New Hampshire makes life harder for military recruiters

The state of New Hampshire has just passed a law that bars schools from handing over "test results, detailed demographic information, and social security numbers to military recruiting services without the consent of parents," according to the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy (NCPSP).

The bill, sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, was signed into law on July 14 by Democratic Governor Maggie Hassan. Specifically, it bars schools from handing over data to recruiters obtained through the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) exam, which is ostensibly a vocational test administered by the Department of Defense. However, New Hampshire schools are still required by the No Child Left Behind law to hand over so-called "directory information" to military recruiters -- names, addresses and phone numbers -- unless parents explicitly object (and even then, there's still no guarantee their child's information isn't being stored in a Pentagon database).

The victory, albeit small, comes after a similar bill was defeated earlier this year by Democrats in Connecticut, which I wrote about for Rupert Murdoch. The difference this time, according NCPSP director Pat Elder, was that the lobbying campaign was much more low-key.

"We didn't mention it publicly," Elder told me, which meant opponents "were caught off guard." New Hampshire is the third state to enact such legislation, joining Maryland and Hawaii.

Is Lockheed Martin funding 'drone outrage'?

Outrage over the unilateral, arbitrary killing of people from Pakistan to Yemen with unmanned US military aircraft – drones – is growing beyond just the regions being bombed and the offices of CODEPINK. It's even sneaking its way into the US Senate, if only for a hearing. Though opposition to remote-controlled killing may not be mainstream, now it's at least being acknowledged. But is this outrage being bankrolled by the military-industrial complex?

That's what one military expert who has never served in a military is suggesting. On Twitter, the armchair warrior who goes by the name “The War Nerd” posted that he keeps “having this feeling that a big part of the drone outrage is funded by Lockheed Martin.” It was a bold claim, backed by the argument that “Defense [sic] is all about $” and a fighter jet costs a lot more than a drone. The post was subsequently shared by a number of left-wing journalists, primarily his colleagues at the Not Safe for Work (NSFW) Corporation, an outlet that is essentially Playboy without the pictures.

But is it true? Well, if Lockheed Martin is fueling outrage over drones, as some on the left are now suggesting, it is going about it in a most curious way. Indeed, it almost appears as if the the world's largest military contractor is funding support for drones, aware that while they might sell for less than a jet, that only means the government can buy more of them.

For instance, consider: The chairman of the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, which exists to “[s]upport policies and budgets” that promote the increased use of drones, is California Republican Buck McKeon, who also chairs the House Armed Services Committee. McKeon's top campaign contributor? Yeah, it's Lockheed Martin. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat who co-chairs the caucus – stacked with dozens of the best friends the military-industrial complex ever had – also gets cash from Lockheed Martin. In fact, the Bethesda, Maryland-based company gives more money to congressional drone advocates from border states (that is, the politically more important ones) than any of its competitors.

Another way Lockheed Martin is financing opposition to President Barack Obama's drone wars in perplexingly bizarre ways is by funding a favorable PBS documentary on the “Rise of Drones.” And by ramping up its own production of unmanned aircraft and buying out its drone-manufacturing competitors. And by building planes that carry drones. And by building the “video-game-like interface” that helps drone operators pilot Lockheed Martin's drones.

It is all very strange, isn't it? Why would a firm that manufactures drones and drone-supporting congressmen and drone-carrying planes and drone-flying computers be funding opposition to its products? It just doesn't make sense. It's kind of stupid, really. It's really stupid.

Say what you will about America's merchants of death, the folks running Lockheed Martin have been pretty adept at making money. Last year, the company had revenues of over $47 billion, more than 80 percent of which came from the US government. They would not, it seems, be dumb enough to bankroll a campaign against a technology they tell their investors is one of their key “growth opportunities.” The simple answer to why Lockheed Martin would be funding outrage over drones is: Um, it wouldn't be. It's not. Wait, do I smell booze on your breath?

And that raises its own question: If Lockheed Martin is clearly not behind drone outrage, who is funding the shoot-from-the-gut conspiracy that said outrage over drones is being driven by something other than dead bodies? Corporate America, actually. Mr. Nerd, as a staff writer for NSFW, is paid for by way of a generous grant from executives at the online shoe store Zappos, a subsidiary of sweatshop titan Amazon.com. And his colleagues are just as divisively conspiratorial, it turns out, with one positing that the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” was a CIA plot to turn Americans against Muslims, a theory that similarly furthered the right-wing agenda by dividing the left – or at least seeking to – and furthered the gross, right-wing-approved narrative that there was something inherently fishy about Muslims building a place of worship in Manhattan.

Conspiracy theories have been crafted out of less.

Education and social revolution

San Diego is a great place. As a college student, I had a lot of fun there. But it's an inescapable, lamentable fact that the whole county is basically just one big military base with a few recreational areas scattered here and there, everyone from Lockheed-Martin to the Marines having decided to set up shop in Southern California. Walk down Pacific Beach's Garnet Avenue at 2am on a Saturday morning -- hypothetically, of course -- and the soldier-to-frat-boy ratio is usually 1:1; private contractors prefer the Gaslamp District. That's why it's encouraging that students at Mission Beach High School were able to successfully drive the military and their JROTC recruiting program off their campus: if they can do it there, it shows its possible to do it anywhere.

