"Farm" life in the an age of economic depression

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The Pentagon as an Engine of Economic Recovery?

How can a country headed into A State of Depression justify spending a trillion dollars a year on an already grotesque defense establishment? I wonder if a standing army doesn't constitute a violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the 2d and 3d amendments to the US Constitution.

WINSLOW T. WHEELER, "Why the Pentagon is Not a Jobs Engine: Save the Economy by Cutting the "Defense" [Offense] Budget":

Harvard economist Professor Martin Feldstein has advocated in the Wall Street Journal (‘Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus’, 24 December 2008) the addition of USD30 billion or so to the Pentagon’s budget for the purpose of generating 300,000 new jobs. It is my assertion, however, that pushing the DoD as a jobs engine is a mistake....

Even other economists are sceptical about Feldstein’s numbers. An October 2007 paper from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst found that each USD1 billion spent on defence would generate 8,555 jobs, not the 10,000 calculated by Feldstein. Given the problems with the F-22 just discussed and the lack of jobs I believe it will generate, even this lower estimate sounds extremely optimistic.

Chalmers Johnson on the Pentagon:

Each year, we Americans account for nearly half of all global military spending, an amount larger than the next 45 nations together spend on their militaries annually.
...
Our problems are those of a very rich country which has become accustomed over the years to defense budgets that are actually jobs programs and also a major source of pork for the use of politicians in their reelection campaigns.

Given the present major recession, whose depths remain unknown, the United States has better things to spend its money on than Nimitz-class aircraft carriers at a price of $6.2 billion each (the cost of the USS George H. W. Bush, launched in January 2009, our tenth such ship) or aircraft that can cruise at a speed of Mach 2 (1,352 miles per hour).

...

By the time the prototype F-22 had its roll-out on May 11, 1997, the Cold War was nearly a decade in its grave, and it was perfectly apparent that the Soviet aircraft it was intended to match would never be built. Lockheed Martin, the F-22's prime contractor, naturally argued that we needed it anyway and made plans to sell some 438 airplanes for a total tab of $70 billion.

The Continuity of Empire: Obama's Pentagon

Ray McGoverns pleads with the president to not send more American soldiers to Afghanistan.
But as he does, The Guardian reports:

Islamabad - The US military is investigating claims that more than two dozen Afghan civilians were killed during an attack on militants [on Monday]. The issue has badly undermined support for the international coalition and President Hamid Karzai.

And The Washington Post reports:

Two remote U.S. missile strikes that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts in northwestern Pakistan yesterday offered the first tangible sign of President Obama's commitment to sustained military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions.

Ron Jacobs, wonders why Gate's is still there:

The American people did not elect the Pentagon. They elected Barack Obama based a good deal on his promise to get US troops out of Iraq sooner rather than later. Since he was elected, Mr. Obama has hedged on this promise. Since he was inaugurated, the Pentagon and its civilian boss Robert Gates have hedged even more. Now, they insist, US troops should remain until the Iraqis hold a national election that is as of today not even scheduled. Then, even after that election is held, the departure of some US troops should depend on the outcome of the election. In other words, the Pentagon and Defense Department are telling Mr. Obama that no US troops should leave Iraq unless the election results meet the expectations of Washington.

This is exactly why Robert Gates should be removed from his position.

But rather than getting rid of Gates, it looks as though Gates is actually calling the shots. As the LA Times reports:

William Lynn III, the top lobbyist for Raytheon Co., was chosen by Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the position of deputy secretary of Defense.

The new ethics rules banned lobbyists from serving in the administration. But the executive order allowed waivers to let some former lobbyists take government jobs if doing so was in the public interest.
...
Gates pushed hard for Lynn's appointment and favored him over other officials suggested by the Obama transition team. At a news conference Thursday, Gates said he was impressed with Lynn and argued he should get the job despite the lobbying ban.

"I asked that an exception be made because I felt that he could play the role of the deputy in a better manner than anybody else that I saw," Gates said.

And this from Obama's Admiral:

"He [Blair] said that the Obama administration would carry out a review of interrogation policy, and that both military and intelligence interrogators would follow a uniform standard. Under questioning, however, he said he believed that some interrogation procedures and methods ought to remain secret so potential adversaries cannot train to resist them."

