Fourth Edition – Wednesday February 9, 2011

Snorre Valen – Why I Have Nominated Wikileaks for the Nobel Peace Prize
Al Jazeera English – Rape Rampant in US Military
Watching America.com – American Cencership of Arab News Media
OpEdNews.com – Is This How We Tream Our Femeal Soldiers?
Carnegie Council – Corporate Warriors: The Privatized Military and Iraq
China Business Review – Labor Relations in Focus
Forbes.com – Chinese Wage Increases Outpacing Economic Growth
Media Awareness Network – Special Issues for Young Children
The Washington Post – The Decline and Fall of the Democratic Leadership Council
Truthout.org – Obama To Chamber: Be Patriotic and Move Jobs Back to America

Readers Bonus’s
Common Cause.org – Common Cause Letters
(Weekly Section) Podcasters Way – Are We Listening, Media Matters & Media Minutes

Check out all These Stories and more at the sites listed above!
For More Information on Truly Independent News Organizations visit www.fair.org (no affiliation)
 INDEX
Snorre Valen – Why I Have Nominated Wikileaks for the Nobel Peace Prize

Al Jazeera English – Rape Rampant in US Military

Watching America.com – American Cencership of Arab News Media

OpEdNews.com – Is This How We Tream Our Femeal Soldiers?

Carnegie Council – Corporate Warriors: The Privatized Military and Iraq

China Business Review – Labor Relations in Focus

Forbes.com – Chinese Wage Increases Outpacing Economic Growth

Media Awareness Network – Special Issues for Young Children

The Washington Post – The Decline and Fall of the Democratic Leadership Council

Truthout.org – Obama To Chamber: Be Patriotic and Move Jobs Back to America

Readers Bonus’s
Common Cause.org – Common Cause Letters

(Weekly Section) Podcasters Way – Are We Listening, Media Matters & Media Minutes
 Back to Index

Why I have nominated Wikileaks for the Nobel

Peace Prize
2. Februar, 2011 | Tags: nobels fredspris, politikk, Wikileaks, ytringsfrihet - 183 Kommenarer

http://www.snorrevalen.no/2011/02/02/why-i-have-nominated-wikileaks-for-the-nobel-peace-prize/

It is always easier to support freedom of speech when the one who speaks agree with you politically. This is one
of the ―tests‖ on liberal and democratic values that governments tend to fail. For instance, western governments
have a long history on tolerating oppressive regimes that are ―friendly-minded‖. Internet companies assist China
in censoring search engines. And many countries respond to Wikileaks‗ obvious right to publish material that is
of public interest, by seeking to ―shoot the messenger‖.

Publishing material that is deemed classified by the government is an obvious right that newspapers and media
have practiced for many, many decades. This way, the public has become aware of abuses of power that
governments should be held accountable for. The internet doesn‘t change this – it merely makes information
more accessible, easier to distribute, and more democratic in the sense that virtually anyone with an internet
connection can contribute.

Nevertheless, many seek to redraw the map of information freedom with the emergence of institutions like
Wikileaks. Political powers and institutions that ordinarily protect freedom of speech suddenly warn against the
danger, the threat to security, yes even the ―terrorism” that Wikileaks represent. In doing so, they fail in
upholding democratic values and human rights. In fact, they contribute to the opposite. It is not, and should
never be, the priviledge of politicians to regulate which crimes the public should never be told about, and
through which media those crimes become known.

Liu Xiabao was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his struggle for human rights, democracy and
freedom of speech in China. Likewise: Wikileaks have contributed to the struggle for those very values
globally, by exposing (among many other things) corruption, war crimes and torture – some times even
conducted by allies of Norway. And most recently: By disclosing the economic arrangements by the
presidential family in Tunisia, Wikileaks have made a small contribution to bringing down a 24-year-lasting
dictatorship.

It would be a crime to ban or oppose the right to publish such information. It should instead be protected,
regardless of what we might think of the contents of some (or even all) of the published material. I am proud to
nominate Wikileaks for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Snorre Valen, Member of Parliament / Stortinget

 Back to Index

Rape rampant in US military

Statistics and soldiers' testimonies reveal a harrowing epidemic of
sexual assault in the US military.

Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 24 Dec 2010 20:34 GMT

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/12/2010122182546344551.html

Sexual assault within the ranks of the military is not a new problem. It is a systemic problem that has
necessitated that the military conduct its own annual reporting on the crisis.

A 2003 Air Force Academy sexual assault scandal prompted the department of defense to include a provision in
the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act that required investigations and reports of sexual harassment and
assaults within US military academies to be filed. The personal toll is, nevertheless, devastating.

Military sexual trauma (MST) survivor Susan Avila-Smith is director of the veteran‘s advocacy group Women
Organizing Women. She has been serving female and scores of male clients in various stages of recovery from
MST for 15 years and knows of its devastating effects up close.

―People cannot conceive how badly wounded these people are,‖ she told Al Jazeera, ―Of the 3,000 I‘ve worked
with, only one is employed. Combat trauma is bad enough, but with MST it‘s not the enemy, it‘s our guys who
are doing it. You‘re fighting your friends, your peers, people you‘ve been told have your back. That betrayal,
then the betrayal from the command is, they say, worse than the sexual assault itself.‖

On December 13, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups filed a federal lawsuit seeking
Pentagon records in order to get the real facts about the incidence of sexual assault in the ranks.

The Pentagon has consistently refused to release records that fully document the problem and how it is handled.
Sexual assaults on women in the US military have claimed some degree of visibility, but about male victims
there is absolute silence.

Pack Parachute, a non-profit in Seattle, assists veterans who are sexual assault survivors. Its founder Kira
Mountjoy-Pepka, was raped as a cadet at the Air Force Academy. In July 2003 she was member of a team of
female cadets handpicked by Donald Rumsfeld, at the time the secretary of defense, to tell their stories of
having been sexually assaulted. The ensuing media coverage and a Pentagon investigation forced the academy
to make the aforementioned major policy changes.

Report reveals alarming statistics

Mountjoy-Pepka often works with male survivors of MST. She stated in a telephone interview that four per cent
of men in the military experience MST. ―Most choose not to talk about it until after their discharge from the
military, largely because the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in over 60 percent of MST cases is too
overwhelming,‖ she informed Al Jazeera.

Last week the Pentagon released its ―annual report on sexual harassment and violence at the military service
academies‖. At its three academies, the number of reports of sexual assault and harassment has risen a
staggering 64 percent from last year.

The report attributes the huge increase to better reporting of incidents due to increased training and education
about sexual assault and harassment. Veteran‘s Administration (VA) statistics show that more than 50 percent
of the veterans who screen positive for MST are men.
 Back to Index
According to the US Census Bureau, there are roughly 22 million male veterans compared to less than two
million female vets.

In Congressional testimony in the summer of 2008, Lt. Gen. Rochelle, the army chief of personnel, reported the
little known statistic that 12 percent (approximately 260) of the 2,200 reported rapes in the military in 2007
were reported by military male victims.

Due to their sheer numbers in the military, more men (at a rough estimate one in twenty), have experienced
MST than women.

Shamed into silence

Billy Capshaw was 17 when he joined the Army in 1977. After being trained as a medic he was transferred to
Baumholder, Germany. His roommate, Jeffrey Dahmer, by virtue of his seniority ensured that Capshaw had no
formal assignment, no mail, and no pay. Having completely isolated the young medic, Dahmer regularly
sexually assaulted, raped, and tortured him.

Dahmer went on to become the infamous serial killer and sex offender who murdered 17 boys and men before
being beaten to death by an inmate at Columbia Correction Institution in 1994.

Capshaw reflects back, ―At that young age I didn‘t know how to deal with it. My commander did not believe
me. Nobody helped me, even though I begged and begged and begged.‖

The debilitating lifelong struggle Capshaw has had to face is common among survivors of military sexual
assault.

Later during therapy he needed to go public. Since then he says, ―I‘ve talked to a lot of men, many of them
soldiers, who are raped but who won‘t go public with their story. The shame alone is overwhelming.‖

In 1985 Michael Warren enlisted in the navy and for three years worked as a submarine machinist mate on a
nuclear submarine. One day he awoke to find another soldier performing fellatio on him.

He recollects with horror, ―I was paralyzed with fear. I was in disbelief... shame. When I reported it to the
commander he said it was better for me to deal with it after being discharged. Nobody helped me, not even the
chaplain. The commander at the processing centre wouldn‘t look me in the face. When I filled out my claim
later they didn‘t believe me. It‘s so frustrating.‖

Armando Javier was an active duty Marine from 1990 to 1994. He was a Lance Corporal at Camp Lejeune in
1993 when he was raped.

Five Marines jumped Javier and beat him until he was nearly unconscious, before taking turns raping him. His
sexual victimization narrative reads, ―One of them, a corporal, pulled down my shorts and instructed the others
to ‗Get the grease‘. Another corporal instructed someone to bring the stick. They began to insert the stick inside
my anus. The people present during this sadistic and ritual-like ceremony started to cajole, cheer, and laugh,
saying ―stick em‘ – stick-em‘.‖

Extreme shame and trauma compelled him not to disclose the crime to anyone except a friend in his unit. He
wrote in his account, ―My experience left me torn apart physically, mentally, and spiritually. I was dehumanized
and treated with ultimate cruelty, by my perpetrators… I was embarrassed and ashamed and didn‘t know what
to do. I was young at that time. And being part of an elite organization that values brotherhood, integrity and
faithfulness made it hard to come forward and reveal what happened.‖
 Back to Index
The reality of being less equal

Women in America were first allowed into the military during the Revolutionary War in 1775 and their travails
are as old. Drill instructors indoctrinate new recruits into it at the outset by routinely referring to them as ―girl,‖
―pussy,‖ ―bitch,‖ and ―dyke.‖

A Command Sergeant Major told Catherine Jayne West of the Mississippi National Guard, ―There aren‘t but
two places for women - in the kitchen or in the bedroom. Women have no place in the military.‖

She was raped by fellow soldier Private First Class Kevin Lemeiux, at the sprawling Camp Anaconda, north of
Baghdad. The defense lawyer in court merely wanted to know why, as a member of the army, she had not
fought back.

The morning after the rape, an army doctor gave her a thorough examination. The army‘s criminal investigation
team concluded her story was true. Moreover, Lemeiux had bragged about the incident to his buddies and they
had turned him in. It seemed like a closed case, but in court the defense claimed that the fact that West had not
fought back during the rape was what incriminated her. In addition, her commanding officer and 1st Sergeant
declared, in court, that she was a ―promiscuous female.‖

In contrast, Lemeiux, after the third court hearing of the trial, was promoted to a Specialist. Meanwhile his
lawyer entered a plea of insanity.

He was later found guilty of kidnapping but not rape, despite his own admission of the crime. He was given
three years for kidnapping, half of which was knocked off.

The long term affects of MST

Jasmine Black, a human resources specialist in the Army National Guard from June 2006 to September 2008
was raped by another soldier in her battalion when she was stationed in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. She
reported it to her Sexual Assault Response Coordinator (SARC) and the Military Police, but the culprit was not
brought to book.

After an early discharge due to MST and treatment at a PTSD Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Program
(PRRTP) facility, she was raped again by a higher-ranking member of the air force in February 2009.

Administrator for a combat engineering instruction unit in Knoxville, Tennessee, Tracey Harmon has no
illusions. ―For women in the military, you are either a bitch, a dyke, or a whore. If you sleep with one person in
your unit you are a whore. If you are a lesbian you are a dyke, and if you don‘t sleep with other soldiers you are
a bitch.‖

Maricela Guzman served in the navy from 1998 to 2002 as a computer technician on the island of Diego Garcia.
She was raped while in boot camp, but fear of consequences kept her from talking about it for the rest of her
time in the military. ―I survived by becoming a workaholic and was much awarded as a soldier for my work
ethic.‖

On witnessing the way it treated the native population in Diego Garcia, she chose to dissociate from the
military. Post discharge, her life became unmanageable. She underwent a divorce, survived a failed suicide
attempt and became homeless before deciding to move in with her parents. A chance encounter with a female
veteran at a political event in Los Angeles prompted her to contact the VA for help. Her therapist there
diagnosed her with PTSD from her rape.
 Back to Index
The VA denied her claim nevertheless, ―Because they said I couldn‘t prove it … since I had not brought it up
when it happened and also because I had not shown any deviant behavior while in the service. I was outraged
and felt compelled to talk about what happened.‖

While it will go to any length to maintain public silence over the issue, the military machine has no such qualms
within its own corridors. Guzman discloses, ―Through the gossip mill we would hear of women who had
reported being raped. No confidentiality was maintained nor any protection given to victims. The boys‘ club
culture is strong and the competition exclusive. That forces many not to report rape, because it is a blemish and
can ruin your career.‖

The department of defence reported that in fiscal year 2009, there were 3,230 reports of sexual assault, an
increase of 11 percent over the prior year.

However, as high as the military‘s own figures are of rape and sexual assault, victims and advocates Al Jazeera
spoke with believe the real figures are sure to be higher.

April Fitzsimmons, who was originally quoted in this article, requested that her information be removed
on the basis of personal reasons.

This is the first in a two part series on sexual harassment in the US military. The second part in the series
will be published in the coming week.

Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
 Back to Index

American Censorship of Arab

News Media
By Nabil Ghishan

Indeed, the Arab satellite media happens to be more democratic than its
American and Israeli counterparts because Arab satellites host both sides of the
issue.

Translated By Amal Bakleh

10 January 2010

Edited by Jessica Boesl

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill to censor some of the Arab news media,
particularly satellite channels ―if Washington deemed, with Israeli backing, that these satellite channels are
broadcasting content that is in conflict with American and Israeli interests in the region.‖

It is strange that this U.S. legislative step, which was opposed by only three members of the House of
Representatives, came on the heels of the president‘s success in turning a new page in the Islamic and Arab
world by drawing a new framework for their relationship, based on mutual respect and common interests rather
than opportunities, particularly as stated in his speech at Cairo University.

Note that the United States claims to defend human rights and freedom of the press but accuses the ―terrorists,‖
wherever they are, of lacking respect for democracy and human rights. At the same time, the U.S. is behaving
contrary to what it preaches because it considers the basic measure for freedom of the press to be something that
does not harm American or Israeli interests.

This is a new definition of media freedom that even the most powerful of dictatorships have failed to achieve.
The United States and its high ranking planners have forgotten that they have U.S. government news media
funded by American taxpayers that can only be broadcast outside the United States. U.S. law prohibits such
broadcasts inside the country under legislative codes that do not allow the Treasury to finance media that is
privately-owned rather than government-owned.

The signatories that helped pass the repressive law recognize that the U.S. and Israeli news media have free
reign around the globe as a result of the freedoms of press, speech, and religion that are protected throughout
world.

Indeed, the Arab satellite media happens to be more democratic than its American and Israeli counterparts
because Arab satellites host both sides of the issue. The satellite will not host an American official without its
Iranian counterpart, and such is the case with Israeli officials that became familiar faces in Arab news media, as
well. Where are the American and Israeli news media when it comes to that freedom, though? Do they allow an
Iranian official or a Hamas official to express his opinion?

