Mitt Romney is not a free market capitalist. Look beyond the slogans and you'll see that he's very much in favor of government working as an agent of corporate CEOs.
(Which it does waaaay too much in the US -- read the _Naked Capitalism_ blog for some examples).
I don't know whether Netenyahu is a free marketeer or a corporatist-should-own-government type, but I do know what Romney was.
Thankfully, Iran has hacked the drones. That should throw a spanner in further attempts to cause trouble on the part the loonies in the US military-industrial complex.
Oh, and Bill: if the US support for tyrannical Middle Eastern governments like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were to stop, and the US wars against various Islamic countries were to stop, then al-Qaeda's "war" against the US would also stop.
The US started this fight, although bad education in the US means that most people in the US don't realize this.
Bill: al-Qaeda's predecessors were funded by the US in Afghanistan to "fight the Soviets".
bin Laden was driven to create Al-Qaeda due to the US's funding and support for the really, really evil government of Saudi Arabia.
The US drone program is just a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda It is accomplishing precisely the opposite of its stated goals -- it is creating a fertile environment in which people, knowing that the US randomly murders innocent people all the time, are happy to sign up for anti-US organizations.
It is one of the stupidest things the US has ever done.
From a completely cold-blooded perspective, it's also worth noting that the high-tech drone murder system isn't helping US interests at all. As far as we can tell, the drone murders are a major recruitment tool for any anti-US organization. And they haven't actually done any lasting damage to any of the many anti-US organizations which already exist.
And in Somalia, after decades of American-funded interference, Al-shabaab is still winning. First we destroyed the Islamic Courts Union, who were moderates; this caused them to be replaced with Al-Shabaab, who are much more intolerant. Which probably makes them better fighters.
Stupid, stupid behavior by a decaying, incompetent military. The US has been carefully creating extremely powerful guerilla forces opposing it. In South America, I guess the US has been doing this for nearly 200 years -- and the locals have wised up enough that they are finally capable of stopping the US before it starts, most of the time.
It will take a little longer for the African and Middle Eastern guerrilla movements to figure out the correct anti-US tactics, because they aren't talking to the South Americans, but it won't take that many more years. The US is already consistently losing its imperial adventures; soon it will lose *faster*.
Travis: minor point. In the 1930s businesses *trained* their workers. Now jerkass business executives claiming "we can't find trained workers". Well, train them, dumbass.
Yep. Who the hell is going to secure the nuclear weapons?
States don't collapse that often in recent years, except in Africa, where most of the governments have only nominal control over large parts of their claimed territory -- this might be the place to look for precedent.
Yeah. I expect Turkey will be on good terms with Syria again after the Assad regime is ousted. Iran? Possibly even before the mullahs are ousted (they're nothing if not practical). Israel? Its politicians are driving it straight down the path of international isolation and eventual destruction; it'll be a South African style pariah state within 10 years, but the real question is whether it will manage the sort of escape which South Africa managed. I don't expect it; there aren't enough good Israelis left thanks to selective immigration and emigration.
Well, the NY state legislature has not really functioned since IIRC the 19th century, so I think it's fair to say that its failure to do anything on gun control says nothing about guns.
Free inquiry continued in Central Asia (Merv and Samarkand) for a few more centuries until everything fell apart in various wars. From what I can tell your basic cultural outline is accurate.
"And some tell us that a “green” military, whichever one is first to get to that point, mostly freed from oil-sucking, will dominate the planet."
I think that's me who's saying that. I have been a student of history, and the unfortunate fact is that militaries matter. A lot. And have for about 5000 years.
" Is that the game? Jesus Lord, I would hope not…"
*shrug* I'm a realist. I would like it if the "green" military were a "UN peacekeeper / global police" military, rather than a "loot and conquer" military. And that's perfectly likely if we do things right. If on the other hand we do things wrong, it could be run by the worst people ever.
Joe: Google the Cornell University study on trapped methane released into the air -- through newly formed cracks leading to the surface, NOT to the well -- from shale fracking.
When you add the evidence up, fracking has not helped at all with the emissions problem, and has made things marginally worse. The fact that it's poisoning water supplies is the real issue, though.
The shutdown of the oldest, least efficient coal power plants -- driven by mercury regulations -- has made a *large* contribution to emissions reductions in the US. The fracking proponents are taking credit for that, but actually it was caused by the mercury regulations; it would have happened with or without fracking.
The wild card as far as I am concerned is Pakistan. I do not have a good understanding of Pakistani internal politics, but there appear to be a *lot* of fault lines.
I did learn one interesting thing through research. The remnants of feudalism (and tax farming) were abolished in India from the 1950s through the 1970s, but were never abolished in Pakistan. The class barriers in Pakistan remain more *institutionalized* than in India; in India they have receded to *socially entrenched* rather than *legally entrenched*.
Combine this with several parts of the country which appear to be treated as "colonized barbarians", and multiple ethnic/linguistic groups in the "main" part of the country, and a "deep state" substantially more entrenched and complicated than anything in Egypt, and you have something which looks awfully messy and awfully old-fashioned.
What are the bargains and deals, and traditions and shared culture, holding Pakistan together? It seems like it ought to fall apart the way the absurd borders of the African colonial-era states have mostly fallen apart. (Despite the borders on our maps, the "real" borders of African governance are elsewhere; I'd love to see a proper *de facto* map of where authority runs.) But Pakistan hasn't fallen apart. What's holding it together?
Israel's government has signed the death warrant for the state of Israel already, they just haven't noticed yet. It may take years or it may take decades. I think it's pretty much guaranteed that the state of "Israel" will be gone by 2060, though.
Meanwhile, history will continue to happen in the "Arab world", which (apart from Turkey) has been an anomaly of states frozen in time for several decades. I believe several of them are essentially propped up by oil, especially Saudi Arabia; I currently expect it to collapse only after the final shift away from oil comes (in 10-30 years), though if they have fewer reserves than they claim, or draw them down faster, it could collapse sooner.
The states which replace the sclerotic Arab dictatorships will be much more functional and vibrant and Israel's military will no longer be able to get away with the sort of arrogant raids and invasions which they used to do in Lebanon and so forth. Eventually the arrogant lunatics in charge of Israel will overreach, and that's when Israel will be destroyed. (Arrogant lunatics will remain in charge of Israel because the sane Israelis are all emigrating as quick as they can.)
Everything in geopolitics takes longer than we expect.
It is inevitable that the Syrian Baathist regime will fall. Still, it's taking years.
It is inevitable that the Israeli Apartheid regime will be isolated by international sanctions. Still, it's taking years.
It is inevitable that the Eurocracy will dissolve in the face of an angry, hungry, unemployed public. This is taking years, too.
It is inevitable that the US will dismantle its bloated military-industrial complex and retreat towards an isolationist stance. This is taking decades, possibly a century.
It is inevitable that the Republican Party in the US will collapse from the weight of its own denial of reality. I have no idea how long this will take.
Professor Cole, do you have any sense of timing? Because I don't.
From what I can tell, there is a point when change becomes guaranteed and inevitable. Then years, decades, or even centuries (in the ancient world) pass without visible change. Then suddenly everything changes in a matter of weeks or months, or even days. It would be much less stressful if it were possible to predict the timelines better.
The US is so behind the times. Worrying about oil?
The first solar-powered military will wipe the floor with every other military in the world, including the US, and the US military won't know what hit it.
Nah. Even a minor improvement in battery technology will eliminate the use of fuel-burning vehicles for all but specialty purposes, and there are major improvements in battery technology coming down the pike.
Probably not as early as 2018 though. 2025 I'd guess.
Bin Laden really has accomplished most of his goals, with the aid and assistance of G W Bush & co. (Apart from the goal of a new Caliphate, which is not going to happen.)
