Dry Heaves and Sucker Ploys:
Written by Chris Floyd
Tuesday, 29 September 2009 00:03
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1847-dry-heaves-and-sucker-ploys-the-great-new-iran-qcrisisq.html
The new "Iran crisis" is such a sickening concoction of stupidity and lies that it almost defies comment. It certainly defies contemplation; even to think about it for thirty seconds is enough to bring on a bout of the dry heaves.
Fortunately, several other writers -- with iron-clad innards, no doubt -- have boldly waded in and dismantled the deception behind the manufactured hissy fit over Iran's "secret nuclear facility." Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com gives a good overview of the case, which, shucked of all the warmongering frenzy, boils down to this little nubbin of reality:
Iran was building a new nuclear enrichment facility, as it is allowed to do by international treaty. The United States and several other Western countries knew about the facility for years. The facility, which is still months away from completion, is not designed to enrich uranium to weapons grade. Iran is not required to inform the IAEA about any new enrichment plant until six months before the plant goes into operation. There is some quibbling about a codicil that was meant to require Iran to give extra early notice; but this was never ratified by the Iranian legislature, so Iran is in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty which it signed and ratified years ago. (As opposed to such already nuclear armed American allies as India and Israel.) The facility was not secret, it can't build bombs, it is not even finished, and it has no nuclear material in it.
Er, that's it. But upon this paper-thin foundation, a vast fortress of sinister bullshit has been erected by the "progressive" American president and his laughable lapdogs in London and Paris. The long-known presence of a unfinished, non-weaponized, treaty-compliant building is now being presented to the world as a burning reason to impose harsh new sanctions on Iran -- harsh to the point of outright acts of war, such as an embargo on shipments of gasoline and other fuel products to Iran. And of course, our coddled, padded, well-protected War Party hacks have seized upon this non-event to bay even louder for oceans of Persian blood to slake their thirsts -- or bolster their faltering manhoods, or do whatever it is that the thought of foreigners being slaughtered in great numbers far, far away does for pathetic little wretches like Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman and the Whole Sick Crew.
I don't have much to add to the analysis of offered by Ditz, Scott Ritter, Jason Raimondo, Glenn Greenwald, among others. (And if you want to put the issue in its deepest, truest context, see this piece written two years ago by Arthur Silber: "So Iran Gets Nukes. So What?") But I will note what is likely to be a side issue, but an interesting one nonetheless -- the timing of these "revelations."
As we all know, Barack Obama and his Europuppies meant to make a big show of sword-waggling at the opening of the oh-so-momentous G20 summit in Pittsburgh. Iran beat them to the punch by formally notifying the IAEA of the new facility before the summit, but in any case, the "Iran crisis" served its purpose for the Masters of the West: it covered up the fact that they actually had nothing whatsoever to say about the ostensible theme of the summit -- solving the global economic collapse. If the "Iran crisis" had not sucked up all the media oxygen, these "leaders" might have had to explain why they have given trillions of public dollars to the perpetrators of the economic collapse, while letting millions upon millions of their citizens slide into jobless, homeless penury. They would have had to explain why they are taking nothing but the most ineffective, cosmetic measures to rein in the hyper-greed of the oligarchs. And they would have to admit that their only plan for addressing the crisis in the future is to do more of the same: giving the elite even more public money to use as they please.
But all the economic questions were blown away by the ever-sexy talk of war. And of course, all the hoo-rah about a new war also distracted from the White House dithering over the old, failing war in Afghanistan. It's the oldest con trick in the book: distracting the sucker while you pick his pocket.
But unfortunately it's not just a game: the militarists are in deadly earnest about attacking Iran, and year by year, they creep ever closer to their ultimate goal -- no matter which party controls the White House. As I wrote here last year:
There is literally nothing that Iran can do – or not do – to divert the American elite's desire to strike at their land and bring it under domination. And apparently there is nothing that anyone in America with any power or a major platform will do to stop it either.
Arthur Silber concludes his damning analysis of our unforced march to new horror with a heartbreaking quote from Martin Luther King Jr. Let it serve as the last word here as well; no one will put it better:
There is such a thing as being too late.... Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with lost opportunity.... Over the bleached bones of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late."
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 07, 2009
Labor Day in a Kleptocracy
[…]
We are living through a profound global financial crisis. That crisis has many proximate causes in the governance and deregulation of Wall Street. We have seen the astounding bailout of Bear Stearns using $30 billion plus in public money—Bear Stearns – an investment bank, an enterprise that prided itself on being in the business of cowboy capitalism, business without a safety net.
But the real roots of the crisis do not lie on Wall Street. The cause of the crisis can be found in the long-term weakening of the real American economy in an era of globalization—in closed factories, outsourced high tech jobs and low wage jobs with no benefits, and in the unsustainable effort to maintain middle class living standards through borrowing. It is to be found in the reality of lives like that of Kimberly Somsel of Westland Michigan, a member of the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate Working America, an unemployed single mother of two battling breast cancer and facing foreclosure due to a ballooning “2 and 28” loan payment. She is selling the family car and her furniture just to get by. Five houses on her block are threatened with foreclosure.
Powerful voices in our country say that public resources should be there for Bear Stearns, but not for Kimberly Somsel, to keep the champagne flowing on Wall Street, but not to build a future for Michigan. But there is another way — a return to a high wage economy driven by productive investment in the United States. This way requires not that we retreat from the global economy, but that we insist that the globalized economy have real rules that work for working people. At the center of these rules must be labor market regulation, and in particular, regulation that empowers workers to speak for themselves by acting together. But rules are no enough. The United States must pursue a real national economic strategy in a globalized world economy.
