IS THE AMERICAN EMPIRE ABOUT TO COLLAPSE? By Chalmers Johnson

March 26, 2007

Interviewer: Mark Karlin of Buzzflash, March 24, 2007

I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. ... The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did.

-- Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

Has our "leadership" traded democracy for empire? Have their over-bloated egos convinced them that they are the world's newly crowned colonial kings? Author Chalmers Johnson is certainly not given to wearing rose-colored glasses. As he concludes in his newest book, Nemesis: "... my country is launched on a dangerous path that it must abandon or else face the consequences."

Johnson's well-argued, persuasive argument draws on the economic, military, and political lessons of the past, which may be just what's needed to wake up Americans in time to change course. In this interview, he explained his hopes and fears for contemporary America.

Mark Karlin: You've written a three-part series of books on the United States as an empire. The first was called Blowback. The second is The Sorrows of the Empire. And, now, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. That's kind of a doomsday declension there.

Chalmers Johnson: I guess you could say that. It's inadvertent. I didn't set out to write three volumes. I don't know whether Gibbons set out to write The Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire. But one led to the other.

The first was written well before 9/11, and it was concerned with what I perceived to be the American public's lack of understanding that most of the foreign policy problems of the 21st century were going to be things left over from the Cold War. Above all, I argue that our numerous clandestine activities, some of which are almost totally disreputable, will come back to haunt us.

The second book followed on the first, in that it was a broad analysis of what I called our military-based empire, an empire of 737 American military bases in over 130 countries around the world. That number is the official Pentagon count. They are genuine military bases. They're very extensive. They are not, as some defenders of the Pentagon like to say, just Marine guards. We haven't got 700 embassies around the world. The Sorrows of Empire was written as we were preparing for our invasion of Iraq, and it was published virtually on the day that we invaded.

Karlin: And now Nemesis is your cataclysmic conclusion. Not long ago, it was considered sort of radical to say that America is a neo-colonial empire. But you embrace that concept in many ways.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: The perspective in much of the neocon writing, in The Weekly Standard, for instance, is that America is an empire. It's a superpower. It can take whatever it wants. Basically, the rule of thumb becomes, if you challenge the U.S. assertion of military control and dominance, you're an enemy of the United States. You don't have to threaten the United States, but merely oppose the imposition of the military authority.

Johnson: Quite true. The roots of this military empire go back, of course, to World War II, which is when we conquered Germany, Japan, Italy, places of that sort, and did not withdraw after the war was over. We've been in Okinawa, for example, ever since 1945. The people there have been fighting against us ever since 1945, in three major revolts -- they hate it.

But the critical point comes with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Paul Wolfowitz, who was then in the Department of Defense working for Dick Cheney in the first Bush administration, wrote that our policy now is to prevent any nation, or combination of nations, from ever having the kind of power that could challenge us in any way militarily.

This is when we really invite "Nemesis," the goddess of retribution, vengeance, and hubris, into our midst by proclaiming that we "won" the Cold War. It's not at all clear that we've won the Cold War. Probably, we and the U.S.S.R. lost it, but they lost it first and harder because they were always poorer than we were. The assumption was that we were now the global superpower; we were the lone superpower; we were a new Rome. We could do anything we wanted to. We could dominate the world through military force.

This is as clear a statement of imperial intent as I think one could imagine, and it is what leads to such radical ideas as war as a choice, preventive war, wars such as that in Iraq, which was essentially to expand the empire by providing a new stable base for us in the Middle East, having lost Iran in 1979, and having so antagonized the Saudis that they were no longer allowing us to use our bases there the way we like.

So, yes, I think the word imperialism is appropriate here, but not in the sense of colonization of the world. I'm meaning imperialism in the sense of, for example, the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe throughout the Cold War after World War II. That is, we dominate places militarily, we insist on local satellite-type governments that are subservient to us, that follow our orders and report to us when we ask them to. Yet we have troops based in their territories. They are part of our global longevity.

Karlin: We've heard both Bush and Cheney repeat their mantra that the troops won't come home until our mission is accomplished, until we achieve victory. It's somewhat fascinating, in a very tragic sort of way, to try to figure out what the heck these guys are talking about. We have seen from both of them so many different missions publicly stated. First it was weapons of mass destruction. Then it was regime change. When we changed the regime and found out there were no weapons of mass destruction, we suddenly developed new missions.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: Now it's not clear what the mission is. Bush just says let's complete the mission. I've speculated on my site Buzzflash that this is sort of a policy of white man's rule, coming from the days of the Confederacy, where, if you were a white male, you were entitled to run a plantation, or whip your slave. You were the head of the household, no matter what.

Johnson: I wouldn't put it in racist terms, but you're quite right. The political philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that at the root of all imperialism, there has to be a racist view.

Karlin: When Bush says we have to accomplish the mission, or Cheney says we have to achieve victory, the question hangs out there as to what our mission is now? And what could possibly be victory in these circumstances? To them, mission or victory mainly means that we are perceived as winning and Iraq remains under our control.

Johnson: I believe that's absolutely true. It's one of the reasons why we didn't have a withdrawal strategy from Iraq -- we didn't intend to leave. Several people who retired from the Pentagon in protest at the start of the war -- I'm thinking of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman particularly -- have testified that the purpose of the invasion was to establish a new, stable pillar of power for the United States in the Middle East. We had lost our main two bases of power in the region -- Iran, which we lost in 1979 because of the revolution against the Shah, whom we ourselves placed in power -- and then Saudi Arabia, because of the serious blunder made after the first Gulf War -- the placing of American Air Force and ground troops in Saudi Arabia after 1991. That was unnecessary. It's stupid. We do not have an obligation to defend the government of Saudi Arabia. It was deeply resented by any number of sincere Saudi patriots, including former asset and colleague, Osama bin Laden. Their reaction was that the regime that is charged with the defense of the two most sacred sites of Islam -- Mecca and Medina -- should not rely upon foreign infidels who know next to nothing about our religion and our background.

