To blog or not to blog, that is the question...

A few months ago, I took a pause in blogging. The appearance of Donald Trump as President of the United States took the wind out of my sails, not so much Trump himself, horrid as he is, but Trump as a symptom and a symbol of ruinous decadence. It was like seeing an old friend suddenly getting horribly thin, or finding a loved one suddenly lost in depression, no longer taking care of their appearance, not washing, not changing their clothes. 

One sure thing has come to me from from all of this. I am grateful that I have no children and thus leave no innocent grandchildren to face the world that is coming. I realize that those of us born right after World War Two, in either the USA or Western Europe, have lived to be elderly in a truly Golden Age of peace, prosperity and health that is more than probably going to disappear forever.

In the following weeks and months, I hope to write some sort of coherent analysis of some of the facets of this descent into chaos. For the moment I am collecting articles that my instinct tells me are relevant and that may help me to write something useful in the future. I am posting them to my twitter account. @David_Seaton, if you care to read them and draw your own conclusions.

In the meantime, the only way I can fully express the dread I feel is in poetry.

Today I leave you with this sample:

Futurology

The old and toothless of our tribe

Tell the tale

That before the beginning of time

Even before the mountains began to glow in the dark

An orange baboon ruled the world

And the legend has it

That our land of tears,

Of ashes,

And of dust

Was,

Once upon a time,

A land of hopes and dreams

DS

ISIS: Obama's Vietnam?

Better than anything else I have come across, the two quotes below sum up, in just a few words, the enormous clusterfuck into which the USA is entering in its mission to "degrade and destroy" the ISIS.

I wouldn't want my country to help the defendants of Kobani because Kobani is held by the PKK, and Turkey has been at war with the PKK for 30 years. Why should we stand in the way of Isis on this particular occasion? After all, Isis has already carried out untold massacres in just about every other Syrian and Iraqi town that it has invaded to date. Why extend a degree of mercy to Kurdish terrorists that has been denied to the Christians of Maloula or Shiite Turkomans of Iraq? Let Isis carry on with its grizzly work. Our soldiers cannot be placed in the line of fire to rescue the same Kurds who were exploding land mines under their feet. Ahmet T. (comment) -  Financial Times

The Sunni states are unable to defend the region from the disciplined, aggressive, but relatively small, lightly equipped forces of IS. Despite lavish expenditures, extensive training programs, and impressive numbers of battalions and squadrons, Gulf armies are deeply flawed by corruption, tribal and sectarian fissures, and poor leadership. There is no reason to expect reform, especially when outside forces are available to provide security. Regional security is also limited by sectarian hostility, which has reached new highs with the demise of Sunni control in Iraq and the rise of Iran's nuclear program. Shia troops from Iran are unable to act decisively in Iraq without triggering fears and reactions from Sunni states. Sunni troops cannot intervene without triggering the same responses in Iran. Brian M Downing - Asia Times

If this war goes much further and it certainly looks like going much, much, further, it could turn out to be infinitely more dangerous and destructive, for all concerned: humanly, economically and politically, than the war in Vietnam ever was. 

The ways that this could all spin out of control are too uncountable for any amateur Cassandra like me to number. Conventional wisdom is that after the demise of the USSR, World War Three is unthinkable, but I think that if anyone in Hollywood were trying to dream up a way of starting it, America's entering this whirlpool would make for quite a believable scenario. DS

Nobody knows you when you're down and out

First it was the 2007 financial crisis. Then it became the 2008 financial crisis. Next it was the downturn of 2008-2009. Finally, in mid-2009, it was dubbed the “Great Recession.” And, with the business cycle’s shift onto an upward trajectory in late 2009, the world breathed a collective a sigh of relief. We would not, it was believed, have to move on to the next label, which would inevitably contain the dreaded D-word.(...) By 2011, it was clear – at least to me – that the Great Recession was no longer an accurate moniker. It was time to begin calling this episode “the Lesser Depression.”(...) A year and a half ago, those who expected a return by 2017 to the path of potential output – whatever that would be – estimated that the Great Recession would ultimately cost the North Atlantic economy about 80% of one year’s GDP, or $13 trillion, in lost production. If such a five-year recovery began now – a highly optimistic scenario – it would mean losses of about $20 trillion. If, as seems more likely, the economy performs over the next five years as it has for the last two, then takes another five years to recover, a massive $35 trillion worth of wealth would be lost. When do we admit that it is time to call what is happening by its true name? J. Bradford DeLong - Project Syndicate 

Once I lived the life of a millionaire,

Spent all my money, I didn’t care.

Took all my friends out for a mighty good time,

Buying high priced liquor , champagne and wine.

Then I began to fall so low,

Lost all my friends, had no nowhere to go.

If I ever get my hands on a dollar again,

I’ll hang on to it till that big eagle grins.

Because, nobody knows you

When you're down and out.

In your pocket, not one penny,

And as for friends, you don't have any.

"Nobody Knows You" - Traditional Blues

I wonder how much our economic stagnation is a major factor in the instability we are seeing in the Middle East and the Ukraine, etc, and not just our military "indecisiveness" and "war weariness"?  

Certainly the miserable performance of the economy is having a very destabilizing effect on the European Union with the emergence of parties on both the left and the right that want to leave the euro or even the EU itself, and I even wonder how much of a role it might play in America's political deadlock/paralysis?

No kidding, could things is far apart as Marine Le Pen, Podemos, Scottish independence, the Tea Party, UKIP and even the ISIS owe some of their success to the western world's, dead in the water, economy?

Certainly the principal charisma of our western societies since WWII has been their capacity to produce enormous wealth and to distribute it widely among our populations, who spen(d-t) it freely... Let's not kid ourselves, even the idea of "freedom" is directly connected to having enough money to exercise that freedom.

If our economy can't cut the mustard, what exactly are we selling? Where exactly are we intent on leading the rest of humanity?

