Rachel Maddow made a case (07/16/12) that Sheldon Adelson, the $25+ billionaire pouring over $100 million into Republican campaigns, has something very specific to buy: immunity from criminal prosecution for violating the US's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He made his money on a huge gambling enterprise in Macao by buying Chinese compliance, probably with million-dollar bribes.
The same week, the LIBOR scandal broke, revealing that global big banks have been fixing borrowing rates to their advantage: the market is not operating freely; a cartel was manipulating it. The Justice Department is reportedly building a case to prosecute the LIBOR collaboration; defendants might include regulators as well as bankers.
This same week, Romney has been caught claiming one thing--that he retired from Bain Capital VI in 1999, to run the winter Olympics in Utah--while official filings with the SEC said another: that he was sole owner, CEO, President and Chairman of the Board until 2002, when Bain was bankrupting companies and outsourcing workers. Actually, it was also doing that before 1999.
Pressure is building on Romney to release his income tax returns going back 20+ years, instead of the 2 he's so far revealed. It's not only Democrats, including Obama, who are pressuring him, but conservatives like George Will; he hopes the release might contain the damage.
We already know that banks found all sorts of creative ways to wrest billions from ordinary people--homeowners, investors, you name it: from shepherding credit-worthy minorities into high-cost subprime loans, talking others into deceptive balloon mortgages, to selling toxic bundles of mortgage securities and betting against their own products that had been designed to fail. In addition, HSBC just admitted to massive money laundering of Mexican drug billions.
The financial industry, authors of these frauds, was bailed out by US taxpayers. Now, Wall Street is funding Republicans over Democrats, in the election campaign, because Democrats passed the Dodd-Frank "reform," which though extremely watered down, does, at least, make an attempt to regulate the financial industry.
Other businessmen, represented by the Koch brothers, abhor regulation, and are willing to pay millions to avoid it. They want to be free to pollute, while society pays the price, and to run unsafe plants, again, while society pays the costs they incur on workers and environs. So, they push millions on super-pacs, hoping to bury Obama and Democrats in negative ad-hysteria. Their aim: to elect Romney and a Republican Congress, both of which will be expected to do their bidding.
This is the world that Citizens United has unleashed. It is not "free enterprise." It is not market capitalism. It is crony/cartel capitalism, dominated by a few extremely wealthy, who want laws to permit their corruption. It is a coordinated effort by the selfish class, like fifth century Roman Senators, to dominate the US, and then "the known world," just like the Roman Senators of old.
br>Buy Attila's autobiography here http://www.amazon.com/Attila-Told-his-Scribes-ebook/dp/B00855M90G.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Friday, July 13, 2012
Romney and a Two-Class Society
In Fifth Century Rome, there were two sets of laws: one for honestiores and the other for humiliores. As you might guess from the words, the former were Senators and a few others: not slaves or serfs; the latter were slaves, serfs, non-citizens and everyone else.
It seems that we are now developing a similar system: Romney may well have committed multiple felonies (on taxes and SEC filings), yet no charges have been filed, and probably won't be. Further, even if he did not commit felonies, it's startlingly obvious that the "carried interest" loophole, which allows him to file his income as if it were capital gains (15% instead of 35%), is comparable to the kinds of privileges enjoyed by the honestiores--and he has enjoyed many others.
Even more egregious, it's clear from the LIBOR scandal, as well as the robo-signing scandals and other bank and corporate misdeeds, that huge thefts were carried out by banksters, CEO's, etc. Yet, so far, no one has even been charged, let alone gone to jail, except for people like Bernie Madoff, who didn't play by the rules, and didn't get away with his multimillion-dollar thefts. The LIBOR, EURIBOR and other rate-thefts, may amount to hundreds of billions of dollars, since they affected interest rates on an estimated $10-600 trillions worth of transactions. Since those thefts affected other elite institutions (banks, municipalities, corporations, even countries), it is more likely that there could be huge civil penalties incurred, but I'll bet practically no one goes to jail.
Yet, consider how easy it is for a young black or Hispanic male to be jailed. All they have to do is walk down a street in NYC with a little bit of pot in their pockets and have a little bad luck. The US now has by far the largest per-capita prison population on the planet, which is saying something, since we're competing with the likes of Russia and Communist China.
Also, consider that police departments in the US have been militarized: equipped with high tech weaponry, and even armored personnel carriers and tanks. This weaponry is not targeted against the Romney's of this world, our honestiores. But it's already been used against the Occupy movement in Oakland, and we'll see it out in force for the political conventions. It could be used against any popular revulsion to elite rule. The same is true of the rapidly increasing surveillance programs.
Attorney General Holder aggressively raids and prosecutes medical marijuana dispensaries and whistleblowers (he wants to catch Julian Assange, too), but he and Treasury Secretary Geithner (both with strong links to Wall Street), have been extremely forgiving of banks and other large corporations--and their leaders.
If Romney and Republicans win control, this pattern will be consummated, but even if Obama and Democrats win, the US will be well along its way towards the two-class society found in Fifth Century Rome.
It seems that we are now developing a similar system: Romney may well have committed multiple felonies (on taxes and SEC filings), yet no charges have been filed, and probably won't be. Further, even if he did not commit felonies, it's startlingly obvious that the "carried interest" loophole, which allows him to file his income as if it were capital gains (15% instead of 35%), is comparable to the kinds of privileges enjoyed by the honestiores--and he has enjoyed many others.
Even more egregious, it's clear from the LIBOR scandal, as well as the robo-signing scandals and other bank and corporate misdeeds, that huge thefts were carried out by banksters, CEO's, etc. Yet, so far, no one has even been charged, let alone gone to jail, except for people like Bernie Madoff, who didn't play by the rules, and didn't get away with his multimillion-dollar thefts. The LIBOR, EURIBOR and other rate-thefts, may amount to hundreds of billions of dollars, since they affected interest rates on an estimated $10-600 trillions worth of transactions. Since those thefts affected other elite institutions (banks, municipalities, corporations, even countries), it is more likely that there could be huge civil penalties incurred, but I'll bet practically no one goes to jail.
Yet, consider how easy it is for a young black or Hispanic male to be jailed. All they have to do is walk down a street in NYC with a little bit of pot in their pockets and have a little bad luck. The US now has by far the largest per-capita prison population on the planet, which is saying something, since we're competing with the likes of Russia and Communist China.
Also, consider that police departments in the US have been militarized: equipped with high tech weaponry, and even armored personnel carriers and tanks. This weaponry is not targeted against the Romney's of this world, our honestiores. But it's already been used against the Occupy movement in Oakland, and we'll see it out in force for the political conventions. It could be used against any popular revulsion to elite rule. The same is true of the rapidly increasing surveillance programs.
Attorney General Holder aggressively raids and prosecutes medical marijuana dispensaries and whistleblowers (he wants to catch Julian Assange, too), but he and Treasury Secretary Geithner (both with strong links to Wall Street), have been extremely forgiving of banks and other large corporations--and their leaders.
If Romney and Republicans win control, this pattern will be consummated, but even if Obama and Democrats win, the US will be well along its way towards the two-class society found in Fifth Century Rome.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Run Against Congress!
Even the conservative Chamber of Commerce blames Congress for the US's fiscal inaction! Ben Bernanke has said, many times, that the Fed is only doing what it can with monetary policy, because Congress isn't doing what it should with fiscal policy. So, the Fed puts forward Quantitative Easing, keeping interest rates at rock-bottom and shifting its portfolio from short to long-term assets to drive down the price of longer-term borrowing, as well as "printing" money. But everyone knows that isn't enough.
What is really needed, Bernanke implies, and Economist Paul Krugman has stated repeatedly, is government spending on stimuli, to enliven job markets, plus bring teachers, police, etc., back to work.
Congress is split; it is split between fiscal "hawks" and "doves(?)." The former, dominated by GOP Tea Partyers, claim, like a blindered former friend of mine, that "debt is debt," and The Government must stop borrowing at all costs.
The "doves" don't know what to do, because the conservative-led media has persuaded a near majority that government must cut spending NOW. But the costs really are tangible, and the GOP's solution--cut taxes on the so-called "job creators"--isn't going to create jobs, except maybe in China, only a larger deficit, probably more speculation with the extra money freed for the speculators, and draconian cuts to the programs that allow people to hang on by their fingernails, like Food Stamps.
Krugman agrees that once we are out of this recession/depression, the US will have to begin to pay down its overhanging debt, but now is not that time. Now, the US should borrow money; it's at historically low rates, because the US is the safe harbor for troubled money the world over. Now we should spend money to re-invigorate the economy: spend it on helping states re-hire their laid off workers, spend it on rebuilding and improving our shabby infrastructure and education and spend it on new ventures, like alternative energy industries, all of which will expand the tax base.
Some businesses are not hiring because no one knows what the deadlocked government will do. But why hire if there is no demand for goods and services, anyway? If demand were injected into the economy, companies would hire workers. The Fed can't cause that; only Congress and the President can.
But Republicans are vehemently opposed to any policy that would help Obama's reelection, and vehemently opposed to any further debt. Democrats, on the other hand, are timid, and too many of them are beholden to interests that want deadlock, or little government action--except on their behalf: the selfish class, I've called them.
That's where we stand today. We could go down the road to near-permanent Depression if we choose "austerity" and tax cuts for the wealthy. That's the direction the Roman Empire took in the 4th and 5th Centuries.
Obama should run against Congress, and for a huge new stimulus, instead.
What is really needed, Bernanke implies, and Economist Paul Krugman has stated repeatedly, is government spending on stimuli, to enliven job markets, plus bring teachers, police, etc., back to work.
Congress is split; it is split between fiscal "hawks" and "doves(?)." The former, dominated by GOP Tea Partyers, claim, like a blindered former friend of mine, that "debt is debt," and The Government must stop borrowing at all costs.
The "doves" don't know what to do, because the conservative-led media has persuaded a near majority that government must cut spending NOW. But the costs really are tangible, and the GOP's solution--cut taxes on the so-called "job creators"--isn't going to create jobs, except maybe in China, only a larger deficit, probably more speculation with the extra money freed for the speculators, and draconian cuts to the programs that allow people to hang on by their fingernails, like Food Stamps.
Krugman agrees that once we are out of this recession/depression, the US will have to begin to pay down its overhanging debt, but now is not that time. Now, the US should borrow money; it's at historically low rates, because the US is the safe harbor for troubled money the world over. Now we should spend money to re-invigorate the economy: spend it on helping states re-hire their laid off workers, spend it on rebuilding and improving our shabby infrastructure and education and spend it on new ventures, like alternative energy industries, all of which will expand the tax base.
Some businesses are not hiring because no one knows what the deadlocked government will do. But why hire if there is no demand for goods and services, anyway? If demand were injected into the economy, companies would hire workers. The Fed can't cause that; only Congress and the President can.
But Republicans are vehemently opposed to any policy that would help Obama's reelection, and vehemently opposed to any further debt. Democrats, on the other hand, are timid, and too many of them are beholden to interests that want deadlock, or little government action--except on their behalf: the selfish class, I've called them.
That's where we stand today. We could go down the road to near-permanent Depression if we choose "austerity" and tax cuts for the wealthy. That's the direction the Roman Empire took in the 4th and 5th Centuries.
Obama should run against Congress, and for a huge new stimulus, instead.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Mormons and Bishop Romney
Joseph Smith, Mormonism's founder, spun a whole saga, spanning about a thousand years of "history," beginning with Eli, a prophet, who led his people out of Jerusalem before the Captivity--he prophesied Jerusalem's doom. He and his son, Nephi, led his people to--the New World! And prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ.
Smith creates a whole alternate history derived from the supposed translation of the golden tablets (by him, with the aid of the angel Moroni). The 'Nephites' depart from the sinners of Israel for the New World (America), but are continually attacked by the descendants and followers of Nephi's evil brothers. The skins of these apostates darken, and they are shown using only stone implements: guess who they are! The tablets, revealed by the angel, were "given back" to him by Smith, after the translation was completed.
This alternate history continues until almost 400 years after Jesus' death and resurrection--his "believers" in the New World receive confirmation of his existence and resurrection-- but later turn wicked, except for Mormon--and Moroni--and all but Moroni are killed in battle. However, the golden tablets survive--to be found over a thousand years later, by Joseph Smith!
