A Tale Of Two Heiresses

Compare and contrast. These two well known American Hotel Heiresses died within week of each other.

One made the news for a day, being a well known Philanthropist and clothes horse.

The other, well even dead she is still the Queen of Mean. And she gets more posthumous press than her more liberal counterpart.

One suffered at the hands of her son while her grandson exposed how badly his father had treated her. The other is making her grandchildren suffer.

Brooke Astor, 105, aristocrat of the people, dies

Astor's image as a benevolent society matron was overshadowed last year by that of a victimized dowager at the center of a very public family battle over her care and fortune. Yet for decades she had been known as the city's unofficial first lady, one who moved effortlessly from the sumptuous apartments of Fifth Avenue to the ragged barrios of East Harlem, deploying her inherited millions to help the poor help themselves.

Among the rich of New York, she was perhaps the last bridge to the Gilded Age, when "society" was a closed world of old-money families, the so-called Four Hundred, who were ruled over by a grandmother of Astor's by marriage, Mrs. William Backhouse Astor.

Helmsley's dog gets $12 million, but leaves 2 grandchildren zilch

Leona Helmsley's dog will continue to live an opulent life, and then be buried alongside her in a mausoleum. But two of Helmsley's grandchildren got nothing from the late luxury hotelier and real estate billionaire's estate.

Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court.

She also left millions for her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, who was named to care for Trouble in her absence, as well as two of four grandchildren from her late son Jay Panzirer - so long as they visit their father's grave site once each calendar year.

Otherwise, she wrote, neither will get a penny of the $5 million she left for each.

Helmsley left nothing to two of Jay Panzirer's other children - Craig and Meegan Panzirer - for "reasons that are known to them," she wrote.

But regardless of their personal peccadilloes they both represent inherited wealth. One from the Robber Barons of 19th Century American Capitalism the other from the modern day Robber Barons of Property Speculation.

THE concept of richesse oblige has various dimensions. The bottom line is that those who have come into oodles of money should give some of it back; the second-to-bottom line is that they should cut a certain style while doing so. Both Brooke Astor and Leona Helmsley, who died within a few days of each other, gave millions of dollars away. And their similarities ended there.

The Astor money, more than $120m by the time it was Brooke's to disburse, was old, from New York land and the fur trade. The Helmsley money, $5 billion by the time Leona got her hands on it, was pretty new, from property speculation. Both fortunes came from late third marriages to cunning husbands. But whereas Mrs Astor, aside from writing features for House & Garden, merely let the markets increase her pile and relished spending the capital (something, she admitted, that John Jacob Astor would have thought as outrageous as dancing naked in the street), Mrs Helmsley worked like a dragon to build up and expand her husband Harry's hotel empire. As a Manhattan hatter's daughter with several competitive siblings, she was used to graft and struggle. Mrs Astor, a solitary and dreamy child who had come by money almost magically, treated it like fairy dust to the end of her days.

The arrogance of big money, Mrs Astor wrote once, “is one of the most unappealing of characteristics”. Mrs Helmsley, though fun to her friends, was arrogance personified: “Rhymes with rich”, was Newsweek's caption for her portrait on its cover. “We don't pay taxes,” she was said to have told a housekeeper once; “only the little people pay taxes.” Mrs Astor, a gentle soul, was upset when her first father-in-law, a colonel, yelled at his secretaries. Mrs Helmsley believed staff existed to be barked at, slapped and called fags if appropriate; two of them sued her for firing them because they were gay. On visits to underprivileged areas Mrs Astor, gloved and immaculate because this was what the ordinary person expected of the rich, would happily sip from a paper cup and praise the hot-dog mustard on her paper plate. At the sight of a paper-cup-carrier in any of her reception areas, Mrs Helmsley would get her doormen to throw the offender out.

SEE:

Rich Getting Richer

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The Horror of Glorifying Bomber Command

The Canadian campaign to legitimate Bomber Harris and his use of fire bombing against Dresden in WWII began with the CBC documentary the Valour and the Glory.

Today that long campaign of historical revisionism has concluded with the National War Museum agreeing to revise its Bomber Command display.

And it has resulted in more not less controversy.

Veterans force WWII museum exhibit change

Fighting words rile historians

Historian decries change to war museum exhibit

Beyond dispute

The cowardice and the horror

We owe our freedom to Bomber Command vets

Museum consultation pledge pleases war veterans

Veterans claim victory - Canadian War Museum to change wording on controversial Bomber Command Plaque

A fellow progressive blogger who runs a Canadian History list has opened up discussion on this amongst academic Canadian historians.

What do historians think about the Canadian War Museum controversy?

Of course amongst the Blogging Tories there is the popping of corks and tinkling of toasts in celebration of their Orwellian victory.

