Amy Goodman's Blog, page 29

San Francisco Bay Area's BART Pulls a Mubarak

What does the police killing of a homeless man in San Francisco have to do with the Arab Spring uprisings from Tunisia to Syria? The attempt to suppress the protests that followed. In our digitally networked world, the ability to communicate is increasingly viewed as a basic right. Open communication fuels revolutions—it can take down dictators. When governments fear the power of their people, they repress, intimidate and try to silence them, whether in Tahrir Square or downtown San Francisco.

Charles Blair Hill was shot and killed on the platform of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system's Civic Center platform on July 3, by BART police officer James Crowell. BART police reportedly responded to calls about a man drinking on the underground subway platform. According to police, Hill threw a vodka bottle at the two officers and then threatened them with a knife, at which point Crowell shot him. Hill was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Hill's killing sparked immediate and vigorous protests against the BART police, similar to those that followed the BART police killing of Oscar Grant on New Year's Day 2009. Grant was handcuffed, facedown on a subway platform, and restrained by one officer when another shot and killed him with a point-blank shot to the back. The execution was caught on at least two cellphone videos. The shooter, BART officer Johannes Mehserle, served just over seven months in jail for the killing.

On July 11, major protests shut down the Civic Center BART station. As another planned protest neared on Aug. 11, BART officials took a measure unprecedented in U.S. history: They shut down cellphone towers in the subway system.

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"From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Japan's Atomic Tragedies." By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

In recent weeks, radiation levels have spiked at the Fukushima nuclear power reactors in Japan, with recorded levels of 10,000 millisieverts per hour (mSv/hr) at one spot. This is the number reported by the reactor's discredited owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., although that number is simply as high as the Geiger counters go. In other words, the radiation levels are literally off the charts. Exposure to 10,000 millisieverts for even a brief time would be fatal, with death occurring within weeks. (For comparison, the total radiation from a dental X-ray is 0.005 mSv, and from a brain CT scan is less than 5 mSv.) The New York Times has reported that government officials in Japan suppressed official projections of where the nuclear fallout would most likely move with wind and weather after the disaster in order to avoid costly relocation of potentially hundreds of thousands of residents.

"Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction." While those words could describe how the Japanese government has handled the nuclear catastrophe, they were said by atomic scientist Edward Teller, one of the key creators of the first two atomic bombs. The uranium bomb dubbed "Little Boy" was dropped on Aug. 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the second, a plutonium bomb called "Fat Man," was dropped over the city of Nagasaki, Japan. Close to a quarter-million people were killed by the massive blasts and the immediate aftereffects. No one knows the full extent of the death and disease that followed, from the painful burns that thousands of survivors suffered to the later effects of radiation sickness and cancer.

The history of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is itself the history of U.S. military censorship and propaganda. In addition to the suppressed film footage, the military kept the blast zones off-limits to reporters. When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Weller managed to get in to Nagasaki, his story was personally killed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett managed to sneak in to Hiroshima not long after the blast and reported what he called "a warning to the world," describing widespread illnesses as an "atomic plague." The military deployed one of its own. It turns out that William Laurence, The New York Times reporter, was also on the payroll of the War Department. He faithfully reported the U.S. government position, that "the Japanese described 'symptoms' that did not ring true." Sadly, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his propaganda.

Greg Mitchell has been writing about the history and aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for decades. On this anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing, I asked Mitchell about his latest book, "Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made."

"Anything that nuclear weapons or nuclear energy touches leads to suppression and leads to danger for the public," he told me. For years, Mitchell sought newsreel footage shot by the U.S. military in the months following the atomic blasts. Tracking down the aging filmmakers, and despite decades-old government classification, he was one of the journalists who publicized the incredible color film archives. As part of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, the film crews documented not only the devastation of the cities, but also close-up, clinical documentation of the severe burns and disfiguring injuries suffered by the civilians, including children.

In one scene, a young man is shown with red, raw wounds all over his back, undergoing treatment. Despite the massive burns and being treated months late, the man survived.

