David Seaton's Blog

TPM Cafe.... Space Odyssey?

2010-09-15T06:10:50Z

[HAL's shutdown]
HAL: I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.
Dave Bowman: Yes, I'd like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.
HAL: It's called "Daisy."
[sings while slowing down]
HAL: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.

Erdogan and the future of... Egypt

2010-09-13T19:31:27Z

"For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations." George W. Bush, Speech to UN General Assembly, September 21, 2004

Bush was actually right when he said that democracy would change the Muslim world, he just muffed the details a bit.

I'm surprised that the son of the only president of the USA to have ever headed the CIA could have been so naive about how American foreign policy actually works. I guess this was just another one of Dubya's many oedipal issues.

I'm in the midst of reading a very interesting book that came into my hands; "For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (Dad)", from way back in 1996, written by British historian, Christopher Andrew. It contains the following priceless quote, "The most powerful government ever to fall as a result of covert action was the administration of Richard Nixon." Not for want of trying all around the world, he might have added, (he does actually and in great and fascinating detail).

During the Cold War military dictatorships that were convincingly anticommunist, like Franco's in Spain, had a blank check from the USA to repress their populations and regimes that voted the way they weren't supposed to, like Chile, or looked like moving to the left, like Indonesia, got military dictatorships in short order: the list of these countries is very long. Summing up, the USA has a long and varied tradition of supporting military establishments in repressing any democratic, civilian dissent, if it didn't jibe with what Washington perceived as US interests.

This is part of what is extraordinary about Erdogan moving as far as he has, at the same time confronting Israel over Gaza, and, with Brazil (another Cold War, ex-military dictatorship), voting against US sponsored Iran sanctions in the UN, he is also apparently being allowed to bring the Turkish armed forces, which have always been seen in Washington as the guarantor of Turkey's modern (read pro-American and pro-Israeli) foreign policy under civilian control.

In short. the United States has always supported the Turkish army's ultimate control of Turkish life and now the generals are being hung out to dry.

Now, it must be said that the Turkish army has in no way hindered Turkey's modernization, quite the contrary. That has never been the issue. The Turkish army has been the guardians of the legacy of modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a secular nationalist bent on turning Turkey into a modern European country, despite the continuing traditionalist piety of Turkey's masses.

The irony is that the culminating of Atatürk's ambition of European-ization, joining the European Union, is helping an Islamist-traditionalist political party to disassemble the Kemalist, pro-western, power structure.

Here is a little light reading on Erdogan's referendum:

The referendum result is a triumph for Erdogan's ideology. It's hard to imagine the heads of Turkey's army plotting another coup, given that the reforms now allow them to be tried in civilian court, or the country's high court banning certain political parties as it has in the past.(...) Erdogan will remain hated by the Turkish secular elite, which is concentrated in the army, universities and business community. But he is beloved by Turkey's poorer, devout periphery. The prime minister has straightened the backbone of the marginalized, and in return has received their undying loyalty. Haaretz

In a largely Muslim country that sits at the crossroads of East and West, Turks who treasure secular rule are again warning about a "creeping coup" of political Islam. (...) In truth, the constitutional changes conform to democratic norms. They strengthen individual rights, privacy, and unions. They bring the military - which ousted four governments in the last 50 years - further under civilian control. But the abstract truth is not the same as the political reality in Turkey. The reality is that this is a polarized country, with a large segment of the population increasingly mistrusting of the government. Editorial - Christian Science Monitor

Logically one could suppose that, either the American leopard has changed its spots, has had a massive change of heart and has become willing to let the democratic chips of the world fall where they may, or that perhaps, the US feet are slipping off the pedals of the world's bicycle... (How's that for assaulting and battering a couple of helpless metaphors?).

Now, as important a client as the Turkish army is, there are much more important ones, if money is the measure. Of course, it goes without saying that Israel is the number one recipient of America's military aid, but number two is Egypt and according to the New York Times, Egypt's military consider Israel their "primary threat".

Now it would seem obvious to me that the US has not given the Egyptian armed forces some $40 billion dollars over thirty years just to protect them from the Israelis, when it could have been done much more cheaply by simply giving less money to the Israelis.

So it stands to reason that the Egyptian armed forces are receiving the money in order to make it easier for them to control Egypt. Here is how it all works:

(T)he rules that apply to the rest of Egypt do not apply to the military, still the single most powerful institution in an autocratic state facing its toughest test in decades, an imminent presidential succession.(...)Technically, Egyptian voters will determine their next leader in the 2011 elections, but in practice the governing party's candidate is almost certain to win. The real succession struggle will take place behind closed doors, and that is where the military would try to assure its continued status or even try to block Mr. Mubarak's son Gamal.(...) The military has much to lose in the transition, these officers and analysts say. Over the years, one-man rule eviscerated Egypt's civilian institutions, creating a vacuum at the highest levels of government that the military willingly filled. "There aren't any civilian institutions to fall back on," said Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation who has written about the Egyptian military.(...) The beneficiary of nearly $40 billion in American aid over the last 30 years, the Egyptian military has turned into a behemoth that controls not only security and a burgeoning defense industry, but has also branched into civilian businesses like road and housing construction, consumer goods and resort management. New York Times

Egypt, like Turkey, is a large and important country. Culturally Egypt is by far the most important Arab state and significantly, the Muslim Brotherhood has its origins there.

Quite a few knowledgeable observers think that, if free and fair elections were ever held in Egypt the Brotherhood would win them.

That would explain this further snippet from the New York Times:

The military interprets its writ broadly. A retired army general, Hosam Sowilam, recently said the army would step in "with force if necessary" to stop the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, from ascending to power.

In fact elections are to be held in Egypt next year, because the ancient dictator, Hosni Mubarak, is ailing, but it would be a miracle if the coming elections turned out to be "free and fair".

(Nobel Laureate and) Former UN nuclear weapons chief and prominent Egyptian dissident Mohamed ElBaradei (...) warned that the (Egyptian) poll would be marred by fraud, and that "anyone who participates in the vote either as a candidate or a voter goes against the national will". He went on to claim that the three-decade rule of president Hosni Mubarak was a "decaying, nearly collapsing temple", and promised activists that regime change was possible in the coming year. Guardian

Sufficient to say that if a process similar to Turkey's were to take place in Egypt -- and although it is a vastly different country from Turkey, the human resources exist in Egypt to make it happen -- all bets would be off in the Middle East.

I have no idea what form a free and democratic Egyptian government would take, only that a country of the size and cultural power of Egypt following the desires of its people would change the entire region in days.

It will be interesting to hear Secretary of State Clinton's comments on Turkey and even more interesting to hear her comments on Egypt and its democratic process... if she makes any.

