The family came home tonight, and Jorge turned on the TV to the Super Bowl! I was shocked. Why would Chileans care about the Super Bowl, they don’t even understand football. I understand about 70% of football and I don’t even care about the Super Bowl. So here I am, being patriotic, watching the game.
Today I was walking down the street and I heard “Party in the USA” blasting from a car. In the supermarket, I see American brands, and advertisements for American movies all over the place.
Even though Chile seems very independent from America, I still see USA influence every day. It’s impossible to get completely away!
You all know the stereotypes, the movies, the songs, the condemnations, and some of you have even actually been there. We were only there for about 20 hours, but all those things are pretty much true, if only for the fact that so much can happen due to the sheer amount of people passing through. But enough of serious observation.
Las Vegas is a depressingly magical place. The recent James Cameron movie, Avatar, released a spat of depression cases for fans who felt remorse at the fact that there is nowhere similar in beauty to the movie’s alien planet, Pandora, and in a way this is applicable to Las Vegas. You will not find a city so dedicated to one human obsession in the most insanely ostentatious manner. Sure there are casinos all over Nevada and on Indian Reservations, but they really don’t compare. Despite all the stories of the obsessed or addicts losing their life’s savings you really can’t go wrong if you limit yourself and take in a show or two.
Then there is the larger picture. Vegas is sprawled across a massive expanse of desert (not to mention many other cities throughout NM, AZ, and CA) and uses an obscene amount of water. Probably every single casino operates some variety of fountains, which includes the biggies at the Mirage, Bellagio, and Treasure Island (to name a few). Most of the cars I saw and every single one of the the many stretch limousines were grotesquely sparkling clean (in sharp contrast to our still dirty VW), which, coupled with the sand and dust that surrounds the city, points to a thriving car wash market. There are efforts being made to relieve the aquatic strain that the city creates, but the damage has already been done (again, not by LV alone) as the Colorado River’s current delta is a mere fraction of what it used to be and has crippled what was once a lush section of Mexico. Electricity consumption is also a massive drain on the system and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that Vegas is an enormous bajillion watt lightbulb. Oh, and while there are just about way too many homeless and needy patrolling the world (even in Vegas) we’ve got tens of thousands of tourists chucking millions of dollars away each day and returning to their overly cushy hotel rooms. But hey, it’s not like these problems aren’t being addressed. There are measures being taken to ease the strain the city creates on water and power usage and the charity…some people win big and donate and there are many charities that operate in Sin City.
Vegas is also superlatively fun. Besides mindlessly gambling there are a litany of shows to watch including most of what Cirque Du Soleil offers (seriously, there are about 6 shows on offer). Prostitution is legal and not too subtly advertised (those aren’t newspaper racks…boob racks!), so if that’s your thing…congrats? You can walk along the strip and watch people work their way down a shopping list of bad decisions. Case in point: we passed a drunk man (bottle in brown paper bag, slurring spanish) get talked into a store selling tickets to shows and events…why not top off a night of drinking with a $50-$150 ticket to a show you won’t remember/enjoy (or get thrown out of)? Don’t have enough money? You can pretty much find any means necessary to pawn belongings or cash paychecks…probably even getting rid of one of those unnecessary kidneys (cutting down on the alcohol will help you in the long run anyway). The Strip consists of Food, Room, Gambling, and Money-Acquisition…and ladies…of the night. Three out of five ain’t bad.
It is a thoroughly enjoyable place and outside of the main drag there are other things to do. The weather is pleasant and probably slightly unbearable during the summer, but it wouldn’t be a bad place to live. Although the gambling environment and some of the people it attracts (popped collars, faux hawks, someone who looks like they just spent more than your life’s earnings on plastic surgery) would probably turn me into an excessively bitter and cynical person…don’t get me wrong, I am already slightly bitter and cynical (thank you, Mets and Islanders), but Vegas would just catapult me over the wall. A weekend visit would be awesome.
As we drove onto the strip Aubrey came to the realization that we could see Zumanity (Zoo Manatee?)…and so we did. It is one of Cirque Du Soleil’s many shows and is for “adults only.” Just some language…and man-asses, lady-butts, and upper halves. Suggestive phrasing. It was phenomenal. (Oh, Mike, you pervert) No, really, regardless of the countless nipples and near-unwanted phallus sightings (not “I nearly didn’t want to see it” but “I nearly saw it and didn’t want to”), the show is this crazy, awesome spectacle. Imagine that characters from The Matrix got together with a handful from mythology and had the world’s most bizarre orgy…
Wheee!
After the show we were pretty worn out (numerous days of driving and sight-seeing also helped) and didn’t really get into gambling. We played the penny slots for a bit and I was actually doing pretty well (up 106%…so $1.06) before I lost interest/Aubrey decided I should place the maximum bet of 90. We didn’t have the time or fortitude to get into anything else. I would have like to see how long I could go before losing all my chips in poker, but that could possibly take too long (I have won, but usually at the expense of people who were drunker than me – me being sober) and some of the slot style machines just look way too convoluted…like US Tax Code size manual convoluted. We decided that we should make a weekend trip and stay in a casino room sometime. Those $1 BJ signs at Sahara caught my eye. That’s BlackJack…they also offer $1 shots, beer, and hot dogs (not combined). Oddlight: The Pirate show at Treasure Island Casino, in which we unwittingly walked out to pyrotechnics heating our faces off. This consists of a female crew on one ship, comprised of women with a skill set between that of a stripper and that of a singer/actress, pole dancing on the rigging while a male crew on the other ship, comprised of male actors whose sole abilities are pirate accent and speech (the women can’t do this for some reason), act piratey. Highlight: Watching the fountain show outside the Bellagio. The iconic and idyllic scene in the 2001 Ocean’s Eleven with DeBussy’s Clair de Lune played through my head. I was really hoping that Clair de Lune would play, but instead the speakers were pumping out that insufferable Shania Twain song. She almost ruined it for me.
