MEDIA ROOTS – Recently we caught up with director Dean Puckett and Dr. Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, the creators of the film Crisis of Civilization. Puckett discusses his background as an activist and why he believes corporate media is becoming more irrelevant by the day. Dr. Ahmed sheds light on the true scope of Al Qaeda as well as the Pentagon’s new “lily pad” base system.

Be sure to check out our previous film review for Crisis of Civilization.

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Interview with filmmaker and director Dean Puckett

You have had some experience as an activist I understand. You chained yourself to a tree to save a community from being bulldozed, or something along those lines? Please talk about that.
 
Sure, well firstly, it wasn’t a tree. My hand was chained inside a concrete barrel which was attached to the gates of Dale Farm. Dale Farm was the largest Traveller community of its kind in Britain. It consisted of nearly a hundred plots of land and at its peak, over a thousand residents of Irish Traveller and English Gypsy heritage. I spent 6 weeks living in the community there as part of a resistance to an eviction threat by the local council. Unfortunately we failed and Basildon Borough Council evicted 90 families (about 500 people, many of them children) from the 52 plots of land at Dale Farm because they didn’t have planning permission even though they owned the land that they were living on.

There has been much written about Dale Farm but I think the crux of it is that there is a lot of prejudice against Gypsy and Traveller communities in the UK which gave the Conservative Government the remit to carry out what I believe to be a racist eviction. People like to hide behind the bureaucracies of planning law and conservative ideologies which justify violent evictions of children and families. But in reality we have a hypocritical Legal System which is stacked in favour of the wealthy so it is almost impossible for Travellers to find a piece of land to live on in peace in a way which suits their culture. No one has the right to dominate the natural resources of this planet yet Travellers are hounded to the point where a culture is virtually wiped out because they refuse to conform to what is considered ‘normal society.’ As my good friend Simon said, “no court in the land could make the eviction of Dale Farm just,” and that is how I feel about it.

So I was chained to the gates on the day when there was the first real threat of eviction of the community. You can watch the video of me ‘locked on.’ And truth be told I have some regrets about the experience. I don’t regret locking on or being a part of the resistance at Dale Farm but I really regret talking to the media as I feel it trivialized what I was doing. Putting your body in the way of injustice is something which I feel is important but talking to right wing press will always undermine your actions no matter how well you put your points across.

I wasn’t there on the day of the actual eviction of Dale Farm which was the harshest piece of State Violence that we have seen in this country in my lifetime. If you go back there now the whole area has been dug up and destroyed and there are Travellers living on the side of the road. It was utterly pointless but the establishment has shown once again the lengths it will go to protect its most valuable asset: land. 

How did Nafeez influence you the most to make this film?

I am attracted to Nafeez’s work because of the way he communicates his ideas which is to analyze global issues such as peak oil, climate change, the war on terror, the destructive nature of neoliberal capitalism from a systems point of view. So he will analyze the root structural causes of these issues without getting caught up in conspiracy theories, or “them and us” type rhetoric. He keeps a level head and is very pragmatic. His work also feels passionate yet not preachy, with a level of humility about history and the possibility that he could be wrong, which I personally find much easier to engage with than many progressive academics whom are sometimes quite dogmatic about their approach.

But also, as a filmmaker, you have to ask yourself, “how can you add to this?” So reading his book I felt like I could bring these ideas to an audience who would not previously have engaged in the text, which is why I felt it was worth spending a year of my life adapting it into a feature length film alongside artist and animator Lucca Benney.

Also I feel like Nafeez is a unique voice being a Muslim and talking about these issues and it’s not something he gets enough credit for in my opinion. Many of these policies affect Muslim communities globally and domestically and so he deserves to have a place. I’m glad this film seems to be making more people aware of his work.

Other than that I have learnt a hell of a lot from him. It was almost like I did a course in international relations and global politics just making the film. We did seven or eight interview sessions, constantly talking back and forth on the phone and working together to make the film and create the final script. Not to mention the community screenings and film festivals we have attended together since last October.

