The Republicans are Running Scared?

Of their TeaBagger Brownshirts and their Leader, La Palin?

I don't think so. Not even close. TeaBagging has been the most effective tool the Republicans have used to revive their dying hopes of electoral relevance after the disastrous eight years of the Bush/Cheney Regime.

TeaBagging has done its work by using that tried and true Bush/Cheney tactic of Doubling Down against resistance. It works surprisingly well. So well, in fact, it's a wonder the Democrats don't try it now and then just for shits and giggles.

When Herself goes out on the hustings, the ravening TeaBagging mobs can't get enough of her.

The most telling thing about it all is that TeaBag candidates beat less radicalized candidates all the time (though not always), and the more "radical" the candidates seem to be, the more they are admired and appreciated, even if they don't win.

They move the discussion.

That is something Democrats and the so-called Progressive Movement simply haven't been able to do more than once in a very great while. It's been the critical failing of the Democrats and the so-called Progressive Movement all along. Seemingly forever, now, the erstwhile "Left" in America has been doing little but reacting to whatever OUTRAGE!!!!™ the Rightists wish to commit at any given time. There are always so many OUTRAGES!!!!!™ the Left doesn't have time, and doesn't have much of an inclination in any case, to move the discussion in the other direction.

Not only that, but the so-called Progressive Movement can't choose candidates appropriately and can't get them elected in critical cases. Holy Joe Lieberman is still in the Senate; Bought-and-Paid For Blanche Lincoln will be there until she is defeated by the Republican candidate in the fall. But her "Progressive" primary rival would have been just as defeated in the fall if he'd won the primary anyway.

This is an absurd situation given the fact that Americans are not for the most part the radicalized Rightists that the TeaBaggers are, and they are politically more inclined to the more Liberal wings of the Democratic Party.

But the Democrats simply can't routinely mount or voice the kind of exciting brawling campaign the Rs have become experts at, and they don't even want to mobilize activists, let alone radicalize them. Consequently, we get the "Enthusiasm Gap".

The notion that the Republican Establishment is running scared of their own creation is a comforting one. It fits right in with the iconic Frankenstein storyline. But so far, this "fear" looks more like a strategic move to put the Dems off-guard.

No, I think the Rs rather like the success of their little operation, and they're not about to run scared. If it ever comes to that, they'll simply crush the TeaBaggers and toss them in the trash.

It's happened before.

September Memories

I was in Seattle on September 11, 2001. I'd arrived the night before, and I was staying at a hotel next to the old public library that was under demolition. In the morning, I'd be conducting a training for new federal employees for the agency I was working for.

I woke up at 6:00am to the persistent sound of sirens outside; it sounded like a major emergency of some sort. I looked out the window and saw the partially demolished remains of the public library. There were some flashing lights somewhere in the distance, but I couldn't see where. Something was going on, but I had no idea what.

I turned on the teevee. I believe it was CBS news (with Dan Rather) was showing the World Trade Center tower on fire. They didn't know just what had happened or how, but it was thought that a small plane had collided with the building. Rescue efforts were under way. I flipped through the channels, and all the news shows were showing the same thing, from slightly different angles, but essentially the same. Much chatter about it, but no real news.

I did my morning routine, then went back to look at the teevee; I saw a plane headed toward the other tower and then a huge explosion out the side of the building. The astonishment I felt was mirrored by the newscaster, another "small plane?"

This couldn't be happening.

At that point, I did not think it was real. Call it basic denial, but what I was seeing struck me as some kind of staged spectacle -- which, if the stories be true, it was.

The report came in that the Pentagon had been hit by a plane or a missile. "We're under attack!"

The South Tower commenced to collapse. It was inconceivable.

I called the office -- located on an upper floor of one of Seattle's tallest buildings -- shortly after 7:00am when employees should be shuffling in to start their day. The person who answered the phone was someone I'd known for a long time, and she was in shock. She said she was almost the only one there, and she was terrified. "What if they hit here?"

"Who?"

"The people who did this."

She said that as far as she knew, everyone was called in to work normally, and she was frightened, terribly, for them and for her, and she asked me if I felt it was OK to go ahead with planned activities today. I asked her if they had heard anything from Washington.

She said not yet, she just got there. But she thought the Assistant Director should be arriving soon, and there would probably be a general message of some sort. She asked whether I was coming in (I was staying only a few blocks from the office.) I said yes, I'd be there about 7:30. She said, "Be safe." I said, "You too."

I continued to watch dumbfounded as the level of reporting deteriorated and hysteria increased. A huge cloud of gray dust covered lower Manhattan and out into the Hudson while the other tower continued to burn. There were reports of car-bomb explosions all over Washington.

I headed to the office.

When I got upstairs and into the secure area, most of the employees were gathered in a small auditorium watching television. The other tower had collapsed while I was on my way to the office. The level of shock was unimaginable.

There had been no word from Washington, but we were told that the Regional Director was on the phone with headquarters and we would receive word shortly. There were sporadic reports on the teevee about Bush and his activities in Florida and then getting on AF-1 and going... where?

Flights were being cancelled, then word came that all planes were grounded indefinitely. The Assistant Director told us that Washington was giving us the option of continuing with our schedule or going home today.

Probably half opted for home. The rest, including me, stayed. I couldn't exactly get home, as it were, since all flights were grounded. So I decided to go ahead with the training that was scheduled. It was a chore. But the trainees (who were also mostly from out of town and could not get home either) said they were grateful to have something to take their minds off... events.

We did a half-day training the first day. I let the trainees go watch teevee or make phone calls or whatever they felt they needed to do. We'd just take it one day at a time.

Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out if I could rent a car and drive home. Sure enough, Alamo had a special deal for Federal employees: one way rental at a reduced price and no drop off fee. I reserved a car for Saturday pick up, and another fellow who needed to be with his family in California and I decided to share driving on the two-day trek.

I was really in a daze most of the rest of the time I was in Seattle, and though I was a real chatterbox on the drive back to CA (unusual for me), I have no recollection of topics and only vague recollections of scenery. When I got home, it was with relief, to be sure, but that's when the shock really settled in.

My strongest impression then and now was that "this is not real."

But of course, it was -- in its own, horrible, way.

What really happened that horrible day is still not entirely known or understood. But the process of transforming our government and nation got underway in earnest almost immediately.

And we aren't going back to the way things used to be.

Annual Green Day Post

Your Wages Are Still Too High

I've been working on a post regarding why the economic "recovery" hasn't occurred, focusing on the fact that the Way Things Are is Policy and that Changes Underway are Strategic and Structural.

Well, Meteor Blades over at dKos has beat me to the punch. Perhaps he's not as distracted as I have been lately. Whatever the case, his post touches on, but doesn't really get into the fact that a great deal of deliberation has obviously gone into the ongoing unemployment crisis.

After all, if there had been any real jobs programs implemented years ago -- or even months ago -- the army of unemployed would have been reduced, conceivably even eliminated. But no. There were no jobs programs at the outset of this Endless Recession and there are none now.

The reason? Simple. American wages are "too high."

Many working Americans have already taken huge pay cuts -- 10%, 15%, 25% is routine if you want to keep your job; 50% pay cut is not unusual any more. But as President Obama has said many times, he wants American companies to be able to compete globally "on a level playing field." He never quite says what he means by that -- though it is widely interpreted to mean raising global standards to American ones. But I submit that's not what he means at all; what he means -- which should be obvious from the economic policies out of the White House -- is that he intends to reduce American standards (wage standards at the very least) to global standards.

50% pay cut apparently isn't enough.

I don't know what would be enough. Since wages in China, India, and even Vietnam are rising, perhaps there is a Global Median that could be reached, let's say $10-15 a day for an average American worker, about the same as in Russia today.

As the AEI flack cited by MB proposes, with an "appropriate" wage scale, American employers would be hiring again, but damn if there aren't all these impediments, like minimum wage laws and overtime and other nuisances that get in the way.

No, the Market Must Rule.

And that means you are being paid too much. Give it up. Now.

Heh. Well, good.

Tony Blair pelted with eggs and shoes at book signing

Former prime minister attacked by anti-war protesters in Dublin as he promotes memoirs

That's the way it should be.

There is no excuse for this man being able to swan around creation pretending to be a man of Goodness, Charity, and Faith when he is as bloodthirsty as any creature who walks.

Read the whole article. It's delicious.

Éirinn go brách!

W....T....F...!!!!?

So I open today's paper, and what do I see but the latest "We're working on it, really!" trial balloon from our rulers with regard to the, erm, unemployment problem we've been having now for years.

