Psst, Peace
We occasionally hear scoops about secret wars, like the ones Washington is currently running from the Philippines to the Horn of Africa. But how often do we hear about something even more threatening to our empire: secret peace?
One just broke out in Latin America that must have Obama and Hillary gnashing their teeth. Colombia and Venezuela, historically one country but lately at each other’s throat, have kissed and made up. That’s been big news south of the border but remains all but classified in the U.S. because it’s bad news for Washington’s never-ending divide and conquer plans for the region. What’s more, it jars the propaganda assumptions of the media.
Colombia, which specializes in cocaine and conservative regimes, has long been Washington’s favorite in Latin America. It’s reputation on the continent is that of a “death squad democracy,” where political campaigns feature rightists gunning down leftists. This has occasioned surviving leftists to take up guerrilla war against the state and support themselves by coca dealing. Their 60 year insurgency has given Washington an ongoing opportunity to lavish billions on favored contractors and mercenaries by “aiding” and “advising” the Colombian military’s battle against blow and bolsheviki.
Colombia was also supposed to come in handy as a forward base in Washington’s continuing scheming to overthrow the leftist government that the neighboring Venezuelans have disobediently dared to elect and reelect. Obama pressed the Colombians to give over seven more bases to the Pentagon, with their personnel exempt from local law. In other words, Americans could “tune up” or “take out” any Colombians, not to mention Venezuelans, at their whim.
Under increased threat, Venezuela brought up troops to the border. It also broke diplomatic relations with Colombia and, more importantly, cut off billions in trade. Meanwhile, the Colombian supreme court declared the base deal unconstitutional, while the country elected a new president who, unlike his predecessor, paid more attention to the howls of businesses going broke because of the trade rupture than to the stratagems of the Pentagon and CIA.
Diplomats on both sides of the border went to work. Relations were reestablished, the trade ban lifted, and agreements were forged on a host of mutual issues. President Chavez of Venezuela and new President Santos of Colombia had a couple of friendly meetings. The talk turned from war to peace. And Santos even proclaimed Chavez his "new best friend."
Colombia is still right and Venezuela still left. But most importantly both are still offspring of Bolivar. Right and left, they have come to understand that they have more to gain by being good neighbors to each other than by beating each other up at the service of the expiring imperio yanqui.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
We Told You So
Two years ago, the Dems won the presidency and both houses of congress by big majorities. The result has been that the minority Reps remain in de facto control of Washington and have moved the country farther to the right while the Dems are dismissed left and right as wimps and woosies.
Presiding over this debacle is capitulator-in-chief Barack Obama. Lots of folks are disappointed in him. But not here at Karman Turn. We had him figured right from the git-go. So join us for a brief jaunt down memory lane back to June 2009 when our pres told us all about what he was all about.
Two years ago, the Dems won the presidency and both houses of congress by big majorities. The result has been that the minority Reps remain in de facto control of Washington and have moved the country farther to the right while the Dems are dismissed left and right as wimps and woosies.
Presiding over this debacle is capitulator-in-chief Barack Obama. Lots of folks are disappointed in him. But not here at Karman Turn. We had him figured right from the git-go. So join us for a brief jaunt down memory lane back to June 2009 when our pres told us all about what he was all about.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Our Pecuniary Pecking Order
The other day President Obama announced a freeze on the salaries of fed workers. They’re lucky compared to the hundreds of thousands of state and local government workers getting the boot. At the same time, Wall Street reported record profits and rich bonuses.
I’ve never been a fan of capitalism. But I have always believed that since it’s the prevailing system everyone should get to play by its first rule that you grab everything you can and the hell with everyone else. Certainly, that’s exactly what Wall Street and corporate America do. Hedge fund managers and insurance execs take home billions for not producing a single useful item or service. No one dares place a limit on their pelf. That would be un-American and socialistic. But that privilege of unlimited accretion is allowed to just a few. If organized workers used their solidarity to demand sky high wages, our rulers, as they have done countless times in the past, would sic the dogs on them.
In fact, we Americans have very strict, and often inane, notions about how much money different groups of us should be allowed to make. As noted, Wall Street and big business get the no-limit license. So do showbiz, sports and government contracting. When we hear about people in those ranks being preposterously paid, we envy them and take pride in a country that allows them such success. But when the poor and working classes manage to wangle a few extra bucks out of the system we turn spiteful and claim that their sloth and greed is what’s ruining America.
Take these two examples: A poor man scuffles by on Uncle Sam’s handouts. Since he appears able-bodied, we condemn him for sponging on us and demand the government stop the sops to him and his ilk. Now imagine a trust fund brat who's never worked a day in his life, but takes in millions of the Uncle Sam’s bucks in the form of interest on government bonds he’s inherited. At worst, we’ll call him a playboy. Few would resent the money he’s siphoning from Uncle Sam or fume that people like him were adding to the national debt.
These antic attitudes are part of what has given these United States the most extreme concentration of wealth anywhere outside of banana republics where a few families own entire countries. The numbers are staggering. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have more bucks than circulate in teeming continents. Yet this debilitating constipation of cash bothers just a few lefties and academics.
Tea Baggers, the noisiest political bunch at the moment, are running around bitching that there’s still too much “sharing of wealth,” meaning that ever more concentration is called for. This despite the fact that the estimable Messrs Gates and Buffet have repeatedly offered that they already stow more than enough swag and are even willing to pay higher taxes.
Out there in Christendom, a different view prevails. Many adhere to Anatole’s France’s view that behind every great fortune there is a crime. Therefore, the wealthy are not particularly admired or trusted, while the lesser classes have a greater sense of solidarity. They think the world would be a better place if the rich had less and the rest more. And even though more equitable societies boast happier people, that sort of talk is tantamount to treason on this the savage side of the Atlantic.
