The Algerian Warning

Ignored by the West at its peril, dismissed as a unique case of both Islamist and regime viciousness, Algeria can also be viewed as a warning to the comfortable West of things to come: Algeria the neo-liberal showcase.

Algeria and the U.S. are two sides of the neo-liberal coin: the rich exist on a foundation of exploitation. While perhaps true as far as it goes, that static perspective conceals a more threatening reality: Algeria is the end point of neo-liberalism, the U.S. in the 1970s the beginning. While certainly morally troubling, for Americans in the 1970s, that might have imparted a somewhat reassuring message, but after 2008, U.S. citizens find themselves in a rather less encouraging position, visibly further down the road in the direction of Algeria. With millions out of work and more millions out of their homes while financial criminals receive taxpayer bailouts and a “stay out of jail free” card, with a health care system designed for profit rather than public health, with wages declining even as job security and job benefits are evaporating, Americans are beginning to see in the distance the impoverishment of society for the enrichment of the rich that constitutes the only system any living Algerian has ever known.

Algeria neither produces nor invests, living off resource exports, Lyes Akram tells us, with the profits going everywhere except to the people, one might add. With neither rule of law nor political institutions that protect the people, “the situation could not be more dangerous.”

l’Algérie est probablement le seul pays au monde dont l’économie est compréhensible aux enfants de 5 ou 6  ans. Deux axes. On ne produit quasiment rien et on n’investit pas. On importe presque tout et on exporte nos ressources qui sont surtout épuisables. En outre, la rente n’offre pas une vie décente au Algériens, à cause des rapines effrénées et de la corruption débridée. Même si les Algériens voulaient, pour des raisons déraisonnables, oublier l’illégitimité du régime, lui pardonner ses crimes passés et présents, il n’est nullement dans leur droit de permettre des crimes à l’encontre des générations futures. Puisque à l’évidence, la politique économique du régime, c’est l’assassinat de l’économie et la dilapidation irréversibles des ressources.Défaillance totale, ruine de l’économie, destruction du système éducatif, décomposition de la société, mais aussi, rappelle Hocine Aït-Ahmed, « Cinquante ans après la proclamation de l’indépendance nationale, nous voici face aux mêmes absences : Absence d’un Etat de droit, absence de vie politique, absence de constitution digne de ce nom, absence d’institutions légitimes capables de protéger le peuple autant que le pays des abus et d’assurer son droit à vivre dans la liberté et la dignité ». La situation du pays est on ne peut plus dangereuse.

While the Algerian author does not appear to have been thinking about Americans, for us to dismiss the plight of Algerians as irrelevant to the future of U.S. society would be a dangerous delusion. Algeria and America are inexorably bound by our thirst for their oil and the ease with which the Algerian military/intelligence dictatorship (that is the polite description; some Algerians would choose the word “voyoucratie” [thugocracy]) sell the line that only they stand between us and the barbaric hordes of fundamentalist Islam/middle class democracy. (What difference, after all, is there between revolutionary violence and true democracy from the perspective of a repressive and kleptocratic elite? Either way, if you are Pinochet or Somoza, you lose your privileges.)

With the social contract defined by the New Deal now being shredded--e.g., by the breaking of public worker contracts (in Wisconsin) and retirement contracts (throughout the U.S.), the conspiracy theory that the elite might intentionally impoverish the U.S. population—defining it as “superfluous”—just as the population of Algeria has, since 1992, been defined as superfluous, is beginning to appear a bit less crazy. Perhaps it is time we reevaluated the post-colonial experience of Algerians.

READINGS:

Justice Commission for Algeria

The Ugly Truth about Algeria

Tools of the Rich

The citizens of the U.S. are shortchanging themselves by allowing the super-rich to define taboos in order to prevent society from considering fundamental reforms that might preserve our democracy, enhance our security, and improve our lives...at the expense of constraining the ability of the super-rich to amass more wealth.

Politics in the U.S.—at the level of policy-making—has a degree of rigidity, narrow-mindedness, and short-sightedness that causes enormous harm to the security and quality of life of Americans.  These constraints are self-imposed; more precisely, they are intentionally imposed by the elite to constrain the voters from exercising their full legal democratic rights of popular oversight. Accepted without a second thought, these unstated and unreasoned taboos prevent Americans from taking full advantage of their vast natural and intellectual resources. The result is a set of interlocked policies that needlessly undermine American security and worsen the general quality of life in American society. 

Taboos obstructing honest evaluation of fundamental policy choices prevent American society from moving effectively in new and desperately needed directions. The American system is based on open debate to find answers to complex problems. That is the best system yet discovered for resolving national problems, but it only works when society faces its options honestly. New directions do exist for addressing this set of challenges, but the roads will only be found if we are willing to look for them.

Ironically, these fundamental policy choices—precisely the ones meriting the most meticulous public debate—are typically the public policy decisions made with the least care, the least debate, the least thought. The results include a foreign policy based on military force even when force intensifies hostility; health care as a business rather than a right; environmental policy favoring consumption now rather than preservation for future generations; and an economic policy that has been enriching the super-rich by impoverishing the rest since the Reagan era.

