Project Censored Annual Release

Peter Phillips <peter.phillips@sonoma.edu>


Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:38:57 -0700

Project Censored <censored@sonoma.edu>

Censored 2008

The Top Censored Stories of 2006 and 2007

http://www.projectcensored.org/

#1 No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person”

Sources:
Consortium, October 19, 2006
Title: “Who Is ‘Any Person’ in Tribunal Law?”
Author: Robert Parry

http://consortiumnews.com/2006/101906.html

 
Consortium, February 3, 2007
Title: “Still No Habeas Rights for You”
Author: Robert Parry

http://consortiumnews.com/2007/020307.html

 
Common Dreams, February 2, 2007
Title: “Repeal the Military Commissions Act and Restore the Most
American Human Right”
Author: Thom Hartmann

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0212-24.htm

 
Student Researchers: Bryce Cook and Julie Bickel
Faculty Evaluator: Andrew Roth, Ph.D.

 
With the approval of Congress and no outcry from corporate media, 
the Military Commissions Act (MCA) signed by Bush on October 17, 
2006, ushered in military commission law for US citizens and 
non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in 
the New York Times October 19, have given false comfort that we, 
as American citizens, will not be the victims of the draconian 
measures legalized by this Act—such as military roundups and 
life-long detention with no rights or constitutional 
protections—Rob ert Parry points to text in the MCA that allows 
for the institution of a military alternative to the 
constitutional justice system for “any person” regardless of 
American citizenship. The MCA effectively does away with habeas 
corpus rights for “any person” arbitrarily deemed to be an “enemy 
of the state.” The judgment on who is deemed an “enemy combatant” 
is solely at the discretion of President Bush.

The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking 
civilization is the right to challenge governmental power of 
arrest and detention through the use of habeas corpus laws, 
considered to be the most critical parts of the Magna Carta which 
was signed by King John in 1215.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist #84 in August of 1788:

 
The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus are perhaps 
greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the 
Constitution] contains. The practice of arbitrary imprisonments 
have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable 
instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious 
[British eighteenth-century legal scholar] Blackstone, in 
reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital:

 
“To bereave a man of life” says he, “or by violence to confiscate 
his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and 
notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm 
of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the 
person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings 
are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and 
therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.”

 

While it is true that some parts of the MCA target non-citizens, 
other sections clearly apply to US citizens as well, putting 
citizens inside the same tribunal system with non-citizen 
residents and foreigners.

Section 950q of the MCA states that, “Any person is punishable as 
a principal under this chapter [of the MCA] who commits an 
offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, 
commands, or procures its commission.”1

Section 950v. “Crimes Triable by Military Commissions” (26) of 
the MCA seems to specifically target American citizens by stating 
that, “Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an 
allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and 
intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the 
co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military 
commission under this chapter may direct.”1

“Who,” warns Parry, “has ‘an allegiance or duty to the United 
States’ if not an American citizen?”

   Besides allowing “any person” to be swallowed up by Bush’s 
system, the law prohibits detainees once inside from appealing to 
the traditional American courts until after prosecution and 
sentencing, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment 
since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play 
out.

   Section 950j of the law further states that once a person is 
detained, “ not withstanding any other provision of law 
(including section 2241 of title 28 or any other habeas corpus 
provision) no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to 
hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever relating 
to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission 
under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of 
procedures of military commissions.”1

   Other constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights, such 
as a speedy trial, the right to reasonable bail, and the ban on 
“cruel and unusual punishment,” would seem to be beyond a 
detainee’s reach as well.

   Parry warns that, “In effect, what the new law appears to do 
is to create a parallel ‘star chamber’ system for the 
prosecution, imprisonment, and possible execution of enemies of 
the state, whether those enemies are foreign or domestic.

   “Under the cloak of setting up military tribunals to try 
al-Qaeda suspects and other so-called unlawful enemy combatants, 
Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress effectively created a 
parallel legal system for ‘any person’—American citizen or 
otherwise—who crosses some ill-defined line.”

   In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a 
US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales opined at a Senate 
Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, 2007, “The Constitution 
doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is 
hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t 
say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended.”

   More important than its sophomoric nature, Parry warns, is 
that Gonzales’s statement suggests he is still searching for 
arguments to make habeas corpus optional, subordinate to the 
President’s executive powers that Bush’s neoconservative legal 
advisers claim are virtually unlimited during “time of war.”

 

Citation

     1.   “Military Commissions Act of 2006” Public Law 109-366, 
109th Congress. See 
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_public_laws&docid=f 
:publ366.109.

UPDATE BY ROBERT PARRY

The Consortium series on the Military Commissions Act of 2006 
pointed out that the law’s broad language seems to apply to both 
US citizens and non-citizens, contrary to some reassuring 
comments in the major news media that the law only denies habeas 
corpus rights to non-citizens. The law’s application to “any 
person” who aids and abets a wide variety of crimes related to 
terrorism—and the law’s provisions stripping away the 
jurisdiction of civilian courts—could apparently thrust anyone 
into the legal limbo of the military commissions where their 
rights are tightly constrained and their cases could languish 
indefinitely.

   Despite the widespread distribution of our articles on the 
Internet, the major US news media continues to ignore the 
troubling “any person” language tucked in toward the end of the 
statute. To my knowledge, for instance, no major news 
organization has explained why, if the law is supposed to apply 
only to non-citizens, one section specifically targets “any 
person [who] in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United 
States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United 
States.” Indeed, the “an y person” language in sections dealing 
with a wide array of crimes, including traditional offenses such 
as spying, suggests that a parallel legal system has been created 
outside the parameters of the US Constitution.

Since publication of the articles, the Democrats won control of 
both the House and Senate—and some prominent Democrats, such as 
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, have voiced 
their intent to revise the law with the goal of restoring habeas 
corpus and other rights. However, other Democrats appear 
hesitant, fearing that any attempt to change the law would open 
them to charges that they are “soft on terrorism” and that 
Republicans would torpedo the reform legislation anyway. Outside 
of Congress , pro-Constitution groups have made reform of the 
Military Commissions Act a high priority. For instance, the 
American Civil Liberties Union organized a national protest rally 
against the law. But the public’s lack of a clear understanding 
of the law’s scope has undercut efforts to build a popular 
movement for repeal or revision of the law.

To learn more about the movement to rewrite the Military 
Commissions Act, readers can contact the ACLU at 
https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DOA_learn

https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DOA_learn.

 

COMMENT

On June 8, 2007 the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Habeas 
Corpus Restoration Act on an 11-8 vote. If approved, the 
bipartisan bill, authored by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and 
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, will restore habeas rights 
that were taken away last year by the Military Commissions Act. 
The bill will move to the full Senate for vote late June 2007.

 

 

 
#2 Bush Moves Toward Martial Law

Sources: Uruknet, October 26, 2006 Title: “Bush Moves Toward 
Martial Law” Author: Frank Morales 
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=27769

 
Student Researchers: Phillip Parfitt and Julie Bickel Faculty 
Evaluator: Andy Merrifield, Ph.D.

 

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which was 
quietly signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, the very same day 
that he signed the Military Commissions Act, allows the president 
to station military troops anywhere in the United States and take 
control of state-based National Guard units without the consent 
of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress 
public disorder.”

   By revising the two-century-old Insurrection Act, the law in 
effect repeals the Posse Comitatus Act, which placed strict 
prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. 
The 1878 Act reads, “Whoever, except in cases and under 
circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of 
Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a 
posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined 
under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.” 
As the only US criminal statute that outlaws military operations 
directed against the American people, it has been our best 
protection against tyranny enforced by martial law—the harsh 
system of rules that takes effect when the military takes control 
of the normal administration of justice. Historically martial law 
has been imposed by various governments during times of war or 
occupation to intensify control of populations in spite of 
heightened unrest. In modern times it is most commonly used by 
authoritar ian gov ernments to enforce unpopular rule.1

   Section 333 of the Defense Authorization Act of 2007, entitled 
“Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal 
law,” states that “the President may employ the armed forces, 
including the National Guard in Federal service—to restore public 
order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result 
of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health 
emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in 
any State or possession of the United States, the President de 
termines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent 
that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are 
incapable of (or “refuse” or “fail” in) maintaining public 
order—in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, 
domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

   Thus an Act of Congress, superceding the Posse Comitatus Act, 
has paved the way toward a police state by granting the president 
unfettered legal authority to order federal troops onto the 
streets of America, directing military operations against the 
American people under the cover of “law enforcement.”

   The massive Defense Authorization Act grants the Pentagon 
$532.8 billion to include implementation of the new law which 
furthermore facilitates militarized police round-ups of 
protesters, so-called illegal aliens, potential terrorists, and 
other undesirables for detention in facilities already contracted 
and under construction, (see Censored 2007, Story #14) and 
transferring from the Pentagon to local police units the latest 
technology and weaponry designed to suppress dissent.

   Author Frank Morales notes that despite the unprecedented and 
shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the 
American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in 
Congress. On September 19, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy 
(D-Vermont) noted that 2007’s Defense Authorization Act contained 
a “widely opposed provision to allow the President more control 
over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection 
Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President 
to use the military to restore domestic order without the consent 
of the nation’s governors.”

   A few weeks later, on September 29, Leahy entered into the 
Congressional Record that he had “grave reservations about 
certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization 
Bill Conference Report,” the language of which, he said, 
“subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit 
the military’s involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it 
easier for the President to declare martial law.” This had been 
“slipped in,” Leahy said, “as a rider with little study,” while 
“other con gressional committees with jurisdiction over these 
matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, 
these proposals.”

   Leahy noted “the implications of changing the [Posse 
Comitatus] Act are enormous.” “There is good reason,” he said, 
“for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to 
martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement 
goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail 
our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we 
make it easier for the President to declare martial law and 
trample on local and state sovereignty.”