We’ve learnt from each other, as I think I have taught him to communicate his ideas in a more simple way. Due to having to condense it into a 77 minute film I have had to really strip it down and get to the heart of the issue and also in terms of communication I would say stuff like “how can we say this in a less academic way?” or “how can it be clearer?” I have seen this has translated into the real world in talks and articles which Nafeez has produced since. Ultimately through the experience of making the film, and to this day as we see the film find its audience on television and the internet, we have become friends and he has helped me understand the world better. And that in turn has influenced the way I have approached things like activism and the way I communicate ideas.
 
There’s an irony of using campy, government funded, public educational film clips in the movie and Crisis of Civilization being the new, 21st century version of a public, educational film, if you will. How much is Crisis of Civilization an antidote to mainstream media propaganda and disinformation?

Key to making this film possible was the discovery of internet archives of open source stock footage. I used footage mainly from the Prelinger Archives and AV Geeks collection, carefully selected from watching hundreds of films. It is a world where you find subtle (and not so subtle) metaphors and parallels to shine fresh light on contemporary issues facing our societies. Some of the films are made by institutions like General Motors and Monsanto and so there is some irony in using them to interpret global crises such as food shortages and energy depletion but also from a creative point of view they look wonderful.

I would sit watching them for hours and hours. I became obsessed with these films and immersed myself in this strange corporate parallel universe. The reason they are so fascinating is because they tell us so much about the world we live in. They represent the ideologies that have gotten us into this mess and the films often bring humor and a surreal edge to Nafeez’s factual and academic work. We also made a conscious decision to make the animations beautiful in their simplicity using iconography such as a business monster eating a forest to guide the audience through the thesis.

I think the mainstream media is becoming more and more irrelevant as the images we see on our TV screens become less in parity with the experiences we are having in the real world. As neoliberal capitalism is failing but the talking heads keep saying the same old crap, people will be looking for different voices and hopefully we can be one of them. There is a faux balance that is created with the news here in Britain. They would never report a more radical perspective on an issue that would really be challenging to the status quo, for example “Lets completely change the way we create money.” Their ‘balance’ is always within a very narrow framework.

Independent media and journalism, along with the internet, is revolutionizing the way we perceive the world and I think that the resurgence in documentary film making along with digital technology is really exciting and is something I am proud to be a part of. I think this is why people are turning to documentary because you can actually take the time to explore and explain something in depth. People are looking to delve beneath the headlines and get into the issues, whether it’s an adaptation of a book or a human story that is not even political, we’re seeing more thirst for real journalism and real filmmakers with a voice to be an antidote to the news and media as people try and make sense of the world around them. The real challenge is how to keep our momentum, break down mainstream distribution channels, and communicate to larger audiences without bowing down to mainstream conventions or sensationalism.

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Interview with Dr. Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed
 
Another great documentary is the BBC production, The Power of Nightmares. It purports that Al-Qaeda literally means “the list” and was a C.I.A. created list of mujahideen fighters, under Bin Laden’s leadership, who fought the Soviets. How real is Al-Qaeda and how much is it a C.I.A. created nightmarish, figment of our imagination?
 
Al-Qaeda is real, but it did very much originate as an intelligence database of Mujahideen recruits. The later British foreign secretary Robin Cook confirmed in the Guardian that Al-Qaeda referred to a CIA database. These recruits were mobilized primarily in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. However, it would be a mistake to assume that Al-Qaeda is simply, therefore, an extension of the CIA and a figment of our imagination. The recruits that joined Al-Qaeda were drawn from militant strands of Muslim movements in parts of the Muslim world which already existed. Since then, those strands have often solidified. Al-Qaeda does exist and it does have real agency but it is a loose network rather than a hierarchical centralized structure and it’s precisely this looseness that makes it vulnerable to infiltration, penetration, and manipulation from outside.

Al-Qaeda  has also remained fundamentally dependent on a variety of state agencies for support, namely, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Qatar, the UAE, to name a few. As these are to a large extent client regimes of the US and UK, there is scope for manipulation through strategic provision and withdrawal of aid. So, in summary, yes there are real militant Islamist extremists out there, some of them affiliated with a network of Mujahideen fighters associated with a core group originally trained with the logistical and financial support of the CIA. In this context, it would be too simplistic to simply assert that Al-Qaeda is a “figment of our imagination.” On the other hand, there is evidence that the Al-Qaeda label has been misapplied, sometimes deliberately, by Western military intelligence agencies to broadly demonize social groups whose links with Al-Qaeda are in reality tenuous (e.g. Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb: despite some real elements of Al-Qaeda being involved in some cases, many others do not withstand scrutiny – e.g. see the work of Jeremy Keenan). Equally, cases where Al-Qaeda do appear to be involved are underplayed and the al-Qaeda element is overlooked when it suits certain geostrategic interests (e.g. links of the 7/7 bombers with al-Qaeda networks in the Balkans; the role of the west in financing Al-Qaeda Mujahideen networks in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia).
 
