Chris Floyd Explains It All For You (Again...)

Just go read it. It's brilliant. Creeping Terror: The New American Way of War


In sum:

.... That's the American way of war. Creep, sneak, kill, run, lie – repeat. Sure, it only makes things worse, creates more enemies, keeps the wars going. But isn't that the point? Check it out, baby: they're piling an extra $33.5 billion of prime war pork on top of the mountain of Terror War funding already laid out for this year! And you need a whole lot of blood to wash down that meat – and a whole lot of new enemies to make sure the feast never ends.

I'd just add that the entire Anglo-American Warfighting effort these days seems to be based on a dirtier, more technologically adept version of Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, and the direct rather than indirect application of terror campaigns against civilian targets, including torture and massacres, based on the Central American Bloodbath of the Reagan years.

Sweet.

Freedom! Fuck yeah!

"Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn! They took the offer! Shi!t!"

[Seen above, Anglo-American-Israeli Fever Dream of Annihilating Tehran]


So I was half-watching the NewsHour last night. It's one of the very few programs on the teevee I ever watch, and generally speaking, I tune out and do other things whenever Gwen Ifill or Judy Woodruff do their comedy stylings as hostesses. Ifill is such a suck-up to Power (as she conceives of it) and Woodruff is a Right Wing Freak (though she tones it down on PBS), but I digress.

The topic was Iran's acceptance of the deal that it was offered last fall to transfer its low enriched uranium stockpiles out of the country in order to delay or avoid some sanctions.

Iran "blinked" as it were.

You would think the US of A -- and the media -- would be high-stepping and twirling their batons like mad and the Obama Administration would be sending out Hillary or Rahm or Axelrod to do all the shows and crow Triumph.

But no.

Oh, far from it.

Instead, Judy had a couple of neo-con drones on to bemoan the fact that the deal Iran accepted (with the considerable help and encouragement of Brazil and Turkey) should have been taken off the table a long time ago, and this is just terrible. We're doomed!

Isn't that special.

Judy's question to the drones: "What's going on here? What -- what is this deal about Turkey and Brasil [her lips curled with distaste] working out an arrangement with Iran? What do they get -- what does each side get -- out of this?"

Of course they go into a mutual tailspin, rending their garments and covering themselves with ashes, because...

What?

Well, so far as I can parse it, this deal was worked out behind the scenes between the high contracting parties: Brazil, Turkey, and Iran, without the help and assistance of the Big Powers, US, EU and Russia. Although apparently Brazil and Turkey were authorized by the Big Powers, through the UN, to do just what they did, they did what they did without the direct participation of the US State Department, and they concluded the agreement without the knowledge of State or any other Stakeholder -- and that's what all the pissing and moaning in Washington is about.

That and the fact that Everyone Who Matters is utterly convinced of Iran's Nuclear Perfidy and wants desperately to nuke Tehran and Isfahan to teach those Wogs a lesson they will never forget and cow the Muslim masses into ultimate submission to their Anglo-American-Israeli and EuroWeenie masters.

It's a revenge fantasy they won't let go of.

Setting aside the Israeli need to exact revenge on the Iranians (for what, it's not exactly clear since Israel and Iran have frequently collaborated on Mischief and Perfidy), the American government's grudge against Iran is obvious enough: revenge for the humiliation of 1979. Why anybody else would need revenge against Iran is one of the Great Mysteries.

The loud and persistent drumbeat of War against Iran is apparently grounded in the fantasy or the fear that Iran is trying to gain the capability to make nuclear weapons!!!! Iran is trying to make... the Bomb!!!! Maybe so, but there is not a shred of concrete evidence of it, and yet Israel and the United States consistently behave as if it is Proven Fact, and not just their mutual hysteria.

It's Cheney's One Percent Doctrine still ruling the roost in DeeCee.

What's up with that?

My objection to the segment on the NewsHour, apart from my crabbiness at Woodward on principle, was that it was so skewed to neo-conism, without the slightest acknowledgment that there is any other point of view. It was propaganda, pure and simple.

"No contribution for you, PBS!" But then, I haven't contributed to them for many years.

Watch the NewsHour segment:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/jan-june10/iran_05-17.html


Then take a look at Russia Today's news report below. World of difference, eh?

And This Is All I'll Have To Say About That (Yeah, right...)

The Kagan Thing has got the whole Lefty Blogosphere into a frenzy, some of it -- well, a good deal of it -- stirred up by "Glennzilla". Elena Kagan has been ritualistically smeared on the premise that she is such an unknown quantity that she will move the Supreme Court to the Right, which will be disastrous for the Nation (and the Blessed Constitution) for thirty or forty years to come (she's only 50 after all, and SCOTUS justices live forever, don't they?) and we can't have that.

So the so-called Left on the Intertubes has been denouncing and struggling against her and all her slim volume of works, vying with one another to come up with the most outrageous accusation against her short but sturdy self.

(Side note, and digression: I made an offhand comment at one point in the Kagan Struggles about short, aggressive women I have known and how they have demonstrated their brass gonads.

There have been several, but I was thinking of one in particular when I wrote that. Her name was Linda, and she and I worked together (many) years ago in New York and Florida. She was just under five feet tall, sturdy, with a round open face much like Kagan's, and when I first heard Kagan talk, she sounded just like Linda. Linda was known for her forcefulness, and for her refusal to take shit from anyone, most especially not from anyone who professed to claim authority when they were in the wrong. She was known for vicious putdowns, delivered not only with a smile, but sometimes with a sly veil of politeness that their victim wouldn't recognize as a put down at all for days -- though everyone else knew. Linda made friends very easily, knew her own business very well, she was kind and generous to a fault, and she was loyal without compromising her own principles. She was very ambitious, and for the most part very successful. I lost touch with her when I decided I'd had enough of the gypsy life I'd been living, much of it east of the Mississippi, and returned to California. [Digression on the digression: I Googled Linda up a little while ago to see what she's up to, and well. How very interesting. Last I knew, she'd just taken a job at Boston University, was preparing to move from her Brooklyn flat, very excited and all. Some 20+ years ago. Now she's apparently at the University of Chicago (!), in a completely different though arguably tangential field, got her doctorate, and she is pimping her research into the arcana of a very narrow aspect of computer animation. She has hundreds of papers and research projects she's completed, alone and with others, and I'm just stunned. My doG, what has she become? Good going, Linda!] But I never forgot her, and if Kagan is anything like her, I have no doubt she'll have a considerable and potentially very positive impact on the Court, if only by not yielding to the bullshit put out by those like Scalia and Thomas... [/digression])

What I saw happening reminded me of other episodes on the Internets, for example, when Barbara Boxer expressed her support for Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate primary all those years ago, FDL exploded with denunciations, the most original of them being that Boxer "is a cloth-coat Republican!" for supporting Lieberman. Oh. Kay. Indeed, the attacks on Boxer were so over the top, and such an anti-Boxer mob was formed over there, that I spoke out against it, in my most Atticus Finch mode, and got my tit run through the wringer more than a couple of times for my trouble. My point was that Boxer was one of the very few actual Progressives in the Senate, and smearing her -- because of her expressed support for her colleague Senator Lieberman -- while ignoring her contributions, indeed often denouncing her Progressive contributions, was simply stupid and was not going to advance The Supposed Progressive Cause that FDL was ostensibly promoting. Many people at FDL took offense and some still harbor grudges about it. I was accused of trying to "deny them the right" to denounce whoever they wanted for whatever reason they thought appropriate. Um. Sure.

It's not about the "right" to do this or that -- or to get as crazy as you want to. It's about critical thinking. And understanding the difference between allies and enemies. It's about listening. It's about rational consideration. And it's about respect.

I defended Hillary when anti-Hillary-mobs were cruising the Internets denouncing her and accusing her of all manner of perfidy during the 2008 primaries, digging up every conceivable accusation from the Clinton White House Era, and making up some new ones, and parading it all around as Gospel Truth Revealed. I pointed out that Hillary was actually running to the Left of Obama, for one thing, and that he was even more of a corporate, imperialist warmonger than they were accusing her of being. So I was (hilariously) accused of being a "Hillarybot, a shill! Burrrrn him!"

There have been other, similar, incidents. And when I saw the same sort of outrageous mob action to smear Kagan forming at Glenn's instigation, I made some remarks about it. To say the least.