Having apparently discovered that telling the masses over and over again that "it could be worse" doesn't cut it, they've figured out they have to do something. And being the clever dicks they are they've apparently seized upon Robert Reich's "payroll tax holiday" idea and are floating it around before Labor Day to see who looks up.

Except... what the fuck do they think they are doing by suggesting that such a payroll tax holiday -- if there were to be one -- would only apply to employers, not employees?

They are seriously deranged if they think that either this will win them any votes or that it will do fuck-all for employment or the economy.

It is inconceivable.

Worse than Hoover. Truly.

At this point, all the Rs have to do is throw any kind of bone to the ravening masses -- the masses that Congress and the White House has been ignoring for years as they continue to suck up to the MOTU -- and the Rs win.

Which many people have speculated is the outcome desired by the Administration, but I don't know.

This latest proposal is just crazy.

Of course they will deny there was any such proposal, claim that "everything is on the table," and that "no decisions have been made yet," yadda, yadda, the way they always do, and then do what they intended all along, which is essentially somewhat less than Hoover would.

One assumes they know how this will play among the People.

Not well.

So. We'll watch them circle the drain.

I for one don't like what I see.

Nationalism vs Tribalism vis-à-vis Iraq

I've taken some commentators apart over their ignorant and arrogant misuse of "tribalism" to describe what is really Nationalism. It's a fairly easy task given that one of the justifications they use for their mischaracterization of tribalism is George Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism." Orwell doesn't mention "tribalism" but he describes Nationalism in starkly specific detail, pointing out that many, many "isms" of the modern era are all versions of Nationalism. That is apparently a difficult concept for some folks to grasp. They seem to need to believe that nationalism and tribalism are the same thing. They're not.

The difference is that of scale, most obviously. But there is also the difference between "mindlessness" and "mindfulness." Tribalists are for the most part "mindful" of their loyalties and their sense of place and purpose. It's really quite remarkable. Nationalists, on the other hand, are deliberately made "mindless." De-tribalization is a necessary step in the process of creating a Nationalist enterprise because it is necessary to replace the mindfulness of the tribe with the mindlessness of the Nation.

I'm reminded of all this again because of the hooey over the "End of Combat Operations" in Iraq, once again, supposedly, solidifying the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iraq as an Independent Nation.

Well. Hold on. This "sovereignty" thing has been something of a bête noire with regards to Iraq throughout the last 20 years or so, since the end of Combat Operations in the first Gulf War. Shortly thereafter, Northern Iraqi Kurdistan was calved off as an Autonomous Region under an American protectorate. A "no fly zone" was established over the southern and largely Shia part of Iraq which was lethally enforced by American military might. At that point, Iraq as a "sovereign nation" ceased to exist in any sensible form.

But then, as a Nation, Iraq was created by Winston Churchill drawing some lines on a map of Mesopotamia in the British Colonial Office after WWI and the break up of the Ottoman Empire.

Mesopotamia was never a Nation. It is not in any viable sense a Nation now. There is no national government to speak of, and despite all the stresses and strains they have been under during the Saddamist years and under the Occupation, city-states, tribes and tribalism endure as the fundamental units of society and such governance as there is.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Much as Tito in Yugoslavia tried to form a Nation out of the disparate afterthoughts of Ottoman and Austrian Empires in Europe, Saddam tried to make Iraq into a Nation in Mesopotamia. Both temporarily succeeded, ultimately failed. Such failure was almost foregone.

In the Former Yugoslavia, after an intense period of domestic upheaval and civil war -- and international intervention -- a series of independent states were established based on essentially ethnic and to some extent tribal lines. Czechoslovakia was broken up, too. The smaller states that have taken the place of these former Nations are more comprehensible and appropriate to the will and interests of their citizens, whereas the more or less artificial amalgamations of ethnic, religious, and tribal affiliations that had been assembled into Nation-States by the Great Powers after World Wars I & II never really made any local sense.

So it is in Iraq.

It seems that Iraq has been trying to come apart into its constituent parts since the invasion, but the occupiers, not knowing what to do, fought shadows and demons, while the peoples of Iraq attempted to sort out a future for themselves -- and were thwarted at every turn.

Autonomous Kurdistan was the exception to the rule of constant interference with and destruction of everything the Iraqis tried to do to govern themselves. They were trying to do it almost from the moment Saddam was overthrown, and every step they took toward their own forms of self-government was thwarted, often quite brutally.

They were to submit, first, to the occupation forces, subsequently to the puppet regime installed by the occupiers, thence, they were to be subjected to a "managed democracy" that had some of the forms of democratic institutions but was in essence a sham.

What the Iraqis have been saying to the occupiers is that they are capable of governing themselves. They've been doing it for thousands of years, even under the many harsh (and/or benign) occupations of the past. They don't have to have a strong central government, they don't even need the trappings of Nationalism. Tribal structure is still very strong. And from their tribal base, Iraqis can assemble a functioning self-government. They know how to do it.

If only they were left alone.

The struggle comes when one group tries to oppress another or steal their means of living or survival.

Some months back, most of the ministries in Baghdad were blown up -- apparently by the Insurgency (that amorphous assembly of resisters.) More than likely the deed was done -- as so many similar instances in Baghdad and elsewhere have been done -- by Sunni resisters who hold a grudge and a grievance against the ruling Shia majority. The Sunnis largely stopped their resistance during the relatively brief period of the so-called Surge when they were being paid by the Americans not to fight. When those payments stopped, the resistance resumed with great violence and bloodshed.

What seems clear is that the Sunni Arabs are intent on making Iraq ungovernable -- unless their demands are met. They were the ruling minority under Saddam, and before that under the British and before that under the Ottomans. They seem willing to give up rule so long as they receive fair compensation on negotiated terms. Which the ruling Shia majority won't countenance. In fact, the ministries were blown up soon after the so-called Government in Baghdad decided not to resume payments to the Sunnis. It was obvious the one led to the other.

This whole No-Negotiation regime was part and parcel of the early stages of the occupation, and it was soon obvious where that path was leading. It was years into the occupation before it dawned on the real rulers of Iraq -- the military -- that it was a simple matter to stop the insurgency, something they might have realized the day they took over the Republican Palace.

But their neo-con ideology, utopianism, and deep contempt for "Sand Niggers" forbade it.

Tribalism is actually the solution to the Nationalist problem in Iraq.

But how many more years must go by before that is figured out?

OT -- Minature Rooms in Aspic

The Thorne Minature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago:

The Art Institute of Chicago - Thorne Miniature Rooms from Igor Guryanov on Vimeo.

I saw this exhibit in Chicago when I was eleven or twelve years old, and I remember being dumbfounded by the ingenuity, skill, artistry, and sheer persistence of those artisans who made these remarkable works of art in the 1930's and '40's under the auspices of and with funding from Mrs. James Ward Thorne.

So far as I know, there is nothing else quite like this exhibit in the world.

There is a lot I like about Chicago -- I've always had a great time when I've been there -- but this exhibit made more of an impression on me than just about anything else in the city.

And yet... looking at these miniature rooms now, I'm still struck by the sheer boldness and creativity of it all, but even more I'm struck how nothing seems to have changed except for the exhibit space itself. (Of course, close comparison shows that there have been some subtle changes over the years.) Nevertheless, the rooms are preserved as if in aspic or amber. But for some tarnish on the silver (watch for it), these rooms appear now essentially as they did when they were first installed.

It's eerie.

Pasty

The main impression I got from the snippets of the Glenn Beckistan Rally at the Memorial to Some President on the Mall was that this man is incredibly soft and pasty-white.

Hm.

Truly.

Nothing he said made the least bit of sense, and from the commentary of the chatterati about it, it didn't matter. No one was paying attention anyway.

Hm.

The attendees were having themselves a fine little get-together on a hot and humid summer's day, and no one -- but no one -- was going to interfere with their pleasure. Can't argue with that. Nor can you work up too much OUTRAGE!!!!!
™ over it.

Just another summer "news" filler.

But the warnings continue, as they should. This man is a prime, grade-A, number one demagogue who's been playing the road show circuit for quite some time. Most of the criticism of him that's appeared in the media, new and old, is of his truly appalling (what I've seen of it) television show -- a show that consists primarily of incoherent rants, nonsense and gibberish. With illustrations. But he has a radio show and a road show too, and he's been taking his show on the road for over a year. Hardly anyone talks about that part of his entertainment empire.

The personal appearances are where he makes the direct connection with the People, and that's apparently where his power lies. Beck does have power over his Masses, so they say, in that he is able to assemble sizable crowds wherever he goes, and he is able to manage them successfully to 1) give money; 2) believe what he says. Even if they don't understand a word of it.

