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!
Friday, August 10, 2007
Thursday, August 9, 2007
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.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, August 6, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
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!
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!
Friday, August 3, 2007
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?
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?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
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.
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.
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