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In This Edition
Stephen Zunes watches as, "Congress Jumps To Israel's 'Self-Defense.'"
Welcome one and all to "Uncle Ernie's Issues & Alibis."
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  G-8, G-20, Gee Whiz! By Ernest Stewart "Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively." ~~~ Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi "They are concerning to us, not just because of the passport they hold, but because they understand our operational environment here, they bring with them certain skills, whether it be language skills or familiarity with potential targets, and they are very worrisome, and we are determined to take away their ability to assist with terrorist attacks." ~~~ John O. Brennan ~ on murdering Americans overseas "As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality." ~~~ George Washington
My advice to Tehran is to start preparing right now. Our junkyard dog, Israel, is about to attack Iranian targets with our backing. Israel has three submarines filled with nuclear tipped missiles lying just off the coast and has a ship in the American Armada currently heading for Iran. Our troops in Afghanistan are massing at Iran's northern border. If someone, i.e., China, Russia, India or Pakistan were to give a few nukes to Tehran. All this would cease! There is nothing like "mutually assured destruction" to shut up big-mouthed, small-brained politicians! As successful as Barry was on Iran in both summits, nobody bought his economic policies. From Canada to Germany, no one was buying what Obama was selling. Last week Obama wrote to G-20 members warning that drastic cuts to public spending would jeopardize the tentative global recovery and risk a 1930s-style depression. Barry said:
We must learn from the consequential mistakes of the past when stimulus was too quickly withdrawn and resulted in renewed economic hardships and recession. Not even lap dog England was buying Barry's BS! Cameron, as one of Europe's main deficit hawks, regards spending cuts as central to the global recovery. He, in fact, praised Canada for a "tough and successful program of spending cuts to get your debt down and economy back on track." German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, hit back at Obama's warning by vowing to push ahead with public sector spending cuts and claiming that global economic recovery can be maintained without stimulus programs. The Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, urged the summit to agree concrete deficit-reduction goals as a way of restoring investor confidence following the Greek debt crisis. Barry won't cut his spending on two needless, useless wars or the partial war in Pakistan. And the new war on deck will, by comparison, make the other wars seem like friendly games of tag. So who will pick up the tab for this one trillion dollar bill? The rich and the powerful who ran it up? Hardly. It will be what's left of the middle class whose taxes will rise, and the old and poor whose programs will disappear by Congressional fiat! Hardly a surprise, eh? Meanwhile, everyone from Australia to Canada is beginning to pull troops out of Afghanistan or establish timetables to do so. Barry offered a 5-year timetable but it's not being bought by anyone. The Netherlands will pull out all of its troops by August and Poland will withdraw troops next year. Even England is reassessing its deployment as the 300th English casualty brought more anti-war protests in London.
All in all the G-8 and G-20 summits were disasters and Toronto is beginning to look more like Nazi Germany than Canada! Apparently they like beating defenseless protestors as well as defenseless baby seals! So much for their moral superiority, eh? Now take off, ya hosers!
Still, whether Anwar is guilty or not, (and consider that somewhere around 95% of all the terrorists that we've kidnapped, murdered and tortured for years were finally found to be not guilty and some we've known from the start were innocent, it maybe reasonable to think that Anwar was just following ze orders from Johnny O or one of his stooges) Anwar, being an American and all just like you and me, deserves his day in court! Of course, Anwar isn't the first to have all his rights as a citizen revoked at the whim of some politician but until Barry made the scene they were content to catch them and bring them home to be tortured and hidden away. Of course, that can be embarrassing to the powers that be so a quick 4 in the back of the head (as Israel did to another American citizen the other day upon the high seas) is preferable to having the truth emerge even to the sleeping Sheeple who aren't paying any attention to anything except their own, drab, wretched lives! Surprise, surprise, America! It seems Johnny O has a list with the names of dozens and dozens of Americans he wants to murder without even a Bush tribunal. Apparently Barry is too hip and all for that. Remember Barry is a Harvard educated lawyer, as is his extreme court nominee Elena Kagan, so you can see what we have to look forward to! Is it just me, or are we on a slippery slope of the mass murder of American citizens that may soon transfigure into the opening of FEMA "Happy Camps?" It's probably just me, huh? You'll recall that on Feb. 3, Dennis C. Blair, then director of National "Intelligence," said in congressional testimony that special permission must first be obtained by military or intelligence forces before what he termed "direct action" (Isn't that a nice euphemism for murder?) strikes against American citizens.
The main weapon in recent CIA and U.S. military counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen has been missile-equipped, unmanned aerial vehicles. The administration has said it has killed dozens or perhaps scores of terrorists with these strikes over the past several years. The reality is for each "terrorist" killed they've murdered scores of innocent people! Can you guess what the FAA is going to allow inside these United Snakes? If you guessed Predator flights you may stay after class and clean the erasers! Oh, don't worry. They're only going to patrol the border areas to keep those pesky Mexicans and Canadians from sneaking in or maybe to stop Americans from sneaking out. And we have the word of politicians that they'd never in a million years be used to hunt down and murder Americans! So roll over America and go back to sleep. There's no cause for alarm. Big Brother is watching over all of us!
Oh, there was a revolution and the average Joe was the one who fought it, bled for it and died for it but it had absolutely nothing to due with him! You'll recall how the "sons of liberty" dressed up like Indians and threw the Kings tea into the harbor because of taxes placed upon said tea? Except, of course, it was the Boston Chamber of Commerce that put on the war paint and threw the East India Company's tea into the harbor for the penny tax they had placed upon it. King George never entered into the equation. The revolution was about our American corporations rebelling against the British corporations, i.e., The Hudson Bay Company, The Massachusetts Bay Company and the East India Company. Those groups tried their best to keep us subservient to them by limiting manufacturing in the colonies. What was made here was sent overseas. If you wanted to buy this or that, it usually was made by the above three or imported by them! You should also know that those founding fathers who signed the Declaration were the richest men in America or were representing them. Why was that slave owning, genocidal maniac of a failed soldier, George Washington in charge of the army and why was he our first President? Because he was the richest man in America! There were, of course a few good men amongst these elitists. Men like Ben-jamin' Franklin and John Adams but they were, alas, few and far between. Tom Jefferson was a slave owning rapist who wrote some beautiful words that were used to blind the regular folk, convincing them to die for the cause, just as they are used to this very day. Unlike the French Revolution where the rich were made to pay for their crimes against the people, the rich in the American Revolution won everything while the "small people" paid for their elitist masters crimes, as they continue to do.
So dream on, America! Have a couple of mad cow burgers, drink 'til there isn't a brain cell left, blow off a few fingers with some M-80s and celebrate a fantasy like good little automatons! As for the rest of you who don't buy that BS, anyone up for the third American Revolution?
Issues & Alibis needs your help so that we can continue our news service. It takes a lot of effort to stay abreast of the latest, greatest plans for your demise. To get to the truth in a mountain of BS! We've cut our costs to the bone and no one is paid anything for their help. In 9 1/2 years, I've never made a dime at this but we do have expenses to pay every year to keep on keeping on! In order to continue we need your support! The good folks who have been supporting us for so many years are, like a growing number of Americans, out of work and can no longer afford to help us. Someone has to step up and take their places. We thank them for their help and hope they come through this in one piece! We've done everything in our power to see that they do. All of those years of weekly "how to" project articles are still in the archives, from how to live off the grid to creating electricity and clean water! What to do if it hits the fan! And thank you for those of you who are stepping up for the first time. Welcome to the good fight, brothers and sisters! In order to keep overhead low we can only accept, checks, money orders and cash. If you buy advertising please consider advertising with us. For the size of our readership the ads are a best buy. Compare our rates with Salon, The Nation or The Huffington Post! Go ahead and make my millennium! To send a desperately needed donation please wrap your donation inside a letter and place it in a business sized envelope and make checks and money orders payable to Ernest Stewart and send them to...
Ernest Stewart Use the above address to also inquire about ours advertising rates. If enough of you care we'll continue our fight to get our Republic back and protect you from the coming madness! We're running on empty!
Sincerely,  08-10-1922 ~ 06-24-2010 Burn Baby Burn!
 12-31-1943 ~ 06-24-2010 Thanks for the Jams!
 11-20-1917 ~ 06-28-2010 Burn baby Burn!
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 Congress Jumps To Israel's 'Self-Defense' By Stephen Zunes In a letter to President Barack Obama date June 17, 329 out of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives referred to Israel's May 31 attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters, which resulted in the deaths of nine passengers and crew and injuries to scores of others, as an act of "self-defense" which they "strongly support." Similarly, a June 21 Senate letter -- signed by 87 out of 100 senators -- went on record "fully" supporting what it called "Israel's right to self-defense," claiming that the widely supported effort to relieve critical shortages of food and medicine in the besieged Gaza Strip was simply part of a "clever tactical and diplomatic ploy" by "Israel's opponents" to "challenge its international standing." The House letter urged President Obama "to remain steadfast in defense of Israel" in the face of the near-universal international condemnation of this blatant violation of international maritime law and other legal statutes, which the signatories referred to as "a rush to unfairly judge and defend Israel." The Senate letter condemned the near-unanimous vote of the UN Human Rights Council for what it called "singling out" Israel, even though no other country in recent memory has attacked a humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters. Both letters called upon the United States to veto any resolution in the UN Security Council criticizing the Israeli attack. What is perhaps most disturbing is that many of the key arguments in the letters were misleading and, in some cases, factually inaccurate. The Israeli government had acknowledged prior to the writing of the letter that the extensive blockade of humanitarian goods was not necessary for their security, but as a means of pressuring the civilian population to end their support for Hamas, which won a majority of legislative seats in the most recent Palestinian election. In addition, the Israeli government announced a significant relaxation of the embargo two days after the letter was written. Despite this, the House letter claimed that the purpose of the blockade was "to stop terrorists from smuggling weapons to kill innocent civilians," thereby placing this large bipartisan majority of the House even further to the right than Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's rightist coalition. There was no mention in the letter than no such weapons were found on board any of the six ships hijacked by the Israelis nor on the previous eight ships the Free Gaza Campaign had sailed or attempted to sail to the Gaza Strip. In addition, even though the ships had been thoroughly inspected by customs officials prior to their disembarkation, the House letter claimed that had the Israelis not hijacked the ships, they would have "sailed unchecked into Gaza." Similarly, according to the Senate letter, Israel's naval blockade was necessary "to keep dangerous goods from entering Gaza by sea" and falsely claimed that the intent of the Israeli blockade was "to protect Israel, while allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza." Particularly striking is the fact that, despite that the International Committee on the Red Cross and a broad consensus of international legal experts recognize that the Israeli blockade of humanitarian goods is illegal, the Senate letter insisted that the blockade "is legal under international law." The House letter insisted, despite the fact that several of those killed on the Mavi Marmara were shot at point blank range in the back or the back of the head and a video showing a 19-year old U.S. citizen shot execution style on the ground, that "Israeli forces used necessary force as an act of self-defense and of last resort." Similarly, the Senate letter refers to the murders of passengers and crew resisting the illegal boarding of their vessel in international waters as a situation where the Israeli raiders were "forced to respond to that attack" when they "arrived" on the ship. The House letter also claimed that the other ships were "commandeered peacefully and without incident," even though on the other ships, despite completely nonviolent resistance, passengers were tasered and brutally beaten and were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets. Similarly, the Senate letter insisted that, in spite of these potentially fatal beatings and other assaults, "Israeli forces were able to safely divert five of the six ships challenging the blockade." Even though the Israeli government has never entered Gaza to disperse aid to the people of that territory since the start of the siege years earlier and reputable relief organizations have documented that the Israelis had routinely refused to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip, these House members claimed that Israel had offered to "disperse the aid . . . directly to the people of Gaza." And, despite the fact that the five aid ships that Israel had allowed to dock in Gaza in previous months had distributed their humanitarian cargo directly to those in need, the senators claimed that it would have otherwise gone "into the hands of corrupt Gaza officials." Learning what actually transpired in the tragic incident was apparently of little interest to the 87 senators who signed the letter defending the attack. Despite the apparent whitewash forthcoming in the internal Israeli investigation, the senate letter supported Israel's alleged intention to carry out "a thorough investigation of the incident," insisting that Israel "has the right to determine how its investigation is conducted." This comes in spite of a recent public opinion poll shows a clear majority of Americans -- including 65 percent of Democrats -- favor an international inquiry over allowing Israel alone to investigate the circumstances of the attack. Ironically, a number of progressive organizations, web sites and list serves have called on the peace and human rights community to support the re- election of some of the very senators who signed this letter, including Barbara Boxer, Ron Wyden, and Russell Feingold. MoveOn, Council for a Livable World, and other progressive groups with PAC money have been are calling on their members, many of whom are peace and human rights activists, to donate their money to these right-wing Democrats who defend attacking peace and human rights activists and lie about the circumstances to justify it. They have no problems with supporting the re-election of those who lie and mislead their constituents in order to defend illegal actions by allied right-wing governments, even when they kill and injure participants in a humanitarian flotilla on the high seas. There may be an underlying current of racism at work here. It is unlikely MoveOn, Council for a Livable World and other groups would defend such actions if, for example, the activists were helping those under siege in Sarajevo in the 1990s or West Berlin in the late 1940s, who happened to be white Europeans.