His speechifying is literally incomprehensible to a radical secularist like me, and they say it is because he talks in a "code" that is only understandable by the Adept -- primarily those steeped in Christian Reconstructionism and general Authoritarianism. That may be, I don't know. What he sounds like is a drunk or drug addict (apparently he has been both) who is still high or on a bender. Cf: the gibberish out of George W. Bush's mouth. Only by comparison, Bush made sense, at least sometimes.

Beck? Never.

On a related note, when I was on the road a lot, I would listen to Limbaugh in the mornings. I was well aware of when he fell into the Oxycontin habit, for he became completely incoherent, his monologues making no sense at all, simply words strung together with Emphasis, as if they had any meaning, and as he got more and more into his drug of choice, not only was he making no sense at all, but he was losing his hearing, and so he was unable to hear either himself or anyone else, and it was almost like he was constantly whining or crying on the air. It was bizarre as hell, and it went on for a year or more.

No one noticed. That's not to say "no one at all." What it does say is that a very strict Code of Silence surrounded his on-air deterioration such that none of his media colleagues ever said a word about it, ever pointed out what complete nonsense he was spouting, ever publicly hinted there was something "wrong", not until the penultimate moment before he went into rehab. Apparently, too, his vaunted listeners -- all those millions, who are, by the way, far fewer than the number touted, not 20 million a week by a long shot, closer to 10 or 12 -- didn't notice. They just went along for the ride, and it wasn't his babbling nonsense that eventually clued them that maybe something was "wrong," it was his constant whining and crying because he couldn't hear.

Something like that episode is going on with this soft, pasty demagogue in his many appearances over the last couple of years. Beck's overt madness has made Bill O'Reilly look sane by comparison; that's scary enough all by itself.

But as Digby pointed out, he Speaks in Tongue, babbling in a language only certain Initiates and Those Chosen can "understand." And as he goes around the country doing this shtick, over and over and over, he seems to bring more and more lunacy out of his followers, while attracting more and more of the merely curious to check it out.

Crazy, perhaps. I wouldn't have any way of knowing what his true psychology is, because so much of what he does is show-biz hucksterism. It's an act. He's putting on a show for the Rubes, with the intention of picking their pockets. This is as obvious as sin.

And in that context, he is nothing more than yet another predator in our midst. Yet another religious predator as he is now propounding the theory that he is Chosen By God to Lead His Flock, yadda, yadda. Sure he was. Given that he is a convert to Mormonism, this is a very odd position for him to take. Yes, of course, Mormons "witness" to Gentiles, but they are typically modest about it, and they typically don't prattle on about being God's Chosen -- well, not unless they're Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, etc., in other words in charge of the Mormon Church itself. And I haven't seen any signs that the current Presidency thereof is yielding to the likes of Glenn Beck. Besides, his ecumenical "ministry" is not even remotely in line with Mormonism as Received From Above. It's little more than bastardized Social Darwinism dolled up in Moralism and Misquoted Scripture.

Not only is he Pillsbury soft and pasty white and he cries a lot -- which is appealing on an instinctive level, (white) babies, don'tchaknow -- he has been able to demonstrate significant levels of managing the masses, which the turn out in DC the other day amply showed. Crowd estimates fell short of the 100,000 - 300,000 that was being touted. Between 75,000 and 85,000 is said to be the most likely number based on pictures like this:





which shows a substantial but surprisingly sparse crowd in many areas. What time were the pictures taken? Time of day has some influence on attendance, and as there appear to be slight shadows from the east, I'd say it was before 11am. But I don't know.


And there was the CBS estimate of 87,000 based on those pictures. It's far less than the number "expected," but for those who watch for these kinds of things, getting a crowd of over 20,000 is considered adequate to demonstrate managing the masses sufficiently to be taken seriously. It was part of Obama's audition process for the Presidency as well.

The curious thing for me is where we go from here. Glenn Beck will be happy to pick the pockets of his followers until Doomsday, a destiny he -- and they -- appear to devoutly wish. OK, then. Have at it.

Healthy ecosystems require predators of a certain sort, and in some sense, the kind of predation Beck does is harmless enough. What's dangerous is letting him run wild, or what's even worse, form a pack of predators with others of his ilk, and doing that seemed to be a part of what he was doing the other day in DC. He had Sarah Palin, Arch She-Predator, and a whole passel of Ministers of the Lord (predators all). And plenty of yelping from would-be running dogs. This was the Display from the podium.

Go watch "Triumph of the Will" again; you will see something of the same thing. Or observe Stalin's rallies in Red Square.

Ultimately, it's a recipe for disaster.

The End of the Republic Is Not the End of Empire

There's an immodest tendency (especially in the Blogosphere) to equate the difficulties the United States is going through these days -- what with the various wars of aggression, the Endless Recession, a government of, by and for the plutocrats, and the tattered, pissed upon Constitution -- as some sort of modern day parallel with the end of the Roman Empire.

And this misses the mark badly.

What's happening is a somewhat murky parallel to the end of the Roman Republic and the inauguration of the Roman Empire, not its end at all.

The United States went through an earlier Imperial Era (we could argue "Empire" is at the root of The American Dream as promulgated by the Founders, but that's another topic for another day). The American overseas imperial ambition began with the overthrow of the Native Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 by American planters and adventurers. In 1898, the United States seized by force -- a war of aggression, gee -- an entire (rotting) Empire from Spain and so joined the tail end of the Imperial free-for-all that characterized the ambitions of (mostly) European powers during the 19th Century.

It didn't work out well.

Not for anyone. Not the Natives who were starved, brutalized, exploited and oppressed throughout the era, and not for their colonial masters, either, who found themselves embroiled in ever more catastrophic World Wars for global hegemony and domination.

The 19th and the first half of the 20th Centuries were disastrous for Natives and for Imperial ambitions in turn. There may have been progress in some other realms -- materially, certainly, for the imperialists -- but not so much progress in terms of humanity.

A bi-polar global political arrangement emerged out of the chaos and wreckage left in the wake of WWII (it's hard to believe just how awful conditions for the survivors were in the aftermath of World War II -- except in the United States, which had escaped the destruction wrought nearly everywhere else.) On the one hand were the Godless Communists led by the weakened but extraordinarily resilient Soviet Union, and on the other were the Free Peoples of the World, led by the United States.

Soon enough, the bi-polarism broke down to accommodate the growing nonaligned independence movements that liberated former imperial enterprises of various European and American powers from their colonial fetters. The Third World was born.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, this tripartite arrangement has broken down. Especially since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, DC -- extraordinarily simple and effective when results are measured by "predictions," but again, that's another topic for another day -- the United States, in concert with much of the rest of the English speaking world, has set about reviving and reimposing aspects of the British Empire in certain sectors where its lessons were not learned back in the day.

While what's going on resembles the days of the British Raj, and certainly today's targets are the very ones the British didn't quite get right when the Sceptered Isle reigned supreme, it is a basically American Imperial enterprise under way, with a basically political rather than a more pointedly economic objective (ie: steal from the Natives to enhance the wealth and power of a handful of British aristocrats and the Crown). That's not to say there aren't such crass economic motives, for there certainly are. It is merely to point out that the primary objective of the Imperial Wars of Aggression currently under way is the establishment and perpetuation of a "peaceful" political order in these restive lands without serious resistance to US Power.

Boiled down, all this is about is crushing resistance. Permanently. Of course it is an impossible objective to achieve, and that's part of its beauty. By being desirable but impossible, it can be pursued forever. It becomes a mythological quest, pursued for its own sake, and conveniently enhancing the power and wealth of the Oligarchs and Plutocrats along the way while step-by-step ensuring the extinguishment of even the pretense of Constitutional self-government.

Beauty.

This is the introductory phase of the establishment of a New Empire at the end of the Republic; it is not the End of the Empire by any means. Instead, it is the opening phase of the establishment of an Enduring Anglo-American Empire.

Perhaps the confusion arises from the conflation of the American Republic with its earlier Imperial thrusts -- which were not enduring and which were conducted from the premises of a Republic. Rome was a Republic throughout its early Imperial expansion, don't forget. Consolidation of that Empire and stabilization on the domestic front required the extinguishment of the Republic -- in the guise of "saving it" of course -- in order to proceed successfully. Which the Romans did. For hundreds of years.

Remnants of the Roman Empire still survive and operate.

The establishment of an Enduring Anglo-American Empire is what I see going on now. It's very halting and imperfect to say the least, but it is proceeding bloodily and relentlessly. It is being financed by the exploitation -- and progressive impoverishment -- of the American masses who are simply and efficiently being relieved of their wealth with breathtaking speed -- and by the likeliest rival to Anglo-American hegemony, China.

