Fukushima Coverup

The company, the government, the regulatory agency and the media all seem to have conspired to coverup the severity of the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Here is the latest in case you missed it:

A full nuclear meltdown of 3 reactor cores occurred within hours of the accident. The company itself has admitted this.

The Fukushima accident has now released more radiation that Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.
The Company itself admitted this.

An area of 966 square kilometres is now uninhabitable due to nuclear contamination. link

Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind, according to Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president.

Each of those items is worth banner headlines in newspapers around the world, but I don't think they've been mentioned, as far as I know.

The company, the government, the regulatory agency and the media all seem to have conspired to coverup the severity of the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Here is the latest in case you missed it:

A full nuclear meltdown of 3 reactor cores occurred within hours of the accident. The company itself has admitted this.

The Fukushima accident has now released more radiation that Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.
The Company itself admitted this.

An area of 966 square kilometres is now uninhabitable due to nuclear contamination. link

Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind, according to Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president.

Each of those items is worth banner headlines in newspapers around the world, but I don't think they've been mentioned, as far as I know.

Fukushima Coverup

Give and You Shall Receive

Flattr is a very clever idea with a lot of potential. It might finally allow micropayments to work.

Particularly interesting is the requirement to donate a few euros (minimum two per month) before you can receive anything. I'm sure we've all had the idea of giving something to help alternative media and other content creators but the clumsy procedures of credit cards and paypal etc serve as an effective barrier.

Flattr is as simple as clicking on a 'Like' button in Google reader or Facebook. And the total donated can be easily controlled such that it is within anyone's budget. So now there is no excuse!

Hattip: Steve Keen.

Flattr is a very clever idea with a lot of potential. It might finally allow micropayments to work.

Particularly interesting is the requirement to donate a few euros (minimum two per month) before you can receive anything. I'm sure we've all had the idea of giving something to help alternative media and other content creators but the clumsy procedures of credit cards and paypal etc serve as an effective barrier.

Flattr is as simple as clicking on a 'Like' button in Google reader or Facebook. And the total donated can be easily controlled such that it is within anyone's budget. So now there is no excuse!

Hattip: Steve Keen.

Give and You Shall Receive

Massive Disconnect between Neo-classical economics and Global Reality

RWER:

Climate scientists are divided over whether “the tipping point”, the point at which positive feedbacks make climate change accelerate and irreversible, thereby endangering the survival of the human species, has been reached....

Meanwhile the World Bank forecasts that by the end of the century global economic output will have risen almost tenfold.

Evidently NCE counts output as a plus but the consequent destruction of the environment in which we live does not count as a loss. It's like chopping down trees on Easter Island. As they approach the last stands, timber production, profit and success have never been higher. But no thought is given to what happens when all the trees are gone.

We need to change NOW the measures of production and economic growth by a full incorporation of environmental damage.

RWER:

Climate scientists are divided over whether “the tipping point”, the point at which positive feedbacks make climate change accelerate and irreversible, thereby endangering the survival of the human species, has been reached....

Meanwhile the World Bank forecasts that by the end of the century global economic output will have risen almost tenfold.

Evidently NCE counts output as a plus but the consequent destruction of the environment in which we live does not count as a loss. It's like chopping down trees on Easter Island. As they approach the last stands, timber production, profit and success have never been higher. But no thought is given to what happens when all the trees are gone.

We need to change NOW the measures of production and economic growth by a full incorporation of environmental damage.

Massive Disconnect between Neo-classical economics and Global Reality

Banana Republic on the Potomac

Greenwald:

"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]," Mr. Hayden said, listing the continuities. "And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action."

And that list, impressive though it is, doesn't even include the due-process-free assassination hit lists of American citizens, the sweeping executive power and secrecy theories used to justify it, the multi-tiered, "state-always-wins" justice system the Obama DOJ concocted for detainees, the vastly more aggressive war on whistleblowers and press freedoms, or the new presidential immunity doctrines his DOJ has invented.

Is this a democracy we are talking about, or a banana republic? It's amazing to me that these policies could be created and confirmed, and there is not a hint of criticism anywhere in the world (apart from a wild-eyed radical like Glenn Greenwald) from either officials or the intellectual class.

Obviously belief in freedom or liberal democracy is merely nominal with most of these people. The Golden Rule is, never offend or speak against the Power (that issues the Gold and gives us our Position, may his Name be Praised).

I guess fool me for being so naive about it all this time.

The Assange case however proves that it hasn't gone unnoticed. The public is beginning to understand that you do not want to be extradited to the US, or even want to visit the damn place.

Extradition treaties have to be reviewed. It's time, sadly, to say goodbye to the American Dream.

Greenwald:

"You've got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition to extending the right of habeas corpus to prisoners at Bagram [in Afghanistan]," Mr. Hayden said, listing the continuities. "And although it is slightly different, Obama has been as aggressive as President Bush in defending prerogatives about who he has to inform in Congress for executive covert action."

And that list, impressive though it is, doesn't even include the due-process-free assassination hit lists of American citizens, the sweeping executive power and secrecy theories used to justify it, the multi-tiered, "state-always-wins" justice system the Obama DOJ concocted for detainees, the vastly more aggressive war on whistleblowers and press freedoms, or the new presidential immunity doctrines his DOJ has invented.

Is this a democracy we are talking about, or a banana republic? It's amazing to me that these policies could be created and confirmed, and there is not a hint of criticism anywhere in the world (apart from a wild-eyed radical like Glenn Greenwald) from either officials or the intellectual class.

Obviously belief in freedom or liberal democracy is merely nominal with most of these people. The Golden Rule is, never offend or speak against the Power (that issues the Gold and gives us our Position, may his Name be Praised).

I guess fool me for being so naive about it all this time.

The Assange case however proves that it hasn't gone unnoticed. The public is beginning to understand that you do not want to be extradited to the US, or even want to visit the damn place.

Extradition treaties have to be reviewed. It's time, sadly, to say goodbye to the American Dream.

Banana Republic on the Potomac

The 'Free Market' is a shibboleth

The "free market", "market mechanism" etc is virtually a shibboleth these days.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1448476/Climate-committee-agrees-on-principlesa

But the free market or cargo-cult market fundamentalism as I prefer to call it is the problem not the answer. Free markets or rather unregulated markets are what have caused the Great Recession and the climate change disaster.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/42422.html

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/CLIMATE-SPECTATOR-pd20101221-CBV35?OpenDocument

"a carbon price might, in theory, make complimentary measures redundant. But, as Professor Ross Garnaut points out, it would need to be $50-$100 a tonne to make it so."

Compare this with Stiglitz who says the tax needs to be somewhere near $88/t.

Why can't we start at a low rate ($10-20/t) and move up from there over time? And return the fee as a citizen's dividend to post compensate for increased energy prices and mute criticism of the 'great big tax'.