But if their victory is to be replicated elsewhere, it's important to keep in mind the tactics that were employed, most of all that the students didn't win by appealing to authority, but by subverting it. Knowing that the school board and principal who lobbied to bring the military to their school -- along with an on-campus shooting range -- would never turn around and kick them off, the students appealed to their fellow students, speaking directly to the people the Pentagon was trying to recruit. As the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft notes in a writeup about the victory, the "most important factor in the success . . . was the students themselves, who persevered even when their principal and others tried to silence and intimidate them."

Outside activists helped spread the word about the students' struggle within the school by handing out leaflets outside, the committee notes, but the "most significant work was done over a long period inside. Through peer education, the students were able to reverse the 'coolness' equation so that rejecting the lure of JROTC became more legitimate than joining it. Once that happened, a de facto boycott of the program ensued that made it impossible to sustain JROTC."

Ultimately, the JROTC program ended at Mission Beach HS not because the principal caved to the pressure of a letter-writing campaign or online petition, but because the students convinced their peers that they should simply refuse to be recruited, handing out buttons declaring they were "Students Not Soldiers” and “Yo No Soy El Army”. Only because the number of students enrolled for the 2011-2012 school year was less than half the 100 required by law to keep it open and justify the expense of employing two full-time instructors was the recruiting program canceled.

Again: this was in San Diego. As a high school student in the Philly suburbs, I couldn't imagine an anti-recruiting campaign succeeding at my school, where muscular recruiters would set up their propaganda shop in the cafeteria and be fawned over as bad-ass heroes by 14 year olds (thank goodness they were just selling militarism, not cigarettes). But these students succeeded in the heart of imperial beast. Pretty impressive.

There's a lesson in this tale for more than just anti-ROTC activists and counter-recruiters. Meaningful change can't be imposed from the top down as effectively as it can from the bottom up. In order to create that anarcho-topia where the radical notion that it's widely accepted as socially unacceptable to put millions of people in cages or bomb and starve millions of others abroad, a society needs to go through a social revolution, not a mere political one. You don't end war by encouraging a parliament to pass a resolution, or by swapping politicians and governing forms, but by creating a culture that finds blowing innocent men, women and children to bits as abhorrent as pushing an old lady into oncoming traffic. Those in power can't start wars if they don't find anybody willing to fight them.

Now, a social revolution isn't any easy to thing to pull off. Changing society's values can take years, often generations. But if you'd like the chance to live in a world where violence isn't deemed acceptable simply if it has the world "state" in front of it, you're going to have to do a lot more than win an election. You're going to have to change people's minds.

Subsidizing military rule in Egypt

I forgot to link to this last week, so in case you missed it check out my piece with Medea Benjamin on the Obama administration's decision to send another $1.5 billion to Egypt despite (because of?) ongoing human rights abuses being committed by the ruling military.

'A Global Empire, Yet a "United States of Fear"'

In my latest piece for Inter Press Service, I review Tom Engelhardt's new collection of essays, United States of Fear, and opine on militarism in America.

Give it a read.

Obama loves war and Wall Street

For days I bitched about Occupy DC's participation in a rally for infrastructure spending with the SEIU, a bitching that hit a fever pitch after the latter endorsed Barack Obama as the candidate of the 99 percent. But I'll tell you what: I can't give up a good opportunity to protest and a chance to open a few minds -- or at least piss a few off.

So, with pushing back against co-option on my mind, I decided I'd head down to Georgetown and the Key Bridge after all, but armed with a sign speaking for the 90 percent of the 99 percent who don't believe the president represents their interests. I tend to prefer signs calling out the institutional problems with the system, not the personnel, but the SEIU kind of forced my hand.

The response was interesting.

From actual occupiers, the people I recognized from camping out at McPherson Square this past week, the reactions were universally positive, which should assuage some fears that the Occupy movement will turn into a Democratic get-out-the-vote machine. I also got a few honks, in addition to some angry shouts, including the ever-so clever "get a job."

At one point as I held the sign out to traffic crossing the bridge, a Circulator bus full of commuters stopped, the driver opening his door to tell me "that's not true, he doesn't love war," as he shook his head. I then explained that he had in fact doubled the troops in Afghanistan, killing thousands of civilians and -- knowing my audience, this being America and all -- more U.S. soldiers than in the eight years George W. Bush oversaw the occupation. I also mentioned the drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

A funny thing then happened. "Is that true?" the driver asked. A fellow occupier interjected: "Yeah, it is." With a look of having genuinely learned something, the driver nodded his head.

Wait, I thought, did I just have a successful political conversation with someone who started by hollering at me from his vehicle? Weird.

The conversation I had earlier with a suit-wearing, self-described private contractor for the State Department was a bit more . . . tense. Demanding to know what my sign "meant," which I thought was pretty clear, said contractor proceeded to reaffirm every caricature of a mindless, subservient supporter of state I ever held. What follows are, I swear to the gods, verbatim excerpts from of our conversation:

Me: Obama's foreign policy is the same as Bush's. He has just expanded the war on terror.

Dude: That's not true.

He doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan.