This situation actually puts me in mind of what was going on in Ancient Greece, the Peloponnesian Wars and all that. The Persians -- the rivals of the Greeks, right? -- though actually defeated by the Greeks at Marathon, were according to Thucydides, very active players and financiers in both Greek imperial expansion (under an ostensible "Democracy") and in the Peloponnesian Wars that wracked Hellas and the colonial holdings of the Greeks for a generation. The Greeks couldn't have done what they did without Persian influence and especially without Persian finance. And of course the exploitation and impoverishment of the masses, but they were never well off to begin with.

So it is now, the Anglo-American quest for a New Imperial hegemony is being financed by China, which appears to have no additional imperial ambitions (they seem happy enough with what they've got, don't they?) so they're content to let the British and the Americans work over resistance groups wherever they find them.

Which is probably the underlying reason why the Chinese continue to finance this Imperial adventure. The Chinese don't want to have to deal with these resistance groups, either, do they? But they have more important things to deal with at the moment, let the Outer Barbarians serve as mercenaries to the Middle Kingdom and at least keep the fiercer Barbarians at bay.

Working out just fine... for the Chinese.

What a tangled web, eh?

But back to my point: this is the End of the Republic, not the End of Empire.

The Anglo-American Empire will endure for at least as long as its peoples can continue to be exploited and impoverished (another generation or more), and for as long as its Chinese financiers believe it is worthwhile to fund it (another several generations if the signs are to be believed.)

Americans will be little the wiser.

Critters

Last year we had 11 skunks taken out from under our house in New Mexico. This year, despite our best efforts, I know there are at least two who have moved in and a neighbor thinks there might be a whole family of them. This time, I got some traps of my own, as the cost of calling Critter Control to come back again and again was getting out of hand. Daniel, who did the job for us last year, was very friendly and efficient, but there were so many skunks, and he usually only set one trap at a time. Consequently, removing them all of them cost a pretty penny.

After they were gone, what I called a Guard Kitty -- a big bruising male tabby -- took up residence and chased away any skunk that tried to make its way under the house. He was very good at his job! One time I was there and a skunk got by him; he went after it under the house and there was a War. I could hear them fighting quite loudly under the floor, and then after a bit I could smell (OMG!) the struggle. I had never encountered such a strong and pungent skunk smell. It seemed to permeate everything, and I had an intense physical/emotional reaction to it. It was really very much a fight or flight reaction. The brain gets into a very strange and almost trance-like state. I was aware of how strongly I was responding, but at the same time I was able to function sufficiently to take steps to counter the stink. It's fairly easy.

Vinegar. Just place bowls of it or spray it wherever the skunks smell is, and within minutes, the smell is gone.

The War continued under the house for a while, so even though I was using vinegar to counteract the skunk's determined efforts to make the Guard Kitty leave it alone, the animal kept spraying for some time. I wound up using a whole bottle of vinegar. Ran out! Ultimately, the struggle stopped with the skunk being chased out by the cat never to return. And by that time all the vinegar -- and the smell -- was gone.

The Guard Kitty (a feral that just showed up one day) got plenty of praise, of course, and he was great at keeping all skunks out for the entire winter. Then he disappeared. I think he may have moved down the street, as I saw a cat that looked remarkably like him crossing the street a block and a half away from our house this spring, but I'm not sure.

I've repeatedly blocked up the likely entrance holes, and I set up a one-way door so that if there are animals under the house they can get out, but the creatures are strong and clever. They have found many ways to dig under and around all my efforts to close up the entrances they have created for themselves. This will be an ongoing project. And as soon as I get back to New Mexico, the traps will have to be employed.

Daniel would take his captives out to Otero Canyon outside of Tijeras to drop them off. It's 27-30 miles or so. A neighbor just sort of shrugged and said, "They'll come back." Sure enough. Daniel claimed that once trapped, the skunks were very docile, and he had never been sprayed by one in all the time he had been handling them. We'll see... I dunno about that docile thing, but the catch and release traps are mighty cool. The skunks, it is said, cannot resist Little Debbie snack bait. So. That's one of the projects for my next trip out to the High Desert.

Meanwhile, the menagerie around our house in California has been growing. Our longtime companion cat, Mao, had kept all other animals off his property. He was extraordinarily territorial; he would not allow any cat or any other large creature to come close. He would fight them off, sometimes the struggles were fatal for the other creature. When Mao died, though, the others started showing up around here after a few months, and one, The Girl Cat, just waltzed right in the house and took up a position on Gramma Betty's lap. She loved it. Betty passed away a year ago in July, and the menagerie keeps growing. There are now seven or eight neighborhood cats that love to hang around -- and get fed -- at our place, but only two are genuinely "ours," plus there are assorted squirrels and birds and occasional rodentia, and now raccoons and (we're told, though I haven't seen them) opossums. Whoo-hoo!

We have a statue of St. Francis in New Mexico. I've seen one -- life-size -- at one of the specialty/antique stores nearby that I'm thinking of getting for our house here in California.

One of the raccoons has been really appealing since his arrival, so much so, I wonder if he is someone's pet. He comes over from the neighbor's yard across the street. They used to have a yippie dog, but they don't have any pets now. I'm wondering if they know they have a 'coon?

Anyway, the creature waddles across the rather busy street just around sunset, waddles up our driveway, greets the assorted cats that are hanging around, and looks for some food to eat. Usually it can find something, and it will chow down for a while, as the cats look on. Typically, the 'coon will take a break in its munching, particularly if it is hot, and get something to drink or just go into the backyard to rest. It will turn over on its back and sprawl belly-up, with its face looking -- well, smiling -- right at you. It's done this numerous times. But the other day, it found a garden hose with a trigger sprayer on the end. I think it must have used the trigger to sprinkle part of the driveway, for I found it on its back, belly up, in a fresh puddle of water, the hose and the trigger beside it, the animal grinning from ear to ear. It was a very hot day. The 'coon was cooling off. I tried to get a picture, but the batteries in my camera died.

We have all kinds of birds at both houses, too, something that surprises most people when they know there are all sorts of outdoor cats around. The birds seem pretty capable of defending themselves, though, and some of them, like the blue-jays, love the catfood and they will harass any cat that dares to get in its way.

While this is an OT post, it does relate to the problem of predators that I brought up in an earlier post. Cats, of course, are predators. Yet their prey seems to be very happy and healthy and not particularly subject to predation, though one of the cats caught a mouse for me the other day.

I'll try to get into the topic more over the next week or so.

(I have some short movies of the raccoon's antics, and if I can get them edited and uploaded, I'll try to post them here as an Update. No guarantees...!)

Getting out in front of the issues

It's long mystified me why the remnant "left" in this country is constitutionally unable to get in front of issues small and large and lead into that new day dawning that used to be so important.

Instead, the "left" constantly reacts to rightist garbage, desperately trying to hang on to the shreds and tatters of a status quo the rightists are only too happy to yank out of their hands.

This has been going on for years and years, decades now, and it is really bewildering.

It's not for lack of ideas. Why just the other day, the New America Foundation came out with a neat little proposal to double Social Security payments to help get the economy "moving" again. Well, there's an idea. Gee. The only problem with it is that the deficit scolds have long since been banging the gong about cutting Social Security to the point where doing so is all but inevitable.

The idea of increasing Social Security payments should have been broached the instant the economy turned sour. I think I did at the time suggest that low-end Social Security payments be doubled or tripled for just that economic purpose. Not only that, but I thought the eligibility age should be reduced to 55 so as to free up jobs for younger workers. I also suggested that because households were drowning in debt, instead of paying off the banks' gambling debts (the Fed just held out the promise of another round of payouts to the banks), payments -- large payments ($80,000 was a figure I remember mentioning) -- should be made directly to households to clear debt or for the purchase of particularly important goods and services (like green-fitting homes and such) in order to goose the economy.

Robert Reich has been advocating a "payroll tax holiday" for quite a while, and the other day he added a nuance: cancel payroll taxes on the first $20,000 of income, and pay for it with an additional payroll tax on those making more than $250,000. This is good.

But we are years into this Endless Recession, and the policies out of Washington have been like Hoover's policies dealing with the Depression. They really haven't helped any but the banks and the upper one percent. They've been devastating for the middle and working class, by design.

Why the so-called "left" isn't out in front of economic issues is bewildering. In fact, Democratic Party economic policy is as Hooverite as that of the White House, and commentators on the so-called "left" are at best ambivalent about what to do -- typified by Paul Krugman's fretting about this and that.

Why aren't self-styled progressives out in front of the war issues? Not just saying "no" but saying what would be the better policy.

We could go on and on.

In the United States what passes for the "left" is reactionary, depending on the rightists for issues to respond to. The "left" is desperately clinging to shreds of the status quo for dear life, rather than coming up with a vibrant new vision for the future.

