The Deafening Silence About the War in the Deficit Debate
(This article is re-posted from the Huffington Post.)
There is a lot of talk right now on Capitol Hill about the need to balance the federal budget. Sadly, both Democrats and Republicans alike are largely debating about how best to balance the budget upon the backs of the poor and working people (who are many times the very same people) and the elderly. First and foremost on the chopping block appears to be Social Security and Medicare — the lifeline for millions of seniors in this country and the only hope for any sort of retirement for the vast majority of people in this country.
Meanwhile, belying any real interest in balancing the budget, the extension of unemployment benefits for millions of people out of work through no fault of their own is being made contingent upon tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
At the same time, what is largely absent from this debate is discussion of the war, which includes military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, allied Pakistan, military exercises in the Yellow Sea and elsewhere, and the maintenance of over 800 U.S. military bases throughout the world. To put the latter into perspective, Great Britain and Ancient Rome, at the very height of their Empires, never had more than 40 military bases internationally.
The U.S. is always at war, whether the pretext is fighting Communism or terrorism, or, as is usually the actual case, fighting against national liberation efforts and for the ability of U.S. corporations to expand their domain and control.
While President Obama had promised during his campaign to “change the mindset that leads us to war,” and while many of us, myself included, believed him, Obama could not even wait until his first weekend in office before launching one of his many (many more than Bush) drone attacks into Pakistan, predictably killing mostly civilians. In addition, just after it was announced that he won the Nobel Prize for Peace, Obama, almost to spite the Nobel committee, announced the “surge” in Afghanistan which is putting 30,000 more American lives in jeopardy, leading to a massive increase of civilian deaths in Afghanistan over those killed during Bush’s tenure, and further inflaming tensions in the Middle East.
Indeed, Obama has been more hawkish than Bush in a number of ways as seen, for example, in his re-commencing funding for the brutal “red berets” of Indonesia — which even Bush refused to do on human rights grounds — and in his re-commissioning the 4th Fleet in the Caribbean which Eisenhower had de-commissioned in the 1950’s.
In the end, while Obama is rightly criticized for being too conciliatory to the rich and powerful — to Wall Street bankers and to the Republicans — he is unflinchingly harsh when it comes to unleashing violence throughout the world.
And so, the war goes on unabated. If it were not enough that the war is currently costing the lives of tens of thousands of innocents abroad as well the lives of thousands of young U.S. military personnel, most of which signed up because they could not find work here, the war is eating up more and more of the federal budget. Depending upon how one counts, the war (both current and past military actions which we continue to pay for) accounts for around half of the total budget of the United States.
No matter how you count, it is clear that the current Af-Pak and Iraq wars will cost this country well over $1 trillion. A modest proposal for cutting the deficit would be to start there, and to try at all costs to spare social spending for the growing needy in our country.
As Noam Chomsky explains, the reason the war is not up for debate is the fact that there has been a political consensus between the two parties since World War II that the U.S. economy would continue to be primed through military spending rather than social spending — social spending having the disadvantage, from the point of view of those who rule this country, of distributing wealth downward rather than upward.
Military spending, on the other hand, amounts to a regressive tax which requires the vast majority of working people to subsidize what President Eisenhower decried as “the military-industrial complex” — that is, high tech companies, weapons manufacturers, and the new proliferation of mercenary organizations (e.g., Black Water, DynCorp and many more) receiving lucrative defense contracts. Further, this spending allows the U.S. to engage in military efforts abroad fought (despite the more lofty goals claimed) in the interests of allowing such corporate interests to expand their markets, and increase their profits, even more.
It is this type of corporate welfare system, along with periodic bank bailouts and tax cuts for the super-rich, which suits the two political parties just fine. Welfare for the truly needy, however, is generally abhorrent to them, and thus the limited nature of the current debate about the federal deficit.
Of course, for those of us concerned about basic notions of fairness and justice, and for those of us who are literally dying at the hands of this system, this state of affairs is completely unacceptable, and must be resisted. A good place to start would be the December 16 anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C. For more information, go to Stop These Wars.
2010 GRIID Film Study
This film study was a project done primarily by GVSU student John DeRuiter, with assistance by Jeff Smith. The last film study GRIID conducted was of films was in 2003, with reports done on Race Representation in Film, Product Placement, Tobacco Use and Hyper-sexual content.
