A Total Perversion

With the long-awaited end of the calamitous Bush years Americans woke up in 2009 to a black man in the White House and the shocking realization that their government was a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. With the Bull at the Courtroom door in the form of Citizens United vs the FEC they discovered their legal rights had been officially rendered subservient to big business and corporate interests.

Many are still left wondering just how this all came about. The Tea Party aims it ire at Washington convinced more than ever that 'big' government spending was the dark black threat to Liberty. Meanwhile Progressives castigate the ever-conciliatory President as Appeaser-in-Chief in between venting their rage at the DLC Blue Dogs. But the destruction of American democracy did not begin with Obama, or the Roberts court, nor did its great unraveling start with the Corporate-crafted Powell Doctrine or with Buckley vs Valeo in 1976 when the Court declared money the equal of speech. It began the moment after the North was deemed victorious and with the Union safely preserved the public stood mutely by while their fellow citizens they had fought to set free were returned to peonage and virtual slavery.

At the very moment when the alarm should have been raised (after all, were not those in the slave-free states also fighting for freedom and against tyranny) the Capital Interest, seeing the apathy towards the 14th and 15th amendments, used those very provisions meant to safeguard the rights, privileges and immunities of American citizens to agitate for corporate personhood, and against the public prerogative.

The late Justice Hugo Black observed, that by manipulating the 14th Amendment corporations had found an ingenious way to to resist state authority and taxation. With the rise of post-Civil War Jim Crow and its new era of structural oppression, the 14th amendment was allowed to drift from its foundational principle and become a shield for unbridled corporate wealth.

Atty Doug Hammerstrom lays it out plainly:

While very few people were turning their attention and energy to bringing former slaves into society - indeed, far more energy was being put into NOT bringing them into society—corporations were using a great deal of their wealth to hire lawyers to advance their interests in the courts. The Fourteenth Amendment offered an opportunity to advance corporate interests, and the corporate attorneys set out to exploit it.

Of the 150 cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment heard by the Supreme Court up to the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 that established the legal standing of “separate but equal,” 15 involved blacks and 135 involved business entities. The scope of the Fourteenth Amendment to secure the political rights of former slaves was so restricted by the Supreme Court that blacks won only one case. The expansive view of the Fourteenth Amendment that comes down to Constitutional Law classes today is the result of corporations using the Fourteenth Amendment as a shield against regulation. Ultimately the Plessy decision left Jim Crow laws, state laws discriminating against blacks, in place because of doctrines developed in those corporate shield cases….

In the 13 years before 1912, 409 due process opinions were handed down. From 1886-1912 two cases restrained or annulled State action involving Negroes, and 39 cases restrained or annulled State action against corporations.

While the corporations were triumphant in wielding the Fourteenth Amendment as a shield against democratic control, blacks were abandoned by the Supreme Court. Not only was the law not used to protect their Constitutional rights, the law was used affirmatively to degrade them.

The great irony here is that these corporate victories represent the very same interests that led our early patriots to fight a war for democracy. Even after the Revolution had succeeded, America's citizens and legislators took careful charge of the chartering process. The men and women opposing King George III knew to fear the power of large corporations. As pamphleteer Thomas Earle wrote:

"Chartered privileges are a burthen, under which the people of Britain, and other European nations, groan in misery."

Thanks to America's disdainful ignorance if not outright antagonism towards her exploited minorities (that's their problem not mine) and her perverted grasp of history we have finally lost what our forefathers fought for and won.

Tied to ALBA

It is remarkable to see the new paradigm taking shape in South America. There are times when it takes on a through the looking glass quality when you see someone like Zelaya a blue-blooded capitalista if there ever was one reinventing himself as a populist. But that is the reality when you have a Hugo Chavez sitting on a countryful of oil surrounded by a glob of dysfunctional states hobbled for centuries by Yankee domination.

Venezuela: No Zelaya, No Oil

Caracas, Jul 8.- Venezuela halted daily 20,000 oil barrel shipments to Honduras until cabinet President Manuel Zelaya return to power, said Economy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez.

