Top 1 percent hijacks gov’t, lower 90 eats cake?

“There is a war going on in this country. I am not referring to the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan. I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people against working families, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country. The billionaires of America are on the warpath. They want more and more and more. …” U.S. Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, December 10, 2010

Editing, excerpting, comment by Carolyn Bennett

“You cannot become a billionaire stepping over children sleeping on the street. …Enough should be enough.”

“The top 1 percent today earns 23.5 percent of all income. In the 1970s, that number was 8 percent. In the 1990s, it was approximately 16 percent. Now it is 23.5 percent. So the people on top are getting a bigger and bigger chunk of all income. Furthermore, it is not only the top 1 percent, there are economists who ask: ‘You think the top 1 percent are doing well? It is really the top one-tenth of 1 percent.’ If you can believe this, the top one-tenth of 1 percent—and I don’t know how many people that is, you can do the arithmetic, 300 million into one-tenth of 1 percent—took in 11 percent of total income, according to the latest data. One-tenth of 1 percent earned 11 percent of all income in America.

“In the 1970s, the top 1 percent only made something like 8 percent of total income. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 to 14 percent. In the late 1990s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005 it passed 21 percent. In 2010, the top 1 percent receive 23 percent of all the income earned in this country.

“The last time that type of income disparity took place was in 1928. I think we all know what happened in 1929.

Top one percent, enough should be enough
But is it?

Today, in terms of wealth as opposed to income, the top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

The United States is in a “horrendous recession right now, where millions and millions of people have lost their jobs, their savings, their homes. This recession was caused by the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street. These people created the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression. The American people bailed them out.

“Now, two years after the bailout, they are giving themselves more compensation than they ever have. They are saying to the American people,

Sorry we caused this recession because of our greed. Sorry you are unemployed. Sorry you lost your house but that is not all that important. What is important is that I, on Wall Street, continue to get millions of dollars in compensation and in bonuses, that I have big parties. How can I get by on one house? I need five houses, 10 houses. I need three jet planes to take me all over the world. Sorry. We have the money. We have the power. We have the lobbyists here on Wall Street. Tough luck. That is the world, get used to it.

“They need more, more. Fifty million is not enough. They need $100 million. One hundred million is not enough. They need 1 billion. One billion is not enough .…When will it stop?

Last year “the Supreme Court made a very strange decision. The Supreme Court decided that corporations are people and they have the right of free speech —and the right without disclosure —… to put as much money as they want into campaigns all over the country. In this last campaign, that is what we saw: Billionaires, in secret, pouring money into campaigns all over the country. Does that sound like democracy to anybody in America— that we have a handful of billionaires probably dividing up the country?”

“The very rich seem to want more and more and more, and they are prepared to dismantle the existing political and social order in order to get it.”


Bottom 99 percent shut up, shut out

“When we went to school, we used to read in the textbooks about Latin America, and they used to refer to some of the countries there as ‘banana republics,’ countries in which a handful of families controlled the economic and political life of the nation.

“…The American people … are not all that far away from that reality today. The top 1 percent has seen a tripling of the percentage of income they earn. The top 1 percent, since the 1970s, has owned 23 percent of all income, more than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. That is not the foundation of a democratic society. That is the foundation for an oligarchic society. The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks. Poverty increases.

“All over America, people are angry, frustrated. …

“Over the 8-year period of President [George W] Bush, from 2001 to 2009, we lost 600,000 private sector jobs and only a million net new jobs were created, all of them in the government sector. … Five million manufacturing jobs disappeared, as companies shut down plants in the United States and moved to China, Mexico, Vietnam, and other low-wage countries. During the Bush era, median income dropped by nearly $2,200 and the trade deficit with China more than tripled, overall trade deficit nearly doubled.… During the eight years of Bush, over 8 million Americans slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. We do not talk about poverty in America anymore. We do not talk about the homelessness in America very much anymore.

“Today, nearly 40 million Americans are living in poverty; 7.8 million Americans lost their health insurance, and that is continuing.… During the Bush years, 3.2 million workers lost their pensions, and about half of American workers in the private sector have no pension coverage whatsoever.… Workers are more and more dependent on Social Security, which has been there for 75 years, which we have to protect and demand that it will be there another 75 years because right now millions of workers are losing their pensions.

“One of the reasons people are angry and frustrated is they are working incredibly hard. … There are people who do not work one job or two jobs; they are working three jobs and four jobs, trying to cobble together an income in order to support their families. While people are working harder and harder, in many cases, their income is going down. They are not going anywhere. In some cases, in many cases, their standard of living is actually going down.

