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Naom Chomsky examines the, "Plutonomy And The Precariat."
Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."
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![]() ![]() ![]() Big Brother Comes To Chicago By Ernest Stewart I hope the day comes soon Won't you please come to Chicago Show your face Chicago ~~~ Crosby, Still, Nash & Young "You don't know the power of the dark side." ~~~ Darth Vader "My bill is pro-consumer." ~~~ Utah State Senator Steve Eliason Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got til it's gone? Big Yellow Taxi ~~~ Joni Mitchell Ergo, if you work downtown or anywhere near it, you may find it impossible, and very dangerous to do what you need to do. The danger comes not from people protesting these monsters, but from the security forces, viz., Gestapo which will be there in overwhelming numbers to see that the fat cats aren't bothered by the peons in any way. Some of the new rules that will be enforced are the same radiation or rape choices as they have at airports, now needed to get on a subway train! Staring in Indiana; can you imagine the lines, and the trains maybe running hours late, due to protests and arrests of folks just trying to get to work? And you will have to take the trains unless you're driving, because most of the buses heading downtown have been cancelled. Oh, and many of those south side rail lines will be closed down for the period. Trying to drive will be hampered by the closing of major routes throughout the city, which will no doubt cause major delays in getting anywhere. Thinking of flying anywhere near the city, including out over Lake Michigan? Forget about it, as you'll have to fly above 18,000 feet which most small planes can't do, and away from the shootdown zone over the city, where if you wander, you and your family may get splashed by an F-18 who will be flying overhead to shoot down anything that violates that airspace and ze orders!
You can thank your Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Barry for all this -- it was their bright idea to schedule this outrage in the city, instead of someplace far from the madding crowds -- like Camp David: where the G-8 will meet in secret to divide up the world! NATO should be meeting in Brussels at its headquarters instead in the center of a major city; good luck, Chicagoans, you're going to need it! If you thought the 1968 Demoncratic convention was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet!
![]() 12-17-1928 ~ 05-06-2012 Thanks for the laughs!
![]() 06-10-1928 ~ 05-08-2012 Thanks for the read!
![]() 01-17-1928 ~ 05-09-2012 Plastic people, oh baby, now, you're such a drag!
![]() 12-09-1915 ~ 05-10-2012 Thanks for the film! ***** We get by with a little help from our friends! So please help us if you can...? Donations ***** So how do you like Bush Lite so far? And more importantly, what are you planning on doing about it? Until the next time, Peace! (c) 2012 Ernest Stewart a.k.a. Uncle Ernie is an unabashed radical, author, stand-up comic, DJ, actor, political pundit and for the last 11 years managing editor and publisher of Issues & Alibis magazine. Visit me on Face Book. Follow me on Twitter. |
![]() Plutonomy And The Precariat On the History of the US Economy in Decline By Noam Chomsky The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There's never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead -- because victory won't come quickly -- it could prove a significant moment in American history. The fact that the Occupy movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it's an unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways. That's another story, but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development, and hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times. I'm just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s -- although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today -- nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that "we're gonna get out of it," even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that "it will get better." There was militant labor union organizing going on, especially from the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are frightening to the business world -- you could see it in the business press at the time -- because a sit-down strike is just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. The idea of worker takeovers is something which is, incidentally, very much on the agenda today, and we should keep it in mind. Also New Deal legislation was beginning to come in as a result of popular pressure. Despite the hard times, there was a sense that, somehow, "we're gonna get out of it." It's quite different now. For many people in the United States, there's a pervasive sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair. I think it's quite new in American history. And it has an objective basis. On the Working Class In the 1930s, unemployed working people could anticipate that their jobs would come back. If you're a worker in manufacturing today -- the current level of unemployment there is approximately like the Depression -- and current tendencies persist, those jobs aren't going to come back. The change took place in the 1970s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying factors, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Brenner, was the falling rate of profit in manufacturing. There were other factors. It led to major changes in the economy -- a reversal of several hundred years of progress towards industrialization and development that turned into a process of de-industrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued overseas very profitably, but it's no good for the work force. Along with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise -- producing things people need or could use -- to financial manipulation. The financialization of the economy really took off at that time. On Banks Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college. That changed dramatically in the 1970s. Until then, there had been no financial crises since the Great Depression. The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history. And it was egalitarian. The lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quintile. Lots of people moved into reasonable lifestyles -- what's called the "middle class" here, the "working class" in other countries -- but it was real. And the 1960s accelerated it. The activism of those years, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent. When the 1970s came along, there were sudden and sharp changes: de-industrialization, the off-shoring of production, and the shift to financial institutions, which grew enormously. I should say that, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was also the development of what several decades later became the high-tech economy: computers, the Internet, the IT Revolution developed substantially in the state sector. The developments that took place during the 1970s set off a vicious cycle. It led to the concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. This doesn't benefit the economy -- it probably harms it and society -- but it did lead to a tremendous concentration of wealth. On Politics and Money Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The legislation, essentially bipartisan, drives new fiscal policies and tax changes, as well as the rules of corporate governance and deregulation. Alongside this began a sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drove the political parties even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector. The parties dissolved in many ways. It used to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee chair, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector (increasingly the financial sector). This cycle resulted in a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the top tenth of one percent of the population. Meanwhile, it opened a period of stagnation or even decline for the majority of the population. People got by, but by artificial means such as longer working hours, high rates of borrowing and debt, and reliance on asset inflation like the recent housing bubble. Pretty soon those working hours were much higher in the United States than in other industrial countries like Japan and various places in Europe. So there was a period of stagnation and decline for the majority alongside a period of sharp concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve. There has always been a gap between public policy and public will, but it just grew astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact. Take a look at the big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on: the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not regarded as much of an issue. And it isn't really much of an issue. The issue is joblessness. There's a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls. The public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply in this period of stagnation and decline, and the preservation of limited social benefits. The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger pointed at the heart of the country. Plutonomy and the Precariat For the general population, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movement, it's been pretty harsh -- and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less -- the .1% -- it's just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they're concerned, sure, why not? Take, for example, Citigroup. For decades, Citigroup has been one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations, repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer, starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won't run through the corruption, but it's pretty astonishing. In 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure for investors called "Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances." It urged investors to put money into a "plutonomy index." The brochure says, "The World is dividing into two blocs -- the Plutonomy and the rest." Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that's where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don't really care about them. We don't really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function. These days they're sometimes called the "precariat" -- people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it's not the periphery anymore. It's becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing. So, for example, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, at the time when he was still "Saint Alan" -- hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this was before the crash for which he was substantially responsible) -- was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years, and he explained the wonders of the great economy that he was supervising. He said a lot of its success was based substantially on what he called "growing worker insecurity." If working people are insecure, if they're part of the precariat, living precarious existences, they're not going to make demands, they're not going to try to get better wages, they won't get improved benefits. We can kick 'em out, if we don't need 'em. And that's what's called a "healthy" economy, technically speaking. And he was highly praised for this, greatly admired. So the world is now indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat -- in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1% and the 99%. Not literal numbers, but the right picture. Now, the plutonomy is where the action is and it could continue like this. If it does, the historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That's where we're heading. And the Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it's going to be necessary to face the fact that it's a long, hard struggle. You don't win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done. Toward Worker Takeover I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that's just a step before the takeover of an industry. Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn't win. But with enough popular support, they could have won. It's a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail. It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there's a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that's the basis for a real revolution. That's how it takes place. In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn't profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don't think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded. And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path. The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that's a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there's a lot that we need. We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it's very serious. It not only affects people's lives, but the economy. In that regard, here's a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours. I don't know if you've ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it's operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It's a scandal. It could be done here as it's been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy. Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can't happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue. Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons I've kept to domestic issues, but there are two dangerous developments in the international arena, which are a kind of shadow that hangs over everything we've discussed. There are, for the first time in human history, real threats to the decent survival of the species. One has been hanging around since 1945. It's kind of a miracle that we've escaped it. That's the threat of nuclear war and nuclear weapons. Though it isn't being much discussed, that threat is, in fact, being escalated by the policies of this administration and its allies. And something has to be done about that or we're in real trouble. The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps towards trying to do something about it. The United States is also taking steps, mainly to accelerate the threat. It is the only major country that is not only not doing something constructive to protect the environment, it's not even climbing on the train. In some ways, it's pulling it backwards. And this is connected to a huge propaganda system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. "Why pay attention to these scientists?" We're really regressing back to the dark ages. It's not a joke. And if that's happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn't going to be averted -- and in a generation or two, everything else we're talking about won't matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.
It's not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures. It's inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.
