The Isocracy Network interviews Mr. Carson on the theory and practice of mutualism, worker self-management, anarchist thinkers and his critics.

3 Nov 09 | The Isocracy Network

Kevin Carson, an American political theorist and a contemporary leader in discussions concerning mutualism and author of three extremely important books on co-operation, mutualism and capitalism. Describing his politics as being “the outer fringes of both free market libertarianism and socialism”, he certainly will find a welcoming audience among our group—which is why he’s been asked several difficult questions.

“The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand” is available in HTML format and Studies in Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective are both available as PDF files.

Firstly, thank you Kevin for agreeing to this interview with The Isocracy Network.

Thanks for inviting me.

Could you begin by giving a description of mutualism from the initial definition offered by the anarchist, Proudhon, to contemporary examples and your own involvement in this sort of analysis of political economy?

Well, first of all, it’s important to distinguish between mutualism as a general form of praxis, and mutualism as a theory. Mutualist practices (friendly societies and lodges, guilds, arrangements for mutual aid, etc.) are probably old as the human race. Proudhon, Owen, Warren, et al simply created a theoretical framework that emphasized such forms of organization as a building block of society. It’s a bit like the centipede trying to figure out how it’s been walking all this time, or the man who was astonished to learn he’d been speaking in prose all along and didn’t even know it.

For that matter, there have been important anarchist thinkers like Kropotkin who emphasized mutual aid and other mutual organizations, without in any strict sense being mutualists. Cooperatives and mutuals have been central to the counterinstitution-building of much of the decentralist Left in the U.S. since the 1960s, but their thought is not explicitly mutualist either.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that most of the important examples of mutualist practice (the cooperative movement, the local currency and alternative credit movements, etc.) are not explicitly or self-consciously mutualist in ideology.

Having read Proudhon for some years, his thought is so complex and at times even seemingly self-contradictory, that I still hesitate to summarize it. But I’d venture to say, as an approximation, that his programme centered on: 1) abolishing artificial property rights in land and artificial scarcity of credit, so that the working class could secure cheap access to the prerequisites of production; and 2) organizing the economy around associations of producers. Of course Proudhon was an important founding thinker for anarchism as a whole as well as for mutualism; so these ideas, in modified form, have heavily influenced later collectivist, communist and syndicalist variants of anarchism.

Mutualist praxis was central to the Owenite movement in the U.K. (e.g. Owenite craft unions organized cooperative production and distribution by strikers in their own shops), as well as such things as the Rochedale cooperatives, the Chartists, and land colonization movements. Owenism, by way of Christian socialism and guild socialism, probably had a significant (if indirect) influence on distributism.

In the U.S. mutualism’s primary founder was the Owenite Josiah Warren. Warrenism, cross-pollinated with J.K. Ingalls’ occupancy-and-use view of land ownership and William Greene’s mutual banking theories, together led to the plumbline individualism of Benjamin Tucker. Tucker focused almost entirely on the abolition of artificial property rights and privilege in land and credit, assuming that when the legal props to rent and interest were removed and cheap land and credit were universally available, the forms of organization would take care of themselves. He displayed almost no interest whatever in cooperatives, associations for mutual aid, etc., as such.

Dyer Lum, John Beverley Robinson, and Clarence Swartz, all heavily influenced by Tucker, supplemented his focus on eliminating monopolies with some positive speculation on cooperative forms of organization; in so doing, they represented a partial fusion of Tucker’s version of individualism with the older cooperativist tradition of Proudhon and Owen. Lum, in particular, was also friendly to the radical labor movement and had fairly close ties to the I.W.W.

Would a highly successful large worker’s cooperatives, like the John Lewis Partnership in the U.K., and the Mondragón Corporation in Spain [centered in Basque Country] serve as evidence that mutualist economics can and does work in the large scale? Are credit unions evidence that mutualist economics can replace capitalist banking?

Although I’m quite friendly to both Mondragon and credit unions, and consider their influence to be decidedly positive, I believe their form is still distorted considerably by the capitalist milieu within which they exist. I like Mondragon’s federated system of cooperative producers, distributors and banks within a single umbrella organization. But it’s much too centralized a system in my opinion, with worker representation only effected at the level of the board of directors for the system as a whole; below the level of the Mondragon system as a whole, it’s a fairly top-down system of conventional management, with no significant self-management at the level of individual departments or factories.

I would greatly prefer local markets with lots of stand-alone cooperative manufacturing shops on the Emilia-Romagna model, integrated with cooperative banks in some sort of barter or local currency network of the sort promoted by Tom Greco.

Most credit unions, unfortunately, have adopted the culture of the conventional banking industry, and have almost no ideological affinity for the larger cooperative or counter-economy movement. Of course they are still greatly preferable to capitalist banks; being controlled by many small, local depositors, they are far less prone to the excesses of the capitalist banking system that we’ve seen in recent years.

Proudhon, although arguing that he opposed the idea of individuals deriving an income through rent and investments, said that he never wished “to forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree” such activities. A contemporary mainstream economist may argue that Proudhon’s position here would be particularly utopian in those markets that have high barriers to entry or other monopolistic features, that a worker’s cooperative versus an entrenched capitalist enterprise in such a market would require a miracle on the scale of David vs, Goliath for success.

That sounds a bit like Tucker’s pessimistic view of things in his later years, when he seemed resigned to the idea that the large industrial trusts had grown to the point that their market power would persist even after the Four Monopolies were removed.

I think such a view neglects the extent to which capital-intensiveness is a source of high overhead cost and inefficiency, and is only made artificially profitable by the state’s subsidies and protections. In fact production as such has become far less capital-intensive over the past three decades, with the old mass-production core outsourcing increasing shares of total production to flexible manufacturing networks and job-shops, and some of them retaining little more than control over marketing and “intellectual property.” The development of cheap, small-scale CNC tools in the 1970s meant that the capital outlays required for manufacturing imploded by one or two orders of magnitude. That was the beginning of a long shift from older mass-production industry to Emilia-Romagna, the Toyota supplier network, the job-shops of Shenzhen and Shanghai, etc.

The process continues even further in the same direction with the desktop manufacturing revolution of recent years: cheap, homebrew CNC machines scalable to the small shop and garage.

When physical capital costs are so low, most of the financial role of the old industrial core is becoming redundant. And with small-scale production driven by local orders on a lean, demand-pull, JIT basis, marketing is similarly redundant.

“Intellectual property” is the main surviving buttress to the old corporate walls, and it’s becoming increasingly unenforceable.

A follower of Henry George would argue in the realm of natural resources it would be impossible for success and that land-rents should be socialised. How would you respond to these claims?

I’m quite friendly to George, and think the lines between individualism and Georgism are a lot less harsh than (say) Tucker would have believed. But I believe a great deal of rent could be eliminated simply by removing subsidies to economic centralization and positive externalities created by taxpayers—not to mention by removing state enforcement of title to vacant and unimproved land. If as much urban infrastructure as possible were funded by user fees, and cities broken up into lots of mixed-use neighborhoods in which residential areas had their own miniature “downtown” cores, differential rent would be far less significant. I think a majority of George’s aims could be achieved by Tucker’s means, or even by a throughgoing application of Rothbard’s means.

With examples of worker’s self-management in the former Yugoslavia, and modelling by economists such as Jaroslav Vanek and Benjamin Ward, it has been shown in some cases (especially in critical infrastructure) it is advantageous for labor-managed firms, in their objective of increasing income per worker, to either lay-off workers or—like a monopolistic capitalist firm – to reduce productivity and thus derive monopoly profits. How would a contemporary version of mutualism prevent these problems?

It’s been a long time since I read Vanek’s work on worker-managed economies, but my immediate reaction is that there’s probably no fool-proof set of governance rules. When the firm is controlled by capital-owners, they’ll behave in such a way as to maximize returns on capital; when it’s controlled by managers, as in most large Western corporations, they’ll maximize benefits to management at the expense of both labor and capital. At least in a worker-managed firm, the decisions will reflect the interests of a bare majority, which can’t be said of the other two mechanisms. Beyond that, I think the answer to the kind of behavior you describe lies in exit as much as in voice: the lower the capitalization requirements and the lower the barrier to entry for most forms of production, and the lower the cost threshold for comfortable subsistence, the less catastrophic changes in employment will be. I’d like to see an economy where a much larger share of total consumption needs are met through production for subsistence or barter in the household/informal sector, and the average time spent in wage employment is much less than at present.

That would mean a significantly larger share of the population would be self-employed than at present, a very large share would work hours that we would regard as “part-time,” household arrangements for pooling wages and hoarding labor-time would be much more resilient, and even wage-earners would tend to accept as normal prolonged periods of unemployment during which they lived off subsistence resources while waiting for a job to their liking.

Pro-capitalist neoliberals, such as George Reismann, Roderick T. Long have criticised your advocacy of mutualism. Reisman and Long both argue that you do not support John Locke’s ownership of landed property that has been mixed with labour or, to use the peculiarly U.S. vernacular, “homesteading”. It seems that both this critics have fundamentally misunderstood Locke’s concept of land ownership, which recognises a public cost for exclusion and use in addition to the right of added value. How do you respond to these criticisms?

To be frank, I can’t say with any degree of confidence what Reisman understands about anything. But I think Long acknowledged Locke’s Proviso and explicitly characterized his own position as “non-Proviso Lockeanism.” I’m not a Georgist myself, although I’d be well-disposed to a local property rules system based on some form of common ownership and community collection of rent. In any case, justifiably or not, when answering Lockean critics I tend to tacitly work from the premise that “Lockean” means “non-Proviso Lockean.” And for the most part, I think a radical and consistent application of non-Proviso Lockean rules would go most of the way toward achieving the aims of the Tucker-Ingalls land theory.

… all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous band of nature: … Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property… For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.

–John Locke, Of Civil Government – Second Treatise

For that matter, over time I’ve come to see the bounderies between the Tucker-Ingalls and non-Proviso Lockean systems as less distinct, and to perceive some practical problems with the Tucker system (at least the more radical variant–he seems to promote different versions of the system at different times). At times Tucker himself seemed to concede the existence of house-rent, but to argue that the nullification of titles to vacant land would (through market competition) cause the land-rent component of rent to disappear and overall rent to fall to the value of rent on buildings. Now, to me, that seems to imply that Tucker wasn’t necessarily (at least at times) dead-set against absentee ownership in principle. That variant of his land theory, at least, seems to imply that the important thing was to eliminate large-scale absentee title to vacant and unimproved land.

In any case, I tend to think that doing so would go a long way to eliminating landlord rent through market competition.

Another critic, Walter Block argues that you are actually some sort of Marxist because you use the labour theory of value for deriving a theory of exploitation. It would seem that (a) Block is unaware that Adam Smith and David Ricardo also used the labour theory of value and (b) using it to calculate a rate of exploitation is hardly the same as using it as an anchor to exchange values.