   Morales further asserts that “with the president’s polls at a 
historic low and Democrats taking back the Congress it is 
particularly worrisome that President Bush has seen fit, at this 
juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.”

 

Citation

     1.   See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law, “Martial 
Law,” May 2007

 

UPDATE BY FRANK MORALES

On April 24, 2007, Major General Timothy Lowenberg, the Adjutant 
General, Washington National Guard, and Director of the 
Washington Military Department, testified before the Senate 
Judiciary Committee on “The Insurrection Act Rider and State 
Control of the National Guard.” He was speaking in opposition to 
Section 1076 of the recently passed 2007 National Defense 
Authorization Act (NDAA), which President Bush quietly signed 
into law this past October 17. The law clears the way for the 
President to execute ma rtial law, commandeer National Guard 
units around the country and unilaterally authorize military 
operations against the American people in the event of an 
executive declaration of a “public emergency.”

This move toward martial law, which is intended to facilitate 
more effective counterinsurgency measures on the home front, took 
place, according to Lowenberg, “without any hearing or 
consultation with the governors and without any articulation or 
justification of need.” This, despite the fact that Section 1076 
of the new law “changed more than one hundred years of 
well-established and carefully balanced state-federal and 
civil-military relationships.” In other words, with one swipe of 
the pen, says the Gene ral, “one hundred years of law and policy 
were changed without any publicly or privately acknowledged 
author or proponent of the change.”

Its “Federal Plans for Implementing Expanded Martial Law 
Authority” are to be executed via the recently created domestic 
military command, the Northern Command or NORTHCOM. “One key 
USNORTHCOM planning assumption,” says Lowenberg, “is that the 
President will invoke the new Martial Law powers if he concludes 
state and/or local authorities no longer possess either the 
capability or the will to maintain order.” In fact, this “highly 
subjective assumption,” as Lowenberg puts it, has been in the 
works for some t ime now. According to the General, the “US 
Northern Command has been engaged for some time in deliberative 
planning for implementation of Section 1076 of the 2007 National 
Defense Authorization. The formal NORTHCOM CONPLAN 2502-05 was 
approved by Secretary of Defense Gates on March 15, 2007,”

Further, according to the General, the 2007 NDAA provisions 
“could be used to compel National Guard forces to engage in civil 
disturbance operations under federal control.” In that case, 
NORTHCOM will effectuate its move to martial law, its “CONPLAN,” 
by way of its very own “civil disturbance plan,” Department of 
Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, code-named Garden Plot. 
Major Tom Herthel, of the United States Air Force Judge Advocate 
General School, recently laid out the Rules of Engagement & Rules 
for t he Use of Force during the implementation of “GARDEN PLOT,” 
which according to Herthel, is ”the plan to provide the basis for 
all preparation, deployment, employment, and redeployment of all 
designated forces, including National Guard forces called to 
active federal service, for use in domestic civil disturbance 
operations as directed by the President.” Among other things, the 
“rules” allow for the use of lethal force during domestic “civil 
disturbance operations.”

That is why many are urging Congress to repeal Section 1076 of 
the 2007 NDAA through immediate enactment of Senate Bill 513. 
Introduced in February 2007, and sponsored by Senator Patrick 
Leahy (D-Vt.), the bill seeks to repeal, or as the Congress puts 
it, “revive previous authority on the use of the Armed Forces and 
the militia to address interference with State or Federal law, 
and for other purposes,” through the “Repeal of Amendments made 
by Public Law 109-364-Section 1076 of the John Warner National 
Defe nse Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007.”

It is critical that Senate Bill 513 becomes law, and that our 
popular struggle succeeds in beating back the President’s attempt 
to further codify the immoral and criminal seizure of state 
control via woefully ill-advised and dictatorial moves toward 
martial law and military rule.

 
 
 
# 3 AFRICOM: US Military Control of Africa’s Resources

Source: MoonofAlabama.org 2/21/2007 Title: “Understanding 
AFRICOM” Author: Bryan Hunt

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/02/understanding_a_1.html

 
Student Researcher: Ioana Lupu Faculty Evaluator: Marco Calavita, 
Ph.D

 

In February 2007 the White House announced the formation of the 
US African Command (AFRICOM), a new unified Pentagon command 
center in Africa, to be established by September 2008. This 
military penetration of Africa is being presented as a 
humanitarian guard in the Global War on Terror. The real 
objective is, however, the procurement and control of Africa’s 
oil and its global delivery systems.

   The most significant and growing challenge to US dominance in 
Africa is China. An increase in Chinese trade and investment in 
Africa threatens to substantially reduce US political and 
economic leverage in that resource-rich continent. The political 
implication of an economically emerging Africa in close alliance 
with China is resulting in a new cold war in which AFRICOM will 
be tasked with achieving full-spectrum military dominance over 
Africa.

   AFRICOM will replace US military command posts in Africa, 
which were formerly under control of US European Command (EUCOM) 
and US Central Command (CENTCOM), with a more centralized and 
intensified US military presence.

   A context for the pending strategic role of AFRICOM can be 
gained from observing CENTCOM in the Middle East. CENTCOM grew 
out of the Carter Doctrine of 1980 which described the oil flow 
from the Persian Gulf as a “vital interest” of the US, and 
affirmed that the US would employ “any means necessary, including 
military force” to overcome an attempt by hostile interests to 
block that flow.

   It is in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa that the US military 
force is most rapidly increasing, as this area is projected to 
become as important a source of energy as the Middle East within 
the next decade. In this region, challenge to US domination and 
exploitation is coming from the people of Africa—most 
specifically in Nigeria, where seventy percent of Africa’s oil is 
contained.

   People native to the Niger Delta region have not benefited, 
but instead suffered, as a result of sitting on top of vast 
natural oil and natural gas deposits. Nigerian people’s movements 
are demanding self-determination and equitable sharing of 
oil-receipts. Environmental and human rights activists have, for 
years, documented atrocities on the part of oil companies and the 
military in this region. As the tactics of resistance groups have 
shifted from petition and protest to more proactive measures, 
attack s on pipelines and oil facilities have curtailed the flow 
of oil leaving the region. As a Convergent Interests report puts 
it, “Within the first six months of 2006, there were nineteen 
attacks on foreign oil operations and over $2.187 billion lost in 
oil revenues; the Department of Petroleum Resources claims this 
figure represents 32 percent of ‘the revenue the country 
[Nigeria] generated this year.’”

   Oil companies and the Pentagon are attempting to link these 
resistance groups to international terror networks in order to 
legitimize the use of the US military to “stabilize” these areas 
and secure the energy flow. No evidence has been found however to 
link the Niger Delta resistance groups to international terror 
networks or jihadists. Instead the situation in the Niger Delta 
is that of ethnic-nationalist movements fighting, by any means 
necessary, toward the political objective of self-determination. 
The volatility surrounding oil installations in Nigeria and 
elsewhere in the continent is, however, used by the US security 
establishment to justify military “support” in African oil 
producing states, under the guise of helping Africans defend 
themselves against those who would hinder their engagement in 
“Free Trade.”

   The December 2006 invasion of Somalia was coordinated using US 
bases throughout the region. The arrival of AFRICOM will 
effectively reinforce efforts to replace the popular Islamic 
Courts Union of Somalia with the oil industry–friendly 
Transitional Federal Government. Meanwhile, the persistent 
Western calls for “humanitarian intervention” into the Darfur 
region of Sudan sets up another possibility for military 
engagement to deliver regime change in another Islamic state rich 
in oil reserves.

   Hunt warns that this sort of “support” is only bound to 
increase as rhetoric of stabilizing Africa makes the dailies, 
copied directly out of official AFRICOM press releases. Readers 
of the mainstream media can expect to encounter more frequent 
usage of terms like “genocide” and “misguided.” He notes that 
already corporate media decry China’s human rights record and 
support for Sudan and Zimbabwe while ignoring the ongoing 
violations of Western corporations engaged in the plunder of 
natural resources, the pollution other peoples’ homelands, and 
the “shoring up” of repressive regimes.

   In FY 2005 the Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative 
received $16 million; in FY 2006, nearly $31 million. A big 
increase is expected in 2008, with the administration pushing for 
$100 million each year for five years. With the passage of 
AFRICOM and continued promotion of the Global War on Terror, 
Congressional funding is likely to increase significantly.

   In the end, regardless of whether it’s US or Chinese 
domination over Africa, the blood spilled will be African. Hunt 
concludes, “It does not require a crystal ball or great 
imagination to realize what the increased militarization of the 
continent through AFRICOM will bring to the peoples of Africa.”

 

UPDATE BY BRYAN HUNT

By spring 2007, US Department of Energy data showed that the 
United States now imports more oil from the continent of Africa 
than from the country of Saudi Arabia. While this statistic may 
be of surprise to the majority, provided such information even 
crosses their radar, it’s certainly not the case for those 
figures who have been pushing for increased US military 
engagement on that continent for some time now, as my report 
documented. These import levels will rise.

   In the first few months following the official announcement of 
AFRICOM, details are still few. It’s expected that the combatant 
command will be operational as a subunit of EUCOM by October 
2007, transitioning to a full-fledged stand-alone command some 
twelve months later. This will most likely entail the re-locating 
of AFRICOM headquarters from Stuttgart, Germany, where EUCOM is 
headquartered, to an African host country.

   In April, US officials were traversing the continent to 
present their sales pitch for AFRICOM and to gauge official and 
public reaction. Initial perceptions are, not surprisingly, 
negative and highly suspect, given the history of US military 
involvement throughout the world, and Africa’s long and bitter 
experience with colonizers.

