The Richest, Most Powerful Nation

In the world.

We spent $672,879,000,000 on war-making in 2012 (we call it "Defense," and don't think about it). That may be why the Department of War became the Department of Defense--although there were bureaucratic reasons, as well. Anyway, we may be the most powerful militarily, but part of the reason for that is that we're somehow persuaded, year after year, to spend on "Defense" as much at least as the five next "most powerful" nations combined. But the most powerful nation cannot control the world.

It shouldn't try. We may be "the richest" nation, but we have a lot of poor people. Nevertheless, we'd rather spend money on military toys and warriors, than on helping to maintain people through unemployment insurance, who still cannot find jobs: there are far fewer jobs than job seekers.

Further, austerity's stupidity is causing disasters all over the world.

Tepid growth in the US compares to what austerity has done to nations like Greece and Spain--despite, in Spain's case, conservative fiscal policy--the result: Depression-level unemployment.

In the US, Republicans boast they forced Democrats to cut off the long-term unemployed. Dismissive phrases they use: "a way of life," "rip off artists," and unemployment is an "easy Street" where "fraud" is "rampant." Democrats are faced with a dilemma that doesn't trouble Republicans. Republicans don't believe in government, anyway, so there's no felt obligation to make it work for people--at least people who aren't CEO's or hedge fund artistes.

Democrats seek the money represented by wealthy and corporate interests, too, but they're torn: they tend to believe that government can be a force for good: FDR was their hero. If in order for government to work at all, the long-term unemployed have to be sacrificed, well, the greater good, some reason….

The bottom line is: the most uncompromising, well-funded side, appealing to a minority of ill-informed white people, gets to call the shots, setting the agenda.

Even the New York Times apparently assumes that Social Security and Medicare are going to have to be cut, despite a growing appeal among progressives for expansion, not contraction of Social Security, in response to the disappearance of private pensions, or fully funded public ones. The media attempt to eliminate any dialog about whether Social Security needs to be expanded, instead of contracted, despite the fact that it's self-funding and the payroll tax, is easily modified. It could be raised on the people paying too little, to make the tax no longer regressive; it subtracts a larger share from earnings below $115,000, than for those above that.

The GOP wages class warfare: progressives must fight back, like Senator Warren, not "go along" with elite greed. Americans should reject the elite's takeover, so reminiscent of the Roman Senators' monopoly of wealth in the Fifth Century.

What the Hell?

What the hell are people supposed to do, if they can't find a job, because they're still aren't enough of them, because…?

Republicans refuse to extend unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed, and propose cutting $40 billion from the Food Stamps budget, as well as advocating cuts to most social programs, while advocating tax cuts for the wealthy. I'd call that class war.

Face it: the very wealthy, more or less the billionaire class, are using their money, judiciously, to insure that they control government, instead of vice-versa. The rest of us are just obstacles to be run over, with a torrent of dollars, made possible by Citizens United.

Democrats? They don't know what hit 'em. They whimper that not extending the long-term unemployment benefits is unwise, maybe even inhumane, but those at the fount of all Democratic Wisdom say: Democrats will try to pass additional legislation--from the Senate.

Who loses? All of us, even the billionaires, if they'd only see it. If you don't give people other choices, they'll have to turn to crime. They'll either hurt others, themselves, end up in prison, or usually both. The cost to society? Do we really want to spend even more on prisons than we do now? Do we want to put away more and more of the "free people" of these United States, which already has the highest rate of incarceration of any developed nation?

There are better solutions, like spending a little bit now to support the unemployed, and a lot more to create needed jobs. There is no magic to this: it's simply that a nation has to invest in itself if it's going to have a future. Siphoning off all the proceeds into the hands of so few--the .001%--almost guarantees decline.

That's where we're headed if these guys win. Maybe, with victories like Warren's and DiBlasio's, the tide could be turning, but there's always that counter-tide of money.

Only if a large enough enraged mass of people rebel against this absurd system, will it ever change. People have to realize how they're being ripped off, every minute. Finance is the largest siphon, of your money to theirs, but there are others in every sector, siphoning off to them the wealth people create. Almost all the increase in wealth since the financial collapse ended up in the hands of a very few extremely wealthy: even though everyone worked for it.

No one rebelled in Fifth Century Rome. Miscreants were randomly burned alive from public lampposts and the barbarians were invading--as well as defending them.

Rome fell, largely because an extremely wealthy class, the Senators, monopolized wealth, and then refused to pay for maintaining the Empire they ran and from which they'd profited so immensely. Most didn't survive the chaos of barbarian dominance in Europe.

Could that be a lesson, even to the billionaires, perhaps?

Religion in Politics

Religion plays a role in our politics, as it did in Fifth Century Rome, but then it was largely a monopoly after the early 500's. Any pagan practices had to be private, (there were still many, not only in the hinterlands, among peasants and serfs, but even in Rome, among the Senators who thought they ran things). The pagan god, Victory, in the Senate was removed, and only Christian rites were approved, or allowed publicly.

Now, religion is more diverse, but still, 'The Christians' believe they should have a monopoly, with a slight nod to Judaism. Jews, after all, have to be converted to Christianity for the Last Days to arrive.

Our new anointed is: Ted Cruz, or so he seems to act. His father, Raphael, after all is a well-known and outspoken evangelist. Some conservative Christians subscribe to a "dominionist" doctrine that advocates a theocratic state run by "believers," and their leaders, of course.

That's actually what The Church in Rome and Ravenna attempted to do in the fifth century. Maybe it's why Emperor Theodosius was denoted "the Great:" he capitulated to Church dominance. His legacy: Goths, Vandals and other heretical Germanic tribes overran his successors and their subjects.

The Church was unable to prevent the barbarian takeover, but was able to weight the game towards a barbarian tribe that converted to the Catholic (Universal, or official) Church--the Franks.

Pagans survived largely in the countryside--the word 'pagan' is derived from the word for peasant or villager.

Today, among the believers of Cruz-type Christianity, the greatest threat is not from pagans or heretics, but from Communists, Socialists or The State. They label Obama a Kenyan Socialist, or a Communist, it doesn't matter which.

Since only a minority, probably smaller than media hype tells us, adheres to extreme fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity, the Ted Cruz's of politics feel compelled to play obstructionist to any progressive change. Gay marriage, according to Raphael Cruz, is a government conspiracy; the Affordable Care Act is a conspiracy to take "our fortunes."

It isn't a stretch for his son, Senator Cruz, to mount a 21-hour filibuster aimed at defunding Obamacare. If saner heads hadn't prevailed, we could have had not only the days of government shutdown but a credit default that would have spelled doom for the most powerful asset the US still has: the US dollar as global reserve currency.

In Rome, the Church, with the reigning Emperor, staged the Adventus (installing holy relics), many times, in an attempt to magic the barbarians away. There were no saner heads to prevail.

