UPDATED: Protests in Spain: waiting till the fat lady sings

UPDATE:

The results of the election were exactly what the polls projected: the 15-M Movement appears to have had no affect on the voting... Whether this movement consolidates into something meaningful remains to be seen.

The Socialists got trounced because they applied neoliberal recipes and their voters deserted them, preferring the original to an imitation (Democrats take note).

What is most striking about Spain is that despite very high unemployment, the elections were quiet and without incidents. The protest movement has been non-violent and the atmosphere cheerful. This is due to Spain's society still being based on personal relationships and not just on the cash-nexus. As Dimitri Orlov says, when things get really bad, what you need are friends, friends being defined as people who will do things for you without asking for money in return. I shudder to think what the USA would be like with Spanish unemployment figures.

So yes, Spaniards still have their happy families, because if they didn't, with those levels of unemployment, the 15-M Movement would have been violent, not Gandhian. The United States could certainly benefit by studying the stability of Spanish society under stress.

As to bullfighting, the Mexican bullfighter, Ignacio Garibay, got gored badly in Madrid yesterday by a bull from the ranch of Pablo Romero that weighed 672 kgs. (nice Hemingway touch, nu?)

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I am holding off writing about this till the votes are counted on Sunday's local elections, because till then, it will be difficult to extract any meaning from it except that, up till voting, what we have here is one of those wonderful, very Spanish, bring the family and spend the day, type of enormous fiestas, with lovely, 1960ish, hippy vibes, very well and spontaneously organized by the kids themselves. We went to the Puerta del Sol yesterday twice. Once in the morning and then later in the evening and it was beautiful... the kids are really lovable.

The rightwing is baying to have the riot police clear the square, but the government are behaving very intelligently... As I say, if this significantly affects the voting in any way. Then we we would be looking at a really meaningful protest.

It would seem logical that if people of the left wanted to send a message to the Socialists they would vote for Izquierda Unida, the Communist led coalition of the left,  which would force the Socialists to move more to the left. However, if everybody just stays home and doesn't vote, they will  have four years to regret so doing at their leisure, because the rightwing people always vote. They only win elections in Spain when there is big abstention. So lefties staying home would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. DS

If you'd like to follow all of this live, here below, is the video stream direct from the center of downtown Madrid.

Video clips at Ustream

My Tribute to New York's Finest

 

In some ways, last weekend was not especially remarkable for the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Squad. About 30 new cases came in, typical for the citywide unit of 190 specially trained investigators and supervisors.

But of those cases, among the 6,000 sex-based cases that the squad handles each year, none carried the notoriety of the one that accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, of sexually attacking a housekeeper at a Manhattan hotel. New York Times

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Anybody who reads my blog knows that I am no great admirer of American foreign policy or American militarism and especially not an admirer of the father and mother of  the above mentioned, America's economic system. However, the Strauss-Kahn case has given me a pleasant twinge of patriotic nachus schlepping, something this expat hasn't felt for a long, long time.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, one of the world's most important and powerful men, sexually attacked Nafissatou Diallo, a poor, black, immigrant, single-mother, a  working woman struggling to support her young daughter, and the NYPD went and nailed his bitch ass. Hats off to "New York's Finest"... Sincerely, I get choked up with pride just thinking about it. DS

Strauss-Kahn - an alternative narrative

Warning: speculation in progress

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If ever, bored with reality, I decide to write political thrillers, this is how I would break down the Strauss-Kahn case.

The hotel is French owned... when I heard that my antennae went all aquiver... I was  invaded by the spirits of Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Len Deighton and John LeCarré... this has all the ingredients for one of their tales.

When we talk about the the New York Sofitel, we are talking about a little piece of France in the middle of Manhattan, a little piece of France, which comes under American legal jurisdiction, which is something that has both advantages and disadvatages, depending on how you play them.

New York in case you weren't aware of it, is a spook's paradise, it being simultaneously America's financial center and the home of the United Nations. Imagine the goodies available for the diligent gleaner. Think how convenient it would be for the French intelligence establishment to be able to listen to all the conversations, make video recordings of all the amorous liaisons in a luxury hotel... especially those of the most wealthy and influential French guests. It would seem probable to me that French intelligence has assets of theirs working in the hotel... microphones and video cameras installed or removed along with the dirty towels. To do this they would have to have the tacit permission of the hotel's French owners, if an appeal to their patriotism were not enough to convince them, it would not be difficult to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. So I think it would have been very easy for French intelligence to have organized the downfall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Why in the world would they want to do that?

Do I think Sarkozy is behind all this?

No, I don't, I don't think they would do this for Sarkozy, I think that they are doing it precisely because of the weakness of Sarkozy.

Most Americans reading about this affair think it is about the IMF, but in fact, true or false, it is about France.

And American readers who have understood that much may think that the coming French election was going to be between Sarkozy and Strauss-Kahn, when in fact Sarkozy's popularity has sunken so low that it is quite possible he won't even make it to the second round of those elections.

So again, imagine if a scandal like this were to break during the campaign, or was staged by people close the French far-right, it would, in the case of DSK still winning, leave France in the hands of a totally disgraced and crippled politician or hand the election to Marine Le Pen... This might lead to the break-up of the European Union, the collapse of the euro... either result would be a Pandora's box... a disaster for France and for its establishment. The merest possibility would be too terrible to contemplate.

In my alternate scenario, the downfall of DSK could be seen as the controlled demolition of a building in ruins, before it collapsed on its own, killing innocent pedestrians passing by. Doing it in New York would be simply be using America's implacable legal system to do their dirty work for them.

