Barfo

The Kommissar is Us

2009-01-02T15:57:00.000-08:00

“Dreh dich nicht um, schau, schau,
der Kommissar geht um!
Dreh dich nicht um, schau, schau,
der Kommissar ist uns"

It was reported today that a family of U.S.-born Muslims, including a physician, a lawyer and several children, who were waiting to board a flight, were detained for investigation by agents of the Homeland Security Service. They had been overheard discussing their seating assignments and commenting on the fact that the seats adjacent to the wings were probably the safest. They were turned in by their fellow passengers.

Don't turn around, uh uh,

The detainees were eventually released and allowed to continue on their intended journey, but employees of the airline refused to let them board, on the grounds that the suspects had not been "cleared". Most of the news reports focused on this aspect of corporate obtuseness; none focused on the more critical fact that,

The Kommissar is us.

A little over seven years ago, Barfo foretold the inevitable denouement of Bush's trumpetted "War on Terror".

"In all events, this war against terrorism on which we embark today, like the war on drugs on which we embarked years ago, cannot be won. ... And who is the enemy? ... What the Government will have to presume is that everyone is at least a potential terrorist. In the most fundamental sense that is a presumption that is entirely antithetical to the concept of civil friendship, i.e., societas." (The Devil's Bill )

Earlier in 2008, the Barfo took note of a report that Homeland Security Service was training its agents to spot Western terrorist recruits, who were "capable of blending into American society and attacking domestic targets." We pointed out that was this training presupposed was none other than that all of us were presumptively "potential suspects." (Blendables )

And so the bill is being paid... without a murmur, even eagerly, plus with tips. Americans who are by and large dense to everything under the sun, are alert to anything suspicious... in fact to anything potentially suspicious... in fact suspicious to anything at all, because anything could potentially be a bad thing which, for the sake of safety, needs to be reported to our Guardians.

It does little good to play the "politically seasoned" and to slough off the incident as a regrettable but essentially minor case The Swarthies -- Anglo-America's ongoing distrust of anything less creamy than buttermilk. The reason the excuse does not work is that what is at play here is not a form of racism but a generalized state of fear. The Muslim detainees had been speaking English and had said nothing patently untoward. Suppose they had been Hispanics speaking Spanish? Or maybe even Sephardic Israelis speaking Hebrew...or is that Arabic? The problem with generalized fear is that it needs something to grab onto precisely because it is "generalized" and therefore needs to grab onto anything in order to give itself a reason.

But a society that is suspicous of itself, is a society that has lost its fundamental coherence. In medical terms, the body politic has lost its health; it's biological processes become inverted and begin to work against the body rather than for it.

Aristotle pointed out millenia ago, that society is a form of friendship and is predicated on mutual trust. If we gathered together in a cave or a clearing it was because we trusted one another in the collective enterprise being undertaken. The gathering together could not have happened otherwise. Our subsequent living and working together and even our commerce become elemental forms of friendship that presume a basic level of good-intention and good-will.

To say, then, that we are each "potential suspects" to one another despite our "common appearance" is to put axe to the very root of society. We cease to be social and become inimicable. A society that is inimicable with itself is a mere husk, like a body wasted by a metastasizing disease.

The United States has always had strong collective, anti-social tendencies. Lacking a unifying culture above the habits of material consumption, the country fostered a culture of hucksterism that hid behind ersatz realism, empty bravado and self-adulation. Hud. This of course is the malignant core of neo-liberalism which sees society as a "beast" to be destroyed and ruthless Ego as the only good. The reductionist illogic of that ideology is precisely that it necessitates a fear of the equally ruthless other and when this fear is shared collectively, it becomes not only fear of the foreign other but turning inward, fear of self. At that point the body politic self-consumes.

©WCG, 2008
.

No Tears for Bully

2008-10-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

Just when you thought the U.S. couldn’t cover itself in more shit, along comes defense secretary Gates to announce that the United States would not be adverse to sitting down and chatting it up with the Taliban. “At the end of the day, that's how most wars end," Gates said. DUH

At the beginning of the day that’s how most wars are avoided, - .

But no....the Talking Turd that besmirches the Offal Office, had to go “Smoke ‘em out” and “Bring ‘em On” and rally up the Yeeehaw Boys who were getting so little regular sex that they had to stomp round the flag, hardness in hand vowing to kick ass and never nego-she-ate with turrurists...especially them rag head types.

So where is the First FlyBoy now? He sure as hell ain’t strutting his codpiece on the flight deck. No... he’s hunched over a podium telling a world that could give a fart that the “fundamentals” of an economy he and his cronies bankrupted are “sound”. No... he blathers platitudes to a General Assembly so openly laughing at him that the ever servient Murkan press had to shield the public from the disgrace

The New American Century did not even last a fucking eight years. Bush’s Kick Ass strutting, Cheney’s scowling unilateralism, Scumsfeld’s smirking preemption have been replaced with Shylock Tears for “please can you lend us a bail out?”and beggaring whines “..for some troops, please, to help out in Afghanistan...” Hectoring Condi’s World Lecture Tour has been replaced by articles entitled “A New Multi-Polar World” and “The End of Liberal Imperialism” and most cuttingly by Putin’s remark that the U.S. was in no position to lecture anyone.

Where the fuck is smirking Billy Kristol now to tell us why the world despises and hates the U.S. Come out of the New York Times editorial rest room Billy and tell us what happened to your Kick Ass Bully Boy wet dream. The repulsive slime.

Now, it is possible that in the incestuous intrique that constitutes Beltway politics, Gates was "signalling" that he supports Obama (who favors talking) over McCain (who favors crash-bombing). But that doesn't remove the vicious irony. The United States which eight years ago ran up the red penant of no quarter now wants to chit-a-chat, tin cup in hand.

It would be laughable had not so many innocent people been killed, maimed and made to suffer by these putrid, infected, scum that have indelibly stained the corridors of government. It would be laughable had not Iraq and Afghanistan been shock and awed back to the stone age; had not an entire city been “shaked and baked” (yeehaw yuk yuk) with phosphorous bombs; had not old men, boys of 15 been and innocent shepherds and farmers been kidnapped, beaten, (“pulpified”), drugged and thrown into isolation cells for years where they slowly went crazy and tried to kill themselves while morally degenerate “Injustices” spewed judicial vomit over the finer technicalities of The Great Writ....for seven goddam years. It would be laughable had the United States not been turned into a frank and open police state, that respects NO law, international or domestic, that spies on its citizens as “potential” enemies, breaks into houses without warrants, that arrests people without cause and whose ThugKops stomp about with the same body armor and kill-toys as their fellow KombatKops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be funny had not this cancerous administration done everything within its metastasizing power to eat up the environment, kill species and drive whales insane.

It would be funny, if any of these things could be undone. But they cannot be. That is not the way history works. That is not the way Nature works.

These diseased aliens from a lower dimension together with the cowardly, venal, whoring degenerates in Congress and the Judiciary have destroyed everything: the environment, civilization, language, law, comity and cooperation and now the economy. They have done so just as Barfo said they would, and they have done so while the U.S. demos as a whole sat around, guzzled chips and gas, scratched their anuses, and pondered the next re-fi. It’s known -- as Palin reminds us -- as Murkan Exceptionalism. Hey Da Rulez don Apply to Us! We’re the Shining Bacon on the Hill.

I wish I could feel sorry for my country; but I don’t.

©Barfo, 2008
.

It's Time for Punitive Voting

2008-09-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

It’s time to start punitive voting.

The concept of punitive voting is very simple: If we loose, YOU loose.

As things are now run, Democrats (like Pelosi, Franks, Feinstein, Biden, and even Boxer) think they’ve got Progressives in a corner. After all, who else are we going to vote for? So they toss us the occasional chicken feed while they

vote billions for war and destruction

vote billions for insurance companies that deny health coverage

vote billions for the banksters that rob and plunder America, all

while they deny bankruptcy protection for people who loose their homes because they committed the crime of falling ill,

while they deny environmental protection for a poor earth that is whitering and dying under the unslaught of naked greed

while they do nothing of any serious importance to assure people a life of wellbeing and freedom.

The senawhores and pimprasentatives who do this figure we’ll vote for them anywyays because what are we going to do, vote Republican?

Hey, the way I see it, if you act like a Republican you should be treated like a Republican. We loose anyway, so we might as well kick your sorry ass out.

It may take a cycle or two, but that is the only way to work for change. You can’t plant until your clear.

VOTE PUNITIVE.

P.S. Call up your local congressoid’s office and tell them about the concept. and listen to the stunned silence at the other end. Oh shit......

©Barfo, 2008

The Pig Sings

2008-09-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

Barfo QuickNotes takes a quick look at Piglip Palin's first weigh-in .

United States Atones for Monroe Doctrine.

2008-09-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

Attending a meeting of Euro-leaders at Lake Como in Italy, Vice President Cheney offered official mea culpas for the United States' unilateral embargo of Cuba. "That is no way for a responsible power to conduct itself,” Mr. Cheney said. “And it reflects the discredited notion that any country can claim an exclusion zone of authority, to be held together by muscle and threats.”

©Barfo, 2008

Gordon Brown is a Jackass

2008-08-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

The English have always been superb at intoning pious hypocricies; but Gordon Brown has taken the skill into the heights of ludicrous comedy

"When Russia has a grievance over an issue such as South Ossetia, it should act multilaterally by consent rather than unilaterally by force," he said. "My message to Russia is simple: If you want to be welcome at the top table of organisations such as the G8, OECD and WTO, you must accept that with rights come responsibilities."

He talks that way to King George, too?

©Barfo, 2008

Bullying the Bear: Payback and Pipelines

2008-08-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

If anyone ever wanted to punch George Bush in his stupid face, kick Cheney in his underbelly nuts, stuff a stinking sock into Richard Perle’s mouth or jam Smirking Billy Kristol’s face into a toilet, he can relax his hostile intentions. The very center of this Administration’s foreign policy has received a massive blow to the gut.

The Administration’s neocon policy of encircling Russia and gutting it from within baited the bear once too often. The bear has struck back and the US can do little but stand aside like a hapless, shown-up punk.

If proof were needed that things were bad, one need only have listened to Condolezza Rice’s hectoring whines chastising Russia’s failure to “integrate” into world institutions and condemning its resort to unilateral and “disproportionate” force against a neighboring country. From an Administration that bully-bellowed it’s “right” to act unilaterally while it incinerated Falluja, Rice’s shamelessness could only provoke acidic ridicule.

If proof were needed that things were edging toward critical, one need only have noticed that virtually no Western media horn published a detailed map of the region

To its credit (mirabilis dictu) the New York Times published a guest editorial by Michael Gorbachev outlining Russia’s complaint against U.S. policies and a decent synopsis by Jad Mouawad of the petro-political issues in the region. I suppose the Times has to do something every once in a while to keep its nose a hair above toney tabloid. Nevertheless, the fact that the western media en masse omitted any mention of the critical gas pipelines that criss-cross the region while they blathered stupidly if tirelessly about who started it and about the ethnic differences between East and West Ossetians was proof certain that Uncle Sam just got his hand mauled as it was clawing the cookie jar.

To appreciate the set back, one has to go back to the sordid foundations of this punk-administration’s foreign policy, so ably set forth in Billy Kristol’s neo- and zio-con PNAC Report of 2000. (Rebuilding America’s Defenses, Project for a New American Cenutry, Sept. 2000)

As enunciated in the Report, the core policy goal for the 21st century was simply and nakedly to “preseve American preeminence through the coming [technological] transformation of war.” America’s policy should be to “preserve and extend” its military “preeminence” by simultaneously fighting “multiple theatre wars” in order to “shape the security environment in critical regions.”

In plain English, the U.S. policy was to go about kicking ass simply to show everyone that it was the meanest punk on the block. This is nothing else that a policy of geo-political terrorism that sought to intimidate anyone and everyone else

The Report identified two critical regions in which this “power projection” needed to take place, viz: (1) “in the Middle East and surrounding energy producing regions” and (2) in a new “American security perimeter in Europe removed eastward.” Although much has been written about the “zionist” prong of PNAC policy which obsesses on Iraq and Iran and the fiction of “islamic terrorism” the more “traditional” prong of this policy was the nibbling away, emasculation and encirclement of Russia.

The Report made unquestionably clear that these twin goals were to be accomplished by unilateral “diplomatic” and military decisions and a corresponding rejection of international structures, treaties and norms. In the neocon mind, institutional structures are useful only as they may temporarily serve to cover and advance an American “projection” of its putative “democratic values.”

Bearing these fundamental in mind, Condi Rice’s sanctimonious condemnation of Russia’s action was nothing other than theatre of the absurd. Just listen to her cant.

Early on in the crisis, Rice intoned that Russia had a “choice to act in a 21st-century way, [and] fully integrate into the international institutions.” (8/15/08) Instead it chose to “to engage in kind of Soviet-style behavior of intimidating and invading allies” like Czechoslovakia. (08/19) “Russia” she said, had backed away from “the principles of cooperation among nations of the communities of states” by “invading small neighbors, bombing civilian infrastructure, going into villages and wreak[ing] havoc and wanton destruction of [the] infrastructure.” (08/19) That same week it was reported that the U.S. had twice killed scores of Afghani children in some village blitzkrieg. Rice’s hypocrisy was so shameless that it is hard to say whether she deserved a medal or a wack upside her prissy face.

There are those who argue that Rice utters this nonsense solely for Americow consumption. After all who else can’t remember back past two weeks and who else wouldn’t choke on the absurd analogy of “Georgia” as a Russian “ally”. Certainly almost no one in Europe -- even if they are intensely anti-Russian -- could swallow such crap.

More interesting than whether Rice swallows her own poop is what her effluences disclose about the inner workings of the neo-con mind. Neo-con pronouncements always inversely reflect the truth. One has to translate.

When Rice speaks of a Russian choice to “fully integrate into ...international institutions” what she really meant was that Russia had a choice to vasselize itself as a quiescent and powerless satrap in America’s neo liberal “institutional empire.” That is the only reason she could go on to say that she felt it was “ very much worthwhile to have given Russia that chance.” Alas! For some perverse reason Russia didn’t particularly jump at the opportunity to be the projectee of American values.

When Rice condemned “the Russian strategic intent of destroying Georgian infrastructure and economic progress,” what she really was moaning about was Russia's spoiling Prince Cheney and Halliburton’s progress at constructing a gas pipeline circumventing both Iran and Russia. In fact, Russia was simply intent on not having its own infrastructure rendered worthless and its own economic progress sent to the back of the Chevron / Unocal / Halliburton bus.

When Rice goes on to assure us that “The culprit here is that Russia overreached, used disproportionate force against a small neighbor, and is now paying the price for that, because Russia’s reputation as a potential partner in international institutions, diplomatic, political, security, economic is frankly in tatters” what she was in fact doing was describing the nature and confessing the failure of America’s own policy.

Over and over again in the past eight years we have seen that with neo-con speak, the condemnation and characterization of “the other” is almost invariably a confession and characterization of self. “They’re seeking to ..." undermine, provoke, destabilize, destroy... always ends up being a completely accurate description of what this Administration itself has done and is up to. The neocon mind is in fact a mental illness, as those who work with paranoids, psychotics and delusional anti-social crazies will readily recognize.

In all events, what Rice has indirectly admitted is that a key prong of US power projection into the “surrounding energy producing regions” is “frankly in tatters”.