Towards a Democratic Empire

The American Empire has a new PR Rep. Madison Avenue has worked it magic once again. Never underestimate the power of a marketing gimmick.

From Obama's inaugural:

Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred… Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable… our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause… We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense… To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West… you are on the wrong side of history… [and] we will defeat you…

The fear of hegemonic decline is palpable. The ideology of Manifest Destiny is given a new lease on life.

The above is how the interests and values of the ruling class are transmitted to subaltern classes. These are the cognitive bonds that keep us safely within the Matrix. We are batteries. Power source to a Death Machine.

The Elders of Zion Strike Again?

Author's note: This post has been taken down for reconstruction- it will be reposted above

AIPAC and the CBC

Glen Ford is editor of Black Agenda Report, on the power of the Israel lobby in the Congressional Black Caucus:

It appears the old John Conyers has left the scene without those of us who used to know him having had a chance to say goodbye. The Israeli lobby has that kind of effect on erstwhile progressives and anti-war folks. The Zionist ideology, and especially the chilling effect of Zionist power, is probably the second-greatest impediment to creation of a sustained American peace movement - the first obstacle being the ideology of American Manifest Destiny, which is in practice quite compatible with Zionism.
However, African Americans are least susceptible to the Manifest Destiny/Zionist Mythology combo. Both ideologies wreak of racism, and most Black people know it. The Congressional Black Caucus knows it, too, but they are terrified of offending Israel's innumerable political hit men.

Silencing the Now: Shhh, the Israelis are Shooting

Obama on 12/30/08: "Shhh, the Israelis are shooting"

As Gaza burns, Obama plays golf. Boy, the New Boss, feels quite bit like the Old Boss.

The Gaurdian cautions that as al-Jazeera broadcast images of Obama taking in the "back 9" juxtaposed with images of murder and mayhem in the streets of Gaza, Obama is "losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realize has even begun... The danger is that when he finally peers over the parapet on January 21, the battle of perceptions may already be half-lost."

How should we interpret silence? Historians of Palestine are well-trained in this art given that the history of Palestine has been largely silenced by Zioinist claims to "A Land without a People for a People without a Land." And as historians such as Gabi Pitterburg point out, the discursive erasure of Palestinians is an essential prerequisite to their their psychical removal (or "Transfer" as its known) and dispossession.

Is there any doubt that Obama will reach out and grasp that Faustian hand with full enthusiasm? Will Obama avoid rocking the proverbial boat on Palestine, the Middle East, and "National Security" issues writ large in the interest of getting his "domestic agenda" passed? Perhaps he should step back from all the FDR/ Great Depression analogies for a moment and remind himself of the fate of LBJ's Great Society. The point being that all the best laid plans for "domestic reform" can come to naught if one lacks the courage to stand up to monsters at home. LBJ thought that if he would give the Southern Dems in Congress, and the JFK foreign policy Establishment (Rostow, the Bundy Brothers, and Rusk) the War they wanted, he would get his Great Society at home- Guns and Butter for all. The problem with Faustian bargains is that they rarely turn out as expected. Trading on the backs of Palestinians may by be a time-honored Beltway tactic - but it produces consistently disastrous results for all concerned- but mostly for Palestinians. It is the Palestinians who pay the price for our cowardice at home. We lack the capacity to confront our own monsters- our own violent pathologies that lead us offer up endless human sacrifice to our Gods of the Military Industrial Complex (Boeing, Raytheon, etc), and so we project that violence outward. And then if that were not enough our Pundits have the audacity to suggest that it is Arab and Muslim political culture that is prone to spates of irrational violence. There is no single more prolific purveyor of violence than the United States. Until we muster the the courage to mount a real social revolution capable overturning the corrupt and defunct system of cruelty we will remain captives of that system. We may avert our eyes form the destruction caused by our own cowardice and we may indulge in yet more narcissistic orgies of self-congratulation for electing Barack Obama (if I see one more advertisement for a human interest special on Obamas or the "historic nature" of elec-sham '08, I think I am going to throw up), but while we dither, and avoid a confrontation with our own ruling class, the world burns. What will be left for our children to inherent? The rubble in Gaza offers one suggestion.

