The Rag Blog

In late June, as parliamentarians were packing up for the summer, Stephen Harper seemed to suggest a potential shift in his minority government’s approach to the war in Afghanistan. In a departure from months of rhetoric by government and military leaders about an open-ended or even decades-long extension of the military role, the Prime Minister stated that extending Canada’s mission in Kandahar beyond February 2009 would require “consensus” from all four parties in the House of Commons.

Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin was among those who interpreted Harper’s statement as a veiled admission that a major concession would be coming on this most important foreign policy file, and that Harper would not seek to extend the counter-insurgency operation beyond the current 2009 end date. “Make no mistake,” Martin wrote, “these were code words for the end of our war mission. He was essentially saying that in a year and a half, other North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners can take their turn at the combat role.” (1)

As Martin pointed out, such an about-face would be a concession to public opinion, and it would certainly seem difficult to imagine a “consensus” in the House that would please the Conservatives. But was Harper’s statement really a preview of a change in course, or merely a hint of a new PR campaign to prolong Canada’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister may well only be signaling a new strategy of co-opting the language of mushy “opposition” to the Afghan debacle coming from the bulk of his parliamentary opponents.

Both the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois have said that they want the current mission to end in 2009, though they have made it clear to varying degrees that they would continue to support the occupation of Afghanistan in other ways, perhaps with a deployment to a less volatile region. The Liberals, of course, are hypocrites of the highest order when they try to position themselves as being in favour of peace. It was under Paul Martin, in 2005, that Canadian troops were sent to Kandahar without any debate. And it was only with the help of the votes of high profile Liberal MPs like Michael Ignatieff that Harper was able to push the 2009 extension through parliament. (Almost five years too late, Ignatieff recently expressed regret for his support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but there is no sign of such a mea culpa on the Afghanistan vote). The New Democratic Party’s policy, meanwhile, does call for an immediate withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan.

A recent Strategic Counsel poll indicates that a clear majority is now opposed to Canada’s role in that Central Asian country (2). Conducted July 12-16, the results found 59% opposed to the mission compared to only 36% in favour. For those with intense feelings on the matter the margin was even wider, with 27% strongly opposed compared to a mere 7% strongly supporting. In Quebec, a staggering 75% said they were opposed. This sampling of public opinion, notably, comes on the heels of a sustained and costly publicity push by the government. It seems that all the military ads and boosterism – the Stanley Cup’s trip to Kandahar for a ball hockey game featuring Rick Hillier and Dave “Tiger” Williams stands out as a memorable example of this disturbing trend – have been unable to overcome the grim reality of the war. Canadian troop fatalities now stand at 66, while Afghan civilian casualties (never reported as dramatically, when they are covered at all) are taken in the dozens by air strikes on a regular basis.

While we all ponder what strategy Harper will try to push when parliament reconvenes, a certain George W. Bush is coming to Canada next week, in what will surely be the last official visit by the deeply unpopular war president. Bush last visited in November 2004 and, despite riding an election win high, sparked anti-war protests across Canada. (You might remember Bush’s joke about thanking those who waved at his motorcade with “all five fingers”). This time, Bush will meet with Harper and their Mexican partner Felipe Calderon. They will gather under a heavy police and military presence just outside of Ottawa in Montabello, Quebec, to discuss implementation of the Orwellian-named Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a framework for initiating what has been called a ‘NAFTA Homeland Security model’.

Bush’s fondness for “Steve” Harper is well established. White House spokesperson Tony Snow reported that a July 31 phone call between the two discussed the August summit, and that Bush thanked the Prime Minister for Canada’s ongoing role in Afghanistan. The war is bound to be a major topic of discussion behind the closed doors, security fences, and riot police at Montebello. Outside the perimetre, and in cities across the country, protesters will be condemning both the domestic implications of the SPP and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Vancouver, a Monday August 20 rally by No One Is Illegal gets underway at 3p.m outside Canada Place (Waterfront Station), meeting up later with a 5:30pm protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery organized by StopWar, the Council of Canadians and the Vancouver & District Labour Council.

The anti-war movement, for its part, won’t be changing course until the troops are brought home from Afghanistan. Harper, in the past, has said that he would not change course on the war even if that meant losing power in Ottawa. Bush’s visit can only further weaken support for the Prime Minister’s handling of the war. It’s a safe bet that Harper’s PR flacks and handlers are working overtime this summer in order to “nuance” the “messaging” of the Afghanistan operation, but not in order to really change the nature of Canada’s involvement in the occupation. Rather, the PM is looking for a new spin, in order to prolong the war and the better to overcome a population in Canada that now seems stubbornly averse to warmongering.

-Derrick O’Keefe is co-chair of the Vancouver StopWar Coalition, and a member of the Canadian Peace Alliance steering committee.

Notes

(1) “It’s about time Mr. Harper listened to the people,” Lawrence Martin, Globe and Mail, June 25, 2007.

In a Democracy Now! national broadcast exclusive, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty speaks for the first time about her experience interviewing Jose Padilla for 22 hours to determine the state of his mental health.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you conclude he had been tortured?

MIAMI (Aug. 16) – Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant, was convicted Thursday of helping Islamic extremists and plotting overseas attacks in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration’s zeal to clamp down on terrorism.

Padilla, wearing a dark suit and wire-rimmed glasses, showed no emotion and started straight ahead as he heard the verdict that could bring him a life sentence in prison. One person in the family section started to sob.

But it was hardly a resounding victory for the government. When Padilla was arrested in the months following the 2001 terrorist attacks, authorities touted him as an al-Qaida terrorist who planned to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city. That allegation never made it to court.

Instead, after a three-month trial and only a day and a half of deliberations, the 36-year-old Padilla and his foreign-born co-defendants were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas and two counts of providing material support to terrorists.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke set a Dec. 5 sentencing date.

The three were accused of being part of a North American support cell that provided supplies, money and recruits to groups of Islamic extremists. The defense contended they were trying to help persecuted Muslims in war zones with relief and humanitarian aid.

Two weeks after the presiding judge upbraided prosecutors for being “light on facts” in its conspiracy allegations,[23] one of the three charges against Padilla was dismissed and another was dismissed in part.

The first of the three counts Padilla was charged with, conspiracy to murder (punishable by life imprisonment), was dismissed on August 16, 2006, on the grounds that it was duplicative of the other two counts pending against him. The second count was conspiracy to materially aid terrorists under 18 U.S.C. § 371 (punishable by five years in prison) and the third was 18 U.S.C. § 2339A (punishable by 15 years in prison). The trial court ordered that the government elect only a single criminal statute in its second count of the indictment. However, on January 30, 2007, the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed the ruling and reinstated a charge of conspiracy to “murder, kidnap, and maim.”[24]

Allegation of torture during imprisonment

In the criminal case, legal brief filed on behalf of Padilla alleges that during his imprisonment he has been subjected to torture, including sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, and enforced stress positions.[25]

George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian, reports that Padilla’s mental faculties have been so impaired by the conditions of incarceration and interrogation that:[26]

…he appears to have lost his mind. I don’t mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.

