by Rick Wolff
for MRZine

Private capitalism (in which productive assets are owned by private individuals and groups and in which markets rather than state planning dominate the distribution of resources and products) has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to flare out into overproduction and/or asset inflation bubbles that burst with horrific social consequences. Endless reforms, restructurings, and regulations were all justified in the name not only of extricating us from a crisis but also finally preventing future crises (as Obama repeated this week). They all failed to do that.

The tendency to crisis seems unstoppable, an inherent quality of capitalism. At best, flare-outs were caught before they wreaked major havoc, although usually that only postponed and aggravated that havoc. One recent case in point: the stock market crash of early 2000 was limited in its damaging social consequences (recession, etc.) by an historically unprecedented reduction of interest rates and money supply expansion by Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve. The resulting real estate bubble temporarily offset the effects of the stock market's bubble bursting, but when real estate crashed a few years later, what had been deferred hit catastrophically.

Repeated failure to stop its inherent crisis tendency is beginning to tell on the system. The question increasingly insinuates itself even into discourses with a long history of denying its pertinence: has capitalism, qua system, outlived its usefulness?

Repeated state interventions to rescue private capitalism from its self-destructive crises or from the political movements of its victims yielded longer or shorter periods of state capitalism (in which productive assets are owned or significantly controlled or regulated by state officials and in which state planning dominates markets as mechanisms of resource and product distribution). Yet state capitalisms have not solved the system's crisis tendencies either. That is why they have repeatedly given way to oscillations back to private capitalism (e.g. the Reagan "revolution" in the US, the end of the USSR, etc.).

Moreover, the history of FDR's efforts to counteract the Great Depression teaches fundamental lessons about capitalism as a system. Since the New Deal reforms all stopped short of transforming the structure of corporations, they left in place the corporate boards of directors and shareholders who had both the incentives and resources to evade, undermine, and abolish those reforms. Evasion was their focus until the 1970s, and abolition since. Capitalism systematically organizes its key institutions of production -- the corporations -- in such a way that their boards of directors, in properly performing their assigned tasks, produce crises, then undermine anti-crisis reforms, and thereby reproduce those crises.

Hence, attention is slowly shifting to questioning the one aspect of capitalism that was never effectively challenged, let alone changed, across the last century and more: the internal organization of corporations. Their decisions about what, where, and how to produce and how to utilize profits are all made not by the mass of workers, nor by the communities they impact, but rather by a board of directors. Composed typically of 15-20 individuals, corporate boards are tiny elites responsible to only the slightly larger elites comprising corporations' major shareholders. Each corporate board is charged by its major shareholders with maximizing profit, market share, growth, or share price. The mass of workers has to live with the results of board decisions over which they exercise next to no control. This is a position they share with the communities surrounding and dependent on those same corporations.

This capitalist organization of the corporation consistently generates investment, production, financial, marketing, and employment decisions that produce systemic instability -- economic crises. This system's profoundly undemocratic organization of production demands radical transformation.

Suppose, as one such transformation, that workers undertook to function as their own board of directors. All weekly job descriptions would henceforth specify four days of particular production tasks and one day participating in collective decisions about what, how, and where to produce and what to do with profits. That means workers replacing the economic autocracy that structures capitalist corporations by democratic mechanisms, just as they have forced political autocracy to give way to democratic mechanisms. The economy and society would then evolve very differently from the capitalist pattern.

As every thinking person knows, climate change is upon us. Market solutions to stem it, which defenders of capitalism have proposed and implemented, have miserably failed to contain it. Substituting undemocratic state planning for markets is no solution either: one look at the environmental records of state planning in the former Eastern bloc suffices to corroborate this point. If we are to redesign our interactions with nature by taking account of the economic and environmental costs of energy sources, especially fossil fuels, as an increasing number of people recognize we must, why not redesign our enterprise structures to take account of the history of failed efforts to contain capitalism's crisis-producing dysfunction?

Might we consider a mutually beneficial alliance between critics of abusing our energy resources and critics of abusing our productive capabilities? How about an alliance focused on a radical, democratic, and therefore anti-capitalist reorganization of production? The point would be to make citizens and workers -- those who must live with the results of what enterprises do -- conjoint decision-makers focused on meeting collective needs, both productive and environmental.

by Lindsay Renick Mayer on March 26, 2009
for Open Secrets

Members of a Senate Committee that today held the first part of a hearing to examine whether health insurance companies are failing to fully pay reimbursements to policyholders haven't had any trouble themselves collecting money from these companies. In total, health insurance companies' PACs and employees have given 25 members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation $3.3 million in campaign contributions since the 1990 election cycle, with 53 percent of that going to Democrats*.

At the top of that list is committee member Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who has collected $680,200 over time for his candidate committee and leadership PAC from the companies. But the industry under scrutiny has also helped pay for the campaigns of committee chair Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who has collected $141,000, while ranking member Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) has brought in $119,700. Blue Cross/Blue Shield has the strongest financial tie to senators currently on the committee, giving $505,700 total, followed by AFLAC, which has donated $337,250 since 1989. Although none of the individuals testifying today were from a health insurance company (instead they were from various health care and consumer task forces and associations), UnitedHealth Group president Stephen Hemsley is scheduled to testify at the second half of the hearing on Tuesday. His company's employees and PAC have given members of the committee $206,300, and Hemsley
himself contributed to Rockefeller in the 2008 election cycle.

New York's attorney general recently published a study that concluded that the insurance industry has systematically under-estimated the reimbursement rates it pays policyholders for out-of-network costs, withholding billions of dollars. The industry has been on the defensive since a Democratic administration took over and Democrats with a health care reform agenda expanded their majority in Congress. This week health insurers wrote the Senate that they were willing to stop charging higher premiums to people with a history of medical problems. The industry likely hopes that concessions like these, in addition to the money it has poured into policymakers' campaigns, will ward off a government-sponsored health insurance program that could take business away.

Since 1989, the health insurance industry has given current members of Congress $39.5 million, with Democrats collecting 52 percent of that. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) has collected the most from the companies at $767,800, followed by Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), whose health insurance money adds up to $737,260. President Obama received $1.3 million from the industry in the 2008 election cycle (and $1.4 million if you include his Senate fundraising). Among health insurers, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and AFLAC have made the greatest contributions to current members of Congress over time at $7 million and $5.7 million, respectively.

For a list of all members of the 111th Congress (plus Obama) who have received money for their candidate committees or leadership PACs from the health insurance industry's PACs and employees*, click here: Health Insurance_to_111th.xls

*The totals for the health insurance industry reflect contributions from both accident and health insurers, as well as HMOs, since the 1989-1990 election cycle.

Senior Researcher Douglas Weber contributed to this report.

by Doug Henwood
for Doug's Blog

Housing market stabilizing?
In the economic news, more signs of the stabilization I’ve been talking about for the last few weeks, especially in the housing market, following last week’s pickup in housing starts (the term of art for when builders begin constructing new houses). Sales of existing houses, which are the lion’s share of the market, rose by 5% in February, the strongest monthly gain in almost six years. The rate of decline in prices also slowed. But the way that’s phrased is a reminder that the market remains very depressed. Prices are still weak, and January’s performance was revised downward (I should point out that revisions to back numbers are frequent in almost all economic data) to make it the worst performance on record. And despite the strength of the pickup in February sales in percentage terms, the pace of sales remains very close to all time lows. But, as they say, flat is the new up.

Sales of new houses in February also showed a strong pickup, following a string of steep declines. Despite that uptick, the sales pace remains quite low. And the overhang of unsold houses, both existing and new, remains at very high levels. And the price of new houses continues to fall. Still, this latest batch of housing data does suggest that the deep plunge has slowed to a slow crawl, or may even be turning around. Of course, it’s still way too soon to make all that much of this. But since housing is often the first sector to bottom out in a recession, this is encouraging.
Job market getting slightly less stinkier?

As a reminder, though, not to get too carried away with jubliation, first-time claims for unemployment insurance, filed by people who’ve just lost their jobs, rose by 8,000 last week. Since this number bounces around a lot, it’s sound practice to look at a running average of the last four weeks data. That measure fell slightly last week, after rising steadily for two months, so that’s a little encouraging. But it remains very high. And the count of people receiving benefits, which is a function not only of how quickly jobs are lost, but also how quickly the unemployed find new jobs (or run out their benefits), continues to rise. So, as I’ve been saying for a while, the job market still stinks, but it’s not getting radically stinkier from week to week. Isn’t that comforting?
Old Europe complains

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the prime minister of the Czech Republic, Mirek Topolanek denounced the U.S. penchant for big-spending stimulus and bailout packages as “the road to hell.” This is pretty funny, since his government just fell, mainly because his electorate isn’t happy with the way he’s handled the way the economic crisis has hit his country. But when under attack at home, it always pays to go on the offensive abroad.

