http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/books/2009/12/06/1206hedgesweb.html
EMPIRE OF ILLUSION
Chris Hedges sees, in America, a nation that has lost its way. He sees a country that places prosperity above principle, celebrity above substance, spectacle above nuance and introspection. He sees a "timid, cowed, confused" populace disconnected from language, governed by consumerism, ambivalent toward the common good, enamored by an American myth that has no basis in the American reality.
"We are a culture that has been denied, or has passively given up, the linguistic and intellectual tools to cope with complexity, to separate illlusion from reality," Hedges writes in his new book, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle." "We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level.
"Most of us speak at this level, are entertained and think at this level. We have transformed our culture into a vast replica of Pinocchio's Pleasure Island, where boys were lured with the promise of no school and endless fun. They were all, however, turned into donkeys — a symbol, in Italian cutlure, of ignorance and stupidity."
Hedges paints a bleak picture in this book — all the more sobering when one considers that this Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has spent decades covering violence and war around the globe, in Africa and the Balkans, South America and the Middle East. He states, plainly, that the age of American Imminence is over. Our standard of living is going to drop. Our consumptive tendencies are going to change. Yet the biggest problem, as Hedges sees it, is American denial — an eagerness to cling to the good-times, anything-we-want illusion, "the the dark message of corporatism," at the expense of this perilous end-of-empire reality.........
........American Illusion
"You strive toward a dream; you live within an illusion. And societies that cannot distinguish between illusion and reality die. If you look at the twilight periods of all great empires – Roman, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian — there is, in those final moments, not only a deep moral degeneration but an inability to distinguish what is real from fantasy.
"During the election between McCain and Obama, we were waging two wars, pre-emptive wars that under post Nurmberg laws are defined as criminal wars of aggression. We were running offshore penal colonies where we openly tortured individuals stripped of all rights. We had suspended habeas corpus. We had engaged in warrant-less wiretapping and eavesdropping on tens of millions of Americans . ... And yet we spoke of ourselves as the greatest democracy on Earth – and that as the embodiment of the highest values, we had a right to deliver it to others by force."
American Values
"We talk about (the importance of) American culture. (But in truth): American culture was destroyed after World War I, with the rise of Madison Avenue and the implanting of mass corporate culture which sought to instill new values into the American consciousness. Instead of the values of thrift, communitarianism, modesty (and) self-sacrifice, we developed, courtesy of the advertising industry, this cult of self — this deep narcissism and hedonism that disconnected us from others and gave us mass corporate culture.
"So it's not American culture that we embrace for the moment. It's not American culture we export. It's corporate culture. And I think that altered situations will force us back into a moral system that defies the dark ethic of corporatism. And hopefully reconnects us to those values within our past that I think were brought us closer to fostering the building of common good.
'Vocational America'
"Education in the United States has become vocational. ... Many of the state universities, community colleges and online for-profit universities — that are growing faster than any other university sentiment — have no use for the Humanities, literature, history, philosophy, classics, art. Why? Because the Humanities ask the kind of broad questions of meaning that those systems that prize above all else vocational workers do not want to ask.
"The problem with our vocational system is that it measures and rewards a very narrow kind of intelligence, a kind of analytical intelligence to create legions of systems managers — people who have a drone-like ability to work for very long hours, and (have) a kind of penchant or capacity for manipulation, but don't know how to question assumptions or structures.".........
........Capitalism
"Capitalism is probably ingrained in human nature. But there are different kinds of capitalism. The kind of penny capitalism that I saw at the farmer's market in the town I grew up in is not a dangerous form of capitalism ... but corporate capitalism is something else. Corporate Capitalism is cannibalizing the nation.
"Karl Polanyi in 1944 wrote a brilliant work called 'The Great Transformation' in which he talked about the inevitable totalitarianism and wars and breakdown that was caused by a system that permitted unregulated capitalists to flourish. When everything becomes a commodity, including human labor, when the natural world becomes a commodity that is valued only by its capacity to generate profit, then you commit collective suicide, because you exhaust human beings and human resources, you deplete them, until they die. And that's precisely what's happening. Look at the oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, our permanent war economy. ..."
Capitalism and Celebrity
"The ethic of celebrity culture ... is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. What are the values promoted on reality television programs like "Survivor"? A capacity for manipulation. Building false friendships (with) those you betray. A destruction of real community and solidarity. Basically: the traits of psychopaths. And what do you get in return? Fleeting fame and money.
"Well, that is the ethic of Wall Street. That is what allowed the titans of large corporations to fleece their shareholders, people who had put month by month small sums aside for their retirement, for their college, destroy these institutions like Lehman Brothers, and then like Richard Fuld did, walk away with a severance package of $45 million. The ethic of celebrity culture is the ethic of Wall Street. And the crisis that faces the country at its core is not so much an economic crisis or a political crisis as it is a moral crisis.
The Bankruptcy of Liberalism
"I fear more the bankruptcy of liberalism than I do the fanaticism of the right. ... I think the book for our times is probably Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the Underground," (1864) in which he writes about a defeated dreamer, who becomes a cynic at a time when liberalism is bankrupt and who descends into a state of moral nihilism ... which understood precisely where his country was going."
The Failure of Democrats
"Those of us who care about the working class in this country – and much of my own family comes from the working class — should have walked out on the Democratic party in 1994 when they passed NAFTA. That thrust a knife in the back of the working class in this country – followed by Clinton's so-called welfare reform, followed by a Democratic party that quite consciously did the bidding of corporations to receive (campaign) money. That was the intent. So by the 1990s, the Democratic party had parity with the Republicans in terms of corporate donations — and of course now they get more.
"The bankruptcy of American liberalism is that it continued to speak against war, continued to speak on behalf of the working class, continued to support constitutional rights, and yet backed the party (the Democratic party) that betrayed all of these values. This wasn't lost on the working class. The anger of the working class toward liberals in this country is not misplaced, because liberals continue with that type of hypocrisy. They continue to espouse values and yet support political parties that tear down those values. And that's very dangerous. . . .
"The progressive movements in this country rely on the working class to propel our democracy fowrward. (But) our working class has been decimated. It doesn't exist any more, because there are no jobs, no meaningful jobs. And so that rage and frustration which you're already seeing leaping up around the fringes of society — and of course America is a very violent nation, that undercurrent of violence runs very deep — is presaging, I fear, a backwash. But a right wing backwash. And that is largely because the liberal class in this country became gutless."
Health Care
"Any discussion of health care in this country should begin with the factual acknowledgment that the for-profit health care industry is a problem and must be destroyed. This is an industry that's not only responsible last year for the deaths of 20,000 Americans who could not get proper health care, medical coverage. But it (is) legally allowed (to) hold sick children hostage while parents bankrupt themselves to try to save their sons and daughters. This is a system, in theological terms, of death.
"Our for-profit health care system makes money off of death, the same way our arms merchants make money off of death. And the inability within our country to face this reality, the inability in a corporatized media to even have this discussion is, I think, evidence of the power of the corporate state, which drives debate, which permits institutions that are morally bankrupt to have a seat at the table. And that is symptomatic of a society in deep decay."...........
