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An Operational Amplifier Architecture with a Single Gain Stage and Distortion Cancellation
Amplifiers with a single high gain stage are attractive for their simplicity and excellent power/performance tradeoff, but their typically higher distortion has limited their use in the audio field. Presented here will be a low power single-stage amplifier architecture that enables passive cancellation of distortion (THD < -120 dB, @ 20 kHz). Classical output stage distortion as well as nonlinear capacitive effects will be addressed.
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FAST TRACK and TPP: OBAMA PREPARES FOR HISTORIC BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN PEOPLE April 9, 2015Posted by rogerhollander in Capitalism, Democracy, Economic Crisis, Environment, Imperialism, Labor, Trade Agreements.
Tags: capitalism, corporations, democracy, fast track, kevin zeese, margaret flowers, multi-national, NAFTA, Obama, roger hollander, thomas baldwin, tpp, trade agreement, trans pacific
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Roger's note: A critical element of fascism, with Nazi Germany as the most dramatic example, has to do with the merging of corporate wealth (capital) and government. Since the beginnings of industrial capitalism, the influence of Enlightenment philosophy has mitigated the most oppressive consequences of capitalism with degrees of democratic institutions and occasional economic reform. However, as economic crises deepen and competition for markets intensifies, democracy and economic justice become a luxury that the world capital cannot afford. We thereby see the need for a greater degree and a more tyrannical manifestation of political and economic repression. In other words, degrees of influence and control governments once had over expansive, rapacious, and sometimes violent capital are rapidly shrinking. Apart from actual armed conflicts, primarily in the oil sodden Middle East, trans-national trade agreements become a means of enforcing the will of capital over that of human need, most particularly in terms of environmental, human rights, and labor protection, and the destruction of social programs. In short, the laws of nations become such that corporations (capital) can rule over the laws of nations. This happens as such trade agreements are made into law by "democratically" elected governments. Note: Hitler and the Nazi Party did not come into power in German in the 1930s via a coup d'etat, rather via democratic election.
Posted on March 8, 2015 by doctom2010
Posted by Thomas Baldwin, March 9, 2015
Biloxi, MS
This is an important collection of web posts and blogs on the critical nature of the Fast Track and TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) trade agreements about to be considered in Congress and being strongly supported by Barack Obama. If one reads the critiques of what is known about these "secret" agreements, the net impact upon the U.S. is disastrous in numerous instances. The article included here give details of those huge defects. TPP is often referred to as NAFTA on steroids and the results of the latter show that about 1,000,000 jobs in the U.S. have been lost since its enaction under Clinton in 1993. These agreements are always represented as "creating" large numbers of jobs and improving the worsening trade deficit. Both in the case of NAFTA and the Korean Trade Agreement exactly the reverse has occurred.
It is imperative that Congress and especially Obama be stopped! These articles show ways you can be involved both my supporting these organizations fighting these agreements and by contacting Congress and the Obama administration in large numbers with petitions, calls and letters. STOP FAST TRACK AND STOP THE TPP.
Newsletter: At A Critical Juncture, Rise Up!
Excerpted from: POPULAR RESISTANCE NEWSLETTER
March 7, 2015
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, http://www.popularresistance.org
March 7th, 2015
Fast Track is a Game Changer
The struggle that we are putting most of our energy towards for the next few months is to stop Congress from giving the president fast track trade promotion authority. This would allow the president for the next seven years to negotiate deals in secret and sign them before they go to Congress for limited review, no amendments and an up-or-down vote. We can't emphasize enough how dangerous this is!
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, which is nearly completed, goes way beyond typical trade deals. Most of the chapters are on issues not related to trade but that would instead enhance corporate rights and power. Although the TPP has been negotiated in secret, it will require that all of our laws, down to the local level, be 'harmonized' with the agreement. It would allow multinational corporations to challenge our laws to protect our communities and the planet through an extrajudicial trade tribunal run in part by corporate lawyers. This is called Investor State Dispute Settlement and Sen. Warren wrote about it in the Washington Post.
Corporations are writing laws that enhance their profits even though they harm our health and safety. Alison Rose Levy describes how this affects the food we eat. And leaks of text from the European version, called TTIP, show how the agreement will destroy the National Health System in the UK.
The President is currently putting tremendous pressure on Congress for fast track in order to complete negotiations of and sign the TPP. The administration went so far as to lie about fast track after the day that Sen Warren's article was published and eight Senators spoke out on the senate floor.
We have been very focused on Sen. Wyden, who is the key person in the Senate, and have been sitting-in at his DC office. Thousands of people are calling his office and jamming his lines and it's having an effect (His number is 202 224 5244). The President wanted fast track legislation on his desk by the end of March, but it won't be introduced in the Senate until mid-April. This gives us more time to ramp up the public pressure and we need to do that because the Chamber of Commerce is getting ready to launch a $160 million ad campaign.
Click here for a link to information about how you can get involved. Here are the basics:
1. Join the weekly "Fast Track Resistance" National Calls – starting on Wednesday, March 11 at 9 pm Eastern/6 pm Pacific, we'll host weekly education and organizing calls to teach about Fast Track and the TPP, provide legislative updates and organize specific actions. We'll have activists on hand to facilitate break-out groups where you'll learn how to organize teach-ins, do visibility actions, use social media to have an impact and reach legislators with your message. You must register for the call. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.
2. March 13 is the National Day to 'Drop in and Hang Out'– Representatives will be in their home districts on recess so people across the country will hold rolling sit-ins like we've been doing for the past 2 weeks in Senator Ron Wyden's office. It's easy to do. Just go to your member's local office during office hours and hold a sign urging them to oppose Fast Track. Bring your friends. Take pictures and share them on social media. Urge those who can't join you to call in to the office. CLICK HERE TO FIND OR POST AN ACTION.
3. Join the Rapid Response Team– you've probably seen some of us 'dropping in and hanging out' in Sen. Wyden's office over the past 2 weeks. It has had an effect but we understand that Sen. Wyden is trying to make a deal with Sen. Hatch to support Fast Track legislation. We've got to stop him from from doing that.
We have plans for a larger action and we need you. Please let us know if you can join us in DC on Thursday, March 19. Contact firstname.lastname@example.com.
The End of the Nation-State?
We are at a critical juncture in world history. We live in a globalized world. That is the reality. But at present, it is a world that is increasingly dominated by multi-national corporations and big finance capital that controls national policies. The result of this system is exploitation of people and the planet and the use of the security state to oppress those who resist or to gather resources.
William Dalrymple reminds us of the serious consequences that can result from such an arrangement in his article about the East India Company.
It is up to us to rise together and fight back, to resist the expansion of corporate power and to build new systems that are more democratic, just and sustainable. We are with you in this struggle. People power, applied strategically, can succeed.
We also need your financial support to do this work. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation.
Flush the TPP!
Stop the Global Corporate Coup!
Bradley Manning is Off Limits at SF Gay Pride Parade, but Corporate Sleaze is Embraced April 27, 2013Posted by rogerhollander in Civil Liberties, Criminal Justice, LGBT, San Francisco.
Tags: bradley manning, corporate sleaze, corporations, daniel ellsberg, democratic party, gay pride, gay pride parade, glenn greenwald, lgbt, liberals, obama supporters, roger hollander, san francisco, sf pride, wikileaks
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A seemingly trivial controversy reveals quite a bit about pervasive political values
News reports yesterday indicated that Bradley Manning, widely known to be gay, had been selected to be one of the Grand Marshals of the annual San Francisco gay pride parade, named by the LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. When the predictable backlash instantly ensued, the president of the Board of SF Pride, Lisa L Williams, quickly capitulated, issuing a cowardly, imperious statement that has to be read to be believed.
Williams proclaimed that "Manning will not be a grand marshal in this year's San Francisco Pride celebration" and termed his selection "a mistake". She blamed it all on a "staff person" who prematurely made the announcement based on a preliminary vote, and she assures us all that the culprit "has been disciplined": disciplined. She then accuses Manning of "actions which placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform": a substance-free falsehood originally spread by top US military officials which has since been decisively and extensively debunked, even by some government officials (indeed, it's the US government itself, not Manning, that is guilty of "actions which placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform"). And then, in my favorite part of her statement, Williams decreed to all organization members that "even the hint of support" for Manning's action – even the hint – "will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride". Will not be tolerated.