When I hear critiques like Topolanek’s—and you can hear them from our own right wing, as well, including more than a few conservative Democrats—I always wonder what they’d do. Just let the economy go down the drain, with no effort made to counteract the implosion? But he’s got a lot of allies across Europe, even if they’re not given to such blunt language. European governments and central banks have been quite slow to pump up the stimulus engine, leaving much of that work to the U.S. In their defense, it is true that their so-called automatic stabilizers—spending on income support and other social measures that rise as unemployment rises—are a lot more powerful than ours. Just half of our unemployed, for example, are drawing unemployment insurance checks. And once those are gone, it’s either the VISA card or the sidewalk. No so in Europe, where the dole checks are always in the mail. Still, the reputation that the Old World has among many on the American left isn’t entirely earned. The European elite is very much into tight money and tight budgets, and hate the sort of stimulus we’re doing here. Give the EU’s size, a somewhat larger share of the world economy than the U.S.’s, that slowness to stimulate could have unpleasant global effects.
Stimulus withdrawal & austerity

But we stimulators also have a problem. It looks very much like the Obama administration would like to withdraw the stimulus sooner rather than later. If so, what then? Turning back to the 1930s, we find that FDR, who was always uncomfortable with all the deficit spending that the Depression forced him into, was lured by the 1933-36 expansion into thinking that the slump was over, so he contrived a balanced budget for 1937. Unhappily, the economy, already weakening some in early 1937, took this turn back to fiscal orthodoxy very badly. The unemployment rate, which peaked at 25% when Roosevelt took office in 1933, had come down to around 11% by mid-1937. But it shot back up to 20% a year later. This raises an important question or two. Will one round of stimulus be enough? And can we wean ourselves from it? Or are our problems much more deep-seated than that?

I’ve been coming around to the idea that in their heart of hearts, Obama & Co. are planning an eventual austerity program. That is, the only way to pay for all this stimulus, if you don’t want to tax the rich heavily (and it’s looking like neither Obama nor the Congressional Dems want to do that), then there’s only one other way to fund all these trillions of stimuli and bailout: cutting social spending to the bone. More broadly, it would be economically rational, in the harsh orthodox sense, to prolong and even deepen the sharp contraction in consumption that this recession has brought with it. Less consumption means fewer imports, which means less money we need to borrow abroad. This is precisely the structural adjustment strategy that the U.S., via the IMF, has imposed on scores of countries around the world over the last 25 years. Could it be that a candidate elected on high progressive hopes would turn into the agent of a home-grown structural adjustment program? He’d be the ideal agent for such a thing, in fact, because it would disarm the natural opposition to such a strategy. Were I given to cliches, I might say that this could turn into Obama’s Nixon in China moment.

By Tamara Pearson
from Venezuela Analysis

Mérida, March 21, 2009 -- On March 18, the mayor of the municipality of Libertador in Caracas, Jorge Rodriguez, from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), signed an agreement with Coca-Cola to take over its land located in the low-income suburb of Catia, and use it for public housing.

After ten days of negotiations with the mayoralty of Libertador, Coca-Cola agreed to relocate a distribution centre which is next to the Nucleus of Endogenous Development Fabricio Ojeda (NUDEFO), one of many new types of "socialist" community development enterprises that the government in supporting.

Coca-Cola will hand over the 1 hectare piece of land to the mayoralty of Libertador, which will use the land to construct 450 housing units "in order to solve the housing problem and the high risk [of mud slides] suffered by those living nearby," Rodriguez said, adding that other land further away had already been acquired to construct refuges for disaster victims.

The project is part of the "Socialist Caracas" plan which is being propelled by the local government in coordination with the national government and will benefit 40,000 local families. The plan includes the NUDEFO, an area of worker run collectives, a subsidized food market known as Mercal , an 85% subsidized medicine pharmacy, sports courts, communal councils, land and water committees, cultural workshops and social missions.

In the second stage of the plan, the government will construct a Bolivarian school, a childcare centre, an integral rehabilitation centre, a communal dining area, a gymnasium, a public library, a cooperative school, and an audiovisual production center.

Rodriguez said his administration is planning a profound change. "We hope that Catia becomes an example of the new socialist communities and the establishment of communes," he said.

"The city of Caracas deserves to be planned for the greatest enjoyment of the people who live here, it's a city that deserves urbanism in keeping with the times and above all in keeping with the principles that we have established in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, to reduce the huge gaps in the country, reduce social injustice, and plant, quickly, equality and happiness," said Rodriguez.

The mayor stressed that Caracas had been a victim of a lack of planning and of urban control that wasn't adjusted to the new times and highlighted the contradiction of so many people living in high risk areas while other land is basically unused, or functions as "bus and old car cemeteries and abandoned factories."

The Coca-Cola distribution centre, which supplies Western Caracas, has been running since 1992, and employs 300 workers. According to the agreement, it will have three, possibly extended to four, months to find land of the same size in order to continue operating. The mayoralty will assist with the necessary procedures for buying that land and constructing the storehouses.

On March 9, President Hugo Chavez announced that the company had two weeks to vacate the land during his weekly "Hello, President" television talk show. One caller to the show, from the NUDEFO, said all the participants in the nucleus had been developing activities to achieve Coca-Cola's vacation of the land. Chavez stressed the importance of recovering such spaces and putting them at the service of the community.

Here is a short film about the struggle of workers in Coca-Cola plants:

Wikipedia
The Poll Tax Riots were mass disturbances, or riots, in British cities during protests against the Community Charge (commonly known as the poll tax), introduced by the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. By far the largest occurred in central London on Saturday March 31, 1990, shortly before the poll tax was due to come into force in England and Wales. Many believe the riot - the largest in the city in the 20th century - caused Thatcher's downfall eight months later.

The disorder in London arose from a demonstration which began at 11am. The rioting and looting ended at 3am. next morning. This riot is sometimes called the Battle of Trafalgar, particularly by opponents of poll tax, because much of the rioting took place in Trafalgar Square.

By jmb | March 22, 2009
from the jmbzine

Daniel Sandate was the second known US war resister to be deported after having first fled to Canada. (I was his lead civilian legal defense attorney in his court-martial at Fort Carson) After having been convicted of desertion, he was sentenced to 8 months of confinement. He is now free and living in Oklahoma City.

I asked Daniel to write a short statement to people in both Canada and the US on the importance of supporting Kimberly Rivera and other war resisters facing deportation in Canada. (Kimberly is currently facing deportation on March 26th) He gave me permission to share what he wrote . . .

Statement by Daniel Sandate on the pending deportation of Kimberly Rivera from Canada

My name is Daniel Sandate. I was in a sense a simple soldier in the infantry that was deployed to Iraq. When there, I was subject to IED attacks and small arms fire. Upon my return, I was still subject to these things in my mind. They never escaped me.

Within us all, there is a place that one can find solace and peace. For such soldiers as myself that relive the horrors, such a place lays in ruins. Destroyed, this refuge is still guarded in the night from what dreams may bring. Time alone can not set the cornerstone for rehabilitation; when said soldier is ignorantly shunned by the service branch of which he or she may serve, the consequences are dire and sometimes deadly..

Upon my return from Iraq, I was stationed at Ft. Carson, Colorado. Having being ignored for both my physical and mental ailments, I fled to Canada. In Canada, I went into hiding to avoid being found, but mostly, I was hiding from myself and the problems that I could not shake. After a serious suicide attempt, I was found and put into the system to be returned to the US Army’s control. While in Canadian custody, I was promised by the US consolate in Canada that my mental health was “paramount”. With that promising hope, I found myself fighting to return to military custody.

Once I was handed over to the Army, I was tumbled through the nightmarish processes of the military criminal justice system. With my ailments still effecting and limiting my body and mind, I was still denied the services that are said to be available by my rights as a soldier. Denied despite the fact that I was not yet found guilty. Denied to mental health treatment by both the Army and the jail that housed me while awaiting the condemning court-martial.

Irrepairable harm has been done. The Canadian Supreme Court has already ruled that Robin Long would not suffer such harm and was. As it is, presently, I am a prime example of the Army’s failure to return quality service to the ones that do serve and have valiantly served it. I have suffered such harm. Not to malicious actions, but to apathetic necglect.

With this, I ask that you support such soldiers that are in Canada. Whether they are in hiding or fighting their appeals to be able to stay (to avoid prosecution for taking part in an illegal war). There are many reasons that a soldier runs. Like a trapped and neglected animal, a trapped and neglected soldier will run. To return a soldier (or any service member) to the impersonal machine that does not care for its own is, in my opinion wrong and morally irresponsible. Therefore I ask that those who feel the same reach out to support these soldiers in any way they can.

