Archive for the ‘Military’ Category

by Stephen Lendman

Wall Street and other financial scammers do it from the living, Prudential and many insurers from the dead, ripping off families of killed war vets. On July 28, Bloomberg.com’s David Evans discussed how it works in an article titled, “Fallen Soldiers’ Families Denied Cash as Insurers Profit,” a polite way of explaining grand theft. From the living, it’s bad enough, from the dead, it gives chutzpah new meaning, affecting countless thousands of bereaved families. 

Evans wrote about one, Cindy Lohman. Two weeks after her son Ryan was killed, she received a Prudential Financial, Inc. “9-inch-by-12-inch envelope,” the company managing life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

A letter explained. As his beneficiary, she was entitled to $400,000 in death benefits along with something looking like a checkbook. The funds “would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use” them, the letter saying:

“You can hold the money in the account for safekeeping for as long as you like,” plus a disclaimer in easily overlooked fine print, explaining “what it called its Alliance Account,” a non-FDIC insured scheme, a ripoff to defraud beneficiaries like Lohman.

After leaving the funds untouched for months, she tried unsuccessfully using one of the “checks,” then failed a second time. She was “shocked,” saying she thought the money was FDIC insured, in a bank, to be used freely.

Not so. The “checks” were drafts or IOUs. “That money – like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by (130 insurers like Prudential) wasn’t actually sitting in a bank.” It was in Prudential’s general corporate account earning income – around 4.8% for insurers, 1% or less for survivors. This summer it was 0.5%, less than half what some banks pay on jumbo CDs, and way less than insurers yield on their investments.

“It’s a betrayal,” said Lohman. “It saddens me as an American that a company would stoop so low as to make a profit on the death of a soldier. Is there anything lower than that?”

For sure – waging an illegal war of aggression, sending young men and women to die for a lie, Ryan Lohman one of thousands affected (plus others maimed and disabled for life), their deaths compounded by insurance fraud ripping of their survivors, and VA officials doing nothing to stop it, claiming ignorance when they damn well knew or easily could have found out. For every branch of government, the business of America is business, the public their patsies to be scammed of their money, health and welfare.

So-Called “Retained-Asset” Accounts

They’ve become standard practice “in an industry that touches virtually every American: There are more than 300 million active life insurance policies in the US, and the industry holds $4.6 trillion in assets, according to the American Council of Life Insurers.”

Insurers tell survivors their money is safe, guaranteed by them not the government, making them woefully unsafe when investments are ripped off, and the principal depends on the company’s health.

According to Jeffrey Stempel, Law Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law, the “checkbook” system cheats survivors.

“It’s institutionalized bad faith. In my view, this is a scheme to defraud by inducing the policyholder’s beneficiary to let the life insurance company retain assets they’re not entitled to. It’s turning death claims into a profit center,” and Washington lets them get away with it.

Three firms, including Prudential and Metropolitan Life, handle retained-asset accounts for about 130 life insurers. No public records show how much, but at least $28 billion is involved.

Besides scamming beneficiaries, insurance companies may be violating federal bank law – a 1933 statute making it “a felony for any company to accept deposits without state or federal authorization.” Only chartered banks and credit unions can do it. Insurers aren’t chartered or regulated, so funds they hold for beneficiaries will disappear if they go under.

Further, the bogus Obama administration “financial reform” doesn’t address retained-asset accounts, only a new federal insurance office with no teeth. The same holds for the entire bill, a gift to Wall Street and big insurers, small investors left unprotected, or as one analyst explained – “austerity” for the public, high times for the big boys, and why not. They wrote the bill and got what they want as they did for “healthcare reform” and everything else Congress enacts, corporate occupied territory like the White House and all federal agencies. How else could Wall Street and insurers like Prudential commit fraud and get away with it.

Pru and Met Life alone rip off hundreds of millions of dollars annually, stealing one of their main profit centers with no accountability. Since 1999, the VA let Prudential send survivors “checkbooks” for its Alliance Account. “In 2009 alone, (recipient) families….were supposed to be paid” $1 billion in death benefits “immediately, according to their insurance policies. They weren’t.”

Pru VA policies offer either a lump sum payment or 36 monthly installments. About 90% choose the former and get a “checkbook,” not a cashable check. Yet under a 2008 law, recipients have one year to put their funds into a tax-free Roth IRA. Lohman said Pru never told her. Unless Congress corrects the fraud, she and other recipients “will remain a secret profit center for the life insurance industry,” their officials robbing the graves of dead soldiers.

