Blog Archive 7 Sep 2009-Apr-2010

Apr 29, 2010, Far-Left Socialist--Obama!

Ralph Reed's Faith & Freedom Coalition sent me a "survey" to "To Stop President Obama’s Far-Left Socialist Agenda for America." FFC announced that it was sending this out to five million "American taxpayers," to send a message, and to raise money. Their goal: $30 million.

The first two questions (on how Obama is doing his job, and what you perceive his ideology to be) might seem fairly standard, except that the second question's answers range from conservative to communist to fascist.

Then the "survey" gets down to its main business. Before question 3 there is an "issue summary" that creates an "issue" almost out of whole cloth: claiming Obama wants to impose a "fairness doctrine" on right-wing talk radio in order to shut it down. The question is then asked (Question 3), whether the respondent thinks Obama will succeed in shutting down Beck, Limbaugh, et al.

The next issue summary states that Obama is as hostile to anyone questioning his agenda as Soviet leaders, and that he marshaled "union thugs" to beat up opponents at Town Hall meetings on health care! Where does this stuff come from? So Question 4 asks: Do you think President Obama respects free speech, or did union thugs act on their own "without any coordination with the Obama political machine?"

After question 6, there is another "issue summary." It states as fact that Obama and Congressional Democrats are "determined" to "loosen up" the border with Mexico, to enroll millions of Mexicans as new citizens as fast as possible, "so as to increase their voter base and cement their hold on political power." The question: how concerned are you about this "development?"

This is Ralph Reed's latest vehicle for raising money from right-wing know-nothings, as well as propaganda--of the Goebbels variety: repeat big lies often enough: people will take them as truth.

Reed turns ("Anti-American Communist Dictator") Chavez's joke about "Comrade Obama" to the left even of Fidel Castro into a serious issue ("issue summary"): do you think Obama is an ally of theirs? How much danger do you think "liberty" faces with Obama's Socialist agenda: More serious than World War II? More serious than the threat from the Soviet Union in the Cold War? More serious than the Civil War? Respondent can check more than one.

Question 12 asks the respondent to pledge to vote in the Congressional election and to bring three friends. Question 13 asks for his email address!

And then he is supposed to send his "emergency freedom-saving donation," to the Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Americans actually think like this!

Most Romans did in the fifth century, because of Imperial propaganda at least as blatant. If the US really goes in this direction, if this kind of Right-wing wins, then I fear for any reality-based politics at all.

Then we can really have an Emperor!

Apr 28, 2010, Professional Military=Empire

Nixon's stroke of genius militarized our foreign policy: he abolished the draft. Sounds like a paradox, but it actually makes sense. The common wisdom is that democracies are not warlike. Yet, the US is the most warlike country in the world, although Americans think we're so peaceful. Now, that's a paradox that Nixon's stroke of genius created.

Instead of the draft, we have a professional army. This is no peacetime army like the one we had before WWII; this is a full-time army, with almost continuous wars, even if far from the "homeland."

Because it's a professional army, opposition to the wars is not visceral, the way it was during Vietnam, Korea and before WWII. "Our boys," (and "girls") don't have to go over there. The only ones who go are those who choose to enlist, which means people disproportionately poor, without other prospects, or from "military families," mostly Southern, or from minorities. Endless leftish commentaries have pointed this out, of course.

So, opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan is muted: people aren't afraid that they, or their children, are going to have to go. Opposition is much more theoretical. The money we spend on these wars is only a part (a large part) of the taxes we pay, and we may object to that, but "our boys and girls" are not on the line.

We may object to the senselessness of the war, the needless killing, and the hopelessness of the enterprise, but we have a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize. So, if he can't get us out of Afghanistan, well, maybe we just should be there. His strategy sounds sort of plausible, but only if you accept certain premises.

For example: al Qaeda can't be allowed to set up camps in Afghanistan, from which they could train to attack us. So, we have to control Afghanistan--but we don't. I pointed out April 5th that the effectiveness of the "drone war" has demonstrated that al Qaeda wouldn't dare set up open camps in Afghanistan: we could cream them with drones. Furthermore, the Taliban wouldn't let them; they wouldn't want us to have a pretext to attack them. Ergo, we don't have to stay in Afghanistan, at all.

Furthermore, even Karzai wants to negotiate with the top Taliban, but the US says 'No.' Isn't Karzai the (more or less) elected President? And we're there to bolster Afghan government institutions? And defend them from the Taliban. Karzai has even made preparations for a loya jirga, the national assembly of elders that has venerable political legitimacy. He had wanted the Taliban to attend. So far, the US has said "No."

Do you get it yet? We have a professional military, courtesy of Nixon. Like the Roman legions, it MUST have wars--and bases in most countries in the world. We the People just get to pay--and deprive ourselves of services--until the US is bankrupted by its wars.

Apr 24, 2010, The Long Counter-Revolution

I missed the signs, going back to the Rehnquist court. Like most people left of center, I railed against the pro-business bias of many court decisions by the US Supreme Court.

But even Rehnquist held that corporations were artificial entities, not corporate "persons" with the rights and privileges of citizens. With the Roberts' Court decision, Citizens United v FEC, that personhood has now been enshrined in the supreme law of the land, no matter how flawed, transparently political and shattering of all precedent that decision was. It was authored by "Justices" who had claimed in their confirmation hearings that they would be bound by precedent, and would not "legislate from the bench." In Citizen's United, that's exactly what they did, more brazenly, more outrageously than any liberal Justices (like Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren and William O. Douglas), who were accused over the years of creating law not out of precedent, but out of their personal biases.

It was a judicial coup, and has the potential to wipe out any populist impulse or movement. It was possibly a direct response to Obama's apparently populist movement and electoral victory.

In "The Rise of The Corporate Court" by People For The American Way, the authors point out: resources available to corporations to influence elections are at a scale never before encountered by our already corrupted "democracy." Exxon collected about $1 million in its PAC for the 2008 election, abiding by campaign finance laws before the Citizen's United case. However, it amassed $85 billion in profits that year. With all limits on direct corporate spending thrown under the bus, it could now easily spend 10% of its profits--$8.5 billion--to elect the officeholders it wants. $8.5 billion is more than the 2008 campaign expenditures of Obama, McCain, plus all senate and congressional candidates and all state legislative candidates combined. Yet, Exxon is just one corporation!

Back in the 1890's, people joked about the Senator "from Standard Oil," or "JP Morgan." It won't be a joke!

What's worse, there are corporations like Goldman-Sachs, setting up some clients to fail so that Goldman--and other clients--can profit. They can use those profits to protect themselves politically! Three point three billion dollars profit just last quarter.

The real question is: how can ordinary citizens reclaim their democracy? There is a movement to ban corporate personhood by amending the Constitution, but the amendment process is much more difficult than passing healthcare in the Senate: required are two-thirds majorities in both House and Senate, and then passage by three-fourths of the states.

Citizens United is the culmination of a long-running counter-revolution. Corporations (and their principal owners) have become the Roman Senators, the honestiores, of our time. The rest of us are being reduced to humiliores.

Even before Rome's downfall, the humiliores had descended into serfdom.

Apr 20, 2010, Retrospective: Earth Day

It's so beautiful out! But, Spring is a month early.

There was a radio show detailing some of the alternatives scientists have begun to discuss because no political solutions appear possible. The alternatives: bio-engineering to "cool" the earth, to counteract dangerous climate change.

There was some hope, when Obama was elected, that he would reverse US opposition to action to slow climate change. After all, the US was global polluter par none until last year (when China surpassed us). Also, the case that global warming is happening and that humans are largely causing it keeps on getting stronger, despite DC's "snowmageddon."

Further, that we are getting nearer and nearer to major climate tipping points. We may already have surpassed some: for example, massive releases of methane as Arctic permafrost thaws (methane is 25 times more potent than CO2 as an agent promoting global warming). All the predictions of even two years ago have proven too low; the high range forecasts (faster global warming) appear to be the low-range of what has already occurred.

Yet, the meeting on climate change in Copenhagen, in which the US was supposed to lead the world in a global response, was an abject failure. It was in large part because Obama offered only the limp-wristed cap and trade and low-ball cut to emissions that has apparently foundered in the stalemated US Congress. Republicans and corporate Democrats reject even that inadequate response.

So, what to do? Bio-engineering? Will the US unilaterally spray the atmosphere with various additives to make clouds more opaque, or to reduce ocean reflectivity, or…?

If not the US, then who? Russia? China?

Put this way, perhaps you can see the problem: if we can't agree on reducing CO2 emissions, how on earth are humans going to agree on something that is still highly speculative, that might cool the earth, but might just screw up the climate even more?

Parenthetically, the scientist on the above-mentioned radio show let drop that 2 billion people depend on the monsoon rains in South and Southeast Asia. What would they do if the US unilaterally sprayed clouds and the result was that the monsoon rains failed? They'd have to leave, or starve! Two billion desperate people. Oh, and they have nuclear weapons: we're talking about India, Pakistan and southern China.

No wonder US intelligence rated the threat from global warming/climate change as greater than al Qaeda!

Perhaps humans are incapable of cooperating globally. Instead, oil and coal (and other) interests must safeguard profits: they have a lot of money to buy policy-makers: vested interests always do.

Perhaps this will be the epitaph of global civilization: vested interests trumped common sense.

We still have time to redeem Earth Day 2010, but not much time. Forget about the American Empire. We can't replace Ephesus with Constantinople as the Romans did. Some humans may survive, but it might be in caves.

Apr 15, 2010, Angry, not Just Tea Partiers

People are angry, and have good reason to be. But right-wing commentators and media like Fox are successfully diverting their ire. Meanwhile, would-be reformers find little support for substantive reform in policy areas in which there are substantial vested interests.

Health reform had to be limited to get past insurance company and provider interests, hence no "public option," and no negotiated Pharma prices.

Financial reform has to pass muster with banks, which are again riding roughshod over the economy: posting huge gambling profits, foreclosing on homeowners and ignoring mortgage re-negotiation programs, instituting new credit card fees, borrowing from the Fed at virtually no cost, and using the money to speculate, instead of loaning to businesses.

Republicans make the false claim that finance reform proposals will perpetuate public bailouts, so any reform must be killed. Meanwhile, Democrats are too craven to re-establish the needed boundaries between depositors and gamblers (like the repealed Glass-Steagall law), or to create a consumer protection agency that isn't answerable to the bankers first.

Why? Because banks and bankers have bought the GOP and enough of the Democrats to forestall meaningful reform.

Tea Party activists are angry, and others, too, but instead of venting their ire against the corporations exporting their jobs for profits, or against bankers, or AIG, they rant against "socialistic" Obama, Muslim, foreigner, against illegal aliens and against "those people" who don't pay income taxes (they pay as much in other taxes).

Noam Chomsky noted the similarities between the violent rhetoric of right-wing Americans and the Nazis before Hitler's takeover, and pointed out that the Nazis had only negligible support two years before they took control (through a democratic election).

The Weimar Republic was democratic, moderate and ineffectual; its reformers were pusillanimous. Nazis boasted they knew what to do. Germany's largest corporations supported them. The fascist system Nazis instituted, merged the power of the state with that of big business. The military in Nazi Germany was fused with both. Is that where we're headed?

Can moderate, centrist, half-reforms mollify enough of the people, stabilize the economy, prevent dangerous climate change, establish peace and maintain democracy? Given the violent response of the crazies, the power of the status quo institutions, and the military's interest in pursuing "the long war," it doesn't seem likely.

I take the Tea Party seriously. They may have all the facts wrong, they may be as ignorant as Sarah Palin, but they have energy. Faced with right-wing populists like Father Coughlin, FDR campaigned against "the economic royalists of our time." He won big for reform in 1936.

Our democracy needs an FDR, or Obama to become one, if it is to survive. Otherwise, we'll face the twilight of empire, like Diocletian's, more totalitarian than Hitler's, but declining nonetheless--before climate change destroys civilization as we know it.

Apr 13, 2010, Trained to Kill

An Afghan bystander asked plaintively, after US troops shot up a bus in Kandahar, "Why didn't they shoot out the tires? Why did they shoot the people?"

It's a good question.

When I was in Basic Training back in 1961 (Yes, the Dark Ages), our cry as we lunged at stuffed dummies with our bayonets was: "Kill, Kilo, Kill!" It was Kilo Company, you see.

Since 1961, since the Vietnam war, and then the wars since (quite a few), American soldiers (and marines) have been trained to be more and more lethal killers, it seems. With their weaponry, American troops are probably the most deadly military on Earth.

But in wars of counterinsurgency, killing is counterproductive most of the time. As both military and civilian leaders keep on saying, the American mission in Afghanistan is to win over the people to the established Afghan governing institutions. Killing ten civilians here and 5 there, is not going to win their hearts; shooting pregnant women and then gouging the bullets out of their bodies to hide their crime isn't cool, either: it's going to drive Afghans into the hands of the Taliban.

With the Joker we foisted on them (Karzai), what other choice do they have? We prevented them from naming a stable head of state (their former King), which was the Afghans' first choice in the loya jirga, the one in which they finally were persuaded/pressured (by our Ambassador) to pick Karzai, instead.

Yet, it seems clear, from sources like the Wikileaks video of a helicopter gunner, and this report of the bus killing (four or five dead and 30 wounded?) that American soldiers may be there to win hearts and minds, or to "clear, hold and build," but what they seem to be trained to do best is to kill lots of people--very quickly.

Don't get me wrong: American servicemen and women aren't evil. Most of them probably think and hope they're doing good. And many try hard. But the military-industrial-security complex is evil; it drives people to do evil, whether they know it or not.

When I was stationed in Turkey (1962-3), I worked and bunked with fellow Traffic Analysts, and drank with them, too, occasionally. I liked them, and they all meant well. But the common opinion they held of the local Turks was appalling: dirty "abies," who will always cheat you, or kill you if you so much as look at their women.

I doubt that American soldiers in Afghanistan are as well disposed towards the locals as my friends were. After all, none of the Turks were trying to kill us.

We don't belong there; we end up killing civilians--and being killed. Afghanistan could bury the American Empire as it buried the Soviets in the 1980's; it could weaken us as decisively as Goths debilitated Romans when they beat Emperor Galen at Adrianople in 378, beginning Rome's slide into oblivion.

Apr 9, 2010, US Empire, Inc.

My previous blog dealt with a video released by Wikileaks. The importance of a service like wikileaks has been underscored by the denials of Pentagon and pro-defense bloggers about the meaning of the Iraq helicopter video. Wikileaks' crucial role has also been demonstrated by the recent Appeals Court decision that the FCC doesn't have the power to enforce net neutrality.

Comcast, AT&T and Verizon all claim that net neutrality will not fairly recompense them for their services, that they need to be able to charge more for high band-width users, in order to adequately invest in continued improvements in the Internet.

Gee, 80% profits (for Comcast) aren't enough?

What really is at issue is: who controls the Internet. The FCC has been like the cop in the patrol car; nobody controls where you go, but you have to abide by the speed limits. In the case of the Internet, the FCC was attempting to insure that everyone had equal access.

The companies want control. Their spokespeople claim they wouldn't charge more except for high-bandwidth users, but if there is no cop on the beat, why wouldn't they charge more? After all, a corporation's officers are legally required to maximize profit.

So, if there is premium access, then those not paying the higher fees will end up getting lower quality (lower cost) services, or they could be blocked unless they pay more.

Providers could also block users if their content promotes ideas or policies that could threaten their bottom line. This brings us back to Wikileaks: the Iraq video would not be in the interest of any corporation which makes profits from our war efforts, since it has profoundly anti-war implications. With no cop on the beat, it could have been blocked.

The same might be said for certain candidates: anti-corporate positions could therefore become even more difficult to bring to public attention. Not only would they be handicapped by receiving no corporate money now that corporations can spend unlimited money directly on elections, but in addition, the carriers could block meaningful access to a campaign.

There are two ways out: one is for the FCC to find another way to regulate the Internet to insure net neutrality: it's exploring its options. The other is to pass net neutrality laws in Congress, but the opposition of the large cable providers meshes with anti-regulatory zeal, largely Republican, though other corporations, like Google and Yahoo might encourage pro-regulation Congress-people if they push back.

The Appeals Court decision is like the second of a one-two punch, the first being the Supreme Court ruling that corporations have free speech rights as "corporate persons."

This looks like a silent corporate coup. Forget about Democrats and Republicans: corporations are gaining control--unless we stop them. Goodbye democracy, goodbye the United States. Hello US Empire, Inc. Is Augustus waiting in the wings? Is her name Sarah Palin?

Apr 7, 2010, Just Looking for Targets in Baghdad

The helicopter gunner was "looking for targets." What he saw was 8 men gathering on the ground, so they became targets. He justified shooting because two of them were carrying something. He decided they had weapons, although in fact they were carrying cameras. Almost all the men were killed in one burst of his machine gun. One struggled to rise on an elbow, the gunner watched. A van came to "gather the bodies," so he shot up the van.

The man in the van had come to rescue the injured, and had two children with him on the way to a tutor. The man he tried to rescue, the photojournalist's assistant, was killed; the children were seriously injured.

There is only one reason why this video was shown on the Internet: Wikileaks leaked it. The photojournalists were a two-man Reuters team, both killed, the photographer's body actually run over by an investigating US Bradley vehicle, his assistant killed when the helicopter returned to shoot up the van; the gunner chuckled when he saw the Bradley run over the body!

Reuters had tried to find out what had happened to their photojournalists and had filed an FOIA for the video; the military claimed there had been a firefight and the helicopter gunner had followed the "rules of engagement." You could see there was no fight; the men were relaxed, paying no attention to the helicopter overhead. This was casual murder, carried out as just another daily patrol, "looking for targets."

The Military refused to release the video. Now we can see why. From the video, we can see, vividly, that the military are out of control and can go on murder sprees with impunity. Reuters had "followed procedures" in trying to find out what had happened to their team; the military stonewalled and insisted on a lie. Only an illegal leak, "conveyed" to Wikileaks, revealed what really happened.

This is how Americans really fought the war in Baghdad (the video was shot in 2007), and probably how they are fighting it in Afghanistan now. Why would any Iraqi, or Afghan, want American military in their country if this is how they operate? This was, after all, simply a daily patrol "looking for targets."

Helicopters fly over me daily. If people here were shot like this, I'd get a cannon and start shooting at them the minute I saw them!

It's likely that the stories told Congress, and even the President, but certainly the media, are similar distortions and lies. The military aren't fighting for freedom; they're terrorizing the people they were sent to "liberate."

This is proof, if proof were needed, that the American military sow terror. We need to stop the terrorists--our troops. They need to come home.

Dismantle the Empire!

Apr 5, 2010, Drone War Explodes Afghan War Rationale

The drone war in Pakistan appears successful, in the sense that it has the Taliban, the Haqqani network and al Qaeda on the run in North and South Waziristan. They've had to jettison ATV's for travel on public buses in ones and twos, they can't have large training exercises; AQ operatives have dug themselves into mountainsides, and "camps" are no longer available: Taliban, etc. have to find shelter in local people's homes, often using coercion--not a good position for an insurgency. Their tribal hosts are only being pragmatic: hosting foreigners, especially (the Arabs), could risk their families to drone attacks. Even sleeping in pine forests is no longer safe: drones patrol in pairs 24/7.

Now, note this: officially, Pakistan has not approved of American drones commanding their skies, but they're tolerated. While the drones do take off from Pakistani airfields, they are controlled remotely from places like a base near Denver, Colorado.

When all else is going badly in Afghanistan, what is the ultimate rationale for staying there: to prevent the Taliban from returning and setting up an al Qaeda haven with training camps.

Even though parts of the Taliban and the Haqqani network remain allied with al Qaeda, is it realistic to assume that they would allow Qaeda training camps in a "new" Taliban Afghanistan (i.e. if the worst came to fruition and the Taliban regained dominance in its government)?

First of all, the strongest Taliban faction has taken the nationalist position of denouncing all foreign influence; they pointedly included al Qaeda. In addition, however, all the insurgents are experiencing the reality that there are no refuges in this age of drone warfare.

Would a newly resurgent Taliban be so stupid as to admit al Qaeda camps on its sovereign soil, either openly or covertly, after such an experience? With the aerial surveillance the US has now, there would be no hiding place. The US would be able to intensify its drone attacks on any Afghan camps, since Afghanistan has no air force to speak of, and would be unlikely to afford one. American drones could continue to use Pakistani airfields, or airfields in other nearby "allied" countries.

The point is: the very success of the drone war demonstrates that we could easily destroy any large-scale terror establishments. So, where is the rationale to continue fighting in Afghanistan? Even President Karzai, whom we have supported with billions of dollars and 100,000 troops, has denounced the troops and has often said that the US is in Afghanistan to control it.

We could prove him wrong and withdraw, but threaten drones to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a "terrorist haven."

We won't because of the money our war-makers, civilian and military continue to reap from imperial war. Ultimately, imperial wars like Afghanistan won't maintain the empire: they will bankrupt it.

.