Quite a story! Having written a novel of a man's life, who appeared once in an account of a Roman-Greek's visit to Attila's court (I, Zerco, on the website link), I know how such stories can be spun--if you have a good imagination.
Afterwards, Smith, had quite an excitin souri and Illinois (apparently leading rebellions)-- and was killed by a mob as he attempted to escape it, outside his second prison, in Illinois.
Not only did Smith 'translate' untraceable golden tablets, he had continuing revelations, published later. His successor, Brigham Young, cemented Mormons' practice of polygamy (he married about 55 women), but was apparently illiterate. He was also racist: at his instigation, black people were denied priest-hood or sacraments until a Mormon leader abolished the prohibition in 1978, 101 years after Young's death.
Although most Mormons now repudiate Brigham Young's racist teachings and polygamy, Mormonism still is based on an alternative history much like the fiction of Orson Scott Card (a Mormon).
Romney isn't just a believer and large donor: he's a Bishop, possibly equivalent to priest. He's admitted, obliquely, that he baptized dead people, as do other Mormons, one of whom baptized Anne Frank!
Quite aside from his questionable claim that, as a (vulture) financier, he knows how to fix the US economy, do Americans realize the strangeness of Romney's religion?
He's the quintessential one-percenter, figure-head for the corporate/wealthy's coup d'état, and a believer in a fantastic fiction. If elected, he'd mark the takeover of the American Senatorial class, much like Roman Senators' unchallenged dominance in the Western Roman Empire's last century.
And would we all have to become Mormons?
Smith creates a whole alternate history derived from the supposed translation of the golden tablets (by him, with the aid of the angel Moroni). The 'Nephites' depart from the sinners of Israel for the New World (America), but are continually attacked by the descendants and followers of Nephi's evil brothers. The skins of these apostates darken, and they are shown using only stone implements: guess who they are! The tablets, revealed by the angel, were "given back" to him by Smith, after the translation was completed.
This alternate history continues until almost 400 years after Jesus' death and resurrection--his "believers" in the New World receive confirmation of his existence and resurrection-- but later turn wicked, except for Mormon--and Moroni--and all but Moroni are killed in battle. However, the golden tablets survive--to be found over a thousand years later, by Joseph Smith!
Quite a story! Having written a novel of a man's life, who appeared once in an account of a Roman-Greek's visit to Attila's court (I, Zerco, on the website link), I know how such stories can be spun--if you have a good imagination.
Afterwards, Smith, had quite an excitin souri and Illinois (apparently leading rebellions)-- and was killed by a mob as he attempted to escape it, outside his second prison, in Illinois.
Not only did Smith 'translate' untraceable golden tablets, he had continuing revelations, published later. His successor, Brigham Young, cemented Mormons' practice of polygamy (he married about 55 women), but was apparently illiterate. He was also racist: at his instigation, black people were denied priest-hood or sacraments until a Mormon leader abolished the prohibition in 1978, 101 years after Young's death.
Although most Mormons now repudiate Brigham Young's racist teachings and polygamy, Mormonism still is based on an alternative history much like the fiction of Orson Scott Card (a Mormon).
Romney isn't just a believer and large donor: he's a Bishop, possibly equivalent to priest. He's admitted, obliquely, that he baptized dead people, as do other Mormons, one of whom baptized Anne Frank!
Quite aside from his questionable claim that, as a (vulture) financier, he knows how to fix the US economy, do Americans realize the strangeness of Romney's religion?
He's the quintessential one-percenter, figure-head for the corporate/wealthy's coup d'état, and a believer in a fantastic fiction. If elected, he'd mark the takeover of the American Senatorial class, much like Roman Senators' unchallenged dominance in the Western Roman Empire's last century.
And would we all have to become Mormons?
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Plantation America
…is what we're entering. It's why the elites no longer seem to care if people are employed, or desperate. It's why a significant portion of the elite is determined to repeal the healthcare law, now that the Supreme Court has upheld it. The hoi-polloi must be driven down, like the slaves of yore.
Sara Robinson (Alternet, 06/28/12) offers an intriguing theory: the wealthy now most articulate, most politically active, increasingly dominant, are from a different aristocracy than men like FDR, or even George H.W. Bush. They have not, she points out, inherited the Puritan-based values of social justice and noblesse oblige, derived mostly from the Northeast. Instead, like the younger Bush and Mitch McConnell, they inherit their ideas from the plantation aristocracy of the Tidewater South, and ultimately from the even more brutal plantation society of the West Indies.
The plantation heritage emphasizes the 'divine right' of the elite to lord it over their slaves--and everyone else, brutally, if necessary. It also rejects the idea that the elite has an obligation to aid those less fortunate, or the later idea that equality is a good: it's not: it's an evil, in their eyes, to be beaten down (literally). Further, freedom, for them, is only individual, and only realized fully by elites, because they should have the freedom to suppress everyone else.
You could go further back and draw parallels between the Puritan vs Plantation aristocracies to the European feudal regimes vs the latifundias lorded over by the Roman Senators towards (and after) the break up of the Roman Empire. The process of Senatorial takeover parallels our own: yeomen peasantry, urban proletariat, and the middle class were all driven into serfdom, under the control of the few Senatorial families monopolizing all wealth. Anyone not of Senatorial rank was treated like a serf.
In feudal society, there was at least the idea that nobility had an obligation to protect and look after their subjects, although this often degenerated into something more like the late Roman system. Its degeneration led to the French Revolution and the English Civil War, but also to social democracy in most of Europe.
It is the southern, plantation ethos that pervades the Tea Party, or rather, its funders, like the Koch brothers and Karl Rove. They are not constrained by ideas of justice, the rule of law or fairness. The Kochs, for example, believe they have a god-given right to pollute the air, water and land and shouldn't have to pay for the damage they do to anyone else; that's their justification for adamantly opposing any kind of environmental regulation: they call this "freedom."
Looked at this way, the contest between conservative and liberal/progressive, between Republican and Democrat, is a contest between two elite cultures, or tribes. The older, more established northeastern ethos appears tired, and lacking conviction. The brash, southern and western tribe pours its resources into gaining dominance.
It doesn't look good.
Sara Robinson (Alternet, 06/28/12) offers an intriguing theory: the wealthy now most articulate, most politically active, increasingly dominant, are from a different aristocracy than men like FDR, or even George H.W. Bush. They have not, she points out, inherited the Puritan-based values of social justice and noblesse oblige, derived mostly from the Northeast. Instead, like the younger Bush and Mitch McConnell, they inherit their ideas from the plantation aristocracy of the Tidewater South, and ultimately from the even more brutal plantation society of the West Indies.
The plantation heritage emphasizes the 'divine right' of the elite to lord it over their slaves--and everyone else, brutally, if necessary. It also rejects the idea that the elite has an obligation to aid those less fortunate, or the later idea that equality is a good: it's not: it's an evil, in their eyes, to be beaten down (literally). Further, freedom, for them, is only individual, and only realized fully by elites, because they should have the freedom to suppress everyone else.
You could go further back and draw parallels between the Puritan vs Plantation aristocracies to the European feudal regimes vs the latifundias lorded over by the Roman Senators towards (and after) the break up of the Roman Empire. The process of Senatorial takeover parallels our own: yeomen peasantry, urban proletariat, and the middle class were all driven into serfdom, under the control of the few Senatorial families monopolizing all wealth. Anyone not of Senatorial rank was treated like a serf.
In feudal society, there was at least the idea that nobility had an obligation to protect and look after their subjects, although this often degenerated into something more like the late Roman system. Its degeneration led to the French Revolution and the English Civil War, but also to social democracy in most of Europe.
It is the southern, plantation ethos that pervades the Tea Party, or rather, its funders, like the Koch brothers and Karl Rove. They are not constrained by ideas of justice, the rule of law or fairness. The Kochs, for example, believe they have a god-given right to pollute the air, water and land and shouldn't have to pay for the damage they do to anyone else; that's their justification for adamantly opposing any kind of environmental regulation: they call this "freedom."
Looked at this way, the contest between conservative and liberal/progressive, between Republican and Democrat, is a contest between two elite cultures, or tribes. The older, more established northeastern ethos appears tired, and lacking conviction. The brash, southern and western tribe pours its resources into gaining dominance.
It doesn't look good.
Monday, June 25, 2012
The "Liberal" Media
Did you know that 14 of the Federal cases against the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were dismissed as posing no constitutionally valid question, four of the cases upheld the Constitutionality of the law, while only 3 ruled against it in whole or in part? And the courts upholding the law included the DC Court of Appeals, probably the closest court to the Supremes.
Furthermore, did you know that the individual mandate vilified by Republicans was originally a Republican idea, and was floated by Republicans as an alternative to Hillary's attempt at healthcare reform back in the early 1990's? Until 2010, no law professor thought there would be even a question of constitutionality for the mandate. After all, insurance for cars are mandated and so much more.
I bring up these points, because that's not the impression you would have gotten from any of the mass media, including the New York Times. The decisions asserting unconstitutionality received 58% of the coverage by newspapers, those upholding ACA's constitutionality 29% and the dismissals 13%. Even worse, TV and cable spent 97% of their time on the decisions finding the law unconstitutional.
This demonstrates how skewed our news has become. What are the effects on American opinion? Seventy-two percent in a Gallup poll thought the individual mandate was unconstitutional, only 22% thought it constitutional. According to another poll (Kaiser), 51% thought the Supremes should rule the mandate unconstitutional, while only 27% thought the Supremes should uphold it.
So, what was considered not even worthy of worrying about before 2010, now becomes almost a super-majority against. The media, in other words, is driving American politics in such a conservative direction that Republican positions of the 1990's are not only dismissed, but considered radical socialism.
The same kind of analysis would probably show that support for budget austerity versus more stimulus, has undergone a similar media-driven change. So, despite the warnings from many economists that we shouldn't repeat what happened in 1937, mass and elite opinion insists that we must--both here and in Europe. 1937 was when FDR and the Democratic Congress cut spending, before the Depression was over, creating a massive economic double dip, only corrected once the government began to spend with abandon, first on the Lend-Lease program to support Britain against Nazi attacks and then on our own participation in WWII.
The end of the USSR began when Russians believed the opposite of what the official media told them. In the Roman Empire, what official information there was became increasingly sycophantic the more dysfunctional the Empire became. By the Fifth Century, there were only paeans to the Emperors.
Why this skewed information? To support the elite, what Occupy labeled the 1%, which wants only lowered taxes and less government for itself, so that it can more fully dominate society, as did the Roman Senators in the Fifth Century, those I've labeled 'The Selfish Class.'
Furthermore, did you know that the individual mandate vilified by Republicans was originally a Republican idea, and was floated by Republicans as an alternative to Hillary's attempt at healthcare reform back in the early 1990's? Until 2010, no law professor thought there would be even a question of constitutionality for the mandate. After all, insurance for cars are mandated and so much more.
I bring up these points, because that's not the impression you would have gotten from any of the mass media, including the New York Times. The decisions asserting unconstitutionality received 58% of the coverage by newspapers, those upholding ACA's constitutionality 29% and the dismissals 13%. Even worse, TV and cable spent 97% of their time on the decisions finding the law unconstitutional.
This demonstrates how skewed our news has become. What are the effects on American opinion? Seventy-two percent in a Gallup poll thought the individual mandate was unconstitutional, only 22% thought it constitutional. According to another poll (Kaiser), 51% thought the Supremes should rule the mandate unconstitutional, while only 27% thought the Supremes should uphold it.
So, what was considered not even worthy of worrying about before 2010, now becomes almost a super-majority against. The media, in other words, is driving American politics in such a conservative direction that Republican positions of the 1990's are not only dismissed, but considered radical socialism.
The same kind of analysis would probably show that support for budget austerity versus more stimulus, has undergone a similar media-driven change. So, despite the warnings from many economists that we shouldn't repeat what happened in 1937, mass and elite opinion insists that we must--both here and in Europe. 1937 was when FDR and the Democratic Congress cut spending, before the Depression was over, creating a massive economic double dip, only corrected once the government began to spend with abandon, first on the Lend-Lease program to support Britain against Nazi attacks and then on our own participation in WWII.