Revised does not equal 'Revisionist'

The plaque in question is poorly worded because it purports to be a neutral commentary on Bomber Command but then goes on to draw a negative conclusion about the Canadian air campaign against Germany. The plaque draws a reader's attention to the 'enduring controversy' regarding 'the morality and value' of the air strikes and then wraps up by drawing the conclusion that the raids were ineffective except in their slaughter of innocent civilians. Hansen might believe the conclusion is factual, but then why does the plaque pretend the issue is controversial if this conclusion is unequivocally true?

He Who Controls the Present . . .

Historian David Bercuson seems to have summed it up best, "I don't see it as giving in. I see it as correcting something that was unfortunately and badly placed in the first place, and I don't see why anyone shouldn't be given leeway to correct errors."

'Right wing ' historians like David Bercuson who is part of the Calgary School with his pal Barry Cooper , along with their political compatriots in the think tank that created the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party have made Bomber Command their political bugaboo since CBC ran the WWII documentary series; the Valour and the Glory. His opinion appears to have influenced the Senate Committee that raised the issue of the display at the War Museum.

So it's worth noting that the Senate report here identifies the four historians who examined the War Museum text: Serge Bernier (Department of National Defence), Desmond Morton (McGill), Margaret MacMillan (Oxford University) and David Bercuson (University of Calgary). Indeed, that is four experienced and credentialled historians, one actually working in a public museum.

Margaret MacMillan has been very public in condemning the change to the museum's text. I understand Desmond Morton has also publicly defended the integrity of the text as it stands. That would suggest the two experts who endorsed making the change were David Bercuson and Serge Bernier.

Bercuson is not an objective historian in the least, and one with an axe to grind. Far more so than even Jack Granatstein. He is a neo-con hack who along with Cooper has advocated for a right wing shift in Canadian politics.

Neoconservatives criticize social scientists for putting forward ideas that are not necessarily workable, yet the Canadian neoconservatives David Bercuson and Barry Cooper argue that inventive intellectual suggestions are vital to the political system, and that the give and take of politics, and the inherent need to compromise, generally sand down the most unrealistic edges of intellectuals' prescriptions

And they share an advocacy for an Imperial and Imperialist Canadian Military is colored by they right wing politics.

Bercuson and the other Reform Party ilk used the Honor and the Glory segment on Bomber Harris and the Dresden Raids to attack its producers and directors, the McKenna Brothers, along with CBC as being historical revisionists. They claimed, falsely as they still do, that the Honor and the Glory smeared Harris as a war criminal and in doing so slighted the troops who carried out his commands.

Aired on the publicly owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Valour and the Horror is a Canadian-made documentary about three controversial aspects of Canada's participation in World War II. This three part series caused a controversy almost unprecedented in the history of Canadian television. Canadian veterans, outraged by what they considered an inaccurate and highly biased account of the war, sued Brian and Terrance McKenna, the series directors, for libel. An account of the controversy surrounding The Valour and the Horror with statements by the directors, the CBC Ombudsman and an examination of the series by various historians can be found in Bercuson and Wise's The Valour and the Horror Revisited.

The second episode, "Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command," proved to be the most controversial of the three episodes. It details the blanket bombing of German cities carried out by Canadian Lancaster bombers, including the firestorm caused by the bombings of Dresden and Munich. The McKennas claim that the blanket bombing, which caused enormous casualties among both German civilians and Canadian aircrews, did nothing to hasten the end of the war, and was merely an act of great brutality with little military significance. In particular British commander Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris is cited for his bloodthirstiness.

What it did was raise the well known public fact that Bomber Harris was hell bent on proving air war worked especially against civilian populations. He had proved it in Iraq!

Yet it was in Iraq that Britain employed its air force for the purpose of suppressing local revolts most widely and for the longest period. Full-scale bombing in Iraq by eight RAF squadrons began in October 1922 and continued until 1932, the year that the British mandatory rule of Iraq officially ceased. Various types of bombs--including delayed and incendiary bombs--were dropped in attacks on villages where militia were believed to be hiding, and in some cases petrol was sprayed over civilian houses in order to intensify the fires ignited by the bombing. Tents and other types of Bedouin dwellings and even their cattle became targets, resulting in the death and injury of many women and children. British Forces justified this indiscriminate bombing by claiming that their operations “proved outstandingly effective, extremely economical and undoubtedly humane in the long run” as they could swiftly put down revolts and riots. One of these RAF squadron leaders in Iraq was Arthur Harris, who later headed the RAF Bomber Command during World War II. Based on their experience in Iraq, the RAF leaders concluded that the best way to defeat the enemy was to conduct "strategic bombing" on civilian dwellings, in particular those of industrial workers.