I don't have the answer but I would like to hear more people asking the question.  DS

The military sexual abuse scandal

David Seaton's News Links

It would seem to me that the current, quite justified uproar about sexual violence in the US armed forces sheds a very bright light on the cognitive dissonance produced by America's view of itself as a democratic, enlightened and inclusive society that serves as a model for the world to emulate, which contrasts with the reality of a worldwide empire which is maintained by the most powerful military establishment in history and that has been at war continuously for over ten years with no positive results.

Transforming the military’s entrenched culture of sexual violence will require new approaches and a much stronger effort than what the Pentagon has done so far. That is the depressing truth of a Defense Department study released on Tuesday estimating that about 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in the 2012 fiscal year, up from about 19,000 in the same period a year before. Those who thought that the crisis could not get any worse have been proved wrong. As in other years, only a small fraction of assaults were reported — 3,374 in 2012 compared with 3,192 in 2011. The study, based on anonymous surveys, suggests that the great majority of sexual assault victims do not report the attacks for fear of retribution or lack of faith that the military will prosecute these crimes. Just two days before the report’s release, the officer in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the Air Force, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, was arrested in Arlington County, Va., and charged with sexual battery, compounding the sense that the military is incapable of addressing this crisis. Editorial - New York Times

I would suggest that the sexual violence should be viewed in the same context as the suicide epidemic in the US armed forces:

A 2009 U.S. Army report indicates military veterans have double the suicide rate of non-veterans, and more active-duty soldiers are dying from suicide than in combat in the Iraq War (2003-2011) and War in Afghanistan (2001–present). Colonel Carl Castro, director of military operational medical research for the Army noted "there needs to be a cultural shift in the military to get people to focus more on mental health and fitness. Wikipedia

An astonishing 6,500 former military personnel (...) killed themselves in 2012, roughly equivalent to one every 80 minutes.(...) Contrary to widely held assumptions, it is not the fear and the terror that service members endure in the battlefield that inflicts most psychological damage, Nash has concluded, but feelings of shame and guilt related to the moral injuries they suffer. The Guardian

What is our armed force's job, what do they do?

Simply put, they kill people and blow things up.

What is the object of our armed forces killing people and blowing things up?

The object of war is to force an adversary by violence or threat of violence to do something they would otherwise not wish to do except to avoid that violence: in short to violently bend the will of the adversary to suit our interests.

Let us now look at a rough and ready definition of "rape", from Wordnet:

1. rape, colza, Brassica napus -- (Eurasian plant cultivated for its seed and as a forage crop)
2. rape, rapine -- (the act of despoiling a country in warfare)
3. rape, violation, assault, ravishment -- (the crime of forcing a woman to submit to sexual intercourse against her will)

I think, then, that without forcing the metaphor, you could say that the United States armed forces have, for example, "raped", Iraq, Panama and Vietnam in recent memory (all for their own good of course).

Now, who are the soldiers?

For hundreds, for thousands, of years soldiers have been very young men, brimming with testosterone, horny as chimpanzees, taught to kill people and blow things up, who spend most of their time bored to death and short periods frightened to death, and often just plain dead.

General William Tecumseh Sherman famously said that "war is hell". 

Here is picture of what he meant.

This is a famous picture, but what is on view is nothing that extraordinary in the context of war, simply that latter-Afghanistan is the first war in history where soldiers carry cellphones with cameras that can upload pictures to Internet... imagine if somebody had had a cellphone at the My-Lai massacre.

Now use your imagination and try to visualize American women soldiers urinating on dead Taliban and you get an idea of how complicated it is to fit women into this culture... as much physically as anything else. Awkward to say the least. You would ask yourself why any women in her right mind would want to be there and do that. To which a feminist could quite rightly ask in turn why any man in his right mind would want to either. Why indeed?

Which brings to one of the sorest points in the entire business: in the increasingly immobile American class structure, practically the only way a young person from a poor family can access to higher education or first class vocational training is to join the armed forces. In most developed countries all these things can be obtained for free without having to risk death or physical and mental mutilation. DS

North Korea puts its armed forces on a war footing

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"As we have learnt again and again in this long period of turmoil, the impossible can become inevitable without even passing through improbable." Anatole Kaletsky - The Times

We seem to be immersed in a period of cumulative disasters, rather similar to the astrological idea of the inauspicious conjunction of certain planets.

This is not how the "age of Aquarius" was supposed to turn out!

Bibi Netanyahu and Israel's primal fallacy

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(David Grossman) said he feared that Netanyahu and Barak would bomb Iran partly out of a perceived strategic need to back up their threats with action, but also because of what he sees as Netanyahu’s sense of historic responsibility to save the “people of eternity.” “He has this idea that we are the people of eternity, am ha’netzach from the Bible, and our negotiations, as he sees it, are with eternity, with the primal currents of history and mankind, while the United States, with all due respect, is just another superpower like Rome or Athens or Babylon, and we’ve survived them all,” said Grossman. “I’m afraid that this way of thinking might encourage Netanyahu to take the step” of attacking Iran. The Nation

David Grossman, along with Amos Oz, is Israel's most prestigious writer and considered by many Israelis as the "conscience of the country". He has given an interview in The Nation on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rush to war with Iran which is terrifying. I find Grossman's insight into Bibi's mind endlessly frightening and disturbing, Up til now I had thought that Netanyahu was a common and garden variety thug... now I think he might be seriously insane

If Grossman is right, that Netanyahu's believes that Israelis are "the people of eternity", and that Israel's negotiations can only be with "eternity", (whatever that is) this means that Israel is governed right now by someone who is crazier than any Ayatollah in Iran... Frankly that idea of negotiating with the "primal currents of history and mankind" has a certain weird, Nietzschean-Wagnerean ring to it: the distilled, national-mystical, vapors of fascism.