Sunday, December 6, 2009
SC99-9
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16414
Trickle-Up Economics
Goldman Sachs senior executives are arming themselves with New York gun permits, according to Alice Schroeder on Bloomberg.com. The banksters "are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank."
One can understand why the banksters are worried. The company, now known as Gold Sachs, has a large responsibility for the financial crisis and the fraudulent "securities" that wrecked the world economy and Americans' pensions. A former Gold Sachs CEO had control of the U.S. Treasury during the Bush regime, from which he diverted $750 billion to bail out the banks, thus supplying them with free capital. Gold Sachs made $27,000 million during the first three quarters of 2009 and is paying out massive bonuses, leaving the busted taxpayers with the debt and interest charges.
Little wonder the U.S. can't afford health care for the uninsured and unemployed. It is far more important to finance multimillion-dollar bonuses for investment bankers. I mean, what would we do without capitalism?
Of course, it is not really capitalism. It is an oligarchy or a financial plutocracy.
In a failed state, the government's priorities are totally separate from those of the people. The U.S. can't afford health care or a bailout for jobless homeowners, but it can afford a pointless war and multimillion-dollar bonuses for banksters who wrecked the economy.
Millions of laid-off workers lost their health insurance subsidies on Dec. 1, the day President Obama announced a $30 billion "surge" in Afghanistan.
The expensive "surge" came 24 hours after the Detroit Free Press published a 127-page supplement of home foreclosures in its metro area. In Michigan, 48 percent of mortgages are on properties that are worth less than the loan, according to a report from First American CoreLogic.
As bad as it is in Michigan, the state ranks seventh in foreclosures, so six states are in even more dire straits.
Why does President Obama think the U.S. can afford a war in Afghanistan when the U.S. economy is falling apart? Massive joblessness. Massive homelessness. Millions of Americans without medical care.
The additional $30 billion for the war comes on top of the $65 billion already appropriated for the year. These appropriations are always fattened with supplementary appropriations. The true cost is well in excess of $100 billion.
Whose going to pay for it? Democratic Rep. David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee proposes to raise income taxes on everyone earning more than $30,000.
This is called "trickle-up" economics. You tax the little guy and give the money to the armaments companies.
There was a time when Democratic presidents represented the little man, and Republicans represented business. Today, both parties represent the moneyed interests. On Dec. 3, at the jobs summit with business leaders, Obama said, "We don't have enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the crisis."
In other words, all the public's money has been spent on the banks and the wars.
Despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and the ease with which Obama won the presidential election over McCain-Palin, the Democratic Party has totally collapsed.
The Democrats have abandoned every constituency. Democrats have discarded the American people. Democrats, in pursuit of campaign contributions, represent the moneyed interests on Wall Street, the munitions companies, the insurance companies, the agribusinesses that have destroyed independent farmers, despoilers of the environment, unaccountable police and the builders of detention centers. The exception is Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
The Democrats have become Brownshirt Republicans.
The American people, except for the 1 percent of super-rich, have been abandoned.
Obama had a different message during the presidential campaign. On May 4, 2008, he went to Elkhart, Ind., to sympathize with the unemployed. On Feb. 9, 2009, just after his inauguration, he returned to Elkhart to say:
"You know, we tend to take the measure of the economic crisis we face in numbers and statistics. But when we say we've lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began — nearly 600,000 in the past month alone; when we say that this area has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America, with an unemployment rate over 15 percent; when we talk about layoffs at companies like Monaco Coach, Keystone RV and Pilgrim International — companies that have sustained this community for years — we're talking about Ed Neufeldt and people like him all across this country.
"We're talking about folks who've lost their livelihood and don't know what will take its place. Parents who've lost their health care and lie awake nights praying the kids don't get sick. Families who've lost the home that was their corner of the American dream. Young people who put that college acceptance letter back in the envelope because they just can't afford it.
"That's what those numbers and statistics mean. That is the true measure of this economic crisis. Those are the stories I heard when I came here to Elkhart six months ago and that I have carried with me every day since. I promised you back then that if were elected president, I would do everything I could to help this community recover. And that's why I've come back today — to tell you how I intend to keep that promise."
What's the story in Elkhart nine months after President Obama reaffirms his promise? "Long-term unemployed face dwindling options."
Lawrie Covey, 58, has been out of work for two years. "I can't even get a job cleaning rooms at a local motel." Her son, who was night shift foreman for a local manufacturer and who lost his job after eight years, was splitting the rent. Winter is upon them, and the heating bill is rising. Their transportation is 20 years old and needs a new radiator. Both her and her son's unemployment benefits have run out.
Covey has fallen back on her experience growing up on a farm. She is raising chickens and picking wild mushrooms and has a garden. If she makes it through the winter, she hopes to get a couple of baby pigs to raise to see them through the next year.
Covey, to whom President Obama made a promise, could just as well be an Afghan peasant. She doesn't count any more than the thousands of Afghans who have been murdered in their sleep by U.S. air strikes on "terrorists."
She voted for a president who spent all the money on wars based in lies and deceptions and on Gold Sachs, the richest institution in the world.
The maniacal left-wing hates Ronald Reagan because "he cut taxes for the rich," but Obama is loading up the poor with enormous debts that imply hyperinflation in order to make Gold Sachs too heavy to lift and in order to reward the munitions industry for its service to world peace and American hegemony.
Trickle-Up Economics
Goldman Sachs senior executives are arming themselves with New York gun permits, according to Alice Schroeder on Bloomberg.com. The banksters "are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank."
One can understand why the banksters are worried. The company, now known as Gold Sachs, has a large responsibility for the financial crisis and the fraudulent "securities" that wrecked the world economy and Americans' pensions. A former Gold Sachs CEO had control of the U.S. Treasury during the Bush regime, from which he diverted $750 billion to bail out the banks, thus supplying them with free capital. Gold Sachs made $27,000 million during the first three quarters of 2009 and is paying out massive bonuses, leaving the busted taxpayers with the debt and interest charges.
Little wonder the U.S. can't afford health care for the uninsured and unemployed. It is far more important to finance multimillion-dollar bonuses for investment bankers. I mean, what would we do without capitalism?
Of course, it is not really capitalism. It is an oligarchy or a financial plutocracy.
In a failed state, the government's priorities are totally separate from those of the people. The U.S. can't afford health care or a bailout for jobless homeowners, but it can afford a pointless war and multimillion-dollar bonuses for banksters who wrecked the economy.
Millions of laid-off workers lost their health insurance subsidies on Dec. 1, the day President Obama announced a $30 billion "surge" in Afghanistan.
The expensive "surge" came 24 hours after the Detroit Free Press published a 127-page supplement of home foreclosures in its metro area. In Michigan, 48 percent of mortgages are on properties that are worth less than the loan, according to a report from First American CoreLogic.
As bad as it is in Michigan, the state ranks seventh in foreclosures, so six states are in even more dire straits.
Why does President Obama think the U.S. can afford a war in Afghanistan when the U.S. economy is falling apart? Massive joblessness. Massive homelessness. Millions of Americans without medical care.
The additional $30 billion for the war comes on top of the $65 billion already appropriated for the year. These appropriations are always fattened with supplementary appropriations. The true cost is well in excess of $100 billion.
