Bigger America? Great!
Bigger U.S.? Not So Fast!
America’s lust for largeness has long appalled and amused the other 95 percent of the world. We’re the land where bigger and better are synonymous. Where a “monster” is not an evil ogre but a food portion. Where fat people in phat clothes need trucks to haul their bloated carcasses between their MacMansions and the Mall sprawl.
We’re the nation that needs to graze everywhere on earth because our appetites have long since outgrown our ample home pastures. We’re the folks who turned The Star Spangled Banner into a multinational anthem. We the ones who made our elections into a multi-billion dollar business where cash flow crowds out civics. We rate movies by box office take and the Superbowl by the price of its commercial spots. We await the quarterly accretions of corporate growth like expectant parents.
They say our economic problem is that we’re not growing fast enough. Imagine, we’re still too small! Maybe devouring Pakistan will help us bulk up.
Then again, the pundits tell us we live in an exceptional land. The exception, of course, is the government--the only institution in all of America that people say is too big rather than not big enough. How the hell did that ever happen?
In fact, our government is smaller than those of first world countries. When we say it’s too big, that’s in relation to the little it does for us. It’s like a Hummer that can’t go faster than 40 mph but guzzles gas anyway.
In those countries with bigger governments, taxes cover health care, education through college, decent pensions, paid vacations, efficient public transportation, etc. Our smaller government spends much of our money on expanding an empire, making war, and seeing to it that the comfortably off are rarely discomfited. But those are areas that advocates of a reduced regime believe should be bigger. Happily, that’s not as true as it once was. Libertarian conservatives, whose ideas seem to catching on among some righties, are solidly anti-imperialist. On that subject, Ron Paul and Noam Chomsky are as close as clams.
The smaller state scam is really an effort to reduce or eliminate the parts of government that serve the needs of ordinary Americans. In particular, to privatize Social Security and Medicare, the last two big government programs whose main beneficiaries are not the military or the wealthy but you and me.
Listen to the constant cry that they’re running out of money. Does anyone worry that the Pentagon will go belly up? That they’ll be no bucks to pay for $600 a gallon gasoline in Afghanistan. Or that the Dept of Energy will no longer be able to dish out billions in giveaways to big oil?
The fact is SS can be made solvent for decades to come by way of a small tax hike. Medicare is in truth a god awful mess. A cash cow for crooked providers, it will take an army of Savonarolas to clean it up.
These are useful things to keep in mind as the campaign mounts to make the government smaller by making us poorer.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Real 'Death Panels'
In fact our government does have them. But they have nothing to do with health care or the blitherings of Sarah Appallin. They consist of high-level committees ensconced deep in the bowels of our national security apparat that decide which of the world’s 200 or so governments should be euthanized for the convenience of our empire. These politicide panels then determine whether the fatal dose should be administered by war, assassination, coup d’etat, destabilization and/or economic strangulation.
Their most recent application was Honduras, where last summer the elected president was removed at gunpoint and death squads were loosed on legitimists, leftists and such. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton celebrated this ongoing bloodbath as a victory for democracy.
Still topping the list for what is bureaucratically dubbed ‘regime change’ are Iran and Venezuela. They got up there by insisting that the vast oil and gas deposits under their lands belong to them and not to Exxon, Chevron or Shell.
Funny, our pols and pundits are forever predicting future “resource wars” with nations scrambling for everything from aluminum to zinc. But they never admit to the ones already happening. Its 31 years now that we’ve been scheming to take back “our” oil in Iran and 10 that we’re plotting to do the same in Venezuela. We don’t admit to the obvious, of course. Rather, we accuse the two countries of seeking nukes, having aggressive designs on their neighbors, oppressing their people and, to be sure, committing the ultimate sin of “anti-Americanism.”
What we omit is that if they turned over their oil to us they could do all of those things with our blessings--and that we’d give them good prices on weapons and torture instruments to boot.
Iran and Venezuela have very different governments. The former is a theocracy like our good buddy Saudi Arabia. Unlike the Saudis, Iran overthrew its pro-Washington royal family back in 1978. It also allows more freedom, especially for women, than do the medievals in Mecca.
By contrast, Venezuela is a raucous democracy. The poor and middle class majority have wrested power away from the old elite and are working to develop bottoms-up governance against vicious opposition from that elite and its Washington patrons. Few nations today have as open and interesting politics.
What the two share in common is peace. Venezuela has never fought a foreign war, while Iran hasn’t attacked anyone in 250 years, or since the course of history put the 5,000-year-old Persian civilization out of the empire business just as it was admitting the nascent United States.
I mention Venezuela this week because its people have just celebrated the eighth anniversary of their victory over one of our ‘death panels.’ In April 2002, a cabal of local military and business types, coordinated, advised and backed by our CIA, Naval Intelligence and such, seized power in Caracas, taking the president prisoner and commencing a reign of terror.
They issued a single decree that read like the CliffsNotes for Fascism 101. It shut down the courts, the legislature and all other elected institutions from the local to national levels. It promised new elections within a year--but gave the cabal veto over candidates.
Meanwhile, the coup’s cops began firing on protesters and rounding up supporters of the legitimate government. The Bush administration lost no time in recognizing the new “government” and praising it for “restoring democracy.” The rest of world all but universally condemned the coup and demanded restoration of the elected government.
Washington and its compradors had badly misjudged. Literally millions of Venezuelans poured into the streets in defense of their real democracy. They were backed by loyal military, who quickly retook the Miraflores (Venezuela’s White House) and freed the president from his island prison. It was all over in less than 48 hours.
The result: the right wing opposition in Venezuela was utterly discredited as dictatorial rather than democratic. The lawful government was strengthened. Latins learned yet again that when Uncle Sam talks about democracy, it means bullets rather than ballots.
The battle goes on. The empire won last summer in Honduras (we’ll see for how long). But attempted coups in Bolivia and Paraguay were thwarted. Venezuelans will be voting in September for their congress. Your tax dollars and ‘death panels’ are still hard at work destabilizing and demonizing the elected government in the name of democracy.
In fact our government does have them. But they have nothing to do with health care or the blitherings of Sarah Appallin. They consist of high-level committees ensconced deep in the bowels of our national security apparat that decide which of the world’s 200 or so governments should be euthanized for the convenience of our empire. These politicide panels then determine whether the fatal dose should be administered by war, assassination, coup d’etat, destabilization and/or economic strangulation.
Their most recent application was Honduras, where last summer the elected president was removed at gunpoint and death squads were loosed on legitimists, leftists and such. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton celebrated this ongoing bloodbath as a victory for democracy.
Still topping the list for what is bureaucratically dubbed ‘regime change’ are Iran and Venezuela. They got up there by insisting that the vast oil and gas deposits under their lands belong to them and not to Exxon, Chevron or Shell.
Funny, our pols and pundits are forever predicting future “resource wars” with nations scrambling for everything from aluminum to zinc. But they never admit to the ones already happening. Its 31 years now that we’ve been scheming to take back “our” oil in Iran and 10 that we’re plotting to do the same in Venezuela. We don’t admit to the obvious, of course. Rather, we accuse the two countries of seeking nukes, having aggressive designs on their neighbors, oppressing their people and, to be sure, committing the ultimate sin of “anti-Americanism.”
What we omit is that if they turned over their oil to us they could do all of those things with our blessings--and that we’d give them good prices on weapons and torture instruments to boot.
Iran and Venezuela have very different governments. The former is a theocracy like our good buddy Saudi Arabia. Unlike the Saudis, Iran overthrew its pro-Washington royal family back in 1978. It also allows more freedom, especially for women, than do the medievals in Mecca.
By contrast, Venezuela is a raucous democracy. The poor and middle class majority have wrested power away from the old elite and are working to develop bottoms-up governance against vicious opposition from that elite and its Washington patrons. Few nations today have as open and interesting politics.