The end of the USSR began when Russians believed the opposite of what the official media told them. In the Roman Empire, what official information there was became increasingly sycophantic the more dysfunctional the Empire became. By the Fifth Century, there were only paeans to the Emperors.
Why this skewed information? To support the elite, what Occupy labeled the 1%, which wants only lowered taxes and less government for itself, so that it can more fully dominate society, as did the Roman Senators in the Fifth Century, those I've labeled 'The Selfish Class.'
Thursday, June 21, 2012
It's the Aliens!
"The aliens, "joked my daughter, "have hidden Pleasant Valley so they can make it arid and dead. Then humans won't live there." The sign to Pleasant Valley directed to two other cities, but it went unmentioned.
"Are they behind global warming," I asked?
It's as good an explanation as any for why the corporate owners and billionaires fund disinformation campaigns against the existence of climate change and its human causes.
Yes, disinformation campaigns. Fox News and on-the-one-side, on-the-other-side remainder of the brain-dead media, are spreading false information, knowingly, about global climate change and its causes. By acting as if as many knowledgeable people deny its existence as those who warn against it, the US media is, in effect, providing false information. That's why nearly a majority of Americans believe climate change is an elitist conspiracy by corrupt liberal scientists, and that its existence and causes haven't been sufficiently proven. So, no action is necessary.
But since most of the real elite, the billionaires, etc., are well-educated and well-informed, they probably know that climate change is not only happening but accelerating. So, why do they spend so much money to persuade others that it's not? Maybe they really are aliens. After all, unless they are aliens, why would they think they, or their children and grandchildren would be immune to the huge environmental damage their profits promote?
"Aliens," my daughter offered, "will be better off when climate change drives off the humans."
"Is Mitt Romney an alien?"
"Only half," she told me. "The other half is a robot."
"I always thought Romney was a 'bot."
Perhaps all the aliens are billionaires and most billionaires and multimillionaires are aliens. That would explain why they appear to have so little empathy for people poorer than they. While raising their taxes would hurt them far less than current taxes or program cuts affect those with significantly less income, still, the right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers and the Adelsons are actively campaigning, through millions of dollars, to get their taxes reduced, and to cut programs benefiting poor people.
Seriously, there appears to be a disconnect between these people who are willing to spend hundreds of millions to make millions miserable and any rational thought about what good that will do--for them, or anyone else.
Ideology, and provably false ideas, make these people into aliens, even if they didn't come from outer space.
Some facts: climate change is accelerating, and human causes are to blame, and could be correctable. Lower taxes for the wealthy, and the greater inequality resulting, makes everyone poorer: societies that are more egalitarian grow more rapidly, as in the 1950's US. Extreme class differences a la fifth century Rome lead to spreading poverty and economic stagnation. Finally: austerity creates greater deficits and greater poverty, when an economy is in a recession. Austerity politics drove the Roman imperium into bankruptcy in 476, after centuries of depression.
"Are they behind global warming," I asked?
It's as good an explanation as any for why the corporate owners and billionaires fund disinformation campaigns against the existence of climate change and its human causes.
Yes, disinformation campaigns. Fox News and on-the-one-side, on-the-other-side remainder of the brain-dead media, are spreading false information, knowingly, about global climate change and its causes. By acting as if as many knowledgeable people deny its existence as those who warn against it, the US media is, in effect, providing false information. That's why nearly a majority of Americans believe climate change is an elitist conspiracy by corrupt liberal scientists, and that its existence and causes haven't been sufficiently proven. So, no action is necessary.
But since most of the real elite, the billionaires, etc., are well-educated and well-informed, they probably know that climate change is not only happening but accelerating. So, why do they spend so much money to persuade others that it's not? Maybe they really are aliens. After all, unless they are aliens, why would they think they, or their children and grandchildren would be immune to the huge environmental damage their profits promote?
"Aliens," my daughter offered, "will be better off when climate change drives off the humans."
"Is Mitt Romney an alien?"
"Only half," she told me. "The other half is a robot."
"I always thought Romney was a 'bot."
Perhaps all the aliens are billionaires and most billionaires and multimillionaires are aliens. That would explain why they appear to have so little empathy for people poorer than they. While raising their taxes would hurt them far less than current taxes or program cuts affect those with significantly less income, still, the right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers and the Adelsons are actively campaigning, through millions of dollars, to get their taxes reduced, and to cut programs benefiting poor people.
Seriously, there appears to be a disconnect between these people who are willing to spend hundreds of millions to make millions miserable and any rational thought about what good that will do--for them, or anyone else.
Ideology, and provably false ideas, make these people into aliens, even if they didn't come from outer space.
Some facts: climate change is accelerating, and human causes are to blame, and could be correctable. Lower taxes for the wealthy, and the greater inequality resulting, makes everyone poorer: societies that are more egalitarian grow more rapidly, as in the 1950's US. Extreme class differences a la fifth century Rome lead to spreading poverty and economic stagnation. Finally: austerity creates greater deficits and greater poverty, when an economy is in a recession. Austerity politics drove the Roman imperium into bankruptcy in 476, after centuries of depression.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Stimulus or Austerity
What do we hear from the movers and shakers? Still, austerity.
Greece is imploding, and even if moderates win this Sunday, it's unlikely that they'll be able to force Germany's Angela Merkel to abandon her stance: austerity as the solution to all their economic ills. Spain is now the problem de jour: another bank/bonds crisis, but again, European bonds, the only interim solution, are nixed by Merkel.
Merkel has her reasons. Germans have their history as justification: the Weimar Republic collapsed under inflation that saw the mark tumble to over 1 trillion to the dollar, wiping out the middle class. After that, the Nazis took over.
Ironically, but also logically, some of the beneficiaries of the austerity-driven depression that's overtaking Europe's periphery are politicians of the extreme right, like Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
If Germans could realize that their resistance to meaningful bailouts and stimulus to create growth is creating little Weimar's all over Europe, perhaps they'd re-think their reluctance.
Angela's conservatives are in the driver's seat in Europe. In the US, conservatives are in a similar position, even though they don't control the federal government. The tea party dominated Republicans control the House, and effectively stymie any stimulatory policy in the Senate: 41 votes out of 100 = a blocking minority. Plus, by controlling a majority of states, Republicans are able to lay off public employees wholesale--partly to balance budgets, but partly because unionized public employees are the only organized group left that can counter their lock-step promotion of corporate and wealthy/selfish class interests. Conservatives see public employees as "the greatest threat" to the US economy. However, the net effect of state (and local) layoffs has been to offset any growth in employment in the private sector, one of the prime reasons why unemployment went up a notch last month.
Given their antagonism to public employees, it's not surprising that Republicans refuse to allow the major Federal grants (stimulus expenditures) necessary to prevent the layoffs or hire back the teachers and police needed.
The US doesn't have the equivalent of Greece's Golden Dawn or its left-wing Syriza, but Republican intransigence and Democratic waffling surely justify them.
Instead, we have the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and the millionaire/billionaire funded super-pacs on one side, and only the weakened Occupy movement on the other. So, our equivalent of the Nazi takeover of Weimar would put corporations and their owners in control.
Why "only" the Occupy movement? Tom Barrett, the defeated old-line Democrat in Wisconsin is your answer. Centrist resistance may win barely enough votes in the General Election against Koch-Rove billions, but what people really yearn for is the kind of policy (only more so) that Obama campaigned on but only half-delivered. Incremental measures aren't solutions.
Even with Obama, the 1%, or the Selfish Class, face little resistance to their takeover. Long-term depression could result, paralleling the history of the late Roman Empire.
Greece is imploding, and even if moderates win this Sunday, it's unlikely that they'll be able to force Germany's Angela Merkel to abandon her stance: austerity as the solution to all their economic ills. Spain is now the problem de jour: another bank/bonds crisis, but again, European bonds, the only interim solution, are nixed by Merkel.
Merkel has her reasons. Germans have their history as justification: the Weimar Republic collapsed under inflation that saw the mark tumble to over 1 trillion to the dollar, wiping out the middle class. After that, the Nazis took over.
Ironically, but also logically, some of the beneficiaries of the austerity-driven depression that's overtaking Europe's periphery are politicians of the extreme right, like Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
If Germans could realize that their resistance to meaningful bailouts and stimulus to create growth is creating little Weimar's all over Europe, perhaps they'd re-think their reluctance.
Angela's conservatives are in the driver's seat in Europe. In the US, conservatives are in a similar position, even though they don't control the federal government. The tea party dominated Republicans control the House, and effectively stymie any stimulatory policy in the Senate: 41 votes out of 100 = a blocking minority. Plus, by controlling a majority of states, Republicans are able to lay off public employees wholesale--partly to balance budgets, but partly because unionized public employees are the only organized group left that can counter their lock-step promotion of corporate and wealthy/selfish class interests. Conservatives see public employees as "the greatest threat" to the US economy. However, the net effect of state (and local) layoffs has been to offset any growth in employment in the private sector, one of the prime reasons why unemployment went up a notch last month.
Given their antagonism to public employees, it's not surprising that Republicans refuse to allow the major Federal grants (stimulus expenditures) necessary to prevent the layoffs or hire back the teachers and police needed.
The US doesn't have the equivalent of Greece's Golden Dawn or its left-wing Syriza, but Republican intransigence and Democratic waffling surely justify them.
Instead, we have the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and the millionaire/billionaire funded super-pacs on one side, and only the weakened Occupy movement on the other. So, our equivalent of the Nazi takeover of Weimar would put corporations and their owners in control.
Why "only" the Occupy movement? Tom Barrett, the defeated old-line Democrat in Wisconsin is your answer. Centrist resistance may win barely enough votes in the General Election against Koch-Rove billions, but what people really yearn for is the kind of policy (only more so) that Obama campaigned on but only half-delivered. Incremental measures aren't solutions.
Even with Obama, the 1%, or the Selfish Class, face little resistance to their takeover. Long-term depression could result, paralleling the history of the late Roman Empire.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Counter-Revolution Paid For By
Scott Walker's "easy win" over old line Democrat, Tom Barrett, shows the relative effectiveness of two strategies: buying elections and media, versus organizing "the masses." Maybe there weren't enough of the masses, or there were too many Fox consumers, but buying an election worked, mass organizing didn't. Also, Tom Barrett's moderate stance of "let's reason together," didn't work. He lost this time by more than last time, before Walker slammed public sector unions and women, and students, and, and, and.
Wisconsin was a laboratory for those freed by Citizens United to spend unlimited funds in order to buy the kind of government they want: slashed services, cowed workers and slashed taxes for the wealthy.
And they won. Big.
Walker is a hero of the right. To them, he's someone who stood up to unions, who stood up to uppity women: he called their bluff and cut taxes for corporations. All the outrage, all the organizing, all the demonstrations against him and the Republican coup d'etat comes down to this: Walker won with a higher percentage of the vote than he won in 2010, before he revealed how radical he was.
The real winners are the people I've called the Selfish Class. It's not clear, yet, whether their campaign spending (seven to one versus Democrats, reportedly, 2/3 from out of state, versus 1/4 for Democrats) or the longer propaganda campaign of Fox News and snide talk radio was most important in waging the counter-revolution. Both were paid for by the same kind of people: the selfish class, whether corporate donors, or billionaires wanting to protect and expand what is theirs.
What is clear is that even if Obama ekes out a win in November (18% of Walker voters said they'd support him), it is the selfish class that really won. Walker's agenda was tailor-made by them: bash unions into impotence, humiliate women into 1950's-type subservience and cow dissidents, minorities and students into hiding. Most important: cut taxes on the wealthy to the bone.
Obama may win against Romney by piecing together a coalition of feminists, gays, minorities and enough independents impressed by his anti-terrorist cojones, but you can bet he'll be reluctant to support strengthening unions, or pushing for a real stimulus, or going after Wall Street. He may be marginally better than Romney, but he's not going to undo the counter-revolution.
There is a real divide in this country, and much of the world. The uber-rich selfish class, like Fifth-century Roman Senators, has their hangers-on and their subservient serfs, who have been taught that their heroes' good fortunes will trickle down. And there are the rest of us, who haven't yet accepted the message.
We haven't accepted it, because it isn't true: with austerity, slashed services and increasing inequality, the wealthy will prosper, but, if they prevail, we'll be driven into a centuries-long depression, just like the fifth-century Roman Empire.