And that along with the Americans the Brits planned massive fire bombing raids on civilian populations in Germany. The Americans built models cities of Berlin and Tokyo in the Utah desert to test the allies fire bombing theories.

Unfortunately what they found was that fire bombing was not effective, it was not controllable for precision strikes, and it laid wholesale waste to civilian as well as military targets. Knowing this they recognized that it was a not weapon for use except as a final solution, a weapon of mass destruction, to be used as a last resort.

Often contrasted with Britain’s policy of “promiscuous bombing” of urban areas, the United States Army Air Forces entered the fray in 1942 with a precision bombing doctrine that called for the destruction of critical nodes in an adversary’s war economy. Owing to a series of disastrous daylight raids in the summer and fall of 1943, however, American forces implemented a policy of radar bombing through clouds that conserved American aircraft but drastically increased the loss of life among German civilians.

The effects of incendiaries on a city made of paper were soon seen. On the evening of March, 9, 1945 a fleet of over 300 B-29’s flew towards Tokyo containing napalm and cluster bombs. As the bombs burst into flame, aided by the wind, the resulting fires flew across streets and buildings creating a firestorm engulfing the center of the city with flames burning at temperatures exceeding 1,800°F. The heat from the fire created additional winds traveling at velocities of over 40 miles per hour that fed the flames and created thermal winds that were beginning to affect the flight paths of the bombers flying above. Many people attempted to escape the firestorm by jumping into the canals surrounding the city. Of those who did immerse themselves in the canals, most died not from drowning but were either boiled alive when the water began to heat or died from asphyxiation caused by the inhalation of the thick black smoke. Many characterized the conditions within Tokyo that night as a holocaust not knowing that they were witnessing the most destructive fire in human history. Death counts were averaged to be around one hundred thousand with over one million homes and buildings destroyed making this the second most destructive air attack of the entire war next to Hiroshima. Had a significant number of the citizens not already evacuated the city, many more would have lost their lives making the loss of human life in this bombing greater than any other battle or attack in the entire war. This same bombing technique continued until numerous towns, villages, and six of Japan’s seven largest cities had been destroyed.

Dresden was the result of Britain's use of incendiary bombing resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilians dead. The American's on the other hand came up with a much better weapon for mass destruction, a final solution, the weapon of last resort; the Atomic Bomb.

However the mass of deaths of allied forces, the bomber crews themselves occurred before the fatal assault on Dresden. Our men as well as British crews ended up dead because Bomber Harris believed in low level bombing missions. Rather than using height for safety he had his planes fly low and through anti-aircraft fire . Aimed at Dam busting, they resulted in massive losses of life of allied bomber command. Harris considered incendiary bombing as less effective than large scale bombs. The type still used today by American Armed forces.

Night after night tens of precious bombers and their irreplaceable crews failed to return from missions which only managed to damage a house or two and kill the odd cow, as bombs were almost randomly scattered within a huge area usually somewhere vaguely near the intended target. Depressingly often, Bomber Command casualties far outnumbered German casualties on the ground.

Harris was hopelessly optimistic when it came to assessing the effectiveness of bombing, making unrealistic claims as to accuracy and destruction, and displaying a remarkable complacency when assessing the effectiveness and failure rate of weapons. He also had an entirely unrealistic view of the overall significance and importance of Bomber Command’s role. He predicted in mid-1942 that it could win the war alone, with a continental land campaign having no use except for mopping up, and describing the ‘entirely defensive’ Coastal Command as ‘merely an obstacle to victory’.

While politicians maintained the pretence that Bomber Command was attacking military and industrial targets Harris was more honest, seeing no shame in attacking the German people and having no problem with describing the aim of his attacks on Berlin as being ‘to cause the heart of the German nation to stop beating’. When pressed to use a higher proportion of incendiaries, he argued the case for high explosive, saying:

I do not agree with this policy. The moral effect of HE is vast. People can escape from fires, and the casualties on a solely fire raising raid would be as nothing. What we want to do in addition to the horrors of fire is to bring the masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill Boche and to terrify Boche.

For that reason, his sacrifice of his own troops and his decision to assault civilian targets, there is a public revulsion of his actions today in Great Britain, except amongst Bomber Command veterans.

Even in wartime Britain, a backlash developed as the extent of the devastation and the number of civilian casualties became known. At the end of the war, all major British commanders were elevated to the peerage except Sir Arthur.

Unlike other senior officers in the fight against Nazism, Harris was knighted only in 1953, eight years after the war ended. He died embittered in 1984.