In summation, I ask that I be seen as an example of what happens when a soldier is kicked to the curb, so to speak, and is then punished for it. One such soldier that will face the same hardships is Kimberly Rivera. She is currently facing deportation and will be going through the same processes of custody that I had to endure.. One way that this can be avoided is if the people stand up and shine a light on these issues that are afflicting the servicemen and servicewomen and the ones around them. I call on to those with a conscience to stand up and voice their wants for radical reform to the governments that are apathetically doing these harms in the name of justice.

US Military War Resisters in Canada Solidarity Page

by Massie Ritsch
from Open Secrets

As long as everyone's talking today about AIG's payouts to its executives and foreign banks, let's remember the payouts AIG has made over the years to politicians. In the last 20 years American International Group (AIG) has contributed more than $9 million to federal candidates and parties through PAC and individual contributions. That's enough to rank AIG on OpenSecrets.org's Heavy Hitters list, which profiles the top 100 contributors of all time.

Over time, AIG hasn't shown an especially partisan streak, splitting evenly the $9.3 million it has contributed since 1989. In the last election cycle, though, 68 percent of contributions associated with the company went to Democrats. Two senators who chair committees charged with overseeing AIG and the insurance industry, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), are among the top recipients of AIG contributions. Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee and has collected more money from AIG in his congressional career than from any other company--$91,000. And with more than $280,000, AIG has been the fourth largest contributor to Dodd, who chairs the Senate's banking committee. President Obama and his rival in last year's election, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), are also high on the list of top recipients.

AIG has been a personal investment for lawmakers, too. Twenty-eight current members of Congress reported owning stock in AIG in 2007, worth between $2.5 million and $3.3 million. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), one of the richest members of Congress, was by far the biggest investor in AIG, with stock valued around $2 million.

Last year AIG and its subsidiaries spent about $9.7 million on federal lobbying, or about $53,000 for every day Congress was in session in 2008. The company's spending on advocacy last year was down from an all-time high of $11.4 million spent on lobbying in 2007.

by Linda Gunter, AlterNet
from Alternet
Posted on March 23, 2009, Printed on March 23, 2009


"Why can't the Americans be more like the French?" It's the prevailing pro-nuclear refrain, the latest in the nuclear industry's efforts at fictional reinvention.

And until the collapse of his ill-fated and poorly orchestrated presidential run, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was the choirmaster, saying: "If France can produce 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power, why can't we?"

This clarion call to newfound Francophilia (remember "freedom fries?") is based on a number of false assumptions, the most obvious being that if France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, this equates with success.

A poodlish U.S. press corps has largely lapped up the spoon-fed propaganda that everything nuclear French is magnifique, conveniently forgetting its post 9/11 self-flagellation after it meekly buckled to the Bush administration's misjudged bellicosity.

But France's monopolistic dependency on splitting the atom to turn on the lights has come with a huge price -- not only financially but in environmental and health costs. In reality, France is a radioactive mess, additionally burdened with an overwhelming amount of radioactive waste, much of which is simply dispersed into the surrounding environment.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Areva, the French nuclear corporation and biggest atomic operator in the world, is almost wholly owned by the French government. Consequently, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone into high marketing gear -- the Washington Post anointed him "the world's most aggressive nuclear salesman" -- pushing nuclear power to any country willing to pay, most notably in the Middle East.

This proliferation-friendly profiteering, however, ignores an ugly situation at home and in other countries where Areva has left its radioactive footprint.

France has 210 abandoned uranium mines. The leftover radioactive dirt -- known as tailings -- along with radioactively contaminated rocks, have been used in school playgrounds and ski-resort parking lots. Efforts to force Areva to clean up its mess have been met with resistance from the company.

Historically, uranium mining corporations, including those in the U.S., have not been obliged to pay for cleanup. Many sites remain contaminated today, and disused uranium mine sites carry no warning signs. When a French documentary exposing the French uranium mining mess was scheduled to air on national television in February, Areva tried unsuccessfully to block it from the airwaves.

Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon proclaims transparency as one of the hallmarks of her company. But its failed censorship attempt, coupled with the July 2008 cover-up when a major uranium spill at a nuclear processing plant went unreported to the public for 14 hours, belies that assertion.

Areva's subsidiary at Tricastin, the huge nuclear complex where the spill occurred -- contaminating two rivers, kept quiet about the accident and then denied the spill endangered human health. Nevertheless, drinking and bathing in the water was temporarily banned, and Tricastin wine growers have struggled to market their products since the accident.

Three more accidents in the region followed, prompting the French environment minister to order radioactive readings at all 58 operating French reactors.

The dirtiest French nuclear site -- with the cleanest of reputations -- is the vast reprocessing plant at La Hague on the Normandy coast. The nuclear industry has successfully cast reprocessing as "recycling," but nothing about reprocessing could be further from the collections of newspapers and soda cans that recycling conjures in the public's mind's eye.

La Hague takes in irradiated reactor fuel -- domestic and from other countries -- and, through a chemical process, separates the plutonium and uranium for theoretical reuse as new reactor fuel. The plutonium is mixed with uranium to make a fuel known as MOX.

However, fewer than 20 French reactors use MOX fuel, which in turn can handle only minimal proportions of plutonium, and the waste these reactors produce cannot be reprocessed. Since all reactors also produce plutonium during the fission process -- as much as 40 atomic bombs worth per year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council -- the net reduction of plutonium by MOX reactors is virtually zero and contributes nothing to the recycling of waste fuel.

Instead, 80 tons of surplus plutonium remain at La Hague in the equivalent of hundreds of soda-can-size containers. About 30 tons result from imported irradiated fuel from client countries, most of whom have now canceled their reprocessing contracts. This is despite a French law that mandates reprocessed waste fuel be returned to its country of origin.

Most of the uranium isn't "recycled" either. Ninety-five percent of the mass of spent French reactor fuel consists of uranium that is so contaminated with other fission products that it cannot be reused as reactor fuel at all (although France ships some of it to Russia). The vast majority of the uranium from reprocessing -- nonfissile uranium 238 -- cannot be recycled either and will need to be permanently secured.

Furthermore, reprocessing creates huge volumes of liquid radioactive waste and radioactive gases. These are simply dispersed into the sea and air.

As much as 100 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste a year is pumped from La Hague into the English Channel and has radioactively contaminated the seas as far as the Arctic Circle. These liquid wastes have been measured at 17 million times more radioactive than normal sea water according to an analysis by a French laboratory at the University of Breme.

In 1998, a Belgian laboratory at the University of Gent measured the aerial discharges from La Hague. The lab found they contained radioactive krypton-85 at 90,000 times higher values than natural levels. Krypton gas released from La Hague has been traced across the globe.

Illness clusters

Two independent medical studies have found high rates of leukemia in communities close to La Hague. Beaches, fishing and swimming areas have been closed due to concerns about radioactive contamination of the sea water. Exposure to radiation is generally considered one of the four most likely causes of leukemia (along with exposure to chemicals, viruses and genetics).

Far from recycling radioactive waste, the French face the same dilemma as everyone else: they don't know what to do with it. France has no scientifically accepted or operating high-level radioactive waste repository. The sole site identified to date -- at Bure close to the Champagne region in eastern France -- has been met with organized opposition and has encountered technical difficulties.

France has so much radioactive waste that the government recently approached 3,511 communities suggesting they become home to the so-called low-level radioactive wastes that have nowhere to go. ANDRA, the French national agency responsible for the disposal of nuclear waste, billed the dump project as a boon to local development but refused to publicly identify the handful of communities it says responded positively to the idea of hosting the country's nuclear detritus.

In fact, there is no French love affair with nuclear energy, but rather a deep mistrust of this most secretive of industries. Some of this suspicion dates to the Chernobyl accident in 1986, when a French government spokesman assured the population that the radioactive cloud from the Ukrainian reactor explosion (which eventually dispersed across the globe) had stopped at the French border. Unlike other Western European countries, France mandated no precautionary actions. Consequently, there are numerous hot spots, particularly in eastern France, where radioactive fallout was extremely high.

This deception spawned the formation of an investigative laboratory -- CRIIRAD or Commission for Independent Research and Information -- as well as a burgeoning network of close to 815 French anti-nuclear organizations.

In an annual fall poll, up to 60 percent of the French public consistently calls for a phase-out of nuclear energy. On March 17, 2007, 62,000 French citizens demonstrated across France against a proposed new reactor in Normandy. On the same day, a national anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C., turned out one-third that amount.

Areva's radioactive footprint also reaches beyond the borders of France. Nowhere is this more evident than in Niger and Gabon, where Areva, under its former incarnation, Cogema, and now under various subsidiaries, has mined uranium, the raw ingredient needed for reactor fuel (and for nuclear weapons) for more than 40 years.

