AMERICAN POLITICS:

ANOTHER SORT OF FIRST OF JULY:

Well now that the great raison d'être for America's far flung wars is safely swimming with the fishies it might just be time for that country to question why they continue to fight. A peace coalition called the Three Million Strong March On Washington is planning to drive this point home next July 1. Here's their announcement.

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Anti-War Rallies and Demonstrations
Friday, July 1 at 8:00am - July 4 at 4:00pm

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Location Everywhere USA

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More Info

Glen Ford recently wrote in the Black Agenda that Americans no longer support the Anti- War movement because there is a Democratic President in office. Let's prove him wrong on his analysis. Party Politics Be Damned when it comes to war - we should all be working towards a more peaceful and just planet. www.htp://threemillionstrong.yolasite.com/organize-locally.php is an organize locally page for the Three Million Strong March on Washington. I challenge each of you to use it to organize an Anti-War rally in your area over the 4th of July weekend. Let's show the world what the American people are really about.

Three Suggestions -
1. You should be peaceful and respectful
2. You should not condemn our brothers and sisters in Uniform. They are not the problem of war, they are simply doing what they believe is right for their country.
3. Since this is the month President Obama has made clear he will begin withdrawal from Afghanistan, your protest/rally should reflect that.

Printable flyers at http://threemillionstrong.yolasite.com/organize-locally.php

Once you've organized please announce your action here, no matter how big or small...it's important, even if you only have a few folks, every person, or group of people count. Also - please photograph your action/s and send them to us --so we can organize pictures prior to, during, and after-wards.

HUMOUR:

HALLOWEEN FUNNY CANDY PART 7:

Politighouls maybe ?

HUMOUR:

US ELECTIONS HALLOWEEN:

CANADIAN POLITICS:

HARPER-SECRET AGENDAS AND IMAGE POLISHING:

The "double header" debates are over. Molly began by watching the US vice-presidential candidates debate in the vain hope that Palin would pull out a real howler- grist for my joke mill. The ins and outs of the "ins", however, made this a time waster. Palin didn't fall flat on her face as I'd hoped. In this she was helped by her opponent Biden who had obviously been "over-coached" by his handlers to "not appear like a pitbull" (without lipstick). After watching him fumble the ball three times, missing great opportunities to play the good old game of "got you now you son of a bitch", I realized that Palin wasn't going to provide any amusement. Biden hardly spoke about Palin at all, mostly concentrating on McCain and his more than fuzzy "record" of how and when he voted in this that and the other thing over the past two decades. Too many "nerve tonics" I guess. Biden hardly noticed that McCain was not at the other podium and that his debate opponent was like a battleship with most of its armour missing and half its guns inoperative. It's probably a matter of "staying on script", and far be it for Molly to try and outguess the fine manipulators of public opinion that the Democrats have hired- the best that multi-millions can buy.

But speaking about "scripts" I then turned to the Canadian debate out of boredom. Something actually happened there. There was actually "real debate", if emotional heat (outside of Even-Steven Harper who had his spiel down to a tee, and displayed all of the emotion of Data on Star Trek, The Next Generation). Good plan actually. One wonders how many "nerve tonics" Sneaky Stevie took before the show. The probable answer is "zero" as Harper is undoubtedly the most hardened liar in the pack, and he can control himself to the millimeter. It's entirely possible that the term "psychopath" could apply to Harper. His style suggests the ability to lie with a straight face and feel absolutely no nervousness about such. This impression is more than reinforced by his record in government. It's interesting that he is able to mount simultaneous lies directed at both his left and right wing flanks.

As usual Duceppe came across as the most intelligent of the candidates. Too bad he sits on top of a machine devoted to a hopeless cause, but I guess that he is used to such a position being the ex-Maoist that he is. In terms of pure "reptilian cunning" he could best Sneaky Stevie in a one on one easily, but he hardly is in such a position. The Canadian debate rapidly became boring as well. The highlight was when Layton turned on Dion, basically making him cringe. One could almost hear the whimpery voice coming out of the side of his mouth-one could definitely see the pained expression on his face as Layton interrupted him, caught him in a boo-boo, and simply "took over" the situation. Jumping Jack definitely came across as much "tougher" than Dion, and much more able to stand up to the Great Satan Stevie who wants to offer more and more Canadian bodies on the altars of American wars.

But the amusement was short lived. After that high point it was all downhill. Layton scored the best opposition points on his attacks on the economy, but Sneaky Stevie "cooled his way through". No knock-out punches here. Dingbat Dion was way out of his league. Mealy-Mouthed May was a non-entity, as befits somebody who used to be one of Brian Mulroney's advisers, made sweetheart deals with the present Liberals (as part of a plot to undermine the NDP as the "left party"), and was part and parcel of a "capture attempt" on the Canadian Green Party that has thoroughly and permanently marginalized its "left" elements.