Convinced that Harris was treated badly, the 7,500 members of the Bomber Command Association, a British veterans organization, have collected $200,000 to erect a statue of him in London. They want the memorial to stand opposite one of Lord Dowding, commander-in-chief of the Royal Air Force's fighter command, in St. Clement Danes, the RAF church in the Strand.

The Times of London has urged that the project be abandoned, calling Harris a "fanatical believer in the carpet bombing of civilians."

But Bomber Command Association spokesman Ray Gallow insists the statue is appropriate. "When we started area bombing, we were losing on all fronts. The public didn't find a thing wrong with bombing German cities then."

In 1992, a statue to Harris was unveiled near Trafalgar Square in London. Within 24 hours, red paint was poured over it - such was/is the controversy the beliefs of Harris caused.

This statue of the infamous ‘Bomber’ Harris was greeted with a hostile reaction when first erected in 1992. This was due to the mixed feelings about Sir Arthur Harris, who was responsible for the indiscriminate bombing policies on German cities during World War II. Although his widespread bombing helped win the war, he as criticised for his lack of remorse at the death of civilians and his own men. The statue, which is located outside St Clement Dane’s RAF church, had to be kept under 24 hour guard for a period of months as it was often vandalised.

Of course Harris was made a scapegoat for decisions made by those in command of the war, none the less his enthusiasm for the use of bombing to terrorize civilians was his downfall.

"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, should be reviewed. Otherwise, we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land." Winston Churchill, 1945 ordering Bomber Command to halt operations over Germany.

Harris's defence of himself and Bomber Command is clear-cut and straightforward. It bears and deserves another hearing. In his memoirs, published in 1947, he wrote: 'There is a widespread impression that I not only invented the policy of area bombing but also insisted on carrying it out in the face of natural reluctance to kill women and children felt by everyone else. The facts are otherwise. Such decisions on policy are not in any case made by Commanders-in-Chief in the field but by the Ministries, the Chiefs-of-Staff Committee and by the War Cabinet. The decision to attack large industrial areas was taken long before I became Commander-in-Chief'.

Sir Arthur Harris, who died in 1984, aged 91 felt aggrieved and slighted at the end of his career, not, perhaps, without reason. He complained that he was not consulted or invited to contribute to the official history of the air offensive directly concerned with his own Command. His official dispatch, written in 1945, was placed on the restricted list apparently because the Air Ministry took objection to it. From all this, the author says, it is not hard to infer that the RAF and the political establishment which had supported him during the war later decided to distance themselves from him and the odium created by the bombing offensive in general.

In Canada the right wing use our vets to justify their glorification of this mass murderer and war criminal. They are after all war mongers, and now have their own war in Afghanistan to tout. And that is the reason that the campaign to change the War Museum display is both revisionist and a revulsion.

The bombing of Dresden in World War II, and to a lesser degree the 1943 bombing of Hamburg, and the firebombing of Tokyo remains a source of controversy to this day (though in the case of the latter, the effect on Tokyo's intentionally decentralized subcontractor war industry manufacturers was devastating).

The bombing of Dresden, led by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and followed by the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between February 13 and February 15, 1945, remains one of the more controversial Allied actions of World War II. The exact number of casualties is uncertain, but most historians agree that the firebombing resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Historian Frederick Taylor says:

“

The destruction of Dresden has an epically tragic quality to it. It was a wonderfully beautiful city and a symbol of Baroque humanism and all that was best in Germany. It also contained all of the worst from Germany during the Nazi period. In that sense it is an absolutely exemplary tragedy for the horrors of 20th century warfare

Firebombing destruction

In pictures

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Since the war, discussion of World War II war crimes has focused almost exclusively on those committed by the Nazis. But hundreds of thousands of German civilians were also immolated in firestorms created by English and American bombs. Should not Allied excesses be addressed as well?

Taylor: We have to discuss them frankly. There is something inherently fascistoid in air warfare -- you don't see the person you are bombing and killing or injuring and you have this sort of psychopathic gaze from above. The air war is the only part of the war where the Allies, leaving aside the Russians, seriously ran the Axis powers a good race in terms of ruthlessness. But it is now 60 years after the fact, most people involved are dead and we shouldn't start pointing fingers except for in the case of the Holocaust. But the English and especially the Americans have continued since World War II to rely on bombing as an instrument of policy and that really concerns me. I feel uneasy about it. So I think Allied excesses are a legitimate subject for discussion. Absolutely.

SEE:

Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada

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CIDA Funds Child Labour In Afghanistan

We are fighting for women and children in Afghanistan say the Harpocrites. Shouldn't these kids be in a Canadian funded school?

Outside the hospital, Senlis members travelled to the construction site of a new bridge funded by CIDA.

But workers told the group they had no accident or medical insurance, and footage of the visit appears to show children working on the bridge.