It is important to remember that the majority of Democrats joined in with Republicans in supporting the Salvadoran junta in the early 1980s and the Suharto regime in the 1990s until voters made clear they would withdraw their support from them if they did not change their policy. AIPAC and other right-wing "pro-Israel" groups are only as powerful as the absence of counter-pressure from the peace and human rights community. Letters like these will continue to be supported by most Democrats only as long they know they can get away with it.
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 Shalit, For Example By Uri Avnery I AM composing these lines while looking through the window at the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and thinking about the young man who is being held not far from this sea, a few dozen kilometers from here. Can Gilad Shalit look out on the same sea through his window? Does he even have a window? How is he? How is he being treated? He has been in captivity for four years and one day today, with no end in sight. Gilad Shalit has become a living symbol - a symbol of Israeli reality, of the inability of our leaders to make decisions, of their moral and political cowardice, of their inability to analyze a situation and draw conclusions. IF THERE had been an opportunity to free Shalit through military action, the Israeli government would have seized it eagerly. So much is obvious, because the Israeli public always prefers solving a problem by force than doing anything that might be interpreted as weakness. The rescue of the hostages at Entebbe in 1976 is considered one of the most glorious exploits in the history of Israel, even though there was only a hair's breadth between success and failure. It was a gamble with the lives of the 105 hostages and the soldiers, and it was successful. In other cases, though, the gamble did not succeed. Not in Munich in 1972, when they gambled with the lives of the athletes, and lost. Not in Ma'alot in 1974, when they gambled with the lives of the schoolchildren, and lost. Not in the attempt to free the captured soldier Nachschon Wachsman in 1994, when they gambled with his life, and lost. If there had been any chance of freeing Shalit by force, they would have risked his life, and probably lost. Fortunately for him, there has been no such chance. So far. Actually, this is quite remarkable. Our security services have hundreds of secret collaborators in the Gaza Strip, in addition to high tech surveillance. Yet it seems that no reliable information about Shalit's whereabouts has been obtained. How has Hamas succeeded in this? Among other measures, by not allowing any contact with the captive - no meetings with the International Red Cross or foreign dignitaries, just two short videos, almost no letters. They simply cannot be pressurized. They refuse all requests of this nature. This problem could possibly be overcome if our government had been ready to give assurances that no attempt would be made to free him by force, in return for a Hamas undertaking to let him meet with the Red Cross. To be credible, such an undertaking would probably need a guarantee by a third party, such as the US. Absent such an arrangement, all the sanctimonious speeches by foreign statesmen about "letting the Red Cross meet with the soldier" are just so many empty words. NO LESS hypocritical are the demands of foreign personalities to "free the kidnapped soldier". Such demands are music to the Israeli ear, but completely disregard the fact that the subject has to be an exchange of prisoners. Gilad Shalit is alive and breathing, a young man whose fate arouses strong human emotions. But so are the Palestinian prisoners. They are alive and breathing, and their fate, too, arouses strong human emotions. They include young people, whose lives are being wasted in prison. They include political leaders, who are being punished for simply belonging to one or another organization. They include people who, in Israeli parlance, "have blood on their hands", and who, in Palestinian parlance, are national heroes who have sacrificed their own freedom for their people's liberation. The price demanded by Hamas may seem exorbitant - a thousand for one. But Israel has already paid such a price for other prisoners in the past, and that has become the standard ratio. Hamas could not accept less without losing face. The thousand Palestinian prisoners have families - fathers, mothers, husbands, wives and children, brothers and sisters. Exactly like Gilad Shalit. They, too, cry out, demand, exert pressure. Hamas cannot ignore them. THE WHOLE affair is shocking evidence of the inability of our government - both the previous and the present one - to take decisions and even to think logically. Hamas already fixed the price four years ago, according to past precedents. Their demand has not changed since then. From the first moment, there was a need to make a decision. No doubt, such an agreement would strengthen Hamas. It would underline its legitimacy as an important Palestinian factor. It would be seen as confirming the mantra that "Israel understands only the language of force." Therefore, it comes down to a simple question: Yes or No? Yes means a blow to Mahmoud Abbas, whose conciliatory ways have not led to the release of one single important Palestinian prisoner. (The US has vetoed any such agreement, since it would strengthen Hamas, which it designates as a "terrorist organization," and weaken Abbas, whom the Americans consider as their man.) NO means life-imprisonment for Shalit, with perpetual danger to his life. For four years now, our leaders have been unable to decide, much as they are unable to decide upon any other important matter concerning our future. (For example: Two states or one apartheid state? Peace or settlements? Making a peace agreement with Abbas or negotiating with Hamas?) IN ORDER to wriggle out of the necessity to make a decision, various tricks have been employed. Among others, the assertion that the purpose of the Gaza blockade was to free Shalit. That was from the beginning a mendacious pretext. The blockade was imposed in order to compel the Gaza population to overthrow the regime of Hamas, which had won the Palestinian elections. The Shalit connection served only for spin. Now the blockade has been partially lifted. That is a huge victory for the aid flotilla - a victory the planners of the flotilla did not dare to hope for in their wildest dreams. As a result of the stupid decision to attack the Turkish ship, international pressure made this step unavoidable. Among other pretexts, the government declared that "anyhow the blockade did not help in freeing Shalit". Shalit's parents cried out. They really believed that there was a connection between the blockade and the fate of their son. But it is obvious that, when deciding to give in to international pressure and lift the blockade partially, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak did not even think about Shalit. I stress the word "partially". True, it is a huge victory for all those of us who said from the beginning that the blockade was immoral, illegal and unwise. The decision to let everything into the Strip except arms constitutes a big change. But the main problem in Gaza is poverty induced by unemployment. Practically all enterprises in the Gaza Strip have been shut down by the blockade. Not only could they not obtain raw materials, but, no less important, they could not export their products to the West Bank, Israel or the world at large. It seems that this situation has not changed. Even if the remaining enterprises receive raw materials now, they cannot export their products - textiles, fruit, flowers and all the rest. Israeli suppliers will now make millions selling their wares in the Gaza Strip, but the Gazans will not be able to sell their products in Israel. Anyhow, this does not concern the fate of Shalit. THE SHALIT family is in terrible distress. One can understand them, but sympathy does not prohibit disagreement. They are wrong when they object to the lifting of the blockade. They are wrong when they demand that Hamas prisoners in Israel not be allowed family visits. (And not only because the families residing in Gaza are not allowed into Israel anyhow.) One cannot have it both ways. When Noam Shalit, the father, demands that a thousand Hamas prisoners be released to free his son - he cannot at the same time take part in persecuting Hamas prisoners. He cannot demand humane treatment for his son - and at the same time justify the inhumane treatment of the Gaza population. This double standard bewilders the public and undermines the campaign for freeing Gilad. The message must be simple, clear and straightforward, and addressed to Binyamin Netanyahu: to make the decision to implement the prisoner swap at once. Gilad will return home, and all Israelis will be jubilant. The Palestinian prisoners will also return to their homes, and there, too, everyone will be jubilant. THE INABILITY of Netanyahu to make decisions and stand behind them reveals the full extent of his incompetence as a leader. Instead, we have a specialist in marketing (which happens to be his original profession), a person who wakes up in the morning with polls and goes to sleep at night with polls. The pollsters tell him that freeing Gilad Shalit would be popular in Israel, but freeing the Palestinians would be unpopular. At night, in bed, he agonizes about it: Which would be better? How many votes would be gained, how many votes would be lost?
That is frightening. If he cannot make a straightforward decision about the fate of Shalit, how can he make decisions about the problems that affect the fate of all of us, not for one year but for generations to come?
