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The Last Days of the American Empire

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It Was Nice While It Lasted

It Was Nice While It Lasted

Writing for the Truthdig website, Chris Hedges—America’s very own Cato—has eloquently described the period that we are living through in the United States:

The final days of empire give ample employment and power to the feckless, the insane and the idiotic. These politicians and court propagandists, hired to be the public faces on the sinking ship, mask the real work of the crew, which is systematically robbing the passengers as the vessel goes down. The mandarins of power stand in the wheelhouse barking ridiculous orders and seeing how fast they can gun the engines. They fight like children over the ship’s wheel as the vessel heads full speed into a giant ice field. They wander the decks giving pompous speeches. They shout that the SS America is the greatest ship ever built. They insist that it has the most advanced technology and embodies the highest virtues. And then, with abrupt and unexpected fury, down we will go into the frigid waters.

The last days of empire are carnivals of folly. We are in the midst of our own, plunging forward as our leaders court willful economic and environmental self-destruction. Sumer and Rome went down like this. So did the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Men and women of stunning mediocrity and depravity led the monarchies of Europe and Russia on the eve of World War I. And America has, in its own decline, offered up its share of weaklings, dolts and morons to steer it to destruction. A nation that was still rooted in reality would never glorify charlatans such as Sen. Ted Cruz, House Speaker John Boehner and former Speaker Newt Gingrich as they pollute the airwaves. If we had any idea what was really happening to us we would have turned in fury against Barack Obama, whose signature legacy will be utter capitulation to the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex and the security and surveillance state. We would have rallied behind those few, such as Ralph Nader, who denounced a monetary system based on gambling and the endless printing of money and condemned the willful wrecking of the ecosystem. We would have mutinied. We would have turned the ship back.

The only good thing to note is that it takes a long time for an empire to finally fall. I think of Byzantium, which struggled on for almost a thousand years after Rome fell, only to fall in 1453 to Mehmet II and his Ottoman Turks.

I strongly recommend you read the Chris Hedges article: I feel he is one of the most knowledgeable and moral commentators on today’s national and international politics. While you are at it, you might want to take a look at some of his books, including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America (2005), I Don’t Believe in Atheists (2008), and The Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009). Others are listed in his Wikipedia biography.

Chicken Little on Wall Street

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The Volatility of the Stock Market Says a Lot About the Average Investor

The Volatility of the Stock Market Says a Lot About the Average American Investor

Today I will be wearing a slightly different hat. As part of my retirement plan, I maintain a pension account containing stocks and mutual funds. I am fascinated by the way the market goes up and down, with jagged swings indicating that “Yes, the sky is falling!” and, alternatively, “No, it isn’t!”

Last week, analyst Kevin Kaiser of Hedgeye Risk Management released a report promising juicy details about mismanagement by the partners of Kinder Morgan (KMI), a publicly traded energy pipeline partnership. The stock of KMI suddenly dropped by 6%. Then the report came out, and it was the Emperor’s New Clothes all over again. Kaiser’s big point was that the firm was stinting on capital expenditures for maintenance of the extensive pipeline network. When the industry had a chance to read the full report, the scorn started flowing. It turned out that KMI spent as much on pipeline maintenance as any of the other firms in the industry, and that therefore Hedgeye was full of pungent excrement. Still, the investors in the marketplace are so timid that the stock has not yet fully recovered from last week’s drop.

Another case in point: American Tower Corporation (AMT) was attacked by Muddy Waters Research (an appropriate name), which claimed that “American Tower is worth 40 percent less than its share price because it overstated the value of its acquisitions and has poor corporate governance.” Predictably, AMT stock slid by several percentage points, until Deutsche Bank came to the firm’s rescue by asserting that Muddy Waters was merely muddying the waters.

If weird hedge fund analysts could do so much damage, I would like to put in my own two cents worth, in the hopes that the stocks of the following companies would take a tumble:

  • Halliburton Company (HAL) has been sexting pictures of their CEO’s private parts to underage schoolgirls across the United States.
  • Monsanto Corporation (MON) has been transporting young boys across state lines for various nefarious purposes.
  • Koch Industries, Inc. (Unlisted) has secretly been funding a political attempt to implement Obamacare and paying off Tea Party members of Congress to be absent when votes attempting to repeal are introduced.

Why am I in the stock market at all? With all its vagaries, it’s still better than the 0.0000001% interest offered by most banks.

Right Wing Poster Boy Goes Bad

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It Didn’t Take Long for Him to Show His True Stripes

It Didn’t Take Long for Him to Show His True Stripes

George Zimmerman has gone over to the Dark Side. Actually, I am of the opinion he was never far from it. His behavior since being acquitted in the “Stand Your Ground” murder of Trayvon Martin shows him to have been guilty—just like O. J. Simpson’s armed robbery in Las Vegas put the skids on any sympathy he may have gotten from his 1990s murder trial.

In the news today is word that the right wing poster boy is in custody after threatening his estranged wife with a gun. Shellie Zimmerman claims that her Georgie Boy was verbally abusive. And the misuse of guns appears to be a chronic problem with him.

