Low Information Voters... a vanishing breed!

 Dow 7000 anyone? Get a rebate check for $300? Increase taxes to cover it George giveth and he taketh away.  

George W. Bush may be the greatest MBA ever matriculated in that he ran the market up nearly 100% and returned it lower at the end of his power than he found it...and he pushed the future of the world, which depends upon orderly markets, over the side.  Is this is the end of capitalism and the advent of sane international policy...or it is the more likely sellout of the real estate of the US to the Asian banking with Mitsubishi of Japan taking the lead position already having large interests in California banks?  

The debt that we are being asked to assume as taxpayers is being transferred to Asia with corporate dealmakers based in the United States selling bank assurances over the Pacific basin.  --Now, the conservative estimates are that China holds $400 Billion of U.S. mortgages...where does it lead to when the Ponzi scheme of US Wall Street capitalism is evident to everyone? War with China ?  Nukes in our future, flying everywhere!  We get to be the generation which failed the world.   

We are being asked to loan money to bankers (through our tax obligation) who in theory will loan it to businesses which manufacture goods that they attach a profit to and sell them back to us. We get to pay twice and pick up all the commissions throughout the entire process.  But those upper crusters accounting themselves as businesses can buy what they personally need at cost. 

By sub-contracting every interaction within the economy they seek to monopolize capital-flow through the Ponzi scheme of capitalism. There has never been any justification for this level of wealth transfer. These large accumulations are dangerous to the social structure.

John McCain wants to give full time tax filers $5000 US worth of health money. That will cover the cost of one emergency room visit per family. Not content with diluting the labor market with increased immigration, John offers to pull your teeth for free but if you want to replace them you are out of pocket. Of course there's no job now and you find it difficult to feed and house yourself and medicine and dentistry are beyond your budget. But if you are a US Veteran or Merchant Marine or a National Politician you get a full ride. Everyone else gets the opportunity to decay gracefully.  

John McCain is hiding in a false universe. He is 72 years old and claiming to be a Viet Nam veteran, but the very earliest of Viet Nam vets were, coming to war in 1966 and only 19. John was a lifer-30 years old. Lifers shield themselves from the realities of war by staying safely away from the action. While training John crashed 4-5 military planes and was involved in over 140 deaths of fellow navy sailors on an aircraft carrier before he went on his storied adventure; crashing and burning: becoming a prisoner of war. As a son of privilege he got a pass for divulging information to the enemy while in captivity, he was the Jessica Lynch of his war, --a coaxed hoax. If there was ever a more dangerous choice to take the helm of the ship of state...

When pressed by his captors John turned quickly as anyone might, as the media creation scion of generations of US Naval admirals carrying the myth of military honor and the illusions of bravery that adorn military comic book minds...the real bravery was from those who went to Canada, burned their draft cards in Saigon like Mark Rankin, poured their blood on draft board record records like the Berrigans, and finally hit the streets by the millions and on one sunny day in Washington, DC drew Richard Nixon out of his White House stronghold and forced him to agree to negotiate a truce to the war. 

Journalists are always talking about the "changed John McCain" just as they talked about a "changed Dick Nixon" well where is he now? Let's listen in to his inner dialog:

"...preaching McCarthyite maidens, cholesterol belt heroic illusions of heroism, run to Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, the daughters of the new Alaska-American separatist movement...abandon the cities by introducing private systems of money among the elites after this irreversible devaluation through dilution of the money supply...dollars are the stock of the commoner...what a bloodless revolution...by the time they find out what we've done the troops will be positioned in place in the hotbeds of Seattle, Lansing, Berkeley, and College Park. A greenbelt zone surrounding Washington.  Tanks are quietly being positioned...as the US poor recognize their similarity and solidarity with Darfur..."