The push to get rid of US bases is an interesting transnational project; it's been kind of back-burner for a while, but I expect it will come back strong in the next couple of decades. Korea doesn't want us, Germany doesn't want us, Japan doesn't want us, the people of Qatar and Bahrain don't want us (even if the monarchies do), etc.
In the mean time, the thing to watch is the acceleration of civil disobedience combined with alternative governments. The anti-foreclosure movement is one to watch very closely, because when squatters' rights become more widely respected than the "bank's paper", that's the sign that the preconditions for the replacement of government are present.
The problem is that the Attorney General is above the law. Nobody has authority to prosecute him, because (unlike the UK) the US doesn't have private prosecutions.
Theoretically any federal grand jury could prosecute Holder, but grand juries are lied to by judges and prosecutors, and you have to get a majority of the random citizens on the grand jury to realize what their rights and duties are, *and* judges will (illegally and unconstitutionally) override "runaway grand juries".
(This is a fundamental flaw in the American legal system and will probably only be fixed after a revolution.)
How else to remove Holder? Impeachment doesn't work, because it's impossible; getting 67 votes in the US Senate will never happen for anything ever again. (This is another thing which is completely broken about the US government. It would require a Constitutional amendment to fix, but a Constitutional Amendment would have to go through the US Senate, so it won't happen until a revolution.)
That leaves voting the President out of office. But the two-party system created by Duverger's Law means that there's very little alternative. If we can get a Kucinich through the primaries we might have a chance, but the media deliberately sandbags such candidates.
On the whole, the US political and judicial system is completely broken. (I haven't even listed a quarter of the evidence for this; read Naked Capitalism for a lot more, and that's not all.) This is the sort of thing which causes revolutions, but it doesn't cause them for a *long time*, so I wouldn't be surprised if the revolution doesn't happen for another 50 years.
I still remember Gorbachev explaining that Putin should just retire now. He was asked "Do you really think Putin could do that?" His response: "I did."
I thought that European Court of Human Rights rulings were now enforceable within the EU (only) by some mechanism or other, due to the EU adopting ECHR law as part of its law. Check this?
The emigration of sane Israelis means that Livni has only a long shot chance of winning the PMs seat. I also doubt that she has the guts to evict the terrorist settlers and shoot those who resist, which is what is needed to provide peace.
If she does win and she does have the guts... she'd better have damned good bodyguards because of what happened to Rabin.
I don't think it makes sense to view it as a war. The US is engaged in a hostile domestic propaganda, and dirty-tricks program against Iran such as countries deploy against countries they later go to war with, yes.
But if it were a war, the US would have lost the war by now and would be retreating in defeat or being bled dry, just as has happened to the US in Iraq and Afganistan, only more so.
Joe, there's no "Congressionally-declared" war. The last declaration of war was in World War II. So all this "war setting" bullshit is just so much bull.
The lawless murderousness of the US government can really only be controlled by a functioning Congress. At this point, this won't happen short of a revolution.
However, a revolution is much, much more likely than most people think; the level of dysfunction of the national government in the US is quite spectacular, well beyond the levels which have caused revolutions in other countries. Gross economic mismanagment which impoverishes the majority of citizens (for 40+ years now) removes the mainstay of governmental support. Failure to provide environmental protection or a safe food supply removes other reasons for support of the government. Debt slavery in the form of student loans creates a well-educated class who have strong reason to overthrow the government. Abandonment of the rule of law eliminates that reason for people to support the government. Abandonment of good government in favor of cronyism eliminates yet another reason for people to support the government. Finally, the revelation of the Iraq and Afghan wars -- that the US military is basically incapable of winning wars -- dulls the effect of threats of force.
At this point the federal government in the US is mainly being propped up by force of habit. There is one remaining plank of legitimacy, which is honest elections. If they dare to steal another election (like the 2000 Presidential election was stolen), it will all be over very quickly. Even if they don't, the combination of gerrymandering and the malapportionment of the US Senate and the Electoral College make the legitimacy given by elections less than complete.
Unless there is proper reform, democratic reform, rule of law reform, or a full system to promote the general welfare (chicken in every pot), I give the US government less than 50 years.
'black friday' is becoming a smaller and smaller event every year. Also, higher sales on 'black friday' apparently correlate with LOWER sales for the full year.... it's a matter of people grabbing cheap stuff which they were going to buy anyway later.
It's a great summary. I have one important and scary thought, though. Capitalist dictatorship is remarkably unstable: it is prone to both economic destruction (due to its 'all the money in a few hands' philosophy') and violent collapse (due to the lack of nonviolent outlets for complaint).
The P.W. Boetha regime fell peacefully when his successor dismantled it, but every other one you mention -- and every other one I can think of -- collapsed violently.
The Park Chung-Hee regime in South Korea managed to avoid economic destruction through a focus on manufacturing and transportation, but that's also an exception: the others actively courted economic destruction.
"Attempts to limit the franchise, to ban unions, and to manipulate the electorate with bald-faced lies are all signs of a barracuda business class that secretly seeks its class interests above all others in society, and which is not afraid of workers and middle classes because the latter are apolitical, apathetic and disorganized."
But the barracuda business class should be afraid. Tick off enough people -- and the would-be capitalist dictators are ticking off the military rank-and-file too -- and eventually it doesn't matter how apolitical and disorganized they are, someone will shoot you. King Louis XVI also wasn't afraid of workers or middle classes.
Capitalist dictatorship is an inherently unstable and self-destructive "system".
How about Kuwait, Professor Cole? It seems like it's simmering to a boil.
Perhaps the best thing the US can do is to detach from its autocratic "allies" and stop selling weapons to them, while removing all our military facilities from the region (except perhaps in Turkey and India, which are probably democratic enough to survive). Seems unlikely that any administration will be sane enough to do that.
Well, South Africa didn't institute official "apartheid" until circa 1950 -- before that the bigotry of the South African government was expressed quite differently.
We may be witnessing a historic change in the form of the official government bigotry of Israel. Unfortunately, it may take 40 more years for the apartheid government to end, as it did for South Africa. And it may not go as smoothly.
The West cannot gain trust. It's too late for that. The opportunity to gain trust in Afghanistan was lost 10 years ago.
Get out and stop interfering; someone will take over sooner or later, perhaps the Taliban, or perhaps Iran will invade and conquer the area, or perhaps Pakistan will. As foreign invaders who have been screwing everything up for decades, the US simply has zero chance to improve anything.
These debates over the time of "ensoulment" have existed in Christianity and Judaism as well. The traditional Christian position is roughly 26 weeks / 180 days, or the first two trimesters, though there's certainly variation.
Placement of ensoulment near the time of viability is typical, because that makes *sense*.
"Ensoulment at conception" is a *distinctly minority* viewpoint which has historically been held only by a few sexist crackpots, like Augustine.
You have the absolute right to decide what happens with your body -- and if you choose to try to bring a baby to term, go for it.
On the other hand, pregancies frequently threaten the lives of women. Google "pre-eclampsia". (We are beginning to understand the evolutionary reasons why pregnancies frequently threaten women's lives.)
Women need the right to save their own lives and health, even if it kills the non-viable embryos within. That's just basic human rights. The adult woman has to have more rights than an embryo -- which is, in technical medical terms, a parasite.
David, you're wrong about Church history. The Roman Catholic Church likes to lie about its past history.
It's dug up people who were *minority* thinkers (as with the quotes you've found), who did not actually represent policy or doctrine during the period, and misrepresented them as the mainstream of Catholic thought. Mistranslation is also used to misrepresent early thinking.