Happy ending. It gives the Socialist party time to recover from the shock and choose a candidate. Like him or not the French establishment can live with Sarkozy if he survives and wins again and the Socialist contenders: Aubrey, Hollande and Royale are all solid, clean, members of the French establishment and any of them could trounce Marine Le Pen in the run-off.

Is any of this political thriller true? Probably not, but, se non è vero, è ben trovato, it would make an entertaining read on a long flight. DS

PS: In an interview in the Spanish Newspaper El País, the pioneer of  America's "New Journalism", Gay Talese said that in his opinion the leading character of the Strauss-Kahn drama isn't the head of the IMF, but the chambermaid.

Who is the maid?

She is reported to be 32, and an immigrant from Africa, living with a teenage daughter. Investigates the Times: ““They’re good people,” said one neighbor, another African immigrant. “Every time I see her I’m happy because we’re both from Africa. She’s never given a problem for nobody. Never noisy. Everything nice.” Business Insider

Africa is a big, place, I would want to know if she is from francophone Africa, and if she is, does she have family in France, and if so would she or they be interested in obtaining French nationality?

The bigger they are the dumber they fall

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Until this incident, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was favored to take the presidency of France away from Nicholas Sarkozy. Maybe he was set up... Sarkozy would be perfectly capable of that. 

But whether the chambermaid's story is true or not, I can't believe how dumb the head of the IMF is... He was in such a hurry to get away, he even left his cell phone... Not to mention samples of DNA.

I thought that only presidents of the USA did this kind of thing.

The way he behaved was panicky and dumb. A president may be required at times to be criminal, but to be panicky and dumb is unforgivable. DS

"Geronimo"?... A Freudian slip?

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The code name the SEALs gave Osama bin Laden, "Geronimo", gives the game away... Freudian slip, I guess. This is a story that goes way way back... really it is just the dark side of the new technologies that makes it different. 

As we hear all the time, these are tools which "empower" people. If the technologies had existed back then, Geronimo, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would probably have attacked New York and Washington and the Zulus might have trashed London. 

Today we live 21rst century imperialism and it reads a little bit like a cross between Arthur C. Clark and Rudyard Kipling... on LSD. The only thing that gives this all a special taste is America's endless hypocrisy... like Al Capone nattering on about "values" and "that's not who we are".... Yes, in fact, that is "who we are" and we must schlepp the karma. Al Qaeda is just  part of that karma.

There are all sorts of "natives" that have resisted imperial oppression, we could as easily speak of Tipu Sultan as Crazy Horse, but Native-Americans like Sitting Bull and Geronimo are better known to Americans than the Fuzzy-Wuzzys. Most of them were killed or imprisoned and the people who did so were sure they deserved to be. Osama bin Laden was simply -- up till today -- the most wildly successful "native" in history in inflicting pain on his imperial adversaries and probably over time, that is how he will be seen. He showed it could be done... he could be called the Wright Brothers of anti-imperial terrorism.

What will the future bring?

If we keep sticking our noses into other people's affairs, economies, religious practices and local arguments, you can be sure that sooner than later, much, much, worse things than 9/11 will occur on American soil. DS

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us...

 "Torture the one who knows nothing to make him talk, kill the one who knows everything to make him shut up."

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I'm proud to say that Andrés Rábago, who signs, "El Roto" ("the broken one"), is an old friend of mine and it is no stretch to affirm that he is one of the world's finest political cartoonists, able to sum up a complex policy or even a philosophy with only a few words and some shadows. Here is his take on Obama's fine adventure. His email is on the drawing if you'd like to congratulate him.DS

Why Obama won't release the photo of bin Laden. A wise decision

Bullet wound to the head: entry-exit

"I think that, given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk," Mr Obama said.(...) "It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, as a propaganda tool. That's not who we are." BBC

In general, exit wounds are larger than entrance wounds. They are also more irregular in outline, and their edges are everted. They exhibit no abrasion collar, and they do not have any features of secondary muzzle product projectile impact, such as soot soiling, or powder tattooing (Besant-Matthews 2000; Knight 1996).  www.forensicmed.co.uk

Osama bin Laden's 12-year-old daughter watched as her father was shot dead by American special forces, a senior Pakistani intelligence official has told the Guardian.

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Obama's decision not to publish the photo of the dead bin Laden is wise decision albeit a rather desperate one.

People who have been allowed to see the photo all report that there is a large wound over bin Laden's left eye, large enough to have a clear view of his brain. This means that he was shot in the back of the head.

On viewing the photo thousands of forensic surgeons all over the world could quickly calculate the type of bullet and the distance it was fired from.

Before too many days have passed Osama bin Laden's twelve year old daughter will be interviewed by the Arab media. In the interview she will tearfully profess that her father was unarmed and captured when he was summarily executed by America's "A-Team", the highly trained Seals.

The photograph of bin Laden would be physical evidence that her story is true.

This of course would inflame public opinion and not only in the world of Islam.

Thus, at this point, the president's decision is a wise one. However, one must ask if the decision to not bring bin Laden to trial and to summarily execute him in front of witnesses after capturing him, and then showing the photograph around, after leaving the witnesses behind, were wise decisions. DS

Et Maintenant?