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![]() A Putsch Against War By Uri Avnery GENERALS AND secret police chiefs get together for an attack on the politicians. In some countries, they arrest the president, occupy government offices and TV stations and annul the constitution. They then publish Communique No. 1, explaining the dire need to save the nation from perdition and promising democracy, elections etc. In other countries, they do it more quietly. They just inform the elected leaders that, if they don't desist from their disastrous policies, the officers will make their views public and precipitate their downfall. Such officers are generally called a "junta," the Spanish word for "committee" used by South American generals. Their method is usually called a "putsch", a German-Swiss term for a sudden blow. (Yes, the Swiss actually had revolts some 170 years ago.) What almost all such coups have in common is that their instigators thrive on the demagoguery of war. The politicians are invariably accused of cowardice in face of the enemy, failure to defend national honor, and such. Not in Israel. In our country we are now seeing a kind of verbal uprising against the elected politicians by a group of current and former army generals, foreign intelligence and internal security chiefs. All of them condemn the government's threat to start a war against Iran, and some of them condemn the government's failure to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace. Only in Israel. IT STARTED with the most unlikely candidate to lead such a rebellion: the ex-Mossad chief, Meir Dagan. For eight years, longer than most of his predecessors, Dagan led the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, comparable to the British MI6. ("Mossad" means "institute". The official name is "The Institute for intelligence and Special Operations".) Nobody ever accused Dagan of pacifism. During his term, the Mossad carried out many assassinations, several against Iranian scientists, as well as cyber-attacks. A protege of Ariel Sharon, he was considered a champion of the most aggressive policies. And here, after leaving office, he speaks out in the harshest terms against the government's plans for an attack on Iran's nuclear installations. Not mincing words, he said: "This is the stupidest idea I have heard in my life." This week he was overshadowed by the recently relieved chief of the Shin Bet. (Shin Bet and Shabak are different ways of pronouncing the initials of the official Hebrew name "General Security Service.") It is equivalent to the British MI5, but deals mostly with the Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. For six years, Yuval Diskin was the silent chief of the silent service. His shaved head could be seen entering and leaving meetings of secret committees. He is considered the real father of "targeted eliminations", and his service has been widely accused of extensive use of torture. Nobody ever accused him of being soft on Arabs. And now he has spoken out. Choosing a most unusual venue - a get together of some two dozen pensioners in a small-town cafe - he let fly. According to Diskin - and who would know better? - Israel is now led by two incompetent politicians with messianic delusions and a poor grasp of reality. Their plan to attack Iran is leading to a world-wide catastrophe. Not only will it fail to prevent the production of an Iranian atom bomb, but, on the contrary, it will hasten this effort, this time with the support of the world community. Going further than Dagan, he stated that the only factor preventing peace negotiations with the Palestinians is Netanyahu himself. Israel can make peace with Mahmoud Abbas at any time, and missing this historic opportunity will bring disaster upon Israel. As chief of the Shin Bet, Diskin was the No. 1 official government expert on Palestinians. His agency receives and collates all the evidence, spy reports, interrogation results and information gathered from listening devices. Leaving no room for doubt, Diskin said that he knew Netanyahu and Barak from close up, did not trust them and thought they were unfit to lead the nation in a crisis. He also said that they are deliberately deceiving the people. He did not omit to mention that they live in extreme luxury. Anyone who thought that these accusers were lone voices, and that the whole choir of current and past security chiefs would rise and condemn them unanimously, was disappointed. One after another these experts were quoted by the media as agreeing with the two in substance, though not necessarily on their style. Not a single one questioned their assertions or denied what they said. The current Chief of Staff and the Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs let it be known that they share the views of the two on Iran. Almost all their predecessors, including all the recent military Chiefs of Staff, told the media that they agree, too. Suddenly there was a united front of experienced security leaders against a war with Iran. THE COUNTER-ATTACK was not late in coming. The entire battery of politicians and media hacks went into action. They did what Israelis almost always do: when faced with serious problems or serious arguments, they don't get to grips with the matter itself, but select some minor detail and belabor it endlessly. Practically no one tried to disprove the assertions of the officers, neither concerning the proposed attack on Iran nor concerning the Palestinian issue. They focused on the speakers, not on what they said. Both Dagan and Diskin, it was asserted, were embittered because their terms of office were not extended. They felt humiliated. They are venting their personal frustration. They are speaking out of sheer spite. If they did not trust the Prime Minister, why did they not get up and resign while they were in office? Why didn't they speak out before? If this was a matter of life and death, why did they wait? Alternatively, why don't they continue to shut up? Where is their sense of responsibility? Why do they help the enemy? Why don't they speak only behind closed doors? Diskin, it was added, has no idea about Iran. It was not in his area of responsibility at all. Dagan knew about Iran, but had a limited view. Only Netanyahu and Barak knew all the facts and the entire spectrum of opportunities and risks. Sources "close to the Prime Minister's office" also had another explanation: Dagan and Diskin, as well as their predecessors, were just stupid. Taken together with Dagan's and Diskin's assertion that Netanyahu and Barak are not rational (and perhaps not quite mentally balanced) this means that our national security depends entirely on a group of irrational and stupid leaders - and that this has been the case for years. A frightening thought: what if everything they say about each other is true? THE MAN accused by his security advisers of messianic tendencies was exposed to personal scrutiny by another event this week. His father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, died at age 102, having remained of clear mind to the end. At the public funeral, he was eulogized by Binyamin. As could be expected, it was a kitschy speech. The son addressed his dead father in the second person - ("You taught me ..."You formed my character" etc) - a vulgar practice I find particularly distasteful. He also shed tears on camera. There is no doubt that the father had a huge influence on his son. He was a professor of history, whose whole intellectual life was centered on one topic: the Spanish inquisition - a traumatic chapter in Jewish history comparable only to the Holocaust. Ben-Zion Netanyahu was an extreme rightist, obsessed by the idea that Jews might be exterminated at any moment, and therefore cannot trust any Goy. He held Menachem Begin in contempt, considering him a softy, and never joined his party. His intellectual attitude was reinforced by a personal trauma: his eldest son, Yoni, the commander of the spectacular Entebbe raid, was the only soldier killed in this operation. It seems that he didn't have such a high opinion of his second son. He once remarked publicly that Binyamin was unfit to be prime minister, but would make a good foreign minister - an uncannily accurate judgment, if one sees the job of the foreign minister as marketing. The home in which "Bibi" grew up was not a very happy one. The father was a deeply embittered man. As a historian, he was never accepted by the academic world in Jerusalem, who disavowed his theories. (Mainly, that the Inquisition did not persecuted the Marranos - Jews who had accepted Christianity rather than leave Spain - because they practiced Judaism in secret, but out of pure anti-Semitism. This was an attack on one of the most cherished tenets of Jewish mythology: that these Jews had remained true to their faith to the point of sacrificing their lives at the stake.) Not getting a professorship in Jerusalem, the father emigrated to the US, where Binyamin grew up. The father never forgave the Israeli establishment. The myth of the Great Historian laboring at his titanic task was a daily reality at home, in America and, later, back in Jerusalem. The three sons had to walk on tiptoe, not being allowed to make any noise that could disturb the great man, nor to bring their friends home. All this shaped the character and world view of "Bibi" - the specter of imminent national annihilation, the role model of the fiercely rightist father, the shadow of the older and much more admired brother. When Binyamin now speaks endlessly about the coming Second Holocaust and his historical role in preventing it, this need not be just a ploy to divert attention from the Palestinian issue or to safeguard his political survival. He may - frightening thought!!! - actually believe it. The picture that emerges is exactly that painted by Yuval Diskin: a Holocaust-obsessed fantasist, out of contact with reality, distrusting all Goyim, trying to follow in the footsteps of a rigid and extremist father - altogether a dangerous person to lead a nation in a real crisis.
Yet this is the man who, according to all opinion polls, is going to win the upcoming elections, just four months from now.
