Book excerpts from a variety of educational nonfiction sources focusing mainly on current events and history of the activities of the US Government and the Multi-national Corporations that influence it
“The people who own the country ought to govern it.” John Jay
Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 www.sjsd.net/~bhull/S020609C7-020609C7.11/Branded.doc
Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 few quotes only
(Alissa Quart “Branded” Urban Youth Workers Institute
In 1991, ad spending in the United States equaled $126.4 billion; in 1994, it equaled $150 billion. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.8)
The marketers make the teens feel important (one teen trendspotter says she is good friends with the woman at the corporation she advises; (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.19)
Amy’s parents aren’t as flustered as I am by their daughter’s fixation on high-end cosmetics. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.29)
Within a month, though, the mourning was transformed into patriotism. Mall-going was prescribed as the contemporary version of planting the victory garden. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.32)
Alissa Quart “Branded” also cited in “The no-nonsense guide to women's rights” By Nikki van der Gaag
The kids got the message. “It’s patriotic to shop,” Amy tells me…..
Katie Sierra…was suspended for her antiwar sentiments in October 2001. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.33)
They have taught their children, now teenagers, to “need” luxury products rather than want them. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.34)
Teenagers have come to feel that consumer goods are their friends-and that companies selling products to them are trusted allies. After all, they inquire after the kids’ opinions with all the solicitude of an ideal parent. Tell us how best to see you our products, they ask. If you do, we will always love you. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.35)
“The kids are happy to participate [in focus groups]. They are happy to get attention and that someone cares about their tastes,” says cool hunter Jane Lacher, (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.42)
Golden Marble Awards are given to the best kids advertisers. Held on the precipitous date of September 10, 2001, the fourth APK was celebrating marketers’ ability to take advantage of the kids’ market and also deploying their industry’s favored neologism, KGOY, or Kids Getting Older Younger. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.47)
By 1964, an estimated $50 million was spent on advertising di¬rected at kids. In the early 1960s, Eugene Gilbert's company, the Gilbert Marketing Group, held "Youth Market Clinics" for corpo¬rate types.
But it would be twenty years before marketing to kids found its avatar. Dr. James U. McNeal. McNeal's 1986 book Children As Consumers: Insights and. Implications rocketed the kid business into an en¬tirely new orbit by quantifying how much children influence family purchases (up to $130 billion back then).
McNeal, now a gentlemanly older man in Texas who runs his own consulting firm McNeal and Kids, sees the mistake of the early marketing models was their construing of kid consumers as "adult rational thinkers." When he spoke of his research in the early 1960's, he therefore encountered "bored people like the head of Chrysler and head of Kmart," the sort of people who would later, of course, not be bored at all by McNeal's courting of youth. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.50)
McNeal's efflorescence started in the 1980's, he says, a result of children having more spending power, with their so-called incomes increasing at a rate of 15 percent a year. Suddenly he was a corporate consultant.
In 1989, corporations spent about $600 million on marketing to" kids. In 1999, they spent twenty times that amount. Numbers of ad dollars are only one indicator of the excitement about selling to children. The size of kid business publishing is another. Retail anthropologist Paco Underhill, in his book Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, suggests, among other things, that merchants should ensure that kids become media consumers as early as possible. He also provides a how-to. Books and videos, he writes, should be placed on the low shelves of stores, allowing kids to better "grab Barney or Teletubbies unimpeded by Mom and Dad, who possibly take a dim view of hyper-commercialized critters." (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.51)
The most vocal group there, however, consisted of a collection of anticonsumerist academics whose aversion to children’s contact with violent media has led them to become much more political and publically outspoken than is the norm for those in the professorate. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.56)
Who now say they are willing to spend upwards of $40,000 on their children’s birthdays and bar mitzvahs. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.66)
Marie Theresa Hernandez, a professor at the University of Houston, told the Houston Chronicle in 2001. “There are instances where parents are willing to spend $15,000 on a quinceanera, but there is nothing in the college fund.” (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.68)
Alissa Quart “Branded” also cited in Houston Chronicle
“There’s a cult of special-ness in the American middle class,” says Rabbi Salkin. “Kids have to be special, the party has to be special, and the families are unwittingly a partner in a communal narcissism, believing they or their children own the ceremony. It’s God’s service.” (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.71)
The entity that gets video product placement right, he says, is the army, as the game Operation Defend Freedom, with its American Army logo. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.108)
The increased selectivity of the colleges begets a rarified quality…… Admission to top colleges is like the American version of getting into the aristocracy.” (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.143-5)
A more common symptom of these extremes, though, is the ever-rising rates of early decision (ED) and early applicants, part of the culture begotten by the U.S. News branding of university life. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.154-5)
Vizzini is as thoughtful about his authorial financial arrangements as he is about forwarding his writerly fame. “I was eighteen when I signed my contract. I should have sent it to a lawyer because I gave away my media rights. Now I don’t get extra profits,” he says. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.167)
In May 2001, seventeen-year-old Tristan Kading was threatened with suspension from his public high school in Stoningham, Connecticut, when he challenged a McDonald’s representative while the rep held “practice interviews” with the school’s students in the cafeteria. Triston accused the visitor of fronting for an exploitive company that lies about what substance its French fries are cooked in… (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.190)
In the middle of December 2001, more than 2,500 teenagers walked out of their Philadelphia public high school classrooms and onto the city’s intersections….
They partially succeeded. In the fall of 2001, Mark Schweiker, the governor of Pennsylvania, had proposed contracting the management of the entire public school system’s central administration to Edison, along with the operation of up to sixty schools. On April 17, a state panel voted to give only twenty city schools to Edison. The entire district was not turned over, only some contracts; in addition to the Edison-run schools, twenty-five are to be run by two universities, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, and a range of smaller for-profit companies such as Chancellor Beacon Academics Inc. and Victory Scholls Inc. As the panel conducted its deliberations, the student activists were rallying around the building. Few in the media picked up on the critical role played by students; their part has been overshadowed by stories about the Edison’s sliding stock prioce and desperate (though finally successful) quest for a new infusion of funds. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.215-6)
Mark Schweiker Edison schools Inc. Student walk out 2001 Philadelphia Public School Notebook
“Students protest against school privatization” People’s World.org
Students protest privatization of Philadelphia schools By Betsey Piette at Workers World.org
“Philly students walk out to protest takeover” Pocono record
“In Largest Schools Takeover, State Will Run Philadelphia's” NYT 12/22/2001
“When we hold bake sales for fund-raisers, our principal tells us we couldn’t serve juice and hot chocolate because those drinks compete with the soda brand in our school’s beverage machines, Coca-Cola,” says Max, rolling her eyes. (Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.221)
(Alissa Quart “Branded” 2004 p.)
When Bush was elected president the federal government had not used the death penalty for thirty-eight years. Bush Reinstated it. (Bloggers note: This claim may be misleading, the death penalty was on the books long before Bush became president and other presidents and candidates also supported it; however the appeals for federal inmates on death row did run out at this time so the death penalty was in practice reinstated.) when he was governor of Texas, that state had more executions than any other, and Bush signed 152 death warrants-more than any previous governor of Texas, or any other American governor in modern times. Typically, he made his life-and-death decision after a half-hour briefing with his legal counsel. Only once, as governor, did he stop an execution.
Millions of viewers watching the second presidential debate in October 2000 were shocked when Bush described the fate of the three men who murdered James Byrd: “Guess what’s going to happen to them?” they’re going to be put to death. It's going to be hard to punish them any worse after they get put to death.” (debate transcript) the words alone do not convey the exultation, almost glee, that appeared on Bush’s face when he spoke of the coming execution of the men who had been convicted of murder. (As a questioner from the audience in the third presidential debate put it, Bush seemed to “overly enjoy” the fact that Texas leads the nation in the execution of prisoners. Bush denied that this was the case, but those who saw his expression in the earlier debate must have had difficulty in believing his assurance.) Undoubtedly the crime was dreadful, but such levity about the infliction of the death penalty makes a poor fit with the idea of promoting a culture of life.
To support the death penalty while opposing the killing of embryos or fetuses need not be inconsistent. As Bush said in A Charge to Keep: “Some advocates of life will challenge why I oppose abortion yet support the death penalty. To me, it’s the difference between innocence and guilt.” But to hold the two positions consistently, one would at least need to be very careful about supporting the death penalty. Since humans are fallible, any legal system that puts a large number of people to death will risk executing people innocent of the crimes for which they were charged. Several studies list people who have been condemned to death, and in some cases executed, who were later shown to be innocent. The Death Penalty Information Center has a list of 102 people wrongly sentenced to death in the United States between 1976 and 200. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune of all the 682 executions in the United Sates between 196 and 2000 found that at least 120 people were put to death while still proclaiming innocence, and in four of these cases there was evidence supporting the claim of innocence. When Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan retired, he said that there were several cases in which he had “grave doubts” about the guilt of people executed in Florida. If Kogan had doubts, then so should we-he was chief prosecutor of the Homicide and Capital Crimes division of the Dade County State Attorney’s Office before becoming a circuit judge and then Chief Justice. Even a highly critical study of the Death Penalty Information Center list, published on a pro-death penalty Web site, acknowledges that there were thirty four people sentenced to death who were released on the basis of serious claims of innocence. After reaching that figure, the study points out that this is less than half of one percent of all defendants sentenced to death in that period. But even if 199 out of 200 people sentenced to death are guilty, that does not erase the wrong done to the one who is innocent.
Bush’s attitude toward the risk of putting to death the innocent is in contrast to that of another Republican state governor who had once been a supporter of the death penalty. In 1999, Governor George Ryan of Illinois became concerned about the risk of putting innocent people to death when an investigation by students in a journalism class at Northwestern university proved that another man committed a murder for which Anthony Porter, a death-row inmate for sixteen years, was about to be executed. Ryan set up a commission that, over three years, conducted the most thorough study of the death penalty over carried out in a single state. It concluded that thirteen condemned prisoners were innocent. The commission’s findings, Ryan later said, showed that “Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error, error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.” The commission proposed changes to the criminal justice system that were repeatedly rejected by the Illinois legislature. Finally, just before he left office, Ryan could no longer live with the risk of executing the innocent: he commuted all death sentences in Illinois to terms of imprisonment.
No matter how careful Bush may have been, it remains possible-the Illinois experience suggests that, given the large number of executions in Texas, one could say “probable”- that during his tenure as governor of Texas, an innocent person was put to death. To justify taking this risk of executing the innocent, one would need to be very sure of one’s grounds for supporting the death penalty. How sure is Bush entitled to be? He has written; “I support the death penalty because I believe, if administered swiftly and justly, capital punishment is a deterrent against future violence and will save other innocent lives.” In the third of his debates with vice President Al Gore, when asked by Jim Lehrer, the moderator, whether he believed that the death penalty “actually deters crime,” he committed himself even more firmly, saying. “I do. It's the only reason to be for it. Let me finish, sir. I don't think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don't think that's right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives.” (debate transcript)
The problem with this defense of capital punishment is that most of the evidence is against it. Whether the death penalty is a deterrent is a factual question. Since it is not difficult to compare murder rates before and after the abolition or reinstitution of the death penalty, or in different jurisdictions that do and do not have the death penalty, there is relevant data. For example, after the 1976 U.S. supreme Court ruling that the death penalty is constitutional, a dozen states chose not to enact laws allowing it. These states have not had higher homicide rates than the states that did enact such laws-in fact, ten of them have had homicide rates lower than the national average. South Dakota has it, North Dakota does not. The homicide rate is higher in South Dakota than in North Dakota. Connecticut has it, Massachusetts does not. Again the homicide rate is higher in the state with the death penalty. The states in these pairs are roughly comparable in terms of their economic and ethnic mix. Moreover, homicide rates have risen and fallen in roughly symmetrical patterns in states with and without the death penalty, suggesting that the existence or absence of the death penalty has little effect on the incidence of homicide.
In 1992, California carried out its first execution in twenty-five years. Homicide rates in Los Angeles rose. Something similar happened when Oklahoma restored the death penalty. Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood took the scrutiny down to the county level, comparing 293 pairs of neighboring counties, differing in their use of the death penalty but otherwise carefully selected to be similar in respect of their location, history, economy, and inhabitants. They found no deterrent effect from capital punishment, executions, or whether a county has a population on death row. They did, however, find higher violent crime rates in death penalty counties. Finally, it is worth noting that a study of the effect of executions in Texas from 1982 until 1997 (and thus including part of Bush’s term as governor) concluded that the number of executions was unrelated to murder rates.
Admittedly, there are some studies that suggest that the death penalty does have a deterrent effect. On closer examination, they usually turn out to have serious flaws. In any case, if Bush supports the death penalty only because “it saves other people’s lives,” he should, before signing 152 death warrants, have taken a hard look at the evidence to see whether it really does save lives. If he had done so he probably would have concluded that that the death penalty does not save innocent lives. Or at the very least, even if he were to take the most skeptical possible view of the abundant evidence against the deterrent effect of the death penalty, and a more favorable view of the few studies suggesting that it does have such an effect, he would have realized that he cannot possibly have any confidence that the death penalty does save other people’s lives. Given that, and the risk-slight in any particular case, perhaps, but substantial when the death penalty is used frequently, as it was in Texas when he was governor-that an innocent person will be executed, someone who is concerned about protecting innocent human life should oppose the death penalty.
There is one other respect in which Bush’s hard-line support for the death penalty does not fit well with his support for the protection of innocent human life. A person who is seriously mentally retarded is likely to be incapable of understanding right and wrong, and thus to be morally innocent, even if he or she did commit the crime. As a national consensus against executing the mentally retarded began to build, Bush, as governor of Texas, came out against a bill that would have prohibited the use of the death penalty against profoundly retarded criminals, with IQ’s of less than 65. His explanation for this position was simply: “I like the law the way it is right now.” Although Texans strongly support the death penalty, on this issue Bush was more extreme than most of his constituents-a 1998 poll showed that 73 percent of Texans were opposed to executing the retarded. The bill was passed by the Texas Senate, which is dominated by Republicans, but with Bush opposing it, it failed in the House. In May 1997, Bush denied an appeal for clemency on behalf of Terry Washington, a thirty-three-year-old mentally retarded man with the communication skills of a seven year old. Washington was executed.
If Bush supports the death penalty because he believes that it saves lives by deterring potential murderers, and if mentally retarded people are morally innocent, then in signing the death warrant for Terry Washington, Bush was deliberately causing the death of a morally innocent human as a means of saving the lives of others. That is of course, exactly what he refuses to support in the case of human embryos.
In June of 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, given the growing national consensus, executing retarded persons is “cruel and unusual punishment” and hence a violation of the Eigth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.(Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.45-9) Murder rates by state. Death Penalty Information Center
Tom Paine, the supporter of American Independence and author of the Rights of Man wrote in Dissertations on First Principles of Government: “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself”. (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.75)
Suppose someone says, “We should clone human beings because aliens have told us to do so.” We would, if we were to take this ridiculous claim seriously, ask for evidence that these aliens really exist, that they have told us to clone humans, and that there is some reason why we should do what they tell us to do. Suppose their response to our questions is, “I have encountered aliens in moments of deep despair, and they have entered into my head and my heart, and I love them and know I can trust them. Open your hearts to them, and you too will come to love them and see they are right.” If we are told that no evidence for the existence of the aliens will be offered, and we should take these claims on faith, we would, rightly, refuse to pay them any further attention. So suppose, then, that someone tells us that human embryos should not be destroyed because "human life is a sacred gift from our Creator." He also refuses to offer evidence, and when asked how he knows this, says it is a matter of faith, and we should open our heart to the Lord, and to Jesus, his only son, and we too will see things as he does. That answer may be more widely held than the justification that the bizarre Raelian sect has given for setting out to produce a human clone, but as a justification for public policy within the sphere of public reason, it fares no better. (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.104) also cited by John Burgeson (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.104) also cited on Talking Points Memo
Richard Dicker, a director of Human Rights Watch in New York, which has lobbied for the court's creation, said the suspension of military aid today amounted to a defeat for the current campaign against the court. "This policy is creating a dilemma where the administration has to chose between sound military cooperation with democratic nations and this campaign of ideology against the international criminal court," he said. (from original source cited
Dicker then added pointedly, “I’ve never seen a sanctions regime aimed at countries that believe in the rule of law rather than ones that commit human rights abuses.” (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.133-4) also cited on Talking Points Memo
When, shortly after taking office as president, George W. Bush was asked what he would do about global warming, his answer was, “We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America.” Asked whether the president would call on drivers to sharply reduce fuel consumption, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, replied, "That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policymakers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one." (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.135) also cite in Brad’s Useful Quotes (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.135) also cite in AMK’s Journal
In an internal memo leaked to the New York Times, an EPA official stated that the White House version “no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change.” (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.136)
The most notorious example of a country going to war against another nation for harboring and supporting terrorism is still Austria-Hungary’s attack on Serbia in 1914, which triggered a world war that cost nine million lives. Austria-Hungary’s case for going to war rested on Serbian involvement in the assassination of the Austria-Hungarian crown prince and his wife in Sarajevo. The conspirators admitted that they had been trained, armed, supported, and given safe passage across the border by Serbian government official. Austria-Hungary handed the Serbian government an ultimatum, demanding that it bring the conspirators to justice and allow Austria-Hungarian officials to supervise the prosecution to ensure that the trial of guilt was pursued to the end. This ultimatum was widely seen as a violation of the principle of national sovereignty. The British foreign minister, Sit Edward Grey, called it “The most formidable document I have ever seen addressed by one State to another that was independent.” The American Legion’s official history of the Great War denounced it as a “vicious document of unproven accusation and tyrannical demand.” Many historians studying the origins of the First World War have condemned the ultimatum, as failing to respect Serbia’s sovereignty. They are especially critical of the fact that after the Serbian government accepted many, but not all, of the demands in the ultimatum, Austria-Hungary refused to enter into negotiations, instead declaring war.
