The End Begins
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
-T. S. Eliott
Yesterday, President of the United States George W. Bush “diverted” a flight to Australia to a desert base in Anbar Province, Iraq (Sure he did.). Anbar Province is now being effectively run not by US occupation forces, but by the armed Iraqi nationalist forces that fought the US to a standstill there… with the cooperation of the same US forces. This is being spun as a successful “counter-insurgency” campaign.
Many who opposed the war in Iraq, and the many more who just disliked the Bush adminstration, certainly had different expectations of what forms the end of that war might take. And this is certainly the beginning of some kind of end. That is not a call to complacency. Fight against this war like lives depend on it. They still do. I just feel compelled to counter-spin it.
With El Presidente on this “surprise” trip, as it happened, were the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. Meeting them on this remote base between Baghdad and the Syrian border was none other than Bagwan Petraeus, the current Vivekananda of counter-insurgency doctrine and the latest in a long line of Generals who will be dragged into historical ignominy by this Commander-in-Chief.
The Ba’athists of Anbar seem to bear no grudges, even for the genocidal revenge that was visted on Fallujah. This bespeaks a political sophistication (or Realpolitik, choose your term) that is miles ahead of the power curve in Washington DC. Only lately, it seems, as the mad mandarins of The Project for a New American Century chirp with bellicosity at Persia, has it occurred to the administration that the raison d’etre of US policy in the region since 1979 — containing the surprise independence of Iran — has been judo-flipped into an Iranian Era, in the same moment that the privatized Islamist militias of the Afghanistan operation (also cranked up courtesy of the CIA circa 1979) have metastasized into a popular movement that threatens the US-obedient rulers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Pakistan.
The generalissimos of the New Crusade didn’t consult enough scripture.
And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell — and great was its fall.
-Matthew 7:26-27
Now the whole US National Command Authority is sitting together with former enemies surrounded by the sands of Anbar.
Someone is cutting deals.
Someone else is preparing to spin a victory, just as they are spinning the surrender of Anbar as the success story of the invasion and occupation.
In his public statements yesterday, Bush opened the window out of which he (or more properly, his Party… he can soon settle back into golf, cocaine, and bass-fishing) will jump.
If the Generals “tell me that if the kind of success we are now seeing here continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces. I urge members of both parties in Congress to listen to what they have to say. Congress shouldn’t jump to conclusions until the general and the ambassador report.â€
Got it, George.
Here is a picture of the meeting at Al Asad Air Base (credited to Jason Reed: Reuters):
Looks like a real drive-by, doesn’t it?
The opposition to the war has not only decimated Republican power, it has driven the Democrat establishment into a retrograde operation against its own left wing. The war is political plutonium. And the outcome — even as Sadr challenges the pro-Iranian SCIRI and reaches out to Sunni nationalists, as the aspirations of the Kurds provoke the Turkish Army, as Pervez Musharraf watches his own security forces fracture and shift against him, as the Russians court Central Asia with the promise of a Gas OPEC, as the Sino-Russian SCO threatens to undo the strategic outcomes of the Cold War, and as the fictional-value crisis triggered by the sub-prime nosedive creates alarming tremors under the global economy — will be that Iran is now and will remain a significant political actor on the world stage. This is inevitable, even with the occasional ill-considered shennaigans of President Ahmadenijad.
This meeting in Anbar is part of a last-minute bid to prevent the inevitable be exploring a realignment with what the administration has convinced itself are the “Sunnis,” one of three categories in its simple-minded social taxonomy of Iraq.
Many believe that the administration will resort to strikes against Iran, but I have said, from the time this particular chicken-little rumor started, that I don’t believe it will happen.
Before the Iraq occupation, the adminstration could harbor delusions about Iraq, about liberation parades across the Al-A’imma Bridge and cocktail parties at the Oil Ministry. Their information came from crackpot academics (Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, et al) and an Iraqi confidence-artist (Chalabi).