The forensic psychiatrist who examined him says that he “does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, ie, post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation”.

Over the course of more than 10,000 years, the rich biodiversity of the Andes-Amazon region has created a culture that is closely interlocked with Pachamama (Mother Nature). This culture is marked by deep knowledge of nature and is highly agricultural. Ours is one of the seven zones of the world to have originated agriculture. It has yielded the greatest variety of domesticated species. This has given rise to a cosmic vision different from the Western outlook that views the creator as a superior immaterial spirit who created man in his image and likeness and created nature to serve him. For the indigenous cosmic vision, humanity is a daughter of and part of Mother Earth. We must live in her bosom in harmony with her. Each hill or peak, each river, each vegetable or animal species has a spirit.

Indigenous, collectivist mentality is strong enough to have endured solidly through 500 years of invasion and the dictatorship of individualism.

The Quechua and Aymara name for the campesino community is ayllu. It is bound by strong ties, many expressed in work (ayni, mink’a, faena) and in all aspects of life. The community is not restricted to persons. It entails a close communal relationship with cultivated species, with medicinal species, with animals and plants that tell cultivators about seasonal variations, and, more broadly, with all animal and vegetable species, with rain, and with the land.

The development of agriculture and tending of livestock, which in other latitudes led to slavery and feudalism, led in Abya Yala (the Americas) to new forms of collectivism. In the Andes zone it led to a state that extended over the territories of six present-day countries ­ Tawantinsuyo (called “empire” by the invaders out of the same ignorance that led them to call the llama “big sheep.”)

It’s true that the new forms of collectivism gave rise to privileged castes and wars of conquest. But in no part of the continent was production based on slave labor or the feudal system.

For more than 10,000 years our culture domesticated 182 plant species, including around 3,500 potato varieties.

Our people know 4,500 medicinal plants.

Tawantinsuyos planned agriculture based on a system of watersheds and micro watersheds or basins.

They built long aqueducts, taking care to avoid land erosion.

Terracing was practiced on the slopes and “waru-waru” in the altiplano (highlands).

Special technologies were used from zone to zone.

Across the entire Tawantinsuyo territory they created storage buildings (qolqa) to supply food to the population whenever some climatic shift undermined agriculture.

Although there were privileged castes, hunger and misery did not exist. Orphans, persons with disabilities, and the elderly were cared for by the community.

The invasion

The backbone of this social organization, of the agricultural infrastructure and food reserves, was crushed by the invasion.

Europe was then passing from feudalism to capitalism. The invasion was a capitalist action. They came looking for spices, believing they had reached India. They found none, but did find gold and silver.

Mining had existed as a marginal activity, but it now became the center of the economy. To exploit the mines they used a system worse than slavery. The slave owner is concerned about the health of his slave just as he’s interested in the health of his donkey. The mine owner in Peru received annually a certain quantity of indigenous people in order to “indoctrinate” them. Regardless of how many of them died, the next year he would receive the same number. Hence, youth and adults were sent into the mines and never left until they died. Because of this, young indigenous people committed suicide and mothers killed their children to free them from torment. This practice diminished following the Tupac Amaru rebellion.

Agricultural work took place through a feudal system. The Europeans took the best lands from the community and converted them into latifundios
(huge estates or latifundia). Community inhabitants became serfs on their own lands. They had to work freely for the feudal lord in exchange for permission to cultivate a small plot for their own needs.

For many reasons a huge decline in agriculture took place:

Canals, terracing, and waru-warus were destroyed because of ignorance and lack of care.

Until this day no planning in terms of watersheds and micro watersheds has been carried out. Chaos took hold and persists.

With the importation of foreign domestic animals to the zone, the environment deteriorated. The auquenidos (camelid) cut pasture grass with their teeth, but cows, horses, and sheep uproot it.

The invaders vented their superstitions on our crops. Our agricultural mentality didn’t suit their cultured ways. So the “exterminators of idolaters” went after plants like the papa, also known as Santa Padre (Holy Father). They renamed it patata, the word used in Spain. This passed into English and other languages as “potato.” They also damned kiwicha or amaranto (amaranth).The coca plant, which the famous doctor Hipólito Unanue called the “supertonic of the vegetable kingdom,” is to this day the target of superstition and excessively harmful prejudice in “refined” circles.

The invaders pillaged the food stockpiles located across the territory to cope with times of hunger brought on by climatic irregularities.

Taking their behavior as a whole, we find that European imposition of hunger and misery — their cultural contribution — was even more deadly than their massacres and the smallpox they spread among us.

Rebellions and republic

From the beginning, our people rebelled against the invaders. Numerous insurrections took place, beginning with Tupac Amaru II’s rebellion. It spread all the way to Bolivia and lasted even after his cruel torture and assassination.

Later the so-called Revolución de la Independencía took place. It did not signify any noticeable change for the indigenous population.

The generals of “independence” were awarded “haciendas” (the new name for the feudal latifundia), “Indians” and all.

The hacienda system consisted basically of the free labor of the colono (serf) for the hacienda. There were other aspects to this serfdom.

The colono had to turn over some of his animals that grazed on natural pastures to the master. He made long treks with pack mules burdened with hacienda produce. They lasted days and he had to sleep out in the open. The owner mistreated him physically and morally. He could jail him and rape the women. The serf’s children did not go to school either because they had to work, or there were no schools, or the master forbade it.

Our land struggle in the 1960s

The hacienda feudal system lasted until the second half of the last century.

The spread of capitalism to the countryside weakened it in many ways:

New large-scale mining absorbed labor from the haciendas.

New mechanized latifundia expelled the serfs and employed an agricultural proletariat.

New high-priced crops required more labor time, pressing the hacienda owner to demand more work from his serfs and to expel them in order to take over their plots. The serfs, on the other hand, needed more time for their own labors and resisted the theft of their plots.

We organized ourselves to struggle against the new outrages. Given the intransigence of the landlords, the struggle became a fight for possession of the land.

Our defensive action not only set us against the landlords but also against the government which defended the feudal system.

In over 100 haciendas we refused to work for the landlords. But we continued to work our own plots. This was in practice an agrarian reform. The government repressed us with arms and we defended ourselves with arms. The military government of the day crushed the armed self-defense; but it took note that it would be impossible to re-implant feudal serfdom. It opted to pass an agrarian reform law – only in this zone – legalizing campesino possession of the land. But indigenous campesinos in other zones of the country rebelled and took over haciendas. This was violently repressed, but could not be effectively contained. Hence, a subsequent reformist military government felt obliged to decree an agrarian reform at the national level.

In this way, we took advantage of capitalism’s weakening of the feudal system to take over the land. In this same epoch the Brazilian campesino movement was shattered. Capitalism triumphed there. Its victims are now struggling courageously in the “Landless Workers’ Movement.”

