What has been lost? - III

Photo by Giacomo Brunelli

"In the wake of 1989, with boundless confidence and insufficient reflection, we put the twentieth century behind us and strode boldly into its successor swaddled in self-serving half-truths: the triumph of the West, the end of History, the unipolar American moment, the ineluctable march of globalization and the free market." Tony Judt - New York Review of Books

"These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people. I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending." Paul Krugman - New York Times

"Almost all the food we eat - 95% - is oil-dependent, so as oil prices rise, the cost of food does too. Oil is central to fertilisers, mechanised production, transportation and packaging. However, between 1950 - when mechanisation and fertilisers transformed farming into agribusiness - and 1984, world grain production increased by 250%. The consequent cheapness of food kept inflation down and allowed for the postwar consumer boom. For years experts have been asking what will we eat when the crises of climate change and oil depletion converge, with the possible end of our globalised food supply." Rosie Boycott - Guardian

"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

"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

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What the United States is facing at this moment, although few seem to realize it, is an ideological collapse. This happens when a mind set is no longer appropriate for confronting reality. An example would be an American Indian confronted with a steam train for the first time... "iron horse".

I think it strange that so few people recognize the symptoms of this collapse, when we so recently witnessed a similar galloping, ideological, wasting disease in another seemingly healthy patient: the USSR.

Listen to this imaginary dialog from the last years of the Soviet Union.

Scene: the Kremlin.

(Enter a flunky in the minister's office)

Flunky: Comrade Minister, a messenger has just arrived from Siberia.

Minister: A messenger, why didn't they just phone?

F: The phones aren't working Comrade Minister.

M: (sighs) Oh well, what's the message?

F: There is no toilet paper left in Siberia, Comrade Minister. They want to know what to tell the masses.

M: That is easy Comrade, since the telephones aren't working, tell them to use the pages of the telephone book.

F: But, Comrade Minister, the only telephone books are in Party headquarters.

M: (galvanized) Give the order immediately for the party to distribute phone books to the masses!

F: (fawning) Brilliant, Comrade Minister!

M: (drawing himself up) We are building Socialism comrade.

Now tweak that dialog around a little bit, change a few names and such and you might be hearing similar dialogs today in the World Bank or the IMF... not to mention the hapless White House.

As William Pfaff says in the snippet at the head of this post, "The myth of the benevolent and ultimately impartial market prevails against all contrary evidence." We are as trapped in our own ideology as the "Comrade Minister" in the sketch above.

What we are facing is a world that, contrary to our ideological mindset, needs to be heavily regulated and controlled if we are not to sink quickly into universal, dystopic barbarity of the sort that science fiction writers thrive on.

To avoid endless warfare, famine disease and genocide, everything we think and do must be reexamined, especially our idea of individual choice as expressed in consumption. This reduction of personal choice and freedom of action among peoples in developed countries, seems inevitable, either before or after a universal hecatomb... Whether we like it or not.

Where does democracy fit in?

More or less the democratic choice would be to either democratically choose to forgo our lifestyle or to have the choice imposed on us by whatever tyrant emerged triumphant from a world drowned in blood and ashes.

There is a slogan that you sometimes hear in May Day celebrations in Spanish speaking countries:

¡Socialismo o Barbaridad!

I don't think that needs translation. The problem is that "Socialism" is an unacceptable word today and previous clumsy versions were suffocated by this cornucopiac view of life that we now find is asphyxiating us in turn.

In the previous post I gave an example of how it was possible for Ekhardt Tolle to extract and retell the core of Vendantic Hinduism, at its most sophisticated, in plain, jargon-less English, so that the strange and exotic terminology wouldn't repel seekers who needed that essence.

At the bottom of whatever impulse that led thinking men and women to embrace Socialism in the first place is also a core of truth that has to be rethought and respoken.

And the wider that inquiry is and the more people participate in it the more democratic the process will be and the more humane will be the final society that emerges, however the change will come whether we participate in its gestation or not.

Sadly, nothing I have seen or heard in the American presidential campaign gives me the slightest reason to hope that anyone, with any chance of a leadership role in the United States, is any more ready for the challenges looming ahead than our "Comrade Minister" of the Soviet twilight was. DS

What has been lost? - II

"The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years." George Soros - Financial Times

"So the moral, in a sense, is also a simple one: if someone offers you seemingly free money, in seemingly infinite quantities, with a soothing new name, you really ought to smell a rat." Gillian Tett - Financial Times

"The working class can kiss my Arse, I've got a MasterCard at last"
Revised parody of the British Labour Party hymn,"The Red Flag"

"Income inequality in the US is at its highest since that most doom-laden of years: 1929. Throughout the main English-speaking economies, earnings disparities have reached extremes not seen since the age of The Great Gatsby." John Plender - Financial Times

"The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics." Tony Karon - Time Magazine"

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Some things are pretty simple. The traditional left has practically disappeared because working people in developed countries are satisfied with the enormous prosperity of our society expressed in cheap food and abundant consumer goods. Having access to easy credit, they feel wealthy, they no longer look to their class for security and safety. They do not identify their fate with the fate of others.

The English express this as, "bugger you Jack, I'm all right" or "I'm alright Jack".

George Soros says that we are looking at the end of an era. That all the mass prosperity we have ever known was basically just a cosmic credit card binge. The cash machine has just spit our card out.

Perhaps this will lead to a rebirth of the left. For sure it will lead to the rise of the ultra-right because people will look for someone to blame. We can see this coming...

What to do?

Confucius said that the first thing to do was to "rectify names", that is to say, use correct terms.

Certainly the left needs its language retooled. Words get worn out, lose meaning. Think what words like, "awesome", "wonderful" and "amazing" originally meant and how little they mean anymore. Much of left wing discourse is similarly devalued: to speak it is to sound like the villain in a cold war spy drama. Think that the word "Proletariat" originally meant people who had a lot of prole or children and you'll see how stale language can get.

A new language of the left has to be created. This is not impossible. recently I came across an example of how something eons old could be expressed in new and different terms without missing its essence.

One of India's greatest spiritual teachers was Ramana Maharishi, a Hindu saint who died in 1950, he expounded the practice of self-inquiry as the path to liberation.

Many people who would benefit from the teachings of Ramana Maharishi might be put off by the exotic Indian English or the obscure Sanskrit terminology normally used in describing it. A spiritually "ripe" suburban housewife might be put off by words like, "Satchidananda", and think she was being drawn into some satanic sect and would end up with a shaved head, beating a tambourine in an airport.

I was amazed to discover that none other than Oprah Winfrey's favorite guru, Eckhardt Tolle, had managed to do a very workmanlike job of conveying the core of of Ramana Maharishi's teachings, in everyday English, without bending them all out of shape.