   Outside of a select audience, reaction in the United States 
has barely even registered. First of all, Africa is one of the 
least-covered continents in US media. And when African nations do 
draw media attention, coverage typically centers on catastrophe, 
conflict, or corruption, and generally features some form of 
benevolent foreign intervention, be it financial and humanitarian 
aid, or stern official posturing couched as paternal concerns 
over human rights. But US military activity on the continent 
large ly goes unnoticed. This was recently evidenced by the 
sparse reporting on military support for the invasion of Somalia 
to rout the Islamic Courts Union and reinstall the unpopular 
warlords who had earlier divided up the country. The Pentagon 
went so far as to declare the operation a blueprint for future 
engagements.

   The DOD states that a primary component of AFRICOM’s mission 
will be to professionalize indigenous militaries to ensure 
stability, security, and accountable governance throughout 
Africa’s various states and regions. Stability refers to 
establishing and maintaining order, and accountability, of 
course, refers to US interests. This year alone, 1,400 African 
military officers are anticipated to complete International 
Military Education and Training programs at US military schools.

   Combine this tasking of militarization with an increased 
civilian component in AFRICOM emphasizing imported conceptions of 
“democracy promotion” and “capacity-building” and African 
autonomy and sovereignty are quick to suffer. Kenyans, for 
example, are currently finding themselves in this position.

It is hoped that, by drawing attention to the growing US 
footprint on Africa now, a contextual awareness of these issues 
can be useful to, at the very least, help mitigate some of the 
damages that will surely follow. At the moment, there is little 
public consciousness of AFRICOM and very few sources of 
information outside of official narratives. Widening the public 
dialogue on this topic is the first step toward addressing 
meaningful responses.
 
 
 
# 4 Frenzy of Increasingly Destructive Trade Agreements

Sources: Oxfam International, March 2007 Title: “Singing Away The 
Future” 
http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/briefingpapers/bp101_regional_trade_agreements_0703

 
IPS coverage of Oxfam Report March 20, 2007 Title: “Free Trade 
Enslaving Poor Countries” Author: Sanjay Suri 
http://ipsnews.org/news.asp?idnews=37008

 
Student Researcher: Ann Marie O’Toole Faculty Evaluator: Peter 
Phillips, Ph.D.

 

The Oxfam report, “Signing Away the Future,” reveals that the US 
and European Union (EU) are vigorously pursuing increasingly 
destructive regional and bilateral trade and investment 
agreements outside the auspices of the WTO. These agreements are 
requiring enormous irreversible concessions from developing 
countries, while offering almost nothing in return. Faster and 
deeper, the US and EU are demanding unprecedented tariff 
reductions, sometimes to nothing, as the US and EU dump 
subsidized agricultural goods on undeveloped countries (see story 
#21), plunging local farmers into desperate poverty. Meanwhile 
the US and EU provide themselves with high tariffs and stringent 
import quotas to protect their own producers. Unprecedented loss 
of livelihood, displacement, slave labor, along with spiraling 
degradation of human rights and environments are resulting as 
economic governance is forced from governments of developing 
countries, and taken over by unaccountable multinational firms.

During 2006, more than one hundred developing countries were 
involved in FTA or Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) 
negotiations. “An average of two treaties are signed every week,” 
the report says, “Virtually no country, however poor, has been 
left out.”

Much of the recent debate and controversy over trade negotiations 
has revolved around the increasingly devastating trade-distorting 
practices of rich countries versus the developing countries’ 
needs for food security and industrial development. The new 
generation of agreements, however, extends far beyond this 
traditional area of trade policy—imposing a damaging set of 
binding rules in intellectual property, services, and investment 
with much deeper consequences for development and impacts on the 
poor.

Double standards in the intellectual-property rights chapters of 
most trade agreements are glaring. As new agreements limit 
developing countries’ access to patented technology and 
medicines—while failing to protect traditional knowledge—the 
public-health consequences are staggering. The US-Colombia FTA is 
expected to reduce access to medicines by 40 percent and the 
US-Peru FTA is expected to leave 700,000 to 900,000 Peruvians 
without access to affordable medicines.

US and EU FTAs also require the adoption of plant-breeder rights 
that remove the right to share seeds among indigenous farmers. 
The livelihood of the world’s poorest farmers is thus made even 
more vulnerable, while profit margins of the world’s largest 
agribusinesses continue to climb. US FTAs are now pushing for 
patents on plants, which will not only limit the rights of 
farmers to exchange or sell seeds, but also forbid them to save 
and reuse seed they have grown themselves for generations. Under 
US FTAs i ncluding DR-CAFTA, US–Peru and US–Colombia FTAs, 
developing-country governments will no longer be able to reject a 
patent application because a firm fails to indicate the origin of 
a plant or show proof of consent for its use from a local 
community. As a result, communities could find themselves forced 
to pay for patented plant varieties based on genetic resources 
from their own soil.

New rules also pose a threat to essential services as FTAs allow 
foreign investors to take ownership of healthcare, education, 
water, and public utilities.

Investment chapters of new FTAs and BITs allow foreign investors 
to sue for lost profits, including anticipated future profits, if 
governments change regulations, even when such reforms are in the 
public interest. These rules undermine the sovereignty of 
developing nations, transferring power from governments to 
largely unaccountable multinational firms. A growing number of 
investment chapters and treaties further tip the scales of 
justice by preventing governments from screening or regulating 
foreign inves tment—banning the use of all ‘performance 
requirements’ in all sectors including mining, manufacturing, and 
services.

More than 170 countries have signed international investment 
agreements that provide foreign investors with the right to turn 
immediately to international investor-state arbitration to settle 
disputes, without first trying to resolve the matter in national 
courts. Such arbitration fails to consider public interest, 
basing decisions exclusively on commercial law.

Not only is the legal basis for investment arbitration loaded 
against public interest, so are the proceedings. Despite the fact 
that many arbitration panels are hosted at the World Bank and the 
United Nations, the investment arbitration system is shrouded in 
secrecy. It is virtually impossible to find out what cases are 
being heard, let alone the outcome or rationale for decisions. As 
a result, there is no body of case decisions to inform 
governments of developing countries when drafting investments 
agreeme nts.

Oxfam notes that the only group privy to this information is an 
increasingly powerful select group of commercial lawyers, whose 
fees often place them out of reach of developing-country 
governments. These lawyers, according to the Oxfam report, are 
eager to advise foreign investors regarding opportunities to 
claim compensation from developing countries under international 
investment agreements.

Strong opposition is growing to the political asymmetry inherent 
in these bilateral trade and investment agreements (see stories 
#8, #19, and #21). As Oxfam notes, “It is in nobody’s long-term 
interest to have a global economy that perpetuates social, 
economic, and environmental injustice.”

 

UPDATE BY LAURA RUSU OF OXFAM INTERNATIONAL

While real progress toward achieving a development-friendly 
outcome in the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round is still 
quite elusive, the negotiation of bilateral and regional free 
trade agreements (FTAs) that would undermine development 
continues at an unabated pace.

   In the United States, the new Democratic leadership in 
Congress recently negotiated changes in the areas of labor, 
environment, and intellectual property in regard to access to 
medicines that are to be incorporated into the completed FTAs 
awaiting Congressional ratification. If implemented as agreed, 
these changes would mean important progress in enforcing core 
International Labor Organization standards and multilateral 
environmental agreements, and in promoting public health over 
private profits by redu cing onerous protections for 
pharmaceutical monopolies. Still, more must be done in these 
areas, and harmful provisions remain in several other areas that 
will adversely affect developing countries, particularly the 
poor.

   Without further changes, the FTAs create a profoundly unfair 
situation in which the US provides massive domestic agricultural 
supports and subsidies that allow products to be exported below 
their cost of production, while developing country trading 
partners are left with no means of protection. With large 
portions of their populations dependent upon agriculture for 
their livelihoods, the FTAs provide no effective safeguard to 
protect poor farmers from unfair competition. In addition, 
investment rules in the FTAs will hinder local and national 
governments from directing foreign investment so that it 
contributes to sustainable development. The investment chapter 
will give foreign companies leeway to challenge investment 
regulations, such as laws to protect the environment and public 
health. These and other provisions would deny developing 
countries the policy space needed to further their own 
development. 

   The US Administration hopes to bring FTAs with Peru, Panama, 
Colombia and Korea to a vote this year, although it remains 
doubtful whether there would be sufficient Congressional support 
to move the latter two. Congressional leadership is insisting 
that Colombia must also address its serious problems of violence 
and impunity, particularly as suffered by trade unionists, and 
has raised market-access concerns with regard to South Korea.

   In a similar vein, the European Union has proceeded with FTA 
negotiations with African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries by 
pushing forward negotiating texts that will undermine the ability 
of poor countries to effectively govern their economies, protect 
their poorest people, improve livelihoods, and create new jobs. 
Going beyond the provisions negotiated at a multilateral level, 
the EU is making requests that would impose far-reaching, 
hard-to-reverse rules in the areas of market access, agriculture, 
se rvices and intellectual property. At the same time, the EU is 
proceeding to open formal negotiations with Central American 
countries for an FTA that would impose similar rules that 
undermine development. A similar agreement with Andean countries 
is expected to follow, and plans have been announced to open 
negotiations with ASEAN, India, and South Korea. In all of these 
negotiations, the EU, like the US, is failing to put development 
first.

For more information, please see http://www.oxfamamerica.org.

 

 

 

#5 Human Traffic Builds US Embassy in Iraq

Source: CorpWatch, October 17, 2007 Title: “A US Fortress Rises 
in Baghdad: Asian Workers Trafficked to Build World’s Largest 
Embassy” Author: David Phinney

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14173

 
Student Researcher: Kristen Kebler and Angela Purcaro Faculty 
Evaluator: Andrew Roth, Ph.D.