The other day President Obama announced a freeze on the salaries of fed workers. They’re lucky compared to the hundreds of thousands of state and local government workers getting the boot. At the same time, Wall Street reported record profits and rich bonuses.
I’ve never been a fan of capitalism. But I have always believed that since it’s the prevailing system everyone should get to play by its first rule that you grab everything you can and the hell with everyone else. Certainly, that’s exactly what Wall Street and corporate America do. Hedge fund managers and insurance execs take home billions for not producing a single useful item or service. No one dares place a limit on their pelf. That would be un-American and socialistic. But that privilege of unlimited accretion is allowed to just a few. If organized workers used their solidarity to demand sky high wages, our rulers, as they have done countless times in the past, would sic the dogs on them.
In fact, we Americans have very strict, and often inane, notions about how much money different groups of us should be allowed to make. As noted, Wall Street and big business get the no-limit license. So do showbiz, sports and government contracting. When we hear about people in those ranks being preposterously paid, we envy them and take pride in a country that allows them such success. But when the poor and working classes manage to wangle a few extra bucks out of the system we turn spiteful and claim that their sloth and greed is what’s ruining America.
Take these two examples: A poor man scuffles by on Uncle Sam’s handouts. Since he appears able-bodied, we condemn him for sponging on us and demand the government stop the sops to him and his ilk. Now imagine a trust fund brat who's never worked a day in his life, but takes in millions of the Uncle Sam’s bucks in the form of interest on government bonds he’s inherited. At worst, we’ll call him a playboy. Few would resent the money he’s siphoning from Uncle Sam or fume that people like him were adding to the national debt.
These antic attitudes are part of what has given these United States the most extreme concentration of wealth anywhere outside of banana republics where a few families own entire countries. The numbers are staggering. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have more bucks than circulate in teeming continents. Yet this debilitating constipation of cash bothers just a few lefties and academics.
Tea Baggers, the noisiest political bunch at the moment, are running around bitching that there’s still too much “sharing of wealth,” meaning that ever more concentration is called for. This despite the fact that the estimable Messrs Gates and Buffet have repeatedly offered that they already stow more than enough swag and are even willing to pay higher taxes.
Out there in Christendom, a different view prevails. Many adhere to Anatole’s France’s view that behind every great fortune there is a crime. Therefore, the wealthy are not particularly admired or trusted, while the lesser classes have a greater sense of solidarity. They think the world would be a better place if the rich had less and the rest more. And even though more equitable societies boast happier people, that sort of talk is tantamount to treason on this the savage side of the Atlantic.
Friday, November 19, 2010
A Detour To Dallas
Forty seven years back. A crisp autumn Friday. Just about one p.m. I was shaving. Getting ready to work the night trick across the Hudson at a paper in Bergen County. I covered four towns. My favorite was the sliver of grungy waterfront under the shadow of the George Washington Bridge called Edgewater. It was loaded with interesting insular characters who had never been across the half mile of river to Manhattan because they had no reason or desire to go there. So much for the lure of bright lights. Mounted on the wall behind the police chief’s desk was a tommy gun, a souvenir from Prohibition days when bootleggers stashed their goods in the caves tucked under the palisades in Edgewater.
Friday nights were easy because there were no town meetings to attend. I’d just copy the blotters at the four police headquarters. I’d write them up at the office and do a few obits, social notes and stuff. With luck, I was out of Jersey by eight or so and heading down to the Village in my zippy Corvair (the model later made notorious by Ralph Nader as a “one-car-accident”).
It was just about one, and me with my face foamed, when WINS delivered the bulletin: a shooting in Dallas involving the president! In no time, they were talking about a Cuban connection. A CBS reporter I knew called to ask if I had run across a certain Lee Oswald in Cuba? That September I had gotten back from a lefty student trip to the island that was supposed to last two weeks but had stretched out to two months. No. I never met any Oswalds, there or here.
I got to Jersey about dinner time and did my rounds. There was only one subject of conversation and one common mood: a bewildered sadness and uncertainty. Everyone was benumbed.
Along with the rest of the country, I spent the weekend in front of the tube. I had one eye on my Sunday Times and one eye on the set the morning Ruby shot Oswald. Looking back, I got exactly the same feeling as when the second World Trade tower was hit. Something big, hidden and awful was happening. There was obviously more to this than two discrete dementos.
But soon enough the media was pounding into us that Oswald had shot Kennedy for no good reason and Ruby had then shot Oswald for no bad one. We were told that the interesting, if not downright sinister, biographies and associations of those two characters, were unimportant to the case. The all but perfect incompetence of the Dallas cops (who never took down a statement from Oswald because it was Friday and the stenographer had gone home) was just another pointless coincidence. The non-stop message was trust the government, there was less here than meets the eye. Nothing to see, folks. Move along.
First, we got the FBI report from J. Edgar: No conspiracy, no magic bullet. Then the Warren Commission report: no conspiracy, but yes, a magic bullet. Finally in the 70s came the House Select Committee report: conspiracy likely, but forget about it. Ever since, the country has been divided between a large majority of citizens (now dying off) who still smell a rat, and a small but powerful government/media elite armed with spray cans of air freshener.
Just about all the principals in the JFK assassination are long gone. Some files have been thrown open but lots of secrets are still kept (about Lincoln’s assassination as well). This is not to cover anyone’s ass, but to maintain the myth that it’s not necessary in America to read Shakespeare or Acton or Gibbon or the chronicles of the Romans. That’s because we have nothing to learn from history. We are blessed in that our leaders, like our country, are exceptionally good, and therefore incapable of the crimes, conspiracies and cover ups that mark the power arrangements everywhere else on earth. Who would claim otherwise but some wacko conspiracy theorist?