Although the U.S. administration-unlike the Austro-Hungarian government in respect to Serbia-had no evidence of the involvement of Afghan’s government officials in the events of September 11, Bush’s ultimatum to Afghanistan was no less threatening to that country’s sovereignty than Austria- Hungary’s was to Serbia. He demanded the closure of all terrorist camps, and access for U.S. officials to ensure that they were no longer operating. In one important respect, he went further than Austria- Hungary, which was content for Serbia to put those who had aided the terrorists on trial. Bush insisted that Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan be handed over to the U.S.-where one might suspect that it would be difficult for them to get a fair trial. (The subsequent history of American procedures for dealing with those captured in Afghanistan has shown this to be reasonable.) (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.145-6)
Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, asked the U.S. government to provide evidence of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the events of 9/11, and indicated that if this was done, he would be willing to hand bin Laden over to an Islamic court in another Muslim country. (This proposal was later softened to a requirement that the court have at least one Muslim judge.) There was also a suggestion that the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of more than fifty Muslim countries, should be consulted. The request for evidence of bin Laden’s involvement-no such evidence had been made public at that time-was surely a reasonable one, in accord with normal requests for extradition. The U.S. would itself insist on evidence before handing someone within its borders over to another nation wishing to put him on trial for a capital offense. Yet, the request, and the proposal for a meeting, appear to have been totally ignored, just as Hungary ignored Serbia’s counter offer in 1914. (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.151)
The result has been graphically described by Philip Gourevitch, author of we Wish to Inform you That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, a heartbreaking book on the Rwanda genocide:
…seven hundred poorly armed U.N. peacekeepers in the north-eastern Ituri region have watched helplessly over the past few weeks as massacres by tribal militias have filled graves with fresh corpses at about the same clip that the dead of Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror have been exhumed in Iraq. (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.)
22“If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. 23“But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, 24eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. (Exodus 21:22-5) (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.206)
Tertullian, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria-leading thinkers of the early church- all agreed that a Christian could not be a soldier. If one of the faithful becomes a soldier, Clement said, he must be cast out of the church, for he has “scorned God.” It was not until 312, when Constantine, the Roman Emperor, became a Christian, that this attitude changed, and Christian thinkers like Augustine began to develop the doctrine of the “just war.” (Peter Singer “The President of Good and Evil” 2004 p.207)
Tom Paine, “Dissertations on First Principles of Government”
Philip Gourevitch, “Wish to Inform you That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families”
And how could any rational person make sacrifices on behalf of unseen supernatural entities? The answer: When it comes to religion, apparently reasonable beings are unreasonable- religion is rooted in the irrational. Keep in mind that claims about the irrationality of religious sacrifices have not been limited to great sacrifices such as asceticism or martyrdom. At issue are such ordinary acts as prayer, observance of moral codes, and contributions of time and wealth.
Whether it be the imputation of outright psychopathology, of groundless fears, or merely faulty reasoning and misperceptions, the irrational assumption has dominated the field. The notion that normal, sophisticated people could be religious has been limited to a few social scientists willing to allow their own brand of very mild religiousness to pass the test of rationality-as in Gordon W. Allport’s concept of “intrinsic” religion…… “The rise of Mormonism” By Rodney Stark, Reid Larkin Neilson p.86
“Acts of faith: explaining the human side of religion” By Rodney Stark, Roger Finke
It was not bishops but the religious “fantasies” of the masses that most concerned Engels. Freud wrote about religious illusions, not about church taxes, and Wallace asserted that “belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world” (1966:265), because as Bryan Wilson explained, “the rational structure of society itself precludes much indulgence in supernaturalist thinking” (1975b:265).
Third,, implicit in all is the claim that all aspects of modernization it is science that has the most deadly implications for religion…… “The rise of Mormonism” By Rodney Stark, Reid Larkin Neilson p.97
additional Google books with the same quote
hannah arendt and jean baudrillard: pedagogy in the consumer society )
Real-life Monopoly
But there’s another side to what scholars Shirley and Joe Kincheloe have insightfully called the “Corporate Construction of Childhood.” It’s the growing scope, market power, and political influence wielded by the small number of megacorporations that sell most of what kids buy. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.27-9)
With so many more dollars at stake, that strategy was risky, so companies hired psychologists, child development specialists, anthropologists, and sociologists to help craft more compelling messages. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.42)
(Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” also cited in Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FVE/is_9_4/ai_54631243/
When all else fails, there’s always nagging. Or what the British side of the industry calls Pester Power. Thanks to Cheryl Idell’s widely influential “nag factor study,” and numerous derivative reports, this time-honored technique of kids has become heavy artillery in the industrial arsenal. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.61)
…Chat rooms are seeded with paid representatives to promote brands. E-mail lists are used to advertise products. While teens and young adults have been the target of many of the early viral campaigns, these techniques are filtering down to children….
One of the more intriguing companies in the bussiness is the Girl’s Intelligence Agency. In 2002, its first year of operation, the company had already developed a network of 40,000 girls, aged eight to eighteen, ready to swing into action on the drop of a dime to create buzz for whatever product the company sends their way.. GIA was founded by Laura Groppe, an academy award winning film producer…. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.76)
Juliet Schor “The Commodification of childhood: Tales from the advertising front lines”
The use of academic to promote sales has a long history in certain areas, such as drugs and health products. And academia has played a role in the kids’ marketplace too, for example, when educators and psychologists endorse “worthy” toys and books. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.82-3)
Opposition has prevented Channel One from growing for many years. But with some notable exceptions, it has mainly managed to hold on to its existing clients…..Zapme….was forced to suspend operations. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.88-9)
The main impetus for commercialization is the chronic underfunding of schools. As budgets tighten, officials become more receptive to selling access to their students. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.90-1)
Some of the worst examples of bias have been found among the corporate environmental materials. In the early 1990’s, energy, paper, and other primary materials companies became concerned about what they considered an excessively proenvironmental attitude among the nation’s youth. They worried that existing environmental education curricula were exacerbating those sentiments. So the companies began what can only be described as an extensive propaganda effort to obscure the nature of the environmental problems facing the planet. For example, Consumers Union concluded that Exxon’s elaborate Energy Cube curriculum “implies that fossil fuels pose few environmental problems and that alternative energy is costly and unattainable.” (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.94)
Businesses are willing to spend millions of dollars on crummy classroom material, but have proven unwilling to pay taxes to support high-quality, serious curricula for the nation’s children. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.96)
Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” University of Orogon review of book
Schools have sold rights to probe kids as young as age seven. Noggin, a joint venture of Nickelodeon and PBS, set up shop an elementary school in watching, New Jersey....
…..Each kid was equipped with a headband with a lens built into it, which was then connected to a camera hidden in a backpack. They were sent into the store and asked to pick any twenty things they would like to buy, the camera recorded everything the children did, such as what they looked at, which aisles they lingered in, what they picked up, and what they ultimately chose to put in the cart. The study was conducted with what at Strottman are called “rookies,” that is, kids who had not yet been interviewed or briefed by the firm. (They were also unaware of the purpose of the study.)….
….Unfortunately, the Bush administration, a recipient of considerable sums of money from tobacco, alcohol, and big pharmaceutical companies, rejected these insightful suggestions.
Levi Strauss…was one of the earliest companies to employ children in innovative ways…as official consultants…
Josh reports that, “they were pretty blunt.” If he didn’t comply with their request, they made it clear he would be fired. They’d send a disposable camera, a notebook, and a tape recorder, and ask him to comb the city. He was on the lookout for cool kids he could interview and whose outfits and accessories he would record. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.103-6)
In the early days, Fogg recruited her own family and employees’ kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews. As they ran out of family members, she began attending outdoor civic events and giving presentations. Now her colleague Ron Coughlin explained, “we have a very aggressive recruiting program in schools.” They work only with private and parochial schools, because safeguards and regulations at public schools are too complex-“the reality is that they [the children] are working,” says Fogg. She presents the program to the boards of the schools and then to the parent meetings, offering cash or other compensation to the school in return for their participation. In her spiel, she promises that the children will gain self-esteem because “someone” is listening to them, and that they will be thrilled to see products they’ve worked on being advertised on television. She promises the kids will have fun, get to be creative, and “never do the same thing twice.” In 2003, the firm embarked on an ambitious recruitment effort, through the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which had agreed to facilitate access to the 3,700 children in the organization. Fogg reports that she’s never been asked in advance by school or organizational officials about the kinds of products the kids will be working on, whether alcohol or cigarette advertising would be part of the work, or about violent video games or sexist portrayals. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.107)
As with many other child researchers, he was trained originally to help children, and his funding came from the nonprofit sector. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.109)
One planner I met in New York has a more eclectic approach. He regularly consults with university brain scientists, hypnotizes consumers, and is hard at work developing an emotional field theory that can “tap into the human mind….[into] the brain functions which control emotions….When I send out a virus, I’m trying to do it in a way so that it will be more receptive. I’m not calling for some Orwellian vision of the future,” he says, but “we’ll be able to…” At this point his voice trailed off, perhaps because he was contemplating a lucrative future of irresistible ads….
Reiher explained to me that he is very concerned about how advertising can manipulate viewers’ attention mechanism and “downshift” the brain, that is, activate the emotional midbrain and the instinctive reactive centers. Such downshifting makes it virtually impossible for critical thinking and effective reasoning to occur while watching an ad. In combination with age-inappropriate content, Reiher believes that downshifting can have a negative impact on brain development in children. In his view, “The ‘muscle’ of metacognition is the key to the higher thought process and this can be compressed by high powered entertainment experiences that keep the brain engaged in the emotional and instinctive modes of processing.” Reiher worries that what the people using MRI scanning techniques and other advanced brain technologies are doing is trying to discover more effective brain downshifting techniques. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.110-2)
Surprisingly although many schools ask to see copies of the surveys in advance, not all do. This gives researchers tremendous latitude and suggests that many principals are asleep at the switch. So too are the school boards that are sanctioning the use of valuable classroom time for market research with no educational value. These practices are a costly subsidy from the taxpayers who fund the schools to the private companies that are reaping the benefits of the research. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.114)
Furthermore, the widespread practice of doing in-store research without prior permission ignores the privacy of other customers in the store, who may be taped and have their behavior analyzed without their knowledge. That’s one reason store managers are reluctant to allow such taping. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.116)
In fact, after surveying twenty-five years of Saturday morning food advertising, and nearly 1,400 food ads from 1972, 1976, 1987, 1994, and 1997, the authors reported that with the exclusion of some public service announcements, “there have been no food advertisements for fruits and vegetables…in the past 25 years.” Furthermore, this study found that the nutritional content of advertised products is getting worse. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.120)
In 2003, information emerged that food companies know more about this than they’ve been letting on. The London Telegraph reported that “scientists working for Nestle and Unilever have been quietly investigating how certain foods, such as chocolate biscuits, burgers and snacks, make people binge-eat, thereby fuelling obesity. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.125)
They’re active on many fronts, but they are failing miserably at what is ultimately a simple task: the production of healthful food. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.127)
In early 2003, responding to the barrage of adverse publicity, Coca-Cola signed a million-dollar agreement with the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry to promote “education and research.” The arrangement was immediately criticized on the grounds that it created a conflict of interest….
The Bush administration has sided squarely with Big Food against its critics. Secretary of health and Human Services Tommy Thompson got public attention when he spoke out against obesity, but behind closed doors, he urged members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association to “go on the offensive” against the critics. Part of the offensive has been to downplay the connection between food and obesity, defining the problem as inadequate exercise. The administration has engineered a taxpayer giveaway for a lifestyle ad campaign called VERB, run by a private-public partnership between HHS, the Centers for Disease Control, and what Commercial Alert’s Gary Ruskin has dubbed the “obesity lobby.” (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.128-9)
A second industry theme is that parents can “just say no.” Paul Kurnit takes the view that “if you don’t want your child to eat pre-sweetened cereals, don’t buy them. If you don’t want your child to eat at McDonald’s, don’t take your child to McDonald’s. I mean, on some level it is truly that simple.” [Child marketer Amanda] Carlson concurs: “They [the parents] should set the guidelines. They should set precedents. They should be good examples, which they’re not, in terms of how to eat healthfully.”
A careful look at industry practices suggests things aren’t as simple as Kurnit and others claim. The soft drink companies have demanded exclusive access in schools. The chains dominate highway rest stops, airports, malls, and other public places, so fast or junk food is usually all that’s available. Agriculture and food lobbies have pushed through food disparagement laws in twelve states where they’re politically powerful. (These laws make certain statements about food products illegal.) Oprah Winfrey was sued by a group of Texas cattlemen under their “veggie libel law” after she did a show on mad cow disease. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.130-1)
(Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” the simple dollar book review
Juliet Schor “When Childhood Gets Commercialized, Can Children Be Protected?” 2005
Chapter 9: Empowered or Seduced?
The Debate About Advertising and Marketing to Kids
A line has been crossed . . . advertising and entertainment and all mediums are blurred now. I think we are reaching a point of an overall degrading of values. . . . And it seems like people get desensitized, and then they have to cross yet another line.
-Richard Goldstein, creative director, major New York ad agency
As marketers have become more brazen, parents, educators, and health professionals have begun to fight back. This is not the first time advocates for children have tried to rein in marketers. In the 1970s, television advertising was the focal point, because it was the major avenue for reaching children. In 1974, the Federal Communications Commission explicitly recognized children's vulnerability to ads and enacted regulations that prohibited host selling and program-length commercials, mandated separators between ads and programs, and restricted advertising time to nine and a half minutes per hour on the weekends and twelve minutes on weekdays. Action for Children's Television, a public interest group, argued that the 1974 regulations were inadequate and pressed the Federal Trade Commission to enact a ban on all advertising to children. In 1978, after considerable deliberation, the FTC issued a report that concluded children under age seven "do not possess the cognitive ability to evaluate adequately child-oriented television advertising." However, by 1981, the agency was unwilling to take on industry, and in any case, Congress stripped it of its ability to do so. At about this time, the FCC reversed its stance on program-length commercials, which remain legal.
The next decade and a half was relatively quiet, but opposition began to surface in the second half of the 1990s. This time, critics took aim at a wider range of practices than television commercials. Ralph Nader, a long-standing opponent of corporate marketing to children, published The Parents' Guide to Fighting Corporate Predators and founded Commercial Alert, which has become a major catalyst for activism, organizing professionals and parents on a variety of issues from school commercialization to junk food marketing. George Gerbner warned that corporations were becoming our children's "story-tellers" and the dominant transmitters of culture. Consumers Union opposed the growing commercialization of schools, as did the Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education and the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education. In August 1999, the Center for a New American Dream launched its Kids and Commercialism Campaign, just in time to help parents cope with the annual marketing blitz associated with back-to-school sales. Some months later, a group called the Motherhood Project, associated with the right-wing Institute for American Values, put together a broad-based statement titled "Watch Out for Children," which attacked the larger consumer culture being sold to youth. Not long afterward, a new coalition called Stop the Commercial Exploitation of Children developed, on the success of a series of events countering the industry's Annual Golden Marble Awards for the best children's ad.
