Crappy Anniversaries
Not so long ago in the salad days of our empire, it was the all-powerful combination of our economy and military that made the rest of the world buy or die.
It’s sheer coincidence that we mark the demise of both this week. On March 18th a year ago, the debt rattles of our financial system emanating from Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers became scary enough for the Fed to assign Wall Street to a ward halfway between intensive care and hospice.
Today, March 19 is the sixth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, which pitted the world’s most powerful military against what our leaders dismissed as a “very small minority of dead-enders and losers.” The inability of our best units to overcome this force after four years obliged the Bush administration to pay cash tributes to the “losers” for not attacking American troops. Meanwhile, our military was thoroughly privatized and transformed from a combat focus to a profit center.
So we are left in a condition on this March week of 2009 of having an economy that no longer impresses and a military less and less able to oppress.
Zombie is the word that’s come into style recently to describe our failed institutions. That’s because even though they look and smell like corpses, they still move among us doing the zombie version of their former live acts.
How other than zombie-ish can you describe Obama’s extension of our war on Afghanistan, a country renowned as the graveyard of empires? Or the administration’s increasingly ridiculous and self-destructive efforts to hide the enormity of Wall Street's arrearages and breath life into Citi morgue and Merrill lynched? It’s only been two months for our new prexy and it already looks like the honeymoon is over and the zombie jamboree is getting underway.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Getting Sick Over Health Care
Dr. AIG Will See You Now
I watched a bit of Obama’s White House health care confab. It made me sick. The key subject seemed to be how to ensure cooperation between the private and public sectors to, as they say in Washington, contain costs. Yes, as everyone agrees, health care costs are spiraling out of sight. And that will take us broke.
Really?
In every other first world country health care is a public service like police or fire. People who get sick go to a doctor or a hospital. Their taxes pay for it. That’s it. Here in America when people get sick they have to check with a financial company that decides whether their treatment will unduly cut into its profits.
In those other countries the purpose of health care is to keep citizens hale and hearty at a reasonable cost to the nation. In the U.S., the health care system is designed to make money for those who invest in it. As the saying goes, those investors are not in business for their health, let alone ours.
The goal all private enterprises share is to grow larger and increase profits. The health industry has been amazingly successful at this. When I was born just before World War II in St. Clare's, a non-profit Catholic hospital in Hell’s Kitchen, health care amounted to a tiny two or three percent of our economy.
Today it’s up to 17 percent and wants to grow even more. It has long since topped manufacturing and is now increasingly a component of FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate), our biggest and least stable economic sector. The exhorbitant premiums we pay to insurers don’t make us any healthier. They go to investments in derivatives and other exotic forms of debt and to pay ridiculous salaries to their execs (you may recall the controversial billion buck compensation package for William McGuire of United Health).
Inviting these companies to a White House conference on expanding health care and limiting its costs is like inviting Jeffrey Dahmer to a cookout.
People who claim belief in capitalist competition are oh so careful to avoid mentioning the fundamental supply and demand equation at the heart of health care. Let’s call it the Jack Benny calculus. For all but Benny, the demand to stay alive and healthy goes without question. Who would not give all to avoid death or debilitation? Thus, by capitalist logic and morality, those able to supply the demand for life and health by way of medical services are entitled to charge all the traffic will bear. And they do.
Society cannot meet such prices. The rest of the first world avoids them by taking health out of the market and making it a public responsibility. Here in America we learn to live with them. Since all but the wealthiest individuals can't afford them, our government and private employers pay the obscene amounts demanded by the financial companies and their confreres in the health business. When their stranglehold become unbearable, we try to reduce it through greater efficiencies such as those being touted by the White House. The prices and profits of the providers remain sacrosanct and untouchable. Indeed, we're now giving them even more billions to cover their bad debts.
The economic crisis has given Obama a magnificent opportunity to rationalize health care by eliminating the discredited financial parasites who feed off it. He has merely to ask Americans if they want the AIGs and United Healths to remain responsible for their life and death? He has merely to ask whether America should consider the time-tested, practical and money-saving example of every other first world country and remove health care from the commercial realm and turn it into a public service like police and fire?
But that remedy was not on the agenda at the White House meeting. Some of its proponents were invited to show Obama’s sense of inclusiveness, but went unheeded to affirm his loyalty to the FIRE flacks with which he has surrounded himself.
As I recounted in an earlier blog (The Heart of the Matter, June 18, 2008), I had a cardiac angiogram in Paris for which I was charged $1,300 by the French state. Had I been a citizen of that nation, I would not have paid a penny. That same procedure in the U.S., which I underwent on a half dozen occasions, was billed between $16,000 and $25,000, depending on whether a stent was inserted.
The difference between the amounts charged by the French and by Americans is the difference between a healthy society and a sick one. So far, Barack Obama, despite his splendid bedside manner, doesn’t seem much interested in narrowing that chasm. Tante pis.
Remember the old Jack Benny bit? A crook sticks a gun in Benny’s face and says,
“Your money or your life!” Jack mulls. “Well?” the crook prods. “I'm thinking,
I’m thinking,” says Jack.
“Your money or your life!” Jack mulls. “Well?” the crook prods. “I'm thinking,
I’m thinking,” says Jack.
I watched a bit of Obama’s White House health care confab. It made me sick. The key subject seemed to be how to ensure cooperation between the private and public sectors to, as they say in Washington, contain costs. Yes, as everyone agrees, health care costs are spiraling out of sight. And that will take us broke.
Really?
In every other first world country health care is a public service like police or fire. People who get sick go to a doctor or a hospital. Their taxes pay for it. That’s it. Here in America when people get sick they have to check with a financial company that decides whether their treatment will unduly cut into its profits.
In those other countries the purpose of health care is to keep citizens hale and hearty at a reasonable cost to the nation. In the U.S., the health care system is designed to make money for those who invest in it. As the saying goes, those investors are not in business for their health, let alone ours.
The goal all private enterprises share is to grow larger and increase profits. The health industry has been amazingly successful at this. When I was born just before World War II in St. Clare's, a non-profit Catholic hospital in Hell’s Kitchen, health care amounted to a tiny two or three percent of our economy.
Today it’s up to 17 percent and wants to grow even more. It has long since topped manufacturing and is now increasingly a component of FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate), our biggest and least stable economic sector. The exhorbitant premiums we pay to insurers don’t make us any healthier. They go to investments in derivatives and other exotic forms of debt and to pay ridiculous salaries to their execs (you may recall the controversial billion buck compensation package for William McGuire of United Health).
Inviting these companies to a White House conference on expanding health care and limiting its costs is like inviting Jeffrey Dahmer to a cookout.