What the two share in common is peace. Venezuela has never fought a foreign war, while Iran hasn’t attacked anyone in 250 years, or since the course of history put the 5,000-year-old Persian civilization out of the empire business just as it was admitting the nascent United States.
I mention Venezuela this week because its people have just celebrated the eighth anniversary of their victory over one of our ‘death panels.’ In April 2002, a cabal of local military and business types, coordinated, advised and backed by our CIA, Naval Intelligence and such, seized power in Caracas, taking the president prisoner and commencing a reign of terror.
They issued a single decree that read like the CliffsNotes for Fascism 101. It shut down the courts, the legislature and all other elected institutions from the local to national levels. It promised new elections within a year--but gave the cabal veto over candidates.
Meanwhile, the coup’s cops began firing on protesters and rounding up supporters of the legitimate government. The Bush administration lost no time in recognizing the new “government” and praising it for “restoring democracy.” The rest of world all but universally condemned the coup and demanded restoration of the elected government.
Washington and its compradors had badly misjudged. Literally millions of Venezuelans poured into the streets in defense of their real democracy. They were backed by loyal military, who quickly retook the Miraflores (Venezuela’s White House) and freed the president from his island prison. It was all over in less than 48 hours.
The result: the right wing opposition in Venezuela was utterly discredited as dictatorial rather than democratic. The lawful government was strengthened. Latins learned yet again that when Uncle Sam talks about democracy, it means bullets rather than ballots.
The battle goes on. The empire won last summer in Honduras (we’ll see for how long). But attempted coups in Bolivia and Paraguay were thwarted. Venezuelans will be voting in September for their congress. Your tax dollars and ‘death panels’ are still hard at work destabilizing and demonizing the elected government in the name of democracy.
PS-An Irish film crew made a terrific documentary on the 2002 Venezuelan coup that, amazingly, covered the occupation of the presidential palace by the coup plotters. It's called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and is viewable at You Tube
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Down Memory Lane
With the Tea Baggers
If you were 260 years old, which is the average age of a tea bagger, and had been a stone conservative all your life, you would have believed, or at least professed, the following things:
* That King George III was our proper sovereign.
* That Washington, Adams, Franklin and that bunch deserved the noose.
* That, having unfortunately become independent, America should have a king rather than a president.
* That, having regretfully become a republic, America should restrict the ballot to white men of property.
* That blacks, Indians, women and children were property.
* That human slavery was God’s way.
* That opposition to slavery was the devil’s work.
* That the extension of voting rights to white men without property put America on the road to ruin.
* That human slavery should be extended to the new states in the west and reimposed on Latin America and the Caribbean.
* That the maintenance of human slavery in the south required attacking the United States of America, destroying its union, killing its soldiers, trampling its flag, and creating a new slave nation.
* That the abolition of slavery marked another awful step in America’s ruination.
* That freed slaves should be retained in bondage by way of feudal share-cropping and strict segregation.
* That free labor should have no rights and that any effort of workers to combine in unions should be prosecuted as conspiracy.
* That child labor kept kids busy and discouraged delinquency.
* That public schools were socialistic.
* That group practice by doctors was socialistic.
* That antitrust laws were socialistic.
* That the government had no right to protect citizens from foul air, bad water, contaminated food or poisonous drugs.
* That the supreme right was private property and the freedom of its owners to do as they wished.
* That any organization with Inc. in back of its name is preferable to any organization with U.S. in front of its name.
* That corporations should have all the rights of human beings but few, if any, of their responsibilities.
* That money talks every time.
* That Woodrow Wilson and his progressive ilk caused most of our current problems.
* That Franklin D. Roosevelt was really named Rosenfeld and was a traitor to his class.
* That fascism was a positive trend in the 1930s and that Hitler and Mussolini were leaders to admire and emulate.
* That the United States should never have entered World War II.
* That Dwight D. Eisenhower was a conscious member of the international communist conspiracy.
* That Joe McCarthy was a saint.
* That taking God out of the schools and putting the N------rs in ruined America yet again.
* That civil rights laws added to the ruin.
* That John F. Kennedy got what he deserved.
* That Ronald Reagan was our greatest president.
* That Saddam Hussein committed 9/11 and that we found his weapons of mass destruction.
* That Wall Street bankers had nothing to do with the current financial meltdown. Instead it was caused by a conspiracy of poor people to destroy capitalism by borrowing money to buy houses they couldn’t afford. This conspiracy was hatched by Woodrow Wilson in the 1910’s and put into motion in the early 1960’s by a couple of radical Columbia University professors scheming with the then four-year-old Barack Obama.
* That Barack Obama grew up to be a Kenyan, an Indonesian, a Muslim, a radical Christian, an atheist, a socialist, a Nazi, an alien and the anti-Christ.
* That even though I think they are socialistic abominations, I keep my Medicare card handy and have direct deposit for my Social Security.
With the Tea Baggers
If you were 260 years old, which is the average age of a tea bagger, and had been a stone conservative all your life, you would have believed, or at least professed, the following things:
* That King George III was our proper sovereign.
* That Washington, Adams, Franklin and that bunch deserved the noose.
* That, having unfortunately become independent, America should have a king rather than a president.
* That, having regretfully become a republic, America should restrict the ballot to white men of property.
* That blacks, Indians, women and children were property.
* That human slavery was God’s way.
* That opposition to slavery was the devil’s work.
* That the extension of voting rights to white men without property put America on the road to ruin.
* That human slavery should be extended to the new states in the west and reimposed on Latin America and the Caribbean.
* That the maintenance of human slavery in the south required attacking the United States of America, destroying its union, killing its soldiers, trampling its flag, and creating a new slave nation.
* That the abolition of slavery marked another awful step in America’s ruination.
* That freed slaves should be retained in bondage by way of feudal share-cropping and strict segregation.
* That free labor should have no rights and that any effort of workers to combine in unions should be prosecuted as conspiracy.
* That child labor kept kids busy and discouraged delinquency.
* That public schools were socialistic.
* That group practice by doctors was socialistic.
* That antitrust laws were socialistic.
* That the government had no right to protect citizens from foul air, bad water, contaminated food or poisonous drugs.
* That the supreme right was private property and the freedom of its owners to do as they wished.
* That any organization with Inc. in back of its name is preferable to any organization with U.S. in front of its name.
* That corporations should have all the rights of human beings but few, if any, of their responsibilities.
* That money talks every time.
* That Woodrow Wilson and his progressive ilk caused most of our current problems.
* That Franklin D. Roosevelt was really named Rosenfeld and was a traitor to his class.
* That fascism was a positive trend in the 1930s and that Hitler and Mussolini were leaders to admire and emulate.
* That the United States should never have entered World War II.
* That Dwight D. Eisenhower was a conscious member of the international communist conspiracy.
* That Joe McCarthy was a saint.
* That taking God out of the schools and putting the N------rs in ruined America yet again.
* That civil rights laws added to the ruin.
* That John F. Kennedy got what he deserved.
* That Ronald Reagan was our greatest president.
* That Saddam Hussein committed 9/11 and that we found his weapons of mass destruction.
* That Wall Street bankers had nothing to do with the current financial meltdown. Instead it was caused by a conspiracy of poor people to destroy capitalism by borrowing money to buy houses they couldn’t afford. This conspiracy was hatched by Woodrow Wilson in the 1910’s and put into motion in the early 1960’s by a couple of radical Columbia University professors scheming with the then four-year-old Barack Obama.
* That Barack Obama grew up to be a Kenyan, an Indonesian, a Muslim, a radical Christian, an atheist, a socialist, a Nazi, an alien and the anti-Christ.
* That even though I think they are socialistic abominations, I keep my Medicare card handy and have direct deposit for my Social Security.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The Holy See No Evil
Despite his formation in the highly disciplined and task-oriented Hitler Youth, it appears that Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope of Rome, is not exactly a no-nonsense executive.
