Restoring Rights
If leading spokespersons of both the right and the left in America enthusiastically back passage of any piece of legislation, there should be headlines in the various elements of the mass media. Anything attracting that kind of bipartisan support must certainly be dramatically important — so weighty that all conscious Americans ought to examine it. Claiming to be among the “conscious,” we hereby provide a serious look at H.R. 3835, the American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007. It was introduced in the House of Representatives by Texas Republican Ron Paul on October 15, 2007.
If enacted, H.R. 3835 would:
* repeal the 2006 Military Commissions Act that denies habeas corpus (the right to face criminal accusations in a court of law);
* ban confessions gained through torture or coercion;
* insist on adherence to the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to gain intelligence;
* challenge the president’s practice of disregarding portions of laws with presidential “signing statements”;
* ban torture and arbitrary kidnapping or imprisonment;
* protect journalists who receive information from the executive branch from prosecution for airing it “unless the publication would cause direct, immediate, and irreparable harm” to our national security; and
* put a stop to any use of secret evidence against any individual or organization.
In short, the act would cancel numerous executive branch attacks on the types of civil liberties that have uniquely marked our nation.
H.R. 3835 has earned support across our nation’s political spectrum because the abuses addressed or alluded to in it have indeed been committed. If this type of extra-constitutional activity isn’t stopped, and if the reigning powers in the executive branch aren’t required to submit to traditional restraints, the United States could be transformed into a police state. Both aliens and U.S. citizens could find themselves targeted with no appeal to the rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
The Military Commissions Act (MCA), one of H.R. 3835’s chief targets, became law late in 2006 after House approval by 250-170 followed a 65-34 vote in the Senate. President Bush eagerly signed it after having insisted it was necessary “as part of making sure that we do have the capacity to protect you,” meaning the American people. He also said it was needed “to insure that those questioning terrorists can continue to do everything within the law to get information that can save American lives.”
In what is surely its most fundamental — though far from its only — undermining of rights, MCA grants power to the president to suspend habeas corpus. Traceable to its inclusion in the Magna Carta of 1215 and frequently termed “The Great Writ,” habeas corpus literally means “you have the body.” It is a legal protection that allows any person to seek relief from unlawful detention of either himself or another. It is as basic a right as can be imagined. Using it prevents arbitrary and lawless action such as incarceration without any reason being given and denial of legal assistance if apprehended. And it applies not only to the citizens of this nation but to all persons dealt with by U.S. authorities.
The Founding Fathers understood the importance of habeas corpus. Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states, “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Our nation is not in rebellion and the kind of invasion envisioned by the men who wrote the Constitution has not occurred. Hence, there is no justification for suspending the privilege.
In its attack on habeas corpus, MCA states that “no court, justice or judge shall have jurisdiction to consider any claim or case of action, including an application for a writ of habeas corpus … brought by or on behalf of any alien detained by the United States as an unlawful enemy combatant.” As clearly pointed out in the October 30, 2006 issue of this magazine, MCA’s attack on habeas corpus is not aimed solely at aliens. That this is so can be seen in the MCA’s definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” as a “person who has engaged in hostilities” against our country or a “person who … has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant” by a tribunal established “under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.” If federal authorities designate someone as an “unlawful enemy combatant,” such as a journalist or speaker who opposes the administration’s war or anti-terrorism policies, habeas corpus could be suspended.
As NEW AMERICAN analyst Joe Wolverton has pointed out, the definition found in MCA “throws the blanket over citizen and alien alike by using the word ‘person’ rather than ‘alien.’” American citizen Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 as he returned from Pakistan. He was labeled an enemy combatant and accused of planning to set off a dirty atomic weapon in a major U.S. city. His lawyer filed a habeas corpus petition seeking to discover the evidence backing up the charge. A court denied the petition and Padilla remained in a military prison for more than three years until November 2005.
Even though Padilla was a U.S. citizen, his rights to know the charges against him, to have legal assistance, and to receive a speedy trial were not honored. During his three years and eight months of incarceration in a military prison, Padilla claims to have been tortured and drugged. Video footage likely demonstrating the treatment he allegedly received “mysteriously disappeared” according to Bush administration attorneys. Eventually brought to trial, Padilla was not convicted on the original charges made against him but on such evidence as a highly questionable request he made to go to Afghanistan and a 10-year-old videotape of Osama bin Laden. On the other hand, the government dropped the very serious charge that Padilla was planning to set off a dirty nuclear device; that charge, which shocked the nation when the government snatched Padilla amidst great media fanfare, was dropped down a memory hole.
Padilla is not the only American citizen who has been treated in such a fashion. Louisianan Yaser Esam Hamdi was working in Afghanistan when he was captured by the Northern Alliance, turned over to U.S. authorities, accused of being a member of the Taliban, sent to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later transferred to a military prison in South Carolina before being freed. And what happened to Padilla and Hamdi has also been the fate of hundreds of prisoners languishing for years in that same special U.S. military compound at Guantanamo. Their incarceration occurred prior to passage of MCA. Joe Wolverton explains that heavy support for the act “was pushed by the Bush administration in a bid to get congressional approval of all the illegal action it had already been taking.”
MCA’s attack on habeas corpus is not its only invitation to home-grown tyranny. It allows “pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions” and gives legitimacy to “statements … obtained by coercion.” Defining these frightening terms is left to the discretion of the president or someone he designates. That it was approved by Congress, many of whose members likely never read it beforehand, indicates dereliction of duty and disdain for the Constitution by a majority of its members.
Gonzalez and His Successor
The Bush administration’s attitude regarding the revolutionary powers contained in MCA was clearly expressed on January 19, 2007 by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Under questioning regarding the measure’s powers, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away.” A stunned Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) interrupted and stated, “Now, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right to habeas corpus unless there is an invasion or rebellion?”
Alberto Gonzalez sought to explain his outrageous assertion: “I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say ‘Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas corpus.’ It doesn’t say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by...” The Pennsylvania senator interrupted again and told the soon-to-resign attorney general that he was “violating common sense.” True enough, but he was also violating the most fundamental of all rights protected by the still-existing though regularly discounted Constitution of the United States — habeas corpus.*
No one should believe that because Alberto Gonzalez recently resigned his post that his attitude has been dethroned. It still prevails as the policy of the Bush administration. Mr. Bush’s nominee to replace Gonzalez, Michael Mukasey, essentially seconded what Gonzalez had stated when questioned about the administration’s disputed antiterrorism policies during Senate confirmation hearings. He claimed that the president had authority as commander in chief to supersede laws written by Congress. He is, therefore, another believer in an imperial presidency. His commentary provides another sound reason for enacting H.R. 3835.
Support From Left and Right
For much of the year 2007, the concerns addressed by H.R. 3835 attracted the attention of both conservatives and liberals concerned about the unconstitutional accumulation of powers by the executive branch. Last March, a group of nationally recognized conservatives announced formation of the American Freedom Agenda (AFA), a campaign seeking restoration of the Constitution’s protections against the Bush administration’s attacks on civil liberties. Led by former Reagan administration Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein, the group includes former Congressman Bob Barr, legal scholar John Whitehead, and several other conservative activists.
AFA’s mission statement claims that “the executive branch has chronically usurped legislative and judicial power, and has repeatedly claimed that the President is the law. The constitutional grievances against the White House are chilling, reminiscent of the kingly abuses that provoked the Declaration of Independence.” The group’s 10-point agenda has largely been reproduced in Congressman Paul’s H.R. 3835. (See text of the measure in "A Bill That Protects Rights.")
In addition, AFA compiled its American Freedom Pledge, a pledge for presidential candidates to sign. Its 10 points follow:
1. No Military Commissions (military panels to try war crimes) Except on the Battlefield
2. No Evidence Extracted by Torture or Coercion
3. No Detaining Citizens as Unlawful Enemy Combatants
4. Restoring Habeas Corpus for Suspected Alien Enemy Combatants
5. Prohibiting Warrantless Spying by the National Security Agency in Violation of Law
6. Renouncing Presidential Signing Statements
7. Ending Secret Government by Invoking State Secrets Privilege
8. Stopping Extraordinary Renditions
9. Stopping Threats to Prosecuting Journalists Under the Espionage Act
10. Ending the Listing of Individuals or Organizations as Terrorists Based on Secret Evidence
Rep. Paul was the first presidential candidate to sign the AFA Pledge, and he drew from its points to create his H.R. 3835.
In July, prominent liberals launched the parallel American Freedom Campaign (AFC), founded by liberal activist Naomi Wolf and backed by prominent leftists from Human Rights Watch and MoveOn.org. A Yale graduate and a Rhodes Scholar, Wolf labored for Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection and Al Gore’s run for the presidency in 2000. She maintains that she “is not a voter on [Congressman Ron Paul’s] side of the ballot, but I will move heaven and earth to support the passage” of his bill.
The liberal AFC has produced its own “American Freedom Pledge” which parallels the AFA pledge. It reads in part:
We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal recourse, allow our phones and emails to be tapped without a court order, and above all do not give any President unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from assault by any President.... Yet today, under the pretense of the “war of terror” the White House is dismantling the Constitution, concentrating power in the President, and undermining the rule of law. This is un-American. [Emphasis in the original.]
If you have the opportunity to speak to a candidate for the nation’s highest office, be sure to ask him or her to sign one of these pledges. Additionally, all liberty-cherishing Americans should approach incumbents and candidates for House and Senate seats about this incredibly important matter. House members should be asked to cosponsor H.R. 3835. Senators should be requested to introduce and support a companion piece in their chamber.
A massive calling of attention to H.R. 3835, and to either of the pledges noted above, will have a dampening effect on any continuance of the ongoing trashing of civil liberties. The very healthy joining of forces by the left and the right in America on this issue could pave the way for further togetherness in restoring the entire U.S. Constitution.
Readers are encouraged to contact their representative in favor of the American Freedom Agenda Act. To send a letter online, go to http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=10449681.
* In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled in Harris v. Nelson that “the writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.” The principle in this case has been repeated in numerous instances both before and after the 1969 statement.
What’s Left of the Bill of Rights?
Television commentator Keith Olbermann hosts Countdown on MSNBC. Well known for his liberal views, he is one of many on the left who consider the Military Commissions Act as an enormous infringement of fundamental rights.
On October 10, 2006, not long after Congress passed the administration-backed Military Commissions Act, Olbermann began his program as follows: “The president has now succeeded where no one has before. He’s managed to kill the writ of habeas corpus.”
He continued the broadcast with several quotes resurrected from lawmakers such as the following from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), another liberal: “The bill before us would not only suspend the great writ — the writ of habeas corpus — it just eliminates it permanently. Conditions for suspending habeas corpus have not been met.”
Olbermann then displayed an enlarged copy of the Bill of Rights and proceeded to show how the destruction of habeas corpus affected nine of its 10 amendments to our nation’s Constitution. These amendments, of course, were added to prohibit government from attacking and destroying fundamental rights. Pointing to his blown-up copy of the first 10 amendments, he proceeded to X-out one after another of the articles as follows:
OK, number one is gone. If you’re detained without trial, you lose your freedom of religion and speech, press, assembly, all the rest.... And, you know, you can’t petition the government for anything.
Number two, while you’re in prison, your right to keep and bear arms might be infringed upon even if you’re in the NRA....
Number three [quartering of troops] is all right.
Number four, you’re definitely not secure against searches and seizures … so forget the fourth.
Number five, grand juries and due process? Obviously out....
Number six, well trials are gone too, let alone the right to counsel. Speedy trial? You want it when?
Number seven, I thought we just covered trials and juries earlier, so forget the seventh.
Number eight, well bail’s kind of a moot point isn’t it?
Number nine, other rights retained by the people. Well, you know, if you can name them during your water boarding, we’ll consider them.
Number ten, powers not delegated to the United States federal government. Well, they seem to have ended up there anyway.
So as you can see … at least one tenth of the Bill of Rights — I guess it’s the Bill of Right now — remains virtually intact. Number three is still safe.
We can rest easy knowing that we will never, ever have to quarter soldiers in our homes as long as the Third Amendment still stands strong. The president can just take care of that with a signing statement.
The Economics of Climate Change
The New American Magazine - Mon, 2007-11-12 06:00
Incredibly, the Nobel Peace Price for 2007 has been awarded jointly to Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The award was made to this unlikely pair “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”
The choice of Gore and the IPCC raised eyebrows among more than a few. “People are asking the obvious: How has Gore’s alarmism on global warming aided world ‘peace’?” queried columnist L. Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center. The answer, perhaps, is that the award was given because of the increasing insistence by some, including certain retired military officers and assorted international bureaucrats, that global warming could lead to wars over scarce resources made yet more scarce by climate change. In a 35-page report released in April by the CNA Corp., a national security think tank in Virginia, nearly a dozen retired admirals and generals warned:
Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world. Projected climate change will seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards in many Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations, causing widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states.
