Yesterday Rachel Maddow cogently explained how Reagan redirected the political trajectory towards the right where it has headed ever since. Her argument was meant to elucidate the strategy driving President Obama's new "Centrism" as presented in his SOTU address. Unlike President Clinton who continued the rightward trend by means of his now infamous "Triangulation" she sees Obama as determined to realign the middle ground leftwards. This as if the fallout from Citizens United vs the FEC and 30,000 K Street lobbyists were about to magically disappear.
The end of U.S. democracy is not a simple consequence of rhetoric or political corruption. It is the inevitable result of imperialist capitalism. Laud him or not, Marx's analysis has stood up to the test of time: "big business, having achieved a monopoly or cartel position in the markets of importance, fuses with the government apparatus. A kind of financial oligarchy or conglomerate therefore results, whereby government officials aim to provide the social and legal framework within which giant corporations can operate most effectively."
This was not the result of any Reaganeque vision but simply the recoupment of the Big Capitalist's briefly weakened post-WWII position.
Money talks and B.S. walks
Ignore Wall St.'s grotesque privileges and perquisites. Just take for example this sudden capitulation on the part of Whole Foods. Merely last October the company announced that its retailers across the country would celebrate Non-GMO Day to raise consumer awareness about the [threatening] presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply. A Non-GMO Project, the Sunday’s events were meant as a wake-up call to consumers across the country.
And why not? If you're going to charge a premium for your product it behooves you to explain why you're offering a "healthier" alternative. At least until one of the government's pet giants puts you in its cross-hairs. Our fine organic growers find they are now unwillingly 'induced' to sing a drastically different tune.
"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must." - Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011
Organic Consumers know manure and they smell betrayal
"In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack."
Whether it's BP, GM or Monsanto, in our current economic phase in late-stage capitalism government is run for and by our corporate captains of industry. They are ones who've been shoving the country ever rightwards and no president, no matter how eloquent or well-meaning, has the means to war against, much less resist, that system.
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Friday, January 28, 2011
Monday, July 6, 2009
Imperialism in Black Face (updated)
On the night of August 26th 2002 a quarter-size bullet hole from an AK-47 cut through a cinder-block wall and killed José Santos Callejas.
This is the background against which to view the current impasse in Honduras. 75% of that country are dirt poor and the majority of those, practically illiterate. Among them are the Garifuna, or Black Karibs, originally from the island of St. Vincent, where as slaves they mixed with the natives and adopted their culture and the Garifuna language. [Currently, Garifuna settlements extend around the city of Trujillo and from Belize to Nicaragua.]
In response to the coup the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) cites the "undeniable involvement" of former US under-secretary of state Otto Reich and the DC-based Arcadia Foundation.
[The Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH—Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña) is organized for the protection of Garifuna culture and language. The Honduran Advisory Council for the Development of Autochthonous Ethnic Groups (CAHDEA) represents Garifuna groups in the protection of civil rights and equal employment opportunities and has recently ratified the ILO (International Labor Organization) treaty which provides ethnic minorities with labor rights protection]
The Garifuna website accuses Reich of "heading misinformation and sabotage operations, with close ties to international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and the Cuban-American mafia in Miami. Their account also names an anti-Zelaya civil coalition, the Movimiento Paz y Democracia, apparently funded by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
What has been established with scarcely a doubt is that the coup was undertaken to prevent a referendum that would determine if a majority of Hondurans desired to modify their constitution.
Such an initiative has never taken place in Honduras, a wholly owned subsidiary of Uncle Sam and Chiquita Bananas. During the Reagan years that country's elite ensured that the Central American nation would be stuck with a constitution that allowed for minimal participation by the Honduran people.
''In the 80's you could not talk about human rights because they would call you a terrorist or a guerrilla,'' said José Antonio Serrano, a member of the Honduran Human Rights Committee's national board. Serrano reportedly received several anonymous warnings to back off inquiring about Mr. Callejas's death.
Against the elite's opposition, Zelaya's proposal was backed by a majority of the country's labor unions and social movements. There is also no doubt that had the referendum been conducted during the upcoming elections in November there would have be a "yes" vote for convening a constitutional assembly.
Although he has rightly denounced Zelaya's illegal removal Obama has yet to recall the U.S. ambassador. Dan Restrepo, his adviser on Latin American Affairs, stated that the Obama government is communicating with the coup forces and trying to "feel out" the situation. Asked if Obama would recognize an unelected government in Honduras Restrepo replied that the administration "is waiting to see how things play out".
So here we have the ultimate irony. The first black U.S. president tacitly supporting a coup that seeks to maintain the exploitation of its black and brown population.
Update!
Obama's timid response has clearly emboldened the golpistas. As if to declare to the world that Obama may be president but is not really in charge the coup's foreign minister dismisses him as el negrito ... translation... little black boy. Wow, just wow..
Your move, Barack.
Callejas was the treasurer for the Honduran Human Rights Committee, and like other rights advocates there, he had gone from defending political and civil freedoms to challenging organized criminals and their landowner sponsors.
Days before being killed, Callejos had informed police about gang members suspected of having killed a German tourist during a bus robbery in July. NYTimes 9-2002.This is the background against which to view the current impasse in Honduras. 75% of that country are dirt poor and the majority of those, practically illiterate. Among them are the Garifuna, or Black Karibs, originally from the island of St. Vincent, where as slaves they mixed with the natives and adopted their culture and the Garifuna language. [Currently, Garifuna settlements extend around the city of Trujillo and from Belize to Nicaragua.]
In response to the coup the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) cites the "undeniable involvement" of former US under-secretary of state Otto Reich and the DC-based Arcadia Foundation.
[The Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH—Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña) is organized for the protection of Garifuna culture and language. The Honduran Advisory Council for the Development of Autochthonous Ethnic Groups (CAHDEA) represents Garifuna groups in the protection of civil rights and equal employment opportunities and has recently ratified the ILO (International Labor Organization) treaty which provides ethnic minorities with labor rights protection]
The Garifuna website accuses Reich of "heading misinformation and sabotage operations, with close ties to international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and the Cuban-American mafia in Miami. Their account also names an anti-Zelaya civil coalition, the Movimiento Paz y Democracia, apparently funded by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
What has been established with scarcely a doubt is that the coup was undertaken to prevent a referendum that would determine if a majority of Hondurans desired to modify their constitution.
Such an initiative has never taken place in Honduras, a wholly owned subsidiary of Uncle Sam and Chiquita Bananas. During the Reagan years that country's elite ensured that the Central American nation would be stuck with a constitution that allowed for minimal participation by the Honduran people.
''In the 80's you could not talk about human rights because they would call you a terrorist or a guerrilla,'' said José Antonio Serrano, a member of the Honduran Human Rights Committee's national board. Serrano reportedly received several anonymous warnings to back off inquiring about Mr. Callejas's death.
Against the elite's opposition, Zelaya's proposal was backed by a majority of the country's labor unions and social movements. There is also no doubt that had the referendum been conducted during the upcoming elections in November there would have be a "yes" vote for convening a constitutional assembly.
Although he has rightly denounced Zelaya's illegal removal Obama has yet to recall the U.S. ambassador. Dan Restrepo, his adviser on Latin American Affairs, stated that the Obama government is communicating with the coup forces and trying to "feel out" the situation. Asked if Obama would recognize an unelected government in Honduras Restrepo replied that the administration "is waiting to see how things play out".
So here we have the ultimate irony. The first black U.S. president tacitly supporting a coup that seeks to maintain the exploitation of its black and brown population.
Update!
Obama's timid response has clearly emboldened the golpistas. As if to declare to the world that Obama may be president but is not really in charge the coup's foreign minister dismisses him as el negrito ... translation... little black boy. Wow, just wow..
Your move, Barack.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Out with the New! (with update)
Today we learn that the United States has agreed to more than triple the rent it pays for use of a key air base in Kyrgyzstan. Apparently the base is vital for Obama's "surge" in Afghanistan.
The accord comes just four months after the Kyrgs had ordered U.S. troops to leave their country. But that was then-- this now and $60 million a year sweeter.
So here we have President Obama, at a time when the U.S. economy is staggering upping the ante in the "War on Terror". You might therefore suspect that the banking Brahmins and their high priests on the Council for Foreign Relations are pressuring the new administration on Afghanistan. You'd probably be right.. but that does not mean the truth is fit for public consumption... after all, we voted out Cheney and his war-loving neocons! ... right?
*(update) The NYTimes reports that someone in the Justice Dept has slipped documents to the families of the 9-11 victims implicating the Saudi Royal family in the attacks. We'll wait and see how far the courts will go to cover up our own government's complicity.
"In a nutshell, we have to decide more precisely what is the objective of our involvement. Because we are increasingly running the risk of getting bogged down both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan in pursuit of objectives which we are lacking the power to reach ... The problem is the more we get involved in Afghanistan the more deeply we get involved in Pakistan as well."
That is what former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Huffington Post.
The same Brzezenski that wrote this back in 1998: "It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America."
and this: "For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.”
So has Brzezinski had a dramatic change of heart ... "seen the errors of his imperialist ways...?" On the surface one is tempted to say yes. Here is what he had to say about a potential Obama presidency: "There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs.. and Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America's relationship with the world."
A fractured, fractious world that looks much the way it does thanks to dear old Zibby.
The accord comes just four months after the Kyrgs had ordered U.S. troops to leave their country. But that was then-- this now and $60 million a year sweeter.
So here we have President Obama, at a time when the U.S. economy is staggering upping the ante in the "War on Terror". You might therefore suspect that the banking Brahmins and their high priests on the Council for Foreign Relations are pressuring the new administration on Afghanistan. You'd probably be right.. but that does not mean the truth is fit for public consumption... after all, we voted out Cheney and his war-loving neocons! ... right?
*(update) The NYTimes reports that someone in the Justice Dept has slipped documents to the families of the 9-11 victims implicating the Saudi Royal family in the attacks. We'll wait and see how far the courts will go to cover up our own government's complicity.
"In a nutshell, we have to decide more precisely what is the objective of our involvement. Because we are increasingly running the risk of getting bogged down both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan in pursuit of objectives which we are lacking the power to reach ... The problem is the more we get involved in Afghanistan the more deeply we get involved in Pakistan as well."
That is what former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Huffington Post.
The same Brzezenski that wrote this back in 1998: "It is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America."
and this: "For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.”
So has Brzezinski had a dramatic change of heart ... "seen the errors of his imperialist ways...?" On the surface one is tempted to say yes. Here is what he had to say about a potential Obama presidency: "There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs.. and Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America's relationship with the world."
A fractured, fractious world that looks much the way it does thanks to dear old Zibby.
Monday, May 4, 2009
That was Then
"Right as we speak, our farm land is being stolen; black farmers are driven off the land, Native American farmers are dispossessed, family farmers of all ethnic groups are even arrested for refusing to lie down and disappear."--Monica Davis, journalist
In 1920 there were close a million black farmers in the United States. They owned nearly 16 million acres of land-- eighty years later they owned a mere 2 million, and their remaining farmland is still dropping by @1,000 acres per day. 18,000 stalwarts struggle on but they are nearly extinct, their demise six times the rate of their white counterparts.
The USDA, like most American institutions has an ugly history vis a vis race. And if that wasn't bad enough for most black farmers their holdings were largely in the former confederacy. (There is a quiet irony here in that in Louisiana after Reconstruction it was the colored gentry many of whom also owned slaves that the electorate appealed to for help rooting out the state's crippling political corruption.)