People who claim belief in capitalist competition are oh so careful to avoid mentioning the fundamental supply and demand equation at the heart of health care. Let’s call it the Jack Benny calculus. For all but Benny, the demand to stay alive and healthy goes without question. Who would not give all to avoid death or debilitation? Thus, by capitalist logic and morality, those able to supply the demand for life and health by way of medical services are entitled to charge all the traffic will bear. And they do.
Society cannot meet such prices. The rest of the first world avoids them by taking health out of the market and making it a public responsibility. Here in America we learn to live with them. Since all but the wealthiest individuals can't afford them, our government and private employers pay the obscene amounts demanded by the financial companies and their confreres in the health business. When their stranglehold become unbearable, we try to reduce it through greater efficiencies such as those being touted by the White House. The prices and profits of the providers remain sacrosanct and untouchable. Indeed, we're now giving them even more billions to cover their bad debts.
The economic crisis has given Obama a magnificent opportunity to rationalize health care by eliminating the discredited financial parasites who feed off it. He has merely to ask Americans if they want the AIGs and United Healths to remain responsible for their life and death? He has merely to ask whether America should consider the time-tested, practical and money-saving example of every other first world country and remove health care from the commercial realm and turn it into a public service like police and fire?
But that remedy was not on the agenda at the White House meeting. Some of its proponents were invited to show Obama’s sense of inclusiveness, but went unheeded to affirm his loyalty to the FIRE flacks with which he has surrounded himself.
As I recounted in an earlier blog (The Heart of the Matter, June 18, 2008), I had a cardiac angiogram in Paris for which I was charged $1,300 by the French state. Had I been a citizen of that nation, I would not have paid a penny. That same procedure in the U.S., which I underwent on a half dozen occasions, was billed between $16,000 and $25,000, depending on whether a stent was inserted.
The difference between the amounts charged by the French and by Americans is the difference between a healthy society and a sick one. So far, Barack Obama, despite his splendid bedside manner, doesn’t seem much interested in narrowing that chasm. Tante pis.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Indulge This
Not So Simple Simony
Among the attributes shared by Vegas and the Vatican are that both are built on hope and hot money. Vegas promises the chance of winning down here while the Vatican offers its payouts up there.
As countless Mafia movies have taught us, Vegas was originally realized by mob moolah, particularly the Cleveland crowd. Since then, of course, publicly traded corporations have taken over--if that’s any improvement. Apart from The Agony and the Ecstacy, there are not many films about how my one time neighborhood church of St. Peters got put up. Though few Catholics choose to linger over the fact, the holy truth is that St. Peter’s and the Vatican complex were largely financed by sinful samoleons, or as Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible dubs it, filthy lucre.
It was Pope Julius II who back in 1506 commissioned Bramante to design St. Peter’s and hired Raphael and Michelangelo to superintend the job. The money for the work, which went on for a century, came from the sale of indulgences, “thereby lighting the match that ignited the Protestant Reformation."*
An indulgence, according to a recent front page New York Times story is “a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife.” By crossing your heart or certain palms you can procure pardon or parole from Purgatory, a place unmentioned in the bible that Catholics hold to be a sort of over-heated waiting room where the semi-sinful are temporarily relegated on the way to either paradise or perdition.
Back in the olden days, Rome marketed indulgences like reverse time shares. You could knock a day, a week, a year, etc., off your purgatorial detention by making the proper prayers, penances, pilgrimages and certified good works, such as quitting your “attachment to creatures” (presumably falling love with your livestock).
But business being business even in the late middle ages, the profitable possibilities of selling indulgences caught on big time. Lots of priests and princes paid popes for the privilege of peddling them. And from those tainted funds came the capital to construct St. Peters. The selling of indulgences and the corruption of the clergy was given a name: simony. This was after Simon Magus, who offered Jesus’ disciples some sugar for their horses if they would grant him power to impart the holy spirit to others.
At any event, all of this chicanery so enraged Martin Luther that he started a new religion, Protestantism, which eventually gave us mushy white bread, churches with neon marquees and NASCAR fans who’d like to share a beer with George W. Bush. In reaction, the Vatican did its best to massacre the Lutheran heretics in the Holy Wars and, when that failed, cleaned up its act a bit by outlawing pray for pay in 1567.
So, you may ask, with our economy evaporating and our empire expiring, why bring up this well toasted history after 400 years? It’s that story in the NY Times I mentioned above. It said that the Church of Rome is recrudescing indulgences in line with a general march back into medieval obscurantism decreed by the current pope, who, if you recall, was only a Hitler Youth, not a Nazi. The official reason for the return of indulgences is said to be the continued presence of sin in the world, which would seem to me to be an admission that after 2000 years the mother church has yet to get the job done .
I hate to be cynical (not), but it strikes me that the church’s finances are in a parlous state due to having to pay for all that priestly pedophilia for all those decades. They surely calculated that a revival of the discredited indulgence game will not help their bona fides but might bolster their bottom line.
It shouldn't be hard to revive such clerical cozening even though the passing of filthy lucre has been banned since 1567. Simony never really stopped but merely slowed. Indeed, its outstanding practitioner in the modern age was the late Mother Theresa, who counseled the poor to suffer in silence while swapping benedictions for bucks with the rich and reactionary (consult Christopher Hitchen’s factual and funny The Missionary Position for all the profane poop).
Not that I’m against all indulgences. I’ve long been a fan of San Francisco’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose good works include sponsorship of an annual Hunky Jesus competition in Dolores Park.
* Lives of the Popes by Richard P. McBrien, p. 272
Among the attributes shared by Vegas and the Vatican are that both are built on hope and hot money. Vegas promises the chance of winning down here while the Vatican offers its payouts up there.
As countless Mafia movies have taught us, Vegas was originally realized by mob moolah, particularly the Cleveland crowd. Since then, of course, publicly traded corporations have taken over--if that’s any improvement. Apart from The Agony and the Ecstacy, there are not many films about how my one time neighborhood church of St. Peters got put up. Though few Catholics choose to linger over the fact, the holy truth is that St. Peter’s and the Vatican complex were largely financed by sinful samoleons, or as Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible dubs it, filthy lucre.
It was Pope Julius II who back in 1506 commissioned Bramante to design St. Peter’s and hired Raphael and Michelangelo to superintend the job. The money for the work, which went on for a century, came from the sale of indulgences, “thereby lighting the match that ignited the Protestant Reformation."*
An indulgence, according to a recent front page New York Times story is “a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife.” By crossing your heart or certain palms you can procure pardon or parole from Purgatory, a place unmentioned in the bible that Catholics hold to be a sort of over-heated waiting room where the semi-sinful are temporarily relegated on the way to either paradise or perdition.
