading article: ‘Afghanistan: The forgotten war,’ The Guardian, January 18, 2006)

More recently, the Guardian noted that the reality in Afghanistan “is a country where security is getting worse and advances - such as democracy, the return of refugees and universal education - are under threat.” (Leading article: ‘Afghanistan: Bravery may not be enough,’ The Guardian, June 10, 2008)

Not only had “the verbiage about ‘democracy's war’” been more than verbiage, it had resulted in actual democracy, which was now under threat.

By striking contrast, the war correspondent Reginald Thompson commented on attempts to bring “democracy” to the Korean peninsula by force of arms in the 1950s. In his superb book, Cry Korea, published in 1951, Thompson wrote:

“What a mockery it was to name this kind of thing democracy! What a Quixotic business - at best - to try to establish it, to imagine it possible to establish an evolutionary result without evolution.” (Thompson, Cry Korea - The Korean War: A Reporter’s Notebook, Reportage Press, 2009, p.175)

Thompson was even able to comprehend Chinese suspicions:

“But would the USA or the UN leave Korea? China might think not - it was already apparent to all observers that democracy is not a saleable commodity but an evolutionary growth in certain circumstances. It might take a long time to take root, even given the circumstances, in a peasant country like Korea, accustomed only to tyranny of one kind of another. So that the US and UN role might be reasonably that of conquerors and colonisers.” (Ibid, p.222)

By contrast, an Independent leader comments:

“We need to be mentally prepared for the duration of this vital mission to secure Afghanistan's democratic future, as well as the likely human cost.” (Leading article, ‘The public mood is shifting, but the mission must push on,’ The Independent, July 13, 2009)

Roger Alton, the pro-Iraq war editor of the Independent, remains onside:

“The Western mission in Afghanistan, though overshadowed by the foolish invasion of Iraq and often poorly carried out these past eight years, remains a worthy one... Nato troops, including Britain's contingent, are in Afghanistan at the invitation of the democratically elected government of President Hamid Karzai. And their purpose is to protect civilians from the depredations of the Taliban while the Afghan army builds up the capacity to take over the job.

“They are also fighting for the protection of British citizens. Some three-quarters of UK terror plots under surveillance by the authorities have links to militants based on the Afghan/ Pakistan border. The Taliban granted al-Qa'ida a base before 2001. There is no reason to suppose they would not do the same again if they returned to power. Our own security is bound up with the safety of the Afghan people.” (Ibid)

In a rare departure from the propaganda norm, the Guardian published comments by former diplomat and deputy governor in occupied Iraq, Rory Stewart, now Ryan Family professor of the practice of human rights, Harvard University:

“Afghanistan's political and strategic significance has been grossly exaggerated. The idea that we are there so we don't have to fight terrorists in Britain is absurd. The terrorist cells and training camps are not in Afghanistan. The people the Americans and British are fighting in Afghanistan are mostly local tribesmen resisting foreign forces. Does al-Qaida still require large terrorist training camps to organise attacks?

“Could they not plan in Hamburg and train at flight schools in Florida; or meet in Bradford and build morale on an adventure training course in Wales? Those who argue that we have the right strategy provided we have enough troops and equipment were saying not long ago that if we had only had 7,000 troops in Helmand instead of 5,000, we could defeat the Taliban.”
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/13/afghanistan-experts-views-defence-troops)

Impressively honest, but Stewart’s views on Afghanistan have been mentioned in a total of four articles in the entire UK national press. As ever, opinion that falls outside the parliamentary consensus “has difficulty in finding expression”.


SUGGESTED ACTION

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Why Visiting Pompeii Has Me Thinking About the Smoke Billowing Out of Our Economic Mt. Vesuvius

I was in Pompeii a couple of days ago. Walking around the ancient city, reading up on its history, and thinking of its people -- wiped out in 79 A.D. by a volcanic eruption -- has me thinking a lot about warning signs.

Warning signs fall into two categories: those that are recognized while there is still time to heed the warning, and those that are acknowledged as "warning signs" only after the fact, when it's too late to do anything but sift through the ashes and wonder why we didn't do something when we had the chance.