Indeed it is. The Bush-Cheney Administration has but a few months to go and it is scrambling to create “realities on the ground.” In so far as the anti-Russian prong of neocon policy is concerned, the Administration certainly has made headway. The Baltic states and Poland been have admitted into NATO, a missile shield against Somalia’s emerging nuclear threat has been forward based in Poland and the Czech Republic. Quite against Russia’s historic interests and alliances, Kosovo was “freed” from Serbia. There can be no doubt that the Administration was egging Georgia on to de-autonomize South Ossetia. As Presdident Medvedev put it

“ The Georgian leadership chose another way. Disrupting the negotiating process, ignoring the agreements achieved, committing political and military provocations, attacking the [Russian] peacekeepers — all these actions grossly violated the regime established in conflict zones with the support of the United Nations and O.S.C.E [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe]. ...It stands quite clear now: a peaceful resolution of the conflict was not part of Tbilisi’s plan.”

Well, Tbilisi had about as much to do with it as the “political and material support provided by its foreign guardians” If Medvedev is to be believed (and there is no reason why he shouldn’t be), Cheney & His Neo Cons were seeking to extend America’s eastward “security perimeter” another nibble or two.

It was too much for the Bear which has now emitted a ROAR that has chilled half of Europe. It has pushed its own security perimeter south and has hung the Sword of Damocles over the CBT pipeline. It has brusquely informed Poland and the Czech Republic that, happy days are again and their cities will once again be targetted by Russian missiles . It is only regrettable that Russia missed a chance for irony by not claiming that the missiles were only directed at the nuclear threat from Brazil. But angry bears aren’t given to irony.

Medvedev made quite clear, that in addition to protecting its southern flank, Russia’s action on behalf of the Ossetians could also be considered pay for Kosovo,

“ [Faced with Tbilisi’s actions] Russia continually displayed calm and patience. We repeatedly called for returning to the negotiating table and did not deviate from this position of ours even after the unilateral proclamation of Kosovo’s independence.”

Contrary to Rice’s disingenuous blather, upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia did earnestly seek to “integrate” itself with the West. What it got was rebuffs, encirclement by US and NATO bases and an insulting 300 million dollar loan collateralized with demands to “open” its economy to savaging and scavenging. Russia has apparently had enough. It is signalling in concrete terms that the days of bullying the bear are over.

And what has the United States shown it can faced with this ROAR? About all it can do is send Condi Rice (and now Cindy McCain!) to hector and whine and accuse the Russians of harboring her own sordid intents. It is truly pathetic, even if Homo Americow can’t figure it out to save his mortgage.

The United States cannot come to the military aid of Georgia. It simply doesn’t have the manpower. Nor does it have the money to double the size of Blackwater, its new Free Market Army. The United States pushed and poked and now it can’t do much more than back off. The United States is close to bankrupt and its fraud riven banking system is dragging the world into recession. The NeoCon Century of Power Projection has turned into little more than a limp dick, high oil and most of our allies in Europe -- still dependent on Russian gas --with very deep second thoughts. All that is needed to make the farce complete is for Israel to discover its long standing “special relationship” with China.

©Barfo, 2008

Las Primarias....

2008-04-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

"The Primaries" by Francisco Goya y Lucientes

War Mongering On Easter

2008-03-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

Except for the Progressive magazine, the USUK press has downplayed Cheney’s war mongering foray in the Holy Land. Instead the headlines announce “Cheney says Independent Palestinian State Overdue.” Yawn.....

What is really going on is that Israel is pressuring a known war hawk to lean on Bush to go to war against Iran.

As reported by the International Herald Tribune: "Welcoming Cheney on Saturday night, Prime Minister Olmert pointedly placed Iran ahead of the peace process as one of "the many items on the common agenda" to be discussed. ' We are both very concerned about Iran; we are anxious to carry on the peace negotiations with the Palestinians.' "

Of course, “We are anxious for peace talks with the Palestinians” is the single most outstanding bull moo of the last 50 years. It is what Israel says every time it takes some action to torpedo whatever umphteenth Peace Plan is on the table. The refrain is intoned so regularly it would not be in the least surprising to learn that it had been incorporated into morning prayers at the Wailing Wall. It is meaningless. It is taken at face value only by morons, and the US mudia.

What Olmert really said was “We are both very concerned about Iran. 00 000 0000000 00 00000 00 000 00000 000000000000 0000 000 000000000000.”

In case one isn't quick enough to understand the meaning of zero, an Israeli official added that Cheney was seen by Jerusalem as "a significant player" who could influence "serious issues that cannot wait." (IHT 03/23/08)

What “serious issues” can’t wait? Certainly not the Peace with Palestine in Our Time issue. While that might be a serious issue, it has been waiting for 60 years. Surely it can wait another nine months until Cheney leaves office.

Well.... what other “serious issues” can’t wait? Peace in Iraq? We all know that Israel has nothing to do with our incursion into Iraq. Global Warming? As if Olmert were pressing Cheney to do something about the Arctic polar bear?

In case anyone still hasn’t figured it out, maybe Cheney’s reply will help. “America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is our commitment to Israel's right to defend itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction,"

Once again, we get fillers packed with zeros. No one denies anyone the right to “defend against” terrorism, whatever that is. The right of self-defense is the bedrock of international relations. Cheney might just as well said he was committed to everyman's right to piss. The question is: against whose wall? Well... for one, against the rocket attacks or more accurately the jumbo firecrackers Hamas is lobbing at Sderot which has forced Israel into aerial bombing of Gaza. That hardly needed clarification. So, discounting the sum of zeros, we are lef with “other threats” allegedly “dedicated to Israel’s destruction.”

I will spare the slow reader any further agony. The issue that “can’t wait” is Iran. What the Israeli official was saying was that Israel regarded Cheney as a key player who could influence President Who himself on an issue that Israel says can’t wait.

The International Herald Tribune, which reported on the Unknown Issue, went on to fill up column inches with the usual blather about Abbas, Hamas, rockets, and the usual nonsense that masquerades as news. But supposing the Times, the Post and the Tribune really can't fathom what is going on, even a moron understands that the vice president doesn’t need to go to Israel to “revitalize” the peace process two weeks after the president himself went to Israel and actually did (or so were told) revitalize it.

In the absence of serious reporting from the Times, the Post, and other outlets of the US mudia, it was left to Mathew Rothschild in the Progressive to note that the sudden departure of Admiral Fallon the other week signaled, if not an imminent attack on Iran, the removal of the safety-lock against doing so.

The missle hatches are open. And on this Sunday, when Christians celebrate the the Suffering and Resurrection of the Prince of Peace, the prince of darkness (while he may attend spurious services in some bunkered conventicle of the US Embassy) is in the Holy Land tete a teting with Israel who wants him to lean on Caesar to attack Iran.

God help us.

© Barfo, 2008

Palm Sunday Pay Day

2008-03-16T07:42:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who is an avowed atheist and thinks religion is a crock of shit has been complaining about Pay Day lenders for a little over a year now. For the silk stocking readership of this blog that might not know what my friend is talking about, a Pay Day lender is a loan shark who specializes in short term, usually two week loans, to tie you over until next pay day. It’s a po’ folk thing.

Suppose a someone makes $100.00 every two weeks. Coming up short at the end of the first week he needs $50.00 to tie him over until next pay day. The smiling Pay Day lender lends him $50.00 for which he will charge him $25.00 in fees and interest. Pay day rolls around and our debtor with a new $100.00 bill in hand goes off to pay his loan ($50.00 + $25.00) and returns home with $25.00 which has to last two weeks. He might as well have gotten hooked on heroin.

While these figures are merely illustrative, a person on minimum wage working 160 hours a grosses $880.00 a month; so the illustration is not that far from reality. Interests and fees charged by Pay Lenders go as high as 800%. [sic].

Is this legal, you might wonder? You bet! A free market is a free market. Reagan taught us all about the evils of Gov’mint meddling and onerous bureaucratic paperwork stifling the “entrepreneurial initiative.”

Well... wait a minute. Wasn’t usury illegal? Wasn’t there a legal cap of 7% interest on loans? Doesn’t the Bible say something about that?

Yes it does. The Old Testament prohibits interest and mandates the forgiveness of debt. Today, Palm Sunday, Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem on an ass, drove the money changers from the outer temple and freed the sacrificial doves from their cages.

But in god-fearing, ever self-righteous, ever self-adulating United States we don’t really give a crap about that, do we? In fact, how many Palm Sunday sermons actually mention Jesus’s act of Compassionate Vandalism?

In State legislatures and in the back-hallways around Congress there are murmurs to the effect that pay day lending is “hurting the economy”. Various compassionate politicians are talking about putting a 36% cap on pay lending. Can’t get more progressive than that, now can you?

Thirty six percent!!! Sho’ is a lot less than 800%. How much is 36% of $50.00 anyways? Answer $18.00. Huh? You mean the outrageous example we started off with was just about the “cure” being proposed by our humanitarians in the Congress?

Go out, wave your psalms, sing your hosannahs, and crucify the widow and the poor man on a cross of interest.

© Barfo, 2008

In Torture We Trust

2008-03-08T18:53:00.000-08:00

The Thing’s veto of legislation that would have outlawed CIA waterboarding is the shriek from Hell that reflects what this diseased regime has always been about : the poisoining and consumption of everything healthy and decent in the United States.

Howling over the radio waves, Thing salivated that “the fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance. ... were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. ... this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.”

The Thing never actually asserted that a specific attack had been deterred through the use of torture. Hell’s minion said only that something called our intelligence community “believed” that this “program” had prevented another attack. Once again, injecting poison into the body politic, The Thing sought to induce people into thinking that torture had made us safe. This is a lie.

The truth is that torture does not produce reliable information. The truth is that this diseased regime has been unable to point -- in private or in public -- to a single instance where torture has protected the United States from a specific attack.

So why does Hell’s Bowel Movement insist that torture will make us safe? Does it really believe that? No. It did so because in the festering intestines that are its soul, it knows that the minute the American People buy that lie, they will have been tricked into damning themselves forever. The body politic will have lost all immunity against being consumed entirely.

The instant torture is accepted as capable of protecting us from bad things, it itself becomes a good thing. It will become an accepted routine for bringing about the greater good and we will turn away, dulled and accepting, from the screams and pleadings of the tortured. We will have inverted good and evil. We will have accepted sin.

The moment torture is accepted as protecting us from our “enemies” it becomes acceptable to be used against us, ourselves, in order to ferret out the enemies in our midsts. And not just the known enemies, because the avowed purpose of torture is not to prove what is known but to find out what is unknown. And if not just against known enemies among us, then against any of us to find out who of us is the enemy.

In this way, our acceptance of sin will consume us and the Thing from hell will have triumphed.

Anyone who may have perchanced into this blog, may have wondered why Barfo uses such foul language describing the slime and putrefaction that inhabit our public places. He does so, because this regime and everyone associated with it and everyone who collaborates with it is truly foul and disgusting in every possible way. Foul language is the only way to speak the truth.

©Barfo, 2008

Psychosis, Policy and Purim

2008-03-01T23:02:00.000-08:00

The image of Israel is that of a big body-built bouncer holding a five year old by the scruff of its neck, smashing its teeth out, bloodying its nose, and kneeing it in the stomach as “deterrence” for being kicked in the shin.

In researching the previous post on Israel's threatened holocaust, I logged onto Ha’artez in order to find the exact quote from an israeli source. After doing so, I perused the discussion blog, which -- no surprise at this point -- was nothing more that a long roll of murderous, hate-filled self pity.

“ The trouble with Israel is that they keep pussy-footing around and bombing empty buildings. For every rocket attack on Israel their should be a 2-3 day rocket barrage in return, right over the Gazan`s heads.”

“ Ring Gaza with artillery and bombard from a stand-off distance as a direct answer to rockets. Time this for maximum embarrassment of Condi"

“ The past two years have been devoted to this still born process, called the peace process. ... . We were told that we had to be patient, that Sderot had to be valiant, and her children had to suffer in silence ... People have the impudence to tell Israelis that they have to suffer in silence because otherwise the Palestinians will stop cooperating in this non-existent peace process. The world always liked its Jews quiet and pliant. The world, the "civilized" one, would like nothing better than to see the end to this troublesome country of the Jews. They just dare not say it in public. That would be bad form."

There was a smaller percentage of posts that decried the “holocaust” remarks as a tactical public relations error. I counted only one or two Jewish/Israeli comments that pointed out the moral contradiction and hypocrisy of Israeli policy.

These few examples are illustrative of the mass psychosis that has taken hold of Israel. This is a phenomenon that has been noted and decried by high-ranking Israelis themselves. As far back as 2001, Ami Alayon, the head of the Israeli secret service (Shin Bet) until 2000, told Le Monde that “In Israel, nobody is dealing with reality anymore.” He debunked the self-deluding propaganda that Arafat had maliciously turned down a magnanimous offer. “This is ridiculous”. (Le Monde 12/22/01) At the other end of the political spectrum Uri Avneri, Class of ‘48 and leftist journalist, has repeatedly decried Israel’s “self-brainwashing, paranoia and suspicion. In between, there are anonymous people like “Esther” who lamented on the discussion board that Ha’aretz had deleted her posts mentioning the three Hamas truce offers that the Israeli government rejected before launching its mini (not so bad) holocaust.

The manner of speaking that has been emitting from Israel and zionist quarters around the world has been cribbed from the book of ThugSpeak -- a language of cultivated hardness and brutality. Victor Kemperer, a German Jewish professor who survived Nazi genocide wrote a book about how deeds conform to the mental attitudes carved out by habits of speech Anyone who has truly informed himself about the nazi period can only be shocked by the kind of language coming from jewish lips.

But the truly troubling psychosis is revealed in the comment that the whole rest of the civilized world “would like nothing better than to see the end to this troublesome country of the Jews.” They all hate us!!! Therefore we have to destroy the Palestinians.

This is simply insane; it bears no relation to objective reality. Israel has the United States, the world’s strongest military, firmly in its corner. Pro-Israeli Jews work at the highest levels in all branches of the U.S. government. Laws in France and Germany make it a criminal offence to denigrate or even to question the jewish version of “The Holocaust”. Most western powers have embargoed Iran demanding that it give up nuclear power, while Israel is allowed to maintain a nuclear arsenal. What kind of derangement translates this into “people have the impudence to tell Israelis that they have to suffer in silence” ?

The Israeli author and musician Gilad Atzmon, answered it this way:

“ I tend to believe that the recorded sudden change in the Israeli collective mental mood is nothing but the outcome of the Israeli natural tendency to resolve the schizophrenic mode inherently entangled within Zionism. It is the outcome of the outburst of the conflict between the tribal and the universal that matures into a state of a colossal and complete phobia. The more Israelis want to secure themselves by clinging to isolation, the more death they happen to spread around themselves” [link]

Zionism certainly, but perhaps more. One of the commentators on the Ha’aretz blog wrote:

“ Our Purim Lesson is that Israel needs to do to Hamas what Hamas has promised to do to Israel. Haman hung on the gallows he had built for Mordechai.”

Well, what did Haman do? Haman faithfully carried out the orders of his king Ahasuerus, who ruled, it is said, from Ethiopia to India. On instructions from Mordechai, the Jewish inhabitants refused to bow to the king or to obey his laws . Haman asked the king what he should and the king gave him power to prosecute the offenders.

On orders from Mordechai, Esther concealed her jewishness, worked her way into the king’s affection and by the usual arts turned the king against his own loyal servant. Mordechai moved into the drivers seat had Haman and his sons hanged and then went about merrily slaughtering 75,000 of the kings own non-Jewish subjects..

"Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.” (Esther 9:5 )

Perhaps it could be said that Haman got it in the neck during a palace coup. But what of these 75,000? Nothing in the story gives grounds for believing that they were other than just non-Jewish subjects obeying their king’s laws. The account provides no explanation or evidence that these slaughtered innocents “hated” anyone, at least no more than the assertion that “the whole civilized world” just hates us because we are Jews.

To this day Purim is a jewish holiday. And the actions in Gaza will provide the Israelis with another occasion for holiday that they can call Purim II.

©Barfo, 2008

Post Script. The Guidelines for the Ha’artez discussion board prohibit

“2. Statements terming Israelis or Palestinians and their leaders Nazis, or accusing them of genocide or ethnic cleansing."

Uh.... that makes it kinda difficult to discuss the topic, doesn't it?

It's not a Holocaust even when We say It is.

2008-02-29T23:38:00.000-08:00

It was the shock that reverberated around the world. An Israeli defense minister threatened Gaza with a holocaust.

It defied belief that a people who have expended so much talent and effort in educating the world as to the horrors of genocide should turn around and threaten others with what they themselves suffered.

This wretched denouement will come as no surprise to those who recognize in Zionism the same fatal ethnic idolatry that agitated Nazism. The difference between legitimate ethnic pride and pathological ethnic narcissism is always a question of degree. But when self-worthiness passes into self-worship it inevitably ends up worshiping at the expense of others

The reaction among most Israelis and their supporters around the globe fell into two categories: (1) denial that anything so outrageous had been said and (2) an attempt to shift the blame onto the victims.

The back-pedaling of the first would be comic were it not so hypocritical. It was said that the word “shoah” (or holocaust) didn’t always mean holocaust, but was used colloquially to refer to the mess in the kitchen, messed up accounts, and any kind of routine fiasco. Ergo, the Gazans weren’t really be threatened with anything like genocide. Not to worry.

This hasbara (“forensic defense of Israel”) is just an outright lie. Just last year, AIPAC and Jewish Groups in the United State fought tooth and nail to prevent an official commemoration of the “Armenian Holocaust.” Over and over again Jewish spokesmen declaimed that the word “holocaust” had a specific meaning limited to Jewish suffering and the “extent of the horror” would be cheapened by being applied to any else.... except of course as we now learn, the mess in the kitchen, the fiasco at the picnic and other such disasters which afflict ordinary people in daily life.

Just this January, the Jewish Council of Germany was aghast and offended that some Munich carnival goers had been granted a permit to parade on what the they unilaterally decreed was “Holocaust Day.” In short, the efforts of Jews around the world to turn their experience in the second world war into a sacred and taboo event is obvious to anyone who hasn’t had his head buried in the sand. To come now and claim that “holocaust” really didn’t mean that when it was uttered is just bald faced hypocrisy that counts on the world being stupidly suckered.

As for blame shifting; this has become the Standard Performance of Israeli policy. Thus, after protesting that, “in context,” shoah really only meant a doozy paloozy, Israelis followed up with “and they deserved it anyways”. Inevitably the coda to this refrain was that “Israel” was being terrorized by a “rain” of rockets and had to defend itself against, unprovoked attacks and a looming Holocaust™ at the hands of jew-hating Arabs.

mini-shoah in Gaza

The only way Israel can disequilibriate the sheer disporportionality of its conduct is to shuffle and switch the things compared. “Israel” is not under attack in any real sense. Sderot, a small township, near the Gaza border is being harrased by jumbo firecrackers that in a period of four years have killed two, perhaps now three or four people. By way of a true comparison all of Gaza is under siege and daily attack by the Israeli military and In the same period, hundreds verging on a thousand Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli collateral actions. The false equation foisted is revolting.

When all is said and done, no one “deserves” a “holocaust” -- mini or otherwise. The whole point of international law in this area is to put limits on how wars are fought. Those limits mean that whatever else “the enemy” may deserve it deserves not to have its children blasted to bits or to be starved and diseased into submission.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is evil, and has been condemned by the UN, the Secretary General, the World Court and numerous human rights organizations. For years the Israel government has subjected Gaza (and the West Bank) to restrictions that clearly qualified as “genocide” under the definitions studiously worked out by Rafael Lemkin who coined the word.

During the past year, what the sycophant western press labeled as energy cut offs was in fact a program of starvation, as reported here and elsewhere. Earlier this year (2008), it was reported that as a result of Israeli bombings the sewage mains had broken in Gaza. What this means is that the Gazans are being placed in imminent danger of typhus outbreaks.

So? So what the vast heap of “The Holocaust®” documentaries invariably omit to tell, is that the piles of bodies so horrorificly being bulldozed into mass graves were not “gassed” but were people who had died of typhus. Epidemics of typhus had broken out in most camps. For this reason one of the key elements of the judgement at Nuremberg was that the Nazis had done “little or nothing” to prevent the outbreak of typhus. -- and this calculated “negligence” qualified as an intentional war crime.

And now that the sewage mains have broken in Gaza, what does the Israeli government says? It threatens a “fiasco”.

©Barfo, 2008

Mothers for Perpetual Safety

2008-02-21T19:59:00.000-08:00

It did not take long after the latest “senseless high school killing” for the harpies on the False Issue Left to raise their quills and voices to demand more effective gun control. Leading the charge for Perpetual Safety were: John Rosenthal of the Christian Science Monitor (”Had Enough Gun Violence? 20 Feb 2006) and “Packing Heat in the Parks” (New York Times Editorial 20 Feb 2006)

The United States doesn’t need more gun control but less. In case anyone hasn’t figured it out yet, the Second Amendment was designed to insure political empowerment (the one and only true kind). Simply put, it enshrines the right to revolt. This was understood quite clearly at the time. In fact, it almost went without saying.

The Bill of Rights of 1688, had guaranteed the right of all Protestants to “have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” The right was enumerated in order to guard against catholic subversion which, from the protestant perspective, was a true and real threat.

Before that suffice to say the barons at Runnymede (1215) were sure as hell not leaning on their quills when they forced King John to cease and desist from undermining the independence of the English Church and courts,

Understanding the purposes of the Second Amendment leads to the ineluctable conclusion that rather than limiting the types and circumstances under which arms can be borne, the Amendment needs to be expanded so as to cover as broad a range of armaments as is reasonable for the purpose intended.

The plain fact of the matters is that hunting rifles and .45’s really won’t do much against the array of armaments in possession of the Government. Waco was a demonstration of the kind of armaments which are adequate to intimidate and oppress ordinary citizens. Since then, the Government has elaborated even more sophisticated “crowd control” armaments including: Mass-tasers, Sonic Beams and Slippery Jelly.

The tasers are laser beams that create excruciating “burning sensations” in the “subject” . Like waterboarding which only “simulates” drowning, these beams only “simulate” burning. Only a few old folks who were going to die anyway would croak.

The sonic beams are the auditory equivalent. They fill the air with such stunning hyper sound that you literally cannot think, but simply fall to ground in paralyzed stupefaction.

Lastly, in case you could possibly get up...there is Slippery Jelly which makes it impossible to do so. So... in mind-numbed stupor and excruciating burning agony, you will meekly allow yourself to be cuffed and carted off by some State Thug encased in Kevlar.

Hollywood fantasy? Nope. Your Total Safety Society brought to you by the Mothers of Perpetual Safety -- senawhores, congressoids and their pimps in the press whose vision of US-America is a “secure” camp -- from sea to shining sea.

The Second Amendment at the very least, protects the right of every citizen to possess and bear his own Slippery Jelly dispenser.

There will doubtless be those who will make the usual argumentum ad horibilis. ... trucking out a parade of horribles, all of which, when stripped of code words, boil down to: Eeeek! You mean let the Darkies have MORE weapons?

In fact, your average, road-raging suburban Blimp-in-a-Ram-Charger is probably more of a real and present danger to most people than your ghetto rapping crack dealer, who after all is really just in the “business-decisions” business.

But either way, the other cardinal fact to remember, just in case anyone forgot, is that the Bill of Rights and Our Form of Government presuppose a certain level of social sophistication and circumstance. Madison said as much in Federalist Ten. The bottom line is simple: the Constitution is a magnificent legal edifice but it is not free standing. In the last analysis, law stands or falls depending on the social subsoil. Simply put, the Constitution is meaningless among apes.

The right the bear arms presupposed a certain level of burgertum: a, broadly speaking, literate, more or less “liberally educated”, society of middle class farmers and homeowners and merchants none of whom were too different or distant from one another culturally or economically. You didn’t fear your neighbor owning a weapon because he was not likely to use it against you any more than he would come at you with his scythe, or axe, or any other number of ordinary deadly household utensils in use at the time.

If we trash the Second Amendment because we fear our neighbors and fear our own fellow-citizens having weapons, then we have simply confessed the utter failure of US-American society. And, if US society is dysfunctional, then the Constitution is irrelevant anyways.

©Barfo, 2008

Look at Yourself - America

2008-02-15T16:45:00.000-08:00

Photo by Tim Heatherington (published in Vanity Fair)

Look at yourself America. This is you and this is your son. This is what Cheney-Bush-Rove, what Jingoid Republicans, Smirking Billy Kristol and his ZioCons, what Morally Bankrupt Demorats, Avaricious Corporations, a Whore Press and a Feckless False-Issue Left have done to you. Look.

Needless to say, Tim Heatherington's photograph got little play in the Murkan Mudia. It is posted here with acknowledgement to help, in a small way, give it the dissemination it deserves.

All the Fetish that’s Fit to Print

2008-02-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

Ever the shill for Big Plunder, the Spew York Times has gotten its Mexican steppinfechit to assure the world that NAFTA is a great thing for Mexico and the only problem is that those stupid Indian tortilla eaters don’t know it.

It is a lamentable fact that it is easier to throw a spanner into the works than to undo the damage done, as is shown by the nine pages it will take to unravel the heap of lies, oxymorons and sophistry neatly packaged into two pages of the Times by OpEditor Eduardo Porter. Ultimately people of good will tire of the effort, which is why rulers and their lackeys get lined up against a wall and mowed down. It's easier.

“Foist a petard” is too genteel a phrase for the sort of flinging Porter engages in. His article is a heap of stinking lies swimming in gastric sophistries. Hold your noses while we examine this excreted screed.

Big Sugar & Wee Corn are Two Peas in a Pod

Porter begins by promoting a confusion, sort of like throwing salt water in your eyes so that you can’t distinguish the burro from the elephant. Noting that the endlosung of NAFTA went into effect last month, Porter informs us that “Mexican corn farmers and American Big Sugar hate this unreservedly.”

Cute. Porter begins with a well known sophistical trick by foisting a false equality based on an irrelevant common feature. It’s like saying Henry Ford and Joe Stalin have common interests because they both moan when they shit. The reader is being set up to loose sight of the fact that in all substantial respects Mexican farmers (the campesino variety) and Big Sugar have nothing, nothing, nothing at all in common.

But in case you didn’t get fooled at first, Porter makes sure the QED is clear: “This shared outrage underscores how egalitarian free trade is.”

No it doesn’t. It shows only that “free-trade” has managed step on two different sets of toes. If NAFTA were really egalitarian it would step on everyone’s toes. But if it did that, it sure as hell would not be law.

Porter knows that Big Sugar and li’l campesino are not in pari-materia but he tries to blur the distinction by jumping back and forth between “sugar issues” and “corn issues” so that by talking about them at the same time, they will seem to involve the same factors. They don’t.

High Fructose OpEd

According to Porter, “Free trade in sugar within North America will allow cheaper Mexican sugar to flood in, .... Mexico’s rural poor, even if they don’t believe it now, are likely to come out ahead.”

How? How will the rural poor come out ahead?

The clear and necessary implication from this pronouncement is that “rural poor” Mexican sugar farmers.... Jose y Pablo... will benefit from this flooding even if they are too damn stupid to realize that no tariffs on their sugar makes their sugar competitive abroad.

What Porter doesn’t tell his readers is that “Mexico’s rural poor” are not sugar growers. No. Mexico’s rural poor might work as underpaid day laborers in big cane fields or sugar mills, but they are not sugar growers. What “free trade in sugar” will benefit is Big Mexican Sugar. Porter knows this, because after digressing to talk about corn he bounces back to the sugar issue, and says.

“ America’s sugar barons ... first cut a deal with Mexico’s sugar barons that would have created a new system limiting trade in sugar and other sweeteners”

Got that? “Barons” Since when has a “baron” qualified as “rural poor”?

Although Porter does his clever best to occlude and confuse, this part of the NAFTA picture is really the battle of Big Sweet -- Mega Food Mex and Mega Food USA trying to lock up their respective turfs Whether NAFTA would benefit them or not the issue has nothing, nothing, nothing at all to do with Jose y Pablo.

Porter knows he has shuffled, switched and lied, because he concludes by saying “Opening up the sugar trade with Mexico will be good news for Americans: it will lead to lower sugar prices for everybody, from confectionary manufacturers to regular consumers.”

Rejoice uh’Murkans... you can now march on the road to diabetes ever more cheaply than before. This is good for you just as it’s good for Big Sugar. But notice, how the Mexican farmer suddenly dropped out of Porter’s egalitarian picture.

Uncle Sam becomes Tio Tortilla

When it comes to corn, Porter is no less ingenuous:

“ Mexican farmers fear that a flood of cheap agricultural imports from the United States will take away their meager livelihoods, and end a centuries-old way of life revolving around small-scale farming of corn.”

No... they don’t fear. They know. The “taking away of meager livelihoods” has been something they have directly experienced since 1994. It is not a question of fear, but of knowing. It is not a question of what might happen but of what has happened. Potter knows this too, because he goes on to spew,

"NAFTA has already shaken up Mexican farming — mostly for the better. The value of agricultural imports from the United States has doubled since 1994, when tariffs started to gradually decline. Imports of corn have more than doubled by volume."

Mostly for the better for whom? How does the soaring value of imports and the doubling of imports beneft poor, small-scale farmers?

I will repeat the question : How does the soaring value of imports from the United States into Mexico benefit Mexican farming which presumably grows things to sell. Since when have cheaper foreign imports benefited domestic production?

This paragaph is just a pile of verbal shit. There is simply no other way to describe it. Porter has the effrontery to say that soaring imports have “shaken up” the poor campesino for the “better”. Anyone who believes this, probably thinks vomit soup is a delicacy.

Porter knows that he is bullshitting through his lie-stained teeth because he goes on to say that “rural Mexico needs investment to increase yields and move out of corn and into more lucrative crops” and the Mexican Government “ will also need to help more rural Mexicans find jobs outside agriculture.”

Translation: Agi-Business needs to get in there and buy up the land, forget about corn... go into other globally-marketable stuffs...and let the Government figure out how to re-employ Jose y Pablo. You know... just the way ol’ Bill Clinton “re-tooled” the US work force for goo-paying- jops at McDonald's.

Porter concludes this repulsive screed with by pounding away at his article of faith: “Nafta will be good news for Mexico’s consumers and many of its farmers.” Yeah... the big ones.

The attentive reader will have noticed how Porter greases the slipping and sliding with equivocal terms but what it boils down to is that a well paid, well stuffed whore on the Spew York Times Editorial Board has taken up a full two pages of this very august newspaper to fill the reader’s mind with crap and to get you to think that NAFTA is a good thing when in fact it has left nothing but devastation in its wake.

The Devastations of Liberalism

The the lynch pin to his sack of shit masquerading as “opinion that’s fit to print” is Porter’s claim that since the US produces yellow corn and the campesino grows white corn, the swamping of Mexico with yellow corn has no causal effect on the impoverishment of the white corn producing Mexican farmer.