I think the Austrians also, for the most part, exaggerate the extent to which marginalism/subjectivism is a radical departure from classical labor and cost theories. It’s closer to the truth to say that marginalism provides a mechanism for explaining the tendency that Ricardo et al described. The marginalist/subjectivist claim that “utility determines value” is true in a technical sense, if you add the qualification “at any point in time given the snapshot of supply and demand in the spot market.” But it’s not true in the ordinary way we use those words. If you allow changes in supply over time to enter the picture, then supply alters until the utility of the marginal unit reflects the cost of producing it—i.e., exactly what Ricardo said.

It makes far more sense to treat marginalism as a complement or fulfillment to classical political economy, rather than as supplanting it.

Politically, where do you think mutualists should align themselves. Should they spend their efforts in building cooperative organisations, like Proudhon’s advocacy of dual power? Or is there some mileage to be made in being involved in existing political organisations, such as the Labour Party—Cooperative Party groups in the U.K.? What about in the United States; is the Libertarian Party salvageable?

I think by far the most important, and the most interest, of our tasks is actually building the kind of society we want, and doing so so far as possible without regard to the state. But there’s something to be said for putting external pressure on the state, and participating in political coalitions to remove as much state interference with our activities as possible. Of course the primary emphasis of such coalition-building should be forming pressure groups, rather than attempting to become part of a governing coalition.

A lot of this parallels Daniel DeLeon’s disputes with the anarchists in the I.W.W. DeLeon argued that “building the structure of the new society in the shell of the old” (i.e. building industrial unions to serve as organs of self-management) would not be enough by itself. So long as the capitalists controlled the state and its armed force, and the significant minority of people whose class interest was tied up with it, there was the danger of the “Iron Heel” being brought to bear against counter-organizations. On the other hand, political victory alone wasn’t sufficient; he gave the example of threats by Jay Gould to organize a national capital strike and lockout if the socialists ever captured the national government. Workers, DeLeon argued, should be focused on building counter-institutions, but also be prepared to seize the commanding heights of the state long enough to dismantle them and prevent them from being used against themselves.

What we need is a primary focus on institution building, without entirely neglecting the need for a political movement to run interference for the counter-institutions.

What’s more, there’s the very real danger an authoritarian state might make a concerted effort to stamp out the counter-economy through (for example) the kinds of totalitarian surveillance Richard Stallman described in “The Right to Read,” intensified licensing and zoning to suppress low-capital producers, etc. It’s a waste of effort and probably corrupting to seriously run our people for Congress or the White House. But it’s perfectly sensible to carry out propaganda against legislation like the DMCA, to support lobbying campaigns organized by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and NORML, etc.

Proudhon argued that through a society of contracts between individuals, a federal structure could arise. This of course must presume that individuals have the capacity to engage in uncoerced contractual arrangements. What other political requirements do you think have a particular priority in breaking down authoritarian elements in statist rule?

Well, it could be that the authoritarian elements of statist rule will persist on paper right up to the point at which they become irrelevant. But in my opinion it’s at least worth a shot to pressure the state from outside, and form ad hoc alliances to pressure the state, in order to minimize its interference and fend off attempts at intensified interference. That includes local efforts against licensing and zoning that impede household microenterprise and micromanufacturing, local pressure to defend peaceful squatters and vagrants, pressure against the regulatory suppression of self-organized mutual-aid efforts, pressure at the national level against further expanding “intellectual property” law, and so forth.

Kevin, thank you for your time and views.

Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society, contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective. Mr. Carson has also written for a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and his own Mutualist Blog.

How U.S. intervention in Colombia escalating its conflict with Venezuela.

by Zach Mason

24 Nov 09 | Socialist Worker

Recurring tensions between neighboring South American countries Venezuela and Colombia have reached new heights in recent weeks.

The current conflict centers around the October 30 signing of a military pact between Colombia and the U.S. that gives the American armed forces the use of seven military bases in Colombia, and grants immunity to U.S. soldiers operating in there.

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and President Barack Obama claim that the U.S. military presence in Colombia will serve only to combat narco-traffickers and leftist guerillas, not threaten Colombia’s neighbors. Yet as the Venezuelanalysis.com Web site reports, this claim “is contradicted by the 2010 fiscal year budget of the U.S. Air Force Military Construction Program, which states that… the pact ‘provides a unique opportunity for full-spectrum operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere’ and ’supports mobility missions by providing access to the entire continent.’”

What’s more, the agreement on military bases follows the reactivation of the U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet, historically used by Washington to intimidate and attack countries that challenge its agenda in the Caribbean and Latin America.

For years, the U.S. has pumped money and weapons into Colombia and sent military advisers there in the name of fighting “narco-terrorism.” As a wave of left or center-left governments have been elected in Latin America, military aid to Colombia has swelled, making it the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world.

The October 30 U.S.-Colombia pact will dramatically escalate ongoing U.S. military intervention in the region. In this context, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has called on his country’s armed forces to prepare for the possibility of conflict, declaring that “we must prepare for war…. This will be the guarantee for peace.”

Chávez also took the opportunity to call on Obama to give back his Nobel Peace Prize, saying, “He keeps sending more troops to Afghanistan, and the war is spreading across this part of Eurasia, Pakistan, [and] in Iraq, they are still bombing children and entire families, and they are supporting the coup in Honduras.”

The U.S. refusal to try to reverse the right-wing Honduras coup has given a big boost to right-wing opposition groups across Latin America. So it was little wonder that Venezuela rejected an offer by the U.S. State Department to mediate the dispute between Colombia and Venezuela by helping to find “practical solutions.”

Chávez responded by calling the U.S. government “the champion of cynicism,” saying, “United States, if you want practical solutions, withdraw the Yankee bases in Colombia and free those fraternal people, free Colombia.” A statement issued by the Venezuela Ministry of People’s Power for Foreign Affairs noted, “The strengthening of the U.S. military presence is aimed at demonstrating its global power to dissuade, under the threat of military intervention, countries like the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela that are critical of imperialist U.S. policies.”

Venezuela froze diplomatic relations with Colombia back in July when the latter first announced plans to allow U.S. military access to its bases. This was the third such diplomatic clash since 2005.

In that year, Venezuela recalled its diplomats from Bogota after it was discovered that Colombian agents had been operating illegally inside Venezuela. Again, and more seriously, relations were frozen in March 2008 when Colombian forces bombed a guerilla encampment inside Ecuador, killing leftist rebels. The attack violated both international law and the sovereignty of Ecuador, an ally of Venezuela.

Since the signing of the U.S.-Colombian pact on bases, tensions have continued to mount, with a series of incidents on the Venezuela-Colombia border. On November 2, two soldiers in the Venezuelan National Guard were shot dead at a border crossing, most likely by Colombian paramilitaries who have been increasingly active inside Venezuela. Venezuela responded by closing and occupying the border crossing in question and sending thousands of troops to border regions.

The pressure rose still further in mid-November when Colombian armed forces captured four members of the Venezuelan National Guard on a boat on the Meta River, part of which constitutes the border between the two countries. The men were later deported to Venezuela, but Venezuela responded by blowing up two border bridges in the area that authorities claimed were being used by Colombian drug traffickers.

Whatever the details of the confrontation on the Meta River, Venezuela’s decision to brace for possible military conflict is based on a credible threat from across the Colombian border. Right-wing paramilitary groups have been a powerful force within Colombia for decades. Formed by local oligarchs, these private armies are the result of a narco-economy in which the line between traditional capitalists and drug lords is blurred—if it exists at all.

There’s also a great deal of overlap between the paramilitaries and the official Colombian military. Colombian President Uribe has himself been linked to the paramilitaries. A U.S. intelligence document from 1991 lists then-Senator Uribe as a “close personal friend of Pablo Escobar,” the notorious drug lord killed in 1993.

Since Uribe became president in 2002, a number of Uribe’s close political allies have been questioned or charged in relation to paramilitary activity. So while Colombia acts as a proxy of U.S. imperialism, paramilitaries act as a proxy of the Colombian state and ruling class. This makes Colombian paramilitaries operating in Venezuela a literal vanguard of reaction.

Venezuelan Vice President Ramón Carrizález called the recent killings “part of a destabilization plan that we’ve been reporting.” In 2004, dozens of Colombian paramilitaries were captured deep inside Venezuela when a plot to overthrow the government was uncovered. Whether or not these forces are in direct contact with U.S. intelligence, they are clearly working in concert with U.S. interests.

The prospect of a dramatic increase in the U.S. military presence in Colombia is certainly ominous for the region’s leftist governments—Ecuador and Bolivia as well as Venezuela. These countries are already under pressure from both internal right-wing oppositions and imperialist intervention. Even the center-left government of Brazil, which has done Washington’s bidding by running the United Nations occupation of Haiti, expressed sharp opposition to the U.S.-Colombian deal on military bases.

The growing U.S. military presence in Latin America poses a challenge to the antiwar movement and the left in the U.S. We must be prepared to oppose the imperialist war machine, wherever and whenever it goes on the offensive—whether directly in Afghanistan and Iraq, or indirectly through its clients like Colombia.

RELATED:

• Chávez, Paranoid or Baited?
• ‘Document Approved’ to Begin Replacing Dollar in Latin America
• Chomsky’s Lectern: Coups, UNASUR and the U.S.

Report from CNN (5:03):

Jeremy Scahill, leading journalist on Blackwater/Xe, broke the story at The Nation. He discussed it at Democracy Now! and on “Morning Joe” at msnbc this morning (8:05):

From Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan” – 23 Nov 09:

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus….

According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have “conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up,” he said, adding, “They have a sizable force in Pakistan–not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way–but to support a legitimate contract that’s classified for JSOC.” Blackwater’s Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of Blackwater SELECT “was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it.” Some of the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as aid workers. “Nobody even gives them a second thought.”…

In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. “That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don’t know if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan,” he said. “So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?”…

The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said, “that’s not entirely accurate.” While he concurred with the military intelligence source’s description of the JSOC and CIA programs, he pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan, not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral’s main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.

Counterterrorism operations have been dubbed by human rights groups and military officials as “death from above”, as strikes have killed 49 civilians for every terrorist leader assassinated. It’s uncontroversial such civilian casualties are counter-intuitive to “winning the hearts of minds of the population”, as Gen McChrystal reported to the president was crucial to avoid “mission failure”.

Mr. Scahill, adding that the Obama Administration “has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US lawmakers over civilian deaths” and cites the June drone attack of a funeral where as many as 60 were killed, continues:

The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, as previously reported in the New York Times, but added that Blackwater is working on JSOC’s drone bombings as well. “It’s Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC,” said the source. When civilians are killed, “people go, ‘Oh, it’s the CIA doing crazy shit again unchecked.’ Well, at least 50 percent of the time, that’s JSOC [hitting] somebody they’ve identified through HUMINT [human intelligence] or they’ve culled the intelligence themselves or it’s been shared with them and they take that person out and that’s how it works.”