Farming is a fickle undertaking at best, and few farmers survive without reliable credit. For black farmers that credit can be especially hard to come by since the USDA and its agency, the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) who are supposed to be in the business of helping farmers have been indifferent and even hostile towards black farmers seeking assistance.
For them dealing with the USDA has been like turning the clock back 60 years to the South of the 1940s. For example:
Ben Burkett, Mississippi state coordinator for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, managed to borrow from the FmHA from 1978 to 1985. But he says it always took "four, five, eight months -- even a year -- to get approved." It's supposed to take 30 days. The last time he applied for an operating loan was in February. He didn't get it until July. By then it was too late to do him any good.
On three separate occasions, the white FmHA loan officer grabbed farmer Lloyd Shaffer's loan application out of his hand, crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket. Other times Lloyd was kept waiting to served for the entire eight hours the office was open. Meanwhile white farmers came and went the whole day long, filling out their forms and conducting other business.
The landmark Pigford settlement was supposed to bring folks like Lloyd a bit of justice. $730 million was paid out as part of that agreement but many including Senator Obama charged that thousands of eligible farmers had been denied relief, having missed the cut-off date for claims. Candidate Obama made it an issue during the Southern primaries. Now President Obama, facing the country's worst recession since the 1930's is not so gung-ho about his own legislation.
Sure the black farmer got a real rotten deal. That was then... this is now.
In 1920 there were close a million black farmers in the United States. They owned nearly 16 million acres of land-- eighty years later they owned a mere 2 million, and their remaining farmland is still dropping by @1,000 acres per day. 18,000 stalwarts struggle on but they are nearly extinct, their demise six times the rate of their white counterparts.
The USDA, like most American institutions has an ugly history vis a vis race. And if that wasn't bad enough for most black farmers their holdings were largely in the former confederacy. (There is a quiet irony here in that in Louisiana after Reconstruction it was the colored gentry many of whom also owned slaves that the electorate appealed to for help rooting out the state's crippling political corruption.)
Farming is a fickle undertaking at best, and few farmers survive without reliable credit. For black farmers that credit can be especially hard to come by since the USDA and its agency, the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) who are supposed to be in the business of helping farmers have been indifferent and even hostile towards black farmers seeking assistance.
For them dealing with the USDA has been like turning the clock back 60 years to the South of the 1940s. For example:
Ben Burkett, Mississippi state coordinator for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, managed to borrow from the FmHA from 1978 to 1985. But he says it always took "four, five, eight months -- even a year -- to get approved." It's supposed to take 30 days. The last time he applied for an operating loan was in February. He didn't get it until July. By then it was too late to do him any good.
On three separate occasions, the white FmHA loan officer grabbed farmer Lloyd Shaffer's loan application out of his hand, crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket. Other times Lloyd was kept waiting to served for the entire eight hours the office was open. Meanwhile white farmers came and went the whole day long, filling out their forms and conducting other business.
The landmark Pigford settlement was supposed to bring folks like Lloyd a bit of justice. $730 million was paid out as part of that agreement but many including Senator Obama charged that thousands of eligible farmers had been denied relief, having missed the cut-off date for claims. Candidate Obama made it an issue during the Southern primaries. Now President Obama, facing the country's worst recession since the 1930's is not so gung-ho about his own legislation.
Sure the black farmer got a real rotten deal. That was then... this is now.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
No Excuses
Sad but true- the Bush Administration was not the first U.S. government to approve the use of torture. Anyone who knows about the School of the Americas understands that torture and assassination have often been used to terrorize and intimidate those who have the nerve to protest U.S. foreign policy. However Bush is the first president to attempt to make torture legal. And for that Mr. Obama there can be no kicking the can down the road or simply "looking to the future." The lawyers and government officials who attempted to pronounce us a pariah nation need to be prosecuted and forever barred from government and the practice of law.
I am ashamed that despite all that the press has reported already most of us remain largely disinterested about what was and apparently continues to be done in our name. There was time when we Americans were better people. But be sure-- if we sit quietly and allow our present government to ignore such crimes we shall have become that which we once so deeply abhorred.
Honor Betrayed
The realization that her own officers were capable of such cruelty was probably what led to Alyssa Peterson's death. Unlike our "good soldiers" Army Spc. Peterson could not bring herself to torture prisoners.
"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."
We owe Alyssa Peterson an accounting for having placed her in such physical and moral jeopardy. Only after those who tried to legalize such gross atrocities are justly charged can we dare to beg for her forgiveness.
I am ashamed that despite all that the press has reported already most of us remain largely disinterested about what was and apparently continues to be done in our name. There was time when we Americans were better people. But be sure-- if we sit quietly and allow our present government to ignore such crimes we shall have become that which we once so deeply abhorred.
Honor Betrayed
The realization that her own officers were capable of such cruelty was probably what led to Alyssa Peterson's death. Unlike our "good soldiers" Army Spc. Peterson could not bring herself to torture prisoners.
"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."
We owe Alyssa Peterson an accounting for having placed her in such physical and moral jeopardy. Only after those who tried to legalize such gross atrocities are justly charged can we dare to beg for her forgiveness.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Noblesse Oblige
Listening to politicians talk about the state of the economy often sounds like a rock musician or Igor Stravinsky talk about expressionist German opera. They either sound painfully out of their depth or unable to discuss the matter without disdain and great trembling. What even the coherent pols have so failed to address is what exactly would be an optimal "recovery".
We know for the Republicans in Congress it would be more 30% returns for the top 1% and sackcloth and ashes for the rest of us. Never mind that those very policies have brought us to our current precipice. Eastern Europeans fresh from their forty lean years "in the communist wilderness" fear any government hand in the financial markets. Thus it was that the current president of the European Union, Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, labeled Obama’s emergency stimulus package “a way to hell” that will “undermine the stability of the global economy.”
But most economists, even those like Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former McCain adviser, understand that to get the folks back investing and markets lending requires a much larger stimulus than our timid President Obama has so far put forward. For once and no doubt the very last time I agree with Darth Vader himself, Dick Cheney who said: "Deficits don't matter" -- it depends on what you're buying and what you'll be getting. What we certainly do NOT need is greater consumption leading to even MORE inflation. Here I agree with Brad de Long that there "are legitimate fears when a government undertakes a deficit-spending plan. We can all recall historical episodes when they turned out to be not just fears but realities. We remember bottleneck-driven and wage-push inflation from the late 1960s and from the oil shock-ridden 1970s – those episodes were the first fear coming home to roost. Nobody today is happy with American fiscal policy in the late 1960s or American demand management policy in the 1970s."
Instead what we need is a complete change in thinking. Here again, we have history to serve as a guide. To drag us out of the Depression (something quite different than bulking up our powers of purchase) FDR's government hired the unemployed. They planted over a billion trees, saved endangered species, modernized backwoods America, and built New York’s Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge. They also put up 2,500 hospitals, 45,000 schools, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 7,800 bridges, 700,000 miles of roads, and a thousand airfields while employing 50,000 teachers and 3,000 writers, musicians, sculptors and painters, among them de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.
For the world to experience a truly sustainable recovery there is but a single viable solution-- we must reeducate the filthy rich and indoctrinate them with the virtues of public sacrifice and noblesse oblige.
We know for the Republicans in Congress it would be more 30% returns for the top 1% and sackcloth and ashes for the rest of us. Never mind that those very policies have brought us to our current precipice. Eastern Europeans fresh from their forty lean years "in the communist wilderness" fear any government hand in the financial markets. Thus it was that the current president of the European Union, Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, labeled Obama’s emergency stimulus package “a way to hell” that will “undermine the stability of the global economy.”
But most economists, even those like Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former McCain adviser, understand that to get the folks back investing and markets lending requires a much larger stimulus than our timid President Obama has so far put forward. For once and no doubt the very last time I agree with Darth Vader himself, Dick Cheney who said: "Deficits don't matter" -- it depends on what you're buying and what you'll be getting. What we certainly do NOT need is greater consumption leading to even MORE inflation. Here I agree with Brad de Long that there "are legitimate fears when a government undertakes a deficit-spending plan. We can all recall historical episodes when they turned out to be not just fears but realities. We remember bottleneck-driven and wage-push inflation from the late 1960s and from the oil shock-ridden 1970s – those episodes were the first fear coming home to roost. Nobody today is happy with American fiscal policy in the late 1960s or American demand management policy in the 1970s."
Instead what we need is a complete change in thinking. Here again, we have history to serve as a guide. To drag us out of the Depression (something quite different than bulking up our powers of purchase) FDR's government hired the unemployed. They planted over a billion trees, saved endangered species, modernized backwoods America, and built New York’s Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge. They also put up 2,500 hospitals, 45,000 schools, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 7,800 bridges, 700,000 miles of roads, and a thousand airfields while employing 50,000 teachers and 3,000 writers, musicians, sculptors and painters, among them de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.
For the world to experience a truly sustainable recovery there is but a single viable solution-- we must reeducate the filthy rich and indoctrinate them with the virtues of public sacrifice and noblesse oblige.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Borrowing Disaster
We've heard it all-- bail-out the banks--no nationalize them!--no--let the market "play out"--oh just let the whole steaming pile collapse! What we have not heard much about is that despite the obvious fraud that has brought the global market to its knees the current financial crisis was bound to happen sooner or later.
"There are two ways to boost profits: you either make your workforce work more effectively, or you make them work harder and longer."
Our Wall St. bankers understand that wealth is power. In trying to wring more "surplus value" vs the ruthless Asian tigers (see China's spectacular growth) they have been suppressing wages and then lending the workers back the difference through inflated mortgages and usurious loans. But just as the Madoff scheme blew up once the economy began to unravel, so has the value of the bankers' portfolio crashed and burned as more and more borrowers are laid off or simply can no longer pay back their lenders.
The reason even nationalization may not help to stem the crisis is that there are not enough industries left to absorb the jobless-- at least not nearly in time to boost consumption. On this point Obama is exactly right. The only chance for an appreciable "rebound" of the global economy is a stimulus package large enough to employ America's "excess labor." Had we not been trapped in the vise of neo-liberal ideologues we would have seen the danger years ago and responded proactively. Instead Bush and Greenspan ignored the rising employment and mushroomed the debt rate. But then we Americans are all middle-class and scornful to call ourselves "labor " like those "wine-sipping, surrender monkeys" in France who have the nerve to believe that workers have rights.
The Financial Times: April 10 2006
Chirac backs down over labour law
Adam Jones, Paris
Confronted by massive street protests as well as blockades and closures of schools and universities, the government had already offered to dilute its plan to introduce the CPE, a new type of job contract that would make it easier to hire and fire people aged under 26. Yet that olive branch was rejected by the unions. They are demanding the total withdrawal of the contract, which had been proposed as a way of cutting youth unemployment in France.
But even back then any political economist with a functioning brain should have understood that the neo-liberal ideal of unlimited trade and constant growth was simply not sustainable. It is fine for well-meaning folks like Krugman to be concerned about the starving peasants in Bangladesh, it's time for someone with some standing and foresight to put forward an alternative to Western-style capitalism. Consider this warning from 2005:
"There are two ways to boost profits: you either make your workforce work more effectively, or you make them work harder and longer."
