Liberty & Power: Group Blog
Entries by William Marina
Monday, November 3, 2008
The Collector is at the Door
The following from Tom Dispatch is of interest, especially towards the end when Dubya is quoted:
"Now, of course, the bill collector is at the door and the property -- the USA -- is worth a good deal less than on November 4, 2000. George W. Bush is a discredited president; his job approval ratings could hardly be lower; his bubble world gone bust.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
American Conservatism is "Gone With the Wind"
Both parties now represent wings of Corporatism, much like Germany in the 1930s & 40s under Hitler.
The Republicans represent on the whole Big Business, with a few like Rubin in the other party but also well financed by Wall St. These are increasingly like the German Big Business conservatives of that era backing Adolf.
In the other wing of the Nazis, Adolf's true friends, the Socialist radicals backing all sorts of things from health fads to their idea of Eugenics to homosexuality, etc., much like the Demo Left today, a total welfare program, even for the German hausfraus! And, the universities, as Fulbright understood, are very much a part of that Corporate mix.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Keynesianism's Last Stand?
It appears to me that with respect to Keynesianism today, it is more appropriate to use the term, "Comeback," although one might argue that when Richard Nixon announced, "We are all Keynesians now," that was rather a recognition of its triumph here.
I do prefer the term "Corporatism," rather than Mercantilism to describe what is happening globally, and the triumph might best be called, "El Duce's," or "Benito's," or "Mussolini's Triumph." Or, perhaps HHG Schacht's, as his minions were literally in the saddle even in Japan after 1946, and up to the present.
Monday, October 6, 2008
2nd Amendment..."Gone With the Wind"
Slightly over 100 years ago, the major architect of the new Empire, Elihu Root, serving in the capacities under TR of both Sec.State and Sec. War, one after the other, used the so-called "Militia Act" to effectively eliminate same, replacing it with the Nat'l Guard. That the Congress was threatened with Martial Law if it did not pass the Bailout Bill, demonstrates our Rubicon was actually crossed years ago. The recent discussion and case on the 2nd Amend., arguing that you could have a gun is almost irrelevant. A bunch of individuals having guns is not what the Amend. was all about, and not the same as a "well-regulated Militia."
The Centralization is fundamental to the overall Empire scenario in everything from finance and economics to so-called Defense, with, of course, other items such as Health and Education (Schooling) thrown in for good measure. A truly bipartisan effort by the two Parties! Several years ago when I spoke to staff members of the NSC in the old Exec. Office Building next to the White House about "decentralized war," they could hardly be bothered. The NeoCon mentality was already alive and well, and little has changed since 1981. They clearly wanted Imperial Strike Forces, essential for any variant of the various "Doctrines" enunciated by every Prez since Harry T.
Now they have made it clear, they will use the troops at Home as well. Too bad we don't have a "No Standing Armies Act" like the Brits passed in 1694.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Public/Self-Help Housing
Today I made the following about an article on public housing at HNN:
While I would not quarrel with what you say about public housing in New York, there is also a crisis with respect to single family homes, in fact, in the epicenter of the sub-prime mess. Habitat for Humanity, using what might be called 18th century Amish barn raising technologies has provided some homes, built by volunteers for those who qualify. This is, however, a drop in the bucket!
America was once known for its self-help, can-do attitude.
Professional builders might not like it, but the US Forest Service has developed a very simple Frame Truss technology which enables several people to "dry-in" a 1,200 sq. ft home in about a week. Coupled with a "temporary final" from a city or country, this would enable a couple or family to move in and complete the house for about the total price of a mid-size car.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Cappie We Hardly Knew You!
We have been in what a number of writers from Hobson to Quigley identified as "Finance Capitalism," otherwise known as "Corporatism," since at least 1929, if not earlier. El Duce's ideas now seem rather pervasive, and who knows what the future will now bring! Imagine Deng with a hat on like Mussolini's! Wonder what Chaplin could do with that?
We could use an updated version of RA Brady's, Business as a System of Power (1943), a favorite of C. Wright Mills, which candidly described in the midst of WWII, the political economies of all of the major powers. Corporatism is now clearly the big winner, and will have a harder time disguising itself as any kind of Capitalism.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
George Washington: Initiator of the Imperial Presidency
Here is my response to Stephen Chapman’s article, "The Imperial Presidency is Here to Stay: And Obama, Clinton and McCain seem fine with that," at Reason Online.
While I agree with the central theme of your article, it is depressing that you go on at the beginning, and again at the end, about the supposed anti-imperialism and anti-interventionism of George Washington, who, in my view, was the initiator of the Imperial Presidency.
Certainly, your view is reflected among a number of so-called libertarians, including Ron Paul and the folks at LRC and Antiwar.com, which recently had a piece on GW's supposed anti-militarism by a Law Prof. at the U. of Colorado. Their intellectual confusion, however, is reflected in the fact that the Mises Institute (linked at LRC as well) also recently published, "Generalissimo Washington: How He Crushed the Spirit of Liberty," excerpted from Murray Rothbard's classic, Conceived in Liberty, each of the 4 volumes of which, as they appeared, I had the opportunity to review in Reason magazine many years ago. If Rothbard's analysis is correct, and I believe it is, then you, Paul, LRC, Antiwar, and others, are in error in your overall views about Washington as anti-imperial, or opposed to intervention.
I have written on this extensively, and most of the articles are at one or more of the web sites in my Signature below. Therefore, I have time for only a few observations.
Washington, like Franklin, wanted a structure (representation) that would allow the Americans to eventually dominate the British Empire (as we now have today). They rejected peace overtures in 1778, when the Brits then began their real counter-insurgency policy. This group wanted Canada as a first war objective, early on. Adam Smith in a letter to George III, discovered in the 1930s, sized that group up nicely, perceiving they wanted Empire. For one group in the revolutionary coalition, the war was always about Empire!
Washington disliked the Militia, and wanted a traditional European type war, as did his inheritors, the South's leaders, many years later. In 1781, at the so-called "crisis" of the Revolution in the South, he sent La Fayette north to mount another assault to take Canada. Ethan Allen & the Green Mtn Boys, by then understood his game, and demanded "double pay, double rations & plunder," which meant the end of that imperial scheme.
