Oops. Sorry. A tragedy, deeply regret, make every effort, best equipment, best in the world, investigating, band plays on, yadda yadda, yadda yadda. But worth it. Definitely.
So much for Obama ever getting tough, speaking the truth, or for even putting American ideals and best interests ahead of the Israeli lobby and the 'evangelical threat'. It just isn't in him, which is what a few prescient people were warning before he was elected. I would have thought that Obama was smart enough to figure out by now that his middle of the road strategy was not pleasing anybody, and in fact alienating most, but I guess not. I could not imagine that it was possible to have a Democrat president analog to the ineptitude of George Bush, but given the challenges the nation now faces it seems there's a pretty good chance.
Mary OG, the issue is not the infallibility of gravity, but video media being used to imply that selected other humans are so different from "us", and therefore crazy, mad, stupid--certainly not OUR equal. There are plenty of You Tube movie examples of vast stupidity attached to a title of humorous southern redneck endearment, or "only in Russia", or 'those crazy Norwegians', or inept military performances, both domestic and foreign, not to mention American extreme sport adrenalin junkies performing another roulette attempt. Separating the stupid act from the social background is what did not happen in this video, which in fact has its impact because it conflates the social background with the stupid act. Obviously the real experiences of expensively kitted and trained US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Japan, and many many other locations show that the supposedly inept 'enemy' our troops expected to fight never showed up and the enemy was instead found to be tough and often tougher and equally inventive, and did not in fact run like chickens. "Never underestimate the enemy" really means never overestimate yourself, which is a strong, and perhaps even intended side effect of this video.
It's just 4th of July in some other country. Look at what Americans spend on fireworks every year, and remember that the lusty, dangerous fireworks of today are a faint approximation of what one could buy fifty years ago. Being different may be surprising but that doesn't make it necessarily evil. The cultural mismatch is in the eye of the beholder. "Parochial" works both directions.
This is the kind of thing the Great Game players miss as they plan out out how their own game is going to go. "No problem" gives way later to "I didn't realize". Of course they never think of everything and it comes back as a big unexpected body count for those who cheer and follow such arrogance, and those who got in the way because they lived on teh gameboard. Blair (bad Saddam), Bush (opportunity knocks), Wolfowitz (they're all wrong,it will pay for itself), Rummy (known, unknown, partly known, guessing), the Neocon shakers and assorted Generals, all had to backtrack, hopefully on page 19. Cheney, no; never admit anything. There were quite a few "I didn't realize's" after the Iraq debacle, but those never get the media attention given to "This is how it's going to go." Or "A little destabilization might not be a bad thing". It's all so complicated now downstream of the Arab Spring, compared to how simple it sounded coming from the Bush team.
I used to support Israel, but that is long gone. My absolute disgust with it is coupled to an equal amount of disgust for America's incomprehensible fawning over a nation that clearly doesn't care a whit about America except for its handouts. Israel is a paranoid, aggressive, suicidal, extremely dangerous loose cannon with no future at all given continuation of present policies.
Oh and we simply cannot forget non-state players, like the little unknown armed band (don't think for a moment that knowing their identity means anything)that took over the refinery somewhere Over There where the oil is. Just think of the investment potential...a few pickups, some auto weapons, rpgs, grenades found for a pittance on the arms bazaars that we've facilitated (and no doubt supply)in Iraq, Aghanistan, various other 'stans, and now Africa--anywhere there is a destabilized state with a non-functional government and porous borders. Which come to think of it is just about anywhere the US sends its troops to install Freedom. Voila! An incident that makes international news and sends shivers through the global oil and oil gambling industries, all save perhaps one who invested his five or ten grand in those pickups, pistols and patriots, who wanted to up his futures value, sway an election, or merely because he too is a patriot. Think of it as Bin Laden trickle down. With paranoid America mainlining oil and the American "press" deriding anything that doesn't consume oil or move twice as fast as is legal, this kind of thing is so EASY now. Expect more!
That's the myth we live by but I'm surprised to see you repeat it. It is true if you remove price spikes, but there is no shortage of articles about the affect of speculators (read 'gamblers') on fuel prices. Like here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/25/114759/wikileaks-saudis-often-warned.html
And then there's the leveraged version of betting on the bets, which worked so well in the banking and insurance industries, as here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/oil-traders-buy-protection-against-price-collapse/article2157124/
And the national economic effect of fuel price increases on the "recovery" from previous gambling: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-5-gas-means-for-the-american-economy-2012-3
And someone's observation that every 10 cent increase in fuel removes X billions of dollars from the national 'profit', and therefore from its 'recovery'--sorry can't find the citation.
And then there's Oil Christmas which I don't need a calendar for because I know my car is suddenly getting about 15% poorer mileage, which translates into my spending 15% more for fuel for a third of every year, and 15% more seasonal profit for Big Oil, and 15% more road and other assorted fuel taxes the State gets, the los of which (if fuel gave the same performance for all the time) makes the State an unenthusiastic player in Solving the Problem. And then there's the straight, no chaser Manipulation of Demand, which has simply become a standard business practice for those who know that riding price spikes is all they need to do to avoid producing anything and retiring early in style.
This isn’t new from Binney. It is more a continuing confirmation of a technological totalitarian state now firmly ensconced, enabled, and quietly operational in American government. There can no longer be any pretense that this effort is about terrorism. It is about a government collecting information on its own citizens, to be accumulated and saved for the day when government, or more exactly, someone in the gov'ment, feels the need to protect itself (himself) from its own citizens, or gain from their neutralization. Then when the target is chosen there is no problem or time lag to obtain "evidence" to neutralize the target, no time consuming and obstructive legal process. And it isn’t just here. Australian surveillance up 20% in one year: http://rt.com/news/australia-surveillance-phone-internet-145/
The only skill a techno-authoritarian needs to rise in this system is the ability to take offense at just about anything. That is the effective end of law by the people.
Charlotte: Suddenly, traveling to the Middle East is the “in” thing to do.
Maybe and thankfully for high profile personalities. But over the past fifteen years many Mid East locations that used to be places where young Americans could safely travel to obtain international experience for their career resumes has shrunk. There are more places where Americans are not only unwelcome, but good targets, and parents and travelers now consider the threat of “terrorism” together with their perusals of what used to be carefree exotic historical locales in their calculations, resulting in the slow closing of America’s eyes to the greater world. This is largely a self created delusion resulting from American governmental policies, erroneous political assignment of “terrorism” labels to internal and non-terrorist events and organizations, and American media cheerleading, or better put, fear-leading.
US news media is now a semi-coordinated disinformation service, at best tangential to facts on the ground. Mythical Clark Kent and Edward R. Murrow are dead. Walter Cronkite, once “America’s most trusted person” was quietly ushered out of the public spotlight he began speaking his mind following public retirement, and now bleakly lags behind Tom Brokaw who never would have made it out of Murrow’s second string. That American new media is bought and paid for to provide newsy entertainment is a given. That Fox clearly intends to be a propaganda machine is similarly clear, as is America’s wide approval for Fox’s belligerence and general disregard, even derision, of facts. Americans no longer steadfastly looks for truth in the face of truth’s frequent ugliness, but prefer having their adrenal glands pumped by media provocateurs. American discourse has been eagerly divided into untouchable cliques by those who enthusiastically seek to command both America’s wallet and its future. It is easy to blame broadcasters, but the fault is lies in the degraded spine of Americans who won’t recognize and can’t muster the courage to walk six feet and turn off the tube, with no age bracket excluded. 1984 arrived and self proclaimed patriots noticed it least.
" Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here - not yet. " Chet Huntley
Israel's present status and direction is what it has been: belligerent and unsustainable. Being determinedly unsustainable is identical to being intentionally suicidal.
The US is unsustainable and an overwhelming number of its key structures from local to federal government, military, and on to big business, want to maintain the status quo. Talk of necessary change is virtually all window dressing. The US too is now intentionally suicidal.
The two spend far too much time trying to use each other.
Much of the rest of the world appears to have a greater comprehension of the increasing fragility of human existence than the US and Israel. The salient issue involved is not oil, technology, markets, resources, political parties, political systems, or religious contention. All of those "top issues" are contained within the salient issue of human survival in the face of changes humans themselves have created.
If much of America is not driving electric cars by about 2020 or 2022, it won't be driving much at all. The countdown to cheap oil's end is underway, whether or not Americans want to recognize the countdown.
America's survival depends on people who can afford new cars buying electric and non-gas hog vehicles. They are not. The po' folks are along for the ride.
An A320 with only 37 total passengers, 750 pounds confiscated, and enough suspicion to send two fighters to force it down? We're only seeing the wavetops.
America continues to isolate and narrow its own vision psychologically and informationally by major media intent combined with the acquiesence of the American public. Much of the rest of the world wonders at this trend in amazement but does not allow itself to be similarly held back. American media condescension toward RT and Al Jazeera, and its supeficial reoprting on Asian opinion has not prevented those organs from ascending as often more reliable conduits of fact. The net effect is contributing to America's overall loss of reputation and influence. Americans simply comprehend less and less about what is more and more important. America does have by far the best propaganda on planet Earth, but it is aimed almost entirely at its own population.
Gaza, recipient of a large scale Israeli attack in response to a few rockets that killed a few Israelis, comprised as of two days ago of eight hundred air strikes plus shelling from the sea and calls for 75,000 reservists. Thirty two miles long by 5 miles average width, 141 square miles or 90,000 acres, population 1,700,000, population density 12,000 per square mile or 18.7 per acre. Air strikes per square mile: 5.6, population per airstrike: 2125.
33.7/141
Manhattan, NY: 33.7 sq miles, 21,568 acres, population 1,600,000, pop density 70,000/ sq mile, air strikes per square mile proportional to Israel’s strikes on Gaza: 192
Cedar Rapids, IA: 71 sq miles, 45440 acres, pop 126,000, pop density 1774/ sq mile, 2.7 per acre, proportionate airstrikes: 376, population per airstrike: 335, airstrikes per square mile: 4.7
Israel’s clear preference for their “Palestinian problem” would be that all the Palestinians simply leave. That is remarkably like Nazi Germany’s initial desire for the Jews, at least until the tremendous funding potential of confiscated assets of killed Jews for German military expansion was recognized. Because current nations on earth have no more interest in absorbing the Palestinians of Gaza today than the nations of 1940 wanted to absorb German Jews then, and because the Palestinians today understandably have little desire to leave what remains of their homeland, Israel’s solution set to its “problem” population is also quite similar to a number of Nazi Germany’s Jewish solutions: sequestration, legal disablement, suspension of citizenship, confiscation of land, physical damage to Palestinian people and businesses, intimidation, legal hooliganism (as opposed to Putin hooliganism), disablement of Palestinian social, regulatory, and executive structures, limitations on local and international business transactions inclouding imports and exports, obstruction and criminalization of independent humans rights and internal Palestinian organizations opposing Israel’s encroachment, reductions of access to raw and finished materials necessary for basic human survival, demonization of the population, propagation of hate, disproportional military response (currently in progress), manipulation of media (always in progress), assassinations, and so on.
The only real differences between Germany in 1942 and Gaza 2012 are overt starvation (because Israel carefully makes sure Palestinians only mostly starve), major outbreaks of disease, unintentional or intentional, and large scale exterminations. Israel manages to fund itself far beyond its own output by continual appropriation of Palestinian assets, and avoids the nasty PR complications of overt exterminations by systematized legal theft which increases the number of internal Palestinian refugees who, it might easily be imagined, are more than chagrined and willing to pick up whatever weapon is at hand. Who then of course deserve to be attacked as the bad guys. And also of course, the generous gifts of ??? billions of dollars from its great friend, the champion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the United States, were not advantages Hitler enjoyed. But, like Churchill considering the Germans in 1941, a Palestinian chance epidemic of high mortality would probably be greeted today in Israel with more relief rather than hand wringing. Or perhaps relish in one’s rooms and some public handwringing to keep the show going. Shooting fish in a barrel. No exit allowed. A response of silence and duplicity in the West. Just like Warsaw, complete with tunnels.
Somehow America's leaders seem to have totally missed or forgotten the message sent by China a few years back, delivered, albeit poorly, by American "news" media. This is understandable if one feels that the American militarization of space has less to do with national defense or world dominion than it does with establishing ever more top secret income streams. The bales of dollars gone missing in Iraq were nothing compared to the profits of militarizing space.
When China sent up a weary old missile to supposely knock down one of its own satellites, causing a sudden increase in space junk at and above orbit speeds, it seems pretty clear that the larger message was that just a relative few weary old missiles with Mickey Mouse times,loaded with cheap old explosive charges and aluminum bb's, or even leftover Florida ballot chads, haphazardly aimed at the several of the most congested orbit distances popular with military spenders, would in rather short order blind or neutralize a sizeable percentage of Americas most prized defense gizmos. The return on investment would be staggering.
Pehaps the more fundamental question is whether an attack on space based weapons and surveillance targets would be answered back here on earth by a doomsday launch by a hawkish and ill-informed president, or whether cooler heads would prevail, citing the zero sum nuclear MAD game we already played and should have learned from.
For the present America is spending a lot of money it doesn't have on high tech projects that could be neutralied by fifty year old technology, ie: the Blunderbuss Equation. This is entirely consistent with American hyper attention to short term profit, and Chinese attention on some point way out there in the future where it is increasingly clear that America will have shot its wad.
Exactamondo Professor. Even Reid eventually wondered aloud where in the world Obama had been hiding himself "in conference" during the health care bill "debate". That's pretty bad. Single payer was 'off the table' as being unpassable according to an Obama quote very late in the game. I do believe it was also the Obama administration that repeatedly prevented any participation by single payer advocates during the bill's hearings, another example of compromise before the debate begins. What Obama proved was that clinging to a hope of centrist master of compromise with people who have taken compromise off the table is mere acquiesence. The same thing happened with the Wall Street reform bill. Not much really changed. The practices that allowed the very rich to appropriate a goodly portion of the accumulated savings of the middle class are still mostly in place and still in operation. It was the biggest theft (or was it a gambling loss covered by taxpayers?...hmmm)in American history, and the biggest thieves got bailouts and bonuses while a million American homeowners were were turned out on the streets where many still live.
Juan's list of must-do's is way too short, but it is a list of real problems America faces rather than meaningless obstructive political inventions such as whether vagina is a less acceptably public word than more prevalent equivalents (take your pick).
The greatest threats to America are not 'out there', but systemic, bored deeply into the very framework of America's home, and not even a topic in the past year's orgy of political misdirection.
German take on the American election: "Germans see the US election as a battle between the good Obama and the evil Romney. But this is a mistake. Regardless of who wins the election on Tuesday, total capitalism is America's true ruler, and it has the power to destroy the country."
It is not only the legitimacy of the federal government that is in serous jeopardy in America, it is the legitimacy of the supposed democratic process of government, and of the election process. The story is not new; voter 'disenchantment' has been haphazardly reported the past three presidential elections, then dropped like a hot potato after an exceedingly brief story run. Voter disenchantment has valid roots that media does not to want to cover because it conflicts with the American myth (that media DOES continually reinforce) that individual votes are somehow actually connected to the future of the nation. But more Americans from all political sectors are in agreement that America is on a disastrous course than there are who agree that any single party offers the best course. In other words, if the presidential vote today was really intended to be the expression of America voter preferences, voter choices would include "None of the Above", or "None Qualified", or "No Confidence". If candidates actually had to run against the shadow of themselves instead of the bogeyman from the other party who really isn't as different as the candidate's own shadow, the election would at least yield a better perspective on how much faith Americans really have in their political system. Such a refreshing possibility also suggests a possible scenario where Americans are so disgusted with the candidate choices that they decide they would be better off for the next four years without one. The predictive success rates of monkeys and the weathermen suggest that America might sustain less damage to itself during the ensuing four years if the guiding hand of an inept, ineffectual, corrupt, and/or ignorant sock puppet pol was missing from the wheel of state. The lack of an ever present voter choice that includes None Qualified shows the limitations of the American Constitution as some kind of automatic, eternal protection of Americans more willing to fight each other than work together.
The results of a close election mean the lack of a new voter mandate, a continuation of societal division, and a continuation of governmental stalemate and inability to effectively deal with the real (not invented) problems that face the nation. Most voters think this election happens this day, November 6. But the majority the election's outcome has already taken place in all the pre-election "polls" that by election day will have largely established the post election voter blocs and the various frictions to which the real directors of America mass have already tied their reins. Change is not in the air, unless of course one is looking forward to the next war.
Given the predictions in a wide variety of significant sectors, the presumption that the economy will pick back up is an exceedingly weak presumption. Bad as things might seem for many at present, these will be good old days we likely will be pining for in just a very few years. Addressing human actions that result in environmental and climate alterations cannot be postponed til the time is right, all deniers have been persuaded, we all have better cars and jobs, and all American boats have risen on the tide we like to think of as normal. Anyone who thinks the future is gong to be a replay of the past, especially any 'golden past' is deluded. Humans have changed and continue to change what 'normal' is. If you dispute that I will ship you untreated drinking water from a dozen randomly selected American rivers. Imbibe that as your sole source of water for the next year and get back to us. As Dr Cole points out, seemingly small alterations can and will have big effects. Wait too long to begin change and no matter how hard you try then it will be too little too late.
Nice to finally see this out in the open, in print. United we aren't, and no amount of bumperstickers will make it so. Outside of their social tribes, Americans increasingly don't much like each other, don't accept each other, suspect each other, fear each other, seek advantage over each other, push compliance to their own beliefs, seek protection from each other, seek adjudication of dispute from outside the locale. This outcome is not an accident. The work leading to it has been constant over a long period of time and continues. It has helped make the herd more herdable, more responsive to both the whip and the drover's soothing lullaby.
If you don't happen to like that outcome, don't act it out. It is really as simple as whether or not in a democracy citizens lead the government, or vice versa. The present, with responsiveness of elected officials virtually identical to cemetery occupants, is the versa.
Sorry Joe, The time for efficiency to be extraneous to government concern is long gone, blown apart by a national system (yes our very own) that supplies almost none of its own needs. You're right, business success today isn't a prerequisite to political success. But then again, success in today's business seems to have almost nothing at all to do with long term planning (think national future). A lack or reality in business is not a reason to de-link business saavy from political ability.