So anyway, we went to Las Vegas and did next to no gambling.
WAIT, WHAT THE HELL! BALLS!
Captain Wrongway Peachfuzz… the perfect mascot for oca.org under the bumbling care of John Matusiak… where did you dig that guy up from? At least, get somebody who can get the facts straight!
URL for article I am referring to:
http://www.oca.org/news/2077
Here’s the latest howler from Matusiak on oca.org. Supposedly, JP met with a Mr Christopher Smith (R-NJ), who is the chairman of the House International Relations Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations Subcommittee according to oca.org. There is a problem with that. There is no such committee. There is a Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight… but Mr Smith is not a member. In addition, there is a Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, of which Mr Smith is a member.
There is yet another glitch. All committee and subcommittee chairmen are of the majority party. I heard rumours that the majority party is the Democratic Party, whilst Mr Smith is a member of the Republican Party, which is not in the majority. Therefore, he cannot be a committee chairman, and he is not such. Mr Matusiak has screwed up yet again. Mr Smith is the ranking minority member of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, quite a different thing from the subcommittee chairman, who is Mr Donald M Payne (D-NJ). In addition, Mr Smith is not the co-chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the US Helsinki Commission). Mr Alcee L Hastings (D-FL) has that position. Mr Smith is only an ordinary member of this body.
There is no Committee on International Relations in the US House of Representatives at present. It existed as such from 1995-2007. There is a Committee on Foreign Affairs, but the ranking minority member is Ms Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Mr Smith is not the co-chairman of this body either.
In short, this is shoddy and nasty workmanship. It is as bad as the piece handed out by Ms Belonick on the so-called award to SVS in Moscow. By the way, don’t tell me how “good-hearted” someone is… that doesn’t count. If someone does shoddy work in an attempt to hide the full truth or inflate something past its due proportion, I’m going to speak up… and loudly, too. This makes everything on the OCA official website open to question. Don’t think that wearing a riassa exempts you from the normal and expected standards that apply to all of us. Mr Matusiak is an incompetent fool, and the sooner that he is replaced, the better. Should I mention that he was an important part of the old régime… or, is that verboten as well?
Michael Schwartz , TomDispatch.com,February 3, 2010
Americans have largely stopped thinking about Iraq, even though we still have approximately 110,000 troops there, as well as the largest “embassy” on the planet (and still growing). We’ve generally chalked up our war in Iraq to the failed past, and some Americans, after the surge of 2007, even think of it as, if not a success, at least no longer a debacle. Few care to spend much time considering the catastrophe we actually brought down on the Iraqis in “liberating” them.
Remember when we used to talk about Saddam Hussein’s “killing fields”? The world of mayhem and horror that followed the U.S. invasion and occupation delivered new, even larger “killing fields” that we don’t care to discuss, or that we prefer to consider the responsibility of the Iraqis themselves. Even with violence far lower today, Baghdad certainly remains one of the more dangerous cities on the planet. The bombs continue to go off there regularly and devastatingly, while the killing, even if not of American troops who rarely patrol any longer and are largely confined to their mega-bases, has not ended, not by a long shot; nor has the anger, suspicion, and depression that go with all of this.
A striking recent article in the British Guardian by reporter Martin Chulov seemed to catch something of what the U.S. actually accomplished in Iraq in a nutshell. It describes a country in “environmental ruin” (and, let’s not forget, taxed with an ongoing drought of monumental proportions). The headline tells the story: “Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds.” The contamination from depleted uranium weapons, bombed pipelines, and other disasters of the years of war, civil war, and chaos seems centered around Iraq’s population centers and, perhaps not surprisingly, coincides with a massive rise in birth defects.
Worse yet, in all those years of occupation, the U.S., despite billions of dollars spent (or rather squandered) on “reconstruction,” never managed to deliver electricity, jobs, potable water, health care, or much else. And despite many attempts, as Michael Schwartz, returning TomDispatch regular and the author of War Without End, makes clear, Washington never even got the oil out of the ground in a country that is little short of a giant oil field waiting to be developed. A remarkable record when you think about it. Tom
The Iraqi Oil Conundrum
Energy and Power in the Middle East By Michael Schwartz
How the mighty have fallen. Just a few years ago, an overconfident Bush administration expected to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, pacify the country, install a compliant client government, privatize the economy, and establish Iraq as the political and military headquarters for a dominating U.S. presence in the Middle East. These successes were, in turn, expected to pave the way for ambitious goals, enshrined in the 2001 report of Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive task force on energy. That report focused on exploiting Iraq’s monstrous, largely untapped energy reserves – more than any country other than Saudi Arabia and Iran — including the quadrupling of Iraq’s capacity to pump oil and the privatization of the production process.
