[Marxism-Thaxis] Security, Secrecy and a Bush Brother, by Margie Burns (FWD)
Security, Secrecy and a Bush Brother By Margie Burns A company that provided security at the World Trade Center, Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport and United Airlines between 1995 and 2001 was backed by a private Kuwaiti-American investment firm whose records were not open to full public disclosure, with ties to the Bush family. Marvin P. Bush, a younger brother of George W. Bush, was a principal in the company from 1993 to 2000, when most of the work on the big projects was done. But White House responses to 9/11 have not publicly disclosed the company's part in providing security to any of the named facilities. Public records indicate that the firm, formerly named Securacom, had Bush on its board of directors. He was also listed as a significant shareholder. The firm, which is now named Stratesec, Inc., is located in Sterling, Va., a D.C. suburb, and emphasizes federal clients. Bush is no longer on the board. Bush has not responded to repeated telephoned and emailed requests for comment. The American Stock Exchange delisted Stratesec's stock in October 2002. (Securacom also had a contract to provide security at Los Alamos National Laboratories, notorious for its security breach.) According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center up to the day the buildings fell down. Yet instead of being investigated, the company and companies involved with it have benefited from legislation pushed by the Bush White House and rubber-stamped by Congressional Republicans. Stratesec, its backer KuwAm, and their corporate officers stand to benefit from limitations on liability and national-security protections from investigation provided in bills since 9/11. HCC Insurance Holdings, Inc., a reinsurance corporation on whose board Marvin Bush sat as director until November 2002, similarly benefits from terrorism insurance protections. (Bush's first year on the board at HCC coincided with his last year on the board at Stratesec.) HCC, formerly Houston Casualty Company, carried some of the insurance for the World Trade Center. It posted a loss for the quarter after the attacks of Sept. 11 and dropped participation in worker's compensation as a result. Bush remains an adviser to the chairman and the Board of Directors, as well as a member of the company's investment committee. The former CEO of Stratesec is Wirt D. Walker III, who is still chairman of the board. Although he has also been the managing director of KuwAm for several years, Walker states definitively in phone interviews that there was no exchange of talent between Stratesec and KuwAm during the WTC and other projects. As Walker put it, I'm an investment banker. He continued, We just owned some stock. The investment company was not involved in any way in the work or day-to-day operations of the security company. He explained clearly and pleasantly that there was no sharing of information or of personnel between the two companies. In December 2000 endash;- when the presidential election was determined -- Stratesec added a Government Division, providing the same full range of security systems services as the Commercial Division, in the company's words. Stratesec now has an open-ended contract with the General Services Administration (GSA) and a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with the agency that allows the government to purchase materials and services from the Company without having to go through a full competition. The company lists as government clients the US Army, US Navy, US Air force, and the Department of Justice, in projects that often require state-of-the-art security solutions for classified or high-risk government sites. In 2000, the US Army accounted for 29% of the company's earned revenues, or about $6.9 million. The White House opposed an independent commission to investigate 9/11 until after the terrorism insurance protections and protections for security companies had safely passed Congress. It has also quietly intervened in lawsuits against United Airlines in New York, brought by relatives of the victims. Marvin Bush joined Securacom's Board of Directors in 1993, as part of new management hired when the company separated from engineering firm Burns and Roe. The new team was capitalized by KuwAm, the D.C.-based Kuwaiti- American investment company. Bush also served on the Board of Directors at KuwAm, along with Mishal Yousef Saud al-Sabah, Chairman of KuwAm and also a Director on Securacom's (Stratesec's) board. The World Trade Center and the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority -- which operates Dulles -- were two of Securacom's three biggest clients in 1996 and 1997. (The third was MCI, now WorldCom.) Stratesec (Securacom) differs from other security companies which separate the function of consultant from that of service provider. The company defines itself as a single-source provider of
[Marxism-Thaxis] The 'Left-Wing Media? (Monthly Review - June 2003)
The 'Left-Wing' Media? by Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster http://www.monthlyreview.org/0603editr.htm This article is a version of material that will appear in the authors' The Big Picture: Understanding Media through Political Economy, to be published by Monthly Review Press in December 2003. Citations for this piece will be available there. If we learn nothing else from the war on Iraq and its subsequent occupation, it is that the U.S. ruling class has learned to make ideological warfare as important to its operations as military and economic warfare. A crucial component of this ideological war has been the campaign against left-wing media bias, with the objective of reducing or eliminating the prospect that mainstream U.S. journalism might be at all critical toward elite interests or the system set up to serve those interests. In 2001 and 2002, no less than three books purporting to demonstrate the media's leftward tilt rested high atop the bestseller list. Such charges have already influenced media content, pushing journalists to be less critical of right-wing politics. The result has been to reinforce the corporate and rightist bias already built into the media system. The main target of this propaganda campaign is television network news programs, but the campaign has also extended into radio broadcasting, newspapers, and other media. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which controls broadcasting outlets and newspapers throughout the world, launched the Fox News Channel in the 1990s as a more conservative rival to CNN and the news programs of ABC, NBC, and CBS. According to the New York Times (April 7, 2003), In the United States, Mr. Murdoch's creation of the Fox News Channel has shifted the entire spectrum of American cable news to the right. Convinced that many people found CNN and the major broadcast networks too liberal, Mr. Murdoch and the former Republican political consultant Roger Ailes chartered Fox to be more conservativeor, from their point of view, more centrist. Last January, Fox became the top-rated cable network and it now draws more than 2 million viewers in prime timeFrom the start, the network displayed an American flag waving on its screen. Its newscasters speak of American and British troops as we, ours, and liberators. After other networks reported setbacks to American and British forces [during the invasion of Iraq], the Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly denounced its competitors as liberal weenies who were exaggerating the difficulties of the fight and underestimating the American public's toleration for casualties. The current attack on media content is presented as an attempt to counter the alleged bias of media elites. In reality, however, it is designed to shrink still furtherto the point of oblivionthe space for critical analysis in journalism. In order to understand the form and content of the conservative onslaught on the media it is necessary to have some comprehension of the role played by professional journalism beginning in the early twentieth century. Prior to 1900, the editorial position of a newspaper invariably reflected the political views of the owner, and the politics were explicit throughout the paper. Partisan journalism became problematic when newspapers became increasingly commercial enterprises and when newspaper markets became predominantly monopolistic. During the Progressive Eraas was chronicled in these pages a year agoU.S. journalism came under withering attack for being a tool of its capitalist owners to propagate anti-labor propaganda.* With profit-making in the driver's seat, partisan journalism became bad for business as it turned off parts of the potential readership and that displeased advertisers. Professional journalism was born from the revolutionary idea that the link between owner and editor could be broken. The news would be determined by trained professionals and the politics of owners and advertisers would be apparent only on the editorial page. Journalists would be given considerable autonomy to control the news using their professional judgment. Among other things, they would be trained to establish their political neutrality. Monopoly control over the news in particular markets was not especially importantso the argument went since, whether or not there were multiple newspapers, trained professionals would provide similar reports, to the extent that they were well trained. There emerged a professional code that, following The Elements of Journalism, by Bill Kovack and Tom Rosenstiel, might be reduced in its most ideal form to nine principles: 1. .Journalism's first obligation is to the truth. 2. Its first loyalty is to citizens. 3. Its essence is a discipline of verification. 4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