Unfortunately, the U.S. legislation, which would grant Obama the right to censor Arab media (such as Al-
Manar – Hezbollah, Al-Aqsa – Hamas and the Iraqi Al-Zawra) and report on their performance in six months, is
in itself an attack on the freedom of the media and the press, the freedom of expression, and religion. This
demonstrates a policy of ethical and professional double standards, a downfall from which the U.S.
administration has always suffered. Back to Index
The bill passed by the House of Representatives confirms the claims of critics of U.S. policy in the Islamic
world as a whole, and the Middle East in particular, that it is a policy based on double standards when
Washington places its interests and Israel‘s interests above the values and principles it advocates in the Middle
East region.

U.S. lawmakers did not hesitate to impose penalties on satellite owners that allow for ―hostile‖ news media by
regarding them as supporters of terrorism. In addition, the lawmakers are discussing a bill sponsored by the U.S.
administration to tie its monetary aid to countries in the Middle East with how well those countries manage to
censor their media from harming U.S. interests - a strange excuse for logic.
 Back to Index

Is This How We Treat Our Female Soldiers?

Families seek answers about daughters' "Non-
Combat" deaths
Army Spc. Morganne McBeth lived to jump out of high-flying aircraft. But after she mysteriously died in Iraq in
the summer of 2010, the military initially said she "stabbed herself".
U.S. Army Sgt. Christopher McBeth has endured two tours in Iraq, where he regularly engaged in combat hell.
The 28-year-old has served for 10 years, but during summer 2010, war finally got him and his family. The
military told him his younger sister, U.S. Army Spc. Morganne McBeth, had suffered a noncombat related
death in Iraq and they weren't at liberty to explain exactly how she died.
All military families deserve closure after their loved ones' deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the McBeths are
still waiting eight months after the tragedy.
"They haven't told me anything," said McBeth, fighting his emotions. "I have no clue what happened to her."
The military has not offered a definitive explanation as to what happened to 19-year-old Morganne, who lived
to jump out of C-130 Hercules aircraft.
While leaving McBeth completely out of the loop, the military has attempted during the last several months to
explain Morganne's death to her parents, Sylvia and Leonard McBeth, of Fredericksburg, Va.
Initially, the military told Morganne's parents she accidentally stabbed herself and that it might have been a
suicide. Her parents didn't buy it and reached out to Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.). Pressure from Wittman
apparently convinced the military to offer some kind of information because soon after his involvement, the
military told them Morganne's death was likely a murder.
Two male soldiers from her unit have been charged and are free while the investigation continues. Spc.
Nicholas Bailey, 23, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and conspiring to obstruct justice by giving a
false statement. Spc. Tyler Cain, 21, was charged with conspiring to obstruct justice.
The story of the McBeth family and its need for closure is not an isolated experience. There are scores of
military families who want clear answers about what happened to their daughters and sons in Afghanistan and
Iraq. One of the most publicized stories is that of icon Pat Tillman, whose death some believe the Department of
Defense tried to cover up to glorify the U.S. military as it aggressively continues to seek new volunteer troops
in the post-9/11 world.
 Back to Index
And like the Tillmans, there are at least 20 families who believe the military isn't telling the truth about how
their daughters died in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to retired Army Col. Ann Wright, who served in Somali
during the early 1990s and quit her State Department job in 2003 in protest of the Iraq invasion.
More than 130 U.S. military women have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Department of Defense has
deemed nearly 50 deaths noncombat related. Wright said at least 20 of the noncombat deaths are suspicious, and
their families are speaking out to some degree.
Out of the 20 female soldier deaths under scrutiny, military reports document 14 as suicides. Many of their
families refuse to accept the military's explanation and believe their daughters died at the hands of others,
possibly fellow soldiers.
This much is clear: The mysterious deaths of female soldiers coincide with an increase in reported sexual
violence against women in the military.
Because of this, these families question whether their daughters' suicides were actually rapes and murders. If so,
then military investigators either bungled their investigations or are orchestrating cover-ups during wartime,
when the Department of Defense is more dependent on female soldiers than ever before.
Since 2002, most enlisted U.S. military men that have committed suicide have done so in the U.S., perhaps in
the aftermath of exposure to combat. But for enlisted women soldiers, they're more likely to commit suicide
overseas and on base, especially within Afghanistan and Iraq, Wright said.
"The question of why women would be more likely to commit suicide outside the U.S. than once home should
be investigated," she wrote in an article for StopMilitaryRape.org.
Here are several stories of female soldiers who the military said committed suicide or were victims of
noncombat deaths, and their families and friends are refusing to accept the military's explanations:
Army Spc. Seteria Brown,22, of Orlando, Fla. Friends said everybody loved the outgoing and positive Brown,
who left behind a 6-year-old daughter. The military said while stationed in Afghanistan in 2008, she put her
M16 barrel to her heart and pulled the trigger.
Army Pvt. Tina Priest, 20, of Smithville, Texas. Her mom said she was shy and "a follower." She wanted to be
a medic, but several weeks into her 2006 deployment to Iraq, she called home saying she had been raped and
that "no one was going to believe her." Just a few days after telling her mother, the military said Priest put her
M16 barrel to her heart and pulled the trigger with her toe.
Army Staff Sgt. Amy Tirador, 29, of Albany, N.Y. The military said while Tirador was on perimeter guard
duty in Iraq in 2009, she shot herself in the back of the head. A former unit mate, Army veteran Gena Smith
said: "Amy was a remarkable soldier and inspiring leader. Her family is insisting that they will do whatever it
takes to prove she didn't kill herself."
Marine Lance Cpl. Stacy Dryden, 22, of Canton, Ohio. The military said Dryden did not kill herself but
was found deceased in a portable latrine in Iraq in 2008. Historically, female soldiers have referred to the on-
base Porta-Potties as "rape traps." What is significant about Dryden's case is that her death, according to
military investigators, was due to injuries suffered during a "friendly wrestling match" she had with a U.S. Navy
sailor who body-slammed her onto concrete. The sailor has not been charged with any crime. Dryden's family
pressed for clearer answers, and in January 2011, military investigators changed their explanation and said the
wrestling match was actually a hostile confrontation after the sailor made a derogatory remark to Dryden.

Is this how we treat our female soldiers?

Similar to the McBeths, the family of Pvt. Lavena Johnson could not get a straight story out of Army
investigators on their daughter's 2005 death in Iraq. Her death has come under intense media scrutiny. Johnson
 Back to Index
has become the face of noncombat female death and has been championed by Mary Tillman, mother of Pat
Tillman.
The Department of Defense's first official version claimed that Johnson, a violin player and honor student,
killed herself by putting the barrel of an M16 in her mouth as the tent she was in burned around her. She ended
it all, in a fiery rage, said investigators from the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, or C.I.D, because a
new boyfriend of two months dumped her in an e-mail from Kentucky.
In 2009, C.I.D. changed answers in a written statement to Republican Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina.
C.I.D. stated Johnson never set fire to the tent, even though eyewitnesses first on the scene testified that parts of
the tent were in flames.
According to military documents, Johnson's commanding officer, James Woods, told investigators that before
her suicide, she was always smiling and that he did not see any changes in behavior.
The Senate Armed Services Committee eventually signed off on C.I.D.'s investigation. Case closed .
The story of Lavena Johnson, however, is far from over. Five years have passed since her death, and Lavena's
father, John Johnson of St. Louis, Mo., is still battling the military. He said he has one simple reason for this:
The evidence that his daughter didn't take her life but instead was raped and murdered is too great to ignore.
The military's official autopsy revealed a busted lip, broken teeth and scratch marks on Lavena's neck. Two
ballistics experts, Donald Marion and Cyril Wecht, also told the family that Lavena's wounds were not
consistent with an M16 and that the alleged exit wound from the top of her head looks more like an entry
wound caused by a 9 mm pistol.
Her father and friends also paid to disinter her body for a second autopsy, and new X-rays revealed a broken
neck. The second autopsy showed that the military had removed part of Lavena's tongue, vagina and anus and
didn't tell the Johnsons about this or document the removals in the first autopsy.
As implausible as it sounds, the taking of body parts such as the heart or brain without notifying the family has
happened to several other female soldiers whose deaths were ruled noncombat related.
Ed Buice from the Naval Criminal Investigative Services, or NCIS, said, "Since (these female soldiers) were
adults, no parental permission would have been required, and organs are generally placed back into the body
cavity and [the] torso is sewn up."
John Johnson believes the missing body parts were taken to cover up a sexual assault.
"My daughter wanted to serve her country, and they're going to insult her like this?" he asked angrily. "The
Army had the absolute chutzpah to say she killed herself. We believe she was raped and murdered by a
contractor. If they had a daughter [that died in a war zone], they would be acting the same way; there's no doubt.
And I'm not resting until something is done."

What the U.S. military says about Lavena, Morganne and others
Chris Grey, chief of public affairs for the C.I.D., the lead investigating body on Lavena's case, said his heart
goes out to John Johnson.
"Some families have a very difficult time believing a loved one would do this," he said. "Other journalists have
been turned off by the very complete and thorough criminal investigation we underwent."
The case remains closed, but Grey asked that anyone with new leads in Lavena's case to come forward. If the
information is legitimate, her investigation will be reopened.
 Back to Index
John Johnson has pushed Grey for answers, and his tenacity has not gone unrewarded. His efforts have helped
expose a disturbing part of the U.S. military -- what some people refer to as military sexual trauma, or MST.
Johnson said he believes the Department of Defense is fully aware of MST and trying desperately the keep the
problem off the public radar because recruiting young women, who are increasingly joining the military, will
suffer.
In 1970, women accounted for 1.4 percent of all military personnel, according to military documents. Today,
that number is 20 percent, or 300,000 women. When troop levels in the Iraq war zone theatre were at their
highest, there were four times more women in theatre than during the 1991 Gulf War.
More women are also being ordered into combat. According to a January 2011 CNN article, the Military
Leadership Diversity Commission called for a gradual end on the ban on women in combat, even though the
ban was seemingly already in effect.
Since 9/11, women soldiers have garnered two Silver Stars. And before 9/11, one Silver Star had been awarded
to a female. According to a March 2010 New York Times article, Marine "female engagement teams" that are
heavily armed and in full gear are on patrol in the Afghan countryside to win over Afghan women.
Even though the military's need for women soldiers is apparent, "There is a pattern of violence against women
soldiers, especially in Iraq," said an anonymous Congressional staffer who spent hundreds of hours
investigating the Johnson case.
Army veteran Tiffany Jones-Wright, who's been championing the awareness of one of the 20 deaths of female
soldiers under suspicion, said on many bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, men outnumber women probably 30 to 1.
"It could be a civilian contractor or the military," she said. "The men on base are crazy. They keep coming at
you, coming at you. It's like you're new meat to them. Sometimes they approach me with my husband right
there."
Jones-Wright said she is sick of the way women are being mistreated by the military. She's also passionate
about Brown, her former unit mate, who the military said put the barrel of her M16 to her heart and ended it all
on base in Sharana, Afghanistan, in 2008.
"Even if you met her the first time, (you would know) she wasn't capable of this," Jones-Wright said. "She was
a happy person. They way she talked about her daughter " she would never do this because of her
daughter. Never!"

The MST numbers: present and unknown

MST, which encompasses both assault and harassment, and also includes male victims, is no dark secret and in
no way a new trend for the military.
Two decades have passed since Tailhook, where Navy aviators forced female officers to run a gauntlet where
they were groped. A seminal moment in bringing attention to MST occurred in 2003, when the American
Journal of Industrialized Medicine published a study in which it interviewed roughly 500 female veterans who
were enlisted sometime between Vietnam and the first Iraq war. According to the study, one in three stated she
experienced "one or more completed or attempted rapes."
In 2006, Congress mandated the Department of Defense to initiate a comprehensive program to track sexual
assaults. MST victims said it's stunning to consider the department took until the 21st century to begin totaling
sexual assaults annually within all five military branches and oversea commands.
 Back to Index
In fiscal year 2008, 2,900 sexual assaults were reported. This was a nine-percent increase across the armed
forces and a 26-percent increase in war zones from 2007. For fiscal year 2009, there were 3,230 reports of
sexual assault, an 11-percent increase across the armed forces from 2008 and a 33-percent increase in war
zones.
These figures do not include the troop members and veterans who were scared to come forward. The
Department of Defense has estimated the number of unreported sexual assaults in the armed forces is between
50 and 80 percent.
Seeking to reveal MST statistics the Department of Defense refuses to make public, the American Civil
Liberties Union and the Service Women's Action Network filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense
and the Department Veterans Affairs in December. The groups said the Department of Defense needs to release
the number of convictions, acquittals and sexual-harassment complaints to expose the entire MST problem.

Predators know they can get away with it

What is painfully unmistakable is that the U.S. military has a culture where rape victims are re-victimized when
they try to report crimes to commanding officers, Ret. Col. Ann Wright who wrote the widely read article
questioning why more enlisted female soldiers commit suicide overseas compared to enlisted male soldiers who
are more likely to commit suicide when back in the states.
"Most times the perp is good friends with the platoon sergeant or commanding officer, and they tell the victim,
"You're nothing but a private, and you want to ruin the career of this guy who wants to make the military his
life?'" Wright said. "They tell the private, "Just shut up.' This type of intimidation is so prevalent."
According to military law, commanding officers have the final decision on whether military personnel of their
unit are charged with a criminal offense that occurred while on duty. In a war zone, the air of intimidation,
according to Wright, can be ratcheted to another level simply because the victim is surrounded by violence and
confusion.
"They'll say, "You're going to be dead by tomorrow,'" Wright said. ""Raping you is just the cost of war. We'll
just chalk it up (your murder) to unsafe security.'"
Wright said the foremost reason why some male soldiers are so brazen about rape and sexual harassment is
simply because the military tolerates it, even while Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insists the military
doesn't stand for any type of MST.
According to 2007 Department of Denfense statistics, 600 out of roughly 2,200 sexual-assault cases
investigated had suspects facing any sort of accountability.
One hundred eighty of the 600 suspects were court-martialed, meaning they would face trial by a military court.
This means just under 10 percent of military sexual-assault suspects faced prosecution that year; in the civilian
world, 40 percent on average face prosecution per year.
Nonpunitive administrative action or discharge was recommended for 220 of the 600 suspects, and the final 200
suspects were given nonjudicial punishment. Nonjudicial punishment is essentially a slap on the wrist and
involves being subjected to extra work duties, for instance.
The other 1,600 sexual-assault cases for 2007 were dropped.
Coincidently, a 2008 Government Accountability Office survey found 50 percent of military sexual-assault
victims never even reported the crime because they felt nothing would come of it.
"This matter is a laughing stock among men in the military," Wright said. "It's like a joke for the guys because
they know they'll never get prosecuted. The atmosphere in the military is you know you can get away with it."
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What was their non-action truly worth?