Sure, everyone talks about health care and foreign policy and economics and the environment, but look at content of the debates: it focuses on details. Should we, perhaps, modify the degree of Wall Street regulation a bit (while still leaving the main offenders in business)? Should we, perhaps, talk to international adversaries (in order to get them to do what we previously used the threat of violence to achieve)? Should we, perhaps, add a few soldiers in uniform to your Muslim country of choice or should we use mercenary forces out of uniform (but without altering our goal of suppressing dissent)? Should we, perhaps, pass a new environmental protection law (but without holding corporate executives criminally responsible for their cheating on the laws already passed)? Should we, perhaps, add a sliver of the disadvantaged to the rolls of those favored with health insurance (but surely without endangering the massive profits of the health care industry)?

The basic questions that address fundamental direction are seldom voiced. They are taboo. 

·          A foreign policy of true compromise with reformist Islam is a taboo subject.

·          A health care policy that rejects socialism for the health care industry and institutes socialism for the disadvantaged is a taboo subject.

·          An environmental policy that punishes corporate polluters and preserves the environment (allowing economic functions only within those constraints) is a taboo subject (the recent New York Times expose of corporations polluting the nation’s drinking water notwithstanding).

·          A financial system that puts society first, employing capital only as a tool for the common good by constraining exploitation and stimulating responsible productivity is a taboo subject.

Americans do have certain cultural/political advantages. Perhaps the greatest is the consensus that those who break taboos are not killed, so, yes, I can voice these complaints in safety, something I would not be able to do in, say, China, Saudi Arabia, or Iran. While I am grateful for this, it does not invalidate my argument. Taboos work more subtly in the U.S.: those who violate them may speak; they are simply ignored. In terms of having influence, if you challenge taboos, you will be cut out of the debate, will no longer be heard, will effectively no longer exist except as an official non-person, an “…ist,” as in “racist, socialist, leftist.” In (we imagine) highly stable, albeit tenuous, Neolithic times, banishment of those who broke village taboos by speaking out may have enhanced group survival; in the contemporary rapidly evolving world, by precluding flexibility, observing taboos invites disaster.

The U.S. has an historic power advantage over its adversaries (even after a decade of behaving like a rogue elephant), the best higher education establishment on earth (albeit a very weak primary and secondary education system), and enormous resources. These advantages give American society an incredibly fruitful array of options. That is, Americans have the collective power to do an unimagined range of different things...if they can open their minds sufficiently to imagine taking new directions toward a fundamentally more just and effective society. Whatever the route to a perfect society, we will never find it (or even succeed in treading water in today's volatile world) if we censor ourselves from discussing the basic options about the fundamental direction of public policy.

These taboos do not arise by chance. Examine these taboos and you will see that each prevents discussion of an issue captured by the super-rich. We cannot discuss the fundamental militarist posture of U.S. foreign policy because that would call into question the war profiteering of arms manufacturing corporations. We cannot discuss the relationship between global overheating and energy policy because that would call into question government favoritism toward Big Energy (in turn of course not unrelated to a foreign policy based on force and collaboration with repressive third world regimes). We cannot discuss the idea of health care as a right because that would not just imperil the wealth of Big Pharma but would start a chain reaction undermining the whole concept of putting the incomes of the corporate elite ahead of the common welfare. We cannot discuss the relative merits of a financial system for the purpose of accumulating capital in private hands vs. a financial system for the social good because that would bring down the whole class system in which Americans sadly do not realize they exist…because the strengthening class system is the greatest taboo of all.  Debate is the foundation of democracy; taboos are tools of the ruling class.

The most recent example of how taboos cripple open debate of fundamental social issues is Romney’s blatant effort to reinforce the insidious taboo against discussing class in American society. The reason for this taboo is clear: as long as we are forbidden from mentioning “class” (except to deny the relevance of the concept for our uniquely perfect system), we cannot even ask if class distinctions are getting worse or if the tax code is biased in favor of the upper class or if the upper class (which cannot, by definition, even exist in the U.S.) might possibly be destroying our democracy. And obviously the taboo on discussing classes also conveniently prevents us from seeing the class war that the rich have been fighting with great success against American society for the past generation.

To avoid all such potentially embarrassing discussion, Romney is accusing Obama of running a campaign based on “hatred.” It is way beyond curious that Romney could so neatly have stuffed his foot in his mouth by raising the issue of politicians who run campaigns based on "hatred" just as he decides to put the most mean-spirited man in Washington a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Romney has handed Obama his response on a silver platter: "Yes," he should say, "this campaign is about hatred." Depriving the most unfortunate while bailing out financial criminals and engorging an obese Pentagon with grossly overpriced weapons designed to defeat an empire that is only visible when Uncle Sam looks in the mirror can go by no better name than "hatred."

Hatred has its uses, and what Americans should hate includes: immoral politicians on the take from the rich to deprive the man in the street just to make the rich richer; big corporations demanding welfare for themselves while denying decent wages to their own employees; financial criminals on Wall St. taking bailouts while designing schemes to defraud homeowners and investors; hypocritical politicians claiming that fleecing the poor to enrich the rich is "patriotism;" war profiteers making $25 million a year who take their corporate headquarters overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes on the profits they made fighting wars harmful to U.S. national security...wars for which they campaigned.