In fact, Roman Catholic hostility to "pre-quickening" (first & second trimester) abortion dates mainly to the mid-19th century.
I concluded long ago that job one is to kill and replace our utterly corrupt American "news media", which is better described as right-wing propaganda. I don't know how to kill it except by telling everyone I meet to read foreign newspapers and blogs instead of the MSM.
The only government-mandated security measure which has been at all helpful so far is locking the cockpit doors. The other security measure which is helpful is that people now expect hijackers to be trying to destroy planes.
The rest of this stuff is just plain waste, but it makes money for some well-connected businessmen, so.
No, no. I've studied history. There was a period when the Republican Party preferred reality to ideology.
The last President to be fully part of that period was Dwight D. Eisenhower. There was still a trace of it in the 1960s and 1970s: Nixon occasionally had his lucid moments, when he wasn't completely paranoid, and declared "We are all Keynesians now", signed the Clean Air Act, opened diplomatic relations with China, etc.
Of course the Republican Party has been 100% fantasy since Ronald Reagan, so that's 32 years now. The time of sane Republicans was a very long time ago -- ancient history.
It's a very good question. This is currently a no-win situation for Assad. His bombing campaigns have created enough cities which will never be willing to respect his government again, that he has no plausible endgame. I suppose he could finish off with simple mass murder and attempt to move colonists from his family into the vacated cities, but he doesn't have the numbers for it.
Bullshit. Have you counted how many "number twos" the US has claimed to have killed? The al-Qaeda leadership is obviously easily replaced.
We've found tout that al-Qaeda was not defined by its leadership, but was a headless organization of guerrillas with spontaneous grassroots organization. The US has pretty much assisted the organization of that sort of terrorist group, by terrorizing civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
I'm beginning to think that Obama's problem is that he's too old -- mentally. He's thinking in old paradigms and has been unable to adjust to the world we now live in. So he's doing his best -- but (for example) he thinks of Israeli-Arab peace, where a modern person would think about containing the threat of insane Israeli governments. There are better domestic examples -- thinking of the Republicans as a legitimate political party when in fact the Republicans have degenerated into a fascist organization trying to overthrow elected government.
I have stopped paying attention to what the US government does internationally. It seems to me to be in the situation of the Brezhnev government of the USSR: able to stagger around and cause lots of trouble, but institutionally incapable of having any lasting international impact.
When watching international affairs, the thing to pay attention to is what the "live" actors are doing -- the ones who aren't hemmed in by a giant bureaucracy of habit and a legislature of gridlock driving them inevitably towards their doom.
I am very curious as to what Turkey is going to do.
Prior to and including WWII, the US basically dissolved the military after every war and started it back up again for the next war.
This allowed for *flexibility* and prevented rigidity of doctrine -- and flexibility was the way the Union approached war. The extreme case is seen in the Civil War, where Lincoln fired generals repeatedly.
During the Cold War, the military became a stultified bureaucracy. That was the end. It was incapable of adapting to the changes in warfare.
A competent warlord could now wipe the floor with the US military. We're kind of lucky we haven't had one yet.
Look up the "Millenium Challenge 2002". Your description of American generals is absolutely correct. The exceptional generals, who don't behave like spoilt children -- such as Paul Van Riper, or if you prefer Wesley Clark -- have all been forced out by now, mostly by the Bush administration. Obama made no effort to bring them back.
This behavior by the remnants of the old guard will merely drive voters into the hands of Morsi. (What other option do they have?)
This is following a true revolutionary paradigm, like the French Revolution; people will not tolerate a restoration of the old system, even if they will tolerate a restoration of the old leadership -- and they will tolerate a great deal in order to wipe out the ancien regime.
"What if the Syrian ships were within 12 miles from the shore of a European country?
Then they could be boarded, but they are not so stupid as to ply those waters."
Every shipment by ship to Syria has to go through one of the following points:
(1) The Suez (Egypt can inspect)
(2) Gibraltar (Morocco and/or Spain can inspect)
(3) The Bosporus (Turkey can inspect)
This means water-based arms shipments can be blockaded completely, unless Assad can load his ships in a country directly bordering the Mediterranean.
Air-based shipments can be halted if care is taken.
Land-based shipments must go through Turkey (which will block them), Iraqi Kurdistan (which could and probably would want to block them), Jordan (which could block them), Lebanon (check before entering the Mediterranean) or Israel (would it be willing to check?), or I suppose perhaps Saudi Arabia (would it be willing to check?)
In any case an arms embargo seems relatively easy to construct and even to enforce, with some very obvious countries as the weak points, countries subject to pressure in the international media.
Of course Assad may have plenty of weapons already on hand in Syria but that's another matter. Why no coordinated "coalition of the willing" arms embargo? It's a legal option under international law, and what's Assad gonna do in response, invade Turkey? I don't think so.
The sane thing to do, as was realized by the early democracies, is to -- as far as possible -- take a "hands-off" or neutral approach to dictatorships which have not worn out their welcome. While supporting actual democracies, and opposing unpopular dictatorships.
For some reason governments have kept finding short-term advantages in other policies. 🙁 It hasn't been healthy for democracy to do so.
"appears to have become"? Read your ancient history, the part which hasn't been destroyed by monsters like the ones who burned the Scientific Institute in Cairo.
It's *always* been a common technique in conflict or domination, as far back as writing goes. We have been struggling to get away from this sort of evil barbarism, but much of the world, including the US seems to be backsliding.
Regarding the police and army, the thing to do is to set up widely-trusted tribunals to hear cases of police abuses, and to remove the police *where they have a record of abuse*, while leaving those who have a record of protecting people in place.
"Clean house", in other words. It may be that the police in entire towns will be sacked, but not in the entire country.
My main objection to "boots on the ground" is competence, which you have not addressed above. If the US had a large population of soldiers who spoke Arabic, an officer corps prepared to cooperate with and take orders from the local Transitional Government, etc., I could see the US doing such an intervention.
Do we? I doubt it.
The question of *ability* is prominent. I would argue that a large number of the "limited wars" were started by people who knew for a fact that they couldn't execute full-scale wars. (Often they arguably couldn't competently execute limited wars either, but they thought they could -- this is probably an argument for shrinking the military to the point where it's not a temptation.)
You mean the Qaddafi Dictatorship, not the Libyan Government. The Libyan Government is located in Benghazi, has been for several weeks. Ask the Libyan ambassadors.
I'm making a point here. Qaddafi threw away his sources of legitimacy, without which nobody can rule.
Incidentally, if recent Somali history is anything to go by, this latest offensive -- and it is offensive! -- will have one of two results:
(1) Strengthening al-Shabaab and making them even more hostile to the West and their neighbors
(2) Replacing them with someone even worse, perhaps a government of pirate warlords, who will then wipe the floor with the invaders.
If we'd let the Islamic Courts Union run the country things would have settled down, but nooooo, the US had to interfere, again.
What he said. This article reads like it was written by someone with severe cognitive dissonance. The only way the facts in it make sense are to recognize that the interfering foreign troops have been making things worse and will never be accepted, yet the entire article is written from the point of view of.... the interfering foreign troops. Without saying "We're screwing up and should get out."
Well, we didn't exactly give them up. The 2000 election was stolen, and we repeatedly voted out the autocrats, only to discover more autocrats.
I think most people just haven't realized yet that our democracy is broken, so people haven't realized that it may take "extralegal" means (nonviolent protest) to restore our rights.
"Anybody who knows anything about Egypt understands that the junior officers in the military will abandon their posts before accepting orders to abort a popular uprising."
That's all they'd do?
It would be better if their reaction would be to take their divisions with them and order them to protect the protestors.... that would be the endgame.
