[From The Nation]

Ridge’s upcoming book, The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege… And How We Can Be Safe Again, accuses the Bush-Cheney White House of pushing the homeland security chief to “raise the national security alert just before the 2004 election.”

Read the full article here.

Editor’s Note: The Iraq Special Operations Forces (ISOF) is probably the largest special forces outfit ever built by the United States, and it is free of many of the controls that most governments employ to rein in such lethal forces. Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New American Media. NAM Middle East correspondent Shane Bauer spent early 2009 reporting from Iraq This article was first published in The Nation.

Read the article here.

6 months later, has the world forgotten? – A brief look at Gaza and Gazans 6 months removed from the invasion. The author speaks with a number of Gazans about what it did to their lives; examines the Fatah/Hamas split and the increasing “Islamization” of Gaza by Hamas; and concludes that Gaza is missing support from the rest of the world and that the Palestinians there are exhausted and losing motivation to look for improvement.

Israeli Troops Told to ‘Shoot First’ -  Discusses the approach taken to civilians during the War and then details the words battle as the IDF tries to deny claims from its own soldiers regarding its tactics. A Christian Science Monitor article on the same topic focuses a bit more on the soldiers’ claims.

Israel hits UN Relief compound – Just one of the many sights that Israel fired on that should not have been touched (beyond the fact that the invasion itself was seemingly illegal), this after the Israelis had been provided with the GPS coordinates of all UN facilities in Gaza. This “soft” target hit list also includes some hospitals and schools.

Casualties

“Amnesty International concluded that an overall figure of some 1,400[Palestinian] fatalities is accurate and that, in addition to some 300 children, 115 women and 85 men aged over 50, some 200 men aged less than 50 were unarmed civilians who took no part in the hostilities.” 13 Israeli’s are believed to have been killed, which includes 4 soldiers killed by friendly fire.

The World Health Organization lost 16 people and the UN Relief Agency lost 5.

It would be unfair not to mention the rocket attacks by Hamas and Palestinian militants into Israel, which have been significant, as an illegal action. Also significant though is the low number of Israeli deaths (8 people in 2008) as a result of these rocket attacks. The IDF named these attacks as a major factor in the invasion. Rocket attacks intensified during the Offensive, included new cities in Israel not previously targeted, and rocket attacks have continued intermittently since Israel’s withdrawal.

As a bit of an aside, I’m a little curious why there has not been any real discussion regarding the morality of using mercenary armies. They are an undoubtedly problematic and worrisome entity.

The two recent Blackwater tidbits are:

Blackwater Founded Implicated in Murder

U.S. Still Paying Blackwater Millions

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Some Israeli soldiers who took part in the January invasion of the Gaza Strip say they were encouraged by commanders to shoot first and worry later about civilians, and went into Gaza with guns blazing.

Testimony from 30 veterans of Operation Cast Lead, published on Wednesday by the activist group “Breaking the Silence,” lends credence to charges by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and U.N. agencies that Israeli forces inflicted civilian death and destruction on an unjustifiable scale.

But the report drew an angry reaction from the military — which has already rejected war crimes charges by international groups — in a 3-page statement rebutting the allegations as a slanderous and defamatory mix of rumor and hearsay.

In print and video testimony, almost all of it nameless and digitally blurred, soldiers say the army’s Gaza imperative was to minimize its own casualties to maintain public support.

“Better hit an innocent than hesitate to target an enemy,” was a typical description by one unidentified soldier of his understanding of instructions repeated at pre-invasion briefings and during the 22-day operation, from December 27 to January 18.

“If you’re not sure, kill. Fire power was insane. We went in and the booms were just mad,” says another. “The minute we got to our starting line, we simply began to fire at suspect places.

“In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents.”

DEFAMATION AND SLANDER

The army issued a statement saying it “regrets the fact that yet another human rights organization is presenting to Israel and the world a report based on anonymous and general testimonies,” while denying it “the minimal decency” of sending it an advance copy to allow the military to investigate.

“This was done while defaming and slandering the IDF (Israel Defense Force) and its commanders,” the statement said.

It acknowledged “there were isolated incidences in which unintentional harm was caused to noncombatants as the result of operational errors” that were unavoidable in complex fighting.

Operation Cast Lead had the declared aim of forcing Islamist Hamas fighters, who deny Israel’s right to exist, to stop rocket and mortar attacks aimed at southern Israeli towns.