“The chaos that results” from failed states, they warn, “can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide, and the growth of terrorism.” Similar concerns have been voiced by retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, who warned: “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today … or we’ll pay the price later in military terms.” Those sentiments were echoed by bureaucrats at this summer’s G8 summit in Heilingendamm, Germany, who warned in a communiqué: “Global warming caused largely by human activities is accelerating [and it] will seriously damage our common natural environment and severely weaken [the] global economy, with implications for international security.”
These concerns, though, are unfounded. Beyond the disputed science* behind the standard global-warming theory, the underlying assumption behind the Nobel Peace Prize this year — that climate change will lead to resource shortages and then to warfare, terrorism and strife — is radically off-base. While shortages often do lead to strife, war, carnage, and mayhem, it is not climate change that leads to shortages. Invariably it is government intervention in and regulation of the economy that leads, first to shortages, then to wars, famines, and genocides. Insofar as environmentalists and radical progressives want government to intervene in the market to control greenhouse gas emissions, it is their proposals themselves that, if enacted, will deindustrialize the developed nations and threaten the peace, stability, and prosperity of the world.
Free Markets or Famine
From the perspective of the modern industrial world, where food is abundant, varied, and fresh, where drinking water is clean, and where public health and sanitation have radically reduced disease, it is difficult to envision the world as it was prior to the industrial and agricultural revolutions. But that foul world of the past, where the vast majority of people lived under constantly repressive feudal rule, is only a history book away. Accounts of rampant famine and disease caused by thorough economic regulation can be found in almost any time period prior to the 19th century.
Jean La Bruyere-Champier served as physician to King Henri II of France in the 16th century. In addition, Champier was very interested in food, going so far as to author a very extensive and obscure encyclopedia of food and drink.
Temporarily dredging up Champier from the depths of Renaissance obscurity, in 1967 Harvard-trained economist V. Orval Watts noted that the antique Frenchman had “made a revealing comment on crows.” In his book, Watts pointed out, Champier “said that crows are not good eating because they live largely on human flesh.”
While macabre, it points to the unfortunate reality that prior to the 19th century famine and death on an incredible scale were a constant of the human condition. And that, by and large, was because a thorough feudal despotism was the normal political arrangement throughout Europe. Sixteenth-century Russia was a case in point. The growth of the Muscovite state during that century was predicated on the growth of a repressive feudal system in Russia.
“To expand and to defend its growing territory, the Muscovite state relied on service people, that is, on men who fought its battles and also performed the administrative and other work for the government,” wrote historian Nicolas V. Riasanovsky in his History of Russia. “The service people — eventually known as the service gentry, or simply gentry — were supported by their estates. In this manner, the pomestie, an estate granted for service, became basic to the Muscovite social order.”
The creation of the service gentry and their estates was of great and terrible consequence to the vast majority of the population, who were peasants. These, like peasants everywhere, were tied to the lands on which they toiled. As estates were parceled out to the service gentry, so were the peasants. The result was tyranny and misery, and eventually, famine. “Gentry landlords, themselves straining to perform burdensome state obligations, squeezed what they could from the peasants,” Riasanovsky wrote. Many peasants tried to flee. Famine ravaged the population in the years 1601-1603.
Nor was Russia the only place where life was nasty, brutish, and short. “Starvation,” economist V. Orval Watts pointed out, “remained an important factor in the death rate throughout most of Europe until the nineteenth century.” According to Watts, that was because the despotic feudal system throttled economic activity and led to massive shortages.
“We may better understand the reasons for the barbarous living conditions … in Europe if we keep in mind that the feudal manors, or baronies, were much like the forced labor camps and collective farms of Communist Russia,” Watts wrote. Thus, he concluded, “starvation was the more common in feudal times because the widespread plundering and restriction of commerce and finance forced the people of each manor to depend on what they could produce for themselves or on what their lord and his henchmen might seize by raids.” Because most people, being peasants, were largely prevented from traveling and trading, supplies were always highly localized and very limited, and starvation was always near.
The deadly consequences of government regulation of and interference in the economy did not disappear with the beginning of modernity. Throughout the 20th century, the ugly results of such meddling have been on display repeatedly wherever despotic governments have tried to control and manipulate a nation’s economic behavior.
The classic case is the Soviet Union. In that communist backwater, all economic matters, including industrial and agricultural organization and production, were micromanaged by a centralized planning agency. As a result, market allocation of goods, services, and resources based on supply and demand was replaced with the fundamentally inefficient whim of the government bureaucrat. As always, the results were endemic shortages and devastating famines. “The historical failures of socialism are indeed enormous,” wrote George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan in 2002. “Five million starved to death during Lenin’s short tenure as Soviet dictator. Seven million starved to death during Stalin’s terror-famine.”
Those who survived were only marginally better off than the dead. “In the name of the proletariat, socialism revived both slavery and serfdom on a massive scale,” Caplan noted. “Millions were sent to slave labor camps to toil in inhuman conditions. Far larger numbers were tied to their collective farms for life, locked in place by internal passport systems. The abuses most familiar to the Western world — like the Berlin Wall — were the media-friendly side of socialism. The lines and shortages endemic under Brezhnev and Gorbachev were the system at its best.”
Global-warming Socialism
What does this have to do with global warming? Despite the demonstrably deleterious effects of socialistic government interference in economic matters, this is precisely the solution offered as the means to combat global warming by environmentalists, progressives, socialists, and everyone else from George Bush on over to the extreme left side of the political spectrum. Bill McKibben, scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, summed up this manner of thinking nicely in a recent review of books on the subject in the New York Review of Books.
“Carbon monoxide — carbon with one oxygen atom — killed you when you breathed it in,” wrote McKibben of a pollutant that once frightened environmentalists but has now become passé. “If you put a filter on the back of your car, it disappears from the exhaust stream. There’s no filter for carbon dioxide; it’s the inevitable result of the combustion of fossil fuel. To deal with it, you need to deal with the dependence on fossil fuel, which means dealing with the economy as a whole, which means dealing with how we live.”
If the Al Gores of the world have their way, it will be government that will deal with how we live. The usual authority referenced with regard to solutions to the supposed carbon crisis of global warming is the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its “Summary for Policymakers,” for Working Group III’s contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment, the panel describes several regulatory mechanisms governments can impose on economies in order to limit the output of greenhouse gas emissions. The policy mechanisms the IPCC recommends governments use include increasing taxes and surcharges, imposing restrictive “regulations and standards” to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide outright, and mandating “tradable permits” to “establish a carbon price” — essentially making producers pay a penalty fee for emissions.
The IPCC has sketched out a number of scenarios marked by increasingly aggressive use of such policy levers to combat global warming. The bureaucrats and would-be administrators of the proposed schemes for economic regulation never talk about the human cost of their plans. At the most aggressive levels proposed by the IPCC, the costs will be so staggering that even many middle-class and low-income Americans will suffer in the face of overwhelming financial challenges as a result of the economic damage resulting from curbs on industrial activity.
“For the United States, the most aggressive scenario in the new UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mitigation report — holding greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to under 500 parts per million, up from the current 380 parts per million — could cost a whopping $240 billion a year, or 2 percent of the nation’s income, said Robert Mendelsohn, a climate change economist at Yale University,” the Chicago Tribune reported in May. To put that into perspective, according to the Tribune, the average yearly cost of the war in Iraq has been $100 billion per year.
What would such costs mean to the average American? According to the Tribune: “Reducing greenhouse gases vigorously and quickly would probably push heating and electric bills for most Americans from 50 percent to 100 percent higher, said Jae Edmonds, a scientist and economist with the Joint Global Change Research Institute, based in Maryland. Gasoline would rise by about 50 cents to $1 a gallon, he said.”
Now, consider a working family in a northeastern state, perhaps living on $15 per hour and heating their home with fuel oil. The cost of purchasing fuel for the heating season this year for such a family, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, is expected to be $1,785. Even a 50 percent increase would add nearly $900 to this bill — money that the family would otherwise have spent on basics like food and clothing.
Even in America, there are disturbing signs that food might become scarce. In California, where substantial regulations on carbon emissions are already in place and where there are plenty of other government-imposed restrictions on economic activity, Interstate Bakeries, one of the largest producers of baked goods in America, including such well-known brands as Wonder and Roman Meal breads, is shutting down numerous operations because of “structural barriers” to profitability. The perverse business climate of California, distorted by regulation, is going to make it harder for people to buy bread!
Bread in California, because it will become relatively scarcer as a result of regulation, will increase in price. So will other commodities. As costs for fuel rise, the cost of transporting other goods to market also rises, leading to price increases for everyday items like milk and eggs at the grocery store or winter coats for kids — who, global warming or not, will still have to bundle up against the winter chill in such northern cities as Chicago, Duluth, and Fargo. To the millions of American families living on $15 per hour or less, such cost increases are devastating. And, with higher prices come job losses for some, like the 1,300 workers in California who will lose their jobs with Interstate Bakeries. For those living at the margin, even in “wealthy” America, socialist tinkering in the economy has real, and dire, consequences.
Catastrophic Impact
If the costs of climate change-induced economic manipulation are high in the United States, the potential consequences for the developing world would be devastating. Capping industrial carbon emissions would radically reduce industrial output, making goods and services desperately needed by the Third World more expensive and putting them out of the reach of millions who badly need access to the benefits of modern industrial free-market civilization.
George Reisman, professor emeritus of economics at Pepperdine University and author of the book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, put the potential decline in productivity resulting from regulation of carbon emissions into perspective in a recent essay for the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Asserting that “emissions caps mean impoverishment,” Professor Reisman wrote:
To gauge the consequences [of caps], simply imagine such caps having been imposed a generation or two ago. If that had happened, where would the power have come from to produce and operate all of the new and additional products we take for granted that have appeared over these years? Products such as color television sets and commercial jets, computers and cell phones, CDs and DVDs, lasers and MRIs, satellites and space ships? Indeed, the increase in population that has taken place over this period would have sharply reduced the standard of living, because the latter would have been forced to rest on the foundation of the much lower per capita man-made power of an earlier generation.
Now add to this the effects of successive reductions in the production of man-made power compelled by the imposition of progressively lower ceilings on greenhouse-gas emissions, ceilings as low as 75 or even 40 percent of today’s levels. (These ceilings have been advocated by Britain’s Stern Report and by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel, respectively.) Inasmuch as these ceilings would be global ceilings, any increase in greenhouse-gas emissions taking place in countries such as China and India would be possible only at the expense of even further reductions in the United States, whose energy consumption is the envy of the world.
In another recent article, Reisman was a bit more pointed in his conclusions regarding the economic implication of substantial reductions in carbon emissions. The “clear implication” of government restrictions on emissions, and hence on economic activity, Reisman wrote, “is economic devastation. It is devastation in the production and use of energy and devastation in the production of everything that depends on energy.” The result, according to Dr. Reisman, could be billions of deaths.
Unnecessary Sacrifice
It is important to recall that the scale of economic damage that, potentially, could be unleashed by invasive regulation of industry in the name of fighting global warming is predicated on a theory of climate change that many highly credentialed scientists have called into question. “The best science offers little justification for … rapid cuts in carbon dioxide,” wrote Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in a 2002 paper. “Furthermore, the economic consequences come with considerable human and environmental risk, at the cost of no significant climatic improvement in terms of avoided temperature rise by the middle of the twenty-first century.”
Still, with a Nobel Prize for Al Gore and the IPCC, with strong support for emissions controls from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and increasingly from President George W. Bush, and with a new bill in the Senate that, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “would cap greenhouse gases at the 2005 emission level starting in 2012 and gradually reduce them to 1990 levels” and more, the nation is on the path toward ever more invasive economic controls. Impoverished generations of the future might well look back and wonder why the present generation ignored the obvious and bleak lessons of economic history.
* See “Global Warming Skepticism” at http://thenewamerican.com/node/2879.
The “Other” Renewables
The New American Magazine - Mon, 2007-11-12 06:00
Over the past several months, THE NEW AMERICAN has looked at some of what are deemed “renewable energy resources” — hydrogen, ethanol, wind, and solar — and found them wanting. Wind and solar power have been shown to be undependable, environmentally disastrous, and puny providers of industrial-grade electricity. Ethanol requires high-grade energy in the form of electricity, natural gas, and petroleum products to convert valuable agricultural products to an inferior and troublesome fuel. Hydrogen was exposed to be no energy source at all because there simply aren’t any naturally occurring deposits of hydrogen, and it, too, requires wasting high-grade electrical energy and/or natural gas in its production to yield a thoroughly impractical, untransportable energy commodity.*
None of these would exist commercially in a free market with an informed public. Even though these “renewables” have received an immense flow of government subsidies and media hype, they are still unpopular with private entrepreneurs because they don’t make fiscal sense. As shown in the pie chart below, “renewables” account for 10.4 percent of electrical generation in the United States. This is further broken down to show that solar and wind generation — after years of subsidies, grants, and other preferential treatment — still produce less than one percent of our total electrical power. So we’ve covered the most politically popular renewables and found they had major drawbacks. But what about the “others”?