Our Wall St. bankers understand that wealth is power. In trying to wring more "surplus value" vs the ruthless Asian tigers (see China's spectacular growth) they have been suppressing wages and then lending the workers back the difference through inflated mortgages and usurious loans. But just as the Madoff scheme blew up once the economy began to unravel, so has the value of the bankers' portfolio crashed and burned as more and more borrowers are laid off or simply can no longer pay back their lenders.
The reason even nationalization may not help to stem the crisis is that there are not enough industries left to absorb the jobless-- at least not nearly in time to boost consumption. On this point Obama is exactly right. The only chance for an appreciable "rebound" of the global economy is a stimulus package large enough to employ America's "excess labor." Had we not been trapped in the vise of neo-liberal ideologues we would have seen the danger years ago and responded proactively. Instead Bush and Greenspan ignored the rising employment and mushroomed the debt rate. But then we Americans are all middle-class and scornful to call ourselves "labor " like those "wine-sipping, surrender monkeys" in France who have the nerve to believe that workers have rights.
The Financial Times: April 10 2006
Chirac backs down over labour law
Adam Jones, Paris
Confronted by massive street protests as well as blockades and closures of schools and universities, the government had already offered to dilute its plan to introduce the CPE, a new type of job contract that would make it easier to hire and fire people aged under 26. Yet that olive branch was rejected by the unions. They are demanding the total withdrawal of the contract, which had been proposed as a way of cutting youth unemployment in France.
But even back then any political economist with a functioning brain should have understood that the neo-liberal ideal of unlimited trade and constant growth was simply not sustainable. It is fine for well-meaning folks like Krugman to be concerned about the starving peasants in Bangladesh, it's time for someone with some standing and foresight to put forward an alternative to Western-style capitalism. Consider this warning from 2005:
"If its growth continues at 8 per cent a year by 2031 China's grain consumption alone will be two-thirds of the current grain consumption for the entire world. [ ] According to China's deputy environment minister, Pan Yue, five of the 10 most polluted cities worldwide are in China; acid rain is falling on one-third of the country; half of the water in its seven largest rivers is "completely useless"; a quarter of China's citizens lack access to clean drinking water; one-third of the urban population is breathing polluted air."
It's past time we stop letting Wall St. obsess us with thinking of dollars and start speaking sense.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
All Fail to Chief
Last week I wrote this warning that this blow-up of the financial markets was not only foreseen but is being carefully primed to set the stage for Obama's undoing. This is not some conspiracy theory I dreamed up in a vacuum. Those of us who are steeped in the African American experience understand how minorities are often and easily made to take the blame for trying times. In fact these very concerns were being discussed from months before Obama's election.
We also know that scapegoating occurs most often in times of economic distress. People are most likely to lash out against "the other" when their livelihoods are being threatened. As CNN reports:
Now, after first issuing denials, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd claims it was the Obama administration who asked him to insert a provision in last month’s $787 billion economic- stimulus legislation that supposedly "authorized" those AIG bonuses.
We are told to overlook the fact that the two senators who chair committees charged with overseeing AIG and the insurance industry are Sen. Dodd and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) who also happen to be two of the most favored recipients of AIG's largesse. Baucus has collected more money from AIG than from any other company--$91,000. And with more than $280,000, AIG has been the fourth largest contributor to Dodd.
Why? Because both Dodd and Baucus are suddenly being righteously adamant that AIG executives not receive any bonus compensation. But while the liberal blogs are all in an uproar over poor maligned Chris Dodd, the real theft, compensating AIG to the tune of $ 180 billion for committing fraud fails the smell test unremarked. A perfect bit of Washingtonian Kibuki theater played out for the gullible numbskulls while our hard earned savings continue to burn and disappear into smoke.
We also know that scapegoating occurs most often in times of economic distress. People are most likely to lash out against "the other" when their livelihoods are being threatened. As CNN reports:
In Detroit, Michigan, where the weak economy has taken a particularly devastating toll, Jeff Schoep serves as the commander for the National Socialist Movement, one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in the United States.
Schoep said he has seen membership grow by 40 percent in recent months, mostly because of the dire economic circumstances.Now, after first issuing denials, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd claims it was the Obama administration who asked him to insert a provision in last month’s $787 billion economic- stimulus legislation that supposedly "authorized" those AIG bonuses.
We are told to overlook the fact that the two senators who chair committees charged with overseeing AIG and the insurance industry are Sen. Dodd and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) who also happen to be two of the most favored recipients of AIG's largesse. Baucus has collected more money from AIG than from any other company--$91,000. And with more than $280,000, AIG has been the fourth largest contributor to Dodd.
Why? Because both Dodd and Baucus are suddenly being righteously adamant that AIG executives not receive any bonus compensation. But while the liberal blogs are all in an uproar over poor maligned Chris Dodd, the real theft, compensating AIG to the tune of $ 180 billion for committing fraud fails the smell test unremarked. A perfect bit of Washingtonian Kibuki theater played out for the gullible numbskulls while our hard earned savings continue to burn and disappear into smoke.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Trap for Obama, Updated w/video
Ever Deeper:
Now comes word that the official at the center of the fraud scandal at the Treasury Department has been allowed to quietly quit and retire from his job as a government regulator, despite allegations that he allowed a bank to falsify financial records (The federal government took over IndyMac back in July, after the bank's stock price plummeted to just pennies a share when it was revealed the bank had financial troubles due to defaulted mortgages and subprime loans, costing taxpayers over $9 billion. )
One becomes both dismayed and slightly amused when celebrated novelists bemoan the limitations of fiction. What their lament is meant to suggest is that there are realities specific to a particular time and place that demand authentic, unbiased reporting, that the conceit of universal truth is a 19th century pretense. One wonders where, if one accepts their premise, such an impartial observer might exist.
Just as the global financial meltdown continues to expose the glaring flaws in "free-market" capitalism, so have the recurrent tragedies of history shown that human stupidity, shortsightedness and greed know no cultural or geographical boundaries. For instance reading this : “If there is a single episode in this entire 18 months that has made me more angry, I can’t think of one other than AIG,” Bernanke said. “AIG exploited a huge gap in the regulatory system, there was no oversight of the financial-products division, this was a hedge fund basically that was attached to a large and stable insurance company.” --one doesn't know whether to laugh and go stock up on gold or simply become a hermit. Does the Chairman of the Federal Reserve not read the newspaper?
I submit that not only did Mr. Bernanke know that the "regulatory system" was being abused, his predecessor enabled the criminals. It is a crisis that President Obama, having wisely foreseen has now inherited, but he would be advised to observe the upheavals taking place in the land of his father. He will be facing a powerful backlash if he turns into the lightning-rod for the American public's simmering rage.
January 17, 2008 Protests Bring New Violence in Kenya
Jeffrey Gettleman, NYTimes, NAIROBI:
Opposition protests resumed in Kenya on Wednesday, and as many people here feared, violence erupted across the country once again. [ ] Opposition leaders have vowed to carry on protests for two more days, and it seems that Kenya’s security forces, which have deemed all protests illegal, are cracking down harshly. On Wednesday afternoon, police officers in padded suits sealed off downtown Nairobi, the capital, and ordered everyone out...
In the near quarter century of Daniel Arap Moi's rule the Kenyan people saw their once hopeful future crushed by their ruler's apparent greed. According to a report by the "Kroll Risk Consultancy", Mr Moi and his sons used a web of front men to manage their secret deals and hide their money. It estimated that Gideon Moi was worth some £550 million as of 2002, while Philip was worth about £384 million. The report was prepared at the request of the new Kibaki administration which succeeded in replacing President Moi by promising to end state corruption.
In 1999 John Githongo founded the Kenyan chapter of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International. In line with his pledge to wipe out government corruption Kibaki appointed Githongo as his "anti-corruption czar". When Githongo revealed that an Anglo Leasing fraud had siphoned off $100 million from inflated government security contracts via a phantom company listed in Britain he was denounced by his fellow ministers and eventually forced to leave the country. Githongo has finally returned to Kenya but what he is finding does not inspire him with hope.
That is the challenge facing President Obama ... as the SEC complicity clearly shows... the rot in Washington reaches clear to the head of the stinking fish. Now we learn that Obama's own White House Counsel Greg Craig represented Rove in his recent book deal, while Craig’s law partner, close associate and mentor, Emmet Flood, is representing Bush in executive privilege matters before the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals, where Bush officials are charged with the political firings of U.S. attorneys for failing to act on orders to prosecute Democrats prior to elections.
One does not need to be a famous novelist to conjure all the dire consequences to a country that accepts this level of corruption.
Charles Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS
In his 'Great Expectations' Dickens takes on the corruption of the judicial system of his time. Dickens' masterful work was intended to propel those in power to institute reforms at a time when children, their parents having been forced into crime, were destined to share the same fate. Great Expectations contained the implicit warning that left unchecked, England would be guaranteed a future of violence, lawlessness and despair-- a fate that still gravely faces Kenya and our own USA.
Luckily, though we may not have a Dickensian novelist, we do have at least one incorruptible reporter who moonlights as a comedian:
Now comes word that the official at the center of the fraud scandal at the Treasury Department has been allowed to quietly quit and retire from his job as a government regulator, despite allegations that he allowed a bank to falsify financial records (The federal government took over IndyMac back in July, after the bank's stock price plummeted to just pennies a share when it was revealed the bank had financial troubles due to defaulted mortgages and subprime loans, costing taxpayers over $9 billion. )
One becomes both dismayed and slightly amused when celebrated novelists bemoan the limitations of fiction. What their lament is meant to suggest is that there are realities specific to a particular time and place that demand authentic, unbiased reporting, that the conceit of universal truth is a 19th century pretense. One wonders where, if one accepts their premise, such an impartial observer might exist.
Just as the global financial meltdown continues to expose the glaring flaws in "free-market" capitalism, so have the recurrent tragedies of history shown that human stupidity, shortsightedness and greed know no cultural or geographical boundaries. For instance reading this : “If there is a single episode in this entire 18 months that has made me more angry, I can’t think of one other than AIG,” Bernanke said. “AIG exploited a huge gap in the regulatory system, there was no oversight of the financial-products division, this was a hedge fund basically that was attached to a large and stable insurance company.” --one doesn't know whether to laugh and go stock up on gold or simply become a hermit. Does the Chairman of the Federal Reserve not read the newspaper?
I submit that not only did Mr. Bernanke know that the "regulatory system" was being abused, his predecessor enabled the criminals. It is a crisis that President Obama, having wisely foreseen has now inherited, but he would be advised to observe the upheavals taking place in the land of his father. He will be facing a powerful backlash if he turns into the lightning-rod for the American public's simmering rage.
January 17, 2008 Protests Bring New Violence in Kenya
Jeffrey Gettleman, NYTimes, NAIROBI:
Opposition protests resumed in Kenya on Wednesday, and as many people here feared, violence erupted across the country once again. [ ] Opposition leaders have vowed to carry on protests for two more days, and it seems that Kenya’s security forces, which have deemed all protests illegal, are cracking down harshly. On Wednesday afternoon, police officers in padded suits sealed off downtown Nairobi, the capital, and ordered everyone out...