It is impossible at times not to wonder if the inner soul of the neo-cons is not secretly on the side of the people. How better to insure that the second and third world's cardboard dictators and corrupted presidents are exposed as buffoons than to set forth a policy only a buffoon could envision as something stable much less successful.

But the strict "neo-liberal" line has accomplished just that. Those countries, like Argentina, that swallowed whole the flat earth philosophy ended up in a shambles with unrepayable debt. With the U.S. economy itself on its knees Obama, our "naive little negrito" as the Latin American golpistas now call him, had no choice but to make common cause with the dark but no longer exiled forces of Alba.

ALBA — the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a solidarity-based alternative to US-backed bilateral “free trade” agreements and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Chavez made the call during the closing of the first meeting of ALBA’s Council of Ministers in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.

ALBA was initiated by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004. After President Evo Morales of Bolivia and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua assumed office in January 2006 and 2007 respectively, their nations signed up to ALBA.

Chavez also spoke on the possibility of expanding ALBA to create a new regional defence pact to replace the Inter-American Defense Board, which is based in Washington DC. Granma reported that Chavez called for “joint military aid as well as intelligence and counterintelligence cooperation ‘to prepare our people for defense so that nobody makes any mistake with us’”. He explained that it was necessary because of “the terrorism and permanent aggression of the United States”.

Viva la revolution!

Honduras: This travesty shall not stand(updated... unless we say so)

"The Honduran military is effectively a subsidiary of the United States government. Honduras, as a whole, if any Latin American country is fully owned by the United States, it’s Honduras. Its economy is wholly based on trade, foreign aid and remittances. So if the U.S. is opposed to this coup going forward, it won’t go forward. Zelaya will return..." Greg Grandin, professor of History, NYU.

The imperial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been a enormous blessing for Latin America. With the United States bogged down struggling for control of Middle East and Central Asian oil our neighbors to the south have finally had the breathing room to begin to resuscitate their strangled democracies.

Honduras' President Zelaya may have overplayed his hand by underestimating the elite's complete contempt for the Honduran people.

A little background:
Honduras is distinguished from it's neighbors by the totality of the banana companies' control. In contrast to El Salvedor, Costa Rica,and Guatemala, no native groups or companies rose to make fortunes in coffee exports. Instead, the U.S. companies controlled the government, financing political parties which conspired against each other. The U.S. also began training a Honduran army and air force which were commanded by the U.S. officers and seven primarily to protect the interests of the banana companies.

The banana companies cultivated only about one-third of their lands,meaning that mich of the best land lay idle. In addition, corrupt officials frequently would appropriate large tracts of land, either keeping it for themselves or selling it to foreign companies. One example occurred in Trujillo, where a local military commander, Col. Gustavo Alvarez, expropriated 2,000 hectares of land belonging to the Garifuna and distributed them amongst wealthy landowners over the Garifunas' protests.

But the genie is out of bottle. At least in Latin America, the days of the Anglo/American imperialist are clearly numbered. It will be a treat to watch our "neocon advocates for freedom and democracy" try to spin this desperate strike against the Honduran people.

So far it seems the Dems are not much better...
While Obama and Clinton have called for a restoration of the constitutional order, they have not yet called for Zelaya to be returned to office. Some in Washington are actually calling for negotiations with the coup plotters to "restore constitutional order" - no doubt hoping to stall by keeping Zelaya out of office (and away from his people) until the November elections.

A report on the coup from Al Jazeera

The New Green Paradigm

"Don't forget, these men cleared billions of dollars in bonuses by fudging financial statements while packaging trillions of dollars of fraudulent loans into securities. This was money taken from shareholders who were lied to, and investors who bought these toxic securities."--Mike Stathis, Managing Principal of Apex Venture Advisors

Although they've been doing their damnedest to maintain their power the Western global elite, by which I mean the Anglo/American power-brokers, may have finally bitten off more than even they can devour.

