Canadian students took the streets to oppose tuition increases. They confronted police and braved violent repression day and night until their demands were meet. What do proponents of traditional non-confrontational social-justice tactics have to teach new activists? Fuck-all. Fuck them and the nonviolence riding-horse they rode in on.
Camila Vallejo, Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright, Cynthia McKinney, Kathy Kelly, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Bernardine Dorhn …an exhaustive list of the dominance of women among activist leaders would go on and on, back to earlier waves of influential organizers, Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, Hellen Keller, Emma Goldman, Harriet Tubman, Louise Michel.
1. Celebrity activists have joined to condemn the Toronto Film Festival’s celebration of the movie industry of Tel Aviv, inappropriate while an Israeli regime ruthlessly exterminates its Palestinian Problem by seizing their lands, driving them into exile, and interning those who refuse to leave in the ghettos of Gaza and the West Bank, then making warm fuzzy movies about it.
2. Iraqi Bush Shoe-Thrower Muntadhar al-Zaidi has been freed! He says he was tortured for his act, but he didn’t regret it. “I got my chance and I didn’t miss it,” he said, now missing a few teeth. The US media is equating Joe Wilson’s affront to earnest debate to al-Zaidi’s internationally-hailed angry repudiation of a lying mass-murderer. Good luck with that.
3. Activists have been arrested for protesting war recruiting in a Philadelphia mall where children were being offered an “Army Experience Center”. Alright, arrests are not good news, in particular when they include the OpEdNews reporter covering the action, but it’s always encouraging to see Americans stand between Army recruiters and their prey.
Note on #1: Signers of the complaint to the TIFF, who include Naomi Klein and Howard Zinn, explain that they are protesting the festival’s framing of the Israeli films, they are not “black listing” the films as the defenders of Israel charge. To me, equating a protest of the festival to blacklisting smacks of decrying “anti-Semitism.”
The chief celebrities rushing to counter the TIFF complainants are, according to the Toronto Star: Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman, Sacha Baron Cohen , Lisa Kudrow, David Cronenberg, Minnie Driver, Simon Wiesenthal Center founder and filmmaker Marvin Hier, Cineplex Canada CEO Ellis Jacob, Norman Jewison, Lenny Kravitz, Sherry Lansing (former head of Paramount Studios), producer Robert Lantos, the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Interesting pattern?
In the interim, a UN probe determines war crimes were committed in Gaza incursion, and US envoy seeks to reach compromise with Israel over illegal settlements.
Zionist puppet Hillary Clinton declares she will NOT talk to Hamas. So why the Hell is she going to be Secretary of State, again?
UN President Accuses Israel of Genocide.
Neo-Nazi Israel planning to demolish hospitals in Gaza.
Nazi troops have already massacred over 1,000 people in Gaza.
More Jewish protests against ZioNazi war crimes in Gaza.
Israel preparing to nuke Iran before Bush leaves office next week?
The Bible is a handbook of genocide. After the exodus, God told the Jews to go into the land and drive the natives out, and to kill every man, woman and child who remained. This is beyond dispute, it is right there in the text. So, one must come to one of two conclusions, either God is a genocidal maniac, or the book is a lie written by genocidal maniacs, to excuse their crimes. Either way, Judaism exists because of genocide, and what Israel is doing in Gaza is just a modern recurrence of what the evil they brought to the region over 3,000 years ago. They believe that they are the only people on the planet who matter, and anything they want belongs to them. No wonder the world keeps driving the Jews out.
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
Enough. It’s time for a boycott. By Naomi Klein
Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Jan 14 notes, thomasmc.com.
There wasn’t any conversation to speak of on the drive to school today, so I turned on the news. From the back a teen immediately interjected “Is that completely necessary?”
I muted the sound and turned around, completely incredulous. “What?”
“Is that completely necessary?” she repeated without a hint of what I hoped to have been mischievous insolence.
“Not really.” Is all I could muster as I turned the volume back up and refocused my attention. I can’t say that listening to corporate propaganda is necessary, or even a good idea. But I am at an equal loss for how else to stay tuned to what’s happening around us. It’s a good thing my honest ambivalence tripped up the teaching moment I might have offered.
There are probably far too many ways to get entangled in current affairs, but for children with school, sports, video games, television, play, music and the odd meal, there is no break for non-academic reality. One might argue that kids could be spared the complications of the world outside. I can hardly see the merit to that school of unthought. Especially as domestic politics have certainly invaded their education, the piss-poor vocational experience few are willing to admit that American schools have become.