So Israel, so small and vulnerable, is now apparently ruled by a madman.

This takes me to what I call "Israel's primal fallacy".

That fallacy is the proposition that the Jewish people will only be safe when they are gathered together in a land where they are the sole inhabitants and depend entirely on their own power to defend themselves and  that land must be in the tiny, biblical Israel.

I think if you proposed to the Jewish people's greatest enemy in history, the idea that half the Jewish people in the world should gather together in a very small area, a territory where they could be utterly annihilated in the space of a couple of hours, that monster would think it a brilliant idea: such a time saver.

Any infantryman will tell you that soldiers under fire should never bunch up, but rather spread out... that is a soldier's rule one. Not having crazy officers might be rule two.

Israel is breaking both rules.

My opinion is that the two greatest defenses ever possessed by the Jewish people, going all the way back to the days when Moses led them out of bondage in Egypt, are:

One: The United States Constitution, whose rules seem to be holding up better than the Bible's in the years since it was written.

and

Two: America's immense spaces.

In short I believe that the "promised land" of the Jews is the United States of America, where Jews can be as Jewish as they want (see Brooklyn's Hasidim) or as assimilated (see Noam Chomsky) as they wish and participate, à la carte, in  the mainstream of an amazingly varied human tapestry (see Walt Whitman) ... all in perfect safety.

Even the West Bank settlers (most of whom seem to already be US citizens) could make a pilgrimage to what I would call "eretz yiArizona", where they could keep their guns and try their luck at hassling Mexicans... America has something for everytbody... if you don't see what you want just ask.

Not only that, perhaps most importantly of all, the United States of America is probably the only country in the world that truly loves Jewish people, where they have actually created much of what the world knows and loves of America. What I am afraid of is that disasters flowing from the "people of eternity" mysticism could in any way sour that "promised land". DS

Looking on the bright side of life - Part Two

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"Melancholia" - Lars Von Trier

Looking at the political paralysis of the American political system, the wasted lives and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ceaseless unrest in the Arab world, the increasing possibility of a war with Iran and the sense of imminent financial collapse, I get the feeling I am only hearing the other shoe drop.

With a little historical perspective you might see that the mysterious process of transformation, a continuum, that began only 22 years ago (a blink of the eye history-wise) with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent sudden, unforeseen, collapse of the Soviet empire is also attacking the remaining economic, military and political structures of world power. In other words, in time, we won't see these as separate, unconnected events, but as one continuous, unfolding, tragedy, such as the period of similar length between World War One and World War Two; a tragedy that was rooted in the culture, economic and political developments of the 19th century as ours is rooted in the culture, economic and political developments of the 20th.

Nowadays as was the case in Eastern Europe as the USSR fell apart and its grip loosened, our "satellites" and our client regimes are in revolt and/or collapsing too. Perhaps the financial system is just a "leading indicator" of this ongoing metamorphosis.

I am coming to believe that we are living through some sort  of process of deep systemic change and end of an era that might have begun with the industrial revolution: a period which we don't have enough distance or perspective to properly understand and that the fall of USSR was simply a warning, something similar to the water receding before a tsunami hits. Foolishly, instead of taking precautions, we wandered out in the tidal flats collecting seashells... now the tide is rolling in and it is too late to run for cover. DS

Some second thoughts about the Af-Pak Wikileaks

Julian Assange

From The Weekly Standard: One of the more interesting aspects of the WikiLeaks document dump is the persistence of intelligence reports indicating collusion between al Qaeda, al Qaeda-affiliated parties, and Iran. By itself, this should not be surprising. The 9/11 Commission, Clinton-era federal prosecutors, and many others have found evidence of such cooperation. Still, it is widely assumed that such an alliance is impossible due to theological differences between Sunni al Qaeda and the Shiite mullahs. The WikiLeaks documents demonstrate, once again, that the world does not abide by armchair assumptions. Our terrorist enemies are not mindless automatons. When it comes to confronting their common enemies, collusion is the order of the day.

"Think the worst and you'll be right" Spanish proverb

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To start off with I love the idea of WikiLeaks: the dirty linen of the powerful on public view... irresistible. I was very impressed by the video of the murder of the Reuters journalists in Baghdad and I was eagerly waiting during the countdown for the 300,000 secret items that WikiLeaks handed over to the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, which have been compared to Daniel Ellsberg's "Pentagon Papers" and initially I was very impressed by the breadth and depth of "linen" now on display. Certainly the futility of war  in Afghanistan was on full view for the world to see.

I began to have second thoughts on the flimsiest of motives: I was repelled by Julian Assange's face when I first saw it: the eyes, the mouth. I immediately thought, "wow, this guy sure could make a good  living playing petty thieves or perverts in police procedural films with a face like that". I looked him up in Wikipedia and saw that he had a pretty funky childhood and youth, more like Colton Harris-Moore the barefoot-bandit's than Daniel Ellsberg's but with the difference that I kind of like the barefoot-bandit's face. But hey, I thought, he who is without strange parents, let him cast the first stone. Live and let live.

However, you could say that my antenna were up and quivering already when I read the first items of the leaks that pointed to a connection between Al Qaeda and Iran. I thought, uh-oh, that sounds familiar, that is the same rap the neocons tried to hang on Saddam Hussein in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and there are still quite a few Americans who think that Saddam was involved in 9-11.  As it so happens that at this very moment the Israel lobby and the usual suspects are busy baying at the moon trying to drum up support for an attack on Iran -- as they always have been, "real men go to Tehran" --  isn't it convenient that this damning bit of evidence connecting Ahmadinejad with Osama bin Laden comes wrapped up conveniently in the most impeccably progressive of packages and just when America's politicians are looking for campaign donations?