But the recklessness of that decision cannot be mapped onto the current administration. Regardless of their staggering apologetics from the podia, this administration has a lengthening list of political casualties on the one hand, and four-and-a-half years of bitter experience in actually-existing Iraq now. The interpreters of that experience are the Generals.
In those quiet enclosed spaces where they dare speak the truth, there is one truth that none of the Generals can withhold. An attack against Iran would spark a general uprising in Iraq that would extend from Baghdad to Basra; and the US would find its already tenuous positon in Iraq untenable. The only thing that might be worse than an American attack on Iran would be one launched by the Israelis, who are rightly identified by Iraqis as an American forward base in the region.
The outcome would not be the destruction of Iranian influence. In the wake of a certain and final US defeat in Iraq, such an attack would be the guarantor of Iranian ascendancy in the context of a catastrophic standoff with China and Russia, the former of which has the capacity to shatter the US economy by selling down dollars and the latter of which can absorb that sell-down in conversion to roubles in the growing fossil energy economy of Russia.
How this war will end has never been a decision that can or would be made by the leadership of either American political party, any more than the defeat in Vietnam was the result of politicians and protesters. The occupied people made the decision. It was not revoked in Vietnam. It will not be revoked in Iraq.
The puzzle that will preoccupy both parties now, since neither knows who will inherit this dilemma, is how to salvage what is left of waning American imperial power. You won’t be able to slide shim-stock between Rudy or Hillary on this question… and neither of them will have the power to stand before the historical macrotrend of US power dissolution.
The first that acknowledges and learns to deal with the fact of Iranian ascendency will be the one that will suffer least… but that’s about it. In less than a decade, we will see Russia, China, and Iran at the head of a re-set Central Asian chessboard, and they will contend with a descendant American empire.
The end of all empires is inevitable. The Great City always exhausts the rural soils and eats the seedcorn, and its debilitated, dependent rulers will always be usurped by “the barbarians” who were formerly bent before the Great City’s plunder. As Dr. King — once himself called one a barbarian — said, “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”
History will record that a decisive misstep in the crash of the American Empire was taken on March 19, 2003. September 3, 2007 will be a historical place-holder for a kind of death-gasp of empire… former guerrillas sitting the Prez down as an equal across the table at Al Asad.
We haven’t reckoned the body count yet, because it is still rising. That’s the sinful part.
It’s over. Admit it. Get over it. Get out.
Bring them home now.
Michael:
“the context of a catastrophic standoff with China and Russia, the former of which has the capacity to shatter the US economy by selling down Dollars and the latter of which can absorb that sell-down in conversion to rubles in the growing fossil energy economy of Russia.”
Oh lordie. Well, we know one thing for certain at this point, and that’s that anyone still lost enough to be propagating the idea that China could a) sell dollars and b) crash the U.S. economy as a result and c) not destroy its own economy in the process (if it could even find a magical way to sell so many dollars) is not someone who has even a rudimentary grasp of basic economics.
(I won’t even bother with the Russian claim.)
Really, are the pickings so bare in the “America is Crashing and Burning” camp so slim that you still insist on holding onto this meme? Can’t you find something not so easily countered? I can honestly pick through these types of writings and at least see where you’re at least coming from on many points, but this ridiculous “China crashes the dollar/destroys America’s economy” one just keeps popping up over and over and is an immediate deal-breaker.
5 September 2007, 11:26 pmAntifa:
Excellent essay! That there was a sitdown way out there in the dessert is beyond doubt, even though it isn’t seen or described as such by the media. Historians, as you point out, will not miss the significance of the event.
It still seems highly possible to me, however, that Iran will be bombed for no other reason than to buy a little more time for the Empire. The Empire’s financial elites are feeling flush and fine right now, and if some more killing will keep the profits flowing for another half-year or year or — years even — then why the hell not?
This is America’s highwater mark in history, seeing as how there isn’t the steam within it anymore to climb any higher. This is the season of profit-making and profit-taking before it all reconnects with the ground. Just a little while longer, just a little while longer, and the profits will be that much higher.
The key is that the financial players are set up to win either way the shit flies in Iraq and Iran and the whole Middle East. Gamblers play until the game folds. I expect these high rollers to do just that.