First, a little background: At the turn of the 20th century a number of influential persons were interested in bringing the establishments of the United States and Great Britain closer together. Consequently, a new, elitist society was formed with branches in London and New York which became known as the Pilgrims Society. Robber barons, archdeacons and bankers, they would gather from time to time in the rarefied confines of luxury hotels like the Victoria, the Savoy and the Waldorf Astoria.

The Pilgrims network

The all too familiar names represent a who's who on society pages. Astor, Duke, Mellon, Stillman, Aldrich, DuPont, Meyer, Vanderbilt, Belmont, Gould, Morgan, Warburg, Baker,Peabody,Carnegie, Harriman, Whitney, Lamont, Dodge, Lodge, Rockefeller, Drexel, Loeb and Schiff feature prominently among them. Only time will tell whether they are capable of restraining (or retraining) their rapaciousness or are prepared to perish along with their dream of 20% returns gifted by the fairy dust of unfettered markets and centralized capitalism.

Contrary to their gilded imaginations, neoliberalism, by undermining the autonomy of nation states has unleashed a monster too large to be managed and too wild to be tamed. Either it will be destroyed or it will destroy our present financial system. The chance of the first actually occurring seems only slightly more likely than achieving world peace-- yet even the most servile Wall Street bankers admit in their sanguine moments that only the products of worthwhile labor rather than anymore financial "wizardry" can stop the bleeding and rescue the system. Laissez-faire is fresh out of magic bubbles.

If Obama is serious about saving the day he needs to puncture the hot-air balloon blown up by the Reagan myth (and expanded if somewhat reluctantly, by President Clinton) that the capital markets, unlike governments, are both efficient and self-regulating.

As Michael Meeropol attempted to warn us back in 2001 in his book, Surrender: How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution: "In reality, the consensus between the two parties on the superiority of American government and the beneficence of capitalism rules any challenge to the status quo politically out of bounds (even the candidacy of longtime policy activist Ralph Nader was seen as beyond the pale). The Republican and Democratic conventions were long commercials for American capitalism and imperialism paid for by American corporations.

"American prosperity from the New Economy was continuously celebrated throughout the campaign. The dark side to the recovery that threatens its long-term viability has been less noted: record trade deficits creating the largest debtor nation in history, crushing corporate and individual debt levels, an enormous speculative financial bubble (seen vividly in the astonishing drop of the NASDAQ), and shocking income inequality that has continued to worsen."

It is disappointing that after having found the courage to anger his fellow Democrats by declaring that the Clinton administration had not altered Reagan's neoliberal trajectory Obama has resorted to using the same tired lot who cling to their discredited belief that economies can be successfuly managed through 'trickle-down' monetary policy in place of trade adjustments, long-term planning and capital regulation.

Any history student can tell you that it was not until the 19th century's "revolutionary middle class" took charge of government that societies began to see a more equitable distribution of wealth. Before then, countries had a small but almost omnipotent wealthy class, a tiny and largely impotent mercantile class in the middle, and at bottom, an enormous pool of terrified workers barely surviving as peons and serfs.

Only the rise of liberal democracies as the mercantilists forged alliances with skilled labor allowed the new bourgeousie to wrest power from the leisure elite. Thanks to the Reagan/Thatcher counter-revolution that vibrant middle class is on the verge of extinction. For the great masses of humanity not already trapped in abject poverty, any chance of retaining a reasonably healthy standard of living will depend on their willingness to assert their rights and take action. Unfortunately, to manage the imbalances of an inequitable global economy while trying to sustain and support our increasingly ravaged ecosystem demands finding the collective will to cut and replace some of our largest but largely stagnating industries.

The challenge will not been taken up by our green-eyed Pilgrims or their lackeys in the corporate press, that ball is in labor's court. Will we, the threatened "workers", have the courage to strike boldly-- not for the same old wage/benefit paradigm, but for truly radical solutions? Unlike the leisure elite we rely on value rather than profit. That requires putting modesty ahead of excess and resisting the Gilded Age's lure of endless returns and mindless profligacy.