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![]() Training The Emotional Brain An Interview with Richard J. Davidson By Sam Harris Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, and Founder and Chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has published more than 275 scientific papers, many chapters and reviews, and edited 13 books. He is the author of the new book (with Sharon Begley) The Emotional Life of Your Brain. Richie (as he is known to his friends) has done more to bring the study of mental well-being into the 21st century than anyone I can think of. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work. ***** Can you briefly summarize your work up to this point? The research I summarize in my book The Emotional Life of Your Brain is about emotional styles-differences among people in how they respond to emotional challenges. From quite early on in my career, there were two critical observations that came to form the core of my subsequent life's work. The first observation is that the most salient characteristic of emotion in people is the fact that each person responds differently to life's slings and arrows. Each of us is unique in our emotional make-up and this individuality determines why some people are resilient and others vulnerable, why some have high levels of well-being despite objective adversity while others decompensate rapidly in the response to the slightest setback. The second observation came from the great fortune I had early in my career to be around some remarkable people. They were remarkable not because of their academic or professional achievements, but rather because of their demeanor, really because of their emotional style. These were extremely kind and generous people. They were very attentive, and when I was in their presence I felt as if I was the sole and complete focus of all of their attention. They were people that I found myself wishing to be around more. And I learned that one thing all of these people had in common was a regular practice of meditation. And I asked them if they were like that all of their lives and they assured me they were not, but rather that these qualities had been nurtured and cultivated by their meditative practices. It wasn't until many years later that I encountered neuroplasticity and recognized that the mechanisms of neuroplasticity were an organizing framework for understanding how emotional styles could be transformed. While they were quite stable over time in most adults, they could still be changed through systematic practice of specific mental exercises. In a very real and concrete sense, we could change our brains by transforming our minds. And there was no realm more important for that to occur than emotion. For it is so that our emotional styles play an incredibly important role in determining who will be vulnerable to psychopathology and who will not be. Emotional styles are also critical in our physical health. Mental and physical well-being are inextricably linked. What is the focus of your new book? In the book I describe 6 emotional styles that are rooted in basic neuroscientific research. The 6 styles are: 1. Resilience: How rapidly or slowly do you recover from adversity? 2. Outlook: How long does positive emotion persist following a joyful event? 3. Social Intuition: How accurate are you in detecting the non-verbal social cues of others? 4. Context: Do you regulate your emotion in a context-sensitive fashion? 5. Self-Awareness: How aware are you of your own bodily signals that constitute emotion? 6. Attention: How focused or scattered in your attention? I did not decide one day to figure out how many emotional styles there were or to postulate which styles would make sense for humans to have. Rather, each of these styles has arisen inductively from the large corpus of research my colleagues and I have conducted using rigorous neuroscientific methods over the past 30 years. They are not the obvious styles that correspond to well-known personality types such as introversion and extraversion. But, as I explain in my book, they can explain the constituents of commonly found personality types. The fact that they are grounded in neural systems provides important clues as to how each style affects our emotional behavior and how the styles can also impact downstream bodily systems important for physical health. How much of a person's emotional style is conscious? Many aspects of emotional style are not conscious. They constitute emotional habits that largely proceed in the absence of awareness. For example, most of us are rarely aware of how long negative emotion persists following a stressful event. The self-awareness style underscores the fact that there are many bodily processes that contribute to emotion of which we may be unaware. One important motivation for me in writing this book is to bring into awareness habits of mind that previously were not conscious. By describing the nature of emotional styles and their underlying brain bases, it is my fervent aspiration that it will help others to recognize emotional patterns in themselves and such awareness is the first, and often most important, step in producing change. So if there are aspects of your emotional style that you wish to change, first becoming aware of these components of your mind is a key ingredient to change. In the book, I offer simple questionnaires you can take for each of the 6 emotional styles to give you an idea of where you fall on each of the 6 dimensions. And I also offer simple strategies to change your emotional styles should you wish to do so. These strategies are derived from ancient meditation practices and modern scientific approaches. Together, they constitute what I've called "neurally-inspired behavioral interventions:" Interventions that are derived from some understanding of the brain and utilize simple behavioral or mental strategies that offer the prospect of transforming your mind and thereby changing your brain. In the book I show that we can all take more responsibility for our own brains and intentionally shape our brains in a more positive way. In my experience, the topic of meditation still provokes skepticism among scientists and secularists. Can you describe what you mean by "meditation" and then tell us why you think this practice is relevant to our understanding of the human mind? One definition of the word "meditation' in Sanskrit is "familiarization." And in a key sense the family of mental practices that constitute meditation can be thought of as strategies to familiarize a person with her own mind. Meditation in this sense can help to cleanse the interior lenses of perception so that we can see our own minds with greater clarity. Particularly for those who are students of the mind, this practice can be enormously informative in providing an inner or phenomenological view that is different from that provided by the objective methods of science. In other senses, meditation refers to mental practices that can be used to cultivate attention and emotion regulation. For example, some practices involve focusing attention on breathing and returning the attention to breathing each time a person notices that her mind has wandered. In this way, gradually over time, selective attention can be improved. The term "mindfulness meditation" refers to a form of meditation during which practitioners are instructed to pay attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally. The process of learning to attend nonjudgmentally can gradually transform one's emotional response to stimuli such that we can learn to simply observe our minds in response to stimuli that might provoke either negative or positive emotion without being swept up in these emotions. This does not mean that our emotional intensity diminishes. It simply means that our emotions do not perseverate. If we encounter an unpleasant situation, we might experience a transient increase in negative emotions but they do not persist beyond the situation.
Scientific research has now established that certain forms of meditation have the types of effects described and underscore their relevance for understanding the human mind. Such work establishes that the mind is more "plastic" than we had assumed in scientific research. By plastic we mean that it is capable of transformation. These findings invite the view that many qualities that we regarded as relatively fixed, such as one's levels of happiness and well-being, are best regarded as the product of skills that can be enhanced through training.
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![]() Austerity Can't Be Just For Regular People By Matt Taibbi It didn't take long to crank up the backlash against European voters. This is inevitable whenever a socialist wins a major election, but particularly now, when new French president Francois Hollande rode to victory shouting, "Austerity can no longer be inevitable!" This sounds like the beginning of what will be a very heated debate over who has to pay for the excesses of the financial crisis. It was previously assumed that everybody but the actual financial services sector would have to pay, but voters in Europe now are refusing to go along, sparking a wave of eye-rolling editorials in the financial press. Even David Brooks got into the act today, penning a lugubrious editorial about the errant political instincts of the populist masses here and abroad. Markets all over the world freaked out over the prospect of having ignorant European voters meddling in the recovery process the geniuses of the high finance world had already painstakingly laid out for them. The model for economic progress in the financial bubble era, after all, is supposed to go something like this:
Before it all explodes, carve out gigantic sums for bonuses and compensation for the companies that inflated those bubbles;
After it explodes, get the various governments to bail those companies out;
Pay for it all by slashing services to what's left of the middle class. They're replaying the same script in Europe, sort of. The causes of crises in places like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy vary somewhat and are less simple to define, but a common denominator in all of them is weak growth mixed with giant budget deficits. In most all of these cases, you had enormous sums of money entering these countries in the middle and late 2000s as global financiers in the midst of the bubble boom looked for higher-yield investments around the world - Spanish real estate, Greek debt, etc. The local economies sucked up the bubble money, and in Greece's case they used it to ramp up state benefits, which they could no longer afford once the bubble burst. A lot of these countries turned to Wall Street to finance their way out of budgetary messes using swap deals and other hocus-pocus moves, kicking the can down the road as it were, and those decisions are now blowing up in their faces. Now that it's the next morning, and everyone has a severe hangover from the bubble, the dominant narrative is that these countries brought their troubles on themselves by being reckless spenders with unsustainable welfare states. The solution, naturally, is going to be "austerity," slashing state budgets, reining in those wasteful citizens with their unreasonable demands for returns on taxes. Take today's Brooks column in the Times, for instance, which seems aimed at his colleague Paul Krugman (who has been arguing that cutting public spending and job stimulus in European countries will be disastrous). Brooks claims that the financial crisis was caused by "structural" problems, the first of which is that we've simply grown out of a need to pay low-skilled workers real wages:
According to Brooks, this organic trend toward lower salaries for everyone but the "superstars" managing those hyperefficient companies has forced politicians into the bad decision of borrowing and taxing to extend more welfare/charity to the less fortunate:
But you can only mask structural problems for so long .... The current model, in which we try to compensate for structural economic weakness with tax cuts and an unsustainable welfare state, simply cannot last. This world view ignores the fact that those "superstar" leaders of "hyperefficient" companies have been sucking up a thousand times as much welfare as those low-skilled workers Brooks is talking about. Here's how the "superstars" of the banking world sometimes earn their bonuses: they borrow trillions from the U.S. Federal Reserve at zero or near zero interest, then they turn right around and lend chunks of that free money to a place like Greece (ex-FDIC Sheila Bair, in a hilarious editorial on the subject, pegged the ten-year yield at 21%), then they pocket the proceeds and call it capitalism. Brooks' analysis of the financial crisis leaves out things like the $16 trillion in emergency loans the banks secretly got from the Fed in the years since the crisis. It ignores quantitative easing, bailouts, and the trillions of dollars of bets Wall Street made on the unreal economy during the bubble years that we all ended up paying for, either through taxes or reduced home values or lowered interest on our savings. The point is, when people talk about "austerity," they only ever talk about the pain the general population should voluntarily accept, in the form of reduced services and curtailed "stimulus." No one ever says the financial services sector should have to cut back on its access to easy money, and there hasn't been much in the way of serious plans to restore some sanity and prudence to the lending and investing business. Instead, governments have stood by and allowed banks to lend thirty and forty dollars for every one on the books, they've watched lenders almost completely do away with underwriting standards, they've continually pumped the big firms full of cheap cash from the Fed and the ECB (printing new trillions when the real money runs out), and they've allowed Wall Street to build giant sandcastles of illusory wealth using synthetic derivatives, all with minimal reserve requirements. The result of all of this easy money is an endless succession of speculative bubbles that simply shift from one market to another as financial companies run around the globe in search of high yields. It was Spanish real estate yesterday, and Euro sovereign debt before that, and American home mortgages at other times, and then it was wheat and corn and other food commodities last year (which led to the social unrest in the middle East), and it was oil in 2008, oil in 2011, and oil again this year, and so on. In addition to the direct consequence of huge stunning losses when these bubbles collapse, the insane volatility of all of these markets creates panic in the business community, and puts a brake on real lending to grow real businesses. When you don't know if oil is going to cost $40 a barrel or $140 three months from now, it's pretty hard to invest in a new airline, or a chain of supermarkets (as commodities, many food prices will also rise and fall with oil), or anything at all, really. It's not surprising that no one wants to lend in this environment.
I agree with Brooks, all of this is unsustainable. But if pain's coming, it can't just be regular people who pay. Bankers have to find new ways of making money that don't just involve betting the hot table and taking out instant billion-dollar profits. They have to go back to building real businesses and being content with gradual returns over time. If there's going to be austerity, it has to be for everybody.
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What a ride we got with Newt Gingrich on his Republican presidential campaign trek! It included a sputtering start, his odd disappearance mid-campaign to take a two-week Greek vacation, his opening a $500,000 line of credit at Tiffany's jewelry palace in New York, several stormy staff rebellions, periodic eruptions of ridiculous policy ideas, his cranky insistence on being called a corporate consultant rather than a lobbyist, his preposterous claims to be a transformative visionary, the sudden infusion of millions of dollars from a billionaire Las Vegas casino baron, his repeated humiliations at the polls, and finally - fffffttt - the Newt was gone.
But not without a supernova burst of ego. Like nearly all candidates these days, Newt had prolonged media coverage of his announcement for office by first announcing the formation of an "exploratory committee," that decided (surprise!) he should announce, then he announced. Gingrich even applied this tedious PR ploy to quitting the race, announcing the announcement of his withdrawal before actually withdrawing. His candidacy was kaput, his billionaire casino dealer abandoned him, his campaign was $4 million in debt, his crowds had evaporated, and the only media attention he had received lately was in April when a penguin bit him during a tour of the St. Louis Zoo. Yet, his cosmic-scale ego demanded the gratification of another week as Newt Gingrich: Candidate for President of the USA."