And so, ironically, I reach agreement with financial fat cat Romney. "Yes, sir. You are right. This election is about hatred." And Obama needs to find the backbone to face the divide between the radical right-wing Republicans (unfortunately, the only breed of Republican still standing) and the American people. It has come to this: there is no longer room for compromise. Our house cannot stand 99.9% slave, 0.1% free. We are at war--the people vs. the super-rich, democracy vs. a class system. Those who equivocate and respect taboos are lackeys of the super-rich. Obama needs to decide which side he is on…or Americans need to vote for the Green Party.

Peruvian Protests Against Mining Pollution Expand

As the tense stand-off between Peru’s Humala Administration and the population of Cajamarca over central government support for gold mining against the wishes of the residents, protests over misbehavior by international corporations in Peru is spreading.

On August 6, protesters in Yungay province, Anchash region began taking action against a mining operation that is polluting Huascaran National Park with cyanide, with the local leader complaining that the Humala Administration has shown “no interest.”

This is not the first problem in the Anchash region this year with pollution by mining corporations. A pattern of central government cooperation with international corporations at the expense of local residents is becoming steadily clearer, and the predictable result is rising instability as the population struggles to be heard."

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Points to Watch:

• Peruvian Policy Brutality
• Central Government Treatment of Espinar mayor Óscar Mollohuanca - illegal arrest, returning to negotiating table after being released
• Peruvian Villagers Poisoned by Mine Waste 'Accident'
• Cajamarca strike, Aug. 21
• Centrral government treatment of Cajamarca regional president Gregorio Santos, who is being threatened by officials favoring international corporate investment as a troublemaker rather than a defender of the legitimate interests of the local people and being marginalized to curry favor with international mining corporations

Policy Process Fairness

To make effective policy and to understand what game policy-makers are playing, process must be distinguished from policy. If the policy is a search for peace, but the process is seen by the adversary as intentionally designed to put them at a disadvantage, the result is likely to be violence.

Democracy or War?

Attitude toward democracy and war seem critical factors in the evolution of the U.S., judging from four core trends currently evident: rising corporate control, rising corruption, rising elite preference for war over negotiation, and the strengthening of class divisions. (Part I of this series on the future prospects of the U.S. discussed the four trends.)

From American Dream to American Illusion

Rising government acceptance of corporate corruption, intensifying corporate control over politics, rising preference in Washington for a foreign policy based on force rather than diplomacy, and accentuation of class divisions with rising inequality in the U.S. constitute a shift in direction away from the post-WWII growth of the middle class and democracy. The decline in the prospects of the average American have been so slow that most seem unconscious of the change, but in the space of one generation, the American Dream has been transformed into the American Illusion. 

Do Drones Harm the U.S.?

Is state violence an effective counter to insurgent violence? A choice exists.

Taliban abuses make it easy for shallow thinkers to condone anti-extremist abuses – respond to an attack on aid workers or schoolgirls with a drone attack on a funeral, an eye for an eye, law of the jungle. But how do such tactical responses offer society a choice? Abuse from insurgents is countered by abuse from authorities, with the extremism of one justifying and stimulating extremism of the other. Ambitious leaders on both sides win, while society loses.

The important point for Americans struggling to figure out how to respond is that when our reactions promote the extremism we are fighting against, then it is not just Pakistani society that loses but American society as well. The whole world political and moral climate is degraded, promoting conditions that poison civil society, undermine democracy, and facilitate the rise of cowboys, fundamentalists, and general intolerance. Every abusive act further alienates and radicalizes innocent bystanders and thus further empowers the lovers of violence.

Even when it is determined that killing someone is required, it must be kept clearly in mind that the killing is not a goal but a means and should not be done if that means does not lead to the goal. The goal is a smoothly functioning civil society, and our common enemy is those who oppose the creation of such civil societies. A smoothly functioning civil society may not flow automatically from democracy, but democracy, physical and economic security for all citizens, and education together are pretty much the best foundation pillars to hold up a smoothly functioning civil society that mankind has yet been able to construct.

From this perspective, the common interest of American and Pakistani society [not, to be sure, of decision-makers who focus on strategic issues to the exclusion of all else and, for example, aid the Haqqani Network to gain influence in Afghanistan at India’s expense] is clear and the question flowing from that common interest is not a military one but a political one: “How do we create a functioning society?” Once that simple question is asked, it instantly becomes obvious how ridiculous it is to answer: “by remotely bombing groups of unidentified adult males or anyone who attends a funeral for anyone who was bombed.” Since the Taliban is not attacking the U.S., it is not clear that the U.S. should be doing anything at all, but if, upon contemplation, Americans decide that it is appropriate to make some effort to influence events in Pakistan, then the goal should be the positive one of helping Pakistani society to function better, precisely the outcome most beneficial to the long-term interests of the American public.

