Latin America's Cold War

Hal Brands

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674055285

News Black-Out in DC: Pay No Attention to Those Veterans Chained to the White House Fence

Saturday 18 December 2010

by: Dave Lindorff   |  This Can't Be Happening | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/news-black-out-dc-pay-no-attention-those-veterans-chained-white-house-fence66096

Detroit mayor plans to shrink city by cutting services to some areas

"In some parts of Detroit, 80% of housing is empty amid widespread unemployment. Many have simply abandoned properties now worth a fraction of the mortgages on them.

Property prices have collapsed to the point where houses can be had for $100, although the average price is $7,500 (£5,000). The city council gives homes away to those prepared to pay the outstanding property taxes."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/17/detroit-shrinking

Crisis: The Motor of Capitalism

 Monday 29 March 2010  by: André Orléan   |  Le Monde

"However, today, the mass of liquidities thus produced, associated with the vertiginous growth in public debt, brings the crisis into a new stage in which the question of currency values enters the spotlight. In this matter, the sites for a possible rupture exist: for example, the dollar's hegemony, the unity of the Euro zone, the parity of the yuan - or the weakness of the pound Sterling? Should such a rupture occur, then the cohesion of international neoliberalism would find itself called directly into question.

The forces of shock that surfaced in August 2007 have not yet finished making felt their devastating effects."

Where Majors Fear To Tread Telegraph.co.uk

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/migrationtemp/2802185/Where-Majors-Fear-To-Tread.html?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4ce363087e4a12b4,0

t r u t h o u t | On Your Marx: Neoliberalism on the Rocks

truthout op-ed:

"Of course there are reasons for being suspicious of Marxism. During the Third International and in the scattered sectarian life it has led outside the universities since the Second World War, Marxism has shown a susceptibility to dogma hardly equaled outside of American economics departments. But the ideological rout that Marxism began to suffer in the ’70s did what periods in the wilderness are supposed to do: it discouraged bandwagon-jumpers and enforced a new seriousness on those who stuck around. The truth is that since the neoliberal era began thirty years ago, Marxism has yielded some of its most formidable monuments of economic thought. Two in particular are David Harvey’s abstract and categorical Limits to Capital (1982), which as the restatement and completion of a great thinker’s project easily outclasses Minsky’s John Maynard Keynes (1975), and Robert Brenner’s narrative and empirical Economics of Global Turbulence (2006), which barely mentions Marx while vindicating, through an analysis of the postwar American, German, and Japanese economies, the idea Marx took from David Ricardo and made his own: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in a situation of free competition.

 …

In economics, the analogous route is Marxism, which like psychoanalysis has a dubious reputation—and an explanatory power and long-term perspective that its rivals can’t touch. With luck, the next intellectual consequence of the crisis will be to pry the lid off Marx’s tomb, since it is only from a Marxian standpoint that the recent credit bubble can be understood in terms of the structural problems it affected to solve as well as those it has created."

http://www.truth-out.org/on-your-marx-neoliberalism-rocks60654

Patrick Cockburn: Putting Petraeus in Perspective

"His great achievement in Iraq was to persuade Americans that they had won the war when, in fact, they were withdrawing with little achieved. He was able to sell the "surge" as a triumph of military tactics when in reality its most important feature was that Sunni insurgents allied themselves with American forces because they were being slaughtered by the Shia."

http://www.counterpunch.com/patrick06252010.html

Juan Cole, The Asian Century? | TomDispatch

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175319/tomgram%3A_juan_cole%2C_the_asian_century/#more

"The most significant of the Indian purchases trumpeted by the president last weekend were military in character.  Obama proclaimed that the $10 billion in deals he was inking would create 54,000 new American jobs.  Right now, it's hard to argue with job creation or multi-billion-dollar sales of U.S.-made goods abroad.  As former secretary of labor Robert Reich has pointed out, however, jobs in the defense industry are expensive to create, while offering a form of artificial corporate welfare that distorts the American economy and diverts resources from far more crucial priorities."

MLK on Violence

"As much as I deplore violence, there is one evil that is worse than violence, and that's cowardice."
-MLK

"Farm" life in the an age of economic depression

Begin quote:

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October 5th
5-7pm
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Tresidder Union

Stephen Walt on The New Media and the Palestine Question

(YouTube)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70mh6O1FcG0

James Akins, 83, dies; energy expert presaged danger of relying on Mideast oil

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/26/AR2010072605298.html

Amid Soaring Deaths, Obama Affirms Afghan Strategy

No 'Adjustments' Needed on War Fronts: Obama

Headline, Oct 5, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/05-0

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The U.S. Military as Quagmire Specialists | TomDispatch

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The U.S. Military as Quagmire Specialists | TomDispatch

"The truth is we’re lost in the desert, careening down an unmarked road, odometer busted, GPS on the fritz, and fuel gauge hovering just above E.  Washington can only hope that the American people, napping in the backseat, won’t notice."