The military intelligence source says that the CIA operations are subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings. “Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now and the CIA knows that,” he says. “Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don’t care. If there’s one person they’re going after and there’s thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That’s the mentality.” He added, “They’re not accountable to anybody and they know that. It’s an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?”

In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and Defense Intelligence Agency camps inside Pakistan, according to the military intelligence source….

The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was defense secretary, JSOC was deployed to commit some of the “darkest acts” in part to keep them concealed from Congress. “Everything can be justified as a military operation versus a clandestine intelligence performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to Congress,” said the source. “They were aware of that and they knew that, and they would exploit it at every turn and they took full advantage of it. They knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would happen because A, it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and B, who was going to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which was on all of the PowerPoints: ‘Preparing the Battlefield.’”…

The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in an already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go wrong, it’s the contractors’ fault, not the government’s. But the widespread use of contractors also raises serious legal questions, particularly when they are a part of lethal, covert actions. “We are using contractors for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention,” said Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. “In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it’s almost a fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations.” Addicott added, “If we were subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That’s one of the reasons we’re not members of the International Criminal Court.”

Today, at Strike the Root, I posted an article by Jonathan Cook at The Electronic Intifada of an Israeli judge’s “historic ruling… when he decided that an Arab teenager needed ‘protection’ from the justice system and ordered that he not be convicted despite being found guilty of throwing stones at a police car during a protest against Israel’s attack last winter on Gaza”. Judge Yuval Shadmi wrote in the verdict: “I will say that the state is not authorized to caress with one hand the Jewish ‘ideological’ felons, and flog with its other hand the Arab ‘ideological’ felons.” Robert Fisk, in a recent lecture, discussed the propaganda efforts in the West that refute the e-mails I’ve received from those outraged by the judge’s ruling (2:13):

Brian Ross and Matthew Cole broke the story last night on the ABC News website. Their report on “Good Morning America” from Thursday morning (2:51):

Until March 2004, “the site was a riding academy and café owned by a local family” in Antavillai, Lithuania. Then, it was purchased by Elite L.L.C., a front corporation of the Central intelligence Agency, and used as a “secret ‘torture center’” in the Bush Administration’s “extraordinary rendition” kidnapping and torture program, Brian Ross and Matthew Cole report at ABC News from documents provided by Lithuanian officials and confirmed by one current official and a former U.S. intelligence official.

John Sifton, human rights lawyer and executive director of One World Research, investigates human rights abuses worldwide. He recently told Anastasia Churkina at Russia Today that C.I.A. agents kept detainees alive just to keep torturing them and found the C.I.A. “set up extensive detention programs around the world” that started in Thailand and expanded to Afghanistan, Jordan, Poland, Romania and another unknown. The third European site, he was told, bordered Poland and many C.I.A. flights went in and out of Lithuania.

After then-President George W. Bush pledged support for Lithuanian efforts to join the NATO alliance in 2002, Mr. Ross and Mr. Cole report, the government “agreed to allow the C.I.A. prison”. Coincidentally, Lithuania formally joined NATO in March 2004.

ABC News first reported that Lithuania was one of three eastern European countries, along with Poland and Romania, where the CIA secretly interrogated suspected high-value al-Qaeda terrorists, but until now the precise site had not been confirmed….

Former CIA officials directly involved or briefed on the highly classified secret prison program tell ABC News that as many as eight suspects were held for more than a year in the Vilnius prison. Flight logs viewed by ABC News confirm that CIA planes made repeated flights into Lithuania during that period. In November 2005, after public disclosures about the program, the prison was closed, as was another “black site” in Romania….

Former CIA officials told ABC News that the prison in Lithuania was one of eight facilities the CIA set-up after 9/11 to detain and interrogate top al-Qaeda operatives captured around the world. Thailand, Romania, Poland, Morocco, and Afghanistan have also been identified as countries that housed secret prisons for the CIA. President Barack Obama ordered all the sites closed shortly after taking office in January.

The Lithuanian prison was the last “black” site opened in Europe, after the CIA’s secret prison in Poland was closed down in late 2003 or early 2004.

“It obviously took a lot of effort to keep [the prison] secret,” said John Sifton, whose firm One World Research investigates human rights abuses. “There’s a reason this stuff gets kept secret.”

“It’s an embarrassment, and a crime.”

Though, the C.I.A. detention program was smaller than that of the military, Mr. Sifton found it was “the one that saw the biggest abuses and most serious forms of torture” and was exponentially clandestine. The Agency’s secret prisons are commonly known as “black sites” which served as a “model” for the military’s.

He added that the Obama Administration has prevented the C.I.A. from detaining people and using “black sites”, but are still permitted to interrogate detainees.

“Domas Grigaliunas, a former counterintelligence officer with the Lithuanian military, said it was widely known among the Lithuanian secret services that U.S. intelligence partners had built the site, although its original purpose was kept highly classified,” Craig Whitlock reports at The Washington Post, adding:

Grigaliunas said he was asked in 2004 by the deputy director of Lithuanian military intelligence to develop plans to help a “foreign partner” that was interested in bringing individuals to Lithuania and concealing their whereabouts as part of a covert operation.…

Villagers who live in a crumbling apartment complex about 100 yards from the site recalled how English-speaking construction workers descended on a small, shuttered horse-riding academy there in 2004. They said the workers refused to answer questions about what they were doing but brought shipping containers filled with building materials. The workers also excavated large amounts of soil; with all the digging, residents said they assumed that part of the new facility was underground.

“If you got close, they would tell us, in English, to go away,” said a retired man who lives nearby and spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of retribution. “We were really wondering what they were up to. We even wondered if it was a Mafia drug operation or something.“

Lithuanian officials, including President Dalia Grybauskaite, denied the initial report from ABC News with the Polish and Romanian governments. She would not comment to them on the most recent report, though she said she harbored “indirect suspicions” and was not in power while the “black site” was reportedly sold to the Lithuanian State in 2007. “‘There are more important things in Lithuania than spending two days denying the gossip of ABC journalists,’ Foreign Minister Vygaudas Usackas told the Baltic News Service,” David Edwards reports at The Raw Story.

The extremely redacted C.I.A. Inspector General report found detainees faced mock executions, threats to kill and rape family members, waterboarding, extensive pressure point restriction, forced stress positions, sleep and light deprivation in custody. Not redacted was a case where a detainee was beaten to death by a private contractor.

Robert Fisk discusses why he continues to cover the ‘great human tragedy’ of the Middle East from Beirut, the ‘irrelevance’ of Osama bin Laden, President Obama’s ‘impotence’ being worse for the Middle East than George W. Bush and his Nobel Peace Prize (5:25):

Max Keiser, in the premier of his new show on Russia Today, comments on the U.S. funding the Taliban, President Barack Obama’s Asian tour proving U.S. economic desperation, global ‘de-dollarization’ and (of course) Wall Street crooks with Danny Schechter (27:03):

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Angola 3 News interviewed Jeanne Theoharris who wrote an article this April at The Nation on the arrest, imprisonment and legal battles of Syed Hashmi, a U.S. citizen imprisoned in New York City prison with “Guantánamo-like conditions”.

18 Nov 09 | Angola 3 News

Jeanne Theoharis is the author of an April, 2009 article in The Nation, entitled “Guantánamo At Home,” which focuses on the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of U.S. citizen Syed Hashmi in a New York City prison with Guantanamo-like conditions. Theoharis holds the endowed chair in women’s studies and is an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Syed Hashmi’s trial will begin in New York City on December 1. The website www.freefahad.com explains that: “Syed Hashmi, known to his family and friends as Fahad, was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1980, the second child of Syed Anwar Hashmi and Arifa Hashmi. Fahad immigrated with his family to America when he was three years old. His father said ‘We knew there would be many opportunities for us here in the United States. We came here to find the American dream.’ The large Hashmi family settled in Flushing, New York and soon developed deep roots throughout the tri-state area. Fahad graduated from Robert F. Wagner High School in 1998 and attended SUNY Stony Brook University. He transferred to Brooklyn College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2003. A devout Muslim, through the years Fahad established a reputation as an activist and advocate. In 2003, Fahad enrolled in London Metropolitan University in England to pursue a master’s degree in international relations, which he received in 2006. On June 6, 2006, Fahad was arrested in London Heathrow airport by British police based on an American indictment charging him with material support of Al Qaida. He was subsequently held in Belmarsh Prison, Britain’s most notorious jail.” For more information on the Hashmi case, also visit: www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org.

Angola 3 News: Can you please give us background on the arrest and prosecution of Syed Hashmi? For example, what are the charges against him? What is their evidence?

Jeanne Theoharis: In June 2006, Hashmi, who is a U.S. citizen, was arrested by the British police at Heathrow Airport (he was about to travel to Pakistan, where he has family) on a warrant issued by the U.S. government. In May 2007, he was extradited to the United States, the first U.S. citizen to be extradited under terrorism laws passed after 9/11. Since then, he has since been held in solitary confinement at Metropolitan Correctional Center (M.C.C.).

The U.S. government alleges that early in 2004, a man by the name of Junaid Babar, also a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. According to the government, Babar stored luggage containing raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks in Hashmi’s apartment and then Babar delivered these materials to the third-ranking member of al-Qa’ida in South Waziristan, Pakistan. In addition, Hashmi allegedly allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call other conspirators in terrorist plots.

The government has claimed that Babar’s testimony is the “centerpiece” of its case. Babar, who has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qa’ida, faces up to seventy years in prison. While awaiting sentence, he has agreed to serve as a government witness in terrorism trials in Britain and Canada as well as in Hashmi’s trial. Under a plea agreement reported in the media, Babar will receive a reduced sentence in return for his cooperation.

A3N: What can you tell us about Hashmi as a person, especially your personal experience of knowing him when he was a student of yours?

JT: Fahad was a student of mine at Brooklyn College in 2002. An outspoken Muslim student activist, Fahad wrote his senior seminar paper with me on the treatment of Muslim groups within the United States and the violations of civil rights and liberties that many groups were facing. Needless to say, this feels particularly chilling—and no longer academic—as we have now witnessed his own rights being violated.

A3N: Since his arrest, what have the conditions of his incarceration been?

JT: Under special administrative measures (SAMs) imposed in October 2007 by the former Attorney General, Hashmi must be held in solitary confinement and may not communicate with anyone inside the prison other than prison officials. Family visits are limited to one person every other week for one and a half hours and cannot involve physical contact. While his correspondence to members of Congress and other government officials is not restricted, he may write only one letter (of no more than three pieces of paper) per week to one family member. He may not communicate, either directly or through his attorneys, with the news media. He may read only designated portions of newspapers—and not until thirty days after their publication – and his access to other reading material is restricted. He may not listen to or watch news-oriented radio stations and television channels. He may not participate in group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring inside and outside his cell—including when he showers or relieves himself—and 23-hour lockdown. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation—when it is given—inside a cage.

As the expert testimony supplied by Hashmi’s attorneys in a pre-trial motion of December 2008 attests, the conditions of Hashmi’s detention may have severe physical and mental consequences and impair his mental state and ability to testify on his own behalf.