Canada's new development minister, Bev Oda, called the findings overly simplistic. But in an interview with CTV News, she didn't dismiss the report.

"I can't say whether they're right or they're wrong," she said.

About this, or about reports of children being used as police/soldiers on Canadian PRT highway projects in Kandahar, or the existence of child brides.

CIDA's biggest success yet has been to fund Timmies in Kandahar.

And speaking of simplistic, how about this explanation for CIDA's success in Afghanistan.

See here for the SENLIS report complete with photos of child labourers.

The Honourable Beverley J. Oda,
Minister of International Cooperation,
meets with His Excellency Omar Samad,
Ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada,
while taking part in Afghanistan Independence
Day Celebrations (Toronto – August 25, 2007)

For Oda it appears that her new job has meant going from the frying pan into the fire. From cutting women's programs in Canada to providing funding for phantom programs in Afghanistan.

"As far as the accountability of the dollars, I am quite confident that the dollars we're committing to support Afghanistan is beneficial. We have real results that we can show," Ms. Oda said.

Like providing warlords with cell phone cards you get at the 7/11?

$4,500 CAD to supply cellular phone cards to local leaders in Panjwayi and Zharey districts.

The reality is that reconstruction is still NOT occurring according to this March 2007 Report for the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute

Reconstruction in Kandahar is woefully insufficient. For security reasons there are few civilians engaged in aid and development in the province, and NGOs are leaving because of the same concern for their safety

Reconstruction has been very slow in the south. The food aid distribution system has failed, causing a severe famine. Much of the population of southern Afghanistan is alienated from ISAF. Unless these circumstances change, the Canadian mission in Kandahar will become less and less acceptable to the local population. Time is not on NATO and Canada’s side.

RATING CANADA’S DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE IN THE SOUTH TO DATE

With Canada’s major military commitment in Kandahar, one would expect to see a comparable level of humanitarian assistance, and where possible, development assistance. The CIDA expects to spend up to $20 million this fiscal year in Kandahar (of the planned $100 million aid disbursement across the country) to be delivered primarily through the PRT. It will disburse even more next year in coordination with the relevant local Afghan ministries. Canada also contributes to the Afghan National Programs that benefit Kandahar Province as well as the rest of the nation.

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT) is spending approximately $10–14 million in Kandahar this fiscal year through the PRT. The Department of National Defence (DND) also contributes through the Commander’s Contingency Fund on numerous smaller initiatives. The critical question is whether this is enough to reverse the situation in Kandahar.
The distribution of food aid is rarely monitored beyond Kandahar City; this makes food supplies and distribution networks in the province vulnerable to abuse and corruption and intensifies the political power of corrupt individuals and institutions based on their control over essential resources. The problem of corruption in Afghanistan has begun to receive acknowledgement by donors and is consistently flagged by Afghan civil society organizations as a major concern. But little has been done to address the causes of corruption at all levels of government – such as the insufficient salaries of civil servants and police – and in the aid industry, or to put in place monitoring and accountability systems to punish those perpetuating corrupt practices.

Development goals are also hindered by the understandable reluctance of international and local NGOs to operate in the region owing to endemic insecurity. Humanitarian workers have been threatened, attacked, and killed in the southern provinces; project sites are vulnerable to sabotage and attack by insurgents, and they receive little direct protection from the ISAF troops operating there, as they have other priorities. Numerous Afghan organizations (such as the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees [DACAAR]) have halted all operations in the south, as have large international agencies like Oxfam. In the south, one in four children will die before the age of five, 70 percent of children are malnourished, and 2.5 million people are in urgent need of more food assistance, as estimated by the World Food Programme (WFP).

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Huffin and Puffin

This is too silly by half. However it should be noted that the Liberal Party of Canada hides it's excrement too, but not well enough as the Gomery Commission proved.

And is flapping ones wings very hard, puffins flap their wings a hundred times to get going, a backhanded comment on Dion's Leadership?

Canadian political parties might not have official birds just yet, but deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has a suggestion for his party -- the humble Atlantic puffin.

"They put their excrement in one place. They hide their excrement ... They flap their wings very hard and they work like hell," he told reporters at the annual summer caucus gathering in St. John's, Nfld.

"This seems to me a symbol for what our party should be."

Liberals embrace Family Values....

And like a true politician, Mr. Ignatieff praised puffins for their "good family values." "They stay together for 30 years," he said.

Unlike Emperor Penguins who were embraced by the social conservatives for their family values until someone pointed out that they also have shown homosexual and polygamous tendencies.

When dealing with fowling ones image one should be careful of not appearing bird brained.

"My wife and I were very impressed with the noble bird. Noble in my lexicon means underappreciated as well."