Mar 31, 2010, Afghan President's Brother

"If they let Ahmed Wali (Karzai) stay in power, it means they are not serious about governance," said a diplomat in Kabul. [New York Times: 3/31/10]

The Afghan President's brother reportedly controls almost everything in Kandahar, the southern Afghan province that the US is poised to "clear and hold" with a large influx of troops: US, NATO and Afghan.

Ahmed Wali is the most important businessman in the area, and he has used his connection to the President well. He seizes land the Americans want to use--so they have to lease it from him; he controls armed groups that patrol the city; he pays off the Taliban to protect his lands and shipments. While the Taliban controls behind the scenes, Ahmed Wali insures that his businesses flourish. He stole the election in Kandahar for his brother. He even, reportedly, launders drug money for the Taliban, as well as for himself.

The greatest reason for the Afghan government's inability to combat the Taliban is that Afghans perceive it as irretrievably corrupt, reportedly one of the most corrupt governments in the world.

Ahmed Wali is Exhibit A.

As American troops assemble to drive the Taliban out of Kandahar, many independent advisors, from NGO's to NATO, probably including US diplomats, have urged that Ahmed Wali must go--if the US is serious about "holding," i.e. bringing in an Afghan government that wins the loyalty of the people.

But Ahmed Wali is the President's brother. He also, reportedly, has been useful to the CIA. He's one of those manipulators of power, who are able to land on their feet, regardless of who holds the whip. Ahmed Wali is going to stay.

Earlier, after the assault on Marjah, in Helmand province, McClatchy reported that the "returning" Afghan government (the governor had hardly ever set foot in Marjah) was universally despised and distrusted as corrupt.

So, this is a pattern. The US is not "serious about governance."

What does this say about the vaunted "counter-insurgency" strategy, which supposedly aims to put effective government in place to counter the insurgency, to attract Afghans' loyalty?

Despite Obama's hurried, secret visit to Karzai, when he reportedly lectured Karzai on getting rid of corruption, that's not going to happen.

The US can win all the battles--while accidentally killing more civilians--but this is no way to beat an insurgency. All we are doing is spending lives (Afghan and American) and money ($1 million per soldier/marine per year), boosting the earnings of defense contractors and making some parts of Afghanistan safe--for Chinese investment--temporarily.

The US lost Vietnam, despite winning all the battles, because its client government was hopeless: the Vietminh/Vietcong offered a better alternative.

Karzai thumbs his nose at the US, even inviting Iran's Ahmadinejad to dinner to spite us.

Afghanistan is "déjà-vue all over again." The only question is: when will the empire collapse?

Mar 29, 2010, Man the Gambler

Some of the most densely populated places on earth are either close to, or even below sea-level, and the seas are rising.

Many people cluster in places they know are high risk: of earthquake, flood, or volcanic eruption. These places happen to be some of the most fertile in the world, like the Nile Delta, and the Tigris and Euphrates in the ancient world, places like Java and the deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh, or of the Mississippi delta in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Why do they have high populations? They are highly fertile, the basis for Empires like Egypt and Sumer. Adaptable humans are gamblers. Every farmer or peasant bets their crops will flourish; they don't always. A Javanese farmer can expect bumper crops because of benign climate and rich soil, but he might be ruined by a volcanic eruption. So, he cultivates crops, right up the slope of Mount Lurus, or any of the 33 other volcanoes on the island, and if it erupts, he could be wiped out. If not, for this season, he's golden.

Women are probably less gamblers than enablers. Their first priority is to protect their children by ensuring that a man supports them. If he insists that their land on the volcano is the best, they aren't going to demand that the family move--until it's too late.

Romans took another kind of gamble, when forests were cut down for Roman baths with the bet that nothing would change: as I describe on my Ephesus page, everything did: Ephesus, Rome's Asian capital before Constantinople, has been a ruin for two thousand years.

Which leads us to dangerous climate change (a label preferable to 'global warming'): aren't the deniers, like EXXON, Senator Inhofe and Rush, gambling with all our lives? They're gambling that dangerous climate change isn't going to happen, even though all the know-it-alls say it is. Everyone who denies climate change, or our part in it, is gambling that it just ain't so.

What happens to people who lose their gamble?

In places like Java or Bangladesh, farms, even farmers get burned out or washed away. Some who gambled don't survive .

In the case of dangerous climate change, we may all lose, eventually. However, the people who suffer first, are those least at fault, in poor, under-developed countries. Therefore, high stakes gamblers can keep on gambling, denying and "winning" through short-term "investments." Yet, even the winners lose if warming is unchecked, if we pass tipping points like the arctic tundra melting to release huge methane deposits.

Can't we gamble that preventative measures could work; instead of gambling that they aren't needed?

Mar 26, 2010, Throw Bricks

Throw bricks through their windows! Get rid of them!

Violence as a political tool is used in third world, or so-called developing countries; hatred, as well, as events like the Ruanda genocide demonstrate. Both were also used in "developed" states: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the USSR.

But in democracies, politics is supposed to be more civilized. Representatives are supposed to represent our interests. Politics is supposed to be rational, debate is supposed to be about policy. It's also, inevitably, about emotion, but it's supposed to be kept civil enough that you don't have riots and revolutions.

When "mainstream" political parties condone violent action, the march towards totalitarianism has quickened. If Republicans condone violence and egg on extremist rhetoric, they are preparing the way for autocracy.

The violence is incited--has been for years--by right-wing talk radio, by the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks, and violent language has escalated since Obama's election.

So have extremist right wing groups; their numbers have proliferated by almost a third since 2008. But extremist groups don't expect to gain control of the nation through elections: Republicans hope to.

Note: many "tea partiers" reject the GOP almost as bitterly as they oppose Democrats; a Third Party movement is gestating.

Republicans seem to reject rational discourse, however. The health care legislation is similar to Romney-care in Massachusetts and a Heritage Foundation-Republican-backed proposal; it has no public insurer (the poorly labeled "public option," which sounded too much like "public bathroom"). Yet, Republican Senators and Congressmen rant about a "government takeover"--except for those who rail against "socialism." Since the bill creates a (subsidized) market of 31 million new customers for private insurance companies, it's the Republican kind of socialism--for corporations, which is what they extended throughout government during W's reign; they call it "privatization."

Since the legislation isn't theirs, it's okay for Republicans to encourage others to threaten their opponents with hate mail, death threats, insults, racial or sexual slurs--but if someone actually shoots a Congressman, or Senator, or the President, then Republicans will be like the boy who taunts a bully into pummeling someone, and then whines, "it's not my fault!"

The violent turn in right-wing politics ought to stiffen spines. When anti-choice Congressman Stupak receives death threats for voting for health care, others should realize: they'll need the courage of their convictions, or they should quit politics.

If spines collapse, instead, I wouldn't hold much hope for even a civil plutocracy, let alone democracy: the US could become a failed state.

The political parallel to Rome here is the fall of the Republic, replaced by Emperor Augustus. But don't expect American hegemony to last 500 years: we can't afford it.

Mar 24, 2010, Big (Good) USA?

Americans assume we're doing good abroad. After all, the US is the only country that aided its defeated enemies and prostrate allies (after WWII) to return them to prosperity and democracy.

Since Vietnam, or, arguably, Korea, the American record has been mixed, but that hasn't altered the predominant American mythology: Americans go abroad to do good.

We're in Afghanistan to wrest it--for the Afghans--from Islamic extremist fanatics. We went into Iraq to save it from the tyrannous dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and to bring Iraq democratic politics--although, of course in both cases, we were also defending America from the threat they posed to us: two small countries halfway around the world, separated from us by seas and oceans, as well as other lands.

Hah! What about oil and oil pipelines?

Romans had a similar ideology. Romans believed they were doing good in the world. In Italy, they were unifying the peninsula; in Greece, they were bringing peace and order; in Asia and Europe, they were bringing order and law, and ultimately, civilization and Christianity.

Both Rome and America would boast the old Quaker saying about its most prosperous citizens: "They did well by doing good."

Romans--of the better sort--believed this. They believed it, even though they were wealthy beyond their contemporaries imagining (and right up there with our contemporaries). They became wealthy by grabbing lands Romans had conquered, and accumulating hundreds, even thousands of slaves, captured in Roman wars of conquest. The Senators of the western empire, in its decline, owned huge estates from Egypt to northern Gaul. Some of them had estates along the whole range: they could supply themselves with northern crops and tropical fruits simultaneously.

Now we have billionaires. While not all of them are American (the wealthiest is Mexican), it is the American system of war, and corporate monopoly, which makes them possible.

What most Americans don't realize is that our wars make a few very rich, but they impoverish the many. The Bush family made their fortune in wars going back to WWI. The Obamas didn't, but there are probably a lot of people in Obama's administration, and more of those advising him about "National Defense," who have become wealthy from war.

Furthermore, while the National Security Industrial complex makes a few very rich, it depends on high unemployment and low wages to recruit "the troops." Conveniently, defense contracts generate less than half the jobs civilian government contracts create for the same money, which means, in a finite budget: war dis-employs millions.

Wars also enable a few--our global elite--to rip off large parts of the rest of the world. That's how empires work.

Big bad America is a (declining) Empire.

.

Mar 22, 2010, Words Have Power

"How's that hopey changey thing working out for ya?" asked Sarah Palin.

Hope and Change were two of Obama's most important slogans, but they lacked substance. While "health care reform" or "health insurance reform" are more substantive, they don't lend themselves to sloganeering.

Democrats have a problem, including Obama, conveying their agenda in non-wonkish terms. It would have been so much more easily sold, and understood, if Democrats had campaigned for Medicare for All, rather than health insurance reform. If Medicare for All was too radical for Congressional Democrats (according to polls, it isn't for most people), they should at least have tried to come up with something less opaque and colorless than "Health Insurance Reform."

"Global warming," was easily ridiculed when Washington DC was blanketed in feet of snow (an effect of global warming). I propose a better tag: Bad Climate Change. Cap and Trade? Forgeddaboutit. How about: Stop Bad Climate Change? The tag would make it obvious: we have to do whatever we can to avert as much of the bad effects as possible.

What does 'bad' climate change do, that climate change does not? It adds a value charge, which is what Democrats, and Progressives more generally, have been so bad at conveying: there are values here that we all share. Unless we are awaiting the end of the world, aka the Rapture, we want to continue to live on this bountiful planet.

Another example: when Obama came into office, people were looking for him to proclaim something like The New New Deal. What did we get instead: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the stimulus! It could have been Rebuilding a Better America Act, or even A New Way Forward.

When it comes to the finance industry: everybody outside it loves to hate it, and with good reason. A bill to stop bad practices, to discourage risky behavior and to prevent bankers from ripping off everyone else, is what we need. It could be called Making Bankers Honest Act, which could be wildly popular, despite all the bank money ranged against it. Instead, we have Financial Regulatory Reform. Bank money will be flung against it anyway, but it will be a lot harder to rally troops to counteract those millions of dollars.

Screw bipartisanship! If Obama is going to push through real change, he'll have to do what he did with health care. Politically it would work better if he could package it to sell, like Stop Bad Climate Change. Otherwise:

The best lack all convictionAnd the worst are filled with passionate intensity--

Just listen to John Boehner on health care!

Mar 16, 2010, 1600 Homes on Palestinian Land

"This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace." Yedioth Ahronoth

Biden was responding to the announcement, made while he was meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, that 1600 new homes would be built in Greater Jerusalem, on land previously claimed by Palestinians. Was 1600 chosen as an echo of the White House's address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

The announcement seemed pointed, but whether it was or not, the problem is the same: the US must de-link itself from Israel's occupation, if it is to be a credible force in the Middle East.

There has been a call to boycott all companies and products associated with the occupation. These should include: Sabra Hummus, but also Motorola, ITT, Terex, Caterpillar, GE, Roadstone Cement, United Technologies and Oshkosh trucks, because of their active role through lucrative contracts, in support of the Israeli occupation. That is something individual Americans can do.

The US administration should go a lot further: it should threaten to withhold military aid, which goes a long way towards supporting the Israel Defense Force, and economic aid, as well. We shouldn't be picky: not just aid that enables the West Bank Settlements, but all aid.

Are the Israelis thumbing their noses at Biden/Obama because they think Democrats are vulnerable? Democrats could lose crucial Jewish support in the upcoming elections, but if Obama put it in terms of Israeli policy "endangering our troops," a muscular policy might actually gain more votes than it would lose. "He's finally showing some balls!" people would say.

What is crucial to understand, however, is that the right-wing Israeli government is not interested in negotiating with Palestinians. Netanyahu wants to establish "facts on the ground" that can't be reversed, that make a two state solution impossible.

Frankly, I don't think it's possible now, because of all the encroachments, settlements and segregated roads. But that means that Palestinians must be integrated into greater Israel. They cannot forever be treated the way blacks were treated in Apartheid South Africa. They have to have rights, votes, and freedom of movement. They must have access to whatever Israelis do, especially opportunities to flourish. Since Israeli right-wing governments have made a two-state solution impossible, Israel will have to live with the consequences, which may, someday soon, mean an Arab majority in Greater Israel.

To continue supporting Israel in its oppressive Palestinian policy justifies al Qaeda in its terror attacks, the Taliban in its nationalism, even Ahmadinejad in his pursuit of regional hegemony.

If the US is to have any influence in the Middle East, it has to assert its interests now. If that's too hard, then we should get out of the empire business.

Mar 16, 2010, China and the US Dollar

China has a lot of them, more all the time; they keep rolling up surpluses, while we roll up deficits. Even in the Great Recession, China is raking in money, although there have been some US trade improvements: we are buying less, due to the recession.

China has a lot of advantages for trade: a hard-working, low-paid, workforce that rarely dares disrupt business with strikes or labor protests. Chinese labor is highly skilled, especially considering how recently China became an industrial power. And China's sheer numbers gives it a tremendous advantage.

But China has a heavy thumb on the scales--almost literally. The renminbi or yuan, the Chinese official currency, has been artificially undervalued for decades. The money measurement of Chinese export prices is skewed downward by that thumb. Chinese goods cost less than they should, because of currency manipulation, giving China a 20-40% competitive advantage over American goods--or German, or French--in our own markets.

The effect of this undervaluation doesn't stop with the huge US trade deficit. It has global repercussions. China is sucking up more and more money from all over the world, not just the US. When China insists on undervaluing its currency, it destabilizes the whole world economy. It's possible that the unbalanced trade/currency relations between China and the US, provided conditions for the 2008 financial collapse.

There is also the global effect of all that money going to a country that spends too little. Chinese savings rates are now an unbelievable 55%. So, money is withdrawn from the international economy and put into US Treasury bills. China doesn't buy imports with its money; it buys resources, mines, oil fields, real estate. It also induces corporations to build factories in China, because that's the only effective way for non-Chinese to crack the China market.

Now, China is facing inflationary pressure, despite a managed economy, while the rest of the world is flirting with deflation; recovery is held back by this huge trade imbalance.

Nobel Economist Krugman advocates a 25% surcharge on Chinese imports as a temporary measure to force China to revalue. He points out: we have China over a barrel. The Fed could minimize the impact if China sold large amounts of its dollar holdings in protest; the dollar would fall (not collapse), which would make the US more competitive. A declining dollar would also devalue China's remaining dollar assets.

Only Obama could do this. It would be an appropriate assertion of American power, and it could help the whole global economy.

I can hear the screams now! What, devaluing the mighty greenback?

Devaluation would be a powerful development and jobs policy, not a loss of prestige. It's way overdue.

Devaluation would also increase pressure to wind up our costly empire: it would cost more. I don't think that would be a bad thing.

.

Mar 12, 2010, Taxes, A Republican Alternative?

Taxes: when all is said and done, it boils down to who pays and who benefits.

Look at the Bush tax cuts; they cut taxes primarily for the top income earners, and caused the largest budget deficits ever recorded--until the Great Recession, as it's now called.

What did we get for those tax cuts? Unbridled speculation, or increasing debt? Both, actually.

Because of Rubin-Clinton-Greenspan, the banks were unleashed. Because of the tax cuts to the wealthy, there were piles of loose capital available for speculation. Because of the previous 30 years of deregulation, union-busting, tax flattening and shredding safety nets, those without loose capital were so hard-pressed to maintain the "American Lifestyle" that they went into debt. And then some of the speculators had a bright idea: speculate with all that extra debt: bundle it, slice it and resell it (the "derivatives" that nearly brought down the western world--they may still).

Obama's budget-tax policy trims around the edges: allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse for those with high incomes, cutting middle class taxes just a bit and adding some modest progressive credits.

What does a "conservative" Republican have to offer? Congressman Ryan of Wisconsin has offered a Republican alternative tax plan. It has been called radical, and it is; it's definitely not conservative. It would start with making the Bush tax cuts permanent, but would go much further. It would abolish the estate tax and the corporate income tax, privatize Medicare and Medicaid (replacing them with vouchers), reduce and partially privatize Social Security, eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends, and eliminate the income exclusion of employer-provided health insurance--to force health insurance into the "free" market.

To make up (some) of the difference, Congressman Ryan would add an 8.5% "Business Consumption" tax: a value-added, or sales tax.

The effects would be radical. "It’s difficult to design a tax plan that will lose $2 trillion over a decade even while requiring 90% of taxpayers to pay more," said the analysts of Citizens for Tax Justice about this plan. It does this by shifting much taxation to the sales tax, while eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit and other poverty reduction credits. Since poor people spend more than their income on consumption, they will be taxed more than 8.5% of their income. In fact, only those earning more than $127,384 would pay less in taxes. Those earning more than $480,700 (the top 1%) would save 15% on their taxes, or $211,314. Those earning $20,053-33,117 would pay $2,032 more (7.7%) and the lowest income group would pay $1,605 more (12.3%).

Just what we need! It's the selfish class raising its head again, and the effects could be even more disastrous than they were between 2000 and 2008: debt, excess capital, declining consumption, rising inequality and speculation.

Give the Republicans power and they'll make the Senators of the Late Roman Empire look like pikers!

Mar 10, 2010, The Filibuster as Empire Buster

Progressive Democratic Senators Bennet, Harkin and others are promoting a bill to reform the filibuster.

However, important Democrats, like Dianne Feinstein, are against it, and the Republicans are obviously against it: they control the Senate's business with 41% of the votes. That's a pretty good trick, when you think about it.

Republicans have used more filibusters in Congress since 2006, than have ever been used before; they're using them to block virtually all legislation, except Defense bills, rendering elections meaningless and government ungovernable.

So, it's easy to understand why no Republican Senators will vote for filibuster reform. But why won't Democrats like Senator Feinstein and fellow caucus member Senator Lieberman vote for reform or abolition. Lieberman did once endorse getting rid of the filibuster, but that was years ago--before he became a pivotal vote. That should be a clue right there.

There is a reason why even a reform of the filibuster (let alone it's abolition) is unlikely.

Senators are there for the power; that's what makes them tick. With the filibuster, all of them, every single one, has much more power than they would with simple majority rule and no power to block.

With the filibuster, Ben Nelson can hold up the nation for his state alone, and so can Lieberman, and so can Jim Bunning. Each, then, gains enormous power--negative--but useful to gain things like the Medicaid in Nebraska deal.

So, why would any power-mad Senator want to give that up?

That's the point: power. And each Senator thinks that if he retains that power for himself, he'll be better placed for re-election, regardless of what happens to the government or his party. Think of all the things he can do for his state, which could insure his re-election (he/she hopes), if he retains that power.

Instead of being a faceless member of the majority, Ben Nelson wheels and deals for his state. Instead of being a retiring and faceless member of the minority, Jim Bunning becomes a national byword.

Maybe not all Senators are motivated solely by power. Maybe some genuinely believe they are doing good for their state and The People, but at the same time, their egos are being massaged, and probably their bank accounts, too.

Also, it may be true that the filibuster could be eliminated by a majority vote (50, plus Biden), but the Senate, as an institution, is very conservative. Also, the abolition of the filibuster might be met by more Republican obstruction: they could refuse to agree to a legislative calendar, thereby blocking all business.

Democrats threatened that in 2005, when Republicans proposed abolishing the filibuster with the "nuclear option." Still, it's too bad the Republicans didn't go through with it.

The Roman Senate led to the downfall of Rome, literally. If the US Senate cannot reform, or legislate, it could be instrumental in the downfall of the American empire, as well.

A State that does not govern, does not survive.

Mar 8, 2010, What If Nothing Works?

What if the Democrats pass healthcare reform and we find that the back room deals have made it meaningless?

What if Iraq explodes into renewed civil war, and the US stands powerless to stop it? Our guy Maliki was the one who signed on to banning Sunni and secular candidates.

What if Iran announces it will build a bomb, and enough companies and countries are willing to buck or veto sanctions that Iran can't be stopped?

What if Obama and Democrats are unable to re-stimulate job growth, and we are stuck at near 10% unemployment?

What if the Republicans are unwilling to cooperate, and unwilling to lead if and when they regain power in Congress?

What if Afghanistan after Marjah is simply more of the same: a corrupt government takes over in daylight, and the Taliban comes back in at night?

Does President Obama lie awake wondering what to do about all these problems?

Last night, as I imitated Harry Reid, it occurred to me: why did Democrats elect such a wimp as their Senate leader? With his soft-high voice, who would ever listen to him; who would ever change their vote hearing his limp-wristed entreaties?