6 September 2007, 10:38 amJoseph J. Snyder:
A brilliant and on-target analysis of iraq. Afghanistan is a similar miasma.
But history does not end (Marx not withstanding). A major conflict with China (whose proxy Iran has become) is still likely at some point…China’s infiltration of Pentagon computers theft of the Navy’s Aegis radar-based fire control system, and various other assaults and stratagems (not to mention sponsorship of Iran’s terrorism) will ultimately bring the two incompatible systems into deadly conflict….
Jack Snyder
6 September 2007, 11:24 amformer US Army Intelligence Officer, 25th Inf. Div., USARV, 1970-71
James M:
and if some more killing will keep the profits flowing for another half-year or year or — years even — then why the hell not?
This is one part of the equation I’ve yet to fully grasp, and it ties in with the “language of finance” post. I hear it said constantly that the U.S. military is the guarantor of our economic preeminence, that the dollar’s (fragile) stability is maintained at gunpoint, etc. I don’t really get the mechanics of all this, though — besides the obvious boon warmaking provides to defense contractors, Halliburton, etc., the former of which represents the last remaining bulwark of our industrial sector.
Other than that, how does the hypothetical bombing of Iran (the actual likelihood of that notwithstanding) or any other country, especially in this time of unilateralism, benefit the economy — and specifically the speculative-finance part of it? Even in the strictly short term, as Antifa contends?
The major apparent thing we seem to have accomplished with our military adventures post-9/11 is to alienate ourselves on the world stage, and to drive our economic competitors into new & powerful partnerships against us.
6 September 2007, 3:21 pmDeAnander:
@antifa, nice to see you here. have enjoyed your occasional polemics at MoA and ET
6 September 2007, 3:37 pmBuradorii:
“Oh lordie. Well, we know one thing for certain at this point, and that’s that anyone still lost enough to be propagating the idea that China could a) sell dollars and b) crash the U.S. economy as a result and c) not destroy its own economy in the process (if it could even find a magical way to sell so many dollars) is not someone who has even a rudimentary grasp of basic economics”.
Economic mutually assured destruction is another soap bubble arrogance about China. When they developed a new military doctrine, instead of exercising the concept, they punched into Vietnam to test it. After sufficient experimenting (60,000+ casualties) they withdrew. These folks won’t think twice about taking an economic hit in order to do us harm. It is stupid…fatally stupid to think the Chinese think as we do.
STAN: I’d hesitate a lot before I studied anything as complex and dynamic as China based on actions taken more than 30 years ago. The governing CPC alone is the largest and most complex political organization in history, with 70 million members, more than the total population of many countries; and having molted several times since the Vietnam War closed out. Under Hu Jintao, it is now going through another shake-up… so given this, and a country of more than 1.3 billion from many ethnicities, regions, and classes, generalizing about how “The Chinese” think (which smacks of Orientalism) might not be nearly as useful as listening to what the Chinese government says, and watching what it does.
And I never said China WOULD tank the dollar; I said it is within their capacity. In other venues (Full Spectrum Disorder, eg) , I have written that China and the US are involved in a danse du mort, wherein whoever releases the emvbrace first could die. Wrote that four years ago… before China began systematically using its dollar assets to buy goodies, especially for its energy-source diversification, around the world.
This Michael Hudson interview with KPFK mentions that as well. Since my own ruminations won’t satisfy an earlier commentator (me not knowing anything about the pseudo-science of economics), perhaps Hudson’s creds as a Professor of Economics will do.
What holding US debt in this quantity (nearly a trillion dollars) does is give China a fair amount of power parity on the international stage. But this parity does not exist in some decontextualized vaccum. The context is the current development of intentional multipolarity in cooperation with that other Security Council member, Russia, via the SCO.
Behind this activity, we have to account for the ever-strengthening bilateral relations between China and Iran.
