From Antibes to Athens
The Cannes Film Festival--happening right now--has long served as one of our gaudiest exemplars of excess. Quaffing kirs at 100 Euros a pop on the terrace of the Hotel du Cap. Zillion dollar yachts bobbing at anchor in Golfe Juan. Wheeling flocks of swifts that, on second glance, turn out to be fleets of Citations, Gulfstreams and Dassaults heading into Nice-Cote d’Azur.
Indecent indulgence? Not so much. This year our pols and media have stamped the stigmata of sybaritism on a hitherto unremarked cohort. Hedge fund managers? Nah. Bond traders? Guess again. Michelle Obama’s couturier? Not hardly. Lindsay Lohan’s bail bondsman? You’re getting close.
The real out-of-control spendthrifts, we are told, are Greek civil servants. Mail carriers redolent of Midas. Trash collectors a la Trump. Buffet-like bureaucrats. The land that first gave us democracy has brought itself into debtocracy. Instead of piling on an Acropolis of arrears to benefit the rich, which is perfectly acceptable business as usual, the Greeks committed the unpardonable capitalist contravention: letting the poor and middle classes share in their ill-advised cornucopia of credit.
For this they must be punished, severely and ceaselessly. The penalty is penury. Greece’s government workers and ordinary citizens must be made bereft of their bennies. The national standard of living has to become more Cote d’Ivoire and less Cote d’Azur. Greeks must learn that before babies are fed, let alone jet skis fueled, the banks and bond houses must be made whole.
The universe has not fallen into hock because Joe Six Pack or Alex Ouzo decided one day to spend beyond their means. It happened because the the richest people on earth, with powers that make Zeus look like a mere conjurer, decided that the manipulation of money stood to be more profitable than the manufacture of goods.
Debt is not incurred; it’s sold just like junk food. If you are the treasurer of a sizable organization, be it public or private, you will be chauffeur-driven to distraction, not to mention free lunch, by battalions of bond peddlers. Each will ply you with pithy Power Points on how your outfit (and, wink, wink, even you) will profit by purchasing yet a newer and more exotic form of debt. If you’re honest, you will shoo them away like flies. If you are flexible, a Porsche would be a fun weekend car.
By the same token, if you are a feckless freshman settling in at Frobisher State, the credit card vultures will alight on you shoulder, gifting you free tees and power juices in exchange for your financial thralldom. Now multiply those solicitations by the millions and scatter them over the earth.
Both debt and junk food deliver instant gratification at the cost of long term misery. And, after enticing you into destitution, distension or disease, both damn you as a knave for falling for their scams.
Our media is currently reveling in the Greek tragedy. They limn it as an object lesson that welfare states go broke and that the lesser classes must learn to live with less, lest, in the words of today’s NY Times, they find themselves in “investors’ line of fire.”
It’s hardly a secret that the big hedge funds have gone from shorting companies to shorting countries. This is the new piracy that has replaced the rapine and pillage of yore. And though there are still rich pickings in Europe, we Americans remain the fattest target in more ways than one. Even after a couple of years of stealing our jobs, looting our pensions, and making a yoke of our nest eggs, Wall Street still sees some meat on our bones. Social Security, of course, is the big jackpot. Bush couldn’t privatize it; it’s more likely that Obama can. We’ll be told we have no choice unless we want to end up in the souvlaki with the Greeks. Don't believe it.
To me, the best thing about the Greek example is the combative spirit of their workers. They know enough economics to understand that they don’t have to take the hit, at least not alone. They can alter the terms of their retrenchment. They can join the Latin Americans in telling the IMF to piss off. In short, they can fight back.
So can we. But not with tea bags.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Strange Ideas
The Brits are having elections today. The way they vote is just as weird, socialistic and un-American as they way they take care of sick people.
Imagine if we were subject to the following:
Campaigns are limited by law to four weeks. Worse, spending is restricted to what we would consider pocket change. That means elections remain a so-called civic responsibility. We Americans, of course, have gotten rid of civics, whatever they were. Our elections are a proudly permanent multi-billion dollar industry providing work for tens of thousands of people in politics and the media and contributing to the economy. The Brits are still decades behind on that score. How many of their prime ministers have the practical experience of managing big money from big shots before they take office?
Shockingly, the British system allows for spoilers. They assume that all candidates are entitled to whatever votes they get. By contrast, in our system only candidates of the two major parties are entitled to their votes. Participation by other parties are discouraged by election laws, and their candidates are properly reproved for taking votes from the entitled parties. Thus we eliminate the possibility of unconventional opinion screwing up voters’ sensibilities. Just think if we, like the Brits, ended up with a health care system where insurance execs couldn’t make zillions of dollars a year? Oh, the horror!
