Sandra Finley

2010-03-06 Propaganda. Kitty Werthmann, Austria, 1938 (The Sound of Music) “the state, little by little eroded our freedom”

Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Peace or Violence, Propaganda No Responses »

Mar 062010

Kitty Werthmann, a young woman in Austria at the time of the Nazi takeover, tells the propaganda story. Many thanks to Jackie Stower from Ohio for sending it.

And many thanks, I am grateful for your thoughtful responses: Kitty’s story is part of the make Obama into Hitler agenda. The comments are appended; they are important for a full reading of Werthann’s article.

Selected Excerpt from Kitty’s story:

“Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria . Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.”

/Sandra

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(Link no longer valid http://www.resistnet.com/profiles/blogs/1938-austria-land-of-the)

The author of the following article, Kitty Werthmann, grew up in Austria and lived through the Hitler regime both before and after WWII, and the suppression of human rights and freedom by the Nazi Party. She moved to the USA and became a citizen in 1962. She is 83 years old. (INSERT: NO. This article is not current. Using the ages and events provided, she was probably born around 1921, is about 89 years old in 2010.) and lives in Pierre , South Dakota …

(INSERT (Sandra speaking): There is a YouTube interview with Kitty Werthmann at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1758808539498490012#) (2007)

You, of course, may not agree with everything Kitty writes. I do not. But I still think it is valuable, especially with the “Comments” submitted (at bottom), to cogitate on some of what she describes.

America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World.

Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away!

By: Kitty Werthmann (An Austrian who witnessed what took place under Hitler)

What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or read in history books.

I am an eyewitness to history. I can tell you that Hitler did not take Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote. I’ve never read that in any American publications. Everyone thinks Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force.

In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates. Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.

The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other. Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna , Linz , and Graz were destroyed. The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.

We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany , where Hitler had been in power since 1933. We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living. Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group — Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria . We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back. Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.

After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.

Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.

Hitler Targets Education–Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children:

Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang “Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,” and had physical education.

Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail. The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free. We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.

My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.

Equal Rights Hits Home:

In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.

Soon after this, the draft was implemented. It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys. They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines. When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat. Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.

Hitler Restructured the Family Through Daycare:

When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.

Health Care and Small Business Suffer Under Government Controls:

Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government.. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.

We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, and then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

“Mercy Killing” Redefined:

In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps . The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated. So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work. I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van. I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months. They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.

As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.

The Final Steps – Gun Laws:

Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.

Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria . Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.

After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria. Women were raped, preteen to elderly. The press never wrote about this either. When the Soviets left in 1955, they took everything that they could, dismantling whole factories in the process. They sawed down whole orchards of fruit, and what they couldn’t destroy, they burned. We called it The Burned Earth. Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses. Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized. Those who couldn’t; paid the price. There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians. This is an eye witness account.

“It’s true….those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.

America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away

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COMMENTS:

(1) D’ARCY: THE FAR RIGHT TWIST ON KITTY WERTHMANN’S STORY

Hi Sandra,

There are many elements to Kitty Werthmann’s narrative that ring true. The Nazi occupation of Austria brought in a regime that was totally focussed on collectivism and totalitarianism. This process of gradual domination was made acceptable by the propagandistic notion that the common good was being represented in Hitler’s social program and his “family values” agenda. In fact, it was just the beginning of his effort to eliminate public scrutiny and political accountability, and then to impose his more sinister designs.

Unfortunately, in looking at the actual website from which her account is taken, I realize that her story is being used to reinforce the highly individualistic (and paranoid) perspective of the far-right Republican agenda in the USA. The deep-seated distrust of government interference in everyday life means, to them, that Kitty is encouraging U.S. citizens to resist every effort to:

1) take Christianity out of the public school system and allow heretical outside ideas to infiltrate children’s minds;

2) facilitate women’s misguided efforts to work outside the home and otherwise expand their horizons beyond child-rearing and serving as dutiful wives;

3) undermine the nuclear family unit by opening up day-care centres (and at the same time furthering the agenda mentioned in #2 above);

4) take centralized control of the medical care system, where individual choice is eliminated;

5) impose a “humanistic” value system from the top whereby a culture of abortion is fostered, and death panels will determine the fate of the elderly; and

6) take away the rights of the individual to own and bear arms and thereby to resist hegemonic government authority.

Unfortunately, for the far right in the USA this is what the Democratic Obama administration’s platform distils down to. And this is the agenda that Kitty Werthmann is calling into question. So, in their minds, the move towards broad-based social programs like Health Care Reform, the secularization of schools, or gun control means that the rights of ordinary Americans are being neutralized in advance of a much more sinister plan to usurp democracy and the rights of the individual. As a democratic socialist, I am afraid that this portrayal of Obama as a modern-day Hitler and his program as an effort towards totalitarian, statist domination very effectively undermines all efforts to make America a safer, more humanitarian society. I am also afraid that the corporate agenda that you are resisting in the Lockheed census case has been and will continue to be clouded by the distribution of fodder such as Ms. Werthmann’s article, which serves to foster even more extremist reactions by red-neck America.

Thanks for listening! I hope to be able to see you in action at the court house on March 16.

D’Arcy

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(2) TREVOR: WERTHMANN ADVISING PEOPLE TO TAKE UP ARMS AGAINST OBAMA

Sandra–That piece by Werthmann has gone viral in the networks of people who are sure that Obama is the next Hitler. Werthmann is an ultra-conservative being put to good use by the corporate interests who are trying to stop Obama from introducing medicare. In September she was advising people to take up arms against Obama.

Not sure you want to be promoting her way of thinking. Take a look at these links: http://washingtonindependent.com/61121/fear-of-fascism-gay-agenda-dominate-conservative-kickoff-for-midterm-elections
http://crooksandliars.com/node/31614

Trevor Herriot

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(3) SELMA: MY GRANDMOTHER WAS AN AUSTRIAN CONTEMPORARY OF KITTY

Janet re-circulated the Kitty Werthmann email.

Dear Janet,
�
My grandmother was an Austrian contemporary of Kitty. She raised her 4 children there – before, during, and after the war. Her 9 year old son bled to death in her arms, an indirect casualty of American night bombing in southern Austria in the last days of the war. She experienced more pain than I ever will in my entire life. She must have been shielding me because she only ever spoke a few words about those times. Or, they were times bound so tightly into her life’s tragedies she could not speak about them, to anyone, let alone to a grandchild. Though Kitty’s and others’ experience of Hitler’s times differ, this was extremely thought-provoking reading for me. It helped me better understand my grandmother, my mother, my aunt, my sister, and myself. Thanks for this, Janet.
�
And going by the bold titles below, we are seeing that what were once Nazi policies are today being implemented in our Canadian and U.S. Governments…Instead of letting this frighten us, let this heighten our awareness of what those who want to lead us are up to, and what may be motivating them, – always a good protection, coupled with love.
�
Kind regards,
Selma

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(4) GARY: IS THE INTERPRETATION THAT MODERN “LIBERALISM” HERALDS THE COMING OF TOTALITARIANISM?

