The Awful Specter of Multi-polarism
As with Christianity, the only thing worse than hearing democracy questioned is having it practiced--source unknown
The ire in Tahrir Square is full of ironies, not the least of which is the American president who inspired such hope in the Middle East with his Cairo speech calling around this week to leaders in the region to stanch the uncontrolled surge of democracy in the Arab world. --Maureen Dowd, NY Times, Feb. 2, 2011
It’s enough to warm an old lefty’s winter-chilled heart. We are being treated to a rare outbreak of revolution. Or what the Chinese call ‘interesting times.’
The Arab world has finally had its fill of suffering and seething and is exploding into rebellion from the Mahgreb to Suez. Thus it joins Latin America, where, to varying degrees in recent years, countries from the Caribbean to Cape Horn have broken free of the imperio yanqui and begun the useful task of unifying their continent.
Revolution, of course, is like marriage: you never know how it’s going to pan out. But since most of us would still be serfs without them, I’m willing to welcome their occurrence. Unfortunately, living in a country where counter-insurgency (i.e., opposition to revolution) is considered as sacred a duty as hedge fund management, this is hardly the place to celebrate the uprisings that Washington spends billions on suppressing. You would have to go to France for that.
So far, one big lesson from Tunisia and Egypt is that that our idiot pols and media have gotten history dead wrong again. For the last decade they’ve been demonizing Arabs and other Muslims as medieval maniacs plotting fresh 9/11s in their caves and casbahs. And we bought it, hookah, laffi and scimitar. The reality is that the majority young of the Arab world actually want to move into the modern world. To the extent that that they hate America it’s not because we’re free, as the fool Bush constantly claimed, but because the U.S. is propping up the dictatorships that keep them from being free.
We can assume that at the moment the Obamists are laboring as hard as they can to shore up Mubarak and his gang or, failing that, to make sure that its replacements are the most reactionary and compliant of available compradors. The only juice Washington has is in its billion bucks a year aid program (mostly military and some food) and its buddy-buddy contacts with Egypt’s officer corps and the killers and fingernail pullers of the security apparat. That may not be enough, especially since the young draftees in the army are the same people as the youthful demonstrators. The two groups are already fraternizing and the troops are not likely to mow down their contemporaries to keep Mubarak in power.
I don’t have the foggiest about how the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions will play out. But I don’t think the Islamists will take charge: their limited influence in the region has been insanely magnified by our empire to serve its purpose. But whether democracy or Bonapartism will prevail is another story.
Whatever happens, the regional awakenings from Caracas to Cairo and Beirut to Burma, along with the rise of China, India and Brazil, are rearranging the world. Communism, then terrorism used to be the wash-your-mouth-out with-soap words in Washington. They are being replaced by an even more frightening pejorative: multi-polarism. It raises the specter of a world where the U.S. is no longer global top dog but just another big country with “interests” that are getting less interesting by the day.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Diplomatese and Dictatorese
This proposed sale [of $281 million in weapons] will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that has been and continues to be an important force for economic and military progress in North Africa. --The Obama Administration’s 2010 request to Congress for military sales to the now fallen murderous Tunisian kleptocracy.
Political talk and diplomatese bear only a vague relationship to everyday English. Consider this object lesson I served up a couple of years back:
Jeffrey Dahmer rules over an anthropaphagusian autocracy with Charlie Manson as his secretary of defense. He accepts Wall Street investments and hosts a U.S. military base. He buys lots of pots and pans and knives from American firms. The administration characterizes him as “moderate” and a “valuable ally” in the war against terror.
Jesus Christ returns, bringing Heaven to a small corner of earth. The Empyrean economy is share and share alike. Jesus declines both U.S. investment and military alliance. The administration brands him an “extremist,” a “dictator,” and a “dangerous obstacle” to the war on terror.
Now, if you can get into that sort of Oz head where words mean only what your superiors want them to mean, there’s a job for you in Washington. In particular, you would have to keep from laughing your ass off when you heard Barack Obama lecturing the president of China on human rights. You would have to put out of mind that the only use for the billions in weapons we supply to thugs like Tunisia’s Ben Ali is to protect their dictatorships from their own people. You would have to forget that the U.S. is to torture as FedEx is to packages
Citizens informed by the money media know that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is a dictator. Didn’t he lift the broadcast license of a tv station (that's still in business on cable, satellite and internet) just for taking part in a coup against the elected government? Doesn’t he arrest people simply for trying to assassinate him? Doesn’t he keep running for office as if he were Teddy Kennedy? Sure, we’ve all been coached on calling Chavez an autocrat, even though he keeps winning honest elections and even though the political opposition in Venezuela is louder, nastier and freer than anything we would permit here.
But how much did we know about our former comprador, Zine Al-Abadine Ben Ali, now enjoying refuge from justice in our medieval satrapy of Saudi? Did you know, for instance, that he’s a graduate of U.S. Army schools at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Holabird, Maryland, where his major was intelligence and military security?
Did we know that “in 1999 Fulvio Martini, former head of Italian military secret service SISMI, declared to a parliamentary committee that ‘In 1985-1987, we (in NATO) organized a kind of golpe (i.e. coup d'etat) in Tunisia, putting President Ben Ali as head of state, replacing President Habib Bourguiba.’"
Did we know that during his confirmation hearing in July 2009 as U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, Gordon Gray reiterated the West's support for the Ben Ali regime, telling the Senate Foreign Relations committee, "We've had a long-standing military relationship with the government and with the military. It's very positive. Tunisian military equipment is of U.S. origin, so we have a long-standing assistance program there."