I don't buy the premise that Kagan will "move" the Court to the Right, for the simple reason that it is already far, far to the Right. She can't "move" it rightwards, any more than Stevens could move it Left. The notion is absurd on its face. The Court IS a Rightist, corrupt abomination. She can join it. She can't move it.

So right out of the gate, the initial premise for attacking her is simply false.

Along that line, to my somewhat jaundiced way of looking at things, Kagan simply cannot make much of a difference at all in how this Court functions nor in its Rightist rulings on behalf of Power and Money. She can dissent if she wants, she can concur. It won't make a difference. The majority will still be a Rightist, corrupt cabal, quite possibly religiously insane, for whom the concept of Justice is alien. And they will continue to rule in their accustomed manner. Regardless.

And then there is this: 12/12/2000.

That's the date the Supreme Court of the United States, after a long period of decline, gave up any pretense of institutional integrity, by its lawless interference and decision in the election. Bush v Gore marked the end of the Court's institutional standing as upholder of the law and the Constitution. The Court has made many errors in its long history, but this one was fundamental, as serious a category error as it is possible for the Court to make. And that gross error was promptly compounded by a series of errors -- Al Gore's concession, the Senate going along with the Court's ruling, and Bush accepting the Presidency.

It was not a "slow-motion coup." It was very fast, and from the moment the Court rendered its Bush v Gore decision, the Court's legitimacy collapsed. That would be followed by the collapse of the legitimacy of Congress which accepted the ruling. Al Gore's political legitimacy faltered when he conceded the election based on the Supreme Court's ruling, and he lost it completely when he told the Congressional Black Caucus to -- in essence -- sit down and shut up and stop objecting. And then the Presidency lost its legitimacy when Bush bustled into the office without a backward glance at how he had got there.

We've been living amid the wreckage of a now defunct Constitutional Republic ever since, while the Governing Class (Our Rulers, as it were) have been busy putting together an anti-Constitutional Imperial State, getting closer and closer to arbitrary rule by Decree from the Throne every day. Kagan's presence or absence from the Court will make not a bit of difference in that enterprise, but she wouldn't have been chosen if she had any serious objection to it. Nor would Obama been able to ascend to the Throne if HE had any serious objection. And so on.

Given that context, all this anti-Kagan crap is so much bullshit, more rearranging of the deck chairs, if you will.

Lots of people are still holding on to the shreds and tatters of What Used to Be, of course. It's human nature. I do it myself. But the fact is, we don't have a "legitimate government" in a Constitutional sense, we haven't had one for a decade, and it's not coming back. That game's been over for quite a while now.

What we're playing now is the Mitigation Game. For example, by putting a Good Emperor on the Throne, things are supposed to be "better." Yet we see the Imperium doesn't change back into a Republic; if anything, consolidation of the Imperial State is accelerated. Yet by being less crazy than McPalin, of course the Obama Reign is "better." It's self evident, yes?

Congress has shown itself to be a hopelessly corrupt body, essentially unable to function on behalf of the People it is supposed to represent. And the courts and the so-called "Justice" Department as a whole are just as corrupt and anti-Constitutional as the Imperial Executive, and for all intents and purposes, the most critical outrages of the Bush/Cheney Regime abide unmolested.

So what do you do? Work yourself into a spit-spewing frenzy over... Elena Kagan?

Please.

The Problem is so much greater than her. Really.

Hard Concepts

The other day Ezra The Tool (but they say he puts out, so there is that) ran an interview on his WaPo blog with Jamie Galbraith, iconoclast economist.

And the so-called Lefty-blogosphere exploded with denunciations and ad hominems at both Galbraith, who denies the validity of Economic Orthodoxy, and at Ezra The Tool for daring to run an interview with The Heretic as well as your general Anti-Ezra animus.

Every time these sorts of things happen, especially in the so-called Lefty blogosphere, I am intrigued and sometimes alarmed. What is really going on? And in the case of the extended and often completely outrageous denunciations of Galbraith (from so-called Lefties), is it ignorance or... something else?

As a rule, I tend to have little faith in economists of any stripe; they are almost all inclined to declare Ultimate Truths that upon examination prove to be Crocks of Shit. They serve economic and political agendas, their own personal careerist ones, or the agendas of Corporate Masters and/or their Government Hirelings. By and large, and as a profession (so-called), they have no interest whatever in and little knowledge of the "micro-economy" of individuals and communities, and are oblivious to the consequences for the masses of following their advice (if it is even comprehensible enough to follow). To say they "don't care" about anything but the private accumulation of as much more wealth as humanly possible by those who already have more wealth than they can count is to be charitable.

They and lawyers should be first against the wall when the Revolution comes.

But that's unlikely to happen in my lifetime, so I tend to be attracted to what little economic theory there is that actually pays attention to those consequences for the masses that are so often ignored or dismissed.

(As a side note, in order to understand Obama's extraordinary level of economic fealty to American and global corporate and financial interests, and to help comprehend the astonishing level of White House indifference to the economic plight of the masses, it might be wise to remember that Obama's grandmother -- who was his primary caregiver growing up -- was a banker, and his father -- who essentially abandoned him -- was an Kenyan economist who got his undergraduate degree at the University of Hawaii and his masters at Harvard in the early 1960's. The Hooverite economic policies coming out of the White House are no accident. And don't doubt for a moment that his ascent to the Throne wasn't smoothed by billionaires and finaciers who saw that Obama had their interests at heart.)

Galbraith is one of the economists I pay at least glancing attention to. I am not a devotee of his or of any other Alternative Economist, nor do I subscribe to any particular Economic School or Theory. All I know is that current fashionable economic theory is based on unfettered plunder and rapine of the "weak" by the "strong."

Galbraith denies the validity of the Peterson-and-The-Billionaires' Deficit Hysteria, and I tend to agree with him. In his interview with Ezra, he points out -- accurately, in my view -- that the deficits the government is running right now have essentially "zero" danger. If anything, he advocates even larger deficits in order to put people back to work and get money flowing more freely through the economy. He rigorously disputes the analogy of government debt and household debt. If anything, he seems to believe that government debt should be used to help clear household debt rather than being handed over to the banking institutions to prop up their make-believe solvency and to keep those bubbles (and bonuses) coming.

From the way the anti-Post-Keynesian rabble attack Galbraith for stating the obvious, I suspect they are terrified of Galbraith and his economic heresy. It doesn't look like a rational fear at all, because on the face of it, if Galbraith's Modern Monetary Theory were practiced, the wealth and status of the Ruling Class would be assured in perpetuity -- through the happy agency of building up the economic wherewithal and security of the Lower Orders, instead of practicing the plunder and rapine and the repetitious finance bubbles the Ruling Class currently engages in.

But people who have invested plenty in the current economic system of bubbles, plunder and rapine, and who have grown fat and happy betting that the whole thing will crash and burn -- and are therefore eager to see it happen -- fear any change that would jeopardize their wagers.

I don't think, however, that includes a whole lot of non-elite Lefties.

So it is quite something to see the explosion of rage at Galbraith (and Ezra for interviewing him) at sites like Crooks and Liars, where the Galbraith comment thread is full of denunciations much like the comments on Ezra's interview.

What's up with that?

What are they so very afraid of?

Watch Galbraith on Moyers for more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwGn_H0LUZg

Note especially that though the interview with Moyers was recorded in November of 2009, here we are many months later and the outlook for Americans hasn't improved for the most part at all.

Apparently these Galbraithian Heresies are really Hard Concepts for those who are steeped in predatory economics.

No wonder Galbraith's pen is sometimes sharp:

Leading active members of today's economics profession, the generation presently in their 40s and 50s, have joined together into a kind of politburo for correct economic thinking. As a general rule — as one might expect from a gentleman's club — this has placed them on the wrong side of every important policy issue, and not just recently but for decades. They predict disaster where none occurs. They deny the possibility of events that then happen. They offer a "rape is like the weather" fatalism about an "inevitable" problem (pay inequality) that then starts to recede. They oppose the most basic, decent, and sensible reforms, while offering placebos instead. They are always surprised when something untoward (like a recession) actually occurs. And when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not re-examine their ideas. Instead, they simply change the subject. -- from How the Economists Got It Wrong, American Prospect, November 30, 2002

In Real News

From The Real News Network

This story is really the central issue throughout the Western world. "Billionaires for Social Insecurity" as the folks over at Campaign for America's Future put it.