In Russia, meanwhile, Putin has cautiously but effectively broken the power of the oligarchs and brought the majority of Russia’s energy production sector back under state oversight. Russia, as people may not know, is now Number One in the world as an oil exporter. It is also a major exporter of natural gas, and is exploring a Natural Gas OPEC-style cartel with neighbors — even courting US puppets like Qatar — and involving Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez in the conversations (as well as Algeria, Lybia, Malaysia, Oman and others), with the heavy-hitters of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine. Oh yeah, and Iran.
Who cares? Well…. Europe?
I’m sorry, but just because this stuff isn’t as sexy to discuss as the “what-if’s” of an attack on Iran, it matters. It’s part of the context… a big part; and calling this adminstration “crazy” is simple-minded and not helpful. They have made terrific errors for ruling class political animals, but that is not crazy. As for being plain mean, they have no monopoly on that. Clinton consigned plenty of Iraqi children to horrible deaths wihtout a second thought. That’s how ruling class power is exercised, and it’s not crazy. Playing crazy is part of the ruling class political repertoire, but it’s not BEING crazy. The problem these days seems to me to be that hatred of Bush & Co. overpowers the hatred of ruling class power and the system on which it perches. We have personalized this to the point where it is blinding us to structures.
6 September 2007, 9:50 pmpeggy:
Okay, here’s my stupid little opinion on this matter. The American empire is going down, just as all other empires before it have gone down. It has been going down for more than forty years. If it goes down with a whimper, it will be much better for everybody than if it goes down with a bang.
Whatever are the details of the process, people will suffer from the contraction of the empire. Many more people have suffered from its expansion. We ordinary people have little control over this process. The rich and powerful, so it appears, likewise have little control. Some, right in America, will opportunistically profit from this process, even though they do not control it, and indeed some are already profiting mightily. So what else is new?
Although it is beyond our power to slow or stop this process, it is necessary for us to prepare for its inevitable consequences. That means helping each other find ways to live in greatly reduced circumstances. It also means doing all we can to prevent the internecine wars that profiteers, warlords and politicians will want to foment in the midst of the chaos.
It still makes me angry that Americans (and I am one, though I have become an expatriate) look only to America for all their questions and all their answers. I still believe that what is happening in America now is of no consequence to most of the people in the world, who have much bigger problems to face than do middle class Americans. And I believe we can actually learn from those other people. We are so arrogant! We know that, but we don’t change. The refusal to change must be part of being arrogant.
It is necessary to get out of personal debt not only so you can fight, but so you can have the luxury to educate yourself, to think beyond your own personal problems, and to help other people out. Yes, such words smack of liberalism, and even of sentimentalist do-gooderism. But if personalizing things can blind us to structures, then thinking only of structures (which, never forget, are purely ideational, and all ideation is riddled with both hidden and obvious fallacies) can blind us to actual human beings and their actual situations.
It is possible to see BOTH the forest AND the trees, and that’s what we have to do. That’s what I try to do.
8 September 2007, 7:36 ampeggy:
p.s. It is impossible to hate, in any real sense, something as abstract as a system (which is, as per above, an ideational system, and one with no personal features, at that). So, if you hate the system of ruling class power, what that really means is that you hate the human beings you consider to be of the ruling class, you give them personal features, and before long you find yourself hating people of a particular, physically identifiable ethnic group, even if it is the very ethnic group to which you belong. So class wars quickly become ethnic wars, with “traitors” all over the place. Examples abound.
To fight effectively, you have to act rationally, and emotions like hatred and anger impair rationality. I have learned this from real, and very effective, fighters on the ground. As soon as personal desires, fears, and hatreds gain control of you, you are lost.
And wasn’t it Che Guevara who said something like, a true revolutionary is motivated by feelings of purest love? (And love in this context, I would guess, does not mean personal desire or banal passion). I have no idea whether Che was what his admirers say he was, but whatever he was, what he said bears being taken seriously.
8 September 2007, 9:08 amJames M:
Peggy, I hope you know your thoughts are valued here, & your opinions aren’t “stupid.” I’ve learned enough from you to repudiate that. And, quite apart from the substance of his argument (which I’ll leave others to debate,) Y.K.’s tone in the other thread did strike me as condescending to you. I don’t think it’s how people who are on the same page, in the same book, or whatever, should communicate to one another.
