The Week the World Stood Still:

by Noam Chomsky                Pub. by, TomDispatch.com                  Oct.16, 2012

The world stood still 50 years ago during the last week of October, from the moment when it learned that the Soviet Union had placed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba until the crisis was officially ended -- though unknown to the public, only officially. The image of the world standing still is the turn of phrase of Sheldon Stern, former historian at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, who published the authoritative version of the tapes of the ExComm meetings where Kennedy and a close circle of advisers debated how to respond to the crisis. Those meetings were secretly recorded by the president, which might bear on the fact that his stand throughout the recorded sessions is relatively temperate compared to other participants, who were unaware that they were speaking to history. 

There was good reason for the global concern. A nuclear war was all too imminent, a war that might “destroy the Northern Hemisphere,” President Dwight Eisenhower had warned. Kennedy’s own judgment was that the probability of war might have been as high as 50%. Estimates became higher as the confrontation reached its peak and the “secret doomsday plan to ensure the survival of the government was put into effect” in Washington, as described by journalist Michael Dobbs in his well-researched bestseller on the crisis.

Dobbs quotes Dino Brugioni, “a key member of the CIA team monitoring the Soviet missile buildup,” who saw no way out except “war and complete destruction” as the clock moved to “one minute to midnight,” the title of his book. Kennedy’s close associate, historian Arthur Schlesinger, described the events as “the most dangerous moment in human history.” Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wondered aloud whether he “would live to see another Saturday night,” and later recognized that “we lucked out” -- barely.

“The Most Dangerous Moment” A closer look at what took place adds grim overtones to these judgments, with reverberations to the present moment. There are several candidates for “the most dangerous moment.” One is October 27th, when U.S. destroyers enforcing a quarantine around Cuba were dropping depth charges on Soviet submarines. According to Soviet accounts, reported by the National Security Archive, submarine commanders were “rattled enough to talk about firing nuclear torpedoes, whose 15 kiloton explosive yields approximated the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in August 1945.”

In one case, a reported decision to assemble a nuclear torpedo for battle readiness was aborted at the last minute by Second Captain Vasili Arkhipov, who may have saved the world from nuclear disaster. There is little doubt what the U.S. reaction would have been had the torpedo been fired, or how the Russians would have responded as their country was going up in smoke. Kennedy had already declared the highest nuclear alert short of launch (DEFCON 2), which authorized “NATO aircraft with Turkish pilots ... [or others] ... to take off, fly to Moscow, and drop a bomb,” according to the well-informed Harvard University strategic analyst Graham Allison, writing in the major establishment journal Foreign Affairs.

Another candidate is October 26th. That day has been selected as “the most dangerous moment” by B-52 pilot Major Don Clawson, who piloted one of those NATO aircraft and provides a hair-raising description of details of the Chrome Dome (CD) missions during the crisis -- “B-52s on airborne alert” with nuclear weapons “on board and ready to use.”

October 26th was the day when “the nation was closest to nuclear war,” he writes in his “irreverent anecdotes of an Air Force pilot,” Is That Something the Crew Should Know? On that day, Clawson himself was in a good position to set off a likely terminal cataclysm. He concludes, “We were damned lucky we didn’t blow up the world -- and no thanks to the political or military leadership of this country.”

The errors, confusions, near-accidents, and miscomprehension of the leadership that Clawson reports are startling enough, but nothing like the operative command-and-control rules -- or lack of them. As Clawson recounts his experiences during the 15 24-hour CD missions he flew, the maximum possible, the official commanders “did not possess the capability to prevent a rogue-crew or crew-member from arming and releasing their thermonuclear weapons,” or even from broadcasting a mission that would have sent off “the entire Airborne Alert force without possibility of recall.” Once the crew was airborne carrying thermonuclear weapons, he writes, “it would have been possible to arm and drop them all with no further input from the ground. There was no inhibitor on any of the systems.”

From the ExComm records, Stern concludes that, on October 26th, President Kennedy was “leaning towards military action to eliminate the missiles” in Cuba, to be followed by invasion, according to Pentagon plans. It was evident then that the act might have led to terminal war, a conclusion fortified by much later revelations that tactical nuclear weapons had been deployed and that Russian forces were far greater than U.S. intelligence had reported. 

[Excerpts from the first part of a 12-page document. Chomsky’s complete document can be accessed at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/16]

Taxing Dilemmas

By Ian Harris           Otago Daily Times          Oct. 12, 2012

Many and varied are the reasons people give for leaving a church, but saving a few dollars by avoiding the collection plate would be well down the list. That, however, is now an issue for German Catholics, thanks to a decree by their bishops that if they don’t pay their dues by way of the tax system, they will be denied the church’s services, from mass to Christian burial. The message is: “You join the club, you pay the sub.”