Whose going to pay for it? Democratic Rep. David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee proposes to raise income taxes on everyone earning more than $30,000.
This is called "trickle-up" economics. You tax the little guy and give the money to the armaments companies.
There was a time when Democratic presidents represented the little man, and Republicans represented business. Today, both parties represent the moneyed interests. On Dec. 3, at the jobs summit with business leaders, Obama said, "We don't have enough public dollars to fill the hole of private dollars that was created as a consequence of the crisis."
In other words, all the public's money has been spent on the banks and the wars.
Despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and the ease with which Obama won the presidential election over McCain-Palin, the Democratic Party has totally collapsed.
The Democrats have abandoned every constituency. Democrats have discarded the American people. Democrats, in pursuit of campaign contributions, represent the moneyed interests on Wall Street, the munitions companies, the insurance companies, the agribusinesses that have destroyed independent farmers, despoilers of the environment, unaccountable police and the builders of detention centers. The exception is Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
The Democrats have become Brownshirt Republicans.
The American people, except for the 1 percent of super-rich, have been abandoned.
Obama had a different message during the presidential campaign. On May 4, 2008, he went to Elkhart, Ind., to sympathize with the unemployed. On Feb. 9, 2009, just after his inauguration, he returned to Elkhart to say:
"You know, we tend to take the measure of the economic crisis we face in numbers and statistics. But when we say we've lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began — nearly 600,000 in the past month alone; when we say that this area has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America, with an unemployment rate over 15 percent; when we talk about layoffs at companies like Monaco Coach, Keystone RV and Pilgrim International — companies that have sustained this community for years — we're talking about Ed Neufeldt and people like him all across this country.
"We're talking about folks who've lost their livelihood and don't know what will take its place. Parents who've lost their health care and lie awake nights praying the kids don't get sick. Families who've lost the home that was their corner of the American dream. Young people who put that college acceptance letter back in the envelope because they just can't afford it.
"That's what those numbers and statistics mean. That is the true measure of this economic crisis. Those are the stories I heard when I came here to Elkhart six months ago and that I have carried with me every day since. I promised you back then that if were elected president, I would do everything I could to help this community recover. And that's why I've come back today — to tell you how I intend to keep that promise."
What's the story in Elkhart nine months after President Obama reaffirms his promise? "Long-term unemployed face dwindling options."
Lawrie Covey, 58, has been out of work for two years. "I can't even get a job cleaning rooms at a local motel." Her son, who was night shift foreman for a local manufacturer and who lost his job after eight years, was splitting the rent. Winter is upon them, and the heating bill is rising. Their transportation is 20 years old and needs a new radiator. Both her and her son's unemployment benefits have run out.
Covey has fallen back on her experience growing up on a farm. She is raising chickens and picking wild mushrooms and has a garden. If she makes it through the winter, she hopes to get a couple of baby pigs to raise to see them through the next year.
Covey, to whom President Obama made a promise, could just as well be an Afghan peasant. She doesn't count any more than the thousands of Afghans who have been murdered in their sleep by U.S. air strikes on "terrorists."
She voted for a president who spent all the money on wars based in lies and deceptions and on Gold Sachs, the richest institution in the world.
The maniacal left-wing hates Ronald Reagan because "he cut taxes for the rich," but Obama is loading up the poor with enormous debts that imply hyperinflation in order to make Gold Sachs too heavy to lift and in order to reward the munitions industry for its service to world peace and American hegemony.
Friday, December 4, 2009
SC99-8
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16407
This is Obama's plan for Afghanistan, a carbon-copy of George Bush's.
The Audacity of Ethnic Cleansing
"Today, we Afghans remain trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other." Malalai Joya "A Woman Among the Warlords" Scribner Publishing, New York
The Bush administration never had any intention of liberating Afghanistan or establishing democracy. The real aim was to remove the politically-intractable Taliban and replace them with a puppet regime run by a former-CIA asset. The rest of Afghanistan would be parceled-off to the warlords who assisted in the invasion and who had agreed to do much of the United States dirty-work on the ground. In the eight years of military occupation which followed, that basic strategy has never changed. The U.S. is just as committed now as it was at the war's inception to establish a beachhead in Central Asia to oversee the growth of China, to execute disruptive/covert operations against Russia, to control vital pipeline routes from the Caspian Basin, and to maintain a heavy military presence in the most critical geopolitical area in the world today.
The objectives were briefly stated in a recent counterpunch article by Tariq Ali:
"It’s now obvious to everyone that this is not a ‘good’ war designed to eliminate the opium trade, discrimination against women and everything bad – apart from poverty, of course. So what is Nato doing in Afghanistan? Has this become a war to save Nato as an institution? Or is it more strategic, as was suggested in the spring 2005 issue of Nato Review:
The centre of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward … The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way … security effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability." ("Short Cuts in Afghanistan", Tariq Ali, counterpunch)
President Barak Obama's speech at West Point was merely a reiteration of US original commitment to strengthen the loose confederation of warlords--many of who are either in the Afghan Parliament or hold high political office--to pacify nationalist elements, and to expand the war into Pakistan. Obama is just a cog in a much larger imperial wheel which moves forward with or without his impressive oratory skills. So far, he has been much more successful in concealing the real motives behind military escalation than his predecessor George W. Bush. It's doubtful that Obama could stop current operations even if he wanted to, and there is no evidence that he wants to.
The Pentagon has settled on a new counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) which it intends to implement in Afghanistan. The program will integrate psyops, special forces, NGOs, psychologists, media, anthropologists, humanitarian agencies, public relations, reconstruction, and conventional forces to rout the Taliban, assert control over the South and the tribal areas, and to quash any indigenous resistance. Clandestine activity and unmanned drone attacks will increase, while a "civilian surge" will be launched to try to win hearts and minds in the densely populated areas. Militarily, the goal is to pit one ethnicity against the other, to incite civil war, and to split the country in smaller units that can be controlled by warlords working with Washington. Where agricultural specialists, educators, engineers, lawyers, relief agencies and NGOs can be used, they will be. Where results depend on the application of extreme violence; it will also be...unsparingly. This is the plan going forward, a plan designed for conquest, subjugation and resource-stripping...........
.........Obama's escalation is not aimed at strengthening democracy, liberating women or bringing
an end to the brutal, misogynist rule of religious fanatics. It is pure, unalloyed imperial politics, the rearranging of the map and its people to serve Washington's interests. As journalist Alex Lantier notes on the World Socialist Web Site, the plan does not end with Afghanistan, but stretches across the globe. The hard-right policymakers behind Obama, still have not abandoned their dream of global rule. Here's an excerpt:
"As Obama indicated elsewhere in his speech, this escalation is one step in plans for even broader wars. “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,” he said, “and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Mentioning Somalia and Yemen as potential targets, he added, “our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.”