The American movie industry influences millions of people in the U.S. and abroad. The movie industry is wildly lucrative, and incredibly powerful. These movies have the ability to normalize how we see ourselves and the world around us. Also, movies usually have a product or idea to sell to the audience, and they have the capabilities to make people want and need these products and ideas. To understand what the corporate movie industry projects as reality and what ideas or products are being sold, it is important to look at films collectively over a period of time and not just on an individual basis.
This study examined five distinct areas of movies, the areas are: the racial make-up of the cast, the amount of sexual objectification, the amount of gratuitous violence, the amount of product placement, and how the movie dealt with American foreign and domestic policy.
The study investigated 42 movies released on DVD in the first four months of 2010. The movies are:
2012 Armored Amelia Astro Boy A Serious Man Avatar
Bitch Slap Black Dynamite Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Couples Retreat Crazy Heart Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Everybody’s Fine Fantastic Mr. Fox Gamer Halloween II
Law Abiding Citizen Ninja Assassin Old Dogs Planet 51
Ponyo Post Grad Sherlock Holmes Sorority Row
Surrogates The Blind Side The Box The Final Destination
The Hurt Locker The Informant! The Invention of Lying
The Lovely Bones The Men Who Stare at Goats The Princess and the Frog
The Stepfather The Time Travelers Wife The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Tyler Perry’s I Can do Bad All by Myself Up in the Air Where the Wild Things Are
Whip It! Zombieland
Racial and Gender Make-Up of the Cast
This section of the study looked at who (what race) played what roles, and how the various races and genders were presented to the audience. This section also looked for examples of racism. Racism is any negative comment or portrayal of any minority race. Racism in movies is usually subtle and furthers the notion of white supremacy, with the hopes of normalizing the idea through constant repetition. Prejudices towards whites, though not as common, were also noted. Also, situations that portray physical handicaps in a negative light were considered racism.
The racism in Hollywood movies is not usually in the form of openly racist comments or actions, but is of a more subtle kind. The racism is built in and is not entirely noticed when viewing just one or two movies, but when a large group of movies is studied the racism is evident. This is what would be called systemic racism.
Of the 42 movies studied, 28 (66%) had a white male lead. 36 (85%) contained a white lead, male or female.
The following movies with an asterisk contained a non white lead, and the movies with a double asterisk contained a female lead.
Armored*
AvatarBitch Slap **
Black Dynamite*
Did You Hear About the Morgans? **
Halloween II **
Ninja Assassin*
The Princess and the Frog*
Ponyo**
Post Grad **
Sorority Row **
The Blind Side*
The Box **
The Lovely Bones **
The Princess and the Frog* **
The Time Travelers Wife **
Tyler Perry’s I Can do Bad All by Myself* **
Whip It! **
This means that of the 42 films in the study only 6 movies had non-white lead characters and only 11 had lead female characters. These movies are clearly weighted with white males, and do not paint an accurate picture of the make-up of the diversity in the US population and abroad. They do however paint an accurate description of the white-male dominated movie industry.
Examples and Highlights:
Surrogates – In this film the African American police chief is corrupt and the militant leader of the anti-surrogate community is Black. However, the anti-surrogate Black leader ends up being just a surrogate of a White inventor and is used for political purposes. This is in contrast to the hero, a White cop played by Bruce Willis.
The Men Who Stare at Goats: the only movie studied which contained any Arab characters, and not surprisingly the characters were often depicted as terrorists.
I Can Do Bad all by Myself: This movie contains an almost entirely minority cast and crew. While this movie may have been intended to give minorities a better opportunity to be in a Hollywood production, it does nothing to break down the walls of division, which so clearly stand in American media.
New Moon – Like the other films in the Twilight series, New Moon promotes racial stereotypes. The Native American characters in the film live in poverty. Quite often the young male Native characters are seen with their shirts off, thus overemphasizing their physical nature. The Native characters are also prone to become angry and lose their tempers easily. This is in sharp contrast to the White vampires in the film, which are economically well off and generally have a calm demeanor.
