My day

A Sleeping Giant Awakes

We Americans are rousing ourselves from what has been too long a nap to join those who have taken to the streets to spread the Arab Spring across the globe. Occupiers have targeted the criminality, corruption, and greed of the top 1% that has resulted in the impoverishment of the rest of us.

What Should Occupy’s Primary Concern Be?

But the propaganda campaign that is now taking place to frighten us into supporting a war on Iran must be our top priority.

The current campaign is a carbon copy of the build-up prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many will recall the accounts of defectors who attested to Hussein’s nuclear program, of the charge that he had tried to buy yellow cake from Niger, of the purchase of aluminum tubes, of his deceiving the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams, of the distortions of IAEA’s reports, and the lack of any media substantiation of these charges.

In February 2003, former secretary of state Colin Powell described the Iraqi WMD programs in his speech to the United Nations, hoping to persuade that body to back — to legitimize — an invasion of Iraq. The effort failed.

Later, in a September 9, 2005 interview by a New York Times reporter, Powell said that it had been “painful” for him to discover that the evidence for the weapons programs did not exist and to know that the speech would be “a permanent blot on his record.”

The war devastated Iraq, killing tens of thousands of civilians, contaminating areas from use of weapons containing depleted uranium that have resulted in hundreds of birth deformities, destroying water, sewage, and power systems, and forcing the country to its knees. All to gain control over Iraq’s liquid gold.

With a different constitution in hand, Iraqis elected a new government in December 2005. Since that time officials have signed contracts with hundreds of foreign corporations for maintaining, improving, and developing production of its oil. With the exception of Exxon-Mobil, no US corporation received such a contract.

This has allowed American CEOs to pretend that the US did not invade Iraq to obtain its oil. Let’s make no mistake, they have made out in a big way. It was reported in a NYTimes article (6/16/11) entitled “In Rebuilding Iraq’s Oil Industry, U.S. Subcontractors Hold Sway,” that four US-based firms, including Halliburton, have received lucrative subcontracts because of their advanced drilling technology.

Now our government, backed by the same corporate-owned media, is playing on our fears again, using the same charge that another country is acquiring WMDs and intends to use them against us — or Israel. Take your pick.

Little thought is being given by those taken in by this war-mongering as to what would befall Iran if it did actually develop a bomb and became the SECOND country in the world to use it. Isn’t it more plausible that IF Iran is developing a nuclear weapon it intends to use it as a nuclear deterrent in the same manner that prevented either of the two super powers from launching a first strike during the Cold War?

Of course, the US backed by Big Oil cannot state that it wants to wage war on another country for its oil any more than it could before the Iraq War.

In getting control of another people’s natural resource, we have already been there, done that when it comes to Iran. In 1953, the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadech, nationalized Iran’s only oil firm, the British owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. He offered the company an agreement that gave it very favorable terms.

Nevertheless, CIA operatives at the instigation of the British initiated a campaign that brought Mossadegh down, re-empowered the Shah, the King of Kings, and set up the SAVAK, his hated security police. This lasted until a harbinger of the Arab Spring drove him from his Peacock Throne in December 1979.

William Blum writes in his book, Killing Hope: “One year after the coup, the Iranian government completed a contract with an international consortium of oil companies. Amongst Iran’s new foreign partners, the British lost the exclusive rights they had enjoyed previously, being reduced now to 40 per cent. Another 40 per cent now went to American oil firms, the remainder to other countries. The British, however, received an extremely generous compensation for their former property.”

The two western powers succeeded in making a point: any country that stands in the way of imperialist ambitions will pay a high price. That lesson still holds.

In looking at the map of the Middle East, we see that Iran lies between Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries that the US has already laid waste. To Iran’s northeast are several small countries, former republics of the now defunct Soviet Union. On its southeast corner, lies Pakistan, which we are now bombing. Further on, to the west of Iraq, lies Israel, a country that secretly developed a nuclear bomb, giving Iran reason enough to want its own. We can now add Libya’s resources. The Saudis have long since thrown in with us. Iran is the last piece in the designs of the West to obtain hegemony over the oil in the Middle East.

Implications for Climate Change

Not only would a war against Iran risk a Third World War, it would also negatively impact the climate change crisis, placing our survival on this planet in doubt. In a world that runs on enormously-profitable fossil fuels, corporate heads and the governments that they control have no motivation for addressing the climate change crisis (as well as the depletion of the finite resources of the earth) by agreeing to reverse the warming of the earth’s atmosphere.

The people of the world are in a protracted struggle over who will control the Earth’s resources. Mother Earth is now showing us the results of a hundred years of rapacious use of her bounty by the profiteers. We have failed to be stewards of her bounty, carefully using only what we need so that future generations will have their share. We are now perilously close to the tipping point, the point at which reversing the crisis will be a very steep climb, indeed.

Mitt, Rick, and Ron

Has anyone noticed the mainstream media‘s delight in having another horse race to cover 24/7 that gives them an excuse to avoid real news — like deployment of US troops to Israel? I know, I know. They don’t do it anyway.

Now that Iowa has rendered its decision on the Republican candidates, let’s take a quick look at the three top vote getters.