Ike and the Military-Inudstrial Complex

Eisenhower, 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953 34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/9556.html


See Also:

"Military-Industrial Complex Speech," Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html

Glen Greenwald: Collapsing empire watch

"The U.S. is now in fifth place in total number of executions, behind only China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and comfortably ahead of Yemen and Sudan."

ŽIŽEK on Violence

A Permanent Economic Emergency

What is the Left to Do?

http://www.counterpunch.org/zizek10152010.html
By SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK 

Closely linked to the necessary de-fetishization of ‘democratic institutions’ is the de-fetishization of their negative counter-part: violence. For example, Badiou recently proposed exercising ‘defensive violence’ by means of building free domains at a distance from state power, subtracted from its reign (like the early Solidarnosc in Poland), and only resisting by force state attempts to crush and re-appropriate these ‘liberated zones’. The problem with this formula is that it relies on a deeply problematic distinction between the ‘normal’ functioning of the state apparatus and the ‘excessive’ exercise of state violence. But the ABC of Marxist notions of class struggle is the thesis that ‘peaceful’ social life is itself an expression of the (temporary) victory of one class—the ruling one. From the standpoint of the subordinated and oppressed, the very existence of the state, as an apparatus of class domination, is a fact of violence. Similarly, Robespierre argued that regicide is not justified by proving the King had committed any specific crime: the very existence of the King is a crime, an offence against the freedom of the people. In this strict sense, the use of force by the oppressed against the ruling class and its state is always ultimately ‘defensive’. If we do not concede this point, we volens nolens ‘normalize’ the state and accept its violence as merely a matter of contingent excesses. The standard liberal motto—that it is sometimes necessary to resort to violence, but it is never legitimate—is not sufficient. From the radical-emancipatory perspective, one should turn it around: for the oppressed, violence is always legitimate—since their very status is the result of violence—but never necessary: it is always a matter of strategic consideration whether to use force against the enemy or not.

Anders Stephanson, 14 Notes

The following passages are extracted from:

FOURTEEN NOTES  ON THE VERY CONCEPT OF THE COLD WAR
Anders Stephanson, Columbia University
1996, reissued 2007 
www.h-net.org/~diplo/essays/PDF/stephanson-14notes.pdf

“The well-known is such because it
is well-known, not known.”
--G.W.F. Hegel

Two debates took place last year on H-Diplo about the cold war, debates about the problems of conception and periodization. The first, during spring, concerned the ‘end’ and was occasioned by a remark I had made in passing that the cold war was really over in 1963. The second exchange, taking place in the autumn and virtually without reference to the previous exchanges, centered on when this putative war (or non-war) actually began. Aside from demonstrating a lack of institutional memory, the second debate revealed once again the extent to which the concept of the cold war is radically ‘under-determined’; by the time discussion petered out, we were back in the 19th century. The current debate, meanwhile, has typically branched out in various directions without analytical focus.

The following Notes will not rehearse my original periodization; I have argued for it elsewhere at some length. Instead I will attempt to deepen it by reflecting on the logical and ontological character of the cold war, on the conceptual conditions of possibility for talking about something called the cold war. The starting point for this genealogical exercise is the same as that of my periodization, namely, Lippmann’s critique of Kennan’s X-Article in late 1947 which introduces the term itself but also provides the historical key to its concept...  The essential aspect here is that Lippmann spotted in Kennan’s argument a certain gesture of diplomatic refusal vis-a-vis the USSR; and it was this US move (I argued) that made the cold war a ‘war’ when the refusal was institutionalized under the sign of ‘no negotiation unless from a position of strength.

