The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 14 No. 6…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…February 7, 2011

Intuit's Vibe

Ready to Kill

By Carl Sandburg

Ten minutes now I have been looking at this.

I have gone by here before and wondered about it.

This is a bronze memorial of a famous general

Riding horseback with a flag

and a sword and a revolver on him.

I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk

to be hauled away to the scrap yard.

I put it straight to you,

After the farmer, the miner, the shop man,

the factory hand, the fireman and the teamster,

Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,

Shaping them on the job of getting all of us

Something to eat and something to wear,

When they stack a few silhouettes

Against the sky

Here in the park,

And show the real huskies that are doing

the work of the world,

and feeding people instead of butchering them,

Then maybe I will stand here

And look easy at this general of the army

holding a flag in the air,

And riding like hell on horseback

Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,

Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men

all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.

Guns or Butter

By John Burl Smith

The term "guns or butter" refers to a nation's options of spending its finite resources for national defense or domestic goods and services. America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are classic examples of this dilemma. Today, as the American consensus loses hegemony in the Arab world and across Africa, concepts such as globalization, modernization and militarization are being viewed from a new perspective. These concepts were embraced as the way to economic development and food security in the Third World or less developed countries (LDCs) in the 1980s and 90s. Many of these countries now find themselves under the boot of dictators and authoritarian regimes propped up by the United States and Europe and are using food security as a weapon to stay in power.

The guns or butter debate is being re-conceptualized in places like Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab nations, in terms of modernization versus dependency and militarization versus food security. According to the World Food Program in 2001, hunger affected some 830 million people globally; 791 million lived in less developed countries (LDCs). Additionally, UNICEF reported (1998) that over 200 million children under age 5 experienced chronic mal-nutrition. This was not the result of a shortage of food but a fact of poor distribution of existing food surplus, as well as inequality and poverty.

Food security affects people on a number of levels: reliable supplies of food, individuals and countries' ability to acquire food and the ability to derive sufficient nutrition in the form of a healthy diet. It is this complexity that makes food security highly relevant to militarization. Militarization refers to the growth in the military potential of the state, accompanied by an increasing economic, political and social role of military institutions both in national and international affairs. It reflects an increase in budget priorities for weapons, equipment, defense systems, personnel and training. Politically, the military is the foundation and establishment of political order. Also, it proliferates throughout government, assuming a greater role in policy-making, including budgetary, foreign policy, trade and treaties that link arms to access to global food security arrangements.

Modernization theorists argue that links between industrialized countries and LDCs are essential for achieving societal cohesion and that military institutions lead to improvements in the economic, social, and political quality of life. These theorists claim that militarization has a unifying effect on a country with the military facilitating human capital formation and development by promoting mobility, mobilizing economic resources and a common cause.

This Western model uses a strong security apparatus to foster globalization in various cultural, economic and political forms in developing nations based on military ties and arms imports. The spear point of modernization is the claim that economic and social development will reduce hunger as the country participates in the global economy and makes the transition from traditional to a modern society. With full participation in modernization, improvements in global trade and access to new food markets will result. This will improve food supply channels and food security as "traditional" economies - subsistence agriculture and local crafts industries - are replaced by foreign and domestic investment that utilize natural and human resources for industry and technology to fuel global economic growth.

Those that see modernization as a dependency arrangement challenge all such claims. They say, colonialism and globalization processes disrupt and exploit indigenous economies by replacing agricultural production by exporting raw materials and exploiting human capital. This creates a divide of "north/south" poverty dependency disguised by military spending -- arms transfers and foreign capital -- where one opens the door for the other, devastating local populations. Foreign capital and foreign weapons draw LDCs into a world political system, an international order of superpower, regional or ethnic conflict. Political leaders and the military are beholden to imperial powers and are less in touch with the needs of the citizenry struggling for self-determination. This drama is playing out in Egypt.

Any positive effects on human development derived from militarization and modernization are reaped by the military and other elites. The privileged position of power and status occupied by the military allows it to control access to an inequitable distribution of social goods and food. Dependency theorists emphasize the fact that there is more to development than just increases in growth rates or assumptions that a trickle-down effect will benefit the entire population and a more equitable distribution of social resources will result.

