Reading

“All governments lie. But disaster lies in wait for those countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.” I. F. Stone

Southeast where?

The other day, Bush referred to our adventures in Asia, mentioning Japan, Korea, and Vietnam as appropriate analogies for his ruinous war in Iraq. It’s only the latest excuse, of course, the potted history of a rat in a corner bullshitting to a loyal audience. But it must be noted that he left out the Philippines. Curious. 1898: after the quick defeat of the Spanish, the U.S. “bought” the islands, and suppressed the newly born Filipino Republic. A couple of years were needed to batter the Filipino army into submission. However, guerilla war, complete with its usual horrors of torture and concentration camps, lasted until 1913. The Philippines would remain an American colony, by God! (McKinley was another Republican who claimed to have discussed war with God.) The white man’s burden was accepted: 126,000 troops, many of them fresh from killing Indians, were sent in.

One of our great instinctive anti-imperialists, Mark Twain, wrote: “I thought we should act as their protector — not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now — why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.”

Speak to it, Horatio, thou art a scholar

K. Rove, front man for plutocratic restoration, turns out to be a lit’ry chap. Who knew? He claimed he was Moby Dick, the Democrats his Ahab. Full fathom five his bones don’t lie. He said he was a myth, “You know, I’m Beowulf, you know, I’m Grendel. I don't know who I am. But they're after me.” Hell, he’s probably the b’ar in Faulkner. But what about Grendel’s mother? From my own translation, the Soccer Hooligan’s Beowulf “Shite man, it’s Grendel’s mum, and she’s fookin’ pissed!” That’s a great scene when she eats Capt. Ahab and his boat the Ninapintasantamaria, with Scottie down in the coal shouting "I'm giving her all I can, Captain! She canna take much more!" As awesome as when Hester Prynne marries Jay Gatsby and they sit on the dock of the bay watching the green light in the fog waste away…

In answering a question about their belief in the power of prayer to prevent disasters like Katrina and falling bridges, only one of the Democratic candidates in the latest debate actually answered the question directly: no, he didn’t believe prayer could prevent disasters. Only one would actually say that. Stunning. What a fucked-up politics.
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A couple of years ago, I was listening to a panel discussion on this collection, when an elderly woman stood up to ask a question. It was Carolyn Goodman, whose son Andrew was murdered along with Michael Schwerner and James Chaney by the Klan in 1964 in Mississippi. It was one of those times when history reminds us that we are made of the past. She passed away the other day. Rest in peace.

Mississippi, btw, still sends Trent Lott to the U.S. Senate. I don't say much good about the Democrats, but cutting loose the crackers, even if it meant losing them to the Republicans (who were most eager to take in the racists), was great thing.

The American Gulag

There are more prisoners in the US than any other country in the world. With a mere five percent of the world’s population, we have close to a quarter of the world’s prisoners. 2.2 million behind bars, another 5 million on probation or parole. Our urge for vengeance and punishment has largely hit low-level drug users; only about a third of prisoners are in for violent crimes. And in a nation that refuses to come to grips with the issues of race, one in eight African American males between 25 and 29 are imprisoned.

What else? This all means our unemployment level is actually rather higher than the official number, since prisoners aren’t counted. What happens when these skill-less, often brutalized people get out of jail? What about all the families ripped apart? What about the future?

Additionally, in a truly sick throwback to Jim Crow, prisoners are counted in censuses, meaning their number boost often rural districts, but they are unable to vote in those districts, so essentially they are subsidizing more conservative representatives. The millions who are prevented from voting means the GOP, those perfect inheritors of Jim Crow polls, gets to win in places like Florida in 2000. No wonder the right loves “law and order” so god-damned much.

More here.

Yum, pork chops!

A chirpy English lass put it well on the Beeb this morning: you have ten pork chops. One of them is off. You can’t really sell that one, so you grind them all up together to make sausages, figuring that just a little bit of badness won’t kill anyone. Only, once the trenchers find out that the sausage is tainted, nobody wants to buy any of it. Replace mortgages for porkchops and witness the financial hysterics “correct,” in the S&M terminology of financial capital, the market.