There’s nothing special about Ben Ali, except perhaps that his wife and in-laws apparently qualify for the Imelda Marcos award for over the top venality. He’s just one of countless tinpot tyrants who have sullied Washington’s payroll over the decades. For all of our ado about democracy, there’s no doubt that future historians will remember our nation as the the world’s non pareil dispenser of dictatorships. I could begin to list them here, but you would get bored and my fingers would tire.
Meanwhile, we've got to assume that nail-biting is growing to epidemic proportions at the Pentagon and in Langley and Foggy Bottom. If Washington got so worked up by a couple of thousand of atavistic Islamists, imagine the worry about the Tunisian revolt going viral with millions in the Middle East demanding real democracy, meaning the overthrow of the despots whose torture chambers we franchise as if they were fitness centers.
Because of the greatness of the Shah, Iran is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.--Jimmy Carter toasting the Shah in Tehran, December 31, 1977, a year before the Shah's bloody dictatorship was overthrown in a popular revolution.
This proposed sale [of $281 million in weapons] will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that has been and continues to be an important force for economic and military progress in North Africa. --The Obama Administration’s 2010 request to Congress for military sales to the now fallen murderous Tunisian kleptocracy.
Political talk and diplomatese bear only a vague relationship to everyday English. Consider this object lesson I served up a couple of years back:
Jeffrey Dahmer rules over an anthropaphagusian autocracy with Charlie Manson as his secretary of defense. He accepts Wall Street investments and hosts a U.S. military base. He buys lots of pots and pans and knives from American firms. The administration characterizes him as “moderate” and a “valuable ally” in the war against terror.
Jesus Christ returns, bringing Heaven to a small corner of earth. The Empyrean economy is share and share alike. Jesus declines both U.S. investment and military alliance. The administration brands him an “extremist,” a “dictator,” and a “dangerous obstacle” to the war on terror.
Now, if you can get into that sort of Oz head where words mean only what your superiors want them to mean, there’s a job for you in Washington. In particular, you would have to keep from laughing your ass off when you heard Barack Obama lecturing the president of China on human rights. You would have to put out of mind that the only use for the billions in weapons we supply to thugs like Tunisia’s Ben Ali is to protect their dictatorships from their own people. You would have to forget that the U.S. is to torture as FedEx is to packages
Citizens informed by the money media know that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is a dictator. Didn’t he lift the broadcast license of a tv station (that's still in business on cable, satellite and internet) just for taking part in a coup against the elected government? Doesn’t he arrest people simply for trying to assassinate him? Doesn’t he keep running for office as if he were Teddy Kennedy? Sure, we’ve all been coached on calling Chavez an autocrat, even though he keeps winning honest elections and even though the political opposition in Venezuela is louder, nastier and freer than anything we would permit here.
But how much did we know about our former comprador, Zine Al-Abadine Ben Ali, now enjoying refuge from justice in our medieval satrapy of Saudi? Did you know, for instance, that he’s a graduate of U.S. Army schools at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Holabird, Maryland, where his major was intelligence and military security?
Did we know that “in 1999 Fulvio Martini, former head of Italian military secret service SISMI, declared to a parliamentary committee that ‘In 1985-1987, we (in NATO) organized a kind of golpe (i.e. coup d'etat) in Tunisia, putting President Ben Ali as head of state, replacing President Habib Bourguiba.’"
Did we know that during his confirmation hearing in July 2009 as U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, Gordon Gray reiterated the West's support for the Ben Ali regime, telling the Senate Foreign Relations committee, "We've had a long-standing military relationship with the government and with the military. It's very positive. Tunisian military equipment is of U.S. origin, so we have a long-standing assistance program there."
There’s nothing special about Ben Ali, except perhaps that his wife and in-laws apparently qualify for the Imelda Marcos award for over the top venality. He’s just one of countless tinpot tyrants who have sullied Washington’s payroll over the decades. For all of our ado about democracy, there’s no doubt that future historians will remember our nation as the the world’s non pareil dispenser of dictatorships. I could begin to list them here, but you would get bored and my fingers would tire.
Meanwhile, we've got to assume that nail-biting is growing to epidemic proportions at the Pentagon and in Langley and Foggy Bottom. If Washington got so worked up by a couple of thousand of atavistic Islamists, imagine the worry about the Tunisian revolt going viral with millions in the Middle East demanding real democracy, meaning the overthrow of the despots whose torture chambers we franchise as if they were fitness centers.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
See No Simians
It looks like no one in charge made a New Year’s resolution to clear those 800 pound gorillas out of the White House. There they lie amid the overpowering stench that we refuse to even wrinkle a nose at.
We’ll call one of these beasts our expiring economy. Our national consensus holds that we should depend upon the free market rather than the government to restore prosperity. Just let corporations do their thing without having to fret taxes and regulations, we’re told, and we’ll soon be farting through silk again. Really? The ape on the ottoman poses a question we dare not ask ourselves because we don’t want to know the answer. To wit: What if the free market believes that there are more profitable places on earth to make money than in the these United States? What if they've decided to create more jobs overseas than here? What if we just become one big Michigan or upstate New York?
Side stepping that reality as if it were a simian stool on his new presidential seal carpet, President Obama instead offers platitudes about becoming more “innovative” and "out-competing other countries around the world."
“Become more innovative? Out-compete? Who or what is he talking about?” asks former labor secretary Robert Reich. “Big American corporations are innovating like mad all over the world, with research and development centers in China and India And their profits are soaring. They're sitting on almost $1 trillion of cash. But they won't create jobs in America because there's not enough demand here to justify them.”
Demand, meaning people with the inclination and money to buy stuff, is the product of steady jobs and decent salaries. Both of those notions have been cast into disrepute by our current politics. We are told instead that austerity, meaning the shedding of jobs and cutting of pay packets, are the solution to our ills. And lots of us are stupid enough to believe it. Meanwhile, for our businesses, like say IBM, the action has moved on to Bahia and Bangalore.