The "free market", "market mechanism" etc is virtually a shibboleth these days.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1448476/Climate-committee-agrees-on-principlesa

But the free market or cargo-cult market fundamentalism as I prefer to call it is the problem not the answer. Free markets or rather unregulated markets are what have caused the Great Recession and the climate change disaster.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/42422.html

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/CLIMATE-SPECTATOR-pd20101221-CBV35?OpenDocument

"a carbon price might, in theory, make complimentary measures redundant. But, as Professor Ross Garnaut points out, it would need to be $50-$100 a tonne to make it so."

Compare this with Stiglitz who says the tax needs to be somewhere near $88/t.

Why can't we start at a low rate ($10-20/t) and move up from there over time? And return the fee as a citizen's dividend to post compensate for increased energy prices and mute criticism of the 'great big tax'.

The 'Free Market' is a shibboleth

The Liberal Defence of Extraordinary Rendition

The Assange Case (Wikileaks) was the biggest story in the world for at least a week and a half.

Richard Seymour over at Lenin's Tomb didn't seem to notice it was happening.

No doubt he was busy playing 'revolutionary at the barricades' at some lefty protest or other.

He finally he jumps in with something on 21 December when it was all over (at least this initial skirmish). With an absolute tin ear for the local and international politics of the affair, his remarks involve wasting everybody's time discussing the sexual misconduct allegations. Seymour doesn't seem to realize that this doesn't matter. Maybe he's in the pay of the Empire like it was suspected Anna Ardin was.

The issue with the Assange case is simple:

Under no circumstances must Assange be extradited or rendered to the United States.

I'll repeat that. Rape be damned, Assange could be up for murder. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MUST ASSANGE BE EXTRADITED OR RENDERED TO THE UNITED STATES.

The reason is, persons cannot be extradited to a place where they may not get a fair trial, may be detained without trial, tortured or executed. Especially persons who are critics of the Empire and who are not guilty or even charged with any crime concerning their dissenting activities.

Remember also that Assange is a White Male of Christian origin and a Citizen of an Allied Country. Who's next if he is fair game?

There needs to be an effective guarantee from the Swedish Government that he will not be so extradited. Otherwise there should be protests up to and including civil disobedience to physically prevent any such extradition to Sweden.

My suspicion is Seymour can't see this issue for the same reason he couldn't see the Global Financial Crisis, otherwise known as the Great Recession or Great Depression 2 depending on how it pans out. He's a traditional Marxian lefty and has a blind spot on the issues of civil liberties and finance capitalism.

This deficiency in politics and economics is pretty major considering the nature of the Marxist project. In fact, it is tragic. We cant put all the blame on Marx, the sad fact it the understanding was simply not there for him and for much of the 20th Century. But it is now time to do better.

Neo-liberal oligarchism has been running amuck across the whole world for the last 30 or 40 years now. Part of the problem no doubt has been the near total collapse and incoherency of the traditional left.

The Assange Case (Wikileaks) was the biggest story in the world for at least a week and a half.

Richard Seymour over at Lenin's Tomb didn't seem to notice it was happening.

No doubt he was busy playing 'revolutionary at the barricades' at some lefty protest or other.

He finally he jumps in with something on 21 December when it was all over (at least this initial skirmish). With an absolute tin ear for the local and international politics of the affair, his remarks involve wasting everybody's time discussing the sexual misconduct allegations. Seymour doesn't seem to realize that this doesn't matter. Maybe he's in the pay of the Empire like it was suspected Anna Ardin was.

The issue with the Assange case is simple:

Under no circumstances must Assange be extradited or rendered to the United States.

I'll repeat that. Rape be damned, Assange could be up for murder. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MUST ASSANGE BE EXTRADITED OR RENDERED TO THE UNITED STATES.

The reason is, persons cannot be extradited to a place where they may not get a fair trial, may be detained without trial, tortured or executed. Especially persons who are critics of the Empire and who are not guilty or even charged with any crime concerning their dissenting activities.

Remember also that Assange is a White Male of Christian origin and a Citizen of an Allied Country. Who's next if he is fair game?

There needs to be an effective guarantee from the Swedish Government that he will not be so extradited. Otherwise there should be protests up to and including civil disobedience to physically prevent any such extradition to Sweden.

My suspicion is Seymour can't see this issue for the same reason he couldn't see the Global Financial Crisis, otherwise known as the Great Recession or Great Depression 2 depending on how it pans out. He's a traditional Marxian lefty and has a blind spot on the issues of civil liberties and finance capitalism.

This deficiency in politics and economics is pretty major considering the nature of the Marxist project. In fact, it is tragic. We cant put all the blame on Marx, the sad fact it the understanding was simply not there for him and for much of the 20th Century. But it is now time to do better.

Neo-liberal oligarchism has been running amuck across the whole world for the last 30 or 40 years now. Part of the problem no doubt has been the near total collapse and incoherency of the traditional left.

The Liberal Defence of Extraordinary Rendition

Modern Day Marxism

Chomsky:

[Marx] offered lots of insights into how society works, and he was an extremely good analyst of the current events of the day. I think he would take it for granted that elites are basically Marxist - they believe in class analysis, they believe in class struggle, and in a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time. And they understand. They're instinctive Marxists; they don't have to read it.

Warren Buffett:

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

What on earth could he mean?

Wikipedia:

Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution.

Neoliberalism, all that b-s about privatization, deregulation, economic reform etc etc has in fact been nothing but a plot to reestablish high and growing income inequality. Congratulations, well done. You've succeeded. Can we have a revolution now?

Chomsky:

[Marx] offered lots of insights into how society works, and he was an extremely good analyst of the current events of the day. I think he would take it for granted that elites are basically Marxist - they believe in class analysis, they believe in class struggle, and in a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time. And they understand. They're instinctive Marxists; they don't have to read it.

Warren Buffett:

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

What on earth could he mean?

Wikipedia:

Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution.

Neoliberalism, all that b-s about privatization, deregulation, economic reform etc etc has in fact been nothing but a plot to reestablish high and growing income inequality. Congratulations, well done. You've succeeded. Can we have a revolution now?

Modern Day Marxism

Christopher Hitchens Catches his Death of Cancer

I'm not some kind of droog kicking drunks in the street. One's opponents should be sober at least and preferably in good health also. But it's hard to avoid this remarkable statement from Hitchens:

I'm glad we're not having an inquest now, as we would be, into why we allowed a Rwanda or a Congo to develop on the Gulf, an imploding Iraq right in front of our eyes, a vortex of violence and meltdown, a whole society beggared and fractured and traumatised, waiting to fall to pieces.

But that is exactly what happened in Iraq, as a direct result of the illegal and criminal invasion which you, the traitor Hitchens, aggressively supported. Surely you, Hitchens, cannot be unaware of this fact?


Hitchens:

One of the bitter aspects of that is, well, I put in 60 years at the coalface, I worked very hard. In the last few years I've got a fair amount of recognition for it. In my opinion, actually, rather more than I deserve. Certainly more than I expected. And I could have looked forward to a few years of, shall we say, cruising speed, you know, just, as it were, relishing that, enjoying it.