Reading Lippmann, then, produced a diagnosis and a criterion but not any deeper conceptual determination. To achieve that, the cold war must be situated more distinctly within the very opposition that ultimately framed it: war and peace. If nothing else, one should consider what kind of surrender (or peace) the cold war presupposed and embodied; and that in turn requires a derivation of our notions of war and peace. I confess that a more immediate reason for doing this is exasperation with a very tiresome cliché: ‘Now that the cold war is over, etc, etc.’ Every article on international relations seems to begin with it, no matter what the author goes on to argue. As reified punditry, or something akin to advertising language, the pronouncement (often then followed by reference to that well known ‘globalized economy’) presumes a notion of an epoch so inflated and blurry that it can include everything and anything. Historical concepts certainly have the potential of reassembling past experience in novel ways, to serve new needs of the present. But the name [the cold war] in this case is a mere catchphrase. Moreover, behind it lurks not only a seamless, indivisible notion of the cold war as an epoch but also an essentialist principle, according to which everything is a reflection or expression of an original essence. That essence, of course, turns out to be the entire postwar relation, or conflict, between the US and the USSR. It has to be so, because what gives the epoch such a self-evident aura in the first place is its resounding ‘end’ with the Soviet collapse: the end is then retrospectively inscribed in the beginning and the trajectory of the ‘period.’ Histories of ‘the cold war’ can then be rewritten to explain that obvious ‘end.’ The effect is to conceal or obliterate variations in the nature of the relationship. Different periodizations of the era are also barred or simply subsumed, periodizations, say, in terms of ‘decolonization,’ ‘the economic rise of Japan and Germany,’ or ‘the universalization of the European model of the nation-state.’ [emphasis added]

…

I want to see if the very concept of the cold war can be produced, if indeed it ‘has’ a concept or is perhaps better left on the heap of everyday banalities. In short, does it entail any imminent necessity? What must ultimately be interrogated is thus the polarity of the US and the USSR itself, its very givenness. …

From Note 5: Augustine and Aquinas

… Within that shadowy context of imperfection, however, it remained that Christians desired just peace while the heathen wanted an iniquitous one, a perverse peace of domination and subservience, a peace that is “not worthy even of the name of peace.” Good and bad alike, nevertheless, seek some sort of peace. Even pax falsa, wicked peace, as opposed to pax vera, is thus peace of a kind. War, then, is derived and defined in terms of its goal, peace. …

From Note 9: Marx, Engels and Lenin

What Clausewitz generally had in mind was war in a European frame, war as epitomized in a battle performed in a baroque theater. Yet his formative experience from the age of thirteen onwards had been devastating war with the French and he remained uncertain about ‘total war’ as political liquidation. Hegel, on the other hand, stuck to the traditional view that the enemy’s internal order was beyond attack. International (i.e. European) law protected “domestic institutions” in times of war. Hegel’s lineal descendants Marx and Engels thought otherwise. Nation-states to them were irrational and bound to be undermined by the globalization of capital. More originally, they also claimed that the whole apparatus of inside and outside, sovereignty in short, served to hide the real nature of the state, namely, class rule. In a way, then, one was always already in a sort of war, a class war, whether openly declared or merely smouldering. Class conflict was a state of affairs, resulting from a certain mode of production; and as long as it remained, there could be no pax vera, only pax apparens.

… [Lenin's]  vision was followed not by Trotsky’s internationalism but Stalin’s Fortress USSR. At no time was Trotsky’s notorious formula at Brest Litovsk - ‘neither war nor peace’ - in the basic interest of Stalin’s Fortress. Lenin’s view did survive, however, in different and reinvigorated form in the figure of Mao, theorist of protracted civil war and invasion of the enemy’s social order; but that is another story.

From Note 11: Wilson and Roosevelt (i)

For the matrix or logic of the American cold-war project after the war was established by Roosevelt during 1939-41 in his attempt, in my view generally justified, to prepare the United States for (and perhaps steer it towards) the ‘inevitable’ open war.
…
As FDR saw matters, it was in fact inherently impossible to deal with dictators: ‘normal practices of diplomacy... are of no possible use in dealing with international outlaws.’ Out of this notion came the notion of ‘unconditional surrender’ enunciated at Casablanca in 1943 but actually present from the beginning in Roosevelt’s outlook. Symptomatically, he took the formula (he said) from U(nconditional).S(urrender). Grant and the Civil War, a kind of conflict that could indeed only be fought to that end. Henry Stimson expressed this logic in a more unequivocal and radical fashion when he projected onto the whole world Lincoln’s famous dictum that no nation can survive half slave and half free: from now on it was the world itself that had to be either free or slave. This was a prescription for limitless war, indeed the reinvention of war as civil war on a global scale in the name of total victory and the principle of universal right. The idea followed in the spirit of Wilson’s earlier one that the only really secure world would have to be one in accordance with US principles (i.e. those of ‘humanity’). Less obviously, it was also symmetrical with Lenin’s notion of international class war.