"Mesoptn" notes

A BBC reporter was discussing the Iranian penchant for seeing the black hand of the Brits behind everything evil. The International British-Bolshevik Conspiracy? This is almost amusing, but given the history of the area, fathomable. The Brits after all, cut up the whole region after WWI finished off the Ottomans, laying the groundwork for much of the war, chaos, and misery since. Here’s Lloyd George in 1919, according to Arnold Toynbee, then in the British delegation to make the world safe for Empire, “Mesopotamia …yes … oil…irrigation…we must have Mesopotamia; Palestine… yes… the Holy Land … Zionism… we must have Palestine; Syria…h’m… what is there in Syria? Let the French have that.” The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, more recently known as British Petroleum (or, laughably, “beyond petroleum”) needed the firm hand of a “Shah,” that usual British urge for instant monarchs (cf. the Hashemites put into power in Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq). Along with the US national security state, the Brits toppled Mossaddeq and waved the usual red scare banner to return the rot of the Pahlavis to power. All-in-all, an excellent way to become a Great Satan.

There’s plenty of fevered conspiratorial nonsense in the hothouse autocracies of the Middle East, but at the same time there is history. A century of promises unkept, neocolonial rule, and monstrous surrogates, all in the name of controlling the oil. Pity we don't have any history in the US, only fantasies of sweetness and light.

Speaking of black hands, here’s Churchill, ever in the thick of it, complaining about, “this odious Mesoptn embarrassment.” Nothing a little gas attack wouldn't fix, eh Winnie?

Special ed.

Exactly. Why didn’t I ever think of this? In the September Harper’s, not yet on-line, P. Schrag in “Schoolhouse Crock” essays why education may be the most hysterical subject in the land (next to gay marriage, anyway). In America, education is in constant crisis, and has been so from Sputnik. Schools are expected to do the impossible. Needless to say, they fail. Of course they do, because schools don’t exist without the context of stable families, good jobs, childcare, wellness/health care, and social welfare, and above all, the class divide then rends America. Regardless of how much money is spent, regardless of how many tests are given in No Childhood Left, schools alone can’t get over this divide.
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Jesus Christmas, that was bile-rising: hearing Rove choke up about his close pal George as he promised more time with his family (ha-ha-ha, I always love that one). O yeah, present at the counterrevolution...

The long sham

Just another act of the "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history" that is the Middle East peace process. Siegman ends this piece optimistically:

If the US and its allies were to take a stand forceful enough to persuade Israel that it will not be allowed to make changes to the pre-1967 situation except by agreement with the Palestinians in permanent status negotiations, there would be no need for complicated peace formulas or celebrity mediators to get a peace process underway. The only thing that an envoy such as Blair can do to put the peace process back on track is to speak the truth about the real impediment to peace. This would also be a historic contribution to the Jewish state, since Israel’s only hope of real long-term security is to have a successful Palestinian state as its neighbour.

But this will only happen if, a) the neoconservatives are dethroned and b) American Jews act.

Reading

Joan Didion’s Miami makes me feel almost sorry for the Cuban exiles. Of course, no exile is sweet, but while there were plenty who fled the betrayed revolution (show me a revolution that wasn’t betrayed), it was the worst elements, the Batistists, the oligarchs, the autocrats, and fascists who rose to power as claimants of the mantel of los exilios; yet even these mucho macho assassins and bombers, dreaming of return, were toyed with by a national security state eager to use them, and just as eager to abandon them yet again. The Greeks had a word for it, the goat song of tragedy. The coast of broken dreams, and it’s cost? 40 years of absurdity that’s only fed Castro’s authoritarianism, and a reactionary stain on American politics only too eagerly absorbed by the Republicans, those tireless exploiters of resentment and hate. And in the Miami environs right now, “our” terrorists, sent to pasture in retirement.

What Didion’s so good at is the grubby little performance that is American politics, the sham of the contemptuous little prick behind the curtain as the Wizard has his photo-ops and stays on message until the next message comes along. All of them of the television age, from Eisenhower to Bush II, are props to varying degrees. And we’re the saps from Kansas, buying the bullshit year after year after year. Enough already! Basta!

