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Saturday, July 19, 2008 |
The nonsense George W. Bush is telling us got noticed by the Daily Show.
BringItOn: "'Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their loss ... in effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to dis-elect them.'
Ralph Nader
Many conservatives insist that socialism will destroy America, that Democrats are really just socialists at heart, and therefore that Democrats destroy America. Even more, they confuse socialism and communism, and insist that Democrats are just communists bent on destroying the wonders of American capitalism by taking 'our money' and giving it to the 'worthless, lazy slobs' who are too stupid to grab a real chunk of the 'American dream'. Conservatives are loathe to approve public policies that spend taxpayer money on healthcare or childcare or food assistance or anything that diverts tax money away from corporations and towards the citizens.
The current financial crisis in the mortgage industry is a direct result of the Bush administration's laissez-faire attitude towards financial regulation and oversight. You'd have thought that the Enron collapse (and other corporate meltdowns over the last 7 years) would have opened the publics eyes, and maybe it did for a few minutes. But put a sweet, juicy apple in front of a horse and he may well forget that the last apple you gave him was really just a piece of rotton fruit. When Bush proclaimed his desire to create 'The Ownership Society' he was handing us an apple. It did taste pretty good for a few chews, but as we reach the core, we can see how rotton it really was. And the taste seems to be lingering far longer than it ever should.
By creating an atmosphere of lax enforcement and by stripping away funding for regulation and any sort of oversight, the mortgage industry called open season on America. They played fast and furious to get anyone into a home regardless of the financial realities such moves required. They got paid when the made the loan, then they sold the loan and got paid again. They didn't give a crap about the people at the end of the trail though, those who would ultimately be left holding worthless loan notes because the original borrower would never be able to pay the full rates when the juicy apple revealed itself to be rotton.
And by and large, as the banking system is brought to its knees by its own greed, none of those folks who fueled the boom will be held responsible. Much like the German Army of the 1930's and 1940's, these fine folks were just following orders. They didn't make the rules after all. Why should they be held responsible?
Socialism has some good qualities - like the collective payments for public institutions and infrastructure or social safety nets that promote work while offering a hand in hard times. But socialism also has an evil side, just like the conservatives tell us it does. It's called corporate socialism. Isn't it funny how it's the only aspect of socialism that the conservatives really seem to love?"
Yes, here is another opportunity for the cynical neocon. You create a situation in which your customers get in trouble. Then you expect the state to support you, not your customers.
If the state helped the unfortunate mortgage holders instead of helping the banks, these customers would be able to pay their mortgages to their banks, and there would be no crisis. Now only the banks are saved, the mortgage holders still lose out. Double profits for the banks, free money and repossession of all the houses their customers could no longer afford. Disaster capitalism it is called.
The corporate world gets all the benefits, the tax payer pays for all the losses. It's a million times worse than Communism.
11:58:40 AM 
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The situation in the Middle East does not look good. Well, there is really no problem, but some countries are pushing their own agenda at any cost; though the possibility that Iran could at a certain time be able to make an atomic bomb, may play a part in Israel's viewpoint, but it shouldn't. There is no legal or moral justification for attacking an other country on the assumption that it could in the future attack your own country.
If Israel attacks Iran it will only show that Israel has become a de facto fascist state. If Israel thinks they have the right to a preemptive strike, they should know that they are giving any other country the same right; and looking objectively at the Middle East there is only one real threat and that is Israel, which has already bombed several countries, is effecting ethnic cleansing in terrritories that don't belong to them, and has not complied with many UN resolutions. If we use the same standards for all countries, Israel should have been bombed and invaded long ago.
Wikipedia: "From 1967 to 1989 the UN Security Council passed 131 resolutions directly dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Of the 131 resolutions passed, 43 could be considered neutral while the remaining 88 either criticized and opposed the actions of Israel or judged against its interests. Nearly half of the 88 resolutions against Israel condemned, censured or deplored the member state or its actions. During this time, in the UN General Assembly, 429 resolutions against Israel were passed, and Israel was condemned 321 times. The United States has used its veto power to prevent resolutions concerning Israel from passing through the Security Council on 42 occasions since 1970."
Israel is using the same scare tactics the Nazis used to incite fear and hatred against the Jews. Why would Iran be a threat to Israel? Why would Iran attack Israel? There is no reason to unless Iran itself would be attacked. The only reason Israel wants to destroy the nuclear capabilities of any country around it is that they want to remain unpunished when Israel again attacks other countries. Israel is deliberately inciting fear and exaggerating the 'threat' to maintain a free hand to attack other nations. A nation with nuclear capabilities would limit Israel's impunity. And the US deliberately exaggerates the 'threat' for economic/strategic aims. But by attacking Iran the US and Israel would create the conditions for any Arab country to attack Israel. There is only one way out of this: make peace and make the Middle East a thriving entity, so Israel can stand on its own feet, not those of Big Brother who already has clay feet.