The dream in those distant days was to strip OPEC — the cartel consisting of the planet’s main petroleum exporters — of the power to control the oil supply and its price on the world market. As a reward for vastly expanding Iraqi production and freeing its distribution from OPEC’s control, key figures in the Bush administration imagined that the U.S. could skim off a small proportion of that increased oil production to offset the projected $40 billion cost of the invasion and occupation of the country.
All in a year or two.
Unremitting Ambition Tempered by Political and Military Failure
Almost seven years later, it will come as little surprise that things turned out to cost a bit more than expected in Iraq and didn’t work out exactly as imagined. Though the March 2003 invasion quickly ousted Saddam Hussein, the rest of the Bush administration’s ambitious agenda remains largely unfulfilled.
Instead of quickly pacifying a grateful nation and then withdrawing all but 30,000-40,000 American troops (which were to be garrisoned on giant bases far from Iraq’s urban areas), the occupation triggered both Sunni and Shia insurgencies, while U.S. counterinsurgency operations led to massive carnage, a sectarian civil war, the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad, and a humanitarian crisis that featured hundreds of thousands of deaths, four million internal and external refugees, and an unemployment rate that stayed consistently above 50% with all the attendant hunger, disease, and misery one would expect.
In the meantime, the government of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, fervently supported by the Bush administration and judged by Transparency International to be the fifth most corrupt in the world, has morphed into an ever less reliable client regime. Despite American diktats and desires, it has managed to establish cordial political and economic relationships with Iran, slow the economic privatization process launched by the neocon administrators sent to Baghdad in 2003, and restored itself as the country’s primary employer. It even seems periodically resistant to its designated role as a possible long-term host for an American military strike force in the Middle East.
This resistance was expressed most forcefully when Maliki leveraged the Bush administration into signing a status of forces agreement (SOFA) in 2008 that included a full U.S. military withdrawal by the end of 2011. Maliki even demanded — and received — a promise to vacate the five massive “enduring” military bases the Pentagon had constructed — with their elaborate facilities, populations that reach into the tens of thousands, and virtually no Iraqi presence, even among the thousands of unskilled workers who do the necessary dirty work to keep these “American towns” running.
Despite such setbacks, the Bush administration did not abandon the idea that Iraq might remain the future headquarters for a U.S. presence in the region, nor in the 2008 presidential election did candidate Barack Obama. He, in fact, repeatedly insisted that the Iraqi government should be a strong ally of the U.S. and the most likely host for a 50,000-strong military force that would “allow our troops to strike directly at al-Qaeda wherever it may exist, and demonstrate to international terrorist organizations that they have not driven us from the region.”
Since entering the Oval Office, Obama has not visibly wavered in the commitment to establish Iraq as a key Middle East ally, promising in his State of the Union Address that the U.S. would “continue to partner with the Iraqi people” into the indefinite future. In the same address, however, the president promised that “all of our troops are coming home,” apparently signaling the abandonment of the Bush administration’s military plans. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on the other hand, has recently voiced a contrary vision, hinting at the possibility that the Iraqis might be interested in negotiating a way around the SOFA agreement to allow U.S. forces to remain in the country after 2011.
Dynamic Paralysis Keeps Iraqi Oil Underground
Iraqi oil, too, has been a focus of Washington’s unremitting ambition tempered by failure. Long before the cost of the war began to lurch toward the current Congressional estimate of $700 billion, the idea of using oil revenues to pay for the invasion had vanished, as had the idea of quadrupling production capacity within a few years. The hope of doing so someday, however, remains alive. Speculation that Iraq’s production could — in the not too distant future — exceed that of Saudi Arabia may still represent Washington’s main strategy for postponing future severe global energy shortages.
Even before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the secretive energy task force Vice President Cheney headed was tentatively allocating various oil fields in a future pacified Iraq to key international oil companies. Before the March 2003 invasion, the State Department actually drafted prospective legislation for a post-Hussein government, which would have transferred the control of key oil fields to foreign oil giants. Those companies were then expected to invest the necessary billions in Iraq’s rickety oil industry to boost production to maximum rates.
Not so long after U.S. troops entered Baghdad, the administration’s proconsul, L. Paul Bremer III, enacted the State Department legislation by fiat (and in clear violation of international law, which prohibits occupying powers from changing fundamental legislation in the conquered country). Under the banner of de-Baathification — the dismantling of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni ruling party — he also fired oil technicians, engineers, and administrators, leaving behind a skeleton crew of Iraqis to manage existing production (and await the arrival of the oil giants with all their expertise).
Within a short time, many of these pariah professionals had fled to other countries where their skills were valued, creating a brain drain that, for a time, nearly incapacitated the Iraqi oil industry. Bremer then appointed a group of international oil consultants and business executives to a newly created (and UN-sanctioned) Development Fund of Iraq (DFI), which was to oversee all of the country’s oil revenues.
The remaining Iraqi administrators, technicians, and workers soon mounted a remarkably determined and effective multi-front resistance to Bremer’s effort. They were aided in this by a growing insurgency.
In one dramatic episode, Bremer announced the pending transfer of the control of the southern port of Basra (which then handled 80% of the country’s oil exports) from a state-run enterprise to KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company Vice President Cheney had once headed. Anticipating that their own jobs would soon disappear in a sea of imported labor, the oil workers immediately struck. KBR quickly withdrew and Bremer abandoned the effort.