In the United States, right now, as we speak, millions of Americans are being forced into poverty by the demands of the banksters and looters of Wall Street and Our Ruling Class -- some of whom are featured in the videos above. Vampires like Alan Greenspan, Bob Rubin, and of course the Devil Himself, Peter G. Peterson.

Millions of Americans are being forced out of work, and many of them will never hold a job again. They won't pay into Social Security, and even without the Billionaires' ministrations, their benefits, if they receive any at all, will be substantially lower than if they were able to keep working. Millions are forced into bankruptcy every year, but in many cases they still have to pay off their credit card debts, which, thanks to Joe Biden's "bankruptcy reform act" is a protected form of debt which can be collected essentially in perpetuity.

And here we see our Billionaires quite openly conspiring to cut Social Security and Medicare further for one very simple reason: they don't want to have to pay taxes to make up for the shortfalls in the funds that have resulted from their various forms of corporate and finance sector welfare and their astonishing levels of tax cuts over the years.

In essence, they are openly refusing to be taxed, and they are daring anybody to do anything about it. They will, however, be delighted to consider taxing the lower orders sufficiently to pay for their ever expanding need for wars of aggression.

It's not just happening in Washington, it's happening all over the Western world -- and in many other places as well.

The recently announced bailout of the EuroZone is a plan to pay off the EuroCreditors at 100% of loan value, at the full expense of the People of Europe. They will suffer, as the billionaires think they should, for being profligate and complacent. The banksters who are demanding payment -- extortion, really -- will lose nothing, in fact they will be rewarded for their efforts to loot the treasuries of all of Europe.

And while all this and more is going on, we see continuing focus on Elena Kagan and her inadequacy.

It's sad, really. There are some people on the left-er side of the alternative media who are actually paying attention to this robbery in plain sight. Digby has been covering it extensively for years; it -- like the proliferation of Tasers in this country -- is her own private bailiwick. The mainstream media will only cover it to the extent that they are able to reinforce the faulty premises that underlie the crusade to cut already minimal benefits for millions. Most of the mainstream media is fully behind the Peterson crusade, and they cannot imagine that anyone would disagree.

But the sad thing is that much of the alternative media seems to agree with the deficit scolds and can't figure out that maybe the Petersons and the other billionaires who are pushing this line are wrong. Even if they did figure it out, they wouldn't know what to do about it.

The fact that the Obama White House and Congress apparently agree with Peterson, and practically the entire ruling class of Europe agrees as well -- in the face, of course, of having their own credit restricted -- is a tough nut to crack for many people who might otherwise be bold. The fact that the masses in Europe, but not here, are informed enough about the fraud, the pillage, and the sleight of hand that's being performed to rise up and protest is a hopeful sign.

But there is still no organized resistance.

We have fallen far down the cliff-face; many have already reached the bottom.

What will it take for Americans to say, "Enough!"

On the Leadership of Teh Left

This is funny.

Over the past few months, Jane and Glenn have been maneuvering to take over the leadership of the so-called Left by becoming outspoken TeeVee and radio personalities as well as big important bloggers, former entertainment moguls (in Jane's case) and best selling authors (in Glenn's) -- who are characterized as "lefties" by the TeeVee (and radio) bookers.

Markos and Arianna must be annoyed with them. If they aren't, they should be.

Of course none of these people -- Markos, Arianna, Jane or Glenn -- are "leftists" in any rational world. They do not speak for the Left and never have, they have little or no understanding of what "Leftist" means, and in Markos's and Arianna's cases, they were Republicans who got religion when they found they could make money (lots of it if they wanted) as Lefties rather than the Reagan Republicans they used to be.

All of them are entrepreneurs running businesses, and their products, in addition to their own sweet selves, are their "communities." These communities are sometimes left-leaning, but they are generally left-leaning in the sense of being libertarians with something of a social conscious. That's about as far as they will go.

Since the anti-Kagan hysteria started in the lefty blogs, Glenn's profile in the media has grown substantially. Jane became a media fixture during the Health Care donnybrook, whereas Markos (who always looks and sounds like he's 14) is an old hand at speaking for the "left," and Arianna has been around since dirt was new and was opining and commentating on the air just as often years ago when she was still a Republican.

While Markos may be just as happy to turn over his "Lefty" mantle to somebody else, cause he's got other things to do, and Arianna will probably be on the air until Doomsday, Jane and Glenn are still fairly fresh faces and voices on the shows, and their hostility toward Obama and the Dems is quite the tonic for the bookers compared to the heavy-footed-ness of the Dem and White House spinners.

Gee, who'd a thunk it? Teh Left doesn't like Obama any more than Teh Right does. Hm. Wonders never cease.

The only problem is that Jane and Glenn (let alone Markos and Arianna) are NOT LEFTISTS.


To the extent they are ideological at all, they are libertarians, in Glenn's case, an extreme civil libertarian (a badge he wears proudly). Socialism, social democracy, social justice -- all characteristics of the Left in any rational world -- are all but irrelevant to them. They have very narrow, and frankly from all appearances, a very self-interested, political stance, and the panoply of Leftist interests and causes, political scut work and the rest of it, doesn't interest them.

Yet they are coming to be hailed as the Voices of the Left, and they are nothing of the kind.

However, they saw a vacant space, "unclaimed territory" as it were, and being clever and bold, they moved in. Why not?

There has been a vacuum in the leadership of the Left in this country for many years.

Democrats have never really been a Leftist party, and given the way our political and governmental systems work, they can't ever be. Power (and money) in the United States is very highly concentrated, becoming more so all the time, and both of the political parties serve power (and money) first and foremost. Neither is truly ideological, but each serves as a home-place for different kinds of people who are skilled at or like to wield power. The Republican Party tends to be the home-place for predators. The Democratic Party tends to be the home-place for managers and technocrats.

Social justice only enters the picture of either party to the extent it is seen to smooth the paths of predator-Republicans or technocrat-Democrats.

From a libertarian point of view, social justice is an oxymoron. It simply can't exist. "Justice" isn't "social." It's formal. Following the law -- as written -- is perforce Justice by definition. Anything else is fraud and cant.

But somehow libertarianism and particularly civil libertarianism became conflated with Teh Left in the minds of the TeeVee and radio bookers, and the Progressive mantle fell by default on up and coming libertarians.

Of course given the fact that Democrats aren't themselves Leftists, and they are largely inarticulate as hell, bumbling and stumbling and falling all over the furniture in public appearances where they have to speak, the default to Glenn and Jane (who are both usually very articulate) as spokespeople (and putative Leaders) for Teh Left might make sense if their critiques and public policy positions (I won't say ideology because I don't think either one has an ideology) weren't frequently indistinguishable from those of Republicans.

This has been painfully apparent in the hysteria over Elena Kagan's appointment to the Supreme Court. There are plenty of issues that could be raised about her appointment, but the real issue isn't her, it's the institutional rot that made her appointment "inevitable." Rather than deal with the rot and corruption that is at the root of the problem, nearly all the hysterical antagonism toward Kagan (from Teh Left) is focused on her "inadequacy" for the job, and this focus is identical to -- though far more furious than -- that of the Republicans.

And the hostility from Glenn, who is absolutely obsessed with Kagan, looks for all the world like any Republican smear-job of any Democratic nominee over the last half century. He's toned it down somewhat in the last few days after being called on his obsessiveness, conflations, and falsehoods, and how Republican it all seemed, but still. The issue is not her. It is the institutional rot and corruption from top to bottom that made her appointment inevitable.

For Jane's part, she's been pretty much declared "nuts," and only her fiercest loyalists (of which there are quite a few, to be sure) have been able to accept her joining up with the TeaBaggers and Grover Norquist. She has crossed a bridge too far for many liberals and progressives to follow so she is routinely denounced and struggled against. Glenn is getting very close to the same point. Markos and Arianna haven't gone there, not quite, but much of their Lefty cred, such as it is, leaves aside the economic aspects of anything that can rationally be called Leftism.

It would of course be better for actual Leftists to have a higher profile than they do, but their problem is that they're not "new."

I posted part of a manifesto on the Greek mess from the International Committee of the Fourth International, and for all its correct economic and political insight and fulminating demands, it comes across as something highly anachronistic. It is Real Leftism, though, from the source -- or one of them -- and it's almost a wonder that anyone can still think that way. Few Americans ever did.

So the libertarians get the Leftist mantle by default, because the Real Left is too alien and obscure? Or is it something else?