Now we have the basis for a useful conversation with Pakistani officials about day-to-day tactics. When the Taliban threatens to murder a social worker who “operates hundreds of ambulances and shelters for women, children and the destitute,” it is clear that Americans who want a vibrant, secure, and free civil society in the U.S. have common cause with Pakistanis struggling for the same goal in Pakistan. It should also be clear that drone attacks are at best an extremely poor and most likely a highly counterproductive route to that common goal.

Some Pakistanis understand this:

The Taliban are pursuing an ‘anti-state struggle’ and Pakistan must take this threat seriously before it causes an irreparable damage to the country, NWFP government’s Peace Envoy Afrasiab Khattak said on Tuesday. “They (Taliban) want to defeat the state and their success starts where the state fails.” [New Age Islam 9/20/2008.]

The problem is that those Pakistanis and Americans who understand their common interest have great difficulty holding a dialogue about how to pursue that common interest. The remark of the NWFP peace envoy, above, points to a way forward: focusing on U.S.-Pakistani cooperative actions to build an effect state. Effective police action followed by open trials under an honest court system will be an important long-term component of such an effort. Killing alleged enemies, much less killing unidentified people, will become more counter-productive the longer it occurs. The argument that the threat is immediate so we cannot wait for long-term solutions is clearly invalidated by the now obvious failure of violence to eliminate an insurgent threat that has been spreading for a decade in violence-ridden Pakistan.

This leaves concerned citizens and policy-makers in both the US and Pakistan with the following question:

Who are the potential Pakistani allies of Americans struggling to defeat violent extremists and what set of tactics might be accepted by each national group as in its own best interests?

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A Supplementary Approach from the Afghan Theater

In the context of a primary focus on building civil society and extending the writ of effective, supportive governance in Pakistan, offering inclusion to Taliban personnel willing to renounce violence offers a supplementary approach:

Pursuing high-level reconciliation with the Taliban senior leadership as a unified, singular organization will fail to achieve the grand bargain that the U.S. and Afghans seek; that is, an agreement to renounce al-Qaeda, respect the Afghan constitution and cease insurgent operations targeting Afghan government officials and security forces. Recognizing that the Taliban is a diverse movement where significant internal divisions and mistrust abound, reconciliation efforts should instead be pursued as a means to divide and weaken the cohesion of the movement’s senior leadership cadre. However, before such efforts can achieve their desired intent, U.S. and Afghan forces must develop a sophisticated understanding of the differences among the factions and their leaders, and identify, encourage and protect those who want to reconcile. The purpose of these efforts is not only to support the primary aim of reconciliation, but also to fracture the Taliban operationally and thereby limit Pakistan’s leverage over the Afghan state.[Understand War 6/13/2012.]

Undeclared War Undermines U.S. Democracy

Escalating “executive war”—war by the Imperial Presidency without Congressional authorization or oversight—against Iran and Pakistan is alienating foreign friends, radicalizing foreign adversaries, undermining U.S. democracy, and setting American society up for blowback.

What under Bush-Cheney neocons was touted as a war against anti-U.S. terrorists has now become a war against Muslim political activists who may not have any intent of attacking the U.S. and may not even be fighting against their own governments. They may simply be innocent bystanders who fit profiles used to excuse murder, in the case of drone attacks that kill unidentified individuals, or industrial disaster, in the case of cyberwar sabotage. And that cyberwar sabotage, whose computer code weapons have already gone viral and spread out of control around the world, could strike anywhere, including back in the U.S. Cyber chickens are flying home to roost. The Obama wars take distinct forms depending on the country – economic and technological against Iran (supplementing a highly public economic war and a terrorist campaign murdering nuclear scientists that may in the future be tied definitively to the White House), drone bombing against Pakistan—but appear to fit a consistent pattern of violating Constitutional requirements that Congress approve war and provide oversight.

As Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the leading Congressional advocate of a tempered and rational foreign policy, warned in his recent letter to President Obama demanding an accounting for his unauthorized use of drones:

The fact that they are conducted with complete impunity and with no accountability threatens to set a dangerous precedent that could unravel the very laws and international standards the U.S. helped to create.  Even the most ardent supporter of the current President should consider the precedent created by granting the President the power to circumvent the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. [Kucinich Leads Congress in Demanding Accountasb ility and Transparency for Drone Strikes,” Kucinich. House.Gov 5/31/12.] 

Kucinich also warned in his letter that targeting “ terrorist suspects whose identity does not need to be known goes further than what Congress authorized when it passed the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) after the attacks of September 11th (9/11). As you know, the AUMF only authorized the use of force against those responsible for the attacks of 9/11 and those who harbored them, not against individuals whose identity is unknown, but that merely fit a certain profile of suspected terrorist activity.”

Both the drone attacks and the cyberwar have been cloaked in a relatively transparent security blanket that has long since ceased fooling anyone but that continues to obstruct the due process of law in the U.S. that rests on the ability of the system of government to hold powerful officials accountable for their actions. Obama Administration leaked formed the basis of a recent New York Times piece by David Sanger detailing the Obama Administration’s complicity in the cyberwar attack on Iran. Thus does Obama continue one of the worst abuses of the neo-con era – the attempts by the White House to position itself above the law.