In other Bremer initiatives, foreign energy and construction firms did take charge of development, repair, and operations in Iraq’s main oil fields. The results were rarely adequate and often destructive. Contracts for infrastructure repair or renewal were often botched or left incomplete, as international companies ripped out usable or repairable facilities that involved technology alien to them, only to install ultimately incompatible equipment. In one instance, a $5 million pipeline repair became an $80 million “modernization” project that foundered on intractable engineering issues and, three years later, was left incomplete. In more than a few instances, local communities sabotaged such projects, either because they employed foreign workers and technicians instead of Iraqis, or because they were designed to deprive the locals of what they considered their “fair share” of oil revenues.
In the first two years of the occupation, there were more than 200 attacks on oil and gas pipelines. By 2007, 600 acts of sabotage against pipelines and facilities had been recorded.
After an initial flurry of interest, international oil companies sized up the dangers and politely refused Bremer’s invitation to risk billions of dollars on Iraqi energy investments.
After this initial failure, the Bush administration looked for a new strategy to forward its oil ambitions. In late 2004, with Bremer out of the picture, Washington brokered a deal between U.S.-sponsored Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the International Monetary Fund. European countries promised to forgive a quarter of the debts accumulated by Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqis promised to implement the U.S. oil plan. But this worked no better than Bremer’s effort. Continued sabotage by insurgents, resistance by Iraqi technicians and workers, and the corrupt ineptitude of the contracting companies made progress impossible. The international oil companies continued to stay away.
In 2007, under direct U.S. pressure, virtually the same law was reluctantly endorsed by Prime Minister Maliki and forwarded to the Iraqi parliament for legislative consideration. Instead of passing it, the parliament established itself as a new center of resistance to the U.S. plan, raising myriad familiar complaints and repeatedly refusing to bring it to a vote. It lies dormant to this day.
This stalemate continued unabated through the Obama administration’s first year in office, as illustrated by a continuing conflict around the pipeline that carries oil from Iraq to Turkey, a source of about 20% of the country’s oil revenues. During the Bremer administration, the U.S. had ended the Saddam-era tradition of allowing local tribes to siphon off a proportion of the oil passing through their territory. The insurgents, viewing this as an act of American theft, undertook systematic sabotage of the pipeline, and — despite ferocious U.S. military offensives — it remained closed for all but a few days throughout the next five years.
The pipeline was re-opened in the fall of 2009, when the Iraqi government restored the Saddam-era custom in exchange for an end to sabotage. This has been only partially successful. Shipments have been interrupted by further pipeline attacks, evidently mounted by insurgents who believe oil revenues are illegitimately funding the continuing U.S. occupation. The fragility of the pipeline’s service, even today, is one small sign of ongoing resistance that could be an obstacle to any significant increase in oil production until the U.S. military presence is ended.
The entire six-year saga of American energy dreams, policies, and pressures in Iraq has so far yielded little — no significant increase in Iraq’s oil production, no increase in its future capacity to produce, and no increase in its energy exports. The grand ambition of transferring actual control of the oil industry into the hands of the international oil companies has proven no less stillborn.
Over the years since the U.S. began its energy campaign, production has actually languished, sometimes falling as much as 40% below the pre-invasion levels of an industry already held together by duct tape and ingenuity. In the Brookings Institution’s latest figures for December 2009, production stood at 2.4 million barrels per day, a full 100,000 barrels lower than the pre-war daily average.
To make matters worse, the price of oil, which had hit historic peaks in early 2008, began to decline. By 2009, with the global economy in tatters, oil prices sank radically and the Iraqi government lacked the revenues to sustain its existing expenditures, let alone find money to repair its devastated infrastructure.
As a result, in early 2009, Maliki’s government began actively, even desperately, seeking ways to hike oil production, even without an oil law in place. That, after all, was the only possible path for an otherwise indigent country with failing agriculture in the midst of a drought of extreme severity to increase the money available for public projects — or, of course, even more private corruption.
The Oil Companies Make Their Move
In January 2009, the government opened a new chapter in the history of oil production in Iraq when it announced its intention to allow a roster of several dozen international oil firms to bid on development contracts for eight existing oil fields.
The proposed contracts did not, in fact, offer them the kind of control over development and production that the Cheney task force had envisioned back in 2001. Instead, they would be hired to finance, plan, and implement a vast expansion of the country’s production capacity. After repaying their initial investment, the government would reward them at a rate of no more than two dollars for every additional barrel of oil extracted from the fields they worked on. With oil prices expected to remain above $70 a barrel, this meant, once initial costs were repaid, the Iraqi government could expect to take in more than $60 per barrel, which promised a resolution to the country’s ongoing financial crisis.
The major international oil companies initially rejected these terms out of hand, demanding instead complete control over production and payments of approximately $25 per barrel. This initial resistance began to erode, however, when the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), a government-owned operation, induced its partner, BP, the huge British oil company, to accept government terms for expanding the Rumaila field near Basra in southern Iraq to one million barrels a day.
The Chinese company, experts believed, could afford to accept such meager returns because of Beijing’s desire to establish a long-term energy relationship with Iraq. This foot-in-the-door contract, China’s leaders evidently hoped, would lead to yet more contracts to explore Iraq’s vast, undeveloped (and possibly as yet undiscovered) oil reserves.