Whatever the anti-USAPATRIOT caucus has in common, I respect Kucinich's ability to collect as many Republicans as he did, and I am interested in which Republicans he got.
That man is thinking outside the box, even if he's working inside it.
The Supreme Court is already controlled by reich wingers, 5-4 at least, and they have already taken over the government. With Obama's assistance in implementing their policies, including kidnapping and torture.
We lost those battles already. It's time to retreat, regroup, and organize, not back phonies.
I believe your analytical mistake is assuming that all Democrats are actually on the same page.
There are, within the elected Democrats:
(1) dishonest authoritarians like Obama
(2) deluded dopes
(3) actual activists who think inside-the-system work is worth it, like Kucinich
Don't toss the good with the bad. That's all I'm saying. Don't let us lose the voice of a Rush Holt just because we have so many Ben Nelsons.
You describe the behavior of the US power elite accurately. The fact that they seem unable to realize that this is not the world of the 19th century, and that since the overthrow of Mossadegh this type of strategy has been been backfiring catastrophically on the US,... well, I think they are stupid, stupid people.
I guess US manipulative power still extends as far as Honduras. It has already fallen apart completely in Venezuela and Bolivia, and mostly fallen apart in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran.
The power of the US MIC is smaller than it thinks it is, because they have forgotten entirely about "soft power". They can still cause a lot of trouble but they seem unable to actually secure their empire. Let us hope they never regain the intelligence to do so.
That question answers itself, doesn't it? Radical theocratic groups are always afraid of *competitors*, and even more afraid of democratic, collaborative, peaceful groups.
No, actually that is never validated. Old age and treachery are worthless without competence, and competence is what seems to have deserted the people backing the Mubarak regime.
The inability of the manipulators to find plausible-looking new faces quickly tells me that even if this revolution does not work out, some revolution will succeed soon.
The manipulators are no longer competent. They will therefore fail.
The only full democracy in the Middle East is Turkey.
(Israel doesn't count because of its apartheid policies on voting rights.) Iran's half-democratic, in that it has real elections to a parliament with real power, but they're manipulated and there's a second power base other than parliament -- sort of like the UK before the King lost his personal power.
GW Bush, who arrived in a stolen election and then ignored warnings of an attack until the World Trade Center was destroyed, as well as starting two wars (and losing both of them), as well as condoning the destruction of priceless archaeological history....
GW Bush also prevented the US from doing anything to address global warming for eight years, and singlehandedly sabotaged the Copenhagen Accords. This will cause more disaster, worldwide, than anything which has ever been done by any world leader.
GW Bush is the worst world leader in history, ever.
While the current US administration knows better, I suspect the Republican Party does NOT know better and *will* allow open repression and increase in unemployment if they get into power.
But the US has been like this, backing dictators abroad for the purpose of profits for a small elite, for a very long time. Since at least the Gilded Age -- the term "banana republic" refers to a South American Country controlled by a dictator for the benefit of one of the US's major corporations and the elite who control it.
And in the South the tradition goes back even further, with the plantation owners, controllers of huge numbers of enslaved people, holding this sort of behavior up as a positive virtue. The suppression of civil liberties domestically was a virtue to them, as well.
The US has improved over the generations, but it sadly has not shed the kleptocratic attitude in favor of a saner, more cooperative attitude.
I don't think that constitutes a plausible plan. We already know of army officers who have openly declared their allegiance to the protesters. An attempted bloodbath would probably be the trigger for a civil war.
Sure, the regime could well win such a civil war, but still, not a remotely reasonable plan. Enough civil war and anyone ambitious starts realizing he has a chance to be the new dictator, foreign neighbors start moving in, and pretty soon the whole region is aflame.
I would raise the important question: suppose these *are* food riots. Does Mubarak have the *ability* to address the demands for cheap bread, the way Sadat did? The prices currently are not the result of a simple political decision which is reverseable.
Erekat, in "negotiating style", is the Obama of the Palestinian Authority. Fatah is the Democrats.
That makes Israel's government the Republicans.
Sigh. It's pretty accurate, actually, fanatical racist religious nuts both.
Not that any of this matters, the area will be rendered uninhabitable by global warming in 50 years anyway, according to the current "business as usual" scenarios. Unless we all stop burning coal as soon as possible.
It's not going to be worth giving this system a name -- it's blatantly unstable: unable to provide for the needs of the populace, unable to address pressing environmental problems, unable even to maintain the financial system which is the source of the elite's wealth. It's just going to be another self-destructing, failed non-system of power grabs and "rule by men, not laws".
Difference is that Brave New World was sustainable. 1984 isn't, the Soviet bloc proved that -- the whole thing is going to self-destruct in one way or another, sometime after everyone stops seriously paying attention to the government.
Unfortunately, global warming and ocean acidification are going to catch up with us well before then, and start the extinction of humanity -- unless we halt coal burning as soon as possible.
Suzerainity (not sovereignty) was also the legal status of Tibet under China. China recognizing this would go a long way to eliminating a lot of trouble.
Oh, it's also basically the status of a number of islands with respect to various ex-colonial powers.
Hell, the US hasn't even been willing to stop pumping CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- which is the ultimate *cause* of the flooding in Pakistan.
"Even in the beginning stages of Catholic emancipation, Catholics were required to assert that they rejected the idea of the Pope having temporal power in order to get basic rights."
I'm not so sure this was a bad idea. Here in the US, our First Amendment even accepted people who announced that they want the US to be conquered by Hitler's armies in WWII. But in most countries, that would be considered traitorous. And back in the Renaissance, the Pope was still claiming that he had a *right to rule the world* and a *right to conquer in order to do so*. 😛 In fact, I don't think they've ever gotten rid of that first bit as official policy.
Asking people to renounce such claims by the Pope in order to participate in civil society is not as outlandish as it may seem to those who don't know the history; the thing is that the Pope was basically a warlord for most of the Middle Ages, with minor religious trappings. The Catholic Church became much more respectable *after* it had its temporal power broken by Italian Independence.
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Since never, obviously. JPE is just parroting nonsense he's heard.
Luckily, Juan's analysis does recognize this.
You don't, because you have been consistently incapable of understanding what the warmaking power is, legally.
And indeed, it is most likely that reform will come from other parties.
The Federalists and the Whigs are long gone. The same may happen to the Democrats and/or the Republicans.
That's malfeasance and grounds for removal of tenure. Harvard's law faculty should do that.
If they don't, Harvard Law School should be de-accredited.
It's also grounds for revocation of Barron's law license, though I forget the precise terminology for why.
No, it doesn't require that. It requires that the Executive Branch *claim* that such intelligence exists.
The executive branch has a long record of lying about such things.
If it required that the executive branch present such intelligence to an impartial court, that would be *an entirely different situation*.
Mitt Romney is not a free market capitalist. Look beyond the slogans and you'll see that he's very much in favor of government working as an agent of corporate CEOs.
(Which it does waaaay too much in the US -- read the _Naked Capitalism_ blog for some examples).
I don't know whether Netenyahu is a free marketeer or a corporatist-should-own-government type, but I do know what Romney was.
Thankfully, Iran has hacked the drones. That should throw a spanner in further attempts to cause trouble on the part the loonies in the US military-industrial complex.
Oh, and Bill: if the US support for tyrannical Middle Eastern governments like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were to stop, and the US wars against various Islamic countries were to stop, then al-Qaeda's "war" against the US would also stop.
The US started this fight, although bad education in the US means that most people in the US don't realize this.
Bill: al-Qaeda's predecessors were funded by the US in Afghanistan to "fight the Soviets".
bin Laden was driven to create Al-Qaeda due to the US's funding and support for the really, really evil government of Saudi Arabia.