Well, that didn't hurt anyone, did it? Only us taxpayers - his Secret Service entourage cost us $40,000 a day.
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The phrase "brain drain" used to mean, in the 1950s and '60s, the flight of professionally-trained people from dictatorships to find opportunity in the U.S. and other Western countries. Now "brain drain" is used in American media to mean an active U.S. government policy to attract foreign entrepreneurs, scientists, physicians, nurses and other skilled laborers in short supply to the U.S.
Behind this push for a "great sucking sound" are companies like Intel, Google, Microsoft, and Pfizer, with their media cheerleaders like Tom Friedman of the New York Times, and members of Congress like Kansas Republican Congressman Jerry Moran and Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner.
The arguments for a deliberate "magnet brain drain," are porcine. Our companies need these skills. The foreigners have these skills and we want them here where they can flourish, and create profits and jobs. Never mind that our country has plenty of people waiting to have the same opportunity. By reducing tuition barriers, overcoming historic discrimination (e.g. lack of women engineers), reducing the 40 percent dropout rate from colleges, and working with youngsters on a one-on-one basis so that they are not left behind or skewered by misguided multiple-choice standardized test regimens, are all great ways to reach out to Americans.
Also, what about having ready and able specialists here who may have to be paid more than their overseas counterparts? These Silicon Valley corporations are making huge profits, pay few taxes, and receive subsidies known as R & D tax credits.
Now we see the grossest of contradictions. We have an agency for International Development (USAID), economists and politicians saying that developing countries desperately need these same skills or what they call "human capital." They need engineers for their transportation, hydraulic and soil systems, physicists for their universities and modern industries, physicians for their sick and injured, nurses for hospital care, public health specialists for eradicating systemic diseases, and entrepreneurs to jumpstart businesses that deal directly with the necessities of life. Through many columns, the globetrotting Tom Friedman has urged developing countries to retain such native talent to build their economies. Yet he has also written that students from abroad receiving U.S. PhDs in the hard sciences be given immediate permanent U.S. residence en route to citizenship. Well, you can't have it both ways. There is not a large surplus of such talent that we can drain them from developing countries building their own societies. The U.S. is a major importer of physicians and nurses from places in South Asia, the Middle East and other regions. These are skills far more desperately needed outside the U.S. than here, especially when you consider the undeveloped pool of talent that lies ignored in our country. Is it so much easier to have foreign workers educated in countries like Pakistan, being battered by our overflowing war in Afghanistan, than to rescue Americans from their battered high school and put them on a track toward excellence?
What if the American-made magnet brain drain took the young Mohammed Yunis away from Bangladesh to Wall Street? Would there have been the micro-credit movement there that is currently spreading around the world? What if the magnet to America brought the young Brazilian, Paulo Freire to Harvard? Would he have created and applied his now world-famous literary program in Brazil? Or if the brain drain brought the young Hassan Fathy to our shores, would Egypt's "people's architect" ever been able to show poor Egyptian peasants how to build small elegant homes from the soil under their feet?
Note that the people populating the IMF, the World Bank, USAID, or any of our fabled universities were not able to think up or accomplish these and many other achievements of developing country innovators.
Silicon Valley companies are lobbying Congress to expand the H-1B visas, beyond the 65,000 new visas each year they already receive for various computer-related work. The Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib, in a recent booster column, bewailed that if there are not more visas granted, these young people who "come here to learn math, science and engineering... would return home and start new high tech companies there." Really! Why would that be so bad?
Already a high percentage of PhDs in the sciences in U.S. universities are granted to foreign students. Guarantee these students a job and more will deplete the ranks back in their developing country. Even fewer U.S. students - say women and deprived minorities - will be given the attention and care they need to fill U.S. job openings.
We live in a society that is known for a deficit of empathy and visualization about societies in other countries that are far below our standard of living. When, for example, medical and other science students from Africa are bid for by higher paying institutions in the U.S., is it any wonder that there are virtually no indigenous scientific laboratories in sub-Saharan Africa pioneering against infectious diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis? The same point can be made in other poor nations whose brains we've drained because for decades we neglect our own tens of millions of "poor and huddled masses."
It is the edge of absurdity for the U.S. to urge and modestly assist these societies to build their educational systems and their knowledge industries - for their own future - and then aggressively pull the cream of their crop into our own orchard, while so many of our Americans are neglected.
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Bad enough that the drugs humans are taking are being passed through our excrements and making their way into our drinking water.
Now, in addition to the antibiotics, the blood pressure medications, birth control pills, the tranquilizers, hormones, heart medicines and sexual stimulants passing through this nation of pill poppers, authorities say they also are finding antibiotic drugs used for enhancing animal growth, preventing disease and increasing feed efficiency in farm animals.
A study designed to identify antibiotics in rivers, lakes and aquifers that come from both human and animal users, has also detected drugs specifically used in farm animals.
The study looked for traces of the antibiotic Monensin, used to enhance growth in cattle, in waterways located near animal feeding operations. The results were shocking. In some cases the concentration of the drug was from 20 to 1,000 times greater in stream sediment than in the water.
Ken Carlson, the principal investigator in the study, said the discovery raises three primary concerns. He said there is a potential toxic danger to fish, plants and other aquatic organisms. There also is a concern that the drugs will affect humans who consume them in drinking water, since existing water treatment plants are not equipped to eliminate them.
The final and most disconcerting worry is that the types of animal and human antibiotics getting in the water are contributing to the emergence of new strains of drug-resistant disease bacteria.
The two-year study, a collaborative work by the Federal Drug Administration and Colorado State College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, is not only looking for drugs in waterways, the group is attempting to find ways to control them.
For example, the Colorado State group is working with area cattlemen in an effort to identify the best management practices to minimize the release of these drugs into the environment, said cooperative investigator Amy Pruden.
Pruden said it is believed these compounds get in waterways because only a fraction of the drugs are metabolized by both animals and humans. This means active compounds pass through the body and are discharged into public wastewater systems. Because the compounds are still active, they become an environmental issue.
Thus the very real threat grows that the water we drink, that we use for cooking and bathing, is saturated with minute traces of uninvited narcotics that are collectively affecting our health.
Even though researchers are aware of this problem . . . they are not sure a solution can be found. The complex system of human and animal waste disposal, involving home and farm septic tank processing, municipal lagoon and chemical processing plants, have no way of separating these drugs from the water that eventually finds it way back into the lakes, streams and ground water supplies.
The Environmental Protection Agency apparently has not addressed this problem. There have never been minimum standards set for determining how many parts per million of drugs to water is tolerable. And no one yet knows what the long-term effects drinking this pharmaceutical cocktail every day will have on our health.
Research has determined that the mixture is clearly having an effect on fish and other animals that drink directly from the toxic filled streams. Eating the fish and the meat of hunted game only adds to the amount of chemicals ingested by humans.
This is not a problem found only in North America. It is global. Recent studies have found similar mixtures of drugs in the water supplies in Canada, Asia, Australia, Europe, Brazil and South Africa.
If you think bottled water will solve the problem, guess again. It has been found that the contaminants cannot be filtered from the tap water or from the natural springs where it has been traditionally collected. Virtually no water source is safe.
The best solutions, it seems, would include either reducing the amount of narcotic use or sending all human and animal excrement to toxic waste dumps. This includes all unused drugs in homes, hospitals and doctor's offices that have been disposed of the old-fashioned way... either by flushing them down the toilet or throwing them in waste disposal containers.
Drug companies will not want to give up their big profits so getting us all off the drug machine probably won't be an option. Will enough disposable land be found in this overpopulated and polluted world to satisfy the demand for piling up toxic waste?
Will anybody even try to find an answer?
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On March 9th the Federal Aviation Administration requested comments from the public on drone test sites. On May 8th, lengthy comments were submitted by Not 1 More Acre! and Purgatoire, Apishapa & Comanche Grassland Trust. The FAA asked all the wrong questions, but still got a lot of the right answers. When the drone accidents start, and you're told "Nobody could have known," refer them here: PDF.
I would have asked "Should weaponized drones be permitted to exist on earth?" and "How can surveillance drones possibly comply with the Fourth Amendment?" The FAA asked:
Not 1 More Acre! replied:
". . . The primary driver of the move to integration has clearly been contractors funded by the DOD, working in concert with the secretive Joint Special Forces Operation Command, the Department of Homeland Security, and the CIA, among others. . . . Private defense [sic] contractors increasingly woo local law enforcement agencies and other community groups with grants to help fund the purchase of new UAS. The FAA should not allow any other federal agency to usurp its authority over the NAS or circumvent the pre-decisional public disclosure requirements of NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] including agencies like the CIA, NASA, and JSOC which are not transparent or accountable to the public."
"However, the FAA has never conducted any NEPA review related to UAS. The agency has never prepared an Environmental Impact Statement or Environmental Assessment to disclose the potential impacts of UAS to the public and agency officials, despite issuing hundreds of Certificates of Waiver and Authorization to some 60 public agencies."
The 63 drone sites in the U.S.?
The 30,000 drones planned for U.S. skies?
The habit drones have of crashing even on their own?