In the case of Pompeii, the warning signs included a severe earthquake in 62 A.D., continued tremors over the ensuing years, springs and wells drying up, dogs running away, and birds no longer singing. And then the most obvious warning sign of all: columns of smoke belching out of Mount Vesuvius before the volcano blew its top, burying the city and its inhabitants under 60 feet of ash and volcanic rock.

But the warning tremors were dismissed as "not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania." And the billowing smoke was quaintly described as looking like an "umbrella pine."

There is currently plenty of alarming smoke pouring out of our economic Vesuvius, but it too is being dismissed. Instead of "umbrella pines," we are being lulled with the sightings of green shoots. Don't worry about those economic tremors, we are told, our financial system is back on track, the worst is over, the bailout worked and we just need to sit tight and wait for the bottom to be hit (some are arguing it's already been hit), after which we'll start our slow but steady climb to recovery.

But the warning signs are all around us:

-- Unemployment has hit a level beyond the administration's worst projections, and last month reached record highs in Rhode Island (12.4 percent), South Carolina (12.1 percent), and Nevada (12 percent), while Michigan, at 15.2 percent, still has the highest jobless rate of any state. Meanwhile, over 650,000 workers will run out of unemployment benefits come September.

-- Credit card defaults have surpassed 10 percent, and in May hit a record high -- the sixth straight month that dubious achievement has been reached.

-- Foreclosure numbers continue to shatter records. There were more than 336,000 foreclosure filings in June, the fourth month in a row with over 300,000. That meant that, as of July 1, one in every 84 homes had been -- or was in danger of being -- lost. And more than 15 million homeowners now owe more on their homes than they are worth.

-- In the first six months of 2009, 675,351 individuals filed for bankruptcy. In June alone, there were 116,365 bankruptcy filings -- a 40 percent increase over June 2008.

-- Since the recession began, an estimated 2.4 million workers have lost their health care benefits.

And the biggest warning sign that the natural order of things has been disturbed is how many of the very people responsible for the economic collapse not only are still in power, but are still lining their pockets with outrageous windfalls -- courtesy of the American taxpayer.

According to last week's earnings reports, Goldman Sachs posted a $3.44 billion second-quarter profit, Citigroup earned $3 billion, and Bank of America earned $2.4 billion.

On top of this, Goldman Sachs just announced that it was setting aside $11.36 billion for employee compensation through the first half of the year.

And AIG -- which we bailed out to the tune of $150 billion -- is apparently doing so well they're ready to set aside $235 million in bonuses.

After the earthquake that severely damaged Pompeii in 62 A.D., it is said that among the first buildings repaired were Pompeii's famous brothels. The metaphor holds. Only in 2009, we call them Goldman, AIG, Bank of America, and Citi. Though that is probably unfair. To the brothels.

But wait, you might ask, isn't the government reacting to the warning signs? Isn't Congress currently redesigning our financial regulatory structure? Yes, but the redesign will give greater authority to the Fed -- which missed all the warning signs leading up to the meltdown. As Mark Williams, finance professor at Boston University and a former Fed bank examiner put it, "giving the Fed more responsibility at this point is like a parent giving his son a bigger and faster car right after he crashed the family station wagon."

And what about the new "Pecora" commission, which has been charged with investigating how the financial collapse happened and how to prevent another one -- won't it point out the warning signs? Its chairman, Phil Angelides, certainly seems determined to. But look at its vice-chairman and the restrictions the commission is operating under. The vice chairman is Bill Thomas, the former GOP congressman from California, who earlier this decade chaired the House Ways and Means Committee. Even among shills for big business, he stands out. What's more, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner ensured the committee won't have much clout by forcing Democrats to agree to a provision that allows the committee to issue subpoenas only if one of its Republican appointees votes to issue one.

Then there is the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which is supposed to protect consumers from the vultures that helped destroy our economy. But its ability to monitor warning signs is being undermined by Wall Street, with the charmingly named Financial Services Roundtable leading the charge. "Politically, it would be difficult to kill it outright," says Scott E. Talbott, the Roundtable's Senior VP for government affairs. "Our goal is to change the agency, change the proposal, to where the benefits outweigh the costs.... We're not for the status quo. We're for protecting consumers. The question is, what's the best way to do it?"