Rudy can fail, and must

What’s so remarkable about the rise of Rudy Ghouliani is that the facts are irrelevant, just as was the case of Young Bush preceeding 2000. Then, the callow (in his 50s!!!!), clueless, spoiled brat who always got his way because his daddy’s friends helped him out of one mess after another (a story clear as daylight if you looked for it) completely foretold the incompetence, callousness, ignorance, and meanness that has led to the disasters of his reign. But the media just kept parroting the party line about restoring dignity and honor to the office, blah-blah-blah (and everybody still mouths the GOP lying point about Gore claiming to have invented the internet). Now, Rudy keeps repeating “9/11” and “terrorism” so that he’ll come across as the man on horseback a fair number of Americans crave. Kevin Baker and Wayne Barrett dissect this nonsense and show us the clannish, profoundly creepy little bully underneath the makeup. Baker argues that he’d be worse than Bush. Barrett lists five of the biggest lies. Personally, how anybody could support him after the Bernie Kerik episode is lost on me, but of course facts are pretty irrelevant to modern image-making. Brand Rudy is set in stone and the Big Lie is hard to overthrow. Certainly the corporate media isn’t going to set the record straight.

Market of death

Is anybody surprised about the continuing revelations about the poisons being sent over in Chinese-made pet food, toys, toothpaste? Why? This is the free market in action. It’s nothing specifically “Chinese;” it’s the “invisible hand,” that will-o-the-wisp of Adam Smith’s, elevated to a religious mantra. It’s the inevitable corruption, oligarchy, and authoritarianism that marketism results in when not overseen by a democratic polity. It used to be standard operating procedure right here too, which is why we have an FDA, an FCC, an EPA, and so on. Which is why the radicals on the right who occupy these desks now work to undermine the old rules, and bring back the adulteration, the pollution, the toxins. You, your children, your pets, are irrelevant. Short term profit, y’all! Profit is all, so much more important than lives, communities, the very planet itself.

Now, for an example of actually-operating capitalism, where capital and the state it partially or wholly owns act together, there’s no finer example than ARAMCO, our oil boys in Wahhabi Arabia, the inheritors of the copper barons, mine owners, and others on the “mineral frontiers.” There was no discernable difference between the State Department’s team in Arabia and the oil firm (and the Company, since the CIA was all over the place), while the corrupt, autocratic, feudal local regime provided the muscle when the workers got uppity. You know, things like wanting to see the movies the American workers got to see; to stop being called “coolies” and “ragheads”; to get better living conditions; to make the same salary; in short, to stop being discriminated against in the segregated whites-only oil camps. The strikes that eventually came – after petitions, work stoppages, and a bus boycott before Montgomery (!) failed – were soundly beaten back, with the strikers carted off to torture chambers as agitators, communists, etc. Old story.

As I write, there’s a coalmine collapse in Utah: the lives of six miners are at stake in a mine that’s gotten 300 safety citations in the last three years. The mine owners and their tools, like the Senator from Coal, Mitch McConnell, maintain unsafe conditions year after year because they gamble that profits now are well worth the risk of other lives later… or as in Utah, right now. The owner of this particular collapsed mine seems like a real piece of work, ranting about the United Mine Workers and global warming and insisting it was an earthquake. He did have one good point: he’s providing the filthy shit that feeds our insatiable electrical need.

A mass murder of errors

No End in Sight is a catalog of errors. Would that it were a comedy of them, instead of the death warrant of hundreds of thousands. The bloody, disastrous errors: Bypassing the State Department’s post-conflict plans in favor of the neocons’ ignorant fantasies. Refusing to declare martial law and stop the trashing of the infrastructure and the looting of 7000 years of history. Disbanding the Iraqi military (incredibly, the US military in country wasn’t alerted about this beforehand). The Chalibi-fetish. The grotesque “neocon kindergarten,” in which baby ideologues with nothing but GOP connections where shipped in to make manifest their adolescent fantasies. And all presided over by the bon mots of Donald Rumsfeld (who unsurprisingly refused to be interviewed) grimacing through his death’s head skull while reporters chuckle at his witticisms.

But those who did talk are other insiders, members of what during the foreign policy disaster in Vietnam were called “the Establishment,” professionals (lots of lapel pins in evidence) from the War and State Departments and associated entities, who tell of their disbelief and disgust about what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith, & Powell (by dint of his “loyalty,” the god-damned fool) and the rest wrought. It’s a powerful document indeed.