Not just recently, thousands of priests have been diddling--and worse--tens of thousands of little kids just about everywhere in Christendom. Ratzinger was a bishop, then cardinal in Germany where some of this was happening. Before taking the throne, he headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which until 1908 was known as the Office of the Inquisition.
While holding that post made notorious by Torquemada, his inquiries were mostly about matters of doctrine rather than evidences of defilement. Or so goes the “petty gossip.” When he did occasionally summon a cleric to whatever serves nowadays as a star chamber, it was on suspicion of being less than medieval in his politics rather than being less than mature in his proclivities.
Perhaps blinded by the incense or deafened by the choir, Ratzinger somehow didn’t notice this recrudescence of one of the more egregious corruptions that have shamed Rome at least since Pope Alexander VI made cardinals of the sons borne him by Lucretia, his adolescent daughter. Though church documents evidence otherwise, the Vatican's flacks tell us that the current pope never read the memos, never was briefed by his underlings, never noticed the morose altar boys at mass. He was just another bystander, like the fedeli in Piazza San Pietro at Wednesday audiences.
Whatever his problems at the office, Benedict XVI has been lucky compared to some of his namesakes. Benedicts IV and VI were murdered, the latter strangled on the contract of the antipope Bonifice VII. Benedict V had his staff of office broken over his head by his predecessor, Leo VIII. Benedict IX was deposed and excommunicated for simony. Benedict XII, a notorious torturer, made plans to launch yet another Crusade to the Holy Land. But these were thwarted by the outbreak of Europe's Hundred Years War.
Some are arguing that celibacy is at the heart's of the church's problem with pedophiliac priests. You can pin that on Benedict VIII. It was he who forbid marriage by wearers of the cloth. It was no matter of spirituality but simple economics. Clerics were leaving church property to their offspring, thus reducing Rome's real estate portfolio.
Goaded by the Reformation and the Risorgimento, the church has cleaned up its act since those days. Indeed, it ran a very tight ship for a while. Until 1870, or just two lifetimes ago, the vicar of Rome ruled politically as well as spiritually over the Papal States, nowadays the Italian provinces of Umbria, Le Marche and Emilia-Romagna. The pope would still be governing those regions had not newly united Italy invaded them, defeated the papal army, and eventually reduced the church’s territorial dominion to the 108 acres of Vatican City in Rome across the Tiber. As compared to the Holy See’s current lackadaisical attitude towards the sins of its servants, it was far more severe with recalcitrants back when it exercised formal police power.
Let me leave you with an extended quote from the great Trevelyan on the church’s use of this power, particularly under the reign of Pope Gregory XVI, when the Holy See saw everything and acted with alacrity.
“Anyone supposed to belong to the dangerous class of ‘thinkers’ was shadowed by the police, even if he had nothing to do with politics. The same vague distrust of everything not medieval led Gregory XVI to prohibit the intrusion of railways and telegraphs into his dominions.
The press was under rigorous censorship, which included most books and newspapers of any importance...
The life, freedom and property of no one who was not a friend to the government had any real security in the Papal States. Long lists of suspects were handed about between the officers spiritual and temporal, whose functions overlapped in the most amazing ways. The houses of suspects were perpetually being searched, and their daily goings out and in were watched and reported. If evidence was lacking, cardinals did not stick at ordering trivial circumstances to be tortured into proof, and certainly lower officials had small scruple in obeying the spirit of their instructions.
Strange commands were issued to the citizens of their church-state, sometimes to individuals, or sometimes to thousands at a time; as, for example, that they should keep within doors between sunset and sunrise, or not go out at night without a lantern; that they should, under compulsion, ‘perform their spiritual exercises for three days in a convent chosen by the bishop,’ or confess once a month before an approved confessor. Cruel punishments were exacted for neglect. The situation of a ‘thinker’ driven into the confessional by the police must have had piquancy...
Throughout the Papal States fines were imposed, inns and cafes closed, civil rights withdrawn at the whim of the officials...Worst of all, any man was liable--and liable almost in proportion to his public spirit and desire to improve the lot of his fellows--to see the inside of the secret cells at Pesaro, or the fortress which rises on the grim rock of San Leo in the heart of the wildest Appenines. In times when the government was especially alarmed, the forms of civilized justice were laid aside, as when in 1821, many hundreds of men and women were imprisoned or banished without trial and without accusation; as when in 1824 and 1844, Special Commissions were established, presided over by persons of the worst character, who judged with an indifference to all rules of law, and punished with a ferocity that shocked even the Europe of that day. Tied up by ropes to the walls of filthy prisons, or to the “galleys” of Civitavecchia, or more mercifully executed by gibbeting or shooting in the back, the Pope’s enemies perished and were forgotten.” *
* Garibaldi’s Defense of the Roman Republic 1848-9 by George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1907.
...that strange third sex which the Roman church creates by training
men up from boyhood in a world that is not the world of men.*
men up from boyhood in a world that is not the world of men.*
Despite his formation in the highly disciplined and task-oriented Hitler Youth, it appears that Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope of Rome, is not exactly a no-nonsense executive.
Not just recently, thousands of priests have been diddling--and worse--tens of thousands of little kids just about everywhere in Christendom. Ratzinger was a bishop, then cardinal in Germany where some of this was happening. Before taking the throne, he headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which until 1908 was known as the Office of the Inquisition.
While holding that post made notorious by Torquemada, his inquiries were mostly about matters of doctrine rather than evidences of defilement. Or so goes the “petty gossip.” When he did occasionally summon a cleric to whatever serves nowadays as a star chamber, it was on suspicion of being less than medieval in his politics rather than being less than mature in his proclivities.
Perhaps blinded by the incense or deafened by the choir, Ratzinger somehow didn’t notice this recrudescence of one of the more egregious corruptions that have shamed Rome at least since Pope Alexander VI made cardinals of the sons borne him by Lucretia, his adolescent daughter. Though church documents evidence otherwise, the Vatican's flacks tell us that the current pope never read the memos, never was briefed by his underlings, never noticed the morose altar boys at mass. He was just another bystander, like the fedeli in Piazza San Pietro at Wednesday audiences.
Whatever his problems at the office, Benedict XVI has been lucky compared to some of his namesakes. Benedicts IV and VI were murdered, the latter strangled on the contract of the antipope Bonifice VII. Benedict V had his staff of office broken over his head by his predecessor, Leo VIII. Benedict IX was deposed and excommunicated for simony. Benedict XII, a notorious torturer, made plans to launch yet another Crusade to the Holy Land. But these were thwarted by the outbreak of Europe's Hundred Years War.
Some are arguing that celibacy is at the heart's of the church's problem with pedophiliac priests. You can pin that on Benedict VIII. It was he who forbid marriage by wearers of the cloth. It was no matter of spirituality but simple economics. Clerics were leaving church property to their offspring, thus reducing Rome's real estate portfolio.
Goaded by the Reformation and the Risorgimento, the church has cleaned up its act since those days. Indeed, it ran a very tight ship for a while. Until 1870, or just two lifetimes ago, the vicar of Rome ruled politically as well as spiritually over the Papal States, nowadays the Italian provinces of Umbria, Le Marche and Emilia-Romagna. The pope would still be governing those regions had not newly united Italy invaded them, defeated the papal army, and eventually reduced the church’s territorial dominion to the 108 acres of Vatican City in Rome across the Tiber. As compared to the Holy See’s current lackadaisical attitude towards the sins of its servants, it was far more severe with recalcitrants back when it exercised formal police power.
Let me leave you with an extended quote from the great Trevelyan on the church’s use of this power, particularly under the reign of Pope Gregory XVI, when the Holy See saw everything and acted with alacrity.