M + i + t + t. His win by eight votes provided the thinnest margin of victory in Iowa caucus history. In a nutshell, Romney believes that giving a free rein to private enterprise will take care of providing jobs and healthcare as well as safeguarding our security around the world. But we can quickly move on to his challengers since his public pronouncements consist mainly of whatever it takes to become his party‘s nominee.

Rick. Santorum’s advocacy for making contraceptives illegal is what I imagine a taser hit to the midsection would feel like. [It is not so long ago that women in many states, including Massachusetts, could not access information about birth control or purchase contraceptive devices.]

Enjoying further flexing of his patriarchal muscle, Santorum’s “bomb, bomb Iran” mantra is scary. Claiming to be an expert on Iran, Santorum informs us of the Iranian people‘s love for us and how they are waiting for us to rescue them from the mullahs. Does he really think that they have forgotten how we installed the Shah as dictator, set up the SAVAK, their secret police, and encouraged Saddam to wage war on them?

So guess where in the budget he would make his $5 trillion cuts over five years? Santorum wouldn’t want to take other people’s money, i.e. tax money, and just give it to poor people, i.e. blacks. He wants to motivate them to earn the money. However, he doesn’t mind taking “other people’s money” and giving it to Corporate America, to those who are truly in desperate circumstances.

So we get this guy’s drift.

Ron. Paul has tapped into the longing of many Americans for an end to our military adventures overseas. In addition to ending the wars, Paul would withdraw all US troops stationed in more than a hundred countries around the world. He calls for a return to the responsibility to declare war that is given to Congress by our Constitution.

Paul would cut a trillion from the federal budget in his first year as president. This appeals to many people who agree that the military/industrial complex needs a haircut.

Okay. What would happen to members of the military who would come home from overseas needing employment and/or long-term medical care if no government assistance were available? An end to military contracts would mean a ton of lay-offs and more in the ranks of the unemployed.

Government wouldn’t have the money to help them out since Paul wants to eliminate nearly all taxes, including income taxes. Would the private sector be able, and willing, to rearrange its priorities to fill the gap?

Paul has a strong commitment to personal freedom, to individual liberty, and would repeal the odious Patriot Act. Yet goes too far in his belief that if we just took care of ourselves we would have no need for those intrusive government services like health care and Social Security.

That’s the thing about Paul. He often has a sound analysis of our difficulties, but manages to come up with wrong solutions.

Rove & Brown Square Off Against E. Warren

Karl Rove, a well-known Republican strategist, is a wizard at attacking the opposition. His favorite tactic?  Make an opponent’s strength a liability. A well-known example was his attack on John Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign. Kerry’s war hero reputation had always been a vote-getter, but Rove’s swiftboating ads painted Kerry as a liar who disgraced all veterans.

Now Rove is at it again. Wall Street, Washington, and the rest of the country know Massachusetts Democratic senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren as a fierce and fearless critic of high-level financial corruption.  Rove’s Crossroads organization recently released an ad pushing the fantasy that she and Wall Street are the best of friends.

Unbelievable. It’s Rove’s client, Republican Scott Brown, who is in tight, very tight, with Wall Street. Brown wants to keep the Senate seat that he won in a 2010 special election. Wall Street hedge funds, banks, financial services, insurance and telecommunication companies, mega corporations, military contractors, and the owner of most of the country’s coal mines want him to keep it, too. To date, they have lavished more largesse on Brown than on 98 other Senators.

Scott Brown, in fact, is becoming known as “Wall Street’s Senator.”

A couple of weeks ago when he had the chance to vote for a bill that, if passed, would have brought 22,000 jobs to our state as well as ending the tax break for the wealthy, he voted “NO.” It would be hard to find a more stark example of his priorities.

Brown is covering up his work for Wall Street by claiming in his latest ad that he has been working hard for his Massachusetts constituents. This latest piece of fluff (another example of Rove’s work?) ends with the voiceover telling the television audience that Scott is working to bring jobs to the Commonwealth and asking viewers to call Scott and tell him to keep working to bring good jobs to Massachusetts. It is shameless. 

Later, in a laughable vote, he was the only Republican to vote “YES” on the failed attempt by Senate Democrats to confirm Richard Cordray to head the  Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Elizabeth Warren is rightly credited with establishing. Seems he wants to find a way to also get in tight with Massachusetts voters. Can’t have it both ways, Scott.

Pearl Harbor: Was December 7, 1941, a Day of Infamy ? or Deceit?

Did President Roosevelt provoke Japan to attack us?

One of several enduring myths about World War II is that dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved the lives of thousands of American servicemen by making a ground invasion of Japan unnecessary. The truth is that the US Air Force had virtually leveled sixty-seven Japanese cities, destroying that country's ability to carry on the war, and Japanese diplomats were already seeking to arrange an armistice through neutral countries.

This myth about how the war ended is a companion piece to the one about how it began. With the seventieth anniversary coming up, it is a good time to review the events that led to the attack.

Robert B. Stinnett dedicated his book, Day of Deceit, to John Ross, a Democratic member of Congress from California, who wrote the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that was signed into law by President Johnson on July 4, 1965. This Act made Stinnett's work possible as well as the work of many other truth tellers.