In the US, Low Information Voters (LIV) continue to be the main obstacle of intelligent government. The oligarchy is so sure of its ability to forcefully create reality for the low information voters, no matter who is in charge of the executive branch (although it is a little more expensive for them when the Democrats dominate the offices of government), that as long as there is an election, they win.  Without a landslide election tossed out votes and the narrative of "move on get over it" blared throughout the media will make McCain the winner. Then the conservative princes prevail. Bush forces McCain to install his cabinet to run things for the continuity of the oligarchy.  The mechanized 1st Brigade Combat Team and its support units become more visible throughout society as complaints about the stealing of the election persist and the ensuing riots are quashed with high energy lasers on the populations of the big coastal cities.  

On the other hand: 

With an Obama landslide making it impossible to fix the vote Bush will create as much damage as he can during the transition: executive orders, pardons, executive decrees on the economy, and the further forward staging for martial law.  Able to start trouble up until the very last moment he will start another war just like his father started the Bosnian war just to keep Clinton busy at the start of his term. This will lower expectations and the direction of the forced conflict will be set in stone by Super Sunday.  

If "Shooter"Dick Cheney keeps control during the transition, the assassination of Obama the last week of January 2009 would create the mayhem necessary for the institution of martial law and the Iraquization of America will be complete with a Green Zone around Washington. The transition time-line would stop thus ending the American experiment of government. Stalinization would begin and the military dictatorship would be firmly in place. 

They'll blame the communists and the socialists and the progressives and low information voters will take their guns and their bibles and proceed to kill large numbers of their neighbors using racial characteristics to sight them in.  

The ACLU alerts us that a 100 mile border around the land and sea of the continental United States has been declared by the US Border Patrol.  In this huge area containing the bulk of the population and all seaports Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Portland, Houston, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston.  Within this border it is possible to stop and detain all citizens for the purpose of legitimate citizenship checks according to the way the oligarchy construes its authority through the Border Patrol, now being backed up the US Army 1st Brigade Combat Team (mechanized) and its support groups: the 3-69 Armor; 2-7 Infantry; 5-7 Cavalry; 1-41 Field Artillery; 1-3 BTB; 3rd SSB.  So by supporting the Border Patrol they can now be permitted to roll their tanks in the streets of America at the behest of madmen seeking to maintain control of the planet at absolutely any cost. The eagle grips the earth in its talons and the pain continues.  

Everything is in place.  Conservatives say it's to "save the babies" and plump them up I suppose for a proper neocon Thanksgiving dinner.  Jonathan Swift would be interested in finding out that Irish fertility is the highest in 16 years...God bless America...

Election Twenty 08 Early Results

Sunday 16 march 2008,

As usual this one's already in the cosmic bag...Obama prevails handsomely with indications on election day 11-4-2008 as well as 1-20-2009 when he takes the wheel. For those of us behind the future event horizon the reality is all too clear even now when we peel the tired scales from our eyes and see the Clintons for who they always were,- a right-wing hood-wink duo of rhetoric without action and deep pockets tied to the likes of the contra- backing devils of the ultra right elites which included the Bush family.

Obama wins the election in a strong manner with Jupiter leading the way. The young man is strong but the Republicans will try anything to unseat him and will ultimately succeed with an assassination. This vice president selection is the most important decision since John Kennedy's choice of Lyndon Johnson. But who?

Don't say Hillary, the vice president needs to carry the same convictions as Obama, like the guy he likes to quote. We need the continuity of vision when the standard bearer is slain.

Check out the 4 November 2008 and 1-20-2009 astrocycle pictures for the three candidates:

Barack Obama 11-04-2008
.. jupiter Applying.(1)
.. saturn separating.(5)
.. neptune separating.(7)
.. cupido separating.(23)
.. vulcanus separating.(29)
.. pluto Applying.(31)
.. kronos separating.(31)
.. poseidon separating.(31)
.. venus separating.(37)
.. mercury separating.(41)
.. kronos separating.(41)
.. vulcanus Applying.(43)
.. apollon separating.(47)
.. poseidon separating.(47)
.. neptune separating.(59)
jup plu vul