Hitchens sold his soul to the devil to get his reward of money, fame, success and recognition. Instead, he got terminal cancer.

Truly pitiful.

Hitchens decided to switch his support to the US Empire over the criminal, baseless, counterproductive, disastrous, genocidal Iraq war.

It's like someone who decides to support Soviet Russia, not during the 1917 Revolution or the 1941 Great Patriotic war, but during the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia or the 1979 Afghanistan invasion.

You would have thought even the slowest of them would know better by then.

God didn't strike Hitchens down with cancer over his atheism or imperialism, he did to to give us a bitter, ironic laugh at this World-Historical clown figure.

I'm not some kind of droog kicking drunks in the street. One's opponents should be sober at least and preferably in good health also. But it's hard to avoid this remarkable statement from Hitchens:

I'm glad we're not having an inquest now, as we would be, into why we allowed a Rwanda or a Congo to develop on the Gulf, an imploding Iraq right in front of our eyes, a vortex of violence and meltdown, a whole society beggared and fractured and traumatised, waiting to fall to pieces.

But that is exactly what happened in Iraq, as a direct result of the illegal and criminal invasion which you, the traitor Hitchens, aggressively supported. Surely you, Hitchens, cannot be unaware of this fact?


Hitchens:

One of the bitter aspects of that is, well, I put in 60 years at the coalface, I worked very hard. In the last few years I've got a fair amount of recognition for it. In my opinion, actually, rather more than I deserve. Certainly more than I expected. And I could have looked forward to a few years of, shall we say, cruising speed, you know, just, as it were, relishing that, enjoying it.

Hitchens sold his soul to the devil to get his reward of money, fame, success and recognition. Instead, he got terminal cancer.

Truly pitiful.

Hitchens decided to switch his support to the US Empire over the criminal, baseless, counterproductive, disastrous, genocidal Iraq war.

It's like someone who decides to support Soviet Russia, not during the 1917 Revolution or the 1941 Great Patriotic war, but during the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia or the 1979 Afghanistan invasion.

You would have thought even the slowest of them would know better by then.

God didn't strike Hitchens down with cancer over his atheism or imperialism, he did to to give us a bitter, ironic laugh at this World-Historical clown figure.

Christopher Hitchens Catches his Death of Cancer

Randall Wray on USS Titanic QEII

link:

Maintaining the dollar's international appeal also requires imposition of the rule of law in the US. Currently, the fraud perpetrated by the biggest banks is far worse than anything the Russian kleptocrats and mafia combined could possibly imagine. The US is in the grips of the worst scandals in world history, with the financial sector no longer constrained by anything that would be recognizable as lawful practice. And that is the biggest threat to the dollar as international reserve currency. Unless the top banks are closed, with their management jailed, there really is no hope for the US dollar or for its economy.

link:

Maintaining the dollar's international appeal also requires imposition of the rule of law in the US. Currently, the fraud perpetrated by the biggest banks is far worse than anything the Russian kleptocrats and mafia combined could possibly imagine. The US is in the grips of the worst scandals in world history, with the financial sector no longer constrained by anything that would be recognizable as lawful practice. And that is the biggest threat to the dollar as international reserve currency. Unless the top banks are closed, with their management jailed, there really is no hope for the US dollar or for its economy.

Randall Wray on USS Titanic QEII

21st Century Jubilee

Steve Keen:

We should write the debt off, bankrupt the banks, nationalize the financial system, and start all over again.

We need a twenty-first century jubilee.

[We’re going into] a never-ending depression unless we repudiate the debt, which never should have been extended in the first place.

If we keep the parasitic banking sector alive, the economy dies. We have to kill the parasites and give a chance to the real economy to thrive once more and stop the financial [crooks] doing what they did this time around ever again.

Chifley was right. We need to nationalize the banks. But the time to do it is when they become bankrupt in a depression, not twenty years later when they have recovered their strength. The coming financial crash in Australia is an historic opportunity to achieve this.

The provision of finance and credit in the economy is an essential public utility - it cannot be left to the inherently corrupt and inefficient private sector based on some delusional cargo-cult ideology of "the free market always lands the goods".

The issue becomes clearer by the day and maybe will come to a head. The Giant Vampire Squid of the financial sector (like some monster out of the imagination of Clark Ashton Smith) needs to be ripped off the head and neck of the real economy where it has been feasting and poisoning, and stamped repeatedly into the ground until it is completely lifeless.

But Steve Keen does not say what Michael Hudson does: that rents and surpluses also need to be nationalized or socialized because those are the income streams that become pledged to banks as interest in the financialized economy. Without doing that, we will be on the treadmill again to another crisis 18 years down the track. This is a far more radical and permanent solution than what Keen proposes, which looks almost mild in comparison in spite of its shocking directness.

Steve Keen:

We should write the debt off, bankrupt the banks, nationalize the financial system, and start all over again.

We need a twenty-first century jubilee.

[We’re going into] a never-ending depression unless we repudiate the debt, which never should have been extended in the first place.

If we keep the parasitic banking sector alive, the economy dies. We have to kill the parasites and give a chance to the real economy to thrive once more and stop the financial [crooks] doing what they did this time around ever again.

Chifley was right. We need to nationalize the banks. But the time to do it is when they become bankrupt in a depression, not twenty years later when they have recovered their strength. The coming financial crash in Australia is an historic opportunity to achieve this.

The provision of finance and credit in the economy is an essential public utility - it cannot be left to the inherently corrupt and inefficient private sector based on some delusional cargo-cult ideology of "the free market always lands the goods".

The issue becomes clearer by the day and maybe will come to a head. The Giant Vampire Squid of the financial sector (like some monster out of the imagination of Clark Ashton Smith) needs to be ripped off the head and neck of the real economy where it has been feasting and poisoning, and stamped repeatedly into the ground until it is completely lifeless.

But Steve Keen does not say what Michael Hudson does: that rents and surpluses also need to be nationalized or socialized because those are the income streams that become pledged to banks as interest in the financialized economy. Without doing that, we will be on the treadmill again to another crisis 18 years down the track. This is a far more radical and permanent solution than what Keen proposes, which looks almost mild in comparison in spite of its shocking directness.

21st Century Jubilee

Death Blow for the Nuclear Industry

Solar Energy Cheaper than Nuclear for the First Time

In a “historic crossover,” the costs of solar photovoltaic systems have declined to the point where they are lower than the rising projected costs of new nuclear plants...

This crossover occurred at 16 cents per kilowatt hour, they said.

The Green movement, environmentalists, antiwar and anti-nuclear campaigners have been right all along, for the past 30 or 40 years.

Nuclear power is costly, toxic, weaponable, non-renewable and not the answer. Solar not nuclear.

Actually its a stroke of luck that the sheer cost of nuclear power is going to kill it. Otherwise we would have to rely on environmental arguments about pollution or moral arguments about war and militarism. Unfortunately those arguments don't carry as much weight.