The dependency perspective posits that exploitation in the global economy creates an international food order of unequal exchange between the LDCs and developed countries. This inequality is the root cause of food insecurity because LDCs are dependent on food imports from developing nations in exchange for cheap labor and exports of cash crops. Formerly self-sufficient developing economies surrender their subsistence way of life to the market-oriented characteristic of global capitalism. The international political economy of food, particularly the increase in international agri-business conglomerates, is thus no different than other global markets such as manufactured goods or technology because a situation of dependent development results that leaves LDCs in a weak competitive position.

Insecure feelings, food security and human rights are concerns of daily life for the vast majority of people in the Third World, which is why countries from Egypt to Sudan and down to the tip of Africa are exploding with revolution. Debates regarding modernization and dependency have shifted in focus as a consequence of failed development, lack of human rights and food insecurity in LDCs resulting from the guns or butter reality of military spending. Famine and food insecurity are not processes akin only to drought or other natural disaster, instead, they are the result of human-induced catastrophes that place populations at risk, most notably children, ethnic minorities, and the poor.

"Food wars" are the hidden agenda of militarization and modernization which produce conflicts that involve widespread food insecurity that results from a struggle or from a campaign in which hunger becomes a weapon of war to weaken opposition forces. The important consideration in the relationship between conflict and hunger is that the effects of war linger long past the period of combat. (Sources: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3719/is_200101/ai_n8937578/)

Bit of History

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (1890-1969)

Born October 14, 1890, in Denison, Texas, David Dwight Eisenhower was the third of seven boys born to David Jacob Eisenhower and Ida Elizabeth Stover. In 1892 the family moved to Abilene, Kansas, where he graduated from Abilene High School (1909). Though born David, he was called Dwight, so he reversed the order of his given names when he enrolled at West Point Military Academy in 1911; he graduated in 1915.

Eisenhower met Mamie Geneva Doud of Boone, Iowa while stationed in Texas. They married on July 1, 1916, in Denver; the couple had two sons.

Eisenhower served with the infantry until 1918 at various camps in Texas and Georgia. During World War I, he trained tank crews; he never saw combat. As Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II, he planned and supervised the successful invasion of France and Germany (1944-45). He rose in military rank to five-star general in the US Army.

In 1948, the year his memoir - Crusade in Europe - was published, Eisenhower became President of Columbia University. He took a leave of absence in 1951 to serve as Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with operational command of NATO forces in Europe. After retiring from active service on May 31, 1952, he resumed the university presidency, which he held until January 1953.

In 1952, a "Draft Eisenhower" movement in the Republican Party persuaded him to declare his candidacy for the 1952 presidential election. His presidential campaign was noted for the simple slogan, "I like Ike." He promised to end the Korean War, maintain both a strong NATO commitment against Communism and a corruption-free frugal administration at home.

Eisenhower preached a doctrine of dynamic conservatism throughout his presidency. He continued all the major New Deal programs in operation, especially Social Security. He expanded its programs and rolled them into a new agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and extended benefits to an additional ten million workers. One of his enduring achievements was the Interstate Highway System. Eisenhower easily won reelection in 1956.

His administration declared racial discrimination a national security issue, meaning Communists were using US racism for propaganda attacks. After the US Supreme Court ruled "separate but equal" unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, Eisenhower told District of Columbia officials to make Washington a model for the rest of the country in integrating black and white public schools. He proposed and signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. The 1957 Act established a permanent civil rights office inside the Justice Department.

When Arkansas refused to honor a Federal court order to integrate schools in the "Little Rock Nine" incident (1957), Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10730, placing the Arkansas National Guard under Federal control and sending Army troops to escort nine black students into Little Rock Central High School.

Eisenhower's foreign policy was noted for CIA-led coups and assassinations. Eisenhower authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to aid the Iranian army's overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and restore the Shah to power. In addition to deposing the leaders of Iran, Guatemala and the Belgian Congo, the Eisenhower administration planned the Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba; John F. Kennedy was left to carry it out.

While Eisenhower opposed the British, French and Israeli response to the Suez Crisis in 1956, he privately acknowledged it was his biggest foreign policy error. After the crisis, the US became the protector of unstable friendly Middle East governments via the "Eisenhower Doctrine." Crafted by Secretary of State John F. Dulles, it held the US would provide economic and military aid and, if necessary, use military force to stop the spread of communism in the Middle East.

Eisenhower applied the doctrine in 1957-58 by dispensing economic aid to shore up the Kingdom of Jordan, and discouraging Syria's neighbors from considering military actions against it. In 1958, he sent troops to Lebanon as part of Operation Blue Bat, a peace keeping mission to stabilize the pro-Western government and to prevent a revolution from sweeping the country.

