A Short and Irreverent History Of NATO and G8 with Erik Ruder

Thanks to Erik and the UIUC ISO for hosting this.

From the flyer:
Speaker: Eric Ruder, of the Coalition Against NATO and G8
With the upcoming NATO summit looming over Chicago, it’s time to present the historical background and context for both NATO and the G8. The G8 summit was scheduled to meet in Chicago at the same time as NATO, but was recently relocated to Camp David in the face of mass protest.

As two of the central bodies pursuing the interests of the global 1%, understanding how and when they were formed and for what purpose is essential to making sense of why the 99% should resist them. It’s also essential to understand why Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials are willing to spend millions of taxpayer dollars [and don't forget the generous 'donations' by tax-evading corporations], shred essential civil liberties and lock down the city center to accommodate the 10,000 or so diplomats, policymakers and media teams that will descend on the city.

This teach-in will cover a short history of both NATO and G8, what they’ve done and do in the world, and how their decisions—made by largely unaccountable and unelected people at big summits—shape the lives of the global 99 percent. The immense resources they’ve commanded throughout the last several decades have largely created the world we now inhabit, and understanding these processes—both economic and political— and why we should protest them, is the main objective of this meeting.

OpEd: A Long Road to Regulating Derivatives

Editorial
A Long Road to Regulating Derivatives
Published: March 24, 2012 (New York Times)

If there is one lesson from the financial crisis that should be indelible, it is that unregulated derivatives are prone to catastrophic failure. And yet, nearly four years after the crash, and nearly two years since the passage of the Dodd-Frank law, the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market is still dominated by a handful of big banks, and regulation is a slow work in progress.
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That means Americans, and the economy, remain at risk. Properly regulated, derivatives — financial instruments that hedge risk — help to stabilize the economy. Unregulated, they are all too easily converted into tools for vast speculation, as demonstrated by their role in inflating the real estate bubble, amplifying the bust and provoking the bailouts. Unreformed, they will cause havoc again.

Even if they don’t cause a meltdown, unregulated derivatives are still an economic threat. That’s because derivatives have become deeply embedded in the economy. Pension systems use them to hedge investment risk. Food companies use them to lock in crop prices. Airlines and manufacturers use them to lock in prices for fuel or metal. But because there is no central exchange where derivatives’ prices are listed, no one knows if the prices banks charge are reasonable.

What is known is that the banks make billions of dollars a year on derivatives deals — lush profits that are surely higher than they would be if the market were transparent and competitive. Overcharging means that bankers are enriched with money that companies could otherwise invest in their businesses and that consumers could otherwise keep in their pockets.

The Dodd-Frank law charged two agencies with writing a broad range of new rules to rein in derivatives — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees derivatives linked to oil, crops and other commodities, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees securities-based derivatives. There has been progress. The C.F.T.C, in particular, has moved ahead with sound rules to create competition, promote safety, increase transparency and tame speculation. But some of the toughest rules are languishing — like the crucial Dodd-Frank requirement that most derivatives be traded on an open exchange, with prices visible before deals are made.

That would minimize the practice of trading derivatives as private bilateral contracts, in which the price is whatever the bank says it is. Over a year ago, the C.F.T.C. sensibly proposed a system in which buy and sell offers would be electronically posted and widely accessible. In response, industry lobbyists and some lawmakers have made the absurd argument that open trading would hurt banks’ flexibility to continue doing business as usual.

Unfortunately, in today’s political environment, even absurd arguments have the power to delay or derail vital reforms. Republican lawmakers, with some Democratic support, have proposed legislation to roll back the rules on open trading even before regulators have finalized them. Rules that have been finalized are increasingly subject to protracted legal challenges by the financial industry. And regulators are routinely reduced to pleading with Congressional appropriators for chump change to carry out their duties.

It is up to President Obama, who takes credit on the campaign trail for reforming Wall Street, to provide full-throated support for implementing and enforcing the Dodd-Frank rules. Otherwise the law will be a reform in name only.

Review of John Pilger's THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY

The War on Democracy - by John Pilger

Is available for free online at johnpilger.com

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This documentary examines US foreign policy in Latin America over many decades, with a focus on Venezuela.

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Pilger begins in Venezuela.

Here, at first glance, it is obvious the polarization of wealth is immense. Some live in gated communities and country clubs while others live in sprawling, overcrowded slums called barrios.