In February of ‘64, just a couple of months after the assassination, I was driving across country with Bob Dylan, Victor Maimudes and Paul Clayton. Like morbid tourists, we detoured into Dallas looking for Dealey Plaza. We finally inquired of some passing duffer. “Oh, you mean where they shot that sonofabitch Kennedy?” he said with a big grin.
They?
Forty seven years back. A crisp autumn Friday. Just about one p.m. I was shaving. Getting ready to work the night trick across the Hudson at a paper in Bergen County. I covered four towns. My favorite was the sliver of grungy waterfront under the shadow of the George Washington Bridge called Edgewater. It was loaded with interesting insular characters who had never been across the half mile of river to Manhattan because they had no reason or desire to go there. So much for the lure of bright lights. Mounted on the wall behind the police chief’s desk was a tommy gun, a souvenir from Prohibition days when bootleggers stashed their goods in the caves tucked under the palisades in Edgewater.
Friday nights were easy because there were no town meetings to attend. I’d just copy the blotters at the four police headquarters. I’d write them up at the office and do a few obits, social notes and stuff. With luck, I was out of Jersey by eight or so and heading down to the Village in my zippy Corvair (the model later made notorious by Ralph Nader as a “one-car-accident”).
It was just about one, and me with my face foamed, when WINS delivered the bulletin: a shooting in Dallas involving the president! In no time, they were talking about a Cuban connection. A CBS reporter I knew called to ask if I had run across a certain Lee Oswald in Cuba? That September I had gotten back from a lefty student trip to the island that was supposed to last two weeks but had stretched out to two months. No. I never met any Oswalds, there or here.
I got to Jersey about dinner time and did my rounds. There was only one subject of conversation and one common mood: a bewildered sadness and uncertainty. Everyone was benumbed.
Along with the rest of the country, I spent the weekend in front of the tube. I had one eye on my Sunday Times and one eye on the set the morning Ruby shot Oswald. Looking back, I got exactly the same feeling as when the second World Trade tower was hit. Something big, hidden and awful was happening. There was obviously more to this than two discrete dementos.
But soon enough the media was pounding into us that Oswald had shot Kennedy for no good reason and Ruby had then shot Oswald for no bad one. We were told that the interesting, if not downright sinister, biographies and associations of those two characters, were unimportant to the case. The all but perfect incompetence of the Dallas cops (who never took down a statement from Oswald because it was Friday and the stenographer had gone home) was just another pointless coincidence. The non-stop message was trust the government, there was less here than meets the eye. Nothing to see, folks. Move along.
First, we got the FBI report from J. Edgar: No conspiracy, no magic bullet. Then the Warren Commission report: no conspiracy, but yes, a magic bullet. Finally in the 70s came the House Select Committee report: conspiracy likely, but forget about it. Ever since, the country has been divided between a large majority of citizens (now dying off) who still smell a rat, and a small but powerful government/media elite armed with spray cans of air freshener.
Just about all the principals in the JFK assassination are long gone. Some files have been thrown open but lots of secrets are still kept (about Lincoln’s assassination as well). This is not to cover anyone’s ass, but to maintain the myth that it’s not necessary in America to read Shakespeare or Acton or Gibbon or the chronicles of the Romans. That’s because we have nothing to learn from history. We are blessed in that our leaders, like our country, are exceptionally good, and therefore incapable of the crimes, conspiracies and cover ups that mark the power arrangements everywhere else on earth. Who would claim otherwise but some wacko conspiracy theorist?
In February of ‘64, just a couple of months after the assassination, I was driving across country with Bob Dylan, Victor Maimudes and Paul Clayton. Like morbid tourists, we detoured into Dallas looking for Dealey Plaza. We finally inquired of some passing duffer. “Oh, you mean where they shot that sonofabitch Kennedy?” he said with a big grin.
They?
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Mendacious Mavens of the Middle
When the McCain-Palin campaign was looking a for a “leftist terrorist” to pin on Obama, the best they could come up with was college professor Bill Ayers, a 66-year-old erstwhile extremist who’d been keeping his nose clean for the last 40 years.
Back in the 60’s I bopped off to Cuba and wore my larynx out yelling revolutionary slogans. I’m now 71 and would happily accept a return to the glory days of the People’s Republic of Eisenhower. I try to keep up with the left, or what’s left of it, and haven’t noticed any nutty notions in decades. The vast majority of my former comrades have either given up on politics or attend the occasional peace rally. Those who remain activists are overwhelmingly safe and sane social democrats just now figuring out that Barack Obama never was and never will be one of them.
That’s not to deny that a few tattered fringistas from the 3rd, 4th or Positively 4th Street Internationals don’t erupt on the scene now and again. Hey, Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento! My point is that America’s meager left, across the spectrum from Hubert Humphrey pro-war liberals to raging Maoists, has long since gone the way of the Whigs. And the movement hasn’t been refreshed by much new blood since Wall Street figured out how to make money and tamp down youthful dissent by putting all the college kids in permanent hock with tuition loans.
So when I hear anyone nowadays condemn “extremists of both left and right,” as Jon Stewart repeatedly did at his big rally about nothing much in Washington a couple of Saturdays ago, I know I’m dealing with the clueless and/or mendacious.
Who besides senior citizen Bill Ayers and the even older Noam Chomsky do they have in mind? What ultra outrage are they referencing? The Battle of Seattle was over a decade ago. The last really big peace march was back in 2002. No, I take back the clueless option. Those who pretend that America is somehow annoyed, let alone threatened by, leftist extremists on a par with Glenn Beck or the various gun-crazy militias running around in the woods are full of shit! And they know it.