While former Acting Attorney General Keisler claimed that these measures are necessary because “there is substantial risk that [Hashmi’s] communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury to persons,” Hashmi was held with other prisoners in a British jail for eleven months without incident. The SAMs were renewed by Attorney General Mukasey in November 2008 and upheld by Judge Loretta Preska in January 2009, citing Hashmi’s “proclivity for violence.” There has been no change to the SAMs under the Obama Administration. They were renewed again by Attorney General Holder in early November 2009. Yet, Hashmi is not being charged and has never been charged with committing an actual act of violence.

Currently, according to research by The New York Times in February 2009, there are six people in the United States being held on pre-trial terrorism SAMs; three (including Hashmi) are under the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York, which has long served as a stepping stone to national political office.

A3N: Looking particularly at the harsh solitary confinement imposed on Hashmi, how is this officially justified? Do you think the stated reason is the actual motivation, or do you think there are other reasons for the solitary confinement and other harsh restrictions?

JT: My colleagues and I have begun to come to the conclusion that the use of prolonged solitary confinement is a tactic to ensure convictions. Such conditions weaken people mentally and the toll of sensory deprivation and isolation simultaneously makes people more eager to take a plea or not able to fully assist their counsel. Most experts agree it is torture (see Atul Gawande’s “Hellhole” in The New Yorker). While our public discussions have tended to see torture as a tactic to get information, in cases like Hashmi’s, torture is being used to help secure convictions.

A3N: How are the prion conditions for Hashmi in N.Y.C. different from those in Guantanamo?

JT: There are key similarities of prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation between Hashmi’s treatment at M.C.C. in lower Manhattan and what we have heard of the conditions at Guantanamo. However, there has been much less attention to these inhumane conditions within the United States.

The focus on prisons like Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Baghram stems, in part, from a larger post-civil rights paradigm that assumes the judicial process is now fair in the United States and relatively incorruptible and thus it was necessary to go outside of the U.S. courts to do the extreme bad things.

Rather, what made Guantanamo possible stemmed from domestic legal practices, many already in place and many others expanded after 9/11, which have continued almost unabated under the Obama Administration.

A3N: With Hashmi’s trial beginning on December 1, what are activists currently doing to support him?

JH: Theaters Against War began holding weekly vigils in October to draw attention to the inhumane conditions of confinement and the due process violations Hashmi and others are facing within the federal courts. Artists and actors such as Wallace Shawn, Kathleen Chalfant, Bill Irwin, Jan Maxwell, Betty Shamieh, and Christine Moore have performed at the vigils.

A3N: Any closing thoughts?

JH: Three central Constitutional issues have become clear in the treatment of Hashmi and others within the federal system: the inhumane conditions of confinement, the abridgement of due process rights , and the lack of 1st Amendment protections.

If these are not addressed, then moving the Guantánamo detainees into the federal system does little to return America to the rule of law, of which we are rightfully proud. I am reminded of that quote by former Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1967, “”It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of…those liberties…which [make] the defense of the nation worthwhile.”

Free Fahad: Part One (9:44):

Free Fahad: Part Two (3:36):

(h/t: InfoShop News)

Greg Miller at The Los Angeles Times reports the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) has “funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan’s intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks” to pay “for the capture or killing of wanted militants”, despite the known fact Inter-Services Intelligence (I.S.I.) “continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to al-Qa’ida members in Pakistan”. The relationship which began with the C.I.A. using the I.S.I. to funnel money to the mujahideen against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan about 30 years ago that “created the Taliban“, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari conceded in May.

C.I.A. Paid Millions of Dollars to I.S.I. Since 9/11: Report

16 Nov 09 | Indo-Asian News Service

The C.I.A. has paid millions of dollars to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (I.S.I.) since 9/11, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency’s annual budget, says a media report.

The I.S.I. also collected “tens of millions of dollars through a classified C.I.A. programme”, which pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday citing current and former U.S. officials.

An intense debate has been triggered within the U.S. government due to “long-standing suspicions that the I.S.I. continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to al-Qa’ida members in Pakistan”.

But U.S. officials have continued to make the payments as I.S.I.’s assistance is considered critical: “Almost every major terrorist plot this decade has originated in Pakistan’s tribal belt, where I.S.I. informant networks are a primary source of intelligence.”

The report went on to say that the payments to Pakistan are authorised under a covert programme initially approved by then president Bush and continued under President Obama.

“The I.S.I. has used the covert C.I.A. money for a variety of purposes, including the construction of a new headquarters in Islamabad, the capital. That project pleased C.I.A. officials because it replaced a structure considered vulnerable to attack; it also eased fears that the U.S. money would end up in the private bank accounts of I.S.I. officials.”

“What we didn’t want to happen was for this group of generals in power at the time to just start putting it in their pockets or building mansions in Dubai,” a former CIA operative was quoted as saying.

C.I.A. officials argue that their own disbursements—particularly the bounties for suspected terrorists—should be considered a bargain.

“They gave us 600 to 700 people captured or dead,” a former senior C.I.A. official, who worked with the Pakistanis, was quoted as saying.

“Getting these guys off the street was a good thing, and it was a big savings to (U.S.) taxpayers.”

Another U.S. intelligence official said Pakistan had made “decisive contributions to counter-terrorism”.

“They have people dying almost every day,” the official said. “Sure, their interests don’t always match up with ours. But things would be one hell of a lot worse if the government there was hostile to us.”

The I.S.I. is a highly compartmentalised intelligence service, with divisions that sometimes seem at odds with one another. Units that work closely with the C.I.A. are walled off from a highly secretive branch that has directed insurgencies in Afghanistan and Kashmir, The Los Angeles Times report said.

“There really are two I.S.I.’s,” the former C.I.A. operative said.

“On the counter-terrorism side, those guys were in lock-step with us,” the former operative said. “And then there was the ‘long-beard’ side. Those are the ones who created the Taliban and are supporting groups like Haqqani.”

The network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani has been accused of carrying out a series of suicide attacks in Afghanistan, including the 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

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Sayyid and I are swamped with work and finals preparations for Masters’ classes operating under the trimester format. The next week to ten days will not have as many posts as usual due our law school finals following these, finishing up group studies at The Council and finding new projects to pay the bills after these studies.

That said, today there will be added content from the both of us and Sayyid will be editing a lot of drafts to be posted throughout the weekend.

Also, I’m guest editing Strike The Root on Friday, so check that out.

Thank you so much for your readership, subscriptions and donations. We greatly appreciate them and will show it even more by expanding the media on the site going into the new year.

Posted in ---- Tagged: Little Alex, Little Alex in Wonderland, Sayyid, STR, Strike the Root ]]> http://littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/wonderland-whered-ya-go/feed/ 0 Little Alex http://littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/u-s-healthcare-in-crisis-an-fdr-interview-with-dr-mary-ruwart/ http://littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/u-s-healthcare-in-crisis-an-fdr-interview-with-dr-mary-ruwart/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:00:20 +0000 Stefan Molyneux http://littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com/?p=8630 ]]>

Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D. is a former pharmaceutical research scientist and Assistant Professor of Surgery. She has worked extensively with the disadvantaged in low-income housing and was a contender for the 1992 Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential nomination. Her scientific, political, and community activities have been profiled in several prestigious biographical works, including American Men and Women of Sciences, World’s Who’s Who of Women, International Leaders in Achievement, and Community Leaders of America (57:22):

Stefan Molyneux runs Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web. His books, podcasts, and videos are available free on the web. Mr. Molyneux accepts donations with the utmost gratitude.

The options on the table before the Obama Administration War Cabinet all involved escalating the occupation by as many as 80,000 troops. The president wants other options as he continues dithering.

President Barack Obama is not satisfied to execute on any of the options his national security team have brought to the table, “pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government”, the Associated Press (AP) reports tonight from a senior administration official. The Afghan government has shown itself to be nothing more or less than a brutal mafia. The druglords and warlords are now the taxmen—rightfully scrutinized for being immoral, but actually just acting as a government.

The news comes as Karl Eikenberry, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, “sent two classified cables to Washington in the past week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until President Hamid Karzai’s government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban’s rise”, The Washington Post reported earlier from senior officials.

At today’s meeting with the War Council, Mr. Obama entertained—what was referred to throughout the day as—”the four options”, which WaPo reported would cost around $1bn per thousand troops. Christi Parsons and Julian Barnes reported them at the Los Angeles Times as:

1. At least 40,000 additional troops, the ‘medium-risk’ option from General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of the U.S.-led occupation—the ‘low-risk’ option being an escalation of 80,000 troops;
2. 34,000 additional troops, including 23,000 for combat and support, 7,000 for the occupiers’ command base and 4,000 trainers, officials confirmed over the weekend;
3. 20,000 additional troops, the ‘high-risk’ option from Gen. McChrystal—”known by military planners as ‘the hybrid’,” WaPo reports, “to shore up security in 10 to 12 major population areas”; and
4. around 12,000 additional troops, supported by Senator John Kerry (D-MA), more geared toward counterterrorism operations, maintaining the same troop level for counterinsurgency.

Mr. Obama was “leaning toward” escalating the occupation by 34,000 and announcing it after his trip to Asia in a week, Jonathan Landay reported at McClatchy over the weekend.

“The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama’s resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely,” the AP reports tonight, adding: “The options presented to Obama by his War Council will now be amended.”

Since Mr. Obama began his presidential run in early 2007, he referred to the occupation of Afghanistan as a “war of necessity”. Leading political scientists, notably Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, see no reason for such an assessment.

Counterterrorism operations have been dubbed by human rights groups and military officials as “death from above”, as strikes have killed 49 civilians for every terrorist leader assassinated. It’s uncontroversial such civilian casualties are counter-intuitive to “winning the hearts of minds of the population”, as Gen McChrystal reported to the president was crucial to avoid “mission failure”.

The argument for shifting to a counterterrorism mission is the concern over the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, the possibility of Afghanistan or Pakistan becoming a ’safe haven’ or ‘base of operations’ for ‘terrorists to conduct operations against the U.S. and the fulfillment of juvenile revenge fantasies over 9/11.

Seymour Hersh wrote of the politics toward understanding the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal at The New Yorker over the weekend, of which Little Alex partially analyzed. He discussed the battle between the military and the White House over the Afghanistan occupation and his article with Rachel Maddow this evening (7:18):

Here at Wonderland, we’re not giving the president as much credit as Mr. Hersh. (In his defense, Mr. Hersh was probably not aware that the reports actually stated there was no indication Mr. Obama would cease to escalate the occupation, as Ms. Maddow mistook.) Our message to the president remains the same: Stop dithering and bring the troops home, now!

To execute a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its allies would need to commit at least another 100,000 troops to begin building an Afghan Security Force of 400,000. This assessment was made by us before military officials confirmed the number, 600,000, as the amount of counterinsurgent forces needed to begin stablizing Afghanistan.

“Nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try,” George Will wrote at WaPo over two months ago. “Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.”.

On Veterans Day, we’re reminded of the deaths of U.S. soldiers during war, but the casualties of war remain, recklessly, forgotten.

“On MSNBC, and the other cable hawkers of government propaganda this morning, veterans were absent, despite the constant invocation of Veterans Day,” Lew Rockwell, Jr., president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, commented. “All the photos and discussion were of active-duty troops in the various U.S. occupations. None of the kids with missing limbs or brain parts were shown, the actual veterans, nor that single-payer Hell, the V.A. medical system and its inmates. It was all lies about the glory of war, by a caw-cawing bunch of chickenhawks.”

In-action U.S. casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan total over 90,000, on record. “That includes a tire-screeching 75,134 dead, wounded-in-action, and medically evacuated due to illness, disease, or injury in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and 14,323 and counting in Afghanistan, or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF),” Kelley B. Vlahos reports at AntiWar.com, adding:

Larry Scott, who runs VAWatchdog.org, an invaluable daily monitor of ongoing issues affecting the 23.4 million living U.S veterans, said the 90,591 figure relating to OIF/OEF casualties is valid—and ultimately overwhelming. “People just forget, they don’t realize there is an ongoing cost of war. Whether you agree with the war or not is not the issue. We have to be ready to pay the price.”

Documents from the government and non-governmental organizations have found that 170,000 veterans of the Vietnam Counterinsurgency have committed suicide, Dahr Jamail reported at AntiWar Radio today. The Veterans Health Administration confirmed in an email dated 15 December 2007: 6,552 veterans commit suicide every year—126 every week, 18 every day. Any suicide survivor can attest to the fact that the casualties of every suicide are exponential to the statistic itself.

The RAND Corportation, according to the Online Journal in April 2008, stated around 300,000 troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering major depression or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—better known as shell shock—and nearly 370,000 received traumatic brain injuries.

Any native of a nation-state invaded by the U.S. Armed Forces can attest to the fact that for every U.S. casualty is a potential nationwide population of human beings and property and natural resources damaged or destroyed.

Mr. Obama won the 2008 presidential election with 52.9% of the vote. That was a year ago. Today, a CNN poll reports 56% of those polled oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan and 58% oppose the occupation as a whole.

Mr. President, politics has a price. Life does not. Morality exceeds value. Integrity makes you a man. Defying power with integrity makes you a leader.

End the occupation of Afghanistan. Yes, you can.

The threat of military force, according to international law, in an act of war. The Venezuelan president is posturing, but the U.S. has mobilized forces and resources in Colombia—to which President Chávez claims to be reacting. Eva Golinger, a journalist and lawyer heavily focused on Venezuela, says the October 30th U.S-Colombia agreement “basically converting Colombia into one giant U.S. military base in South America” (4:49):

The Obama Administration and the Colombian government signed an agreement allowing for the U.S. to expand access to military bases in a “private, low-key ceremony” that infuriated Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the Associated Press reported less than two weeks ago.

They reported Mr. Chávez’s concern is that the ten-year counterinsurgency deal “would make Colombia a base for asserting U.S. power in South America”. The deal, U.S. officials say, will not increase U.S. presence of armed forces and—nearly twice that amount of—corporations contracted by the U.S. government.

Mr. Chávez has said “that U.S. access to the Colombian bases poses a direct threat to his oil-exporting country”, al Jazeera reports.

Violence on the Venezuela-Colombia border has escalated over the last months, as has demonization from the U.S. since Venezuela began to make efforts toward abandoning the acceptance of U.S. dollars for its oil.

The Daily Telegraph reported of this violence as Mr. Chávez recently voiced a preparation for war after recent violence:

Four men on motorcycles shot and killed two Venezuelan National Guard troops at a checkpoint near the border in Venezuela’s western Tachira state last week, prompting Chávez’s government to temporarily close some border crossings.

And last month, Venezuelan authorities arrested at least 10 people in Tachira alleging involvement in paramilitary groups. The bullet-ridden bodies of 11 men, nine of them Colombians, were also found last month in Tachira after being abducted from a soccer field

The violence prompted Venezuela to send 15,000 soldiers to the border with Colombia on Thursday. Officials said the build-up was necessary to increase security along the border.

“Let’s not waste a day on our main aim: to prepare for war and to help the people prepare for war, because it is everyone’s responsibility,” Mr. Chávez told military officers during his weekly television and radio program.

“Students, revolutionaries, workers, women: all are ready to defend this sacred homeland called Venezuela,” he continued, adding: “The best way to avoid war is preparing for it.”

Last week, Humberto Márquez, reporting at Inter Press Service, wrote of Colombian paramilitary factions in Western Venezuela “aggravating”  diplomacy:

The sense of alarm has even reached their big neighbour, Brazil, where Marco Aurelio García, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s foreign policy adviser, said “It would be a good thing for Venezuela and Colombia to agree on a system of joint surveillance of their common border, and I would not exclude a non-aggression pact,” for which Brazil could provide assistance through “technical means,” such as surveillance aircraft….

For nearly half a century, Colombia has been caught up in a civil war that frequently spills over its borders. Guerrilla movements in remote rural areas took up arms in 1964, and far-right paramilitary death squads with ties to the drug trade have been active since the 1980s.

Since 2000, Colombia—the main source of drugs to the U.S. market—has received heavy U.S. military aid as well as advisers and contractors, to fight drug trafficking and the insurgent groups, through Plan Colombia.

Former Colombian president Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) warned that there was a “pre-war situation” with Venezuela because of President Álvaro Uribe’s poor handling of the new military agreement with Washington….

Lula’s adviser García said the Brazilian government “does not see the accord as appropriate. We cannot keep Colombia from reaching its own decisions, but what are needed are guarantees that no imbalance will be generated in the region.”…

Since July, Chávez ordered restrictions of trade and other economic activities with Colombia, and the border bridges over the Táchira river, joining the Colombian city of Cúcuta and the Venezuelan towns of San Antonio and Ureña have been the scenario of frequent protests by truckers, local merchants, shop workers and people who depend on petty contraband for a living.

Last weekend, paramilitary supporters handed out leaflets urging businesses in Ureña and San Antonio to close their doors in protest against the restrictions on cross-border traffic imposed by authorities in Venezuela. The leaflets also included death threats against some people in the area. Ten of the pamphleteers were arrested by the Venezuelan National Guard.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe “reacted angrily” to the mobilization of Venezuelan troops and the rhetoric of Mr. Chávez, calling on the U.N. to investigate, the Daily Telegraph reports. A statement from the Foreign Ministry of Venezuela responded his reaction was “immoral” and “showed the hypocrisy of the Colombian oligarchy”.

Some facts via Reuters:

• Venezuela and Colombia share a 1,375-mile (2,200-km) border and a volatile history. After both were freed from the Spanish by Venezuelan liberator Simon Bolivar in the 19th century, the two countries were the center of a short-lived nation known as Gran Colombia that also included Ecuador and Panama.
• Colombia’s four-decade-old guerrilla conflict has for years spilled over the Venezuelan border, where kidnappings, contraband and drug trafficking are common. Mr. Chávez’s ideological closeness to Colombian FARC Marxist rebels has led Washington and Bogota to accuse him of supporting the guerrillas. Mr. Chávez denies providing arms or logistical support to the rebels.
• When Mr. Chavez recalled his diplomats from Colombia in July, it was the third such measure since 2005 when tensions ran high over the arrest in Caracas of a FARC guerrilla leader in a Colombian-led police operation.
• The two countries raised the specter of war in March 2008 after a Colombian bombing raid on a guerrilla camp in Ecuador brought troop movements from Quito and Caracas. Mr. Chavez cut diplomatic relations with Bogota and threatened to stop cross-border trade.

Manuel Rosales, primary opposition presidential candidate to Mr. Chávez in 2006, is in Venezuelan custody for allegedly offering a $25 million bounty to 2,500 paramilitary operants to kill Mr. Chávez, al Jazeera reported—adding that, however, “he himself would not give the money directly”.

Begs the questions: (a) True or false?; (b) If true, who are Mr. Rosales benefactors?

Stephen Webster at The Raw Story adds:

During the summer of 2009, Venezuela bought billions of dollars’ worth of sophisticated fighter jets and tanks from its military ally Russia.

Venezuela’s closest allies, Ecuador and Bolivia, back that stance.

“As long as there are uniformed foreigners in a South American country, it’s difficult for us to think there can be peace,” Bolivian President Evo Morales reportedly said in August.

A conventional war between Venezuela and Colombia would, as Mr. Chávez said in his address, “extend throughout the whole continent”.

Such a troop mobilization from Venezuela with its president’s rhetoric and continued defiance against the U.S. and dollar hegemony coincide with the unprecedented circumstances of a tail-spinning U.S. dollar and the over-extension of U.S military might with liabilities far exceeding its assets.

Military conflict between the two countries would become a proxy war between: the ‘West’-aided Colombia; and a Russia, the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries—or ‘OPEC‘—and possibly China-aided Venezuela. The West would crumble, making such a World War III hypothetical, improbable.

Whatever the reason stated by the Obama Administration for its latest agreement with Colombia, it’s self-defeating. Unless, of course, that is the reason.

Scott Horton, anarchist host of AntiWar Radio, spoke to the Young Americans for Liberty chapter at the University of New Hampshire on why libertarians should be antiwar, the history of oligarchs lying the U.S. into wars, the becoming of the Empire, blowback, how Osama bin Laden baited the U.S. into Afghanistan to end the Empire as the U.S. did to the Soviets, and irrational American exceptionalism—introducing Thomas Woods – 6 November 09 – (27:36):

Peter Schiff, an intellectual economist, brutalizes a know-nothing dingbat with no substance to bring to the table. Schiff: 1; Dingbat: 0

Part One (7:10):

Part Two (7:10):

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• Administration Aides Paid Millions By Wall Street

“Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage showing the Taliban in Afghanistan displaying what appears to be U.S. weapons. The fighters say they seized the arms cache from two U.S. outposts in eastern Nuristan province. Days after the alleged assault, the U.S. military pulled out its troops from the area,” Jonah Hull reports (1:50):

We’re to believe U.S. Armed Forces are fleeing, frantically—disregarding arms and ammunition?

We’re to believe the best-trained military in the world left arms behind—where militant factions, which could disrupt the world order, could just pick them up—by accident? Or after some long-calculated cost:benefit analysis? An analysis taking up as much time to pack up the arms for transport?

The consent for the extension of the occupation is being manufactured on the basis that you’re stupid enough to believe all of these coincidences.

Logic, people.

Carrie ‘Opposite Marriage’ Prejean: (a) ‘wrote’ a book; (b) for which Sean Hannity ‘wrote’ a foreword; and (c) “I was all by myself”? Form your own conclusions—and please send them to TMZ. I won’t reply to responses—like I don’t to anti-Semites and chickenhawks.