I guess we're just lucky the LaRouchians weren't selected by the media to be the mouthpieces for Teh Left.

Whew! That was close.

How the Real Left Sees the Greek (and Euro) Crisis

As we all know, there is no political "Left" in this country to speak of, and what little remains of what once were vibrant Leftist policy and economic criticism is rigorously excluded from the Public Square. You never, ever hear a real Leftist or Socialist argument in the popular press and media, and you hardly ever see it in alternative media, either. It's as if it never was...

In Europe, the situation is somewhat different in that the governments in Europe are nearly all some version of Social Democracy, even when the ruling party is Conservative. However, the Greek crisis has exposed the strains those governments are under, especially given the stranglehold the European Central Bank and through it the Vampire Squids of Global Finance have over the Euro, and thus over the nations of the European Union.

The Greek People rise up -- as have many Europeans -- against the swindlers, but they find, more and more, that their governments, their supposedly liberal, socialist, leftist governments, align themselves with the Vampires and not with the People, and this is happening everywhere in Europe. Just like here, the working class, the masses, are to be forced into poverty to pay off the gambling debts of the banksters, and any opposition is to be met with state violence.

The International Committee for the Fourth International has produced a manifesto regarding this situation that is a startling critique given the general centrist/rightist blather we see and hear all the time. I will append just the final portion of it here, but the whole thing is worth taking a look at and pondering well. Not only does the Committee examine what is really happening and why, they propose concrete actions to thwart and ultimately overcome the Vampires in our midst.

What a concept.

Here's the end of the manifesto. But read it all...

For a socialist program

7. Finance capital and social democracy ram through cuts not because of their strength, but due to the absence of working class parties. Popular opposition is perplexed and paralyzed by the lies of the trade unions and the ex-left. The struggle against the bourgeoisie’s plans to impoverish Europe entails a break with all forms of Stalinism and opportunism.

The ex-left has created a fog of lies around socialism, in an attempt to isolate the workers from an understanding of their own political heritage. To lay out positions around which workers can develop a socialist opposition to social cuts, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) makes the following demands:

• No sackings or loss of purchasing power

Claims by finance capital and its agents in the social democracy and ex-left that there is no money are lies. The money has been plundered from the working class through decades of austerity and deindustrialization. Funds must go not to the profit interests of capital, but to the social needs of the workers.

• Nationalize the banks

The most elementary defense of working class interests requires public control of the banks. In private hands, the banks ruin countries at will, hold up lending to create high interest rates according to their political needs, starve industry of funds, and supervise a universal downward spiral in living standards in the name of “competitiveness.” To fulfill its function—providing funds to develop production and trade—the financial industry must be taken out of the hands of private interests and placed at the disposal of the workers.

• No confidence in the ex-left. For revolutionary socialism

The obsolescence of the principle of private property in the commanding centers of the economy shows the necessity of socialism. However, workers will be bound hand and foot to the diktat of the banks so long as they do not break with social democracy, the unions, and their ex-left apologists. There is no alternative to building revolutionary socialist parties to struggle for power. The nationalization of the banks and large industry will serve the interests of the masses only if state power is in the hands of the working class. Workers can have no more confidence in a government of the financial oligarchy than in individual oligarchs.

• For the United Socialist States of Europe

Rising tensions inside Europe and discussions of a possible breakup of the euro underline the bankruptcy of the EU project. They threaten a disastrous Balkanization of Europe, which would lay the basis for trade war between European economic blocs and ultimately for war itself. European workers must respond with an international struggle for a united European government of workers’ states, as a step towards establishing world socialism.

• Not a penny for war

Foreign wars, such as the NATO war in Afghanistan, foment a toxic political atmosphere, dividing the workers with far-right nationalism and anti-immigrant hatred. In addition to producing repeated atrocities, these wars drain desperately needed social resources. Opposing them is essential to establishing the unity of the European working class and its political solidarity with workers of Islamic countries and the United States.
Build the International Committee of the Fourth International

8. The political and economic situation in Europe places in stark relief the depth of the crisis of leadership in the working class. In every country, the fate of the workers is in the hands of reactionary petty-bourgeois organizations acting consciously in the interests of the financial aristocracy. Regardless of their demagogic rhetoric, every one of the old organizations—led by ex-Stalinists, ex-socialists, ex-Marxists, ex-radicals, and even ex-reformists—function politically as agents of the corporations, the banks and the bourgeois state. Not one of them is independent of the bourgeois state. PASOK, Syriza, the various socialist parties, and practitioners of pseudo-left theatrics like the NPA in France are politically corrupt to the bone. To call them “opportunist” would be almost a compliment, for that term—signifying the subordination of long-term revolutionary interests to short-term reformist objectives—belongs to another historical period. Characteristic of these present-day organizations is not only the rejection of a revolutionary program, but even any defense of the most elemental needs of the working class. As long as the working class remains under the political control of these petty-bourgeois organizations, which function as nothing other than the “left” flank of the capitalist political establishment, it will suffer defeat after defeat.

Therefore, the most urgent task confronting the working class—in Greece, in Europe and throughout the world—is the building of a new revolutionary political party, based on the principles of international socialism. The International Committee of the Fourth International is the only political organization that seeks to organize and unify the working class in the struggle against capitalist exploitation, poverty and war. Notwithstanding all the difficult problems that confront the modern working class, it remains the essential and decisive revolutionary force on the planet. The present world crisis will compel ever greater masses of workers, in every part of the globe, to enter into struggle against capitalism. The ICFI is convinced that a new period of revolutionary struggles is now beginning. It has created the World Socialist Web Site as a political organ to report on, unify and provide political leadership to the struggles of the working class. The International Committee embodies a colossal political experience, derived from its many decades of struggle in defense of Marxist and Trotskyist principles.

The ICFI calls on the most politically conscious workers, intellectuals and youth to fight for the perspective elaborated in this statement and to join the ICFI.

March 17, 2010

The History of the Internationale Pt 1


The History of the Internationale Pt 2


Alistair Hulett's version of The Internationale as interpreted by Alex Thiel:

The Blowout (now with Updates!!); The Fizzle; and The Swindle

First the Blowout: It appears, and I could be wrong, that the blowout of the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, bad as it is, isn't quite as bad as the Doomsayers would have you believe.

It is not -- yet -- the end of the world as we know it, and apparently, for all its many faults, BP is actually behaving like a Corporate Citizen to clean up the mess, close the hole, and get things back to "normal" as quickly as possible. They have done some reprehensible things to be sure -- such a coercing the survivors of the explosion to sign papers assuring all and sundry they weren't injured and that they are satisfied with a maximum claim against the company of $5,000, etc. Also they apparently were not aware of or lied about the amount of oil coming out of the well into the Gulf initially. Their CEO is quite a piece of work.

The White House is being criticized by the likes of Karl Rove and the entire hate radio brigade for their languidity in the early days of the disaster, turning the tables on the critics who continue to lambaste the Bush Regime for its utter indifference to the sufferings in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast in the first few days after Hurricane Katrina. "This will be Obama's 'Katrina!'" thunders Rove. Yeah, right. Like the Health Care was Obama's Waterloo. Whatever.

In fact, the Administration appears to have been on the ball from the get-go, and where they failed was in relying so heavily on BP for their information and not surveying the situation more fully themselves. This is clearly one of the inherent problems of deregulation: when your only source of information is the entity responsible for the disaster, it's only natural that you won't have the full picture.

Interesting that the media narrative went into a kind of hyper-romantic "Quest-mode" in reporting about the "hundred ton cap" to be assembled and put over the leak and other efforts to control the oil. Practically every bit of reporting became a bodice-ripping novel of derring-do and bravery in the face of adversity, and love for the men in Oil, yadda, yadda, which should have been embarrassing to any journalists still out there, because the real stories were either absent altogether or were buried by this Romance. I'm always fascinated to see narratives developed and then go universal so quickly and thoroughly. Finding out what actually happened, how to fix it, and how to prevent it from happening again will probably have to wait until the book is published.

But it appears that there has been a mobilization all along the Gulf to contain the oil, clean up what they can, and to preserve as much of the ecology and environment of the Gulf as humanly possible. That, to me, is the real story. The one that needs to be told in detail and hammered home constantly. Unfortunately, our media has chosen an alternate reality in which BP is the Big-Muscled hero of the piece and the clean up crews are greedy proles exploiting the situation to feather their own nests. (Have you heard, for example, that the fishermen are being paid $48 an hour for clean up chores??! I mean really!!! They don't deserve that!)

