Category Archives: Current Events

A case against Clinton foreign policy

The US government can’t protect its citizens from terrorism, but it can send its giant, cumbersome military out to incite tensions and maybe even a war with two countries that pose no threat to average American citizens.

You see, the careerists in the government and their lobbyist handlers have their own agendas, and it isn’t the security of the country. It’s the exercise of power in a great game that could go disastrously wrong, but in the the meantime will continue to enrich weapons makers and lobbyists, and will continue to get some more ridiculous looking ribbons and pins on some military uniforms. Myopia is the standard condition in Washington.

Adam Walinsky, who was Robert Kennedy’s speech writer, has written an op-ed on why he supports Trump. I admit that the idea of the US cooperating with the Chinese government in the suppression of terrorism is something that could be expanded to the suppression of their citizens in general, but he makes some important points.

From Politico Magazine:

So profound a change, and a decent respect for old friendships, requires me to deliver a public accounting for this decision.

Here it is. John and Robert Kennedy devoted their greatest commitments and energies to the prevention of war and the preservation of peace. To them that was not an abstract formula but the necessary foundation of human life. But today’s Democrats have become the Party of War: a home for arms merchants, mercenaries, academic war planners, lobbyists for every foreign intervention, promoters of color revolutions, failed generals, exploiters of the natural resources of corrupt governments. We have American military bases in 80 countries, and there are now American military personnel on the ground in about 130 countries, a remarkable achievement since there are only 192 recognized countries. Generals and admirals announce our national policies. Theater commanders are our principal ambassadors. Our first answer to trouble or opposition of any kind seems always to be a military movement or action.

Nor has the Democratic Party candidate for president this year, Hillary Clinton, sought peace. Instead she has pushed America into successive invasions, successive efforts at “regime change.” She has sought to prevent Americans from seeking friendship or cooperation with President Vladimir Putin of Russia by characterizing him as “another Hitler.” She proclaims herself ready to invade Syria immediately after taking the oath of office. Her shadow War Cabinet brims with the architects of war and disaster for the past decades, the neocons who led us to our present pass, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, in Ukraine, unrepentant of all past errors, ready to resume it all with fresh trillions and fresh blood. And the Democrats she leads seem intent on worsening relations with Russia, for example by sending American warships into the Black Sea, or by introducing nuclear weapons ever closer to Russia itself.

Different kinds of intervention

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Honduras has been the focus of US intervention for over a century. While corrupt Honduran “leaders” bear most of the blame for the country’s situation, the US government, often at the behest of private interests, has not helped. From Stephen Kinzer:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/03/29/hard-choices-honduras/sLI9xnEw6TWXQgGb9ZVTZO/story.html

The Herd Mind: Who Benefits?

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U.S. citizens are sheep, but sheep get shorn. Another from Dan Sanchez:

https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/humiliation-and-herd-think-52174109511e#.hm8p1kgpl

“Moreover, the troops hold a special place in the fold. They are not sheep, but sheep-dogs, as Chris Kyle was instructed as a boy in American Sniper. Never mind that sheep-dogs work not for the sake of the sheep, but for the sake of the shepherd’s wool and mutton. And when it comes to the humiliation of sheep at the hands of shepherds and sheep-dogs, the herd mind is extremely tolerant.”

The Wahhabi-Israeli Alliance

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From Dan Sanchez:

https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/saudi-arabia-and-israel-an-axis-of-convenience-d553f4b1fb46#.larng9pef

“Finally Britain had the Saudis give Hussain an offer he couldn’t refuse. Ibn Saud, the Emir of Najd in eastern Arabia, had long been on Britain’s payroll, but had already been largely crushed by the Ottomans before Hussain joined the fight. After the war, Churchill and Lawrence both threatened to unleash Ibn Saud and his fanatic Wahhabi followers against Hijaz if Hussain would not yield. After finally giving up on Hussain ever accepting Sykes-Picot and Balfour, the British made good on their threat and sicced their religiously rabid bulldog on Hussain’s people. As Wahid wrote:

“Ibn Saud’s Wahhabis committed their customary massacres, slaughtering women and children as well as going into mosques and killing traditional Islamic scholars. They captured the holiest place in Islam, Mecca, in mid-October 1924. Sharif Hussain was forced to abdicate and went to exile…”

Ibn Saud, who was willing to play ball with Britain’s colonial designs on the Middle East, thus gained dominion over most of the Arabian Peninsula. As his reward, the British upgraded Ibn Saud’s Emirate to a Kingdom. A British functionary later came up with the name “Saudi Arabia.”