The other primate in the parlor that we refuse to acknowledge is our failure at arms. It’s now a decade since the world’s most expensive and deadly military launched what used to be called a punitive expedition against the feudal Pashtun tribe in Afghanistan. At best, hedges our commander in chief, it will be another four years before we can think about getting ready to retire from what has become an exercise in self-punishment.
The pundits have already declared Iraq the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history. With that slot filled, Afghanistan will have to settle for being the stupidest. But those superlatives aren’t actually so. We have merely repeated the Brit disaster in the same part of the world a century ago that prompted Kipling to pen, Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown. For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles and weareth the Christian down.
Amazingly, there’s still minimal outcry against this futile fight with the feudals. So long as their kids are not drafted, Americans have apparently become as willing to abide endless multi-trillion dollar wars as they are for being constantly in hock. So if you take the White House tour don’t forget your hip boots, nose plugs and a couple of bananas.
It looks like no one in charge made a New Year’s resolution to clear those 800 pound gorillas out of the White House. There they lie amid the overpowering stench that we refuse to even wrinkle a nose at.
We’ll call one of these beasts our expiring economy. Our national consensus holds that we should depend upon the free market rather than the government to restore prosperity. Just let corporations do their thing without having to fret taxes and regulations, we’re told, and we’ll soon be farting through silk again. Really? The ape on the ottoman poses a question we dare not ask ourselves because we don’t want to know the answer. To wit: What if the free market believes that there are more profitable places on earth to make money than in the these United States? What if they've decided to create more jobs overseas than here? What if we just become one big Michigan or upstate New York?
Side stepping that reality as if it were a simian stool on his new presidential seal carpet, President Obama instead offers platitudes about becoming more “innovative” and "out-competing other countries around the world."
“Become more innovative? Out-compete? Who or what is he talking about?” asks former labor secretary Robert Reich. “Big American corporations are innovating like mad all over the world, with research and development centers in China and India And their profits are soaring. They're sitting on almost $1 trillion of cash. But they won't create jobs in America because there's not enough demand here to justify them.”
Demand, meaning people with the inclination and money to buy stuff, is the product of steady jobs and decent salaries. Both of those notions have been cast into disrepute by our current politics. We are told instead that austerity, meaning the shedding of jobs and cutting of pay packets, are the solution to our ills. And lots of us are stupid enough to believe it. Meanwhile, for our businesses, like say IBM, the action has moved on to Bahia and Bangalore.
The other primate in the parlor that we refuse to acknowledge is our failure at arms. It’s now a decade since the world’s most expensive and deadly military launched what used to be called a punitive expedition against the feudal Pashtun tribe in Afghanistan. At best, hedges our commander in chief, it will be another four years before we can think about getting ready to retire from what has become an exercise in self-punishment.
The pundits have already declared Iraq the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history. With that slot filled, Afghanistan will have to settle for being the stupidest. But those superlatives aren’t actually so. We have merely repeated the Brit disaster in the same part of the world a century ago that prompted Kipling to pen, Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown. For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles and weareth the Christian down.
Amazingly, there’s still minimal outcry against this futile fight with the feudals. So long as their kids are not drafted, Americans have apparently become as willing to abide endless multi-trillion dollar wars as they are for being constantly in hock. So if you take the White House tour don’t forget your hip boots, nose plugs and a couple of bananas.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Psst, Peace
We occasionally hear scoops about secret wars, like the ones Washington is currently running from the Philippines to the Horn of Africa. But how often do we hear about something even more threatening to our empire: secret peace?
One just broke out in Latin America that must have Obama and Hillary gnashing their teeth. Colombia and Venezuela, historically one country but lately at each other’s throat, have kissed and made up. That’s been big news south of the border but remains all but classified in the U.S. because it’s bad news for Washington’s never-ending divide and conquer plans for the region. What’s more, it jars the propaganda assumptions of the media.
Colombia, which specializes in cocaine and conservative regimes, has long been Washington’s favorite in Latin America. It’s reputation on the continent is that of a “death squad democracy,” where political campaigns feature rightists gunning down leftists. This has occasioned surviving leftists to take up guerrilla war against the state and support themselves by coca dealing. Their 60 year insurgency has given Washington an ongoing opportunity to lavish billions on favored contractors and mercenaries by “aiding” and “advising” the Colombian military’s battle against blow and bolsheviki.
Colombia was also supposed to come in handy as a forward base in Washington’s continuing scheming to overthrow the leftist government that the neighboring Venezuelans have disobediently dared to elect and reelect. Obama pressed the Colombians to give over seven more bases to the Pentagon, with their personnel exempt from local law. In other words, Americans could “tune up” or “take out” any Colombians, not to mention Venezuelans, at their whim.
Under increased threat, Venezuela brought up troops to the border. It also broke diplomatic relations with Colombia and, more importantly, cut off billions in trade. Meanwhile, the Colombian supreme court declared the base deal unconstitutional, while the country elected a new president who, unlike his predecessor, paid more attention to the howls of businesses going broke because of the trade rupture than to the stratagems of the Pentagon and CIA.
Diplomats on both sides of the border went to work. Relations were reestablished, the trade ban lifted, and agreements were forged on a host of mutual issues. President Chavez of Venezuela and new President Santos of Colombia had a couple of friendly meetings. The talk turned from war to peace. And Santos even proclaimed Chavez his "new best friend."
Colombia is still right and Venezuela still left. But most importantly both are still offspring of Bolivar. Right and left, they have come to understand that they have more to gain by being good neighbors to each other than by beating each other up at the service of the expiring imperio yanqui.