To gauge just how seriously the Department of Defense takes MST, victim advocates said they consider how
the department ran its 12-member Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military.
In 2005, Congress mandated the Department of Defense to form this task force to develop prevention strategies
and track data. But in 2008, the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, discovered the task force hadn't
done anything substantial regarding MST (PDF).
The 12 task force members spent $15 million over three years and told the GAO they needed the millions to pay
civilian staff and cover travel expenses.
What was the task force's non-action truly worth? Wright said nearly 6,000 military rapes occurred during those
three years.
To the Department of Defense's credit, another task force at the time -- the Department of Defense Task Force
Report for Victims of Sexual Assault -- realized the department needed a lead office to establish and enforce
sexual-assault policy matters across the armed services.
In 2005, the Department of Defense created the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, or SAPRO,
which strictly deals with sexual assault and harassment, and its accomplishments are gaining traction.
SAPRO established a 24-hour global hotline, a number given to all soldiers during their pre-deployment
training. According to a January 2011 article in The Christian Science Monitor, the Army is also training 4,000
victim advocates and sexual-assault response coordinators, or SARCs, and the Navy has trained an estimated
12,000 healthcare personnel for sexual-assault response.
Additionally, the Department of Defense created the Sexual Harassment/Assault Responsive Program, or
SHARP, a grassroots effort for all military personnel, which has produced a rap song titled "I.A.M. STRONG."
The song's chorus includes: "You need to " Intervene! Motivate! Act! " Turnin' the other cheek is a thing of the
past!"
The rap mirrors SAPRO's fundamental prevention for sexual assault and harassment against the female soldier -
- bystander's intervention.
Karen Whitley, SAPRO director, said just as society has learned to take the keys away from an imminent drunk
driver, the Department of Defense urges military personnel to intervene in situation they believe might result in
MST.
Whitley said inspiring major shifts in cultural attitudes, such as the effort to raise awareness about the dangers
of drunk driving over the last 30 years, takes eight to 10 years before witnessing any lasting success.
"We're now five years into this," she said. "I feel the military leads the way on improving societal issues, and I
feel we're going to make a difference here."
But not long after its creation, SAPRO became a target of MST advocates. They argue some of SAPRO's newly
implemented policies to help encourage more victims to report MST crimes -- such as restricted reporting -- are
not tough enough and even laughable.

Restricted and unrestricted reporting

Army veteran Susan Avila-Smith runs the MST advocacy group VETWOW, which stands for Veteran Women
Organizing Women.
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Avila-Smith's been advocating for MST victims since 1995, after the military refused to punish her Army ex-
husband after he jumped up and down on her pregnant stomach and killed their baby. Yet what enraged her to
become an MST advocate was what happened after she sought justice from commanding officers.
"I was told not to talk to anybody about it or I would be BCD'd, which is a Bad Conduct Discharge," she said.
Avila-Smith said VETWOW represents 3,000 veterans who were raped during their enlistment, and nearly all
of them told their commanding officers about the crime. Many revealed to her the fallout from this was worse
than the rape itself, she said.
Before the military put into action new sexual-assault reporting procedures in 2005, military law offered rape
victims only a single choice if they were to seek an investigation. Tell company-level commanding officers
about the rape and who the alleged rapist was. Company-level commanders oversee between 75 to 200 troops
and are judge and jury when handing down criminal charges that occur while on duty.
Thus it's no surprise some Department of Defense sexual-assault task forces of this decade have made the issue
of confidentiality for rape victims a top priority. This is a clear signal that the re-victimization of rape victims in
the military is arguably the greatest obstacle to derailing MST.
Seeking confidentiality, SAPRO initiated a two-track sexual-assault reporting policy in 2005 called restricted
and unrestricted reporting.
Restricted reporting allows the victim a new choice -- to bypass chain of command by not having to disclose the
name of the victim or the rapist.
Instead, restricted reporting permits a victim to call a SARC on a hotline or tell a victim advocate such as a
chaplain or healthcare professional. Once a restricted report is made, advocacy and counseling is initiated for
the victim, but an investigation is not triggered.
Unrestricted reporting sticks with military tradition. Service members who desire an investigation, along with
healthcare services, must notify commanding officers of the rape and whom they're accusing.
For the 3,500 soldiers who have utilized restricted reporting, Whitley called it "remarkable progress."
"That's 3,500 people we feel we're helping who would have never come forward if not for restricted reporting,"
she said. "And that tells me it's working."
But there are several glaring drawbacks to restricted reporting, Avila-Smith said, and the limitations are also
posted on SHARP's website.
According to the SHARP website, "Your assailant remains unpunished and capable of assaulting other victims,"
and "You will continue to have contact with your assailant, if he/she is in your organization billeted with you."
Essentially, an alleged rapist goes free under restricted reporting, and if the alleged rapist is in the same unit as
the victim, which is a common occurrence according to VETWOW, the predator is still interacting with the
victim.
"We've struggled with this, but what we want is people to come forward and get the care they need," Avila-
Smith said.
VETWOW and other MST advocacy groups refuse to acknowledge restricted reporting as a remedy to curb
MST. Simply put, restricted reporting has meant 3,500 alleged predators got away with rape, she said.
"Restricted reporting? It's a joke," Avila-Smith said with a scoff. According to her, the number one thing the
Department of Defense needs to do is hold commanding officers accountable -- meaning higher-ranked
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commanders or civilians trained in prosecuting sexual assault are allowed transparency to the MST
investigations of commanding officers and an equal or greater say when administering an indictment.
Other MST advocates are also championing institutional overhauls. U.S. Army veteran Olga Ferrer is the
director of A Black Rose, a nonprofit MST advocacy group. While stationed in Kuwait during the Gulf War,
Ferrer was alone in a shared shower facility when a male soldier snuck up from behind.
She filed a report and sought military police to help with the investigation, but instead they told her the "report
had vanished." She is adamant the only way to end MST is to involve a civilian element.
"Every military site -- overseas or in the U.S. -- should have a unit or group, that includes doctors, nurses,
therapists, that investigates sexual assaults and does not fall under the DOD or military," she said. "These
people will be the ones where all sexual assaults will be reported to."
She said restricted reporting makes her anger boil.
"The alleged rapist should immediately be removed from the victim's unit, and the victim should also be placed
somewhere else," Ferrer said. "They should not be working together. Period. The only one being restricted is the
victim."

"Just tell the truth"

Avila-Smith believes civilians can remain patriotic and supportive of the troops but need to see the U.S. military
and its culture with objective eyes.
"People don't want to care because people don't want to believe this is true," she said. "And because it doesn't
exist to them, they have no empathy for victims."
In regards to Lavena Johnson, Avila-Smith said, "It's really truly amazing what the military will do to cover
things up."
"It would be so much better if the military just tells the truth," she said. "It would be quicker, cleaner and a
whole lot cheaper. Just tell the truth."
Spot.us note: Susan Burke, a highly regarded Washington D.C.-based attorney is preparing to file a class-
action lawsuit on behalf of MST survivors to change how the U.S. military deals with sexual-assault committed
within its ranks as well as its aftermath. The suit will ask for both damages and changes in the military's
practices so that everyone who wants to serve our country can do so free from sexual harassment and assault.
Burke can be contacted at ssajadi AT burkeoneil DOT com.
The following poem was written by "greensthings-2009" in the comments section of Katie Couric's article
"Sexual Assault Permeates U.S. Armed Forces."
1979.
18 years old.
The Army.
Germany, sent out to the field for the first time.
The only woman and 1500 men.
I was the Medic, they were Engineers.
Alone, in the dark being watched, only I didn't know
Vilseck, Germany after two weeks without a shower, we were allowed to go to Tent city for 2 days.
Much Celebrating. Much Drinking. After showers the partying started.
I was invited.
A cute boy
Fun
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free drinks
more drinks
Something wrong....
Room spinning
Dizzy
can't walk
being carried
pass out
wake up
can't move
tied up
can't talk
gag in mouth
voices
someone on me
wet between the legs
laughter
another body on me
tears
another body
all night
over and over again
how many?
Don't know
too many
over and over again
thrusting
sweaty
pawing
pain
tearing
more laughter
in and out of conscience
how many?
could be twenty
could be a hundred
all ranks
all sizes
all ages
all *******
all thrusting
all sweating
lots of pain
smell of greasy tent
smell of booze
smell of tobacco
smell of man sweat
smell of *****
smell of sex
all thrusting
all groping
all squeezing
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all pawing
only one, who when he saw my tears, stopped in his tracks
But he walked out, and another came in to take his place
over and over again
no help
none in sight
all night long
in and out of reality
in and out of dreams
more body's
more men
more thrusting
how many hours?
finally the sweet release of awareness
awakening
naked
in the showers
bruises and blood everywhere
Pain
oh my God the pain
all consuming pain
my clothing in a pile
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
water is cold
scrub some more
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
scrub
put on uniform
met at door, by commanding Officer
stern words about MY behavior
told if I talked, it would be MY fault
Threatened with prison for "enticing"
handed orders to be transfered
Told to pack my bags
Transportation waiting
Warned again
If you talk, you die
or worse
watching blindly as the trees roll by
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curling up inside of me
hiding the pain
hoping the pain will fade
as the bruises do
can't walk, can't sit, can't take a ****
blaming myself
Others have
so why not me?
Guilt
it weighs on a mind
remembering what was said
silence it is my friend
denial
lock the pain away
never talk they said
never talk I did
The pain it became my friend
To this day, it never ends.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the first time I have EVER written or spoken about that night. The ONLY reason I have after thirty years
is, because it is STILL going on! What happened to me, happens to thousands of women in the military ever
year!
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Corporate Warriors: The Privatized Military and

Iraq
Public Affairs Program

P. W. Singer, Joanne J. Myers

http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/transcripts/5287.html
Audio Link: http://media.carnegiecouncil.org/carnegie/audio/20051201_PWSinger.mp3
Introduction

JOANNE MYERS: Good afternoon. I'm Joanne Myers, Director of Public Affairs Programs, and I'd like to
thank you for joining us this afternoon as we welcome P. W. Singer to the fourth program in our series on
American Military Power.

Dr. Singer is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution and Director of
the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World. He is with us this afternoon in order to
discuss a phenomenon that has been around for quite a long time but has most recently demanded our attention,
and this is the extremely controversial role that private military companies are playing in fighting the war in
Iraq.

Whether reading about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison or hearing about companies that overcharge the
government for services provided in Iraq, some of the most disturbing news coming from this war zone has
involved private military contractors who have been outsourced by the Pentagon to perform the duties once
carried out by official military units.

With U.S. forces increasingly overstretched, private companies are more and more providing a record number
of armed personnel to offer services ranging from logistics and troop training to escorting of convoys and
interrogations in conflict zones around the world. This new privatized military industry encompasses hundreds
of companies, thousands of employees, and billions of dollars in revenue.

While these new private solutions for public military ends is not necessarily a bad thing, when it comes to actual
warfare the stakes are high. The entrance of the profit motive onto the battlefield raises a series of troubling
questions, as these so-called private soldiers have been operating with previous few constraints to govern their
activities. Therefore, if outsourcing of the military continues to be the trend, it would be prudent to ask: What
ethical standards should apply when our national security is at issue and people's lives are constantly put at risk?

For some time now, P. W. Singer has been interested in the rise of the so-called private military companies and
their lack of public oversight. He is widely acclaimed for his work in this area and is often the first one
journalists turn to when wanting to know more about this issue. His appearances on all the major networks,
including several cable and news shows, attest to this.
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His book on this subject, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, was the first
publication to explore the private military industry, and in 2004 was named Best Book of the Year by the
American Political Science Association. In addition to this work, he is the author of Children at War, which was
discussed here in February, and for those of you who are interested, you can find a transcript on our Web site.
And as I mentioned earlier, Dr. Singer is based in Washington at the Brookings Institution.

We are very grateful that he has made the journey up this morning and we welcome him here this afternoon.
Thank you.

Remarks

P. W. SINGER: Thank you.

Today I am happy to talk to you about what I think is probably one of the most controversial but least
understood developments in both the war in Iraq, and in modern warfare in general: the rise of the private
military industry. This new industry does not offer the traditional goods of warfare; it does not make the
weapons, tanks, aircraft carriers, and so on. Instead, it provides the services of warfare; it is fulfilling
professional functions that were once limited to soldiers. This rise of the private military presents some
interesting dilemmas for the conduct of both war and politics.

What I will to do today is give the quick-and-dirty analysis of the private military industry and its role in Iraq.
I'll start out by defining what this industry is and where it came from; next, I'll talk about what is going on in
Iraq and some of the implications that we need to think about; and finally, I'll discuss some of the policy
responses that we need to develop.

It's important to define what we mean by the private military industry. These are private companies that offer
the functions of warfare—not the goods, but the functions—spanning a wide range of activities. They perform
everything from tactical combat to consulting (training and advising forces, but not carrying weapons
themselves) to the mundane logistics (equipping, supplying, repairing, and so on). The result is that the private
military industry now offers every function that was once limited to state militaries.

Basically, what has happened is that the industry of warfare has followed the path laid out in other
industries?the outsourcing and globalization of services. So, in a business sense, we shouldn't be all that
surprised by this transition. But what is significant is the domain in which it is taking place—it is happening in
the arena of war, which was once limited to the state. In fact, war used to be a defining aspect of states; war was
what the state did and in turn made the state. The private military industry has now broken that monopoly. The
result is that any actor in the global system can access these skills and functions simply by writing a check. That
presents an amazing dilemma.

Now, there are really three causes driving this industry and they roll into one dynamic.

The first is good old-fashioned supply and demand. Since the end of the Cold War, you have a much smaller
U.S. military. It's about 35 percent smaller than it was during the Cold War. It's greatly overextended. So you
have a gap between supply and demand.

But we're not the only ones. More than six million soldiers were downsized at the end of the Cold War. That
affects the labor market. It means labor is more available; it's also cheaper.
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Another aspect on the demand side is the rise of more wars. But these wars aren't as strategic as they were in the
past. They often take place in areas that don't interest the great powers and where the superpowers aren't going
to intervene as they did in the past.

There are also changes in technology. Light weapons and small arms, like AK-47s, have spread and
proliferated. There are more than 550 million small arms in the global market, one for every twelve human
beings. You can buy an AK-47 in Kenya for the price of a goat. You can buy one in Uganda for the price of a
rooster. These weapons are surprisingly easy to learn how to use. They are lighter and cheaper. A ten-year-old
can learn how to use an AK-47 in under thirty minutes, which means another addition to the demand side in
terms of the threats produced.

Secondly, there have also been changes in the conduct of warfare itself. There used to be distinctions in war
between soldiers and civilians. Those distinctions are breaking down. They are breaking down on the low-
intensity war side—the messier wars, the conflicts that feature drug cartels, fedayeen, terrorists, warlords, and
child soldiers.

The distinctions are also breaking down on the high-intensity warfare side—the type of wars that the U.S.
military fights. If you were a U.S. Navy sailor serving aboard a guided missile destroyer during the Iraq war,
serving alongside you would have been twenty contractors from six different companies. They were the ones
operating the air defense system, because it has gotten so sophisticated that we can't keep people in the military
to operate it. So we've turned to the private market.

We are also seeing a change in the relation between the military and technology. The military is no longer
developing technology the way it did in World War II—making radar, atomic bombs, and the like. It is getting
its technology off the shelf. For example, the reason that the U.S. military is so much more lethal in this war as
compared to the last war—the reason we were able to topple Saddam's government with only one-fourth of the
troops that were deployed in the 1991 Gulf War—was the fact of information technology. It was the Internet
that linked the weapons systems into a far more lethal whole.

The final cause that wraps these together is what's called the "privatization revolution." It's a change in
mentality, a change in political thinking. It's the new ideology that 'if there is a function that the market can do,
then you should turn it over to the market.' We have seen this transformation take place in everything from
garbage collection, to postal services, schools, prisons, and police. We spend more on private police in the
United States right now than on actual police.

And this phenomenon is not confined to the United States. It is something that's quite global. One of the fastest-
growing industries in formerly communist China right now is the private security industry.