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
Haven't the Chinese heard about Kelo?
What is this "just" compensation stuff, anyway?
From tomorrow's Financial Times:
Making Mother Nature Cry?
Dear Lew Rockwell,
You make an excellent point about Katrina from Pop. Mech. in LRC today, which relates also to Hans Hoppe's piece on Insurance.
In the 3rd ed. of HistFL, I discussed much of the same with respect to hurricanes, but also the role of liability in Capitalism. I shall be expanding on this in the 4th ed., next year, because not only does the Fed. Flood Insur. encourage reckless actions, this is also abetted by the Army Corp. of Eng. program, which results in severe erosion even in much milder storms. Jeb Bush rec'd over $8Bil from Dubya to "Restore the Everglades," but much of it has been used to squeeze out more water for the big builders, which is the power base Jeb comes from (in case you haven't guessed, Dubya's was/is oil). A new study also shows the general role of Fed/state land and forestry policies in this mess. The same is true in all of the gulf states, but FL's long coast line, etc., exacerbates all of these factors.
With Environmentalism of this sort, Mother Nature must cry a great deal!
Regards, Bill Marina
Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Guess Who Said This!
"I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.
"What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?
"I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."
Monday, February 27, 2006
“Imperial Schism? The Firing of Bruce Bartlett as a Lesson for Historians”
Two economists were in the news this week, with respect to having been, in effect, fired!
One of them, Lawrence Summers, is the President of Harvard University. He is resigning, effective in June, rather than face a long period of nasty confrontation with a part of the faculty. He can, however, salve his wounds with the long-term financial remuneration of a tenured senior professorship, and on the lecture circuit, should he choose not to go into either the business world or return to a career in government.
The other is Bruce Bartlett, whose book, Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, is due out February 28th. Bartlett, of course, was fired last October from a conservative think-tank in Dallas, Texas, The National Center for Policy Analysis. The reason? His book hit too close to President Bush’s responsibility for the policies of his administration. The president, directors and some donors to NCPA, apparently believe policies can somehow be divorced from those who make them. What a novel view!
Both firings open up some interesting questions about the intellectual establishment in this country, ranging from universities to think-tanks. For now, let’s focus on the example of Bruce Bartlett’s.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Not to Worry! And, It's Not About Oil!
"Saving the World from Bird Flu"
Last night on late TV our beloved President announced he is launching a Preemptive War Against Bird Flu (PWABF), because Karl Rove suggested that's where the WMDs might really be hidden!
To seal off any threat from the East, American bombers attacked the Canary Islands. Naval warships are moving to surround the Islands and shell them with depleted uranium. After that, Poodle Blair can send in some of the Brits leaving Iraq to round up the survivors to rendition to Guantanamo.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
The Dubai Ports Issue is Really Wal-mart and Toyota All Over Again!
Good Heavens! George Bush is threatening to veto a piece of Congressional legislation, breaking his record of never having used the veto. What's going on?
A coalition of Democrats led by New York Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, joined by Republican Senate leader, Bill Frist, as well as Christian conservatives such as Cal Thomas, see Dubai's acquisition of P&O's port concessions as a threat to American security. Why, two of the 911 bombers came from that small nation!
Bush's "War on Terror" having cried "wolf" everywhere, including Saddam's Iraq, is now having the issue come back to, as it were, "bite the President in the ass."
Beneath all of this "security" clamor, it's really the Wal-mart question again, in a slightly different guise!
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Bringing the United Nations Back In
Today Juan Cole offers a program for peace in Iraq.
"informed Comment" by Juan Cole
There will be anti-War protests in the coming month, as the 3-year anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq approaches.
I think it is time to demand a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq. I suspect a majority of Iraqi parliamentarians want that. The Sunni Arabs demand it. The Sadrists demand it. It is time. Saying that the guerrillas would take advantage of a timetable, given the carnage we saw on Monday (see below) is frankly silly. They are taking advantage of the current situation. We have to create a new situation, with which they might be happier so that they stop blowing things up. Staying this course is untenable.
But that step will not necessarily resolve the crisis.
I think the peace movement has a real opportunity here to make a push for much heavier United Nations involvement in Iraq. I say, let's make up placards calling on Kofi Annan to get involved, and calling on Bush to let the UN come in in a big way, with proper protection.
Here are the advantages:
Cheney to Head National Archives?
Today's New York Times reports that the government is secretly reclassifying numerous documents, many already published, back into secrecy.
Maybe, now that Cheney says he wants no future elective office, Bush can nominate him as Head of the National Archives to remove just about everything there back into the secrecy of the agencies from whence the materials came. Remember Edward Shils' book, The Torment of Secrecy? God forbid some of those old century plus documents from the BIAs (both Indian and Insular) detailing the Army's massacres of both Indians and Filipinos be allowed in the Archives for future historians to see, part of our first "War on Terrorists." Wonder if the NSA is listening in on discussions between those "suspicious" archivists? Some with a beard may just be part of al Qaida.
Now "History" can be written the Empire's way, just as in 1984!
Thursday, February 9, 2006
With Wolfie in the "Darkest" Third World
That great genius of instant "shock and awe" and brilliant "Democratic nation building" appears to have had an interesting year at the World Bank.
Financial TimesFebruary 9 2006
"Observer: Dialogue of the deaf"
Paul Wolfowitz was always going to have a rocky first year at the World Bank, given his role as architect of the war in Iraq.
It has not helped matters that he relies so heavily on a core team of advisers from the Republican party, who have very little expertise in development matters. But, Observer wonders, are his staff trying to make it work?
In a recent survey only 48 per cent of more than 10,000 respondents said they had a good understanding of the direction in which the bank's senior management - namely, Wolfowitz - was leading them.
That is down from 67 per cent at the time of the last survey, two years ago. That is not particularly surprising - the bank has a long history of unsettling transitions, the inevitable result perhaps of a process in which the president is chosen based on close links to the White House rather than knowledge of the bank and its work.
But what was surprising was the answer to a question that Wolfowitz himself inserted into the survey.