Meanings have many verbal paths leading to them.

Tolle often repeats that words are only signposts pointing at the path and that one should not get too identified with the words in detriment to where they point. Therefore if a word like "God" is a help in spiritual practice use it, and if it is an obstacle, because of the baggage it carries, don't. I don't think Tolle ever uses words like "Atman" or "Advaita", he just sticks to the central idea.

He must be getting the message over because his book "The Power of Now" sells like hot bread.

Something similar desperately needs to be done with the language of progressive politics so that people who are seeking can get quickly to the truth without being repelled by culturally over-freighted verbiage. With what is lying ahead, a failure to do so would be tragic. DS

What has been lost?

Gandhi with women workers in Lancashire, September 1931

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This photograph of Mahatma Gandhi surrounded by cheering women workers in Lancashire was taken in 1931.

1931 was a bad, bad year in the industrial world and the women in the picture are "workers". It isn't difficult to imagine that there lives were easily as hard, and probably a good deal harder than those of the natives of the rust belt small towns that were the object of Barack Obama's "Bittergate" remarks.

They are cheering in solidarity with a man that wants to destroy their empire.

What was the culture that produced this picture and what happened to it?

What has happened since then is the stupefication of the left.

The hymn of the British Labor (labour) Party is entitled "The Red Flag", which is sung to the melody of the German Christmas carol, "O Tannenbaum". The opening verse goes like this:

The people's flag is deepest red,

It shrouded oft our martyr'd dead
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts' blood dyed its ev'ry fold.

Then raise the scarlet standard high,
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.

That's what the ladies in the photo sang and they believed it.

With the coming of Tony Blair or more exactly, the coming of the conditions that brought Tony Blair, cruel parodies of "The Red Flag" circulate, here is one of the better ones:

The people's flag is palest pink
It's not the colour you might think
White collar workers stand and cheer
The Labour government is here
We'll change the country bit by bit
So nobody will notice it
And just to show that we're sincere
We'll sing The Red Flag once a year

The cloth cap and the woollen scarf
Are images outdated
For we're the party's avant garde
And we are educated
So raise the rolled umbrella high
The college scarf, the old school tie
And just to show that we're sincere
We'll sing The Red Flag once a year

But the cruelest parody I've ever heard of "The Red Flag" opens:

The working class can kiss my arse
I've got the foreman's job at last

The rest is too rough for a family blog

What Obama said had some truth in it, but what was (I think the new Americanism is) inappropriate was the flip tone employed. There is something serious here that deserves discussion.

Karl Rove made a point of underlining the Marxist, "religion is the opium of the people" tone of Obama's remarks. Turdblossom has a point, but, in fact, in the original quote, in contrast to Obama, Marx's tone is filled with impassioned compassion and respect for the people's religiosity.

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

"The heart of a heartless world". Now how does that compare to:

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”

One is a noble sentiment, nobly expressed and the other is something you might hear at a vernissage. Shallow, condescending. And then, when cornered Obama didn't defend the idea... and it can be defended as Marx went on to say,

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

Now, what Marx is saying makes no mention of the existence or nonexistence of God. Here, on this point, Marx like the Gautama Buddha, keeps a "noble silence". He is only talking about using religion to keep people from examining their actual lives: alienation. Or as Joe Hill sang:

Long-haired preachers come out every night
To tell you what's wrong and what's right
But when asked about something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet

Chorus
You will eat bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky.
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die -- that's a lie.

And the starvation army they play,
They sing and they clap and they pray.
'Til they get your all coin on the drum,
Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum.

Chorus
You're going to eat bye and bye, poor boy,
In that glorious land above the sky, way up high.
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die -- dirty lie.
Holy rollers and jumpers come out,
And they holler , they jump, lord they shout.
Give your money to Jesus they say,
He will cure all your troubles today.

Chorus
And you will eat bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky.
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

If you heart for children and wife,
Try to get something good from this life.
You're a sinner and a bad man they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Chorus
You will eat bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky.
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.


Working men of all countries unite,
Side by side for freedom we will fight.
When this world and its wealth we have gained,
To the grafters we will sing this refrain:

Chorus
You will eat bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood it'll do you good,
You will eat in that sweet bye and bye.

Yes, You will eat bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky.
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die -- that's a lie.

As a matter of fact, I personally believe in God and I have always found what Marx said deeply spiritual. Gandhi himself synthesized all the contradictions implicit here. That's another reason the Socialist ladies in the picture were cheering him.

In short Obama said what he said and as Arianna Huffington was thousands of miles away in the South Pacific, staying on "billionaire Obama backer" David Geffen's 454-foot yacht, like in "the people's flag is palest pink," she didn't kill the story in time and Obama got caught.

This was even a better opportunity for him than the Wright-race speech to say something noble and to educate his listeners... as is his want, but he didn't step up, he choked.

And I think that if you think this stuff and say this stuff, you have to defend this stuff, because it has a pedigree and can be defended without offending. Or don't think it or at least have the mother wit not to say it anywhere to anyone except maybe to Michelle when the lights are off... Not even then, people get divorced and ex-wives of famous men write books.

For me this confirms my impression of Barack Obama as an American Tony Blair with a fantastic tan, but without Blair's self discipline.

Is this an endorsement of Hillary Clinton?

No, but one can say this for Hillary, she is so phony, so artificial, so contrived, that you could think that, somehow, somewhere, cowering at the bottom of her soul, there might be a real person hoping to get a chance to spring out.

As to the Democrats and America itself, my inner Lenin tells me things are going to have to get much, much worse, before they ever get better. DS

Bittergate and Obama's navy

David Geffen's Yacht

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Maureen Dowd, who normally seems to favor Barack Obama -- whom she calls the "Wonder Boy" -- over hapless Hillary, published a scathing article about the freshman senator from Illinois and Bittergate in the New York Times.

Obama comes across less like a candidate in Pennsylvania than an anthropologist in Borneo. His mother got her Ph.D. in anthropology, studying the culture of Indonesia. And as Obama has courted white, blue-collar voters in “Deer Hunter” and “Rocky” country, he has often appeared to be observing the odd habits of the colorful locals, resisting as the natives try to fatten him up like a foie gras goose, sampling Pennsylvania beer in a sports bar with his tie tight, awkwardly accepting bowling shoes as a gift from Bob Casey, examining the cheese and salami at the Italian Market here as intriguing ethnic artifacts, purchasing Utz Cheese Balls at a ShopRite in East Norriton and quizzing the women working in a chocolate factory about whether they could possibly really like the sugary doodads.(...) What turns off voters is the detached egghead quality that they tend to equate with a wimpiness, wordiness and a lack of action — the same quality that got the professorial and superior Adlai Stevenson mocked by critics as Adelaide. The new attack line for Obama rivals is that he’s gone from J.F.K. to Dukakis. (Just as Dukakis chatted about Belgian endive, Obama chatted about Whole Foods arugula in Iowa).