Sandra,

What I get from this is that creeping totalitarianism overwhelmed 1930s Austria and that the elements of modern “liberalism” — health care, daycare, the promise of full employment some day — heralds the coming of similar conditions throughout the world. Is that a fair assessment of the material?

Gary

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(5) HERMAN: KITTY WERTHMANN’S PIECE SOUNDS LIKE A PIECE OF AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

Hi Sandra,

This piece by Kitty Werthmann sounds like a piece of American propaganda. I briefly checked the historian Ian Kershaw’s book Making Friends with Hitler on the topic of the Anschluss of Austria. It doesn’t match Werthmann’s description very well. Also, her diatribe against socialized medicine and the gun laws sounds very American to me. That’s just a couple of thoughts off the top of the head. I don’t intend to research this further, but I would caution to take the “facts” in her piece with a heaping spoon of salt.

Herman

(Later) I understand what you’re trying to do. We’re of course immersed in propaganda every day, both political and commercial.

Best,

Herman

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(6) NICOLA: I THINK YOU’VE BEEN HAD BY RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA!

Hello Sandra,

I have read the writing of Kitty Werthmann as posted in your mass e-mail.

I am highly suspicious of her version of history and specifically, the “socialist” philosophy she purports to have held sway in Austria under Hitler.

Glancing around the internet, I note that Kitty Werthmann is heavily promoted by Eagle America, an organization for promotion of Phyllis Schlafly, an extremely right wing, anti-women’s equality, perhaps “Republican”.

Sorry to say – I think you’ve been had by right wing propaganda, people who are seriously trying to say that Hitler was a socialist – and so is Obama.

You might want to check this out more thoroughly than I have time for right now.

Thanks Sandra,

Nicola

2010-03-05 Love, Hate & Propaganda, the art of mass persuasion (WW2) on CBC

George Bush war criminal, Perception, fallibility, Linguistics, Propaganda 2 Responses »

Mar 052010

(Nov 29, 2011: scroll down to bottom to “Comments” regarding Bush Family history)

The use of propaganda in today’s world is a serious issue.

This CBC documentary sets the stage for this series of postings about propaganda and naiveté: (link no longer valid ~~http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/lovehatepropaganda/~~

“ … a six-part documentary series on the role propaganda played in World War Two. With newsreels, posters, speeches, rallies, songs and radio, entire populations were convinced to go to war. Hosted by Geo Stroumboulopoulos, Love, Hate and Propaganda is a primer on the art of mass persuasion, aimed directly at a media-savvy generation.”

“.. how the world came not just to the brink of madness but to a colossal state of madness, and it was all through messaging.”

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COMMENTS FROM TORONTO SUN & WINNIPEG FREE PRESS:

http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/tv/2010/03/03/13095596.html

Stroumbo tackles WWII

‘The Hour’ host narrates documentary series

By BILL HARRIS, QMI Agency

Last Updated: March 3, 2010 12:19pm

George Stroumboulopoulos. (HO)

So what more can be said about the Second World War?

Well, quite a bit, according to George Stroumboulopoulos. He’s the narrator of the new six-part documentary series Love, Hate & Propaganda, part one of which debuts Thursday on CBC.

“I initially didn’t really see where I could bring something different, because so many documentaries have been done really well before,” Stroumboulopoulos said. “But then the idea came of dealing with propaganda, and how the war was sold, and how the world came not just to the brink of madness but to a colossal state of madness, and it was all through messaging.

“The German people didn’t want to go to war. The Americans sure didn’t want to go to war. Nobody wanted to go to war. Yet somehow, the Italians and the Germans and the French whipped everybody up into a frenzy, and the British, the Canadians, and eventually the Americans followed.

“It was just so fascinating to me to approach it from that perspective, which is, six parts on how propaganda defined this war.”

The six episodes of Love, Hate & Propaganda are titled The Strong Men; Selling War; Meet the Enemy; Truth and Total War; Hiding the Horrors; and Changing the Story.

From whose perspective are these tales being told?

“All of them,” Stroumboulopoulos said. “It’s not just the Germans, but how much the British used propaganda, the Canadians.

“Every side lied and tricked, and it wasn’t always for negative reasons. A lot of times it was governments doing what they thought they had to do to put their countries in the best position to achieve their goals.

“There was just a lot of stuff I didn’t know. We’ve heard a lot about World War II, but this was not written for any particular demographic and I think the audience is going to be really surprised by some of this stuff.”

bill.harris@sunmedia.ca

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http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/entertainment/TV/wartime-spin-writ-large-86318192.html

Wartime spin writ large

By: Brad Oswald

4/03/2010 1:00 AM |

Basil Fawlty once famously implored his staff not to mention the war, implying — to great Brit-com effect — that it was rude to do so and that the Second World War was a memory best left behind.

That was a different time, in a different generation and a very different TV genre. The producers of the earnest and approachably educational new six-part CBC series Love, Hate & Propaganda (which premieres tonight at 9 on CBC) have rightly decided that the time is right to revisit the history of this most massive global conflict and to introduce a new generation to its causes, consequences and the enduring social and political lessons left in its wake.

“This is a series about the psychology of war,” series host George Stroumboulopoulos explains, by way of introduction, “not the battles or military manoeuvres. It’s about people — how they were led, and misled.”

And that, perhaps, is the most valuable and engaging aspect of Love, Hate & Propaganda — in an era where instant communication and constant repackaging of images and information are the rule, this series opts not to exploit the often-revisited catalogue of footage and photos from battlefields and prison camps and instead explores the spin, manipulation and public-perception building that made the war happen.

Stroumboulopoulos, a clever fellow who can sometimes seem a bit too pleased with his own wit on The Hour, takes his hosting role straight-ahead seriously in Love, Hate & Propaganda, and he proves to be a good choice for the task. His presentation is measured and sincere, but brings a level of accessibility that might serve as the necessary bridge between the series’ mid-20th-century subject matter and the new-millennium viewership it’s trying to reach.

In tonight’s opener, The Strong Men, Stroumboulopoulos offers in-depth profiles of the three powerful leaders — Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin — whose lust for power and conquest set Europe and, ultimately, the world on a headlong rush toward war. Later in the hour, Japan’s involvement in the growing global conflict is also assessed.

In particular, the series’ examination of Hitler’s early political career — in the 1920s, he positioned himself as a right-wing outsider whose air-of-mystery strategy involved not letting anyone photograph him — is a fascinating series of revelations.

Hitler’s ability to manipulate public perception, as well as his willingness to embrace the emerging technologies of the day — he was an early adopter of air travel, motion pictures and radio as means of getting his message out — are shown as key factors in his eventual rise to power in Nazi Germany.