Nowhere near the, regularly heavily, substantial LAW post, but lolololololol (7:36):

My count, including “alone”: 5

</immature, counter-productive waste of time>

And, you’re right, Ms. Prejean—Christians aren’t perfect, they (you) are stupid for your superstition. Talking snakes, rebirthing whales and zombie messiahs are the beliefs of whack-jobs.

KBR, Inc.—a recently former subsidiary of Halliburton and profiteer of the Iraq War, which is the largest non-union construction company in the U.S.—faces a class-action lawsuit claiming burning waste exposed 100,000 Iraqis and foreign troops to cancer-causing toxins, Daniel Tencer reports at The Raw Story.

by Daniel Tencer

9 Nov 09 | Raw Story

Defense contractor KBR may have exposed as many as 100,000 people, including U.S. troops, to cancer-causing toxins by burning waste in open-air pits in Iraq, says a series of class-action lawsuits filed against the company.

At least 22 separate lawsuits claiming KBR poisoned American soldiers in Iraq have been combined into a single massive lawsuit that says KBR, which until not long ago was a subsidiary of Halliburton, sought to save money by disposing of toxic waste and incinerating numerous potentially harmful substances in open-air “burn pits.”

According to one of the lawsuits (PDF), filed in a federal court in Nashville, KBR burned “tires, lithium batteries … biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles.”

And they did so within plain sight of U.S. troops operating in Iraq, the lawsuit states. “In some instances, the burn pit smoke was so bad that it interfered with the military mission,” the Nashville lawsuit states. “For example, the military located at Camp Bucca, a detention facility, had difficulty guarding the facility as a result of the smoke.”

The plaintiffs note that the military “did not prevent” KBR from disposing of the waste “in a safe manner that would not have harmed plaintiffs. The military wanted the defendants to solve the burn pit problems.”

The lawsuit “claims at least 100,000 people were endangered by the contractors’ ‘utter indifference to and conscious disregard’ of troops’ welfare,” notes the Courthouse News Service.

At a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on Friday, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said that KBR continues to use burn pits at the U.S.’s largest base in Iraq.

“The Army and the contractor in charge of this waste disposal—Kellogg, Brown, and Root—made frequent and unnecessary use of these burn pits and exposed thousands of U.S. troops to toxic smoke,” Dorgan said. “Burn pits are still used at the Balad Airbase in Iraq, which is the largest U.S. base in that country.”

A 2008 report by the Pentagon asserted that “adverse health risks are unlikely” from the burn pits, but that assertion was challenged by retired Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, a biomedical sciences officer who took some of the air samples used in the report.

“Although I have no hard data, I believe that the burn pits may be responsible for long-term health problems in many individuals,” the Air Force Times quoted Curtis as saying. “I think we are going to look at a lot of sick people.”

The lawsuit “claims at least 100,000 people were endangered by the contractors’ ‘utter indifference to and conscious disregard’ of troops’ welfare,” notes the Courthouse News Service.

At a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on Friday, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said that KBR continues to use burn pits at the U.S.’s largest base in Iraq.

“The Army and the contractor in charge of this waste disposal—Kellogg, Brown, and Root—made frequent and unnecessary use of these burn pits and exposed thousands of U.S. troops to toxic smoke,” Dorgan said. “Burn pits are still used at the Balad Airbase in Iraq, which is the largest U.S. base in that country.”

A 2008 report by the Pentagon asserted that “adverse health risks are unlikely” from the burn pits, but that assertion was challenged by retired Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, a biomedical sciences officer who took some of the air samples used in the report.

“Although I have no hard data, I believe that the burn pits may be responsible for long-term health problems in many individuals,” the Air Force Times quoted Curtis as saying. “I think we are going to look at a lot of sick people.”

Trends forecaster Gerald Celente discusses the Newspeak of State officials with Lew Rockwell, Jr.: “The wealth of the nation is going to the ‘too big to fail’s” (13:41):

Download the mp3 here.

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Vedad Krehic on ‘intellectual property’ at LewRockwell.com (LRC): How copyright has turned the record labels, software writers and film studios against their own customers.

by Vedad Krehic

9 Nov 09 | LRC

The consumer entertainment industry lobbyists lie. They lie over, and over, and over. They lie to the media, they lie to the politicians, they lie to you. The lies in question are rarely looked upon critically by the media or the politicians, only by grassroots opposition. The main lies involved are all variations on the same theme; copying equals theft. That is to say, if you copy a piece of data – be it a software program, a song, a movie, a book, that makes you a thief. You’re depriving the producer of that work of money which they supposedly have a right to.

I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t “educated” well enough in government schools, but no matter how I twist and turn my logic, I still fail to see how this even remotely makes sense. If I walk into a store and leave with a jacket for which I have not paid then I have deprived the store’s owner of his or her justly acquired, tangible property. They have one less jacket. They are directly harmed by my action.

If a friend, however, lends me a music CD and if I then make a copy, so that I can listen to the music without having to borrow the disc again in the future, nobody is harmed. It is possible that I could, for example, have made an agreement or contract with him when I borrowed the disc stating that I cannot copy it. If I were to do it anyway, I’d be in violation of a private agreement. If not, who is harmed by my act of duplication? I used my own tangible property (CD drive, computer, and hard drive or blank CD) to fashion a duplicate of the data on the CD. The original CD is still my friend’s property. I return it to him, and while he is no better or worse off than he was before, I am now better off. The imprint of the music on my tangible property makes that property marginally worth more to me, as I can enjoy its use to a greater extent than previously.

Was anyone harmed at any point here?

Yes—if you choose to believe the consumer entertainment industry. They claim there was a third party here that was being harmed. Can you see the third party? There was me, and there was my friend. There was my property and that of my friend. I don’t see the third party anywhere in that process. I suppose my friend could have been in a contract with the person or organization he purchased the CD from not to copy it, but I wouldn’t have been bound by that contract. Either way, I did nothing wrong.

So who is this mysterious third party? At which point does he appear, and how is he harmed?

The third party is the copyright holder. Wait, the what-holder? What’s a copyright holder? Where does he come into play?

Well, let me explain. You see, there’s this notion advocated by some—primarily media lobbyists, objectivists and government officials—of an intellectual property (I.P.). What is an intellectual property, you may ask? Well, the gist of it is that if you do anything that requires a bit of work with the big, roundish object mounted on top of your neck, you have a time-limited monopoly on that action if you’re the first person to do it.

Not understandable? Let me enlighten you, dear reader, with some examples.

Let’s say you are the first to invent a new type of screwdriver. According to the theory of I.P., if you register it with a patent office, for all intents and purposes you now own that idea. You own it for a limited amount of time (20 years), after which the ownership magically vanishes. How can you own the idea, you might ask? Well, according to I.P., that means that nobody else can legally manufacture the same type of screwdriver for the duration of the ownership. Or, to put it in clearer terms, nobody has a right to compete with you. You have a monopoly. The same applies for all other sub-categories of I.P., including copyright, trademarks, trade secrets, and so on; but this article is intended to focus mainly on copyright. For an extended discourse and refutation of the other ones, as well as a more in-depth take on copyright, I recommend to the reader Stephan Kinsella’s brilliant essay, “Against Intellectual Property” [.pdf]

Copyright follows the same logic as the screwdriver inventor. It posits that the act of making a “creative” work—such as writing a book, composing a song, painting a picture, taking a photo and so on—creates a different type of property on top of the tangible property that already exists in that item. Follow me, dear readers, if you can, through the logic. Let’s use a painting as an example. The painting consists of a canvas and some paint. That’s the tangible property. That’s what the painting’s owner owns. But, according to the theory of I.P., there is (assuming the painting hasn’t been placed into the public domain or had its copyright expire) another owner, as well. The painter, or whomever he might have signed over the copyright to the painting.

You see, the owner of the painting can do anything he wants with it (within the bounds of the non-aggression axiom). He can throw rancid tomatoes at it, he can hang it upside down, he can embed a block of wood straight through the middle of it. It’s his or her right as the owner. He may not, however, legally duplicate the pattern of paint on the canvas. There is an existing moral prohibition against duplicating it and then selling those duplicates as the original—it’s called fraud. There is no such moral prohibition against merely duplicating it, or, for that matter, duplicating it with the intention of selling the duplicates (assuming one doesn’t claim they are original). The reason he may not duplicate it is that the “creator,” the copyright holder, doesn’t allow it. Granted, there are some exceptions, such Creative Commons or other copyleft licenses which explicitly grant the right to copy within the framework of copyright law. Nevertheless, unless otherwise stated by the copyright holder, the legal assumption is that unauthorized duplication is not permitted.

Can anyone please explain to me how someone can be a just owner of something, yet not be allowed to exercise his or her ownership rights over it? He can throw rancid tomatoes at the painting, but not duplicate the pattern that makes the painting a painting, rather than just canvas and paint? Or, to use a different type of copyrightable pattern, how can someone own their own brain yet not own the part of it containing a song they memorized?

The logical conclusion is that the natural right of property and the idea of copyright, and of intellectual property in general, are fundamentally incompatible and conflict sharply. You cannot own something and have someone else dictate to you what you can and cannot do with it, without that being an element voluntarily arrived at through contract. In absence of a contract, the dictating party is initiating aggression against the just owner of an item. Intellectual property is an assault on tangible property.

What we’re looking at is protectionism in disguise—government giving preferential treatment to one specific industry at the expense of the rest of society. Now, let’s go back to the copyright holder, the mysterious third party who was hurt by me copying the CD’s contents. What I’ve done by copying my friend’s CD is violate a government-imposed monopoly on copying the CD’s contents, the monopoly belonging to the copyright holder. Hence, according to the idea of intellectual property, I’m a thief. I’ve had the audacity to compete with the beneficiary of the monopoly. That is the sense in which I’ve supposedly hurt a third party.

Let’s take a quick look at the current “copyright wars” being waged, in light of the above description of copyright. The music industry in particular and the broader copyright-dependent entertainment industries in general are in decline. Their profit margins are going down, and they don’t like it. The consumers aren’t as pleased with their products as they once were. The seemingly rational course of action for the industry is to look into why consumers aren’t pleased with their products, see what they can do better, innovate, and drop their prices to increase demand. What do the industries (by which I mean the members of the IFPI and MPA) do, however?

None of the above.

In fact, not only are they unwilling to innovate, they have gone to the extreme of starting to sue their own potential and real customers—with the number of lawsuits now over being over 20,000. I’m not a business major, but I’m pretty damn sure that’s not a good way to gain favour with your customers. In their view, every copy made is a lost sale; each person who makes a copy—and a download from a file-sharing network is a copy—must equal a lost sale. Because I’m sure you’ve all gone and bought every single song or movie you’ve heard or seen at a friend’s place, on the radio, on TV, and so on. Let’s cut the crap, okay?