For thirty years, America’s economic elites and their political allies have pursued a combination of economic and social policies designed to produce a low wage economy. These policies—our labor laws and our broader system of labor market regulation, our tax policies and our approach to globalization, have yielded decades of stagnant wages and rising economic inequality.
But at the same time, policymakers of both parties have sought, with some success, to maintain high levels of consumer spending. The pursuit of the contradiction of a low wage, high spending economy has systematically destroyed the various ways we individually and collectively save and invest. Instead of an income driven economy, we have become an economy driven by asset bubbles fueled by cheap debt. The ultimate unsustainability of this strategy has brought us to our current economic crisis.
To grasp what needs to be changed, it is necessary to review the thirty years of policy that got the United States to where we are.
[…]
[full article]
- How a Low Wage Economy with Weak Labor Laws Brought Us the Mortgage Credit Crisis
http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/events/spring08/feller/
… In fact, they behave politically much more like Afghan and Pakistani big landlords, who pay their peasants a dollar a day and call in the army to put down any organized protests. In part, they have been offered an irresistible temptation by the destruction of organized labor; French workers wouldn't put up with a tenth of the insults visited upon us by our overlords. But it is a dead end, even for the uber-rich. Healthy, educated workers will be key to American economic competition in the world in the coming century. Our super-rich and our politicians are hollowing the country out with their ponzi schemes and their Sparta strategy of projecting military force even as the country's economic base in manufacturing and productivity sinks in comparison to rivals.
As we barbecue on imported grills and watch sports on our foreign-made LCD televisions and lament the bad economy, we should take a moment Monday to celebrate not just the individual worker but what is left of the American labor movement, since only if it is strengthened is our country likely to succeed in stepping back from the abyss. Aristotle warned us that each form of legitimate government is subject to decay. Aristocracies too easily become juntas. And democracies too easily become demogoguery and mob rule. The first eight years of the twenty-first century took us perilously close to both at once.
I celebrate today the organized workers, the ones who can push back against the crooks in pinstripe:
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
[full article]
Where have All the broad Shoulders Gone?
Or, Labor Day in a Kleptocracy
http://www.juancole.com/2009/09/where-have-all-broad-shoulders-gone-or.html
We are living through a profound global financial crisis. That crisis has many proximate causes in the governance and deregulation of Wall Street. We have seen the astounding bailout of Bear Stearns using $30 billion plus in public money—Bear Stearns – an investment bank, an enterprise that prided itself on being in the business of cowboy capitalism, business without a safety net.
But the real roots of the crisis do not lie on Wall Street. The cause of the crisis can be found in the long-term weakening of the real American economy in an era of globalization—in closed factories, outsourced high tech jobs and low wage jobs with no benefits, and in the unsustainable effort to maintain middle class living standards through borrowing. It is to be found in the reality of lives like that of Kimberly Somsel of Westland Michigan, a member of the AFL-CIO’s community affiliate Working America, an unemployed single mother of two battling breast cancer and facing foreclosure due to a ballooning “2 and 28” loan payment. She is selling the family car and her furniture just to get by. Five houses on her block are threatened with foreclosure.
Powerful voices in our country say that public resources should be there for Bear Stearns, but not for Kimberly Somsel, to keep the champagne flowing on Wall Street, but not to build a future for Michigan. But there is another way — a return to a high wage economy driven by productive investment in the United States. This way requires not that we retreat from the global economy, but that we insist that the globalized economy have real rules that work for working people. At the center of these rules must be labor market regulation, and in particular, regulation that empowers workers to speak for themselves by acting together. But rules are no enough. The United States must pursue a real national economic strategy in a globalized world economy.
For thirty years, America’s economic elites and their political allies have pursued a combination of economic and social policies designed to produce a low wage economy. These policies—our labor laws and our broader system of labor market regulation, our tax policies and our approach to globalization, have yielded decades of stagnant wages and rising economic inequality.
But at the same time, policymakers of both parties have sought, with some success, to maintain high levels of consumer spending. The pursuit of the contradiction of a low wage, high spending economy has systematically destroyed the various ways we individually and collectively save and invest. Instead of an income driven economy, we have become an economy driven by asset bubbles fueled by cheap debt. The ultimate unsustainability of this strategy has brought us to our current economic crisis.
To grasp what needs to be changed, it is necessary to review the thirty years of policy that got the United States to where we are.
[…]
[full article]
- How a Low Wage Economy with Weak Labor Laws Brought Us the Mortgage Credit Crisis
http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/events/spring08/feller/
… In fact, they behave politically much more like Afghan and Pakistani big landlords, who pay their peasants a dollar a day and call in the army to put down any organized protests. In part, they have been offered an irresistible temptation by the destruction of organized labor; French workers wouldn't put up with a tenth of the insults visited upon us by our overlords. But it is a dead end, even for the uber-rich. Healthy, educated workers will be key to American economic competition in the world in the coming century. Our super-rich and our politicians are hollowing the country out with their ponzi schemes and their Sparta strategy of projecting military force even as the country's economic base in manufacturing and productivity sinks in comparison to rivals.
As we barbecue on imported grills and watch sports on our foreign-made LCD televisions and lament the bad economy, we should take a moment Monday to celebrate not just the individual worker but what is left of the American labor movement, since only if it is strengthened is our country likely to succeed in stepping back from the abyss. Aristotle warned us that each form of legitimate government is subject to decay. Aristocracies too easily become juntas. And democracies too easily become demogoguery and mob rule. The first eight years of the twenty-first century took us perilously close to both at once.
I celebrate today the organized workers, the ones who can push back against the crooks in pinstripe:
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
[full article]
Where have All the broad Shoulders Gone?
Or, Labor Day in a Kleptocracy
http://www.juancole.com/2009/09/where-have-all-broad-shoulders-gone-or.html
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