I originally had no intention of writing about this episode, but the more I discovered about it, the more revealing it became. So let's just consider a few of the points raised by all of this.
First, while even a hint of support for Manning will not be tolerated, there is a long roster of large corporations serving as the event's sponsors who are welcomed with open arms. The list is here. It includes AT&T and Verizon, the telecom giants that enabled the illegal warrantless eavesdropping on US citizens by the Bush administration and its NSA, only to get retroactively immunized from Congress and thus shielded from all criminal and civil liability (including a lawsuit brought in San Francisco against those corporations by their customers who were illegally spied on). Last month, AT&T was fined by OSHA for failing to protect one of its employees who was attacked, was found by the FCC last year to have overcharged customers by secretly switching them to plans they didn't want, and is now being sued by the US government for "allegedly bill[ing] the government improperly for services designed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing who place calls by typing messages over the web."
The list of SF Pride sponsors also includes Bank of America, now being sued for $1 billion by the US government for allegedly engaging in a systematic scheme of mortgage fraud which the US Attorney called "spectacularly brazen in scope". Just last month, the same SF Pride sponsor received a record fine for ignoring a court order and instead trying to collect mortgage payments from bankrupt homeowners to which it was not entitled. Earlier this month, SF-Pride-sponsoring Bank of America paid $2.4 billion to settle shareholder allegations that Bank executives "failed to disclose information about losses at Merrill Lynch and bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees before the brokerage was acquired by Bank of America in January 2009 for $18.5 billion."
Another beloved SF Pride sponsor, Wells Fargo, is also being "sued by the US for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages over claims the bank made reckless mortgage loans that caused losses for a federal insurance program when they defaulted". Last year, Wells Fargo was fined $3.1 million by a federal judge for engaging in conduct that court called "highly reprehensible" relating to its persecution of a struggling homeowner. In 2011, the bank was fined by the US government "for allegedly pushing borrowers with good credit into expensive mortgages and falsifying loan applications."
Also in Good Standing with the SF Pride board: Clear Channel, the media outlet owned by Bain Capital that broadcasts the radio programs of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck; a pension fund is suing this SF Pride sponsor for making cheap, below-market loans to its struggling parent company. The health care giant Kaiser Permanente, another proud SF Pride sponsor, is currently under investigation by California officials for alleged massive privacy violations in the form of recklessly disclosing 300,000 patient records.
So apparently, the very high-minded ethical standards of Lisa L Williams and the SF Pride Board apply only to young and powerless Army Privates who engage in an act of conscience against the US war machine, but instantly disappear for large corporations and banks that hand over cash. What we really see here is how the largest and most corrupt corporations own not just the government but also the culture. Even at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, once an iconic symbol of cultural dissent and disregard for stifling peities, nothing can happen that might offend AT&T and the Bank of America. The minute something even a bit deviant takes place (as defined by standards imposed by America's political and corporate class), even the SF Gay Pride Parade must scamper, capitulate, apologize, and take an oath of fealty to their orthodoxies (we adore the military, the state, and your laws). And, as usual, the largest corporate factions are completely exempt from the strictures and standards applied to the marginalized and powerless. Thus, while Bradley Manning is persona non grata at SF Pride, illegal eavesdropping telecoms, scheming banks, and hedge-fund purveryors of the nation's worst right-wing agitprop are more than welcome.
Second, the authoritarian, state-and-military-revering mentality pervading Williams' statement is striking. It isn't just the imperious decree that "even a hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated", though that is certainly creepy. Nor is it the weird announcement that the wrongdoer "has been disciplined". Even worse is the mindless embrace of the baseless claims of US military officials (that Manning "placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform") along with the supremely authoritarian view that any actions barred by the state are, ipso facto, ignoble and wrong. Conduct can be illegal and yet still be noble and commendable: see, for instance, Daniel Ellsberg, or most of the leaders of the civil rights movement in the US. Indeed, acts of civil disobedience and conscience by people who risk their own interests to battle injustices are often the most commendable acts. Equating illegal behavior with ignominious behavior is the defining mentality of an authoritarian – and is particularly notable coming from what was once viewed as a bastion of liberal dissent.
But the more one learns about the parties involved here, the less surprising it becomes. According to her biography, Williams "organized satellite offices for the Obama campaign" and also works for various Democratic politicians. It was President Obama, of course, who so notoriously decreed Bradley Manning guilty in public before his trial by military officers serving under Obama even began, and whose administration was found by the UN's top torture investigator to have abused him and is now so harshly prosecuting him. It's anything but surprising that a person who was a loyal Obama campaign aide finds Bradley Manning anathema while adoring big corporations and banks (which funded the Obama campaign and who, in the case of telecoms, Obama voted to immunize).
What we see here is how even many of the most liberal precincts in America are now the leading spokespeople for and loyalists to state power as a result of their loyalty to President Obama. Thus do we have the President of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade sounding exactly like the Chairman of the Joints Chief, or Sarah Palin, or gay war-loving neocons, in depicting any meaningful opposition to the National Security State as the supreme sin. I'd be willing to bet large amounts of money that Williams has never condemned the Obama administration's abuse of Manning in detention or its dangerously radical prosecution of him for "aiding the enemy". I have no doubt that the people who did all of that would be showered with gratitude by Parade officials if they attended. In so many liberal precincts in the Age of Obama – even now including the SF Gay Pride parade – the federal government, its military, and its federal prosecutors are to be revered and celebrated but not criticized; only those who oppose them are villains.
Third, when I wrote several weeks ago about the remarkable shift in public opinion on gay equality, I noted that this development is less significant than it seems because the cause of gay equality poses no real threat to elite factions or to how political and economic power in the US are distributed. If anything, it bolsters those power structures because it completely and harmlessly assimilates a previously excluded group into existing institutions and thus incentivizes them to accommodate those institutions and adopt their mindset. This event illustrates exactly what I meant.
While some of the nation's most corrupt corporations are welcome to fly their flag over the parade, consider what Manning – for whom "even a hint of support will not be tolerated" – actually did. His leak revealed all sorts of corruption, deceit and illegality on the part of the world's most powerful corporations. They led to numerous journalism awards for WikiLeaks. Even Bill Keller, the former Executive Editor of the New York Times who is a harsh WikiLeaks critic, credited those leaks with helping to spark the Arab Spring, the greatest democratic revolution the world has seen in decades. Multiple media accounts describe how the cables documenting atrocities committed by US troops in Iraq prevented the Malaki government from allowing US troops to stay beyond the agreed-to deadline: i.e., helped end the Iraq war by thwarting Obama's attempts to prolong it. For all of that, Manning was selected by Guardian readers as the 2012 Person of the Year, while former Army Lt. Dan Choi said yesterday:
As we move forward as a country, we need truth in order to gain justice, you can't have justice without the whole truth . . . So what [Manning did as a gay American, as a gay soldier, he stood for integrity, I am proud of him."
But none of those vital benefits matter to authoritarians. That's because authoritarians, by definition, believe in the overarching Goodness of institutions of power, and believe the only bad acts come from those who challenge or subvert that power. Bad acts aren't committed by the National Security State or Surveillance State; they are only committed by those who oppose them. If a person's actions threaten power factions or are deemed prohibited by them, then Good Authoritarians will reflexively view the person as evil and will be eager to publicly disassociate themselves from such individuals. Or, as Williams put it, "even the hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated", and those who deviate from this decree will be "disciplined".
Even the SF Gay Pride Parade is now owned by and beholden to the nation's largest corporations, subject to their dictates. Those who run the event are functionaries of, loyalists to, the nation's most powerful political officials. That's how this parade was so seamlessly transformed from orthodoxy-challenging, individualistic and creative cultural icon into yet another pile of obedient apparatchiks that spout banal slogans doled out by the state while viciously scorning those who challenge them. Yes, there will undoubtedly still be exotically-dressed drag queens, lesbian motorcycle clubs, and groups proudly defined by their unusual sexual proclivities participating in the parade, but they'll be marching under a Bank of America banner and behind flag-waving fans of the National Security State, the US President, and the political party that dominates American politics and its political and military institutions. Yet another edgy, interesting, creative, independent event has been degraded and neutered into a meek and subservient ritual that must pay homage to the nation's most powerful entities and at all costs avoid offending them in any way.