John McCain 11-04-2008
.. moon Applying.(1)
.. venus separating.(3)
.. hades separating.(5)
.. uranus separating.(7)
.. saturn Applying.(11)
.. node separating.(13)
.. pluto separating.(17)
.. vulcanus separating.(19)
.. jupiter separating.(23)
.. apollon separating.(23)
.. uranus Applying.(29)
.. mercury separating.(31)
.. admetos separating.(41)
.. kronos separating.(47)
.. vulcanus Applying.(47)
.. saturn separating.(53)
.. node Applying.(59)
.. neptune separating.(59)
.. hades Applying.(59)
.. zeus Applying.(59)
moo nod sat ura had zeu vul


Hillary Clinton
11-04-2008
.. sun separating.(1)
.. moon separating.(5)
.. venus Applying.(5)
.. jupiter separating.(7)
.. zeus separating.(7)
.. uranus separating.(11)
.. vulcanus Applying.(11)
.. hades Applying.(29)
.. admetos Applying.(29)
.. cupido separating.(31)
.. jupiter separating.(41)
.. saturn separating.(41)
.. neptune separating.(43)
.. mars separating.(47)
.. uranus Applying.(59)
.. neptune Applying.(59)
ven ura nep had adm vul

Hillary Clinton
The number of cycle parts is 56
Mon Oct 27 1947 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Tue Jan 20 2009 00:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
.. zeus separating.(7)
.. vulcanus Applying.(11)
.. venus separating.(13)
.. sun separating.(17)
.. node separating.(19)
.. moon separating.(29)
.. hades separating.(29)
.. admetos separating.(29)
.. cupido separating.(31)
.. moon separating.(37)
.. saturn separating.(37)
.. node Applying.(53)
.. cupido separating.(53)
.. mars separating.(59)
nod vul


John McCain
The number of cycle parts is 56
Sat Aug 29 1936 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Tue Jan 20 2009 00:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
.. mars Applying.(2)
.. hades separating.(5)
.. node separating.(7)
.. saturn Applying.(13)
.. pluto separating.(17)
.. jupiter separating.(19)
.. vulcanus separating.(19)
.. apollon separating.(23)
.. uranus Applying.(37)
.. mercury separating.(41)
.. cupido Applying.(41)
.. admetos separating.(41)
.. sun separating.(43)
.. neptune separating.(43)
.. zeus Applying.(47)
.. kronos separating.(47)
.. vulcanus separating.(47)
.. sun Applying.(53)
.. mercury separating.(53)
.. venus separating.(53)
.. zeus separating.(53)
.. uranus separating.(59)
.. hades separating.(59)
.. zeus separating.(59)
sun mar sat ura cup zeu


Barack Obama
The number of cycle parts is 56
Fri Aug 04 1961 00:00:00 GMT-0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Tue Jan 20 2009 00:00:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
.. jupiter separating.(1)
.. jupiter separating.(2)
.. jupiter separating.(3)
.. jupiter separating.(5)
.. jupiter separating.(7)
.. neptune separating.(7)
.. jupiter separating.(11)
.. venus Applying.(13)
.. node separating.(17)
.. mars separating.(17)
.. cupido Applying.(17)
.. moon separating.(29)
.. vulcanus separating.(29)
.. saturn separating.(31)
.. neptune Applying.(31)
.. pluto separating.(31)
.. poseidon separating.(31)
.. kronos separating.(41)
.. vulcanus separating.(43)
.. mars Applying.(59)
ven mar nep cup

Who do you want for the VEEP?

Fed rescue of Bear Stearns raises specter of Depression-era crash

By Barry Grey
15 March 2008

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The Federal Reserve Board on Friday took emergency action to prevent the collapse of Bear Stearns, the fifth largest US investment bank and one of the world’s largest finance and brokerage houses.

Invoking a little-used provision added to the Federal Reserve Act in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, the US central bank agreed to allow the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to insure an infusion of credit to Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase. Under the terms of the “secured loan facility,” to extend for up to 28 days, the risk of a default by Bear Stearns will be borne by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, not JP Morgan Chase. The latter will serve essentially as a conduit for the cash provided by the US central bank.