Perhaps threatened by the possibility that Chinese companies might accumulate the bulk of the contracts for Iraq’s richest oil fields, leaving other international firms in the dust, by December a veritable stampede had begun to bid for contracts. In the end, the major winners were state-owned firms from Russia, Japan, Norway, Turkey, South Korea, Angola, and — of course — China. The Malaysian national company, Petronas, set a record by participating with six different partners in four of the seven new contracts the Maliki government gave out. Shell and Exxon were the only major oil companies to participate in winning bids; the others were outbid by consortia led by state-owned firms. These results suggest that national oil companies, unlike their profit-maximizing private competitors, were more willing to forego immediate windfalls in exchange for long-term access to Iraqi oil.
On paper, these contracts hold the potential to satisfy one aspect of Washington’s oil hunger, while frustrating another. If fully implemented, they could collectively boost Iraqi production from 2.5 million to 8 million barrels per day in just a few years. They would not, however, deliver control over production (or the bulk of the revenues) to foreign companies, so that Iraq and OPEC could continue, if they wished, to limit production, keep prices high, and wield power on the world stage.
Nevertheless, the centers of resistance to the original U.S. oil policies have voiced opposition to these new contracts. Members of parliament immediately demanded that all contracts be submitted for their approval, which they declared would be withheld unless ironclad protections of Iraqi workers, technicians, and management were included. Iraq’s own state-owned oil companies demanded guarantees that their technicians, engineers, and administrators be trained in the new technologies the foreign companies brought with them, and given escalating operational control over the fields as their skills developed.
The powerful Iraqi oil union opposed the contracts unless they included guarantees that all workers be recruited from Iraq. Local tribal leaders voiced opposition unless they guaranteed a full complement of local workers, and subcontracts for locally based businesses during the development phase. Then there were the insurgents, who continued to oppose oil exports until the U.S. fully withdraws from the country, and expressed their opposition by the 26 bombing attacks they’ve launched on pipelines and oil facilities since September 2009.
Some of these same groups have successfully blocked previous oil initiatives. Unless they are satisfied, they may frustrate the government’s latest bid to make oil gush in Iraq. One warning sign can be seen in the fate of a contract signed with the CNPC in early 2009 that called for the development of the relatively small (one billion barrel) Ahdab oil field near the Iranian border. The language of the original contract met conditions demanded by local leaders and workers, but the work, once begun, generated few local jobs and even fewer local business opportunities. The Chinese instead brought in foreign workers, following the pattern established by U.S. companies involved in Iraqi reconstruction. Eventually, equipment was sabotaged, work undermined, and the project’s viability remains threatened.
The end is not in sight and the outcome still unclear. Will the vast Iraqi oil reserves be developed and sent into the hungry world market any time soon? If they are, who will determine the rate of flow, and so wield the power this decision-making confers? And once this ocean of oil is sold, who will receive the potentially incredible revenues? As with so much else, when it comes to Iraqi oil, the American war has generated so many problems and catastrophes — and so few answers.
A professor of sociology at Stony Brook State University, Michael Schwartz is the author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (Haymarket Press), which explains how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the U.S. to dismantle the Iraqi state and economy while fueling a sectarian civil war. Schwartz’s work on Iraq has appeared in numerous academic and popular outlets. He is a regular at TomDispatch.com. His email address is ms42@optonline.net.
The personal information of approximately 53 West Virginia University students was available on-line on January 15. The breach occurred during a routine update to 1098-T tax forms, which can be used to claim tax credits for tuition paid.
These tax forms contain names and SSNs. They were viewable to anyone for less than 1.5 hours. The entire was shut down, and will remain so, until a fix can be found.
By Rev. Richard Skaff
Global Research, January 31, 2010
Webster’s dictionary defines terrorism as the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. [1].
However, the United States code defined terrorism as “(An) act of terrorism means an activity that (A) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life that is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any state, and (B) appears to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population: (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.” [2].
This is an official congressional definition of terrorism that applies only to other nations. However, the psychological end results of terror, is always fear that eventually leads to resignation and submission. Fear and terrorism are interconnected, therefore, we should discuss their connection in order to understand their impact on our behavior, and their use to control people. Fear has been the glue that has kept people attached to their dictators and to their gods. It is worth our time to take a brief look at this phenomenon that rules our existence.
Fear is the key to obedience
Man’s self-awareness is the progenitor of his alienation, fear, egocentrism, and anxiety; therefore, the unexamined life is worth living for the human herds, because it gives them a sense of false security and pseudo-belonging. Fear is the ulcer of the masses that cripples their psyche and vanquishes their freedom. [3].
Biblically speaking, fear was always used by the clergies to ensure that people would obey the rules that were allegedly bestowed by God upon humanity to avoid burning in hell. These rules were actually written by men to control the masses and to perpetuate the power of the religious leaders. As a result, telling the truth and challenging the establishment will only lead to ridicule, crucifixion, and death.
Unfortunately, fear is the driving force and the main psychological component of terror. Fear incapacitates people and renders them impotent. Fear is conducive to regressive behaviors by responsible adults, where people become dependent on an illusory parent figure like the government or a corporation per example, in order to protect them from the evildoers. So they become willing to relinquish their most intimate and sacred rights in order to feel safe. [3].