The result was that, over the 1990s and going into the 2000s, the Saudis began to restrict the uses we had of Prince Sultan Air Base at Riyadh. They became so restricted that, finally, in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we moved our main headquarters to Qatar and conducted the war from there. This left us, however, with only the numerous small bases we have in the Persian Gulf. But these are in rather fragile countries.

Iraq was the place of choice, to these characters, who knew virtually nothing about the Middle East. Spoke not a word of Arabic or knew even the history of it. Iraq was the one they picked out because it's the second largest source of oil on earth, and it looked like an easy conquest.

We now know that the President himself didn't understand the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam -- that he did not appreciate that Saddam Hussein's regime was a minority Sunni dictatorship over the majority Shia population. That once you brought about regime change there, the inevitable result would be unleashing the Shia population, who had previously been suppressed, to run their country, and that they would align themselves with the largest Shia power of all, a Shia superpower, namely, Iran, right next door, where most of their leaders had spent the period of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship.

That's essentially what's happened. It's hard to imagine how this served our interests, given the deep hostility between Iran and the United States ever since we started interfering in that country back in 1953. It is hard to imagine how this served the interests of Israel, in that it gave Shia support there. Support from Iran now spreads throughout the Middle East to Hezbollah, Hamas, and other organizations. And it leads to a contradiction in terms of what we're doing there. At times, we seem to be trying to restore Sunni rule, so that we can bring about some peace. On the other hand, we have no choice but to support the majority power because of our propaganda about supporting democracy at the point of an assault rifle.

Karlin: In Nemesis you draw comparisons to the Roman empire. As you point out, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, we became the most powerful nation, at least in our self-perception. But in terms of our economy, we are at the mercy of all the countries that are keeping our economy afloat through loans. Militarily, we have the most powerful weapons, but this seems to have done nothing for us in Iraq.

Johnson: Nothing at all. In fact, sticking to Iraq just for a moment, one of the most absurd things is the fact that we have a defense budget that's larger than all other defense budgets on earth. This army of 150,000 troops that we've sent to Iraq -- a country with the GDP of Louisiana, I'd say --- they've been stopped by 20,000 insurgents. This is a scandal and a discrediting of the military, the Pentagon, and the strategies we've pursued.

But the broad argument that I'm trying to make in Nemesis is that history tells us there's no more unstable, critical configuration than the combination of domestic democracy and foreign empire. You can be one or the other. You can be a democratic country, as we have claimed in the past to be, based on our Constitution. Or you can be an empire. But you can't be both.

The classic example is the Roman republic, on which our country was, in many respects, modeled. They decided, largely through the influence of militarism, to retain their empire. Having decided to retain it, they then lost their democracy due to military intervention in politics after the assassination of Julius Caesar and the coming to power of military dictators. They were termed Roman emperors, but they were essentially military dictators.

There is an alternative model that I advocate in the book. It's not as clear-cut an example, but it is certainly one that's relevant, and that is Great Britain after World War II. After the spectacular war against Nazism, it was brought home to the British that if they were going to retain the jewel in the crown of their empire, namely India, with its huge, vast population, it could do so. It could keep people under its control through military force. They'd used that often enough in India, as it was.

In light of the Nazi experience, though, it now seemed almost impossible to go in that direction. Britain realized that to retain its empire, it would have to become a tyranny domestically. It chose, in my view, to give up its empire. It didn't do it beautifully, and we see imperialistic atavisms all the time, Tony Blair being the best example. But it chose to give up its empire in order to retain its democracy.

The causative issue is militarism. Imperialism, by definition, requires military force. It requires huge standing armies. It requires a large military-industrial complex. It requires the willingness to use force regularly. Imperialism is a pure form of tyranny. It never rules through consent, any more than we do in Iraq today.

The power of the military establishment is what threatens the separation of powers on which our Constitution is based. The Constitution, the chief bulwark against tyranny and dictatorship, separates the executive and legislative and judicial branches. It does not concentrate power in the executive branch, or concentrate money there, or secrecy.

The two most famous warnings in the history of our country address militarism -- namely George Washington's farewell address, read at the opening of every session of Congress, and Eisenhower's speech. Washington spoke of the greatest enemy of liberty as being standing armies. He said they were the particular enemy of republican liberties. He was not opposed to defending the country; he was talking about standing armies, as distinct from armies raised to defend the country in a time of national emergency. It was standing armies, Washington argued, that overbalance the separation of powers, that serve the presidency and destroy federalism.

The next great warning, which was even more striking, were the words of Dwight Eisenhower in 1961. He spoke of the military-industrial complex and its unwarranted, unchecked, unsupervised power and the enormous damage it was doing. This is what I'm talking about in Nemesis, and why I use this, as you put it, very apocalyptic subtitle.

But I do mean it. I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. And we have, as you know, also very serious economic dependencies on the rest of the world now. We are a wholly indebted country. We're not paying for the things we're doing. The sort of news we saw in recent days in the Stock Exchange is entirely predictable.

Karlin: Is the Middle East intervention -- Iraq, and the desire to nuke Iran -- is this empire building in the guise of fighting terrorism?

Johnson: Yes.

Karlin: If there weren't terrorists, Bush and Cheney would have had to invent them?

Johnson: Absolutely. There's just no doubt about it. In fact, we have to say that in any historical perspective, that the response of Bush-Cheney to 9/11 was a catastrophe of misjudgment and almost surely based on interests entirely separate from the terrorist attacks. We enhanced Osama bin Laden's power by declaring war on terrorism, escalating his position. The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11th, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did.