For this reason Peru is, with the likely exception of Cuba, the country of the continent with the greatest proportion of landowners, either of communal or private plots.

Some campesinos from the epoch of struggle for the land feel the qualitative change. “Now we are free,” they say. They consider that breaking down feudal servitude also broke them free from the yoke that had gripped them.

Following the rupture they worked for education, building schools and paying men and women teachers. Later they fought to get the state to pay them. They built health centres and fought to get the state to pay for health services.

They got the vote and elected their own mayors. They fought against mining pollution. They struggled to assume in a collective manner police and judicial functions, to replace corrupt cops and judges. They fought against corrupt authorities of any stripe – and for many other things.

They feel that breaking from feudal servitude freed them to spread wings and carry the struggle forward.

Current struggles

Most current struggles of indigenous campesinos are against the killing of Pachamama, Mother Earth; against depredations by the large companies, mainly mining, but also petroleum and gas. Previous Peruvian governments were servants of feudal lords; today they serve the great multinationals. They act against the Peruvian people and against nature.

Living conditions are another cause of struggle. There is more and more unemployment, and the standard of living is falling. In the countryside this is due to excessively low prices for farm products. This is linked to the struggle against the Free Trade Agreement with the United States that will demolish our agriculture for the benefit of large, subsidized imperial firms.

The indigenous movement, together with the rest of the Peruvian population, is fighting against corruption and to get their own representatives into local governments. People often suffer betrayals because there is no system for authentic democratic control.

Our allies

The indigenous movement is not alone. Although it is the most vigorous and persevering, it is not unique. The rest of the people are struggling together with us.

Intellectuals called indigenistas, whether indigenous or not, merit special mention. Ever since the oppression of the original peoples of our continent began there have been individuals who have struggled against it and to defend our culture.

The work of Father Bartolomé de las Casas is known.

In Peru there were notable political figures like González Prada and Mariátegui. Writers like Clorinda Matto, Ciro Alegría, José María Arguedas. Painters like José Sabogal. Musicians like Alomía Robles, Baltasar Zegarra, Roberto Ojeda, Leandro Alviña, and so on.

The meaning of our struggle

We are defending our culture in its diverse aspects: our cosmic vision, social organization, our rituals and agricultural know-how, medicine, music, language, and many others.

We do not claim that our culture is superior to others. We are struggling to stop it from being considered inferior.

We want to be respected as equals.

We have been educated to harmonize equality and diversity. Peru is a mega-diverse country, both geographically and demographically. We have 82% of the world’s 103 natural life zones. Our inhabitants speak 45 different languages. The great Inca Sun God celebration was not exclusive. It had a procession of different peoples with diverse gods. The notion of “one God” did not exist. We are for the equality of the diverse; we are against homogenization (igualitarismo).

On the one hand we respect diverse individualities and particularities. On the other, we oppose individualism. Ours is a culture of solidarity.

We don’t seek a return to the past. We know we must make the best in general of advances in human culture.

That does not contradict our resolve to go back to our own roots. Our past will be vividly present in our future.

We love and care for Pachamama. We fervently yearn to return to basing our economy on our rich biodiversity, through agriculture and natural medicine, along with any modern advances that do no harm.

We don’t want our social system to be based on the deep-seated, antisocial individualism that the invaders brought here. We intend to recover and strengthen at all levels the vigorous, collectivist solidarity and fraternity of the ayllu, making use, as well, of universal knowledge that is not harmful.

We dream that the past 500 years of crushing blows are just a passing nightmare in the ten thousand years of building our culture.

Hugo Blanco was leader of the Quechua peasant uprising in the Cuzco region of Peru in the early 1960s. He was captured by the military and sentenced to 25 years in El Fronton Island prison for his activities. While in prison, he wrote Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru. It was published in English by Pathfinder Press in 1972(*) and is must-reading for anyone who wishes to understand the liberation struggles of peasants and indigenous people in that region.

An international defence campaign that gained the support of such figures as Ernesto Che Guevara, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Bertrand Russell succeeded in winning his freedom. After a period in exile in Mexico, Chile, and Sweden, Blanco returned to Peru where he won election to the national parliament on a united left slate. He has continued to play an active role in Peru’s indigenous, campesino, and environmental movements, and writes on Peruvian, indigenous, and Latin American issues.

The article was translated Phil Cournoyer. In the 1960s Cournoyer participated in the worldwide defence campaign to win Blanco’s freedom and a decade later coordinated a cross-Canada speaking tour of the Peruvian indigenous leader.

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue – In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.” But beyond the irony lies China’s true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region’s Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959, is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it’s under Chinese control. Assuming he’s able to master the feat of controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. “It will be a very hot issue,” says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism scholar at Stanford. “The Dalai Lama has been the prime symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so it’s quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be a lot more important than the others.”

The man who ran CNN’s news operation during the invasion of Iraq is now doing damage control in response to a new documentary’s evidence that he kowtowed to the Pentagon on behalf of the cable network. His current denial says a lot about how “liberal media” outlets remain deeply embedded in the mindsets of pro-military conformity.

Days ago, the former CNN executive publicly defended himself against a portion of the “War Made Easy” film (based on my book of the same name) that has drawn much comment from viewers since the documentary’s release earlier this summer. As Inter Press Service reported, the movie shows “a news clip of Eason Jordan, a CNN News chief executive who, in an interview with CNN, boasts of the network’s cadre of professional military experts.’ In fact, CNN’s retired military generals turned war analysts were so good, Eason said, that they had all been vetted and approved by the U.S. government.”

Inter Press called the vetting-and-approval process “shocking” — and added that “in a country revered for its freedom of speech and unfettered press, Eason’s comments would infuriate any veteran reporter who upholds the most basic and important tenet of the journalistic profession: independence.”

But Eason Jordan doesn’t want us to see it that way. And he has now fired back via an article in IraqSlogger, which calls itself “the world’s premier Iraq-focused Web site.” Jordan runs that Web site.

The journalist who wrote the Aug. 14 article, Christina Davidson, was in an awkward spot: “War Made Easy” directly criticizes her boss, and it was the subject of the article.

Davidson’s only assessment of the film that wasn’t favorable had to do with its criticisms of Jordan. “While there’s no doubt that journalistic laziness contributed to the uncritical re-broadcasting of the Bush administration’s official line,” she wrote, “Solomon takes it a little too far in trying to make the case that all of the cable networks were actively complicit in promoting the war. Solomon bases his reasoning primarily on one choice quote from Eason Jordan, former CNN news chief and current CEO of IraqSlogger’s parent company, Praedict.”

In fact, the film provides a wide range of evidence that “all of the cable networks were actively complicit in promoting the war” — the result of chronic biases rather than “journalistic laziness.” And CNN, like the rest of the cable news operations, comes in for plenty of tough scrutiny in the documentary. As the magazine Variety noted in a review of “War Made Easy” a few days ago, “Fox News is predictably bashed here, but supposedly neutral CNN gets it even harder.”