How governments perpetuate fear through the use of the media
Americans have been living in fear since 9-11. However, the reality behind our fears has been set out by our own corporate media who has been the main culprit in spreading it like a disease. Our media has terrorized our hearts and minds for years through their subliminal violent programming, and sensational coverage of their own version of the distorted truth.
Sensationalism and misinformation are the essence of the modern media! Angry talk shows are the dish of the day, where the host abuses, yells, belittles, terrorizes his guests to ensure that their opinions are not heard, and only the host’s scripted ideas emerge as the winners, so his or her master’s agenda is served.
The media has been spreading terror for years in the hearts of the American public, in order to force them to watch their trivial programming. Just as in Orwell’s Oceania , the airwaves are bombarded with 24 hours news channels that would resort to any twisted strategy to keep their distorted coverage going. “If it bleeds it leads. The airwaves are also inundated with shows and stories that promote fear, exaggeration of situations, twisting of the truth, psychological propaganda, bloody and gory stories, and buzz words (i.e. flesh eating bacteria, shark attacks on our shores, weapons of mass destruction, SARS, West Nile virus, carjacking, hijacking, war of the sexes, violence, epidemics, pandemics, child abductions, gay marriages, bird flu, H1N1, and so forth and so on). All designed to frighten, brainwash, manipulate, create conflict, confuse, liberalize, and mesmerize their audiences into watching their programs where anything is acceptable. “Instill fear in them and they shall watch and follow”. This is a policy of terror not of democracy. [3].
The terror card
Just as in the case of the Nazi Germany and the Israeli State, terror has been the ace in the hole for the US government. They have even adopted Israel’s model of safety. They totally ignore that the US is not under occupation as the Palestinian people are in Palestine , and that the alleged terrorism in the Holy Land is simply a reaction against unholy brutal occupation.
The US Homeland Security (the Orwellian ministry of lies) would like to use the Israeli anti-terror system, which is usually financed by American tax payers (US government gives Israel $7 to $8 billion dollars a year in money for being our friend besides the free military equipments, nuclear technology, and contracts).
As our proxy in the Near-East, an Israeli company has developed a system that matches high technology up with and behavioral psychology. It’s called WeCU, short for “We See You” (the same way Big Brother sees you). It projects images on a wall and monitors reactions of people. “If you strolled through an airport and saw a picture of your mother, you couldn’t help but respond.”
Or if you were a terrorist, the logic goes, you’d respond to a terror group logo or other familiar imagery. The reaction to these images could be a darting of the eyes, an increased heartbeat, a nervous twitch or faster breathing, said company CEO Ehud Givon. If the system observes suspicious behavior, a person is detained and interrogated. “One by one, you can screen out from the flow of people those with specific malicious intent,” Givon said. U.S. officials are considering the Israeli model for airport security. Israel practices ethnic profiling at Ben-Gurion Airport . Jewish Israelis typically pass through smoothly, while others like their Palestinian cousins may be taken aside for closer interrogation or even strip searches.” In other words, if you are an Arab or a Palestinian, you will be strip searched and be subjected to body cavity searches. [4].
Of course the intimidation process that triggers anxiety, fear, and false positives doesn’t count, because the system is not designed to work but to harass and intimidate the identified victims just as the Stasi did in East Germany, or the Soviets in the Soviet Union. The Israelis’ self-hatred for being Jews combined with their desperation to be identified as Europeans (especially German) has continuously obfuscated their judgment and forced them to project their self-hatred against their Arab cousins and re-enact their persecution on their Palestinian brothers whom they occupy and slaughter on a daily basis, even though the Christian Europeans have persecuted, burned and murdered millions of Jews throughout history.
Purpose of terrorism
According to Herman and O’Sullivan, terrorism has served other purposes in the West beyond mobilizing of populations in support of counterinsurgency operations in the provinces. It created a generalized fearfulness and irrationality that give leaders greater freedom of action. Per example, the Reagan administration needed a terrorism threat tied to a foreign enemy to justify its enormous arms buildup of the early 1980s and to distract attention from its regressive economic and social and social policies. [5]. Thorstein Veblen (American economist and social critic) pointed out in 1904 that militarization to combat a foreign enemy is the natural and best hope of the American elite as “a corrective for ‘social unrest’ and similar disorders of civilized life” and as the route to “popular submission and squalor.” [6]. Therefore, opponents of militarization and harsh measures against dissident minorities are paralyzed by terrorism propaganda, and it is very difficult to do something that demagogues can interpret as “helping terrorists.”
Ironically, the alleged underwear/Christmas Nigerian bomber who was listed in our intelligence data base as a terrorist and who had no coat during his trip to the United States (despite freezing temperatures) or luggage, had a one way ticket, and was aided by a professional mystery man who helped him get on the plane, was easily granted a visa by the US embassy to the United States.
Are our embassy employees so inept that they keep making the same errors over and over again?
Or incompetence is always a better strategy than complicity and treason?
This Christmas day incident created a major distraction during the holidays, revived the existence of the mythical Al Qaeda, and was used as a state propaganda tool to drum up fear in the public.
Sure enough few days later, a fabricated audio tape of the late Osama Bin Laden conveniently surfaced to corroborate the link of the Nigerian bomber to Al Qaeda.