Parents Sue for Lost Benefits

On August 30, AP reported that the parents of six dead soldiers “are suing Prudential Financial, saying it paid paltry interest on military life insurance benefits while keeping more generous” payouts for itself.

Filed in Springfield, MA US District Court, it accuses Pru of using “bookkeeping maneuvers,” misrepresenting how benefits are handled. “Their attorneys are seeking class-action status” for potentially tens of thousands of others.

One of four attorneys involved, Cristobal Bonifaz, said lost interest varies, “depending on how quickly beneficiaries withdrew the money,” those leaving it untouched (the great majority) owed the most, as much as $30,000 per recipient.

“What we’re saying to Prudential is, ‘You kept investing the money, but that money did not belong to you as of the day that person died, and whatever you made off it, you should give to those persons it was meant for.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. Plaintiffs in the current suit are parents of soldiers who died in Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and those dying after returning home.

Lead plaintiffs, Kevin and Joyce Lucey, spoke for many saying: “It’s totally unacceptable for any company to think they can treat any family that has gone through this kind of trauma, especially military families. (We) think it becomes part of our responsibility to make sure no one has to go through anything similar to this.”

Given Washington’s complicity with banksterism, insurance fraud, and numerous other corporate scams, imagine how many others haven’t come to light. Imagine also the challenges ordinary people face for restitution, even by class-action, deep-pocketed bigness and business-friendly courts huge hurdles to overcome, plus interminable litigation years, especially when high stakes are involved.

by Stephen Lendman

In an August 2 speech to disabled veterans, Obama touted his planned withdrawal, saying:

“As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end….Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy….for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. And I made it clear that by August 31, 2010, America’s combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing – as promised, on schedule.”

At two or more recent fundraisers, he repeated the “pledge:”

“We are keeping the promise I made when I began my campaign for the presidency: by the end of this month, we will have removed 100,000 troops from Iraq, and our combat mission will be over.”

Unmentioned was combat readiness remaining, paramilitary army additions replacing those leaving, shifting Iraq forces to Afghanistan, increasing hostilities against Pakistan, committing daily war crimes throughout the region, planning more conflicts ahead, continuing America’s permanent war agenda, glorifying them in the name of peace, destroying generations of US youths by a never-ending cycle of imperial wars, not liberating ones.

No matter. US cable channels hailed the Iraq pullout like VJ day, none more cloyingly one-sided than MSNBC, devoting an entire evening for “embedded” coverage – “in bed with” for Studs Terkel (1912 – 2008), to report propaganda, not truths, regular media fare, round the clock on cable TV, MSNBC reporter Richard Engel exiting with troops in a specially equipped “Bloom-mobile” (named for NBC’s late correspondent David Bloom), host Rachael Maddow in Baghdad, and Keith Olbermann anchoring coverage in New York, a trio doing what they do best – deceiving, not informing viewers, defending imperial wars, not condemning them.

According to MSNBC news executive Phil Griffin, the decision to go wall-to-wall was a “no-brainer,” saying “We’ve got something unique and it’s an important story. We said, ‘Let’s go for it,’ ” so they did in embarrassing overload, misrepresenting and suppressing the real Iraq story. More on it below.

On August 19, New York Times writer Steven Myers hailed the wind down “even though Baghdad remains without the permanent government” that Obama’s strategy envisions, the “stalemate” casting a shadow over the 50,000 troops remaining in an “advise and assist” role.

A supposed “agreement” plans their withdrawal by end of 2011, the State Department then taking over in charge of an army of contractors, including thousands of paramilitaries for private security, hired assassins like Blackwater USA, rebranded as Xe Services LLC to hide the company’s dark past, continuing unabated under its new name.

Doubling or tripling them won’t matter. Daily violence rages, in July at the highest level in the past two years, media reports downplaying or suppressing the facts, pretending a liberated Iraq is now healing, enhanced by our presence and commitment to “democracy,” what’s not tolerated at home or anywhere abroad, especially in countries we attack, destroy, and occupy.

Saddam’s Iraq no longer exists, the country divided into the Basra south, Kurdish north and Baghdad center, a puppet government serving US interests. In addition, two decades of war and sanctions killed, maimed or otherwise harmed or displaced millions, causing horrific depravation and an epidemic of cancers, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, hepatitis, other diseases, and newborn deformities from scores of pollutants, including depleted uranium (DU), chemicals, toxic metals, oil, bacteria, and other poisons, America’s deadly legacy.