Instead of calling it a war on terrorism, we should have called it a national emergency. We should have gone after the terrorists as criminals, as organized crime, because of their attacks on innocent civilians. Tracked them down -- we have the capacity to do that -- arrested them, extradited them back to the United States, tried them in our courts, and executed them. Had we done that, we would have retained the support of virtually the entire rest of the world, including the Islamic world, as the victims on 9/11.

But we did the opposite. We simply went crazy, and we also refused to acknowledge that the retaliation that came on 9/11 was blow-back. We were partly responsible for what happened, since the people who attacked us were our former allies in the largest single clandestine operation we ever carried out, including Armenians sending into battle of the Mujahideen against the Russians in Afghanistan. Certainly, Osama bin Laden was not unfamiliar to our Central Intelligence Agency. They had been working with him for quite a long time.

It's in that sense that I think it was a catastrophic error. But the truth is, in retrospect, it doesn't look like an error at all. They saw it as an opportunity -- as a golden opportunity to carry out these sort of mad and speculative schemes that they had been working on throughout the 1990s, dreaming that we were this new Rome that could do anything it wants to.

Karlin: What will collapse first in America, according to your scenario, in the last days of the American republic?

Johnson: I'm not Cassandra. I can't make a prediction. If I would look at the historical examples, I would say we could expect that a bloated, overgrown military soon would become unaffordable. It would move in and take over. I don't really expect that to happen, though I certainly should warn you that General Tommy Franks had said publicly in print that in case of another attack like 9/11, he saw no alternative but for the military to assume command of the country.

That would be the Roman answer -- having built this huge militaristic world, and becoming increasingly economically dependent on the military-industrial complex domestically. We don't actually manufacture that much in this country, anymore, except for weapons and munitions. That's a possibility, that the military does ultimately take over, just as in the Roman republic, with that reliance on standing armies instead of legions raised from common citizens because of threats to the country. Ultimately, ambitious generals, often from the establishment, chose to take over. All they asked for was dictatorship for life, by God, and that's what they got.

It isn't inconceivable that one could have a renaissance in popular opinion. And that is needed. We need to rebuild the Constitutional system to overcome that most peculiar of anomalies. We know about the imperial presidency. We know about Dick Cheney's ambitions. It's one thing after another. So why is the Congress simply abdicating its role as the main point of oversight, the main source of authority?

I live in the 50th District of California, where Duke Cunningham was sentenced to federal prison for eight and a half years for being the biggest single bribe taker in the history of the U.S. Congress. It's significant, of course, that the people bribing him were defense contractors. It was a case of us getting crummy weapons, in order simply to line their own pockets.

There's far too much of that. Not enough has been done about it. We have procedures in this country for dealing with unsatisfactory political leaders, for removing the incompetent from office. It's called impeachment. Last November, the American public brought the opposition party into power in Congress, and immediately the leaders of the opposition party said impeachment is off the table. Well, if impeachment is off the table, then it may well be that Constitutional democracy is off the table, too.

If you had asked me what I think actually will happen -- and again, I cannot foresee the future -- the economic news encourages me in this thought. I believe we will stagger along under the façade of constitutional government until we're overtaken by bankruptcy. Bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the United States, any more than it did for Germany in 1923, or China in 1948, or Argentina just a few years ago, for 2001 and 2002.

But it would mean a catastrophic shake up of the society, which could conceivably usher in revolution, given the interests that would be damaged in this. It would mean virtually the disappearance of all American influence in international affairs. The rest of the world would be greatly affected, but it would begin to overcome it. We probably would not.

That's what I think is the most likely development, given the profligacy of our government in spending money that it doesn't have, in borrowing it from the Chinese and the Japanese, and the defense budgets that are simply serving the interest of the military-industrial complex.

Karlin: Polling has shown that most Americans want some sort of withdrawal from Iraq based on timetables. They want this war over. The Democratic electoral victory was perceived to be a victory to close down the Iraq war. The majority of Iraqis support attacks on American soldiers. Why is Bush talking about trying to save Iraq from the terrorists, if 62% support attacks on American soldiers?

Johnson: That's exactly the point, I think. He's not making sense. They're putting out hot air, a smoke screen, visions, such things as the longing for democracy, as if American G.I.s are going to bring democracy to anybody. They're disguising their real intent. We see it in their almost total inability ever to say that they do not intend to keep permanent bases, when you've seen the largest military bases, air bases with huge double runways, strategically located around the country. Never once do they say, that's not our intent. And the Air Force occasionally let slip that we expect to be there for at least a couple more decades.

But the American establishment, which certainly includes the Congressional and judicial establishment, has accepted the idea that we are the lone superpower, that we can do anything we want to. Although we've always been a superpower since World War II -- we've easily been the world's largest nation -- we didn't behave in that stupid manner. That's in part why I entitled my book Nemesis. She is the punisher of hubris and arrogance.

The public is on the receiving end, in terms of the declining jobs, the lower quality of life in America, and supplying the troops for the wars of choice that Bush and Condoleezza Rice have invented -- the public is beginning to get the idea. They understand it in a natural way.

That is one reason the military so much prefers the volunteer army, since 1973, as distinct from conscription. Conscription does mean a citizen army. You know why you're there. When I was in the Navy in the Korean War, it was an obligation of citizenship, it was not as it is today. Service today in our armed forces is a career choice, a decision about how to make your living. That alters things a great deal.

It makes it easier for the officers. Everybody who was ever in the armed forces knows that, with a citizen army, the people are very sensitive to whether the officers are lying, or whether they know what they're doing, whether the strategy makes any sense or not. There's a degree of fairness at work. The Vietnam war was certainly a working-class war. The total number of Yale graduates killed in Vietnam was one, and that is a fact.