The Christian Science Monitor bluntly spelled out one of the blowback routes of this new global threat:

the possibility that such attacks could provide a digital copy of the cyberweapon to rogue nations or that hacktivists could reverse-engineer the weapon for use against the power grid or other key US infrastructure.

Officially revealing the U.S. policy of attacking foreigners in their home countries with drones, White House Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, as quoted in Washington Post 4/30/12, stated:

...let me say it as simply as I can. Yes, in full accordance with the law — and in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives — the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qaeda terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones.

The anti-Iranian cyberwar remained mired in controversy, with both the Obama Administration and Israel’s Mossad seemingly competing for credit, oblivious to the strong possibility that both will be condemned by history for opening wide this new Pandora’s Box. Washington may not have invented cyberwar, but it certainly is making few efforts to delay the arrival of a new, nasty world in which low-cost, highly dangerous cyberwar will ravage global societies.

Obama’s private wars violate two of the most fundamental principles of democracy. First, although now utterly obvious as the result of White House statements, they were when determined and implementing totally defiant of the need for transparency in government, being implemented without Congressional authorization and behind the backs of the American people. Second, in their lack of Congressional oversight, they violate the equally critical democratic requirement of rule of law by establishing a precedent of arbitrary and unauthorized Presidential action. Once the President acquires the “right” in practice, if not in law, to make private war, what power is denied him? To argue that the President cannot personally authorize war except when it is fought via the Internet or drones makes a mockery of democracy.

The American Dream...for the 1%

When the rich get richer while the rest all get poorer and the rich campaign to increase their privileges, it amounts to class war.

(Click to View)

Democracy Now [6/6/12] pointedly describes the current state of the American Dream:

Several months before Occupy Wall Street, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%," an article for Vanity Fair. He returns to the subject in his new book looking at how inequality is now greater in the United States than any other industrialized nation. He notes that the six heirs of the Wal-Mart fortune command wealth equivalent to the entire bottom 30 percent of American society. "It’s a comment both on how well off the top are and how poor the bottom are," Stiglitz says. "It’s really emblematic of the divide that has gotten much worse in our society." On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that pay for the top CEOs on Wall Street increased by more than 20 percent last year. Meanwhile, census data shows nearly one in two Americans, or 150 million people, have fallen into poverty or could be classified as low-income. "United States is the country in the world with the highest level of inequality [of the advanced industrial countries], and it’s getting worse," Stiglitz says. "What’s even more disturbing is we’ve [also] become the country with the least equality of opportunity."

The "rich enriching themselves by stealing from the poor" is not just a slogan; this is what it looks like. When the U.S. has the highest level of inequality among industrial countries and the least equality of opportunity, and the elite of the business world protected by top politicians in both major parties continue to demand more government welfare (e.g., low capital gains taxes) and less regulation, that adds up to class war.

Wisconsin: Second Victory for the Elite Over Society

The Wisconsin election was not about union power; it was about democracy, and the voters dealt democracy a major defeat, This is what class war by the rich looks like in a land of the shortsighted.

Two major battles in the developing class war in the U.S. have occurred in the past five years: 

1. the decision to provide Wall St. with a bailout without compensating public control over the negligent and/or criminal financial institutions that got the corporate welfare;
2. the victory of Wisconsin Governor Walker in his recall election campaign funded by outside corporate millions.

Real News summarizes the Walker victory:

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker has won the recall election. He remains the governor. Millions of dollars poured into Wisconsin, something like $45 million for Scott Walker, most of which came from outside the state. He outspent his Democratic rival, who spent somewhere close to $10 million—apparently, most of that money came from within the state.

The wise people of Wisconsin have determined that their enemies are those who protect their homes from burglars, those who risk their lives to quench fires, and those who teach their children. Such public workers do not deserve a chance to organize; the government should have the right to break its contracts with them as convenient. Will a Wisconsin policeman now think twice before risking his life to protect a victim? Will a Wisconsin fireman now think twice before entering a burning home to save the owner? And as for Wisconsin teachers, no doubt if they stop teaching altogether, the wise voters of Wisconsin will not even notice.


These two back-to-back elite victories over society may spark the awakening of the naive, short-sighted, and near comatose U.S. public, but at present they signal the nearly complete control over U.S. "democracy" by the super-rich. "Democracy" the U.S. remains in the sense that the voters did in fact have the power to win this one, had they only the wisdom to see their own common self-interest. Alas, "common self-interest" is a concept evidently too subtle for most, in that it is evidently self-contradictory over the short run, so corporate millions "bought" the election not through fraud (as far as I am aware) but through propaganda - convincing a big chunk of Wisconsin's workers to support the rich rather than maintain solidarity with their own. Time will tell what happens to wage levels and working conditions in Wisconsin now that the rich have clear...and legal control.