The inclusion of this passage made clear that Obama was basing his Afghan policy on a report issued last month by Anthony Cordesman of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Cordesman wrote: “The President must be frank about the fact that any form of victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be part of a much wider and longer struggle. He must make it clear that the ideological, demographic, governance, economic, and other pressures that divide the Islamic world mean the world will face threats in many other nations that will endure indefinitely into the future. He should mention the risks in Yemen and Somalia, make it clear that the Iraq war is not over, and warn that we will still face both a domestic threat and a combination of insurgency and terrorism that will continue to extend from Morocco to the Philippines, and from Central Asia deep into Africa, regardless of how well we do in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
He added: “…the present level of US, allied, Afghan and Pakistani casualties will almost certainly double and probably more than triple before something approaching victory is won.” (Alex Lantier "Obama’s speech on Afghanistan: A compendium of lies" World Socialist web Site)
In the years ahead, we can expect to see relief and reconstruction efforts stepped up to provide security in the heavily-populated areas while the war in the south is expanded and intensified. Tajiks and Uzbeks, in the Afghan military will be enlisted to fight or expel their Pashtun countrymen, while warlords, druglords and human rights abusers are handed over large swathes of the countryside. 30,000 more troops is not enough to lock-down all of Afghanistan, but it may be enough to force hundreds of thousands of people into regional bantustans where they can be controlled by bloodthirsty chieftains, the very same men who leveled Kabul on April 28, 1992, killing 80,000 Afghan civilians.
This is Obama's plan for Afghanistan, a carbon-copy of George Bush's.
This is Obama's plan for Afghanistan, a carbon-copy of George Bush's.
The Audacity of Ethnic Cleansing
"Today, we Afghans remain trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and US/NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other." Malalai Joya "A Woman Among the Warlords" Scribner Publishing, New York
The Bush administration never had any intention of liberating Afghanistan or establishing democracy. The real aim was to remove the politically-intractable Taliban and replace them with a puppet regime run by a former-CIA asset. The rest of Afghanistan would be parceled-off to the warlords who assisted in the invasion and who had agreed to do much of the United States dirty-work on the ground. In the eight years of military occupation which followed, that basic strategy has never changed. The U.S. is just as committed now as it was at the war's inception to establish a beachhead in Central Asia to oversee the growth of China, to execute disruptive/covert operations against Russia, to control vital pipeline routes from the Caspian Basin, and to maintain a heavy military presence in the most critical geopolitical area in the world today.
The objectives were briefly stated in a recent counterpunch article by Tariq Ali:
"It’s now obvious to everyone that this is not a ‘good’ war designed to eliminate the opium trade, discrimination against women and everything bad – apart from poverty, of course. So what is Nato doing in Afghanistan? Has this become a war to save Nato as an institution? Or is it more strategic, as was suggested in the spring 2005 issue of Nato Review:
The centre of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward … The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way … security effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability." ("Short Cuts in Afghanistan", Tariq Ali, counterpunch)
President Barak Obama's speech at West Point was merely a reiteration of US original commitment to strengthen the loose confederation of warlords--many of who are either in the Afghan Parliament or hold high political office--to pacify nationalist elements, and to expand the war into Pakistan. Obama is just a cog in a much larger imperial wheel which moves forward with or without his impressive oratory skills. So far, he has been much more successful in concealing the real motives behind military escalation than his predecessor George W. Bush. It's doubtful that Obama could stop current operations even if he wanted to, and there is no evidence that he wants to.
The Pentagon has settled on a new counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) which it intends to implement in Afghanistan. The program will integrate psyops, special forces, NGOs, psychologists, media, anthropologists, humanitarian agencies, public relations, reconstruction, and conventional forces to rout the Taliban, assert control over the South and the tribal areas, and to quash any indigenous resistance. Clandestine activity and unmanned drone attacks will increase, while a "civilian surge" will be launched to try to win hearts and minds in the densely populated areas. Militarily, the goal is to pit one ethnicity against the other, to incite civil war, and to split the country in smaller units that can be controlled by warlords working with Washington. Where agricultural specialists, educators, engineers, lawyers, relief agencies and NGOs can be used, they will be. Where results depend on the application of extreme violence; it will also be...unsparingly. This is the plan going forward, a plan designed for conquest, subjugation and resource-stripping...........
.........Obama's escalation is not aimed at strengthening democracy, liberating women or bringing
an end to the brutal, misogynist rule of religious fanatics. It is pure, unalloyed imperial politics, the rearranging of the map and its people to serve Washington's interests. As journalist Alex Lantier notes on the World Socialist Web Site, the plan does not end with Afghanistan, but stretches across the globe. The hard-right policymakers behind Obama, still have not abandoned their dream of global rule. Here's an excerpt:
"As Obama indicated elsewhere in his speech, this escalation is one step in plans for even broader wars. “The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly,” he said, “and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Mentioning Somalia and Yemen as potential targets, he added, “our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.”
The inclusion of this passage made clear that Obama was basing his Afghan policy on a report issued last month by Anthony Cordesman of the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Cordesman wrote: “The President must be frank about the fact that any form of victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be part of a much wider and longer struggle. He must make it clear that the ideological, demographic, governance, economic, and other pressures that divide the Islamic world mean the world will face threats in many other nations that will endure indefinitely into the future. He should mention the risks in Yemen and Somalia, make it clear that the Iraq war is not over, and warn that we will still face both a domestic threat and a combination of insurgency and terrorism that will continue to extend from Morocco to the Philippines, and from Central Asia deep into Africa, regardless of how well we do in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
He added: “…the present level of US, allied, Afghan and Pakistani casualties will almost certainly double and probably more than triple before something approaching victory is won.” (Alex Lantier "Obama’s speech on Afghanistan: A compendium of lies" World Socialist web Site)
In the years ahead, we can expect to see relief and reconstruction efforts stepped up to provide security in the heavily-populated areas while the war in the south is expanded and intensified. Tajiks and Uzbeks, in the Afghan military will be enlisted to fight or expel their Pashtun countrymen, while warlords, druglords and human rights abusers are handed over large swathes of the countryside. 30,000 more troops is not enough to lock-down all of Afghanistan, but it may be enough to force hundreds of thousands of people into regional bantustans where they can be controlled by bloodthirsty chieftains, the very same men who leveled Kabul on April 28, 1992, killing 80,000 Afghan civilians.
This is Obama's plan for Afghanistan, a carbon-copy of George Bush's.
SC99-7
http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2009/12/paul-krugmans-free-lunch-theory/
Paul Krugman’s Free Lunch Theory
........The List
Why might I think that the kind of growth Krugman envisions is impossible? Rather than resort to subtle arguments, I will deploy overwhelming brute force.