This drive-time comment came after an evening spent not being forced to attend a journalist’s lecture last night. It was off-putting enough to have to wait in the atrium apparently. Although, as dense as the economic principles might have been, I sorely regretted that all of the kids, especially the girls, had not witnessed Naomi Klein, about as apt a role model as any young woman could dream.
So what if much would be above their head? Won’t they grow into it? Are there realities too shocking for children? Shouldn’t our challenge be to address those horrors, sooner than shield ourselves by pretending they do not exist? What a luxury that our children have even the choice to know how they are impacted.
It’s one thing to expose kids to pictures of highway accidents, or television programs about serial killers, quite another in my opinion to complicate their understanding of societal malevolence. Can they not gleam from parental example that such obstacles do not render life hopeless? We cope. We blot out certain realities to pamper our own delusions. Is that a difficulty level beyond young people?
There’s no doubt a fine line about forcing experiences on children, the morning news for example, but isn’t that to pretend that almost all their indoctrination isn’t involuntary? Can you think of any accomplished person who wasn’t pushed?
We can be thankful our children aren’t experiencing household raids, aerial bombings, and marketplace bombers which take the lives of their friends and relatives. How sheltered do children need to be? Even if their Social Studies will eventually teach them Zinn or Chomsky, aren’t the lessons sabotaged by the context of isolation? How are children really to learn that they aren’t working in factories but for blood spilled by labor unions; that their grandparents aren’t destitute or dead owing to collective efforts which demanded more from their government? Pop culture has already lulled kids to the politics of nothing matters. Is there any wrong time to try to right that lie? Or do YOU believe that individuals have no power to participate in the global community?
COLORADO COLLEGE- If you catch Democracy Now on KRCC, you are already up to speed on Naomi Klein‘s SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM. Otherwise you can hear the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate at 7:30pm tonight at Armstrong Hall; an uncharacteristically critical voice among CC’s usual lineup of neoliberal panderers.
National Conference on Media Reform has buried Naomi Klein’s address, possibly because she’s out of tune with their Obama chorus. Here it is via Submedia TV.
Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.
Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008
Brothers and Sisters in the Movement
I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.
I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.
Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.That’s why I left the Democratic Party.
I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:Hands off Haiti!
Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!
No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!
And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.Que vivan los pueblos de america!
Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008
First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!
Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.
Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions
Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.
Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.
In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.
Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.
What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?
First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.
All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)
The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.
Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.
I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.
Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.
We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.
In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.
I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.
Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.
Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Take, set in Argentina’s deliberately crashed economy, has now written Shock Doctrine- the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Very difficult viewing.
Suzanne Woolsey is vice chair of the Colorado College Board of Directors. Her husband will be speaking this Thursday at the school, and all three of their kids graduated from there. The following opinion piece by Evelyn Pringle is reprinted in whole below.
January 17, 2005
Mom & Pop War Profiteering Team – Woolseys
By Evelyn Pringle
Miamisburg, Ohio
The Defense Policy Board (DPB) is a hand-picked group of 30 people that advises Bush administration officials on matters such as whether and when to go to war, or not. The current group was selected by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, and approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Everyone who is anyone in the arms and defense industry knows that palling up to DPB members is the ticket to getting a Pentagon contract.
Shortly after the war in Iraq began, the April 10, 2003 New York Times pointed out that several board members stood to benefit financially from the war. It reported that the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) documented that 9 of the members were “linked to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.”
Promote War & Garner Positions For Profits
One of the members mentioned who stood to profit was R. James Woolsey. In addition to being a member of the DPB, Woolsey also sits on Navy and CIA advisory boards; and he is also a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), a private group that was specifically set up by Bush in 2002, to find ways to increase public support for a war against Iraq.
Let me say right here and now that I think bold lines are crossed when people like Woolsey, who promote a specific war, financially benefit from their successful promotion. There should be a law that requires a standard recusal from all war profits by any policy advisor who advocates sending our young men and women off to die in that same war.
And I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve never heard of our government forming a group of promoters to rally support for a war before. I dare anyone to try and convince me that this war profiteering scheme wasn’t well planned and managed from the get-go.
Mom & Pop Team Of War Profiteers
I would rate the husband and wife team of James and Suzanne Woolsey up there as one of the most blatant examples of war profiting that I‘ve ever seen. They both remain policy advisors on Iraq, even though they both work for private firms that do business there. James has long wanted to use US military might to transform the Middle East. “And he has pushed for war with Iraq as hard as anyone, even before the terrorist attacks of Sep 11, 2001,” according to the April 8, 2003 Global Policy Forum.
