Fox News Lies, Claims Rosie Was Fired
Trump also jumps on the bandwagon
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Neo-Con talking heads, Donald Trump and even some 9/11 truth activist groups are erroneously claiming that Rosie O'Donnell was fired by ABC in an attempt to strip her of her status as a crusader for free speech. The truth is that Rosie was sick and tired of ABC's deliberate attempts to censor her and had already decided to leave The View several weeks ago.
As we reported yesterday, prominent 9/11 truth sources close to O'Donnell revealed to Alex Jones weeks ago that Rosie had refused to have her first amendment rights restricted and was likely to quit on her own terms after she was asked to stay on the show by ABC with the proviso that she tone down her stance on the issue of 9/11.
In addition, The View wanted O'Donnell to sign a three year contract when Rosie just wanted a shorter commitment of 12 months. Many have heralded this as a huge mistake on the part of ABC.
Despite this the establishment media, once again caring little for facts or bothering to find out the truth, has surmised that Rosie was fired for talking about the 9/11 cover up.
Fox News' John Gibson has concocted his own conspiracy theory about why O'Donnell will no longer appear on The View:
Was it the grabbing the crotch and shouting "Eat me"? Probably not. As grotesque as that command was, as awful as that image may be, it was probably just a gag-inducing moment that only confirmed what the ABC suits and Barbara Walters had already decided. They had to have decided she must go because of one reason: her insistence on pushing 9/11 conspiracy nutter theories on national network television, a deeply embarrassing thing for any self-respecting network, especially one that is vying for the top spot in the evening news wars.
Do you think it helps Charlie Gibson, a respected veteran of straight news, to be on a network which has allowed an employee to bellow to the sky that the attacks of 9/11 were a put-up job in which our own government attacked its own people? And what is one left to conclude other than that when you hear Rosie demanding the audience go Google "World Trade 7" and see how they weren't telling you the truth.
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Once again we get the half baked and ill informed "this is what 9/11 conspiracy theorists think" trash and then Gibson goes on to say how anyone who suggests building 7 was "pulled" is saying "George Bush did it" - thus both WTC owner Larry Silverstein and most recently John Kerry must be saying that then?
In addition Bill O'Reilly has written a slime covered piece in which he announces himself as an oracle for predicting O'Donnell would be pushed out at ABC:
As predicted here last January, Ms. O'Donnell is leaving "The View." She made the announcement today, making me an oracle. Truthfully, that wasn't a very hard prediction to make. In corporate America, there are boundaries. People who make money for corporations can stretch the boundaries. But sooner or later, the corporations, in this case Disney, has to decide what's best for the shareholders.
O'Reilly also claims that the American public dislikes O'Donnell on The View and that is why Disney essentially severed relations with Rosie. In truth it is O'Reilly himself that the American public dislikes. As O'Donnell's ratings have sky rocketed, his own have plummeted. ABC's The View averages over twice as many viewers as O'Reilly's show, reaching a total of around 30 million viewers throughout the course of the entire show.
O'Reilly's viewership has been in freefall since his October 2004 sex scandal, dropping from a height of around 3.1 million to just over 2 million in October 2006 and leveling of at that rate to the present day. O'Reilly has lost over a third of his audience in two years, yet has the gall to continually announce that he has his finger on the pulse of America and "knows the American people".
In a further series of lies, un-truths and total ignorance, Donald Trump has weighed in on the issue.
O'Reilly "interviewed" Trump on his radio show whereupon he had this to say:
O'REILLY: Do you have any inside information about Disney?
TRUMP: I don't want to say what I have, Bill. I can just tell you that this was a deal that was not going to happen. And she —most likely — I mean the straw that broke the camel's back was what she did at the Waldorf- Astoria.
O'REILLY: Yes, that's what I believe, too. But let me just get this straight. You don't have to burn any sources, but you are convinced that Disney threw her over the side.
TRUMP: I am convinced that Disney threw her over the side, absolutely.
People magazine checked in with Trump to get his expert opinion about O’Donnell leaving the show. When asked Trump told them, “Well, she didn't leave The View, ABC fired her. They couldn't take it anymore. Her ratings, frankly, were good during the month of January when she and I were going at it, but they've been falling very steadily ever since. Her other show – her talk show – was canceled because of low ratings.”
Not one iota of this statement is true. O'Donnell has ensured that The View's ratings have risen by 17% in the time she has been on the show, introducing 600, 000 new viewers, the primary reason as to why she was offered a new contract.
Given the success of her outspoken approach on The View, there is no doubt that O'Donnell will now be offered her own syndicated show, and it will be on her own terms. Therefore we expect her pledge of allegiance to exposing 9/11 truth to only intensify in the coming months.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
5-Year Prison Sentence For Brown As New Waco Draws Nearer
5-Year Prison Sentence For Brown As New Waco Draws Nearer
Margot Sanger-Katz
Concord Monitor
Wednesday April 25, 2007
A federal judge sentenced tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown to more than five years in prison yesterday, giving them sentences at the top of the range recommended by probation officers but below sentencing recommendations offered by the prosecutor.
The couple did not attend the hearing, and Ed Brown refused to recognize the sentence or the federal court that issued it.
"I've been convicted of crimes?" he asked in a phone interview yesterday.
The couple have been holed up in their fortified Plainfield home for several months, saying that any attempts to arrest them will trigger a violent confrontation with federal officials.
The Browns were convicted in January of conspiring to defraud the government, conspiring to disguise large financial transactions and disguising large financial transactions. Elaine Brown, whose West Lebanon dental practice earned the couple's income, was also convicted of multiple counts of tax evasion and failure to withhold employment taxes. The government calculated the couple's unpaid tax bill at roughly $750,000.
The Browns, who maintain that federal income tax laws don't apply to them, argued during their trial that the laws were invalid. Midway through the trial, the Browns stopped attending the proceedings. Ed Brown issued internet and radio statements that the situation might turn into "another Waco" and urged armed supporter to help him resist capture. In 1993, a standoff between the Branch Davidian religious sect and federal officers near Waco, Texas, resulted in 80 deaths, including those of four law enforcement agents.
Elaine Brown returned to court several days later and was released into the custody of a son in Massachusetts on the condition that she not return to her husband.
But a few weeks after the guilty verdict, she violated the terms of her release and joined Ed Brown in Plainfield. On a daily internet radio show and in sporadic blog posts and news interviews, the couple have challenged the validity of their convictions and the jurisdiction of the court, and they have issued threats against the judge, prosecutor and other federal officials.
Yesterday, it appeared that the U.S. marshals took those threats seriously. More than a dozen marshals were positioned around the courtroom during the sentencing. Others stood at patrols around the Concord courthouse during the day. Several of the marshals said they were brought in from out of state to work the hearings.
"We have concerns," U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said at a press conference after the sentences were announced. "We're genuinely concerned because of their use of the internet, the blogs and some of the statements the Browns have made."
Judge Stephen McAuliffe rejected attempts by the prosecutor to boost the couple's sentences outside of the range recommended by probation officers. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Morse argued that both Browns' sentences could be increased under federal sentencing guidelines because they had disrupted government functions and committed further crimes as fugitives. He also asked the judge to depart from the guidelines altogether because of the unusual circumstances surrounding their convictions.
"The defendants are thumbing their noses at the rule of law every step of the way," Morse said.
McAulliffe handed down nearly identical sentences. Both Ed and Elaine Brown were sentenced to 63 months in prison and three years of supervised release. The conditions of their supervised release require them to immediately file accurate tax returns for the years of their crimes and to comply with any payment plan required by the IRS.
The judge also finalized an order requiring the Browns to forfeit part of their interest in their home and office building found to be related to their crimes. The couple can satisfy that requirement by paying the total judgment, about $215,000.
During the trial, Elaine Brown turned down a plea deal that would have included a two-year prison sentence.
McAuliffe said the Browns' sentences were appropriate, given that they had been convicted of "garden variety" tax crimes, but he noted that they might face additional prison sentences if they were charged and convicted of the other crimes Morse described.
During the sentencings, Morse mentioned the Browns' destruction of Elaine Brown's electronic monitoring bracelet as a federal felony and also referred to threats against court officials, another federal crime.
Morse did not answer reporters' questions yesterday, but in a phone interview on Monday he said he could not comment on whether his office planned to charge the Browns over those allegations.
The Browns have 10 days to appeal their convictions. It is unclear whether they will. Shortly after the jury verdict in January, the couple attempted to file an appeal, but it was rejected as premature. In recent statements, the Browns have said that they will no longer receive mail from the court or file any documents. Joe Haas, a friend from Gilmanton Iron Works, said that Ed Brown told him yesterday that he would not file an appeal.
"Ed says he doesn't care. He doesn't acknowledge them. It's all a fiction," Haas said.
In a phone interview yesterday, Brown did not answer questions about his appeal, but he questioned whether the judge's ruling applied to him.
"Who's he?" Brown asked. "What's he? Part of the corporation of the United States? That has nothing to do with me. I'm a natural living soul."
Monier, the U.S. marshal, said his office's strategy has not changed as a result of the sentences. He said his staff will continue to communicate with the Browns and will not initiate a siege or standoff at their home.
"We're just not going to engage in that kind of game with them," he said.
In a letter he sent to the couple yesterday, he urged the Browns to turn themselves in.
"We have, and will continue to take, all reasonable steps to resolve this peacefully," he wrote.
Monier did say that his office will take action against Brown supporters who bring weapons to the Plainfield house or otherwise provide "assistance, aid, or comfort to the Browns in their continuing efforts to obstruct justice and avoid apprehension."
Since Ed Brown stopped attending his trial, he has been visited by a number of supporters who have brought food, weapons and technical assistance to him, and later to Elaine. Monier did not say whether friends who brought food might be subject to prosecution, but he did say visiting would be allowed.