I'm going to guess that, for Talbott's group, the "best way" to protect consumers will be a way that somehow does not protect consumers.

And then we have today's blistering report from Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing the TARP program, showing that many of the banks -- instead of using the bailout money they received to boost lending -- have used it to make investments, repay debts, or buy other banks. The report also takes on the Treasury Department for its ongoing lack of transparency when it comes to requiring bailed out banks to let the public know what they have done with our money. It's hard to heed warning signs that are so deliberately kept out of view.

Walking around Pompeii my friends and I kept wondering: "How could they miss the birds not singing, the water not flowing, the earth trembling, and the smoke billowing? The list of today's warning signs, which future generations may similarly marvel at, grows longer with each passing day.

So the tremors continue to rumble beneath our feet and the plumes of smoke continue to belch overhead.

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It's The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!

I am happy to announce that beginning today I will be working as a Fellow and blogger with Campaign for America's Future. This post introduces the areas I will be pursuing.

The economy is terrible. There aren't enough jobs. Most of the jobs that are still there are not paying enough for people to keep up, and people are afraid they could lose them tomorrow. So we all have too much debt. We have too little health care. We have too much stress. And in the bigger picture we have too little power to do anything about it.

They say we're reaching a "bottom" and that there are "green shoots." But I am afraid that this isn’t your father’s recession. I'm afraid this economy isn’t a pendulum that has swing too far in one direction, ready to be pulled by natural forces back to the other side. I am afraid that this isn't a "business cycle" pattern with a fall, then a bottom, then a recovery where all the shoppers return to the stores, all the jobs come back and growth picks up where it left off. Even "green shoot" optimists admit there will be few new jobs if there is any recovery.

It may be that we are not in a period of waiting for things to "get back to normal." Many people think that this economic collapse IS the return to normal.

For decades concerned observers have warned about problems with the "sustainability" of our economic paradigm. If you look at charts describing changes in the economy, environment, population - all kinds of things - you see that in recent decades they all change and start to move, often exponentially, in directions that obviously cannot be sustained. They look like this:

A wise man once said that when something is unsustainable it can’t be sustained. And here we are. A very good explanation of the problem of unsustainability of our economic paradigm is The Story Of Stuff. "It's a linear system and we live on a finite planet."

It is not just the economy out of whack. The business practices that brought us here -- overextraction, overextension, overleveraging, overconsumption -- have also whacked the planet’s resources. The fisheries are increasingly depleted. The aquifers are increasingly drained. The forests are increasingly logged. The landfills are increasingly full. And, of course, the planet is increasingly hotter.

Our economic system has also taken a toll on the people. Too many hours at a stressful workplace with too little sleep have burned many of us out. Our thinking and identity are about our jobs, not our spirit and character. Our values are devoted to markets with many of us placing making money over loving and caring for families and others. And there's no time for that stuff anyway. We have become consumers instead of citizens and humans. Decades of falling wages, decreasing savings and increasing debt have tapped us out. Consumption has used us up. And we’re fed up.

So things reached a breaking point and broke down. This has been coming at us for decades. And here we are.

If this economic collapse was the consequence of decades of an unsustainable economic model, then what do we do?

The government, of course, has been working to fix this problem within the context of the current failed economic system. And in that context they have been doing a good job. They lowered interest rates to encourage even more borrowing. The stimulus pumped borrowed money into the economy to cover the loss of demand from people and business. They raised the FDIC protection levels so we're not all wiped out if banks fail. They bailed out overleveraged financial institutions so they could again provide credit.

Of course the stimulus is better than none. We need unemployment benefits and infrastructure investment. And investment has a longer-term payoff.

But what happens after the stimulus? What do they think will drive our economy back to what they think of as normal? Will it be renewed manufacturing of cars? If we don't bring back the good-paying jobs, who will buy them? Same for houses. Same for TVs and appliances and furniture and jewelery and expensive shoes and all the rest.

In a June interview on the Lehrer News Hour, Treasury Secretary Geithner said that they are doing what they need to do to "get growth back on track."