Bribing, Lying and Dying "for Jesus" (w/update*)

Ironically, it was his belief that the Roman Republic with its systems of "checks and balances" could be restored by the simple empowerment of more "just and honest" men that led to Cicero's ignominious end; his body torn to bits, his tongue ripped out, nailed to a pike and paraded about town. So died Rome's old Republic and its finest rhetorician.

It is my opinion that Obama won the presidency largely because after eight insufferable years of blundering incoherence Americans were enthralled imagining a leader who could manage a keenly turned phrase; one whose oratorical limit had not been reached by the third or fourth grade. But will Obama's instinct for Justice and a rhetorical flourish be enough to counter the reactionary elements who view the Constitution and the very notion of a pluralist democracy as anathema?

That many leaders of the ascendant "Religious right" share that view is an open secret. The problem is that while their followers are captivated by the revelatory "vision" of the "End Times" and the endlessly-predicted "Apocalypse" they have not yet soured on the idea of America as a republic. So while they plan for their new Christian Empire the Dominionists have apparently been at work rigging our elections. Do not been lulled into thinking that because the "secular Democrats'" have enjoyed recent victories that the Dispensationalists and their fascist supporters have shriveled up and thrown in the towel. I suspect they are merely biding their time. The facade must be maintained until the masses have been sufficiently "shocked" that they will march through the Capitol hoisting the latest ungodly Liberal leader's extracted tongue. For the zealous extreme, government has no role in seeking justice, tolerance or compassion.

Hark the Rev. Joseph Morecraft, of Cobb County, Georgia's Chalcedon Presbyterian Church: Democracy is "mob rule!". "The purpose of civil government is to terrorize evil doers... how do you terrorize an evil doer?--You enforce Biblical law! Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah."

Exploiting Religion...Older Than Rome

Christianity has always been the ideal religion for an oppressive empire. Such an authoritarian ideology can easily be put to serving the land-owning classes. The Romans were quick to see the effective use of religion in controlling the "plebes". Livy, in his history of the Roman republic, wrote that Numa Pompilius [an early king from 6th century B.C.E.] to convince the mob of his exceptional powers spread a story about his meeting at night with the goddess Egeria, by whose authority he set up Rome's enduring religious practices. The historian Polybius (2nd century B.C.E.) expressed the belief that the ruling class arranges matters in such a way that the masses are impressed and 'restrained' and Scaevola, the chief priest, opined that "it is expedient that populations should be deceived in the matter of religion."

Indeed the great Republican orator, Cicero, himself pronounced that the deceit was "just" since the people had a "constant need for the advice and authority of the conservative upper classes as it was what "holds the state together".

But what about "lying" when your goal is to tear the state apart and reconstitute it in your own image? Ironically at least one religious sect, the Jehovah's Witness, has been honest about lying:
"According the Watchtower, it is okay to “hide the truth from your enemies,” since they are in “Theocratic warfare,” which is taken as permission to lie. And who are their enemies? Everyone but themselves... has been described in their literature as permissible, especially to your “enemies” (which is everyone except the elitist governing body). It depends on whom you're lying to. They give the example of Abraham, in a life threatening situation, misrepresenting his wife's status, calling her his sister instead of his wife."

The issue of the Religious Right "using deceit" for "prosecuting good" brings us back to the murk surrounding our system of voting. It is not wild speculation to suspect that the untimely demise of Bush's loyal IT specialist involved foul play:



Neither can one feel confident about dismissing as coincidence all these others who have died after becoming enmeshed in our electoral corruption. What we may never know now thanks to the convenient death of Michael Connell is just who among Rove's wealthy backers on the Reactionary Right are quietly prosecuting the "great Deception."

(N.B. For those new to the election tampering story I recommend reading Citizens for legitimate Government and Raw Story. )

snippet:the interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell’s name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to present the 2004 presidential returns as they came in.

Alternative media group ePlubibus Media further discovered in November 2006 that election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted on the servers of a company in Chattanooga, TN called SmarTech, which also provided hosting for a long list of Republican Internet domains.