So, yes, you could conceivably imagine a renaissance of public demand to take back the Congress, reconstitute it, reform it. Kick out the elites that serve vested interests. They're in both parties.

But I don't really expect that to happen. I think it's almost impossible to imagine mobilizing that kind of public, given the conglomerate control of the media in America, basically for purposes of advertising revenue.

At the same time, I am very much aware that the Internet is a new source of information. It's radically active. There are lots of people using it. And the public is alive. I've now published three books, this inadvertent trilogy. I notice a much more positive response to this last book, Nemesis, than to the first two, when you go into public to talk about it at the bookstore or at a university, or at a Democratic club. The people are worried to death about the way the country is going, the way it's governed, and above all, what they see as having happened. The political system has failed. We allowed it -- we lost oversight. If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, we have been anything but vigilant.

That's what Eisenhower warned us against. It's now here on our doorstep. We're close to the tipping point. And I don't really expect it to be reversed. But at the same time, that's precisely why you and I are talking to each other. We still do believe that there's a possibility of mobilizing inattentive citizens to reclaim the Congress and clean it up.

Karlin: You mentioned earlier that the CIA at one time cooperated with the mujahideen, and particularly Osama bin Laden.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: He was, in essence, an intelligence and military asset for the United States in its effort to wound the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: The effort was successful, in large part, because of a guerilla operation in which foreign fighters, including Osama bin Laden, who is from Saudi Arabia, fought on behalf of a Muslim nation against what was considered an imperial invader from the north -- Russia. And Russia finally withdrew.

Johnson: Right. What happened in Afghanistan contributed ultimately to the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Karlin: Exactly. It was one of the major dominos leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union as an empire. And it was imperial hubris which caused them to think they could subdue Afghanistan.

Johnson: Right.

Karlin: Now my question is this: Is Iraq America's Afghanistan?

Johnson: It is perfectly possible that it will prove to be. Let me, just for once, give the Pentagon credit instead of criticizing it. I've always preferred their phrase "asymmetric warfare" for terrorism. Terrorism is a wrong word. It's a pejorative term. It's used to attack other people. We don't recognize the amount of terrorism we ourselves perpetuate, particularly from the air. But asymmetric warfare means the warfare of the poor, of the people who must rely upon ambushes and traps, and knowing their own country. That's what the Soviet Union ran into.

The fact that we are again repeating that -- you simply have to wonder whatever happened to Tony Blair? Is he an educated Englishman or not? Doesn't he know what happened to England in Afghanistan in the 19th Century, where the Afghans wiped them out? They would leave one single Englishman and send him back to the Khyber Pass to inform the army in India what had happened. We're back there again, and there's no doubt that we're going to be facing something very much like what the Soviet Union faced, in this coming summer.

It's absurd to listen to our people talk about how they had won the Afghan war. Basically what they did was to re-ignite the civil war by aiding the most corrupt figures in the country, namely the Northern Alliance of warlords, and provide them with airpower. It was anything but a victory, and I would hate to invest much in the Karzai regime for longevity.

So, yes, it is perfectly possible that we have come up against our genuine nemesis in the Middle East. We have created an economy totally dependent on oil. There's our insane belief that we can dominate the world through superior task forces, cruise missiles, and things of this sort. And we still claim that this is democracy.

The very idea -- we've seen the pictures of Americans kicking down the door of a private home, rushing in, usually walking all over Arabic rugs in their dirty boots, and pointing assault rifles at cowering women and children, carrying a few men off with their arms tied behind their back and hoods over their heads. Then we claim that this is bringing democracy to Iraq? We shouldn't be surprised that many Iraqis say it's okay to kill Americans.

That's what's going on in Iraq. We know we're going to lose it, just as we did in Vietnam. At least the public is sensing that, once again raising the hopes that democracy is not an insane form of government. The public may not be as well-informed as it ought to be, but it seems to be better informed than the elites in Washington, D.C.

Mark Karlin is the editor of buzzflash.com.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/49603/

I fart in your general direction by Xymphora

Suddenly, out of the blue, everybody knows the truth. Iran farts in the general direction of Tony Blair: "You don't frighten us, English pig-dog! Go and boil your bottoms, son of a silly person. I blow my nose on you, so-called Arthur-king, you and your silly English kiniggets. I don't want to talk to you, no more, you empty-headed animal, food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries." The Iranians know what I’ve been saying for months and months and months, that the talk of a war against Iran is an American bluff. The Iranians intend to drive a wedge between Tony and the neocons, and are succeeding brilliantly. By the way, those American troops supposedly massed on the border of Iran . . . the charge of the light-headed brigade? The Americans don’t seem to mind losing 3,000 soldiers one-by-one, but I think even they’d notice 3,000 all at once. Meanwhile, the Arabs now are starting to feel comfortable that their old friends in the American Establishment – you know, the guys that Noam says rule the world – are starting to pay attention again and are actually ruling the world. We’re seeing the neocon-realist war in Washington played out with a new courage to speak the truth in the Middle East. Elliot Abrams and David Wurmser, blood dripping from their fangs (I know people don’t like this way of putting it, but considering the mass slaughter and suffering for which these ghouls are personally responsible, a little blood on the fangs doesn’t do them justice; I won’t sacrifice truth on the altar of political correctness, and if the Zionist apologists don’t like it they should stop abetting murder), must be screaming in anguish. Someone is telling the Arab leaders that they are in a position to dictate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians which would mean the end of Zionist dreams of an Israeli empire. That encouragement must be coming from very high in the American Empire (higher than Bush, who’s being embarrassed, and put in his place, by an unheard of snub). Never fear, Zionists! We will no doubt soon see a baffling 'Palestinian’ attack on Israeli civilians just in time to stop the Zionists’ biggest nightmare, peace. Evidence of a new intelligence: The Americans joining a meeting which included Iranian diplomats to discuss Iraq, and going out of their way to shake hands with the Iranians; American diplomatic meetings with Syria; American reestablishment of ties to the Palestinians by meeting with the Fatah-Hamas government while pretending Hamas isn’t there!; An indication (i. e., threat) that the United States would negotiate a Palestinian state without Israeli involvement (i. e., interference), for which Condi got her own snub; UAE distancing from neocon Iran talk; Saudi King Abdullah calling the American occupation of Iraq 'illegitimate’; Saudi efforts to cool tensions with Iran; U. S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates cooling tensions with Iran. Don’t count the four horsemen of the apocalypse out just yet, but realism and intelligence are breaking out all over. I thought this interview (see also here) with Prince Hassan Bin Tallal to be particularly inspiring. It often seems that the Israelis can manipulate the Arabs at will, but the Prince reveals a complete understanding of the situation, including Israel’s efforts, following the 'Clean Break’ paper, to break the Middle East up into tiny states through constant war so Israel can have its empire (if only Americans had the courage and intelligence to see how the Clean Breakers infiltrated the American government to achieve Israeli extremist goals!). The only weapon against Zionism is an understanding of the truth!