"It's got to be a little bit more than just, 'Let's go out and say hi to Ed and Elaine today,' " Monier said.
About 15 supporters either attended the hearings or demonstrated outside the courthouse yesterday. Most said they were not surprised by the outcome.
"The whole thing was unfair, so it's still unfair," said Bernie Bastian of Weare, a close friend of Ed Brown's who attended every day of the trial. Bastian waited outside the courthouse yesterday because he said that he did not want to recognize the court's jurisdiction over his friend.
"I expected them to do wrong, and they met my expectation," he said.
Margot Sanger-Katz
Concord Monitor
Wednesday April 25, 2007
A federal judge sentenced tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown to more than five years in prison yesterday, giving them sentences at the top of the range recommended by probation officers but below sentencing recommendations offered by the prosecutor.
The couple did not attend the hearing, and Ed Brown refused to recognize the sentence or the federal court that issued it.
"I've been convicted of crimes?" he asked in a phone interview yesterday.
The couple have been holed up in their fortified Plainfield home for several months, saying that any attempts to arrest them will trigger a violent confrontation with federal officials.
The Browns were convicted in January of conspiring to defraud the government, conspiring to disguise large financial transactions and disguising large financial transactions. Elaine Brown, whose West Lebanon dental practice earned the couple's income, was also convicted of multiple counts of tax evasion and failure to withhold employment taxes. The government calculated the couple's unpaid tax bill at roughly $750,000.
The Browns, who maintain that federal income tax laws don't apply to them, argued during their trial that the laws were invalid. Midway through the trial, the Browns stopped attending the proceedings. Ed Brown issued internet and radio statements that the situation might turn into "another Waco" and urged armed supporter to help him resist capture. In 1993, a standoff between the Branch Davidian religious sect and federal officers near Waco, Texas, resulted in 80 deaths, including those of four law enforcement agents.
Elaine Brown returned to court several days later and was released into the custody of a son in Massachusetts on the condition that she not return to her husband.
But a few weeks after the guilty verdict, she violated the terms of her release and joined Ed Brown in Plainfield. On a daily internet radio show and in sporadic blog posts and news interviews, the couple have challenged the validity of their convictions and the jurisdiction of the court, and they have issued threats against the judge, prosecutor and other federal officials.
Yesterday, it appeared that the U.S. marshals took those threats seriously. More than a dozen marshals were positioned around the courtroom during the sentencing. Others stood at patrols around the Concord courthouse during the day. Several of the marshals said they were brought in from out of state to work the hearings.
"We have concerns," U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said at a press conference after the sentences were announced. "We're genuinely concerned because of their use of the internet, the blogs and some of the statements the Browns have made."
Judge Stephen McAuliffe rejected attempts by the prosecutor to boost the couple's sentences outside of the range recommended by probation officers. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Morse argued that both Browns' sentences could be increased under federal sentencing guidelines because they had disrupted government functions and committed further crimes as fugitives. He also asked the judge to depart from the guidelines altogether because of the unusual circumstances surrounding their convictions.
"The defendants are thumbing their noses at the rule of law every step of the way," Morse said.
McAulliffe handed down nearly identical sentences. Both Ed and Elaine Brown were sentenced to 63 months in prison and three years of supervised release. The conditions of their supervised release require them to immediately file accurate tax returns for the years of their crimes and to comply with any payment plan required by the IRS.
The judge also finalized an order requiring the Browns to forfeit part of their interest in their home and office building found to be related to their crimes. The couple can satisfy that requirement by paying the total judgment, about $215,000.
During the trial, Elaine Brown turned down a plea deal that would have included a two-year prison sentence.
McAuliffe said the Browns' sentences were appropriate, given that they had been convicted of "garden variety" tax crimes, but he noted that they might face additional prison sentences if they were charged and convicted of the other crimes Morse described.
During the sentencings, Morse mentioned the Browns' destruction of Elaine Brown's electronic monitoring bracelet as a federal felony and also referred to threats against court officials, another federal crime.
Morse did not answer reporters' questions yesterday, but in a phone interview on Monday he said he could not comment on whether his office planned to charge the Browns over those allegations.
The Browns have 10 days to appeal their convictions. It is unclear whether they will. Shortly after the jury verdict in January, the couple attempted to file an appeal, but it was rejected as premature. In recent statements, the Browns have said that they will no longer receive mail from the court or file any documents. Joe Haas, a friend from Gilmanton Iron Works, said that Ed Brown told him yesterday that he would not file an appeal.
"Ed says he doesn't care. He doesn't acknowledge them. It's all a fiction," Haas said.
In a phone interview yesterday, Brown did not answer questions about his appeal, but he questioned whether the judge's ruling applied to him.
"Who's he?" Brown asked. "What's he? Part of the corporation of the United States? That has nothing to do with me. I'm a natural living soul."
Monier, the U.S. marshal, said his office's strategy has not changed as a result of the sentences. He said his staff will continue to communicate with the Browns and will not initiate a siege or standoff at their home.
"We're just not going to engage in that kind of game with them," he said.
In a letter he sent to the couple yesterday, he urged the Browns to turn themselves in.
"We have, and will continue to take, all reasonable steps to resolve this peacefully," he wrote.
Monier did say that his office will take action against Brown supporters who bring weapons to the Plainfield house or otherwise provide "assistance, aid, or comfort to the Browns in their continuing efforts to obstruct justice and avoid apprehension."
Since Ed Brown stopped attending his trial, he has been visited by a number of supporters who have brought food, weapons and technical assistance to him, and later to Elaine. Monier did not say whether friends who brought food might be subject to prosecution, but he did say visiting would be allowed.
"It's got to be a little bit more than just, 'Let's go out and say hi to Ed and Elaine today,' " Monier said.
About 15 supporters either attended the hearings or demonstrated outside the courthouse yesterday. Most said they were not surprised by the outcome.
"The whole thing was unfair, so it's still unfair," said Bernie Bastian of Weare, a close friend of Ed Brown's who attended every day of the trial. Bastian waited outside the courthouse yesterday because he said that he did not want to recognize the court's jurisdiction over his friend.
"I expected them to do wrong, and they met my expectation," he said.
Giuliani warns of 'new 9/11' if Dems win
Giuliani warns of 'new 9/11' if Dems win
Roger Simon
The Politico
Wednesday April 25, 2007
MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.
“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.
The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.
“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”
“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”
He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”
After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will safer with a Republican president.”
Giuliani, whose past positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights have made him anathema to some in his party, believes his tough stance on national defense and his post-Sept. 11 reputation as a fighter of terrorism will be his trump card with doubting Republicans.
“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”
Giuliani said terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”
Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”
Addressing the terrorists directly, Giuliani said: “We are not giving that up, and you are not going to take it from us!”
The crowd thundered its approval.
Giuliani also said that America had been naive about terrorism in the past and had missed obvious signals.
“They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”
Roger Simon
The Politico
Wednesday April 25, 2007
MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.
“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.
The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.
“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”
“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”
He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”
After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will safer with a Republican president.”
Giuliani, whose past positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights have made him anathema to some in his party, believes his tough stance on national defense and his post-Sept. 11 reputation as a fighter of terrorism will be his trump card with doubting Republicans.
“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”
Giuliani said terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”
Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”
Addressing the terrorists directly, Giuliani said: “We are not giving that up, and you are not going to take it from us!”
The crowd thundered its approval.
Giuliani also said that America had been naive about terrorism in the past and had missed obvious signals.
“They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Are we safe from robots that can think for themselves?
Are we safe from robots that can think for themselves?
REBECCA CAMBER
UK Daily Mail
Tuesday April 23, 2007
Robots that can think for themselves could soon be caring for our children and the elderly and policing our streets, say experts.
Scientists told yesterday of a new generation of robots which can work without human direction.
They predict that in the next five years robots will be available for child-minding, to work in care homes, monitor prisons and help police trace criminals.
And while it may sound like something out of a science-fiction film, the experts say advances in technology have made the thinking robot possible.
A group of leading robotic researchers called for an urgent public debate and legislation to prevent large numbers of autonomous robots being introduced into society without considering the potential risks to public safety.
Until now most robots have been operated by humans, usually by remote control or verbal commands. But now autonomous machines such as toys and vacuum cleaners which cover the room without needing any human instructions or guidance are being introduced.
Manufacturers are exploring ways to make robotic toys look after children, which experts say will lead to child-minding machines able to monitor youngsters, transmitting their progress to the parents by onboard cameras.
In Japan, scientists are producing robots to act as companions for the elderly and check their heart rate.
Alan Winfield, professor of electronic engineering at the University of the West of England in Bristol, said yesterday it would not be long before technological advances made it possible for robots to be introduced in the home, as well as prisons and the police service.
Speaking at a debate on robot ethics at the London Science Media Centre, he said: "It is highly likely that in a number of years robots will be employed both for child-minding and care for the elderly.
"But the danger is that we will sleepwalk into a situation where we accept a large number of autonomous robots in our lives without being sure of the consequences.
"The outcome could be that when given a choice the robot could make the wrong decision and someone gets hurt. They can go wrong just like a motor car can.
"We should be aware of the future that we are letting ourselves in for. We need to look at their safety and reliability."
His warning echoes the hit Hollywood sci-fi film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, in which a slave robot with a mind of its own causes chaos.
Noel Sharkey, professor of computer science at Sheffield University, said: "Technology is increasing at an incredible rate.
"My main worry is that these autonomous robots could be introduced very quickly. We need to have an informed public debate now before that happens."
The biggest advances in robots in recent years have been as weapons of war. The U.S. military is developing battlefield robots which will be given the ability to decide when to use lethal force.
At the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, a battlefield robot is being developed which will use radar data and intelligence feeds to make decisions based on a set of ethical rules, which has been compared to an artificial conscience.