Still, a large number of Canadians are gradually coming to an "anyone but Harper" position. There are good reasons for this, as the following article from the Harper Index points out.

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Hidden-agenda concerns keep Conservatives from majority :
Only ten percent in poll think Harper has told them the whole truth about his plans.
OTTAWA, October 3, 2008:

Stephen Harper attempted in the federal leaders' debate last night to dispel the fear many Canadians have that he has a hidden ideological agenda that will not come into full view until he has a majority government.

Despite a political career built on contempt for public services, marketing boards, social programs and unions, Harper steered a cautious path during his two-plus years of minority government, avoiding hot-button social issues. In last night's debate, he boasted about having increased spending on social programs as Prime Minister.

"There's no ideological agenda there," he claimed, about cuts to some arts programs while increasing funding to others. Later he chided the other leaders about funding he said his government had put into economic development. "This is hardly a laissez-faire attitude."

Harper knows that Canadians are concerned about what may be, as Jack Layton put it in the debate, under Harper's blue sweater. (This was a reference to Harper's attempts to soften his image in this campaign by appearing in sweaters rather than suits.)

A May poll by Vector Research™ was one of many that have pointed to the distrust many voters feel for Harper. "Some people feel that Harper has a hidden agenda and that if the Conservatives win a majority government in the next federal election he will do things he did not talk about in the election campaign," said Vector's Marc Zwelling.

"Forty two percent of Canadians, including 46 percent of the women we talked to, told us they feel Harper is holding back or covering up information about a lot of his plans that voters ought to know."

Only ten percent of those polled thought that Harper has told the voters the whole truth about his plans.

In a September 29 poll, two thirds of respondents said they thought a Harper majority government would expand the role of private health care, something Harper downplayed last night and throughout the campaign.

Harper's debate strategy confirmed what many observers have written, that he is running to attract voters in the political centre and establish a long-term majority by staying relaxed and in control, with barely a hint of ideology. He never used right-wing catch-phrases like "privatize," "war on terror," or "war on drugs," nor did he refer to religion, morality or any of the other ideas that would mark him as a right-winger. He boasted he does not use private health care.

The often-aggressive Harper took a much more subdued tone in the debates than he often does in the House. Both in the debate and through most of his tightly-scripted and heavily-guarded campaign, Harper has managed to skirt discussion of issues that provoked much of the distrust he now encounters.

Dozens of trust-disturbing incidents and policies from the past two years might have been raised that weren't: including a government culture of authoritarianism, blocking access to public documents, a revolving door between the government and top corporate lobbyists, tying the hands of future governments with secret deals like the SPP and TILMA. The Harper government's ideological attacks on Canadian Wheat Board haven't achieved much campaign notice. The politicization and muzzling of the public service did not come up in the debate. Neither did the government's outright hostility to the news media and its relentless attempts to control their access to government officials.

The final vote on October 14 will tell whether his performance last night and throughout the campaign successfully assured voters he is a moderate without a hidden agenda.

AMERICAN POLITICS:

HOWARD ZINN ON WAR:

The following essay is from the Z Communications site, the new and better version of the old Z Net. Drop on over for a wealth of internet resources. Howard Zinn is one of the premier historians and commentators on the American left.

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Memo to Obama, McCain: No one wins in a war

By Howard Zinn
BARACK OBAMA and John McCain continue to argue about war. McCain says to keep the troops in Iraq until we "win" and supports sending more troops to Afghanistan. Obama says to withdraw some (not all) troops from Iraq and send them to fight and "win" in Afghanistan.

For someone like myself, who fought in World War II, and since then has protested against war, I must ask: Have our political leaders gone mad? Have they learned nothing from recent history? Have they not learned that no one "wins" in a war, but that hundreds of thousands of humans die, most of them civilians, many of them children?

Did we "win" by going to war in Korea? The result was a stalemate, leaving things as they were before with a dictatorship in South Korea and a dictatorship in North Korea. Still, more than 2 million people - mostly civilians - died, the United States dropped napalm on children, and 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives.

Did we "win" in Vietnam? We were forced to withdraw, but only after 2 million Vietnamese died, again mostly civilians, again leaving children burned or armless or legless, and 58,000 American soldiers dead.

Did we win in the first Gulf War? Not really. Yes, we pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, with only a few hundred US casualties, but perhaps 100,000 Iraqis died. And the consequences were deadly for the United States: Saddam was still in power, which led the United States to enforce economic sanctions. That move led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, according to UN officials, and set the stage for another war.

In Afghanistan, the United States declared "victory" over the Taliban. Now the Taliban is back, and attacks are increasing. The recent US military death count in Afghanistan exceeds that in Iraq. What makes Obama think that sending more troops to Afghanistan will produce "victory"? And if it did, in an immediate military sense, how long would that last, and at what cost to human life on both sides?

The resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan is a good moment to reflect on the beginning of US involvement there. There should be sobering thoughts to those who say that attacking Iraq was wrong, but attacking Afghanistan was right.

Go back to Sept. 11, 2001. Hijackers direct jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing close to 3,000 A terrorist act, inexcusable by any moral code. The nation is aroused. President Bush orders the invasion and bombing of Afghanistan, and the American public is swept into approval by a wave of fear and anger. Bush announces a "war on terror."
Except for terrorists, we are all against terror. So a war on terror sounded right. But there was a problem, which most Americans did not consider in the heat of the moment: President Bush, despite his confident bravado, had no idea how to make war against terror.

Yes, Al Qaeda - a relatively small but ruthless group of fanatics - was apparently responsible for the attacks. And, yes, there was evidence that Osama bin Laden and others were based in Afghanistan. But the United States did not know exactly where they were, so it invaded and bombed the whole country. That made many people feel righteous. "We had to do something," you heard people say.

Yes, we had to do something. But not thoughtlessly, not recklessly. Would we approve of a police chief, knowing there was a vicious criminal somewhere in a neighborhood, ordering that the entire neighborhood be bombed? There was soon a civilian death toll in Afghanistan of more than 3,000 - exceeding the number of deaths in the Sept. 11 attacks. Hundreds of Afghans were driven from their homes and turned into wandering refugees.

Two months after the invasion of Afghanistan, a Boston Globe story described a 10-year-old in a hospital bed: "He lost his eyes and hands to the bomb that hit his house after Sunday dinner." The doctor attending him said: "The United States must be thinking he is Osama. If he is not Osama, then why would they do this?"

We should be asking the presidential candidates: Is our war in Afghanistan ending terrorism, or provoking it? And is not war itself terrorism?

Howard Zinn is author of "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress"�published by�City Lights Books.

AMERICAN POLITICS:


OBAMA AND 'THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS':


The 'School of the Americas', headquartered in Fort Benning, Georgia, has an infamous reputation as the "school of torture" where the US military teaches soldiers from its Latin American client states the finer details of many things, including interrogation methods. It has been the target of long standing campaigns demanding that it close. For more information see the School of the America Watch website. Molly recently came upon this gem at the website of the North American Congress on Latin America about the waffling of presidential candidate Barack Obama on this matter. Now it is almost a truism amongst the more radical left, anarchists amongst them, that the election of Obama will have little fundamental effect on the course of the US Empire, beyond pulling it back from some of its more egregious acts of folly. Still others, however, quite more numerous than such leftists, see Obama's candidacy as some shining symbol of hope. They will be disillusioned, and the following explains one of the items that will be part of that awakening.


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Obama and the School of the Americas
Nikolas Kozloff
For a candidate who talks the talk on human rights, Barack Obama has little to say about the infamous School of the Americas (SOA). Originally established in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946, the school later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia in 1984. Since its inception, the institution has instructed more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in military and law-enforcement tactics.



The Pentagon itself has acknowledged that in the past the School of the Americas utilized training manuals advocating coercive interrogation techniques and extrajudicial executions. After receiving their training at the institution, officers went on to commit countless human rights atrocities in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia.



Activists long lobbied Congress to shut down the school, and in the waning days of the Clinton presidency they nearly achieved their goal. In July 1999, the House passed an amendment that cut funding for the military institution, but the Senate decided to pass its own version of the bill that included funding. Compromise legislation between the House and Senate deleted the funding cut, effectively restoring public support for the school. Shortly afterwards Congress renamed the school Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) and revised the institution’s structure and curriculum.



Now fast forward to the 2006 mid-term Congressional election: hoping to make use of their newfound majority on Capitol Hill, some Democrats sought to eliminate WHINSEC’s funding once and for all. Shortly after their victory in November they nearly succeeded with 203 legislators voting against ongoing public support of the school and 214 in favor. The closeness of the vote suggested that if the Democrats were able to increase their legislative majority in 2008, then the WHINSEC might indeed be history.



Outside the halls of Congress a number of prominent organizations joined calls to shut WHINSEC including the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the NAACP, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, and over 100 U.S. Catholic Bishops.



Still, the Democratic presidential candidates refused to take a stand against WHINSEC. In fact, the only two Democrats who expressed opposition to the institution were long shots Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich (on the Republican side, Ron Paul said he too would shutter WHINSEC).



In the early stages of the presidential race, Kucinich pledged to close the school if he were elected. A longtime foe of WHINSEC who had voted repeatedly to close the institution while serving in Congress, Kucinich even attended a political protest held at the gates of the school in late 2007.



But now that Kucinich and the other Democratic contenders have bowed out of the race the question is: where does Obama stand? On International Human Rights Day last year the Senator remarked, “We in the United States enjoy tremendous freedoms, but we also carry a special responsibility—the responsibility of being the country so many people in the world look to… for human rights leadership.”