I remember an ad that used to run on L.A. television stations years ago for a law enforcement school in which the first benefit listed was that graduates could “arrest offenders.” Or, in other words, carry a gun and feel a surge of power. Perhaps it is people like Zimmerman who should, at all costs, be kept away from firearms.

This is probably not the last we’ll hear of the Floridian neighborhood watch guy with the itchy trigger finger.

The Jeep Moment

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It’s in All the 1950s Sci-Fi Films

It’s in All the 1950s Sci-Fi Films

You probably remember The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): A flying saucer lands in the park in our nation’s capital, and a worried crowd begins to gather. Not to worry, however, a Jeep full of Army officers pulls up, and everyone in the audience breathed a sigh of relief. Our boys are here! They’re invincible. The G.I.’s will take care of the alien menace.

Except, they don’t. Michael Rennie and his robot accomplice Gort have weapons at their command that could turn people and their property into something resembling a tuna melt.

I find it interesting that, after we’ve won a two-front war, we should suddenly feel fear. Was it because of the uncertainty generated by the atom? Hiroshima and Nagasaki appeared to have deeply affected the American psyche. All of a sudden, this relativity thing that no one seemed to understand could not only kill people, but do it in a way that was strangely alien. (Was that why Professor Barnhardt, the Alfred Einstein lookalike, was played by Sam Jaffe in the movie.)

We were right to feel fear—and not only because of the A-Bomb. With the end of the Second World War, we were entering a world we did not understand. First there was Communism, which scared the bejeezus out of us until it all unraveled like a cheap suit in 1988-89. But we didn’t get any kind of respite, because all of a sudden there was all this weird violence in the Middle East.

American Hawks were still around, except now they were called Neoconservatives. They kept having this “Jeep Moment,” where they would meet any crisis by sending in our troops with their Jeeps (though now I guess they ride Humvees). We’re still dealing with something alien that we can’t understand. We keep fighting wars with people who speak a strange language and worship strange gods and in general behave in bizarre ways. And they think nothing of blowing themselves to bits if they could take a bunch of us with them. (In the Arab world, being a suicide bomber is considered to be a good career move.)

It strikes me that there is a mathematical formula for success in a military action against a peoples we don’t understand: K/F=C, or Knowledge divided by Force equals the Chance of Victory. Either that, or a recipe for fried chicken.

 

 

Another War Nobody Wants

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Just What We Needed!

Just What We Needed!

I guess things have been going too well for us lately. It must be time for another war. Let’s dust off those “Support Our Troops” signs and wave that raggedy flag. We are about to step once again into that Tar Baby par excellence, the Middle East, which is full of people who hate us and want to get even with us for … for … I forget what. We don’t understand them, though they understand us somewhat from being exposed to our entertainment media for so long.

There is no possible good outcome from our involvement in Syria. Innocent Syrians will be killed by our weaponry, and thousands of people will thereupon discover they have a blood feud with the United States. I thought Obama was smarter than that.

Let’s say we have a super bomb in our arsenal that will seek out Bashar al-Assad and blow him to kingdom come. Then what? Even such a surgical strike will lead to a civil war among Islamists, al-Qaida, Baathists, Druzes, Shi’ites, Alawites, and others. Are we going to send in referees with striped shirts to declare who will be the winner and who is fighting fair. No one will be fighting fair, and of one thing I am certain: Before long, all weapons will be aimed at us. So much for gratitude, huh?

 

Twerking Our Way to Nowhere

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Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke at the MTV Video Music Awards

Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke at the MTV Video Music Awards

I don’t know if I can express my disapproval over a performance that made Rush Limbaugh so livid with rage.“It was just this side on on-stage pornography,” the Viagra user who liked even looser women in the Dominican Republic. “It was pure, unadulterated rot.”

Actually, it was pure nothing. I saw the full number on YouTube before the high sheriffs of Copyrightdom had it removed. It was jerky, and sexy more in its intent than its execution.

But I’ll bet that Pat Robertson was mightily aroused to wrath, and we’ll be hearing some priceless lines from the right-wing Christian doomsayer-elect within the next day or so.

I frankly don’t care if Miley Cyrus dances full-on naked on the stage. It’s been done  before, though not by Hannah Montana,.and it will be done again.

In the meantime, more serious issues await our consideration: We are about to add to the mess in Syria. The Stock Market is taking a dive in anticipation of same. Washington continues to be more divided than a Civil War battlefield, with belligerent threats from the Republicans made worse by their suspicion that they are about to be regarded as a very bad episode in our country’s history.

OK, Who Cut the Cheese?

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It’s Best to Be Slow and Through on This Issue

It’s Best to Be Slow and Thorough on This Issue

I don’t really mean to be facetious about this, but there exist several possibilities regarding the use of nerve gas in Syria:

  • Most people think that Bashar al-Assad is responsible, and he might very well be
  • Arrayed against Bashar and his Baathists are a lot of Al-Qaida baddies, who might well have gotten their hands on some Sarin from Chemical Ali’s stock of it in Iraq
  • It could be that both sides are releasing nerve gas, which is not as outlandish as it may seem

Remember that George W. Bush had us going to war against Saddam in Iraq based on “weapons of mass destruction” that were never found. We cannot risk making assumptions that will lead to a massive loss of lives among Syrians or among our own armed forces.