Major national organizations such as the Children's Defense Fund, the National Education Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have also entered the debate about kids and consumer culture. The American Psychological Association began studying whether it should amend its code of ethics to prevent members from conducting marketing research on children. The issue reached the political mainstream in the 2000 elections, as Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton declared that "too many companies simply see our children as little cash cows that they can exploit." Clinton called for a ban on ads to preschoolers and in public elementary schools. The debate heated up and one industry publication declared that "marketing to kids is now officially under the gun." As I've described, 2002 was a watershed year for opponents of food marketing. By 2003, the annual KidPower conference was taking note. "We are accused of manipulating and exploiting kids," the conference brochure intoned. "The kid industry is under attack for selling products to children that are presumed to make them greedy, violent and fat." Organizers added a session that would enlighten participants about "how worried" they should be about growing criticism in the press and the spread of advertising bans now in place in some European countries.
Under attack from many sides, industry has mounted three lines of defense. The first is that they are empowering kids. The second is that advertising to kids is necessary for the economic health of the industry. The third is that parents are the guilty party.
The New Discourse of Kid Empowerment
The core of what I call the new discourse of kid empowerment is the idea that ads and products help children to feel powerful. It says that kids need to feel independent and master their environments to feel in control of their parents. Lisa Morgan argues that "kids want to be in control in a world where they create their own rules . . . we always try to put them into situations where they . . . demonstrate mastery of a specific situation." Gene del Vecchio contends that "kids have very little control over the world in which they live. Therefore, they love to gain any measure of control over their sphere of existence. . . . Control touches a strong need that children have to be independent." Del Vecchio and others argue that a sense of control can be achieved through learning how to operate a toy, having the opportunity to choose among products, even something as simple as choosing among color variations, or watching an ad in which children triumph over adults.
Is it true that ads can create positive psychological outcomes? If a kid buys a pair of Nike shoes and feels better about himself or herself because of them, then Nike's ads may enhance self-esteem. But the messages are a double-edged sword because they also do the reverse, undermining self-worth. Sometimes the reality doesn't meet the promise. Sometimes kids desperately want a product because they're convinced it's essential to their happiness but there's no money to pay for it. As the nation's children are increasingly likely to live in poor and low-income households, this gap between desire and means is likely to grow. Many psychologists already find this a worrisome trend. Allen Kanner and M. E. Gomes have argued that many young people are suffering from feelings of deep inadequacy brought on by an inability to keep up with consumer culture.
Empowerment is also raised in a defense of the widespread antiadultism of commercial culture. Paul Kurnit defended an ad he produced for the board game Operation in which adults are portrayed as buffoons, saying it "levels the playing field" between children and adults. But there's a fine line between wholesome kid mastery and destructive antiadultism, and many believe that line has been crossed. Social conservatives argue that advertising and the media have become unacceptably disrespectful toward adults, undermining children's proper deference and obedience. However, even those who do not believe that adults have a God-given authority over children find themselves disturbed by some of today's advertising, wondering if the pervasive antiadultism is undermining mutual respect between parents and children. Bob Garfield, the influential columnist of Advertising Age, called a Nintendo spot that ridiculed parents an "exercise in craven cynicism and moral abdication." Garfield acknowledged that Nintendo was hardly alone in putting forward the "make-fun-of-grown-ups" message. Nevertheless, he argued, "At some point someone has to take a stand. These people have no right to speak to our children this way, and they had damn well better stop." James McNeal, responding directly to Kurnit, called his position "detestable."
Similar issues arise with direct targeting of children. After the gatekeeper model collapsed in the 1980s, industry went full steam ahead, selling their clients on nag factor kid influence. But the further industry goes down this road, the more it must defend itself against charges that it is having excessive and undue influence on kids. Industry has responded by claiming that children are capable of managing the persuasive pressure of commercial messages and are neither overly swayed nor harmed by them. This has led to the idea that kids are different than they were in the past, as, for example, in the 1970s, when research showed that children had rather limited abilities to understand and withstand advertising. Industry insiders now ignore or denigrate this research on the grounds that it's no longer relevant. They describe today's children as savvy, not able to be manipulated. Martin Lindstrom, a branding expert, thinks that kids have "an advertising filter which is greater than any previous generation. Advertisers and marketers cannot lie, and they cannot deliver crap quality." Wynne Tyree argues that "kids are much more sophisticated than most adults understand, and their sophistication levels are ever increasing at younger ages. There is a lot of evidence that kids are cognitively (and physically) developing more rapidly." Lisa Judson of Nickelodeon contends that "kids have a kind of truth meter. They are able to tell when marketers are being truthful and straightforward and they can tell when marketers are trying to trick them." Geoffrey Roche, an award-winning Canadian creative director, opines, "I don't think there is any way that we, as advertisers, can convince children of anything." Of course, this isn't always to the companies' benefit. One McDonald's advertiser, explaining the dynamics of Happy Meals, explained wistfully that "the kids have become a little more savvy, a little more demanding."
As a consequence, industry spokespeople argue that children do not need protection in their dealings with marketers. Those who are pushing for stricter regulations are put down as know-nothings. Paul Kurnit contends that the people who want to protect kids are "overprotective. . . . It is an issue where we often find that the people who are the most vocal about it have the least understanding of what's going on in kids' lives."
It's hard to dispute the view that children have become more sophisticated and worldly. However, there's little evidence on how that newfound sophistication affects children's ability to resist the persuasive power of ads, and whether growing up faster is empowering in the ways marketers suggest. I've found only one study that evaluates whether children's ability to understand and critically process advertising has grown over time. It's a meta-analysis by Mary Martin of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte that assesses the findings of twenty-one previous studies, conducted between 1972 and the mid-1990s. Martin finds that the ability of younger children to understand ads appears to have increased somewhat since the 1970s, although the correlation is weak and may be due to changes in the way researchers have measured understanding. Furthermore, the crucial question of whether young children can resist the persuasiveness of advertising has not been adequately explored. As I noted in Chapter 3, there's evidence that young children's ability to withstand persuasion is limited. Until there's more research, the industry's claims remain unproven.
The Instrumental Benefits of Ads The industry's second argument is that advertising is justifiable because it creates other benefits, such as free television, better products, and economic growth and employment. Psychologically, these are the most powerful arguments because they reinforce the utter inevitability of advertising. But their logical power is weak.
Let's start with the claim of free television. First, it's not true. Television only appears to be free. The public funds ads and programs by paying higher prices for advertised products. The fact is that if you're a consumer, you pay for television, whether you watch or not. What's more, nominally free television is a bad thing because it leads kids to watch too much of it. Indeed, given the extensive body of research on the detrimental effects of television, free TV hardly makes a compelling case for advertising. Perhaps the strongest argument for free television is that it's available to low-income consumers who cannot afford other forms of entertainment. But given that low-income children spend so much time watching television and are disproportionately affected by some of the most harmful aspects of consumer culture, such as violence, obesity, and depression, this is a hard position to defend. It would be preferable to subsidize other forms of entertainment or to offer pay-per-view at heavily reduced rates to low-income households.
A second argument is that ads promote competition and indirectly lead to better products. More likely, they do the reverse. Advertising is expensive, and therefore creates barriers that make it harder for new products and companies to enter the market. With today's monopolized industries, the high cost of ad campaigns keeps the giants in control and the newcomers out. If we really wanted to maximize product innovation and improvements, we'd structure the system so advertising was inexpensive and mainly informational.
Finally, the industry has long taken the stance that ads create consumer demand, which creates more production and employment. Without ads, the argument goes, the economy would collapse. But most economists don't agree with this logic. They see advertising as mainly affecting brand choice rather than overall sales. And even if it were true, it's a problematic argument. During my research, I had lunch with a man who was then president of one of the nation's largest advertising agencies. He began our conversation by telling me that he believed advertising had become a terribly destructive force around the world, putting fast food joints everywhere, undermining local cultures and global diversity. As he looked over his career, he had lost faith in his business. So how do you live with yourself? I asked. His answer was that he put food on the table for his many employees. By that criterion, he is willing to advertise tobacco, which his firm does, and other harmful products just to maintain business. When it involves children, this instrumentality is even more questionable. Indeed, there's precious little justification for advertising to children merely to keep agencies profitable. Policy should be based on what's best for kids, not on arguments about how using them in one way or another yields particular outcomes for adults. When we argue that it's okay to use kids for the sake of making money, it's much harder to draw lines to protect their health, safety, and well-being. If society permits advertising to children, it should be because we're confident it isn't harmful, deceptive, or overly enticing.
A few marketers have taken that tack, claiming that advertising is actually good for children, helping them to be savvy consumers, and providing product information. But evidence suggests the opposite conclusion. For example, one study found that youth who watch more ads turn out to be more trusting of them, not less. A controlled study comparing students in Channel One and non-Channel One schools found that the former are more positive about the advertised products than those who don't see the broadcasts. If we want children to grow up with good consumer skills, we need to teach them directly, through media literacy courses, lessons in financial management, and information about how to become an informed consumer.
Findings from a Center for a New American Dream poll I collaborated on in 1999 suggest that relatively few parents buy into the industry's claims. Only 15 percent believe that advertising "is a good way for kids to get accurate information about products," and only 23 percent say that "children today are very sophisticated about advertising and are not really influenced by it all that much." To take the "we're doing good for kids" line seriously, one would need to see evidence for the causality that underlies this view: that kids who watch more ads have higher self-esteem and better friendships, are more content with their lives, and are more positively empowered. I found just the reverse.
Industry Blames the Parent
Industry's final line of defense is that parents always have the option of protecting their children from advertising. They can turn off the television and just say no. When parents let their children watch, they are giving tacit approval. Of course, the proliferation of marketing in schools and other public institutions undermines this claim, but it remains a mainstay in the industry's arsenal of arguments. Recently, the debate has gone further, as marketers blame parents for the excesses of consumer culture. If children have become too materialistic, or obese, or aggressive, it's because parents aren't doing their jobs. "The reason that there's childhood obesity is because caregivers don't have enough time to spend with their children. So what they're doing is giving their kids eight hours of TV a day," says Kenn Viselman, the media producer who brought Teletubbies to the United States. Other marketers hold a similar position. Peter Reynolds, CEO of Brio Toys, says, "Parents aren't losing control, they're giving it up. . . . The responsibility of the purchase always lies with the adult. Yeah, seventy-two times a day you're going to be asked, 'Can I have that toy? Can I have that toy?' But if the answer is 'no' seventy-two times a day for three or four weeks, then they stop asking." Paul Kurnit says parents are responsible for the decline of the gatekeeper model: "A decade ago I called it 'the unmanned tollbooth.' Today I call it 'Easy Pass.' " Arnold's Jerrie van Gelder worries that industry critics will lead us down a slippery slope: "If we start to remove the responsibility from the parents . . . I wonder where it stops."
This line of argument is powerful because it possesses an essential truth. Parents should and do bear responsibility for restricting children's access to consumer culture. When they fail to exercise judgment or set limits, the outcomes can be disastrous. I subscribe to this perspective as a researcher and as a parent. I've shielded my own children to a degree some people find excessive. But the undeniable fact of parental responsibility does not imply that it's only parents who should be held accountable. The complexities of life today render that approach far too simple-minded. Looking at the evolution of relationships between children, parents, and marketers, we see how much more entangled and difficult this triangulation has become. In the process, it becomes clear that all three parties need to behave differently.
Some of the more thoughtful advertisers I encountered understand this triangulation well. Wynne Tyree describes the case of food, explaining that the pervasiveness of unhealthful choices "puts moms in a tough position-the battle or the surrender." Tyree believes that mothers have only the best intentions for their children and care about their health. "But moms today, unlike many moms of yesterday, want their kids to be happy as much as they want them to be healthy. This is particularly true of those moms who are more time-constrained and/or work outside the home. Since kids want the sweets, the fats, and carbs, the result becomes a child with a little extra baby fat moms are sure their kids will grow out of." Tyree also recognizes the problem of what social scientists call "path dependency"-that what we do today affects our behavior tomorrow. "There's the problem of kids' palates that never get exposed to healthy foods and thus never develop a taste for them." Introducing young children to unhealthy food, even as treats, can undermine their ability to maintain a healthful diet over the long run.
The industry's critics are not so far from this perspective, explaining that it is increasingly difficult for parents when they are overextended and stressed and advertising comes at kids from so many angles. Harvard University's Susan Linn contends that we have put parents in the position of "playing David to the corporate Goliaths." And neither Linn nor others in the critics' camp are arguing against parental responsibility. They're asking for help. Indeed, one might argue that it is precisely because it is getting harder for parents that there should be more restrictions on marketers. We should be focusing less on who's to blame and more on a workable solution that protects children's well-being.
Parents have mixed attitudes about responsibility and blame. The Center for a New American Dream's poll asked about where the responsibility lies-with parents or marketers. Forty-one percent of parents took the view that "it is getting harder and harder to set limits with kids because so much advertising is aimed at making kids feel they need all of these products in order to fit it." A nearly identical number (43 percent) felt that "blaming advertisers is just an excuse parents give because they do not know how to say no." Interestingly, 12 percent volunteered that they agreed with both of these sentiments, an option that was not offered by the interviewers.
The poll also found that the vast majority of parents willingly accept responsibility for their children. But most don't think they should be forced to fight the battle alone, and there is strong support for restrictions on advertising. Seventy-eight percent of parents are opposed or strongly opposed to showing commercials for brand-name products in school; 64 percent believe Internet providers are not doing enough to protect children from online advertising; and 65 percent believe TV networks should be required to reduce the amount they advertise to children. When asked how they felt "when your child pressures you to buy something as a result of an advertisement," 20 percent said "angry" and 38 percent said "pressured." By contrast, only 6 percent reported themselves "ready to please," and 17 percent were "happy I have the money to buy it." A large majority (78 percent) also reported that they believe "marketing and advertising puts too much pressure on children to buy things that are too expensive, unhealthy, or unnecessary." Seventy percent feel "advertising and marketing aimed at kids has a negative effect on their values and world view," and 87 percent think "advertising and marketing aimed at kids today make children and teenagers too materialistic."
These findings reveal that although more than 40 percent of parents don't primarily blame advertisers, most of those respondents are critical of many of the practices marketers are engaged in. The poll suggests that parents have a pragmatic and balanced view of the issues.
Many advertisers speak with a forked tongue about parental responsibility. To the public they extol it. To their clients, they boast about their ability to exploit parental weakness. Whether it's dual messaging, going around parents by advertising in schools, finding the battles that moms are too exhausted to fight, or encouraging pester power, much of children's marketing has become an effort to break down parental opposition. Food marketers search for a believable (never mind true) nutritional claim. ("Give 'em a vitamin, give 'em calcium," David Siegel of the Wondergroup advises.) Toy manufacturers slap on the word educational. Companies anointed with the wholesome halo venture into questionable territory, knowing that parents trust them.
Surveying the commercial landscape, it seems that we've reached the point where it is no longer fair to put the onus exclusively on parents. Those who are trying to limit marketers' access to their kids deserve a reasonable chance of success. They shouldn't have to sequester their kids from so much in the environment. That puts an undue burden on both child and parent. The failure to address these issues also unfairly exposes those children who, for whatever reason, don't have parents setting limits for them. Despite his strong rhetoric about parental responsibility, Peter Reynolds's company markets only to parents, not to kids. "I want to save the children from the parents who don't take responsibility," he says. Such a stance is rare.
Advertising Doubts
When I began my research, I wasn't particularly interested in how those within the industry felt about their work. I just wanted to figure out what they were doing. Perhaps naively, I assumed that most would either believe in what they do or, if they didn't, would have well-developed rationalizations to keep their consciences at bay. I was unprepared for the spontaneous articulation of doubts I encountered. Mary Prescott raised her criticisms in both of our conversations: "I am doing the most horrible thing in the world. . . . We are targeting kids too young with too many inappropriate things. It's not worth the all-mighty buck." And later she confessed that "at the end of the day, my job is to get people to buy things. . . . It's a horrible thing and I know it." Thomas Kouns, of Truth Moderating and Qualitative Research and a former strategic planner at a number of agencies, also identified a problem at the core of the enterprise: "We have a message which says to be worth anything, you have to have the product. . . . Brands are about giving you value, giving you self-esteem. Fundamentally, that's really flawed. It stunts your emotional growth in a lot of ways. . . . We're so culpable, everybody's culpable." Mark Lapham, who founded and then sold his own promotions company, seemed as if he's marking time until he makes enough money to retire and do something he can be proud of. Martin Lindstrom decried the growth of materialism among tweens and worried that we've produced a generation that is not very nice. He described how it feels to "wear two hats." As a marketer, he counsels brands that they need tween strategies. But "from a parent point of view, I think this is a sad phenomenon." A marketer with a flair for the dramatic repeatedly foretold a future in which she'd "burn in hell."