Seis de Mayo
Two lifetimes later, we know “what then?” Our brute force conquest of Mexico gave us Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and half of Colorado. It also gave us 110 million neighbors who see no reason to be any more respectful of our border than we have been of theirs.
Indeed, when they cross that border, whether in the oven heat of the Sonora or the muddy bottoms of the Rio Bravo, few feel like they’re really leaving Mexico. Rather, they are entering a lost part of their land that, dios mediante, they may some day reclaim. Why not? Israel is making good on a 2,000-year-old irredentist initiative.
But it’s not dreams of national redemption that have brought millions of legit and illicit Mexicans to the U.S. Rather it is the poverty of too much corn. Bill Clinton was in Haiti the other day, apologizing for the poverty of too much sugar. The empire plays the same game everywhere, though apologies are still lacking in Mexico. Not that they mean much after the damage is done. It’s simple. You target a third world country, then flood it with under-priced mountains of the main commodity it produces. In Mexico, that meant corn, grown by millions of small farmers and processed in local mills serving tiendas that made their own tortillas.
With ultra-cheap corn cascading in from Iowa and Indiana, those Mexican farmers and processors soon went broke. Local food production was replaced by U.S. fast food outlets. The millions who lost their land and their livelihood headed for the overflowing cities in search of scarce jobs.
The human overabundance, like that of corn, kept the price of labor low. Here were millions of Mexicans to work for next-to-nothing in the U.S. runaway factories. Here were millions more to push north across the border, and, by the chump wages paid them, enrich the bottom line of meat packers, agro businesses, hotel and restaurant operators, etc. You visited that new Albanian restaurant in L.A. and found that your meal was cooked by some hard-working chef trying to support a family back in Zacatecas.
Not only could we exploit Mexicans, but we could also demonize them as “illegals” for entering their erstwhile country without an invitation when all they were doing was emulating General Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States.
The Brits are having elections today. The way they vote is just as weird, socialistic and un-American as they way they take care of sick people.
Imagine if we were subject to the following:
Campaigns are limited by law to four weeks. Worse, spending is restricted to what we would consider pocket change. That means elections remain a so-called civic responsibility. We Americans, of course, have gotten rid of civics, whatever they were. Our elections are a proudly permanent multi-billion dollar industry providing work for tens of thousands of people in politics and the media and contributing to the economy. The Brits are still decades behind on that score. How many of their prime ministers have the practical experience of managing big money from big shots before they take office?
Shockingly, the British system allows for spoilers. They assume that all candidates are entitled to whatever votes they get. By contrast, in our system only candidates of the two major parties are entitled to their votes. Participation by other parties are discouraged by election laws, and their candidates are properly reproved for taking votes from the entitled parties. Thus we eliminate the possibility of unconventional opinion screwing up voters’ sensibilities. Just think if we, like the Brits, ended up with a health care system where insurance execs couldn’t make zillions of dollars a year? Oh, the horror!
Seis de Mayo
We can easily defeat the armies of Mexico, slaughter them by the thousands, and pursue them perhaps to their capital; we can conquer and annex their territory; but what then?--Horace Greeley, 1846, on the eve of the Mexican-American War.
Two lifetimes later, we know “what then?” Our brute force conquest of Mexico gave us Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and half of Colorado. It also gave us 110 million neighbors who see no reason to be any more respectful of our border than we have been of theirs.
Indeed, when they cross that border, whether in the oven heat of the Sonora or the muddy bottoms of the Rio Bravo, few feel like they’re really leaving Mexico. Rather, they are entering a lost part of their land that, dios mediante, they may some day reclaim. Why not? Israel is making good on a 2,000-year-old irredentist initiative.
But it’s not dreams of national redemption that have brought millions of legit and illicit Mexicans to the U.S. Rather it is the poverty of too much corn. Bill Clinton was in Haiti the other day, apologizing for the poverty of too much sugar. The empire plays the same game everywhere, though apologies are still lacking in Mexico. Not that they mean much after the damage is done. It’s simple. You target a third world country, then flood it with under-priced mountains of the main commodity it produces. In Mexico, that meant corn, grown by millions of small farmers and processed in local mills serving tiendas that made their own tortillas.
With ultra-cheap corn cascading in from Iowa and Indiana, those Mexican farmers and processors soon went broke. Local food production was replaced by U.S. fast food outlets. The millions who lost their land and their livelihood headed for the overflowing cities in search of scarce jobs.