Wisconsin was a laboratory for those freed by Citizens United to spend unlimited funds in order to buy the kind of government they want: slashed services, cowed workers and slashed taxes for the wealthy.
And they won. Big.
Walker is a hero of the right. To them, he's someone who stood up to unions, who stood up to uppity women: he called their bluff and cut taxes for corporations. All the outrage, all the organizing, all the demonstrations against him and the Republican coup d'etat comes down to this: Walker won with a higher percentage of the vote than he won in 2010, before he revealed how radical he was.
The real winners are the people I've called the Selfish Class. It's not clear, yet, whether their campaign spending (seven to one versus Democrats, reportedly, 2/3 from out of state, versus 1/4 for Democrats) or the longer propaganda campaign of Fox News and snide talk radio was most important in waging the counter-revolution. Both were paid for by the same kind of people: the selfish class, whether corporate donors, or billionaires wanting to protect and expand what is theirs.
What is clear is that even if Obama ekes out a win in November (18% of Walker voters said they'd support him), it is the selfish class that really won. Walker's agenda was tailor-made by them: bash unions into impotence, humiliate women into 1950's-type subservience and cow dissidents, minorities and students into hiding. Most important: cut taxes on the wealthy to the bone.
Obama may win against Romney by piecing together a coalition of feminists, gays, minorities and enough independents impressed by his anti-terrorist cojones, but you can bet he'll be reluctant to support strengthening unions, or pushing for a real stimulus, or going after Wall Street. He may be marginally better than Romney, but he's not going to undo the counter-revolution.
There is a real divide in this country, and much of the world. The uber-rich selfish class, like Fifth-century Roman Senators, has their hangers-on and their subservient serfs, who have been taught that their heroes' good fortunes will trickle down. And there are the rest of us, who haven't yet accepted the message.
We haven't accepted it, because it isn't true: with austerity, slashed services and increasing inequality, the wealthy will prosper, but, if they prevail, we'll be driven into a centuries-long depression, just like the fifth-century Roman Empire.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Pentagon Propaganda for US?
The Pentagon already shades the truth abroad, with their information services, but that's "psy-war." Now its supporters want to give it the legal right to wage psy war against the American people (The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 (H.R. 5736) to modify the NDAA 2013. It would lift the ban against US government propaganda targeted towards the American people.
The House added this provision to the 2013 NDAA, already obnoxious enough because like the 2012 NDAA, it permits indefinite detention, even of citizens, by Presidential fiat: the NDAA Obama signed!
Has Obama gone over to the dark side? Does the military, or the behind-the-scenes Establishment hold a gun to his ribs, or threaten his daughters' lives? Or was Obama always more hawkish than we knew: his first claim to fame was an eloquent speech against the Iraq War, before it was launched.
The indefinite detention provision has been struck down in Federal Court, a hopeful first step; let's hope the Senate doesn't pass the House bill with the Pentagon propaganda provision.
If it does, we soon won't even know that we've entirely lost what little democracy we have. We could be transformed into a warrior state. War would become a commercial venture, taxes would rise, and services vanish--isn't that the Tea Party dream? The "candidates for intervention" are legion. Even the poorest countries have wealth to extract: resources and possibly businesses, labor and customers. There's a word for this: imperialism.
Yet now, the American military are being forced to cut budgets--so, the DOD propaganda arm could swing into action--using taxpayer dollars--to persuade us the military should be as fully funded as the generals want.
Is that what the elite wants, the movers-and-shakers, the selfish class? It worked for Rome, didn't it? And for the British Empire--for awhile.
Their heydays were when they were economic colossi, when the riches flowing from imperial dominance fueled the rise of a wealthy elite: Rome's Senators built palaces all over the Empire; they became centers of stagnation and impoverization in the Fifth century.
But the US is no longer in its heyday. China, India, Russia and Brazil are growing faster; Chinese influence is rising in every region. Meanwhile the US is the most indebted nation in the world. If the US continues attempting global control, it would have to be on the Chinese dime. How long would China stand for that?
Pentagon propaganda would lead the US to bankruptcy, not world ascendancy; we can't afford more adventures abroad. I wish we could spend most of the Pentagon's billions on redeveloping the national economy; the US could lead the world out of the growing "great recession" and people would have jobs: a billion spent on Defense creates only half or fewer jobs than comparable civilian sectors.
We still have choices, but not for long. A security establishment that can indefinitely detain and spout its own poison would complete our transition to a police state.
The House added this provision to the 2013 NDAA, already obnoxious enough because like the 2012 NDAA, it permits indefinite detention, even of citizens, by Presidential fiat: the NDAA Obama signed!
Has Obama gone over to the dark side? Does the military, or the behind-the-scenes Establishment hold a gun to his ribs, or threaten his daughters' lives? Or was Obama always more hawkish than we knew: his first claim to fame was an eloquent speech against the Iraq War, before it was launched.
The indefinite detention provision has been struck down in Federal Court, a hopeful first step; let's hope the Senate doesn't pass the House bill with the Pentagon propaganda provision.
If it does, we soon won't even know that we've entirely lost what little democracy we have. We could be transformed into a warrior state. War would become a commercial venture, taxes would rise, and services vanish--isn't that the Tea Party dream? The "candidates for intervention" are legion. Even the poorest countries have wealth to extract: resources and possibly businesses, labor and customers. There's a word for this: imperialism.
Yet now, the American military are being forced to cut budgets--so, the DOD propaganda arm could swing into action--using taxpayer dollars--to persuade us the military should be as fully funded as the generals want.
Is that what the elite wants, the movers-and-shakers, the selfish class? It worked for Rome, didn't it? And for the British Empire--for awhile.
Their heydays were when they were economic colossi, when the riches flowing from imperial dominance fueled the rise of a wealthy elite: Rome's Senators built palaces all over the Empire; they became centers of stagnation and impoverization in the Fifth century.
But the US is no longer in its heyday. China, India, Russia and Brazil are growing faster; Chinese influence is rising in every region. Meanwhile the US is the most indebted nation in the world. If the US continues attempting global control, it would have to be on the Chinese dime. How long would China stand for that?
Pentagon propaganda would lead the US to bankruptcy, not world ascendancy; we can't afford more adventures abroad. I wish we could spend most of the Pentagon's billions on redeveloping the national economy; the US could lead the world out of the growing "great recession" and people would have jobs: a billion spent on Defense creates only half or fewer jobs than comparable civilian sectors.
We still have choices, but not for long. A security establishment that can indefinitely detain and spout its own poison would complete our transition to a police state.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Climate Change, Politics and Money
Our political campaigns debate regulation, austerity and stimulus. The multi-millionaires and billionaires funding super-pacs to elect Republicans and Romney abhor taxes and regulations, whether it's building codes, global warming gas emissions or casinos.
Why, they could be on their way to earning trillions if it weren't for "job-killing regulations" and taxes! The Kochs, fossil fuel producers, have been cited over and over for emissions pollution, have paid large fines (small compared to their incomes), and legal fees that probably dwarf the fines: their pac funding dwarfs both. A Texas billionaire is a builder of shoddy developments; he's been sued repeatedly for using inferior materials, and not surprisingly, he's for "tort reform" that would cap jury awards for damages. So, he, the Kochs, and many others donate millions to Romney or GOP-supportive superpacs.
Why do they do this? Simple, in each case, they "donate" to get what they want through Congress and the President--the Congress and President they are buying. And while the money advanced is almost small change to the super-rich, it floods the election process.
What does this have to do with global warming? Warming increased last year faster than expected (3.5% over 2010), and the world is on track to warm 3.5 degrees Celsius; Earth will be a much warmer place than it has ever been since humans evolved. Earth was as warm eons ago, but it's not clear that people can survive it without major disruption and mass die-offs. The reason the earth is warming so rapidly, according to Climate Action Tracker(CAT), is because no nation has even met its (inadequate) targets for cutting emissions, and even if they did, none would be enough to slow global warming. The US's inability to adopt carbon emission reduction programs like cap and trade is symptomatic: Brazil's and Mexico's gestures, according to CAT, are ineffectual or worse. But the world as a whole is even more so: nations appear unable--or unwilling, like the US--to meet their climate change pledges.
The reason for the puny response is political. There is no lack of technology to battle climate change. But private interests are donating funds to prevent its use, and persuade others it's unnecessary. The Kochs, for example, have a stake in preventing programs to ameliorate climate change. Citizens United has opened the financial floodgates, rendering billionaires even more effective at blocking positive action.
The flood from the super-rich parallels the near monopoly of wealth and power of Rome's Senators in the fifth century. Then, everyone else was driven into serfdom; now its wage slavery and debt--if you're lucky enough to get a job--but now the world's people will be corralled into an overheated ditch.
Maybe the billionaires think they can create their own climate-controlled havens to survive?
Why, they could be on their way to earning trillions if it weren't for "job-killing regulations" and taxes! The Kochs, fossil fuel producers, have been cited over and over for emissions pollution, have paid large fines (small compared to their incomes), and legal fees that probably dwarf the fines: their pac funding dwarfs both. A Texas billionaire is a builder of shoddy developments; he's been sued repeatedly for using inferior materials, and not surprisingly, he's for "tort reform" that would cap jury awards for damages. So, he, the Kochs, and many others donate millions to Romney or GOP-supportive superpacs.
Why do they do this? Simple, in each case, they "donate" to get what they want through Congress and the President--the Congress and President they are buying. And while the money advanced is almost small change to the super-rich, it floods the election process.
What does this have to do with global warming? Warming increased last year faster than expected (3.5% over 2010), and the world is on track to warm 3.5 degrees Celsius; Earth will be a much warmer place than it has ever been since humans evolved. Earth was as warm eons ago, but it's not clear that people can survive it without major disruption and mass die-offs. The reason the earth is warming so rapidly, according to Climate Action Tracker(CAT), is because no nation has even met its (inadequate) targets for cutting emissions, and even if they did, none would be enough to slow global warming. The US's inability to adopt carbon emission reduction programs like cap and trade is symptomatic: Brazil's and Mexico's gestures, according to CAT, are ineffectual or worse. But the world as a whole is even more so: nations appear unable--or unwilling, like the US--to meet their climate change pledges.
The reason for the puny response is political. There is no lack of technology to battle climate change. But private interests are donating funds to prevent its use, and persuade others it's unnecessary. The Kochs, for example, have a stake in preventing programs to ameliorate climate change. Citizens United has opened the financial floodgates, rendering billionaires even more effective at blocking positive action.
The flood from the super-rich parallels the near monopoly of wealth and power of Rome's Senators in the fifth century. Then, everyone else was driven into serfdom; now its wage slavery and debt--if you're lucky enough to get a job--but now the world's people will be corralled into an overheated ditch.
Maybe the billionaires think they can create their own climate-controlled havens to survive?
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Attila as Told to his Scribes Just Published
Copy and paste the link I'll provide below and you'll go to Amazon's listing of the Kindle book, Attila as Told to his Scribes.
It's $5 for a very long read. If you like historical fiction, romance and adventure and a deep exploration of a charming megalomaniac, this book is for you.
Attila begins his tale (yes, he tells it to his scribes, it's an autobiography), when he's on the cusp of adolescence, already a warrior, when his father is killed before his eyes. It ends with his death, told by his last scribe and his last bride.
http://www.amazon.com/Attila-Told-his-Scribes-ebook/dp/B00855M90G/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1337727607&sr=1-1
It's $5 for a very long read. If you like historical fiction, romance and adventure and a deep exploration of a charming megalomaniac, this book is for you.
Attila begins his tale (yes, he tells it to his scribes, it's an autobiography), when he's on the cusp of adolescence, already a warrior, when his father is killed before his eyes. It ends with his death, told by his last scribe and his last bride.
http://www.amazon.com/Attila-Told-his-Scribes-ebook/dp/B00855M90G/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1337727607&sr=1-1
Memorial Day: Molasses Monday
I'm a vet, lucky to be in and out of the Army between our various "Wars," officially "military engagements." Formally, I'm a Vietnam Era Vet, since we began messing with the natives there while I was in the Army, and our "intervention" escalated while I was in the (luckily for me) "Inactive Reserve."
Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, inaugurated by freedmen after the Civil War, celebrating their freedom from slavery, and memorializing the fallen soldiers who helped make that happen.
To me, Memorial Day is a three-day weekend. Even that is less meaningful to me, now, because I'm "retired." No one but Social Security pays me anything for work rendered. So, I'm no more off work on Memorial Day than I was today, Sunday, when I mowed for several hours just to insure that people who come here--a small event space with land--won't be overwhelmingly infested by disease-bearing ticks. On Memorial Day, I'll finish mowing the trails.
All Memorial Day means to me in practical terms is that I won't get mail, and any official business I have to attend to, will have to wait until Tuesday.
But a friend of mine, who's running for Congress as an Occupy-Democrat against a more traditional Democrat in a primary next month, sees Memorial Day as an opportunity to appear to a lot of people in town parades all over the district.
However, there is a military dimension to Memorial Day in larger cities, where military units will parade down main streets.
My experience in the Army in Turkey (electronic surveillance of Soviet missile testing was our mission), led me to realize that our military institution was imperial by nature and racist in its relations to host nationals--unless they were white, like the Bavarians I lived amongst in my second tour. Turks were sufficiently foreign and dark enough that my fellow soldiers spoke of them much the way white southerners used to speak of black people. There was even an equivalent to the N-word to designate Turks: abie, a contraction of the Turkish word, agabey, meaning friend. That's not what it meant, then, to the American soldiers.
So, I'm chary of Memorial Day celebration: it has become a celebration of Empire, when politicians wax eloquent about our "heroic men and women" who paid the ultimate price for "their country."
"Their country" has not been in danger of military attack since Pearl Harbor. The last war in which American soldiers gave their lives really defending "their country," was the Civil War. Memorial Day celebrates war dead, who helped the US win Empire, which is now bankrupting us.
I mourn the war dead, though: what a waste!
Think how wealthy the US would be if we didn't spend about $750 billion a year on our military establishment, more than most countries in the world, combined.
Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, inaugurated by freedmen after the Civil War, celebrating their freedom from slavery, and memorializing the fallen soldiers who helped make that happen.
To me, Memorial Day is a three-day weekend. Even that is less meaningful to me, now, because I'm "retired." No one but Social Security pays me anything for work rendered. So, I'm no more off work on Memorial Day than I was today, Sunday, when I mowed for several hours just to insure that people who come here--a small event space with land--won't be overwhelmingly infested by disease-bearing ticks. On Memorial Day, I'll finish mowing the trails.
All Memorial Day means to me in practical terms is that I won't get mail, and any official business I have to attend to, will have to wait until Tuesday.
But a friend of mine, who's running for Congress as an Occupy-Democrat against a more traditional Democrat in a primary next month, sees Memorial Day as an opportunity to appear to a lot of people in town parades all over the district.
However, there is a military dimension to Memorial Day in larger cities, where military units will parade down main streets.
My experience in the Army in Turkey (electronic surveillance of Soviet missile testing was our mission), led me to realize that our military institution was imperial by nature and racist in its relations to host nationals--unless they were white, like the Bavarians I lived amongst in my second tour. Turks were sufficiently foreign and dark enough that my fellow soldiers spoke of them much the way white southerners used to speak of black people. There was even an equivalent to the N-word to designate Turks: abie, a contraction of the Turkish word, agabey, meaning friend. That's not what it meant, then, to the American soldiers.
So, I'm chary of Memorial Day celebration: it has become a celebration of Empire, when politicians wax eloquent about our "heroic men and women" who paid the ultimate price for "their country."
"Their country" has not been in danger of military attack since Pearl Harbor. The last war in which American soldiers gave their lives really defending "their country," was the Civil War. Memorial Day celebrates war dead, who helped the US win Empire, which is now bankrupting us.
I mourn the war dead, though: what a waste!
Think how wealthy the US would be if we didn't spend about $750 billion a year on our military establishment, more than most countries in the world, combined.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Goose Bumps
There are goose lakes up here, and people lakes. The two often don't mix. If a lake is big enough, it can accommodate both, but if it's a small lake, or a large pond, it's one or the other.
A goose pair settled on our lake about three springs ago, and pretty soon they had five goslings swimming along between them. They looked very proud and were very protective of their brood. But seven geese (the goslings grew astonishingly fast) make a terrible mess for people also using the pond. Goose goo all over the beach, the surrounding lawns, the dock and the float made swimming or sunbathing unpleasant.
The lake wasn't safe for the geese, either. Only three geese survived to fly south. Foxes or coyotes must have killed the others. We have both.
Three geese returned, but if they came back for sentimental reasons, they were silly geese. There are lakes that are safer, with islands, inaccessible to predators. Those nearby lakes are also preferable, because people rarely use them, except to admire from afar.
Those three geese had more goslings, but this time they were lucky, in an ironic way. A film crew came to film a Fourth of July party, staged here before the Fourth, and of course, they shot off fireworks. Being careful, they set them off on the float in the middle of the lake.
That set off the geese parents and their nearly grown children--in an explosion of wings and honkings. They didn't come back.
Now I knew how to drive them off.
Last year and this Spring, I did. A 22 rifle wasn’t loud enough, but a 20-22 makes a loud bang, and the rifle has a telescopic sight. So, shot precisely between the goose pairs, they take off. Serially, there must have been ten or fifteen pairs landing. Only one threesome--the original one?--needed a second shot to be persuaded. A few ducks wouldn't be a problem and wouldn't overwhelm the lake: two geese that become seven would seriously do so, just as the exploding global population of humans overcrowds the ecosystem.
Am I like the anti-immigrant vigilantes that patrol the Arizona and Texas borders with Mexico? In contrast to the geese, immigrants contribute a lot. If there is any hope of maintaining Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs, it is immigrants: they bring youth, new energy, new muscle, inspiring cultures and pride in their new country.
Without immigration, our population would decline and our economy, as well. The US has gained from both the initial exploitation and the ongoing energy of new arrivals since before its founding. The only huge financial success I know who did not inherit, is a naturalized immigrant.
In this way, the US could be just the opposite of fifth century Rome: newcomers could reinvigorate it, instead of destroying it.
A goose pair settled on our lake about three springs ago, and pretty soon they had five goslings swimming along between them. They looked very proud and were very protective of their brood. But seven geese (the goslings grew astonishingly fast) make a terrible mess for people also using the pond. Goose goo all over the beach, the surrounding lawns, the dock and the float made swimming or sunbathing unpleasant.
The lake wasn't safe for the geese, either. Only three geese survived to fly south. Foxes or coyotes must have killed the others. We have both.
Three geese returned, but if they came back for sentimental reasons, they were silly geese. There are lakes that are safer, with islands, inaccessible to predators. Those nearby lakes are also preferable, because people rarely use them, except to admire from afar.
Those three geese had more goslings, but this time they were lucky, in an ironic way. A film crew came to film a Fourth of July party, staged here before the Fourth, and of course, they shot off fireworks. Being careful, they set them off on the float in the middle of the lake.
That set off the geese parents and their nearly grown children--in an explosion of wings and honkings. They didn't come back.
Now I knew how to drive them off.
Last year and this Spring, I did. A 22 rifle wasn’t loud enough, but a 20-22 makes a loud bang, and the rifle has a telescopic sight. So, shot precisely between the goose pairs, they take off. Serially, there must have been ten or fifteen pairs landing. Only one threesome--the original one?--needed a second shot to be persuaded. A few ducks wouldn't be a problem and wouldn't overwhelm the lake: two geese that become seven would seriously do so, just as the exploding global population of humans overcrowds the ecosystem.
Am I like the anti-immigrant vigilantes that patrol the Arizona and Texas borders with Mexico? In contrast to the geese, immigrants contribute a lot. If there is any hope of maintaining Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs, it is immigrants: they bring youth, new energy, new muscle, inspiring cultures and pride in their new country.
Without immigration, our population would decline and our economy, as well. The US has gained from both the initial exploitation and the ongoing energy of new arrivals since before its founding. The only huge financial success I know who did not inherit, is a naturalized immigrant.
In this way, the US could be just the opposite of fifth century Rome: newcomers could reinvigorate it, instead of destroying it.
Friday, May 18, 2012
A Looming Minority: Demographic Angst
White people will become a minority in the US, since white births have fallen below 50% for the first time in US history. The white majority is past childbearing. That's huge; it may explain a lot of things, like America's political polarization, the extreme anti-immigrant politics of the South and West, the conservative urge to cut funds for services like education--increasingly, they'll be spent on minority kids.
As a New York Times (05/17/12) article pointed out, the younger and older generations won't look like each other, and working together will get harder. It's already hard. There is, now, a split between older voters and younger over education budgets, for example: seniors vote against and vote them down regularly. In one of my towns (I pay taxes in two), the school age population is already markedly more minority than those of voting age, and the budget is voted down more often.
A good portion of the radical right-wing social agenda could be explained by the fear of becoming a minority. Anti-women: yeah, it's those young women of color who are having all those babies, and that's probably because of the breakdown of marriage and the family, which is why they've got to stop gays, too. Stop Obama, too, the black President. Cut government spending, cut jobs and gut public employee rights: sure, minorities and women work for governments disproportionate to their share of the population.
Terrorism and wars abroad? Terrorists are seen as foreign and dark-skinned, even though we've had our own homegrown WASP terrorists, like the Oklahoma bomber, the Washington snipers and so many school shooters. So, we launch a war on Terror, or the mealy-mouthed alternative the Obama administration came up with, and increasingly, it seems, Muslims are targeted and recruited (through sting operations), which somehow translates into Brown people--the ones who are threatening to take America away from the desperate grip of older, "conservative" un-brown people, who want to "take America back."
Corporate conservatives are using all of the above to fund a politics that is all about establishing corporate dominance: eviscerate regulations and workers' rights, and reduce already low, loop-hole-ridden corporate taxes. But they also want to insure they get Government's business, including more and better wars.
Scott Walker of Wisconsin isn't their hero; he's their employee.
However, corporations aren't American; they don't hold any special allegiance to the US. They can be just as exploitative of the US as oil and mining companies have been to nations like Ecuador and the Congo. Corporate money flows to Republican extremists not because corporations are anti-gay, or anti-minority, but because right-wingers will toe the corporate line and most are true laissez-faire believers.
Barbarians ripped off Rome in the fifth century; corporations want to do it here, now.
As a New York Times (05/17/12) article pointed out, the younger and older generations won't look like each other, and working together will get harder. It's already hard. There is, now, a split between older voters and younger over education budgets, for example: seniors vote against and vote them down regularly. In one of my towns (I pay taxes in two), the school age population is already markedly more minority than those of voting age, and the budget is voted down more often.
A good portion of the radical right-wing social agenda could be explained by the fear of becoming a minority. Anti-women: yeah, it's those young women of color who are having all those babies, and that's probably because of the breakdown of marriage and the family, which is why they've got to stop gays, too. Stop Obama, too, the black President. Cut government spending, cut jobs and gut public employee rights: sure, minorities and women work for governments disproportionate to their share of the population.
Terrorism and wars abroad? Terrorists are seen as foreign and dark-skinned, even though we've had our own homegrown WASP terrorists, like the Oklahoma bomber, the Washington snipers and so many school shooters. So, we launch a war on Terror, or the mealy-mouthed alternative the Obama administration came up with, and increasingly, it seems, Muslims are targeted and recruited (through sting operations), which somehow translates into Brown people--the ones who are threatening to take America away from the desperate grip of older, "conservative" un-brown people, who want to "take America back."
Corporate conservatives are using all of the above to fund a politics that is all about establishing corporate dominance: eviscerate regulations and workers' rights, and reduce already low, loop-hole-ridden corporate taxes. But they also want to insure they get Government's business, including more and better wars.
Scott Walker of Wisconsin isn't their hero; he's their employee.
However, corporations aren't American; they don't hold any special allegiance to the US. They can be just as exploitative of the US as oil and mining companies have been to nations like Ecuador and the Congo. Corporate money flows to Republican extremists not because corporations are anti-gay, or anti-minority, but because right-wingers will toe the corporate line and most are true laissez-faire believers.
Barbarians ripped off Rome in the fifth century; corporations want to do it here, now.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
JP Morgan Chase F..ked Up
Jamie Dimon must be furious! His minions f..ked up. His argument for weakening the Volcker Rule and other regulations just got quashed by the "sloppiness" of his own trading unit.