This mechanism was used because only commercial banks, so-called depository institutions, can borrow directly from the Fed’s discount window. Bear Stearns is not a depository bank, and hence the Fed was obliged to invoke a provision of the 1932 amendment to the Federal Reserve Act that applies when “unusual and exigent circumstances exist and the borrower is unable to secure adequate credit accommodations from other sources.”

The announcement of the Fed bailout sent shivers through Wall Street and shook financial markets around the world. It confirmed rumors that had been mounting over the past week that Bear Stearns, the second largest US underwriter of mortgage bonds, did not have the cash to meet claims by its creditors. The rescue operation came one day after the collapse of Carlyle Capital Corporation, a $22 billion publicly traded investment fund controlled by the Carlyle Group, long one of the most profitable and well-connected private equity firms in the US.

With the de facto collapse of Bear Stearns, however, the housing and credit market collapse has claimed one of the titans of Wall Street. Founded in 1923 and employing some 15,500 people worldwide, Bear Stearns was one of the “big five” Wall Street investment banks. In 2005-2007, Bear Stearns was recognized as the “Most Admired” securities firm in Fortune magazine’s “America’s Most Admired Companies” survey.

Last July, the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds as a result of the bursting of the US housing bubble sparked a crisis of confidence in the credit system that has gathered steam and expanded in scope to threaten the viability of some of the biggest banks and financial institutions in the world. The worsening credit crunch has deepened the crisis in the housing market and the economy in general, plunging the US into a recession and wreaking havoc with the economies of Europe and Japan.

The news of the bailout sent share prices tumbling on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 194.65 points, a drop of 1.6 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fared even worse, giving up 27.34 points (2.1 percent), while the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 51.12 points, or 2.3 percent.

Nine stocks fell for every one that rose, and the fears that other financial houses could follow Bear’s demise was reflected in a 4.1 percent fall in the Standard & Poor’s Financial Index. All 92 members of the index lost ground during the trading day.

Bear Stearns stock plunged $27, or 47 percent, to end the day at $30. Coming on the heels of a months-long slide in the bank’s stock price, yesterday’s panic sell-off reduced Bear Stearns’s market valuation to $4.1 billion, less than one-fifth the size of Lehman Brothers.

Indicative of the broader reverberations from the Bear Stearns collapse, the share price of Ambac Financial Group, the world’s second-largest bond insurer, fell 93 percent, on widespread fears that the company will not have sufficient capital to meet claims from its creditors.

The US dollar hit new lows against the euro and other currencies.

The Fed action on Friday confirmed speculation that its extraordinary announcement three days earlier that it would loan $200 billion in Treasury bonds to investment banks and brokerages and accept as collateral privately issued mortgage-backed securities—whose market value has plummeted—was a desperation measure aimed at forestalling the failure of a major Wall Street finance house.

Speaking of Friday’s Fed rescue operations, the Wall Street Journal Online wrote: “The timing of the move made its urgency clear: If Bear could have held out until March 27, it could have borrowed directly from the Fed itself under a new program announced just Tuesday.”

The maximum size of the loan is not predetermined, but is limited by how much collateral Bear Stearns can provide to satisfy the Fed’s requirements, officials said. The loan by no means assures Bear Stearns’s survival. More likely, it was granted in the hope that it would buy time for a more orderly disposition of the firm’s fate and head off a panic response by bankers and investors to its demise.

As the Wall Street Journal Online noted, “The developments could mean the end of independence for Bear, founded in 1923. JP Morgan said it is ‘working closely with Bear Stearns on securing permanent financing or other alternatives for the company’—Wall Street lingo for a sale of other strategic-level change—and CNBC reported that the bank is ‘actively being shopped’ to potential buyers.”

Officials at Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investor Services met Friday to discuss whether to downgrade Bear Stearns’s credit rating, and if so, by how much.

In its own statement on the bailout, Bear Stearns said, “The company can make no assurance that any strategic alternatives will be successfully completed.”

Carl Lantz, a strategist at Credit Suisse, said the intervention by the New York Fed and JP Morgan showed that Bear “didn’t have enough money to turn the light on this morning.”