Published in 2000, Stinnett's book documents President Franklin D. Roosevelt's maneuvers to provoke Japan to attack us as well as demonstrating that FDR knew the attack was on its way. It was a surprise to millions here and abroad, but not to our president, several of his aides, and various military personnel. Even Winston Churchill knew.

Roosevelt had been re-elected for a third term in November 1940 by a huge landslide in spite of his preparations for war and assurances that he would "never send our boys to war." In a meeting with the president a month before the election, Admiral James O. Richardson had not only strenuously objected to using Oahu as the base for the Pacific Fleet rather than San Diego, but had also disapproved of Roosevelt's willingness "to lose -a cruiser or two" if Japan decided to retaliate from our harassing their shipping and naval operations. Consequently, he was relieved of his command on February 1, 1941, and replaced by Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel.

The information that Stinnett obtained through FOIA showed that the last straw for the Japanese had been Roosevelt's placing an embargo on shipments of petroleum products, iron, steel and metal products to Japan. Through first time interviews with radio intercept operators that he backs up with copies of the actual messages that military cryptographers decoded, translated, and analyzed, Stinnett shows incontrovertibly that FDR knew the Japanese fleet was on its way.

Many military figures as well as historians believe that US cryptographers did not crack Japanese codes until some months after Pearl Harbor. Stinnett's research shows that all the Japanese codes of which there were many had been broken before the war. Another belief that still circulates here is that the Japanese maintained a radio silence. Contrary to their orders, however, the ship's commanders began communicating with one another almost immediately after getting underway.

From February through December 6th of 1941, Admiral Kimmel was kept out of the loop. He did not know that the Japanese planned to attack the Pacific fleet that was clustered at Honolulu or the date.

Stinnett writes of the attack: "At 9:35 a.m. the Japanese ended their raid and began returning to their ships. They left a heavy toll on Oahu: there were 2,273 Army and Navy dead, 1,119 wounded. Of the 101 warships in the anchorage, sixteen suffered major damage. Five were permanently out of World War II: Utah, Oklahoma, Arizona, Cassin and Downes. The Army Air Force lost 96 planes and the Navy and Marine air bases lost 92." Close to a hundred civilians were killed by the shelling of the area by US warships.

The Japanese planes could have inflicted a more severe setback for the US if they had bombed the dry docks, repair capabilities, and machine shops and had blown up the oil reserves.

In his opening statement to Congress on Dec. 8th, President Roosevelt said, "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." Within an hour, Congress issued a declaration of war.

The last of many official investigations came in 1995 at the behest of Kimmel's remaining son and grandsons. Both Kimmel and General Walter Short, Commander of the US Army's Hawaiian Department were made the scapegoats for the attack, demoted and disgraced. Their families wanted Congress to recognize their service to their country and to restore their rank posthumously. But like previous investigations, a cover-up was still in place.

A partial exoneration, Wikipedia notes, came about when "on May 25, 1999, the U.S. Senate voted to recommend both officers be exonerated on all charges, citing 'denial to Hawaii commanders of vital intelligence available in Washington.'" But neither President Clinton nor President Bush chose to act on this recommendation.

The picture of the Japanese that resulted from this "sneak" attack probably contributed to the acceptance by the American people of the decision to round up all Japanese and those of Japanese ancestry and put them in detention camps for the duration. A sad chapter in our history.

One might also say that another result was that FDR's willingness to sacrifice nearly 3000 lives in order to jolt the country into going to war was one more link in the chain of US presidents who have lied in order to wage war.

Stinnett, himself, writes, "The wisdom and moral justification for the decision to provoke Japan into a bloody and terrible war that ultimately took millions of lives will be argued over for many years by people of good faith and from all political persuasions."

Memo to Elizabeth Warren:

From a superannuated woman pol to a newbie

When your name hit our computer screens in Massachusetts this past summer as a possible candidate to retake Ted's Senate seat, I thought that you might be unfamiliar with the rather rocky political terrain here in your home state. So here is some advice, probably unwanted and maybe unneeded, but that's okay, I understand.

Two things:

1. Organize a group of "Independents for Elizabeth Warren." National news outlets and political pundits have wondered how a liberal state like Massachusetts could elect a Republican to replace Kennedy. One factor is that the Party leadership here is composed of moderates. Another is that few recognize that the number of unenrolled in this state equals the number of Democrats. In a second go-round, "indies" can again make the difference. You will need them on your side.
2. Leave yourself the space to run a solid positive campaign by disconnecting your campaign operation from the chore of having to reply to what will be a steady stream of invective from the Republican Party.

You can't leave this task to the likes of the Democratic State Committee because Democrats, with the exception of Reps Weiner (we miss you, Tony) and Grayson (it will be good to have you back, Alan), do not have a clue on how to go head-to-head with Republican attack dogs.

An organization similar to Bold Progressives could run a TV ad, for example, that shows S. Brown soliciting D. Koch for money for his campaign. Let them be the ones to publicize Scott's voting record so that those of us on the ground can get on message and help get the word out through letters, columns, emails and even leafleting at supermarkets.

From a loyal supporter