"There are a lot of doubts," echoed Magdy Suleiman as he was fixing falafel sandwiches for a lunch-hour crowd in Cairo's middle-class Agouza neighborhood Tuesday. "Why did they catch him now?"(...) In cafes in downtown Riyadh, bin Laden's birthplace, men Tuesday repeated another long-standing belief among some Arabs: that the terrorist mastermind never existed. "To be honest, I've never been convinced that there was such a person as Osama bin Laden," said Osama al-Obeid, a Saudi banker.  Wall Street Journal 

By midday yesterday, I had three phone calls from Arabs, all certain that it was Bin Laden's double who was killed by the Americans – just as I know many Iraqis who still believe that Saddam's sons were not killed in 2003, nor Saddam really hanged. In due course, al-Qa'ida will tell us. Of course, if we are all wrong and it was a double, we're going to be treated to yet another videotape from the real Bin Laden – and President Barack Obama will lose the next election. Robert Fisk - Independent

In reality, Bin Laden's death changes nothing, except perhaps to ensure that, economy permitting, Barack Obama is re-elected. The occupation of Iraq, the Af-Pak war and Nato's Libyan adventure look set to continue. Israel-Palestine is stalemated, though the despotisms in the Arab world that Obama has denounced are under pressure – except the worst of them all, Saudi Arabia. Tariq Ali - Guardian

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You have to hand it to Obama he took the chance to win the prize. But he may yet have cause to regret his triumph.

There seems to be a sour feeling hanging over the whole thing. The disturbing story bin Laden's daughter tells from Pakistani custody and the conflicting and confused response(s) from Washington have taken a bit of the glowing edge off the whole thing.

We now wait for the other shoe to drop.

If Al Qaeda, or what is left of it, cannot produce anything spectacular in response to the death of their icon, something, if not as grandiose as 9-11, at least as professional... not a schoolboy wearing exploding diapers, but something stunning, then we will have come the end of an era and we will have to hunt around to find the beginning of a new one

Now that the Soviet Union no longer exists and Osama bin Laden is dead, who will take on the indispensable role of the "official villain" or "bad guy", so the "indispensable nation", can be "indispensable"? Who will be the Hitler du jour, without whom it will be difficult or impossible for the USA to justify its serial invading of small countries which is what justifies in turn its massive military expenditures?

Osama bin Laden, who began his career fighting the USSR in Afghanistan was about the last relic of the Cold War left standing, unless you count the ancient Fidel Castro... What will they find to keep the military-industrial complex up and running... You can be sure that they will find something.

As Gilbert Becaud put it... What now? DS

Now what? (heavily updated)

Update: I get the strange feeling that Osama bin Laden was like a bottle of champagne that people keep in the refrigerator to open on some future, unspecified "special occasion". Since he was obviously under Pakistani surveillance and probably has been for years, I'm interested in understanding the timing of this great day.

The "mysterious force" that seems to be at work here is the collapse of supply side economics, otherwise known as "voodoo" economics or Reaganomics, which has led to a situation where the USA must cut costs and raise taxes or go the way of the Wiemar Republic. This is very upsetting for those few who have enough money to influence public opinion, such as the Koch brothers, Murdoch and of course Trump, plus many other less conspicuous billionaires. Nothing more mysterious than that.

Recently added to this poisonous brew is the slow motion collapse of America's position in the center of the world's oil production, the Middle East, otherwise known as the "Arab Spring", which is being sold as a triumph of our "values", but which is, in fact, an unqualified disaster for the USA both economically and geopolitically.

My tentative reading of the bin Laden "job" is that Obama was looking weak and now needed some of what Dubya called "political credit" in order to raise taxes, cut entitlements and declare "victory" in Afghanistan and Iraq and get out ASAP, because the USA is broke.

Bin Laden had been located for quite some time and like the bottle of champagne kept in the fridge for special occasions that I mention, now was the time to uncork it and drink it... get people feeling good before major surgery.

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Nearly ten years after the attack on the Twin Towers, it is reported that Osama bin Laden has been killed in a military town in Pakistan by American commandos and his body quickly dumped into the ocean. At this writing there is no photograph of his corpse.

The question that immediately springs to my mind is that, although Americans will feel a lot better, what will  be the real impact  of bin Laden's death (in battle) in an Islamist culture of martyrdom, a culture of countless suicide bombers? Are they expected to pack up and go home on hearing the news. To be killed in jihad was presumed to be bin Laden's heart's desire. To have captured him and brought him to trial would have certainly been more demoralizing.

Do Al Qaeda still have the capacity to retaliate significantly? That is the real question in the coming days and weeks. DS

Donald Trump, or the death rattle of "Voodoo Economics"

I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman for myself. Consequently, I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power to repel, is annulled by money.(...) I am a detestable, dishonorable, unscrupulous and stupid man, but money is honoured so also is its possessor. Money is the highest good, and so its possessor is good. Besides, money saves me the trouble of being dishonest; therefore, I am presumed honest. Third Manuscript of Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Karl Marx, 1844*

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You may wonder, as I often do, why characters like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman. Glenn Beck and now, Donald Trump are literally crawling out of the political woodwork these days. What is the force that draws people who would make Huey Long look like Abe Lincoln into the limelight?  What power is it that allows seemingly serious consideration for the highest offices in the land to men and women who, not so long ago, would have been simply laughed off the stage?

The power of money of course... terror stricken money.

Why is money, the most powerful of man-made forces afraid?

Basically because today's rich people are in very serious danger of having to pay taxes again and they have gotten out of the habit of doing so.

With today's economic crisis we are looking at what appears to be the terminal phase of what Bush "the elder" called "Voodoo Economics" and most academics refer to as "Supply Side Economics":

Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that overall economic well-being is maximized by lowering the barriers to producing goods and services (the "Supply Side" of the economy). By lowering such barriers, consumers are thought to benefit from a greater supply of goods and services at lower prices. Typical supply-side policy would advocate generally lower income tax and capital gains tax rates (to increase the supply of labor and capital), smaller government and a lower regulatory burden on enterprises (to lower costs). Although tax policy is often mentioned in relation to supply-side economics, supply-side economists are concerned with all impediments to the supply of goods and services and not just taxation. Wikipedia

Well, we have seen the final result of massive deregulation of the economy and radical tax cuts for the wealthy: the USA, supposedly the richest nation in the history of humanity, is courting bankruptcy... Being warned by Moody's and the IMF, like traditionally impoverished Greece and Portugal are today and banana republics were in the recent past.