Most Arab countries were skeptical of the "Eisenhower doctrine;" they considered "Zionist imperialism" the real danger. They did, however, take the free money and weapons.

Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure on March 28, 1969 at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC. His likeness appeared on the dollar coin from 1971 to 1978. Six postage stamps have been issued by the US Post Office in his honor. Statutes have been erected in his honor. Schools, ships, institutes, medical centers, federal office building, overpasses, highways, bridges, trees and parks bear his name.

An avid golfer, a tree overhang on the 17th hole at Augusta National Golf Club, where he was a member, is named in his honor. The Eisenhower Golf Club at the United States Air Force Academy and the 18th hole at Cherry Hills Country Club, near Denver, are named in his honor. (Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org, www.whitehouse.gov, and www.answers.com)

Venue for an Artist

Excerpts from Two Speeches

By President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the US had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual--is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." ( Farewell Address delivered on January 17, 1961)

"The free nations, most solemnly and repeatedly, have assured the Soviet Union that their firm association has never had any aggressive purpose whatsoever. Soviet leaders, however, have seemed to persuade themselves, or tried to persuade their people, otherwise. And so it has come to pass that the Soviet Union itself has shared and suffered the very fears it has fostered in the rest of the world.

This has been the way of life forged by 8 years of fear and force. What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road? The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated. The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." (The Chance for Peace Address delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953)

News You Use

Guns R US

As congressional leaders in Washington wrangle over deficits and the federal debt, they speak in terms of accountability, fiscal responsibility, reducing government spending, and reducing unfunded liabilities. In all this rhetoric, they have failed to mention the possibility of closing any of the hundreds of US overseas bases. Even the proposed reduction in the military budget is minuscule when one considers US military spending relative to the rest of the world.

In the trade-off of guns over butter, it is clear the United States has chosen guns. US taxpayers will pay $737.0 billion for proposed Department of Defense for FY2011. For the same amount of money, the following could be provided: 377.8 million Children Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR 11.3 million Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR 12.9 million Firefighters for One Year OR 97.0 million Head Start Slots for Children for One Year OR 166.9 million Households with Renewable Electricity - Solar Photovoltaic for One Year OR 445.0 million Households with Renewable Electricity-Wind Power for One Year OR 94.5 million Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year OR 151.6 million People Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR 11.2 million Police or Sheriff's Patrol Officers for One Year OR 93.5 million Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR 132.8 million Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550

Clearly, these are just a few of the alternatives that can be purchased with nearly a trillion dollars of annual expenditure. As the debate over spending intensifies with the need to pass an annual budget and raise the debt ceiling, remind your congressional representatives who want to cut Social Security and other social programs that ending warfare, closing foreign bases and reducing the size of the military budget are alternatives. (Source: http://nationalpriorities.org/en/tools/tradeoffs/state/US/program/14/tradeoff/0)

Kudos! Kudos!

Rand Paul Call for Halt to Aid to Israel

Democrats and pro-Israel lobbies slammed comments made by newly elected Republican Senator and Tea Party representative Rand Paul who suggested that the United States should halt all foreign aid including its financial aid to Israel.

Paul made the suggestion in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. According to Paul, "Reuters did a poll, and 71 percent of American people agree with me that when we're short of money, where we can't do the things we need to do in our country, we certainly shouldn't be shipping the money overseas."

When asked by Blitzer if he wanted to halt an annual $3 billion to Israel, Paul replied affirmatively, explaining that Egypt receives almost the same amount.

Paul responded, "You have to ask yourself, are we funding an arms race on both sides? I have a lot of sympathy and respect for Israel as a democratic nation, as, you know, a fountain of peace and a fountain of democracy within the Middle East. But at the same time, I don't think funding both sides of the arm race, particularly when we have to borrow the money from China to send it to someone else. We just can't do it anymore. The debt is all- consuming and it threatens our well-being as a country."

Pro-Israel Jewish lobby J Street, other Jewish organizations and US Representatives issued statements in response to Paul's comments that ranged from "alarmed" to "shocking." Despite the outrage, Senator Paul should be commended for making a sensible suggestion when our nation faces a fiscal crisis. Kudos to Paul! May many others join the call to end aid, which is mostly guns, tanks and other weapons, to foreign nations, including Egypt and Israel.

Hood Notes

JP Morgan, Food Stamps and Indian Workers

By Michael Snyder

JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money. Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine how much JP Morgan's profits in this area have soared. But doesn't this give JP Morgan an incentive to keep the number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program as high as possible?