Sexual Objectification
This section of the study examined the movies looking for examples of sexism. Sexism can relate to remarks and situations that cast women in a negative light. The hyper – sexualization of women and their treatment as mere objects are the foremost examples of sexism. Comments and actions which further the traditional ideas of what a woman or a man should be were also considered sexism. The traditional idea of a woman is that she is: beautiful, caring, dependant, etc. The traditional idea for a man is that he is: strong, smart, independent, etc.
Of 42 movies studied, 10 (23%) contained scenes or situations where sexual objectification of women occurred. The following movies contained scenes of sexual objectification:
Bitch Slap*
Black Dynamite*
Couples Retreat *
Did You Hear About the Morgans?*
Gamer*
Halloween II*
Sorority Row *
Surrogates *
The Final Destination*
Up in the Air*
Examples and Highlights:
Sorority Row: This movie paints quite a dim view of American sorority girls. All of the girls are incredibly promiscuous, including one who sells herself out to a doctor in exchange for prescriptions.
The Final Destination: This movie portrays both males and females in a demeaning way. There are many scenes with sexualized content, including one scene showing the “hook-up” of two perfect strangers, (the scene does nothing to further the plot and is unnecessary.)
Bitch Slap: The entirety of this movie contains hyper-sexualization of women. The plot details the story of three prostitutes who have become involved with a murder. This movie is so over the top it is easy to see it as a parody, but it still contains a massive amount of sexual objectification.
However, some films did present women as strong, courageous and independent. Two examples of positive depictions of women were:
Whip It – In this film there are numerous examples of women playing non-stereotypical roles. Most of the women in the film are roller derby athletes and the main character (played by Ellen Page) demonstrates a great deal of self-confidence, determination and persistence, despite the personal risks she takes throughout the film. She is assertive with both her parents and holds her boyfriend accountable for his behavior.
Avatar – There are also strong women in the blockbuster movie Avatar. Sigourney Weaver’s character is independent and confident throughout the film and the lead female character (Neytiri) is a confident, courage’s and athletic character that is also very ground in her culture and spirituality. She becomes the mentor to the lead male character Jake, played by Sam Worthington.
Violence
This section looked at the amount of violence in each movie. This section also looked at who was committing these acts of aggression. The excessive amount of violence in our society is in part normalized by the amount of violence present in mainstream movies.
Of the 42 movies studied, 15 (35%) contained scenes of gratuitous violence. Of those 15 movies, only one contained violence committed by a female (Bitch Slap). Also, of the 15 violence containing movies, white males committed 73% of the violence.
The following movies contained gratuitous violence, meaning excessive violence that was not necessary to communicate a certain dynamic in the film.
Armored*
Avatar*
Bitch Slap*
Black Dynamite*
Did You Hear About the Morgans?*
Gamer*
Halloween II*
Law Abiding Citizen*
Ninja Assassin*
Sherlock Holmes*
Sorority Row*
Surrogates*
The Final Destination*
The Hurt Locker*
The Stepfather*
Zombieland*
Examples and Highlights:
Armored: This movie tells the story of a group of armored truck drivers who decide to loot their own cars. The plot slowly gets more violent and culminates in a chaotic shootout.
The Stepfather: This movie is about a psychopathic murderer who tricks women into marrying him and then takes pride in brutally mutilating his new family.
Gamer: This movie can almost been seen as a parody of America’s obsession with violent videogames and can easily be connected to the insensitivity our society has towards violence. In the movie gamers can control real live prison inmates and use them to fight and kill other individuals. While this movie points out flaws in American society, it is itself a component of the violence driven society we live in, because the violence is highlighted and graphic.
Ninja Assassin – This film from start to finish is filled with intense and graphic violence. The film has over 100 murders, some by decapitation.
Product Placement
This section examined each movie looking for examples of product placement. Product placement is the use of products as either background props or more commonly as items that are written into the script with a contractual agreement. These placements are just like any other advertisement where the brand pays for a spot in the movie. These placements are quite common, and our culture of consumption is promoted and normalized by the ubiquity of these products in commerical movies.