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 41 Years Later, A Victory For Butter By David Sirota The last time America found itself in a budget debate pitting domestic priorities against war expenditures, Richard Nixon was in the White House and David Obey was the youngest member of Congress - an anti-war liberal whose insurgent campaign unexpectedly vaulted him into the House seat vacated by the hawkish president's new defense secretary. In those dark days, it was the guns of Vietnam and the Cold War versus the butter of the Great Society and the War on Poverty - and despite Obey's protests, guns won the day. "President Nixon issued a call to counterrevolution at home," summed up Time magazine in 1973, noting that while the Republican administration was increasing the Pentagon budget, it was proposing the "abolition or deep cutting of more than 100 federal grant programs that have benefited the unemployed, students, farmers, veterans, small businessmen, the mentally ill and tenants in federally aided housing." The resulting body bags and cuts to homeland investment were, of course, devastating - which is why it is fitting that Obey is choosing to end his congressional tenure where he started it: on the side of butter in a 21st century reprisal of the ancient debate. Over the last decade, Obey has been methodically campaigning against the war in Iraq and the endless Afghanistan occupation, saying their rationales are weak, their prosecution inept and their deficit-financed costs unaffordable in the face of unmet domestic needs. For years, he valiantly has championed bills to legislate withdrawal timetables and war surtaxes. Now, with President Obama pushing a plan to boost Afghan war funding at the potential expense of economic aid at home, Obey has replaced the scalpel strokes of proactive legislation with the blunt force of filibuster. According to Politico, Obey last week "drew a direct link between war funding and progress on domestic priorities" with his announcement that as Appropriations Committee chairman, he will "withhold action on the war funds until there (is) some resolution on a major economic relief bill extending jobless benefits." Like clockwork, the move was met with hypocritical hysteria. The same Republican Party that bewails deficits responded with a letter asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates to champion the deficit-exploding war-funding bill in order to avoid "undermining" the military. Gates, despite just having called for defense spending cuts, obediently complied. "Gates to Congress: Stalling on War Funding Will Hurt U.S. Troops," read the Fox News headline after he publicly echoed the GOP demands. The Nation's Chris Hayes has written that such tripe boils down to "You're either with the war or you are against the troops" - and as the bloated Pentagon budget proves, that message has thwarted Obey for most of his life. Until, perhaps, now. Yes, just as Obey prepares to retire, there are signs that his crusade is winning converts. For instance, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn is using his position on President Obama's deficit commission to focus attention on Pentagon profligacy. Similarly, Politico reports that "key tea party players (are) expressing a willingness to put the Pentagon budget on the chopping block."
Whether or not the cacophony stops the Pentagon's latest blank check is less important than Obey finally having rekindled an honest discussion about guns and butter. In a 41-year career of venerable accomplishments, that is the most profound achievement of all.
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 Sticking The Public With The Bill For The Bankers' Crisis By Naomi Klein My city feels like a crime scene and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene. No, I'm not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on Saturday. I'm talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world's wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill. How else can we interpret the G-20's final communique, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard earned benefits; public sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G-20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse. For instance, reducing the projected 2010 deficit in the U.S. by half, in the absence of a sizeable tax increase, would mean a whopping $780-billion cut. They are happening for a simple reason. When the G-20 met in the London in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, the leaders failed to band together to regulate the financial sector so that this type of crisis would never happen again. All we got was empty rhetoric, and an agreement to put trillions of dollars in public monies on the table to shore up the banks around the world. Meanwhile the U.S. government did little to keep people in their homes and jobs, so in addition to hemorrhaging public money to save the banks, the tax base collapsed, creating an entirely predictable debt and deficit crisis. At this weekend's summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper convinced his fellow leaders that it simply wouldn't be fair to punish those banks that behaved well and did not create the crisis (despite the fact that Canada's highly protected banks are consistently profitable and could easily absorb a tax). Yet, somehow, these leaders had no such concerns about fairness when they decided to punish blameless individuals for a crisis created by derivative traders and absentee regulators. Last week, the Globe and Mail ran a fascinating article about the origins of the G-20. It turns out the entire concept was conceived in a meeting back in 1999 between then Finance Minister Paul Martin and his U.S. counterpart Lawrence Summers (itself interesting since Summers was, at that time playing a central role in creating the conditions for this financial crisis, allowing a wave of bank consolidation and refusing to regulate derivatives). The two men wanted to expand the G-7, but only to countries they considered strategic and safe. They needed to make a list but apparently they didn't have paper handy. So, according to reporters John Ibbitson and Tara Perkins, "the two men grabbed a brown manila envelope, put it on the table between them, and began sketching the framework of a new world order." Thus was born the G-20. The story is a good reminder that history is shaped by human decisions, not natural laws. Summers and Martin changed the world with the decisions they scrawled on the back on that envelope. But there is nothing to say that citizens of G-20 countries need to take orders from this handpicked club. Already, workers, pensioners and students have taken to the streets against austerity measures in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Greece, often marching under the slogan "We won't pay for your crisis." And they have plenty of suggestions for how to raise revenues to meet their respective budget shortfalls. Many are calling for a financial transaction tax that would slow down hot money and raise new money for social programs and climate change. Others are calling for steep taxes on polluters that would underwrite the cost of dealing with the effects of climate change and moving away from fossil fuels. And ending losing wars is always a good cost saver.
The G-20 is an ad-hoc institution with none of the legitimacy of the United Nations. Since it just tried to stick us with a huge bill for a crisis most of us had no hand in creating, I say we take a cue from Martin and Summers. Flip it over, and write on the back of the envelope: Return to sender.
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How else can you explain the remarkable gusher of compassion that Republican lawmakers are presently directing toward Big Oil in general and BP in particular? For example, only hours after winning his party's nomination for a Kentucky senate seat, GOP teabag darling Rand Paul was on national TV decrying Barack Obama as "un-American" for daring to demand that BP be held accountable for its human and ecological destruction in the Gulf.
Next came Minnesota's Lioness of Loopiness, Michelle Bachmann, implying that the hard-hit people of the Gulf are shiftless moochers who're using the oil disaster to grab corporate cash. Brimming with tears of compassion, the kooky congresswoman wailed that, "[BP] shouldn't have to be fleeced and made chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest."
And who can ever forget the astonishing public apology to BP's CEO by the oil-soaked Texas Republican, Joe Barton? After Obama had gotten agreement from BP to set aside $20 billion to cover some of the damages it has caused, Barton called Obama's actions a presidential "shakedown." He asserted that it made him "ashamed" to live in America, and he obsequiously begged forgiveness from the reckless CEO whose faulty well killed 11 American workers and is doing inestimable economic and ecological harm.
Meanwhile, GOP congressional leaders are working to limit the legal liability of BP and its partners to a paltry $75 million. Such knee-jerk kow-towing has to be genetic, don't you think? Maybe oil is literally in their DNA.
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"General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts," began the MoveOn.org attack ad against Gen. David Petraeus back in 2007, after he had delivered a report to Congress on the status of the war in Iraq. George W. Bush was president, and MoveOn was accusing Petraeus of "cooking the books for the White House." The campaign asked "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" on a full-page ad in The Washington Post. MoveOn took tremendous heat for the campaign, but stood its ground.
Three years later, Barack Obama is president, Petraeus has become his man in Afghanistan, and MoveOn pulls the critical Web content. Why? Because Bush's first war, Afghanistan, has become Obama's war, a quagmire. The U.S. will eventually negotiate its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The only difference between now and then will be the number of dead, on all sides, and the amount of (borrowed) money that will be spent.
Petraeus' confirmation to become the military commander in Afghanistan was never in question. He replaces Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who resigned shortly after his macho criticisms of his civilian leadership became public in a recent Rolling Stone magazine article.
The statistics for Afghanistan, Obama's Vietnam, are surging. June, with at least 100 U.S. deaths, is the highest number reported since the invasion in 2001. 2010 is on pace to be the year with the highest U.S. fatalities. Similar fates have befallen soldiers from the other, so-called coalition countries. Petraeus is becoming commander not only of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, but of all forces, as the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is run by NATO.
U.S. troops, expected to rise to 98,000 this year, far outnumber those from other nations. Public and political support in many of those countries is waning.
Journalist Michael Hastings, who wrote the Rolling Stone piece, was in Paris with McChrystal to profile him. What didn't get as much attention was Hastings' description of why McChrystal was there:
The whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org, which received international attention after releasing leaked video from a U.S. attack helicopter showing the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and a Reuters cameraman and his driver in Baghdad, has just posted a confidential CIA memo detailing possible public relations strategies to counter waning public support for the Afghan War. The agency memo reads: "If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for 'listening to the voters.' French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now."
I just returned from Toronto, covering the G-20 summit and the protests. The gathered leaders pledged, among other things, to reduce government deficits by 50 percent by 2013. In the U.S., that means cutting $800 billion, or about 20 percent of the budget. Two Nobel Prize-winning economists have weighed in with grave predictions. Joseph Stiglitz said, "There are many cases where these kinds of austerity measures have led to ... recessions into depressions." And Paul Krugman wrote: "Who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again."
In order to make the cuts promised, Obama would have to raise taxes and cut social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Or he could cut the war budget. I say "war budget" because it is not to be confused with a defense budget. Cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels. A true defense budget would shore up our schools, our roads, our towns, our social safety net. The U.S. House of Representatives is under pressure to pass a $33 billion Afghan War supplemental this week.
We can't afford war.
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After months of listening to his campaign rhetoric, the people of the United States had hope and joy in their hearts the day Barack Obama was sworn in as our new President. Everybody knew the nation was in terrible trouble and this upstart young Democrat had promised that he had a plan to fix the mess and get America back on the right track once again.
Some of the television talking heads were even comparing Mr. Obama to the late President John F. Kennedy in those early days, suggesting that a man with the charisma and mental skills that he was demonstrating were just what was needed to offer the kind of bold leadership this nation needed at such a dark time in history. They remarked how amazing it was that such men always seemed to come out of the woodwork when we needed them.
Mr. Obama began with amazing gusto. He appointed his primary Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton to serve as his Secretary of State. He kept his brilliant campaign strategist David Axelrod on as his chief presidential advisor, and made a few early trips to some key foreign nations, assuring the world that the United States will not be doing business as it had been done under the George W. Bush Administration.
All looked good during those first few honeymoon weeks. But then, it appears that Mr. Obama began making some wrong turns. While we were struggling to find a way out of the worst financial crisis the nation has faced since the Great Depression, Timothy Geithner, former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was named Secretary of the Treasury. And Ben Bernanke, a Bush appointee, remained on as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. William C. Dudley, a former partner and managing director at Goldman, Sachs & Company, moved into Geithner's old post as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
These and a list of other choices for top financial advisory jobs were like appointing a den of foxes to oversee the operations of the chicken coop. Even though armed with a Democratic Party control of both the House and the Senate, attempts to repair the financial mess, get control of the runaway banking system, and pour badly needed money into state and local coffers, and expand assistance to the hordes of Americans that have jammed the unemployment rolls, have been lame at best.
While we have had shows of major struggles to overpower Republican efforts to block everything Mr. Obama wanted to accomplish in banking reform, a bill was recently passed that was lauded by the media and even President Obama as "the most important legislation since the Great Depression." If this is true, why did the value of bank stocks rise sharply on the very day this measure passed? Did investors know something we didn't?
Notice that the most important legislation - a jobs bill designed to give help to the long-term unemployed, put hundreds of thousands of teachers back to work in financially strapped school systems, stop a 21 percent Medicare pay cut for doctors treating elderly patients and extend business tax breaks - remains blocked in the Senate. All Republican Senators and one Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against it.