Perhaps it's lucky that Wall Street conservatism is not particularly religious: evangelical or fundamentalist. It's unlucky that the establishment believes in other magic: austerity will reduce unemployment; yet it's demonstrated repeatedly that cutting government programs promotes joblessness, while raising taxes on the wealthy will promote prosperity.

Dark Weed

Think about this: if you're involved in an unregulated, illicit market, there are no guarantees, often no product description, or quality described.

Of course, I'm talking about Pot. The illicit market in states where marijuana is illegal, or 'not legal," is completely without any regulation, as well as without any taxation. Not only doesn't the state get to tax the proceeds, and the municipalities or counties lose increased sales taxes, but the customers often don't know what they're buying.

In medical marijuana states, patients can ask for particular kinds of marijuana, and growers attempt to meet their needs, through breeding and selective cultivation. In Colorado and Washington, look for tailored tastes and moods. In states where the trade is illegal, you don't know what you're getting, or where it came from: illegal grows in trashed state or national forests, with chemical fertilizer and pesticides, instead of from certified organic farms with an address.

And, of course, illegality raises the price, sometimes as much as ten or twenty-fold. Successful drug dealers reap huge profits, but illegal drug costs are much steeper for the seller, too: it costs a lot to hire killers, or psychopaths and the risk premium is huge: you have to be able to cover your losses. Cultivation of the crop is the same or higher than it would be for a legal operation, but there are few incentives to tailor a substance like marijuana to particular needs: other than potency.

There is one reason only why New York state does not have at least medical marijuana: the dysfunctional state legislature. Medical marijuana bills have passed the Democratic State Assembly several times, but because of Republican control, the State Senate refuses to vote on them, or votes them down. In this current session, a Democratic majority was elected, but the Republicans, and reportedly, Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, encouraged just enough disgruntled Democratic Senators to form an independent caucus and make a deal with them. In effect, the minority Republicans can, and have still, blocked medical marijuana, by again being part of the majority--with the rump Democrats.

Why? Andy is protecting himself, in case he can run for President: all those parts of the country that still abhor legal pot. Besides, he's more conservative than the state Democratic Party. If legalization keeps on gaining in popularity, though, count on Andy to lead the charge.

This has nothing to do with the Roman Empire, except no drugs or liquors were explicitly outlawed there, but distilled liquor wasn't invented until the 12th century. Wine was actually part of the Roman dole. I can't imagine how state-seized wine tasted, but most taxes were collected in kind in the last centuries of the Empire: currency was too debased to support the troops--or the dole.

Veteran's Day 2013

I'm a vet!

I was part of the Cold War contingent, and while I'm counted as a "Vietnam Era" veteran, I was lucky to be separated from the Army before the major escalation in that mistaken war, in late 1964 (after LBJ's landslide election).

I was stationed in Turkey 1962-1963, which was the standard tour, since it was considered a "hardship post." I wrote a novel about my experience, but it's unavailable except for one printed manuscript copy I saved in our latest move. Unfortunately, none of my electronic files survived, since the technology has changed so much. I couldn’t find it in my small batch of large format floppy disks: I wrote it in the early 80's, a story incorporating my experiences in the early 60's--after my new wife and I returned to the scene: Sinop, on the Black Sea.

My role in the Cold War was minor. I was a Traffic Analyst in an Army Security Agency mission, in which we monitored the radio-control transmissions of the USSR's Tyuratam Missile Testing site in what is now Kazakhastan. We knew what they were developing as soon as they did. That included their failed attempt to develop Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM's). Sinop may be nearly Turkey's northernmost point along the Black Sea: Sinop Burun (nose, or peninsula) sticks out from the coast on a high headland. Our base was on its highest point.

The city of Sinop (Sinope) goes back before the 4th century BC, when Diogenes walked its streets looking for an honest man. Not true Turks, one Turk told me when speaking about Sinopians: most were converted Greeks.

I never thought about it until recently, but we were engaged in what NSA has now developed globally: surveillance of nearly everyone. I was trained at NSA before embarking for Turkey. It was surveillance that was easily justifiable: by international treaty, anyone could gain all the (unencrypted) data from another nation's rocket tests--if they knew when a test was going to happen: that's where we came in.

Later, when I was teaching in a maximum security prison, I had a student who had been a Soviet helicopter gunner: he had been stationed in the mountains east of the Black Sea. His unit was involved in attempting to control the restive inhabitants north of Afghanistan. His former empire was crumbling when I taught his Soviet Politics course in prison.

I wish ours were crumbling, too. Instead, it seems as if the American Empire will survive shutdowns and more, while Americans at home go without, to maintain our expensive military in over 100 nations abroad. We will impoverish ourselves, as Rome and other empires did before us. We continue to attempt to extend greater US control over the rest of the globe, even though we can no longer afford an expensive empire

Government For the Few

There was a brief period in European and American politics, when the governors believed, at least, that they were working for the good of all. In the US, this spanned from the Progressive era to the Great Society.

The end, and the ultimate failure, of the Great Society was the result of imperial hubris: the quagmire of Vietnam. It made the trend toward social democracy unaffordable, while enriching and empowering a few. Many of the new rich financed the counterrevolution against "welfare as we know it," and highly progressive income taxes, and, well, the whole Progressive to Liberal to social democratic tendencies in governance, i.e. government that aids the many who need help, not the few who are privileged enough already.

There were similar movements of reform and social democracy in most of Europe in this same period: some earlier, some later.

But that era is past; it was a short interlude between the thousands of years when governments naturally existed to benefit the very few at the expense, or misery, of the many. The Roman Empire was no egalitarian paradise, certainly. From start to finish, it depended on the labor of slaves, who probably made up well over half the population. Slaves had to be continually replaced. Bad ones sent to galleys and mines only lasted a few years. Even good slaves would have to be replaced after 40 years of service.

Even the vaunted Athenian Democracy, of course, depended on slaves.

Where do slaves come from? Conquest. This was even true of African slavery in the Americas. Europeans conquered Africa first by taking advantage of the absence of effective states (ones that controlled their territories), and the multiplicity of potential allies, as well as enemies. Europeans did, ultimately take over, i.e. conquer most of Africa, no longer to sell slaves, but because they had penetrated the continent in order to buy them, in the first place.

When Rome began to lose territory, instead of conquering new lands, the supply of slaves became more erratic. There were floods of them when an invading barbarian army was defeated, but many more were carried off by successful barbarian raids and wars, and then sold back to the slave-hungry Romans. Attila did that after all his successful campaigns of pillage, rape and slaughter. Slaves were the most valuable spoil of all.

What does this have to do with today? Today's Roman Senators are the billionaires who finance and inspire all the attempts to roll back or abolish all the reforms and programs benefiting the many. Even though they, the one-percent, the .001 percent, have prospered beyond even the imaginings of Hollywood sycophants, they want more, much more. Where can the predators turn now, since government has already given them so many favorable contracts, and breaks in taxes like the hedge funders' "carried interest" clause?