The Power of "No Comment"

When Obama visited Middle East in July these were his sentiments:

"He said then that when bombs are raining down on your citizens, there is an urge to respond and act to try to put an end to that. That's what he said then. I think that's what he believes." [Axelrod quoted on Face the Nation].

Which side of the line do you suppose he was standing on? Does one suppose that Obama might have venture into Occupied Gaza to witness first hand the human suffering caused by Israeli cruelty and American supplied war planes? No, he was not referring to a Palestinian "urge to respond" to Israeli bombs, though one would assume that Palestinians, as humans, would have such an "urge."

Radical journalist Joshua Frank reprints Axelrod's comments:

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Obama’s Senior Adviser David Axelrod explained to guest cost Chip Reid how an Obama administration would handle the situation, even if it turns for the worst.

“Well, certainly, the president-elect recognizes the special relationship between United States and Israel. It’s an important bond, an important relationship. He’s going to honor it ... And obviously, this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks. As Hamas began its shelling, Israel responded. But it’s something that he’s committed to."

Such feckless adherence to orthodox thinking, and such cold indifference to a human tragedy of this magnitude gives lie to the notion that once Obama's actually in power, he'll be able to put some distance between himself and his AIPAC puppetmasters- even Obama suggested something of the sort when he told 'Ali Abunimah in 200o:

"Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."

Is Obama victim of his own naivete? Or did he simply pay lip service to Arab-Americans when it was in his political interest to do so (I of course think it is the latter). Did he actually think that once he got closer to the levers of power he'd have more freedom of action? Perhaps he should dust off Ferguson's The Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. A little more attention to how power in America actually works would have disabused the young state senator of such naive assumptions. Had he read that book he might have a better understanding of just how long it would take to repay all those who put him in power- I don't like predictions, but if i had to venture, i predict that he'll be prostrating himself before his AIPAC puppetmasters for as long as the corrupt and defunct political system for which he serves as chief executive remains in tact.

The problem is strucutual, it's systemic. Obama is now part of the death machine - and has to be opposed as such. The wicked system over which he presides is doomed. Too bad Obama didn't the memo.

Looting the Treasury on the Way out the door

Electoral politics in the US are a spectator sport. They keep us safely anesthetized. Elections are the opiate of the masses.

Naomi Klein on the thieves in high-places and the futility of the electoral process:

Unfortunately for the market, voters have just voted for change. They voted for a candidate who really turned the election into a referendum on this economic policy of rampant deregulation. So you’ve really got a problem here. How do you reconcile the market’s desire for status quo with the voters’ demand for real change? There is no way to do that without a few bumps along the way. And I’m quite concerned that what we’re seeing from Obama’s team is an accepting of this logic that they need to give the market what it wants, which is continuity, smooth transition, which is really just code for more of the same. And when you hear names like Larry Summers being bandied about for Treasury Secretary, that’s feeding the market exactly what it wants, which is more of the same.

Barack Obama turned his election campaign into a referendum on the mania for deregulation and free trade and really less trickle-down economics. He said the idea of giving more and more to the people at the top and waiting for it to trickle down to the people below, and that really resonated with voters, and they elected him on that platform. And let’s remember, Amy, because this really is about democracy, that his campaign turned around when the economic crisis really hit Wall Street. He was losing ground to McCain when the crisis hit Wall Street, and Obama started using this language of really putting the ideology of deregulation on trial. That’s when his numbers turned around. That’s when he went on his winning streak that took him all the way to Election Day.

Yeah, this bailout is really not a bailout at all; it’s a parting gift to the people that the Bush—that George Bush once referred to jokingly as “my base.” You know, in one of my columns recently, I likened it to what European colonial rulers used to do when they finally realized they had to hand over power; they would loot the treasury on the way out the door.

You know, I always think about what the International Monetary Fund does when developing countries come and ask for a loan. Think about what they’re doing right now. The International Monetary Fund says, “You want a loan? Well, here’s our list of conditions.” They used to call it structural adjustment. The same thing could be done to the auto industry. If they’re coming for a bailout, they should be structurally adjusted, and taxpayers should be playing IMF to the auto industry and insisting that they change the way they work, that they build green automobiles, that they protect jobs. It can’t simply be a blank check.