That’s right – long before 9/11. In January 1998, James signed the now infamous letter to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) calling for regime change in Iraq (which Clinton trashed). In 1998, he also successfully lobbied to pass the Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), which allocated nearly $100 million for the Iraqi opposition, mainly the Iraq National Congress (INC), headed by none other than Ahmed Chalabi.
9/11 – Gift To Profiteering Team
The lobby for the war in Iraq immediately moved into high gear after 9/11. Within days, the DPB convened to discuss how they could use 9/11 to justify a war in Iraq. James was sent overseas to try to find a link between Saddam and bin Laden. He returned with the tale that an unnamed source had told the Czech intelligence that in April, 2001, he had observed a meeting between the lead 9/11 skyjacker and an Iraqi agent in Prague.
Even though the tale was deemed not credible by US, British, Israeli, and French, intelligence agencies, it became the basis of a major neo-con disinformation campaign against Saddam on cable news shows and editorial pages in major US newspapers.
James himself wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that said a foreign state had aided Al Qaeda in preparing the 9/11 attacks and pointed to Iraq as the prime suspect. In fact, James even went so far to allege that Saddam was behind the 1993 WTC bombing and the anthrax letters sent out after 9/11. In large part, the propaganda campaign was successful. A poll conducted in late 2002, showed that over half of those polled believed that Saddam was somehow linked to 9/11.
Woolsey & Chalabi – Secret Long-Time Buddies
Just when I think I have seen every dirty filthy angle by which money can be made in the war profiteering trade, something else turns up. I recently discovered a little tid-bit that I was unaware of. In addition to getting $100 million tax dollars allocated for the INC and Ahmed Chalabi in 1998, James also became lawyer and adviser to Iraq’s “President in Waiting” in the same year.
With the help of the media, James must have forgot to mention this obvious conflict of interest while he was alleging collusion in 9/11 between Chalabi’s enemy Saddam and bin Laden. This relationship definitely should have been made public before the war began because of its relevance to the truth or falsity of the justification given for waging war in Iraq to begin with.
Back in 1998, Chalabi sought legal help from Woolsey to secure the release of 6 of his INC associates from the detention center in Guam, even though the CIA said they were threats to US interests. James successfully freed Chalabi’s minions and mowed a path for the so-called Iraqi defectors to feed bogus information to US intelligence teams.
The false information about WMDs and collusion between Saddam and bin Laden, that originated from the relationship of Chalabi and Woolsey, along with the resulting diversion of financial and military resources to Iraq, and away from the real terrorist bin Laden, has left the US with a limited ability to project military power anywhere else in the world. Any unexpected conflict would be a disaster with the military so overstretched in Iraq, and it looks like in large part, we can thank Woolsey and Chalabi for this predicament.
And as it turns out the CIA was right. One of men Woolsey freed, Aras Habib Karim, went on to become Chalabi’s Chief of Intelligence, and has since leaked classified information to Iran, and is currently under investigation by the FBI. I wonder if James is representing the guy now?
James & Booz Allen Hamilton
At the same time that they were advocating for war in Iraq, its more than obvious that James and Suzanne Woolsey were positioning themselves for a future in defense-related firms, with an eye on the anticipated war profits.
James is a shining example of how the revolving door policy works in Washington. Although he left his position as director of the CIA in 1995, he remained a senior advisor on intelligence and national security policies.
And he also now works for several private firms that do business in Iraq. According to Citizens for Public Integrity, in July, 2002, James joined Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that “had contracts worth more than $680 million” that year.
In May, 2003, in his capacity as a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, James was a featured speaker at a seminar entitled “Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq.” He spoke of the potential business opportunities in the reconstruction of Iraq and how Bush planned to steer the contracts to US companies. Approximately 80 corporate executives paid $1100 to listen to what he had to say.
May, 2003 was only 2 months after the war began. If not for his advisory positions in the Bush administration, how would James possibly be able to put together a investor seminar with information on how to make money in Iraq?
In addition, “Booz Allen is a subcontractor for a $75-million telecommunications project in Iraq. The company does extensive work for the Defense Department as well. Recently, the Navy awarded it $14 million in contracts,” according to the Aug 15, 2004 LA Times. In true Dick Cheney style, James said in an interview that “he had not been involved in Booz Allen’s Iraq contracts,” the Times reports. But then it really doesn’t matter whether he was involved in a particular contract or not, because as a Vice President of the firm, he benefits from profits resulting from all contracts.