“Anyone supposed to belong to the dangerous class of ‘thinkers’ was shadowed by the police, even if he had nothing to do with politics. The same vague distrust of everything not medieval led Gregory XVI to prohibit the intrusion of railways and telegraphs into his dominions.
The press was under rigorous censorship, which included most books and newspapers of any importance...
The life, freedom and property of no one who was not a friend to the government had any real security in the Papal States. Long lists of suspects were handed about between the officers spiritual and temporal, whose functions overlapped in the most amazing ways. The houses of suspects were perpetually being searched, and their daily goings out and in were watched and reported. If evidence was lacking, cardinals did not stick at ordering trivial circumstances to be tortured into proof, and certainly lower officials had small scruple in obeying the spirit of their instructions.
Strange commands were issued to the citizens of their church-state, sometimes to individuals, or sometimes to thousands at a time; as, for example, that they should keep within doors between sunset and sunrise, or not go out at night without a lantern; that they should, under compulsion, ‘perform their spiritual exercises for three days in a convent chosen by the bishop,’ or confess once a month before an approved confessor. Cruel punishments were exacted for neglect. The situation of a ‘thinker’ driven into the confessional by the police must have had piquancy...
Throughout the Papal States fines were imposed, inns and cafes closed, civil rights withdrawn at the whim of the officials...Worst of all, any man was liable--and liable almost in proportion to his public spirit and desire to improve the lot of his fellows--to see the inside of the secret cells at Pesaro, or the fortress which rises on the grim rock of San Leo in the heart of the wildest Appenines. In times when the government was especially alarmed, the forms of civilized justice were laid aside, as when in 1821, many hundreds of men and women were imprisoned or banished without trial and without accusation; as when in 1824 and 1844, Special Commissions were established, presided over by persons of the worst character, who judged with an indifference to all rules of law, and punished with a ferocity that shocked even the Europe of that day. Tied up by ropes to the walls of filthy prisons, or to the “galleys” of Civitavecchia, or more mercifully executed by gibbeting or shooting in the back, the Pope’s enemies perished and were forgotten.” *
* Garibaldi’s Defense of the Roman Republic 1848-9 by George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1907.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Socialism: Oui Ou Non?
Consider this anomaly: The yahoos are giving themselves conniptions because Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are supposedly inflicting socialism on America. This despite the banks and brokerages full of fat cats willing to certify that their Dem buddies remain fully faithful to capitalism as a commandment.
Meanwhile, few in France worry that their country is heading for socialism. And that despite the fact that a coalition of actual socialists, communists, greens and other assorted leftists just won a solid 54 percent victory in regional elections.
Some Americans--i.e., stupid ones--would say France is already socialist. That would be laughed off by the capitalists who run France, not to mention the global rich who flock there to luxuriate amid its non pareil bourgeois refinements.
The difference is that socialism is merely a scare word to the ignorant tea-timers who fling it and/or are freaked by it. They might as well be damning the Dems for delivering us to mopery. In France, on the other hand, socialism remains a popular ideal, if no longer a practical destination. The word conjures up heroic yesterdays and better tomorrows. It’s also a threat of sorts. By voting for leftists, French workers are letting their bosses know that they will not not passively accept job losses, wage cuts and benefit reductions. With no electoral left and only a weak labor movement, ordinary Americans lack that muscle available to the French and are obliged to accept being screwed by any outfit with Inc. at the end of its name.
In fact, France had socialist governments back in the 1930s with Blum and again in the 1980s with Mitterand. The former built the foundation of France’s social welfare system, so that for the first time ever ordinary workers took paid vacations. After a brave start, the Mitterand government backed off its most radical reforms, heeding the threat by Wall Street to strangle the French economy.
What’s left of “socialism” today are generous (by American standards) social and civic benefits and a sense of solidarity that accepts frequent strikes and demos as necessary to maintain the decent living standards that French capitalists are forever chopping away at. As I’ve noted before, on this side of the Atlantic the workers are afraid of the bosses while over there the bosses are afraid of the workers.
It’s been like that for a long time, and, I hope, will remain so. Meanwhile, we can pity the poor Gauls, deprived of paying through the nez for health care and college tuition and forced to accept them as public benefits. If you’re out in Yosemite, the Tetons, Cape Cod or the Smokies this summer, you can feel sorry for them in person as they suffer the slavery of "socialism" on their mandatory month-long vacations.
God forbid it should ever happen here.
Consider this anomaly: The yahoos are giving themselves conniptions because Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are supposedly inflicting socialism on America. This despite the banks and brokerages full of fat cats willing to certify that their Dem buddies remain fully faithful to capitalism as a commandment.
Meanwhile, few in France worry that their country is heading for socialism. And that despite the fact that a coalition of actual socialists, communists, greens and other assorted leftists just won a solid 54 percent victory in regional elections.
Some Americans--i.e., stupid ones--would say France is already socialist. That would be laughed off by the capitalists who run France, not to mention the global rich who flock there to luxuriate amid its non pareil bourgeois refinements.
The difference is that socialism is merely a scare word to the ignorant tea-timers who fling it and/or are freaked by it. They might as well be damning the Dems for delivering us to mopery. In France, on the other hand, socialism remains a popular ideal, if no longer a practical destination. The word conjures up heroic yesterdays and better tomorrows. It’s also a threat of sorts. By voting for leftists, French workers are letting their bosses know that they will not not passively accept job losses, wage cuts and benefit reductions. With no electoral left and only a weak labor movement, ordinary Americans lack that muscle available to the French and are obliged to accept being screwed by any outfit with Inc. at the end of its name.
In fact, France had socialist governments back in the 1930s with Blum and again in the 1980s with Mitterand. The former built the foundation of France’s social welfare system, so that for the first time ever ordinary workers took paid vacations. After a brave start, the Mitterand government backed off its most radical reforms, heeding the threat by Wall Street to strangle the French economy.
What’s left of “socialism” today are generous (by American standards) social and civic benefits and a sense of solidarity that accepts frequent strikes and demos as necessary to maintain the decent living standards that French capitalists are forever chopping away at. As I’ve noted before, on this side of the Atlantic the workers are afraid of the bosses while over there the bosses are afraid of the workers.
It’s been like that for a long time, and, I hope, will remain so. Meanwhile, we can pity the poor Gauls, deprived of paying through the nez for health care and college tuition and forced to accept them as public benefits. If you’re out in Yosemite, the Tetons, Cape Cod or the Smokies this summer, you can feel sorry for them in person as they suffer the slavery of "socialism" on their mandatory month-long vacations.
God forbid it should ever happen here.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Travels With Hillary
I know you’re worried sick because you haven’t heard from me in ten days. I’m happy to report that my exciting mistress, the curvaceous and undulating city of San Francisco, is as sexy as ever. California may be broke, but at California and Polk the crab Louis and sourdough at the Swan Oyster Depot are still as rich as Rockefeller. And the R & G Lounge, where Chinatown meets the Financial District, remains the Heavenly Gate to my stomach.
Of course, I’m not the only one who’s been traveling. Hillary Clinton has been zipping around as well. Unfortunately for the empire, I’ve been getting more respect than she does. Today’s Times tells me that the Russkies gave her a goose nearly as uncomfortable as the barbed colonoscopy that the Israelis administered to Barack Obama via Joe Biden. Prime Minister Putin took the occasion of her visit to Moscow to announce that Russia was going ahead with construction of a nuclear reactor in Iran. This was yet another signal that Washington’s sisyphean efforts to rid the Persian Gulf of 5000 years of Persian influence was going nowhere at a comfortable pace. Previously, Beijing had made it known that it would not sanction Iran, one of its biggest trading partners, just because a deadbeat borrower was looking for a scrap. (More worrisome still, read James Petras’ vital piece about bigger trouble brewing between China and the U.S.) Here was yet another lesson to unschooled Americans that it’s hard to convince people who actually read history to start a gratuitous war against a country that hasn’t attacked anyone in 250 years, and also supplies them with the oil they need to keep warm and move around.