Since 9-11, the United States military has been implementing the “lilly pad” base system; around 50 smaller bases, scattered around the world with small troop numbers, spartan amenities and complete with pre-equipped weaponry. What does this new strategy say about the American empire in the 21st century?

Successive US military planning and national security strategy documents confirm that the US continues to adopt a military posture in which it self-identifies as a unilateral hegemonic power with ultimate responsibility for the integrity of the existing global political and economic order. To this end, the US has attempted to spawn a network of bases in key strategic regions around the world with a view to enable a unique capacity to mobilize military forces at will, with speed, anywhere in the world, and further, to potentially fight wars in multiple theatres. They are a way of continuing to encroach on and contain the power of US rivals like Russia and China.

However, the distinctive quality of the lilly pad system is to focus on less public forms of military penetration into diverse geographical locations, to empower intelligence functions and covert operations capability in a way unlikely to solicit significant public awareness and opposition. It is also linked to a need for greater efficiency in military budgets, facing the strain in the context of continuing global recession.

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Adam Miezio for Media Roots.

Cover art created by Abby Martin.

MEDIA ROOTS – For the third straight election, an international convenience store chain is now offering coffee cups featuring President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. The unscientific poll currently claims to hold Obama over Romney, 58 to 42 percent respectively.

The marketing ploy has been labeled “7-Election” and offers cups featuring only the two establishment candidates running for office. However, several additional candidates continue to actively run while still not taken seriously by corporate establishments. Below are grassroots campaigns that voters might also consider to support this November despite them not having their face stamped on cups of joe.

Gary Johnson / Jim Gray – Libertarian Party

    Johnson is the sanest man running for president, according to GQ. He’s on the ballot in 47 states and believes the federal government spends too much because it does too much, such as subsidizing public energy resources and prolonging warfare.

Rocky Anderson / Luis Rodriguez – Justice Party

    The former mayor of Salt Lake City wishes to create a watchdog agency, instead re-enlisting Congress, to oversee the Federal Reserve while raising the federal minimum wage without first halting inflation.

Rosanne Barr / Cindy Sheehan – Peace and Freedom Party

    Barr calls for an end to the prohibition of marijuana, rejects continued war support for Israel, and supported Sheehan’s congressional campaign in 2008. But who will run with Barr now that Sheehan has resigned from the campaign?

Dr. Jill Stein / Cheri Honkala – Green Party

    This team has based their campaign around their Green New Deal and wishes to create millions of green jobs. But Dr. Stein admits a vote for her would “take votes away from Obama who would be better for the 99% than Romney.”

Virgil Goode / Jim Clymer – Constitution Party

    Goode does support an audit of the Federal Reserve but believes that “legal immigration must be reduced not increased.” He rejects Obamacare and continued funding of Planned Parenthood but does support capital punishment, the utilization of nuclear power, and the expansion of domestic oil drilling opportunities.

The campaign of Dr. Ron Paul is now over with the official selection of Mitt Romney for the Republican Party’s ticket.

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Oscar Mosko for Media Roots.

Photo provided by Flickr user sashafatcat.

MEDIA ROOTS – The Pentagon and the corporate media establishment are again attempting to control the 9/11 and War on Terror narrative by claiming that they are considering legal action against former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette (a.k.a. Mark Owen) for publishing his book No Easy Day. The supposed context for the publication of his story, scheduled for release on Tuesday, is that the veteran did not offer the manuscript to the Department of Defense for prior review and he now may face legal recourse from the agency. Additionally, his name was leaked by the Associated Press last week, resulting in possible threats to his life.

The book was originally scheduled for release on September 11 of this year. It was an attempt made by Owen to remain apolitical about arguably the most politicized event of the decade. But the current debate appears to be scripted for the history books as several hard questions about the death of bin Laden continue to be ignored and will most likely not be answered in the upcoming publication distributed by Dutton.