This event has set the stage for the next level of terror propaganda that will pave the way for additional loss of liberty and multi-million dollar contracts for the Terrorism Industrial Complex that will be providing the airports of the world with body scanning machines to protect the herds from terrorism. Let’s remember that using intermittent fear mongering through contrived incidents is a great marketing strategy to sell expensive security gadgets and to erode freedom. No wonder that most Americans favor ethnic profiling and body scanning in airports, according to a recent poll conducted by a government mouth piece/newspaper “USA Today.” [7]. As I mentioned in a previous article that people will always give up their liberty for their safety, and that Mr. Obama has quickly learned that the permanent war on terror card is the inherent ingredient to maintain his power, and to guarantee himself a second term.
Consequently, the TIC public-private partnership will continue to promote more technology for safety. Per example, Iris scanning technology in airports provided by L1-ID solutions a company that George Tenet former head of the CIA benefited greatly as a major shareholder and a previous director of Viisage that was acquired by L-1 ID solutions will eventually be implemented. [8]. Or next time you decide to fly, Homeland security and their subdivision the TSA (the thought and behavior police) might slap on you a shocking bracelet that would serve as your boarding pass, and would track your lost luggage, set off an alarm in area that you are not allowed to be in, awaken you with an electric jolt if you fall asleep and helps you not to miss your flight. Subsequently, a stewardess can shock you and/or immobilize you if you get out of line. Of course this bracelet is designed to ensure your safety and the safety of your luggage from being lost. A top government official expressed interest in these safety bracelets in 2006. However, as of today it remains unclear if this is the trend of future air travel. [9,10].
Racism as a tool to promote terrorism and suspend natural rights
Give up your freedom or die! That is the logo that most Americans believe in at this point of time as told by their government. What is a loss of a few sacred rights when we can keep you safe and alive, our government asks? In addition, our government implies that they are not discriminating against you, but they are only targeting a specific ethnic and/or racial group who doesn’t look like you and who wants to kill you. It’s our holy (Jihad) war against the evil dark skinned man versus the good and pure white Christian man (even though purity is a myth and humanity is a pool of mutt who has shagged each other for thousands of centuries). The government will also tell us that they will use the terrorists’ violent tactics to eradicate as taught by our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the dogma of our alleged born again U.S. Christian government.
Historically, every dominant race and culture has appointed itself as the supreme one and the rest had to follow. In contrast to the bible, the meek shall not inherit the earth, but shall perish like an insignificant cockroach. Racism like hate and destructiveness is part of the human character. It is definitely a great political tool to create division among the masses in order to dominate them; in addition, down-grading people justifies their eradication. The establishment has the ability to define a race and to alter that same definition based on the political climate of the day. The illusion of belonging to a superior group helps compensates for the person who feels like a flee, and in lieu the group membership leads him to feel like a giant by appealing to his or her narcissistic biases. Group narcissism is a key factor in racism. It is fueled and perpetuated by politicians. Racism and fear go hand in hand. Fear is a natural response for self-preservation. By connecting fear to racism and artificially inducing it in people, weakens the masses and divides them, fabricates consent, and makes racism a mechanism of pseudo self-preservation. [3].
A brief view of The Terrorism Industrial Complex (TIC)?
According to Herman and O’Sullivan, the terrorism industrial complex consists of security agencies closely connected to the government. Many of their employees are previous government employees from the intelligence community and the military.
The private sector terrorism experts in the west who reaches the mass media are generally affiliated with the terrorism industry institutes and think tanks. A large fraction of these experts also has revolving-door relationships with governments and government intelligence agencies, and many are connected with private security firms.
They therefore reflect official views and a state agenda, and they rarely depart from the assumptions of the western model of terrorism. Some of the experts have a material interest in “threat inflation.” [5]. The security industry serves business and government; it therefore approaches “terrorism” from the standpoint of its employers and principals. Some segments, especially those providing security services and recruiting and training mercenaries, are often arms of the government that carry out covert actions for which the government does not want to admit responsibility.
Leaders of the security business organize and participate regularly in conferences, hearings, and seminars on terrorism, and are experts consulted by the media to explain and show how to cope with the terrorist threat. Because of their structural position and role, members of the security industry look at terrorism strictly within the frame of the Western model. And they have a material interest in inflating the threat of terrorism in order to elevate, their own importance as supplier of counterterrorism services. Since the West engages in and supports a primary terrorism under the guise of responding to the violence of others, the security industry naturally gravitates to the support of and participation in real terrorism, as exemplified by advising the Guatemalan and Honduran military on apprehending and interrogating so-called terrorists and aiding the Nicaraguan contras. In the West this is all known as counterterrorism. [5].
The industry naturally excludes the terrorism of the West and its clients from the terrorism agenda, and in fact, makes primary terrorist like the governments of South Africa and El Salvador victims of terrorism engaging in counterterrorism. The press follows closely in the terrorism industry’s wake. Thus Abu Nidal, loosely affiliated with Libya and Syria , merits great attention as a terrorist; the leaders of RENAMO, whose killings of unarmed civilians exceed those of Abu Nidal by a factor of many hundred but who are surrogates of a Western client and ally, South Africa , are rarely placed on official and expert lists of terrorists and are given slight attention and inspire little indignation in the mass media. Even after the State Department itself issues a report documenting RENAMO killings on a staggering scale, mass media attention was fleeting and their indignation was restrained (in contrast with their reaction to the killing fields of distant Cambodia ). Even traditional terrorists like Orlando Boschand Luis Posada Carriles, who blow up civilian airliners and engage in multiple assassinations, do not attract substantial media attention. As long as they only attack the citizens, facilities, and friends of enemy states, the terrorism industry and media display little interest in their activities. This pattern is pervasive, and the choices have nothing to do with the substance of terrorism –in fact, they commonly involve emphasis on a lesser terrorism and simultaneous aversion of the eyes from wholesale terror. The choices are simply tailored to the political and propaganda needs of the West. If it is true that a substantial part for anti-Western terrorism is a response to western terrorism, then the solution to the terrorism problem for the West is clear: Stop doing it! The U.S. media rely almost exclusively on the government and private sector of the terrorism industry for their identification of terrorists, model of terrorism, facts, and proposed solutions. [5].