Dumb and Dumber: President Barbie and The Great Sage of the Senate

Alexander Cockburn sizes up the VP debate and declares: "A Start is Born!"

"On present trends, the McCain-Palin ticket is doomed, just as the Republican presidential campaign of another Arizonan senator, Barry Goldwater, was crushed by Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. Yet that defeat was the making of Ronald Reagan, who stole every right-wing Republican heart with his speech for Goldwater in the party convention that year. Two years later, Reagan was governor of California. Twelve years later in 1976, he was challenging an incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford. In 1980 he won the presidency

More than once, last night, I thought Palin must have been watching re-runs of Reagan’s speeches, though decades of deference to Hollywood tycoons made Reagan far more respectful of Wall Street than the Alaskan governor. Her first national political foray may have only a month to run, but on Thursday night she won herself a long-term political future. Populism comes in many different garments. The bailout, voted through this last week by Obama and Biden and the Democrats, showed the party has lost the capability even of deception, even of the pretence that it is the friend of the working people. (And yes, Palin is the only person on the campaign trail from whose lips I have heard the increasingly unfamiliar term “working class”.) Palin has a lot to learn, but in the years ahead, amid the bankruptcy of the liberal left, her strain of populism will have an eager audience."

As for the "Great Sage," Robert Fisk wonders why Biden would assert: "we kicked Hizballah out of Lebanon."

Stephen Zunes is similarly unimpressed with this one from the Great Sage:
"BIDEN: With regard to Iraq, I gave the president the power [in the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution]. I voted for the power because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the United States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted."

Boy, it it wern't for Sen. Biden, who "would keep the UN in line"?

Another pearl wisdom from the String of Biden:
"Here's what the president [Bush] said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, "Big mistake. Hamas will win. You'll legitimize them." What happened? Hamas won."

Atta boy, Scranton Joe!! somebodody's got to keep the West Bank free of Democracy!

A View from a Front Line in the Drug War

This new movie looks very interesting: Humboldt County. A review to follow... (as soon as I can get to a theater showing it... funny how much trouble movies lacking a talking Chuwawa have with distribution...)

Congress at work: $70 billion more for War

Chalmers Johnson on the $70 billion dollar down-payment on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for fiscal year 2009 (the rest will be slipped in through "supplemental appropriations"). Johnson thinks that it is strange that the defense budget is not an issue in current economic debates.

American Bankster: Krugman as Finance Czar?

On Today's Democracy Now! Paul Krugman suggests that as Treasury Secretary he would send shivers down the spine of today's Robber Barrons. Its worth a try...

On a related note: APB, Have you seen this man:









Robert Rubin has gone missing. In the midst of this crisis we have heard a great deal about Phil Gramm and his merry band of market deregulators, but we seem to have overlooked the chief Fox in the Henhouse. It is interesting to note that after Rubin pushed through the repeal of Glass-Steagall- the 1933 law which erected a firewall between commerical and investment banks (ie commerical banks- those which collect deposits) can not invest our savings in the latest Wall Street ponzi scheme (the ponzi scheme in the 1920, or at least one of them, was real estate specualtion in Florida), he went to work for the investment arm of Citigroup (the merger of the commerical bank Citicorp and the investment bank Travelers). ie, he took the job that he had just legalized.

Constitution? Who needs a Constitution when you have $$$, lots of it!

I don't suppose that Obama was ever required to read the Constitution when he was teaching Constitutional Law, or else he might have noticed Article I, Section 9:

"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." 

(Retroactive immunity is, by definition, "ex post facto"...)

Clinton's Third Term

News Flash: 

Obama appoints Hawks to guard Dove house. Here the NYT lists Obama's FP advisers. Not a single ME expert among his ME advisers, you know how dangerous the opinions of ME experts can be...

The same could be said of his econ policy advisers. Placing Robert Rubin, the founder of Rubinomics, and the architect of financial market deregulation in the 1990s, in a high position is most certainly putting the foxes in charge of the proverbial henhouse. These are after all the corporate thieves who have given us the current global economic meltdown.