He says this notwithstanding that he also says that NAFTA will make it necessary for campesinos to "find jobs outside agriculture." That is the strangest non-causal effect I've ever seen.

But even on its isolated merits, this lynch pin is so wobbly in its hole that it wouldn’t support a single tortilla. Estimates as of 2002 were that 1 in 3 tortillas were being made of yellow corn. But in actuality the grade & color of corn is not the critical factor at work. It is just a bogus difference in support of a bogus propaganda for the benefit of Big Plunder.

NAFTA is not just a question of “open trade over open borders”. It is a complex economic regime with equally complex causes and effects. The true fact is that the price of white corn is tied to and fluctuates with the price of yellow corn. The dumping of yellow corn on the Mexican market has devalued the return on white corn.

It is a plain fact that, by law, Mexico used to only allow the importation of corn when its farmers' production fell short of domestic needs. In other words, white or yellow, Mexico was buying domestically. NAFTA eliminated quotas limiting corn imports while at the same time allowing U.S. subsidy programs to remain in place. This promoted the dumping of corn into Mexico by U.S. agribusiness at below the actual cost of production. The price paid to farmers in Mexico for their corn fell by over 70%

The decline was not due solely to the mere fact of imports. A contributing reason for the decline is that in February 1995, the Mexican government was advised by the World Bank and IMF to continue to depress prices to reduce domestic grain production and to import supplies. It complied.

Another reason for the devastation of the small Mexican corn grower was that corn buyers in Mexico were offered very favorable loan rates available to them through U.S. export agencies. U.S. Commodity Credit Corporation which made corn-purchasing loans at 7% for three years, 1/4 of the rate Mexican banks were able to provide.

In other words, while the World Bank was ordering Mexico to depress local prices, U.S. export agencies were undercutting Mexican banks in order to promote corn sales that would undercut the Mexican farmer.

Liars like Porter would have his readers believe that NAFTA was simply a matter of “open borders” when in fact it is the fulcrum for a coordinated series of policies designed to despoil and plunder Mexico and the rest of Hispanic America.

Ask yourself, who these “corn buyers” are? Surely Laura y Maria aren’t applying for 7% loans to buy their daily tortillas. These “corn buyers” are in fact giant Mexican corporations like Minsa, Gimsa and Maseca, mass producers of agricultural products and food stuffs. But these Mexican produces are in turn heavily “invested” by U.S. agribusiness interests, like Cargill and ADM - who are responsible for fully two-thirds of all U.S.corn exports.

Since NAFTA, Birdseye, Green Giant, Campbell’s Soup, Hunt, Arthur Daniels Midland, Conagra, Cargill, and Tyson’s have all significantly increased their farming and processing operations in Mexico. While these companies’ profits have skyrocketed. rural poverty and unemployment has also skyrocketed.

In other words, what the neo-liberal regime boils down to is a strategy for Big Food to destroy the little guy. And the strategy includes US agribusiness taking over food production and processing in Mexico, with the assistance of “trade” policies, government subsidies, and IMF diktats.

Odious shills like Porter, decry that the rise in rural poverty is “just a correlation” that there are “other variables” at work to explain the decimation of the Mexican rural social-economy. But then these same word punks turn around and ignore those interlocking variables and talk about NAFTA as if it were just trading sugar for flour over the picket fence.

Ring In the Mall!

Porter’s screed betrays two other noteworthy facts. First, that he is himself aware of the social and human costs involved and second that he is willing to sacrifice human beings on the high pyramid of corporate greed.

Although Porter’s oblique reference to a “centuries-old way of life” may effectively hide what is at stake from the average US reader, those familiar with Mexican will know that Porter is saying to hell with a centuries old culture. Ring in the Mall!!!

Since before the arrival of the Spanish, the Mexican rural community was based on the ejido -- a form of communitarian homesteading of land. The land is owned by the community but is ‘farmed out’ to families who work it and who live on it from generation to generation so long as they continue to work it. The ejido was at the center of what the Spanish Administration used to refer to as the “Indian Republics.”

The phrase was apt, because at issue was, in microcosm, a “republic”. The ejido system is not just a “mechanism” of production but is the material undergirding for an entire way of life, that reaches into family structures, social morés and spirtual life. The Indian has tenaciously fought to preserve the ejido throughout the centuries and the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 was in one third part the revolt of ejidatarios against ...(guess)... Big Sugar which was poaching on Indian lands lands in the name of “efficient” production. That is what Zapatismo was all about.

Porter, who got his degree at UNAM, (Mexico's National University) knows the story full well. He is the latest crop -- escoria mas bien dicho -- of Mexican liberales.

In Mexico the word “liberal” retains its original and correct meaning, followed in the entire rest of the world, except the obfuscatory Spew York Times and the US mudia. In a nutshell, a liberal is a person who believes in the Sanctity of the Invisible Hand and the all Beneficence of Market Forces.

Ever since the 1850’s the “liberal” regime in Mexico has done its best to destroy the peasantry. Their so-called “maximum hero” Benito Juarez, “freed” the peasant from the “bonds” of the ejido by allowing him to be a “free-hold” farmer. Result: the land was bought up by U.S. “investors” on the cheap. The peon was turned into a hired-day laborer who could spend his pittance getting drunk in pulquerías.

Juarez was one in that lamentable train of Mexican “intellectuals” who get drunk on foreign intoxicants to the great detriment of the people of the country.

Eventually the Juarez land reforms were “corrected” -- at least to the extent that further damage wasn’t done. But just as the Mexican peasant was recovering from that dubious benefit, he then had to face the encroachments of Big Rail and Big Sugar in the 1890’s and 1900’s. It was then the policy of the liberal Porfirian government, to develop the country by “investing it out” to foreign capital. And if some damn peon village stood in the way, to hell with it. In 1910, the campesino revolted as he will again, soon enough.

After 10 years of revolution, his hard fought way of life and the inviolability of the ejido was enshrined in the Constitution for near 70 years, until Salinas, that slimy, murderous gangster-mole, incubated in a Harvard test-tube, amended the constitution to, once again, take away the campesinos’ legal protections. NAFTA is the end of the process.

The Spew York Times will never let on. What it routinely excoriates as the “one party rule of the PRI” was in fact an essentially social-democratic regime modeled on modern European lines. It was not perfect (what politics is?); it was corrupt (what party isn’t?) -- but when all is said and done it was repudiation of a “free-for-all” market liberalism, in favor of a managed economy that, while fundamentally capitalist, protected certain social values and standards of living.

What rags like the Spew York Times call the “opening up” and “democratization” of Mexico was in actual fact a reversion to the economic savagery of 19th century liberal economics. Porter, who has never done any harder work than shovel his own palaver for Business World, the WSJ and now The Big Spew, thinks it is marvelous that the Mexican peasant can join the burgeoning lumpen proletariat in the cities.

Anyone who wants to behold Porter's demented vision of the good can travel to Mexico City, look beyond the ne plus ultra towering glass "statements" of Big Plunder -- dejando su planta en el suelo -- and behold the millions of once rural poor now living in urban hovels on top of garbage dumps

This is not to say that there are not problems involved in sustaining a way of life that is not maximally efficient from a purely economic point of view. It is a question of political-economy that many European countries, particularly France and Germany, have faced. Is preserving a way of life worth the economic cost? Can the small farmer, the European peasantry, the Mexican campesino have a role in a larger economy? The non-liberal answer is, Yes. It is often complicated and it involves “costs” just the way education, health, pensions also involve “costs” but the “costs” are considered worth it since it is also felt that human life is something more than fungible in the spinning vortex of exchange values.

Licking the Capitalist Boot

But Porter, like the rest of his crowd of liberales, don’t care about non-economic social values. For them, the “movement” of goods is a good in itself -- it has become their dominating fetish, which they obsesses over and thrill to to the exclusion of everything else. This is why, Porter can callously talk about“shifts” and “reallocations” and macro-benefits over the long run, even when the stupid people don’t realize how benefited they are.

Ever since some god first taught man to plant a weed, civilized life has consisted in a cycle of production and consumption. The problem with Porter and his crowd is that the cycle has become an end in itself.... something like a beloved and oft-licked boot.

All ideologies ultimately demand their own reinforcement by insisting that perceptions and concepts conform, ratify and thus perpetuate the ideology itself. To this extent fetishism is built into all “systems”. The way toward freedom is not to deny the necessity of production and consumption but rather not to idolatrize it.

That idolatry is the essence of what passes for Porter’s thought process. Uncontrolled movement of goods and money and profits is the only good he understands. He is so wedded to his fetish, that he cannot even explain how this un-restrained, gyrating vortex might benefit ordinary small people. Instead, licking furiously at the boot of his fetish, he insists that large “imports” of corn will benefit the poor Mexican farmer. To perpetuate his idolatry, he engages in false facts, absurdities and repeated thumping on his capitalist bible that NAFTA is good dammit, it’s good.

In fact, the only beneficiaries of this macro-system are the macro-players. Those that control the mass-production - mass consumption cycle. And the big corporate players are so heavily cross-invested, that it bears little relation to reality to speak Mexican versus American corporations. These labels are about as meaningless as the country of a ship’s registry. Under NAFTA what controls and benefits is simply Big Food.

But none of this disturbs shills like Porter who is so enthralled to his fetish that he can actually pen articles entitled. “Feeding the Rich Feeds the Poor”

Ah yes! Le Brioche pour moi, est le pain pour toi. Isn’t that right Porter?

In fact all Porter is doing is feeding the poor into Moloch’s Maw.

©Barfo, 2008

The Sweinstein Stench and the Schumer Shuffle

2008-02-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

In November 2007, Sweinstein and Schumer bolted ranks and voted to confirm co-religionist Mukasey as Attorney General. Nothing partisan here.

Explaining yet another one of her DemoPublican switcheroos Sweinstein wrote in the LA Times (32 Nov 07) “Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales.” The Justice Department was demoralized and needed “a new dynamic of independence from the White House”

Sweinstein acknowledged that “serious questions”had been raised about Mukasey’s “views on torture” but that he had assured her in a personal letter that he knew that water-boarding was “illegal” under US Military Law and the Geneva Conventions.

“Congress,” Sweinstein wrote, “should go further and explicitly ban waterboarding and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques for all parts of the government” presumably including the Post Office, the Department of Education and perhaps even the CIA.

Until then, however, “the bottom line” was that she “hope[d]” Judge Mukasy would “direct the Justice Department where the facts and the law lead, not where the White House dictates.”

Of course the real bottom line is that both Mukasey and Sweinstein were hiding under The Rock of Technicalities -- waterboarding whether it was fun or folly was not yet “illegal” for the CIA.

Schumer was no less two-faced. In an article penned for the Spew York Times (06 Nov 07) he explained that he was voting for Mukasey because the Justice Deparment was in “desperate need of a strong leader, committed to depoliticizing the agency’s operations.” “Most important,” Schumer wrote, “Judge Mukasey has demonstrated his fidelity to the rule of law”

Ah... but then came the fine print on the encyclopedia installment purchase plan.... While Mukasey’s refusal to state that waterboarding was “illegal” was deeply unsatisfactory to Schumer --- deeply --- “ Congress is now considering — and I hope we will soon pass — a law that would explicitly ban the use of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques. And I am confident that Judge Mukasey would enforce that law.”

Ah... the Schumer Shuffle... praise Mukasey for fidelity to legality, excoriate him not stating that waterboarding was “illegal” when it wasn’t and then express a pious hope that Congress might one day pass and Mukasey might one day enforce a law illegalizing waterboarding.

Actually, Chuck most people didn’t give a rats ass about your fucked legalities. What most people found offensive was Mukasey’s helpless moral quandary as to whether dunking was torture or not, as a matter of painful fact.

The Schumer Shuffle concluded by stating that “if we block Judge Mukasey’s nomination and then learn in six months that waterboarding has continued unabated, that victory [for Law] will seem much less valuable. No one questions that Judge Mukasey would do much to remove the stench of politics from the Justice Department. I believe we should give him that chance.”

Ah... but the Stench from the Hill...

Today, Dan Eggen of the Washington Post reported

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said this morning that waterboarding was deemed legal by the Justice Department at the time it was used by the CIA on three al-Qaeda captives, and as a result the Justice Department "cannot possibly" investigate whether a crime occurred. . . .

Mukasey's remarks were a direct rebuff to demands from many leading Democrats this week that the Justice Department open a criminal probe into the CIA's use of waterboarding, . . .

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Wednesday that President Bush could approve the use of the tactic again and that such a decision would "depend on the circumstances," ...

Mukasey, is scheduled to appear before the Judiciary Committee again, where no doubt he will be grilled with mock mercilessness by Schumer and Sweinstein, who will demand that he follow a law Congress has not passed.

And the stench rolls on.

©Barfo, 2008

Why Blending In Matters

2008-02-07T15:45:00.000-08:00

CIA chief announces new threat from "blendables"

Why Hispanics Should Despise Clinton

2008-02-06T20:56:00.001-08:00

The wisdom floating on the pond of public discourse is that "Clinton has the Hispanic Vote." As scum goes, the wisdom is true enough. The more important question is: why? Why the fuck would any non-Cuban Hispanic suck up to Clinton?

I recently copied an old news-clip video of Clinton to DVD. The clip was shot shortly after NAFTA had been approved and while Poison Pete Wilson was whipping his jingoid base into an anti-immigrant fervor. Currying favor with the rabble that passes for the California electorate, Clinton came to town -- San Diego to be precise -- stood on the border, wagged his finger and said in all piety that we had to do something "to stop these illegals from coming here and taking jobs away from Americans."

Vomit.

More than anyone else, Clinton can take the shameful credit for dismantling the U.S. industrial infrastructure and shipping jobs over to Mexico, San Salvador, Thailand and China. For this fuckwad to blame hungry Mexican campesinos for stealing our jobs, is a hypocritical outrage .... surely sufficient to earn him an English knighthood but not one iota of approval from any self-respecting Ibero-American.

Doubtless, those who acquire their consciousness from the US mudia will scratch their heads, call me nuts and think that Clinton's Big Handout of Good Paying Jops to Mexicans explains why they love the Clintons. It's all a question of lick yer chops jops. Actually not.

Yankee Americans have their heads so far stuck up their self-righteous assholes that most of them haven't a glimmer of a notion as what the neo-liberal agenda has done to Mexico and other Hispanic American countries. The general opinion in the US is that them illegals are overcome with near-religious adoration of our way of life and that's why they are coming here to steal our goodpayingjops. What these folks are oblivious to is that NAFTA has actually destroyed towns, families and sustainable jobs in Mexico. Huh?

Well... it might not be found in "All the News that's Fit to Print" but the "other part" of NAFTA is that the US gets to dump agri-industrial maize on the Mexican market, prohibiting Mexico from providing agricultural supports for its peasantry while allowing the same (under another name of course) for Big Food. The result? US Big Food has destroyed the economy of countless villages. When the economy of villages is destroyed so too are "family values." Demoralized men, turn to drink or wander the continent away from their families looking for same piece-of-scrabble-job to survive. The Mexican countryside is fast acquiring the spectre of the deserted panorama of the 16th century.

No doubt, Mr. Cheez-O, will munch his petroleum based snax, and "think" to himself that, the destruction of the Mexican peasantry is no doubt the result of good-honest-market-forces in that Big Food can provide Lots of Corn on the Mega Cheap and therefore "the average Mexican" comes out ahead. Yuk Yuk. What else more could they want aside from cheap tortillas? Crunch munch. Again, actually not.