Whether in politics or personal life, positioning oneself mid-way between two supposed extremes is usually a cheap ploy rather than a considered judgment. We even have a name for for it: playing both sides against the middle. Politicians, our lowest form of life, find it useful for conning the widest possible range of constituents. Newspeople, the next lowest, are forever trying to convince their audiences that truth lies in the middle for the same reason. I go along with Texas populist Jim Hightower, who likes to say, there's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.
When the McCain-Palin campaign was looking a for a “leftist terrorist” to pin on Obama, the best they could come up with was college professor Bill Ayers, a 66-year-old erstwhile extremist who’d been keeping his nose clean for the last 40 years.
Back in the 60’s I bopped off to Cuba and wore my larynx out yelling revolutionary slogans. I’m now 71 and would happily accept a return to the glory days of the People’s Republic of Eisenhower. I try to keep up with the left, or what’s left of it, and haven’t noticed any nutty notions in decades. The vast majority of my former comrades have either given up on politics or attend the occasional peace rally. Those who remain activists are overwhelmingly safe and sane social democrats just now figuring out that Barack Obama never was and never will be one of them.
That’s not to deny that a few tattered fringistas from the 3rd, 4th or Positively 4th Street Internationals don’t erupt on the scene now and again. Hey, Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento! My point is that America’s meager left, across the spectrum from Hubert Humphrey pro-war liberals to raging Maoists, has long since gone the way of the Whigs. And the movement hasn’t been refreshed by much new blood since Wall Street figured out how to make money and tamp down youthful dissent by putting all the college kids in permanent hock with tuition loans.
So when I hear anyone nowadays condemn “extremists of both left and right,” as Jon Stewart repeatedly did at his big rally about nothing much in Washington a couple of Saturdays ago, I know I’m dealing with the clueless and/or mendacious.
Who besides senior citizen Bill Ayers and the even older Noam Chomsky do they have in mind? What ultra outrage are they referencing? The Battle of Seattle was over a decade ago. The last really big peace march was back in 2002. No, I take back the clueless option. Those who pretend that America is somehow annoyed, let alone threatened by, leftist extremists on a par with Glenn Beck or the various gun-crazy militias running around in the woods are full of shit! And they know it.
Whether in politics or personal life, positioning oneself mid-way between two supposed extremes is usually a cheap ploy rather than a considered judgment. We even have a name for for it: playing both sides against the middle. Politicians, our lowest form of life, find it useful for conning the widest possible range of constituents. Newspeople, the next lowest, are forever trying to convince their audiences that truth lies in the middle for the same reason. I go along with Texas populist Jim Hightower, who likes to say, there's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.
For a hilarious but just as serious take on this issue, I commend you to Bill Maher's most recent New Rules video.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
What the Electaprise Means
Whether under Reps or Dems, the American polity has been rolling rightwards for the last 30 years. That pilgrimage to penury continued last night. The reason for it is simple. The U.S., unlike other countries, does not have a left. It has a right wing party and one that believes in getting along by going along. So politically our country remains on a one-way trip. John Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow aren’t going to change that.
Maybe this is a good time to define our terms. There are millions of shapes and shades of politics. But they all boil down to two notions. Some believe that wealth and power should be concentrated amongst themselves. Others believe it should be spread around. Thanks to the seating arrangements in the French parliament two centuries ago, we call the former rightists and the latter leftists. We have the right to thank for palaces and plutocrats and the left for democracy and the middle class.
Moving to the right doesn’t just mean that conservative politicians run the government. That’s the least of it. Moving to the right in this day and age means the continuing replacement of what’s public by what’s private, meaning none of the public’s business. It means we take orders from corporate bosses--an increasing number not even Americans--instead of leaders we elect. It means that corporate profit rather than peace, prosperity or public benefit becomes the focal point of just about everything we do. It means we turn from a nation into a multinational.
The evidence of this swirls around us in the windblown posters from yesterday’s election. That event, formerly a civic duty and now a commercial enterprise, posted revenues in the five billion dollars range. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, anonymous investors the world over are now invited to get their bids in for the solon of their choice. The NY Times has called the endless attack ads that have become a staple of our electaprises “a goldmine” for local tv stations. By now, virtually all of us watch those stations over a cable network. Because we have a conservative polity in place, those cable companies are not constricted by the onerous regulations they have in other countries, like socialistic France.
For instance, the French have a law against cable monopolies. There are lots of competing companies and you can easily move from one to another. Costs for a package including highspeed internet, unlimited telephony to 60 countries, and 100 or so cable channels run to 40 Euros a month. We wouldn’t stand for that in conservative America. We make sure that every town has its own private monopoly cable company and are willing to pay for the privilege.
In any event, yesterday’s electaprise shouldn’t change much. The Obama administration was already aggressively following through on most Bush (meaning conservative) policies, particularly in re the economy and the empire. Expansionary policies and peace have been ruled out as too lefty. That means more war and more austerity. If your kid can’t get a job, there’s always the military. They will teach him or her that in conservative and corporate America, just as in the service, unquestioning obedience to authority is all.
Whether under Reps or Dems, the American polity has been rolling rightwards for the last 30 years. That pilgrimage to penury continued last night. The reason for it is simple. The U.S., unlike other countries, does not have a left. It has a right wing party and one that believes in getting along by going along. So politically our country remains on a one-way trip. John Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow aren’t going to change that.
Maybe this is a good time to define our terms. There are millions of shapes and shades of politics. But they all boil down to two notions. Some believe that wealth and power should be concentrated amongst themselves. Others believe it should be spread around. Thanks to the seating arrangements in the French parliament two centuries ago, we call the former rightists and the latter leftists. We have the right to thank for palaces and plutocrats and the left for democracy and the middle class.