“When asked the question by pollsters, ‘Do you think America is moving in the right direction,’ people overwhelmingly think not.”

Senator Sanders said on Monday, “The American people are saying, given the $13.8 trillion national debt, let’s not give tax breaks to billionaires and drive up that national debt, forcing younger generations to pay more in taxes; allowing Republicans to start slashing Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security because of this large debt we are making larger.…”

“We do not need tax breaks for billionaires. We need to create jobs for the middle class of this country so that we can put people back to work. … We need agreements now that do not give tax breaks to millionaires or billionaires, that do not lower the tax rates or the estate tax, which is applicable only to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. We need an agreement that rebuilds our infrastructure, rebuilds our manufacturing base, and creates the millions of good-paying jobs the American people desperately want.

“If the American people stand and say, ‘We can do better than this…’ and we are prepared to follow them … we will do better…, reflecting the needs of children (the future) and of the working-class and middle-class of our country.”


Sources and notes

“THE ECONOMY” -- (Senate - December 10, 2010) Full Congressional Record Transcript of Sanders Filibuster December 10, 2010, http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=e35eddb4-0d83-4c55-92c0-e448c55526ff


Bernard Sanders , Senate Years of Service: 2007-
Party: Independent, http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index
Senator Bernie Sanders was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. While in office Sanders focused issues have been shrinking middle class and widening income gap, reversing global warming, universal health care, fair trade policies, supporting veterans and preserving family farms. He serves on five Senate committees: Budget; Veterans; Energy; Environment; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, http://sanders.senate.gov/about/
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=387b127b-1f18-4032-b07d-92e17452e219


See also
Letters to Washington, for December 13, 2010, http://www.kpfa.org/archive/show/54209
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/65994

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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War’s Rape — No Island unto ourselves

These matters matter to me
My notes from Chapter 4 “The Democratic Republic of Congo: Rape” of Ann Jones’ compelling book War is not over when it’s over: women speak out from the ruins of war
Excerpting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

Business and War – RAPE

“… People not already removed to serve the soldiers are cleared off, leaving open fields for armies to go about the real business of war, which of course is business. In the Congo, that business is extracting natural resources and selling them. All of this is made possible by rape used as a tactic of war.” Violence privatized.

‘Privatization of violence’

“Observers of world conflicts use the term ‘privatization of violence’ to describe a new and increasingly popular form of war—that is, war waged by individual men who, in their drive for personal wealth and power, use private armies and paramilitary groups, or stir up ethnic militias to wreak private vengeance. …

“The privatization of violence also delivers the destruction of the public good. Driven by crazed personal greed and ambition, the privatized war has nothing whatsoever to do with the welfare of the people who happen to live in its path.”

Women take the brunt of endless violence unprosecuted and unpunished, Jones writes. Women’s enslavement by militia and national army includes sexual servitude amounting to endless torture, often ending in death.

Violence with impunity— war or “peace”
Men get away with endless terror against women

Raped women meet their rapists, combatants demobilized and reintegrated into civilian life, on the street. Often raped repeatedly, before entering and when returning from hospital—women’s experience of terror never ends.

Many men speak of the ‘culture of impunity’ not as a barbaric breakdown of justice; but as today’s way of life, a free pass that encourages civilians—teachers, pastors, fathers—to take up practices popularized by soldiers.

“The failure to punish anyone for rape or torture gives everyone permission (The number of men penalized for crimes against women in the DRC is almost nil). …Absence of punishment creates a ‘culture of impunity’ in which those responsible for punishing crime become complicit with criminals.” The consequences are boundless suffering.

Woman, culture, society, family, future BREAKDOWN

Woman target of men at war
“As direct targets of men at war, women and girls suffered terribly. One or another armed group might be singled out as the worst perpetrators of atrocities but every armed group— even the UN peacekeeping force— was guilty of rape.

“Men singly or in gangs raped women and girls of all ages…. They often tortured women during rape….

“They cut off women nipples or breasts; they mutilated or cut off the external genitalia. They [men] eviscerated living pregnant women to remove and kill fetuses. After rape, men commonly inserted foreign objects into the vagina: sticks, sand, rocks, knives, rifle barrels, bottles, broken glass, pestles covered in pepper, burning wood or charcoal, or molten plastic made by melting shopping bags. They inserted a handgun or rifle in the vagina and fired it.