Big Food does not provide Lots of Corn on the cheap... quite the contrary. NAFTized market forces being they are, the price of tortillas has soared.

Nor did NAFTA provide such "goodpayingjops" to Mexicans as would make up the difference. The plague-like effect of NAFTA is not limited to the countryside. It has wrought devastation on the entire economia politica of Mexico. It has done so, because trashing labor laws, skirting environmental protections, forcing reductions in government subsidies to people while mandating them for business is the entire rotten core of so-called "free-trade." (See e.g., the linked articles by David Bacon, at end). The entire maquiladora regime was nothing but a government paid bonus to Big Business allowing them they can set up shop on the other side of the border, getting all sorts of tax breaks while paying hapless workers some pathetic sub-survival pittance.

The only beneficiary of this satanic scheme, is Big Money... and if Monica was sucking off Bill, we know whose dick Bill had in his mouth.

The neo-liberal regime has been a disaster for the ordinary people of Ibero-America. It was that disaster which was the subject of protest and condemnation from presidents Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Hugo Chavez, at the Ibero American Summit late last summer. Of course, what the US mudia reported on was the King's Short Fuse... The dismal reality of so-called "free market" plunder was buried under a ton of titillation.

The Spew York Times intones loftily that Hugo Chavez's reforms lack transparency. But when it comes to reporting transparently on the effects of NAFTA on Mexico, the Times suddenly acquires a penchant for black cloth shrouds, and now reports (matter of factly and as if it were obvious why) that Hispanics Luv Hillary.

Putting aside the Elian-obsessed, there is absolutely no reason why any Hispanic should react to the Clintons with anything other than nausea. They are whores to a regimen which has brought misery on a macro-scale to ordinary people on both sides of the border.

But every whore has his and her puto vendido... lamaculo de mierda, joto político, maricon wannabe, like the Hispanic DNC douchebags and party leadership in California... the Art Torreses, Fabian Nuñezes, Villraigosas, and host of other crypto-Republican Taco Bell Chicanos that support insurance company provided health "care" and Hillary. Sois escoria. Me dais asco, pinche panda de Malinches...

On the issues, Obama is not that much better than Clinton. His main advantage is that he might be whereas we know how little a Clinton will do for ordinary people. But whatever Obama's defects might be, they are not sufficient to warrant affirmative support for the Clintons who have done nothing for Hispanics north or south of the border.

©Barfo, 2008

Links to article by David Bacon
www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080806P.shtml
www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/5.09/990429-miners.html
www.thenation.com/doc/20080211/bacon

Ridet et Moritur

2008-01-31T10:43:00.000-08:00

It was said of Rome, that she “laughed and died”. It will be said of us as well. But at least, from a certain point of view, it will be amusant. US politics has become a total farce.

Wikipedia (yes, I rely on Wiki!) defines “farce” as “a comedy ... which aims to entertain the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include sexual innuendo and word play, and a fast paced plot whose speed usually increases, culminating in an ending which often involves an elaborate chase scene. Farce is also characterized by physical humour, the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense,....”

Uh....

Lessee here.... the aspirants for Emperor have included a senator turned impersonator who runs on his record as tv prosecutor; a real-time prosecutor who runs away from his record as an adulterer, mafia pimp and real-time cross dresser; a kiddie bomber turned torture victim whose damaged psyche promises to keep the country embroiled in a 100 year war aimed at ferreting out a quasi mythological figure of evil; and lastly, a bible thumper and a Mormon Savant... Where, oh where is Moliere when we need him?

On the Demorat side we’ve had a crowd of mediocrities, the chief ones of which is a lacquered matrioshka doll whose revealed and uncovered political positions remain the same: progressively bigger versions of herself. While matrioshka jets around the country telling Arkansas, Iowa, Georgia, Florida, and Nevada how “thrilled” she is to “be here” (Hi there!!!) she is trailed by her bully boy hubbie who has given off intoning lachrymose renditions of Amazing Grace in favor of negro-bating and snarling “you, get out of here” to questioners at public meetings.

This duo is followed by another -- for Tintin buffs, the American version of Thompson and Thomson (Dupond et Dupont) -- a black man peddling “change” trailed by a white suthner’ peddlin’ “hope”. Were they to run on a ticket, the platform would undoubtedly be: It’s Time for a Change Hope is on the Way. By all accounts, prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary has a better record of effective relief.

To be effective, every farce needs just a hint of reality missed, which in this case is provided by a reactionary who wants to return to the statu quo ante 1812 and a jug eared dwarf married to a towering stunner, who wants to move the country forward (while, perhaps, communicating with alternative life forms from outer space).

If tragedy can be enveloped within farce it lies in the fact that contradictions like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich represent what paradoxically enough needs to be done. The United States, needs to return to its constitutional foundations, reviving its spirit of laissez-aller, while at the same renouncing laissez faire and moving forward toward social-democracy.

For those not blessed with French, the two laissez’s are not the same. The first refers to a spirit of live-and-let live and to a concept of the State that does not look too hard at individuals, does not probe into their lives and respects their privacy even if it leads to some minor social deviances and sloppiness around the edges. In every day American life, this spirit once led to an easiness not found anywhere else in the world. You could get a drivers license simply by passing a test and telling the clerk who you were. You could get into the country simply by knowing where the Orioles came from and you were a shoe-in, if you said that you had gone to Grover Cleveland High... because God knows only Americans could come up with something like that. Juridically, this concept of laissez aller was enshrined in the first four articles of the Bill of Rights and, most practically, in the Fourth Amendment. As Burke put it, howsoever drafty and humble the abode, “all the Kings horse and all the King’s men dare not cross the threshold!”

But there is a difference betting “letting him be” and “letting them do”. The line may be imprecise and shiftable, since all being involves some doing and all doing involves some being. But basically, we all know what it looks like when some asshole is going on a rampage that doesn’t do the public much good. Incredibly enough laissez faire became the prevailing political philosophy --at least the "resounding cymbal -- of the 19th century. This doctrine of irresponsibility (for that is what is at issue) took hold precisely on account of a confusion and equivocation between individual aller and corporate faire. This confusion lives on today, in such absurd notions as “our family budget is just a smaller version of GM’s”. Well... it’s true, both use math... but that really isn’t the point.

From this equivocation, a further petard sprung up; namely, the propaganda that pursuit of private interests promotes social good: “What’s good for me, is good for you, Jack; have faith.” This notion was no more than a perversion of altruism. It is one thing to say, as the ancient Romans did by way of greeting, si vales valeo (if you are well, I am well); it is a moral distortion to invert the greeting into si valeo, vales.

Nevertheless, this perversion became the foundation stone of capitalist ideology. It had a false and seeming corroboration so long as the irresponsible party was wasteful enough to leave juicy scraps all about making it appear that the proposition was true. But it was “true” only so long as there could be an abundance of waste... waste that inevitably some poor, oppressed peon in one of them inferior undeveloped countries paid for with sweat and a ruined life devoid of anything but underpaid labour.

Most of the world gave up on this nonsense by 1880. By then, even Bismarck caught on which is why he coopted huge chunks of the socialist platform from Ferdinand Lasalle. Historically viewed fascism is the progression past capitalism. From the Communist perspective, it was “capitalism in its last stages” From the fascist perspective it was “the first stage of the post-capitalist “third way”). To put it very simply (in what is after all an essay on farce), the argument between the two sides was over intent and purpose but neither side disputed the structural character of a "regulated economy". Only the imbeciles and morons in post-war/pee-cee political science departments could elaborate the manichean fairy tale that has become the accepted view of “fascism”.

The difference between what the French called the "radical right" and social democracy was simply the degree of laissez aller that each was willing to allow. Both philosophies accepted private enterprise as an engine of production. Both put limits on laissez-faire. Both fascism and social democracy regulated capitalism to insure that it behaved more or less responsibly. The difference basically boiled down to tolerance. Historically, speaking the European fascist movements encompassed racial, religious, cultural and geo-political aims in addition to the central socio-economic one; and this endeavor to “regulate” these other issues is what gave fascism its totalitarian taint.

To give a simple and minimally controversial example, fascist programs to get rid of “degenerate art” and to “restore decency” to culture were in fact an unnecessary side issue to the underlying restructuring of political-economy. Communism also embarked on these side dish crusades, and this coincidence on irrelevancies has led bimbos in America to argue that communism and fascism were “the same”. They were not.

Under FDR, the United States too became a fascist country. Anyone who does not understand that should start up his or her own campaign for president. The underlying proposition of the so-called New Deal was that the “the economy needed to be regulated”. Duh. And so fifty years after Bismarck, the ever avant garde United States came up with a rudimentary social security program.

In some ways, US fascism was the worst of the lot. There is no question that its main target was to protect and promote capitalism. Roosevelt made this very clear in a speech to preppies in which he avowed his love of bacon, eggs and the “capitalistic system.” Whereas, in European countries fascism was avowedly undertaken for the good of “the State” the “Das Volk” the La Nación Una y Grande... in the US it was undertaken to salvage “the system” i.e. capitalism. It was a subtle but important distinction.

Leftist orthodoxy would have it that fascism was just a razzle-dazzle capitalist "trick" on labor. In my view, that is an incorrect oversimplification which overlooks the contradictions inherent in any attempted synthesis of opposites. Bismarck's trenchant remark about assuming responsibility for the "welfare" of the "labour soldier" bespoke the dualism involved.

Under the European fascist model, state intervention in the economy was avowedly undertaken for the direct benefit of ordinary people and in some not insignificant respects this was in fact the case. The underlying notion was that business owed and the worker had a social right to a certain standard of living. Under the Rooseveltian model, intervention was undertaken for the direct benefit of the “business community,” and "the flow of interstate commerce" in the belief that that would indirectly benefit the public in general. In other words, the Rooseveltian model did not depart one iota from the trickle down theory. For that reason, and with good reason, some commentators have called it National Capitalism.

The virtue of American Fascism Lite was that whatever it did to regulate the faire of the matter, it left largely unregulated, the aller of life. The cruel irony is that since the 1960’s , America’s pursuit of multi-cultural, multi gender, political correctness has ended up making it more fascistic by attempting a totalist management of culture and social mores while leaving an essentially 19th century political economy intact.

A comparison between the United States and Germany is once again illustrative. No one can doubt that the current regime in Germany is anti-Nazi. But to be “anti-Nazi” can also simply be to be Nazi in reverse. The facts bear this out. The German government today criminalizes and sends people to jail for invoking illicit symbols, illegal ideas, impermissible beliefs. Just as Goebbels tried to purge the German language of “non-Germanic” words (mandating haarschneider versus friseur) so today German wort-leiters are purging the language of words that have “unsavory” connotations such as “degenerate” and “lager”. Why? Well, because Nazis used them.

Of course, this “culture management” is totalitarian in the truest and worst way. But, in Germany, it takes place on top of a system that actually does protect and deliver social benefits to ordinary people. The fascio/social democratic economic foundation remains in place. In the United States there is no foundation to speak of. What little there was has been pulverized by the Reagan - Bush - Clinton - Bush regimes. What we are left with is political and cultural fascism without even the economic benefits -- in other words Police State Capitalism.

This then, in summary form, is the situation in its historical context. Once the context is grasped correctly and shorn of the digressive nonsense and ignorance that passes for American political criticism, it can be seen how and why the Ron and Dennis Show embodied the pathetic contradictions of our current in extremis.

Ron Paul is completely correct in advocating a political return to constitutional laissez aller. But he is completely wrong in thinking that this can be accomplished without regulating the corporate beast. In fact, the corporate beast did not exist in 1789, and cannot under any stretch of sophistry be brought within any libertarian framework of an “original intent”.

Similarly, Dennis Kucinich is completely correct in his advocacy of social welfare and environmental protection programs. But he is equally wrong to the extent that he promotes the jumbalaya of political correctness. Nothing has brought the putative “left” into more contempt in the public’s mind than its essentially fascistic drum beating on cultural and personal issues.

At this juncture in history, the only way out of the morass is to pull these contradictory poles into synthesis. The corporate mechanism will not be abolished in our lifetimes, but it can and should be brought under strict regulation directly for the public good. Society must emphatically reject the idea that humans, wildlife and God’s creation exist for the plunder and profit of corporations and an excrescent plutocratic elite. In tandem it must be recognized that the private sector has no role in certain public endeavors, such as health care. This synthesis, forms the structure of the so-called the “mixed economies” -- which entailed laissez faire at primitive economic levels, fascistic regulation in the middle, and outright socialistic control of certain national resources and enterprises. Broadly speaking this was the “state-socialism / social-democratic” system adopted in Europe in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It needs to be adopted in the United States.

A move to such a system is not a simple flip of the coin. Individualist libertarianism and state-socialism are, after all, opposites. The "move" becomes a question of adulterations. For example, in pure Madisonian liberalism, the state has no business knowing if you have hemmorhoids whereas in a system where the state provides health care the question shifts to limits on what can be done with that information. There would be plenty of practical issues to argue over were US social policies to undertake a move into the late 19th century.

Rather than debating such pragmatic and structural questions, the farce that passes for “democracy” in the United States makes Carnival in Rio look like a sober academic discussion. Of course, this farce could not more delight the putrescent scum that control the US media, which fills the airwaves and, thus the empty space in millions of crania, with total nonsense and absurdities. In fact, they have done such a good job in hollowing out what passes for the American brain, that The People themselves DEMAND NONSENSE.

For decades, true political questions and discourse have been dragged through muck and mud of racio-gender-faith issues to the detriment of any serious political or economic thought. It is not that any one of these “issues” is not important to the interested persons or groups, it is rather that, in the scheme things, they are not issues that relate to the whole. Although they have filled the national airwaves they are not truly national issues.... unless, of course, one suffers from Bentham’s Dementia.

Thus considered, the faux left is equally as idiotic as the neo Christian right and between the two of them they have shredded politics to fragmented tatters. And when that gets old there is always the tested standby of racism wrapped in righteousness, which in today's incarnation is blaming Mexican "illegals" for our self-inflicted woes. All of this suits our true rulers who would have us all chase after bugaboos forever rather than come anywhere close to the word “class”.

As a result, the farce will continue. Energy and vapour will be expended in copious amounts on such stupidities as Hillary the Woman versus Obama the Black, when any damn fool can see that neither is either. Pundits will punditize on whether “Hope” is more of an appealing political (sic) issue than “Bringing America Home” or “Fighting Terrorism Wherever it Takes Us” or “Putting the God back into the Budget.”

In the end, no one will shed tears for us, anymore than they shed tears for the enervated and degenerate Romans. Hilarity will reign until the concluding mad “chase scene” when the US economy falls on all concerned, and the Rulers of the World are left bereft, standing next to their rusting SUVs and squabbling over turnips.

Ridet et moritur.

©Barfo, 2008

Whoops

2008-01-28T22:45:00.000-08:00

I did not watch the State of the Union Address because I don't need a Talking Turd to tell me what the state of the Union is. Anyone who hasn't figured that out should put an ad in the Pet Rock Personals section of his local paper.

State of the Union speeches aren't very important anyway. Originally conceived as a kind of accountability-accounting of national accounts, it became in the last hundred years or so a form of political tone setting -- somewhat like the Queen's Speech, only delivered by boors.