If you want to look at success, as oppsoed to Obama, look at the Jeep in WWII: A contest for a national spec, a winner, and then the spec spread through multiple manufacturing streams so that manufacturing itself was not a bottleneck to the need. What do we do today? Give money to startups, let them get a hint of success, then support the selloff as good business. To China, sure, its only business.
Obama is a vacant storefront in terms of Americas's future. Nothing he has done shows a hint of clue about it. Is he better than Romney? Certainly, but only in terms of the slower pace he would set digging the nation into its own grave, compared to rich-kid, never-had-a-care, nary-a-clue-now Romney.
We need a Jeep kind of war effort now, and I don't mean the stupid overweight, overlycomplex Jeep Patriot you see lumbering around advertising itself. But WWII was oh so long ago and we all must have our wants met and we gotta keep all our treasured WWII myths floating somehow. That's what we Americans do today. Meet our wants, the hell with the needs, the hell with reality. The Greeks called that Desire, and it was a deadly sin. How did American manage to make a deadly sin into a national freedom, a national treasure? And why are both both Romney and Obama so eager to support that deadly sin?
I suppose Clinton thinks of herself as the white knight on an election battleground, deflecting Banghazi spears away from Obama by saying she is responsible for the Benghazi attack. What she really did was take a page from Bush's book and further demonstrate that responsibility in modern American government is meaningless. Stating personal responsiblity at that level of officialdom means not that something will happen now, but rather that the case is closed and nothing will happen in judgement over the lack of responsibility. Clinton would have been more accurate saying she was irresponsible, but that obviously doesn't sound so good.
I used to think of the State Department as an important piece of American government, rather than as a dual specialty office splitting its time between amplifying Israeli policy and being national crier for Al Qaeda sightings. But I think a grey rock would have been less harmfully provocative and more soothing for international tensions than Clinton has been. Ultimately this little episode shines a light on Obama who is the only person who can do anything about Clinton's 'irresponsibility'. Heads have rolled in past administrations when the President felt his agenda was mired down. Mired as Obama has been, the only heads he has rolled are a bunch of men, women, and children sitting in tents, or having dinner, or riding motorbikes on some faraway desert scape beyond the reach of American reporting media. And Rahm to the mayorship of Chicago of course. But that was bowling.
Irresponsibility is by no means limited to Clinton or Obama. Responsibility has no place at all in the Romney campaign, where direct conflicts of quotes in major speeches are regularly an hourly occurrence, and 'policy-makin' is primarily involved in successful nuancing of completely contradictory positions. In the specific area of contradictions, Obama holds a very slight advantage.
If responsibility means anything anymore, it should fall to the informed electorate to make a responsible decision with their vote. The problem is when both choices are irresponsible. Then what does the responsible voter do?
Didn't George the Lesser say something like "My job is to keep repeating things"? Romney is recounting the American myth, in front of the American virtual fireplace. It's the American lullaby. Sleep children sleep, daddy will watch over you.
John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me recounted the experiences of a brave white man willingly entering racist black reality to find what being black really meant. I suggest that even Little Lord Romney might experience a shift of world view if he were parachuted naked into Gaza, with no papers, a bad haircut, and a professional makeup job complete with all the facial profiling features of those nasty Palestinians. I'll chip in ten bucks.
Norton: Not sure of your intent here. Netenyahu has never let facts stand in the way of the need to manufacture consent, every day. What danger did Iraq ever represent, and to who? It is extremely prudent to question the constant misrepresentations by US pols and US media of what Khameni and Ahmadinejad actually say. Fatwas can be lifted, but in general are more consistent over time than politicians, especially coming from the top echelon of religious leaders. See "Pope". To much and perhaps most of the world, the US is truely frightening with its combination of nuclear and "conventional" overkill, not to mention its global surveillence capacity and weaponization of space. Overwhelming conventional force are not much different than WMD's. If you often wonder if the Muslim world really cares about the Palestinians you must not ever read any news or views from the Muslim world.
Dr. Cole I cannot agree. This is no more a butterfly than a crude, overdubbed movie depicting Jesus as a verbal oaf as he and Mary Magdelene engage in a very explicit sexual union. It is relatively true that America does not censor films, or stupidity for that matter. But America has long recognized incitement to riot and yelling fire in a theater as acts worthy of preventative laws. This film was intended to incite on an international stage, not inform or express artistic expression. And, using the 'follow the money' dictum regarding motivation, there are more parties than one that could presently view a little fire in the theater as a good thing for them.
Vote for the less demented candidate. That's the choice in 2012. and you should be happy, even excited about it! That's the DNC line. The American wreckage of a former democracy continues to pile up.
"Israel will fall from such blind hubris, as all nations eventually do."
I think Dr Cole has pointed out several times that this is essentially what Mr. Ahmadinejad said, which has been changed for most Americans by some tens of thousands of media and politico repetitions into "Iran wants to wipe Israel from the face of the earth."
I see also this morning that Obama personally intervened to pressure the Democratic Party to reinstate "God" and "Jerusalem as capital of Israel" into the Democrat platform. The cliff we are rushing toward with such enthusiasm is more than financial.
Traditional American alliances have been distancing themselves for a decade toward a new global polarization where America is not number one, and probably not number two or three. US media, scared spitless of being anything other than entertainment subservient to dying American myths, right wing bluster, and Israel continues to hum lullaby of Broadway. Absent American attention to a shifting reality, the world will go on without America.
Most people I talk to don't want to talk about reality. They want to talk about continuing their personal or shared myths. Google, Yahoo, and CNN, not to mention the former big three "broadcasting corporations", pander to American myths. Farmers and workers, the old Left of the past, cared about how to get the family to next year, how to reduce unfair advantage, the common weal, what works and should be supported, and what doesn't work and should be avoided. Pragmatism today only applies in our most loved mythical systems: economics, military power, bootstrap (not cooperative) America, directing of public opinion, the seeking of profit, power, and advantage, and the fundamental American right to engage in recreation and spend money any way you see fit even if it kills people. Google's method is the opposite of niche marketing.
Twenty years ago a saavy computer acquaintance said that the internet would destroy all national boundaries by making their economic borders permeable and unmanageable. History has shown that to to be true. The transfer of the very large amounts of national currency assets, as opposed to smaller transactions still under the thumb of national regulation, outweighs regulated commerce profits wth disproportional economic and political effect. The kabuki of regulatory economic control still plays however, with political infighting as nightly infotainment and voters incessantly reminded that their votes rally do matter in controlling asset flow despite deteriorating family economic health as proof to the contrary.
The technological leveraging of power concentration has not been limited to currency flow however, and control of communications has been speeding ahead of regulatory control capability with no less a performance advantage than the perforation of national economic boundaries. The advantages to consumers of technology advances, like cell phones, are being debauched by greed for advantage and money, and at least on the level of the evening news, all that progress is perfectly legal and, well, simply ordinary business. Removed from its usual descriptive context, however, the trend may also be recognized as the legalization and systemization of corruption. One would think that given the importance of this trend to national security, the Department of Homeland Security would have a branch dealing with corruption or systemic manipulation. But that would present some very vexing profiling difficulties. Unless they looked Chinese.
>China and especially Russia have suffered diplomatically much more from the situation than the US.
I don't think either care very much about diplomatic blips. They don't claim to be democracies responding to the will of the people. Having been on the receiving end of a previous axis of evil label they're quite used to letting diplmatic teapot tempests careen on past. Business they care about, but I haven't seen any big deal business backlash for their positions.
>Syria is a Russian client state and host to a major base.
That, plus business and military supply is the superficial reality, but there isn't just one operant reality here.
>A disintegrated Syria harms the Russians’ power interests much more than those of its opponents.
Which supports my point. The Russians need to maintain people in power who can arrange and authorize deals. That's not possible in a disintegated nation, which is what Assad is creating, or has created, by violent repressive force. Better for Russia to facilitate change to try to retain the greatest number of sympathetic bureaucrats. Syria is now in a full blown civil war. With Assad's continued presence, and even with a loss by rebels in Aleppo, the conflict will default to guerilla tactics given the force and weapons imbalance. Assad can kill people but cannot win a guerilla war waged against even a relatively small minority of his own population.
>Doesn’t it make a lot more sense....that the Russians are primarily motivated.... to prop up Assad and maintain their regional influence through their closest ally.....
No, not any more. The initial Syrian opposition to Assad was determined, patient, and peaceful beyond any reasonable expectation. The violent Syrian opposition did not exist until violence ordered by Assad exceeded the suppressive capability of that violence and peaceful means were recognized to be of no value given Assad's kill count, and his meaningless rhetoric. Once the fear of violent Assad repression was overcome--and I pointedly note that demonstrators somehow did manage ro remain peaceful even during many Assad authorized attacks--opposition violence began. Armed, violent conflict did not begin with armed gangs roaming the countryside. It began with repeated, brutal Assad attacks on peaceful demonstrators. Assad is toxic to Russians own interests.
Therefore my question remains of what other factors Russia adn China might consider more valuable than a disintegrated ally.
The deep issue is not now and never has been whether the opposition or Assad will "win". The issue is whether the tissues and organs of Syrian society will be physically disintegrated by the conflict. We focus on blood spilled in a war of attrition and assume while watching tv from our warm intact hovels that buildings can be rebuilt. But ruin enough buildings and infrastructure and the outcome of attrition is non-functional chaos that lasts and lasts. In a word, Iraq.
The few thousand "rebels" didn't win in Fallujah. The US military definitely did not win; they simply destroyed the china shop, killed a lot of innocent people, and had to admit in the end that they had not cornered and eradicated the people they were after. The people of Fallujah lost. Another military-media critical turning point toward victory that wasn't anything of the kind.
Fallujah's example begs the question of why Russia and China continue to support Assad, which by now means support for Syrian disintegation and non-functionality, with no one remaining having the power to make stable financial or military deals. China usually doesn't make this kind of strategic mistake.
The only plausible explanation I've seen inkled is that Syria as an open wound continues to bleed diplomatic power from the US and Europe which have clearly been unable to head off the conflict. A disintegrated Syria also further destabilizes the positional power team of Israel and the US. Israel has a demonstrated historic preference for destabilizing its neighbors, a perspective that almost every other nation except itself and the US have viewed as unhealthy. Israel normally prefers to perform these causitive acts itself. Having someone else assist a runaway conflict might finally be conveying the reality that fighting with ones neighbors, and contributing to their internal chaos as a full time occupation is not conducive to long life. Of the multiple great games being played, in this one Israel may be the bait.
Americans used to have a myth that someone could, after erring in life, 'go straight'. Going straight was a common theme in fifty's and sixty's tv westerns, constantly echoing the redemption central to Christianity, repatriating US WWII troops from their portion of the barbaric excesses of that war, and extending into the justice system where via incarceration one could indeed completely pay one's debt to society for a wrongdoing. Despite poll results where Americans in great numbers claim a strong Christian belief, social redemption has faded and been replaced by unending guilt of felons, and even those who tweet badly, such information saved forever in Rumsfeldian surveillence sweeps and residing on ones and zeros somewhere, waiting for a future use. Romney's "England" worldview effectively brands nearly all earthly humans as 'lesser'. However it is not Romney himself so much as the wide acceptance such views that is alarming. Go Right far enough and one cannot go straight.
>if liberal, moderate, and independent Americans knew how far to the Left everyone else is, they’d freak out and push the button.
The rest of the world isn't to the left, it's the center. America has been levered to the right by people who want it there, and paid to get it pushed there, and pay to keep it there, primarily for purposes of personal control and profit. Mayer's book on German subversion by Naziism, They Thought They Were Free, comes to mind. If one's information comes primarily from the Tube or radio, effective avenues for transforming profit into influence and more profit, the resulting view is intentionally skewed. Which is why information flow via the internet is under constant attack.
Why the choice of a different word? Let's call them what we call them here: First Responders. CIA targeting didn't make a mistake; it has a policy of killing First Responders, the same people who are the subjects of American hero articles. The CIA (and who else with armed drones?) has a policy of killing heros. And to think some Americans are shocked and surprised that America is hated. As you sow (terrorism), so shall you......
Your posting illustrates a question not being asked much: If the US has such high and mighty surveillence gear, why does it not simply report exactly what is going on in Syria. End Assad's claims that it is always the other guys. Respecting sovereign airspace is now a non-functional excuse because the US really doesn't care. Perhaps the US military doesn't really have the abilities it likes to say it has. Most likely someone does know and doesn't want to say, for their own reasons, while the killing goes on. But Assad's argument that it's always the other guy and never him is getting old, and the lack of countering claims by concerned nations is becoming more than a little suspicious.
It is humans coming out on the short end of the resource wars the CIA has been talking about for a decade. 'Resource wars' is so vague! What other country will it happen in? Not this one, oh no! Oh yes, and here, and now. What we also have are the results a government ceasing to protect its own citizens: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152268501/pennsylvania-doctors-worry-over-fracking-gag-rule
It's pretty clear that the majority of US government and military propaganda has been aimed at Americans for some time. The idea that US propaganda is primarily aimed at other countries is itself propaganda. That these two legislators want to to make it official shows they are pretty dim. I assume, however, that THEY want the real scoop, not the invented stuff.
Glad to see this but it is too bad a single judge has to be putting on the brakes while, as you point out, Obama, Pelosi, Reed, and a host of DC others don't seem to care, or are actively on the other side of the fence. One has to ask the question of whether it does any good to vote anymore. When one begins to ask that question, functional democracy is no longer present. When neither of two candidates represents a coherent choice, voting is a joke.
If there is a magic bullet left in America’s glove box it is distributed electrical production, NOT large scale arrays. “Near term’ as you put it really means the acceptance of that fact. The mighty state of Texas found it wasn’t so mighty after all when it finally came to grips with the real cost of an upgraded smart grid.
Put another way, a few major lines of supply are eternally prone to interdiction, either for intentional disruption or systematized bloodsucking. Afghanistan, for example, or the Iraqi insurgency, or the Viet Cong. US military presence in Afghanistan is the military version of a fully implemented smart electrical grid. But the Taliban’s distributed supply on the backs of one’s and two’s has not been beaten and America is now looking for the right wording and time to pronounce victory and leave town to set up shop in some greener, less battle scarred landscape.
Loss of corporate control of electrical production is what inhibits dispersed electrical production, and is the major driving force of why US military action around the globe will continue, a Mississippi sized sluice of dollars that each year subtracts from the resources America will require to survive an oil-starved future it just doesn’t want to think about. We already have all the technology we need. Some new magic bullet that is effective enough to provide a different American energy future, and cheap enough for wide distribution is no more ‘right around the corner’ than it was for Hitler. But the national security of American is not as important as maintaining some non-human citizen’s all important income stream. As long as we have politicians that are ideologues rather than thinkers, and a news media that is entertainment based on indulgences of profit mongers, the resulting near total absence of pragmatic discourse about how to get from where we are to where we can survive will not change. Obama? Romney? Abject silence.
Nice to see a hoodied high priest of Intel saying this. But this isn't high intel. This is only common sense. Why does common sense coming from the intel community arrive like a bolt of lightning? Sanctions don't work the way they are advertised, especially in the world of oil. Fuel prices aren't due to Iran, but to confrontive American political pressures, speculation, and American love of consumption, as in tuberculosis. If the US doesn't do something profoundly different about its stupendous waste in the cause of individual freedom, and predelection to military and economic threats, today's highest fuel prices are gonna be the 'good ol' days'. Five dollar gas is going to look awfully good when it hits ten.
RTT, wingover, other names in other languages or times, it's still a stunt that one doesn't do at low altitude or high density altitude unless there is a very pressing need, or to showboat. This is showboating for the watchers not cool enough to be the pilot, who is no longer cool.
Psychobable is a derogatory label served up when the speaker wants to opt out of the conversation. It is less appropriate in this case than milbabble.
Subtext: American government--both sides of the aisle--and big oil are steering America's SUV to the cliff. All for the sake of profits, power, and a mythical ally called Israel. Iran--nuclear weaponized or not-- doesn't bother me. The Republicans, Democrats, and Israel bother me a lot because none of them offer any viable future.
The resulting current presidential campaign is a farce. Media carries every sneeze of the hottest (or most self destructive) Republican candidate of the moment, but you could fit stories about US voter alarm,. disgust and dissatisfaction with the process into a teaspoon. It does no good to shout a warning as the cliff finally becomes visible to the most studiously ingorant. At that point everyone is just along for the ride.
Professor, I greatly appreciate your many contributions, but the inclusion of biofuels is a mistake and has nothing to do with green. Do you mean the biofuels that cost more btu to produce than they possess? The biofuels that produce 10-20% less fuel economy in internal combustion engines and harm many older vehicles in the national fleet causing incalculable damage? The biofuels that, because they give less fuel economy, effectively gift states a brand new biofuel revenue stream based on reduced consumer miles travelled vs fuel taxes collected? No wonder government likes biofuels.
Biofuels may might maybe have a place, but it isn't on the highway. It is in cogenerators, where all IC engines are destined to end up, where the 75% wasted by almost all IC engines produce is retained for other productive uses. Yes, we--all of us--currently waste about 75% of all the dollars we spend on gas for our cars and trucks, and biofuels for vehicles do nothing to stop that waste.
We are running out of time to have a coherent, comprehensive, useful, INFORMED national debate about how we head into the future, and the sub-basement quality of the "debate" about biofuels illustrates how very far we have to go before our actions stop being self destructive and come close to being productive.
Our national problem is systemic--hard wired into the system-- as DSmith and Kronoberger point out.
Make no mistake about it, the mighty US will fall flat on its ass from its own stupidity if it doesn't begin to use some of the brain cells it likes to think it is blessed with.
>if what Iran really wants is energy independence, it should rapidly expand its solar, wind and geothermal sectors...