For some, the problem isn't so much advertising as the way it's carried out. Langbourne Rust issued a blanket condemnation of his colleagues' use of nag factor: "It is assumed by most of them that it's all about pester power. We end up creating a world and culture around this idea. And we end up with a culture of kids at odds with their parents-wheedling, whining, and cajoling." Kenn Viselman takes a similar view. Referring to Idell's original nag factor study and the direct marketing that followed it, Viselman noted that "ever since that study came out, the concept of advertising to kids has become more and more widespread. It's become a way of life in our country and it's totally wrong. It's sacrilegious. We should be doing whatever we can to protect our youth, and instead we're just selling them out so we can make a few dollars." I encountered a few marketers who refuse to promote violent products or stress the need for positive approaches, but in my experience, these concerns mainly get lip service.
Rita Denney is one of the few professionals I discussed this issue with who shared the critics' view that advertising to children is inherently unfair. She's also one of the most highly educated and knowledgeable people in the field and holds a Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology from the University of Chicago. She understands a lot about children's development, and this is the basis of her refusal to work on children's products or accounts. "I have a third grader who I've watched grow up with television." Denney explains that it's too hard for her daughter to understand the rules of advertising and that she can't make certain kinds of judgments. "I'm willing to sell anything to adults," she explains. But she draws the line at kids.
The most poignant case I encountered was Susan Davies (pseudonym), a senior executive and a single mother who confessed her longtime ambivalence about the whole enterprise of marketing to kids. She's had to advertise products she doesn't believe in and wouldn't let her own children use. This leaves her feeling morally conflicted and unhappy with her work, so she's left the job a number of times. But she keeps returning because she needs the money. "The biggest issue is finding some peace." This is not always easy because, as she explains, in the advertising business you "can't really be critical of the product . . . you can't have a judgment on the product."
In the end, Davies identified the crux of the problem: the industry lacks sufficient moral accountability. In the agencies, people are afraid to confront the clients. In the companies, there's a similar lack of accountability. And all the while, the pressure to make money is overwhelming the need to do well by kids. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.177-88)
My own experience also supports this view. After our first child was born, we decided not to expose him to television…..But a funny thing happened: he never asked. (Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.207)
(Juliet Schor “Born to Buy” 2004 p.217 immediately after organization list)
WHEREAS, the nurturing of character and strong values in children is one of the most important functions in any society; Parents Bill of Rights
Well aware that war was afoot, Scowcroft had tried to head it off with an August 15, 2002, Wall Street Journal op-ed piece titled “Don’t attack Saddam” and TV interviews. As a purveyor of the realist school of foreign policy, and as a protégé of Henry Kissinger, Scowcroft believed that idealism should take a backseat to America’s strategic self-interest, and his case was simple. “There is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations,” he wrote, “and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks.” To attack Iraq, while ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, “could turn the whole region into a cauldron and, thus, destroy the war on terrorism.” A few days later, former secretary of state James Baker, who had carefully assembled the massive coalition for the Gulf War in 1991, joined in, warning the Bush administration that if it were to attack Saddam, it should not go it alone. (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.5)
(Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” first 6 pages at Salon
One of the key figure behind the its ascendency was Chaim Weizmann, a young chemist at Manchester University who met Charles Prestwick Scott, (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.105-8)
One of the first people Begin sought out was Jerry Falwell, who had just begun to achieve national recognition and who saw the birth of Israel as the (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.109)
After “A Clean Break,” the neocon machine shifted into higher gear. The drumbeat for war began. (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.148)
Asked if there was any talk at the Rome meeting about destabilizing Iran, Ledeen replied by E-mail, “Please mr. unger, have the good manners to go away and stay away.” (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.235)
David Addington oversaw Cheney's aggressive and highly secretive legal staff.29
Stephen Hadley kept Condoleezza Rice in check at the National Security Council, lest she fall back into Scowcroft’s orbit. Wurmser had been moved out of….
But the real push was delayed until the second week of September. As Card famously put it, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce a new product in August.” (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.250-1)
Iraq was merely just the beginning. To Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and the PLO Perle added, “We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: ‘You’re next.’” (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.290)
If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him? (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.300)
Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children
Another factor in the 2004 election was fear itself. As John Judis explained in “Death Grip,” … Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski …. (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.318)
The best general introduction to this field is Drew Westen's recent book, The Political Brain, but the research that is perhaps most relevant to the 2004 election has been conducted by psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. In the early 1980s, they developed what they clumsily called "terror management theory." Their idea was not about how to clear the subways in the event of an attack, but about how people cope with the terrifying and potentially paralyzing realization that, as human beings, we are destined to die. Their experiments showed that the mere thought of one's mortality can trigger a range of emotions--from disdain for other races, religions, and nations, to a preference for charismatic over pragmatic leaders, to a heightened attraction to traditional mores. Initially, the three scholars didn't attempt to apply their theory to elections. But, after September 11, they conducted experiments designed to do exactly that. “Death Grip” by John Judis
Hate filled the air, at times evoking the specter of McCarthyism, the hate and fear mongering of Father Coughlin, and even the assault against reason undertaken by the Puritans. (Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” 2007 p.330-4)
If the once powerful Christian Coalition had become moribund — and it had — that was because it had been replaced by a far more powerful institution: the Republican Party. Indeed, in 2004, no fewer than 41 out of 51 Republican senators voted with the Christian Coalition 100 percent of the time. When the new Congress took office in early 2005, it included Tom Coburn, newly elected senator from Oklahoma, who believed that doctors who performed abortions should be executed. Asserting that global warming was a hoax, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) compared environmentalists to the Nazis. He argued that American policy in the Middle East should be based on the Bible, that Israel had a right to the West Bank “because God said so.” And on the Senate floor, in a speech about the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, he displayed an enormous photo of his extended family, and told the august assembly, “We have 20 kids and grandkids. I’m really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family, we’ve never had a divorce or any kind of homosexual relationship.”
Meanwhile, the White House sought extraordinary means to get its message across. In late January 2005, a man named James Guckert showed up at a presidential news conference using Jeff Gannon as a pseudonym, and lobbed softball questions to President Bush. “Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy. . . .” he told President Bush. “Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. How are you going to work — you’ve said you are going to reach out to these people — how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”
Inhofe said: “I believe very strongly that we ought to support Israel; that it has a right to the land. The is the most important reason: Because God said so. As I said a minute ago, look it up in the Book of Genesis. It is right up there on the desk. In Genesis 13:14–17, the Bible says:
"The Lord said to Abraham, 'Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are northward, and southward, and eastward and westward: for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever. . . . Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it to thee.'"
That is God talking.
The Bible says that Abraham removed his tent and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar before the Lord. Hebron is in the West Bank. It is at this place where God appeared to Abram and said, "I am giving you this land — the West Bank". This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true. Craig Unger “The Fall of the House of Bush” excerpt at rkmbs.com
Full text of "Report of the congressional committees investigating the Iran- Contra Affair : with supplemental, minority, and additional views"
In reality, Corporate Air Services was not a CIA front. The real proprietor of the small air fleet, through several dummy corporations, was Richard Secord. Behind Secord stood not the CIA .....
Felix Rodriguez, a friend and former colleague of vice president George Bush's national security adviser, Donald Gregg. .....
Seventeen days later, Al Shiraa published the story of the arms sales (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.21-2)
We began negotiations for a proffer of testimony from Robert Earl,. A Rhodes scholar .....
We began extensive interviews with Felix Rodriguez, aka Max Gomez, who had overseen the Ilopango Donald Gregg (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.93)
Casey's supervision of North was apparent from the information provided by Clair George, the CIA's director of operations
Through Felix Rodriguez (Max Gomez), vice president George Bush's office had been drawn into North's activities. Donald Gregg, the vice president's national security advisor and Rodriguez's former CIA supervisor, told us that he had recommended to the U.S. embassy in El (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.105)
Asked dissuade Regan, McFarlane admitted, "not having the guts Bill Casey, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Cap Weinberger would have said I was some kind of commie." (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.120-)
Hakim's early-June testimony on the finances of the Enterprise and the share in them that he had set aside for Oliver North
Hakim had also unilaterally reversed proclaimed U.S. anti-terrorism policy. Bowing to a demand that the Iranians had been pressing in vain from their earliest indirect overtures to U.S. officials, Hakim (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.123)
Rob Owen took the stand next. We needed his testimony to confirm North's active supervision of his work in supporting the Contras.
Our according to Richard Gadd; a "workaholic ... a work of art," according to Rafael Quintero, "wonderful patriotic American," according to Joseph Coors the beer mogul (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.186-7)
Next in seniority was Lawrence H. Silberman, the judge I had most dreaded having on the panel. He had written the court of appeals opinion holding that the statute authorizing the appointment of independent counsel was unconstitutional (a holding that had been reversed by the Supreme Court); he had been hostile when interrogating my associate counsel in various matters we had had before the court; and at a D.C. circuit conference he had gotten into a shouting match about independent counsel with Judge George MacKinnon, the chief of the panel that appointed me. Silberman not only had hostile views but seemed to hold them in anger.
With no experience as a trial judge and little as a trial lawyer, Silberman had served under George Shultz as solicitor and then under-secretary of the Labor Department during President Nixon’s first term. He had served briefly as deputy attorney general in the early 1970’s. I had dealt with him during this period and had tentatively evaluated him as overly bright and cynical. He had served as ambassador to Yugoslavia under Presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford. After returning to private practice in Washington Silberman had become advisor on foreign policy matters to Ronald Reagan’s campaign organization. In this capacity Silberman had been on the fringe of the negotiations to avoid the possibility of an "October surprise"— the pre-election release of the U.S. embassy staff held captive by Iranian radicals. He and Robert MacFarlane had represented Reagan in at least one meeting with a person who claimed to have influence with Iranians who might affect the timing of the release of the hostages. Among some career officers in the State Department, he was jokingly referred to as “our ambassador to Khomeini.”
Passed over for appointment to head the State Department or the CIA, Silberman had remained in private practice but had served on various government advisory committees dealing with foreign policy; he had also advised George Shultz on matter concerning the Middle East. Even after Reagan appointed him to the court of appeals in 1985, Silberman had continued to give speeches at Federalist Society meetings. He was an obvious prospect for a right-wing appointment to the Supreme Court. I feared that North’s appeal would provide him with an opportunity for a virtuoso performance designed to catch the ear of President Bush.
Yet I was reluctant to request that Silberman disqualify himself. Prior government service or political activity did not bar him from serving on the panel. His unfavorable view of independent counsel, if it arose in the course of litigation rather than outside the courtroom, was not a basis for disqualification. Too late, I learned that he had a personal animus: He despised Judge Gerhard Gesell. Indeed, Silberman had stopped having lunch in the judges’ lunchroom because of his antipathy for Gesell. Had I known that, the scales would have tipped in favor of my seeking his recusal. (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.248-53)
Silberman and Santelle briefly acknowledged that my staff and I had successfully insulated ourselves from the testimony. The remainder of their opinion however, was written to imply that we had deliberately used North’s testimony to refresh witnesses’ recollections, although the undisputed fact was that we had done no such thing. (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.256-7)
opponents of North's prosecution seized on the opinion as vindication, but the strong dissent by the chief judge softened the blow for us. ... Lynch was not available to represent us in a further appeal, having accepted an appointment as the chief of the ... Before petitioning the Supreme Court, however, we had to move for reargument to give Judges Silberman and ...
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who would later be appointed to the Supreme Court) wrote a dissenting opinion that criticized Silberman's having (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.260-1)
Our public relations capabilities were minimal compared with those of Congress, the White House, and the agencies we were investigating.
Our But the Washington Press corps, perhaps the best group of reporters in the world, regularly published (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.264-5)
At our last staff conference in 1990 and again in early 1991, we evaluated the case against Donald Gregg. He had testified to the grand jury and to Congress that he had not known that Felix Rodriguez was helping North supply the Contras until August 1986, when Congress was about to authorize the CIA to take back the responsibility. Gregg had said that he had never told Bush about Rodriguez's role in North's operation. James Steele however, had admitted to having told Gregg in January 1986 that Rodriguez was busy helping the Contras, and Oliver North had claimed that Gregg had known about his activities as early as 1985. a February 1986 report to Gregg from his assistant, Samuel Watson, on resupplying the Contras was annotated with the phrase "Felix [Rodriguez] agrees," in Gregg's hand writing.
On July 24, 1990, at Gillen's request, the FBI had conducted a polygraph examination of Gregg. The examiner ahd concluded that the polygraph indicated deception on Gregg's answers to the five most relevant questions he was asked. We knew that while Bush was still vice president, Boyden Gray had interrogated Gregg after discovering a memorandum by his assistant listing one of the topics for a May 1986meeting between Rodriguez and Bush as "Contra resupply." When we tried to question Gray about the results of this interrogation, President Bush stepped in and asserted his attorney-client privilege to prevent Gray from testifying about what Gregg had told him. Although Gregg had made no claim that Gray was his lawyer, he would probably have done so if we had contested the president's claim.
Our investigation of Gregg retained it's vitality because of the results of his polygraph examination, but such results are inadmissible in court, so we could not make a solid case against him without the cooperation of either Felix Rodriguez or Samuel Watson. Rodriguez was a hardened operative, a former CIA agent who constantly protected Gregg, under whom he had served in the CIA. Even though Richard Secord had informed that Rodriguez's fellow operative Raphael Quintero had told him that Rodriguez had telephoned Gregg every time weapons were delivered, we could not persuade Quintero to testify against Rodriguez. We would have to decide whether it was worth our time and effort to prosecute Rodriguez for denying that he had made the calls, when he was likely to persist in the denials even if convicted and thus would never testify against Gregg.
As for the other potential witness against Donald Gregg, we continued to gather proof that Samuel Watson had known quite early about Rodriguez and about North's Contra supply activities, but we could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Watson had reported this to Gregg and the vice president. Watson's secretary was ready to testify that he had dictated a memorandum specifying "Contra resupply" as a subject to be discussed by Rodriguez and Bush in may 1986. another secretary corroborated her. Watson denied it. A case against Watson would consist simply of two secretaries' saying that his denials were false. We believed that he had lied, but we did not want to be diverted into a slander case against Watson to try to compel him to talk. Craig Gillen argued against prosecution, saying that he could not see a juror's blood rising over Watson's dispute with his secretaries. "It's a fragment of a day in a larger picture."
Watson declined to make a proffer, and his lawyer would not consent to our subjecting Watson to a polygraph examination. Our only remaining choice was to give him immunity and ....
John Poindexter denied ever having given information to Gregg. Poindexter said that as national security adviser he had dealt directly with the vice president (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.270-2)
Even though several witnesses had lied to us and to Congress, we had decided not to obtain indictments that were peripheral—those that might punish the lies of subordinates, without producing useful witnesses against Ronald Reagan, George Bush, or key officials who had supported or covered up the president's illegal covert actions. a year earlier, we had suspended our investigation of William Walker, who had been Eliot Abram's principal assistant; Edwin Carr, who had the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Paul Thompson, who had been Poindexter's military assistant and council to the National Security Council, and—with considerable misgivings — Donald Gregg and Samuel Watson, who had been members of George Bush's vice presidential staff. (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.318-9)
Before leaving Washington, Shultz had directed Hill, Platt, and Abraham Sofaer to pull together the record of what he had known and what he had
That afternoon as Hill took notes, Shultz had analyzed where the administration stood and what it must do The illegality of the administration's actions had not escaped Shultz. "We appear to have violated our own laws," he had told Hill. "Certainly (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.322-3)
he had known of the November 1985 Hawk shipment but believed it not to have been an arms-for-hostages deal
Although Shultz had never held elective office, few others in recent history had matched his career of outstanding government (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.334-5)
In analyzing the appropriateness ..... accepting Steven Kirk, who had turned out to be an advocate for the defense government's good will (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.432-3)
I was tempted to ask Dole to disclose any relationship he had with Bennett's law firm. Too avoid the appearance of attacking Weinberger on the eve of his trial, however, I decided not to ask Dole for any disclosures.
On the day that Dole asked for information about my salary, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney appeared on the NBC program Meet the Press and denounced Weinberger's indictment as a "travesty." Said Cheney, "I was the senior House Republican on the committee that investigated the Iran-Contra matter ... the fact that now—six years after the fact— the special prosecutor, who has yet really to nail anybody, and has spent millions of dollars, is out trying to prosecute, I think is an outrage."