Noble ah yes Mssr. Ignatieff does come from a Russian Aristocratic family after all, so I guess he can appreciate nobility and being in Dion's cabinet I guess he also understands being underappreciated.



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Labour, Opera and Anarchy

This is the labour day long weekend in North America and for that reason the August Carnival of Anarchy will begin and carry on through the week. The theme is:

Anarchism and Work, Anarchism and Life

Why Opera you ask. Because it originates from the Latin word for work; Opus. As in creative, fulfilling, self directed activity. Liberated labour if you like. Self-Valorization.

Whereas the common modern word for labour, work and worker in the Latin based languages like French, Spanish, Italian, etc. is trabajo and travail (from the Latin tripalium, or “instrument of torture”)

Hence modern work for most of us is not an opera nor our opus but wage slavery.

Towards a History of Workers' Resistance to Work - Michael Seidman

And besides it gives me another chance to make a reference to that great cultural anarchist Bugs Bunny.

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Farmers Vote To Join Wheat Board

In Nebraska. Farmers vote to join the Wheat Board.

That runs counter to the propaganda of the Harpocrites that farmers want an open market. American farmers who suffer from Agribusiness domination of the market like Canadian farmers recognize that a Marketing Board is the better option. Because as we all know consolidation creates better market access in the capitalist market.

As Marx said; That production rests on the supreme rule of capital. The centralization of capital is essential to the existence of capital as an independent power.

The Nebraska Wheat Growers Association, formed in 1954 and based in Ogallala, plans to move its office to Lincoln, as part of a proposed merger with the Nebraska Wheat Board. "The proposal, under discussion for about a year now, is aimed at improving the efficiency of both groups and making promotion of wheat more effective," says Mike Sullivan, NAWG president and producer from Wallace. "It will also make lobbying efforts on behalf of wheat growers more effective with NAWG being based in Lincoln near the Legislature." The Nebraska Wheat Growers Association is a dues-paying, voluntary membership organization that represents the state's producers, including lobbying for them on state and national policy issues. It sets membership policy on such matters as the farm program, crop insurance, soil and water conservation, transportation, and environmental issues. The Wheat Board, on the other hand, consists of a seven-member board, appointed by the governor, that administers the 1-1/4-cent-per-bushel wheat checkoff fee paid by all Nebraska wheat growers. The checkoff was created under state law and as such the board is prohibited from lobbying on state issues, although it can do so on national issues. The board's responsibilities are allocating checkoff dollars for research, promotion, education and market development, says Royce Schaneman, executive director of the Wheat Board.

See:

Wheat Boom

Death of the Family Farm

Wheat Board

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Wheat Boom

Wheat prices have gone through the roof.

Wheat prices have broken through all-time record levels, fuelling concern consumers could soon be paying even more for bread, baked goods, beef, chicken, eggs, beer and a range of products exposed to grain prices.

As has barely and it had nothing to do with the Harpocrites phony plebiscite to break up the Wheat Board.

Prices for barley — a major livestock feed and a key ingredient in beer — also continue to break records.

Jason Craig, acting senior trading manager with WA grain group CBH, said yesterday forward cash prices for the coming barley harvest had swept to $325 a tonne for feed barley and $336 for malt barley this week.

That is a jump of nearly $20 since Tuesday and $70 in the past three weeks, mainly due to problems in Ukraine, a big supplier to Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest feed barley importer.

“We have never seen prices like this,” Mr Craig said. “This is unknown territory.”

The global harvest of summer wheat has begun while spring wheat planting begins. But production estimates are down. Meaning an increase in prices.

Farmers in western Canada may harvest their smallest wheat crop since 2002 because of reduced planted acreage and unfavorable weather, a government survey shows.

Production of all varieties of wheat by farmers in the four western provinces may be 18.7 million metric tons, 16.5 percent less than the 22.4 million tons harvested last year, Statistics Canada said today. The report is based on a survey of 17,300 farmers between July 27 and Aug. 5.

Wheat is all set to see a price rise following the International Grains Council’s announcement that the carryover stock of the cereal is bound to witness a fall in 2007-08.

According to a report by the council, global 2007-08 wheat carryover stocks will fall to a 28-year low of 111 million tonnes.

Global wheat output this year is seen at 607 million tonnes, up 16 million tonnes from last year, but down 7 million tonnes from the council’s previous estimate due to lower output in European Union and Canada, the report issued said.

Lower output has pushed up global wheat prices, leading to lower consumption of the cereal as feed. As a result, global wheat demand is also seen lower at 614 million tonnes, down 3 million tonnes from the Council’s last estimate in July.