Let's raid Social Security and Medicare! they chorus.

They are more like Attila than they know!

Comments? Click on 'continue;' scroll down.

Caste, Class & Color

Back when men were men and women knew their place, when a white sheet was a badge of honor, there was a region of this country that was ruled, brutally, by a minority--after slavery had been abolished--and after the 14th and 15th Amendments gave all men (not women) the right to vote. Flaming crosses and worse enabled the white minority to rule over 'the colored.' Meanwhile, monopolies overworked white workers in other parts of the country.

The post-Civil War period experienced an explosion of riches--in a few hands, especially the most ruthless. Black people were re-enslaved, through sharecropping, Jim Crow and the prison system.

The post-Civil War period must be the model for the Tea Party, whose activists famously shouted "We Want Our Country Back!" No wonder they see Obama as an abomination: he's like one of those ex-slave, black Senators or Congressmen, run by corrupt carpetbaggers exploiting the South during cursed Reconstruction. Worse, he's better educated than they are.

Post-Reconstruction is the model for the new society they'd like to construct--post-Reconstruction, pre-Progressive Era. It's the reforms and expansions of the franchise beginning with Progressive era that the radical Republicans want to excise.

Before Progressivism, there was no regulation of business: trusts proliferated, monopolies became the industrial norm, and wealth shot upward into fewer and fewer hands.

The great Hudson Valley estates are evidence of their extremes of wealth. Now, our new Roman Senators are more visible on screen than on great estates, but their fortunes dwarf the Gilded Age.

A minority is attempting to rule the rest of us: the Republican majority in the House, elected by fewer votes than the minority Democrats, is holding the rest of government hostage, demanding it "negotiate" with them, i.e. give in to their demands.

If Republicans succeed, if Obama blinks, and uses the occasion to negotiate a "grand bargain" that cuts taxes for the wealthy, cuts Social Security and other earned benefits, as well as further shredding the safety net, then we'll be hurtling back to the 19th century.

We already have monopolies like Monsanto and oligopolies like Wall Street, all of them enabled by government. Unions are almost as helpless as they were before the New Deal. We already have inequalities of wealth as great or greater than in 1900.

Can a determined minority, with money and media, overcome the rights, safeguards and programs Americans won through terrible struggles, starting with the wars on strikers, followed by the sit-downs at factories and later in buses and lunch counters, and despite white terror, won at the ballot box? Will we really let ourselves be poisoned, our land and water despoiled, our labor devalued? Will we allow them to impoverish us?

It happened in Fifth Century Rome; it happened again in the 1870's; it could happen here--with consequences far worse than Romulus Augustulas's defeat, Rome's depopulation, or brutal Jim Crow: think planetary destruction.

Whee! Ain't This Fun!

Guvmint shut down, so we won't have to pay no taxes no more. Guvmint shut down so we don't have to have no guvmint health care. So, poor folks can still die when they're no longer useful. And enterprising people--like us--can still buy the finest healthcare in the world.

You'll see. Everybody will be better off without guvmint--except for keeping gangs in the keeps and off the streets, if you know what I mean, while smart folk in the suites can make off with the green.

The Tea Party represents two elements: racists, who want to prove that a black man should never be President, and 'those people' should stay in their place; and predators, who want all government out of the way, so they can make off with ALL the wealth everyone else produces. The second element funds the first, of course, and primes it on what to say.

So, every day that the government is shut down, and we notice the things that can go wrong when it's not doing its job, the more the Tea Party/Republicans will lose credibility--except with the racist and vengeful 20%. The predators don't lose: they make out like the bandits they are.

The extremism of people like Ted Cruz is not unlike the Taliban and al Qaeda in its nihilism. It's hard to know what a zealot like Cruz or Mullah Mohammed really believe. Cruz gets others to believe, for example, that the Affordable Care Act is going to unleash the apocalypse, although it's an almost Republican attempt at providing universal health care (even Mexico precedes us), so that people won't be in perpetual fear of the illness that loses them their job, their insurance and drives them into bankruptcy. Cruz and the Republican crazies in the House are absolutely determined to stop this potentially extremely popular program from ever happening. They fear its effects: already, in one day, the website insurance exchanges have had far more traffic and demand than either opponents or proponents predicted, with the predictable screw ups giving opponents something to exploit.

Tea Party funders want people desperate, not secure. Consciously or not, they have encouraged the progressive impoverishment of the middle class, because anxious employees will work harder. They won't dare challenge elite rip-offs.

Capital buys technology and dis-employs, but also enables world-wide use of the cheapest labor--and even creates it, since global competition drives down wages--and weakens all those other things self-respecting business leaders despise, like unions.

Affordable Care could actually begin to change that dynamic: it would give employees greater independence: they wouldn't have to fear losing their insurance, possibly their lives, if they changed jobs.

This has to be stopped--says Cruz--and especially, the people behind him. In Rome, these same people, the predatory Senatorial class, drove the Empire bankrupt--and most soon lost everything themselves. And so did almost everyone else: Rome was reduced to a village.

Climate Change & Shutting Government Down

I get it now: the GOP wants to shut down government to prevent Climate Change!

What? The denialist party is secretly taking climate change more seriously than the world's scientists, who only shout that the sky is falling, without doing anything about it?

What I mean to say: the GOP has a diabolical plan, while denying its existence: respond to climate change by insuring that more and more people are desperately poor, so they can't spend the money that would fuel further climate change: people's consumption would suddenly fall, reducing climate-change-inducing pollution, like CO2. Of course the geniuses who thought up this genius plan would benefit through tax-cuts, so they could keep more of their ill-gotten gains--and consume more, but only the gilded few.

I mean 'ill-gotten' in the sense that fortunes are made by transferring income (legally) from poor to wealthy, and taxes from wealthy to poor.

So only a few can consume to their heart's content, and they have the resources to pay people to protect their interests: from the President on down to key legislators in states, small and large.

An apparent example is the EPA's turning its back on its preliminary findings in Dimock, PA, Pavillion, WY and Parker County, TX: that fracking had contaminated ground water. Instead, it closed those investigations down, and continued to stand by while other parts of the Obama administration, like Interior, promote fracking. Who's being paid off, and by whom?

But it's better still to just shut government down, so that a program that might provide substantial help to a lot of people--and save money--can be repealed, so that taxes for the wealthy can be canceled,

So, instead of government intruding on our lives, it's lack of action will insure that so much less will be spent that we'll be plunged into a stark Depression. Since Republicans insist on cutting Food Stamps, the one program that's helped people survive in this, for the rich only, "recovery;" people will be driven to misery, as well; their consumption will sink to that of an average Bangladeshi. So, all talk of climate change will cease--because everyone else's lowered rate of consumption will dramatically reduce CO2 emissions globally. Then, the world's worst polluters will be able to continue in business, simply by paying off the corrupt political machine. The demand for greater regulation will fail, and will 'obviously' be unnecessary, especially since everyone (who's anyone) will be so much better off, living in their protected enclaves: protected from the chaos and misery beyond their gates.