While we do not yet know the details of the highly clouted banking reform bill, we suspect it may be so filled with loopholes that the banks and lending institutions are still going to be free to run wild with the people's cash. After all, many of the people holding those high elected offices are lawyers, and lawyers know how to write documents that sound good, but contain hidden subterfuge. If this is true, we must fear another crash, worse than the one that occurred during the last year of the Bush presidency, lurking just around the corner.
The health care battle was another major effort. In the end, the watered-down bill that got through both the House and Senate and was signed into law fell far short of what the people expected and badly needed. Most benefits, if they can even be called that, don't go into effect until 2014. In the meantime, our legislators are refusing to budge on a badly needed jobs bill that will cover doctor bills for Medicare patients.
The Jobs Bill also would have extended unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans who have fallen out of any chance for state or federal assistance. We hear that similar decisions are being made by governments throughout Europe, including Canada. World money is in the clutches of the wealthy and the unemployed masses are being thrown to the wolves.
There is an old adage that the only real money is the money that is circulating. The economic climate in America is so bogged down with the money under lock and key in the "Too-Big-To-Fail" banks that very little of it is circulating. The United States has been operating on borrowed money from other nations, like China, for too long.
Mr. Obama came into office on a promise to shut down the war in Iraq and start bringing our troops home. While there has been a beginning of a withdrawal from Iraq, there is evidence that our military presence will continue to be present there indefinitely. Our forces bombed that nation into destruction and withdrawal now would leave that war-torn nation in chaos and caught up in a three-way civil war.
Mr. Obama has followed the advice of the generals in the Pentagon, kept the very people who have been operating the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in charge, and expanded the war in Afghanistan. Troops are still dying on both fronts. Those two wars, plus an aerial battle with drones in Pakistan, have now cost the United States just over one trillion dollars since Bush launched the first assault on Afghanistan in 2001. We are pouring billions of borrowed money into those military operations with no end in sight. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is in any way a threat to the security of the United States.
What appears to have been happening is that our government has been taken over by big business interests, including the massive military industrial complex created during World War II. The people that control these big banks, insurance companies and industrial centers appear to have put almost every member of the House and Senate, many of the Supreme Court members, possibly our president and many of his top advisors on corporate payrolls.
What is going on these days in Washington is nothing more than a charade. The people in office are putting on a public show that makes it appear as if they are trying to get things done. Once in a while they throw the public a bone to keep everybody assured that all is well, when in truth, it is not.
Even worse, we suspect much of the national media has bought right into the trickery. Reporters no longer dig for the truth. One of the last ones that did was Helen Thomas, and look what they did to her.
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For some years a number of groups have mounted an anti-incumbency campaign aimed at ridding Congress of the huge majority that keep getting reelected despite miserable performance. This year's midterm elections provide the ultimate test for all the anti-incumbency sentiment that has bubbled up over many years. This year more than all others there is a huge amount of public discontent with Congress which is solidly supported by the cowardly, partisan actions or inactions that explain why so many Americans are fed up with the two-party controlled political system. Rightfully, many, many Americans see the country on the wrong track.
An economy without any real energy for ordinary Americans, unemployment that is more like 20 percent rather than the official 10 percent figure, two enormously costly and useless wars and a regulatory system that has allowed corporations to decimate our natural environment and financial system. All these and much more justify voting out nearly all incumbents.
So what will happen? Will the tea party movement produce election results that throw out incumbents? Will angry Americans across the political spectrum have the courage to reject their own members of the House and Senate that are incumbents? Or will people succumb to the well financed campaigns of incumbent Democrats and Republicans, believe all the campaign lies and keep reelecting incumbents as they have done for a very long time?
Data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that from 1964 through 2008, incumbents in the House of Representatives averaged a 93 percent re-election rate; members of the Senate averaged 83 percent. Will 2010 really be different?
Some people think so. How interesting that 2010 is clearly the year of the challenger with roughly 2,300 non-incumbent candidates seeking to fill 471 open congressional seats this year, more than any year since the mid-1970s. Even more interesting is that there are nearly twice as many Republican candidates seeking office as Democrats.
Various recent polls show strong public interest in voting out incumbents. A CNN poll found 47 percent of the public is more likely to vote for a challenger rather than an incumbent running for re-election at the federal, state or local level. An earlier poll by ABC News/Washington Post found just a third of registered voters were inclined to re-elect their representatives to congress. And a Harris Interactive poll found that half of Americans (49%) say almost everyone in Congress, including their representative, should be thrown out.
The newest poll results are even more intriguing. In a USA Today/Gallup poll out days ago, 6 in 10 registered voters say they would rather vote for a candidate who has never served in Congress than for one who has. This sentiment rises to about 7 in 10 independents and Republicans, but is shared by just about 4 in 10 Democrats, who are seeking to maintain their Congressional majority. Just 32 percent of voters in the poll say most members of Congress deserve re-election, while 63 percent say they do not - one of the worst levels in Gallup polls dating to 1992. And while more, 50 percent, say their own representative deserves to be re-elected, that too is near the all-time low that Gallup has recorded.
But will voter action in the coming elections follow these sentiments?
The first good news is that there have been five failed attempts by incumbents this year to win their party's primary nomination.
Does American democracy have any legitimacy and vitality? We will know after the mid-term elections. If there is no marked reduction in winning incumbents, then the answer is a depressing NO. And that reality will signify that elections no longer offer the opportunity to improve our nation.
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 Extreme Measures Arming the Zealotocracy, Serving the Elite By Chris Floyd One of the most significant developments in the modern world -- history may find it to be a decisive one -- has been the deliberate cultivation of religious extremism by ruling elites trying to sustain and expand their power. The rise of virulent extremism in almost every major religion -- Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism -- has many other causes, of course. Chief among these is the turbulent encounter between modernity and tradition, a confrontation that has played out -- and is playing out -- in so many different ways both within and across various cultures. Modernity encompasses not only the technologies and techniques of capitalism that in its many guises (including state capitalism) has plowed up so much ancient ground and overturned so many ancient certainties, but also the historic development of ideas and ideals based, ultimately, on the notion of the inherent (even inalienable) autonomy and worth of the individual. These ideas too have found expression in myriad -- and often conflicting -- forms. And of course, there has never been and can never be any kind of clear dividing line between all of these swirling currents, the multifaceted dimensions of modernity and tradition; like a jar of colored sands, they mix and meld in innumerable, unstable combinations as they are sifted and shaken through the course of time. So it would be wrong to say that the rise of sectarian zeal can be ascribed solely to its manipulation by elites. But it would be equally wrong -- and dangerously blind -- to deny the fact of these manipulations, or to minimize in any way the pernicious, atrocious effect they have had -- and are having -- on human existence. They have placed a deep -- and entirely unnecessary -- shadow over humanity for generations: a shadow that only gets darker, and more poisonous, as time goes on. For the last 50 years, in country after country, ruling elites -- those factions which hold a disproportionate and thus illegitimate sway over society -- have fostered the growth of religious extremism for two main reasons: to distract the populace from the way their lives are unjustly diminished by the elitist agenda -- and to throttle and demonize any popular movement that might threaten the elite's hegemony. This happened throughout the Middle East, for example, as tyrants of every stripe (often clients of the West) turned to hitherto marginal fundamentalist religious groups to dilute and drive back secular challenges to their rule. These challenges were often, although not always, led by movements that could be characterized as "leftist" to one degree or another. (Although it is also true that any challenge whatsoever to elite rule is almost always categorized as some kind of dangerous, revolutionary "leftism," even if it has little or no socialist content at all -- and even if it is entirely non-violent, or gradualist, or merely mildly reformist.) Usually with Western help, the tyrants cultivated religious extremists both as shock troops and cultural warriors to attack and divide any opposition. As the London Review of Books noted recently (in a piece highlighted this weekend by MAS As'ad AbuKhalil):
The Islamisation of Egyptian society deepened after the 1967 war; it became explicit government policy under Sadat, the self-styled 'believer president' who supported radical Islamists in his battles with the left, and who made the sharia 'the principal source' of law in 1980 - a year before his assassination by an Islamist. Under Mubarak, praying has become as popular as shopping or football and now serves a roughly similar function as a distraction from the innumerable frustrations of Egyptian life. Indeed, Islam as observed by Egyptians is increasingly an Islam that caters to consumerist needs. The popular televangelist Amr Khaled mixes Quranic citations with boosterish advice of a more general kind. This variety of Islam is no threat to the regime, but it has made life far less easy-going. 'My neighbour used to water his plants in his pyjamas on the balcony, where he'd be joined by his wife in her nightie,' a friend tells me. 'They'd drink beer in the open, and then he'd go downstairs for the sunset prayers in the local mosque. Today he'd be killed for this, but at the time he would have seen no contradiction.' Over the past half century, this same dynamic has played out in various ways, and to various degrees, in countries all over the world. It has happened in Iran, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia (Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo), and many others. It is happening at an astonishingly accelerated rate today in Israel, which has become by far the most religiously and ethnically intolerant of any nation considered part of "the West." And it is most palpably happening on many levels in the United States, as Chris Hedges and many others have documented. In most cases, this dynamic involves a strong fusion of religious extremism with a strident, exclusionary nationalism. Indeed, religious nationalism is one of the hallmarks of our age. At various times, and in various quarters, one element -- the religious or the nationalist -- might predominate over the other. We can see this in, say, the Tea Party movement, where exclusionary nationalism -- the self-defined "Real Americans" vs. the strange, traitorous Others -- is now in ascendance, occluding somewhat the sex-obsessed, church-based "Focus on the Family"-style religious nationalism that was somewhat more prevalent earlier in the decade. The whole career of Sarah Palin exemplifies this oscillation, as she has tracked back and forth between the most virulent, primitive, casting-out-devils Christian fundamentalism and the bellicose, militarist nationalism she shares with the Beltway neo-cons, a number of whom are, of course, Jews and/or atheists whom Palin, like George W. Bush, believes will burn in eternal hellfire. Although these kinds of contradictions demonstrate the utter incoherence and moral vacuity of religious nationalism, they rarely lessen the power of these movements, which -- once unleashed, encouraged (and heavily funded) -- feed on the nuclear fuel of raw, unexamined emotions, fears and needs: a fuel that is constantly replenished by the relentless propagation of artfully filtered (and often fabricated) outrages and threats. Here's an example from personal experience. I came of age in the mid-70s, in the Bible Belt, in a family rooted in that old-time Southern Baptist religion. This was the era when the TV preachers -- Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, and others -- first began flooding the late-night airwaves. These televangelists, just beginning the fusion of religion and nationalism noted above, were widely, almost universally, regarded by the good, God-fearing, church-going grownups of my acquaintance as extremely marginal, even comical figures, of little note and little worth. Yet in just a few years' time, many of these figures, and others like them, would be trooping to the White House to be courted and honored; they were commanding vast media networks, college campuses and commercial empires. One of them, Robertson, even ran for president. They had become an integral and important part of the nation's power structure, pushing "hot button" issues, almost always related to sex -- homosexuality, abortion -- and "traditional values" (e.g., submission to authority: biblical authority, corporate authority, military authority, male authority, etc.). They constructed a false history of a paradisiacal past that had been "stolen" from "real" Americans by liberals, feminists, unions, queers, darkies, commies, college professors, Mexicans, etc. etc. And all the while, the elite interests who helped bankroll and magnify these marginal movements into national juggernauts were in fact beggaring the believers themselves, destroying their communities -- indeed, their "traditional values," their family and social networks, and their quality of life -- by gutting their towns and cities, driving family farmers from their land, sending tens of millions of jobs to near-slave labor overseas, befouling the environment, degrading public amenities and vital infrastructure, relentlessly restricting legal recourse against corporate predation and depredation, and corrupting the democratic process to send a steady stream of spineless hacks and whores to Washington to perpetuate the bipartisan corporate-militarist agenda. The result has been poisonous rancor, social division, economic ruin, vast anxiety, endless war and the relentless, systematic degradation of the quality of life for working people, the poor, the sick, the vulnerable -- indeed, for everyone outside the small circle of the elite, and their sycophants and servants in the media-political class. And at every step of the way, this ever-growing dynamic of religious nationalism -- which has found its highest, most complete expression in the war-profiteering militarist empire of the Terror War and its attendant atrocities, foreign and domestic -- has been aided and abetted and strengthened and expanded by the so-called "liberals" and "progressives" of the Democratic Party (and their own innumerable outriders, servitors and sycophants) who have been and remain among the fiercest proponents of ... the war-profiteering militarist empire. ("Progressives," of course want to "reform" the empire -- that is, make its deadly operations more efficient and codify its most heinous atrocities into law -- but none of them, not one, call for it to be dismantled.) Just as in Mubarak's Egypt or the Shah's Iran, any secular opposition to the thuggish (indeed criminal) American elites has been effectively neutralized. The resultant anger and confusion of a people who are indeed being robbed and screwed over is thus diverted from its true perpetrators, and instead is channeled into one of few avenues of "protest" against the "system" allowed to operate freely and fully on a mass scale: religious nationalism in its various forms. Of course, this kind of "protest" only strengthens the genuine systems of rapacious power, and thus, ultimately, serves both sides of the partisan divide. (Or rather the factional divide between two groups of squabbling courtiers jockeying for the top perks of the imperial state they both avidly serve.) And, as we have seen in Iran and will likely see in Egypt, these movements, once unleashed and empowered, cannot be completely controlled by their elite patrons (as some Republican incumbents and insiders have already learned to their sorrow).