But that last frontier of privatization, that last monopoly, the one that no one thought could ever be broken, was
the military. Yet as we're learning from the current conflict in Iraq, that monopoly has been broken.

The way to think about the industry is like any other business. There are three sectors, three types of companies.

The first are what I call "military provider firms." Some people will call these "private military companies."
Sometimes the companies call themselves "private security companies." It doesn't matter what they call
themselves, its what they do that matters. These are companies that operate in the tactical sphere. These are
companies that use weaponry. These are companies that fulfill those functions that, for example, infantries and
Special Forces would have fulfilled in the past.

The second type of company is the military consultant firm. They don't fight for you, but they train and advise
the military how to do its job better. Their parallel in the civilian sphere is the management-consulting firm.
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The third type of company is the military support firm. They're akin to supply-chain management firms. They
take care of the back-end, the non-sexy roles like logistics and technology assistance that need to be done if
your operation is to succeed.

The size of this industry is immense, much bigger than most people realize. All told, the entire industry pulls in
approximately $100 billion per year in revenue on the global level. It's operating in over fifty different
countries.

The biggest client of this industry is, in fact, the most powerful military in the world. During the ten years
leading up to the current Iraq war, the Pentagon entered into over 3,000 contracts with private military
companies. Since the Iraq war, it has obviously escalated to a whole new level.

For example, just one company in the military support sector, Halliburton and its KBR Division, just that one
company has pulled in—depending on who does the accounting—somewhere between $13-16 billion worth of
revenue related to the Iraq war. To put that figure in context, $13 billion is 2.5 times what the U.S. government
spent (in current dollars) on the entire 1991 Gulf War.

We can also look at these numbers in a historic sense. If we take the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the
Mexican-American War, and the Spanish-American War, and combine their costs and convert them to reflect
current dollars, we still spent more on Halliburton's contract. And it gets even more interesting. If we take how
much was spent on the Mexican-American War—about $1.8 billion in current dollars—that's roughly the same
amount that the U.S. Army has found that Halliburton either provided unsubstantiated documentation of its
billing or that it claims that Halliburton over-billed. Personally, I think we got a better deal out of the Mexican-
American War. We got California, Utah, and Arizona out of that one, while we got some nice Hallibuton
logo'ed towels out of this one.

Now, what's going on in Iraq with PMFs? Just as Iraq is the single largest commitment of U.S. military forces in
a generation, it is by far the largest marketplace for the private military industry ever. The numbers dwarf any
other operation.

There are more than eighty private military companies operating on the ground in Iraq. Depending on how you
define the individuals within the industry, there are more than 20,000 private military contractors. That number
is not concrete. For example, some people in the industry say that only 8,000 of them are armed and that only
these should count; other people figure that 25,000 of them are armed or serving in some military capacity. It's a
debate of definitions, essentially as to whether you include non-Western private soldiers, but the point is that it's
quite a significant number of people.

To put the number of people in context, let's take the 20,000 figure, a lowball estimate which is the one I use,
and which is, by the way, the figure that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reported to Congress. 20,000 is
more than the rest of the coalition combined. That means, if we are being honest, that we have not assembled a
"coalition of the willing" in Iraq, but rather a "coalition of the billing."

Now, the result is that these private military contractors are facing great dangers and they are bearing great
costs. More than 280 have been killed in Iraq and over 3,000 have been injured. Those are Department of Labor
statistics and they even think that it may be a low count. And those numbers don't go into the official count,
because the Pentagon doesn't include private military contractors when it talks about the number killed in action
in Iraq. It's a way of displacing some of the costs of the war.

What are the jobs that these private contractors are doing? Well, it's everything from logistics (the Halliburton-
type roles) to training and advising (both of local Iraqi forces and U.S. military forces). For example, if you are
a soldier deployed in Iraq right now, your last refresher course as you went through Kuwait to learn about the
latest tactics would have been a war game that's operated by the company MPRI. MPRI claims that it has the
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people who formerly worked at Fort Irwin, which is where the U.S. Army created and honed its skills, the place
where we created the best army in the world. So MPRI says, in fact, that it hired away the trainers from this
military outfit, that it has the best military trainers in the world. Those people are not in the U.S. military
anymore.

You also have, of course, contractors operating in the sexier, armed, tactical roles, the ones that people have
paid the most attention to. They carry out three functions in Iraq: First, they guard key installations, ranging
from construction sites to the Green Zone itself. At one military base outside Mosul, the perimeter has Iraqi
security forces 360 degrees around it. But no one really trusts them, so we have our own security forces in the
interior perimeter. 180 degrees of it is U.S. Army, 180 degrees is private military.

Second, contractors are guarding key individuals. For example, Paul Bremer and other significant figures were
guarded by private military contractors who were equipped with everything including their own helicopters.

Third, contractors are escorting convoys, which is much more dangerous than any other role that is being
carried out in Iraq.

So, when we take a step back and look at the Iraq war and write the history of it, we are going to have to include
at least a chapter—or maybe more—on private military contractors. That's a major departure from any other
history of war. We could not have waged the Iraq war without private military contractors. Simply put, if those
20,000 troops pulled out, the operation would collapse.

But contractors have also been involved in many of the most controversial aspects of the war; everything from
the over-billing allegations; the incidents at Fallujah and the uprising that followed, and the tragedy of the
Blackwater employees who were killed there and the subsequent lawsuit filed by the families of those
employees; to Abu Ghraib, where the U.S. military found that 100 percent of the interpreters and up to 50
percent of the interrogators were private military contractors working for the Titan and CACI [pronounced
"khaki"] firms, respectively. The U.S. Army found that 36 percent of the identified abuse incidents involved
private military contractors, and they also identified six private military contractors as being individually
responsible up to a potentially criminal level. As a footnote, of course, not one of those private contractor
individuals has been legally prosecuted, punished, or imprisoned.

So what are the dilemmas that emerge from this? Obviously, they are pretty manifold. There are five that I
identify as key.

The first are contractual dilemmas. This comes when you hire anyone to do a job for you, whether it is a
plumber or a lawyer. On the one side, you are hiring them to get better skills; you hire them hopefully to save
you money; you are also hiring them to take on a job that you'd rather not do, it may be distasteful, it may be
messy, you may not have the time.

The flipside of when you hire someone—this is what academics call "principal agent dilemmas"—is that you
lose control of what is being done, and so anything can happen. How do you find out if they are doing a good
job or not? How do you know if they're over-billing you or working all the hours that they say? If you spend
extra time checking up on that, then you don't get the cost savings that you wanted. This dilemma plays out in
any kind of contract.

But what is happening now is that these dilemmas are moving into the sphere of warfare. Beyond the issues of
"Oh, they over-billed us," in the military there is also the issue of command and control. That's where it really
becomes worrisome, because you've got people operating for you that you don't have command and control of.
That raises some interesting questions.
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It gets even more interesting when you realize that, for cost savings purposes, military contractors are bringing
in what are called third-party nationals. There is the issue of, "well, maybe if they are American their patriotism
will kick in and they'll do the right thing." It may not. Patriotism doesn't always work as we all well know. But
now, if you're bringing in a Bangladeshi or a South African, for example, you don't even have that thin claim of
a patriotism element. Regardless of where they come from, that person can leave at any time. They are bound
not by an oath but by a contract. They can leave if they get a better job offer. They can leave because Iraq isn't
the paradise that they thought it would be and they just want to go home. They can leave because their wife had
a baby and they want to go home and see it.

What you are doing is injecting discretion into a military operation. These are choices that soldiers don't have,
and you are injecting that into your operation. That creates a worrisome layer of uncertainty.

The second dilemma is the fact that it's an open market. The private military industry is a global business that is
effectively unregulated. There are very few regulations on who can work for these firms and who these firms
can hire themselves out to. So, on the employee side, the vetting is not being done by our own military; it is
being done by a private company that has different incentives in play.

Some of the people in the industry are, literally, the most talented soldiers in the world. For example, there are
more former British SAS—that's their version of our Green Berets—in Iraq right now serving in a private
capacity than there are SAS troops in the entire British military right now. There are also a number of former
Army Delta Force soldiers and former Navy SEALs working in Iraq.

Many of these contractors are honorable men and women. It depends on how you cut it, but most of the people
working in this industry are good people looking to do a good job. But there aren't the same hiring controls as in
the military, so some bad apples get in there.

On the skill side, people get in who don't have the job skills to do the tasks. For example, the U.S. Army found
that 35 percent of the interrogators working for the CACI Company at Abu Ghraib were not trained to be
military interrogators.

There are also some people who we should be scared that they are there. For example, one of the individuals
paid with U.S. taxpayer money was an individual who had openly testified to the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in South Africa that he had firebombed the houses of thirteen political activists. The reason that he
admitted to that was so that he wouldn't be prosecuted for the planned murder of a number of political activists
to which he had confessed. He was working for us in Iraq.

Another exemplary individual was former British Army. Sounds good, right? "He's former British Army; what's
wrong with that?" There's a reason he was former British Army: He had been kicked out of the British Army
and put in jail for cooperating with Irish terrorists. The British Army wasn't happy to find out that he had a job
in Iraq and was armed with a submachine gun and an access badge to all our bases.

The other side of the employment issue is the question of who hires these companies. There aren't any controls
there. Private military companies have worked for what we would describe as the "good guys": the UN,
environmental groups, democratic countries, and even protecting endangered rhinos for the World Wildlife
Fund.

They have also worked for some people that we might find questionable. For example, private military
companies have been caught working for warlords, dictatorship, and two separate Colombian drug cartels.
Those are some issues to be concerned about. There was also one contractor that provided what was called "the
jihadi challenge." It was a military training course for young Muslim youth who wanted to join the jihad in
Kosovo or Kashmir or Afghanistan. This was prior to 9/11.
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The third issue to be concerned about is conducting public policy through private means. This is what is
happening with outsourcing. We are taking public policy ends and trying to carry them out via private means.
On the one hand, it's a new way to carry out covert operations when you want to escape oversight, and this is
often how they are used—to get around legislative limits. Executive branches like this. For example, what's
going on in Colombia could fall under this category.

It is also something to get around what I would call overt operational limits. Let's think about it this way: If we
didn't have these more than 20,000 private military contractors in Iraq, what would we do? Well, we would
have either not carried out that operation, or found a way to fulfill those functions. We would have had to either
send more troops—meaning that the Secretary of Defense would have had to admit that he was wrong—or send
more National Guard, which would have been pretty politically unpopular in the middle of the presidential
campaign season. Or, we could have asked our friends and allies to send troops, which would have meant
making compromises with them, and even then they probably wouldn't have done it. Or we could have used
private military contractors as we did. And, by the way, they come with what businessmen would describe as a
"positive externality"; if they are killed, wounded, or captured, it doesn't carry the same weight in the public
mind as if soldiers are. They don't count in the same manner. That's unfortunate, but it's the truth.

The fourth issue is that of the legal gray areas. Basically, what we have done is moved companies into the
military sphere, but we don't have the legal structures in place to deal with the transition. You can't court martial
a private military contractor. The Supreme Court found that you cannot court martial a civilian.

International law is pretty much absent on this issue. They don't meet the definition of mercenaries, but we don't
have another definition to define their status. In fact, one military lawyer said that they fall into the same legal
gray area, the same legal vacuum, as the unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay. It is as if they don't even
exist under the law. They are in another world.

Normally, when you commit a crime, the local state is the one that prosecutes you. If I go to Germany and shoot
someone, a German court will deal with me. But the irony here, the twist, is that military contractors are not
operating in normal states. They're operating in war zones, failed states. It is a big concern that we don't have
the accountability structures in place.

There is an easy way to prove this. How many private military contractors have been prosecuted for any crime
in Iraq? Just guess. Somebody call out a number.

VOICE: Zero.

P. W. SINGER: Zero.

Let's compare that to the number of U.S. troops. Well, over sixty U.S. troops have been court martialed during
this conflict for all sorts of things, from the Abu Ghraib abuses to drinking on duty. But maybe that's not a fair
comparison.

Let's compare the numbers to regular civilian life, because these contractors are not soldiers. Take a typical city
in the United States that has the same number of people and the same per capita income as the private military
population of Iraq: Westport, Connecticut. Beautiful little Westport, with a per capita income of over $70,000
per year, has a crime rate of twenty-eight crimes per 1,000 citizens. The PMF population of Iraq has a supposed
crime rate of zero by contrast.

We have to ask ourselves what is going on here. Have we found in private militaries the Stepford village of
Iraq, where human nature has been overcome? Or, do we have a gap in the law and a lack of political will to
close it? I think we know which one it is.
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The final dilemma I'll close on is the issue of the public versus private sphere. The rise of this industry raises
some deep questions about the military itself.

Now, most people have focused on the first-level question: retention. What does private contracting mean for
keeping soldiers in the military when we are paying companies to recruit soldiers out of the military? We are
seeing this take place, for example, with the Special Forces, where the U.S. military is now compelled to offer
bounties to keep our most talented people within the military. Right now the bonuses are over $100,000 for one
of these soldiers to re-enlist. The reason for this is because people can leave and join companies that will pay
them the same amount or more. So we're bidding against ourselves.

But there's another issue at play here. This is about the definition of the profession itself. The military is a
unique profession. It is the only profession that stands at a remove from society. It is the only profession that
has its own court system, its own laws; the only profession that has its own grocery stores and separate bases.
The reason for this is because it is responsible for society's security. That's why we treat it uniquely. That's why
we honor the military and have a different pension system. Perhaps we don't honor the military enough, but we
do treat it differently than every other profession.

What happens when that profession starts becoming like any other profession, when people use skill sets that
they've gained in the military for profit? It raises some fundamental questions that we have to explore.

I should say that this is not just something that we're dealing with in the United States. It is a global industry.
The questions go beyond us and we need to pay attention to how other nations are wrestling with it as well.

I will end on this note: If I had come in here and given this talk five years ago, you would have gone to Joanne
and said, "What crackpot did you bring in here? He sounds like a Hollywood scriptwriter. That's something out
of a movie. That's not real." All these are real descriptions of what's happening now. The incidents that I cited
were real. That's what's happening now. Where are we going to be five to ten years from now?

Thank you.

JOANNE MYERS: Truth is stranger than fiction, right?

Questions and Answers

QUESTION: I don't know the difference between these people and mercenaries. Could you explain that
please?

P. W. SINGER: That's a really good question. "Mercenary" is defined in different ways, but at the end of the
day it's the legal definition that is important. It's the same as using the term "murderer" ? you can throw the
word around, but there is also legal terminology that defines it. Under international law, there is a legal
definition of what it means to be a mercenary.

The problem is that it's one of the most poorly written definitions under the law. For example, if you are
fighting in a civil war, then you are not a mercenary. If you are fighting on behalf of your own government, but
not in that government's military as someone of the same nationality, then you are not a mercenary. You are
considered to be in an organization, as opposed to being an individual, and so you are not a mercenary.

The result is, in fact, that no one really meets the definition of being a mercenary at the end of the day under the
law. In fact, we haven't prosecuted anyone for being a mercenary in the last eighty years, except for one guy,
and he actually fought for Fidel Castro, so I think there were obviously extra considerations operating on the
side there.
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So we have to go beyond the legal definition of being a mercenary and look at the person's motivations. What
we are seeing with private military contractors could be defined as mercenary motives: using military skills for
profit. In my opinion, if we take a look back in history, what we have here is the corporate evolution of the
mercenary trade. Throughout history, there have been all sorts of times when for-profit entities have operated in
war.