Sounds like the 21st Century's version of Senatorial rule in the Fifth, when the wealthy ruled in their own interest even as the world was falling about their ears.

Comments welcome.

Is It Possible: Peace Not War?

What would the world be like, if the US relinquished its self-defined role as world policeman and imperial arbiter of power anywhere on the globe?

It looks as if this might actually happen: the American public's opposition to war against Syria, no matter how limited in intent, was so sustained and broad-based, that Congress and even the Senate listened, and then the President heard. Supposedly, even Michelle was against!

John Kerry's statement on Syria giving up chemical weapons was hardly rhetorical, despite his claims. It was an appeal for a way out of the dead end Obama had created by his "red line" remark about chemical weapons use.

Russia didn't want to see its ally bombed, so Putin transformed the "rhetorical" remark into a diplomatic proposal that (so far) has legs. Now Obama is negotiating through Kerry, willing to appeal for a UN solution, and Putin thinks, maybe, he has a chance at the Nobel Peace Prize. Agreement may be near.

But consider how different this is to prior reactions by Presidents at least since Kennedy. Backing down from a threat, or use of force, was considered weakness, and loss of credibility for the US. Hawkish Republicans and Democrats claim this has happened with Obama on Syria: the US has lost face; Russia has won; US credibility is at an all-time low.

What credibility? The US has operated outside international law, arrogating to itself unilateral power to punish transgressors of its power, or challengers to its control, since at least WWII. The most recent demonstration of US reach and ultimate weakness before Syria was the Snowden affair. The US was even able to pressure Cuba and Ecuador against offering asylum to Snowden, and it forced President Evo Morales's plane to divert its course and finally be brought down to be searched, in Portugal. So, Snowden got asylum where he was: in Russia.

Russia is no super-power, but Putin has demonstrated that the US can no longer get its way globally. The US had already lost control over large parts of South America. The sooner the United States of America realizes that it can't control the whole planet, and it would be better not to try, the better off everyone would be. Think of the hundreds of billions of dollars we could spend on aiding our citizens, instead of "Defense." Think of the people around the world who wouldn't be killed, or driven from their homes because they transgressed US interests.

Envision a world in which the very real conflicts within and between nations would be resolved by negotiation, not force of arms. Obama's reversal and Putin's initiative on Syria could lead to very different international relations. The same model--negotiation and world law--should be extended to US relations with Iran, and maybe, finally, to North Korea.

Envision a world in which swords really are beaten into plowshares.

Congress, Obama and War-making

It is extraordinary to realize that Obama's appeal for Congressional support to attack Syria--that's what it is, really--is also one of the first retreats from imperial Presidential powers offered by a sitting President.

But it should awaken us to a fact: this isn't a democracy anymore, any more than Rome's Republic was still a Republic, after Julius Caesar marched on Rome.

The imperial presidency has grown ever since FDR, and growth was only temporarily slowed by former General, President Eisenhower. The last President to really ask for Congressional approval for a foreign adventure was Bush the First. There was a real debate, although the outcome was preordained.

Obama has not grabbed for power, so much as been advised that he has to assert it, since he's President. And, consider what he, or any President, faces: a united front of Defense contractors, Generals, intelligence experts, investors and almost anyone with money. They're almost all of them for war, any war, as long as it's profitable, and any war is hugely profitable, if you're on the right side. No one they know will ever be killed on a battlefield, or blown up by American bombs.

The Roman Empire grew for the same reason: the profits of war. While modern nations don't enslave their captives and sell them on the slave block, or openly pillage conquered cities as Rome did, they use war to win economic control, as the Bush's tried to do in Iraq: capture Iraq's oil wealth through gaining contracts for American corporations to extract the oil.

But the profitability of our last few wars hasn't met expectations. Iraq has been a bust, Afghanistan and Libya also. Is this a sign of a declining empire?

What I see is an authoritarian, elite-corporate-controlled state, in which dissent like mine is simply ignored: dissenters don't have the money to bring lawsuits, or win elections. The corporate controllers are in a position to manufacture public opinion, and, at the same time, to gain almost exclusive access to government officials wielding power. Elected officials are flattered, threatened, and overwhelmed by expensive expertise. They have to do what the powers-that-be want them to do.

In addition, we now have a surveillance state, so no one knows what the State knows about us. However, more are becoming aware that the State could know everything. It was a more primitive version of that power that enabled Stalin to build a totalitarian state under his control.

Obama isn't the Stalin his successor could be; it wouldn't be pretty, since the Empire will continue to retreat, whoever it is. And the military-security-industrial complex will control the power structure.

Unless we can break free of the corporate state, the overwhelming majority of us will be impoverished and virtually enslaved, to feed the hungry imperial maw, even more desperate as war profits dwindle and the world becomes increasingly more difficult to control.

Is Syria Like Kossovo?

The Obama Administration is discussing whether Clinton's air war over Kossovo could be a model for the kind of intervention the US might make against the Syrian government, if it got NATO approval--the chance for UN approval is nil. Intervention may now be considered necessary, because Obama was dumb enough to state, months ago, that Syrian use of chemical weapons would be "crossing a red line," and he would be forced to act accordingly.

It may be true that the Syrian government started a larger scale gas attack in part because evidence of an earlier, smaller attack had so far only resulted in words: our promise of supplying weapons and ammunition to the opposition still hasn't happened.

So, of course we have to "act," right? We're the USA and we're the good guys. Actually, public opinion, while malleable in crisis, is in no mood for another foreign adventure.

Before Obama considers an air war, or any kind of Syrian intervention, he should consider what kind of conflict he'd be trying to "fix." The Assad regime is horrid: autocratic, brutal, discriminatory, and perfectly willing to massacre large numbers of its citizens, especially Sunnis.

But the opposition is fragmented. About all they have in common is their determination to get rid of Assad and minority Alawite dominance. While there are secular democrats in the opposition, the large majority is divided: some are moderate Sunnis, driven by war to support ethnic cleansing of Alawites and Christians. Then there are the Islamic militants: al Nusra Front the best known, is highly effective militarily, probably equipped by Qatar, affiliated with al Qaeda and is made up of nihilist religious zealots. There are others, and some are Iraqis, the same al Qaeda zealots who tried to murder the Shia in the Sunni parts of Iraq.

So, whom, exactly would our air war promote? If it's the militant side of the opposition, then Syria could become an al Qaeda haven, even the foundation for the new Islamic Caliphate. Or, it could become a Sunni authoritarian "democracy," in which non-Sunni flee for their lives, or hole up in enclaves, balkanizing the country. Or it could end up as a civil war between moderate and extremist Sunnis, if our bombing polishes off the Assad regime.

Better if the US and Europe refrain from any intervention: Muslims have to handle this themselves, anyway. The best: simply walk away. If Arabs want to sell oil, we can buy it, or go solar, without causing death and destruction from the air.