“Since early this decade, top Internet ‘gurus’ in Ohio have been coordinating web services with their GOP counterparts in Chattanooga, wiring up a major hub that in 2004, first served as a conduit for Ohio's live election night results,” researchers at ePluribus Media wrote.

A few months after this revelation, when a scandal erupted surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for reasons of White House policy, other researchers found that the gwb43 domain used by members of the White House staff to evade freedom of information laws by sending emails outside of official White House channels was hosted on those same SmarTech servers.

*Finally a network runs the story:

Dec. 23, 2008

(CBS/AP) Federal investigators are looking into a small plane crash in Ohio which claimed the life of its pilot, a Republican media consultant who was instrumental in the presidential and gubernatorial campaigns of three members of the Bush Family.

Michael Connell,45, of Akron died Friday when his plane crashed near a vacant house in Uniontown while attempting to land at nearby Akron-Canton Airport.

Following Last Friday's fatal accident, CBS Affiliate WOIO reported that Connell, who had recently been subpoenaed to testify in relation to a lawsuit alleging vote rigging in the 2004 Ohio election, was warned at least twice about flying his plane because his plane might be sabotaged.

Quoting an anonymous close friend of Connell's, WOIO correspondent Blake Chenault also reported that twice in the past two months Connell, who was an experienced pilot, canceled flights because of suspicious problems with his plane.

Proud To Be An American

Barack Obama may be struggling to beat John McCain in our quadrennial presidential sweepstakes but the rest of the world is cheering for him to capture the White House. According to a BBC poll, people in all 22 of the countries surveyed prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of John McCain by a 4-1 margin.

In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.

So what does this say about the overall image of the United States? I would argue that it shows that after 7 and a half years of George W. Bush the world sees America as more insular and indifferent towards the rest of humanity than ever before.

History suggests this antipathy for the "ugly American" has been well earned.

"[I] know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems to be the truth"
--H.L. Mencken

People across the world understand that the United States is the Unrivaled Empire with the military might to exert its will and pursue its interests wherever it pleases. And yet they seem convinced that this hegemonic power can be employed benevolently -- or at the very least, less dangerously at a time when human beings as a whole are facing existential challenges. Climate Change, resource depletion, pollution, HIV-Aids, just to name the most pressing, should be of utmost priority yet here we are, roughly 50 days from electing the most powerful leader on earth and these issues are mostly absent from our political discussions.

Rather than being pressed to articulate, exactly how, he as president will go about tackling these problems Barack Obama is being constantly forced to explain:
a)--who he never was and b)--things he never said.

A report by Dan Hoyle on voters in small-town America bears the first point out:

"Obama, he's not our kind of people," said Middleton in a gruff, bitten-off speaking style, taking a break from canning green beans at the couple's double-wide mobile home. As a retired coal miner and a die-hard union man he should be a Democratic candidates natural supporter. He won't vote for Obama: "He don't believe in the hereafter, and the Lord, the way I look at it ... he's Muslim."

Such views are common in what the corporate media tenderly refer to as America's heartland. Polls taken in Canada and Australia show that citizens in those countries know Senator Obama to be a devout Christian (he spent his early twenties working on behalf of Catholic Charities), so when similar polls in rural USA indicate that over 19% agree with Mr. Middleton is it ignorance or simple excuse-making cussedness?
I'd say probably a little of both.

"[Our]ecclesiastics are responsible for all the turmoils and black hatreds that now rage in the bleak regions... they are to blame for every witches' pot that now brews in the backwoods of the Union."

Mencken penned those words for the American Mercury in 1924. His fear was that the Ku Klan Klan's infiltration of the Baptists and Methodists had inspired their ministers to oppose "every attempt to meet ignorance and prejudice with enlightenment." He charged religious zealots with preaching "not only the most bitter, savage morality of the Old Testament," but its "contempt of obvious facts."