Also in that part of the world, Hillary and the Obama administration have even more Iraqi chickens returning to roost. The recent elections there strengthened the factions least likely to take meetings with the spooks and schemers toiling away at the billion dollar U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone.
Farther east, the war in Afghanistan looks to be on the same time line as the Mesozoic Era. That’s steady income for the Pentagon’s gun runners, but tiresome for the Europeans who, after centuries of playing the Great Game, have grown weary of commuting through the Khyber Pass. The Dutch government collapsed over its support of our Kabul caper. Soon the rest of NATO will be begging off as well.
Days earlier Hillary had been in Brazil, where disobedience, and even insolence, also reigned. Foreign Minister Celso Amorim patiently explained to her that his country was immense, populous and overflowing with resources. Therefore, it had not the slightest reason to take orders from anyone but its own people. Hillary could not comprehend such impertinence. How dare Brazil maintain friendly and profitable relations with such “rogue” nations as Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Iran against American “interests?” Hillary went home scratching her head and no doubt wishing that Brazil was as tiny and defenseless as Honduras, whose new CIA-installed death squad democracy stands as the Obummers' sole foreign policy success.
I don't envy Madame Secretary Clinton. She's becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of diplomacy.
I know you’re worried sick because you haven’t heard from me in ten days. I’m happy to report that my exciting mistress, the curvaceous and undulating city of San Francisco, is as sexy as ever. California may be broke, but at California and Polk the crab Louis and sourdough at the Swan Oyster Depot are still as rich as Rockefeller. And the R & G Lounge, where Chinatown meets the Financial District, remains the Heavenly Gate to my stomach.
Of course, I’m not the only one who’s been traveling. Hillary Clinton has been zipping around as well. Unfortunately for the empire, I’ve been getting more respect than she does. Today’s Times tells me that the Russkies gave her a goose nearly as uncomfortable as the barbed colonoscopy that the Israelis administered to Barack Obama via Joe Biden. Prime Minister Putin took the occasion of her visit to Moscow to announce that Russia was going ahead with construction of a nuclear reactor in Iran. This was yet another signal that Washington’s sisyphean efforts to rid the Persian Gulf of 5000 years of Persian influence was going nowhere at a comfortable pace. Previously, Beijing had made it known that it would not sanction Iran, one of its biggest trading partners, just because a deadbeat borrower was looking for a scrap. (More worrisome still, read James Petras’ vital piece about bigger trouble brewing between China and the U.S.) Here was yet another lesson to unschooled Americans that it’s hard to convince people who actually read history to start a gratuitous war against a country that hasn’t attacked anyone in 250 years, and also supplies them with the oil they need to keep warm and move around.
Also in that part of the world, Hillary and the Obama administration have even more Iraqi chickens returning to roost. The recent elections there strengthened the factions least likely to take meetings with the spooks and schemers toiling away at the billion dollar U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone.
Farther east, the war in Afghanistan looks to be on the same time line as the Mesozoic Era. That’s steady income for the Pentagon’s gun runners, but tiresome for the Europeans who, after centuries of playing the Great Game, have grown weary of commuting through the Khyber Pass. The Dutch government collapsed over its support of our Kabul caper. Soon the rest of NATO will be begging off as well.
Days earlier Hillary had been in Brazil, where disobedience, and even insolence, also reigned. Foreign Minister Celso Amorim patiently explained to her that his country was immense, populous and overflowing with resources. Therefore, it had not the slightest reason to take orders from anyone but its own people. Hillary could not comprehend such impertinence. How dare Brazil maintain friendly and profitable relations with such “rogue” nations as Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Iran against American “interests?” Hillary went home scratching her head and no doubt wishing that Brazil was as tiny and defenseless as Honduras, whose new CIA-installed death squad democracy stands as the Obummers' sole foreign policy success.
I don't envy Madame Secretary Clinton. She's becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of diplomacy.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
When Words Wear Out
Any little kid knows that if you keep repeating a word as fast as you can it turns to gibberish. That applies to our public discourse as much as to the four-year-old driving you crazy by endlessly intoning “poopie.” I’m thinking of three political words at or nearing gibberish status here in America. “Socialism,” “anti-Semitism” and “anti-American” have long since escaped their standard definitions and flown off to fantasyland.
Socialism, according to the online Free Dictionary, is “Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy." An online conservative dictionary says “socialism is a political term applied to an economic system in which property is held in common and not individually, and relationships are governed by a political hierarchy.”
For the sentient, what we nowadays call socialism refers to the mixed economies (part public but mostly private) around the world where socialists or social democrats either hold power or form the main opposition. Germany and Scandinavia are the most typical examples. These countries are free, democratic, prosperous and peaceful. Their people enjoy among the highest living standards and best civic and social services on earth. What’s not to like about Denmark?
Uniquely among first world countries, the U.S. has never had a strong socialist, or even pro-labor, movement. Quite the opposite: America is among the most capitalist and conservative of countries, with both political parties agreeing that prosperity and well-being are best gained by encouraging private business. Public solutions to public problems, such as health care, meet fierce opposition. Even the few broad benefits we've won, such as Social Security and Medicare, remain highly controversial and in danger of dilution and even disappearance.
In this kind of reactionary atmosphere, just about anything that corporate types don’t like, including proposals to keep their books honest, get demonized. And the handy all-purpose pejorative to accomplish this is the word socialism. No matter that in the rest of the world socialism equates to bullet trains taking workers on month-long seashore vacations with the money they saved on not having to pay out of pocket for hospital bills or college tuition. Here in America, it means the devilish schemes of Democrats and bureaucrats to commit Godless evil on the citizenry. Thus the word socialism is so soiled that it can’t be used in polite company, let alone to suggest a policy alternative. Meanwhile, its use as a pejorative is crazily inaccurate, antically applied and wearing out. In a word, it’s become gibberish.
My Merriam-Webster describes anti-Semitism as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.” There’s a much longer historical explication at Wikipedia, not to mention your public library. When I was a lad just after WW II, there was quite of bit of anti-Semitism abroad in the land (Check out the 1947 Gregory Peck flick Gentleman’s Agreement to get a sense of it). Typically, businesses, schools, neighborhoods and clubs discreetly or blatantly turned away Jews. For more and deeper reasons than I can explain here, that kind of discrimination happily died out. Where once Jews were obliged to keep to themselves, they have become so interwoven into American life that they worry now about cultural diminution by intermarriage.
Not that anti-Semitism has disappeared. There’s still plenty of it amongst the ranks of Rapture-ready Christians, who believe that Jews, foremost among the unsaved, are deserving candidates for horrible death comes the looming End Time. Weirdly, their particular doctrine holds that until then they must venerate the state of Israel. So they ardently, if temporarily, champion Israel, especially its hard right and expansionist elements. Even more weirdly, Israel and its partisans welcome that support, playing political kissy-face with the bible-thumpers and ignoring their base anti-Semitism.
Meanwhile, the word anti-Semitism has taken on a new definition and usage that you won’t find in the dictionary. Instead of denoting hostility towards Jews, it’s become a dirt ball to throw at anyone who makes even a tepid criticism of the policies of Israel. C’est bizarre because Israelis are free to fault America and both Americans and Israelis are free to second-guess their own countries. It’s only when Americans are less than perfectly indulgent of Israel that the noxious tar of anti-Semitism gets flung at them.
Meanwhile, Israel’s penchant for war, expansionism and apartheid have been losing it friends and adding to its adversaries at an ever increasing rate. Thus ever more critics are being labeled anti-Semites, not a few of them within the pro-Israel ranks. With each new, more ludicrous charge, the pejorative loses weight. What was once serious has become cynical on its way to gibberish.