The luck is the other way around with coal however. It's cheap to burn to produce electricity, and there is lots of it. We are having to rely on environmental, pollution, and intergenerational moral arguments to defeat it: a tough sell. This is why it is of fundamental importance that a carbon tax (combined with a carbon dividend) on CO2 be introduced as soon as possible. The price incentive is the one thing that can get the system moving.

Solar Energy Cheaper than Nuclear for the First Time

In a “historic crossover,” the costs of solar photovoltaic systems have declined to the point where they are lower than the rising projected costs of new nuclear plants...

This crossover occurred at 16 cents per kilowatt hour, they said.

The Green movement, environmentalists, antiwar and anti-nuclear campaigners have been right all along, for the past 30 or 40 years.

Nuclear power is costly, toxic, weaponable, non-renewable and not the answer. Solar not nuclear.

Actually its a stroke of luck that the sheer cost of nuclear power is going to kill it. Otherwise we would have to rely on environmental arguments about pollution or moral arguments about war and militarism. Unfortunately those arguments don't carry as much weight.

The luck is the other way around with coal however. It's cheap to burn to produce electricity, and there is lots of it. We are having to rely on environmental, pollution, and intergenerational moral arguments to defeat it: a tough sell. This is why it is of fundamental importance that a carbon tax (combined with a carbon dividend) on CO2 be introduced as soon as possible. The price incentive is the one thing that can get the system moving.

Death Blow for the Nuclear Industry

Stiglitz: Carbon tax a no-brainer

Putting a price on carbon is ''a no brainer'' and should be the first priority of any government, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says.

''I'm an advocate of carbon tax, because the general principle is that it's better to tax bad things than good things,'' he told a capacity crowd at the Australian National University's Llewellyn Hall yesterday afternoon, drawing a loud burst of enthusiastic applause.

''We don't know exactly what the right price of carbon is some say around $US60 to $80 ($A66 to $A88) a tonne, but what we do know is that zero is the wrong price.''

link

Stiglitz thus joins what appears to be a majority of economists from all schools who advocate the carbon tax over 'carbon trading'.

In theory, 'carbon trading' would work, if the licenses were auctioned on an annual basis, but then if it is so like a carbon tax, why bother?

In my view, 'carbon trading' is designed to fail. It's designed to make money for Wall st traders and to allow corporate-dominated governments to giveaway 'permits to pollute' to the big polluters.

An obvious and inevitable line of attack against the carbon tax is the 'great big new tax' and 'raise the cost of standard of living' arguments. To counter this purely at the political level a carbon dividend should be proposed. Either 50% or even 100% of the revenue raised from a carbon tax should be returned to each citizen on a per capita basis as compensation for increased energy costs.

Or 50% of the revenue could be invested in the building out of the new clean energy infrastructure. This would be a genuine 'nation building' project, not the farcical and murderous wedding-bombing operation in Afghanistan.

Putting a price on carbon is ''a no brainer'' and should be the first priority of any government, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says.

''I'm an advocate of carbon tax, because the general principle is that it's better to tax bad things than good things,'' he told a capacity crowd at the Australian National University's Llewellyn Hall yesterday afternoon, drawing a loud burst of enthusiastic applause.

''We don't know exactly what the right price of carbon is some say around $US60 to $80 ($A66 to $A88) a tonne, but what we do know is that zero is the wrong price.''

link

Stiglitz thus joins what appears to be a majority of economists from all schools who advocate the carbon tax over 'carbon trading'.

In theory, 'carbon trading' would work, if the licenses were auctioned on an annual basis, but then if it is so like a carbon tax, why bother?

In my view, 'carbon trading' is designed to fail. It's designed to make money for Wall st traders and to allow corporate-dominated governments to giveaway 'permits to pollute' to the big polluters.

An obvious and inevitable line of attack against the carbon tax is the 'great big new tax' and 'raise the cost of standard of living' arguments. To counter this purely at the political level a carbon dividend should be proposed. Either 50% or even 100% of the revenue raised from a carbon tax should be returned to each citizen on a per capita basis as compensation for increased energy costs.

Or 50% of the revenue could be invested in the building out of the new clean energy infrastructure. This would be a genuine 'nation building' project, not the farcical and murderous wedding-bombing operation in Afghanistan.

Stiglitz: Carbon tax a no-brainer

Ken O'Keefe on the BBC

Ken O'Keefe gives a spirited performance against a BBC 'journalist'.

Ken O'Keefe gives a spirited performance against a BBC 'journalist'.

Ken O'Keefe on the BBC

Emily Henochowicz

21-year old Emily Henochowicz loses her left eye after being shot in the face with a tear gas canister.

Link

21-year old Emily Henochowicz loses her left eye after being shot in the face with a tear gas canister.

Link

Emily Henochowicz

Housing Bubble

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article18733.html

Way back in 1983 Fred Harrison published his book "The Power in the Land" which relied on Homer Hoyt's 18-yr cycle theory to predict a land boom peaking in 1989 and a recession thereafter.

Back in the day we Georgists were amused to see the prediction come true and thought the bubble was a big one too. Anyone could also predict that the next peak would be 2007 or therabouts.

But look at this latest boom! No wonder the Economist called it the "biggest bubble in world history".

It's been Michael Hudson perhaps more than anyone else who has emphasized that a big land boom means huge amounts of money have been lent with land or property as collateral, which means in a bust all the banks are bust. In a financialised economy all available rents or supluses are pledged to banks as interest.

The financial sector is a giant vampire squid, sucking the life out of the economy and the workforce. Here again Hudson has rightly emphasized that 'debts that can't be paid, won't be paid'; that we need a 'Jubilee'.

However, the financial sector owns and controls the world and won't get it's fangs off it until there is some kind of revolution or popular rebellion.

Neo-liberalism will also have to be destroyed. The core of this dogma is to privatize, de-regulate, de-fund, de-tax and de-stroy.

Privatize: hand over land and resources and everthing in the nature of a natural monopoly to the private sector to allow them to privatize the economic surplus.

De-regulate: remove barriers to the raising of profits.

De-fund: the public sector and in particular the essential government role of infrastructure. Infrastructure will be provided by the miracle of market forces! Just like some sort of latter-day cargo cult. All you need to do is set up on some level ground somewhere wooden carvings of Adam Smith and Hayek, and all the good things anyone could desire will come down!

De-tax: lower or remove altogether taxation on wealth, property and capital.

De-stroy: the obvious outcome of it all, although a small class of the very rich have gotten smaller and even richer, which is their objective.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article18733.html

Way back in 1983 Fred Harrison published his book "The Power in the Land" which relied on Homer Hoyt's 18-yr cycle theory to predict a land boom peaking in 1989 and a recession thereafter.

Back in the day we Georgists were amused to see the prediction come true and thought the bubble was a big one too. Anyone could also predict that the next peak would be 2007 or therabouts.

But look at this latest boom! No wonder the Economist called it the "biggest bubble in world history".