Maybe Bank of America is too big to be humbled by such a monumental loss, but this was just one trading strategy, supposedly to "hedge" risk of another trading strategy.
Why shouldn't banks be allowed to make bets with their own money? This's why. It's why Glass-Steagall, or something very similar needs to be re-enacted: banks should not be allowed to gamble; only trading companies, without individual depositors should be allowed to gamble like this--and allowed to fail.
Why would that make a difference? BOA wouldn't be so big if it didn't have millions upon millions of depositors, insured by FDIC. If BOA were to fail, because of further "sloppy" gambles, the whole financial system would again be in danger of implosion, a revisit to the disaster of 2008, but probably worse, since BOA is much, much larger than Bear Stearns, etc.
Why shouldn't the federal government regulate these combination banking and trading institutions? Why shouldn't it regulate to minimize risk of another collapse? Is it really good policy to allow these hybrid institutions to maximize risk for the whole economy?
The very fact that this is still a question, says a lot about our political economy. We have only recently climbed a little way out of the hole caused by this kind of financial speculation, yet the power of money is such, that someone like BOA CEO Jamie Dimon, strongly connected to that aforementioned collapse, still has the credibility to argue against increased regulation--and to be listened to, until his own institution proves him dramatically wrong.
The game our elites are playing is dangerous. Banks gamble with money; oil and gas companies gamble with our climate and our water. Isn't that what exploitation of Canadian tar sands, gas and oil fracking in the Northeast US and oil exploration in newly melting Arctic Ocean waters all represent?
They gamble with our future, not just financially and environmentally, but the future viability of US power. If the oil and gas companies have their way, not only will the seas rise by over 50 feet, according to James Hanson, but the US will be stuck in a dinosaur economy, when the rest of the world is racing to create alternative energy.
Maybe that's comparable to Rome's inability to adjust to the new cavalry-driven warfare practiced by Huns and Germanic tribes. For about two generations, the Romans were able to buy them off, buying their services--until they were driven into bankruptcy.
"Patriots," our drive to pump--and burn--even more hydrocarbons--and billions of dollars, will not only destroy the climate, it will bankrupt the Empire! We'll need an even larger military to protect our dependence on imported oil.
Maybe Bank of America is too big to be humbled by such a monumental loss, but this was just one trading strategy, supposedly to "hedge" risk of another trading strategy.
Why shouldn't banks be allowed to make bets with their own money? This's why. It's why Glass-Steagall, or something very similar needs to be re-enacted: banks should not be allowed to gamble; only trading companies, without individual depositors should be allowed to gamble like this--and allowed to fail.
Why would that make a difference? BOA wouldn't be so big if it didn't have millions upon millions of depositors, insured by FDIC. If BOA were to fail, because of further "sloppy" gambles, the whole financial system would again be in danger of implosion, a revisit to the disaster of 2008, but probably worse, since BOA is much, much larger than Bear Stearns, etc.
Why shouldn't the federal government regulate these combination banking and trading institutions? Why shouldn't it regulate to minimize risk of another collapse? Is it really good policy to allow these hybrid institutions to maximize risk for the whole economy?
The very fact that this is still a question, says a lot about our political economy. We have only recently climbed a little way out of the hole caused by this kind of financial speculation, yet the power of money is such, that someone like BOA CEO Jamie Dimon, strongly connected to that aforementioned collapse, still has the credibility to argue against increased regulation--and to be listened to, until his own institution proves him dramatically wrong.
The game our elites are playing is dangerous. Banks gamble with money; oil and gas companies gamble with our climate and our water. Isn't that what exploitation of Canadian tar sands, gas and oil fracking in the Northeast US and oil exploration in newly melting Arctic Ocean waters all represent?
They gamble with our future, not just financially and environmentally, but the future viability of US power. If the oil and gas companies have their way, not only will the seas rise by over 50 feet, according to James Hanson, but the US will be stuck in a dinosaur economy, when the rest of the world is racing to create alternative energy.
Maybe that's comparable to Rome's inability to adjust to the new cavalry-driven warfare practiced by Huns and Germanic tribes. For about two generations, the Romans were able to buy them off, buying their services--until they were driven into bankruptcy.
"Patriots," our drive to pump--and burn--even more hydrocarbons--and billions of dollars, will not only destroy the climate, it will bankrupt the Empire! We'll need an even larger military to protect our dependence on imported oil.
Friday, May 4, 2012
The Scream, Icon for Our Era
Edvard Munch's The Scream, or the last privately owned version of it, sold for $119,922, 500.00 yesterday, or just a hair under $120 million, at Sotheby's auction. It is the most expensive painting ever, since the previous priciest, a Picasso, Nude Green Leaves and Bust, sold for "only" $106.5 million in 2010. As someone commented, several of the world's billionaires (there are now 1,226 of them) must have been competing for the canvas. The buyer, so far, remains anonymous.
The Scream is iconic and it is also emblematic of the era. While the US economy grew at an anemic rate, while unemployment is still above 8% (8.1 in April, 2012), the money paid for Munch's canvas beats the world record.
The fastest growing crop of billionaires come from the fast-growing economies of the BRIC countries, not surprisingly, but the US still leads with the most (425) and both China's and Russia's shares slipped from over 100 last year to 95 and 96 respectively, this year, due to the world's slowing economy. The world's richest man, by about a 9 billion dollar margin, is Carlos Slim from Mexico.
So, there are 1226 billionaires in the world, but most people in the world's richest nation, the US, are economically insecure and getting poorer, while Europe is sliding back into recession and has reached depression levels of unemployment in Greece, Spain and Ireland.
The price for The Scream is therefore symbolic of the huge inequalities growing in the world economy, not just the US's. Some people can spend that kind of money on a piece of painted canvas, while the majority of humanity is struggling. I could think of a lot of other uses for $120 million (like jobs for 2400 people), but the painting in question is also emblematic of what's wrong with this picture.
The Scream is disturbing; it doesn't impart good feeling, at all. It may have its own kind of beauty, in its evocation of anguish, but it ain't warm and fuzzy. I don't think I'd want to display it on my living room wall, nor even in an office dedicated to psychological counseling. Its seller, Petter Olson, a Norwegian businessman, said of it:
"For me, (it) shows the horrifying moment when man realizes his impact on nature, and the irreversible changes that he has initiated, making the planet increasingly uninhabitable."
Certainly, the colors of the painting evoke both the anxiety of the figure, and the irreversible damage we are causing to the planet, but it is the power of the figure itself that expresses what humans are beginning to realize: the horrible future that seems to await us.
It's likely the 1200+ billionaires believe they will escape the worst of these changes, but then the Fifth Century Roman Senatorial class assumed that Rome would be eternal, and their exalted place in it would always be secure: obviously, they were wrong.
The Scream is iconic and it is also emblematic of the era. While the US economy grew at an anemic rate, while unemployment is still above 8% (8.1 in April, 2012), the money paid for Munch's canvas beats the world record.
The fastest growing crop of billionaires come from the fast-growing economies of the BRIC countries, not surprisingly, but the US still leads with the most (425) and both China's and Russia's shares slipped from over 100 last year to 95 and 96 respectively, this year, due to the world's slowing economy. The world's richest man, by about a 9 billion dollar margin, is Carlos Slim from Mexico.
So, there are 1226 billionaires in the world, but most people in the world's richest nation, the US, are economically insecure and getting poorer, while Europe is sliding back into recession and has reached depression levels of unemployment in Greece, Spain and Ireland.
The price for The Scream is therefore symbolic of the huge inequalities growing in the world economy, not just the US's. Some people can spend that kind of money on a piece of painted canvas, while the majority of humanity is struggling. I could think of a lot of other uses for $120 million (like jobs for 2400 people), but the painting in question is also emblematic of what's wrong with this picture.
The Scream is disturbing; it doesn't impart good feeling, at all. It may have its own kind of beauty, in its evocation of anguish, but it ain't warm and fuzzy. I don't think I'd want to display it on my living room wall, nor even in an office dedicated to psychological counseling. Its seller, Petter Olson, a Norwegian businessman, said of it:
"For me, (it) shows the horrifying moment when man realizes his impact on nature, and the irreversible changes that he has initiated, making the planet increasingly uninhabitable."
Certainly, the colors of the painting evoke both the anxiety of the figure, and the irreversible damage we are causing to the planet, but it is the power of the figure itself that expresses what humans are beginning to realize: the horrible future that seems to await us.
It's likely the 1200+ billionaires believe they will escape the worst of these changes, but then the Fifth Century Roman Senatorial class assumed that Rome would be eternal, and their exalted place in it would always be secure: obviously, they were wrong.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Attila as told to his Scribes
Attila the Hun, the most powerful man in Europe for almost a generation (circa 433-453), evolves in his account, from romantic young prince betrayed by his uncle, to ruthless conqueror. To his followers, he was famously generous, yet his stay in the Empire as a Roman hostage, he claims, taught him all he needed to know about cruelty and torture. His Roman interlude also motivated him to avenge his father, and to overcome all odds: he became the greatest king of all the Huns and war-leader of a huge confederation of steppe peoples.
This is a fictional autobiography--yes an autobiography …as told to his scribes: what he tells them, what they think, and what he thinks, or sees, when he's telling them. He's not a nice guy, although his tale (based on history and folktales) begins when he is an attractive boy on the cusp of manhood--when he witnesses his beloved father's murder. Attila is a lover and a megalomaniac, an attractive one--up to a point.
Sigidinum and Ravenna taught him to despise urban living; later, nothing pleased him quite so much as destroying Roman cities like Acquilea and Sigidinum (modern day Belgrade).
Of course, Attila's greatest weakness was his thirst for conquest. He was not an imperialist, like Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar, nor like the conquistadors Cortez and Pissarro. Nor, like the Europeans and Americans after them. He was partly driven by a prophecy, only half remembered, from his youth. He wasn't interested in holding a piece of land; he only wanted to assert his will, and to carry off the wealth of settled lands. He believed (with some justification) that Roman wealth had been stolen already, anyway. He depopulated a whole region north of the Danube, and kept people out--a buffer for his people's protection, he claimed, but that gave him greater power over them, too. Paradoxically, he often wished he were on the open steppes, where he couldn't see a tent from one horizon to the next.
And, Attila had a weakness for women. He had numberless wives, who he justified as his way to cement ties with his allies and, later, with newly conquered tribes. It was, ultimately, a risky game and his first wife, his queen, Erekan, knew it. And so, finally, did his last scribe--and his last bride.
Attila as told to his scribes, will be out on Kindle soon. I will keep you posted.
This is a fictional autobiography--yes an autobiography …as told to his scribes: what he tells them, what they think, and what he thinks, or sees, when he's telling them. He's not a nice guy, although his tale (based on history and folktales) begins when he is an attractive boy on the cusp of manhood--when he witnesses his beloved father's murder. Attila is a lover and a megalomaniac, an attractive one--up to a point.
Sigidinum and Ravenna taught him to despise urban living; later, nothing pleased him quite so much as destroying Roman cities like Acquilea and Sigidinum (modern day Belgrade).
Of course, Attila's greatest weakness was his thirst for conquest. He was not an imperialist, like Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar, nor like the conquistadors Cortez and Pissarro. Nor, like the Europeans and Americans after them. He was partly driven by a prophecy, only half remembered, from his youth. He wasn't interested in holding a piece of land; he only wanted to assert his will, and to carry off the wealth of settled lands. He believed (with some justification) that Roman wealth had been stolen already, anyway. He depopulated a whole region north of the Danube, and kept people out--a buffer for his people's protection, he claimed, but that gave him greater power over them, too. Paradoxically, he often wished he were on the open steppes, where he couldn't see a tent from one horizon to the next.
And, Attila had a weakness for women. He had numberless wives, who he justified as his way to cement ties with his allies and, later, with newly conquered tribes. It was, ultimately, a risky game and his first wife, his queen, Erekan, knew it. And so, finally, did his last scribe--and his last bride.
Attila as told to his scribes, will be out on Kindle soon. I will keep you posted.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Terrorists Everywhere!