Now 82, Sumiteru Taniguchi is director of the Nagasaki Council of A-Bomb Sufferers. Mitchell found recent comments from Taniguchi in a Japanese newspaper linking the atomic bombing to the Fukushima disaster:

"Nuclear power and mankind cannot coexist. We survivors of the atomic bomb have said this all along. And yet, the use of nuclear power was camouflaged as 'peaceful' and continued to progress. You never know when there's going to be a natural disaster. You can never say that there will never be a nuclear accident."

In a poignant fusion of the old and new disasters, we should listen to the surviving victims of both.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Japan's Atomic Tragedies

In recent weeks, radiation levels have spiked at the Fukushima nuclear power reactors in Japan, with recorded levels of 10,000 millisieverts per hour (mSv/hr) at one spot. This is the number reported by the reactor's discredited owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., although that number is simply as high as the Geiger counters go. In other words, the radiation levels are literally off the charts. Exposure to 10,000 millisieverts for even a brief time would be fatal, with death occurring within weeks. (For comparison, the total radiation from a dental X-ray is 0.005 mSv, and from a brain CT scan is less than 5 mSv.) The New York Times has reported that government officials in Japan suppressed official projections of where the nuclear fallout would most likely move with wind and weather after the disaster in order to avoid costly relocation of potentially hundreds of thousands of residents.

"Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction." While those words could describe how the Japanese government has handled the nuclear catastrophe, they were said by atomic scientist Edward Teller, one of the key creators of the first two atomic bombs. The uranium bomb dubbed "Little Boy" was dropped on Aug. 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the second, a plutonium bomb called "Fat Man," was dropped over the city of Nagasaki, Japan. Close to a quarter-million people were killed by the massive blasts and the immediate aftereffects. No one knows the full extent of the death and disease that followed, from the painful burns that thousands of survivors suffered to the later effects of radiation sickness and cancer.

The history of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is itself the history of U.S. military censorship and propaganda...

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"War, Debt and the President." By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

President Barack Obama touted his debt ceiling deal Tuesday, saying, "We can't balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession." Yet that is what he and his coterie of Wall Street advisers have done.

In the affairs of nations, Alexander Hamilton wrote in January 1790, "loans in times of public danger, especially from foreign war, are found an indispensable resource." It was his first report as secretary of the treasury to the new Congress of the United States. The country had borrowed to fight the Revolutionary War, and Hamilton proposed a system of public debt to pay those loans.

The history of the U.S. national debt is inexorably tied to its many wars. The resolution this week of the so-called debt ceiling crisis is no different. Not only did a compliant Congress agree to fund President George W. Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with emergency appropriations; it did so with borrowed money, raising the debt ceiling 10 times since 2001 without quibbling.

So how did the Pentagon fare in the current budget battle? It looks like it did fine. Not to be confused with the soldiers and veterans who have fought these wars.

"This year is the 50th anniversary of [Dwight] Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech," William Hartung of the Center for International Policy told me while the Senate assembled to vote on the debt ceiling bill. Speaking of the late general turned Republican U.S. president, Hartung said: "He talked about the need for a balanced economy, for a healthy population. Essentially, he's to the left of Barack Obama on these issues."

Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, explained the history of the debt ceiling's connection to war:

"It was put in in 1917 during World War I, and the idea was to prevent President Wilson from committing even more American troops and money to war. In every country of Europe—England, France—the parliamentary control over the budget was introduced to stop ambitious kings or rulers from waging wars. So the whole purpose was to limit a government's ability to run into debt for war, because that was the only reason that governments ran into debt."

The Budget Control Act of 2011 assures drastic cuts to the U.S. social safety net. Congress will appoint a committee of 12, dubbed the "Super Congress," evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, to identify $1.2 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving. If the committee fails to meet that goal, sweeping, mandatory, across-the-board cuts are mandated. Social services would get cut, but so would the Pentagon.

Or would it? The Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus opposed the bill. Congressional Black Caucus Chair Emanuel Cleaver called it "a sugarcoated Satan sandwich." For fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the discretionary funding approved is split between "security" and "nonsecurity" categories. "Nonsecurity" categories like food programs, housing, Medicare and Medicaid (the basis of any genuine national security) will most likely be cut. But the "security" budget will get hit equally hard, which Democrats suggest would be an incentive for Republicans to cooperate with the process.