If another and even worse crisis isn't to ruin the country once and for all, then the way forward is fairly obvious... in fact, much too obvious for some people's taste.

The way forward would basically involve revoking the policies that caused the crisis is the first place.

It would include very detailed and rigorous national and international regulation, the closing of offshore tax havens and of course raising taxes back to where they were before Reagan began to tinker with the economy.

This (naturally) has the wealthy in a panic, they would pay off the nation's debt by laying off policemen and firemen and reducing support and entitlements for America's elder citizens and a long list of the vulnerable and needy and of course these solutions are so psychopathicly antisocial, that  if the American people were allowed to think straight for even a moment they would tar and feather the people who propose them... and raise those taxes, close all the loopholes and regulate a more robustly crisis-proof system... so obviously anything that muddies the water, distracts from something so clear and simple will find ample funding and echo in the media whose owners just happen to be belong to the super rich themselves.... And having Caspar Milquetoast in the White House isn't helping one bit. DS

PS. Just for fun, here's another quote from the same text that tops this post:

Let us assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, etc. If you wish to enjoy art you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you wish to influence other people you must be a person who really has a stimulating an encouraging effect upon others. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return, i.e., if you are not able, by the mere manifestation of yourself as a loving person, to make yourself a beloved person, then your love is impotent and a misfortune.

The world crisis as it develops

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The other day we went shopping at a huge hypermarket of the French, "Carrefour" chain on the outskirts of Madrid. We hadn't been there for about a year and we were struck by how the quality of the store-brand, discount merchandise had deteriorated in that time. Not that long ago it was possible to buy quite nice things at discount: bluejeans, appliances, etc, for very little money. The prices have held, but what is for sale is shoddy junk. This is a trend that I am noticing in all over the discount stores: hypermarkets, supermarkets, etc.

Obviously to avoid raising prices in the middle of a recession, the merchants are looking for ever more cut rate suppliers...  this appears to be the last "firewall" against inflation and when it is broken it will be difficult  for the great majority to continue to consume, especially since credit has tightened and jobs continue to be offshored; again, an attempt to buck the inflationary trend.

If the consumers in the wealthy countries can no longer afford to consume, many factories in the third world will be closed and their workers laid off, which will lead to turbulence in those countries, where workers and their families are much more exposed to the rising cost of basic food items... and so it goes.

There follow a series of quotes to fill in a possible profile of what awaits us in the coming months:

“The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit.” [Marx - Capital, Volume III, Chapter 30]

(...) High inflation endangers China’s status as the low-cost workshop for the world.(...) Food prices are soaring, and the government said on Friday that the consumer price index in March had risen 5.4 percent, its sharpest increase in nearly three years.(...) Beijing and many municipal governments have required employers to raise wages. The government has raised minimum wages in the hope of reducing the big income gap between the rich and the poor, and the urban and rural.(...)  “China is moving into a new era, a new norm,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong. (...)  In some cases, retailers are bidding for goods at prices the exporters consider too low.“I hear that many Chinese exporters are rejecting orders from Wal-Mart and other Western retailers,” Mr. Tao said. “I’ve been covering the Chinese economy for a long time, and I’ve never heard that before.”(emphasis mine) New York Times

"The hedge funds are now active in commodities and are playing the futures contracts, where upwards of 30 million tons of soybeans for future delivery are contracted for every day. They are also buying the companies that stock grains.(...) Futures purchases of agricultural commodities classically have been the means by which a limited number of traders stabilized future commodity prices and enabled farmers to finance themselves through future sales. Speculative purchases have no other purpose than to make money for the speculators, who hold their contracts to drive up current prices with the intention not of selling the commodities on the real future market, but of unloading their holdings onto an artificially inflated market, at the expense of the ultimate consumer. Even the general public can now play the speculative game; most banks offer investment funds specializing in metals, oil, and more recently, food products. It is astonishing in the present situation that the international financial institutions and government regulators have done little to control or banish this parasitical and anti-social practice. The myth of the benevolent and ultimately impartial market prevails against all contrary evidence." William Pfaff

"The social theories of Karl Marx were long ago discarded as of little value, even to revolutionaries. But he did warn that capitalism had a tendency to generate its own crises. Indeed, the spread of capitalism, and its accelerated industrialization and wealth-creation, may have fomented the food-inflation crisis — by dramatically accelerating competition for scarce resources." Tony Karon - Time

It has always seemed to me that Marx's predictions were foiled by availability of ever cheaper and more abundant consumer goods and ever cheaper and more abundant credit with which to buy them, despite stagnant or falling wages. This formula seems to be in crisis now. It will be interesting to see how we wiggle out of this one. DS

"A Hard Day's Night" remembered

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I saw this film one sultry, summer night in Dalton Georgia, of all places, and two days later I joined a crowd of university students that were playing and singing the songs from the film in Washington Square in New York. Not long after that I saw the Beatles perform the same songs in the surrealistic atmosphere of Madrid's bullring... with Franco's police liberally using billy clubs on any overenthusiastic fans. That sequence of events was real globalization, with no Facebook or Twitter required.