The Saudis midwifed Israel by overthrowing and displacing a major early obstacle to the Zionist project in Palestine. And Zionism midwifed Saudi Arabia when the former’s imperial patron granted the Arabian Peninsula to the House of Saud largely for the sake of Zionism. Israel and Saudi Arabia were born symbiotic twins out of the womb of the British Empire.”

Is Saudi Arabia ISIS’ True Goal?

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From Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

“The US will wreck itself if it continues to fight these ruinously expensive wars against the jihadis. IMO the IS wants to build a salafist state across the Middl East and South Asia. To that end they must achieve control of the assets now possessed by Saudi Arabia.

Would IS welcome a chance to inflict as many casualties on the US as possible? Certainly they would but that would be a means to an end and not the end itself.”

Turkey, the Valued NATO Ally

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From Patrick Cockburn:

“Ever since Syrian government forces withdrew from the Syrian Kurdish enclaves or cantons on the border with Turkey in July 2012, Ankara has feared the impact of self-governing Syrian Kurds on its own 15 million-strong Kurdish population.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would prefer Isis to control Kobani, not the PYD. When five PYD members, who had been fighting Isis at Kobani, were picked up by the Turkish army as they crossed the border last week they were denounced as “separatist terrorists”.

Turkey is demanding a high price from the US for its co-operation in attacking Isis, such as a Turkish-controlled buffer zone inside Syria where Syrian refugees are to live and anti-Assad rebels are to be trained. Mr Erdogan would like a no-fly zone which will also be directed against the government in Damascus since Isis has no air force. If implemented the plan would mean Turkey, backed by the US, would enter the Syrian civil war on the side of the rebels, though the anti-Assad forces are dominated by Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate.”

“Why doesn’t Ankara worry more about the collapse of the peace process with the PKK that has maintained a ceasefire since 2013? It may believe that the PKK is too heavily involved in fighting Isis in Syria that it cannot go back to war with the government in Turkey. On the other hand, if Turkey does join the civil war in Syria against Assad, a crucial ally of Iran, then Iranian leaders have said that “Turkey will pay a price”. This probably means that Iran will covertly support an armed Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. Saddam Hussein made a somewhat similar mistake to Mr Erdogan when he invaded Iran in 1980, thus leading Iran to reignite the Kurdish rebellion that Baghdad had crushed through an agreement with the Shah in 1975. Turkish military intervention in Syria might not end the war there, but it may well spread the fighting to Turkey.”

North Korea and China Quarreling

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Kim Jong-un hasn’t been seen in a while. His sister seems to be in control in his absence. Entrance and exit permits are reportedly revoked in Pyongyang. North Korea and China are not happy with each other, so top North Korean government officials are visiting South Korea to talk about re-unification again. They do this as a threat to China, which needs a pliant North Korea on its border, not a western-leaning unified state. Of course, the U.S. also doesn’t want re-unification. It needs the relationship between the south and the north to be always on the edge in order to keep its control over the south. Tension between China and North Korea cause sympathy for the north in South Korea.

Lots of good background on the “hermit kingdom” from Justin Raimondo here:

ISIS’ Brand of Islam

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These two articles describe how the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, brought to power in 1744 through a pact between Muhammed ibn Saud and Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab during the conquest of the Arabian peninsula, provides the philosophical basis for ISIS’ interpretation of Islam. This form of Islam

1. gave moral cover to the al-Sauds as they dealt harshly with the other Arabian tribes during their conquest.

2. allows almost any action by ISIS for the attainment of political means by providing an Islamic cover.

3. has made the al-Saud family somewhat captive to their own radicalized population.

4. forced the al-Saud family to focus Wahhabi energies outside the kingdom by financing radical Islamic schools all over the Muslim world and by supporting jihadist movements.

This small movement, though its views are anathema and foreign to a majority of Muslims, has had an outsized influence on the Muslim world through its partnership with the now oil-rich al-Saud family.

Playing with Fanatic Fire

ISIS’ Harsh Brand of Islam is Rooted in Austere Saudi Creed

Ron Unz’s “China’s Rise, America’s Fall”

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The American Conservative recently ran an article by Ron Unz which is a response to Acemoglu and Robinson’s “Why Nations Fail”, which argues that China’s growth will falter and America’s will resume because of the corrupt, “extractive”, one party rule in China versus the open, democratic rule of the benign American bureaucratic State.