In the near quarter century of Daniel Arap Moi's rule the Kenyan people saw their once hopeful future crushed by their ruler's apparent greed. According to a report by the "Kroll Risk Consultancy", Mr Moi and his sons used a web of front men to manage their secret deals and hide their money. It estimated that Gideon Moi was worth some £550 million as of 2002, while Philip was worth about £384 million. The report was prepared at the request of the new Kibaki administration which succeeded in replacing President Moi by promising to end state corruption.
In 1999 John Githongo founded the Kenyan chapter of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International. In line with his pledge to wipe out government corruption Kibaki appointed Githongo as his "anti-corruption czar". When Githongo revealed that an Anglo Leasing fraud had siphoned off $100 million from inflated government security contracts via a phantom company listed in Britain he was denounced by his fellow ministers and eventually forced to leave the country. Githongo has finally returned to Kenya but what he is finding does not inspire him with hope.
"In the past, the scandals that we had were of a scale that was mind-boggling to most people. Big sums, hundreds of millions of dollars! Those are many zeros and sometimes difficult to connect to your everyday circumstances," he said. "What is happening now is having a very direct impact on the poor."
Back to "Business as usual"
Despite President Kibaki's promises, Mr Moi and his sons remain highly influential, Gideon Moi is now an MP and former President Moi was recently named special envoy to Sudan's north-south peace process. Kenyans' great expectations that followed Kibaki's election have given way to despair as they watch the vultures both in and out of Kenya pick away their future through stealth and criminal deceit. As one reporter put it, "There was a feeling [in the new government]that pursuing corruption of the past was provoking corruption allegations in the present".That is the challenge facing President Obama ... as the SEC complicity clearly shows... the rot in Washington reaches clear to the head of the stinking fish. Now we learn that Obama's own White House Counsel Greg Craig represented Rove in his recent book deal, while Craig’s law partner, close associate and mentor, Emmet Flood, is representing Bush in executive privilege matters before the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals, where Bush officials are charged with the political firings of U.S. attorneys for failing to act on orders to prosecute Democrats prior to elections.
One does not need to be a famous novelist to conjure all the dire consequences to a country that accepts this level of corruption.
Charles Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS
In his 'Great Expectations' Dickens takes on the corruption of the judicial system of his time. Dickens' masterful work was intended to propel those in power to institute reforms at a time when children, their parents having been forced into crime, were destined to share the same fate. Great Expectations contained the implicit warning that left unchecked, England would be guaranteed a future of violence, lawlessness and despair-- a fate that still gravely faces Kenya and our own USA.
Luckily, though we may not have a Dickensian novelist, we do have at least one incorruptible reporter who moonlights as a comedian:
Friday, February 6, 2009
Wasted In America
Whether from a nagging inferiority complex attributable to its youth and borrowed cultures, or simply the fruit of its puritanical roots the USA has a self-destructive streak that is fast becoming its undoing. No nation can long survive unless it can instill a healthy amount of pride and a sense of shared commitment in its people. What was so poignant about Barack Obama's election was the tearful joy on the faces of our African-American children who appeared to range in age from five to over a hundred. Finally, they thought, their parents, those already dead or very much alive, could believe they were equal American members, allowed to indulge in all the prerequisites and privileges of their powerful country. An inspiring notion, to which we grown-ups are yet to be impressed.
With all the talk centered on rescuing the economy and ending the Iraq fiasco the giant elephant in the room, the great all-devouring threat to the nation's survival stands quiet and unseen. I'm referring to the criminal number of black and brown and native-born Americans being locked in prison and being robbed of constructive futures simply for getting involved with unsanctioned drugs.
There is something ethically grotesque about the fact that our last three presidents--Clinton, Bush and Obama--had all at one time in their youthful lives experimented with illegal drugs. Yet, since the election of Ronald Reagan the United States has incarcerated more American citizens for abusing marijuana than the total number of prisoners we had locked behind bars in 1980. (Of the 450,000 arrests during the period 1990-2002, 82% of the increase was for marijuana, with 79% for marijuana possession-- Boyum and Reuter, 2005).
As a result of these Draconian drug laws the United States has well over two million of its people in prison, the majority for non-violent drug offenses. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world and yet retains one of the highest rankings in drug abuse. More troubling still is the rate at which we are imprisoning women, many with small children, virtually guaranteeing that the family will not escape its downward spiral, their lives given over to the hedge of self-medication against hopelessness and chronic depression.
"There is considerable evidence to show that the costs of such laws do not fall equally across all segments of US society. Between 1985 and 1995, for instance, there was an increase of 200 percent in the number of females incarcerated in state and federal institutions, most for non-violent offences. Many commentators agree that much of this was the result of stricter enforcement,increased penalties and mandatory prison sentences for drug offenders" (Reichel 2005, Bush-Baskette, 1999, Gray, 2001). Additionally, while punitive US drug policies can be seen to have significantly affected the imprisonment of women in general, the greatest increase in the percentage of inmates incarcerated for drug offences is seen in African American women.
An infuriating example of these destructive policies is the case of Yraida Guanipa. Ms. Guanipa has spent the last ten and a half years a Florida federal penitentiary, locked away from her friends, her extended family and her two young children.
At first the War on Drugs" seemed a political brain-stroke-- a real twofer for the Christian Right and their control of Washington's "new Republican majority". By building the extra prisons needed in rural and exurban counties the local Republicans could use their inmates to boost their Congressional numbers-- and since the war was centered in urban communities that consisted overwhelming of black and brown Democrats-- they were concurrently keeping potential voters away from the voting booth (and those pesky unions). The real travesty of the 1990's was the fact that a Democratic president went right along. Yet as far as reducing illegal drug use the impact was virtually nil:
A recent study comparing marijuana use in Amsterdam and San Francisco showed that relative risks of punishment make no difference on levels of use. Despite significantly different law enforcement regimes in these cities, the research found remarkable similarities in drug use patterns (Reinarman, Cohen & Kaal, 2004). Figures show that from 1990 to 2002, daily use of marijuana by high school seniors approached 6%--the exact same level as in 1975.
Not much to show for a program that is costing the Federal government upwards of $9 billion dollars each year. Put another way, the cost of keeping a non-violent drug offender in prison is greater than the cost of tuition, room and board at Yale or Harvard. So while mountains of words and barrels of ink are being spent on describing the need to stimulate the economy and "Reinvest in America" we ignore the ongoing war being waged against our own citizens. As with all wars, there is terrible collateral damage being done to our most vulnerable communities. Worse, by pretending that the problem can be solved simply by locking up the poor and probably many of our most innovative and entrepreneurial minds, we have doomed ourselves to failure. No nation has ever flourished once it becomes unable to care for its least.
Tragically, though we have a president who most certainly understands the consequence of this crippling waste and destruction, Obama fears, no doubt with a bitter dose of irony, that his instincts for change are most likely to be incarcerated by the shade of his skin.
With all the talk centered on rescuing the economy and ending the Iraq fiasco the giant elephant in the room, the great all-devouring threat to the nation's survival stands quiet and unseen. I'm referring to the criminal number of black and brown and native-born Americans being locked in prison and being robbed of constructive futures simply for getting involved with unsanctioned drugs.
There is something ethically grotesque about the fact that our last three presidents--Clinton, Bush and Obama--had all at one time in their youthful lives experimented with illegal drugs. Yet, since the election of Ronald Reagan the United States has incarcerated more American citizens for abusing marijuana than the total number of prisoners we had locked behind bars in 1980. (Of the 450,000 arrests during the period 1990-2002, 82% of the increase was for marijuana, with 79% for marijuana possession-- Boyum and Reuter, 2005).
As a result of these Draconian drug laws the United States has well over two million of its people in prison, the majority for non-violent drug offenses. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world and yet retains one of the highest rankings in drug abuse. More troubling still is the rate at which we are imprisoning women, many with small children, virtually guaranteeing that the family will not escape its downward spiral, their lives given over to the hedge of self-medication against hopelessness and chronic depression.
"There is considerable evidence to show that the costs of such laws do not fall equally across all segments of US society. Between 1985 and 1995, for instance, there was an increase of 200 percent in the number of females incarcerated in state and federal institutions, most for non-violent offences. Many commentators agree that much of this was the result of stricter enforcement,increased penalties and mandatory prison sentences for drug offenders" (Reichel 2005, Bush-Baskette, 1999, Gray, 2001). Additionally, while punitive US drug policies can be seen to have significantly affected the imprisonment of women in general, the greatest increase in the percentage of inmates incarcerated for drug offences is seen in African American women.
An infuriating example of these destructive policies is the case of Yraida Guanipa. Ms. Guanipa has spent the last ten and a half years a Florida federal penitentiary, locked away from her friends, her extended family and her two young children.
Her offense: She agreed to pick up a package for a friend, which turned out to contain cocaine. Although Ms. Guanipa had never been arrested -- had never been a drug user--she received a thirteen-year "drug conspiracy" prison sentence. Her good standing in the community, her lack of criminal background and the fact that she had a 1-year-old and a 2-year old had no impact on her sentence.
At first the War on Drugs" seemed a political brain-stroke-- a real twofer for the Christian Right and their control of Washington's "new Republican majority". By building the extra prisons needed in rural and exurban counties the local Republicans could use their inmates to boost their Congressional numbers-- and since the war was centered in urban communities that consisted overwhelming of black and brown Democrats-- they were concurrently keeping potential voters away from the voting booth (and those pesky unions). The real travesty of the 1990's was the fact that a Democratic president went right along. Yet as far as reducing illegal drug use the impact was virtually nil:
A recent study comparing marijuana use in Amsterdam and San Francisco showed that relative risks of punishment make no difference on levels of use. Despite significantly different law enforcement regimes in these cities, the research found remarkable similarities in drug use patterns (Reinarman, Cohen & Kaal, 2004). Figures show that from 1990 to 2002, daily use of marijuana by high school seniors approached 6%--the exact same level as in 1975.
Not much to show for a program that is costing the Federal government upwards of $9 billion dollars each year. Put another way, the cost of keeping a non-violent drug offender in prison is greater than the cost of tuition, room and board at Yale or Harvard. So while mountains of words and barrels of ink are being spent on describing the need to stimulate the economy and "Reinvest in America" we ignore the ongoing war being waged against our own citizens. As with all wars, there is terrible collateral damage being done to our most vulnerable communities. Worse, by pretending that the problem can be solved simply by locking up the poor and probably many of our most innovative and entrepreneurial minds, we have doomed ourselves to failure. No nation has ever flourished once it becomes unable to care for its least.
Tragically, though we have a president who most certainly understands the consequence of this crippling waste and destruction, Obama fears, no doubt with a bitter dose of irony, that his instincts for change are most likely to be incarcerated by the shade of his skin.
Friday, January 30, 2009
The Color of Goodness and Poverty
There is an astonishing disconnect or perhaps more accurately, disengagement, taking place in American politics. Having been exposed as the party void of ideas beyond cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans and without a shred of interest in governing, the Republicans have seen their representation in Washington at its lowest level in thirty years. And yet were it not for the population's changing demographic we could have easily been facing a President McCain and Vice-president Palin.
In "The State of Working America 2002-03," the Economic Policy Institute estimated that the bottom 80 percent of American households now control only about 17 percent of the nation's wealth. Since the advent of the Bush administration wages, benefits, and working conditions for workers across the board decreased at a precipitous rate while the rich made out like bandits. Now we learn that the few safeguards that the S.E.C supposedly had in place to prevent unscrupulous bankers from ripping off the public were not only not being enforced, but when the thefts were discovered by several states the federal government bluntly refused to prosecute.