Moving to the right doesn’t just mean that conservative politicians run the government. That’s the least of it. Moving to the right in this day and age means the continuing replacement of what’s public by what’s private, meaning none of the public’s business. It means we take orders from corporate bosses--an increasing number not even Americans--instead of leaders we elect. It means that corporate profit rather than peace, prosperity or public benefit becomes the focal point of just about everything we do. It means we turn from a nation into a multinational.
The evidence of this swirls around us in the windblown posters from yesterday’s election. That event, formerly a civic duty and now a commercial enterprise, posted revenues in the five billion dollars range. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, anonymous investors the world over are now invited to get their bids in for the solon of their choice. The NY Times has called the endless attack ads that have become a staple of our electaprises “a goldmine” for local tv stations. By now, virtually all of us watch those stations over a cable network. Because we have a conservative polity in place, those cable companies are not constricted by the onerous regulations they have in other countries, like socialistic France.
For instance, the French have a law against cable monopolies. There are lots of competing companies and you can easily move from one to another. Costs for a package including highspeed internet, unlimited telephony to 60 countries, and 100 or so cable channels run to 40 Euros a month. We wouldn’t stand for that in conservative America. We make sure that every town has its own private monopoly cable company and are willing to pay for the privilege.
In any event, yesterday’s electaprise shouldn’t change much. The Obama administration was already aggressively following through on most Bush (meaning conservative) policies, particularly in re the economy and the empire. Expansionary policies and peace have been ruled out as too lefty. That means more war and more austerity. If your kid can’t get a job, there’s always the military. They will teach him or her that in conservative and corporate America, just as in the service, unquestioning obedience to authority is all.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Double Header
It’s campaign season, which means that the beast with two heads is out bestenching the ozone again. The fiercer head with the sharp fangs and empty eyes is called Rep and the confused, toothless one is Dem. The beast is always among us, but becomes particularly predatory at election time. That’s when the two heads pretend they have two minds and snap at each other like Jack Russell terriers. I’ve been watching this happen for most of my three score and ten. It’s not much of a spectacle, and is getting more penny dreadful with each rendition.
What’s new this time around is that the relentless transformation of our elections from public exercise to private initiative is now complete. Thanks to the infamous Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, anyone anywhere in the world with big bucks is allowed to anonymously invest in our government leaders. So now when we say we have the best congress money can buy, that means renminbi, rials and rupees as well as greenbacks.
Our conservative friends suffer hypocrisy on this score. For decades they portrayed themselves as super patriots and argued that good old business was more American than bad old government. Then globalism erased the distinctions between homegrown and foreign corporations. Would the yahoos follow the logic of their free enterprise faith and now argue that China National Oil Corp., Dubai World and Credit Suisse were also more patriotic than hapless and hated Uncle Sam?
The answer to that one came with the Gulf oil spill. The right took British Petroleum to its heart and stoutly defended BP against what it reviled as ruinous regulators and evil environmentalists from Washington. The fact that BP was UK did not stop Rand Paul, the Republican senate candidate in Kentucky, from calling criticism of it “un-American.” Neither did it discourage Newt Gingrich from offering that Obama’s treatment of poor BP made the U.S. a “Venezuela type” country.
The beast head named Dem is yapping at the Rep head for soliciting secret swag from foreigners. Of course, it’s not barking too loudly since it’s guilty of the same sin. The invitation for foreigners to join our highly profitable election enterprise is yet another sign of the demise of our empire. In the early stages of imperialism, the center rules its subject states; in the latter stages the subject states corrupt the center. Any day now, I can see a bipartisan bill offered up in congress providing that our votes be counted by Swiss bankers.
It’s campaign season, which means that the beast with two heads is out bestenching the ozone again. The fiercer head with the sharp fangs and empty eyes is called Rep and the confused, toothless one is Dem. The beast is always among us, but becomes particularly predatory at election time. That’s when the two heads pretend they have two minds and snap at each other like Jack Russell terriers. I’ve been watching this happen for most of my three score and ten. It’s not much of a spectacle, and is getting more penny dreadful with each rendition.
What’s new this time around is that the relentless transformation of our elections from public exercise to private initiative is now complete. Thanks to the infamous Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, anyone anywhere in the world with big bucks is allowed to anonymously invest in our government leaders. So now when we say we have the best congress money can buy, that means renminbi, rials and rupees as well as greenbacks.
Our conservative friends suffer hypocrisy on this score. For decades they portrayed themselves as super patriots and argued that good old business was more American than bad old government. Then globalism erased the distinctions between homegrown and foreign corporations. Would the yahoos follow the logic of their free enterprise faith and now argue that China National Oil Corp., Dubai World and Credit Suisse were also more patriotic than hapless and hated Uncle Sam?
The answer to that one came with the Gulf oil spill. The right took British Petroleum to its heart and stoutly defended BP against what it reviled as ruinous regulators and evil environmentalists from Washington. The fact that BP was UK did not stop Rand Paul, the Republican senate candidate in Kentucky, from calling criticism of it “un-American.” Neither did it discourage Newt Gingrich from offering that Obama’s treatment of poor BP made the U.S. a “Venezuela type” country.
The beast head named Dem is yapping at the Rep head for soliciting secret swag from foreigners. Of course, it’s not barking too loudly since it’s guilty of the same sin. The invitation for foreigners to join our highly profitable election enterprise is yet another sign of the demise of our empire. In the early stages of imperialism, the center rules its subject states; in the latter stages the subject states corrupt the center. Any day now, I can see a bipartisan bill offered up in congress providing that our votes be counted by Swiss bankers.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Debt Dodge
Unless politicians are prepared to dig into the pockets of middle- and upper-income families, experts say, the demands from bond market investors to get government finances under control can be satisfied only by cutting back even further on benefits for the poor and needy.