Of the 42 movies studied 28 (66%) contained deliberate examples of product placement. The following movies contained product placement:
2012*
Armored*
Black Dynamite*
Couples Retreat *
Crazy Heart*
Did You Hear About the Morgans?*
Everybody’s Fine*
Law Abiding Citizen*
Ninja Assassin*
Old Dogs *
Planet 51*
Post Grad*
Sorority Row *
Surrogates *
The Blind Side*
The Box*
The Final Destination*
The Informant!*
The Invention of Lying*
The Lovely Bones*
The Princess and the Frog*
The Stepfather*
The Time Travelers Wife *
The Twilight Saga: New Moon*
Tyler Perry’s I Can do Bad All by Myself*
Up in the Air*
Whip It!*
Zombieland*
Some of these movies contained very few or very subtle examples of placement, while others contained very obvious examples. A few highlighted examples of products entering the plot and affecting the movie are:
Up In the Air: this movie seemed to be almost a feature length commercial spot for American Airlines. George Clooney’s character always flies with American Airlines.
Zombieland: In this movie, Woody Harrelson’s character is obsessed with finding Twinkies and spends much time talking about Hostess products in general.
Post Grad: In this movie, Eskimo Pie’s are said to balance “all that is wrong with the universe” and a lengthy promotion of the brand follows.
Couples Retreat: The product placement that took up more actual screen time than any other film during the study was the use of Guitar Hero in the film Couple’s Retreat. Not only do people play the game for several minutes in a row, with parts of the video game are edited in to the film and one of the lead characters (Vince Vaughn) is a video game salesman who actually sells Guitar Hero.
US Militarism
This section investigated the how the US military and militarism were depicted. It has become increasingly clear that when the US military is part of Hollywood film plots that they tend to be presented in a positive way. This is in part due to the US Defense Department’s role in the content of movie scripts as is documented in the book The Hollywood War Machine: U.S. Militarism and Popular Culture, by Carl Boggs.
There were only three films that dealt with the US military or militarism:
Avatar: The plot of this movie places American backed corporations as the antagonist, and the native population of a foreign planet as the protagonist. The final scene ends with the defeat of the Americans and a victory for the natives and their planet. Whether or not the human soldiers in the film are US military or private mercenaries is not clear, but they clearly seemed to be from the US.
The Men who Stare at Goats: This movie is about a secret division of the American military, which had begun research into mind control techniques. The movie makes a farce of the American military and its engagement in the war in Iraq.
The Hurt Locker: This movie takes a very neutral stance about the life of a soldier in the American Military fighting in the war in Iraq. The movie has a documentary feel to it and casually shows the life of a soldier. The positives and negatives of army life are highlighted. The truth about being in combat and then returning home is shown, and the taxing nature of this is shown.
Conclusion
This report was created to highlight some of the shortcomings of the mainstream film industry. The report is not meant to be definitive evidence, but only to point to some inherent flaws in how Hollywood normalizes certain ways of seeing the world.
This report has shown that white-men dominate the lead roles in most movies; 24 out of the 42 movies studied contained a white male lead. The study also looked at gender representation; males dominated the violence in movies, and women were sexually objectified in many of the films. This reinforces the commonly accepted gender roles in our society; men are strong and independent, and women are sexual dependent objects.
Another element the study focused on was the amount of product placement in movies, (66% contained deliberate product placement). This shows how clearly intertwined corporate America is with Hollywood movies and the growing efforts to commercialize all aspects of public life.
This study has shown that our society is not properly represented by the Hollywood film industry. Our population is not half white men, nor do they commit 73% of the violence. Women are not sexual objects and are clearly capable of an independent life in which they are they lead role. Minorities are grossly underrepresented in all aspects of Hollywood movies, which is not an honest depiction of American society.
This study has found and shown that while these movies may provide a form of entertainment, they perpetuate stereotypes and contribute to a very narrow way of seeing the world, a world that is often white male dominated, with violence and consumerism as behavioral norms.
The Press cites “Watchdog” in criticism of MEA
Today, Press education reporter Dave Murray wrote a story for MLive entitled, “Watchdog group says MEA executive earning nearly $300,000 is out of touch with teachers.”
The article is based on a Press Release from a Muskegon-based group called the Education Action Group (EAG), which is calling out the Michigan Education Association’s President and other staff are making too much money.
The Press article does provide a response from the MEA, which says, “Our people are leading a huge, multi-million dollar operation, one of the largest unions in the state, and are compensated accordingly.”