The security category includes "Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the intelligence community [and] international affairs." This sets up a dynamic where hawks will be trying to cut as much as possible from the State Department's diplomatic corps, and foreign aid, in order to favor their patrons at the Pentagon and in the weapons industry.

Hartung explained that the contractors, in addition to having the support of Speaker of the House John Boehner, "had Buck McKeon, the head of the House Armed Services Committee, whose biggest contributor is Lockheed Martin, who's got big military facilities in his district, [and] Randy Forbes, whose district is near the Newport News Shipbuilding complex, which builds attack submarines and aircraft carriers. They used their influence to get people on the inside, their allies in the House, to push their agenda."

President Obama's debt ceiling deal is widely considered a historic defeat for progressives, a successful attack on the New Deal and Great Society achievements of the past century. Congresswoman Donna Edwards, D-Md., summed up the disappointment, in which half the Democrats in the House voted against their president, tweeting: "Nada from million/billionaires; corp tax loopholes aplenty; only sacrifice from the poor/middle class? Shared sacrifice, balance? Really?"

The Project on Government Oversight says of the "Super Congress" that "the creation of the committee doesn't come with many requirements for transparency." Who will be the watchdog? With the 2012 election coming up, promising to be the most expensive ever, expect the committee's deficit-reduction proposal, due by Thanksgiving and subject to an up-or-down vote, to have very little to give thanks for.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

War, Debt and the President

President Barack Obama touted his debt ceiling deal Tuesday, saying, "We can't balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession." Yet that is what he and his coterie of Wall Street advisers have done.

In the affairs of nations, Alexander Hamilton wrote in January 1790, "loans in times of public danger, especially from foreign war, are found an indispensable resource." It was his first report as secretary of the treasury to the new Congress of the United States. The country had borrowed to fight the Revolutionary War, and Hamilton proposed a system of public debt to pay those loans.

The history of the U.S. national debt is inexorably tied to its many wars. The resolution this week of the so-called debt ceiling crisis is no different. Not only did a compliant Congress agree to fund President George W. Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with emergency appropriations; it did so with borrowed money, raising the debt ceiling 10 times since 2001 without quibbling.

So how did the Pentagon fare in the current budget battle? It looks like it did fine. Not to be confused with the soldiers and veterans who have fought these wars.

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"War Is a Racket" By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

"War is a racket," wrote retired U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, in 1935. That statement, which is also the title of his short book on war profiteering, rings true today. One courageous civil servant just won a battle to hold war profiteers accountable. Her name is Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse. She blew the whistle when her employer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, gave a no-bid $7 billion contract to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) as the invasion of Iraq was about to commence. She was doing her job, trying to ensure a competitive bidding process would save the U.S. government money. For that, she was forced out of her senior position, demoted and harassed.

Just this week, after waging a legal battle for more than half a decade, Bunny Greenhouse won. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers settled with Greenhouse for $970,000, representing full restitution for lost wages, compensatory damages and attorneys' fees.

Her "offense" was to challenge a no-bid, $7 billion-plus contract to KBR. It was weeks before the expected invasion of Iraq, in 2003, and Bush military planners predicted Saddam Hussein would blow up Iraqi oilfields, as happened with the U.S. invasion in 1991. The project, dubbed "Restore Iraqi Oil," or RIO, was created so that oilfield fires would be extinguished. KBR was owned then by Halliburton, whose CEO until 2000 was none other than then-Vice President Dick Cheney. KBR was the only company invited to bid.

Bunny Greenhouse told her superiors that the process was illegal. She was overridden. She said the decision to grant the contract to KBR came from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, run by VP Cheney's close friend, Donald Rumsfeld.

As Bunny Greenhouse told a congressional committee, "I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."

The oilfields were not set ablaze. Nevertheless, KBR was allowed to retool its $7 billion no-bid contract, to provide gasoline and other logistical support to the occupation forces. The contract was so-called cost-plus, which means KBR was not on the hook to provide services at a set price. Rather, it could charge its cost, plus a fixed percentage as profit. The more KBR charged, the more profit it made.