It is excommunication in all but name, and a reformist group within the church is not happy. It says the new rule is tantamount to saying that the sacraments are for sale, which “goes beyond the sale of indulgences that Martin Luther denounced”, triggering the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago.

Indulgences were an ingenious fund-raising device. Needing money to build the grandiose new St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the pope promised that they would wipe away the penalties of sin, on earth and in purgatory, for those who bought them – and also for their dead relatives.

Luther was aghast both at this commercialisation of sin and salvation and at the church’s exploitation of lay people’s naivety. He challenged indulgences on theological grounds, and his charge that the German states had become “the milch cow of Europe” for Rome’s benefit fanned Reformation fervour.

In today’s increasingly secular world, the German churches’ claim on a share of taxes collected by the state seems out of place; but the practice is an overhang from a relationship with the state that goes back centuries.  The tax, calculated at 8 to 9 per cent of a church member’s income tax bill, collected €5 billion (NZ$8 billion) from Germany’s 25 million Catholics last year, and €4.5 billion (NZ$7.2 billion) from its 24 million Protestants. It keeps the churches (and Jewish synagogues) well-funded, and enables them to run hospitals, schools and other social services at home and abroad.

But clouds are building. The Catholic Church has lost 3 million members in the past two decades, and with them the tax levy they once paid.  So when a retired professor of church law, Harmut Zapp, challenged whether his religious beliefs should tie him automatically to a tax payment, the bishops were not amused. He wanted to stop paying but remain a church member. The bishops countered that “it is not possible to separate the spiritual community of the church from the institutional church”. Last month a federal court concurred – and that will no doubt spur many who now hover between staying in or getting out to decide one way or the other.

For people whose faith has ebbed away, the choice will be easy. But it is a real dilemma for those Christians, of every hue, who have glimpsed new horizons in faith and understanding, but who don’t find them reflected in their churches’ rituals and practices. A tension grows between where their evolving faith is taking them, and where their churches seem to be stuck. And the more their leaders insist that members’ religious duty is to acquiesce and obey, as some do, the more those people wonder why they should continue to support them with their cash.

More than 40 years ago, English Anglican Bishop John Robinson reflected on that tension between a liberating gospel and a stultifying church, while acknowledging that not everyone finds it stultifying. In 1966 it came to a head for a Catholic professor of theology in England, Charles Davis. He had grown increasingly uncomfortable about the sheer weight of the clerical system, which he found authoritarian, cramping and pointless. He felt his integrity was at stake by continuing to be part of it.

For Davis and others like him, getting out proved liberating. But Robinson said that was not the only option. Another was to stay within the church but switch one’s energies to service in the world beyond it. A third, to stay within the organisation and work to transform it from the inside.

The latter is the course chosen by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organisation of American nuns, in their current disagreement with the Vatican (which I wrote about in July). Ordered to back off in their questioning of certain church teaching, in August the conference responded by seeking instead “open and honest dialogue”, in the hope of “creating more possibilities for the laity, and particularly for women, to have a voice in the church”.  Wish them luck! Back in 1517, dialogue was what Luther was initially seeking, too

The transformative qualities of contemplation

Rowan Williams                       Guardian/UK                           14 October 2012
 
'Contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems, our advertising culture, and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit.' We need to show our world the face of a humanity in endless growth towards love, delighted and engaged by the glory of God that we look towards. St Paul speaks (in II Corinthians 3.18) of how "with our unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord", we are transfigured with a greater and greater radiance. That is the face we seek to show to our fellow human beings. 

This is not because we are in search of some private "religious experience" that will make us feel secure or holy. In the early church, there was a clear understanding that we needed to advance: from the self-understanding or self-contemplation that taught us to discipline our greedy instincts and cravings, to the "natural contemplation" that perceived and venerated the wisdom of God in the order of the world, and allowed us to see created reality for what it truly was in the sight of God – rather than what it was in terms of how we might use it or dominate it.

In this perspective, contemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them. Contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems, our advertising culture, and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need so as to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter.

We have to be very careful in our evangelisation not simply to persuade people to apply onto God and the life of the spirit all the longings for drama, excitement and self-congratulation that we so often indulge in. The American scholar of religion, Jacob Needleman, wrote that the words of the gospel are addressed to human beings who "do not yet exist"; and responding in a life-giving way to the gospel means a transforming of our whole self, our feelings and thoughts and imaginings. To be converted to the faith does not mean simply acquiring a new set of beliefs, but becoming a new person, a person in communion with God and others through Jesus Christ.