Obama then added that Bush had undermined human rights: “We were told that waterboarding was effective. We were assured that shipping men off to countries that tortured was good for national security. We were led to believe that our military and civilian courts were inadequate, and so we established a network of unaccountable prisons.” He continued, “We have not only vacated the perch of moral leader; we have also compounded the threat we face, spurring more people to take up arms against us.”



Obama lamented that the Bush administration had destroyed the moral credibility of the United States worldwide. In Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, Russia, and Pakistan, human rights violations were on the rise. Unfortunately, Washington no longer enjoyed any international respect and could not speak with authority on human rights.



Poignantly, Obama closed by stating, “The very depth of the anti-Americanism felt around the world today is a testament not to hatred but to disappointment, acute disappointment. The global public expects more from America. They expect our government to embody what they have seen in our people: industriousness, humanity, generosity, and a commitment to equality. We can become that country again.”



Obama likes to employ soaring rhetoric when discussing human rights. But late last year, he failed to take a strong position opposing WHINSEC. When pressed, the candidate praised Congress’ revision of the school’s curriculum but said that he wanted to continue to evaluate the institution.



What more information could Obama possibly need to reach a final decision on the matter? An Obama spokesman said the senator "has not committed to closing down the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, but he will take a hard look at the program and the progress it has made once he is elected." The spokesman reiterated Obama was pleased with the institution's inclusion of human rights courses.



To put this in all in perspective then, on this issue Obama has staked out a position to the right of Ron Paul, many members of Congress, and mainstream labor and Church organizations.
Given widespread public disgust towards torture and the like, Obama’s meekness on WHINSEC is perplexing. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and revelations about so-called waterboarding, many U.S. citizens have soured on the War on Terror. Meanwhile, the prisoner detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has become an international eyesore. Even President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have publicly said they’d prefer to close the facility.



Obama also supports closing Guantánamo, which makes his statements on WHINSEC all the more befuddling. In the present political climate, what does the Senator have to lose by coming out against the former School of the Americas? Perhaps he fears the GOP might accuse him of being weak on defense. But Republican nominee John McCain is not likely to use torture as ammunition during the campaign—it hardly seems a winning electoral issue for the Arizona Senator. What’s more, many voters are oblivious to WHINSEC and have little knowledge of, or interest in, U.S. policy towards Latin America.



No, it’s not fear of GOP retaliation on the campaign trail that keeps Obama quiet on WHINSEC. What the Senator is really concerned about is offending the movers and shakers within the military-industrial complex. Closing WHINSEC would demonstrate that the United States has no interest in dominating the peoples of Latin America by military means. Obama however is reluctant to make a clean break from the United States’ imperialist past.



On the other hand, try as he might to skirt the issue, Obama will soon be obliged to take a clearer stand on WHINSEC. That’s because the House recently approved the McGovern-Sestak-Bishop amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2009. The amendment obliges WHINSEC to publicly release the names, rank, country of origin, courses, and dates of attendance of the school's graduates and instructors.



Legislators pressed for the measure because in recent years WHINSEC has withheld vital information that would have helped to identify the perpetrators of massacres, targeted assassinations, and human rights abuses committed in Latin America. In a resounding defeat for the Pentagon, the measure was approved by a vote of 220 to 189. The amendment now heads to the Senate where all eyes will be on Obama.



The vote, however, will not resolve the larger question of whether WHINSEC should be shuttered once and for all. If it chose to, the media could prod the candidates to address U.S. military policy towards Latin America during the fall campaign. So far however reporters and pundits have ignored the topic, preferring instead to ask Obama about his flag pin.



McCain has suggested the two candidates participate in town-hall style debates, potentially allowing more direct engagement with voters. The U.S. public would surely welcome this departure from the relentless and insipid questioning featured in previous debates. It would certainly be refreshing to see Obama questioned on issues of real substance such as the historic U.S. role in Latin America, military policy, and human rights.

AMERICAN POLITICS:

HILLARY CLINTON DOES HER "WEEPING MADONNA" IMITATION:

The score in the US Democratic primaries now stands at 2 and 2, with Clinton having won in New Hampshire and Nevada and Obama having won in Iowa and South Carolina. Personally I'm cheering for Obama. Not that anybody should expect the American Empire to cease being the American Empire, no matter who is in the White House. The policies will be very much the same no matter who occupies the Presidency, with the caveat that almost all of the present candidates, both Republican and Democratic, would lack the self-destructive talents of the present Administration, with their desire to sink the USA deeper and deeper into its imperial decline. Maybe that isn't such a bad thing, though Molly lacks the "lefty faith" that the powers that come to replace the USA in the rest of this century will be any more benign than the USA has been. They'll actually probably be far worse.