A Palestinian rights group says 1,417 people were killed, in the 22-day onslaught, 926 of them civilians. The Israeli army put the toll at 1,166 and estimated 295 dead were civilians. Israel said 10 of its soldiers and three civilians were killed.

Whole streets in parts of the Gaza Strip were razed to minimize the risk of Israeli casualties from small-arms attacks and booby-trap bombs. The United Nations says Gaza six months later is just beginning to clear 600,000 tons of rubble.

Amnesty International labeled Israel’s actions “wanton.” The Anti-Defamation League in the United States accused Amnesty of “outrageously accusing the Israeli military of war crimes.”

“MASSIVE DESTRUCTION”

Soldiers in Israel’s largely conscript army have standing orders not to talk to the media. Breaking the Silence said those quoted “served in all sectors of the (Gaza) operation.”

“The majority … are still serving in their regular military units and turned to us in deep distress at the moral deterioration of the IDF,” it said. Their narratives “are enough to bring into question the credibility” of the official line.

Transcripts can be seen at www.breakingthesilence.org.il.

Soldiers describe a “Neighbor Procedure” in which civilians were forced to enter suspect buildings ahead of troops. They cite at least one “human shield” case of a civilian forced to walk in front of a soldier resting a rifle on his shoulder.

Speaking on Israel Radio, Colonel Avi Peled said that story was based completely on hearsay.

“The soldier who testified spoke to his commander and the matter was investigated,” he said. “He did not speak of his own experience. He spoke about something he’d heard that took place in the first week of the fighting (when) he was not even there.”

“We never used any civilian as a human shield,” Peled said.

The soldiers repeat charges leveled by international rights groups but denied by Israel that white phosphorus — whose use as an incendiary is banned in populated areas — was fired indiscriminately into Gaza streets.

In its summary, Breaking the Silence says these accounts indicate the “massive destruction” inflicted on Gaza “was unrelated to any direct threat to Israeli forces,” and that the rules of engagement were deliberately “permissive.”

“We did not get instructions to shoot at anything that moved,” says one soldier. “But we were generally instructed: if you feel threatened, shoot. They kept repeating to us that this is war and in war opening fire is not restricted.”

To strip away cover for Hamas fighters, soldiers said, first aerial bombardment and artillery, then demolition charges and armored bulldozers razed whole areas including gardens, and olive and orange groves.

“We didn’t see a single house that was intact … that was not hit. The entire infrastructure, tracks, fields, roads, was in total ruin. The D-9 (bulldozer) had gone over everything,” the report quoted one as saying.

This was also evident to foreign reporters who were allowed into Gaza by the army only after fighting stopped on Jan 22.

“There was a clear feeling, and this was repeated whenever others spoke to us, that no humanitarian consideration played any role in the army at present,” a soldier says.

“The goal was to carry out an operation with the least possible casualties for the army.”

The army rebuttal said: “Most of the testimonies are anonymous and lack any identifying details that would allow the IDF to investigate, confirm, or refute them … not even a first initial …” and no ranks or unit names at all are provided.

Responding to Wednesday’s report, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a statement: “The IDF is one of the most moral armies in the world and behaves in accordance with the highest ethical code.”

(Editing by Dominic Evans)

PERHAPS, like me, you have this romantic notion of shopping daily — maybe even a mental vision of yourself making the rounds, wicker basket in hand, of your little Shropshire or Provençal or Tuscan village. The reality, of course, is that few of us provision our kitchens or cook exclusively with ultra-fresh ingredients, especially in winter, when there simply are no ultra-fresh ingredients.

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But if your goal is to cook and cook quickly, to get a satisfying and enjoyable variety of real food on the table as often as possible, a well-stocked pantry and fridge can sustain you. Replenished weekly or even less frequently, with an occasional stop for fresh vegetables, meat, fish and dairy, they are the core supply houses for the home cook.

While you’re stocking up, you might clear out a bit of the detritus that’s cluttering your shelves. Some of these things take up more space than they’re worth, while others are so much better in their real forms that the difference is laughable. Sadly, some remain in common usage even among good cooks. My point here is not to criminalize their use, but to point out how easily and successfully we can substitute for them, in every case with better results.

Here, then, is my little list of items you might spurn, along with some essential pantry and long-keeping refrigerator items you might consider. Note that I’m not including the ultra-obvious, things that are more or less ubiquitous in the contemporary American pantry, like potatoes, eggs and honey.

OUT Packaged bread crumbs or croutons.