Twenty years of war, sanctions, and occupation demolished Iraq. The Gulf War was an economic and environmental disaster, destroying power and chemical plants; factories; dams; water purification facilities; sewage treatment and disposal systems; oil wells, pipelines, refineries, and storage tanks besides ravishing the entire country and its people, the result of gratuitous destruction and slaughter.

In 2003, it was repeated, a “shock and awe” blitzkrieg intermittently continued even with US forces withdrawing. Throughout the country, thousands remain on super-bases, equipped with sophisticated weapons to reign death and destruction from land, sea or air, leaving rubble and a deadly cocktail of oil, gasoline, heavy metals, DU, pesticides, benzene, and other chemicals and pollutants. Also, a GMO-contaminated food supply; water too unsafe to drink; sanitation, electricity, and decent housing in short supply; and most Iraqis deprived of adequate medical, education and other essential services.

Today’s Iraq is nightmarish, portrayed as democratically liberated, Obama’s bravado as stage-managed as Bush’s declared victory on the US carrier Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, a captive audience assembled to cheer failure and imperial war crimes.

Iraqis live them daily, devastated by one of history’s greatest ever crimes, ongoing for two decades, what the major media won’t touch, instead delivering “in bed with” “mission accomplished” reports, inventing their own version of reality.

Nightmarish human depravation and suffering prove otherwise. Most Iraqis are unemployed or underemployed, impoverished, and without basic services. Under permanent occupation, the country is being strip-mined for profit, its resources stolen, its people exploited and abused, compounded by a poisoned environment, daily violence, major media suppressed crimes, thousands detained, tortured and ill-treated without charge under horrific conditions.

Obama’s promise to withdraw all US forces by December 2011 will also be broken. As long as the region’s oil rich and strategically important, America’s there to stay, Iraqis to be used, abused, and cheated until they succeed in driving us out.

The hated occupation motivates them to resist, cleric Moqtada al-Sadr vowing to “rise up and fight to the death,” Abu Mohammed (in charge of the Sadrist cemetery) saying if US forces aren’t out by end of 2011, “we will fight and give our blood. This will be our solution,” one they expect will be needed knowing Washington came to stay, a status millions of Iraqis won’t tolerate nor should they.

Some Final Thoughts

Echoed by shameless major media trumpeting, Obama’s bravado is brazenly bogus, the staged-managed Iraq pullout more retreat than success.

The occupation’s now rebranded, yet US combat readiness remains, accompanied by daily violence, atrocities, and depravation. They plague Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and US-financed proxy wars in Somalia, Yemen, Colombia, and elsewhere, realities the major media suppress, as well as the war at home on human need, not addressed or discussed.

Since 2001 alone, trillions of dollars have been wasted on militarism and war making, badly needed funds domestically at a time of deepening depression.

As a result, growing millions of Americans are hemorrhaging – suffering from unemployment, lost savings, homelessness, ill health, hunger, hopelessness and despair, another unreported story, media stooges hailing a “recovery” for Wall Street, not Main Street.

Unsurprisingly, US workers are experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, perhaps surpassing its severity before it ends because US leaders don’t give a damn, mindless of human suffering, their audacity of power corrupted, brutal and uncaring, Obama as bad as the rest.

by Stephen Lendman

Colombia, America’s closest South American ally, is a corrupted narco-state, a repressive death squad faux democracy, threatening regional neighbors, and reigning terror against trade unionists, human rights workers, campesinos, pro-democracy organizations, independent journalists, and legitimate resistance groups like the FARC-EP. Established in 1964, James Petras calls it the “longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world,” persisting valiantly for decades. 

Thanks to Plan Colombia and other support, the state is heavily militarized, more than ever now serving as Washington’s land-based aircraft carrier against regional targets, including neighboring Venezuela.

The Pentagon got expanded access, former President Alvaro Uribe agreeing to US forces on seven more military bases (three airfields, two naval installations, and two army facilities), as well as unrestricted use of the entire country as-needed for internal and external belligerency, including out-of-control violence and human rights abuses, the region’s most extreme to keep two-thirds of Colombians impoverished, millions displaced, corruption endemic, wealth concentration growing, and corporate predators freed to exploit and plunder.

Also to facilitate record amounts of Colombian cocaine from government-controlled areas reaching US and world markets, new President Juan Manuel Santos embracing the “Uribe Doctrine,” now his. It’s extremist, hard right, corrupt, brutal, corporate-friendly, and militarized in lockstep with Washington.