Back on track? Does he mean we will fish out the remaining fish? Cut the rest of the trees? Drain the rest of the aquifers? Take the tops off the rest of the mountains? Does he mean that we will run up the rest of the credit cards? Will we cover the rest of the land with even bigger houses and subdivisions and strip malls? Will we export all the rest of the jobs? Will we hand the rest of the nation's income and wealth over to an elite few?

I don't think they are going to get things back "on track" by applying more of the same "solutions" that got us to where we are today. Will they bail out more companies, making them even too bigger to fail? None of the fixes will work if the problem is that we have reached the limits of sustainability of the economic model we have been following for decades.

So what can we do to change the system itself? How do we restructure the model - the economic paradigm - in ways that let We, The People enjoy and share the benefits of our economy? There are a number of clues that I will be writing about in my work with Campaign for America's Future. Maybe we can follow the clues and find answers.

One obvious part of problem is that we have an economic system in which we tolerate a few people controlling –- and thereby getting most of the benefits from –- things that should belong to and be controlled by all of us. Aren't We, The People supposed to be making the decisions here? And shouldn't we make decisions that benefit all of us instead of just a wealthy few?

At the center of this problem is the role of the corporation in our society. Corporations have amassed immense power and that power is used to control the country's decision-making processes, always to the benefit of the wealthy few. Getting a grip on this problem requires us to regain understanding of why we have corporations in the first place. We, The People enacted the laws that allow corporations to exist because we felt that it would be to our benefit to do so. And to the extent that they are now benefiting a few at the expense of the rest of us, we can change the laws. Let that sink in.

Another thing we have to get control over is the concept of externalization. Why do we allow companies to externalize their costs while internalizing the profits? In other words, companies are allowed to push costs onto the rest of us, but are not asked to share the resulting profits with the rest of us. We even let them see and treat people (us) as "costs" -- a layoff pushes the responsibility to support a worker onto the community while the company keeps the wages they were paid.

When a company replaces a worker with a machine, the company pockets the wages that would have gone to the worker and the worker is discarded. But now we are learning that eventually enough workers are discarded that there is no one to purchase what those workers replaced by machines were making. So the company and the economy lose, too. This just doesn't work.

Here is a big one: We need to understand that actually making things is what drives an economy. America became an economic powerhouse because we made things here. China is an economic powerhouse because they make things there. I'll be writing about that a lot.

These are just a few of the things that I will be exploring in the coming months. Let's see where it goes.

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Turkey Gets Boost from Pipeline Politics

The political geography of the modern Middle East has been affected for one hundred years by the appetite of westerners and other outsiders for the region's hydrocarbons.

On Monday, the region's "pipeline politics" took another step forward with the signing in Turkey's capital, Ankara, of an agreement to build a new, 3,300-kilometre gas pipeline called Nabucco, running between eastern Turkey and Vienna, Austria.

The project underlines the new influential role that Turkey, a majority Muslim nation of 72 million people, is playing in the Middle East, and far beyond.

The new project's name was chosen, Austrian officials said, after the Verdi opera that representatives of the five participating countries - who include Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, along with the two terminus states - saw together during an earlier round of negotiations in Vienna.

But the name also gives clues to two intriguing aspects of the project's geopolitical significance. The theme of the opera is the liberation from bondage of slaves held by the ancient Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar ('Nabucco') - and it is a widely discussed feature of the Nabucco project that many European nations want access to a gas source that is not under the control of Russia.

Last winter, several European nations suffered severe gas shortages after Russia, locked in a tariff dispute with transit-country Ukraine, closed off the spigots completely.

But the other implication of the name is more strictly Middle Eastern. The modern-day home of Nebuchadnezzar is Iraq. Washington has given strong support to the Nabucco project - and one of the reasons U.S. officials give for this support is their hope that once Nabucco is up and running in 2015, Iraq can be one of the nations that reaps large profits by feeding gas into it.

However, construction of the pipeline is estimated to cost some eight billion dollars, and many officials in the participating countries are still unclear where they will get enough gas to make it economically viable.

The Nabucco participants had been hoping that a key feeder state would be one of Turkey's eastern neighbours, Azerbaijan. But on the eve of the project's inauguration in Ankara, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev took the CEO of the vast Russian gas company Gazprom to Azerbaijan, where they signed a contract with the state gas company that will force Nabucco to compete hard against Gazprom for any purchase it wants to make from Azerbaijan.