Geoffrey Yu of UBS said, “I don’t think the market has seen anything of this magnitude before, such a big bank.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Peter A. McKay wrote: “For investors, the arrival of the Federal Reserve and JP Morgan Chase with a financial life raft for troubled Bear Stearns served primarily as a reminder of how murky and deep the waters of Wall Street’s credit crisis remain, with other market participants possibly drowning below the surface.”

The immediate fear motivating the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and Wall Street banks was the danger that an uncontrolled collapse of Bear Stearns would have a domino effect on already turbulent financial markets. Were Bear Stearns forced to sell off assets at fire-sale prices to raise cash needed to meet creditors’ demands, the value of untold billions in assets held by other financial institutions would drop, leading to more margin calls from creditors, further institutional collapses, more panic selling of debt and securities—a vicious spiral to the bottom with the potential of a breakdown in the entire capitalist financial system.

The temporary reprieve for Bear Stearns does not eliminate the potential for just such a scenario in the near future.

The underlying problem is the vast credit bubble that was inflated on the basis of reckless and intrinsically unviable home loans and other forms of speculation, including leveraged buyouts and a vast expansion in unregulated credit markets that delivered unsustainably high returns on investment. The immense fortunes amassed by the uppermost echelons of the US population on the basis of such parasitic financial operations have created, as their consequence, a social and economic disaster of historical proportions, threatening tens of millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions more people around the world, with pauperization.

President Bush, perhaps the consummate political personification of the social layer that benefited from the now-imploded speculative bubble, spoke Friday before the Economic Club of New York, only hours after the rescue of Bear Stearns had been announced. Moving from platitude to platitude, he declared the US economy “the envy of the world,” referred to the financial crisis as a “rough patch,” and reassured his audience that “in a free market, there’s going to be good times and bad times. That’s how markets work.”

The only substance of his remarks was opposition to any resurrection of government regulation of the banks, denunciation of proposals, such as the timid half-measures being advanced by congressional Democrats, to contain the growing wave of home foreclosures, and a restatement of the demand that his tax cuts for the wealthy be made permanent.

His speech did nothing to reassure the financial markets, which are too mired in crisis to buy into the fool’s paradise “optimism” of the commander in chief. Martin Feldstein, a conservative Republican who served for a time as Ronald Reagan’s chief economic adviser, summed up the growing sentiment in a speech to a conference in Florida. “I believe,” he said, “the US economy is now in recession. The situation is bad, it’s getting worse and the risks are that the situation could be very bad.”