However, the bulk of the article is commentary from EAG director Kyle Olsen. Olsen’s comments are not just critical of MEA staff salaries, but the overall cost of unionized teachers in general in the state of Michigan. This would not be much of a revelation to Press readers if the reporter had bothered to provide some background information on the EAG and its founder Kyle Olsen.
Kyle Olsen has appeared on Fox News numerous times in recent months and has also been a guest on the shows of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Olsen is also the editor of the online source Public School Spending, which is a clearinghouse for information critical of education unions across the country.
On Olsen’s personal blog he also has links to ATF Exposed, a site dedicated to criticizing the American Federation of Teachers union and NEA Exposed, which slams the National Education Association. Along with these links, Olsen’s blog and the Education Action Group site all have very similar content to the anti-union consultant Rick Berman’s Teacher’s Union Exposed. While there is no evidence that these anti-union forces have any relationship, they certainly share the same perspective and use many of the same anti-union talking points.
If the Grand Rapids Press is going to use the term Watchdog when referring to EAG and Kyle Olsen, they need to qualify what that means and provide readers more information on efforts to discredit the Michigan Teachers union.
Letter of support for WikiLeak’s founder Julian Assange
(This letter is re-posted from ZNet.)
While only a tiny fraction of the U.S. diplomatic cables scheduled for publication by Wikileaks have thus far been made available, some conclusions can already be drawn. These cables and the Iraq and Afghan War Diaries provide an opportunity for Americans to see our government for what it is.
Our government is seen here as controlling a global military and espionage empire that impacts every region of the globe and deceives its own population. Secrecy, spying, and hostility have infected our entire government, turning the diplomatic corps into an arm of the CIA and the military, just as the civilian efforts in Afghanistan are described by Richard Holbrooke, who heads them up, as “support for the military.” Secret war planning, secret wars, and lies about wars have become routine. The United States is secretly and illegally engaged in a war in Yemen and has persuaded that nation’s government to lie about it. The United States has supported a coup in Honduras and lied about it.
We have long known that the war on terrorism was increasing, rather than diminishing, terrorism. These leaks show Saudi Arabia to be the greatest sponsor of terrorism, and show that nation’s dictator, King Abdullah, to be very close to our own government in its treatment of prisoners. He has urged the United States to implant microchips in prisoners released from Guantanamo. And he has urged the United States to illegally and aggressively attack Iran. Congress should immediately block what would be the largest weapons sale in U.S. history, selling this country $60 billion in weapons. And Congress should drop any idea of “updating” the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force to permit presidents to unconstitutionally launch more wars. We see what sort of wars our allies urge on our presidents.
We learn that while dictators urge war, other branches of the same governments, the people, and the evidence weigh against it. We learn from a cable from last February that Russia has refuted U.S. claims that Iran has missiles that could target Europe. We learn from September 2009 that the United States and Britain planned to pressure Yukiya Amano, the then incoming head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to produce reports suggesting Iranian nuclear developments, whether or not merited by the facts, and that National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones proposed the propaganda strategy of baselessly tying Iran’s nuclear program to North Korea’s.
Much of the pressure for war appears to come from within the United States, whose representatives treat the entire world as a hostile enemy to be spied on, lied to, and exploited. The secrecy that permits this behavior must be broken if the United States’ approach to the world is to change. Those who have helped to fulfill President Obama’s campaign promise of transparency must be protected from his vengeance, while those who have abused positions of diplomatic trust to advance agendas of espionage and war planning must be held accountable.
While other countries may offer residency and protection to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, it is the United States that has most benefitted from his work. We encourage U.S. cities to offer him sanctuary.
Our Department of Justice has granted immunity for aggressive war, kidnapping, torture, assassination, and warrantless spying, while pursuing the criminal prosecution of Bradley Manning for allegedly leaking materials to Wikileaks. Were our government to indict Assange or support the extradition or rendition of Assange from anywhere in the world to Sweden, while maintaining that his work and not the Pentagon’s has endangered us, our nation’s moral standing would reach a new low.
Our government should cease any actions it is taking to prosecute Julian Assange for absurd criminal charges, to pressure Sweden to do so, or to sabotage Wikileaks’ servers. Coverups of leaks have a history in Washington of backfiring in the form of larger leaks and scandals. Our State Department should focus on diplomacy and mutually beneficial partnerships with the world community.