Nobody’s perfect. That’s why the truth accidentally pops out of our kept media from time to time. The truth revealed in the above quote from the NY Times is that bond investors own the world and that we are in their thrall.
The richies and the righties have successfully sold the stupidos on the notion that debt will be the death of us. Everyone and their tea-brained uncle is shrieking and hollering about how our engorging arrears means the ball and chain for future generations. Our kids’ kids and their kids will have to feed on gruel and sleep on stones, in the words of Emerson, “to pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.”
But, of course, the creator is not our creditor. Our debt is owed to bond investors. They trade in that debt in order to profit by it. Some hold it for years and some for months or days. Some hold it for mere microseconds. We no more know who owns our debt at any given moment than we know how many grains of sand our feet kick up when we walk on a beach.
What we should know, but are rarely told, is that credit and debt have replaced the mass production of goods as the chief means of taking money from everyone and giving it to the wealthy. In fact, we should no longer call ourselves capitalist because ever more of what we once called capital has been turned into debt. The French have a fine old word known to all economists for people who live off the interest from debt: they call them rentiers.
Our rentier, nee capitalist, class has two great fears common to its ilk everywhere. The first is inflation. Their ultimate nightmare is a repeat of Germany in the 1920s when people needed a wheel barrow full of bills to buy a crust of bread. If the value of the dollar falls to, say, a penny, debtors will pay off their loans with near worthless bucks. At that point, the creditor class will start driving their Maseratis into abutments.
Their other nightmare is repudiation. What if debtors just refused to pay up? It’s happened recently with sovereign debt. Argentina and Ecuador repudiated part of their paper, the latter when it was discovered by the new reform government that certain loans the country had taken out were illegally drawn. The Ecuadorans saved themselves $3 billion.
On the Daily Show the other night, Jon Stewart, a cretin when it comes to matters foreign, mocked Europeans for their massive demonstrations in opposition to government austerity programs. Why, he asked, weren’t those crazy furriners modeling themselves on the Tea Baggers and protesting public spending instead?
Despite being a smart as well as smart alecky bunch, it has apparently never occurred to Stewart and his writers that not every middle class in the world is as stupid and suicidal as ours. The millions who marched in Europe understand perfectly well that the debit crisis is really a trick to make the rich richer at our expense. Unlike us, they are prepared to repudiate the righties and the richies. They're already fighting back. Ten million marched in Spain the other day. In U.S. terms, that was 100 million people. If we could turn out one-tenth that number, the bond traders would go into another business.
Unless politicians are prepared to dig into the pockets of middle- and upper-income families, experts say, the demands from bond market investors to get government finances under control can be satisfied only by cutting back even further on benefits for the poor and needy.
Nobody’s perfect. That’s why the truth accidentally pops out of our kept media from time to time. The truth revealed in the above quote from the NY Times is that bond investors own the world and that we are in their thrall.
The richies and the righties have successfully sold the stupidos on the notion that debt will be the death of us. Everyone and their tea-brained uncle is shrieking and hollering about how our engorging arrears means the ball and chain for future generations. Our kids’ kids and their kids will have to feed on gruel and sleep on stones, in the words of Emerson, “to pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.”
But, of course, the creator is not our creditor. Our debt is owed to bond investors. They trade in that debt in order to profit by it. Some hold it for years and some for months or days. Some hold it for mere microseconds. We no more know who owns our debt at any given moment than we know how many grains of sand our feet kick up when we walk on a beach.
What we should know, but are rarely told, is that credit and debt have replaced the mass production of goods as the chief means of taking money from everyone and giving it to the wealthy. In fact, we should no longer call ourselves capitalist because ever more of what we once called capital has been turned into debt. The French have a fine old word known to all economists for people who live off the interest from debt: they call them rentiers.
Our rentier, nee capitalist, class has two great fears common to its ilk everywhere. The first is inflation. Their ultimate nightmare is a repeat of Germany in the 1920s when people needed a wheel barrow full of bills to buy a crust of bread. If the value of the dollar falls to, say, a penny, debtors will pay off their loans with near worthless bucks. At that point, the creditor class will start driving their Maseratis into abutments.
Their other nightmare is repudiation. What if debtors just refused to pay up? It’s happened recently with sovereign debt. Argentina and Ecuador repudiated part of their paper, the latter when it was discovered by the new reform government that certain loans the country had taken out were illegally drawn. The Ecuadorans saved themselves $3 billion.
On the Daily Show the other night, Jon Stewart, a cretin when it comes to matters foreign, mocked Europeans for their massive demonstrations in opposition to government austerity programs. Why, he asked, weren’t those crazy furriners modeling themselves on the Tea Baggers and protesting public spending instead?
Despite being a smart as well as smart alecky bunch, it has apparently never occurred to Stewart and his writers that not every middle class in the world is as stupid and suicidal as ours. The millions who marched in Europe understand perfectly well that the debit crisis is really a trick to make the rich richer at our expense. Unlike us, they are prepared to repudiate the righties and the richies. They're already fighting back. Ten million marched in Spain the other day. In U.S. terms, that was 100 million people. If we could turn out one-tenth that number, the bond traders would go into another business.