What makes the above situation more dangerous is the fact that the US has its own Middle East agenda, and it's not about destroying the nuclear capabilities of Iran, it's about oil and the strategic place of Iran in encircling the 'enemy', Russia, China, and India, the economic powers that threaten the predominance of the US (with their British satellite).
So what is a possible scenario for the coming months?
Israel could attack the nuclear facilities in Iran.
The US could either respond to a retaliation by Iran or simply fake one and bomb the Iranian military installations and part of its industry and government. There is talk about reducing troops in Iraq now. Well, they could simply be moved to Iran, or just removed to limit the retaliation from Iran on US troops in Iraq. Move them out, then later move them in again. But sure is that Israel will be blamed for all US actions.
George W. Bush is a man who would take any risk, even destroying the US and world economy; as long as his war profiteering companies are doing fine, this world is the best of all possible worlds in his opinion.
Bush is trying to grab as much as he can during the last months of his reign. And he would gladly leave Obama with a heritage he can't do much about; Bush is trying to put the next president before a fait accompli (several possibly).
NYTimes: "Israel will almost surely attack Iran's nuclear sites in the next four to seven months - and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country's nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war - either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.
It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United States (nor, for that matter, the rest of the world) that Iran be savaged by a nuclear strike, or that both Israel and Iran suffer such a fate. We know what would ensue: a traumatic destabilization of the Middle East with resounding political and military consequences around the globe, serious injury to the West's oil supply and radioactive pollution of the earth's atmosphere and water."
Of course, the above is written by Benny Morris, an Israeli. His object is to convince Iran to stop their nuclear programme. But attacking Iran is also a sure way to ensure that resentment will increase and finally end in the destruction of Israel. When a country bombs and ravages the countries around it, that country is the threat, and one day the inevitable will happen, and it will be destroyed in its turn. Israel is not a viable nation in this form. It is a racist country, treating other races like they themselves were treated in the horrible WWII years, and whenever the might of the US starts waning, which may not be far off with its present serious crisis and economic decline, Israel will lose its support and will no longer be sustainable. If you want to live in peace, don't make enemies.
If the US wants to take on the combined might of Russia, China and India, they are stark raving mad. It would be a sign of an empire on the point of crumbling, an effort to regain what other nations are claiming. It would be the beginning of the end of America. The US no longer has friends; the US administration rules by threats and blackmail, it no longer convinces any other way.
AsiaTimes: "In sum, the past week's flow of events in places as far apart as Prague, Hokkaido, Tbilisi, Harare, Tehran and the Arctic underscored that after a brief respite, the rivalries over energy security have revived with a ferocity that can rock the equilibrium of overall US-Russia relations. The situation will likely be exacerbated in the coming period. The geopolitics of energy security are a highly sensitive subject for the Bush administration, whose profound links with Big Oil are legion. It is a tremendous loss of face for the Bush-Cheney-Rice combine that Moscow is outwitting the US on the energy front.
The strong possibility is that the Bush administration will press the pedal on multiple fronts on the Eurasian geopolitical landscape and create a fait accompli of US-Russian mutual antagonism for Senator Barack Obama, should he become president. The haste behind the Prague deal on missile defense smacks of such thinking. Almost certainly, Rice will press for a decision on the plan of action in respect of Georgia's and Ukraine's membership of NATO at the meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers in December. The question, 'Who is the boss in Russia?' doesn't really seem to matter anymore."
LATimes: "The U.S. military's growing role in rebuilding war-battered nations has fueled concerns about a 'creeping militarization' of American foreign policy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. As the conflict in Afghanistan shows, coordinating war-fighting with diplomacy, job creation and road-building often doesn't work well, the Pentagon chief said in remarks prepared for delivery at an international policy dinner.
'Getting all these different elements to coordinate operations and share best practices has been a colossal - and so far an all too often unsuccessful - undertaking,' said Gates.
He added that the increased involvement of the military in jobs that historically were done by civilian agencies has led to concerns of 'a creeping militarization of some aspects of America's foreign policy'.
In both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, U.S. troops have been doing far more than fighting insurgents and securing borders. They've coordinated reconstruction projects and filled transition teams that bolstered fragile local governments and rebuilt industry.
'The Foreign Service is not the Foreign Legion, and the U.S. military should never be mistaken for a Peace Corps with guns,' said Gates.
In the future, Gates said, the U.S. may not be toppling a regime and rebuilding a nation, but there will be a need to help countries that are struggling with insurgents, failed governments or natural disasters.
The most persistent threats, he said, will come from failing states that can't meet the basic needs of their people."
The US is a failing state. The US is a threat to world peace. The US is the only exporter of revolutions at the moment and it is doing so for the benefit of its own industry. Wars are the new profitable industry of neocon America. War is business, and business is war. You destroy a country, at tax payers' expense, and then rebuild it at the expense of the ravaged country, and the profits are exclusively for the US war profiteers. But, unfortunately, it's also the end of civilization, the end of freedom, liberty and justice.
I do hope that at least some people in this and the next administration will see the danger, if not for the world, at least for the US.
And even if it takes several years, George W. Bush and Tony Blair must be tried for war crimes.
11:40:23 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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