It looks like Obama really hit a lace-curtain nerve of Maureen's, doesn't it?

One of the most interesting things I have read about how Bittergate came to light is from Bill Bradley via RCP. Catch this:

When Arianna Huffington, thousands of miles away in the South Pacific where she was staying on billionaire Obama backer David Geffen's 454-foot yacht, learned of the brewing issue. She signed off on the story, which was then underway.

On reading this a few awkward questions spring to mind.

Why exactly does someone who espouses progressive politics go to Tahiti to lounge on a 454 foot yacht and why is the owner of such a monster yacht backing Obama?

What are these people "clinging" to?

Is it that unfair to doubt that these people have much real empathy or any reason to feel any empathy at all for the "lunch pail" set?

Is it poisonous to think that they might be just a little elitist? I mean I know, there is always going to be someone with a bigger yacht, but 454 feet is not your normal "bass buster", is it?

Could it be that we have stumbled onto a rich vein of phoniness in the obamistas, if not in Obama himself?

What kind of bad joke is the Democratic Party anyway? DS

EU, Russia and the USA: musical chairs... two chairs left

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The natural synergies between Russia and the European Union are central facts in today's geopolitics.

Russia, underpopulated at 140 million and amazingly rich in natural resources and the 400 million inhabitants of the European Union, unrivaled for adding value to everything tangible that comes into their hands are an obvious match up.

If Russia and the European Union can ever come to some harmonious understanding, the result would be the most productive concentration of humanity and raw materials in history. The question would be how to handle the United States. because two is company and three is a crowd. What would they need the USA for? Except as a provider of entertainment, what would America's further role be in the "West"?

If Russia is no longer a military threat to Europe, what possible justification could there be for the USA to station soldiers in Europe? Why should the Mediterranean be filled with US warships? How would this affect Israel?

If Europe with the euro and the world's largest economy finally creates it own unified defense force... in the face of fierce American opposition and ridicule, just like when the euro was created, what then could possibly justify an American role in European affairs. America would be next to irrelevant in Europe.

Therefore keeping Russia and the EU apart is evidently an American strategic goal of the first order.

In my opinion this obvious synergy between Russia and the European Union and the logical consequences that would flow from it are haunting American foreign policy today... much more than Iran, China or the "Global War on Terror".

It seems to me evident that the USA is doing all it can to create tension with Russia in order to prevent and interrupt the natural flow between Europe and Russia. Something like a fireman who sets fires in order to justify his role and create a demand for his services. DS

Getting fed to the lions

He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it’s not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.

And what are the grounds for his supercilious disdain? If he were a war hero, if he had a career of remarkable civic achievement or public service — then he could perhaps be excused an unattractive but in a sense understandable hauteur. But what has Barack Obama accomplished that entitles him to look down on his fellow Americans? William Kristol - New York Times

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The quote above from loathsome neocon, William Kristol is only a preview of what is in store for Barack Obama if, as is probable, he wins the Democratic nomination, and below my post is a very workmanlike analysis from Politico of the flank that Obama's "small town gaffe" has opened for his adversaries.

In case anyone thinks that I am exaggerating the importance of all of this let me explain a bit of "secret doctrine".

A great many white Americans, although they would never admit it, even to themselves, are not quite ready to have someone of African ancestry in the White House; at the same time they do not want to appear racist even in their own eyes.

What could be more delicious than to disqualify an African-American as an elitist snob?

What could be more democratic than to openly consider a black man one's social superior?

It is probably the only acceptable ad-hominem attack that can be used against Obama without disqualifying the attacker as a redneck... and Obama walked right into it.

It immediately turns all of Obama's strong points: his intelligence, his verbal ability and poise, in short his cool, into weaknesses that prove that he is elitist. And if you say that it is impossible for an African-American to actually be an elitist, then you are the racist practicing the "racism of low expectations"

"Of course a Harvard lawyer, who lives in million dollar townhouse has every right to be an elitist, no matter the color of his skin!"

Checkmate.

The United States of America has become a virtual mega-Bosnia-Herzegovina and Barack Obama has just strolled into a very old and well marked mine field. DS

What Clinton wishes she could say - Politico
Why, ask many Democrats and media commentators, won’t Hillary Rodham Clinton see the long odds against her, put her own ambitions aside, and gracefully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Democratic nominee?

Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democrats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won’t tell the story.(...)Far from a no-holds-barred affair, the Democratic contest has been an exercise in self-censorship.

Rip off the duct tape and here is what they would say: Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working-class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico).

Republicans will also ruthlessly exploit openings that Clinton — in the genteel confines of an intraparty contest — never could. Top targets: Obama’s radioactive personal associations, his liberal ideology, his exotic life story, his coolly academic and elitist style.

This view has been an article of faith among Clinton advisers for months, but it got powerful new affirmation last week with Obama’s clumsy ruminations about why “bitter” small-town voters turn to guns and God.(...) Skepticism about Obama’s general election prospects extends beyond Clinton backers. We spoke to unaffiliated Democratic lawmakers, veteran lobbyists, and campaign operatives who believe the rush of enthusiasm for Obama’s charisma and fresh face has inhibited sober appraisals of his potential weaknesses.

The concerns revolve around two themes.

The first is based on the campaign so far. Assuming voting patterns evident in the nominating contest continue into the fall, Obama would be vulnerable if McCain can approximate the traditional GOP performance in key states.

The second is based on fear about the campaign ahead.

Stories about Obama’s Chicago associations with 1960s radicals Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers landed with barely a ripple. So, too, did questions about whether he once backed a total ban on handguns (he says no but in a 1996 state legislative race his campaign filled out a questionnaire saying yes). Obama’s graceful handling of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy may have turned that into a net positive against Clinton.

But all this was in a Democratic contest. What about about when Obama’s running against a Republican?

Let’s take the first point: Obama’s electoral coalition. His impressive success to date comes predominately from strong support among upscale, college-educated whites and overwhelming support from African-Americans.

Assuming he is the Democratic nominee, it seems virtually certain he would bring turnout of these groups to historic levels.

But there is reason to question whether he would be able to perform at average levels with other main pillars of the traditional Democratic coalition: blue-collar whites, Jews and Hispanics. He has run decently among these groups in some places, but in general he’s run well behind her.