The US drone program is just a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda It is accomplishing precisely the opposite of its stated goals -- it is creating a fertile environment in which people, knowing that the US randomly murders innocent people all the time, are happy to sign up for anti-US organizations.
It is one of the stupidest things the US has ever done.
From a completely cold-blooded perspective, it's also worth noting that the high-tech drone murder system isn't helping US interests at all. As far as we can tell, the drone murders are a major recruitment tool for any anti-US organization. And they haven't actually done any lasting damage to any of the many anti-US organizations which already exist.
And in Somalia, after decades of American-funded interference, Al-shabaab is still winning. First we destroyed the Islamic Courts Union, who were moderates; this caused them to be replaced with Al-Shabaab, who are much more intolerant. Which probably makes them better fighters.
Stupid, stupid behavior by a decaying, incompetent military. The US has been carefully creating extremely powerful guerilla forces opposing it. In South America, I guess the US has been doing this for nearly 200 years -- and the locals have wised up enough that they are finally capable of stopping the US before it starts, most of the time.
It will take a little longer for the African and Middle Eastern guerrilla movements to figure out the correct anti-US tactics, because they aren't talking to the South Americans, but it won't take that many more years. The US is already consistently losing its imperial adventures; soon it will lose *faster*.
We may get a big-spending government in 2020. I see little hope for 2016, and no hope until President Hoover II is out of office.
(I'm referring to the business executives who think trained workers spring from the head of Zeus as dumbasses.)
Travis: minor point. In the 1930s businesses *trained* their workers. Now jerkass business executives claiming "we can't find trained workers". Well, train them, dumbass.
Yep. Who the hell is going to secure the nuclear weapons?
States don't collapse that often in recent years, except in Africa, where most of the governments have only nominal control over large parts of their claimed territory -- this might be the place to look for precedent.
Yeah. I expect Turkey will be on good terms with Syria again after the Assad regime is ousted. Iran? Possibly even before the mullahs are ousted (they're nothing if not practical). Israel? Its politicians are driving it straight down the path of international isolation and eventual destruction; it'll be a South African style pariah state within 10 years, but the real question is whether it will manage the sort of escape which South Africa managed. I don't expect it; there aren't enough good Israelis left thanks to selective immigration and emigration.
Well, the NY state legislature has not really functioned since IIRC the 19th century, so I think it's fair to say that its failure to do anything on gun control says nothing about guns.
In the period Juan is talking about, NOBODY respected women. It was a lot worse than back in ancient Egypt.
Free inquiry continued in Central Asia (Merv and Samarkand) for a few more centuries until everything fell apart in various wars. From what I can tell your basic cultural outline is accurate.
Actually, future battery technology (currently in design and development) is the way to use wind or sun overnight.
I know the people designing it.
From what I've read, residential wind usually has a very poor efficiency. (Residential *solar* on the other hand is excellent.)
"And some tell us that a “green” military, whichever one is first to get to that point, mostly freed from oil-sucking, will dominate the planet."
I think that's me who's saying that. I have been a student of history, and the unfortunate fact is that militaries matter. A lot. And have for about 5000 years.
" Is that the game? Jesus Lord, I would hope not…"
*shrug* I'm a realist. I would like it if the "green" military were a "UN peacekeeper / global police" military, rather than a "loot and conquer" military. And that's perfectly likely if we do things right. If on the other hand we do things wrong, it could be run by the worst people ever.
Joe: Google the Cornell University study on trapped methane released into the air -- through newly formed cracks leading to the surface, NOT to the well -- from shale fracking.
When you add the evidence up, fracking has not helped at all with the emissions problem, and has made things marginally worse. The fact that it's poisoning water supplies is the real issue, though.
The shutdown of the oldest, least efficient coal power plants -- driven by mercury regulations -- has made a *large* contribution to emissions reductions in the US. The fracking proponents are taking credit for that, but actually it was caused by the mercury regulations; it would have happened with or without fracking.
The wild card as far as I am concerned is Pakistan. I do not have a good understanding of Pakistani internal politics, but there appear to be a *lot* of fault lines.
I did learn one interesting thing through research. The remnants of feudalism (and tax farming) were abolished in India from the 1950s through the 1970s, but were never abolished in Pakistan. The class barriers in Pakistan remain more *institutionalized* than in India; in India they have receded to *socially entrenched* rather than *legally entrenched*.
Combine this with several parts of the country which appear to be treated as "colonized barbarians", and multiple ethnic/linguistic groups in the "main" part of the country, and a "deep state" substantially more entrenched and complicated than anything in Egypt, and you have something which looks awfully messy and awfully old-fashioned.
What are the bargains and deals, and traditions and shared culture, holding Pakistan together? It seems like it ought to fall apart the way the absurd borders of the African colonial-era states have mostly fallen apart. (Despite the borders on our maps, the "real" borders of African governance are elsewhere; I'd love to see a proper *de facto* map of where authority runs.) But Pakistan hasn't fallen apart. What's holding it together?
Israel's government has signed the death warrant for the state of Israel already, they just haven't noticed yet. It may take years or it may take decades. I think it's pretty much guaranteed that the state of "Israel" will be gone by 2060, though.
Meanwhile, history will continue to happen in the "Arab world", which (apart from Turkey) has been an anomaly of states frozen in time for several decades. I believe several of them are essentially propped up by oil, especially Saudi Arabia; I currently expect it to collapse only after the final shift away from oil comes (in 10-30 years), though if they have fewer reserves than they claim, or draw them down faster, it could collapse sooner.
The states which replace the sclerotic Arab dictatorships will be much more functional and vibrant and Israel's military will no longer be able to get away with the sort of arrogant raids and invasions which they used to do in Lebanon and so forth. Eventually the arrogant lunatics in charge of Israel will overreach, and that's when Israel will be destroyed. (Arrogant lunatics will remain in charge of Israel because the sane Israelis are all emigrating as quick as they can.)
Everything in geopolitics takes longer than we expect.
It is inevitable that the Syrian Baathist regime will fall. Still, it's taking years.
It is inevitable that the Israeli Apartheid regime will be isolated by international sanctions. Still, it's taking years.
It is inevitable that the Eurocracy will dissolve in the face of an angry, hungry, unemployed public. This is taking years, too.
It is inevitable that the US will dismantle its bloated military-industrial complex and retreat towards an isolationist stance. This is taking decades, possibly a century.
It is inevitable that the Republican Party in the US will collapse from the weight of its own denial of reality. I have no idea how long this will take.
Professor Cole, do you have any sense of timing? Because I don't.
From what I can tell, there is a point when change becomes guaranteed and inevitable. Then years, decades, or even centuries (in the ancient world) pass without visible change. Then suddenly everything changes in a matter of weeks or months, or even days. It would be much less stressful if it were possible to predict the timelines better.
The US is so behind the times. Worrying about oil?
The first solar-powered military will wipe the floor with every other military in the world, including the US, and the US military won't know what hit it.
Nah. Even a minor improvement in battery technology will eliminate the use of fuel-burning vehicles for all but specialty purposes, and there are major improvements in battery technology coming down the pike.
Probably not as early as 2018 though. 2025 I'd guess.
Bin Laden really has accomplished most of his goals, with the aid and assistance of G W Bush & co. (Apart from the goal of a new Caliphate, which is not going to happen.)
The push to get rid of US bases is an interesting transnational project; it's been kind of back-burner for a while, but I expect it will come back strong in the next couple of decades. Korea doesn't want us, Germany doesn't want us, Japan doesn't want us, the people of Qatar and Bahrain don't want us (even if the monarchies do), etc.
And, due to 'baked in' global warming (we needed to get off of fossil fuels in the 2000s), a lot of people will die even afterwards.
The ACLU and EFF are still on the side of good, while still trying to work within the system.