As I pointed out earlier regarding the mosque issue, the appropriate position on it is "No," not because it is Muslim, but because it is religious -- and we don't need more religion, there or anywhere else. Religion and religious fervor is part of the problem. But putting it that way is getting in front of the issue, and that would be... rude.

Let's be clear: our government is rightist through and through. One party is insane, the other is its enabler. Neither has any interest in serving the People. The People are passive in the face of these facts in part because they see no sign at all that anyone able to lead is interested in leading toward correct solutions. Many apparently thought Obama would be the one and have been sorely disappointed. But surely they know that putting the bloodthirsty plunderers back in charge for another round of looting and disaster is not a good idea.

But that's the political alternative to the disappointment so many feel. Madmen or their enablers.

If we on the "left" could actually get out in front of issues, present a coherent framework for positive change and follow through, what a wonderful world this would be. But no.

Can't do that.

Sad.

Predators

Predators are running wild this summer, much as they were last summer when the TeaBaggers were All The Thing and you couldn't turn around in July or August without running into a screaming mob of gun-toting white folk out to Protect Their White Wimmen and Prevent The Colored From Getting Health Care.

This summer, the predatory screamers are out in force to Prevent The Ground Zero Mosque.

Subtle, eh?

Now as far as I'm concerned, we have plenty enough religious institutions cluttering up the land, and we could do with fewer of them. I am not a supporter of the Cordoba House Project, nor would I be if there were no controversy surrounding it. My own view is that all religious institutions should be taxed to a fare thee well, that there should be strict limits placed on their activities, and that their public presence should be reduced -- or in some cases eliminated. Churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, "meeting houses" and "prayer facilities" have proliferated like weeds in this country. There are more than enough of them.

I say call a moratorium on any new religious facilities. Of any kind. Anywhere.

But that's just me.

Obviously, I have no great love for religious institutions, though I like to think of myself as a man of strong and abiding faith. The two are not incompatible. In fact, I find most of the institutions of religion to be incompatible with maintaining faith. The problem with nearly all religious institutions is simple: they are filled with and run by opportunistic predators. The Catholic Church, of course, is the principle example thereof in the modern world. And of course my ancestors were all Catholics, some of them excessively devoted to the Church, bless their hearts.

But the Catholic Church is by no means the only predatory religious outfit trolling for souls. By no means. In fact, essentially all of them operate as predatory enterprises. They need to be curbed.

So no, no Ground Zero Mosque. No Ground Zero religious institution of any kind.

The site of the World Trade Center is not "Sacred Ground," not even close. The deaths there do not make it "hallowed" in any way. No religious institution is in competition with the World Trade Center site for sacredness. The whole idea is absurd.

Certain predatory interests have tried mightily to make the site into some kind of quasi-religious/nationalist symbol from the moment the buildings collapsed. If it is a symbol of anything, it is a symbol of materialist catastrophe. But that's the game of the predators. They thrive on the suffering and extinction of others. It is their whole reason for being. So rather than see the World Trade Center site for what it is and "moving on" as it were, they try like anything to keep their prey engaged in struggling with one another for attention and then fattening them up for the kill.

Any new Constitution for the People of the United States would need very strict limitations and controls on the predators among us, by no means limited to controls on religious institutions.

The predators have been running wild for a generation. It's time they sat a few rounds out.

Let's Add "Peace" to "Dignity" and "Justice"

To me, Dignity and Justice are encompassing principles that can be construed to cover most of what we desire in forming and implementing modern nation states. But in the current context of the United States as HyperPower pursuing global hegemony through war and Imperial rule, specifying "Peace" as an objective and a foundational principle is more and more desirable.

We may come to question the advisability of any nation-state in the modern world, but the default position -- absent nation-states -- would have to be either World Empire (which is the direction we're going), or tribal units, which is the direction I would prefer, though with many caveats.

=================
Some random notes:

I am in favor of abolishing the states and substituting semi-autonomous regional governments, for the simple reason that states have become as rotten and corrupt as the Federal government, in fact, they probably started out that way. There are far too many statelets on the East Coast that could be more practically governed as a unit. There is a serious mismatch between the interests of various regions of the country and some of the states have internal mismatches between the interests, populations, and geography of one sector versus another. Break them up, reform them into affinity regions.

Autonomy is important. Direction from the Capital is only feasible with a unified polity, and the United States has never been that. Expansion merely disperses and institutionalizes inherent division. Instead, try for internal unification within the regional polities.

With regional autonomy, ironically, the national assembly can become an Imperial state, but one with strictly limited powers. In other words, the urge to empire, which appears to be deeply ingrained in the American psyche, can be expressed in a national government which ostensibly rules its autonomous regions (think parts of post Maoist China) with all the pomp and circumstance required, but which is purposely benign.

In fact, the national government does not "rule" so much as fulfill the mutual interests of the peoples of the regions.

With Peace as a foundational principle, the nation, much like China, does not engage in armed conflict abroad, and strictly limits armed domestic action. Yes, we have to think about domestic police action, potentials for armed rebellion and so on.

Dignity and Justice are principles that serve as brakes on the predatory interests and intentions of some, generally small, proportion of any population, and sometimes the predators among us become dangers to themselves and others. Their control becomes an interest of the People and the State, but that interest may have to be backed up with force. Predators do not generally yield willingly.

Dignity and Justice encompass more than Law; they are foundational principles of the social contract. They are fundamental principles of a desirable economic and social condition as well as legal principles. One should not separate Law from economic and social justice.

How they are expressed may be different from region to region, and the national expression may be different still.

To be continued...

Here in New Mexico

There's no teevee here, so when I'm in the house, I sometimes listen to the radio. The other day, I was idly spinning the dial on the 1942 Philco that sits by the french door out to the back yard, and hit on a "new and positive" AM station, KIVA in Albuquerque. It was actually pretty good more or less "liberal" talk radio, which is not uncommon in New Mexico, but it differed from the other stations (I can think of one in Santa Fe and another one in Albuquerque, and there must be others) in its local focus. All the talent was local, and the topics were New Mexico-centric. I thought that was pretty damn good, given that there are so many issues here that constantly need addressing.

One of the favorite targets of the talkers on this station was Governor Bill Richardson, a long time Democratic Party apparatchik, many of whose efforts seem to be perfectly tailored to soak the poor on behalf of the rich. Oh yes.

Finally, a program came on that dealt directly with the problem of the poor in New Mexico, which is an ongoing situation, never resolved, nor is it necessarily resolveable. There is Tradition, after all, and Tradition in New Mexico is very, very strong. There is Culture. There is Social Conditioning.

All these factors were recognized, and they were condemned by a flack from something called The Rio Grande Foundation, whose premise was that New Mexicans are poor because they are dependent on the one hand, and their culture doesn't allow them to innovate or become enterpreneurs except to the extent their padron permits.

They are dependent on Government, according to the flack, to an extent not seen anywhere else in the country, and so they are poor. Government is so bloated in New Mexico that it sucks up all the resources for itself leaving nothing for innovative enterpreneurs. Who are oppressed by the padron system that keeps everyone dependent on Government. Government is so bloated in New Mexico that there are eight campuses of four year state universities -- compared to only two in Arizona.

And so on and so forth. It was fascinating, and I didn't hear anyone call in to correct the record. What this flack was proposing was that New Mexico become more like Arizona, reduce or eliminate dependence on Government, get rid of the padron system, and everybody become independent enterpreneurs innovating all kinds of neat stuff that will make everybody rich.

Uhhh....

Anybody been to Arizona lately? Oh. Not working out so well, all in all, and not so innovative nor so independent of "Government" as the flack believes. And New Mexico is not nearly so absent enterpreneurial spirit as the flack insists.

The notion that everyone should be "independent" is one of those deeply rooted Libertarian ideological premises that resonates strongly with a certain class of Americans, but it doesn't work in practice. If the issue is the poverty of New Mexicans, making them all "independent" simply worsens their situation, it doesn't improve it. But then it also makes exploitation even easier than it already is. Which is the point of advocating "independence." It's a predatory imperative.

And most people instinctively want to protect themselves -- through mutual assistance -- from predation.

New Mexicans have been doing that for quite a long time. It's worked out pretty well all in all for all kinds of people. Those who would prefer to predate may wish to do so in Arizona, where the Liberty for Predators is fundamental.

If I have more time, I'll cogitate on this dichotomy some more...

Redoing the Constitution on Principles of Dignity and Justice

Dignity and Justice

Recently, our friends on the right have taken direct aim at provision of the Constitution that they don’t like, mostly amendments like the 14th, but opening the notion that the Constitution itself is outdated and should probably be “revisited.”