 

The enduring monument to US liberation and democracy in Iraq will 
be the most expensive and heavily fortified embassy in the 
world—and is being built by a Kuwait contractor repeatedly 
accused of using forced labor trafficked from South Asia under US 
contracts. The $592 million, 104-acre fortress equal in size to 
the Vatican City is scheduled to open in September 2007. With a 
highly secretive contract awarded by the US State Department, 
First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting has joined the ranks of 
Halliburton/ KBR in Iraq by using bait-and-switch recruiting 
practices. Thousands of citizens from countries that have banned 
travel or work in Iraq are being tricked, smuggled into brutal 
and inhumane labor camps, and subjected to months of forced 
servitude—all in the middle of the US-controlled Green Zone, 
“right under the nose of the US State Department.”

Though Associated Press reports that, “The 5,500 Americans and 
Iraqis working at the embassy are far more numerous than at any 
other US mission worldwide,”1 there is no mention in corporate 
media of the 3,000 South Asian laborers working for contractors 
in dangerous and abysmal living and working conditions.

One such contractor is First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting. 
FKTC has procured several billion dollars in US construction 
contracts since the war began in March 2003. Much of its work is 
performed by cheap labor hired from South Asia. The company 
currently employs an estimated 7,500 foreign laborers in theaters 
of war.

American FKTC employees report having witnessed the issuance of 
false boarding passes to Dubai, and passport seizure from 
planeloads of South Asian workers, who were instead routed to 
war-torn Baghdad. Former US Embassy construction manager for 
FKTC, John Owen, disclosed to author David Phinney that the 
deception had all the appearance of smuggling workers into Iraq.

On April 4, 2006, the Pentagon issued a contracting directive 
following an investigation that officially confirmed that 
contractors in Iraq, many working as subcontractors to 
Halliburton/KBR, were illegally confiscating worker passports, 
using deceptive bait-and-switch hiring practices, and charging 
recruiting fees that indebted low-paid migrant workers for many 
months or even years to their employers.

Section 1. (U) of the Pentagon directive states, “An inspection 
of contracting activities supporting DoD in Iraq revealed 
evidence of illegal confiscation of worker (Third Country 
National) passports by contractors/subcontractors; deceptive 
hiring practices and excessive recruiting fees, substandard 
worker living conditions at some sites, circumvention of Iraqi 
immigration procedures by contractors/subcontractors and lack of 
mandatory trafficking in persons awareness training. This FRAGO 
[fragmentary order] establishes responsibilities within MNF-1 for 
combating trafficking in persons.”

An April 19, 2006 memorandum from Joint Contracting Command in 
Baghdad to All Contractors again states that, “Evidence indicates 
a widespread practice of withholding employee passports to, among 
other things, prevent employees ‘jumping’ to other employers. All 
contractors engaging in the above mentioned practice are directed 
to cease and desist in this practice immediately.”

The Pentagon has yet to announce, however, any penalty for those 
found to be in violation of US labor trafficking laws or contract 
requirements.

In a resignation letter dated June 2006, Owen told FKTC and US 
State Department officials that his managers at the US Embassy 
site regularly beat migrant workers, demonstrated little regard 
for worker safety, and routinely breached security. He also 
complained of poor sanitation, squalid living conditions and 
medical malpractice in labor camps where several thousand 
low-paid migrant workers, recruited from the Philippines, India, 
and Pakistan lived. Those workers, Owen noted, earned as little 
as $10 to $30 for a twelve-hour workday.

Rory Mayberry, a medic subcontracted to FKTC to attend 
construction crews at the Embassy, shares similar complaints 
about treatment of migrant laborers. In reports made available to 
the US State Department, the US Army, and FKTC, Mayberry called 
for the closure of the onsite medical clinic, listing dozens of 
serious safety hazards, unsanitary conditions, as well as routine 
negligence and malpractice. He furthermore called for an 
investigation into deaths that he suspected resulted from medical 
malpractice. Mayberry is not aware of any follow-up on his 
allegations.

Owen says that State Department officials supervising the US 
Embassy project are aware of abuse, but apparently do nothing. He 
recalls, “Once when seventeen workers climbed the wall of the 
construction site to escape, a State Department official helped 
round them up and put them in virtual lockdown.”

Phinney says that more FKTC employees are stepping forward to say 
that Owen’s and Mayberry’s testimonies “only begin to scratch the 
surface” of the conditions workers are forced to endure in 
building this monument to US liberation and democracy in Iraq.

 

Citation:

     1.   Associated Press, “New US Embassy in Iraq Cloaked in 
Mystery,” MSNBC, April 14, 2006.

 

UPDATE BY DAVID PHINNEY

When I first heard that Project Censored would recognize this 
story on the low-wage migrant laborers from South Asia building 
the US embassy in Baghdad, I admit I felt the story was a 
failure. Allegations of forced labor, lousy treatment of workers 
and beatings struck me as something that should rise to the level 
of torture at Abu Ghraib. Despite what appears to be a whitewash 
review of the embassy project by the State Department Inspector 
General that exonerated the contractor—even though more than a 
dozen sources on the site say conditions were abysmal—I am now 
encouraged by a recent effort at the US Justice Department to 
investigate allegations of labor trafficking and other matters. 
But the problem of labor abuse has been found to be “widespread” 
among contractors in the theater of war in Iraq. Unfortunately, 
not one contractor has been penalized—in fact, many are being 
rewarded with new US-funded contracts. That is a crime to 
humanity that may haunt the United States for years to come.

 

 

 

#6 Operation FALCON Raids

Sources: SourceWatch, November 18, 2006 Title: “Operation Falcon” 
Author: Artificial Intelligence

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Operation_FALCON

 
Ukernet, February 26, 2007 Title: “Operation Falcon and the 
Looming Police State” Author: Mike Whitney 
http://uruknet.info/?p=m30971&s1=h1

 
Student Researcher: Erica Haikara and Celeste Winders Faculty 
Evaluator: Ron Lopez, Ph.D.

 

Under the code name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops 
Organized Nationally) three federally coordinated mass arrests 
occurred between April 2005 and October 2006. In an unprecedented 
move, more than 30,000 “fugitives” were arrested in the largest 
dragnets in the nation’s history. The operations directly 
involved over 960 agencies (state, local, and federal) and were 
the brainchild of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and US 
Marshal’s Director Ben Reyna. The DoJ supplied television 
networks government -shot action videotape of Marshals and local 
cops raiding homes and breaking down doors, “targeting the worst 
of the worst criminals on the run,” emphasizing suspected sex 
offenders. Yet less than ten percent of the total 30,150 were 
suspected sex offenders and less than two percent owned firearms. 
The press has not asked, “Who were the others?” And to date, the 
US Marshal’s office has issued no public statement as to whether 
the people arrested in Operation Falcon have been processed or 
released. Author Mi ke Whitney cautions that Attorney General 
Gonzales has little interest in the petty offenders who were 
netted in this extraordinary crackdown. This action is instead, 
he warns, a practice roundup in the move toward martial law.

   Altogether, there were three FALCON Operations, each netting 
roughly 10,000 criminal suspects. Between April 4–10, 2005, 
FALCON I swept up 10,340 fugitives in the largest nationwide mass 
arrest (to that date) in American history. Alberto Gonzalez 
proudly announced on April 15 through corporate media, “Operation 
FALCON is an excellent example of President Bush’s direction and 
the Justice Department’s dedication to deal both with the 
terrorist threat and traditional violent crime. This joint effort 
shows t he commitment of our federal, state, and local partners 
to make our neighborhoods safer, and it has led to the highest 
number of arrests ever recorded for a single initiative of its 
kind. We will use all of our Nation’s law enforcement resources 
to serve the people, to pursue justice, and to make our streets 
and Nation safer.”

   Operation FALCON II, carried out the week of April 17–23, 
2006, arrested another 9,037 individuals from twenty-seven states 
mostly west of the Mississippi River. Operation FALCON III, 
conducted during the week of October 22–28, 2006, netted another 
10,733 fugitives in twenty-four states east of the Mississippi 
River.

   The US Marshals Service has not yet disclosed the names of the 
people arrested in these massive sweeps nor of what crimes they 
were accused. We have no way of knowing whether they were 
provided with due process of law, where they are now, or whether 
they have been abused while in custody.

   SourceWatch contributors further ask for clarification, 
“Although Attorney General Gonzales stated on April 15, 2005 that 
Operation FALCON was ‘an excellent example of President Bush‘s 
direction and the Justice Department’s dedication to deal both 
with the terrorist threat and traditional violent crime,’ where 
is the connection between the Operation FALCON roundups and 
catching terrorists? Why did police wait for federally 
orchestrated raids to arrest known sex offenders and suspected 
murders? Why were s tate and federal agencies integrated with 
local law enforcement to simply carry out routine police work?”

   The media played an essential role in concealing the important 
details of the Operation. In fact, the non-critical “cookie 
cutter” articles which appeared in newspapers across the country 
suggest that the media may have collaborated directly with the 
Justice Department. (see Chapter 9, Fake News) Whitney notes that 
nearly identical “news” segments and articles put the best 
possible spin on a story that most Americans might find deeply 
disturbing, and perhaps frightening.

   While mass militarized police roundups make little sense as a 
method of apprehending fugitives, the FALCON program does make 
sense as a means of effectively setting up a chain-of-command 
structure that radiates from the Justice Department and relocates 
the levers of control to Washington where they can be manned by 
members of the administration. Whitney warns that the plan behind 
the FALCON program appears to have been devised to enhance the 
powers of the “unitary” executive by putting state and local la w 
enforcement under federal supervision, ready for the institution 
of martial law (see story #2.)

 

UPDATE BY MIKE WHITNEY

Operation FALCON presents the first time in US history that all 
of the domestic police agencies have been put under the direct 
control of the federal government. The implications for American 
democracy are quite profound.

Operation FALCON serves no purpose except to centralize power and 
establish the basic contours of an American police state. It is 
not an effective way of apprehending criminals.