Hugo Chavez, president, was elected in 1999. Pilger gives us a quick sampling of how Chavez is viewed in the US media, mostly as a threat to the national security, while some extreme Fox news pundits regularly call for his assassination.

But in Venezuela, he is viewed by most as a hero. His presidency has seen the country transition to almost full literacy; extreme poverty is down; free health clinics are open to the public; free schooling is provided for the children, with state funded cafeterias feeding those children at least one hot meal a day; and the poorest mothers and housewives are now paid as day laborers.

Under Chavez, Venezuela has become a much more inclusive and just society. Until his presidency, the poor in Venezuela were invisible to the ruling elite. On the maps of urban areas, the barrios of millions of people were not included, the state's developers wanting to keep the land on the map as green space for future development. Now the poor are able to own their own land for the first time. Now state oil proceeds subsidize the supermarket prices, so that food is affordable to everyone. The country's constitution, newly created, is reprinted in part on food packages, so that everyone is reminded of their rights.

There are still notable problems in Venezuela. There is a stifling old bureaucracy and associated corruption from the pre-Chavez state that lingers on. While poverty is in sharp decline, many are still forced to live a life of begging.

Chavez is criticized by the privately owned media in Venezuela who claim the country is being imperiled by the socialist policies of Chavez's government.

Most of the private wealth in the country had come from oil production, an industry now under state control.

The US had been heavily involved in Venezuelan oil production, being their largest consumer of oil. The deal was the US got cheap oil and the private oil producers got to keep the majority of the profits from the country's oil.

Washington DC was not happy about losing a controlling interest in Venezuelan oil production and the rich in Venezuela were not happy about losing their oil kickbacks.

In 2002 the opposition to Chavez's government was organized, with the private owned media outlets starting personal attacks on Hugo Chavez. The campaign built momentum until April 11th 2002, when an anti-Chavez march was held in the center of Caracas. This is where it gets interesting. There was another march that day, led by Chavez supporters, which was taking place outside the presidential palace, Miraflores.

The anti-Chavez marchers were redirected to the palace by one of their organizers. Some of the anti-Chavez marchers objected to the route change, sensing the danger in bringing these two groups together. But the organizer persisted in changing course, saying "I'm in charge here...this has already been planned, we are going to Miraflores."

As the anti-Chavez demonstrators approached the palace and the pro-Chavez march, gunfire rang out and people started dropping with gunshot wounds to the head. Snipers were firing from hidden positions around the area.

The media immediately tried to blame the Chavez supporters for the violence, but video evidence shows that they were under fire themselves from the snipers, with some attempting to fire back at the hidden sniper positions.

Within hours, a video appears on the privately owned media networks showing a dozen or so prominent military officials, who also blamed the shootings on Chavez and his supporters, and demanding Chavez's resignation.

As Pilger uncovers, the CNN correspondent in Caracas later revealed that the generals in the video had made their recording before the shooting took place. They were aware of the fact that the anti-Chavez people were going to be redirected to Miraflores, and they were aware that people would be killed. This was their plan all along, with the goal being Chavez's resignation.

After the video of the military officials aired, renegade army officers encircled the presidential palace and Chavez was given an ultimatum: resign or the palace would be bombed. He was then taken prisoner, and the plotters of the coup announced that Chavez had resigned. The truth is that he was kidnapped. The next morning, an unelected dictator and prominent businessman, Pedro Carmona, was sworn into office.

The common people were mostly horrified by the abrupt abandoning of the constitution, with good reason. The president, national assembly members, attorney general, supreme court, director of the central bank, and the national electoral board were all “suspended” by dictatorial decree.

Not surprisingly, the US media began running stories justifying the coup with the Miraflores massacre story that we found out was planned beforehand by people organizing the anti-Chavez coup. But CBS reported the lie and told us, “The Bush administration made it clear it is happy with the change in leadership in the country responsible for 15% of America’s oil imports.”

The white house press spokesman also spoke the same lie to the media, claiming that the Chavez government provoked the crisis by suppressing peaceful demonstrations and blaming the Chavez government for the sniper fire.

But very shortly it emerged that the resignation of Chavez had been faked, his signature forged. One of the last independent public radio stations in Venezuela was keeping hope alive by spreading the story, eventually getting Chavez’s wife on the phone to confirm that her husband’s resignation was a fake.

Immediately, Chavez supporters took to the streets demanding the return of the rightful President, Hugo Chavez. Hundreds of thousands of people surrounded the Presidential Palace, forcing the army guard of the dictatorship to retreat. The army announced that it had re-sworn its allegiance to the constitution. The original Presidential guard retook the palace to the cheers of hundreds of thousands of pro-Chavez onlookers. The coup plotters had all fled.