The Korean government is looking to create robotic armed border guards as part of a £ 51million investment in robotics.
REBECCA CAMBER
UK Daily Mail
Tuesday April 23, 2007
Robots that can think for themselves could soon be caring for our children and the elderly and policing our streets, say experts.
Scientists told yesterday of a new generation of robots which can work without human direction.
They predict that in the next five years robots will be available for child-minding, to work in care homes, monitor prisons and help police trace criminals.
And while it may sound like something out of a science-fiction film, the experts say advances in technology have made the thinking robot possible.
A group of leading robotic researchers called for an urgent public debate and legislation to prevent large numbers of autonomous robots being introduced into society without considering the potential risks to public safety.
Until now most robots have been operated by humans, usually by remote control or verbal commands. But now autonomous machines such as toys and vacuum cleaners which cover the room without needing any human instructions or guidance are being introduced.
Manufacturers are exploring ways to make robotic toys look after children, which experts say will lead to child-minding machines able to monitor youngsters, transmitting their progress to the parents by onboard cameras.
In Japan, scientists are producing robots to act as companions for the elderly and check their heart rate.
Alan Winfield, professor of electronic engineering at the University of the West of England in Bristol, said yesterday it would not be long before technological advances made it possible for robots to be introduced in the home, as well as prisons and the police service.
Speaking at a debate on robot ethics at the London Science Media Centre, he said: "It is highly likely that in a number of years robots will be employed both for child-minding and care for the elderly.
"But the danger is that we will sleepwalk into a situation where we accept a large number of autonomous robots in our lives without being sure of the consequences.
"The outcome could be that when given a choice the robot could make the wrong decision and someone gets hurt. They can go wrong just like a motor car can.
"We should be aware of the future that we are letting ourselves in for. We need to look at their safety and reliability."
His warning echoes the hit Hollywood sci-fi film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, in which a slave robot with a mind of its own causes chaos.
Noel Sharkey, professor of computer science at Sheffield University, said: "Technology is increasing at an incredible rate.
"My main worry is that these autonomous robots could be introduced very quickly. We need to have an informed public debate now before that happens."
The biggest advances in robots in recent years have been as weapons of war. The U.S. military is developing battlefield robots which will be given the ability to decide when to use lethal force.
At the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, a battlefield robot is being developed which will use radar data and intelligence feeds to make decisions based on a set of ethical rules, which has been compared to an artificial conscience.
The Korean government is looking to create robotic armed border guards as part of a £ 51million investment in robotics.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Virginia School Shooting: Another Government Black-Op?
Virginia School Shooting: Another Government Black-Op?
Early details suggest Columbine-style set-up to justify mass gun control, VA Tech has "blood on their hands," banned concealed carry, disarming victims
Paul Joseph Watson & Steve Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, April 16, 2007
Early details about the horrific school shooting at Virginia Tech strongly indicate that these events represent a Columbine-style black-op that will be exploited in the coming days to push for mass gun control and further turning our schools into prisons.
Eyewitness Matt Kazee told the Alex Jones Show that it was a full two to three hours after the shootings began that loudspeakers installed around the campus were used to warn students to stay indoors and that a shooter was on the loose.
Quite how the killer was afforded so much time before any action was taken to stop him is baffling, especially considering the fact that the campus, according to Kazee, was crawling with police before the event happened due to numerous bomb threats that had been phoned in last week.
The shootings came three days after a bomb threat Friday forced the cancellation of classes in three buildings, WDBJ in Roanoke reported. Also, the 100,000-square-foot Torgersen Hall was evacuated April 2 after police received a written bomb threat, The Roanoke Times reported.
CNN quoted a student who was outraged at the delay in identifying and stopping the killer.
"What happened today this was ridiculous. And I don't know what happened or what was going through this guy's mind," student Jason Piatt told CNN. "But I'm pretty outraged and I'll say on the record I'm pretty outraged that someone died in a shooting in a dorm at 7 o'clock in the morning and the first e-mail about it — no mention of locking down campus, no mention of canceling classes — they just mention that they're investigating a shooting two hours later at 9:22."
He added: "That's pretty ridiculous and meanwhile, while they're sending out that e-mail, 22 more people got killed."
The details that are beginning to emerge fill the criteria that this could very well be another government black-op that will be used as justification for more gun control and turning our schools into prisons, festooned with armed guards, surveillance cameras and biometric scanning to gain entry.
Ironic therefore it is that Virginia is a concealed carry state and yet Virginia Tech campus recently enforced a policy prohibiting "unauthorized possession, storage or control" of firearms on campus. According to gun rights activists such as Aaron Zelman of Jews For The Preservation of Firearms, VA Tech has "blood on its hands" for disarming the victims who could potentially have defended themselves against the killer.
Initial reports suggested there were two shooters, but the story quickly changed to just one shooter who later killed himself (as happens in almost all these cases) or was shot by police.
Eyewitness accounts describe police hiding behind trees and failing to pursue the killer, while ordering the school to be placed on lockdown so nobody could escape the carnage as the killer picked off his targets with seemingly little interruption from the police.
At the moment, the official death toll is 30, but could rise, making this the deadliest school shooting in history.
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9/11 Hero William Rodriguez Tells His Story!
In this powerful and emotional DVD, produced by William Rodriguez himself, the 9/11 hero presents his incredible story of bravery and the subsequent honors and accolades he turned his back on in his search for the real truth of what happened that fateful day. Click here to buy the DVD or click here to subscribe to Prison Planet.tv and watch it online now in high quality!
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If these figures are accurate, the casualty figures surpass those of the school shooting at Columbine in 1999 when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.
It is well documented that disturbing questions remain over the incident at Columbine. It is clear that authorities had prior knowledge of what was going to happen. Observers were in the area hours before the shooting took place. Articles from the Associated Press stated that ballistics from Columbine show that six of the thirteen victims were possibly shot and killed by Jefferson County SWAT.
In addition, it was never properly explained how Klebold and Harris were able to transport over 100 bombs into the school before the shootings began.
In the aftermath of Columbine there were calls for vastly increased gun control laws, more than 15 state legislatures passed significant gun control bills or dropped NRA-supported bills.
In 1996 a similar incident occurred in Dunblane in Scotland where sixteen children and one adult were killed. The resulting inquiry recommended tighter control of handgun ownership, public feeling had turned against private gun ownership, allowing a much more restrictive ban on handguns to pass.
It then emerged that the killer Thomas Hamilton was heavily involved in Freemasonry, as well as running clubs for young boys, a fact which Labour and Tory ministers acknowledged in correspondence to each other. A a 100-year public secrecy order was placed on the documents, along with the majority of other information relating to the case including the police report. There have been allegations that the lengthy closure order was placed on the report after it linked Hamilton to figures in the Scottish establishment, including two senior politicians and a lawyer.
In both the Dunblane and Columbine cases the shooters turned the guns on themselves after the killing spree was over.
We will have more on this story as it unfolds.
Early details suggest Columbine-style set-up to justify mass gun control, VA Tech has "blood on their hands," banned concealed carry, disarming victims
Paul Joseph Watson & Steve Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, April 16, 2007
Early details about the horrific school shooting at Virginia Tech strongly indicate that these events represent a Columbine-style black-op that will be exploited in the coming days to push for mass gun control and further turning our schools into prisons.
Eyewitness Matt Kazee told the Alex Jones Show that it was a full two to three hours after the shootings began that loudspeakers installed around the campus were used to warn students to stay indoors and that a shooter was on the loose.
Quite how the killer was afforded so much time before any action was taken to stop him is baffling, especially considering the fact that the campus, according to Kazee, was crawling with police before the event happened due to numerous bomb threats that had been phoned in last week.
The shootings came three days after a bomb threat Friday forced the cancellation of classes in three buildings, WDBJ in Roanoke reported. Also, the 100,000-square-foot Torgersen Hall was evacuated April 2 after police received a written bomb threat, The Roanoke Times reported.
CNN quoted a student who was outraged at the delay in identifying and stopping the killer.
"What happened today this was ridiculous. And I don't know what happened or what was going through this guy's mind," student Jason Piatt told CNN. "But I'm pretty outraged and I'll say on the record I'm pretty outraged that someone died in a shooting in a dorm at 7 o'clock in the morning and the first e-mail about it — no mention of locking down campus, no mention of canceling classes — they just mention that they're investigating a shooting two hours later at 9:22."
He added: "That's pretty ridiculous and meanwhile, while they're sending out that e-mail, 22 more people got killed."
The details that are beginning to emerge fill the criteria that this could very well be another government black-op that will be used as justification for more gun control and turning our schools into prisons, festooned with armed guards, surveillance cameras and biometric scanning to gain entry.
Ironic therefore it is that Virginia is a concealed carry state and yet Virginia Tech campus recently enforced a policy prohibiting "unauthorized possession, storage or control" of firearms on campus. According to gun rights activists such as Aaron Zelman of Jews For The Preservation of Firearms, VA Tech has "blood on its hands" for disarming the victims who could potentially have defended themselves against the killer.
Initial reports suggested there were two shooters, but the story quickly changed to just one shooter who later killed himself (as happens in almost all these cases) or was shot by police.
Eyewitness accounts describe police hiding behind trees and failing to pursue the killer, while ordering the school to be placed on lockdown so nobody could escape the carnage as the killer picked off his targets with seemingly little interruption from the police.
At the moment, the official death toll is 30, but could rise, making this the deadliest school shooting in history.
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9/11 Hero William Rodriguez Tells His Story!
In this powerful and emotional DVD, produced by William Rodriguez himself, the 9/11 hero presents his incredible story of bravery and the subsequent honors and accolades he turned his back on in his search for the real truth of what happened that fateful day. Click here to buy the DVD or click here to subscribe to Prison Planet.tv and watch it online now in high quality!