It’s a unique approach, in narrative terms, and Love, Hate & Propaganda is very successful in creating a modern context in which the series becomes a cautionary tale as well as a historical overview.

It’s a timely and well-considered documentary that deserves to be seen.

2010-03-05 Court Allows Torture Suit Against Former Defense Sec’t Donald Rumsfeld

George Bush war criminal No Responses »

Mar 052010

UPDATE, see: 2012-11-08 Federal appeals court dismisses torture suit against Rumsfeld (the reasons for dismissal are interesting)

1st time in U.S. history that court allows torture suit against current or former Cabinet Secretary

CHICAGO – Federal Judge Wayne R. Andersen issued an historic ruling today allowing a suit charging former Defense Secretary with authorizing torture.Rumsfeld asked the court to dismiss the case because he is a high-placed governmental official and argued that he was immune from suit even for allegations of torture. Mr. Rumsfeld also argued that due to his position, the Constitution permitted him to order interrogation techniques that are widely considered by human rights experts to be torture. The Court rejected both of Mr. Rumsfeld’s arguments and held that high-placed placed cabinet officials can be held personally liable if they authorize the use of torture.

While many previous civil suit attempts to prosecute Bush-era cabinet officials for authorizing torture have failed, the suit brought by Chicago-based Loevy and Loevy Attorneys at Law, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel v. Donald Rumsfeld, United States of America and Unidentified Agents, will now proceed to discovery and a trial.

Donald Vance, a Navy veteran, accuses U.S. forces in Iraq of imprisoning him without charges for over three months in 2006, and torturing him during much of that time. Vance, a private security employee at the time of his arrest in Baghdad, named former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a defendant for his role in overseeing the military prison system in Iraq.

Rumsfeld allegedly issued orders allowing torture techniques which allowed Vance to be subjected to extreme sleep deprivation, interrogation for hours at a time, held in an extremely cold cell without adequate clothing or blankets, and periodically denied food and water for long periods of time. During virtually Vance’s entire three month imprisonment at the notorious Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport, he was held in solitary confinement in a continuously lit, windowless cell.

“Plaintiffs…allege that in August 2003 Rumsfeld sent Major Geoffrey Miller to Iraq to review the United States prison system,” read Andersen’s decision. “Plaintiffs claim that Rumsfeld informed Major Miller that his mission was to ‘gitmo-ize’ Camp Cropper…. These allegations, if true, would substantiate plaintiffs’ claim that Rumsfeld was aware of the direct impact that his newly approved treatment methods were having on detainees in Iraq…. Based on these allegations, we conclude that plaintiffs have alleged sufficient facts to survive Rumsfeld’s motion to dismiss on account of a lack of personal involvement… Accepting at this stage that these treatment methods were in fact used, we conclude that a court might plausibly determine that the conditions of confinement were torturous.”

An employee of Shield Group Security (SGS) at the time of his arrest, Vance and a co-worker, Nathan Ertel, suspected their employer of paying of local sheiks for influence in obtaining government contracts and of other illegal dealings. To combat the suspected illegal activity, Vance and Ertel became unpaid informants to the FBI in Chicago and U.S. officials in Iraq. When SGS officials threatened Vance’s and Ertel’s lives, they arranged for U.S. military forces to rescue them. But after a few hours of interrogation and then rest at the U.S. embassy, the U.S. imprisoned Vance and Ertel, beginning their nightmarish imprisonment without habeus corpus.

Once they were in U.S. custody, low level bureaucrats invoked the unprecedented powers Rumsfeld had given them to imprison Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel as “persons of interest” to the United States. Three months of interrogation followed, in which Mr. Vance was physically abused and denied the right to counsel, the right of access to the courts, and any legitimate process to challenge his illegal detention.

2010-03-03 U.S. gets say on which Canadians can fly

Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials) No Responses »

Mar 032010

Would you please send the following all over your world. It is very troubling. Many thanks to Joe Hueglin for sending it in. Joe writes: Interested in asking whether the Census data is one of the data bases available to Homeland Security for this programme?

/Sandra

(My next court appearance over the out-sourcing of Canadian census work to Lockheed Martin Corporation of the American military-industrial-congressional complex is TUESDAY, MARCH 16^th at 9:30 am, Provincial Court in Saskatoon on 19^th Street.)

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U.S. gets say on which Canadians can fly
By Kevin Dougherty, The Gazette March 3, 2010

(Link no longer valid Read the Secure Flight Final Rule (PDF, 195 pages – 10.27 MB)

Starting in December, passengers on Canadian airlines flying to, from or even over the United States without landing there will be allowed to board the aircraft only after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.

Secure Flight, the newest weapon in the U.S.’s war on terrorism, gives the United States unprecedented power over who can board planes that fly over U.S. airspace -even if the flights originate and land in Canada.

The program, set to take effect globally in December, was created as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2004.

Canada’s Parliament never adopted or even discussed the Secure Flight program – even though Secure Flight transfers the authority to screen passengers, and their personal information, from domestic airlines to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The European Parliament, on the other hand, has consistently voiced objections to the Secure Flight plan.

When asked about the program, Transport Canada, the federal department in charge of Canadian airlines, deferred to Public Safety Canada.

After refusing to comment on Secure Flight or the government’s position on the U.S. program, David Charbonneau, a Public Safety Canada spokesperson, said: “Canada works in partnership with the United States, as well as with other allies, on aviation safety and security.

“Canada’s approach will continue to balance the privacy rights of travellers with the need to keep the public safe from terrorist and other threats to the air transportation system.”

Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, referred all questions on the Secure Flight program back to the office of Transport Minister John Baird, who oversees Transport Canada.

Canadian airlines already check their flight manifests against the U.S. no-fly list, which is compiled by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and distributed to airlines around the world. It contains the names of about 16,000 people the U.S. government says are suspected of terrorism. The names and why they are on the list are not disclosed, for reasons of ‘national security.’

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration says Secure Flight will reduce the number of false positives – innocent travellers with the same names as people on the no-fly list – who are stopped at airports.

Under Secure Flight, the TSA, a branch of Homeland Security, will have access to all U.S. government databases.

As part of Secure Flight, Canadian airlines will transfer personal information of travellers to Homeland Security, preferably 72 hours before takeoff. Then, the TSA will use Infoglide, a package of 50 “identity resolution” algorithms – complex mathematical formulas to extract and aggregate information from several sources, to check passenger identities.

“If necessary, the TSA analyst will check other classified and unclassified governmental terrorist, law enforcement, and intelligence databases – including databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defence, National Counter Terrorism Centre, and Federal Bureau of Investigation,” notes Secure Flight Final Rule, the U.S. government document that defines the program.

The General Accounting Office, an U.S. institution similar to Canada‚s auditor-general, is concerned this sweeping check could cause new problems.