If the electorate wanted a third Clinton term, wouldn't they have voted for Clinton? 

What's a matter with Kansas?

Is Islamophobia one of Obama's "values straight from the Kansas heartland"? 

If John McCain were to drop dead of a heart attack (at the ripe old age of 71), and the Republicans were to draft Condi as a replacement, would this constitute progress in American race relations? Or do you need more than skin color to qualify as a progressive candidate? (there are still some people out there that demand that a political actor shares their interests and ideology before they offer them any form of  support- but those people are "way out there" in the sense of being nowhere near the center of American political society, or the levers of American power. The American Power-Elite has a very specific vetting process before it allows anyone near said levers, the first stop: AIPAC. We know where it goes from there...). 

But not to worry, I'm sure that Iraqis feel much better knowing that it was Collin Powell (instead of a White Man) who sold the American war against their country to the UN.  Don't forget Colored Folk can carry the White Man's Burden as well as anyone. 

Melanie McAllister, in her book Epic Encounters seems a bit flummoxed by these kinds of phenomena. In her chapter, "Military Multiculturalism" she can't quite figure out how militarism and imperialism can co-exist in the same cultural space as  multiculturalism (aren't these two things polar opposites??). General Powell, and the dark skinned troops he commanded represent the broadening of American identity, but these same forces perpetrated the Highway of Death.[1] McAllister can't quite figure out how this could be so.

David Harvey in The New Imperialism suffers no such confusion. For him, militarism and imperialism are all too eager to incorporate  ethnic minorities and gender majorities into the complex of Captial and Empire- as this facade  of inclusion  (reality in some cases) performs an essential legitimating function. Its no mistake that Bush 41 sent Clarence Thomas up there, or that Bush 43 put Condi and Collin in key positions. Malcolm X used to have a term for these kinds of people.  It looks like the Dems have finally figured out to game the system (after 40 years in the Wilderness).

Drawing on the Malcom X - David Harvey tradition of political analysis, one might think in terms of "Multicultural Militarism" instead of  "Military Multiculturalism." 

[1] Interesting footnote on Gulf War II (1991) and American "racial inclusivity": At the time of the War, African Americans represented 13% of the total US population, but 20% of the American armed forces, and 25% percent of American combat troops. Who needs a draft when you have structural racism and a permanent underclass? Structural racism, now there a term you won't here in an American presidential campaign. If we listen to Obama the problem is African-Americans' culture of irresponsibility (oh, if only they would work hard enough to go to Harvard or Stanford they might be able to develop an ethic of responsibility... Where'd Obama's dad go to school again, oh yeah, it was Harvard...). Or as he likes to say, the Government can't sit down with your child and teach them how to read or speak the Queens' English (but it can bomb countries half way around the globe, and throw people in jail for growing marijuana...). He's not proposing policy solutions to the problems of exploitation and underdevelopment (what Harvey calls "uneven geographical development"). Heaven forbid we actually use the levers of American power to alter the balance of class forces in American society... 

A couple concrete things on structural racism and the Obama campaign: 

1. The Drug War

2. The Death Penalty

3. Discrimintion in labor, housing, and credit markets

4. Geographically uneven school funding 

5. The de-industrialization of America (African Americans' traditional avenue for social mobility-- think NAFTA and Free Trade)

6. Health care and life expectancy rates (Universal health care anyone?)

7. American Military Engagements

I'm sure the list could go on. But this should suffice, as on each of these concrete points, Obama and McCain are on one side, and I am on another. 

Obama: Finally! Someone with the courage to stand up to the power of the Left

Obama stands with McCain and Justice Scalia in opposing gun control and and supporting the Death Penalty.

Olbermann salutes Obama for having the "courage" to "stand up to the Left" on FISA .

Principles? who needs principles when you have money, lots of it!!

The Daily Show's brilliant montage of Democrats trying to explain away Obama's stand of campaign financing. No one ever said Democrats weren't morally flexible (this might be what you'd call the yoga of ethics). Hell, not having core principles has worked so far, why change now?