All that being said everything I know about Hillary Clinton leads me to a reactive and visceral dislike of someone who is far too obviously a crook and a shyster. Obama, on the other hand, reminds me of "Denis the Menace's father". I kid you not. He is rather cartoonish in his clean cut presentation, and though I have no doubt that he has many skeletons in his closet I am unaware of them. He comes across as "cute and sincere", and it is no wonder that so many youthful voters flock to him. Clinton, on the other hand looks very much like she should be President of the Feminist Caucus of the Used Car Dealers of America. What is much more important,however, is that-even if it leads to no perceptible policy change whatsoever on the part of the US government- Obama's election would have a very salutary effect on the American left. It would force them to finally grow up out of their obsession with ethnicity and to rethink all the politically correct cliches that they spout instead of proposing real solutions for America today. As the bard says, "that would be a consummation devoutly to be wished for".

Well back to Hillary. The pundits presume that she reversed the poll trends in New Hampshire by doing a weepy bit while meeting with a select group of voters in that state. Conventional wisdom says that this broke some sort of spell that had lead people to conclude that she had all the emotional resources of a block of concrete (not a bad assumption in Molly's view), and that, in particular, women voters in that state voted for her out of sympathy. Maybe out of stupidity, particularly as Hillary waited until the opportune moment to get misty eyed over how much she loved America- always a crowd pleaser in the USA.

But like all too many reports of weeping statues of the Virgin Mary there is more than slight room for doubt about the reality behind the carefully orchestrated moment. The old (almost paleolithic) feminist icon Germaine Greer has expressed her doubts in an article penned for the British newspaper 'The Guardian'. The article titled 'For Crying Out Loud' is an extended exploration on the use of crying as a technique of power. Her article is both entertaining and amusing, and Molly recommends it highly. It begins with the following words:

"Watching Hillary Clinton begin to get teary-eyed is enough to make me give up shedding tears altogether. The currency, you might say, has become devalued....Hillary's feeble display of emotion, while answering questions from voters in a cafe in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Monday, is supposed to have done her campaign a world of good. If it has, it's because people have wished a tear into her stony reptilian eye, not because there actually was one....Hillary's clipped diction did not falter; all she had to do was take the steel edge off her voice and our imaginations did the rest...."

Read the full article at the Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/hillaryclinton/story/0,,2238249,00.html . A great read if Molly says so, and she does. So here is Molly's vote for Obama instead, not because he is so great, but because his election would finally force the American left (and all they influence in their own imperialist version of exporting Hollywood culture across the rest of the world) to become a real left and not a miasma of identity politics. Go Barack go !

ANTI-ELECTIONEERING:

MILWAUKEE ANARCHISTS BEGIN ANTI-ELECTION CAMPAIGN:

A few hundred kilometers south of civilization here in Winnipeg (cough,cough) anarchists in Milwaukee have begun their own run-up to the 4 year farce of electioneering in the USA. Banners have been placed in anticipation of both the Republican and Democratic national conventions eight months down the road. The picture to the left is one of them. This is the statement of m"some Milwaukee anarchists" as they urge abstention from the upcoming circus:

"Dear Politicos...Do you expect us to be excited about this leash you have so kindly put around our necks ? Every four years we're allowed to have a meaningless impact on the ordering of things by marking up a piece of paper and putting it in a box. The punch line of this is that even if this ritualized illusion worked without scandal or foul play it would be an insult to our integrity to validate our domination by bowing down and telling somebody we aren't worthy of making our own decisions. Do you think that if we heard this repeated in volume and for long enough that we'd forget that we don't have to ask or wait to take control of our lives ?

Forgive us our disgust at this cruel joke you call a choice. We will not forget to laugh, but it will be at your expense. Eight months remain until the Democratic national Convention and the Republican national convention, and you would do well to expect resistance. Everyone can smell the shit you peddle; they've just forgotten how to act, and some are starting to remember. Your end will come.

Why not vote, you ask ?

Some short answers:

1)The relationship and tension of our lives being out of our control is perpetuated through voting and the idea that other people are more qualified to order them in all areas of life. It validates our continued domination, being only qualified to reproduce it, to ask for that which imposes upon us.

2) Voting is inherently reformist. No meaningful change can ever come about through it. It looks as if we might be able to change some things of insignificance, but only on the terms and within the parameters of what makes voting possible. It encourages that we look at details and never the whole of our social relationships. We could never vote to end the relationship we have between us and the infrastructure that counts the votes. We could never vote to end capitalism, the state, institutions of domination, etc. "If voting could change things it would be illegal", a wise woman once said.

3)Voting takes the place of direct participation in the ordering of our lives as it creates meaning out of meaningless choices, preserving the illusion of individual agency where there is none to be found in the difference between options that present almost identical minor alterations to the misery of society and in so doing recuperates the desires of exploited and oppressed people into a form that can be managed and controlled by those responsible for exploitation.

