Blog Archive 7 Sep 2009-Jan-2010

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.]

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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.