Contemplation is an intrinsic element in this transforming process. To learn to look to God without regard to my own instant satisfaction, to learn to scrutinise and to relativise the cravings and fantasies that arise in me – this is to allow God to be God, and thus to allow the prayer of Christ – God's own relation to God – to come alive in me. Invoking the holy spirit is a matter of asking the third person of the trinity to enter my spirit and bring the clarity I need to see where I am in slavery to cravings and fantasies, and to give me patience and stillness as God's light and love penetrate my inner life. Only as this begins to happen will I be delivered from treating the gifts of God as yet another set of things I may acquire to make me happy, or to dominate other people.

And as this process unfolds, I become more free – to borrow a phrase of St Augustine (Confessions 4.7) – to "love human beings in a human way", to love them not for what they may promise me, to love them not as if they were there to provide me with lasting safety and comfort, but as fragile fellow creatures held in the love of God.

This "internal" transformation is not more important than action for justice, but without it our search for justice or for peace becomes another exercise of human will, undermined by human self-deception. The two callings are inseparable, the calling to "prayer and righteous action", as Protestant martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, writing from his prison cell in 1944. True prayer purifies the motive, true justice is the necessary work of sharing and liberating in others the humanity we have discovered in our contemplative encounter.

[This is an edited version of the talk that Rowan Williams gave to the General Synod of Bishops in Rome last week. The full address is available at www.archbishopofcanterbury.org  ]

Links between MoD and private sector

Guardian research in the aftermath of the 'jobs for generals' scandal shows extent of links between MoD and private sector

Nick Hopkins, Rob Evans and Richard Norton-Taylor        Guardian/UK       15 October 2012

Lt General Sir John Kiszely, who has resigned as president of the Royal British Legion, was one of several former senior members of the military caught in a lobbying sting. Senior military officers and Ministry of Defence officials have taken up more than 3,500 jobs in arms companies over the past 16 years, according to figures that reveal the extent of the "revolving door" between the public and private sector.

The data, compiled by the Guardian from freedom of information requests, shows how the industry swoops on former officials and military personnel once they have left service, with hundreds of senior officers being given jobs every year. The figures for 2011-12 show 231 jobs went to former officials and military personnel – a rise from the previous year's total of 101. Another 93 have been approved since January. In total 3,572 jobs have been approved since 1996.

The disclosure comes in the aftermath of a "jobs for generals" scandal that led to the resignation of the president of the Royal British Legion, Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely, who was embarrassed in a newspaper lobbying sting. Kiszely was one of several former senior members of the military caught on film by Sunday Times reporters who were pretending to seek lobbyists for a South Korean defence company.  Admiral Trevor Soar, second in command of the Royal Navy until the spring, has also quit his role as an advisor at the large UK defence and engineering company Babcock.

The MoD began its own inquiry on Monday into the access that former members of the military have to serving officials. This may lead to a tightening of current restrictions and blanket bans on certain individuals approaching senior staff in the ministry. Figures obtained by the Guardian show that there has been a regular flow into the private sector every year since records began in 1996. There has never been fewer than 101 and the highest is 360.

The furore began at the weekend with the Sunday Times investigation in which six former members of the military were approached for help by journalists purporting to be working for a defence firm. Those fooled by the sting included Lord Dannatt, a former head of the army; Lieutenant General Richard Applegate, a former head of procurement at the MoD; and Lord Stirrup, a former chief of the defence staff. All of those involved intimated they knew people at the top of the MoD who could help the firm. Some bragged about their connections to ministers and the MoD's most senior civil servants.

Though they all denied wrongdoing, at least two of them appear to have been in breach of Acoba guidelines. These state that senior officers have to wait up to two years before they can lobby on behalf of defence companies. Soar, who retired this March, suggested he could ignore those guidelines if he was described as a consultant. Applegate, who has only just past the two years' "purdah", claimed he had spent the past 18 months working on behalf of an Israeli arms firm and had successfully lobbied the MoD to release £500m for a helicopter safety programme.

But even if the men have defied the Acoba rules, there is no way of sanctioning them or the firms with whom they might have been working. Jenkin said the public administration select committee (Pasc) had flagged this problem to the government in July and had recommended adopting a much tougher regime. "We recommended that there should be a statutory appointment of a conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, with statutory rules so that it is very clear what people can and cannot do. Acoba does not have any powers. This episode shows that and I hope the government will now look fa A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "This is an important issue as events over the weekend have shown. Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, said the system needed to be changed. "It is ludicrous that rules can be broken without sanction and so we must see systematic change to restore confidence and standards.