While initially cheaper than manned planes, unmanned drones of the sort used now tend to require many more personnel: 168 people to keep a Predator drone in the air for 24 hours, plus 19 analysts to process the videos created by a drone. Drones and their related technologies are increasing in price rapidly. And to make matters worse, they tend to crash. They even "go rogue," lose contact with their "pilots" and fly off on their own. The U.S. Navy has a drone that self-destructs if you accidentally touch the space bar on the computer keyboard. Drones also tend to supply so-called enemies with information, including the endless hours of video they record, and to infect U.S. military computers with viruses. But these are the sorts of SNAFUs that come with any project lacking oversight, accountability, or cost controls. The companies with the biggest drone contracts did not invest in developing the best technologies but in paying off the most Congress members.
What could go wrong?
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![]() Hope And Hesitation In Obama's Sudden Conversion By Robert Scheer Once again President Barack Obama has come tantalizingly close to being terrific. But his failure of courage on the gay marriage issue, in the end, undermined the point he hoped to make Wednesday. As with his prior rhetorical flashes of principle in denouncing torture, commiserating with the victims of Wall Street fraud and resolving to end unjustifiable wars, he quickly waffled and the result was a continuation of that which is fundamentally wrong. There is only one essential point to be made about gay marriage: To acknowledge one's own sexual being and to define the relationships that follow is a basic human right. How dare anyone intrude on a life choice that is not his to make for others? Whether the president's family knows gay couples who are monogamous and nice to their children has no more to do with the issue than the old argument of enlightened racists in the American South that there were many fine Negroes who were not at all uppity. Uppity as in the case of gays who were not satisfied with Obama's prior endorsement of civil unions: "I had hesitated on gay marriages in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient." As in knowing your place and being content with the bone you are tossed rather than demanding the full meal you're entitled to. There is enormous condescension in Obama's assertion that "I've always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally." He had not been adamant enough to push for an amendment to the Civil Rights Act to end discrimination based on sexual orientation. Nor did he issue an executive order banning government agencies from contracting with businesses guilty of such discrimination. Surely one could not have always been in favor of fairness and equality and yet succumbed to pressure from those who claimed that allowing gays to marry was somehow ungodly. "I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word 'marriage' was something that invokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs," Obama told us, as if sensitivity is admirable when the bigots hide behind cultural norms. So too did the word "slavery" invoke powerful religious beliefs for the American slaveholders who frequently cited Scripture as endorsing their degenerate oppression of others. The deciphering of divine intention that is so common among today's anti-gay fanatics is exemplified by a statement made Tuesday by Tami Fitzgerald, the chairwoman of the successful North Carolina campaign to ban gay marriage under that state's constitution: "... you don't rewrite the nature of God's design for marriage." No, what you don't do is selectively cite Scripture to justify denying basic freedoms to your fellow citizens. That's precisely why our federal Constitution bans the governmental establishment of any religion. Failure to insist on an inviolable freedom for all Americans is the key weakness in the position that Obama stated in his carefully scripted interview with ABC News on Wednesday. He not only didn't embrace a federal guarantee of the human rights of homosexuals, he endorsed the notion that the matter is one to be decided by the states, such as North Carolina, where the Democrats will hold their national convention in September. Since the voters of that state have now decided to deny gay people their rights, it would seem logical for the Democrats to refuse to hold their convention in such a retrograde environment. Perhaps if Obama's opinion had evolved just a few days earlier he might have successfully made an argument to North Carolinians before they voted in the Tuesday referendum that produced a constitutional amendment banning same-sex unions. The host state of the 2012 Democratic National Convention boasts of being on the cutting edge of scientific innovation, but it is mired in the swamp of primitive religious dogma. Let's never forget that invocations of "God's design" have historically been an invitation to religious pogroms and genocide. Only this time, as Obama's sudden conversion suggests, the forces of intolerance just might be in decline. The good news is that young voters have returned to the sanity of the nation's Founders and are unwelcoming of the government's imposing its will on their pursuit of happiness. Surely Obama was mindful that the gay marriage issue is trending sharply in that direction, and certainly his response is a reason for optimism among those fighting against second-class citizenship for gays.
A prediction that Obama's shift will lead to deep and lasting change for the nation was offered by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an equally skilled political trend spotter: "No American president has ever supported a major expansion of civil rights that has not ultimately been adopted by the American people, and I have no doubt that this will be no exception." From the mayor's lips to God's ears.
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![]() Will The Israeli Left Finally Awaken? By Jonathan Cook Israelis barely had time to absorb the news that they were heading into a summer election when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu yesterday pulled the rug from underneath the charade. Rancourous early electioneering had provided cover for a secret agreement between Netanyahu and the main opposition party, Kadima, to form a new, expanded coalition government. Rather than facing the electorate in September, Netanyahu and his hardline rightwing government are expected to comfortably see out the remaining 18 months of his term of office. Not only that, but he will now have the backing of more than three-quarters of the 120-seat Israeli parliament, leading one commentator to crown him the "King of Israel." The announcement may have taken Israelis by surprise but it fully accorded with the logic of an increasingly dysfunctional Israeli political culture. Shaul Mofaz, who a few weeks ago ousted Tzipi Livni as head of the centre-right Kadima party, had been vitriolic in denouncing Netanyahu. He called the prime minister a "liar" and went to the trouble of posting on his Facebook page a pledge that he would never make a deal with this "weak, incompetent and deaf government." He also boasted in a recent interview that he would topple Netanyahu by leading the revival of mass social protests expected in the summer. Last year hundreds of thousands took to the streets to demand an end to the rocketing cost of living, much of it caused by business cartels that were empowered by Netanyahu and his Likud party in privatisation programmes years ago. But the reality was that Mofaz, a hawkish former army chief of staff who is seen as a lacklustre, power-hungry and slippery politician, had no credibility with either the demonstrators or the wider electorate. Kadima, which has never strayed far from its ideological roots in the Likud, from which it split several years ago, is currently the largest faction in the parliament. But polls suggested Mofaz would lead it to electoral oblivion. The deal will win him a temporary reprieve, with a seat in the inner circle alongside Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the long-time defence minister whose own party was expected to vanish if the September election had taken place. Kadima will get no ministries but Mofaz will have a say in the biggest issues facing Israel: its dealings with Iran and the Palestinians. This may be good for Mofaz personally but most likely his act of supreme duplicity will finish off Kadima as an independent party. The next year and a half may see him try to return to the Likud fold. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has created a national unity government that more precisely reflects the majority mood: an unalloyed, aggressive and xenophobic rightwing consensus. There was little need for Netanyahu to bring Kadima into the coalition. He was racing ahead in the polls, his popularity outstripping that of all the other major party leaders combined. And he had won this scale of support even as senior security officials, including the former heads of the Mossad and the Shin Bet, questioned his rationality on the issue of whether to attack Iran. But there are advantages to Netanyahu in postponing an election he was expected to win. Not least, it gives him time to entrench moves towards authoritarianism. Netanyahu has been behind a series of measures to weaken the media, human rights groups, and the courts. At the moment his government is defying a series of Supreme Court rulings to dismantle several small Jewish settlements on Palestinian land that are illegal even under Israeli law. An uninterrupted 18 months will allow him to further undermine these rival centres of power. One of the promises he and Mofaz made yesterday was to overhaul the system of government. Netanyahu now has enough MPs to overturn even the most sacrosanct of Israel's Basic Laws. In addition, the new coalition will face an all but non-existent parliamentary opposition: a shrivelled centre-left of the Labor and Meretz parties, with only a handful of seats; a few noisy ultra-nationalists who would be more trouble in government than Netanyahu needs; and the Arab parties, who are reviled by Jewish public and politicians alike. Labor's new leader, Shelly Yacimovich, was expected to partially revive her party's fortunes on the back of the social protests and might have been joined in a potentially confrontational opposition by a new centrist party, headed by TV news anchor and heart-throb Yair Lapid. Now both are relegated to the political margins. Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, whom Netanyahu fears most as a potential challenger, has also been defanged. His current, pivotal role in the coalition will be savagely diminished by the bulky presence of Kadima. Another bonus for Netayahu is that he is now better situated to see off the potentially dangerous early days of a Barack Obama second term, if the US president is re-elected in November. This is when some observers believed the US president, serially humiliated by Netanyahu over the settlements and the peace process, might seek his revenge. But should Obama choose a fight on the Palestinian issue, he will be facing a prime minister whose position in Israel is unassailable. What does all this mean for Iran and the Palestinians? Regarding the former, several commentators and some of his own ministers have argued that Netanyahu now has a free hand to launch a go-it-alone attack on Iran and destroy what he claims is a nuclear weapons programme that might one day rival Israel's own secret arsenal. More likely, the expanded coalition will make little difference to Israeli calculations over Iran, one way or the other. Mofaz, like most of the security establishment, opposes an attack unless it is headed by the US. But Netanyahu will doubtless exploit his strengthened position to up the rhetoric against Tehran and add to the pressure for intensified action from the US and Europe. As for the Palestinians, it can mean only more of the same - or worse. Mofaz, who tried to distinguish himself in opposition by proposing a miserly peace plan that would see the Palestinians holed up in a series of enclaves, lacks the political weight to deflect Netanyahu from his even more intransigent approach. But at least for Netanyahu, the Kadima leader will cut a more presentable figure in Washington than Lieberman as an advocate for Israel's hard line. The Israeli prime minister's claim yesterday that he was about to unveil a "responsible peace process" should be taken no more seriously than his professed commitment, abandoned the same day, to submit himself to the judgment of the Israeli electorate. The one small sliver of light is that what remains of the Israeli left, so long in hibernation or denial, may finally be stirred into a response by the antics of this ugly ruling cabal. Last year's social protests remained, in a great Israeli tradition, studiously "apolitical", unlike their counterparts, the Occupy movements, in the United States and Europe. The demonstrators refused to draw any connection between the rapidly polarised economic situation - the gap between Israel's rich and poor is now as bad as in the US - and either the right's self-serving neoliberal policies or the occupation that has channelled endless resources to the settlers and the security establishment.