For the most part, the media completely ignored FALCON. In fact, 
these extraordinary police-state sweeps did not elicit even one 
editorial or one column-inch of commentary from any journalist in 
the country. Following the government’s version of events, the 
story was simply brushed aside as trivial. For those who care to 
explore the media’s true role in undermining the fundamental 
rights of Americans; FALCON is probably a good place to begin. It 
illustrates how the media deliberately obscures facts that do not 
serve the overall interests of the state.

The last FALCON operation was carried out on October 28, 2006. 
Since then, the project has been put on “hold,” presumably until 
some time in the future when it will be reactivated by 
presidential decree. The precedents have now been established for 
law enforcement agencies across the nation to be taken over by 
the chief executive at a moment’s notice. If there is another 
terrorist attack within the United States, or the outbreak of an 
epidemic, or a natural disaster on the scale of Hurricane 
Katrina; we can expect that President Bush will consolidate his 
power by asserting direct control over all of the various 
federal, state, and local police agencies. Eventually, we will 
see that FALCON was organized with that very purpose in mind.

Recent changes to the Insurrection Act of 1807 as well as to the 
Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 allow President Bush to declare 
martial law at his own discretion and to take control of the 
National Guard from the state governors. That means that Bush now 
has a complete monopoly on all the means of organized violence in 
the country.

With the aid of the corporate media and an alliance of far-right 
organizations, Bush has successfully removed all the traditional 
obstacles to absolute power. The groundwork has been laid for an 
American dictatorship. FALCON is just one small part of that much 
larger plan.

 

UPDATE BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

A more recent and less publicized sweep was made March 7, 2007, 
in Baltimore, with the arrest of about two hundred fugitives. The 
rationale for this sweep is more puzzling, perhaps, as it was the 
only city involved. This sweep received only local media 
attention.

Numerous questions, as stated in the Operation FALCON article, 
remain unanswered. The mainstream press does not appear to be 
interested in exploring beyond the initial sweep events.

Both House and Senate committees on the judiciary and government 
oversight are digging into DoJ operations due to the US attorney 
firings and politicization of the Department, with all roads 
leading to the White House. It is not unreasonable to expect that 
these sweeps may eventually come under investigation as well.

The mainstream press, to my knowledge, has not responded at all 
to my SourceWatch coverage of this story. The press coverage that 
Operation FALCON received appears to be limited to DoJ and USMS 
news releases with the addition of an occasional local interest 
story. Information on the fate of the 30,000 plus who were 
arrested is conspicuous by its absence.

Additional information on this story should be available from 
both the DoJ and USMS. In reality, it most likely will not be, as 
neither has provided any updates. The SourceWatch article will 
continue to be updated when or if additional information becomes 
available.

 

 

#7 Behind Blackwater Inc.

Source: Democracy Now! January 26, 2007

Title: “Our Mercenaries in Iraq: Blackwater Inc and Bush’s 
Undeclared Surge” Author: Jeremy Scahill 
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/26/1559232

 
Student Researcher: Sverre Tysl Faculty Evaluator: Noel Byrne, 
Ph.D.

 

The company that most embodies the privatization of the military 
industrial complex—a primary part of the Project for a New 
American Century and the neoconservative revolution is the 
private security firm Blackwater. Blackwater is the most powerful 
mercenary firm in the world, with 20,000 soldiers, the world’s 
largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, 
including helicopter gunships, and a private intelligence 
division. The firm is also manufacturing its own surveillance 
blimps and target sys tems.

   Blackwater is headed by a very right-wing Christian-supremist 
and ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family has had deep 
neo-conservative connections. Bush’s latest call for voluntary 
civilian military corps to accommodate the “surge” will add to 
over half a billion dollars in federal contracts with Blackwater, 
allowing Prince to create a private army to defend Christendom 
around the world against Muslims and others.

   One of the last things Dick Cheney did before leaving office 
as Defense Secretary under George H. W. Bush was to commission a 
Halliburton study on how to privatize the military bureaucracy. 
That study effectively created the groundwork for a continuing 
war profiteer bonanza.

   During the Clinton years, Erik Prince envisioned a project 
that would take advantage of anticipated military outsourcing. 
Blackwater began in 1996 as a private military training facility, 
with an executive board of former Navy Seals and Elite Special 
Forces, in the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. A decade 
later it is the most powerful mercenary firm in the world, 
embodying what the Bush administration views as “the necessary 
revolution in military affairs”—the outsourcing of armed forces.

   In his 2007 State of the Union address Bush asked Congress to 
authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine 
Corps by 92,000 in the next five years. He continued, “A second 
task we can take on together is to design and establish a 
volunteer civilian reserve corps. Such a corps would function 
much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the 
Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical 
skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them.”

   This is, however, precisely what the administration has 
already done—largely, Jeremy Scahill points out, behind the backs 
of the American people. Private contractors currently constitute 
the second-largest “force” in Iraq. At last count, there were 
about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, 48,000 of which work as 
private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office 
report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or 
effective legal constraints and are politically expedient, as 
contract or deaths go uncounted in the official toll. With Prince 
calling for the creation of a “contractor brigade” before 
military audiences, the Bush administration has found a back door 
for engaging in an undeclared expansion of occupation.

   Blackwater currently has about 2,300 personnel actively 
deployed in nine countries and is aggressively expanding its 
presence inside US borders. They provide the security for US 
diplomats in Iraq, guarding everyone from Paul Bremer and John 
Negroponte to the current US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. 
They’re training troops in Afghanistan and have been active in 
the Caspian Sea, where they set up a Special Forces base miles 
from the Iranian border. According to reports they are currently 
negotiating direct ly with the Southern Sudanese regional 
government to start training the Christian forces of Sudan.

   Blackwater’s connections are impressive. Joseph Schmitz, the 
former Pentagon Inspector General, whose job was to police the 
war contractor bonanza, has moved on to become the vice chairman 
of the Prince Group, Blackwater’s parent company, and the general 
counsel for Blackwater.

   Bush recently hired Fred Fielding, Blackwater’s former lawyer, 
to replace Harriet Miers as his top lawyer; and Ken Starr, the 
former Whitewater prosecutor who led the impeachment charge 
against President Clinton, is now Blackwater’s counsel of record 
and has filed briefs with Supreme Court to fight wrongful death 
lawsuits brought against Blackwater.

   Cofer Black, thirty-year CIA veteran and former head of CIA’s 
counterterrorism center, credited with spearheading the 
extraordinary rendition program after 9/11, is now senior 
executive at Blackwater and perhaps its most powerful operative.

   Prince and other Blackwater executives have been major 
bankrollers of the President, of former House Majority Leader, 
Tom DeLay, and of former Senator, Rick Santorum. Senator John 
Warner, the former head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, 
called Blackwater, “our silent partner in the global war on 
terror.”

 

 

 

#8 KIA: The US Neoliberal Invasion of India

Sources: Democracy Now! December 13, 2006 Title: “Vandana Shiva 
on Farmer Suicides, the US-India Nuclear Deal, Wal-Mart in India” 
Author: Vandana Shiva with Amy Goodman 
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/13/1451229

 
Global Research, October 9, 2006 Title: “Genetically Modified 
Seeds: Women in India Take on Monsanto” Author: Arun Shrivastava

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ARU20061009&articleId=3427

 
SciDev.Net Title: “Sowing Trouble: India’s ‘Second Green 
Revolution’” Author: Suman Sahai 
http://www.scidev.net/content/opinions/eng/sowing-trouble-indias-second-green-revolution.cfm

 
Student Researchers: Jonathan Stoumen and Michael Januleski 
Faculty Evaluator: Phil Beard, Ph.D.

 

Farmers’ cooperatives in India are defending the nation’s food 
security and the future of Indian farmers against the neoliberal 
invasion of genetically modified (GM) seed. As many as 28,000 
Indian farmers have committed suicide over the last decade as a 
result of debt incurred from failed GM crops and competition with 
subsidized US crops, yet when India’s Prime Minister Singh met 
with President Bush in March 2006 to finalize nuclear agreements, 
they also signed the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agricultur e 
(KIA), backed by Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and 
Wal-Mart. The KIA allows for the grab of India’s seed sector by 
Monsanto, of its trade sector by giant agribusiness ADM and 
Cargill, and its retail sector by Wal-Mart.

Though the contours of KIA have been kept so secret that neither 
senior Indian politicians nor the scientific community know its 
details, it is clear that Prime Minister Singh has agreed to 
sacrifice India’s agriculture sector to pay for US concessions in 
the nuclear field.

In one of very few public statements by a US government official 
regarding KIA, Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State for 
Political Affairs, states, “While the civilian nuclear initiative 
has garnered the most attention, our first priority is to 
continue giving governmental support to the huge growth in 
business between the Indian and American private sectors. Singh 
has also challenged the United States to help launch a second 
green revolution in India’s vast agricultural heartland by 
enlisting the help of America’s great land-grant institutions.”

Vandana Shiva translates, “These are twin programs about a market 
grab and a security alignment.” Burns announced that while the 
nuclear deal is the cutting edge, what the US is really seeking 
is agricultural markets and real estate markets, “to take over 
the land of people, not through a market mechanism, but using the 
state and an old colonial law of land acquisition to grab the 
land by force.”

Through KIA, Monsanto and the US have asked for unhindered access 
to India’s gene banks, along with a change in India’s 
intellectual property laws to allow patents on seeds and genes, 
and to dilute provisions that protect farmers’ rights. A 
combination of physical access to India’s gene banks and a 
possible new intellectual property law that allows seed patents 
will in essence deliver India’s genetic wealth into US hands. 
This would be a severe blow to India’s food security and 
self-sufficiency.