It seemed,  back in the long, viciously cold winter of 2011, that the clarity of the struggle in Wisconsin between outside corporate greed trying to break the post-New Deal social contract with employees and the public--represented by police, firemen, and teachers--was so incontrovertible that even the most apolitical wage-earner could not help but understand his long-term interest. The tens of thousands who risked frostbite to defend their legal rights to organize so as to defend themselves against corporate organizations offered powerful evidence that Americans were finally awakening from their delusion that Washington politicians were serving them rather than their super-rich corporate patrons. Finally, it appeared, the neo-con/neo-liberal scam against America--so clearly exposed by the highly profitable "war on terror" along with the bailout of Wall St. and refusal of Washington to force corporate leaders to defend themselves in court--would be terminated by an awakened American public.


Unfortunately, the generation-long covert class war of the super-rich has been fought with enough skill that even such evidence as the profitable (for CEOs) war on terror and a corporate self-enrichment scheme that wrecked the U.S. economy has not convinced Americans that they need to fight back.


There is, however, much more to Walker's victory than simply the self-delusion and shortsightedness of the American voter. One other critical facet is that this one-sided class war has now achieved so many victories that the whole structure of government is aligned on the side of the rich.  Black Agenda Report editor Bruce Dixon itemizes some of the legal weapons the rich have put into place to overthrow the New Deal compromise [6/6/12]:

...it was union leaders who damped down the calls for, and explicitly repudiated talk of a general strike. To be fair, under present federal and state laws, a union official who even calls for, let alone is part of pulling off a general strike is probably guilty of multiple felonies and conspiracies to commit, perhaps even RICO and terrorist prosecutions if judges and district attorneys are feeling ambitious. Such an official also risks confiscation of union funds and assets, either outright in a hurry or after prolonged expensive litigation. But that's what people involved in movements do --- they take individual and collective risks and they violate laws for the cause, whatever that happens to be.

It seems that it is perfectly OK for a couple of billionaire CEOs to organize with a handful of their buddies to buy an election, but for workers to organize to defend American society is now a crime. It is no coincidence that the U.S. increasingly looks today like the U.S. of 1929. When the rich control government officials and manage to slant the legal system in their private defense, where can the public go? You young folks better get off the Internet and read Steinbeck before it is too late.


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Update: Romney on Wisconsin

"[Obama] says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people." [Democracy Now 6/11/12.]

It is hard to think of anything more fundamental to civil society than good education and security for citizens in their homes and on the streets. Romney has made the attitude of the new Republican Party toward the American people all too clear.

Class War Fundamentals

Class war makes everything different: instead of agreement on the rules serving as the foundation for common success, society is split in two camps, with at least one trying to ruin the future of the other. If you happen to be part of the “other,” you need to know that you are under attack.

Class war makes everything different. If we are all united, everyone may still spend most of their energy trying to get theirs first, but we all agree on the rules, and the game is ultimately more like a picnic with a shortage of chocolate cake than a fight to the death: everyone can win at least a little, and everyone agrees that the best society is indeed one in which everyone wins. If the rich get richer, they do so only so long as the poor and the average simultaneously gain. If wars are fought, they are fought to defend society from real threats.

A class war situation is exactly the reverse. If society is split into two camps, haves and have-nots, with each side perceiving the game as zero-sum, the rich do not get richer by floating on a rising tide but by stealing what little the poor have, and the poor respond by trying to kill the rich. Rather than trusting the rich to run the government for the good of all, the poor concentrate on trying to dethrone the rascals. Rather than sharing to create a stable, healthy, productive society, the rich do one of three things: pretend the poor do not exist (the gated community strategy), keep the poor as cannon fodder and cheap labor (the Middle Ages and Wisconsin Republican strategy), or eliminate them (the Colombian cattle baron and Israeli strategy). Wars are not last resort efforts to protect the society but eagerly awaited opportunities for the rich to accelerate the process of self-enrichment; that is, foreign wars are primarily features of the domestic civil war, with calls for “patriotism” just so much wool to be pulled over the eyes of the man in the street, who is too busy trying to survive to give any serious thought to politics.

The existence of elites appears inevitable in all large modern societies. Most people simply do not have the interest to get involved, and the minute you trust others to govern on your behalf, you create an elite. We could of course make some simple and rather obvious legal changes to minimize the production of elites, the most fundamental perhaps being limiting any individual to holding office for only one term…ever. We could also institute national recall provisions, like that currently being used to challenge Wisconsin Governor Walker. And of course we could have a tax system that encourages everyone to work hard by promoting the growth of the middle class, as the U.S. so successfully did from the end of WWII (indeed, from the New Deal) until Carter lost the tax battle to elitists in the late 1970s. But these are issues that glaze over the eyes of most of the victims, and elitists are working very hard to undermine education in order to keep things that way.

If all this seems complicated, the reason is that we are educated purposefully to make us ignorant of these issues. Public education is primarily a vehicle to instill patriotism (whose uses have already been referred to) rather than to teach the tools for maintaining vigilance over those to whom we delegate power. Our educational system serves our ruling elite, not us. It is probably true that there is no better country on earth in which to obtain a genuine education, one that will make of you a citizen armed to protect yourself from elite abuse, but that requires effort – either go to a really good college and spend years studying history, politics, and economics under unusually open-minded professors or self-educate yourself by successfully navigating the intellectual mine field of the Internet, reading things that reveal how the world works. How one either selects the professors or negotiates the Internet intellectual mine-field without already being an expert is another question.