"My annual meeting speech [last September] gave me the chance to provide my views on the general direction and priorities for our institution. Have you read it?" Forty-five per cent of the respondents said they had not.
As a public service, Observer would like to point out that they can find it on the bank's website, on Wolfowitz's page, under the heading "Recent Speeches".
Saturday, February 4, 2006
Our Brilliant Managers
A pre-Super Bowl news weekend special:
Baseball insiders say they knew Dubya was nuts when in 1989 he traded Sammy Sosa to the Cubs. What with running Harkin Oil into the ground, and then the US, its been downhill ever since.
The Seattle Times indicates the War in Iraq is now costing $100,000 per minute, totaling half a trillion $, about what the 13 year Vietnam War cost. This is, of course, conservative when compared to the analysis done by the Nobel Laureate in Economics, George Stiglitz. And the CB's have now left New Orleans and are back in Iraq building our permanent air bases there as part of the Pentagon's 20 year plan. And, I thought only the Soviets developed such centralized, long range plans!
The Independent, UK, reports another leaked Memo about how Bush and Blair talked about a plan to provoke the War early on. and Bush opined, "it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups" afterwards. Right!
Meanwhile Rummy, Negroponte and Condi are spending millions to support Venezuelan groups apposing Chavez. Rummy complains that, like Hitler, Chavez was popularly elected. Speaking of elections, 13 of the elected Palestinians are in Israeli prisons, but then it appears that much of so-called Palestine is a rather walled-in place anyway. One might suggest that the most apt comparison with Hitler is Dubya, trying to provoke a war, as Adolf did in 1939 dressing up the Wehrmacht in Polish uniforms.
PS: Dabya says he wants to conserve oil. Has anyone told him that our tanks in that War he declared "victory" in, in May, 2003, when re-armored against bombs, get ONE mile to the gallon? Another comparison with Adolf's Tiger Panzer tank, which was also a fuel guzzler.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Democracy and War
Timing is everything! A recent academic “splash” has been made by the E. Mansfield & J. Snyder new book, Electing to Fight, the subject of a meeting at the Cato Institute. Rather than listening to that session, or bothering with the book, I recommend “Spengler’s” piece discussing it. Although he has their first names reversed, the links to their work and the Cato meeting are included, along with several of his own articles that are of interest, certainly that on one of David Beito’s favorite people, Victor Davis Hanson, ”No true Scotsman starts a war”.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Hamas & Zionism
I have read the, at this point, eight brief comments to David Beito’s posting yesterday about Hamas’ victory.
For background on Israel, I recommend this piece by Michael Neumann, and have ordered his book. I also suggest this article on the election by
Juan Cole.
For identification purposes, I ought to mention that in 1987, as Director of International Studies at Florida Atlantic University, I was also the founding Co-director of the Florida-Israel Institute, and wrote the legislation establishing it, dedicated to promoting education, cultural and economic ties between the two entities.
I was in Gaza in December, 1987, about two weeks before the initial Intifada developed. By my fourth visit to Israel in 1990, it was clear my efforts were over. Florida’s AIPAC leaders were not enchanted with the notion of bringing free market ideas to that essentially socialist/corporatist nation, and so informed the University. At that time about 94% of Israel’s economy was under government ownership or control. Eat your heart out, Fidel!
It is well to recall that Zionism was not only socialist, but in the 1930s a number of such leaders in Israel were enthralled by the ideas of two chaps, one in Italy, the other in Germany, both of whom had come from a national socialist background.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
The New American "Secret" Uniformed Police
Paul Craig Roberts has some interesting comments on our newest Secret Police.
The great American historian, Mercy Otis Warren, long before FDR in 1941, referred to the British occupation of Boston in Oct., 1768, as a "day of infamy." In modern America, that day arrived in 2005, and most Americans were unaware of it. Of course, we have been using such forces "out there" for years, but have now brought them down below the Rubicon.
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the White House, those doyens of style, Laura Bush, Condi Rice, Karen Hughes and Lynn Cheney, are probably spending some time designing the new uniforms. Ah, but, will they wear Jackboots?, that is the question! Of course, if Hillary is elected in 2008, they will be redesigned, anyway!
I am reminded of 1965, when those several of us at FAU seeking to speak out against the Vietnam War had our signs torn down with the sanction of the administration, even when Sen. Ernest Gruening, one of two who had voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, was the speaker. The only intellectual sanctuaries were at the Quaker Meeting Houses, the Unitarian Fellowships, and the Catholic College for women, then nearby. As the siege mentality purposefully exploited by the expansion of the "War on Terror" increases, those days may soon be with us again, in spades.
Some now talk of leaving America, but I am reminded of the Ancient Taoist proverb, also found, as I recall, somewhere in Isaiah, "Go straight to the heart of danger, for there you will find safety."
When I was consulting years ago in the late '60s, I once boarded a plane in WPB, and Teddy Kennedy came aboard with two guys I assumed were Secret Service agents. Why did I think so? — they both had on the same style tie with a series of "S.S."s embroidered all over it. I wonder if Abe Lincoln originated that idea before Dr. Goebbels or Himmler?
Friday, December 2, 2005
Where is John Galt?
Why John left.
The Saturn workers thought they could influence decisions on building the car and also the market.
As Astonishing As Elvis!
For those readers who would like to learn more about a group of fanatics perhaps as out of touch with reality as Dick Cheney or the Fundamentalists, click here.
We're off for a three week cruise around the Horn, but will continue to read L&P on the ship.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
The Ultimate Big Pharma: Legalizing Opium Warlords
Afghani opium is about to be declared medicinal. A partial triumph for the boys at the Cato Institute! As a Bush administration advisor declared last year, reality within the Empire is whatever they declare it to be.
The emerging drug regulatory agency in Afghanistan reminds me of the "Anti-Counterfeiting" agency in Taiwan with whom I met some years while on a Fulbright studying economic development in Asia.
They did give out the nicest gifts, but it was apparent they weren't really trying to "stop" the pirating of books, films, recordings or other products, but rather to regulate them a bit as would any good cartel.