9-11: Nine Years On

2010-09-11T15:44:15Z

Seen through a cloud of burning Koran smoke, nine years on and counting, most Americans still have no real idea what happened on the eleventh of September in 2001 or why it happened.

The big mistake almost all Americans make when contemplating 9-11 is to think that we were attacked, when if fact we were counterattacked. Americans have been just too self-absorbed to ever know, or even probably care what was being done all over the world in their name. We have been blithely pushing ourselves into other cultures, into other traditions and other economies without ever thinking that this might have painful consequences or that those offended could ever really hit back in a meaningful way. And now that the new technologies have made it possible, we are surprised that somebody who drinks the same Coke we do could explode right next to us.

9/11 was basically imperial blow back, as if Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse could have raided Wall Street with a Sioux war party in the 1870s. The seeds for the attacks on Manhattan and Washington were planted when the United States of America took over Britain and France's imperial role in the Middle East after World War II. The end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union left the anti-imperialist movement without a superpower patron and overseer and the ideological packaging that went with it.

The anti-imperialist movement has existed since the local (called "native") elites of the European colonies absorbed the western concept of nationalism, it certainly was not invented by the USSR, who used it as a weapon against the "free world". When the USSR went down, opening the way for globalization, the national liberation movements were orphaned and, like orphans, those who wanted to continue to struggle against imperialism had to make their own way in the world.

"Imperialism" here is taken to mean the domination of non-Christian, non-European peoples, by European or Euro-American-Christians (since roughly the 1950s the Jewish people of the United States under the neologism, "Judeo-Christian" have been given the status of "honorary Christians", in much the same way that the Japanese were considered "honorary whites" under the former apartheid regime of South Africa). Certainly for the inhabitants of Muslim countries the distinction between Zionists (read Jews) and "crusaders" (read Christians) has become rather blurred over time.

At first the political tools used by "third world" countries to resist this domination were nationalism (emphasizing local sovereignty, UN seat, nationalized-socialized economy, etc.) and in many cases simultaneous alignment with the Soviet block in "national liberation struggles". In order to weaken the allure of left-wing nationalism, the United States and her allies often encouraged Islamic fundamentalism and encouraged the growth of movements such as the Taliban, Hamas and Hizbullah. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the advent of globalization, secular nationalism and socialism lost practically all their usefulness as tools for loosening the grip of aliens on the economies, lives and customs of non-"European" peoples.

However, by now, many Muslims have discovered that, for better or worse, Islam is the one idea, culture and "way of life" that cannot be dissolved or co-opted by the omnivorous powers of synthesis and the economic and military hegemony of the "New World Order". Thus, as day follows night, with nowhere else to turn, "Islam is the Answer" has now become the default slogan of anti-imperialism among Muslims and may, who knows, begin to resonate among disaffected, heretofore non-Muslims, that find themselves helpless victims of American-led globalization.

What makes the situation today more explosive than the cold war is the difference in ideological potency between Islam and Marxist-Leninism. Marxist-Leninism had a great attraction for young, nationalist intellectual elites in the third world and gave them an organizational structure, international connections and financing for forming a revolutionary vanguard and cadres.

However Marxism never had much attraction in itself for the masses in Muslim countries (or any other for that matter) and neither did proletarian internationalism. A traditional "ultra-nationalist-international" is a contradiction in terms. But, Islam squares that circle: Islam works on the level of the most militant, nationalist chauvinism, while at the same time being totally international constantly searching for common denominators among Muslims everywhere.

In the cold war equation there was no wild card factor like Israel, which, with the demise of South African apartheid, can be seen as the last "western colony" left standing, something, which at the same time stimulates nationalist and internationalist feelings among the masses and elites alike in Muslim countries. This is what makes political Islam so revolutionary... Really, all that was necessary was to add modern communications (Internet, with its social networks and chat rooms and Satellite TV) to the Israel/Palestinian/Iraq conflict for the waiting Umma to get to critical mass.

This is the context that made Osama bin Laden's "super stardom" possible.

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald's. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less? Ted Koppel - Washington Post

Al Qaeda exists because of a political failure that goes back many years. A political failure born of contempt for a stubborn culture's refusal to bend its neck to "reality".

At the heart of the GWOT is a rebellion of the most proactive, hard core and daring of the Muslim world against Western domination of their space. Once that political failure connects with a plan to attack it, organizations will spring up spontaneously to continue that attack.

Religion in itself is not really the only driving force here, but rather serves as the ideological adhesive to articulate a cultural rebellion that cuts across nationalities and ethnic groups and welds them into a force for violent change. Osama's Islam replaces Marxist-Leninism and nationalism, all of which have failed to free Muslim countries from their perceived oppression. Tied to the newest technologies the ancient concept of the Muslim Umma is proving more potent than any imported ideology ever was.

I agree with Harvard professor, Niall Ferguson, who thinks that Osama Bin Laden is in reality more a "Leninist" than a religious leader. Just as Lenin was first a revolutionary and second a Marxist. Bin Laden's Islam structures his proud rebelliousness. Bin Laden shares with Lenin the rather unique ability to see revolutionary possibilities where others see only backward and illiterate masses and then to craft an organization and an ideology to fit that vision... and he also shares Lenin's "just do it" insistence on action instead of endless talk.

Americans love to personalize things, but important as they are, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are more symptoms than causes.

Today in countries like Egypt even moderate Muslims, people that don't plan on ever putting a bomb in their jockey shorts, are wearing beards and hijabs and chorusing, "Islam is the answer": They see it as a vaccine against being digested and assimilated and then excreted by the dynamics of globalization.

Are Muslims just being insanely paranoiac when they accuse the United States of trying to "destroy" Islam?

In my opinion, yes and no. "Yes", from the American point of view, where we think it jolly nice if some people go to church on Sunday, others go to temple on Saturday and, what the heck, others can go to mosque on Friday if they want to... but for the rest of what is left of the week, it is business as usual or else.

"No", from the point of view of many Muslims, if by "to destroy" means "to trivialize" their religion, which, in their view, is a seven day, 24 hour a day project, which is the arbiter of all human affairs. This is contrary to the rules of our economic system: within globalization the "market" has taken on the role that Islam assigns to God. Therefore Islam being indigestible in its present form must be reshaped or "Disneyfied" if you will. Except it can't be and still be Islam.

More than confronting the American people themselves, it seems to me that Muslim fundamentalists are confronting history's most powerful exponent of a system that was once described as turning "all that is solid into air", leaving commerce as the fundamental activity of all human beings. If we consider in what shape our economic system has left the teachings of Jesus Christ, perhaps the Muslims aren't as far off target as they appear at first glance.

If you stop and think about it, every traditional relationship between human beings that ever existed anywhere, clan, tribe, nationality, religion, family authority, has been either dissolved or degraded by our economic system: this is what we have lost in exchange for our standard of living. We happen to be cool with that, but not everybody else is.