We occasionally hear scoops about secret wars, like the ones Washington is currently running from the Philippines to the Horn of Africa. But how often do we hear about something even more threatening to our empire: secret peace?
One just broke out in Latin America that must have Obama and Hillary gnashing their teeth. Colombia and Venezuela, historically one country but lately at each other’s throat, have kissed and made up. That’s been big news south of the border but remains all but classified in the U.S. because it’s bad news for Washington’s never-ending divide and conquer plans for the region. What’s more, it jars the propaganda assumptions of the media.
Colombia, which specializes in cocaine and conservative regimes, has long been Washington’s favorite in Latin America. It’s reputation on the continent is that of a “death squad democracy,” where political campaigns feature rightists gunning down leftists. This has occasioned surviving leftists to take up guerrilla war against the state and support themselves by coca dealing. Their 60 year insurgency has given Washington an ongoing opportunity to lavish billions on favored contractors and mercenaries by “aiding” and “advising” the Colombian military’s battle against blow and bolsheviki.
Colombia was also supposed to come in handy as a forward base in Washington’s continuing scheming to overthrow the leftist government that the neighboring Venezuelans have disobediently dared to elect and reelect. Obama pressed the Colombians to give over seven more bases to the Pentagon, with their personnel exempt from local law. In other words, Americans could “tune up” or “take out” any Colombians, not to mention Venezuelans, at their whim.
Under increased threat, Venezuela brought up troops to the border. It also broke diplomatic relations with Colombia and, more importantly, cut off billions in trade. Meanwhile, the Colombian supreme court declared the base deal unconstitutional, while the country elected a new president who, unlike his predecessor, paid more attention to the howls of businesses going broke because of the trade rupture than to the stratagems of the Pentagon and CIA.
Diplomats on both sides of the border went to work. Relations were reestablished, the trade ban lifted, and agreements were forged on a host of mutual issues. President Chavez of Venezuela and new President Santos of Colombia had a couple of friendly meetings. The talk turned from war to peace. And Santos even proclaimed Chavez his "new best friend."
Colombia is still right and Venezuela still left. But most importantly both are still offspring of Bolivar. Right and left, they have come to understand that they have more to gain by being good neighbors to each other than by beating each other up at the service of the expiring imperio yanqui.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
We Told You So
Two years ago, the Dems won the presidency and both houses of congress by big majorities. The result has been that the minority Reps remain in de facto control of Washington and have moved the country farther to the right while the Dems are dismissed left and right as wimps and woosies.
Presiding over this debacle is capitulator-in-chief Barack Obama. Lots of folks are disappointed in him. But not here at Karman Turn. We had him figured right from the git-go. So join us for a brief jaunt down memory lane back to June 2009 when our pres told us all about what he was all about.
Two years ago, the Dems won the presidency and both houses of congress by big majorities. The result has been that the minority Reps remain in de facto control of Washington and have moved the country farther to the right while the Dems are dismissed left and right as wimps and woosies.
Presiding over this debacle is capitulator-in-chief Barack Obama. Lots of folks are disappointed in him. But not here at Karman Turn. We had him figured right from the git-go. So join us for a brief jaunt down memory lane back to June 2009 when our pres told us all about what he was all about.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Our Pecuniary Pecking Order
The other day President Obama announced a freeze on the salaries of fed workers. They’re lucky compared to the hundreds of thousands of state and local government workers getting the boot. At the same time, Wall Street reported record profits and rich bonuses.
I’ve never been a fan of capitalism. But I have always believed that since it’s the prevailing system everyone should get to play by its first rule that you grab everything you can and the hell with everyone else. Certainly, that’s exactly what Wall Street and corporate America do. Hedge fund managers and insurance execs take home billions for not producing a single useful item or service. No one dares place a limit on their pelf. That would be un-American and socialistic. But that privilege of unlimited accretion is allowed to just a few. If organized workers used their solidarity to demand sky high wages, our rulers, as they have done countless times in the past, would sic the dogs on them.
In fact, we Americans have very strict, and often inane, notions about how much money different groups of us should be allowed to make. As noted, Wall Street and big business get the no-limit license. So do showbiz, sports and government contracting. When we hear about people in those ranks being preposterously paid, we envy them and take pride in a country that allows them such success. But when the poor and working classes manage to wangle a few extra bucks out of the system we turn spiteful and claim that their sloth and greed is what’s ruining America.
Take these two examples: A poor man scuffles by on Uncle Sam’s handouts. Since he appears able-bodied, we condemn him for sponging on us and demand the government stop the sops to him and his ilk. Now imagine a trust fund brat who's never worked a day in his life, but takes in millions of the Uncle Sam’s bucks in the form of interest on government bonds he’s inherited. At worst, we’ll call him a playboy. Few would resent the money he’s siphoning from Uncle Sam or fume that people like him were adding to the national debt.
These antic attitudes are part of what has given these United States the most extreme concentration of wealth anywhere outside of banana republics where a few families own entire countries. The numbers are staggering. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have more bucks than circulate in teeming continents. Yet this debilitating constipation of cash bothers just a few lefties and academics.
Tea Baggers, the noisiest political bunch at the moment, are running around bitching that there’s still too much “sharing of wealth,” meaning that ever more concentration is called for. This despite the fact that the estimable Messrs Gates and Buffet have repeatedly offered that they already stow more than enough swag and are even willing to pay higher taxes.
Out there in Christendom, a different view prevails. Many adhere to Anatole’s France’s view that behind every great fortune there is a crime. Therefore, the wealthy are not particularly admired or trusted, while the lesser classes have a greater sense of solidarity. They think the world would be a better place if the rich had less and the rest more. And even though more equitable societies boast happier people, that sort of talk is tantamount to treason on this the savage side of the Atlantic.