It's hardly surprising that someone who so boldly and courageously opposes the US war machine is demonized and scorned this way. Daniel Ellsberg was subjected to the same attacks before he was transformed many years later into a liberal hero (though Ellsberg had the good fortune to be persecuted by a Republican rather than Democratic President and thus, even back then, had some substantial support; come to think of it, Ellsberg lives in San Francisco: would expressions of support for him be tolerated?). But the fact that such lock-step, heel-clicking, military-mimicking behavior is now coming from the SF Gay Pride Parade of all places is indeed noteworthy: it reflects just how pervasive this authoritarian rot has become.
Corporate corruption and sleaze
For a bit more on the dominance of corporate sleaze and corruption in our political culture, see the first few paragraphs of this extraordinary Politico article on a new book about DC culture, and this Washington Post article detailing the supreme annual convergence of political, media and corporate sleaze called "the White House Correspondents' Dinner", to be held this weekend.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City October 5, 2011Posted by rogerhollander in Democracy, Economic Crisis, Environment, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Poverty, War.
Tags: colonialism, corporate wealth, corporations, democracy, foreclosures, injustice, labor, labor rights, liberty square, occupy wall street, press freedom, protest, revolution, roger hollander, studets, torture, Wall Street, zuccotti park
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What follows is the first official, collective
statement of the protesters in Zuccotti Park:
As we gather together in solidarity to express a
feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together.
We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the
world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality:
that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that
our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up
to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors;
that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but
corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the
Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined
by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place
profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality,
run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let
these facts be known.
- They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite
not having the original mortgage.
- They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give
Executives exorbitant bonuses.
- They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based
on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
- They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the
farming system through monopolization.
- They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of
countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
- They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate
for better pay and safer working conditions.
- They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on
education, which is itself a human right.
- They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as
leverage to cut workers' healthcare and pay.
- They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with
none of the culpability or responsibility.
- They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get
them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
- They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
- They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the
- They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives
in pursuit of profit.
- They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their
policies have produced and continue to produce.
- They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible
for regulating them.
- They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on
- They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people's
lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned
a substantial profit.
- They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping,
and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
- They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control
of the media.
- They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented
with serious doubts about their guilt.
- They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
- They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians
- They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive
government ontracts.*
To the people of the world, We, the New York City
General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert
your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy
public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate
solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form
groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and
all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
NationofChange has been an unfiltered media
resource for the Occupy Wall Street movement even while the mainstream media has
ignored, censored, and undermined the progress of the people.
I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes one September 20, 2011Posted by rogerhollander in Criminal Justice, Democracy, Humor.
Tags: capital punishment, chevron, constitution, corporate greed, corporations, corporations are people, death sentence, democracy, dow, exonmobil, mitt romney, monsanto, nestle, pfizer, supreme court, texas executions, walmart
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Supreme Act Of Judicial Treason Against The People Of The United States, And What We Can And Must Do About It January 24, 2010Posted by rogerhollander in Democracy, Political Commentary.
Tags: anthony kennedy, clarence thomas, constitution, corporations, impeach, impeachment, multinational, roger hollander, supreme court, transnational, treason
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Because of the gravity of the crime against the Constitution committed by a gang of 5 right wing judicial outlaws on our Supreme Court yesterday, we are launching two critical action pages at once
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5 http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php
By any fair legal definition, the decision yesterday by The Supreme Court 5 constitutes nothing less than an act of TREASON against the people of the United States. Having read and analyzed the entire 183 page decision and all of its concurring and dissenting opinions ourselves, we are fully prepared to support this accusatory conclusion.
Having so grossly abused its jurisdiction by presuming to decide a question expressly WAIVED by the petitioner in the Court below (p 12), this rogue Supreme Court ruled for the FIRST time that NO corporation can be constrained from unlimited influence over our elections. And even assuming that the Court intended the decision to only apply to American corporations, the Court expressly DECLINED (pp 46-47) to reach the question of whether foreign ownership stakes in American corporations should likewise be given carte blanche to put their thumbs on the scales of our democracy.
Thus, until Congress FURTHER acts (and it must, though it could not have escaped the attention of The Supreme Court 5 that the current Republican minority has vowed to obstruct ANYTHING of consequence that Congress might try to pass), there is now nothing to constrain foreign nationals, even our most sworn enemies, from usurping what even the most die hard Tea Bagger takes as an article of faith, that the rights of citizenship of this country are ONLY for Americans. This must be construed, within the four corners of our Constitution, as deliberately and knowingly exposing the United States of America to harm in the interim, by giving "aid and comfort" to our enemies (Constitution Article 3, section 3), should our enemies now wish to take advantage of this unprecedented and rash decision. In simple Constitutional terms . . treason!!
The fact is that we now live in a world of giant transnational corporations, with allegiance to NO sovereign government, let alone our own, sworn only to exploit the most vulnerable and desperate workers they can find in any country of the world. How does The Supreme Court 5 propose parsing which of these extra-national legal artificialities should be allowed to corrupt our democratic election process? Apparently in their minds, all of them.
Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php
So what is it that we can and MUST do? The first and most prominent proposal we heard yesterday, and which we of course support, was to amend the Constitution to clarify that corporations have no such rights as people (which is to say U.S. citizens). While this certainly could not hurt, and would obviously help (assuming such a proposed amendment could garner 67 votes in a Senate already stalemated by obstructionism, let alone be ratified by 3/4 of the states, including many "red" ones), what we must first assert is that there is nothing WRONG with our Constitution, and demand that Congress do whatever it can to protect it.
Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5 http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php
Because just as importantly, we are on ominous and clear notice that there is no further outrage these 5 gangsters in black robes are not gleefully and arrogantly capable of. Indeed, in his dissenting opinion (that the majority did not go far ENOUGH), Clarence Thomas characterized the decision as only a "first step" (Thomas opinion p. 1). It is worth noting that the authorship of the majority opinion is claimed by Anthony M. Kennedy, heretofore generally considered the LEAST wing nutty of the 5. Therefore, the immediate and unavoidably necessary recourse must be impeachment for all five, treason already being a high crime, otherwise the horrors yet to issue from their treacherous minds is too terrible to contemplate.
We will have much more to say on all this in subsequent alerts to follow shortly, but for now we are making available for no charge (not even shipping) your choice of one of two absolutely gorgeous full 4 color process bumper stickers. Take a "Corporations Are NOT The People" bumper sticker, OR a "Impeach The Supreme Court 5" bumper sticker for free. Of course if you can make a contribution (or if you want both), please DO contribute what you can, which is what allows us to send these out for free to anyone who cannot make a donation right now.
You can request your bumper sticker from the return page after you submit either of the action pages above. Or you can do directly to this page and get them there.
Bumper Stickers for no charge: http://www.peaceteam.net/bumper_stickers.php
Facebook participants can also submit the action pages at
Corporations Are Not The People: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1029
Impeach The Supreme Court 5: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1030
And on Twitter, just send the following Twitter reply for the Corporations Are Not The People action
@cxs #p1029
And this Twitter reply for the Impeach The Supreme Court 5 action
@cxs #p1030
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at http://www.millionfaxmarch.com/in.htm
Supreme Court's "Radical and Destructive" Decision Hands Over Democracy to the Corporations January 21, 2010Posted by rogerhollander in Democracy.
Tags: anthony kennedy, campaign finanace, congress, constitution, corporate personhood, corporations, democracy, first amendment, Greg Palast, linda segura, political campaigns, roberts court, roger hollander, supreme court
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One expert calls the Citizens United decision "the most radical and destructive campaign finance decision in the history of the Supreme Court."
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted January 21, 2010.
The Supreme Court has just predicted the winners of the next November election," Sen. Chuck Schumer announced this morning. "It won't be Republicans. It won't be Democrats. It will be Corporate America."