The first and probably the most obvious discrepancy is if military intelligence had known of his precise location for eight months prior to the raid, then why hasn’t more proof of his whereabouts been released to the American public? “Despite the intense surveillance effort the CIA was unable to obtain a photograph of Bin Laden or a recording of the voice of the mysterious man, presumed to be the al-Qaida leader,” states the Guardian the week after the raid.

With such precise knowledge of the bunker, why was bin Laden not captured for trial in a court of law? Attorney General Eric Holder answers that the operation was not only lawful according to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001) but was simply an act of national self-defense. But in a nation where children are taught the belief of liberty and justice for all, it’s quite contradictory for this nation’s leadership to not protect and promote these ideals worldwide.

Furthermore, Owen recounts a scene where bin Laden may actually have already been dead upon their arrival. “At first it was funny because it was so wrong,” Owen reflected in his account of May 1, 2011. This version is in direct conflict with that of the White House in which bin Laden was allegedly reaching for a weapon at the time of the fatal shots. Owen confirms that the suspected terrorist was unarmed at the time of his death and their team may have just been on a kill mission.

But the greatest and most pertinent question has still not been asked: was Osama Bin Laden actually killed on May 1, 2011? This past March, the online hacker group Anonymous was able to obtain emails from the intelligence analysis group Stratfor which directly contradicts the official story about what happened with bin Laden’s body after the raid. While possibly the smoking gun of a White House cover-up, several news stories reported before the raid also directly contradict the official narrative. Below are a just few examples:

2001 – “Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.” [Fox News]

2002 – “Pakistan’s president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease.” [CNN]

2006 – “Saudi intelligence services seem to be sure that Osama bin Laden is dead. The elements gathered by the Saudis indicate that the head of Al Qaeda was the victim, while he was in Pakistan on Aug. 23, 2006, of a strong case of typhoid fever that led to a partial paralysis of his lower limbs.” [France’s Directorate-General for External Security]

2007 – “… he also had dealings with Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.” [Benazir Bhutto]

2008 – “The last relatively reliable bin Laden sighting was in late 2001.” [Time]

2009 – “What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake – and that he is being kept ‘alive’ by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror? Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.” [Daily Mail]

The War on Terror is riddled with unanswered questions that range in depth and consequence. From numerous eyewitness accounts of what actually hit the Twin Towers to this morning’s attack at a US military base, the corporate media hardly scratches the surface of investigation, often simply regurgitating government propaganda. But as more individuals combat societal ignorance, becoming proactively aware of the atrocities committed by their military establishment and the history of their empire, the War on Terror is destined to end.

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

Photo provided by Flickr user Ben Sutherland.

MEDIA ROOTS — Instead of the run of the mill faceless accusations of ‘The 1% are oppressing the 99%’ research organization Project Censored has compiled a valuable list with names and faces of some of the world’s biggest earners and financial elites.  

Project Censored also characterizes a particular sect of these financial elitists as the ‘Global Economic Super Entity’, the biggest movers and shakers of the world economy. The assertion is made that NATO is now simply an arm of the financial elite global corporate class, a defacto ‘world police force’ to make sure the money keeps flowing as planned. A lot of interesting points are raised with ample documentation contained herein.  

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PROJECT CENSORED – The Occupy Movement has developed a mantra that addresses the great inequality of wealth and power between the world’s wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of us, the other 99 percent. While the 99 percent mantra undoubtedly serves as a motivational tool for open involvement, there is little understanding as to who comprises the 1 percent and how they maintain power in the world. Though a good deal of academic research has dealt with the power elite in the United States, only in the past decade and half has research on the transnational corporate class begun to emerge.[i]

Foremost among the early works on the idea of an interconnected 1 percent within global capitalism was Leslie Sklair’s 2001 book, The Transnational Capitalist Class.[ii] Sklair believed that globalization was moving transnational corporations (TNC) into broader international roles, whereby corporations’ states of orgin became less important than international argreements developed through the World Trade Organization and other international institutions. Emerging from these multinational corporations was a transnational capitalist class, whose loyalities and interests, while still rooted in their corporations, was increasingly international in scope.