One fairly evident other source for Nabucco's would be Iran, which is reported to have considerable amounts of new gas coming online in the next five years.

Paul Stevens, an energy specialist with London's Chatham House think-tank, recently told the Christian Science Monitor that an Iranian deal alone could put the Nabucco project close to operating in the black. But he noted that the current political crisis in Iran makes that less do-able and thus, "makes the immediate commercial goals dimmer for Nabucco".

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department's special envoy for Eurasian energy, Richard Morningstar, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington that, "This would be the absolute worst time to encourage Iran to participate in a project like Nabucco, when we have received absolutely nothing in return."

He did, however, argue that the prospect of inclusion in Nabucco could be one incentive used to help persuade Iran to cooperate with the international community.

Regardless of whether that comes about or not, this week's formal birth of the long-negotiated Nabucco project underlines modern Turkey's steady emergence as a significant player in Middle East politics, as well as its continuing role as a bridge between Europe and the countries of the Middle East and the Caucasus.

In many of the Arab countries of the Middle East, as in Bulgaria and some other countries in the Balkans, there was until recently much lingering hostility towards Turkey, based on the resentment earlier generations felt about the harsh way they were treated by the former Ottoman Empire.

But the present-day Turkish republic replaced the Ottoman Empire in 1923 and in the Arab Middle East, the earlier hostility towards Turkey now seems largely to have dissipated.

Even in Syria, which for several decades nursed a strong sense of grievance against Turkey for its 1938 annexation of the northwestern province of Alexandretta (now Hatay), that grievance has now been replaced by generally warm ties - and much admiration of Turkey's recent economic progress.

In Iraq, there was also for decades strong resentment of Turkey, among both the country's majority Arab population and from its minority of Kurds, who are concentrated along Iraq's mountainous northern border with Turkey.

But the moderately Islamist 'Justice and Development' Party (AKP) that has governed Turkey since 2002 has built good relations with Iraq's central government in Baghdad.

It has also built a decent working relationship with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) - in spite of the sympathy that many Iraqi Kurds feel with their fellow Kurds inside Turkey, who for a long time were treated very badly by Ankara. (In Turkey's 2007 general election, however, the AKP attracted a clear plurality of support from Turkey's Kurds.)

Turkey now holds several significant levers of power over Iraq. It controls the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which together are vital to the wellbeing of Iraq's people. It provides an important existing pipeline that takes Iraqi oil to a shipping terminal on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

It is the only one of Iraq's neighbours apart from Iran that has a military capable of deterring other powers - inside or outside Iraq - from launching aggressive military adventures inside the country as the U.S. military draws down its presence there.

Turkey also projects considerable "soft power"- both in Iraq and in the rest of the Muslim Middle East. It strongly opposed the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003, a stance that most Iraqis today strongly appreciate. But it also remains on good terms with Washington, as a much-valued member of NATO. And most Iraqis probably appreciate that pragmatism, too.

The AKP also provides an interesting example, to Islamist parties both in Iraq and further afield, of how an intelligent Islamist party can succeed both at home and abroad.

At home, the AKP government has shown moderation and toleration. In foreign affairs, it remains committed to strengthening Turkey's ties with the west, including by continuing Turkey's push to join the European Union.

Now, with the launching of the Nabucco project, Turkey has added to the influence it can exert with many Middle Eastern - as well as European - countries.

*Helena Cobban is a veteran Middle East analyst and author. She blogs at www.JustWorldNews.org.

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‘Government Sachs’ Strikes Gold ... Again

By Robert Scheer

Connect the dots: Goldman Sachs made $3.44 billion in profit this past quarter, while the U.S deficit topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history and appeared to be headed toward doubling that figure before the budget year is out. Since most of the increase in the federal deficit is due to bailing out the banks and salvaging the greater economy they helped destroy, why is the top investment bank doing so well?