But our Roman Senators might lose billions! The US would save hundreds of billions, maybe trillions. Does the empire belong to corporate overlords, or does our country belong to us? Are we a democracy, or a military/corporate dictatorship?

When the Roman Empire faced a similar decision, it bankrupted itself attempting to maintain control, like this, of conflicts beyond its power. Are we going to go there?

Modern Fascism

Thirty-five years: the judge split the difference for Bradley/Chelsea Manning. Defense lawyers asked for 20, the prosecution asked for 60-90.

Now we know: if we happen upon the government acting illegally, or immorally, we must shut our eyes, because that's the Government. They can do no wrong--unless, according to the GOP, they spend too much on frivolous things like Food Stamps.

But Security? Never ask. Don't even look! If you work for Government, however, you better look--at your fellow employees to insure a colleague doesn't become another Manning or Snowden.

There was a time, when we pointed derisively at the USSR, because they had secret police and the Gulag. Everyone there was expected to report on everyone else, and the primitive censorship, fear and constant monitoring was effective, for a while, in suppressing popular interests--or rationality--in favor of the Communist Party elite. It was woefully inefficient, not least because there was no free flow of information.

The new American system of dictatorship is much more sophisticated, so sophisticated that if there wasn't someone like Bradley Manning or Ed Snowden spilling out the secrets of what the Government is really doing, no one would really know for sure that they were being manipulated and controlled surreptitiously. Now we know: what Government tells the compliant media is becoming as reliable as Pravda or Izvestia. And that's on top of having a militarized police and the most prisoners per capita, suffering the harshest treatment.

In the late Roman Empire, there was an extreme concentration of wealth held by the Senatorial class, similar to today's inequality. The Senators also controlled the civil imperial government. The military was a separate entity, increasingly drawn from the "barbarians" they were continually fighting. Social and political control was more fragmented. Misinformation and fantasy was rampant. The Emperor had an army of informers, but was mostly concerned with court and elite intrigue. The Senators held life and death powers over their serfs--and exercised it freely. The cities were in chaos, just like Detroit, but, worse than bankruptcy, corrupt gangs ran them.

Are we headed in that direction? One party of the duopoly can't even raise taxes in Texas on highly profitable oil companies to keep their roads paved, roads largely destroyed by heavy oil company truck traffic. The other party appears to be made up of those who can be bought, but are less reliable for corporate interests, punctuated by a few honest souls.

But when a putatively liberal President presides over record deportations, record whistleblower prosecutions, covert killing and an apparently out of control surveillance state, you wonder: when did we lose our democracy? Most of the press and public don't seem to care. What we have in democracy's stead is overlapping institutions, including Government departments, corporations (including media), the military-security industry and the extremely wealthy, attempting to coordinate and strengthen their control:

We could call it "modern Fascism."

Myths of Deficits and Inequality

Cut taxes on the wealthy, the "job creators," so they can create more jobs, Republican "conservatives" insist.

Here is a direct refutation: the wealthy are hoarding their cash--the top 1% save 37% of their earnings. Rather than creating jobs, by their out-sized savings rate they destroy jobs.

We should cut corporate taxes argues the Chamber of Commerce incessantly, because (by one measure) US taxes are higher than economic competitors like Japan and Germany.

Corporations are also hoarding cash, again cutting jobs: money not spent on consumption or real (as opposed to financial) investments, is jobs not created and wealth not multiplied.

Higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations would capture some of this excess cash to build infrastructure, improve education and hire people in needed jobs.

The US is the fourth most unequal nation among wealthy OECD nations, having a Gini index of .36 compared to the most unequal nation's Gini of .50 (Mexico). 0 would be complete equality, 1.00 represents complete inequality, where only one person received all the income. According to the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, and even the Economist, inequality is inefficient. Increased inequality drains consumption and investment spending: low consumption drives low investment, drives low job growth.

Repeal Obamacare. The Republican House of Representatives has voted to repeal it 33 or 34 times. Proponents of repeal claim that the program will increase deficits and cut jobs. It's likely that the reverse is true in both instances. While Obamacare will increase some taxes, mostly marginal, it will also save an astonishing amount of money not yet easily calculated. Health care costs, and costs to the government may actually go down, through lower hospital and emergency room costs, and a reduction in treatments needed as people get regular medical care, instead of only going to the doctor (or the emergency room) when a health crisis strikes.

The Congressional Budget Office (not a partisan institution) estimated cost savings from Obamacare that would reduce out-going deficits substantially. In fact, its most prominent recent caveat (reduction of the reduction) was the administration agreeing to a year's delay in the employer mandate (to provide insurance or pay a fee per employee), which CBO estimated to cost the government $10 billion.

So, what's going on here? The Mainstream Media emphasize the Republican message, even though it's the opposite of the truth and makes no economic sense. Higher taxes on the wealthy do not curb growth; they probably stimulate it, up to a point. Obamacare, while far from perfect, does not increase future deficits; it will reduce them.

Why are "conservatives" and Republicans against higher taxes for high incomes? They have high incomes, or are paid by people who do. Ditto the MSM.

Inequality is rising worldwide, in the US faster than most, and the "winners" want to keep it all. They are like Fifth Century Roman Senators, who chose the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, instead of imposing taxes on themselves.

What Kind of Country Are We?

Germany and Japan have highly unionized work forces: New Dealers made sure that unions were strong before the Allied occupation forces relinquished control. Ditto South Korea. The rationale: democracy would have a better chance to flourish, and Nazi/Fascist brutes would have less likelihood of regaining control if confronted by strong unions.

But Brazil, France, Spain, Russia, India and South Africa also have union-organized auto industries. In contrast, a large portion of the US auto industry, especially beyond the rust-belt states, is not unionized and unionization is declining rapidly. The foreign transplants, like Nissan and Honda, are unionized in virtually every other so-called 'developed country.'

Despite weakened unions, the US Chamber of Commerce's reaction to Obama's NLRB appointments, ratified in the recent filibuster deal in the US Senate, was that a major disaster had occurred. American business appears to have an aversion to unions, not just among the auto transplants in the South.

Omigod! The NLRB might actually attempt, again, to fulfill its mandate that employers not unduly interfere with union organizing elections!

As soon as FDR was gone, business rallied against unions, and in 1946 a Republican Congress passed Taft-Hartley, weakening unions and making "right-to-work" legislation viable. Since 1946, 23 states have passed such laws. Is it just coincidence that right-to-work states have fewer union workers (6.48% vs 10.8%) and lower wages?

All the southern states except Kentucky, all the plains states, almost all the Rocky Mountain states are right-to-work, and now two states from the industrial heartland (Michigan and Indiana) are, as well.

Right-to-work is a euphemism. RTL means employees in a union-organized workplace don't have to join a union, or pay union dues, but can benefit from a union contract. When workers become "free-riders" like this, unions lose money, power and eventually their contracts. Then employers don't have to face an organization representing workers.