The other day President Obama announced a freeze on the salaries of fed workers. They’re lucky compared to the hundreds of thousands of state and local government workers getting the boot. At the same time, Wall Street reported record profits and rich bonuses.
I’ve never been a fan of capitalism. But I have always believed that since it’s the prevailing system everyone should get to play by its first rule that you grab everything you can and the hell with everyone else. Certainly, that’s exactly what Wall Street and corporate America do. Hedge fund managers and insurance execs take home billions for not producing a single useful item or service. No one dares place a limit on their pelf. That would be un-American and socialistic. But that privilege of unlimited accretion is allowed to just a few. If organized workers used their solidarity to demand sky high wages, our rulers, as they have done countless times in the past, would sic the dogs on them.
In fact, we Americans have very strict, and often inane, notions about how much money different groups of us should be allowed to make. As noted, Wall Street and big business get the no-limit license. So do showbiz, sports and government contracting. When we hear about people in those ranks being preposterously paid, we envy them and take pride in a country that allows them such success. But when the poor and working classes manage to wangle a few extra bucks out of the system we turn spiteful and claim that their sloth and greed is what’s ruining America.
Take these two examples: A poor man scuffles by on Uncle Sam’s handouts. Since he appears able-bodied, we condemn him for sponging on us and demand the government stop the sops to him and his ilk. Now imagine a trust fund brat who's never worked a day in his life, but takes in millions of the Uncle Sam’s bucks in the form of interest on government bonds he’s inherited. At worst, we’ll call him a playboy. Few would resent the money he’s siphoning from Uncle Sam or fume that people like him were adding to the national debt.
These antic attitudes are part of what has given these United States the most extreme concentration of wealth anywhere outside of banana republics where a few families own entire countries. The numbers are staggering. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have more bucks than circulate in teeming continents. Yet this debilitating constipation of cash bothers just a few lefties and academics.
Tea Baggers, the noisiest political bunch at the moment, are running around bitching that there’s still too much “sharing of wealth,” meaning that ever more concentration is called for. This despite the fact that the estimable Messrs Gates and Buffet have repeatedly offered that they already stow more than enough swag and are even willing to pay higher taxes.
Out there in Christendom, a different view prevails. Many adhere to Anatole’s France’s view that behind every great fortune there is a crime. Therefore, the wealthy are not particularly admired or trusted, while the lesser classes have a greater sense of solidarity. They think the world would be a better place if the rich had less and the rest more. And even though more equitable societies boast happier people, that sort of talk is tantamount to treason on this the savage side of the Atlantic.
Friday, November 19, 2010
A Detour To Dallas
Forty seven years back. A crisp autumn Friday. Just about one p.m. I was shaving. Getting ready to work the night trick across the Hudson at a paper in Bergen County. I covered four towns. My favorite was the sliver of grungy waterfront under the shadow of the George Washington Bridge called Edgewater. It was loaded with interesting insular characters who had never been across the half mile of river to Manhattan because they had no reason or desire to go there. So much for the lure of bright lights. Mounted on the wall behind the police chief’s desk was a tommy gun, a souvenir from Prohibition days when bootleggers stashed their goods in the caves tucked under the palisades in Edgewater.
Friday nights were easy because there were no town meetings to attend. I’d just copy the blotters at the four police headquarters. I’d write them up at the office and do a few obits, social notes and stuff. With luck, I was out of Jersey by eight or so and heading down to the Village in my zippy Corvair (the model later made notorious by Ralph Nader as a “one-car-accident”).
It was just about one, and me with my face foamed, when WINS delivered the bulletin: a shooting in Dallas involving the president! In no time, they were talking about a Cuban connection. A CBS reporter I knew called to ask if I had run across a certain Lee Oswald in Cuba? That September I had gotten back from a lefty student trip to the island that was supposed to last two weeks but had stretched out to two months. No. I never met any Oswalds, there or here.
I got to Jersey about dinner time and did my rounds. There was only one subject of conversation and one common mood: a bewildered sadness and uncertainty. Everyone was benumbed.
Along with the rest of the country, I spent the weekend in front of the tube. I had one eye on my Sunday Times and one eye on the set the morning Ruby shot Oswald. Looking back, I got exactly the same feeling as when the second World Trade tower was hit. Something big, hidden and awful was happening. There was obviously more to this than two discrete dementos.
But soon enough the media was pounding into us that Oswald had shot Kennedy for no good reason and Ruby had then shot Oswald for no bad one. We were told that the interesting, if not downright sinister, biographies and associations of those two characters, were unimportant to the case. The all but perfect incompetence of the Dallas cops (who never took down a statement from Oswald because it was Friday and the stenographer had gone home) was just another pointless coincidence. The non-stop message was trust the government, there was less here than meets the eye. Nothing to see, folks. Move along.
First, we got the FBI report from J. Edgar: No conspiracy, no magic bullet. Then the Warren Commission report: no conspiracy, but yes, a magic bullet. Finally in the 70s came the House Select Committee report: conspiracy likely, but forget about it. Ever since, the country has been divided between a large majority of citizens (now dying off) who still smell a rat, and a small but powerful government/media elite armed with spray cans of air freshener.
Just about all the principals in the JFK assassination are long gone. Some files have been thrown open but lots of secrets are still kept (about Lincoln’s assassination as well). This is not to cover anyone’s ass, but to maintain the myth that it’s not necessary in America to read Shakespeare or Acton or Gibbon or the chronicles of the Romans. That’s because we have nothing to learn from history. We are blessed in that our leaders, like our country, are exceptionally good, and therefore incapable of the crimes, conspiracies and cover ups that mark the power arrangements everywhere else on earth. Who would claim otherwise but some wacko conspiracy theorist?