Hydropower
The energy in falling water has been harnessed for centuries and was the primary source of nonhuman, nonanimal energy before Watts’ steam engine. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, water power drove the New England mills, making that region a competitive force in many energy-intensive industries, notably textiles. Hydroelectricity came into its own in the United States in the early 20th century with the hydroelectric plants built in connection with the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Hoover Dam, and many other less well-known but crucially important hydroelectric projects.
One might consider hydroelectric power the ultimate source of electrical generation as it can be turned on and off in short order, is nonpolluting, and has rain and melting snow as its fuel. Of course, every power source must have some drawbacks and dangers since that is the nature of potential energy. Dams silt up over long periods of time, and dam failures caused by earthquakes or design flaws have annihilated communities in minutes. Then, too, the flow might be too low during the periods when energy is needed, but all in all, hydroelectricity is a solid, reliable contributor of about seven percent of U.S. electrical-energy production.
However, as a solution for meeting our growing energy needs, hydroelectricity is dead in the water. There are too few, if any, generating sites available with the topography for dam construction — requiring both a large volume of flow and a considerable vertical distance between the “head water” and the “tail water.” (Hydroelectric energy is proportional to the volume of water channeled through the turbine, times the difference in reservoir levels.) In recent years, many dams have been removed, some because they have become decrepit and weren’t worth refurbishing, others because of pressure from environmentalists to return the rivers to their natural states.
Geothermal
We all know that it gets warmer as we drill deeper into the Earth, so it seems a simple enough matter to drill a hole, pour water into it, and wait for the steam to come rushing out. Actually that’s not far from what is done in a geothermal “Hot Dry Rock” system, except two geothermal wells are drilled with the rock between them explosively ruptured at a great depth. This is not a tunnel as such, just fractured rocks so the feedwater can come in contact with the hot rocks (with as much surface area as possible) before becoming superheated and being pumped to the surface where it is flashed into steam. At most locations, to get sufficiently high temperatures to produce steam would require drilling to a depth of 30,000 feet — nearly six miles down! This is between the deepest land-based well ever drilled (24,000 feet in California) and the deepest well in the world (36,000 feet in Russia). Costs for drilling to these levels are not readily available, but drilling to 20,000 feet would cost an estimated $10 million, with costs rising rapidly at increasing depths. It wouldn’t be surprising for the cost to exceed $50 million per well to drill to a depth of 30,000 feet — provided someone could be found with the equipment and technology to take on such a project.
In several volcanic locations, for instance Yellowstone Park and Iceland, the depth of the geothermally active level is much shallower than normal. In these areas, different technologies are available. Flash Plants take advantage of the fact that as pressure is released from superheated water, the water “flashes” into steam just as it does in the case when the superheated water is produced in a high-pressure boiler. This steam can be used directly for powering a generator with as much condensate as practical returned to the water table. A third method routes warm water through a heat exchanger, where the heat is transferred to a low-boiling-point liquid, which produces the gas to drive the generator. Because of the two fluids involved, this is known as the Binary Cycle and is the method of choice for most geothermal plants now being designed.
It appears that geothermal electrical generation is feasible at least to some degree, although much needs to be learned as to its economies and long-term reliability. There is concern that localized cooling will occur, interrupting the availability of sufficiently hot water/steam. Physical constraints (such as well diameters and friction losses) and some state environmental regulations (California regulates everything!) tend to limit the generator capacity to between one-twentieth and one-fifth of a nuclear or coal-fired plant. The cost per kilowatt output is two or three times that for coal or nuclear.
We all know that there’s a virtually limitless supply of hot rocks some five or six miles straight down — which gives geothermal the potential for producing electrical power. But it remains to be seen if technology in the foreseeable future will be able to utilize it.
Biomass
“Biomass” is the buzz word to describe the burning of wood, farm stubble, and garbage — itself now known as waste or municipal waste. Tree-huggers can rest assured that this practice does not entail cutting down trees for the purpose of generating electricity. In fact, it would take a stack of oak logs four feet wide by four feet high by over four hundred miles long to fuel a 1,000 MW power plant for a year. Instead, the wood-products industry long ago recognized the advantage of burning bark and otherwise unusable tree parts to heat boilers for local steam, and (later) using this steam to “co-generate” electrical power in cooperation with a local utility. Obviously this is not going to be an exciting new energy source, but it still generates nearly as much electricity as the highly subsidized wind and solar industries — and with a great deal more dependability.
Burning municipal wastes is not so straightforward. Most garbage arrives at the power plant just the way you put it on the curb — bottles, cans, paper, food, plastic, etc. This refuse is separated by machines and human labor to remove recyclables and burn the flammables. Even that is not so easy. Soggy garbage must be dried out before being ignited, usually with a natural-gas burner. Then large draft fans are used to insure combustion, and other systems remove particulates and odor-causing gases. While this may not be the wave-of-the-future in industrial electricity production, it at least gives cities an option on the size of landfills they must come up with.
Also Rans
Most of us have heard of the very high tides in the Bay of Fundy where the water level changes by about 50 feet during diurnal tides and would agree this is probably the best place in the world for tidal power. But such sites are very limited and, we might remember, have two periods each day when no power can be generated because there wouldn’t be a strong enough incoming or outgoing tide. Indeed, a generating plant might well be constructed across the bay entrance. But although this limited and localized source of energy would likely provide the power for Fundy, Cleveland would be a very different matter.
There are many other possible energy sources: wave motion, river turbines, landfill gases, chicken manure, and the latest — burning salt water in a radio-frequency energy field. All (except the saltwater fraud) have the potential of generating some positive energy. But our country doesn’t operate on a few kilowatts of piddle power, it takes millions of kilowatts — gigawatts — to power our homes, our factories, our water and wastewater systems, and our other electrical needs. The “also rans” are dreams, none of which have any chance of becoming a factor in large-scale, reliable energy production.
Of the “other renewables,” we can see that the energy contributions from hydro and biomass are essentially constant and not expected to grow, with biomass providing much less energy than hydro. Geothermal generation has — and perhaps will always have — great potential. Of the many other interesting and inventive ideas, none have caught the imaginations of wise investors.
The hard reality is that we are a nation of electricity users and our use goes up every year. To provide the trillions of kilowatt hours necessary for our health, safety, and enjoyment, our choices are coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium. Oil and natural gas are options for fueling a power plant boiler, but they are non-economical and a waste of valuable fuels that can be put to other uses. Coal will be with us for many years, but its disadvantages compared to nuclear power — in fuel cost, in pollution, in deaths from mining and transport, in actual (not eco-lawyer inflated) power-plant construction costs — make it unattractive to those without a vested interest.
* To read this and other energy articles online, go to www.thenewamerican .com, then click on “Energy” in the left-hand column.
Pilot Who Dropped the A-Bomb Didn’t Know Japan Wanted To Surrender
The John Birch Society News Feed - Fri, 2007-11-02 21:22
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
Paul Tibbets piloted the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Unbeknownst to him and the American people at the time was the fact that the Japanese had already tried to surrender.
Follow this link to the original source: "Paul Tibbets, pilot who bombed Hiroshima, dies at 92"
COMMENTARY:The Chicago Tribune’s Walter Trohan was arguably America’s most respected journalist sixty years ago. In a front-page article published by his newspaper on August 19, 1945, Trohan told of having access to a January 1945 peace offering from Japan. He explained that he and his newspaper could not publish what they knew at the time because they were cooperating with a censorship code requiring silence about military matters during wartime.
Once the war finally ended on August 15, 1945, Trohan related that, in January, President Roosevelt "received a Japanese offer identical with the terms subsequently concluded by his successor, President Truman." But FDR, who passed away in mid-April, did nothing and a few days later went to Yalta to meet with Churchill and Stalin.
Had the Japanese offer been accepted when presented in January, there would have been no enormously costly battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, no firebombing of Japanese cities by our air force, and no dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war would have ended in the Pacific before all of those events took place, and its end would likely have speeded Germany’s surrender that didn’t come until several months later.
Colonel Paul Tibbets and his crew couldn’t have known about Japan’s January offer when they unleashed the horrible weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Nor could Major Charles Sweeney and his B-29 crew have known about it when they dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki a few days later. The twin attacks cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. The attitude held by most at the time insisted that the attacks were necessary to avoid the need for an invasion of mainland Japan and the loss of perhaps millions more. But that attitude was incorrect, though very few at the time knew that it was.
In her 1956 book The Enemy at His Back, journalist Elizabeth Churchill Brown supplied convincing commentary about the close of the war. One of many whose research confirmed the revelation supplied by Walter Trohan about the early Japanese desire to surrender, she wrote: "I quickly began to see why the war with Japan was unprecedented in all history. Here was an enemy who had been trying to surrender for almost a year before the conflict ended."
Why Japan’s offer was not accepted can only be a matter for speculation. But, in an article written by this author and published in The New American magazine in August 1995 (the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan), I suggested that the threat of nuclear terror made obvious by the bombings "has been used effectively to propel mankind – especially the United States – to the brink of world government."
The real winners of the war were the enemies of national sovereignty who were also promoters of the United Nations. Once the bombs were dropped, it became fashionable for internationalists everywhere to claim that nations can no longer be truly independent and peoples can no longer expect to exercise God-given freedoms. In his 1967 book Utopia: The Perennial Heresy, Professor Thomas Molnar agreed with our assessment when he wrote: "Political leaders, fearful of the final cataclysm of nuclear annihilation, say that men must huddle together under a world government…." This argument can still be heard today.
The combination of assuring that the bloody war in the Pacific would continue for seven more months, and the decision, made at the top levels of our government, to use frightfully horrific nuclear weapons on non-combatant Japanese, has to be considered one of the most horrible crimes in all history. John F. McManus
John F. McManus is President of The John Birch Society.
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Writers' Strike May Shut Down Hollywood
The John Birch Society News Feed - Fri, 2007-11-02 20:00
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
During a meeting on the evening of November 1 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the Writers Guild of America Negotiating Committee announced its unanimous recommendation to call a strike, threatening to leave the film and TV studios devoid of content.
Follow this link to the original source: "Writers Set to Strike, Threatening Hollywood"
COMMENTARY:Hollywood is in a near panic. According to the New York Times: "a writers' strike will have an immediate impact on more than 200,000 workers in the movie and TV industry here and the thousands more who produce or sell entertainment elsewhere in the United States and abroad."
The ripple effect of a strike could have a large, area-wide negative impact on the economy of Southern California, already damaged by the collapse in home sales and recovering from the damage of October's Santa Ana wind-driven fires. The entertainment industry contributes an estimated $30 billion annually, or about 7 percent, to the economy of Los Angeles County.
The Los Angeles Times noted: "A prolonged strike would destabilize Southern California's signature industry and spur a domino effect across the Los Angeles economy, throwing untold numbers of people out of work."
First of all, this writer is not unsympathetic to the thousands of people who may become unemployed as a result of the collateral damage emanating from the writers' strike. As one who was, himself, forced to flee Los Angeles County as a result of unemployment in the early 1990s, I understand their plight. Southern California has been blessed with natural beauty — where the Pacific Ocean and towering mountains are within sight of each other — and a climate more pleasant than almost anyplace else in the United States. Having to give up the "California lifestyle" involuntarily is difficult, indeed.
The Hollywood entertainment industry is another matter. I had a birds-eye view of the mindset of that community while briefly working for Daily Variety, which for many years has been the 'bible" of the industry. (Remember the headline: Sticks nix hick pix in the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy?)
Of course, Daily Variety was a mismatch for me, but one must put food on the table somehow. It was evident that my conservative views on moral issues such as abortion and "alternative lifestyles" (several of Daily Variety's editors were conspicuously "gay") irritated my coworkers and hastened my departure from Hollywoodland.
What I confirmed during my employment on Wilshire Boulevard was that those who espouse the values of what might be called Middle America are not held in high esteem in Hollywood — and the scripts upon which virtually all TV and movie productions are based reflect that bias. It is not accidental that Americans searching for "family fare" on their TV set or when attending the movies might as well be panning for gold — it's not impossibile to find, but it's rare.
Maybe, just maybe, a nice long Hollywood writers' strike will have a positive cultural effect on America. Families might turn off their TV sets, read a good book, or actually engage in stimulating conversation!Warren Mass
Warren is the Editor for the John Birch Society Bulletin.
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AgJOBS Amnesty May be Added to Farm Extension Bill
The John Birch Society News Feed - Fri, 2007-11-02 15:28
Over the past week our office has been made aware of the possibility that Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) may be planning to attach the proposed Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits, and Security Act of 2007 (AgJOBS) to the Farm Bill Extension Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419).