Well, you might ask, doesn't this massive leakage damage the war effort in Afghanistan, and I would ask in return, when did the neocons ever give diddly squat about the war in Afghanistan, which they have always considered a distraction from more important affairs, like trashing Iraq and Iran? I mean, after all, what threat does Afghanistan pose to Israel?

So, could this enormous flood of leaks from WikiLeaks about the war in Afghanistan in reality be protective covering for a massive misinformation operation, one which kills two birds with one stone: weakens the distracting Af-Pak war effort and provides some sort of personal reason for Americans to want to attack Iran? Certainly, when I read the article in the neocon bible, Rupert Murdoch's, "The Weekly Standard", which I quote above, I began to get that old feeling: been there, done that, here we go again.

So I would say, whoa there, lets stop and go though all of this with a fine tooth comb and see where they want to take us with all of this: because I would agree with President Obama, when he says that Afghanistan is the "good war", in the sense that it is "good", if it keeps us too busy there to get into even worse trouble elsewhere... Kind of like methadone for American militarism. DS

War in the Middle East: from Yellow to Red Alert

War drums are beating in the Middle East. In a short time, the United States has increased the number of its carrier strike groups opposite Iran to three, and reports are raining down of a tightening ring of American and Israeli concentrations all around the Islamic Republic. On the diplomatic front, the Israelis are unusually concerned about their international image (for example, making concessions in Gaza) while their top officials - including Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself - are shuttling between Jerusalem and Washington. Victor Kotsev - Asia Times

I ask myself: what are Israeli warships doing for the first time in the waters of the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s maritime areas? Fidel Castro - Granma

The temptation for President Obama to double down on Iran will grow rapidly as he concludes that Afghanistan will remain a festering sore as far as anyone can peer into a murky future, hardly a recipe for success at the polls in November. With a war in Afghanistan, which is bound to get worse, and a military theater in Iraq replete with sectarian violence, the bombing of Iran may give Mr. Obama a three-front war - and a chance to retain both houses of Congress.  Arnaud De Borchgrave - Washington Times

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In fighting summer forest fires there is a critical point, which might be expressed as (+35º -30% +35Kph): If the temperature is over 35 degrees Celsius, the humidity is less than 30% and  the wind is blowing harder than 35 kilometers per hour, a major forest fire could and probably will break out at any moment.

When you have the optimum conditions in a long, hot, dry, summer, one windy day, a piece of broken glass in the sunlight, a cigarette, a field mouse chewing through a wire or an arsonist trying to buy charred land cheaply: in an instant, anything can set off a fire that consumes thousands of acres and many lives.

This might be an apt metaphor for the situation in the Middle East right now.

If you are following the news, you can see that the tinder is dry and there are potential sparks aplenty: Iran, flotillas, settlers, Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah and the alembic of Israel's coalition politics. Nothing new there, but for the "red alert" there also has to be a high wind.

What is the equivalent of the "high wind" in today's Middle East?

To my mind there are two factors that make me fear that a war in the Middle East could be imminent.

The first is simply meteorological. In the summer there are less clouds in the sky than in the autumn and air strikes are easier to carry out.

The second is that both Democrats and Republicans would like to win the midterm elections in November and neither one of them would want to do or say anything to offend the powerful Israel lobby at a time like this.

That means that a rather attractive window is open at this moment for Israel to attack Iran.

The question remains, is the USA going to attack Iran simultaneously or are all those US carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf just to keep watch on the Israelis?

Of course, even when all the elements are there, the low humidity, the hot weather and  the wind, forest fires are not inevitable... but at that moment you are mostly dependent on luck. Such, I fear, is the case today in the Middle East. DS

A unique opportunity for peace in our time

Ensuring there's enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country's entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he'd favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them. "We need to look at the American people and explain to them that we're broke," Boehner said. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio)

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I found the above quote in a post by Dean Baker at TPM Café and the above chart was delivered to my mail box  a couple of days ago and I think they compliment each other very nicely

In them I see one of the few hopeful developments to appear in a very bleak world.

Finally, the most politically active American citizens, the elderly, the only ones who always vote, are being told clearly that their pensions must be sacrificed to America's endless wars, wars fought in places that most Americans can't find on a map.

I don't think they are going to stand for it.

The ensuing confrontation could change US politics beyond recognition, because there are probably quite a few Democrats who are as willing to sacrifice the standard of living of America's elderly to the gods of imperial war as Republicans like congressman Boehner are. (Note: Boehner is pronounced "bayner" not "boner").

In my opinion, this could have the germs of a real, sustained political movement in it, something like the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s.

Real politics, sit-ins, strikes, demonstrations, hounding of lawmakers, not just voting for a "messiah" and then sitting back waiting for the loaves and the fishes to appear.

Our greatest consolation as Americans would be if the elderly of America brought peace to the world by using their votes and ample free time to put an end to America's culture of endless wars. DS

September Song

9-11 - El Roto

The Obama administration has proposed regulatory changes, but even their backers say they face a difficult road in Congress. For now, banks still sell and trade unregulated derivatives, despite their role in last fall’s chaos. Radical changes like pay caps or restrictions on bank size face overwhelming resistance. Even minor changes, like requiring banks to disclose more about the derivatives they own, are far from certain. New York Times

(H)ealth care reform, while an overdue imperative, still is overshadowed in existential urgency by the legacies of the two devastating cataclysms of the Bush years, 9/11 and 9/15, both of whose anniversaries we now mark. The crucial matters left unresolved in the wake of New York’s two demolished capitalist icons, the World Trade Center and Lehman Brothers, are most likely to determine both this president’s and our country’s fate in the next few years. Both have been left to smolder in the silly summer of ’09. Frank Rich - New York Times

(T)here is still a mammoth, gaping hole at Ground Zero. Bureaucratic gridlock, partisan bickering, old-fashioned greed and failed leadership have all been blended together perfectly in one big pot to create a colossal, historic stew of inaction. Paul Rieckhoff - Huffington Post

President Obama made clear during last year's presidential campaign that Afghanistan would be his war if he was elected. Since being sworn in, true to his word, he has made the Afghan war a national security imperative because that's where al Qaeda is. At least, that's where Mr. Obama thinks it is. But nothing is less certain. Arnaud de Borchgrave - Washington Times

He has decided to expand the current system, not fix it. David Brooks - NYT

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I have have held off commenting on the president's health care speech to congress in order to read the opinions of better qualified analysts: the general opinion seems to be that it was a very fine speech, but that no one is really that sure what he said. By now it seems pretty clear that whatever comes out of it this process will resemble what other developed western countries consider universal health coverage to the degree that a spavined camel resembles a racehorse.