Indeed, in a momentous 5 to 4 decision that the New York Times has called a "doctrinal earthquake," the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an unprecedented ruling today that gives new significance to the phrase "corporate personhood." In it, the Roberts Court overturned the federal ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns, ruling that forbidding corporations from spending money to support or undermine political candidates amounts to censorship. Corporations, the Court ruled, should enjoy the same First Amendment rights as individuals.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the Supreme Court rejects "the argument that political speech of corporations or other associations should be treated differently under the First Amendment simply because such associations are not 'natural persons.'"
In other words, as Stephen Colbert put it last year, "Corporations are people too."
On a conference call with reporters following the decision, critics could not overemphasize the enormity of the ruling, whose implications will be visible as early as the upcoming midterm elections. Bob Edgar, head of the watchdog group Common Cause, called it "the SuperBowl of really bad decisions." Nick Nyhart of Public Campaign called it an "immoral decision" that will make an already untenable mix of money and politics even worse.
"This is the most radical and destructive campaign finance decision in the history of the Supreme Court," said Fred Wertheimer, President of Democracy 21. "With a stroke of the pen, five justices wiped out a century of American history devoted to preventing corporate corruption of our democracy."
Writing about the ruling, Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy described it as "a revolution in the law," one that has been in the works for years thanks to conservative activism.
"Today's decision is a huge gift to corporations from a Supreme Court that has been radicalized by right-wing ideology, whose political agenda was made obvious in the Bush v. Gore case and whose very political decision today only makes things worse."
Of course, corporate cash has long had a corrupting influence on our politics, but never before has this been seen as some sort of fundamental freedom. "This court has said its the constitutional right of a corporation to spend as much money as it wants to influence an election," said Wertheimer. The potential "fear factor" for politicians when it comes to the way they vote is huge. Members of Congress, who already spend a disproportionate amount of time fundraising to stay in office, now have reason to worry that their re-election chances will be derailed by corporations whose limitless funds can be aggressively used to protect their interests.
Writing for AlterNet last month, Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, argued that President Obama may never have been elected with these new rules on the books:
Candidate Barack Obama was one sharp speaker, but he would not have been heard, and certainly would not have won, without the astonishing outpouring of donations from two million Americans. It was an unprecedented uprising-by-PayPal, overwhelming the old fat-cat sources of funding.
Well, kiss that small-donor revolution goodbye. If the Supreme Court votes as expected, progressive list serves won't stand a chance against the resources of new 'citizens' such as CNOOC, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Maybe UBS (United Bank of Switzerland), which faces U.S. criminal prosecution and a billion-dollar fine for fraud, might be tempted to invest in a few Senate seats."
The case before the Court, Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, centered around a rabidly anti-Hillary Clinton documentary produced by the right-wing group Citizens United. In a statement, Citizens United called the riling "a tremendous victory, not only for Citizens United but for every American who desires to participate in the political process."
Meanwhile, President Obama, whose critics on the left have accused him of being himself beholden to Wall Street, has called upon Congress to "develop a forceful response to this decision."
"With its ruling today," he said, "the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans."
Obama's Betrayal of Public Education? Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling December 17, 2008Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Education.
Tags: arne duncan, blagojevich, bush administration, cato, charter schools, chicago schools, commercial club, corporate control, corporations, ctu, curriculum, david brooks, education, education policy, educational reform, experimental schools, fordham foundation, henry giroux, heritage foundation, kenneth saltman, mayor daley, neoliberal, Obama, pedagogical darwinism, penal pedagogies, private sector, privatization, public schools, renaisance 2010, rezko, rote learning, school councils, standardized testing, teachers, teachers union, union-busting, zero tolerance
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President-elect Barack Obama with his nominee for secretary of education, Arne Duncan. (Photo: Reuters) MORE "PLUS CA CHANGE …" YOU CAN BELIEVE IN (RH)www.truthout.org 17 December 2008
Since the 1980s, but particularly under the Bush administration, certain elements of the religious right, corporate culture and Republican right wing have argued that free public education represents either a massive fraud or a contemptuous failure. Far from a genuine call for reform, these attacks largely stem from an attempt to transform schools from a public investment to a private good, answerable not to the demands and values of a democratic society but to the imperatives of the marketplace. As the educational historian David Labaree rightly argues, public schools have been under attack in the last decade "not just because they are deemed ineffective but because they are public."[1] Right-wing efforts to disinvest in public schools as critical sites of teaching and learning and govern them according to corporate interests is obvious in the emphasis on standardized testing, the use of top-down curricular mandates, the influx of advertising in schools, the use of profit motives to "encourage" student performance, the attack on teacher unions and modes of pedagogy that stress rote learning and memorization. For the Bush administration, testing has become the ultimate accountability measure, belying the complex mechanisms of teaching and learning.
The hidden curriculum is that testing be used as a ploy to de-skill teachers by reducing them to mere technicians, that students be similarly reduced to customers in the marketplace rather than as engaged, critical learners and that always underfunded public schools fail so that they can eventually be privatized. But there is an even darker side to the reforms initiated under the Bush administration and now used in a number of school systems throughout the country. As the logic of the market and "the crime complex"[2] frame the field of social relations in schools, students are subjected to three particularly offensive policies, defended by school authorities and politicians under the rubric of school safety. First, students are increasingly subjected to zero-tolerance policies that are used primarily to punish, repress and exclude them. Second, they are increasingly absorbed into a "crime complex" in which security staff, using harsh disciplinary practices, now displace the normative functions teachers once provided both in and outside of the classroom.[3] Third, more and more schools are breaking down the space between education and juvenile delinquency, substituting penal pedagogies for critical learning and replacing a school culture that fosters a discourse of possibility with a culture of fear and social control. Consequently, many youth of color in urban school systems, because of harsh zero-tolerance polices, are not just being suspended or expelled from school. They are being ushered into the dark precincts of juvenile detention centers, adult courts and prison. Surely, the dismantling of this corporatized and militarized model of schooling should be a top priority under the Obama administration. Unfortunately, Obama has appointed as his secretary of education someone who actually embodies this utterly punitive, anti-intellectual, corporatized and test-driven model of schooling.
Barack Obama's selection of Arne Duncan for secretary of education does not bode well either for the political direction of his administration nor for the future of public education. Obama's call for change falls flat with this appointment, not only because Duncan largely defines schools within a market-based and penal model of pedagogy, but also because he does not have the slightest understanding of schools as something other than adjuncts of the corporation at best or the prison at worse. The first casualty in this scenario is a language of social and political responsibility capable of defending those vital institutions that expand the rights, public goods and services central to a meaningful democracy. This is especially true with respect to the issue of public schooling and the ensuing debate over the purpose of education, the role of teachers as critical intellectuals, the politics of the curriculum and the centrality of pedagogy as a moral and political practice.
Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, presided over the implementation and expansion of an agenda that militarized and corporatized the third largest school system in the nation, one that is about 90 percent poor and nonwhite. Under Duncan, Chicago took the lead in creating public schools run as military academies, vastly expanded draconian student expulsions, instituted sweeping surveillance practices, advocated a growing police presence in the schools, arbitrarily shut down entire schools and fired entire school staffs. A recent report, "Education on Lockdown," claimed that partly under Duncan's leadership "Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has become infamous for its harsh zero tolerance policies. Although there is no verified positive impact on safety, these policies have resulted in tens of thousands of student suspensions and an exorbitant number of expulsions."[4] Duncan's neoliberal ideology is on full display in the various connections he has established with the ruling political and business elite in Chicago.[5] He led the Renaissance 2010 plan, which was created for Mayor Daley by the Commercial Club of Chicago – an organization representing the largest businesses in the city. The purpose of Renaissance 2010 was to increase the number of high quality schools that would be subject to new standards of accountability – a code word for legitimating more charter schools and high stakes testing in the guise of hard-nosed empiricism. Chicago's 2010 plan targets 15 percent of the city district's alleged underachieving schools in order to dismantle them and open 100 new experimental schools in areas slated for gentrification.