And there you have it. In Mr. Middleton's America facts are malleable not concrete. Knowledge must first be filtered through prejudice. As for taking on the great ills of the day: Belief not Action confers Redemption. It is a way of viewing life, as well as others, that is necessarily both self-referential and self-reverent.

The ugly truth for Obama may simply be this. He might impress those foreign non-believers who offend God with their atheistic modern notions, he will never be what good Christians folks in our faithful hinterland think of as devoutly and proudly American.

I think Gary Ball, a former coal miner and editor of the firebrand Mountain Citizen newspaper in Inez, Kentucky said it best: "We know Obama's plenty book-smart ... but I liked Harry Truman, the last president to have a simple high school education."

I don't believe John McCain needs to worry about not understanding much about the "internets". He may have a millionaire wife and more homes than he can count, but he likes us Americans just the way we are. Just the way we've always been.

Barack Obama: Presumer-in-Chief?

After a victorious jaunt from Kabul to Downing Street Barack Obama has discovered that laurels won abroad shrink to a thorny crown on American soil. To prove the trip they had all begged to join was no more than a meaningless fling, our celebrities in the press now assure us that no matter the strength of his vision nor the breadth of his charm, the young senator had, in fact, accomplished nothing. Nothing, that is, beyond convincing the rest of the world that, but for the voting, he's already the president.

Ah, the recklessness of youth wasting its time courting Old Europe.

It appears the dashing senator, after managing to nimbly avoid every political IED in his path, has been undone by the ultimate misstep: he outran his own success. And just so we appreciate its deeper implications, here are the garlands our infatuated newsmen were kind enough to wrap around Obama's neck as they greeted him by the finishing line:


Washington Post: "Whether by the end of this week he will be seen as presumptuous or overly cocky..."

TIME Magazine: "capable to become the Commander in Chief of a superpower -- without seeming presumptuous..."

AP: ".. a speech that risked being seen as presumptuous..."

The National Journal: "He is well aware voters here at home might see that as presumptuous..."

Chicago Tribune: "That means walking the fine line between looking presidential and appearing arrogant and presumptuous..."

Boston Globe: "plus the growing sense in some quarters that the presumptive Democratic nominee is getting a little presumptuous..."

One can be forgiven for suspecting that these great bards think remarkably alike... one should never imagine they might all be working off of Karl Rove's talking points ... no, that would be far too presumptuous... and we know our corporate-owned media has a liberal bias...right...? Wrong!

Instead, we are to overlook the fact that Obama's opponent offers such presumption by the day, if not the hour. John McCain brays that he is "ready-from-before-day-one" and has the gonads to coyly assume it. We must forget that his presumptuous goofs-- like his dewy-eyed support for Bush's ill-conceived war typify his misjudgments. Disregard the chills running down the spines of a few million of us as we picture "bomb, bomb" McCain in command of a nuclear arsenal. Such fears are folly our fawning pundits insist. Never mind that their septuagenarian hero's one great accomplishment came forty years ago as a prisoner-of-war under doubtful circumstances. And even if every word of McCain's autobiography is true, is it unseemly to ask whether such an ordeal might be responsible for his frequent mental lapses and mercurial temper?

Such questions, judging from the near silence on the subject, I can only presume are out of bounds- unlike the coarse whispers of a jealous surrogate which become instant front page news subject to weeks of biting analysis and great tomes of indignation. And while the sins of Reverend Wright were wholly rhetorical, our supposed watch-dog press does not apparently care a whit that the man we may elect as president admits to having had a quick-rage-trigger and views military force as an act of diplomacy.

With that in mind, is it impolitic to think there were a few old Germans among Berlin's 200,000 thrall hoping that before America's next president goes hunting another war someone in our universally "liberal" news media summons the nerve to ask a few hard questions? Or would that be presumptuous?

A New Medley for the Audacity of Hope

Recapitulation

Dare we whisper Camelot?

Triumph or Triumphalism



U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., center, poses with German police officers before he boards his campaign charter plane in Berlin, Friday, July 25, 2008.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Read: A World of Hope