Gerrymandering elected majorities from white, rural minorities, Tea Party state legislatures, from Wisconsin to Texas, now pass draconian abortion laws, slash services from education to Medicaid, cut taxes on the wealthy, and raise them on the poor. It's a coup that exploited the 2010 reaction to Obama and the unlimited corporate and private funds released by Citizens United. It's a coup of corporate elites, and it's frighteningly successful in the states, where it's compounded by the generations-long decline of organized labor.

The US Congress is divided between a similarly gerrymandered, reactionary House majority, and an inchoate, moderate Senate majority corrupted by corporate money. The US looks increasingly like the despotic, declining Empire of Fifth Century Rome, led by a fabulously wealthy elite dominating an increasingly impoverished majority. The coup isn't complete, but it's dangerously close. The military-industrial-security complex doesn't know it yet, but an Empire based on mass misery is like a hollowed, rotten tree: it'll go down fast in a storm, despite its sophisticated surveillance and automated weaponry.

What Don't They Understand?

'They' are Obama, Biden and other putative liberals or progressives, who have signed onto--and defend--the massive surveillance of practically everyone, world-wide, including American citizens in the US, that the intelligence complex has foisted on all of us. Obama was a constitutional law professor; he should know about all the guaranteed rights that PRISM and meta-data collection violate. Instead, he pursues Ed Snowden to the ends of the earth.

Apparently, the American public doesn't understand, either.

Of course, there are all sorts of justifications: US citizens aren't targeted--unless they are. We have to sweep up all the world's communications to protect the American people, although we do a terrible job protecting, except for ferreting out the credulous in stings: occasionally there is the miniscule chance that someone will set off a bomb. Many more are killed, routinely, because our gun laws are so lax, because we travel faster on the roads than they're designed for, because we have a healthcare system driven by profit--and a corporate system in which human lives are less important than dividends.

So, to stop the occasional mad man, we give up our rights to privacy; we bow to government and corporate power and don't think about it: it's more important to know what the celebs are doing, or whether your team is winning. It's preferable to spend hundreds of millions on stadiums than to fully fund food stamps, so that people don't go hungry.

What does that have to do with the NSA's surveillance? The Terror Industry is a diversion, of money that could be used to make people's lives better, of attention away from the escalating inequality enabled by that same inattention: if you're terrified of terrorists, you won't think about how your CEO is exploiting you, and your government is watching your every move. You certainly won't rebel against the system, even if you sense it's been shaped to rip you off. The surveillance state tells you: you can't get away with anything, especially protest against your government.

Go scream about abortion, instead; or oral sex. Your surveillers will even support you: social issues are safe; but economic ones are not: taxes must go down--in inverse relation to your income, and regulations must be dismantled, to free private enterprise--so it can exploit everyone more efficiently.

Surveillance and police control, even with tanks, will enable the government--or select corporations--to protect their privileges, against massive unrest. Yes, the US is ready if American dissidents try to bring Tahrir Square to Washington or New York. Police have already crushed Occupy--while the IRS targeted "progressive" groups about as much as the Tea Party.

Democratic hacks seek support from the corporate class, our Roman Senators: Republicans slavishly represent them.

Roman Senators--and the defense-industrial-intelligence-complex--lay the groundwork for a legal coup: NSA's General Keith Alexander for President!

Change one little rule

just an iota, and business groups start to wring their hands over the labor-friendly changes that could take place. A confirmed Secretary of Labor? A full NLRB board with a Democratic majority? They write as if disaster is going to strike.

Unions have had a hard time recently, and if these nominees are confirmed, because Reid finally threatened to do away with the filibuster on nominee confirmations, then already it will have a tremendous impact. Unions have had diminished clout, and the eviscerated NLRB and caretaker Labor Department hasn't helped. Even reporters for the Chamber of Commerce admit that a confirmed nominee has more power than an interim appointee and could push for rules making union organizing elections a lot easier. That, in turn, could stop the slide in unionization, and might even help it to recover some lost ground.

That's the disaster the Chamber is worried about: labor empowered, wages raised, profits possibly cut--ah, some redistribution of income and power. Since corporate profits and inequality of incomes are soaring, there is a lot of room for a more just distribution of the wealth produced, and the managerial elites might just have to rake in fewer millions. I don’t think that would be a bad thing.

But you see how a rule compromise in the Senate can change a lot of other things in the real world. It could even begin a reversal of the silent takeover of power and wealth engineered by this generation's Roman Senators.

Still, we should note: no formal rule was changed; there was an "agreement" between Democrats and enough Republicans to prevent a filibuster on Richard Cordray, the interim and now confirmed head of the Consumer Financial Protection Board that's already shown it has teeth in regulating out of control credit card companies. Supposedly, the agreement will also cover the NLRB nominees and others who have been waiting for confirmation for a good part of Obama's tenure.

The agreement also highlights the weakened status of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: John McCain brokered the agreement for the Republicans and McConnell was sidelined and ignored; that has significance for the Senate down the road, beyond the filibuster issue. While this was an interim agreement that left the filibuster in place, for now, it could lead to big changes in the distribution of power in the Senate, and in the "real world."

Nominations are a uniquely senatorial power, however. On any tax or spending issue, the House is supposed to lead, and on any other issue, it has at least veto power. Given its extremist wing in the Republican majority, it's unlikely that senatorial comity will lead to House functionality.

However, any movement away from increasing corporate power and toward buttressing the power of workers might undo what seems like an inevitable takeover, like the one that gave Roman Senators monopoly power--shared with the military--in the late, declining Roman Empire.

American Liberalism and the Democratic Party

American liberalism wasn't just about social issues like gay marriage and immigration. American liberalism was the closest thing Americans had to the movements in Europe and elsewhere: they promoted economic equality, fair tax systems, labor representation and economic democracy. Europeans labeled them democratic socialism, or social democracy. In the US, we rarely used such terms; they smacked of Socialism, even Communism.

European democratic socialism had its base in political parties either affiliated with, or a part of, the labor movement. Labor in the US has been closer to Democrats than Republicans, at least since FDR, but the Democrats were never a labor party. Since Clinton's "new Democrats," it has become increasingly pro-business and lukewarm to labor.

Somewhere between Carter and Clinton, Democrats pretty much jettisoned economic democracy in favor of campaign funds, and found they could successfully appeal to middle class voters with social arguments like: gay rights, civil rights and pro-choice policies. That left them free to take more pro-business and even pro-wealthy class positions that would make it easier to raise campaign funds, enabling them to win elections.

The Rooseveltian idea that Democrats should strive for economic rights, like Freedom from Want was shoved aside: rich people gave money, the middle class voted for Democrats, the poor didn't turn out to vote in any great numbers--and most of them voted for Democrats, anyway, so they would get the crumbs--and the rhetoric.