On every side, in country after country, and at varying levels, life is being made "far less easy-going" by the unholy alliance of rapacious corporate-militarist elites and the Zealotocracy of religious nationalists they have helped propel to heights of power and influence. And as long as the imperial system keeps churning its way around the globe, this murderous, retrograde, life-strangling dynamic will continue to accelerate.
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 The Good, The Bad And The Wimpy By Case Wagenvoord We are slowly learning that all deficits are not created equal. There are good deficits and there are bad deficits; there are deficits that wear white hats and those that wear black hats. Last week Senate Republicans shot down a bill that surely would have fed ammo to a black-hatted deficit when they killed legislation that would have extended unemployment benefits for the estimated 1.2 million Americans whose jobless benefits will be exhausted by the end of the money, according to The New York Times. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada did what Senate Democrats do best-he wimped out and announced he would move on to new business since he didn't have the votes to stop a Republican filibuster against the bill. Of course a fool might ask: Why not let the Republicans hold their filibuster. Let every Republican senator who stands up to speak against the bill be duly recorded by C-Span. Then when the 2012 elections roll around play clips of their dulcet rhetoric over and over again to let the nation see exactly what the GOP stands for. According to the Times,"The Obama administration has not fought aggressively for the legislation." But this is to be expected. Obama continues to float in Never-Never Land as the Pentagon leads him to and fro by his nose, and the Democrats wimp out. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, "The only thing Republicans opposed in this debate are (sic) job-killing taxes and adding to the national debt." Which brings us back to the distinction between good deficits and bad deficits: In Republican eyes, bad deficits are those that help alleviate domestic economic suffering. It all gets down to the Right's doctrine of personal responsibility. The unemployed would not be unemployed had they not forced their manufacturing plants to relocate overseas because the once-employed demanded a living wage. Good deficits, on the other hand, are those that help America maintain her military erection. Deficits are to the Pentagon as Viagra is to the fifty-something male. Here are a few examples of good deficits:
1. B-52 bombers consume 47,000 gallons of jet fuel per mission per plane, leaving a contrail of red ink in their wake.However, according to both Republicans and Democrats, these are good deficits because they are "feel-good" expenditures. Being a military superpower is such an ego trip that our leaders are loathe to give it up so the funds being burnt up on a useless war could be diverted to relieve the ever growing suffering on the home front. Meanwhile, Obama continues to float in Never-Never Land while the Pentagon leads him around by the nose, and Sen. Reid comes up with even more creative ways to wimp out less he incur the wrath of America's Rabid Right.
Our children may go hungry; more and more tent cities will spring up as more homes are lost, but, by God, both the Pentagon and its military contractors will continue to prosper. And nobody, but nobody seems willing to make the connection between domestic suffering and the money being wasted on an useless and unnecessary war.
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 Gone Fishing By Mike Folkerth Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is on the air. I'm going to be out of pocket for the next eight days...fishing. When I return I will begin to wind down my website. After three years and 1100 articles, I've said all that I can say. If you have not done so, please consider printing off my Show-Stopper booklet that is available at the top of this site. I wanted to post up an article during my absence that I believe impressively demonstrates that we knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Great Depression would repeat itself should we fail to learn from history. We failed to learn from history. I often have to ground myself in reality, lest I get caught up in all the diversions that our leadership and main stream news dish up daily. To do so, I go back and read the boring lessons of history and the brilliant foundational material that was written by those who had been there, done that, and remembered most of it. One such name has graced these pages many times and that is Leonard Ayres who wrote, "The Chief Cause of this and Other Depressions." Boring stuff? Not really. Here is a reminder of what Mr. Ayres tried to tell us in 1934. That is, he tried to tell those who wished to forgo another Great Depression, which apparently did not include our Federal Government. "There is no simple legislative formula by which business activity can be stabilized in a capitalistic economy, so that the fluctuations of booms and depressions will be ironed out. "Stability of business activity depends on the stability of the fundamental conditions under which business operates. Operating in a stable and predictable environment is the key to our economic woes." Mr. Ayres so well stated, "That kind of fundamental stability is the product of the drab and undramatic exercise of national integrity and self-restraint." Following are the points that Mr. Ayers suggested that would keep our economy on an even keel. He begins, "It involves persistent adherence to at least seven national policies."
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 The Land Where Theories Of Warfare Go To Die Obama, Petraeus, and the Cult of COIN in Afghanistan By Robert Dreyfuss Less than a year ago, General David Petraeus saluted smartly and pledged his loyal support for President Obama's decision to start withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan in July 2011. In December, when Obama decided (for the second time in 2009) to add tens of thousands of additional American forces to the war, he also slapped an 18-month deadline on the military to turn the situation around and begin handing security over to the bedraggled Afghan National Army and police. Speaking to the nation from West Point, Obama said that he'd ordered American forces to start withdrawing from Afghanistan at that time. Here's the exchange, between Obama, Petraeus, and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as reported by Jonathan Alter in his new book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One: That seems unequivocal, doesn't it? Vice President Joe Biden, famously dissed as Joe Bite-Me by one of the now-disgraced aides of General Stanley McChrystal in the Rolling Stone profile that got him fired, seems to think so. Said Biden, again according to Alter: "In July of 2011 you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it." In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of the U.S. military, however, things are rarely what they seem. Petraeus, the Centcom commander "demoted" in order to replace McChrystal as U.S. war commander in Afghanistan, seems to be having second thoughts about what will happen next July -- and those second thoughts are being echoed and amplified by a phalanx of hawks, neoconservatives, and spokesmen for the counterinsurgency (COIN) cult, including Henry Kissinger, the Heritage Foundation, and the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Chiming in, too, are the lock-step members of the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill, led by Senator John McCain. In testimony before Congress just last week, Petraeus chose his words carefully, but clearly wasn't buying the notion that the July deadline means much, nor did he put significant stock in the fact that President Obama has ordered a top-to-bottom review of Afghan policy in December. According to the White House, that review will be a make-or-break assessment of whether the Pentagon is making any progress in the nine-year-long conflict against the Taliban. In his recent Senate testimony -- before he fainted, and afterwards -- Petraeus minimized the significance of the December review and cavalierly declared that he "would not make too much of it." Pressed by McCain, the general flouted Biden's view by claiming that the deadline is a date "when a process begins [and] not the date when the U.S. heads for the exits." The Right's Marching Orders for the President Petraeus's defiant declaration that he wasn't putting much stock in the president's intending to hold the military command accountable for its failure in Afghanistan next December earned him an instant rebuke from the White House. Now, that same Petraeus is in charge. The dispute over the meaning of July 2011 is, and will remain, at the very heart of the divisions within the Obama administration over Afghan policy. Last December, in that West Point speech, Obama tried to split the difference, giving the generals what they wanted -- a lot more troops -- but fixing a date for the start of a withdrawal. It was hardly a courageous decision. Under intense pressure from Petraeus, McChrystal, and the GOP, Obama assented to the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops, ignoring the fact that McChrystal's unseemly lobbying for the escalation amounted to a Douglas MacArthur-like defiance of the primacy of civilian control of the military. (Indeed, after a speech McChrystal gave in London insouciantly rejecting Biden's scaled-down approach to the war, Obama summoned the runaway general to a tarmac outside Copenhagen and read him the riot act in Air Force One.) If Obama's Afghan decision was a cave-in to the brass and a potential generals' revolt, the president also added that kicker of a deadline to the mix, not only placating his political base and minimizing Democratic unhappiness in Congress, but creating a trap of sorts for Petraeus and McChrystal. The message was clear enough: deliver the goods, and fast, or we're heading out, whether the job is finished or not. Since then, Petraeus and McChrystal -- backed by their chief enabler, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a Republican holdover appointed to his position by George W. Bush -- took every chance they could to downplay and scoff at the deadline. By appointing Petraeus last Wednesday, Obama took the easy way out of the crisis created by McChrystal's shocking comments in Rolling Stone. It might not be inappropriate to quote that prescient British expert on Afghan policy, Peter Townsend, who said of the appointment: "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." On the other hand, Petraeus is not simply another McChrystal. While McChrystal implemented COIN doctrine, mixing in his obsession with "kinetic operations" by U.S. Special Forces, Petraeus literally wrote the book -- namely, The U.S Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. If the COIN cult has a guru (whom all obey unquestioningly), it's Petraeus. The aura that surrounds him, especially among the chattering classes of the Washington punditocracy, is palpable, and he has a vast well of support among Republicans and assorted right-wingers on Capitol Hill, including the Holy Trinity: John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Joe Lieberman. Not surprisingly, there have been frequent mentions of Petraeus as a candidate for the GOP nomination for president in 2012, although Obama's deft selection of Petraeus seems, once and for all, to have ruled out that option, since the general will be very busy on the other side of the globe for quite a while. Even before the announcement that Petraeus had the job, the right's mighty Wurlitzer had begun to blast out its critique of the supposedly pernicious effects of the July deadline. The Heritage Foundation, in an official statement, proclaimed: "The artificial Afghanistan withdrawal deadline has obviously caused some of our military leaders to question our strategy in Afghanistan... We don't need an artificial timeline for withdrawal. We need a strategy for victory." Writing in the Washington Post on June 24, Henry Kissinger cleared his throat and harrumphed: "The central premise [of Obama's strategy] is that, at some early point, the United States will be able to turn over security responsibilities to an Afghan government and national army whose writ is running across the entire country. This turnover is to begin next summer. Neither the premise nor the deadline is realistic... Artificial deadlines should be abandoned." And the Post itself, in the latest of a long-running series of post-9/11 hawkish editorials, gave Obama his marching orders: "He... should clarify what his July 2011 deadline means. Is it the moment when 'you are going to see a whole lot of people moving out,' as Vice President Biden has said, or 'the point at which a process begins... at a rate to be determined by conditions at the time,' as General Petraeus testified? We hope that the appointment of General Petraeus means the president's acceptance of the general's standard." Is the COIN Cult Ascendant? It's too early to say whether Obama's decision to name Petraeus to replace his protŽgŽ McChrystal carries any real significance when it comes to the evolution of his Afghan war policy. The McChrystal crisis erupted so quickly that Obama had no time to carefully consider who might replace him and Petraeus undoubtedly seemed like the obvious choice, if the point was to minimize the domestic political risks involved. Still, it's worrying. Petraeus's COIN policy logically demands a decade-long war, involving labor-intensive (and military-centric) nation-building, waged village by village and valley by valley, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and countless U.S., NATO, and Afghan casualties, including civilians. That idea doesn't in the least square with the idea that significant numbers of troops will start leaving Afghanistan next summer. Indeed, Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer with long experience in the Middle East and South Asia, who headed Obama's first Afghan policy review