If passed, the AgJOBS amendment would create an amnesty program, similar to the one that was rejected by Congress earlier this year, which would grant amnesty to agricultural workers who are unlawfully residing within the United States. Millions of illegal immigrants could potentially be given legal status by the AgJOBS program. According to the Heritage Foundation, 1.5 million workers would be granted "legal" status, as well as approximately 1.8 million family members.
The AgJOBS bill would just be another piecemeal approach to the comprehensive immigration reform bill that was widely opposed by the American people earlier this year. Continue to oppose the AgJOBS bill, or other forms of amnesty, by contacting Congress today.
To take immediate action on this issue, click here.
To support The John Birch Society's legislative alert system, click here.
Thank you,
The John Birch Society
Standing for family and freedom since 1958
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Oklahoma Illegal Immigration Law Takes Effect
The John Birch Society News Feed - Thu, 2007-11-01 20:29
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
JBS grassroots activism leads to a tough new immigration bill in the state of Oklahoma.
Follow this link to the original source: "State immigration law backers submit petitions"
COMMENTARY:
On November 1, a new illegal alien bill became law in Oklahoma, and it is one of the toughest in the country. Earlier in the week, on Monday, an opposition group delivered 1,100 signed petitions to the governor's office. On Thursday, local JBS leader Clark Curry delivered nearly 2,700 signed petitions he had collected at the 2006 Oklahoma State Fair in support of "no amnesty."
"The people of the great state of Oklahoma have taken a giant step forward to protect the critical public resources available to legal, taxpaying citizens by passing the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007. Now they want to see it carried out," Curry stated.
The new law helps to keep illegal aliens from receiving public assistance by requiring proof of citizenship or valid visas before being able to get government identification, such as a driver license. Those charged with a felony or with driving under the influence will have their citizenship verified or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will be notified. The law also makes it illegal to transport or harbor illegal immigrants. Public employers and their subcontractors have to register with a Basic Pilot Program to verify the work authorization status of all new employees.
The law reads:
The State of Oklahoma finds that illegal immigration is causing economic hardship and lawlessness in this state and that illegal immigration is encouraged by public agencies within this state that provide public benefits without verifying immigration status. The State of Oklahoma further finds that illegal immigrants have been harbored and sheltered in this state and encouraged to reside in this state through the issuance of identification cards that are issued without verifying immigration status, and that these practices impede and obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration law, undermine the security of our borders, and impermissibly restrict the privileges and immunities of the citizens of Oklahoma. Therefore, the people of the State of Oklahoma declare that it is a compelling public interest of this state to discourage illegal immigration by requiring all agencies within this state to fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities in the enforcement of federal immigration laws. The State of Oklahoma also finds that other measures are necessary to ensure the integrity of various governmental programs and services.
"While there are those that claim we cannot deport all the illegal aliens," Curry said, "it’s clear to the state of Oklahoma that we won’t be catering to their needs any longer and in the resulting environment, they will merely deport themselves."
Bill Hahn
Bill Hahn is the public relations manager for The John Birch Society.
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Europeans Resisting EU; the Warning For America Must Be Heeded
The John Birch Society News Feed - Thu, 2007-11-01 16:31
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
Demands for a referendum are sweeping England but Prime Minster Gordon Brown remains adamantly opposed to letting the voters have a say about the new European Union Treaty.
Follow this link to the original source: "Campaign For an Independent Britain"
COMMENTARY:
On October 27, protest rallies in London and throughout Britain saw politicians and grass-roots anti-EU campaigners demand that Prime Minster Brown schedule a referendum on the matter of Britain’s approval of the new EU Treaty.
European Parliament member Daniel Hannan, a British national, told a large London gathering that Great Britain had already ceased to be an independent nation and was largely run from EU headquarters in Brussels. He insisted that approval of the recently constructed EU treaty formed as a substitute for the rejected EU Constitution, would "make the British people completely subservient to Europe." He supported the demands for a referendum issued by over 100 elected officials — members of Parliament, members of the European Parliament, and local elected representatives from the country’s cities and towns. Danish political leader and anti-EU activist Jens-Peter Bonde journeyed from his country to participate in the rally.
Speakers claimed that the newly created treaty would make the EU a single legal entity with an EU head of state, an EU foreign minister, an EU police force, an EU judicial system, and an EU army. They also claimed that the new treaty would do away with any remaining ability for Britain to veto EU legislation.
In a related event, a "Counter-Jihad Conference" met in Brussels on October 18. Referring to their homelands as "Eurabia," participants addressed the continuing strong influx of Muslims into all parts of Europe. Of particular note to Americans, reporter Baron Bodissey, who attended the conference, issued the following warning to the people of the United States:
And for those who think America is exempt from all of this, bear in mind the "North American Union." The NAU is also considered a paranoid fantasy by most people, but it is being constructed in the same manner, piecemeal, boring document by boring document. Agreements, protocols, joint understandings, etc. — none of them requires the consent of Congress. They are not secret, but they are never noticed by the public at large, and so never generate any popular counter-pressure on elected officials.
Imagine a Rip Van Winkle, who went to sleep in the 1950s during the heady days of the Common Market when removing trade barriers was supposedly the only issue. Waking up fifty years later, he discovers that a totalitarian European regime has been imposed from Brussels, without so much as a by-your-leave from the citizens of the nations of Europe.
O Brave New World, indeed!
It begins with the removal of trade barriers. Then comes the talk about "the free flow of goods and people." Then, the "harmonization of laws within the community." With politically correct multicultural indoctrination to grease the skids, no one notices until it’s too late. They wake up and find their God-given rights have evaporated, and decisions are made on their behalf and without their consent by a distant and unaccountable group of bureaucratic mandarins.
Watch Europe closely; its present is America’s future.
What has occurred and continues to occur in Europe does not have to be America’s fate. Resistance here in our nation to the threat posed by those who seek to create an EU-style single legal entity is real and growing. It must become a force that cannot be resisted by any of this nation’s would-be "bureaucratic mandarins."
Are you interested in Freedom? Are you interested in keeping American independent?
If so, don't sit on the sidelines. Join the John Birch Society and get in the fight to keep America free!
John F. McManus
John F. McManus is President of The John Birch Society.
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Foreign Relations Committee Approves LOST
The John Birch Society News Feed - Wed, 2007-10-31 21:25
The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations voted to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) on Wednesday, October 31, by a vote of 17-4. With the committee's approval, the full Senate will now be faced with a final vote on ratification of the treaty.
As of October 31, there is no scheduled vote on LOST in the Senate. Nevertheless, previous reports indicated that the Senate would vote on LOST prior to the end of the year.
The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) entered into force in 1994 and has been ratified by 153 countries (click here for a list of recent LOST developments). The treaty gives the UN complete jurisdiction over the oceans and everything in them, including the ocean floor with all its resources, along with the power to regulate 70 percent of the world's surface.
It is more important now then ever to contact your senators and urge them to oppose the Law of the Sea Treaty. To take immediate action, click here.
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The CIA Spends Billions But Its Activities Aren’t Revealed
The John Birch Society News Feed - Wed, 2007-10-31 16:16
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, reluctantly announced that his intelligence agency spent $43.5 billion for 2007. What those billions paid for remains unknown. A law passed after 9/11 required airing the agency’s budget, but not its activity.
Follow this link to the original source: "$43.5 Billion Spying Budget for Year, Not Including Military"
COMMENTARY:The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) succeeded the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1947. OSS had been led by General William Donovan who loaded the agency with communists. Confronted by the FBI about his preference, Donovan boldly replied, "I know they’re Communists. That’s why I hired them." These disloyal employees devoted most of their efforts to neutralizing and even destroying indigenous anti-Communist organizations and individuals in both Europe and the Far East.
It would be comforting to believe that communists in the OSS were purged when the agency was renamed in 1947. Most stayed on, however, and the new CIA continued its left-leaning activities. Lyle Munson, a patriotic American who served in both the OSS and CIA, would later seek to correct the notion that the CIA was serving the best interests of the United States. In 1971, intelligence specialist Frank Capell noted that Munson once pointed out that "the operational arm of the CIA has been the haven for more left-of-center dreamers, social climbers, draft-dodgers, do-gooders, one-worlders, and anti-anti-communists than any other single department or agency in Washington."
In his 1970 book, Donovan of OSS, Corey Ford pointed out that Allen Dulles and John McCone — each of whom later became CIA leaders — were both Donovan lieutenants. Moreover, through six decades the agency has almost exclusively been led by members of the world-government-promoting Council on Foreign Relations. In 1953, Allen Dulles led the CIA’s successful efforts to remove Dr. Muhammad Mossadegh as Iran’s top government official. Many Iranians have never forgotten the United States’ role in undermining their popular leader. The Mossadegh-style operation has been employed by the CIA over the years in other nations, and it has led to the United States being both feared and hated by many.
The CIA’s operations have always been suspect. Having billions to spend with virtually no congressional oversight gave the agency a green light to do whatever its leaders wanted. Of course, a succession of U.S. presidents had to know and approve whatever the CIA was doing.
Thomas W. Braden was a veteran of the OSS who became a high CIA official in 1951. He would later boast of the CIA’s creation of "dummy foundations" through which the agency was able to funnel money to its favorite individuals and activities. He told of supplying money to the far-leftist National Student’s Association that he described as "a CIA front." He noted that $2 million had been given annually to Communist Party leader Jay Lovestone, and other funds had been secretly directed to leftist "labor leaders, students, professors, and others" both in the United States and abroad.
In 1983, Braden stated during a television interview that the CIA had financed numerous publications the agency wanted to keep in operation, including the Communist Party’s newspaper, Daily Worker. All of this was being done covertly and, if anyone in Congress knew anything about it, no information was given to the American people.
Now, we learn that the agency’s annual budget totals $43.5 billion and its employees number close to 100,000. Director Mike McConnell has stated that no further information about the agency would be revealed "because such disclosures could harm national security." If history is any guide, complete disclosures would upset the operations of many who are working to destroy the independence of nations — including the United States — and build the long-desired world government.
With 16 separate agencies within its massive structure, the CIA constitutes a brilliantly conceived method for financing or undermining desired targets and individuals both at home and abroad. And the few in government who do know what it is doing say little or nothing. The agency spends huge amounts of taxpayer money for satellites, weapons, spies, computers, and whatever cloak-and-dagger operations it wishes to conduct. While some of its billions are spent in operations that would be approved by Congress and the American people, other billions end up being used in hidden operations that are likely most damaging both to our nation and the true friends of America worldwide.
Congress should exercise a far greater role in seeing that the CIA isn’t still unseating foreign leaders, financing leftists at home and abroad, and working to compromise the independence of this nation. An admission about the size of its budget isn’t enough. John F. McManus
John F. McManus is President of The John Birch Society.
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Kasparov in the Riskiest Chess Match of His Life
The John Birch Society News Feed - Wed, 2007-10-31 13:36
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
With love of his fatherland as his motivation, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is running for president of Russia in March 2008. But in Russia, where the government makes all the rules as the game unfolds, politics is filled with treachery and very real danger.
Follow this link to the original source: "Kasparov barred from Russia polls"
COMMENTARY:
In 2005, after experiencing years of a growing police state and outright terrorism, a political group with the name "Other Russia" was formed by those who opposed Vladimir Putin and his regime. Three candidates put forward by the Other Russia group have just been barred from taking part in December's parliamentary polls. Because the group is not registered as a political party, the election commission made a move to block the only opposition to the present Kremlin regime. They did this by instituting election ballot criteria that are virtually impossible to meet.
The main presidential candidate offered is none other than Garry Kasparov, the highly charismatic, energetic, often flamboyant (and a bit of a revolutionary) famous Russian chess master. He has chosen to be the leader of the opposition to the Kremlin's ruling party. He knows open elections are not likely, but he believes the soul of a nation is at stake. He is willing to risk his wealth, security, and even his life in the struggle to rid his country of a fearful master — what he calls the KGB Corporation run by Putin.
Kasparov doesn't believe that today's Russia is a democracy at all, but a "police state." While he has been able to organize street protests, he has also been detained, investigated, and is now under constant surveillance. Still, he refuses to be silent. Strategy sessions are held around his kitchen table with government dissidents in attendance, all labeled extremists by the government. Asked if he thinks he's still protected somewhat by his fame and the fact he's still considered a national hero, Kasparov answered: "It does help to a certain degree. But it is not an ultimate protection. No one is safe in Putin's Russia." He is well aware of the murder of over a dozen journalists in his country and doesn’t make a move without protection from two or more bodyguards.