This has meant that many of those on the so-called Left, by default, must defend the Constitutional status quo, even though, many, like me, believe that the Constitution is an anachronism, faulty, and has long been an impediment to progress.

So what will happen -- regardless of whether there are any substantive revisions to the Constitution -- is that discussion of revision will take place from the right, primarily on the premise of 1) strengthening the executive, 2) curtailing or eliminating individual rights, 3) institutionalizing economic rule by the wealthy.

We might see a revision of the concept of “Law” to provide a Constitutional foundation for the long time practice of one Law for the rich, another -- and much harsher -- Law for everyone else. We might see a reversion to “States’ Rights” by which the several states may override Federal Law.

Whatever the case, our friends on the Right are not shy at all about re-doing the Constitution (or substituting the Confederate Constitution) to suit themselves.

Those on the Left bleat pathetically that “Things Are Fine As They Are. Leave the Constitution alone!!!”

But they’re not fine.

They haven’t been for a long time, if they ever were. And rather than a defensive posture, why not take an aggressive stance and demand changes to the Constitution that actually serve the interests of the People rather than letting the Rabid Right prattle about changes that would only serve the Oligarchy?

Peoples Dignity and Justice should be the principles on which a New Constitution is formulated, and we should not be the least bit shy about it and what’s needed.

We can start with the premise that the way things are isn’t working, and they aren’t working because of institutional rot on the one hand and Constitutional imperfection on the other. The way things are -- basically a very corrupted Imperial-Security State run by and for the profit of a very few individuals and interests -- is a direct product of the nature of the Constitution adopted in 1789.

So how would I change it?

First, abolish the Senate.

Second, abolish lifetime judicial appointments.

Third, expand the House of Representatives, by at least double, triple would be better.

Fourth, abolish the states.

Fifth, develop and implement autonomous regions in place of states.

Sixth, develop and implement economic as well as political rights.

Seventh, restrict and limit war-making powers ; institutionalize a defensive military subject to civilian control.

Eighth, restrict and limit the national executive authority .

Ninth, abolish all courts, departments, agencies and bureaus of the current Federal government and replace them only as necessary and as authorized by the representatives of the People.

That’s a start.

Just a start.

If these Constitutional revisions (actually, re-writing the whole thing) were considered on the basis of common human rights, dignity and justice, we'd see a transformed American experiment in self-determination and self-government.

The time has come...

(Note, I'm traveling at least until next week. Posting here may therefore be limited.)

On Redoing the Constitution

You may have noticed that the Rabid Right Wing Noise Machine is banging the drum for a "revisit" of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the ostensible reason being that these foreigners, they come here only to "drop a baby," and thus secure an anchor for citizenship.

But this isn't the only amendment they have issues with; by no means. They have objections to the first, fourth, fifth and sixth; they believe the tenth has long been violated in spirit and substance. Given their druthers, they'd do away with the 17th Amendment, and if you drill down far enough, you'd probably find plenty of TeaBagging ravers who want to overturn the 13th, 15th and 16th Amendments as well as the 19th. But why stop there?

They have issues. You see. And if they had the opportunity, I don't doubt they'd love to start over from scratch, and a whole lot of them would simply prefer to substitute the Confederate Constitution -- with slight modifications.

It's the 14th Amendment's provision of automatic citizenship to those born in the United States or under its jurisdiction that they've chosen as the wedge leading to redoing the whole damn thing.

It's a pretty brilliant ploy. There is a lot of anti-immigrant feeling in the United States due in part to malingering racism (the immigrants are mostly from South of the Border, don't you know) and to the dreadful economic conditions for most Americans.

Pitting one group against another is the time honored ploy of the Ruling Class to ensure their own top-doggedness through all the vicissitudes of popular sentiment.

But in this case, given the general contempt for the Constitution that pervades the Ruling Class (cf: recent Palace regimes) and the contempt for particular provisions of the Constitution that offend the sensibilities of the vocal TeaBagging Brownshirts, it looks very much like this "Movement to Revisit" -- starting with the 14th Amendment -- which is actually the key to the whole Constitutional notion of extending the protections of the Constitution to all Americans, and defining who Americans are -- is the opening salvo in a campaign to openly overthrow the Constitution itself.

And start over?

Well, that's yet to be seen. The point is that the Government has essentially already divorced itself from The People, and over time, it has become the increasingly common practice of The Government to ignore the Constitution when it chooses to. This is a difficult concept to fathom, but it is more and more apparent that the Constitution is little more than a decoration when it comes to actual operations by the Government in all its branches and majesty. The Executive routinely pays it no mind -- with no consequences. The Congress is too corrupted to consider the Constitution, more concerned always with its own rules and perks. The Courts have a very spotty record of following the Constitution and the law, rather than creating out of whole cloth "law" and "Constitutional support" for their generally mindless political positions.

In practice, the military and the bureaucracy do what they're told -- by corrupt and anti-constitutional officials.

So why not start over?

I've advocated no less myself. But isn't it interesting that those who would take up the challenge are fierce anti-constitutionalists operating on the Right Wing, whereas I would look to revise our Constitutional underpinnings from the Left? And isn't it further interesting that so-called Leftists are now in the position of having to defend the status quo Constitution from the depredations of the Right Wing barbarians, whereas many on the Left would be more inclined toward revision themselves if given their druthers?

What's happening with the 14th Amendment may not go anywhere, but it is an example -- yet again -- of how the Right Wing in this country consistently takes the lead for real change toward a far more authoritarian, oppressive and exploitative future, while the Left sits passive or at best parenthetically defends the status quo.

This is how the nation keeps moving rightward.

To the point where it wouldn't be surprising to see the whole "equal protection" framework of the 14th Amendment and thus the Constitution itself overthrown -- in order to satisfy some deep need to protect and defend the nation from Brown Babies.

"What the Fuck Are You Doing, McCord?"

For all the attention Breitbart and Julian have garnered the last few weeks, it is people like Ethan McCord and Shirley Sherrod who are the ones really making the difference.

They speak out and speak truth to power, they take action, they cause and are "change."

They are the heroes if there are any real heroes any more.

The Takeaway -- Sherrod vs Breitbart, Julian Assange vs the Man

The contrast between the way the Government/Mediaplex behaved toward the Sherrod story as injected into the public square by Andrew Breitbart and the WikiLeaks "War Log" story as carefully handled by the Consortium of Media Partners Which Included WikiLeaks (aka Julian), the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian UK, could not be more striking.

Yet there are many similarities.

In both cases, "incendiary" individuals were given a platform -- indeed, multiple platforms -- from which to "incite." Exactly what is being incited is never really clear. I guess it depends on what emotions are stirred up. Breitbart was given a platform to stir up racial animosities, and -- even on FOX -- he was pretty quickly shot down. Certainly CNN squashed him and his little false story line like a bug. The issue became one of the inappropriate influence "bloggers" have on the mainstream "news," and the outrageousness of Government reacting to this sort of incitement.

"Bloggers" are circling the wagons, though the lefties want to leave Breitbart outside the protective circle. It seems clear though that there is a deep underlying admiration for Breitbart throughout the blogosphere: he can git 'er done. He absolutely ruled the media and the government for a whole week. That is Blog Power!

Julian is not considered a "blogger" but instead is seen more as a muckraker or investigative journalist. To me, that's an extraordinary stretch, but whatever. The point is that Julian causes a ruckus among the Powers That Be -- much like Breitbart -- by "exposing their secrets," except that what Julian exposes is not really all that secret, and the ruckus is typically between factions within the Government (for example between the Pro-War and the Slow-War factions) rather than engaging the public.

There's the difference right there: Breitbart does engage the public in his phony little crusades; to a surprising extent, Julian does not.

Breitbart is a useful tool to some very powerful interests, but they don't seem to be interests within the Government. They appear to be essentially Southern racist elements outside the Government that insist on trying anything in their power to get the Government/Mediaplex to react embarrassingly. And they are very successful. It's not just about provoking a reaction though. It is -- at least from all appearances -- about provoking a reaction that 1) harms the Government as an institution; 2) harms specific black people who have run afoul of the provocateurs.

Julian, on the other hand, seems to serve the interests of factions within the Government, factions that are almost entirely out of public view, and the reaction more strongly resembles a contest between two equally bloodthirsty elements in the Government, with the Mediaplex serving almost as referee/mediator.

The "Collateral Murder" video last April went into very heavy rotation and Julian was on all the shows declaring his dedication to the Truth, yadda yadda, and then it went away. Another investigation was done and the soldiers involved were cleared. But some of the soldiers involved in the incident have gone public with their own reservations about what took place in that incident, but even more importantly they have reminded Americans that what happened in the video is policy that goes on every day. It's not an aberration.