No, he surged the troops in Afghanistan. Just like Bush.

*****

He has authorized more drone strikes in Pakistan than Bush did in eight years, killing thousands of innocent civilians.

You're wrong. He killed Osama bin Laden.

 *****

He's also killed U.S. citizens with drone strikes.

They were traitors.

Well, under the Constitution even traitors are supposed to have trials to determine they are traitors. Should we really trust one man to decide who lives or dies?

I trust my government.

*****

So what would you have us do?

I would have us pull all our troops out of every country and bring them home. Something like 95 percent of suicide attacks are the result of foreign occupations. You don't see terrorists going after Switzerland.

Well, that's because they don't have a military.

As Upton Sinclair said, it's difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it.

Some Veterans Day reading

One thing you learn after living outside the United States for awhile is that other countries do not fetishize soldiers and military service quite like Americans do, their cultures being nowhere near as militarized. Televised sporting events, for instance, do not begin by saluting the brave men and women abroad helping kill poor foreigners for Our Freedom. Uniformed military personnel aren't used to sell shitty beer at half time. The armed forces aren't billed to potential recruits as a more glamorous version of ITT Tech.

In the land of the free, by golly, we sure do love The Troops, don't we? We Americans salute their service even as a solid majority of us concede that the war in Iraq was, if not a grave crime, at least a mistake -- oops! we just killed a couple hundred thousand A-rabs -- and agree that the occupation of Afghanistan is a waste of (American) lives and money.

This love is curious for a nation that likes to bend over and blow itself for being the world's most free and ruggedly individualistic. And it's dangerous: how many people have chosen to become the American empires hired guns because they were led to believe it was a just and honorable profession?

It's not, mind you, that I think we ought to shout "baby killer!" and hock a loogie at anyone in uniform -- generals and recruiters, sure -- but neither should we heap praise on those who have chosen a profession that just in the last couple decades has asked them to kill people in at least a half-dozen unjust wars from Panama to Pakistan. That decent, upstanding men and women sometimes join the military and become part of the evil enterprise of empire should be lamented, not lauded, lest other impressionable young people come to the conclusion that there's any honor in mass murder.

But I've said this before. Humor me this holy Veterans Day and check out some of my past writings on the topic of America's wars and the saluting of the rank-and-file soldiers who make them possible:

 -- "That anti-patriotic feeling": It is said that soldiers don't decide the policy, they just follow orders. Fair enough. But is suspending one's conscience in the service of an immoral act a praiseworthy move?

-- "On 'supporting the troops'": The U.S. women's soccer team took time during a recent match to, literally and rather creepily, the American troops in attendance for their "service." But their service isn't an abstraction, so shouldn't the decision to salute them be based on the reality of what it actually entails?

-- "'Unconditional' allegiance is for machines, not people": Liberal blogger Adam Serwer says we "should support servicemembers unconditionally because their service is unconditional." I call bullshit.

Congressional drones

Concerned that the unmanned aerial drones currently raining death upon the unfortunate inhabitants of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia aren't having their synthesized voices heard in Congress? Sick and tired of our brave robots defending American overseas lacking representation the halls of power? Fret no more, friend. Drones, unlike some bipeds, now have their very own caucus in Washington consisting of around 50 lawmakers -- perhaps the only patriots left in America.

Here is their mission:

This is an exciting and existing technology that will continue to grow, and improve our lives [ed: by ending them?] as public acceptance progresses. The Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus’ goal is to educate members of Congress on every facet of this industry. We are this industry’s voice on Capitol Hill, and will work closely with industry to ensure we continue to expand this sector through efficient government regulation and oversight

Be sure to check out the sea of mostly pale white faces bravely speaking out for poor, disenfranchised military contractors like Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin in the face of the dire threat posed by the dark forces of the peace-activist-congressional complex. One only hopes they can convince the public they purport to represent to accept this killer technology for which their tax dollars are paying. Good luck, brave sirs!

As for all you other living and breathing folks, especially you hippies protesting the collusion between state and Wall Street, just be aware: while Predator drones have a voice in Congress, you don't.

So this exists

Can anyone think of any alternative taglines, I wonder?

 

(original)

Juan Cole's war on anarchism

As a liberal supporter of invading Iraq who apparently believed the Bush administration's rhetoric about freedom and democracy, and felt that bombs and military occupations would be the best means of promoting it, Juan Cole sure has a lot of nerve attacking anarchism as philosophy that depends "on a naive reading of social interest." And while I have my own criticisms of right-wing libertarianism, I can't help but note the incongruity of attacking folks like Ron Paul on the basis that their beliefs will lead to privatized, corporate warfare when the wars Cole has supported and continues to support depend on legions of private guns-for-hire and defense contractors like Halliburton and KBR.

Nominally about the recent GOP presidential debate, Cole's attack on anarchy -- from "anarcho-syndicalists like [Noam] Chomsky" to the aforementioned Paul -- is perhaps a sign that liberals like him are fearful the anti-state position is gaining traction, especially given the conspicuous lack of change since liberal savior Barack Obama moved to the White House. Indeed, that would explain why, instead of addressing the world we live in now, where a Nobel laureate is waging war in at least half a dozen countries with the help of an army of private war-profiteering corporations and their mercenaries, Cole focuses our attention on a scary future where, without the state, "warmongering corporations [could] pursue war all on their own."