In February of ‘64, just a couple of months after the assassination, I was driving across country with Bob Dylan, Victor Maimudes and Paul Clayton. Like morbid tourists, we detoured into Dallas looking for Dealey Plaza. We finally inquired of some passing duffer. “Oh, you mean where they shot that sonofabitch Kennedy?” he said with a big grin.
They?
Forty seven years back. A crisp autumn Friday. Just about one p.m. I was shaving. Getting ready to work the night trick across the Hudson at a paper in Bergen County. I covered four towns. My favorite was the sliver of grungy waterfront under the shadow of the George Washington Bridge called Edgewater. It was loaded with interesting insular characters who had never been across the half mile of river to Manhattan because they had no reason or desire to go there. So much for the lure of bright lights. Mounted on the wall behind the police chief’s desk was a tommy gun, a souvenir from Prohibition days when bootleggers stashed their goods in the caves tucked under the palisades in Edgewater.
Friday nights were easy because there were no town meetings to attend. I’d just copy the blotters at the four police headquarters. I’d write them up at the office and do a few obits, social notes and stuff. With luck, I was out of Jersey by eight or so and heading down to the Village in my zippy Corvair (the model later made notorious by Ralph Nader as a “one-car-accident”).
It was just about one, and me with my face foamed, when WINS delivered the bulletin: a shooting in Dallas involving the president! In no time, they were talking about a Cuban connection. A CBS reporter I knew called to ask if I had run across a certain Lee Oswald in Cuba? That September I had gotten back from a lefty student trip to the island that was supposed to last two weeks but had stretched out to two months. No. I never met any Oswalds, there or here.
I got to Jersey about dinner time and did my rounds. There was only one subject of conversation and one common mood: a bewildered sadness and uncertainty. Everyone was benumbed.
Along with the rest of the country, I spent the weekend in front of the tube. I had one eye on my Sunday Times and one eye on the set the morning Ruby shot Oswald. Looking back, I got exactly the same feeling as when the second World Trade tower was hit. Something big, hidden and awful was happening. There was obviously more to this than two discrete dementos.
But soon enough the media was pounding into us that Oswald had shot Kennedy for no good reason and Ruby had then shot Oswald for no bad one. We were told that the interesting, if not downright sinister, biographies and associations of those two characters, were unimportant to the case. The all but perfect incompetence of the Dallas cops (who never took down a statement from Oswald because it was Friday and the stenographer had gone home) was just another pointless coincidence. The non-stop message was trust the government, there was less here than meets the eye. Nothing to see, folks. Move along.
First, we got the FBI report from J. Edgar: No conspiracy, no magic bullet. Then the Warren Commission report: no conspiracy, but yes, a magic bullet. Finally in the 70s came the House Select Committee report: conspiracy likely, but forget about it. Ever since, the country has been divided between a large majority of citizens (now dying off) who still smell a rat, and a small but powerful government/media elite armed with spray cans of air freshener.
Just about all the principals in the JFK assassination are long gone. Some files have been thrown open but lots of secrets are still kept (about Lincoln’s assassination as well). This is not to cover anyone’s ass, but to maintain the myth that it’s not necessary in America to read Shakespeare or Acton or Gibbon or the chronicles of the Romans. That’s because we have nothing to learn from history. We are blessed in that our leaders, like our country, are exceptionally good, and therefore incapable of the crimes, conspiracies and cover ups that mark the power arrangements everywhere else on earth. Who would claim otherwise but some wacko conspiracy theorist?
In February of ‘64, just a couple of months after the assassination, I was driving across country with Bob Dylan, Victor Maimudes and Paul Clayton. Like morbid tourists, we detoured into Dallas looking for Dealey Plaza. We finally inquired of some passing duffer. “Oh, you mean where they shot that sonofabitch Kennedy?” he said with a big grin.
They?
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Mendacious Mavens of the Middle
When the McCain-Palin campaign was looking a for a “leftist terrorist” to pin on Obama, the best they could come up with was college professor Bill Ayers, a 66-year-old erstwhile extremist who’d been keeping his nose clean for the last 40 years.
Back in the 60’s I bopped off to Cuba and wore my larynx out yelling revolutionary slogans. I’m now 71 and would happily accept a return to the glory days of the People’s Republic of Eisenhower. I try to keep up with the left, or what’s left of it, and haven’t noticed any nutty notions in decades. The vast majority of my former comrades have either given up on politics or attend the occasional peace rally. Those who remain activists are overwhelmingly safe and sane social democrats just now figuring out that Barack Obama never was and never will be one of them.
That’s not to deny that a few tattered fringistas from the 3rd, 4th or Positively 4th Street Internationals don’t erupt on the scene now and again. Hey, Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento! My point is that America’s meager left, across the spectrum from Hubert Humphrey pro-war liberals to raging Maoists, has long since gone the way of the Whigs. And the movement hasn’t been refreshed by much new blood since Wall Street figured out how to make money and tamp down youthful dissent by putting all the college kids in permanent hock with tuition loans.
So when I hear anyone nowadays condemn “extremists of both left and right,” as Jon Stewart repeatedly did at his big rally about nothing much in Washington a couple of Saturdays ago, I know I’m dealing with the clueless and/or mendacious.
Who besides senior citizen Bill Ayers and the even older Noam Chomsky do they have in mind? What ultra outrage are they referencing? The Battle of Seattle was over a decade ago. The last really big peace march was back in 2002. No, I take back the clueless option. Those who pretend that America is somehow annoyed, let alone threatened by, leftist extremists on a par with Glenn Beck or the various gun-crazy militias running around in the woods are full of shit! And they know it.