Sklair writes:
The transnational capitalist class can be analytically divided into four main fractions: (i) owners and controllers of TNCs and their local affiliates; (ii) globalizing bureaucrats and politicians; (iii) globalizing professionals; (iv) consumerist elites (merchants and media). . . . It is also important to note, of course, that the TCC [transnational corporate class] and each of its fractions are not always entirely united on every issue. Nevertheless, together, leading personnel in these groups constitute a global power elite, dominant class or inner circle in the sense that these terms have been used to characterize the dominant class structures of specific countries.[iii]

Estimates are that the total world’s wealth is close to $200 trillion, with the US and Europe holding approximately 63 percent. To be among the wealthiest half of the world, an adult needs only $4,000 in assets once debts have been subtracted. An adult requires more than $72,000 to belong to the top 10 percent of global wealth holders, and more than $588,000 to be a member of the top 1 percent.  As of 2010, the top 1 percent of the wealthist people in the world had hidden away between $21 trillion to $32 trillion in secret tax exempt bank accounts spread all over the world.[iv] Meanwhile, the poorest half of the global population together possesses less than 2 percent of global wealth.[v] The World Bank reports that, in 2008, 1.29 billion people were living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.25 a day, and 1.2 billion more were living on less than $2.00 a day.[vi] Starvation.net reports that 35,000 people, mostly young children, die every day from starvation in the world.[vii] The numbers of unnecessary deaths have exceeded 300 million people over the past forty years. Farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up 4 percent from the year before—yet, billions of people go hungry every day. Grain.org describes the core reasons for ongoing hunger in a recent article, “Corporations Are Still Making a Killing from Hunger”: while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control global food prices and distribution.[viii] Addressing the power of the global 1 percent—identifying who they are and what their goals are—are clearly life and death questions.

It is also important to examine the questions of how wealth is created, and how it becomes concentrated. Historically, wealth has been captured and concentrated through conquest by various powerful enities. One need only look at Spain’s appropriation of the wealth of the Aztec and Inca empires in the early sixteenth century for an historical example of this process. The histories of the Roman and British empires are also filled with examples of wealth captured.

Once acquired, wealth can then be used to establish means of production, such as the early British cotton mills, which exploit workers’ labor power to produce goods whose exchange value is greater than the cost of the labor, a process analyzed by Karl Marx in Capital.[ix] A human being is able to produce a product that has a certain value. Organized business hires workers who are paid below the value of their labor power. The result is the creation of what Marx called surplus value, over and above the cost of labor. The creation of surplus value allows those who own the means of production to concentrate capital even more. In addition, concentrated capital accelerates the exploition of natural resources by private entrepreneurs—even though these natural resources are actually the common heritage of all living beings.[x]

In this article, we ask: Who are the the world’s 1 percent power elite? And to what extent do they operate in unison for their own private gains over benefits for the 99 percent? We will examine a sample of the 1 percent: the extractor sector, whose companies are on the ground extracting material from the global commons, and using low-cost labor to amass wealth. These companies include oil, gas, and various mineral extraction organizations, whereby the value of the material removed far exceeds the actual cost of removal.

We will also examine the investment sector of the global 1 percent: companies whose primary activity is the amassing and reinvesting of capital. This sector includes global central banks, major investment money management firms, and other companies whose primary efforts are the concentration and expansion of money, such as insurance companies.

Finally, we analyze how global networks of centralized power—the elite 1 percent, their companies, and various governments in their service—plan, manipulate, and enforce policies that benefit their continued concentration of wealth and power.

The Extractor Sector: The Case of Freeport-McMoRan (FCX)

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) is the world’s largest extractor of copper and gold. The company controls huge deposits in Papua, Indonesia, and also operates in North and South America, and in Africa. In 2010, the company sold 3.9 billion pounds of copper, 1.9 million ounces of gold, and 67 million pounds of molybdenum. In 2010, Freeport-McMoRan reported revenues of $18.9 billion and a net income of $4.2 billion.[xi]

The Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, employs 23,000 workers at wages below three dollars an hour. In September 2011, workers went on strike for higher wages and better working conditions. Freeport had offered a 22 percent increase in wages, and strikers said it was not enough, demanding an increase to an international standard of seventeen to forty-three dollars an hour. The dispute over pay attracted local tribesmen, who had their own grievances over land rights and pollution; armed with spears and arrows, they joined Freeport workers blocking the mine’s supply roads.[xii] During the strikers’ attempt to block busloads of replacement workers, security forces financed by Freeport killed or wounded several strikers.