I yearn for a Senate leader like LBJ. He could twist arms, make deals, and carry out a Democratic agenda even in the face of a (moderate) Republican President. And then ram through civil rights legislation and Medicare when he was President.

Unfortunately, Harry Reid symbolizes Congressional Democrats, so it's no wonder that Congress is held in contempt by huge majorities of Americans. On the one side: timorous Democrats, afraid even to vote for what they believe in--think of Harry's soft high voice. On the other: Republicans who refuse to compromise and insist on playing victim to the big bad Democrats: think of John Boehner, whose voice is made for accusation and flippant denial.

Polarization is worse now than it was when Obama first started to campaign against it. The US Congress will drive the US into "failed state" status, unless it mends its ways, unless party discipline overcomes petty ambition and un-petty corruption.

Ironically, the peace president faces bipartisan support only on the wars. So long as Obama plays the generals' game, he'll get enough Republican votes to offset liberal, anti-war Democrats. No wonder he resists calls by Kucinich and Feingold to buck this rare consensus by adopting time-certain withdrawal plans for Afghanistan!

The US as failed state, except as bully-boy for global corporations. That is what it looks like--and the emerging nations will take over, like the Barbarians. They'll do business with whomever, ignoring global warming--they didn't cause it--until we--and they--are burned to a cinder.

It doesn't have to be this way. All that's needed is a little courage to act like commonsense human beings facing perennial disasters, instead of grasping idiots

Feb 27, 2010, Predator Banksters

There has been outsized brouhaha about Goldman's and other bankster bonuses--made possible by Fed and bailout (taxpayer) money. There has also been some attention paid to the kind of "investments" that have bloated Goldman and JP Morgan profits: huge bets using the Fed's free money.

Now, it turns out that those same kinds of bets are behind a lot of the continuing instability in international financial markets. Greece is an especially egregious example.

It is likely that the Greek government has been feckless, and its public employee unions have been unreasonable. It is also true that Greece is in the exact same position as California, New York, and many other American states: it can't create its own money, so it can't do what the US Federal government can do: issue money to cover shortfalls (and more). Its currency, the Euro, is controlled by the limited government in Brussels, itself steered economically by its two largest players: Germany and France. Both major countries are understandably reluctant to follow even easier money policy than they already have: in Germany's case, its Mark meltdown in the 1920's and '30's makes it doubly wary.

However, there is something else going on, and it has to do with the banks, or rather the banksters. An article from the New York Times, 2/25/10 pinpoints the problem: Credit Default Swaps (CDS).

"As banks and others rush into these swaps, the cost of insuring Greece’s debt rises. Alarmed by that bearish signal, bond investors then shun Greek bonds, making it harder for the country to borrow. That, in turn, adds to the anxiety — and the whole thing starts over again."

That is, CDS's raise interest rates that Greece (and Portugal, Spain, Ireland, etc.) will have to pay to fund their obligations. That will make their budget-balancing task harder, and the misery of the ordinary man/woman in the street that much greater: governments will have to lay off millions in order to pay off their debts, and will have to curtail the public services that have raised their nations' standards of living.

But Wall Street doesn't mind. Why? Because, its traders can make huge profits on the backs of Greek (and other nations') misery.

Wall Street did the same thing to Lehman and to AIG, and its traders are probably sharpening their knives for Portugal, Spain and so on.

This is only one more reason why financial regulation is imperative: banks will only return to the civilized world, and abandon their rapacity, when deposits and Fed/FDIC guarantees are stripped from their speculative arms, when the wall between depository and speculative institutions set up by Glass-Steagall is re-established and when CDS's (and other "exotic" financial instruments) are regulated.

If the banksters succeed in defeating reform, they will eventually succeed in bringing down the whole financial system, something they almost succeeded in doing in 2007-8.

And then?

Feb 17, 2010, Cut The Deficit?

An overwhelming majority of small businessmen polled in northern New York, said that their greatest concern was the government's growing deficit. They said the government needed to cut expenditures, not increase them. It should also (somehow, not specified) encourage business. Analogies were drawn between a household and the government; one couldn't live beyond one's means as a family; nor could government, they insisted.

It's as if Keynes never existed!

A healthy portion of the deficit is from automatic stabilizers, like payouts for unemployment; the more unemployed, the more payments. Two benefits flow from this: people are not thrown into utter misery, and they still buy things, thereby sustaining some demand for goods and services. Without unemployment insurance, food stamps and other support payments, the Great Recession could easily have become the Second Great Depression.

How do you stimulate business when there is too little demand in the economy for whatever reason--in this case because of financial collapse? Do you cut government expenditures?

How, logically, would this help? If consumers aren't buying and businesses aren't selling--or buying materials, etc., how does cutting government expenditures solve this problem? Doesn't it make more sense that if government bought things (highway paving, bridge materials, labor), it might stimulate business, even if it meant a short-term increase in the government deficit?

Governments are not households; that's a false analogy. Households can't create money, or destroy it; governments can and do. Furthermore, if one household saves money, it is being thrifty, but if everyone saves money, if nobody spends, everyone becomes poorer. This is called 'the paradox of thrift.' It's what happened in Japan for the Lost (two) Decade(s): savings rates were too high. Business floundered.

It could happen in the US, and will, if there is no further stimulus and real jobs bill, or, if the only growth in the national budget is for "Defense." Defense spending is a poor stimulus. Not only does it use large amounts of capital for each job, it spends much of it abroad--"stimulating" Okinawa, for example, or Afghanistan. Also, it doesn't make the nation more productive, except at killing.

And yet, no politician would dare suggest cuts to "defense," the largest discretionary item in the budget.

Obama pretends he's listening: he's cutting discretionary spending in about 1/8 of government--for 2011--and yet he knows that what the nation needs is more stimulus. The government should spend more, not less, until we're in a solid recovery and unemployment is steadily receding. If there were no more stimulus to promote business, or prevent state and local government lay offs, then demand would fall and we'd be right back where we started: it's called a "double-dip" recession. That happened in 1937, and in the Third Century.

In Rome, that double-dip went on for hundreds of years.

Feb 16, 2010, The Marjah Model

The Afghan offensive, despite attempts to safeguard civilians, is still an offensive in what we have proclaimed to be a war. In wars, lots of people get hurt, or worse. No matter how 'careful' or not an invader may try to be, he is still an invader. He is still causing local people to be killed, even if they're blown to bits by a mine their own people set.

Obama's Afghan war might end well, but only if Obama uses a temporary success (if there is one) to begin negotiating with the Taliban leadership. The Afghan government has already indicated that there is a way to do this (by calling a loya jirga to which the Taliban are invited). The Karzai government has promoted the idea of negotiations; NATO allies are receptive. There have been "feelers," and "signals" that even Mullah Omar is willing to talk. The Pakistanis have also offered to mediate with the Haqqani network, as long as they're assured of continued (renewed?) influence in Afghanistan. And now the Pakistanis and the CIA captured the "number two" leader, who favors negotiation.

There is only one important player who is still too skeptical to embrace negotiations: the Obama administration, or the American military.

This is shortsighted, especially in political terms. If Obama wants to re-elect Democrats, and gain re-election, tangible movement towards getting out of Afghanistan would be a tremendous boost. Obama should engage in the necessary diplomacy to assure an honorable withdrawal (ignoring the screams from the crazy Right).

At the same time, he and Congress should direct huge resources to stimulating job growth (again, ignoring the idiots shouting "Socialism!"). He should also bring the banks to heel. Obama and the Democrats in Congress must present voters with tangible progress on the economic and military fronts. Then Republicans wouldn't have a case--they offer no real alternative. Saying 'No' to everything does not solve, or even respond to what most people perceive as huge problems--joblessness, unstable, untamed banks, two wars, climate change and manufactured fear.

Marjah models what Obama needs to do domestically: impose as little pain as necessary, but not shrink from the probability that some will oppose whatever he does. Bipartisanship is dead: Republicans won't compromise when obstruction wins them votes. Obama and Democrats, especially Senators, should press on, using the Reconciliation process when necessary. Obama needs to use recess appointments, too, to neutralize Senatorial "holds."

Obama must be flexible, tough and unequivocal. What are the chances from a "centrist," who specialized in "bringing people together?"

Either, a progressive, activist government begins to solve our problems, or we'll be faced with stalemate--Obama will be replaced by a reactionary like Sarah Palin--and the Empire will self-destruct a la 476.

Feb 11, 2010, Declare War: Win Election

Republicans and Tea Partiers are outraged that Khalid Sheik Mohammed would be tried in a civilian court. Saying he would be a danger, and we'd be "giving" him rights we had fought for is ludicrous.

The Bush administration prosecuted about 300 terrorists in civilian courts. Further, courts for over a generation have safeguarded whatever "secrets" the state may have used in order to gain conviction. In addition, the Supreme Court found the military commissions unconstitutional; their reconstitution has been difficult.

Those 300 terrorists were dealt with more harshly in the courts than the terrorists who went through military commissions, from which some were released to places like Yemen!

The tea party conspiracists, at the same time, seem to believe that the Obama administration is setting up machinery to make mass incarcerations of tea partiers. The same rumors went the rounds during Bush II--about concentration camps under construction for leftists--now the right has paranoia, instead, and is paranoid about Northcom, the US command set up in the US for domestic disasters--like hurricanes and earthquakes!

Health care reform, these same crazies say, is a conspiracy for a government takeover, even though Obama, Pelosi and Reid have cut smelly deals with almost, but not all, of the corporate participants in the health care industry (Pharma, the AMA, hospitals). I wish it were a government takeover; instead, it creates a new, subsidized market for health insurance companies!

The right-wing lunacy has a megaphone far outweighing any shouting on the left: corporate media are perfectly happy to help bring down an administration that is even slightly anti-corporate. That's why we've heard a lot more about Tea Party and Republican outrage than about the outrage on the left: on Afghanistan, Guantanamo, health care compromises, Obama's unwillingness to investigate past war crimes, his continued use of extraordinary "wartime" powers.

So, now we have the "41st" vote held by Brown, who closely aligns himself with the lunatics! Krugman in an op-ed in the NY Times, concluded, "We are doomed!"

If the party of No prevails in the 2010 elections, we will be; it offers no real solutions and is not interested in governing, only in posturing in order to win power. On the other hand, the Democrats still have no spine: Schumer caved on the KSM trial, for example.

Sarah Palin, in effect, recommends that Obama "declare war" on Iran, if he wants to win re-election--against her or other Republicans. Perhaps she's suggesting that Republicans use that threat as their campaign theme?

Given the GOP's lack of ideas, and unwillingness to deal with any real problem, this pronouncement of hers may prove prescient: look for it as the Republican meme in 2012.

Is this the Empire's death rattle? It sure looks like it: instability, ungovernability, overreach and bankruptcy.

Feb 9, 2010, Nuclear "Ambitions?" Iran?

I'm being treated with radiation (I have an early cancer), and the radiation comes from highly concentrated uranium (about 20%), used to create treatment isotopes.

You have heard of Iran's nuclear "ambitions:" it's been bruited all over the news since Ahmadinejad announced Iran would begin further enriching some uranium--to 19.7%. Iran is a member of the NPT (non-proliferation treaty), is inspected by the IAEA, and openly declared what it was doing.

The announcement does not remotely imply that Iran is determined to develop a bomb. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to above 95%; medical grade is enriched to 19.7%. To reach 95%, Iran would have to build huge complexes--visible from the air.

Radioactive isotopes are used to treat cancer. Iran buys isotopes from abroad, but why shouldn't it produce its own? Japan and South Korea do, Brazil does, Argentina did; none of these are nuclear powers. It's true that all the nuclear powers (including Israel) also produce radioactive isotopes with enriched uranium, but there is a faulty logic to the assumption that this latest action proves that Iran is bound and determined to produce the Bomb.

It does nothing of the kind: granted that all possessors of nuclear weapons produce radioactive isotopes, but not all producers of radioactive isotopes are nuclear powers.

What is telling, however, is that Clinton and Obama are using this non-issue to jab at Iran's leadership and make them sweat (through "targeted sanctions"). It is also telling that China doesn't want to go along with sanctions: she needs Iranian oil, but she also doesn't see Iran as a threat.

Who does? Israel for years has been trying to drum up support for bombing Iran's nuclear plants. The US, even under Bush, had to restrain her. It's the primary reason why Iran has begun to put its nuclear facilities underground.

Why does Ahmadinejad and his government appear so intransigent?

I would be too, if I were abiding by the rules, wanted to modernize my country and was told 'No, No' by the international community. No nation under IAEA's inspection regime has surreptitiously become a nuclear power. We'd know if Iran were really trying to produce nuclear bombs: it would kick out the inspectors first--before it tried.

The other reason for intransigence is that it plays well domestically in Iran: it's not about an effort to build nuclear bombs. Ahmadinejad is posing for his nationalist constituency.

Why does the US push for sanctions, then? Perhaps the most important reasons are: to restrain Israel (see, we're doing something!) and to appear tough back home: if you can scare people, they'll support you! They'll also support huge defense budgets: no one will talk about cutting those now.

Iran, a poor nation of 70 million, is threatening the American Colossus?

Get real.

Feb 8, 2010, Political Instability?

Nations painted "politically unstable," make investors wary; they hire ex-CIA for expert assessments. 'Developing' countries have faced this difficulty repeatedly.

The talk in Davos, at the World Economic Forum, was of political instability--in the US. The movers and shakers may be onto something, although it might better be termed political stalemate.

The United States faces huge economic problems, and those problems, now worldwide, spread from America. China is stimulating its economy and so are European nations. Governments are acting; their people are not stopping them.

In the US they are. First, Obama's stimulus was too small and poorly targeted, because of the compromises and deals he made to move it through Congress. So, unemployment is over 10%, instead of the 8% he promised. A logical response would be a second, better-targeted stimulus, but conservatives are screaming that even the first should be cancelled. If it were, unemployment would surge, probably past 12%, and we'd plunge into a renewed Depression.

Second, the deficit has escalated; Republicans and tea partiers say government spending must be cut--across the board--except (of course) for Defense. If it were, we'd be in for a "double-dip" recession, not a limp recovery.

Third, Obama's legislative initiatives (health care, financial reform, cap and trade), aimed at rectifying problems that led to this crisis, appear to be dead in the water.

Yet, Obama was elected by a respectable landslide a little over a year ago, and was wildly popular at his inauguration. Furthermore, he brought with him a huge majority to both houses of Congress.

Scott Brown's upset win in Massachusetts, "the bluest state," has blocked whatever momentum there was for Obama's reforms. In polls, generic Republicans beat Democrats easily--only one year after that landslide. So, Democratic legislators are afraid to act.

If Democrats do nothing, they will lose. What alternatives do Republicans offer? The extensively tried and failed "free market" and tax cut policies (for the rich) that drove the world into this hole.

And then there is the Tea Party movement. People in it blame both parties, but offer about the same Republican stale beer, except that the beer is laced with anti-bank, anti-government populism.

Meanwhile "progressive" Democrats rebel against Obama's compromises, withhold votes on the Senate healthcare bill and cap and trade, while other Democrats mutter about losing Wall Street campaign funding--if they pass financial reform. Exacerbating this, the Supremes just rewrote the political rules: corporations can now dominate even more.

If the Republican 'No' party gains Congressional control--then what? Will Obama compromise to return to reward-the-rich, laissez-faire policy? Or would he block it?

We'll face either stalemate, or the ruinous return to Selfish Class control. Only assertive reform will undo this downward spiral.

Feb 6, 2010, We Don't Want Yer (Foriegn) Money!

My wife, Elizabeth Cunningham, is trying to sell books ( The Passion of Mary Magdalen) and her CD ( MaevenSong ) across borders as well as nationally. But her local bank, Rhinebeck Savings, can't even handle a Canadian postal money-order in US dollars! Canada is only 5-hours drive from there.

We go to Canada often, both on business and to visit our daughter. Have you tried to change Canadian Dollars into US in this country? In Canada, you can change either way at the border, and in many banks; in the US, I found one gas station, where they took Canadian, because they had enough Canadian customers from 5 miles across the border. But no banks will change Canadian (Pound Sterling, Euros, whatever), unless you go to a major city, and often only if they have a foreign currency department.

Guess we don't want their money. We spend enough abroad; you'd think we'd welcome imports of foreign cash to pay for it: foreigners buying American, even if only $l2 dollars at a time.

Ever have trouble changing dollars abroad? I haven't, except 40 years ago in India, when I had to make a special arrangement between an American bank in Delhi and Bank of India in the small city where I was doing research. Back then, BoI still used huge leather ledgers to record each transaction; each had to be cosigned by the clerk, his manager, and the bank president--carried from one to the other by the bank "peon." It feels as if American banks haven't progressed much further, despite all their computerization.

Other countries want to receive foreign currency; from selling their goods and services to a foreign country, bringing in foreign reserves. It seems as if American banks do their best to discourage money from coming in--unless a huge corporation, like Amazon, controls it.

We are also the surliest nation when it comes to foreign tourists crossing our borders. Everyone from abroad is suspect.

No wonder we have such huge trade deficits! Other countries support exporters, their banks bend over backwards to welcome foreign exchange and tourists; US banks do their best to discourage transactions such as charging $50 for routing a $12 money-order back to Canada to an American bank, then back. Why $50? Why only American banks?

My wife had to forego payments from Canada. At very least it would have been money entering this country: she tore up the money-order in front of the incompetent bankers.

Why are they like this? Imperial hubris makes Americans hidebound: only American banks can transfer dollars? It will turn us into dinosaurs. Or a poor, Third World country.

Feb 5, 2010, Deficits Are Good For You

Some deficits, that is. Liberal economists from the 1930's on made a distinction between good deficits and bad ones. The deficits FDR ran in the '30's and in WWII were good deficits. Bad deficits were the kinds under both Bush's and Reagan. Why, the difference? In the first case, FDR was investing in the future, first in regaining productivity, and then our literal survival as a nation. And the investments paid off: the US became the world's powerhouse, and industrial champion, and by far the richest nation on earth.

But not all wars are equally good investments; ones in which you are not fighting for survival, but are fighting for economic control (called the free market), these, paradoxically, are not good investments. We will never get a return on the Iraq investment, nor on the Afghan one, although some American corporations will--not the oil companies, however. So, the deficits we racked up on those, and on tax cuts that made a few very rich, did not build a stronger, more prosperous America: quite the opposite.

The people, who are screaming hardest about the deficits Obama's government is running, didn't complain so much when the deficits were driven by tax cuts to the wealthy--now expiring. And yet, look what those deficits brought us: the de-industrialization of America, and the greatest income inequality among (post) industrial nations. And then, the economic crisis was brought upon us by the deregulation frenzy of Friedman's disciples, who never saw a regulation or a government agency they approved of.

Obama's deficits are good deficits: if they derive from the stimulus, because those are investments in the financial stability and future wealth of the nation. But to the extent that the deficits are driven by two wars and the most expensive military in the whole world combined, those are bad deficits.

Does American productivity and wealth depend upon controlling other countries, or does it depend on its people, in the United States?

A few profit enormously from our imperial adventures, but other countries do a lot better in trade, without spending almost $700 billion on defense. China spends less than $70 billion.

If Obama really wanted to cut the deficit, he'd find any graceful way he could to get out of Iraq more rapidly, and Afghanistan, too. And then cut back on the military's imperial bloat.

But maybe he doesn't dare. The last man who tried that was JFK.

Cut the military and use the money to create jobs to meet the needs this country has put off for too long: by the Federal government, if no one else seems willing to try. Businesses could be energized by even more federal contracts, more reconstruction projects, more investment in the technologies of the future, like biotech and green energy. That's what China is doing.

The government should invest in the American people, for a change-you can believe in. Is that so bad?

Feb 3, 2010, A Bankrupting Empire

Stein's law: If a trend cannot continue, it will stop

Budget deficits growing over the next 10 years, is that possible? Obama has come clean with his budget; what Bush covered up, Obama reveals, with a point: US budgets are going to grow inexorably, in part because of the programs upon which I depend, (Social Security and Medicare), but there is another huge program which doesn't pay for itself, at all.

This cannot continue. Let's posit that things could change.

One change would be if the health care reform passed: it would streamline Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately, the deals Obama made with big Pharma and the Hospitals would keep costs rising almost as fast--no price negotiations with drug companies, for example.

That could change. The point of Obama's budget projections, however, is to demonstrate that they will have to change. We just can't keep going on the way we have been.

There is another major contributor to the deficit, however: the military, the largest item in the discretionary budget. The reason it takes up more of the discretionary budget than anything else, is not just two unjustified wars, but because it is stretched all over the world. We have bases in a majority of the 195 countries. Why? It looks like we're not only fixated on controlling outcomes in the Middle East, but in Latin America, Oceania, the rest of Asia, Europe and, most recently, Africa.

Do Americans benefit from all this military activity? We're not spread all over the world to fight terror; most of the extent of American military involvement predates al Qaeda, but the latter has certainly helped extend our military even further.

Actual terror attacks are stopped by police work, not the military--or not stopped as in the case of the underpants bomber. You can't exterminate terrorism militarily.