Women, family breakdown
The whole of life [falls] apart. Rape makes that happen…

“In eastern Congo …husbands cast out raped wives to fend for themselves, with or without their children; or raped wives with no visible injuries conceal the fact of rape from their husbands and try to carry on. In either case, women are afraid to venture out to gather firewood, or fetch water, or cultivate their fields.

“For a time women band together to work the fields — until soldiers abduct a group en masse. Terrified, women begin to neglect their crops, or soldiers steal the produce, and families suffer malnourishment and hunger.

“With no surplus produce to sell at market, women have no money. They can’t pay school fees for their children. Girls are afraid to go to school; now boys drop out too. Some men leave the village, shamed by a wife’s rape. Some men leave to join a militia, voluntarily or by force. Some men leave to look for work and money in cities far away. Many men never come back. Some outcast women leave for cities or truck stops where they take up ‘survival sex,’ selling the only asset they have left, their already dirtied bodies.

Consequential rippling breakdowns
From woman, the female of the species including women and girls, reaching within woman; and from her wounds, farther, wider, deeper into society and culture and existence itself

“Cultural norms die when women are raped in the presence of their families; when boys and men are forced to rape their own sisters, mothers, or daughters, or are murdered on the spot for refusing; when boy soldiers are compelled to rape babies or grandmothers. …

“So divisive is rape, and the shame and terror that attend it, that even in the best case a family may fall apart…. The durability of extended family ties, the allegiance of kinfolk, the pleasant give-and-take of hospitality at the heart of Congolese life—all fade and fracture.

“Fragments of families pack up and move to places they believe to be safer, leaving empty houses in the village, soon looted by soldiers. In this way, the community falls apart.

“Those who leave are desperate, penniless, often ill with sexually transmitted infections.

“Those who stay are old, ill, infirm.

“Those who return find their property ransacked, their tools stolen, their crops and livestock plundered, their friends and neighbors vanished.

“They move away again.”

Humankind no Island
We are no island unto ourselves; all are part of us, part of the whole. Another’s death diminishes me because I am involved in humankind. Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for me. [Licensed unlicensed variation on Donne]



Book source
Ann Jones’ The war is not over when it’s over: women speak out from the ruins of war (Metropolitan Books, 2010); Chapter 4 “The Democratic Republic of Congo: Rape,” pages 135-163

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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Climate Summit ends; a voice lingers on the wind

Editing, excerpting, comment by Carolyn Bennett

“Earth is our life, nature our home we must defend”

The end-summit agreement at Cancun “sets up a fund to help poor people cope with climate change and halt deforestation,” Environment Correspondent Louise Gray reports from Cancun. “It keeps the UN ‘show on the road’ after [the climate summit at] Copenhagen had threatened to push the whole process off the rails.”

However, at Cancun, following COP 15, there were in fact two climate summits, Gray writes, and they could hardly have been more different. One met in “a shabby part of downtown Cancun” and hosted more than 1,000 activists waving rainbow flags and throwing flowers at the feet of their leader, Bolivian president Evo Morales. The other met “a few miles down the coast of Mexico [where] thousands of grey-faced bureaucrats [gathered] in air-conditioned halls of an equally faceless conference room.”

Although there might have been different summit flavors, as Gray describes, there were also powerful progressive voices, some of whom found a hearing and whose voices linger on the winter wind. President Evo Morales was among them. He spoke with Al Jazeera and Democracy Now. His thoughts are compelling and worth remembering when, in some future, progressive heads of state may gain significant power and standing among the UN’s 193 member states and among their own country’s substantial progressive leadership. This is some of what Morales told Al Jazeera.

Current practices are “leaving the world without ecology — an ‘ecolocide’ that leads to genocide.”

“We need limited industrial development, rational development, not industries to kill like we have now but industries to save lives.”

“It is important to create an international court of climate justice. Industries, social movements, governments and international organizations who do not meet the norms that are established must be sanctioned.”

“The industrialized nations have to pay their ecological debt by reducing emissions and financing green policies.”

Included in significant debate are “the rights of Mother Earth, …  proposals of peoples of the world, … how to live in harmony with Mother Earth.”

President Evo Morales spoke with the Democracy Now program during the Copenhagen summit in 2009 and during the Cancun climate change summit. He said this.

“Capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity” [transcript in translation at Democracy Now]. “Capitalism — irrational development— policies of unlimited industrialization [destroy] the environment. That irrational industrialization is capitalism. As long as we do not review or revise those policies, it’s impossible to attend to humanity and life.