"The East India Companies of Britain and the Netherlands behaved that way," Cole writes. "[And] India was not conquered by the British government, but by the East India Company. Likewise what is now Indonesia was a project of the Dutch East India Company."

However, while intended as a critique of anarchism, Cole's examples only bolster the critique of the state. The East India Companies, after all, were chartered by the British government, granted trade monopolies by the British government, and had their claim to properties, most of which were looted from poor foreigners, protected by the British government. And while I won't claim to speak for Ron Paul, most anarchists -- and it shows Cole's muddled thinking that he lumps "limited government" advocates like Paul in with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon & Co. -- don't just oppose "the state," they oppose the use of violence and coercion. It just so happens that states with their claims to a "legitimate monopoly on the use of violence" tend to be the greatest purveyors of it.

If in some future anarchotopia a private corporation -- let's not get into the fact that corporations are created by the state -- should wage war, then they would be acting like states and would be opposed just as vigorously. Indeed, to an anarchist the distinction between corporation and state is the same as a Christian's distinction between God and Jesus: though taking different forms, they're one and the same, the difference academic.

While Cole's fixated on a future of corporate war, he seems unaware that a world of Big Bad Corporations waging war on the world exists right now and that, rather than checking this aggression, the state is aiding and abetting it. Liberals can rail against Blackwater/Xe all they want, but in the end its Hillary Clinton's State Department that's giving them millions in tax dollars.

Speaking of oblivious, Cole writes:

Right anarchists seem not to be able to perceive that without government, corporations would reduce us all to living in company towns on bad wages and would constantly be purveying to us bad banking, tainted food, dangerous drugs, etc.

It's almost as if he's unaware we already live in a world where Goldman Sachs exists and where wages have been more or less stagnant since the 1970s. Instead of scaring his readers away from an anarchist world, he likely just left them wondering what the difference would be.

(My Saturday afternoon ruined via BDR)

Cuts in military spending? Don't get your hopes up

"The Pentagon is bracing for spending cuts far deeper than what it was expecting just a few weeks ago," screams the lead of this Washington Post story, bringing tears of joy to anti-American zealots like your humble blogger who would like nothing more than to see the U.S. empire go the way of its Roman predecessor. Alas, as is often the case with articles in the corporate media, the full truth, if its reported at all, is buried at the bottom as an afterthought. What matters to inside-the-Beltway readers is not the facts, but the narrative.

So, before getting to the truth -- which I too am burying, though if you were able to figure out that the circle goes in the round hole I'm sure you've already guessed it -- the Post goes to all the usual, outraged suspects for some choice quotes about how, gosh darn it, no one in Washington is standing up for the military-industrial complex.

“Who knows where the needle will end up?” Thomas Donnelly of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute tells the paper. “Nobody has defense as a high priority. It’s increasingly looking like everybody wants to toss the military overboard.”

So how 'bout that truth, huh? While some lawmakers are indeed talking of cutting defense spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, if only, as I suspect, to deflect attention from the obvious outrage of slashing the relative pittance spent on social programs to deal with the supposed debt problem, the Post waits until paragraph 16 -- one six -- to inform us that the massive, sky-is-falling cuts talked of in the lede aren't really cuts at all.

Indeed, while the "cuts" discussed in the article may "sound like big numbers, some analysts said they represent a reduction in projected spending only and that the Pentagon’s budget would actually continue to grow slightly, about at the rate of inflation."

That's Washington: not increasing war spending by as much as once projected, but still in fact increasing it, is what constitutes a "cut." Actually cutting programs like Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, is called shoring them up. Isn't politics fun?

Poor Boeing is under assault!

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley argues in The Wall Street Journal that President Obama is unjustifiably interfering with Boeing's right to hire cheap labor because his administration is in the pocket of big labor unions, which "rely on coercion, bullying and undue political influence to stay afloat." Apparently the issue is that South Carolina is a "right-to-work" state, meaning it relies on coercion to forbid unions and businesses from voluntarily agreeing to make union membership a condition of employment. Some people on the National Labor Relations Board don't like that.

I must admit, though, I find it perplexing that Gov. Haley would contrast "great corporate citizen" Boeing with what are the purportedly uniquely corrupt and coercive labor unions. Boeing, after all, was just awarded a $35 billion contract -- billions, not millions -- from the Air Force to construct a fleet of refueling tankers. I'm not sure if the governor knows where the Air Force gets its money, but it's not from bake sales.

And I hate to shatter Gov. Haley's innocent little world, but Boeing doesn't get all those multi-billion dollar taxpayer-funded contracts because it simply makes a better ice cream cone than its competitors. No, it gets them by bribing government officials and because just about every politician who wants a second term is beholden to them, from the "progressive" Jim McDermott -- seen here shilling for his friendly neighborhood military contractor and that $35 billion contract -- to that anti-business Marxist reviled by the right for his hatred of motherhood and the American way, Barack Obama, who travels the globe trying to sell Boeing's lethal products to foreign heads of state.