Back in the olden days, Rome marketed indulgences like reverse time shares. You could knock a day, a week, a year, etc., off your purgatorial detention by making the proper prayers, penances, pilgrimages and certified good works, such as quitting your “attachment to creatures” (presumably falling love with your livestock).
But business being business even in the late middle ages, the profitable possibilities of selling indulgences caught on big time. Lots of priests and princes paid popes for the privilege of peddling them. And from those tainted funds came the capital to construct St. Peters. The selling of indulgences and the corruption of the clergy was given a name: simony. This was after Simon Magus, who offered Jesus’ disciples some sugar for their horses if they would grant him power to impart the holy spirit to others.
At any event, all of this chicanery so enraged Martin Luther that he started a new religion, Protestantism, which eventually gave us mushy white bread, churches with neon marquees and NASCAR fans who’d like to share a beer with George W. Bush. In reaction, the Vatican did its best to massacre the Lutheran heretics in the Holy Wars and, when that failed, cleaned up its act a bit by outlawing pray for pay in 1567.
So, you may ask, with our economy evaporating and our empire expiring, why bring up this well toasted history after 400 years? It’s that story in the NY Times I mentioned above. It said that the Church of Rome is recrudescing indulgences in line with a general march back into medieval obscurantism decreed by the current pope, who, if you recall, was only a Hitler Youth, not a Nazi. The official reason for the return of indulgences is said to be the continued presence of sin in the world, which would seem to me to be an admission that after 2000 years the mother church has yet to get the job done .
I hate to be cynical (not), but it strikes me that the church’s finances are in a parlous state due to having to pay for all that priestly pedophilia for all those decades. They surely calculated that a revival of the discredited indulgence game will not help their bona fides but might bolster their bottom line.
It shouldn't be hard to revive such clerical cozening even though the passing of filthy lucre has been banned since 1567. Simony never really stopped but merely slowed. Indeed, its outstanding practitioner in the modern age was the late Mother Theresa, who counseled the poor to suffer in silence while swapping benedictions for bucks with the rich and reactionary (consult Christopher Hitchen’s factual and funny The Missionary Position for all the profane poop).
Not that I’m against all indulgences. I’ve long been a fan of San Francisco’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose good works include sponsorship of an annual Hunky Jesus competition in Dolores Park.
* Lives of the Popes by Richard P. McBrien, p. 272
Friday, February 20, 2009
Barack's "Backyard" Isn't
Savior or Same Old Same Old?
For five murderous decades, Guatemala suffered a vicious succession of right wing dictators who butchered 200,000 of their own citizens suspected of being leftists, that meaning anything but medieval. Of course, these regimes were warm and close allies of Washington, which supplied them with the wherewithal for slaughter. Back in 1960-61, the U.S. used Guatemala as a staging base to mount its inept invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
In recent days, while the supposedly fresh-minded Barack Obama was repeating exactly the same dumb and damning things about Cuba as did ten other presidents from Eisenhower to Bush II, something amazing happened down in Havana. The democratically elected president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, made a state visit to the island and “officially asked Cuba for forgiveness” for allowing his country to be used by the U.S. to attack a brother Latin nation.
Hardly a day goes by that the newly free (from U.S. domination) nations of Latin America don’t announce yet another joint economic or diplomatic program aimed at achieving greater unity. Every country, without exception, accepts Cuba as an integral member of the hemisphere’s polity, and every one has demanded an end to the 50-year-old U.S. blockade and subversion of Cuba.
Meanwhile, President Lula of the huge economic powerhouse of Brazil, meets cordially and constantly with his hermano Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Indeed, the traffic of friendly Latin and world leaders in and out of Caracas make it look like the UN. Nevertheless, a clueless U.S. further isolates itself by its efforts to reverse the democratic trend in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, etc., as “dangerous to the continent” they comprise.
Washington’s client list in the region is down to Columbia, a death squad democracy where those in the political opposition are lucky to get a bullet behind the ear without being tortured beforehand. Obama, like Bush before him, can’t offer enough praise for Alvaro Uribe, the well-documented drug lord now endeavoring, without the opposition that our liberals and media heaped on Chavez, to gain the right to run for president indefinitely.
Barack Obama’s notion of change doesn’t appear to apply to Latin America. He sounds like Teddy Roosevelt a century ago, warning the natives that they had better do as Don Yanqui says or taste the bayonets of the US Marines.
Both his State Department and Obama himself, “in remarks that were unusually hostile and threatening even by the previous administration's standards,” accused Hugo Chávez of having "impeded progress in the region" and described his new policy as providing a "counterweight to governments like those currently in power in Venezuela and Bolivia which pursue policies which do not serve the interests of their people or the region.” This was equivalent to the U.S. telling Germany and France that it would oppose their influence in Europe. How out to lunch can you get?
With Bush or Barack, boom times or bust, it appears that America is not about to give up its unaffordable and self-destructive imperial pretensions. Washington cannot shake off the mindset that Latin America is “our back yard,” in other words a place we own where we can do whatever we want. Unable any longer to realize that assertion, we keep it nevertheless as a delusion, no less dangerous for being unreal. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that our government is still spending millions of taxpayer bucks trying--fortunately in vain--to undermine and overthrow disobedient countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and the others. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were still sponsoring assassination plots against the nearly dead Fidel Castro. No doubt, they’ll attempt grave trashing after he’s gone. Meanwhile, the other 96 percent of the world treat our delusionary demarches as the fading moans of a moribund empire and goes about its own un-American business.
For five murderous decades, Guatemala suffered a vicious succession of right wing dictators who butchered 200,000 of their own citizens suspected of being leftists, that meaning anything but medieval. Of course, these regimes were warm and close allies of Washington, which supplied them with the wherewithal for slaughter. Back in 1960-61, the U.S. used Guatemala as a staging base to mount its inept invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
In recent days, while the supposedly fresh-minded Barack Obama was repeating exactly the same dumb and damning things about Cuba as did ten other presidents from Eisenhower to Bush II, something amazing happened down in Havana. The democratically elected president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, made a state visit to the island and “officially asked Cuba for forgiveness” for allowing his country to be used by the U.S. to attack a brother Latin nation.
Hardly a day goes by that the newly free (from U.S. domination) nations of Latin America don’t announce yet another joint economic or diplomatic program aimed at achieving greater unity. Every country, without exception, accepts Cuba as an integral member of the hemisphere’s polity, and every one has demanded an end to the 50-year-old U.S. blockade and subversion of Cuba.