Most of the new experimental schools have eliminated the teacher union. The Commercial Club hired corporate consulting firm A.T. Kearney to write Ren2010, which called for the closing of 100 public schools and the reopening of privatized charter schools, contract schools (more charters to circumvent state limits) and "performance" schools. Kearney's web site is unapologetic about its business-oriented notion of leadership, one that John Dewey thought should be avoided at all costs. It states, "Drawing on our program-management skills and our knowledge of best practices used across industries, we provided a private-sector perspective on how to address many of the complex issues that challenge other large urban education transformations."[6]
Duncan's advocacy of the Renaissance 2010 plan alone should have immediately disqualified him for the Obama appointment. At the heart of this plan is a privatization scheme for creating a "market" in public education by urging public schools to compete against each other for scarce resources and by introducing "choice" initiatives so that parents and students will think of themselves as private consumers of educational services.[7] As a result of his support of the plan, Duncan came under attack by community organizations, parents, education scholars and students. These diverse critics have denounced it as a scheme less designed to improve the quality of schooling than as a plan for privatization, union busting and the dismantling of democratically-elected local school councils. They also describe it as part of neighborhood gentrification schemes involving the privatization of public housing projects through mixed finance developments.[8] (Tony Rezko, an Obama and Blagojevich campaign supporter, made a fortune from these developments along with many corporate investors.) Some of the dimensions of public school privatization involve Renaissance schools being run by subcontracted for-profit companies – a shift in school governance from teachers and elected community councils to appointed administrators coming disproportionately from the ranks of business. It also establishes corporate control over the selection and model of new schools, giving the business elite and their foundations increasing influence over educational policy. No wonder that Duncan had the support of David Brooks, the conservative op-ed writer for The New York Times.
One particularly egregious example of Duncan's vision of education can be seen in the conference he organized with the Renaissance Schools Fund. In May 2008, the Renaissance Schools Fund, the financial wing of the Renaissance 2010 plan operating under the auspices of the Commercial Club, held a symposium, "Free to Choose, Free to Succeed: The New Market in Public Education," at the exclusive private club atop the Aon Center. The event was held largely by and for the business sector, school privatization advocates, and others already involved in Renaissance 2010, such as corporate foundations and conservative think tanks. Significantly, no education scholars were invited to participate in the proceedings, although it was heavily attended by fellows from the pro-privatization Fordham Foundation and featured speakers from various school choice organizations and the leadership of corporations. Speakers clearly assumed the audience shared their views.
Without irony, Arne Duncan characterized the goal of Renaissance 2010 creating the new market in public education as a "movement for social justice." He invoked corporate investment terms to describe reforms explaining that the 100 new schools would leverage influence on the other 500 schools in Chicago. Redefining schools as stock investments he said, "I am not a manager of 600 schools. I'm a portfolio manager of 600 schools and I'm trying to improve the portfolio." He claimed that education can end poverty. He explained that having a sense of altruism is important, but that creating good workers is a prime goal of educational reform and that the business sector has to embrace public education. "We're trying to blur the lines between the public and the private," he said. He argued that a primary goal of educational reform is to get the private sector to play a huge role in school change in terms of both money and intellectual capital. He also attacked the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), positioning it as an obstacle to business-led reform. He also insisted that the CTU opposes charter schools (and, hence, change itself), despite the fact that the CTU runs ten such schools under Renaissance 2010. Despite the representation in the popular press of Duncan as conciliatory to the unions, his statements and those of others at the symposium belied a deep hostility to teachers unions and a desire to end them (all of the charters created under Ren2010 are deunionized). Thus, in Duncan's attempts to close and transform low-performing schools, he not only reinvents them as entrepreneurial schools, but, in many cases, frees "them from union contracts and some state regulations."[9] Duncan effusively praised one speaker, Michael Milkie, the founder of the Nobel Street charter schools, who openly called for the closing and reopening of every school in the district precisely to get rid of the unions. What became clear is that Duncan views Renaissance 2010 as a national blueprint for educational reform, but what is at stake in this vision is the end of schooling as a public good and a return to the discredited and tired neoliberal model of reform that conservatives love to embrace.
In spite of the corporate rhetoric of accountability, efficiency and excellence, there is to date no evidence that the radical reforms under Duncan's tenure as the "CEO" of Chicago Public Schools have created any significant improvement. In part, this is because the Chicago Public Schools and the Renaissance Schools Fund report data in obscurantist ways to make traditional comparisons difficult if not impossible.[10] And, in part, examples of educational claims to school improvement are being made about schools embedded in communities that suffered dislocation and removal through coordinated housing privatization and gentrification policies. For example, the city has decimated public housing in coveted real estate enclaves, dispossessing thousands of residents of their communities. Once the poor are removed, the urban cleansing provides an opportunity for Duncan to open a number of Renaissance Schools, catering to those socio-economically empowered families whose children would surely improve the city's overall test scores. What are alleged to be school improvements under Ren2010, rest on an increase in the city's overall test scores and other performance measures that parodies the financial shell game corporations used to inflate profit margins – and prospects for future catastrophes are as inevitable. In the end, all Duncan leaves us with is a Renaissance 2010 model of education that is celebrated as business designed "to save kids" from a failed public system. In fact, it condemns public schooling, administrators, teachers and students to a now outmoded and discredited economic model of reform that can only imagine education as a business, teachers as entrepreneurs and students as customers.[11]
It is difficult to understand how Barack Obama can reconcile his vision of change with Duncan's history of supporting a corporate vision for school reform and a penchant for extreme zero-tolerance polices – both of which are much closer to the retrograde policies hatched in conservative think tanks as Heritage Foundation, Cato Institution, Fordham Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, than to the values of the many millions who voted for the democratic change he promised. As is well known, these think tanks share an agenda not for strengthening public schooling, but for dismantling it and replacing it with a private market in consumable educational services. At the heart of Duncan's vision of school reform is a corporatized model of education that cancels out the democratic impulses and practices of civil society by either devaluing or absorbing them within the logic of the market or the prison. No longer a space for relating schools to the obligations of public life, social responsibility to the demands of critical and engaged citizenship, schools in this dystopian vision legitimate an all-encompassing horizon for producing market identities, values and those privatizing and penal pedagogies that both inflate the importance of individualized competition and punish those who do not fit into its logic of pedagogical Darwinism.[12]
In spite of what Duncan argues, the greatest threat to our children does not come from lowered standards, the absence of privatized choice schemes or the lack of rigid testing measures that offer the aura of accountability. On the contrary, it comes from a society that refuses to view children as a social investment, consigns 13 million children to live in poverty, reduces critical learning to massive testing programs, promotes policies that eliminate most crucial health and public services and defines rugged individualism through the degrading celebration of a gun culture, extreme sports and the spectacles of violence that permeate corporate controlled media industries. Students are not at risk because of the absence of market incentives in the schools. Young people are under siege in American schools because, in the absence of funding, equal opportunity and real accountability, far too many of them have increasingly become institutional breeding grounds for racism, right-wing paramilitary cultures, social intolerance and sexism.[13] We live in a society in which a culture of testing, punishment and intolerance has replaced a culture of social responsibility and compassion. Within such a climate of harsh discipline and disdain for critical teaching and learning, it is easier to subject young people to a culture of faux accountability or put them in jail rather than to provide the education, services and care they need to face problems of a complex and demanding society.[14]
What Duncan and other neoliberal economic advocates refuse to address is what it would mean for a viable educational policy to provide reasonable support services for all students and viable alternatives for the troubled ones. The notion that children should be viewed as a crucial social resource – one that represents, for any healthy society, important ethical and political considerations about the quality of public life, the allocation of social provisions and the role of the state as a guardian of public interests – appears to be lost in a society that refuses to invest in its youth as part of a broader commitment to a fully realized democracy. As the social order becomes more privatized and militarized, we increasingly face the problem of losing a generation of young people to a system of increasing intolerance, repression and moral indifference. It is difficult to understand why Obama would appoint as secretary of education someone who believes in a market-driven model that has not only failed young people, but given the current financial crisis has been thoroughly discredited. Unless Duncan is willing to reinvent himself, the national agenda he will develop for education embodies and exacerbates these problems and, as such, it will leave a lot more kids behind than it helps.
[1] Cited in Alfie Kohn, "The Real Threat to American Schools," Tikkun (March-April 2001), p. 25. For an interesting commentary on Obama and his possible pick to head the education department and the struggle over school reform, see Alfie Kohn, "Beware School 'Reformers'," The Nation (December 29, 2008). Online: www.thenation.com/doc/20081229/kohn/print.
[2] This term comes form: David Garland, "The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society" (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
[3] For a brilliant analysis of the "governing through crime" complex, see Jonathan Simon, "Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear," (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007).