Why are American troops everywhere? To protect American business interests, but those interests often conflict with ordinary Americans.

Sure, Walmart imports cheaper goods (mostly from China, from whom our military protects us?), but American corporations, including Walmart, export jobs, because the military protects them wherever they do business.

So, when politicians, including Obama, say that in order to gain control of the deficits, we must discover how to save money on Medicare and Social Security, I say: at least those programs have their own payroll taxes: those can be re-jiggered. And reforms would probably cut costs, especially if drugs and fees could be negotiated. But that won't control the discretionary budget.

To do that, our whole military mission must be re-assessed, otherwise the deficits will continue out of control: we can no longer afford to patrol the world. Either we will recognize that and drastically cut the American military, or we will go bankrupt.

Then we'll have to cut the military, anyway.

Feb 2, 2010, Prisoner at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave

Is Obama prisoner of corporate interests, Wall Street, the Senate, and government bureaucrats?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

When Obama explained how he worked to the Republican House caucus, it became clear how much he (and any other President) was dependent on so-called "experts," in places like the Congressional Budget Office, and on people like Tim Geithner, who know the ropes. This is a kind of prison.

For example, he pointed out that the Republican idea for tort reform as part of health care reform, would "only" result in a billion or so in savings (over 10 years?), because that's what the CBO told him.

Talking to the caucus, he didn't cover his escalation in Afghanistan (which Republicans favor and many Democrats oppose), but the same kind of prison may be operative. Pro-war counter-insurgency proponents in the Pentagon and uniformed services presented most of the policy options. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, a retired General, did propose a counter-argument along with the VP, but they were clearly outnumbered, and Obama had said, in the campaign, that Afghanistan was the war "we" had to win.

Has Wall Street imprisoned the President? While Obama rails against "fat cats," Geithner, his man, is also a Banker's banker, and Larry Summers is his other main source of financial services expertise. In other words, Obama appointed "experts" who were not neutral at all. While he proposes some reforms, even some form of reinstating rules like Glass-Steagal to separate commercial and investment banking, his proposed arbiter on Wall Street would be the Fed, already highly compromised as the Banker's Bank.

Wall Street Banks are flush, unemployment is still high, perhaps growing, not yet declining, because banks can make more money on speculation than on investments creating jobs.

Right-wing populism is a natural result; the left is compromised by collaboration with Obama.

Obama's jobs program could have been proposed by Hoover. Again, it's probably in large part a result of Obama's advisors, mired in an anti-government milieu: it also protects him from the right, but will it work?

What is needed is a program that will create 10 million jobs, fast, because, in effect, employers are on strike. FDR created the WPA, CCC, etc., but Obama has been told that similar programs would be political poison. Would they? Proposing one would win a lot of the disaffected.

But nothing will pass: Republicans are betting on obstructionism.

Could Obama become a Truman, campaigning against the "Party of No," the way Truman did against the "Do Nothing (Republican) Congress?"

There is something bloodless about Obama, unlike Truman. He's brilliant, a great orator, a thinker, a wonk. He reminds me of the last good Emperor in Rome: Majorian, who tried to reform abuses, but ended up getting killed.

Jan 29, 2010, Judicial Fascism

Counter-revolution just happened and it's worse than most realized. Not just judicial activism, but judicial takeover.

The case (Citizens United vs FEC) had no standing on the issue ruled upon; the defense had already waived it. Yet, the 5 told the plaintiffs and defense to prepare to debate that point: corporate money in elections.

Additionally, in the decision, the 5 asserted that they had the (future) right to rule even if there was no issue, or no case. In other words, these supposed "strict constructionists" are actually "fabulous constructionists," creating law with the wave of their wands. Clarence Thomas even went further, and said this is only the beginning.

But, I bet you that the mainstream media will concern themselves only with who will win and who will lose from this decision. Will any of them, will any political leader, including the President, stand up to them and say: NO! This is an unconstitutional seizure of power!

All Obama said in his State of the Union address was that Congress has to pass a law, unspecified, to rectify the unspecified problems with this decision--he also noted an important point: foreign corporations would be able to spend money, too--at which point Justice Scalia mouthed the words: "This is wrong."

One thing that's unlikely to happen: Congress, or the people, will pass a constitutional amendment to undo this decision in time to prevent further damage to our "democracy." Too much money is arrayed against it. The 2010 elections will be dominated by corporate money; how can they not be? The airwaves will carry all manner of outright propaganda, mostly against incumbent Democrats. Since the media is already controlled by corporations, it's unlikely that most Americans will know that the "information" delivered to them is misleading and self-serving. The only silver lining in the decision is that it leaves in place the requirement that sources of funding must be revealed.

Republicans should be allowed to hold a filibuster, so that Democrats can pillory them as the cat's paws of the big corporations. But you know that won't happen. Apparently, Democrats don't want to have to be there for a quorum call, because they are too busy raising money for the next election. And they're afraid of the corporations--for good reason, especially now: corporate money may drown out all other voices.

What the Democrats, and specifically President Obama, need to do is make people aware that this corporate takeover is not about freedom of speech, at all: it is about the freedom to buy elections and elected officials, which will result not in more democracy but in Fascism (the merger of state and corporate institutions).

Then an amendment, or impeachment of Justices, might be possible, but people would have to be highly aroused, willing to revolt, before anything like that could happen.

Jan 26, 2010, Ski Cross and Gladiators

I'm a skier, so, I pricked up my ears when the radio reporter told of an accident happening on the slope, as she spoke. She was reporting on a new winter event tryouts at Lake Placid preparatory to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Ski cross?

Ski cross is racing downhill, over a course, without gates, against three other racers: they all start at the same time, and they all jockey for position, all the way down the mountain. By jockeying, I mean, driving your competitors off the hill by virtually any means, as you all hurtle downward.

I raced downhill in High School, and I know the rush, the incredible speed, the feeling almost of floating, even as your skis grate across patches of ice, worn down by previous skiers.

I can't imagine racing against three others.

At my age, I know I'm too breakable. The competitors in this new sport have to be very good, for starters, at just plain downhill racing. But add in the other racers, each vying for the best line, the best angle, and also trying to drive the others out of it and you have a race on many dimensions--at fifty miles per hour (or more). You also have the recipe for horrendous accidents. The one reported on radio, was a French racer, who was sent home with a broken disk and possible spinal injury.

So, why, you wonder is this new sport now becoming an event at the Winter Olympics? Darren Rawls, a top US hopeful said it was wonderful fun, but then he's been winning more than losing, and has only gotten "beaten up," sometimes.

The real reason: it's "fun to watch." Think of watching it on a big little screen; it won't be just one racer, but four, all battling it out all the way down the mountain. You can watch them all the way, and you get to see the accidents, too! Possible "career-ending injuries" around every corner: think of the drama!

Why this is better than seeing gladiators slug it out with sword and trident! Better than cheering on bestiarii as they slaughter wild beasts in the coliseum.

You get the picture? Yes, this new, oh so dangerous (but fun) event is very like those historic events, except that injury and dying is left up to chance (so much more suspense that way); it's also peopled not by slaves, but by "amateurs," who probably can make money on their careers--if they survive.

But the reason for the event is the same: entertain the masses; keep them happy: now, glued to the box.

When the Vandals besieged Cirta, in North Africa, the authorities kept the games going--so that the Vandals breaching the walls wouldn't upset the citizens. The Vandals captured and enslaved them.

Jan 24, 2010, The Imperial Dilemma

In the Bollywood film, Lagaan, it is very clear: a vast and expensive Imperial establishment is dependent upon the sweat of a mass of poor people, who fear they will get insufficient rains to grow their crops. How can they pay their tax to the Imperium without starving?

In the Fifth Century Roman Empire, taxes were the food ripped from peasants' hands, and many did starve. But as the evil British officer tellingly remarked, he had to maintain his cantonment, whether it rained, or not.

In the modern Empire, war is as profitable to some interests as occupation, and far more profitable than direct rule. However, the modern military still has to be fed, whether it rains (the modern equivalent is depression), or not.

The American military is like Jan Slepian's Hungry Thing; it must keep eating, and more and more. This explains why the Defense budget (or the War budget) keeps on growing larger each year; it explains why Obama can't get troops out of Iraq; why he was forced to send in more troops to Afghanistan, and why we now seem to be spreading our military tentacles into places like Ecuador, Bolivia and Yemen. The military has now gained virtual control, in tandem with the corporations that sell to them.

The economy doesn't really matter to them, similar to the way the British cantonment didn't care if Indian peasants went hungry, as long as they paid the lagaan: the peasants had to pay their "share" of the cost of being "protected" by their oppressors: the British Raj.

This equation lays bare the true nature of imperialism: its subjects must submit--and pay--regardless of their impoverished state. After the fall of Rome, the relations between ruler and ruled became transparent: the conquering Germanic leaders demanded tribute in return for not ripping off everything else of value. It's true they "protected" their subjects from other marauders, but only because they were protecting their own extortion racket. That's really, what they are: extortionists: "nobility" and imperial rulers, anywhere. They live off the sweat of others, or, in the modern case, off the wealth in or under their land, or the wealth their geographic location makes possible (like Afghanistan and the trans-Caspian pipeline) .

Lenin was right on this, even though he was wrong about so much else--especially wrong that revolutionary elites would be the "vanguard of the proletariat."

So, in Afghanistan, we are there to maintain the imperialist colossus, which is not the United States, but its military-industrial sector. We can't get out, because the military needs a raison d'être, not just for its maintenance but also for its expansion.

This way madness--and bankruptcy--lies.

Jan 21, 2010, America's Coup d'État

Did you hear about the coup d'état? It happened in Washington, DC today. The political system was effectively taken over by the largest corporations in the land.

As predicted on this site, the US Supreme Court majority (5 to 4) ruled against democracy, today. In Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission, the court ruled that corporations and labor unions could fund specifically political material, i.e. ads for or against candidates running for office, out of their own treasuries, and in the heat of elections.

The ostensible reason for the ruling was free speech, as in deciding that money=speech in political discourse, and therefore cannot be prohibited for particular classes of speakers, in this case corporations or unions.

This ruling busts the political system wide open in favor of the overwhelming funds held by large corporations (unions are second rate in this game). For example, in the last month of an election, Goldman Sachs could spend billions, if it wanted to, against all candidates favoring bank reform and regulation. Exxon could do likewise against candidates for climate change policy that might crimp its profits.

The lead dissenter, Justice John Paul Stevens, excoriated the court's decision, saying it could "undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation." It's unlikely that the lame legislative branch could marshal the will to overcome the court's decision with a Constitutional amendment.

This is a legal coup d'état even more outrageous than the one in which the court selected the Bush-humanoid for President. And this decision won't be with us just for eight years, either. In legal terms, it's outrageous, since the decision overturns precedent (two previous court decisions), and rests on the misreading of a court statement (not a decision) from the 19th century, which took the position that corporations were legal persons. It is radical, and wholly anti-democratic. It's precisely what Roberts and Alito were chosen to do: preside over the creation of a new corporate fascism.

On the left, we have written and spoken reams against the untoward influence of deep pockets on the current (and past) Congresses and on the Senators and Congressmen bought by corporate lobbying. We ain't seen nothing yet!

So, the election of Scott Brown, the tea party movement, the privatization of elections (who actually controls the vote counting in the computerized systems?), are only parts of a piece of a wholesale corporate takeover, that now has seen its newest and boldest step.

Democrats will tremble, Republicans will applaud, and corporations will become the most powerful forces in the nation, and government. Forget reform; forget dealing with climate change; forget our very survival--if it risks diminishing some corporation's profits.

Forgeddaboudit!

Jan 20, 2010, Obama's or China's Military?

Heard of a military agreement between the governments of Colombia and the United States? Under its terms, the U.S. is permitted "to upgrade, expand and use seven Colombian military bases for the purpose of increasing the operational capabilities of U.S. armed forces throughout South America."

Colombia is next to Venezuela and Ecuador, in easy flying distance to Bolivia, those hotbeds of radicals. Oh, just for drug interdiction? Columbia is the most important country controlled by an anti-revolutionary regime. Honduras has now joined it, and the US seems to be covertly backing the counter-coup successor regime there. This is Obama's policy? We're allying ourselves with the landlords, gangsters and drug lords--and American business interests.

And, it seems we're getting more involved in Yemen, although with no "boots on the ground," just CIA, or similar, and training units.

Did you notice how many soldiers and marines we're sending to Haiti, supposedly for humanitarian purposes? Did you see their humanitarian equipment? They all carry M-16's, at least, "without ammunition." Then why carry them at all? And why in combat uniform, i.e armor?

We're already occupying Iraq, although perhaps we can get out soon. We're pouring troops and mercenaries into Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan, they're all in civvies, in Afghanistan, we're the man to beat, and the Taliban are doing pretty well at doing so.

Oh, and we have a new Africom, to coordinate all American military activity in Africa. What military activity? We don't know yet, but we'll probably find out that we have bases all over the continent, in strategic countries, just as in Colombia.

What the hell does the American military think it can do? Control the whole world? We'll get our asses whipped in Afghanistan--unless we have the wisdom to talk our way out of there, and that's one of the poorest countries in the world.

Parenthetically, we've contributed to its poverty by promoting the civil war that's lasted over forty years; it began against a Soviet supported regime that was genuinely progressive. We whipped up the crazies, and the Taliban and al Qaeda are the result.

It's worse than you or I know. The American military and our CIA are everywhere; they're supporting corrupt, authoritarian forces fighting against change, reform and peace that isn't the peace of the prison. Yes, the Taliban are brutal; so is Karzai's government, but it's corrupt, as well.

There is one country where there are few American military: Israel. We give them billions, the most military aid in the world, to keep down the Palestinians (that's its practical effect, anyway).

We can't afford to do any of this. Why do the Chinese lend us the money to keep on going, getting deeper in debt? This is no longer an empire; it's a military enterprise, a huge business. Ultimately, the Chinese, Germans, Japanese, etc. are loaning us hundreds of billions, so they don't have to do it.

But why should the US police the world?

Jan 19, 2010, The Radical MLK

The Martin Luther King we hear about is the non-violent leader of the Civil Rights movement, who must be so proud that a man of African descent sits in the oval office.

We don't hear of the later King, the man who realized that the legal rights in the process of being won for African-Americans and all other minorities, was far from enough.

So, while he might be pleased that Obama is in the White House, he would hardly be pleased to hear that militarism has only increased many-fold since his day, nor that Obama is asking for a substantial Defense budget increase in a budget already greater than all the budgets of all the other militaries in the world combined.

King would be in the opposition, but not like the Republican party of NO. King would be with the anti-war activists, especially against the surge in Afghanistan; he would be with ACORN: he'd march for justice for homeowners; he would be pressing for radical reform for the banking system, including the breakup of the large banks and re-negotiation of all the at-risk mortgages. He would be advocating for radical tax reform to make the income tax a progressive tax, again.

Like many current critics of the Afghan war, King would argue that the war takes money away from needed social change, that it increases poverty; by 1965, he was beginning to make the argument that we should get out of Vietnam for that reason, among others. In 1967, he called the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." He drew the connection to capitalism, and said, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."

If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he might try to persuade the President, and Congress to institute real reforms (including Single Payer healthcare and more equitable taxation); he would urge them to get out of the Middle East.

He might also be on the barricades.

He wouldn't be a happy old man because a black man is President. He might be even more outraged at the mess Obama and the Democrats have made of popular reforms, and especially, by their timorous collaboration with the war-party on our Vietnam--Afghanistan.

With King and then Bobby's assassinations, any hope of real change died in 1968, not because individuals are so important, yet symbolically they were: if you advocate real change, you get killed. The counter-revolution began then; it prevailed in 1980.

Obama is no revolutionary, so the counter-revolution, the system of wealth-in-control is still in place. That's why a timid reformer like him is in danger of being a one-term President. Then the (Roman) Senators will continue to dismantle the Empire, for their own profit.

Jan 14, 2010, Haiti and the Devil

Haiti's earthquake, declared Pat Robertson, was a result of its people's pact with the Devil, back when Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, a Voudun, led a slave rebellion in 1791 that grew into the successful 1804 revolution against the French slave-owners! What Robertson was really denouncing was Voudun, what we call Voodoo.

Pat Robertson has come out with insane declamations before--like 9-11 caused by the prevalence of the "homosexual lifestyle." He thinks he's an Old Testament prophet, so, he should inveigh against all manner of "wickedness," including, apparently, rebellion against slavery! Slavery worse than our South. How racist! And he's still popular among right-wing "Christians."

His citation of the devil recalls the thinking prevalent in the early 5th century, when the Roman Church marshaled finger bones, clavicles, whatever, of supposed martyrs, in order to defend the Empire against barbarian hordes.

The Church didn't stop the barbarians: far from it. Later on, it supported the Franks, barbarians who had converted to Catholicism. The finger bones hadn't worked.

The fifth century was the beginning of the Dark Ages. It was the beginning of the dominance of the Medieval, magical thinking Pat Robertson exemplifies and others mimic. It has been marshaled by the religious right wing's fight against same-sex marriage. Its latest triumph was in New Jersey, using similar tactics to the earlier defeat in New York: money to spread fear and misinformation about the "gay lifestyle." Or menace.

I hope it's not the wave of the future.

Actually, if there was a devil's curse on Haiti, it was imperialism, white devils. The French didn't take the loss of their most profitable colony lying down. Not only did Napoleon send unsuccessful expeditions to re-take it, but King Charles X, in 1825 mounted a large naval armada to re-conquer Haiti. President Boyer had to buy him off with reparations (indemnifying France for the profits from slavery the French had lost!). The total was 150 million francs, a huge sum in those days.

Expeditions by British, Germans, French and Americans, and even occupations (the US from 1915-1934), also stole wealth from the Haitian part of the island, often directly from the government's vaults.

The poverty that resulted, built the shoddy buildings that fell about people's ears in the earthquake. It has been building ever since the French were forced to leave their most prosperous colony in the 1790's. The poverty isn't because of a black devil's curse, or the fecklessness of the hard-working population; it's because imperialists saw Haiti as an easy prey. American corporations still do.

Think of Haiti as the victim of imperialism. Like many other places on earth, it will be a lot better off when all the empires fall.

Jan 12, 2010, Avatar: a Metaphor

James Cameron made Pandora look more like Vietnam than Afghanistan, and the goddess-worshipping people were more like American plains Indians than like the Taliban or the Vietcong, but still there are parallels. In this case, the American military--in contemporary uniform--with hi-tech equipment, were apparently employees of a faceless mega-corporation, bent on extracting a rare and expensive mineral from this distant planet/moon, and on pushing the "blue monkeys" aside to get it.

What was different was the avatar program, which created Na'vi people who were under human control--until Jake's avatar, and then others, joined the Na'vi.

Their pantheistic goddess worship was an embodiment of the Gaia Principle, that all beings are connected to the planet. The humans had no sense of this, but it was the very power and life of the Na'vi.

There was a Hollywood ending, including the wonderful final battle, in which all the fearsome creatures of the planet combined with their sometime antagonists, or prey, to drive out the invaders. If a European filmmaker had made this film, it might have echoed past history; the indigenous people would not have prevailed. It would have been a poignant tragedy, in which you came out of the theater lamenting their demise.

For anyone with a sense of history, Avatar had a tragic feel to it, despite the ending: it was about all the indigenous cultures and people brutally shoved aside, controlled or exterminated by European and/or "modern" conquerors (Chinese and Japanese, too). And, no coincidence, they were shoved aside for the riches beneath their soil, or those above it, just as the Na'vi of Pandora were about to be shoved aside, their land raped.

But the parallel with Afghanistan was made particularly poignant because military and civilians looked and spoke like contemporary Americans. Perhaps Cameron offers a caution, a whiff of the future. Unlike past conflicts, Cameron may mean, the West will have to withdraw, either peacefully, or in defeat.

This is a different era. While the Na'vi looked like ten-foot tall aboriginal Americans, or pre-Roman Celts, they had the equivalent of modern communication, by (literally) plugging into the Mother tree. Unlike the Na'vi, Afghans, Yemenis, Iraqis all have modern communications, but the effect is similar; their people are bound together, and, for good reason, are at best skeptical of the invader, even if he says he's a friend; he might not have their best interests in mind.

Some analysts describe the Afghan Taliban much like the gathering of tribes in Avatar's final scenes: locals defending their turf, not for ideological reasons, but because it is "we" vs "they."

If true, how can the US overcome this, even with several 100,000 troops? Why should it? Unlike Pandora, Afghanistan looks hellish. Let them have it.

Jan 9, 2010, Radical Poltical Changes Needed

Is this Capitalism, or plutocracy? I've been watching Obama conciliate and compromise, I've seen Senate deal-making, insuring that no one with money ever loses any, I've seen the absurdity of politics in my own state (New York), heard the screams on Fox and talk radio. I also anticipate an awful decision to come down from the Supreme Court that will only make things worse: giving corporations the power to spend money directly on political campaigns. We haven't gotten the decision yet; perhaps the "liberal" wing of the court is trying to block it.