Criticism of the American system of government-big business-bank partnership, in other times and places called fascism, has for too long been the exclusive domain of leftists, with soi disant conservative publications mocking any criticism of the corrupt symbiosis of government and the corporate world, especially “conservative” corporate sectors like weapons manufacturers and private prison operators. Defense. Law and order. Those are conservative values, right? Who other than a liberal would be against them? So it is good to see a magazine with the word “conservative” in its title actually criticize our corporate welfare state.

Unz documents the rapid growth of the Chinese economy against the stagnant American median incomes of the last 40 years, and lists several areas where the Chinese have surpassed American business. Despite this, China’s rise does not need to be seen as a threat since the global standard of living is increased by Chinese production.

Of course, China has its share of corruption and social problems with such a quick ascent, but this is a lot easier to take when real per capita income has risen by over 1,300 percent in 30 years. The stagnant American worker seems much more resentful of his elites.

While China’s masses are benefiting from this progress, the United States is becoming more unequal, with the top one percent controlling about as much wealth as the bottom 95 percent. The Chinese and American Gini coefficients are about equal now, and moving in opposite directions. Thirty five percent of the last few years’ economic recovery in America has gone to the top .01 percent. The government-corporate partnership funnels money upward.

The central message of the article is this:

“…although American micro-corruption is rare, we seem to suffer from appalling levels of macro-corruption, situations in which our various ruling elites squander or misappropriate tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth, sometimes doing so just barely on one side of technical legality and sometimes on the other.

Sweden is among the cleanest societies in Europe, while Sicily is perhaps the most corrupt. But suppose a large clan of ruthless Sicilian Mafiosi moved to Sweden and somehow managed to gain control of its government. On a day-to-day basis, little would change, with Swedish traffic policemen and building inspectors performing their duties with the same sort of incorruptible efficiency as before, and I suspect that Sweden’s Transparency International rankings would scarcely decline. But meanwhile, a large fraction of Sweden’s accumulated national wealth might gradually be stolen and transferred to secret Cayman Islands bank accounts, or invested in Latin American drug cartels, and eventually the entire plundered economy would collapse.

Ordinary Americans who work hard and seek to earn an honest living for themselves and their families appear to be suffering the ill effects of exactly this same sort of elite-driven economic pillage. The roots of our national decline will be found at the very top of our society, among the One Percent, or more likely the 0.1 percent.”

Corruption

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The difference between corruption in developing countries and the U.S. lies in its scale and sophistication. Latin Americans, for example, have to deal with small levels of corruption in their daily lives, whether it is from the police who stop them for made up offenses or local politicians demanding bribes from small businesses. But corruption in the U.S. is so large and so sophisticated that it is often hidden in plain sight.

Special interests use political connections to force American taxpayers to buy goods and services they would never purchase if left to themselves. One man who both profits and has the inside political connections is Michael Chertoff, who headed the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush. Chertoff was helping the American public to understand the threats to their safety today on Fox News after vague news of another underwear bomber was released by the government. He appeared very serious and dour, obviously concerned over the grave dangers facing this country.

But wait: it appears that Chertoff could benefit from the grave danger and resulting fear. His consulting firm, the Chertoff Group, represents one of the makers of full body scanners. An amazing coincidence.

The size of the U.S. prison population has been in the news recently, which brought to mind the story of the California prison guard union’s actions a few years ago. They gave $1 million to defeat a measure that would have reduced marijuana possession sentences. More people to guard means more guards. And they are only number five on this list of lobbyists against marijuana decriminalization.

Any understanding of a modern economy under a managerial bureaucratic government such as that ruling the U.S. must incorporate an analysis of this kind of corruption. The American economy of today is greatly distorted by this kind of political rent seeking and the actions of the Federal Reserve in service of its Wall Street masters, whose power over government and the economy makes body scanners and prison guards look insignificant. A great overview of the control that Wall Street banks have had over the U.S. government and the amazingly small circle of players involved in this control, over both Democrats and Republicans, is available in Murray Rothbard’s Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. This is a must read which serves as a guide to further research where the wars, assassinations, invasions, loans, the subsequent bailouts of the recipients of those loans by the American taxpayers, and foreign policy of the U.S. government are put in the analytical framework of who benefits from government actions. Lenin’s “who-whom?” is alive and well in the USA, and we can see who is doing what to whom.