[4] Advancement Project in partnership with Padres and Jovenes Unidos, Southwest Youth Collaborative, "Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track," (New York: Children & Family Justice Center of Northwestern University School of Law, March 24, 2005), p.31. On the broader issue of the effect of racialized zero tolerance policies on public education, see Christopher G. Robbins, "Expelling Hope: The Assault on Youth and the Militarization of Schooling" (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008). See also, Henry A. Giroux, "The Abandoned Generation" (New York: Palgrave, 2004).
[5] David Hursh and Pauline Lipman, "Chapter 8: Renaissance 2010: The Reassertion of Ruling-Class Power through Neoliberal Policies in Chicago" in David Hursh, "High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning" (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).
[6] See: www.atkearney.com
[7] "Creating a New Market of Public Education: The Renaissance Schools Fund 2008 Progress Report," The Renaissance Schools Fund www.rsfchicago.org
[8] Kenneth J. Saltman, "Chapter 3: Renaissance 2010 and No Child Left Behind Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools" (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
[9] Sarah Karp and Joyn Myers, "Duncan's Track Record," Catalyst Chicago (December 15, 2008). Online: www.catalyst-chicago.org/news/index.php?item=2514&cat=5&tr=y&auid=4336549
[10] (See Chicago Public Schools Office of New Schools 2006/2007 Charter School Performance Report Executive Summary)
[11] See Dorothy Shipps, "School Reform, Corporate Style: Chicago 1880-2000," (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006).
[12] See, for example, Summary Report, "America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline," Children's Defense Fund. Online at: www.childrensdefense.org/site/DocServer/CPP_report_2007_summary.pdf?docID=6001; also see, Elora Mukherjee, "Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools," (New York: American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties, March 2008), pp. 1-36.
[13] Donna Gaines, "How Schools Teach Our Kids to Hate," Newsday (Sunday, April 25, 1999), p. B5.
[14] As has been widely, reported, the prison industry has become big business with many states spending more on prison construction than on university construction. Jennifer Warren, "One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008," (Washington, DC: The PEW Center on the States, 2007). Online at: www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=35912
Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. His most recent books include: "Take Back Higher Education" (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006), "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex," (2007), and "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed," (2008). His newest book, "Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability?," will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2009.
Kenneth Saltman is associate professor in the department of Educational Policy Studies and Research at DePaul University in Chicago. He is the author, most recently, of "Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools," (Paradigm Publishers 2007), and editor of Schooling and the Politics of Disaster (Routledge 2007).
A Recipe for Corporate Success in Tough Times? SaladShooters, Adult Diapers and Tactical Ammo December 16, 2008Posted by rogerhollander in War.
Tags: afghnaistan, ammunition, antiprsonnel mines, artillery, boeing, cannon rounds, contractors, corporations, dod, dow, Economic Crisis, flechette, ford, general tire, gm, howitzer, International harvester, Iraq, lockheed, military, national presto, nick turse, Pentagon, pin bullets, roger hollander, technology killing, vietnam, war, war profiteering, weapons, whirlpool
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While many companies have moved away from arms production, the line between civilian industry and military contracting continues to shift. (Photo: State Museum of Pennsylvania)
15 December 2008
by: Nick Turse, TomDispatch.com
Is it possible that one of the Pentagon's contractors has a tripartite business model for our tough economic times: one division that specializes in crock-pots, another in adult diapers, and a third in medium caliber tactical ammunition? Can the maker of the SaladShooter, a hand-held electric shredder/dicer that hacks up and fires out sliced veggies, really be a tops arms manufacturer? Could a company that produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death? And could this company be a model for success in an economy heading for the bottom?
Once upon a time, the military-industrial complex was loaded with household-name companies like General Motors, Ford, and Dow Chemical, that produced weapons systems and what arms expert Eric Prokosch has called, "the technology of killing." Over the years, for economic as well as public relations reasons, many of these firms got out of the business of creating lethal technologies, even while remaining Department of Defense (DoD) contractors.
The military-corporate complex of today is still filled with familiar names from our consumer culture, including defense contractors like iPod-maker Apple, cocoa giant Nestle, ketchup producer Heinz, and chocolate bar maker Hershey, not to speak of Tyson Foods, Procter & Gamble, and the Walt Disney Company. But while they may provide the everyday products that allow the military to function, make war, and carry out foreign occupations, most such civilian firms no longer dabble in actual arms manufacture.
Whirlpool: Then and Now
Take the Whirlpool Corporation, which bills itself as "the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances" and boasts annual sales of more than $19 billion to consumers in more than 170 countries. Whirlpool was recently recognized as "one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute." The company also professes a "strong" belief in "ethical values" that dates back almost 100 years to founders who believed "there is no right way to do a wrong thing."
In the middle of the last century, however — as Prokosch has documented — Whirlpool was engaged in what many might deem a wrong thing. In 1957, Whirlpool took over work on flechettes — razor-sharp darts with fins at the blunt end — for the U.S. military. While International Harvester, the prior Pentagon contractor producing them, had managed to pack only 6,265 of these deadly darts into a 90mm canister round, Whirlpool set to work figuring out a way to cram almost 10,000 flechettes into the same delivery vehicle. Its goal: to "improve the lethality of the canisters." (In addition, Whirlpool also reportedly worked on "Sting Ray" — an Army project involving a projectile filled with flechettes coated in a still-undisclosed chemical agent.)
In 1967, an Associated Press report noted that U.S. troops were using new flechette artillery rounds to "spray thousands of dart-shaped steel shafts over broad areas of the jungle or open territory" in Vietnam. "I've seen reports of enemy soldiers actually being nailed to trees by these things," commented one Army officer.
On a recent trip to Vietnam, I spoke to a Vietnamese witness who had seen such "pin bullets" employed by U.S. forces many times in those years. In one case, Bui Van Bac recalled that a woman from his village, spotted by U.S. aircraft while she was walking in a rice paddy, was gravely wounded by them. Local guerillas came to the woman's aid and brought her to a hospital where a surgeon found a number of extremely sharp, three centimeter long "pins" inside her body. Medically, it was all but hopeless and the woman died.
A top player in lethal technologies back then, Whirlpool is now among the tiniest defense contractors. While, in recent years, the company has ignored requests for information from TomDispatch.com on their dealings with the Pentagon, records indicate that last year, for example, it received just over $105,000 from the Department of Defense, most of which apparently went towards the purchase of kitchen appliances and household furnishings.
Similarly, Whirlpool's predecessor in the flechette game, International Harvester, is now Navistar International Corporation. Navistar Defense, a division of the company,
remains one of the Pentagon's stealth "billion dollar babies." But while it did more than $1 billion in business with the DoD last year, Navistar appears to have been building vehicles for the Pentagon, not creating anti-personnel weaponry. There are, however, companies that can't seem to say goodbye to lethal technologies.
National Presto Industries
National Presto Industries traces its history to the 1905 founding of the Northwestern Iron and Steel Works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, according to the Business & Company Resource Center. By 1908, the company was making industrial steam pressure cookers and, in 1915, began making models for home use. On the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II, the company entered the arms game when it scored a multi-million dollar contract to produce artillery fuses. Even with that deal in hand, it was reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy when its new president, Lewis Phillips, landed a series of other lucrative military contracts.
In the early years of the Cold War, about the time Whirlpool was getting into the flechette business, National Presto Industries had just introduced "a revolutionary new concept in electric cooking… a complete line of fully immersible electric cooking appliances employing a removable heat control" — and was about to launch "the world's first automatic, submersible stainless steel coffee maker." The company was also still churning out war materiel.
In 1953, National Presto announced plans to build a multi-million dollar plant to produce 105mm artillery shells. In 1955, it was awarded millions to make howitzer shells for the Army, and the next year, millions from the Air Force for fighter-bomber parts. By 1958, company President Lewis Phillips would declare, "The future of this company in Eau Claire and hence the security of our jobs here is now almost wholly dependent upon defense contracts awarded by the U.S. Government." When the Army cancelled its contracts with Presto in 1959, Phillips lamented, "With little or no notice, this Government decision has forced us completely out of the manufacturing business here in Eau Claire."