Thankfully (I guess), the oil is light-sweet crude, not the tarry gunk that comes up off the California coast, so the damage, while substantial, is not nearly as horrific as it might otherwise be, nor as bad as it would be if a similar event happened off California.

Meanwhile, the question is how do we get off oil? That's the problem right there. So far, there is no answer -- except for individuals who can and choose to take their leave from the oil-driven economy. As oil-derived products become more and more expensive, though, the ("greedy") proles are finding it impossible to keep up. Their continued impoverishment is assured by the facts on the ground while the Plutocrats revel in ever increasing revenues from other sources (expanding economies in India and China for example.) Wherever they can extract revenue, so the Plutocrats go.

Time to rethink that picture, but Our Rulers simply have no will to.

UPDATE: With the failure of the containment dome due to the presence of hydrate crystals and other consequences of depth and cold, it is looking like this incident will turn into something like Chernobyl, with perhaps, somewhat less environmental damage (let's hope.) While the Government will be blamed, in this case, it is the essentially unregulated oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico that is to blame. The question is whether, finally, the People will take charge and rein in the wilding private sector, through the agency of their Government.

UPDATE II: Seems I'm not the only one to see the Chernobyl parallel. This piece at dKos by Stranded Wind takes the metaphor considerably farther than I have and provides a number of people's action and education items. Worth the read.


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The Fizzle in Times Square may turn into an instructive tale yet. I'm assuming the guy who was arrested did it and it wasn't a Black Op -- big assumptions, I know, but one has to start somewhere. The idea apparently, executed poorly, was to cause a big explosion in Times Square, killing/injuring a substantial number of oblivious tourists and random New Yorkers for the purpose of... revenge?

That seems to be the case. The man in custody was apparently outraged by the continuing extermination by Predator drones of random Pakistanis -- some of whom apparently were killed while he was on his most recent visit to Pakistan where he was born and where his father was a high ranking military officer before his retirement. I've written about the Death From Above cult before, and I've tried to give some idea of what it must seem like to the people on the ground, who, for all intents and purposes are chosen for Death randomly and are exterminated by the dozens as the spirit moves the pilots of the Death Machines flying constantly over their heads.

Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen, apparently took it upon himself to Do Something about this upon his return to the US. He bought an old SUV, filled it with incendiary and explosive materials, set it alight and got out of there. An alert street vendor, a Muslim as it happens, noticed the illegal parking of the vehicle in Times Square, noticed the smoke, alerted others and so the area was cleared, no bombs went off, and eventually a culprit was captured.

Karl Rove and ilk are pathetically trying to politicize this event, too, using every trick they can think of to "blame" it on Obama -- except for pointing out that the drone attacks in Pakistan may have had something to do with it. They are absolutely livid that he was read his rights. "Terrorists have no rights!" they scream. Strangely, you'll note, the Cheneys have been lying low and haven't been parading around spitting their venom and hurling their accusations the way they used to, but I expect them to pop up if Shahzad actually does go to trial. We'll see. But maybe they're spent as it were. We should only be so lucky.

I'd just point out that Rove's efforts (and before him, the Cheneys') to politicize this event (as well as others) in many ways mirrors the criticisms leveled at the Bush Regime from the (so-called) Left during its many years of disastrous rule. Disasters and terrorists triggered huge amounts of criticism then as they do now. And it is basically tribal.

If Rove's efforts (which look more and more pathetic, and that may be why the Cheneys have backed off for the time being) help to demonstrate just how ridiculous political tribalism can be, then all to the good. But once people divide into tribal entities, it's very hard to overcome it. Americans have a long way to go to get out of their current tribalist morass, and I for one am not convinced Americans can do it. I actually am toying with the notion that tribalism has some excellent points in its favor...
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And let's consider Greece for a moment. I am so proud of the Greek masses for rising up against the banksters and their government lackeys who have swindled them and now seek to make them suffer as much as possible for their trouble. They actually rose up -- something Americans will not do, seem incapable of even considering. Of course, the uprising is -- at least for now -- ineffective. Mother Merkel over in Germany (which is funding much of the bailout, so-called, that will result in so much misery for the Greek masses) is displeased with her wayward Greek children, and makes no bones about it. (The linkages between Greece and Germany go back a long way, but are very little known in this country.) But the point is that the Greek masses are being made to suffer extensive hardship in order to pay off the banksters. In this case it is the European Central Banks, but they in turn are in debt to the same scoundrels and thieves who have been conducting an unprecedented campaign of looting and impoverishment of the masses throughout the world for years, the same banksters who continue to preen on Wall Street.

I say it is unprecendented, but the pattern was set and model was created and put in motion by Enron and those who followed its lead more than a decade ago. That kind of economic predation and looting has become the New Normal, and it has got to stop. We see that governments feign powerlessness to do anything about it, and we saw in California when Gray Davis actually tried to do something about it, his skinny white ass was booted out of office and he was replaced with a cartoon super-hero. Jeebus.

At any rate, the only way to stop it is to refuse, and that takes some preparation and some sleight of hand. It's widely assumed that Greece is going to default on its debts to the banksters, there is no way around it, no matter what Mother Merkel says. And if Greece defaults, it is widely assumed that Spain, Portugal, Ireland and possibly Italy will too. Which, apparently, will collapse the Euro, which will do... what? Nobody knows. But the trick is to refuse to pay off the banksters' gambling debts, and it's got to start somewhere. Greece will do.

Hopefully, it will start the global economy on a new, and better, path. But it's only the beginning.

The Doomsayers are claiming that by August or November at the latest, we will be living in A Different World. Hm. Could be. Rejoice!

The Plan

Hm. Seems to me that a handful of folks are catching on that the way things are, especially the grotesquely high unemployment rates and the ripple effect throughout society of so much unemployment, is just the way Our Rulers have planned it.

Years ago -- remember? -- the now Endless Recession got under way, and remarkably, as unemployment figures rose higher and higher, "month over month," there was no effort, whatsoever to put people back to work. The "stimulus" was hailed as this Big Jobs Program when it obviously was not; none of the shovel ready programs the stimulus would eventually fund (maybe in Year Two?) provided more than very, very modest employment anywhere in the country. A project might be hailed as providing 300 jobs in an area where 30,000 had been lost.

Here we are, years into this Endless Recession, and there are still no Jobs Programs, no serious effort to put people back to work whatsoever. This Hooverite disinterest in the plight of the unemployed should have been alarming years ago.

It is only now being noticed to a very limited extent because of a study done by Rutgers entitled "No End In Sight: The Agony of Prolonged Unemployment." (pdf link)

Yes. Well. Glad they noticed. Finally.

But will Our Rulers? Why should they? As far as they are concerned, the astronomical levels of unemployment in this country can essentially be permanent. The American Plutocracy simply doesn't need all those workers, and there is no way in hell they will re-employ them. Furthermore, there is no way in hell the Plutocracy will allow the Government to become the Employer of Last Resort.

But worst of all, there is no way in hell that Americans will rise up in protest against this appalling situation.

None.

The White House economic team has been rigorous in maintaining its utter indifference to the fact that millions upon millions of Americans are annually being shoved into poverty. That millions upon millions have lost their jobs and will never be employed again. That millions upon millions of Americans continue to lose their homes to foreclosure, their savings to bankruptcy, their future to the Masters of the Universe.

Not even Hoover and his team were this indifferent. They couldn't afford to be because the People would and to some extent did rise up in protest.

Now? (Almost) Nothing.

As I said over at Digby's Place, Reagan must be chortling in his grave, Baroness Thatcher tickling his corpse. The idea of an uprising on behalf of one's own interests and those of his and her compatriots is almost alien to modern Americans. Instead, such uprising as there is is almost entirely confined to the right wing stooges of capitalists and their running dogs.

Arizona Secession

The State of Arizona is for all intents and purposes shutting down, and is in the slow motion process of seceding from the Union. This has been clear to me as I've traveled across the state numerous times over the last few years. In previous posts, I've noted that the Interstate 40 rest stops are closed, most of the state parks are closed, and the state is motivated to sell its state buildings to raise cash. In addition, Arizona recently passed an open concealed carry gun law that essentially removes any restriction on the acquisition and open carrying of concealed firearms anywhere in the state under any circumstances without a permit.