This summer Israel may finally get its own Occupy movement - one prepared to tackle the real occupation.
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![]() Those Revolting Europeans By Paul Krugman The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it's about time. Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It's far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity - and that's a good thing. Needless to say, that's not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered Francois Hollande as a figure of menace. He is "rather dangerous," declared The Economist, which observed that he "genuinely believes in the need to create a fairer society." Quelle horreur! What is true is that Mr. Hollande's victory means the end of "Merkozy," the Franco-German axis that has enforced the austerity regime of the past two years. This would be a "dangerous" development if that strategy were working, or even had a reasonable chance of working. But it isn't and doesn't; it's time to move on. Europe's voters, it turns out, are wiser than the Continent's best and brightest. What's wrong with the prescription of spending cuts as the remedy for Europe's ills? One answer is that the confidence fairy doesn't exist - that is, claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years. So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper. Moreover, there seems to be little if any gain in return for the pain. Consider the case of Ireland, which has been a good soldier in this crisis, imposing ever-harsher austerity in an attempt to win back the favor of the bond markets. According to the prevailing orthodoxy, this should work. In fact, the will to believe is so strong that members of Europe's policy elite keep proclaiming that Irish austerity has indeed worked, that the Irish economy has begun to recover. But it hasn't. And although you'd never know it from much of the press coverage, Irish borrowing costs remain much higher than those of Spain or Italy, let alone Germany. So what are the alternatives? One answer - an answer that makes more sense than almost anyone in Europe is willing to admit - would be to break up the euro, Europe's common currency. Europe wouldn't be in this fix if Greece still had its drachma, Spain its peseta, Ireland its punt, and so on, because Greece and Spain would have what they now lack: a quick way to restore cost-competitiveness and boost exports, namely devaluation. As a counterpoint to Ireland's sad story, consider the case of Iceland, which was ground zero for the financial crisis but was able to respond by devaluing its currency, the krona (and also had the courage to let its banks fail and default on their debts). Sure enough, Iceland is experiencing the recovery Ireland was supposed to have, but hasn't. Yet breaking up the euro would be highly disruptive, and would also represent a huge defeat for the "European project," the long-run effort to promote peace and democracy through closer integration. Is there another way? Yes, there is - and the Germans have shown how that way can work. Unfortunately, they don't understand the lessons of their own experience. Talk to German opinion leaders about the euro crisis, and they like to point out that their own economy was in the doldrums in the early years of the last decade but managed to recover. What they don't like to acknowledge is that this recovery was driven by the emergence of a huge German trade surplus vis-a-vis other European countries - in particular, vis-a-vis the nations now in crisis - which were booming, and experiencing above-normal inflation, thanks to low interest rates. Europe's crisis countries might be able to emulate Germany's success if they faced a comparably favorable environment - that is, if this time it was the rest of Europe, especially Germany, that was experiencing a bit of an inflationary boom. So Germany's experience isn't, as the Germans imagine, an argument for unilateral austerity in Southern Europe; it's an argument for much more expansionary policies elsewhere, and in particular for the European Central Bank to drop its obsession with inflation and focus on growth.
The Germans, needless to say, don't like this conclusion, nor does the leadership of the central bank. They will cling to their fantasies of prosperity through pain, and will insist that continuing with their failed strategy is the only responsible thing to do. But it seems that they will no longer have unquestioning support from the Elysee Palace. And that, believe it or not, means that both the euro and the European project now have a better chance of surviving than they did a few days ago.
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![]() Does The West Have A Future? By Paul Craig Roberts Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider: We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant. This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an "invisible bomb" that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A "senior law enforcement source" told the New York Times that "the scary part is that if they build one, they probably built more." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that "the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people." Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder woman and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa. The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as "a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others." FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect--what, fake plots? In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers' lives. Even alternative news media initially fell for this fake plot. Apparently, no one stops to wonder how al-Qaeda, which has become so disorganized and helpless that it is on the run and left its revered leader, Osama bin Laden, in a Pakistan village alone and unguarded to be murdered by US Navy Seals, could catch the CIA off guard with an "undetectable" bomb, to use the description provided by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, who was briefed on the device by US intelligence personnel. Notice that the Secretary of State has committed the bankrupt US and its unravelling social safety net to the protection of "India and others" from terrorists. But the real significance of this latest hoax is to introduce into the fearful American public the idea of an undetectable underwear bomb. What does this bring to mind? Anyone of my generation or any science fiction aficionado immediately thinks of Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters. Written in 1951 but set in our time, Earth is invaded by small creatures that attach to the human body and take over the person. The humans become the puppets of their masters. Large areas of America succumb to the invaders before the morons in Washington understand that the invasion is real and not a conspiracy theory. On clothed humans, the creatures cannot be detected, and the edict goes out that anyone clothed is a suspect. Everyone must go about naked. Women are not even allowed to carry purses in their hand, because the creature can be in the purse attached to the woman's hand. Obviously, if the CIA, the news sources, and Dianne Feinstein's briefers are correct that defeated al-Qaeda has come up with an "undetectable" bomb, we will have to pass through airport security naked. If so, how will this be possible? If each airline passenger must go through a personal screening by disrobing in a room, how long will it take to clear "airport security"? I doubt there is any place in North or South American that the traveller couldn't drive there faster. Or perhaps this is an answer to depression level US unemployment. Millions of unemployed Americans will be hired to view naked people before they board airliners. As the Transportation Safety Administration division of Homeland Security has taken its intrusions, unchallenged, into train, bus, and highway travel, are we faced with the total collapse of the clothing industry? Stay tuned. A couple of years ago a noted philosopher wrote an article in which he suggested that Americans live in an artificial or virtual reality. Another noted philosopher said that he thought there was a 25% chance that the philosopher was right. I am convinced that he is right. Americans live in the Matrix. Nothing that they know or think that they know is correct. For example, our non-truth-telling "leaders" continually declare that "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East." This myth is one of the many reasons rolled out to justify American taxpayers' declining incomes being taxed to provide the Israeli government with the means to murder Palestinians and steal their country. Israeli democracy a myth you say? Yes, a myth. According to news reports compiled and reported by Antiwar.com (May 8), the September 4 Israeli elections have been cancelled, because the "opposition leader Shaul Mofaz is joining the government." Mofaz sold out his party for personal power, a typical politician's behavior. Mofaz's treachery produced protests from his followers, but, according to news reports, "israeli police were quick to crack down on the protest, terming it 'illegal' and arresting a number of journalists." Ah, "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East." In truth Israel is a fascist state, one that has been in violation of international law and Christian morality during the entirely of its existence. Yet, in America Israel is a hallowed icon. Like Bush, Cheney, and Obama, millions of American "christians" worship Israel and believe it is "God's calling" for Americans to die for Israel. If you believe in murdering your opponents, not debating with them, dispossessing the powerless, creating a fictional world based on lies and paying the corporate media to uphold the lies and fictional world, you are part of what the rest of the world perceives as "The West." Let me back off from being too hard on The West. The French and Greek peoples have shown in the recent elections that they are unplugging from the Matrix and understand that they, the 99%, are being put by their elites in a position to be the sacrificial lambs for the mistakes of the 1% mega-rich, who compete with one another in terms of how many billions of dollars or euros, how many yachts, collections of exotic cars, and exotic Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds they have as personal possessions. The central banks of the West--the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the UK bank--are totally committed to the prosperity of the mega-rich. No one else counts. Marx and Lenin never had a target as exists today. Yet, the left-wing is today so feeble and brainwashed that it does not exist as even a minor countervailing power. The American left-wing has even accepted the absurd official account of 9/11 and of Osama bin Laden's murder in Pakistan by Navy Seals. A movement so devoid of mental and emotional strength is useless. It might as well not exist.
People without valid information are helpless, and that is where Western peoples are. The new tyranny is arising in the West, not in Russia and China. The danger to humanity is in the nuclear button briefcase in the Oval Office and in the brainwashed and militant Amerikan population, the most totally disinformed and ignorant people on earth.
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![]() A Question Of Timing What America Can Learn from the Revolt in Europe By Robert Reich Who's an economy for? Voters in France and Greece have made it clear it's not for the bond traders. Referring to his own electoral woes, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Monday in an article in the conservative Daily Telegraph: "When people think about the economy they don't see it through the dry numbers of the deficit figures, trade balances or inflation forecasts - but instead the things that make the difference between a life that's worth living and a daily grind that drags them down." Cameron, whose own economic policies have worsened the daily grind dragging down most Brits, may be sobered by what happened over the weekend in France and Greece - as well as his own poll numbers. Britain's conservatives have been taking a beating. In truth, the choice isn't simply between budget-cutting austerity, on the one hand, and growth and jobs on the other. It's really a question of timing. And it's the same issue on this side of the pond. If government slices spending too early, when unemployment is high and growth is slowing, it makes the debt situation far worse. That's because public spending is a critical component of total demand. If demand is already lagging, spending cuts further slow the economy - and thereby increase the size of the public debt relative to the size of the overall economy. You end up with the worst of both worlds - a growing ratio of debt to the gross domestic product, coupled with high unemployment and a public that's furious about losing safety nets when they're most needed. The proper sequence is for government to keep spending until jobs and growth are restored, and only then to take out the budget axe. If Hollande's new government pushes Angela Merkel in this direction, he'll end up saving the euro and, ironically, the jobs of many conservative leaders throughout Europe - including Merkel and Cameron. But he also has an important audience in the United States, where Republicans are trying to sell a toxic blend of trickle-down supply-side economics (tax cuts on the rich and on corporations) and austerity for everyone else (government spending cuts). That's exactly the opposite of what's needed now. Yes, America has a long-term budget deficit that's scary. So does Europe. But the first priority in America and in Europe must be growth and jobs. That means rejecting austerity economics for now, while at the same time demanding that corporations and the rich pay their fair share of the cost of keeping everyone else afloat. President Obama and the Democrats should set a clear trigger - say, 6 percent unemployment and two quarters of growth greater than 3 percent - before whacking the budget deficit.