Be that as it may, the principal objective of Muslim fundamentalists, in my opinion, is to eject an alien civilization (us), and all those who empower it (ME, American client regimes), from the spiritual-emotional center of Islam. At heart this is just an continuation of the dismantling of the Euro-American (white) domination of the world that began at the end of WWII, a domination which globalization has given a new breath of life.

So basically this is yet another "national liberation struggle". If we look at the cost-effectiveness of everything Al Qaeda have done since the attack on the USS Cole and the African embassies and compare it with the sacrifices made by the Vietnamese people to finally gain their independence, I imagine that sooner or later the Muslim fundamentalists are going to succeed in driving us out of the Middle East.

What happens then?

Obviously if there is a general Islamist revolution in the Middle East followed by the Magreb, with America's client regimes falling like dominoes, it would have the immediate effect of pushing the price of oil through the roof and that alone would bring on a major economic crisis. It would be every man for himself as Europe, Japan and China scrambled to assure their energy supplies. This might bring protectionism roaring in, if it didn't start a series of wars. Israel, of course, might always do something crazy, but I think that in such a situation, observers might be amazed at how "prudent" the Israelis could be, if Egypt, Jordan and Syria, for example, fell to the Muslim Brotherhood in short succession.

Whatever finally happened, the period of transformation would be a harrowing, violent roller coaster ride, however, when the transformation had been completed, we would find the resulting situation:

The new rulers would immediately have to find some way of feeding their populations
The only thing they would have to sell to feed them would be oil.
The thirst of the developed and developing nations for oil would be as great as ever.

In those three points we have the makings of a workable peace.

What would that peace look like?

The best model I can think of would be some Muslim/post-Christian version of the Treaty of Westphalia, a miracle of diplomacy whereby Protestants and Catholics managed to end the "Thirty Years War", religious conflict in Europe, and perhaps most importantly enshrined the idea of state's non-meddling in the internal affairs of other states. This idea of inviolable sovereignty had managed to limp along for hundreds of years until Bush and Blair under aegis of the neocons trashed it... with the results we are living with today.

In some perfect neo-Westphalian world, the Muslim minority of Europe would be allowed to practice their religion in peace and the Christian and Jewish minorities in the Middle East practice theirs. Too good to be true? Well, the part about Christians and Jews being able to practice their religions in peace in the Middle East is a workmanlike description of how the Ottoman empire worked, otherwise how do you think that 19th century Zionist settlers under the patronage of the Rothschilds were allowed to settle in Palestine in the first place?

The bit about the Ottoman empire being a place where the three religions "of the book" lived in peace is why, contrary to many commentators, I view very favorably Turkey's moves to cool their relations with Israel and reclaim a prominent place in the world of Islam. Turkey's role in the post-American-hegemony, multipolar world of compartmentalized and case by case globalization is a key one.

Of course the joker in the deck is Israel. There is always a possibility that Israel, finding itself "eyeless in Gaza", might Samson-like pull the whole thing down around their ears, but I don't think so. I imagine rather that there will be a series of tipping points, where American public opinion visibly sours on Israel's involving the US in an endless, fruitless series of wars that deteriorate America's power and endanger American lives, combined with the aforesaid rise of Islamic republics in the Middle East and the Magreb... not to mention Iran's future possession of the atomic bomb, followed closely by Egypt and Saudi Arabia (then probably called the Islamic Republic of Mecca and Medina). These tipping points will send many Israelis with double nationality heading for the doors and make it obvious to those who stay that a more accommodating manner of behavior, shall we say, is now required.

Summing up, the years ahead will surely be horrible and dangerous, like the period of the above mentioned Thirty Years War, but the peace that may follow it, like the peace that followed that endless religious war, could be very stable and last for quite a long time.

Er, ah... this is like Saturday already

2010-09-11T15:26:32Z

Am I missing out on something? I thought Friday was the last day for reader's posts, and now it is Saturday.

Saying goodbye to my TPM Cafe blog

2010-09-09T09:30:10Z

The American "freedom cycle"

I was getting myself adjusted to the closing of Talking Points Memo Cafe's reader blogs and mulling over my manageable sense of loss and disappointment... and there I was, getting the old deja vu all over again... I felt something familiar pushing up from my subconscious, a memory, a metaphor, for something I had seen and felt so many times...

By now, I go a long way back and things from my childhood sometimes take a while to work their way up to the surface... Then it came to me... From 1950s, deepest Eisenhower, Chicagoland... The first time I came across what I call the "American freedom cycle", the heady promise of freedom, its domestication and finally its death.

I was preteen then and I was over at a friend's house. His older brother put on a 45rpm record he had just bought, it was Elvis Presley singing Lieber and Stoller's, "Heartbreak Hotel", his first big hit.

I still remember the staccato opening "chinese" chords, the solid bass line, the "existentialist" lyrics and most of all, the amazing black-white voice. At the very beginning, in that stultified, tight assed, white bread, suburban America of the mid-fifties, the racial ambiguity and sexual energy of that voice gave me, and much of my generation, the idea of what it could be to be a fully free, young, adult male... it was soon to end... as usually happens to anything wild and free in the USA: in came the suits.

John Lennon was a poet, philosopher and a genius when he commented at Elvis Presley's physical death, "Elvis died when he went into the army". The horrid movies, the corny songs, the sequined rolls of fat, the redneck Judy Garland death, all were born in that barber's chair.

Elvis promised freedom and copped out, he is a symbol of that... Since then we have all seen it happen over and over again, the dream goes pffft... I can think of very painful examples right down to this very day (if you catch my drift). Sometimes I think that only the greatest artist of my generation, Muhammad Ali, was for real, right down to the last drop.

No people are more obsessed by the idea of freedom than Americans are, no one else thrills more to seeing freedom in action than we do, I don't think any people love to live it more, even if only vicariously, but no system is so adept at smothering it in the cradle as America's system is.

Here at TPM Cafe a free space suddenly appeared and we all walked out into the sunlight and played in that space and enjoyed our freedom while it lasted and finally, as almost always happens... in came the suits and the party is over.

I am not comparing Josh to Elvis or to Colonel Parker, but TPM is turning into a serious proposition and watching a lot of people having a good time without it producing any money is not the American Way... In come the suits.

I want to thank Josh for ever having thought of having something like the reader's blogs in the first place and for keeping it around as long as he has and if he ever figures a way of doing it again without losing money, I'll be back in a flash.

Hope to continue to see all my friends here in the commentary section in the following fashion:

Mr. Rosenberg, I heartily disagree with your opinion as stated above, And hey Aurthur babe, how you keeping?