Many Americans, unfortunately, think that's just grand.

The WarLog Document Dump was initially seen as relatively benign because it was vetted by three well-regarded members of the Global Mediaplex and assurances were made that nothing that would jeopardize "security" -- whatever that means -- or put individuals at risk would be revealed. Instead, there would be a coordinated, high profile, media release timed with the WikiLeaks release to clarify and amplify what the documents show.

At least that was the plan.

Now it seems to have gone off the rails because (according to some reports) individuals are named and the documents weren't scrubbed thoroughly or even very well, and this is causing no end of heartburn in all the Powerful circle where it was at first believed that this would not be a problem. Indeed, until the last couple of days, Julian had all but been adopted by his "media partners" (and one would assume the Government) as a "responsible" member. Well, that may not come to pass in the end.

The irony is that they seem to want Julian as part of the Team whereas they seem to be saddled with the likes of Breitbart instead.

Meanwhile, Shirley and Charles Sherrod have emerged as quintessential Americans and the military and the Government have once again been put on the spot. How it will shake out after Labor Day is anybody's guess. But if the Sherrods (Shirley says now she will sue) can maintain the profile they've cultivated through this mess, I have real hope for the future.

There will always be a question in my mind about Julian's real role in all this though. More and more people are growing suspicious of him and his motives and just what he's setting out to accomplish and on whose behalf. It seems clear that he is working for somebody. The fact that we don't know who may be the tip off.

At the same time that more and more people are growing suspicious of him, more and more are hailing him The Hero and putting their Faith and Hope and Trust in him and his ability to provide leaks of Secrets. I know people need that hope and want to have faith, so it's hard for me to criticize it too much. On the other hand, after the immense disappointment so many self-described progressives have with the Obama team, it might be better in the short and the long run not to put faith and hope and trust into any media-driven Heroic Figure.

It's a thought...

The Sherrods vs Hysteria

Last Monday, the media and the White House exploded with hysteria over the edited video clip of Shirley Sherrod of Georgia giving a speech in March to the NAACP at an awards ceremony in DC(?). The video was marketed and promoted by Andrew Breitbart, a notorious scammer, and was purported to show a black Federal worker exposed as a racist before the racist NAACP. According to Breitbart, this was "get back" for the NAACP's call on the TeaBaggers to denounce the racists in their midst.

The White House and Agriculture Department behaved very badly indeed in this instance, for they summarily dismissed Shirley Sherrod -- actually, they required and got her immediate resignation -- within hours, if not minutes, of the posting of the video on one of Breitbart's websites, even before the thing had entered common knowledge and heavy rotation on the cable channels.

But then, the cable channels didn't actually behave any better. FOX of course was leading the charge to pillory and ostracize Ms Sherrod, and most of the other "news" channels just mindlessly followed suit. Were it not for the fact that Shirley Sherrod was in Georgia, near enough to CNN's headquarters in Atlanta, the record might not have been corrected.

But she was in Georgia and she made many appearances on CNN to counter the lies of Andrew Breitbart -- who also made many appearances on all the shows, though they never appeared together -- and to denounce FOX and challenge the White House and Agriculture Department for yielding to hysteria stirred up by FOX and Breitbart.

Ultimately, CNN made a special biographical program to explain to viewers who Shirley and Charles Sherrod are in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and what they have done in the context of rural Georgia and the preservation of farmlands and farm life for blacks and whites.

Breitbart seemed like a goon and the Government seemed out of touch and hysterical to say the least.

Ultimately, the Sherrods came out of last week's media-storm -- and White House and USDA stumble-bumming -- smelling like roses, whereas Breitbart was pummeled from every direction imaginable. Yet, according to Palace wags, he'll survive, stronger than before. He did not back down. Nor, unlike the Government, did he apologize.

I've made a number of points about this incident:

• 1) One man, Andrew Breitbart, was able to paralyze and control both media and the Government for nearly a week, by simply posting what turned out to be a misleadingly edited video clip on his website. Though the Sherrods came out of this looking very good, Breitbart was the master of what went on. Simply by posting his deceptive video clip, nearly every other story was jettisoned, a dedicated public servant was forced out of her position with the Federal Government, an action that then required "walking back" and numerous apologies for not "hearing the whole story." The media -- all of it -- was completely consumed with the saga for day after day. The media was being driven by Breitbart, and to a much lesser extent by Shirley Sherrod.
  
  
• 2) What happened demonstrated the weakness of the Government and the mindlessness of the media. Combined, the two appear to hold nearly tyrannical power over Americans, but the facts shown here demonstrated just the opposite. In fact, it was Andrew Breitbart who controlled both. That is extraordinary, and it is very dangerous. It's not so much "who" was the controlling entity, it is that the apparatus of both media and the Government could be controlled by a single individual at all. This not only indicates weakness, it implies irrelevance. When you think about what that means in the context of the WaPo's "Secret Government" series, it should put the Dread into nearly everyone.

But the fact was that pointing out the implications of what happened was met with a chorus of denial and boos. It's very hard to recognize how weak our Government really is when we are being told over and over again that it is a tyranny. Well, yes, it is, but it is a surprisingly weak tyranny. If one man, Andrew Breitbart, can control it so easily, think what a more public minded individual might be able to do.

Breitbart used a time-honored tactic, that of the "whistle-blower" to put his evil plan in motion. He had video "proof" of racists within the Government and at the NAACP, and he was blowing the whistle on them.

For its part, the Government -- apparently in the person of Cheryl Cook, Deputy Director of the USDA and one assumes a career civil servant -- demanded the immediate resignation of Shirley Sherrod even before the "proof" was in wide circulation or in fact had circulated beyond Breitbart's site much at all. This is stunning, and there are many implications. Was Ms Cook monitoring Breitbart and FOX on the internet? Did she report what Breitbart had "discovered?" Was it her recommendation and decision to terminate Ms Sherrod with prejudice? And was that decision then made the policy of the Government? What a mess. And who, exactly, is Cheryl Cook to be making these decisions -- if that's what happened?

We don't know. Ms Cook has been in seclusion from day one, unaccountable and inaccessible. Is she a factional player? We don't know. All I can say is that I have seen this sort of thing happen in Federal service. Without a fair hearing -- or any hearing at all in some cases -- employees will be forced out, either through resignation or firing, on the accusation of some impropriety or other without evidence or proof, or as I have seen happen, when the actual evidence contradicts the accusations. It happens suddenly, without warning, and sometimes with such determination that the victim has no chance to respond until after the events have transpired. I was one of the ones who intervened when this situation developed in my agency. So far as I knew, it was not a partisan issue, but it was an issue of hysteria ginned up by someone with a grudge who then was able to convince a supervisor to act in ignorance and haste.

The first time I saw it happen, I thought it was an aberration; then I saw it happen again. And then I realized this behavior was part of the institutional culture and that, when there was no intervention, the perpetrators could be handsomely rewarded, even if the victim eventually sued and won.

Ultimately I realized it is a self-protective action by the institution itself. Although there are real people involved, and there may be personal issues at the bottom of it, the process is often so mindless -- literally -- that it is not a personal matter. It is the Institution reacting to some perception of threat.

Based on what I've seen in the past, my suspicion is that Shirley Sherrod had been targeted and was being monitored prior to this incident, probably due to her history and her apparent newness to the Agency as an employee, as a "potential threat." Knowing something of who she was (she had pressed and won an enormous discrimination suit against the very Agency that now employed her) I'm sure close tabs were being kept on her and her activities. Although I have no idea who Cheryl Cook is or if she is a factional player in the USDA (wouldn't surprise me if she were), my instinct says she acted on her own to "protect the agency" from potential harm once she saw that Sherrod was being targeted by Breitbart. How she learned of that becomes a matter of some interest. I would guess that she was contacted directly by... someone. But I'm noodling here. What really happened will probably never be investigated let alone known, and Cheryl Cook will probably get an award. That's how these things work.

-- To be continued

Leaks -- Part Ia (Now with 2xUPDATE!!! )

Of course today, three publications -- Der Spiegel, the New York Times, and the Guardian UK -- put out stories on the 90,000 field reports from Afghanistan that detail what a cockup that little endeavor has been from the outset. These reports were delivered to these publications more than a month ago with the proviso that they not be reported on until WikiLeaks "officially" released them today.

What? How is it that these three prestigious publications would agree to such terms? Especially if, as was reported in the NYT, the entire document dump was delivered weeks ago, and the Times has spent the interim following up, doing additional investigation and reporting and getting confirmations? If the news was so important, wouldn't they have reported it -- even in truncated form -- many days or weeks ago? Instead, they were mediating conversations between the White House and Julian Assange.