Freeport has come under fire internationally for payments to authorities for security. Since 1991, Freeport has paid nearly thirteen billion dollars to the Indonesian government—one of Indonesia’s largest sources of income—at a 1.5 percent royalty rate on extracted gold and copper, and, as a result, the Indonesian military and regional police are in their pockets. In October 2011, the Jakarta Globe reported that Indonesian security forces in West Papua, notably the police, receive extensive direct cash payments from Freeport-McMoRan. Indonesian National Police Chief Timur Pradopo admitted that officers received close to ten million dollars annually from Freeport, payments Pradopo described as “lunch money.” Prominent Indonesian nongovernmental organization Imparsial puts the annual figure at fourteen million dollars.[xiii] These payments recall even larger ones made by Freeport to Indonesian military forces over the years which, once revealed, prompted a US Security and Exchange Commission investigation of Freeport’s liability under the United States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

In addition, the state’s police and army have been criticized many times for human rights violations in the remote mountainous region, where a separatist movement has simmered for decades. Amnesty International has documented numerous cases in which Indonesian police have used unnecessary force against strikers and their supporters. For example, Indonesian security forces attacked a mass gathering in the Papua capital, Jayapura, and striking workers at the Freeport mine in the southern highlands. At least five people were killed and many more injured in the assaults, which shows a continuing pattern of overt violence against peaceful dissent. Another brutal and unjustified attack on October 19, 2011, on thousands of Papuans exercising their rights to assembly and freedom of speech, resulted in the death of at least three Papuan civilians, the beating of many, the detention of hundreds, and the arrest of six, reportedly on treason charges.[xiv]

On November 7, 2011, the Jakarta Globe reported that “striking workers employed by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold’s subsidiary in Papua have dropped their minimum wage increase demands from $7.50 to $4.00 an hour, the All-Indonesia Workers Union (SPSI) said.”[xv] Virgo Solosa, an official from the union, told the Jakarta Globe that they considered the demands, up from the (then) minimum wage of $1.50 an hour, to be “the best solution for all.”

Workers at Freeport’s Cerro Verde copper mine in Peru also went on strike around the same time, highlighting the global dimension of the Freeport confrontation. The Cerro Verde workers demanded pay raises of 11 percent, while the company offered just 3 percent.

The Peruvian strike ended on November 28, 2011.[xvi] And on December 14, 2011, Freeport-McMoRan announced a settlement at the Indonesian mine, extending the union’s contract by two years. Workers at the Indonesia operation are to see base wages, which currently start at as little as $2.00 an hour, rise 24 percent in the first year of the pact and 13 percent in the second year. The accord also includes improvements in benefits and a one-time signing bonus equivalent to three months of wages.[xvii]

In both Freeport strikes, the governments pressured strikers to settle. Not only was domestic militrary and police force evident, but also higher levels of international involvement. Throughout the Freeport-McMoRan strike, the Obama administration ignored the egregious violation of human rights  and instead advanced US–Indonesian military ties. US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who arrived in Indonesia in the immediate wake of the Jayapura attack, offered no criticism of the assault and reaffirmed US support for Indonesia’s territorial integrity. Panetta also reportedly commended Indonesia’s handling of a weeks-long strike at Freeport-McMoRan.[xviii]

US President Barack Obama visited Indonesia in November 2011 to strengthen relations with Jakarta as part of Washington’s escalating efforts to combat Chinese influence in the Asia–Pacific region. Obama had just announced that the US and Australia would begin a rotating deployment of 2,500 US Marines to a base in Darwin, a move ostensibly to modernize the US posture in the region, and to allow participation in “joint training” with Australian military counterparts. But some speculate that the US has a hidden agenda in deploying marines to Australia. The Thai newspaper The Nation has suggested that one of the reasons why US Marines might be stationed in Darwin could be that they would provide remote security assurance to US-owned Freeport-McMoRan’s gold and copper mine in West Papua, less than a two-hour flight away.[xix]

The fact that workers at Freeport’s Sociedad Minera Cerro Verde copper mine in Peru were also striking at the same time highlights the global dimension of the Freeport confrontation. The Peruvian workers are demanding pay rises of eleven percent, while the company has offered just three percent. The strike was lifted on November 28, 2011.[xx]

In both Freeport strikes, the governments pressured strikers to settle. Not only was domestic militrary and police force evident, but also higher levels of international involvement. The fact that the US Secretary of Defense mentioned a domestic strike in Indonesa shows that the highest level of power are in play on issues affecting the international corporate 1 percent and their profits.