No doubt that there is an excess of enmity for our empire in the world. And civilized bourgeois nations disdain our mindless avidity and trash culture. So there is some actual anti-Americanism around. Maybe even lots of it. But here at home the phrase as used by pols and the media has little or nothing to do with America or Americans. When directed at other countries, as in “Bolivia is anti-American,” it simply means disobedient. And when aimed by yahoos at other Americans it means “Shut up, you’re not allowed to talk!” "Anti-American" is not quite gibberish yet, but it has entered the express elevator in the tower of Babel.
Any little kid knows that if you keep repeating a word as fast as you can it turns to gibberish. That applies to our public discourse as much as to the four-year-old driving you crazy by endlessly intoning “poopie.” I’m thinking of three political words at or nearing gibberish status here in America. “Socialism,” “anti-Semitism” and “anti-American” have long since escaped their standard definitions and flown off to fantasyland.
Socialism, according to the online Free Dictionary, is “Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy." An online conservative dictionary says “socialism is a political term applied to an economic system in which property is held in common and not individually, and relationships are governed by a political hierarchy.”
For the sentient, what we nowadays call socialism refers to the mixed economies (part public but mostly private) around the world where socialists or social democrats either hold power or form the main opposition. Germany and Scandinavia are the most typical examples. These countries are free, democratic, prosperous and peaceful. Their people enjoy among the highest living standards and best civic and social services on earth. What’s not to like about Denmark?
Uniquely among first world countries, the U.S. has never had a strong socialist, or even pro-labor, movement. Quite the opposite: America is among the most capitalist and conservative of countries, with both political parties agreeing that prosperity and well-being are best gained by encouraging private business. Public solutions to public problems, such as health care, meet fierce opposition. Even the few broad benefits we've won, such as Social Security and Medicare, remain highly controversial and in danger of dilution and even disappearance.
In this kind of reactionary atmosphere, just about anything that corporate types don’t like, including proposals to keep their books honest, get demonized. And the handy all-purpose pejorative to accomplish this is the word socialism. No matter that in the rest of the world socialism equates to bullet trains taking workers on month-long seashore vacations with the money they saved on not having to pay out of pocket for hospital bills or college tuition. Here in America, it means the devilish schemes of Democrats and bureaucrats to commit Godless evil on the citizenry. Thus the word socialism is so soiled that it can’t be used in polite company, let alone to suggest a policy alternative. Meanwhile, its use as a pejorative is crazily inaccurate, antically applied and wearing out. In a word, it’s become gibberish.
My Merriam-Webster describes anti-Semitism as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.” There’s a much longer historical explication at Wikipedia, not to mention your public library. When I was a lad just after WW II, there was quite of bit of anti-Semitism abroad in the land (Check out the 1947 Gregory Peck flick Gentleman’s Agreement to get a sense of it). Typically, businesses, schools, neighborhoods and clubs discreetly or blatantly turned away Jews. For more and deeper reasons than I can explain here, that kind of discrimination happily died out. Where once Jews were obliged to keep to themselves, they have become so interwoven into American life that they worry now about cultural diminution by intermarriage.
Not that anti-Semitism has disappeared. There’s still plenty of it amongst the ranks of Rapture-ready Christians, who believe that Jews, foremost among the unsaved, are deserving candidates for horrible death comes the looming End Time. Weirdly, their particular doctrine holds that until then they must venerate the state of Israel. So they ardently, if temporarily, champion Israel, especially its hard right and expansionist elements. Even more weirdly, Israel and its partisans welcome that support, playing political kissy-face with the bible-thumpers and ignoring their base anti-Semitism.
Meanwhile, the word anti-Semitism has taken on a new definition and usage that you won’t find in the dictionary. Instead of denoting hostility towards Jews, it’s become a dirt ball to throw at anyone who makes even a tepid criticism of the policies of Israel. C’est bizarre because Israelis are free to fault America and both Americans and Israelis are free to second-guess their own countries. It’s only when Americans are less than perfectly indulgent of Israel that the noxious tar of anti-Semitism gets flung at them.
Meanwhile, Israel’s penchant for war, expansionism and apartheid have been losing it friends and adding to its adversaries at an ever increasing rate. Thus ever more critics are being labeled anti-Semites, not a few of them within the pro-Israel ranks. With each new, more ludicrous charge, the pejorative loses weight. What was once serious has become cynical on its way to gibberish.
No doubt that there is an excess of enmity for our empire in the world. And civilized bourgeois nations disdain our mindless avidity and trash culture. So there is some actual anti-Americanism around. Maybe even lots of it. But here at home the phrase as used by pols and the media has little or nothing to do with America or Americans. When directed at other countries, as in “Bolivia is anti-American,” it simply means disobedient. And when aimed by yahoos at other Americans it means “Shut up, you’re not allowed to talk!” "Anti-American" is not quite gibberish yet, but it has entered the express elevator in the tower of Babel.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Gonna Study War Some More
There are two main ways of keeping the peace. One is the Johnny Cash method, or don’t bring your guns to town. Movies teach us that this was popular among pinko marshals like Wyatt Earp in the old west. The other is the NRA idea of selling everyone lots of guns so that any one can either scare off or plug troublemakers.
The problem with John and Wyatt's advice was that one was a singer and the other a law man so that they didn’t particularly care about the fortunes of Samuel Colt up here in Connecticut. On the other holster, the advantage of the NRA notion is that it makes lots of money whether or not it keeps the peace. And if America isn’t about making money, what is it about?
Obviously, Cash and Earp have few fans in Washington. The Pentagon, lavishly indulged by lopsided congressional majorities such as those enjoyed by dictatorships, has become mainly a weapons monger. Thanks to its efforts, U.S. corporations peddle more lethal hardware around the world year after year than any other death merchants. Pig heaven is selling to all sides in a conflict. There was a lot of that in Iraq, where huge shipments of arms vanished on arriving from the States, to show up later in the hands of our nominal enemies. Nothing new about that. The U.S. profitably armed both Iran and Iraq in their 1980-88 war that killed a reported million people.
It’s hardly surprising then that defense secretary Robert Gates, who’s there to remind us that when it comes to war there’s no difference between Bush and Obummer, has been trashing the Europeans for not doing enough arms shopping and sabre rattling. Consider this amazing quote from a speech he gave last week at the National Defense University, a Defense Department-financed graduate school for military officers and diplomats:
“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.”
Gates went on to criticize the Europeans for spending only half as much of their GDP on the military as the U.S. does. He warned that “hostile powers”could be tempted into “aggression” by such puny war budgets.
My first thought on ingesting that inversion of logic and assault on decency is that politicians invoke 2001 and 9/11 to claim they 'changed everything'--in ways, coincidentally, that benefit those making the claim. But, as you and I have noticed, everything is pretty much the same. I didn’t transpose my sock and underwear drawers after 2001 and I didn’t fret more about Muslims with box cutters after 9/11 than I did about Soviets with H-bombs when that was the threat du jour.
Gates doesn’t tell us why peace was okay in the last century but has become dangerous in this one. Neither does he identify the “hostile powers” likely to attack Europe because it doesn’t permit its military-industrial sector to engorge itself as sickeningly as ours does.
My Rough Guide to Rogue Regimes hasn’t listed any new threats to Europe since the Berlin Wall came down. Of course, the Pentagon warns that Persian rockets could hit Luxembourg at any moment, but continentals consider that to be merely a sales promo for Northrup, Lockheed and Boeing.
There’s nothing new about Washington admonishing even historically tranquil states to become sufficiently terrified of whatever dangers the Pentagon invents so that they will purchase U.S. weapons and invite in our forces to protect them from foes foreign and domestic. Reagan’s ambassador to Austria in the 1980s ticked off the locals with suggestions that they abandon neutrality. We’re forever urging quiet little Costa Rica, which has no army, to get itself one--Pentagon outfitted, of course. We’ve made our annoyance clear at the anti-war clauses of the Japanese constitution. No doubt our diplos are working diligently to get the Swiss worrying that neighboring Liechtenstein is a secret aggressor state.