Till then as my childhood radio favorites, Bob and Ray, used to say in signing off,

Write if you get work and hang by your thumbs!

Burning a Koran in a crowded theater

2010-09-08T18:17:58Z

"America - the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today."
Sinclair Lewis's Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1930

Sinclair Lewis should rise from his grave, have a stiff drink and write up the following story:

A small US church says it will defy international condemnation and go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Koran on the 9/11 anniversary. The top US commander in Afghanistan warned troops' lives would be in danger if the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida went ahead. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the church's plan was "disrespectful and disgraceful". Muslim countries and Nato have also hit out at the move. And the US Attorney General, Eric Holder, called the idea "idiotic and dangerous". But organiser, Pastor Terry Jones said: "We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam." News Item - BBC News

(...) Terry Jones, the pastor of a tiny Florida church with just three or four dozen members, whose every stray thought on the subject of Koran burning is now reported each day by thousands of news organizations worldwide, has proved himself to be a master of public relations. On Wednesday, Mr. Jones -- currently the subject of 4,102 news stories linked to by Google News -- told the world that he would press ahead with the publicity stunt he announced in July - New York Times

The White House says an American church's threat to burn copies of the Muslim holy book could endanger U.S. troops serving overseas, and the State Department denounced the plan as "un-American." Associated Press

(New York) Mayor Bloomberg said Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who plans on a Koran-burning rally on Saturday's 9/11 anniversary, has every right to burn the sacred books - even though he finds it distasteful. New York Daily News

The story of the Koran burning, Florida pastor, Terry Jones, is having a massive, worldwide, media repercussion. There are riots in diverse places in Muslim countries and American public figures from the White House to Hillary Clinton, to the American commander in Afghanistan, General Petraeus, even Angelina Jolie, all have had their say in the matter.

However, when you come right down to it, the name of the church in question, "The Dove World Outreach Center" is almost longer than a list of its members... There are little more than fifty parishioners involved in this! For me, that is the story: how the media has taken up this malignant goofiness and given this pitiful rustic the worldwide "fifteen minutes of fame" that the late Andy Warhol said finally awaits us all.

Sociologically speaking, I find it passing strange that a church made up of poor, white, southerners, America's traditional military caste, would do anything that the American army says could put the lives of American soldiers in jeopardy. I could just as easily imagine President Obama's former pastor, the Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright, burning a cross in front of Chicago's, Trinity United Church of Christ. None of this makes any sense.

In short: the story is the story is the story is the story... that all over the world we are talking about this clown and his tiny band of imbeciles is the real story.

What to do as TPM Reader Blogs shut down

2010-09-07T06:56:33Z

I have been testing Genghis's DagBlog and it works very well; an especially interesting feature that he has engineered, is that your post is automatically indexed by Google News.

He has also worked it out so that you can know how many hits you have had and track where they come from. This is essential in discovering what you are doing right and what you are not. An example of how this works: I wrote a piece (also posted here at TPM) about Peak Oil, which has had 1000 hits on DagBlog, where I cross posted it. Most of the hits have come from the post's being linked by "The Oil Drum" a specialist blog aggregator, an important bit of information, because it means that specialists are reading my opinion. So I am probably getting more readers at DagBlog and more importantly, I know why I'm getting them.

The bottom line is that Genghis's operation is more professionally constructed and gives a blogger more information and potentially more exposure (thanks to Google News) than TPM does.

When TPM Cafe's reader blogs shut down I shall continue to comment on the official Café blogs in order to "hang out" with my TPM family and maintain contact and exchange information with them and if the TPM reader's blogs ever come back in some form, I'll continue to cross post here for Auld Lang Syne, but if you are a serious blogger DagBlog is a very interesting opportunity that should be explored.

What makes the Kochs and the neocons nervous enough to spend so much money

2010-09-04T19:59:22Z

If you study the following two clippings from the UK's Guardian and from Germany's Der Spiegel you can why the Kochs, libertarians of every stripe, AIPAC and the neocons, have every reason to have (as the British would put it) their knickers in a twist.

Speculation that government ministers are far more concerned about a future supply crunch than they have admitted has been fueled by the revelation that they are canvassing views from industry and the scientific community about "peak oil".(...) Experts say they have received a letter from David Mackay, chief scientific adviser to the DECC, asking for information and advice on peak oil amid a growing campaign from industrialists such as Sir Richard Branson for the government to put contingency plans in place to deal with any future crisis. Guardian

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document -- leaked on the Internet -- shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.(...) The scenarios outlined by the Bundeswehr Transformation Center are drastic. Even more explosive, politically, are recommendations to the government that the energy experts have put forward based on these scenarios. They argue that "states dependent on oil imports" will be forced to "show more pragmatism toward oil-producing states in their foreign policy." Political priorities will have to be somewhat subordinated, they claim, to the overriding concern of securing energy supplies. (Germany) would also have to show more restraint in its foreign policy toward Israel, to avoid alienating Arab oil-producing nations. Unconditional support for Israel and its right to exist is currently a cornerstone of German foreign policy. (...) "A readjustment of Germany's Middle East policy ... in favor of more intensive relations with producer countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have the largest conventional oil reserves in the region, might put a strain on German-Israeli relations, depending on the intensity of the policy change," the authors write. Der Spiegel

I don't ever write about Peak Oil, because, among my many odd jobs, (some odder than others), for over ten years I have been doing news aggregation for a major Spanish energy futures portal and have had to read hundreds and hundreds of articles about oil during those years. I also have friends who are real industry experts on the subject (I just know what I read in the papers) and up till now "received" opinion is that Peak Oil is tinfoil-hatsville, and so I stay away from it. But, these two articles in publications that I respect have made me realize that the subject is now being discussed at (gasp) the highest levels.

OK, so the cat is out of the bag.

Let's look at what this might entail. As the first clipping from Der Spiegel points out, Peak Oil's effects touch the Zionist third rail of course, which explains some of the neocon's skittishness, but what about the Koch's end of the coalition of freedom loving Americans?

Der Spiegel with Teutonic thoroughness, spells out what The Guardian, with British understatement merely hints at. Check this list. I have taken the liberty of putting some emphasis here and there.

Market failures: The authors paint a bleak picture of the consequences resulting from a shortage of petroleum. As the transportation of goods depends on crude oil, international trade could be subject to colossal tax hikes. "Shortages in the supply of vital goods could arise" as a result, for example in food supplies. Oil is used directly or indirectly in the production of 95% of all industrial goods. Price shocks could therefore be seen in almost any industry and throughout all stages of the industrial supply chain. "In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse."
Relapse into planned economy: Since virtually all economic sectors rely heavily on oil, peak oil could lead to a "partial or complete failure of markets," says the study. "A conceivable alternative would be government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other short-term coercive measures to replace market-based mechanisms in times of crisis."(five year plans?)
Crisis of political legitimacy: The Bundeswehr study also raises fears for the survival of democracy itself. Parts of the population could comprehend the upheaval trigged by peak oil "as a general systemic crisis." This would create "room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government." Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could "in extreme cases lead to open conflict."