“[Ending capitalism means] changing economic policies, ending luxury, and consumerism. It is ending the struggle — or this searching — for living better.

“Living better is to exploit human beings. It is plundering natural resources. It is egoism and individualism. … In those promises of capitalism, there is no solidarity or complementarity. There is no reciprocity.

“… We are trying to think about other ways of living lives and living well — not living better. Not living better — living better is always at someone else’s expense. Living better is at the expense of destroying the environment.”

During the Copenhagen conference, Morales said —

“The earth is our life. Nature is our home, our house. … If the mother is recognized as Mother Earth, it is something that cannot be sold. It is something that cannot be violated.… This is nature. This is planet earth. That is why I’ve come here — to defend the rights of Mother Earth, to defend the rights to life, to defend humanity, saving Mother Earth.”

Sources
“Cancun climate change summit: Bolivians dance to a different beat, but fail to derail the talks— As the Cancun climate change talks close, Louise Gray reports on the battle between the Bolivians and the bureaucrats.” (Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent Cancun), December 12, 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8197539/Cancun-climate-change-summit-Bolivians-dance-to-a-different-beat-but-fail-to-derail-the-talks.html
“Morales warns of climate ‘genocide’ — Bolivian leader says agreement essential as climate summit remains deadlocked on final day of talks.” December 10, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/12/2010121054139149384.html
“Bolivian President Evo Morales on Climate Debt, Capitalism, Why He Wants a Tribunal for Climate Justice and Much More, December 17, 2009, “http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/17/bolivian_president_evo_morales_on_climate
“Bolivian President Evo Morales at Cancun Climate Summit: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal ‘Diplomacy of Empire,’” December 10, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/10/bolivian_president_evo_morales_on_wikileaks

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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War Dead est. at week’s end

Compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett

How many (est.) in two-theater

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD?

Casualty sites reporting December 11-12, 2010

(accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 201]

Wounded 32,937-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides estimated: 18 a day

Latest update on this site: November 22, 2010

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count (civilian deaths from violence) figures:

99,022 – 108,095

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties figures:

IRAQ: 4,430 U.S., 4,748 Coalition

AFGHANISTAN: 1,426 U.S., 2,256 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

 • Just Foreign Policy Iraqi deaths due to U.S. invasion —

“The number is … at least 10 times

greater than most estimates cited in U.S. media

yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths

caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003”:

1,421,933

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq

AL JAZEERA REPORTS FROM
U.S. aggression, occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan

Afghanistan is suffering some of the worst violence in the nine-year conflict, with 1,271 civilians killed in the first six months of 2010, according to UN figures. The rise in civilian deaths represents a 21 percent increase over the same period in 2009.

More than 140,000 foreign troops are deployed in Afghanistan, mostly in the south and east of the country; and for them, 2010 also has been the deadliest year: an estimated 680 foreign-troop deaths compared with 521 for all of 2009.

Across Pakistan, an estimated 4,000 people have died in suicide and bomb attacks since government forces raided an Islamabad mosque in 2007.

AFGHANISTAN December 12
Forty-seven (est.) people died Saturday. Among the dead were more than a dozen civilians. A NATO air raid reportedly “killed at least 25 suspected fighters in eastern Afghanistan.”

AFGHANISTAN December 12
Six soldiers died Sunday while serving with the NATO-led force in Afghanistan’s southern region. These deaths represent “the highest death toll in a single incident [since] a renegade border police officer” killed six foreign troops on November 29. This year’s international-troop death toll is estimated at more than 670 “ well above the 502 figure in the whole of 2009.”

AFGHANISTAN December 11
Fifteen (est.) civilians died and four suffered wounds Friday when a roadside bomb exploded in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Many of the dead were children.

Also on Saturday close to an army checkpoint in northern Afghanistan, five Afghan soldiers and nine civilians suffered wounds when a suicide bomber blew up a stolen police car packed with explosives.

IRAQ December 12 
Seventeen people died Sunday (among them police officers) when a car bomb exploded in central Ramadi in Iraq’s western, predominantly Sunni Anbar province. The capital of the Anbar province and Iraq’s largest area, Ramadi lies approximately 100 kilometers (61 miles) west of Baghdad.

PAKISTAN December 6-12 
Fifteen people died and several dozen suffered wounds Friday when a trailer packed with explosives blew up outside a hospital in northwest Pakistan. Friday’s bombing was the fourth in Pakistan since Monday.