CNN is among the news outlets at the core of the myth of “the liberal media” — perpetuated, in part, by the fact that people are often overly impressed by the significance of rhetorical attacks on some media organizations by more conservative outlets. (Before his resignation from CNN in 2005, Eason Jordan was himself subjected to denunciations from the right — for allegedly skewing news coverage to curry favor with the Baghdad government during Saddam’s rule and, after the invasion, for reportedly stating that U.S. troops had targeted some journalists in Iraq.) But antipathy from right-wing pundits is hardly an indication of journalistic independence.

Stretching to defend Jordan’s CNN record, IraqSlogger complains that the CEO of its parent company is unfairly characterized in the film: “Solomon assumes that Jordan was seeking the blessing of Pentagon officials on the propriety of his choices, when in fact he was just doing a boss’s duty.”

The article then provides a quote from Jordan, supplying his explanation to set the record straight: “Employers routinely vet prospective employees with their previous employers. In these cases, we vetted retired generals to ensure they were experts in specific military and geographic areas. The generals were not vetted for political views.”

The explanation can only flunk the laugh test.

Eason Jordan was CNN’s chief news executive when, on April 20, 2003 (a month after U.S. troops invaded Iraq), he appeared on CNN and revealed that he’d gotten the Defense Department’s approval of which retired high-ranking officers to put on the network’s payroll. “I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance — At CNN, here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war’ — and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important.”

With war euphoria riding high, Jordan was eager to shore up his — and CNN’s — image as cooperative pals of the nation’s military commanders. Now, Jordan is trying some backspin with the claim that he was merely checking job references.

“Often journalists blame the government for the failure of the journalists themselves to do independent reporting,” I note in the documentary. “But nobody forced the major networks like CNN to do so much commentary from retired generals and admirals and all the rest of it.” What Jordan did on behalf of CNN “wasn’t even something to hide, ultimately. It was something to say to the American people on his own network, See, we’re team players. We may be the news media, but we’re on the same side and the same page as the Pentagon.’ And that really runs directly counter to the idea of an independent press. And that suggests that we have some deep patterns of media avoidance when the U.S. is involved in a war based on lies.”

The FDA’s latest campaign to protect the profits of a drug company over the safety of Americans is unprecedented, and the organizers include a gang of current and former FDA officials largely credited with turning the nation’s regulatory beagle into a lapdog for Big Pharma under the Bush Administration.

FDA spokesman Douglas Arbesfeld, apparently the industry’s new inside guy, kicked off the campaign by sending an e-mail to journalists which was intended to discredit Dr Steven Nissen and the Cleveland Clinic. Dr Nissen’s study appeared online on May 21, 2007, in the New England Journal of Medicine and warned that GlaxoSmithKline’s diabetes drug Avandia increased the risk of heart attacks by 43% and death from cardiovascular events by possibly 64%.

The talking points for the media appear to have been formulated and agreed upon ahead of time between Arbesfeld and others (see below) because more than one story from ostensibly different sources later appeared in the media and on the internet referring to Dr Nissen with such names as “St Steven”, “Patron Saint of Drug Safety” and “Saint Steven the Pure.”

In his email to journalists, Mr Arbesfeld pasted portions of an article which appeared on the Heartwire website, containing umpteen critical comments about Dr Nissen and the Avandia study, as well as comments made by an anonymous blogger on the internet who said that business at the Cleveland Clinic is run similar to a Mafia TV series. The full bog states:

“Wake up pharmaceutical companies, this is a call from Dr. Nissen, if you don’t hire the Cleveland Clinic for your big trials then you face the firing squad from Nissen and Company.”

“The Cleveland Clinic was one of the most respected names in medicine, now they are positioning themselves as candidates to take over for a new series on HBO to replace the Soprano’s ” the Clinico’s ‘next week who should we wack ……’ ” Bata bing bata boon. Comment by Brian A – May 22, 2007.”

However, it could just as easily be inferred that Mr Arbesfeld authored the slanderous blog and supplied it to Heartwire with the intention of quoting it later from a “reputable web site. For its part, Heartwire has since removed what it says are “unsubstantiated remarks about Dr Nissen and the Cleveland Clinic,” and states: “In retrospect we regret that we published those sentences, as they do not meet the highest standards of journalistic or scientific integrity or credibility.”

The smear campaign has federal lawmakers up in arms. At a June 6, 2007 hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in response to questions about Mr Arbesfeld sending the e-mail under his official title of FDA spokesman, FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach told the lawmakers, “It was an inappropriate and unfortunate act on the part of an individual which has been addressed through disciplinary procedures.”

Dr Nissen is none too happy about the stunt either. “I’m a pretty tough guy,” he told ABC News on May 30, 2007, “but I’ll tell you, having this kind of an e-mail that questions my motives, broadcast to the major journalists with whom I work and have established a reputation, is — it’s an outrage.”

As for his part, Mr Arbesfeld told the Boston Globe that the email reflected his own personal views and not the FDA’s. Any assertion that the email reflected his own personal views is not quite credible considering that his previous employment was always promoting the views of the industry.

A few articles in the media mentioned that Mr Arbesfeld worked for Johnson & Johnson, but his employment with public relations firm Manning Selvage & Lee was not noted. On December 16, 1999, the Healthcare Marketing & Communications Council reported that Mr Arbesfeld had joined Manning as Senior Vice President in New York.

On January 5, 2001, the firm issued a press release to announce the promotion of Mr Arbesfeld and others and referred to Manning as “one of the largest healthcare practices worldwide and has a broad array of clients including Allergan, Amgen, Eli Lilly and Company, Genentech, Hoffmann La-Roche, Kaiser Permanente, Novartis, Pharmacia and Procter & Gamble.”

In reading the press release, Mr Arbesfeld’s expertise with using the Internet is apparently a bi-product of his work for Manning. “In this role,” it said, “Arbesfeld will help healthcare clients maximize internet-relations in the marketing and communications mix, and will expand the Practice’s strategic e-product offerings.”

On August 5, 2002, Arbesfeld identified himself in a Reuters article as representing none other than Glaxo, along with six other drug giants including Bristol-Myers, Aventis, J&J, AstraZeneca, Abbott Labs and Novartis, in a campaign to promote the “Together Rx” prescription drug card program for senior citizens. In 2005, the Reporters Handbook listed him as the contact person for J&J subsidiaries, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical and Ortho Biotech Products.

Less than a week after Mr Arbesfeld’s hatchet job on Dr Nissen, ex-FDA Deputy Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb planted an editorial in the May 29, 2007, Wall Street Journal entitled, “Journalist Malpractice,” accusing the New England Medical Journal of intentionally publishing the Nissen study to make the FDA look impotent. “The publication was timed,” he wrote, “to get ahead of the Food and Drug Administration’s more careful evaluation of the same issues.”

“The journal seemed bent on beating the FDA to the punch,” Dr Gottlieb claimed.

“The goal?” he said, “Painting the FDA as impotent, in order to argue for legislation winding through Congress that would increase regulatory hurdles for drug approvals.”