On December 11, the Associated Press reported that Dole had received $13,000 in campaign contributions since 1987 from members of Bennett's law firm. (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.482-3)
In the postmortem, we received more praise than criticism, Newsday columnist Robert Parry, for example, had this to say: ""Undeterred by persistent attacks against him in his investigation, Walsh has dragged out more truth about the scandal than anyone else .... without Walsh and his small band of prosecutors, .... (Lawrence Walsh “Firewall” 1997 p.514-5)
he Institute for Historical Review
Reagan Chronology
I recall the days of rushing off to Stride Rite to buy two pairs of sensible leather shoes for each of my children every three months (one for church and one for everyday) plus a pair of sneakers. (Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.17)
The widely publicized rise in shootings, gangs, and dangerous drugs at public schools sent many parents in search of a safe haven for their sons and daughters. Violent incidents can happen anywhere, as the shootings at lovely suburban Columbine High School in Colorado revealed to a horrified nation. (Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.25-6)
Alternatively, we could take the usual liberal approach, calling for more government regulations of the housing market such as price caps. But we don't think the solution lies with such complex regulations. …… Nor would we be arguing for outright government subsidies (Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.33-6)
And then there are sports. In winning years a few of the big programs might break even thanks to the sell-out crowds and television deals, but for most colleges the cost to field teams in every sport from football to water polo must come out of the general budget. ….Columbia University allocates even more, redirecting $ 7 million of its general revenue to make up the shortfall in athletics. (Elizabeth Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.43)
But Mrs. Clinton stayed firm in her fight against "that awful bill." She was convinced that the bill was "unfair to women and children," and she intended to stand by her principles, even if it cost some Democratic party candidates campaign contributions. Over the ensuing months, she was true to her word. With her strong support, the Democrats slowed the bill's passage through Congress. When Congress finally passed the bill in October 2000, President Clinton vetoed it. The following summer, an aide explained to me the abrupt about-face: "A couple of days after Mrs. Clinton met with you, we changed sides [on the bankruptcy bill] so fast that you could see skid marks in the hallways of the White House." Thanks to Mrs. Clinton, families still had one financial refuge left -- at least for the moment.
But the story doesn't end there. The banking lobbyists were persistent. President Clinton was on his way out, and credit card giant MBNA emerged as the single biggest contributors to President Bush's campaign. In the spring of 2001, the bankruptcy bill was reintroduced in the Senate, essentially unchanged from the version President Clinton had vetoed the previous year. (Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.125-6)
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
Consider the example set by Citibank, America's largest credit card issuer. In 1990, I [Elizabeth] was hired as a one-day consultant by Citibank to address a gathering of some forty senior lending executives. The task: use my research to suggest policies that would help Citibank cut its losses from cardholders in financial trouble. I arrived at Citibank's New York headquarters with dozens of graphs and charts tucked in my file folders. I was ushered into a large, brightly lit conference room where each chair was filled by someone outfitted in a starched shirt, silk tie, and dark suit. The executives stayed with me all day, eating lunch at the conference tables as we continued our discussions about the effects of unemployment on loan defaults and the rising number of bankruptcies among two-earner families. (Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.138-9)
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
What about families' access to credit? Deregulation of the mortgage lending industry was not a right-wing conspiracy; it was actually supported by most Democrats as well. Many liberals got behind the move for traditionally liberal reasons: They wanted to defend lower-income families. They had been persuaded that the risks posed by overaggressive lenders might not be as dangerous as once was thought. A deregulated lending market could even prove to be a critical tool to help low-income and disadvantaged groups improve their lot. After all, working-class families needed credit to start businesses, to build homes, and to send their kids to college -- things that upper-income families had long had plenty of opportunities to do. (Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.149)
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
If America's crippling addiction to debt could be shaken off with a simple regulatory change, what are the politicians doing about it? The answer, quite simply, is nothing.
As the number of mortgage foreclosures skyrockets, as credit card debt soars, as the lines at the bankruptcy courthouse stretch out into the street and around the block, all we hear from Washington is the sound of silence. There has been no serious progress on any proposal to rein in predatory lending: no measure to control credit card fees, no proposal to ban creditors from trying to collect from a dead person's brothers and sisters, and certainly no bill to bring back meaningful limits on interest rates. The national political parties have found time to take positions on the speed of the Internet, ergonomic standards in the workplace, and regional restrictions on dairy products, but they have claimed no position on the financial issues that profoundly affect millions of middle-class families.
There is, however, one notable exception to all that inaction. Congress has paid attention to one troubling statistic -- the rapidly growing number of families filing for bankruptcy. High interest rates and aggressive marketing of complicated debt products echo through the bankruptcy statistics, as record numbers of families seek refuge in the bankruptcy courts after getting in over their heads with too much easy credit at exorbitant interest rates. In 1994, Congress created a bipartisan commission to study the issue. The group's charter was relatively straightforward: to investigate why so many families were in trouble and to develop recommendations to improve the situation. I [Elizabeth] was named senior adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.
Three years later, the commission delivered its report to Congress. The 1,100-page document detailed why so many families were in trouble (job losses, medical problems, and divorce) and identified certain lending practices that put families at particular risk. More important, it reaffirmed that the bankruptcy laws were, for the most part, working as Congress had originally intended: to offer families a fresh start in the wake of financial and personal disaster. It concluded with recommendations for modest legislative changes that were designed to curb abuses by both borrowers and lenders.
But the Congressional bankruptcy commission was not to have the final world. While the commission was busy gathering facts, holding hearings, and analyzing current practices, another group also went to work, advancing a very different perspective. The "National Consumer Bankruptcy Coalition" (NCBC), the clever moniker of the banking industry lobby, was pushing its own agenda. The major banks had hit on a new strategy to reduce their bankruptcy losses. Rather than stop lending to families in financial trouble (as Elizabeth had counseled Citibank), they had a simpler and more profitable solution -- restrict the rights of consumers to file for bankruptcy.
If fewer people could turn to bankruptcy for relief, more families would be subject to collection efforts from banks -- and every other creditor -- forever. Those families might never pay off their bills in full, but they would continue to rack up the interest and penalties, and at least a few would make some small payment every month, effectively becoming lifelong profit wells for their creditors. For the rest -- those who simply could not come up with the money, no matter how hard they were squeezed -- the lenders might eventually write off some of those loans voluntarily. (Although one wouldn't guess it from all the fiery rhetoric, bankruptcy filings account for just a fraction of lending industry losses; in the large majority of cases, the bank simply gets tired of trying to collect.) But if a family were not permitted to file for bankruptcy, it would be the lender, not the family in trouble, that would decide when the collection calls should stop.
And so the banking lobby drafted a new bankruptcy law. To get all the lenders on board, the coalition added changes that would give better deals for car lenders, mortgage lenders, education loan servicers, landlords, credit unions -- in short, better deals for everyone except families in trouble. The credit industry moved fast, persuading two friendly congressmen to introduce their bill in September 1997, a month before the official Bankruptcy Commission was scheduled to release its report. From then on, all eyes were on what Hillary Clinton would eventually dub "that awful bill."
The "awful bill" was long and complex, couched in virtually unreadable prose. But to a trained bankruptcy lawyer, the intent was unmistakable: to undercut virtually every protection in the bankruptcy laws. Under the proposed legislation, child support payments would no longer take precedence over all credit card debt. As a result, more single mothers would be forced to compete with professional collection agents when they needed money from their bankrupt ex-husbands. Homeowners who had fallen behind on their mortgages would be prevented from catching up on past-due house payments until they had also paid off their credit card debts, increasing the likelihood of foreclosure. Families would no longer be able to free themselves from certain unsecured debts, so they would be required to make payments (plus penalties, late fees, and interest) on some of those bills for the rest of their natural lives-even if those payments took up 100 percent of their paychecks.
To win over legislators, credit industry executives lobbied extensively and donated more than $60 million in political contributions. This was followed by a public relations strategy that would make any spin doctor proud. Instead of telling the public that the bankruptcy reform bill would improve profits for credit card companies and giant banks (not exactly the most sympathetic group), the NCBC and its supporters in Congress announced that the bill would help the American family. To quote Democratic Representative Rick Boucher: "The typical American family pays a hidden tax of $550 each year because of . . . bankruptcies of mere convenience." The implied promise, repeated so often that it has become an article of faith, was that changing the laws would put $550 a year in the pocket of every bill-paying American family.
Well that certainly sounds good; after all, who wouldn't want some extra cash? But there are a few serious problems with this claim. First, the figure is a gross exaggeration. According to the NCBC, the same banking lobby group that generated the $550 promise, only 100,000 of the 1.5 million families who file for bankruptcy each year could afford to repay some of their debts. In other words, under the proposed bill, those 100,000 bankrupt families would be expected to generate $550 for every household in America, since the other 1.4 million are already tapped out. So we did the math. Suppose the laws were changed, and those 100,000 families could no longer seek protection from the bankruptcy courts, and they were forced to repay as much as they possibly could. In order to return an amount that added up to $550 for every household in America, each one of those bankrupt families would have to repay more than $550,000 in a single year! In our sample of more than 2,000 bankrupt families, not one even owed $550,000, let alone earned enough money to repay that amount. But even if a magic fairy somehow gave all the bankrupt families every dollar they needed to repay their debts in full, what makes anyone think the banks would pass that money on to consumers? Recall that the credit card industry got a $10 billion windfall from falling interest rates in 2001 that they did not pass on to their customers. Why would this supposed $550 per family be any different?
Nevertheless, the combination of intense lobbying and a good cover story had its intended effect. Despite President Clinton's veto, the bankruptcy bill was reintroduced in the next session of Congress. This time, even Senator Hillary Clinton bowed to big business. She had been in office two months when she had her chance to vote on what she had called that "awful bill." Sure, the official Bankruptcy Commission had better credentials than the banking lobby. Yes, her husband had actually appointed the Chairman of the Commission and two of the commissioners. And she clearly understood that families in trouble would be hit hardest by the proposed changes. But the Bankruptcy Commission did not make campaign contributions or have its own lobbyists, and neither do families in financial trouble. Senator Clinton had taken $140,000 in campaign contributions from the banking industry, and she proved willing to overcome her "strong reservations about whether this bill is both balanced and responsible" and voted in favor of "that awful bill." (Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.153-6)
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.)
Regardless of your insurance status, your heirs will not be required to pay your balance; in most cases the credit card companies will write off your debts even if you never purchased the credit protection insurance. ….. If you can scrape together some money, buy a real disability policy from a reputable insurance company of put your money in the bank. (Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p.167)
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p. 123- …. also cited on debtpro123
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” also cited on debtpro123
(Elizabethe Warren “The Two Income Trap” p. 156-7 also cited on debtpro123
Inman saw more signs of trouble. Richard Allen was going to get national-security advisor, the old Brzezinki and Kissinger post…..But Allen’s paranoia startled Inman. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.49 in print or P.17 on Google )
But it was Haig that made the news that day. He stepped unhesitatingly before the State Department press corps for his first press conference as Secretary and tagged the Soviet Union with “the training, funding and equipping” of international terrorists. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.64 on Google )
McMahon had a reputation as a man of caution. Several years earlier, when the CIA put together what was known publicly on who supported and funded several dozen anti-CIA groups and publications such as the Covert Action Information Bulletin, which tried to expose CIA operations and operatives McMahon had blown up. “Stupid sons of bitches,” he had yelled at a senior-staff meeting, “spying on Americans, If anyone got hold of this… Don’t you see? The perception.” (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.103-4 )
Casey was discovering that the CIA had virtually no good intelligence penetrations of human sources among the Sandinistas. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.113-4 )
One beneficiary of the CIA assistance was a fifty-five-year-old civil engineer who had been educated in the United States, at Notre Dame University-Jose Napoleon Duarte. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.117 or p. 91 on Google)
General David C. Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior military person and the only holdover from the Carter Administration, looked at the approval of a Nicaragua operation with some dismay. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.174-7)
“We refuse to assassinate any person,” the Libyan leader said, placing his hands under his chin and looking up in the air dreamily at one point. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.185)
A later SECRET State Department analysis from the department’s intelligence division stated: “CIA records indicate, however, that the source of one of the reports that Libya intends to attack the Sixth fleet has in the past had sustained contact with a Soviet diplomat.” The other reports of plans to attack U.S. principals were “most later discounted.” The analysis also noted “the obvious probability that reporting breeds reporting where the U.S. is perceived to have an interest.” In all, the memo suggested that all the hit-squad reports may have been misinformation feeding off itself. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.186 in print copy or p. 167 on Google copy)
Barnes was stunned. He knew the Latin American players: no one, including the CIA, would be able to control the Argentines, who were known for their ruthlessness. The agency might as well have picked Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.187 or p. 168 on Google)
But on the operations and covert-action side, Inman was growing increasingly troubled. Casey was aligning the CIA with some of the major unsavory characters in the world.
Casey had received a visit from Israeli defense Minister Ariel Sharon, a burly, trucelent former general with extreme hawkish ideas. Israel was giving covert paramilitary support to the main Christian militia in Lebanon- the rightist Phalangist party, headed by Bashir Gemayel, a baby-facedruthless warlord. At thirty –four, Gemayel had developed into one of Lebanon’s most important and charismatic leaders, forging a unique and powerful future for himself. The Israeli game plan was working, and Sharon wanted $10 million in secret CIA paramilitary support to go to Gemayel.
Inman was opposed. In 1978, Bashir’s forces had made a lightning attack on the summer-resort home of Tony Frangieh, the political heir to the rival Christian faction, slaughtering him, his wife, their two-year-old daughter, the bodyguards and even the domestic staff. In 1980, Bashir’s militia had come close to wiping out the rival Christian militia of Lebanon’s ex-president Camille Chamoun.
Bashir was a savage murderer.
But their was more- something hidden in the intelligence files.
Back in the 1970’s, after studying political science and law in Lebanon, Bashir had come to the united States to work for a Washington law firm and had been recruited by the CIA. As the youngest of the six children Peter Gemayel, he was no doubt destined to relative obscurity in the powerful family. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.203-4)
Since the 1977 public disclosure that King Hussein of Jordan had been a CIA paid agent for twenty years, the agency had been reluctant to keep heads of state on the payroll. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.218 or 201 on Google)
Casey got the point and became somewhat more approachable. The Catholic Church was opposing the Sandinistas, he said, and if there were truly free elections in Nicaragua the Sandinistas would not win.
How about the U.S.-backed Contras? McCurdy wanted to know. What kind of message were they spreading in the countryside in the battle for the hearts and minds of the locals? They were blowing up bridges. A granary and a ranch had been hit. A power plant had been attacked; the CIA had said the power plant was a military target, but it turned out that only about 10 percent of the power was for the armed forces; the rest was for civilians. That was the opposite of the REA. That was destroying, not building. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.242-3 )
The claim that the Sandinistas wouldn’t win in a fair election was from Casey, who has demonstrated a strong bias. In the 1984 elections, this received little if any attention from Casey and perhaps Woodward, the Sandinistas won easily. According to some reports cited by Noam Chomsky they were far fairer than the ones in El Salvador and Guatemala and some of the biggest problems may have been caused by the Contras with the support of the US and CIA. If the Nicaraguans weren’t unifying against the Contras they might have been able to address other issues and considered some other candidates besides Daniel Ortega, who wasn’t as bad as the US propaganda made him out to be.
In Senator Dodd’s televised response for the Democratic side, he adapted a typical Reagan tactic, one single graphic image. He chose El Salvador: “I have been to that country and I know about the morticians who travel the streets each morning to collect the bodies of those summarily dispatched the night before by the Salvadoran security forces-gangland style- the victim of bended knee, thumbs were behind the back, a bullet through the brain. We recoil at such an image for our association with criminals….” (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.251 ) (Scribd the CIA: an expose of the Agency’s History and Covert Operations )
In Zaire, formerly the Congo, (it has since resumed the name the Congo) Casey met with the leader Joseph Mobutu. CIA ties with Mobutu dated back to 1960, the year the CIA the year the CIA had planned the assassination of the Congolese nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba. An August 25, 1960 cable to the CIA station chief from then DCI Allen Dulles stated that Lumumba’s “removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action.” Before the CIA plot could be effected, Lumumba was murdered by another group of Mobutu supporters. Casey had an important, personal relationship with Mobutu, and now they exchanged intelligence. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.268 )
The following excerpt describes an event where a plane was shot down as William Cohen and Gary Hart were visiting Nicaragua. Evidence linking the CIA to the plane and covert activity that could potentially have caused the death of both senators was indicated.
