Conservatives speculate in oil and natural gas, even if they know that fossil fuels contribute to global warming/climate change, because they can make a lot of money. It's moral, they feel, to maximize your money, regardless of the consequences--as long as it's legal. They don't particularly believe there is such a thing as global warming, even if they see the evidence all around them: "natural variations," they say, or "sun-spots." But investing in something that may be a major contributor to even more global warming--like the Canadian tar sands--or fracking for oil and gas, is just what you do, when you know you'll make a killing.
I don't invest in oil. I've lost a few dollars on a natural gas ETF. I've made a few on gold--and lost a lot more on gold mines. As a putative progressive, I shouldn't invest even in the gold, since gold mines are highly polluting. But at least I'm only speculating on the "transition fuel," and losing money on it. No conservative would consider "ancillary" consequences--like an uninhabitable planet, or brutish ensuing generations as worth worrying about.
A conservative resists believing in climate change, because it will, unfortunately, require huge coordination by people---and especially, governments--all over the world. It's probably a conspiracy of the World Federalists (a progressive organization that hardly exists any longer), or of the UNA's (United Nations Associations). I was president of a local UNA chapter, once. Mostly, I did the work for an aging, no longer competent older generation, when I was in my 30's. I'm in my 70's now.
The conservative harks back to the golden age of the pioneer, when every man had to depend on his own skill for survival and winning his riches. World climate regulations are clearly antithetical.
But so is modern life. Attila the Hun was the true conservative. In my book, Attila as Told to His Scribes, (available on this website), he wanted to level cities and saw Roman society as a prison he had to destroy--while profiting from the loot: like Romney, like vulture capitalists.
The conservative movement, in Canada as well as the US, appears to have the same bent, but different methods: they'll kill us with global warming, while they prosper--and build climate controlled domes, perhaps, to escape the consequences. Apparently, Harper's Tories, try to suppress protests against their determination to export tar sands oil world wide--from the Pacific via British Columbia, which resists their pipeline plans, and from the Caribbean, via the Keystone XL pipeline. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Republicans give corporate frackers carte blanche and eminent domain!
"I ain't gonna let no Liberal get between me and the best oil play in the bidness! We gonna make us some money!"
Even if Obama wins, this nation and the world, rush ever more rightward. It might not be progressive to have grandchildren!
Showing posts with label Attila. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Attila. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Obama the Cowardly Lion
I voted for Kennedy, and LBJ, with diminishing hope for Carter, and with a certain detachment for Bill. But with Barack Obama, I confess I was won over, as I had been for JFK back in early 1960.
Kennedy was far from perfect, but Obama isn't just a disappointment; he isn't just a failing President the way Carter was, he's failing the country, and it's probably because of who he is. Drew Westen's essay in the NYT is damning, with faint praise. Clearly, Westen is an admirer of the New Deal (so am I), but he sees Obama as someone who doesn't really know who he is; it changes with each person he works with; and he doesn't know how to deal with a bully.
Obama's pacific nature would have been well-suited to the situation Bush W faced in 2001. The outcome would have been very different, as it probably would if the Supremes had allowed Gore to be elected.
Westen pointed out that Obama's stories never include a real villain; anything bad is rather abstract, or in passive mode. And, he doesn't stand up to a bully, like McConnell, or Boehner; he wants to appease.
My wife, the inestimable Elizabeth Cunningham, told me long ago, "He's just like me! He wants to placate so the unpleasantness will go away. I know how to stand up to a bully, though; he doesn't."
But he also doesn't know if he's for progressive politics, although that's where he started, or if he really thinks more like Reagan. He may have been corrupted, in the moral sense, or he's just more of a chameleon than anyone knew: conservative when Republicans make everyone seem to be to his right--not a comfortable place to be--progressive when among Democrats, but never far out left.
That's why "centrism" is like a religion in the Obama White House: along with Change We Can Believe In, Obama's other great theme in the election was Unity. After health care, it's been little change, but too much effort for achieving unity when none is possible, except through a dead-pan or ambiguous surrender.