At the same time KIA has paved the way for Wal-Mart’s plans to 
open five hundred stores in India, starting in August 2007, which 
will compound the outsourcing of India’s food supply and threaten 
14 million small family venders with loss of livelihood.

“This is not about ‘free trade,’” Shiva explains, “Today’s trade 
system, especially in agriculture, is dishonest, and dishonesty 
has become a war against farmers. It’s become a genocide.”

Farmers are, however, organizing to protect themselves against 
this economic invasion by maintaining traditional seed banks and 
setting up exemplary systems of community agrarian support. In 
response to the flood of debilitating debt tied to GM/hybrid 
seeds and the toxic petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides 
these crops depend on, one woman in the small village of Palarum 
says, “We do not buy seeds from the market because we suspect 
they may be contaminated with genetically engineered or 
terminator see ds.” Instead village women save and trade hardy 
traditional seeds that have evolved over centuries to produce 
low-maintenance, nutritious “crops of truth.”

Each village in this rural area of India has formed its own 
community-based organization called a sangham. Seventy-two 
sanghams are part of a regional federation. These sanghams form 
an informal social security network that, through the maintenance 
of seed banks, will come to the rescue of individuals or entire 
villages in times of crop failure. Every member of the community 
has access to food and is assured of some work even if landless. 
The federation furthermore trains students in skills such as 
carpentr y, computing, pottery, bookbinding, veterinary science, 
herbal medicine, sewing, farming, waste management, and 
agro-forestry.

Author Arun Shrivastava comments that, “These seventy-two 
villages were once horizontally and vertically stratified along 
caste, class, and religious lines. Food scarcity was endemic, 
people were malnourished, the majority worked as unskilled day 
wagers. Today they are cohesive, interdependent. I did not see 
one malnourished person. Rarely do people go to urban centers to 
seek work.” Shrivastava continues, “The community is the most 
important entity that can help us ensure food and nutrition 
security. The r ight of access to natural resources—land, rivers, 
forests, air, and everything that Nature has given us, including 
seeds, is the fundamental right of the communities, not of the 
corporations or the state or the individual. No corporation has 
the right to expropriate what Nature gave us.”

Professor of genetics Suman Sahai concludes, “India must be 
cautious that it does not become the dumping ground for a 
technology and its controversial products that have been rejected 
in many parts of the world and whose safety and usefulness remain 
questionable. Food security is an integral part of national 
security. All India’s efforts in the nuclear arena to shore up 
its national security goals will be undermined if it allows 
itself to become insecure in the matter of food.”

 

Citation:

     1.   Nicholas Burns, “‘Heady Times’ For India And the US,” 
Washington Post, April 29, 2007.

 

UPDATE BY ARUN SHRIVASTAVA

Nature has given us seeds and ‘crops of truth’ that do not 
require any tending but give us nutrition at no or low-cost. This 
knowledge needs to be rapidly disseminated; soon our lives may 
depend on it.

With current farming and food distribution systems it takes ten 
calories of fossil fuel energy to transport one calorie of food 
from farm to fork. That is unsustainable now; the era of cheap 
oil is effectively finished. Since we are already past peak oil, 
we all must learn to ensure food and nutrition security for our 
family and community. We will have to learn basic skills like 
conserving seeds, growing nutritious food, and medicinal crops 
without chemicals and machines. We will need more cohesive and 
inte rdependent local communities, like the women of Zaheerabad 
have shown.

The women of Zaheerabad save seeds in community-held seed banks 
and grow nutrition-dense food through a system that ensures 
health and livelihood for all. They have established how 
self-sufficient, sustainable communities might live in a 
post-carbon world.

A handful of multi-national corporations are patenting seeds. 
These genetically modified (GM) seeds neither increase yield nor 
reduce costs nor enhance nutritive content of foods, nor reduce 
dependence on oil. The seeds of deception have destroyed farmers 
in India, the US, and elsewhere.

Patenting ensures monopoly control while subverting farmers’ 
right to save seeds; it is antithetical to natural rights of 
local communities. The Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in 
Agriculture covertly seeks to gain access and control over 
community-held seeds.

Since publication of the article, Deccan Development Society 
(DDS) has extended the model to twenty-six more villages but the 
community FM radio station remains silent.

At People’s SAARC (South Asia Association for Regional 
Cooperation) summit in Kathmandu (March 2007) participants voted 
for a “GM-free South Asia,” community control over seeds and 
protection of South-Asian biodiversity. Over six million farmers 
requested the Supreme Court of India (April 2007) to ban open 
field trials of GM seeds because of the dangers of irreversible 
contamination of community-held seeds and adverse impact on 
health.

The mainstream media is silent. They don’t have space for 
disseminating information that will save us from disease and 
starvation. These are unglamorous issues.

For more information on growing crops of truth and the need for a 
new social order, the following are ideal sources:

 

1.   The Web site of Deccan Development Society (DDS), initiator 
and facilitator of the sanghams, is 
http://www.ddsindia.com/www/default.asp. Contact PV Satheesh, 
Director of Zaheerabad Project.

 

2.   Beej Bachao Andolan (BBA, Save the Seeds Movement) is a 
well-known movement of farmers who save traditional seeds of the 
Himalayan region. Contact Biju Negi, negi.biju@gmail.com.

 

3.   For information on growing food for health and personal 
freedom, go to www.soilandhealth.org.

 

4.   For information on threats posed by multinational seeds 
firms, go to www.gmwatch.org and www.mindfully.org.

 

5.   The Seeds of Deception by Jeffrey Smith discusses how GM 
foods, introduced in the US in 1993 without proper biosafety 
assessment, endanger our health. It is available at 
www.seedsofdeception.com. See also the research of Dr. Irina 
Ermakova at http://irina-ermakova.by.ru/eng/articles.html/, and 
of Dr. Arpad Pusztai: 
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/a.pusztai/.

 

6.   “Heartless in the Heartland” is the ghastly story of how 
Monsanto blackmailed US farmers not to save their seeds. See 
www.mindfully.org.

 

7. For an excellent summary, watch The Future of Food, a 
documentary by Deborah Koons Garcia, downloadable from 
www.mindfully.org.

 

8.   For discussions on peak oil and food security, see Richard 
Heinberg’s Fifty Million Farmers, published on November 17, 2006, 
available at http://www.energybulletin.net/22584.html. Also visit 
the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, managed by Dr. Colin 
Campbell, one of world’s leading oil experts, at 
http://www.peakoil.net.

 

9.   My two recent papers also shed light on the subject: “The 
attack on our seeds,” a related article published by Farmer’s 
Forum in India (contact the editor at bksnd@airtelbroadband.in), 
and “The Silent War on the People of India,” which can be found 
at 
http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2007/03/22/the_silent 
_war_on_the_people_of_india.

 

UPDATE BY VANDANA SHIVA

The Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture impacts 650 
million farmers of India and 40 million small retailers and it is 
redefining the relationships between people in the two biggest 
democracies in the world.

   A new movement on retail democracy has begun in India that is 
bringing together small shopkeepers, street hawkers, trade unions 
and farmers unions. On August 9, 2007, which is Quit India Day, 
the movement will be organizing actions across the country 
telling Wal-Mart to leave India.

   For more information, visit our website at www.navdanya.org.

 

 

 

#9 Privatization of America’s Infrastructure

Sources: Mother Jones, February 2007 Title; “The Highwaymen” 
Author: Daniel Schulman with James Ridgeway

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/highwaymen.html

 
Human Events, June 12,2006 Title: “Bush Administration Quietly 
Plans NAFTA Super Highway” Author: Jerome R. Corsi 
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=15497

 
Student Researcher: Rachel Icaza and Ioana Lupu Faculty 
Evaluator: Marco Calavita, Ph.D.

 

We will soon be paying Wall Street investors, Australian bankers, 
and Spanish contractors for the privilege of driving on American 
roads, as more than twenty states have enacted legislation 
allowing public-private partnerships to build and run highways. 
Investment firms including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the 
Carlyle Group are approaching state politicians with advice to 
sell off public highway and transportation infrastructure. When 
advising state officials on the future of this vital public asset 
, these investment firms fail to mention that their sole purpose 
is to pick up infrastructure at the lowest price possible in 
order to maximize returns for their investors. Investors, most 
often foreign companies, are charging tolls and insisting on 
“noncompete” clauses that limit governments from expanding or 
improving nearby roads.

   In 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway 
Act, which called for the federal and state governments to build 
41,000 miles of high-quality roads across the nation, over rivers 
and gorges, swamps and deserts, over and through vast mountain 
ranges, in what would later be called the “greatest public works 
project in human history.” Eisenhower considered the interstate 
highway system so vital to the public interest that he authorized 
the federal government to assume 90 percent of the massive cost.

   Fifty years later, states are selling off our nation’s 
enormous, and aging, infrastructure to private investors. 
Proponents are celebrating these transactions as a no-pain, 
all-gain way to off-load maintenance expenses and increase 
highway-building funds without raising taxes. Opponents are 
lambasting these plans as a major turn toward handing the 
nation’s valuable common asset over to private firms whose 
fidelity is to stockholders—not to the public transportation 
system or the people who use it.

   On June 29, 2006, Indiana’s governor Mitch Daniels announced 
that Indiana had received $3.8 billion from a foreign consortium 
made up of the Spanish construction firm Cintra and the Macquarie 
Infrastructure Group (MIG) of Australia. In exchange the state 
handed over operation of a 157-mile Indiana toll road for the 
next seventy-five years. With the consortium collecting the 
tolls, which will eventually rise far higher, the privatized road 
should generate $11 billion for MIG-Cintra over the course of the 
contract.

   In September 2005, Daniels solicited bids for the project, 
with Goldman Sachs serving as the state’s financial adviser—a 
role that would net the bank a $20 million advisory fee. When 
Goldman Sachs, one of the nation’s most active and most 
profitable investment banks, with deep connections to Washington, 
began advising Indiana on selling its toll road, it failed to 
mention the fact that, even as it was advising Indiana on how to 
get the best return, its Australian subsidiary’s mutual funds 
were ratcheting up their positions in MIG—becoming de facto 
investors in the deal.