This is an economy & a society:
whose automobile industry is a shambles
whose manufacturing base has been in decline for decades
where “full” employment (~5%) likely will not return until sometime in the 2016-2020 period (see Figure 4 and the discussion below)
where non-wealth-creating consumption (PCE) makes up about 71% of GDP
whose total (public & private) debt-to-GDP ratio is north of 350% and is now rising faster than defaults, asset sales or payments can pare it down due to increased public debt (see Figures 1, 2, and 3 and the discussion below)
where real income actually declined over the last decade
where “over the past 10 years, the private sector has generated roughly 1.1 million additional jobs, or about 100K per year. The public sector created about 2.4 million jobs.”
where home prices, which were the principal source of household wealth in a bubble economy, have likely not yet hit bottom
where household wealth has fallen precipitously as a result
whose overbuilt residential investment sector (new housing) will stagnate for many years to come
where there are 23.1 square feet of shopping center space for every American
where rising health care, food and energy costs are eroding household disposable income
where over 45 million Americans lack any kind of health insurance
where the cost of an college education has increased far in excess of the inflation rate for decades
where wealth & income inequality is at its highest level since 1928
where 49 million Americans went hungry at some point in 2008
where 1 in 8 Americans and 1 in 4 children receive food stamps
where total bank credit of all commercial banks is contracting, not expanding where several regional banks fail each week
where the government insurance system for depositors (FDIC) is insolvent
where “enormous budget deficits in nearly every State in the Union are ‘wreaking havoc’ on government employees, the services they provide, and the residents who need them most”
where the Central Bank (aka “the Fed”) is accountable to no one, and is thus free to print money for any purpose it deems important, including monetizing the debt or bailing out too-big-to-fail (TBTF) banks
where Congress has been “captured” by those they must regulate across all industries, and so does literally nothing or practically nothing in the name of reform
where the Executive branch of government (i.e. the Treasury) mostly serves the interests of highly over-leveraged TBTF banks
whose politically powerful TBTF banks drain huge amounts of capital away from wealth-creating activities
whose negative current accounts (trade) balance exploded during the years leading up to the financial crisis and still shows a substantial deficit (exports versus imports)
whose declining oil production peaked in 1970 whose concomitant dependency on oil imports has been rising for decades (see trade balance)
whose government debt must be funded by Asian & European central banks and oil exporters
which is involved in one costly but pointless occupation (Iraq) and one pointless but costly foreign war, and is on the verge of expanding the war (Afghanistan)
* Not all items are documented (linked), but ample documentation could be provided
That’s enough—you get the idea. The list is not comprehensive. I didn’t stop because I ran out of material. Some indicators more time-sensitive than others, so improvements will vary over time if the situation is reversible. For example, home prices should bottom out sometime in the next few years. On the other hand, nothing will fix our declining oil production. Some items are sensitive to political circumstances, e.g. the non-accountability of the Fed.
Other indicators, for example those illustrating growing poverty, may not directly affect GDP growth. These points are meant to show a society going rapidly downhill.............
Paul Krugman’s Free Lunch Theory
........The List
Why might I think that the kind of growth Krugman envisions is impossible? Rather than resort to subtle arguments, I will deploy overwhelming brute force.
This is an economy & a society:
whose automobile industry is a shambles
whose manufacturing base has been in decline for decades
where “full” employment (~5%) likely will not return until sometime in the 2016-2020 period (see Figure 4 and the discussion below)
where non-wealth-creating consumption (PCE) makes up about 71% of GDP
whose total (public & private) debt-to-GDP ratio is north of 350% and is now rising faster than defaults, asset sales or payments can pare it down due to increased public debt (see Figures 1, 2, and 3 and the discussion below)
where real income actually declined over the last decade
where “over the past 10 years, the private sector has generated roughly 1.1 million additional jobs, or about 100K per year. The public sector created about 2.4 million jobs.”
where home prices, which were the principal source of household wealth in a bubble economy, have likely not yet hit bottom
where household wealth has fallen precipitously as a result
whose overbuilt residential investment sector (new housing) will stagnate for many years to come
where there are 23.1 square feet of shopping center space for every American
where rising health care, food and energy costs are eroding household disposable income
where over 45 million Americans lack any kind of health insurance
where the cost of an college education has increased far in excess of the inflation rate for decades
where wealth & income inequality is at its highest level since 1928
where 49 million Americans went hungry at some point in 2008
where 1 in 8 Americans and 1 in 4 children receive food stamps
where total bank credit of all commercial banks is contracting, not expanding where several regional banks fail each week
where the government insurance system for depositors (FDIC) is insolvent
where “enormous budget deficits in nearly every State in the Union are ‘wreaking havoc’ on government employees, the services they provide, and the residents who need them most”
where the Central Bank (aka “the Fed”) is accountable to no one, and is thus free to print money for any purpose it deems important, including monetizing the debt or bailing out too-big-to-fail (TBTF) banks
where Congress has been “captured” by those they must regulate across all industries, and so does literally nothing or practically nothing in the name of reform
where the Executive branch of government (i.e. the Treasury) mostly serves the interests of highly over-leveraged TBTF banks
whose politically powerful TBTF banks drain huge amounts of capital away from wealth-creating activities
whose negative current accounts (trade) balance exploded during the years leading up to the financial crisis and still shows a substantial deficit (exports versus imports)
whose declining oil production peaked in 1970 whose concomitant dependency on oil imports has been rising for decades (see trade balance)
whose government debt must be funded by Asian & European central banks and oil exporters
which is involved in one costly but pointless occupation (Iraq) and one pointless but costly foreign war, and is on the verge of expanding the war (Afghanistan)
* Not all items are documented (linked), but ample documentation could be provided
That’s enough—you get the idea. The list is not comprehensive. I didn’t stop because I ran out of material. Some indicators more time-sensitive than others, so improvements will vary over time if the situation is reversible. For example, home prices should bottom out sometime in the next few years. On the other hand, nothing will fix our declining oil production. Some items are sensitive to political circumstances, e.g. the non-accountability of the Fed.
Other indicators, for example those illustrating growing poverty, may not directly affect GDP growth. These points are meant to show a society going rapidly downhill.............
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
SC99-6
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24085.htm
All Politicians Are Alike
An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore
Dear President Obama,
Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.
It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).
So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.
There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.
With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.
Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.
I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.
Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"
Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.
We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?
Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.
The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.
President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."
What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.
All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.
When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.
Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.
Tonight we still have hope........
As of tonight, Mr Nobel Peace Prize is sending 30,000 more troops over to Afganistan to act as Cannon Fodder and Pawns for the elites and their nefarious agendas. So much for hope.
All Politicians Are Alike
An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore
Dear President Obama,
Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.
It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).
So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.
There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.
With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.
Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.
I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush's Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.
Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you're doing it so you can "end the war") will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you've said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone -- and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout "tea bag!"
Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.
We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?
Don't be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn't be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can't change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.
The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can't be won over by abandoning the rest of us.
President Obama, it's time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, "No, we don't need health care, we don't need jobs, we don't need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, 'cause we don't need them, either."
What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.
All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.
When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.
Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.
Tonight we still have hope........
As of tonight, Mr Nobel Peace Prize is sending 30,000 more troops over to Afganistan to act as Cannon Fodder and Pawns for the elites and their nefarious agendas. So much for hope.
SC99-5
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24098.htm
The World’s Least Powerful Man
The Obama Puppet
It didn’t take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel’s.
Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else either, if he ever intended to do so.
The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can’t do anything about it.
President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out the order.
Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.
President Obama can promise that he is going to bring the troops home, and the military lobby says, “No, you are going to send them to Afghanistan, and in the meantime start a war in
Pakistan and maneuver Iran into a position that will provide an excuse for a war there, too. Wars are too profitable for us to let you stop them.” And the mere president has to say, “Yes, Sir!”
Obama can promise health care to 50 million uninsured Americans, but he can’t override the veto of the war lobby and the insurance lobby. The war lobby says its war profits are more important than health care and that the country can’t afford both the “war on terror” and “socialized medicine.”