As important as health care is (and what in a "serious" country could be more important?) the real story today is paralysis and this paralysis is, if nothing else, bipartisan. And it is bipartisan because it is systemic, something that has been brewing since the end of the Second World War and which now is coming to a head. Neither party has either the ideas nor the power to fix it and I am of the opinion that even if they fell into each other's arms and took a blood oath of mutual fealty; that even together, they wouldn't have either the ideas nor the power to fix it.

That is the reason why I was quite lukewarm about a Democrat -- any Democrat -- taking the White House at this moment. I have a very strong feeling that this president -- any president -- is set to preside over what many will see as the collapse of America's "empire" and whichever party is in the White House when this happens will take the blame for it... I would have preferred -- call me sentimental -- that the Republicans had taken the historic hit... I was hoping (not really believing) that the Democrats would be the ones to try to put Humpty Dumpty together again... it was not to be.

What will this collapse of "America's empire" look like?

It will look very similar to the collapse of Spain's empire and will feature some of the same players.

South America is going south... again.

The United States is so deeply entangled in and obsessed by the Middle East and Af-Pak that it has taken its eyes and energies off its proverbial back yard, Latin America. Because of its dependence on oil and the power of the Israel lobby it will find it impossible to refocus in time. There are simply not enough resources to control the Middle East and Southwest Asia and project power in South America at the same time. As professor Andrew Bacevich puts it, "we haven't got the money and we haven't got the troops".

Latin America gained its "first" independence at the beginning of the 19th century, when a prostrate Spain, exhausted from the Napoleonic wars, relaxed its grip. And now with a distracted and overburdened America relaxing its grip, Latin America is poised to gain its "second" and perhaps definitive independence.

Latin America and the United States have much in common, it is the proportions of the components that differ the most. All of us are great producers of raw materials and commodities, where not too much is manufactured (anymore). To understand the political mix of most of Latin America excluding lily white Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, known as the "Southern Cone," the USA will serve as a good model.

Imagine that instead of 12% and 1.5% of the population respectively, African and Native- Americans represented in varying proportions, 70 to 80+ percentage of the US population. Imagine that the distribution of wealth was similar to what it is right now. Here is how the sociology department of the University of Southern California, Santa Cruz describes it:

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2004, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.3% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.3%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.2%.

Now imagine that all the people with the money were of European descent and all the people without money were of color (not too difficult, is it?) now imagine that a series of political figures that combined the qualities of Doctor Martin Luther King and Sitting Bull appeared... That is what is happening in Latin America right now, while the United States faces the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and quite probably Iran and has no marines left over to send.

President Barack Obama -- it could have (sigh) been McCain -- will have the dubious privilege of sitting by helplessly while the United States of America gets ridden out of Latin America on a rail. DS

Reality check

Those who think that they have just voted to legalize Utopia (and I hardly exaggerate when I say this; have you been reading the moist and trusting comments of our commentariat?) are preparing for a disillusionment that I very much doubt they will blame on themselves. The national Treasury is an echoing, empty vault; our Russian and Iranian enemies are acting even more wolfishly even as they sense a repudiation of Bush-Cheney; the lines of jobless and evicted are going to lengthen, and I don't think a diet of hope is going to cover it. Nor even a diet of audacity, though can you picture anything less audacious than the gray, safety-first figures who have so far been chosen by Obama to be on his team? (...) In other words, there is something pain-free and self-congratulatory about the Obama surge. This has happened before, of course, with the high-sounding talk about the "New Frontier," the "Great Society," and "Morning in America." It's just that this time it's more than usually not affordable. There are many causes of the subprime and derivative horror show that has destroyed our trust in the idea of credit, but one way of defining it would be to say that everybody was promised everything, and almost everybody fell for the populist bait. Christopher Hitchens - Slate

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There are many who still believe that history is made from the biographies of "great men", when in fact political reality is the product of the interacting forces generated by the natural conflict of interests of the sum total of the world's inhabitants who press against each other individually and collectively in their struggle to obtain some acceptable result... Some groups, notably the wealthy and the powerful press more than others, but the total interaction is infinitely complex and individuals have little effect on its outcome.

For a long time, many of the most scientific political thinkers were sure that the synthesis of all these conflicts would lead inevitably to a result that would benefit humanity and so the process was called "progress". Today most would agree that we are moving somewhere, but nobody knows really where, and almost no one thinks that we will ever "arrive", or if we did that we would be much pleased with the result.

We are talking about a process.

Truly no man or woman or woman living is above or outside this process.

Barack Obama is a product of the same social and political process that produced and elected Eisenhower (To go back any further than Eisenhower, before the days of television is to engage in political archaeology), JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G.H. W. Bush, Clinton and... has elected and reelected, George W. Bush.

Many seem to feel that Barack Obama has been anointed more than elected and that he is somehow absolved of the same law of gravity that weighed upon his predecessors, illustrious and otherwise.

The major difference between Obama and his predecessors is not his color or his intelligence, it is the greatly diminished power that he will inherit.

Just as it is a very different thing to be the CEO of General Motors today then it was when "Engine Charlie" Wilson declared that what was "good for General Motors is good for the USA" (and by extension the world) so it too is a very different thing to be President of the USA today then it was in the Reagan period.