It is evidence of a log in the eye to suggest for Iran what is also true for any country, especially the US. Obama Wednesday said 'oil is the fuel of the past'. Well duuuuhhh. That's old news, and it's more than a lot disingenuous to be saying it now in an election runup when he has had years of access to the presidential pulpit. Ocassional mentions to placate a voter sector won't do. Obama's paraphrase of Apollo's iconic "We've got a problem" transmission has had a tough time getting in line behind a lot of other supposedly immediate and often invented dilemmas. If the US military is taking tax dollars to build alternative power generation at its bases, and build Afghan projects it will soon abandon, and Israel is doing the same helped along by a few bales of US dollars, why are domestic efforts stuck in research and studies?
Obama hit on a good line when he said there’s no mystery about how Iran might assure the world that it is not developing nuclear weapons. It is good that we stop pretending something is a mystery when it is no mystery at all. There is also no mystery about how Saddam Hussein found it impossible to assure the US that he did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that the US never found any after a lot of searching. Bush & Co didn’t want and repeatedly rejected all such assurances not only from Hussein, but from the IAEA. Assurances are a two way street: the offer, and the acceptance. Iran has every reason to be suspicious of the US, and of Israel which has a rock-hard policy of not accepting any assurances except dollars.
There is also no mystery about another aspect of any coherent contemplation of an attack on Iran that Obama did not mention. Every ten cent increase in the price of gasoline will cost Americans an estimated additional $14B, $14B that will come out of the pockets of Americans people and American business and go directly into the pockets of oil speculators, oil companies, and the country of origin. That $14B will just as surely be subtracted from any other American use such as food, health care, and every other need and use of American families, and from American economic recovery, investment in jobs or a non-oil energy future, and every other American need for the present and the future. The total 2011 budget for the US Energy Department is, for example, only $3B, or about 21% of the $14B that one dime’s increase in gas prices represents. From a different perspective, if America could reinvest the savings from avoiding a ten cent increase in the price of gas, it could increase the total budget of the US Energy Department by a factor of five.
There is also no mystery that the US is not in the same condition as it was in 2001. We no longer see stories about the depletion of men and materiel of the National Guard by its leaders, and American media is skittish to the point of ignoring the degradation by way of deployment and combat of the rest of America’s military. We don’t see stories tallying the military equipment the US left in Iraq when it withdrew, or of estimates of repair and replacement to achieve simply the level of military readiness of 2002. But that equipment has not magically replaced itself, and is still either missing in action, or its replacement cost is dispersed in the military budget that the military itself admits it cannot count.
America of 2012 is a hollowed-out, more internally vulnerable version of what it was a decade ago, with much of the damage hidden in countless documents recording loss of family homes, loss of jobs and income, jobs and fortunes exported offshore, loss of manufacturing of basic goods, degradation of equipment and infrastructure, and colossal debt.
As Dr. Cole points out again, Iran is no Iraq, being much larger geographically, and with a larger population which will, if attacked, act like any population confronted by an attack from without, defending Iran in any way possible from the invaders. Nor is the Mid East region the same as that of a decade ago. It is more nervous, more fractionated, less stable, and more prone to unpredictable outcomes from desperate decisions made under time constraints that are too small, which are exactly the intended result of open military action.
A dime today is inconsequential, unless it is attached, one after the other in a string stretching from Earth toward Mars, to each gallon of gasoline Americans buy. No one can accurately predict the cost of oil or gas should Iran be attacked. But with Iran representing a target roughly three times the size of Iraq, in a nervous, destabilized region, a doubling of gas prices, not to mention the specter of 1974’s gas lines, certainly is in the realm of a conservative estimate. The US military has assured that Iran will not stop oil transiting Hormuz, but military assurances have historically been proven to be over-optimistic in the extreme. And history has shown that the idea of supply and demand regarding oil prices is fading myth.
If you personally find these figures discomfiting, insert your own. But there is no mystery that this exact scenario resulted from Bush & Co’s attack and subsequent disastrous occupation, dismantlement, and abandonment of what was, even after a decade of sanctions and military attacks, a comparatively stable, middle class, terrorist-free Iraq in 2001. Gasoline more than doubled in price during that time period. Granted, the increase took five years and was not instantaneous, but then isn’t now.
A mere doubling of gas price is not one dime, but roughly forty dimes, with an attached price tag of over half a trillion dollars. Increase the range of probability of oil price increases to the relative sizes of Iraq to Iran—a factor of three—and you have more than three quarters of a trillion dollars. And a larger multiplier is not outside of probability. Such a bill addressed to Americans would be nearly instantaneous and might last a week, a month, a year, or more. No one knows. But the risk it represents to America’s present and America’s future begins to approach the risk assessment rationales we all clearly agree must apply to nuclear plant design and operation. The absolute need for safety regarding nuclear power is not questioned. The safety of war, a much more dangerous and unpredictable undertaking, should be a much greater concern. We would be irresponsible to consider the risk of war with Iran to be anything less than some multiple of a nuclear catastrophe.
The above are only dollar costs, negative economic potentials for America present and future. They do not begin to account for lives lost—American, Iranian, and anyone else who gets caught in the crossfire or fallout--and the dark, expanding societal ripples of lives and families obliterated, altered, debilitated, disempowered, made destitute, separated from a better future, burdened with pain and grief, and degraded in unimaginable ways: the moral and utterly certain costs of war. A war with Iran where the US is a clear initiator, or even perceived as a supporter, will result in a moral accounting assigned to the reputation of America. The international repercussions of a diminished reputation are loss of trust, an increase in suspicion, and a hidden drive to re-align with nations that represent the best probability for safety and stability. These costs are incalculable.
Any coherent perspective on a future conflict with Iran must note these changes in the American reality of 2012, and the real damage potentials for America. Gasbag Republican election blather, not to omit the similar passing of wind by many Democrats, ignores it all and is regularly incoherent in the extreme. If Republicans, or Democrats, or Obama, or Israel, wished to realistically assess the costs of a conflict with Iran on the public stage, they would address these numbers and considerations. The fact that they don’t, and in fact avoid them like the plague, suggest that they want Americans to forget about the great potentials for harm and simply acquiesce to the wisdom of pols or ideologues.
Americans don’t like to enumerate their limitations. It makes them feel uncomfortable and less than invulnerable. But any attack on Iran carries a very high probability of being self defeating. Iran is not a threat to the US. A comprehensive, realistic accounting of an attack on Iran clearly reveals that Israeli promotion of war with Iran, and US acquiescence to the idea of war with Iran, are much greater threats to the security and future of the US than is Iran.
"So we start ‘debating’ on measures about which there should be no negotiating because they are basic human rights..."
Excellent point Steve. Run out the clock that is ticking away the minutes that the US has left in an oil facilitated society. Unlike football, the game isn't over when the clock stops, it is over before the clock stops, when the time, energy, focus, and dollars remaining are insufficient to complete a viable alternate national energy system.
The fundamental moral issue--whether we survive as a nation without blood on our hands--outweighs short term profit motives and any trumped up moral indignation emanating from those who wish to exert power over others. So what do we have at the pinnacle of national political dialog today? A push to roll back contraception to the dark ages. And arguments that profits of the rich must be maintained, no matter the rest.
Ensuring the availability of contraception in no way endangers the future survival of the nation. Ignoring the pressing need to escape from oil dependency absolutely affects the future survival of the nation.
You are correct, it is a pain, but necessary, though actual sources are often unknown. AP??? This is just a little half-step in the dance about 'Will or won't Israel inform the US'. The larger question is why, given the gravity of the potential, it should even be a question. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_ISRAEL_IRAN
AP: "WASHINGTON (AP) -- Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations with U.S. officials, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and on Capitol Hill."
I guess that puts an end to any notion that Israel is an ally of the US. To pull this back OT, I wonder how JFK would react to a loose cannon ally stating that it would endanger the security of the US and the large majority of American allies without any warning. I think Ike answered that one.
Santorum promotes inequality with a smile. Driving at speed into the future using a tiny rear view mirror as an occasional reference guide is the height of stupidity.
Santorum is proof that exposure to knowledge does not equate to the transfer of same. He also illustrates the modern conundrum of how semi-smart people can be simultaneously as limited as a box-of-rocks. That so many people are seriously considering him to be a qualified candidate illustrates the difficulty of controlling an advanced technological society with rock boxes. Rick would be right at home in the Dark Ages.
That is really the nut. When international reputation has ben disgraced, the diplomatic arm has been weakened, and allegiances to ideological or political myths whose day has passed are maintained, the illusion of military might is the only thing that can keep 'patriotism' alive. Militarism, economic expansionism, increasing blowback, and decreasing strength are the only predictable outcomes.
The “Canadian …oil pipeline” ....refers to the Keystone project to transport heavy oil from the ”oil sands”... near Ft. McMurray, Alberta, to refineries in Texas, WHENCE IT WILL BE SOLD ON THE INTERNATIONAL MARKET. Oil companies will receive all the tax credits and all the profits, and Canadians and Americans will receive all the environmental damage. Keystone is all about corporate profit, not US energy independence.
The argument against external militarization is going septic. All that was necessary to “create” a militarized Syrian civil war was to do nothing, and that has now been done. Refrain from action sufficient to stop a government’s attacks against its own people long enough and you end up with external militarization anyway. Cooperative, overt, or covert, it is still a militarized situation. If Russia is pipelining support to Assad, then Russia is aiding, not preventing, external militarization. The US would have more clout it had not pursued the very same policy so enthusiastically in the past.
I would hope to have seen open conversation with Russia about how far it would allow Assad to go toward dissolving his country in civil war, but I haven't seen much, the pressing issue of contraception dominating most news pages.
Not to forget page two, I read a rant a few days ago that Americans were the dumbest smart people on the planet. That degree of hyperbole is always to be suspected, but I read again today that a near majority of Americans would favor the US bombing Iran, for reasons that clearly have been almost entirely invented. “Favor” as if the decision were one of chocolate over vanilla, where a decision to war is unconnected from any other circumstance. What could the putrefaction of yet another major Mid East society possibly have to do with a good old patriotic bombing of Iran?
Once you start looking there are more than ten reasons. One of the biggest: would an attack really solve anything? Would anything change? Israel apparently cannot perceive any ill effects of a couple more Mid East neighbors trashed and far less stable than now. If Israel got its attack, would it become more relaxed, less paranoid , more cooperative with its neighbors and the Palestinians? I don't think so. What of some additional millions of Muslims who finally abandon the idea of peace and equity with Israel? A plus? Would chances increase that some other nuclear country decides that enough is anough and that it is time to help create a nuclear balance?
Three times the (visible) cost of the Iraq doesn’t begin to encompass the cost of a war with Iran. What is the cost of America's "professional" army with loaded weapons confronting American citizens "peaceably assembling" at empty gas pumps? What is the cost of war to America’s semi-vibrant online economy when UPS delivery costs 50% of the total cost, rather than the 20% that is now not uncommon? What is the cost of spreading hunger, malnutrition, and want as transportation, fertilizer, and maintenance costs push food prices beyond more American families declining income? What costs do you assign the continued postponement of maintenance of fundamental societal infrastructure including bridges, highways, and water supplies? The long list only begins with those costs. Oil prices are not linked to supply and demand as much as to the cattle prod of speculator fear, and the Hormuz sphincter, and the Mid East in general, is a very sensitive place.
People who beat the drums for war, or can’t get enough of the adrenaline rush of battle, or who aren’t yet old enough to understand they are mortal, willfully choose to ignore the cost of war. Nations that continue to spend more than they can afford simply cease to be. If Scrooge, rather than Rambo, was counting the shiploads of thousand dollar bills, caskets, and deferred debt destined for war-for-no-reason, there would be a quick end to shipments.
>… possible Iran nuclear weapons is one that I think is central to the whole imbroglio….
“Imbroglio” is a good term, vague and misleading from the fundamental issues. The fundamental issues are that the US is an increasingly fragile nation; that war in the Mid East is Pandora's box; that nuclear weapons are defensive, not offensive, by nature; that Israel by holding Jerusalem holds—and enjoys squeezing—the hearts of Christians and Muslims alike; that war profiteering funds sufficient social science necessary to maintain war as an acceptable choice; and that Iran, no less than any other nation on earth, must look beyond oil as an energy source.
>So, how can Israel get out of the corner their attitude has left them in?
Change their attitude. Remove Israel’s manipulative hold on both Christianity and Islam’s heart: Declare Jerusalem a universal, sacred, open, international city with unfettered access by all. Assure Iran, as well as Israel and every nation, of its right to exist and its right to plan and act for a future that assuredly will not be a reiteration of the present.
Marsh is exactly right: there’s no There there in Obama’s administration. There’s no back to back. The giddy party built on campaign promises is now old dust growing weeds at the edge of the road. Once installed, Obama abandoned the campaign rhetoric of four years ago that resulted in a winning bloc of Dems, Progressives and pragmatic conservatives, in favor of political compromise that had no chance of success. Another president might have noticed the near total lack of desired “change” and forcefully altered course, but Obama did not. In touting his ‘record’, Obama now suggests voters should vote for more of the same.
Obama’s failure does not print a free ticket to Republicans or justify the idiocy rampant in the leading GOP candidates. I’ve counted the invisible elephants and gorillas that writers have described over the years as sharing America’s condo and there are a lot of them. Concentrating on one doesn’t stop the others from growing, and that is no less true for Republicans as well as Democrats, Independents, Progressives, Libertarians, and fruitcakes. In the end the only metric that matters is whether a projection of current policy into the future illustrates a healthy, live America, or a dying America.
The current American course, defined by measurement over the past decade and largely unaltered over time, is toward ever more surveillance by more and more groups, more secrecy, more corporate influence and control, more home foreclosures, more family breakups, more homelessness, less education at greater cost, less health care for fewer people at greater cost, more bankruptcy due to preventable medical events, less income, less social stability, increased national fragility, continued lack of control over financial institutions which cover their loss potentials with other peoples’ money, increased social diffraction, more social stratification, less freedom to move and speak, more fear and stress, less personal satisfaction, more legal protections for aggregated legal entities, more legal exposure to citizens, less congressional function (no, it is not impossible), less governmental and corporate oversight, less protection for people who report wrongdoing, less legal recourse to correct social ills, fewer US jobs, less US manufacturing, greater reliance on national competitors for the fundamentals of human well being, devaluation of the national currency, increased degradation of international boundaries, increased use of ungovernable covert and robotic warfare, more international enemies, increasing resource warfare, more rapid global re-polarization, continued reliance on oil, reduced energy and capital investment resource for a post-oil reality, increasing preference for ideological myth over social consensus on how the earth functions (formerly: science), and ever increasing reliance on non-functioning systems.
Because the course of America currently supports the growth of all these gorillas, all are growing unchecked, and increasing numbers of Americans are being pressed into corners from which no escape is apparent. The American news media, placing profit or a desire to manipulate public opinion over the public weal, is happy to boil down complex problems into sound bites cached irrelevant categories where focus on an issue is systematically flayed to death.
The truth in Marsh’s piece is that the choice between Republican and Democrat candidates does not include one where America avoids driving over its self-made cliff, only a minor difference about when the event occurs. Blind faith or hope in any given ideology will not change this, nor will entertaining distractions by Fox, MSNBC, campaign reform proposals, or the Super Bowl. The gorillas will remain, stronger and hungrier than ever. Nothing short of a complete national mobilization and focus on investment and preparation for a viable American future will suffice. Unfortunately that is not on any candidates’ speech notes.
Though the graph is uttely clear about why the US has no business maintaining a high state of public fear of 'lesser' states, not to mention tiny, non-expansionist nations, its two percent cutoff is arbitrary and a bit misleading, as the cluster of data points just above the two percent cutoff illustrates. Would the graph's information density and usefulness been improved using a three percent, or a one percent cutoff? I note a suprising absence of Israel, given its arms export industry. Does this mean Iran and Israel arms expenditures are about on par?
It is simply amazing that Gingrich can speak lunacy out of both sides of his mouth and listeners simply nod. The first paragraph you quote, about a massive all-energy effort by the US, is absolutely true, and in the end would be far less expensive than any new fairy tale military adventure to steal somebody else's oil so we could avoid coming to grips with our own extravagant and unsustainable energy use. But that line is a toss-off lie as Gingrich and the Republicans have had a strict policy for decades of opposing and disabling any substantive moves to create sustainable domestic energy sources.
The fundamental choice America faces is whether to invest dollars into national energy self sufficiency, or burn dollars by the truckload while making more enemies and destabilizing the planet on a military machine that by definition and experience cannot produce anything and knows only how to consume. Running its current debt, the US doesn't have the dollars for either course without a massive change of national focus, and it certainly can't afford to do both. The difference between the two is that determined investment in energy self sufficiency offers a possible route into a viable American future, while investment in the military erases any chance of a viable American future. Every buck handed to the military is more than one buck less we have to stop our energy (and political) dependency. Bring 90% of all those military people home and put them to work in America making America energy self sufficient.
None of the Republican presidential wannabes even vaguely comprehend this. Nor, unfortunately, does Obama.
Thank you for that article. I especially liked the graphic.
It is Nov 22. Not a single mention of JFK anywhere online so far today. But a helicopter crashing while trying to put up a Christmas tree in New Zealand (two days before Thanksgiving) made the news. And the Dead Sea Scrolls.....
Yes. If America's candidates are its 'best of the best', there's no hope for the survival of America. The ranks of popular public dimwits are growing. Listen to the cheers.
A world class, wise, truly Presidential Obama would wait until Israel launches its Iran attack, then scramble a line of US fighters and say, personally, to cowboy Netenyahoo “You’re gonna have to go through us to get to them. I suggest you turn around.” That would truly be keeping peace. The loss of a few fighters would be a tidy and dirt cheap solution to an Israel intent on self destruction. The morals involved are pre-adolescent. Obama should be talking more to his daughters, and less to his advisors. Friends don’t let friends commit suicide. Two people committing suicide together does not make suicide more acceptable. You can’t make friends by poking them with sticks. If you want to steer your ship to safer waters, stop the idiot drilling holes in the hull. If Humpty Dumpty gets shoved off the wall, he never, ever gets put back together again.