It's an interesting progression. In fact, the very word "company" comes from the term "the free companies."
These were thirteenth century knights who banded together and fought for someone for payment in bread.

The very first joint stock enterprise?the first time that one could buy shares of stock in something?was an
invasion of France in the late 1300s. The first legal contracts were structured by the condotieri, which were
entities that fought in Italy in the 1500s.

What happened, though, is that with the rise of the state and patriotism and nationalism in the late 1700s, the
idea of fighting-for-profit fell by the wayside and it went black market. That's really when the "Dogs of War"
mercenary period started; the kind of people we saw in the Congo in the 1960s.

What's happening now is that the profession has gone from being black market to being open market again, and
it has gone back from being individual mercenaries to being corporatized. You can buy stock in these
companies. They have boards of directors.

Does anyone here own an S&P 500 mutual fund? You all then own stock in private military companies, because
many of the entities within the S&P 500 own private military companies. Take MPRI, for example, the
company that I referenced earlier. MPRI, which did the training of U.S. troops in Kuwait, also did the training
for local armies in Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Colombia, and so on. That company was
private; it was started by former U.S. Army generals. A couple of years back, it was bought by L3. L3 is a
major company in the S&P 500.

QUESTION: Early in this war there was a great deal of discussion about body armor. Why wasn't body armor
available to American troops? Given the enormous amounts of money being spent on organizations like
Halliburton, how is it that body armor is apparently still not available to the people fighting this war?

P. W. SINGER: It's a really good question. It allows us to have fun with numbers, the Halliburton numbers, in
a different way.

Let's say that instead of spending that money on Halliburton, we had spent it on things within the military
sphere. Let's say we spent it on body armor. We could have bought 2.3 million sets of body armor, enough for
every U.S. soldier to have it. If we count just the people fighting in Iraq, they could have had a different flak
vest for every day of the week. It could have been like Paris Hilton's closet to them.

Let's say, "Okay, we're not going to spend it on body armor. We're going to spend it on up-armored Humvees."
We could have bought more than 10,000 up-armored Humvees.

Everybody wants to talk about the Dick Cheney and Halliburton link. I'm not one of the conspiracy theorists; I
don't think he sent the money in Halliburton's direction. But, to play with numbers, in the time since he became
Vice President Dick Cheney has received $33 million in backdated pay from Halliburton. That was the exact
amount that Michael Jordan made that year.

You also could have paid the salary of more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers with just that amount.

Another way to think of these numbers is to say, "Okay, we're not going to spend it on flak vests, we're not
going to spend it on Humvees. Why don't we just pay off the Iraqis?" We could have written a check to every
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single Iraqi citizen for $560. Now, as you may know, at the time the going rate for attacks on U.S. forces was in
the range of $50-70. We could have outbid the terrorists and insurgents by a factor of ten.

The body armor issue is interesting in another way, because we're talking about a market. Remember, these
private military companies are competing with each other, which can be a positive or a negative. They all have
their own structures of how they operate and what they say is the best way to operate. Some companies say that
it is best to equip all their people with the heaviest of body armor and helmets. There are other companies that
say the opposite. For example, there was a former Special Forces man from one company who said, "No, no,
no. It's too constraining. I can't operate in a firefight with that level." So there's a dispute. There are different
tactics, and no one knows which one is the best.

And then there is the question of: Is the profit motive in play? Take up-armored vehicles for example. Some
companies say, "Go in an up-armored vehicle. Get it as big and as bold as you can, intimidating, with guns
sticking out the side. Let the Iraqis know that you mean business." Other companies—and this is more the
British companies—say, "That's so American. Why not get a beat-up old car and just drive on by, and they'll
never know that you're even a target? Get an old Toyota and kick in the door and put dirt all over it." Which
strategy is the best? There's a dispute between them.

Now, one of the companies did a really brilliant thing: it got unique access to up-armored vehicles. There are
not a lot of these vehicles out there, but this company tapped into a source. They found a company that used to
make up-armored vehicles for rap stars, because evidently rappers need protection too, on the streets of New
York and Los Angeles. So, even though this military contractor only needed ten, it leased sixty. The reason was
that then they could go around telling their clients, "Go with us because we've got the vehicles and the other
guys don't."

So the question is: Are the companies who don't have the up-armored vehicles saying that it's safer to travel
incognito because they actually believe it, or are they saying it because they couldn't find or afford the vehicles?

This vehicle armor issue goes beyond company doctrine; it's also something that will play out in the courts.
Regarding the four guys who were killed in Fallujah—the private security contractors working for
Blackwater—their contract said that they would be operating only in up-armored vehicles. The contract also
said that, if they went out in a convoy, there would never be fewer than six personnel in the vehicles, allowing
three per vehicle—two guys in the front so they could look every way, and one in the back who could look out
the rear.

Well, as you may well know, only four guys were there and they were not in up-armored vehicles. The mothers
of these men are suing the company for breaking the contract. And so there is a jury in North Carolina that is
going to decide what's proper battlefield behavior in Fallujah. Interesting stuff.

QUESTION: I'm a journalist and I have a question about extracting information about these firms. I was
embedded in Iraq twice and it's easy to see that KBR has the logistics contracts nailed down. They're pretty
obvious about the work they do with Air Mobility Command, and they schlep both military personnel and
civilians all over the place. MPRI does convoy-security training for Marines in Kuwait. They are easy to
identify because they wear U.S. Army uniforms, except without rank insignia and the little "U.S. Army" patch.
But for all intents and purposes they look like soldiers.

There are groups like Erinys and DynCorp and people I've never heard of, ex-Gurkhas, running around. How
can one extract information from the obvious folks, but also the less obvious people, like DynCorp, who have
little camps in U.S. military bases? Is it through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) searches or requests? Is it
through subpoenas? And how extractable is that information? Thank you.
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P. W. SINGER: That's a really good question. It's great because it also lets me talk about some of the solutions
we should think about.

The short answer is you can't FOIA them because the contracts are proprietary. Good luck. But you can FOIA
government reports and the like. In the past, there weren't many of these reports; now you can get more and
more of them.

One of the things to watch out for is the buck-passing, where one agency will say, "Oh, no. They were the ones
who hired them. Talk to them." When you go to the second agency they'll say, "No, no, no. You've got to talk to
the company." And the company will say, "Well, the contract says we can't talk to you, go to the agency."

You may recall that four years ago a missionary plane was shot down in Colombia. It was shot down by the
Colombian air force, but the plane that coordinated the attack was a private military one. Congress wanted to
find out more about it, but the State Department and the private company gave them the runaround.

What was interesting is that Congress got fed up, and so Bob Barr and Cynthia McKinney—about as far right
and as far left as you can get—signed a joint letter to the State Department saying, "You've got to tell us what's
going on." This is what I reference as an executive branch/legislative branch conflict, because it goes beyond
partisan issues. That incident took place during the Clinton Administration, so it doesn't break down in the
traditional right/left way that have grown worse in the last four years.

Now, what needs to be done about the dilemmas I have described? There are four things that need to go on here.
They all stem, in a sense, from trying to remember our responsibilities: our responsibility to be not only smart
business clients, to get the best of the marketplace, but also our responsibility as regulators, to be smart
government.

The first step is better accounting. We need to know the real numbers. Tracking the numbers is something that
too often doesn't happen.

For example, the Pentagon does not directly track the number of private military contractors that are employed.
When Congress requested that number from them, they called me. I had an estimate. My point of discussing an
estimate was to show how absurd the system is. There is no tracking.

The same goes for tracking the cost-plus contracts. If you let someone else collect the figures for you, then of
course you are going to get a lot of cost overruns and the like. That's why you receive a bill at a restaurant?to
make sure that the charges are accurate. In the case of these contractors, better accounting practices need to be
mandated.

The second thing is that we need to decide for ourselves what are and are not our core functions: What is it
proper to outsource and what is it improper to outsource? This runs deeper than questions of simply saving
money. The very first question that companies like Cisco ask when they turn to outsourcing is, "What do I keep
in-house and what do I turn over?" Because if a company turns over too much, then suddenly it finds out that
there's no "there" there and, like Cisco, the company's stock crashes. Well, in the military world, "stock"
crashing is even worse.

My personal take is that the old rules that the military had should still apply. Some in the military use the term
"mission-critical functions." Other people describe these activities as "emergency essential." These are basically
the functions that affect the success or failure of an operation, whether the battle is won or lost. Those elements
should be kept in-house.

As for the more ancillary functions, sure, outsource them—and this is issue number three—only if it saves you
money. Be a smart business client. Take advantage of the marketplace. Smart business clients seek out good
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competition, but 40 percent of Pentagon contracts with these companies were not competitive, so the
government didn't even find out what the best price is for these private military services.

For example, the contract to hire private interrogators for Abu Ghraib prison originally started out as an
information technology contract in 1998 with the CACI firm. Now, even if we were still getting information
technology services from them in 2003, which was when they kept making additions and changes to the
contract, the IT market had changed quite a bit from the way it was in 1998. Plus there's the issue of whether an
IT contract is really the best way to determine the going rate for interrogators.

Another lesson of good contracting is that you have your own eyes and ears. If we look at a graph of the number
of contracts, we see a big spike, but the number of people doing contract oversight follows a downward curve.
For example, the Aegis contract is the biggest armed security contract in Iraq. The person that is responsible for
oversight of that contract is responsible for fifty other contracts at the same time. (That statistic is from a GAO
study that you can access.) He was also the fourth person to carry out that duty in two years. Aegis is actually
frustrated with the system, because they are continually dealing with someone new and having to tell the person
who is supposed to be overseeing them how to do his job. That's absurd.

In 2003, when much of this was going on, in the entire Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) there were only
fourteen people working contract oversight in Iraq. That meant that the Brookings Institution, where I'm
employed, had more people doing contract oversight and budget oversight than the entire U.S. operation in Iraq.
Brookings has an overall budget of just over $30 million, as opposed to $18 billion for the CPA.

The final issue of being a smart client is that if someone does you wrong, you return the favor. It's called
"market sanctions." You fire people who cheat you. It's easy enough to see how this works to shape the market
to your favor.

The fourth problem we need to solve is closing the legal loopholes. We need to start defining the status of these
private military contractors under the law. It's important not only because of what happens if they commit a
crime, but also because of the flipside: What happens if they are captured? They could be termed "mercenaries"
by the bad guys, by our adversaries.

The legal questions are also important for U.S. forces. There was an interesting incident involving the company
Zapata Engineering, which is from my hometown of Charleston, North Carolina. Zapata performed Explosive
Ordnance Disposal (EOD) in Iraq. It blew up the old ammunition, explosives, and huge bomb stockpiles that
Saddam had; an important job, something we needed to accomplish. The United States doesn't have enough
people to do it.

Well, Zapata, as it was moving through Iraq, hired its own private military protection. A year after the incident
at Fallujah in which the Blackwater employees were killed, the Marines there saw another convoy go through
and—this is where the stories diverge—they say that they saw the convoy shooting at civilians. They also say
that some of the bullets went their way. The Marines stopped the convoy and detained the Zapata guys.

Now, the Zapata guys say, "We didn't do it. It was another private military contractor convoy that did it. You
stopped the wrong guys."

The stories diverge on another point. The Marines say, "We treated them responsibly, as detainees should be
treated. We put them in a facility where we used to hold Iraqis, and then after three days we released them."

The Zapata guys say that they were beaten up while they were detained, that they sicced dogs on them. One of
them says that there was a pile-on of people, and that the Marines conducting the pile-on were saying things
like, "How do you like that contractor money right now?" Then they kicked them out of the country.
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The legal questions are very interesting here. According to the Marines, if they stick to their side of the story,
these Zapata guys were committing something for which Marines could have been court martialed. But the
Corps couldn't figure out the legal questions, so all they could do was kick the Zapata people out of the country.
They couldn't figure out the contractors' status. They could even have said, "You're illegal combatants; you're
going to Guantanamo." It was up in the air.

The Zapata guys are upset about this. They are upset because their constitutional right to work was violated.
Iraq's a great place to make money, and they are being prevented from going there. What right do the Marines
have to kick them out of the country? You also have the abuse claims. A couple of the Zapata people have hired
the same lawyer who worked on the FBI-Ruby Ridge case, and they are going to sue the Marines. This is the
world we are in today.

QUESTION: There are some senators, good ones such as John McCain and John Warner, who are very
interested in the military. Have they any interest in taking up this subject? Obviously, the military needs these
contractors now, so I have to assume that any investigation would come after the conflict?

I'm also interested in the fact that at the end of this war, whenever it does end, we'll have 20,000-odd people
roaming around looking for some employment.

P. W. SINGER: That's a really good question. On the legislative side, people were interested in different
aspects of the contractor issue even before Iraq. For example, one representative focused in on it because the
family of one of the missionaries killed in Colombia was from his district; but they were concerned only with
the Colombia issue.

In Iraq, the issue that really sparked interest was not Fallujah so much as Abu Ghraib. For example, during
some of the hearings, John McCain was particularly upset by this. Of course, the Democrats were also upset by
this.

The problem is twofold. First, we live in a partisan age. If there is anything that is pointed out as wrong with the
current system, that critique is viewed through a partisan lens, and people quickly retreat to their camps. One
side seizes on the critique with glee and says, "Ah, I've got a hammer that I can bash the other side with"—the
Halliburton stuff, for example. But then the other side says, "Oh, we don't like to be bashed and so we're going
to defend it." So we haven't seen a lot of progress on that front.

Second, there is the stamina issue. A few loopholes in the law were closed regarding the status of private
military personnel, but then the comprehensive issue of figuring it all out didn't get dealt with.

What is interesting is that when we gave a similar talk to Congress—and this points to how Congress works—
the question from them was, "What committee deals with this?" That was where it broke down.

The system isn't set up well to deal with this issue. For example, if you are on the Armed Services Committee,
you're there not because of service issues; you're there because you've got a base or a factory in your hometown.
You've got the goods side that you want to protect; you're less interested in the services side. That's an issue to
keep our eye on and worry about, because it's not being resolved.

Of course, there is also lobbying that goes on, through both political campaign donations and the other type of
lobbying, which is handing out your card, former military guys glad-handing around Washington. The
Blackwater Company hired the Alexander Group after Blackwater made the news because of the Fallujah
incident. The Alexander Group is run by Tom DeLay's former chief of staff. Actually, Tom DeLay's wife, if I
remember correctly, worked there as well. But this shouldn't surprise us. Cigarette manufacturers lobby. Ice
cream companies lobby. Why wouldn't private military companies do the same?
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Your other question was a really good one. What happens next? There are two ways to think about this: in the
business sense and in the political sense.

In the business sense, these companies have to worry about the fact that they may be sitting on a bit of a bubble
right now. Iraq was a place where anyone could set up a company—the barriers to entry were quite low—and
money was coming in hand over fist. They were being paid, literally, in stacks of bills in some cases.

Well, that time is ending as the Iraqi government starts to step into the picture. The Iraqi government is
becoming less and less excited about these guys moving around their country.

What we have to worry about is some Iraqi politician who decides to stand up to these outsiders, who wants to
show that he's nationalist, that he's patriotic. He is going to pick, I believe, private military contractors before he
is going to pick U.S. military folks. He will detain them and hopefully no worse, but it could worsen from there.