Foreclosures rising among high-risk US mortgages

This article highlights the parasitical nature of the bank mortgage and its ties to Wall Street. Some of these folk engaged in this sort of practice would get prison time in a morally decent society. The US is not such a society; and so adjustable-rate mortgages will be allowed to strangle a portion of the population.

Tony

Foreclosures rising among high-risk US mortgages

By Alexandra MarksRon Scherer, Staff writers of the Christian Science Monitor

Fri Mar 2, 3:00 AM ET

NEW YORK - One of the great legacies of the housing boom of the past six years is that almost everyone – even people with questionable credit – has access to a mortgage.

But now, some housing advocates contend, all that easy credit is on the verge of creating the worst mortgage crisis since the 1980s. The reason: A rising number of homeowners are shouldering mortgages they can no longer afford. For example:

•In 2004, John Silva refinanced the modest home he and his wife own in Willow Springs, N.C. Today, with their mortgage at almost 10 percent, he worries he's just a "hiccup" away from foreclosure.

•Ten months ago, newly divorced Tammy Myers got a no-down-payment loan to buy a house in Denver. The interest rate is now so high it's difficult to make her monthly payment.

•Susie Smith -- a retired social worker who's too embarrassed to use her real name -- almost lost the house in St. Paul, Minn., she had lived in for most of her life. That was after she refinanced it and her monthly payments more than doubled from $675 to more than $1,400 a month.

Across the nation, foreclosures and defaults are rising as mortgages that were once affordable are now expensive albatrosses as the introductory "teaser rates" that made the loan possible end and higher interest rates kick in. Some housing specialists worry that the mortgage industry -- with more than 20 companies already in bankruptcy -- will raise its lending standards so high that would-be homeowners with less-than-perfect credit will be frozen out. There is even some concern that the pullback in lending will extend the slump in the nation's housing market.

"It's the most serious threat to the economy," says Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com. "It has the potential to set the housing market back another big notch since there could be a whole class of people who can't get credit."

At issue is a class of mortgages that lenders call "subprime" because they do not qualify for the lowest or prime interest rate. These are designed for high-risk borrowers, those with fixed incomes, or those who have had credit problems in the past. Since 1998, more than 6 million Americans have borrowed in this way, according to the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). The majority of these loans are adjustable-rate mortgages (ARM) that are tied to changes in interest rates.

One in five loans subprime

That's a dramatic increase in only a decade. In 1995, subprime mortgages represented a niche market: less than 5 percent of mortgages originated. Today, Wall Street analysts estimate they make up from 18 percent to 24 percent.

Advocates contend they've made it possible for millions of Americans who in the past would not be able to qualify for a mortgage to own their home. But critics contend they've also become open to abuse, in part because qualification standards are now so low.

Deregulation has allowed the mortgage industry to create products like the no-down-payment mortgage and the even riskier "no documentation" loan where all borrowers have to do is state their income without providing proof of their ability to repay the loan.

"There was a real rush to make these loans and make as many loans as they could," says Jordan Ash, director of the ACORN Financial Justice Center in Minneapolis, a national low-income housing advocacy organization. "That's because the mortgage companies could sell them off right away" to Wall Street investors.

Investors profited from the high interest rates that consumers were paying.

"Wall Street wanted the mortgage brokers to keep making loans even though they were riskier and riskier," says Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates in Washington, D.C. "They didn't care that ... people were getting loans they couldn't afford because there was so much money to be made."

Abuses got so bad that some lenders were making loans to borrowers who ended up defaulting on their very first payment, according to housing experts.

Defaults ignored in soaring market

While the housing market was soaring, lenders shrugged off borrowers' problems because the value of the property was rising. But now that the housing market is in a tailspin in some areas, as many as 2.2 million people could end up losing their homes, worth a total of $164 billion, according to CRL. Another report, by Lehman Brothers, concluded that as many as 30 percent of people who obtained subprime loans in 2006 may end up defaulting on them.

"Many families are going to lose their homes," says Deborah Goldstein, executive vice president of the CRL in Durham, N.C. "There's a need for federal regulators to address the kinds of abusive mortgage practices that we're seeing."