What does all this mean, really

Doomsters like James Kunstler and Dimitri Orlov, especially Kuntsler, paint the oil-less future as some sort of survivalist's Arcadia, where self-reliant citizens, grow vegetables, sew their own clothes and do a lot of carpentry without power tools. I think the post-Peak Oil world will look more like the following story:

A man is walking home from work, when he sees a long line forming in front of a government store, he asks the people what they are in line for and they tell him "lemons"... Frantically he runs home, arriving much earlier than normal, and finds his wife in bed with his next door neighbor, confronting them furiously he shouts:

What are you doing here, don't you know that today they are selling lemons?

This is a classic joke from the now defunct German Democratic Republic.

What brought the GDR down and the rest of Really Existing Socialism, including the USSR along with it, was not really people's chaffing under the repression of totalitarianism, but rather our system's miraculous ability to produce and distribute an infinite variety of affordable consumer goods, which their godless, planned economy couldn't. Free health care, social equality, guaranteed employment, good schools (Angela Merkel graduated from the University of Leipzig) and guaranteed housing couldn't compete with our cornucopia.

The essence of our system is a quite recent -- and never before in history achieved -- endless variety of things, many of them amazingly cheap, to choose from. Think about it, you wander into a shopping mall looking to buy some deodorant and you'll be forced to choose between dozens of different brands at many different prices until you find exactly the one that suits your pocketbook or your "unique lifestyle" and image. You can eat your favorite fruit at any time of the year, flown in from the other side of the planet. This is freedom! This cornucopic miracle is all about logistics and logistics depends on oil.

No oil means either starvation or what are you doing here, don't you know that today they are selling lemons?

If Peak Oil finally happens we will be looking at some stark choices: whether we serve the Koch's as slaves or serve the Kochs boiled, baked or fricasseed. I can easily imagine which outcome they would prefer we chose.

I'm sure the Kochs know more about oil than Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change or Germany's Bundeswehr combined and the Koch family's intervention in America's political life may be explained by that knowledge and by every good business man's effort to produce predictable outcomes.

While we are waiting for the Cafe to get straightened out

2010-09-04T15:33:15Z

Since Josh put the fox among the chickens I have been cross-posting over at the DagBlog. I have found it a pleasant experience, perfectly complimentary with posting on my home blog and cross-posting here. I would suggest all TPM "orphans" to try it, at least as a lifeboat, but also on DagBlogs own merits, which as I say are very complimentary to the Cafe's.

The Kochs: paying to keep America dumb

2010-09-01T18:19:28Z

AJ Goode and his wife Mary who live in a shelter in Los Angeles - BBC News

Around the world people ask themselves, if Americans are so dumb, why is the country so rich? Americans are not really born that stupid, but making them stupid is a huge industry.

The Koch Brothers are leaders in that industry.

At this juncture, the interests of America's wealthy are totally separate from those of the middle class and working class base just as they would be in a third world autocracy and the only way for them to keep the hoi poloi on board, in what is still formally a democracy, is by endless war, endless fear and xenophobia. That is why so much is being spent on think tanks and AstroTurf organizations.

Two things strike me right off the bat:

It costs a huge amount of money to get people to vote and to be organized against their own vital interests.
I believe it would be absurdly cheap to demolish the entire Koch strategy.

Knowing how vulnerable and absurd their ideas are is why people like the Kochs are more than willing to spend that type of money, just as the Dutch are willing to spend a fortune to be able to live below sea level or why it costs more money to fly in a plane than to fall off a cliff, because they all entail thwarting the natural tendency of things.

What is the tendency of our world, where is it headed?

Anyone who is paying attention realizes that the world of the future is going to be so dangerous and so complex, what with climate change, wars for food and water and genetic manipulation, that it is either going to be heavily regulated or it will be a hell that will make Blade Runner look like Hannah Montana. The Kochs are obviously cool with that, with their kind of money they will live well in an America filled with the desperately poor, just like Mexican or African billionaires do in their countries, but they are smart enough to realize that if most people ever came to their senses they would not be one bit enthusiastic for such a program. So a huge amount of money is being spent to keep people from understanding reality and to ridicule those who do.

You have to ask yourself how an espèce d'ordure like George W. Bush ever got elected president and stayed president in the first place and then accept that those very same forces are still at work today.

The big question is...

Why can't the Democrats who were once supposed to be the "people's party", come up with candidates that connect solidly with "deep" America.

How is it that a piece of work like Sarah Palin is the one who isn't (wasn't) a millionaire, the one who went to a state university, the one who was a commercial fisherman, (fisherperson?) served on the PTA and whose husband carries a steelworker's union card? Why is this objectively working class woman a Republican of the most brutish sort?

Why is it that the only Democrat that seems acutely aware of this problem is a born aristocrat like Howard Dean?

This is the real question.

Can you have a working class movement without the working class?

To paraphrase the demon Rumsfeld, you go with the working class you have, not with the working class you would like to have.

America's working people are in desperate need of health, education and welfare, but they are also mostly social conservatives. They generally are religious.

Why should this social conservatism and religiosity automatically be a force for economic reaction? Why should this folk culture serve the interests of people like the truly elitist Koch brothers, who are objectively the enemies of the working poor?

There is nothing in the teaching of Jesus Christ that intrinsically supports economic libertarianism, xenophobia, racism, military adventures at the expense of health or education, or connects in any way with the beggar thy neighborism of the disciples of Ayn Rand.

Imagine how the following text would sit with Ayn Rand or the Koch Brothers, in fact, can you imagine it being spoken at Tea Party event?

'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.' Matthew 25:41-45

Or these

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:17-18

If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered. Proverbs 21:13

He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. Proverbs 14:31

He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses. Proverbs 28:27

Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy. Proverbs 31:8-9

Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. Deuteronomy 24:14
(Hat to Scott Manley)

I believe that it is no coincidence that more emphasis is usually given in the USA to the apocalyptic "the end of days" scenario, than to the Biblical quotes above. Even the age old religion of the have nots in today's America has to be warped to suit the needs of those who have.

Certainly there is no better country than America in the whole world to be rich. It is probably the only country in the world where the rich are loved. Conversely there is no worse country in the world to be poor. America's working poor have every reason to be paranoid, the system literally hates them.

Religion and populism go hand in hand. "Religion is the opium of the people" in the same sense that "opium is the opium of the cancer patient". At issue is pain, if you propose no real cure for the disease, why begrudge the palliative drug? Jesus offers a far better deal for the working poor than the Tea Party does.