This is why Republicans and the right can't be taken seriously: They have the gall to suggest that big government contractors are under assault by the very big government by which they earn their profits. They pretend big businesses get to be so big because of the "free market." And, arguably most ludicrous of all, they purport to believe that President Barack "Boeing" Obama isn't a good little corporatist just like them.

Poland's safe, but what about my $100 billion?

The U.S. government has for years justified building an unworkable “missile defense system” in Eastern Europe, allegedly -- and I’m serious -- because of the threat posed by Iranian (not Russian, definitely not Russian) missiles, despite the fact that Iran has not attacked another country in centuries, a record the U.S. could do well to copy.

But in a March 25th press briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell suggested that there may be no need to defend Poland from the specter of Persian rocket fire, telling reporters that “if the Iranians were to abandon their pursuit of long-range ballistic missiles or a nuclear weapon, it would to some degree obviate the need for a European missile defense.”

As Morrell certainly knows, of course, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, the consensus opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- including, presumably, the Defense Departments intelligence outfits -- declared “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” Translation: a major declared rationale for the so-called missile defense system may not be true.

And here I thought we were going to waste more than $100 billion on a military-industrial boondoggle that doesn’t even work. What a relief!

Forget a bailout, how 'bout a war?

While researching a story last week, I came across a rather unusual press release from the RAND Corporation that I caught my attention for what I think are reasons that will be readily apparent:

Claims RAND Advocates War Against China are False

Contrary to various online accounts, RAND is not advocating war against China or any nation to advance recovery of the U.S. economy. The notion that RAND has generated such an analysis is simply a rumor, with no foundation in fact. We do not know how those who generated the rumor arrived at their conclusion.

Wondering why RAND would feel the need to issue such a release, I did some Googling and found a few rather poorly sourced articles from the tinfoil hat crowd claiming the Pentagon-founded think tank was advocating a hefty dose of military Keynesianism in order to boost the struggling U.S. economy. 

But as an article, "The RAND Corporation: America's University of Imperialism," by noted imperial critic Chalmers Johnson indicates, RAND would be just the type of place to coldly advocate war as a way to jump-start the economy -- after all, World War II supposedly ended the Great Depression, right?

Indeed,  the article notes that RAND researcher Herman Kahn was apparently the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove in his classic film of the same name. And, as Johnson writes, RAND hasn't suffered since from a lack of militaristic sociopaths:

The RAND Corporation is surely one of the world's most unusual, Cold War-bred private organizations in the field of international relations. While it has attracted and supported some of the most distinguished analysts of war and weaponry, it has not stood for the highest standards of intellectual inquiry and debate. While RAND has an unparalleled record of providing unbiased, unblinking analyses of technical and carefully limited problems involved in waging contemporary war, its record of advice on cardinal policies involving war and peace, the protection of civilians in wartime, arms races, and decisions to resort to armed force has been abysmal.

For example, Abella credits RAND with "creating the discipline of terrorist studies," but its analysts seem never to have noticed the phenomenon of state terrorism as it was practiced in the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America by American-backed military dictatorships. Similarly, admirers of Albert Wohlstetter's reformulations of nuclear war ignore the fact that that these led to a "constant escalation of the nuclear arms race." By 1967, the U.S. possessed a stockpile of 32,500 atomic and hydrogen bombs.

In Vietnam, RAND invented the theories that led two administrations to military escalation against North Vietnam -- and even after the think tank's strategy had obviously failed and the secretary of defense had disowned it, RAND never publicly acknowledged that it had been wrong. Abella comments, "RAND found itself bound by the power of the purse wielded by its patron, whether it be the Air Force or the Office of the Secretary of Defense." And it has always relied on classifying its research to protect itself, even when no military secrets were involved.

While I don't think war with China is in the offing anytime soon -- U.S. political leaders are notorious for their hubris and willful disregard for reality, but they surely can't be that insane, right? -- just to be safe, one might want to get in touch with those cousins in rural Idaho that you haven't talked to in a couple of years . . .

In case you missed it

With all the news channeled dominated by coverage of Sarah Palin's fancy clothes and the revelation that Barack Obama was indeed born to a human -- and not via immaculate conception, as previously thought -- and has a grandmother who he apparently loves (shocking!), one could be forgiven for missing this revealing story from earlier this month on how the U.S. "defense" budget manages to increase every year, even when politicians from both major parties campaign on promises of cutting wasteful federal spending:

Pentagon officials have prepared a new estimate for defense spending that is $450 billion more over the next five years than previously announced figures.

The new estimate, which the Pentagon plans to release shortly before President Bush leaves office, would serve as a marker for the new president and is meant to place pressure on him to either drastically increase the size of the defense budget or defend any reluctance to do so, according to several former senior budget officials who are close to the discussions.

-----

"This is a political document," said one former senior budget official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It sets up the new administration immediately to have to make a decision of how to deal with the perception that they are either cutting defense or adding to it."

Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's top budget official from 2001 to 2004, who is not involved in the current discussions, agreed.

"The thinking behind it is pretty straightforward," Zakheim said. "They are setting a baseline for a new administration that then will have to defend cutting it."