Report anything out of the ordinary. Be watchful. Be thankful that the police, especially the TSA, insure that we board airplanes safely, no matter the indignity, and now it's protecting us on trains, buses, even highways.
Surliness with 'an officer' could get you arrested. Then, the Supreme Court says, you can be strip-searched, told to "spread 'em," but all in the name of safety, and to prevent terrorists from taking over--and imposing Shariah law on the rest of us. Whew! Thank God for the 'officers' protection.
Actually, the strip-search is for the officers' protection, as Justice Kennedy's brief makes clear, and the Solicitor General's, too. After listing the astonishing variety of drugs found hidden in suspects' rectums and vaginas, the SG's brief includes this: "inmate hospitalized after trying to smuggle a knife into jail inside his body" and "man arrested for selling bootlegged CD's was found concealing a nine-millimeter handgun between rolls of fat."
So, it's the war on drugs plus fear of terrorism plus prison security that persuaded the Supreme Court to allow strip-searches for anyone detained. What happened to the 4th Amendment? "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures?"
Traffic accidents easily outpace casualties from terror in the US, or Europe. Yet, governments are using the (manufactured) fear of terror to become police-states. The US leads the way.
Now, the NSA, or other government agency, or private corporation, knows all about you: don't believe those privacy statements guaranteeing privacy. First of all, have you read them completely? Maybe the lawyers who wrote them have. NSA, et al, now have the capability, and acquiescence or support/authorization to collect our email, Facebook posts, this blog, anything anyone ever puts on the Internet. Why? Since we're scared of the terrorists, it's easy to whip up political support for all the surveillance we can stand. However, we're really scared because the United States, with the most deadly and mobile military in the world, can't stop the terrorists, and are the terrorists in places like Afghanistan and Yemen.
Freudians call it projection.
Outside the US, America is perceived as brash, undisciplined and dangerous. Our political polarization and surge towards corporatocracy only reinforces that: our imperial bullying has driven many world-wide into seeing the US as the most dangerous nation on Earth.
The US has a penchant to 'fix' international problems through force. Increasingly, it is resorting to covert means: drones, special ops, mercenaries, spies, and in the US, domestic police are adapting the same techniques.
In the late Roman Empire, the less in control they were, the more vicious government agents became--military or police. We appear to be treading down the same slippery slope.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
April's Afghan Outrage
Ah, April: time for another Afghan horror. Every month, it seems, someone in the military releases some damning news, or photo, or carries out a massacre or other Afghan scandal.
In January, soldiers urinated on the dead bodies of Afghans, claimed to be insurgents; in February there was the "inadvertent" burning of Qurans, in March there was the massacre of Afghan villagers by a deranged American sergeant.
Now, in April, the LA Times published the photos of American Airborne soldiers posing, and mugging for the camera with the body parts of suicide and IED bombers. The pictures were actually taken in 2010, but the soldier who released them, sent them to the Times this month.
First of all, these horrors were conscious acts by US soldiers. The first and last events: pissing on bodies, and posing, grinning, with body parts, reflects some American soldiers' attitudes towards Afghans, for whom supposedly they were sent halfway around the world to protect. Probably there are many American troops for whom this kind of cavalier disregard for the people of Afghanistan is not acceptable. It wasn't for the soldier who released those photos; he had complained to his superiors that such attitudes contributed to lax security.
The Quran burning, meanwhile, was not "inadvertent" at all. The Qurans in question had been seized from detainees at the large American detention center in Bagram, and according to accounts there, some at least had been used to send and receive messages between detainees: subversive messages.
If you want to prevent detainees from organizing, obviously, those Qurans had to be destroyed, or, at least, shipped out of the country. What was "inadvertent," was destroying them in plain sight, where our Afghan collaborators could see what to any Muslim would be supreme sacrilege and desecration. What was inadvertently revealed was Americans' total ignorance of the people they are supposedly there to protect.
So far, we have no General Dyer, who ordered machine-gunning peaceful Indian protesters during India's independence movement. However, these Afghan incidents are typical for imperialist militaries: the local people aren't quite real; they are so foreign. The incidents underline why Indians threw out the British and why Africans threw out all European colonials, despite the very real improvements all these imperialists made: roads, railroads, schools, hospitals. It's also, why we lost in Vietnam, and the Russians in Afghanistan before us.
These incidents again demonstrate why Americans and NATO have to get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible and why empire, especially now in the 21st century, is unsustainable.
Military might, the Romans discovered, is especially transient when the people are against you. Resistance to the Barbarians was ineffective in part because the peasants were already oppressed: they welcomed new conquerors.
Given the above, it's surprising we haven't yet been thrown out of Afghanistan. Better to go before we have to scramble for the helicopters.
In January, soldiers urinated on the dead bodies of Afghans, claimed to be insurgents; in February there was the "inadvertent" burning of Qurans, in March there was the massacre of Afghan villagers by a deranged American sergeant.
Now, in April, the LA Times published the photos of American Airborne soldiers posing, and mugging for the camera with the body parts of suicide and IED bombers. The pictures were actually taken in 2010, but the soldier who released them, sent them to the Times this month.
First of all, these horrors were conscious acts by US soldiers. The first and last events: pissing on bodies, and posing, grinning, with body parts, reflects some American soldiers' attitudes towards Afghans, for whom supposedly they were sent halfway around the world to protect. Probably there are many American troops for whom this kind of cavalier disregard for the people of Afghanistan is not acceptable. It wasn't for the soldier who released those photos; he had complained to his superiors that such attitudes contributed to lax security.
The Quran burning, meanwhile, was not "inadvertent" at all. The Qurans in question had been seized from detainees at the large American detention center in Bagram, and according to accounts there, some at least had been used to send and receive messages between detainees: subversive messages.
If you want to prevent detainees from organizing, obviously, those Qurans had to be destroyed, or, at least, shipped out of the country. What was "inadvertent," was destroying them in plain sight, where our Afghan collaborators could see what to any Muslim would be supreme sacrilege and desecration. What was inadvertently revealed was Americans' total ignorance of the people they are supposedly there to protect.
So far, we have no General Dyer, who ordered machine-gunning peaceful Indian protesters during India's independence movement. However, these Afghan incidents are typical for imperialist militaries: the local people aren't quite real; they are so foreign. The incidents underline why Indians threw out the British and why Africans threw out all European colonials, despite the very real improvements all these imperialists made: roads, railroads, schools, hospitals. It's also, why we lost in Vietnam, and the Russians in Afghanistan before us.
These incidents again demonstrate why Americans and NATO have to get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible and why empire, especially now in the 21st century, is unsustainable.
Military might, the Romans discovered, is especially transient when the people are against you. Resistance to the Barbarians was ineffective in part because the peasants were already oppressed: they welcomed new conquerors.
Given the above, it's surprising we haven't yet been thrown out of Afghanistan. Better to go before we have to scramble for the helicopters.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Romney and Mormonism
Already, people are beginning to look at Romney's religion. He's a Mormon, maybe the quintessential American cult, but not just a Mormon; he's a Mormon bishop, who's also given millions to his church.
A friend who knows "Christians," as in the ones in Tennessee or Florida, told me that one of his acquaintances wasn't going to vote for Romney: even though he's black, he voted for W twice. He won't vote for Romney, because he's not a Christian.
Set aside the polygamy thing, which only the ultra-reactionary fringe still practices, Mormonism is not your garden variety Protestantism. It's a revelation religion based on the writings and preaching of Joseph Smith in 19th century America, and it has its own holy books, which reference the Bible, but the way the Koran does: Jesus Christ is the previous prophet; Joseph Smith is the final one.
Mormonism may well become an issue. Not only is there a hit musical comedy on Broadway, "The Book of Mormon," there's a bestselling Mormon mystery novel.
Romney is not at all comparable to John F. Kennedy and Catholicism. Santorum said JFK's speech on religion and government made him want to throw up: Kennedy was a secular Catholic; Romney isn't a secular Mormon; he's a bishop who's all but admitted that he baptized long ago dead people, like Jews killed in the Holocaust: some Mormon even "baptized" Anne Frank!
Why is this important? If evangelicals in the South can't stomach voting for Romney, and therefore don't vote, Obama wins.
If I were a Republican, I'd seriously worry about Romney's Mormonism, especially, if I learned more about it, regardless of whether I was evangelical, or secular. That's why some pro-Obama super-pac may yet go after Romney on precisely this issue: all they need to do is point out how weird Mormonism really is. And what a Mormon bishop does.
I've been very disappointed, and even felt betrayed, by Obama--the Yemeni Pulitzer Prize-winner's detention, just the latest example--but I know he's better than Romney, especially a Romney beholden to right-wing Republicans. Romney is the perfect representative of the 0.01%, except for his Mormonism, but he doesn't even represent the 1%. He's a quarter of a billionaire, and he has not a clue how ordinary people have to struggle to make ends meet. On top of all that, he comes across as an uptight hypocrite.
Obama is less of a democrat than I hoped, but at least, although he's part of the 10%, he has some aspiration to represent the rest of us.
If Romney were elected, it would be the equivalent of the super-wealthy Petronius Maximus' accession to the Imperial throne, upon the murder of his predecessor--arranged by him--triggering the Vandal invasion and the wholesale looting of Rome. Maximus was torn apart by the mob, hours before the Vandals arrived. Rome "fell" 20 years later.
If Obama wins, we may have a bit more time.
A friend who knows "Christians," as in the ones in Tennessee or Florida, told me that one of his acquaintances wasn't going to vote for Romney: even though he's black, he voted for W twice. He won't vote for Romney, because he's not a Christian.
Set aside the polygamy thing, which only the ultra-reactionary fringe still practices, Mormonism is not your garden variety Protestantism. It's a revelation religion based on the writings and preaching of Joseph Smith in 19th century America, and it has its own holy books, which reference the Bible, but the way the Koran does: Jesus Christ is the previous prophet; Joseph Smith is the final one.
Mormonism may well become an issue. Not only is there a hit musical comedy on Broadway, "The Book of Mormon," there's a bestselling Mormon mystery novel.
Romney is not at all comparable to John F. Kennedy and Catholicism. Santorum said JFK's speech on religion and government made him want to throw up: Kennedy was a secular Catholic; Romney isn't a secular Mormon; he's a bishop who's all but admitted that he baptized long ago dead people, like Jews killed in the Holocaust: some Mormon even "baptized" Anne Frank!
Why is this important? If evangelicals in the South can't stomach voting for Romney, and therefore don't vote, Obama wins.
If I were a Republican, I'd seriously worry about Romney's Mormonism, especially, if I learned more about it, regardless of whether I was evangelical, or secular. That's why some pro-Obama super-pac may yet go after Romney on precisely this issue: all they need to do is point out how weird Mormonism really is. And what a Mormon bishop does.
I've been very disappointed, and even felt betrayed, by Obama--the Yemeni Pulitzer Prize-winner's detention, just the latest example--but I know he's better than Romney, especially a Romney beholden to right-wing Republicans. Romney is the perfect representative of the 0.01%, except for his Mormonism, but he doesn't even represent the 1%. He's a quarter of a billionaire, and he has not a clue how ordinary people have to struggle to make ends meet. On top of all that, he comes across as an uptight hypocrite.
Obama is less of a democrat than I hoped, but at least, although he's part of the 10%, he has some aspiration to represent the rest of us.
If Romney were elected, it would be the equivalent of the super-wealthy Petronius Maximus' accession to the Imperial throne, upon the murder of his predecessor--arranged by him--triggering the Vandal invasion and the wholesale looting of Rome. Maximus was torn apart by the mob, hours before the Vandals arrived. Rome "fell" 20 years later.
If Obama wins, we may have a bit more time.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Iran Is Not Recalcitrant
Even if Iran were secretly trying to develop the bomb, they would be acquiring it for defense. To fear they would drop it on Israel is to think the Iranians are less rational than even the North Koreans. The most they could do is threaten their non-nuclear neighbors, but even that's unlikely, with the US threatening them if they try. Meanwhile, Israel has several hundred bombs and the missiles and bombers to deliver them.
Even if the Iranians built the bomb, it would be for defense: to prevent the US from trying to force "regime change."