IN Take crumbs, cubes or slices of bread, and either toast evenly in a low oven until dry and lightly browned, tossing occasionally; or cook in olive oil until brown and crisp, stirring frequently. The first keep a long time, and are multipurpose; the second are best used quickly, and are incomparably delicious.

OUT Bouillon cubes or powder, or canned stock.

IN Simmer a carrot, a celery stalk and half an onion in a couple of cups of water for 10 minutes and you’re better off; if you have any chicken scraps, even a half-hour of cooking with those same vegetables will give you something 10 times better than any canned stock.

OUT Aerosol oil. At about $12 a pint, twice as expensive as halfway decent extra virgin olive oil, which spray oil most decidedly is not; and it contains additives.

IN Get some good olive oil and a hand-pumped sprayer or even simpler, a brush. Simplest: your fingers.

OUT Bottled salad dressing and marinades. The biggest rip-offs imaginable.

IN Take good oil and vinegar or lemon juice, and combine them with salt, pepper, maybe a little Dijon, in a proportion of about three parts oil to one of vinegar. Customize from there, because you may like more vinegar or less, and you undoubtedly will want a little shallot, or balsamic vinegar, or honey, or garlic, or tarragon, or soy sauce. …

OUT Bottled lemon juice.

IN Lemons. Try buying six at a time, then experiment; I never put lemon on something and regret it. (Scramble a couple of eggs in chicken stock, then finish with a lot of lemon, black pepper and dill; call this egg-lemon soup, or avgolemono.) Don’t forget the zest: you can grate it and add it to many pan sauces, or hummus and other purées. And don’t worry about reamers, squeezers or any of that junk; squeeze from one hand into the other and let your fingers filter out the pips.

OUT Spices older than a year: smell before using; if you get a whiff of dust or must before you smell the spice, toss it. I find it easier to clean house once a year and buy new ones.

IN Fresh spices. Almost all spices are worth having. But some that you might think about using more frequently include cardamom (try a tiny bit in your next coffee cake, apple cake, spice cake or rice pilaf); ground cumin (a better starting place in chili — in fact, in many bean dishes — than chili powder); fennel seeds (these will give a Provençal flavor to any tomato sauce or soup; grind them first, or not); an assortment of dried chilies (I store them all together, because dried chipotles make the rest of them slightly smoky); fresh — or at least dried — ginger, which is lovely grated over most vegetables; pimentón, the smoked Spanish red pepper that is insanely popular in restaurants but still barely making inroads among home cooks; and good curry powder.

OUT Dried parsley and basil. They’re worthless.

IN Fresh parsley, which keeps at least a week in the refrigerator. (Try your favorite summer pesto recipe with parsley in place of basil, or simply purée some parsley with a little oil, water, salt and a whisper of garlic. Or add a chopped handful to any salad or almost anything else.) And dried tarragon, rosemary and dill, all of which I use all winter; mix a teaspoon or so of tarragon or rosemary — not more, they’re strong — with olive oil or melted butter and brush on roasted or broiled chicken while it cooks, or add a pinch to vinaigrette. Dill is also good with chicken; on plain broiled fish, with lemon; or in many simple soups.

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OUT Canned beans (except in emergencies).

IN Dried beans. More economical, better tasting, space saving and available in far more varieties. Cook a pound once a week and you’ll always have them around (you can freeze small amounts in their cooking liquid, or water, indefinitely). If you’re not sold, try this: soak and cook a pound of white beans. Take some and finish with fresh chopped sage, garlic and good olive oil. Purée another cup or so with a boiled potato and lots of garlic. Mix some with a bit of cooking liquid, and add a can of tomatoes; some chopped celery, carrots and onions; cooked pasta; and cheese and call it pasta fagiole or minestrone. If there are any left, mix them with a can of olive-oil-packed tuna or sardines. And that’s just white beans.

OUT Imitation vanilla.

IN Vanilla beans. They’re expensive, but they keep. (If you look online you can find bargains in bulk, which is why I have 25 in my refrigerator.) If you slice a pod in half and simmer it with some leftover rice and any kind of milk (dairy, coconut, almond…), you’ll never go back to extract.

OUT Grated imitation “Parmesan” (beware the green cylinder, or any other pre-grated cheese for that matter).