As Tennessee Congressman Jimmy Duncan -- one of the few genuinely anti-war Republicans left in Congress, even if he does inexplicably rationalize supporting John McCain for president (here's an interview I did with Duncan that was published by Antiwar.com last year) -- once remarked to me, the U.S. Defense Department is the biggest bureaucracy in the history of the world. And like any other bureaucracy (or politician for that matter), its primary institutional priority is not to, say, present a rational and realistic view of the threats to the United States, but to increase its own power and influence.

Put simply, the military-industrial complex benefits not from peace and tranquility, but from war and an endless parade of villains and threats -- real, or as is usually the case, imagined -- with which it can cajole the American public into unquestioningly supporting whatever hawkish (and need I say expensive?) policies they put forward. 

Not being stupid people, those who profit from war (the so-called "merchants of death") are also well aware of the political difficulties posed for a politician in being cast as "weak on defense" -- as defined by the very same war profiteers and their congressional/media comrades --  and are willing to use the establishment's fetishization of military-spending-as-barometer-of-safety-and-preparedness 

Consider that the United States is now building a missile defense system in Poland, allegedly to defend against an attack from Iran (which hasn't attacked another country since the 18th century), and you can pretty well gauge how effective they have been in this endeavor. Combine the institutional pressures in favor of an ever-expanding military budget with the fact that both John McCain and Barack Obama support expanding the size and budget of the armed forces -- as well as a doomed-to-fail military "surge" in Afghanistan -- and you have a recipe for the defense/war budget to grow faster than the stock market at the height of the Federal Reserve-induced dot-com bubble, no matter who wins on November 4th.

A walking tour of the military-industrial complex

Working in and around Washington, DC can be something of a weird, albeit illuminating, experience. Unlike other U.S. cities, where waterfront properties with a perfect view of the city's skyline would be full of high-priced condos, Washington's nearby suburb, the grossly misnamed "neighborhood" of Crystal City, is largely home to the merchants of death, their advocates, and -- as you'll see below -- their enablers. 

Having worked in the physical manifestation of the military-industrial complex for a number of months now, I have almost become accustomed to riding in an elevator full of men and women in fatigues while defense contractors in ill-fitting suits -- those men (and occasionally women) who directly profit off of war and its accompanying misery -- fret about landing that next big contract to build the Pentagon's latest weapon of mass destruction.

But while I've become somewhat used to living in world dominated by the military and militarists, I got to thinking: maybe the rest of the world isn't (one can hope?). So with that, I bring you the first of what is likely to be a long-running, recurring installment of "a walking tour of the military-industrial complex":

What tour of the military-industrial-congressional complex would be complete without a stop by Senator John "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" McCain's campaign headquarters? 

True story: about three weeks ago I was waiting in line at a sandwich shop behind some young McCain campaign staffers who were so sure of their candidate's impending victory that they were loudly discussing their planned "victory" vacations to various tropical paradises. Perhaps they know something we don't -- could William Ayers be Barack Obama's real father? -- but, in light of the recent polling data and the state of the U.S. economy, they might want to reconsider that drunken, celebratory romp through the Virgin Islands.

About a block away from McCain's campaign headquarters are the offices of Lockheed-Martin, which is a bit convenient, seeing as it just so happens that McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, "used to be" a lobbyist for said merchant of death. That connection, I'm sure, in no way impacted the Maverick's recent call for the Bush administration to expand its military aid package to Taiwan -- which, it just so happens, McCain would like to see include a bunch of Lockheed-manufactured F-16s. Nope, nothing to see here. Move along, move along...

This is the Crystal City underground, an odd mixture of restaurants, electronics stores -- and as you see here -- defense contractor gift shops and "Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC)" offices. If one thought the "military-industrial complex" was a mere fiction created by clove-smoking hippies and Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech writers, this place would put your doubts to rest. 

Watch out Banana Republic -- here comes the official Boeing gift shop. Impress the ladies with your sense of sophistication when you show up to the Hamburger Hamlet bar wearing your B-50 bomber Polo shirt. Oh yeah.

Gulf War II, baby! A fixture of the Crystal City underground, this store is your one-stop-shop for all your war glorifying merchandise needs -- my personal favorite being the kid's t-shirt commemorating Harry Truman's brave decision to nuke Hiroshima, complete with mushroom cloud: "This 'Little Boy' is the Bomb!" 

[Ok, so I actually haven't seen that shirt -- but considering the other war porn available in Crystal -- it isn't that far-fetched.]

 

Have you ever taken the train to work and found yourself wondering, "What are my enemy's movements?" Do you often find yourself pondering that eternal, omnipresent concern shared by so many students and business professionals: "Do I have enough troops?"

Well, fear not, for the Crystal City metro has got you covered, its walls plastered with ads selling the latest in expensive products designed to streamline the insurgent-killing process.

This ad, also in the Crystal City metro, is notable mostly for the existentialism embodied in the phrase it uses to sell war enhancement products -- "The Enemy is Uncertainty" -- but also for its bold commitment to "defeat the common enemy" and its Rumsfeldian pledge to "[m]ake the unknown known".