Whether in politics or personal life, positioning oneself mid-way between two supposed extremes is usually a cheap ploy rather than a considered judgment. We even have a name for for it: playing both sides against the middle. Politicians, our lowest form of life, find it useful for conning the widest possible range of constituents. Newspeople, the next lowest, are forever trying to convince their audiences that truth lies in the middle for the same reason. I go along with Texas populist Jim Hightower, who likes to say, there's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.
When the McCain-Palin campaign was looking a for a “leftist terrorist” to pin on Obama, the best they could come up with was college professor Bill Ayers, a 66-year-old erstwhile extremist who’d been keeping his nose clean for the last 40 years.
Back in the 60’s I bopped off to Cuba and wore my larynx out yelling revolutionary slogans. I’m now 71 and would happily accept a return to the glory days of the People’s Republic of Eisenhower. I try to keep up with the left, or what’s left of it, and haven’t noticed any nutty notions in decades. The vast majority of my former comrades have either given up on politics or attend the occasional peace rally. Those who remain activists are overwhelmingly safe and sane social democrats just now figuring out that Barack Obama never was and never will be one of them.
That’s not to deny that a few tattered fringistas from the 3rd, 4th or Positively 4th Street Internationals don’t erupt on the scene now and again. Hey, Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento! My point is that America’s meager left, across the spectrum from Hubert Humphrey pro-war liberals to raging Maoists, has long since gone the way of the Whigs. And the movement hasn’t been refreshed by much new blood since Wall Street figured out how to make money and tamp down youthful dissent by putting all the college kids in permanent hock with tuition loans.
So when I hear anyone nowadays condemn “extremists of both left and right,” as Jon Stewart repeatedly did at his big rally about nothing much in Washington a couple of Saturdays ago, I know I’m dealing with the clueless and/or mendacious.
Who besides senior citizen Bill Ayers and the even older Noam Chomsky do they have in mind? What ultra outrage are they referencing? The Battle of Seattle was over a decade ago. The last really big peace march was back in 2002. No, I take back the clueless option. Those who pretend that America is somehow annoyed, let alone threatened by, leftist extremists on a par with Glenn Beck or the various gun-crazy militias running around in the woods are full of shit! And they know it.
Whether in politics or personal life, positioning oneself mid-way between two supposed extremes is usually a cheap ploy rather than a considered judgment. We even have a name for for it: playing both sides against the middle. Politicians, our lowest form of life, find it useful for conning the widest possible range of constituents. Newspeople, the next lowest, are forever trying to convince their audiences that truth lies in the middle for the same reason. I go along with Texas populist Jim Hightower, who likes to say, there's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.
For a hilarious but just as serious take on this issue, I commend you to Bill Maher's most recent New Rules video.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
What the Electaprise Means
Whether under Reps or Dems, the American polity has been rolling rightwards for the last 30 years. That pilgrimage to penury continued last night. The reason for it is simple. The U.S., unlike other countries, does not have a left. It has a right wing party and one that believes in getting along by going along. So politically our country remains on a one-way trip. John Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow aren’t going to change that.
Maybe this is a good time to define our terms. There are millions of shapes and shades of politics. But they all boil down to two notions. Some believe that wealth and power should be concentrated amongst themselves. Others believe it should be spread around. Thanks to the seating arrangements in the French parliament two centuries ago, we call the former rightists and the latter leftists. We have the right to thank for palaces and plutocrats and the left for democracy and the middle class.
Moving to the right doesn’t just mean that conservative politicians run the government. That’s the least of it. Moving to the right in this day and age means the continuing replacement of what’s public by what’s private, meaning none of the public’s business. It means we take orders from corporate bosses--an increasing number not even Americans--instead of leaders we elect. It means that corporate profit rather than peace, prosperity or public benefit becomes the focal point of just about everything we do. It means we turn from a nation into a multinational.
The evidence of this swirls around us in the windblown posters from yesterday’s election. That event, formerly a civic duty and now a commercial enterprise, posted revenues in the five billion dollars range. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, anonymous investors the world over are now invited to get their bids in for the solon of their choice. The NY Times has called the endless attack ads that have become a staple of our electaprises “a goldmine” for local tv stations. By now, virtually all of us watch those stations over a cable network. Because we have a conservative polity in place, those cable companies are not constricted by the onerous regulations they have in other countries, like socialistic France.
For instance, the French have a law against cable monopolies. There are lots of competing companies and you can easily move from one to another. Costs for a package including highspeed internet, unlimited telephony to 60 countries, and 100 or so cable channels run to 40 Euros a month. We wouldn’t stand for that in conservative America. We make sure that every town has its own private monopoly cable company and are willing to pay for the privilege.
In any event, yesterday’s electaprise shouldn’t change much. The Obama administration was already aggressively following through on most Bush (meaning conservative) policies, particularly in re the economy and the empire. Expansionary policies and peace have been ruled out as too lefty. That means more war and more austerity. If your kid can’t get a job, there’s always the military. They will teach him or her that in conservative and corporate America, just as in the service, unquestioning obedience to authority is all.
Whether under Reps or Dems, the American polity has been rolling rightwards for the last 30 years. That pilgrimage to penury continued last night. The reason for it is simple. The U.S., unlike other countries, does not have a left. It has a right wing party and one that believes in getting along by going along. So politically our country remains on a one-way trip. John Stewart, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow aren’t going to change that.
Maybe this is a good time to define our terms. There are millions of shapes and shades of politics. But they all boil down to two notions. Some believe that wealth and power should be concentrated amongst themselves. Others believe it should be spread around. Thanks to the seating arrangements in the French parliament two centuries ago, we call the former rightists and the latter leftists. We have the right to thank for palaces and plutocrats and the left for democracy and the middle class.