Besides his recent statement to the Times belies the title of his own May, 2003 seminar which was: “Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq.” What is he trying to say? That he never got paid for speaking at that seminar? That none of the 80 executives that attended ever contacted Booz work in Iraq? Yea right. James & Paladin Capital Group
James positioned himself all over the map. He is now a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, another defense-related firm. In part, here is how the firm describes itself on its web site, Paladin Homeland Security Fund, L.P. Investment Strategy
As widely reported in public media, billions of dollars are being appropriated by the United States and foreign governments for replenishment of military stockpiles, deployment of new means to create more secure societies and creation of new standards, equipment, technologies and policies for coping with and recovering from the myriad forms of terrorism and attack. … the General Partner believes that the Federal and State governments … and indeed governments throughout the world, will look to … private enterprise to address these issues. The General Partner believes that the private sector thus will look to expend billions of dollars to execute defense and security plans for security in the public sector and to deploy growth equity to produce the products and services that non-governmental organizations will require.
Fund Management
Operation of the Fund starts with an experienced management team. … additional individuals who have prominent and distinguished records in relevant fields, including security, defense and information and technology sciences, have associated with Paladin Capital in connection with the Fund. These additional principals of the Fund include R. James Woolsey, …
The Fund’s Principals have extensive domestic and international experience in fund investments and in originating, underwriting, closing, monitoring and exiting investments similar to those that are proposed for the Fund. The additional Principals, including Mr. Woolsey, … have extensive and distinguished track records in service within the security, defense and related fields.
Investment Guidelines Characteristics
Small to medium-sized, worker-friendly companies with the following characteristics: Must relate to defense, prevention, coping or recovery from disaster. Dual use: commercial and government applicability for products and services.
Surely no one could ever allege a possible conflict of interest between James serving on 3 defense-related boards (Navy, DPB, & CIA) with the US government and his involvement with this firm.
Global Options – James & DPB Member Livingstone
James is also plugged into Global Options, which is headed by his fellow DPB member Neil Livingstone. In addition to sitting on the DPB, Livingstone has served as a Pentagon and State Department advisor and has long called for overthrowing Saddam.
Livingstone was already promoting war against Iraq back in 1993, when he wrote an editorial for Newsday that said the US “should launch a massive covert program designed to remove Hussein.” Well 11 years later, it looks like he finally got his wish, and just like his pal James, Livingstone is a regular speaker at investment seminars on Iraq.
Global Options provides contacts and consulting services to firms doing business in Iraq and “offers a wide range of security and risk management services,” according to its website. Although James admits that he is a paid advisor at Global Options, he again says the work he does at the firm does not involve Iraq. And of course I believe him (not).
Suzanne – Better Half Of Profiteering Team
From 1993 – 2003, Suzanne was an executive with the National Academies, an institution that advises the government on science, engineering, and medicine. There’s probably no big money to be made in that position and that’s probably what motivated Suzanne seek a more potentially profitable government position.
And she sure found one. According to the Aug 15, 2004 LA Times, Suzanne is a trustee of a little-known arms consulting group that had access to senior Pentagon leaders directing the Iraq war.
Although she had zero experience with military or national security matters, in 2000 she became a trustee at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a nonprofit corporation paid to do research for the Pentagon. During the attack against Iraq, the IDA provided senior Pentagon officials with assessments of the operation.
Through this position, Suzanne had unlimited insider access to valuable information. For instance, the Times reported that in a June 3, 2003, briefing, Brigadier General Robert Cone of the Army, described the group‘s operation. ”This team did business” within the Army Central Command ”on a daily basis, by observing meeting and planning sessions, attending command updates, watching key decisions being made, watching problems being solved, and generally being provided unrestricted access to the business of the conduct of this war,” Cone said, according to a transcript of the session.
The question is did Suzanne use the info to benefit the family business? I’ll let the reader be the judge. She was appointed to “Fluor’s board in January 2004, while Fluor and a partner, AMEC, were competing for two federal contracts to do reconstruction work in Iraq. A little more than a month after she was named, Fluor and AMEC got both contracts, with a combined value of $1.6 billion,” according to the LA Times.
Although a Fluor official refused to discuss why Suzanne was chosen for the job, the official confirmed SEC filings that show, “Fluor pays outside directors (like Suzanne) $40,000 a year, plus stock options and additional fees for attending meetings,” the Times reports.
As for the financial worth of her stock in the company, its looking good. Fluor’s stock has risen steadily since the war in Iraq began. The Times reports that in August, 2004, it was $45 a share, up from a little more than $30 a share in March 2003. Reports filed with the SEC show Suzanne owns 1,500 shares of Fluor stock.