Forty-three people died Monday when bombs exploded “attacking anti-Taliban militiamen and pro-government elders in Mohmand.” Nine people suffered wounds Tuesday and the motorcade of the chief minister of Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan sustained damages when a suicide bomb exploded.


Sources
“Scores killed in Afghan violence—At least 47 people, many of them civilians, killed in incidents across war-ravaged country,” December 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/12/2010121205341227925.html
“Bomb blast kills Afghan civilians — At least 15 people die after a vehicle they were travelling in drove over an explosive device, detonating it,” December 11, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/12/2010121154123846565.html
“Bomber strikes Pakistan hospital — Suicide attack at Shia hospital in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province kills at least 15 and wounds several dozen,” December 10, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/12/2010121012392823908.html
“Afghan attack kills NATO troops — At least six foreign soldiers killed in fighting in the south of the country,” December 12, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/12/20101212103213118342.html

“Suicide car bomb hits Anbar — At least 17 people killed after attack on government building in the western Iraqi province,” December 12, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/12/2010121273656219446.html

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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Australian Assange, meet American Margaret Chase Smith

“ … Freedom of speech is not what it used to be … The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.” [U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience,” June 1950]

Excerpting, editing, re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett

In this new age, U.S. McCarthyism “High-Tech’ed” stomps the globe. Publisher meets politician: 21st century Assange meets 20th century Chase Smith

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (December 2010)
“WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the U.S. embassy cables. Other media outlets, including The Guardian in Britain, The New York Times in the U.S., El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

“[But Australian] Prime Minister [Julia] Gillard and U.S. Secretary of State [former U.S. Senator] Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organizations … because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large; WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.”

U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (June 1950)
“The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as … Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America .… The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.”

 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (December 2010)
“We are the underdogs [and] as the co-coordinator of … other groups, WikiLeaks has [undergone] the most vicious attacks and accusations from the U.S. government and its acolytes.

“I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a U.S., citizen
There have been dozens of serious calls in the U.S. for me to be ‘taken out’ by U.S. special forces
Sarah Palin says I should be ‘hunted down like Osama bin Laden’
A Republican bill seeking to have me declared a ‘transnational threat’ and disposed of accordingly sits before the U.S. Senate
An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office, speaking on national television, has called for me to be assassinated
An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.”

U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (June 1950)
“It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor. Surely, the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal. Surely, we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we ‘dish out’ to outsiders.…”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (December 2010)
“[In WikiLeaks’ four-year publishing history] … not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the Congress of the United States that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it could not find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defense said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

“[However] the United States, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.”

U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (June 1950)
“I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as briefly as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (December 2010)
WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption….Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that [institution]. The [estate or institution of] media helps keep government honest.”

U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (June 1950)
“… It is high time we remembered that … the Constitution [of the United States], as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

“Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined. Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism…”

Sources and notes
“Don’t shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths” (Julian Assange writing in The Australian), December 8, 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/wikileaks/dont-shoot-messenger-for-revealing-uncomfortable-truths/story-fn775xjq-1225967241332

“Declaration of Conscience” — Senator Margaret Chase Smith spoke June 1 1950, in the dark days of Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism, witch hunts of the mid 20th century, archives at American Rhetoric, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/margaretchasesmithconscience.html

Assange recapped in his December article in The Australian: “The U.S. diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

► The U.S. asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably, Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too
► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the U.S. to attack Iran
► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran’s nuclear program stopped by any means available
► Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect ‘U.S. interests’
► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and U.S. intelligence sharing is kept from parliament
► The U.S. is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbor Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

“In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the U.S. Supreme Court said, ‘only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.’ The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.”


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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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Henwood unclothes Gates sans credential

Excerpting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

“Private school grad, college dropout” — a powerfully entrenched ignoramus — spreads nonsense to the gullible and the profit makers about something he knows nothing about — good education policy and how properly to educate and improve the system, facilities, faculties, resources supportive of quality education for all in the United States.

Business slick Willie (unclothed)

“The only reason people listen to [Bill Gates] is that he’s thought to be some sort of business genius (as if business genius were translatable to pedagogy or anything else). [The thought is], ‘If he’s that rich, he must be smart’ … but [Bill Gates] really is not such a business genius [in the original sense of a heroic entrepreneur rising on one’s own well-honed creation.]”

Henwood unclothes in some detail this “genius” feeding on other people’s creation. This is some of what he had to say.