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If these figures are accurate, the casualty figures surpass those of the school shooting at Columbine in 1999 when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves.
It is well documented that disturbing questions remain over the incident at Columbine. It is clear that authorities had prior knowledge of what was going to happen. Observers were in the area hours before the shooting took place. Articles from the Associated Press stated that ballistics from Columbine show that six of the thirteen victims were possibly shot and killed by Jefferson County SWAT.
In addition, it was never properly explained how Klebold and Harris were able to transport over 100 bombs into the school before the shootings began.
In the aftermath of Columbine there were calls for vastly increased gun control laws, more than 15 state legislatures passed significant gun control bills or dropped NRA-supported bills.
In 1996 a similar incident occurred in Dunblane in Scotland where sixteen children and one adult were killed. The resulting inquiry recommended tighter control of handgun ownership, public feeling had turned against private gun ownership, allowing a much more restrictive ban on handguns to pass.
It then emerged that the killer Thomas Hamilton was heavily involved in Freemasonry, as well as running clubs for young boys, a fact which Labour and Tory ministers acknowledged in correspondence to each other. A a 100-year public secrecy order was placed on the documents, along with the majority of other information relating to the case including the police report. There have been allegations that the lengthy closure order was placed on the report after it linked Hamilton to figures in the Scottish establishment, including two senior politicians and a lawyer.
In both the Dunblane and Columbine cases the shooters turned the guns on themselves after the killing spree was over.
We will have more on this story as it unfolds.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Gloria Steinem: How the CIA Used Feminism to Destabilize Society
Gloria Steinem: How the CIA Used Feminism to Destabilize Society
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
March 18, 2002
"In the 1960's, the elite media invented second-wave feminism as part of the elite agenda to dismantle civilization and create a New World Order."
Since writing these words last week, I have discovered that before she became a feminist leader, Gloria Steinem worked for the CIA spying on Marxist students in Europe and disrupting their meetings. She became a media darling due to her CIA connections. MS Magazine, which she edited for many years was indirectly funded by the CIA.
Steinem has tried to suppress this information, unearthed in the 1970's by a radical feminist group called "Red Stockings." In 1979, Steinem and her powerful CIA-connected friends, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post and Ford Foundation President Franklin Thomas prevented Random House from publishing it in "Feminist Revolution." Nevertheless the story appeared in the "Village Voice" on May 21, 1979.
Steinem has always pretended that she had been a student radical. "When I was in college, it was the McCarthy era," she told Susan Mitchell in 1997, "and that made me a Marxist." (Icons, Saints and Divas: Intimate Conversations with Women who Changed the World 1997. p 130) Her bio-blurb in June 1973 MS. Magazine states: "Gloria Steinem has been a freelance writer all her professional life. Ms magazine is her first full-time salaried job."
Not true. Raised in an impoverished, dysfunctional family in Toledo Ohio, Steinem somehow managed to attend elite Smith College, Betty Friedan's alma mater. After graduating in 1955, Steinem received a "Chester Bowles Student Fellowship" to study in India. Curiously, an Internet search reveals that this fellowship has no existence apart from Gloria Steinem. No one else has received it.
In 1958, Steinem was recruited by CIA's Cord Meyers to direct an "informal group of activists" called the "Independent Research Service." This was part of Meyer's "Congress for Cultural Freedom," which created magazines like "Encounter" and "Partisan Review" to promote a left-liberal chic to oppose Marxism. Steinem, attended Communist-sponsored youth festivals in Europe, published a newspaper, reported on other participants, and helped to provoke riots.
One of Steinem's CIA colleagues was Clay Felker. In the early 1960's, he became an editor at Esquire and published articles by Steinem which established her as a leading voice for women's lib. In 1968, as publisher of New York Magazine, he hired her as a contributing editor, and then editor of Ms. Magazine in 1971. Warner Communications put up almost all the money although it only took 25% of the stock. Ms. Magazine's first publisher was Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a CIA-connected PR executive who planned John Kennedy's Dallas motorcade route. Despite its anti establishment image, MS magazine attracted advertising from the cream of corporate America. It published ads for ITT at the same time as women political prisoners in Chile were being tortured by Pinochet, after a coup inspired by the US conglomerate and the CIA.
Steinem's personal relationships also belie her anti establishment pretensions. She had a nine-year relationship with Stanley Pottinger, a Nixon-Ford assistant attorney general, credited with stalling FBI investigations into the assassinations of Martin Luther King, and the ex-Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Latelier. In the 1980's, she dated Henry Kissinger. For more details, see San Francisco researcher Dave Emory.
Our main misconception about the CIA is that it serves US interests. In fact, it has always been the instrument of a dynastic international banking and oil elite (Rothschild, Rockefeller, Morgan) coordinated by the Royal Institute for Internal Affairs in London and their US branch, the Council for Foreign Relations. It was established and peopled by blue bloods from the New York banking establishment and graduates of Yale University's secret pagan "Skull and Bones" society. Our current President, his father and grandfather fit this profile.
The agenda of this international cabal is to degrade the institutions and values of the United States in order to integrate it into a global state that it will direct through the United Nations. In its 1947 Founding Charter, the CIA is prohibited from engaging in domestic activities. However this has never stopped it from waging a psychological war on the American people. The domestic counterpart of the "Congress for Cultural Freedom" was the "American Committee for Cultural Freedom." Using foundations as conduits, the CIA controlled intellectual discourse in the 1950's and 1960's, and I believe continues to do so today. In "The Cultural Cold War," Francis Stonor Saunders estimates that a thousand books were produced under the imprint of a variety of commercial and university presses, with covert subsidies.
The CIA's "Project Mockingbird" involved the direct infiltration of the corporate media, a process that often included direct takeover of major news outlets. "By the early 1950's," writes Deborah Davis, in her book "Katherine the Great," the CIA owned respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communication vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all." In 1982 the CIA admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents in the field. Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, who ran the operation until his "suicide" in 1963, boasted that "you could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple of hundred dollars a month."
I was born in 1949. Idealists in my parent's generation were disillusioned when the Communist dream of universal brotherhood turned out to be a shill for a brutal despotism. My own generation may discover that our best instincts have also been manipulated and exploited. There is evidence that the 60's drug counter culture, the civil rights movement, and anti-war movement, like feminism, were CIA directed. For example, the CIA has admitted setting up the (National Student Association as a front in 1947 http://www.cia-on-campus.org/nsa/nsa2.html). In the early 1950's the NSA opposed the attempts of the House Un American Activities Committee to root out Communist spies. According to Phil Agee Jr., NSA officers participated in the activities of SNCC, the militant civil rights group, and Students for a Democratic Society, a radical peace group.
According to Mark Riebling, the CIA also may have used Timothy Leary. Certainly the agency distributed LSD to Leary and other opinion makers in the 1960s. Leary made a generation of Americans turn away from active participation in society and seek fulfillment "within." In another example of the CIA's use of drugs to interfere in domestic politics, Gary Webb describes how in the 1980's, the CIA flooded Black ghettos with cocaine.
I won't attempt to analyze the CIA's motivation except to suggest what they have in common: They demoralized, alienated and divided Americans. The elite operates by fostering division and conflict in the world. Thus, we don't realize who the real enemy is. For the same reason, the CIA and elite foundations also fund the diversity and multicultural movements.
Feminism has done the most damage. There is no more fundamental yet delicate relationship in society than male and female. On it depends the family, the red blood cell of society. Nobody with the interests of society at heart would try to divide men and women. Yet the lie that men have exploited women has become the official orthodoxy.
Man loves woman. His first instinct is to nurture ("husband") and see her thrive. When a woman is happy, she is beautiful. Sure, some men are abusive. But the vast majority have supported and guided their families for millennium.
Feminists relentlessly advance the idea that our inherent male and female characteristics, crucial to our development as human beings, are mere "stereotypes." This is a vicious calumny on all heterosexuals, 95% of the population. Talk about hate! Yet it is taught to children in elementary schools! It is echoed in the media. Lesbians like Rosie O'Donnell are advanced as role models.
All of this is calculated to create personal confusion and sow chaos among heterosexuals. As a result, millions of American males are emasculated and divorced from their relationship to family (the world and the future.) The American woman has been hoodwinked into investing herself in a mundane career instead of the timeless love of her husband and children. Many women have become temperamentally unfit to be wives and mothers. People, who are isolated and alone, stunted and love-starved, are easy to fool and manipulate. Without the healthy influence of two loving parents, so are their children.
Feminism is a grotesque fraud perpetrated on society by its governing elite. It is designed to weaken the American social and cultural fabric in order to introduce a friendly fascist New World Order. Its advocates are sanctimonious charlatans who have grown rich and powerful from it. They include a whole class of liars and moral cripples who work for the elite in various capacities: government, education and the media. These imposters ought to be exposed and ridiculed.
Women's oppression is a lie. Sex roles were never as rigid as feminists would have us believe. My mother had a successful business in the 1950's importing watchstraps from Switzerland. When my father's income increased, she was content to quit and concentrate on the children. Women were free to pursue careers if they wanted to. The difference was that their role as wife and mother was understood, and socially validated, as it should be.
Until Gloria Steinem and the CIA came along.
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
March 18, 2002
"In the 1960's, the elite media invented second-wave feminism as part of the elite agenda to dismantle civilization and create a New World Order."
Since writing these words last week, I have discovered that before she became a feminist leader, Gloria Steinem worked for the CIA spying on Marxist students in Europe and disrupting their meetings. She became a media darling due to her CIA connections. MS Magazine, which she edited for many years was indirectly funded by the CIA.
Steinem has tried to suppress this information, unearthed in the 1970's by a radical feminist group called "Red Stockings." In 1979, Steinem and her powerful CIA-connected friends, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post and Ford Foundation President Franklin Thomas prevented Random House from publishing it in "Feminist Revolution." Nevertheless the story appeared in the "Village Voice" on May 21, 1979.