What better way to end this "walking tour" installment then with an ad that displays the basic inhumanity inherent in the military-industrial complex. After the endless stream of advertisements and politicians heralding war as a force that gives us meaning, its useful to point out that those that actually partake in it -- and aren't completely taken in by the military's dehumanizing brainwashing -- tend not to like it all that much. Some even want to kill themselves because of what they've seen and/or done in Iraq and other illegal wars of aggression. Yet while the military has a seemingly endless stream of money to pay for recruitment ads during sporting events and other television programming aimed primarily at young men, the best they can do to prevent suicide among their "employees" is an ad in a random subway station.

You gotta have priorities, I guess.

When it rains, it pours

The conflict between Russia and Georgia -- besides killing a good number of innocent people and possibly enabling a new fraudulent "cold war", to the delight of defense contractors everywhere -- provoked a stunning amount of hypocrisy from U.S. officials. Consider Condoleeza Rice, speaking to to reporters on Monday:

"Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and that's its military power," Rice told reporters en route to an emergency meeting of NATO foreign ministers set for Tuesday. "That's not the way to deal in the 21st century."

This from a woman who sold a war on an impoverished country on the other side of the globe on the basis that maybe -- contrary to evidence available at the time -- Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program and was preparing to maybe, just maybe, nuke an American city? Hypocrisy truly knows no bounds among those in the upper echelons of power. As Salon's Glenn Greenwald writes: 

Whatever one's views are on the justifiability of each isolated instance, it's simply a fact that the U.S. invades, bombs, occupies, and interferes in the internal affairs of other countries far more than any other country on the planet. It's not even a close competition.

Just during the time Rice has served in the Bush administration, we bombed, invaded and occupied Afghanistan; did the same to Iraq; repeatedly bombed Somalia, killing all sorts of civilians; fed bombs to Israel as they invaded and bombed Lebanon; top political officials (led by John McCain and Joe Lieberman) have repeatedly threatened, and advocated, that the same be done to a whole host of other countries, including Iran and Syria. That's to say nothing of the virtually countless interventions and bombings in the pre-Bush, "peacetime" years -- from the Balkans and Panama to Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and on and on and on.

But, as Greenwald notes, war isn't loved just by those in the White House, but by the elite media as well:

The most enduring and predominant rule of American politics is that every national politician must demonstrate their willingness, even eagerness, to start wars. On the day in 1989 that the first George Bush ordered the deadly U.S. invasion of Panama, The New York Times' R.W. Apple approvingly wrote on the front page that starting wars like that was "a Presidential initiation rite," and that "most American leaders since World War II have felt a need to demonstrate their willingness to shed blood to protect or advance what they construe as the national interest." Thus, proclaimed Apple, Bush's attack on Panama was an example of his "showing his steel" and "has shown him as a man capable of bold action."

Read the rest.

Ron Paul Rally in DC

Yesterday I headed down to the U.S. Capitol to check out a rally for former presidential candidate and current Texas Republican congressman, Ron Paul. Having interviewed Mr. Paul several times during the course of his campaign, I was interested in checking out just what kind of crowd he could attract on a 90-degree July day in Washington.

In many ways, the crowd seemed a lot like the recent antiwar rallies I have attended -- largely consisting of "average" folks, with a visible 10 percent of the crowd consisting of what can only fairly be described as the "lunatic fringe" (more on that later). Otherwise, everyone from hippie-types shouting "free the weed" to right-wing Christians concerned about a "North American Union" were in attendance (in addition to a good deal of regular-looking, "normal" folks), highlighting the politically transcendent appeal of Paul's radical anti-war, anti-corporatist message.

Particularly surprising to me was the speech by Naomi Wolf, a prominent feminist and one-time adviser to former Vice President Al Gore, on the 10 signs that a country is drifting toward fascism (video shot by yours truly below):

A few years ago I would have expected Wolf to be just another Democratic partisan willing to write-off Ron Paul as a kooky "right-wing extremist." But many of Paul's positions on the most pressing issues of the day -- opposition to empire, torture, and the national security state -- are what would usually be characterized by the establishment media as "far left", and appeal to many people who are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party's embrace of corporatism and illegal, aggressive warfare.

As Wolf noted in her speech, for far too long those who agree with Paul's stances on those issues would allow themselves to be divided by a range of red herring wedge issues that are largely meaningless when a country is engaged in illegal foreign occupations and indefinitely detaining suspected "terrorists". When it comes down to it, those who agree on the immorality of preemptive war, warrantless spying, and torture should not be divided by their differing views on the estate tax -- priorities, people.

Yet for decades both the Democratic and Republican parties have been busy scaring their respective bases with the horrifying prospect of the other party taking power, obfuscating the fact that, for all practical purposes, there is no real disagreement between the parties on the worthiness of an imperialistic foreign policy.

That said, there were several speakers at the rally who, if the goal is to appeal to as broad an audience as possible by focusing on a message of peace and freedom, were . . . questionable choices, to put it mildly. In fact, one man who followed Wolf -- a retired Arizona police officer by the name of Jack McLamb -- rambled on with crackpot conspiracies about the "New World Order" so ridiculous it was if they were intentionally designed to marginalize the entire event.