Meanwhile, President Lula of the huge economic powerhouse of Brazil, meets cordially and constantly with his hermano Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Indeed, the traffic of friendly Latin and world leaders in and out of Caracas make it look like the UN. Nevertheless, a clueless U.S. further isolates itself by its efforts to reverse the democratic trend in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, etc., as “dangerous to the continent” they comprise.
Washington’s client list in the region is down to Columbia, a death squad democracy where those in the political opposition are lucky to get a bullet behind the ear without being tortured beforehand. Obama, like Bush before him, can’t offer enough praise for Alvaro Uribe, the well-documented drug lord now endeavoring, without the opposition that our liberals and media heaped on Chavez, to gain the right to run for president indefinitely.
Barack Obama’s notion of change doesn’t appear to apply to Latin America. He sounds like Teddy Roosevelt a century ago, warning the natives that they had better do as Don Yanqui says or taste the bayonets of the US Marines.
Both his State Department and Obama himself, “in remarks that were unusually hostile and threatening even by the previous administration's standards,” accused Hugo Chávez of having "impeded progress in the region" and described his new policy as providing a "counterweight to governments like those currently in power in Venezuela and Bolivia which pursue policies which do not serve the interests of their people or the region.” This was equivalent to the U.S. telling Germany and France that it would oppose their influence in Europe. How out to lunch can you get?
With Bush or Barack, boom times or bust, it appears that America is not about to give up its unaffordable and self-destructive imperial pretensions. Washington cannot shake off the mindset that Latin America is “our back yard,” in other words a place we own where we can do whatever we want. Unable any longer to realize that assertion, we keep it nevertheless as a delusion, no less dangerous for being unreal. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that our government is still spending millions of taxpayer bucks trying--fortunately in vain--to undermine and overthrow disobedient countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and the others. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were still sponsoring assassination plots against the nearly dead Fidel Castro. No doubt, they’ll attempt grave trashing after he’s gone. Meanwhile, the other 96 percent of the world treat our delusionary demarches as the fading moans of a moribund empire and goes about its own un-American business.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Gullibles Travels...continued
Non Commercial Commercials
It’s not all gloom and doom out there, folks.
Confidence may be shattered, but gullibility remains intact. I was reminded of that when I turned on my local public radio station to find they were conducting their biweekly beggathon--surely, the most bromidic bore in all of broadcasting.
Some clerk was making the usual claim that public radio was non commercial. This was followed by a commercial for Pyjamagrams, delivered to your ever-loving in a de luxe hat box. Then there was another lying cadge followed by another commercial, this one for a dentist who claims to “cater to cowards.”
My local station is dominated by a plugola princess who hosts a food show where she blatantly barters mentions for manna. For instance, she advises listeners that they’ll be treated well on her food tours because she puffs the participating establishments on her program. Not only that, her life partner runs a flackery specializing in--what an amazing coincidence?--food and restaurants!
We couldn’t get away with that kind of cozen back on Hearst’s trashy and utterly corrupt New York Mirror, where I apprenticed in journalistic harlotry. There, if we published a wedding picture of the daughter of the Chevy dealer, we’d have to run it on a different page or day than the ads the dealer bought, lest our whoredom waxed obvious.
Today, the hustlers are in your face and the hustled appear happily clueless. When I point out to my more innocent friends that they regularly run commercials on commercial-free public radio, they’re always surprised and a bit resentful at the revelation. They likewise don’t enjoy contemplating that while commercial radio has only one source of revenue, namely selling spots, non-commercial radio has four: private grants, government funding, individual contributions, and selling spots. No wonder that the public broadcasting execs outshine their private counterparts when it comes to compensation packages.
Noam Chomsky wrote somewhere that it was the gullibility of the middle and educated classes that let our leaders get away with pillage propagandized as patriotism. The poor were either too ignorant or cynical to take it seriously, while the rich knew better since their agents were dispensing the horse hockey. No, it was the great washed and neatly garbed who were educated just enough to get the message but not enough to see through it.
We live in a country where a very large business consists of nothing more than telephoning strangers and bunking them out of their bucks. Another huge industry produces exactly the same products and then packages them at high prices for the impressionable and lower ones for the economical. The scam called public broadcasting is small change next to those. What’s more, its marks can easily afford the few bucks a year that signifies their gullibility. Like the old cons say, it’s a sin to let a sucker keep his money.
From the Horse's Mouth
What is an underwriter or a sponsor?
An underwriter or a sponsor is the term used for an individual or company whose monetary contribution goes to fund the station's programming or operation costs. In return for you dollars, you receive advertising and exposure via our multi-media network.
What is a credit or a spot?
Credit and spot are terms for a commercial. Because public broadcasting is noncommercial, we cannot call sponsor messages "commercials." Program underwriters legally need to be identified, and they deserve recognition for their contribution to the station.
Does public broadcasting only cater to the affluent or upper crust? CPBI prides itself on the variety of programming and outreach that touches many different people.
Source: http://www.cptv.org/membership/spon_myths.asp
It’s not all gloom and doom out there, folks.
Confidence may be shattered, but gullibility remains intact. I was reminded of that when I turned on my local public radio station to find they were conducting their biweekly beggathon--surely, the most bromidic bore in all of broadcasting.
Some clerk was making the usual claim that public radio was non commercial. This was followed by a commercial for Pyjamagrams, delivered to your ever-loving in a de luxe hat box. Then there was another lying cadge followed by another commercial, this one for a dentist who claims to “cater to cowards.”
My local station is dominated by a plugola princess who hosts a food show where she blatantly barters mentions for manna. For instance, she advises listeners that they’ll be treated well on her food tours because she puffs the participating establishments on her program. Not only that, her life partner runs a flackery specializing in--what an amazing coincidence?--food and restaurants!
We couldn’t get away with that kind of cozen back on Hearst’s trashy and utterly corrupt New York Mirror, where I apprenticed in journalistic harlotry. There, if we published a wedding picture of the daughter of the Chevy dealer, we’d have to run it on a different page or day than the ads the dealer bought, lest our whoredom waxed obvious.
Today, the hustlers are in your face and the hustled appear happily clueless. When I point out to my more innocent friends that they regularly run commercials on commercial-free public radio, they’re always surprised and a bit resentful at the revelation. They likewise don’t enjoy contemplating that while commercial radio has only one source of revenue, namely selling spots, non-commercial radio has four: private grants, government funding, individual contributions, and selling spots. No wonder that the public broadcasting execs outshine their private counterparts when it comes to compensation packages.