And they should set that trigger now, during the election, so the public can give them a mandate on Election Day to delay the "sequestration" cuts (now scheduled to begin next year) until that trigger is met.
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Driving west from Madison, through the small towns and dairy farm country of western Wisconsin, it quickly becomes clear that the Wisconsin recall election is a statewide phenomenon.
For all the efforts of Gov. Scott Walker to convince the hosts on Fox and CNBC that he is a popular governor who is threatened not by angry citizens but by "the left, the radical left, and the big labor union bosses" who are "somehow counting on the idea that they can bring enough money and enough bodies into Wisconsin to dissuade voters," the message from farm country tells an entirely different story.
Walker has had the overwhelming spending advantage since the recall fight started last November. Walker has had all the benefits of the Republican Party organization, which has gone into overdrive to aid his candidacy, while Democrats have faced a multi-candidate primary fight.
Yet Walker does not have the swing counties of western Wisconsin wrapped up. Not by a long shot.
Along Highway 14, heading out of Dane County and into Iowa and Richland counties, hundreds of hand-painted signs propose to "Recall Walker." Most list reasons for the governor's removal: "Worst Job Losses in U.S.," "Attacks on Collective Bargaining," "Cut Education," "Cut BadgerCare," "Divided State," "John Doe."
Of course, the governor also has his supporters.
But there is genuine, broad-based and statewide opposition to this governor in every region of Wisconsin - especially in the western and northern parts of the state. Even as he has spent $21 million so far on the recall campaign, that opposition is growing.
In the new Marquette University Law School Poll, disapproval of the governor's performance had moved up to 51 percent. Indeed, his approval rating has now declined to 47 percent, the lowest point so far this year. And one of the prospective Democratic challengers, Tom Barrett, has now moved ahead of Walker in head-to-head matchups run by the Marquette pollsters.
What has changed? The polling shows that Wisconsinites, who once felt that Republicans had the right equation for creating jobs (tax cuts for multinational corporations, attacks on public employees and their unions, slashing of education and public service funding), have soured on the GOP and its poster-boy governor. They've been influenced, of course, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics study showing that, in the year since Walker implemented his austerity agenda, Wisconsin has suffered the worst job losses in the nation. The Marquette poll shows that Wisconsinites now believe that investments in education, good relations with unions, and fair tax policies are more likely to grow the economy than Walker's "war on workers" approach.
The governor admitted Wednesday that the recall contest on June 5 is "a 50-50 race." But what's notable is that his numbers are declining, while numbers for the opposition are rising.
When I spoke at the Arcadia Bookstore in Spring Green the other night, we talked a good deal about the Democratic gubernatorial primary. I suggested, as I will here, that people should take their vote seriously. After all, they are not just choosing a nominee. If the signs in front of the farms are correct, and if the polls are correct, it looks like Democrats may be choosing a governor.
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According to Marine Corps lore, semper fidelis, a Latin phrase for "always faithful," commands Marines to remain a "brotherhood, faithful to the mission at hand, to each other, to the Corps and to country, no matter what. Becoming a Marine is a transformation that cannot be undone and once made, a Marine will forever live by the ethics and values of the Corps."
The Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., is the official residence of the commandant of the Marine Corps. It is the home of the Marines who are the ceremonial guard for the president during official U.S. government functions and the security force for the White House and Camp David. The Marine Band, also located at the Barracks, is known as "The President's Own." The Barracks is the showplace of the Marine Corps with its Silent Drill Platoon giving weekly military precision performances for the public during the busy summer tourist season.
But the Marine Barracks has its dark and ugly side. It is also the home of officers and enlisted men of the Marine Corps who have been accused of sexually harassing, assaulting and raping female Marine officers and enlisted and civilian women who work there.
According to information provided by the Marine Barracks Washington legal adviser at the request of the Senate Armed Services Committee minority counsel, from 2009 to 2010 three female Marines and two civilian women reported to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that they had been raped by male Marines. Two of the female Marines held high-visibility jobs at the Barracks and said they were raped by senior officers.
During the same period, two other female Marines and two other civilian women reported that they had been sexually harassed by Marines at the Barracks.
Second Rape Lawsuit Filed Against Marines, Navy and DOD
On March 6, 2012, attorney Susan Burke filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of eight military women-four Marines and four Navy members-who said they were raped while in the service. Two of the four female Marine officers served at the Barracks and alleged that they had been raped by Marines assigned there. The two, Lt. Ariana Klay and Lt. Elle Helmer, spoke at a news conference announcing the lawsuit and on national TV shows afterward.
This is the second lawsuit filed in a little over a year against the Department of Defense on the issue of rape in the military. The first lawsuit was filed on Feb. 15, 2011, and was brought by 15 female and two male active-duty military personnel and veterans. They accused the DOD of permitting a military culture that fails to prevent rape and sexual assault and alleged that it mishandled cases that were brought to its attention, thus violating the plaintiffs' constitutional rights.
On Dec. 9, 2011, U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady dismissed the suit, saying the sexual assault allegations were "troubling" but that Supreme Court and other court decisions had advised against judicial involvement in cases of military discipline. O'Grady cited Gilligan v. Morgan, decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which determined that "matters of military discipline should be left to the 'political branches directly responsible-as the judicial branch is not-to the electoral process.' " O'Grady said, "Not even the egregious allegations within the plaintiffs' complaint will prevent dismissal."
The March 2012 lawsuit names current and former secretaries of defense and military chiefs of the Navy and Marine Corps as defendants. It alleges that "Although defendants testified before Congress and elsewhere that they have 'zero tolerance' for rape and sexual assault, their conduct and the facts demonstrate the opposite: They have a high tolerance for sexual predators in their ranks, and 'zero tolerance' for those who report rape, sexual assault and harassment." The lawsuit alleges that "Defendants have a long-standing pattern of ignoring congressional mandates designed to ameliorate the armed services' dismal record of rape and sexual assault. As but one example, defendant [Leon] Panetta [secretary of defense] continues to violate the law requiring the Department of Defense to establish an incident-specific Sexual Assault Database no later than January 2010." More than two years later, the database still does not exist.
"Rather than being respected and appreciated for reporting crimes and unprofessional conduct," the lawsuit alleges, "plaintiffs and others who report are branded 'troublemakers,' endure egregious and blatant retaliation, and are often forced out of military service."
Lt. Ariana Klay
According to the lawsuit, Klay, a Naval Academy graduate, served as a protocol officer for the Marine Barracks. She alleges that while there, she was sexually harassed by a lieutenant colonel, a major and a captain. She said she was gang-raped by a Marine officer and his civilian friend, a former Marine. Klay alleges that the Marine officer threatened to kill her and told his friend he would show him "what a slut she was" and "humiliate" her.
After she reported the alleged rapes and subsequent harassment, the Marine Corps investigation ruled that she welcomed the harassment because "she wore makeup, regulation-length skirts as a part of her uniform and exercised in running shorts and tank tops."
The Marine Corps did not punish any of those who were accused of sexually harassing Klay. One of her alleged harassers was granted a waiver by the Corps that permitted him to get a security clearance despite accusations of hazing and sexual misconduct against not only Klay but many others. He was selected to be in a nationally televised recruitment commercial while he was still under investigation. According to the lawsuit, the Marine Corps featured Klay's alleged rapist and a harasser in the Marine calendar.
The Marine Corps finally court-martialed one of Klay's alleged attackers but didn't convict him of rape, instead finding him guilty of adultery and indecent language (a common escape by military courts from the rape charge). The military court ruled that Klay "consented" to having sex with the men despite the evidence that the accused threatened to kill her.
Klay has attempted suicide since the alleged rapes and harassment and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Lt. Elle Helmer
In 2005, Helmer was appointed the public affairs officer for the Barracks, the federal lawsuit says. In 2006, she was selected to also serve as the first female "ceremonial parade staff flanking officer." Helmer alleged that the "selecting" officer, a Marine captain, made continuing sexual advances to her that she reported to the Marine Barracks equal opportunity officer. Nothing was done to stop the advances, Helmer said.
Another superior officer, a major, required Helmer to attend a "pub crawl" for St. Patrick's Day that had been endorsed by the unit's colonel, the lawsuit alleges. When Helmer objected to going, she says the major told her that it was a mandatory work event. The pub crawl involved Marine officers identified by the T-shirts they were wearing going from bar to bar on Capitol Hill drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, paid for by the Marine Corps, the lawsuit says. Helmer says she was required to drink shots of liquor at the same pace as the bigger male officers and when she drank water to try to keep herself from becoming intoxicated, she was required by the major to drink an extra shot as a punishment.
Helmer became intoxicated and left the group to find a cab home. She said the major followed her and told her that she must come with him to his office to discuss a business matter. When they reached his office, Helmer alleges, the major tried to kiss her and when she resisted he grabbed her and knocked her over. She says she lost consciousness at that point.