The Gabon site is now closed, but joint investigations in Gabon and Niger by an organization of French lawyers -- SHERPA -- along with CRIIRAD -- found significant levels of radioactive contamination and serious health issues in both countries.

In Niger, ranked as one of the poorest countries on the planet and, like Gabon, a former French colony, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding that places Areva directly at the center, along with the Niger government, of what may yet flare into civil war.

After four decades of uranium mining by Areva subsidiaries in the poorer northern region of the country -- at Arlit and Akokan in the Sahara Desert -- the country faces an environmental catastrophe that is destroying the lives and livelihoods of the surrounding communities.

Radioactive dust is everywhere. Water sources -- already scarce in this desert region -- have been depleted and contaminated. Radioactive metals resulting from uranium processing, have been discarded as scrap or sold in the local markets and used by villagers in household items.

Areva, via its Niger subsidiaries SOMAIR and COMINAK, constructed two hospitals at Arlit and Akokan, which are only open to mine workers, and it supplies and pays the doctors who work there. The doctors publicly insist they have never seen uranium-mining-related illnesses caused by radiation exposure, a conclusion CRIIRAD and SHERPA strongly dispute based on the evidence they uncovered in their 2004-2005 investigations in Niger.

SHERPA subsequently found a company doctor who admitted that pulmonary and respiratory illnesses or cancers were never officially diagnosed, because this could harm the company's reputation. One anonymous source told SHERPA that patients with these diseases were told they suffered from malaria and AIDS. Patients who sought a second opinion at the public hospital at Agadez were met with incredulousness by doctors there, who could not understand how their illnesses could have been "missed."

SHERPA found one case of a mine worker with advanced leukemia who was refused health evacuation by SOMAIR and who died on the job at the age of 41 leaving behind five children.

Around Arlit and Akokan, CRIIRAD found unacceptably high levels of radioactivity -- particularly difficult-to-detect alpha emitters -- in the water, sand and in discarded metals. Water was found to be 10 times more radioactively contaminated than the World Health Organization's "acceptable" level for safe drinking water. Yet Areva's press materials state there is no contamination of drinking water at the two sites.

In 2007, CRIIRAD found radioactive rocks outside Areva's Akokan hospital that were 100 times more radioactive than background levels. A letter from CRIIRAD to Areva CEO Lauvergeon pointing out the problem went ignored. Areva eventually cleaned up the site.

Areva's uranium-mining monopoly in Niger ended in 2007 but existing contracts with the Niger government were renewed, and the company was recently awarded the contract for the huge new Imouraren uranium mine, the largest in Africa and due to open in 2012.

The Niger government, meanwhile, has declared open season on northern Niger, awarding close to 140 prospecting licenses to uranium-mining companies from China, India, Canada, the United States and elsewhere in its efforts to become the world's top exporter of uranium -- it currently ranks fifth.

Faced with large swathes of the country virtually cordoned off for new mines, some in Niger are fighting back, predominantly the Tuareg, the poorest and most deprived of Niger's northern population.

A largely nomadic people, the Tuareg have seen little of the benefits of uranium mining (they make up 3 percent of the workforce), and their traditional lifestyle has been the hardest hit. They view the government's new mining plans as a "pillaging" of the land, with the Tuareg sacrificed for corporate profit.

Some have taken up arms. Others, including exiled leaders in France, are leading advocacy efforts to draw international attention to the plight of their people. Growing desertification in the Sahara has been compounded by the dual effects of climate change and mineral extraction. The Tuareg are dependent on clean water for grazing their animals and growing crops and want to see no more uranium mining until the environmental devastation is cleaned up. They point out that none of the profits from current mining efforts has been injected back into their struggling communities.

The Niger government has responded by attempting to eliminate the Tuareg. Amnesty International has identified numerous human rights abuses, including disappearances, torture and summary executions. The Tuareg, fearing an attempted genocide, point to slaughter of their livestock by the Niger military in a further effort to eliminate their way of life. Some observers fear a smaller-scale Dafur in the making.

Areva has actively encouraged the Niger government to deal with the Tuareg problem, and late last year, an Areva vice president told a French government committee that the Tuareg were simply a romantic "illusion," urging his government to aid Niger in crushing them.

Niger is not without U.S. help as well. According to a March 2009 article published by In These Times, Congress authorized $500 million in 2005 for a six-year period to counter "terrorism" in the region, despite little evidence of Islamic extremism.

With its human rights track record largely a well-kept secret, Areva has been welcomed into the United States, where the company has quietly established 42 offices with 5,300 employees. Its U.S. tentacles extend to virtually every phase of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium enrichment to radioactive-waste management. With the smoke and mirrors resurgence of nuclear power gaining political and public traction, Areva -- read the French government -- smells huge profits, and the U.S. is prime prey.

Areva is behind the push to revive nuclear-waste reprocessing in the U.S. The separated plutonium would then be blended into MOX fuel and used in U.S. reactors, none of which is adapted to handle the hotter plutonium fuel.

Until recently, Areva, in partnership with the U.S. Shaw Group, was running MOX fuel test assemblies at Duke Energy's Catawba nuclear plant in South Carolina before the operation was shut down prematurely for safety reasons. The U.S. MOX fuel was made at the French MOX fuel-fabrication plant at Cadarache, a facility that had been closed due to the danger of earthquakes in the area. The plant was reopened solely to accommodate the U.S. fuel, a move that was challenged as illegal by French anti-nuclear advocates.

Areva recently won a contract to build and operate a new uranium-enrichment facility in Idaho. It operates more than 50 percent of this country's dry cask storage operations, where all of the U.S. spent reactor fuel still sits at the 65 reactor sites (there are 104 operating reactors in the U.S.) At least 30 percent of U.S. reactors use Areva-supplied fuel.

The company's U.S. plans also extend to new reactors, where it hopes to grab at least 33 percent of the U.S. market according to its Web site. This includes a proposal for seven of its unproven "generation three" design, the Evolutionary Power Reactor, billed as the world's largest reactor. (It is called the European Pressurized Reactor everywhere but the U.S.)

Seven EPR reactors are slated for six U.S. sites, although so far only two sites -- at Calvert Cliffs on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Calloway near St. Louis -- have filed initial applications. George Vanderheyden, chief executive for UniStar, the company hoping to build the EPR at Calvert Cliffs, says the EPR "will be one of the most expensive technologies in the United States to build." UniStar has partnered with the French state electricity company, lectricit de France (EDF), on the project. However, cost may not be the only challenge.

The two Areva EPR reactors under way -- in Finland and France -- have already run into trouble. The Finnish reactor at the Olkiluoto nuclear site started first, in August 2005, but has already fallen three years behind schedule after safety and quality-assurance problems with the piping, containment liner and concrete base slab were discovered. This has put the Finnish EPR 50 percent over budget at a current estimated cost of at least $6.7 billion. Areva partner Siemens has pulled out of the project, leaving Areva to buy out Siemens' share at an estimated cost to the company of $2.6 billion.

When construction began in December 2007 on a second EPR at the Flamanville site in France on the Normandy coast, similar problems quickly arose. By the summer of 2008, the French security agency had shut down the construction site -- managed by EDF -- due to safety concerns about technical and quality-control problems with the reinforced steel used in the concrete base. EDF insists the Flamanville EPR will open on schedule in 2012 despite news reports that put the project nine months behind schedule after just nine months of construction. But in early March this year, EDF ran afoul of the European Commission, which raided the company's offices, suspecting EDF of antitrust violations and illegal price hikes.

EDF has come into the public spotlight before. In May 2006, a confidential security report prepared by EDF was leaked to French activists and the media. The document claimed to show that because the EPR could withstand the impact of a military jet it could also defend against a commercial jet airliner.

But when analyzed by John Large, an independent nuclear engineer in the U.K., these claims were deemed to be "entirely unjustified." Large said the documents showed the EPR had "an almost total lack of preparation to defend against the inevitability of a terrorist attack."

Congress and the White House have not yet been asked why they will allow U.S. tax dollars to flow to a French corporation for new nuclear projects on U.S. soil. Or why so many new nuclear installations are even needed when the cheaper, cleaner and safer alternatives of renewable energy are readily available. And especially why they will allow U.S. tax dollars to enrich a corporation with such an ugly track record on human rights.

Before another genocide in Africa is too late to stop, it is time those questions were asked.

Linda Gunter is the co-founder of Beyond Nuclear.

from the Upside Down World

The president-elect of El Salvador Mauricio Funes, together with his supporters, celebrated the victory in the elections held this Sunday in this Central American country, giving a speech in which he said that with their vote the people had signed "a new accord on peace and reconciliation."