Noam Chomsky wrote somewhere that it was the gullibility of the middle and educated classes that let our leaders get away with pillage propagandized as patriotism. The poor were either too ignorant or cynical to take it seriously, while the rich knew better since their agents were dispensing the horse hockey. No, it was the great washed and neatly garbed who were educated just enough to get the message but not enough to see through it.
We live in a country where a very large business consists of nothing more than telephoning strangers and bunking them out of their bucks. Another huge industry produces exactly the same products and then packages them at high prices for the impressionable and lower ones for the economical. The scam called public broadcasting is small change next to those. What’s more, its marks can easily afford the few bucks a year that signifies their gullibility. Like the old cons say, it’s a sin to let a sucker keep his money.
From the Horse's Mouth
What is an underwriter or a sponsor?
An underwriter or a sponsor is the term used for an individual or company whose monetary contribution goes to fund the station's programming or operation costs. In return for you dollars, you receive advertising and exposure via our multi-media network.
What is a credit or a spot?
Credit and spot are terms for a commercial. Because public broadcasting is noncommercial, we cannot call sponsor messages "commercials." Program underwriters legally need to be identified, and they deserve recognition for their contribution to the station.
Does public broadcasting only cater to the affluent or upper crust? CPBI prides itself on the variety of programming and outreach that touches many different people.
Source: http://www.cptv.org/membership/spon_myths.asp
Friday, January 23, 2009
Starting with the "Citi morgue"
Bury the Dead Banks
A couple of years back in my natal nabe of Hell’s Kitchen, just off Times Square, a professional inebriate joined the great majority, leaving behind an uncashed disability check. His buddies, ever in need of bucks for bottles, got the bright idea of sitting the corpse in a wheelchair and rolling it down to a money store. They pretended the recipient was merely napping and that they were doing him the service of securing his spondulicks. The clerk wasn’t buying any such nonsense and called in the law, who charged the miscreants with fraud, a breach intellectually beyond the public drunkeness and disorderly conduct violations that matched their talents.
Put those winos in bespoke suits and let them bloviate on the business channels and you will see the same scam, only a billion times bigger. Like the sodden stiff, American-style rip 'n run capitalism expired after a life of wretched excess. It happened back on the the drunk’s holiday of St. Patrick’s Day, 2008, when the Fed (meaning big, socialistic government) was obliged to replace an insolvent Wall Street as our national banker and broker.
Ever since, the money crowd has been pretending that the deceased is only dozing. The Reps, who had organized their existence around the credo that capitalism would piss on government’s grave, simply can’t accept that the unimaginable opposite has occurred. The Dems want to avoid their assigned task of disposing of the body. But the bankers, of course, are denying it for dollars. If they can maintain the fantasy that zombies like Citibank are merely comatose they can keep the cash transfusions flowing from Uncle Sam. Not only that, the scam helps to juice the stock market. Citi’s shares, for instance, swing wildly, plunging on revelations about its true condition and soaring on stories that additional fed handouts are forthcoming. Both the longs and the shorts get in their licks as the rest of us go bust.
If Obama’s serious about restoring the economy, the least he can do is to cancel this cozen asap. Check for pulses, listen for heartbeats, then bury the dead banks and nationalize the major survivors to ensure that they lend rather than hoard. It’s only a first shovelful in digging ourselves out of the hole, but it’s a vital one.
A couple of years back in my natal nabe of Hell’s Kitchen, just off Times Square, a professional inebriate joined the great majority, leaving behind an uncashed disability check. His buddies, ever in need of bucks for bottles, got the bright idea of sitting the corpse in a wheelchair and rolling it down to a money store. They pretended the recipient was merely napping and that they were doing him the service of securing his spondulicks. The clerk wasn’t buying any such nonsense and called in the law, who charged the miscreants with fraud, a breach intellectually beyond the public drunkeness and disorderly conduct violations that matched their talents.
Put those winos in bespoke suits and let them bloviate on the business channels and you will see the same scam, only a billion times bigger. Like the sodden stiff, American-style rip 'n run capitalism expired after a life of wretched excess. It happened back on the the drunk’s holiday of St. Patrick’s Day, 2008, when the Fed (meaning big, socialistic government) was obliged to replace an insolvent Wall Street as our national banker and broker.
Ever since, the money crowd has been pretending that the deceased is only dozing. The Reps, who had organized their existence around the credo that capitalism would piss on government’s grave, simply can’t accept that the unimaginable opposite has occurred. The Dems want to avoid their assigned task of disposing of the body. But the bankers, of course, are denying it for dollars. If they can maintain the fantasy that zombies like Citibank are merely comatose they can keep the cash transfusions flowing from Uncle Sam. Not only that, the scam helps to juice the stock market. Citi’s shares, for instance, swing wildly, plunging on revelations about its true condition and soaring on stories that additional fed handouts are forthcoming. Both the longs and the shorts get in their licks as the rest of us go bust.
If Obama’s serious about restoring the economy, the least he can do is to cancel this cozen asap. Check for pulses, listen for heartbeats, then bury the dead banks and nationalize the major survivors to ensure that they lend rather than hoard. It’s only a first shovelful in digging ourselves out of the hole, but it’s a vital one.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Israel's Juice
Firing Shots in Gaza
And Calling Them in Washington
The story seemed fair on on its face. On Saturday, Scott Simon, NPR’s sultan of smarm, invited two think tank types to offer two different views on whether Hamas, the democratically elected ruling party in Gaza, was receiving arms and alms from Iran to pursue its legitimate resistance to Israeli domination. (Of course, Simon didn’t use those accurate and useful terms).
The first tanker said, yeah, there was lots of evidence of lots of such putatively nefarious dealings. The second tanker said, no, not so much. The supposedly informed and critical NPR audience was invited to draw their own judgment. What could be fairer than that?
A whole lot!
First and foremost, the issue was a ringer. Countless millions of Muslims (and many of other confessions) from around the world have or are ready to give guns, money and even their lives to fight Israel. So why should the Iranians be singled out?
Second, Israel has carte blanche to both America’s armory and its treasury. If it requested gold-plated F-16s and ruby-encrusted Apache choppers, our production lines would crank 'em out PDQ. If the Israelis wanted another zillion bucks to upgrade to the popular new high tech HIC’s (harsh interrogation chambers) we would instantly borrow them from the Chinese and wire them to Tel Aviv. In other words, how many guns Israel runs simply isn’t a cause for controversy in NPR’s world.
What Scott Simon was doing was merely piling on to our demonization of Hamas and Iran, both as legitimate entities as Israel, Iceland or Indiana. This was evidently at the service of Israel, a tiny country that nevertheless manages to exercise huge clout over the allegedly all powerful United States.