in February 2009, told me (for an article in Rolling Stone last month) that it's not inconceivable the military will ask for even more troops, not agree to fewer, next year. The Post is right, however, that Obama needs to grapple seriously with the deep divisions in his administration. Having ousted one rebellious general, the president now has little choice but to confront -- or cave in to -- the entire COIN cult, including its guru. If Obama decides to take them on, he'll have the support of many traditionalists in the U.S. armed forces who reject the cult's preaching. Above all, his key ally is bound to be those pesky facts on the ground. Afghanistan is the place where theories of warfare go to die, and if the COIN theory isn't dead yet, it's utterly failed so far to prove itself. The vaunted February offensive into the dusty hamlet of Marja in Helmand province has unraveled. The offensive into Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and a seething tangle of tribal and religious factions, once touted as the potential turning point of the entire war, has been postponed indefinitely. After nine years, the Pentagon has little to show for its efforts, except ever-rising casualties and money spent. Perhaps Obama is still counting on U.S. soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum and win the war, even though administration officials have repeatedly rejected the notion that Afghanistan can be won militarily. David Petraeus or no, the reality is that the war will end with a political settlement involving President Karzai's government, various Afghan warlords and power brokers, the remnants of the old Northern Alliance, the Taliban, and the Taliban's sponsors in Pakistan. Making all that work and winning the support of Afghanistan's neighbors -- including India, Iran, and Russia -- will be exceedingly hard. If Obama's diplomats managed to pull it off, the Afghanistan that America left behind might be modestly stable. On the other hand, it won't be pretty to look at it. It will be a decentralized mess, an uneasy balance between enlightened Afghans and benighted, Islamic fundamentalist ones, and no doubt many future political disagreements will be settled not in conference rooms but in gun battles. Three things it won't be: It won't be Switzerland. It won't be a base for Al Qaeda. And it won't be host to tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops.
The only silver lining in the Petraeus cloud is that the general has close ties to the military in Pakistan who slyly accept U.S. aid while funneling support to the insurgency in Afghanistan. If Obama decides to pursue a political and diplomatic solution between now and next July, Petraeus's Pakistan connection would be useful indeed. Time, however, is running out.
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 Mission Accomplished The Reagan Occupation and the Destruction of the American Middle Class By David Michael Green Eighty years ago, something occurred in America that was never supposed to happen. An aristocrat came to the presidency and engineered a policy revolution that created a broad and prosperous middle class where it had not existed as such before. To do this, Franklin Roosevelt and his party had to rewrite the existing rules of wealth redistribution in the United States such that the traditionally fantastically wealthy overclass (which had grown even fatter as the industrialism of the prior century concentrated wealth yet further) would become merely tremendously wealthy from that point forward, in order to leave enough for others to live a decent life. Needless to say, this rankled the country club set, but, remarkably, they more or less made peace with this development during the early decades of the post-war era, and largely cooperated with the new economic order. So did their political representatives. The Eisenhower administration was the first chance after twenty years of the New Deal to dismantle the newly created American welfare state, and Ike not only refused to take that opportunity, but famously labeled those in his party who wanted to as "stupid." If Eisenhower, in his gray suit, black-and-white photos and de rigueur businessman's hat from the era seems quaint today, so does his political restraint. By the 1980s that was ancient history, and remains so to this day, including through (and via) two Democratic presidencies now. If Americans understood the real ambitions of Ronald Reagan and his puppeteers, and if they knew the degree to which the supposed patriotism of those folks extended beyond falsity and into the far darker waters of being an irritating irrelevance put on purely for show, then they would not only stop seeing Reagan as some sort of national hero, but would also understand that he instead launched a process far more equivalent to an invasion and occupation of this country. The goal of the right - which cares about America about as much as it does about Burkina Faso - has been to restore the economic order last seen under Herbert Hoover, in which a tiny minority possess vast sums of wealth and there is (therefore) essentially no remaining middle class. It is nothing short of a breathtaking display of a world class greed, worthy of the ages. It has also been a work of strategic genius (in much the same way one might appreciate the Germans' engineering prowess in figuring out the logistics of how to mass murder ten or twelve million civilians in a year or two), one which has drawn upon deep psychological insights, absolutely sociopathic amoralism, and clever tactics that have all simultaneously pushed in the same direction. In plain English, they hired some politicians of hit-man level moral integrity, who then marshaled fear, insecurity, hate and deceit into a witch's brew of self-destruction that would prove highly attractive to a large segment of the population already sinking from the effects of a global economic order rebalancing after decades of post-war American dominance. Of course, you couldn't just come right out and say, "Vote for me and I'll give your money to people so rich they can't even imagine what they'll do with it (but they still demand to have it anyhow)," so slightly more subtle tactics had to be employed. It is telling that the most honest thing Barack Obama ever said was when he thought there were no microphones in the room. But he was right when, at a presidential fundraiser in San Francisco he told the wine and cheese set that the right uses guns, god and gays (I would add Gaddafis) to scare people out of their money. I'll believe that Republicans are serious about protecting heterosexual marriage on the day that you can't find half of them prowling the gay bars of DC every night (and you don't even want to know what the other half are into). This bait-and-switch tactic worked perfectly well whenever it was applied. It didn't hurt that the regressive Billy-Bobs who vote for these folks are as dumb as a tree. With bags of hammers for leaves. But stupid is really only the facilitating quality, and often one that is neither present nor required. What really drives this stuff is fear. If you can turn that into a loathing of fur'ners, fags, bitches, blackies and brownies, you got their vote. Then you can do what you really set out to accomplish in the first place. George W. Bush's 2004 campaign was the paradigmatic example. All year he talked about jamming through a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Big priority. Urgent national issue. The religitarded across America just about peed themselves, they were so excited. Then he gets elected and is brazen enough to announce that there'll be no such effort, after all, and that his signature legislative initiative will be an attempt to hand over the fat Social Security pot of money to Goldman Sachs. The redneck dolts with their Bush/Cheney '04 bumper-stickers didn't know what to think. So, of course, they just didn't. Meanwhile, to say that this kleptocratic revolution worked really well is only untrue by means of the verb tense employed. It is still working really well. And the final leg of Reagan's March to the Sea is now upon us. Chunks of middle class body parts have been hacked off, bit by bit, over the decades, 'til there's little remaining anymore. Remember how they told us that 'free trade' wouldn't decimate our jobs, our unions and our bargaining power? Is that why little old ladies serve Happy Meals at McDonald's all across the country, assuming they're lucky enough to get that job? Remember how they said that massive tax cuts for the wealthy would be 'revenue neutral' and would jump-start the economy? Which is confusing since the national debt doubled under George W. Bush, and then he proceeded to hand us the worst economy since the Great Depression. Remember how they told us that we needed to slash wasteful government spending on benefits? Now that we've become the ones who need those, they're gone. Remember when they said that government is our enemy and corporations should be free to do whatever they want? You know, like spill oil or trade derivatives? There's another little trick that is about to become especially prominent in the coming years. When Reagan came to office and began his "voodoo economics" project of nearly quadrupling the national debt, after having promised to cut it instead, many people were puzzled by this. Personally, I figured that they just did the math and realized that in the real world (where governments sometimes live but campaigns rarely do) something simply had to give. If you slash tax revenues and massively increase military spending, guess what's gonna happen to your budget? Others, however, saw a more nefarious game being played, and perhaps they were right. This is the idea that they intentionally ran up deficits so large that the national government would be forced to do what it otherwise would not, which is to slash spending on popular entitlements and other social programs. Whether or not the conspiracy was real, it is the case that the federal government is running humongous deficits every year, which pile up further on the massive national debt. And it is also the case that we are now hearing a rising chorus on the right - especially from the tea party know-nothings - about slashing government spending as the top priority for Washington. Even though, according to the principles of Keynesian economics, this is the last thing we should be doing during a recession. And, of course, something tells me that as the pinch is increasingly felt, the call for cuts won't be in the domain of military spending, even though our allocation there is obscenely out of proportion to any imaginable threat in the world, and is roughly equal to what almost the entire rest of the world spends on defense - that's one country equal to almost two hundred others, combined. I'm also guessing that we won't be raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans either, even though they pay far less than they did in the pre-Reagan era, when the country was generally very prosperous, and even though they often pay a lower percentage in taxes than the secretaries and janitors who work for them. No, we can't touch those folks. Instead, the intense pressure now will be to finish the job of eviscerating the middle class and transferring every last nickel of their wealth to the oligarchs who fancy themselves masters of the universe. Unemployment insurance, for example. Never mind that we have ten percent official unemployment and closer to twenty percent in reality, or that whole cities like Detroit are being wiped out. The Republican minority in the Senate, along with the Democratic "moderates" there, are now refusing to extend expiring unemployment benefits (which are already a pittance when they exist). Nine hundred thousand laid-off workers have thus lost their meager sub-subsistence benefits, and that number will grow to more than a million-and-a-half in a few days now. Guess why. Because regressive senators - including John Kerry and Maria Cantwell - are holding unemployment insurance extensions hostage to protecting a loophole that allows wealthy fund managers to be taxed on their profits at an obscenely low percentage rate. How's that for national priorities? How's that for compassionate conservatism? Next, inevitably, will come entitlements. Indeed, most of the states in the union are already heading that way, cutting pensions for employees. Not to mention certain low priority areas like education, which is getting slashed from California to New York. How long can it be before Medicare and Social Security are put on the chopping block? And why? Because we have our priorities good and straight, pal: a morbidly bloated military and pathetically low tax rates for the wealthiest among us comes first. Then, if we could somehow do it for free I suppose we could allow decent education, or health care, or retirement with dignity for our elders. But, of course, since that can't be done without cost, those things must go. The other strategic initiative now reaching fruition during the right's three decade-long campaign to massively redistribute wealth in this country - literally, the crime of the century - is the evisceration of the state. This must be done (or, more accurately, it must be done in some respects but absolutely not in others) because the state is the only force capable of standing up to the power of concentrated wealth, and because the state sets the very rules by which such wealth either is or isn't concentrated. It also must be done because the state nominally speaks for the public and the public interest, as against the private interest. Since Reagan, regressive puppet politicians have been spouting anti-state rhetoric and sarcastic venom with increasing intensity. Saint Ron of Hypocrisy told us that government was the problem, not the solution, seemingly without noticing the irony of his massive military build-up or the government-enforced restrictions the right favors on everything from abortion to gay marriage to euthanasia. Now, as gutted and corrupted regulatory institutions have permitted massively harmful meltdowns ranging from Wall Street to coal mines to oil wells, we are forced to listen to sermons from those on the right