IN Real Parmigiano-Reggiano. Wrapped well, it keeps for a year (scrape mold off if necessary). Grated over anything, there is no more magical ingredient. Think about pasta with butter and Parmesan (does your mouth water?). But also think about any egg dish, with Parmesan; anything sautéed with a coating of bread crumbs and Parmesan; or asparagus, broccoli, spinach or any other cooked vegetable, topped with Parmesan (and maybe some bread crumbs) and run under the broiler; how great. Save the rinds to throw in pots of sauce, soup, tomato-y stew or risotto.

OUT Canned peas (and most other canned vegetables, come to think of it).

IN Frozen peas. Especially if you have little kids and make pasta or rice with peas (and Parmesan!); not bad. Or purée with a little lemon juice and salt for a nice spread or dip. In fact, many frozen vegetables are better than you might think.

OUT Tomato paste in a can.

IN Tomato paste in a tube. You rarely need more than two tablespoons so you feel guilty opening a can; this solves that problem. Stir some into vegetables sautéed in olive oil, for example, then add water for fast soup. Or add a bit to almost any vegetable as it cooks in olive oil and garlic — especially cabbage, dark greens, carrots or cauliflower.

OUT Premade pie crusts. O.K., these are a real convenience, but almost all use inferior fats. I’d rather make a “pie” or quiche with no crust than use these.

IN Crumble graham crackers with melted butter and press into a pan. But really — if you put a pinch of salt, a cup of flour, a stick of very cold, cut-up butter in a food processor, then blend with a touch of water until it almost comes together — you have a dough you can refrigerate or freeze and roll out whenever you want, in five minutes.

OUT Cheap balsamic or flavored vinegars.

IN Sherry vinegar. More acidic and more genuine than all but the most expensive balsamic. Try a salad of salted cabbage (shred, then toss with a couple of tablespoons of salt in a colander for an hour or two, then rinse and drain), tossed with plenty of black pepper, a little olive oil and enough sherry vinegar to make the whole thing sharp.

OUT Minute Rice or boil-in-a-bag grains.

IN Genuine grains. Critical; as many different types as you have space for. Short grain rice — for risotto, paella, just good cooked rice — of course. Barley, pearled or not; a super rice alternative, with any kind of gravy, reduction sauce, pan drippings, what have you. Ground corn for polenta, grits, cornbread or thickener (whisk some — not much — into a soup and see what happens). Quinoa — people can’t believe how flavorful this is until they try it. Bulgur, which is ready in maybe 10 minutes (it requires only steeping), and everyone likes. If you’re in doubt about how to cook any of these, combine them with abundant salted water and cook as you would pasta, then drain when tender; you can’t go far wrong.

OUT “Pancake” syrup, which is more akin to Coke than to the real thing.

IN Real maple syrup, an indigenous gift from nature and the north country.

YOU SHOULD ALSO STOCK:

REAL BACON OR PROSCIUTTO Or other traditionally smoked or cured meat of some kind. If you have a quarter pound of prosciutto in the house at all times you can make almost anything — simple cooked grains, beans, vegetables, tomato sauces, soups — taste better. And, tightly wrapped, it’ll keep for weeks in the fridge or months in the freezer.

FISH SAUCE You have soy sauce, presumably; this is different, stronger, cruder (or should I say “less refined”?) in a way — and absolutely delicious. Use sparingly, but use; start by sprinkling a little over plain steamed vegetables, along with a lot of black pepper.

CANNED COCONUT MILK Try this: cook some onions in oil with curry powder; stir in coconut milk; poach chicken, fish, tofu, or even meat in that. Serve over rice.

MISO PASTE Never goes bad, as far as I can tell, and its flavor is incomparable. Whisk into boiling water for real soup in three minutes; thin a bit (with sake if you have it), and smear on meat or fish that’s almost done broiling; add a spoonful to vinaigrette. Etc.

CAPERS, GOOD OLIVES (BUY IN BULK, NOT CANS) AND GOOD ANCHOVIES (IN OLIVE OIL, PLEASE) The combination of the three makes a powerful paste, or pasta sauce, or dip.

WALNUTS And/or other nuts, but walnuts are most basic and useful. Try a purée with garlic, oil and a little water, as a pasta sauce, or just add to salads or cooked grains.

PIGNOLI With raisins, they make any dish Sicilian.

DRIED FRUIT For snacking, in braises (braised pork with prunes is a classic winter dish), or just soaked in water (or booze) or poached for dessert. Don’t forget dried tomatoes, too.

DRIED MUSHROOMS Don’t even bother to reconstitute if you’re cooking with liquid; just toss them in.

FROZEN SHRIMP Incredibly convenient.