As the chief procurement officer, Greenhouse's signature was required on all contracts valued at more than $10 million. Soon after testifying about the egregious RIO contract, she was demoted, stripped of her top-secret clearance and began receiving the lowest performance ratings. Before blowing the whistle, she had received the highest ratings. Ultimately, she left work, facing an unbearably hostile workplace.

After years of litigation, attorney Michael Kohn, president of the National Whistleblowers Center, brought the case to a settlement. He said: "Bunny Greenhouse risked her job and career when she objected to the gross waste of federal taxpayer dollars and illegal contracting practices at the Army Corps of Engineers. She had the courage to stand alone and challenge powerful special interests. She exposed a corrupt contracting environment where casual and clubby contracting practices were the norm. Her courage led to sweeping legal reforms that will forever halt the gross abuse she had the courage to expose."

The National Whistleblowers Center's executive director, Stephen Kohn (brother of Michael Kohn) told me: "Federal employees have a very, very hard time blowing the whistle. So whenever the government is forced to pay full damages for all back pay, all compensatory damages, all attorneys' fees, that's a major victory. I hope it's a turning point. The case was hard-fought. It should never have had to been filed. Bunny did the right thing."

According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone will exceed $5 trillion. With a cost like this, why isn't war central to the debate over the national debt?

Two-time Congressional Medal of Honor winner Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler had it right 75 years ago when he said of war: "It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket]. ... It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives ... It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many."

As President Barack Obama and Congress claim it is Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that are breaking the budget, people should demand that they stop paying for war.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

War Is a Racket

"War is a racket," wrote retired U.S. Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler, in 1935. That statement, which is also the title of his short book on war profiteering, rings true today.

One courageous civil servant just won a battle to hold war profiteers accountable. Her name is Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse. She blew the whistle when her employer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, gave a no-bid $7 billion contract to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) as the United States was about to invade Iraq. She was doing her job, trying to ensure a competitive bidding process would save the U.S. government money. For that, she was forced out of her senior position, demoted and harassed.

Just this week, after waging a legal battle for more than half a decade, Bunny Greenhouse won. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers settled with Greenhouse for $970,000, representing full restitution for lost wages, compensatory damages and attorneys' fees.

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"A Victory In The War Against Profiteering." By Amy Goodman

"War is a racket," wrote retired U.S. Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler, in 1935. That statement, which is also the title of his short book on war profiteering, rings true today.

One courageous civil servant just won a battle to hold war profiteers accountable. Her name is Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse. She blew the whistle when her employer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, gave a no-bid $7 billion contract to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) as the United States was about to invade Iraq. She was doing her job, trying to ensure a competitive bidding process would save the U.S. government money. For that, she was forced out of her senior position, demoted and harassed.

Just this week, after waging a legal battle for more than half a decade, Bunny Greenhouse won. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers settled with Greenhouse for $970,000, representing full restitution for lost wages, compensatory damages and attorneys' fees.

Read More

"Rupert Murdoch Doesn't Eat Humble Pie." By Amy Goodman

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

"People say that Australia has given two people to the world," Julian Assange told me in London recently, "Rupert Murdoch and me." Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, was humbly dismissing my introduction of him, to a crowd of 1,800 at East London's Troxy theater, in which I suggested he had published perhaps more than anyone in the world. He said Murdoch took that publishing prize.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," an independent, daily global TV/radio news hour airing on more than 950 stations in the United States and around the world. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

Two days later, the Milly Dowler phone hacking story exploded, and Murdoch would close one of the largest newspapers in the world, his News of the World, within a week.

On Tuesday, Murdoch claimed before the British House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport that it was his "most humble day." But what does it mean for a man with no humility to suffer his most humble day? The principal takeaway from the committee hearing must be, simply, that Rupert Murdoch is not responsible for the criminal activities under investigation, from police bribery to phone hacking. When asked if he was ultimately responsible, his answer was simple: "No." Who was? "The people I trusted to run it and maybe the people they trusted."