From Note 13: Lippmann (ii) and Kennan

… One need not embrace the Soviet position to see that the cold war as embodied in the American stance was utterly against Stalin’s interests, that he would have liked precisely what he said he wanted: negotiations, deals and reduction in tension, coupled with relative isolation, above all, recognition as an equal. Instead the USSR became a pariah.

CounterPunch Diary

The Soros Syndrome

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10082010.html

Back at the dawn of the twentieth century Lenin and Martov were organizing their international Congresses and looking for grant money to this end. Martov, the Menshevik, told Lenin he must absolutely stop paying for the hotels and halls with money hijacked by Stalin from Georgian banks in Tblisi. Lenin reassured Martov, and then asked Stalin to knock over another bank  which he did, Europe’s record bank heist up till that time. It was one way, perhaps the only way, past the grip of cautious millionaires. Then as now.

Dr. Khair El-Din Haseeb’s Presentation  at Georgetown University

April 5, 2006

http://www.globalcomplexity.org/DrHaseeb%27slecture.htm

James Galbraith on Obama

Whose Side Is the White House On?

by James K. Galbraith

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/09-7

"Large countries can and do fail, they have done so in our own time. And the consequences are very grave: drastic declines in services, in living standards, in life expectancies, huge increases in social tension, in repression, and in violence. These are the consequences of following through with crackpot ideas such as those embodied in the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission, as Jeff Madrick again outlined, such notions as putting arbitrary limits on the scale of government, or arbitrary limits on the top tax rate affecting the wealthiest Americans.

This isn’t a parlor game. The outcome isn’t destined to be alright. It will not necessarily end in progress whatever happens. What we do, how we proceed, and how we effectively resist what is plainly about to happen, matters very greatly for the future of our country, of our children, and of another generation to come. We need to lose our fear, our hesitation, and our unwillingness to face the facts. If we thereby lose some of our hopes, let’s remember the dictum of William of Orange that “it is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.”

The President should know that, as Lincoln said to the Congress in the dark winter of 1862, he “cannot escape history.” And we are heading now into a very dark time, so let’s face it with eyes open. And if we must, let’s seek leadership that shares our values, fights for our principles, and deserves our trust."

© 2010 New Deal 2.0

James K. Galbraith is a Vice President of Americans for Democratic Action. He is General Editor of "Galbraith: The Affluent Society and Other Writings, 1952-1967," just published by Library of America. He teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.

Economic links

On tax rates and wealth distribution:
http://empirestudies.blogspot.com/2008/11/who-rules-america.html

Michael Hudson on Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/5/new_600b_fed_stimulus_fuels_fears

Michael Whitney on inflation and other things:
http://empirestudies.blogspot.com/search?q=Whitney

Paul Craig Roberts:
http://empirestudies.blogspot.com/search?q=roberts

Game Plan for a Flat Tax, Social Security Cutbacks and Austerity: Obama's Sellout on Taxes
By MICHAEL HUDSON (Dec 8, 2010)
http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson12082010.html

The Endless Thanksgiving: Next Up: a "Flat Tax" for the Rich
By MICHAEL HUDSON (Nov 25, 2010)
http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson11252010.html

David Cay Johnson on Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/18/free_lunch_how_the_wealthiest_americans

Wealth for the Common Good:
 http://wealthforcommongood.org/resources/tax-fact-sheet/

“Shifting Responsibility: How 50 Years of Tax Cuts Benefited the Wealthiest Americans,” Chuck Collins, Alison Goldberg, and Sam Pizzigati (Wealth for the Common Good, April 2010)
www.ips-dc.org/files/1675/ShiftingResponsibility.pdf

Chuck Collins, “Reverse the Great Tax Shift”
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/07/reverse-the-great-tax-shift/

Dean Baker: Peter Orzag Goes to Citigroup

Dean Baker: Peter Orzag Goes to Citigroup

"Why do the folks in power in Washington seem unable or unwilling to consider a financial speculation tax? Let's imagine for a moment that during his stint as OMB director Peter Orszag had been a vocal advocate of financial speculation taxes. It doesn't seem likely that under these circumstances Citigroup would currently be offering him a job that, according to the New York Times, would typically pay $2 to $3 million a year."

An extensive bibliography compiled by Ed Moise of Clemson University:

Iraq Wars Bibliography

http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/EdMoise/iraqbib.html#iraniraq