Shortly after the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) issued its second bulletin that officially confirmed the FMLN's lead, Funes addressed the nation, congratulating all the citizens who participated in the elections.

"I want to thank all who voted for me, all who defeated fear, all who chose the path of hope," he said.

Funes added: "Today, the public who believed in hope and defeated fear have triumphed. This is a victory for all the Salvadoran people."

Funes made a phone call to congratulate the rival party for their work, emphasizing that "ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance) will become the opposition from now on, and in that capacity, rest assured that the party will be respected and heard."

He invited various social and political groups to build a new welfare state for the people.

"I want to appeal to the other political forces to work toward unity," Funes said, as he promised to carry out "preferential actions" to benefit the poor rather than the rich, in order to solidify an efficient and competitive economy and a broad business base.

Funes said that, beginning with his inauguration, he will work to make El Salvador "the most dynamic economy in Central America."

"I want to be the president of social change and reconstruction. It's time to move forward to the future and leave behind the revenges of the past," he added.

Funes also said that he will collaborate with former President Elías Saca in the last days of his administration.

With the victory of the Salvadoran left, the country breaks with 20 years of the rule of the ARENA party, which in these elections depended on a victory of its candidate Rodrigo Ávila.

According to the TSE's report, 8,654 certified election results containing 90.68% of the votes were scrutinized. The victory of the FMLN was confirmed by 51.27% of the votes that it won, more than the 48.73% that went to the conservative ARENA party.

The original article "Funes: 'Hemos firmado un nuevo acuerdo de paz y reconciliación'" was published by TeleSur on 15 March 2009. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi

by Marc Becker
from Upside Down World

Heading out from San Salvador to Chalatenango, the roads are covered with political propaganda from the ruling right-wing ARENA party. In the lead up to the March 15 presidential elections in this small Central American country, all of the utility posts have been painted in the party’s colors of red, white, and blue. Presidential candidate Rodrigo Avila beams down from billboards with promises that he will rule with “sabiduría,” with wisdom. Smaller banners promise a future of freedom and prosperity.

Once past the town of Chalatenango, however, the ARENA propaganda quickly disappears, replaced by the distinctive red graffiti of the leftist FMLN party and posters of their champion, journalist Mauricio Funes. By the time we arrive at Cambridge’s sister city of San José de las Flores and Madison’s sister city of Arcatao, not a single ARENA marker is to be seen anywhere.

We are deep in rebel territory, in the red zone of the 1980s where the Salvadoran military moved in with a brutal force, massacring local populations with the goal of subjugating and depopulating the zone. Here local farmers fought back, joining the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front to demand an end to economic exploitation and social exclusion. When the civilian refugees who had been forced out of the zone unilaterally decided to return in 1986, cities in North America joined them in sistering relations. After the 1992 peace accords, the FMLN became a legal political party but it was beaten repeatedly at the polls by the conservative and much better funded ARENA party.

Morning always comes early in the country side, but on Sunday, March 15, it comes even earlier to Arcatao. Poll workers are to show up at 5 a.m. to begin their work, but by 4 a.m. FMLN militants are already present at the municipal building on the square in an attempt to head off any attempts at fraud. Although we are in the middle of the dry season, it had rained hard the night before. The last couple of days had been hot, but rather than making the air muggy, it now felt fresh and cooler.

Polls are not supposed to open until 7 a.m., but local activists are so eager for the outcome of these historic elections that voting begins 15 minutes early. Buses and trucks roar up to the plaza and disgorge their passengers who quickly queue up to vote. Several voters are missing limbs that were blown off in the war. Memories of the conflict weight heavily on many in this area.

In El Salvador, rather than voting in schools or other public buildings, the election booths are placed outside right on the sidewalk in front of the municipal building. Every 450 voters warrant one booth. Arcatao’s eligible voter population just rose above 1800, meaning that there are 5 polling stations, the last one with only 46 voters.

Each polling station has 4 workers (president, secretary, and 2 spokespeople) and 4 observers, with half from each party. The 2 observers are clearly labeled as to their party, but the poll workers are not allowed to carry party identifications, even though they are there in representation of their party. Nevertheless, most of the FMLN poll workers are wearing red. The eager president of the first table takes it to the furthest extreme; she is decked out in red down to her shoes and finger nails.

Some of the hardest core party activists, however, have absolutely no party markers. They are working with the municipal electoral board, and it is in their own best interests that the vote in Arcatao is counted accurately, fairly, and with absolutely no hint of fraud or impropriety. The election results here are a forgone conclusion. The FMLN workers are friendly and upbeat, while the ARENA activists are cold, distant, even sullen.

Table 4 has a long drawn out discussion, almost a fight, regarding whether voters have to mark their ballots in the privacy of the voting booths set up for this purpose, or whether they can mark them on the table in plain site of everyone present. The majority of FMLN voters seem content to vote openly right on the table; they had nothing to hide. Most ARENA voters, however, use the booth.

Leading up to the election there were incessant rumors that sweatshop workers would lose their jobs unless they took a cell phone picture of their ballot marked for ARENA. But here in Arcatao there are no sweatshops, and we do not see any voters taking pictures of their ballots.

The other persistent rumor is that Hondurans are crossing the border to vote for ARENA. From Arcatao, Honduras lies just on the other side of the mountains to the north. Driving into town signs warned against Hondurans trying to vote. Rumors circle around that the woman in pink over there is Honduran, but she hangs around long after casting her vote, hardly the profile of a partner in a criminal fraudulent process. The president of Table 2, an ARENA activist proudly decked out in white and blue, two of the party’s tri-color, is also rumored to be a Honduran.

I aska local resident whether they easily distinguish between Salvadoran and Hondurans, but across this porous border it is not so easy to tell. Apparently most of these alleged Hondurans are dual citizens, and in our reading of the electoral code nothing can prevent them from voting in El Salvador. To me, the anti-Honduras sentiment smacks of nativism.

Electoral observer missions are theoretically neutral, but whoever has observed of participated in such a mission is well aware of the fallacy of such assumptions. We keep our distance from local community leaders, all of whom are inevitably FMLN activists with whom we have been meeting over the course of the past two days. Our goal is to protect the integrity and legitimacy of our reporting, but I don’t think the ruse fools anyone; everyone knows where our sympathies lie.

Part of our job as observers is to document irregularities in the voting process. Since this is a leftist stronghold, most of those violations are naturally the fault of local FMLN poll workers. All are so small that it hardly seems possible that they could in any way affect the election’s outcome. Other violations are systemic and bear witness to one of the weakest electoral systems in Latin America. For example, the FMLN and ARENA decided on a voter-marking ink that is too light to see. Voters randomly mark any digit on their hands, even though a search of the election code states that the ink should go on the thumb.

The electoral code also stipulates that no political propaganda is supposed to be in the polling station, but outside on the plaza in one of the FMLN’s most loyal strongholds, party propaganda is impossible to avoid. A FMLN flag waves over the plaza; FMLN graffiti is on the columns holding up the awning over the sidewalk; FMLN posters adorn the walls of the municipal buildings. FMLN markers are so prevalent and so ubiquitous that people seem to forget that they exist.

By 9:30, almost everyone has already voted. The polls do not close until 5 p.m., so the day slowly drags on, and the crowds that were present in the early morning slowly disperse. Only the poll workers, observers, a few straggler voters, and party diehards are left on the plaza. The sun slowly drifts across the sky. Poll workers move the voting stations into the street where they are under the shade of trees from the late afternoon sun. Someone drives a truck into the middle of the booths and blares a radio tuned to a pro-FMLN call-in talk show. No one seems to mind.

Poll workers are ready to pack up the booths long before closing time, but they hold out until the end. At exactly 5 p.m. the head of the local electoral board announces that it is time, and the workers grab everything off the table and disappear into the municipal building to count the votes. The president of each table holds up the ballots one by one for everyone to see. Votes for FMLN go into one pile, the occasional vote for ARENA into a second, and a couple spoiled ballots into a third. As a check against fraud, the president is also supposed to show the signature and stamp on the reverse side verifying the ballot’s legitimacy, but at Table 4 this does not happen. It is late, and no one seems to mind.

By 7 p.m., most of the ballots in Arcatao are counted. For the municipality, the FMLN scores 849 to ARENA’s 469. The almost 2-to-1 margin is a landslide, though probably by no means the FMLN’s widest margin of victory. I hear a story that in January’s legislative elections in San José de las Flores ARENA only gained 3 votes in one booth, one vote less than the four officials working that table for the party of the government.