Absolutely right. Songs (as a good example) are not only property, they are a society's developing tradition, a part of its heart added by each new generation. The corporatists want to own everything forever, meaning they want to own the tradition and make people pay to hear their own tradition. They want property in the national heart. The only reason you hear young people and locals play jazz standards to the degree that they do is that they ignore the law that says you must pay for each performance. It is a mean world when the songs important to a nation are owned and held hostage for money. This goes far beyond the original intent of copyrights. Exploding technology has made this a far more complex issue than anyone can deal with and the global society is increasingly falling behind in judging the moral and ethical conundrums of technological advances, not catching up. In that vacuum, control has defaulted to corporate law which has no interest in compassion, tradition, or national heritage. Corporate personhood is not human and holds no human values, only the guiding rules of profit and survival at any cost.
Motive, opportunity, evidence, means....After all the words written about this case it seems there were still some big holes in the prosecution's case. But that got less play than than the conflicting stances of the Italian and American press. I'm amazed that assertions of character came to be so important to the prosecution, and were lapped up by the press.
While I agree that many aspects of the current illusion of American democracy are actually those of fascism, or more accurately, totalitarianism or corporatism, one must firmly note that "fascism" is found in concerned comments by left wing, liberal, progressive, Libertarian, right wing, and far right wing writers. The definition is either not being shared by all those writers, or widely differing effects of 'fascism' are being targeted by different people as being the important effects.
Left and Right have far more common ground than is recognized, but that recognition is constantly obscured, and misdirected by many well funded entities bent on manipulation of public opinion for their own benefit. THAT is a primary issue that also goes unrecognized.
I agree that the maps you supply are a service and essential to understanding what's going on. Why maps are not used by more media and analysts is a mystery, unless furthering understanding is not their intent. Al Jazeera's latest: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011226182950484591.html
I have not read Professor Kolin's book, but all the key points Kolin makes in this post are present--frequently with blistering clarity-- in Sheldon Wollin's book of 2008, Democracy Inc. One area Wolin emphasizes that Kolin does not mention in this short post is the depth, breadth, and subtety of persuasion that may be brought to bear in the service of manipulation of the voter, and the unremitting employment of that full strength which has become a norm in America. As Wolin puts it, once manipulation (the cry of "Terror!") has successfully destroyed 'normal', a democracy becomes easily managed. By making this point, Wolin does not allow the artifice of "voting" to remain as a politically consequential act. Once managed, democracy may remain in place as a figurehead system, with voting retained as an ineffectual mollifying activity for patriotic citizen subjects, with the real decisions being made by a thin slice of the population.
Wolin in turn fully echoes the generalities of Jacques Ellul's prescient 1964 book, The Technological Society, which establishes the evolutionary potential for advancing technology to create pressure toward totalitarianism. One of the many myths of America is that it is a successful, steady-state democracy, possessing the ability and strength to withstand change from all quarters. Current views of Americans, however, uniformly apprehensive about America's direction, and ranging across the political spectrum, clearly suggest a confused and growing doubt of that myth. I would be interested to read whether Kolin shares Wolin's conclusion that a democracy possessing a rapidly developing technology has a predisposition and dynamic toward totalitarianism, and where exactly, in such a timeline, America stands right now.
The most important coming story about Egypt’s strife may have nothing at all to do with Mubarkak or Obama or Netenyahu’s or anybody else’s next moves, but rather what corporate US media giants choose to do next with the story. What approval or disapproval of the popular Egyptian uprising is present? How accurate is US media’s reporting compared to other international media? Will a silver lining be found, or will storm clouds prevail? Will the tempo of media reporting increase, or will the current attention being paid falter, and the situation languish? In Egypt’s case, languishment is out; this story isn’t going away given the international interest in what’s going on. It will have to be spun. But finding the right spin is going to become much, much tougher in the event that any other Mid East nations now experiencing protests might follow Egypt into full blown national protest. This is how events, influenced by self serving media coverage that aims to manipulate rather than inform, spiral out of control. So, now with camera trained on the producers in our own control booth, we take you to the story that’s not going to be covered. Dr. Spin, as you please.
If I have confused you I must achieved some kind of dubious pinnacle. Perhaps I am the one confused. I was essentially pointing out that Wikileaks is news simply because there is no corroborating document (and I assume there is not, because Wikileaks document was supposedly secret). If there is a public document and Wikileaks version is identical, there is nothing newsworthy to the Wikileaks release. If there was no previous public release of Glaspie's cable, by what evidence should one totally accept the Wikileaks cable as accurate?
So you have now accepted the Wikileaks version of Glaspie's cable as the definitive, true version? Am I to further assume that you believe all of Wikileaks releases, no matter how they may conflict with previously public versions, to be true, accurate, untainted, unedited, unsorted, not altered, not cherry-picked, and not released by a person or entity(ies) with a hidden agenda? If you have any reservations about the accuracy of some Wikileaks releases, how are you differentiating this one into the 'true' category? I ask this in the same spirit I would question any news release.
Juan replies:"....The number of Western contractors in Iraq is actually shrinking dramatically."
Your answer may relate to white faces in Iraq, but doesn't address the equally large question of where, after leaving Iraq, "contractors" are going. A vacation? Back to American unemployment? Across some border where they manage and profit from non-white faced workers remaining in Iraq? The next new, as yet not quite announced war? Or a number of dispersed tiny war-lets. As far as Iraq, fewer white faces can hardly hurt. As far as the US itself, progress depends on whether the total number of contractors and dollar amount of spending is actually decreasing, or whether they remain full speed ahead, slowly but surely drawing the noose tighter on America.
Media attention to 'collateral damage' focuses almost entirely on deaths. Even then it does not convey the truth that in any country, the cultural emotional tauma of a single person killed ripples out much farther than media cares to even think about. It isn't just "them" Afghans or Iraqis; all you have to do in America to see we are no different is to look at a missing child on a milk carton, or comprehend the prominence of a news story about a single person's heartwrenching tragedy two thousand miles from where you live. But we Americans do clearly fail to show any comprehension that one unjust death of 'furriners' has a thousand ramifications, almost all of them resulting in anti-US sentiment.
But collateral damage is much more than death and US media completely ignores that, save in small dispersed jolts. Large scale displacement of people (refugees resulting from US policy)in war zones we approve of (Swat Valley). Or damage to essential public infrastructure: power, water, sewage, medical, regulatory, transportation (Swat Valley, and virtually all scenes of Ameican military actions, including all its 'successes' in Iraq). And also the multiplying effect of completely natural, and therefore entirely predictable, natural disasters that just happen to fall smack dab on top of those man-made disasters above (Swat Valley).
If 'collateral damage' was anything but a euphemism to escape the real emotional repercussions of what the US actually does to countries it says it is saving, we would have lots of follow-up stories on the Swat Valley, and Fallujah, and every other place America has wrecked, or encouraged others to wreck on its behalf, chasing evil chimeras. Those stories aren't to be found. What the rest of the world sees is that Americans are magnificently hypocritical, and that they simply don't care. This type of societal trajectory has no happy ending.
A new government? Did the Parliament members residing out of country move back to Iraq? If so, time to move the goalposts again. The US government does not WANT to come home. That's only what American citizens want.
The team sports analogy is more correct than we would like to believe. It is even more dispiriting to realize that ignorant US voters voting for their team (or against the other one) have more effect on voters in faraway nations does the voter’s own vote. The pervasive team mentality is supported by the nature of popular American sports. Virtually all major American sports are episodic: run the play, then run another and another until the clock runs out. The US military is configured the same way: run a play (the Surge, COIN), huddle, run another play. The ‘play’ has a beginning, end, and rest period, and viewers delight in quick, unexpected moves. Many war history books are built on a play-by-play model.
But the ‘play’ model doesn’t perform well in many situations, particularly in wars of occupation. Americans were treated to lots of plays in Viet Nam, starting with the Special Forces and helicopter assault plays. In terms of that war’s outcome, they didn’t work. The sequence of ‘new’ military plays hasn’t worked in Iraq and it’s not working in Afghanistan. Non-Americans play different types of games by different rules that ‘trump’ our games. But we keep on playing the same game and ignore losses with the promise of another new play. I see the military recently advertising a new ‘game changer’. It’s a grenade launcher. Same game. More blood on the ground maybe, but the outcome will be the same. None of the underlying causes are being addressed. The only ones who benefit are the military manufacturers and war profiteers.
I find little in your posts with which to quibble. Your clear thought process is what sets you apart. But I will quibble with your occasional descent to euphemism, which is a current American epidemic. Ollie North may find this useful, but transparency and clarity are not his business. You typically set the tenor of Informed Comment against this kind of intellectual laziness and intentional misdirection. The term you used today is “throw under the bus” which may be chic, but also has vastly different meanings to an incompetent editor at a loss for words, and a mafiosa talking about a client. I do note with no small satisfaction that you have finally found other, more accurate words to describe the thuggery, brutality, immorality, and illegality of “settler”, as in Jewish “settler”.
The current Olbermann episode may be significantly clarified by dispensing with the idea that there is little neutral news in America, anywhere, any more. Edward R. Murrow, his shadow, and his cautionary echoes are long gone. The word “show” outnumbers the word “news” in your short post by more than three times, 16 to 5. A final score of 16 to 5 in any sports contest would clearly demonstrate the team “News” suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the powerful team “Shows”. But while American “news” has thoroughly become a “show”, most major news shows today also clearly possess a political purpose, and minor news shows either respond or imitate them. That is, American news content today is mostly propaganda.
The intent or direction of this propaganda is perhaps clearest with a review of the annual earnings of the top ‘news show celebrities’. We can also dispense with the confusing terms “news broadcaster”, “commentator”, “host” and anything similar because there are no longer any national, regional, or even local news show presenters who are not Celebrities, who maintain their celebrity and create their own facts by referencing each other. According to Newsweek (I am open to other sources) the earnings leaders on the “Right” are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Sarah Palin with a total of $147 million. On the “Left” we have Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann with a total of $22 million. Bill Clinton, as all ex-Presidents, has rather special earning powers. Milling about somewhere else are Don Imus and Rudy Giuliani.
What is important is not how much money each of these people made last year. Top notch Entertainers and Sports Figures can also make a lot of money, but that is due to the marketability of their current batting average or personality appeal. Political celebrity is different because rather than earning the money, the measure is more: How much money are people (or corporations) willing to pay these people to be in the public eye so that their message can saturate and influence the public debate? Given that Stewart and Olbermann may arguably be termed Entertainers, the sports score of 147 million to something less than 22 million indicates just how much some people are willing to spend to bend American public opinion to their own purpose. In American today, that purpose is the accrual of power and money, not egalitarian American idealism.
Americans, unfortunately, seem to really enjoy propaganda, and to genuinely prefer it to strictly informational information that requires more of the recipient than experiencing a series of quick adrenal flushes in the comfort of their Barcaloungers. No amount of education or information can overcome gullibility. The huge dollar amounts cited above indicate the degree to which American gullibility and ignorance are being targeted and encouraged.
Canadian Professor Bob Altemeyer at the University of Manitoba deftly points out that while most people offer the names of leaders when asked for examples of authoritarians, it is a population’s percentage of authoritarian citizens that enables authoritarian leaders to rise and rule. Altemeyer also points out that a significant percentage of any human population is authoritarian by preference. This percentage is an important target component of American news propaganda, that is, an important base that may be convinced to vote against their abest interests. Combine the populations of citizen authoritarians with the ignorant and the gullible and you can win elections. Olbermann’s sacking is a case study in gullibility prevailing over critical thinking.
"It is being assumed that the individual who sent the bombs is a member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Both bombs were packed with PETN, the signature explosive for AQAP."
Gee. No one else has that kind of explosive. Think of it! Explosives in the mail along with a note they are coming. Incontrovertable evidence is just so hard to come by these days. Time to attack Yemen and buy some munitions stocks.
The biggest reason Wikileaks document release endangers lives is not the reason Hillary Clinton gives, but the potential of the document release to ignite American, Iraqi, and World outrage about how poorly the US military conducted its invasion, and what information it chose to keep secret from the American people to protect its reputation. The manifest wrongs and errors of the US military and war leadership are a self inflicted wound it has been determinedly secretized. It's all about protecting the US military, and its taxpayer income stream, not about protecting people. Wikileaks is all about loosing the military's hold on information.
A critical review of public documents show that a day by day review of the Iraq war initiated by George Bush includes contravention of international law, contravention of military law, contravention of the ideals expressed in the US Constitution, contravention of the Geneva Accords, fraud, bribery, murder, kidnapping, hostage taking (including children), abuse, torture, widespread intentional destruction of essential public utilities (targeting a civilian population), insufficient planning and effort to maintain the basic functions of an occupied society, conspiracy to suppress evidence, open propaganda to support military public relations bias about conduct and progress of the war, profound ignorance of Iraqi religious, social, and religious culture, and ineptitude at every level, that is, at the tactical, operational, strategic, diplomatic, and civilian leadership levels of the military effort.
They aren't "settlers". They are violent thieves and hooligans with state sponsorship that operate outside of virtually all recognized law. A thief is a thief. A violent thief is repulsive to all coherent societies. A more accurate label is needed.
The real effects of US/Obama foreign policy:
Aug 6, 2010 Christian Science Monitor excerpt:
A new poll of Arab opinion finds that for the first time a majority of the public across the region – including a sizable minority in Saudi Arabia – believes a nuclear-armed Iran would be a positive development in the Middle East.
The portion of the Arab population thinking that way has doubled since a similar survey a year ago, in part because of huge majorities this year in Egypt and Morocco. Egypt, which makes up a quarter of the Arab world, was not in last year’s survey.
The findings, however, say less about a change in Arab opinions of Iran than they do about a change in opinions about another country, say the organizers of the 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll: Arabs have soured on the United States of Barack Obama.
The poll finds that Arabs have traded in last year’s “wait-and-see” attitude toward the new American president in favor of something much more negative, and the support for Iran is, in many ways, being seen as one part of that anger.
“What this poll reveals is a backlash against the United States, reflecting the loss of hope that people had in what they thought were to be the policies of the new President Obama,” says Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland Middle East expert, who conducted the poll with the polling firm Zogby International. “It’s really people venting by supporting ‘the enemy of my enemy.’”
Israel offers a new photo seized from Mavi Marmara passenger as corroboration that the IDF attackers of the aid flotilla faced "deadly force". Let's see, one tall man with his mouth closed wearing a baseball cap and lifejacket, calmly taking movies of a bearded man with his mouth open and his finger in the air, and his other arm over the shoulder of a teenage male dressed up in army clothes with his mouth open in an apparent gasp, and some blood on his face, standing at the head of some stairs. Also a fat person in a relaxed pose with his hand resting lightly on a guard rail and his head obscured by the video camera, apparently just standing there.
Plausible captions for this photo:
Man with Finger in air: "Fred I told you to keep that damned camera away. Now look what you've done. You hit him on the head with it and the other nuts will think we did it on purpose. Do something useful for once and get a bandage."
"I said no more photos. They'll think we're taking advantage of them."
Implausible captions:
"Don't shoot me with your stupid gun disguised as a camera."
"If I put my hand in front of the camera like this and point my finger up it will make no sense."
IDF caption:
"Once upon a time, Turkish terorists ..."
At least the AP legal department has the wit to say it is unable to verify anything at all about this photo.
Sunday Morning News Pill: Yahoo front-pages a brand new, AP channeled Netanyahu chapter, plus a wheezy old CSM story dating from before the Racheal Corrie was even intercepted, then second-pages a story on numbers, wounds, and accounts of Mavi Marmara survivors, and reports of the number of dead who were shot in the back or head.
In the newest chapter of his current novel, beloved author "Bubi" Netanyahu claims Turkish "activist" "thugs" were the 'organized attack force' on the Mavi Marmara. "Netanyahu did not say where the information came from. But Israeli military officials have claimed there is strong evidence that the men who fought the soldiers were hired mercenaries."
Once more the author's keen insight into his American audience has left a reverberating chord. Where Bubi's new information came from is of course entirely irrelevant to the telling of the story. Minor discrepancies such as whether the IDF contains hired mercenaries, the disappearance of any evidence conflicting with Netanyahu's story line, the fabrication and alteration of video and audio evidence, the complete absence of seized weapons, the issue of less-than-black-skinned piracy on the high seas, and the vexing problem of how to describe a container of wheelchairs as terrorist weapons, are of no real concern to the readers of this author's gripping tale.
What will happen to Sasha? Will Lev be re-united with Mimsel? Stay tuned. Bubi at six!
As this attack clearly took place in international waters, would it not be possible for the captain of the Mavi Marmara (or the surviving ranking officer if, as reported, the captain was killed) to lodge murder charges against one or more of the attacking Israelis in the ship's country of origin? Witnesses exist. Would not a legal trial in absentia be possible?
Irony alert:
Apr 29, 2010: Laptops for Gaza refugees
"GAZA CITY - THE UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday launched a campaign to distribute some 200,000 laptops to schoolchildren in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, a spokesman said. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) plans to distribute half a million devices to refugees across the Middle East by the end of 2012, spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said."
How does one term this: The Laptop in a Tent Program? What is the nutritional value of a laptop? Israel will now be forced to condemn the UN for supplying devices that may be used as military communication systems.
Oops. Sorry. A tragedy, deeply regret, make every effort, best equipment, best in the world, investigating, band plays on, yadda yadda, yadda yadda. But worth it. Definitely.
So much for Obama ever getting tough, speaking the truth, or for even putting American ideals and best interests ahead of the Israeli lobby and the 'evangelical threat'. It just isn't in him, which is what a few prescient people were warning before he was elected. I would have thought that Obama was smart enough to figure out by now that his middle of the road strategy was not pleasing anybody, and in fact alienating most, but I guess not. I could not imagine that it was possible to have a Democrat president analog to the ineptitude of George Bush, but given the challenges the nation now faces it seems there's a pretty good chance.
You could have shortened your lede to "Obama Undermines Peace" and saved a few keystrokes.
Would that such coherency be exhibited by our politicians.