Here is where it gets truly cynical and why Obama's attempt to bring Republicans on board may be D.O.A. What the banks were doing was essentially preying on borrowers who had been historically disadvantaged, primarily because of the race. I can assure you I have first hand evidence that the color of your skin can effect the points on your mortgage. It was Eliot Spitzer who first identified the illegal pattern that underlay the sub-prime fiasco-- what he did not realize when he asked the Bushies to prosecute was that their supporters had specifically sanctioned the game, believing that when all was said and done their voters would be inclined to blame the victims (and just in case their scam was exposed, they had Rush Limbaugh ready with the appropriate "spin".)
As Greg Palast humorously explains:
Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 monthly payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. The Grinnings move into their Toyota. Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.
There is saying in the ghetto--you want to see the next scam that's gonna rock the country?-- just take a look at what's going down in the 'hood. Just like the IRAN/Contra drugs for smuggled weapons triggered the 80's crack and cocaine epidemic, the sub-prime racket, thanks to some clever Wall Street sleight of hand eventually blossomed into a worldwide infection. One would think that after seeing their 401k's reduced to rubble and their pensions looted the Republican faithful would be hunting heads, or at least for an honest party. But here is where Rove and his minions have displayed their true genius. Theirs is a party guided not by the actions of imperfect political men but the inscrutable designs of the Almighty.
By identifying Republicanism with Southern Evangelism the Bushies have updated and codified "Manifest Destiny". So that the political debate centers not on economic concerns but religious and social philosophy. Thus the crisis of Christian faith as propagated by the Dispensationalists and the prophets of End Times blends seamlessly with the notion that America itself, as it continues its "browning" is seeing its "Last Days" before the inevitable "Rapture". When the end is at hand and one's eternal soul hangs in the balance what is the significance of an emptied bank account. Indeed, what the republicans are banking on, now that they have destroyed our manufacturing base and stolen our money, is that as the crisis deepens their faithful will tune out government completely and tune in the preachers they've kept extremely well paid to be the voices of God.
As Kevin Phillips suggests in "American Theocracy":
"It is not coincidental that at the time the leading sector of the economy was assumed by finance and oil (a declining global resource) that right wing Christianity emerges as a state ideology under Republican rule."
Nor that we've seen a foreign policy that is defined by imperial overreach and where religious dogma denies science in the name of biblical inerrancy.
Judas Capitalism and End Times
Indeed, Business Week's William Wolman has described the American economy as a 'Judas economy'; one dominated by debt and unscrupulous financiers. As he and Anne Colamosca point out in "The Triumph Of Capital and The Betrayal of Work": what our business and government leaders are unwilling to admit, but most Americans know in their gut is that: in the brave new global economy, big money holds all the cards while workers -- including white-collar professionals -- are increasingly expendable.
All symptoms of banking imperialism wedded to late stage capitalism. It is no great stretch to perceive that Fundamentalist Christianity’s concern with the End of Times actually reflects its followers sense that American democracy itself is approaching its end.
The kicker here is that by embracing the vanity embedded in Manifest Destiny the white American worker by in large refrains from making common cause with his darker-skinned colleagues. In so doing he enables the rich and disables his potential power. As Wolman and Colamosca note:
"in the new economy you need capital, and contrary to the hype only a lucky few will prosper on their own. The dynamics of the global securities markets, and the control of interest rates by the Federal Reserves and Bundesbanks of the world, perpetuate a system where fast economic growth is allowed only in developing countries. Meanwhile in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world inflation is kept low, so as to protect the value of the wealthy's financial assets. Any nation which strays from this policy is punished by a devastating outflow of investment capital. The result: few economic opportunities for American workers."
Obama is to be commended for wanting to bring more Republicans into the fold. Unfortunately, those willing to lavish the Limbaughs of the world with millions are betting that for the fundamentalist Evangelical faithful all ends well so long as God's heart is pure and His favored children are white.
In "The State of Working America 2002-03," the Economic Policy Institute estimated that the bottom 80 percent of American households now control only about 17 percent of the nation's wealth. Since the advent of the Bush administration wages, benefits, and working conditions for workers across the board decreased at a precipitous rate while the rich made out like bandits. Now we learn that the few safeguards that the S.E.C supposedly had in place to prevent unscrupulous bankers from ripping off the public were not only not being enforced, but when the thefts were discovered by several states the federal government bluntly refused to prosecute.
Here is where it gets truly cynical and why Obama's attempt to bring Republicans on board may be D.O.A. What the banks were doing was essentially preying on borrowers who had been historically disadvantaged, primarily because of the race. I can assure you I have first hand evidence that the color of your skin can effect the points on your mortgage. It was Eliot Spitzer who first identified the illegal pattern that underlay the sub-prime fiasco-- what he did not realize when he asked the Bushies to prosecute was that their supporters had specifically sanctioned the game, believing that when all was said and done their voters would be inclined to blame the victims (and just in case their scam was exposed, they had Rush Limbaugh ready with the appropriate "spin".)
As Greg Palast humorously explains:
Here’s how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 monthly payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain’t worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the “discount” they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. The Grinnings move into their Toyota. Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.
There is saying in the ghetto--you want to see the next scam that's gonna rock the country?-- just take a look at what's going down in the 'hood. Just like the IRAN/Contra drugs for smuggled weapons triggered the 80's crack and cocaine epidemic, the sub-prime racket, thanks to some clever Wall Street sleight of hand eventually blossomed into a worldwide infection. One would think that after seeing their 401k's reduced to rubble and their pensions looted the Republican faithful would be hunting heads, or at least for an honest party. But here is where Rove and his minions have displayed their true genius. Theirs is a party guided not by the actions of imperfect political men but the inscrutable designs of the Almighty.
By identifying Republicanism with Southern Evangelism the Bushies have updated and codified "Manifest Destiny". So that the political debate centers not on economic concerns but religious and social philosophy. Thus the crisis of Christian faith as propagated by the Dispensationalists and the prophets of End Times blends seamlessly with the notion that America itself, as it continues its "browning" is seeing its "Last Days" before the inevitable "Rapture". When the end is at hand and one's eternal soul hangs in the balance what is the significance of an emptied bank account. Indeed, what the republicans are banking on, now that they have destroyed our manufacturing base and stolen our money, is that as the crisis deepens their faithful will tune out government completely and tune in the preachers they've kept extremely well paid to be the voices of God.
As Kevin Phillips suggests in "American Theocracy":
"It is not coincidental that at the time the leading sector of the economy was assumed by finance and oil (a declining global resource) that right wing Christianity emerges as a state ideology under Republican rule."
Nor that we've seen a foreign policy that is defined by imperial overreach and where religious dogma denies science in the name of biblical inerrancy.
Judas Capitalism and End Times
Indeed, Business Week's William Wolman has described the American economy as a 'Judas economy'; one dominated by debt and unscrupulous financiers. As he and Anne Colamosca point out in "The Triumph Of Capital and The Betrayal of Work": what our business and government leaders are unwilling to admit, but most Americans know in their gut is that: in the brave new global economy, big money holds all the cards while workers -- including white-collar professionals -- are increasingly expendable.
All symptoms of banking imperialism wedded to late stage capitalism. It is no great stretch to perceive that Fundamentalist Christianity’s concern with the End of Times actually reflects its followers sense that American democracy itself is approaching its end.
The kicker here is that by embracing the vanity embedded in Manifest Destiny the white American worker by in large refrains from making common cause with his darker-skinned colleagues. In so doing he enables the rich and disables his potential power. As Wolman and Colamosca note:
"in the new economy you need capital, and contrary to the hype only a lucky few will prosper on their own. The dynamics of the global securities markets, and the control of interest rates by the Federal Reserves and Bundesbanks of the world, perpetuate a system where fast economic growth is allowed only in developing countries. Meanwhile in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world inflation is kept low, so as to protect the value of the wealthy's financial assets. Any nation which strays from this policy is punished by a devastating outflow of investment capital. The result: few economic opportunities for American workers."
Obama is to be commended for wanting to bring more Republicans into the fold. Unfortunately, those willing to lavish the Limbaughs of the world with millions are betting that for the fundamentalist Evangelical faithful all ends well so long as God's heart is pure and His favored children are white.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Word! Today We Reclaim Our Humanity
From the Tragic and Ridiculous
To the Inspiring and Sublime
Call it Hype or Hope... This Is Truly A Grand New Day
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
We Are "That One"
I can no longer refrain from bemoaning the tepidness of our president-elect when it comes foreign affairs. It is one thing to run a 'feel-good' campaign and something quite different to govern based on high moral principle. But if the timidity Obama has shown by selecting Clinton retreads for his "change" administration represents "transcendental leadership" then there is little the world can hope for in the years ahead.
Not that his choices have been any great surprise. From a strictly policy standpoint there was barely a sliver of difference between him and Hillary. In fact the primary reason (apart from the rather grotesque distraction of having a garrulous and charismatic former president occupying the role of "First Lady") that Obama seemed the superior option was his apparent knack for getting contentious factions to see their common ground. Indeed his uniquely American quality as he spoke of constantly was that thanks to his background "he had bits of us all inside him."
The End of Exceptionalism
There is a Manichean inevitability about 21st century globalization. A friend of mine put it succinctly after visiting London for a second time nearly a decade ago-- "the Empire has struck back"... indeed the subjected people of the 19th and 20th centuries are striking back in Rome and Paris from Minneapolis to Tel Aviv.
"There are areas where Americans—or at least the American right—cherishes the notion that we are exceptional. We sometimes think that we alone believe that "sometimes military force is necessary to maintain order in the world." ... On what has become a crucial test of a society's inclusiveness and tolerance, the United States lags well behind every Western European country, as well as many Eastern European and most Latin American countries. --Fareed Zakaria
Which is why the neo-cons grandly narcissistic "Plan for a New American Century" with its aspiration to an updated form of 19th century imperialism has been such a disaster. The "great unwashed" have already stormed the barricades-- as Obama's election demonstrates-- they are ensconced at Cambridge and Harvard. The idea of the separate autonomous state defined by its ethnicity and common faith is fast becoming extinct. One simply has to look at the historic centers of rigorous trade to see that Commerce eventually supercedes both "Race" and religion. The problem, under such tradition-upsetting circumstances, is what exactly should one be loyal to? And that is precisely the conundrum that Barack Obama will be challenged to solve.
"My Country is the World and my Religion is to do Good"
Thomas Paine, more than any other Revolutionary figure, is responsible for the American Idea-- an idea which has taken hold around the world-- the notion that individual liberty is an act of conscience. It is a concept as old as Plutarch and Socrates and yet as the viability of the nation state collapses like Wall Street banks and the Big Three automakers, we humans cling more and more tightly to our fear of the "Other". For the Eastern chauvinists and their religious zealots inspired by Osama bin Laden, it is the encroachment of the West with its aggressive sexuality and dogma of profit. They resent our swaggering on Islam's sacred conservative ground and so they insist on drowning the courageous Muslim voices straining to cast off their political chains and shape a new destiny. They are not helped by the fact that here in America the evangelical Christian Right see the "Third World's" struggle for dignity and democracy as a signal for the biblical "End Times" and an inevitable final "Clash of Civilizations".