Here it is, spelled out a little more clearly. A gun has been held to our heads since birth, and all the say we are allowed to have on the matter regards the colour of the bullet. Whether it resembles an elephant, a donkey, or anything at all does not matter in the least. And you wonder why we are far from interested in dialog. Dialog would only exist as a means to blur our chains, to confuse and muddle the relationship. We know full well that the slave closest to the master depends on and develops the most affinity to him. Servitude becomes their world and meaning in life.

We are only interested in one thing regarding your parasitic relationship with us. Ending it as soon as possible.

"Some Milwaukee anarchists"

SHOCK ECONOMICS:

Naomi Klein's new book 'The Shock Doctrine:The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" is well on its way to becoming a best seller. Klein is now on a book promotion tour that will carry her throughout the USA, Canada and many countries of Europe through the next few months. Even the ideological 'National Post' is paying her the compliment of printing excerpts of her book, albeit with equally long attacks on each of the pieces printed side by side on their pages. For more on Naomi Klein see the obligatory Wikipedia article on her as well as her own webpage http://www.naomiklein.org . The Canadian online magazine Straight Goods has recently republished an article by her entitled 'Shock Economics: 9/11 Gave the Bush Administration an Excuse to Privatize Everything'. The original and longer article is online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2165922,00.html . Here are some excerpts from the article online at Straight Goods....

"As George Bush and his cabinet took up their posts in January 2001, the need for new sources of growth for US corporations was an urgent matter. With the tech bubble now officially popped and the Dow Jones tumbling 824 points in their first two and a half months in office, they found themselves staring in the face of a serious economic downturn. John Maynard Keynes had argued that governments should spend their way out of recessions, providing economic stimulus with public works. Bush's solution was for the government to deconstruct itself- hacking off great chunks of public wealth and feeding them to corporate America in the form of tax cuts on the one hand and lucrative contracts on the other....

"Then came 9/11, and all of a sudden having a government whose central mission was self-immolation did not seem like a very good idea. With a frightened population wanting protection from a strong, solid government, the attacks could well have put an end to Bush's project of hollowing out government just as it was beginning. For awhile that even seemed to be the case....

"But far from shaking their determination to weaken the public sphere, the security failures of 9/11 reaffirmed in Bush and his inner circle their deepest ideological (and self-interested) beliefs- that only private firms possessed the intelligence and innovation to meet the new security challenge. Although it was true that the White House was on the verge of spending huge amounts of taxpayer money to launch a new deal, it would be exclusively with corporate America, a straight-up transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars into private hands...."

READ THE FULL ARTICLE at the Straight Goods site or go to the original at the Guardian newspaper (see link above)

HOW FREE IS THE USA?:

NOT VERY MUCH:

While reading the September 17th edition of Time Magazine Molly came across an interesting item in their 'Dashboard' section. Entitled 'How Free Is Your Country ?' it has a world map that gives a visual about how various countries size up on the 'Voice and Accountability' indicator of the Worldwide Governance Indicators project. Think the USA is the "land of the free" ? Guess again. This indicator is a measure of how free citizens are to voice their opinions and select a government. The World Governance Indicators actually compare 212 listed countries on six different parameters ie

Voice and Accountability

Political Stability and Absence of Violence

Government Effectiveness

Regulatory Quality

Rule of Law

Control of Corruption

On most of these indicators(except for one-more on this later) the USA scored fairly high, but in no case was it the top country or even close. The 'Voice and Accountability' section measures basic parameters of democracy and freedom of speech. In this field the USA has dropped from a rank of 22nd in 2005 to the level of 35rd in 2006, a reflection of both increased distrust of public officials and further restrictions on freedom of the press. Most West European countries score as "freer" than the USA as do Australia, New Zealand and Canada (at the 12th ranking). Some of the countries that beat the USA, however, are interesting. Italy ! Hungary ! Chile ! Now, I can see that there may indeed be more freedom of speech in Italy. Probably a heck of a lot more. But is it possible that Italians distrust their government less than Americans do.

If you examine the indicators two things strike you. One is that this is not a set of biased estimates by some obscure left wing think tank. The estimates are produced by the WORLD BANK INSTITUTE, an outfit that nobody in their right mind could accuse of "left wing biases". The second is that each estimate of the six parameters is produced by integrating a number of different reports from up to 24 different organizations. The estimates vary from organization to organization. What the world Bank has tried to do is draw a composite picture. Some "in house' groups such as Freedom House or Global Insight Business Conditions and Risk Indicators give the USA much higher ratings than say the Economist Intelligence Unit which puts the USA down at position # 83 rather than 35. The Gallup World Poll puts it even further down the list at position # 106. The latter is, of course, biased, but no less so than such things as Freedom House. All told those outfits that have the least to lose or gain by their opinions, other than the fact that they are selling them as "the truth" to those who depend upon them for business decisions, tend to cluster around the aggregate estimates that the Governance Indicators bring out as the best opinion.