The Nicaraguan officials produced a briefcase which had been retrieved from the plane. Cohen and Hart peered inside. There was a manuscript instructing the pilot to meet someone in Costa Rica at a certain restaurant, a bill of lading from Miami and the pilot’s Florida driver’s license, U.S. Social security card and American credit cards.
And there was more, including some code-word identifications for the operation and the contract. Both Cohen and Hart recognized them as authentic CIA paperwork. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.272-5 )
That summer the first serious public fissure appeared among Reagan’s inner circle when White House chief of staff Baker said it was Casey who had provided him with briefing papers that President Carter had used to prepare himself for the nationally televised debate in the 1980 presidential campaign. Investigations by Congress and the FBI were launched.
This excerpt goes on to tell about a possible espionage effort within the campaign of Ronald Reagan and a memo which implicates Hugel that was not disclosed but witness testimony indicates that it did exist and this investigation was cut short without completion and forgotten. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.277-80 )
The United States was vulnerable, he said. There were no standards, no rules, no laws, on spying abroad. Only one rule, “Don’t get caught. If you do don’t admit it.” (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.309 on the print copy on Google this excerpt is on page 300 )
Horton had felt uncomfortable about some of the other intelligence efforts in the year he had been the Latin American NIO. Casey wanted an assessment of the opposition to Castro inside Cuba. Horton wasn’t able to come up with much hard intelligence, because it didn’t exist. CIA sources in Cuba were meager, it was true, but Horton concluded that it was also possible that Castro didn’t have much internal opposition. That didn’t sit well with Casey and he responded suspiciously, as if his contempt for Communists was universal and of course Castro must have had opponents....
Horton felt sour. Perhaps it was unfair, but he found a metaphor that he thought apt: Casey was like the new chief executive officer of a large corporation who came in to milk the corporation for what he could get out of it before throwing it to one side. Sure, Casey saw himself as an old OSS operator and had a sentimental feeling about inteligence work, but if any cans were going to get hung around any neck for Central America, it would be Reagan’s or Casey’s. those cans would go around the CIA. The seeds for a gigantic backlash, a repeat of the church and Pike investigations, were being planted.
Horton knew that Casey had to be credited with keeping in touch with many people, but almost all shared his world view, as Mexico demonstrated. Horton had spent hours sitting in Casey’s office, before his desk, dragged in for one matter or another. Casey was to rough on people, on Horton.
He thought that Casey was not attached enough to the CIA and its need for independence. The CIA had become once again a tool for the administration bent of forcing its view on the world. The distortion and ploys were many. Some were subtle. Horton felt he could stand stubbornly at the gate only for so long. He didn’t want to be a martyr. It was personal. Somebody else could have handled Casey much more smoothly. Gates did it. For him, a few or even many compromises on paper maybe didn’t add up to much.
There was another factor in Horton’s decission to leave. It was hard for him to evaluate the significance of this, but it wasn’t that he just didn’t get along with Casey. The DCI was a bully. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.345-6 in book 340 on Google )
One person bought Casey’s argument-Reagan. Six days after this latest Beirut bombing, the President was on the campaign trail in Bowling Green Ohio. This excerpt goes on to describe a disagreement between Reagan and both Carter and his DCI Stanfield Turner (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.381 in print copy or 379 on Google )
CIA Primer Tells Nicaraguan Rebels How to Kill New York Times (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.388)
The word “neutralize” appeared under the heading “Selective Use of Violence for Propagandistic Effects.” …. “If possible professional criminals will be hired to carry out selective ‘jobs.’ “ (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.389 excerpt also cited in Google Book “Eating Fire, Tasting Blood”)
Senator Moynihan recognized the manual for what it was. At Harvard he had read a paper on Mao Tse-tung’s technique of insurgency: identify the landowner single him out and have a public trial. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.391)
Bandar knew how to have a conversation that never took place. He was funnelling millions to the contras; this was widely suspected and he just denied it routinely with a confident laugh and a long lecture about the implausibility. Their relationship was the kind that both Bandar and Casey valued- one in which men of authority could have frank, deniable talks and emerge with an agreement only they understood. Bandar and Casey agreed that a dramatic blow against the terrorists would serve the interests of both the United States and Saudi Arabia. They knew that the chief supporter and symbol of terrorism was the fundamentalist Muslim leader Sheikh Fadlallah, the leader of the Party of God, Hizbollah, in Beirut. Fadlallah had been connected to all three bombings of American facilities in Beirut. He had to go. The two were in agreement.
Later it was decided to give effective operational control to the Saudis, particularly as the CIA bureaucracy grew more and more resistant to active anti-terrorist measures. The Saudis came up with an Englishman who has served in the British Special Air-Service. The elite commando special operations forces. This man travelled extensively around the Middle East, and went in and out of Lebanon from another Arab state. He would be an ideal leader of a sophisticated operation. The CIA, of course, could have nothing to do with "elimination." The Saudis, if asked would back a CIA denial concerning involvement or knowledge. Liaison with foreign intelligence services was one CIA activity out of the reach of congressional oversight; Casey had flatly refused to the committees about this sensitive work. And in this case, the CIA as an institution did not know. Nothing was written down, there were no records. The Saudi $3 million deposited in the Geneva account was "laundered" through transfers among other bank accounts, making certain it could not be traced.
The Englishman established operational compartments to carry out separate parts of the assassination plan; none had any communication with any other except through him. several men were hired to procure a large quantity of explosives; another man was hired to find a car; money was paid to informants to make sure they knew where Fadlallah would be at a certain time; another group was hired to design an after-action deception so that the Saudis and the CIA would not be connected; the Lebanese intelligence service hired the men to carry out the operation.
On March 8, 1985, a car packed with explosives was driven into a Beirut suburb about fifty yards from Fadlallah's high-rise residence. The car exploded, killing eighty people and wounding two hundred, leaving devastation, fires and collapsed buildings. Anyone who had happened to be in the immediate neighbourhood was killed, hurt or terrorized, but Fadlallah escaped without injury. His followers strung a huge "MADE IN US" banner in front of a building that had been blown out.
When Bandar saw the news account, he got stomach cramps. Tracks have to be meticulously covered. Information was planted that the Israelis were behind the car bombing. But the Saudis needed more to prove their non-involvement. There was only one way. They provided irrefutable intelligence that led Fadlallah to some of the hired operatives. As Bandar explained it, "I take a shot at you. You suspect me and then I turn in my chauffeur and say he did it. You would think I am no longer a suspect."
Still Fadlallah was a problem, now more than ever. The Saudis approached him and asked whether, for money, he would act as their early-warning system for terrorist attacks on Saudi and American facilities. They would pay $2 million cash. Fadlallah accepted but said he wanted the payment in food, medicine and education expenses for some of his people. This would enhance his status among his followers. The Saudis agreed.
There were no more Fadlallah-supported terrorist attacks against Americans.
"It was easier to bribe him than to kill him," Bandar remarked.
Casey was astounded that such a comparatively small amount of money could solve such a giant problem. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.396-7 )
He talked about his childhood in Queens, a universe of simple, permanent affiliations. Walking to and from public schools 13 and 98, there were fistfights, he recalled. It was the late 1920’s after World War I, when boys just circled up and fought. “Win some, lose some,” he said. Did he remember any of the kids who beat him? “Of course, do you think I forget anyone?” He stared hard, his dentures full of peanuts. “Particularly anyone who beat me?” (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.403-4 )
For More than a month I had known that President Reagan had signed the finding to create three secret Lebanese units for preemptive attacks on terrorists. Lauder, Casey’s press man, had tried to dissuade the post from running the story. We had discovered that the top-secret finding had been rescinded after the Beirut car-bombing had killed eighty people. We knew only about the role of the Lebanese intelligence service at that point, and nothing about the secret role of the Saudis or their $3 million contribution to the operation. We saw no reason to withhold the story, since the operation had failed and the finding was history.
“It’s like hitting an old woman with a hammer,” Lauder said in exasperation. The story ran on May 12: “Antiterrorist Plan Rescinded After Unauthorized Bombing.”
Three days later George Lauder wrote to Casey: “It seemed clear Woodward was planning to go ahead with the story irrespective of what I told him. I strongly stated that his story was grossly irresponsible and an ‘invitation to murder.’ I said that if he were Fadlallah and had seen a great number of supporters, including woman and children, blown up and then read the Washington post story, he couldn’t help but want to take revenge against the Americans in Lebanon, … this excerpt continues on Google Books page 407 (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.405 )
Why should we not print what the Soviets already know?
It has to do with the atmospherics of intelligence operations, the official said…. P.455
“There’s no way you run that story without endangering the national security,” Casey said. He sipped a scotch and water. “I’m not threatening you, but you’ve got to know that if you publish this, I would recommend that you be prosecuted.” This of course was not the only problem for the Post. “We’ve already got five absolutely cold violations.”
He explained that he was referring to the Post and the four other publications. He added matter-of-factly that he had just come from the Justice Department, where all five cases were pending upon his recommendation. He implied the train had already left the station.
Bradlee asked if it was the 1950 law.
“yeah, yeah,” Casey said. “I don’t practice law anymore. You know what I’m talking about.”
Bradlee and Downie attempted to get some specifics. What was the problem? First it was the Soviets, then other countries, and now what?
“Look,” Casey said, “hold the story for a week.” (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.459 in print copy or 466 on Google )
On October 2, we ran a long story on the memos headlined “Qaddafi Target of Secret U.S. Deception Plan, elaborate Campaign Included Disinformation that Appeared as Fact in American Media.” (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.476 in print copy or 483 on Google )
Casey had been an attractive figure to me because he was useful and because he never avoided the confrontation. He might shout and challenge, even threaten but he never broke the dialogue or the relationship. (Bob Woodward “Veil: the Secret wars of the CIA p.506m in print or end of Google excerpts Woodward goes on to say that because of the eighty innocent people killed in the attempt to kill Fadlallah Casey was the one with blood on his hands not Woodward. )
Powell asserted that everyone in the international coalition was willing to go after al Qaeda, but extending the war to other terrorist groups or countries could cause some of them to drop out.
The president said he didn’t want other countries dictating terms or conditions for the war on terrorism. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.81)
Wolfowitz seized the opportunity. Attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain. He worried about 100,000 American troops bogged down in mountain fighting in Afghanistan six months from then. In contrast, Iraq was a brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable. He estimated that there was a 10 to 50 percent chance Saddam was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks.” The U.S. would have to go after Saddam at some time if the war on terrorism was to be taken seriously. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.83) also cited in the American Conservative
He had several other ideas. “Stay away from CNN,” he suggested. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.87)
“An enemy,” Bush said, interrupting the chief of staff, reminding them it was a war way beyond al Qaeda. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.90)
At his home in the Washington suburbs the next morning, Tenet took out a pen, some paper and began writing longhand. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.93)
“Not a legal case,” countered Rumsfeld. “It’s not event-related.”…
“Is Iran in the coalition?” asked Steve Hadley.
“It’s not a single coalition,” said Rumsfeld. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.104)
But Bush insisted he would not soft-peddle America’s determination to win the war. We will defeat our enemies, we will set a tone for future presidents, he said. “Two years from now only the Brits may be with us.” (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.106)
Did they want or need a white paper? Rumsfeld asked. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.135)
Turning to the outline of the war, Rumsfeld said, “We ought to have a broad beginning and an ending. It ought to be focused on al Qaeda-it shouldn’t be focused on UBL….It’s not over if we get his head on a platter. And the failure to get his head on a platter is not failure. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.136)
“The president and the war counsel have got to obviously be decisive, but not be hasty.”
So provocation was going to be one tool. Did he explain or warn Rice or the other war cabinet members that he was testing, planning or being provocative?
“Of course not. I’m the commander-see, I don’t need to explain –I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.” (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.145-6) Also cited in Third World Traveler
“We will be meeting like this for some time,” Bush said….
“Many believe that Saddam is involved,” he said. “That’s not an issue for now. If we catch him being involved, we’ll act. He probably was behind this in the end.” (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.167) “I think the precedent is bad of having to go out and make the case publicly,” Rumsfeld said, “because we may not have enough information to make our case next time, and it may impair our ability to preempt against the threat that may be coming at us.” (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.176-7)
Appearing before parliament on Thursday, Prime Minister Blair presented evidence that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network was responsible for the September 11 attacks. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.196)
Bush called Nick Calio, the White House chief of congressional liaison, to the Oval Office.
…memo limiting access to information to a small number of members of congress… “I don’t care. Get it up there. This is what’s going to happen,” Bush ordered.
“Okay,” said Calio, “but I just want to tell you that you can expect-“
“I’m not defending it,” Bush said. “Do you get the picture here?”
Calio nodded.
“Get it up there to them, okay?”
“Fine,” Calio said.
“It’s tough shit,” the president said.
Bush later talked with Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the longest conversation Graham had ever had with Bush, and he heard a real stream of Texas profanity.
Calio then undertook what was basically an intense Middle East-style shuttle diplomacy between Bush and Congress trying to bring both toward the middle. Finally Bush agreed to lift the order. He had sent the message that he could cut them off if he wanted. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.198-9) On Israel, Powell referred to Sharon’s statement that Israel would not itself to become Czechoslovakia. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.203)
“The president’s recent job approval increase is unprecedented even for a time of crisis.”
…discussion about poll jump…
Rove took the polling information to Bush, and explained that if history is a guide, they had about 30 to 40 weeks before the polls returned to the norm.
…somebody else could handle. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.206)
Another reporter asked, “Are you running the risk of being characterized as attacking the Afghan people rather than military targets?” (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.210)
The president said he would be asking children to contribute $1 each to an Afghan Children’s Fund. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.217)
Rumsfeld launched into a discussion of what should be said publically about the possible use of U.S. weapons of mass destruction if the other side used them. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.218)
The meeting turned to Syria, well documented as a state supporter of Hezbollah. Syria had condemned the September 11 attacks. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.221)
Rumsfeld put forth one of his trademark aphorisms: “Do no good and no harm will come of it.” Doing good is risky. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.222)
The CIA briefers reported how important it would be to offer incentives to the Pashtuns to withdraw support from the Taliban. What would the message be? “Withdraw and get fed? If you don’t withdraw you don’t get fed.” One said. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.227)
But the atmosphere was generally one of deference to authority, especially by Franks to Rumsfeld. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.251)
Look, We’re entering a difficult phase. The press will seek to find divisions among us. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.262)
Powell worried again that it was bombing for bombing’s sake, unconnected to a military objective. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.275)
Watching from owner George Steinbrenner’s box, Karl Rove thought, it’s like being at a Nazi rally. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.277) also cited by Common Dreams
cited in the Future of Freedom Foundation
And because it would be the policy of the United States, the only superpower, the rest of the world would have to move over, would have to adjust over time. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.281)
“They may have nukes,” Cheney said, laying out the worst case scenario. They may have CW/BW. The allies in the region are a fragile proposition for us. The strategic consequences of a radical takeover in Pakistan or Saudi would be enormous. And third, the degree of patience in the United States may dissipate if we get hit again.
“Therefore, Cheney said, addressing Franks and Rumsfeld, “We may need to think about giving you more resources, a different timeline, more forces and a higher tempo of operations.” (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.291 )
“It is clearly an estimate,” Rumsfeld replied, “I did not suggest one, two, or three months; I said months rather than years. That means it could be as long as 23.” (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.296 )
He had yet another piece of bad news. “The Iranians may have switched sides and gone to side with the Taliban.” (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.298 )
In one case, $50,000 was offered to a commander to defect. Let me think about it, the commander said. So the Special Forces A-team directed a J-DAM precision bomb right outside the commander’s headquarters. The next day they called the commander back. How about $40,000? He accepted. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.299)
Musharraf said his deep fear was that the United States would in the end abandon Pakistan, and that other interests would crowd out the war on terrorism.
Bush fixed his gaze. "Tell the Pakistani people that the President of the United States looked you in the eye and told you we wouldn't do that."
Musharraf brought up an article in the New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, alleging that the Pentagon, with the help of an Israeli special operation unit, had contingency plans to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons should the country become unstable.
"Seymour Hersh is a liar," Bush replies. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.303 )
In the end, Tenet believed they would find state sponsorship of the September 11 attacks….He believed that eventually they might find Iranian tracks in September 11. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.317)
We wanted to deal with specific moments, and Balz asked him [Rumsfeld] about the day after the attacks when Rumsfeld had raised the question, 'Is there a need to address Iraq as well as Bin Laden?