And yet through all the chaos, suspicion and fear there are those who embody that individual principle: that differences can the bridged, that identity extends no farther than reach of one's intellect or the tip of one's nose. That increasing modern reality made me think of Obama's great challenge as I read about Raid al-Ubrah. As a Beduoin lawyer living in Israel Mr. Al-Ubrah is a second-class citizen yet he happily volunteers to help Russian immigrants who do not speak Hebrew navigate the bureaucracy of their adopted home.
"I enjoy the action, I like the old people, and I like helping out," Ubrah says. "Who cares if the person asking for advice is Arab or Jew or Christian?"
Watching the horror unfolding in Gaza my heart is heavy-- it seems that as a world lacking in any moral leadership we have lost our collective conscience. That Raid al-Ubrah springs from a nomadic tribe reminds me (sadly) that the greatness of a people resides not in the land, or their wealthiest men, but in their heroes. That more often than not, the greatest among us die forgotten-- reviled, in exile, imprisoned or poor. Would that those like Mr. Obama, who may yet leave the world so much, can remember what it means to take a stand and bravely endure.
Not that his choices have been any great surprise. From a strictly policy standpoint there was barely a sliver of difference between him and Hillary. In fact the primary reason (apart from the rather grotesque distraction of having a garrulous and charismatic former president occupying the role of "First Lady") that Obama seemed the superior option was his apparent knack for getting contentious factions to see their common ground. Indeed his uniquely American quality as he spoke of constantly was that thanks to his background "he had bits of us all inside him."
The End of Exceptionalism
There is a Manichean inevitability about 21st century globalization. A friend of mine put it succinctly after visiting London for a second time nearly a decade ago-- "the Empire has struck back"... indeed the subjected people of the 19th and 20th centuries are striking back in Rome and Paris from Minneapolis to Tel Aviv.
"There are areas where Americans—or at least the American right—cherishes the notion that we are exceptional. We sometimes think that we alone believe that "sometimes military force is necessary to maintain order in the world." ... On what has become a crucial test of a society's inclusiveness and tolerance, the United States lags well behind every Western European country, as well as many Eastern European and most Latin American countries. --Fareed Zakaria
Which is why the neo-cons grandly narcissistic "Plan for a New American Century" with its aspiration to an updated form of 19th century imperialism has been such a disaster. The "great unwashed" have already stormed the barricades-- as Obama's election demonstrates-- they are ensconced at Cambridge and Harvard. The idea of the separate autonomous state defined by its ethnicity and common faith is fast becoming extinct. One simply has to look at the historic centers of rigorous trade to see that Commerce eventually supercedes both "Race" and religion. The problem, under such tradition-upsetting circumstances, is what exactly should one be loyal to? And that is precisely the conundrum that Barack Obama will be challenged to solve.
"My Country is the World and my Religion is to do Good"
Thomas Paine, more than any other Revolutionary figure, is responsible for the American Idea-- an idea which has taken hold around the world-- the notion that individual liberty is an act of conscience. It is a concept as old as Plutarch and Socrates and yet as the viability of the nation state collapses like Wall Street banks and the Big Three automakers, we humans cling more and more tightly to our fear of the "Other". For the Eastern chauvinists and their religious zealots inspired by Osama bin Laden, it is the encroachment of the West with its aggressive sexuality and dogma of profit. They resent our swaggering on Islam's sacred conservative ground and so they insist on drowning the courageous Muslim voices straining to cast off their political chains and shape a new destiny. They are not helped by the fact that here in America the evangelical Christian Right see the "Third World's" struggle for dignity and democracy as a signal for the biblical "End Times" and an inevitable final "Clash of Civilizations".
And yet through all the chaos, suspicion and fear there are those who embody that individual principle: that differences can the bridged, that identity extends no farther than reach of one's intellect or the tip of one's nose. That increasing modern reality made me think of Obama's great challenge as I read about Raid al-Ubrah. As a Beduoin lawyer living in Israel Mr. Al-Ubrah is a second-class citizen yet he happily volunteers to help Russian immigrants who do not speak Hebrew navigate the bureaucracy of their adopted home.
"I enjoy the action, I like the old people, and I like helping out," Ubrah says. "Who cares if the person asking for advice is Arab or Jew or Christian?"
Watching the horror unfolding in Gaza my heart is heavy-- it seems that as a world lacking in any moral leadership we have lost our collective conscience. That Raid al-Ubrah springs from a nomadic tribe reminds me (sadly) that the greatness of a people resides not in the land, or their wealthiest men, but in their heroes. That more often than not, the greatest among us die forgotten-- reviled, in exile, imprisoned or poor. Would that those like Mr. Obama, who may yet leave the world so much, can remember what it means to take a stand and bravely endure.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Life In A Bubble
One of the many structural weaknesses in the United States' system of government is the presidency itself. Not only is the President the Commander-in Chief (currently in charge of two wars), he is expected to run the executive branch with its 13 independent departments and numerous boards, commissions and committees. All that while performing the ceremonial duties expected of a titular monarch and being hounded day and night by a sensation seeking press that considers a president's choice of snack to be front page news.
(After ordering a tuna melt on 12-grain bread, Obama approached reporters and placed his hand on the shoulder of pool reporter Philip Rucker of The Washington Post, who was scribbling away in his notebook. "You don't really need to write all that down,” Obama (pleaded) said.)
And yet there are major stories that can shape the direction a presidency just waiting for a chance to see the light of day. Take for instance the story broken by Gary Webb about the CIA dealing drugs in order to finance IRAN/CONTRA. The evidence was all sitting right there in the Congressional record. Granted it was buried inside thousands of other documents, but being a conscientious reporter Webb was willing to ignore what the President ate for breakfast and do the painstaking work of uncovering real news. His reward for exposing the laziness, (and in some cases complicity), of his celebrity colleagues at the New York Times and the Washington Post was to be drummed out of the newspaper business. No longer able to work at his chosen profession despite having been awarded a Pulitzer Prize Webb ending up tragically taking his own life.
We know thanks to Carl Bernstein that the CIA has infiltrated every major newspaper and broadcast media in the country. The result has been the virtual blackout of critical news until the damage has been done (see the "Plan for the New American Century" and run up to the Iraq invasion). Many of us, frustrated by the dearth of timely reporting have come to rely on the foreign press to stay current. But like in so many other areas the advent of the 24 hour cable news and the Internet with its ability to instantly project the "sensation of the moment" has left the investigative journalist an endangered specie.
Our more reliable old hands across the Pond warn that, despite the need, we are closing in on an era of no more Gary Webbs.
"Reporters are missing out on stories because they no longer have the time to trawl through parliamentary records, according to The Daily Telegraph’s outgoing political diarist, Jonathan Isaby. Isaby – who is leaving the Telegraph to become co-editor of news blog ConservativeHome – said the “ultra-pressured environment” of a multimedia newsroom meant stories were often going undetected.
Sadly, what Murdoch and his ilk have apparently proven -- cheesiness remains what the public prefers:
However the Mail's full-page in-depth "report" failed to expose Mrs. Obama's preferred choice of fruit. I'm sure you're all dying to know...
(After ordering a tuna melt on 12-grain bread, Obama approached reporters and placed his hand on the shoulder of pool reporter Philip Rucker of The Washington Post, who was scribbling away in his notebook. "You don't really need to write all that down,” Obama (pleaded) said.)
And yet there are major stories that can shape the direction a presidency just waiting for a chance to see the light of day. Take for instance the story broken by Gary Webb about the CIA dealing drugs in order to finance IRAN/CONTRA. The evidence was all sitting right there in the Congressional record. Granted it was buried inside thousands of other documents, but being a conscientious reporter Webb was willing to ignore what the President ate for breakfast and do the painstaking work of uncovering real news. His reward for exposing the laziness, (and in some cases complicity), of his celebrity colleagues at the New York Times and the Washington Post was to be drummed out of the newspaper business. No longer able to work at his chosen profession despite having been awarded a Pulitzer Prize Webb ending up tragically taking his own life.
We know thanks to Carl Bernstein that the CIA has infiltrated every major newspaper and broadcast media in the country. The result has been the virtual blackout of critical news until the damage has been done (see the "Plan for the New American Century" and run up to the Iraq invasion). Many of us, frustrated by the dearth of timely reporting have come to rely on the foreign press to stay current. But like in so many other areas the advent of the 24 hour cable news and the Internet with its ability to instantly project the "sensation of the moment" has left the investigative journalist an endangered specie.
Our more reliable old hands across the Pond warn that, despite the need, we are closing in on an era of no more Gary Webbs.
"Reporters are missing out on stories because they no longer have the time to trawl through parliamentary records, according to The Daily Telegraph’s outgoing political diarist, Jonathan Isaby. Isaby – who is leaving the Telegraph to become co-editor of news blog ConservativeHome – said the “ultra-pressured environment” of a multimedia newsroom meant stories were often going undetected.
“There is now such a daily grind of reacting to events and deadlines all the time – its an ultra-pressured environment,” he told Press Gazette.
“People don’t have the time to look through Hansard [the official parliamentary record] and look at parliamentary questions and answers which so often are the source of so many stories.
“If reporters spent a bit more time looking through Hansard, they’d be surprised by what they might happen across.”
So now instead, when not parroting government propaganda a la Judith Miller, our dedicated reporters are tracking down the Obamas' preferred breed in dogs. Meanwhile here are some of the critical stories you probably did not read in 2008.Sadly, what Murdoch and his ilk have apparently proven -- cheesiness remains what the public prefers:
"Commander-In-Briefs" By the Daily Mail Reporter
Barack Obama showed off his impressively muscled tummy and a toned pair of pecs while on holiday in Hawaii.The U.S. president-elect is throwing down something of a challenge by being photographed in his swimming trunks.
Impressive: Barack Obama on holiday in his trunks
However the Mail's full-page in-depth "report" failed to expose Mrs. Obama's preferred choice of fruit. I'm sure you're all dying to know...
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
President Obama's Shoes
Responding to the instantly famous "shoe attack" Bush quipped, "That’s what happens in free societies – people try to bring attention to themselves.”
No, Mr. Bush, that's what oppressed people do when their lives are being destroyed and people like you aren't listening.
"In Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City, thousands rallied to demand the reporter's release: "Bush, Bush, listen well: Two shoes on your head." They called the reporter a "hero."
"I’m sure many Iraqis want to do what Muntazer did. Muntazer used to say all the orphans whose father were killed are because of Bush," his brother, Udai al-Zaidi, told Reuters Television.
Dividing the SpoilsJoe Biden's proposition in 2006 to divide Iraq into three semi-autonomous regions arrived in Baghdad virtually DOA after having won hands-down support in the U.S. Senate. As Biden laid out in an Op-Ed to the NYTimes, the notion that the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites would each be responsible for their own laws, administration and security was hardly radical, after all, the Iraqi Constitution already provided for a federal structure in which "the provinces combine to form regional governments."
His argument ran thus: [Iraq] was already heading toward partition:"The Sunnis, who until recently believed they would retake power in Iraq, are beginning to recognize that they won't and don't want to live in a Shiite-controlled, highly centralized state with laws enforced by sectarian militias. The Shiites know they can dominate the government, but they can't defeat a Sunni insurrection. The Kurds will not give up their 15-year-old autonomy."