All that, followed by the recent "Show Your Papers or Go To Jail" law -- which ultimately may never go into force, but we'll see -- is a form of defiance that comes naturally to some Arizonans, but which flies in the face of a developing national conscience and consensus about some basic principles of living together in a civilized society.

Arizona dissents.

Says, "Fuck you." The State Motto.

The point here is that the old (white) farts that have proliferated there don't want to pay taxes, don't think they should have to, don't want to follow rules imposed on them, and they are refusing to conform to the developing basic rules of American society. They are declaring their Independence from a society, and ultimately from a country, they loathe and despise, and they are in essence defying anyone to do anything about it.

The precipitating cause is the Endless Recession that Arizonans have no easier way of escaping than anyone else, but perhaps the model is that Cranky Old "Get Off My Lawn" Man, Sen. McCain. Who does nothing much but crab, complain, fuss, and preen on the TeeVee whenever he gets the chance.

Texas Governor Rick Perry has been flirting with the Secessionists since the election of that Colored Man to the Presidency. Of course many other Southerners like to toy with Secessionist hoo-hah; it's what they do. It's who they are. But what's going on in Arizona, while as White Supremacist as anything in Dixie, is not from that same animus. Instead, Arizonans are acting on their Old West cussedness. It's their animosity toward being told what to do, or being prevented from doing what they want. Cf: Old Man McCain.

They continue on this route, Arizona will indeed secede. Set itself up as an independent republic (of some sort). The Devil take the hindmost.

Contrast with New Mexico next door, where the Neo-Liberal government of Bill Richardson and the Democrats (Dems all the way down) has decided to "stay the course" as it were, by taxing the poor. Smart. Some budget cuts, program tweaking, hours reduced, etc. But most everything is still open, the Welcome mat is still out, and things are going on pretty much the way they always have, only now shoppers are paying a sales tax on food and cigarettes cost $7 a pack and so on.

The point being to raise the cost of living for those least able to afford it, and to do everything possible to ensure the continued comfort and convenience for the rich.

A Del Webb community has just opened in Bernalillo. The first and so far only in New Mexico. Arizona is creeping into New Mexico, and I wonder if the locals have any idea....

Russia Today Explains It All For You

This video of a rather lengthy discussion on Russia Today TV about "Soviet Amerika" might be illuminating to anyone who questions the notion that the United States is an Empire, behaving as an Imperial Power, and is falling into many of the same traps and hazards Empires of the past have been prey to, most tellingly, the former Soviet Union.



One of the main problems with maintaining the Founders' vision of their new republic -- and one of the main reasons it has failed -- is the matter of scale. The United States is simply too big, and constantly strives to become much bigger (either literally or by proxy), to maintain the kind of rugged quasi-libertarian republic the Founders set in motion. The Imperial idea was there at the beginning, of course, given that the Rebellion, the Revolution, was an act of liberation from the British Empire. But not -- at all -- for the purpose of ending Imperial ambition. Instead, it was to take control of the Imperial impulse in this hemisphere at any rate from the hands of the British and to conduct the Imperial enterprise the way the men of substance who precipitated and engaged in the Revolution desired.

But you can't really have an Empire that's close to the People except as tyranny. The Republican ideal and Imperial tyranny are simply incompatible. What do you do?

Initially, Americans tried to resolve the incompatibility by expansion -- which in time included, of course, the genocide and extreme resource exploitation, extraordinary levels of immigration, numerous wars of aggression and conquest and so on that characterize America's expansionary period. It also included a devastating Civil War.

I've commented in the past about the telling irony of the Gold Rush. Arguably, America was a Libertarian Paradise, say from 1800-1850, and yet, when gold was discovered in the newly conquered territory of California, hundreds of thousands of Americans packed up and left their Paradise -- at immense expense and risk to life and limb -- and headed out to California, where many of them simply died, if they made it at all.

And I've asked why. Why would they do that if they already lived in Paradise? While there was gold to be found, to be sure, the individual Argonaut was in no position to find much of it, and certainly was not going to hold on to it if he did. Most of these Argonauts knew that when they set out, or if they didn't know it, they came to understand it on the trek. If they survived the trip, they were generally impoverished, famished, and worn out by the time they got to California, and many were so disappointed by what they found, and so filled with foreboding and loathing they promptly died.

Few of the survivors ever made more than the meanest living in California, and such living as they were able to make required the constant replenishment of the population with newcomers. That's been the basis of California's "prosperity" all along. Attract a constant stream of immigrants, and by this means, some of those who arrived earlier are able to "prosper" by exploiting the newcomers. If that fails, as it does from time to time, bar the door.

Speeded up and in microcosm, that's the story of the United States.

But what happens when that endeavor reaches the end? The net has to be cast farther and farther afield, and the Empire has to grow either physically or by proxy outside the boundaries of the territory already claimed and settled.

But that sets in motion instabilities that can easily lead to collapse.

The Rugged Yeoman of yore cannot individually seize some foreign land and rule and prosper as potentate -- and still preserve anything of the Republican ideal of the Founders.

The Rugged Yeoman becomes a Tyrant. His Republic becomes an Empire. The scale of the endeavor metastasizes.

Our friends in Russia have tried to approach the problem from the reverse direction, going from Empire to Republic, and in doing so, have somewhat reduced the scale of their political enterprise by spinning off many of the "Republics" that once constituted the Soviet Union and before that, the Russian Empire. Yet they still face the tyranny of their own Oligarchs and their republican political efforts are primitive at best. It sort of works -- and doesn't. The urge to Empire is still very strong within Russia today.

On the other hand, the United States has formed a political and economic axis with the United Kingdom, at least at the elite levels, which is practically a unity. The dissolved British Empire is being revivified through the Power and agency of the United States, with a specific concentration on those areas of the globe where the British failed to impose their benevolent rule: Iraq, the Yemen, Somalia, the Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan and so forth. All of these were failed British colonial outposts or failed clients of the British Empire when time was. Their continued assertion of independence is being directly challenged by American (primarily) military might and technology, with Israel's annoyance and tag-along in the Middle-East.

And the comment from observers abroad is that this is absurd and self-destructive. Don't do it! And yet it is being done. Without let or hindrance. Those who have been down this path before go unheard and unheralded.

Study and consider.

As always, the question remains, What do you do about it?

The always upbeat and cheery Chris Floyd (heh) provides plenty of additional cogency. I can only take him in small doses, but he's right you know. His buddy Arthur Silber (also right, you know) I can't take at all.

What Have We Learned?

We've learned from the WikiLeaks video of the slaughter of some dozen Iraqis from above that what we see is routine. That is how the Glorious War On Terror is conducted, that is how is has consistently been conducted for years upon years, that is the daily reality the Wogs face and have been facing since well before the Glory of our Expeditions Abroad was brought into focus by the public opening of the various fronts in our perpetual wars of aggression.

To the Wogs on the ground -- remember, they have no airplanes, no helicopters, no drones with which to defend themselves from the ceaseless slaughter -- the exterminations from above are entirely random, arbitrary, cruel, and extremely brutal. The Killers almost always take out entirely innocent civilian targets, who have no idea they are targets, but the survivors learn that any Wog at any time can -- and quite likely will -- become a target for the Killers From Above. Perhaps they are lucky that their faith provides a fatalist outlook on events so they if by random "luck" of the draw they are slaughtered by the Killers, they will accept their Fate with almost as much equanimity as their Killers deliver it.

We've learned that the military lies, constantly, and that lying is Doctrine,; even when they tell the truth, they are lying. They lie about everything, and they lie all the time. It is their way. It is who they are. It is the world in which they live; it is all a lie, a constant lie, and they want, nay demand, that we, civilian observers of their slaughters and their lies, believe their lies, or at the very least set aside our disbelief long enough for them to get on with their job. Which is the killing of Wogs.

Time and again, we heard the defenders of the Killers claim that the killing was justified because an RPG and AK-47s were found among the crushed and burned and separated remains of the Wogs who were exterminated from above that day. Indeed, from the video evidence, it appears that at least a couple of the Wogs are carrying rifles, but there is no sign of RPG weapons, despite the hysteric calling of the troops that they "see" one. No they don't, they see two cameras which they hysterically misidentify as RPGs and which misidentification they then use to justify opening fire on the Wogs. The rifles seen in the video are never aimed or used in any sort of threatening manner; they appear to be entirely defensive weapons. But weapons just the same.