The insurance lobby says health care has to be provided by private health insurance; otherwise, we can’t afford it.
The war and insurance lobbies rattled their campaign contribution pocketbooks and quickly convinced Congress and the White House that the real purpose of the health care bill is to save money by cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, thereby “getting entitlements under control.”
Entitlements is a right-wing word used to cast aspersion on the few things that the government did, in the distant past, for citizens. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are denigrated as “entitlements.” The right-wing goes on endlessly about Social Security and Medicare as if they were welfare give-aways to shiftless people who refuse to look after themselves, whereas in actual fact citizens are vastly overcharged for the meager benefits with a 15% tax on their wages and salaries.
Indeed, for decades now the federal government has been funding its wars and military budgets with the surplus revenues collected by the Social Security tax on labor.
To claim, as the right-wing does, that we can’t afford the only thing in the entire budget that has consistently produced a revenue surplus indicates that the real agenda is to drive the mere citizen into the ground.
The real entitlements are never mentioned. The “defense” budget is an entitlement for the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower warned us 50 years ago. A person has to be crazy to believe that the United States, “the world’s only superpower,” protected by oceans on its East and West and by puppet states on its North and South, needs a “defense” budget larger than the military spending of the rest of the world combined.
The military budget is nothing but an entitlement for the military/security complex. To hide this fact, the entitlement is disguised as protection against “enemies” and passed through the Pentagon.
I say cut out the middleman and simply allocate a percentage of the federal budget to the military/security complex. This way we won’t have to concoct reasons for invading other countries and go to war in order for the military/security complex to get its entitlement. It would be a lot cheaper just to give them the money outright, and itwould save a lot of lives and grief at home and abroad.
The US invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with American national interests. It had to do with armaments profits and with eliminating an obstacle to Israeli territorial expansion.
The cost of the war, aside from the $3 trillion, was over 4,000 dead Americans, over 30,000 wounded and maimed Americans, tens of thousands of broken American marriages and lost careers, one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and a destroyed country.
All of this was done for the profits of the military/security complex and to make paranoid Israel, armed with 200 nuclear weapons, feel “secure.”
My proposal would make the military/security complex even more wealthy as the companies would get the money without having to produce the weapons. Instead, all the money could go for multi-million dollar bonuses and dividend payouts to shareholders. No one, at home or abroad, would have to be killed, and the taxpayer would be better off.
No American national interest is served by the war in Afghanistan. As the former UK Ambassador Craig Murray disclosed, the purpose of the war is to protect Unocal’s interest in the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline. The cost of the war is many times greater than Unocal’s investment in the pipeline. The obvious solution is to buy out Unocal and give the pipeline to the Afghans as partial compensation for the destruction we have inflicted on that country and its population, and bring the troops home.
The reason my sensible solutions cannot be effected is that the lobbies think that their entitlements would not survive if they were made obvious. They think that if the American people knew that the wars were being fought to enrich the armaments and oil industries, the people would put a halt to the wars.
In actual fact, the American people have no say about what “their” government does. Polls of the public show that half or more of the American people do not support the wars in Iraq or
Afghanistan and do not support President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Yet, the occupations and wars continue. According to General Stanley McChrystal, the additional 40,000 troops are enough to stalemate the war, that is, to keep it going forever, the ideal situation for the armaments lobby.
The people want health care, but the government does not listen.
The people want jobs, but Wall Street wants higher priced stocks and forces American firms to offshore the jobs to countries where labor is cheaper.
The American people have no effect on anything. They can affect nothing. They have become irrelevant like Obama. And they will remain irrelevant as long as organized interest groups can purchase the US government.
The inability of the American democracy to produce any results that the voters want is a demonstrated fact. The total unresponsiveness of government to the people is conservatism’s contribution to American democracy. Some years ago there was an effort to put government back into the hands of the people by constraining the ability of organized interest groups to pour enormous amounts of money into political campaigns and, thus, obligate the elected official to those whose money elected him. Conservatives said that any restraints would be a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
The same “protectors” of “free speech” had no objection to the Israel Lobby’s passage of the “hate speech” bill, which has criminalized criticism of Israel’s genocidal treatment of the
Palestinians and continuing theft of their lands.
In less than one year, President Obama has betrayed all of his supporters and broken all of his promises. He is the total captive of the oligarchy of the ruling interest groups. Unless he is saved by an orchestrated 9/11-type event, Obama is a one-term president. Indeed, the collapsing economy will doom him regardless of a “terrorist event.”
The Republicans are grooming Palin. Our first female president, following our first black president, will complete the transition to an American police state by arresting critics and protesters of Washington’s immoral foreign and domestic policies, and she will complete the destruction of America’s reputation abroad.
Russia’s Putin has already compared the US to Nazi Germany, and the Chinese premier has likened the US to an irresponsible, profligate debtor.
Increasingly the rest of the world sees the US as the sole source of all of its problems. Germany has lost the chief of its armed forces and its defense minister, because the US convinced or pressured, by hook or crook, the German government to violate its Constitution and to send troops to fight for Unocal’s interest in Afghanistan. The Germans had pretended that their troops were not really fighting, but were were engaged in a “peace-keeping operation.” This more or less worked until the Germans called in an air strike that murdered 100 women and children lined up for a fuel allotment.
The British are investigating their leading criminal, former prime minister Tony Blair, and his deception of his own cabinet in order to do Bush’s bidding and provide some cover for Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq. The UK investigators have been denied the ability to bring criminal charges, but the issue of war based entirely on orchestrated deception and lies is getting a hearing. It will reverberate throughout the world, and the world will note that there is no corresponding investigation in the US, the country that originated the False War.
Meanwhile, the US investment banks, which have wrecked the financial stability of many governments, including that of the US, continue to control, as they have done since the Clinton administration, US economic and financial policy. The world has suffered terribly from the Wall Street gangsters, and now looks upon America with a critical eye..............
The World’s Least Powerful Man
The Obama Puppet
It didn’t take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel’s.
Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else either, if he ever intended to do so.
The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can’t do anything about it.
President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out the order.
Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.
President Obama can promise that he is going to bring the troops home, and the military lobby says, “No, you are going to send them to Afghanistan, and in the meantime start a war in
Pakistan and maneuver Iran into a position that will provide an excuse for a war there, too. Wars are too profitable for us to let you stop them.” And the mere president has to say, “Yes, Sir!”
Obama can promise health care to 50 million uninsured Americans, but he can’t override the veto of the war lobby and the insurance lobby. The war lobby says its war profits are more important than health care and that the country can’t afford both the “war on terror” and “socialized medicine.”
The insurance lobby says health care has to be provided by private health insurance; otherwise, we can’t afford it.
The war and insurance lobbies rattled their campaign contribution pocketbooks and quickly convinced Congress and the White House that the real purpose of the health care bill is to save money by cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, thereby “getting entitlements under control.”
Entitlements is a right-wing word used to cast aspersion on the few things that the government did, in the distant past, for citizens. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are denigrated as “entitlements.” The right-wing goes on endlessly about Social Security and Medicare as if they were welfare give-aways to shiftless people who refuse to look after themselves, whereas in actual fact citizens are vastly overcharged for the meager benefits with a 15% tax on their wages and salaries.