Our problem isn't Obama, and it's only specific to the Democrats because the Republicans are already bought and paid for: the power of money seems capable of stopping any meaningful reform in its tracks, by buying off just a few "Democrats": like Senators Nelson, Lincoln and Lieberman.

But progressives are stymied, and meaningful reform is too: in health care, finances, stimulus, military policy and the environment. It's stymied, not because everyone is corrupted, many are honest and earnest, but because enough are, and money to corrupt them is almost unlimited.

Looking back the 62 years I've been politically aware, I can see that our political system has gotten notably more corrupted by forces mobilized to protect profit, wherever it can be earned--even to killing people in Pakistan (Blackwater/Xe).

Corruption is behind the arcane compromises in health reform, and why Dodd's financial reform proposal will be heavily compromised; maybe it's why he won't run, so that he can push for a legacy without worrying about campaign funds; it's why the US came to Copenhagen empty-handed, and effectively stalemated any movement towards an agreement on climate change. It's also, why we have to escalate in Afghanistan: the alternative would be withdrawal. Think how many defense contractors would lose money if we withdrew, and how many military officers would lose chances for promotion.

It's all about money: profits the moneyed would lose if we were to have meaningful reform.

So, instead, we'll have tiny incremental changes that won't make things much better, but will protect profits, while the system becomes increasingly insupportable.

How insupportable? Maybe voters won't totally reject the health reforms, but how about another financial collapse, or environmental degradation that makes California and the Southwest uninhabitable for large populations, and agriculture impossible? How about going bankrupt when China et al feel they can no longer finance our military adventures?

Our political non-system is driving us to policies that will make our huge problems worse. It's like Greek tragedy, but the inherent flaw is in the system, and it's going to bring us down!

A small change to that system--eliminating the filibuster-cloture complex in the Senate--might make a huge difference, but Democrats need to have the courage of their convictions; it's not clear that many do.

"The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity." W.B. Yeats

Jan 5, 2010, War Everywhere All the Time

I wrote in a blog Sept. 21, that the US military was much like Tojo's Japan, where the military did what they wanted and the civilian government was powerless to stop them: Tojo cooperated; so it seems, does Obama. W was the Military's cheerleader, but increasingly, that seems to be the only difference. The military is out of control, and as far as military policy is concerned, it's in control. It wants control of the world.

This global institution also spends more money than all other militaries in the world combined. Our closest competitor and "potential rival" is China, which spends (officially) about 10% of the US military budget, and including black budgets probably spends less than 15%. But our Pentagon is "concerned" that China will become dangerous. We must spend more!

This way insanity lies, especially, since we don't have the money! We borrow it from China! And that money short-changes the American people to the tune of $685 billion a year spent on killing, not people.

But we have to, you see, because of people like the Nigerian underwear bomber. It's highly likely, however, that his attack was a fraud: he didn't even have the right kind of fuse to set off his bomb (an explosive was needed, not a match). There were people video-taping the whole flight, who have now disappeared, and the man who tackled Mutalab was apparently trained to do so. Sounds fishier and fishier.

But his "foiled" attack will make it relatively easy to renew the Patriot Act when it comes up this winter. And it also justifies our incipient war in Yemen, where we are bombing civilians at the opposite end of the country from where al Qaeda in Arabia is supposed to be.

This convenient attack justifies all the troops we have strung over the whole globe, in strategic locations selected so that we can control whole areas--like Yemen, itself, at the foot of the Arabian Peninsula, controlling the Gulf of Aden, critical to world shipping of oil.

Wait a minute! Some of the most eagerly sought after Iraqi oil fields were just picked up by Russian and Chinese firms; the richest copper deposit in Afghanistan just went to China, as have many other choice sources of raw materials. So, our military, floated on debt to China, facilitates Chinese investment.

This is far beyond what the Japanese Military tried in the 1930's. The US military, ostensibly funded by US taxpayers, is really an international enterprise doing the bidding of an international elite that is only tangentially aligned with American interests.

Al Qaeda is only the most repellent of many opposition movements, but the omnipresence of US military promotes its popularity globally, because it is the most openly defiant.

The American "Empire" fell a long time ago. That's why we're so in debt.

Dec 30, 2009, World Doesn't Do Climate Change

The world has decided to do nothing about climate change, as if our world leaders were true Roman Senators of the fifth century, never acknowledging the terminal death throes of their Empire until it was too late.

Doing nothing is the effect of the memo of agreement that was only "noted" by the Copenhagen meeting on climate change. Climate negotiations are worse off with Obama than they were with Bush, because Bush refused to take part in Kyoto, so the Europeans led most of the world to a real agreement, even if it was inadequate. Now, with Obama's help, there is no agreement, at all: just words. And even the future process of negotiations is in doubt, whereas before it had been accepted and expected.

In the fifth century, Roman Senators could not believe that the Roman Empire was disintegrating before their eyes, so they didn't look. All they did was try to look after themselves, as in ingratiating themselves with the new barbarian kings. They didn't survive, anyway.

The reason Obama came with no real proposal to Copenhagen is because corporations and their representatives are able to block any real climate proposal by shouting on Fox and oiling Congress's and the administration's floors with cash. Oil, coal, transportation, and utilities all feel threatened--by any agreement. But just like the Roman Senators, they believe there is no danger: they don't want to look: acting to cut CO2 would cut their profits!

Either they don't care about succeeding generations, or they are highly skilled at constructing their own counter-factual "truth." Or maybe they're just intellectually lazy, or afraid of change. Fear of change might be the only way in which the climate change deniers are actually conservative.

Intellectually lazy: if you're very good at extracting oil, or leveling mountains for coal, you might not be good at making better solar panels. But decision-makers don't do either directly: they could use their capital to profit from new, green technology, even if they don't have direct know-how. Can't they see that unless they change, they're like dinosaurs? Their insistence on protecting dirty profits, in the face of all the data showing that we haven't much time, may go down in history as the greatest stupidity of all: if there is a history, at all, after us.

Perhaps the elites are dinosaurs, but they'll make us all into dinosaurs, as well--extinct, just like our predecessors. It seems as if my book, The Selfish Class, was more prescient than I realized: with no action against global warming until too late, our benign climate may go haywire, because of the selfishness and short-sightedness of our equivalent of the Roman Senators, our corporate elite.

Happy New Decade!

Dec 28, 2009, Barbarians and Bombers

Why would a young man from a prominent family, with excellent prospects, want to kill himself--and many other people--over Detroit, with a bomb?

Muslim Jihadis, for so Umar Abdulmutallab appears to be, remain inscrutable to us. However, there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of these young men (and women), who appear to have violent cases of rejection of the West, where they were/are apprentices to western science and technology--and witnesses to western wealth.

When I wrote Attila as Told to his Scribes, I had a sense that "the scourge of God" had caught something similar, although he had no visions of dancing virgins awaiting a hero's death. Attila wanted to destroy the Roman Empire--both Eastern and Western branches--and there have been persistent folktales of his youthful sojourn in Ravenna or Rome. Folktales, legends and myths do not come from nowhere. Given the royal hostage institution, used by both Empires at the time, it is likely that Attila was sent to Ravenna. This is especially likely, since his Roman counterpart, general Aetius, sometime ally and most successful opponent, had been hostage from there to the Hunnic court of Attila's predecessor.

Aetius came back with a predilection to hiring Hunnish mercenaries; they became the core of his power. Attila, it seems, went back to his plains determined to bring the Empire down. Unlike Umar Abdulmutallab, however, Attila also focused upon ripping off the wealth of both empires. The Goths and Vandals, Attila's more successful successors, wanted to preserve some imperial institutions under their control. They were like bulls in the china shop, however: preservation was left to Constantinople.

Where does this violence come from? In the Roman case, the "barbarians" were more warlike, and had invented new forms of warfare (primarily, cavalry charges) against which the famed Roman military machine became increasingly impotent. The jihadis appropriated the awful innovation of the Tamil Tigers: suicide bombing, against which there is no effective defense, except for persistent and exhaustive police work.

But suicide bombers are not capable of winning battles; instead, they attempt to demoralize the enemy; they are like artillery barrages and bombing sorties before a battle, but they aim at civilians, not military. Their goal is to soften up (terrorize) the people of the country. In the Middle East and South Asia, their unpredictable and devastating violence may be aimed at ultimate takeover (in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan); in the US and Europe their goal is to drive us out of their region. Their psychological effect, however, may make the West more determined to stay, and less inclined to scrutinize our role there.

Another goal may be to bankrupt us, if we are stupid enough to continue our current strategy. It's arrogant for us to think they are not succeeding.

Hubris is the disease of dying empires.

Dec 22, 2009, Democrats Vote With Democrats!

Back in my youth, I was a Political Science Professor at a not very prestigious state university in a far South state. One of my colleagues was even more New York than I was, and his specialty was Political Parties--American Political Parties (unfortunately, there only seem to be two that count).

Anyway, my friend Mark came running up to me one day, quite breathless with excitement. "Democrats," he asserted, "vote more with Democrats than they do with Republicans: in both the House and the Senate!"

He thought this so stupendous: he had deduced this with statistical analysis of roll calls: they didn't just say they were Democrats; they actually voted like it more of the time. Such an original finding!

What I had always wondered was: why don't Democrats vote with each other more often? He couldn't tell me why, but I could have quoted the aphorism: Democrats belong to no organized party.

Then, Republicans were also more heterogeneous: some voting with Democrats a significant minority of the time. Republicans, today, even the so-called "moderates" like Olympia Snow, vote with Republicans the overwhelming preponderance of the time. Since Obama became President, and the GOP lost both houses of Congress, it is rare for even one or two Republicans to vote with Democrats.

But Democrats like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln, supposed "moderates," vote with Republicans almost as often as they do with their own party, or at least it seems so (I won't do a correlation analysis of their roll calls).

So, it is a big deal, that all 60 Democrats and Independents voted together; it doesn't happen often, at least on partisan issues like health reform.

The big questions are: can Democrats stick together long enough? Can the House negotiate back a public option in return for Reid's abortion compromise? Will the whole thing end up as I wrote before: creating a huge new government subsidized market for oligopolistic health insurers? They might be more restricted but their profits will go up at everyone's expense.

The Senate vote demonstrated the corruption of the American political system--the 59th and 60th votes will probably be extremely costly to Americans, but without those votes, the Senate comes to a standstill.

I do think the Republican charge that this vote could become an albatross around Democrats' necks might prove accurate, if the final product is as flawed as Reid's bill.

Taxes will go up for the most vocal--the wealthy--but anyone could be subject to fines if they don't get health insurance. I know some people who will flat out rebel--instead of supporting the Democrats they had voted for before.

"The best lack all conviction/and the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Dec 19, 2009, Senates Destroy Empires

The Roman Senate inadvertently created the Roman Empire, and then became a shell of its former self from the time of Augustus until the 2nd Century. From the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180, until Diocletian in 284, competing Senatorial factions almost destroyed the empire, by involving themselves in succession politics: supporting factions in the armies, which fought continuous civil wars for more than a century. Diocletian (284-305), a military man, re-established authoritarian control over the whole empire, and set up what we would describe as a totalitarian system.

That system lasted until the end of the fourth century (395) when the Senate reared its ugly head again, in part because the succeeding western Emperors: Honorius and Valentinian III, were totally incompetent.

But even during Diocletian's reign, the Senate was party to a corrupt deal: the army and the Emperor would control all military matters, while the Senate would provide the money. It would therefore have control over taxation, and not surprisingly, Senators didn't tax themselves, but everyone else was impoverished--including, finally, the Emperor himself.

The US Senate is a very different institution in some ways, but appears to be as corrupt as its namesake. I'm not aware of a filibuster in the ancient body, but in the modern one, that evolving practice (it no longer requires reading the phone book aloud for hours at the podium) has created political and moral corruption of the highest order. Now, one Senator, like Joe Lieberman on health reform, can hold up the whole body. Don't go along with him, and there is no health reform, yet what he demands destroys the reform; the bill becomes a vehicle for enriching his patrons--the insurance industry--by creating a subsidized market of almost 40 million.

The same has been true of financial reform, and climate change legislation. In addition, like their predecessors in Rome, the Senate (and Congress as a whole) seems loath to interfere at all in military policy.

In all three cases, inaction amounts to making policy--to keep things disastrously the same--instead of responding to the very real crises we face.

The filibuster has a checkered history: it preserved slavery and then segregation long after either could have been dismantled; it did not prevent a civil war, but it has changed over the years. The current Republican tactic of calling for a cloture vote on virtually anything (except Defense until this week), has turned the Senate from a functioning legislature into an international laughingstock: it can't do anything.

If Congress is going to function as a policy-making body at all, the filibuster must go. Otherwise, the US Senate will be partly responsible, just like its Roman namesake, for bringing down the whole system: empire, State, and the world as we know it.

Dec 16, 2009, Health Care "Compromise"

How can health reform without a public option lower medical costs? It hands insurers a huge, new, subsidized, non-competitive market.If the reimbursement system were re-worked, so that providers are paid for outcomes, not for per procedure, and publicly subsidized health insurance companies--that's what they'd be--would have their rates controlled, or negotiated, and their overhead costs limited, then costs could come down! This system would force physicians and hospitals to find the most efficient, cost-effective means to cure the patient; health insurance companies would have to become highly efficient.

That's probably not what we're going to get.

As a current cancer patient, I have researched my options under my Medicare Advantage plan--and with some of the competition. (I've pretty much decided which treatment to take, and where). My impression has been: this is big business, and it's recession-proof. People continue to get cancer, etc.--maybe increasingly as we toxify the environment--that's good for business. That's the health insurance-provider paradigm.

What's health reform going to accomplish if it subsidizes low income people to buy insurance, fines people if they don't buy it, and doesn't have a public option? It creates a whole new (government subsidized) market for health insurance companies.

What does the health insurance industry give up for this windfall? Pre-existing conditions and other abuses we could all catalogue, but the "compromise" doesn't cap prices.

Have the Democrats become the party of the health insurance industry? You'd think so, but, with a few exceptions, Republicans receive more money from the industry than Democrats.

Why has this vaunted compromise been necessary: because of renegade non-Democrat, Joe Lieberman, for the 60'th vote.

Sixty votes shouldn't be necessary. The Majority Leader (Reid) could use the reconciliation procedure (50+1), since this issue will have massive impact on the budget; it's one in which majorities (public and Congressional) are clearly for. A tiny self-interested (legally corrupt?) minority should not be allowed to stand in the way.

If not "reconciliation," then we must have majority rule! The archaic, anti-democratic cloture-filibuster rule should be jettisoned (a Senate rule can be passed by a simple majority). Then, pass a real health care reform bill. Why reward the health insurance industry--after already doing the same for the banks?

Wouldn't it be better to have a Senate that could make decisions? The problem is: it wouldn't be better for individual Senators; with the 40-60 rule, their one vote becomes doubly important.

A few more compromises like this, and Obama and the Democrats will have unknowingly ushered in the fascist state for which the Republicans have been hankering for decades. Another nail in the imperial coffin.

Dec 10, 2009, Doubled World Consumption?

And it's a race to the finish!

Who will buy more cars: China or the US? China is buying more now, and probably for 2010, and will be permanently "in the lead" after 2014. Guess why: China's population is four times the US's.

And this is cause for celebration: more goods are being produced and sold?

Actually, the NYT article which prompted this reflection noted that although car sales in China rose over 40%, (while US sales fell 37%), gas consumption hardly budged: China is managing its "energy density" much better than we are, as in using policy to encourage smaller and more efficient cars to replace older less efficient ones.

Why this is a cautionary tale, however, is that China is clearly aiming to replicate the US living standard, if more efficiently arrived at, but as noted above: China has four times the US population.

Already, the globe has been strained by our industrial civilization with only one USA, one Japan and one Europe. If four more US-equivalents are added, and if India is not far behind for another three (US-equivalents), how will industrial (or post-industrial) civilization survive? How will the global eco-system survive? How will we continue to extract the needed minerals, energy sources and water, when world consumption more than doubles?

What about all the people who are neither in the developed world, nor the rapidly developing one? What about African countries, or Latin American ones, or about other Asian and Eastern European countries? Competition for resources will become fiercer as rising commodity and energy prices illustrate. Resource rich countries can either enrich themselves, or be bought off by suborning the elites: which is what we're attempting in places like Iraq.

Poor countries without substantial resources will just be out of luck; such competition will create huge and rising costs to development.

But with world consumption more than doubling (at least 2.33 times) post-industrial civilization is obviously not sustainable. The only way it could be maintained would be if people could commercially extract minerals and materials from other planets, and the moon. Mineral extraction now, from the moon or Mars, involves a few pounds of random material at the cost of billions of dollars. That's how feasible the space "option" is for the foreseeable future.

What is the solution? At some point, everyone will have to live a much more restricted lifestyle than we do now. That will probably be accomplished by economic collapse, not by voluntary agreement: humans don't seem capable of agreeing on such a course voluntarily, although we can hope.

One way or another, the world will reach a new Dark Age--for those who survive.

Dec 9, 2009, Afghanistan's Civil War

The Afghan war is actually a civil war that has been going on for 40 years! The roots of it go back centuries.

The Saur Revolution (1979) established a pro-Soviet, Tajik dominated state, but the USSR was ousted from the country in 1989. Afterwards, guerrilla forces from the Tajik/Uzbek northern parts of Afghanistan, fought for power against Pashtun forces from Afghanistan's south. The Pashtun Taliban won control of almost 95% of the country by 2000.

Pashtuns, historically called Afghans, represent 39-42%, the Tajiks about 27-34%, the Hazaras and Uzbeks each about 9% of Afghanistan's population.

The US invasion (2001) ousted the Pashtun Taliban, and installed American allies: the Tajik-Uzbek based Northern Alliance.

The Taliban and the Northern Alliance are still fighting! The only thing that changed was that, because the Taliban was stupid enough to snub its nose at the US and shelter al Qaeda, the US intervened in the civil war and installed the opposition.

Now the US is involved in fending off the Taliban, i.e. the Pashtun side of the civil war, and supporting the Tajik-Uzbek allies. Precisely because the Taliban are a native-grown Pashtun movement, they can control large parts of Pashtun Afghanistan (the South and East). They can also attack the non-Pashtun parts, since there are Pashtun settlements everywhere in Afghanistan. They can easily attack the central government, as well, because large parts of the country--and neighboring Pakistan tribal areas--are dominated by Pashtuns. That includes Kabul's environs, even though the capital is more ethnically mixed.

While Hamid Karzai is a Pashtun, his government's control (such as it is) depends upon former members of the Northern Alliance in large parts of the country--and on US/NATO forces.

The US has intervened in an ongoing civil war: different ethnic groups have been vying for power in Afghanistan for generations. During most of this period, governments in Kabul have been dominated by Pashtuns; the latter consider themselves the true Afghans, the others as interlopers, or heretics if they are Shiites, like the Hazara.

Foreign interventions in civil wars are rarely successful; civil wars are settled by the people of the country. The Taliban may be brutal, but the Pashtun code, which prevails in present-day Afghanistan, is nearly as awful as the horrendous sex discrimination enforced by the Taliban: women are secluded in their homes and routinely beaten, even in Kabul.

The dominant Taliban faction rejects al Qaeda support (they're foreigners, too) and asserts its interests to be solely in Afghanistan.

So, the generals have sold Obama a faulty bill of goods: we should leave the Afghans to settle their own disputes. Unfortunately, we won't; the US appears set to follow the USSR's path: down the tubes.

Dec 3, 2009, Obama Sandbagged For Empire

It's true, while campaigning, Obama said Afghanistan was a war we had to win, but that was before Taliban advances and Karzai stealing his election. Obama seemed smart enough to see the reality out there.

Robert Parry points out that Obama's early appointments: Gates to Defense and Hillary to State determined the Afghan "surge." They promoted the appointments of Generals Petraeus and McChrystal, counter-insurgency specialists. Then, McChrystal used his "assessment" and strategic leaks to help Clinton and Gates overcome the more dovish members of Obama's security team (Biden and Eichenberry) in favor of escalation. I said something similar on Nov. 10th about the two Generals.

In his speech, Obama used the tired old argument that al Qaeda threatens us from Afghanistan. Even our Intel is saying al Qaeda has decentralized, and is more a brand than an organization. Further, our drones have killed more than half its leadership in Pakistan. Obama's people were making these arguments in October, but in his speech, Obama acted as if the Taliban and al Qaeda were joined at the hip. Some factions may be allied, but to claim all are is deceptive and wrong.

Further, after the drone war (piloted from Colorado, taking off within Pakistan), it is absurd to warn, in dire terms, of a Taliban takeover enabling al Qaeda to re-establish itself in Afghanistan! Al Qaeda is safer in its caves in Waziristan, in Quetta, and in lightly-governed places like Somalia and Indonesia. Why lay itself open to drone attacks any more than it has already? And the more nationalistic Taliban don't want them.

As I predicted on Nov. 27th, Obama "split the difference," announcing a surge and the beginning of a withdrawal within a few seconds of each other. He hopes to buy off both doves and hawks; neither is pleased.

Obama was sandbagged by Gates, et al. Consider: an extra $30 billion next year, to be spent on this surge is money we won't be able to spend to rebuild our economy. Furthermore, war diverts idealism and energy from needs at home.