There are many theories on why the entertainment industries’ profits are going down the drain. My own personal favourites are as follows:

1. Lack of innovation and fear of technology. The industries have always been afraid of new technology. The radio, the player-piano, the phonograph, the VCR, cassette tapes etc. were seen as threats by the industry, which responded by attempting to restrict sales and ownership. They’re notoriously skeptical towards new technology, and will bend over backwards to prevent it from becoming commonplace. They’re unwilling to experiment and find new ways to fulfill customer demand. Apple practically had to force iTunes onto the market, the record labels weren’t willing to go along with it at first. They weren’t willing to only sell individual songs, they wanted whole albums sold.One glaring example of the entertainment industries’ fear of technology was ex-MPAA president Jack Valenti’s 1982 statement to a U.S. Congressional panel:

   “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”

   As we all know, VCRs went on to become one of the biggest profit sources for Hollywood in history, and now we have DVDs and Blu-Ray discs filling the VCR’s role.

2. Appealing to the lowest common denominator. This applies both to movies and music, but in my opinion, especially music. With their tight working relationship with radio and MTV-like TV channels, the IFPI members of the music industry have, until the last decade, had a virtual choke hold on customers. The radio and TV was the way new music was promoted and exposed to the customer. This is why a good portion of the popular music available today (which, of course, is a subjective opinion—but one many people would echo) is of dubious quality. Need I mention anything more than Britney Spears? The control they once had is now eroding. This is, I believe, one of the core reasons behind their stubborn unwillingness to embrace new technology, and especially the Internet: they give consumers more choice.Movies and news media, of course, aren’t exempt. Every year, Hollywood cranks out hundreds of movies, on which only a handful are truly worth spending one’s finite time. Who truly needs to see movies like Brüno? I mean, okay, it’s mildly humorous. But it’s far from intelligent.

   Here is an article by Michael Crichton discussing the quality of the media, with emphasis on news media in particular. While that isn’t directly what this article is discussing, its observations can be applied to that of the entertainment media as well.

3. Treating the customer like a criminal. You walk into a cinema, buy a ticket, sit down and wait for the movie to start. Then you see this.Doesn’t give you the impression that they like or trust their customers a whole lot, does it?

   But that’s just the beginning of it. The entertainment industries lobby politicians to strengthen and lengthen and broaden the scope of copyright laws. When last I checked, copyright in the U.S. lasts for life + 70 years. Who can claim that a musician should still have a monopoly on his or her works 70 years after they die?

   Furthermore, they lobby for laws like the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), which, among other things, further erodes property rights in that it makes reverse engineering DRM systems illegal. What’s DRM, you ask? DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. Restrictions might be a more apt term than rights. DRM is, in short, copy protection technology. It’s there on your DVDs, your Blu-Ray discs, your Audible audiobooks, and unfortunately many other places also. Sure, one could have DRM without copyright, but it wouldn’t make much sense to do so. DRM makes it difficult, but not impossible, to make copies of the contents of a medium such as a DVD. It’s a failed attempt by the copyright industries to use technology to prevent the use of other technology.

   The results of using DRM have been mainly preventing non-tech-savvy users from making backups of their own discs (as tech-savvy users can figure out ways to copy them anyway) and to introduce unnecessary inconvenience to the customer. Here are a few examples.

4. The entertainment industries’ crusade against file sharing. A truly stillborn, yet relentlessly continued policy. This harks back to #1 & #3, but deserves a mention of its own. File sharing, which is to say, people sharing media content in the form of digital files such as MP3s, has had a history dating back to the beginning of the digital computer age, but in its current, Internet based incarnation dates back only a decade. It started with Shawn Fanning releasing Napster in 1999. There were a few file-sharing networks prior to Napster, such as HotLine and Audiogalaxy, but Napster is the first one that got real traction. Millions of users copying music files from each other via the Internet. The music industry freaked.

They had Napster shut down. Due to its centralized nature, it was a simple case of shutting down the central coordinating server. Since then, file sharing has been a whack-a-mole game with the entertainment industries’ lawyers and paid politicians constantly trying to shut down various file-sharing networks, and new ones—more decentralized, anonymized and secure—popping up to fill their place. And with every blow, they make file sharing an even stronger movement. This isn’t just me being dramatic, it’s a simple fact. They give it publicity. For example, ThePirateBay, a Swedish BitTorrent (a popular file-sharing technology) tracker and search engine, was attempted to be shut down multiple times by various governments, as well as many national government attempting to ban Internet providers in their respective countries from allowing their users to access the site. Every single attempt has been met with ridicule, and ThePirateBay’s user base grew exponentially as a result of the publicity. The previous owners of ThePirateBay are now on trial for promoting copyright infringement. More on ThePirateBay’s legal saga.

All of these elements combine to form a highly unfavourable impression of the copyright industry in consumers’ eyes. Technology is making traditional entertainment industry business models obsolete. Instead of innovating, the industries are using the hammer of government to force their customers to comply with 1970s business models—and now those customers are rebelling. As a result, the measures applied by governments to coerce them just keep getting more and more draconian. The ACTA, or Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an international copyright treaty which is being negotiated in secrecy, is just the latest in a series of totalitarian treaties promoted by the copyright-dependent entertainment industries.

That treaty, if passed, would mark the death of the Internet as we know it; pretty much every single website and service with user-uploaded content would be forced out of business by the sheer cost of compliance. Bye-bye YouTube, Flickr, Google Book Search, digg, Wikipedia, etc.

We can’t let this insanity go on any longer – eliminate imaginary property!

[Thanks for editorial help from John T.]

Vedad Krehic is a student studying digital media production in Norway. Send him mail.

RELATED:

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At the 1990 Mises University at Stanford, Professor Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) spoke on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the future for freed markets in a lecture titled, “The Future of Austrian Economics.” Educational and always humorous, he shows the flaws of the U.S.S.R. weren’t practical blunders, but ideological and methodological flaws of “planning the modern industrial State” which made its demise inevitable from the start and why compromising radical philosophy with the irrational “doesn’t work”. (49:39):

More from Prof. Rothbard:

• Murray Rothbard on Political Strategy (Video)
• Rothbard on Keynes: Hero or Villian? (mp3)
• The Founding of the Federal Reserve (Video)
• Rothbard: The State is a Counterfeiter
• Dr. Murray N. Rothbard: “America’s Two Just Wars”

His full archive is at Mises.org.

Prisoners, physicians and psychologists describe ‘humiliating punishments’ and ‘deteriorating’ conditions during the Obama Administration at the U.S.-run detention center, Andrew Wander reports at al Jazeera.

by Andrew Wander

9 Nov 09 | AJE

On the night that Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, 21-year-old Mohammed el Gharani was sitting in a segregation cell in Guantanamo Bay’s high security Echo Block.

He remembers the excitement among his fellow prisoners at the prospect of an Obama presidency. “Everyone was very hopeful; people were saying he was going to change things, that he would close the prison,” Gharani, who was released in June, says.

“Even the guards were telling us that if he won, things would improve for us.”

They were to be disappointed. A year after Obama’s election win, Al Jazeera has learnt that despite the new president’s pledge to close the prison and improve the conditions of detainees held by the U.S. military, prisoners believe that their treatment has deteriorated on his watch.

Authorities at the prison deny mistreating the inmates, but interviews with former detainees, letters from current prisoners and sworn testimony from independent medical experts who have visited the prison have painted a disturbing picture of psychological and physical abuse very much at odds with White House rhetoric on prisoner treatment.

While no-one is alleging a return to the early days of the prison, when detainees were subjected to “enhanced interrogation” techniques that are today widely regarded as torture, prisoners say day-to-day life at Guantanamo has become harder under the Obama administration.

Within days of Obama’s inauguration and subsequent announcement that he would close Guantanamo, prisoners say authorities introduced new regulations and revoked previous privileges at the prison.

“They took away group recreation for prisoners in segregation, which was the only time we saw anyone,” Gharani remembers. “They took away the books we had from the library. They even sprayed pepper spray into my cell while I was sleeping, so I’d wake up unable to breathe.”

Gharani says he was beaten so badly by guards that he is still suffering pain today.

‘Humiliating rules’

Al Jazeera has obtained letters written by those currently being held in Guantanamo that tell a similar story. In one, written in March, a prisoner, who has asked that he remains anonymous for fear of repercussions, says he is writing to “depict to what degree our conditions inside Guantanamo detention have deteriorated” since Obama took office.

“I am in the very same cell, wearing the same uniform, eating the same food, yet treated much worse compared to mid-2008,” the prisoner writes. “We are unable to understand the goals of the policy of more restrictions and inflexibility.”

According to the letter, prison authorities inflict “humiliating punishments” on inmates and prisoners face ”intentional mental and physical harm”.

“The situation is worsening with the advent of the new management,” the prisoner writes, noting, like Gharani, that the new rules were imposed in January this year. Conditions, he says, “do not fit the lowest standard of human living”.

Separately, two prisoners have complained to their lawyer that their belongings, including their bedding, were removed from their cells on several occasions for no reason. Each time, they were told that the removal was a “mistake,” and the belongings were returned, only to be confiscated again.

More disturbingly, the same two prisoners say that during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, their recreation time was moved to prevent them from taking part in traditional group prayer.

Using religion to punish prisoners is illegal under international law. Authorities at Guantanamo deny the prisoners are kept from practising their religion, although they concede that recreation times are sometimes moved “due to operational needs”.

They say that personal belongings are not removed from cells “unless detainees misuse the items”; the prisoners categorically deny that they did so.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which monitors prisoner treatment at Guantanamo, declined to comment on specific allegations at the prison, but says that it recognises the cumulative effect low-level abuse can have on the well-being of prisoners in general.

“In some cases, a single act may amount to torture,” ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno says. “In others, ill treatment may be the result of a number of methods used over time, which, taken individually and out of context, may seem harmless.”

Read the full article

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Professor Gary Chartier on: ‘promoting access, affordability, and choice by ending privileges for corporations, professionals, and the otherwise politically connected’.

by Gary Chartier

[Updated from article originally posted at the Center for a Stateless Society in August]

The Golden Rule gives us good reason to value at least three goals related to the provision of medical care.

• We typically value our own physical well being, so we’d probably like our own bodies taken care of. If we do, we have good reason to want other people to have access to health care services. Taking access seriously as a goal means maximizing the number of people with access to decent health-care.
• We likely value choice: we don’t like other people to run our lives or constrain our options. If we do, we have good reason to want other people not to be pushed around. Taking choice seriously as a goal means minimizing interference with everyone’s freedom to make health-care choices.
• We value affordability. We don’t want to pay a lot personally for health care, and we don’t want institutions in which we participate to have to do so. So we have good reason not to want other people or institutions to have to pay a lot for health care, either. Taking affordability seriously as a goal means minimizing the net overall cost of health-care to (at least) the national economy.

The question participants in current debates about health care have to confront is: which otherwise just institutional arrangements can enable us to achieve these goals? The degree to which health care services are accessible and affordable and to which people are able to choose health care providers and therapies is determined by structural, political factors. So we have to identify legal norms it makes sense for us to support and (in appropriate circumstances) enact and implement in light of the Golden Rule.