As Uribe’s Defense Minister, James Petras explained that Santos was an assassin, deploying military forces and paramilitary death squads “to kill and terrorize entire population centers, (murdering) over 20,000 people….falsely labeled ‘guerrillas.’ ”

UN Special Rapporteur Report on “Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions”

Mandated by the Human Rights Council (HRC), Special Rapporteur Philip Alston issued his March 31, 2010 report, based on his June 8 – 18, 2009 Colombia mission, understating the reality by citing “important gains,” yet nonetheless damning, saying “very serious problems remain.” Calamitous for most Colombians more accurately describes them.

Under Uribe and Santos, they’re virulent, security and paramilitary forces “carr(ying) out a significant number of premeditated civilian murders,” fraudulently called “combat” deaths. Killings rage “around the country,” military commanders under pressure to show results by “kill counts.”

A culture of violence with impunity plagues Colombia, the military adopting a “you’re either for us or against us” doctrine, stigmatizing civilians as potential enemies to be targeted and eliminated. Paramilitaries also share fault, “carr(ying) out many killings and the numbers are rising.”

As a signatory to international human rights law conventions, including Geneva and its Additional Protocols, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Colombia is legally obligated, international treaties automatically state laws under its Constitution’s Article 93, ones the Uribe, Santos and other past governments spurned with impunity.

Calling resistance fighters “terrorists,” the phenomenon of “false positives” amounts to “unlawful killings of civilians, staged” to look legitimate, including by arresting them at home, by patrols, at roadblocks, or though other means. Sometimes, “informers” rat on them for a reward, usually monetary. Once assassinated, faked legitimacy is established by planting weapons on the scene, changing their clothes to combat fatigues, and other deceptions. If family members later know, they’re intimidated to silence, on threat of disappearing or death.

Government officials are in denial, claiming “civilian victims were in fact guerrillas or criminals,” calling unlawful killings a few “isolated cases.”

Clear evidence, however, shows a widespread problem, government and paramilitary forces responsible, a pattern “repeated around the country. There have been too many killings of a similar nature to characterize them as isolated incidents carried out by individual rogue soldiers or units, or ‘bad apples.’ ” The entire security apparatus is involved, eyewitnesses and soldier testimonies confirming it.

Cold-blooded murder and extrajudicial assassinations are state policy, many thousands affected, the practices continuing unchecked. In 2009, the Ministry of Defense issued bogus human rights mandates throughout the Armed Forces, for show, not serious change.

At best, it’s “too early to confirm the extent or nature of a drop in allegations. Past experience in Colombia shows that many (killings) remain unreported for long periods of time due to witness fear, lack of knowledge about how to make complaints and navigate the justice system, and significant communication and geographic impediments to making complaints.”

In regions visited, conditions look “significantly less positive” than reported, lack of accountability a key factor, impunity for state killers “as high as 98.5%. Soldiers (paramilitaries and police) simply (know) that they (can) get away with murder” because of no serious effort to prosecute or convict.

Yet, “important steps to reduce paramilitary killings and violence,” were attempted, including demobilizing and reintegrating the AUC. However, “the full picture of the demobilization….shows an alarming level of impunity for former paramilitaries.” In addition, no one has been sentenced nor a full accounting of crimes produced. As a result, truth and justice has been sacrificed, including for victims, “denied the right to restitution and reparation.”

In 2009, helpful legislation didn’t pass because of internal opposition, the failure and demobilization flaws causing a “rise in killings by new illegal armed groups (IAGs), composed of paramilitaries who didn’t demobilize and others joining new groups. They “may have spread across Colombia and, in the aggregate may number in the thousands.”

The “incontrovertible reality remains that (vulnerable people) continue to be disproportionately killed or threatened and are especially” at risk. Government efforts to curb violence are weak and ineffective, unmasking a faux democracy.

High level complicity and a culture of impunity are at fault, why Colombia remains the world’s most dangerous country for trade unionists, and one of the most hazardiys for human rights workers, pro-democracy supporters, independent journalists, or anyone challenging state power, Santos as militant, corrupted, and extremist as Uribe, most Colombians the worse off for it.

A Final Note

On August 17, the Constitutional Court of Colombia, its highest judicial branch, ruled 6 – 3 against granting the Pentagon more military bases (the October 2009 agreement), calling the deal unconstitutional because legislators didn’t approve it.

Chief Justice Mauricio Gonzales said the agreement is “an arrangement which requires the state to take on new obligations as well as an extension of previous ones and as such should be handled as an international treaty, that is, subject to congressional approval.”

The decision doesn’t affect previous US-Colombian accords, so until resolved, highly likely in America’s favor, US forces can be moved temporarily to permitted bases, effectively negating the high court ruling, a Santos congressional majority expected to affirm it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.