Steinem has always pretended that she had been a student radical. "When I was in college, it was the McCarthy era," she told Susan Mitchell in 1997, "and that made me a Marxist." (Icons, Saints and Divas: Intimate Conversations with Women who Changed the World 1997. p 130) Her bio-blurb in June 1973 MS. Magazine states: "Gloria Steinem has been a freelance writer all her professional life. Ms magazine is her first full-time salaried job."
Not true. Raised in an impoverished, dysfunctional family in Toledo Ohio, Steinem somehow managed to attend elite Smith College, Betty Friedan's alma mater. After graduating in 1955, Steinem received a "Chester Bowles Student Fellowship" to study in India. Curiously, an Internet search reveals that this fellowship has no existence apart from Gloria Steinem. No one else has received it.
In 1958, Steinem was recruited by CIA's Cord Meyers to direct an "informal group of activists" called the "Independent Research Service." This was part of Meyer's "Congress for Cultural Freedom," which created magazines like "Encounter" and "Partisan Review" to promote a left-liberal chic to oppose Marxism. Steinem, attended Communist-sponsored youth festivals in Europe, published a newspaper, reported on other participants, and helped to provoke riots.
One of Steinem's CIA colleagues was Clay Felker. In the early 1960's, he became an editor at Esquire and published articles by Steinem which established her as a leading voice for women's lib. In 1968, as publisher of New York Magazine, he hired her as a contributing editor, and then editor of Ms. Magazine in 1971. Warner Communications put up almost all the money although it only took 25% of the stock. Ms. Magazine's first publisher was Elizabeth Forsling Harris, a CIA-connected PR executive who planned John Kennedy's Dallas motorcade route. Despite its anti establishment image, MS magazine attracted advertising from the cream of corporate America. It published ads for ITT at the same time as women political prisoners in Chile were being tortured by Pinochet, after a coup inspired by the US conglomerate and the CIA.
Steinem's personal relationships also belie her anti establishment pretensions. She had a nine-year relationship with Stanley Pottinger, a Nixon-Ford assistant attorney general, credited with stalling FBI investigations into the assassinations of Martin Luther King, and the ex-Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Latelier. In the 1980's, she dated Henry Kissinger. For more details, see San Francisco researcher Dave Emory.
Our main misconception about the CIA is that it serves US interests. In fact, it has always been the instrument of a dynastic international banking and oil elite (Rothschild, Rockefeller, Morgan) coordinated by the Royal Institute for Internal Affairs in London and their US branch, the Council for Foreign Relations. It was established and peopled by blue bloods from the New York banking establishment and graduates of Yale University's secret pagan "Skull and Bones" society. Our current President, his father and grandfather fit this profile.
The agenda of this international cabal is to degrade the institutions and values of the United States in order to integrate it into a global state that it will direct through the United Nations. In its 1947 Founding Charter, the CIA is prohibited from engaging in domestic activities. However this has never stopped it from waging a psychological war on the American people. The domestic counterpart of the "Congress for Cultural Freedom" was the "American Committee for Cultural Freedom." Using foundations as conduits, the CIA controlled intellectual discourse in the 1950's and 1960's, and I believe continues to do so today. In "The Cultural Cold War," Francis Stonor Saunders estimates that a thousand books were produced under the imprint of a variety of commercial and university presses, with covert subsidies.
The CIA's "Project Mockingbird" involved the direct infiltration of the corporate media, a process that often included direct takeover of major news outlets. "By the early 1950's," writes Deborah Davis, in her book "Katherine the Great," the CIA owned respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communication vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all." In 1982 the CIA admitted that reporters on the CIA payroll have acted as case officers to agents in the field. Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, who ran the operation until his "suicide" in 1963, boasted that "you could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple of hundred dollars a month."
I was born in 1949. Idealists in my parent's generation were disillusioned when the Communist dream of universal brotherhood turned out to be a shill for a brutal despotism. My own generation may discover that our best instincts have also been manipulated and exploited. There is evidence that the 60's drug counter culture, the civil rights movement, and anti-war movement, like feminism, were CIA directed. For example, the CIA has admitted setting up the (National Student Association as a front in 1947 http://www.cia-on-campus.org/nsa/nsa2.html). In the early 1950's the NSA opposed the attempts of the House Un American Activities Committee to root out Communist spies. According to Phil Agee Jr., NSA officers participated in the activities of SNCC, the militant civil rights group, and Students for a Democratic Society, a radical peace group.
According to Mark Riebling, the CIA also may have used Timothy Leary. Certainly the agency distributed LSD to Leary and other opinion makers in the 1960s. Leary made a generation of Americans turn away from active participation in society and seek fulfillment "within." In another example of the CIA's use of drugs to interfere in domestic politics, Gary Webb describes how in the 1980's, the CIA flooded Black ghettos with cocaine.
I won't attempt to analyze the CIA's motivation except to suggest what they have in common: They demoralized, alienated and divided Americans. The elite operates by fostering division and conflict in the world. Thus, we don't realize who the real enemy is. For the same reason, the CIA and elite foundations also fund the diversity and multicultural movements.
Feminism has done the most damage. There is no more fundamental yet delicate relationship in society than male and female. On it depends the family, the red blood cell of society. Nobody with the interests of society at heart would try to divide men and women. Yet the lie that men have exploited women has become the official orthodoxy.
Man loves woman. His first instinct is to nurture ("husband") and see her thrive. When a woman is happy, she is beautiful. Sure, some men are abusive. But the vast majority have supported and guided their families for millennium.
Feminists relentlessly advance the idea that our inherent male and female characteristics, crucial to our development as human beings, are mere "stereotypes." This is a vicious calumny on all heterosexuals, 95% of the population. Talk about hate! Yet it is taught to children in elementary schools! It is echoed in the media. Lesbians like Rosie O'Donnell are advanced as role models.
All of this is calculated to create personal confusion and sow chaos among heterosexuals. As a result, millions of American males are emasculated and divorced from their relationship to family (the world and the future.) The American woman has been hoodwinked into investing herself in a mundane career instead of the timeless love of her husband and children. Many women have become temperamentally unfit to be wives and mothers. People, who are isolated and alone, stunted and love-starved, are easy to fool and manipulate. Without the healthy influence of two loving parents, so are their children.
Feminism is a grotesque fraud perpetrated on society by its governing elite. It is designed to weaken the American social and cultural fabric in order to introduce a friendly fascist New World Order. Its advocates are sanctimonious charlatans who have grown rich and powerful from it. They include a whole class of liars and moral cripples who work for the elite in various capacities: government, education and the media. These imposters ought to be exposed and ridiculed.
Women's oppression is a lie. Sex roles were never as rigid as feminists would have us believe. My mother had a successful business in the 1950's importing watchstraps from Switzerland. When my father's income increased, she was content to quit and concentrate on the children. Women were free to pursue careers if they wanted to. The difference was that their role as wife and mother was understood, and socially validated, as it should be.
Until Gloria Steinem and the CIA came along.
Friday, April 13, 2007
War Profiteering and the Concentration of Income and Wealth in America
Escalating Military Spending
by Prof. Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Global Research, April 13, 2007
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How Escalation of War and Military Spending Are Used as Disguised or Roundabout Ways to Reverse the New Deal and Redistribute National Resources in Favor of the Wealthy.
Escalating Military Spending: Income Redistribution in Disguise
Critics of the recent U.S. wars of choice have long argued that they are all about oil. "No Blood for Oil" has been a rallying cry for most of the opponents of the war.
It can be demonstrated, however, that there is another (less obvious but perhaps more critical) factor behind the recent rise of U.S. military aggressions abroad: war profiteering by Pentagon contractors.
Frequently invoking dubious "threats to our national security and/or interests," these beneficiaries of war dividends, the military–industrial complex and related businesses whose interests are vested in the Pentagon’s appropriation of public money, have successfully used war and military spending to justify their lion’s share of tax dollars and to disguise their strategy of redistributing national income in their favor.
This cynical strategy of disguised redistribution of national resources from the bottom to the top is carried out by a combination of (a) drastic hikes in the Pentagon budget, and (b) equally drastic tax cuts for the wealthy. As this combination creates large budget deficits, it then forces cuts in non-military public spending as a way to fill the gaps that are thus created. As a result, the rich are growing considerably richer at the expense of middle– and low–income classes.
Despite its critical importance, most opponents of war seem to have given short shrift to the crucial role of the Pentagon budget and its contractors as major sources of war and militarism—a phenomenon that the late President Eisenhower warned against nearly half a century ago. Perhaps a major reason for this oversight is that critics of war and militarism tend to view the U.S. military force as primarily a means for imperialist gains—oil or otherwise.
The fact is, however, that as the U.S. military establishment has grown in size, it has also evolved in quality and character: it is no longer simply a means but, perhaps more importantly, an end in itself—an imperial force in its own right. Accordingly, the rising militarization of U.S. foreign policy in recent years is driven not so much by some general/abstract national interests as it is by the powerful special interests that are vested in the military capital, that is, war industries and war–related businesses.
The Magnitude of U.S. Military Spending
Even without the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are fast surpassing half a trillion dollars, U.S. military spending is now the largest item in the federal budget. Officially, it is the second highest item after Social Security payments. But Social Security is a self-financing trust fund. So, in reality, military spending is the highest budget item.
The Pentagon budget for the current fiscal year (2007) is about $456 billion. President Bush’s proposed increase of 10% for next year will raise this figure to over half a trillion dollars, that is, $501.6 billion for fiscal year 2008.
A proposed supplemental appropriation to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "brings proposed military spending for FY 2008 to $647.2 billion, the highest level of military spending since the end of World War II—higher than Vietnam, higher than Korea, higher than the peak of the Reagan buildup."[1]
Using official budget figures, William D. Hartung, Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York, provides a number of helpful comparisons:
Proposed U.S. military spending for FY 2008 is larger than military spending by all of the other nations in the world combined.