I don't think such a joyous worldwide mania as that one could possibly happen today, if for no other reason than today's market is too "segmented". 

I saw this clip on the New Yorker online and thought I would bring it to the attention of those too young to remember that magic moment and those strangely innocent times. DS

An Easter Meditation

I wrote this piece way back in 2011 and I think it still makes sense, I hope you do too. DS

The other day, a small child, let us call her "Virginia", asked me a pair of searching questions: "where does the Easter Bunny get his Easter eggs?" and "do rabbits lay eggs?".

At a loss as to what to tell her, It occurred to me that the framing of her questions themselves was reminiscent of  much of America's present political polemics: a lot of talk avoiding the central question... The Easter Bunny doesn't really exist.... just something invented to sell more stuff.

I would maintain that a huge disinformation industry and a 7 by 24 lobbying and think-tank blitz exists simply to keep Americans from thinking about the salient fact of American life, which is illustrated in the following graph:

So we see that the top one percent of Americans possess 43% of the nation's financial wealth and the bottom 80%, only seven percent of that wealth. This leads to a society which is revealed in the next graph:

I'm proud of you Sir"
Posted by Skinny-G de Alcatraz on Friday, February 5, 2016

So thanks to an enormous effort of the "management of consent" it has been decided that, America being deep in debt and fighting two (three?) wars, cuts are going to have to be made in American's social entitlements, which are the most meager and practically non-existent in the developed world, while it is not "realistic" or even ethical to significantly raise the taxes of that one-percent who owns 43% of the nation's wealth.

The contemporary rationale for oppressing the poor is national debt and deficit, which could otherwise be relieved only by raising taxes on the rich and requiring corporations to bear an equitable share of the national tax burden, which in the Republican party, and a part of the Democratic party today, is unacceptable (and plausibly thought politically suicidal, in view of the current alignment of available political funds and of the legislation governing campaign practice – quite possibly irreversible, since this alignment would seem automatically to disallow reversal). (...) Global war has silenced and numbed America. The national deficit is moral. The people pay in deprivation, indigence, ill-health, insecurity, the humiliation of men and women who cannot find work, support their offspring or properly educate their children in what it should mean to be an American. William Pfaff

It seems obvious to me that if people could think clearly for even a moment, the majority, say 80%, would demand that taxes on the upper one-percent be raised to Scandinavian levels, tax loopholes plugged, offshore tax-havens closed down and defense spending cut to a least only more then the next five countries in the list instead of the next ten, and the money thus raised spent on moving the quality of life in the USA up the second graph to at least the standing of say, Belgium's.

Instead, in the midst of all this mishagoss; just one example of hundreds more: people are being led to discuss Donald Trump as a serious presidential candidate. I would say that a significant portion of the 43% of the nations' wealth that is owned by that one-percent is being spent by them to maintain that sort of level of debate... anything but talking about America's central facts as shown by the two graphs

So, to answer the little girl's questions: yes, Virginia, in Washington, rabbits do lay colored eggs. DS

A fairy tale as grim as Grimm could ever be (reprint)

I posted this first on December 8th, 2010, but it seems even more relevant today than it did way back then. DS

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Once upon a time in a far off and pleasant land, during the reign of King George the Idiot, there lived a young man who dreamed of fame and greatness.

He yearned so long and so deeply, that the Good Fairy was moved by his constant pleading and praying and appeared before him in all her beauty and magic splendor.

"Young man," she said, "because of the depth and especially because of the unusual insistence of your desires, I have decided to grant you three wishes. After each wish I shall disappear until the wish has been granted and then return to grant your next request. Now, think hard, what is the first boon that you wish for?"

The young man thought for a moment and said, "Oh Good Fairy, I would like to write my life story and have everyone in the kingdom read it and think that I am wonderful."

"Really?" asked the Good Fairy, "Since you are very young and haven't done very much, that will be a lot of work for me... Are you sure?"

"Puhleeeeeeeeeeze!" the young man begged.

"So be it!" said the Good Fairy, and disappeared.

No sooner had the Good Fairy left then the young man sat down at his table where the few sheets of paper on it magically multiplied into hundreds, and soon a magic quill pen appeared out of thin air, and taking it in his hand he began to write well into the night, as if his hand had a life of its own, which indeed it had.

He awoke the next morning to find that a thick manuscript sat on the table before him. As in a trance he took it in his arms and presented it to a publisher, who, as if hypnotized,  immediately ordered all other work in his print shop to stop and for all the printers to work at nothing else but printing the young man's life story.

The very next day the freshly printed life story of the young man appeared in all the book shops of the land, and it sold out immediately. In no time at all the entire Kingdom could talk of little else than the young man's fascinating life story.

He sat at home enjoying his new found fame, when the Good Fairy appeared for a second time.

"It is time for your second wish." the beautiful Good Fairy said, "Have you thought of what you want to wish for?"

"As a matter of fact I have." the young man replied, "I would like a golden tongue and the power of rhetoric, so that all who hear me will be enchanted by whatever I say, no matter how pompous and platitudinous it might be".

"That won't be so difficult." the Good Fairy said, "Talk is cheap. Are you sure that is all you want?"

"Puhleeeeeeeeeeeze!" the young man implored.

"So be it!" said the Good Fairy, and disappeared.

In a short time everyone in the entire kingdom sat in awe of the young man's marvelous speeches, their mouths dropping open, while visions of sugar-plums danced their heads, as they dreamed of the beautiful land of milk and honey that the young man's golden tongue evoked. Soon crowds followed him wherever he went hanging on his every word.

The Good Fairy appeared for the third time.

"Think carefully young man" she said slowly and gravely, "This is your last wish..." She paused, "Have you decided what you want now?"