The human overabundance, like that of corn, kept the price of labor low. Here were millions of Mexicans to work for next-to-nothing in the U.S. runaway factories. Here were millions more to push north across the border, and, by the chump wages paid them, enrich the bottom line of meat packers, agro businesses, hotel and restaurant operators, etc. You visited that new Albanian restaurant in L.A. and found that your meal was cooked by some hard-working chef trying to support a family back in Zacatecas.
Not only could we exploit Mexicans, but we could also demonize them as “illegals” for entering their erstwhile country without an invitation when all they were doing was emulating General Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Nothing Sells Like Nothing
“...a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: Well, what if we have created a thing which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which no one knows how to price?”--Fabrice Tourre of Goldman Sachs on the ABACUS synthetic collateralized debt obligation offering that he structured for the firm, as quoted in the NY Times
Before capitalism came along economics was mainly conquest. You ravaged and savaged other people, enslaved the survivors, stole their stuff, and lived off the proceeds. As Casper Gutman, seeker of the Maltese Falcon, pointed out, "the Holy Wars were largely a matter of loot."
The notion that you could create wealth by hanging up the pike and making useful items for sale began to catch on in the middle ages. Soon people were creating even more wealth by hiring others to make even more stuff to sell.
There were certain expenses involved that we nowadays call capital--hence the term capitalism. You had to pay for the raw materials, the tools, wages for the workers, etc. Obviously, you could become richer by keeping these expenses as low possible while selling your goods for as much as possible.
The ideal would be a product that cost nothing to make and whose main purpose was to profit its sellers. An impossible dream, you say. For eons human society had been based on tangibles (i.e, a pepperoni pizza) and services (i.e., a delivery boy). How could business escape that straight jacket of substance? How could it achieve maximum productivity and profitability by making nothing out of nothing? That was the ultimate challenge.
It took a son of Gaul who chose America to meet that challenge--something we can all be proud of.
So what is that perfectly nebulous product?
It’s the Synthetic Collateralized Debt Obligation or SCDO. It allows underlying credit exposure to be taken on using a credit default swap rather than by having a vehicle buy assets such as bonds.
Who wouldn’t want to own one of those--especially the kids? Hey, Mother’s Day is coming? I know moms are finicky. What if you gave her one and she said she wanted a flower pot instead? No problemo. You could short her ABACUS SCDO. You know, that’s when you sell stuff you don’t own.
A couple of decades back when it became apparent that we were switching from an economy that made tangible items to one based on services, pundits warned that Americans would end up washing each others' cars for a living. Wall Street has since advised us that that was wishful thinking.
“...a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: Well, what if we have created a thing which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which no one knows how to price?”--Fabrice Tourre of Goldman Sachs on the ABACUS synthetic collateralized debt obligation offering that he structured for the firm, as quoted in the NY Times
Before capitalism came along economics was mainly conquest. You ravaged and savaged other people, enslaved the survivors, stole their stuff, and lived off the proceeds. As Casper Gutman, seeker of the Maltese Falcon, pointed out, "the Holy Wars were largely a matter of loot."
The notion that you could create wealth by hanging up the pike and making useful items for sale began to catch on in the middle ages. Soon people were creating even more wealth by hiring others to make even more stuff to sell.
There were certain expenses involved that we nowadays call capital--hence the term capitalism. You had to pay for the raw materials, the tools, wages for the workers, etc. Obviously, you could become richer by keeping these expenses as low possible while selling your goods for as much as possible.
The ideal would be a product that cost nothing to make and whose main purpose was to profit its sellers. An impossible dream, you say. For eons human society had been based on tangibles (i.e, a pepperoni pizza) and services (i.e., a delivery boy). How could business escape that straight jacket of substance? How could it achieve maximum productivity and profitability by making nothing out of nothing? That was the ultimate challenge.
It took a son of Gaul who chose America to meet that challenge--something we can all be proud of.
So what is that perfectly nebulous product?
It’s the Synthetic Collateralized Debt Obligation or SCDO. It allows underlying credit exposure to be taken on using a credit default swap rather than by having a vehicle buy assets such as bonds.
Who wouldn’t want to own one of those--especially the kids? Hey, Mother’s Day is coming? I know moms are finicky. What if you gave her one and she said she wanted a flower pot instead? No problemo. You could short her ABACUS SCDO. You know, that’s when you sell stuff you don’t own.
A couple of decades back when it became apparent that we were switching from an economy that made tangible items to one based on services, pundits warned that Americans would end up washing each others' cars for a living. Wall Street has since advised us that that was wishful thinking.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
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.
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 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.
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