Coming
in September
From AK Press
Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Recent
Stories
August
5, 2003
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Meet the Real WMD Fabricator: Rolf
Ekeus
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July 26 / 27, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
Hot Stories
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
5, 2003
Poindexter's
Gambit
What
Was Behind the Pentagon's Betting Parlor?
By
DAVID MORSE
What was behind the Pentagon's screwball scheme
to establish an online futures market for acts of terrorism?
The $8 million betting parlor was scuttled
only three days before its scheduled debut on August 1. Was it
just a one-time fluke? If so, it raises questions about who is
running the Pentagon. If it was part of a pattern, then it raises
some serious questions about the Bush administration.
The announced purpose of the Policy Analysis
Market, as it was known, was to harness the "anonymous forces
of market capitalism" to predict the likelihood of acts
of terrorism - much as commodity-trading speculates on the future
price of coffee or pork bellies. The Pentagon's justification
was that "markets are extremely efficient, effective and
timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information."
But critics in the Senate raised moral,
as well as tactical concerns, in pointing out the obvious. Not
only were markets faulty predictors of the future (witness the
last stock market bubble and its collapse), but if anonymous
online traders could bet on the probability of various acts of
terrorism in the Middle East - assassinations and coups - the
setup was an invitation to mischief, including insider-trading
by terrorists themselves. This may have been the Pentagon's real
intent all along: to use its cyber-surveillance capability to
track buyers and sellers. But even as a long-term sting operation,
it was ripe for abuse by speculators of every stripe.
"Can you imagine," asked Senator
Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, who helped blow the whistle in
the Senate, "if another country set up a betting parlor
so that people could go in - and is sponsored by the government
itself - people could go in and bet on the assassination of an
American political figure?"
The new toy came from within Pentagon's
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, DARPA, where John M.
Poindexter had been put to work brainstorming ideas for the War
on Terrorism after 9/11. Poindexter's cyber-surveillance project,
called Total Information Awareness, had already drawn fire, but
was called "brilliantly imaginative" by his boss, Paul
Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, according to the New
York Times.
The idea was anything but brilliant,
of course. It was, as one Congressman put it, "unbelievably
stupid." A New York Times editorial called it "wacky,"
and demanded Poindexter's resignation, without asking how the
idea had gotten past Wolfowitz. In response to the bipartisan
outrage, Wolfowitz lost no time distancing himself from the project,
suggesting that the brainstormers at DARPA "got too imaginative."
The project was scuttled. Poindexter
resigned. Heads of state in the Middle East can presumably sleep
better. Was it a fluke? The facts suggest otherwise.
First, never mind that this is the same
rear admiral John Poindexter who was indicted during the Reagan
years for his role in the scheme by which arms were sold to Iran
and the proceeds funneled to the right-wing rebels in Nicaragua.
Never mind that Poindexter lied to Congress, and escaped a prison
sentence on a technicality. Never mind, even, that the Bush administration
put this same John Poindexter in charge of DARPA, where he concocted
a plan for wholesale surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The problem goes far wider and deeper
than Poindexter or his boss, Wolfowitz. Or Wolfowitz's boss,
Donald Rumsfeld. Or Condi Rice. Or even George W. Bush.. Poindexter's
follies are the quintessence of what this administration has
been about from the beginning. This latest scheme simply exposes
the tip of an ideological iceberg that is no less wacky or dangerous,
but which has escaped such noisy condemnation because it floats
in a sea of general acceptance. It is the ideology of privatization,
carried to extreme. At its most benign, this ideology rests on
the very dubious assumption that every aspect of government,
from elections to social institutions, to foreign policy, can
be governed by the so-called free market. At its most vicious,
it is simply monopoly capitalism masquerading as government:
profoundly antidemocratic, as well as anti-competitive, with
no thought beyond lining the pockets of the powerful.
The war on Iraq reflects this more vicious
mode. The war was motivated by corporate greed, and sold with
false advertising. Allies were bullied and bought. Underlying
the administration's steamroller approach was the arrogance of
a monopoly. No alternatives would be considered. The largest-ever
mass demonstrations around the world were brushed off like consumer
complaints.
The Pentagon itself is run according
to a more competitive model. Troops were delivered to Iraq in
accordance with industry's just-in-time standards of efficiency,
with Donald Rumsfeld playing the role of a CEO downsizing the
Pentagon as if it were a recent acquisition. Instead of the supplying
the 240,000 or so troops requested by Pentagon brass, Rumsfeld
delivered 170,000 - not enough to perform the many tasks of occupation
In both cases, the corporate model is flawed. Wholesale greed
does not yield intelligent foreign policy. And a military occupation
is not the same as a corporate takeover. As the occupation grinds
on, with more loss of American lives and political rumblings
at home, the corporate brainstormers running the administration
have resorted ever more desperately to the ploys one would expect
from runaway capitalism - the placing of bounties on Saddam Hussein,
dead or alive, the degrading attempt to buy the loyalty of former
Iraqi army troops with hundred dollar bills. The cynicism of
these devices, and the grumbling of our own troops, all convey
the essential failure to secure a just peace for the Iraqi people.
But that objective was missing all along.
The corporate model for the war is flawed
in other ways as well. The Pentagon outsourced some of its manpower
requirements to Mexican nationals who were willing to join the
U.S. Army. But while this may blunt the political impact at home,
it does not translate into lower wages - the Army being the Army,
and not a multinational sweatshop. We are still spending $4 billion
a month in Iraq. And Americans reading of mounting U.S. casualties
might not notice how many surnames are Hispanic.
As for those fat, cost-plus contracts
awarded to Halliburton and other politically connected U.S. firms
for rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, they will cost U.S. taxpayers
far more than would the services of European firms that are more
competitive and better positioned geographically to do the job.
Which takes us to the essential fallacy
so evident in the wacky betting parlor scheme. It is not just
Poindexter's folly; it is the bogus assumption that privatization
translates into efficiency and that marketplace greed should
govern human affairs.
David Morse
is a journalist whose work has appeared in Esquire, The Nation,
Japan Economic Journal, and elsewhere. He writes about the globalized
economy and the impact of privatization on public policy. He
can be reached at: dmorse@david-morse.com
Weekend Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Meet the Real WMD Fabricator: Rolf
Ekeus
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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