It's been Michael Hudson perhaps more than anyone else who has emphasized that a big land boom means huge amounts of money have been lent with land or property as collateral, which means in a bust all the banks are bust. In a financialised economy all available rents or supluses are pledged to banks as interest.

The financial sector is a giant vampire squid, sucking the life out of the economy and the workforce. Here again Hudson has rightly emphasized that 'debts that can't be paid, won't be paid'; that we need a 'Jubilee'.

However, the financial sector owns and controls the world and won't get it's fangs off it until there is some kind of revolution or popular rebellion.

Neo-liberalism will also have to be destroyed. The core of this dogma is to privatize, de-regulate, de-fund, de-tax and de-stroy.

Privatize: hand over land and resources and everthing in the nature of a natural monopoly to the private sector to allow them to privatize the economic surplus.

De-regulate: remove barriers to the raising of profits.

De-fund: the public sector and in particular the essential government role of infrastructure. Infrastructure will be provided by the miracle of market forces! Just like some sort of latter-day cargo cult. All you need to do is set up on some level ground somewhere wooden carvings of Adam Smith and Hayek, and all the good things anyone could desire will come down!

De-tax: lower or remove altogether taxation on wealth, property and capital.

De-stroy: the obvious outcome of it all, although a small class of the very rich have gotten smaller and even richer, which is their objective.

Housing Bubble

Change the System, Not the Climate

A People's Declaration from Klimaforum 09 -


The Copenhagen conference on Climate change was a flop and a joke. It was, literally, a bunch of Neros fiddling while the world burned.

But it may have the benefit of finally discrediting the approaches tried to date, such as carbon trading etc.

Another benefit of the Conference was the alternative summits, people's summits, such as the Klimaforum. The Klimaforum document is highly admirable and a sound basis for going forward. Change must come from below, and the exploitative Western capitalist system that created the crisis must be radically altered.

A People's Declaration from Klimaforum 09 -


The Copenhagen conference on Climate change was a flop and a joke. It was, literally, a bunch of Neros fiddling while the world burned.

But it may have the benefit of finally discrediting the approaches tried to date, such as carbon trading etc.

Another benefit of the Conference was the alternative summits, people's summits, such as the Klimaforum. The Klimaforum document is highly admirable and a sound basis for going forward. Change must come from below, and the exploitative Western capitalist system that created the crisis must be radically altered.

Change the System, Not the Climate

Michael Hudson vs Paul Krugman

Michael Hudson has (briefly) broken into the public debate via a comment from Paul Krugman of the New York Times.

Here is a taste of the radical view that ever-so-momentarily hits the spotlight:

To answer this question, my book describes the "intellectual engineering" that has turned the economics discipline into a public relations exercise for the rentier classes criticized by the classical economists: landlords, bankers and monopolists. It was largely to counter criticisms of their unearned income and wealth, after all, that the post-classical reaction aimed to limit the conceptual "toolbox" of economists to become so unrealistic, narrow-minded and self-serving to the status quo. It has ended up as an intellectual ploy to distract attention away from the financial and property dynamics that are polarizing our world between debtors and creditors, property owners and renters, while steering politics from democracy to oligarchy.

In this article Hudson goes on to point out one of the oddest and most characteristic aspects of neo-classical economics, that propositions don't have to correspond to reality, they just have to be internally logically consistent.

In the past, Hudson has confidently predicted that neo-liberalism is dead as a result of the GFC, but I prefer to agree with Gaffney that it aint dying anytime soon. The corpse will be patched up and shoved out again for consumption by new generations of students.

Michael Hudson has (briefly) broken into the public debate via a comment from Paul Krugman of the New York Times.

Here is a taste of the radical view that ever-so-momentarily hits the spotlight:

To answer this question, my book describes the "intellectual engineering" that has turned the economics discipline into a public relations exercise for the rentier classes criticized by the classical economists: landlords, bankers and monopolists. It was largely to counter criticisms of their unearned income and wealth, after all, that the post-classical reaction aimed to limit the conceptual "toolbox" of economists to become so unrealistic, narrow-minded and self-serving to the status quo. It has ended up as an intellectual ploy to distract attention away from the financial and property dynamics that are polarizing our world between debtors and creditors, property owners and renters, while steering politics from democracy to oligarchy.

In this article Hudson goes on to point out one of the oddest and most characteristic aspects of neo-classical economics, that propositions don't have to correspond to reality, they just have to be internally logically consistent.

In the past, Hudson has confidently predicted that neo-liberalism is dead as a result of the GFC, but I prefer to agree with Gaffney that it aint dying anytime soon. The corpse will be patched up and shoved out again for consumption by new generations of students.

Michael Hudson vs Paul Krugman

Tolkien on Power

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was a visually spectacular and a worthy rendition, however one of the things which irritated me about it was its mishandling (misunderstanding?) of the core concept of the Ring of Power.

It must surely strike even the casual reader that political power or the lust for power is a prime evil in Tolkien's Middle Earth (not to mention our own earth) and there are adequate quotes from the man himself to describe his main ideas:

"You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1995, p. 121.)

"Power is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales" (p. 152.)

"The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on" (pp. 178-179.)

"In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit" (p. 243.)

"Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for domination)" (p. 246.)

"My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)" (p.63)

Can't get much plainer than that.

Now what I'd like to know is the relationship (if any) between Tolkien and his fellow philologist Nietzsche.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was a visually spectacular and a worthy rendition, however one of the things which irritated me about it was its mishandling (misunderstanding?) of the core concept of the Ring of Power.

It must surely strike even the casual reader that political power or the lust for power is a prime evil in Tolkien's Middle Earth (not to mention our own earth) and there are adequate quotes from the man himself to describe his main ideas:

"You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1995, p. 121.)

"Power is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales" (p. 152.)

"The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power, and so on" (pp. 178-179.)

"In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible. He had gone the way of all tyrants: beginning well, at least on the level that while desiring to order all things according to his own wisdom he still at first considered the (economic) well-being of other inhabitants of Earth. But he went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination, being in origin an immortal (angelic) spirit" (p. 243.)

"Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power (exerted for domination)" (p. 246.)

"My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)" (p.63)

Can't get much plainer than that.

Now what I'd like to know is the relationship (if any) between Tolkien and his fellow philologist Nietzsche.

Tolkien on Power

Blair Planned Iraq Invasion Nine Months Before War

link

Further evidence to the Chilcot report adds to that already existing that the decision to attack Iraq was made first and the pretext prepared afterwards.

This means that the war was a crime and the corporate media is a propaganda network. Hardly anyone would refute that these days, but it is not reported very much, not discussed, and no action is planned or taken.

Western culture has a blind spot on the reality: we have told big lies and committed major war crimes. One day civilization may advance to the point where this is no longer tolerated.

link

Further evidence to the Chilcot report adds to that already existing that the decision to attack Iraq was made first and the pretext prepared afterwards.