Upon regaining consciousness, she said, she found herself lying on the floor in the major's office, wearing his shorts. He was allegedly passed out on the floor nearby, naked.
Helmer left the office and reported to the Marine Command that she had been raped. She alleges the colonel there discouraged her from asking for a rape kit examination, saying it would "be out of his hands." Nonetheless, Helmer got a medical examination that employed a rape kit.
NCIS initially refused to investigate Helmer's allegations, despite the medical and circumstantial evidence, saying that her inability to recall the incident precluded any investigation. After a delay in which the alleged crime scene was destroyed, NCIS eventually conducted a brief investigation and because of Helmer's lack of consciousness during the incident concluded that nothing could be done. Additionally, the Marine Corps reported it had lost the Helmer rape kit, the medical evidence allegedly indicating rape.
Helmer took the case to the major's superior officer, who acknowledged that the NCIS investigation was "woefully inadequate" and removed the major from his command. No further steps were taken, the lawsuit alleges. Helmer says the superior officer told her, "You're from Colorado-you're tough. You need to pick yourself up and dust yourself off. I can't baby-sit you all of the time."
Helmer says she was eventually forced to leave the Marine Corps. The alleged rapist remains a Marine officer in good standing.
Rape Reporting in the Military
The Department of Defense estimates that only 20 percent of military personnel who experience "unwanted sexual contact" report it to military authorities because the accusations can be met with suspicion and the victims can experience retaliation.
In 2009, 3,230 service members reported being raped or sexually assaulted, but the Department of Defense estimated that 16,150 actually were raped or sexually assaulted during that year.
In 2010, 3,158 military personnel reported sexual assault or rape. The DOD estimated 15,790 were actually raped or assaulted.
In addition, in 2010, 68,379 veterans had at least one VA outpatient visit related to military sexual trauma. About 40 percent of those outpatients-nearly 27,000 -requesting treatment for military sexual trauma were male veterans.
Retaliatory Culture for Those Reporting Rape
The Department of Defense has finally quantified the retaliatory culture of the military. The DOD 2010 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military found that 44 percent of active-duty women and 20 percent of active-duty men who had been victims of sexual assaults or rapes did not report them because "they thought their performance evaluation or chance for promotion would suffer." Even more decided not to report because they "thought they would be labeled a troublemaker."
Most rapists evade any form of punishment, much less incarceration. The DOD sexual assaults report said that fewer than 8 percent of suspected perpetrators were court-martialed and convicted, while in civilian life 40 percent of the accused were prosecuted. Most military personnel who have committed rape or sexual assault are allowed to be honorably discharged; if they're forced to retire, they still receive their full benefits.
The DOD does not maintain a military sex offender registry that can alert service members, unit commanders, communities and civilian law enforcement to the presence and movement of sexual predators. Military sex offenders are not placed in the national sex offenders' database created by the Department of Justice.
The Navy and Marine Corps give a substantial number of waivers to potential recruits who have criminal records, including felony convictions. A 2007 study found that in 2006 the Marines gave 20,750 recruits (54.3 percent of all those recruited that year) waivers for criminal convictions. In 2005, 20,426 recruits (53.5 percent) were given them.
In 2006, the Navy gave 3,502 recruits, or 9.7 percent of those recruited, waivers for criminal conduct. In 2005, it gave them to 3,467 recruits, or 9.2 percent.
According to a 2009 study, 13 percent of men enlisting in the Navy admitted that they had raped someone. Of those men, 71 percent admitted to serial rapes. The perpetrators said that they targeted people they knew rather than strangers and generally used drugs or alcohol rather than brute force to incapacitate their victims.
What Can Be Done to Stop Rape and Boost Prosecutions?
Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps captain and company commander and now executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, says that the Pentagon's primary solution for ending rape is through its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), which has no law enforcement authority to prosecute or punish. She says SAPRO's messaging to military troops is questionable, including its infamous poster that says "Ask Her When She's Sober."
Bhagwati strongly believes that the military should have all sexual assault cases handled at the General Court Martial Convening Authority level, where a general officer-with more experience, maturity and impartiality than a junior commander in whose unit the alleged crime occurred-would decide whether they should be prosecuted.
Another option is offered in the Sexual Assault Training Oversight and Prevention Act (the STOP Act), introduced by Congresswoman Jackie Speier on Nov. 16, 2011. H.R. 3435 would take the reporting, oversight, investigation and victim care of sexual assaults out of the hands of the military's normal chain of command and place jurisdiction for them in the newly created, autonomous Sexual Assault Oversight and Response Office, composed of civilian and military experts.
Speier has been talking about the issue of rape in the military each week for four months on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Because of the reluctance of the military to prosecute sexual predators, Bhagwati also calls for reform to allow service members access to the federal courts for civil redress of these crimes. Currently, service members cannot bring a tort claim in federal court for rape, sexual assault and harassment cases and other crimes and acts of negligence by the military, including medical malpractice and workplace discrimination.
There is a pattern of the military using psychiatric diagnoses to get women who report sexual assaults out of the military.
According to a Freedom of Information Act request, from 2001 to 2010 the military discharged more than 31,000 service members, citing a personality disorder-"a long-standing, inflexible pattern of maladaptive behavior and coping, beginning in adolescence or early adulthood." The military considers a personality disorder diagnosis as a non-service-related, pre-existing condition. Veterans Affairs will not provide treatment for a pre-existing condition, and the service members are left without treatment for their sexual assault trauma. Additionally, service members who are diagnosed with a personality disorder and are discharged lose GI Bill educational benefits and have to repay re-enlistment bonuses.
Military records obtained by Yale Law School's Veterans Legal Services Clinic through a separate Freedom of Information Act request show that the personality diagnosis is used disproportionately on women. In the Army, 16 percent of all soldiers are women, but they constitute 24 percent of all personality disorder discharges. Women make up 21 percent of the Air Force but account for 35 percent of personality discharges. In the Navy, women account for 17 percent of the total members but 26 percent of personality discharges, while the 7 percent of the Marine Corps who are female account for 14 percent of the personality discharges. The records do not state how many women were ordered discharged from the military with a personality disorder diagnosis.
On April 16, 2012, after pressure during meetings with congressional leaders, Secretary of Defense Panetta said he would ensure that officers of at least the rank of colonel with special court-martial authority would oversee sexual assault cases rather than junior officer commanders. Although reported sexual assaults continue to rise, junior commander-initiated actions to prosecute offenders were down 23 percent, courts-martial were down 8 percent and convictions decreased 22 percent from 2010 to 2011.
Panetta also will recommend to the military that special victims units be established to handle the offenses and that National Guard and Reserve members be allowed to remain on duty after they are sexually assaulted so they can obtain treatment and support, which they currently lose when they are removed from active duty.
To learn more about rape in the military, see the film "The Invisible War." It won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
~~~ Jeff Parker ~~~ ![]() |
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Parting Shots...
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![]() 2012 Veepstakes By Will Durst Since Governor Romney has sewed up the nomination tighter than one of Chris Christie's old suits, the only remaining Republican election drama is which name the Bairn of Bain Capital intends to place on the bottom of his bumper sticker. Yes, friends, it's once again time to play that quadrennial game sensation sweeping the nation: Let's Guess Mitt's Vice Presidential Pick! Usually the question of the presumptive nominee's prom date doesn't play out until June or July, but this year, the mushrooming punditocracy has chewed on the fat tasty rancorous primary for so long, they bloated up like a poisoned toad. And are hungry. Which is why "running mate" is currently chalked atop the media blackboard menu. "Feed Me!" The Vice Presidency is an odd job interview. Best way to apply is to deny desiring the position. Saying exemplary things about the candidate never hurts. Neither does fund-raising. Disguising any interest in 2016 -- all good. But the choice ultimately depends on whether Willard decides to excite his base, gravitate towards the middle, or make a game change. Here's a couple contenders.
Texas Governor Rick Perry. 10,000 to 1. Same thing, only the snail is dead.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Pizza CEO Herman Cain former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, & Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. 100,000 to 1. The snail is dead and the piano is made of uranium, heaviest element on Earth.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. 100 to 1. Spends much time bringing many things to the table but alas, New Jersey is not among them.
Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. 10 to 1. Only problem is, two guys so white, might become known as the Albino Ticket.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. 25 to 1. President Barack. Vice President Piyush. Totally possible.
Former Governor of Florida Jeb Bush. 50 to 1. Too soon. People need more time to recover from Bush Fatigue. Another two decades should do it.
New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte. 50 to 1. Would help nail down that crucial Northeast vote.
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. 25 to 1. Bland and boring. A victory party guaranteed to cure insomniacs.
Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. 30 to 1. More polarizing than a linear accelerator. Makes Romney look liberal.
Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman. 200 to 1. Two Mormons? That's a Broadway musical, not a presidential ticket.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. 80 to 1. Hybrid of Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal with associative perks and potholes.
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. 10 to 1. Good Christian mudder. Especially helpful should Mitt need Old Testament righteousness to counter squishy - conservative charges.
Ohio Senator Rob Portman. 100 to 1. Dubyah's old budget director could make Romney's economic argument fuzzier than peach season in Georgia.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. 1,000 to 1. More dead snails and immensely heavy pianos.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. 60 to 1. Fading fast. Broke unwritten "don't speak of wanting it" rule. Blatantly airing image ads even though he's not running for office.
Florida Senator Mario Rubio. 3 to 1. Catholic Hispanic AND state of Florida. Fits together like seashores, lemonade and halter tops.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney. 300 to 1. Relieved to leave D.C., but could be convinced to work on behalf of country again. After all, he's already had one recent change of heart. |
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