There are just some things that are a little too "creepy" to be "outsourced" to private corporations. It seems really unsavory for a big Wall Street bank to be making so much money off of the suffering of tens of millions of Americans.

So if unemployment goes down will this ruin JP Morgan's food stamp business? Apparently not! In an interview, JP Morgan executive Christopher Paton says that 40% of food stamp recipients are currently working, and he seems convinced that there could be further "growth" in that segment.

So is this what America is turning into? A place where tens of millions of the unemployed and the working poor crawl over to Wal-Mart and the dollar store every month to use the food stamp debit cards provided to them by JP Morgan?

It turns out that JP Morgan also provides child support debit cards in 15 U.S. states and unemployment insurance benefit debit cards in seven states.

Apparently states have found that they can save millions of dollars by "outsourcing" the provision of these benefits to big financial firms like JP Morgan.

So what happens if you have a problem with your food stamp debit card? Well, you call up a JP Morgan service center. When you do this, there is a very good chance that you are going to be helped by a JP Morgan call center employee in India. That's right - it turns out that JP Morgan is saving money by "outsourcing" food stamp customer service calls to India.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email http://grittv.org/2011/01/31/inequality-egypt-protest-us-mubarak-blankfein/...Inequality Drives Egyptians to Streets, But Ours Worse...By Laura Flanders...It's amazing what inequality can drive people to, eventually...Just look at Egypt. 'These big guys are stealing all the money,' one 24-year-old textile worker standing at his second job as a fruit peddler told a reporter this weekend. "People are desperate.' "I wish we could be like the United States with a democracy, but we cannot," said another. And so they protest, regardless of police batons, curfews and shootings. In spite of what some on Fox News (and the Israel lobby's camp) sought to argue this weekend -- namely that the protests were all the work of Islamist radicals -- every report from the ground contradicts that. As in Tunisia, the protesters are driven by fury at poverty, lack of options, and the looting of their state by the super powerful. It's an equation we understand -- elsewhere: a massive gap between rich and poor is inconsistent with democracy. But before you get carried away with third world conditions there, try here. On Friday a guest blogger at Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism blog noted a remarkable fact: the U.S. actually has much greater inequality than Egypt-or Tunisia, or Yemen.

Email www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/sanders-pentagon-billions-fraudsters/...Sen. Sanders: Pentagon paid billions to fraudsters...By Agence France-Presse...The US military paid $285 billion over three years to hundreds of military contractors that defrauded the Pentagon over the same stretch of time, a US senator charged Wednesday. Brandishing a 45-page January 2011 US Department of Defense report on the issue, Independent Senator Bernie Sanders called for "far more vigorous enforcement" by the US military "to protect taxpayers from massive fraud." "The sad truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money," he charged. Sanders underlined that the report, which his office made public, showed that from 2007-2009 the Pentagon spent $270 billion on 91 contractors involved in fraud cases that yielded judgments of more than $1 million. The Pentagon also spent $683 million over the same period on 30 contractors convicted of criminal fraud charges, and "billions more" went to firms that it had suspended or barred for misusing government funds, said Sanders. The senator, who represents the small northeastern state of Vermont, highlighted a section of the report in which the Pentagon declared existing remedies as "sufficient."

Email www.alternet.org/story/149700/...Rachel Maddow: In America Today, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower Would Be Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Senate...By Rachel Maddow...For the next hour, we begin with the president of the United States addressing the nation and calling for a massive investment in this country's infrastructure, rebuffing the idea of giant tax breaks for the richest Americans, and warning anyone who would dare touch Social Security to keep their hands off. "Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. And a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice." Listen to the way he goes after the right here. "Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things, but their number is negligible and they are stupid." That is not what Barack Obama. That is way too the left of any national Democrat at this point. That was all Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower, who was president when the top tax bracket for the richest people in this country was 92 percent. The Republican Party platform of Eisenhower's 1956 called for expansion of Social Security, broadened unemployment insurance, better health protection for all of our people. It called for voting rights--full voting civil rights for D.C. It called for expanding the minimum wage to cover more workers. It called for improved job safety for workers, equal pay for workers regardless of sex. This is the Republican Party circa 1956. If Dwight Eisenhower were running for office today, he would have to run as an independent, and not as some Joe Lieberman, in between the parties, independent. He'd be a Bernie Sanders independent.