Public opinion is strongly against Freeport in Indonesia. On August 8, 2011, Karishma Vaswani of the BBC reported that “the US mining firm Freeport-McMoRan has been accused of everything from polluting the environment to funding repression in its four decades working in the Indonesian province of Papau. . . . Ask any Papuan on the street what they think of Freeport and they will tell you that the firm is a thief, said Nelels Tebay, a Papuan pastor and coordinator of the Papua Peace Network.”[xxi]

Freeport strikers won support from the US Occupy movement. Occupy Phoenix and East Timor Action Network activists marched to Freeport headquarters in Phoenix on October 28, 2011, to demonstrate against the Indonesian police killings at Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg mine.[xxii]

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) chairman of the board James R. Moffett owns over four million shares with a value of close to $42.00 each. According to the FCX annual meeting report released in June 2011, Moffett’s annual compensation from FCX in 2010 was $30.57 million. Richard C. Adkerson, president of the board of FCX, owns over 5.3 million shares. His total compensation in was also $30.57 million in 2010 Moffett’s and Adkerson’s incomes put them in the upper levels of the world’s top 1 percent. Their interconnectness with the highest levels of power in the White House and the Pentagon, as indicated by the specific attention given to them by the US secretary of defense, and as suggested by the US president’s awareness of their circumstances, leaves no doubt that Freeport-MacMoRan executives and board are firmly positioned at the highest levels of the transnational corporate class.

Continue Reading The Global 1%: Exposing the Transnational Ruling Class at Project Censored

MEDIA ROOTS – Support to repeal the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) is growing as the Bush-Obama administrations continue to pursue the ongoing global ‘War on Terror’ of nearly twelve years.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges is on the front lines of the battle to nullify section 1021 – the indefinite detention clause of the NDAA – along with professor Noam Chomsky, activist Daniel Ellsberg, and author Naomi Wolf. Less than one month after President Obama signed the bill into law, this astute group sued the federal government for clauses that are, at best, constitutionally vague. Consequentially, Manhattan Federal Court temporarily sided with the plaintiffs by having issued an injunction on the indefinite detention clause which has since been appealed by the Obama administration.

The call to nullify the NDAA continues to surge around the country. Last month, the Clark County Republican Party Central Committee of Nevada unanimously called for its appeal while legislators in Michigan are currently considering a bill that could virtually revoke the federal law in that state.

Additionally, Ben Swann of WXIX recently suggested the president, and some members of Congress, may be in direct violation of the very law that they created by recently supporting Al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian opposition forces. He explains that “late last year, when Sen. John McCain co-wrote the National Defense Authorization Act, and President Obama signed it into law, they crafted a law that gave the president the authority to use all necessary and appropriate force during the current armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and associated forces, including the power to indefinitely detain anyone caught supporting Al-Qaeda, which in this case is the president and members of Congress.”

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

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TRUTHDIG –  [Section 1021] of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on Dec. 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military, which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and habeas corpus and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within “the homeland” as well as those abroad.

In May, Judge Forrest issued a temporary injunction invalidating Section 1021 as a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. It was a courageous decision. Forrest will decide within a couple of weeks whether she will make the injunction permanent.

Barack Obama’s administration has appealed Judge Forrest’s temporary injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional rights. The administration’s added failure to restore habeas corpus, its use of the Espionage Act six times to silence government whistle-blowers, its support of the FISA Amendment Act—which permits warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens—and its ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, is a signal that for all his rhetoric, Obama, like his Republican rivals, is determined to remove every impediment to the unchecked power of the security and surveillance state. I and the six other plaintiffs, who include reporters, professors and activists, will most likely have to continue this fight in an appellate court and perhaps the Supreme Court.

Read Chris Hedges’ complete article at Truthdig.

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Photo provided by Flickr user DonkeyHotey.