Monday, October 22, 2007
Written below by Greg Palast(1) is the real story of the War on Terror.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt calmed a nation when he said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
Today, George Bush says, "We have nothing to sell but fear itself."Double Cheese with Fear
Fear sells better than sex. But who's buying?The mothers of this country who are wrestling with threats!Oh my! What threats? If you thought it's just Osama, you're taking big chances, because more danger is just outside your door, ringing the bell.
It's the pizza delivery guy. Aren't you afraid yet? Did you know that 25% of pizza delivery drivers have been in jail within four months of starting the job bringing you your pie? From Sing-Sing to your doorstep! One in four!
Who said so? Derek Smith said so. He said (I can't make this up):What pizza do you like? At what price? Are you willing to take the risk associated with dealing with a company that doesn't screen drivers?Who is this guy? Derek Smith is the founder of a company called ChoicePoint, prime contractor for the Department of Homeland Security. He's the man standing between your family and Al-Qaeda's mushroom-and-peperoni sleeper cells. You should know something about this Smith, because he knows an awful lot about you.
Last time I checked, Smith and ChoicePoint had piled up over 16 billion files on every living and dying U.S. citizen, and they've put it up for sale, bit by bit.* The company pulled in over a billion dollars in revenues in 2005, only eleven years after Smith founded it.
*ChoicePoint has written me to say, "No data files or "dossiers' exist at ChoicePoint." Darn strange for a data company.
ChoicePoint, the largest personal profile database company in America, is the leader in the Fear Industry. The problem for CEO Smith and the firm he founded in 1994 is that, at first, the public wasn't buying.... until September 11, 2001, when ChoicePoint's new business plan fell from the sky.
"The War on Terror hasn't been decided yet, but a few winners are emerging," wrote Forbes a few months after the attack. "High up on the list of businesses that will benefit....ChoicePoint, Inc."
They didn't have to wait. ChoicePoint's Bode Technologies division picked up a $12 million contract to identify by DNA testing pieces of corpses found in the Staten Island garbage dump holding the twin towers.
Al-Qaeda's attack set up an explosion of demand for Smith's top product. His top product is you. Your Prozac prescription, Satan's church donations, Victoria Secret bill payments, driver's license, voting record, you name it. And George Bush is buying. ChoicePoint is operating a private FBI, or more accurately, a private KGB, because they keep files on you that the law doesn't allow the FBI to hold.
The law in question is the U.S. Constitution, which says the government can't spy on you unless you're suspected of a crime-but ChoicePoint can, and that's where the game begins. Under the USA PATRIOT act, Congress has outsourced the snooping. The act allows the Feds to ask ChoicePoint for data the government itself cannot legally obtain. The spooks at the new Total Information Office (now "Terrorism" Information Office since Congress changed the name and removed the logo, the All-Seeing Eyeball-no kidding) couldn't wait. In one classified document that came our way, a Total Info honcho exhorted agencies to come up with "far-out, funky" uses of the ChoicePoint info they aren't supposed to have. Groovy, man.
And what does the family Bush do with ChoicePoint's funky information? In Florida, it was ChoicePoint's DBT unit that came up with the list of 94,000 "felons" to purge from Florida voter rolls before the 2000 election. At least 91,000 were innocent legal voters, and the vast majority of these were guilty of nothing more than being Black, Democrats or both. (See Chapter 4).
And now, ChoicePoint wants your blood. Why? Because "ChoicePoint Cares." That's the name of its program to reunite those kiddies on milk cartons with their loved ones. And they'll need your DNA to do it.
That's the point of the ghost stories of pizza men coming to snatch your milk-carton baby, to convince "the mothers of this country facing threats" to raise no objections to the data goldminers digging into your bank accounts, medical records and bloodstream. And now, with Osama out there, Americans can't wait to rush into the protective arms of our computerized big brother.
But come on, if ChoicePoint gets the bad guys for us, who cares? However, ChoicePoint, unlike the Canadian Mounties, is not likely to get their man. The Illinois State Police, for example, tested ChoincePoint's DNA-matching evidence used in more than a thousand rape cases. The police scientists say ChoicePoint got it wrong 25% of the time. In some cases it appears, ChoicePoint produced test "results" on evidence that didn't exist.Marines in a Tube
We know the cure for The Fear is "less liberty, more weaponry." ChoicePoint will help dispose of our liberties cheap, but how can we defend ourselves?