Ironically, there are many in Iraq who believe that the Senate's approval of the Biden proposal actually helped to quell the sectarian violence that had been rising exponentially, as more and more tribes and neighborhood gangs sought revenge. Even the Kurds who already enjoy de facto autonomy were said to "oppose" the “Biden plan”.
“We don’t support establishing federal regions on a sectarian basis. For example our region is not ethnic, it contains Kurds and non-Kurds. The regions should be established on a geographic basis,” said Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman.
Ezzet al-Shabender, a member of parliament from the secularist Iraqi List of former prime minister Ayad Allawi, credited the broad-based disgust triggered by Biden’s proposal for helping Iraqi politicians bury their differences.
“His project was the reason behind the unity of many political blocs that once differed in viewpoints,” he said, comparing it to the Balfour Declaration, a 1917 British note that backed the creation of Israel andis regarded across the Arab world as the ultimate colonial injustice.
Indeed one wonders, now that Obama has Biden as his chief-counselor, whether the original neocon plan to divide up Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, is to be continued under a Democratic face. It certainly seems that way to the Iraqis, most of whom viewed the Senate resolution with near-apoplectic outrage.
"The Iraqi government categorically rejects the resolution. Iraq is not a US property," said a spokesman for the Sunni-led National Dialogue Front. The Association of Muslim Scholars, which calls itself the political arm of the Iraqi armed resistance, stated, "The Senate's adoption of [the] resolution…is not shocking, because [partitioning the country] was one of the objectives behind the invasion of Iraq."
Indeed, from Richard Perle to David Wurmser, who recently resigned as Vice President Cheney's chief Middle East adviser, the neoconservatives who pushed for the war eagerly embraced the notion of redrawing the map of the region, and it didn't stop at Iraq's borders.
Map of an imaginary reconstituted Iraq, published by the Goals For Americans Foundation. Note the placement of Mosul, the biggest city of north-western Iraq, in the middle of the “Kurdish Republic”. Another version is available here, with Najaf located approximately in the marshlands north of Basra instead of in central Iraq
The wild-card in all this remains Iran which has gained the most from Bush's poorly planned invasion. There is little doubt that if such a partition were put into effect the Shia region would be Iran's closest ally and Iraq would cease to exist as an Arab state. Stranded without direct access to the country's oil one need not be a pessimist to see the Sunnis, sandwiched between Kurds and Shia, becoming like the Tamil Tigers , prompting more chaos. In fact a mere cursory reading of Sri Lankan history suggests that all the ingredients: regional, religious and ethnic division are there waiting to be exacerbated. This is the heavy price of "divide and conquer". Replace Iraq for "Sri Lanka" and Sunni and Shia for "Buddhist and Hindu" or "Sinhalese and Tamil" you have a tendentious state where the region's powerbrokers depend on constant turmoil.
"The Tigers need a ‘Sinhala Sri Lanka’ (as opposed to a pluralist Sri Lanka) to justify the creation of Tiger Eelam; the Southern extremists need Tigers and their quest for Tiger Eelam to justify ‘Sinhala/Buddhist Sri Lanka’. Co-existing side by side these two opposing but mutually dependent extremisms endeavour to expand themselves and wipe out the middle ground, thereby destroying the environment necessary for the survival of the democratic Tamils and the centrist Sinhalese."
Haytham Hashim: “[Any] Iraqi federal system should be demarcated in a spirit free from racism and sectarianism..."
Nuha Zaki: “I think the concept of regions is a bad idea, especially in the current situation ... we should do our utmost to combat sectarianism and make Iraq return to its past as a unified country and a unified people from north to south. The establishment of regions will lead to barriers that will have consequences for such areas as the economy and trade,”
Abu Usama: “Iraq, the Land of the Two Rivers, was from the days of the monarchy a centralised state from north to south, and when the republic was declared, the late leader Abd al-Karim Qasim held on to every square inch (dharra, literally, “atom” or “tiny particle”) of our dear fatherland of Iraq. But today we live under fire of the loathsome occupation which is aimed at splitting Iraq into races and sects… Not everything that is workable in the West may be in harmony with Arab and Muslim Iraq.”
But then, bringing hope and democracy to Iraq was never why we went there.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Mourning Mumbai (Update 2): Life On Earth Must Be Canceled
Reports that the Indian foreign minister intends to fly to the United States to meet with Obama suggest that the neocons may have succeeded in creating the president-elect's first major crisis. The sheer brazenness of the Mumbai assault was clearly meant to embarrass the Singh government which had been showing crucial restraint in response to constant Pakistani provocation stemming from the bitter conflict over Kashmir. 
Meanwhile the Washington Post's colorful "Le Carre" opening to the Mumbai tragedy starting with the fisherman's account reads very differently in the Indian papers:
"I saw 6 to 7 boats coming in on Wednesday evening and about ten people unloaded many bags from these boats and then gradually took them into the building, Nariman House', Vitthal Tandel, a fisherman in the area said. "The building has many rooms and these are used a s guest houses by travelers, largely Israeli residents. None of us know what their names are", he said.
Virendra Ghunawat, a television journalist who has been tracking the Nariman House shootout since the time it took place Wednesday night, said "even the cops have been cagey about details."
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It was just after dinner, about 9 p.m., when the fishermen noticed four strangers come ashore on an inflatable raft. Moments later, another four pulled up to the boat launch in a speedboat. Only two got out of the boat. They were young, muscular men, with backpacks and bulky duffel bags slung across their shoulders.
![[Prashant Agrawal]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vr2YDozY1c2ReLd2xDNEn7dt8VTnA8K0W5IcaRH95m8JtOZ6cLCs6PoqJr9ukiIo-xrXZfOLeSLPmg-0Redons-jjvpL_7m0fVlzu8rhaDWILvmXW-s9mj0s_Mv77zLkdpP2mSUrYQNb-SJBb47g=s0-d)
No doubt Obama will pressure India to tamp down the rhetoric---a nuclear Near East war is to no one's benefit... not even our deluded dystopian neocons. Unfortunately the situation in India is so tense that its government will surely collapse unless it can prove it is truly in charge of the country's security. New Delhi will likely demand that Obama must direct the Pakistani government to rein in the ISI and ensure that its own internal security apparatus becomes more effective. Otherwise the world will be forced to hold its breath while India reassembles its troops along the Indo-Pakistani border.
A Problem Without A Solution
While Musharraf was a threat to Pakistan's civil society the current regime does not control the Pakistani military, nor does it control the religiously affiliated and British influenced (and Western infiltrated) ISI. The country's long-standing military rule remains the chief impediment to Pakistan's stability. [Under the British, the military was a primary recipient of land in canal colonies and this enhanced the stature of the Army and hence laid a foundation for future dominance in politics in Pakistan-- Imran Ali, Punjab under Imperialism]
The reality is-- even if the country's senior military officers were willing to rein in their jihadist surrogates-- thanks to Bush's heavy-handed tactics (bombing villages in western Pakistan and sending drones to carry out assassinations) they are no longer sure of their own chain of command. Their dilemma is further complicated by Pakistan's increasingly paranoid historical view that it must preserve Afghanistan as a bulwark against Indian aggression.
Pakistan sees India's growing influence in Afghanistan as a threat. After India opened consulates in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Kandahar, Pakistan charged that these consulates provide cover for Indian intelligence agencies to run covert operations against Pakistan, as well as foment separatism in Pakistan's Balochistan province. "Pakistan's fears of encirclement (PDF) by India have been compounded" by the new Indian air base in Farkhor, Tajikistan, write South Asia experts Raja Karthikeya Gundu and Teresita C. Schaffer in an April 2008 Center for Strategic and International Studies paper.
So while India has been the primary target of Islamic jihadists there is a strong belief among the Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the neocons really want to see is the breakup of Pakistan. “One of the biggest fears of our military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan,” said an Islamabad government official.
"I saw 6 to 7 boats coming in on Wednesday evening and about ten people unloaded many bags from these boats and then gradually took them into the building, Nariman House', Vitthal Tandel, a fisherman in the area said. "The building has many rooms and these are used a s guest houses by travelers, largely Israeli residents. None of us know what their names are", he said.
Virendra Ghunawat, a television journalist who has been tracking the Nariman House shootout since the time it took place Wednesday night, said "even the cops have been cagey about details."
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It was just after dinner, about 9 p.m., when the fishermen noticed four strangers come ashore on an inflatable raft. Moments later, another four pulled up to the boat launch in a speedboat. Only two got out of the boat. They were young, muscular men, with backpacks and bulky duffel bags slung across their shoulders.
At least one of the fishermen was instantly suspicious and asked the strangers what they were doing. "One of them turned around and said in heavily accented Hindi: 'Don't hassle me. I'm in a terrible mood.' We got nervous and just left them alone," said a 25-year-old fisherman who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The strangers flagged down two taxis and sped off toward the Oberoi Trident hotel in Nariman Point. It would be among the first stops in a trail of death and destruction spanning 10 sites and three days that left 174 people dead and 239 wounded.
You are forgiven if you thought that description was the opening for a John Le Carre novel. However it is the start of today's remarkable article on the Mumbai tragedy in the Washington Post.
Less than three days after the terrorist assault on the Taj Mahal Hotel and the heart of Mumbai's vital financial center, the Indian government assures our credulous corporate press that they have gathered all the relevant facts despite having received advance warning of a possible attack [Something like... Bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S?]:
The chairman of the Tata Group, the conglomerate that owns the Taj hotel, asserted that it had been warned about the possibility of a terrorist attack and had taken some measures, but that the assailants knew exactly how to penetrate the hotel’s security.
“They came from somewhere in the back; they planned everything,” the chairman, Ratan Tata, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN. “They went through the kitchen; they knew what they were doing.”Despite being caught flat-footed India's intelligence services are now completely confident about the alliances of the terror perpetrators: "we are not going to sit back with Pakistan unleashing this terror on India,” quotes an unnamed government spokesman.
One always wonders why such provocative statements deemed to be worthy of public consumption are never attributable. I suspect the reason lies in the fact that the quoted official would be pressed to provide the evidence that would justify launching hostilities. Even as Pakistan gears for a possible border war there is cause to suspect that just as in the government's instant dubious analysis following 9/11 any verifiable evidence to India's charge will prove rather flimsy.
Indeed there are eerie similarities between the life and death of FBI agent, John O'Neill and Hemant Karkare, the Indian anti-terrorism police chief, who was also killed in what is being purposefully labeled as India's 9-11 tragedy.
[From 2002] Former Afghanistan CIA agent Robert Baer has published a book charging that the cover-up of the 1990’s pipeline negotiations revealed extensive financial corruption inside the Clinton administration, and contributed to the lack of intelligence before 9/11. However, in January 2001, Vice President Cheney allegedly reinstated the intelligence block and expanded it to effectively preclude any investigations whatsoever of Saudi-Taliban-Afghan oil connections. Former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O’Neil resigned from the FBI in disgust, stating that he was ordered not to investigate Saudi-Al Qaida connections because of the Enron pipeline deal.
There Are Only Two Ways of telling The Truth--Anonymously and Posthumously
--Thomas Jefferson
Like John O'Neill, Hemant Karkare was willing to follow wherever the evidence led. As a result he had uncovered the secret links between the Indian military and Hindu terror groups.
Kakare's investigation had exposed the involvement of three Indian military intelligence officers in terrorist acts that were blamed on Muslim groups. At the time of his murder, Karkare was pursuing leads that were supposed to uncover the depth of the nexus between the Indian military and the sudden rise of well armed and well financed Hindu terrorism groups with training camps spread across India.