At $141.7 billion, this year's proposed spending on the Iraq war is larger than the military budgets of China and Russia combined. Total U.S. military spending for FY2008 is roughly ten times the military budget of the second largest military spending country in the world, China.
Proposed U.S. military spending is larger than the combined gross domestic products (GDP) of all 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The FY 2008 military budget proposal is more than 30 times higher than all spending on State Department operations and non-military foreign aid combined.
The FY 2008 military budget is over 120 times higher than the roughly $5 billion per year the U.S. government spends on combating global warming.
The FY 2008 military spending represents 58 cents out of every dollar spent by the U.S. government on discretionary programs: education, health, housing assistance, international affairs, natural resources and environment, justice, veterans’ benefits, science and space, transportation, training/employment and social services, economic development, and several more items.[2]
Although the official military budget already eats up the lion’s share of public money (crowding out vital domestic needs), it nonetheless grossly understates the true magnitude of military spending. The real national defense budget, according to Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute, is nearly twice as much as the official budget. The reason for this understatement is that the official Department of Defense budget excludes not only the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also a number of other major cost items.[3]
These disguised cost items include budgets for the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security; nuclear weapons research and development, testing, and storage (placed in the Energy budget); veterans programs (in the Veteran’s Administration budget); most military retiree payments (in the Treasury budget); foreign military aid in the form of weapons grants for allies (in the State Department budget); interest payments on money borrowed to fund military programs in past years (in the Treasury budget); sales and property taxes at military bases (in local government budgets); and the hidden expenses of tax-free food, housing, and combat pay allowances.
After adding these camouflaged and misplaced expenses to the official Department of Defense budget, Higgs concludes: "I propose that in considering future defense budgetary costs, a well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it. You may overstate the truth, but if so, you'll not do so by much."[4]
Escalation of the Pentagon Budget and the Rising Fortunes of Its Contractors
The Bush administration’s escalation of war and military spending has been a boon for Pentagon contractors. That the fortunes of Pentagon contractors should rise in tandem with the rise of military spending is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is the fact that these profiteers of war and militarism have also played a critical role in creating the necessary conditions for war profiteering, that is, in instigating the escalation of the recent wars of choice and the concomitant boom of military spending.[5]
Giant arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman have been the main beneficiaries of the Pentagon’s spending bonanza. This is clearly reflected in the continuing rise of the value of their shares in the stock market:
"Shares of U.S. defense companies, which have nearly trebled since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, show no signs of slowing down. . . . The feeling that makers of ships, planes and weapons are just getting into their stride has driven shares of leading Pentagon contractors Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., and General Dynamics Corp. to all-time highs."[6]
Like its manufacturing contractors, the Pentagon’s fast-growing service contractors have equally been making fortunes by virtue of its tendency to shower private contractors with tax-payers’ money. These services are not limited to the relatively simple or routine tasks and responsibilities such food and sanitation services. More importantly, they include "contracts for services that are highly sophisticated [and] strategic in nature," such as the contracting of security services to corporate private armies, or modern day mercenaries. The rapid growth of the Pentagon’s service contracting is reflected (among other indicators) in these statistics: "In 1984, almost two-thirds of the contracting budget went for products rather than services. . . . By fiscal year 2003, 56 percent of Defense Department contracts paid for services rather than goods."[7]
The spoils of war and the devastation in Iraq have been so attractive that an extremely large number of war profiteers have set up shop in that country in order to participate in the booty: "There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield," reported The Washington Post in its 5 December 2006 issue.
The rise in the Pentagon contracting is, of course, a reflection of an overall policy and philosophy of outsourcing and privatizing that has become fashionable ever since President Reagan arrived in the White House in 1980. Reporting on some of the effects of this policy, Scott Shane and Ron Nixon of the New York Times recently wrote: "Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does."[8]
Redistributive Militarism: Escalation of Military Spending Redistributes Income from Bottom to Top
But while the Pentagon contractors and other beneficiaries of war dividends are showered with public money, low- and middle-income Americans are squeezed out of economic or subsistence resources in order to make up for the resulting budgetary shortfalls. For example, as the official Pentagon budget for 2008 fiscal year is projected to rise by more than 10 percent, or nearly $50 billion, "a total of 141 government programs will be eliminated or sharply reduced" to pay for the increase. These would include cuts in housing assistance for low-income seniors by 25 percent, home heating/energy assistance to low-income people by 18 percent, funding for community development grants by 12.7 percent, and grants for education and employment training by 8 percent.[9]
Combined with redistributive militarism and generous tax cuts for the wealthy, these cuts have further exacerbated the ominously growing income inequality that started under President Reagan. Ever since Reagan arrived in the White House in 1980, opponents of non-military public spending have been using an insidious strategy to cut social spending, to reverse the New Deal and other social safety net programs, and to redistribute national/public resources in favor of the wealthy. That cynical strategy consists of a combination of drastic increases in military spending coupled with equally drastic tax cuts for the wealthy. As this combination creates large budget deficits, it then forces cuts in non-military public spending (along with borrowing) to fill the gaps thus created.
For example, at the same time that President Bush is planning to raise military spending by $50 billion for the next fiscal year, he is also proposing to make his affluent-targeted tax cuts permanent at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years, or an average yearly cut of $160 billion. Simultaneously, "funding for domestic discretionary programs would be cut a total of $114 billion" in order to pay for these handouts to the rich. The targeted discretionary programs to be cut include over 140 programs that provide support for the basic needs of low- and middle-income families such as elementary and secondary education, job training, environmental protection, veterans’ health care, medical research, Meals on Wheels, child care and HeadStart, low-income home energy assistance, and many more.[10]
According to the Urban Institute–Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, "if the President's tax cuts are made permanent, households in the top 1 percent of the population (currently those with incomes over $400,000) will receive tax cuts averaging $67,000 a year by 2012. . . . The tax cuts for those with incomes of over $1 million a year would average $162,000 a year by 2012."[11]
Official macroeconomic figures show that, over the past five decades or so, government spending (at the federal, state and local levels) as a percentage of gross national product (GNP) has remained fairly steady—at about 20 percent. Given this nearly constant share of the public sector of national output/income, it is not surprising that increases in military spending have almost always been accompanied or followed by compensating decreases in non-military public spending, and vice versa.
For example, when by virtue of FDR’s New Deal reforms and LBJ’s metaphorical War on Poverty, the share of non-military government spending rose significantly the share of military spending declined accordingly. From the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s, the share of non-military government spending of GNP rose from 9.2 to 14.3 percent, an increase of 5.1 percent. During that time period, the share of military spending of GNP declined from 10.1 to 5.8 percent, a decline of 4.3 percent.[12]
That trend was reversed when President Reagan took office in 1980. In the early 1980s, as President Reagan drastically increased military spending, he also just as drastically lowered tax rates on higher incomes. The resulting large budget deficits were then paid for by more than a decade of steady cuts on non-military spending.
Likewise, the administration of President George W. Bush has been pursuing a similarly sinister fiscal policy of cutting non-military public spending in order to pay for the skyrocketing military spending and the generous tax cuts for the affluent.
Interestingly (though not surprisingly), changes in income inequality have mirrored changes in government spending priorities, as reflected in the fiscal policies of different administrations. Thus, when the share of non-military public spending rose relative to that of military spending from the mid 1950 to the mid 1970s, and the taxation system or policy remained relatively more progressive compared to what it is today, income inequality declined accordingly.
But as President Reagan reversed that fiscal policy by raising the share of military spending relative to non-military public spending and cutting taxes for the wealthy, income inequality also rose considerably. As Reagan’s twin policies of drastic increases in military spending and equally sweeping tax cuts for the rich were somewhat tempered in the 1990s, growth in income inequality slowed down accordingly. In the 2000s, however, the ominous trends that were left off by President Reagan have been picked up by President George W. Bush: increasing military spending, decreasing taxes for the rich, and (thereby) exacerbating income inequality (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Income Inequality in the U.S. (Gini Index), 1913-2004
Source: Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer, No. 114 (December 2006), p. 1
Leaving small, short-term fluctuations aside, Figure 1 shows two major peaks and a trough of the long-term picture of income inequality in the United States. The first peak was reached during the turbulent years of the Great Depression (1929–1933). But it soon began to decline with the implementation of the New Deal reforms in the mid 1930s. The ensuing decline continued almost unabated until 1968, at which time we note the lowest level of inequality.
After 1968, the improving trend in inequality changed course. But the reversal was not very perceptible until the early 1980s, after which time it began to accelerate—by virtue (or vice) of Reaganomics. Although the deterioration that was thus set in motion by the rise of neoliberalism and supply-side economics somewhat slowed down in the 1990s, it has once again gathered steam under President George W. Bush, and is fast approaching the peak of the Great Depression.
It is worth noting that even at its lowest level of 1968, income inequality was still quite lopsided: the richest 20 percent of households made as much as ten times more than the poorest 20 percent. But, as Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer points out, "that looks almost Swedish next to today’s ratio of fifteen times."[13]
The following are some specific statistics of how redistributive militarism and supply-side fiscal policies have exacerbated income inequality since the late 1970s and early 1980s—making after-tax income gaps wider than pre-tax ones. According to recently released data by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), since 1979 income gains among high-income households have dwarfed those of middle- and low-income households. Specifically:
The average after-tax income of the top one percent of the population nearly tripled, rising from $314,000 to nearly $868,000—for a total increase of $554,000, or 176 percent. (Figures are adjusted by CBO for inflation.)
By contrast, the average after-tax income of the middle fifth of the population rose a relatively modest 21 percent, or $8,500, reaching $48,400 in 2004.