I would’ve liked to have said that sooner, but there’s always the question in my mind of whether or not to intervene in defense of someone who’s perfectly capable of defending themselves. Now I think, though, that answering “no” to that question makes sense mainly when it’s just a question of arguments competing in a respectful context (unless one has an additional perspective to contribute.) When it’s a question of a condescending and possibly patriarchal tone, I think it’s only right to speak up.
9 September 2007, 8:17 pmLinda c:
I spent hours - off and on - this weekend studying Noam Chomsky’s - Hegemony or Survival. I have to admit that it took hours for my mind to make the transition from “mom” to a person really trying to understand.
I have realized that, over all, the “American Public” is lazy. They/we are to lazy to let their/our minds make that transition and begin the transformations that are needed to really understand - What the hell is going on.
When I look at the picture above - I think of hegemony and then the frightening realization of survival intercedes.
10 September 2007, 8:29 amskol:
I don’t know if our failure of motivation is laziness, or that laziness has much to do with how we motivate ourselves in the situation we face. It’s awfully easy for the public to forget that we’re even at war. We know the war is happening, but it’s just another thing; in our head, it’s an aside. I think the reason is that to consider its full implications, along with all the other things in the back of our head (and in close proximity), is terrifying.
But too bad for us, huh? After all, we willingly let ourselves be distracted by TV, movies, games, drugs, etc., but on the other hand being necessarily distracted by mortgage payments, feeding our family, buying toys for our kids, drugs (the “good” kind), etc. Survival is already interceding, and as Y.K. so thoroughly pointed out (I’m being sarcastic - it wasn’t cool), all actions of survival here seem to feed hegemony. We’re balancing on a thin line over feelings of insanity. It isn’t lazy, but it’s secure, and many people work their ass off to feel that way. But the foundation of that security is weakening, and rapidly, along with everything that brought us to those misconceptions. It’s approaching the point where we are finally realizing that walking that line is more actually insane than anything else. See-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil isn’t cutting it anymore for anyone who’s at all politically motivated.
But that’s just me. This is coming from a guy who’s had panic attacks feeling this way and sees how this coincides to a pluto-uranus conjunct in my horoscope (hey now, that’s describing my entire generation!).
So maybe that’s all a bit of rambled plea (I lost my train of thought four paragraphs back), but please consider that it’s more fear than laziness, and that backing away and not confronting is an aspect of that. I don’t think there is anyone who isn’t confronting fear because they’re lazy, or even that apathetic. They won’t confront fear because they’re afraid of it. Suddenly, that FDR quote makes so much more sense to me… but understanding it isn’t easy when you’re afraid.
boilerplate: replace all second-person-plurals with articles of your choosing, and I apologize for the horoscope link, but it’s hopeful and just a bit relevant, absurdity aside.
11 September 2007, 3:42 amxenia:
RE debt:
I think there is also a generational gap at work, as older people on this forum have not had to deal with immense amounts of college debt. As a person who went to college and grad school in the late 1990s, with her parents making less than 30,000 a year combined, I had to take out tremendous loans, which I never wanted (but for citizenship reasons I could not go to Europe). I will never be able to pay those back, simply on the basis of making less than 20,000 a year working at a college. We also do not have any other savings, property, etc. so it strikes me as particularly cruel to suggest it’s within one’s personal reach to pay back any debts. Isn’t it enough I renounced having children and a house? Do I really have to make some NYC yuppie happy on top of it by being a good girl and paying it all back?
13 September 2007, 6:06 amLinda c:
No, no college indebtness - my choice!
Debt has a life of its own, inside our day to day existence. That is why - when you finally pay it off -it is “debt relief”. It is just that “relief”!! It “frees us to fight” - for future generations.
13 September 2007, 4:23 pmLinda c:
just to add - I guess misspelling is from “lack of college”. Sometimes my fingers are more excited than my brain - or is it the other way around!