WINTER SQUASH AND SWEET POTATOES These store almost as well as potatoes and are more nutritious and equally interesting. A sweet potato roasted until the exterior is nearly blackened and the interior is mush is a wonderful snack. The best winter squashes (delicata, for example) have edible skins and are amazing just chunked and roasted with a little oil (and maybe some ginger or garlic). For butternut- or acorn-type squashes, poke holes through to the center with a skewer in a few places and roast in a 400 degree oven until soft. Let cool, then peel and seed.

Connect the dots: Goldman Sachs made $3.44 billion in profit this past quarter, while the US deficit topped $1 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history and appeared to be headed toward doubling that figure before the budget year is out. Since most of the increase in the federal deficit is due to bailing out the banks and salvaging the greater economy they helped destroy, why is the top investment bank doing so well?

Well, because that was the plan, as devised by Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Remember that Lehman Brothers, Goldman’s competitor, was allowed to go bankrupt. The Paulson crowd wouldn’t let Lehman change its status to that of a bank holding company and thus qualify for federal funds; soon afterward, Goldman was granted just such a deal, worth a quick $10 billion. Much is now made of Goldman paying back part of its bailout money, but forgotten is the $12.9 billion that Goldman got as its cut of the $180 billion AIG payoff. That is money that will not be paid back.

Goldman is considered a very smart bank because it was early in reducing its exposure to the mortgage derivatives that in large part caused the meltdown. However, it had done much to expand the market and continued to sell suspect derivatives to unwary buyers as sound investments, even as Goldman divested. The firm still holds $1.85 billion in real estate and lost $499 million in the previous quarter on bad loans, but made up for it by playing the vulture role and issuing high-interest debt to governments and companies made desperate by the recession that the financial gimmicks of the banks brought on in the first place.

And Goldman was not just another bank. Before Paulson ran the Treasury Department, another former Goldman head, Robert Rubin, pushed through the repeal of the Glass-Steagall controls on banking activity. While some now play down the significance of this radical deregulation, not so Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein–at least not back in June 2007, when the markets were still doing well. “If you take an historical perspective,” Blankfein told the New York Times by way of explaining his company’s spectacular success at the time, “we’ve come full circle, because that is exactly what the Rothschilds or J.P. Morgan the banker were doing in their heyday. What caused an aberration was the Glass-Steagall Act.”

That 1933 act was repealed in a law signed by President Bill Clinton at Rubin’s urging, and in the following eight years Goldman Sachs recorded a 265 percent growth in its balance sheet. “Back then,” the Wall Street Journal reports, “Goldman was churning out profits by trading credit derivatives, speculating on currencies and oil and placing big bets [on] the stock market.”

Big bets made in a casino designed by Goldman, which now makes money off loans to the victims. High on the list of victims are state governments that have to turn to Goldman for money because the federal government that saved the banks won’t do the same for the states, which have watched their tax bases shrink because of the banking meltdown. As the WSJ noted, “issuing debt to ailing governments” is now a growth industry for Goldman.

Why didn’t the federal government just lend the money to the states? Why was all the money thrown at Wall Street instead of needy homeowners or struggling school systems? Because the federal government works for Goldman and not for us. Indeed, when it comes to the banking bailout, Goldman Sachs is the government.

So much so that last fall the New York Times ran a story, headlined “The Guys From ‘Government Sachs’,” that stated: “Goldman’s presence in the [Treasury] department and around the federal response to the financial bailout is so ubiquitous that other bankers and competitors have given the star-studded firm a new nickname: Government Sachs.”

One of those stars was Stephen Friedman, another former head of Goldman. Friedman was both a director of the company and chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank when he helped work out the details of the Wall Street bailout. The president of the NY Fed at the time, Timothy Geithner, now secretary of the treasury, requested a conflict-of-interest waiver that allowed Friedman to buy more Goldman Sachs stock, and Friedman ended up with 98,600 shares. At market close on Tuesday that was worth $14,756,476. That’s nothing–three years ago, the fifty top Goldman execs made $20 million each, and this year could be better.

They’re not hurting.

This past winter both the outgoing director of the CIA and a separate Pentagon report declared political instability in Mexico to be on a par with Pakistan and Iran as top-ranking threats to US national security. It was an exaggeration; Mexico is not yet a “failed state.” On the other hand, it is certainly drifting in that direction.

A vicious war among narco-trafficking cartels last year killed at least 6,000 people, including public officials, police and journalists. The country leads the world in kidnappings (Pakistan is second). And with the global crisis, the chronically anemic economy is hemorrhaging jobs, businesses and hope.