Last fall federal regulators started to step in, requiring lenders to disclose more clearly the benefits and risks of some subprime loans to borrowers. On Tuesday, Freddie Mac, a quasi-public backer of home loans, announced it would cease purchasing the riskiest subprime mortgages. This week, Fannie Mae, another quasi-public housing organization, said it is working on "rescue" products to try to help troubled borrowers.

Housing advocates believe the regulators are reacting too late. "They're good positive steps but it's not close to being enough – the genie's already out of the bottle," says Mr. Rheingold. "What we're seeing now with the incredibly high foreclosure rates ... is a product of the complete deregulation of the mortgage industry over the last 10 to 15 years."

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), which represents the nation's major lenders, points out that deregulation has helped create record homeownership.

And the market is already correcting itself, says Kurt Pfotenhauer, the MBA's senior vice president for government affairs. Investors are now requiring stricter standards and mortgage companies are weeding out overly aggressive brokers.

"Government regulation of this market will result in fewer people having access to credit," he says. "If you care about people having access to credit you shouldn't regulate the market."

Rate hikes could cause more defaults

The catalyst for a lot of defaults will be a change in the interest rates many borrowers pay. This year, holders of some $250 billion in ARMs will see their interest rates rise -- perhaps by as much as 1.5 percentage points.

Hugh Moore, an investment manager who runs Guerite Advisors in Greenville, S.C., estimates as many as 1.4 million subprime borrowers will face the prospect of higher interest rates. "I don't know if that constitutes a tidal wave, but you have to believe a number of those people don't have a lot of additional cushion," he says.

Take Mr. Silva's case. In 2004, he was paying 7.6 percent on his $139,000 ARM. Last summer, the two-year teaser interest rate ended and his mortgage jumped 2 percentage points to 9.6 percent. His payments went from $920 to more than $1,200.

The interest on his mortgage, along with his monthly payments, will increase every six months until it reaches a high of 13 percent – if interest rates continue to climb.

"I had wanted a 30-year fixed rate and they told me I'd qualify for one," he says. "Then when I got to the closing they told me I could only qualify for the adjustable rate."

Silva initially walked away. But he had some debts to pay that were due from a stint of unemployment after the dotcom crash in 2000. After two days, he returned and signed the new mortgage.

"I felt like it was a switch and bait," he says.

Ms. Myers is also coping with mortgage sticker shock. As sales director at a Colorado golf course, her commission-driven income depends on weather. When she got her no-down payment loan last spring, costing $2,200 a month, the weather was good and she was bringing home as much as $6,000 a month. When snow came early to Denver, the golf course closed, and her monthly income has plummeted to $2,200 – only enough to cover the mortgage and nothing else. She's maxed out her credit cards and borrowed from family to make payments over the last few months. Her March payment is now due and she only has $1,000 left in the bank.

"They won't take a partial payment, and they say they won't work with me until I've been 60 days late on my mortgage," she says. "I've never been late before, and I don't ever remember being in a financial situation like this before."

Ms. Smith nearly lost her St. Paul house to foreclosure. A retired social worker on a fixed income who is raising a grandson on her own, she had no intention of refinancing her 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. Then her insurance company said her old house needed structural repairs -- and it wouldn't issue a policy until the work was done. That's when a mortgage broker came around. He told her he could get her an adjustable-rate mortgage that would allow her to take out equity to pay for the repairs without increasing her monthly payment too much -- at least for the first two years. When she asked what would happen after the two-year "teaser rate" was up, the broker told her she could just refinance again.

"And voilà, at the end of the two years, I get this slap in the face -- they start raising the interest rates every few months and said, 'No, we're not going to refinance,' " she says. Eventually, her payments doubled to more than $1,400 a month. "I told them I don't make $1,400 a month," she says. "'Tough,' they said, 'It's just too bad.' "

Eventually, the lender started foreclosure proceedings. Smith then contacted ACORN, the national housing organization, which negotiated a new fixed-rate loan for her. But her payments are still more than $1,300 a month and she's now working as many part-time jobs as she can find.

"I hate for anyone to find out that I was this stupid, that I could get caught up in something like this," she says. "The sad thing is that I'm not the only one. There are thousands of people that this is happening to."

Do We Really Need an International Criminal Court? by Diana Johnstone

Year after year, people in the Arab countries are helpless spectators to the ongoing destruction of Iraq and Palestine by the United States and Israel. They see families wiped out by bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. They see Arabs tortured and humiliated in Abu Ghraib and in Guantanamo. They see Israel regularly carrying out "targeted" assassinations in the Occupied Territories (splashing death around the target) while extending its illegal settlement of land belonging to Palestinians. Probably no people have greater cause to yearn for an equitable system of international justice. But where are they to look for it?

Well, what about the International Criminal Court (ICC)? The ICC is supposed to punish perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has been in operation since July 2002, but seldom gets as much attention as it received during a symposium in mid-January at the Academy of Graduate Studies in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Underlying the two-day discussion on the "ambition, reality and future prospects" of the ICC was the question: is the ICC a first baby step toward international justice? Or is it just another element of Western "soft power", imposed on small countries?

Although Libyan leader Moammer Gadhafi has expressed the second view, on balance most of the legal experts and academics -- from Libya and other Arab countries, but also from Europe, China and South America -- tended to lean toward the first view. Although nobody denied the evident shortcomings of the ICC, lawyers and jurists generally see it as "better than nothing" and point out that democratic legal systems have evolved from institutionalized power relations toward greater justice.

Selectivity

Meanwhile, a new war front was opening up. Urged on by the United States, Ethiopia invaded Somalia to restore disorder. U.S. war planes bombed fleeing members of the Islamic Courts Council that only recently managed to end the clan fighting that had ravaged Mogadishu for some fifteen years. The newly installed, U.S.-backed president, Abdulli Yusuf Ahmed, 73, announced that there would be "no talks" with the defeated Islamists, who were to be wiped out as they fled.