But the RPG "presence" is the justification for the slaughter, not the rifles, and there is no RPG. No RPG is found. What is found are mangled and destroyed camera lenses which the hysterical declare to be "RPGs" and so it is still being reported that an RPG "round" was found among the dead and mutilated remains, because it is the central lie of the whole episode. The Killers must have this central lie believed.

We've learned that the Killers are hysterics, and they are terrified of Wogs, absolutely petrified with fear of Wogs and Woggery, and their sole response to their fear and their hysteria is to kill, kill, kill! The Killers appear to be so drugged up they can't tell what it is they see on their monitors, so they call it whatever they need to call it to justify the slaughter they are about to conduct, regardless of any reality outside their hysterical fear of the Wogs and what they will do. And we've learned that they will be backed up by their superiors, all the way up to the Pentagon and the White House without reservation.

We've learned that Our Rulers have no shame at this conduct. We've learned that our troops have no shame at this conduct. We've learned that Americans are almost entirely desensitized to this conduct -- or actively cheer it on. We've learned, or we should have learned, that Power, naked, raw and and cruel, is what this so-called War is about, and the application of Killing Power, arbitrary, random, and cruel, is how it is conducted.

Now that we know this, what shall we do? It is the endless conundrum. What shall we do?

There are those who defend the Killers because they're "just doing their jobs," and they should not be held to account for what they do. I've never understood or agreed with that viewpoint, because in fact, they are responsible for what they do, and they cross the line on their own volition. They can say no. There may be consequences for doing so, of course, but there are consequences (eventually) for the slaughters they conduct as well.

That does not relieve their officers and commanders all the way up to the Pentagon and the White House of their responsibility, but it is up to those on the ground and in the air over the so-called "battle zone" to say NO, loud and clear, and refuse to fire, refuse to believe a camera lens is an RPG, refuse to become hysterical killers for... what?

As much as we want to think that it was the protests at home that ultimately ended the Vietnam War, it was just as much the fact that the troops were refusing to continue killing gooks wildly to no discernible object, and that they were even killing their officers rather than continue the insane slaughter of the gooks.

Until the troops in our expeditionary forces take the initiative and refuse to continue the slaughter, it will go on. It is the first step. The command will, eventually, follow. They will have no choice.

The military is nowhere close to that point yet. And as Dan Froomkin points out, absolutely no one in Congress is the least interested in exploring the basis for what is shown in the WikiLeaks video. None. Not at all.

We learned a long time ago that Our Rulers do not listen to what those on the "Left" have to say about anything. It is not in their interests to bother with what the "Left" has to say. They are, on the other hand, more than happy to fret and worry right along with whatever the Rightists and other hysterics have to say, fearful always of what the Rightists might do. Which is one reason why the "Left" is ignored: they have demonstrated time and again they will do nothing, whatever, that Our Rulers need to pay attention to if they don't get their way. Whereas we know the Rightists love to kill people and blow shit up and are heavily funded by Rightist economic interests to hold that threat constantly over the Government and Our Rulers. So they often do get much more than a hearing, they get action to satisfy their demands.

Surprising how that still works, but it does.

The only thing we can be certain of is that the world of Our Rulers and their expeditionary forces is entirely divorced from that of the rest of us, and that we, The People, as it were, have more and more in common with the suffering (and often slaughtered) masses in the rest of the world than we have with those who rule us and seek ever greater levels of control over us.

Provided we learn the lesson of our global commonality with one another -- and our utter alienation from those who rule us -- we will have a way forward. Until then, the path is backwards.

Will we learn that lesson?

There's Been a Change

Since the passage of what's still called the Healthcare (even though it is really Health Insurance) Reform, Obama's status among the Powers That Be has risen dramatically. Oh, the groundlings are still fussing the way they do, but as far as those who acknowledge and wield Power, Obama is now confirmed as The Good Emperor he was put in place to be.

He has done The Impossible.

This actually confers upon him something close to god-like status.

No one thought he could really do it, let alone his many cranky critics on the right and the left.

And yet as it has happened, the Government over which he presides is falling further and further into the void as far as the public is concerned, with a recent Pew poll showing as many as 80% distrusting Government as an institution.

Yes. Well.

That's what happens when the Government as an Institution has become such a wretched mess, partly by design, partly through neglect, and partly as a consequence of simple inertia. We've had thirty years, an entire generation, of deliberate political design to hamstring, cripple and eventually destroy the Government as an Institution intended to serve the People. And when it comes to poor people, the destructive design has been going on much longer. The very proposition of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" produced a reactionary response, and an immediate and long-lasting effort to thwart and destroy it commenced.

But in other ways the institutional systems of Government have been critically neglected for most of the past 30 years, and their neglect has led them to neglect their core functions and duties. This is how, in part, the economy has been allowed to go through repeated bubbles and crashes. The mechanics of regulation have simply been neglected -- to the point that they don't function any more. The Bubble and Bust economy is the result. "Nothing can be done about it." Of course "something" can be done, "something" could have been done about it all along, but it wasn't due to the culture of neglect that pervaded the institutions of Government that might have intervened.

So it has been in many spheres, from finance and banking through infrastructure, to education and -- indeed -- health care. Neglect, greed, kleptocracy, incompetence, all have run rampant.

In Government, once a policy course is set, it runs by inertia, continuing blindly regardless of its purpose or utility. Thus neglect provides its own inertial direction forward. Right onto the rocks, if such there be.

That, too, can be part of design.

Obama came into the frayed and deteriorated Government "from out of nowhere" and set about making The Change.

It's not the Change many people seem to have expected from him, in that he has preserved nearly all the attributes of the Bushevik Imperial and Expansionist State -- which so many of us objected to and still do. But then, he was fairly clear that he would do this when in office, and institutional inertia would tend to preserve it in any case. Say what you will about the Imperial State the Busheviks put in place, it was and is a functioning as opposed to a fractured and faltering Governmental direction. It was/is "something."

He also made clear he was a Corporatist, dyed in the wool, and would, so far as he could, promote Corporate interest. So let it be written, so let it be done.

But Corporate interest in the aggregate is not necessarily what many of us think it is. The Healthcare, for example, is a specifically Corporate Interest -- and institutional interest -- measure designed to clarify and begin to stabilize a sector that has long been wildly out of control, thanks to neglect. (A neglect that I would say was deliberate after Clinton's HCR measure went down in flames.) Whether it will work or not, I don't know, but that's the obvious intent.

That's a huge Change. And it is fully in the interests of the corporations and institutions which will be most affected, so much so that some of them are actually implementing portions of the reform early. This is what they wanted.

Militarily, there are at least signs that the direction is changing, but the inertia of the military institutions and the purposes and causes of Empire set for them won't allow much Change in the short term. They are still in a cruel-killer mode that likely will not be altered until and unless Imperial objectives change significantly.

And what exactly is the purpose and objective of the Empire? I've asked this question numerous times over the last ten or fifteen years, and if there is an answer at all, it is typically based on economics, resource acquisition, and furthering some sort of amorphous Greater Good. For Us. Not them.

But from the way the Empire is being imposed, it seems the purpose of it, ultimately, is nothing more, really, than Power. To Be and to Command. Resistance is not only Futile, it is Stupid. Submit. Now. And never rise again.

This seems to be the overriding doctrine and policy of the Empire -- domestically and abroad, though the imposition of it abroad is far more brutal and cruel.

It is a re-ordering of the nation and the world -- as big a Change as could be imagined -- ultimately for the purpose of re-ordering. For its own sake, in other words.

I've often said that Obama's reign is the Neo-Liberal phase of the two-phase system under which we are ruled, whereas the Bush-Cheney grotesquerie was the Neo-Conservative phase. There is no genuine two-party system, no genuine democracy at the national level, and no genuine representation by our electeds, either. The Constitution is essentially a relic of a bygone Republic that never really worked all that well anyway, and the future, which seemed so chaotic and impossible when the Busheviks were in charge, is now coming into focus.

Change we can believe in? We haven't seen that yet, and the Pew poll shows that the People don't believe it yet.

But if some clever dick ever figures out that something most certainly can be done about the appalling unemployment levels, the uncertainty levels, and the atrocious burdens of household debt -- all of which the Experts claim are long-term, structural, and that "nothing can be done about them" -- the Change will crystalize. A more or less permanent direction (and strange, almost Chinese, stability) will be achieved.