Indeed, for decades now the federal government has been funding its wars and military budgets with the surplus revenues collected by the Social Security tax on labor.
To claim, as the right-wing does, that we can’t afford the only thing in the entire budget that has consistently produced a revenue surplus indicates that the real agenda is to drive the mere citizen into the ground.
The real entitlements are never mentioned. The “defense” budget is an entitlement for the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower warned us 50 years ago. A person has to be crazy to believe that the United States, “the world’s only superpower,” protected by oceans on its East and West and by puppet states on its North and South, needs a “defense” budget larger than the military spending of the rest of the world combined.
The military budget is nothing but an entitlement for the military/security complex. To hide this fact, the entitlement is disguised as protection against “enemies” and passed through the Pentagon.
I say cut out the middleman and simply allocate a percentage of the federal budget to the military/security complex. This way we won’t have to concoct reasons for invading other countries and go to war in order for the military/security complex to get its entitlement. It would be a lot cheaper just to give them the money outright, and itwould save a lot of lives and grief at home and abroad.
The US invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with American national interests. It had to do with armaments profits and with eliminating an obstacle to Israeli territorial expansion.
The cost of the war, aside from the $3 trillion, was over 4,000 dead Americans, over 30,000 wounded and maimed Americans, tens of thousands of broken American marriages and lost careers, one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and a destroyed country.
All of this was done for the profits of the military/security complex and to make paranoid Israel, armed with 200 nuclear weapons, feel “secure.”
My proposal would make the military/security complex even more wealthy as the companies would get the money without having to produce the weapons. Instead, all the money could go for multi-million dollar bonuses and dividend payouts to shareholders. No one, at home or abroad, would have to be killed, and the taxpayer would be better off.
No American national interest is served by the war in Afghanistan. As the former UK Ambassador Craig Murray disclosed, the purpose of the war is to protect Unocal’s interest in the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline. The cost of the war is many times greater than Unocal’s investment in the pipeline. The obvious solution is to buy out Unocal and give the pipeline to the Afghans as partial compensation for the destruction we have inflicted on that country and its population, and bring the troops home.
The reason my sensible solutions cannot be effected is that the lobbies think that their entitlements would not survive if they were made obvious. They think that if the American people knew that the wars were being fought to enrich the armaments and oil industries, the people would put a halt to the wars.
In actual fact, the American people have no say about what “their” government does. Polls of the public show that half or more of the American people do not support the wars in Iraq or
Afghanistan and do not support President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Yet, the occupations and wars continue. According to General Stanley McChrystal, the additional 40,000 troops are enough to stalemate the war, that is, to keep it going forever, the ideal situation for the armaments lobby.
The people want health care, but the government does not listen.
The people want jobs, but Wall Street wants higher priced stocks and forces American firms to offshore the jobs to countries where labor is cheaper.
The American people have no effect on anything. They can affect nothing. They have become irrelevant like Obama. And they will remain irrelevant as long as organized interest groups can purchase the US government.
The inability of the American democracy to produce any results that the voters want is a demonstrated fact. The total unresponsiveness of government to the people is conservatism’s contribution to American democracy. Some years ago there was an effort to put government back into the hands of the people by constraining the ability of organized interest groups to pour enormous amounts of money into political campaigns and, thus, obligate the elected official to those whose money elected him. Conservatives said that any restraints would be a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
The same “protectors” of “free speech” had no objection to the Israel Lobby’s passage of the “hate speech” bill, which has criminalized criticism of Israel’s genocidal treatment of the
Palestinians and continuing theft of their lands.
In less than one year, President Obama has betrayed all of his supporters and broken all of his promises. He is the total captive of the oligarchy of the ruling interest groups. Unless he is saved by an orchestrated 9/11-type event, Obama is a one-term president. Indeed, the collapsing economy will doom him regardless of a “terrorist event.”
The Republicans are grooming Palin. Our first female president, following our first black president, will complete the transition to an American police state by arresting critics and protesters of Washington’s immoral foreign and domestic policies, and she will complete the destruction of America’s reputation abroad.
Russia’s Putin has already compared the US to Nazi Germany, and the Chinese premier has likened the US to an irresponsible, profligate debtor.
Increasingly the rest of the world sees the US as the sole source of all of its problems. Germany has lost the chief of its armed forces and its defense minister, because the US convinced or pressured, by hook or crook, the German government to violate its Constitution and to send troops to fight for Unocal’s interest in Afghanistan. The Germans had pretended that their troops were not really fighting, but were were engaged in a “peace-keeping operation.” This more or less worked until the Germans called in an air strike that murdered 100 women and children lined up for a fuel allotment.
The British are investigating their leading criminal, former prime minister Tony Blair, and his deception of his own cabinet in order to do Bush’s bidding and provide some cover for Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq. The UK investigators have been denied the ability to bring criminal charges, but the issue of war based entirely on orchestrated deception and lies is getting a hearing. It will reverberate throughout the world, and the world will note that there is no corresponding investigation in the US, the country that originated the False War.
Meanwhile, the US investment banks, which have wrecked the financial stability of many governments, including that of the US, continue to control, as they have done since the Clinton administration, US economic and financial policy. The world has suffered terribly from the Wall Street gangsters, and now looks upon America with a critical eye..............
SC99-4
http://www.vtcommons.org/journal/2009/11/editorial-beyond-baracks-bamboozling-obamamania-fizzles-vermonters-take-fresh-look-i
Beyond Barack's Bamboozling - As Obamamania Fizzles, Vermonters Take A Fresh Look At Independence
Turn back the clock for a moment. It was one year ago this month that the majority of U.S. voters (if corporately-owned voting machine counts are to be believed) threw their weight behind a presidential candidate who promised to push the “reset button” and jump-start the United States Empire.
My favorite joke of last fall: Who was the loneliest person in the United States the day after the Obama election?
A Vermont secessionist.
Even funnier is the constant drumbeating about Obama the “progressive,” the “liberal,” the “Democrat,” which is about as accurate as calling Obama a “socialist,” a “Communist” or a “terrorist”.
Pundits from both the left and the right have completely missed the point of the already-stale “Obama phenomenon.” Obama is simply the new chauffeur, the newest driver of the getaway car that is the U.S. Empire.
In a stunning new book entitled Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm Publishers, 2009 - reviewed this season at our web site), historian and journalist Paul Street meticulously uncovers the media-manufactured mythology that has cloaked “Brand Obama” these past several years.
His conclusion about the man mainstream liberals (and 70 percent of Vermont voters) pinned their “hope” for “change” on?
“Obama,” he writes, “stands to the conservative business-and-empire-friendly side of majority U.S. opinion on key issues like national health insurance, campaign finance, trade, Iraq, and foreign relations in general.”
No surprise to our readers – but a wake-up call to those who pinned their hopes on Mr. O.
The Commander In Speech’s brilliance, of course, lies in his use of carefully cultivated rhetoric designed to convince attentive audiences that he is at least paying “lip service” attention to national problems (witness the so-called national health care “debate”) or global crises (climate change and Peak Oil come to mind).