Many progressives have problems with all of this, they are repelled by what they consider the gross superstition of creationism, for example. As to evolution, however, if the Democrats want to ever win southern white people or even a lot of evangelical black people, they had better not put evolution at the center of their program, More than religious, this is a cultural thing. Poor people never have liked Darwinism very much... think about it. What does "survival of the fittest" hold for them? What is their role in "the devil take the hindmost"?

Why are so many of the poor of America, white and black, socially conservative? Because without a welfare state, the only institutions that offer any comfort or protection are the church and the family. The family is the first welfare state. In the USA there is no welfare state and the family is also under heavy pressure from the system. Single parent families are increasingly common, The United States has the highest percentage of single-parent families (34% in 1998) among developed countries. The United States has one of the highest divorce rates in the world, twice that of Denmark, Canada, or the United Kingdom. The divorce rate is highest among lower income couples. With reason, poor people in America are terrified: frightened people take comfort where they can. A divorced waitress with two kids who has to take them to an emergency room to treat their asthma can't be criticized for being a "Left Behind" enthusiast: she and her kids fly up to heaven and the stingy tippers go to hell.

The Evangelicals love for creationism and the literal reading of scripture is because the Bible trumps the "experts"... any hick quoting the good book is superior to a PhD from MIT quoting Darwin. The same psychology holds true for "Rapture" enthusiasts, they will be saved, taken directly up to heaven and all the people who have ever treated them so shabbily here on earth will suffer indescribable torment and humiliation, which the chosen will be able to watch from heaven. This is a form of sedition.

I find any rebellion of the "lower orders" in the USA positive per se. I start from the premise that it is really the poor, the sniggered at, the excluded and the disadvantaged -- what are called the "lower classes" -- that have to be the protagonists of any authentic change. Up till now, all the "struggle" is coming from the top against the down. And many middle class Democrats that think they are progressives are merely water carriers for the "one percent".

What is new is that now it is America's lower middle classes, once the envy of the entire world, that can't pay for health and education any more and find themselves losing their homes and being pushed toward pauperization.

How can the billionaire's conspiracy be defeated on the cheap?

You have to start from where you are.

Perhaps the only thing that the white, black and Latino populations really have in common is their fear of destitution and their faith in Jesus.

The basic message of Christianity, especially the Evangelical variety, is that Jesus died in great agony on the cross to redeem those who believe in him, out of pure love for each of them, one at a time, although they have done nothing in particular to deserve this, the most precious of rewards.... and it's free... an "unlimited offer".

This means that a person who has been "born again", no matter if they are fat or have bad breath or don't have a high pay grade, are beloved and unique in the eyes of the central figure of Western civilization. Some may not think this is so special but they might admit that it is a culturally more grounded reason to feel special than because the brand of underwear they have on reflects their "unique lifestyle".

That is why, despite much of the grotesque tackiness and fanaticism of some of it, that, at the risk of sounding condescending, I find the Evangelical movement filled with such promise, because it alone, even without knowing it, is the only serious rebellion against the "unhappiness principal" that drives American capitalism. The entire American economy is based on making people feel bad about themselves, making them feel poor, ugly, sick, helpless, stupid, inadequate and then offering to sell them something to relieve the pain of rejection and failure. Americans are hardly ever away from a voice that tells them that they don't measure up to some impossible standard of perfection. The message is like the song, "all in all you're just another brick in the wall" ...unless you buy what the voice is selling.

The sort of Christianity practiced by America's charismatic Christians, both black and white, means that joy can be found for free... this is positively "un-American".

That is why I think that some sort of "liberation theology" is finally going to the only idea or movement that is going to change America. I'm sure that most of the Evangelicals that were attending the Republican convention would be horrified to know that British Socialism has its deepest roots in the Baptist and Methodist chapels of Wales and the industrial north of England. But there is no reason to believe that someone who drove the money changers out of the temple is a fan of Ayn Rand's.

I think that America's most deeply rooted institutions are now in conflict with our modern, globalized economy or as Joe Sleeper says:

(...) obeisance to every whim of global capital, which is abandoning Palin's small-town America and Obama's urban America, a capital whose injustices and consumer palliatives are subverting our republican institutions and character.

There has to be found or be created, an overlap between American progressives and the Evangelicals.

There has to be rebellion for anything to happen and the culture of the people has to be taken into account. The lower middle class and poor people of America are religious and we have to start from there. The only strategy that will ever reverse the enormous inequality and the oppression of the poor in the USA is an American version of "Liberation Theology".

And remember it is cheap, really cheap, there are over 2000 years of what an MBA would call "sunk costs" working for it.

You don't believe in any of it?

No problem.

If you are truly progressive and want to change the system, then you should say like Henry of Navarre, "Paris vaut bien une messe"... Or study up on "Pascal's Wager".

Like Howard Dean, I believe that America's progressives have to make their peace with evangelical America and find defenders of the "little man" that vibrate in the same cultural key as they do. Where is a contemporary William Jennings Bryan? It is absurd that a credible case can be made that the Democrats are elitist, but it is being made effectively every day of the week.

The Koch Brothers

2010-08-31T17:06:05Z

Charles and David Koch

Jane Mayer has written what may be, because of its future repercussions, a history making article in the New Yorker.

Her exhaustively researched article shows that the brothers Koch of Koch Industries are supplying a great deal of the money fueling the vapors of America's loony right and are the major financial power behind the highly organized and sinister attack on climate change science in the USA.

I will assume that you have read Mayer's piece. I have little new to add to it, only my take on what I think it all means.

As a starting point, here is a sample list of organizations they fund, which I have taken from Sourcewatch:

1) Cato Institute $8,450,000
2) Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation $6,025,375
3) George Mason University $2,311,149
4) George Mason University Foundation, Inc. $2,074,893
6) Heritage Foundation, The $1,004,000
7) Institute for Justice $1,000,000
8) Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment $810,000
9) Reason Foundation, The $642,000
10) Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, The $504,000
12) Institute for Humane Studies $455,000
13) Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy $385,000
14) Washington Legal Foundation $350,000
15) Capital Research Center $340,000
16) Competitive Enterprise Institute $254,460
20) Ethics and Public Policy Center, Inc. $190,000
22) National Center for Policy Analysis $175,000
23) Citizens for Congressional Reform Foundation $175,000
24) Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc. $125,000
25) American Legislative Exchange Council $120,000
26) Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty $115,000
28) Political Economy Research Center, Inc. $80,000
29) Media Institute $60,000
30) National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship $60,000
31) University of Chicago $59,000
32) Defenders of Property Rights $55,000
33) University of Kansas Endowment Assocation $50,000
36) Texas Public Policy Foundation $44,500
37) Center for Individual Rights, The $40,000
38) Heartland Institute $40,000
39) Texas Justice Foundation $40,000
40) Institute for Policy Innovation $35,000
42) Center of the American Experiment $31,500
43) Atlas Economic Research Foundation $28,500
44) Young America's Foundation $25,000
45) Henry Hazlitt Foundation $25,000
47) Atlantic Legal Foundation $20,000
48) National Taxpayers Union Foundation $20,000
49) Families Against Mandatory Minimums $20,000
50) Philanthropy Roundtable $19,200
51) Free Enterprise Institute $15,000
52) John Locke Foundation $15,000
53) Hudson Institute, Inc. $12,650
54) Alexis de Tocqueville Institution $12,500
55) National Environmental Policy Institute $12,500
56) Washington University $11,500
57) Pacific Legal Foundation $10,000
58) American Council for Capital Formation $10,000
60) Institute for Political Economy $8,000
62) State Policy Network $6,500
64) Fraser Institute, The $5,000
65) Mackinac Center, The $5,000
66) Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation $5,000
68) Institute for Objectivist Studies $5,000