Monday, September 27, 2010
The Absolute in Moderation
Suppose the Brits had won the Revolutionary War. Suppose King George III imposed one of his German cousins on us as monarch. Suppose that King Karl I of Upper and Lower Canada and the Royal Colonies of America spoke English with a Prussian accent and much preferred Berlin to his palace in Philadelphia. Suppose Karl appointed America’s government, including members of the legislature. Suppose even mentioning freedom of speech, let alone practicing it, got you into deep doodoo with the Royal Constabulary--chains and chopping blocks kind of doodoo.
This scenerio came to mind as I was watching several amiable interviews last week with the charming King Abdullah II of Jordan and his lovely consort, Queen Rania, who were in town for the General Assembly opening. Abdullah is a real favorite in America. He was schooled and militarized here and at Sandhurst in Britain and speaks in an attractive combination of colloquial American and polished British English. His dad, the late King Hussein, was likwise popular in in the states. Hussein even had an American wife whose good works and snazzy wardrobe were regularly publicized by Barbara Walters and such.
Though the Jordanian monarchy claims a line back to Mohammed himself, this particular branch was installed by the Brits to see to their interests in the territory of Trans Jordan, one of the countries they invented when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. If you recall your Lawrence of Arabia stuff, the Brits got the Arabs to fight against the Turks in World War I by promising them independence. They, of course, betrayed that promise and installed various puppet rulers around the Middle East whose glance turned more to Mayfair than Mecca.
Whenever members of the now pro-American Hashemite house appear before our politicians or on our media, it’s polite that a certain word never be mentioned. That also goes for the Saud family as well as the various emirs and sultans of the Gulf states. The word is democracy. Their nations don’t have it and they don't like to talk about the fact that they prefer absolute dynastic rule instead.
If we applied dictionary definitions to our usages, these royals would properly be termed despots. But then we supposedly freedom-loving Americans would be asking ourselves why we pal around with their like. To avoid such embarrassment, we abandon Funk & Wagnalls and call them moderates instead. Except to tea baggers and other yahoos, moderate is a nicely anodyne word. I mean, who’s opposed to moderation?
We constantly urge people in that part of the world to abandon extremism and model themselves on these moderates. They shrug, not particular caring whether moderates or fanatics stone the adulterers and lop off the limbs of thieves.
Meanwhile in the genuinely democratic nation of Venezuela they had genuinely free and fair elections on Sunday which handily returned the pro-government parties to power with a 70 percent turnout. Nevertheless, Washington labels Venezuela “extremist” and “undemocratic.” It accuses its president, who has twice the domestic popularily of Obama, of being a detested dictator who steals elections by buying the votes of the poor majority with jobs, schools, health care, housing and such.
It should be obvious that the reason that King Abdullah of Jordan is a “moderate” but President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is an "autocrat" is the the former accepts American “leadership” while the latter insists that Venezuelans lead Venezuela. Mr. Funk and Mr. Wagnalls must be spinning in their sarcophagi.
Suppose the Brits had won the Revolutionary War. Suppose King George III imposed one of his German cousins on us as monarch. Suppose that King Karl I of Upper and Lower Canada and the Royal Colonies of America spoke English with a Prussian accent and much preferred Berlin to his palace in Philadelphia. Suppose Karl appointed America’s government, including members of the legislature. Suppose even mentioning freedom of speech, let alone practicing it, got you into deep doodoo with the Royal Constabulary--chains and chopping blocks kind of doodoo.
This scenerio came to mind as I was watching several amiable interviews last week with the charming King Abdullah II of Jordan and his lovely consort, Queen Rania, who were in town for the General Assembly opening. Abdullah is a real favorite in America. He was schooled and militarized here and at Sandhurst in Britain and speaks in an attractive combination of colloquial American and polished British English. His dad, the late King Hussein, was likwise popular in in the states. Hussein even had an American wife whose good works and snazzy wardrobe were regularly publicized by Barbara Walters and such.
Though the Jordanian monarchy claims a line back to Mohammed himself, this particular branch was installed by the Brits to see to their interests in the territory of Trans Jordan, one of the countries they invented when the Ottoman Empire collapsed. If you recall your Lawrence of Arabia stuff, the Brits got the Arabs to fight against the Turks in World War I by promising them independence. They, of course, betrayed that promise and installed various puppet rulers around the Middle East whose glance turned more to Mayfair than Mecca.
Whenever members of the now pro-American Hashemite house appear before our politicians or on our media, it’s polite that a certain word never be mentioned. That also goes for the Saud family as well as the various emirs and sultans of the Gulf states. The word is democracy. Their nations don’t have it and they don't like to talk about the fact that they prefer absolute dynastic rule instead.
If we applied dictionary definitions to our usages, these royals would properly be termed despots. But then we supposedly freedom-loving Americans would be asking ourselves why we pal around with their like. To avoid such embarrassment, we abandon Funk & Wagnalls and call them moderates instead. Except to tea baggers and other yahoos, moderate is a nicely anodyne word. I mean, who’s opposed to moderation?
We constantly urge people in that part of the world to abandon extremism and model themselves on these moderates. They shrug, not particular caring whether moderates or fanatics stone the adulterers and lop off the limbs of thieves.
Meanwhile in the genuinely democratic nation of Venezuela they had genuinely free and fair elections on Sunday which handily returned the pro-government parties to power with a 70 percent turnout. Nevertheless, Washington labels Venezuela “extremist” and “undemocratic.” It accuses its president, who has twice the domestic popularily of Obama, of being a detested dictator who steals elections by buying the votes of the poor majority with jobs, schools, health care, housing and such.
It should be obvious that the reason that King Abdullah of Jordan is a “moderate” but President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is an "autocrat" is the the former accepts American “leadership” while the latter insists that Venezuelans lead Venezuela. Mr. Funk and Mr. Wagnalls must be spinning in their sarcophagi.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Virgin on the Absurd
One of the differences between human beings and the United States of America is that humans lose their innocence only once. America’s innocence, like the remote that falls between the sofa cushions, is forever getting lost and refound.