The average after-tax income of the poorest fifth of the population rose just 6 percent, or $800, during this period, reaching $14,700 in 2004.[14]
Legislation enacted since 2001 has provided taxpayers with about $1 trillion in tax cuts over the past six years. These large tax reductions have made the distribution of after-tax income more unequal by further concentrating income at the top of the income range. According to the Urban Institute–Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, as a result of the tax cuts enacted since 2001:
In 2006, households in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum received tax cuts (averaging $20) that raised their after-tax incomes by an average of 0.3 percent.
Households in the middle fifth of the income spectrum received tax cuts (averaging $740) that raised their after-tax incomes an average of 2.5 percent.
The top one percent of households received tax cuts in 2006 (averaging $44,200) that increased their after-tax income by an average of 5.4 percent.
Households with incomes exceeding $1 million received an average tax cut of $118,000 in 2006, which represented an increase of 6.0 percent in their after-tax income.[15]
Concluding Remarks: External Wars as Reflections of Domestic Fights over National Resources
Close scrutiny of the Pentagon budget shows that, ever since the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980, opponents of social spending have successfully used military spending as a regulatory mechanism to cut non-military public spending, to reverse the New Deal and other social safety net programs, and to redistribute national/public resources in favor of the wealthy.
Close examination of the dynamics of redistributive militarism also helps explain why powerful beneficiaries of the Pentagon budget prefer war and military spending to peace and non-military public spending: military spending benefits the wealthy whereas the benefits of non-military public spending would spread to wider social strata. It further helps explain why beneficiaries of war dividends frequently invent new enemies and new "threats to our national interests" in order to justify continued escalation of military spending.
Viewed in this light, militaristic tendencies to war abroad can be seen largely as reflections of the metaphorical domestic fights over allocation of public finance at home, of a subtle or insidious strategy to redistribute national resources from the bottom to the top.
Despite the critical role of redistributive militarism, or of the Pentagon budget, as a major driving force to war, most opponents of war have paid only scant attention to this crucial force behind the recent U.S. wars of choice. The reason for this oversight is probably due to the fact that most critics of war continue to view U.S. military force as simply or primarily a means to achieve certain imperialist ends, instead of having become an end in itself.
Yet, as the U.S. military establishment has grown in size, it has also evolved in quality and character: it is no longer simply a means but, perhaps more importantly, an end in itself, an imperial power in its own right, or to put it differently, it is a case of the tail wagging the dog—a phenomenon that the late President Eisenhower so presciently warned against.
Accordingly, rising militarization of U.S. foreign policy in recent years is driven not so much by some general/abstract national interests, or by the interests of Big Oil and other non-military transnational corporations (as most traditional theories of imperialism continue to argue), as it is by powerful special interests that are vested in the war industry and related war-induced businesses that need an atmosphere of war and militarism in order to justify their lion’s share of the public money.
Preservation, justification, and expansion of the military–industrial colossus, especially of the armaments industry and other Pentagon contractors, have become critical big business objectives in themselves. They have, indeed, become powerful driving forces behind the new, parasitic U.S. military imperialism. I call this new imperialism parasitic because its military adventures abroad are often prompted not so much by a desire to expand the empire’s wealth beyond the existing levels, as did the imperial powers of the past, but by a desire to appropriate the lion’s share of the existing wealth and treasure for the military establishment, especially for the war-profiteering contractors. In addition to being parasitic, the new U.S. military imperialism can also be called dual imperialism because not only does it exploit defenseless peoples and their resources abroad but also the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens and their resources at home. (I shall further elaborate on the historically unique characteristics of the Parasitic, dual U.S. military imperialism in another article.)
by Prof. Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Global Research, April 13, 2007
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How Escalation of War and Military Spending Are Used as Disguised or Roundabout Ways to Reverse the New Deal and Redistribute National Resources in Favor of the Wealthy.
Escalating Military Spending: Income Redistribution in Disguise
Critics of the recent U.S. wars of choice have long argued that they are all about oil. "No Blood for Oil" has been a rallying cry for most of the opponents of the war.
It can be demonstrated, however, that there is another (less obvious but perhaps more critical) factor behind the recent rise of U.S. military aggressions abroad: war profiteering by Pentagon contractors.
Frequently invoking dubious "threats to our national security and/or interests," these beneficiaries of war dividends, the military–industrial complex and related businesses whose interests are vested in the Pentagon’s appropriation of public money, have successfully used war and military spending to justify their lion’s share of tax dollars and to disguise their strategy of redistributing national income in their favor.
This cynical strategy of disguised redistribution of national resources from the bottom to the top is carried out by a combination of (a) drastic hikes in the Pentagon budget, and (b) equally drastic tax cuts for the wealthy. As this combination creates large budget deficits, it then forces cuts in non-military public spending as a way to fill the gaps that are thus created. As a result, the rich are growing considerably richer at the expense of middle– and low–income classes.
Despite its critical importance, most opponents of war seem to have given short shrift to the crucial role of the Pentagon budget and its contractors as major sources of war and militarism—a phenomenon that the late President Eisenhower warned against nearly half a century ago. Perhaps a major reason for this oversight is that critics of war and militarism tend to view the U.S. military force as primarily a means for imperialist gains—oil or otherwise.
The fact is, however, that as the U.S. military establishment has grown in size, it has also evolved in quality and character: it is no longer simply a means but, perhaps more importantly, an end in itself—an imperial force in its own right. Accordingly, the rising militarization of U.S. foreign policy in recent years is driven not so much by some general/abstract national interests as it is by the powerful special interests that are vested in the military capital, that is, war industries and war–related businesses.
The Magnitude of U.S. Military Spending
Even without the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are fast surpassing half a trillion dollars, U.S. military spending is now the largest item in the federal budget. Officially, it is the second highest item after Social Security payments. But Social Security is a self-financing trust fund. So, in reality, military spending is the highest budget item.
The Pentagon budget for the current fiscal year (2007) is about $456 billion. President Bush’s proposed increase of 10% for next year will raise this figure to over half a trillion dollars, that is, $501.6 billion for fiscal year 2008.
A proposed supplemental appropriation to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq "brings proposed military spending for FY 2008 to $647.2 billion, the highest level of military spending since the end of World War II—higher than Vietnam, higher than Korea, higher than the peak of the Reagan buildup."[1]
Using official budget figures, William D. Hartung, Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York, provides a number of helpful comparisons:
Proposed U.S. military spending for FY 2008 is larger than military spending by all of the other nations in the world combined.
At $141.7 billion, this year's proposed spending on the Iraq war is larger than the military budgets of China and Russia combined. Total U.S. military spending for FY2008 is roughly ten times the military budget of the second largest military spending country in the world, China.
Proposed U.S. military spending is larger than the combined gross domestic products (GDP) of all 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The FY 2008 military budget proposal is more than 30 times higher than all spending on State Department operations and non-military foreign aid combined.
The FY 2008 military budget is over 120 times higher than the roughly $5 billion per year the U.S. government spends on combating global warming.
The FY 2008 military spending represents 58 cents out of every dollar spent by the U.S. government on discretionary programs: education, health, housing assistance, international affairs, natural resources and environment, justice, veterans’ benefits, science and space, transportation, training/employment and social services, economic development, and several more items.[2]
Although the official military budget already eats up the lion’s share of public money (crowding out vital domestic needs), it nonetheless grossly understates the true magnitude of military spending. The real national defense budget, according to Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute, is nearly twice as much as the official budget. The reason for this understatement is that the official Department of Defense budget excludes not only the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also a number of other major cost items.[3]
These disguised cost items include budgets for the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security; nuclear weapons research and development, testing, and storage (placed in the Energy budget); veterans programs (in the Veteran’s Administration budget); most military retiree payments (in the Treasury budget); foreign military aid in the form of weapons grants for allies (in the State Department budget); interest payments on money borrowed to fund military programs in past years (in the Treasury budget); sales and property taxes at military bases (in local government budgets); and the hidden expenses of tax-free food, housing, and combat pay allowances.
After adding these camouflaged and misplaced expenses to the official Department of Defense budget, Higgs concludes: "I propose that in considering future defense budgetary costs, a well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it. You may overstate the truth, but if so, you'll not do so by much."[4]
Escalation of the Pentagon Budget and the Rising Fortunes of Its Contractors
The Bush administration’s escalation of war and military spending has been a boon for Pentagon contractors. That the fortunes of Pentagon contractors should rise in tandem with the rise of military spending is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is the fact that these profiteers of war and militarism have also played a critical role in creating the necessary conditions for war profiteering, that is, in instigating the escalation of the recent wars of choice and the concomitant boom of military spending.[5]
Giant arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman have been the main beneficiaries of the Pentagon’s spending bonanza. This is clearly reflected in the continuing rise of the value of their shares in the stock market:
"Shares of U.S. defense companies, which have nearly trebled since the beginning of the occupation of Iraq, show no signs of slowing down. . . . The feeling that makers of ships, planes and weapons are just getting into their stride has driven shares of leading Pentagon contractors Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., and General Dynamics Corp. to all-time highs."[6]
Like its manufacturing contractors, the Pentagon’s fast-growing service contractors have equally been making fortunes by virtue of its tendency to shower private contractors with tax-payers’ money. These services are not limited to the relatively simple or routine tasks and responsibilities such food and sanitation services. More importantly, they include "contracts for services that are highly sophisticated [and] strategic in nature," such as the contracting of security services to corporate private armies, or modern day mercenaries. The rapid growth of the Pentagon’s service contracting is reflected (among other indicators) in these statistics: "In 1984, almost two-thirds of the contracting budget went for products rather than services. . . . By fiscal year 2003, 56 percent of Defense Department contracts paid for services rather than goods."[7]
The spoils of war and the devastation in Iraq have been so attractive that an extremely large number of war profiteers have set up shop in that country in order to participate in the booty: "There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield," reported The Washington Post in its 5 December 2006 issue.