It’s another world.

At the end of WWII the United States was “the last man standing”.

At the end of the Cold War, the USA was the unquestioned hegemon.

That has all changed.

Not only is the USA now flat broke, its only unquestioned superiority, its massive military power, is proving ineffective in producing favorable and predictable outcomes.

Another massive change is that the Anglo-American version of capitalism is being seriously questioned, this, in economic terms, is as if Pope Benedict had hung out a “gone fishin’” sign on Saint Peter's, a great vacuum exists where recently there stood a temple of legitimacy.

Everyone around the world is pleased thst Obama, right down to his color, is nothing like Bush, but that doesn't mean that the hard men and women who manage things are so pleased that they will forget for a moment what their objectives are: nor will the stream of events open like the waters of the Red Sea to Obama's "soft power".

I think everything will be sweetness and light with Obama exactly until - and not one moment longer - he tries to show “leadership”: meaning trying to push people to go where they don’t want to go.

At that moment he will be just one more president of a bankrupt USA that loses wars and destroys shareholder value. DS

From NATO to ONAN

Subtle metaphor of the current American political discourse

David Seaton's News Links

The American presidential campaign is talking about everything but the central question facing the United States: it's rapid decline as the world's hegemonic superpower and the enormous dangers facing the United States and the world if America tries to maintain that fading hegemony.

This "primary contradiction", which could cause millions of lives to be lost and result in unimaginable chaos and impoverishment, is ignored except, perhaps, when presidential candidates suggest increasing military spending or promise to reassert American "leadership".

Both "solutions" are like a terminal cancer patient planning next year's summer vacation. An insane waste of precious time.

Today, I've posted excerpts from two important articles on this theme by John Gray, emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics and my favorite political commentator, William Pfaff.

Please read them very carefully and be prepared to discuss:)

We are back to great-power politics, shifting alliances and spheres of influence. The difference is that the west is no longer in charge. With their different histories and sometimes sharply conflicting interests, Russia, China, India and the Gulf states are not going to form any kind of bloc. But it is these countries that are shaping world development at the start of the 21st century. The US - its bankrupt mortgage institutions nationalised and its gigantic war machine effectively funded by foreign borrowing - is in steep decline. With its financial system in the worst mess since the 1930s, the west's ability to shape events is dwindling by the day. Sermonizing about "law-based international relations" is laughable after Iraq, and at bottom not much more than nostalgia for a vanished hegemony. Deluded about its true place in the world, the west underestimates the risks of intervening in Russia's near abroad. Russia's weaknesses - demographic decline, cronyism in the economy and a seething sense of national humiliation - are well known, but western vulnerabilities are no less real. Our leaders bore on about Russia needing us as much as we need Russia. In fact, despite a recent blip, investment in Russia is a byproduct of the global market that will continue for as long as it continues to be profitable, whereas Russian energy supplies can be curtailed at will by the Russian government. Economists will tell you the country is too reliant on oil. But the world's oil reserves are peaking while globalisation continues to advance, and Russia stands to gain from any international conflict in which supplies are disrupted. Again, the west needs Russia if the Iranian nuclear crisis is ever to be defused peacefully, and without Russian logistical cooperation Nato forces will find it even harder to bring the aimless, unwinnable war in Afghanistan to any kind of conclusion.(...) Clearly, with the exception of some in "old Europe", our leaders do not know what they are doing. The grandstanding of David Miliband and David Cameron in Ukraine illustrates the point. Blathering about national self-determination and territorial integrity, they seem not to have noticed that the two principles are normally incompatible. Self-determination means secession and the break-up of states. In the Caucasus, a region of multi-sided national enmities, it means a wider war and worsening ethnic cleansing. The stakes are even higher in Ukraine. Deeply divided and with a major Russian naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, the new state will surely be torn apart if an attempt is made to wrench it from Russia's sphere of influence. The country would become a battlefield, with the great powers irresistibly drawn in. Playing with Wilsonian notions of self-determination in these conditions is courting disaster. John Gray - Guardian

__________________

The United States has been invading troublesome Caribbean and Central American neighbors since the mid-19th century. It was what the U.S. Marine Corps did for a living – Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic. Ronald Reagan absurdly invaded Granada, officially to save American students from dangerous Cuban airport laborers. The senior George Bush invaded Panama to seize President Manuel Noriega, a former employee of the CIA. It has never been explained what those two invasions were really about. There were (widely publicized) clandestine operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador. All this has been taken for granted as the Monroe Doctrine at work.(...) Today the world’s only expansionist ideological power is the United States, aggressively pushing everywhere, persuading, promoting, and even invading countries for “democracy.” It wants to make everyone democratic “like us,” which in the end means to do as we want them to do. The ideology is meant to be generous, but it is a generosity devoted to the control of energy resources, raw materials, trade, and finance. This makes the U.S. the expanding and aggressive nation in the world today, the one with a “global ideology,” with military power to back it up. This frightens people. When the power doesn’t work as intended, as in the Caucasus, it makes other people frightened, the ones who have bet on the U.S. to advance their own agendas. That is what is changing the geopolitical map. William Pfaff

Meanwhile the American voters play with their dollies. DS

Every so often something beautiful happens

David Seaton's News Links
Every so often something beautiful happens that makes your heart swell with human feelings of empathy and solidarity.

A wall falling and people behind it flowing out just to buy ice cream, to see their friends they haven't seem for years, or to get married and start a family like the couple in the story below.

The down side? This could blow Egypt apart. American aid has neutralized Egypt, but Egypt is the most important country in the Middle East.