Perhaps Halliburton/KBR will be given a no-bid contract to regulate the opium distribution. They are ever so useful! Wonder if Medicare will give it away to seniors? Given the competition with Chavez in Latin America, perhaps Cocaine will also be declared a medicine! Free Opium/Coke Dens, now that would really narcotize the American public. No need to worry about hurricane damage, inflation, corruption, Iraq. Whee!
So now we can begin to see what a Bush looks like; coca leaves and poppy flowers.
Wednesday, November 2, 2005
From Andy Rooney to Vladimir Putin, With Love
A year or so ago, "Sixty Minutes," Andy Rooney, floated the idea of a group of professorial advisors to the President of the United States. If not the "best and the brightest" these would certainly be among the most influential of the bureaucrats inhabiting Washington, DC, what some of us lovingly refer to as the "anal sphincter" of the Empire. This idea went nowhere, probably because Dick Cheney has that position.
Now The Christian Science Monitor reports that Putin is setting up such a
"parallel parliament" in Russia:
ANNUAL NEOLOGISM CONTEST
Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words. The winners are:
1. Coffee (N.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (V.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (V.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (Adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (Adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (V.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (N.), olive-flavoured mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (N.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (N.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (N.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (N.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (N), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (N.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (N.), The belief that, when you die, your spirit flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (N.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Are We Slow Learners?
Mr. Marina is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Exec. Dir. of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC.
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. . . . We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
A senior Bush administration adviser, 2002
A large number of Americans believe we are an "Exception to History”; brighter, richer, and just all around more Providentially Blessed, even when it appears this year with respect to wars, hurricanes, and just plain corruption and lies, that our leader may have lost the "Mandate of Heaven."
It may be that we are just, as a People, simply slow learners!
Friday, October 28, 2005
A Reply to Montaner Regarding My "Mistakes"
Thank you Alvaro for contacting Montaner in order to correct my "mistakes."
Carlos Alberto Montaner on Cuba & Iraq
I read with interest the article by Montaner at the link provided by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, that is in Spanish rather than English.
I find Montaner's recounting of US-Cuban relations of a century ago very partial, and perhaps misleading when then applied to the situation in Iraq today.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
On the Death of Ba Jin
The great Chinese anarchist writer, <a href+”http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5349362,00.html”>Ba Jin</a> died, October 17th, at the age of 100.
In all of the nonsense written about the “clash” of Civilizations, it is amazing how little effort is given over to exploring the “borrowing” back and forth, for better and for worse, between cultures and nations.
In viewing, for example, the excellent presentations at the recent Mises Institute conference on Fascism, I saw nothing about Fascism in China or Japan, surely as important as Argentina.
One cannot understand Japanese history since 1945, for instance, without realizing that New Dealers in the Occupation helped bring Fascist bureaucrats back from Manchukuo to run the Finance Ministry in Tokyo because they both hated corporations.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Happy Cristobal Colon Day!
Readers may wish to read my piece on Colon and Political In-Correctness at: http://hnn.us/articles/16960.html
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Impeach the Lout!
This Op-Ed piece, by the NYT's Bob Herbert, pretty much sums up my views:
Monday, September 19, 2005
FEMA & Microsoft: True Love?
CNET reports the following:
"A government for the people by…Microsoft?
According to Slashdot, the U.S. Patent Office is considering making the online patent registration process available via Internet Explorer only. Well, FEMA's already gone that route. If you try using Mozilla Firefox on the FEMA application site, you get this message: "In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6. Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register." Good luck calling FEMA these days; I was able to get only a recorded message when I tried.
Many alternative browsers support ActiveX or make allowances for it, so I fail to see why the U.S. government would insist that Katrina victims use only one browser--a browser with a long history of security flaws, some of the more serious ones having to do with ActiveX Controls. It seems wrong to me that FEMA or any other government agency should restrict access to one browser. I hope this is a temporary oversight."
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Firearms Refresher Course/Katrina
My cousin, Joe Marina, sent me the following note, which has, apparently, been making the rounds on the Internet.
"Subject: Firearms Refresher Course:
If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraq Theater of operations during the last 22 months; that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000.
The firearm death rate in Washington D.C. is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are 25% more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.
Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of Washington, D.C."
Here is my response:
Monday, September 5, 2005
Look What "Jumper"ed Out of the Black Box? Cuba, All Over Again?
Mr. Marina is Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Fellow of the Independent Institute, Oakland, CA, and Exec. Dir. of the Marina-Huerta Educational Foundation. He lives in Asheville, NC.
Air Force Gen. John Jumper has announced that the American Empire's idea of Iraqi "Democracy" includes four, huge, permanent Air Bases, with all of the troops, etc., that will be needed to protect such enormous facilities in perpetuity. Welcome to four new versions of Guantanamo, East, folks!
Probably, that won't be in the new Constitution, but rather tacked on as a treaty, as we did in Cuba after 1898. Incredible, how the face of Empire changes so little over a century!
Sunday, September 4, 2005
Black Hawk Up, the Counter-Insurgency at Home!
Hopefully, the Army can finally "win" a Counter-Insurgency!
Will George W Strut Down Bourbon Street in a Flight Suit?
"Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans"
Army Times, September 2:
NEW ORLEANS — Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.” ...
Dozens of military trucks and up-armored Humvees left the staging area just after 11 a.m. Friday, while hundreds more troops arrived at the same staging area in the city via Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters.
“We’re here to do whatever they need us to do,” Sgt. 1st Class Ron Dixon, of the Oklahoma National Guard’s 1345th Transportation Company. “We packed to stay as long as it takes.”
While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations....
Saturday, September 3, 2005
Corruption, Inc. Strikes Again?
Who would have thunk it?
Halliburton has been hired for the cleanup of three Naval bases in Mississippi damaged by hurricane Katrina. As soon as it is safe, it will also be doing the damage assessment for other Naval facilities in the New Orleans area. Wonder who'll get the contracts to repair those?
Friday, September 2, 2005
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Trump and Stewart are trying to keep it under wraps, that the Sorcerer (Dick Cheney)'s Apprentice (George W.) may be auditioning for their shows.
The question is, what job to Apprentice him into, and should we wait 3 more years?