Well, because that was the plan, as devised by Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Remember that Lehman Brothers, Goldman’s competitor, was allowed to go bankrupt. The Paulson crowd wouldn’t let Lehman change its status to that of a bank holding company and thus qualify for federal funds; soon afterward, Goldman was granted just such a deal, worth a quick $10 billion. Much is now made of Goldman paying back part of its bailout money, but forgotten is the $12.9 billion that Goldman got as its cut of the $180 billion AIG payoff. That is money that will not be paid back.

Goldman is considered a very smart bank because it was early in reducing its exposure to the mortgage derivatives that in large part caused the meltdown. However, it had done much to expand the market and continued to sell suspect derivatives to unwary buyers as sound investments, even as Goldman divested. The firm still holds $1.85 billion in real estate and lost $499 million in the previous quarter on bad loans, but made up for it by playing the vulture role and issuing high-interest debt to governments and companies made desperate by the recession that the financial gimmicks of the banks brought on in the first place.

And Goldman was not just another bank. Before Paulson ran the Treasury Department, another former Goldman head, Robert Rubin, pushed through the repeal of the Glass-Steagall controls on banking activity. While some now play down the significance of this radical deregulation, not so Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein—at least not back in June 2007, when the markets were still doing well. “If you take an historical perspective,” Blankfein told The New York Times by way of explaining his company’s spectacular success at the time, “we’ve come full circle, because that is exactly what the Rothschilds or J.P. Morgan the banker were doing in their heyday. What caused an aberration was the Glass-Steagall Act.”

That 1933 act was repealed in a law signed by President Bill Clinton at Rubin’s urging, and in the following eight years Goldman Sachs recorded a 265 percent growth in its balance sheet. “Back then,” The Wall Street Journal reports, “Goldman was churning out profits by trading credit derivatives, speculating on currencies and oil and placing big bets [on] the roaring stock market.”

Big bets made in a casino designed by Goldman, which now makes money off loans to the victims. High on the list of victims are state governments that have to turn to Goldman for money because the federal government that saved the banks won’t do the same for the states, which have watched their tax bases shrink because of the banking meltdown. As the WSJ noted, “issuing debt to ailing governments” is now a growth industry for Goldman.

Why didn’t the federal government just lend the money to the states? Why was all the money thrown at Wall Street instead of needy homeowners or struggling school systems? Because the federal government works for Goldman and not for us. Indeed, when it comes to the banking bailout, Goldman Sachs is the government.

So much so that last fall The New York Times ran a story, headlined “The Guys From `Government Sachs,’ ” that stated: “Goldman’s presence in the [Treasury] department and around the federal response to the financial bailout is so ubiquitous that other bankers and competitors have given the star-studded firm a new nickname: Government Sachs.”

One of those stars was Stephen Friedman, another former head of Goldman. Friedman was both a director of the company and chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank when he helped work out the details of the Wall Street bailout. The president of the N.Y. Fed at the time, Timothy Geithner, now secretary of the treasury, requested a conflict-of-interest waiver that allowed Friedman to buy more Goldman Sachs stock, and Friedman ended up with 98,600 shares. At market close on Tuesday that was worth $14,756,476. That’s nothing – three years ago, the 50 top Goldman execs made $20 million each, and this year could be better.

They’re not hurting.

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GM's charm offensive

Am I really helping to starve Africans?

I feel really bad. I’ve just seen the documentary “Can GM save the world?” shown on SBS TV recently. As a critic of genetically modified (GM) foods, I was left wondering if I’m morally a bad person for contributing to the starvation of millions in Africa by opposing GM crops - at least that’s what this documentary would have you believe.

But am I morally bankrupt for advocating clean, green food production systems rather than corporate controlled biotech seeds, pesticides and other industrial agrichemicals? If so, then that makes me, along with many scientists, environmental groups and most consumers, complicitous in a massive Mao-like genocide.

Maybe it’s not me. Perhaps the documentary wanted me to think that. If you thought that the documentary sounded like a paid advertisement for the biotechnology industry, then you’d be forgiven for thinking so. The biotech industry has long recognised that their aggressive, and some say arrogant, style has sullied the impact that any direct advertising could possibly have. Far better to work with TV and radio researchers to promote your message using celebrities and the noble scientist as a proxy - preferably both at the same time. And the documentary’s host, Jimmy Doherty is the perfect foil. His boffin appeal and pin-up boy good looks plays straight out of the Jamie Oliver school of geezer charm. Surround him with a slew of pro-GM scientists and create an air of impartiality by offering Jimmy as a self-styled poster child for sustainable farming and you’ve got a winning formula. A stroke of directorial genius I would have thought.