13 September 2007, 4:36 pmmetis seeker:
Regarding skol’s discussion on laziness - I’ve also felt uncomfortable with this criticism of the “average american”.
For one it seem to make the problem much too personal - that it is some kind of personal or moral deficiency of the individual. Perhaps it is because this criticism is so closely associated with the norms of the so-called ‘protestant work ethic’. The theme that keeps getting hit home here is that the problem needs to be viewed as a systemic problem.
Like anything I suppose there is a fine line between recognizing the decisions or beliefs of an individual as a result of enculturation and letting said individual off the hook for taking responsibility for this enculturation. In my view, in this case using laziness seems to cross this line, I think skol may be right that the problem may be closer to fear.
13 September 2007, 6:25 pmCraig:
xenia:
Do I really have to make some NYC yuppie happy on top of it by being a good girl and paying it all back?
Yes. Student loan debt is one of those rare forms of debt you can’t escape through bankruptcy. Even Social Security will be garnished to pay off student loans.
13 September 2007, 9:03 pmpeggy:
Gradually over several decades, a college degree in the US has become, for many or most middle class people, a (perceived) necessity for getting any kind of reasonable job. Thus, people are willing to go deeply into debt just to get that piece of paper. A college degree is now comparable economically to a life-saving medical procedure costing tens of thousands of dollars or more. A US family is fortunate indeed if it can survive without any of its members ever having to go through an expensive medical procedure. And a middle class US family is also uncommonly fortunate if it does not have to cough up blood to see its children through to a B.A.
Xenia, what would happen if you didn’t pay off your college debt? This is not a rhetorical question; I really want to know. Many people default on their college loans. If you can default on your student loan without suffering dire consequences, I think you should do it. If a critical mass of people were to default on their college loans, the whole system would collapse. If that happened, colleges and universities without huge endowments or huge private or public grants would just collapse, and some of those who work at colleges (such as you) would be jobless. But your one default is not going to make this collapse happen. A relatively high default rate is built into the college loan system.
If Stan and others of us are aiming to dismantle the capitalist system within the United States, we are at the minumum going to have to break some rules and even some laws. I am probably breaking some law by advocating that you break some law. But I’m not even sure that defaulting on a loan is breaking a law. You will be penalized by not being able to take out reasonably priced loans in the future. DO NOT TAKE OUT ANY MORE LOANS. Join the “informal economy” (many people do, to a greater or lesser extent). Most yard sales belong to the informal economy. Is it illegal to not report your income from a yard sale on your tax return? Yes. Is it immoral? No. And the answer to your last question above is a double no. You do not have to (and you cannot and you will not) “make some NYC yuppie happy” by paying off your college loan. And please don’t diss NYC yuppies. Many of them are kind and intelligent people, carrying a load of guilt and debt, just like you.
14 September 2007, 12:29 ampeggy:
p.s. Craig - nobody should count on Social Security anyway. The way things are going, it’s not going to last much longer. It will be deducted from U.S. folks salaries, and then it will be used to pay for stupid foreign wars, and the people who paid it won’t see any of it, even if they’re lucky enough to reach the age of sixty-five.
14 September 2007, 12:38 amxenia:
Sorry Peggy, after living in NYC as a refugee from Croatia/Serbia/Kosovo and encountering many yuppies, I cannot say I like them (perhaps they reserve kindness and intelligence for interactions with their own). They are not as averse to the smell of DU shell as I am, especially when used on civilians. My suggestion that bombing is not “merely” deplorable for humanitarian reasons, but that people might hate them for their participation in it, or even their tacit consent, met with blank stares.
14 September 2007, 5:08 amxenia:
PS Precisely because student loans cannot be discharged, I find the liberal argument of “choice” fairly preposterous. In that sense, I completely agree with YK’s remarks on the previous discussion.