If the Mubarak regime is seen collaborating with the Israelis to put the Palestinians back in their cage it might bring the Egyptian people out into the streets. If the Israeli army enters Gaza and Hamas puts up a real fight then the Egyptian army (captains, majors and colonels) might stage a coup d'etat and a general war might break out in the Middle East. Something much bigger and harder to control than the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Because when people's hearts swell with human feelings of empathy and solidarity it generates an amazing force that politicians oppose at their peril. DS

Wedding bells to ring after fall of Rafah wall - Reuters
While other Palestinians lugged food and fuel from Egypt into the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Omran Lubbab took advantage of the fall of Gaza's Rafah wall to bring his future bride home.

"No more delays," said Lubbab, a 34-year-old Gaza cameraman, vowing to marry fiance Heba al-Qadi in two weeks' time.

Lubbab was reunited with Qadi, a Palestinian who lives on the Egyptian side of the divided town of Rafah, after stepping through one of the gaps Hamas fighters blew in the border wall dividing the town.

"We have been engaged for two years but our wedding has been delayed because of the closure of the border crossing," said Qadi, who carried two suitcases filled with new dresses into the Gaza Strip to begin her new life.

Israel and Egypt have largely kept the Rafah passage sealed since Hamas Islamists violently took over the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in June.

In a declared bid to stop Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, Israel shut the territory's other crossing points on Friday but eased restrictions on Tuesday after an international outcry over shortages of fuel and other goods.

Qadi will be staying with relatives in Gaza until the wedding.

Her mother, Buthaina al-Qadi, was all smiles as she watched the couple chatting about their wedding reception.

"I am very happy. My daughter is finally going to start a new life and a family," she said.

Palestinian police estimated that more than 100,000 people had crossed into the Egyptian side of Rafah.

"People need to breathe. People need to bring food to their children. It is the revolution of hunger," said one policemen who declined to give his name.

Congo to Wall Street: Hey, things are tough all over.

David Seaton's News Links
I imagine that quite a few of my readers are watching the Dow Jones with trepidation these days or struggling with their mortgage or credit card payments and I thought a little news from Africa might make them stop and count their blessings.

There is this war in the Congo, you see, and it's been going on for ever so long. I'll let Wikipedia bring you up to speed:

The largest war in modern African history, one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II, it directly involved eight African nations, as well as about 25 armed groups. 5.4 million people died, mostly from starvation and disease. Millions more were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighboring countries. Despite a formal end to the war in July 2003 and an agreement by the former belligerents to create a government of national unity, 1,000 people died daily in 2004 from easily preventable cases of malnutrition and disease. A United Nations human rights expert reported in July 2007 that sexual atrocities against Congolese women go 'far beyond rape' and include sexual slavery, forced incest, and cannibalism.

So you can see that although we haven't been following it very closely, it has managed quite well without us. DS

Congo conflict causes 45,000 deaths a month: study - Guardian
Abstract: The effects of a decade of fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo is continuing to kill about 45,000 people each month - half of them small children - in the deadliest conflict since the second world war, according to a new survey. The International Rescue Committee said preventable diseases and starvation aggravated by conflict had claimed 5.4m lives since the beginning of the second Congo war in 1998, equivalent to the population of Denmark. Although the war officially ended in 2002, malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition have continued to claim enormous numbers of lives in part because fighting continues in the east of the country. The study of 14,000 households across Congo between January 2006 and April 2007 found that nearly half of all the deaths were of children under the age of five, who make up only 19% of the population.(...) "When war destroys a country's economy and infrastructure, there's no quick fix," said Dr. Richard Brennan, one of the survey's authors. "Significant improvement in Congo's health and mortality will require years of unwavering commitment from the government and the international community and substantial financial investment. Sadly, the humanitarian crisis in Congo continues to be overlooked and funding remains disproportionate to the enormity of need." READ IT ALL

History to Bush: quo vadis... turkey?

"As long as George Bush is commander-in-chief of the US military and he and his advisers are intent on getting the US into a shooting war with Iran, Iran is the issue." Josh Marshall

David Seaton's News Links
Webster defines the word, "surreal" as, "marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream". That Bush, failed in Iraq, struggling in Afghanistan, could, may very well... in fact, probably will, start another war... very soon, has all the qualities necessary to fill Webster´s definition.

Dream? Nightmare? Why quibble?

Philip Stephens wrote in his Financial Times column that "the White House once again seems hell-bent on being outwitted in the court of global opinion; and, maybe, on making a strategic miscalculation that could make the war in Iraq look like a sideshow."

There is much speculation that all of this is to be done for Israel's benefit: Both the Israel lobby, AIPAC and Norman Podhoretz, a senior foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani and the "godfather of neoconservatism", beat the drum ceaslessly for a war with Iran, but according to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Israeli "Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel"

David Ignatius wrote in the Washingon Post,"Military action would be irrational for both sides. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. I wish the Bush administration could see that with each step it takes closer to conflict, it is walking toward a well-planned trap."

"Irrational", sister to "surreal" is the operative word.

As Paul Krugman said, "All of this would be funny if it weren’t so serious." Fareed Zacharia wrote in Newsweek, "This would all be funny if it weren't so dangerous." Russian President Vladimir Putin commented, "I think running around like a lunatic -- with a razor and waving a red banner -- isn't the best way to solve this kind of problem". And a New York Times editorial said, “With a different White House, we might dismiss this as posturing — or bank on sanity to carry the day, or the warnings of exhausted generals or a defense secretary more rational than his predecessor. Not this crowd.”

Albert Einstein once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Los Angeles Times columnist, Rosa Brooks has come right out and accused Bush of being clinically insane. Rosa Brooks is not only a columnist, she is also a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who specializes in international law, human rights, law of war, state failure, terrorism and rule of law issues. So this is not some bag lady shouting on a street corner. She wrote, "What's a constitutional democracy to do when the president and vice president lose their marbles? The U.S. is full of ordinary people with serious forms of mental illness -- delusional people with violent fantasies who think they're the president, or who think they get instructions from the CIA through their dental fillings. The problem with Bush is that he is the president -- and he gives instructions to the CIA and military, without having to go through his dental fillings."