Mary OG, the issue is not the infallibility of gravity, but video media being used to imply that selected other humans are so different from "us", and therefore crazy, mad, stupid--certainly not OUR equal. There are plenty of You Tube movie examples of vast stupidity attached to a title of humorous southern redneck endearment, or "only in Russia", or 'those crazy Norwegians', or inept military performances, both domestic and foreign, not to mention American extreme sport adrenalin junkies performing another roulette attempt. Separating the stupid act from the social background is what did not happen in this video, which in fact has its impact because it conflates the social background with the stupid act. Obviously the real experiences of expensively kitted and trained US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Japan, and many many other locations show that the supposedly inept 'enemy' our troops expected to fight never showed up and the enemy was instead found to be tough and often tougher and equally inventive, and did not in fact run like chickens. "Never underestimate the enemy" really means never overestimate yourself, which is a strong, and perhaps even intended side effect of this video.
It's just 4th of July in some other country. Look at what Americans spend on fireworks every year, and remember that the lusty, dangerous fireworks of today are a faint approximation of what one could buy fifty years ago. Being different may be surprising but that doesn't make it necessarily evil. The cultural mismatch is in the eye of the beholder. "Parochial" works both directions.
This is the kind of thing the Great Game players miss as they plan out out how their own game is going to go. "No problem" gives way later to "I didn't realize". Of course they never think of everything and it comes back as a big unexpected body count for those who cheer and follow such arrogance, and those who got in the way because they lived on teh gameboard. Blair (bad Saddam), Bush (opportunity knocks), Wolfowitz (they're all wrong,it will pay for itself), Rummy (known, unknown, partly known, guessing), the Neocon shakers and assorted Generals, all had to backtrack, hopefully on page 19. Cheney, no; never admit anything. There were quite a few "I didn't realize's" after the Iraq debacle, but those never get the media attention given to "This is how it's going to go." Or "A little destabilization might not be a bad thing". It's all so complicated now downstream of the Arab Spring, compared to how simple it sounded coming from the Bush team.
I used to support Israel, but that is long gone. My absolute disgust with it is coupled to an equal amount of disgust for America's incomprehensible fawning over a nation that clearly doesn't care a whit about America except for its handouts. Israel is a paranoid, aggressive, suicidal, extremely dangerous loose cannon with no future at all given continuation of present policies.
No better metaphor for Israel than chopping down olive trees planted and owned by a person who could have been a good neighbor.
Security isn't a gun, it is a good neighbor.
Oh and we simply cannot forget non-state players, like the little unknown armed band (don't think for a moment that knowing their identity means anything)that took over the refinery somewhere Over There where the oil is. Just think of the investment potential...a few pickups, some auto weapons, rpgs, grenades found for a pittance on the arms bazaars that we've facilitated (and no doubt supply)in Iraq, Aghanistan, various other 'stans, and now Africa--anywhere there is a destabilized state with a non-functional government and porous borders. Which come to think of it is just about anywhere the US sends its troops to install Freedom. Voila! An incident that makes international news and sends shivers through the global oil and oil gambling industries, all save perhaps one who invested his five or ten grand in those pickups, pistols and patriots, who wanted to up his futures value, sway an election, or merely because he too is a patriot. Think of it as Bin Laden trickle down. With paranoid America mainlining oil and the American "press" deriding anything that doesn't consume oil or move twice as fast as is legal, this kind of thing is so EASY now. Expect more!
"...it is just supply and demand..."
That's the myth we live by but I'm surprised to see you repeat it. It is true if you remove price spikes, but there is no shortage of articles about the affect of speculators (read 'gamblers') on fuel prices. Like here:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/25/114759/wikileaks-saudis-often-warned.html
And then there's the leveraged version of betting on the bets, which worked so well in the banking and insurance industries, as here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/oil-traders-buy-protection-against-price-collapse/article2157124/
And the national economic effect of fuel price increases on the "recovery" from previous gambling:
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-5-gas-means-for-the-american-economy-2012-3
And someone's observation that every 10 cent increase in fuel removes X billions of dollars from the national 'profit', and therefore from its 'recovery'--sorry can't find the citation.
And then there's Oil Christmas which I don't need a calendar for because I know my car is suddenly getting about 15% poorer mileage, which translates into my spending 15% more for fuel for a third of every year, and 15% more seasonal profit for Big Oil, and 15% more road and other assorted fuel taxes the State gets, the los of which (if fuel gave the same performance for all the time) makes the State an unenthusiastic player in Solving the Problem. And then there's the straight, no chaser Manipulation of Demand, which has simply become a standard business practice for those who know that riding price spikes is all they need to do to avoid producing anything and retiring early in style.
This isn’t new from Binney. It is more a continuing confirmation of a technological totalitarian state now firmly ensconced, enabled, and quietly operational in American government. There can no longer be any pretense that this effort is about terrorism. It is about a government collecting information on its own citizens, to be accumulated and saved for the day when government, or more exactly, someone in the gov'ment, feels the need to protect itself (himself) from its own citizens, or gain from their neutralization. Then when the target is chosen there is no problem or time lag to obtain "evidence" to neutralize the target, no time consuming and obstructive legal process. And it isn’t just here. Australian surveillance up 20% in one year:
http://rt.com/news/australia-surveillance-phone-internet-145/
The only skill a techno-authoritarian needs to rise in this system is the ability to take offense at just about anything. That is the effective end of law by the people.
Charlotte: Suddenly, traveling to the Middle East is the “in” thing to do.
Maybe and thankfully for high profile personalities. But over the past fifteen years many Mid East locations that used to be places where young Americans could safely travel to obtain international experience for their career resumes has shrunk. There are more places where Americans are not only unwelcome, but good targets, and parents and travelers now consider the threat of “terrorism” together with their perusals of what used to be carefree exotic historical locales in their calculations, resulting in the slow closing of America’s eyes to the greater world. This is largely a self created delusion resulting from American governmental policies, erroneous political assignment of “terrorism” labels to internal and non-terrorist events and organizations, and American media cheerleading, or better put, fear-leading.
US news media is now a semi-coordinated disinformation service, at best tangential to facts on the ground. Mythical Clark Kent and Edward R. Murrow are dead. Walter Cronkite, once “America’s most trusted person” was quietly ushered out of the public spotlight he began speaking his mind following public retirement, and now bleakly lags behind Tom Brokaw who never would have made it out of Murrow’s second string. That American new media is bought and paid for to provide newsy entertainment is a given. That Fox clearly intends to be a propaganda machine is similarly clear, as is America’s wide approval for Fox’s belligerence and general disregard, even derision, of facts. Americans no longer steadfastly looks for truth in the face of truth’s frequent ugliness, but prefer having their adrenal glands pumped by media provocateurs. American discourse has been eagerly divided into untouchable cliques by those who enthusiastically seek to command both America’s wallet and its future. It is easy to blame broadcasters, but the fault is lies in the degraded spine of Americans who won’t recognize and can’t muster the courage to walk six feet and turn off the tube, with no age bracket excluded. 1984 arrived and self proclaimed patriots noticed it least.
" Journalists were never intended to be the cheerleaders of a society, the conductors of applause, the sycophants. Tragically, that is their assigned role in authoritarian societies, but not here - not yet. " Chet Huntley
Chet’s gone and his quote is no longer accurate.
Israel's present status and direction is what it has been: belligerent and unsustainable. Being determinedly unsustainable is identical to being intentionally suicidal.
The US is unsustainable and an overwhelming number of its key structures from local to federal government, military, and on to big business, want to maintain the status quo. Talk of necessary change is virtually all window dressing. The US too is now intentionally suicidal.
The two spend far too much time trying to use each other.
Much of the rest of the world appears to have a greater comprehension of the increasing fragility of human existence than the US and Israel. The salient issue involved is not oil, technology, markets, resources, political parties, political systems, or religious contention. All of those "top issues" are contained within the salient issue of human survival in the face of changes humans themselves have created.
If much of America is not driving electric cars by about 2020 or 2022, it won't be driving much at all. The countdown to cheap oil's end is underway, whether or not Americans want to recognize the countdown.
America's survival depends on people who can afford new cars buying electric and non-gas hog vehicles. They are not. The po' folks are along for the ride.
An A320 with only 37 total passengers, 750 pounds confiscated, and enough suspicion to send two fighters to force it down? We're only seeing the wavetops.
America continues to isolate and narrow its own vision psychologically and informationally by major media intent combined with the acquiesence of the American public. Much of the rest of the world wonders at this trend in amazement but does not allow itself to be similarly held back. American media condescension toward RT and Al Jazeera, and its supeficial reoprting on Asian opinion has not prevented those organs from ascending as often more reliable conduits of fact. The net effect is contributing to America's overall loss of reputation and influence. Americans simply comprehend less and less about what is more and more important. America does have by far the best propaganda on planet Earth, but it is aimed almost entirely at its own population.
Gaza, recipient of a large scale Israeli attack in response to a few rockets that killed a few Israelis, comprised as of two days ago of eight hundred air strikes plus shelling from the sea and calls for 75,000 reservists. Thirty two miles long by 5 miles average width, 141 square miles or 90,000 acres, population 1,700,000, population density 12,000 per square mile or 18.7 per acre. Air strikes per square mile: 5.6, population per airstrike: 2125.
33.7/141
Manhattan, NY: 33.7 sq miles, 21,568 acres, population 1,600,000, pop density 70,000/ sq mile, air strikes per square mile proportional to Israel’s strikes on Gaza: 192
Cedar Rapids, IA: 71 sq miles, 45440 acres, pop 126,000, pop density 1774/ sq mile, 2.7 per acre, proportionate airstrikes: 376, population per airstrike: 335, airstrikes per square mile: 4.7
Israel’s clear preference for their “Palestinian problem” would be that all the Palestinians simply leave. That is remarkably like Nazi Germany’s initial desire for the Jews, at least until the tremendous funding potential of confiscated assets of killed Jews for German military expansion was recognized. Because current nations on earth have no more interest in absorbing the Palestinians of Gaza today than the nations of 1940 wanted to absorb German Jews then, and because the Palestinians today understandably have little desire to leave what remains of their homeland, Israel’s solution set to its “problem” population is also quite similar to a number of Nazi Germany’s Jewish solutions: sequestration, legal disablement, suspension of citizenship, confiscation of land, physical damage to Palestinian people and businesses, intimidation, legal hooliganism (as opposed to Putin hooliganism), disablement of Palestinian social, regulatory, and executive structures, limitations on local and international business transactions inclouding imports and exports, obstruction and criminalization of independent humans rights and internal Palestinian organizations opposing Israel’s encroachment, reductions of access to raw and finished materials necessary for basic human survival, demonization of the population, propagation of hate, disproportional military response (currently in progress), manipulation of media (always in progress), assassinations, and so on.
The only real differences between Germany in 1942 and Gaza 2012 are overt starvation (because Israel carefully makes sure Palestinians only mostly starve), major outbreaks of disease, unintentional or intentional, and large scale exterminations. Israel manages to fund itself far beyond its own output by continual appropriation of Palestinian assets, and avoids the nasty PR complications of overt exterminations by systematized legal theft which increases the number of internal Palestinian refugees who, it might easily be imagined, are more than chagrined and willing to pick up whatever weapon is at hand. Who then of course deserve to be attacked as the bad guys. And also of course, the generous gifts of ??? billions of dollars from its great friend, the champion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, the United States, were not advantages Hitler enjoyed. But, like Churchill considering the Germans in 1941, a Palestinian chance epidemic of high mortality would probably be greeted today in Israel with more relief rather than hand wringing. Or perhaps relish in one’s rooms and some public handwringing to keep the show going. Shooting fish in a barrel. No exit allowed. A response of silence and duplicity in the West. Just like Warsaw, complete with tunnels.
What, exactly, is the line?
Somehow America's leaders seem to have totally missed or forgotten the message sent by China a few years back, delivered, albeit poorly, by American "news" media. This is understandable if one feels that the American militarization of space has less to do with national defense or world dominion than it does with establishing ever more top secret income streams. The bales of dollars gone missing in Iraq were nothing compared to the profits of militarizing space.
When China sent up a weary old missile to supposely knock down one of its own satellites, causing a sudden increase in space junk at and above orbit speeds, it seems pretty clear that the larger message was that just a relative few weary old missiles with Mickey Mouse times,loaded with cheap old explosive charges and aluminum bb's, or even leftover Florida ballot chads, haphazardly aimed at the several of the most congested orbit distances popular with military spenders, would in rather short order blind or neutralize a sizeable percentage of Americas most prized defense gizmos. The return on investment would be staggering.
Pehaps the more fundamental question is whether an attack on space based weapons and surveillance targets would be answered back here on earth by a doomsday launch by a hawkish and ill-informed president, or whether cooler heads would prevail, citing the zero sum nuclear MAD game we already played and should have learned from.
For the present America is spending a lot of money it doesn't have on high tech projects that could be neutralied by fifty year old technology, ie: the Blunderbuss Equation. This is entirely consistent with American hyper attention to short term profit, and Chinese attention on some point way out there in the future where it is increasingly clear that America will have shot its wad.
Exactamondo Professor. Even Reid eventually wondered aloud where in the world Obama had been hiding himself "in conference" during the health care bill "debate". That's pretty bad. Single payer was 'off the table' as being unpassable according to an Obama quote very late in the game. I do believe it was also the Obama administration that repeatedly prevented any participation by single payer advocates during the bill's hearings, another example of compromise before the debate begins. What Obama proved was that clinging to a hope of centrist master of compromise with people who have taken compromise off the table is mere acquiesence. The same thing happened with the Wall Street reform bill. Not much really changed. The practices that allowed the very rich to appropriate a goodly portion of the accumulated savings of the middle class are still mostly in place and still in operation. It was the biggest theft (or was it a gambling loss covered by taxpayers?...hmmm)in American history, and the biggest thieves got bailouts and bonuses while a million American homeowners were were turned out on the streets where many still live.
Juan's list of must-do's is way too short, but it is a list of real problems America faces rather than meaningless obstructive political inventions such as whether vagina is a less acceptably public word than more prevalent equivalents (take your pick).
The greatest threats to America are not 'out there', but systemic, bored deeply into the very framework of America's home, and not even a topic in the past year's orgy of political misdirection.
German take on the American election: "Germans see the US election as a battle between the good Obama and the evil Romney. But this is a mistake. Regardless of who wins the election on Tuesday, total capitalism is America's true ruler, and it has the power to destroy the country."
Rest at:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/commentary-total-capitalism-and-the-downfall-of-america-a-865437.html
It is not only the legitimacy of the federal government that is in serous jeopardy in America, it is the legitimacy of the supposed democratic process of government, and of the election process. The story is not new; voter 'disenchantment' has been haphazardly reported the past three presidential elections, then dropped like a hot potato after an exceedingly brief story run. Voter disenchantment has valid roots that media does not to want to cover because it conflicts with the American myth (that media DOES continually reinforce) that individual votes are somehow actually connected to the future of the nation. But more Americans from all political sectors are in agreement that America is on a disastrous course than there are who agree that any single party offers the best course. In other words, if the presidential vote today was really intended to be the expression of America voter preferences, voter choices would include "None of the Above", or "None Qualified", or "No Confidence". If candidates actually had to run against the shadow of themselves instead of the bogeyman from the other party who really isn't as different as the candidate's own shadow, the election would at least yield a better perspective on how much faith Americans really have in their political system. Such a refreshing possibility also suggests a possible scenario where Americans are so disgusted with the candidate choices that they decide they would be better off for the next four years without one. The predictive success rates of monkeys and the weathermen suggest that America might sustain less damage to itself during the ensuing four years if the guiding hand of an inept, ineffectual, corrupt, and/or ignorant sock puppet pol was missing from the wheel of state. The lack of an ever present voter choice that includes None Qualified shows the limitations of the American Constitution as some kind of automatic, eternal protection of Americans more willing to fight each other than work together.
The results of a close election mean the lack of a new voter mandate, a continuation of societal division, and a continuation of governmental stalemate and inability to effectively deal with the real (not invented) problems that face the nation. Most voters think this election happens this day, November 6. But the majority the election's outcome has already taken place in all the pre-election "polls" that by election day will have largely established the post election voter blocs and the various frictions to which the real directors of America mass have already tied their reins. Change is not in the air, unless of course one is looking forward to the next war.
"When the economy picks back up...."
Given the predictions in a wide variety of significant sectors, the presumption that the economy will pick back up is an exceedingly weak presumption. Bad as things might seem for many at present, these will be good old days we likely will be pining for in just a very few years. Addressing human actions that result in environmental and climate alterations cannot be postponed til the time is right, all deniers have been persuaded, we all have better cars and jobs, and all American boats have risen on the tide we like to think of as normal. Anyone who thinks the future is gong to be a replay of the past, especially any 'golden past' is deluded. Humans have changed and continue to change what 'normal' is. If you dispute that I will ship you untreated drinking water from a dozen randomly selected American rivers. Imbibe that as your sole source of water for the next year and get back to us. As Dr Cole points out, seemingly small alterations can and will have big effects. Wait too long to begin change and no matter how hard you try then it will be too little too late.
"Yet we hate equality too. "
Nice to finally see this out in the open, in print. United we aren't, and no amount of bumperstickers will make it so. Outside of their social tribes, Americans increasingly don't much like each other, don't accept each other, suspect each other, fear each other, seek advantage over each other, push compliance to their own beliefs, seek protection from each other, seek adjudication of dispute from outside the locale. This outcome is not an accident. The work leading to it has been constant over a long period of time and continues. It has helped make the herd more herdable, more responsive to both the whip and the drover's soothing lullaby.
If you don't happen to like that outcome, don't act it out. It is really as simple as whether or not in a democracy citizens lead the government, or vice versa. The present, with responsiveness of elected officials virtually identical to cemetery occupants, is the versa.
Sorry Joe, The time for efficiency to be extraneous to government concern is long gone, blown apart by a national system (yes our very own) that supplies almost none of its own needs. You're right, business success today isn't a prerequisite to political success. But then again, success in today's business seems to have almost nothing at all to do with long term planning (think national future). A lack or reality in business is not a reason to de-link business saavy from political ability.
If you want to look at success, as oppsoed to Obama, look at the Jeep in WWII: A contest for a national spec, a winner, and then the spec spread through multiple manufacturing streams so that manufacturing itself was not a bottleneck to the need. What do we do today? Give money to startups, let them get a hint of success, then support the selloff as good business. To China, sure, its only business.