Let no-one tell you that the wars in the Balkans were motivated by age-old hatreds. It was debt that did us in. From my adolescence in the 1980, living with 300% inflation, I heard almost every day about the 20 billion debt of our country, and the sheer impossibility of paying it off. Guess what? Most people knew it was the political class who used it for their own enrichment, sending their kids to US universities, while spouting phrases about all of us making sacrifices, and they hated the politicians for it. In a famous speech, a girl told the politicians to leave the country if they did not like our people. Had the wars not happened, there would have been a complete change of the
old guard (instead, most of the former elites remained in power and adjusted their voices to a neo-liberal, pseudo-ethnic pitch).
I wish Americans had even a little bit of that specific hatred for the rich and the powerful. Instead, it always has to be personalized here: your very own debt, Bush’s war, etc. For one, I will not vote for Hillary…even if she should provide me with my very own debt discharge.
14 September 2007, 5:28 amxenia:
I forgot this detail in the flash of fury: a year before Yugoslavia fell apart, there was an extended period of bickering over which republic got the most out of loans and which region was exploiting others. This created conditions for ethnicizing politics. When miners started striking because they did not have enough bread, we all realized fun had come to an end, and everyone feared they would have the same problem. Plus, a lot of money could be made selling Yugoslavs all those weapons.
Happy end: Slovenia and Croatia got off without having to pay anything, and in the last decade amassed their very own debt which equals Yugoslavia’s, although they sold much of their coast to Donald Trump and his likes. Bosnia has 80% unemployment. But hey, we have liberal democracy and credit cards now, which brings me to my starting point: debt and individualism.
(Many apologies for clogging the blog)
14 September 2007, 6:09 amLinda c:
I still believe what I wrote about the “American Public”. Fear is a very “personal” emotion. If we do not put out the “effort” to overcome our fears - aren’t we lazy? Fear is an emotion that can overpower many things - it will make your body shake and your mind want to shut down. It takes a very strong willed personality and a lot of “effort” to overcome fear - it is never overcome by someone who is lazy. This is where I am coming from and why I wrote the “american public” is lazy. Effort and accomplishment walk hand and hand. Without one there is not another. If “I” am not willing to put out the “effort” to accomplish something then “I” am lazy.
Yes, being envolved in every day “necessary distractions” is what makes our lifes operate on a “normal” day to day balance. As was so aptly put - Fear, of hegemony/survival, “understanding it isn’t easy when your are afraid”. It takes an effort.
14 September 2007, 8:47 ampeggy:
It seems that every proposal I put forward for reducing individual debt, or throwing it off entirely, is royally trashed. I understand that debt is a political tool. I understand that debt is the strongest weapon wielded by the ruling class against the working and middle classes in the USA. I understand that what we are looking at is class warfare, waged aggressively by the ruling class, while members of the working and middle classes lie down and take it. For “middle classes” perhaps I should substitute the term “bourgeoisie.” Lazy bourgeoisie. Stupid bourgeoisie. Intransigent bourgeoisie. Hypocritical bourgeoisie. Sense of entitlement bourgeoisie. Thinking that the world owes them a living bourgeoisie. Just wanting to be richer and more comfortable bourgeoisie. Outraged when their personal comfort is challenged bourgeoisie. Hoity toity muckety muckety bourgeoisie. Always blaming their own peers for their own problems bourgeoisie. Collaborating with the oppressor bourgeoisie. Denying responsibility bourgeoisie. Too oppressed to move bourgeoisie. Too oppressed to think bourgeoisie.
Okay, babies, try this on for size. If you can’t be part of the solution, be part of the problem. Get drunk. Steal something. Fuck everybody. Have fun.
14 September 2007, 7:03 pmSam Carpenter:
A surprising shift:
Confessions of an “ex” Peak Oil Believer
18 September 2007, 7:26 pmhttp://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Peak_Oil___Russia/peak_oil___russia.html
skol:
I’m not buying the lazy argument, if only because it won’t get you very far. To some extent, I agree; you’d think more things could be done. I’m about as frustrated as Peggy right about now, and I’m a little worried that some of you have given up on the rest of us who, heaven forbid, are looking for some shred of hope in these scary times. To accuse the public of laziness, on top of everything else, doesn’t seem fair to me. How many more things could we factor into what’s going on in the head of John Q Public? The media portrayal of the war, of the economy, of Britney Spear’s performance at the VMAs (Which of these is Q. Public more interested in, more willing to comprehend, more willing to want to hear about)? What about their mortgages? Pension? Job, cost of living? I could go on and on and on and the only thing I can think of that’s lazy is none of us want to get up in the morning and worry about all this shit and not know what to do or how to cope with any of it. Any advice? Is there anything we can work with? Or is it really this intractable?