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Jude Wanniski, RIP
I first became acquainted with Jude Wanniski through his great book, The Way the World Works, which I used as a text in one of my classes when I returned to teaching in the 1990s after a stint in administration. I treasure the email exchanges that followed, especially during the last several years.
His columns on questions ranging from the economy to Louis Farrakhan, to gassing Iraqis, to bombs in North Korea, to justice for the Palestinians, were an ongoing voice of reason within America. One memorial to him would be to go back to his web site and read a few of these.
Dams and Guns: The Empire Has Sprung Another Leak!
The latest leak is in Louisiana, not Iraq, where the big bucks are being spent. Not to worry, the water is in its "last throes," and VP Head Dick, will see if Halliburton can ride to the rescue with another no-bid contract in Cajun land. This is clearly all Cindy Sheehan's fault for raising the wrath of God against America.
Check out: New Orleans.
Today's Quiz:
How many fingers does GW have to stick in the dike?
Answer: As many as he needs, since the Empire creates its own reality.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Telling It Like It Is
God, I do thank, evangelist, the Rev. Pat Robertson for telling it like it is.
Earlier, he told us, “God’s blessing is on him [George W. Bush]. It’s the blessing of heaven on the emperor.” I think GeorgeII/43 must have liked that!
Now, Robertson announces its time for the CIA to take out Hugo Chavez. Well, its probably easier than attempting to invade Iran.
Readers of John Perkins', Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004), will recognize this as the approved intermediate tactic of the American Empire, in between economic pressure and invasion, and often practiced on the Latinos.
Just as the Roman Emperor Constantine, sought a union of the Empire with Christianity, proclaiming the notion of the Trinity by a vote of his stooges at Nicea, and making him God's Man here on Earth, so the convergence of Church and State marches on in the modern Empire.
Just as Jesus had to get off by himself for 40 days of contemplation, so George needed to retire to his ranch. During that time, Satan tempted Jesus, and GeoII/43 now has Cindy Sheehan picking at him.
Hey, may there is divine retribution, after all!
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Jack Douglas' Essays
Essays by the sociologist, Jack D. Douglas, are now a new feature at www.billmarina.com/. The recent essay is entitled, "America's Raging Inflation: The Official Statistics Are The Standard Big Political Lies."
To go to the web site, Click Here.
The author of many books and articles, among them, The Myth of the Welfare State (1989, Jack is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of California at San Diego.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Chew on This!
Who says an American company can't compete in China? The Chinese chew Wrigley says The Asia Times.
Sunday, August 7, 2005
"The Best Damn Medal Writer in the U.S. Army?"
See,The Man Who Invented Audie Murphy. Or, HNN: News From Abroad .
Saturday, August 6, 2005
Russian Affirmative Action?
Yesterday’s Financial Times contains a review, by James Harkin, of a remarkable new book:
Hugh Barnes, Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg (2005).
"By what criteria should recherche historical figures be plucked from obscurity and granted a fresh lick of paint for a modern audience? Insofar as the reputation of Gannibal endures, it is chiefly because he is known for being the greatgrandfather of Russia’s national poet, Alexander Pushkin. Hugh Barnes, journalist and Russian scholar, wants to make amends for that, and succeeds brilliantly in his task.
The boy Abram Petrovich Gannibal, from humble origins in Ethiopia, became a godson to the Russian tsar Peter the Great via the unusual route of being bought as a child slave in Constantinople. He was initially regarded as nothing more than a curiosity; he was brought to Russia at a time, as Barnes records, when black people were routinely depicted as alien bogeyman figures. Very soon, however, Gannibal became much more important than that. By the age of 12, he was a soldier in the Russian army and was winning garlands for his courage in fighting in the war against Sweden. Very soon, he became Peter’s adviser and house-intellectual, as well as one of his most educated officers.
Peter hoped to introduce Russia to the outside world to create a more cosmopolitan kind of Russian, and his exotic godson became the perfect ambassador for his reformist ambitions. Gannibal became, says Barnes, “a polymath in the Enlightenment mould, a man of eclectic skills: a linguist, a diplomat, a cryptographer, a spy, and also on occasion an able military commander”.
The philosopher-soldier Gannibal was soon talking differential calculus with Leibniz and philosophy with Voltaire. His intellectual and practical career, Peter wrote proudly, “furnished the most striking proof of the injustice of that odious prejudice which assigns to the Negro race a reputation of intellectual and moral inferiority. He has immense spirit, a prodigious facility for study... [and] was blessed with a mobile and elevated character and an incorruptible probity”.
Gannibal’s chief talent, however, was for military strategy and intrigue. In a brilliant career he fought as a commissioned officer for the French against the Spanish, and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-engineer.
He became the tsar’s spy in Paris, and even used his engineering genius to build a wall of fortifications around Russia from the Arctic Circle to China.
That a black slave should have shot up so high in the Russian elite is in itself a marvel. But Barnes wants to use the breadth of Gannibal’s experience as a foil for a much larger story, one which takes on everything from Russian literature to the geopolitics of Muslim slave-trading in Africa. For an essentially military man, Gannibal’s fate was supremely intertwined with Russia’s literary culture. Following his death, he seems to have pricked the conscience as well as the muse of Russian writers - his greatgrandson Pushkin, for example, wrote an unfinished and rather sentimental account of his ancestor, titled The Negro of Peter the Great. In the 20th century, Nabokov was moved to write an essay about Gannibal’s life. Even the man who first bought him from a slave market in Constantinople, the Russian ambassador Pyotr Tolstoy, was an ancestor of the novelist and author of War and Peace, Barnes points out. In an attempt to further enhance his mercurial hero, Barnes wants to make a case for him as the “Russian Othello” - a literary allusion too far, possibly. But then Gannibal’s personality, at least in Barnes’ telling, does resemble that of a Shakespearean hero - he was an insomniac who worried ceaselessly about his ancestry and his place in posterity.
Gannibal died in 1781, at the plum age of 85, in relative obscurity after having fallen foul of shifting court loyalties. His tombstone pays tribute to “a Russian mathematician, a builder of fortresses and canals”, but makes little mention of his military career.
