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July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July 26 / 27, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
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Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
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Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
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Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
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Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
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Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
July
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses...Again
Robert
Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The
US Torture Camp in Iraq
David
Lindorff
Dumb and Dumber in Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in
Puerto Rico
David
Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops
Douglas
Valentine
A Nation of Assassins
Stew Albert
Contract Killing
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Report on Palestinian Child Prisoners
July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Caesar's Favor
David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
John Stanton
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Patrick
Bond
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Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
Paul
Beaulieu
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Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
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William
Witherup
Georgie Porgie
Website
of the Day
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True Love at Last
July
22, 2003
Diane
Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces;
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Brecher
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Steve
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and Jim Vallette
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Smith
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James
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Cassel
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Watch
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
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July
30, 2003
Poindexter
the Terror Bookie
Why
Stop with an Assassination Market?
By DAVID LINDORFF
Once again, Adm. John Poindexter, the convicted
felon of Iran-Contra scandal fame who brought us the Total
Information Awareness--oops, make that the Terrorism Information
Awareness project--is ahead of his time and in the news. And
once again, he's coming in for heavy criticism. His first sin,
back in the 1980s was trying to establish a secret fund to allow
President Ronald Reagan to finance the Contra guerrillas in
Nicaragua using drug money from Latin America and funds from
sale of Stinger missiles to Iran. Then, more recently, it was
trying to develop a supercomputer that could track every financial
move of every person in America, or perhaps the world. Slapped
down for that bold scheme, now the plucky admiral with the ultimate
geeky surname has run afoul of liberal sensitivities with a
plan to have the Pentagon operate an online futures market
that would allow investors to place bets on the likelihood of
terror attacks, assassinations and other man-made calamities.
So what's all the fuss about?
Adm. Poindexter's idea--based upon the
Republican shibboleth that "the market is always right"--is
that by allowing investors to invest based upon their individual
intuition about what terrorists are likely to do next, American
intelligence, law enforcement and military organizations will
be better able to anticipate those actions.
The idea of American investors betting
on the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
or American Iraq Viceroy L. Paul Bremer, or on a future bombing
of Disney World, has so nauseated Democrats (and so embarrassed
congressional  Republicans), that a move
is afoot now in Congress to defund the program. In the words
of a leading critic of the proposed terrorism futures market,
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), the idea is "wasteful and absurd."
I disagree.
Let's for a moment accept the underlying
premise that investors, acting collectively, have a prescience
beyond that of ordinary individual mortals--that they can predict
the future direction of the stock market, the national economy,
or even the interest rate policy of Federal Reserve. Why not
give them a shot at predicting the future of terrorism activity?
There certainly can be no harm in letting people risk their
money, and maybe even make some, on trying to guess where the
next big bomb will go off? And how much worse can investors
do at predicting terrorism than the Homeland Security Department
whose system of color-coded threat-level announcements so far
has batted 000, or than the U.S. intelligence community, which
missed 9/11 (not to mention the collapse of the Soviet Union)
completely?
Instead of criticizing Poindexter, the
government should be taking his bold idea and expanding on it.
Why limit this futures market concept of his to terrorism? Why
not put the vaunted predictive capacities of the American investment
community to work helping government plan ahead in other areas
of public concern?
The Federal Elections Commission fir
example, could establish a futures market for federal elections.
People could bet on the outcome of the 2004 presidential race
and the race for control of the Senate and the House. If the
system proves itself reliable over the course of one or two
election cycles, perhaps costly national elections could be
dispensed with altogether, and offices could be filled based
upon investor predictions in the future.
The EPA could establish a futures market
on global warming, where investors could bet on what number
of degrees the earth's temperature will rise by different years
over the next century, or perhaps how many feet the sea level
will rise by different dates, allowing urban planners and clothing
manufacturers to anticipate demand. (A side market could take
bets on which animals would become extinct by certain dates,
helping zoo mangers plan on which new exhibits to open.)
The Education Department could offer
a futures market where people could bet on the drop-out rate
for different ethnic groups or income levels as school funding
continues to be cut, allowing school boards across the country
to slash staffing and classroom space in advance of declining
enrolments.
The Department of Health and Human Services
could offer a futures market on the number of children suffering
from malnutrition over the life of the welfare "reform"
program, allowing public hospitals to gear up their treatment
programs for rickets and other heretofore Third World ailments.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics could let people place bets on
the unemployment rate as the Bush tax cut program plays out
in ever larger national deficits, giving states a heads up on
the construction of homeless shelters and the need for increased
police budgets. NASA could run a market based on investors1
bets on when the next space shuttle will blow up or burn up
(a transaction tax on each trade could go towards financing
a replacement vehicle).
Really, the possibilities for allowing
investors to parlay individual greed and ignorance into collective
wisdom, thereby providing government officials with much-needed
policy guidance and planning assistance, is endless.
The only real fly in the ointment here
is the original premise. The idea that investors--most of whom
are incredibly narrow and provincial in their backgrounds, education,
experience and interests--have some kind of transcendental
collective wisdom and prophetic insight really is not borne
out, except in the short term. Investors can do a relatively
good job forecasting what the stock market, or exchange rates
will do out a few weeks, or maybe months, based upon what they
have been doing up to the present date, as long as nothing surprising
occurs. Since they1re basically predicting their own future
behavior, this makes perfect sense. Where they fail is predicting
longer-term trends, which of course respond to events about
which futures investors, like the rest of us mortals, haven't
a clue.
No stock futures marketeer could have
predicted the 9/11 attacks that shattered both the stock market
and the U.S. economy. Nor do futures investors have any idea
what global warming will do to American business prospects.
Then, of course, there's the danger of
manipulation.
The Hunt brothers were pretty successful,
for a while, in their efforts to corner the silver commodities
futures market a few years ago.
They simply collected enough of the available
silver to put them in a commanding position to manipulate silver
futures. Indeed, manipulating futures markets is a common problem,
because trading in futures, unlike trading in equities, involves
relatively fewer players. The fewer the players, the easier
it is to manipulate a market.
So we'd have to worry about people manipulating
the terrorism futures market, I guess. And how would you do
that? Bet on a dramatic but highly unlikely assassination,
maybe, like the president of the United States perhaps, or the
terror bombing of a high-profile target like Disney Land or
the Chunnel. And then go out and finance the hit by some willing
terror cell. Such market manipulation would give a whole new
meaning to that Wall Street term "making a killing."
On second thought, maybe Poindexter's
latest brainstorm, like his others, is a bad idea.
Dave Lindorff
is the author of Killing
Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A collection of Lindorff's stories can be found here: http://www.nwuphilly.org/dave.html
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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