Obama lost the Jewish vote by double-digits in Florida, New York and Maryland — and that was before controversy over anti-Israel remarks of Wright.

An undecided Democratic superdelegate told us many Jewish voters are itching for a reason to break with the party and side with Republicans, who have embraced the Israeli cause with passion. A small shift could swing swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania, which have significant Jewish populations.
Obama won only about one-third of Hispanic votes on Super Tuesday — and did even worse a month later in Texas. A Democratic nominee needs big margins with Hispanics to win states like New Mexico, California, Colorado and Arizona. In the fall, Obama would be running against a Republican with a record on immigration that will resonate with Hispanics.

Then there’s the lower-income white vote. Does it seem odd that a woman with a polarizing reputation would be rolling up enormous margins among some of the country’s most traditional voters? Three out of every four blue-collar whites in small towns and rural areas of Ohio voted for Clinton over Obama on March 4. The reality is, this is already an electorate with deep cultural divisions — and that’s in the Democratic Party. READ IT ALL

The "small town" gaffe

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” - Barack Obama

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As my readers may have noticed, I am not a great fan of Barack Obama's, but among his possible defects (I say "possible", because so little is really known about him) being dumb was the last one I would ever have thought he possessed.

However, this remark about small town Americans is about the dumbest thing I have ever heard a major, campaigning politician say... and that includes "the decider" himself, who, strangely enough, is rather shrewd when out campaigning.

Can you imagine a white person running for president making a statement about African-Americans with that many patronizing stereotypes? I love to do parodies, but I wouldn't even attempt one here, because even joking, it would be so painfully offensive; and if Obama even so much as dreamed he had said something in a similar tone about Jewish people he would wake up in a cold sweat and immediately phone Abe Foxman to apologize... even at three in the morning.

Despite being a "white wine-espresso", type myself, I spent many childhood summers in the small town pictured above, where my great, great, grandfather, an immigrant marble carver from Glasgow Scotland, had settled in the 1840s.

On reading this horseshit in the Huffington Post and the subsequent play it is getting, I was moved to write a panegyric on the virtues of the small town, but after some rumination decided that to defend the human beings who live in the country against such a patronizing attitude would be like affirming that Obama is "a credit to his race" or something like that.

I just can't get over how dumb it is.

If I had any doubt (and I did, I assure you) that Barack Obama is a phony, I have none now. DS

Middle East: the skinny

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Charles Krauthammer column in the Washington Post is what you might call a "neocon watershed". Here is what Krauthammer wants:

During the Cold War, we were successful in preventing an attack not only on the United States but also on America's allies. We did it by extending the American nuclear umbrella -- i.e., declaring that any attack on our allies would be considered an attack on the United States.

(...)We should do the same to keep nuclear peace in the Middle East. It would be infinitely less dangerous (and therefore more credible) than the Cold War deterrence because there will be no threat from Iran of the annihilation of the United States. Iran, unlike the Soviet Union, would have a relatively tiny arsenal incapable of reaching the United States.

How to create deterrence? The way John Kennedy did during the Cuban missile crisis. President Bush's greatest contribution to nuclear peace would be to issue the following declaration, adopting Kennedy's language while changing the names of the miscreants:

"It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran."

This should be followed with a simple explanation: "As a beacon of tolerance and as leader of the free world, the United States will not permit a second Holocaust to be perpetrated upon the Jewish people."

This policy -- the Holocaust Declaration -- would not be tested during the current administration, because Iran is not going to go nuclear before January 2009. But it would establish a firm benchmark that would outlive this administration. Every future president -- and every serious presidential candidate -- would have to publicly state whether or not the Holocaust Declaration remains the policy of the United States. (underlining mine)

This proposal is what the neocons think they can salvage from the Iraq debacle. In a sense it is a white flag.

Israel has literally bet the farm on American hegemony and if that is fading, Israel finds itself painted into a corner. As I wrote in a previous post, "For the lack of CHIPAC",

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was supposed to set in motion a domino effect which would lead to new democratic regimes in Iran and the Arab world that would recognize the state of Israel. Instead it has only hastened the decline of American influence there and around the world.(...) Probably a lot of Israel's present behavior is explained by the hysteria-producing feeling that this is the "last dance": the "last days" of the White Man's Burden.(...) In a few years the Israelis simply won't have the same levers of power in their hands they do today and they will be forced to make what Ariel Sharon called "painful concessions", only a bit more painful than Sharon ever dreamed (dreams?). This is not a plot or a conspiracy, it is simply that the world is no longer a white soliloquy.

The bottom line is that all of Israel's eggs are in America's basket and if the United States ground forces ever manage to extricate themselves from Iraq, committing them again to fight in the Middle East would be next to impossible.

Perhaps the only thing that could ever bring back the American boots on the ground in the Middle East would be to avoid having to execute some of the clauses in Krauthammer's contract.

I am very sure that Charles Krauthammer doesn't just wake up in the morning and think it would be nice if the United States committed itself to vaporizing 70,049,262 people. This is a very serious proposal that has been discussed at length and that Krauthammer has been chosen to float. This is an opening move in a new game.

It will be interesting to see if any of the presidential candidates sign on this proposal in the coming months. DS

Globalization: the right tool for the job

A Night at the Opera - The Marx Brothers (1935)

David Seaton's News Links
Much of today's financial crisis seems to have its origins in deregulation. Sadly, the financial sector is just like a big department store: when not watched closely, enough people inside the system will steal enough goods to put the store out of business.

However, despite all the messages of common sense and a garden variety knowledge of human nature, “deregulation” has become some kind of Anglo-Saxon religion. "freeing business from government interference" has become a jihad.

Faced with the present need to create robust regulations, the American establishment goes about it with all the distaste of a chef at the Riyadh Hilton forced to carve a Virginia ham.

Because of this distaste and the sunk costs of massive ideological indoctrination carried out in endless think tanks and classrooms going way back to the days of Barry Goldwater, Americans will probably not be able to gather their wits about them in time to write suitable regulations quickly enough to stabilize globalization.

This cultural inability to regulate may drain power from the USA even more dramatically then any other factor, including the war in Iraq or the rise of China.

Cultural inability to manage certain processes can carry a high cost: imagine the warlike Zulu facing the Maxim gun.

Robust, workable and well written regulations are needed soon if globalization is not going to turn into the Marx Brother's stateroom in "A Night at the Opera", with clouds of pickpockets taking the hardboiled eggs.

The only shop that produces regulations in quantity and quality and quickly enough is the European Union. Probably the most well known example of that regulatory superiority and its usefulness is the case of the creation and implantation of the GSM cell phone standard.