The other side of the coin is threatening perfectly peaceful countries with war so as to gin up profitable arms races. It’s now 31 years that Washington has been claiming Iran is developing nukes to annihilate just about everyone from Oman to Iceland. We’re currently stuffing even more weapons into the Persian Gulf because we say it’s threatened by the Persians, a people who have not attacked another country in 250 years. Venezuela has never invaded anyone or even fought a foreign war. That doesn’t stop Washington and its house media from charging it with scheming to devour Latin America, a fate that the continent can escape only by buying American weapons and accepting ever more U.S. bases on its soil.
The tired ploy of manufacturing crises like those cited above appears to be fading. The vagueness of Gate’s warning about putative "hostile powers" is another sign that our weapons and warfare state has become so natural to us that it's no longer necessary to frighten us with scare stories about evil enemies. Soon wars will be scheduled like tv listings:
There are two main ways of keeping the peace. One is the Johnny Cash method, or don’t bring your guns to town. Movies teach us that this was popular among pinko marshals like Wyatt Earp in the old west. The other is the NRA idea of selling everyone lots of guns so that any one can either scare off or plug troublemakers.
The problem with John and Wyatt's advice was that one was a singer and the other a law man so that they didn’t particularly care about the fortunes of Samuel Colt up here in Connecticut. On the other holster, the advantage of the NRA notion is that it makes lots of money whether or not it keeps the peace. And if America isn’t about making money, what is it about?
Obviously, Cash and Earp have few fans in Washington. The Pentagon, lavishly indulged by lopsided congressional majorities such as those enjoyed by dictatorships, has become mainly a weapons monger. Thanks to its efforts, U.S. corporations peddle more lethal hardware around the world year after year than any other death merchants. Pig heaven is selling to all sides in a conflict. There was a lot of that in Iraq, where huge shipments of arms vanished on arriving from the States, to show up later in the hands of our nominal enemies. Nothing new about that. The U.S. profitably armed both Iran and Iraq in their 1980-88 war that killed a reported million people.
It’s hardly surprising then that defense secretary Robert Gates, who’s there to remind us that when it comes to war there’s no difference between Bush and Obummer, has been trashing the Europeans for not doing enough arms shopping and sabre rattling. Consider this amazing quote from a speech he gave last week at the National Defense University, a Defense Department-financed graduate school for military officers and diplomats:
“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.”
Gates went on to criticize the Europeans for spending only half as much of their GDP on the military as the U.S. does. He warned that “hostile powers”could be tempted into “aggression” by such puny war budgets.
My first thought on ingesting that inversion of logic and assault on decency is that politicians invoke 2001 and 9/11 to claim they 'changed everything'--in ways, coincidentally, that benefit those making the claim. But, as you and I have noticed, everything is pretty much the same. I didn’t transpose my sock and underwear drawers after 2001 and I didn’t fret more about Muslims with box cutters after 9/11 than I did about Soviets with H-bombs when that was the threat du jour.
Gates doesn’t tell us why peace was okay in the last century but has become dangerous in this one. Neither does he identify the “hostile powers” likely to attack Europe because it doesn’t permit its military-industrial sector to engorge itself as sickeningly as ours does.
My Rough Guide to Rogue Regimes hasn’t listed any new threats to Europe since the Berlin Wall came down. Of course, the Pentagon warns that Persian rockets could hit Luxembourg at any moment, but continentals consider that to be merely a sales promo for Northrup, Lockheed and Boeing.
There’s nothing new about Washington admonishing even historically tranquil states to become sufficiently terrified of whatever dangers the Pentagon invents so that they will purchase U.S. weapons and invite in our forces to protect them from foes foreign and domestic. Reagan’s ambassador to Austria in the 1980s ticked off the locals with suggestions that they abandon neutrality. We’re forever urging quiet little Costa Rica, which has no army, to get itself one--Pentagon outfitted, of course. We’ve made our annoyance clear at the anti-war clauses of the Japanese constitution. No doubt our diplos are working diligently to get the Swiss worrying that neighboring Liechtenstein is a secret aggressor state.
The other side of the coin is threatening perfectly peaceful countries with war so as to gin up profitable arms races. It’s now 31 years that Washington has been claiming Iran is developing nukes to annihilate just about everyone from Oman to Iceland. We’re currently stuffing even more weapons into the Persian Gulf because we say it’s threatened by the Persians, a people who have not attacked another country in 250 years. Venezuela has never invaded anyone or even fought a foreign war. That doesn’t stop Washington and its house media from charging it with scheming to devour Latin America, a fate that the continent can escape only by buying American weapons and accepting ever more U.S. bases on its soil.
The tired ploy of manufacturing crises like those cited above appears to be fading. The vagueness of Gate’s warning about putative "hostile powers" is another sign that our weapons and warfare state has become so natural to us that it's no longer necessary to frighten us with scare stories about evil enemies. Soon wars will be scheduled like tv listings:
- Somalia invasion set for next Tuesday.
- Bombing of Ecuador to be summer replacement for subversion of Bolivia.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Obama's Felonious Forum
It’s rare when the public gets to witness an illicit meeting by a criminal syndicate. That’s why this old police reporter was all eyes and ears at Barack Obama’s “Health Care Forum” on Thursday. Here, right on cable for all the world to eavesdrop, was a mob wrangling over territory and loot. But my fascination didn’t last long. For all their dark power, the attendees were a boring lot. Not one had the flash of John Gotti or the quiet authority of Frank Costello. I switched over to TCM and the far more scintillating Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races.
Criminal confab? Attended by the top leaders of our government! What is this nut ranting about? Well, the fact is that just about everywhere in the civilized world profiting on basic health care, as we do here in America, is unlawful, illegal and verboten, not to mention immoral and uneconomical. Thus, so would be meetings furthering this activity.
Non-profit health care? Perfectly OK. Government-provided health care? No problem. Private profit health care for ancillary items like dental, glasses, private rooms? Sure. But profit on treating illness, disease and trauma? No, not allowed. Period.
Those civilized nations see three big reasons for this rule. The first is that the state, any state, reserves to itself the right to take life, and then only by way of due process. Anything else is murder to one degree or another. Allowing private companies to deny health care to their customers simply on the basis of profitability gives them the power of life and death.
The second is that it is not possible to make a free market in health care. Just about everyone would surrender their last penny and go into lifetime hock to keep themselves and their loved ones alive and well. Under capitalism’s sacred law of supply and demand this means that providers of health care will charge whatever the traffic will bear, meaning taking that last penny and IOU from a sufferer. That’s not only immoral, but a formula for impoverishing millions of people.
The third is that, like all businesses, private health care providers expect to increase their market share and profit every year. Given the above mentioned imperative of survival, this means that they can easily grow from their present 17 percent share of our economy to 20 or 30 percent. While those civilized countries were prospering by producing goods and services, our economy would be increasingly based on treating each other for our ills. And there would be no incentive for offering preventive care or adopting healthy habits since they would slow the growth of the dominant sickness sector.
The real, but unspoken, issue at Obama’s felonious forum, was how to control the rapacious growth of health care so that it doesn’t swallow the rest of the economy. GM, for example, says it’s at a competitive disadvantage because every car it makes in the U.S. has an added $1,500 built into the price because of the health care benefits won by its union workers. That same car made in Ontario is $1,500 more profitable because Canadian taxpayers rather than GM bear that cost.
The ills of ordinary Americans have no part in the so-called health care debate of the Washington power players and their corporate pay masters. Sob stories about poor Aunt Thelma who was turned down for cancer treatment by Moneybags Health Insurance are for show. The fight is really about balancing the conflicting interests of different business sectors. Obama takes that very seriously, while the Reps, like nasty brats, think only of ways to screw him and the Dems, no matter the damage it does to the system they claim to revere.