The only problem with the Nissen-NEJM conspiracy theory is that the issue under investigation in Congress right now is why the FDA did not warn the public about Avandia heart risks six months before the Nissen study was ever published.

In the end, when it comes to “Journalistic Malpractice,” the larger question would seem to be how was it that so many industry shills were able to get the major media outlets and medical journals to immediately publish commentaries and editorials attacking the NEJM and the Nissen research with headlines splashing all over the internet.

In his editorial, Dr Gottlieb notes that there are “questions” whether Avandia is associated with heart risks, but says they are “so far unsupported by more rigorous, randomized studies and extensive review by the FDA and other authorities around the world.”

“When it comes to the issue du jour, drug safety,” he wrote, “no description of medical research in a medical journal comes close to the detail level or scrutiny imposed by the FDA on study results before approval.”

Assuming this is true, the problem is that the industry insiders running the FDA refuse to act on the advice of the agency’s top scientists with first hand access to the underlying data. In a July 26, 2007 speech on the Senate floor, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), of the Senate Finance Committee, said that, in the case of Avandia, “Not only did the FDA disregard the concerns and recommendations from the office responsible for post-marketing surveillance, but I have found that it also attempted to suppress scientific dissent.”

In the past two months, he told his fellow senators, “I’ve had to write to the FDA regarding the suppression of dissent from not one but two FDA officials involved in the review of Avandia.”

The Heartwire website conveniently echoed Dr Gottlieb’s sentiments by featuring portions of a May 23, 2007, unsigned editorial from the medical journal The Lancet, which claimed that the verdict on Avandia should await the results of a Glaxo sponsored trial called RECORD, not due out until 2009.

“Taken together,” the editorial said of Dr Nissen’s findings, “these results, although based on very small numbers of events, certainly raise a signal of concern and indicate the need for more reliable information about rosiglitazone’s safety.”

“But the FDA, physicians, and patients can reasonably await the results of RECORD, a phase 3 trial designed specifically to study cardiovascular outcomes,” it said.

“Until the results of RECORD are in,” the Lancet noted, “it would be premature to overinterpret a meta-analysis that the authors and NEJM editorialists all acknowledge contains important weaknesses.”

The problem with waiting two years for the results of the RECORD trial is that FDA scientist Dr David Graham reviewed the results of this study thus far and told an FDA advisory panel that the study design is so flawed that the results should not be considered in any risk benefit analysis of Avandia now, or in 2009.

In fact, Dr Graham says the RECORD study is so useless that it is probably unethical to allow it to continue because no possible benefit can be achieved by allowing it to go on and that Avandia should be pulled off the market now because thousands of patients are being injured each month by using the drug.

At the end of his editorial, Dr Gottlieb lists himself as a physician and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, as well as former Deputy Commissioner of the FDA from 2005 to 2007. However, back on August 24, 2005, the Seattle Times provided a much better picture of his background and highlighted the oddity of the FDA hiring him in the first place in light of his solid alliance with the industry. “Only a month ago,” the article states, “Dr Scott Gottlieb was a Wall Street insider, promoting hot biotech stocks to investors.”

At the time, the Times noted, “Now Gottlieb holds the No. 2 job at the federal agency that approves new drugs, oversees their safety and affects the fortunes of companies he once touted.”

“Now, as one of three deputy commissioners,” the article said, “Gottlieb will help oversee such major policies as the FDA’s fast-track approval process for drug and biotech products, a priority for many Wall Street funds and the pharmaceutical industry.”

The Times also noted that a half-dozen current and former FDA officials said they did not know of anyone else from Wall Street ever moving directly into such a high-level job at the agency.

A couple months later, the November 12, 2005, Boston Globe reported that Dr Gottlieb could not participate in formulating the nation’s defense plan against the avian flu due to conflicts of interest. He “was recused from key parts of the planning effort because his past consulting work for Manning Selvage & Lee involved companies whose products would be used to combat a flu pandemic,” it said. Yes, the very same Manning Selvage & Lee at which Arbesfeld held the Senior Vice President position. Does anyone smell a rat (or several)?

The article pointed out that Dr Gottlieb’s former clients included Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, and Sanofi-Aventis, the parent company of the nation’s sole flu vaccine maker.

According to the Globe, Manning paid Gottlieb a $12,500 monthly retainer for nine months for projects that included eight companies, and he was also paid $9,000 for private consulting work for VanGen Inc, a firm that won a $878-million contract to supply the US government with 75 million doses of anthrax vaccine.

These days, financial/market punditry seems to follow two opposite lines of thinking. It ranges from the predominant view that world economies are growing and sound, problems in them minor and fixable, and current volatility (aka turmoil) is corrective, normal and a healthy reassessing and repricing of risk. Contrarians, on the other hand, believe the sky is falling. Most often, extreme views like these turn out wrong and are best avoided. Things are never that simple and hindsight usually proves only Cassandra was good at forecasting although calling market tops and bottoms wasn’t her specialty.

Amidst all the commentary and sorting out of market Strang und Durm these days, some financial world figures stand head and shoulders above the rest for their wisdom, level-headednessness and believability. One in particular is Jeremy Grantham, called by some the philosopher king of Wall Street even though he’s based to the northeast in Boston. In 1977, he co-founded Grantham, Mayo and Van Otterloo, now known as GMO. In his Quarterly Letters to clients, he assesses current market conditions and usually takes a longer view as well. His commentaries are detailed, scholarly, sober and clear.

The Vanguard Group of mutual funds founder John Bogle calls Grantham “one of the top two or three individuals in this business (and) If there’s anybody in this whole business who calls a spade a spade (that person is) Jeremy Grantham.” A metaphor for his wisdom, attitude and investing style sits aside his office desk. It’s a huge 9th century stone Buddha signifying “everything in moderation” and one of Grantham’s core beliefs that all markets eventually revert to their mean values from their highs and lows.

Based on his company’s exhaustive research, there are “no exceptions ever.” Bubbles come and go, but, in time, they all settle back in same place. As Grantham puts it: “We know one principal truth at GMO and that is that we live in a mean-reverting world in investing. (Our research) has shown….that all bubbles….eventually break (and our definition of a bubble is a) 2 standard deviation event – the kind of moves that occur about every 40 years.” Grantham mentions four stock market ones in particular that stand out – the US in 1929, US again in 1965 – 72, 1989 in Japan (in land and stocks) and the still ongoing greatest ever US 2000 bubble yet to come back to its mean.

Grantham is known in the trade as a value investor. That means buying financial assets at less than their intrinsic value or what famed investor/Columbia University professor Benjamin Graham (1894 – 1976) called a “margin of safety.” Warren Buffett today calls it “finding an outstanding company (or any financial asset) at a sensible price” as opposed to a bargain that may turn out bogus or a booby trap. Grantham correctly called the equity bubble in the late 1990s and believes the 2000 – 2003 bear market is secular, long-term, and unlikely to end before 2010 despite a continuing four year cyclical bullrun reprieve from 2003 to the present. Only in the fullness of time will he, and the rest of us, know if he’s right.