"Oh yes!" he cried out, "Old King George is abdicating... I want to be King!"

The Good Fairy looked at him steadily and for a brief instant a cloud of melancholy crossed her charming features. "Are you absolutely sure, young man? George wanted the job as much as you do and look at what a horrible time he is having, all he wants to do now is to retire into the forest and cut brush like a common wood cutter. Are you absolutely sure?"

"Puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!" the young man wailed.

She shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"So be it!" said the Good Fairy and disappeared.

No sooner than she had disappeared a great clamor rose up in the land and great cheering crowds appeared before the young man's home and he was carried on their shoulders though the gates of the palace and crowned king of the land with all pomp and splendor. Masses were sung and soldiers paraded and all was feasting and wassailing for days on end as the kingdom reveled in the joy of having such a splendid new ruler.

And then...

The magic spell wore off: the money lenders appeared with insatiable demands and the treasury was emptied by endless wars and sadness gripped the people. In the market place and in the countryside the peasants and nobles muttered and plotted against the new king. The adoring courtiers that once clustered around him, showering him with flattery, abandoned him to his fate and returned to their homes to write their memoirs.

The young man tried to speak to the people as of old, but his tongue seemed glued to his palate and nothing but mumbling issued from his mouth.

One night in the darkened palace, with his hair turned gray, he slumped on his throne in the empty throne room, abandoned by all, weeping disconsolately and ruing his fate.

"Woe is me," he sobbed, "How did I ever get into this mess?"

And then...

The Good Fairy appeared for a fourth time.

The young king fell on his knees and implored her, "Can you help me?" he groaned.

"Sorry, you're on your own now, buster", she replied, a hardness he had never seen before was in her eyes and a coldness he had never heard before was in her voice... once so sweet, now metallic. Slowly her beauty vanished and before him stood a hideous hag.

"You had your three wishes" the apparition said, "I gave you everything you asked for. You could have asked for wisdom, you could have asked for a long life and the gift of contentment, but this is what you wished for, so you have made this misery all by yourself."

"I wish I had never seen you!" the young king shouted, "I wish you didn't exist!"

"So be it." said the Good Fairy and disappeared for the last time.

Moral: Everyone has their wants and their wishes but if a fairy asks, don't tell. DS

Solidarity: the talk and the walk

What have they done with President Obama? What happened to the inspirational figure his supporters thought they elected? Who is this bland, timid guy who doesn’t seem to stand for anything in particular?(...) Mr. Obama is conspicuously failing to mount any kind of challenge to the philosophy now dominating Washington discussion — a philosophy that says the poor must accept big cuts in Medicaid and food stamps; the middle class must accept big cuts in Medicare (actually a dismantling of the whole program); and corporations and the rich must accept big cuts in the taxes they have to pay. Shared sacrifice! Paul Krugman - New York Times

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home. Bob Herbert's last column in the New York Times

(I)n agreeing Friday night to what he called the largest annual spending cut in the nation’s history, the president further decoupled himself from his party in Congress, exacerbating concerns among some Democrats about whether he is really one of them and is willing to spend political capital to defend their principles on bigger battles ahead. New York Times

David Seaton's News Links

I wonder if all those kids, the ones who worked so hard to get out the vote for Barack Obama in 2008 and thrilled to his "Audacity of Hope" and "We are the change we seek", knew that what they were electing was an animal many thought to be long extinct: a moderate-Republican?

And I wonder if now that they know the score, they are going ring all those doorbells for him again in 2012?

He is letting a lot of people down, who put a lot of hope and trust in him.

You can bet that the budget cuts are going to come out of "entitlements", that is to say, protection for the vulnerable members of society, and certainly not from the budget of what Steve Walt calls,

(...) a military establishment that costs more than all other militaries put together and that is used not to defend American soil but to fight wars mostly on behalf of other people.

I thought it might be interesting to talk about what trust and "solidarity" really mean. To begin with it means standing by the people that you have caused to believe that they can count on you to stand by them when things get really tough for them. Solidarity means "having someone's back." Not letting down the people who are counting on you to protect them. This is sometimes painful and often dangerous.

To illustrate this concept of solidarity I have chosen a short, but powerful video, taken from the Portuguese version of bullfighting.

As you may know, in Portugal, they don't kill the bull, so at the end of the tourada, the animal must be subdued and led alive from the ring. This "final act" is often done in traditional manner, by a group of young amateurs called "Forcados" who take control of the animal with their bare hands.

Belonging to one of these forcado clubs is considered an ultimate masculine rite of passage in Portugal, like playing varsity football in the USA, with the difference that "a pega de cara" is much more dangerous than football, for even with his horns padded the Iberian fighting bull is like a half-ton Rottweiler. Things can go terribly wrong, and when that happens, as the saying goes, "that is when you find out who your real friends are".

Watch this short film and learn the basics of solidarity.

For a long time I have wondered who Obama thought he was fooling... and I have finally come to the conclusion that he is fooling himself.  He is simply afraid to fight and he covers it with talk. I find his lack of self-knowledge frightening.

If he really thinks he got a "deal" from his negotiation, that the Republican Congress is going to go quietly along with what Boehner agreed to, then his self-delusion is total. Read this from former Clinton adviser, morphed into ultra-right agitator a toute faire, Dick Morris.