There is one of the indicators that is particularly damaging to American self perceptions, perhaps even more so that pricking the balloon of America's preeminence in "freedom", something that most of us foreigners doubted in the first place. Being the 35th freest country in the world is still a fairly high score. Where the USA really scores low is on the 'Political Stability and Absence of Violence' indicator. Here the USA comes in at the 89th place. This has fallen tremendously in the last 7 years. All other indicators have also fallen, but none so dramatically as this one. It should be noted that the Gallup World Poll played no part in compiling this particular index. This is not the perhaps biased general world public opinion that the USA is a violent country both domestically and internationally. This is the estimate of people who have to base business decisions on such estimates.

Anyways, the WGI isn't just about the USA and its trials and tribulations. Drop on over to see how your own country and others rate on this yardstick.

OPUS CARTOON BANNED IN THE USA:

Apparently 25 major US newspapers have decided to drop the Opus cartoon series because of fears that it "may offend Muslims". The latest story line is where one of the main characters' girlfriend, a perpetual faddist, has taken up fundamentalist Islam as her latest fad. God (Allah) knows Molly has met many such people in her life. Click the picture to the left for a better view of the offending piece. The series has run without censorship up here in Canada, at least to my knowledge. Yeah, bomb the shit out Islamic countries but don't say boo to them in the press. One has to wonder about the rationality of the Americans. How politically correct can you get ?

SATANIC PURSES: MONEY,MYTH AND MISINFORMATION IN THE WAR ON TERROR By R. T. Naylor

Molly has just finished reading 'Satanic Purse' with the more descriptive subtitle given above. Naylor is a professor of economics at McGill University where he specializes in such matters as money laundering, smuggling, black markets, environmental crime and now terrorist financing. This book concentrates on the myth of a worldwide well financed Islamist conspiracy backed by Bid Laden as a multibillionaire with extensive fingers in every shady pie from drug running, through "halawa banks" and on into stock market manipulation. It begins, however, with a well documented debunking of the myth of Bin Ladin as a sort of terrorist supervillian, a myth that has been deliberately propogated by US officials for the purpose of justifying their policies both domestic and foreign. The author goes into the rather complicated web of Middle Eastern politics, both secular and Islamist to draw out a picture of a rather fractious crew of mutually feuding groups, trends and simple points of view. My favourite is the North African group who think that Bin Ladin should be killed because he isn't "radical enough". The whole point of this can be summarized by the following quote from the book,

"The role of Bin Ladin in recent terrorist outrages is not only grossly exaggerated, in many cases it is completely fictional. This is not to suggest that he is/was a nice guy- he preached a villent and retrograde ideology, exhorted andf encouraged at least some of the crimes imputed to him, and applauded after the fact. There were/are plenty of raps on which to haul him before a genuine court of justice (by definition outside the U.S.). But for a variety of reasons it was/is convenient to give him credit for actions in which he had at best a peripheral role, frequently none at all. Blowing Bid Ladin metaphorically out of all proportion before blowing him physically off the face of the Earth is consistant with a US trdaition of personifying infamy by invesnting supervillians with which superheroes do battle, inevitably to a victory that, if not real, is certainly loudly and publically declared. While this practice may be politically expedient (and profitable for the infotainment industry) in the short run, it obscures understanding and thereby impedes sensible action in the long.

Similarily with al-Qa'idah. The original construct was built on myths about "criminal organmizations" as large scale, transnational, centrally run entities which were extrapolated from the criminal justice to the "national security" fields. Just as crime is almost always the preserve of individuals or of loose ad hoc associations without serious long term staying power, so, too, with "terrorist" groups. to the extent that relationships ever do exist between militant factions beyond the merely rhetorical , they are temporary alliances of convenience among those with essentially local grudges rather than the result of those groups (usually guided by men with huge egos) being departments or subsidiaries of some hierarchically controlled international conspiracy. Under these circumstances to attempt to combat them using measures created to deal with either countries (with a geophysical existence) or organizations (with a supposedly corporate one) is like furiously throwing lethal punches in the air and hoping that there are not too many innocent bystanders, or at least no independent witnesses, in the general vicinity. Even worse, by effectively creating, then advertising, an al-Qa'idah brand name, the US and the West at large give local groups a global significance they otherwise would not likely have had, guaranteeing further sets of imitators in the future." Satanic Purses, pp 336-337

The reality of those who went crusading against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was that they were a fractious divided lot whose real contribution to the victory over the Soviets was marginal at best. Bib Ladin was merely one amongst many, and his financial contributions were nothing astoonishing. Similarily in the post Soviet age. Terrorist attacks are almost inevitably the result of local groups operating on a shoestring budget with no central direction from Bin Ladin or anyone else. Their perpetrators are not the stuff of James Bond novels, but are often instead bumbling idiots who only occasionally get lucky because law enforcement agencies and the "spook industry" contains more than its own share of similar idiots and, perhaps more importantly, chug along well trod bureaucratic paths that are the very antithesis to "intelligence".