Not surprisingly, voters turned against President Felipe Calderón’s right-wing National Action Party (PAN) in the July 5 midterm elections. But the left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD)–which many believe was robbed of the presidency in the 2006 election–has ripped itself apart with factional infighting. So frustrated Mexicans gave their Congress back to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose decades of corrupt authoritarian rule were supposed to have permanently ended in 2000. At least, thought many voters, the PRI knows how to keep order.

Mexicans are of course responsible for their own country. But geography has always forced them to play out their history in the shadow of their northern neighbor. “Poor Mexico,” goes the saying. “So far from God, so close to the United States.” Today, Mexico is a prime example of the socially destructive effects of the neoliberal economics promoted throughout the world by the US governing class.

The North American Free Trade Agreement–proposed by Ronald Reagan, negotiated by George Bush I and pushed through Congress by Bill Clinton in 1993–is both symbol and substance of neoliberalism. It was sold to the citizens of the United States, Mexico and Canada with the promise that free trade in goods and money would transform Mexico into a booming middle-class economy, dramatically reducing illegal immigration and creating a vast market for US and, to a lesser extent, Canadian exports.

Fifteen years later, Mexico is still unable to create enough jobs to employ its people. Out-migration has doubled, and on both sides of the US-Mexico border labor-market competition has kept wages down. At the top, income and wealth have ballooned. It is no accident that among NAFTA’s prominent godfathers were former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (Democrat) and former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan (Republican), whose fingerprints are all over the current global financial disaster.

I was an opponent of NAFTA. Still, I thought the best case for it was that efficiencies from economic integration could at least make US and Mexican businesses more internationally competitive. But even that argument turned out to be worth no more than a share of Bernie Madoff’s hedge fund.

Several years ago I gave a speech to a group of businesspeople in Mexico City. Those from the multinational banks and corporations thought NAFTA was a great success, but smaller Mexican businessmen saw it differently. You Americans, said one, promised that with your technology and our cheap labor, we’d be partners in competing with Asia. Then you opened up your markets to China and invested there instead. “Sure,” he said. “We can make TV parts for half what it costs in the United States. But the Chinese can make them, and ship them, for a tenth. So instead of closing the gap between Mexico and the United States by raising wages, we have to narrow the gap between Mexico and China by lowering them.”

When I mentioned the conversation to a New York investment banker who had lobbied for NAFTA, he conceded that his side may have talked vaguely about partnership with Mexico. But he shrugged and added, “Things changed”–that is, profit opportunities in China dwarfed anything Mexico had to offer.

The Wall Streeters had little interest in making Mexico more competitive. They also had little interest in making the United States more competitive. Their purpose was just the opposite: to disconnect themselves and their corporate partners from the fate of any particular country. The World Trade Organization, the opening of the US market to China and a parade of bilateral trade agreements followed in NAFTA’s wake.

In Mexico, the political and financial elite were willing collaborators. For example, NAFTA opened up Mexican banks to foreign ownership: political insiders who had bought the giant Banamex from the government for $3.2 billion and gotten the government to provide it with permanent subsidies then sold the firm, with the subsidies, to Citigroup for $12.5 billion. Today roughly 90 percent of the banking system is owned by US and other foreign investors, who do not have to recycle Mexicans’ deposits, or the Mexican government’s money, back into Mexico but can invest them anyplace in the world.

The Banamex deal was negotiated by Rubin after he became Citigroup’s $17 million-a-year executive committee chair. In the late 1980s, when he was at Goldman Sachs, Rubin had midwifed the privatization of Mexico’s phone system to Carlos Slim, a politically connected Mexican businessman. Slim then used the monopoly profits from his high phone rates to invest all over the globe–including a substantial ownership stake in the New York Times. The latest Forbes rating says he’s the world’s third-richest man.

Still, as long as the US economy was blowing dot-com and subprime bubbles, the neoliberal model seemed stable. US investors got Mexican bank deposits and cheaper labor on both sides of the border. Through out-migration to the States, Mexico’s oligarchs got rid of frustrated workers who might otherwise have been politically troublesome. The economy also benefited from hard-currency remittances migrants sent back home.

Another infusion of cash to the Mexican economy, unacknowledged in the official statistics, is the roughly $25 billion in illegal drug exports to the States. Today, with remittances, oil prices and tourism depressed, the narco trade is probably Mexico’s largest single earner of hard currency.