It is the duty of every Republican Congressman to vote no on this terrible deal. It violates our campaign promises to the American people. We promised $100 billion of cuts and we delivered $38 billion ($62 billion on a twelve month basis). In the Republican House's first real test out of the box it has broken the promise over which it was elected.(...) And the lesson is this: We need to purify our party and purge it of the likes of John Boehner and all those Congressmen who vote for the budget sellout. The Tea Party must take the lead in this purifying fire. We must not let the RINOs win! Dick Morris

This was the ground where he should have made his stand. He had everything to gain by drawing a line in the sand there and declaring, "no pasarán".

The president and his handlers seem to have forgotten what a near run thing the 2008 election was until Lehman Brothers went down, and how important the enthusiasm of his base was to to his final victory. This is the battle where he could have broken the Tea Party, split the Republicans and coasted to victory in 2012. What he has done is split the Democrats and alienate progressives and perhaps open himself up to a challenge from his own party or from an independent from the left who inherits the spirit for change that he so fraudulently invoked in 2008. DS

Repent! The end is near... or maybe not

Administration officials said that nearly 800,000 federal workers would probably be told to stop working if a deal was not reached in the next two days. Small business loans would stop. Tax returns filed on paper would not be processed. Government Web sites would go dark. And federal loan guarantees for new mortgages would become unavailable. Speaking to reporters on a morning conference call, a senior administration official said the cumulative impact of the shutdown “would have a significant impact on our economic momentum.” New York Times

David Seaton's News Links

I have to admit that I still haven't quite gotten over seeing the Oscar winning documentary, "Inside Job", which is described by its director, Charles Ferguson as being about "the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption". I found myself especially depressed by the part America's most prestigious educational institutions have been playing in this corruption. This is as if America's mind itself were corrupted, with unimaginably negative consequences for the country.

A healthy intellectual community is vital, central, to any meaningful change.  For at bottom the battle to be fought politically must be first be fought intellectually and if America's intellectuals are corrupt, who is to fight it? As the Bible says, "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."

What is the battle that has to be fought? Steve Walt has written a powerful paragraph that shows the outlines of it:

Since the mid-1960s, American conservatism has waged a relentless and successful campaign to convince U.S. voters that it is wasteful, foolish, and stupid to pay taxes to support domestic programs here at home, but it is our patriotic duty to pay taxes to support a military establishment that costs more than all other militaries put together and that is used not to defend American soil but to fight wars mostly on behalf of other people. In other words, Americans became convinced that it was wrong to spend tax revenues on things that would help their fellow citizens (like good schools, health care, roads, and bridges, high-speed rail, etc.), but it was perfectly OK to tax Americans (though of course not the richest Americans) and spend the money on foreign wars. And we bought it. Moreover, there doesn't seem to be an effective mechanism to force the president to actually face and confront the trade-offs between the money he spends on optional wars and the domestic programs that eventually have to be cut back home.  Stephen M. Walt

I confess I don't see any way of winning that battle as things stand today other than if the conservative movement simply collapses under the weight of its own stupidity, unfortunately damaging millions of people's lives and welfare in the process. I wonder how many dumb things anyone can do on borrowed money, for how long?

I am reminded of Marx's much ridiculed prediction that capitalism would eventually collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions.  Where he went wrong, in my humble opinion, was imagining that a revolution would hurry the process. I think he made that error out of the natural and very human desire to see things we would like to happen, happen when we are still alive to see them happen. 

Life is very short and a human being's power to imagine future utopias nearly infinite. How many millenarians over the centuries, have sold everything and then sat in a field waiting for the world to end?  Humans are always seeing signs that the end is near. Today we have the Rapture movement to prove that this waiting hopefully for the world to end is just part of the contradictory and tragic nature of our species. So, in my opinion Marx succumbed to this most human of traits, wishful thinking, when he predicted revolution bringing the end of capitalism and the instrument with which to effect the liberation of humanity. However, inevitably the world will end someday. Won't it?

On the other hand his analysis of the forces within the capitalist system, those which could cause its final collapse seem to me as rationally scientific as a seismologist discussing the San Andreas Fault.... On examining the fault scientists know that something terrible is bound to happen sometime, but the they don't know when, maybe tomorrow or maybe in 300 years. The idea of a revolution causing the collapse of capitalism is like thinking that if all the inhabitants of Los Angeles jumped up and down simultaneously, that this would cause the famous earthquake called, "the big one" to occur. But just because revolution has failed doesn't mean that capitalism is safe, because it can fail all on its own and there is no guarantee that anything better will automatically replace it.

The prime reason that the world's left(s?) appears so helpless today in the face of capitalism is that capitalism has become a truly international or better said, "a-national" movement. Today many corporations are even headquartered officially in offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes. They are not controlled by any nation, while the left always, despite singing "The Internationale",  is inevitably attached to the states they inhabit and the only state where a revolution might actually change the whole world, The United States of America, is the state least likely to ever see one.

However just like the Rapturettes probably all we can do is wait and hope. DS

Libya for Dummies: the lipstick doctrine

The Lipstick Doctrine

In the Victorian age, the British once sang – “We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do/ We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” The Libyan intervention feels like a last reprise of that old tune, rather than a bold statement for a new age. Gideon Rachman - Financial Times

The president seemed to provide little guidance for what position he would take in other, more vital nations in the region now roiled by an “Arab Spring” of popular uprising. Nor did Mr. Obama’s speech on Monday shed light on whether the president would use force in other trouble spots. - New York Times

David Seaton's News Links

We now have an "Obama Doctrine", which after Guantanamo and Afghanistan, might be defined, paraphrasing Groucho Marx,  "This is my doctrine, if you don't like it, I've got others".

This "doctrine" has all the rigor of something that doctors in British emergency rooms call the "Dirt Index", which is arrived at by multiplying the number of the patient's tattoos by the number of the patient's missing teeth, which gives us the exact number of days since the patient last had a bath. This is just a way of making a joke of a bad smell that has to be dealt with.