The “faceless bureaucrats” in Brussels believe in regulation and know how to write good ones; regulations that can fit a Bulgarian or a Dane a Romanian or a Swede.

The ability to create regulations that actually work has turned this fractious peninsula of Asia into the world's largest economy, while the United States today seems to only to be able to offer the world "one size fits all" military power for all occasions... but no practical solutions for governing the incipient day to day chaos of universal interconnection.

Here is how Wikipedia describes the process by which Europe has regulated itself into the universal standard of quality:

The EU has developed a single market through a standardized system of laws which apply in all member states, guaranteeing the freedom of movement of people, goods, services and capital. It maintains a common trade policy, agricultural and fisheries policies, and a regional development policy. Fifteen member states have adopted a common currency, the euro. It has developed a role in foreign policy, representing its members in the World Trade Organization, at G8 summits and at the United Nations. Twenty-one EU countries are members of NATO. It has developed a role in justice and home affairs, including the abolition of passport control between many member states under the Schengen Agreement.

Anyone dreaming about or dreading a world government only needs to examine how that part of the world, that until 1914 was the world, has organized itself in order to get an idea of what a "New World Order" would actually look like. No "black helicopters", just the Common Agricultural Policy.

I think that Europeans will be surprised by how much power is going to come their way in the next few months and years, for the simple reason that the EU exists to regulate and what the world needs most are workable standards, weights and measures. DS

Petraeus reads The Rubaiyat

David Seaton's News Links
On the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war, the commanding General David Petraeus went to Washington and argued before the US Congress against the promised withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

He bleakly refused to offer any timetable for resuming reductions or to estimate how many U.S. soldiers would be in Iraq by year's end. "We haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel; the champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator," he said. "And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible."

Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times:

The Maliki debacle in Basra, (...) made it stunningly clear — after a cease-fire was brokered in Iran — that we’re spending $3 trillion as our own economy goes off a cliff so that Iran can have a dysfunctional little friend.

And David Ignatius in the Washington Post:

Iran's covert campaign to reshape Iraq has been clear since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Iranian intelligence officers prepared lists of Iraqis for assassination in the weeks and months after the war began; they sent Iranian-trained mullahs to take over the Shiite mosques of central and southern Iraq that had been smashed by Saddam Hussein; they pumped an estimated $12 million a week in covert financial support to their allies as the January 2005 election approached; they infiltrated all the major Shiite political parties, and many of the Sunni ones, too.

The Iranians have fixed the political game. They are on all sides at once. They have links to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Dawa party; they funnel money to the Badr organization of Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, which is a key recruiting ground for the Iraqi army; they provide weapons, training and command and control for the most extreme factions of the Mahdi Army. Moqtada al-Sadr, the Mahdi Army's nominal leader, is actually living in the Iranian holy city of Qom, suffering from what intelligence sources believe may be clinical depression. A useful ploy would be to invite him to come home and see if he can be drawn into negotiations.

The Iranians were able to start the recent trouble in Basra and Baghdad through one set of operatives, then negotiate a cease-fire through another. In short, they play the Iraqi lyre on all its strings.

Fighting a war against Iran is a bad idea. But fighting a proxy war against it in Iraq, where many of our key allies are manipulated by Iranian networks of influence, may be even worse.

How can the United State extricate itself from this tar baby?

Michael Goodwin wrote in the New York Daily News:

After watching hours of the dreary Senate hearings on Iraq on Tuesday, I have only one remaining question: Why would anybody want to be the next President of the United States?

There is no clear way forward or out of Iraq. Beyond changes on the margins - forcing the Iraqi government to pay more reconstruction costs, for example - the most likely prospect is more of the same slog in the hopes Iraqis eventually will build for themselves the country we are unable to build for them.

I say that despite knowing that Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have promised to withdraw our troops within a year or so, no matter the ground conditions. I don't believe it's a promise they can keep.

Obama admitted as much on Tuesday by creating big-time wiggle room for himself. He told Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker that everybody wants a "successful resolution" and that nobody was demanding a "precipitous withdrawal" of our troops. He also seemed to be seeking a way of defining limited victory rather than sticking with his vow of a rapid retreat.

It was a grownup moment for him, one that reflects the stubborn reality of Iraq. As bad as it is, and it is disastrously bad, it could get far worse if we suddenly pull the plug on our role.

Obama and Clinton had been ducking that issue in their primary battle, but ducking will not be an option in the general election or in the Oval Office. Faced with the prospect of an all-out civil war, maybe genocide and almost certainly a failed state taken over by Islamic fundamentalists or Iran, the next President will be forced to fight in some fashion.

At this moment numerous observers are predicting that the United States will attack Iran in the near future and that Israel will use the ensuing confusion to simultaneously attack Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. At that point you might be able to double the value of your automobile by filling the gas tank.

Much has been made of the scars left on the American psyche by the war in Vietnam, but I think a quite a bit of that was self pity at having lost a war for the first time: of being "losers".

There was much self-dramatization involved in both those who were against the war in Vietnam and those who were for it. To some extent the obscenity and the needlessness of Vietnam cut through the overstimulated banality of everyday American life. A hint of reality. For many of us defeat in Vietnam was just another of the drugs my generation experimented with.

The United States had stumbled, but the momentum of the cold war gave an ideological cover and sense to Vietnam's senselessness. At the same time the war in Vietnam itself and the consequences of losing it had little or no effect on American's standard of living and that standard of living has become the essence of America's being: wealth is America's mystical body. Vietnam didn't touch that.

Iraq is different. If wealth is America's mystical body, gasoline is its holy spirit.

There is in the war in Iraq something of the inevitable, the inescapable; of winning the lottery in reverse: something old and dead and clinging that is deeply foreign to the American genius.

One of the most attractive traits of the American character is its belief that it is possible to rewind life and erase the past; a belief in the endless possibilities of new beginnings.

However, before committing ground troops to the Middle East, perhaps someone in the White House should have read the classic Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, who wrote in The Rubaiyat

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

A more un-American sentiment is hard to imagine. Muslims are always being accused of being fatalistic... Go to their world and learn why. DS

I just couldn't stomach writing about Petraeus today

Jyoti Amge, the world's smallest teenager

David Seaton's News Links
General Petraeus is in Washington and I know I'm going to have to write about Iraq again sometime this week, I'm even going to get paid for it... but I'm going to hold off as long as I can...

Depressing is not exactly the word... The war in Iraq is like... I dunno, writing about Iraq is like... like playing the part of Bill Murray in "Ground Hog Day"... on LSD, or like rowing a boat with a clothes line.