The undersigned express our gratitude to those doing the job a representative government and an independent media are each supposed to do. We demand an end to all overt and covert wars, a ban on the use of State Department employees and contractors in spying or warfare, and a full investigation of the facts revealed in the Wikileaks cables.
We support the protest of our current wars planned for December 16th, 10 a.m., at the White House.
Signed,
Medea Benjamin
Leslie Cagan
Tim Carpenter
Gael Murphy
Cindy Sheehan
David Swanson
Debra Sweet
Ann Wright
Kevin Zeese
Coca Cola and the Hijacking of Santa Claus
Tis the season as they say to be shopping, but it is also the time of the year when advertisements are trying to tap into “traditional” notions of Christmas.
Of course there is no greater icon for this time of the year than jolly old Saint Nicholas, more commonly known as Santa Claus. Whether we tell our children or not about the white-bearded man in a red suit, Santa Claus will be part of children’s consciousness at a very early age.
However, the current manifestation of Santa Claus is a drastically different one from traditional European Christian culture. In fact, the image we have of Santa Claus right now, with the red and white suit, is really a cultural creation of the Coca Coal Company.
In the later part of the 19th Century artists were depicting St. Nick in a variety of ways, with the red and white outfit being only one of them. However, Coca Cola, which was seeking to expand its marketing of their soda beverage from just a warm weather drink and Santa Claus became the perfect symbol to help them achieve that goal.
Starting in 1931, the company began running ads during the Christmas season where Santa Claus would be drinking or delivering Coca Cola along with the other presents. The popularity of the use of these images helped the company develop their brand as the preferred holiday beverage that persists til today.
Here is an example of a current Coca Cola commercial that utilizes Santa Claus as the one who, along with Coke, brings people together and makes our lives special. The magic of Santa Claus is demonstrated by his power to influence our lives as if we were characters in a snow globe.
However, all the associations we have of Santa Claus with Christmas is really a manifestation of modern consumer culture, where the emphasis is placed on buying and wanting presents. This is a far cry from the historical St. Nicholas, a bishop from the 3rd Century who provided comfort to the poor, particularly poor children.
After his death St. Nick was interpreted in all sort of ways, often based on regional and cultural myths. However, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Nicholas on December 6th, where it is common practices still in some European countries to give gifts at that time.
Regardless of how one celebrates or acknowledges this 3rd Century bishop it is safe to say that the modern consumer culture has hijacked someone who would most likely be disgusted at the greed and materialism that currently surrounds his role at Christmas. Religious traditionalist may want to consider reclaiming the message of St. Nicholas, but it also seems that considering the economic hardships families face and the unhealthy message that adults send to children about the hyper-commercial significance of overspending and materialism that now drives Christmas, parents might consider some alternatives.
There are all kinds of suggestions about what to do differently during the Christmas season, but one good source for parents on alternatives to the hyper-commercial aspect of the holiday is the Commercial Free Holiday Guide put out by the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood.
If you are in West Michigan and you are looking for parents, educators and community activists that are combating commercial pressures targeted towards children, contact STOK (Stop Targeting Our Kids.)
New Report reveals Obama administration gave stimulus funds to companies with a history of polluting
The Center for Public Integrity has released a new report that looks at how the 2009 stimulus funds were distributed and how in many cases the money went to companies with a history of polluting the environment.
“In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.
The administration has awarded more than 179,000 “categorical exclusions” to stimulus projects funded by federal agencies, freeing those projects from review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Coal-burning utilities like Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling are among the firms with histories of serious environmental violations that have won blanket NEPA exemptions.
Even a project at BP’s maligned refinery in Texas City, Tex. — owner of the oil industry’s worst safety record and site of a deadly 2005 explosion, as well as a benzene leak earlier this year — secured a waiver for the preliminary phase of a carbon capture and sequestration experiment involving two companies with past compliance problems. The primary firm has since dropped out of the project before it could advance to the second phase.
Agency officials who granted the exemptions told the Center that they do not have time in most cases to review the environmental compliance records of stimulus recipients, and do not believe past violations should affect polluters’ chances of winning stimulus money or the NEPA exclusions.