about the incompetence of government. Well, yeah. If in fact you staff government regulatory bodies with industry shills who are explicitly ordered not to actually, er, regulate, and if you legislate away their power to effectively do so anyhow, and if you pulverize conscientious whistleblowers to within an inch of their lives, then guess what? That little bit of government will in fact be incompetent. In fact, it will be nearly as bad at the competence thing as, say, all the big banks on Wall Street (which had to be rescued by the, uh, government), or all the big auto companies in Detroit (ditto), or British Petroleum, or Enron, or the savings-and-loan industry, or... And so, despite the astonishing illogic of it all, the American people now clamor for more harm to be brought upon themselves and more of their money to be looted for the further enrichment of the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population. It certainly doesn't help that the supposed "party of the people" is every bit as much a part of the problem as anyone else, and arguably far more so given the extra measure of disingenuousness involved. From NAFTA to WTO to welfare 'reform' to the Telecommunications Bill, Wall Street never had better friend in the White House than Bill Clinton. That is, until Barack Obama simply outright changed the address of Goldman Sachs' headquarters to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As we speak, the president and his party in Congress are busy gutting meaningful 'reform' of the shamelessly gluttonous finance industry, just as their masters have ordered them to do. And if you think Obama's bad now, wait until after November. Like Clinton in 1994, he will take the trouncing he's about to receive in the election as a signal to move even further to the right. And thus the Reagan Occupation inches closer yet to a full-blown "mission accomplished". The middle class is on its knees and shrinking fast. Unions have been broken into irrelevance. Government, supposedly an agent of the public interest, has become a complete tool of those it is meant to monitor. Both political parties are fully owned by the oligarchy. The public has been brainwashed into seeing its allies as enemies and its enemies as allies. We have been drained of hope that any actor on the horizon can come to our rescue. Bad policy choices by self-serving politicians? Would that 'twere only thus.
We are occupied.
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Dear Unterfuhrer Kanjorski, Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, Ralph Nader, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Fredo Bush, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Sonia (get whitey) Sotomayor. Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, your speech in committee declaring money for your bill won't be wasted on defective people or minorities, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account! Along with this award you will be given the Iron Cross 1st class with diamond clusters, presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Obama at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker," formally the "White House," on 07-03-2010. We salute you Herr Kanjorski, Sieg Heil!
Signed by, Heil Obama |
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The headline from this morning's New York Times article by Charlie Savage says it all -- not just about this issue but about the administration generally:  Savage writes that it is "unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013"; quotes Sen. Carl Levin as saying that "the odds are that it will still be open" by the next presidential inauguration; and describes how Sen. Lindsey Graham -- who is actually trying to close the camp -- is deeply frustrated with the White House's refusal to spend time or energy to do so, quoting him as saying that the effort is "on life support and it's unlikely to close any time soon." So that appears to be a consensus: Guantanamo -- the closing of which was one of Obama's central campaign promises -- will still be open as of 2013, by which point many of the detainees will have been imprisoned for more than a decade without charges of any kind and without any real prospect for either due process or release, at least four of those years under a President who was elected on a commitment to close that camp and restore the rule of law. None of this is news to anyone even casually watching what's been going on, but there are several aspects of this article which are so noteworthy for illustrating how this administration works. Let's begin with this: Obama officials -- cowardly hiding behind anonymity as usual -- raise the typical excuse which they and their defenders perpetually invoke for their "failures" to fulfill their campaign positions: it's all Congress' fault ("They blame Congress for failing to execute that endgame," Savage writes). It's true that Congress has enacted measures to impede the closing of Guantanamo, and threatened to enact others, but the Obama administration's plan was never so much to close Guantanamo as to simply re-locate it to Thompson, Illinois (GTMO North), in the process retaining one of its key, defining features -- indefinite, due-process-free detention -- that made it such a menace in the first place (that's the attribute that led Candidate Obama to scorn it as a "legal black hole.") The only meaningful way to "close Guantanamo" is to release the scores of detainees whom the administration knows are innocent and then try the rest in a real court (as Pakistan just did with Americans they accused of Terrorism). Imprisoning only those people whom you convict of crimes is a terribly radical, purist, Far Leftist concept, I know -- the Fifth Amendment is so very un-Pragmatic and pre-9/11 -- and that is something the administration therefore refused from the start even to consider. But more important -- and this goes to the heart of the debate I had all week with Obama defenders over his alleged inability to influence Congress -- the primary reason why Congress has acted to impede the closing of Guantanamo is because the Obama White House has allowed it to, and even encouraged it to do so with its complete silence and inaction. I was accused by various Obama defenders all last week of being politically ignorant for arguing that Obama possesses substantial means of leverage to influence Congress to do what he wants, and that often, when the excuse is made that it's not Obama's fault because he can't control Congress, the reality is that Congress is doing what it does because the White House is content with or even supportive of that, while pretending in public to lament it. I provided numerous examples proving that was true, none of which was answered, but one need not believe me and my starry-eyed political ignorance. Just listen to Carl Levin, who sort of knows how the process works given that he's been in the Senate for about 400 years, explaining the real reason Guantanamo will not close:
"There is a lot of inertia" against closing the prison, "and the administration is not putting a lot of energy behind their position that I can see," said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee . . . . .That -- what Levin just said there -- is the heart of the critique of the Obama administration which its defenders steadfastly refuse to address, opting instead to beat the same strawman over and over no matter how many times it's pointed out what they're doing. After The American Prospect's Mori Dinauer completely mischaracterized my argument by claiming that I "believe that the president can bend Congress to his will," I wrote: "Why is it that no matter how many times you say 'I am not arguing and do not believe X,' someone will come along and say: 'can you believe that he's arguing X?' How much clearer could I have made it over the course of three posts that I do not believe that the President can bend Congress to his will'?" Yesterday, Matt Yglesias reasonably enough requested that "people who've been on the Glenn Greenwald side of the Great Presidential Power Debate" look at what happened with the failure of the Senate to pass the administration-supported tax extender bill, but then argued this episode negates "the Glenn Greenwald side of the Great Presidential Power Debate" because it demonstrates that "just because Barack Obama wants congress to do something doesn't mean it happens." It's particularly disappointing to see Matt resort to this complete strawman and mischaracterization of the views of Obama critics, because he knows that's not the claim. I had a Twitter discussion with Matt on this topic and told him: "The strawman is that Obama is all-powerful and can get any legislation he wants passed - NOBODY claims that." And Matt independently knows that "the Glenn Greenwald side of the Great Presidential Power Debate" has nothing to do with the claim that "just because Barack Obama wants congress to do something [it] mean[s] it happens," because he read the posts this week where I explicitly and repeatedly renounced that view:
As I've acknowledged from the start, the President does have some constraints in the area of domestic policy and will not always be able to move Congress to do what he wants. . . . None of this is to say that the President is omnipotent. It's certainly possible that he could truly devote himself to inducing the Congress to do something he wants, but fail. The fact that the President fails to get something he wants is not proof that he failed to try.Instead, the issue has been and still is exactly what Carl Levin just explained. The administration has substantial leverage to influence what Congress does, but they use it only on those issues that are actually important to them. And in those White House actions, one finds their actual priorities. The White House applied vast pressure on Congress to get what it wanted by having a war-funding bill enacted without conditions, demanding progressive provisions be stripped out of the financial reform bill, preventing drug re-importation from being enacted in order to please the pharmaceutical industry, negotiating the public option away with industry interests, and (to their credit) blocking funding for obsolete fighter jets. They exerted great influence over Congress because those were important priorities for Obama. By contrast, they do nothing on a whole slew of issues which they claim they support and which were at heart of the Obama campaign -- such as closing Guantanamo -- thus conveying to Democrats in Congress that they do not really care about such measures (or even oppose them) despite their public assurances to their base that they continue to support them. As I wrote:
The complaints have never been that the Obama White House failed to force Congress to enact progressive legislation it claimed it wanted, but rather, that they never really tried using the substantial leverage and influence they have, thus illustrating that they never really wanted it in the first place. That's exactly what Levin just said. Matt says that the White House can't "engage in a maximum, 100 percent push for each item on the Obama agenda" and "you can't just be going nuclear thirty times a year." That's true enough. But look at the issues where they do "go nuclear"and contrast it with the ones where (at best) they do nothing. As one of Matt's commenters writes:
I actually support Obama and think Greenwald's basically wrong, but this isn't a great argument. If this president isn't willing to go all in for healthcare, climate change, gay rights, or immigration [GG: or closing Guantanamo], just what IS he willing to push for? The answer to that is clear: war funding, killing the public option, preventing drug re-importation, and stripping out FinReg provisions which Wall Street hates most. Beyond Levin's complaints, Savage's article provides a perfect illustration for how this works. Just marvel at this passage:
In any case, one senior official said, even if the administration concludes that it will never close the prison, it cannot acknowledge that because it would revive Guant‡namo as America's image in the Muslim world.That is so vintage Obama administration: we're not going to do the things we said we would, but we're going to keep pretending that we will and claim we want to in order to keep our rubes devoted and believing. That deceit works with many Democrats, but it does not seem to be working in the Muslim world, where people are far less politically faithful and gullible and want to see actual actions, not pretty words, and thus are growing increasingly disenchanted with both the U.S. and Obama. The reality is that closing Guantanamo has been discarded because of the Obama administration's general embrace of the Bush/Cheney Terrorism template; if you are going to retain a system of due-process-free indefinite detentions, then closing Guantanamo makes little sense. One could almost respect the administration more if they admitted that -- as John Brennan came close to doing yesterday -- rather than pretending that it is trying but is just oh-so-tragically and helplessly thwarted by Congress. * * * * * Related to all of this: see Eric Lichtblau's excellent article on how Obama officials have been meeting with lobbyists outside the White House in order to avoid having to disclose these meetings pursuant to Obama's much-touted "transparency" policies. UPDATE: Speaking of the financial reform bill, this, too, is a revealing headline, from AP:
 Among the big winners: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. rose 3.5 percent, while JPMorgan Chase & Co. gained 3.7 percent. Bank of America rose 2.7 percent and Citigroup Inc. rose 4.2 percent.Apparently, "investors" celebrated the fact that the most stringent regulations did not end up in the final bill, though I really can't imagine why any rational person would have ever thought they would. (c) 2010 Glenn Greenwald. was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy," examines the Bush legacy. |
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TORONTO - Nearly 600 people were arrested as global leaders and elites met behind a fortified perimeter during the G-8 and G-20 Summits in Huntsville and Toronto this weekend.