It is dark outside, and some people gather in the corner cafe to watch returns on TV. But all of the media outlets in El Salvador favor the right, so most people remain out on the square where the municipality has set up an Internet video stream on a computer projector to show more sympathetic coverage. It isn’t until after 10 p.m. that the electoral council declares a FMLN victory. The gathered crowd greets this news with fireworks and shouts of joy. Local political leaders give speeches embracing their victory. Poll workers who have been awake now for close to 20 hours go home exhausted but happy.

The 2009 elections are the fourth time that the FMLN contested for presidential power through the electoral process. Together with wins in January’s local and legislative elections, the FMLN will be the dominant party when it takes office in June. Not only does this bring an end to 20 years of conservative ARENA rule, but it is also the first time that a leftist government has been elected in Salvadoran history.

Ten years ago, before Hugo Chávez took office in Venezuela, Cuba’s was the only leftist government in the Americas. Now the left is dominant, even hegemonic, in Latin America, and hopefully the few conservative dominos will fall as well.

Marc Becker (marc@yachana.org) is a Latin American historian from Arcatao’s sister city of Madison, Wisconsin. He observed the elections with U.S. El Salvador Sister Cities. More information and photographs from the elections are on his webpage at http://www.yachana.org/reports/salvador/

from the WW4 Report

On March 11—just four days before El Salvador's historic election for president and vice-president—five Republican Congressmen gave speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives threatening that Salvadorans living in the US would lose their immigration status and be outlawed from sending money home to their families if voters in El Salvador elect the opposition FMLN party's candidate. "Those monies that are coming from here to there I am confident will be cut, and I hope the people of El Salvador are aware of that because it will have a tremendous impact on individuals and their economy," stated Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN). Similar threats by US officials were made during the 2004 Salvadoran presidential campaign.

The Republicans' statements were on the front pages of the widest circulating daily newspapers in El Salvador on the morning of March 12, the day after the presidential and vice-presidential campaigns legally closed—leaving the FMLN unable to respond to the threats. The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) mobilized its activists in the US to demand public statements of neutrality from the State Department in Washington and the US Embassy in San Salvador.

After receiving what it referred to as an "inundation" of phone calls from citizens around the US on March 12, the State Department released a statement of neutrality, saying "The US government reiterates its official position that it does not support either candidate in the upcoming presidential election in El Salvador on March 15th... The separation of powers and freedoms in the United States allows the debate in which members of the US Legislature have expressed their opinions, which do not necessarily reflect the official position of the United States." Later that day, the US Embassy in El Salvador also released a statement saying, "The US Government will respect the will of the Salvadoran people and will seek to work constructively with whoever wins that election."

from Wikipedia

On February 23, 1977, Oscar Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador. His appointment was met with surprise, dismay, and even incredulity. While this appointment was welcomed by the government, many priests were disappointed, especially those openly aligning with Marxism. The Marxist priests feared that his conservative reputation would negatively affect liberation theology's commitment to the poor.

On March 12, a progressive Jesuit priest and personal friend Rutilio Grande, who had been creating self-reliance groups among the poor campesinos, was assassinated. His death had a profound impact on Romero who later stated, "When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought 'if they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path". Romero urged Arturo Armando Molina's government to investigate, but they ignored his request. Furthermore, the censored press remained silent.

Tension was noted by the closure of schools and the lack of Catholic priests invited to participate in government. In response to Fr. Rutilio's murder, Romero revealed a radicalism that had not been evident earlier. He spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture. As a result, Romero began to be noticed internationally. In February 1980, he was given an honorary doctorate by the Catholic University of Leuven. On his visit to Europe to receive this honour, he met Pope John Paul II and expressed his concerns at what was happening in his country. Romero argued that it was problematic to support the Salvadoran government because it legitimized terror and assassinations.

In 1979, the Revolutionary Government Junta came to power amidst a wave of human rights abuses by paramilitary right-wing groups and the government. Romero criticized the United States for giving military aid to the new government and wrote to President Jimmy Carter in February 1980, warning that increased US military aid would "undoubtedly sharpen the injustice and the repression inflicted on the organized people, whose struggle has often been for their most basic human rights". Carter, concerned that El Salvador would become "another Nicaragua" and thus less business-friendly, ignored Romero's pleas and continued military aid to the Salvadoran government.

Romero was killed by a shot to the heart on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass at a small chapel located in a hospital called "La Divina Providencia", one day after a sermon where he had called on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God's higher order and to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights. According to an audio-recording of the Mass, he was shot while holding up the Eucharist. When he was shot, his blood spilled over the altar.

by Frida Berrigan

from Tom Dispatch

"Shovel-ready."

It's the magic incantation to fix our economic woes. Many states and federal agencies have already gone from scouring their budgets for things to cut to green-lighting construction projects. The Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus package is sure to muster many shovels in an effort to rouse a despondent economy and put Americans back to work.

Here's the strange thing though: That package was headline news for weeks, bitterly argued over, hailed and derided in equal measure. And yet road construction, housing projects, and green retrofits aren't the only major projects getting the shovel-ready treatment via massive infusions of cash.

At the end of February, another huge "stimulus" package was announced but generated almost no comment, controversy, or argument. The defense industry received its own special stimulus package -- news of the dollars available for the Pentagon budget in 2010; and at nearly $700 billion (when all the bits and pieces are added in), it's almost as big as the Obama economic package and sure to be a lot less effective.

Despite the sort of economic maelstrom not seen in generations, the defense industry, insulated by an enduring conviction that war spending stimulates the economy, remains almost impervious to budget cuts. To understand why military spending is no longer a stimulus driver means putting aside memories of Rosie the Riveter and the sepia-hued worker on the bomber assembly line and remembering instead that the Great Depression came before "the Good War," not the other way around. In World War II, it's also important to recall, the massive military buildup was labor intensive, employed millions, and was accompanied by rationing, austerity, and very high taxes.

This time around, we began with boom years and spent our way into the breach, in significant part by launching unnecessary, profligate wars. Meanwhile, President George W. Bush cut taxes at a more than peacetime pace and borrowed like an addicted gambler on a losing streak to underwrite his wars of choice, including his Global War on Terror. If the former president's nearly trillion dollar (and counting) global war got us into this mess, by simple logic it's not likely to bail us out as well.

Riding the Slide to Billions

While the good times rolled during the long slide from surplus to deficit, from no war to global war, it wasn't just the Merrill Lynches and subprime mortgage giants that cleaned up. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman -- the top three defense contractors -- had a ball, too.

In 2002, the first full year of what came to be known as the Global War on Terror, for instance, those three companies -- ranking first, second, and third on the Pentagon's list of top ten contractors -- split $42 billion in contract awards, more than two-thirds of the $67 billion distributed among the top 10 Pentagon contractors.

In 2007, the last year for which full contracting data is available, the same Big Three split $69 billion in Pentagon contracts, which was more than the total received by the top 10 companies just five years earlier. The top 10 divvied up $121 billion in contracts in 2007, an 80% increase over 2002. Lockheed Martin, the number one Pentagon contractor, graduated from a mere $17 billion in awarded contracts in 2002 to $28 billion in 2007. That's a leap of 64%. Given such figures, it's easy enough to understand how the basic military budget -- excluding money for actual war-fighting -- jumped from about $300 billion to more than $500 billion during the Bush years.

Given the economic climate, it's no surprise that the three defense giants have all posted losses in the past few weeks. But before the hankies come out and the histrionics start, it should be noted that Lockheed Martin alone has an $81 billion backlog in orders, enough to keep chugging along for another two years without a single new contract.

If such war spending had been an effective stimulus for the economy, we would be roaring along on 12 cylinders today. But increasingly this kind of spending mainly stimulates corporate shareholders, stock prices, and (of course) war itself.

No matter, the staggering new defense budget ensures that, for the defense industry, some version of good times will continue to roll, even if the economic impact of these huge military investments proves negligible and the need in other areas is staggering.

The 2010 Defense Budget

President Obama is reportedly intent on digging deep into the Pentagon budget. He has given his Office of Management and Budget until April to complete an "exhaustive line-by-line" review of the detailed budget request before it is released. In speeches, he has focused on wasteful and unnecessary defense spending.

Just days ago, Obama insisted that "the days of giving defense contractors a blank check are over." To underline that assertion, he cited a 2008 Government Accountability Office study that found 95 military projects over budget by a total of $295 billion. He pledged to end such egregious practices, and the no-bid contracts that often go with them. That applause line plays well at a time when belts are tightening uncomfortably and boot straps remain elusive, but it misses a reality, no less potentially important in the Obama era than in the preceding one: for (at least) the last eight years, defense contractors haven't needed a "blank check" because they already have the combination to the safe, the PIN number to the account, and a controlling interest on the board of the bank.