But, with his Harvard/Columbia pedigree, his huge financial and political base of support among the multinational banksters, and his “professorial” demeanor (long on words, short on action), Obama knows better than most that none of these deeply rooted structural problems is ever going to be solved by Establishment imperial interests who seek to profit from exploiting these crises. The United States is an Empire that is simply too big, too corrupt, and too much governed by entrenched interests to respond to the needs and desires of its citizens.Perhaps the most compelling evidence of Obama's empty rhetoric? His passage of the largest imperial Pentagon "Defense" budget ($680 billion) in U.S. history, just 3 weeks after winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
“Disaster capitalism,” in other words, trumps “the audacity of hope.”
And that is why Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence is here. To remind Vermonters that our 21st-century future is shaping up to look very different from our past, and that the pursuit of economic decentralization, non-violent secession, and political independence for our once-and-future republic is in our best interest.
A return to our first principles:
We at Vermont Commons believe that the United States is no longer a republic governed by its citizens, but an Empire that is essentially ungovernable.
We believe that a sovereign state's right to nonviolently secede, first championed in the United States by the citizens of 19th century New England, is a right that demands re-exploration in the 21st century.
We believe that a 21st century Vermont, working in concert with our neighbors and the rest of the world, may better be able to feed, power, educate and care for its citizens as an independent 21st century republic than as one of fifty states within the U.S. Empire, given the new century's emerging realities: climate change, global peak oil, and an "endless war on terror" for "full-spectrum dominance" being waged by the U.S. government for geo-strategic control of the world's remaining fossil fuel energy resources.
Our vision for 2010 and beyond is to remain in statewide print publication six times per year, and to continue our efforts to pioneer a new and sustainable model for 21st century independent multimedia journalism.
Elements of our emerging model include
1. Our Not-For-Profit Approach: We see our news journal as a nonprofit “statewide multimedia coffeehouse,” not a commercially run for-profit business.
2. Our Place-Based “Commons” Focus: We are focused on the goings-on of a single place – Vermont – and its relationship with the rest of the world, with a specific focus on breathing life back into idea of “the Commons.”
3. Our Civically Minded and Solutions-Oriented Content: We seek out writers and ask them to submit their work as unpaid citizen journalists, chronicling solutions-oriented work being done by Vermonters across the state.
4. Our Fiercely Subjective Yet Non-Partisan Politics: We make no pretense to “Objectivity.” Instead, we are modeling ourselves after 19th-century republican newspapers in the new U.S. republic – we have a definite point of view. But we balance this with a non-partisan approach, seeing ourselves as a “big tent” for a variety of voices from a variety of political perspectives – liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, and decentralist/mutualist.
5. Our Collaborative Funding Model: As a not-for-profit, we rely on funding from generous individuals, subscriptions, and advertising from like-minded businesses and nonprofits............
Beyond Barack's Bamboozling - As Obamamania Fizzles, Vermonters Take A Fresh Look At Independence
Turn back the clock for a moment. It was one year ago this month that the majority of U.S. voters (if corporately-owned voting machine counts are to be believed) threw their weight behind a presidential candidate who promised to push the “reset button” and jump-start the United States Empire.
My favorite joke of last fall: Who was the loneliest person in the United States the day after the Obama election?
A Vermont secessionist.
Even funnier is the constant drumbeating about Obama the “progressive,” the “liberal,” the “Democrat,” which is about as accurate as calling Obama a “socialist,” a “Communist” or a “terrorist”.
Pundits from both the left and the right have completely missed the point of the already-stale “Obama phenomenon.” Obama is simply the new chauffeur, the newest driver of the getaway car that is the U.S. Empire.
In a stunning new book entitled Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Paradigm Publishers, 2009 - reviewed this season at our web site), historian and journalist Paul Street meticulously uncovers the media-manufactured mythology that has cloaked “Brand Obama” these past several years.
His conclusion about the man mainstream liberals (and 70 percent of Vermont voters) pinned their “hope” for “change” on?
“Obama,” he writes, “stands to the conservative business-and-empire-friendly side of majority U.S. opinion on key issues like national health insurance, campaign finance, trade, Iraq, and foreign relations in general.”
No surprise to our readers – but a wake-up call to those who pinned their hopes on Mr. O.
The Commander In Speech’s brilliance, of course, lies in his use of carefully cultivated rhetoric designed to convince attentive audiences that he is at least paying “lip service” attention to national problems (witness the so-called national health care “debate”) or global crises (climate change and Peak Oil come to mind).
But, with his Harvard/Columbia pedigree, his huge financial and political base of support among the multinational banksters, and his “professorial” demeanor (long on words, short on action), Obama knows better than most that none of these deeply rooted structural problems is ever going to be solved by Establishment imperial interests who seek to profit from exploiting these crises. The United States is an Empire that is simply too big, too corrupt, and too much governed by entrenched interests to respond to the needs and desires of its citizens.Perhaps the most compelling evidence of Obama's empty rhetoric? His passage of the largest imperial Pentagon "Defense" budget ($680 billion) in U.S. history, just 3 weeks after winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
“Disaster capitalism,” in other words, trumps “the audacity of hope.”
And that is why Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence is here. To remind Vermonters that our 21st-century future is shaping up to look very different from our past, and that the pursuit of economic decentralization, non-violent secession, and political independence for our once-and-future republic is in our best interest.
A return to our first principles:
We at Vermont Commons believe that the United States is no longer a republic governed by its citizens, but an Empire that is essentially ungovernable.
We believe that a sovereign state's right to nonviolently secede, first championed in the United States by the citizens of 19th century New England, is a right that demands re-exploration in the 21st century.
We believe that a 21st century Vermont, working in concert with our neighbors and the rest of the world, may better be able to feed, power, educate and care for its citizens as an independent 21st century republic than as one of fifty states within the U.S. Empire, given the new century's emerging realities: climate change, global peak oil, and an "endless war on terror" for "full-spectrum dominance" being waged by the U.S. government for geo-strategic control of the world's remaining fossil fuel energy resources.
Our vision for 2010 and beyond is to remain in statewide print publication six times per year, and to continue our efforts to pioneer a new and sustainable model for 21st century independent multimedia journalism.
Elements of our emerging model include
1. Our Not-For-Profit Approach: We see our news journal as a nonprofit “statewide multimedia coffeehouse,” not a commercially run for-profit business.
2. Our Place-Based “Commons” Focus: We are focused on the goings-on of a single place – Vermont – and its relationship with the rest of the world, with a specific focus on breathing life back into idea of “the Commons.”
3. Our Civically Minded and Solutions-Oriented Content: We seek out writers and ask them to submit their work as unpaid citizen journalists, chronicling solutions-oriented work being done by Vermonters across the state.
4. Our Fiercely Subjective Yet Non-Partisan Politics: We make no pretense to “Objectivity.” Instead, we are modeling ourselves after 19th-century republican newspapers in the new U.S. republic – we have a definite point of view. But we balance this with a non-partisan approach, seeing ourselves as a “big tent” for a variety of voices from a variety of political perspectives – liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, and decentralist/mutualist.
5. Our Collaborative Funding Model: As a not-for-profit, we rely on funding from generous individuals, subscriptions, and advertising from like-minded businesses and nonprofits............
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