There is nothing particularly wrong with political toning. In fact, it does serve to identify the particular obsession, lunacy or idiocy that animates a Chief Magistrate. The Caesars engaged in political toning, only they were much more succinct and graphic about it. Upon acceding to the imperial curule, they would "indicate" a tutelary deity. When the Empire was beset by economic difficulties and lots of illegal immigration by Uncouth Blonds, Diocletian, not surprisingly, chose Hercules as his Guiding Light or Club as the case might be. Nero, chose pretty boy Apollo and, if I am not mistaken, Julius Gaius chose Venus. Everyone one knows the story about how Constantine changed tutelary deities in mid-battle, as a result of which we all now eat the Bread of Christ in lieu of Mithra's Pomegranate or whatever his holy food was. Problems only arose when emperors "indicated" that they were their own tutelary deity ... as when Caligula became convinced that he was the very incarnation of Zeus. Otherwise, it was an efficient "political toning" system that saved a lot shouting from the Rostra. Alas, this system would hardly work in the United States. Given that all our Chief Magistrates have chosen to accept Jesus as their titular god.

For all that, getting a general indication of a president's "agenda" for the year wasn't particularly obnoxious either. However, beginning with Reagan, the State of the Union became the occasion for a lot of cheap and meaningless rabble-rousing. It was then, that I first noticed how the flotsam in Congress passed over from applauding to whooping and whistling. And not only when Reagan fed them some ear-candy, but even as He walked into The Well. "This is undignified," I thought.

Ever since then the State of the Union Address has gotten progressively more vulgar, loud, crude, and just plain hysterical. It has become, in fact, an Orwellian Hour of Adulation -- a mindless orgy of Whoops, Yelps, Shrieking and Foot Stompings and Furious Clapping. Apes and Chimps on a rampage.

Ever haling proudly, we broadcast this disgrace throughtout the world, convinced that this proves to all the alien unfortunates what a "vibrant democracy" we have. What it in fact shows, is that our Congress has surpassed the Roman Senate in degenerate, stupid, mindless, adulation of tyrants. As Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush walk down the aisle these moronic sychophants stumble over one another to reach out for a handshake or even a look or a smile in their direction. And so I was not surprised when a friend called to say that during the Talking Turd's latest address the congressoids were all but standing chairs.

Ah! This is terrible! Our representatives reduced to standing on chairs to express the legislative ecstasy. We need to pass a bill to authorize the installation of rings, swings and trampolines. Democracy demands no less.

©Barfo, 2008

The Times Makes Light of Desperation

2008-01-25T20:17:00.000-08:00

The [N]ew York Times continued it’s scumbag reporting on Gaza with an article by Steven Erlanger which began by stating that Egypt had moved to “restore” its border with Gaza after “Palestinians used a bulldozer to knock down another portion of the wall, originally built by Israel just inside Gaza, to continue their shopping spree.”

Shopping spree??? SHOPPING SPREE??? Is that what douchebag Erlanger thinks you do when you are starving? Are we to suppose that Erlanger would characterize 12 year old “ghetto rats” who “breached” the “security barrier” around the “Jew-Enclave” of Warsaw or Lodz as going on a “shopping spree” for potatoes? Oh... I forgot...those shoppers were Innocent Jews, these untermenschen are filthy Arabs.

Actually there is no difference. Cutting off heat in the winter, cutting off electricity and water, restricting medical supplies and reducing food rations to just above starvation is a crime against humanity -- any humanity -- and that includes anyone. Period. Erlanger’s quip about “shopping spree” was just the sort of cynical, contemptuous, humour one might have expected from a morally dead, SS anti-semite.

Let’s get certain facts straight. Facts that even the Spew York Times can’t quite bury. As commented on this blog in October (http://barfos.blogspot.com/2007/10/let-them-light-candles.html ), the initial “sealing off” of Gaza did not just involve electricity blackouts but extended to food. Even innocent Israel didn’t deny it, proving its magnanimity by saying it would “allow in the minimum amount of food and medicines necessary to avoid a humanitarian crisis”

Avoid a crisis? How many calories does that require? 2,000? 1600 Non-German Rations? A “Jew Ration” of 800? It’s all so deja jew -- aint that right Stevie?

The US press, which gives comfortable berth to scrivner punks like Erlanger, has consistently sought to sanitize Israel’s crimes under international law and has become a mere fart horn for the Israeli Thug State. It glosses over Israel’s illegal acts, it consistently harps (in misleadingly vague terms) about so-called “missle attacks on Israel” and routinely refers to the blockade of Gaza as involving mere “power cuts”. Typically enough Erlanger’s spew talked about “the economic squeeze on Hamas, which intensified last week when Israel decided to cut off shipments into Gaza, including fuel for the local power plant, in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.” Ah.... well then... it’s not so bad... It’s just an “economic squeeze” on "Hamas" in an ever so restrained response against TERRORIST ROCKET attacks on Israel.

The whole world except the spew fed chicken-public in the US understands that Israel is seeking to “degrade” the quality of life of Gazans to sub-basic levels.

As reported by the Guardian “Gaza goes hungry as Israeli sanctions bite”

“http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2189543,00.html

“According to a World Bank report issued last month: "Gaza's economic backbone and private sector vitality risks collapse if the current situation ... continues." The report states that 90% of Gaza's industrial production has ceased and agricultural output has fallen by 50% in 2007

“The Israeli sanctions are affecting every level of Gazan society. Farmers have been particularly hard hit as they have been barred from exporting their products and denied pesticides and fertiliser by Israel, which makes it impossible to plant for next year

“Spare parts for water pumps and other equipment are also barred

“It is reducing the amount of food going into Gaza every week as it tries to exert more pressure on the population to bring about political change.”

Let me repeat that for shitheads like Erlanger... Thug Staat Israel is:

REDUCING THE AMOUNT OF FOOD .... in order to EXERT MORE PRESSURE ON THE POPULATION. ....

In order for “pressure” to work it has to hurt. After all, no one was pressured into making concessions by baskets of brioche. And when reduced amounts of food “hurt” we call it hunger and starvation. In other words, Israel is engaged in precisely what international forbids: the collective starving of civilians in order to get them to surrender, or otherwise do what you want. It’s kinda like “area bombing”.

Back last Fall, the International Herald Tribune reported:

"The international aid group Oxfam International has warned that 225,000 Gazans could soon suffer from inadequate water supplies because of the fuel shortage, raising concerns for public health.

"With exports and most imports halted, factories have closed, construction has halted and store shelves are empty. Government officials believe the poverty rate has jumped to 75 percent, up from 65 percent from last summer."

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8618265

Let me repeat that for Spew York Times douchebags like Erlanger

SUFFER FROM INADEQUATE WATER SUPPLIES / STORE SHELVES ARE EMPTY

No doubt Erlanger, stuffed and slothed by post-war fats thinks that this refers to a run on truffles at Bloomies. Not.

Just this past week, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, condemned the crisis Israel had instigated in Gaza, stating that “If this situation endures, the closure will also cause further shortages of food, medical and relief items in the Gaza Strip,” He called on Israel to “refrain from actions that will harm the well-being of the general civilian population in Gaza.”

FURTHER SHORTAGES OF FOOD.... got that Steve?

As Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, insisted that Gazans were starving, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, John Holmes, sounded the alarm about the impact of the closure of crossing points on the already “extremely worrying and fragile” humanitarian situation in Gaza. The crossings are “the lifeline for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and other goods into Gaza,” Holmes said, and the closure will result in even greater shortages of food items, medical goods, among other relief supplies and basic daily necessities.

But in what surely qualifies for a cameo scene in one of the genocide soaps Hollywood churns out, the Guardian reported that

“The Israeli army is micro-managing the sanctions to ensure that it cannot be accused of starving Gaza. In a daily communique to international organisations, the army proclaims: "No Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip - No Hunger in the Palestinian Territories", before it lists the number of days of food it estimates that Gaza has."

Ah yes:

Fellcome tzu Theresienstadt, vhere you fill bee vell cared for. Zer is no starvation in Theresienstadt. You fill be vell cared for... Und efry one vill receive FULL RATZIONS , as ordered by zee Reich Gofernment!!

As the Guardian noted,

"But dry statistics hide thousands of stories of misery."

While the humanitarian Israeli Army is “managing” the situation to insure -- most critically -- that it can’t be accused of what it is doing to bring stomach pressure to bear, David Welch, one of the pieces of shit that have gotten stuck into the US Government, blamed the “border crossings” on Hamas’s `illegal actions in Gaza, their unwillingness to behave in a responsible manner.”

Wringing its hands and joining in the woe-fest, Israel's government said it was concerned that militants would use the breach in the border fence to bring arms and terrorists into Gaza. “We have real concerns that they can now freely smuggle explosives, missiles and people into Gaza, which makes an already bad situation even worse,'' Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aryeh Mekel “Egypt should take care of the problem.''

The hypocrisy is beyond belief but not beyond outrage. Jesus forgave almost every sin... but hypocrisy infuriated even him.

Conflict and enmity are lamentable facts of human existence. That Jews and Arabs are at war in Palestine is one thing. But, if we have learned anything, in 2000 years of Christian Civilization it is that we can at least seek to mitigate the harm we inflict on civilians and avoid cruel and unusual punishments on even our enemies. Too often the restraint that distinguishes civilization from barbarism has been cast aside, as by Allied terror bombing of German cities and German ethnic cleansing of the so-called eastern territories. If there is a paradigm of what ought not to be done, it is the “rations reduction” of civilians trapped behind walled enclosures. If Israel doesn’t understand that then, it “has remembered everything and learned nothing.”

©Barfo, 2008

http://cghs.dadeschools.net/ib_holocaust2001/Ghettoes/diet/diet.htm
http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/AxisRule1944-2.htm#Feeding

ElagabaBush goes to the Holy Land.

2008-01-15T19:40:00.000-08:00

In the annals of imperial demise there is always a point at which farce begins to overtake tragedy. What could be more inane than the image of Romulus Augustulus training his pet-chickens as the 1000 year empire he nominally headed crumbled into irrelevance at Odovacer’s feet?

But even before that farcical last act, the Roman Empire was, with ever greater frequency, slipping into and out of folly. Hardly less inane than l’empereur des poules, was the emperor Elagabalus who quite literally backed his rump onto his throne as he grovelled before a huge black phallus dragged through the streets of Rome.

For some reason, the imperial Bimbo’s trip to the Middle East makes one think of Elagabalus... or maybe Romulus Augustulus... or maybe just one of the last idiot Merovignian kings of France.

Amid the now familiar panoply of advance teams, jumbo jets, back up jets, decoys, limo-transports, post-teams, legions of guards, legions of walkie-talkies and legions of undercover agents whispering into felafels, Bush flew to the Holy Land to bring peace to the Middle East in his term. Anyone who believes this nonesense ought to be committed to wherever they sent Louis le Fou. In fact, anyone who reports this nonesense with a straight face ought to be shot pro bono publico.

Despite the trappings, Bush’s lap dog status was revealed and underscored by the lavish and obsequious flattery with which Olmert all but smothered his guest. The more Olmert praised and thanked Bush the more it become obvious that he was desperately trying to cover the fact that it was he who dictated what’s what to the object of his flattery. But the facts betrayed the game. Every item and condition and limitation on the Israeli agenda ended up getting mouthed by Bush, so that despite the imperial fol de rol, Bush played Blair to Olmert’s Bush.

(By the way.... where was Tony ....? Hadn’t he been given some very important mission to bring peace to Palestine?)

Who knows.... In any case, the fact is that peace will not be brought to the Middle East, nor less to the Holy Land, by Bush or by any US president so long as the United States continues to let AIPAC and Israel dictate policy. In addition to bankrolling Israel’s defense, the US all but acts as apologist and agent for Israel in the Security Council. Bush is the most blindly pro-Israel president ever and has since endorsed the ghetto-ization of the West Bank. Behind Bush’s so called “push for peace” is a de facto aquiesence in the long term Israeli push for colonization. It doesn’t get simpler or truer than that.

Now, in addition to steppinfechin’ Israel’s “domestic” policies, Bimbush let it be known that he was hop to-ing Israel’s regional policies. It would be comedic were it not so fraught with direful potential for human misery. As Bush thundered from the parapets of Jerusalem against Iran for continuing with its nuclear energy program, the president’s erstwhile ami du jour, Nicky Sarko, was in the United Arab Emirates firming up a deal to sell them the technology and where-withall to build their own nucular energy plants. Of course not a peep from the US mudia.

Again, hardly a peep from the US mudia or congressional AIPACoids as Israel tested a long range (4,500 km) nuke-capable missile within but days after Bush blasted Iran for destabilizing the region and exhorted his Arab hosts to join in the crusade (?) against the Infidel --X that -- Shiite Persian. All that was needed to round out the farce was for Bush to urge his oil-pals to recall their heroic ancestors at Thermopylae.

Rather than report on the fundamental contradictions underlying ElagabaBush’s sejour in the Near East, worthies such as the New York Times dedicated full story coverage to the peregrine aspects of the imperial tour, reporting in all but hushed tones that, after listening to a cantor sing prayers for the dead, Bush emerged from Israel’s Genocide Memorial with tears in his eyes asking mommy Rice why we hadn’t “bombed Auschwitz.” The Times then went on to report on Bush’s wide eyed pilgrimage (his word) to the Sea of Galilee. Yawn.

In an apparent effort to make up for lack of reportorial substance, the Times hired smirking Bill Kristol as a resident pontificator. But none of this did much to clue in the US chicken-public, which was by and large (plus ça change) left to draw the conclusion that their leader was making a last, if desperate, effort to bring peace to those people over there. As reported by Reuters, the Arab press saw it all quite differently:

The Lebanese daily As-Safir: :

"The explicit aim of the lame duck visit to the region is to foster hatred for Iran among Arab countries ... and to urge them to stand together with Israel against what the American president calls 'terrorism' -- as if there was anything more dangerous for the region than Israeli terrorism."

United Arab Emirates daily Khaleej Times:

"Just as the Gulf countries have healthy relations with the West, including the US, they also have historical, cultural and economic ties with Iran. The UAE happens to be Iran's biggest trading partner. This is why the UAE and other Gulf countries wouldn't want any more confrontation and conflict between the US and Iran."

The Syrian daily As-Sawra :

"This is a new chapter in the series of lies that has characterized the Bush administration. He wants us to believe that he seeks peace and that Iran, and not Israel, is the danger. America does not want peace for the Arabs, but rather their surrender. It doesn't seek democracy but the control of the whole region. "

The Cairo weekly Al-Ahram :

"The positions Bush expressed in interviews with major Israeli television channels and newspapers last Friday are even more shocking than Israeli actions on the eve of his visit. They mark a clear regression from the stances Bush declared in his opening speech at the Annapolis meeting."

Such opinions do not come from the “terrorist” presses of Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood, but from established and government-allowed papers. The palpable anger and disgust must thus be viewed as semi-official if not completely official reactions. But the US chicken-public will hear little of that. What they will hear is arguments from the likes of smirking Billy Kristol and the scrivener drones in Albrecht’s Enterprise Institute, to the effect that this rag-head hostility is all the more reason why we should hug up and hold tight with “our only ally” Israel.

And the sad thing is that most of the chicken-public will believe it and none of the cowards in Congress will gainsay it until lurching from folly to disaster to catastrophe the US finally goes the way of Romulus Augustulus.

©Barfo, 2008

Neo Blasphemy

2007-11-21T17:08:00.000-08:00

With a wizardry befitting medieval alchemy, Jewish and Zionist groups have long labored to turn criticism of anything jewish or zionist into a sign of anti-semitism, using the shrill cry of “persecution!” to silence political opposition and even cultural preferences.