Those who are making the most fuss right now seem farther and farther out of step with the course of events. The fuss itself is devolving into entertainment. That's perhaps where it needs to be, and where it will need to stay. Which is not to say that the Changes we are subject to are what we want or what we need.

It is more a case that the Future has been taken out of our hands.

Bow down. Rejoice.

On Killing the Enemies of America

The recent release of an Apache helicopter gunner video by WikiLeaks has caused something of a stir. There have been previous similar video releases, though they are usually reversed contrast as in night-camera or otherwise made to seem more video game like and less... real.

This latest one has caused something of a stir because it is very graphic, brutal, hideous, and grotesque. In it, a number of Iraqi men are seen to assemble, to go about some sort of business, to chat with one another, chat on their cell phones, and they are seen to be blasted by Apache cannon-fire, many killed, some wounded -- and then killed -- and those who come to pick up the wounded are also blasted and killed. Turns out there were some children in the van that came to attend the wounded, and the children were gravely wounded in the fire from the Apache gunship. Their father was killed.

This video is getting some attention in the mainstream -- not a lot, but some -- because two of the Iraqis killed were employees of Reuters news service, and Reuters had been trying to get the gunner's video for years through the appropriate channels at the Pentagon. The incident happened in 2007 during the Surge. The other dead and wounded Iraqis have been generally ignored by the mainstream media. No surprise there. The general random extermination of Brown People Over There has not mattered to the powers that be at the mediaplexes since it was determined by the Pentagon that there would be no count nor accounting of dead and wounded Brown People in the Glorious War On Terror (in Perpetuity.) It would not be the job of the Pentagon to concern itself with their dead and injured. Period. So our media has followed suit.

There's been some sense that this incident must be an anomaly of some sort, because surely Our Forces do not randomly exterminate people Over There like this. And I say "randomly" because the video shows men on the street with cameras and with (possibly) a few weapons going about their business in a dangerous neighborhood where there had been some conflict recently. The men are fully in the open, they are not showing the slightest hostile intent, nor are they in any way menacing or conducting military or "terrorist" operations of any kind that can be determined from Above. Nevertheless, those who will kill them are heard discussing the men's weaponry and hostile intent as if it were real and they were not making it up on the spot.

And this goes on all the time. It has from the beginning of the Iraq invasion.

The presumption has been, from the beginning, that any Iraqi male is by definition Enemy, and any armed or thought to be armed Iraqi is subject to summary execution from Above (or from the ground if that is more convenient.) Anyone in the way, too bad.

And that's what happens here.

It's been going on just like this from the outset of hostilities. And if reports of pre-invasion actions over Iraq bear any truth, and I suspect they do, it was going on just like this for years before the invasion itself.

To the Iraqis, this is random murder, random slaughter. Anyone could be targeted and taken out at any time, for no reason at all that the Iraqis can determine. It is purely arbitrary from their point of view, not unlike the fictional situation faced by Earthlings in H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds."

In that work, Wells was positing a parallel situation between the experiences of Londoners subjected to the invasion of Martians, and Natives in foreign lands subjected at the time he wrote (1898) and being subjected to random and incomprehensible arbitrary extermination by their New Overlords.

This is how Imperialism was imposed in those days, and we can see from videos like this that this is how this is the way Imperialism is imposed today.

The point is to target and kill randomly so as to make it impossible (so it is assumed) for the Natives to respond coherently. It will drive them to despair, and in despair they will welcome their new masters and submit to their commands. It worked in the Old Days, more or less, and it is supposed to work now.

Just look at Iraq now!

It would appear that those who are doing the targeting and killing really have no clue what they are doing. They are also imagining things about their targets (such as their weaponry and their intent) that has no earthly basis in what's visible to them from Above. They're simply making it up and convincing one another of the "truth" of their fantasies. It comes across as similar to a drug induced illusion that is not in any way real, but they are convinced that what they "see" is the Truth.

On that note, it's of some interest that Rummy had a grand scheme to create a small force of rugged killers, who would be drugged up to maintain their constant readiness and ability to kill without question and in so far as possible under their own initiative. It looks from this video to be that's what we've got in the air over our various hostile locations around the world. No rational person seeing what the video shows would reach the conclusions about the armaments and intentions of the Iraqis on the ground that these killers from Above do. Their actions are brutal, but their beliefs are unreal.

As I say, this has been going on, relentlessly, in all our theaters of endless war for a very long time now. It is the way our Imperial Operations are conducted.

The killers declare some threat to exist, request permission to exterminate, and do it.

And our leaders continue to wonder why the Natives hate us.

WikiLeaks says they will release more such video anon. Eventually, perhaps, Americans will come to understand that this is the way their Empire is established and they will turn away from it in disgust, but I actually doubt it. Previous experience shows that Americans have no problem at all with randomly exterminating brown people who are in the way. None.

And of course, no matter what happens, the military will lie about it and their lies will be routinely disseminated without question by nearly all the English speaking mass media. It is what they do.

The 39 minute full version:

On the Violence. Or the threats thereof...

Much is being made... well, some at any rate... over the violence attending the passage of the HCR (now dubbed "Health Insurance Reform" or HIR) legislation what with all the symbolism of Kristallnacht and such that went with the broken glass and yowling of the mobs.

Comes now the warnings about and the round up of some of the fringier and flakier of the lunatics on the right, those who claim the right of insurrection starting with the officers of the law.

The way this is being played out is interesting. It seems that Our Rulers are singling out certain elements on the right for close scrutiny and they are taking out certain very marginal players, and they seem to be doing it as a signal to the TeaBaggers and their sponsors that if they step out of line the man'll come and take them away.

But the line, for those on the right, seems to be set at "Pretty Much Anything Goes."

They can carry on as wildly as they like, including breaking windows, so long as... no one gets hurt? Is that the game? All good clean fun, eh?

Blowing off steam, as Rush would say. Actually, the other day -- probably yesterday -- he was going full bore against Obama, claiming Obama started it! Obama said mean things against el Rushbo, mean, mean, mean! It was quite a performance...

Ah. Key: this is all Performance. I'm sure there are folks out there eager wage something come April 19, and who knows, they might just do it.

But there is another level to all of this. Back in the day, it was critically important for Our Rulers to discredit and marginalize and co-opt the lefty insurgency, and they did so with a wide range of tactics, from the "Free Speech Zones" to the Marches in Place. And anybody who got out of line was bludgeoned, gassed, or hauled off to the pokey. Remnant Communists organized some of the biggest protest marches the nation, nay the world, had ever seen, and they were studiously ignored by the Ruling Class. Through these means and others, relentlessly and piteously applied, the Left -- so called -- became so marginalized it all but disappeared, replaced by an ersatz-left that is almost indistinguishable from Reaganism. Clever ploy, eh? The point is, it worked. There is no "Left" left in this country. And there is little or no possibility of one arising -- or re-arising -- any time soon.

Now to apply the same proven tactics to the right.

The TeaBaggers are getting lots of attention from the Republican rump party and from the media, but they come across as reactionary and insolent and deeply confused about the simplest things. There's justifiable anger of course among the People, and the TeaBaggers collect and diffuse the anger. Nobody knows what they're fighting against or fighting for, they're just fighting for the hell of it. Or something like that. The more these people are seen, the more they -- and their childish anger -- are marginalized. The more they are featured, the less their message resonates.

Ultimately Our Rulers become the Wise and Witty, Warm and Wonderful realists who are Doing the Best They Can for All of Us, and those on the Left and those on the Right can just sit down, shut up, and listen to their betters.

The Rightists have been denying there was any violence, at least that there was any violence committed by them. The bricks and the epithets either didn't happen at all or if they did, they were the product of "Leftist" provocateurs. Maybe they were, who knows? But I think the Rightists understand better what is going on than those on the so-called Left, because they've practiced these very same tactics for many years. Successfully.

Now they see they themselves being targeted. And they are worried.

Good.

Meanwhile, the Ruling Class continues on its merry way, looting, murdering, pillaging and plundering with abandon, and no one's the wiser.

Have you read Matt Taibbi's piece, or gone over to Chris Floyd's for something dismal lately? Well, there you are. We're not really making any progress at all.

Ah, but it's Spring!

A Flower:

And now for something completely different

I love to use and reuse of old stuff.

There's a site over at Flickr.com that I recommend for ideas and just for fun.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lockwasher/3197794730/

Visit the blog, too:

http://lockwasherdesign.blogspot.com/

I'm sure you'll have a good time!