Military buildups may be short-term economic stimuli, but they are expensive not only in terms of the actual number of dollars, but in terms of the many more jobs that could be produced for the same amount of money in civilian enterprises. The latter jobs could enrich the nation, like building alternative energy sources, instead of throwing money down the drain as "military consumption." Economists talk of "opportunity costs:" billions going to the military cost much more than the billions counted in the Government's budget.

Over-expenditure on the military is what almost all failing empires do. It weakens them further, and the US is no exception.

Dec 3, 2009, Another Outrage: Afghanistan? Honduras

Maybe we "animals" have been deceived--the way the pigs hoodwinked the other animals in Animal Farm.

I thought Barak was thoughtful, a moderate progressive. But everywhere I turn, there is another policy that reeks of mollifying and toadying to the status quo ante.

Sending more and more troops to Afghanistan is only one of these capitulations, or betrayals. Oh, yes, he'll begin to withdraw them by 2011, but the operative word is begin.

Another outrage was the bank bailout that leaves bankers even wealthier than before, while unemployment and mortgage defaults continue to climb. Financial reform is left to someone like Desperate Dodd. I could also list landmines (we won't foreswear them) and preventive detention, although most military commissions have been decommissioned.

But what's beginning to smell worse than all of these is little, unimportant Honduras. The coup government just held their "election" on November 28th, amid police and army repression, rigid restrictions on campaigning, as well as on free speech (people were threatened with jail if they campaigned for an election boycott). No international observers agreed to come; the legal President (Zelaya) was still holed up (or under siege) in the Brazilian Embassy, and the few independent observers said the turnout was a dismal 40%. The coup party said turnout was almost 62%. Incredibly the US State Department went even further, saying turnout was better than in the last Presidential election!

Yes, the US, with Obama as President, is positioning itself to recognize the newly "elected" government (the coup party won, of course), while virtually every other nation in the Americas and Europe continues to insist the election is illegitimate. An election controlled by the coup plotters, with what looked like a full police presence (supporters of the coup), raids against the opposition and who knows how much fraud (since no one was watching): that's considered legitimate?

But international business wants us to do business with the now more pliable Honduras. Perhaps, campaign funds are at stake.

In Orwell's Animal Farm, the pigs led the animals in rebellion against the farmer's oppression, but in the end, they became the oppressors, acted just like the farmer and other humans--and then became them.

I hope that's not a metaphor for our present political system, but it begins to feel like it.

The institutional forces are too strong for any one individual to overcome, especially someone like Obama, who has a proclivity to buy off all his critics. The institutions: the Pentagon and large corporations, including the media, represent huge economic forces in this country, and their interests are clear, despite their peace through strength rhetoric: long-term war and dictatorship boosts all of their budgets and their power.

Do they care about other national needs? Forgettaboutit.

Nov 30, 2009, Pakistan: Afghanistan's 500-Pound Gorilla

Most commentary about the impending "surge" in Afghanistan forgets the other main actor in this war: Pakistan. Its government could fall, or be overthrown by the military, in the midst of its offensives against the Pakistani Taliban.

While the Afghan government appears irretrievably corrupt, Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari and his party (PPP), have until now been shielded from corruption prosecution, by a National Reconciliation Ordinance signed by discredited former military dictator, Pervaez Musharraf. It has now expired. Corruption cases against Zardari and his supporters are highly likely. Further, his enhanced powers over Parliament and the PM (also a Musharraf legacy) are now under fire. It's likely the Supreme Court will rule against him.

It's now possible (likely?) that Zardari will be forced to resign, and the ruling PPP will have to call a mid-term election in which it would probably be defeated by the opposition. To muddy the waters further, the military (perhaps the real power in Pakistan) has not only withdrawn support from Zardari, but openly chafes at the "strings attached" to US foreign and military aid. There is popular, nationalist Pakistani opposition to them, as well.

It's highly improbable that the military will take kindly to Obama's expected warning against it, or its intelligence agency (ISI), to cease supporting Taliban elements fighting in Afghanistan: the ISI has a long history of backing Taliban factions to insure that India's influence doesn't dominate its western neighbor.

While Pakistan, a nuclear power, is no failed state like Karzai's Afghanistan, it's a weak, unstable and impoverished state: it hasn't had the economic success of India, its traditional antagonist, and the only stable state institution is the Army.

As a consequence, as Obama embarks on this new Afghan "surge," both of the US's proposed main partners are extremely wobbly. These are the partners whom Obama will have to count upon to take over the fight.

So, how likely is it that Pakistani and Afghan governments can be strengthened enough that they will be able to carry on, when Obama, or a successor withdraws American troops?

Consider what Pakistan is being asked to do: mount bloody offensives in which large numbers of its own citizens will be killed, in order to support offensives spearheaded by the US on the other side of the border. Pakistan's military has been driven to attack the Pakistani Taliban because of the latter's intransigence, and aggression. Will it continue to do so, if the Taliban sues to negotiate?

It's much more likely, that intensification of the Af-Pak war will de-stabilize all the participants even further--including the US. The region is a graveyard of empires.

Will the US be next?

Nov 27, 2009, To Get the (Afghan) Job Done

, said the President of his plan. With 34,000 more troops? With a new strategy? With a concerted effort to cut corruption? That's what Obama promised, in a news conference.

Is it realistic? Hell no! The troops added to the existing 68,000 would not be enough. A total of 102,000 American military in Afghanistan might be enough to secure a province or two, but Afghanistan is a large, ethnically complex and geographically difficult country.

It's also difficult politically. Will attempts to clean out corruption succeed? How can they, when the American military is forced to participate in it? More troops will mean more opportunities for the Taliban, or its allies, to extort more money or the new troops won't get their supplies.

Aid programs can't succeed until there is adequate security, but it's unlikely that American troops can provide it, nor is it likely that Afghan police and army can be reliable (or incorruptible) enough to fill in the large gaps, either--especially given the endemic corruption (and perhaps, subversion).

The sole up-side to Obama's apparent plan for Afghanistan is his call for an outline for withdrawal, and "decision points," where that or other options will be considered.

Obama prefers the Congressional tactic of splitting the difference among the loudest interests: his plan probably gives the military most of what it wants; we'll see if State gets what it wants (a larger civilian aid program). The peace lobby will get a withdrawal outline. So, everyone should be paid off, right?

Wrong. The Afghan war is doomed. What Obama may hope, is that his plan will buy off his critics, mollify his supporters, allow Democrats to win in 2010 and for him to be re-elected in 2012.

And after that, he'll get out?

The problem is, until the military gets its ass kicked, which wouldn't look pretty, it runs the show. Obama has to give them most of what they want; they are too politically powerful--and did you notice that McChrystal headed an assassination unit in Iraq? This really goes back to the military buildup begun by Carter, added to by Reagan, and then by each President since.

We'll withdraw from Afghanistan the way we withdrew from Vietnam. Instead of "Vietnamization," it will be "Afghanization," increasing the size of the Afghan military so that it's capable, theoretically, of stopping the Taliban. We'll say, the Afghans have to defend themselves.

Remember the scenes on the rooftop of the Saigon Embassy?

Just keep those helicopters ready!

Nov 23, 2009, Americans Would Rather Kill than Cure

Congress didn't have anything like the health care debate about the Defense budget; it was unanimously approved in the Senate Appropriations Committee for the 2010 Pentagon budget. The bill has a price tag of $636 billion, including $128 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but that's for one year.

By contrast, the Senate health care bill would cost $849 billion over ten years, in other words $85 billion per year--versus $636 billion. Yet the health care bill will save money, help people, make them more productive and not kill people.

And yet the health care bill is the thin wedge of Socialism, say Republicans; one Republican Congressman voted for it, and no Republican Senators.

It's not a perfect bill; it's not really a very good one. Given Republican opposition, it may come as a surprise, but it gives the health insurance industry a huge windfall: with subsidies for those who can't afford coverage and fines for those who don't sign up; there will be millions of newly insured, and the companies will pocket most of the proceeds with or without a public option.

So, why can a Defense appropriation of seven and half times the magnitude of this fiercely fought health care bill sail through Appropriations with nary a nay?

Who lobbies for healthcare reform? There are industries that favor it, because with our current system they're uncompetitive in world markets; increasing healthcare costs squeeze profits. Also, lots of people want and need healthcare reform: the present system is a mess. But there are powerful industries that profit from the status quo: health insurers, pharmaceutical corporations, and the provider industry: hospitals, doctors, pharmacists. Except for some of the latter two, all fear they might lose from the proposed reforms. Democrats have tried to buy them off, which is one reason why reform won't save half as much money as it could--if it mandated payment for outcomes (cures) rather than for each procedure.

Who lobbies for Defense? The military does so in subtle ways, but the defense industry isn't subtle, at all: its defense contracts are cash cows that just keep producing money-milk. Congresspersons and Senators have their own interests: bringing home valuable contracts and jobs to their state or district.

Who lobbies against defense? A few hippies, Quakers, "peaceniks," and "the left." See how many of them voted against the Defense Appropriation in the Senate?

A majority of the public may be against both wars, but their "lobby" consists mostly of letters, phone calls, demonstrations and emailed petitions.

It's no contest, obviously. So, the US lavishes the military, and then, surprise, it has little left over. That's why empires rot from the inside out.

Nov 20, 2009, Obama's Afghan Anticorruption Drive a Fraud

How can Obama not know that the US pays for safe passage and government cooperation in Afghanistan? He also has to know that Karzai's own brother is one of the biggest grafters.

So, what is this BS that the Karzai government has to "clean up its act?" Or what?

The whole system is corrupt; that's how it works, and that's one of the reasons why the Taliban are making inexorable progress: as bad as their previous rule was, it was not corrupt. They are an effective movement, and they wrap themselves in the Afghan nationalist mantle. Karzai is too compromised by graft, and by his association with the occupiers, which is how more and more Afghans see the US-NATO troops.

So, what proof of clean up will it take for Obama to give the military and the hawks some of what they've been clamoring for: more troops?

Here is the simple mechanics of how the US funds the Taliban: it pays contractors to truck in supplies; the Taliban controls the roads they drive, so the contractor pays off the Taliban to pass by; he even figures the payments in his contract: it's a cost of doing business. Everything is trucked in. If the trucker doesn't pay, the Taliban hijacks the shipment, seizing for itself whatever military materiel it needs. It's estimated that the Taliban makes more on this trade than it does on its control of the world's heroin, which it taxes at the source. The costs for supplies like diesel fuel are astronomical, but the US military pays it: it's the cost of--doing business.

The Taliban's take is probably not confined to trucking. I wouldn't be surprised if all foreign forces are indirectly paying the Taliban for their own security.

So, who's corrupt here? We have corrupt American defense contractors, too, who routinely rip off Uncle Sam with shoddy work, over-billing and outright fraud. It's rarely prosecuted. It's just a cost of doing business.

So, Obama won't withdraw, but he probably won't give the military as many troops as they want, either. We'll be "fighting with one hand tied behind our backs," Republicans will say.

And they'll be right! With both hands, though, we'd still lose, eventually. The only way to have clean hands is to leave, while offering civilian aid to be administered by the UN, or USAID, not the army.

Yes, the Taliban probably would come back, maybe in a coalition. But al Qaeda would likely stay in its caves: we've already killed so many of its leadership with drones; it wouldn't dare set up training camps.

But if Obama gives the military some of what it wants (more troops), goodbye more reforms: forget about a second term. The wealthy will regain control, with a GOP resurgent--until the whole thing falls apart, like Rome in 476.

Nov 18, 2009, Maybe We Need A Revolution

Did anybody notice: there was a popular mandate for change last year that won the first convincing majority since Reagan? It was for progressive, not reactionary politics. Obama is still relatively popular--he's a rock star--but where is the progressive change?

In the economic collapse that was bailed out, it was not the people who won, but the banks. The banks on Wall Street are high flyers, and banksters are again earning billions in bonuses, because of daring trades backed by Uncle Sam (in bailout loans and an apparent guarantee that their banks are too big to fail).

Yet unemployment still rises, banks don't loan, and businesses don't invest.

And President Obama is faced with the Hobson's choice of escalating Afghanistan a little or a lot, or being damned as the President who lost Afghanistan, if he begins withdrawal, or agrees to negotiations with the Taliban.

Notice to all Americans: we do not own Afghanistan to lose: we created its monsters (the Taliban and al Qaeda) and made it easier for the former to prevail--as a nationalist movement against the invader. We never owned the country.

The most marked political feature of the Autumn of 2009, is that one year after a Democratic sweep, conservatives did well in off-year elections; in Congress, progressive Democrats are frustrated, Republicans are militantly united against government or Democratic-sponsored policy, and conservative Democrats use leverage to stop any change, unless it favors large corporate interests.

The bailout is inadequate, because of the Blue Dog Democrats, who cut the stimulus way below what it should have been. They oppose another. They're also against healthcare reform, unless it's anti-abortion and profits the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. That's why Lieberman opposes the public option.

If the Senate Democratic leadership finds some balls--maybe under their seats--they should oust Lieberman from his committee chairmanship and from the caucus, and, by majority vote adopt the "nuclear option" eliminating the filibuster that the Republicans threatened but never used.

Government by minority does not work! Especially, an obstructionist minority!

I'm willing to risk Republicans regaining the Senate someday and not being able to block them. We need a representative government, not a stalemated one. If Democrats acted like the majority they are, passed all their legislative initiatives, and stopped obstruction on re-balancing the courts, they'd win the 2010 elections in a walk. They would have confounded the cynics and fulfilled their ambitious mandate, including, cutting the banks back to size. That would be wildly popular.

As it is, Palin's Going Rogue, and the know-nothing aginners are winning, because either the government isn't doing anything--blocked by threats of filibuster--or caving to the corporate interests, including the military's.

At this rate, 476 (the fall of "Rome") could happen soon.

Nov 12, 2009, Obama's Veterans Day Walk

President Obama walked among the fallen, today.

He walked, alone, among the graves of the troops who had fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the two ongoing wars he has inherited. He didn't just go in and go out; he spent ten minutes there, walking among those graves, obviously reading the names and dates, thinking about the young men and women who had died in these wars.

I hope he thinks long and hard--and finds a way to withdraw instead of escalate. These men and women may have believed they were doing good, but, in the case of Iraq, at what cost--to Americans and the US, and especially to the many millions of Iraqis, whose lives we upended, or ended?

In Afghanistan, what is worth fighting for to justify the deaths of these men and women? The government is incredibly corrupt, irrelevant and barely tolerated. It is also almost as repellently conservative as the Taliban, as witnessed in the Shiite marriage law signed by Karzai, which legitimized marital rape and removed almost all rights from women in Shiite families. As brutal as they are, the Taliban might be welcomed by a lot of Afghans: the current government is so bad.

If the US had stayed in China, and supported Chiang-Kai shek with several hundred thousand troops, do you think we could have stopped the Chinese Revolution? Karzai's government is at least as corrupt as the Chinese Nationalists in the run up to 1949. And we think we can stop the Taliban, no matter how repellent, by supporting Karzai?

What really keeps us in Afghanistan? I hope, Obama thought about that as he walked among those graves. There are a few economic interests: defense industry sales and a pipeline route--as much a strategic interest: a route avoiding Iran for gas and oil pipelines. There is the revival of the domino theory that says that if the Taliban take over in Afghanistan, Pakistan will also be at risk, and it's a nuclear state. A war-weary Afghanistan won't take over Pakistan! The Pakistanis are fighting off "their" Taliban, now that they realize they endanger the Pakistani State. If the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis, who have covertly supported them, would feel they had won over India, which has supported Karzai and the US.

We might have thought we were promoting democracy, but Karzai's corrupt re-election--internationally confirmed--makes clear that the government of Afghanistan is no paragon to be artificially maintained at the expense of billions of dollars and thousands of lives of Americans and Afghans.

If the Taliban came back, al Qaeda would not march right behind them. What's left of them would stay in the securest caves in Waziristan, where they are now. If drones can pick them off among all those crags, they'd have no problem destroying them if they set up an open camp.

Mr. President, bring our troops home: neither war is worth it.

Nov 11, 2009, Dodd's Change You Can Believe In

Senator Dodd has shown rare courage. He seems willing, as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, to go head to head with the industry he oversees. Compare him to fellow Chairman, Baucus, who tried for months to compromise health care away, and finally came up with a bill the Majority Leader had to rewrite.

Senator Dodd has actually come up with a comprehensive (over 1100 pages) program for regulating the financial industry; it goes beyond the bill that's been progressing through the House, and beyond what the White House suggested. Dodd proposes a single agency to oversee the banking industry, relieving the Fed and the FDIC of regulatory power, and giving this new agency power to break up institutions "too big to fail." He also proposes, along with the White House and the House, to establish a Consumer financial watchdog agency, to look after consumers' interests, including the power to monitor credit card services--and card interest rates. The White House approves his plan.

About the only thing Dodd's proposal doesn't do is re-establish Glass-Steagall rules to keep commercial banking separate from investment banks. It should, but Dodd will be lucky if he gets his bill out of committee. Whether there is some way to get it past the 60-vote barrier is a whole different question. Maybe, as a bill about financial regulation, it could slip through in the reconciliation process. It's unlikely he'll get a single Republican vote, unless this bill is so watered down it becomes meaningless. To get conservative "Democrats" to vote for it will be an uphill battle, too.

What's refreshing is that Dodd is willing to try. He's written a bill that is sure to elicit howls and gnashing of teeth on Wall Street, and among bankers nationwide. He's Chairman of the Banking Committee; you'd expect him to be making nicey-nice with bankers, a la Baucus vis a vis health insurance companies. He probably receives enough money from the finance industry in campaign funds, but he's willing to take them on, anyway.

Here is a Democrat who is actually willing to stand up for something he believes in: that the financial system has to be re-regulated to prevent anything like the 2007-2008 collapse from ever happening again. He's also not daunted by the success (and power) some big firms like Goldman-Sachs have had in cashing in on the "recovery."

While JP and Goldman were crowing, Dodd was putting together a new regulatory structure that would prevent them from doing it again.

Maybe Dodd will embolden the Milquetoasts. It's his kind of spirit that the Democrats need if they are really going to bring "change you can believe in."

Nov 10, 2009, Afghanistan Again!

People who know the situation on the ground in Afghanistan insist: more troops will simply fuel the insurgency. Yet, that's the only course considered by President Obama.

The course may have been set when Obama appointed General Petraeus for theater commander, and General McChrystal for Afghan war commander. McChrystal and Petraeus are known as counter-insurgency experts. Put counter-insurgency experts in charge and you get counter-insurgency.

However, effective counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, I've read, requires far more troops than even McChrystal's "low risk" scenario of 80,000 additional American troops: 600,000 troops are necessary, because of the size of the country, and its population.

Would 130,000 American troops and 50,000 NATO troops be adequate if the Afghans made up the difference? To 600,000? An attempt to expand the Afghan forces that much is doomed. Afghan forces are unreliable for a reason: Afghans may hate the Taliban, but they don't want Americans telling them what to do, either. Individual Afghan soldiers have turned on Americans even after fighting with them against insurgents. Furthermore, Afghanistan is a poor country; it can't afford a huge military; if its army and police were bulked up to 420,000, the state would be forever dependent upon foreign funds to maintain them. Afghans would resist and join the insurgency.

Americans should remember that Afghanistan is one of the few nations that violently and effectively fended off western empires in the colonial period. With our help, it did so again against the Soviets. Our help included supporting the creation of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

"Sources" indicate that Obama is considering a troop increase less than McChrystal's "medium risk" option (40,000), but more than his high risk option (20,000)--about 34,000--what can we conclude?

Obama listens to generals, but doesn't quite buy their arguments. And yet, he'll end up with almost 100,000 American servicemen in Afghanistan, far more than there are now, when non-military experts say we already have too many--enough to fuel the insurgency--but not enough to fight it.

Withdrawal is not an option because? The military says so; they're paid to fight, not to withdraw--until they're defeated. Again, the parallels to the Roman Empire and Tojo's Japan come to mind.

What would happen if we withdrew? The Taliban factions and warlords would make an uneasy peace. Women in Kabul and ordinary Afghans would again be oppressed, but most are already; they're also dodging bullets and bombs. But even if the Taliban won complete control, it's unlikely to invite al Qaeda to establish training camps. That's much too dangerous for any government; it would lay their country open to more attacks. Furthermore, the Taliban are nationalists; they want to control Afghanistan, not hand it over to Arab extremists.

If we withdrew, Afghanistan in 20 years might moderate and want to trade--like Vietnam, now!

Nov 4, 2009, Bad Things Happen

Voters do stupid things, sometimes, like return Republicans to the majority because Democrats in the County Legislature were unable to stop the Republican executive from raising taxes: the Republican minority sustained his vetoes. The Republicans made rising taxes an issue. Now they will do what the executive demands: raise taxes even more to pay off his pals.

Voters can be scared into doing something wrong, like undoing marriage equality in Maine, because negative campaigns of fear can be stronger than positive ones like justice.