“More individuals could be misidentified, law enforcement would be put in the position of detaining more individuals until their identities could be resolved, and administrative costs could increase, without knowing what measurable increase in security is achieved,” the GAO said in a January presentation to the U.S. House of Representatives committee on Homeland Security.

Andrea McCauley, a Homeland Security spokesperson in Washington, D.C., said the TSA is confident there will be fewer false positive results than under the current no-fly list system.

“We have designed this program to ask for the minimum amount of personal information necessary,” she said.

If the search of U.S. databases, which will also contain information collected in Canada, like police records, turns up “no match” between a passenger and the watch list, Homeland Security will inform the airline it can issue a boarding pass.

Personal information will be purged from the system after seven days, McCauley said.

“If you are a potential match, it would be retained for seven years,” she said, explaining that “a potential match is someone who has been determined not to be an exact match but has the potential to match some of the data elements.”

If the search returns a positive match, personal information will be kept by Secure Flight for 99 years.

kdougherty AT thegazette.canwest.com

2010-03-02 Weed killer causes male frogs to lay eggs. Australian Broadcasting, CBC News – Technology & Science

Health No Responses »

Mar 022010

The chemical industry was once able to trash the careers (livelihoods) and reputations of scientists and media people whose work reflected badly on their products. Tyrone Hayes was one of the scientists who they almost drove out. Old-timers in our network may remember his name. I am happy to see that they only took him out of commission for a short while. You will see that he is the scientist behind this recent report.

When we first started working on the chemicals people were scared of the industry because of the examples it set: not only could it destroy people, it DID. Today, there is a complete turn-around. People have little fear or even hesitation in putting their names to critical evidence.

One person in isolation is vulnerable. When we all speak our minds, and are informed, no one is vulnerable. We have created a critical mass. That is our gift to Tyrone Hayes in thanks for his work. We can make the world safe for him.

The link to the National Geographic report on atrazine follows this report on CBC from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

/Sandra

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http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/03/02/tech-frog-weed-killer.html

Weed killer causes male frogs to lay eggs

Last Updated: Tuesday, March 2, 2010 | 9:18 AM ET

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Both of these copulating frogs are genetically male, but the larger one on the bottom has been completely feminised by atrazine exposure and produces viable eggs. (Tyrone Hayes/ABC)

One of the most common weed killers in the world, atrazine, can chemically castrate male frogs, turning them into females that lay eggs, say U.S. researchers.

Atrazine continues to be used on corn fields in Canada, although it is no longer approved for use in Europe. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced last year it would launch a new scientific evaluation of atrazine’s effect on humans.

Prof. Tyrone Hayes of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues reported their findings in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Atrazine-exposed males were both demasculinized [chemically castrated] and completely feminized as adults,” said Hayes.

Atrazine is widely used by farmers around the world as a herbicide, particularly in production of corn, sorghum and sugar cane.

Earlier studies have found that the chemical feminized zebra fish and leopard frogs, and caused a significant decline in sperm production in male salmon and caiman lizards.

“Atrazine exposure is highly correlated with low sperm count, poor semen quality and impaired fertility in humans,” said Hayes and colleagues.

While previous studies have shown atrazine adversely affects amphibian larval development, this latest study of African clawed frogs shows the process can go even further, said Hayes.

“Before, we knew we got fewer males than we should have, and we got hermaphrodites. Now, we have clearly shown that many of these animals are sex-reversed males,” said Hayes.

Genetic males become functioning females

Hayes and colleagues compared 40 male control frogs with 40 male frogs reared from hatchlings until full sexual maturity, in atrazine concentrations similar to those experienced year-round in areas where the chemical is found.

Of the male frogs exposed to atrazine, 90 per cent had low testosterone levels, decreased breeding gland size, feminized laryngeal development, suppressed mating behaviour, reduced sperm production and decreased fertility.

The remaining atrazine-exposed male frogs developed into functional females.

“Ten per cent of the exposed genetic males developed into functional females that copulated with unexposed males and produced viable eggs,” the researchers wrote.

The larvae that developed from those eggs were all male.

“Atrazine has caused a hormonal imbalance that has made them develop into the wrong sex, in terms of their genetic constitution,” said Hayes.

Hayes and colleagues exposed frogs to water contaminated with 2.5 parts per billion of atrazine.

Atrazine level restricted in drinking water

In Australia, environmental groups have been concerned about the adequacy of testing of Australian waterways for chemicals such as atrazine.

For example, in 2008, Tasmanian Greens MP Tim Morris said Freedom of Information requests had revealed atrazine levels in the state’s waterways as high as 7.42 parts per billion.

The National Health and Medical Research Council recently released revised guidelines that restrict the level of atrazine in drinking water to 20 parts per billion.

Health Canada concluded an environmental assessment of atrazine in 2007. Its Pest Management Regulatory Agency “determined that the use of atrazine on corn for weed control does not entail an unacceptable risk to the environment.”

Whether the effects found in frogs translate to humans is far from clear.

Frogs have thin skin that can absorb chemicals easily and they literally bathe in the polluted water.

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The same story on National Geographic:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100301-atrazine-frogs-female-chemical/

The so-called pregnant man has company: One of the most common weed killers in the United States can make male frogs lay eggs, …

2010-02-25 Recruiting by stealth, etc. – Your input

Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials), Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys No Responses »

Feb 252010

(1) “RECRUITING BY STEALTH”, DAVID GOODMAN

Feb 11, 2010

Wanda writes:

I don’t know if this is helpful, but I just listened to CBC “Dispatches” and one of the interviews was with American Journalist David Goodman called “Recruiting by Stealth”. He describes how the educational legislation passed during the Bush era “No Child Forgotten” actually allowed the recruiters in the Army access to information from the High Schools (student test scores, student career testing answers, student academic information, etc, etc, etc). He talked about how these recruiters got email addresses, phone numbers & all manner of information about all students in Senior High – which the schools never released to any other outside agency before, but they were compelled to under this new legislation.

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(2) THE STATE OR A MOB ORGANIZED BY THE STATE, FROM HERMAN

Hi Sandra,

Within the last several months, there was a news item about the release of zillions of recorded telephone conversations /before,/ during and after the 9/11 attack. It led me to infer that some body monitors all telephone conversations in the U.S. I passed a copy of this to TomDispatch asking what they thought of it, but did not receive a reply.

My question to you is: /are you aware of anyone in the States pursuing this issue?/ (MY RESPONSE: sorry, I can’t help on this one.)

Without going into detail, I grew up under the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. I’ve always said to people : don’t think it couldn’t happen here. Some day the state or a mob organized by the state may come to the door and carry me away or kill me. I have to get that Edwin Black book (INSERT: “IBM and the Holocaust”).

Herman

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(3) PARTISANS WHO CHANGED THE RULES OF HUMAN CONDUCT, FROM DON

“… I had not read the Canadian constitution or its Charter of Rights and Freedoms by November 2002. However, I had watched and read enough history. I knew the history in pre-World War II Germany had been partisans who changed the rules of human conduct to mark individuals for exclusion from justice. …”

Good luck.