   Many are suspicious that governors like Daniels across the 
nation are taking questionable advice from corporate investment 
banks—and from Washington.

   Despite public concerns, privatization of US transportation 
infrastructure has the full backing of the Bush administration. 
Tyler Duvall, the US Department of Transportation’s assistant 
secretary for transportation policy, says the DoT has raised the 
idea with “almost every state” government and is working on 
sample legislation that states can use for such projects. Across 
the nation, there is now talk of privatizing the New York Thruway 
to the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey turnpikes, as well as 
of inviting the private sector to build and operate highways and 
bridges from Alabama to Alaska.

   In Texas, Governor Rick Perry still refuses to release details 
of a $1.3 billion contract his administration signed with Cintra 
for a forty-mile toll road from Austin to Seguin, or of an 
enormous $184 billion proposal to build a 4,000-mile network of 
toll roads through Texas.

   It is known, however, that the Bush administration is quietly 
advancing the plan to build a huge ten-lane NAFTA Super Highway 
through the heart of the US along Interstate 35, from the Mexican 
border at Laredo, Texas to the Canadian border north of Duluth, 
Minnesota, financed largely through public-private partnerships. 
The Texas Department of Transportation will oversee the 
Trans-Texas Corridor as the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway, 
which will be leased to the Cintra consortium as a privately 
opera ted toll road. Construction is slated to begin in 2007.

   Authors Daniel Schulman and James Ridgeway warn that, just as 
the creation of a National Highway system promised to “change the 
face of America,” in Eisenhower’s words, so too could its demise.

 

 

# 10 Vulture Funds Threaten Poor Nations’ Debt Relief

Source: BBC Newsnight, February 14, 2007 Title: “Vulture Fund 
Threat to Third World” Author: Greg Palast with Meirion Jones

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17070.htm

 
Student Researcher: Jenifer German Faculty Evaluator: Robert 
Girling, Ph.D.

 

Vulture funds, otherwise known as “distressed-debt investors,” 
are undermining UN and other global efforts to relieve 
impoverished Third World nations of the debt that has burdened 
them for many decades.

Vulture funds are financial organizations that buy up debts that 
are near default or bankruptcy. The vulture fund will pay the 
original investor pennies on the dollar for the debt and then 
approach the debtor to arrange a better repayment on the loan, or 
will go after the debtor in court.

In the private financial world, these funds, like the birds they 
are named for, provide a useful function for investors who are 
unable to follow up on defaulted debts and are themselves facing 
financial ruin if the debtor reneges entirely.

Under normal circumstances, distressed-debt investing—like day 
trading—is risky business. It is a gamble and the company knows 
that going in. The vulture fund may get nothing for its 
investment if the debtor continues to default and has no assets 
to attach. However, if there is still meat on the bones (the 
debtor has considerable assets to liquidate) the vulture fund can 
make millions.

A problem has arisen in recent years, however, as vulture funds 
have begun inserting themselves into an increasingly globalized 
“free market”—where no distinction is made between an 
irresponsible and defaulted company and a destitute and 
impoverished nation.

In the case of nations, the actions of vulture funds are 
corrupting the process begun in 1996 to provide debt relief for 
Third World nations struggling to emerge from the heavy debt laid 
upon them by previous corrupt rulers and colonial masters.

In one recent case, the poverty-stricken nation of Zambia was 
negotiating with Romania to reduce a $40 million debt still owed 
from a 1979 loan to buy Romanian tractors. In 1999, Romania had 
agreed to liquidate the entire loan for $3 million. Zambia 
planned to use the debt cancellation to invest in much-needed 
nurses, teachers, and basic infrastructure. Just before the deal 
was finalized however, investors at the England-based vulture 
fund Donegal International convinced the Romanian government to 
sell them the loan for just under $4 million—not much more than 
Zambia had offered. Donegal then turned around and sued Zambia 
(where the average wage is barely a dollar a day) for the full 
$40 million.

Throughout the lawsuit, global NGOs have pleaded with the English 
High Court to void the new contract and allow Zambia to honor the 
original agreement of $3 million. But on February 15, 2007, an 
English court ruled that Donegal was entitled to much of what it 
was seeking—at least $15 million, perhaps more.1

In a last desperate plea, global NGOs working to relieve Third 
World debt (such as Oxfam and the Jubilee Debt Campaign) turned 
to Donegal directly, asking them to forgive the debt. Donegal 
knows that, as a national entity, even a cash-poor country like 
Zambia has access to considerable resources; in this case copper, 
cobalt, gem stones, coal, uranium, marble, and much more. Public 
works and other civic improvement projects can also be 
liquidated.

Also, Donegal has no history of mercy toward impoverished 
nations. In 1996 it paid $11 million for a discounted Peruvian 
debt and threatened to bankrupt the country unless they paid $58 
million. Donegal got its money. Now they’re suing Congo 
Brazzaville for $400 million for a debt they bought for $10 
million. Donegal and other vulture funds have teams of lawyers 
combing the world for assets that can be seized.

Even worse, many of these vulture funds have influential ties to 
powerful world leaders like the Bush administration. The risk 
normally faced by distressed-debt investors is virtually 
eliminated when they have political influence that is greater 
than the poor nation they are suing. They raise most of their 
money through legal actions in US courts, where lobbying and 
political contributions hold influence. And many vulture fund 
CEOs have close links to top officials both in the US and 
England.

President Bush has the power to block collection of debts by 
vulture funds, either individual ones or all of them, if he 
considers it to be at odds with US foreign policy—in this case 
debt relief for poor countries.2 According to Congressman John 
Conyers, “It’s our position that the Foreign Corrupt Practices 
Act and the comity doctrine brought from our constitution allows 
the president to require the courts defer in individual suits 
against foreign nations. And so, we’re conducting a couple of 
things. First of all, we want to know where these practices are 
going on at the present time, and, two, how we can get this 
information to President Bush so that he can, as he indicated to 
us, stop it immediately.”3

Chancellor Gordon Brown, now the prime minister of England, calls 
the vulture funds perverse and immoral. Oxfam and Jubilee have 
urged the chancellor to use his influence as chair of the 
International Monetary Fund’s key decision-making committee to 
make sure that new regulations are devised that prevent private 
companies from bypassing international debt rules and pursuing 
debts from very poor countries.

 

Citations

     1.   Ashley Seager, “Court Lets Vulture Fund Claw Back 
Zambian Millions,” The Guardian, February 16, 2007.

     2.   Ashley Seager, “Bush Could Block Debt Collection by 
‘Vulture’ Funds,” Guardian Unlimited, February 22, 2007.

     3.   “Conyers Confronts Bush On Vulture Bonds,” an interview 
with Democracy Now!, February 16, 2007. #11 The Scam of 
“Reconstruction” in Afghanistan

 

      Much of the US tax money earmarked to rebuild Afghanistan 
actually ends up going no further than the pockets of wealthy US 
corporations. Paychecks for overpriced, and often incompetent, 
American “experts” under contract to USAID go directly from the 
Agency to American bank accounts. Seventy percent of the aid that 
does make it to a recipient country is carefully “tied” to the 
donor nation for further fraud and exploitation.

 

“Why It's Not Working in Afghanistan” Ann Jones, Tomdispatch.com, 
8/27/06

 

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=116512

 

“Afghanistan Inc: a CorpWatch Investigative Report” Fariba Nawa, 
CorpWatch, 10/6/06   
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13518

 

#12 Another Massacre in Haiti by UN Troops

 

      On December 22, 2006 more than 30 unarmed Haitian 
civilians, including women and children, were killed by extensive 
and indiscriminate gunfire from UN “peacekeeping” forces, 
reportedly as collective punishment for a massive demonstration 
days earlier calling for the return of President Aristide.

 

“UN in Haiti: Accused of Second Massacre” Haiti Information 
Project, Haiti Action, 1/21/2007

 

http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/1_21_7/1_21_7.html

“Haiti: Poor Residents of Capital Describe a State of Siege” 
Wadner Pierre and Jeb Sprague, IPS, 2/28/07

 

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36772

#13 Immigrant Roundups to Gain Cheap Labor for US Corporate 
Giants

 

        In the wake of 9/11, Immigration Customs Enforcement has 
conducted raids and roundups of “illegal” immigrants under the 
rubric of preventing terrorism and keeping our homeland safe. The 
real goal, however, is to replace the immigrant work force in the 
US with a tightly regulated, exploitive guest-worker program.         

 

“Migrants: Globalization’s Junk Mail?” Laura Carlsen, Foreign 
Policy in Focus, 2/23/07  http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4022

“Which Side are You on?” David Bacon, Truthout, 1/29/07   
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012907L.shtml

“Workers, Not Guests” David Bacon, The Nation, 2/6/07    
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/020607LB.shtml

 

#14 Impunity for US War Criminals

 

      A last minute adjustment to the Military Commission Act of 
2006 redefined torture, removed the harshest definition of war 
crimes, and exempts the perpetrators from prosecution for such 
offences dating back to November 1997.  The source of this 
provision is, however, a mystery. The White House denies any 
involvement or knowledge regarding the insertion of such language 
into the MCA.

 

“A Senate mystery keeps torture alive, and its practitioners 
free” Jeff Stein, Congressional Quarterly, 11/ 22/06

 

http://public.cq.com/public/20061122_homeland.html

 

#15 Toxic Exposure Can Be Genetically Transmitted to Future 
Generations

 

      Research suggests that our behavior and our environmental 
conditions may program sections of our children’s DNA. New 
evidence about how genes interact with the environment suggests 
that many industrial chemicals may be more ominously dangerous 
than previously thought. One researcher points to a revolution in 
medicine: “You aren't eating and exercising just for yourself, 
but for your lineage.”