I want to argue here that we can and should work effectively to achieve the goals of access, choice, and affordability by working for the across-the-board elimination of legal privileges that allow privileged elites to reap monopoly profits and limit people’s access to care by making and keeping them poor.

Tensions among the Goals

At first blush, it might seem as if achieving all of these goals at once would be difficult or impossible.

One option consistent with maintaining the current model of health-care delivery would involve letting people sink or swim in a crisis-ridden economy. In this case, we could achieve affordability while preserving choice. But of course we would be ignoring the implications of the Golden Rule regarding the importance of access.

Another option would be to limit choice by rationing. It’s not clear that this would ultimately reduce net health care expenditures (both because actual rationing decisions would almost certainly lead to cartelization that would benefit privileged elites and because it would be almost impossible for rationing decisions to be made rationally), but perhaps it might do so initially. In this case, we’d have access and perhaps some limited initial degree of affordability, but at the cost of choice.

Or we could try to find a way to dramatically expand access to health care in something like the current health-care market. The problem is that we know what doctors charge. We know what hospitals charge. We know what drug manufacturers charge. We know what medical device manufacturers charge. We know what insurers charge to, we’re told, make it all possible. And we know the charges are anything but insubstantial. Delivering health care services at current prices would be very costly. A plan that offered everyone these services at current prices would help us to achieve the goals of access and choice. But affordability would suffer if access were achieved while current price levels were maintained.

Reducing Costs by Abolishing Privileges for Politically Favored Groups

So it might appear, at first glance, as if there were a real problem achieving all three goals. But I believe that’s because of an assumption that isn’t being made explicit in most of the discussions being conducted on-line, on TV, and in the print media by Beltway insiders. That’s the assumption that privileged, well-connected political actors can and should keep their privileges. The options getting the most attention in today’s health-care debate are options that largely treat monopolistic and quasi-monopolistic privileges enjoyed by the politically connected as unproblematic. If we want to achieve all three goals for health care reform simultaneously, we need to support the abolition of these privileges.

Access and affordability are limited by a range of factors.

• Drug companies and medical device manufacturers reap monopoly profits because the law gives them patent rights. Patents don’t make good economic sense, despite what their corporate apologists might tell you. But they do ratchet up the profits of those who own them, at the expense of ordinary people.
• Working hand-in-hand with health-care professionals’ groups, state and national laws impose licensing requirements that limit who can provide health care services. By constraining the numbers of people who practice various health professions and the kinds of services particular professionals can perform, these requirements boost the incomes of health professionals and artificially inflate the prices of their services.
• Hospital licensing and accreditation requirements similarly limit the number of hospitals in operation, and therefore pad the pockets of existing hospitals while driving up the prices people have to pay for hospital stays and other services.
• Legal limitations on advertising and price competition in the area of health care services also make it easy for health care professionals to maintain high incomes.
• The FDA approval process adds to drug costs (and lengthens the times-to-markets of many products) in ways that certainly aren’t always to the benefit of health-care consumers.

These kinds of legal privileges are sold to the public, of course, as designed in various ways to help ordinary people. But their practical—and, in many cases, intended—effect is to take money away from ordinary health-care consumers and transfer it to people and organizations with more political privileges.

These are hardly the only legal privileges politicians confer on the well-connected that help to keep health-care costs high.

• Rules that provide tax incentives for employers to purchase health insurance for employees tend to make it easier for insurance companies to charge higher prices than they likely would be able to charge to individual consumers.
• State rules that preclude the purchase of insurance across state lines also make it easier for insurance companies to charge high premiums and reap handsome profits.
• Rules that limit who can be an insurer in the first place can have a similar effect. A physician who wanted to offer patients care on a flat-fee-per-year basis was recently prevented from doing so because this arrangement looked too much like insurance, and the physician wasn’t a licensed insurer. Who benefited? Not the patients, clearly—but the insurance industry.
• Agricultural subsidies also contribute to health-care costs by encouraging the purchase of lots of low-nutrition foods. Purchasing these items simultaneously redirects resources that could be used to buy foods that made positive contributions to people’s health away from the purchase of such foods and encourages the purchase of items that may actually decrease health and thus boost health care costs.

Another dubious legal privilege that also drives up costs: the opportunity for plaintiffs in tort cases to obtain punitive damages. A punitive damage award can turn an individual person into a scapegoat, someone to be “taught a lesson” on behalf of the entire class of victims of conduct like his or her own. Punitive damage awards drive up costs unnecessarily while forcing health-care professionals and hospitals to focus on practicing defensive medicine.

Increasing Access by Challenging Policies that Make and Keep People Poor

Political factors drive up the costs of health care dramatically. They also limit access to care by driving down the incomes of people who might want access to care but can’t afford it.

Sales and similar taxes impact even the poorest people. And state and federal income taxes certainly reduce the resources available to the working poor and blue-collar Americans.

These taxes indirectly confer special privileges on the various beneficiaries of the spending they make possible. And special privileges exert other negative consequences on economically vulnerable people.

Some kinds of jobs require business licenses, or other kinds of permissions from local authorities to start up. Maybe the licenses require costly and dispensable equipment or unnecessary certification, or maybe they just involve prohibitive up-front costs. (Think about how much it costs to obtain a New York taxicab medallion.) Sometimes, they preclude people using the low-cost facilities that are their own homes for business purposes, imposing the heavy burden of working elsewhere. And sometimes—as when Tulare, California, officials recently shut down a little girl’s lemonade stand because it didn’t have a license—licensing requirements are just exercises in petty tyranny. Whatever their form or their motivation, the burdens created by licensing requirements fall hardest on poor people.

Those same requirements impact where poor people can find housing: housing that doesn’t meet someone else’s standards of middle-class acceptability is denied to poor people who could pay for it, but who might be unable to pay for anything else. And the burden on the poor is only increased when certain kinds of jobs are denied to people at all—like selling medications in locations other than legally approved pharmacies supervised by licensed pharmacists.

Tariffs also hurt poor people by significantly increasing the costs they need to pay for imported goods (including, often enough, food needed for good health that would be less expensive than domestic alternatives absent import duties). Though often touted as propping up poor workers’ incomes, they serve primarily to boost the profits of poorly performing domestic producers at the expense of both domestic consumers (especially poor ones) and foreign producers.

Politically guaranteed privileges are responsible in multiple ways for many corporate profits. In an environment in which this is so, unionization can help to improve workers’ economic positions. Legally imposed limitations on union activity can tend to reduce unions’ influence, and so to reduce the incomes of workers who might make more were they free to engage in more radical bargaining tactics.

And of course the executives and major shareholders of the largest corporations control an enormous amount of wealth because of subsidies, cost-plus contracts, and the insulation from competitive pressure created by patents and tariffs. Absent the illegitimate privileges these members of the elite receive, the wealth concentrated in these large firms would doubtless be more widely dispersed.

An Initial Agenda

So: if we want to support structural, political changes that will make health care more affordable and accessible while increasing choice, we should support legal changes that would:

• Eliminate legal protection for patents;
• End the FDA approval process, along with all other attempts to use the force of law to limit the commercial accessibility of remedies desired by health-care consumers;
• Eliminate hospital accreditation and professional licensing rules;
• Limit malpractice awards to actual damages plus reasonable costs of recovery (including reasonable legal fees);
• Repeal legal constraints on the sale of insurance across state lines;
• Eliminate legal rules preventing the operation of what amount to insurance schemes by health professionals;
• Alter the federal and state tax codes to de-link employment and insurance; and
• Eliminate agricultural subsidies.

More broadly, concern for the poor should prompt us to boost people’s incomes, and so their access to health care, by supporting legal changes that would:

• Eliminate licensing, zoning, and related restrictions that help to keep people from starting small, low-capital businesses;
• Eliminate rules that prevent poor people from entering businesses the law currently treats as off-limits;
• End rules that force poor people to choose between the kind of housing middle-class planners and neighborhood busybodies prefer—and no housing at all;
• Eliminate import duties;
• Reduce or eliminate tax burdens that fall primarily on poor people—sharply increasing the standard income tax deduction and the Earned Income Tax Credit;
• Repeal state limitations on collective bargaining, including compulsory arbitration requirements, prohibitions on secondary boycotts, back-to-work orders, and “right-to-work” laws;
• Treat as unowned any firms dependent enough on special benefits conferred by the state (subsidies, tariffs, patents, and other monopolistic favors) to count as creatures of illegitimate privilege, and spread their wealth to ordinary people—mutualizing them by allowing their workers to homestead them just as they might other unowned property.

The approach I’ve outlined here would ensure that poor people had more money. By eliminating monopolies (and quasi-monopolistic market distortions like tax subsidies for particular insurance choices), it would also ensure that less money was spent overall on health-care services and that the costs of such services for individuals were much lower, and that these services were thus much more accessible. At the same time, it would preserve choice, avoiding top-down rationing. It would help us make significant progress toward reaching all three of the health-care reform goals we have good reason to want.

Most options currently on the table call, effectively, for tinkering with the existing, deeply flawed, American health-care system. They leave many elite privileges and monopoly profits intact. By contrast, the approach I’ve suggested here would be anything but a continuation of the status quo. Indeed, it would be a dramatic attack on the status quo, one that redistributed wealth from privileged monopolists to ordinary people, and dramatically increased the likelihood of access to inexpensive, high-quality medical care for all Americans.

Gary Chartier is an associate professor of law and business ethics and associate dean of the School of Business at La Sierra University, author of Economic Justice and Natural Law and the forthcoming The Conscience of an Anarchist as well as articles in journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, Religious Studies, and the Journal of Social Philosophy, and a contributor to the Center for a Stateless Society. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and a J.D. from the UCLA.

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As Georgia has committed more troops to the U.S.-led Afghanistan occupation, Barrington Alliance, Inc.—a collaborator within the military industrial complex, based in the Chicagoland area—will send $100m in small arms and ammunition with a ’sophisticated’ surface-to-air strike system to the war criminal regime, sources confirm to Russia Today. (1:59):

U.S. to Send $100M Worth of Weapons to Georgia—Intelligence

9 Nov 09 | RT

The U.S. has offered to sell Georgia up to $100 million worth of weapons, which would include, among others, a sophisticated air defense system, small arms and ammunition, according to Russian security services.

Russia’s General Staff says the offer was made by a private arms manufacturer after Tbilisi asked Washington for its military assistance, Itar-Tass news agency reports.

Russia has repeatedly criticized the U.S., Israel and other countries for supplying weapons to Georgia, and after last year’s war in South Ossetia called for an embargo on all arms deals with Tbilisi.

The head of the General Staff, Aleksandr Shlyakhturov, told the agency that, according to the information at their disposal, “Georgia, is still getting military assistance from NATO members, Israel and Ukraine.”

He added that NATO countries mainly supply Georgia with small arms and ammunition, while the U.S. leads training of the staff, Israel provides it with unmanned aircrafts, and Ukraine with tanks and air defense systems.

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