For me the real giveaway in the Koch's sucker list is the last one, the "Institute for Objectivist Studies"... in case you are not aware, "Objectivist" or "Objectivism" is the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who I (full disclosure) consider one of the most evil human beings to grace that most evil of centuries, the 20th. Perhaps the title of one of her books that gives the most of her thinking away in the shortest dose is called "The Virtue of Selfishness".

Her oeuvre is compounded of many volumes of novels and essays, articles and speeches: millions of verbs and nouns and assorted prepositions, you name it, but the British, who still can use our language with pungent economy, might simply define Rand's philosophy in a few choice words such as, "Bugger you Jack, I'm alright."

Rand's philosophy might be called the "secret doctrine" behind the Koch's manipulation of American democracy, just as it inspired Alan Greenspan and many other powerful people who have found in it a well constructed justification of their basest instincts.

I found the following quote from Mayer's article which positively reeks with Objectivism. The Kochs have funded an exhibition at the Smithsonian which makes global warming sound sort of like fun. (The bold, black, emphasis is entirely mine).

At the main entrance, viewers are confronted with a giant graph charting the Earth's temperature over the past ten million years, which notes that it is far cooler now than it was ten thousand years ago. Overhead, the text reads, "HUMANS EVOLVED IN RESPONSE TO A CHANGING WORLD."(...) The accompanying text says, "During the period in which humans evolved, Earth's temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fluctuated together." An interactive game in the exhibit suggests that humans will continue to adapt to climate change in the future. People may build "underground cities," developing "short, compact bodies" or "curved spines," so that "moving around in tight spaces will be no problem."

Such ideas uncannily echo the Koch message. The company's January newsletter to employees, for instance, argues that "fluctuations in the earth's climate predate humanity," and concludes, "Since we can't control Mother Nature, let's figure out how to get along with her changes."

People might wonder, "do the Kochs really think that they and their offspring will be exempt from the rigors of climate change? Are the presumably super rich future Kochs ready to go around with 'short compact bodies' or 'curved spines' in order to 'move around in tight spaces'?"

When they once asked George W. Bush about history's verdict on his administration he replied something to the effect that he didn't care because he'd be dead by then. I imagine that is the sort of attitude that the Kochs have toward the future of their country and our species, when nobody is looking or listening.

You might as well pose a question like that to a Mexican drug capo like the ones who run Los Zetas. These are people who take what they want and are just as nasty as they have to be to get it. The Kochs, having been born rich, haven't had to take the same risks that the Zetas do, but we are still talking about sociopathic behavior whose only final value and measure is money and power.

Probably, if they think or care much about the world their grandchildren will live in, they picture them living in gated and heavily fortified communities, somewhere in a newly verdant Antarctic, maintained in glowing eternal health by miraculous genetic manipulations and tended by starved sex slaves, the tattered remnants of the world's once teeming billions, whom the neo-Kochs breed and consume like we breed and consume battery chickens today.

What Mayer's article and the Sourcewatch list I have reprinted reminds me most of is Terry Southern's 1960s period piece, "The Magic Christian" and the Peter Sellers film version of it: a simple allegory of the things that people will do for money. At the time the film seemed way over the top, but in light of what the Kochs are doing to American politics and to the air that the entire world breathes, "The Magic Christian" seems quite restrained.

I do see a tiny ray of light in all this. It may be that the apparent divisions in American society, that the great British historian Eric Hobsbawm calls the deepest divisions among our people since our Civil War, are more artificial than they appear to us now and that if the manipulation of peoples "feelings" and the darkening of their intelligence by people such as the Kochs and Rupert Murdoch becomes more widely recognized, sanity may rear its pretty head again... or maybe the Kochs will just have to personally buy us all off... one at a time, Magic Christian style.

Why I heart TPM Café (if anybody is interested)

2010-08-30T09:34:55Z

Art happens no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce" James Whistler (the one with the mother)

I have chosen James Whistler's famous quote, "art happens" to explain the unique woods colt that TPM has fortuitously engendered and why I think it would be foolish to tamper with its magic.

TPM Café, is like any work of art, in the end, inexplicable. You remember Louis Armstrong's reply to a diamond-studded dowager after a concert he gave in Carnegie Hall, she asked, "Mr. Armstrong, what is jazz?" and he answered, "Lady, if you don't know by now, you never will."

Strange and wonderful things, rich with information and packed with humanity, happen here daily. It is also a family as we have seen when members lose their jobs, lives or loved ones.

For me personally, the comments that I have received to my postings have meant valuable encouragement and exposure: for example, thanks to cross-posting here, my home blog has been listed by James Wolcott at Vanity Fair. As I am an expatriate, far from home, hoping to finally get some writing work stateside someday, this is great for my morale.

I could go on and on, but anybody who loves this venue already understands everything I'm trying to say already and like Satchmo said, those that don't know by now, never will.

August Break: Further Reading for TPM Cafe Regulars

2010-07-29T10:08:29Z

"Summer Tale" by Eleonore Weil

Like I do every year, inshallah, I am taking the month of August off: this year I am retiring to my dacha/hill-station in the mountains outside Madrid. As always, I leave with the firm proposal to do nothing at all except read, sleep and walk.. but reality will interpose itself in the form of a front porch that needs to be stripped, sanded and repainted. Oh well.

Every year, when I go off, I try to leave something for my regular readers to enjoy, a treasure trove of goodies, so that they will not have forgotten me (sniff) by September.

This August I've decided to leave a long list of links to articles I have collected over the last few months in the course of my work, a few random things that I enjoyed when I found them and that I hope my readers may find interesting. I confess that I am too lazy to sort them out as to subject matter or even importance, but you'll find them in roughly chronological order, with the most recent first. I have taken the trouble to re-test the links before pasting them in, but I can't guarantee how long they'll work. Enjoy!