19 September 2007, 4:58 amStan:
The “average American” is not lazy, but ignorant. It is an ignorance that is cultivated in and fertilized by the very structure of American society. Unpack “American society,” in structure, culture, and relation to global society, and we begin to understand the etiologies of this industrially-cultivated ingorance.
19 September 2007, 7:22 amLinda c:
Skol,
But, you do get up in the mornings, worry about all of this shit, and cope with it. That’s an effort!
Now, I’ve got to begin to understand the etiologies of “industrially - cultivated ignorance”. Maybe, we aren’t lazy - I guess I really need to find out for myself.
19 September 2007, 7:35 amSam:
In my experience, the “average” American is mentally lazy, anti-intellectual, prone to racist, sexist, and xenophobic simplifications, and who would much rather turn-off the brain and go shopping or turn on the football game. Certainly the US has thousands of people who are the opposite of all this, that is obvious. But the famous ignorance of Americans, their quality of being like big children, their gross materialism, their cultural arrogance, is most certainly in part due to their mental laziness and, generally speaking, their inability to approach complex issues and confront other cultures. The educational system, the mass media obviously contribute to forging this sort of mentality. I wish it weren’t so, but I believe that’s the way it is here. Hence the enormous indifference, the passivity, the willingness to listen to fools like Rush Limbaugh, and to re-elect criminals like George Bush, and to fall hook, line, and sinker for the crude propaganda that passes for news and political speeches, and finally, their allowing the rise of an authoritarian climate and allowing their country to be taken from them. The US has for all intents and purposes been turned into a quasi-police state. See, for example, the latest article by Paul Craig Roberts in Counterpunch, as well as the appalling video he comments on:
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09192007.html
19 September 2007, 2:20 pmSam:
See also:
DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
Uh, uhhm: Say no more, Iraq is a slam dunk
By Julian Delasantellis
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II11Ak03.html
19 September 2007, 4:12 pmSam:
Remarkable video from the 80’s:
The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis
19 September 2007, 6:45 pmhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17720.htm
Sam:
More on the Ethanol Scam:
The coming Ethanol Shock and its impact on global food prices -=- The Hidden Agenda behind the Bush Administration’s Bio-Fuel Plan
http://mail.constitutionalgov.us/pipermail/economicwar_constitutionalgov.us/2007-July/000505.html
http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/energy/ES_Engdahl_Biofuels.mp3
And one more about Iraq and Oil:
From Greenspan to Kissinger: Oil Warriors
http://counterpunch.com/weissman09192007.html
20 September 2007, 10:10 amSam:
Very good article at ZMag. The only thing missing, unfortunately, is the role of Israel, or rather, Zionism and “eretz Israel.”
The Political Economy of the U.S.-Iran Crisis
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jun2006/odonnell0606.html
22 September 2007, 2:06 amTimothy R. Anderson:
The world actually might end with the Dow Jones Industrial Average below
11, 000 . The world actually might end with the American
military suffering more than 4, 500 fatalities in the Iraq War.
The world actually might end with the price of a barrel of oil costing
$ 105 . Somewhere in all that , I wonder, will Iraq be allowed to be
Iraq again ? Without the dysfunctional, co-dependent , overdependent,
mutually catastrophic relationship with the United States of America ?
I bring this up because it has now been more than 35 months
since the June 28, 2004 ceremony where Iraq got its ” sovereignty ” .
The United States of America is investing a bunch of borrowed money
into Iraq. It is not a happy thing.
Tim
10 October 2007, 1:49 pm