Bad Sex in the City

JoAnn Wypijewski

There is something untrustworthy about a man who can't conduct a decent affair. Rudy Giuliani never could. He flaunted his girlfriend Judi Nathan (now a proper lady with a proper lady's name, Mrs. Judith Giuliani) at public events while he was mayor and still married to Donna Hanover, with whom he had no understanding about elective affinities. He used his son Andrew as his beard, claiming he was teaching the boy golf those many weekends when he was cavorting with Judi in Southampton. He announced his new love, and concomitant dumping of the old, at a 2001 press conference, thus informing Donna their marriage was over at the precise moment that any New Yorker listening to 1010 WINS learned of it. Then he tried to push her and the children out of Gracie Mansion so he could get on with his life. In the return whiff of scandal around Rudy and Judi the hoary details of their crass courtship are said to be of no consequence. Let's not get into his private life, commentators quickly warned, eager to steer political discussion clear of anything that might actually rub up against the realities of life experienced by the common horde. Let's talk about the issues, the "new" ones here being hardly newer than what any New Yorker had long known: that the NYPD accompanied the pair on their trysts; that (hark!) these police escorts were paid for from the public purse and involved some finagled accounting. The parched details and dollar amounts reported lately in The Politico are nowhere nearly as telling as the rough picture of things sketched in Newsday by Jimmy Breslin back in 2000, when he wrote about a cop nicknamed Wrong Way because once while pulling into Gracie Mansion with Judi in the back seat he almost collided with the cop pulling out of the mansion with Donna. Wrong Way was later part of a five-car police detail assembled simply to get the king and his court to the ball game: one car for Rudy, one for Judi, one for Andrew, one for Donna and one for the Other Girl he's said to have kept on the side, the two girlfriends given separate corporate seats at Yankee Stadium. The only evocative tidbits among the latest revelations are news that someone from the NYPD walked Judi's dog and accompanied her on a shopping trip when she selected her sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring--in Atlanta. At least the cops didn't torture or kill the dog, a practice that in an earlier life was part of young Judi's job as a saleswoman for US Surgical. That would have twinned Giuliani's personal and political deficits, probably irreparably. In the main, the huff and puff over "taxpayer expense" is not likely to blow down much to obstruct Giuliani's presidential campaign. Once we collectively concede that a maximum leader requires maximum protection, and so too his loved ones--either for the sake of his happiness or as a hedge against ransom threats--then there's really not much difference between the wife, the kids, the dog, the girlfriend. The reporters at The Politico didn't sift through those FOIA documents out of a passion for fiscal probity. Sex is the story that sells here, so why not talk about sex? Granted, it was more fun--the last time adultery and presidential ambitions coincided so publicly--to imagine Governor Clinton bound to a bedstead with silken ties, maddened by the big-haired blonde with her animal prints and scented light bulbs, a woman who claimed he was never so happy as when he could bury his face in her muff, than it is to contemplate Mayor Giuliani panting over his soon-to-be-new-missus, the "princess," according to Vanity Fair, who's always longed to be "a queen." To toss around the subject of adultery and politics now is to raise that specter of Saturday Night Bill and of the other big-haired girl, the frisky Monica, with her kneepads and cigar tricks and oral-anal games in the Oval Office. And no one much wants to do that: not partisans of Hillary Clinton; not her opponents, who may have to support her come November or ask for the Clintons' support; not conservatives, who may find themselves having to back their own philanderer down the road. Already, this is a repression election. Rumors are afloat that Rudy needs a short leash, his eyes wandering toward a former rhythmic twirler with eclectic tastes, a fan of The Lonely Crowd, The Indispensable Chomsky and Leadership, by Rudolph Giuliani. Democratic bloggers bleat pathetically, "At least he [Bill] stayed married." Although it's Hillary's great asset, she sometimes wears marriage like a cross. Rudy is said to be similarly chafing now that Judith is his wedded wife. Christians take heart in Mike Huckabee and, maybe, the knowledge that if Giuliani does turn out to be the chosen one, his sins won't matter anyway. David got away with Bathsheba, after all, and with dispatching her husband, Uriah the Hittite, to the enemy's spears. The rest of us can take heart that at least Rudy doesn't hold the power of life and death over anyone. Bill executed a man as the Gennifer Flowers story swirled in 1992. He bombed Iraq as the Senate considered removing him from office over Monica Lewinsky. Nothing beats death for distraction. The trouble, in fact, is in treating sex as a distraction. Usually it isn't. Usually it's just life, like the mortgage and the bad school and the checkbook that's balanced or not, the dinner that's sublime or not. Adultery may thrillingly divert from one reality, but in the form practiced by Bill and Rudy and millions of others it tends to create its own parallel universe, with its own set of mores and unwritten rules. Rudy broke them all. One doesn't bring the paramour to the marriage bed (unless it's a threesome), or involve the children, or deliberately humiliate the spouse. Bohemians, hippies, gay people, adventurers in polyamory have all experimented with different levels of truth-telling and have all decided, at one time or another, when a lie or reticence is the kindest act of all. But they've also understood, at some deep level, why the English called adultery a "criminal conversation": the criminal part could be jettisoned, as it was by English law in the nineteenth century. But the conversation, measured physically, emotionally, intellectually, could not. Only a madman or a monk would count it a moral failure to converse with more than one person for a lifetime, yet most Americans call adultery just that, even when they're engaged in it. And most married people probably are involved in it, or have been. Poll numbers are as schizoid as the culture, with overwhelming majorities telling surveyors they "know someone" who's not monogamous while only a minority own up to their own sampling of delights afield. A politics that's similarly evasive--that counts as irrelevant the ways people arrange their lives, their joys, needs and sorrows; that cares nothing for how and why they converse--is no politics at all. It doesn't matter that Rudy had sex with Judi or anyone else, or that he had that police escort, frankly. What matters is that Rudy was a prick. Rudy made it cruel.