The rise in the Pentagon contracting is, of course, a reflection of an overall policy and philosophy of outsourcing and privatizing that has become fashionable ever since President Reagan arrived in the White House in 1980. Reporting on some of the effects of this policy, Scott Shane and Ron Nixon of the New York Times recently wrote: "Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does."[8]
Redistributive Militarism: Escalation of Military Spending Redistributes Income from Bottom to Top
But while the Pentagon contractors and other beneficiaries of war dividends are showered with public money, low- and middle-income Americans are squeezed out of economic or subsistence resources in order to make up for the resulting budgetary shortfalls. For example, as the official Pentagon budget for 2008 fiscal year is projected to rise by more than 10 percent, or nearly $50 billion, "a total of 141 government programs will be eliminated or sharply reduced" to pay for the increase. These would include cuts in housing assistance for low-income seniors by 25 percent, home heating/energy assistance to low-income people by 18 percent, funding for community development grants by 12.7 percent, and grants for education and employment training by 8 percent.[9]
Combined with redistributive militarism and generous tax cuts for the wealthy, these cuts have further exacerbated the ominously growing income inequality that started under President Reagan. Ever since Reagan arrived in the White House in 1980, opponents of non-military public spending have been using an insidious strategy to cut social spending, to reverse the New Deal and other social safety net programs, and to redistribute national/public resources in favor of the wealthy. That cynical strategy consists of a combination of drastic increases in military spending coupled with equally drastic tax cuts for the wealthy. As this combination creates large budget deficits, it then forces cuts in non-military public spending (along with borrowing) to fill the gaps thus created.
For example, at the same time that President Bush is planning to raise military spending by $50 billion for the next fiscal year, he is also proposing to make his affluent-targeted tax cuts permanent at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years, or an average yearly cut of $160 billion. Simultaneously, "funding for domestic discretionary programs would be cut a total of $114 billion" in order to pay for these handouts to the rich. The targeted discretionary programs to be cut include over 140 programs that provide support for the basic needs of low- and middle-income families such as elementary and secondary education, job training, environmental protection, veterans’ health care, medical research, Meals on Wheels, child care and HeadStart, low-income home energy assistance, and many more.[10]
According to the Urban Institute–Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, "if the President's tax cuts are made permanent, households in the top 1 percent of the population (currently those with incomes over $400,000) will receive tax cuts averaging $67,000 a year by 2012. . . . The tax cuts for those with incomes of over $1 million a year would average $162,000 a year by 2012."[11]
Official macroeconomic figures show that, over the past five decades or so, government spending (at the federal, state and local levels) as a percentage of gross national product (GNP) has remained fairly steady—at about 20 percent. Given this nearly constant share of the public sector of national output/income, it is not surprising that increases in military spending have almost always been accompanied or followed by compensating decreases in non-military public spending, and vice versa.
For example, when by virtue of FDR’s New Deal reforms and LBJ’s metaphorical War on Poverty, the share of non-military government spending rose significantly the share of military spending declined accordingly. From the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s, the share of non-military government spending of GNP rose from 9.2 to 14.3 percent, an increase of 5.1 percent. During that time period, the share of military spending of GNP declined from 10.1 to 5.8 percent, a decline of 4.3 percent.[12]
That trend was reversed when President Reagan took office in 1980. In the early 1980s, as President Reagan drastically increased military spending, he also just as drastically lowered tax rates on higher incomes. The resulting large budget deficits were then paid for by more than a decade of steady cuts on non-military spending.
Likewise, the administration of President George W. Bush has been pursuing a similarly sinister fiscal policy of cutting non-military public spending in order to pay for the skyrocketing military spending and the generous tax cuts for the affluent.
Interestingly (though not surprisingly), changes in income inequality have mirrored changes in government spending priorities, as reflected in the fiscal policies of different administrations. Thus, when the share of non-military public spending rose relative to that of military spending from the mid 1950 to the mid 1970s, and the taxation system or policy remained relatively more progressive compared to what it is today, income inequality declined accordingly.
But as President Reagan reversed that fiscal policy by raising the share of military spending relative to non-military public spending and cutting taxes for the wealthy, income inequality also rose considerably. As Reagan’s twin policies of drastic increases in military spending and equally sweeping tax cuts for the rich were somewhat tempered in the 1990s, growth in income inequality slowed down accordingly. In the 2000s, however, the ominous trends that were left off by President Reagan have been picked up by President George W. Bush: increasing military spending, decreasing taxes for the rich, and (thereby) exacerbating income inequality (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Income Inequality in the U.S. (Gini Index), 1913-2004
Source: Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer, No. 114 (December 2006), p. 1
Leaving small, short-term fluctuations aside, Figure 1 shows two major peaks and a trough of the long-term picture of income inequality in the United States. The first peak was reached during the turbulent years of the Great Depression (1929–1933). But it soon began to decline with the implementation of the New Deal reforms in the mid 1930s. The ensuing decline continued almost unabated until 1968, at which time we note the lowest level of inequality.
After 1968, the improving trend in inequality changed course. But the reversal was not very perceptible until the early 1980s, after which time it began to accelerate—by virtue (or vice) of Reaganomics. Although the deterioration that was thus set in motion by the rise of neoliberalism and supply-side economics somewhat slowed down in the 1990s, it has once again gathered steam under President George W. Bush, and is fast approaching the peak of the Great Depression.
It is worth noting that even at its lowest level of 1968, income inequality was still quite lopsided: the richest 20 percent of households made as much as ten times more than the poorest 20 percent. But, as Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer points out, "that looks almost Swedish next to today’s ratio of fifteen times."[13]
The following are some specific statistics of how redistributive militarism and supply-side fiscal policies have exacerbated income inequality since the late 1970s and early 1980s—making after-tax income gaps wider than pre-tax ones. According to recently released data by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), since 1979 income gains among high-income households have dwarfed those of middle- and low-income households. Specifically:
The average after-tax income of the top one percent of the population nearly tripled, rising from $314,000 to nearly $868,000—for a total increase of $554,000, or 176 percent. (Figures are adjusted by CBO for inflation.)
By contrast, the average after-tax income of the middle fifth of the population rose a relatively modest 21 percent, or $8,500, reaching $48,400 in 2004.
The average after-tax income of the poorest fifth of the population rose just 6 percent, or $800, during this period, reaching $14,700 in 2004.[14]
Legislation enacted since 2001 has provided taxpayers with about $1 trillion in tax cuts over the past six years. These large tax reductions have made the distribution of after-tax income more unequal by further concentrating income at the top of the income range. According to the Urban Institute–Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, as a result of the tax cuts enacted since 2001:
In 2006, households in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum received tax cuts (averaging $20) that raised their after-tax incomes by an average of 0.3 percent.
Households in the middle fifth of the income spectrum received tax cuts (averaging $740) that raised their after-tax incomes an average of 2.5 percent.
The top one percent of households received tax cuts in 2006 (averaging $44,200) that increased their after-tax income by an average of 5.4 percent.
Households with incomes exceeding $1 million received an average tax cut of $118,000 in 2006, which represented an increase of 6.0 percent in their after-tax income.[15]
Concluding Remarks: External Wars as Reflections of Domestic Fights over National Resources
Close scrutiny of the Pentagon budget shows that, ever since the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980, opponents of social spending have successfully used military spending as a regulatory mechanism to cut non-military public spending, to reverse the New Deal and other social safety net programs, and to redistribute national/public resources in favor of the wealthy.
Close examination of the dynamics of redistributive militarism also helps explain why powerful beneficiaries of the Pentagon budget prefer war and military spending to peace and non-military public spending: military spending benefits the wealthy whereas the benefits of non-military public spending would spread to wider social strata. It further helps explain why beneficiaries of war dividends frequently invent new enemies and new "threats to our national interests" in order to justify continued escalation of military spending.
Viewed in this light, militaristic tendencies to war abroad can be seen largely as reflections of the metaphorical domestic fights over allocation of public finance at home, of a subtle or insidious strategy to redistribute national resources from the bottom to the top.
Despite the critical role of redistributive militarism, or of the Pentagon budget, as a major driving force to war, most opponents of war have paid only scant attention to this crucial force behind the recent U.S. wars of choice. The reason for this oversight is probably due to the fact that most critics of war continue to view U.S. military force as simply or primarily a means to achieve certain imperialist ends, instead of having become an end in itself.
Yet, as the U.S. military establishment has grown in size, it has also evolved in quality and character: it is no longer simply a means but, perhaps more importantly, an end in itself, an imperial power in its own right, or to put it differently, it is a case of the tail wagging the dog—a phenomenon that the late President Eisenhower so presciently warned against.
Accordingly, rising militarization of U.S. foreign policy in recent years is driven not so much by some general/abstract national interests, or by the interests of Big Oil and other non-military transnational corporations (as most traditional theories of imperialism continue to argue), as it is by powerful special interests that are vested in the war industry and related war-induced businesses that need an atmosphere of war and militarism in order to justify their lion’s share of the public money.
Preservation, justification, and expansion of the military–industrial colossus, especially of the armaments industry and other Pentagon contractors, have become critical big business objectives in themselves. They have, indeed, become powerful driving forces behind the new, parasitic U.S. military imperialism. I call this new imperialism parasitic because its military adventures abroad are often prompted not so much by a desire to expand the empire’s wealth beyond the existing levels, as did the imperial powers of the past, but by a desire to appropriate the lion’s share of the existing wealth and treasure for the military establishment, especially for the war-profiteering contractors. In addition to being parasitic, the new U.S. military imperialism can also be called dual imperialism because not only does it exploit defenseless peoples and their resources abroad but also the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens and their resources at home. (I shall further elaborate on the historically unique characteristics of the Parasitic, dual U.S. military imperialism in another article.)
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