HDS Greenway has got it down pretty good in the Boston Globe:

"The American public hears no realistic plans from Democrats on how to disengage from this fruitless enterprise. McCain talks about a 100-year troop presence as if Iraq were a homogeneous, industrial democracy like Japan, (...) In the meantime, the through-the-looking-glass atmosphere surrounding whatever Bush says about Iraq becomes ever-more bizarre."

After surviving all the atomic perils of decades of cold war, who would have ever thought that the USA would attempt suicide in a place, that if God were to give the earth an enema, he would surely insert the hose?

So today, instead of Iraq, I have decided to pay homage to this lovely little person, Jyoti Amge from India. Here is what the agencies have to say about her:

A teenager from India who stands at a tiny 1ft 11in (58cm) tall is the smallest girl in the world.

Jyoti Amge, 14, is shorter than the average two-year-old child and only weighs 11lb (5kg).

Despite this, she goes to a regular school in Nagpur, central India, where she has her own small desk and chair, and her classmates treat her like any other student.

She said: 'I am proud of being small. I love all the attention I get. I'm not scared of being small and I don't regret it.

She will even be releasing an album with her favourite Indian pop star, the bhangra/rap star Mika Singh.

Jyoti is ambitious and hopes to work as a Bollywood actress one day.

She said: 'I would love to work in a big city like Mumbai, act in films and travel to London and America."

I love the line, "'I am proud of being small. I love all the attention I get. I'm not scared of being small and I don't regret it." She is obviously intelligent and from the expression on her face sitting next to the baby, she also has a mischievous sense of humor and must be full of fun. Irresistible!

Personally, I think that if a drip like Paris Hilton can get all the attention she gets, this adorable tiny creature is going to be a (adjective that means "big" or "huge" without being a joke) star.

Jyoti Amge should be making a world tour, not Alan Greenspan. DS

My Bette Davis story

David Seaton's News Links
Bette Davis, one Hollywood's greatest stars was born on April 5th, 1908 and so we are celebrating her centenary.

This has brought forth a flood of in memoriam pieces about her. The best I've read are by James Wolcott over at Vanity Fair, whose fluid, fluent and perceptive blog I read regularly.

Reading Wolcott's posts jogged my memory and up popped my own personal Bette Davis story and out it pops here.

I'm not sure of the exact date, it must have been sometime in the middle to late '50s of tardo-Eisenhower and Bette Davis was touring with her then husband Gary Merrill in "An Evening with Carl Sandburg".

I couldn't have been more than a freshman in high school then, but, precocious little twerp that I was, I belonged to a Northwestern University night-school, theater group and as part of the program they took us down to the loop to see Davis's show. We were all thrilled to be seeing a great Hollywood star in person and even more thrilled because we had been promised a question and answer session with Bette Davis herself after the show.

When it was over we stayed in our seats and waited.

After a quarter of an hour, the lights went down halfway and the curtain went up again... and there were Bette Davis and Mr. Bette Davis sitting in front of us.

The house was filled with that uncritical adoration and microscopic attention of a myth-drinking group of Americans having the darshan of a genuine, golden age, Hollywood movie star. Charisma radiated from Bette Davis, the eyes were everything they were supposed to be: they flashed and shone. Charm and temperament exuded... Then something strange and unforgettable happened.

Bette Davis peered into the gloom at the back of theater and suddenly, as if the plug had been pulled from a swimming pool, all of Bette Davis's charisma drained away in a gurgle and for a moment we were left looking at a rather dinged up, middle aged lady, staring with great popping eyes at some point behind our backs. Bette Davis was paralyzed like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming car..... we slowly turned in our seats... coming toward the stage, out of the gloom, was a presence.

Slowly into the half light came Carl Sandburg.

Now Carl Sandburg may not mean much to many of my readers, but for anybody from Chicago at that time, he had so defined the city's self image that no matter what a 98 pound weakling you were, to be from the windy city was to have "broad shoulders". The greatest voice of Middle Western populism, the biographer of our Abraham Lincoln, a socialist and Chicago's poet laureate.

He had a charisma -- with his white mane in the shadows -- that literally glowed in the dark. He didn't go up on stage with the Davises, he found a dramatic sliver of light where he was and all of us turned... our... backs... on... Bette Davis.

I cannot remember what he said to us. I remember only the sound of his voice and the cadences, the way each word he said had its own weight, shape and texture. He recited a bit, he laughed: he bathed in our admiration like a farmer washing his face under a pump on a hot day, a pleasure duly earned.

Bette Davis was just another fan. It was truly, "An Evening with Carl Sandburg."

For some, Bette Davis is "All About Eve", for me she's the poor lady on that stage looking at the back of a bunch of students: an image drowned and drained by reality. DS

My 666th Post

David Seaton's News Links
According to Google Blogger Dashboard, this is my 666th post since I started News Links way back in October of 2006, with the object of emulating my hero, Billmon, who has retired and whom I miss terribly.

Once I had the suspicion that Billmon was a professor named Sidney Winter, but I never had that confirmed. If the greatest blogger that ever lived isn't you Sid, accept my heartfelt apologies.

So, I have decided to dedicate my 666th posting to "The Beast" himself, Billmon.

If you have arrived in blogdom lately and never read the master, another devotee, Miguel de Icaza saved the gurumaharaj's entire production before it was yanked from cyberspace. You may visit the temple and lay offerings at Billmon's tomb at this address. And of course, no homage to The Beast would be complete without Yeat's poem:

"The Second Coming"
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Outside of the tango, "Cambalache", no better description of our world has ever been written.

Tomorrow we can get back to who is best fitted to lead America into its imperial abyss. DS

Dharma bums: Gore and McCain

Bhagavad Gita

David Seaton's News Links
I had a mail asking me to justify how I could be willing to vote for Dennis Kucinich, Al Gore and John McCain and not for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

First congressman Kucinich:
As I've often said, if the tooth fairy could give me three wishes Dennis Kucinich would be President of the United States and with a mandate large enough to enact his full program. I would love to live in a country that someone who thinks like Dennis Kucinich could be president. I do, in fact, live in such a country, but that is another story.

In the case of both Gore and McCain, I read them as men of dharma in the Hindu sense, a apparently esoteric term which, if you pardon me copying and pasting myself, I will explain below.

_____________________________________________

"Dharma" is a very useful Sanskrit word, that Wikipedia defines as "the underlying order in nature and human life and behavior considered to be in accord with that order." Some would translate that as "right" as opposed to "wrong", or "duty" but those words might carry a little more "Judeo-Christian" freight of "sin" and "guilt" than dharma might feel comfortable carrying. "Appropriate", might be closer, but such a very powerful version of that word... so powerful that the word "dharma" in the original version would be more precise, so I'll try to explain dharma, as I understand it, through some examples.