This means that the war was a crime and the corporate media is a propaganda network. Hardly anyone would refute that these days, but it is not reported very much, not discussed, and no action is planned or taken.

Western culture has a blind spot on the reality: we have told big lies and committed major war crimes. One day civilization may advance to the point where this is no longer tolerated.

Blair Planned Iraq Invasion Nine Months Before War

The Anti-Empire Report November 4th, 2009 by William Blum

The Anti-Empire Report

November 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." — Voltaire

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He's holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Somalian civil society and court system are so devastated from decades of war that one wouldn't expect its citizens to have the means to raise serious legal challenges to Washington's apparent belief that it can drop bombs on that sad land whenever it appears to serve the empire's needs. But a group of Pakistanis, calling themselves "Lawyers Front for Defense of the Constitution", and remembering just enough of their country's more civilized past, has filed suit before the nation's High Court to make the federal government stop American drone attacks on countless innocent civilians. The group declared that a Pakistan Army spokesman claimed to have the capability to shoot down the drones, but the government had made a policy decision not to. 1

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, behaves like the world is one big lawless Somalia and the United States is the chief warlord. On October 20 the president again displayed his deep love of peace by honoring some 80 veterans of Vietnam at the White House, after earlier awarding their regiment a Presidential Unit Citation for its "extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry". 2 War correspondent Michael Herr has honored Vietnam soldiers in his own way: “We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.” 3

What would it take for the Obamaniacs to lose any of the stars in their eyes for their dear Nobel Laureate? Perhaps if the president announced that he was donating his prize money to build a monument to the First — "Oh What a Lovely" — World War? The memorial could bear the inscription: "Let us remember that Rudyard Kipling coaxed his young son John into enlisting in this war. John died his first day in combat. Kipling later penned these words:

"If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied."



“The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature.” — James Madison, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, April 2, 1798.

A wise measure, indeed, but one American president after another has dragged the nation into bloody war without the approval of Congress, the American people, international law, or world opinion. Millions marched against the war in Iraq before it began. Millions more voted for Barack Obama in the belief that he shared their repugnance for America's Wars Without End. They had no good reason to believe this — Obama's campaign was filled with repeated warlike threats against Iran and Afghanistan — but they wanted to believe it.



If machismo explains war, if men love war and fighting so much, why do we have to compel them with conscription on pain of imprisonment? Why do the powers-that-be have to wage advertising campaigns to seduce young people to enlist in the military? Why do young men go to extreme lengths to be declared exempt for physical or medical reasons? Why do they flee into exile to avoid the draft? Why do they desert the military in large numbers in the midst of war? Why don't Sweden or Switzerland or Costa Rica have wars? Surely there are many macho men in those countries.

"Join the Army, visit far away places, meet interesting people, and kill them.”

War licenses men to take part in what would otherwise be described as psychopathic behavior.

"Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him." — Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H

"In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed." — Eduardo Galeano



After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a Taliban leader declared that “God is on our side, and if the world’s people try to set fire to Afghanistan, God will protect us and help us.” 4

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." — George W. Bush, 2004, during the war in Iraq. 5

"I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis." — Barack Obama. 6

Why don't church leaders forbid Catholics from joining the military with the same fervor they tell Catholics to stay away from abortion clinics?

God, war, the World Bank, the IMF, free trade agreements, NATO, the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, "anti-war" candidates, and Nobel Peace Prizes can be seen as simply different instruments for the advancement of US imperialism.

Tom Lehrer, the marvelous political songwriter of the 1950s and 60s, once observed: "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." Perhaps each generation has to learn anew what a farce that prize has become, or always was. Its recipients include quite a few individuals who had as much commitment to a peaceful world as the Bush administration had to truth. One example currently in the news: Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres which won the prize in 1998. Kouchner, now France's foreign secretary, has long been urging military action against Iran. Last week he called upon Iran to make a nuclear deal acceptable to the Western powers or else there's no telling what horror Israel might inflict upon the Iranians. Israel "will not tolerate an Iranian bomb," he said. "We know that, all of us." 7 There is a word for such a veiled threat — "extortion", something normally associated with the likes of a Chicago mobster of the 1930s ... "Do like I say and no one gets hurt." Or as Al Capone once said: "Kind words and a machine gun will get you more than kind words alone."

The continuing desperate quest to find something good to say about US foreign policy

Not the crazy, hateful right wing, not racist or disrupting public meetings, not demanding birth certificates ... but the respectable right, holding high positions in academia and in every administration, Republican or Democrat, members of the highly esteemed Council on Foreign Relations. Here's Joshua Kurlantzick, a "Fellow for Southeast Asia" at CFR, writing in the equally esteemed and respectable Washington Post about how — despite all the scare talk — it wouldn't be so bad if Afghanistan actually turned into another Vietnam because "Vietnam and the United States have become close partners in Southeast Asia, exchanging official visits, building an important trading and strategic relationship and fostering goodwill between governments, businesses and people on both sides. ... America did not win the war there, but over time it has won the peace. ... American war veterans publicly made peace with their old adversaries ... A program [to exchange graduate students and professors] could ensure that the next generation of Afghan leaders sees an image of the United States beyond that of the war." 8 And so on.

On second thought, this is not so much right-wing jingoism as it is ... uh ... y'know ... What's the word? ... Ah yes, "pointless". Just what is the point? Germany and Israel are on excellent terms ... therefore, what point can we make about the Holocaust?

As to America not winning the war in Vietnam, that's worse than pointless. It's wrong. Most people believe that the United States lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, by poisoning the earth, the water, the air, and the gene pool for generations, the US in fact achieved its primary purpose: it left Vietnam a basket case, preventing the rise of what might have been a good development option for Asia, an alternative to the capitalist model; for the same reason the United States has been at war with Cuba for 50 years, making sure that the Cuban alternative model doesn't look as good as it would if left in peace.

And in all the years since the Vietnam War ended, the millions of Vietnamese suffering from diseases and deformities caused by US sprayings of the deadly chemical "Agent Orange" have received from the United States no medical care, no environmental remediation, no compensation, and no official apology. That's exactly what the Afghans — their land and/or their bodies permeated with depleted uranium, unexploded cluster bombs, and a witch's brew of other charming chemicals — have to look forward to in Kurlantzick's Brave New World. "If the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan eventually resembles the one we now have with Vietnam, we should be overjoyed," he writes. God Bless America.

One further thought about Afghanistan: The suggestion that the United States could, and should, solve its (self-created) dilemma by simply getting out of that god-forsaken place is dismissed out of hand by the American government and media; even some leftist critics of US policy are reluctant to embrace so bold a step — Who knows what horror may result? But when the Soviet Union was in the process of quitting Afghanistan (during the period of May 1988-February 1989) who in the West insisted that they remain? For any reason. No matter what the consequences of their withdrawal. The reason the Russians could easier leave than the Americans can now is that the Russians were not there for imperialist reasons, such as oil and gas pipelines. Similar to why the US can't leave Iraq.
Washington's eternal "Cuba problem" — the one they can't admit to.