Dividing off economic democracy and equal opportunity from social issues like gay marriage, gives Democrats a progressive tilt, but they never stopped the Reagan Counter-revolution. Democrats collaborated on tax-cuts for the wealthy, and adopted corporate-friendly policies like repealing Glass-Steagall, promoting NAFTA and now the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Obama is as much involved in updating of the new Democrats as his irascible associate, Rahm Emanuel, current mayor of Chicago, presiding over the most public school closings (largely in poor neighborhoods) of any large city, a part of "austerity" politics: cutting government's social services.

It's no accident that Obama proposes to cut Social Security benefits--and other government benefits, as well--by adopting the "chained CPI" measure for adjusting payments to the cost of living. He's the first Democratic President to dare suggest such a thing. It's also no accident that he presides over an invasive surveillance program and is hawkish on drones. By being for progressive social issues, he can get a pass on his surrender to the Military-Industrial-Security-Complex and Democrats can fatten on Defense-related campaign funds. In his political campaigns, despite record numbers of small donors, Obama depended financially on big bucks given by people Democrats used to call "fat cats."

Democrats have been co-opted by the contemporary class of "Roman Senators:" Nader's epithet: "not a dime's worth of difference" from Republicans almost rings true--except for social policy.

We need a democratic revival not based on either of the current political parties. N.B. My paternal family has been Democrats at least since Franklin Pierce (1853).

Surveillance Makes Us Safe

Drones, "minimization procedures," "targeting procedures," "metadata" "US persons" "non-US persons…."

It's okay: we're only "targeting" non-US persons abroad; if we've mistakenly targeted a US person and there is indication of a crime, that's also okay. So, surveillance not only stops terrorism in its tracks--NY subway bombing plot, etc.--it also fights crime--at home and abroad.

No wonder, neither Hong Kong, nor Russia are jumping through US police-state hoops! Moscow doesn't "know'" where Edward Snowden is. The crimes the US accuses of Snowden reveal the extent of crimes the US commits against people in Russia--and everywhere else--the "legal" targets are non-US persons on "foreign territory." We accuse Putin's government of authoritarian practices, but we're listening in on all those non-US persons in Russia. So, why should the Russian or Hong-Kong governments cooperate with the US? Why should Ecuador, or Iceland?

Talk about a widening gulf! It's between everyone else vs official Washington, which thinks the surveillance of virtually everyone--except US persons--is easily justified because the US has to stop terrorists. After all, even Brits and Canadians aren't "US-persons."

Even an American resident or citizen can be tracked if there is evidence of a crime. How do the authorities establish evidence of a crime? 'Accidental' surveillance?

There have been at least two high profile politicians/public figures recently, who were caught because of such accidental surveillance: Elliot Spitzer and General Petraeus. The former was caught through a bank alert for suspicious money transfers, and then phone surveillance in 2008, the latter in 2012, when the FBI traced harassing emails from Petraeus' biographer, Paula Broadwell, to a woman she feared was competing with her for Petraeus' affections.

Cases like those may have prepared the American public for Snowden's revelations. They may explain the shrug, accompanied by: "we knew they were doing it all along," reaction of so many--instead of outrage.

Why no outrage? Turks and Brazilians are rioting against their governments because of specific accusations--authoritarianism, or corruption and misplaced priorities--the US has its share of similar abuses and they may actually be worse. The vast extent of American surveillance exceeds anything Russia or China can mount.

Which makes it okay?

The NY Times, the Guardian, et al; were the entities that published the leaks, i.e. made them public--so that even al Qaeda can read them! Why aren't they prosecuted for treason, too?

The real treason--betrayal of American and international civil liberties--is perpetrated by the accusers: the US Government (including Obama), and the Congress and Courts permitting it.

The US, in its decline, has the potential to become more authoritarian than the Roman Empire. Surveillance gives the tools to crush all opposition. Even Stalin's powers were puny compared to these! A President elected with our contemporary Roman Senators' support wouldn't bother to assure us (as Obama has) that he wouldn't use these powers to crush opposition. He/she would use them to maintain control.

Pot and Big Brother

There seems to be a push, at least in the leftish media, to promote the inevitability of legal marijuana.

At the same time, we have the revelations of Edward Snowden: the US is massively watching all of us, through virtually all our communications except face to face. In Orwell's 1984, Big Brother could do even that. Scared yet?

But maybe marijuana is a plot, of the liberal/socialist government under the tyrant Obama…. Hold that thought.

The commercial possibilities of legal marijuana, already being experienced in the two states that made it legal as a recreational as well as medical drug--Washington and Colorado--seems very attractive, especially to cash-strapped state and local governments. Huffpo published a piece on how much money could be realized in taxes and reduced prison costs, would cut the price of pot dramatically, and yet increase legal employment and taxes collected, all based on those two states' early experiences.

I could attest to other advantages: anyone with a small plot of ground, or a closet, could grow their own! Wine and liquor stores might notice a falling off of demand for their drug of choice, however. That's where opposition to legalization may come from.

But think, for a moment, how the widespread availability of marijuana might affect the nation as a whole. Marijuana rarely causes violence; alcohol does, but marijuana does have an influence on how people think: most become more reflective, or passive and introspective, or creative, according to Bill Maher. You've seen giggling potheads? That's about the closest potheads get to violence, as far as I've seen--admittedly a small sample.

There's a precedent for the political use of drugs. The Inca used coca leaves to dull rebellious impulses among its subject peoples. They chewed and worked harder. After the Conquest, Spaniards used it to quiet rebellion and induce hard work by the subject Quechua. The USSR and so many other nations had cheap vodka, or gin, or….instead of rebellion.

So: would legal marijuana be a boon to the State, not just as a revenue raiser, and cost-cutter (as in prisons not needed), but also as a social control? The Feds can know where you are, whom you talk to and for how long, even if they don't eavesdrop, but marijuana might induce people not to care, i.e. be more easily controlled.

I'm no subscriber to the tyrant-socialist-Obama school, nor to conspiracy theory. But I do think there are powerful people, who want to be sure government does have control. They know, perhaps unconsciously, that the .001% holding so much wealth are vulnerable to popular outrage and worse--Emperor Maximus, the wealthiest Senator to wear the diadem, was literally ripped apart by the mob in 455.

So, marijuana might be seen by the super-elite as another way to "mellow out" the opposition, the way lotteries give the millions just a little hope. It bears thinking about.

F**k 'Em All!

So saith my soulmate, upon hearing that we might intervene militarily, again, on one side of an ancient Muslim sectarian dispute.

The Syrian civil war is increasingly a war between Shia, including Alawites, and the Sunni majority. The Sunni powers, the Saudis and the Emirates, are supporting the rebels, including al Qaeda affiliates; the Shiite powers, Iran and Hezbollah, and behind them, Russia, are supporting Assad's Alawite-dominated government.

So, since Russia is heavily arming Syria and Hezbollah, shouldn't the US jump in to support the rebels, along with its long-time 'democratic friends,' the Sunni-dominated monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf? Shiite-controlled Iraq, on which the US squandered almost a trillion dollars, is permitting passage of Russian and Iranian weaponry to Assad and Hezbollah.