It's true that S&P blamed the GOP's obstructionism in their downgrade missive, but they're seeing only half of the picture; the other half has Obama cringing before GOP leaders. Obama enables bullies. The bullies are also incredibly destructive. They brought the US over the brink of fiscal credibility, and it's probably like the title of my long ago discarded first novel: When Wrong Ways Prevail.
The novel wasn't about the Roman Empire; it took place in modern India, and the wrong ways were personal, not economic or political. However, my non-fiction book, the Selfish Class, available onsite, details 21st Century parallels with the late Roman Empire's takeover by the wealthy and the military.
That's what seems to be happening here, now: tragically, even with Obama.
My novel, Attila, also onsite, takes place only decades before Rome's fall.
Kennedy was far from perfect, but Obama isn't just a disappointment; he isn't just a failing President the way Carter was, he's failing the country, and it's probably because of who he is. Drew Westen's essay in the NYT is damning, with faint praise. Clearly, Westen is an admirer of the New Deal (so am I), but he sees Obama as someone who doesn't really know who he is; it changes with each person he works with; and he doesn't know how to deal with a bully.
Obama's pacific nature would have been well-suited to the situation Bush W faced in 2001. The outcome would have been very different, as it probably would if the Supremes had allowed Gore to be elected.
Westen pointed out that Obama's stories never include a real villain; anything bad is rather abstract, or in passive mode. And, he doesn't stand up to a bully, like McConnell, or Boehner; he wants to appease.
My wife, the inestimable Elizabeth Cunningham, told me long ago, "He's just like me! He wants to placate so the unpleasantness will go away. I know how to stand up to a bully, though; he doesn't."
But he also doesn't know if he's for progressive politics, although that's where he started, or if he really thinks more like Reagan. He may have been corrupted, in the moral sense, or he's just more of a chameleon than anyone knew: conservative when Republicans make everyone seem to be to his right--not a comfortable place to be--progressive when among Democrats, but never far out left.
That's why "centrism" is like a religion in the Obama White House: along with Change We Can Believe In, Obama's other great theme in the election was Unity. After health care, it's been little change, but too much effort for achieving unity when none is possible, except through a dead-pan or ambiguous surrender.
It's true that S&P blamed the GOP's obstructionism in their downgrade missive, but they're seeing only half of the picture; the other half has Obama cringing before GOP leaders. Obama enables bullies. The bullies are also incredibly destructive. They brought the US over the brink of fiscal credibility, and it's probably like the title of my long ago discarded first novel: When Wrong Ways Prevail.
The novel wasn't about the Roman Empire; it took place in modern India, and the wrong ways were personal, not economic or political. However, my non-fiction book, the Selfish Class, available onsite, details 21st Century parallels with the late Roman Empire's takeover by the wealthy and the military.
That's what seems to be happening here, now: tragically, even with Obama.
My novel, Attila, also onsite, takes place only decades before Rome's fall.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Osama bin Laden Wasn't Killed?
I know people who think the bin Laden assassination was a hoax, otherwise, they argue, why did the Seals ditch the body at sea?
The answer is probably two-fold: it was the Navy Seals, after all, which provided the muscle for the operation. But probably more importantly, a burial at sea, while it can be scrupulously correct in Islamic ritual--reportedly it was--also disposed of the body without thereby creating a martyr's shrine.
That's important on the Indian subcontinent: veneration of a martyr's grave, that becomes a shrine for a saint, in Islam, or an altar to a local god, in Hinduism, has a long and bloody history. Better, people have no specific place for pilgrimage--except the mansion in Abbotabad; that can't be avoided.
In the fifth century, people speculated that Attila didn't die, because he was buried in a secret grave beneath the river Tisza. All the captives who worked to divert the river, and to dig the grave, were summarily executed. Attila as Told to His Scribes on this site.
We've read or heard stories of Jesus's resurrection, or, in the case of Kazantzakis, succumbing to the temptation not to be crucified, and going on, living his life anonymously, somewhere else. There is also Elizabeth Cunningham's Passion of Mary Magdalen, in which Jesus rises again: Cunningham claims: "Maeve put the erection back into the resurrection."
Wait for it: Osama bin Laden will rise again.