Sometimes, voters elect people for the right reasons, like the New Jersey and Virginia governorships: New Jersey's Corzine is a billionaire who couldn’t get a handle on property taxes; Virginia's Deeds was a weak candidate, so the Republican candidates won against them, as they should have. On the other hand, in New York City, Bloomberg was able to buy his way to a third term, but only barely, despite (with his own money) outspending the Democrat by 10 to one.

Perhaps billionaires won't automatically win elections. That's positive, at least.

Other bad things happen to people. I have always had exceptionally good health; I eat right, exercise, work outdoors and even do heavy lifting at age 70. I joked (seriously) that my good fortune was due to a wonderful sex life with my loving, younger wife. Now, I move into the category of the ailing: I have prostate cancer. I have to decide on treatment and I may have to say goodbye to sex; at very least it will change dramatically; it will no longer be an effortless joy.

Good things happen, too. My mother, at 96, had lived in her house, where she had run a school, for 64 years. This Monday I moved her to a small home; everyone grieved at her leaving, but she suddenly seems more aware, engaged and happy than she has for the last two years of her slow deterioration. And now, while I battle my own ill health, I will have to worry less about hers.

What does this have to do with the parallels between the Roman and American Empires? Nothing, really, except the part about billionaires in politics: they parallel the Roman Senators, who selfishly cornered wealth and power and contributed immeasurably to Rome's downfall. Perhaps Corzine's loss and Bloomberg's close finish are heartening: that we may not be going the way of Rome. But they are small silver linings, still, in a depressing day, now clouded over and dingy.

Oct 30, 2009, The Pentagon's Perpetual Employment Plan

Ike predicted something like this: give the military a huge establishment, and it will find justification for it--way into the future. A Pentagon protégé of Generals Petraeus and McChrystal has found a way.

Dr. David Kilcullen posits The Long War as the necessary strategy to counter the threat of terrorism and radical Islam. He's not talking about another 5 to 10 years long in Afghanistan, or Pakistan: that's just the beginning. He advocates a global war, or at least one that includes most of Asia, and Europe--those Europeans have provided safe havens for terrorists; they've insisted on extending human rights--and a war that will last beyond all our lifetimes: 50 to 100 years.

If I build bookcases, I'll buy books to fill them: if the US builds a Military Establishment that requires a constant and increasing infusion of half a trillion to a trillion dollars, it has to find a mission to sustain it. Since the Cold War is over, it needs something else. Kilcullen has found it.

Miraculously for him, and for the military, it's a self-reinforcing system: we go "over there" to fight terrorists, which generates more terrorists who are angered by American intervention, thereby justifying more "hard fighting" and more troops, and therefore bigger budgets, which in turn create more terrorists whom the military will have to fight--until?

This is hubris. It's also the path so many empires have taken: they exhausted themselves: constant warfare against created enemies, those from whom they have taken, those beyond, who might have taken, instead. The long war's only difference makes the concept even worse: the enemies are within other states, but usually not the state, itself.

Does Kilcullen, or any Pentagon planner, ever think of the economic consequences of such a strategy? After all, his war could just as easily be a 200 year war, except that generation after generation of Americans would have to be taxed more and more heavily--especially since the United States is not going to be able to borrow so easily, any longer. This is so reminiscent of Rome!

This isn't about the nastiness of the Taliban; or even al Qaeda; it's about fighting Muslim "extremists," stretching far into the future. Why are they the 50-years enemy? We don't have to explain this: we've been taught to believe it.

If we left the Middle East alone, and just continued to buy oil from them until we could do without, the US--and the rest of the world--would be a lot better off.

Radical Islam cannot take over the world, and if we left it alone, it would moderate in time--like Communist Vietnam.

If that sounds like retreat, it is: graceful retreat. The only empires that continue in a graceful after-life are those, like the UK, that retreated when they knew it was time.

Oct 23, 2009, Headlong Into Afghanistan

'What we did today was to discuss General McChrystal's overall assessment, his overall approach, and I have noted a broad support from all ministers of this overall counterinsurgency approach," said NATO secretary general, Anders Rasmussen, who has favored troop increases since before his August 2009 appointment to the position.

This means more troops to Afghanistan, despite all the protests against escalation.

Why will there probably be an escalation, even though polls in the US and in NATO countries show growing majorities opposed?

It's because the generals are for. As I've noted in earlier posts, the US is becoming like Tojo's Japan, a place ruled by a military that overawes civilian control when it comes to military issues. Generals trump public opinion: the public only pays for everything. Generals trump Congress: Congress is just this annoying second body of government, one that might be too responsive to the irresponsible, i.e. the people.

Furthermore, Generals and Defense officials can pressure Presidents (or Prime Ministers, etc. in the case of NATO). In the US, especially, if a General recommends and a President doesn't follow, then he's "weak" and "indecisive." So, Obama's delay can be seen for what it is: an attempt to find a way out of a cul de sac set up by McChrystal and Petraeus. They've presented their case as the only way out, and if Obama doesn't take it, the ensuing disaster will be on his head.

Their argument seems to trump the one that says: we'll end up spending a trillion, lose thousands more Americans, trash Afghanistan and eventually be forced out in ignominy, anyway--but that won't happen until after more years of war. So, in the meantime, it's easier to follow the General's prescriptions.

If Obama were to begin drawing down troops, and negotiating, he'd be accused of betrayal, of accommodation with the Devil--"Islamo-fascists" are the contemporary equivalent--of Munich, of leaving our "allies," i.e. the corrupt Afghan government and military, in the lurch and of destroying America's "credibility." You think the attacks in the health care debate have been over the top! Republicans might even try to mount an Impeachment effort.

By escalating troops, all the above can be delayed, probably for the next President, since Obama could find himself in a similar position to the one that forced LBJ not to run for re-election. But he might not, which makes the escalation strategy a more attractive gamble than withdrawal.

Afghan escalation could be the final nail in the US imperial coffin, but it might take awhile. Rome didn't immediately fall after the terrible defeat at Adrianople (378); it took 98 years--history moved more slowly then--but the die had been cast. If we jump headfirst into Afghanistan, alea iacta est (the die is cast).

Oct 21, 2009, US Politics Could Doom the World

The News isn't good: everywhere you look, except the crazy stock market.

Profit increases reported by many corporations are not from sales, but because of layoffs--cutting labor costs to the bone. The banks reporting high profits: JP Morgan-Chase, Goldman Sachs, are not profiting from lending out money to individuals or businesses, but from loaning bailout money to the Fed (an automatic 3.75% return) and speculating just as wildly as they did before the September '08 crash--but with public money.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to rise, housing starts fall and defaults are increasing.

While there are some positive developments on the international scene--talks with Iran and nuclear weapons talks--things aren't going well, otherwise.

Afghanistan is getting worse: needing a runoff election, an inept, corrupt Afghan government faces an increasingly successful Taliban. Pakistan's army is finally fighting back against Islamic extremists: their Taliban, al Qaeda and the Islamic groups focused on Kashmir, have all been cooperating in attacking the Army and State. But it's not clear whether Pakistan's offensive will succeed: there will be millions of refugees that could swamp the nation.

And no one knows what Obama is going to do about Afghanistan, except that he's ruled out the only sensible alternatives: withdrawal, or major reductions in force (like the Go Deep strategy--See blog below). Even Biden's proposal--more drones, fewer conventional military actions--would increase hostility towards the invaders and fuel the insurgency; but it would cost fewer American lives.

Congress is another disaster. Despite a super-majority, Democrats can't seem to pass reforms: while people are for reforms initially, the corporate interests involved--health insurance, defense, finance, coal and oil--are able to throw so much money against reforms, that popular opinion begins to turn against them. Meanwhile, Congressmen and Senators are wined, dined and funded by the same interests. It appears that no meaningful reforms will be allowed to pass, unless they increase the respective industry's profits.

And then this: despite increasingly dire reports of accelerating global warming, there will be no Copenhagen global warming treaty this year, no agreement on cutting green house gas emissions: yet time gets shorter and the planet gets hotter.

Why no treaty? Because of the non-functional and corrupted American political system: the US Congress--afraid of oil-coal-gas-manufacturing interests--cannot agree upon a meaningful climate change bill, so our government says it can't promise anything Congress won't pass: honest, but shameful. Why doesn't Obama commit to pushing a necessary treaty through Congress?

If Obama can't, or won't, sell Congress (and the people) on combating worsening global warming, then surely we are all doomed! The Romans only promoted deserts surrounding the Mediterranean (See page on Ephesus); we'll leave the planet a burnt cinder!

Oct 19, 2009, Go Deep: Afghan Exit Strategy?

A Defense Intelligence Agency officer, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, is arguing against not only a troop buildup in Afghanistan, but for withdrawal of most troops except Special Forces teams, and training/security units in Kabul. He proposes a shift from "Counterinsurgency" to "Counter-terror." He calls his idea Go Deep (vs McChrystal's Go Big), in which the Special Forces teams roam the countryside, hunting for Taliban and al Qaeda, but have no fixed bases against which the Taliban could mount offensives. The residual forces, in Kabul, would aid Afghan forces, contribute to their buildup, and to local security. However, Davis also points out that it would be irresponsible to put 400,000 Afghan troops in the field: it would take almost 100,000 US troops to train them, and it would cost more to maintain than Afghanistan's GDP; what would happen when we left?

Further, he warns, as have many others, that additional troops (the 40-80,000 McChrystal requests) would intensify Afghan hostility, and energize the insurgency even more.

The basic idea of Go Deep is to turn the war on its head: instead of the Taliban attacking fixed targets and units, the Special Forces teams would be attacking the Taliban wherever they find them, and the Taliban would lose conventional military targets in the countryside. One American goal could be to block Taliban movement into more populated areas, and keep the fighting in sparsely populated areas.

So, would the bulk of Afghanistan be free of warfare? Doubtful. It sounds as if Taliban advances have gone too far: they're attacking in many regions where they were nonexistent a year or two ago. On the other hand, the counter-terror units would hunt in more areas--spreading hell discriminately--outside Kabul.

A Go Deep tactic might make sense as part of a two-pronged strategy, the other prong being to simultaneously negotiate with the Taliban, which has put forward an opening proposal: all foreign troops out, internationally monitored elections, and a legitimate Taliban role in the election and, possibly in the ensuing elected government. The strategy would put the Taliban on the defensive, put fewer American GI's at risk, and make it more attractive for the Taliban to negotiate an end to the 30 years war.

Since misguided US policies in the past caused the creation of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, it may be responsible to maintain some kind of presence until there is a settlement (it's unlikely the expected runoff "election" will provide one). This approach would get most troops out, would save US "face" and would more quickly move Afghanistan to the negotiating table. It makes possible a graceful exit from Empire.

Oct 16, 2009, Depressons are Good for the Army

And Navy, Marines, and Air Force. All met their recruiting goals for the first time since the military went to an all-volunteer force in 1971. It's not a coincidence that this depression/recession is the deepest since the Great Depression, and that unemployment is still climbing, and is expected to rise to over 10%. If a young man or woman is desperate enough, has a family he or she can't support, or has no other chance of employment, why not go into one of the services?

Because he, or she, would be at risk of being shot or blown up? If they live in dangerous inner-city neighborhoods, the risks of Afghanistan or Iraq may seem less immediate. If they come from remote, rural areas, the theoretical risks they face may seem far removed, compared to the bleak prospects they face at home. Furthermore, that they could overawe other peoples elsewhere in the world, might even appeal to frustrated young men, stymied at home.

In other words, the unprecedented success of the military's recruitment is not a good sign; it signals how badly off people are. It will also make the military more self-confident in pushing its ultimate agenda: war everywhere, all the time. It makes the proposed expansion of forces in Afghanistan (40,00 more, or even 80,000 more) that much more feasible.

Despite the dizzying Dow (currently at 1087!), the US and the world are in deep doo-doo. Let me count the ways: unemployment keeps rising; credit is short; income is falling; housing defaults are rising and haven't peaked yet; Congress dithers over pusillanimous legislation on climate change; is doing the same on financial regulatory reform--80% of derivatives traders would be exempted; and yes, we seem to be stuck in Iraq and likely to be committed to supporting a failed state in Afghanistan. And that's just the US! Oh, but maybe we'll eke out a minimally better health system than we have now.

In the world, new research shows that our damage to the environment is more extensive and intensive than scientists realized. In order to rectify it the US will have to go carbon cold turkey by 2020! That is, NO carbon pollution. Less egregious polluters may have a few more years of grace, before they too need to go cold turkey. Either that, or radical climate change may make a large part of the Earth uninhabitable.

Maybe the solution is to let the Taliban/al Qaeda prevail (they're getting closer in Pakistan and Afghanistan). They'd plunge us back into the Dark Ages: that would take us to carbon zero! For the few who survive.

Oct 15, 2009, Global Warming Must Change Us

Today is blog action day, drawing attention to global warming: http://www.blogactionday.org

The Earth is warming. But last night in the Hudson valley, it was in the 20's F.; snow is predicted. It's too early for winter; overall warming doesn't result in warmer temperatures everywhere. What warming has already done is drive more extreme weather. We've had the second coolest, wettest summer on record. Other places have had drought, floods, record heat waves, or high winds.

What causes climate change? Despite the deniers, there is broad scientific consensus that our industrial civilization does.

That's why economic policy discussions are almost surreal: the government has pumped trillions of dollars into banks, auto companies, insurance giants, and into the stimulus package--to restart consumption. Yesterday, the Dow closed above 10,000 for the first time since the 2008 collapse, and consumption edged up in August. Still, people are saving, not buying the way they used to, and unemployment and housing defaults are still rising. The stimulus was supposed to create green jobs and industries, but so far it has only prevented a portion of the employed from losing their jobs. It's too early to tell if the green economy is developing. For the Earth, the economic slowdown was a temporary gift.

What are not discussed in political circles are the implications of climate change to our lifestyle. How we use energy, how we live, in extensive suburbs and exurbs, how we grow our food and where, with energy-intensive inputs and pollution--all must change, and also how and where we produce manufactured goods.

We can't go blithely on, just the way we were: driving huge SUV's to get to jobs hours away from home, nor can the banks and holding companies keep on speculating away our economy.

Some people try to grow more of their own food; I do, without chemicals; that food doesn't have to be trucked across a continent to get to our tables.

This summer, I saw something encouraging in northern New York: farmer's markets everywhere; we need much more of that kind of local, less energy-intensive food, and other products.

While large corporations may nod towards lower impact production and distribution, their global reach is part of the problem: think of all those goods shipped across oceans, then trucked across continents. If global corporations are to survive (likely), they'll have to decentralize, producing for more local markets, using less energy in production, and less in transportation.

However, politics represents special interests best: they are highly organized, well funded--and against change: they made their fortunes under the previous dispensation. But if the status quo wins, billions will not survive.

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Oct 14, 2009, Depression, Recession or Recovery?

Nobody really knows. I predicted a depression back in late 2007, and the current "recovery" doesn't look very convincing. The stock market is fed on wishful thinking and speculation: "if it keeps on going up another few days, I'll make a killing." And then it goes down again.

But, joblessness keeps on going up. People are not spending. Consumer credit is reportedly way off. Banks are making money by lending money back to the government, money they borrowed from it.

Are businesses making money? Few are, unless they're in the extreme discount sector of an industry, like Walmart; their business typically picks up when people don't have much money to spend.

A conservative economic newsletter points out that a depression means that most of the jobs lost will not come back, because the economy is in for radical change. There may be new jobs in new industries, but the old ones are either dying, or artificially protected. New jobs could be in new green industries, new kinds of services, or even subsistence on small plots of land--modern day peasants.

The Obama idea of a stimulus was to incite growth in those new jobs; it's a worthy goal, although the American political and economic establishments are wary of anything smacking of what the French call dirigisme: the government "picking winners." It seems to be working in China.

The US, however, may be facing not just a Depression, but also a failure of will to change, even if change is absolutely necessary. The failure may not be with the majority of people, but with those who are organized: they have huge amounts of money backing their conservative resistance to anything but the status quo, the status quo in which they made handsome profits. That's what we see with the furious lobbying against health care reform, global warming legislation and financial sector regulation.

The US is cursed with over-mobilization and organization by the powers-that-were.

Change may only be possible if there is a popular revolution, or at least a spontaneous, nation-wide protest. But most Americans are too passive, or just don't realize how badly off we are. By the time they do, it may be too late. Not for meaningful health care reform, but for extricating ourselves from self-sabotaging wars, and for initiatives on the environment to ameliorate climate change. If we can't act soon for the latter, it could be too late; only the world won't experience the fate of Ephesus (see my page on Ephesus), but something far worse.

We are not in a crisis; we are at the beginning of what must be a transformation.

Oct 11, 2009, Sell America?

While the chatter is about Obama's Nobel (hope is in order, that he will fulfill the promise), conservative financial gurus, like Bill Bonner, are writing about doom, and about how the US will follow in Rome's footsteps (it had depression from the 300's until the 1950's). In fact, the founder of Agora Financial is saying: sell America, i.e its stocks, bonds, real estate, whatever, because? Because markets are disappearing, and all that stands between us and permanent depression are the government's provision of funds, and the banks' monetization of debt.

Bonner points out that banks are borrowing from the Fed at negligible cost (0.25%) and then lending back to it at 4%, making 3.75% profit for doing nothing. That's one of the reasons why capital is unavailable for businesses, especially small start-ups.

Another reason is that people are saving, not spending--if they have any money at all. The savings rate has gone from negative to a reported 8%, even though banks are paying virtually no interest. So, although, theoretically, those savings should be buttressing the capital markets, they are, in effect, going back to the government. Why would banks lend to small businesses (the ones who would start hiring and begin to reduce the 15 million unemployed), when there is such reduced demand for goods and services, i.e. consumption, the great driver of the US economy? Instead, banks can earn an easy 3.75% lending to the government.

So, what is the solution? Should we all just buy gold (up from below $1,000/oz to $1,057/oz in a few short weeks)? Even Bonner, an inveterate gold bug, predicts that gold will go down when stocks do, but just not as much.

Perhaps, what is at stake here is the whole model of a capitalist economy. If the US, like Rome before it, and Japan in the contemporary period, is entering a period of seemingly endless depression, what then?

Instead of continuing to bail out banks, the US should bankroll jobs directly, sending the money to start-ups, and/or worker coops and small businesses--and to new iterations of FDR's WPA or CCC. Money has to be put into the hands of people who will spend it in order to survive. So, the government should take what's left of the stimulus, and any new programs, and directly fund jobs for the millions who are unemployed, supporting businesses or programs that address the social needs that the Greed Generation ignored, as well as restructuring our energy markets and resource use, to green the economy.

What the government can do is to create demand where there is none: It isn't doing that by giving money to banks.

Oct 9, 2009, Bankster's Lament

Regulate Wall Street? What a silly idea! Don't you realize we are the golden goose; we lay golden eggs. We create billions of dollars out of nothing. Do you really want that to go away?

Oh, yes, there was a little problem last September, but forget about it! We've paid back part of the money Uncle Sam lent us, and the rest, well, it'll be repaid someday, with interest--unless we can twist a few arms down there in Washington to persuade them to just forget the whole thing. We're trying. After all, everyone can see we're doing the impossible. People go on about this stupid recession, but I ask you: what recession? We're making billions! Literally.

And what's all this stupid uproar about "excessive" bonuses? So shortsighted! Without those bonuses, we'll lose all the best and the brightest--yes, that's who we are--we will all go to, uhm, London, or Dubai, or even Shanghai--don't really think I'd like to live in Shanghai, but there you are.

There's this rumble about a "Consumer Financial Protection Agency," but that's just a stupid idea those Libruls thought up. If they don't like being poor, why don't they get rich? They think the Federal Reserve and the FDIC won't protect us--I mean, them? Just because we own the Federal Reserve, and just because the FDIC was set up to protect the banks, us that is--doesn't mean we need another government institution. Just think: another government bureaucracy. Every time you turn around, some bureaucrat is going to tell you: you're breaking some damn rule, or other.

I mean, they have this idea that our financial institutions don't do anything positive, just dream up these exotic derivatives to rip off everyone else. Of course we don't! We dream up these derivatives to make money. And if we make money, why, then, there's more to go around. We buy yachts, and million-plus houses, and fur coats, and condos at Vail, and vacations at, er, Crete--I mean, Hawaii. So, if they take the money away from us, you know, with these niggling regulations, why, where will it go? To job training, or welfare, or education, or healthcare--for losers? C'mon!

I'm a self-made man, and my Daddy, and my Grandpappy, they kept their money, too, but what's going to happen to all of us, if these Government Regulators try to tell us what we can't do?

Dammit, we deserve every cent we inherited! And every cent we manufacture out of thin air, with our genius!

What? You're worried that we'll just have to be bailed out again? That's ridiculous!

Oct 6, 2009, Capitalism Is Subversive

Capitalism, A Love Story is anything but love in Michael Moore's new film. He shows some of the devastation caused by Capitalism, and some of the immediate, populist reaction to the Paulson bailout. It takes awhile, however, for even Michael Moore to make a film, and events have proceeded since. We now have "tea parties" against the "Socialist" "African-born" Obama, and "government takeover" of health care and "our guns." The media gives these quasi-populist protests more credence than the genuine ones Moore documents. And he doesn't get very far in presenting Obama's apparent capitulation to Wall Street with the second bailout, either. Seen from that perspective, the film is bittersweet.