And yet… the primary error, the invasion itself, is not a matter of discussion in this documentary. This is, after all, a rather mainstream perspective. Indeed, at one point there’s a title card about the “many people who tried to save a nation.” Bullshit! Good-hearted people trying to do the noble job of nation-building is simply irrelevant to the underlying motives for the war and the uses of the resulting chaos. Because the chaos is useful: it keeps troops in the Gulf, it maintains Cheney’s ministate and GOP dominance at home and continues the long national security state control over domestic democracy.

The national security state, bipartisan to its core, agrees that “withdrawal” is merely a soporific for domestic consumption: the military presence in the country formerly known as Iraq is supposed to be permanent. The front-runners of both parties fully subscribed to the hegemonic American mission to control Middle Eastern oil, not that they would ever admit that, of course. Oil out, weapons in, & finance capital uber alles are their gods and masters, Clinton/Obama as much as Ghouliani/Thompson.

Wahhabi Arabia

Reading America’s Kingdom, by Robert Vitalis, about “mythmaking on the Saudi oil frontier” and the devil’s bargain of oil for security that still binds us in a death grip with the carbon fountain of Arabia. And man, is the gang is all here: ARAMCO, Stardard Oil’s nasty spawn (nowdays known as Exxon/Mobile), Bechtel, innumerable al Sauds and al Fahds, Daddy bin Laden, the WWII-gut-punched Brits being cut out of the Middle East as the upstart Yanks take over. And bring along their Jim Crow notions…. Vitalis tracks the oligarchy’s move from mineral frontier in our SW to Latin America to the Persian Gulf, bringing with them their poisons of apartheid and union-phobia. An ugly, ugly story of modern imperialism in the century when the old version of imperialism was being put into its deserved grave.

One suggestive nugget: the “Arabist” St. John Philby called it “Wahhabi Arabia.” Got that right! This was of course Kim Philby’s father; according to WikiP, Kim was at one point spying on his dad for MI6. Another theory has it that he was first recruited by the Soviets to spy on the old man, since the old man was so tight with the Saudis and up to his gills in the tar patch of the American and British struggle to get the oil. Would have loved to sit around that dinner table!

Bridges to nowhere

For years, we’ve been hearing about how fragile our infrastructure is. Auto culture’s ugly foundations are crumbling, and very little has been done about. (It ain't sexy; no new taxes; the invisible hand will provide). We see the results in Minnesota. Anybody surprised? The death toll over the Mississippi is pretty modest, considering.

Mostly built after the Second World War, the nation’s highway system fueled the growth of sprawling suburbs and exurbs, white flight from the cities, and a transfer of wealth from the industrialized NE to the war-industry south and west, from city to 'burb. (Political power followed.) Not to mention finishing the decapitation of public transportation, that automobile/tire company plan to hook us to cars. Like junkies, we’re now stuck with long commutes, car after car with a lone driver, oil-run politicians, blood in the Middle East, continued devastation of the environment. Over forty thousand dead a year on our roads...

Where are you going? What's your hurry?

Global climate change

... is going to kill millions of people, force hundreds of millions to migrate, and, in general, massively destabilize the world. Darfur, Nigeria, New Orleans, Iraq: the pockets of instability we now experience will become arcs, nay, swaths of disaster, continental in scope. And some people are going to be very, very angry at the piggies who’ve gobbled up so many resources and expelled all the resulting poisonous waste out into the toilet we’ve made of the atmosphere and oceans.

Against this, what effect will recycling, solar panels, and carbon-trading (what a scam!), or the fantasy of sequestration, have? Little to nothing, methinks. And taxing carbon, which passes for a radical notion in a corporate-controlled polity, is only a start. No, what we need is a revolution in the way we live. We need to stop being consumers. We need to stop buying the shit; we need to reorient our selves. Growth for growth’s sake, which Edward Abbey called the ideology of the cancer cell, is killing the planet and, needless to say, us along with it. Indeed, we have to change what we mean by “progress.” Of course, progress’s hold on us akin to the Church’s before the Enlightenment…

Considering that people still buy SUVs, though, this is a huge order. Not least because this Western disease has infected China and India, where a couple of billion people have been suckered into thinking that plastic and cars are going to make their lives better. Most often I’m pessimistic and think change will only come after disaster, and not necessarily the right kind of change either, for in desperation people usually fall for the charlatans and the thugs. But then I remember that the Church’s power was broken. We enlightened up once…

And of course I don’t mean we need to change as individuals and be done with it. O no; we must act collectively, for the commonwealth of the planet.