What about the legality of the President ordering the assassination of someone who has publicly declared himself an enemy, and boasts that he's attacked us? It's probably stretching the elastic limits of Presidential authority as Commander in Chief, but unfortunately, there are precedents, at least since Wilson, and certainly since Kennedy. JFK apparently approved plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. His own assassination might very well have been blow-back. Lee Harvey Oswald had earlier defected to the USSR and later defended the Cuban Revolution.
The unreal world of government covert action and anti-government terror is a game that supposedly grown people play. Presidents are advised that they must, that it's their responsibility to Protect and Defend, that these super-secret operations are absolutely necessary.
And so, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, acted as judge, jury and Commander of the executioner.
If Obama had ordered bin Laden's capture, instead of murder, bin Laden's trial might have become a cause célèbre worldwide, and al Qaeda would have exploited it--to recruit more suicide bombers. Any dispassionate coverage of the trial would have infuriated true believers.
I suspect there is another, simpler reason why bin Laden was killed in the raid: Navy Seals, especially special units like the one which carried out the raid in Abbotabad, are probably trained to kill, not to capture.
Anyway, enough people, including Republican Congressmen, saw the gruesome photos of bin Laden, that we can be sure: he's dead.
The answer is probably two-fold: it was the Navy Seals, after all, which provided the muscle for the operation. But probably more importantly, a burial at sea, while it can be scrupulously correct in Islamic ritual--reportedly it was--also disposed of the body without thereby creating a martyr's shrine.
That's important on the Indian subcontinent: veneration of a martyr's grave, that becomes a shrine for a saint, in Islam, or an altar to a local god, in Hinduism, has a long and bloody history. Better, people have no specific place for pilgrimage--except the mansion in Abbotabad; that can't be avoided.
In the fifth century, people speculated that Attila didn't die, because he was buried in a secret grave beneath the river Tisza. All the captives who worked to divert the river, and to dig the grave, were summarily executed. Attila as Told to His Scribes on this site.
We've read or heard stories of Jesus's resurrection, or, in the case of Kazantzakis, succumbing to the temptation not to be crucified, and going on, living his life anonymously, somewhere else. There is also Elizabeth Cunningham's Passion of Mary Magdalen, in which Jesus rises again: Cunningham claims: "Maeve put the erection back into the resurrection."
Wait for it: Osama bin Laden will rise again.
What about the legality of the President ordering the assassination of someone who has publicly declared himself an enemy, and boasts that he's attacked us? It's probably stretching the elastic limits of Presidential authority as Commander in Chief, but unfortunately, there are precedents, at least since Wilson, and certainly since Kennedy. JFK apparently approved plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. His own assassination might very well have been blow-back. Lee Harvey Oswald had earlier defected to the USSR and later defended the Cuban Revolution.
The unreal world of government covert action and anti-government terror is a game that supposedly grown people play. Presidents are advised that they must, that it's their responsibility to Protect and Defend, that these super-secret operations are absolutely necessary.
And so, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, acted as judge, jury and Commander of the executioner.
If Obama had ordered bin Laden's capture, instead of murder, bin Laden's trial might have become a cause célèbre worldwide, and al Qaeda would have exploited it--to recruit more suicide bombers. Any dispassionate coverage of the trial would have infuriated true believers.
I suspect there is another, simpler reason why bin Laden was killed in the raid: Navy Seals, especially special units like the one which carried out the raid in Abbotabad, are probably trained to kill, not to capture.
Anyway, enough people, including Republican Congressmen, saw the gruesome photos of bin Laden, that we can be sure: he's dead.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Bastards and Real Bastards
Qaddafi bombs his own unarmed people and destroys towns in order to retake them; in China, human rights activists just disappear: poof. In Attila, as Told to His Scribes, (Chapter Two to appear soon), Attila makes the case that the Romans were worse than he was: and besides, he learned the brutality from them.
Lying kills more than Qaddafi's bombs, only not so suddenly. The misrepresentation of reality perpetrated on Americans by the MSM will result in a lot more deaths than bombs, from diseases not treated, from air pollution, from unmitigated climate change, from car accidents due to poor road maintenance, even from hunger--so draconian are the cuts justified by these lies. Note: Canada permits no Fox-Canada, because it has a law against lying on air.