And so, one had to reach for the salt, when Haaretz reported (18 XI 07) that Jewish groups in Holland had monitored a 64% rise in anti semitic “attacks”. The article explained that of the 261 “attacks” six or seven involved actual violence. According to the group’s report, the “The research focused only on unmistakably anti-Semitic incidents and remarks.” However, included in “unmistakably” was mail, addressed to Jewish groups, that “accused them of acting like Nazis because of Israel's actions.” In that case, a spokesman said, “we considered these mails to be anti-Semitic.”

The unstated premise of this demonology is that Jews are incapable of acting like Nazis -- which is why saying that they do can only be regarded (so it is said) as an unfounded insult inspired by personal hatred. The theological kernel in the premise is thus that Nazis are that than which nothing more evil can be conceived -- i.e. they be the deebils!

Of course, this is utter nonsense. A more scientific appraisal would begin with the fact that Germans and Jews, cowboys and indians are, like the rest of us, human beings, everyone of whom is capable of both good and evil. As such, inter-group behavioral comparisons are entirely reasonable. The comparison between Nazi and Zionist pseudo racial ideologies, has long been noted. It is hardly difficult to fathom. Both ideologies aimed to preserve a given ethno-cultural identity while annexing territory and “segregating out” the local population. The rhetoric used by both ideologies has at times been indistinguishable.

“The source of national feeling ...lies in a man's blood ...in his racio-physico type and in that alone. ...For that reason we do not believe in spiritual assimilation. It is inconceivable, from the physical point of view, that a Jew born to a family of pure Jewish blood can become adapted to the spiritual outlook of a German or a Frenchman.”

Hitler? Nein. Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the founders of zionism. (Iron Wall, (1925).) Jabotinsky founded that current of zionism whose political descendant today is represented by the Likud Party. Jabotinsky was equally blunt about the “colonization” of Palestine,

“All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy.” (Op. cit.)

It hardly requires a great mental exertion to see the evident similarities. On the contrary, what requires exertion is the hypocrisy and obscurantism which currently passes for zionist apologetics.

Of course, there is no single variant of zionism just as there was no single variant of national socialism. Political movements are by nature created by a consensus that embraces even inconsistent policies under one umbrella. On the other hand, there is always the pudding ... the net outcome on the ground, so to speak. And it is quite legitimate to compare the Nazi and Israeli puddings on the ground.

On those occasions when Israel’s avid supporters leave off name calling and join the issue on the merits, they invariably point to the “fact” that Israel has not “gassed six million Palestinians in factories of death.” This is said in such tones as to indicate that the speaker believes it to be the piece de difference. Q.E.D. Ergo non nobis and it is “pure” anti-semitism to “even attempt” to make the comparison. But to assert as much is simply to state the demonological premise in another fashion. If “gassing six millions in factories of death” is the touchstone, then comparison is a fortiori impossible.

However, it is not “gassing” that’s the key, but policies of oppression including “genocide.” Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jew who coined the word “genocide” and who made a detailed study of Nazi policies in the occupied territories never mentioned “gassing.” In his view, mass murder was only one of several different types of graduated policies which comprised genocide. Equally important and often-times as effective were: economic embargoes, cultural embarrassments, denial of essential social services, segregations and starvation. In fact, untold millions died of death-through-labor in Stalinist work-camps; and such a fatally punitive regimen when applied to a single ethnic group would count as genocide just as much (albeit with infinitely more personal pain and suffering along the way) as shooting and gassing.

Far from being “beyond the pale” comparing historical facts on the ground -- let the pudding fall where it may -- is the only way to learn from history. Anything else is touhou bouhou.

Stupidly enough, there are those who use the “fascist” and “nazi” as an epithet signifying some ill-defined form of police state or oppressiveness. Used as such, the term reflects that the speaker has perceived that one party has his boot on the neck of the other. While that perception may not be articulated in detail or with the great learning, for all that it is not necessarily inaccurate. No less than apes and dogs detect injustice even if they can’t explain it very well. A scientific or Socratic approach would be to elicit, step by step, what it is the speaker means to say and to test it for veracity.

But that is not what the zionist cabals are about. What they are about is stifling debate and intimidating criticism. In a recent interview given to Wajahat Ali, Norman Finklestein put it thus,

“Whenever Israel comes under international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict diplomatically or on account of its human rights violations, it revives the extravaganza called The New Anti-Semitism. In 1974 the Anti-Defamation League, an Israel lobby group in the U.S., put out a book called The New Anti-Semitism and in 1981 it put out another book called The Real Anti-Semitism. Right after the new intifada began, the Israel lobby again started with The New Anti-Semitism. The purposes of this agitprop are pretty obvious: to delegitimize all criticism of Israel as motivated by anti-Semitism and to turn the perpetrators into the victims. It seems to have less effect in recent years due to overuse: once you start calling Jimmy Carter an anti-Semite, people really begin to wonder.”

Yes... even Man eventually begins to wonder.

©Barfo, 2007

Finklestein Interview
http://www.counterpunch.org/ali11202007.html

Jabotinsky quotes, cited in Leni Brenner “Zionism in the Age of Dictators” (1983)
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm
http://aaargh-international.org

Between the Gringo & the Gachupin

2007-11-10T22:45:00.000-08:00

It was a sobering if not unforeseeable denouement from the Spirit of Salamanca where in 2005 Latin American leaders united in a spontaneous show of gratitude for the tireless efforts of King Juan Carlos to promote Ibero-American cooperation. Now, two years later, in Santiago, Chile, at the annual summit of Hispanic nations, an exasperated monarch told Hugo Chavez to shut up, and shortly thereafter walked out of he summit’s plenary session to underscore his royal displeasure at criticism of Spanish economic policies in the region.

Needless to say, the neo-liberal media around the world was all a-blast and a-blather with headlines El Rey espetó a Chavez: Por qué no te callas?” It was only a matter of time before Fox or the Daily News would screech: King to Hugo: Shut Up! The monarch’s language was indeed strong. Spitting out a question without using the deferential subjunctive was a notch above the barrack bark of command. Anglo-Americans who care little about Ibero-America and know even less could easily be persuaded that nasty Hugo at last got his well deserved comeupance. Don’t cry for Venezuela... if the full-of-trouble half-breed gets what’s coming

But yesterday’s events can only be understood in their historical context; and for those minimally acquainted with the disaster and tragedy of Spanish and American history, it was a depressing state of affairs.

From the outset, the relationship between Spain and the AmerIndian World was problematic and paradoxical, to say the least. The Iberian conquest of las Américas was a necessary historical event. Simply put, it is a worse than absurd fantasy to maintain that half the world should have stayed at home for 3000 years until the other half made it from stone age to iron age and could deal on equal footing. Even the Indians understood the inscrutable necessity which drove Spaniards to their shores, which is why, knowing full well otherwise, they wrote apologetically that they had thought Cortez was a god.

Spanish rule brought a necessary technological development and cultural amalgamation to the new world. While these changes partially destroyed the indigenous cultures, they also gave painful birth to new hybrid customs and awarenesses which are marvelous in their own right.

But Spanish rule also brought voracious economic exploitation and political discrimination. This latter was not confined to the effective exclusion of the Indian; it included as well a de jure discrimination against native born Spaniards, or criollos as they were known. Spain adopted a mercantalist policy whereby the the colonies in their social and economic entirety existed as the boiler room for the Spanish Ship of Empire. As in the English Colonies, such policies did much to spur the spirit of resentment and revolt.

However, contrary to nationalist myths, the collapse of the Spanish Empire was not brought about by American independence movements -- by the Bolivarian Revolution, the Argentine uprising and the Mexican War of Independence. Rather it was the collapse of Empire that allowed and indeed necessitated the independence of the American states. The political map of Latin America -- what Ché called “divisiones inciertas e ilusorias” -- was not so much the product of genuine grass-roots movements but simply chunks of empire fallen to pieces. What brought the Spanish Empire to its end was a Bonapartist invasion of Spain following on 200 years of Anglo-American piracy and subversion.

The opening salvo in this assault was Cromwell’s propagation of the Black Legend, a spurious and sado-masochistic libel of Spanish cruelty published under the title of The Tears of the Indians and which was used as justification for the “liberation” of Jamaica. Once liberated, the English promptly imported 500,000 slaves, evidently not giving much of a rats ass about the Tears of the Africans.

But the propaganda of Belgian babies roasted on bayonetes only goes so far. To undo an empire, an ideology is needed. This was found in the liberal mantra of “free markets” and “free trade.” Washed of its perfume, what the ideology came down to was a demand to poach on what Spain felt was hers. An entré. A fair slice of the pie. A bite at the apple. Share a bit of what’s yours Jack, it’s only right.

Needless to say, there were those in the colonies -- mostly criollos -- who could not have agreed more. These liberales -- like liberals everywhere -- embellished it all with copious Rouseauian and Jeffersonian flourishes -- but the bottom line was basically simple. If, say, you owned a ranch that produced 1,000 hides a year, you could make more money selling them on the free global market than you could paying the state monopoly prices dictated by privileged merchants in Seville.

Even worse than the merchant-guilds of Seville were the gachupines -- old country Spaniards who were granted the cream off the top. Armed with royal licenses and patents, they would arrive in the New World, make a killing and return home with a new or refurbished title. To the Indian, it is fair to say, old- or new- world Spaniard was a distinction without a difference. But to the mestizos and criollos, these peninsular Spaniards were loathed for their rapaciousness and for that exquisite arrogance of which only the Spanish are capable. Death to the Gachupines became the battle cry of a hemisphere.

As much as the hammer of Bonapart’s regiments, Liberalism was the wedge that shattered the Spanish Empire which became the felled beast and ravaged prey of English and American pirates, smugglers and carpet-baggers allied with tin-pot “local liberators” and oligarchs in the host lands.

In truth, Hispanic America had simply traded one predator for another. For the next 100 years, both Spain and her once glorious colonies slid into a century of what might be called cold anarchy -- a state of perpetual political unrest and uncertainty whose only beneficiaries were foreign investors and their local presta-nombres (name-lenders), venda-patrias (country-sellers) and oligarchs. The Anglos had won at last and las Américas became the economic colony of the Brits and the Americans with supporting roles by the Dutch and the French.

The acrimoniousness that followed in the wake of “collapse and independence” cannot be underestimated. On both sides of the Atlantic, the Spanish world turned not so much inward as away from one another as if the other did not deserve to exist. On the American side, Argentina was the least resentful; Mexico the most. Mexico’s social-democratic revolution in 1910-1920 and Spain’s national-fascist revolution in 1935-1939 only exacerbated the estrangement. Mexico gave refuge to Spanish republicans and never recognized the Franco regime.

As bad as the political estrangement was the economic stagnation that ensued on both sides of the Atlantic upon years of anarchy, revolt and civil war. Whereas during the colonial period, Hispanic America had been within the developed portion of the world, independence only brought under-development and economic dependence. Argentina did relatively well, especially during the Second World War. In contrast Mexico’s 1910 revolution set back her previously achieved prosperity by 30 years. Spain’s loss of empire had reduced her to an economic midget and her civil war had rendered her destitute midget at that. The grandiosity of fascio-nationalist rhetoric only underscored Spain's hopeless, dried-up condition.

But as is well known, shortly after his accession to the throne, Juan Carlos lent his support to the rejuvenatiion and democratization of Spain. Less well known were his efforts to re-establish what he called the “Ibero-American community.” Too much bad water had flowed under the bridge to put in place what had been Count of Aranda’s farsighted but shelved plan in 1780 to create a Spanish Commonwealth; but Juan Carlos felt that something like that could still be achieved de facto. Beginning slowly, promoting tourism and cultural exchanges, the young monarch sought to revive the better bonds of memory between the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula and the Americas.

One of the more popular off-shoots of the royal effort was La Ruta del Quetzal a camping route that would acquaint Spanish kids with the colonial and indigenous culture of Ecuador. It was also no small matter that four years ago, mostly as a result of the King’s efforts, the academic reactionaries of La Réal Academia de la Lengua Española, agreed to incorporate a wealth of Ibero-Indian words into the officially authorized dictionaries. Such efforts ultimately culminated at the 2005 Salamanca Summit where it was agreed to institutionalize the reunions so as to give the idea of Ibero-Americanism an ongoing political and economic presence and purpose.

This week, three years on and with the support of Argentina’s Kirchner, the leaders of the Second Bolivarian Revolution -- Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa -- let it be known they are not about to free themselves from the gringo only to reindenture themselves to the gachupin. They would happily welcome renewed Spanish economic ties, so long as they provided a way of freeing themselves from Yankee neo-liberal plunder. If Spain were willing to do for it’s former colonies what Europe did for Spain in the 1980’s all the better. But a Spanish predator is no better than a NorthAmerican one.

The critique was headed up by the Harvard-educated Correa who criticised the conduct of Spanish companies whose predatory practices had led Ecuador into a “long and dismal neo-liberal night.”

As the Spanish monarch and president Jose Luis Zapatero wilted, Correa redoubled the attack scoring Spanish “birds of prey” -- like Telefónica, Santander, Unión Fenosa, and Repsol -- who, allied with European trusts or U.S. and Canadian multinationals, had produced a "chasm of social inequality in a trail environmental devastation.”

That blast, was followed by Chávez, who rose to criticize former Spanish president José Maria Aznar whom he called a neo-fascist, a lackey and a snake for promoting predatory business practices. Chavez recalled that Aznar had once privately told him that the poorer Latin American nations had “screwed themselves”. Responding to a recent complaint by the Spanish Chamber of Commerce (CEOE) against an alleged “lack of juridical security” in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, Chávez denounced Spanish companies for having (juridically) “sacked” Venezuela.

In fact, by criticising a former president, Chávez was being somewhat less direct than Correa, given the fact that the conduct of the Spanish companies remains the same under the Zapatero’s administration. But this obliqueness went over Zapatero’s head and he demanded an apology from Chávez taking into consideration, he said, that Aznar deserved the respect due someone elected by the Spanish People. Chávez replied, that as a paid lobbyist Aznar was globe-trotting disrespect against Venezuela and that he had a right to defend the Venezuelan People against such attacks.

At that point, as Zapatero and Chávez began to talk over one another, the King exploded and to the shock of everyone present, told Chávez to shut up. Undeterred and addressing Zapatero, Chávez replied that Aznar may have been elected but he was still a fascist.

President Bachelet, the summit’s host, smoothed things over; but not one of the Latin American leaders came to the defense of the Peninsulares. Columbia’s Alvaro Uribe, a neo-liberal himself, later advised Chávez to use less forceful language when referring to known personalities, but he did not defend either the King or his president. The feeling among the American leaders was, that if the summits are to be truly substantive they require frank discussion about conflictive issues.

The frank discussion continued in full force when Chávez was followed by Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega who began by noting that 90% of his country was opposed to the predatory business practices of Spanish companies and then went on to state that European policy had subsumed itself to the “dictatorship of global capitalism, led by the United States.”

He criticized Europe’s policy towards Cuba as hypocritical and stated that both Europe and the United States had historically maintained a policy of interference and destabilization with respect to those Latin Ameircan countries who wished to act with true independence. He called for the creation of a new Organization of American States free from the domination by the United States.

Before he had finished, and with a nod from Zapatero, the King left the chamber.

No doubt Fox News and the New York Times will treat the story in much the same manner as the right wing Spanish press which will huff and puff about how a noble and patient king was exasperated by the uncouth, aggression of a demagogue. The reaction from the left has been more sympathetic:

"Without Videla, Pinochet or Stroessner, these ‘Ibero-American’ summits just aren’t what they used to be. Now these sovereign nations dare top criticise the depradations caused by Spanish multinationals and to defend themselves against Aznar’s attacks waged on behalf imperialist lobbies whose servile creature he is. And when they do, the King looses his cool.