When Kasparov is in Russia, he retains a security contingent that costs him tens of thousands of dollars a month. His wife, Daria Tarasova, and their baby often stay in an apartment in New Jersey. Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general who was Putin's superior in St. Petersburg twenty years ago and now lives in Maryland, is quoted as saying:
You can expect anything with this regime, and Kasparov has been very vocal and very personal in his criticism of Putin. I wouldn't be surprised to hear about something terrible happening to him. And where will the evidence be? Remember that Trotsky's assassin, Señor Ramon Mercader, was sent to get him in Mexico by the KGB and was secretly made a hero of the Soviet Union. No one knew the truth for decades.
When asked if he feared for his life, Kasparov said:
I do. The only thing I can try to do is reduce my risk. I can't avoid the risk altogether. They watch everything I do in Moscow, or when I travel to places like Murmansk or Voronezh or Vladimir. I don't eat or drink at places I'm not familiar with. I avoid flying with Aeroflot [the Russian national airline]. It doesn't help in the end if they really decide to go after you. But, if they did, it would be really messy. And not just because of the bodyguards. There would be a huge risk for the Kremlin if anything happens to me, God forbid, because the blood would be on Putin's hands. It's not that they have an allergy to blood, but it creates a bad image, or makes it worse than it already is.
In September, CBS’ 60 Minutes program traveled to St. Petersburg to film Kasparov. More than 1,000 turned out to voice their displeasure with their government at a rally, but there was also a strong police presence. Kasparov noted, "I can see that people respond," to the American media coverage of the event, "and they are overcoming their fear. That's how we can win." The event was ignored by the Russian media, which Kasparov says is totally and completely controlled.
Kasparov knows that he has controlled opposition in the Young Guard. The Young Guard is the youth branch of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. Putin's Kremlin orchestrated the creation of a series of youth organizations modelled on the Soviet-era Komsomol. The largest of them, with ten thousand active members and capable of delivering a hundred thousand bodies to any event, is called Nashi, or Ours. Nashi, like the Komsomol, organizes volunteers for staged demonstrations. They are dedicated activists whose specialty is to harass the opposition. One of the questions on Nashi's entrance exam for its summer camp was to describe Garry Kasparov. The "correct" answer was that he is an American citizen who has taken an oath of loyalty to undermine Russia in the name of the U.S. State Department. "Nashi was created, first and foremost, for disturbing our activities," Kasparov said.
Unfortunately, Kasparov is cozying up to the "neo-conservatives" (neo-cons) in the states. He recently gave several speeches stateside, one to the Hudson Institute, a neocon think tank, with Norman Podhoretz in attendance. He also received an award from the Center for Security Policy, another neocon think tank. The award, which is given to "individuals for devoting their public careers to the defense of the United States and American values around the world," was previously presented to neocons Newt Gingrich, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld.
Still, one admires the enormous fortitude Kasparov exhibits against incredible odds and outright peril. "Look, it's my country," Kasparov says. "I believe that I have to try to change it for [the] better. And it's following the motto of the Soviet dissidents that I learned [in] my childhood: 'Do what you must and so be it.' And I do what I must."
Ann Shibler
Ann is the Editorial Assistant for The New American magazine, a publication of the John Birch Society.
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The Difference Between the John Birch Society and the President
The John Birch Society News Feed - Wed, 2007-10-31 13:13
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
President Bush voiced his disapproval with the United States Congress when he announced that it is simply wasting time. The 110th Congress carries "the worst record for a Congress in 20 years," Bush said.
Follow this link to the original source: "Bush Says Congress Is Wasting Time"
COMMENTARY:
When it comes to passing multi-billion dollars worth of legislation, Congress takes too much time, according to recent comments made by President Bush. The President is having more trouble with the current Congress than he has had since his presidency began roughly 7 years ago. Ironically, constant legislative stalls come from the Democrat-controlled Congress attempting to spend more money than President Bush has requested.
The spending in question would be allocated to mostly unconstitutional programs, such as a slew of massive appropriations bills filled with domestic welfare and foreign aid programs. Some of the legislation in question includes:
• The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that would have provided expanded national health care coverage
• Military spending for Iraq and withdrawal of troops
• The nomination of Michael Mukasey as U.S. Attorney General
Congress has failed repeatedly to grant the White House the funds, legislation, or nominations requested by the President. For these reasons, the President pointed out that this Congress has "the worst record for a Congress in 20 years." According to President Bush, "Congress has been unable or unwilling to get its basic job done."
Though for different reasons, for once The John Birch Society could not agree more!
Congress has been failing at its "basic job" for a number of years. Nevertheless, the reason for President Bush's disapproval is vastly different the John Birch Society's. While President Bush is concerned with approving unnecessary spending, expanding Executive powers, and merging the United States into what has been commonly termed the North American Union, the John Birch Society is greatly concerned with the blatant disregard most of our elected officials have toward upholding the U.S. Constitution.
Is President Bush, though, in any position to be scolding the Congress. Consider approval ratings. Bloomberg recently reported on a CNN/Opinion Research poll that resulted in a dismal 22 percent approval rating of Congress. But Bush's approval rating in an October 17 Reuters/Zogby poll resulted in an equally dismal 24 percent approval rating.
A history of out-of-control spending, and a failure to protect our borders, enforce immigration laws, protect the privacy of American people, or bring an end to the unconstitutional War in Iraq (as well as military operations world-wide) has caused the public to loose confidence in the Congress.
Instead of merely rubber-stamping the requests made by the president, Congress should try to regain the confidence of the American people. A good start would be for congressmen to vote on constitutional principles rather than the requests put forth by the Executive branch of government.
Of course, that won't happen without citizen involvment and activism. You can help change the downward spiral in Washington! Click here to view The John Birch Society's legislative action page and become a part of our growing army of grassroots activists.
Mary Benoit
Mary Benoit is a Research Associate for the John Birch Society.
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Christians Should Support Constitutional Government
The John Birch Society News Feed - Tue, 2007-10-30 18:11
I was honored to speak before the National Committee of the Constitution Party on Thursday, October 25, 2007 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Today's column is a condensed version of that address.
Daniel Webster is regarded as perhaps America's most notable jurist. Webster said, "Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world."
He also said, "The hand that destroys the Constitution rends our Union asunder forever."
Please remember that this is the same Daniel Webster who said: "If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instruction and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."
You see how Daniel Webster (like most of America's founders) was a man with deeply-held Christian convictions. He believed the Bible. He was a devout believer. And he found no contradictions between the Bible and the Constitution. In fact, he believed (as do I) that the Constitution is the best safeguard for Christian liberty that we have.
When any constitutionally-elected officeholder assumes office, he or she promises to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. They don't promise to represent "conservative principles" or to be "loyal to a political party," etc. The Constitution is the contract between "We the people" and our civil magistrates.
When you or I hire an electrician or plumber to do work for us, we sign a contract for specific work to be done. And at the end of the day, I really don't care whether he claims to be a Christian or where he goes to church or how religious he claims to be. When the work is finished, I want my lights to turn on and my toilet to flush. In other words, I expect him to live up to his contract.
When we elect people to public office, we should expect only one thing: that they uphold their contract to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
You see, adherence to the Constitution protects our freedom of speech and assembly; our freedom of worship; our right to keep and bear arms; our right to a trial by jury; the right to be secure in our own homes against police overreach; our right to witness for Christ in public, as a Christian; the right to own property; the right to not be deprived of life or property without due process of law; the right to face our accusers, and the right to keep government local and limited.
In fact, keeping government local and limited is the cornerstone doctrine of American government. In most nations, the federal government holds power over virtually every area of the lives of its people. Not so in America--at least, not in the America that was originally crafted.
Most of the problems that we are now dealing with socially, culturally, financially, etc., stem from America abandoning the basic founding principle that "the government that governs least governs best."
Accordingly, America's commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been (and is being) systematically stripped from us--not by State legislatures, but mostly by agencies of the federal government.
Consider how it has been federal courts that have banned prayer in school, and legalized abortion and homosexual marriage. Even in the liberal State of Massachusetts it was the courts (along with a compliant liberal governor, Mitt Romney), that forced acceptance of homosexual marriage upon the people.
Today, we have federal departments and agencies almost without number. We have the Department of Education, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, the Department of State, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of the Interior, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Each and every federal department and agency, in its own way and for its own purposes, to one degree or another, ignores or violates constitutional government. And as a result, they contravene and strip away the rights and freedoms of States collectively and of the people individually.
The result of this gargantuan federal monstrosity includes back-breaking taxation and over-regulation, which fuel inflation, stymie productivity, and invite foreign influence.
One only has to observe how President Bush is now appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of an illegal Mexican alien who raped and murdered two Houston, Texas teenagers, arguing that his death sentence should be overturned and that he should be given a new trial. Bush's reason? Illegal aliens should be under the authority of a UN "world court" instead of the State of Texas' authority.
Observe how Bush is pushing for amnesty for illegal aliens. See how he has merged these United States into a regional government by signing onto the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement with Canada and Mexico. See how he is pushing for a NAFTA superhighway. Observe how he and other globalists are planning to replace the U.S. dollar with a regional, multinational currency called the Amero.
Furthermore, virtually every administration for the last fifty years has engaged in an aggressive nation-building foreign policy. (Can anyone say, "Iraq"?) In addition, in contradiction to the stated warnings of our nation's founders, they have actively pursued entangling alliances with unfriendly governments. The past three administrations in particular have deliberately steered our country down a path of multiculturalism, globalism, and elitism.
Pastors, especially, should fight for constitutional government! Do you preachers really think that there will be any room for the old-time Gospel when the globalists and elitists in the federal government have finished with their diabolical schemes?
Already, President Bush repeatedly tells us that Christians and Muslims--and all other religions--worship the same God. How long will you preachers be able to preach the narrow message of salvation, that Christ is the only way to Heaven, when Bush's doctrine of Universalism is the accepted religion? And make no mistake about it: Universalism is the national religion of the United Nations, the European Union, and the emerging North American Union.
The Department of Homeland Security is already holding seminars for pastors, instructing them how they should ask their congregants to turn in their firearms in the event that the President declares a national emergency. How many of you pastors are prepared to become an instrument of gun confiscation for global government?
This is what happens when we abandon constitutional government.
It is not enough that a candidate says he is a Christian. Every politician I know, or have ever known, says they are a Christian--at least every four years. It is not enough that a candidate carries a giant-print Bible to church. It is not enough that he says he prays or says that "faith is important."
The truth is, if the candidate is a sincere Christian, he or she will all the more readily obey his or her oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. After all, does not our Lord tell us that our yea is to be yea and our nay is to be nay? In other words, genuine believers are to be true to their word. How, then, could a true Christian make a promise before God and the American people to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution and then turn around and ignore that promise? He couldn't.
Therefore, a professing believer who is elected to public office and then ignores his or her promise to the Constitution proves that he or she is not a true Christian but a phony who only uses a religious testimony to dupe Christians.
Take the issue of abortion, for example. Ron Paul proposed the "Sanctity of Life Act of 2005" (and 2007), which would require that "human life shall be deemed to exist from conception, without regard to race, sex, age, health, defect, or condition of dependency"
The bill also provides that "the Congress recognizes that each State has the authority to protect unborn children..." And that "the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review ...the performance of abortions; or the provision of public expenses of funds, facilities, personnel, or other assistance for the performance of abortions."
In other words, Dr. Paul understands that Article. III. Section. 2. of the U.S. Constitution gives to Congress the authority to rein in an abusive judiciary and take the issue of abortion (or homosexual marriage or fill in the blank) out from under the jurisdiction of the Court. This means that should Congressman Paul's bill become law, abortion on demand ends and Roe v Wade is overturned.
So, please tell me why, after having control of both houses of Congress and the White House for six years, did these "pro-life" Republicans in Congress and a "pro-life" President not pass Dr. Paul's bill? Why? Because they really do not give a hoot about abortion, but only use pro-life rhetoric to dupe conservative voters.
In addition, those conservatives who have followed President Bush's preemptive war doctrine are the ones who have abandoned historical conservative principles. Before G.W. Bush changed the landscape, conservatives--especially Christian conservatives--mostly subscribed to Augustine's "just war" theory regarding accepted protocols for the conduct of war. Today, however, many professing conservatives have foolishly followed Bush's "preemptive war" theory, which, before now, was practiced mostly by pagan emperors. As Christians, however, we should still subscribe to "just war."
In concert with "just war" philosophy (not to mention American history), Christians should agree with Ron Paul's approach to dealing with terrorists. He authored H.R. 3076, the September 11 Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001. According to Paul, "A letter of marque and reprisal is a constitutional tool specifically designed to give the president the authority to respond with appropriate force to those non-state actors who wage war against the United States while limiting his authority to only those responsible for the atrocities of that day. Such a limited authorization is consistent with the doctrine of just war and the practical aim of keeping Americans safe while minimizing the costs in blood and treasure of waging such an operation."