That night Chavez was returned to the Presidential Palace by helicopter, less than 48 hours after being kidnapped.

In a poignant interview with Pilger, Chavez describes the night of the coup. He did not expect to live. He probably expected to end up like Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, deposed by coup and dead with the aid of a foreign nation, in that case Belgium, in Chavez’s case, the United States. In the 6 months leading up to the coup in April of 2002, the Bush administration channeled more than $2 million dollars to the Venezuelan opposition, knowing long before that those same groups were planning a coup against Chavez. Some of that money was given directly to people that ended up in cabinet positions in the short lived government that was installed after the coup.

Chavez says he owes his life to the people of Venezuela, who went out in great numbers, peacefully demanding Chavez be returned.

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Pilger now describes the broader imperial policies of the US, especially in Latin America. He begins in Guatemala.

The majority of Guatemala’s economy, Banana growing, was dominated in the 1950s by the United Fruit Company. A man named John Foster Dulles was on the corporate board of United Fruit Company, he also happened to be US Secretary of State. His brother, Allen Dulles, was the director of the CIA at the time.

Jacobo Arbenz had been elected President of Guatemala in 1950, the first to be elected by a majority of the people. He promised social justice, and his programs were seen as very much like the new deal reforms of Roosevelt. He instituted a land reform plan that was modest in scope, but it was viewed as a communist plot by United Fruit and Washington.

CIA Agent Howard Hunt, who was working for Allen Dulles, claims that he was told that a decision was made at the “highest levels of our government” that Guatemala is to be rid of the Arbenz government. He then, in his own words, says that the CIA planned a year-long “terror campaign” against the Guatemalan people, including bombing and propaganda, to create a sense of crisis in the country. At the end of the campaign, at which point the Arbenz government thought an American invasion of Guatemala was imminent, the CIA sponsored a coup d’état called Operation PBSUCCESS, which toppled the government.

Vice President Richard Nixon flew in to bless the new government, and praise the new path that Guatemala was on. The dictatorships that succeeded Arbenz’s government were supplied weaponry by the US, and death squads killed many of the indigenous people.

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At 44:40, Philip Agee, CIA agent 1957-68, “In the CIA, we didn’t give a hoot about democracy. I mean, it was fine if a government was elected and would cooperate with us, but if it didn’t, then democracy didn’t mean a thing to us, and I don’t think it means a thing today.”

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Pilger discusses Cuba, which the US government was very concerned about. In a video clip from what looks like congressional testimony, CIA director Richard Helms describes the CIA efforts to destabilize Cuba, much like they did in Venezuela. “Under the government aegis we had task forces that were striking at Cuba constantly. We were attempting to blow up power plants, we were attempting to ruin sugar mills, we were attempting to do all kinds of things during this period. This was a matter of American government policy. This wasn’t the CIA.”

And in response to the successful Cuban revolution and land reforms, which brought much positive change in health care and education, the United States has waged economic war on Cuba for over 50 years.

Another amazing clip appears at about 46:16. This one is almost unbelievable. It’s from Congressman Jose Serrano of New York: “How dare you, 90 miles from my country, the last 45 years with a different form of government? How dare you haven’t allowed American corporations to buy you out? How dare you continue this arrogance that says you will never succumb to us? Don’t you know who we are? Don’t you know who these corporations are? Don’t you know your life would be better if you could drink Coca-Cola every day?”

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Pilger says the “Red Scare” and the fear of nuclear war were used to justify the terrorist campaigns against Cuba, Guatemala, and other Latin American countries. The fear that these countries would be “controlled” by the Soviets was justification for aggressive preemptive campaigns by the US to take control those governments. If that is the state of things, obviously there was no concern for democratic rule by the people of those states.

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Pilger then discusses Chile in 1973, in what is becoming a familiar story. A military coup, backed by the US government overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.

The leader of the coup, Augusto Pinochet, had Allende supporters rounded up and brought to the National Stadium in Santiago, which was used as a concentration camp. There were 2000 people kept at the stadium, many died there. The people in the concentration camp were tortured, which included beatings with rubber truncheons on the genitals and the soles of the feet.

At the height of the coup, Sept, 11th, 1973, Pinochet sent planes to attack the presidential palace with Allende inside, bombing the palace and engulfing it in flames. Allende refused to surrender the government or leave. He died inside the burning palace.