I don't know what you think of as the "institutional left", but apparently not them.
In the mean time, the thing to watch is the acceleration of civil disobedience combined with alternative governments. The anti-foreclosure movement is one to watch very closely, because when squatters' rights become more widely respected than the "bank's paper", that's the sign that the preconditions for the replacement of government are present.
The problem is that the Attorney General is above the law. Nobody has authority to prosecute him, because (unlike the UK) the US doesn't have private prosecutions.
Theoretically any federal grand jury could prosecute Holder, but grand juries are lied to by judges and prosecutors, and you have to get a majority of the random citizens on the grand jury to realize what their rights and duties are, *and* judges will (illegally and unconstitutionally) override "runaway grand juries".
(This is a fundamental flaw in the American legal system and will probably only be fixed after a revolution.)
How else to remove Holder? Impeachment doesn't work, because it's impossible; getting 67 votes in the US Senate will never happen for anything ever again. (This is another thing which is completely broken about the US government. It would require a Constitutional amendment to fix, but a Constitutional Amendment would have to go through the US Senate, so it won't happen until a revolution.)
That leaves voting the President out of office. But the two-party system created by Duverger's Law means that there's very little alternative. If we can get a Kucinich through the primaries we might have a chance, but the media deliberately sandbags such candidates.
On the whole, the US political and judicial system is completely broken. (I haven't even listed a quarter of the evidence for this; read Naked Capitalism for a lot more, and that's not all.) This is the sort of thing which causes revolutions, but it doesn't cause them for a *long time*, so I wouldn't be surprised if the revolution doesn't happen for another 50 years.
"Is Obama a complete jellyfish?"
Look at his behavior offering the Republican terrorists in Congress pre-emptive concessions.
In short, YES.
I still remember Gorbachev explaining that Putin should just retire now. He was asked "Do you really think Putin could do that?" His response: "I did."
Unfortunately, the only way to avoid the civilian casualties of this sort of war is for oppressive, unpopular regimes to leave peacefully.
Gaah. I really hope the rights advocates manage to unify on a push for a NO vote rather than boycotting the election.
You should only boycott elections if the elections are actually being *stolen*, not for any other reason.
Indeed. I can see why the saying was attributed to Talleyrand, the ultimate pragmatist.
It is always upsetting when governments act crazy. Evil, evil we can deal with. Crazy is a lot harder to deal with.
I thought that European Court of Human Rights rulings were now enforceable within the EU (only) by some mechanism or other, due to the EU adopting ECHR law as part of its law. Check this?
The emigration of sane Israelis means that Livni has only a long shot chance of winning the PMs seat. I also doubt that she has the guts to evict the terrorist settlers and shoot those who resist, which is what is needed to provide peace.
If she does win and she does have the guts... she'd better have damned good bodyguards because of what happened to Rabin.
Rabin seems to have realized eventually that expansionism was a fool's game and decided to actually support a Palestinian state.
For his troubles, he was assassinated by an extremist right-wing Israeli.
I don't think it makes sense to view it as a war. The US is engaged in a hostile domestic propaganda, and dirty-tricks program against Iran such as countries deploy against countries they later go to war with, yes.
But if it were a war, the US would have lost the war by now and would be retreating in defeat or being bled dry, just as has happened to the US in Iraq and Afganistan, only more so.
Joe, there's no "Congressionally-declared" war. The last declaration of war was in World War II. So all this "war setting" bullshit is just so much bull.
The lawless murderousness of the US government can really only be controlled by a functioning Congress. At this point, this won't happen short of a revolution.
However, a revolution is much, much more likely than most people think; the level of dysfunction of the national government in the US is quite spectacular, well beyond the levels which have caused revolutions in other countries. Gross economic mismanagment which impoverishes the majority of citizens (for 40+ years now) removes the mainstay of governmental support. Failure to provide environmental protection or a safe food supply removes other reasons for support of the government. Debt slavery in the form of student loans creates a well-educated class who have strong reason to overthrow the government. Abandonment of the rule of law eliminates that reason for people to support the government. Abandonment of good government in favor of cronyism eliminates yet another reason for people to support the government. Finally, the revelation of the Iraq and Afghan wars -- that the US military is basically incapable of winning wars -- dulls the effect of threats of force.
At this point the federal government in the US is mainly being propped up by force of habit. There is one remaining plank of legitimacy, which is honest elections. If they dare to steal another election (like the 2000 Presidential election was stolen), it will all be over very quickly. Even if they don't, the combination of gerrymandering and the malapportionment of the US Senate and the Electoral College make the legitimacy given by elections less than complete.
Unless there is proper reform, democratic reform, rule of law reform, or a full system to promote the general welfare (chicken in every pot), I give the US government less than 50 years.
'black friday' is becoming a smaller and smaller event every year. Also, higher sales on 'black friday' apparently correlate with LOWER sales for the full year.... it's a matter of people grabbing cheap stuff which they were going to buy anyway later.
So don't overread the American situation.
On a different topic, I just read this article of yours: link to juancole.com
It's a great summary. I have one important and scary thought, though. Capitalist dictatorship is remarkably unstable: it is prone to both economic destruction (due to its 'all the money in a few hands' philosophy') and violent collapse (due to the lack of nonviolent outlets for complaint).
The P.W. Boetha regime fell peacefully when his successor dismantled it, but every other one you mention -- and every other one I can think of -- collapsed violently.
The Park Chung-Hee regime in South Korea managed to avoid economic destruction through a focus on manufacturing and transportation, but that's also an exception: the others actively courted economic destruction.
"Attempts to limit the franchise, to ban unions, and to manipulate the electorate with bald-faced lies are all signs of a barracuda business class that secretly seeks its class interests above all others in society, and which is not afraid of workers and middle classes because the latter are apolitical, apathetic and disorganized."
But the barracuda business class should be afraid. Tick off enough people -- and the would-be capitalist dictators are ticking off the military rank-and-file too -- and eventually it doesn't matter how apolitical and disorganized they are, someone will shoot you. King Louis XVI also wasn't afraid of workers or middle classes.
Capitalist dictatorship is an inherently unstable and self-destructive "system".
How about Kuwait, Professor Cole? It seems like it's simmering to a boil.
Perhaps the best thing the US can do is to detach from its autocratic "allies" and stop selling weapons to them, while removing all our military facilities from the region (except perhaps in Turkey and India, which are probably democratic enough to survive). Seems unlikely that any administration will be sane enough to do that.
Well, South Africa didn't institute official "apartheid" until circa 1950 -- before that the bigotry of the South African government was expressed quite differently.
We may be witnessing a historic change in the form of the official government bigotry of Israel. Unfortunately, it may take 40 more years for the apartheid government to end, as it did for South Africa. And it may not go as smoothly.
The West cannot gain trust. It's too late for that. The opportunity to gain trust in Afghanistan was lost 10 years ago.
Get out and stop interfering; someone will take over sooner or later, perhaps the Taliban, or perhaps Iran will invade and conquer the area, or perhaps Pakistan will. As foreign invaders who have been screwing everything up for decades, the US simply has zero chance to improve anything.
He has never "joined in a prayer for the destruction of the Jews". As usual, Zionist extremists make stuff up. Your own link discredits you.
These debates over the time of "ensoulment" have existed in Christianity and Judaism as well. The traditional Christian position is roughly 26 weeks / 180 days, or the first two trimesters, though there's certainly variation.
Placement of ensoulment near the time of viability is typical, because that makes *sense*.
"Ensoulment at conception" is a *distinctly minority* viewpoint which has historically been held only by a few sexist crackpots, like Augustine.
Pregnancies can kill.