Manufacturing terrorism
There are several forms of manufactured terrorism. One is the inflation of the menace on the basis of modest and not very threatening but conceivable real actions (as with the weather underground and the West German Kurds). Another is the false transfer of the responsibility for a terrorist act to a convenient villain, as in the case of Agca’s shooting of the pope. The spate of terrorist bombings in western Europe during the early and mid-1980s had the earmarks of being, at least in part, manufactured terrorism. The bombings were all too convenient for Western propaganda needs; many of them, especially those directed against NATO installations , were symbolic and ineffectual. [5]. The examples of manufactured terrorism are innumerable, and will continue to go on and on to advance Western governments political agendas. Terrorism is also manufactured in the private sector to incriminate union leaders, activists, and political enemies, sometimes in collusion with agents of the state. In addition, the West has produced an industry of institutes and experts who formulate and channel analysis and information in accordance with Western demands. These institutes as part of Terrorism Industrial Complex are designed to give authoritative status to experts who will confirm and reinforce state propaganda, to occupy the informational space that might otherwise be used by dissident voices, and thus to ensure closure of fact and opinion. The government and corporate wealthy nourish the institutes and think tanks that service and sponsor suitable intellectuals and journalists who will convey the proper messages. The function of experts is merely to clarify and elaborate on pre-established truths, which reflects an effective propaganda system. [5].
Terrorism as a tool for power and for grand theft of public money
As we have seen, there are several factors that influence terrorism and they’re all connected and manipulated to serve political purposes, in order for the elite to increase their wealth, power, and global domination. The key ingredient to take away people’s money, long standing systemic privileges, and their natural rights such as freedom is for governments to snatch it in increments through what social psychologists call the inoculation effect. Per example, you don’t take away people’s social security privileges overnight, instead you will surreptitiously do it in small doses by regularly and gradually reducing these benefits to nothing, while the herds become totally desensitized to the idea of losing it. Like religious leaders, our public-private partnership (PPP) democratic governments have consistently and regularly robbed the proles of their money. Through taxation and inflation (indirect tax) induced and justified by deliberate and profligate spending to finance their alleged political agendas, they have transferred the wealth of nations to themselves and to their other half in the global private industry. Meanwhile, contrived terror will continue to be a great tool of control and wealth for the elites who have rendered their mercenaries and bandits into famous terrorists and global stars.
Notes
1. Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary
2. The United States Congressional and Administrative News, 98th congress, Second session, 1984, Oct 19, volume 2; par 3077, 98 STAT, 2707 (West publishing Co. 1984).
3. R. Skaff, (2007). The Human Manifesto. PA, Maryland.
4. Michael Tarm, (January 8, 2010). Associated Press. Mind-reading systems could change air security.
5. E. Herman, G. O’Sullivan (1984). The “Terrorism” Industry: The experts and institutions that shape our view of terror. Random House Publishing, New York .
6. Throstein Veblen, The theory of Business Enterprise ( New York : Scribner, 1904), pp. 393-94.
7. Thomas Frank , USA Today (01-11-2010). Most OK with TSA full-body scanners
8. Shorrock, T. (05-07, 2007). George Tenet cashes in on Iraq. Salon.com
9. Youtube, 2010. DHS Showed Interest in Shock Bracelet for Airline Passengers
10. Worldnet daily (July 8, 2008) Latest buzz: Shock bracelets for all airline passengers ‘Just when you thought you’ve heard it all’
Food Fight in Portland, one of the most awesome places in all of creation, sells a cleverly confrontational “What Kind Of Asshole Eats A Lamb?” shirt. So we ran with that and assembled a whole line of images to put on stickers, shirts, etc.
And of course…
Thanks Food Fight and Kurt Halsey.
Louis Vuitton sells a ton of animal skins, like most other “fashion” designer companies. Plant-based textiles had been invented before recorded history. Since we are no longer neanderthals or cro-magnons, abstaining from using animal products as clothing is simply utilizing pre-historic technology to join the rest of homo-sapiens here in the modern world. Leather is Violence.
For some reason, the indigenous cultures of where-ever have always been called savages throughout history to justify exploitation, enslavement, torture, genocide, etc. Rarely is the mirror turned back on the “civilized”.
And, as we all know, The World Is Vegan – If You Want It.
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
In 2007, under direct U.S. pressure, virtually the same law was reluctantly endorsed by Prime Minister Maliki and forwarded to the Iraqi parliament for legislative consideration. Instead of passing it, the parliament established itself as a new center of resistance to the U.S. plan, raising myriad familiar complaints and repeatedly refusing to bring it to a vote. It lies dormant to this day.
And, as we all know, The World Is Vegan – If You Want It.
