News & Articles

In 1918, reflecting on World War I, Sen. Hiram Johnson said: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.”
Actually, in America’s recent wars, officials have slaughtered truth even before any fighting started, for they’ve used lies as their excuse to go to war – for example, the Bush-Cheney regime hustled America into their Iraq escapade by snuffing out the truth about that country’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. Just as immoral are the dishonest post-war claims of success. Officials always insist that their military adventure was worth all the lost lives and treasure, thus validating themselves, while also legitimizing the idea of going to war again and again.
Officialdom’s routine mugging of truth makes a recent bit of honesty from a three-star general astonishing, as well as refreshing – and gutsy. General Daniel Bolger, a senior commander of our forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote a New York Times op-ed, bluntly saying that after sacrificing thousands of US soldiers, “all we have to show for it are two failed wars.”
Recently retired, Bolger is certainly not criticizing the troops, but the political leaders and the brass, including himself. “I got it wrong,” he writes. “Like my peers, I argued to stay the course.” As a result, “we backed ourselves into a long-term counterinsurgency.” General Bolger is especially furious about the current spurious claim that Bush’s 2007 surge in Iraq “won the war.” The surge did not “win” anything, he says, pointing out that the terrorists who were supposedly defeated are the very ones we’re now at war with again – only they’re savvier, better armed, and more vicious.
Yet, insanely, some political and Pentagon officials are pushing for another surge of ground troops, as if repeating the same mistake will produce a different result.

“The Truth About the Wars,” The New York Times, November 11, 2014.

Wall Street sodbusters reap farm profits

We know from the childhood song that Old McDonald had a farm – but e-i-e-i-o – look who’s got his farm now!
It’s groups like American Farmland, Farmland Partners, and BlackRock. These aren’t dirt farmers wearing overalls and brogans, but Wall Street hucksters in Armani suits and Gucci loafers. The latest fast-buck fad for high-roller investment trusts, hedge funds, and venture capital speculators is “farming.” Not that these dude ranch dandies are actually plowing and planting. No, no – these are soft-hands people, buying up farmlands with billions of rich investors’ dollars, then tilling the tax laws and threshing the farmers who do the real cultivation.
For example, American Farmland Company – which owns 16 farms – is a combine of the largest real estate empire in New York City, two Florida sugar barons, a wealth management outfit, and the real estate brokerage arm of insurance giant Prudential. None of these nuveau sodbusters has a speck of dirt under their fingernails, but they’ve figured out how to work the land without touching it and still harvest a sweet profit. The founder of this scheme says “It’s like gold, but better, because there is this cash flow.”
Cash flow? Yes, farmers are charged rent to till the Wall Streeters’ land, then, the financiers get a prime cut of any profits from the corps that the farmers produce. Also, the combine is set up as a Real Estate Investment Trust, providing an enormous tax break for the Wall Street plowboys. And, of course, there’s the mega-pay the moneyed elites will reap when they convert their scheme into securities for sale on the stock exchange.
A few rich speculators get richer, farmers are turned into sharecrop laborers, and farms are switched to high-profit crops that require heavy pesticide dosages and soak up scarce water resources. Other than that, this is one hell of a deal.

The Walmartizaton of  Thanksgiving

Everyone from the Obama family in the White House to my little family in Texas will take a deserved pause from the unrelenting intensity of work on Thanksgiving Day. But millions will not get a work pause.
Such workers as firefighters, police and hospital workers must stay on the job, but they’re providing essential services for our society. Yet Walmart, Target, Macy’s, Radio Shack, and other retailers are also requiring their low-paid workers to report. Why? What’s essential about buying gewgaws, gizmos, or garments from these mass marketers of consumer excess that justifies them forcing employees to give up this family day of giving thanks?
Retail giants already exploit the day after Thanksgiving, which they’ve dubbed “Black Friday,” for an orgy of commercialism. Yet that’s not enough to satisfy soulless profiteers. So they’ve moved their Black Friday start back into Thursday, during the family mealtime of Thanksgiving Day itself. Some are even opening their doors at 6 am on Thursday, essentially wiping out this day of family grace for every employee they require to be at work. Show up… or lose your job. Thanks, boss.
A mall outside of Buffalo has gone even more extreme, requiring its 200-plus stores to open on Thanksgiving Day or pay a $200-an-hour fine. What we have here is the insatiable excess of what Pope Francis recently condemned as “unbridled consumerism.” Yet a Walmart PR flack claims to be doing consumers a favor by staying open on a spiritual day to “provide what consumers need.”
Bovine excrement! Walmart has nothing that needs to be bought on a holiday, and any of the stuff it sells can be bought the very next day from Costco, Crate & Barrel, Barnes & Noble, Dillard’s, Nordstrom, Patagonia, and other stores that respect their employees and America’s values by closing on Thanksgiving Day.

“Spending: Retailers Are Facing off Over Closing or Opening,” The New York Times, November 15, 2014.

“New York Mall Will Fine Stores If They Don’t Open On Thanksgiving,” www.alternet.com, November 12, 2014.

“Mall Will Fine Stores If They Don’t Open On Thanksgiving,” www.time.com, November 11, 2014.

“Pope Francis: ‘Unbridled Consumerism’ Is Destroying Our Planet,” www.ecowatch.com, November 13, 2014.