Obama is a vacant storefront in terms of Americas's future. Nothing he has done shows a hint of clue about it. Is he better than Romney? Certainly, but only in terms of the slower pace he would set digging the nation into its own grave, compared to rich-kid, never-had-a-care, nary-a-clue-now Romney.
We need a Jeep kind of war effort now, and I don't mean the stupid overweight, overlycomplex Jeep Patriot you see lumbering around advertising itself. But WWII was oh so long ago and we all must have our wants met and we gotta keep all our treasured WWII myths floating somehow. That's what we Americans do today. Meet our wants, the hell with the needs, the hell with reality. The Greeks called that Desire, and it was a deadly sin. How did American manage to make a deadly sin into a national freedom, a national treasure? And why are both both Romney and Obama so eager to support that deadly sin?
I suppose Clinton thinks of herself as the white knight on an election battleground, deflecting Banghazi spears away from Obama by saying she is responsible for the Benghazi attack. What she really did was take a page from Bush's book and further demonstrate that responsibility in modern American government is meaningless. Stating personal responsiblity at that level of officialdom means not that something will happen now, but rather that the case is closed and nothing will happen in judgement over the lack of responsibility. Clinton would have been more accurate saying she was irresponsible, but that obviously doesn't sound so good.
I used to think of the State Department as an important piece of American government, rather than as a dual specialty office splitting its time between amplifying Israeli policy and being national crier for Al Qaeda sightings. But I think a grey rock would have been less harmfully provocative and more soothing for international tensions than Clinton has been. Ultimately this little episode shines a light on Obama who is the only person who can do anything about Clinton's 'irresponsibility'. Heads have rolled in past administrations when the President felt his agenda was mired down. Mired as Obama has been, the only heads he has rolled are a bunch of men, women, and children sitting in tents, or having dinner, or riding motorbikes on some faraway desert scape beyond the reach of American reporting media. And Rahm to the mayorship of Chicago of course. But that was bowling.
Irresponsibility is by no means limited to Clinton or Obama. Responsibility has no place at all in the Romney campaign, where direct conflicts of quotes in major speeches are regularly an hourly occurrence, and 'policy-makin' is primarily involved in successful nuancing of completely contradictory positions. In the specific area of contradictions, Obama holds a very slight advantage.
If responsibility means anything anymore, it should fall to the informed electorate to make a responsible decision with their vote. The problem is when both choices are irresponsible. Then what does the responsible voter do?
Didn't George the Lesser say something like "My job is to keep repeating things"? Romney is recounting the American myth, in front of the American virtual fireplace. It's the American lullaby. Sleep children sleep, daddy will watch over you.
John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me recounted the experiences of a brave white man willingly entering racist black reality to find what being black really meant. I suggest that even Little Lord Romney might experience a shift of world view if he were parachuted naked into Gaza, with no papers, a bad haircut, and a professional makeup job complete with all the facial profiling features of those nasty Palestinians. I'll chip in ten bucks.
Norton: Not sure of your intent here. Netenyahu has never let facts stand in the way of the need to manufacture consent, every day. What danger did Iraq ever represent, and to who? It is extremely prudent to question the constant misrepresentations by US pols and US media of what Khameni and Ahmadinejad actually say. Fatwas can be lifted, but in general are more consistent over time than politicians, especially coming from the top echelon of religious leaders. See "Pope". To much and perhaps most of the world, the US is truely frightening with its combination of nuclear and "conventional" overkill, not to mention its global surveillence capacity and weaponization of space. Overwhelming conventional force are not much different than WMD's. If you often wonder if the Muslim world really cares about the Palestinians you must not ever read any news or views from the Muslim world.
Dr. Cole I cannot agree. This is no more a butterfly than a crude, overdubbed movie depicting Jesus as a verbal oaf as he and Mary Magdelene engage in a very explicit sexual union. It is relatively true that America does not censor films, or stupidity for that matter. But America has long recognized incitement to riot and yelling fire in a theater as acts worthy of preventative laws. This film was intended to incite on an international stage, not inform or express artistic expression. And, using the 'follow the money' dictum regarding motivation, there are more parties than one that could presently view a little fire in the theater as a good thing for them.
Vote for the less demented candidate. That's the choice in 2012. and you should be happy, even excited about it! That's the DNC line. The American wreckage of a former democracy continues to pile up.
"Israel will fall from such blind hubris, as all nations eventually do."
I think Dr Cole has pointed out several times that this is essentially what Mr. Ahmadinejad said, which has been changed for most Americans by some tens of thousands of media and politico repetitions into "Iran wants to wipe Israel from the face of the earth."
I see also this morning that Obama personally intervened to pressure the Democratic Party to reinstate "God" and "Jerusalem as capital of Israel" into the Democrat platform. The cliff we are rushing toward with such enthusiasm is more than financial.
Traditional American alliances have been distancing themselves for a decade toward a new global polarization where America is not number one, and probably not number two or three. US media, scared spitless of being anything other than entertainment subservient to dying American myths, right wing bluster, and Israel continues to hum lullaby of Broadway. Absent American attention to a shifting reality, the world will go on without America.
Most people I talk to don't want to talk about reality. They want to talk about continuing their personal or shared myths. Google, Yahoo, and CNN, not to mention the former big three "broadcasting corporations", pander to American myths. Farmers and workers, the old Left of the past, cared about how to get the family to next year, how to reduce unfair advantage, the common weal, what works and should be supported, and what doesn't work and should be avoided. Pragmatism today only applies in our most loved mythical systems: economics, military power, bootstrap (not cooperative) America, directing of public opinion, the seeking of profit, power, and advantage, and the fundamental American right to engage in recreation and spend money any way you see fit even if it kills people. Google's method is the opposite of niche marketing.
Twenty years ago a saavy computer acquaintance said that the internet would destroy all national boundaries by making their economic borders permeable and unmanageable. History has shown that to to be true. The transfer of the very large amounts of national currency assets, as opposed to smaller transactions still under the thumb of national regulation, outweighs regulated commerce profits wth disproportional economic and political effect. The kabuki of regulatory economic control still plays however, with political infighting as nightly infotainment and voters incessantly reminded that their votes rally do matter in controlling asset flow despite deteriorating family economic health as proof to the contrary.
The technological leveraging of power concentration has not been limited to currency flow however, and control of communications has been speeding ahead of regulatory control capability with no less a performance advantage than the perforation of national economic boundaries. The advantages to consumers of technology advances, like cell phones, are being debauched by greed for advantage and money, and at least on the level of the evening news, all that progress is perfectly legal and, well, simply ordinary business. Removed from its usual descriptive context, however, the trend may also be recognized as the legalization and systemization of corruption. One would think that given the importance of this trend to national security, the Department of Homeland Security would have a branch dealing with corruption or systemic manipulation. But that would present some very vexing profiling difficulties. Unless they looked Chinese.
>China and especially Russia have suffered diplomatically much more from the situation than the US.
I don't think either care very much about diplomatic blips. They don't claim to be democracies responding to the will of the people. Having been on the receiving end of a previous axis of evil label they're quite used to letting diplmatic teapot tempests careen on past. Business they care about, but I haven't seen any big deal business backlash for their positions.
>Syria is a Russian client state and host to a major base.
That, plus business and military supply is the superficial reality, but there isn't just one operant reality here.
>A disintegrated Syria harms the Russians’ power interests much more than those of its opponents.
Which supports my point. The Russians need to maintain people in power who can arrange and authorize deals. That's not possible in a disintegated nation, which is what Assad is creating, or has created, by violent repressive force. Better for Russia to facilitate change to try to retain the greatest number of sympathetic bureaucrats. Syria is now in a full blown civil war. With Assad's continued presence, and even with a loss by rebels in Aleppo, the conflict will default to guerilla tactics given the force and weapons imbalance. Assad can kill people but cannot win a guerilla war waged against even a relatively small minority of his own population.
>Doesn’t it make a lot more sense....that the Russians are primarily motivated.... to prop up Assad and maintain their regional influence through their closest ally.....
No, not any more. The initial Syrian opposition to Assad was determined, patient, and peaceful beyond any reasonable expectation. The violent Syrian opposition did not exist until violence ordered by Assad exceeded the suppressive capability of that violence and peaceful means were recognized to be of no value given Assad's kill count, and his meaningless rhetoric. Once the fear of violent Assad repression was overcome--and I pointedly note that demonstrators somehow did manage ro remain peaceful even during many Assad authorized attacks--opposition violence began. Armed, violent conflict did not begin with armed gangs roaming the countryside. It began with repeated, brutal Assad attacks on peaceful demonstrators. Assad is toxic to Russians own interests.
Therefore my question remains of what other factors Russia adn China might consider more valuable than a disintegrated ally.
The deep issue is not now and never has been whether the opposition or Assad will "win". The issue is whether the tissues and organs of Syrian society will be physically disintegrated by the conflict. We focus on blood spilled in a war of attrition and assume while watching tv from our warm intact hovels that buildings can be rebuilt. But ruin enough buildings and infrastructure and the outcome of attrition is non-functional chaos that lasts and lasts. In a word, Iraq.
The few thousand "rebels" didn't win in Fallujah. The US military definitely did not win; they simply destroyed the china shop, killed a lot of innocent people, and had to admit in the end that they had not cornered and eradicated the people they were after. The people of Fallujah lost. Another military-media critical turning point toward victory that wasn't anything of the kind.
Fallujah's example begs the question of why Russia and China continue to support Assad, which by now means support for Syrian disintegation and non-functionality, with no one remaining having the power to make stable financial or military deals. China usually doesn't make this kind of strategic mistake.
The only plausible explanation I've seen inkled is that Syria as an open wound continues to bleed diplomatic power from the US and Europe which have clearly been unable to head off the conflict. A disintegrated Syria also further destabilizes the positional power team of Israel and the US. Israel has a demonstrated historic preference for destabilizing its neighbors, a perspective that almost every other nation except itself and the US have viewed as unhealthy. Israel normally prefers to perform these causitive acts itself. Having someone else assist a runaway conflict might finally be conveying the reality that fighting with ones neighbors, and contributing to their internal chaos as a full time occupation is not conducive to long life. Of the multiple great games being played, in this one Israel may be the bait.
US and Israel: a classic toxic, dishonest, abusive, manipulative marriage.
Americans used to have a myth that someone could, after erring in life, 'go straight'. Going straight was a common theme in fifty's and sixty's tv westerns, constantly echoing the redemption central to Christianity, repatriating US WWII troops from their portion of the barbaric excesses of that war, and extending into the justice system where via incarceration one could indeed completely pay one's debt to society for a wrongdoing. Despite poll results where Americans in great numbers claim a strong Christian belief, social redemption has faded and been replaced by unending guilt of felons, and even those who tweet badly, such information saved forever in Rumsfeldian surveillence sweeps and residing on ones and zeros somewhere, waiting for a future use. Romney's "England" worldview effectively brands nearly all earthly humans as 'lesser'. However it is not Romney himself so much as the wide acceptance such views that is alarming. Go Right far enough and one cannot go straight.
>if liberal, moderate, and independent Americans knew how far to the Left everyone else is, they’d freak out and push the button.
The rest of the world isn't to the left, it's the center. America has been levered to the right by people who want it there, and paid to get it pushed there, and pay to keep it there, primarily for purposes of personal control and profit. Mayer's book on German subversion by Naziism, They Thought They Were Free, comes to mind. If one's information comes primarily from the Tube or radio, effective avenues for transforming profit into influence and more profit, the resulting view is intentionally skewed. Which is why information flow via the internet is under constant attack.
Thanks Rick Wayne. You nailed a big part of it.
Why the choice of a different word? Let's call them what we call them here: First Responders. CIA targeting didn't make a mistake; it has a policy of killing First Responders, the same people who are the subjects of American hero articles. The CIA (and who else with armed drones?) has a policy of killing heros. And to think some Americans are shocked and surprised that America is hated. As you sow (terrorism), so shall you......
Your posting illustrates a question not being asked much: If the US has such high and mighty surveillence gear, why does it not simply report exactly what is going on in Syria. End Assad's claims that it is always the other guys. Respecting sovereign airspace is now a non-functional excuse because the US really doesn't care. Perhaps the US military doesn't really have the abilities it likes to say it has. Most likely someone does know and doesn't want to say, for their own reasons, while the killing goes on. But Assad's argument that it's always the other guy and never him is getting old, and the lack of countering claims by concerned nations is becoming more than a little suspicious.
It is humans coming out on the short end of the resource wars the CIA has been talking about for a decade. 'Resource wars' is so vague! What other country will it happen in? Not this one, oh no! Oh yes, and here, and now. What we also have are the results a government ceasing to protect its own citizens:
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152268501/pennsylvania-doctors-worry-over-fracking-gag-rule
It's pretty clear that the majority of US government and military propaganda has been aimed at Americans for some time. The idea that US propaganda is primarily aimed at other countries is itself propaganda. That these two legislators want to to make it official shows they are pretty dim. I assume, however, that THEY want the real scoop, not the invented stuff.
Glad to see this but it is too bad a single judge has to be putting on the brakes while, as you point out, Obama, Pelosi, Reed, and a host of DC others don't seem to care, or are actively on the other side of the fence. One has to ask the question of whether it does any good to vote anymore. When one begins to ask that question, functional democracy is no longer present. When neither of two candidates represents a coherent choice, voting is a joke.
If there is a magic bullet left in America’s glove box it is distributed electrical production, NOT large scale arrays. “Near term’ as you put it really means the acceptance of that fact. The mighty state of Texas found it wasn’t so mighty after all when it finally came to grips with the real cost of an upgraded smart grid.
Put another way, a few major lines of supply are eternally prone to interdiction, either for intentional disruption or systematized bloodsucking. Afghanistan, for example, or the Iraqi insurgency, or the Viet Cong. US military presence in Afghanistan is the military version of a fully implemented smart electrical grid. But the Taliban’s distributed supply on the backs of one’s and two’s has not been beaten and America is now looking for the right wording and time to pronounce victory and leave town to set up shop in some greener, less battle scarred landscape.
Loss of corporate control of electrical production is what inhibits dispersed electrical production, and is the major driving force of why US military action around the globe will continue, a Mississippi sized sluice of dollars that each year subtracts from the resources America will require to survive an oil-starved future it just doesn’t want to think about. We already have all the technology we need. Some new magic bullet that is effective enough to provide a different American energy future, and cheap enough for wide distribution is no more ‘right around the corner’ than it was for Hitler. But the national security of American is not as important as maintaining some non-human citizen’s all important income stream. As long as we have politicians that are ideologues rather than thinkers, and a news media that is entertainment based on indulgences of profit mongers, the resulting near total absence of pragmatic discourse about how to get from where we are to where we can survive will not change. Obama? Romney? Abject silence.
Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby contains more truth than 99% of US foreign policy of the last 60 years.
Nice to see a hoodied high priest of Intel saying this. But this isn't high intel. This is only common sense. Why does common sense coming from the intel community arrive like a bolt of lightning? Sanctions don't work the way they are advertised, especially in the world of oil. Fuel prices aren't due to Iran, but to confrontive American political pressures, speculation, and American love of consumption, as in tuberculosis. If the US doesn't do something profoundly different about its stupendous waste in the cause of individual freedom, and predelection to military and economic threats, today's highest fuel prices are gonna be the 'good ol' days'. Five dollar gas is going to look awfully good when it hits ten.
RTT, wingover, other names in other languages or times, it's still a stunt that one doesn't do at low altitude or high density altitude unless there is a very pressing need, or to showboat. This is showboating for the watchers not cool enough to be the pilot, who is no longer cool.
Psychobable is a derogatory label served up when the speaker wants to opt out of the conversation. It is less appropriate in this case than milbabble.
Nice wingover, right up to that last part. I wonder what the pilot's military future is now.
Why wasn't this video confiscated for national security reasons? More than a few people weren't quick enough.
>inflation was 2.9% last month.
Wow, only 2.9 for the month? That's nothin'. Ask Jimmie Carter. Not a problem.
Subtext: American government--both sides of the aisle--and big oil are steering America's SUV to the cliff. All for the sake of profits, power, and a mythical ally called Israel. Iran--nuclear weaponized or not-- doesn't bother me. The Republicans, Democrats, and Israel bother me a lot because none of them offer any viable future.
The resulting current presidential campaign is a farce. Media carries every sneeze of the hottest (or most self destructive) Republican candidate of the moment, but you could fit stories about US voter alarm,. disgust and dissatisfaction with the process into a teaspoon. It does no good to shout a warning as the cliff finally becomes visible to the most studiously ingorant. At that point everyone is just along for the ride.
Your post is spot on Professor Cole.
Professor, I greatly appreciate your many contributions, but the inclusion of biofuels is a mistake and has nothing to do with green. Do you mean the biofuels that cost more btu to produce than they possess? The biofuels that produce 10-20% less fuel economy in internal combustion engines and harm many older vehicles in the national fleet causing incalculable damage? The biofuels that, because they give less fuel economy, effectively gift states a brand new biofuel revenue stream based on reduced consumer miles travelled vs fuel taxes collected? No wonder government likes biofuels.
Biofuels may might maybe have a place, but it isn't on the highway. It is in cogenerators, where all IC engines are destined to end up, where the 75% wasted by almost all IC engines produce is retained for other productive uses. Yes, we--all of us--currently waste about 75% of all the dollars we spend on gas for our cars and trucks, and biofuels for vehicles do nothing to stop that waste.
We are running out of time to have a coherent, comprehensive, useful, INFORMED national debate about how we head into the future, and the sub-basement quality of the "debate" about biofuels illustrates how very far we have to go before our actions stop being self destructive and come close to being productive.
Our national problem is systemic--hard wired into the system-- as DSmith and Kronoberger point out.
Make no mistake about it, the mighty US will fall flat on its ass from its own stupidity if it doesn't begin to use some of the brain cells it likes to think it is blessed with.
>if what Iran really wants is energy independence, it should rapidly expand its solar, wind and geothermal sectors...