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(4) CENSUS ACTUAL REQUIREMENT UNDER THE STATISTICS ACT IS FOR VERY LITTLE INFORMATION, FROM DOUG

Don’t know if I mentioned this before, but Russell Porisky from (Link no longer valid www.naturalperson.com) has done lots of work re:statutory interpretation of what you actually MUST provide according to the Statistics Act. It’s actually VERY little ie name number of people in your dwelling and number of livestock or animals you own. The rest is not mandatory. If you learn statutory rules of construction that he teaches, it’s easy to determine.

Good luck.

Doug

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(5) RE-STATED BY A DIFFERENT DOUG (THANKS!)

Hi Sandra, census of population isn’t defined within the Stats Act, so the next place is a Cdn law dictionary which defines it as a count or enumeration of the people… which goes back to my original understanding… an individual is required by law to tell them how many people in your place and how many cows you have, other than that, I believe the rest is voluntary and the penalties don’t apply, HOWEVER, I haven’t spent a lot of time studying this act, but it stands to reason the only thing they can require by law is a # for the purpose of Fed transfer payments to the Provinces. Hope this helps.

Doug

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(6) VOLUNTARY SURVEYS, FROM EDUARD

I had some sense there was a significant difference between the long form and the short, and the ones I as a farmer am subjected to.

Thank-you for pointing out:

“Voluntary surveys

8. The Minister may, by order, authorize the obtaining, for a particular purpose, of information, other than information for a census of population or agriculture, on a voluntary basis, but where such information is requested section 31 (INSERT: jail time and a fine) does not apply in respect of a refusal or neglect to furnish the information.”

. . . All the best!

Eduard

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(7) CREDIBILITY OF STATSCAN WITNESS, FROM A GUY

Nice work…you’ve been busy. Just a couple of comments. Statscan has called me last week and coincidentally today. I recognize the number (from Winnipeg) and I just don’t answer. I don’t know if they’ll give up or keep it up…whatever. I don’t buy the argument about just 64 people not in compliance for the 2006 information fest…that sounds like pure bullshit. And then there is this in your commentary

” A. THE STORY OF FRIENDS WHO LIVE IN SOUTHEAST SASKATOON: STATISTICS CANADA CAME INTO THE HOME, QUESTIONS FOR MORE THAN HALF AN HOUR, ENTERED RESPONSES ONTO A COMPUTER. HAD TO SEE THEIR ACTUAL INCOME TAX FORMS. JANUARY 5, 2010. NOT EVEN DURING A CENSUS.”

My answer..Over my dead fucking body…or there’s take your pick. Sorry for the language but this doesn’t really sound voluntary to me. Give us info or go to jail. Fuck that. If they ever get to the point where they are going to show up at my door, I’ll answer the door naked, and lets see if they try to charge me with indecent exposure while in my own house. I wonder what box they’ll tick off on the form when they see that.

Anyway , keep swinging away.

2010-02-25 Understanding why we flounder, help from John Ralston Saul “On Equilibrium”

Culture and Ethics, Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials), Why we flounder or do not flounder No Responses »

Feb 252010

For me, the preceding newspaper article USING DEFENCE STOCKS TO BOLSTER YOUR INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO is a tragedy of epic proportions. Not a tragedy of a single person or family, but of our society. It is bizarre that this can be an article from a “normal” newspaper, on a normal day, written by a normal person. It’s not normal; it is insanity.

If we can understand WHY or HOW it is that our society embraces insanity – how it is that we’ve gotten ourselves into this mess, we should be in a better position to move ourselves onto a different plane.

WHY do we flounder? John Ralston Saul explains some of the answer in his book “On Equilibrium” (2004).

“Common sense, Ethics, Imagination, Intuition, Memory, Reason”

Qualities are most effective in a society when they are recognized as of equal, universal value and so are integrated into our normal life. Ralston Saul says (among other interesting things) that we divorce “reason” from everything else. It becomes distorted. We are out of balance.

(p. 308-315)

“… Some might argue that the disposal of waste and the distribution of clean water are among the most important areas of solid progress we have made in the last 150 years. They would be right. But that doesn’t make process rational. And it would be impossible to prove that this process was a child of reason.

If you examine the sources of the initiatives for waste disposal and clean-water distribution you find individuals and societies driven by a constant mix of human qualities. Thought and argument were of central importance. But so was ethics – a sense of ‘the other’ and of inclusive responsibility. So was imagination, allowing people to conceive of what was happening to their society. So was intuition, driving people to make decisions. So was the memory of what happened to their society when these elements were not dealt with.

You could argue that there is rationality constantly at work in the conceiving of such systems. And that would probably be so. But that doesn’t make the systems rational.

The point is: if utilitarianism is given leadership in a given area, it will set about demeaning, marginalizing and unraveling the non-utilitarian elements at play. Why? Because utility is not thought. Nor is it argument. It does not, in and of itself, have a purpose or a direction. A toilet would just as happily dispose of fresh caviar or unwanted goldfish. It will indifferently send its cargo off through a system of pipes to be deposited in a sewage-treatment plant or directly into your drinking-water supply. That was the point about the IBM Hollerith punch-card machine, indifferently an organizer of death camps and of efficient workplace structures.

Utilitarianism can only lead us if it reduces all else to its own narrow truth of utility. The closest utility can come to a purpose is efficiency and, related to that, self-interest. This can be made into a seductive proposition, thanks to myriad fast, apparently clear, short-term answers and concrete illustrations of those answers.

But what makes a society or a civilization is precisely its more complex, less clear, more long-term, non-utilitarian aspects. And so it was a consensus around the ‘nature of the other’ which solidified the idea of responsible individualism and social inclusion, which drove the movement for egalitarian waste removal and clean-water supplies. This was an illustration of culture in its broadest sense. It included what we have always considered to be culture – ideas, literature, images, music, architecture, the sciences. Why do we think of these as culture? Because they are the repositories and the mechanisms of thought and argument.

… None of this is a comment on whether utility is good or bad. Or waste disposal. Or trade. Nor is it a comment on the necessary function of self-interest. I’m simply pointing out that these characteristics and functions are not in and of themselves rational. They are not equipped to lead society.

Why then are we so obsessed by utilitarianism? We have always wanted the comfort of clarity and permanent systems. We remain uncomfortable with our own qualities and strengths – with complexity and uncertainty. …

… Rousseau: “As soon as public service ceases to be the main concern of the citizens and they come to prefer to serve the state with their purse rather than their person, the state is already close to ruin.

What does that mean today? Think of the facility with which democracies now talk of training youth rather than educating them. Tony Blair is typical of those seduced and excited by the utilitarian solution. Echoing the latest utilitarian fashion, he argues that “human capital” is the key to future prosperity. I’m not suggesting that students shouldn’t have training, but a rational citizen is not human capital any more that she is a utilitarian mechanism.