General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin have just what we need to stick in our nation's holster: the Virginia-class submarine.
The Virginia-class U-boat was originally designed to hunt Soviet subs. The problem with the 1996 design is that the Soviet Union went out of business seven years earlier. Never mind. That didn't stop our triumvirate of corporate warriors. They've redesigned the Virginia-class for the War on Terror.
Given that our enemies today are mostly guys carrying box cutters and stuffing TNT in their shoes, I was curious as to how these sub-o-saurs would be helpful in post-cold-war theaters of battle. Our BBC team called Northrop Grumman and asked. Their PR man explained that the firm is' "reconfiguring it for the new type of war-the new military situation."
We called during the invasion of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is land-locked.
No matter: Iraq was on the horizon and, if you look at the map, there is an itty-bitty piece of beachfront near Basra. The weapons maker explained, you could use the ship to "land commandos" on the beaches to seek out hiding places of terrorists. I remembered that the Israelis, who have a smaller budget than ours, land commandos in canvas canoes. But I didn't want to quibble with Lockheed over price. Still, one thing about the scheme to use the Virginia-class to land commandos concerned me: It's a big boat, about the size of an underwater aircraft carrier. Exactly how would one sneak up on the beach with this thing?
The defense expert snorted at our lack of knowledge of the weaponry. For an extra $400 million per vessel, they had been "retrofitted." The torpedoes have been retooled to fit nine sailors each so they can be shot onto the beach.
I can't make this up. In one design, four marines lie down sideways, five marines are launched in headfirst. "Specifically configured to put Navy Seals into torpedoes, [a]'lock-in/lock-out' trunk," we were told.
I was curious about the submarine's three headed corporate team deal among what used to be fierce competitors for Navy work. They may be competitors, but, notes a Navy spokesman, they "do not 'compete' in the traditional sense." Indeed they don't. In fact, they don't compete at all. Rather than bid against each other, which might reduce the cost, they settle on a single price. What used to be called a "price-fixing conspiracy" is now called a "consortium," after the word "consort," which referred to the king's concubine. A kind of weaponry OPEC.
The consortium companies were willing to part with one of these sub-surface sailor injectors for a billion and a half dollars. Our President, knowing a bargain when he sees one, ordered thirty-six. Later, as U.S. troops in Iraq demanded such retrograde material as armor for their Humvees, the President cut back his sub order. The consortium obliged by agreeing to make fewer boats-- for two and a half billion each.
Despite the consortium's commitment to corporate socialism, Lockheed Martin has become top dog among corporate arms dealers. It became the number one recipient of funds from the U.S. Treasury among all U.S. companies on the wings of the F-22A, a fighter designed to defeat the Soviet Union's MIG 29 UBM. The MIG 29 was never built. And the Soviet Union doesn't exist--proof of the extraordinary effectiveness of the F-22A. We've got 83 of them. Bush has ordered 96 more at $130 million per airplane. That's double the old price, but the new price comes with a new name, the F-22 Raptor. Is that cool or what?
Who makes these Humvee-armor-vs-Raptor-and-subs decision now that Paul Wolfowitz is no longer our Deputy Defense Secretary? The answer: his replacement, Gordon England, former Executive Vice President of both General Dynamics and a Lockheed unit. Now that's a consortium.The Joke's on Us O h, hey, you never got the punch line.
So Osama walks into this bar, see, and George Bush says, "Whad'l'ya have pardner?" and Osama says, "Well, George, what are you serving today?" and Bush says, "Fear," and Osama says, "Fear for everybody!" and George pours it on for the crowd. Then the presidential bartender says, "Hey, who's buying?" Osama points a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. They are," he says--and the two of them share a quiet laugh.
I highly recommend Armed Madhouse. Great fun. The real story of the War on Terror is better than a spy thriller. (Only its true!)
Steve, your common sense commentator.
(1)Greg Palast, ARMED MADHOUSE- From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets & Strange Tales of a White House GONE WILD, (U.S.A.: Plume [The Penguin Group], 2006, 2007)p. 38-40, 45-49.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