In any case, education is key, and elitists know this. Thus, one of the clearest clues to the real intentions of politicians is their attitude toward education. Those who strive to strengthen public education and protect academic freedom are defenders of liberty; those who want dictatorship (to put it bluntly – call it “rule by your betters,” if that makes you happy) will attack public schooling, shift funds to private schools with ideological agendas, attack teachers’ unions, and do everything they can to subordinate university professors to political control (e.g., curb freedom of speech for any who criticize Israel, try to end Federal funding of Islamic studies, call anyone who speaks Russian a “commie symp”).

The first two paragraphs attempt to make the concept of class war simple, but in practice class war is the ultimate in human duplicity and subtlety. The most difficult challenge of winning a class war is figuring out that you are under attack. And solid education in the social sciences is the only microscope with sufficient resolution to reveal the initial stages of the attack.

Do not despair, however. Eventually, the class war will become so clear that only those determined to remain blind will be unable to perceive it, for elites are condemned to suffering from an appetite they cannot quench. Eventually, no matter how rich the elites become, they will bite off one bite more than they can chew. Then, the whole social sand castle in which they have the tower suites will dissolve, hurting themselves at least as much as it hurts everyone else. At that point, if not sooner, you will know it is time to fight back.

The Existential Threat to Western Elite Privilege

Are our leaders truly protecting us, as they claim, from a dark and looming Islamic menace? Must all else be sacrificed on the altar of securing the nation against terror today just as it was sacrificed on the altar of securing the nation against the communist menace during the long Cold War? Somehow, it all seems a bit too familiar and a bit too convenient.

A threat obviously does exist: a tiny number of individuals have become convinced that a battle to the death is the only way to achieve justice for the Islamic world. Exacerbating this situation, the violent and unsympathetic nature of the Western response has greatly enhanced this splinter faction’s influence. Nonetheless, the West has had all the time in the world to amend its approach to the Muslim world in order to make room in the global political system for their existence and their hopes and their grievances. Choose your favorites from among the innumerable symbols of the West’s response: Grozniy, Jenin, Lebanon, Gaza, Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo. None of these was a legitimate, much less rational or even self-serving, response to bin Laden’s terrorist challenge, much less to a very much justified Islamic political critique. The West has insisted in the rudest and clumsiest fashion that it will contemplate no such thing as making room for an independent Islamic political force.

For those old enough to recall, it feels all too familiar. History does not repeat: it is simply not credible that exactly the same menace requiring exactly the same response is required in two successive historical periods, with not a moment’s peace separating the two. It is far more likely that the identity exists in the minds of those who, by their power, set the rules of the game.

Alain Badiou has just summarized this from the French perspective:

Honte aux gouvernements successifs, qui ont tous rivalisé sur les thèmes conjoints de la sécurité et du "problème immigré", pour que ne soit pas trop visible qu'ils servaient avant tout les intérêts de l'oligarchie économique ! [ Alain Badiou, “Le racisme des intellectuals,” Le Monde 5/5/12.]

"Shame on successive regimes which have all competed with each using the intertwined themes of security and the "immigration problem, so as to thinly veil their service above all to the interests of the economic oligarchy." Yes, there is an existential threat: an existential threat to elite privilege; the elite knows it, and the elite is defending itself.

Inexpedient Government

If "that government is best which governs least," the absence of transparency on the part of officials is the best clue that the government needs to be slapped down.

Government is inexpedient, but since we are far from prepared to manage without it, let's try to direct its awesome power at the target of achieving the common good.

I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.  ["True Conservatism" in Historical and Literary Lessons 5/20/12.]

Thoreau merits careful consideration: we can agree with him that were we wise enough to conserve our values through our joint actions day by day, then perhaps small government would be best. Until that nirvana on earth be attained by society, however, Thoreau's counsel is best accepted as true only in theory. In practice, a wiser rendition would be, "That government is best which governs to the minimum required for the common good."


Problems, of course, rear their ugly heads before the words leave my fingertips. Given a government so powerful that it can defeat an enemy intent on conquest, how can we prevent the officials of such government from intimidating us as individual citizens? Given a government so powerful that it can break up a financial monstrosity that manipulates trillions of dollars in secret bets, how can we prevent the officials of that government from accepting a few billion in spare change in return for pretending they cannot see the monster?

Thanks to Juan Cole, Informed Comment. 

Transparency.    Politicians have a pretty good idea whether or not what they are doing is appropriate: if they have expertise in nothing else, politicians certainly have expertise in detecting opportunities to conduct the public business for their personal advantage. When an official hides information, it is almost never for national security reasons, almost always to conceal behavior that the official knows full well was inappropriate. In a democracy, the public interest is rarely served by concealing the behavior or true reasons behind the behavior of officials. There are of course exceptions, perhaps the main one being a situation where a weak state under the threat of attack defends itself by pretending to be more powerful than it is. For a secure state, however, "national security" is a claim designed to protect the guilty far more often than to protect the public. Lack of transparency by officials constitutes prima fascie evidence of guilt and serves as society's alarm bell.