What is happening in Libya is very simple, but it is connected to some things that are quite complicated.

The simple part is that if we ignore all the R2P (Responsibility to Protect) drivel -- Congo, Bahrain, Syria, Myanmar  etc, need not apply --  perhaps it may be noted that, a short hop away, just across the Mare Nostrum from the wealthy European Union, which houses NATO, America's only real allies; outside the troubled Middle East; this side of the Persian Gulf; this side of the Suez Canal; far from energy-rich Russia; in a country with very few people and unchallenging geography; controlled by a very awkward character with no friends left; a hair-challenged tyrant who is opposed by a ragtag group of desperate and poorly armed nobodies, people who can be bought for a song; just waiting to become a UN protectorate, while they develop "democratic institutions"... lies a huge amount of oil.

"Low hanging fruit", you might call it.

As an anonymous commentator on my previous post suggested:

"At present prices, Libyan oil production is about $185 million a day. Amortizing the development costs of weapons that are mostly exported at $100 million a day for a month is a bargain if it gets you hooked up with $200 million a day for the next 3 decades."

So at least if we remove all the gooey humanitarian intervention cant and as long as almost none of our people get hurt, this operation does make some sense. Nothing particularly brave and noble about it all, but it makes sense.

The rest of the situation, like they say on Facebook, is "complicated".

The American media is full of rejoicing about the shared democratic values of the "Arab Spring", the president speaks soaringly about being "on the right side of history"... talk about your putting lipstick on a pig.

What the "Arab Spring" -- the empowering of the "Arab street" -- means is that America's position in the Middle East, if not totally collapsed, has been made infinitely more complicated. The last thing the USA has ever wanted is for Middle Eastern governments to follow the opinion of their subjects (oops, citizens), as the people of that region tend to frown on "Zionists and crusaders". Supporting "security states" has been America's modus operandi  in the Middle East for many years. The people who own stuff in the region have built their lives around those policies... and they are being left out to dry.

 

People who had been mainstays of American policies for decades and did our dirty work for us without question are being abandoned without ceremony.  Remaining power elites in the area and beyond have seen that being a lockstep ally of the USA is of little survival value when push comes to shove. And the new power elites that may arise, no matter what ideology they may profess, will have taken note of how little value we had  for their predecessors in their hour of need, and plan accordingly. 

A disaster. Instability in the Persian Gulf is practically guaranteed for many years to come... Certainly the European Union's access to Middle Eastern oil has been made more problematic.

Since it never rains but what it pours, this has all happened precisely at the moment when Japan's catastrophe has taken nuclear power off the menu of solutions for the energy shortfall.

The winner in this situation, is of course Europe's eastern neighbor Russia, which has all the oil and gas that the EU might need. 

Bottom line, the United States can no longer guarantee Europe's energy supply. 

Russia can. 

Russia abstained on the Libyan resolution.

Ironies of history: the USSR has disappeared and Russia has just won the Cold War.

Which takes us to another abstainer: Germany.

The Germans have been taking a lot of harsh criticism for their abstention from the UN Libya resolution, however it may prove to have been a brilliant move.

As far as France, Britain and reluctantly the United States is concerned this entire operation is predicated on the idea that as soon as his air force was destroyed Qaddafi would simply dry up and blow away, fly up his fundament and disappear. This doesn't seem to be happening. As I said in a previous post, Libya's "Brother Leader", is a very tough old bird and it very well may be that he cannot be defeated without the "coalition" putting "boots on the ground"... something they have repeatedly said they are not prepared to do and which the UN resolution doesn't provide cover for. If they do decide to use ground forces to bring down Qaddafi and control Libya the consequences could be dire for France and Britain...  As Max Hastings wrote in the Financial Times:

The Americans remain irritably aware that they have been bullied into participation in a speculative adventure, for which they are obliged to do the heavy lifting, because the British and French cheerleaders lack the firepower. For instance, of 112 cruise missiles fired at Libya on Sunday night when the offensive began, just three were British, and one of those got stuck in its launch tube.

It is obvious that to decisively defeat Qaddafi, bring the post-Qaddafi situation under control so that "free" Libya does not turn into a rest and recreation center cum cash cow for Al Qaeda, American military involvement will be needed indefinitely. Deeply indebted America cannot afford it and there is little or no public support for it. Horrible as he is, Qaddafi may still be the best option: he has been at the same time horrible and the best option for over forty years.

So, if Qaddafi wins his civil war, negotiations will have to take place in order to renew access to his oil (so near and yet so far). Guess which country is uniquely placed to lead those negotiations? The only European power that abstained... Germany, of course.

At this point Germany holds not only a possible key to the Libyan oil, its cooperation with Russia in the Nord Stream gas pipeline gives them a vital key to northern Europe's energy needs. This is added to the reality that as by far Europe's most powerful economy, Germany holds the keys to the survival of the euro and ultimately the European Union itself. So, without firing a shot, Germany has secured many of the objectives, certainly the "place in the sun", which it sought at the cost of ruin and devastation in World Wars One and Two.

As to NATO, if its founding mission objective was famously, to "keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down" as of this moment it has failed, and this Libyan operation is the dramatization of that failure.

Sometimes in modern history these small, "colonial" incidents like  the "Fashoda Incident" of 1898 can be seen, with 20/20 hindsight, to mark a turning point in international relations. It may be that in a few years this Libyan adventure will be seen as such a turning point, the end of one paradigm and the birth of a new one, whose shape we can only see imperfectly now. DS