We have already had a couple of shooting incidents between Iraqi police and private military contractors. One
was a full-fledged battle in Baghdad that involved heavy machine guns on both sides. So that's something to
worry about. When that bubble breaks, a lot of these companies are going to go out of business.

The historic side to worry about—going back to the question of the mercenary trade—is that when big wars
end, most soldiers go home, but some percentage goes off in search of work elsewhere. The conquistadors, who
basically led the colonization of the United States, were out-of-work soldiers from the Reconquista in Spain.
The filibusters who set up the banana republics in Latin America were out-of-work United States Civil War
soldiers. After World War I, most people went to fight in warlord wars in China. After World War II, more than
75,000 ex-SS members ended up fighting in French Indochina and Algeria.

What we have to worry about here is what happens to these guys from PMFs. Where will they go to work?
Some will go home, but some will have gotten a taste for the trade and may end up elsewhere.

Going back to the first question: If you are a company and you're sitting on a bubble, and suddenly the contracts
aren't there, what do you do? If you're like any other company, you either downsize or you find new markets,
and you maybe take contracts that you wouldn't have taken in the good old days.

QUESTION: I'm a student of history and a legal aide in this country. I would like to ask something on the
political costs of using mercenaries in war. You mentioned the blurring of the boundary between the military
realm and the civilian world. We have come to a point where it is more and more difficult for people to
understand who their enemies are. Indeterminate captives were killed in earlier times. They were shot
immediately when they were found without clear army badges or uniforms. Now we have thousands of these
pirate-like guys with automatic machine guns, wearing dark glasses, and protecting people like Paul Bremer.
This blurring of the boundary between the civilians and the military, you have described it from our perspective.
But what is the perspective of the Iraqi people, for example, who now suddenly have no means to distinguish
between people who are working for an NGO or perhaps for the United Nations? The United Nations marked a
sanctuary once. In Iraq, the UN headquarters was blown up and people were killed. I think this is a result of
using these mercenaries. This is one of the costs that cannot be put in terms of money, and it makes the work of
the United Nations and other people much, much harder.

P. W. SINGER: You raise an interesting point. On the cover of my book is a picture of people working for
MPRI. They are wearing U.S. Army fatigues. The only difference is they don't have the insignia. So one has to
know a lot about the U.S. military and has to be close to them to tell the difference. There are other people
running around Iraq wearing civilian attire. As you put it, it's confusing for Iraqis and potentially dangerous for
NGOs.
 Back to Index
You also asked about the UN side. Who do you think is going to protect the UN election monitors in Iraq? The
UN will hire the same companies that we've been discussing.

There is definitely a blurring from the Iraqi perspective. In my understanding, the local civilians recognize
private military personnel, but they don't say to themselves, "Oh, that was a private military guy that shot at me,
so I'm not going to get angry at the United States about it. I'm only going to get angry about it when it's a U.S.
soldier that shoots at me." No. It's all part of the "outsiders" to the local. They're all lumped together.

Now, we can flip that. As you put it, the adversaries don't care. It's another way the distinction has been blurred.
They don't say, "Oh, well, you're an NGO worker. I'm not going to take you hostage." The "bad guys," so to
speak, are also not respecting these rules anymore.

This opens up a really interesting question for humanitarian actors who, like the UN, because they still cling to
the idea of the protection of neutrality. But other people aren't respecting that. For example, more Red Cross
workers were killed in the 1990s than U.S. Army soldiers.

I'm finishing up a research study right now on the humanitarian community and private military contractors. We
found more than forty instances of humanitarian actors that have hired private military contractors, ranging
from international organizations to aid organizations that are nongovernmental. We interviewed thirty-seven
people within the humanitarian sector on this. Only two were willing to talk publicly about it.

More and more groups are using these contractors. One incident is particularly striking. An international aid
organization hired snipers in Iraq. The people in the international aid organization asked, "Since we are hiring
these firms, what are our rules of engagement? As an NGO, an international aid group, what are our rules of
engagement?" Their headquarters said, "Don't ask that question, because we don't have rules of engagement
because we don't hire companies like that. Shhh!"

JOANNE MYERS: Well, P. W., you've again proved that, whether discussing children at war or corporate
warriors, you have left us with many questions. I invite you all to continue the conversation. Thank you very
much for coming.
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Labor Relations in Focus

The PRC government's efforts to better protect workers' rights spring from worries about
China's social stability

http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/public/0611/wu.html

by Victorien Wu

Since ascending to their leadership positions during the 2002-03 transition, PRC President Hu Jintao and
Premier Wen Jiabao have expressed considerable concern about China's social stability and have emphasized
the importance of balancing the country's development. This shift in policy priorities is not altogether
surprising. PRC government statistics suggest that social unrest has grown significantly over the past few years.
Beyond rural protests against illegal government seizures of agricultural land, worker demonstrations against
wage arrears and other bread-and-butter issues have also made the headlines. Moreover, the number of labor
disputes channeled through government-sanctioned dispute resolution processes has risen sharply in recent
years.

In this context, the PRC government has undertaken several initiatives to demonstrate its resolve to better
protect workers' rights. These have included the draft Labor Contract Law, issued for public comment last
spring, and the renewed campaign by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) to unionize workers
in foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). These, along with the government's other labor-related campaigns, may
mark the beginning of a more vigorous effort by the PRC government to mend labor relations in China.

The broader political agenda

Hu and Wen have, in comparison to their predecessors, placed a greater emphasis on helping those who have
been left behind in China's reform efforts. Most notably, in December 2002, soon after he became secretary
general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hu signaled a shift away from the policy direction set out by
his predecessor Jiang Zemin, by taking the CCP leadership to visit Xibaipo village in Hebei. There, Hu recalled
the Xibaipo Spirit of modesty, plain living, and hard work that Mao Zedong had called for in 1949. He also
urged his colleagues to help build a "moderately well-off society" (xiaokang shehui), clearly suggesting that the
CCP should tackle China's growing socioeconomic inequalities.

Hu's efforts to shift the CCP's policy agenda gained crucial momentum at the third plenum of the 16th CCP
Central Committee in late 2003, when the Central Committee approved a key document that contrasted visibly
with Jiang's report to the 16th CCP Congress in 2002. The document, named the Decision on Several Issues in
Perfecting the Socialist Market Economy, paid more attention to the wide range of problems that have arisen as
a result of China's reform efforts. It also emphasized "social development" as an integral component of the
CCP's agenda.

Subsequently, in a speech to top cadres in February 2005, Hu said that building a "harmonious society" (hexie
shehui) should be a priority for the CCP and the PRC government. He observed that "social conflicts are
emerging in great numbers" and encouraged his colleagues to "balance different interests" and maintain "social
equity and justice." Wen later echoed Hu's message in the PRC Government Work Report delivered at the
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March 2005 session of the National People's Congress when he declared that the government must "properly
balance the interests of all quarters and ensure that everyone shares the fruits of reform and development."

These policy priorities are set to dominate and shape the PRC government's agenda for at least the next few
years. Indeed, the CCP leadership has decisively rallied around Hu's "harmonious society" doctrine. In mid-
October, the sixth plenum of the 16th CCP Central Committee—the CCP's first plenum to focus more on social
development rather than political or economic issues—formally endorsed Hu's "harmonious society" doctrine,
signaling broad support among China's top policymakers for Hu's agenda.

Equally important, China's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) indicates that the government will strengthen its
efforts to construct a "harmonious society" and focus on social justice and the issues that most affect people's
livelihoods. The specific goals of the plan include ensuring the use of labor contracts, improving labor dispute
resolution mechanisms, protecting the legal rights of workers, and more closely supervising the labor market
and the implementation of labor laws and regulations.

Rising labor disputes

The stress on building a "harmonious society" and better protecting workers' interests arises from signs that
China's social stability is being tested. In early 2006, the PRC Ministry of Public Security announced that more
than 87,000 "mass social disturbances" had occurred in 2005, up 6 percent from 2004 and 50 percent from
2003. More than 3.7 million people were involved in such incidents in 2004, but the ministry did not provide a
comparable figure for 2005. The rise in the reported number of such disturbances, as well as widespread media
reports of some of these incidents, have almost certainly raised concerns among China's policy elites about
social unrest in general. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences revealed in its 2004 Blue Book of Chinese
Society that more than half of the Chinese experts it interviewed believed that it is "possible" or "very likely"
that China would face a "comprehensive social crisis."

Although the PRC government has not provided a rural-urban breakdown of its statistics on social unrest, other
official statistics indicate the scope of worker discontent. In particular, the number of reported labor dispute
cases has risen considerably in recent years. According to the PRC Ministry of Labor and Social Security
(MLSS), roughly 314,000 labor disputes were submitted to government-sanctioned mediation and arbitration
committees in 2005 alone (see Table 1). This figure is more than double the number of cases submitted in 2000
and nearly 10 times that of 1995. The number of workers involved in disputes also grew from 467,000 in 2001
to 740,000 in 2005. According to MLSS, employees filed roughly 94 percent of cases in 2005, with the
remainder filed by employers. Disputes over wages, benefits, and social insurance accounted for 65 percent of
all cases, while 18 percent arose from conflicts over the termination of labor contracts. The remainder stemmed
from workplace injury, training, and layoffs. Interestingly, MLSS statistics show that the more economically
developed coastal regions of China account for the majority of labor dispute cases. In 2005, 62.4 percent of
dispute cases were submitted in Beijing, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai, and Zhejiang. While this
may reflect the concentration of businesses along coastal areas, it also shows important pockets of disaffection
in the regions that have benefited most from China's economic reforms.

Although the PRC government could take comfort in the fact that more than 90 percent of these cases are
ultimately settled through the government-sanctioned dispute resolution process, it has chosen to take a starker
view of these statistics. In its 2005 statistical report on labor disputes, MLSS interprets the fact that more cases
were settled through arbitration rather than mediation as evidence that labor disputes tend to be highly
contentious. MLSS has also chosen to interpret the higher success rate of workers in dispute cases as a sign that
"infringement of workers' rights continues to be a prominent problem" (see Table 2).

The PRC government's wariness may be justified. According to the Congressional-Executive Commission on
China (CECC), workers may face important obstacles in submitting cases through the government-sanctioned
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dispute resolution process. First, workers do not have union representation during mediation, the initial step in
dispute resolution. Second, the cost of submitting a dispute to the next stage of the process—arbitration—can be
as high as ¥420 ($52.40), about half the average monthly wage of a Chinese worker. Though this may not be a
problem for collective dispute cases, it presents a significant barrier to workers who seek to file individual
cases. Finally, if both mediation and arbitration fail to solve the dispute, workers can file a lawsuit in court, but
the costs of litigation can be prohibitive. These obstacles may discourage workers from using the dispute
resolution process, and the reported number of dispute cases may not indicate the true magnitude of labor
frictions.

Beyond statistical evidence that suggests the

number of labor dispute cases is rising, there have
been press reports of some worker demonstrations
turning violent.

 In June 2004, 5,000 Shenzhen workers clashed

with police over wage arrears.
 In January 2005, more than 1,000 workers in
Shenzhen marched against the loss of severance pay,
resulting in blocked roads, traffic jams, and violence.
 In July 2005, 3,000 migrant workers at a
garment factory in Guangzhou rioted over inadequate
pay.
 In September 2005, more than 100 workers at
a shoe factory in Guangzhou battled police and
smashed vehicles over unpaid wages.

It is unclear whether these violent incidents are

representative of labor demonstrations in China.
Indeed, the PRC government has not released
statistics on the number and scope of labor-related
protests. Nevertheless, these incidents highlight
the potential explosiveness of labor discontent and
likely heighten the PRC leadership's worries about labor relations in China.

Policy responses

Over the past several years, the PRC government has tried to improve the protection of workers' rights. In
particular, the State Council and MLSS have issued directives to clear wage arrears for migrant workers whose
previously ambiguous legal status and inadequate access to legal channels made them susceptible to abuse. The
problem of unpaid wages for migrant workers may be particularly important because of their large numbers—
officially estimated to be 120 million—and because the problem appears to be widespread. According to a State
Council survey report released in April 2006, 51 percent of rural migrant workers reported "sometimes" or
"frequently" having difficulty getting paid on time, and 76 percent said that they had not received overtime pay
owed to them.

Over the past two years, the PRC government has also focused on promoting the use of labor contracts. The
existing Labor Law requires labor contracts between employees and employers. But according to a National
People's Congress survey in 2005, less than 20 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises use labor
contracts, and the State Council survey report indicates that 46 percent of migrant workers lack labor contracts.
In May 2005, MLSS issued a circular that directs employers of migrant workers to adopt labor contracts. Earlier
this year, it launched a campaign to promote the use of labor contracts in all enterprises, with the goal of
ensuring that at least 90 percent of all employees in China have contracts by the end of 2007.
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Two responses have caught the attention of foreign investors: the draft Labor Contract Law and the renewed
ACFTU campaign to unionize workers in FIEs. Observers have widely noted that many provisions in the draft
Labor Contract Law appear to favor workers. For example, the draft law would require employers to seek the
permission of the trade union before terminating any labor contract and to negotiate the terms of mass layoffs
that involve more than 50 employees. The draft law also indicates that if an employer and an employee disagree
over the interpretation of a labor contract, the ambiguity should be resolved in favor of the employee.

Meanwhile, ACFTU has reenergized its efforts to establish trade unions in FIEs, claiming that its campaign is in
response to the need to better protect the rights of FIE workers. Some labor experts have noted, however, that as
more Chinese are finding employment in private and foreign-invested companies, ACFTU may have
undertaken this campaign to boost its membership and revenue. (Enterprises that have trade unions must
appropriate a sum equal to 2 percent of their total monthly payroll to the trade union each month.) In 2004,
ACFTU announced a campaign to recruit 6.6 million workers every year until 2008. This is presumably
translating into a greater effort to establish unions in private firms and FIEs as the state-owned sector shrinks.

Whether these various measures will succeed in better protecting workers' rights is unclear. In general,
implementation of national laws and regulations, as well as campaigns initiated from the top, are easily thwarted
by local authorities intent on boosting their GDP and thus reluctant to strictly enforce central government
directives that may hinder local economic growth (see the CBR September-October 2006, p.52). Indeed, as in
the area of intellectual property rights and environmental protection, observers have noted that the primary
reason for the weak protection of workers' rights is not an inadequate legal framework, but rather the poor
enforcement of China's existing labor laws and regulations. CECC notes in its 2006 annual report that "the
Chinese government's failure to implement existing labor regulations ... renders most of the protective aspects
of Chinese labor law ineffective." For example, even though MLSS regulations require provincial authorities to
review their minimum wage levels every two years, MLSS reported that at least four provinces were
noncompliant in 2006.

In late 2004, MLSS began to establish a system of labor inspection to ensure local compliance with China's
labor laws and regulations. Whether such a system will achieve its intended goal is unclear because it delegates
inspection authority to the local labor and social security bureaus— whose mandate, in the first place, is to
enforce the laws and regulations.

Foreign investors' concerns

Available statistics suggest that FIEs account for a disproportionately small share of labor dispute cases, given
that they provide one-third of China's industrial value-added output and more than half of its exports (see
Figure). This may be because US and other foreign investors tend to bring their international human resources
practices and environmental health and safety standards, which often exceed local requirements, to their China
facilities. Nevertheless, the steps that the PRC government has taken to strengthen labor rights have caught the
attention of foreign investors in China. In general, foreign companies and business associations have affirmed
the PRC government's goal of protecting workers' rights. The growth of social unrest in China could harm the
business climate, and uniform enforcement of labor laws and protection of workers' rights could help level the
playing field for all firms operating in China. At the same time, however, foreign companies have also
expressed concerns about some aspects of recent government moves.