Now it so happens that among the war crimes listed in the Statute of Rome that governs the ICC is this one (Article 8.2.b.xii): "Declaring that no quarter will be given". This is exactly what the Ethiopian-U.S.-backed conquerors were doing. But there was no chance that the ICC would deal with this latest outburst of international criminal behavior.

Indeed, after four and a half years of existence, the ICC has taken just one suspect into its custody: Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, head of a rebel militia in the impenetrable Ituri forest in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (ex-Zaïre). He is held under Article 8 (war crimes), section 2.e.vii on charges of recruiting children under the age of 15 to fight in his militia.

This is certainly bad behavior, but considering all that is going on in the world today, it hardly seems to rank among "the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole" (Article 5, defining the crimes within jurisdiction of the court). A French judge working as an investigator in the ICC Prosecutor's office, Bernard Lavigne, acknowledged that since it is clearly unable to deal with all the crimes in the world, the Court is necessarily selective. He defended the selection of this lone suspect by the need to start off with an air-tight case that the Prosecution was sure to win.

Therein, however, lies one of the ICC's more subtle and insidious vices. Although the Statute formally upholds the "presumption of innocence", all the details point to a Court whose job is not meant to sort out the innocent from the guilty, but to punish the (presumed) guilty. Politically, the creation of the ICC responds to demands of various NGOs, given great resonance by Bosnia and especially Rwanda, to "end impunity" and to comfort victims. The underlying political assumption is that both the criminals and the victims can be easily identified prior to trial -- the trial being more a demonstration of the concern of the international community for justice than the search for a justice, and a truth, that may be elusive or seriously contested.

Like the ad hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the ICC, despite its title, is not essentially set up to deal with international conflicts, but rather to administer "international" justice to internal conflicts, in countries too weak to resist its authority.

The total impotence of the ICC to deal with the most dangerous crimes truly "of concern to the international community as a whole", those that outrage public opinion not only in the West but in all parts of the world, those that seriously threaten world peace, is most strikingly due to:

-- the fact that the crime of aggression is not covered;

-- the fact that the United States and its citizens are immune to prosecution, first of all because the United States has not ratified the ICC Statute, and secondly, because the United States has used its unprecedented economic and political clout to pressure countries into signing Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) that exempt Americans from prosecution. One hundred and two countries have signed BIAs with the United States.

Aggression exempted

Article 5 of the Rome Statute limits the jurisdiction of the Court to:

(a) The crime of genocide;

(b) Crimes against humanity;

(c) War crimes;

(d) The crime of aggression.

However, it goes on to specify that the Court "shall exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression once a provision is adopted [...] defining the crime and setting out the conditions under which the Court shall exercise jurisdiction with respect to this crime." In short, the crime of aggression is for the time being exempted from the Court's jurisdiction.

The formal reason is that aggression is "not defined". This is a specious argument since aggression has been quite clearly defined by U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3314 in 1974,

which declared that: "Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State", and listed seven specific examples including:

-- The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof;

-- Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the :territory of another State;

-- The blockade of the ports or coasts of a State by the armed forces of another State...

The resolution also stated that: "No consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression."

The real reason that aggression remains outside the jurisdiction of the ICC is that the United States, which played a strong role in elaborating the Statute, before refusing to ratify it, was adamantly opposed to its inclusion. It is not hard to see why..

This went against the nearly unanimous opinion of most of the world, which recalls that the Nuremberg Tribunal condemned Nazi leaders above all for the crime of aggression, as the "supreme international crime" which "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole".

It may be noted that instances of "aggression", which are clearly factual, are much easier to identify than instances of "genocide", whose definition relies on assumptions of intention.

Defenders of the ICC stress that "aggression" may be defined, and thus come under the active jurisdiction of the Court, at the Review Conference which should be held in 2009 to consider amendments. Even so, an amendment comes into force only one year after ratification by seven eighths of State Parties to the Statute, and applies only to State Parties (which so far notoriously do not include the United States). And should the United States turn around and choose to ratify the Statute, it may still declare that for a period of seven years it does not accept the jurisdiction of the Court for its nationals (Article 124). All this means that the earliest conceivable (but highly improbable) date when U.S. crimes, including aggression, might be brought under ICC jurisdiction would be 2017. Even then, there is scarcely any possibility that an American citizen, or any person acting on behalf of the United States, would end up in the dock at the ICC.

For one thing, the ICC must turn over jurisdiction to any State which proves "willing and able" to try the case in its own courts.

Moreover, Article 16 allows the Security Council to suspend any ICC investigation or prosecution for a period of 12 months. The suspension can be renewed indefinitely. These days, the Security Council is generally viewed throughout the world as an instrument of U.S. policy.

The BIAs would still apply.

And incidentally, employing poison gases counts as a war crime, but not the use of nuclear weapons.

In short, the ICC is established according to double standards to deal with small fry.

A court for "failed states"

Indeed, it is hard to see how the ICC can deal with any but extremely weak or "failed" States. According to Article 17, a case is not admissible unless the State concerned is genuinely "unwilling or unable" to investigate and prosecute it. The Court itself can determine whether the State concerned is "unwilling or unable".

At this point, the scene grows very murky. The Democratic Republic of Congo cooperated in turning over the case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo to the ICC because he was a rebel against the State, and that troubled State has reason to want to be in the good graces of the ICC. But what if a State refuses, or shows itself "unwilling or unable" to pursue a case? What then? The ICC has no police force of its own. Will it then call on the Security Council to authorize arrest -- meaning military action on the territory of the "unwilling" State?