The tough times didn't last. Soon enough, National Presto returned to the fray, benefiting from the disastrous American war in Vietnam. From 1966 to 1975, the company manufactured more than two million eight-inch howitzer shells and more than 92 million 105mm artillery shells. In Vietnam, 105mm shells would kill or maim untold numbers of civilians, but it was a boom time for National Presto, which took in at least $163 million in Pentagon contracts in 1970-1971 alone for artillery shell parts. Finally shuttered in 1980, the company defense plant was kept on government "stand-by" into the 1990s, a sweetheart deal that earned Presto $2.5 million annually for producing nothing at all.
As the Vietnam War wound down, National Presto turned back to the civilian market with a series of new kitchen gadgets: in 1974, the PrestoBurger, an electric, single-serving fast broiler for hamburgers; in 1975, the Hot Dogger; and in 1976, the Fry Baby deep fat fryer. In 1988, the company introduced its wildly popular SaladShooter, followed in 1991 by its Tater Twister potato peeler. When sales of its SaladShooters, corn poppers, pressure cookers, deep fryers, and griddles became sluggish, however, weaponry again proved a savior.
In 2001, National Presto decided to get back into the arms game. Months before 9/11, the company's chairman Melvin Cohen expressed fears that a future war might mean ruin for the company's kitchen appliance business. As a result, Presto purchased munitions manufacturer Amtec. In the years since, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Presto has also "made other complementary acquisitions in the defense industry." These have included Amron, a manufacturer of medium caliber ammunition (20-40mm) cartridge cases and Spectra Technologies, which is "engaged in the manufacture, distribution, and delivery of munitions and ordnance-related products for the DOD and DOD prime contractors." Such types of ammunition are extremely versatile and are fired from ground vehicles, naval ships, and various types of aircraft — both helicopters and fixed-wing models.
Additionally, in the months after 9/11, National Presto entered the diapers trade, setting up that business in its old munitions plant. In 2004, with Melvin Cohen's daughter MaryJo now at the helm, the company further expanded into the business of adult-incontinence products. "I spent a couple of days wearing them," the younger Cohen told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time. "They're very comfortable."
In 2005, Presto's Amtec was awarded a five-year deal by the Pentagon for its 40mm family of ammunition rounds. By the end of last year, it had already received $454 million and was expecting the sum to top out, at contract's end, above $550 million.
Just as 105mm shells of the sort produced by Presto were a nightmare for the people of Vietnam, so too has 40mm ammunition spelled doom for civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this year, the BBC reported on a typical joint U.S./U.K. attack on a home in Iraq in which insurgents had taken shelter. After exchanging ground fire, coalition forces called in an airstrike. According to the BBC, "The aircraft fired 40mm cannon rounds at the two houses, finally dropping a bomb on one of them. It collapsed. The other house was set on fire. The two insurgents in the house were buried but so were a number of women and children." Similarly, in August, news reports tell us, U.S. troops called in an airstrike by an AC-130 — which packs 40mm cannons — that helped kill approximately 90 civilians in the village of Azizabad in Afghanistan, according to investigations by the Afghan government and the United Nations.
As in the past, war time has been a boom-time for Presto. In 2000, before the start of the Global War on Terror, National Presto's annual sales clocked in at $116.6 million. In 2007, they totaled $420.7 million, with more than 50% of that coming from arms manufacturing. Earlier this year, Presto nabbed another 40mm ammunition contract (a $97.5 million supplemental award) set to be delivered in 2009 and 2010. According to official DoD figures, from 2001 through 2008 National Presto received more than $531 million, while Amtec has taken home another $171 million-plus. Their combined grand total, while hardly putting Presto in the top tier of Pentagon weapons contractors, is still a relatively staggering $702.8 million — not bad for a company known for slicing and dicing vegetables.
Death is Our Business and Business is Good
These days, most civilian defense contractors aren't like Presto. General Tire and Rubber Company, for example, once lorded it over a business empire that produced not only car tires, but antipersonnel mines and deadly cluster bombs. Today, the company seems to have left its days of supplying the U.S. military with lethal technologies behind.
Dow Chemical classically drew ire from protestors during the Vietnam War for making the incendiary agent napalm that clung to and burned off the flesh of Vietnamese
victims. Dow got out of the napalm business long before the war ended, but, due to widespread protests at the time, the company is still living down the legacy today.
At a 2006 Ethics and Compliance Conference, Dow's President, CEO, and Chairman Andrew Liveris recalled, "Believe me, we have had our share of ethical challenges, most of them very public… starting with the manufacture of Napalm during the Vietnam War… when suddenly we went from being a company that made Saran Wrap to keep food fresh to a kind of war machine… at least, according the characterizations of the time." While Dow is still a defense contractor, its DoD contracts appear not to include the manufacture of weapons of any type. Instead, such companies have largely ceded the field to dedicated "merchants of death" — weapons-industry giants like Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.
Right now, National Presto Industries may look like a throw-back to an earlier era when companies regularly made both innocuous household items and heavy weapons. In a new hard-times economy, however, in which taxpayer dollars are likely to continue to pour into the Pentagon, could it instead be a harbinger of the future? Having proved that outfitting real shooters is even more lucrative than making SaladShooters, Presto has gotten rich in the Bush war years. It has, in fact, greatly outperformed the big guns of the weapons business. While the stocks of top defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman have all lost significant value in the last year — down 29.3%, 55.3%, and 50.1%, respectively — National Presto's stock price was up 28.1% as of mid-December.
It isn't hard to imagine more civilian firms, especially ones which are already Pentagon contractors, getting into (or back into) the weapons game. After all, when the Big Three Detroit automakers were scrounging around for a bailout just a few weeks ago, they used America's persistent involvement in armed conflict as one argument in their favor. For example, Robert Nardelli, Chrysler's chief executive, told the Senate that the failure of the auto industry "would undermine our nation's ability to respond to military challenges and would threaten our national security." While that argument was roundly dismissed by retired Army Lt. Gen. John Caldwell, chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association's combat vehicles division, it probably wouldn't have been if the automakers made more weapons systems.
Will Presto be the back-to-the-future model for Pentagon contractors in the lean times ahead? Only time will tell. At the very least, it seems that, as long as Americans allow the country to wage wars abroad, require their salads to be shot, and have bladder issues, National Presto Industries has a future.
Copyright 2008 Nick Turse

subset: commoncrawl


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BMI View : Olam International's USD61mn investment to establish a new cocoa processing plant in Indonesia is consistent with the ongoing trend in both Olam and Indonesia's agribusiness sector to gain greater exposure to mid- and downstream operations. Olam itself is looking to expand further downstream in certain areas of Africa and Asia, in a bid for a more stable and less indebted business model.
Potential Seen In Indonesia
Olam's USD61mn investment into a new cocoa processing plant in Indonesia is consistent with the company's movement to more mid- and downstream focused activities, which it argues will increase profitability through more value-added products. Olam's belief that Asia will deliver strong confectionary sales growth is the primary driver behind their investment into Indonesia, which will also act as a regional trade hub. Indeed, our Food & Drink team believes that chocolate confectionery sales growth in countries such as Indonesia, India and China will be among the highest in the world.
|Massive Potential
|Selected Asian Countries - Chocolate Volume Sales Growth, 2013-2018 (% Chg Over Period)
We believe that some key downside risks exist for Olam's performance in Indonesia. While we forecast cocoa production to grow 14.5% from 2012/13 to 2017/18 to 492,300 tonnes, we note that structural problems exist in the market which could limit output. The core of Indonesia's cocoa production problem lies in the fragmented nature of the country's cocoa growing. In 2003, 87% of land under harvest for cocoa was on smallholder farms with on average 0.5-1.5ha of land a farm. The dominance of smallholdings means that investment into inputs is limited, and inhibits the purchase of new plant stock which is more resistant to disease.