“What the hell did they do!" Rumsfeld exploded. "Give you every goddamn classif--... take that off the..."
I urged him not to worry.
"I didn't say that," Rumsfeld declared and then tried to pretend someone else had shouted. He pointed to Larry DiRita, his civilian special assistant. “Larry, stop yelling over my shoulder, will you please?"
I said that perhaps we could put an 18 1/2 second gap in our tape.
"Now you're talking," Rumsfeld said.
The 19-page transcript that the Defense Department later released of the interview deleted his explosion and the “hell” and goddamn." (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.319 ) also cited at activist times
One of Powell’s greatest difficulties was that he was more or less supposed to pretend in public that the sharp differences in the war cabinet didn’t exist. The president would not tolerate public discord. Powell was also held in check by his own code- a soldier obeys.
Bush might order, Go get the guns! Get my horses! -- all the Texas, Alamo macho that made Powell uncomfortable. But he believed and hoped that the president knew better, that he would see the go-it-alone approach did not stand further analysis. Hopefully, the success in the first phase of the war in Afghanistan had provided the template for that understanding.
The ghosts in the machine in Powell's view were Rumsfeld and Cheney. Too often they went for the guns and the horses. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.322 also cited in Washington Post article 11/17/2002)
In the spring of 2002, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became so violent that it threatened to overwhelm the war on terrorism….
…Bush said he wanted to send Powell to the Middle East to see if he could calm things down…. Powell was reluctant. He said he didn't have much to offer, too little leverage with either side….
We are in trouble, the president told Powell. "You're going to have to spend some political capital. You have plenty. I need you to do it."
"Yes, sir," Powell said….
Do you understand what you’re saying to the Israelis? Powell asked him You’re going to have to look Sharon in the eye and say get out.
He said he understood.
On April 4, Bush delivered a Rose garden speech calling on the Palestinians to end the terror…..
Rice called Armitage at the State Department to ask him to tell Powell to scale back his statement, make less of a commitment about future negotiations. There were real concerns that Powell was going too far.
In Washington, Armitage was almost chained to his desk so he could talk to Powell between his meetings. It was midnight, 7 a.m. in Jerusalem, when Armitage explained Rice's concerns.
Powell went nuts. Everybody wanted to grade papers! he said. No one wanted to step up, face reality! They wanted to be pro-Israel and leave him holding the Palestinian bag by himself. They had sent him out on a nearly impossible mission.
"I'm holding back the [expletive] gates here," Armitage reported. "They're eating cheese on you" -- an old military expression for gnawing on someone and enjoying it. People in the Defense Department and the vice president's office were trying to do him in, Armitage said. He had heard from reliable media contacts that a barrage was being unloaded on Powell. He was leaning too much to Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader. The White House was going to trim Powell's sails; he was going to fail. Armitage said he couldn't verify who was leaking this, but he had names of senior people in Defense and in Cheney's office.
"That's unbelievable," Powell said. "I just heard the same thing." He had had cocktails with some reporters traveling with him, and they reported that their sources in Cheney's office were declaring he had gone too far, was off the reservation, and about to be reined in.
"People are really putting your [expletive] in the street," Armitage said.
Rice reached Powell and said all the others thought it was best he say nothing more, and announce that he was going back to Washington to consult with the president.
Powell, who had been engaged in a grueling diplomatic shuttle, erupted. Was he just supposed to say, thank you very much for your hospitality, good-bye!
Rice said she was worried that he was committing the president and the administration more deeply than they all wanted.
Guess what? Powell countered. They were already in. They couldn't launch an initiative with a high-profile presidential speech like the one Bush had given in the Rose Garden on April 4, and not expect to propose some plan or follow-up. But he agreed to trim back on his statement.
(Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.323-6) also cited in the Washington Post
In early August, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made the diplomatic rounds in Indonesia and the Philippines and, as always, kept in touch with what was happening at home. Iraq was continuing to bubble. Brent Scowcroft, the mild-mannered national security adviser to Bush’s father during the first Gulf War, had declared on a Sunday morning talk show on August 4 that an attack on Iraq could turn the Middle East into a “cauldron and thus destroy the war on terrorism.”
Blunt talk, but Powell basically agreed. He had not made clear his own analysis and conclusions to the president and realized he needed to do so. On the long flight back, from nearly halfway around the world, he jotted down some notes. Virtually all the Iraq discussions in the National Security Council had been about war plans -- how to attack, when, with what force levels, military strike scenario this and military strike scenario that. It was clear to him now that the context was being lost, the attitude and views of the rest of the world that Powell knew and lived with. His notes filled three or four pages.
During the Persian Gulf War, when he had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell had played the role of reluctant warrior, arguing to the first President Bush, perhaps too mildly, that containing Iraq might work, that war might not be necessary. But as the principal military adviser, he hadn't pressed his arguments that forcefully because they were less military than political. Now as secretary of state, his account was politics -- the politics of the world. He decided he had to come down very hard, state his convictions and conclusions so there would be no doubt as to where he stood. The president had been hearing plenty from Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, a kind of A-team inside the war cabinet. Powell wanted to present the B-team, the alternative view that he believed had not been aired. He owed the president more than PowerPoint briefings. (Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 p.331-2 also cited in Washington Post article 11/17/2002)
Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 and book excerpts from other books from On the Issues
(Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 Christopher Hitchens book review )
Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 Book review some out of context )
Bob Woodward “Bush at War” 2002 Book review )
In 1972, then-strongman but not yet leader Saddam Hussein signed a Friendship Treaty with the Soviet Union.
(more on support of the Iraqi Kurds then abandoning them when they made a deal with the Shah) (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.69-70)
Powell knew deeply, intimately, that war is fought by kids, even teenagers who would die because of decisions made in Washington….. Only he had been in combat (of those involved in the decision making)…..
Such a back-channel contact outside the chain of command was risky for both of them, especially Franks, who would have to protect himself and might have to let Rumsfeld know there had been a conversation. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.78-80)
Asked how he thought the Iranians might respond to being called part of an “evil” axis, Bush said, “I doubt the students and the reformers and liberators inside Iran were displeased with that. I made a calculation that they would be pleased. Up hear the president speaks so clearly about the nature of the regime and the harshness and the repression they have to live under. Now I’m confident the leaders didn’t like it.
…he said “I say that freedom is not America’s gift to the world. Freedom is God’s gift to everybody in the world. I believe that….” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.88)
Vice President Cheney told General Franks that he was planning a trip to the Middle East in March and asked what countries he should visit. Who might be ripe for solicitation, pressure to assist in a war against Iraq? (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.111)
When do kids start in school here in Bahrain? Mrs. Cheney inquired.
This isn’t Bahrain, the wife replied. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.112)
“The stated mission is regime change,” the president said. “but all this talk from the level four people… [they] are talking about things they know nothing about. Our intent is serious. There are no war plans on my desk….” Bush July 31 2002 (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.137)
Other unanswered questions included: What if Syria attacks Israel? What if Iraq just sort of implodes and someone kills Saddam? What would the U.S. do?
It was pretty much agreed that the U.S. would still have to enter Iraq with the military because they would not know who the new Iraqi leader might be. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.147)
The UN itself ought to be made an issue since it had failed for more than a decade, unable and unwilling to enforce its own resolutions that directed Saddam to destroy his weapons of mass destruction and to permit weapons inspections inside Iraq. The U.N. had to be challenged. “Go tell them it’s not about us. It’s about you. You are not important.” The U.N. was running the risk of becoming irrelevant and a mockery, he (Cheney) said. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.157) Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” also cited at On the Issues
At the NSC meeting, Cheney said to the president, “Well I’m going to make that speech.”
“Don’t get me in trouble,” Bush half-joked.
Trouble is what Cheney had in mind.
“Cheney said Peril of a Nuclear Iraq Justifies Attack,” read the headlines in the New York Times on the morning of August 27. Powell was dumbfounded. The vice president had delivered a hard-line address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville and basically called weapons inspections futile. "A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions," Cheney had said of Hussein. "On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow 'back in the box.' " (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.164) Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 also cited in the Washington Post
Christine M. Ciccone “….I found myself struggling to keep from laughing out loud at times, especially when Sec. Rumsfeld became a caricature of himself with the ‘we know what we know, we know there are things we do not know, and we know we know there are things we know we don’t know we don’t know.’ “ (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.171)
Bush and Blair took questions from reporters. They said they were committed to ending Saddam’s threat once and for all. How or when went unanswered. Bush asserted unequivocally, “Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction.” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.178) Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” also cited in the Daily Howler
“The definition of a first tier-terrorist was somebody who was either involved in the events of September 11th or harbored and provided sanctuary to those involved. And there’s not evidence that Iraq fell into either one of these two categories….” Bob Graham (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.192-3)
Bush scoffed….“At some point, we will conclude that enough is enough and take him out. He’s a liar and he’s no intention of disarming.” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.240)
That evening, December 18, my wife, Elsa Walsh, and I attended a huge White House Christmas Party for the media hosted by the president and his wife. The Bushes stood for hours in a receiving line as a photographer snapped pictures with the first couple. When we reached the front of the line, the president remarked that my book was selling well.
“Top of the charts,” he said, and asked, “Are you going to do another book?” He then stretched out his arms and indicated with his body language that there might be a story there, that it should be done.
“Maybe it will be called ‘More Bush at War,’” I said.
“Let’s hope not,” Laura Bush said, almost mournfully. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.243-4) Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 also cite in the Daily Howler
For example, Rumsfeld advocated what he called the “toolbox approach” to problems, noting that if the only tool you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.281)
Later Powell got word that Rumsfeld had kicked Warrick and O’Sullivan out of the Pentagon, ordering them to leave by sundown.
“What the hell is going on?” Powell said in a phone call to Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld said that as they got into post-war planning, the work had to be done by those who were truly committed to this and supporters of the change and not those who have written or said things that were not supportive. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.283-4)
Libby used the intercept of the two suspected terrorists laughing about killing a donkey with ricin that McLaughlin had discarded as unreliable. He said that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, was believed to have met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer and cited intelligence of as many as four meetings. The others knew the CIA had evidence of two meetings perhaps, and that there was no certainty about what Atta had been doing in Prague or whether he had met with the Iraqi official. Libby talked for about an hour.
Armitage was appalled at what he considered overreaching and hyperbole. Libby was drawing only the worst conclusions from fragments and silky threads.
On the other hand, Wolfowitz, who had been convinced years ago of Iraq's complicity in anti-American terrorism, thought Libby presented a strong case. He subscribed to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's notion that lack of evidence did not mean something did not exist….
The most important response came from Karen Hughes. As a communications exercise, she said, it didn't work. The sweeping conclusions at the head of each section were too much. The president, she said, wanted it to be like the old television series "Dragnet": "Just the facts." Let people draw their own conclusions….
So who then should present the public case? Rice and Hadley pondered that. The case would have to be made to the United Nations, so the chief diplomat, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, was the logical choice. Hadley believed there were additional reasons to choose Powell. First, to have maximum credibility, it would be best to go counter to type and everyone knew that Powell was soft on Iraq, that he was the one who didn't want to go. Second, Powell was conscious of his credibility, and his reputation. He would examine the intelligence carefully. Third, when Powell was prepared, he was very persuasive.
"I want you to do it," Bush told the secretary of state. "You have the credibility to do it." Powell was flattered to be asked to do what no one else could. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.289-90)
Colin, the vice president said, look carefully at the terrorism case that Scooter prepared. Give it a good look.
Sure, Dick, Powell said. He generally used the vice president's first name when they were alone. Cheney was not ordering him or trying to direct him. It was just a request to take a serious look.
Powell looked at it. Four Mohammed Atta meetings in Prague. That was worse than ridiculous. He pitched it.
Powell thought that Cheney had the fever. The vice president and Wolfowitz kept looking for the connection between Hussein and Sept. 11. It was a separate little government that was out there -- Wolfowitz, Libby, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and Feith's "Gestapo office," as Powell privately called it. He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first Gulf War just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation. Nearly every conversation or reference came back to al Qaeda and trying to nail the connection with Iraq. He would often have an obscure piece of intelligence. Powell thought that Cheney took intelligence and converted uncertainty and ambiguity into fact. It was about the worst charge that Powell could make about the vice president. But there it was. Cheney would take an intercept and say it shows something was happening. No, no, no, Powell or another would say, it shows that somebody talked to somebody else who said something might be happening. A conversation would suggest something might be happening, and Cheney would convert that into a "We know." Well, Powell concluded, we didn't know. No one knew. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.292) Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” also cited in War without end
Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said, “We have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program since its elimination of the program in the 1990’s,” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.293)
Bush then spoke 16 words that would become notorious: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.294-5)
Then he gave the Prime Minister his pep talk. “This is going to change. You watch, public opinion will change. We lead our publics. We cannot follow our publics.” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.296)
“We really don’t know,” Rumsfeld said, once again expressing skepticism about intelligence. “People may be lying to us,” he said. “Their seriousness with us will depend on their judgements about how serious we are.” Implying that the intelligence people were stringing some sources or agents along, he said, “At some point things change and the diddler can turn into the diddlee.” The implication was that the deceiving or diddling of others might reap a harvest of lies in return, but it was a rumsfeldism that left several shaking their heads. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.330)
The president was very worried. He called Blair for one of their regular conversations. They explored the possibilities, which other countries on the U.N. Security Council they could get to support them with a second resolution.
“If they don’t vote with us,” Bush said, “what I want to say you is that my last choice is to have your government go down. We don't want that to happen under any circumstances. I really mean that." If it would help, Bush said, he would let Blair drop out of the coalition and they would find some other way for Britain to participate.
If it would help, Bush said, he would let Blair drop out of the coalition and they would find some other way for Britain and its 41,000 military personnel in the region around Iraq to participate. “I said I’m with you. I mean it,” Blair replied. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.338) Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” also cited in the Washington Post Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” also cited in the Washington Post
At the Pentagon press briefing the next day, March 11, Rumsfeld indicated that the British might not participate if there was war. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.341)
Bush said that Chirac was a “bully,” especially to the East European nations. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.346)
If there were a delay, he said, “Public opinion won’t get better and it will get worse in some countries like America.” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.357)
“I was the guy that said they [the U.N.] ought to vote. And one country voted — at least showed their cards, I believe. It's an old Texas expression, show your cards, when you're playing poker. France showed their cards. … They said they were going to veto anything that held Saddam to account. So cards have been played, and we’ll just have to take an assessment after tomorrow to determine what that card meant.” Bush said he wanted to talk about the U.N.’s importance. “In the post-Saddam Iraq, the U.N. will definitely need to have a role. And that way it can begin to get its legs, legs of responsibility back.” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.360)
(Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.)
“The Iraqi generals are war criminals,” he told them and added a new and significant twist. “If Saddam leaves we’ll go in anyway. That way we can avoid ethnic cleansing. We’ll go in in a peaceful way, and there’ll be a list of country after country after country all who are solidly with us in this coalition.” Going in was important to get the WMD and to deal with the Baath Party leadership. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.369)
Bush later recalled that moment. “It was emotional for me. I prayed as I walked around in a circle. I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty, that there be minimal loss of life.” He prayed for all who were to go into harm’s way and for the country. “Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord’s will….I’m surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness.” (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.379) Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” also cited in the Washington Post
Bush was worrying about the woman and children. This could be a kind of baby milk factory, he said, recalling an incident from the 1991 Gulf War when the Iraqis had claimed a suspected biological weapons plant that was bombed was really for the production of milk…. Could Iraq use this as a public relations exercise?.... (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.487)
At one point Franks said, “There are 30,000 Iraqi casualties estimated.”
Rumsfeld had been trying to make sure they didn’t provide numbers. He later recalled “I remember leaping in and suggesting that that person probably realy doesn’t know that number and that my impression would be that it would not be helpful that people walked out of the room with that number in their heads.”
"In other words, we had just been mowing them down as we're coming in,” the president commented later in an interview...I mentioned that some generals estimated that 60,000 Iraqi military were killed, but no one knew because they didn't find the bodies…. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.407)
Rice expressed her concern to Powell. "You can blame Rich if you want," Powell replied, but "Rich had the guts to talk to you directly about this, so I don’t think he is the source."… Powell thought Rice was more interested in finding someone to blame for the public airing of the problem than in fixing it….