It is evidence of a log in the eye to suggest for Iran what is also true for any country, especially the US. Obama Wednesday said 'oil is the fuel of the past'. Well duuuuhhh. That's old news, and it's more than a lot disingenuous to be saying it now in an election runup when he has had years of access to the presidential pulpit. Ocassional mentions to placate a voter sector won't do. Obama's paraphrase of Apollo's iconic "We've got a problem" transmission has had a tough time getting in line behind a lot of other supposedly immediate and often invented dilemmas. If the US military is taking tax dollars to build alternative power generation at its bases, and build Afghan projects it will soon abandon, and Israel is doing the same helped along by a few bales of US dollars, why are domestic efforts stuck in research and studies?
Obama hit on a good line when he said there’s no mystery about how Iran might assure the world that it is not developing nuclear weapons. It is good that we stop pretending something is a mystery when it is no mystery at all. There is also no mystery about how Saddam Hussein found it impossible to assure the US that he did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that the US never found any after a lot of searching. Bush & Co didn’t want and repeatedly rejected all such assurances not only from Hussein, but from the IAEA. Assurances are a two way street: the offer, and the acceptance. Iran has every reason to be suspicious of the US, and of Israel which has a rock-hard policy of not accepting any assurances except dollars.
There is also no mystery about another aspect of any coherent contemplation of an attack on Iran that Obama did not mention. Every ten cent increase in the price of gasoline will cost Americans an estimated additional $14B, $14B that will come out of the pockets of Americans people and American business and go directly into the pockets of oil speculators, oil companies, and the country of origin. That $14B will just as surely be subtracted from any other American use such as food, health care, and every other need and use of American families, and from American economic recovery, investment in jobs or a non-oil energy future, and every other American need for the present and the future. The total 2011 budget for the US Energy Department is, for example, only $3B, or about 21% of the $14B that one dime’s increase in gas prices represents. From a different perspective, if America could reinvest the savings from avoiding a ten cent increase in the price of gas, it could increase the total budget of the US Energy Department by a factor of five.
There is also no mystery that the US is not in the same condition as it was in 2001. We no longer see stories about the depletion of men and materiel of the National Guard by its leaders, and American media is skittish to the point of ignoring the degradation by way of deployment and combat of the rest of America’s military. We don’t see stories tallying the military equipment the US left in Iraq when it withdrew, or of estimates of repair and replacement to achieve simply the level of military readiness of 2002. But that equipment has not magically replaced itself, and is still either missing in action, or its replacement cost is dispersed in the military budget that the military itself admits it cannot count.
America of 2012 is a hollowed-out, more internally vulnerable version of what it was a decade ago, with much of the damage hidden in countless documents recording loss of family homes, loss of jobs and income, jobs and fortunes exported offshore, loss of manufacturing of basic goods, degradation of equipment and infrastructure, and colossal debt.
As Dr. Cole points out again, Iran is no Iraq, being much larger geographically, and with a larger population which will, if attacked, act like any population confronted by an attack from without, defending Iran in any way possible from the invaders. Nor is the Mid East region the same as that of a decade ago. It is more nervous, more fractionated, less stable, and more prone to unpredictable outcomes from desperate decisions made under time constraints that are too small, which are exactly the intended result of open military action.
A dime today is inconsequential, unless it is attached, one after the other in a string stretching from Earth toward Mars, to each gallon of gasoline Americans buy. No one can accurately predict the cost of oil or gas should Iran be attacked. But with Iran representing a target roughly three times the size of Iraq, in a nervous, destabilized region, a doubling of gas prices, not to mention the specter of 1974’s gas lines, certainly is in the realm of a conservative estimate. The US military has assured that Iran will not stop oil transiting Hormuz, but military assurances have historically been proven to be over-optimistic in the extreme. And history has shown that the idea of supply and demand regarding oil prices is fading myth.
If you personally find these figures discomfiting, insert your own. But there is no mystery that this exact scenario resulted from Bush & Co’s attack and subsequent disastrous occupation, dismantlement, and abandonment of what was, even after a decade of sanctions and military attacks, a comparatively stable, middle class, terrorist-free Iraq in 2001. Gasoline more than doubled in price during that time period. Granted, the increase took five years and was not instantaneous, but then isn’t now.
A mere doubling of gas price is not one dime, but roughly forty dimes, with an attached price tag of over half a trillion dollars. Increase the range of probability of oil price increases to the relative sizes of Iraq to Iran—a factor of three—and you have more than three quarters of a trillion dollars. And a larger multiplier is not outside of probability. Such a bill addressed to Americans would be nearly instantaneous and might last a week, a month, a year, or more. No one knows. But the risk it represents to America’s present and America’s future begins to approach the risk assessment rationales we all clearly agree must apply to nuclear plant design and operation. The absolute need for safety regarding nuclear power is not questioned. The safety of war, a much more dangerous and unpredictable undertaking, should be a much greater concern. We would be irresponsible to consider the risk of war with Iran to be anything less than some multiple of a nuclear catastrophe.
The above are only dollar costs, negative economic potentials for America present and future. They do not begin to account for lives lost—American, Iranian, and anyone else who gets caught in the crossfire or fallout--and the dark, expanding societal ripples of lives and families obliterated, altered, debilitated, disempowered, made destitute, separated from a better future, burdened with pain and grief, and degraded in unimaginable ways: the moral and utterly certain costs of war. A war with Iran where the US is a clear initiator, or even perceived as a supporter, will result in a moral accounting assigned to the reputation of America. The international repercussions of a diminished reputation are loss of trust, an increase in suspicion, and a hidden drive to re-align with nations that represent the best probability for safety and stability. These costs are incalculable.
Any coherent perspective on a future conflict with Iran must note these changes in the American reality of 2012, and the real damage potentials for America. Gasbag Republican election blather, not to omit the similar passing of wind by many Democrats, ignores it all and is regularly incoherent in the extreme. If Republicans, or Democrats, or Obama, or Israel, wished to realistically assess the costs of a conflict with Iran on the public stage, they would address these numbers and considerations. The fact that they don’t, and in fact avoid them like the plague, suggest that they want Americans to forget about the great potentials for harm and simply acquiesce to the wisdom of pols or ideologues.
Americans don’t like to enumerate their limitations. It makes them feel uncomfortable and less than invulnerable. But any attack on Iran carries a very high probability of being self defeating. Iran is not a threat to the US. A comprehensive, realistic accounting of an attack on Iran clearly reveals that Israeli promotion of war with Iran, and US acquiescence to the idea of war with Iran, are much greater threats to the security and future of the US than is Iran.
"So we start ‘debating’ on measures about which there should be no negotiating because they are basic human rights..."
Excellent point Steve. Run out the clock that is ticking away the minutes that the US has left in an oil facilitated society. Unlike football, the game isn't over when the clock stops, it is over before the clock stops, when the time, energy, focus, and dollars remaining are insufficient to complete a viable alternate national energy system.
The fundamental moral issue--whether we survive as a nation without blood on our hands--outweighs short term profit motives and any trumped up moral indignation emanating from those who wish to exert power over others. So what do we have at the pinnacle of national political dialog today? A push to roll back contraception to the dark ages. And arguments that profits of the rich must be maintained, no matter the rest.
Ensuring the availability of contraception in no way endangers the future survival of the nation. Ignoring the pressing need to escape from oil dependency absolutely affects the future survival of the nation.
You are correct, it is a pain, but necessary, though actual sources are often unknown. AP??? This is just a little half-step in the dance about 'Will or won't Israel inform the US'. The larger question is why, given the gravity of the potential, it should even be a question.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_ISRAEL_IRAN
AP: "WASHINGTON (AP) -- Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations with U.S. officials, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and on Capitol Hill."
I guess that puts an end to any notion that Israel is an ally of the US. To pull this back OT, I wonder how JFK would react to a loose cannon ally stating that it would endanger the security of the US and the large majority of American allies without any warning. I think Ike answered that one.
Santorum promotes inequality with a smile. Driving at speed into the future using a tiny rear view mirror as an occasional reference guide is the height of stupidity.
That was then, this is now.
Santorum is proof that exposure to knowledge does not equate to the transfer of same. He also illustrates the modern conundrum of how semi-smart people can be simultaneously as limited as a box-of-rocks. That so many people are seriously considering him to be a qualified candidate illustrates the difficulty of controlling an advanced technological society with rock boxes. Rick would be right at home in the Dark Ages.
>we are making more enemies than we can handle
That is really the nut. When international reputation has ben disgraced, the diplomatic arm has been weakened, and allegiances to ideological or political myths whose day has passed are maintained, the illusion of military might is the only thing that can keep 'patriotism' alive. Militarism, economic expansionism, increasing blowback, and decreasing strength are the only predictable outcomes.
Coalition of the Unwilling
The “Canadian …oil pipeline” ....refers to the Keystone project to transport heavy oil from the ”oil sands”... near Ft. McMurray, Alberta, to refineries in Texas, WHENCE IT WILL BE SOLD ON THE INTERNATIONAL MARKET. Oil companies will receive all the tax credits and all the profits, and Canadians and Americans will receive all the environmental damage. Keystone is all about corporate profit, not US energy independence.
The argument against external militarization is going septic. All that was necessary to “create” a militarized Syrian civil war was to do nothing, and that has now been done. Refrain from action sufficient to stop a government’s attacks against its own people long enough and you end up with external militarization anyway. Cooperative, overt, or covert, it is still a militarized situation. If Russia is pipelining support to Assad, then Russia is aiding, not preventing, external militarization. The US would have more clout it had not pursued the very same policy so enthusiastically in the past.
I would hope to have seen open conversation with Russia about how far it would allow Assad to go toward dissolving his country in civil war, but I haven't seen much, the pressing issue of contraception dominating most news pages.
Not to forget page two, I read a rant a few days ago that Americans were the dumbest smart people on the planet. That degree of hyperbole is always to be suspected, but I read again today that a near majority of Americans would favor the US bombing Iran, for reasons that clearly have been almost entirely invented. “Favor” as if the decision were one of chocolate over vanilla, where a decision to war is unconnected from any other circumstance. What could the putrefaction of yet another major Mid East society possibly have to do with a good old patriotic bombing of Iran?
Once you start looking there are more than ten reasons. One of the biggest: would an attack really solve anything? Would anything change? Israel apparently cannot perceive any ill effects of a couple more Mid East neighbors trashed and far less stable than now. If Israel got its attack, would it become more relaxed, less paranoid , more cooperative with its neighbors and the Palestinians? I don't think so. What of some additional millions of Muslims who finally abandon the idea of peace and equity with Israel? A plus? Would chances increase that some other nuclear country decides that enough is anough and that it is time to help create a nuclear balance?
Three times the (visible) cost of the Iraq doesn’t begin to encompass the cost of a war with Iran. What is the cost of America's "professional" army with loaded weapons confronting American citizens "peaceably assembling" at empty gas pumps? What is the cost of war to America’s semi-vibrant online economy when UPS delivery costs 50% of the total cost, rather than the 20% that is now not uncommon? What is the cost of spreading hunger, malnutrition, and want as transportation, fertilizer, and maintenance costs push food prices beyond more American families declining income? What costs do you assign the continued postponement of maintenance of fundamental societal infrastructure including bridges, highways, and water supplies? The long list only begins with those costs. Oil prices are not linked to supply and demand as much as to the cattle prod of speculator fear, and the Hormuz sphincter, and the Mid East in general, is a very sensitive place.
People who beat the drums for war, or can’t get enough of the adrenaline rush of battle, or who aren’t yet old enough to understand they are mortal, willfully choose to ignore the cost of war. Nations that continue to spend more than they can afford simply cease to be. If Scrooge, rather than Rambo, was counting the shiploads of thousand dollar bills, caskets, and deferred debt destined for war-for-no-reason, there would be a quick end to shipments.
>… possible Iran nuclear weapons is one that I think is central to the whole imbroglio….
“Imbroglio” is a good term, vague and misleading from the fundamental issues. The fundamental issues are that the US is an increasingly fragile nation; that war in the Mid East is Pandora's box; that nuclear weapons are defensive, not offensive, by nature; that Israel by holding Jerusalem holds—and enjoys squeezing—the hearts of Christians and Muslims alike; that war profiteering funds sufficient social science necessary to maintain war as an acceptable choice; and that Iran, no less than any other nation on earth, must look beyond oil as an energy source.
>So, how can Israel get out of the corner their attitude has left them in?
Change their attitude. Remove Israel’s manipulative hold on both Christianity and Islam’s heart: Declare Jerusalem a universal, sacred, open, international city with unfettered access by all. Assure Iran, as well as Israel and every nation, of its right to exist and its right to plan and act for a future that assuredly will not be a reiteration of the present.
Marsh is exactly right: there’s no There there in Obama’s administration. There’s no back to back. The giddy party built on campaign promises is now old dust growing weeds at the edge of the road. Once installed, Obama abandoned the campaign rhetoric of four years ago that resulted in a winning bloc of Dems, Progressives and pragmatic conservatives, in favor of political compromise that had no chance of success. Another president might have noticed the near total lack of desired “change” and forcefully altered course, but Obama did not. In touting his ‘record’, Obama now suggests voters should vote for more of the same.
Obama’s failure does not print a free ticket to Republicans or justify the idiocy rampant in the leading GOP candidates. I’ve counted the invisible elephants and gorillas that writers have described over the years as sharing America’s condo and there are a lot of them. Concentrating on one doesn’t stop the others from growing, and that is no less true for Republicans as well as Democrats, Independents, Progressives, Libertarians, and fruitcakes. In the end the only metric that matters is whether a projection of current policy into the future illustrates a healthy, live America, or a dying America.
The current American course, defined by measurement over the past decade and largely unaltered over time, is toward ever more surveillance by more and more groups, more secrecy, more corporate influence and control, more home foreclosures, more family breakups, more homelessness, less education at greater cost, less health care for fewer people at greater cost, more bankruptcy due to preventable medical events, less income, less social stability, increased national fragility, continued lack of control over financial institutions which cover their loss potentials with other peoples’ money, increased social diffraction, more social stratification, less freedom to move and speak, more fear and stress, less personal satisfaction, more legal protections for aggregated legal entities, more legal exposure to citizens, less congressional function (no, it is not impossible), less governmental and corporate oversight, less protection for people who report wrongdoing, less legal recourse to correct social ills, fewer US jobs, less US manufacturing, greater reliance on national competitors for the fundamentals of human well being, devaluation of the national currency, increased degradation of international boundaries, increased use of ungovernable covert and robotic warfare, more international enemies, increasing resource warfare, more rapid global re-polarization, continued reliance on oil, reduced energy and capital investment resource for a post-oil reality, increasing preference for ideological myth over social consensus on how the earth functions (formerly: science), and ever increasing reliance on non-functioning systems.
Because the course of America currently supports the growth of all these gorillas, all are growing unchecked, and increasing numbers of Americans are being pressed into corners from which no escape is apparent. The American news media, placing profit or a desire to manipulate public opinion over the public weal, is happy to boil down complex problems into sound bites cached irrelevant categories where focus on an issue is systematically flayed to death.
The truth in Marsh’s piece is that the choice between Republican and Democrat candidates does not include one where America avoids driving over its self-made cliff, only a minor difference about when the event occurs. Blind faith or hope in any given ideology will not change this, nor will entertaining distractions by Fox, MSNBC, campaign reform proposals, or the Super Bowl. The gorillas will remain, stronger and hungrier than ever. Nothing short of a complete national mobilization and focus on investment and preparation for a viable American future will suffice. Unfortunately that is not on any candidates’ speech notes.
Though the graph is uttely clear about why the US has no business maintaining a high state of public fear of 'lesser' states, not to mention tiny, non-expansionist nations, its two percent cutoff is arbitrary and a bit misleading, as the cluster of data points just above the two percent cutoff illustrates. Would the graph's information density and usefulness been improved using a three percent, or a one percent cutoff? I note a suprising absence of Israel, given its arms export industry. Does this mean Iran and Israel arms expenditures are about on par?
It is simply amazing that Gingrich can speak lunacy out of both sides of his mouth and listeners simply nod. The first paragraph you quote, about a massive all-energy effort by the US, is absolutely true, and in the end would be far less expensive than any new fairy tale military adventure to steal somebody else's oil so we could avoid coming to grips with our own extravagant and unsustainable energy use. But that line is a toss-off lie as Gingrich and the Republicans have had a strict policy for decades of opposing and disabling any substantive moves to create sustainable domestic energy sources.
The fundamental choice America faces is whether to invest dollars into national energy self sufficiency, or burn dollars by the truckload while making more enemies and destabilizing the planet on a military machine that by definition and experience cannot produce anything and knows only how to consume. Running its current debt, the US doesn't have the dollars for either course without a massive change of national focus, and it certainly can't afford to do both. The difference between the two is that determined investment in energy self sufficiency offers a possible route into a viable American future, while investment in the military erases any chance of a viable American future. Every buck handed to the military is more than one buck less we have to stop our energy (and political) dependency. Bring 90% of all those military people home and put them to work in America making America energy self sufficient.
None of the Republican presidential wannabes even vaguely comprehend this. Nor, unfortunately, does Obama.
Thank you for that article. I especially liked the graphic.
It is Nov 22. Not a single mention of JFK anywhere online so far today. But a helicopter crashing while trying to put up a Christmas tree in New Zealand (two days before Thanksgiving) made the news. And the Dead Sea Scrolls.....
Yes. If America's candidates are its 'best of the best', there's no hope for the survival of America. The ranks of popular public dimwits are growing. Listen to the cheers.
A world class, wise, truly Presidential Obama would wait until Israel launches its Iran attack, then scramble a line of US fighters and say, personally, to cowboy Netenyahoo “You’re gonna have to go through us to get to them. I suggest you turn around.” That would truly be keeping peace. The loss of a few fighters would be a tidy and dirt cheap solution to an Israel intent on self destruction. The morals involved are pre-adolescent. Obama should be talking more to his daughters, and less to his advisors. Friends don’t let friends commit suicide. Two people committing suicide together does not make suicide more acceptable. You can’t make friends by poking them with sticks. If you want to steer your ship to safer waters, stop the idiot drilling holes in the hull. If Humpty Dumpty gets shoved off the wall, he never, ever gets put back together again.