My father’s generation was taught that America lost its innocence when Prohibition engendered lawlessness and dissipation. My cohort was said to have misplaced its virginity in Dallas and Danang. Then, says Blow, it got misplaced yet again in the rubble of the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
I guess it’s marvelous that we Americans think so highly of ourselves that whatever screwing we give and get only temporarily deprives us of our purity. Now if we could only make the other 95 percent of the world who see us as Tony Sopranos only fatter rub their eyes and perceive Cinderella instead.
Were we a cosmopolitan and adult people, we would have treated 9/11 with the same stoicism with which the Brits suffered the Blitz or the IRA bombings. We would have calmly regarded that attack as yet another battle in our long see-saw war to control the Middle East and its resources. We might have remembered the USS New Jersey hurling 2,700 pound shells dubbed “flying Volkswagens” into the perched villages of the Levant. Or the tens of thousands killed by the chemical weapons we supplied to our then pal Saddam Hussein for our joint war on Iran. Or Israel’s wars of punitive annihilation that we provisioned.
We would have reckoned that we got in our shots, and with 9/11 they got in one of theirs. So let’s bind our wounds and head back into battle. If we Americans want global leadership and cheap gas we have to pay some price, don’t we? Instead, the politicians and the bullshit mills of the media churned out yet another version of the virgin being assailed. Evil ravaged goodness merely because it was good. “They hate us for our freedom,” as Bush endlessly intoned. So we must destroy evil lest it rob of our innocence yet again. And not just any evil, but the one that resides east of Suez, bows to Mecca, and sits on oil deposits.
Back in World War II, Harry Truman made a national reputation by heading a Senate investigation into war profiteering (it was considered a crime rather than a smart career choice back then). During Vietnam, Senator Fulbright held revelatory hearings on how we got into that war. Our Iran-Contra adventure raised questions for which congress sought answers. Interestingly, no one in power today seems interested in investigating the Allah awful mess we have gotten ourselves into between Baghdad and Kabul. Few even want to hear about the subject: Obama’s speech on replacing combat in Iraq with a euphemism for same was rated one of the dullest and least listened to of his presidency.
Ground Zero has become the cross on our shield and we are settling into a new round of crusades. The last series of such endeavors went on for two centuries. The fact that we're insolvent shouldn’t slow us down. After all, Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless led several thousand paupers in the first Crusade. They looted Belgrade as if they were CIA contractors in Kabul before the Seljuk Turks cut them to pieces.
Nine years ago today, we saw the world stand still. We saw the innocence of a nation crumble to the ground. We saw the face of evil form in plumes of smoke and ash. It was Sept. 11, 2001---NY Times columnist Charles M. Blow
A Jewish mother is sending her frail son off to war. “Don’t over exert,” she admonishes. “Kill an Arab and then take it easy." “But mom," he answers,“what if they kill me?" “Why should they,” she asks, “what have you done to them?”--from Uri Avnery, wise old Israeli politician and writer
One of the differences between human beings and the United States of America is that humans lose their innocence only once. America’s innocence, like the remote that falls between the sofa cushions, is forever getting lost and refound.
My father’s generation was taught that America lost its innocence when Prohibition engendered lawlessness and dissipation. My cohort was said to have misplaced its virginity in Dallas and Danang. Then, says Blow, it got misplaced yet again in the rubble of the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
I guess it’s marvelous that we Americans think so highly of ourselves that whatever screwing we give and get only temporarily deprives us of our purity. Now if we could only make the other 95 percent of the world who see us as Tony Sopranos only fatter rub their eyes and perceive Cinderella instead.
Were we a cosmopolitan and adult people, we would have treated 9/11 with the same stoicism with which the Brits suffered the Blitz or the IRA bombings. We would have calmly regarded that attack as yet another battle in our long see-saw war to control the Middle East and its resources. We might have remembered the USS New Jersey hurling 2,700 pound shells dubbed “flying Volkswagens” into the perched villages of the Levant. Or the tens of thousands killed by the chemical weapons we supplied to our then pal Saddam Hussein for our joint war on Iran. Or Israel’s wars of punitive annihilation that we provisioned.
We would have reckoned that we got in our shots, and with 9/11 they got in one of theirs. So let’s bind our wounds and head back into battle. If we Americans want global leadership and cheap gas we have to pay some price, don’t we? Instead, the politicians and the bullshit mills of the media churned out yet another version of the virgin being assailed. Evil ravaged goodness merely because it was good. “They hate us for our freedom,” as Bush endlessly intoned. So we must destroy evil lest it rob of our innocence yet again. And not just any evil, but the one that resides east of Suez, bows to Mecca, and sits on oil deposits.
Back in World War II, Harry Truman made a national reputation by heading a Senate investigation into war profiteering (it was considered a crime rather than a smart career choice back then). During Vietnam, Senator Fulbright held revelatory hearings on how we got into that war. Our Iran-Contra adventure raised questions for which congress sought answers. Interestingly, no one in power today seems interested in investigating the Allah awful mess we have gotten ourselves into between Baghdad and Kabul. Few even want to hear about the subject: Obama’s speech on replacing combat in Iraq with a euphemism for same was rated one of the dullest and least listened to of his presidency.
Ground Zero has become the cross on our shield and we are settling into a new round of crusades. The last series of such endeavors went on for two centuries. The fact that we're insolvent shouldn’t slow us down. After all, Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless led several thousand paupers in the first Crusade. They looted Belgrade as if they were CIA contractors in Kabul before the Seljuk Turks cut them to pieces.
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