Moving to the right doesn’t just mean that conservative politicians run the government. That’s the least of it. Moving to the right in this day and age means the continuing replacement of what’s public by what’s private, meaning none of the public’s business. It means we take orders from corporate bosses--an increasing number not even Americans--instead of leaders we elect. It means that corporate profit rather than peace, prosperity or public benefit becomes the focal point of just about everything we do. It means we turn from a nation into a multinational.
The evidence of this swirls around us in the windblown posters from yesterday’s election. That event, formerly a civic duty and now a commercial enterprise, posted revenues in the five billion dollars range. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, anonymous investors the world over are now invited to get their bids in for the solon of their choice. The NY Times has called the endless attack ads that have become a staple of our electaprises “a goldmine” for local tv stations. By now, virtually all of us watch those stations over a cable network. Because we have a conservative polity in place, those cable companies are not constricted by the onerous regulations they have in other countries, like socialistic France.
For instance, the French have a law against cable monopolies. There are lots of competing companies and you can easily move from one to another. Costs for a package including highspeed internet, unlimited telephony to 60 countries, and 100 or so cable channels run to 40 Euros a month. We wouldn’t stand for that in conservative America. We make sure that every town has its own private monopoly cable company and are willing to pay for the privilege.
In any event, yesterday’s electaprise shouldn’t change much. The Obama administration was already aggressively following through on most Bush (meaning conservative) policies, particularly in re the economy and the empire. Expansionary policies and peace have been ruled out as too lefty. That means more war and more austerity. If your kid can’t get a job, there’s always the military. They will teach him or her that in conservative and corporate America, just as in the service, unquestioning obedience to authority is all.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Double Header
It’s campaign season, which means that the beast with two heads is out bestenching the ozone again. The fiercer head with the sharp fangs and empty eyes is called Rep and the confused, toothless one is Dem. The beast is always among us, but becomes particularly predatory at election time. That’s when the two heads pretend they have two minds and snap at each other like Jack Russell terriers. I’ve been watching this happen for most of my three score and ten. It’s not much of a spectacle, and is getting more penny dreadful with each rendition.
What’s new this time around is that the relentless transformation of our elections from public exercise to private initiative is now complete. Thanks to the infamous Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, anyone anywhere in the world with big bucks is allowed to anonymously invest in our government leaders. So now when we say we have the best congress money can buy, that means renminbi, rials and rupees as well as greenbacks.
Our conservative friends suffer hypocrisy on this score. For decades they portrayed themselves as super patriots and argued that good old business was more American than bad old government. Then globalism erased the distinctions between homegrown and foreign corporations. Would the yahoos follow the logic of their free enterprise faith and now argue that China National Oil Corp., Dubai World and Credit Suisse were also more patriotic than hapless and hated Uncle Sam?
The answer to that one came with the Gulf oil spill. The right took British Petroleum to its heart and stoutly defended BP against what it reviled as ruinous regulators and evil environmentalists from Washington. The fact that BP was UK did not stop Rand Paul, the Republican senate candidate in Kentucky, from calling criticism of it “un-American.” Neither did it discourage Newt Gingrich from offering that Obama’s treatment of poor BP made the U.S. a “Venezuela type” country.
The beast head named Dem is yapping at the Rep head for soliciting secret swag from foreigners. Of course, it’s not barking too loudly since it’s guilty of the same sin. The invitation for foreigners to join our highly profitable election enterprise is yet another sign of the demise of our empire. In the early stages of imperialism, the center rules its subject states; in the latter stages the subject states corrupt the center. Any day now, I can see a bipartisan bill offered up in congress providing that our votes be counted by Swiss bankers.
It’s campaign season, which means that the beast with two heads is out bestenching the ozone again. The fiercer head with the sharp fangs and empty eyes is called Rep and the confused, toothless one is Dem. The beast is always among us, but becomes particularly predatory at election time. That’s when the two heads pretend they have two minds and snap at each other like Jack Russell terriers. I’ve been watching this happen for most of my three score and ten. It’s not much of a spectacle, and is getting more penny dreadful with each rendition.
What’s new this time around is that the relentless transformation of our elections from public exercise to private initiative is now complete. Thanks to the infamous Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, anyone anywhere in the world with big bucks is allowed to anonymously invest in our government leaders. So now when we say we have the best congress money can buy, that means renminbi, rials and rupees as well as greenbacks.
Our conservative friends suffer hypocrisy on this score. For decades they portrayed themselves as super patriots and argued that good old business was more American than bad old government. Then globalism erased the distinctions between homegrown and foreign corporations. Would the yahoos follow the logic of their free enterprise faith and now argue that China National Oil Corp., Dubai World and Credit Suisse were also more patriotic than hapless and hated Uncle Sam?
The answer to that one came with the Gulf oil spill. The right took British Petroleum to its heart and stoutly defended BP against what it reviled as ruinous regulators and evil environmentalists from Washington. The fact that BP was UK did not stop Rand Paul, the Republican senate candidate in Kentucky, from calling criticism of it “un-American.” Neither did it discourage Newt Gingrich from offering that Obama’s treatment of poor BP made the U.S. a “Venezuela type” country.
The beast head named Dem is yapping at the Rep head for soliciting secret swag from foreigners. Of course, it’s not barking too loudly since it’s guilty of the same sin. The invitation for foreigners to join our highly profitable election enterprise is yet another sign of the demise of our empire. In the early stages of imperialism, the center rules its subject states; in the latter stages the subject states corrupt the center. Any day now, I can see a bipartisan bill offered up in congress providing that our votes be counted by Swiss bankers.
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