NOTE: THINGS ONLY STAY UP FOR 24 HOURS HERE AT TPM, SO IF YOU'D LIKE TO READ YOUR WAY THROUGH ALL OF THIS WITH MORE LEISURE, YOU'LL ALSO FIND THE LIST HERE

List of Articles
Robert Skidelsky: Consolidators versus Stimulators - Project-Syndicate
Gideon Rachman: Lunch with the FT: Oleg Deripaska

Mexico: Downward drift - Financial Times

Escape from Mexico - The National Interest

Why 2011 Will Be A Bummer - Huffington Post

In Ireland, a Picture of the High Cost of Austerity - New York Times

James Surowiecki: The dangers of financial illiteracy in America - New Yorker

Worst retreat of Arctic sea ice in thousands of years: study - The Montreal Gazette

Is it OK to Cheat in Football? - Project Syndicate

What If He's Right? - Clusterfuck Nation

William Pfaff: America's Record of Lost Wars and Failed Interventions

Martin Hutchinson: Back to the Kaiser's World - Prudent Bear

Hackers Aren't Only Threat to Privacy - Wall Street Journal

The Slow Fade of Meatspace -Reason.com

The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is - NYT
The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is (Part 3) - NYT

The internet: Everything you ever need to know - The Observer

Daniel and Tony Judt: Generations in the Balance - New York Times

Gary Becker: Will Africa finally take off?

Raghuram Rajan: Jobless Recoveries and Manic Policies - Project Syndicate

Martin Hutchinson: The Asian Inflation Bug - Prudent Bear

Tom Engelhardt: Entering the Soviet Era in America

Checkmate - Club Orlov

Immanuel Wallerstein: Impossible Choices in a World Depression

For Analysts, Things Are Always Looking Up - Businessweek

Education Does Not Guarantee Economic Achievement - Forbes

Turkey, Stealth Superpower - Asia Times

Jürgen Habermas: Germany and the Euro-Crisis - The Nation

The increasing 'humanisation' of our pets - Financial Times

Seeking Power: Europe's Extreme Right - Center for Security Studies, Switzerland

Your toilet paper and the recovery - MSN Money

Music industry on verge of collapse - Celebrity Buzz

The U.S. Is Not Too Big To Fail - The New Republic

Surging costs hit food security in poorer nations - Businessweek

Bernie Madoff, Free at Last - New York Magazine

Higher education's bubble is about to burst - The Examiner

Cow manure powers computers down on the data farm - The Times

Calling out Bernard Madoff but falling on deaf ears - Washington Post

At the Heart of the Crash - New York Review of Books

Why I'd rather be punched in the testicles than call customer service - The Oatmeal

Wiki Leaks: No Secrets - New Yorker

The new poor: Blacks Lose Decades of Economic Gains - New York Times

Will Europeans accept a generation of 'austerity'? - BBC News

Easy Money, Hard Truths - New York Times
The Machines That Ate the Market - Businessweek
Austerity Does Not Produce Prosperity - Huffington Post
Legendary Investor Is More Worried Than Ever - Wall Street Journal
The short sale of American icons - MarketWatch
How U.S. drug policy is making Mexican cartels more deadly - Foreign Policy
The history of the toilet - Guardian
An American Chernobyl - ClubOrlov
The New Poor: In Job Market Shift, Some Workers Are Left Behind - New York Times
Thieves Flood Victim's Phone With Calls to Loot Bank Accounts - Wired
Detroit Saved from Detroit by Marijuana - BlackBook
Martin Hutchinson: Thatcher, Papandreou or Adenauer? - The Prudent Bear
A Sampling of Chinglish - New York Times
Woody Allen: Will the real Avatar please stand up - New Yorker
Chinese leaders revive Marxist orthodoxy - Asia Times
Google Delivers Foreign Tongues at the Press of a Button - Der Spiegel
Amartya Sen: The economist manifesto - The New Statesman
Powerful People Are Better Liars - Harvard Business Review
Seeing Tongue, Spray-On Skin, Transplanted Hand: Military's Extreme Medicine Wing - Wired
The Exotic in the Eyes of African Beholders - New York Times
Iqbal Z. Quadir: The economics of social progress - McKinsey
Tony Judt: Ill Fares the Land - New York Review of Books
It's Impossible To "Get By" In The US - Zero Hedge
Tony Judt: What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy? - New York Review of Books
Gideon Rachman: Cameron's Tories point to isolation - Financial Times
Super-sizing the "Last Supper" - Reuters
Why writing software is not like engineering - University of San Francisco
The History of the Honey Trap - Foreign Policy
How I Got the Goods on Madoff, and Why No One Would Listen - Businessweek
Porn: Good for us? - The Scientist

Some second thoughts about the Af-Pak Wikileaks

2010-07-28T16:33:36Z

Julian Assange

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading Don Quixote, while Iceland takes a leak

2010-07-26T18:50:35Z

Gustavo Doré's Don Quixote

This summer I am rereading the world's first, and still probably the world's best novel, "Don Quixote", by Miguel de Cervantes. The first time I read it, my Spanish was nothing like it is today, nor is the life experience that I bring to the book now in any way comparable to the weltanschauung of the boy I was then. Every page holds treasures that I missed before, and what is most amazing of all, is how, despite the archaic, 17th century Spanish, the book is still more "modern" than any contemporary best seller: the truth about human beings never grows old.

Don Quixote is such a funny book because Cervantes uses the most prosaic details of everyday life in La Mancha, which is like a Spanish Peoria, as the triggers for the Don's delusions of knightly feats of daring-do. It is the quality of his marvelously bald and plausible descriptions of warts and all reality that makes Don Quixote's delusions so hilarious, noble and pathetic. For example, windmills, as common in La Mancha as grain elevators in the Middle West, become giants to his mad eyes, sturdy, no-nonsense country girls become fairytale princesses and the 17th century Spanish equivalent of two dollar hookers in a fleabite motel become noble ladies in a mighty castle... it goes on and on...

Imagine the owner of a gas station on the steppes of Indiana, who watches old "A-Team" reruns till he goes mad and starts to think he is "Mr. T" and then goes out armed to the teeth on a "mission": that is basically the starting point of this greatest of books. Not that hard to imagine in an American context is it?

However, don't get the idea that inventing this stuff is simple, it takes the genius of a Cervantes to pull it off. Normally reality is funnier than anything that you or I could ever dream up, but Cervantes's way of looking at the contrast between who we think we are and who we really are is available to all.

An example of Cervantes's method applied to the contemporary USA: imagine a president of the USA that thought that he could make the waters recede and the climate change, while all the secret information in the Pentagon was heading for Iceland.