How much power the Israelis have over us was reflected the very next day in these speak-for-themselves words in the Sunday NY Times: “...the question of whether Israel will settle for something less than a conventional attack on Iran pose[s] immediate and wrenching decisions for Mr. Obama.”
Just why would Israel’s imperatives be “immediate and wrenching” to our incoming president? So what if Israel doesn’t settle for less than another, bigger war in the Middle East? Will they charge us with disobedience? Will they apply sanctions or remove Obama from office or otherwise decree regime change in Washington? Just how much juice do they have?
Gibbon wrote that one of the signs of a declining empire is when the metropolis loses its sway over its colonies and starts giving in to them instead of giving orders to them. If that’s so, then the American empire is moribund. It’s time to bury it, folks.
And while we’re on the Middle East, it’s important to keep in mind the following facts which you are not going to derive from NPR, the Times, the rest of the money media or the politicians:
1. Israel’s conquest and subjugation of Gaza in 1967 was and remains illegal.
2. The Gazans have every right to resist their subjugation.
3. Under prevailing U.S. and Israeli military doctrine, it is merely necessary to say you are attacking military targets and trying not to harm civilians. Those civilians you do kill and injure, no matter how many, then become “collateral damage,” with no blame attached. It’s fair to presume, then, that the Gazans would say their rockets are directed at Israeli military targets. In other words, the same evasions should apply to all sides.
Finally, for some first class commentary on the Gaza War from a couple of brilliant writers, I recommend recent pieces by my former colleague Diana Johnstone, and also by Uri Avnery, a truly great and wise Israeli
And Calling Them in Washington
The story seemed fair on on its face. On Saturday, Scott Simon, NPR’s sultan of smarm, invited two think tank types to offer two different views on whether Hamas, the democratically elected ruling party in Gaza, was receiving arms and alms from Iran to pursue its legitimate resistance to Israeli domination. (Of course, Simon didn’t use those accurate and useful terms).
The first tanker said, yeah, there was lots of evidence of lots of such putatively nefarious dealings. The second tanker said, no, not so much. The supposedly informed and critical NPR audience was invited to draw their own judgment. What could be fairer than that?
A whole lot!
First and foremost, the issue was a ringer. Countless millions of Muslims (and many of other confessions) from around the world have or are ready to give guns, money and even their lives to fight Israel. So why should the Iranians be singled out?
Second, Israel has carte blanche to both America’s armory and its treasury. If it requested gold-plated F-16s and ruby-encrusted Apache choppers, our production lines would crank 'em out PDQ. If the Israelis wanted another zillion bucks to upgrade to the popular new high tech HIC’s (harsh interrogation chambers) we would instantly borrow them from the Chinese and wire them to Tel Aviv. In other words, how many guns Israel runs simply isn’t a cause for controversy in NPR’s world.
What Scott Simon was doing was merely piling on to our demonization of Hamas and Iran, both as legitimate entities as Israel, Iceland or Indiana. This was evidently at the service of Israel, a tiny country that nevertheless manages to exercise huge clout over the allegedly all powerful United States.
How much power the Israelis have over us was reflected the very next day in these speak-for-themselves words in the Sunday NY Times: “...the question of whether Israel will settle for something less than a conventional attack on Iran pose[s] immediate and wrenching decisions for Mr. Obama.”
Just why would Israel’s imperatives be “immediate and wrenching” to our incoming president? So what if Israel doesn’t settle for less than another, bigger war in the Middle East? Will they charge us with disobedience? Will they apply sanctions or remove Obama from office or otherwise decree regime change in Washington? Just how much juice do they have?
Gibbon wrote that one of the signs of a declining empire is when the metropolis loses its sway over its colonies and starts giving in to them instead of giving orders to them. If that’s so, then the American empire is moribund. It’s time to bury it, folks.
And while we’re on the Middle East, it’s important to keep in mind the following facts which you are not going to derive from NPR, the Times, the rest of the money media or the politicians:
1. Israel’s conquest and subjugation of Gaza in 1967 was and remains illegal.
2. The Gazans have every right to resist their subjugation.
3. Under prevailing U.S. and Israeli military doctrine, it is merely necessary to say you are attacking military targets and trying not to harm civilians. Those civilians you do kill and injure, no matter how many, then become “collateral damage,” with no blame attached. It’s fair to presume, then, that the Gazans would say their rockets are directed at Israeli military targets. In other words, the same evasions should apply to all sides.
Finally, for some first class commentary on the Gaza War from a couple of brilliant writers, I recommend recent pieces by my former colleague Diana Johnstone, and also by Uri Avnery, a truly great and wise Israeli
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Save Your Eight Stuff
It's No Year's Leave
Back in July I warned that if Obama and the Dems came to power, the righties would erase 2008 from our memory banks just as surely as Judge Crater evanesced into that summer’s eve in long ago Gotham. I’m repeating my alert. You have until Inauguration Day to muster any memorabilia attesting to the existence of the 365 days between 2007 and 2009. Limbaugh and Hannity have already pinned the recession on Obama, while the ever clueless Bush has blamed his old man for the mess. In coming days, they’ll be faulting the Dems for the Gaza ghastlies and the Afghan agonies. It won’t be long before the mainstream media follow suit. By Memorial Day at the latest all the world’s woes will be laid at the bent knees of the Dems and anyone who recalls 2008 will end up behind the eight ball.
So, as I advised last summer, make a 2008 scrapbook to thrill and delight the grandkids and to prove to the doubtful that it was a year that was. --But Happy New Year!
Back in July I warned that if Obama and the Dems came to power, the righties would erase 2008 from our memory banks just as surely as Judge Crater evanesced into that summer’s eve in long ago Gotham. I’m repeating my alert. You have until Inauguration Day to muster any memorabilia attesting to the existence of the 365 days between 2007 and 2009. Limbaugh and Hannity have already pinned the recession on Obama, while the ever clueless Bush has blamed his old man for the mess. In coming days, they’ll be faulting the Dems for the Gaza ghastlies and the Afghan agonies. It won’t be long before the mainstream media follow suit. By Memorial Day at the latest all the world’s woes will be laid at the bent knees of the Dems and anyone who recalls 2008 will end up behind the eight ball.
So, as I advised last summer, make a 2008 scrapbook to thrill and delight the grandkids and to prove to the doubtful that it was a year that was. --But Happy New Year!
Things That You're Liable to Read in the Bible
Gaza and Genesis
We Americans decided by ourselves that we were the world’s leader and that the other 96 percent of humanity had better obey if they didn’t want visits from the CIA or the 82nd Airborne. Over the last two centuries we used force on hundreds of occasions in every part of the world to get our way. One can only imagine how many more wars we would have fought if we actually had a contract from God, inscribed in the Bible, that sanctified our conquests.