Speaking of James Bond, the book contains more than a few side plots as the author shows how the myths of previous "campaigns" such as the War on Crime (the Mafia as a giant centrally controlled corporate entity), the War on Drugs and even the Cold War (America has had more than its share of phoney wars) were recycled into the new War on Terror. One of the myths that Naylor examines, however, is not American at all. It is the 'Blood Diamonds' tale. The tale was actually concocted by Ian Fleming, the author of the Bond series, on behalf of the South African De Beers corporation when they felt that their control over the international diamond trade was threatened. De Beers spread Fleming's rumour that the "diamond racket" was controlled by the old standby, the 'Evil Empire'- even at exactly the same time that the De Beers company had entered into secret arrangements with the Soviet Union to smuggle diamonds out of the USSR in violation of anti-Soviet sanctions then in force.

There is so much more to discover in this book which concentrates much more of the myth of Islamist terrorism as a generous paymaster requiring the multimillions that it does not have. At times the author may overstate his case, but the general picture he paints has the unmistakeable ring of truth to it. It's an undercurrent that makes a whole lot of sense when you look at the recent history of Islamist terrorism, its perpetrators and how often they are caught. They seem a rather motley crew because that is exactly what they are. The picture painted by US authorities is, of course, wildly different. This is because it is plainly and simply "bullshit". Bullshit can be defined as not simply lying, though there is plenty of that as well. It is talking as if the whole concept of "truth" is an inconvenience that hardly has any real importance. High sounding emotional trigger words replace actually saying anything of substance. Coherance is as little valued by the bullshitter as facts. Academic post-modernist leftists may construct a grandious theory justifying bullshit, but the non-academic world of real governments puts them to shame in that they have constructed a very successful "practice" of bullshit that is much more advanced than anything in the "theories" of the academics. But more on that later.

Molly recommends this book highly. It opens many different doors to many different ways of viewing world events.

9/11 Five Years and 2 Days Later:
A World of Lost Opportunities:
The fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington has come and gone, and the commemorations have begun to fade. The myth making has added another brick to the mental monuments that both sides, the USA and fundamentalist Islam, have constructed to justify their actions. On the one side the toll of innocent victims is being used to continue to cover the far from innocent role of American foreign policy and American business in fostering the sort of mindset that sees the USA as "the Great Satan". The idea is now being mooted by, not just the American government, but even the present Canadian one that outfits like Al Queda carry out their attacks because "they hate the way of life and the freedoms of the West". I'm sure that they do indeed have such hatred, but it is hardly the reason why they have declared war on the USA. That sort of propaganda falls pretty flat outside of the USA and a minority of Canadians.
On the other side the death toll and the spectacular nature of the events has undoubtedly fed the delusion that a world spanning empire such as the USA can be defeated by a handful of terrorists carrying out such actions. No matter if the toll rises to 100 or 1,000 times the present toll an empire can never be defeated by such actions. Asymmetric war is, after all, asymmetric, and in the end the USA can outlast its present opponents until the time that its competitors overtake it on the economic front. At such a time Islamic fundamentalism may find itself pining for the "good old days" of fighting the Americans rather than a less constrained opponent.
Be that as it may the next few posts will look at the missed opportunities that the 9/11 events led to- for all sorts of different parties.
Til then- Molly

A Couple of Items From 'Straight Goods', an independent left wing cyber magazine (http://www.straightgoods.ca )
1)The Most Militant Union In The World.
According to an article by Mike Martin in the August 15th edition of SG this title is held by the autoworkers of South Korean manufacturer Hyundai. They have held a strike in every year for the last 12 years and "won" every time. This union is attempting to negotiate a total industrial union for its industry with other workers represented by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, in imitation of the IWW's concept of industrial unionism- though I mean NO direct influence here.
2)I've seen this before on the internet, but SG reproduces another article here (The New Funding Heresies) on a conspiracy by American millionaires to fund "progressive" organizations in the USA. The author is Christopher Hayes, and the article is lifted from 'In These Times' (an American vague left publication that would be categorized in the civilized world as social democratic). The report is on a conference in early May, 2006 of the 'Democracy Alliance' in Austin Texas- held, of course, in the obligatory liberal smoke free environment. The nickname of what these conspirators want to build is "The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy'. Vast ??? "Left Wing" ???? "Conspiracy" ???? In civilized countries the subsidization of harmless left wing opponents is a government function in that 1)the advancement of careers in leftism is considered part of educational and economic development and 2)civilized governments recognize the social benefits of channeling opposition towards bureaucracies of social control that have secondary economic benefits. Only in America is this considered a matter of private charity for a segment of the ruling class. What a weird country.