John McCain

John McCain: "My butt is so wide for special interest plowing by Republican behind the behind backers that when their elephant -sized members enter my back door they find no pleasure at all." Thanks Jim Leherer for bringing this ugly fact to the light of my afternoon.

Katha Pollitt takes on revisionism and muses on the manufacture of today into historical grist in the latest online edition of thenation.com


BLOG | Posted 10/08/2007 @ 1:46pm
How Many Times Can a Country Lose its Innocence?
by Katha Politt

I've been thinking recently about the many ways in which we conceal from ourselves the truths we know we know. At the Shocked, Shocked conference at NYU on Saturday -- the subhead of which was the comical/exasperated "Just how many times can a country lose its innocence?" -- the Yale historian David Blight gave a riveting talk about how over the second half of the 19th century the Civil War became memorialized as a conflict between "two right sides " -- Union and Confederate-- and "reconciliation" came to mean focussing exclusively on the valor of the soldiers in both armies. Slavery? Black people? Neither fit the narrative of reuniting North and South. For that, the causes and purposes of the war had to be obscured, the past -- the real past -- forgotten. The slaveowner and the slave dropped out of the public story, the soldiers in blue and gray became the star players. In this way, the country could bind up its wounds and move on triumphantly without having to confront the reconstitution of white supremacy in the South, or Northern racism either. Napoleon quipped that the winners write history, but until the civil rights movement, the history of the Civil War was largely written by the South.

Blight gave an interesting example of how the wish for a heroic, positive history distorts "progressive"memory too. Ken Burns ended his PBS series on the Civil War with footage of the huge 1913 reunion at Gettysburg of veterans from both sides, closing on a conciliatory meeting between an old black union soldier and a white confederate one. According to Blight, this picture had to have come from a much later vets reunion. In 1913, all the vets were white. The only blacks permitted in the encampment were the ones who built and maintained the latrines, cooked and served food, and handed out blankets.

You can see the same process of historical mythmaking at work on the War in Vietnam. The war as well-intentioned tragedy (liberal version) versus the war as sabotaged glory, the stab in the back (conservative). The history of militant GI resistance, told in the powerful documentary "Sir! No Sir!", has dropped out of public memory, replaced by feckless "draft dodgers" and the myth of the returning soldier spat upon in the airport by a hippie girl with flowers in her hair.

How will the War in Iraq be woven into the ongoing narrative of American goodness and progress? We brought them democracy, but they couldn't handle freedom? We could have pacified the country with just a bit more time but the peaceniks stabbed us in the back, just like in Vietnam? Maybe both--in fact, both are in circulation already. You can be sure that, as with Vietnam, no matter how many Abu Ghraibs and Hadithas come to light, they will be blamed on bad-apple soldiers and the fog of war, not higher ups or official policy.

Imagine that in 30 years the Smithsonian tries to put on an exhibit exploring the the Iraq war: the cooked evidence of WMD, the "embedding" of the media, our bewildering and shifting alliances with assorted Iraqi would-be strongmen, the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure, the violence against civilians, the displacement of millions of Iraqis to Syria and Jordan, and so on. Today , these are all things we know well. But will we still know them in 30 years? If history is any guide, they'll have been replaced by a soothing and hopeful popular narrative of patriotism , military valor and well-meaning blunders. In the furor over the planned exhibit, many rightwing politicians will raise tons of cash, the curator will lose her job, and in the end the more disturbing, 'controversial" displays will be replaced with pictures of Osama bin Laden, 9/11, soldiers building schools and soulful-eyed Iraqi children being brought to America for medical treatment.

Blight closed with a wonderful remark from the Reverend Fred Shuttleworth, the great civil-rights leader: "If you don't tell it like it really was, it can never be as it ought to be." That goes for all of us.