Once a famous rishi, or Hindu holy man, was sitting in meditation next to a flowing river accompanied by his disciples. His reverie was interrupted by the sound of the death struggles of a scorpion that had fallen in the river. Filled with compassion the rishi reached out his hand and lifted the drowning creature out of the water, but no sooner did the scorpion feel himself safe, it stung the rishi's hand and the pain of the sting forced the rishi to drop it back into the water, where of course the scorpion began to drown again... and again the holy man reached down to pull the scorpion out and again he was stung for his pains, this was repeated several times till one of the disciples managed to get a leaf under the scorpion, lift it out of the water and set it on dry land, whereupon the scorpion stalked off into the grass without so much as a backward look.

The disciple approached the rishi, who was nursing his swollen hand, and touching his guru's feet in homage asked, "Master, why did you continue to attempt to save the drowning scorpion, when each time you did so, he stung you for your pains?

The guru replied, "It is the scorpion's dharma to sting and it is my dharma to save."

Perhaps that example might be a little confusing because of the rishi's saintliness. The following story might clarify it.

Once upon a time in India there lived a king who was both a patron of the arts and of religion and a young actor resolved on getting a job at the court theater.

Disguising himself as a mendicant holy man with matted hair and smeared with ashes, the actor appeared before the palace gates, where the guards, knowing the king's penchant for conversing with saints, promptly ushered him into the royal presence. The king and the rishi/actor had a long conversation about spiritual matters and the king received some valuable pointers on his meditation techniques. At the end of the interview the king clapped his hands and a servant brought in a tray with a hundred gold coins upon it, which the king humbly offered to the rishi/actor, who with saintly modesty refused it, only accepting a bowl of rice before blessing the king and going on his way.

The next day the actor appeared before the palace dressed as a dancing girl and accompanied by a group of musicians. The guards knowing the king's love of music ushered the troupe promptly into the royal presence.

To the rhythm of the tabla and the whining of the sitar the actor/dancing girl whirled and stamped his/her bangled feet, striking coy poses, combined with lascivious undulations that drew enthusiastic applause from the king and the entire court. At the end of the performance, the king clapped his hands and again, as before, the servant appeared with the tray covered in gold coins... but this time the actor/dancing girl shook his/her tresses, stamped his/her feet in indignation and pouted with offended displeasure and asked for more money in a rough, high pitched voice.

Now, the king was no dunce and something in the voice of the dancing girl rang a bell and he leaped from his throne and shouted, "I know you! You are the same person that came here yesterday posing as a rishi!" The actor whipped off his wig and threw himself at the king's feet saying, "Yes, your majesty, I was the rishi yesterday and I am the dancing girl today. In reality I am an actor who wants a job in the royal theater and this was the only way I could think of to show you my art."

"Well, said the king, "you are indeed a wonderful actor and not only am I going to give you a job in my theater, from today you are its director." The king paused and lifting the actor to his feet asked him, "But tell me one thing first: Why as rishi did you refuse a hundred gold coins and as a dancing girl protest that they were too few?"

The actor replied, "Your majesty, it is against the dharma of a rishi to accept money for spiritual advice and it is against the dharma of a dancing girl to ever be satisfied no matter how much money she gets... and, of course, it is the dharma of an actor to behave in the dharma of others" So the actor stayed on at court and as the years passed became one of the king most trusted advisors.

Living in dharma can be quite complex, however. Take this example: A judge can also be a grandfather. At home, in his grandfather dharma, his little grandson rides him around the living room like a pony, spurring him in the ribs. In court, in his judge dharma, the accused tremble in his presence. Each role has its dharma.

Institutions and organizations also have their dharmas. Take General Motors for instance. Toyota Motors has just passed GM as the world's biggest car maker. The dharma of a car maker is to make good cars. Toyota makes good cars, GM makes lousy cars.

The opposite of dharma is "adharma". The problem that faces the United States today is that while it postures as "dharma swarupa" (the embodiment of dharma) it is now perceived as adharmic and this could cause a catastrophic collapse in America's positions in a host of situations to come.

In Hindu mythology, Vishnu, the god of preservation and nurturing, incarnates from age to age to restore and to foster dharma. In a secular democracy, however, I'm afraid we'll just have to do it ourselves.

_______________________________________________

So what about Gore and McCain?

First the one I think would make the best president: Al Gore.

I confess that I was not really a fan of Al Gore's until he had the presidency stolen from him by Bush. I cannot think of any more bitter experience for anyone to face. I thought his reaction, his attitude, serene and institutional was completely "dharmic". I think he put the welfare of the country before his own ego, which is at the heart of presidential dharma. That his sacrifice was repaid by eight years of the worst, most adharmic, president in American history takes nothing away from the merit of Gore's abnegation. Dharma to be really dharma has to be Nishkam Karma, self-less or desireless action performed without any expectation of fruits or results.

On to McCain. Obviously at the center of McCain's dharma are the years he spent in a Vietnamese prison. What most exemplifies dharma in this case is that McCain could have been released years before he was, because his father was the Admiral commanding the Pacific Fleet and the Vietnamese were eager to exchange him. McCain refused to be exchanged before his comrades. I can't think of a better example of nishkam karma or Dharma than that.

Tom Engelhardt quite reasonably inquires what McCain was doing when he got shot down. Again, the son and grandson of admirals was fulfilling family dharma. The Gita will inform any who are interested in the dharma of a Kshatriya.

I prefer Gore to McCain because I think he will follow more progressive policies, but I could be wrong. Yesterday there was an interesting article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, that I'll quote:

Of seven major industries that have been the most reliable Republican resources, Sen. McCain has beaten Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama in only one, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization. Even that one, transportation, is a close call. Among the seven combined, the expected Republican nominee raised $13.1 million through February, compared with $22.5 million for Sen. Obama and $27.1 million for Sen. Clinton.(...) Health-care and pharmaceutical firms have given three times as much to each of the two Democrats as to Sen. McCain. Defense firms put Sen. McCain ahead of Sen. Obama, but behind Sen. Clinton. Energy, construction and agribusiness firms have given more to both Democrats.

I don't know about you, but I smell a rat. These people know what they expect for their money and if there is anything people like this don't like and don't understand it is Nishkam Karma in any shape or form.