"Here we go again. I suppose old habits die hard," said US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, on October 28 before the General Assembly voted on the annual resolution to end the US embargo against Cuba. "The hostile language we have just heard from the Foreign Minister of Cuba," she continued, "seems straight out of the Cold War era and is not conducive to constructive progress." Her 949-word statement contained not a word about the embargo; not very conducive to a constructive solution to the unstated "Cuba problem", the one about Cuba inspiring the Third World, the fear that the socialist virus would spread.

Since the early days of the Cuban Revolution assorted anti-communists and capitalist true-believers around the world have been relentless in publicizing the failures, real and alleged, of life in Cuba; each perceived shortcoming is attributed to the perceived shortcomings of socialism — It's simply a system that can't work, we are told, given the nature of human beings, particularly in this modern, competitive, globalized, consumer-oriented world.

In response to such criticisms, defenders of Cuban society have regularly pointed out how the numerous draconian sanctions imposed by the United States since 1960 have produced many and varied scarcities and sufferings and are largely responsible for most of the problems pointed out by the critics. The critics, in turn, say that this is just an excuse, one given by Cuban apologists for every failure of their socialist system. However, it would be very difficult for the critics to prove their point. The United States would have to drop all sanctions and then we'd have to wait long enough for Cuban society to make up for lost time and recover what it was deprived of, and demonstrate what its system can do when not under constant assault by the most powerful force on earth.

In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the first 39 years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. In the ten years since, these figures have of course all increased. The sanctions, in numerous ways large and small, make acquiring many kinds of products and services from around the world much more difficult and expensive, often impossible; frequently, they are things indispensable to Cuban medicine, transportation or industry; simply transferring money internationally has become a major problem for the Cubans, with banks being heavily punished by the United States for dealing with Havana; or the sanctions mean that Americans and Cubans can't attend professional conferences in each other's country.

These examples are but a small sample of the excruciating pain inflicted by Washington upon the body, soul and economy of the Cuban people.

For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear much of that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the General Assembly on the resolution, which reads: "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". This is how the vote has gone:
Year Votes (Yes-No) No Votes
1992 59-2 US, Israel
1993 88-4 US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay
1994 101-2 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1995 117-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1996 138-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1997 143-3 US, Israel
1998 157-2 US, Israel
1999 155-2 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2000 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2001 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2002 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2003 173-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2004 179-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2005 182-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2006 183-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2007 184-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2008 185-3 US, Israel, Palau
2009 187-3 US, Israel, Palau

How it began, from State Department documents: Within a few months of the Cuban revolution of January 1959, the Eisenhower administration decided "to adjust all our actions in such a way as to accelerate the development of an opposition in Cuba which would bring about a change in the Cuban Government, resulting in a new government favorable to U.S. interests." 9

On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba." Mallory proposed "a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government." 10 Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo.
Notes

1. The Nation (Pakistan English-language daily newspaper), October 10, 2009 ↩
2. Washington Post, October 20, 2009 ↩
3. Michael Herr, "Dispatches" (1991), p.71 ↩
4. New York Daily News, September 19, 2001 ↩
5. Washington Post, July 20, 2004, p.15, citing the New Era (Lancaster, PA), from a private meeting of Bush with Amish families on July 9. The White House denied that Bush had said it. (Those Amish folks do lie a lot you know.) ↩
6. Washington Post, August 17, 2008 ↩
7. Daily Telegraph (UK), October 26, 2009 ↩
8. Washington Post, October 25, 2009 ↩
9. Department of State, "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba" (1991), p.742 ↩
10. Ibid., p.885 ↩

The Anti-Empire Report

November 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." — Voltaire

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He's holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Somalian civil society and court system are so devastated from decades of war that one wouldn't expect its citizens to have the means to raise serious legal challenges to Washington's apparent belief that it can drop bombs on that sad land whenever it appears to serve the empire's needs. But a group of Pakistanis, calling themselves "Lawyers Front for Defense of the Constitution", and remembering just enough of their country's more civilized past, has filed suit before the nation's High Court to make the federal government stop American drone attacks on countless innocent civilians. The group declared that a Pakistan Army spokesman claimed to have the capability to shoot down the drones, but the government had made a policy decision not to. 1

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, behaves like the world is one big lawless Somalia and the United States is the chief warlord. On October 20 the president again displayed his deep love of peace by honoring some 80 veterans of Vietnam at the White House, after earlier awarding their regiment a Presidential Unit Citation for its "extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry". 2 War correspondent Michael Herr has honored Vietnam soldiers in his own way: “We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.” 3

What would it take for the Obamaniacs to lose any of the stars in their eyes for their dear Nobel Laureate? Perhaps if the president announced that he was donating his prize money to build a monument to the First — "Oh What a Lovely" — World War? The memorial could bear the inscription: "Let us remember that Rudyard Kipling coaxed his young son John into enlisting in this war. John died his first day in combat. Kipling later penned these words:

"If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied."



“The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature.” — James Madison, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, April 2, 1798.

A wise measure, indeed, but one American president after another has dragged the nation into bloody war without the approval of Congress, the American people, international law, or world opinion. Millions marched against the war in Iraq before it began. Millions more voted for Barack Obama in the belief that he shared their repugnance for America's Wars Without End. They had no good reason to believe this — Obama's campaign was filled with repeated warlike threats against Iran and Afghanistan — but they wanted to believe it.



If machismo explains war, if men love war and fighting so much, why do we have to compel them with conscription on pain of imprisonment? Why do the powers-that-be have to wage advertising campaigns to seduce young people to enlist in the military? Why do young men go to extreme lengths to be declared exempt for physical or medical reasons? Why do they flee into exile to avoid the draft? Why do they desert the military in large numbers in the midst of war? Why don't Sweden or Switzerland or Costa Rica have wars? Surely there are many macho men in those countries.

"Join the Army, visit far away places, meet interesting people, and kill them.”

War licenses men to take part in what would otherwise be described as psychopathic behavior.

"Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him." — Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H

"In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed." — Eduardo Galeano



After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a Taliban leader declared that “God is on our side, and if the world’s people try to set fire to Afghanistan, God will protect us and help us.” 4

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." — George W. Bush, 2004, during the war in Iraq. 5

"I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis." — Barack Obama. 6

Why don't church leaders forbid Catholics from joining the military with the same fervor they tell Catholics to stay away from abortion clinics?

God, war, the World Bank, the IMF, free trade agreements, NATO, the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, "anti-war" candidates, and Nobel Peace Prizes can be seen as simply different instruments for the advancement of US imperialism.