One quite aggressive country does. If you want to know what Israel is all about open your good book to Genesis 15:18 and you'll find a reason for a lot of the bloodshed in the Middle East. If you don’t have one handy, it says that “the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” It means that all or parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq belong to the Jews, according to the ultimate authority.
If you’ve been to their country, you’ll know that the Israelis are a tough bunch and not so much frightened by pinprick rocket attacks from Gaza as ticked at the countries that God meant them to rule. Their mien can be likened to that of a landlord anxious to drive out his tenants so that he can move in his relatives.
In furtherance of its grace from Genesis, Israel has taken land from all four of its neighbors and has organized its military to dominate the region well beyond its biblical bequest. Every few years, the Israelis kill great numbers of nearby residents and blow up their civil infrastructure to encourage their docility or departure. That's what happened in the summer of 2006 in Lebanon and today in Gaza. But like a cat with eyes bigger than its belly, Israel has been obliged at times to spit up some of its conquests either because of persistent resistance or because too few colonists could be found to inhabit the lands taken.
But no matter how violent the Israelis get, the neighbors don’t go away. They bury their dead, remain refractory, and make babies at double the rate of the Israelis. The Arabs believe that down the road, incha’allah, their numbers and their presence will prevail and that Israel will go the way of its erstwhile model, the late, unlamented Union of South Africa. In other words, Israel will become a multinational state rather than an apartheid one.
That will make some Jews miserable, particularly the observant kind who take the real estate deed in the Bible seriously. But it might intrigue secular Jews willing to chance living in a land in which they are only influential but not dominant. I say might because nothing is sure in that part of the world, whether it’s gospel or not.
We Americans decided by ourselves that we were the world’s leader and that the other 96 percent of humanity had better obey if they didn’t want visits from the CIA or the 82nd Airborne. Over the last two centuries we used force on hundreds of occasions in every part of the world to get our way. One can only imagine how many more wars we would have fought if we actually had a contract from God, inscribed in the Bible, that sanctified our conquests.
One quite aggressive country does. If you want to know what Israel is all about open your good book to Genesis 15:18 and you'll find a reason for a lot of the bloodshed in the Middle East. If you don’t have one handy, it says that “the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” It means that all or parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq belong to the Jews, according to the ultimate authority.
If you’ve been to their country, you’ll know that the Israelis are a tough bunch and not so much frightened by pinprick rocket attacks from Gaza as ticked at the countries that God meant them to rule. Their mien can be likened to that of a landlord anxious to drive out his tenants so that he can move in his relatives.
In furtherance of its grace from Genesis, Israel has taken land from all four of its neighbors and has organized its military to dominate the region well beyond its biblical bequest. Every few years, the Israelis kill great numbers of nearby residents and blow up their civil infrastructure to encourage their docility or departure. That's what happened in the summer of 2006 in Lebanon and today in Gaza. But like a cat with eyes bigger than its belly, Israel has been obliged at times to spit up some of its conquests either because of persistent resistance or because too few colonists could be found to inhabit the lands taken.
But no matter how violent the Israelis get, the neighbors don’t go away. They bury their dead, remain refractory, and make babies at double the rate of the Israelis. The Arabs believe that down the road, incha’allah, their numbers and their presence will prevail and that Israel will go the way of its erstwhile model, the late, unlamented Union of South Africa. In other words, Israel will become a multinational state rather than an apartheid one.
That will make some Jews miserable, particularly the observant kind who take the real estate deed in the Bible seriously. But it might intrigue secular Jews willing to chance living in a land in which they are only influential but not dominant. I say might because nothing is sure in that part of the world, whether it’s gospel or not.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Enemies Erstwhile and Otherwise
Threats Getting Threadbare
With a new administration as enthusiastic for change as it is respectful of business as usual, it looks like a good time to review the threat board. We Americans love God but can’t live without the devil. Satanic threats, virtually all of which we create for ourselves, justify our empire, prop up our economy by way of “defense” spending, and scare us into sticking with the status quo.
For decades we had the “evil empire” embodied by the quondam commies. Then there was the “axis of evil” among atheist Koreans, Shiite Persians and Sunni Mesopotamians (imagine what they jabbered about at their secret cabals?). Nowadays, we have only the rubric “terrorism” to flog the foreigners we deem disobedient. Though it’s not particularly accurate or enlightening, it is a scary word signifying that we must let our government run roughshod lest those satans slay us in our sleep. And, of course, it’s a single word. If you pejoratize our enemies with more than one word you tax the public’s attention span.
Which raises the problem that our most familiar threats are suffering senility and don’t drum up the dread they used to. The Cuban Revolution is going on 50, with a frail but still feisty Fidel about to gall his 11th American president. Washington still dubs his regime a threat to the western hemisphere, while the western hemisphere, with the isolated exception of the U.S., enjoys increasingly cordial relations with the tropic isle we used to call the “pearl of the Antilles.” Obama apparently accepts that Cuba should remain a threat but says he favors some minor amelioration. We’ll still try to starve Cubans to death, but will allow exiles here to send table scraps to their relatives. And we’ll close Guantanamo so it will no longer be a sobriquet for torture, but revert to being a nasty example of imperial armed robbery.
Across the Caribbean, Venezuela, a country that never fought a war beyond its borders, is sharing the calumny we dump on Cuba. While we tar him as an autocratic ogre, President Chavez is working hard to unify Latin America on the European model, making our old backyard into their brand new mall. On his side is the utter disgust most Latins have for the so-called Washington consensus economics that kept them so poor for so long. Venezuela’s been on the threat board for a decade now. It ain’t going nowhere.
An old standby is Kim Il Jung, North Korea’s erstwhile boy dictator, now nearing 68 and reportedly suffering from stroke and such. North Korea sits on a peninsula surrounded by three far more powerful countries it would not dare attack. It was virtually wiped out when it tried to reunite with South Korea by force in 1950 and has since had so little to do with the rest of the world that it’s known as a “hermit kingdom.” Nevertheless, Washington continues to label it a danger to all Asia and beyond. Ashton Carter, a high diplomat in the Clinton administration, gave up the game when he revealed the real reason we oppose nukes in the North. When other countries have nukes, we lose our “leverage” over them, he said.