NAFTA and the neoliberal ideology it represents are certainly not the root causes of narco-trafficking. But they have been major factors in its recent monstrous growth. For starters, the trade agreement created a two-way overland superhighway for contraband; the Mexican drug lords use the dollars they have earned from their exports to import guns, aircraft and sophisticated military equipment from the United States to fight their territorial wars. By wiping out small Mexican farms that could not compete with heavily subsidized US agribusiness, NAFTA also expanded the pool of unemployed young people that provides the narco-traffickers with recruits. And banking integration under NAFTA made money laundering much easier.

Perhaps most important, NAFTA has helped maintain the corrupt network of Mexican oligarchs. The 1988 presidential election–which the then-ruling PRI had to steal from the PRD to win–shocked the establishment on both sides of the border. By opening up Mexico to US money and influence, NAFTA was a way, as the US Trade Representative said to me at the time, “to keep the Mexican left out of power.”

Until the 1980s, Mexican drug (mostly marijuana) smuggling to the north was modest in scale and generally tolerated by successive PRI governments. Their message was: we don’t care what you sell to the gringos, but no rough stuff here, keep it away from our kids and of course share a little of the profit under the table. But the US-backed neoliberals who took over the PRI in the 1980s had closer ties with the Mexican cartels. The brother and father of president and NAFTA champion Carlos Salinas–hailed in Washington as a good-government reformer–were widely accused of being connected to the drug business. In Salinas’s first year in office his national police chief was found with $2.4 million in drug money in the trunk of his car.

In the 1990s, as the geographically better-positioned Mexican cartels muscled out the Colombians as chief cocaine retailers to the US market, their profits and political influence grew. But so did the rivalry among them and their allied government factions for control of trade routes. Bullet-riddled bodies began showing up on the streets, making the public nervous.

Seeking legitimacy after his 2006 election was tainted by charges of fraud, President Felipe Calderón declared war on the narco-traffickers. It was a popular gesture, but given that the police, the military and the legal system are heavily infiltrated by the gangs, it backfired. The narcos reacted with horrific violence–assassinations, beheadings and mutilations of police and soldiers as well as thugs, brazenly displayed on YouTube. Losing control, Calderón appealed to George Bush II for help. The result: the Mérida Initiative, a $400 million-per-year program to provide aircraft, military equipment and training to the Mexican police and military.

After decades of keeping its distance from the United States, the Mexican military–like the armed forces of Colombia, Honduras and other Latin American countries–is becoming a Pentagon client. In turn, Mexican society is itself becoming militarized. Corrupt local police are being replaced by soldiers who may be slightly less corrupt but who are a greater threat to human rights and democracy. An April Human Rights Watch report identified seventeen specific cases of abuse by the Mexican military, including “killings, torture, rapes, and arbitrary detentions.”

To his credit, Barack Obama has acknowledged what his predecessors failed to: that the US demand for drugs and its supplying of arms makes it an enabler in the rise of narco warlords. But he has also made it clear that neither issue is on his administration’s agenda. Moreover, just as Bill Clinton carried the water for George Bush I’s NAFTA, Barack Obama has endorsed Bush II’s Mérida Initiative.

Given the unwillingness of US politicians to deal with the demand side of the market, the Mérida Initiative is not likely to be any more successful in eradicating the drug trade than the $6 billion Plan Colombia has been. The best one can hope for is some sort of market-sharing deal among the cartels that would be implicitly endorsed by the Mexican government while Washington tactfully averts its eyes. Given that in many areas, drug money is the chief source of campaign financing, a PRI-dominated Mexican Congress might be just the right forum for a cynical, but welcome, end to the killings.

Meanwhile, the drug violence has frightened away tourists and investors, making Mexico’s recession even worse. Most forecasters expect the economy to contract some 6 percent this year–a huge hit to a country in which 45 percent live on $2 a day or less. Calderón’s response is to tread water–rescuing big businesses that speculated on Wall Street derivatives and dribbling out a bit more public spending–while waiting for the United States to once again suck up Mexico’s surplus labor.

But even when the US economy recovers, it is unlikely to re-create the credit boom that kept the NAFTA deal afloat. In the post-crash era, the United States will finally be forced to address its trade deficits and its massive foreign debt. Americans will have to slow down consumer spending, increase savings and sell more to–and buy less from–the rest of the world. If Mexico could not prosper during fifteen years of exporting goods and people to a bloated US consumer market, it is hard to believe it will be able to do so when that market has slimmed down.