In Barnes’ story, Gannibal appears as a self-shaper nimble enough to make a myth out of his own circumstances. It was only during his time in France, for example, that he began signing his name Gannibal, a Russian variant of Hannibal. Like other former enslaved Africans who made their way to the top of western societies, such as Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho, Gannibal was something of a canny operator - he seems to have played his colonial hosts at their own game, alternately revelling in his exoticism and suggesting the nobility of his African origins, a claim which he never managed to corroborate.
That this former slave eventually became the owner of slaves is a delicious irony for a biographer. But Barnes makes it clear that even Gannibal’s formidable presence could do little to overturn intellectual racism. Even Montesquieu, he records, who tended towards the view that Africans were lazy and immoral, was impressed by Gannibal. Among friends such as Voltaire and Richelieu, says Barnes, “it was as if Gannibal’s wit bleached the pigment of his skin”.
Barnes has dug himself up a most engaging subject. He carries his story along in an unpretentious fashion, wearing his research lightly and never failing to intrigue. Only when it descends into travelogue - when Barnes walks around the places associated with Gannibal trying to sound reflective - does the pace begin to falter. The story is so rich that it has no need of being dressed up in this way.
Gannibal’s life made for an almost unique encounter between Europe and Africa. His story is all the more relevant, Barnes argues, because of the recent resurgence of racism in post-Soviet Russia. Nowadays, he says drily, many ordinary Russians take a rather dim view of the dark-skinned Muslim peoples of Chechnya and other republics. They are known disparagingly as the chorniye, or the blacks, of Russia. Among some Russian scholars, too, it remains controversial to point out their national poet should have had a negro ancestor.
While this may sound a little worthy, what Barnes has written is an intelligent Boy’s Own story, an adventure stuffed full of encounters with history - a ripping good yarn which has the merit of being entirely true."
Thursday, August 4, 2005
How Soon We Forget!
"Al-Zaman reports that US troops are billeted in 1700 homes in Fallujah. The newspaper says that owners are largely refusing to accept rent, and just want the soldiers out of their homes." Juan Cole
America's historical amnesia allows it to forget the quartering of the British standing army in Boston in 1768.
The great feminist republican, Mercy Otis Warren, who, in 1805 published her multi-volume History of the American Revolution because she feared Americans had already succumbed to a pursuit of wealth, called this October "Day of Infamy," the day upon which the American Revolution began. FDR's speech writers on December 8, 1941, never bothered to give her credit for the phrase!
We do unto others what we would not allow done unto us. But, then, no one has ever accused the American Empire of consistency, even in its immorality, although many still deny its hypocrisy.
Wednesday, August 3, 2005
Imperial Investment
Here's a chance for all the Warriors to support Bush I, Carlucci and all of the other Empire Guys at the Carlyle Group and join with our Brit Jr. partners in making a few $$ while supporting the Empire:
"Financial Times News alert: Qinetiq acquisitions set to double US revenues
The acquisition, which is expected to be announced with a smaller deal to acquire Planning Systems Inc., a privately held US engineering group, will nearly double Qinetiq's sales coming from the US to $600m, or about a third of group revenues.
The company has been emphasising its push into the US ahead of an expected £1.1bn public offering in November. Qinetiq and its shareholders, the defence ministry and US-based private equity group Carlyle, sent letters to a dozen banks last week to gauge interest in an IPO.
Privately held Apogen, based in suburban Washington D.C., is a provider of software and IT systems to both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security and generated $205m in revenues last year a technology services group created by Apogen.
"This has been part of our strategy for a while," Sir John said.
"We have enormous technological capabilities here in the UK, and the US is the largest market for what we have to sell."
Sir John would not rule out further acquisitions in the US, saying the company continued to talk to "all sorts" of potential take-over targets.
Following the two latest acquisitions, which must be cleared by US security agencies, Qinetiq would have more than 2,500 employees in the US, compared with 10,000 in the UK."
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Our "New" Barbarians
A century after being introduced into the American Empire, Filipinos and others are getting citizenship by joining the US Army. Check out The Asia Times and The New York Times.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Ibsen and Hayek
Dear Yumi,
A very nice piece of yours today in lrc.com/ on Ibsen, whose plays I first enjoyed in high school, long before I met Hayek.
You omitted, however, an important aspect of the conclusion of "An Enemy of the People." Dr. Stockmann does not just decide to stay in town, he chooses to fight back!
He asks his daughter, Petra, to round up some ragamuffins whom he intends to offer a real liberal education. When she asks how many, he replies, in a typical Ibsen reference to Christianity, that, as a start, "twelve will do."
It is in that context that one understands his declaration, "A man is strongest when he stands most alone." (Various translations).
With respect to the press, you may have noted that in several other plays Ibsen also calls the press person, "Aslaksen." A Norwegian friend told me that translates as "ass kisser!"
I have long referred to Washington, DC, as the "anal sphincter" of the American Empire, and Ibsen's choice of words might well apply to most of the Media inhabiting that Beltway and beyond!
Regards,
Bill Marina
Monday, July 18, 2005
“Big Brother” Moves From the Military into Business
One needs to be reminded that National Football League “tests” are not very accurate at predicting future stars in the actual game:
Financial Times July 18, 2005
Employers take a psychometric view of hopefuls
By Ruth Sullivan
Psychometric testing, which can help to assess personality traits, is enjoying a renaissance. This approach - allowing companies to build up a fuller picture of job applicants and to select executives with leadership potential - is being used by a growing number of top companies.
The practice dates at least as far back as the second world war, when the British army experimented with the technique to measure officers' ability and leadership skills. Companies have been trialling it mostly since the 1970s, and its growing importance was signalled 18 months ago, when James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son, was obliged to take a psychometric test as part of the selection process for the chief executive job at BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster that is part of his father's media empire.
Now, a new survey of FTSE 100 companies - conducted by The Test Agency Hogrefe, a psychometric test publisher - shows that most large corporations are using some form of psychometric testing: of the 73 responding to the survey, 59 said they did so.
"It has taken a long time to get through to corporate use," says Nigel Evans, a chartered psychologist and psychological testing verifier at the British Psychological Society. So why the growing popularity? One reason is that, with the rise of the internet, companies are receiving large volumes of applications, especially from recent graduates. Yet, intriguingly, managers are the employees most subjected to psychometric testing, with 80 per cent of the respondents using tests on this group. Some 13 per cent of the responding companies revealed that they use psychometric testing for board- level appointments.