Powell believed it was the hardest of all tasks to go back to fundamentals and question your own judgment, and there was no sign it was going to happen. So he soldiered on once again against the current. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.415-6)
“The good news for us is that Dean is not the nominee,” Rove now argued to an associate in his second floor West Wing office. Dean's unconditional opposition to the Iraq war could have been potent in a face-off with Bush. "One of Dean's strengths, though, was he could say, I'm not part of that crowd down there." But Kerry was very much a part of the Washington crowd, and he had voted in favor of the resolution for war. Rove got out his two-inch-thick, loose-leaf binder titled "Bring It On." It consisted of research into Kerry's 19-year record in the Senate. Most relevant were pages 9 to 20 of the section on Iraq. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.431) Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” also cited in the Washington Post
Relations [between Powell and Vice-President Cheney] became so strained that Powell and Cheney could not, and did not, have a sit-down lunch or any discussion about their differences. Never.
[After reading an unfavourable news story about him, White House political advisor Karl] Rove had figured that State — or Powell — wanted to strike back at the White House …. He was just collateral damage.
[Powell] and Rumsfeld got into another big fight. This time it took a week to resolve …. Powell couldn’t believe the silliness.
Both the president and she were “mad,” she told the secretary of state. Powell had “given the democrats a remarkable tool.”…..
Powell did not particularly enjoy being dressed down by someone 17 years younger who held the job he had held 15 years earlier.
Whenever anyone suggested that Powell should have pangs of conscience on the war, Powell said he had done everything in his power. In August 2002 he had nearly broken his spear, laying before the president all the difficulties of a war … He had warned the president. It was the president’s decision, not his. (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” 2004 p.436-7) (Bob Woodward “Plan of Attack” also cited in Frum Forum
(Bob Woodward “The War Within” Scribd copy
"Control is what politics is all about," legendary journalist Theodore H. White wrote. War is also about control-both on the battlefield and in Washington, where the strategy and policy are supposed to be set. But from the start, no one in the administration had control over Iraq policy. (Bob Woodward “The War Within” 2008 p.20)
"Attached is a worrisome DIA report on coalition detention facilities and insurgent networks," Rumsfeld wrote on December 12 to Casey, Abizaid and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad.
The attached five-page SECRET report from the Defense Intelligence Agency brought more disturbing news from Iraq, suggesting that the aggressive detention program was creating more terrorists.
"Insurgents and terrorists use coalition detention facilities to trade information on successful tactics and techniques, teach detainees insurgent and terrorist skills, preach radical Islam and recruit new members into the insurgency," it stated.
At one detention facility, the report stated, detainees had an insurgent training program to prepare detainees for their release, in which they taught new recruits how to become suicide bombers, use IEDs-improvised explosive devices-and carry out kidnappings and torture.
That was especially troubling, considering that more than 75 percent of detainees were released within six months of their capture, including a substantial number of insurgents and terrorists.
"Many detainees are determined to be innocent of any involvement in the insurgency," the report continued. "Insurgent recruiters, however, exploit their feelings of humiliation, anger and fear to entice them to join the insurgency while in coalition custody or immediately after release."
The report concluded, "insurgents, terrorists, foreign fighters and insurgent leaders captured and released by coalition forces may be more dangerous than they were before being detained." (Bob Woodward “The War Within” 2008 p.34-5)
Petraeus pounced on the public relations opportunity. He knew that Hadley and others in the administration were searching for a dramatic event…..
“I’ll be on Fox Sunday,” Petraeus said, “and I’ll emphasize all these points, so that you get from me the support on the talk shows. Or at least on Fox.” (Bob Woodward “The War Within” 2008 p.368)
The president had little patience for briefings. "Speed it up. This isn't my first rodeo," he would say often to those presenting. It was difficult to brief him because he would interject his own narrative, questions or off-putting jokes. Presentations and discussions rarely unfolded in a logical, comprehensive fashion. Satterfield thought this reflected an insecurity in Bush. The president was a bully. (Bob Woodward “The War Within” 2008 p.408)
"What's the definition of the job of president?" I asked. "My definition is to determine what the next stage of good is for the majority of people in the country....and then develop a plan to carry it out, and then carry it out."
"That's not the way I think about it," Cheney replied. "I tend to think about it more in terms of there are certain things the nation has to do, things that have to get done. Sometimes very unpleasant things. Sometimes committing troops to combat, going to war. And the president of the United States is the one who's charged with that responsibility....
"The stuff you need the president for is the hard stuff. And not everything they have is hard. They do a lot of things that are symbolic, and the symbolic aspects of the presidency are important. And they can inspire, they can set goals and objectives-'Let's go to the moon'-but when they earn their pay is when they have to sit down and make those really tough decisions that in effect are life-and-death decisions that affect the safety and security and survival of the nation, and most especially those people that we send into harm's way to guarantee that we can defeat our enemies, support our friends, and protect the nation.
"That's the way I think of it." (Bob Woodward “The War Within” 2008 p.418-9)
"There's nothing that I'm prouder of than the liberation of Iraq," she said without hesitation. "Did we screw up parts of it? Sure. It was a big, historical episode, and a lot of it wasn't handled very well. I'd be the first to say that."
But Rice largely absolved herself of accountability for the problems with the war during its first 20 months, when she had been Bush's national security adviser. "It wasn't my responsibility to manage Iraq," she said. "Look, the fact of the matter is, as national security adviser you have a lot of responsibility and no authority." (Bob Woodward “The War Within” 2008 p.421)
Josh Bolten ducked into the Oval Office and said the president had lunch plans that were being delayed.
"Yeah. Get moving, will you?" Bush said to me. "How many more questions you got?"
"Just a few," I said. Of course, I had hundreds.
"You better hurry. I'm getting less indulgent, as you can tell. One, I'm hungry. And two, I've got a meeting."
"Is there kind of a recentering of American power in the Middle East?"
"Absolutely," the president said. "And it should be. And the reason it should be: It is the place from which a deadly attack emanated. And it is the place where further deadly attacks could emanate. And the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is a very dangerous notion. And the idea of people having the capacity, a nuclear capacity, and giving those to terrorist groups that could use them is a very deadly notion, as well."
"And so we have military hegemony in the region, just as a practical matter?"
"We've got freedom hegemony we're pushing. We're trying to get freedom moving," the president answered.
Hadley interrupted, alerting the president to the implications of the word "hegemony," which means dominance or leadership and carries overtones of empire.
"It's a loaded word, as you know very well," the president said.
"It is a loaded word," I agreed.
"It's a very tricky, Washington loaded word. It was very tricky, Woodward. Very tricky," Bush said.
"No, no," I protested.
"Yeah, it was. It was a Woodward tactic," Bush said.
"If you listen to Secretary Rice on this subject," I said, "She is absolutely delighted that we have all these troops there."
"Is it hegemonistic to have troops in Korea?" the president said. "I don't think so. Is it hegemonistic to have them in Japan? Was it hegemonistic to have them in Germany? No. The United States has got a troop presence at the invitation of governments to help provide security. Which, by the way, also helps provide the conditions for liberty to advance." (Bob Woodward “The War Within” 2008 p.424-5)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20621358/The-Lucifer-Effect-by-Philip-Zimbardo
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32615441/The-Lucifer-Effect
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18102814/The-Lucifer-Effect
http://www.scribd.com/doc/23890551/The-Dark-Alliance newspaper article 109 pages
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.
Modern behaviorist say that shyness is a learned phobic reaction to social events. This learning may be the product of : • a prior history of negative experiences with people in certain situations, either by direct contact or by watching others getting “burned”;
• not learning the “right” social skills:
• expecting to perform inadequately and therefore becoming constantly anxcious about your performance;
• learning to put yourself down for your own “inadequacy”-“I am shy,” “I am unworthy,” “I can’t do it,” “I need my Mommy!”
According to behaviorists, a child can learn to become shy by trying to be effective in a world dominated by adults. A forty-nine-year-old teacher relates this story:
John B. Watson quote along with some material on conditioning
Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.42-3)
In our culture where, as James Dobson says, Beauty is the gold coin of human worth and intelligence it silver coin, shyness may be the debit statement….
To be labeled “communist” by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s was to be condemned as an evil tool of Russian totalitarian forces of oppression. It’s the other way around for “bourgeois capitalists” in Moscow. Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.51-2)
Birds don’t do it, bees don’t do it; but parents and educated teachers do it. They lay shyness trips on their children and students. They do so by tossing around the shy label when it is not deserved, by being insensitive to their shyness when it is there, and by creating or perpetuating environments t5hat breed shyness. Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.58)
I remember one day way back when I was in second grade. The little girl seated in front of me was squirming in her seat long enough that it was obvious to us kids where she had to go. Her hand went up, but Mrs. Bachman did not notice it. The hand began waving more frantically until it caught the teachers attention. Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.69-70)
Such a “catastrophe theory” of child development runs contrary to traditional ideas that deprived, abusing environments breed madness and badness. Serene, benign, enriched environments were thought to be the cradles of sanity and adult success. The support for this view came largely from observations that adults who were mentally ill or law breakers came from impoverished or high-stress backgrounds. The thinking behind this is faulty. Only a minority of all those who grew up under adverse circumstances are in our jails and mental hospitals. Those who bend instead of breaking may develop and utilize the self-reliance necessary to carve a significant place for themselves in society. Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.74)
The point to be made here is that we must encourage our children to express their feelings-positive and negative ones-when they are being experienced. Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.112-3)
Behavior always occurs in a context; try to understand the context before evaluating, judging, and reacting to the behavior. Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.191)
“Have you hugged your kids today?” Rosita Perez poses this question on her bumper sticker. She hugs hers and thinks we should hug ours because it’s good for their well being. Researcher James Prescott goes further in advocating physical contact as a means to reduce violence between people and nations. His research shows that cutures where physical contact is minimal are more aggressive, and people who do not like close physical contact with others are more punitive in their values toward lawbreakers, endorse the death penalty for capital crimes, and are more bigoted and authoritarian. Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.198)
In a Washington, D.C. facility for delinquent boys, violence was an ongoing problem that the staff dealt with in all the usual ways. They voiced their concerns, rewarded nonviolence, gave counseling and therapy to repeated offenders, and punished the incorrigible troublemaker-all exercises in futility. It was not until they decided to analyze the situations in which aggressive behavior occurred that the violence was controlled. Most of the incidences of aggression took place in the hallways, particularly at corners, where one boy often bumped into another coming around the bend. One bump led to another, push came to shove, and another fight erupted. The simple solution was to break down the wall with its blind turn, widen it, and curve it. No more traffic accidents at the intersection, and the incidents of violence were significantly reduced. Philip G. Zimbardo, “Shyness: What it is and what to do about it” 1977,1992 p.209-10)
Eugene Debs “The master class has always brought a war, and the subject class has always fought the battle.” (Zinn p41)
Eisenhower told Henry Stinson “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. (p52) also cited at common dreams.org Admiral William Leary “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.” also cited at Doug-long.com
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71. cited at Doug-long.com
Douglas MacArthur was allegedly in favor of using the bomb in Korea though and supposedly it was Truman who refused to do so this time.
Colin Powell when asked about Iraqi casualties at end of the first gulf war “That is not a matter I am terribly interested in.” (Zinn p90)
Antonin Scalia at the University of Chicago Divinity School “For the believing Christian death is no big deal.”
“In 1970, the US government and several multinational corporations were linked in opposition to the candidacy and later the presidency of Salvador Allende” (Zinn p.147) original source the Church Committee Report
Amartya Yen “Global capitalism is much more concerned with expanding the domain of market relations than with, say, establishing democracy, expanding elementary education, or enhancing the social opportunities of society's underdogs." (p 210) also cited in the world traveller
All of this was in sharp contrast to European values as brought over by the first colonists, a society of rich and poor, controlled by priests, by governors, by male heads of families. For example, the pastor of the Pilgrim colony, John Robinson, thus advised his parishioners how to deal with their children: "And surely there is in all children ... a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down; that so the foundation of their education being laid in humility and tractableness, other virtues may, in their time, be built thereon." Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p.20)
White servants had not yet been brought over in sufficient quantity. Besides, they did not come out of slavery, and did not have to do more than contract their labor for a few years to get their passage and a start in the New World. As for the free white settlers, many of them were skilled craftsmen, or even men of leisure back in England, who were so little inclined to work the land that John Smith, in those early years, had to declare a kind of martial law, organize them into work gangs, and force them into the fields for survival. Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p. 25)
Fear of slave revolt seems to have been a permanent fact of plantation life. William Byrd, a wealthy Virginia slave owner, wrote in 1736:
We have already at least 10,000 men of these descendants of Ham, fit to bear arms, and these numbers increase every day, as well by birth as by importation. And in case there should arise a man of desperate fortune, he might with more advantage than Cataline kindle a servile war... and tinge our rivers wide as they are with blood. Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p.35)
At the very start of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, the governor, John Winthrop, had declared the philosophy of the rulers: "... in all times some must be rich, some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie; others meane and in subjection." Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p.48)
Locke's statement of people's government was in support of a revolution in England for the free development of mercantile capitalism at home and abroad. Locke himself regretted that the labor of poor children "is generally lost to the public till they are twelve or fourteen years old" and suggested that all children over three, of families on relief, should attend "working schools" so they would be "from infancy . . . inured to work." Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p.73-4)
Before this, the Cherokees had, like Indian tribes in general, done without formal government. As Van Every puts it:
The foundation principle of Indian government had always been the rejection of government. The freedom of the individual was regarded by practically all Indians north of Mexico as a canon infinitely more precious than the individual's duty to his community or nation. This anarchistic attitude ruled all behavior, beginning with the smallest social unit, the family. The Indian parent was constitutionally reluctant to discipline his children.' Their every exhibition of self-will was accepted as a favorable indication of the development of maturing character.. . Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p. 137)
The presidential election itself had avoided real issues; there was no clear understanding of which interests would gain and which would lose if certain policies were adopted. It took the usual form of election campaigns, concealing the basic similarity of the parties by dwelling on personalities, gossip, trivialities. Henry Adams, an astute literary commentator on that era, wrote to a friend about the election:
“We are here plunged in politics funnier than words can express. Very great issues are involved… But the amusing thing is that no one talks about real interests. By common consent they agree to let these alone. We are afraid to discuss them. Instead of this the press is engaged in a most amusing dispute whether Mr. Cleveland had an illegitimate child and did or did he not live with more than one Mistress.” (Zinn "Peoples history of the United States p.)
….The control of women in society was ingeniously effective. It was not done directly by the state. Instead, the family was used-men to control women, women to control children, all to be preoccupied with one another, to turn to one another for help, to blame one another for trouble, to do violence to one another when tidings weren't going right…..
….The approach was summed up by the warden at the Ossining, New York, penitentiary: "In order to reform a criminal you must first break his spirit." That approach persisted. Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p.514)
The fundamental facts of maldistribution of wealth in America were clearly not going to be affected by Carter's policies, any more than by previous administrations, whether conservative or liberal. According to Andrew Zimbalist, an American economist writing in Le Monde Diplomatique in 1977, the top 10 percent of the American population had an income thirty times that of the bottom tenth; the top 1 percent of the nation owned 33 percent of the wealth. The richest 5 percent owned 83 percent of the personally owned corporate stock. The one hundred largest corporations (despite the graduated income tax that misled people into thinking the very rich paid at least 50 percent in taxes) paid an average of 26.9 percent in taxes, and the leading oil companies paid 5.8 percent in taxes (Internal Revenue Service figures for 1974). Indeed, 244 individuals who earned over $200,000 paid no taxes. Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p.571)
A Carnegie Endowment study showed that two young people of equal standing on intelligence tests (even accepting the dubious worth of intelligence tests for children brought up under different circumstances) had very different future depending on whom their parents were. The child of a lawyer, though rating no higher on mental tests than the child of a janitor, was four times as likely to go to college, 12 times as likely to finish college, and 27 times as likely to end up in the top 10 percent of American incomes. Howard Zinn "Peoples history of the United States” p.663)
Noam Chomsky: "Deterring Democracy" 1991 for free online copy click here
"Rethinking Camelot: JFK, Vietnam and the political culture" by Noam Chomsky
Sam Harris “The End of Faith” 2004 on line copy
Jeremy Scahill: “Blackwater” 2007 on line copy at issuu.com
Jeremy Scahill: “Blackwater” on-line copy at knizky.mahdi
Bob Woodward “State of Denial” download site source
Howard Zinn: "A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.)" 2005 for free copy click here
http://www.ebookf.com/
http://www.socialist-federation.org/Books.html
http://www.lumkan.com/leptis-magna-regularly-looted.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ConsentPOP_Chom.html
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/3402/
Report of the Select Committee of Assassinations of the US House of representatives
additional information available at History Maters.com
Copy of JFK’s “Peace Speech” at American University
James Douglass Ground Zero Center for nonviolent Action website
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