Even if we are able to identify which side is employing nerve gas, I am reluctant about committing ourselves to bombing raids or, worse yet, “boots on the ground.” If we send in our bombers and Cruise Missiles, how do we know what targets to hit, considering that our military intelligence is god-awful or nonexistent. And do we want to set up another Green Zone, this time in Damascus or Homs or Aleppo, from which we cannot venture out without being blown to bits by roadside bombs?

And if we commit to either course, who stands to gain? Who stands to lose? Are we even asking ourselves these questions, or do we just assume that we’re still the world’s policeman after all these failed forays?

 

Kills Wife, Children, Self

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I’m Beginning To Think It’s Well Beyond Gun Control

I’m Beginning To Think It’s Well Beyond Gun Control

Something highly incongruous is happening around the country. On one hand, the total rate of crime, including murder, is decreasing nationwide. On the other hand, what murders there are are becoming more spectacular:

  • The random killing in Duncan, Oklahoma, of a young Australian baseball player by teens who were “bored”
  • The murder of a World War II veteran who is beaten to death by teens in Spokane
  • The shooting of four co-workers by a North Florida man who then took his own life

And that’s just within the last couple of days. Whether guns are involved or not, there seems to be a dangerous anomie among teens, and a total lack of conflict resolution skills among many of their elders.

So frequent are these stories that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish one occurrence from another: They merge into one another, with the result that it seems everyone is out there senselessly killing people—all the time!

For one thing, the news media obviously batten on to these stories so that people watching the news or reading the paper (wait—they don’t do that any more) are sickened. Each is accompanied by a news media orgy that continues until it is time for the next news media orgy to begin.

Since I have given up on watching the news, I don’t get as badly hammered by bad news as most people. But even following stories on the Internet causes sufficient consternation.

What must other people think when they watch our news program? I am reminded of Mexican newspapers giving gory details of murders and showing photos of the bodies. At least, that’s the way it was when I used to travel through Mexico in the 1980s.

The Perils of Chelsea

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Interesting Timing

Interesting Timing

I find it amusing that Bradley (a.k.a. Chelsea) Manning has changed his/her gender preference right around the time he/she received a 35-year prison sentence. Now that raises several interesting possibilities. If he (I will continue with the masculine gender for now, only because it’s just too cumbersome handling the pronouns otherwise) were going to spend his time in San Quentin or one of the other California prisons, it would very likely mean that he wants to be on the receiving end of some rough trade. I don’t know what the situation is at Leavenworth and other Federal penitentiaries, but I suspect that the sexual scene is relatively more sedate.

If I were an indie filmmaker, I can picture half a dozen scenarios of what happens from this point on; but I have no intention of going into detail in this blog.

At the back of my mind, I suspect that the former Bradley Manning’s release of information to WikiLeaks was at least somewhat motivated by his frustrations serving in the U.S. military given his gender orientation.

But why reveal that information now?

 

 

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

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Yeah, Let’s Clean It Up and Rid Ourselves of More American Fighting Men and Women

Yeah, Let’s Clean It Up and Rid Ourselves of More American Fighting Men and Women!

Even at this late date, we can find Neocons and Universal Hawks like John McCain advocating that we intervene militarily in Syria. After all, it worked so well for us in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Now first of all, whom do we support? The cruel Baathist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, or the Islamofascists of Al-Qaida? Come on, quick! It’s one or the other. Or maybe we can just kill everyone and turn the country into a parking lot for future wars.

I am beginning to think that one characteristic of Americans is that they do not have the ability to learn from experience. Do you suppose it could be all that Oxycontin, or maybe there’s something in that bad beer that most Yanquis drink while watching (un)reality shows on the idiot box? In any case, as soon as the opportunity for another war in a country that we don’t understand (and—really—do we understand any of them?) presents itself, there’s a large contingent all gung ho for getting G.I. boots on the ground.

Let me look in my crystal ball: If we intervene on behalf of Bashar, we will be treated with contempt the world over. If we intervene on behalf of the rebels, we will be allying ourselves with Al-Qaida—and we will be treated with contempt the world over. If we don’t intervene at all, we will be treated with contempt the world over … but we wouldn’t have to bury the charred, exploded remains of thousands of young American men and women. I don’t know, but number three is looking mighty good to me.

The Arab Spring has shown us that the Middle Eastern man in the street wants to live in a democracy like Americans, but they have absolutely no idea of how to get there. The only people who are well organized are either the Islamofascists or the tyrants and their stooges. There are maybe a handful of others, but they are constantly disheartened by the actions of their coreligionists.

I think that the best thing we can do is not rely on the Middle East for anything and just let the people kill one another. Sure, we can send them Band Aids and antiseptics and such, but no weapons and none of our military personnel.