The so-called “stimulus” funding came from the $787-billion legislation officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February 2009.
Documents obtained by the Center show the administration has devised a speedy review process that relies on voluntary disclosures by companies to determine whether stimulus projects pose environmental harm. Corporate polluters often omitted mention of health, safety, and environmental violations from their applications. In fact, administration officials told the Center they chose to ignore companies’ environmental compliance records in making grant decisions and issuing NEPA exemptions, saying they considered such information irrelevant.”
You can read the entire report online at http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/2565/
Rethink Afghanistan – Stop the Drone Killings
This new video from Rethink Afghanistan provides analysis on the realities of US military use of Predator Drones in Pakistan. Drones used by the US since the beginning of the Obama administration have killed over 700 civilians.
Amway endorses US/Korea Trade Agreement
On Friday, the Obama administration announced that the US and South Korea had reached an agreement on a trade policy that essentially replicates NAFTA.
This decision by the Obama administration is a betrayal of what was promised during the campaign about trade policy and a betrayal of working people in this country. Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach confirms this in a statement release on Friday:
“Choosing to advance Bush’s NAFTA-style Korea free trade agreement rather than the new trade policy President Obama promised during his campaign will mean more American job loss and puts the White House at odds with the majority of Americans who, polling shows, oppose more-of-the-same job-offshoring agreements.
Merely tweaking the “cars and cows” market access provisions of Bush’s NAFTA-style Korea trade pact but leaving in place the offshoring-promoting foreign investor protections is a slap in the face to the majority of Americans who, according to repeated polls, oppose the same old trade policy that has cost millions of American jobs.”
The White House also posted statements of support from government and business leaders on Friday. One of those statements is from Doug DeVos, the current President of Amway. “Like most companies, we support a more competitive playing field. This new trade agreement allows Amway to continue meeting aggressive growth targets, and gives a much needed boost for all export business in Michigan.”
This statement from Amway shouldn’t surprise us since they don’t even chose to make the claim that this trade agreement will create jobs, it is merely about “meeting aggressive growth targets.” The US Chamber of Commerce is a bit more subtle in their approach and uses that tired old line that the US/Korea Trade Agreement will,“create thousands of new jobs, advance our national goal of doubling exports in five years, and demonstrate that America is once again ready to lead on trade.”
This is the exact same rhetoric that the Obama administration uses in his announcement on Friday and it indicates that the Democratic White House is taking cues from the Chamber of Commerce.
Interestingly enough, as the progressive blog Firedoglake reports, most of the major unions in the US have been silent on the US/Korean trade agreement. However, there was one major union that took a stance on this trade agreement – the UAW. According to Firedoglake the UAW supports the trade agreement. UAW president Bob King flew back from Europe and was greeted by Obama himself when he got off the plane, no doubt to get the auto worker president to give his support for the anti-worker legislation. Working people who are in unions which gave millions to elect this President should be asking what the hell they have won as workers since the beginning of 2009?
Winter Open House at The Bloom Collective
Winter Open House
Sat. Dec. 11 Noon -5 p.m.
Refreshments & Conversation
3 – 5 p.m. Potluck Discussion
Recent Political Repression in the US
671 Davis NW
(Corner of 5th & Davis)
The Bloom Collective hosts a winter open house Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. Stop by to mingle, merry-make, dialogue and potluck with The Bloom community of core members, patrons and volunteers. If you haven’t had a chance to visit The Bloom since we moved to Steepletown Center on the northwest side, this is the perfect time to do it. If you haven’t been there for awhile, you’ll really like the new larger room that now is home to the infoshop/lending library’s thousands of books, hundreds of DVD documentaries and a recently expanded zine collection.
Bloom core members tackled the job of improving the zine collection last fall. What is a zine? It’s a small self-published “magazine.” Zines have been around since the 1970s, as an effective way to protest the idea that information can be “owned” or copyrighted. In the ’80s and ’90s, making zines became popular within the DIY and punk scene as a way of self-expression and a form of resistance against commercial culture and even official left magazines, which tend to rely on a small sector of experts who can tell us all what to think.