Wendy Lord, chief psychologist at The Test Agency, says that a good mix of psychometric tests can help to find the right person - and this, in turn, is likely to lead to more job satisfaction, better performance, higher productivity and a greater likelihood of retaining staff.
The most popular psychometric tests are those measuring aspects of behavioural style or motivation - usually in the form of questionnaires - and those assessing intellectual power or the potential to learn in particular areas.
A classic questionnaire includes the question: " 'Most of what happens in life depends on being in the right place at the right time.' How much do you agree? Strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree or strongly disagree?" Such inquiries attempt to determine the extent to which a person believes they are captain of their own destiny.
Some companies have seen a rise in the retention of staff following the use of testing. Virgin Mobile, the virtual mobile phone operator and a FTSE 250 company, saw the retention rate of new recruits show an encouraging rise after it started using psychometric testing more consistently two years ago. Phillip Mather, head of human resources business delivery, says the biggest improvement in retention has come from giving candidates personality tests: "They have helped us better identify which individuals would enjoy and fit our culture". Previously newcomers to the company have arrived and it has taken up to 12 months for them to realise that Virgin Mobile's self-directed culture is not for them, he says.
"Recruitment is expensive and as companies focus on the bottom line they realise they can reduce the risk [in recruitment]," says Mike Dodd from Academy HR, an independent consulting company. Over the past five years the consultancy has seen a large rise in the use of psychometric testing in large and medium-sized companies.
But some employers, especially smaller companies, are still put off by the cost and time involved, particularly the expense of using qualified professionals - whether in-house or outsourced - to choose and interpret tests.
While 95 per cent of respondents revealed that they use psychometric testing only for recruitment purposes, some - notably Rolls- Royce - use them for staff development. The company can, for example, establish which employees are team players or team leaders.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Hear, Hear, Libertarian Gaggism!
I suppose there will always be those who prefer the "civility," shall we say, of the feckless US Congress these days, to the rowdy behavior of the British Parliament. Everyone to their own taste!
American politics also used to be a bit rowdy. Dr. Joseph Warren, for example, the great orator, killed battling the British at Breed's Hiil, used to bait the British officers in speeches during their occupation of Boston, 1768-76.
By all means, let us have no nasty discourse, better none at all. Pity, some are so squeamish.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
911 & 7/7, Coincidence? Hardly!
From SRA:
BBC 5, July 7, 2005
A radio interview on BBC 5 during the evening hours of July 7 with the managing director of a Crisis Management Firm tells: Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attacks
This scenario echoes the 9/11 wargames in New York.
A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.
On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.
Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch. Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.
Audio Interview clip
The transcript is as follows.
POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.
HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on. . .
The fact that the exercise mirrored the exact locations and times of the bombings is light years beyond a coincidence. Power said the drill focused around 'simultaneous bombings'. At first the bombings were thought to have been spread over an hour, but the BBC reports just today that the bombings were in fact simultaneous. . .
This is precisely what happened on the morning of 9/11/2001. The CIA was conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning.
Disappearing Deficit?
WSJ, July 12, 2005;
Why is it that the dreaded federal budget deficit only commands screaming headlines when it's rising, not falling? And why is it that the deficit is portrayed as a fire-breathing, hydra-headed monster only when the press can portray the villain as "irresponsible tax cuts," not runaway federal spending?
We ask these questions in the wake of the great unreported fiscal story of 2005: the shrinking federal deficit. It's down by at least $100 billion because federal tax receipts have skyrocketed this year by 14.6% (or $204 billion) through June. Private economic forecasters now believe the budget deficit may come in at about 2.5% of GDP, which is in line with the historical average for the past 40 years. Given that we're fighting an expensive, must-win war on terror, these deficit numbers aren't too shabby.
Not even the most unbridled supply-sider predicted that President Bush's investment tax cuts would unleash such a spurt of tax receipts this year. But thanks to sustained economic growth, more Americans working and improved business profits, individual income tax receipts have shot up by 17.6%. Even more astonishing is the nearly 41% spike in corporate revenues. There's a fiscal lesson here that bears repeating: The best way to grow tax revenues is to grow the tax base, and that is what has happened this year.
Alas, what hasn't happened in Washington this year is federal spending restraint. Despite pious pledges from Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress to trim spending growth to 4% this year, so far total nonmilitary spending is up 7.3%. Thanks to a 10% boost in Medicare (even before the prescription drug program hits next year), we now devote a larger share of the budget to health care than national defense -- notwithstanding that Congress has a clear Constitutional mandate to spend money on national security, but not so when it comes to funding gall bladder operations or Viagra.
During last year's Presidential campaign, Democrats ripped Mr. Bush for underfunding education -- which is incredible given that the Department of Education budget has jumped by a gravity-defying 20% this year and has more than doubled over Mr. Bush's tenure. One gets the sense that Republicans have thrown up their hands in despair and are pleading: Stop us before we spend again. All of this is to say that Washington doesn't have a budget deficit problem, it has a spending problem. Thank goodness for Mr. Bush's tax cuts or things would be much worse.
Friday, July 8, 2005
The Mother of all Immigrations!
“When Adam delved, and Eve, span, who was then the Gentleman?”
Radical slogan of the English Revolution
Judaism traces lineage through the Mother. It’s easy to see why!
The latest birth statistics in the US for 2002, show that 23% had a foreign born mother, exceeding the old high of 1910. One out of ten were from Mexico, and 59% overall were Hispanic. Out of 4 million births in 2002, 915,800 were Hispanic. In some places, like an urban county outside of Atlanta, foreign births accounted for 41.3% of all births.
Boy, the Old South was never like this! A New South is certainly rising again, and, a New America is in the offing. And, as our beloved President has put it, "no child will be left behind."
Data source, The Miami Herald, 7/8/05
Wednesday, July 6, 2005
Internet Protectionism?
How much does the US government really believe in the principles of Free Trade?