But charm offensive aside, the documentary’s main conclusions were clear: GM was “so simple”, “so natural” that it would be morally corrupt to be critical of a technology that “was amazing” and “offered hope” to millions in the developing world. Sure, there were nominal offerings by two GM critics, but quite apart from the fact that each had less than a minute of air time, they were both book-ended by rebuttals from GM scientists, ensuring that they served as little more than a linking device for the main pro-GM thrust.

The “GM will feed the world” myth is a deviously clever piece of PR. The need has arisen because GM food has not enjoyed the worldwide acceptance that their biotech inventors had hoped for. On the contrary, GM crops have engendered massive consumer resistance with environmental and consumer groups rallying together to create a powerful global “no GMO” voice. Reeling from this unexpected rejection and devoid of any saleable consumer benefits, the biotech industry needed a distraction. Their target was the emotional heart-strings of western consumers. And the vehicle? The hungry in the third world. Without their consent, the plight of the third world has been thrust into the service of biotech operatives.

The myth is powerful because who wants to be seen as opposing a technology that will feed hungry mouths? But can it? Before we slavishly succumb to its emotional pull, does the assertion stand up to scrutiny?

The framing of the “can GM feed the world?” question assumes a priori that there isn’t enough food already being produced. This is demonstrably false. Critics point to a 2006 UN FAO report that acknowledges that world agriculture today produces 17 per cent more calories per person than it did 30 years ago despite a 70 per cent population increase, yet the gap between the fed and the underfed is greater than ever.

We now have the perverse situation where there are more obese people in the west than there are malnourished in the third-world. The real reason people go hungry is because they don’t have the money to buy food, the arable land to grow it or because of war and conflict. The distorted global food trading system that favours large agribusiness interests at the expense of the subsistence farmer also plays its part.

Asking if GM can feed the world suggests that GM is the only solution. Omitted from consideration are truly environmentally, economically and culturally sustainable food production systems such as organics and biodynamics that place people and soils at the centre of their food security. New genetically modified magic beans that are subject to intellectual property rights are clearly not a solution donated to the world community for their attendant use.

To feed the hungry, GM crops need to be accessible to those who need them, yet 95 per cent of all GM crops are grown in just four countries: The US, Argentina, Canada and Brazil most of which are fed to animals, ostensibly to fatten up livestock for fast-food hamburgers and for use in other highly processed foods - no third world lives saved there.

But maybe GM crops have something special that will increase yields? With only two commercial GM traits available; one being herbicide resistance, the other that allows the plant to create it’s own insect toxin, the current suite of GM crops are more about ensuring continued sales of pesticides more than feeding the hungry. There is simply no such thing as a commercially available GM crop to increase yield or exhibit drought tolerance. Such falsehoods are the flights of PR fancy but are required to sustain the “feed the world” myth.

As a society, we need to ask: Who is telling us that GM can solve world hunger? Not surprisingly, it’s those who stand to benefit financially.

But surely we don’t believe that Monsanto, the company that gave the world PCBs, Agent Orange, dioxins and GM crops, is now a benevolent philanthropist out to save needy people? If GM crops were truly about feeding the hungry, then why does Monsanto so aggressively assert their intellectual property rights by suing farmers for the simple act of saving seeds from their crops? Third world farmers simply cannot afford this legal risk, much less the royalty fees, expensive seeds and chemicals that GM agriculture mandates.

In response, we are starting to see a seismic change in people’s attitudes when it comes to food. People are connecting the dots between a genetically modified, industrialised, global farming model and the impact to human health, the environment and global food security. Truly sustainable farming systems that nurture people, their soils and communities through a harmonic resonance with natural systems are experiencing a renaissance across the world as witnessed by the phenomenal growth of the organics sector and the proliferation of farmers markets in every city, town and village across the globe.

Most importantly the renaissance is helping to feed people where it’s needed most - in the third world. In stark contrast, the only thing that GM crops are feeding is corporate profits.

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