This is precisely what President Thomas Jefferson did when America's ships were confronted with Barbary pirates on the high seas.
If the United States government had listened to Ron Paul, we would not have lost nearly 4,000 American soldiers and Marines, spent over $1 trillion, and gotten bogged down in an endless civil war from which there is no equitable extraction. Furthermore, had we listened to Dr. Paul, Osama bin Laden would no doubt be dead, as would most of his al-Qaeda operatives, and we would be less vulnerable to future terrorist attacks, instead of being more vulnerable, which is the case today.
How can anyone say with a straight face that they are fighting a war on terrorism while at the same time doing absolutely nothing to secure our borders and ports?!
I submit that every true American, especially conservative Christians, should enthusiastically support constitutional government. I further believe that a President who would take his oath to the Constitution seriously would bring a new birth of freedom to America the likes of which has not been seen since 1776. May God give us such a man!
(c) Chuck Baldwin
This article is republished with permission, and was originally posted at: http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2007/cbarchive_20071030.html
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UN Bureaucrat Questions Wisdom of Biofuel
The John Birch Society News Feed - Mon, 2007-10-29 20:27
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
A UN "independent expert" calls biofuel production a catastrophe for the poor. His solution? More government intervention, of course.
Follow this link to the original source: "UN expert seeks to halt biofuel output"
COMMENTARY:Jean Ziegler, a UN "independent expert on the right to food" described the use of agricultural land to produce crops for conversion into biofuel as "a crime against humanity," according to an Associated Press report.
In the wake of rising prices for petroleum based fuels, the U.S., under the Bush administration, has sought to encourage the production of ethanol from corn. Elsewhere, particularly in Brazil where ethanol is made from sugar cane and in Southeast Asia where palm oil is a key source for biodiesel, biofuel production has soared, but at a cost. As Wired has pointed out in its "Science" blog, biofuel "production can have unexpected and unwelcome effects, driving up food prices and encouraging deforestation."
Those concerns have been echoed by Ziegler who argues that "the effect of transforming hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tons of maize, of wheat, of beans, of palm oil, into agricultural fuel is absolutely catastrophic for the hungry people."
As to be expected of a UN bureaucrat, though, the solution to the biofuel problem proposed by Ziegler is government intervention. According to the Associated Press report, Ziegler "presented a report Thursday to the U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee saying a five-year moratorium on biofuel production would allow time for new technologies for using agricultural byproducts instead of food itself."
The solution, though, is not going to come from government. The real solution to the growing fuel crisis is the free market. If governments would get out of our fuel tanks, we wouldn't have a shortage of fuel, and we wouldn't have food shortages either.
Consider: biofuel only succeeds when it is government mandated and funded. As USA Today has pointed out, building Brazil's much admired biofuel industry took "years of work and billions of dollars in subsidies." Prior to that government intervention, the market had been delivering the cheaper and better alternative — gasoline.
It's the same today in the United States. Even with prices having risen to the $3 per gallon mark, gasoline still offers a better value than biofuel on a level playing field. So government has had to subsidize biofuel production to give it a competitive edge. For instance, federal subsidies for cellulosic ethanol production totaling $385 million have been doled out to 6 projects nationwide, according to USA Today. That's $385 million taken from the taxpayers who earned the money in the first place (and who might have spent it on gasoline if left to their druthers) and given as corporate welfare to businesses that can't otherwise compete on the level playing field of the market.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this sort of taxpayer looting. According to USA Today, "Congress also is considering additional assistance to private investors in such projects: $2 billion in loan guarantees, a special 50-cent-a gallon subsidy to go on top of the existing subsidy for conventional ethanol, and a mandate that U.S. motorists use 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022."
Thus, by 2022, thanks to Congress, the only people who will be able to afford food made scarce by ethanol and biodiesel production will be the biofuel fat cats enriched by government subsidies that were funded by unwitting taxpayers. As for those poor folks who will be priced out of the market for milk, eggs, and other basic foodstuffs, it will be: "Let them drink ethanol."Dennis Behreandt
Dennis is Web Editor for the John Birch Society, and a regular contributor to The New American magazine.
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Combining Forces to Defeat Oppressive Regimes
The John Birch Society News Feed - Mon, 2007-10-29 19:26
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
At a recent meeting, several Asian and Cuban human rights organizations gathered together to discuss the human rights violations and oppression rampant in their homelands.
Follow this link to the original source: "Cuban, Asian Groups Discuss Evils of Communism"
COMMENTARY:In mid-October in Miami, Florida, the Southeast Asian Democracy League and the Cuban Liberty Council (CLC) along with three other Cuban expatriate organizations came together to support a common cause: the removal of all militarily imposed totalitarian dictatorships.
The Southeast Asian Democracy League consists of the Bangladesh Democracy League, the Sam Rainsy Party of Cambodia, the Force of Vietnamese People for Freedom and Democracy, and the Government of Laos Abroad. All of these groups represent nations that have been conquered by totalitarian regimes.
Founded by Cuban expatriates who escaped from Castro’s Cuba, the CLC was established in 2001 to promote and support the Cuban exile community in the United States and opposition parties inside Cuba. They were joined by Municipios de Cuba en el Exilio, the Cuban Political Prisoners Council, and the Junta Patriotica Cubana. Together they represent the majority of Cubans who are against Castro’s Communist regime.
Featured speakers at the conference related stories of persecution and suffering in Cuba and in Asia. Dr. Charles Chang, prime minister of the Government of Laos Abroad, explained the atrocities committed against the Hmong people, especially children, by the communist Pathet Lao party. Meanwhile, in Bangladesh, according to Dr. Muhammed Chowdhurry, a military dictatorship operates behind the scenes and the people are arrested and terrorized. Free elections are impossible and popular political leaders have been jailed.
The Chinese communist party has long been particularly repressive. Among many other victim groups in China is the Falun Gong, whose practitioners are routinely hunted down and persecuted. A spokesperson from the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong described the imprisonment and torture of millions of Falun Gong practitioners. And in Vietnam, the Montagnards, a small ethnic minority that helped the United States during the Vietnam War, is now physically persecuted by the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP). The VCP specializes in slavery and human trafficking, and the country still has no freedom of religion or the press, or, for that matter, any measurable degree of political freedom.
Delegates at the forum pledged to work together to break the stranglehold totalitarian regimes have on the people of their various homelands. The meeting of these dissident groups serves as a reminder that, throughout much of the world, many people remain under the yoke of oppressive and tyrannical regimes. That they met in Florida, in the USA, should remind Americans of the freedoms they yet enjoy and should be committed to protecting.
Ann Shibler
Ann is the Editorial Assistant for The New American magazine, a publication of the John Birch Society.
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Pushing War With Iran
The New American Magazine - Mon, 2007-10-29 05:00
“Bush Warns of a Nuclear Armed Iran,” blared the headline of an Associated Press report on the president’s October 3, 2007 speech before the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Do the increasingly strident statements by the president, as well as by State Department and Pentagon officials, over the past several months signal that a U.S. military attack on Iran may be imminent? Both opponents and supporters of a military strike believe it is coming soon, based not only on official administration rhetoric and the observable preparatory movement of U.S. military assets, but also on the White House’s use of private sources to build a pro-war constituency among the American public.
In recent months there has been a marked escalation of calls — by neoconservative think tanks, radio talk shows, and media organs closely allied to the Bush administration — for a massive pre-emptive U.S. military strike on Iran. Some prominent spokesmen are openly calling for the U.S. to use tactical nuclear missiles. Is this a spontaneous crescendo of popular support or a huge propaganda campaign initiated by White House spinmeisters?
On September 30, the Israeli internet news site, IsraelNationalNews.com, reported on the comments of two of the leading neoconservative war hawks, John Bolton and Norman Podhoretz. The story by Gil Ronen, entitled “Bolton, Podhoretz Say: Bomb Iranian Nuclear Plants,” reports:
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Conservative Party delegates in Britain on Sunday that UN efforts to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country. Influential conservative thinker Norman Podhoretz told a British paper that he has advised U.S. President George W. Bush to do just that.
As THE NEW AMERICAN reported in its April 2 cover story, “Engineering War,” the Bush administration has been strongly signaling for months that it is preparing militarily for a massive attack on Iran. It also has been trying to prepare the public psyche to accept this aggression as a course of action that is unavoidable; there is, supposedly, no other alternative.
Neocon War Drums
That is the unmistakable message that is being sent repeatedly through the neoconservative transmission belts in the blogosphere, the lecture circuits, talk radio, television news, and the political campaign trails. The building crescendo has the sound and smell of a government-orchestrated propaganda campaign. Back on August 31, the New Yorker posted an online report from Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin who cited an unnamed Washington neoconservative source who says the current warmongering upsurge has come specifically at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney. According to Mr. Rubin:
They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be a heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this — they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”
We cannot confirm whether or not the above-mentioned news organs are taking direction from Mr. Cheney. We don’t need to; all of them are, in point of fact, carrying out a “heavy sustained assault” for an imminent pre-emptive attack on Iran. And their voices are being amplified by the usual war-hawk choristers that have usurped the conservative label.
But Bolton’s speech in England shows that the propaganda line has a built-in mission-creep message. Although the initial selling point to the party faithful is that Iran’s WMD capabilities must be taken out because of the potential threat posed to Israel and America, the war plans are morphing into much grander objectives, starting with “regime change.” (Where have we heard that before; and where has it ever ended with that, once regime change was effected?)
Mr. Bolton told his British audience that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove “the source of the problem,” namely, Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Here’s how IsraelNationalNews.com reported it:
“If we were to strike Iran,” Bolton said, “it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change as well, because I think that really sends the signal that we are not attacking the people, [but rather] the nuclear weapons program. The U.S. once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back.” His words were met with applause and cheers.
Of course, if Ahmadinejad were removed (and even executed), we would soon find (as we found in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq when Milosevich, the Taliban and Saddam, respectively, were removed) that the mission had “evolved” from regime change to nation building. Which, naturally, means perpetual occupation of Iran by U.S. military forces (already spread deadly thin) or UN “coalition-of-the-willing” military forces paid for by the American taxpayers (already bled thin).
Mr. Podhoretz is now a senior foreign-policy adviser to GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, who seems to revel in his image as the most hawkish of the Republican hopefuls. Giuliani has publicly stated his position in favor of a pre-emptive military strike and doesn’t rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain are also keeping the nuclear option on the table.
Pre-emptive Blitz
The Sunday Times of London reported on September 2 that the Pentagon had already drawn up plans for a “three day blitz” on over one thousand targets to take out Iran’s entire military:
The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus.”
Alexis Debat, the French terrorism and security “expert” cited by the Times, has been a major neocon cheerleader for widening the Iraq War policies and for a pre-emptive attack on Iran. He has been presented as an expert on terrorism and/or national security, not only by the Sunday Times (an organ of Rupert Murdoch’s hawkish media empire), but also by ABC News, PBS, the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Time, the International Herald Tribune, and the National Interest. He was until recently a reporter and consultant for ABC News and a senior fellow at the prestigious Nixon Center. However, it turns out that Monsieur Debat is a complete fraud. “Dr.” Debat’s Ph.D. from the Sorbonne doesn’t exist. The interviews he supposedly conducted with Alan Greenspan, Bill Gates, Barak Obama, Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, and others were totally fabricated. ABC News and the Nixon Center have quietly announced that he “resigned” recently from their employ.
However, the one story the now-toxic and discredited Alexis Debat very likely did not fabricate out of thin air is his report on the administration’s plans for an upcoming “shock and awe” assault on Iran. Debat’s claim of an imminent massive strike against the Tehran regime tracks very closely with the stories that the Bush spin doctors have been feeding to other trusted sources — such as Bolton, Podhoretz, and other neocons. Even more importantly, it tracks with the concentrated deployment of U.S. carrier groups and other military assets to the Persian Gulf over the past year and the escalating saber-rattling by Bush war hawks in the Pentagon, the State Department, and on Capitol Hill.
Living Under Surveillance
The New American Magazine - Mon, 2007-10-29 05:00
We live in a surveillance society. It is pointless to talk about surveillance society in the future tense. In all the rich countries of the world everyday life is suffused with surveillance encounters, not merely from dawn to dusk but 24/7. Some encounters obtrude into the routine, like when we get a ticket for running a red light when no one was around but the camera. But the majority are now just part of the fabric of daily life. Unremarkable.
— “Report on the Surveillance Society”
Surveillance Studies Network, 2006
Everyone on the political spectrum — from free-market anarchists to totalitarians — has some vision of what is meant by the phrase, “surveillance society.” Is the idea of a surveillance society in today’s world “unremarkable?” Consider:
* The UK is now the world’s most watched country, having upwards of five million closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras keeping a watchful eye on the public, with the average citizen being caught on camera around 300 times per day.