What’s the solution? One is that you get active with one of the many groups promoting a single payer answer, like Health Care Now or Single Payer Action. Another was suggested back in the ‘70s by Gordon Lightfoot when he sang, “The skyline of Toronto is something you’ll get onto...”
It’s rare when the public gets to witness an illicit meeting by a criminal syndicate. That’s why this old police reporter was all eyes and ears at Barack Obama’s “Health Care Forum” on Thursday. Here, right on cable for all the world to eavesdrop, was a mob wrangling over territory and loot. But my fascination didn’t last long. For all their dark power, the attendees were a boring lot. Not one had the flash of John Gotti or the quiet authority of Frank Costello. I switched over to TCM and the far more scintillating Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races.
Criminal confab? Attended by the top leaders of our government! What is this nut ranting about? Well, the fact is that just about everywhere in the civilized world profiting on basic health care, as we do here in America, is unlawful, illegal and verboten, not to mention immoral and uneconomical. Thus, so would be meetings furthering this activity.
Non-profit health care? Perfectly OK. Government-provided health care? No problem. Private profit health care for ancillary items like dental, glasses, private rooms? Sure. But profit on treating illness, disease and trauma? No, not allowed. Period.
Those civilized nations see three big reasons for this rule. The first is that the state, any state, reserves to itself the right to take life, and then only by way of due process. Anything else is murder to one degree or another. Allowing private companies to deny health care to their customers simply on the basis of profitability gives them the power of life and death.
The second is that it is not possible to make a free market in health care. Just about everyone would surrender their last penny and go into lifetime hock to keep themselves and their loved ones alive and well. Under capitalism’s sacred law of supply and demand this means that providers of health care will charge whatever the traffic will bear, meaning taking that last penny and IOU from a sufferer. That’s not only immoral, but a formula for impoverishing millions of people.
The third is that, like all businesses, private health care providers expect to increase their market share and profit every year. Given the above mentioned imperative of survival, this means that they can easily grow from their present 17 percent share of our economy to 20 or 30 percent. While those civilized countries were prospering by producing goods and services, our economy would be increasingly based on treating each other for our ills. And there would be no incentive for offering preventive care or adopting healthy habits since they would slow the growth of the dominant sickness sector.
The real, but unspoken, issue at Obama’s felonious forum, was how to control the rapacious growth of health care so that it doesn’t swallow the rest of the economy. GM, for example, says it’s at a competitive disadvantage because every car it makes in the U.S. has an added $1,500 built into the price because of the health care benefits won by its union workers. That same car made in Ontario is $1,500 more profitable because Canadian taxpayers rather than GM bear that cost.
The ills of ordinary Americans have no part in the so-called health care debate of the Washington power players and their corporate pay masters. Sob stories about poor Aunt Thelma who was turned down for cancer treatment by Moneybags Health Insurance are for show. The fight is really about balancing the conflicting interests of different business sectors. Obama takes that very seriously, while the Reps, like nasty brats, think only of ways to screw him and the Dems, no matter the damage it does to the system they claim to revere.
What’s the solution? One is that you get active with one of the many groups promoting a single payer answer, like Health Care Now or Single Payer Action. Another was suggested back in the ‘70s by Gordon Lightfoot when he sang, “The skyline of Toronto is something you’ll get onto...”
Friday, February 19, 2010
Ronald Reagan Is Smiling
Taking stock of us from his celestial saddle at Gipper’s Grove way out in Simi Valley, Reagan must be grinning. There’s never been a better or easier time to become ridiculously rich in America. Indeed, the planet has seldom seen such a piling of pelf. Bespoke-suited armies of traders, brokers and bankers have buried the myth that money comes from making stuff or doing things. They are instead proving daily that money can issue from nothing more than money. Or is it vice versa?
The stats on the concentration of wealth in America are mind-numbing. Rather than sending you instantly bye-bye by enumerating some of them, let me just observe that we are quickly approaching a time when the owners of the world can be comfortably entertained on the cocktail terrace of a Ritz Carlton Hotel--more likely one in Shanghai than in New York.
Our conservatives, who learned their economics from Monopoly where one player takes all and everyone else goes bust, see this concentration as the natural order of things. The rich should be rich, the poor poor and the middle class muddling. Anything else confuses the yahoos. So they treat any effort to bring up the penurious majority or restrain the profligate minority as “socialism.” It never occurs to them to ask why top-heavy economies tumble, or why more equitable ones enjoy peace and prosperity?
Not just Palinoids but lots of Americans have specific views on the in-gathering of gelt. Consider the following from the business section of the Feb. 19 NY Times on the decision by a fat cat health broker to raise rates in California by as much as 39 percent:
“But from a business perspective, Wellpoint, one of the nation’s largest insurers and the operator of commercial Blue Cross plans in more than a dozen states, may have few alternatives as a company accountable to shareholders demanding higher earnings” [i.e., higher than the $2.6 billion they raked in last year].
In decades past, business apologists invariably sketched shareholders as a pathetic huddle of widows and orphans dependent upon their paltry dividends for their daily crust of bread. Nowadays, of course, speed-of-light computer trading allows investors to buy and sell shares in fractions of a second--yes, a second. The days of Hettie Green are long past, and one sees few crones and waifs shivering at Broad and Wall. Still, the estimable Times tells us that the profits of these nanosec shareholders must and will come before the accident victim or the cancer sufferer.
If you linked to the Times story on the 400 highest earners you will also have noted, as April 15 approaches, that their average tax came to 16.6 percent. Would that bloggers be so favored
We're the party that wants to see an America in which
people can still get rich--Ronald Reagan, May 4, 1982
people can still get rich--Ronald Reagan, May 4, 1982
Taking stock of us from his celestial saddle at Gipper’s Grove way out in Simi Valley, Reagan must be grinning. There’s never been a better or easier time to become ridiculously rich in America. Indeed, the planet has seldom seen such a piling of pelf. Bespoke-suited armies of traders, brokers and bankers have buried the myth that money comes from making stuff or doing things. They are instead proving daily that money can issue from nothing more than money. Or is it vice versa?
The stats on the concentration of wealth in America are mind-numbing. Rather than sending you instantly bye-bye by enumerating some of them, let me just observe that we are quickly approaching a time when the owners of the world can be comfortably entertained on the cocktail terrace of a Ritz Carlton Hotel--more likely one in Shanghai than in New York.
Our conservatives, who learned their economics from Monopoly where one player takes all and everyone else goes bust, see this concentration as the natural order of things. The rich should be rich, the poor poor and the middle class muddling. Anything else confuses the yahoos. So they treat any effort to bring up the penurious majority or restrain the profligate minority as “socialism.” It never occurs to them to ask why top-heavy economies tumble, or why more equitable ones enjoy peace and prosperity?
Not just Palinoids but lots of Americans have specific views on the in-gathering of gelt. Consider the following from the business section of the Feb. 19 NY Times on the decision by a fat cat health broker to raise rates in California by as much as 39 percent:
“But from a business perspective, Wellpoint, one of the nation’s largest insurers and the operator of commercial Blue Cross plans in more than a dozen states, may have few alternatives as a company accountable to shareholders demanding higher earnings” [i.e., higher than the $2.6 billion they raked in last year].
In decades past, business apologists invariably sketched shareholders as a pathetic huddle of widows and orphans dependent upon their paltry dividends for their daily crust of bread. Nowadays, of course, speed-of-light computer trading allows investors to buy and sell shares in fractions of a second--yes, a second. The days of Hettie Green are long past, and one sees few crones and waifs shivering at Broad and Wall. Still, the estimable Times tells us that the profits of these nanosec shareholders must and will come before the accident victim or the cancer sufferer.
If you linked to the Times story on the 400 highest earners you will also have noted, as April 15 approaches, that their average tax came to 16.6 percent. Would that bloggers be so favored
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