Moore points out that FDR's second (economic) bill of rights was never implemented here, but it was in Europe and Japan, as part of the American occupation and postwar reconstruction.

What Moore leaves out, however, is how American capitalism has been an aggressive intruder, pushed all over the world by US foreign policy, and its economic representatives in the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. He also neglected to point out, that despite its "conservative" supporters in the US, capitalism is probably the most radical and destabilizing of economic systems. It's also the most warlike: imperialism is a natural outgrowth of corporate capitalism, a point Moore refers to tangentially. Profits climbed during the Iraq war, and the most enthusiastic supporters of another surge in Afghanistan are also the most "corporate-friendly." Occupation of a poor country is highly profitable.

To capital, nothing is sacred, which is one of the reasons why priests and bishops denounced it in Moore's film as evil. It's also one of the reasons for international terrorism, especially among Muslims. Islam has anti-capitalist elements that may be as strong as those in Christianity (rich men, camels and heaven, etc., versus interest as usury), but Afghans, Saudis, and many other Middle Easterners also live in tribal, traditional societies. These are societies most radically disrupted by capitalism.

Moore barely touched on how capitalism has turned nature's plants and animals into patented private property, and how a company like Monsanto can force peasants or indigenous people to pay for seeds, even when the genetic material came from their traditional seed stocks. He neglected to point out how corporations like Disney and Google have subverted copyright law for their own profits.

Greed is central to capitalism; it is not just abuse by a few "bad apples." Capitalism is not "the market." Capitalism is not democratic: it is the dominance of society by the few very rich. A plutocracy.

A plutocracy ruled fifth century Rome: it didn't end well.

Oct 4, 2009, Buy Up the Opium in Afghanistan!

This was an anonymous proposal made in a commentary about the Afghan war. It makes a kind of crazy sense!

Instead of spending billions on the war ($65 billion projected in 2010), the US could spend $2-3 billions on buying up the opium crop in Afghanistan (supplying 80% of the world's heroin), which would double prices to the grower. If the US made certain the money went directly to the growers, who would lose?

The Taliban.

The Taliban sells opium on the illegal market to fund their prosecution of the war; they also use their market power to control the peasants who grow it. By controlling the opium trade, they extend their sphere of control over Afghanistan.

To deprive the Taliban of their market would be like depriving a conventional military of its fuel supply. The Taliban needs drug money to keep their recruits in the field, and especially, to arm them: guns, ammunition and explosives cost a lot of money, whether they are being smuggled in from Iran, China or other neighboring countries, captured in raids on armories, or purchased on the black markets.

Everybody but the Taliban would win.

The US could profit, but black market prices would fall, by establishing open, legal markets with guaranteed prices. Afghan farmers would win by earning legitimate profits at fair prices, and the US would be seen as a reliable, non-threatening customer--instead of an oppressor, or invader. The Afghan security forces would have an easier time maintaining security: the Taliban would have much less money to arm the terror against ordinary Afghans.

What would the US do with all this opium? Opium is not only the raw material for heroin, but for morphine and a lot of other drugs, most for painkillers, but not all. Painkillers are in short supply, but will be needed increasingly worldwide, as populations age. Therefore, the US could sell the opium to legitimate pharmaceutical companies, which manufacture legal painkillers. It could probably sell at lower prices than current legal suppliers.

The Afghan military, but decreasingly the US and NATO, would be enlisted to protect growers and the rest of the people from Taliban threats. This would become easier as the Taliban's money and armaments dry up. Americans could go home

Would a policy like this be tried? I doubt it. The US is irrational when it comes to drugs. We'll never get over the Temperance movement, AKA war on drugs. Our abolitionist approach to drugs, and our refusal to admit failure, could doom us to the Afghan quagmire, where we will sink, like so many empires before us.

Sep 30, 2009, The Military/Police Own US

I'm lumping the military and the police together, because they work together. Yes, there's still Posse Comitatus, but that doesn't really stop them.

Have you read accounts of Pittsburgh during the G20? The city was shut down: bridges, mass transit, most businesses closed down. Protest, while not expressly prohibited, became a forbidden exercise: people were arrested and beaten arbitrarily by police dressed up in armor, shields, helmets; demonstrations were broken up, even though all were peaceful until a few frustrated people broke some shop windows. The Leaders were protected from us, i.e. ordinary people objecting to the disproportionate resources controlled by the wealthy few.

And then there is foreign policy: the Pentagon dominates it, since its budget is more than twelve times as large as the State Department's. It's the military that is carrying out the majority of aid programs in foreign countries, even non-military aid. The aid is supposed to be overseen by a representative of State's AID, but the Pentagon is trying to get Congress to eliminate any civilian overview.

This brings us again to Afghanistan. The military appears to have boxed Obama into a corner where all he can do is order up more troops to be sacrificed to the altar of a "military solution," even if it's called "counter-insurgency."

In 1931, the Japanese military invaded Manchuria. The civilian government was cowed by the military, which used the Emperor to justify its imperial designs. In the fifth century, the Roman Emperor was a figure-head, who had to accede to every military demand--even though the military was steadily losing portions of the Empire through its use of Germanic mercenaries. Roman society was militarized even more than ours: the army nearly destroyed Thessalonika, and its inhabitants, because they had had the temerity to dishonor the imperial statues.

At least our police didn't trash Pittsburgh and its inhabitants. But don't think that isn't possible, especially if political protest to the three-day repression do not materialize.

The repressive apparatus flexed its muscles in Pittsburgh, even unveiling a new Iraq-tested "crowd control" weapon: ear-splitting noise. It also rounded up people simply because they were there: in one case just getting out from a movie!

While the US Supreme Court will find corporations have the "freedom" to express their First Amendment rights in elections, clearly, ordinary citizens cannot express those rights at a G20 summit, nor at any other venue where our rulers might take offense.

The last stage of the American Empire may have begun: like Diocletian's, the Empire will be Fascist and Totalitarian, not Democratic. The Military is in control, not Obama.

Sep 21, 2009, Obama, Afghanistan and Tojo's Japan

A former CIA official pointed out recently that the basic premise for why we're in Afghanistan is flawed: even if al Qaida again could set up training camps there, that would not be an imminent threat to the US. After all, they can't attack the US from Afghanistan, which is halfway around the world.

The ex-CIA pointed out that the 911 plotters trained in apartments in Germany and on the civilian airfields in Florida, not in Afghanistan. Any current plot would do similarly. In fact, an al Qaeda trained Afghan, Najibullah Zazi, was just picked up in Denver, after the FBI discovered that he had taken notes for making a bomb. Zazi had attended courses in an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan. No explicit plans of when and where bombs would be placed have yet to surface, despite questioning and arresting Zazi's father and an Imam in Brooklyn.

What the above demonstrates, is that the war in Afghanistan is being waged under false pretences somewhat more sophisticated than the ones that impelled us to invade Iraq. I'm beginning to think, though, that Obama can't get out of Afghanistan, because the military would try to kill him if he did. And with the whipped up rabid right, I'm sure there would be many volunteer assassins, just as there were for the Kennedys and MLK.

The only interests lobbying for more troops in Afghanistan are the military, the Republicans (and their media) and the defense contractors behind them. The overwhelming public sentiment is to get out, or at least not to send more troops.

Obama is a political animal; he knows of the resistance to more troops. If he sends them, I doubt it's because he's convinced of the rightness of the strategy, but more because he has to keep the military at his back. His reiteration on the Sunday talk shows of "skepticism" about sending more troops is political cover. He said that before he sent a single additional "young man--or woman--in uniform into harm's way," he would have to be assured that the "strategy" was right.

So, he'll have to express conviction that McChrystal got it right. Why? Unfortunately, the US is now very much like Tojo's Japan: the military calls the shots, even if it's caught raiding, or bombing hospitals. The impotent civilian government just has to go along. Instead, we should get out--we could continue to bomb al Qaeda's hideouts, when we find them.

It looks as if the US will continue to march blindly in Afghanistan, the death-trap of empires. It could be America's last imperial "adventure."

Sep 16, 2009, USA Inc. Coming Up Corporate Takeover III

If a majority rules in favor of Citizens United in the Supreme Court re-hearing of its case against the Federal Elections Commission (it looks likely), it will be permitting corporate money to buy political ads, and to use corporate funds for any political purpose that an individual can. The distinction between commercial speech (always open to corporations) and political speech will be wiped out.

The ACLU, a liberal watchdog for First Amendment rights, has filed an amicus brief which argues that the language of the campaign finance law, and the recent decisions upholding it, provide only vague guidelines for what is prohibited speech for corporations and unions, and therefore has a "chilling" effect on freedom of speech. It therefore argues for overturning the prohibition limiting what kinds of speech corporations (or unions) will be permitted during an election campaign. This is a legal argument that focuses solely upon the problem of defining what is prohibited; it does not consider the likely political consequences.

If corporations and unions are permitted to finance "speech," as in campaign ads, or movies (Hillary, the Movie was the issue for the original suit), there will be a flood of corporate money, influence and power into the political system that will make the current corrupted politics seem clean by comparison.

Up until now, corporations have had to launder their money through their top executives, who funded PACs to represent their agendas, or by financing political events before or after the campaigns (a "blackout" period), as for example, paying for political conventions.

The current system is already strongly influenced by corporations, but elected officials are beholden to large and small donors and constituents more than they are to corporations, at least for elections. If McCain-Feingold is effectively overturned, the sheer volume of corporate money will insure that only they will count. Donors, both large and small, will be unimportant: candidates will appeal for corporate support. Their appeal may be specific to particular laws that impact particular corporations, e.g. watering down clean water standards for paper mills, or clean air standards for coal-fired power plants. Or more general: no regulation.

A corporate "investment" of a few 1000's could save millions or billions of dollars. This might look like bribery, but it would be legal.

If the court overthrows corporate limits on political spending, then the nation will return to the pre-progressive era of the late 19th century. Then, a Senator explained that "we" pass laws to enable "you" (corporations) to make money, so that you give us money to win elections so that we can make more laws to help you make more money.

Where does that leave the American people?

Sep 12, 2009, How to Get Out of Afghanistan

I initially bought the idea (silly me) that we had to invade Afghanistan after 9-11, because the Taliban refused to deliver up the al Qaeda leadership and gave them refuge--and training camps. The US, along with Pakistan's CIA (ISI) helped create both in the early 1980's, by arming and training al Qaeda and the Taliban for fighting against "the Communists." The ISI continued to support the Taliban as an ally against India until it turned on Pakistan.

Bush botched whatever possibility there was for eliminating the Taliban when he invaded Iraq and neglected Afghanistan. Now, NATO and US efforts to right this mess only make things worse. Despite American attempts to strengthen Afghan security against Taliban attack, Americans are seen as the invader, suspected of wanting to lord it over Afghans, who have thrown off every would be conqueror since Alexander the Great. We bomb "insurgents," and unintentionally kill almost as many civilians--and then NATO troops rescue a New York Times reporter and mistakenly kill his Afghan interpreter! The Afghan army might actually do worse, but at least they'd be from the same country.

Yet, Afghanistan is key to stabilizing this corner of Asia. Americans and Europeans can't do this, but Afghans can. Ansar Rahel and Jon Krakauer, (New York Times, September 11, 2009), point out that Afghans can call a loya jirga to settle their problems, and all Afghans would respect it; it's a traditional institution honored and legitimate in this tribal land. A loya jirga is a grand assembly of tribal elders, the respected people of Afghanistan. They aren't elected; they are chosen largely by traditional means. They have been called in times of crisis for 1000's of years.

A loya jirga could bring together the warring factions in the nation and compel them to negotiate and work together, because it would represent all Afghan powers-that-be. This is necessary because not only is the fighting destroying the nation all over again, and leaving it open to the destructive power of American and NATO weapons, but the government, in whose name the foreign forces are fighting, is clearly seen as illegitimate. It has reached a crisis because President Karzai can't win legitimacy from the recent stolen election.

The loya jirga named the kings of Afghanistan, and wrote the Constitution. It could demand a grand compromise between Taliban factions and the government, establishing a new unity government. It could enable the US to leave, after promising reparations in the form of development aid.

Otherwise, the US faces another, more disastrous Vietnam: Afghanistan could complete US bankruptcy and impotence, a sure way to end an empire.

Sep 8, 2009, Corporate Takeover II

The Supreme Court is rehearing arguments on the campaign finance law, McCain-Feingold, and one expected line of attack is that prohibiting corporations from financing campaigns is a violation of free speech: that money is speech. But if money is speech then what is poverty? Censorship? Elizabeth Cunningham pointed out this parallel: See link below. .

If corporations, as "artificial persons," can fund election campaigns--large ones have huge amounts to spend--then where does that leave real people?

Would an insurgent campaign, like Obama's, based on small donors, ever again be viable? Probably not. In the name of 'free speech,' we would have un-free elections. During the Robber Baron era, Senators were referred to, as the Senator from Dupont, the Senator from J.P. Morgan, the Senator from Standard Oil, and those weren't jokes. That could happen again.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the US Supreme Court is holding hearings to determine whether the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law squares with the First Amendment. Reputedly, the four conservative Justices want to strike down the whole law. In the case, the FEC ruled that Citizens United, a non-profit corporation, could not show Hillary, the Movie during last year's election campaign, since it was expressly political, and corporations are forbidden, by McCain-Feingold, from spending money on political campaigns.

The ACLU defends Citizens United against the government, saying it has the right, as a legal person--like the ACLU, itself--to spend money for political purposes. McCain-Feingold bans corporations and unions from direct expenditures on political campaigns.

One of the planks of the defense argument rests on the dissent by Chief Justice Burger, in the Supreme Court decision: Buckley v Valeo, 1976: the majority struck down only parts of the 1975 Federal Election Campaign Act. In effect, Burger held that money is speech, and since, as per the First Amendment, Congress can make no law to abridge freedom of speech, he held that the financial restrictions in the earlier act were unconstitutional. Justices Scalia and Thomas have long promoted this position on McCain Feingold. Justices Alito and Roberts now join them, one vote shy of the majority needed to throw out the campaign finance law entirely.

But, if money is the equivalent of speech, and therefore cannot be restricted in elections, what does that say for democracy? What does Free Speech cost? If you don't have money, do you have free speech? Rather than give corporations power to fund elections, the Court should revisit the whole question of corporate personhood.

If not, if the conservative bloc prevails in Citizens United, then it is questionable whether democracy will survive; the decision could complete the corporate takeover temporarily interrupted by Obama.

[Note: Corporate Takeover I (Aug 25, 2009, Stop the Corporate Takeover!) will be found in the Archives.]

Click for more info

Sep 6, 2009, Thar's Gold in Them Vaults

Gold traded for $1,004 in March 2008 and after dipping back to the high 800's in November, it's been on the rise since; it is now trading at $993. To put this into perspective: until gold was untied from the dollar, gold in the US was fixed at $35 an ounce from the 1930's to 1971; no longer fixed, it began to rise; it was selling for $260 in April, 2001.

Gold prices go up when there is economic uncertainty, especially about the currency. Due to the stimulus and bailout spending packages, the government is now committed to anywhere from $3 trillion to $7 trillion in loans, or guarantees, depending upon how you count it. The willingness of Geithner and Obama to borrow and spend huge amounts of cash has tight money and anti-fiat money folks extremely anxious.

It's true, the Fed, et al are creating this money, and it's a lot of money. However, even more money was "destroyed" in the financial collapse. Has there been an accounting of the pluses and minuses?

The economic consensus, so far, seems to hold that the newly created money has not yet made up for the loss of the old money; deflation is still a problem, despite rising energy prices; inflation is a possibility when and if the new money produces more demand than the economy can handle. So far, inventories are still large, although diminishing, and inflation is not yet a problem--despite the higher energy prices.

Yet gold is climbing again, after reaching a peak before most people realized we were heading towards an economic crisis. Gold bugs, who perennially tout gold as a secure haven, are again saying that you've got to put money in it before the real collapse comes. Every fall in the dollar is seen as proof of this, although, against other currencies the dollar is still holding up relatively well: it's fallen from $1.324 to the Euro in January, to $1.428 in September, a small drop considering that the Euro nations borrowed less and stimulated less.

But gold bugs have another agenda: dismantle fiat currency and central banks. But where would we be without the Fed interventions (and Treasury and FDIC)? The largest banks would have collapsed, and the economy would have made the Great Depression look like a mild rehearsal. Plus, there would be almost no money!

When Roman Senators held huge savings in gold, the Roman economy remained in depression until it self-destructed; all that liquidity was in the ground not in the economy. If it had been spent, instead, Rome might have survived.

Even before 476, the barbarians carried it off: it's so "secure!"

Sep 1, 2009 Sanctions Against IranBush's UN Ambassador, Bolton, says sanctions wouldn't deter Iran, but they'd be worth trying, anyway. Neo-conservatives in Washington want the sanctions, and some claim that Obama could claim a "win" if they were imposed: it seems that conservatives in Germany and France are also promoting sanctions, so chances of pushing it through the UN would be likely.

But none of the policy-makers appear to consider the impact upon Iran's people. Since Iran imports a large portion of its gasoline, banning exports to them (the sanctions being debated), would severely impact its people. Iran is building and upgrading refineries to provide more of their own fuel (they have enough oil), so you can be certain that Iran's military or security forces will not feel shortages; the people would feel them. In fact, gasoline sanctions are just the ticket for the unpopular conservative Ahmadinejad regime to rally most of the progressive opposition. That opposition still manages to rally against the regime, despite repression and horrendous prisoner abuse. So far, it knows that the West sympathizes.

But if the US under Obama pushes for gasoline sanctions, most Iranians will rally to the regime--against the hostile world. An export ban on gasoline is the stupidest move the international community could make; it would consolidate conservative, pro-nuclear control of Iran, and it would justify to them an all out effort to produce nuclear weapons before the US decided it would have to attack--Yes, Obama could be pushed in that direction, and so could Congress.

In other words, gasoline sanctions wouldn't deter--even Bolton says so--but their political effect within Iran would be precisely the opposite of what the international community is trying to achieve. And war could be the result.

Unless you are a hawk, who wants to make more super-war profits or war promotions, or a paranoid who really thinks that Iran would be irrational enough to attack Israel if it had a few bombs, war really doesn't make sense. Even if Iran produced as many bombs as Israel, its leaders know that the US has more than enough to obliterate it: nuclear threats are absurd. Nuclear weapons only make (some kind of) sense as a deterrent against attack.

Further, without gasoline sanctions, the Iranian government may bluster, but it was weakened by the unexpected, and so far unbowed, inventive opposition. Negotiations, not sanctions, could take advantage of that, even if Obama had to try harder to get them.

The Iraq and Afghan wars are too much already; Iran is larger than either, its military stronger, its people more nationalistic: war with Iran could destroy the west, as well as Iran.

Jul 22, 2009 Saint Maeve's Day

Novels can be revolutionary. Novels like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, or Sender's Seven Red Sundays, but one of the most revolutionary is one you wouldn't expect: Bright Dark Madonna, by Elizabeth Cunningham. It was released April 1, 2009.

Why is it revolutionary? Anti-clerical hardly begins to describe Maeve, who confronts, battles, and momentarily allies with a Paul of Tarsus. She confronts Peter and James, too. She refuses to behave the way women are supposed to. And she has her own power, quite independent of the vanished "Lord Jesus."

The sacred "chalice" that supposedly brought forth the seed of the Anointed, brings forth a daughter even more rebellious and wild than Maeve, herself. Talk about sacred bloodlines! Talk about social revolution.

Bright Dark Madonna is the third in The Maeve Chronicles--the fourth and last is only beginning to take shape--but BDM stands on its own. It's the story of Maeve's middle years, when she has to face motherhood, middle age and an emerging church she wants no part of.

Cunningham writes lucid, beautiful prose, occasional real poetry, song, high comedy and tragedy. Her characters have become more real to me than the people I know: Maeve and "Ma" (the Virgin Mary) are absolutely unforgettable.

People have written to Cunningham, and not just one or two, to tell her that her previous Chronicles: The Passion of Mary Magdalen and Magdalen Rising have "saved their lives." Counselors have told their clients to read them. Cunningham, a counselor herself, has found some of her clients speaking to Maeve quite frequently.

For the last few years, Cunningham and a devoted band of local--and sometimes not so local--readers have held a Passion reading of the last chapters of The Passion of Mary Magdalen, instead of the Bible. One will be held again this year on April 10th, entitled An Unorthodox Easter. For details go to http://www.highvalley.org/calendar.html.

For more on Bright Dark Madonna, or on the Maeve Chronicles, click on the permalink (passionofmarymagdalen.com) where you can find Cunningham's book tour schedule, reviews, can order the book from the publisher, or, armed with the necessary information, can go to Amazon or your local bookstore. If a bookstore doesn't have her books, ask for them.

Another thing: the Maeve Chronicles take place in a time and place relevant to this website: in or near the Roman Empire, but in the first century, not the fifth.

Personal disclosure: Elizabeth Cunningham is my wife of 30 years.