Given the promised size of the next Pentagon budget, no matter what weapons programs are cut or companies and contracts disciplined, the "bank board" will remain the same because the overall amount available to it shows no signs of changing. In fact, basic funding levels (not including money still being set aside for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) are remarkably in line with the most recent Bush administration budget, right down to prospective further increases. The just released overall figure for the 2010 Pentagon budget is actually $533.7 billion; that is, $20.4 billion higher than Bush's last base budget.

President Obama does not like the term "Global War on Terror" (GWOT), dispensing with the Bush administration's moniker of choice to describe the most costly array of military operations since World War II. But Obama's Pentagon will continue to spend a GWOT-sized chunk of our national treasure, even as troops trickle home from Iraq, and the surge relocates to Afghanistan's inhospitable steppes. The preliminary figure for war-fighting in 2010 is $130 billion, which represents a modest decrease from the $144 billion that is expected to go to military operations in 2009. Add that to the base Pentagon budget and you get a subtotal of $664 billion for 2010 military expenditures.

If the estimated costs of military spending lodged in other parts of the federal budget (like funding for nuclear weapons which is considered the bailiwick of the Department of Energy), as well as miscellaneous non-Defense Department defense costs -- about $23 billion last time around -- are also included, then President Obama's first military budget should come in at around $670 billion.

After the preliminary budget figures were released, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told reporters, "In our country's current economic circumstances, I believe that represents a strong commitment to our security." Almost $700 billion is a strong commitment alright. Unfortunately, as a stimulus commitment -- and a largely unquestioned one at that -- it is certain to prove a drag on our economic recovery, despite the claims of the defense industry and their ever-present publicists and lobbyists.

Lifting America by the (Combat) Bootstraps?

And are we hearing those claims these days! The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), representing more than 100 leading defense and aerospace corporations, has been trumpeting their contributions to the economy in a print ad campaign and on their website under the catch-phrase: "Aerospace and Defense: The Strength to Lift America."

In terms of American well-being, the AIA estimates that defense and aerospace manufacturers contribute $97 billion in exports a year, while maintaining two million jobs. As Fred Downey, an association vice president, told the Associated Press, "Our industry is ready and able to lead the way out of the economic crisis."

As the association sees it, defense and aerospace corporations are about as shovel-ready as you can get. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), however, offers quite a different view of the AIA's two-million jobs claim. Their "Career Guide to Industries," for example, looks intensively at Aerospace Product and Parts Manufacturing (which would also include some non-defense related corporations) and finds that the sector employed 472,000 wage and salary workers in 2006. Now, this is not the whole picture of defense-related employment, but according to the Associated Press, the BLS estimates that only 647,000 people work in industries where at least one-fifth of the products are defense-related.

Perhaps the AIA was including not just jobs making weapons, but jobs lobbying Congress to pay for them. Then Downey and crew might almost have a case. The BLS would probably not consider lobbyist jobs to be defense-related, but maybe they should because the Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks money in politics, reports that the industry spent $149 million on lobbying firms to get its points across to Congress and the administration last year. That has to be a lot of shovel-ready jobs right there.

Speaking of shovel-ready jobs shoveling out defense industry claims, if the lobbying sector is happy, ad firms must be ecstatic. These days, defense contractors and associations are spending striking sums on what's politely termed "public education": full-page ads in major newspapers, ads in Washington metro stations near the Pentagon, Crystal City (a Virginia community where many Pentagon satellite offices are located), Capitol Hill, and other places where the powerful congregate when their limos are in use, not to speak of aggressive pop-up ads on political news sites like the National Journal.

Lockheed Martin, for example, recently unveiled a new ad campaign pitched towards troubled economic times. It depicts proud blue-collar workers above the tagline: "95,000 employed, 300 million protected." At the bottom of the ad are the logos of the supersonic fighter plane known as the F-22 Raptor and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers whose members build it. As if to underline these messages, 200 members of Congress signed a January 20th "Dear Mr. President, Save the F-22" letter, meant to be waiting for Barack Obama as he entered the Oval Office. The letter asserted that the F-22 program "annually provides over $12 billion of economic activity to the national economy."

Even if that dubious claim were substantiated, the economic activity comes at a high cost. The United States spent more than $65 billion to design and produce the F-22 Raptor -- a fighter plane originally conceived to penetrate the airspace of the long extinct Soviet Union, to counter large formations of enemy bombers in Cold War scenarios that are today inconceivable, and to achieve air superiority high over Eastern Europe whose greatest problems now involve a potential region-wide economic meltdown. In the wake of the Cold War, as military analyst Chalmers Johnson recently pointed out, the F-22 lacks a role in any imaginable war-fighting scenario the U.S. might actually find itself in.

Efforts to promote the plane as a critical tool in the Global War on Terror floundered when Defense Secretary Gates spoke plainly about the system's uselessness last year. "The reality," he said, "is we are fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theater."

Fortunately for Lockheed Martin, once the U.S. economy began to crater, it could emphasize a new on-the-ground use for the F-22 -- as an instant make-work jobs program.

However, even there the plane's utility is questionable. William D. Hartung, director of the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative, points out that, if the F-22 program is cut, the "job losses will be stretched out over two and half years or more, and could happen after the end of the current recession." In addition, Lockheed has had to back away from the 95,000 jobs claims, clarifying that more than 70% of those jobs are only indirectly related to the F-22, and that just 25,000 workers are employed directly on the plane's construction. Winslow Wheeler is the head of the Center for Defense Information's Straus Military Reform Project and his scholarship is built on more than 30 years of service at the Government Accountability Office and on the Senate Budget Committee, among other places. He points out that, when it comes to high-tech weapons, today's military-industrial complex bears not the slightest resemblance to its World War II
predecessor as a job generator. As he describes it, in the early 1940s "production lines cranked out thousands of aircraft each month: as fast as the government could stuff money, materials and workers into the assembly line."

In stark contrast, the F-22, he points out, is essentially an artisanal product. "Go to Lockheed Martin's plant," he writes. "You will find no detectable movement of aircraft out the door. Instead you will see virtually stationary aircraft and workers applying parts in a manner more evocative of hand-crafting. This ‘production rate' generates one F-22 every 18 days or so." This is, in fact, what shovel-ready largely means in Pentagon stimulus terms these days.

War for Jobs?

Economists have also weighed in on why "war for jobs" as a way out of recession or depression has entered the world of mythology. An analysis from the University of Massachusetts' Political Economy Research Institute, for instance, finds that, for every one billion dollars invested in defense, 8,555 jobs are created. By contrast, the same billion invested in health care would create 12,883 jobs, and in education, 17,687 jobs or more than double the defense stimulus payoff.

It has often been said that World War II -- and the production stimulus it offered -- lifted the United States out of the Great Depression. Today, the opposite seems to be the case. The "war economy" helped propel the U.S. into what might turn out to be another great depression, and so, unlike in 1929, as our economy crumbles today, we are already on a global war footing.

As the Obama administration grapples with economic disaster and inherited wars, it will have the added challenge of confronting a military-industrial complex accustomed to budgets that reach almost three quarters of a trillion dollars, based on exaggerated global threats, unsubstantiated economic claims, and entrenched profligacy. When Obama's analysts pour over the budget, looking at all those overpriced weapons and plum contracts, they'll have to ask: Is each weapons system or program actually needed for American security and is it cost effective? Or are the defense contractors shoveling a load of shovel-ready bull?

Frida Berrigan is a Senior Program Associate at the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative (ASI). She is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus and a contributing editor at In These Times.

by Bill Weinberg, AlterNet

from the World War 4 Report

A year-end report by the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command names two countries as likely candidates for a "rapid and sudden collapse": Pakistan and Mexico.

The report, code-named JOE 2008 (for Joint Operating Environment), states: "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state."

Mexican officials were quick to deny the ominous claim. Exterior Secretary Patricia Espinosa told reporters that the fast-escalating violence mostly affects the narco gangs themselves, and "Mexico is not a failed state." Enrique Hubbard Urrea, Mexico's consul general in Dallas, actually boasted improvement, asserting that the government "has won" the war against the drug cartels in certain areas, such as Nuevo Laredo—one of the border cities that has been the scene of recent nightmarish violence.

But US political figures were also quick to react—using the Pentagon's lurid findings to argue for increased military aid to Mexico. As President-elect Barack Obama met in Washington with Mexican President Felipe Calderón on Jan. 12, the former US drug czar, Gen. (ret.) Barry McCaffrey, just back from a meeting in Mexico of the International Forum of Intelligence and Security Specialists, an advisory body to Mexican federal law enforcement, told a Washington press conference: "Mexico is on the edge of the abyss—it could become a narco-state in the coming decade." He praised Calderón, who he said has "launched a serious attempt to reclaim the rule of law from the chaos of the drug cartels."