Summing up: The most important quality in any person of power, as Bush so well illustrates negatively, is dharma. I think that both Al Gore and John McCain are men of proven dharma and I know for sure, as do most Americans, that both the Clintons are adharmic in the extreme... and, as to Obama, to tell the truth, I have no idea what or who Barack Obama really is and I'm not sure even he does either, and that is simply not good enough for me. DS

A message from the gleaners

The Gleaners - Millet

From the Financial Times: "Migrant workers are choosing to move to Europe, Australia or Canada instead of the US in order to protect the purchasing power of the money they send home to their families, according to one of the world’s leading experts on remittances. The shift is a result of sharp falls in the value of the US dollar against other international currencies, many of which have been boosted by the rise in commodity prices."

David Seaton's News Links
Millions of people around the world are making economic decisions every day of their lives and even the decisions of the poorest people are of great significance if they all take the same decision together at the same time.

When we think of globalization we usually think of "Davos Man", not the person who picks our lettuce, cleans our house or carries bricks up a scaffold, but they are the infantry of globalization and the money they send back home or take home when they return, keeps much of the world turning.

Often the fortunes of an entire clan of dozens of people at the other end of our planet depend on the work and earnings of one pair of hands, far, far away from home... but just a glance away from us. Places that only a generation ago only "existed" for us in National Geographic, now survive only a MoneyGram away from us.

Once upon a time, when many of our ancestors immigrated to America, the world was so big and communications so difficult that the break from "the old country" was total. Brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers never saw or heard from the immigrants again. Maybe a letter, perhaps someone returning from America with a message. We make a great romance of it all, but most of it was pain. I believe that that pain still haunts the American subconscious.

Of course they sent money home in the old days, in Ireland "a letter from America" still is a synonym for money I'm told. But nothing can compare to today's going to some little hole in the wall on any street and sending a money order every week to the ends of the earth, a money order that arrives in hours and nothing compares to being able to call home for practically nothing to find out how the money was spent and talk to parents and children and nothing compares to being able to take a cheap flight home with presents every vacation to be made a fuss over in your home town.

Families remain intact across the world, languages and customs are not forgotten... Returning home in a box to be laid to rest with your ancestors is no longer a hopelessly expensive dream.

The opinion of these people, who leave their sweat and their blood and tears far away from home, when taken in their millions, is even more serious than the opinion of those who move fortunes only with the click of a mouse. Like the song goes, the immigrant, "works hard for the money"... They give value, they demand value in exchange for their lives and they know value. On the other end of the satellite telephone connection their people tell them what can be bought with every penny of their lives.

This is literally the end of a dream that lasted hundreds of years. The dollar's magic is gone and poor people no longer want to be paid in it. Can the rich commodity producers be far behind? DS

Woodrow Wilson: the man who destroyed civilization

Woodrow Wilson

"Nicholson Baker, a supremely talented novelist, has written a surprising book of nonfiction titled "Human Smoke." It is composed primarily of snippets taken from contemporary newspapers in the run-up to World War II and makes the daring argument that the war -- our supposedly "good" war -- was not good at all. We shouldn't have fought it." Richard Cohen - Washington Post

"Politicians constantly fondle a small, clean, paperweight version of this war, as if it provides them with moral clarity. We know that it was the most destructive five year period in history. It was destructive of human lives, and also of shelter, sleep, warmth, gentleness, mercy, political refuge, rational discussion, legal process, civil tradition, and public truth. Millions of people were gassed, shot, starved, and worked to death by a paranoid fanatic. The war's victims felt as if they'd come to the end of civilization." Nicholson Baker

David Seaton's News Links
Many people's interest in history begins with reading or seeing films about World War Two. My father's generation fought the war and my street was filled with veterans of North Africa, Sicily, Italy Normandy and the Pacific. It was natural for us to be curious and every house had stories to tell: history was a living thing. Most of us that became history buffs got our start there. This has caused many to have a very distorted view of how historical processes work, as if visiting aliens from outer space, intent on capturing a member of our species in order to study our habits and nature, captured and flew off with a schizophrenic they found talking to himself on a street corner. On debriefing this subject, the visitors from outer space might come to some curious conclusions about humanity's thought processes. In my opinion The Second World War is as valid a sample of typical human history as the schizophrenic, encased in his private logic, would be of the general run of our species.

World War Two, its insanity and evil continue to fascinate and the "Good War" has become a political Swiss Army Knife. As Nicholson Baker says in the quote from the box above:

"Politicians constantly fondle a small, clean, paperweight version of this war, as if it provides them with moral clarity."

I believe, however, that much of this emphasis on World War Two is misplaced or rather misdirected. The wrong questions are asked. What is the correct question?

First, there is no mystery about Hitler himself. Whether he was "evil" or not we must leave to theologians, what he was for sure was bat shit crazy. There are a lot of criminally insane people running around at any time and anywhere. The fundamental question is... has to be:

How did a totally insane, former corporal, failed watercolorist and recent clochard get supreme power in a country that had produced Meister Eckhart, Martin Luther, Kant, Goethe, Hegel, Bach, Beethoven, Einstein and, and, and... the list goes on forever.

Germany was considered by many the most advanced, productive and civilized nation in the world. We are not talking about Idi Amin Dada taking over Uganda.

So, briefly, my idea is not that Hitler destroyed civilization, but that civilization had to be destroyed already for Hitler to have ever left the level of street thug or soapbox agitator. I disagree with Nicholson Baker, by the time Hitler took power war was unavoidable, simply because Hitler would have gotten the atomic bomb and put it on a V-2 rocket.

The war that really has to be studied is World War One. That is the war that could have been avoided and that was the war that could have ended differently. That is where civilization was destroyed. And as horrible a war as it was, it was not the war itself, but how it ended that brought on World War Two.

By 1917, when America entered the war, Germany and the Allies had bled themselves white, essentially they had fought each other to a draw. It was America's entry that "won" the war. If America had stood on the sidelines, the exhausted combatants would have had to make peace on the basis of that exhaustion and have signed a treaty formulating how they would continue to live together. The humiliation of the Versailles Treaty and the ensuing economic ruin and social disorder it brought upon Germany were what broke down Germany's social order to a point where a lowlife like Hitler could seem like an answer to it all.

Therefore, in my revisionist opinion, America' entry into the First World War led directly to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Second World War and all its insanity. Wilson = Holocaust.

If we add all of the "Wilsonian" ideas of "self-determination" that led directly to the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Turkish Empire we can see the germs of the tragedies of the Balkans and the Middle East that are still with us today. All in all, I can think of no other individual in the history of humanity that caused so much death and destruction as Woodrow Wilson.

So, my plea would be when ever you hear Woodrow Wilson and "Wilsonism" invoked in order to invade or to bomb, remember what Wilson and Wilsonian really mean and the harm they have done and are doing at this very moment and the basically Wilsonian attitude of all of the candidates running for President of the United States today. DS