The biggest lie is that the deficit is the problem. It isn't; it's a short-term solution and needs to be even larger in the near-term--to overcome lagging demand. The secondary lies are that unions are corrupt, wield monopoly power over governments, and are the cause of the budget deficits that--take a deep breath--caused the recession--which is all Obama's fault, of course. Oh, also: seniors are greedy and Social Security will sink us.
Reality Check: Obama's stimulus did prevent us, and perhaps the world, from falling headlong into another Great Depression, but it was compromised away to death and was much too small to pull us out of recession. What we need now, is more spending for job creation, not draconian cuts. Social Security hasn't contributed to the deficits; its "locked box" has been looted for years by politicians, who borrowed the bonds amassed, and replaced them with IOU's. Now they have to be paid back. Slashing the military, or taxing the few who have ripped off everyone else, could pay off the IOU's: both are responsible for them, after all.
In the ongoing budget battle, Obama does know that the stimulus worked, if not enough, and he knows we need more of it. Yet, right off the bat, he freezes Federal workers' wages, and offers to cut Food Stamps, the program that has expanded exponentially--because people need it to get by.
Obama is a politician. When he saw the election results, he listed rightward--offering concessions like the Food Stamps cuts, because people were angry about spending (due to Fox/Limbaugh lies). But nothing he offers will be drastic enough, unless he accepts the whole GOP agenda. If he does that--
We'll need a new party; we'll nationalize the Wisconsin Movement.
It's either that, or capitulation to our new masters: corporations and billionaires, the epitome of Fifth Century Roman Senators. Less humane than their predecessors, however, corporations and billionaires assume no responsibility for their slaves and serfs, nor for the world they trash.
Lying kills more than Qaddafi's bombs, only not so suddenly. The misrepresentation of reality perpetrated on Americans by the MSM will result in a lot more deaths than bombs, from diseases not treated, from air pollution, from unmitigated climate change, from car accidents due to poor road maintenance, even from hunger--so draconian are the cuts justified by these lies. Note: Canada permits no Fox-Canada, because it has a law against lying on air.
The biggest lie is that the deficit is the problem. It isn't; it's a short-term solution and needs to be even larger in the near-term--to overcome lagging demand. The secondary lies are that unions are corrupt, wield monopoly power over governments, and are the cause of the budget deficits that--take a deep breath--caused the recession--which is all Obama's fault, of course. Oh, also: seniors are greedy and Social Security will sink us.
Reality Check: Obama's stimulus did prevent us, and perhaps the world, from falling headlong into another Great Depression, but it was compromised away to death and was much too small to pull us out of recession. What we need now, is more spending for job creation, not draconian cuts. Social Security hasn't contributed to the deficits; its "locked box" has been looted for years by politicians, who borrowed the bonds amassed, and replaced them with IOU's. Now they have to be paid back. Slashing the military, or taxing the few who have ripped off everyone else, could pay off the IOU's: both are responsible for them, after all.
In the ongoing budget battle, Obama does know that the stimulus worked, if not enough, and he knows we need more of it. Yet, right off the bat, he freezes Federal workers' wages, and offers to cut Food Stamps, the program that has expanded exponentially--because people need it to get by.
Obama is a politician. When he saw the election results, he listed rightward--offering concessions like the Food Stamps cuts, because people were angry about spending (due to Fox/Limbaugh lies). But nothing he offers will be drastic enough, unless he accepts the whole GOP agenda. If he does that--
We'll need a new party; we'll nationalize the Wisconsin Movement.
It's either that, or capitulation to our new masters: corporations and billionaires, the epitome of Fifth Century Roman Senators. Less humane than their predecessors, however, corporations and billionaires assume no responsibility for their slaves and serfs, nor for the world they trash.
Friday, July 2, 2010
When Government is Small Enough
We've heard a lot about the conservatives' drive to cut government spending, and functions. Famously Grover Norquist said that his aim was to make government small enough that he could "drown it in a bathtub."