The Coming Food Crisis is here and so is the remedy:

from the Nation website:

The Hundred-Mile Diet

Christopher Ketcham

..."Meanwhile, trade studies in Britain find that the British import huge quantities of staples such as milk, pork and lamb, while exporting comparable tonnages of these same products--trapped in lunatic "food swap" trade agreements made possible by cheap oil, subsidized transport and centralized purchases by massive retailers. Perhaps localvorism is best understood as an act of rebellion against a system that should not--cannot--stand."...

CRUDE BUBBLING REALITY SURFACES FROM THE TROOPS through the nyt

The War As We Saw It
By Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray and Jeremy A. Murphy
The New York Times

Sunday 19 August 2007

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers' expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a "time-sensitive target acquisition mission" on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse - namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.

Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington's insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made - de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government - places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.

Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict - as we do now - will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.

At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. "Lucky" Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.

In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, "We need security, not free food."

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.

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Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.

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Eat this Rovian Daily Kos censoring implants!

observations from a Viet vet against war advocating peace published in Counterpunch

..."Tillman was killed by three, closely-grouped 5.56mmrounds (the ammunition used exclusively by the U.S. M-16; a “round” is one cartridge) the middle of his forehead. The official Army story (after all the “enemy fire” b.s. was exposed as a lie) was that he was killed by friendly fire by his own unit from 90 yards away.

"A bit of weapon forensics is appropriate at this point. The M-16 is an automatic weapon, which can be fired “semi”-automatically, where each trigger-pull fires one round, or on full automatic, where the weapon fires continuously, and very rapidly, as long as the trigger stays pulled. The choice between semi and full is made by a switch on the weapon.

"Anyone who has fired any type of weapon knows that the violent release of expanding gases accelerating the bullet down the barrel causes the weapon to jump, or recoil. It’s pure physics. The accelerating bullet causes an equal and opposite reaction. The recoiling weapon will not, and cannot, place a second bullet on the same aiming point as the first if it is fired rapidly. Similarly for the third bullet, and so forth. This is especially true for automatic fire mode, but also for semi-automatic mode, if the rate of fire, or pulling of the trigger is rapid. Automatic weapons are said to “walk”, and it is impossible to avoid this, even by the most skilled marksman.

"Add to this another factor. Automatic weapons discharge multiple bullets in rapid succession. Where these bullets land is called the “beaten zone”, in Army training parlance.

"The further away you are from the beaten zone, the larger it will be. That is, the weapon’s recoil, already discussed, causes a “spray”effect, whose profile is larger the further away the target is--like a garden hose.

"Army doctors examining Tillman noted the very close grouping of the entry wounds in his forehead, and concluded they could not have come from a weapon fired 90 yards away(more like 10 yards, max), and tried to report this, but their reports were squelched. Ten yards raises vexing questions, not the least of which is that the Army’s current story, after the first Silver Star heroism version was exposed as b.s., may itself be another cover-up. The obvious question is this: if the bullets came from 10 yards away, who fired them, and why?"

"This is complicated by the knowledge that Pat Tillman, a member of the elite U.S. Army Rangers, its shock infantry, was openly opposed to the occupation of Iraq, in which he had participated, and was a well-read political dissident who intended to meet with Noam Chomsky, an internationally-renowned political writer who is deeply opposed to U.S. imperialism. Pat Tillman, the poster boy for Bush/Cheney’s “Global War on Terrorism”, never had that meeting and never returned to the U.S."

"Winston Warfield is a Vietnam Veteran, (Infantry) and a member of Veterans for Peace."

These are the realities of the United States of America when the trickle down policies of the Bush Gang hit main street

•Twenty million Americans – cannot buy enough to eat.

•20 percent are without adequate water supplies.

•12 percent of children are malnourished.

•92 percent of American children suffer learning problems.

•23 percent of Americans live in "absolute poverty," earning less than ten dollars a day.

•More than 20 million people have been displaced inside America.

•A further two million Americans have become refugees, mainly in California and Arizona.