The entire relationship must be rethought. In this regard, Obama’s abandonment of his campaign pledge to renegotiate NAFTA was a missed opportunity. A renewed debate over the trade deal could have spurred public discussion of the failure of neoliberal economics, the “war on drugs” and an immigration policy that ignores conditions in Mexico that drive people across the border. It could have been a forum to think through the question of how continental integration can work for working people rather than just investors. For example, what kind of cooperative transportation, energy and green industrial policies would make the people of three nations–now bound together in one market–globally competitive?

Obama’s Wall Street advisers have no more interest in this sort of change than did Bush’s. And without a new economic direction, life for the average Mexican will surely worsen and social tensions rise. Some Mexican friends point out that the revolution against Spain erupted in 1810 and the one against the US-backed dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1910. And in 2010… ?

In any event, Mexico’s growing troubles will not stay conveniently on the other side of the Rio Grande. Build a ten-foot wall, and desperate people will find twelve-foot ladders. Free trade will, of course, continue to flourish; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano estimates that Mexican drug cartels are now operating in 230 US cities.

So, thanks to the people who brought you the subprime mortgage disaster, the credit freeze and the Great Recession, the next Mexican revolution may come closer to home than you think.

An astonishing six million people are estimated to have died as a result of the conflict in the Congo – the largest war-related death toll since the Second World War. What is perhaps more appalling to citizens geographically removed from this conflict, is the fact that our consumption of seemingly indispensable high-tech gadgets – cell phones, mp3 players, laptops and video game systems – may have substantially contributed to this holocaust.

The conflict in the Congo is often described as “tribal,” but sober assessments by the United Nations, research organizations and the American government reveal something far more complex. The multimillion dollar trade of the Congo’s natural resources by foreign armies, rebels and militias has played an integral role in fueling the conflict – both by motivating armed groups to wage war, and by providing them with the cash to do so.

Here’s where the Western consumer comes in. Congolese minerals – after being dug up at gunpoint or taxed by brutal militias and rebels – often take a long international trip before ending up in our pockets and on our desks. Raw materials are traded in Central Africa, processed into electronic hardware in East Asia and eventually end up on the shelves of large electronics companies. As the final link in this supply chain, consumers are unintentionally funding the deadliest war in the world today – not something we equate with buying a new cell phone or laptop. John Prendergast, the co-chair of the Enough Project: an initiative to end genocide and crimes against humanity, notes “there are few other conflicts in the world where the link between our consumer appetites and mass human suffering is so direct.”

There are four main minerals that link our gadgets to the war. Tin is used as a solder on circuit boards of all electronic products; tantalum, or coltan, is used in capacitors that control the flow of electric current; tungsten makes our cell phones vibrate; and gold, a veteran conflict mineral, is used in many products for its resistance to corrosion.

By controlling these essential minerals within the global economy, rebels and militias – not to mention the governments that have directly supported them (including both the governments of Congo and Rwanda) – generate millions in profit, providing ample funds for armed groups to wage wars and terrorize civilians. Women and girls have disproportionately borne the horrific brunt of this conflict: the level and brutality of the sexual violence pandemic in Congo is unparalleled, affecting hundreds of thousands of women.

A grassroots campaign is developing to help end this war by focusing on its root causes. The targets of this growing movement are the powerful electronics companies that may unwittingly be using conflict minerals in their products. Letter campaigns and the threat of boycotting companies that refuse to investigate their supply chains are raising the level of pressure on markets already in decline as a result of the global recession.

On the political end, a bipartisan bill in the US Senate could require all US-registered companies selling products using tin, tantalum or tungsten to annually disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) where the minerals were mined. If the company lists the Congo, or any of its neighbors, as the country of origin, then it would be obliged to name the specific mine.

A similar bill in Canada’s parliament is urgently needed to help end the war in Congo, which kills an estimated 45,000 Congolese every month. As engaged citizens we need to write to our members of Parliament, encouraging them to draft and support such a bill. Canada must show leadership by ensuring Canadians are not indirectly contributing to this bloodshed.

By building awareness of the relationship between tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold in our electronic goodies and the conflict in the Congo – and by translating that awareness into consumer and citizen pressure – we can play a key role in helping to end this holocaust in Central Africa. Without action, we will continue to sustain the Congo War … and an unprecedented amount of suffering and sexual violence.

Greg Queyranne, MA, is a Canadian researcher focusing on conflicts in Central Africa.