Absolutely right. Songs (as a good example) are not only property, they are a society's developing tradition, a part of its heart added by each new generation. The corporatists want to own everything forever, meaning they want to own the tradition and make people pay to hear their own tradition. They want property in the national heart. The only reason you hear young people and locals play jazz standards to the degree that they do is that they ignore the law that says you must pay for each performance. It is a mean world when the songs important to a nation are owned and held hostage for money. This goes far beyond the original intent of copyrights. Exploding technology has made this a far more complex issue than anyone can deal with and the global society is increasingly falling behind in judging the moral and ethical conundrums of technological advances, not catching up. In that vacuum, control has defaulted to corporate law which has no interest in compassion, tradition, or national heritage. Corporate personhood is not human and holds no human values, only the guiding rules of profit and survival at any cost.
Motive, opportunity, evidence, means....After all the words written about this case it seems there were still some big holes in the prosecution's case. But that got less play than than the conflicting stances of the Italian and American press. I'm amazed that assertions of character came to be so important to the prosecution, and were lapped up by the press.
Why does American foreign policy so often result in non-compliant nations fearing they will be attacked in one form or another by the US?
While I agree that many aspects of the current illusion of American democracy are actually those of fascism, or more accurately, totalitarianism or corporatism, one must firmly note that "fascism" is found in concerned comments by left wing, liberal, progressive, Libertarian, right wing, and far right wing writers. The definition is either not being shared by all those writers, or widely differing effects of 'fascism' are being targeted by different people as being the important effects.
Left and Right have far more common ground than is recognized, but that recognition is constantly obscured, and misdirected by many well funded entities bent on manipulation of public opinion for their own benefit. THAT is a primary issue that also goes unrecognized.
I agree that the maps you supply are a service and essential to understanding what's going on. Why maps are not used by more media and analysts is a mystery, unless furthering understanding is not their intent. Al Jazeera's latest:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011226182950484591.html
Thank you for your response Prof Kolin. I did not intend my remarks to be in any way negative. I look forward to reading your book.
I have not read Professor Kolin's book, but all the key points Kolin makes in this post are present--frequently with blistering clarity-- in Sheldon Wollin's book of 2008, Democracy Inc. One area Wolin emphasizes that Kolin does not mention in this short post is the depth, breadth, and subtety of persuasion that may be brought to bear in the service of manipulation of the voter, and the unremitting employment of that full strength which has become a norm in America. As Wolin puts it, once manipulation (the cry of "Terror!") has successfully destroyed 'normal', a democracy becomes easily managed. By making this point, Wolin does not allow the artifice of "voting" to remain as a politically consequential act. Once managed, democracy may remain in place as a figurehead system, with voting retained as an ineffectual mollifying activity for patriotic citizen subjects, with the real decisions being made by a thin slice of the population.
Wolin in turn fully echoes the generalities of Jacques Ellul's prescient 1964 book, The Technological Society, which establishes the evolutionary potential for advancing technology to create pressure toward totalitarianism. One of the many myths of America is that it is a successful, steady-state democracy, possessing the ability and strength to withstand change from all quarters. Current views of Americans, however, uniformly apprehensive about America's direction, and ranging across the political spectrum, clearly suggest a confused and growing doubt of that myth. I would be interested to read whether Kolin shares Wolin's conclusion that a democracy possessing a rapidly developing technology has a predisposition and dynamic toward totalitarianism, and where exactly, in such a timeline, America stands right now.
The most important coming story about Egypt’s strife may have nothing at all to do with Mubarkak or Obama or Netenyahu’s or anybody else’s next moves, but rather what corporate US media giants choose to do next with the story. What approval or disapproval of the popular Egyptian uprising is present? How accurate is US media’s reporting compared to other international media? Will a silver lining be found, or will storm clouds prevail? Will the tempo of media reporting increase, or will the current attention being paid falter, and the situation languish? In Egypt’s case, languishment is out; this story isn’t going away given the international interest in what’s going on. It will have to be spun. But finding the right spin is going to become much, much tougher in the event that any other Mid East nations now experiencing protests might follow Egypt into full blown national protest. This is how events, influenced by self serving media coverage that aims to manipulate rather than inform, spiral out of control. So, now with camera trained on the producers in our own control booth, we take you to the story that’s not going to be covered. Dr. Spin, as you please.
If I have confused you I must achieved some kind of dubious pinnacle. Perhaps I am the one confused. I was essentially pointing out that Wikileaks is news simply because there is no corroborating document (and I assume there is not, because Wikileaks document was supposedly secret). If there is a public document and Wikileaks version is identical, there is nothing newsworthy to the Wikileaks release. If there was no previous public release of Glaspie's cable, by what evidence should one totally accept the Wikileaks cable as accurate?
So you have now accepted the Wikileaks version of Glaspie's cable as the definitive, true version? Am I to further assume that you believe all of Wikileaks releases, no matter how they may conflict with previously public versions, to be true, accurate, untainted, unedited, unsorted, not altered, not cherry-picked, and not released by a person or entity(ies) with a hidden agenda? If you have any reservations about the accuracy of some Wikileaks releases, how are you differentiating this one into the 'true' category? I ask this in the same spirit I would question any news release.
Juan replies:"....The number of Western contractors in Iraq is actually shrinking dramatically."
Your answer may relate to white faces in Iraq, but doesn't address the equally large question of where, after leaving Iraq, "contractors" are going. A vacation? Back to American unemployment? Across some border where they manage and profit from non-white faced workers remaining in Iraq? The next new, as yet not quite announced war? Or a number of dispersed tiny war-lets. As far as Iraq, fewer white faces can hardly hurt. As far as the US itself, progress depends on whether the total number of contractors and dollar amount of spending is actually decreasing, or whether they remain full speed ahead, slowly but surely drawing the noose tighter on America.
Media attention to 'collateral damage' focuses almost entirely on deaths. Even then it does not convey the truth that in any country, the cultural emotional tauma of a single person killed ripples out much farther than media cares to even think about. It isn't just "them" Afghans or Iraqis; all you have to do in America to see we are no different is to look at a missing child on a milk carton, or comprehend the prominence of a news story about a single person's heartwrenching tragedy two thousand miles from where you live. But we Americans do clearly fail to show any comprehension that one unjust death of 'furriners' has a thousand ramifications, almost all of them resulting in anti-US sentiment.
But collateral damage is much more than death and US media completely ignores that, save in small dispersed jolts. Large scale displacement of people (refugees resulting from US policy)in war zones we approve of (Swat Valley). Or damage to essential public infrastructure: power, water, sewage, medical, regulatory, transportation (Swat Valley, and virtually all scenes of Ameican military actions, including all its 'successes' in Iraq). And also the multiplying effect of completely natural, and therefore entirely predictable, natural disasters that just happen to fall smack dab on top of those man-made disasters above (Swat Valley).
If 'collateral damage' was anything but a euphemism to escape the real emotional repercussions of what the US actually does to countries it says it is saving, we would have lots of follow-up stories on the Swat Valley, and Fallujah, and every other place America has wrecked, or encouraged others to wreck on its behalf, chasing evil chimeras. Those stories aren't to be found. What the rest of the world sees is that Americans are magnificently hypocritical, and that they simply don't care. This type of societal trajectory has no happy ending.
A new government? Did the Parliament members residing out of country move back to Iraq? If so, time to move the goalposts again. The US government does not WANT to come home. That's only what American citizens want.
Fox News is a propaganda organization. Those who like Fox prefer to be misinformed, prefer propaganda to reality.
Professor,
The team sports analogy is more correct than we would like to believe. It is even more dispiriting to realize that ignorant US voters voting for their team (or against the other one) have more effect on voters in faraway nations does the voter’s own vote. The pervasive team mentality is supported by the nature of popular American sports. Virtually all major American sports are episodic: run the play, then run another and another until the clock runs out. The US military is configured the same way: run a play (the Surge, COIN), huddle, run another play. The ‘play’ has a beginning, end, and rest period, and viewers delight in quick, unexpected moves. Many war history books are built on a play-by-play model.
But the ‘play’ model doesn’t perform well in many situations, particularly in wars of occupation. Americans were treated to lots of plays in Viet Nam, starting with the Special Forces and helicopter assault plays. In terms of that war’s outcome, they didn’t work. The sequence of ‘new’ military plays hasn’t worked in Iraq and it’s not working in Afghanistan. Non-Americans play different types of games by different rules that ‘trump’ our games. But we keep on playing the same game and ignore losses with the promise of another new play. I see the military recently advertising a new ‘game changer’. It’s a grenade launcher. Same game. More blood on the ground maybe, but the outcome will be the same. None of the underlying causes are being addressed. The only ones who benefit are the military manufacturers and war profiteers.
Dear Professor,
I find little in your posts with which to quibble. Your clear thought process is what sets you apart. But I will quibble with your occasional descent to euphemism, which is a current American epidemic. Ollie North may find this useful, but transparency and clarity are not his business. You typically set the tenor of Informed Comment against this kind of intellectual laziness and intentional misdirection. The term you used today is “throw under the bus” which may be chic, but also has vastly different meanings to an incompetent editor at a loss for words, and a mafiosa talking about a client. I do note with no small satisfaction that you have finally found other, more accurate words to describe the thuggery, brutality, immorality, and illegality of “settler”, as in Jewish “settler”.
The current Olbermann episode may be significantly clarified by dispensing with the idea that there is little neutral news in America, anywhere, any more. Edward R. Murrow, his shadow, and his cautionary echoes are long gone. The word “show” outnumbers the word “news” in your short post by more than three times, 16 to 5. A final score of 16 to 5 in any sports contest would clearly demonstrate the team “News” suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the powerful team “Shows”. But while American “news” has thoroughly become a “show”, most major news shows today also clearly possess a political purpose, and minor news shows either respond or imitate them. That is, American news content today is mostly propaganda.
The intent or direction of this propaganda is perhaps clearest with a review of the annual earnings of the top ‘news show celebrities’. We can also dispense with the confusing terms “news broadcaster”, “commentator”, “host” and anything similar because there are no longer any national, regional, or even local news show presenters who are not Celebrities, who maintain their celebrity and create their own facts by referencing each other. According to Newsweek (I am open to other sources) the earnings leaders on the “Right” are Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Sarah Palin with a total of $147 million. On the “Left” we have Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann with a total of $22 million. Bill Clinton, as all ex-Presidents, has rather special earning powers. Milling about somewhere else are Don Imus and Rudy Giuliani.
What is important is not how much money each of these people made last year. Top notch Entertainers and Sports Figures can also make a lot of money, but that is due to the marketability of their current batting average or personality appeal. Political celebrity is different because rather than earning the money, the measure is more: How much money are people (or corporations) willing to pay these people to be in the public eye so that their message can saturate and influence the public debate? Given that Stewart and Olbermann may arguably be termed Entertainers, the sports score of 147 million to something less than 22 million indicates just how much some people are willing to spend to bend American public opinion to their own purpose. In American today, that purpose is the accrual of power and money, not egalitarian American idealism.
Americans, unfortunately, seem to really enjoy propaganda, and to genuinely prefer it to strictly informational information that requires more of the recipient than experiencing a series of quick adrenal flushes in the comfort of their Barcaloungers. No amount of education or information can overcome gullibility. The huge dollar amounts cited above indicate the degree to which American gullibility and ignorance are being targeted and encouraged.
Canadian Professor Bob Altemeyer at the University of Manitoba deftly points out that while most people offer the names of leaders when asked for examples of authoritarians, it is a population’s percentage of authoritarian citizens that enables authoritarian leaders to rise and rule. Altemeyer also points out that a significant percentage of any human population is authoritarian by preference. This percentage is an important target component of American news propaganda, that is, an important base that may be convinced to vote against their abest interests. Combine the populations of citizen authoritarians with the ignorant and the gullible and you can win elections. Olbermann’s sacking is a case study in gullibility prevailing over critical thinking.
Bob Altemeyer’s book The Authoritarians is available free online as a PDF file at:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
"It is being assumed that the individual who sent the bombs is a member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Both bombs were packed with PETN, the signature explosive for AQAP."
Gee. No one else has that kind of explosive. Think of it! Explosives in the mail along with a note they are coming. Incontrovertable evidence is just so hard to come by these days. Time to attack Yemen and buy some munitions stocks.
The biggest reason Wikileaks document release endangers lives is not the reason Hillary Clinton gives, but the potential of the document release to ignite American, Iraqi, and World outrage about how poorly the US military conducted its invasion, and what information it chose to keep secret from the American people to protect its reputation. The manifest wrongs and errors of the US military and war leadership are a self inflicted wound it has been determinedly secretized. It's all about protecting the US military, and its taxpayer income stream, not about protecting people. Wikileaks is all about loosing the military's hold on information.
A critical review of public documents show that a day by day review of the Iraq war initiated by George Bush includes contravention of international law, contravention of military law, contravention of the ideals expressed in the US Constitution, contravention of the Geneva Accords, fraud, bribery, murder, kidnapping, hostage taking (including children), abuse, torture, widespread intentional destruction of essential public utilities (targeting a civilian population), insufficient planning and effort to maintain the basic functions of an occupied society, conspiracy to suppress evidence, open propaganda to support military public relations bias about conduct and progress of the war, profound ignorance of Iraqi religious, social, and religious culture, and ineptitude at every level, that is, at the tactical, operational, strategic, diplomatic, and civilian leadership levels of the military effort.
They aren't "settlers". They are violent thieves and hooligans with state sponsorship that operate outside of virtually all recognized law. A thief is a thief. A violent thief is repulsive to all coherent societies. A more accurate label is needed.
Jerusalem, the myth-dream capitol of America.
The real effects of US/Obama foreign policy:
Aug 6, 2010 Christian Science Monitor excerpt:
A new poll of Arab opinion finds that for the first time a majority of the public across the region – including a sizable minority in Saudi Arabia – believes a nuclear-armed Iran would be a positive development in the Middle East.
The portion of the Arab population thinking that way has doubled since a similar survey a year ago, in part because of huge majorities this year in Egypt and Morocco. Egypt, which makes up a quarter of the Arab world, was not in last year’s survey.
The findings, however, say less about a change in Arab opinions of Iran than they do about a change in opinions about another country, say the organizers of the 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll: Arabs have soured on the United States of Barack Obama.
The poll finds that Arabs have traded in last year’s “wait-and-see” attitude toward the new American president in favor of something much more negative, and the support for Iran is, in many ways, being seen as one part of that anger.
“What this poll reveals is a backlash against the United States, reflecting the loss of hope that people had in what they thought were to be the policies of the new President Obama,” says Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland Middle East expert, who conducted the poll with the polling firm Zogby International. “It’s really people venting by supporting ‘the enemy of my enemy.’”
Wave of Protests, Gov't Condemnation
Israel offers a new photo seized from Mavi Marmara passenger as corroboration that the IDF attackers of the aid flotilla faced "deadly force". Let's see, one tall man with his mouth closed wearing a baseball cap and lifejacket, calmly taking movies of a bearded man with his mouth open and his finger in the air, and his other arm over the shoulder of a teenage male dressed up in army clothes with his mouth open in an apparent gasp, and some blood on his face, standing at the head of some stairs. Also a fat person in a relaxed pose with his hand resting lightly on a guard rail and his head obscured by the video camera, apparently just standing there.
Plausible captions for this photo:
Man with Finger in air: "Fred I told you to keep that damned camera away. Now look what you've done. You hit him on the head with it and the other nuts will think we did it on purpose. Do something useful for once and get a bandage."
"I said no more photos. They'll think we're taking advantage of them."
Implausible captions:
"Don't shoot me with your stupid gun disguised as a camera."
"If I put my hand in front of the camera like this and point my finger up it will make no sense."
IDF caption:
"Once upon a time, Turkish terorists ..."
At least the AP legal department has the wit to say it is unable to verify anything at all about this photo.
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Monday-May-31-2010-photo-taken-unidentified-person-aboard-ship/photo//100606/480/urn_publicid_ap_org12f7366a180d40fa8bd9ad663818f0b2//s:/ap/20100606/ap_on_re_mi_ea/gaza_blockade
Sunday Morning News Pill: Yahoo front-pages a brand new, AP channeled Netanyahu chapter, plus a wheezy old CSM story dating from before the Racheal Corrie was even intercepted, then second-pages a story on numbers, wounds, and accounts of Mavi Marmara survivors, and reports of the number of dead who were shot in the back or head.
In the newest chapter of his current novel, beloved author "Bubi" Netanyahu claims Turkish "activist" "thugs" were the 'organized attack force' on the Mavi Marmara. "Netanyahu did not say where the information came from. But Israeli military officials have claimed there is strong evidence that the men who fought the soldiers were hired mercenaries."
Once more the author's keen insight into his American audience has left a reverberating chord. Where Bubi's new information came from is of course entirely irrelevant to the telling of the story. Minor discrepancies such as whether the IDF contains hired mercenaries, the disappearance of any evidence conflicting with Netanyahu's story line, the fabrication and alteration of video and audio evidence, the complete absence of seized weapons, the issue of less-than-black-skinned piracy on the high seas, and the vexing problem of how to describe a container of wheelchairs as terrorist weapons, are of no real concern to the readers of this author's gripping tale.
What will happen to Sasha? Will Lev be re-united with Mimsel? Stay tuned. Bubi at six!
Likud Vows it will Not Arrive
As this attack clearly took place in international waters, would it not be possible for the captain of the Mavi Marmara (or the surviving ranking officer if, as reported, the captain was killed) to lodge murder charges against one or more of the attacking Israelis in the ship's country of origin? Witnesses exist. Would not a legal trial in absentia be possible?
Irony alert:
Apr 29, 2010: Laptops for Gaza refugees
"GAZA CITY - THE UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday launched a campaign to distribute some 200,000 laptops to schoolchildren in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, a spokesman said. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) plans to distribute half a million devices to refugees across the Middle East by the end of 2012, spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said."
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_520611.html
How does one term this: The Laptop in a Tent Program? What is the nutritional value of a laptop? Israel will now be forced to condemn the UN for supplying devices that may be used as military communication systems.