For example, they have noted that certain provisions of the draft Labor Contract Law might conflict with
international practices in human resources management and deprive employers and employees of the flexibility
necessary to handle employment relationships effectively. The draft law, for instance, requires employers that
use a labor service company to sign only one fixed-term contract with the employee. At the end of the contract,
the employer must hire the employee directly. If it does not, the employer cannot use a labor service company
to hire a different person for the same position. This may prevent employers from finding the best person and
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may result in fewer job opportunities for Chinese workers. Thus, the law could have the unintended
consequence of negatively affecting Chinese workers, and for companies that uphold China's laws and
regulations, including US and other foreign firms, the Labor Contract Law, if implemented in its current form,
could make operating in China more cumbersome.

As the PRC government finalizes the Labor Contract Law and undertakes other initiatives to address
widespread grievances among China's workers, foreign businesses hope that their concerns will be taken into
account. In the meantime, better enforcement of existing laws and regulations would go a long way toward
removing the difficulties that Chinese employees face in their workplaces.
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Chinese Wage Increases Outpacing Economic

Growth
Shu-Ching Jean Chen, 07.02.07, 1:15 AM ET

http://www.forbes.com/2007/07/02/china-wage-growth-markets-econ-cx_jc_0702markets1.html

HONG KONG -

Wages in China have nearly doubled over the past four years, outpacing the rate of growth of the economy,
according to a rare release of data at a recent official forum.

Combined annual wages reached 2.34 trillion yuan ($308 billion) at the end of last year, up from 1.32 trillion
($173 billion) in 2002, representing an average annual rate of increase of 13.5% after inflation, according to a
report from state-owned Chinanews.com.cn on official figures released at a meeting put on recently by the
China Association for Labor Studies.

The corresponding figure for Chinese GDP growth during the same period was 10.3%.

It has long been know that labor costs have been rising steeply in China, but the government has rarely released
figures to illustrate how much.

The speed of growth in annual wages was 1.9 times faster than in the preceding four-year period, and the fastest
pace of wage increases China has seen since it began to make the switch from a closed communist economy to
capitalism in 1979.

On a per-capita basis, the average Chinese worker earned an annual wage of 12,422 yuan ($1,630) in 2002, or
1,035 yuan ($136) per month. As of 2006, they were making 21,001 yuan ($2,756) a year, or 1,750 yuan ($230)
a month.

Accounting for inflation, the real rate of growth was 12% a year, higher than the 9.2% for the corresponding
figure for per-capita GDP.

But this phenomenal pace of wage growth appears to have been uneven, leaving out the nation‘s largest group
of laborers — the 800 million farmers. A survey reported in China Youth Daily last month indicated that
farmers typically earn between 700 yuan ($92) and 1,000 yuan ($131) a month.

While there is an abundance of available unskilled workers in the interior, coastal manufacturing regions are
beginning to experience a shortage of labor, which is expected to put further upside pressure on wages.

Meanwhile, food price inflation that has made staples like pork much more expensive caused Beijing last week
to call on local governments to raise minimum wages in areas where salary growth has lagged.

At the end of 2006, Shenzhen had the highest minimum wage in China at 810 yuan ($105) per month, while
Jiangxi province in the east was at the bottom with a minimum wage of 270 yuan ($35.50), according to state
news service Xinhua.
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Special Issues for Young Children

Developmental concerns

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/parents/marketing/issues_kids_marketing.cfm?RenderForPrint=1

Parents of young children have an important role to play in protecting their kids from invasive marketing, and in
educating them about advertising from an early age.

According to Consumer Reports magazine, "young children have difficulty distinguishing between advertising
and reality in ads, and ads can distort their view of the world."

Research has shown that children between the ages of two and five cannot differentiate between regular TV
programming and commercials. Young children are especially vulnerable to misleading advertising and don't
begin to understand that advertisements are not always true until they're eight.

According to the Canadian Toy Testing Council the biggest area of concern with toy ads in Canada is
exaggeration. Young children often think a toy actually can do a lot more than it can because of the way toys
are portrayed in advertisements.

These concerns have led some jurisdictions to ban all advertising to children. Québec has banned print and
broadcast advertising aimed at kids under thirteen. Sweden has banned advertisements aimed at children under
12 and it is lobbying European Union members to adopt similar policies.

Effects of materialism

Parents should be concerned about the effect excessive materialism can have on the development of their
children's self image and values. In her 1997 book on modern family life, The Shelter of Each Other, author
Mary Pipher worries that our consumer-saturated culture may be breeding feelings of "narcissism, entitlement
and dissatisfaction" in today's kids.

Children's identities shouldn't be defined by their consumer habits; yet that is the main way they see themselves
reflected in the media—as consumers, and advertisers are targeting younger and younger children with this
message. The marketing of merchandise based on the popular pre-school TV programs Barney and Teletubbies
marked the beginning of identifying toddlers as a consumer market. Reporting on this trend, the industry
magazine KidsScreen noted that: "Agencies are cautiously eyeing the zero-to-three year-old demographic—a
group that poses tremendous challenges and opportunities, because research has indicated that children are
capable of understanding brands at very young ages."

A healthy society raises children to be responsible citizens rather than just consumers. Creating healthy, happy
families means spending time together rather than spending money. For tips on promoting a non-commercial
family lifestyle, see Dealing with Marketing: What Parents Can Do.

Junk food advertising and nutrition concerns

According to the Canadian Paediatric Society, most food advertising on children's TV shows is for fast foods,
soft drinks, candy and pre-sweetened cereals—while commercials for healthy food make up only 4 per cent of
those shown.
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Fast food chains spend more than 3 billion dollars a year on advertising, much of it aimed at children. To
directly target children, the fast food industry uses more than traditional commercials. Restaurants offer
incentives such as playgrounds, contests, clubs, games, and free toys and other merchandise related to movies,
TV shows and even sports leagues.

Child advocates condemned PBS for licensing of Teletubbies merchandise to Burger King and McDonald's in
1999, but that hasn't stopped the fast food cross-promotion trend. As author Eric Schlosser explains in his 2001
book Fast Food Nation, "America's fast food culture has become indistinguishable from the popular culture of
its children."

The results of all this aggressive marketing of fast food, soft drinks and candy to children—A nation of
overweight children, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada—which says that almost one in
four Canadian children between 7 and 12, is obese. A 2002 U.S. study showed that fast-food commercials
during kids programming on Saturday mornings are pitching bigger and bigger portions, a trend that researchers
link to an the alarming rise of obesity among young people.

Marketing toys based on teen and adult entertainment

Marketing young children toys that are based on restricted movies and Mature rated video games is a common
industry practice. A report in 2000 by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission exposed how the media industries
actively target young children with violent entertainment meant for adults. Among their findings was the fact
that action toys, based on characters from video games rated Teen and Mature, were labelled suitable for
children (sometimes as young as 4 or 5 years old).

The packaging for one action figure recommended for kids four years old and up, invites them to "join in the
blood bath" by playing the Nintendo version of the game—even though it's M-rated (for ages 17 and up).

A company which produces toys based on the World Wrestling Federation encourages children four and up to
use their play sets to "bash and dump opponents senseless with an array of street fighting accessories."

Young consumers as collectors

Marketers have discovered something about children that parents have long known—they love to collect things.
Kids' collections used to consist of marbles, stamps or coins. But now, thanks to our consumer culture, kids
amass huge collection of store-bought items such as Beanie Babies, Barbies or Pokémon cards and figures. The
marketing strategy behind the Pokémon was simple and lucrative—create 150 Pokémon characters, then launch
a marketing campaign called "Gotta Catch 'Em All," to encourage children to collect all 150 of the cheaply
made, over priced figures.

Because most collecting crazes are short-lived fads, the sheen quickly fades on the current collection and kids
move on to the next big trend—leaving behind boxes of discarded toys.
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The decline and fall of the Democratic Leadership

Council
By Chris Cillizza

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/democratic-party/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-de.html?wprss=thefix

The news, first reported by Politico's Ben Smith, that the Democratic Leadership Council will shut down --
possibly by the end of the week -- marks the end of an era in Democratic party politics.

"With its CEO Bruce Reed joining the Administration, the DLC Board of Directors has decided to suspend
operations while it considers what the next phase of the DLC will be," DLC founder Al From said in a
statement released this afternoon.

From, along with an up-and-coming politician named Bill Clinton, formed the group in 1985, a reaction to
Ronald Reagan's sweeping presidential win in 1984.

The DLC's stated goal? "Creating a dynamic but centrist progressive movement of new ideas rooted in
traditional American values," according to Clinton's autobiography "My Life".

(Among the other heavy hitters included in the early days of the DLC were Sens. Sam Nunn, Chuck Robb,
Joe Lieberman and Al Gore as well as governors Lawton Chiles and Gerry Baliles.)

The zenith of the group's power came with the election of Clinton as president in 1992 on a heavily centrist
platform.

Among the legislative victories the group claimed during those days included the creation of AmeriCorps, an
expansion of the earned income tax credit and welfare reform.

In the wake of the Clinton years, however, the DLC fell on hard times as the liberal left -- primary through the
blogosphere -- rose in opposition to the presidency of George W. Bush.

The liberal blogosphere in many ways positioned itself against the DLC, which it cast as a Republican-lite
organization that did little to foster the foundational principles of the party.

"We pushed the party so far left that we positioned it squarely in the American mainstream and last year won a
historic, sweeping congressional victory, something the 'centrist' groups had been unable to accomplish for
decades -- not even in the DLC's glory days of the 1990s," wrote Markos Moulitsas and Susan Gardner in a
2007 op-ed in the Washington Post.

(Animosity from the liberal left toward the DLC is nothing new. Rev. Jesse Jackson once said the group's
initials stood for "Democratic Leisure Class".)
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The election of President Obama was another blow to the DLC. Obama didn't run from the DLC but neither did
he run toward their principles either. And, the fact that Obama beat then New York Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton in the Democratic primary made the loss all that more stinging.

From's retirement from the DLC in 2009 was regarded by many as the beginning of the end although the hiring
of Reed, another former Clinton aide, was seen as a possible saving grace.

Reed's departure to become chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden earlier this year left the organization
without a high profile leader.

In the wake of the DLC's collapse, other moderate Democratic groups argued that the sensible center still had a
place in politics -- pointing to the rise of groups like Third Way, which remains a robust entity within the party
with 37 staffers and a budget of upwardfs of $7 million.

"Al From built the DLC into one of the most important political organizations of the last quarter century, and
Third Way is proud to carry on that legacy," said Matt Bennett, one of Third Way's co-founders.

With Karen Tumulty

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/democratic-party/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-de.html?wprss=thefix
 Back to Index

Dave Johnson | Obama To Chamber: Be

Patriotic And Move Jobs Back To America
Dave Johnson | Monday 07 February 2011

http://www.truth-out.org/print/67553

President Obama today appealed to the patriotism of the members of the Chamber of Commerce to begin
investing in America again, to begin bringing factories and jobs back and to begin sharing the gains of our
economy with the American people.

Saying that we cannot go back to the economy and culture we saw before the recession, the President reminded
business leaders that the pre-recession period was a time when growth and gains and productivity did not
translate into rising incomes for working people. He asked business leaders to take responsibility for thinking
about how we make sure everyone has a stake in trade, increasing exports and rising productivity, "So ordinary
folks see their standard of living and income rise as well."

We can‘t go back to the kind of economy and culture that we saw in the years leading up to the recession, where
growth and gains in productivity just didn‘t translate into rising incomes and opportunity for the middle class.
That‘s not something necessarily we can legislate, but it‘s something that all of us have to take responsibility for
thinking about. How do we make sure that everybody‘s got a stake in trade, everybody‘s got a stake in
increasing exports, everybody‘s got a stake in rising productivity? Because ordinary folks end up seeing their
standards of living rise as well. That‘s always been the American promise. That‘s what JFK meant when he
said, ―A rising tide lifts all boats.‖ Too many boats have been left behind, stuck in the mud.

Speaking of a "virtuous circle" the President asked companies to invest in hiring American workers,

...[make] ... investments made now that will pay off as the economy rebounds. And as you hire, you know that
more Americans working will mean more sales for your companies. It will mean more demand for your
products and services. It will mean higher profits for your companies. We can create a virtuous circle.

The President said that as a government we will help lay the foundation for businesses to grow, innovate and
succeed. We will update the infrastructure, transportation, education system and remove barriers to business
growth. But he said he wanted to be clear that even as we remake the foundations, businesses have a
responsibility to America.

We invest in the infrastructure, so innovation should lead to companies and jobs here, and manufactinrg here.
Doing otherwise breaks the social compact and makes people feel the game is fixed and they are not benefiting.

We also have a responsibility as a nation to provide our people with -- and our businesses -- with the fastest,
most reliable way to move goods and information. The costs to business from outdated and inadequate
infrastructure is enormous. And that‘s what we have right now -- outdated, inadequate infrastructure.

And any of you that have been traveling to other countries, you know it, you see it, and it affects your bottom
lines. That‘s why I want to put more people to work rebuilding crumbling roads, rebuilding our bridges. That‘s
why I‘ve proposed connecting 80 percent of the country with high-speed -- to high-speed rail, and making it
possible for companies to put high-speed Internet coverage in the reach of virtually all Americans.
The idea is supposed to be that we gain from the investment we make in laying down those foundations for
businesses: Intel pioneers the microchip and puts thousands to work here. Henry Ford put people to work here.
And then those folks buy here, and the economy works for everyone. A virtuous circle.

The President said that America can compete. Caterpillar is building a new plant in Texas. In Tennessee
Whirlpool opening its first US plant in more than a decade. Companies are bringing jobs back to our shores.
Now is the time to invest in America

Appeal To Patriotism

The President appealed to the patriotism of the Chamber. "I know you love this country and want America to
succeed just as badly as I do, we are all Americans. It is that sense of patriotism that has carried us through
harder times than this."

The President pointed to past partnerships between big business and government. At the end of 1930s, FDR
formed a new partnership with business to build the "Arsenal of Democracy." Roosevelt reached out to
businesses, and business leaders answered the call to serve their country.

After years of working at cross purposes, the result was one of the most productive collaborations between the
public and private sectors in American history.

Some, like the head of GM, hadn‘t previously known the President, and if anything had seen him as an
adversary. But he gathered his family and he explained that he was going to head up what would become the
War Production Board. And he said to his family, ―This country has been good to me, and I want to pay it
back.‖ I want to pay it back.

He said we have faced tumultuous moments of change and we know what to do: Rise to this occasion, come
together, adapt.

Perhaps this will be a turning point, and the huge multinationals and financial giants that make up the
Chamber's primary backers will begin to support America and Americans again.

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/dave-johnson-obama-to-chamber-be-patriotic-and-move-jobs-back-to-

america67553
 Back to Index

Common Cause Letters

http://www.commoncause.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4773617&ct=9039331

The Honorable Eric Holder, Jr.