At about 53:17, there is a great clip of Henry Kissinger denying US involvement in the coup. In and extremely weak and almost laughable defense, Kissinger basically says, “well there is no evidence that we were involved, so we weren’t involved.” He doesn’t outright deny US involvement in the coup, but says that the lack of evidence is proof that there was no involvement.

But Pilger discloses the publicly available documents indicating US involvement, a CIA cable to an operative in Chile in October 1970 saying that “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup.” When the coup happened 3 years later, a US official cabled back to Washington that “Chile’s coup was close to perfect.”

Duane Clarridge, head of the CIA Latin American division in the early 1980s praises Pinochet as the savior of the state of Chile, tries to minimize the number of deaths attributed to Pinochet's coup takeover, denying both the truth commission’s findings and the monuments to the dead in Santiago. He arrogantly proclaims that the CIA played a major role in overthrowing Allende. Generally, Clarridge feels that if the US national security interests warrant it, it is okay to overthrow a democratically elected government. He acknowledges Pinochet committed human rights violations, but thinks it was worth it, in terms of US national security interests. In his words, "Sometimes, unfortunately, things have to be changed in a rather ugly way."

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By the late 1970s most of Latin America was under the control of US backed dictators. They were sending their enforcers to train in terrorist tactics, the 'ugly way' that Clarridge was talking about, at the School of the Americas in Georgia. This training included torture techniques and interrogation methods. Pilger interviews a former Major from the School of the Americas, Joseph Blair, who describes the training: physical abuse, false imprisonment, threats to family members, torture, killing…these were the philosophy of the School of the Americas.

Pilger spends some time on the details of Nicaragua in the 1980s, where the US backed contra death squads were in action. Then an interview with a nun who was abducted by US backed terrorists in Guatemala in 1989. She was tortured and gang-raped by a group of Guatemalan men, and one American, in secret prison in Guatemala City. This amazing nun that he interviews makes a great point: that US actions at places like Abu Ghraib are not isolated incidents, the US has been involved in this activity, torture and widespread human rights violations, for decades all over the world.

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Things changed in the 1990s. Mostly gone are dictators like Pinochet, replaced with democracies crafted under extreme influence of the United States National Endowment for Democracy. Thing of NED as a US taxpayer sponsored electioneering campaign. Now, whoever these countries vote for, the policies will be largely the same. While the politicians and policies of this era are praised by some, their effect has been to create a polarization of wealth in society. A great divide has emerged between a very small number of people benefitting financially from the system, and the great majority of people living in poverty. The luxury hotels in downtown are just minutes from thousands of people mining a trash heap to survive. Pilger interviews a couple with a week-old baby living in the streets of Santiago, Chile, and they tell him most people are worse off than them. Even for the people who have work, it's not enough to pay their bills. Yet, Chile is held up as the model for the rest of the region by some political commentators in the US.

Bolivia has recently broken away from this model. Popular uprisings released the country from decades of extreme exploitation by the US. Many died in the government's initial response to the uprising. The supposedly democratically elected President, the Washington DC raised Goni, called the Gringo by his people, send in the army to violently put down the uprisings, which started with peacefully blockages of roads. This only outraged the people, who came by the thousands into the streets to protest. This demonstration of true popular democracy happened in 2003, the year after the people of Venezuela peacefully demanded the return of their President Chavez. Goni the Gringo resigned and fled back to Washington DC, where he still lives. In 2005, Evo Morales, the first indigenous person to Preside over Bolivia, was democratically elected.

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Pilger returns to an interview with Chavez, where Chavez feels this trend of true democratic change is sparking off across Latin American, and perhaps further abroad. Pilger agrees that some new faces are offering promising changes, but he does provide a small caution that we shouldn't let our hope and optimism get the best of us. There are great challenges ahead.

Chavez ends with these words: "Victor Hugo wrote this: 'There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.' The American empire has reached its end, and the world must now be governed by the rule of law, equality, justice, and fraternity."

Or you can listen to the whole discussion here: (48 minutes)

Podcast of our interview with Carol Ammons

Airdate: 03/17/2012

Part 1 of 3



Part 2 of 3




Part 3 of 3

Quote for Today

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
--Goethe

Interview with Alex Cline

Alex joined us in studio today to discuss his recent article,
"Coming Soon to a Police Department Near You: Unmanned Aerial Drones"
in the Public i.

Quote of the Day

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor,
to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

--Anatole France