[From the NYTimes] The ruling Indian government had lately hit back at the Bharatiya Janata Party with evidence that its supporters, belonging to a range of radical Hindu organizations, had also been implicated in terrorist attacks. Indeed, in a bizarre twist, the head of the police antiterrorism unit, Hemant Karkare, killed in the Mumbai strikes, had been in the midst of a high-profile investigation of a suspected Hindu terrorist cell. Mr. Karkare’s inquiry had netted nine suspects in connection with a bombing in September of a Muslim-majority area in Malegaon, a small town not far from Mumbai.
The new Pakistani government already under siege caught between the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and their own religious extremists are naturally alarmed at being (wrongly) fingered. From their point of view there is a core group of rightwing ideologues within India’s military, intelligence and political elite at work trying to overthrow Manmohan Singh’s conciliatory government. The plan (they firmly believe) is to help the rise of rightwing elements in power and push India into a showdown with Pakistan and facilitate a closer alliance with Washington.
India's (opposition) B.J.P. has pressed for the resurrection of a tougher antiterrorism law that was in place during its administration. That measure allowed for longer periods of preventive detention and enabled confessions extracted by the police to be used in court. Its critics said it was an unfair and ineffective tool used too often to round up innocent people, largely Muslims, and it was repealed in 2004 by Mr. Singh’s administration.
But history suggests violent religious eruptions are almost always a cover for deeper state-interests if not out and out greed.
US Plays Spoiler in India-Pakistan Pipeline Accord
Siddharth Srivastava, NEW DELHI, June 23, 2005
India's 10-day campaign to tie up a deal on a fresh source of energy has met with resistance from the United States. Reports, confirmed by Foreign Ministry officials in New Delhi, say the US has warned Pakistan of sanctions if it goes ahead with the proposed $4 billion, 2,600-kilometer Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.
The latest US threat comes in the wake of a marathon nine-hour meeting between Indian and Iranian officials in Tehran that reiterated both countries' firm commitment toward building the pipeline. Apart from the pipeline issue, India signed a US$22-billion deal to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Iran over 25 years starting 2009. India recently signed a LNG deal with Qatar as well to tide over its energy shortages. Pakistan's newspaper Dawn, as well as The Times of India, quoted officials in Washington saying that the US warned Pakistan of sanctions if it went ahead with the project, disregarding US concerns over Iran's nuclear plan.
This is despite Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri making a strong plea in favor of the pipeline given the potential revenue ($700 million in transit fees alone) and the country's need for energy security. Kasuri, who was in the US last week, impressed upon US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Pakistan cannot abandon the project. However, the US believes that given the $1-billion-plus yearly aid that it has been advancing to Pakistan since 2002, the country should fall in line.
"Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline a natural thing to do": Henry Kissinger
NEW DELHI (IRNA) -- The former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has indicated his support for the proposed Iran-Pakistan- India (IPI) gas pipeline which the Bush administration had objected to. Speaking on “American Foreign Policy After Elections,” organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Aspen Institute India in Mumbai, Thursday, Kissinger, answering a query on the multi-billion project, initially said he had no knowledge about every problem in the world, The Hindu reported here Friday.
Later, however, he said, “The pipeline will be a natural thing to do”. He said he had always advocated negotiation with Iran. “I expect the new administration [to be headed by Obama] to begin discussions with Iran.”
Prashant Agrawal, CEO of Indipepal.com, says the attacks have change the Indian landscape.
"As the Indian landscape changed, so has the Indian attitude. The first Bollywood movie on the attacks highlighted the resilience of Mumbai citizens. But in conversations, writings and film, people have shifted from resilience to wanting revenge. One of the most successful movies of 2008 highlights an ordinary citizen taking revenge. The surprise hit of 2008 in India is a low-budget thriller called "Wednesday." "Wednesday" is a taut thriller where the audience is held in suspense. The person the audience believes is a terrorist hell-bent on releasing his jailed compatriots is actually a vigilante. He doesn't secure the release; he blows them up.
The audience cheers as he tells the police, "We (the people) are tired of being resilient. Our hands are not tied, we too can hit back." Audiences around the country clapped and cheered his soliloquy. And now with these attacks, the attitude hardens even more. CNN-IBN, the local English news channel, not known for hyperbole, is calling its coverage not Terror in Mumbai, but "War on Mumbai."Is it farfetched to link the oil lobby's objection to a potential India-Pakistan rapprochement coupled with a more flexible Obama administration to the Mumbai massacre? After the Taliban-Enron fiasco followed by the disastrous Iraq occupation one need not read the Wall Street Journal or be as plainspoken as Joe Biden to realize it would be dense to simply pooh-pooh it. On the other hand the benefits of such an attack could prove far more mundane.
Indian oil union calls off strike after Mumbai terror attack
New Delhi (Platts Oilgram)--1Dec 2008
An association, which represents officers of India's state-run oil and gas companies, which had called for an indefinite strike from December 2, has decided against going ahead with it, a senior association official said Monday. The Oil Sector Officers' Association had said the strike would cripple the entire nation and adversely impact the Indian economy.
Live Earth Canceled
"Due to circumstances far beyond our control, we are saddened to announce that Live Earth India has been cancelled. We will continue to work for solutions to the climate crisis for the good of the people of India and around the world. But for now, our thoughts and our prayers are with the victims of this terrible attack, with the bereaved, with the people of Mumbai and with everyone in India."
Monday, November 10, 2008
The Dismantling of America
There is a gangster-like irrationality to our country's version of democracy. When Hank Paulson came a-begging, bowing to Nancy Pelosi on bended knee, our Congress, in its slavish devotion to the rich failed to extract even the most basic guarantees for us, the unwashed and lowly ... you know ... the ones who are footing the bill.
Where the Brits insisted that any bailout earn them voting rights with seats on their bankers' boards, a 12 percent annual dividend paid to the government, a suspension of dividend payments to shareholders, restrictions on executive bonuses, and a legal requirement that the banks lend money to homeowners and small businesses, we American nitwits won the right to get stiffed.
If we are to believe our servile Congress, we taxpayers deserve no controlling interest in return for those 700 billions of dollars, no votes nor seats on the board, and a mere five percent in dividend payouts even as Wall St. shareholders continue to make billions and its executives don their golden parachutes while pocketing end of year bonuses for having frittered away staggering amounts of money.
Congress' spineless sell-out was so disturbing even Bloomberg News is asking the courts to force the Federal Reserve to disclose the securities the central bank is accepting on behalf of American taxpayers as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks.
As Bloomberg rightly points out:``The American taxpayer is entitled to know the risks, costs and methodology associated with the unprecedented government bailout of the U.S. financial industry,''
The Great American Swindle: Private profits and Socialized losses
If President Obama is serious about reforming the way America does business he would be advised to learn from our friends up North.
In Canada for a commercial bank to acquire an investment dealer-- like say Goldman Sachs-- it must adhere to strict regulations. Naturally their banks howled about "losing competitiveness" until the crisis hit and those sensible government policies kept them solvent. You see for Canadians the notion of democracy is not to screw one's neighbor out of house and home, but to form a more perfect union. Radical notion that-- too bad it's not in our own Constitution... oh wait...
The idea that America's "union" was in part conceived specifically to "promote the general welfare" has been discarded since the "Reagan Revolution". Instead, it has become an article of faith that government policies such as a progressive tax rate are somehow anti-democratic. As a result, even as unmanaged speculation threatens to sink our entire economy, Paulson and his Wall Street cronies are determined to drain the nation's coffers to feed the private sector's addictive habit.
A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks
With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax Policy
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 10, 2008; Page A01
The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.
But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.
The sweeping change to two decades of tax policy escaped the notice of lawmakers for several days, as they remained consumed with the controversial bailout bill.
As Naomi Klein observes in the upcoming edition of The RollingStone: The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq — a "free-fraud zone" where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create.
There are over 10 weeks left before the Obama inauguration. If it is not yet clear that the neocons intend to effectively cripple the next administration consider this: On the same day that he allocated the first $125 billion to the banks, Secretary Paulson hinted -- not that the markets required greater regulation but that the crisis demanded "greater fiscal responsibility and entitlement reform". In other words good-bye, Medicare and Social Security. If the Wall St. wizards stole your pension, shipped your job to Brisbane and left you in debt with a case of ulcers-- maybe you can head South and join up with the 'wise guys'.
NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso Embracing A FARC Commander
Like the hockey-mom said--this is the Real America, Now, Aren't you glad-- it ain't Canada!
Where the Brits insisted that any bailout earn them voting rights with seats on their bankers' boards, a 12 percent annual dividend paid to the government, a suspension of dividend payments to shareholders, restrictions on executive bonuses, and a legal requirement that the banks lend money to homeowners and small businesses, we American nitwits won the right to get stiffed.
If we are to believe our servile Congress, we taxpayers deserve no controlling interest in return for those 700 billions of dollars, no votes nor seats on the board, and a mere five percent in dividend payouts even as Wall St. shareholders continue to make billions and its executives don their golden parachutes while pocketing end of year bonuses for having frittered away staggering amounts of money.
Congress' spineless sell-out was so disturbing even Bloomberg News is asking the courts to force the Federal Reserve to disclose the securities the central bank is accepting on behalf of American taxpayers as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks.
As Bloomberg rightly points out:``The American taxpayer is entitled to know the risks, costs and methodology associated with the unprecedented government bailout of the U.S. financial industry,''
The Great American Swindle: Private profits and Socialized losses
If President Obama is serious about reforming the way America does business he would be advised to learn from our friends up North.
In Canada for a commercial bank to acquire an investment dealer-- like say Goldman Sachs-- it must adhere to strict regulations. Naturally their banks howled about "losing competitiveness" until the crisis hit and those sensible government policies kept them solvent. You see for Canadians the notion of democracy is not to screw one's neighbor out of house and home, but to form a more perfect union. Radical notion that-- too bad it's not in our own Constitution... oh wait...
The idea that America's "union" was in part conceived specifically to "promote the general welfare" has been discarded since the "Reagan Revolution". Instead, it has become an article of faith that government policies such as a progressive tax rate are somehow anti-democratic. As a result, even as unmanaged speculation threatens to sink our entire economy, Paulson and his Wall Street cronies are determined to drain the nation's coffers to feed the private sector's addictive habit.
A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks
With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax Policy
By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 10, 2008; Page A01
The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.
But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.
The sweeping change to two decades of tax policy escaped the notice of lawmakers for several days, as they remained consumed with the controversial bailout bill.
As Naomi Klein observes in the upcoming edition of The RollingStone: The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq — a "free-fraud zone" where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create.
There are over 10 weeks left before the Obama inauguration. If it is not yet clear that the neocons intend to effectively cripple the next administration consider this: On the same day that he allocated the first $125 billion to the banks, Secretary Paulson hinted -- not that the markets required greater regulation but that the crisis demanded "greater fiscal responsibility and entitlement reform". In other words good-bye, Medicare and Social Security. If the Wall St. wizards stole your pension, shipped your job to Brisbane and left you in debt with a case of ulcers-- maybe you can head South and join up with the 'wise guys'.
NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso Embracing A FARC Commander
Like the hockey-mom said--this is the Real America, Now, Aren't you glad-- it ain't Canada!
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