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder,

The Supreme Court‘s 5-4 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010),
has had a dramatic impact, overturning prior Court precedent, ending restrictions on corporate and union
political spending that had been in place since 1947, and fueling a surge in secret and independent spending in
the 2010 elections. Outside groups spent more than $296 million on the 2010 Congressional midterms – a 330
percent increase over 2006 – with more than $135 million of that coming from undisclosed donors¸ according to
the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Since that decision, information has come to light that raises serious questions about the impartiality of Justices
Thomas and Scalia in the Citizens United case. It appears both justices have participated in political strategy
sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the
decision. With respect to Justice Thomas, there may also be an undisclosed financial conflict of interest due to
his wife‘s role as CEO of Liberty Central, a 501(c)(4) organization that stood to benefit from the decision and
played an active role in the 2010 elections.

Until these questions are resolved, public debate over allegations of bias and conflicts of interest will serve to
undermine the legitimacy of the Citizens United decision and erode public confidence in the integrity of our
nation‘s highest court. As Attorney General, you are ideally situated to address this matter, both in the interest
of justice and in the interest of your client, the Federal Election Commission. The Commission was the losing
party in Citizens United, but may now have legitimate grounds to seek reconsideration.

Therefore, Common Cause hereby formally requests that the Justice Department promptly investigate whether
Justices Thomas and Scalia should have recused themselves from the Citizens United case under 28 U.S.C. §
455. If the Department finds sufficient grounds for disqualification of either Justice, we request that the
Solicitor General file a Rule 60(b) motion with the full Supreme Court seeking to vacate the judgment.

The American public deserves answers to a number of questions bearing on whether Justices Thomas or Scalia
should be disqualified from the Citizens United case:

1. Would a reasonable person question the impartiality of Justices Thomas and Scalia based on their
attendance at secretive Koch Industries retreats?
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Federal law requires any United States judge – including a Supreme Court justice – to ―disqualify himself in
any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.‖ 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). ―The very
purpose of § 455(a) is to promote confidence in the judiciary by avoiding even the appearance of impropriety
whenever possible.‖ Liljeberg v. Health Servs. Acquisition Corp., 486 U.S. 847, 865, citing S. Rep. No. 93-419
at 5; H. R. Rep. No. 93-1453 at 5. ―Under § 455(a), disqualification is required if a reasonable person who knew
the circumstances would question the judge‘s impartiality, even though no actual bias or prejudice has been
shown.‖ U.S. v. Tucker, 78 F.3d 1313, 1324 (8th Cir. 1996)(internal quotes omitted).

In October 2010, news reports revealed that Justices Scalia and Thomas have attended one or more invitation-
only retreats sponsored by Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held corporation in the United States
and a major political player that directly benefited from the Citizens United decision.[1]

That revelation comes from a letter and information packet, dated September 24, sent by Koch Industries CEO
Charles Koch to potential attendees of the next Koch retreat, planned for January 30-31, 2011 in Palm Springs,
California. Common Cause has obtained those materials, attached, courtesy of Think Progress, which broke the
story.

The description of the Palm Springs program, entitled ―Understanding and Addressing Threats to American
Free Enterprise and Prosperity,‖ states that:

This action-oriented program brings together top experts and leaders to discuss –and offer solutions to counter –
the most critical threats to our free society. …Past meetings have featured such notable leaders as Supreme
Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas; Governors Bobby Jindal and Haley Barbour;
commentators John Stossel, Charles Krauthammer, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh; Senators Jim DeMint and
Tom Coburn; and Representatives Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and Tom Price.

The Koch Industries retreats are highly political, and attended by an elite group of Republican donors and
officials, conservative leaders, and captains of finance and industry. According to Charles Koch‘s invitation
letter:

At our most recent meeting in Aspen [June 27-28, 2010], our group heard plans to activate citizens against the
threat of government over-spending and to change the balance of power in Congress this November. In
response, participants committed to an unprecedented level of support. The important work being done with
these initiatives continues. (emphasis added)

That ―unprecedented support‖ was made possible by the Supreme Court‘s dramatic decision in Citizens
United. Koch Industries and its corporate allies derived a direct benefit from the Citizens United decision in the
2010 elections, and the Kochs have founded and provided financial support for other groups that benefited from
the decision. The Koch Industries PAC spent $2.6 million in the 2010 election cycle, and individuals associated
with Koch Industries and its affiliates contributed another $1.8 million. More than 90 percent of those funds
were contributed to Republican candidates.[2] In addition, Americans for Prosperity – founded and funded by
the Kochs – stated its intention last summer to spend $45 million to influence the 2010 elections.[3]

The Kochs‘ support for deregulation of campaign spending is well documented. A number of the highly
influential groups that filed amicus briefs in support of the appellant were founded or funded by the Kochs,
including the Cato Institute,[4] Institute for Justice,[5] Pacific Legal Foundation,[6] and the Barry Goldwater
Institute for Public Research.[7] Representatives from other amici, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
and the Wyoming Liberty Group, also attended last year‘s Koch retreat in Aspen and benefitted from the
Citizens United decision.[8] The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent nearly $33 million to influence the 2010
congressional midterms, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
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The Citizens United case was active before the Supreme Court between January 2008 and January 2010. If
Justices Thomas and Scalia attended or spoke at a Koch Industries meeting during that time frame, it would
certainly raise serious issues of the appearance of impropriety and bias.

However, no mention of such an event is listed on the Justices‘ disclosure forms for 2008 and 2009, and the
Koch Industries gatherings themselves are highly secretive. The program for the 2010 Aspen retreat contains a
―Confidentiality and Security‖ section, which states:

In order to understand and develop strategies more effectively, the proceedings of this meeting are
confidential. The meetings are closed to the public, including media. Please be mindful of the security and
confidentiality of your meeting notes and materials, and do not post updates or information about the meeting
on blogs, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, or in traditional media articles. These meetings are
invitation-only and nametags should be worn for all meeting functions.

2. Does attendance of a closed-door Koch Industries retreat constitute political activity?

Regardless of the timeframe, we believe it is inappropriate for a Supreme Court judge to be ―featured‖ at or
attend closed-door strategy meetings with political donors, corporate CEOs, candidates and political officials,
and thereby lend the prestige of their position to the political goals of that event. Canon 5 of the Code of
Conduct for United States Judges states that:

A judge should not…make speeches for a political organization…or attend or purchase a ticket for a dinner or
other event sponsored by a political organization or candidate. …A judge should not engage in any other
political activity.

The Code goes on to explain that:

The term ―political organization‖ refers to a political party, a group affiliated with a political party or candidate
for public office, or an entity whose principal purpose is to advocate for or against political candidates or parties
in connection with elections for public office.

Although the Code of Conduct is not binding on Supreme Court justices, § 455 was modeled upon it, and the
Code‘s standards are highly instructive with respect to what constitutes a reasonable basis for an appearance of
bias. In the context of § 455, the political nature of an event and level of political activity of an organization is
more relevant than the formal corporate form of the sponsor. A reasonable person would question the
impartiality of Justices Thomas and Scalia in the Citizens United case based on their attendance at political
strategy meetings sponsored by a corporation that raises and spends millions to defeat Democrats and elect
Republicans. That appearance is heightened by the highly secretive nature of those meetings, which were
closed to the public and the media. Neither Justice Thomas nor Justice Scalia listed their attendance on their
disclosure forms, and the public has no way of knowing when the meetings took place in relation to the
pendency of the Citizens United case, what issues were discussed or the extent of the Justices‘ involvement.

3. Did Justice Thomas have a conflict of interest based on his wife’s interest in the subject matter of the
Citizens United case?

In addition to questions concerning the appearance of partiality, the Justice Department should investigate
whether Justice Thomas should have recused himself from the Citizens United case based on financial conflicts
of interest covered under § 455(b).

In 2009, Justice Thomas‘ wife, Virginia ―Ginny‖ Thomas, left her employment at the Heritage Foundation to
found a new 501(c)(4) organization, Liberty Central. The organization received initial funding from donations
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of $500,000 and $50,000, but has not disclosed the donors. Ms. Thomas served as the group‘s CEO from
November 2009 until December 2010 for an undisclosed salary.

According to the New York Times, Liberty Central is ―dedicated to opposing what [Ms. Thomas] characterizes
as the leftist ‗tyranny‘ of President Obama and Democrats in Congress and to ‗protecting the core founding
principles‘ of the nation.‖[9] After its founding, the group quickly launched an electoral project called ―Impact
2010,‖ stating on its website that:

The election this November will be a historic one. And the left is working hard to maintain its lock on power in
Washington, with the help of union allies, and groups like Organizing for America, MoveOn.org, and others.
Liberty Central is working to retire those in Congress who support this big government agenda, while
simultaneously helping return our country to a more pro-liberty Congress.

The group used a scorecard to help determine its ―battleground target races‖ in order to ―ensure that certain
elected officials get an early retirement.‖[10] It published a list of ―pro-liberty candidates‖ and graded
incumbents in targeted districts on an A-F scale, and then used that information to advocate for the election or
defeat of congressional candidates. The New York Times reported that Ms. Thomas told Fox News at a Tea
Party rally in Atlanta that, ―Liberty Central will be bigger than the Tea Party movement.‖[11]

The Supreme Court‘s decision in Citizens United, issued on January 21, 2010, provided a substantial benefit to
Liberty Central while Ms. Thomas was its CEO by enabling it to raise and spend corporate funds directly
advocating the defeat or election of political candidates for the first time in more than 60 years. According to a
story in the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Thomas stated that Liberty Central ―would accept donations from various
sources – including corporations – as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme
Court.‖[12]

Federal law requires a justice to recuse himself when:

He knows that…his spouse…has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy…or any other interest
that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.

28 U.S.C. § 455(b)(4). As CEO of Liberty Central, Ms. Thomas clearly had an interest that was substantially
affected by the Supreme Court‘s decision in Citizens United. Although the law requires knowledge on the part
of the judge, it also states that ―[a] judge should…make a reasonable effort to inform himself about the personal
financial interests of his spouse.‖ § 455(c). Given the high public profile of Ms. Thomas and Liberty Central, it
would strain credulity for Justice Thomas to claim that he was not aware of this interest.

4. Do Koch Industries ties to his wife’s group, Liberty Central, create an additional appearance of bias
for Justice Thomas?

These financial conflicts of interest for Justice Thomas come full circle to the § 455(a) appearance of partiality
issue in light of Liberty Central‘s ties to Koch Industries. At the time of the Citizens United decision, one of
Liberty Central‘s five board members was Matt Schlapp. Mr. Schlapp is a registered lobbyist for Koch
Industries Inc. and two of its affiliated corporations, and was the former Vice President of Federal Affairs at
Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC. He also runs a public affairs firm, Cove Strategies, that has close ties to
the Republican Party and the Kochs.[13] Additionally, Mr. Schlapp was assistant treasurer and chair of the
candidate selection committee of Koch Industries Inc Political Action Committee (KOCHPAC) in 2008, and
still listed himself as a director of KOCHPAC as of February 2010.[14]
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When Ms. Thomas left Liberty Central in November 2010, , she was replaced by Sarah Field, a former
employee of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.[15]

The complete lack of transparency of Liberty Central‘s finances makes it difficult to assess the full scope of the
ethics issues raised by Ms. Thomas‘s role in founding and leading the group. Neither Common Cause nor the
public at large is able to ascertain the interests of Liberty Central‘s principal donor, who contributed $500,000
of the group‘s $550,000 income in 2009, while the Citizens United case was pending before the Supreme
Court. Liberty Central has declined to identify its funders or disclose its election-related spending, its website
does not provide a phone number or physical address, and the address listed on its Form 990 is a UPS store in
Burke, Virginia.

Summary and Request for Formal Action

For all of the above stated reasons, we believe that the public interest requires a full investigation by the Justice
Department into, and public reporting of, potential grounds for disqualifying Justices Thomas and Scalia from
the Citizens United case.

If the Department finds that ―a reasonable person who knew the circumstances would question‖ either justice‘s
impartiality, § 455(a) requires disqualification. Tucker, 78 F.3d at 1324 (disqualifying a judge based on his
relationship with President and Hillary Clinton, who had expressed public support for the defendant). Similarly,
a finding that Ginny Thomas had an ―interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome‖ of Citizens
United requires disqualification of Justice Thomas under § 455(b). Given that the facts supporting an
appearance of bias were not publicly known at the time of the decision, the appropriate remedy for either
violation is for the Department to file a motion with the Court to vacate the judgment. Liljeberg, 486 U.S. at
867.

Justice Stevens, writing for the Court in Liljeberg, had the wisdom to predict that the courts‘ ―willingness to
enforce § 455 may prevent a substantial injustice in some future case by encouraging a judge or litigant to more
carefully examine possible grounds for disqualification and to promptly disclose them when discovered.‖ Id. at
868. ―The guiding consideration is that the administration of justice should reasonably appear to be disinterested
as well as be so in fact.‖ Id. at 869-70 (quoting Public Utilities Comm’n of D.C. v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 466-67
(1952).

Avoiding bias in a case that affects every voter in our democracy is critical, both to prevent injustice and to
avoid further damaging the public‘s confidence in our judicial system and the rule of law. We respectfully
request a meeting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss these concerns, and urge you to take prompt
action to address this important matter.

Sincerely,

Bob Edgar

President and CEO

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Arn H. Pearson, Esq.

Vice President for Programs

[1] See, e.g., Kate Zernike, Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead, New York Times (Oct. 19,
2010), Lee Fang, Health Insurance, Banking, Oil Industries Met with Koch, Chamber, Glenn Beck To Plot 2010
Election, Think Progress (Oct. 20, 2010), http://thinkprogress.org./2010/10/20/beck-koch-chamber-meeting/.

[2] See http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2010&strID=C00236489.

[3] See, e.g., Kate Zernike, Shaping Tea Party Passion Into Campaign Force, New York Times (Aug. 25,
2010), http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/us/politics/26freedom.html; Jane Mayer, Covert Operations, The
New Yorker (Aug. 30, 2010), http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer.

[4] CATO Institute, CATO Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary, (May 2002), http://www.cato.org/25th/.

[5] Institute for Justice, IJ Thanks Its Cornerstone Supporters: Charles & David Koch, (November 2001),
http://www.ij.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1750&Itemid=245.

[6] SourceWatch, Koch Family Foundations,

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations (last visited Jan. 19, 2011).

[7] Zachary Roth, Group That May Bring Health-Care Lawsuit Is Backed By Big-Name Conservative Funders,
TPMMuckracker, (April 7, 2010),
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/group_that_may_bring_health-
care_lawsuit_is_backed.php; Media Matters, Conservative Transparency: Goldwater Institute,
http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/organization/Goldwater_Institute/funders (last visited Jan. 19,
2011).

[8] Fang, supra note 1.

[9] Jackie Calmes, Activism of Thomas’s Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues, New York Times (Oct. 8, 2010),
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/us/politics/09thomas.html.

[10] See http://www.libertycentral.org/liberty-centrals-top-races-2010-10.

[11] Calmes, supra note 4.

[12] Kathleen Hennessey, Justice’s wife launches ‘tea party’ group, Los Angeles Times (Mar. 14, 2010),
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/14/nation/la-na-thomas14-2010mar14.

[13] See http://www.covestrategies.com/team.html.

[14] Clerk of the House of Representatives, Matt Schlapp: Lobby Contribution Report, ( July, 25, 2008),
http://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=13f00549-5473-4073-8cd1-
d11ad0d7d286; Federal Election Commission, Campaign Finance Reports and Data,
http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?10930593442 (last visited Jan. 18, 2011).

[15] See http://www.libertycentral.org/about.

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