Tom Lehrer, the marvelous political songwriter of the 1950s and 60s, once observed: "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." Perhaps each generation has to learn anew what a farce that prize has become, or always was. Its recipients include quite a few individuals who had as much commitment to a peaceful world as the Bush administration had to truth. One example currently in the news: Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres which won the prize in 1998. Kouchner, now France's foreign secretary, has long been urging military action against Iran. Last week he called upon Iran to make a nuclear deal acceptable to the Western powers or else there's no telling what horror Israel might inflict upon the Iranians. Israel "will not tolerate an Iranian bomb," he said. "We know that, all of us." 7 There is a word for such a veiled threat — "extortion", something normally associated with the likes of a Chicago mobster of the 1930s ... "Do like I say and no one gets hurt." Or as Al Capone once said: "Kind words and a machine gun will get you more than kind words alone."

The continuing desperate quest to find something good to say about US foreign policy

Not the crazy, hateful right wing, not racist or disrupting public meetings, not demanding birth certificates ... but the respectable right, holding high positions in academia and in every administration, Republican or Democrat, members of the highly esteemed Council on Foreign Relations. Here's Joshua Kurlantzick, a "Fellow for Southeast Asia" at CFR, writing in the equally esteemed and respectable Washington Post about how — despite all the scare talk — it wouldn't be so bad if Afghanistan actually turned into another Vietnam because "Vietnam and the United States have become close partners in Southeast Asia, exchanging official visits, building an important trading and strategic relationship and fostering goodwill between governments, businesses and people on both sides. ... America did not win the war there, but over time it has won the peace. ... American war veterans publicly made peace with their old adversaries ... A program [to exchange graduate students and professors] could ensure that the next generation of Afghan leaders sees an image of the United States beyond that of the war." 8 And so on.

On second thought, this is not so much right-wing jingoism as it is ... uh ... y'know ... What's the word? ... Ah yes, "pointless". Just what is the point? Germany and Israel are on excellent terms ... therefore, what point can we make about the Holocaust?

As to America not winning the war in Vietnam, that's worse than pointless. It's wrong. Most people believe that the United States lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, by poisoning the earth, the water, the air, and the gene pool for generations, the US in fact achieved its primary purpose: it left Vietnam a basket case, preventing the rise of what might have been a good development option for Asia, an alternative to the capitalist model; for the same reason the United States has been at war with Cuba for 50 years, making sure that the Cuban alternative model doesn't look as good as it would if left in peace.

And in all the years since the Vietnam War ended, the millions of Vietnamese suffering from diseases and deformities caused by US sprayings of the deadly chemical "Agent Orange" have received from the United States no medical care, no environmental remediation, no compensation, and no official apology. That's exactly what the Afghans — their land and/or their bodies permeated with depleted uranium, unexploded cluster bombs, and a witch's brew of other charming chemicals — have to look forward to in Kurlantzick's Brave New World. "If the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan eventually resembles the one we now have with Vietnam, we should be overjoyed," he writes. God Bless America.

One further thought about Afghanistan: The suggestion that the United States could, and should, solve its (self-created) dilemma by simply getting out of that god-forsaken place is dismissed out of hand by the American government and media; even some leftist critics of US policy are reluctant to embrace so bold a step — Who knows what horror may result? But when the Soviet Union was in the process of quitting Afghanistan (during the period of May 1988-February 1989) who in the West insisted that they remain? For any reason. No matter what the consequences of their withdrawal. The reason the Russians could easier leave than the Americans can now is that the Russians were not there for imperialist reasons, such as oil and gas pipelines. Similar to why the US can't leave Iraq.
Washington's eternal "Cuba problem" — the one they can't admit to.

"Here we go again. I suppose old habits die hard," said US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, on October 28 before the General Assembly voted on the annual resolution to end the US embargo against Cuba. "The hostile language we have just heard from the Foreign Minister of Cuba," she continued, "seems straight out of the Cold War era and is not conducive to constructive progress." Her 949-word statement contained not a word about the embargo; not very conducive to a constructive solution to the unstated "Cuba problem", the one about Cuba inspiring the Third World, the fear that the socialist virus would spread.

Since the early days of the Cuban Revolution assorted anti-communists and capitalist true-believers around the world have been relentless in publicizing the failures, real and alleged, of life in Cuba; each perceived shortcoming is attributed to the perceived shortcomings of socialism — It's simply a system that can't work, we are told, given the nature of human beings, particularly in this modern, competitive, globalized, consumer-oriented world.

In response to such criticisms, defenders of Cuban society have regularly pointed out how the numerous draconian sanctions imposed by the United States since 1960 have produced many and varied scarcities and sufferings and are largely responsible for most of the problems pointed out by the critics. The critics, in turn, say that this is just an excuse, one given by Cuban apologists for every failure of their socialist system. However, it would be very difficult for the critics to prove their point. The United States would have to drop all sanctions and then we'd have to wait long enough for Cuban society to make up for lost time and recover what it was deprived of, and demonstrate what its system can do when not under constant assault by the most powerful force on earth.

In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the first 39 years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. In the ten years since, these figures have of course all increased. The sanctions, in numerous ways large and small, make acquiring many kinds of products and services from around the world much more difficult and expensive, often impossible; frequently, they are things indispensable to Cuban medicine, transportation or industry; simply transferring money internationally has become a major problem for the Cubans, with banks being heavily punished by the United States for dealing with Havana; or the sanctions mean that Americans and Cubans can't attend professional conferences in each other's country.

These examples are but a small sample of the excruciating pain inflicted by Washington upon the body, soul and economy of the Cuban people.

For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear much of that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the General Assembly on the resolution, which reads: "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". This is how the vote has gone:
Year Votes (Yes-No) No Votes
1992 59-2 US, Israel
1993 88-4 US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay
1994 101-2 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1995 117-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1996 138-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1997 143-3 US, Israel
1998 157-2 US, Israel
1999 155-2 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2000 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2001 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2002 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2003 173-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2004 179-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2005 182-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2006 183-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2007 184-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2008 185-3 US, Israel, Palau
2009 187-3 US, Israel, Palau

How it began, from State Department documents: Within a few months of the Cuban revolution of January 1959, the Eisenhower administration decided "to adjust all our actions in such a way as to accelerate the development of an opposition in Cuba which would bring about a change in the Cuban Government, resulting in a new government favorable to U.S. interests." 9

On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba." Mallory proposed "a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government." 10 Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo.
Notes

1. The Nation (Pakistan English-language daily newspaper), October 10, 2009 ↩
2. Washington Post, October 20, 2009 ↩
3. Michael Herr, "Dispatches" (1991), p.71 ↩
4. New York Daily News, September 19, 2001 ↩
5. Washington Post, July 20, 2004, p.15, citing the New Era (Lancaster, PA), from a private meeting of Bush with Amish families on July 9. The White House denied that Bush had said it. (Those Amish folks do lie a lot you know.) ↩
6. Washington Post, August 17, 2008 ↩
7. Daily Telegraph (UK), October 26, 2009 ↩
8. Washington Post, October 25, 2009 ↩
9. Department of State, "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba" (1991), p.742 ↩
10. Ibid., p.885 ↩

The Anti-Empire Report November 4th, 2009 by William Blum