 

“Some Chemicals are More Harmful Than Anyone Ever Suspected” 
Peter Montague, Rachel's Democracy & Health News #876, 10/12/06   
http://www.precaution.org/lib/06/ht061012.htm

 

#16 No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11

 

Osama bin Ladin’s role in the events of September 11, 2001 is not 
mentioned on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” notice. Six years later 
the FBI spokesperson  explains, “The reason 9/11 is not mentioned 
on Osama bin Laden's Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no 
hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11…”

“FBI says, ‘No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11’” Ed 
Haas, Muckraker Report, 6/6/06

http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

 

#17 Drinking Water Contaminated by Military and Corporations

 

    Corporations, municipalities, and the US military are using 
America’s waters as their dumping ground —often with little or no 
accountability. The average major facility discharges pollutants 
in excess of its permitted limit by over 275 percent, nearly four 
times the legal limit, while more than 40 percent of US waterways 
are already unsafe for swimming and fishing,

 

“Factories, Cities Across USA Exceed Water Pollution Limits” 
Sunny Lewis, Environment News Service 3/24/2006

 

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2006/2006-03-24-05.asp

 

“Military Waste In Our Drinking Water” Sunaura Taylor and Astra 
Taylor,

 

AlterNet,  8/4/2006   http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/39723/

 

     

 

#18 Mexico’s Stolen Election

 

      US interests were significantly invested in the outcome of 
Mexico’s 2006 presidential election in which overwhelming 
evidence reveals massive fraud.

“Evidence of Election Fraud Grows in México,” Chuck Collins and 
Joshua Holland, AlterNet, 8/2/2006 
http://www.alternet.org/story/39763

“Mexico: The Political Volcano Rumbles” Revolution, 9/10/06    
http://revcom.us/a/060/mexico-volcano-en.html

 

#19 People’s Movement Challenges Neo-Liberal Agenda

 

      In Latin America, massive opposition to US economic 
domination has demanded that populist leaders and parties take 
control of national governments, building powerful alternatives 
to neo-liberal exploitation.

 

“Is the US Free Trade Model Losing Steam?” American Friends 
Service Committee, Trade Matters,  5/3/06

http://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/trade-agreements/LosingSteam.htm

 

“Economic Policy Changes With New Latin American Leaders” Mark 
Weisbrot, International Herold Tribune, 12/28/06 
http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=773&Itemid=45

 

 “Is Hugo Chaves a Threat to Stability? No.” Mark Weisbrot, 
International Affairs Forum, 3/31/07

 

http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1102&Itemid=45

 

#20 Terror Act Against Animal Activists

 

      The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2006 expanded the 
definition of “terrorism” to include acts that interfere, or 
promote interference, with the operation of an animal enterprise. 
Over 160 groups opposed this Act on grounds that its terminology 
is dangerously vague and poses major conflict to the US 
Constitution.

 

“The AETA is Invidiously Detrimental to the Animal Rights 
Movement (and Unconstitutional as Well)” David Hoch and Odette 
Wilkens, Vermont Journal of  Environmental Law, 3/9/07

http://www.vjel.org/editorials/2007S/Hoch.Wilkens.Editorial.htm

“US House Passes Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act With Little 
Discussion or Dissent” Will Potter, Green is the New Red, 
11/14/06   
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/2006/11/13/aeta-passes-house-recap/

 “22 Years for Free-Speech Advocates: Six Animal Rights Activists 
Given Lengthy Prison Sentences for Running Website” Budgerigar, 
Earth First! Journal, 11/06   
http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/article.php?id=6        

 

#21 US Seeks WTO Immunity for Illegal Farm Payments

 

The July 2006 Doha round of WTO negotiations broke down over the 
contentious issue of farm trade and the unrestricted opening of 
markets to agricultural products. In a last-minute proposal, one 
not included on the original agenda, the US insisted that all 
trade agreements include a special “Peace Clause” that would make 
its use of illegal farm subsidies immune from prosecution by the 
countries affected.

“Canada launches WTO case on US subsidies” Eoin Callan, Financial 
Times, 1/9/2007

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/5debac74-9f9b-11db-9e2e-0000779e2340.html

 

 “US seeks “get-out clause” for illegal farm payments” Oxfam, 
6/29/2006

http://www.oxfam.org/en/news/pressreleases2006/pr060629_wto_geneva

 

#22 North Invades Mexico

 

      The number of North Americans living in Mexico has soared 
from 200,000 to 1 million (one-quarter of all US expatriates) in 
the past decade. With more than 70 million American baby-boomers 
expected to retire in the next two decades, experts predict “a 
tidal wave” of migration. The land rush is sending up property 
values to the detriment of locals whose children are consequently 
driven into slums or forced to emigrate north.

 

 “Border Invaders: The Perfect Swarm Heads South” Mike Davis, 
TomDispatch.com,  9/19/2006

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=122537

 

#23 Feinstein’s Conflict of Interest in Iraq

 

      Dianne Feinstein is involved in monumental conflicts of 
interest as she promotes and exploits the Global War on Terror. 
As a member of the Military Construction Appropriations 
subcommittee, Senator Feinstein voted for appropriations worth 
billions of dollars to her husband's military construction firms, 
while consistently voting to fund US military proliferation.

 

“Senator Feinstein’s Iraq Conflict” Peter Byrne, Bohemian, 
1/24/2007 
http://www.bohemian.com/metro/01.24.07/dianne-feinstein-0704.html          

 

#24 Media Misquotes Threat From Iran’s President

 

      A mistranslated quotation attributed to Iran’s President 
Ahmadinejad, which threatened that, “Israel must be wiped off the 
map,” has been spread around the world. Ahmadinejad’s actual 
statements, however, were significantly less threatening.

“‘Wiped Off The Map’ - The Rumor of the Century” Arash Norouzi, 
MohammadMossadegh.com, Global Research, 1/20/2007  
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NOR20070120&articleId=4527

 

“Full Text: The President of Iran's Letter To President Bush” 
Translated by Le Monde, Information Clearing House, 05/09/06   
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12984.htm

 

#25 Who Will Profit From Native Energy?

 

      The US government and energy industry intend to market a 
shift away from dependence on foreign energy by deregulating and 
stepping up their exploitation (“development”) of wind and solar 
resources located on Native American reservations.

“Native Energy Futures” Brian Awehali, Lip Magazine, 6/5/06 
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featawehali_nativefutures.htm

 
Statement by Project Censored Director Peter Phillips Regarding 
the Importance of the 2008 Censored Stories and the Nature of 
Censorship Today.
 
We need to broaden our understanding of censorship in the US. No 
longer is the dictionary definition of direct government control 
of news adequate. The private corporate media in the US 
significantly undercover and/or deliberately censor numerous 
important news stories every year.

 
The systemic erosion of human rights and civil liberties, in the 
US, is the common theme of many of the most censored stories of 
2006-07.

 
The corporate media last year ignored that habeas corpus can now 
be suspended for anyone by order of the President. With the 
approval of Congress, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, 
signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, allows for the suspension of 
habeas corpus for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While 
media, including a lead editorial in the New York Times October 
19, 2006, have given false comfort that American citizens will 
not be the victims of the measures legalized by this Act, the law 
is quite clear that ‘any person’ can be targeted. The text in the 
MCA allows for the institution of a military alternative to the 
constitutional justice system for “any person” regardless of 
American citizenship. The MCA effectively does away with habeas 
corpus rights for all people living in the US deemed by the 
President to be enemy combatants.

 
Laws enacted last year allowing the government to more easily 
institute martial law is  another civil liberties story ignored 
by the corporate media in 2006-07. The John Warner Defense 
Authorization Act of 2007 allows the president to station 
military troops anywhere in the United States and take control of 
state-based National Guard units without the consent of the 
governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public 
disorder." The law in effect repealed the Posse Comitatus Act, 
which had placed str ict prohibitions on military involvement in 
domestic law enforcement in the US since just after the Civil 
War.

 
Additionally, under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and 
Local Cops Organized Nationally) three federally coordinated mass 
arrests occurred between April 2005 and October 2006. In an 
unprecedented move, more than 30,000 “fugitives” were arrested in 
the largest dragnets in the nation's history. The operations, 
coordinated by the Justice Department and Homeland Security, 
directly involved over 960 agencies (state, local and federal) 
and are the first time in US history that all of the domestic 
police a gencies have been put under the direct control of the 
federal government.

 
Finally, the term “terrorism” has been dangerously expanded to 
include any acts that interfere, or promote interference with the 
operations of animal enterprises. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism 
Act (AETA), signed into law on November 27, 2006 expands the 
definition of an “animal enterprise” to any business that “uses 
or sells animals or animal products.” The law essentially makes 
many protesters, boycotters or picketers of businesses in the US 
potential terrorists.

 
Most people in the US believe in our Bill of Rights and value 
personal freedoms. Yet, our corporate media in the past year 
failed to inform us about serious changes in our civil rights and 
liberties.  Despite our busy lives we want to be informed about 
serious decisions made by the powerful and rely on the corporate 
media to keep us abreast of important changes. When a media fails 
to cover these issues, what else can we call it but censorship?

 
A broader definition of censorship in America today needs to 
include any interference, deliberate or not, with the free flow 
of vital news information to the American people. With the size 
of the major media giants in the US, there is no excuse for 
consistently missing major news stories that affect all our 
lives.

 

Peter Phillips e-mail: peter.phillips@sonoma.edu

Andrew Roth e-mail: rotha@sonoma.edu

 

Project Censored

Sonoma State University

1801 East Cotati Ave.

Rohnert Park, CA 94928

(707) 664-2500

 

Tax-deductible donations accepted

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr Relea