In addition to your garden-variety "9/11 truth" kookery (cheered on by a not insignificant Alex Jones-worshipping segment of the crowd), McLamb went off about how government agents are,  apparently, affixing color-coded stickers to the mailboxes of would-be troublemakers. The purpose? Well, you see, a red sticker on your mailbox signals to "foreign troops" that one should be taken out to a field and shot. A blue sticker, in contrast, merely means that these undefined foreign soldiers should take you to a Halliburton-constructed concentration camp.

As one Ron Paul supporter standing next to me astutely observed, "so how does that work with apartment complexes?"

With such a range of fairly respected speakers -- Wolf, former CIA agent Michael Scheuer, talk show host Charles Goyette -- it boggles the mind as to why rally organizers would allow someone suffering from bizarre paranoid delusions to address the crowd.  If supporters of Ron Paul are looking to shake off the "fringe" label, inviting a guy who makes the "9/11 was an inside job" crowd uncomfortable doesn't appear to me to be the most effective strategy. 

In fact, due to the quality of some of the speakers -- another man who later took the stage went beyond mere "secure the borders" rhetoric to a full-on, xenophobic rant about how there were too many "illegals" committing crimes in the U.S. (undocumented workers actually commit less crime, but hey, they tend to have darker complexions so what do the facts matter?) and that, h'yuck, we ain't learnin' no Spanish -- I ended up leaving before Ron Paul actually spoke. 

Judging by the near-total lack of applause the speaker received, I'm guessing I wasn't the only one perplexed as to why a rally in favor of a guy who made opposition to war and the police state the focus of his campaign (and who, even with his anti-illegal immigration rhetoric, has said he finds the concept of a border fence "rather offensive" and that "I think we could be much more generous with our immigration") would allow a speaker to engage in such rank bigotry and fear-mongering about "illegals".

Such is the downside to creating a political coalition that includes everyone from Green Party supporters to the close-the-borders crowd. On the one hand, Ron Paul's message, by transcending the obsolete constraints of "left" and "right", is able to attract a large, diverse following that shows the potential mass appeal of a simple "bring the troops home and follow the Constitution" message. However, that larger following often brings a whole range of crazies with their own pet issues who are not so much concerned with ending the American empire as they are with demanding that people buy into the lunacy that WTC 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition, god damn it (as I witnessed one man try to convince a group of perplexed Chinese tourists who were walking by).

As the late Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it goes...

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(Also see The American Conservative's Kelley Vlahos and Daniel McCarthy for their takes on the rally.)

And since this is a post about Ron Paul, what better time then to hawk one of my interviews with him? This one, from January 2007, I believe was the first interview with Paul about a potentially launching a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination:

The covert war on Iran

In my last post regarding allegations of U.S. support for the anti-Iranian terrorist group, Jundullah, I noted that since the likes of Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) were unable to -- or more likely, unwilling to -- investigate the charges, it would probably be best to rely on The New Yorker's Sy Hersh for information on what's really going on. As it would happen, Hersh has a new article out today that finds:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations.

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The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. “The oversight process has not kept pace—it’s been coöpted” by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.”

When I asked Senator Rockefeller about these allegations last year, he responded that, gosh darn it, he just couldn't do anything about it. Of course, if Hersh's reporting is right, then Rockefeller has not only failed to adequately exercise his oversight responsibilities -- you know, basic things like actually issuing a subpoena over credible allegations of U.S.-backed terrorism -- but has been actively complicit in the ongoing covert war on Iran.

But should anyone be surprised? If the United States or Israel attacks Iran, it will be because there is broad, bipartisan support in Washington for such an attack. While Democratic partisans can go ahead and try to convince themselves that an attack on Iran will be the fault of all those dastardly neocons in the White House, it's increasingly obvious that the Democratic Party -- which took control of Congress based on broad antiwar sentiment in 2006 -- fully embraces the same imperial foreign policy objectives of the Bush administration. It was, after all, Democrat Harry Truman who dropped two nukes on Japan, fought a war in Korea without congressional approval, and ushered in the Cold War (and the accompanying military-industrial complex), so it's not as if Republicans have a monopoly on militarism and the willingness to commit war crimes.

A wide number of Democrats are also backing a resolution that calls for a de facto war on Iran -- a complete naval embargo and prohibition on the movement of Iranian officials -- for its "pursuit of nuclear weapons", despite the fact that the IAEA and all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies have come to the conclusion that Iran is, in fact, not pursuing nuclear weapons. But in Washington, people don't let little things like the "facts" get in the way of America's implacable demand for foreign enemies.

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For those interested, Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio fame aired a portion of my exchange with Senator Rockefeller during a recent interview of former CIA intelligence analyst Melvin Goodman. Go here to listen -- the discussion of Rockefeller begins around the 16:30 mark.

Kill your television

The New York Times reports:

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”

If you haven't already done so, disconnect your cable or satellite feed and save yourself from exposure to the criminally asinine celebrity gossip coverage that passes for television "news". Granted, you may not be as up to date on Britney Spears' most recent meltdown or Jessica Simpson's latest hookup as your friends, but you just might gain back your sanity.

As CBS correspondent Lara Logan is quoted as saying in the NYT article: “If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts.”

Instead of absorbing corporate media disinformation, support actual journalism -- links are conveniently provided to your right.

You have nothing to lose but your chains.