Also going gray is our Persian paranoia. It’s been 30 years since Washington began scaring us with the ever imminent and inevasible threat from Iran and its never quite perfected nukes. Our leaders lately tell us that Iran now plans to target everything from Israel to Iceland once it perfects the missiles to carry its still developing nukes. As my father used to say, if we had ham we could have ham and eggs if we had eggs. Of course, no one asks and no one explains why Iran, a country that hasn’t attacked anyone for 270 years, wants to commit suicide by rocketing its oil customers in Europe. Here, Obama figures to follow exactly the same policy as Bush, with a few diplomatic niceties added for window dressing. Our aim in Iran is exactly the same as it was back in 1953 when we overthrew its democratic government and imposed a bloody dictator. As Kissinger has said, we regard Iran’s oil as our own and mean to get it back.
Afghanistan, which joined the threat board seven years ago with 9/11, has been at more or less continuous war since the early 70s--that would be the 670s. Other countries love to invade it and the Afghans enjoy fighting them off. I don’t know why, since there’s little there to fight over. All I remember from my trip back in ‘73 was the dirt cheap hash, delicious melons and handsome rugs. Obama says he will change Bush’s policy by making the war there bigger and bloodier.
Syria’s been on the threat board for 60 years. Since it’s not strong enough to fight off its neighbors, let alone attack them, it has lost land on the Golan to Israel and its position in Lebanon to the U.S. Since they don’t have much oil, the Syrians don’t make the top of our shit list. We always seem to threaten them as an afterthought.
As as wrote back in the summer (Iraq Going, Going, Gone, July 22), the Iraqis have no reason to accept subordination to our empire and we have no way to force them, having shot our bolt militarily. After 40 years, the far more capable Israelis have yet to pacify four million starveling Palestinian imprisoned on a few patches of land. Any hope of the U.S. doing better in Iraq was always a pipe dream. The recently agreed withdrawal agreement codifies a more or less total American defeat. Not that the war was a total loss. We’ve got $50 billion of Iraqi oil receipts in our banks. You can be sure the big boys will find a way to hang on to that stash. Meanwhile, we move our shock and awe show to Afghanistan as control of the Middle East and its energy drifts back to the people who live there.
With a new administration as enthusiastic for change as it is respectful of business as usual, it looks like a good time to review the threat board. We Americans love God but can’t live without the devil. Satanic threats, virtually all of which we create for ourselves, justify our empire, prop up our economy by way of “defense” spending, and scare us into sticking with the status quo.
For decades we had the “evil empire” embodied by the quondam commies. Then there was the “axis of evil” among atheist Koreans, Shiite Persians and Sunni Mesopotamians (imagine what they jabbered about at their secret cabals?). Nowadays, we have only the rubric “terrorism” to flog the foreigners we deem disobedient. Though it’s not particularly accurate or enlightening, it is a scary word signifying that we must let our government run roughshod lest those satans slay us in our sleep. And, of course, it’s a single word. If you pejoratize our enemies with more than one word you tax the public’s attention span.
Which raises the problem that our most familiar threats are suffering senility and don’t drum up the dread they used to. The Cuban Revolution is going on 50, with a frail but still feisty Fidel about to gall his 11th American president. Washington still dubs his regime a threat to the western hemisphere, while the western hemisphere, with the isolated exception of the U.S., enjoys increasingly cordial relations with the tropic isle we used to call the “pearl of the Antilles.” Obama apparently accepts that Cuba should remain a threat but says he favors some minor amelioration. We’ll still try to starve Cubans to death, but will allow exiles here to send table scraps to their relatives. And we’ll close Guantanamo so it will no longer be a sobriquet for torture, but revert to being a nasty example of imperial armed robbery.
Across the Caribbean, Venezuela, a country that never fought a war beyond its borders, is sharing the calumny we dump on Cuba. While we tar him as an autocratic ogre, President Chavez is working hard to unify Latin America on the European model, making our old backyard into their brand new mall. On his side is the utter disgust most Latins have for the so-called Washington consensus economics that kept them so poor for so long. Venezuela’s been on the threat board for a decade now. It ain’t going nowhere.
An old standby is Kim Il Jung, North Korea’s erstwhile boy dictator, now nearing 68 and reportedly suffering from stroke and such. North Korea sits on a peninsula surrounded by three far more powerful countries it would not dare attack. It was virtually wiped out when it tried to reunite with South Korea by force in 1950 and has since had so little to do with the rest of the world that it’s known as a “hermit kingdom.” Nevertheless, Washington continues to label it a danger to all Asia and beyond. Ashton Carter, a high diplomat in the Clinton administration, gave up the game when he revealed the real reason we oppose nukes in the North. When other countries have nukes, we lose our “leverage” over them, he said.
Also going gray is our Persian paranoia. It’s been 30 years since Washington began scaring us with the ever imminent and inevasible threat from Iran and its never quite perfected nukes. Our leaders lately tell us that Iran now plans to target everything from Israel to Iceland once it perfects the missiles to carry its still developing nukes. As my father used to say, if we had ham we could have ham and eggs if we had eggs. Of course, no one asks and no one explains why Iran, a country that hasn’t attacked anyone for 270 years, wants to commit suicide by rocketing its oil customers in Europe. Here, Obama figures to follow exactly the same policy as Bush, with a few diplomatic niceties added for window dressing. Our aim in Iran is exactly the same as it was back in 1953 when we overthrew its democratic government and imposed a bloody dictator. As Kissinger has said, we regard Iran’s oil as our own and mean to get it back.
Afghanistan, which joined the threat board seven years ago with 9/11, has been at more or less continuous war since the early 70s--that would be the 670s. Other countries love to invade it and the Afghans enjoy fighting them off. I don’t know why, since there’s little there to fight over. All I remember from my trip back in ‘73 was the dirt cheap hash, delicious melons and handsome rugs. Obama says he will change Bush’s policy by making the war there bigger and bloodier.
Syria’s been on the threat board for 60 years. Since it’s not strong enough to fight off its neighbors, let alone attack them, it has lost land on the Golan to Israel and its position in Lebanon to the U.S. Since they don’t have much oil, the Syrians don’t make the top of our shit list. We always seem to threaten them as an afterthought.
As as wrote back in the summer (Iraq Going, Going, Gone, July 22), the Iraqis have no reason to accept subordination to our empire and we have no way to force them, having shot our bolt militarily. After 40 years, the far more capable Israelis have yet to pacify four million starveling Palestinian imprisoned on a few patches of land. Any hope of the U.S. doing better in Iraq was always a pipe dream. The recently agreed withdrawal agreement codifies a more or less total American defeat. Not that the war was a total loss. We’ve got $50 billion of Iraqi oil receipts in our banks. You can be sure the big boys will find a way to hang on to that stash. Meanwhile, we move our shock and awe show to Afghanistan as control of the Middle East and its energy drifts back to the people who live there.
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