Earlier in the year, Grantham toured the world for six weeks, returned worried, and wrote about it in his April Quarterly Letter titled “It’s Everywhere, In Everything: The First Truly Global Bubble.” It’s “bubble time,” he observed “from Indian antiquities to modern Chinese art; from land in Panama to Mayfair; from forestry, infrastructure, and the junkiest bonds to mundane blue chips.” All the necessary conditions are in place – “fundamental economic conditions” look excellent; central bank supplied liquidity is plentiful and cheap; and there’s so much around, it’s easy to leverage. Since around mid-July or so, the latter condition no longer is true or perceived to be by investors turned cautious and in some cases even panicky.

Grantham explains human behavior causes bubbles when positive market conditions unleash “animal spirits” to capitalize on opportunities that get carried to extremes when there’s enough cheap credit around as fuel. Even in the best of times, that’s a recipe for trouble with success feeding on itself. It signals by leveraging up, the better investors can do until the music stops as it always does, and the longer and louder it’s been playing, the severer the subsequent headache.

No one knows for sure when big trouble’s coming next or how bad it’ll be when it arrives. Up to early summer, it was smooth sailing and easy profits, but Grantham says what he sees today is unprecedented: “everyone, everywhere (in all asset classes) is reinforcing one another.” Across the world you hear it confirmed that “they don’t make any more land (and) with these growth rates and low interest rates, equity markets must keep rising (and) private equity (plus merger mania, huge stock buy-backs and plenty of central bank supplied fuel) will continue to drive the markets.”

It’s become self-reinforcing and the results are “predictable and consistent.” The three major asset classes – real estate, stocks and bonds – are “expensive compared with (their) replacement cost where it can be calculated.” Equally worrisome, risk premiums “reached a historic low everywhere” until just weeks ago.

Grantham’s conclusion is these are all warning signs spelling eventual trouble because as noted above “Every bubble has always burst (with no exceptions, ever).” When the 2000 bubble deflation resumes, “it will be across all countries and all assets, with the probable exception of high grade bonds.” In addition, risk premiums will widen (and now are) forcing companies to pay higher financing costs for borrowed funds that will depress investor confidence and reduce economic activity.

No one knows how deep or protracted a decline will be, but Grantham stresses it’s coming because the current global bubble is unprecedented. “No similar global event (of this magnitude ever) occurred before.” Now that’s pretty scary stuff to chew on because economic troubles bite everyone and most of all those most vulnerable and least able to weather the storm. That includes ordinary working people with little or nothing invested.

During the current bull run, Grantham was troubled as early as January, 2004 when he advised clients that “The outlook for 2004 is not bad, but the (stock) market is very overpriced and all predictors look bad for the next year and the year after.” As things turned out, he was wrong, or perhaps with future hindsight just way early in his judgment. He was troubled again at year end 2005 when he told investors to “prepare for a decline in the performance of equities and other risk assets in 2006.” Once more, his call was either early or wrong as the past 18 months saw considerable strength until just recently.

His January, 2007 Quarterly Letter assessed what happened saying “Against all odds, Goldilocks tiptoed through the perils of the first (2005) and second (2006) year of the Presidential Cycle….it (2006) was the rarest of rare birds – a perfect year.” As a result, “risk taking also prospered” because of low global inflation, no financial crises anywhere, low interest rates, and “very very” available credit. As things turned out, “this was almost certainly the best year in the entire history of finance for the selling of high credit risks at low premiums.”

One extreme measure of it was the quadrupling of so-called securitized Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) instruments (packages of risky and other debt) to around $2.5 trillion facilitated by the so-called “expanded ‘carry trade’ of borrowing in cheap (low interest) Japanese and Swiss currencies.”

Downsides often accompany opportunities, and Grantham explained conditions going into 2007 in breathtaking terms. “Goldilocks global conditions, especially cheap and easy credit, have caused the broadest overpricing of financial assets – equities, real estate, and fixed income – ever recorded.” However, he stressed, “Just because risk taking is off the charts does not mean it can’t keep going for another year” or longer.

The end of a Goldilocks economy was clearly on the minds of people Grantham met on his world tour. Everywhere he traveled he was asked “What is the catalyst for a (market) break” when none was then visible or imminent? He answered citing these vulnerabilities: rising inflation (that’s greater than reported) constraining central bank support for a weakening economy, pointing to the US as an example. This, in turn, will slow economic activity and reduce profit margins that are still way above global norms but will come down.

Then there’s the housing decline a Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) report shows is the result of overbuilding and home prices rocketing 70% in value since 1995 adjusted for inflation. It “created $8 trillion in housing bubble wealth” and an unprecedented oversupply of unsold homes and “vacant ownership units.” CEPR believes the coming housing bubble correction “is likely to throw the economy into a recession and quite possibly a very severe (one).”

It notes housing construction has to decline, and revaluing $8 trillion in housing wealth excess will reduce consumption and bring saving rates “back to more normal levels.” Consumers need all they can get because, at today’s elevated prices, the average potential home buyer can’t afford one, and, as one analyst observed, lenders are relearning how to say “no.”

Current economic conditions worry PIMCO’s Bill Gross as well. PIMCO is a 36 year old firm and “one of the largest specialty fixed income managers in the world.” Gross is one its founders and serves as managing director and chief investment officer. In his July Investment Outlook, he said people are “looking for contagion in all the wrong places.” The Bear Stearns and other hedge fund losses are “now primarily history (and) can be papered over with 100 cents on the dollar marks.” The real problem lies in “those millions and millions of homes….not going anywhere….except for their mortgages….going up, up, and up….and so are delinquencies and defaults.”

He cites a recent Bank of America estimate that about $500 billion of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) will be reset in 2007, another $700 billion in 2008, and a large proportion of them are subprimes. He noted 7% of these loans are now in default, and the “percentage will grow and grow like a weed in your backyard tomato patch.” This will affect real money in the hundreds of billions of dollars of “toxic waste” that will spill over into reduced consumption, less new home construction, and even AAA-asset backed commercial paper “feel(ing) the cooling Arctic winds of a liquidity constriction.”

In Gross’ view, the sky isn’t falling, and “there is no hint yet of a true ‘crisis’ – these developments” may, in fact, have a salutary effect with “easy credit becoming less easy (and) excessive liquidity returning to more rational levels.” Gross still sees strong global growth ahead, but as a bond fund manager, he’s paid to worry.

In his report, Grantham is worried, too, and notes the housing decline affects prices, credit growth and consumption when subprime and other loan rates are reset higher with a considerable amount coming this year and even more ahead as just noted. In addition, and most significantly, he says rising inflation and widening risk premiums lower “the feasible leverage in private equity deals and place many deals that can be done today (meaning last spring) out of reach, which, in turn, has dire effects on the current stock market (and economy).”