Potluck discussion on political repression
At 3 p.m., the potluck discussion gets started. The topic is Recent Political Repression in the US. The topic was chosen because of the FBI’s targeting of political activists here in the Midwest this past fall.
The Bloom Collective will serve hot beverages and treats (vegan options available!) and has a few small items for purchase, including 2011 Slingshot planners for $6.This may be your last chance to get a Slingshot before the New Year as The Bloom is going to be closed from Dec. 12 through Jan. 5.
On behalf of The Bloom Collective, we hope to see you there!
The editorial in Sunday’s Grand Rapids Press about where they stand on WikiLeaks effort to uncover US war crimes should tell us something about the mentality of those who make up the Press editorial staff.
The Press editorial begins by trying to frame the issue as one between closed-door government discussion and “carefully calibrated press releases.” The Pres is clear that the decision by WikiLeaks to post US government documents is not only damaging to US government credibility, it is a criminal act that should result in punishment of those responsible.
The Press editorial staff thinks the US government should go after both the US soldier who copied the documents and the person responsible for posting the documents online, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. “The president has to go after Mr. Assange with every legal tool at hand to send the strong message that this kind of theft of classified material won’t be tolerated.”
Unfortunately, the Obama administration agrees with the advice from the Press editorial staff. A few days ago President Obama said, “The Attorney General and I don’t always agree on different issues. But I believe on this one, he and I strongly agree that there should be a criminal prosecution”.
However, the main issue of concern for people who care about justice and democracy is the lack of understanding by the Press editorial staff over both the content of the WikiLeaks documents and how US foreign policy functions.
The Press editorial makes mention of “unflattering — opinions American diplomats have of foreign leaders,” but fails to mention that the documents reveal that US intelligence agencies spied on foreign leaders and United Nations diplomats.
The Press editorial thinks that the leaks documents “could do real damage to the delicate balance of Middle Eastern power.” However, if one does not look at these documents through an imperialist lens then it is clear that what US policy is actually doing in is to increase the chances of instability in the Middle East.
What the Press editorial staff fails to either understand of to admit is that the US documents posted by WikiLeaks further demonstrates that the US has no interest in promoting justice, democracy or peace anywhere in the world.
The independent press gets this. For example, Jeremy Scahill has an excellent piece about what the WikiLeaks documents reveal about US policy with Pakistan. Scahill believes the documents reveal that the US is engaged in a “secret” war in Pakistan, where innocent civilians are being killed from US military drone attacks.
The Press editorial says nothing about the fact that the leaked documents reveal that the US (and Israel) are determined to attack Iran. The Press editorial fails to mention the US efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Venezuela in the WikiLeaks documents and it contempt for the popular government in Bolivia. The US government documents posted by Wikileaks even reveals that the US government undermined the efforts at any serious reduction of carbon emissions at the Global Climate Summit talks last year in Copenhagen. Instead, the Press editorial felt it was important to tell us, “Lybian leader Moammar Gaddafi depends on a Ukranian nurse described as a “vuluptious blonde.”
However, the largest omission in the Press editorial on the recent Wikileaks documents is the failure to acknowledge the US role in war crimes. The Press editorial staff either refuses to or fails to understand that the US government has been committing war crimes in the form of torture and deliberate attacks on civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the real crime, not that the WikiLeaks posted the US government documents. The Press editorial staff should be saluting the courage of WikiLeaks instead of calling for their prosecution.
The Press editorial concludes by saying that the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers ultimately provided a public service but the WikiLeaks documents do not. Well, who better to ask about this comparison than Daniel Ellsberg, the person who released the Pentagon Papers.
Last week during an interview with Democracy Now, Ellsberg not only expressed his support for what WikiLeaks has done but he said that the public must support and defend WikiLeaks from any government prosecution.
As we said at the beginning of this posting, the Grand Rapids Press editorial from yesterday is very instructive in terms of what it tells us about the Press editorial staff’s view of democracy. In the end, it is clear that the Press not only supports the suppression of information that would enhance democracy, they support the repressive and brutal practices of the US government with their complicity by failing to call it out.
GRIID encourages everyone to look at the US documents posted on WikiLeaks and to draw your own conclusions about US Foreign Policy. As we always say from a media literacy perspective – it is better to develop critical thinking skills than to promote censorship.