Andrew Breitbart was able to paralyze and direct the media and the Government last week; this week it is Julian Assange's turn.

Something's not right.

Something is definitely not right.

Factions within Government is my suspicion, still. The amount of material in this "leak" is daunting, so daunting I doubt anyone will read it all. But no matter. The point is that things have never been what we were being told they were in Afghanistan. Things are worse. Much worse.

My impression is that this "leak" is intended to set the stage for withdrawal. But there are wheels within wheels. More than meets the eye.

Guardian UK

New York Times

Der Spiegel

===========================================
UPDATE -- Interesting.

Julian says:

We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.

The New York Times says:

The Times and the other news organizations agreed at the outset that we would not disclose — either in our articles or any of our online supplementary material — anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardize military or antiterrorist operations. We have, for example, withheld any names of operatives in the field and informants cited in the reports. We have avoided anything that might compromise American or allied intelligence-gathering methods such as communications intercepts. We have not linked to the archives of raw material. At the request of the White House, The Times also urged WikiLeaks to withhold any harmful material from its Web site.

Now I'm sure there is a perfectly acceptable rationalization for the remarkable similarity between what Julian says his source asked and what the White House asked of WikiLeaks through the New York Times.

Could someone in the White House be the source?

Fascinating.

===================================

UPDATE -- And another thing.

It will be more than interesting to see if Julian is on all the shows again, and if this story is the lead story for the rest of the week, just as Andrew Breitbart was on all the shows and his smear of Shirley Sherrod was the lead story for most of last week.

In addition to which, I wonder if the same faction is behind both "whistle-blower" events.

On Whistle Blowers, Charles and Shirley Sherrod, and the Predominant National Security State -- Part I

From the title of this post, you can get an idea of why I've been away from blogging here for a while. I tried to put together something quickly in the midst of the Shirley Sherrod ginned up "controversy," but there was so much more going on and so much more that needed to be said. Even where to begin was problematical. But then I realized there was a common theme among issues swirling in the blogosphere and the mass media.

It starts with the concept of "Whistle Blowing."

What is it? Those who are either old enough or scholarly enough know who Daniel Ellsberg is, and they know he is a classic whistle-blower who released the Pentagon Papers to an eager (well...) New York Times back in the day, was hounded by Government (of which he had been a part) and the Shadow Government, and he was tried, though not convicted, of espionage and other crimes.

The Pentagon Papers that were at the center of all this revealed something that many people understood to be true in any case: the Government was strategically lying to the American people about (especially) the War in Vietnam, how it came to be, and how it was being pursued. The lies were non-stop, and they were deliberate.

The embarrassment to the Powers That Be cannot be underestimated. And this incident was intimately tied to Watergate. Among other things, the Watergate burglars had broken into the offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to gain whatever incriminating evidence the could of his purported madness. (This was a field of CYA pioneered by the Nazis and Stalinists when time was: opposition to the State was defined as "madness" and so opponents were dismissible on the grounds that they were Crazy; it's still in practice. It often works.)

Watergate was another big whistle-blower event, though what was actually going on is not necessarily what the Mythology of the Era would have us believe. Nixon was driven out of office to be sure, but not because of the intrepid reporting of Woodward and Bernstein and the dogged determination of Katherine Graham to get him -- for whatever personal and class reasons she felt obligated to follow.

Nevertheless, those two whistle-blower incidents -- one involving the release of classified documents to the New York Times, one involving intrepid reporting of leads and information coming from an anonymous (as it turned out, FBI) source -- have become iconic. Both of them severely damaged the Government's cover, and in the case of Nixon, the Government itself, in pursuit of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way."

Well. That's as may be.

After Watergate, the Government learned how to be much better at preserving, protecting and defending itself from the sticky fingers and prying eyes of the Unwashed Masses. Simultaneously with this inward protection, the Government put forth all sorts of "reforms" to protect whistle-blowers and to open its operations to public scrutiny. Reforms that have had some effect, to be sure, but to what object may be questioned.

For example, I've pointed out in other fora that whistle-blower protections have led to thousands of whistle-blower complaints and reports every year, every one of which has to be investigated, and many of which are the result of personal animosities and issues, charges of unfair employment practices, charges of sexual harassment, or self-righteous indignation at... something, just what isn't always clear.

I know this because I had to deal directly or indirectly with some of these cases while I was a Federal employee.

Very, very rarely is there an internal whistle-blower case that is actually one that merits the kinds of protections that are assumed to be provided to whistle-blowers who are revealing the illegal acts and misdeeds of Government officials -- in the manner of Watergate, et al.

No, that's not what goes on. Not for the most part. And when there are legitimate reports or complaints of high-level misconduct -- which does happen from time to time -- there is (or was) generally some kind of action, including dismissal, indictment, trial, or what have you. But the misconduct that gets the whistle blown internally is usually minor or non-existent.

The argument that Government operates too much in secret is true and false simultaneously. Government is widely open to scrutiny, though conducting that scrutiny can be difficult because the operations of Government are typically so complex, layered and documented to a fare-thee-well.

On the other hand, there are layered secrets, and to an increasing extent, there is a Secret Government that operates almost entirely outside the public view. In addition, there is a growing private contractor sector that operates in concert with the Secret Security State Government. All of this is nearly impenetrable -- except to the extent this Secret State chooses to be open with the public.

The private sector, especially the large scale transnational corporate sector, is so intimately integrated with the higher levels of the Government of the United States that they are nearly indistinguishable (viz: the Gulf Oil Disaster). At those levels, it is often difficult or impossible to obtain accurate and/or truthful information.

Just so with the Government's warmaking operations. Lies are their stock in trade, and because rational people are rightly scared to death of that warmaking being turned on them, it is typical for the lies of our warmakers to be accepted (at least superficially) without question. At least the first time around.

And the Government has learned the value of Strategic Leaks and Pseudo-Whistle Blowing. It has become so adept at strategic leaks that I tend to discount almost everything that is promoted in the mainstream (and parts of the non-mainstream as well) as a "whistle blowing leak". There's just too much false information in the system. Too many incentives to shape perceptions. Too many opportunities to control the message by any means necessary.

In other words, Government whistle-blowing is not what it is made out to be; and just as a side note, Government employees are encouraged to report waste, fraud, abuse, and illegal activities; they are protected while investigations are under way, and if wrongdoing in revealed, it is generally, though not always, corrected and if there is illegality involved, prosecutions are likely. The Federal Government is 1) full of snitches; 2) highly Puritanical by nature. And the first objective of Government is self-preservation. It has the Institutional wherewithal to secure its survival.

Of course there are those who assert that Government is by nature criminal, and as such, a close eye must be kept on its operations at all levels and at all times. I've often wondered who is supposed to be keeping this "eye" on the criminal Government. The answer, when there is one, is the "Media" -- in the broadest sense. The idea being that if the Media is "doing its job" there will be plenty of Ellsbergs and Deep Throats and what not, and the secrets of Government will be exposed to the disinfecting light of day.

Nonsense. That isn't how it works. The major mass media are effectively Public Relations arms of the Government -- or rather, of factions within the Government -- and it is very rare that they will reveal secrets that will in any way jeopardize the cozy relationships between Government and the Media, or that they would do anything that would seriously jeopardize the security and survival of the Government itself.

What seems unclear to those who advocate the kind of whistle-blowing that was done in the '70's it was a very rare set of circumstances, and what happened was highly unusual. Because it was a threat to the security and survival of the Government itself, procedures and practices were instituted that were designed to ensure that kind of whistle-blowing threat never happened again.

That's part of why I am so skeptical of the WikiLeaks parade. There is not much "there" there in the WikiLeaks leaks, for one thing. Certainly nothing comparable to the Pentagon Papers and what they revealed. The fact that the Pentagon immediately verified the authenticity of the "Collateral Murder" video and that it went on immediate heavy rotation on all the news channels was a tip off to me that this thing was not what it appeared to be. It was, I thought, and still think, more likely a Honey Trap to lure would-be leakers so that they could be more easily hunted down, much as I tend to think Adrian Lamo was being used in his eventual bagging of Bradley Manning.

Those who are so certain that WikiLeaks is not what I suspect it is seem to have a very heavy investment in the notion that WikiLeaks is on the up and up. They seem to have a desperate need for something like WikiLeaks to feed them the Truth. They don't seem to know -- or to want to know -- that Government is not going to permit leaks and whistle blowing that jeopardize the internal ability of the Government to survive, and they don't seem to understand how pervasive is Government's use of strategic leaks to further its own agenda, even though they chatter about it all the time.