But it's pretty much agreed, by the world's best intelligence agencies, the American and Israeli, that Iran abandoned nuclear weapon development in 2004, and hasn't decided whether to resume it. On the other hand, many analysts believe that Iran has the technological and knowledge capability to build a nuclear weapon, and one of the policy points of contention was that very word, 'capability.' If Iran is to be denied nuclear 'capability,' then there are already grounds for attacking it--and scores of other countries.
What is almost never admitted is this: Iran, as a member of the IAEA, has the international treaty right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, as long as it allows inspections to insure that's what it's doing. Enriching uranium to 20% is for medical use, and as someone with prostate cancer treated by radiation, I believe modern nations should be able to supply their own, and Iran is modernizing.
It is possible that a gold bug's theory, explains why the US is acting this way. Iran has been leading an international movement away from the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. If the movement prevails (it will, eventually, even without Iran), the US would owe debt it couldn't pay, and its strength would be checkmated, because it couldn't credibly borrow the huge sums we now depend on monthly, especially to finance our imperial military.
So, the pressure against Iran may not be what it seems. The conflict isn't really about a few nuclear bombs that do not exist. It's about whether the US remains a viable economic superpower.
It is clear that Iran's leaders don't like us, but then we've been helping Israel and the MEK covertly attack the regime for years. Iran's promotion of a post-dollar international economy fits in with their hostility--and with their experience of the US as a malign international entity, consistently hostile--even when the Iranian regime was more liberal, and inclined to view reconciliation favorably.
Iran is 3.7 times larger than Iraq territorially, is 2.3 times larger in population, and has an effective government not based on one dictator. If bluff and sanctions don't work, war with Iran could be the straw that broke the American camel's back: it could bankrupt the US empire; we'd be facing a replay of Rome's fall in 476.
Even if the Iranians built the bomb, it would be for defense: to prevent the US from trying to force "regime change."
But it's pretty much agreed, by the world's best intelligence agencies, the American and Israeli, that Iran abandoned nuclear weapon development in 2004, and hasn't decided whether to resume it. On the other hand, many analysts believe that Iran has the technological and knowledge capability to build a nuclear weapon, and one of the policy points of contention was that very word, 'capability.' If Iran is to be denied nuclear 'capability,' then there are already grounds for attacking it--and scores of other countries.
What is almost never admitted is this: Iran, as a member of the IAEA, has the international treaty right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, as long as it allows inspections to insure that's what it's doing. Enriching uranium to 20% is for medical use, and as someone with prostate cancer treated by radiation, I believe modern nations should be able to supply their own, and Iran is modernizing.
It is possible that a gold bug's theory, explains why the US is acting this way. Iran has been leading an international movement away from the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. If the movement prevails (it will, eventually, even without Iran), the US would owe debt it couldn't pay, and its strength would be checkmated, because it couldn't credibly borrow the huge sums we now depend on monthly, especially to finance our imperial military.
So, the pressure against Iran may not be what it seems. The conflict isn't really about a few nuclear bombs that do not exist. It's about whether the US remains a viable economic superpower.
It is clear that Iran's leaders don't like us, but then we've been helping Israel and the MEK covertly attack the regime for years. Iran's promotion of a post-dollar international economy fits in with their hostility--and with their experience of the US as a malign international entity, consistently hostile--even when the Iranian regime was more liberal, and inclined to view reconciliation favorably.
Iran is 3.7 times larger than Iraq territorially, is 2.3 times larger in population, and has an effective government not based on one dictator. If bluff and sanctions don't work, war with Iran could be the straw that broke the American camel's back: it could bankrupt the US empire; we'd be facing a replay of Rome's fall in 476.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Fascism Now!
The Late Roman Empire was much like a Fascist state--without the populism. The Senatorial class was legally established as the class with power over government, but not the military. Not by coincidence, the Senators in the western empire monopolized wealth in the three forms in which it was recognized then: land, slaves and gold.
Because of their disproportionate wealth, Senators and their sons monopolized high civilian imperial offices: they bought them. Their wealth enabled them to exploit everyone else. Closeness to government and avoidance of taxation favored wealth accumulation among Senators. Since Senators as a class, also failed to reproduce themselves, estates tended to get bigger and fewer--inherited by the dwindling number of sons, nephews and cousins. They were the 0.01%.
Morally, culturally, or in the realm of "social issues," the Senators were extremely conservative or reactionary. Old ways were better, be it the old Roman religion over newfangled Christianity, social relations between landowner and coloni, performing meticulous rituals maintaining their class, or sucking up to the Emperor.
Fascism may be a mass movement--the Tea Party, for example--but paradoxically, it reveres class divisions with the 'best people' on top. The poor are either powerless, or the "masses" led by the best people. They don't talk of "classes," except as in leftists waging "class warfare," especially, when they try to assert their rights, or their own collective power.
Fascists in Italy and Germany incorporated large corporations in their economic system: they were major beneficiaries, even of the war-economy, with its need for armaments and its supply of slave labor.
In the US, we haven't gone quite that far, but the ground has been laid: unions weak or nonexistent, prisons privatized, a defense industry subsidized by government, the largest defense industry in the world; strengthening security services to the point of arrogance--getting away with strip-searching almost anyone by decision of the Supreme Court! The same court gave corporations the lever to regain control of government, after a 97-year hiatus, and perhaps corporations will--in the person of Mitt Romney, and a Republican leadership in both houses of Congress. Certainly, they are, transparently, the marionettes of the most aggressive anti-government billionaires the world has seen.
The question, the 6 billion dollar question, is: will money and media control buy the election? Or will people finally see, will Obama and Democrats finally articulate the rejection of this overweening security state, this demonizing of the jobless and women, this CLASS WAR being waged by the equivalents of the Roman Senators, waged on all the rest of us.
When the Senators won Roman governance, they reduced everyone else to serfs, and then were swept away by Germanic upstarts, the beginning of feudalism. Where we're headed, though, looks more like Fascism, its modern, mafia equivalent.
Unless Americans can wake up.
Because of their disproportionate wealth, Senators and their sons monopolized high civilian imperial offices: they bought them. Their wealth enabled them to exploit everyone else. Closeness to government and avoidance of taxation favored wealth accumulation among Senators. Since Senators as a class, also failed to reproduce themselves, estates tended to get bigger and fewer--inherited by the dwindling number of sons, nephews and cousins. They were the 0.01%.
Morally, culturally, or in the realm of "social issues," the Senators were extremely conservative or reactionary. Old ways were better, be it the old Roman religion over newfangled Christianity, social relations between landowner and coloni, performing meticulous rituals maintaining their class, or sucking up to the Emperor.
Fascism may be a mass movement--the Tea Party, for example--but paradoxically, it reveres class divisions with the 'best people' on top. The poor are either powerless, or the "masses" led by the best people. They don't talk of "classes," except as in leftists waging "class warfare," especially, when they try to assert their rights, or their own collective power.
Fascists in Italy and Germany incorporated large corporations in their economic system: they were major beneficiaries, even of the war-economy, with its need for armaments and its supply of slave labor.
In the US, we haven't gone quite that far, but the ground has been laid: unions weak or nonexistent, prisons privatized, a defense industry subsidized by government, the largest defense industry in the world; strengthening security services to the point of arrogance--getting away with strip-searching almost anyone by decision of the Supreme Court! The same court gave corporations the lever to regain control of government, after a 97-year hiatus, and perhaps corporations will--in the person of Mitt Romney, and a Republican leadership in both houses of Congress. Certainly, they are, transparently, the marionettes of the most aggressive anti-government billionaires the world has seen.
The question, the 6 billion dollar question, is: will money and media control buy the election? Or will people finally see, will Obama and Democrats finally articulate the rejection of this overweening security state, this demonizing of the jobless and women, this CLASS WAR being waged by the equivalents of the Roman Senators, waged on all the rest of us.
When the Senators won Roman governance, they reduced everyone else to serfs, and then were swept away by Germanic upstarts, the beginning of feudalism. Where we're headed, though, looks more like Fascism, its modern, mafia equivalent.
Unless Americans can wake up.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Insanity
In November 2012, we will be faced with the choice between a quarter-billionaire who continually re-invents himself politically, and an incumbent who may not be trustworthy either, a casualty of the terror war.
Romney would cut taxes on the wealthy, cut services for everyone else and go to war at the drop of an Israeli's hat. Obama told Yemen to keep a Pulitzers prize-winning Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Shaye, imprisoned. The real charge against him: he interviewed possible terrorists, making him an "associate" of al Qaeda. According to Obama's new NDAA, associates of al Qaeda can be detained indefinitely.
Shaye crossed Obama, because he proved that the US is waging war in Yemen. The transparent American-Yemeni official fiction: Yemenis were doing it themselves--assassinating opponents with drones only the US had. Many people suspected this was going on, but Shaye was in the field and witnessed it. So, he was doing his job and informing the world; what the best journalists do. And for that he's still held in a Yemeni prison, thanks to Obama's personal phone call to Yemen's President.
On one side there is a plutocrat who will take any position if it will win him GOP votes, and on the other, a former constitutional law professor, who acts as if freedom of the press is a national threat. And he's the signer of the NDAA that gave him this power. He first objected that it wasn't strong enough!
What would happen if Romney were elected? He supports attacking Iran and virtually every other war; he's likely to escalate the one in Yemen.
Who is Obama? On government leaks, he has become more extreme than Nixon, while on economic and social issues he's somewhat sane, compared to the positions Romney has taken to win GOP support.
Some have said that the November election will be between a born-again right-wing Republican and a moderate Republican marked D on the ballot. Romney has compromised anything he ever stood for when Governor of Massachusetts--and his advisor revealingly blurted out that everything Romney said for the primaries would be wiped clean in his General Election campaign (the etch-a-sketch remark). Romney's unabashed hypocrisy is astounding, but he won't be able to hide from it: his primary positions are flying all over the internet, such as his pledge to defund Planned Parenthood as soon as he takes office. Republicans will hold him to it.
Super-pacs will broadcast every slip Romney made, every cockamamie thing he said to win over the right-wing--over and over. They're having to doctor voices and events to get Obama, but super-pacs will do that, too.
Hold your nose, wish there was a viable third party, but know there isn't, then vote, hoping our progression towards what happened to Rome in 476 is slow enough that we can reverse it--if we can Occupy sanity, instead.
Romney would cut taxes on the wealthy, cut services for everyone else and go to war at the drop of an Israeli's hat. Obama told Yemen to keep a Pulitzers prize-winning Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Shaye, imprisoned. The real charge against him: he interviewed possible terrorists, making him an "associate" of al Qaeda. According to Obama's new NDAA, associates of al Qaeda can be detained indefinitely.
Shaye crossed Obama, because he proved that the US is waging war in Yemen. The transparent American-Yemeni official fiction: Yemenis were doing it themselves--assassinating opponents with drones only the US had. Many people suspected this was going on, but Shaye was in the field and witnessed it. So, he was doing his job and informing the world; what the best journalists do. And for that he's still held in a Yemeni prison, thanks to Obama's personal phone call to Yemen's President.
On one side there is a plutocrat who will take any position if it will win him GOP votes, and on the other, a former constitutional law professor, who acts as if freedom of the press is a national threat. And he's the signer of the NDAA that gave him this power. He first objected that it wasn't strong enough!
What would happen if Romney were elected? He supports attacking Iran and virtually every other war; he's likely to escalate the one in Yemen.
Who is Obama? On government leaks, he has become more extreme than Nixon, while on economic and social issues he's somewhat sane, compared to the positions Romney has taken to win GOP support.
Some have said that the November election will be between a born-again right-wing Republican and a moderate Republican marked D on the ballot. Romney has compromised anything he ever stood for when Governor of Massachusetts--and his advisor revealingly blurted out that everything Romney said for the primaries would be wiped clean in his General Election campaign (the etch-a-sketch remark). Romney's unabashed hypocrisy is astounding, but he won't be able to hide from it: his primary positions are flying all over the internet, such as his pledge to defund Planned Parenthood as soon as he takes office. Republicans will hold him to it.
Super-pacs will broadcast every slip Romney made, every cockamamie thing he said to win over the right-wing--over and over. They're having to doctor voices and events to get Obama, but super-pacs will do that, too.
Hold your nose, wish there was a viable third party, but know there isn't, then vote, hoping our progression towards what happened to Rome in 476 is slow enough that we can reverse it--if we can Occupy sanity, instead.
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