Certainly the declining months of Bush's raj are reminiscent of those old Hollywood films about the Roman empire... Nero and his magic violin, Caligula and his consul horse. The world hanging on the product of a diseased brain. DS

Michael Hirsh: Another Turn of the Screw - Newsweek
Abstract: For some people, it all felt unnervingly like a lurch back to 2002—the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration's announcement of wide-ranging sanctions against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Defense Ministry—as well as its major banks—tarred much of Tehran's officialdom as rogues, terror supporters or proliferators. Russian President Vladimir Putin, displaying his gift for anti-American metaphor, likened the Bush officials to "mad people wielding razor blades." Democratic lion Sen. Robert Byrd thundered: "Congress will not be kept out of the loop while this administration plots another march to war."(...) their new approach does seem to cut off the possibility of high-level negotiations with the current Iranian government, at least for the present. Even a key U.S. ally, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, says the sanctions alienate U.S. officials from the only real decision makers in Iran. "The Revolutionary Guards … are the ones who are running the Iranian government," Zebari said last week. While Bush administration officials insist that Tehran intends to build a bomb, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is concerned that Iran wants eventually to become a "virtual nuclear- weapons state," like Japan. That is, it wants to have the technology, industry and expertise to produce a bomb on short notice, but doesn't necessarily want to make or test one. ("Yes, that is what we are doing," a senior Iranian envoy, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told NEWSWEEK last week.) Many Iranians hint that this would be a sufficient strategic deterrent, unless the United States attacks first. READ IT ALL

Rosa Brooks accuses Bush of being clinically insane

David Seaton's News Links

The article below is by far the roughest thing I've ever read about Bush in a mainstream publication. In this article Rosa Brooks actually accuses Bush and Cheney of being clinically insane. Dynamite!

Rosa Brooks is not only a columnist, she is a a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center whose scholarly work focuses on international law, human rights, law of war, state failure, terrorism and rule of law issues. So this is not the rant of some blogger in pajamas (heh, heh).

Breaking with News Links traditions, I'm quoting the article in full, because a column this rough about the chief of state could get a journalist thrown in jail is some countries that are widely considered democracies.

In fact any country where you can write something this hard about a sitting chief of state and not be "disappeared" can be considered a democracy. In American jurisdiction it turns out that Bush is having people disappeared, so the more places the article can be found the better. DS


Straitjacket Bush - Los Angeles Times
Forget impeachment.

By Roda Brooks
25 October 2007

Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.

Because they've clearly gone mad. Exhibit A: We're in the middle of a disastrous war in Iraq, the military and political situation in Afghanistan is steadily worsening, and the administration's interrogation and detention tactics have inflamed anti-Americanism and fueled extremist movements around the globe. Sane people, confronting such a situation, do their best to tamp down tensions, rebuild shattered alliances, find common ground with hostile parties and give our military a little breathing space. But crazy people? They look around and decide it's a great time to start another war.

That would be with Iran, and you'd have to be deaf not to hear the war drums. Last week, Bush remarked that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III . . . you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." On Sunday, Cheney warned of "the Iranian regime's efforts to destabilize the Middle East and to gain hegemonic power . . . [we] cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions." On Tuesday, Bush insisted on the need "to defend Europe against the emerging Iranian threat."

Huh? Iran is now a major threat to Europe? The Iranians are going to launch a nuclear missile (that they don't yet possess) against Europe (for reasons unknown because, as far as we know, they're not mad at anyone in Europe)? This is lunacy in action.

Writing in Newsweek on Oct. 20, Fareed Zakaria, a solid centrist and former editor of Foreign Affairs, put it best. Citing Bush's invocation of "the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon," ZZakaria concluded that "the American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. . . . Iran has an economy the size of Finland's. . . . It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are . . . allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"

Planet Cheney.

Zakaria may be misinterpreting the president's remark about World War III though. He saw it as a dangerously loopy Bush prediction about the future behavior of a nuclear Iran -- the idea being, presumably, that possessing "the knowledge" to make a nuclear weapon would so empower Iran's repressive leaders that they'll giddily rush out and start World War III.

But you could read Bush's remark as a madman's threat rather than a madman's prediction -- as a warning to recalcitrant states, from Germany to Russia, that don't seem to share his crazed obsession with Iran. The message: Fall into line with administration policy toward Iran or you can count on the U.S.A. to try to start World War III on its own. And when it comes to sparking global conflagration, a U.S. attack on Iran might be just the thing. Yee haw!

You'd better believe these guys would do it too. Why not? They have nothing to lose -- they're out of office in 15 months anyway. Après Bush-Cheney, le déluge! (Have fun, Hillary.)

But all this creates a conundrum. What's a constitutional democracy to do when the president and vice president lose their marbles?

The U.S. is full of ordinary people with serious forms of mental illness -- delusional people with violent fantasies who think they're the president, or who think they get instructions from the CIA through their dental fillings.

The problem with Bush is that he is the president -- and he gives instructions to the CIA and military, without having to go through his dental fillings.

Impeachment's not the solution to psychosis, no matter how flagrant. But despite their impressive foresight in other areas, the framers unaccountably neglected to include an involuntary civil commitment procedure in the Constitution.

Still, don't lose hope. By enlisting the aid of mental health professionals and the court system, Congress can act to remedy that constitutional oversight. The goal: Get Bush and Cheney committed to an appropriate inpatient facility, where they can get the treatment they so desperately need. In Washington, the appropriate statutory law is already in place: If a "court or jury finds that [a] person is mentally ill and is likely to injure himself or other persons if allowed to remain at liberty, the court may order his hospitalization."

I'll even serve on the jury. When it comes to averting World War III, it's really the least I can do.