In his current July client Letter, Grantham conceded “no areas of this unprecedented global bubble had yet gone hyperbolic like the internet and tech stocks did in 1999 (until now):” The “candidate” is “the growth rate of leveraged loans. At (a hugely speculative) $545 billion for the first half of this year, it is running 60% up on last year” that’s about the same size gain dot.com and tech stocks made year over year in 1999 with painful consequences not far behind for investors owning them.

Grantham’s July commentary mentioned one other likely market headwind after the 2008 election. It’s the expected fallout from “piling on” moves of “more wealth to the wealthy by shifting more of the tax load to sales and income taxes of average taxpayers and away from the capital gains and dividend taxes of the wealthy.” It means “ordinary working stiffs are not doing particularly well….and are getting antsy” enough to worry politicians to raise taxes on the most well-off.

Grantham expects them to come in higher taxes on capital gains, dividends and top-end ordinary income rates as well as redefining what income is. That will mean more of it will be taxed to reduce the gross disparity between what rich and ordinary folks now pay, and not a moment too soon for those championing fairness, not special privilege. If this happens, however, it “will not be good for the animal spirits of investors” who represent the most important bubble-sustaining input.

Grantham sums up his current thinking with what he calls a “torture(d) analogy.” He compares the global financial system to a giant suspension bridge. “Thousands of bolts hold it together. Today a few of them have fractures and one or two seem to have failed completely. The bridge, however, with typical redundancy built in (unlike the Minnesota one that collapsed), can (easily) take a few failed bolts, perhaps quite a few….This global financial structure is far too large and has far too many interlocking pieces for weakening US house prices and a few subprime issues to bring it down.”

What is worrisome is whether or when we reach a “broad-based level of financial metal fatigue” causing simultaneous multiple bolt failures “with ultimately disastrous consequences.” What’s also scary is the global financial structure is heavily “faith based, held together by unprecedented amounts of animal spirits” moving in the same positive direction. If the faith wanes, it’s then “every man for himself” and look out below.

Also worrisome, but so far contained, is growing subprime mortgage trouble. Until a month ago, equity markets were totally unaffected and may bounce back from their current sell-off. Grantham isn’t panicking but shows concern about flat to declining home prices, a high inventory of unsold homes likely moving higher, and mortgage “honeymoon rate” reset increases up to 2.5 points coming soon for holders “already stretched.” We’re told, he says, that even the subprime market is “contained,” but we have to wonder if “the container, in this case, will turn out to be Pandora’s.”

Then there’s a slowing economy, inflation concerns, high oil and other industrial commodity prices and now agricultural ones as well “boosted by ethanol production” pressuring consumers. “So two of the three great asset classes (now all three) are having the wobblies in some of their components” – real estate and low grade debt (and since mid-July equities and other type debt instruments as well), “especially real-estate related but increasingly including corporate loans and private equity funding….”

Grantham may have written this commentary before the the July-mid-August equity market sell-off. However, based on his prior (and long-standing) comments, his current analysis probably still holds true: “stocks (will likely) make it through this third (and traditionally strongest) year of the Presidential (four year market) Cycle.” The third year in the Cycle “has never declined materially and should be considered the bane of short sellers (and equity market naysayers) everywhere.”

In sum, Grantham says, “a few more bolts in the bridge may fail, but in the end you have to bet the bridge will hold, supported by amazing animal spirits.” At least that’s true up to October when the fourth year of the Cycle begins. Then, the “odds of failure rise” but won’t likely become high until October, 2008 with a new administration and Congress soon to take power. Grantham then gets blunt stating “based on history” (and tax increases he expects), that’s the most likely time for a bear market, and he’s betting on one that could be nasty.

He concludes saying he’s been trying to come up with a simple way to explain “how serious the situation is for the overstretched, overleveraged financial system.” He does it this way: “In 5 years I expect….at least one major bank (broadly defined) to have failed and up to half the hedge funds and a substantial percentage of the private equity firms in existence today (to have) simply ceased to exist.”

WASHINGTON (Aug. 16) – Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan , according to a new military report.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest number since the 102 suicides in 1991 at the time of the Persian Gulf War.

The suicide rate for the Army has fluctuated over the past 26 years, from last year’s high of 17.3 per 100,000 to a low of 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001.

Last year, “Iraq was the most common deployment location for both (suicides) and attempts,” the report said.

The 99 suicides included 28 soldiers deployed to the two wars and 71 who weren’t. About twice as many women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide as did women not sent to war, the report said.

Preliminary numbers for the first half of this year indicate the number of suicides could decline across the service in 2007 but increase among troops serving in the wars, officials said.

The increases for 2006 came as Army officials worked to set up a number of new and stronger programs for providing mental health care to a force strained by the longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the global counterterrorism war entering its sixth year.

Failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and the stress of their jobs were factors motivating the soldiers to commit suicide, according to the report.

“In addition, there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed” in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops are participating in the war effort, it said. The same pattern seemed to hold true for those who not only attempted, but succeeded in killing themselves.

There also “was limited evidence to support the view that multiple … deployments are a risk factor for suicide behaviors,” it said.

About a quarter of those who killed themselves had a history of at least one psychiatric disorder. Of those, about 20 percent had been diagnosed with a mood disorder such as bipolar disorder and/or depression; and 8 percent had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, including post traumatic stress disorder – one of the signature injuries of the conflict in Iraq.

Firearms were the most common method of suicide. Those who attempted suicide but didn’t succeed tended more often to take overdoses and cut themselves.

In a service of more than a half million troop, the 99 suicides amounted to a rate of 17.3 per 100,000 – the highest in the past 26 years, the report said. The average rate over those years has been 12.3 per 100,000.

The rate for those serving in the wars stayed about the same, 19.4 per 100,000 in 2006, compared with 19.9 in 2005.

The Army said the information was compiled from reports collected as part of its suicide prevention program – reports required for all “suicide-related behaviors that result in death, hospitalization or evacuation” of the soldier. It can take considerable time to investigate a suicide and, in fact, the Army said that in addition to the 99 confirmed suicides last year, there are two other deaths suspected as suicides in which investigations were pending.

NEW YORK (Aug. 15) – People in the U.S. who quietly band together and adopt radical ways – not just established overseas terrorist groups like al-Qaida – pose a serious threat to the American’s security, a new police analysis has concluded.

The New York Police Department report released Wednesday describes a process in which young men – often legal immigrants from the Middle East who are frustrated with their lives in their adopted country – adopt a philosophy that puts them on the path to what Muslim extremists have dubbed a jihad, or holy war.

At a briefing, NYPD officials argued that local law enforcement is best suited to deal with the homegrown terror threat.

“Hopefully, the better we’re informed about this process, the more likely we’ll be to detect and disrupt it,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said during the meeting with private security executives at police headquarters.

The study is based on an analysis of a series of domestic plots thwarted since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including those in Lackawanna, N.Y.; Portland, Ore.; and Virginia. It was prepared by senior analysts with the NYPD Intelligence Division who traveled to Germany, Spain and other overseas spots to confer with authorities about similar cases.