… (There is a quote from Mussolini, followed by) .. My point is not to call anyone a fascist. Rather it is to point out how seductively the utilitarian, interest-based corporatist viewpoint has chased reason from our public imagination and replaced it with mechanistic dogma. It is so omnipresent that we no longer recognize it as such. …

When I say utilitarianism chases out reason, the impetus is obvious. Reason will press us to be conscious. It will force us to use our memory, to say nothing of our ethical judgement. The utilitarian, being mere method and self-interest, is dependent on perpetual virginal naivete. Its short-term clarity is intended to bring results and produce a direction. And we must not notice when it doesn’t.

So a rational leader like Harry Truman quite naturally points out, “That people have to keep their eyes and ears open at all times or they’ll be robbed blind by … the big business interests. Every generation seems to have to learn that all over again, and it’s a shame.”

And indeed, various arguments of inevitability tied to what we now call globalization have caused us to willingly suspend our disbelief yet again, even though the evidence of our naivete continues to pour in. Think of Nike withdrawing its financial support from American universities such as Michigan, Oregon and Brown. Why? Because these schools expressed concern over working conditions in Nike’s overseas factories. Universities are supposed to be independent centres of thought – of rationality – but they were caught in a web of utilitarian logic. They need money. They are an attractive, soft, advertising centre for sports-equipment manufacturers. And the equipment in question is produced according to an utilitarian model.

Or think of a current fashion which is presented as utilitarian truth: the new large markets created by globalization require larger corporations. We should therefore be pleased by a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, leading to many companies larger than national states. But the logic simply doesn’t work. A decade or so ago we were told to deregulate and open our borders in order to stimulate competition. Today we are told that the return in force of monopolies and oligopolies is a healthy and in any case inevitable outcome of opening up to the world. So the plan to increase competition has done the opposite.

Which is it meant to be? In utilitarianism it really doesn’t matter because there is no direction and there are no ideas. Looked at rationally, these big corporations are bad for the global market and for our societies. Anyone who THINKS he is in favour of the marketplace must be against the trend. Anyone who BELIEVES in the marketplace may be able to trick himself into naïve acceptance.

… There was – is – no real danger, only the fear. The fear of danger here is the fear of uncertainty. And because of that fear, reason can swing into deformity perhaps faster than any of our other qualities.

All that is needed is a troubled time or a voice capable of exacerbating our fears, playing upon them, or a critical mass of insecure minds in a critical place. Suddenly we discover that our ability to think and argue has been locked up in methodology, truth and dogma. This is the cheapest, the fastest, way to self-confidence. And in fleeing the dangers of free enquiry, reason is blown immediately into the truly dangerous waters of certainty. Thought, after all, may be our most unusual quality. Perhaps it is also our most delicate, the one most immediately dependent upon the tension created by our other qualities.

That is why the worst thing we can do is to overstate the rational case. Of the six qualities it is the least capable of assuming such hyperbole.

Treat it as mere reason – as thought and argument. Cut loose the sucker-fish – the facts, methodology, instrumentalism, utilitarianism. Stop treating it as the source of truth. Stop pretending that thought is virtue. “Sometimes it is reasonable to act contrary to reason.” Remember that life is not a Manichean choice between good and evil. Only a false rationality leads us into that trap. Ethics can deal with the choices of life in a much more complex and interesting way.”

. . . . Cripes! John Ralston Saul is right. I applied ethics to the case of Lockheed Martin. Think how simple and dull my life could have otherwise been! I would not have been hauled into Court wouldn’t know the many of you, would not know all that I have learned through experience, and working with a network of other people.

2010-02-25 Using defence stocks to bolster your investments, spotlight on Lockheed Martin, G&M Feb 24

Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials) No Responses »

Feb 252010

(hyperlink this to the other discussion re investment in “defence” stocks)

Many thanks to Blake who writes:

This Globe & Mail article illustrates the power behind the industrial/military alliance, and perfectly defines why you are right.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/e-zines/globe-investor-magazine/using-defence-stocks-to-bolster-your-portfolio/article1478990/?cmpid=1

Using defence stocks to bolster your portfolio

(photo)

Lt. Col. James Hecker flies over Fort Monroe Virginia before delivering the first operational F/A-22 Raptor to its permanent home at Langley Air Force Base, Va., in May 2005. This was the first of 26 Raptors to be delivered to the 27th Fighter Squadron. U.S. Air Force

Military spending is still on the rise, and the stocks of companies that make munitions and other war-related items have been strong

Published on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010 8:56AM EST; Last updated on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010 6:59PM EST

The thesis:

The ultimate defensive investment may be defence stocks.

The rationale:

Spending on defence is more a function of government priorities in the area of national security. It is not necessarily tied to economic cycles. Defence stocks may thus offer one way to make a portfolio less subject to economic fluctuations.

Moreover, Mr. Katsoras and Mr. Fournier expect the global trend toward higher military expenditures will continue. The next section highlights some of the main points in their argument that the defence industry should experience growth in the years ahead.

The background:

World military spending has been on the rise this decade, climbing to a record level of $1.46-trillion (U.S.) in 2008. That is an increase of 45 per cent since 1999, according to the inflation-adjusted figures published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Reasons for the escalation are offered by National Bank Financial analysts, Angelo Katsoras and Pierre Fournier, in their February research report The Military Industry and Global Instability:

•economic growth increases the ability of emerging countries to arm;

•the United States is conducting a “war on terror;”

•there’s an increasing number of “geopolitical hotspots.”

Defence stocks as growth stocks:

Economic growth is increasing the capacity of emerging countries to buy weapons and expand their armed forces. In fact, the fastest growth in military spending is now in the developing world.

According to SIPRI estimates, China has increased military spending by 194 per cent from 1999 to 2008, and is now the second biggest buyer with a 5.8-per-cent global share. Other big hikes have occurred in Russia (173 per cent), Saudi Arabia (81 per cent), South Korea (51.5 per cent), India (44 per cent), and Brazil (30 per cent).

The emerging world is not without its tension spots. As economies expand, there are increasing concerns about protecting ports, shipping lanes, air space and access to critical materials. Moreover, there are still old rivalries and unresolved border disputes between Russia, Japan, China, India and Pakistan, note Mr. Katsoras and Mr. Fournier.

Tensions are also rising between newly assertive emerging countries and the United States. In particular, China and the U.S. are becoming more strident in their disagreements over trade, currencies, protectionist measures, Taiwan and exiles such as Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Rearmament programs in the developing world are having a contagion effect. When one country commences a program to build up its capabilities, neighbouring countries feel compelled to follow suit. In short, there is a potential for regional arms races.

Looking at other venues, the U.S. is engaged in a war on terrorism, which has led to incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also beefing up homeland security. Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East are approaching the boiling point due, in no small part, to suspicions that Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons.