The preamble to the Rome Statute emphasizes that "nothing in this Statute shall be taken as authorizing any State Party to intervene in an armed conflict or in the internal affairs of any State". But this seems to be contradicted by the provisions of the Statute itself in regard to "unwilling" States.

Rather than a Court to keep the peace, the ICC could turn out to be -- contrary to the wishes of its sincere supporters -- an instrument to provide pretexts for war.

"If you can't beat them, join them."

It appeared from the Tripoli symposium that Arab intellectuals have an ambivalent attitude toward the ICC. On the one hand, many fear that the ICC can be instrumentalized to serve what they see as the long term U.S.-Israeli policy of breakig up Arab States and fragmenting the Middle East along ethnic or religious lines, as a way of "divide and rule". In such a strategy, ethnic conflicts over territory and resources can be depicted by Western media and NGOs as one-sided cases of "genocide" requiring urgent international intervention. The trial run was Yugoslavia, and Iraq is the prime example.

Jurists themselves, professionally attached to the construction of a new legal institution, may be oblivious to strategic aspects. But the very emphasis on applying criminal law to political conflicts tends to reinforce the Manichean view (typical of the Bush administration and of Israel) that the world's troubles are due to "bad guys", "terrorists", criminals that must be rooted out and punished. This precludes analysis of underlying causes of conflicts.

Like other Arab States, except for Jordan (and two formerly French territories, Djibouti and the Comoro Islands), Sudan is not a Party to the Rome Statute and thus does not fall under ICC jurisdiction. This fact has not prevented the mounting campaign for international intervention to stop what is described as "genocide" in Darfur. Some observers on the ground contend that this campaign is characterized by a limitless inflation of the number of casualties, to upgrade massacres to the status of "genocide". Whatever the reality, the call for "intervention", implying military intervention, is not accompanied by any clear explanation of how this would solve the underlying problems of religious identity and claim to scarce resources that have caused the crisis in Darfur. The well-financed and (largely) well-intentioned campaign to "save Darfur" actually tends to eclipse any effort to find genuine political and economic solutions by way of negotiation carried out by parties familiar with the history and culture of the region.

As can be seen in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the armed "rescue" of a country or region tends to be followed by a sharp drop in interest, and above all of the economic and practical aid promised at the outset.

In Tripoli, some argued that Sudan would be better placed to defend itself from impending military intervention if it were Party to the ICC. As a Belgian lawyer put it, for small countries the problem is to "avoid being entrapped", and for this purpose it is better to join the ICC than to stay out of it.

Many Arab and Third World intellectuals are tired of standing on the sidelines and "complaining". Joining the ICC might be a way to "join the world" and improve their own countries. This viewpoint seems particularly frequent among women lawyers and human rights NGOs.

But as one participant put it, "Inside or outside; the small countries are on the sidelines".

The view from Tripoli

To conclude with a subjective note, from the peaceful atmosphere of Tripoli the rabid Bushist-Blairist fantasies about the deadly threat from "Islamo-fascism" seem particularly grotesque. The semi-socialist regime installed 37 years ago by Colonel Moammer Kadhafi has widely redistributed oil revenues, educating the population and creating a large middle class thanks to a service sector (largely bureaucratic) that employs some 80 per cent of the population. This makes it a singularly tranquil society -- some bureaucrats may be superfluous, but they are not homeless, begging or thieving. Colonel Kadhafi is eccentric, sleeping in tents instead of palaces, but it is hard to avoid the feeling that he has been demonized not for his faults but for his support to Arab unity (which failed), to the Palestinians and to other liberation causes -- which was natural for a country like Libya that had been the victim not so very long ago of a ruthless colonization by Mussolini's forces, which subjected the local population to summary executions, mass deportations and concentration camps. Looking around, one may conclude that Kadhafi's "soft" dictatorship could well be the best transitional modernizing regime that exists in the Arab world.

In any case, the ICC symposium followed its own ambivalent course without interference from the government. The overall impression was of a great thirst for peace, development and justice -- all under threat from the fanatic Western "war on terror". Islamic extremism is a problem to be dealt with in a growing number of Arab countries (not Libya, apparently, where the devout but moderate Muslim practice seems to preempt the extremists), but which is clearly aggravated by U.S. aggression and Israeli persecution of the Palestinians.

Justice and globalization

I give the last word to excerpts from the contribution of a retired Libyan gentleman who has held high positions in the past, but now prefers to remain anonymous:

"The dominant system is oriented towards an international business law considered as the supreme reference overhanging all national law and of course international public and private law. The WTO has defined in this context an arsenal of principles and procedures all the way to and including a juridical system based on the negation of the elementary principles of separation of powers that characterize democracy.

"This is totally unacceptable. We need exactly the opposite. We need a business law that is respectful of the rights of nations, people and labor, and respectful of the environment, rights of communities, women, while ensuring the conditions for further progress of democratization of societies.

"We have to advocate an International Law of the Peoples, which should combine:

"-- The respect of national sovereignty, allowing people to choose their future according to their wishes.

"-- The respect of Human Rights, not only political rights but also social rights and the right to development and peace.

"No solution is reached through abolishing one of the two terms of the equation. We can neither abolish sovereignty nor can we abolish human rights.

"The principle of respect for the sovereignty of nations must be the cornerstone of international law. The fact that this principle is violated today with so much brutality by the democracies themselves constitutes an aggravating, rather than mitigating circumstance. [...] The solemn adoption of the principle of national sovereignty in 1945 was logically accompanied by the prohibition of recourse to war. [...] With the militarization of the globalization process, which is closely associated with the neo-liberal option and with its predilection for the supremacy of international business law, it has become more imperative than ever that priority be given to this reflection on people's rights."

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions published by Monthly Review Press. She can be reached at: dianajohnstone@compuserve.com