So, the US should do it again, in Syria, not just offer small arms? It should go in with massive equipment and training for the rebels, or more, even though prominent numbers of the rebels claim sympathy with, or allegiance to, al Qaeda?

The US helped create al Qaeda, back when Americans were seeking allies to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The US supported and trained Osama bin Laden. Don't Americans ever learn? The US's second adventure in Afghanistan turned out so well that a majority of the US House of Representatives (including conservative Republicans) just demanded the US leave Afghanistan by the end of 2013!

Not only has hot-head McCain insisted America intervene in Syria, on the rebel side, but he was publicly seconded by Bill Clinton, who warned Obama would be a "wuss," if he didn't act forcefully on Syria.

It's true the Syrian rebellion started out as a peaceful, secular protest demanding democracy, and the Assad regime attempted violent suppression. Assad had no compunction attacking Syrian civilians with his military: in 1982, his father, Hafez, murdered at least 10,000 Syrians in Hama, alone. But this time, Sunnis rallied and the protest turned into a rebellion, fueled by money and arms from the Sunni Persian Gulf oil monarchies. Hence, Syrians now fight both civil war and sectarian war.

The US will support the Sunni side, along with al Qaeda, why?

Sunni and Shia have been battling since 661 CE (1,352 years), over who should succeed the Prophet. Why should the US have anything to do with either? Especially, why, since it has already failed twice in its Mideast interventions--Iraq and Afghanistan--and the outcome of its third, Libya, is still uncertain.

The US loses, if it intervenes. As horrendous as the carnage in Syria, the US would make it worse. But Empire is so seductive, especially to the Defense industry. Americans could be bankrupted as the Romans were, but unlike Huns, or Germanic barbarians, US 'enemies' do not threaten America's existence, only each others'.

Let them kill each other until they're exhausted--they will anyway. Or see reason. Let the UN pick up the pieces.

Treason?

The judge in Bradley Manning's trial has stated that it is enough for the prosecution to show that al-Qaeda, like the rest of the world, reads WikiLeaks.

So, Bradley Manning is an enemy of the people, because he's made public the war crimes committed in the name of the American People. Since terrorist groups focus their attention on the US and what it does, of course the lead group, al Qaeda, our publicly declared enemy number one, has sought out the Wikileaks documents made possible by Manning's document release. So has anyone who reads the New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers.

The judge, in this carefully controlled show trial, didn't allow Manning to show his intent: to reveal war crimes in order to stop them. He isn't allowed, either, to demonstrate that nothing he revealed did anything but publicize war crimes, manipulation and cynical deception on the part of the US and many of its allies. He is not allowed to show that his document dumps harmed no one.

The mass media portrays the Manning trial, if it portrays it at all, as the trial of someone who disclosed sensitive documents to al Qaeda, a traitor and "weirdo," and obviously either misguided or evil. This is the line taken by the prosecution: now the MSM has become spokesmen for the government's side in a court case!

If we follow the prosecution's logic, not only the Washington Post and the New York Times should be prosecuted. In addition, any paper, website, radio broadcaster, online article writer (including me), could be prosecuted on the same grounds: making information public about possible US war crimes--as long as al Qaeda, or some other terrorist organization--might have an interest in it, or might have downloaded the material(s) onto their computers.

That's the kind of logic that the USSR used to classify most maps of their empire as secret; it's the kind of logic that made information about Krushchev's New Lands program classified, so that no one, including the Kremlin, knew that it was a horrendous failure: wheat can't successfully grow in an arid climate like Kazakhstan.

It's the kind of logic that the Roman Empire used to ban any information except by the Church, or in the mouths of panegyrists, whose business it was to extol the virtues of the sitting Emperor and to condemn all opponents as devils.

It's the logic of an authoritarian government terrified that the public will find out what horrible things it is doing in their name. The first Bradley Manning release by Wikileaks was a perfect example: the video of a helicopter gunship gunning down civilians on a Baghdad street, including the disturbing chatter of the American crew while shooting.

Manning shouldn't go to prison; he should get the Nobel Peace Prize, instead. Perhaps Manning and Edward Snowden, the former CIA who leaked information on Prism and Government seizure of Verizon "metadata," should both be nominated.

Keep Guantanamo Open!

In response to GOP Congressional insistence on including a $200 million Defense appropriation to build new barracks at Guantanamo, after Obama declares he'll try again to close it:

Anything that boosts Defense Appropriations is a good thing, obviously.

It's estimated that 3-8% of released Guantanamo detainees may have returned to terrorism. Even if a third of detainees returned to terrorism--largely in their own countries--would their actions cost more than the loss of credibility the US expends by keeping Guantanamo open? Guantanamo continues to imprison 86 men convicted of no crime, and cleared for release three years ago.

It's about the money. Defense contractors favor their friends: Republicans continue to be their loudest and most effective supporters.

The Guantanamo appropriation is symptomatic of the whole Defense complex. It makes you wonder: who really controls?

Noam Chomsky suggested in a recent article, "Humanity Imperiled," that the US has consistently opted for policies that increase tensions not reduce them. Examples included: JFK not agreeing to a public compromise to the Cuban Missile Crisis, risking nuclear war to achieve a secret deal that appeared as if only Krushchev backed down.

In '73 Kissinger risked nuclear war, calling a high nuclear alert, to warn the USSR not to interfere in the Arab-Israel war; in 1983, Reagan ordered SAC bombers to penetrate Soviet airspace to test their responses--risking nuclear war, again. Last year, Obama rejected meeting multilaterally with Iran to consider a nuclear ban in the Middle East.

A decade earlier, Clinton quashed an Israeli-North Korean agreement that would have stopped North Korean exports of nuclear and missile technology in return for Israel's recognition. Agreements with North Korea by Clinton and later, Bush, were sabotaged by the latter, when he reneged on the agreement and intensified sanctions. Obama just oversaw a US-South Korea military exercise that had mock bombing runs up to North Korea's borders. Each incident elicited a predictably bellicose North Korean response.

The US invaded Afghanistan claiming it was responsible for 911 (most of the 911 terrorists were Saudis, the planning was done in Germany and the US), and then invaded Iraq--Bush's personal vendetta--and upended the Middle East. Now the US is engaged in sub-rosa wars: in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and probably in more places we don't know about.

Is there a pattern here? Regardless of the President, ever since Eisenhower warned against the growing power of the "defense-industrial complex," US policy has favored an increasingly militaristic foreign policy. The military, and/or the industries that batten from it, push the US toward aggression: they profit from it.

Everyone else, worldwide, is impoverished and endangered, including the American Empire. Its overreach, and the selfishness of our Senatorial class, is bankrupting us and helping to destroy the planet, much as Rome despoiled Europe and the Mediterranean, then bankrupted itself through endless wars and the rapacity of the Senatorial class.