With Fluor making a bundle, it only stands to reason that all the more money can be funneled back into the Woolsey piggy bank. SEC filings show that Fluor reported that its revenue for the first quarter of the current fiscal year from work in Iraq totaled ”approximately $190 million. There was no work in Iraq in the comparable period in 2003,” reports the Times.
I would be willing to bet that any defense related firm would have given an arm and a leg to find out what was being said during those IDA meetings and war planning sessions. Oh of course I’m not suggesting that Suzanne was feeding Fluor information before she came on board and that‘s why she was hired. But at the same time, its sure difficult to think of any other reason why she would be hired.
Here’s another profiteering trick that I would never have thought of. Suzanne even managed to get paid while she gathered the insider information. Tax records show that in 2003, she was paid $11,500 for serving on the IDA. Who wouldn’t want this gal on their team?
The overlapping public and private associations of the Woolsey’s are merely 2 examples of the all too familiar pattern in the Bush administration, in which people who play key roles in advising officials on policies, are involving themselves financially with firms in related fields. And it should be noted that the profiteering is certainly not limited to war policies. Its rampant in every area of policy within the Bush administration.
Long-Term War – Thriving Family Business
Hands down, James should be awarded a plaque for being the #1 Iraq War Monger, and it should say: “What could be more sickening than a war-hungry non-combatant? A war-hungry non-combatant reaping profit from the blood of slaughtered women, children and men of Iraq,” (Bill Berkowitz).
War-hungry James is still hard at it; promoting war for as far as the eye can see. On August 15, 2004, the LA Times reported that, “Last month, Woolsey appeared at a … news conference to announce the creation of a group called the Committee of the Present Danger, which he said would attempt to focus public attention on the threat ”to the US and the civilized world from Islamic terrorism.”
On September 29, 2004 he participated in a forum entitled: “World War IV: Why We Fight, Whom We Fight, How We Fight,” sponsored by the Committee on Present Danger and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. I wonder how many people who went to the polls on Nov 2, 2004, realized that a vote for Bush meant rubber-stamping more of World War IV?
Plan To Destroy and Conquer Iraq
The Iraqi citizens had no say-so in the Bush administration’s decision to bomb the hell out of their country and the Iraqi people, now suffering the most as a result of the war, are not allowed to be involved in making decisions about the reconstruction of Iraq.
In comments that could have been made yesterday, Naomi Klein described what would happen to the Iraqis under Bush’s war plan in the April 14, 2003 issue of the Guardian, “A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country had been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their new-found “freedom” – for which so many of their loved ones perished – comes pre-shackled by irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy. ”
Every one of her predictions has come true and Iraqis may be worse off than we realize. Klein reports that on October 13, 2004, Iraq’s “health ministry issued a harrowing report on its post-invasion health crisis, including outbreaks of typhoid and tuberculosis and soaring child and mother mortality rates,” while at the same time the “State Department announced that $3.5 billion for water, sanitation and electricity projects was being shifted to security.”
How can anybody in their right mind expect the Iraqi people to be grateful to America for all this good fortune?
Stop The War Profiteering
It seems to me that we’ve taken our eye off the ball here. Granted, the web of corruption is bad enough in itself, but too little consideration is being given to the Iraqi lives at stake. Every profiteering dollar bilked or wasted is a dollar that could be spent on improving Iraq’s basic living conditions like getting water, sanitation and electricity up and running again, or training Iraqi police and military forces, or developing jobs for Iraqis.
Instead our tax dollars are being funneled back to profiteers like the Woolseys, over the backs of not only our dead soldiers; but over 100,000 dead Iraqis as well. The administration had the chance to rebuild Iraq, and at the same time earn the trust of the Iraqi people, but instead it chose to rape and torture innocent Iraqi prisoners, raid the reconstruction fund, and deprive the Iraqis of everything essential to normal human life. The blatant acts of corruption by the occupational authority and US contractors have given the Iraqis every reason under the sun to mistrust the motives of Americans who say they want to help rebuild their country. And how can we expect their opinions to change as long as the obvious corruption continues?
If we ever expect to regain the trust of Iraqis, we have to stop the Woolseys, and others like them, who engage in this filthy, disgusting trade. For starters, I say all Bush war profiteers should be given 2 options: they can either recuse themselves from advising government officials on any matter of national security period, or they can donate all profits made through affiliations with defense-related companies to soldiers wounded in the war and families of soldiers killed in the war.
While this would definitely be a good first step, I won’t hold my breath while waiting to see which option the greedy war-mongers choose.