Although much of the reduction in the world crop estimate is offset by lower consumption, forecast of wheat stocks at the end of 2007-08 are placed 2 million tonnes lower than previously, at 111 million tonnes, the smallest since 1979-80, with those in the five major exporters (Argentina, Australia, Canada, the EU and the US) expected to be especially tight, the report said.

And even the Commodities markets; including wheat and barley, were affected by America's sub-prime meltdown. Far more than by Chuck Strahl's illegal plebiscite on barley.

Also supporting prices was a slowdown in the selling by investors that had been prompted by declines in global equity markets, McDougall said. Investors sold commodity futures last week to cover losses in other markets on concerns that tightening credit might slow economic growth.

Wheat and barley shortfalls have affected prices more than the Harpocrites illegal attempt to strip malt barley sales from the Wheat Board. Which they contended was the case for the increase in the barely price. Which it wasn't.



SEE:

Death of the Family Farm

Slap Upside The Head

Barley B.S.

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Bad News For Bush

Business as usual in Iraq. Surge or not.

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report.

"While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved." "Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised.

Iraq needs $100-150 bln for reconstruction: Finance minister

AMMAN (Reuters) - Iraq needs at least $100 billion to rebuild its shattered infrastructure after four years of violence and lawlessness following the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, Finance Minister Bayan Jabor said on Monday.

"The country is devastated and we are in need of at least $100 billion to $150 billion to restore infrastructure -- from sewerage to water to electricity to bridges and basic needs of the country," he told Reuters in Amman.

He said about $4 billion had been spent on infrastructure projects so far this year, more than in all of 2006, when internal violence and the limited capacity of the Iraqi private sector meant only about 40 percent of $6 billion allocated in the budget was used.

"What happened last year was ... a failure in the government's ability to execute," Jabor said.

Health and humanitarian crisis in Iraq

The billions of dollars planned for reconstruction are going unspent as the situation on the ground has spelled suspension for reconstruction efforts. While the coalition forces had not predicted the downward spiral that ensued - predicting a peaceful transition from one regime to another - investments have been mainly made in reconstruction efforts and in comparison, next to nothing, has been set aside for humanitarian assistance.

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction

July 30, 2007 Quarterly and Semiannual Report to Congress (Highlights, All Sections and Appendices)

Asset Transfer
SIGIR produced another audit on the asset-transfer process,
looking at how completed projects are transferred to
Iraqi control. During the course of the audit, SIGIR found
that the Government of Iraq (GOI) has failed to accept a
single U.S.-constructed project since July 2006. Although
local Iraqi officials have accepted projects, the national
government has not. Moreover, SIGIR learned that the U.S.
government is unilaterally transferring projects to Iraq. The
failure of the asset-transfer program raises concerns about
the continuing operation and maintenance of U.S.-constructed
projects.

First Focused Financial Review
This quarter, SIGIR completed the first in a series of
focused financial reviews of large contracts funded by
the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF). These
reviews will meet the “forensic audit” requirement
that the Congress imposed upon SIGIR last December
through the Iraq Reconstruction Accountability Act of
2006.

This initial review examined the work performed
by Bechtel under its Phase II IRRF contract. SIGIR’s
findings from the Bechtel audit are emblematic of
the many challenges faced by contractors in the Iraq
reconstruction program, including insufficient oversight,
descoping, project cancellations, cost overruns,
and significant delays in completing projects. SIGIR has
announced the next round of focused financial reviews,
which will audit the largest contracts in the Iraq reconstruction
program over the next year.

Anti corruption
The Embassy made progress on several fronts to address the endemic corruption in Iraq, which SIGIR views as a “second insurgency.” This quarter saw the inception of the Iraqi-created Joint Anti-Corruption Council (JACC), comprising the three main anticorruption organizations in Iraq, as well as other governmental representatives. A SIGIR audit this quarter identified continuing challenges to the implementation of a coherent anticorruption effort, including the absence of a program manager with the authority to coordinate the overall anticorruption effort and the lack of a comprehensive plan that ties anti corruption programs to the U.S. Embassy’s Iraq strategy.

Officer overseeing Iraq reconstruction projects urges patience

Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, commander of the Corps of Engineers' Gulf Region Division in Baghdad since Oct. 14, 2006, is responsible for overseeing the bulk of U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in Iraq. Earlier this summer, Government Executive senior correspondent Katherine McIntire Peters interviewed Walsh when he was in Washington during a brief leave from Iraq. The following is an edited transcript:

Q: You've been in Iraq more than eight months now. How have things gone with reconstruction during that time?

A: The security issue had an impact on about 12 percent of our projects when I got there, and now it's up to about 19 percent. Certainly part of the requirements in building, whether in the United States or Iraq, is to make sure you get the skilled labor, the equipment and the materials you need. In Iraq, you also need to make sure the security piece is taken care of, and then make sure the politics are OK with the local tribes and the provincial leadership. If any one of those four or five things is not in alignment, then you have to slow down or stop a project.