* Upwards of 1.5 million automobiles can now be tracked and located anywhere in the United States — or in fact anywhere on Earth — using OnStar, General Motor’s onboard car-to-mobile-phone-network communications system.
* Telecom giant AT&T has allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to set up what could only be called a “spy room” on AT&T property to make routine monitoring of phone calls easier.
* Marijuana farmers in Wisconsin now must fear not only conventional law enforcement methods, but also the Internet. Satellite images from Google Earth — yes that Google Earth — have been used to locate farms and arrest farmers.
* The trend of one-to-one marketing has driven businesses to be more aggressive in both discovering and remembering facts about their customers. Firms like Donnelly Marketing, which keeps dossiers on over 90 percent of American households, collect and manage massive files regarding each family’s preferences in everything from pets to politics.
* Face-recognition software was successfully tested during Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa, Florida, with approximately 100,000 faces being scanned and identified. (Several law-breakers — mostly ticket scalpers — were noticed, but no arrests were made, since it was just a “dry run”!)
* The FBI, apparently unsatisfied with their success using data mining, is issuing so many National Security Letters (NSLs) — administrative subpoenas that require no probable cause while simultaneously precluding the recipient from ever disclosing that the letter was issued — that they plan to automate the process of tracking them.
Clearly this presents a challenge to a free society. That challenge stems from the imbalance in power between the state and the people where surveillance is concerned. That imbalance must be addressed if freedom is to be maintained.
Conflicting Views
The odds are pretty good that most people, when asked what that term means, would think of some image from the Will Smith movie, Enemy of the State, in which an innocent man is pursued relentlessly by a federal security apparatus employing the latest high-tech surveillance gadgetry. Many would agree, also, with the movie’s tagline, “It’s not paranoia if they really are after you.”
It does seem these days that “they” really are after “us.” The question is not whether or not a surveillance society will occur, particularly in Western societies like the United States and the United Kingdom. That horse is out of sight already. The question is more what the unavoidable ubiquity of surveillance will mean to the individual and the collective. The question is how society should deal — how society will deal — with routine, widespread, nearly constant surveillance, not just by government but by private entities as well, now that surveillance technology is quite clearly not only common but also here to stay.
But how much surveillance is too much? Such questions amount to quibbling over price. No one can prevent the proliferation of surveillance tech, and no one can preclude “bad people,” including some agents of the State, from also having it. That much is certain. Can freedom and privacy coexist with the surveillance society? Absolutely. However, one cannot determine the proper amount of surveillance by the government if one has already ceded the entire decision to that government.
Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?
So far, Americans seem to favor surveillance over privacy. For example, a recent survey by ABC News found that most Americans favor increased use of police surveillance cameras to “fight crime.” This, despite the fact that precious little data illustrates that cameras do anything to reduce crime. Indeed, despite the lack of real security benefits, publication of a single story illustrating that a heinous killer was caught via video can justify almost any infringement upon the privacy of ordinary citizens.
Security expert Bruce Schneier calls this effect, within the realm of surveillance psychology, the “availability heuristic.” Most people would rather all their deepest secrets be posted on the Internet tomorrow than have a psychopathic serial killer escape capture today, assuming that’s the trade-off. Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Today’s “I’ve got nothing to hide” can turn into tomorrow’s “but I didn’t know that was against the law!” That’s particularly the case when a government moves in the direction of imposing more and more laws and regulations on its citizens — denying the right to keep and bear arms, for instance.
While the bulk of the American public seems convinced that more surveillance is a good thing, both for safety and convenience, the technorati are not as uniform in their view. Schneier thinks legislation is the only methodology for curtailing, or at least somewhat stemming, the advance of surveillance and the corresponding loss of privacy. In a recent blog entry he says:
We’re never going to stop the march of technology, but we can enact legislation to protect our privacy: comprehensive laws regulating what can be done with personal information about us, and more privacy protection from the police. Today, personal information about you is not yours; it’s owned by the collector. There are laws protecting specific pieces of personal data — videotape rental records, health care information — but nothing like the broad privacy protection laws you find in European countries. That’s really the only solution; leaving the market to sort this out will result in even more invasive wholesale surveillance.
It is ironic that Schneier speaks of the protection available in European countries, given the number of times per day that a typical citizen of the UK is caught on camera. Another person worried about increased surveillance is author Naomi Wolfe. According to Wolfe’s The End of America, the United States is well on its way to becoming a fascist empire due to the fact that creating a surveillance society is one of the “Ten Steps to Fascism.” The Bush administration claims to have a legitimate reason for massive privacy infringement: protecting the U.S. public from the ever-present specter of terrorism, but are its arguments legitimate?
Surveillance and Power
The Bush administration (like many U.S. administrations before it) is enamored with monitoring ordinary citizens, under the guise of protecting the freedom of those they watch. The fact that their “improvements” in security have resulted in limited actual performance improvements is apparently lost in the shuffle. Is there anyone who believes that the privacy normal Americans have given up has directly precluded further terrorist attacks? Is there anyone — anyone — who actually believes that if a terrorist wanted to attack an arena, a stadium, a shopping center, or even an airport, that such an attack could not have taken place despite the so-called protections put in place after 9/11? From Future of Freedom Foundation columnist Anthony Gregory, we find this accurate commentary:
The real threat to American liberty, the defense of which the administration still insists is the purpose of the war on terror, is a federal government without strict checks and limits on its power, whose executives feel comfortable using the military to spy on peaceful Americans, while telling the media not to report their secret and unconstitutional surveillance activities. The use of a military intelligence agency against the American people, with or without judicial oversight, is far more a “shameful act” than reporting such activities to the American people, who have a right to know.
Clearly we have a right to know, but that point aside, the State is exactly the wrong organization to have the power of unfettered surveillance for other reasons. The tendency, nay the likelihood, that evil will flourish in a bureaucratic environment where risk can be externalized is unassailable. Bureaucracies are almost always inefficient. Bureaucracies are almost always wasteful. Bureaucracies are almost always caught somewhere between the Keystone Cops and the Three Stooges when their performance is measured.
If this assessment sounds too harsh, please consider who the real heroes of 9/11 were: they were the citizen-soldiers who attempted to stop the terrorists aboard United Airlines Flight 93; they were the local firemen and policemen who willingly and selflessly rushed into the doomed WTC towers; and they were the field FBI agents who reported important pieces of the 9/11 plans to their superiors in Washington, only to have the information ignored. The entity that failed most grossly to protect us on 9/11 was the Washington bureaucracy itself, and yet we are supposed to prevent future 9/11s by transferring more power to that bureaucracy?
The number of times airport security has been breached since the supposed improvements in airport security should put the myths to rest. The Seattle Times published a report of all the airport security breaches they had found between 2002 and 2004. The list was far from inconsequential, although the Times evidently stopped collecting reports after the number reached 100. According to the Times, “Screeners say that’s [only] a fraction of the incidents, and most are never disclosed.” The reported incidents included one instance when five DHS investigators posing as passengers managed to get knives, a gun and a bomb in their carry-on baggage through security checkpoints without being detected.
Clearly, the increase in state intrusion on the privacy of the citizen does not result in a net increase in the safety of that citizen from terrorist attack. But, if the State were more skilled, could surveillance be used to thwart some future terrorist attack? No. The reason: The basic mathematics of finding a needle in a haystack.
Says Institute for Political Economy Chairman Paul Craig Roberts from a 2006 column on libertarian website LewRockwell.com:
Floyd Rudmin, a professor at a Norwegian university, applie[d] the mathematics of conditional probability, known as Bayes’ Theorem, to demonstrate that the NSA’s surveillance cannot successfully detect terrorists unless both the percentage of terrorists in the population and the accuracy rate of their identification are far higher than they are. He correctly concludes that “NSA’s surveillance system is useless for finding terrorists.”
The mathematics mentioned absolutely prove that monitoring every phone call, every e-mail, and every instant message of every American will not result in a reduction of terrorist attacks. In fact, using the most generous estimates for both the number of terrorists in the U.S. population, and the NSA’s ability to find them, Rudmin concludes:
The probability that people are terrorists given that NSA’s system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.2308, which is far from one and well below flipping a coin. NSA’s domestic monitoring of everyone’s email and phone calls is useless for finding terrorists.
So while one would have to be incurably naïve to think the NSA will stop monitoring U.S. communications — something they’ve been doing for over 40 years — at least we know what this practice cannot accomplish, no matter what we are told. What can we do about it? Maybe those being watched can fight back. David Brin, scientist and best-selling author of science fiction novels, certainly thinks so. In his 2004 Salon piece, “Three cheers for the Surveillance Society!” he stated as much:
Swiss researcher Marc Langheinrich’s personal digital assistant application detects nearby sensors and then lists what kind of information they’re collecting. At a more radical and polemical level, there is the sousveillance movement, led by University of Toronto professor Steve Mann. Playing off “surveillance” (overlooking from above), Mann’s coined term suggests that we should all get in the habit of looking from below, proving that we are sovereign and alert citizens down here, not helpless sheep. Mann contends that private individuals will be empowered to do this by new senses, dramatically augmented by wearable electronic devices.
Columnist David Leo Veksler — webmaster at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank — suggested a strategy in a 2007 column:
There are a number of limitations of the power of the state. Foremost is that the same technologies that make ubiquitous surveillance possible also allow ubiquitous secrecy.... Government’s attempts at limiting the spread of encryption and introducing loopholes into encryption programs failed miserably because information is nearly impossible to contain in our connected world.
Veksler continues:
There’s no guarantee that life will remain private in the future. We can only be certain that the potential to communicate securely will grow along with the potential to monitor unsecured communications. If we value privacy, the tools will be there.
Adam Perenberg, technology columnist for Slate, agrees with Veksler. “Just because cameras are getting smaller, more powerful, and surveillance is becoming ubiquitous, that doesn’t necessarily mean Big Brother wins.” In fact, he’s on record suggesting that what all this powerful computation and image capture means is that anyone can turn the tables on the government.
If the experience of users of Google Earth in the UK is any indication — where they actually used a Google Earth plug-in to obtain the locations of speed cameras — surveillance tech can be used against the State just as successfully as it can be used by it. Perenberg and others may be correct, although the imbalance in power between the government and a typical citizen still needs to be considered.
Surveillance Psychology
Should we be hopeful or cautious? Should we be more convinced that the State will take away our anonymity or comforted by the fact that we can fight back? Should we be cowering in the corner, awestruck by the imbalance of power, or should we be laughing at the Beverly Hillbillies trying to master some new gadget? The answer lies someplace in between.
Some researchers, like Erving Goffman, conclude that surveillance can subconsciously coerce people, leading to docile, stay-below-the-radar behavior from those who are surveilled — meaning possibly fewer societal problems.
Such an acquiescent attitude might become common under constant surveillance. One could also argue that the urge to become famous, if even for a moment, will drive the type of semi-ludicrous behavior that is a staple of reality television in the population at large.
Brin describes the tendency to put these issues into “yes/no” terms as a devil’s dichotomy. It’s either “big brother is out to get us!” or “without complete transparency the terrorists will win!” Hogwash. When one allows a vibrant panorama of choices to be reduced to such an absurd and simplistic yes-or-no debate, he misses the point completely. The question of surveillance technology is more complicated than simply good or bad. It is entirely possible that increased surveillance can lead to positive results on occasion. Does that mean that everyone should just “roll over” and accept more invasive surveillance when the next terrorist attack is used to peel away more privacy? Of course not.
The real problem lies not with the nature of the technology itself, but with the way the technology is used. Most people have a tendency to blame the hammer when the nail goes in crooked. The gun-rights debate coined an interesting term, “It’s the criminals, stupid.” While falling prey to sloganeering is always a danger when analyzing such a complex issue, that sentiment remains solid.
Imagine what would happen if, in response to the development of better guns, we passed laws that attempted to control access to these firearms, laws that ultimately resulted in only two groups having those weapons: the State and the crooks. This would not prevent the technology, the guns in this case, from being misused. Instead, we’d just be left with large groups of people ripe for violence with no alternative. That place exists. In the United States it’s called the inner city.
The same analysis can be applied to the proliferation of surveillance tech, and the State’s tendency to abuse it, as can be applied to most other concerns about the State abusing its power: understand that the State, and our tendency to trust it and its agents too much, is the problem! When we lament the fact that some random person could wield the power of surveillance in an evil way, we must remember this fact: we’ve only got people. If we want to lessen the imbalance of power between those who rule and the ruled, the most viable option is having fewer rulers. The most viable option is a higher degree of self-government, and checks and balances throughout.
The imbalance in power can only be maintained or exacerbated if two things happen. One, if we allow those who rule us to take away the instruments by which our freedom can be maintained. Two, if we forget that we must require both responsibility and accountability of anyone who purports to protect us. Your safety and security has always been, and will always be, your responsibility. Let’s make sure we don’t forget that.