The report found homegrown terrorists often were indoctrinated in local “radicalization incubators” that are “rife with extremist rhetoric.”

Instead of mosques, those places were more likely to be “cafes, cab driver hangouts, flop houses, prisons, student associations, non-governmental organizations, hookah bars, butcher shops and bookstores,” the report says.

The Internet also provides “the wandering mind of the conflicted young Muslim or potential convert with direct access to unfiltered radical and extremist ideology.”

Kareem Shora, legal adviser for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, called the findings faulty and potentially inflammatory.

“It plays right into the extremists’ plans because it’s going to end up angering the community,” said Shora.

The report warns that potential terrorists are difficult for law enforcement to detect because they blend in well with society. It also argues that more intelligence gathering is needed to thwart potential terror plots at their earliest stages.

Potential homegrown terrorists “are not on the law enforcement radar,” the study says. “Most have never been arrested or involved in any kind of legal trouble.”

“No American President can stand up to Israel.”

These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974). Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent-minded American military leader.

Admiral Moorer knew what he was talking about. On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked the American intelligence ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173. The Israelis even strafed the life rafts, machine-gunning the American sailors leaving the stricken ship.

Apparently, the USS Liberty had picked up Israeli communications that revealed Israel’s responsibility for the Seven Day War. Even today, history books and the majority of Americans blame the conflict on the Arabs.

The United States Navy knew the truth, but the President of the United States took Israel’s side against the American military and ordered the United States Navy to shut its mouth. President Lyndon Johnson said it was all just a mistake. Later in life, Admiral Moorer formed a commission and presented the unvarnished truth to Americans.

The power of the Israel Lobby over American foreign policy is considerable. In March 2006, two distinguished American scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, expressed concern in the London Review of Books that the power of the Israel Lobby was bending US foreign policy in directions that serve neither US nor Israeli interests. The two experts were hoping to start a debate that might rescue the US and Israel from unsuccessful policies of coercion that are intensifying Muslim hatred of Israel and America. The Israel lobby was opposed to any such reassessment, and attempted to close it off with epithets: “Jew-baiter,” “anti-semitic,” and even “anti-American.” Today Israeli citizens who oppose Zionist plans for greater Israel are denounced as “anti-Semites.”

Many Americans are unaware of the influence of the Israel lobby. Instead they think of the US as “the world’s sole superpower,” a macho new Roman Empire whose orders are obeyed without question or the insolent nonentity is “bombed back to the stone age.” Many Americans are convinced that military coercion serves our interest. They cite Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now they are ready to bring Iran and Pakistan to heel with bombs.

This arrogance results in the murder of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of men, women and children, a fate that many Americans seem to believe is appropriate for countries that do not accept US hegemony.

Coercion is what American foreign policy has become. Macho superpatriots love it. Many of these superpatriots derive vicarious pleasure from their delusions that America is “kicking those sand niggers’ asses.”

This is the America of the Bush Regime. If some of these superpatriots had their way every “unpatriotic, terrorist supporter” who dares to criticize the war against “the Islamofacists” would be sent to Gitmo, if not shot on the spot.

These Bush supporters have morphed the Republican Party into the Brownshirt Party. They cannot wait to attack Iran, preferably with nuclear weapons. Impatient for Armageddon, some are so full of hubris and self-righteousness that they actually believe that their support for evil means they will be “wafted up to heaven.”

It has come as a crippling blow to Democrats that “their” political party is comfortable with Bush’s America, and will do nothing to stop the Bush regime’s aggression against the Iraqi people or to prevent the Bush regime’s attack on Iran.

The Democrats could easily impeach both Bush and Cheney in the House, as impeachment only requires a majority vote. They could not convict in the Senate without Republican support, as conviction requires ratification by two-thirds of Senators present. Nevertheless, a House vote for impeachment would take the wind out of the sails of war, save countless lives and perhaps even save humanity from nuclear holocaust.

Various rationales or excuses have been constructed for the Democrats’ complicity in aggression that does not serve America. Perhaps the most popular rationale is that the Democrats are letting the Republicans have all the rope they want with which to produce such a high disapproval rating that the Democrats will sweep the 2008 election.

It is doubtful that the Democrats would assume that men as cunning as Karl Rove and Dick Cheney do not understand the electoral consequences of a low public approval rating and are walking blindly into an electoral wipeout. Rove’s departure does not mean that no strategy is in place.

So what does explain the complicity of the Democratic Party in a policy that the American public, and especially Democratic constituencies, reject? Perhaps a clue is offered from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune news report (August 1, 2007) that Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison will spend a week in Israel on “a privately funded trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Federation. The AIEF–the charitable arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)–is sending 19 members of Congress to meet with Israeli leaders. The group, made up mostly of freshman Democrats, has plans to meet with Isreali Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and [puppet] Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The senior Democratic member on the trip is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has gone three times. . . . The trip to Israel is Ellison’s second as a congressman.”

According to the Star-Tribune, a Republican group, which includes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, Minn), led by Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Va) is already in Israel. According to news reports, another 40 are following these two groups during the August recess, and “by the time the year is out every single member of Congress will have made their rounds in Israel.” This claim is probably overstated, but it does show careful Israeli management of US policy in the Middle East.

Elsewhere on earth and especially among Muslims, the suspicion is rife that the reason the war against Iraq cannot end, and the reason Iran and Syria must be attacked, is that the US must destroy all Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine, turning an entire people into refugees driven from their homes and from the lands on which they have lived for many centuries. Americans might think that they are merely grabbing control over oil, keeping it out of the hands of terrorists, but that is not the way the rest of the world views the conflict.

Jimmy Carter was the last American president who stood up to Israel and demanded that US diplomacy be, at least officially if not in practice, even-handed in its approach to Israel and Palestine. Since Carter’s presidency, even-handedness has slowly drained from US policy in the Middle East. The neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime has abandoned even the pretense of even-handedness.

This is unfortunate, because military coercion has proven to be unsuccessful. Exhausted from the conflict, the US military, according to former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, is “nearly broken.” Demoralized elite West Point graduates are leaving the army at the fastest clip in 30 years. Desertions are rapidly rising. A friend, a US Marine officer who served in combat in Vietnam, recently wrote to me that his son’s Marine unit, currently training for its third deployment to Iraq in September, is short 12-16 men in every platoon and expects to be hit with more AWOLs prior to deployment.

Instead of re-evaluating a failed policy, Bush’s “war tsar,” General Douglas Lute, has called for the reinstitution of the draft. Gen. Lute doesn’t see why Americans should not be returned to military servitude in order to save the Bush administration the embarrassment of having to correct a mistaken Middle East policy that commits the US to more aggression and to debilitating long-term military conflict in the Middle East.

It is difficult to see how this policy serves any interest other than the very narrow one of the armaments industry. Apparently, nothing can be done to change this disastrous policy until the Israel Lobby comes to the realization that Israel’s interest is not being served by the current policy of military coercion.