The monosyllabic denials stood in stark juxtaposition to his rhetorically nimble son, James Murdoch. Frequently reminding the committee that he was not present at News of the World during the dark days of hacking and bribing, James used more words to say essentially the same thing: I know nothing.

The performance, for now, seems to have worked. No, the buck doesn't stop with Rupert Murdoch, but the money sure rolls in nicely. News Corp.'s stock price inched up throughout the day. The Murdochs' apparent success in the hearing might be attributed to the stone-faced lawyer sitting directly behind James throughout: News Corp. Executive Vice President Joel Klein.

Klein is a new addition to the executive stable at Rupert Murdoch's media empire, hired, according to a News Corp. press release, as "a senior adviser to Mr. Murdoch on a wide range of initiatives, including developing business strategies for the emerging educational marketplace." Klein formerly was deputy White House counsel to President Bill Clinton.

More lately, and more likely germane to his hiring by Murdoch, was Klein's tenure as chancellor of New York City schools, the largest school system in the U.S., serving more than 1.1 million students in more than 1,600 schools. Klein, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, undertook controversial restructuring of the school system. My colleague at the "Democracy Now!" news hour, Juan Gonzalez, who is a columnist at the New York Daily News (the main competitor to Murdoch's New York Post), consistently documented Klein's failures as chancellor, reporting on "countless parents and teachers who long ago grew weary of his autocratic and disrespectful style." Klein's attempt to shutter 19 schools in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods was reversed by the New York State Supreme Court. Claims of improved performance on standardized tests made under Klein's direction were shown to be based on inflated scores.

Less than two weeks after his hire was announced, News Corp. bought a privately held company, Wireless Generation. Murdoch said of the $360 million purchase, "When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone."

Which is why one of the leading education tweeters, Leonie Haimson, a New York public-school parent and executive director of Class Size Matters, is concerned. She told me: "With all the allegations about phone hacking, etc., we really have concerns about the privacy of New York state students. And secondly, we don't want to open up the public coffers wide for the Murdoch companies to make money off of our kids."

New York City public schools have already granted the company a $2.7 million contract, and the New York State Education Department is close to granting Wireless Generation a $27 million no-bid contract.

News Corp. has announced the formation of a Management and Standards Committee that will answer directly to Klein. Klein, who sits on the News Corp. board of directors, will report to fellow board member and former fellow Justice Department attorney Viet Dinh. Dinh was assistant attorney general under George W. Bush and a principal author of the USA Patriot Act, the law that, among other things, prompted an unprecedented expansion of government eavesdropping. According to recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Dinh and other directors lined up on July 3 to sell off stock options, with Dinh netting about $25,000, just as the scandal broke.

News Corp. is far from a news corpse, though the term is sadly relevant, with the initial exposé of News of the World's grotesque hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler's voice mail, giving false hope to her family that she was alive. The FBI is now investigating whether Murdoch papers tried to profit from hacking into the voice mails of victims of the 9/11 attacks. U.S. journalists must now dig into News Corp.'s operations here, to expose not only potential criminality, but also the threat to democracy posed by unbridled media conglomerates like the Murdoch empire.

"Rupert Murdoch Doesn't Eat Humble Pie" by Amy Goodman

"People say that Australia has given two people to the world," Julian Assange told me in London recently, "Rupert Murdoch and me." Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, was humbly dismissing my introduction of him, to a crowd of 1,800 at East London's Troxy theater, in which I suggested he had published perhaps more than anyone in the world. He said Murdoch took that publishing prize.

Two days later, the Milly Dowler phone hacking story exploded, and Murdoch would close one of the largest newspapers in the world, his News of the World, within a week.

On Tuesday, Murdoch claimed before the British House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport that it was his "most humble day." But what does it mean for a man with no humility to suffer his most humble day? The principal takeaway from the committee hearing must be, simply, that Rupert Murdoch is not responsible for the criminal activities under investigation, from police bribery to phone hacking. When asked if he was ultimately responsible, his answer was simple: "No." Who was? "The people I trusted to run it and maybe the people they trusted."

Read More