The tension was palpable on the subway as the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) announced that under a "police directive" all routes in and out of the downtown core would be suspended midday Saturday.
Several blocks north of the protests that were the assumed cause of the transit shutdown, IPS observed a police officer conducting random searches of pedestrians. Asked why he was doing so, the officer, who refused to identify himself, replied, "Do you want to be responsible for a terrorist attack?"
The officer stated that the transit system was shut down due to a "terrorist threat" posed by anarchists, that a cache of Molotov cocktails had been discovered, and that the crude weapons were "all over the city."
A spokesperson for the G-8/G-20 Integrated Security Unit later contradicted the police officer, stating in a phone interview, "There's no terrorist threat." The spokesperson would not clarify the reasons for the transit closure saying only that it was due to a "security precaution" and that it was "just part of the [security] process."
The stealthy side of this process revealed itself on Thursday, when police arrested an individual under the 'Public Works Act,' a provision passed in secret by Ontario cabinet officials earlier this month that allowed police to question, search and potentially detain anyone within five meters of the G-20 security fence.
In the weeks months leading up to the summit, protesters were under surveillance by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). One of those protesters targeted by CSIS, Stefan Christoff, called this part of a broader "chill effect" and "culture of fear" that the security forces were allegedly seeking to foster in advance of the largest, most expensive, and most heavily secured meeting of global leaders in history.
Arbitrary and sometimes preemptive arrests became the norm as the weekend progressed, drawing denunciations from several prominent human rights organizations. Amnesty International decried the "curtailment of civil liberties" that accompanied "high fences, new weaponry, massive surveillance, and the intimidating impact of the overwhelming police presence."
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, some of whose members were swept up in the arrests, decried police tactics, and expressed concern about the conditions of those being detained. "It would appear that the presumption of innocence has been suspended during the G-20," they said in a statement.
On Saturday, following a peaceful march of between 10,000 and 25,000 demonstrators, hundreds of Black bloc protesters wove their way through the streets, breaking windows of banks and other symbols of corporate power, torched police cars that police abandoned, and chanted anti-establishment slogans.
Decried as "thugs that prompted violence" by a spokesperson for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the organization No One is Illegal defended the protesters, stating that they were symbolically targeting global capitalism, and were merely "engaging in corporate property destruction,"
While security forces did not step in to stop the bloc protesters, late on Saturday night, approximately 150 peaceful protesters were placed in detention after staging a sit-in.
On Sunday morning, supporters of the hundreds detained at a makeshift detention facility on Toronto's eastside rallied for their release. They were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and more arrests. At the time of press, upwards of 600 mostly peaceful protesters had been detained, including several journalists.
A 'Movement Defense Committee' emerged by Sunday night, calling on supporters to 'Free the Toronto 500' and to "mobilize a show of political strength and solidarity for the nearly 500 people arrested in the last four days."
The final communiques of the G-8 and G-20 did little to assuage the central grievances that were expressed before the events during the 'People's Summit' held by activists Jun. 18-20, or in the many peaceful demonstrations held prior to and during the summits.
The major issues being protested - lack of commitment regarding climate change and clean energy, the mounting concerns regarding the development of the Albertan tar sands, ongoing wars and foreign occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the imposition of fiscal austerity measures on member states despite continuing fallout from the global economic crisis which began in 2008 - were not resolved.
And perhaps the core concern - that a select, if somewhat broadened, group of elites are making decisions that concern all peoples around the globe largely in secret - appeared to be flaunted by members of the corporate elite, dubbed the 'B20' (Business 20), who were on hand.
During the summit, several dozen of the globe's most powerful CEOs were given exclusive, off-the-record meetings with the G-20's finance ministers and Prime Minister Harper.
The G-20 includes the "world's most industrialized nations" (which also comprise the G-8): Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain and the United States.
Its other members are Australia, Mexico, Turkey and South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, plus the 27-member European Union.
In concert with the eventual announcement by the G-20 that they would seek to halve deficits by 2013 (with the exception of Japan), one business leader projected, "Stimulus is winding down and the private sector is going to have to come in and pick up the slack."
Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty praised the corporate leaders, saying "The advice we get from you is invaluable in terms of our deliberations and the deliberations of our leaders."
Offering an indication of the B20's influence, South Korean Finance Minister Jeung-Hyun Yoon told Toronto's Globe and Mail, "I sincerely hope the business summit can serve as a platform for public-private collaboration and the starting point of the new normal in the global economic architecture."
As the effects of the latest policy pronouncements begin to be felt, many fear that Toronto will become known as the staging ground for the security model that will be deployed to protect this new architecture.
~~~ Gary Varvel ~~~  |
I'm Not Dreaming
I was a soldier boy
I fought with bravery,
Now I never, ever close my eyes completely
I barely recognize
If god isn't dead,
Now I never, ever close my eyes completely
*Now I never, ever close my eyes completely
Now I never, ever close my eyes completely 
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Parting Shots...
 Obama aims to break free from society's outdated notions of what constitutes a "normal" video address. WASHINGTON-Hailed as a sign of renewed government transparency when they began airing last year, President Barack Obama's weekly video addresses have grown increasingly experimental in recent weeks, raising eyebrows nationwide. Videos like the one that aired Tuesday morning, which begins with Obama outlining his new plan to provide healthier school lunches to the nation's children, but soon devolves into frantic editing, unsettling imagery, and dissonant audio effects, have left many wondering about the president's ultimate message. "I found the whole thing a bit confusing," said New York resident Abe Klein, who added that he has watched Obama's videos transform over time from informative to aesthetically challenging to just plain bizarre. "I don't know if I was supposed to come away thinking that childhood obesity is our nation's next major health crisis, or if Obama wanted us to take the jarring black-and-white footage of a rooster getting its head chopped off literally." "Don't get me wrong, I'm all for these weekly addresses," Klein added. "But the president is starting to freak me out."
Obama, who sources said has been more introspective and isolated in recent months, made his first foray into the avant-garde last March, when he posted a video titled "Red, White, and Doom" to the White House website. In it, the president, seated in the Oval Office with a skull-and-crossbones banner where the American flag would normally be, stares unblinkingly into the camera as the phrase "in God we trust" loops for four minutes and 33 seconds. While it was initially dismissed by the public as a technical error, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer was quick to clarify that the video in fact reflected Obama's changing vision for the country. "The president still wants to continue his dialogue with the American people," Pfeiffer said. "However, he's been getting really into Nam June Paik lately, and is passionate about using new technologies and techniques to communicate his message of hope and progress."
 A still from last month's address on Europe's growing debt crisis, set to the sounds of a heavily distorted foghorn. "And if he smashes the very foundations of modern consumerist culture while he's at it, then all the better," Pfeiffer added. Though the videos are a continuation of the fireside chat tradition begun by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, they mark the first time a president has used weekly addresses as a form of artistic self-expression. Obama's early pieces primarily played with structure: Our Long-Term Strategy In Afghanistan employs Brion Gysin's cut-up technique to reorder the words in a major speech on foreign policy, eventually creating a shocking sound collage that, according to the White House, reveals "a truth previously buried beneath layers of intent." Since then, the president's work has grown more abstract and drawn mixed reviews. Citizens reacted favorably to the absurdist slapstick of Reshaping Wall $treet, which features a man in a pig mask rooting through a garbage pail filled with currency, but were less satisfied with (S)Mother Earth, in which Americans ranging in age from 6 months to 90 years are submerged in oil and found guilty by a clown-faced judge for their role in the recent BP oil spill. "This is an abhorrent waste of federal funds," Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform said of Obama's May 13 video, timestamp. "How can a man overseeing the largest deficit in history justify spending our hard-earned money on some artsy video of him signing the same bill over and over again for 14 straight hours as the distant sound of children's laughter grows in intensity until it becomes unbearably loud and then the entire thing ends with footage of an atom bomb going off? It's just despicable." "Do we really want our tax dollars going toward something so clearly derivative of Sadie Benning's early works?" Norquist added. Nonetheless, a number of critics have embraced Obama's edgier productions. Artforum magazine referred to Obama's oeuvre as "a winking indictment of the institution of the presidency from none other than the president himself," and cited in particular his wildlife conservation video Meat Play as "the direction the office needs to go in if the executive branch is to remain relevant." Though he hinted that his current work-in-progress would be his most ambitious and challenging to date, Obama has largely refused to comment on the controversial material. "My work speaks for itself," Obama said as he applied blackface makeup to prepare for the shooting of a new video called Ask/Tell/Die. "I can't tell the people of our great nation what to think or how to react. That's up to the viewer. All I'm looking for is an honest reaction- something that shocks the bourgeoisie out of its mind-numbing, plastic complacency for once and causes them to sit up and scream from the depths of their rotting bowels, 'Ahhhhh! Who are we and what is the nature of our existence?! We are like cockroaches marching into a bowl of spoiled milk to drown! We are all drowning!'"
"That's all," he added. |
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Issues & Alibis Vol 10 # 27 (c) 07/02/2010
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