In another example of unilateral diplomacy, the government has announced it intends to keep control of the Internet and the whole process of DNS addresses, rather than allow it to go international as was once agreed upon. Read the article here.
Tuesday, July 5, 2005
Non-Citizen Soldiers
Immigrants with green cards, mostly Mexican, now make up about 7% of America's active fighting forces. They seek not only advancement in the Army, but American citizenship, according to an article in The Christian Science Monitor.
Whether Bush's War brings "Democracy" to Iraq, or not, these soldiers will ultimately obtain American citizenship. This is in the grand tradition of both the Chinese and Roman Empires, and more recently the French, although citizenship was not always a part of the package.
I knew a Ukranian who was in the Polish army and was captured by the Germans, and given the opportunity of joining the army to fight the Russians, or probably prison or death. He won the Iron Cross, 2nd Class.
Now if we can just find some of those middle echelon, Iraqi Missing Officers.
Monday, July 4, 2005
A Special Place, Outside the Constitution
"I see," said Mr. Dooley, "Th' supreme coort has decided th' constitution don't follow th' flag." . . .
"An' there ye have th' decision, Hinnissy, that's shaken th' intellicts iv th' nation to their very foundations, or will if they thry to read it. 'T is all r-right. Look it over some time. 'T is fine spoort if ye don't care f'r checkers. Some say it laves th' flag up in th' air an' some say that 's where it laves th' constitution. Annyhow, something's in th' air. But there 's wan thing I 'm sure about."
"What's that?" asked Mr. Hennessy.
"That is," said Mr. Dooley, "no matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' supreme coort follows th' iliction returns."
The anti-imperialist satirist, Finley Peter Dunne, commenting on the Insular Cases in 1901
It was these cases which made Guantanamo a special place, outside of the Constitution. If you can torture there, I suppose our imperial Court might even agree you caan burn a flag there.
Sunday, July 3, 2005
Iraqi Officers?
My latest comments on Mr. Bush's War have just been posted at HNN. Buckle up for a long and bloody Insurgency!
Friday, July 1, 2005
'Indians are bastards anyway': Henry Kissinger
Some recently released tapes demonstrate the past perfidy of the American Empire in Asia. No wonder GeorgeII/43 is spending over $300 million to "improve our image." Lots of luck, George!
Check out this article in Asia Times
Win-Win, for the Bush Dynasty!
As George W. Bush seeks to divert attention from his twin wars in Asia by pretending to protect Americans from the Chinese bid to acquire Unocal, joined by a cadre in Congress, has anyone noticed the short blurb in The Financial Times indicating that if the Chinese win, a nice portion of the funding will be handled by the Carlyle Group?
If you want to see how Globalization works for the Imperial Family, try Googling "Carlyle Group," and read on, and on!
Is this what Thomas Friedman means by a "flat earth," level playing field?
We really didn't need the Kelo decision to learn that Corporatism is alive and well in the good old USA. Have a Happy Fourth of July weekend, Folks!
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
"Onward, Imperial Islamic Soldiers, Marching as to War, with the Crescent of George W., Going on Before"
No sooner had President George W. Bush finished his speech, than the television talking heads and the press, that Big Media , which the government relies upon to help define their Imperial Reality for us, were hard at it, interpreting every possible nuance or inflection of his address.
Did he say anything new? Hardly. But what he omitted spoke volumes!
The real test of the effectiveness, of his speech, however, will come, not from the Media, or those millions of passive Americans and most of the Congress that have supported his war, but among the youth ranging from some of the "red" states of the South and the Mid-west, to the inner cities ghettoes and barrios. Will these young people, inspired by the President's rhetoric, buy into the notion that Iraq has been worth the cost? Bottom line: will they enlist in Mr. Bush's War?
I rather think not!
They are more likely to heed the warnings of some of our more cautious and realistic military men that the insurgency will last years, a position even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged with the statement that it might take a dozen years.
Bush is hoping that the Iraqi army will begin to shoulder the overwhelming burden of the war, and mentioned the figure of 160,000, as if it was the sheer number that mattered, rather than morale.
The most perceptive observation made on the "Charley Rose" show discussing the speech, was that the US was having trouble finding middle echelon officers to staff the Iraqi army, and that we intended to put in a number of American officers into those positions.
Now, it is certainly true about the importance of the middle echelon officers in any war, especially an insurgency, where the nature of the warfare demands instant decisions, without the time for debate or consult with those of a higher rank, up the chain of command.
It has been clear for months now, that this crucial sector of Saddam's old army did not, nor has not yet, come over to the side of the new government sponsored by the Americans.
I would not want to be in the shoes of, say, an American captain, thrust into the midst of an Iraqi unit. We know the insurgents have infiltrated men into these units. How difficult would it be for one of these men to frag the American officer, or simply shoot him in the back?
Fragging was, of course, a problem in Vietnam, and there has already been at least one case in Iraq. A newspaperman friend of mine from the Vietnam era told me there were rumors that Max Cleland, the triple amputee war hero, and later Senator from Georgia, attacked by Republicans for his lack of enthusiasm for Iraq, had actually been fragged. If this is true, it makes the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire look almost tame in comparison.
Certainly, the morale and training of the middle echelon officers is critical. Some military historians have suggested that in WWII, the creative, and gung-ho 11,000 or so young recruits in that position were a great weapon in achieving victory.
There are already indications that some of our best young officers, often West Point graduates, in which the country has a considerable investment, are opting out of the Army for commensurate managerial jobs. Perhaps the task of integrating with the Iraqi army will fall to the mercenaries hired by companies such as Halliburton.
In Vietnam, quite apart from the fragging, the increasing disillusionment of the middle echelon officers was an early sign the war was not going well. Anyone who has read many of the letters of these middle echelon British officers in the American Revolution, often young Scots, who wrote back to their families about going out into the wilderness, perhaps never to return, will recognize this pattern. The British referred to the area around Charlotte, North Carolina, as the "hornet's nest," and it was the defeats around that area which led to the retreat toward Yorktown.
Clearly, a segment of the American military shares the administration's hope that it will be possible to build a US supported regime, perhaps on the model of what was done in the Philippines over a century ago; not that that nation has been a gr