You have the absolute right to decide what happens with your body -- and if you choose to try to bring a baby to term, go for it.
On the other hand, pregancies frequently threaten the lives of women. Google "pre-eclampsia". (We are beginning to understand the evolutionary reasons why pregnancies frequently threaten women's lives.)
Women need the right to save their own lives and health, even if it kills the non-viable embryos within. That's just basic human rights. The adult woman has to have more rights than an embryo -- which is, in technical medical terms, a parasite.
David, you're wrong about Church history. The Roman Catholic Church likes to lie about its past history.
It's dug up people who were *minority* thinkers (as with the quotes you've found), who did not actually represent policy or doctrine during the period, and misrepresented them as the mainstream of Catholic thought. Mistranslation is also used to misrepresent early thinking.
In fact, Roman Catholic hostility to "pre-quickening" (first & second trimester) abortion dates mainly to the mid-19th century.
I concluded long ago that job one is to kill and replace our utterly corrupt American "news media", which is better described as right-wing propaganda. I don't know how to kill it except by telling everyone I meet to read foreign newspapers and blogs instead of the MSM.
None of these machines do any damn good.
The only government-mandated security measure which has been at all helpful so far is locking the cockpit doors. The other security measure which is helpful is that people now expect hijackers to be trying to destroy planes.
The rest of this stuff is just plain waste, but it makes money for some well-connected businessmen, so.
No, no. I've studied history. There was a period when the Republican Party preferred reality to ideology.
The last President to be fully part of that period was Dwight D. Eisenhower. There was still a trace of it in the 1960s and 1970s: Nixon occasionally had his lucid moments, when he wasn't completely paranoid, and declared "We are all Keynesians now", signed the Clean Air Act, opened diplomatic relations with China, etc.
Of course the Republican Party has been 100% fantasy since Ronald Reagan, so that's 32 years now. The time of sane Republicans was a very long time ago -- ancient history.
It's a very good question. This is currently a no-win situation for Assad. His bombing campaigns have created enough cities which will never be willing to respect his government again, that he has no plausible endgame. I suppose he could finish off with simple mass murder and attempt to move colonists from his family into the vacated cities, but he doesn't have the numbers for it.
Base the Fleet in India. There's no reason the US should have ships in the Persian Gulf, though we might need them in the Indian Ocean.
Bullshit. Have you counted how many "number twos" the US has claimed to have killed? The al-Qaeda leadership is obviously easily replaced.
We've found tout that al-Qaeda was not defined by its leadership, but was a headless organization of guerrillas with spontaneous grassroots organization. The US has pretty much assisted the organization of that sort of terrorist group, by terrorizing civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
I'm beginning to think that Obama's problem is that he's too old -- mentally. He's thinking in old paradigms and has been unable to adjust to the world we now live in. So he's doing his best -- but (for example) he thinks of Israeli-Arab peace, where a modern person would think about containing the threat of insane Israeli governments. There are better domestic examples -- thinking of the Republicans as a legitimate political party when in fact the Republicans have degenerated into a fascist organization trying to overthrow elected government.
I have stopped paying attention to what the US government does internationally. It seems to me to be in the situation of the Brezhnev government of the USSR: able to stagger around and cause lots of trouble, but institutionally incapable of having any lasting international impact.
When watching international affairs, the thing to pay attention to is what the "live" actors are doing -- the ones who aren't hemmed in by a giant bureaucracy of habit and a legislature of gridlock driving them inevitably towards their doom.
I am very curious as to what Turkey is going to do.
Prior to and including WWII, the US basically dissolved the military after every war and started it back up again for the next war.
This allowed for *flexibility* and prevented rigidity of doctrine -- and flexibility was the way the Union approached war. The extreme case is seen in the Civil War, where Lincoln fired generals repeatedly.
During the Cold War, the military became a stultified bureaucracy. That was the end. It was incapable of adapting to the changes in warfare.
A competent warlord could now wipe the floor with the US military. We're kind of lucky we haven't had one yet.
Look up the "Millenium Challenge 2002". Your description of American generals is absolutely correct. The exceptional generals, who don't behave like spoilt children -- such as Paul Van Riper, or if you prefer Wesley Clark -- have all been forced out by now, mostly by the Bush administration. Obama made no effort to bring them back.
This behavior by the remnants of the old guard will merely drive voters into the hands of Morsi. (What other option do they have?)
This is following a true revolutionary paradigm, like the French Revolution; people will not tolerate a restoration of the old system, even if they will tolerate a restoration of the old leadership -- and they will tolerate a great deal in order to wipe out the ancien regime.
"What if the Syrian ships were within 12 miles from the shore of a European country?
Then they could be boarded, but they are not so stupid as to ply those waters."
Every shipment by ship to Syria has to go through one of the following points:
(1) The Suez (Egypt can inspect)
(2) Gibraltar (Morocco and/or Spain can inspect)
(3) The Bosporus (Turkey can inspect)
This means water-based arms shipments can be blockaded completely, unless Assad can load his ships in a country directly bordering the Mediterranean.
Air-based shipments can be halted if care is taken.
Land-based shipments must go through Turkey (which will block them), Iraqi Kurdistan (which could and probably would want to block them), Jordan (which could block them), Lebanon (check before entering the Mediterranean) or Israel (would it be willing to check?), or I suppose perhaps Saudi Arabia (would it be willing to check?)
In any case an arms embargo seems relatively easy to construct and even to enforce, with some very obvious countries as the weak points, countries subject to pressure in the international media.
Of course Assad may have plenty of weapons already on hand in Syria but that's another matter. Why no coordinated "coalition of the willing" arms embargo? It's a legal option under international law, and what's Assad gonna do in response, invade Turkey? I don't think so.
The sane thing to do, as was realized by the early democracies, is to -- as far as possible -- take a "hands-off" or neutral approach to dictatorships which have not worn out their welcome. While supporting actual democracies, and opposing unpopular dictatorships.
For some reason governments have kept finding short-term advantages in other policies. 🙁 It hasn't been healthy for democracy to do so.
"appears to have become"? Read your ancient history, the part which hasn't been destroyed by monsters like the ones who burned the Scientific Institute in Cairo.
It's *always* been a common technique in conflict or domination, as far back as writing goes. We have been struggling to get away from this sort of evil barbarism, but much of the world, including the US seems to be backsliding.
Those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it.
And by losing the works of the past, it becomes impossible to know the past.
Not quite the burning of the Library at Alexandria, but it ranks up there in the annals of destruction of history and knowledge.
This is the worst news I have heard since the Iraq war.
If they can pull off a Portugal-style transition to democracy, I would be most impressed.
Portugal did. No reason Libya couldn't.
Regarding the police and army, the thing to do is to set up widely-trusted tribunals to hear cases of police abuses, and to remove the police *where they have a record of abuse*, while leaving those who have a record of protecting people in place.
"Clean house", in other words. It may be that the police in entire towns will be sacked, but not in the entire country.
My main objection to "boots on the ground" is competence, which you have not addressed above. If the US had a large population of soldiers who spoke Arabic, an officer corps prepared to cooperate with and take orders from the local Transitional Government, etc., I could see the US doing such an intervention.
Do we? I doubt it.
The question of *ability* is prominent. I would argue that a large number of the "limited wars" were started by people who knew for a fact that they couldn't execute full-scale wars. (Often they arguably couldn't competently execute limited wars either, but they thought they could -- this is probably an argument for shrinking the military to the point where it's not a temptation.)
You mean the Qaddafi Dictatorship, not the Libyan Government. The Libyan Government is located in Benghazi, has been for several weeks. Ask the Libyan ambassadors.
I'm making a point here. Qaddafi threw away his sources of legitimacy, without which nobody can rule.