And for heaven’s sake, let’s keep watching the watchers. If we fail to do so, all the checks and balances built into the system — from the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures to habeas corpus — will ultimately be totally lost along with freedom.
Wilton D. Alston, a libertarian activist and writer, is a principal research scientist working in the field of transportation safety.
Students Protest Campus Gun Policies
The John Birch Society News Feed - Fri, 2007-10-26 21:19
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
College students across the country have been strapping empty holsters around their waists this week to protest laws that prohibit concealed weapons on campus, citing concerns over campus shootings.
Follow this link to the original source: "Students Strap On Empty Holsters to Protest Gun Restrictions on Campus"
COMMENTARY:
One story that the major media haven’t covered this week is a quiet protest on university campuses across the country. Students have been wearing empty holsters to symbolize that they would be unprotected if faced with someone who was shooting at them on a gun-free campus.
Students for Concealed Carry on Campus organized the protest from October 22-26 at about one hundred universities across the nation. The organization, which now claims 5000 members, was begun in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings by worried students who used Facebook to contact other students.
The group claims that campuses are prime targets for people intent on harming others because of laws that prohibit carrying concealed weapons. Students, in fact, lose their constitutional right to bear arms to protect themselves and others when they step on campus.
"I’m hoping that people actually realize that this is something that college students are serious about moving forward and realize that it’s not about taking the law into your own hands; it’s about taking personal responsibility for yourself," said Justin Turner, a senior in criminology and history at Florida State. Turner is chair of a chapter of the organization Students for the Second Amendment.
The Virginia Tech massacre of 33 people in April of this year was the largest mass shooting in America. We think one person at the right place at the right time could have lessened or eliminated the body count, one Miami University student told the Toledo Blade.
A similar situation occurred in 1966 when Charles Joseph Whiteman, a student at the University Texas, starting firing on passersby, killing 14 and wounding 31. Back then, police credited civilians who brought out their personal firearms to assist police with helping to neutralize Whitman's threat. They made it difficult for Whitman to take careful aim without being hit, as W. Scott Lewis noted in an editorial for the Washington Times.
Not surprisingly campus administrators and police are the most vocal about not allowing students to carry concealed weapons. "Whether it’s a handgun or mace, there’s always a chance the criminal could use the weapon against the person," argued Rick Amweg, assistant chief of university police at Ohio State University in the OSU Lantern. Amweg ignores the fact that this also happens to police officers.
The Toledo Blade claimed: "University administrators, parents and law enforcement agencies all know that alcohol, drugs and college students are a combustible combination. It makes no sense, therefore, to add guns to a mix that already often proves too much for young adults to handle."
Not only is this comment demeaning t students generally, it ignores the fact the holders of concealed gun licenses are among the most responsible people; they are required to be 21, pass a criminal check, and take a class and pass a gun test before receiving the concealed weapons license.
People with concealed weapons are five times less likely to commit violent crimes than other members of the public. Most students eligible to have concealed weapon licenses would be seniors and graduate students.
Only Utah universities allow students to carry concealed weapons on campus if they have a permit.
While the licensing of concealed weapons mocks the spirit of the Second Amendment and puts control and lists of gun owners into the hands of state licensing agencies, it has provided the opportunity for many law abiding people to carry guns to protect themselves. The ban from carrying guns on university campuses negates the Second Amendment outright and denies people the ability to protect themselves if necessary.
Dr. John Fisher
Dr. John Fisher teaches communications and researches in the area of mass media and political decision making.
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Cato Institute Releases Latest "Don't Worry - Be Happy" Report on Trade Benefits
The John Birch Society News Feed - Fri, 2007-10-26 20:32
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
Errant scholarship and government data are combined to promote absurd conclusion that US trade policy has improved living standards for American workers.
Follow this link to the original source: "Trading Up: How Expanding Trade Has Delivered Better Jobs and Higher Living Standards for American Workers"
COMMENTARY:
Undaunted by debt up to your eyeballs? Think the federal government is overstating the real inflation rate? The Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies has a report for you.
So you can experience the same initial knee-jerk reaction I had, here is the teaser for the lead article at the Cato Institute on Oct 25th:
How Expanding Trade Has Delivered Higher Living Standards for American Workers
Opponents of trade liberalization have sought to indict free trade and trade agreements by painting a grim picture of the economic state of American workers and households. They claim that real wages have been stagnant or declining as millions of higher-paying middle-class jobs are lost to imports. In "Trading Up: How Expanding Trade Has Delivered Better Jobs and Higher Living Standards for American Workers," Cato scholar Daniel Griswold argues that the reality for a broad swath of American workers and households is far different and more benign. The large majority of Americans, including the typical middle-class family, is measurably better off today after a decade of healthy trade expansion.
"High Living" is indeed an accurate description of our recent economic condition. But for those familiar with the obvious signs of approaching economic turmoil that, lately, seem to be all around, the cheery Cato report does seem to fly in the face of the evidence. Indeed, for those who read the full report, there is plenty in the report that seems off-base.
For example, this from the report's summary:
"Thanks to lower interest rates delivered in part by more open global capital markets, American households have not experienced any significant increase from a decade ago in debt payments as a share of family income. The debt ratio in 2004 was 14.4 percent, up only slightly from 14.1 in 1995."
This conclusion is drawn from data on debt (table 14 tab) produced by the supposedly trustworthy Federal Reserve, perhaps the planet's largest issuer of credit. There is no mention how this conclusion squares with the record amounts of mortgage foreclosures and credit card balances. More importantly there is no mention of the Economic Report of the President for 2006 which shows (on page 70) the plummeting savings rate of Americans. In the early 1980's, according to that report, Americans were saving 10-12% of their disposable incomes. But, in late 2005 the savings rate went negative. (For 2006 and 2007 it is being reported as averaging around 0.5%, a number that is likely less than the statistical error of the collected data.)
Yes, I know the Economic Report of the President is the highly biased document that our chief executive uses to justify the outrageous budget he submits to Congress every year. But, when it helps Cato researchers reach their foregone conclusions, they are happy to use it as a unquestioned source. Case in point:
The first chart of real data offered in the 16 page Cato report is used to substantiate the claim that "in the long run, job growth in the United States tends to track growth in the labor force." The chart is titled "US Employment Grows with Labor Force." There are two lines on the chart that do indeed track rather harmoniously with one another. However, if we look at the chart closely things unravel quickly.
Readily apparent is the fact that the title of the chart does not match the data in the chart. While the chart title and the Cato analysis use the term "labor force", the chart data is actually for "Civilian Labor Force." Since the difference between the "Civilian Labor Force" line and the "Total Employment" line matches the commonly referenced unemployment rate of just under 5 percent, we can guess that all the data in the chart is actually referring to civilian labor data. It is left unclear why an organization supposedly committed to the cause of helping to shrink the size of government would ignore the impact of non-military government employment in their analysis.
Rather than make guesses though, we should go to the source of the reported data. The reference at the bottom of the chart is the aforementioned, "Economic Report of the President," in this case for 2002. This is intriguing since Cato has based its conclusions on 2005 data. The 2000-2002 period in the chart actually shows a notable drop in total employment. It would appear then that it is only through the magic of projections made by our federal government that a recovery in the chart's employment trend line is achieved for 2005. Perhaps the generators of the chart had factored in large upcoming increases in staffing for companies like Halliburton and Blackwater? Whatever the case, if the source citation is not a typo, Cato has confidently based its conclusion on projections made by government statisticians going out three or four years.
That Cato would do such a thing however, seems doubtful. They know that federal statistics coming out of DC are often no more based in reality than the five-year plans that used to come out of the Kremlin. Adding credibility to the supposition that the 2002 citation is a indeed a typo is the fact that the referenced chart does not appear to be in the four-hundred plus page Economic Report of the President, 2002. No luck though in the 2005, 2006 or 2007 reports either. Other Cato chart references include page numbers and that would have been helpful here. For now, we will just assume that there are other versions of these reports and give Cato the benefit of the doubt before riding them too hard on their scholarship.
The next several Cato conclusions are based on no appreciable data, but rather on "probably this, probably that" type statements. The next chart of real data appears on page 8. We are asked to disregard the line showing no net growth in "real hourly wages" for American workers since 1964. Instead we are encouraged to draw our attention to the more breathless line above it depicting "real hourly compensation." This has almost doubled since 1964.
Real hourly compensation which includes benefits like health care and 401K plans is claimed to be the more accurate statement of worker well-being. It provides for an eye-catching sidebar in the the report:
"Since 1973, average real hourly compensation for American workers has increased 45 percent, for an average annual growth rate of more than 1.1 percent."
Cato concludes, "The average American worker has not suffered from 'stagnant' earnings in the past three decades but in fact has enjoyed real gains." Now, you might be thinking, "Ah ha! What balderdash. Everyone knows the real rate of inflation, the rate at which the public-private partnership Federal Reserve debases our currency, has averaged far in excess of 1.1 percent a year." But, you would be wrong. In fact, as far as Cato is concerned, you are not even close:
"Even the more comprehensive compensation numbers tend to understate the real gains American workers have enjoyed in recent decades. Economists have long realized that the Consumer Price Index tends to overstate the cost of living compared with past years because it often fails to accurately capture the increased quality of new and improved products...The inability of the CPI to fully capture such advancements means that the rise in the cost of living (i.e., inflation) has been systematically overstated." (emphasis added)
Of course, the economists Cato refers to are not ones that buy groceries, put gas in their cars or worry about their heating bills. They are the ones who think it is fabulous that the communist Chinese are happy to accept U.S. debt in exchange for ever more powerful consumer electronics made within their sweatshop labor regime.
While it has become far more expensive to put food on the table, and it often takes a second income to pay taxes, Cato urges you to consider how much better your life is because you can use credit cards and home equity loans to acquire the hottest new cell phones, flat panel TV's, digital cameras and computer software. You're not worse off; the backers of the Cato Institute and their allies have inspired you to go into debt while acquiring all the latest technology of the total surveillance state. Don't worry. Be happy.
Cato's apologetic on behalf of corporatism closes with this sentence:
To promote further progress for American workers and households, Congress and the administration should pursue policies that expand the freedom of Americans to participate in global markets.
The orginal long version might have read something like this:
To promote further progress for American workers and households towards life as peasants in a corporate feudal state, our Congress and the administration should continue to pursue policies that expand the freedom of American corporations around the world to exploit global markets.
Afterall, it is the major transnational corporations, not the average American citizen, that are allowed to reap the benefit of a managed trade policy that is built on access to sweatshop labor and buttressed by central bank currency manipulations. I guess you can call me a protectionist - for freedom.
Jim Capo
Jim Capo is the John Birch Society's National Spokesman on Trade Policy, and a coordinator for North and South Carolina.
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Fixing Illegal Immigration by Nixing the Open Borders/North American Union Vision Behind It
The John Birch Society News Feed - Thu, 2007-10-25 22:29
ARTICLE SYNOPSIS:
Although American public opinion is rapidly coalescing around the idea that the government can and must solve the illegal immigration problem, a lasting solution must include rooting out the open borders/North American Union vision behind it by dismantling the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Follow this link to the original source: "Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index -- Loss of Faith: Public’s Belief in Effective Solutions Eroding"
COMMENTARY:
According to the "Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index" for the fall of 2007, published by Public Agenda in cooperation with Foreign Affairs (released October 24):
Illegal immigration already has the elements that might constitute a "tipping point" in public attitudes -- a substantial majority are strongly concerned about a problem and believe the government has the power to address it. Continuing public frustration implies continuing pressure on the political system to deal with this problem as the public demands that its concerns be met.
Or translated: A growing majority of Americans is fed up with the government’s refusal to stop illegal immigration. Politicians ignore the growing pressure for a solution at their own electoral peril.
In this environment of super-sensitivity to voter attitudes on immigration by both political parties, we can be sure that immigration legislation will continue to occupy center-stage in 2008 and beyond. However, the more the pressure grows for a legislative solution to the problem of illegal immigration, the more likely that deceptively-named and –described legislation will be introduced and passed.
In the meantime, many of our government, business, and academic elites are busily working to establish the North American Union (NAU), an open borders arrangement for North America that would make the present turmoil over immigration moot. In fact, unless the NAU merger process is stopped, legislative gridlock over illegal immigration would provide the same end-state as the widely-reviled Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill of June 2007, i.e., open borders throughout North America.
If you doubt a North American Union merger of the United States, Mexico, and Canada, a la the European Union, is well underway, you need to read “Merger in the Making” (4 MB PDF), the North American Union Edition of The New American magazine for October 15, 2007.
The bottom line for anti-illegal immigration activists: Although American public opinion is rapidly coalescing around the idea that the government can and must solve the illegal immigration problem, a lasting solution must include rooting out the open borders/North American Union vision behind the government's refusal to stop illegal immigration by blocking the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
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