About 60 percent of our contracts are now with Iraqi firms. If an Iraqi principal or an Iraqi senior worker receives a cell phone call threatening him or his wife, he may not come to work. That's what we call an impact to the construction schedule. There also have been some attacks on particular project sites. Some small percentage have been damaged beyond repair. So far, we've completed 3,200 projects. I would say probably less than 1 percent of those have been destroyed. It's a very small percentage.

Troops Confront Waste In Iraq Reconstruction

Maj. Craig Whiteside's anger grew as he walked through the sprawling school where U.S. military commanders had invested money and hope. Portions of the workshop's ceiling were cracked or curved. The cafeteria floor had a gaping hole and concrete chunks. The auditorium was unfinished, with cracked floors and poorly painted walls peppered with holes.

Whiteside blamed the school director for not monitoring the renovation. The director retorted that the military should have had better oversight. The contract shows the Iraqi contractor was paid $679,000.

Americans who report Iraq corruption pay a price

Corruption has long plagued Iraq's reconstruction. Congress approved more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.

Yet there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.

William Weaver, a professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and a senior adviser to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, said, "If you do it, you will be destroyed."

Investigating an Outsourced War

The United States government detained Donald Vance just outside Baghdad for 97 days. They hooded him, interrogated him ruthlessly, and blasted his cell with heavy metal music. He was accused of selling weapons to terrorists. His real crime appears to be telling the FBI about corrupt contracting practices in Iraq. Vance is among a select group of state enemies: whistleblowers.

We know this because of an Associated Press story that uncovered Vance’s ordeal. Vance, suspicious that the contractor he worked for was supplying weapons to insurgents, started supplying information to the FBI back in the States. But he was soon detained by Army Special Forces and brought to Camp Cropper for his 97-day stay.

The story also reported the fate of other whistleblowers who have tried to halt the massive boondoggles still ongoing in Iraq: they have been “vilified, fired, and demoted.”

Bunnatine Greenhouse, a high-ranking civilian in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who testified about the corrupt practices of a Halliburton subsidiary now “sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.” Julie McBride testified about the same Halliburton company’s cost exaggerations and skimming. What happened? “Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion. My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country.”

Pentagon auditors investigating alleged Iraq contract fraud
Mike Rosen-Molina at 7:13 PM ET

[JURIST] The US Department of Defense will send an investigative team headed by Pentagon Inspector General Claude M. Kicklighter to Iraq to probe allegations of fraud and corruption related to military contracts, a DOD spokesman said Tuesday. The team will concentrate on incongruities concerning weapons and supplies bought by the US and intended for the use of Iraqi forces. As of last week, 73 criminal investigations were underway into contracts valued at more than $5 billion, Army spokesman Col. Dan Baggio said Monday; 20 military and civilian figures, including an officer who worked closely with Gen. David Petraeus , have already been indicted. The New York Times reported Tuesday that multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are conducting their own investigations into the matter.

The Rip-off in Iraq: You Will Not Believe How Low the War Profiteers Have Gone

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.

Humanitarian disillusions

On August 28th, Al-Jazeera English broadcast a report that the Salvadorian contingent of the MNF-I will be renewed in Iraq, highlighting their “reconstruction and humanitarian assignment”. It’s not the first misuse of the humanitarian concept. Everyone is aware of the existence of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps fewer people know that some Private Security Companies (PSCs), that are often compared to mercenary companies, justify their presence through “humanitarian” reasons.

For example, the British Aegis, well known in Iraq for the video broadcast by its personnel showing them firing at civilian vehicles with Elvis Presley as accompanying background music. As one of the largest PSC worldwide they have created the “Aegis Foundation”, which has been active across Iraq since 2004 and “has completed a wide range of projects assisting communities in urgent need, from providing clean drinking water for schools and inoculations against water-borne diseases to supplying hospitals and medical clinics with generators and essential equipment.” The International Peace Operation Association (IPOA), which, at the exact opposite of what its name suggest is a trade association of some of the most prominent PSC and has rules of engagement in its Code of Conduct, doesn’t hesitate to talk about the “benefits of military in humanitarian role” in its newsletter.

SEE:

Military Industrial Complex

The Cost of War

U.S. Supplies Iraqi Insurgents With Weapons

Surge Blackout

What He Didn't Say

Iraq; The War For Oil

Look In Your Own Backyard

Iraq Inspector General

Another Privatization Failure

Conservative Nanny State

Another Privatization Myth Busted

Halliburton

Privatization of War

Privatization


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