Investment opportunities:

Since the developing world is where growth in military spending is likely to be greatest, one area to consider for investing purposes is U.S. defence suppliers with significant exposure to the developing world. Two with strong global presences are Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT-N76.93-0.63-0.81%) and Raytheon Corp. (RTN-N55.83-0.34-0.61%)

Also noteworthy are suppliers of equipment and weapons for local, unconventional, and terrorist threats. Some examples are DigitalGlobe Inc. (DGI-N23.291.607.38%) (satellite surveillance), Raytheon Corp. (interceptors of short- and medium-range missiles), and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (LLL-N90.84-0.49-0.54%) (unmanned aerial vehicles and body/luggage scanners).

The U.S. defence industry is one of the few in America with a competitive edge in world markets. It currently accounts for over 75 per cent of global weapons exports in 2008.

Spotlight on Lockheed Martin:

In their report, Mr. Katsoras and Mr. Fournier single out Lockheed Martin, which trades at about $77 (U.S.), as “one example of a U.S. defence company with significant exposure to developing markets, which account for 25 per cent of its sales.” Contract wins in recent months include:

•missile defence system for the United Arab Emirates, worth $7-billion;

•$842-million agreement with Morocco for F-16 jets;

•sale of two-dozen F-16 jets to Egypt for $3.2-billion.

Recently released financial results for the company’s fiscal year (ending Dec. 31) were strong. The Bethesda, Md.-headquartered company generated $3.2-billion in cash from operating activities, and finished the year with cash and equivalents of $2.4-billion. Long-term debt stood at $5.1-billion.

Revenues rose six per cent to $45.2-billion, during a year of recession. Earnings came in at $7.78 per share, ahead of consensus estimates. And management raised guidance for fiscal 2010 earnings per share to the $7.15 to $7.35 range. The order backlog at year end registered $78-billion.

“The reason to own Lockheed Martin stock is that it may have the strongest dividend in the market at this time,” declares Associated Content contributor, Ken Van Gogh. Following last year’s increase in its quarterly dividend to 63 cents per share, the annual dividend yield is now close to 3.3 per cent.

This dividend is financed by about a third of free cash flow, which is a very low payout ratio. On top of this, the dividend has been increased every year since 2002, and now stands 450 per cent higher.

In another sign of financial strength, Lockheed Martin is returning cash to shareholders through a share-repurchase program. During fiscal 2009, the number of outstanding shares was reduced, from 400 million to 382 million.

Risks to the big picture:

There are a number of risks that could undermine the positive outlook for defence stocks. They include:

•an early U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan;

•a heavily indebted U.S. government further cuts defence spending;

•a slowdown in the growth of emerging economies.

However, Mr. Katsoras and Mr. Fournier believe projections of early withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan are too optimistic. In fact, insurgencies in these countries are gathering momentum and the U.S. is increasing deployments to the region.

In addition, they don’t see the financially strapped U.S. government cutting back on defence. The world is no where near the halcyon state that followed the end of the Cold War. America still faces many geopolitical threats. Having one or more flare up, (for example, another terrorist incident) especially keeps the focus on national security.

2010-02-25 Charter of Rights and Freedoms potential arguments, Update on trial

Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials), Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys No Responses »

Feb 252010

James Beddome (Manitoba) had written:

“but which section of the charter do you intend to invoke?

I would assume, section 2a) freedom of conscience, but you could also try section 2b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression. Interestingly you could also make an argument under section 8 “unreasonable search and seizure”.

James was right on the mark.

Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms is about freedom from “unreasonable search and seizure”, seemingly unrelated to my case.

However, because of the significance of Charter Rights and Freedoms (constitutional), the Courts have given broad interpretation to the various Sections.

The case law associated with Section 8 protects “a biographical core of personal information” such as a person in a free and democratic society would not want to hand over to the Government.

Courts must be given advance notice if Charter arguments will be used in a trial. And a written summary of the Charter sections and case law that will be used.

I paid two lawyers, one to do the written presentation for (as James said):

“section 2a) freedom of conscience, but you could also try section 2b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression.”

The other lawyer did the written presentation for the section 8 argument (privacy – freedom from unreasonable search and seizure).

It is viewed that the latter argument will win; the Government cannot meet the criteria to override Section 8. There is a possibility of difficulty with Section 2 arguments.

2010-02-24 Democracy, updates in the wake of the Prorogation of Parliament (Canada) followed by US Supreme Court decision on corporate financing of political parties.

Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category) No Responses »

Feb 242010

The straws that broke the camel’s back. Flash points. Masses of people mobilizing in North America:

– Dec 30, 2009. Canada: the proroguing of Parliament to shut down public debate over Afghan detainees (among other things).

Three weeks later:

– Jan 21, 2010. U.S.: the Supreme Court decision on corporate financing of political parties.

CONTENTS

(1) EXCITEMENT: DEMOCRACY SERIES

(2) BRIEF UPDATE, MY TRIAL

(3) UPDATE, AMERICAN SUPREME COURT DECISION ON CORPORATE FINANCING

(4) SASKATOON – FAIR VOTE CANADA, SASK CHAPTER. Join us this Saturday

(5) SASKATOON – WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? Saturday, March 20^th, 1:00 pm, STM Auditorium (University of Sask). Mark your calendar!

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(1) EXCITEMENT: DEMOCRACY SERIES

George Frideric Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn – – they all composed music using a theme and then variations on the theme.

My excitement lies in using the theme and variations on democracy, developed in this network, as input for a “What is democracy?” series of public discussions. It’s broken, how are we going to fix it?

I can’t pass along a great musical score. But maybe collaboratively we can do better than the following. What would you add? Your input is welcome!

THE PREMISE I AM WORKING FROM:

Canadian democracy is sick. One pill won’t fix it.

Our emails have covered these topics, all variations on democracy, problems and solutions:

The Canadian first-past-the-post electoral system has to evolve.
All jurisdictions require public and individual citizen financing of elections with an end to financing by corporations. (Jurisdictions that currently have some form of such legislation: Federal Government, Quebec, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. (We need it in Saskatchewan. May I be so bold as to say that Alberta needs it, too! along with other provinces and territories.)
Establish a separation of powers between the governance and commercial functions in Canada. This includes getting the corporate interest out of the bureaucracy, out of Government agencies and out of the Universities. (I used the recent examples of genetically-modified rice and flax to illustrate the disastrous consequences of our failure to understand the corruption that is inevitable when a society fails to establish this separation of powers. Jane Jacobs’ book “Systems of Survival, A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics” provides the argument, if people have any doubt.)
Enforcement of the Rule of Law. Everyone is equal before the law, a critical component of democracy. (NOTE: I talked with Gail Davidson from Lawyers Against the War (Vancouver) in follow-up to bringing charges against the officials in Saskatchewan who were responsible for the arrest of George Bush when he came here in October. Using Gail’s material, we (Sask.) provided the evidence and legal argument to the responsible officials a month prior to the Bush event. They did nothing when they have a duty under the law. .. I will get an update out (it’s started). The update includes a new effort by an American Law Professor to get the International Criminal Court to launch a prosecution of Bush and his colleagues.)
The power of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Privy Council have to be diminished, brought into balance. “The Friendly Dictator” (Jeffrey Simpson’s book on Jean Chretien) documents the concentration of power in the PMO. And now we have Stephen Harper. Also, the Privy Council makes many of the strategic appointments in Government, a “power behind the throne” that does not necessarily change when the Prime Minister changes.
“GOVERNMENT FRONTS” AND TRANSPARENCY When Government-funded functions, departments, universities, etc. are called “Corporations” the meaning of words is further debased. The debased language conceals Government funding AND public ownership (just a few examples from Saskatchewan alone: SaskWater Corporation, University of Saskatchewan Corporation, Agwest Biotech, Information Services Inc. .. there’s a long list of examples.). Transparency and accountability are lost. Eventually public ownership is lost. The Americans are currently fighting for an amendment to their Constitution to say that corporations do not have the same rights as citizens. We need to define “corporation” in Canada. “Government fronts” need to go. Entities that are publicly-funded are not “corporations”. Their name must show the connection to Government; the name cannot be used to disguise or conceal the flow of tax-payer money.
My trial over the contracting-out of Canadian census work to Lockheed Martin (American military-industrial-government complex) raises issues of privacy of information in a democracy. And issues of the rule-of-law and morality.

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Thanks to Grenville who writes:

Canada desperately needs fundamental Monetary Reform.
Ownership and control of the media, in all its forms, is concentrated in very few hands, giving the owners unfetterd power to make or break people, political parties, corporations.
We hear the cry from every party, and many individuals and organizations “They must be held accountable!” Fine words and sentiments, but exactly, precisely, what does it mean to be accountable?
Canada is not a “Free and Democratic” country, nor is Canada a sovereign nation.

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(2) BRIEF UPDATE, MY TRIAL

My next court appearance is March 16^th. Then April 20^th.

I expect March 16^th will be short. I will go on the stand to give more evidence, but it will be focused on only one thing, the “privacy” nature of the information sought by StatsCan. I don’t know what to expect of the prosecutor’s cross-examination of me which will also take place.

On April 20^th a lawyer will present the “argument” to the Court on my behalf, and the Prosecutor will argue the Crown’s position.

So April 20^th will likely be the more interesting court date?

ASIDE: I did not see this connection until just recently:

the Nazis (Hitler) and the Communists (Stalin) both embraced godless states; they outlawed religion – loyalty to the ideology.
I believe we now have corporatocracy in North America, not democracy.
Corporate behaviour is notoriously godless. Lockheed Martin would stand at the pinnacle of godlessness … OOPS! I suppose there is one god and it is money.

FOR NEWCOMERS:

My trial over the contracting-out of Canadian census work to Lockheed Martin (American military-industrial-government complex) raises issues of privacy of information in a democracy.

Detailed information files on citizens is a characteristic of nazi/fascist/militaristic regimes.

The trial also raises the issue of our complicity in the enrichment of a corporation with a long record of serious court convictions, and that has been a major manufacturer of weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction, land mines and cluster bombs.

Canada is signatory to International Laws that prohibit these weapons, and we have our own laws that are even more stringent than the International Conventions.

How is it that we are awarding Government contracts collectively worth more than a billion dollars to these people? Canadian foreign policy dictates that we are to impose sanctions against entities that break International Laws. The rule of law and morality must be enforced.

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(3) UPDATE, AMERICAN SUPREME COURT DECISION ON CORPORATE FINANCING

On January 24, 2010 we circulated “A Gift for global citizens: U.S. Supreme Court gives corporations free spending on political campaigns”.

The decision (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) set up a storm of protest in the U.S. that launched an effort to amend the American Constitution.

I signed up at this link and received a first update (below):

http://action.citizen.org/t/10315/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2190

There is also good information at:

http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/

Citizens in Canada and in the U.S. are working on the same issues of democracy versus corporatocracy.

an e-newsletter about the movement to curb corporate influence in politics and restore our democracy

Issue #1 • February 24, 2010We hope you enjoy this inaugural issue of Public Citizen’s e-newsletter about the intersection of money and politics. This is part of the campaign we developed following the disastrous Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows corporations to spend unlimited amounts supporting or attacking political candidates. We’ll update you regularly with select news stories and blog posts, legislative developments and ways to get involved.New index highlights extraordinary corporate resources

(Links below no longer valid – italicized text)
Corporations do not establish their “worth” through political and expressive speech, as the Supreme Court suggested recently in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, but through a different kind of statement altogether – the financial statement. What may not be quite so obvious is how extraordinary are the resources that corporations can mobilize as against what is now spent on elections.Consider:
> Total amount spent on federal elections in the 2008 election cycle: $5.285 billion
> Revenues of top-selling drug Lipitor, 2007-2008: $27 billion

Read Public Citizen President Robert Weissman’s column on The Huffington Post.

Bayh explains his bye-bye
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) expounded in Sunday’s New York Times on why he is quitting the Senate. In addition to citing excessive partisanship, he says the burden of raising money takes a tremendous toll. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision will only make matters worse, he says. Bayh’s solution: a constitutional amendment, enhanced disclosure of who pays for ads and public financing of elections. Read Bayh’s op-ed.

Something we can all agree on
In these days of highly partisan politics, it’s refreshing to see people on the right and left agree. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll shows widespread disapproval of the Supreme Court’s decision to give corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Eighty percent said they oppose the ruling, while 65 percent said they strongly oppose it. Responses were similar regardless of party affiliation.

Learn more about a constitutional amendment
Public Citizen recently hosted a Webinar for supporters who wanted to learn more about the Citizens United ruling and ways to blunt it. We explained why we need public financing of elections, legislation that gives shareholders a say over corporate funding of campaigns and, above all, a constitutional amendment clarifying that corporations aren’t people and don’t have First Amendment rights.

Visit www.DontGetRolled.org to learn more!

(4) SASKATOON – FAIR VOTE CANADA, SASK CHAPTER. Join us this Saturday

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(5) SASKATOON – WHAT IS DEMOCRACY? Saturday, March 20^th, 1:00 pm, STM Auditorium.

EVENT NAME: What is Democracy? A Discussion on Democracy in Canada

Presentations by 3 panelists followed by audience comments, questions and answers.

This is an information and learning event organized by citizens who have concerns.

DATE: Saturday, March 20^th

TIME: 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm

LOCATION: University of Saskatchewan, St Thomas More Auditorium

All are welcome! Please join us.

Top-notch presenters.

No charge. Pass-the-hat to cover expenses.

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