Also weighing in was Joel Kurtzman, senior fellow at the Milken Institute, who in a Wall Street Journal editorial, "Mexico's Instability Is a Real Problem," warned, "It may only be a matter of time before the drug war spills across the border and into the US." He hailed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for his "plan to 'surge' civilian and possibly military law-enforcement personnel to the border should that be necessary..." He also lauded Calderón's deployment of 45,000 military troops to fight the drug cartels—but raised the possibility of a tide of refugees flooding the US Southwest. "Unless the violence can be reversed, the US can anticipate that the flow across the border will continue."

Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined the chorus. On Jan. 11, the day before Calderón arrived in Washington, Gingrich told ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos": "There is a war underway in Mexico. More people were killed in Mexico in 2008 than were killed in Iraq. It is grossly under-covered by the American media. It's on our border. It has the potential to extend into our countryside... The illegal narcotics teams in Mexico are in a direct civil war with the government in which they are killing the police, killing judges, killing the army... I'm surprised that no one in the American system is looking at it very much. It's a very serious problem."

Gingrich doesn't have his facts quite right. The Iraq Body Count website puts the number of civilian deaths alone in Iraq last year at a maximum of 9,028 (compared to 24,295 in 2007). The Mexican daily El Universal reports that according to its tally, there were 5,612 killings related to organized crime in Mexico last year—more than double the 2007 figure and the highest since it started keeping track four years ago.

Yet even if Gingrich is exaggerating and the Pentagon is paranoid, there is definitely cause for concern. The violence—at its worst in the border cities of Juárez and Tijuana—is reaching spectacular levels redolent of Colombia. In Juårez (and elsewhere across Mexico), severed heads are left outside police stations in chilling numbers; mutilated, decapitated corpses left outside schools and shopping centers—or hanging from overpasses as a warning to the populace. A man recently arrested in Tijuana—charmingly nicknamed the "Stew-maker"—confessed to disposing of hundreds of bodies by dissolving them in chemicals, for which he was paid $600 a week. A barrel with partially dissolved human remains was left outside a popular seafood restaurant. Bombs hurled into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence day in Michoacán Sept. 15 left seven dead.

The mysterious wave of femicide which has haunted Juárez for more than 15 years has spiraled hideously. Authorities report that 81 women were killed in the city last year, breaking all previous records—in fact, more than doubling the previous record of 2001, and bringing the total since 1993 to 508.

And the cartels' agents have penetrated the highest levels of Mexican federal power. Several high-ranking Mexican law enforcement officials were detained last year in Operación Limpieza ("Operation House Cleaning"), aimed at weeding out officials suspected of collaborating with the warring drug lords.

Cartel hit-squads operate in the uniforms of Mexican federal police agents, and in towns such as Nuevo Laredo the local police became so thoroughly co-opted that the federal government dissolved their powers. It is questionable whether the Mexican bloodletting is really a war of the cartels against the state, or between cartels for control of the state.

State security forces are hardly less brutal than the drug gangs they battle (and overlap with). Mexico's National Human Rights Commission issued several recommendations last year calling on the defense secretary to punish those responsible for torture and gratuitous killings. Up until now, those recommendations have been ignored.

US policy abets violence
Despite the blatant corruption, the US is pouring guns into Mexico—an illicit trade from north of the border arming the cartels (and their paramilitary units like the notorious "Zetas," made up of military veterans) with assault rifles and rocket-launchers, while Washington is beefing up the Mexican army and federal police over the table. "Mexican law enforcement and soldiers face heavily armed drug gangs with high-powered military automatic weapons," warned Gen. McCaffrey—oblivious to the incestuous inter-penetration of these seeming opponents.

McCaffrey, who was an architect of Plan Colombia ten years ago, is today a booster of its new Mexican counterpart—the $1.4 billion, multi-year Mérida Initiative. At his Washington press conference, he decried that this is "a drop in the bucket compared to what was spent in Iraq and Afghanistan... We cannot afford to have a narco-state as a neighbor."

The first $400 million Mérida Initiative package was approved by Congress last June, and the first $197 million of mostly military aid sent south in December. Although it differs in not actually introducing US military advisors, the Mérida Initiative is clearly modeled on Plan Colombia, and is dubbed "Plan Mexico" by its critics.

It has moved apace with the Homeland Security Department's ambitious plans to seal off the border. And indeed, Plan Colombia's supposed success in bringing a tenuous "stability" to Colombia has done nothing to dethrone the nation from the dubious honor of both the hemisphere's worst rights abuser and biggest humanitarian crisis—nearly 3 million internally displaced by political violence, with the rate of displacement growing since the intensive US military aid program began in 2000.

With all eyes on Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, this is the grim situation that President Obama inherits on the nation's southern border. But he also faces an active resistance to the "Plan Mexico" model and concomitant border militarization—both sides of the line.

Obama, who was famously made an honorary member of Montana's Crow Indian nation last year, received a letter just before he took office from women elders of the Lipan Apache, whose small South Texas reservation is to be bisected by Homeland Security's border wall. The letter calls the land seizure "unlawful," and urges Obama to call a halt to the wall. Texas ranchers also have litigation pending against the seizure of their lands for the wall.

Environmentalists are incensed at the border wall's exemption from EPA regulations, and one—Judy Ackerman of El Paso—was arrested in December for blocking Homeland Security's construction equipment in an act of civil disobedience.

Elvira Arellano, a deported Mexican woman who in 2006 took sanctuary for weeks in a church in Obama's hometown of Chicago to highlight immigrants' rights, held a press conference at the US embassy in Mexico City two days after he took office to ask the new president to call a halt to Homeland Security's coast-to-coast immigration raids.

Arguably, NAFTA is to blame for what could be Mexico's impending destabilization. The largest surge ever in both legal and unauthorized Mexican migration to the US began after the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement took effect. Sociologist James Russell finds that the percentage of all North America's Mexican-origin persons living in the United States jumped from 13.6% to 20.5% between 1990 and 2005. Russell argues that "NAFTA allowed tariff-free imports to flood into Mexico, taking markets away from many Mexican peasants and manufacturers. With work no longer available, displaced peasants and workers joined in increasing numbers the migrant route north into the United States."

The privatization of Mexico's communal peasant lands—the ejidos—was another NAFTA-related measure that helped force hundreds of thousands from their traditional rural communities. In these same years, Mexico's narco economy exploded, the trafficking of cocaine and growing of opium and marijuana filling the vacuum left by the evaporation of the market for domestic maize and beans. And when the oil shock prompted the diversion of US croplands from Mexico-bound corn to "biofuels," a now-dependent Mexico experienced a "maize shock" in 2008—and food riots.

Even amidst the spiraling violence of the narco wars, nonviolent political resistance to policies of free trade and militarization persists in Mexico. As Obama was taking the oath of office, farmers in Chihuahua state, just across from Texas and New Mexico, blockaded roads and used farm equipment and animals to erect barricades at the entrances of Agriculture Secretariat offices to demand rises in the price of their maize and other (legal) crops. Days earlier, thousands of fishermen went on strike on Mexico's Pacific coast to protest the rise in the price of diesel fuel. The Zapatistas and related peasant movements in Mexico's south continue to occupy disputed lands and resist their privatization. On Jan. 9, some 4,000 marched in Jalisco to protest the police killing of a local youth. And in December, public-sector workers and students in Ciudad Juárez staged a 24-hour strike to protest the wave of narco-killings in the city.

Obama and de-NAFTAfication
Obama pledged on the campaign trail to consider a renegotiation of NAFTA. And in his third debate with John McCain, when asked about the pending free trade agreement with Colombia, he noted that in the Andean nation "labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions." This won him public opprobrium from Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, who was Bush's closest ally in South America.

But despite criticisms, Obama supports the Mérida Initiative, and has spoken of extending it into a comprehensive hemispheric security bloc. Obama and his vice president Joe Biden are both supporters of continued military aid to Colombia, albeit with a greater emphasis on human rights conditions.

Apart from the security implications of its mere proximity to the US, Mexico is also second only to Saudi Arabia as a US oil supplier. Free trade politics helped create a social crisis there, and militarization in response to this crisis may only push it to the point of explosion. If Obama doesn't rethink the Mérida Initiative as well as follow through on his campaign pledge to take another look at NAFTA, the prospects for escalation are frighteningly real.

The last direct US military intervention in Mexico was under Woodrow Wilson—a Democrat who won re-election in 1916 by pledging to keep the US out of World War I, just as Obama won the White House with pledges to get us out of Iraq. A resurgent American left putting Mexico and Latin America back on its agenda may help assure that this history does not repeat itself.

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Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso Books 2000) and editor of the online journal World War 4 Report

This story first appeared Feb. 19 on AlterNet.