Government has justification for existing to the degree that it functions on behalf of society and with the permission of society. It is just so much nonsense to accuse the government of "being too big" or "interfering too much" without finishing the thought. If the government overwhelms healthy social activities, it is too big; if it fails to regulate socially harmful private interests, it is too small. The self-serving nature of many complaints accusing government of being "too big" would be quickly revealed if the critics were forced to complete their thoughts. 

Wall St. CEO: "Government is too big; it is preventing me from making billions without paying any taxes!"

Big Oil Executive: "Government is too big; it is preventing me from poisoning the air I don't own to pad my pocket!"

Racist: "Government is too big; it is subsidizing the education of minorities!"

Rich man: "Government is too big; it is offering health care to sick people who aren't even rich!"

We may agree with Thoreau that in principle, small government or no government would be best...once humans are ready for such liberty. In the meantime, what matters is not size but quality, and transparency is the essence of good governance.  It is not the size of the government but its transparency that indicates the citizenry needs to take disciplinary action.

Liberty, Slavery, and Class War

Liberty is both reciprocal and relative, not individual or absolute. Otherwise, it just means "my liberty, and your slavery."

Slavery is the power to compel. In the long and bumbling struggle of Americans for liberty, the physical bondage called slavery has been more clearly condemned than the more subtle but equally effective financial bondage of a rich elite, in part because the dial of financial bondage is far more sensitive (in modern parlance, "trickle down"), in part because the dial of financial bondage has been spun with far more skill, and in part because financial slavery is not easy to define, whereas physical slavery is. In the event, physical bondage was prohibited after a war that nearly destroyed the nation, while the level of financial bondage waxes and wanes with the alertness of the citizenry.


In the 21st century, carefully distracted and manipulated by culture wars, bribed by cheap Chinese consumer junk, scared by the marvelously useful specter of terror, and beguiled by a breathtakingly bold stream of elitist propaganda nonsense, American citizens are not very alert at all. Hence, the super-rich elite has been steadily spinning the dial on the financial slavery machine in the direction of transferring the marvelous wealth of American society into their own hands. It is no longer necessary to debate the idiocy of trickle down, for trickle down has been transformed into squeeze dry.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for Liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable [sic] things, called by the same name–liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable [sic] names–liberty and tyranny.” [Abraham Lincoln, Speech to the Sanitary Commission, April 1864, as quoted in Ronald C. White, Jr., "Lincoln and the Rhetoric of Freedom," in Harold Holzer and Sara Vaugn Gabbard, eds., Lincoln and Freedom (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois UP, 2007, 139.)]

What in the language of abolition does not equally apply to the struggle against financial slavery?

When American families use the word "liberty," they are not referring to granting monster banks the liberty to engage in mortgage fraud or bet against their own clients or demand welfare to compensate them for their gambling losses. When billionaires use the word "liberty," they are referring to all this and more...to the right to buy elections by pitting their billions against the savings of normal voters in a "free" contest of "one dollar, one vote." The billionaires are referring to the right to tell the politicians they have bought to pass laws for their private convenience, laws that break unions, drive down wages, and push virtually everyone into subservience. The billionaires are referring to laws that allow them to destroy the environment that is our common heritage in order to enrich themselves even as they impoverish the rest of us.


When the average American uses the word "liberty," that word means "government  of the people, by the people, and for the people." When billionaires and their lackey politicians use the word "liberty," it means something incompatible: it means  "class war." And the billionaires are winning.

Does Europe Exist?

Europeans need to decide whether or not Europe exists. If it does, the rich need to act accordingly.

If Europe exists or wants to exist in the future, if there is a community of like-minded people who care about each other and want to stick together, then the fortunate need to help the unfortunate. This remark by former European Central Bank Executive Board Member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi is typical of Europe's problem:

Ireland has made huge progress over the last year. It is really a pity what is happening in Greece is spoiling all this. Without the Greek events, I think Ireland would be able to come back to the markets. [Bloomberg 5/18/12.]

Well, of course, without those who are in trouble, those who are not would be better off. What is the point of such churlishness? The point, clearly, is that "we" are out for ourselves and could care less about our neighbors. And there are currently more than a few rich Germans who think exactly the same thing about Ireland.

Domino theories usually don't hold much water, but the idea that eliminating Greece will only pull the plug on Spain...and Ireland is hard to dismiss. It is beginning to appear that the only Europe that exists is the old one that brought us a century of fascism and war. Is there a European community or are there just rich and everyone else?

It seems unimaginable for Europeans to turn their backs on the society that gave democracy to the West, but if the Acropolis no longer means anything, if the various little nationalities over there don't want to be Europeans working together in the face of adversity, here's an option: all the Mediterranean societies can walk away from the EEC, leaving it to the cold-hearted Germans who apparently are now quite happy to discover that they won WWII after all. It is not clear what that would accomplish in economic terms since Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece all face the same economic challenge, but at least they might have empathy for each other. And I perceive certain gentlemen standing in the shadows with welcoming smiles on their faces. Erdogan, Gul, and Davutoglu today constitute the most innovative decision-making team in the neighborhood. Could they lead a Mediterranean common market to a better tomorrow?