Incidentally, if recent Somali history is anything to go by, this latest offensive -- and it is offensive! -- will have one of two results:
(1) Strengthening al-Shabaab and making them even more hostile to the West and their neighbors
(2) Replacing them with someone even worse, perhaps a government of pirate warlords, who will then wipe the floor with the invaders.
If we'd let the Islamic Courts Union run the country things would have settled down, but nooooo, the US had to interfere, again.
What he said. This article reads like it was written by someone with severe cognitive dissonance. The only way the facts in it make sense are to recognize that the interfering foreign troops have been making things worse and will never be accepted, yet the entire article is written from the point of view of.... the interfering foreign troops. Without saying "We're screwing up and should get out."
Well, we didn't exactly give them up. The 2000 election was stolen, and we repeatedly voted out the autocrats, only to discover more autocrats.
I think most people just haven't realized yet that our democracy is broken, so people haven't realized that it may take "extralegal" means (nonviolent protest) to restore our rights.
Freedom House is located in the US and receives funding from operations closely attached to the US government.
Despite their inherent bias, I bet the US position in their rankings will drop. Again. I'm not sure how high Tunisia will rise, though.
"Anybody who knows anything about Egypt understands that the junior officers in the military will abandon their posts before accepting orders to abort a popular uprising."
That's all they'd do?
It would be better if their reaction would be to take their divisions with them and order them to protect the protestors.... that would be the endgame.
Whatever the anti-USAPATRIOT caucus has in common, I respect Kucinich's ability to collect as many Republicans as he did, and I am interested in which Republicans he got.
That man is thinking outside the box, even if he's working inside it.
The Supreme Court is already controlled by reich wingers, 5-4 at least, and they have already taken over the government. With Obama's assistance in implementing their policies, including kidnapping and torture.
We lost those battles already. It's time to retreat, regroup, and organize, not back phonies.
Ross Perot. John Anderson. The left will not be herded.
I believe your analytical mistake is assuming that all Democrats are actually on the same page.
There are, within the elected Democrats:
(1) dishonest authoritarians like Obama
(2) deluded dopes
(3) actual activists who think inside-the-system work is worth it, like Kucinich
Don't toss the good with the bad. That's all I'm saying. Don't let us lose the voice of a Rush Holt just because we have so many Ben Nelsons.
You describe the behavior of the US power elite accurately. The fact that they seem unable to realize that this is not the world of the 19th century, and that since the overthrow of Mossadegh this type of strategy has been been backfiring catastrophically on the US,... well, I think they are stupid, stupid people.
I guess US manipulative power still extends as far as Honduras. It has already fallen apart completely in Venezuela and Bolivia, and mostly fallen apart in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran.
The power of the US MIC is smaller than it thinks it is, because they have forgotten entirely about "soft power". They can still cause a lot of trouble but they seem unable to actually secure their empire. Let us hope they never regain the intelligence to do so.
That question answers itself, doesn't it? Radical theocratic groups are always afraid of *competitors*, and even more afraid of democratic, collaborative, peaceful groups.
No, actually that is never validated. Old age and treachery are worthless without competence, and competence is what seems to have deserted the people backing the Mubarak regime.
The inability of the manipulators to find plausible-looking new faces quickly tells me that even if this revolution does not work out, some revolution will succeed soon.
The manipulators are no longer competent. They will therefore fail.
The only full democracy in the Middle East is Turkey.
(Israel doesn't count because of its apartheid policies on voting rights.) Iran's half-democratic, in that it has real elections to a parliament with real power, but they're manipulated and there's a second power base other than parliament -- sort of like the UK before the King lost his personal power.
GW Bush, who arrived in a stolen election and then ignored warnings of an attack until the World Trade Center was destroyed, as well as starting two wars (and losing both of them), as well as condoning the destruction of priceless archaeological history....
GW Bush also prevented the US from doing anything to address global warming for eight years, and singlehandedly sabotaged the Copenhagen Accords. This will cause more disaster, worldwide, than anything which has ever been done by any world leader.
GW Bush is the worst world leader in history, ever.
While the current US administration knows better, I suspect the Republican Party does NOT know better and *will* allow open repression and increase in unemployment if they get into power.
But the US has been like this, backing dictators abroad for the purpose of profits for a small elite, for a very long time. Since at least the Gilded Age -- the term "banana republic" refers to a South American Country controlled by a dictator for the benefit of one of the US's major corporations and the elite who control it.
And in the South the tradition goes back even further, with the plantation owners, controllers of huge numbers of enslaved people, holding this sort of behavior up as a positive virtue. The suppression of civil liberties domestically was a virtue to them, as well.
The US has improved over the generations, but it sadly has not shed the kleptocratic attitude in favor of a saner, more cooperative attitude.
Hmm. I think the morons in the US power elite may think of Egypt that way. In reality, that seems almost certain to be untrue.
I don't think that constitutes a plausible plan. We already know of army officers who have openly declared their allegiance to the protesters. An attempted bloodbath would probably be the trigger for a civil war.
Sure, the regime could well win such a civil war, but still, not a remotely reasonable plan. Enough civil war and anyone ambitious starts realizing he has a chance to be the new dictator, foreign neighbors start moving in, and pretty soon the whole region is aflame.
I would raise the important question: suppose these *are* food riots. Does Mubarak have the *ability* to address the demands for cheap bread, the way Sadat did? The prices currently are not the result of a simple political decision which is reverseable.
The evidence for the Mossad setting up Hizbollah and Hamas is so well known I think it's linked from Wikipedia. It came out literally decades ago.
Erekat, in "negotiating style", is the Obama of the Palestinian Authority. Fatah is the Democrats.
That makes Israel's government the Republicans.
Sigh. It's pretty accurate, actually, fanatical racist religious nuts both.
Not that any of this matters, the area will be rendered uninhabitable by global warming in 50 years anyway, according to the current "business as usual" scenarios. Unless we all stop burning coal as soon as possible.
It's not going to be worth giving this system a name -- it's blatantly unstable: unable to provide for the needs of the populace, unable to address pressing environmental problems, unable even to maintain the financial system which is the source of the elite's wealth. It's just going to be another self-destructing, failed non-system of power grabs and "rule by men, not laws".
Difference is that Brave New World was sustainable. 1984 isn't, the Soviet bloc proved that -- the whole thing is going to self-destruct in one way or another, sometime after everyone stops seriously paying attention to the government.
Unfortunately, global warming and ocean acidification are going to catch up with us well before then, and start the extinction of humanity -- unless we halt coal burning as soon as possible.
Suzerainity (not sovereignty) was also the legal status of Tibet under China. China recognizing this would go a long way to eliminating a lot of trouble.
Oh, it's also basically the status of a number of islands with respect to various ex-colonial powers.
Hell, the US hasn't even been willing to stop pumping CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- which is the ultimate *cause* of the flooding in Pakistan.
Why haven't we done anything about that?
"Even in the beginning stages of Catholic emancipation, Catholics were required to assert that they rejected the idea of the Pope having temporal power in order to get basic rights."
I'm not so sure this was a bad idea. Here in the US, our First Amendment even accepted people who announced that they want the US to be conquered by Hitler's armies in WWII. But in most countries, that would be considered traitorous. And back in the Renaissance, the Pope was still claiming that he had a *right to rule the world* and a *right to conquer in order to do so*. 😛 In fact, I don't think they've ever gotten rid of that first bit as official policy.
Asking people to renounce such claims by the Pope in order to participate in civil society is not as outlandish as it may seem to those who don't know the history; the thing is that the Pope was basically a warlord for most of the Middle Ages, with minor religious trappings. The Catholic Church became much more respectable *after* it had its temporal power broken by Italian Independence.