"Military expertise should not be lost after retirement, but contact on defence contracts must be transparent and within established guidelines. We must get to the bottom of what happened. We must also establish the facts of ministerial involvement and awareness in these cases." Labour has tabled a series of questions on the issue, including a demand for details of meetings between former members of the military and serving civil servants, senior officers and ministers.   [Abridged]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/15/mod-military-arms-firms

The Faux Objectivity of Journalists

Establishment journalists are creatures of a highly ideological world and often cause ideology to masquerade as neutral fact.

by Glenn Greenwald                     Guardian/UK                         October 12, 2012

Martha Raddatz as the moderator of Wednesday night's vice presidential debate was assertive and covered substantial ground in 90 minutes. That's all true enough, but the questions she asked reveal something significant about American journalism in general and especially its pretense of objectivity.  For establishment journalists like Raddatz, "objectivity" is the holy grail. In their minds, it is what distinguishes "real reporters" from mere "opinionists" and, worse, partisans.

The reality is that, as desperately as they try, virtually no journalists are driven by this type of objectivity. They are, instead, awash in countless highly ideological assumptions that are anything but objective.  These assumptions are almost always unacknowledged as such and are usually unexamined, which means that often the journalists themselves are not even consciously aware that they have embraced them. But embraced them they have, with unquestioning vigor

At best, "objectivity" in this world of journalists usually means nothing more than: the absence of obvious favoritism toward either of the two major political parties. As long as a journalist treats Democrats and Republicans more or less equally, they will be hailed as "objective journalists". But that is a conception of objectivity so shallow as to be virtually meaningless, in large part because the two parties so often share highly questionable assumptions on the most critical issues.

The highly questionable assumptions tacitly embedded in the questions Raddatz asked illustrate how this works. Let's begin with Iran, where Raddatz posed a series of questions and made numerous observations that she undoubtedly believes are factual but which are laden with all sorts of ideological assumptions. First there is this:

RADDATZ: Let's move to Iran, because there's really no bigger national security.issue...    RYAN: Absolutely.   RADDATZ: this country is facing.

The very idea that Iran poses some kind of major "national security" crisis for the US - let alone that there is "really no bigger national security" issue "this country is facing" - is absurd. At the very least, it's highly debatable. The US has Iran virtually encircled militarily. Iran has demonstrated no propensity to launch attacks on US soil, has no meaningful capability to do so, and would be instantly damaged, if not (as Hillary Clinton once put it) "totally obliterated" if they tried. That Iran is some major national security issue for the US is a concoction of the bipartisan DC class that always needs a scary foreign enemy.

Note what Raddatz did not ask and never would. Even after both candidates re-affirmed their commitment to attacking Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, there were no questions about whether the US would have the legal or moral right to launch an aggressive attack on Iran. That the US has the right to attack any country it wants is one of those unexamined assumptions in Washington discourse, probably the supreme orthodoxy of the nation's "foreign policy community".

Worse, even after Biden boasted about the destruction of the Iranian economy from US sanctions - "the ayatollah sees his economy being crippled. . . . He sees the currency going into the tank. He sees the economy going into freefall" - there was no discussion about the severe suffering imposed on Iranian civilians by the US, whether the US wants to repeat the mass death and starvation it brought to millions of Iraqis for a full decade, or what the consequences of doing that will be.

In sum, all of Raddatz's questions were squarely within the extremely narrow - and highly ideological - DC consensus about US foreign policy generally and Iran specifically: namely, Iran is a national security threat to the US; it is trying to obtain nuclear weapons; the US must stop them; the US has the unchallenged right to suffocate Iranian civilians and attack militarily. As usual, the only question worth debating is whether a military attack on Iran now would be strategically wise, and advance US interests.

One can say many things about the worldview promoted by her questions. That it is "objective" or free of ideology is most certainly not one of them. Exactly the same is true of Raddatz's statements and questions about America's entitlement programs. Here is the "question": "Let's talk about Medicare and entitlements. Both Medicare and Social Security are going broke and taking a larger share of the budget in the process."

That Social Security is "going broke" is a claim that is dubious in the extreme. This claim lies at the heart of the right-wing and neo-liberal quest to slash     benefits for ordinary Americans - Ryan predictably responded by saying: "Absolutely. Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts." - but the claim is baseless.      [Excerpts only]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/12-4        Read the full article with updates at The Guardian