These potential output issues could be further exacerbated by the number of domestic and multinational companies who have entered the cocoa market. For example, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill are entering the market with installed capacity of 60,000 tonnes and 65,000 tonnes respectively. Barry Callebaut is tying up with domestic player PT Comextra Majora to set up crushing plants with an installed capacity of 30,000 tonnes. There exist real risks of a supply shortage in the coming years, as some operations in Indonesia already import some cocoa beans from Africa. Grinders are waiting for the government to reduce the import tax on cocoa beans, currently at 5%, which would improve profitability in the future.
|Deepening Imbalances
|Indonesia - Cocoa Production, Grinding Capacity & Raw Cocoa Imports And Exports ('000 tonnes)
Recent Move Downstream
Olam's business is split into four main areas, and until 2009, the company predominantly focused on its upstream operations, devoting most of its annual capital expenditure to the ' Industrial Raw Materials' segment as agricultural commodities prices rose. From 2009, however, Olam re-orientated its business towards mid- and downstream, seeking higher profitability from more value-added products. Relatively, Olam has invested more into its 'Food Staples and Packaged Foods' segment than any other business area for the past three financial years. Indeed, this segment is the only business area which grew in size, relative to the rest of the company, for the past two financial years up to FY2013.
|Staples & Packaged Food Expansion
|Olam International - % Of Total Capital Expenditure/ % Of Total Assets By Sub-Sector
Similarly, the company has increased its focus on its 'Confectionery & Beverage Ingredients' business, in line with its value-added strategy. In 9M14, Olam increased its capital expenditure (capex) in the segment by 35.3% y-o-y to SGD2.8bn, compared to average capex growth of an average of just 1.0% across the other three business areas. The 9.1% y-o-y capex decline in the company's 'Industrial Raw Materials' segment further showcases their shift in focus.
|Average Margins For Food & Confectionery
|Olam International - Revenue Growth (LHC) & Operating Margin By Sub-Sector
We believe that Olam's new strategy will result in less volatile results and will ultimately be more sustainable, but will limit both revenue and EBITDA growth. Though Olam argues that a move to more downstream activities is more value-added and therefore more profitable, both its 'Food Staples and Packaged Foods' and 'Confectionery and Beverage Ingredients' segments have recorded flat operating margins over the past 10 years since sales have increased in both these segments. This implies that no economies of scale have been achieved. In fact, until 2011 the company's 'Industrial Raw Materials' segment was more profitable than either of the other two business areas.
|Improving Cash Flow
|Olam International - Free Cash Flow (SGDmn, LHS) & Debt/ T12M EBITDA
In previous years, Olam's growth in its upstream businesses has come at high expense, as it came largely from fast-paced product and geography diversification via acquisitions. This meant that the company has historically been highly leveraged, with negative free cash flow. EBITDA growth has also been very volatile, as a result of fluctuating commodities prices and the business environment in countries in which it operates. We believe that Olam is focusing more downstream in order to reduce such volatility, to deleverage itself and to generate positive cash flow. However, in our view this will weigh on both revenue and EBITDA growth rates, though will ultimately result in a more sustainable business model. Furthermore, we believe that this is consistent with the strategy of Temasek, the Singaporean investment group which is in the process of purchasing Olam.


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Brazil to Miss Inflation Target Until 2015, Survey Shows
Economists covering Brazil raised their forecast for 2014 inflation above the 4.5 percent target for the first time, on doubts about the central bank's commitment to controlling consumer prices.
Consumer prices will increase 4.55 percent in 2014, according to the median forecast in a Nov. 18 central bank survey of about 100 economists published today. Consumer prices rose 6.97 percent in October from a year earlier.
"It looks like no one is really confident that the central bank is focusing on inflation anymore," said Jankiel Santos, chief economist at Espirito Santo Investment Bank. "It's much more focused on economic growth than on inflation. As long as inflation doesn't breach 6.5 percent, it looks like it's going to be OK for them."
The central bank began cutting rates in August to protect Brazil from global economic turmoil, even as inflation accelerated to a six-year high. President Dilma Rousseff said this month that Brazil must keep "one eye on inflation and one eye on growth."
Economists expect policy makers to cut borrowing costs 0.5 percentage point to 11 percent this month, and to 10 percent by the end of 2012, the survey found. The central bank reduced its benchmark Selic rate by a half point last month, saying a slowing world economy will curb inflation.
Shoring Up Growth
The government's concern with shoring up economic growth means inflation may take longer to slow back to target, said Marcelo Salomon, chief economist for Brazil at Barclays Plc in New York.
"The central bank and the government are willing to have a smoother convergence of inflation to target," Salomon said.
Central bank President Alexandre Tombini repeated Nov. 16 that Brazil can make "moderate" interest rate cuts and still reach its 2012 inflation goals. Tombini told Veja magazine last week that the central bank has no target other than inflation.
At the same time as 2014 inflation expectations rose, forecasts for 2012 and 2013 fell. Analysts cut their 2012 inflation forecast for the fifth straight week, as Latin America's largest economy shows signs of slowing. Consumer prices will rise 5.55 percent next year, compared with a forecast of 5.56 percent the previous week, the survey showed. The economists also cut their 2013 inflation forecast to 4.92 percent from 5 percent.
Prices, as measured by the IPCA index, will rise 6.48 percent this year, unchanged from last week's forecast, the survey found.
Slowing Down
Breakeven rates, the difference between yields on 2015 inflation-linked and fixed rate bonds, show that traders are wagering on average annual inflation of 5.7176 percent over the next four years, down from 6.1974 percent at the end of September.
Brazil's economy grew at its slowest pace in two years in September, cementing bets the central bank will keep cutting rates to prevent a recession. Economic activity, a proxy for gross domestic product, expanded 1.17 percent in September from a year earlier. The increase was lower than the median forecast of 1.25 percent from 14 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Industrial production contracted 2 percent in September, the second-biggest fall since the decline that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008. Vehicle sales fell 7.5 percent in October from a year earlier, and third-quarter business confidence was the lowest since the first three months of 2009.
Economists kept their forecast for economic growth this year and next unchanged. Latin America's biggest economy will expand 3.16 percent in 2011 and 3.5 percent in 2012, the survey found.
Annual inflation slowed in October for the first time in 14 months. The central bank targets inflation of 4.5 percent, plus or minus two percentage points
Tombini said last week that inflation has peaked and will "fall sharply" by the second quarter of 2012.


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I loved the relationship between the friends - like an Victorian era


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zombie shooter
Prepare For Console Quality FPS Zombie Slaughtering In Dead Trigger
Take one look at the trailer and you'll be blown away. Madfinger Games is redefining mobile gaming ... again.
Daniel Douvris
| June 2
Affliction: Zombie Rising Immerses You In A Realistic Zombie Showdown
Prepare to fight the zombie horde in this incredible atmospheric experience.
Daniel Douvris
| May 31
Get Your Daily Dose Of Zombie Blasting With Paper Zombie
Paper Zombie brings a cutout feel to classic arcade shooting letting players vent their frustrations on hordes of undead with touch-based shooting.
Luke Patrick
| September 12
From GDC: Hands On Preview Of Gameloft's Zombie Infection And Fishing Kings
Gameloft gave us hands on time with two additional games during GDC. We played Zombie Infection which is a Resident Evil clone, and Fishing Kings which is similar to Flick Fishing. Find out all about them inside.
Staff Writer
| March 15


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Authorities responded to a residential fire in the 1100 block of North 25th Street in Van Buren on Wednesday.
A 69-year-old woman was found unconscious in the home, but the woman's identity has not yet been released, Detective Jonathan Wear of the Van Buren Police Department said.
A female neighbor called 911 at 11 a.m. and said she smelled smoke coming from the residence. Police arrived immediately thereafter and forced entry, according to a Van Buren Police Department news release.
The woman was found unconscious in the kitchen and pulled outside by police officers, the news release states. The two officers, Cpl. Mark McGraw and officer Blayne Irwin, were sent to Summit Medical Center for smoke inhalation treatment as a precautionary measure, but both appeared to be in good condition and were released, Wear said.
Preliminary investigation indicated a grease fire began in the kitchen and the woman most likely died of smoke inhalation, Stanley Clark of the Van Buren Fire Department said. The fire had burned itself out by the time authorities arrived, as all of the windows and the doors to the house were closed, Clark said.


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Nutrition and healthy eating are top priorities for Americans, but price is still of paramount importance when selecting where to buy groceries on a regular basis, according to a report from Ipsos Public Affairs. The "Checking In With Americans at the Grocery Aisle" report, based on a July survey of more than 1,000 consumers, also found that many would be open to using an app that helped them select products based on their needs.
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