Schemer, stealer, trickster (unclothed)

“What really made [Gates] rich was having been in the right place at the right time in 1981 when IBM needed an operating system for its new PC,” Henwood writes. “[To put it gently], Gates (with Allen) borrowed heavily from an existing operating system, Digital Research’s CP/M. [Reporting what happened Digital Research said] ‘Microsoft paid Seattle Software Works for an unauthorized clone of CP/M, and Microsoft licensed this clone to IBM.’”

Henwood concludes the undress: “[Gates’ rise in riches was] another instance of adopting someone else’s work and taking credit for it—this time with the innovation of litigating aggressively and manipulating markets to defend a monopoly position; and once secured, Microsoft did everything it could to crush competition.…”

Given this business history, “it is pretty rich for Gates to criticize monopoly and stodginess in public education.”

Education reformer without credential (exposed)

Gates learned from a parent in the field of intellectual property “about gaining advantage in a world where the innovation of others can threaten monopoly profits,” Henwood concludes. “But there’s nothing terribly admirable about using litigation and market power to become a billionaire.…”

Bill Gates’ personal and business history confers no credential or qualification “to hold forth on education policy.”

Sources and notes

Doug Henwood hosts Behind the News, a weekly radio show covering economics and politics on Pacifica Network KPFA-Berkeley that rebroadcasts on several other stations across the U.S., and attracts a worldwide audience via its Internet (archived).

Henwood is editor and publisher of Left Business Observer, a newsletter he founded in 1986. The periodical covers economics and politics in the broadest sense. His “recent and persisting obsessions include the meaning of ‘Bush-ism’; income distribution and poverty in the U.S. and elsewhere in the First World; the globalization of finance and production; the worldwide attack on pensions; the 1990s boom and its gloomy aftermath; the economics of energy.” Each issue of LBO contains a report on the world's financial markets and central banks.

Henwood is an American print and broadcast journalist, author of Wall Street (1997), The State of the USA (1994), After the New Economy (2003), and Yale University graduate in English. http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/DH_bio.html
http://lbo-news.com/

William Henry (Bill) Gates III (b. October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, author and Chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. Gates is ranked among the world’s wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third. At Microsoft, Gates held positions of CEO and chief software architect. He remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 8 percent of the common stock. Paul Allen and Bill Gates were childhood friends sharing an interest in computer programming, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

Paul Gardner Allen (b. January 21, 1953) is an American industrialist who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates. Allen is one of the wealthiest people in the world with a personal wealth of U.S.$12.7 billion as of 2010. He is the founder and Chairman of Vulcan Inc., his private asset management company, and is Chairman of Charter Communications. Allen also has a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio, which includes stakes in Digeo, Kiha Software, real estate holdings, and more than 40 other technology, media, and content companies. Allen also owns three professional sports teams: the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL), the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Seattle Sounders FC franchise (which began playing in the 2009 season) in Major League Soccer (MLS).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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Call to answer “vicious intimidation campaign”

Petition at Avaaz

“The vicious intimidation campaign against WikiLeaks is a dangerous attack on freedom of expression and the press. Top U.S. politicians have branded WikiLeaks a terrorist organization, and urged corporations to shut it down. Commentators have even suggested assassinating its staff.

“Whatever we think of WikiLeaks, legal experts say it has likely broken no laws, and the group works with leading newspapers (NYT, Guardian, Spiegel) to carefully vet what it publishes - so far less than 1% of the cables leaked to it.

“We urgently need a massive public outcry to defend our basic democratic freedoms.

“Sign the petition to stop the crackdown –
Let’s reach 1 million voices this week!”

AT  http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?cl=850535438&v=7730

PETITION
To the U.S. and other governments and corporations involved in the crackdown on WikiLeaks:

We call on you to stop the crackdown on WikiLeaks and its partners immediately. We urge you to respect democratic principles and laws of freedom of expression and freedom of the press. If WikiLeaks and the journalists it works with have violated any laws, they should be pursued in the courts with due process.

They should not be subjected to an extra-judicial campaign of intimidation.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?cl=850535438&v=7730

Notes
“Avaaz—meaning ‘voice’ in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages—launched in 2007 with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.… The Avaaz community campaigns in 14 languages, served by a core team on four continents and thousands of volunteers. We take action — signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing ‘offline’ protests and events — to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform the decisions that affect us all.”

AVAAZ. Org THE WORLD IN ACTION, http://www.avaaz.org/en/about.php