In other words, the ideal was no government at all. It's an interesting idea, especially since we see examples of it in various places around the world.
Somalia, for example. In Somalia, there is a government, but its writ is extremely limited even in the capital city of Mogadishu. Nevertheless, the US and the UN are supporting it--even though it has been caught using child soldiers in its national army. But there is virtually no security, except in some of the rebel-held areas, where strict, extremely brutal "sharia" law is arbitrarily enforced. If someone is starving, and he grabs a loaf of bread, having no money--there is no viable currency--he could have a hand and foot hacked off by al Shabaab, a fundamentalist insurgent group.
So, if you travel in Somalia, you need at least a couple of bodyguards, armed (at least) with AK47's. If you want to send a letter out of the country, you're out of luck. If you're near one of the local businessmen-warlords, who has a local private mail service, you might be able to send a letter within parts of Somalia.
If you want to send your children to school, in most of the country you'll just have to forget about it. One of the reasons for Somali piracy is that there is no security for the nation's fishing areas, so the international fishing industry has moved in, and the Somalis make a living by commandeering unprotected shipping. It's become a big business.
Nations without governance for large parts of their territories are vulnerable to freelance armies like the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), which bills itself as a rebellion to replace Uganda's government with a Christian theocracy, but ranges over four nations, killing, raping, looting, and recruiting boys to fight and girls as sex slaves. The LRA reminds me of the worst aspects of medieval freelance armies: it really isn't interested in holding territory, simply in maintaining (and enriching) itself. It has ranged free for years, because northern Uganda, southern Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo have large territories without government control. The LRA is like Attila's Huns.
The Congo has also been vulnerable, especially its eastern territories, to the same kind of freelance armies (a lot of them): government hardly functions there. Africa (and other ungoverned parts of the world) are like the period during and after the fall of Rome in Europe, when barbarian hordes roamed free, ripped off whatever they could carry, killed any resisters, recruited malcontents and kept on moving. That era has been labeled "the Dark Ages."
They illustrate what No government looks like. Is that what Grover wants?
In other words, the ideal was no government at all. It's an interesting idea, especially since we see examples of it in various places around the world.
Somalia, for example. In Somalia, there is a government, but its writ is extremely limited even in the capital city of Mogadishu. Nevertheless, the US and the UN are supporting it--even though it has been caught using child soldiers in its national army. But there is virtually no security, except in some of the rebel-held areas, where strict, extremely brutal "sharia" law is arbitrarily enforced. If someone is starving, and he grabs a loaf of bread, having no money--there is no viable currency--he could have a hand and foot hacked off by al Shabaab, a fundamentalist insurgent group.
So, if you travel in Somalia, you need at least a couple of bodyguards, armed (at least) with AK47's. If you want to send a letter out of the country, you're out of luck. If you're near one of the local businessmen-warlords, who has a local private mail service, you might be able to send a letter within parts of Somalia.
If you want to send your children to school, in most of the country you'll just have to forget about it. One of the reasons for Somali piracy is that there is no security for the nation's fishing areas, so the international fishing industry has moved in, and the Somalis make a living by commandeering unprotected shipping. It's become a big business.
Nations without governance for large parts of their territories are vulnerable to freelance armies like the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), which bills itself as a rebellion to replace Uganda's government with a Christian theocracy, but ranges over four nations, killing, raping, looting, and recruiting boys to fight and girls as sex slaves. The LRA reminds me of the worst aspects of medieval freelance armies: it really isn't interested in holding territory, simply in maintaining (and enriching) itself. It has ranged free for years, because northern Uganda, southern Sudan, Central African Republic and DR Congo have large territories without government control. The LRA is like Attila's Huns.
The Congo has also been vulnerable, especially its eastern territories, to the same kind of freelance armies (a lot of them): government hardly functions there. Africa (and other ungoverned parts of the world) are like the period during and after the fall of Rome in Europe, when barbarian hordes roamed free, ripped off whatever they could carry, killed any resisters, recruited malcontents and kept on moving. That era has been labeled "the Dark Ages."
They illustrate what No government looks like. Is that what Grover wants?
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