“If the image of the gachupines was already bad enough in Latin America, the monarch’s conduct has done a poor service to his country.”

http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia.php?id_noticia=44690

And

"Perhaps the tone and words used by Chavez and Ortega were not the ne plus ultra of the Castillian language, but actions not words are what cause social injury and in this respect the balance does not run in favor of the Spaniards in attendance at the summit. .... Borbón y Zapatero forgot that they are not in their colonies and that on this side of the planet they can neither command nor demand. ... Nor were they meeting a group of obsequious lackeys; but on the contrary were obligated to listen and to take into consideration the critiques and opinions of their summit counterparts. Or do Borbón and Zapatero think that Latin America is merely the personal preserve of predatory corporations?

"Both men seem to have forgotten that the Crown and Staff are ultimately not worth a goddamn in these parts if they are not accompanied by honesty, wisdom, and most importantly by democratic legitimacy. Unfortunately, predatory enterprises have always counted on the absolute support of the monarchy and, as we know now, from Zapatero as well. Both are simply mayordomos of interantional capital -- a fact which the Spanish ought to correct...."

http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia.php?id_noticia=44691

King Juan Carlos' efforts at creating an Ibero-American Community were a worthy correction of a tragic history if, and only if, they lead to such investments as respect the natural and cultural environment of the host country and pay back a portion of profit into the social and economic welfare of its people.

©Barfo, 2007

References

http://www.europapress.es/00407/20071110163611/cumbre-ortega-acusa-europa tener-doble-discurso-cuba-onu.html

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/11/10/internacional/1194711476.html

The Trouble is

2007-11-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

The NY Times explains its "trouble" with Hugo Chavez

When Puppets get Puppity.

2007-11-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

It was all kind of funny... Pakistan’s general gone mufti re-attached his shoulder boards, sacked n’ stacked his supreme court and suspended elections all -- he insisted -- in order to protect his eight year long “transition to democracy” against assorted terrorist threats.

Anticipating the anguished howl that indeed hit the heavens over Washington, Musharaff was ready with a bunch of handy quotes from Saint Lincoln.

“I would at this time, Musharraf said, “venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln, specially to all my listeners in the United States. As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during that time of crisis, and this was to preserve the Union… towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary power, he trampled individual liberties.

"His justification was necessity and explaining his sweeping violation of Constitutional limits he wrote in a letter in 1864, and I quote, ‘My oath to preserve the Constitution imposed on me the duty of preserving by every indispensable means that government, that Nation of which the Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the Nation and yet preserve the Constitution?’”

Musharraf went on to quote Lincoln, as political surgeon:

“By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save life but a life is never wisely given to save a life.”

Mussolini couldn't have said it better.

Leaping forward, Musharraf took a page from President Nixon and groused about an “activist judiciary” that was bringing the nation to wrack and ruin.

What Musharraf most likely did not know was that somewhere between 25% to 33% of listeners in the United States still consider “the Original Gorilla” to have been a bloody tyrant. And with good reason. Lincoln subverted the rule of law and for much the same reasons invoked by all state idolaters .

In the 1864 letter from which Musharraf quoted, written but ten days before his assassination, Lincoln expressed his conviction that his oath to “preserve the constitution” was really an oath “to preserve that nation of which the Constitution was the organic law.” By that handy-dandy inversion Lincoln could justify violating the Constitution he had sworn not to violate.

The appeal to “the Nation” or “das Volk” or “the Motherland” is always the same. It is the Golden Calf for which tyrants everywhere justify their violation of law. And if laws can be overridden in order to protect the ultimate, supreme good of "the State"... who is a mere limb to complain when he is sacrificed on doctor's orders for the good of the All?

The difficulty with this appeal, at least in so far as the United States is concerned, is that “our nation” is indisputably the creature of the constitution -- not the other way around. Not only are we a nation of laws we are a nation born of constitutional law. Without that birth certificate there is no United States; and that is why the United States is the most quintessentially liberal country ever to have existed. It is the creature of contract.

Musharraf's uppity act was wilder still if it is borne in mind that he merely applied the same raison d’etat that the present administration itself uses to suspend constitutional liberties, and to do away with judicial review: “to protect the Uhmur’can People from turrurism.” The Pakistani leader hardly needed to have gone so far back as Lincoln. He could have quoted Imbecile's nominee for Attorney General, who just the week before informed the Senate that the president was not necessarily bound to observe the law if he determined he was defending the country.

And so, the Administration was reduced to howling an impotent protest against a puppet that was getting all strings tangled by doing what the puppet handler itself was doing with it other hand on another stage.

Damn! They just don’t make puppets like they used to.

©Barfo, 2007

Let Them Light Candles

2007-10-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

AS reported by news media around the world, Israel decided several days ago to interrupt fuel and electricity supplies to Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks on Israel -- actually on the township of Sderot, 1 kilometer from the Gaza border. In view of the Palestinian attacks on innocent civilians, Israel’s intermittent power cut seemed to bespeak a super human patience and forbearance. Why God Himself could hardly be as mild in his judgements. Inconvenient? Well Let them light candles!

But there is always the “fine print”. Overlooked in all the blather about electricity cut offs was the following, courtesy of the New York Times:

"Israel said Sunday day that they had begun reducing fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip and had closed one of the two crossings through which food, medicine and other supplies pass into the area. ... As a result, only limited supplies of basic goods are allowed to enter the strip, and all exports of produce are prohibited. ...

"[According to a government spokesman,] the number of trucks of food and other goods entering Gaza will be reduced to roughly 55 trucks a day from 100 to 120, “We will allow in the minimum amount of food and medicines necessary to avoid a humanitarian crisis,” he said.”

A fifty percent reduction in food supplies? On a per-capita basis that boils down to a starvation diet. The “humanitarian crisis” Israel labors hard to avoid means what? The avoidance of “mass death”? But wait, what do starvation diets lead to?

Perhaps one could take a page from Raphael Lemkin’s seminal work “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” According to Lemkin, who coined the term, genocide operated on cultural, social, economic and biological levels. Lemkin writes:

“The destruction of the foundations of the economic existence of a national group necessarily brings about a crippling of its development, even a retrogression.”

The physical debilitation and even annihilation of national groups in occupied countries is carried out mainly in the following ways:

1. Racial Discrimination in Feeding. Rationing of food is organized according to racial principles throughout the occupied countries. "The German people come before all other peoples for food," declared Reich Minister Göring on October 4, 1942. In accordance with this program, the German population is getting 93 per cent of its pre-war diet, while those in the occupied territories receive much less: in Warsaw, for example, the Poles receive 66 per cent of the pre-war rations and the Jews only 20 per cent.

2. Endangering of Health. The undesired national groups, particularly in Poland, are deprived of elemental necessities for preserving health and life. This latter method consists, for example, of requisitioning warm clothing and blankets in the winter and withholding firewood and medicine. . . . Such measures, especially pernicious to the health of children, have caused the development of various diseases.

Lemkin’s schema of genocide has not been fully incorporated into international law. Nevertheless, it provides a cogent framework for analyzing genocidal policies from sociological and ethical perspectives. Cutting back on food deliveries in Gaza is strictly analogous to the General Gouvernement’s food “policies” in occupied Poland.

To argue that such measures are “reprisals” against a so-called barrage of rocket attacks on civilian Sderot is simply beside the point. International law prohibits indiscriminate reprisals. The whole purpose of the prohibition is precisely to put limits on the kinds and degrees of retaliation allowed. The limitations presuppose that there is something to retaliate over in the first place. To argue that the “right to retaliate” wipes away limits is simply to wipe away international law itself.

Precisely that kind of “they-started-it” argument was rejected at Nuremberg. The Nazi leveling of Lidice, in Czechoslovakia, was done in response to the unlawful, indisputably terrorist murder of Heydrich, the duly appointed administrator of those occupied territories. What made the Nazi response to that and other partisan acts of sabotage and murder a crime was not that retaliation was not allowed, but rather that the retaliation employed was excessive and indiscriminate, if not altogether an excuse to engage in counter-terror over and above deterrence and extermination over and above lawful reprisal.

Israel's trail of tu quoque’s can ultimately only lead back to the inceptional fact that European Zionists sought to colonize and invade a land that was not theirs by any genealogical or mythological stretch. That aside, the you started it gambit doesn’t work because the “its” are neither militarily nor morally equivalent.

Palestinians and Israelis are engaged in a conflict over land. But in this conflict, Israel -- among the world’s foremost military powers -- holds all the cards. It has control of Gaza’s borders. It has control of Gaza’s finances. It has control of Gaza’s air space. It has control of Gaza’s electricity and power. It has control of all entry and exit into Gaza. When democratic elections produced results Israel did not appreciate, it simply resorted to economic strangulation. No Indian Reservation was so controlled as Gaza whose only historical analog in recent memory are Lodz and Warsaw -- and, like Lodz and Warsaw , Gaza is one if not the most crowded places on earth. To claim some kind of moral equivalence from such state of inequality is simply perverted.

All animals will resist their capture and imprisonment. The human animal is no different. It is entirely natural that Palestinians, not wanting to live under Israeli domination, should resist. One should not expect otherwise . To self-righteously intone that they ought not to resist is to dress up in flimsy moral tissue a demand for abject and acquiescent submission.

Gazan resistance is in fact puny and pathetic. They cannot inflict any real damage on Israel. The facts bespeak the inequalities. According to Human Rights Watch, since 2005 there have been 2,700 Q’assam rocket attacks “into Israel”. The holocaustian horror conjured up by such a phrase qua headline is that of Jerusalem, O Jersualem recoiling under a barrage of missiles. Reading the usual zionist histrionics, one might think that a new “holocaust” was in the making. But these “missiles” (jumbo firecrackers really) have a range of a few kilometers and no more. In fact, just about the only place they can hit is the border village of Sderot. Human Rights Watch reports that as a result of these 2,700 attacks four Israeli civilians have been killed and 75 injured.

Contrast these “horrendous” casualties with the almost daily reports of 9, 5, 17, 23, 4, ...... Palestinians killed in some Israel counter-action. We have gotten so accustomed to the daily reports of Palestinian dead that no one pays attention. Adding insult to injury, these dead are brushed aside as “collateral damages”. Israel routinely has some low level corporal announce that Israel was targeting a “military installation” and oooops ... just happened to blow up the surrounding civilian neighborhood. Needless to say, the “military installation” is the rooftop from which the Q’assam rocket was allegedly fired.

Who the hell is the one taking the punches here? Any moron can see that it’s the Palestinians who are hemorrhaging. How the hell does it all add up here? Very simply this: Palestinians and Israelis are trading punches. In this wretched game of retaliation, Israel consistently gets in the better and more bloody punch. So be it. But now comes Israel decked out in the usual sack cloth and ashes and says that in addition to its regime of retaliatory collateral damage it has decided that it “has to” further retaliate by putting all of Gaza under a starvation regimen.

Shit by any other name stinks just as bad; and putting an entire civilian population on a “minimal” allotment of food and medicine qualifies as genocide.

©Barfo, 2007

Links
07/10/30 Israel Restricts Gaza Crossing as Firing Persists - New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/world/middleeast/29mideast.html?pagewanted=print

Rafael Lemkin on Web:
http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/index.htm

Human Rights Watch Reports
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/iopt0707/1.htm#_Toc170198335

Mr. Depravity To Spew More Sulfur

2007-10-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

Our Depraved Imbecile is scheduled to throw an official temper tantrum before a crowd of Cuban hysterics, White House staffers announced today. According to the New York Times, Mr. Depravity will warn Cuba, in stern and unbending terms, that he will not accept a transfer of power from Fidel to Raul Castro. Of course, the transfer occurred last year. But never mind.

No. No. No. I won’t have it. I demand you listen to me. LISTEN TO ME!!

Imbecile is expected to demand that Cubans continue to resist the Castro regime, as they most certainly must have been doing for the past 60 years.

His Depravity is expected to blather that “while much of the rest of Latin America has moved from dictatorship to democracy” Cuba “continues to use repression and terror to control its people” who have “suffered economically” as a result of Castro’s rule.

No. No. No, you depraved fuckwad, Cuba has suffered economically as a result of a US imposed embargo (aka siege) designed to strangle and starve.

No. No. No, you diarrhea drooling sack of shit, the ones who terrorized their people were US imposed scum like Videla who tossed kids out helicopters, Stroessner who walled up people alive and Pinochet who had women waterboarded and bottle-raped.

It is certainly true that about half of Latin America has moved from US backed dictatorships to US extorted neo-liberal sell-offs. Either way, half the continent continues to live lives of no-win, economic struggle and deprivation while the even less fortunate, the bands of ragged kiddie orphans wandering through Foochimori’s Lima, struggle to find enough sniffing glue to dull the hunger pains.

It is true that, as a communist state, Cuba does not permit capitalist multi-party democracy, that it has curtailed dissent and, at times, imprisoned opposition that went no further than words. At worst, such a record would put Cuba politically on par with a number of Latin-American "democracies" and many others as well. The difference is that the Cuban leadership works for the people's health, education, housing and welfare as best it can; whereas beneath Mr.Depravity's spew of liberal slogans -- odious on account of the policies to which they have been prostituted -- is the naked aim to turn Cuba into yet another third world cesspool where human beings can toil for $1.00 a day and be reduced to picking for scraps on festering garbage heaps.

While the smirking punk may congratulate himself on his pimping for corporate brutality and greed; the other half of Latin America has had enough of Hell’s Nostrums, Murkan style democrapcy and malignant US corporations bankrolling murderous bands of White Guard thugs. That half, is closing US bases, sending the IMF packing, founding its own development bank and elaborating economic polices and social programs that actually help their fellow human beings.

May Batista’s snarling exiled Ferengi gag -- and gag deeply -- on Mr. Depravity's sulfurous fuming.

©Barfo, 2007

Yet Another Revolting Week (14-21 October 2007)

2007-10-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

In what has become a never ending cycle of grotesquerie, the week began with a nominee for Attorney General struggling not to condone torture and ended with the Vice President urging an attack on Iran. In between, the world was fetted with the Imperial Imbecile threatening World War III now that France can once again be counted as an ally.

Simulated Mistakes Worse than Sin

Given the Supreme Court’s je suis trop fatigué performance the week previous, it could hardly come as surprise that the wannabe Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the Nation (CLEON) would sound the trumpet for Imperial Prerogative while palavering excuses for torture. Testifying before Congress, former federal Judge Mukasey imperfectly suggested that torture was a “sin” while dribbling marbles over whether “waterboarding” constituted torture. Mukasey just couldn’t figure it out. After all waterboarding only “simulates” the feeling of drowing; and since the “subject” is not actually drowning it can’t be all that bad, right? Well gee..... why don’t we just interrogate victims by feeding them chocolate coated brandy bon bons?

The fact is (for those blessed with the most minimal inferential faculties) that waterboarding “simulates” drowning by cutting off air-flow. There is no other way to simulate drowing. None. And, for all who have experienced it, a lack of airflow is extremely painful causing the body to convulse with all desperate force to locate and get air. Does it really make a goddam bit of difference whether the deprivation of oxygren occurs because your nose and mouth are “blocked” or your head is dunked under water? No, it does not. And most humans will talk -- and talk anything -- if only because it gives them a chance to get air.

Credit where credit is due. Senator McCain expressed incredudilty at Mukasey’s slithering response. Hanoi taught McCain something, that’s for sure.

In old days “simulated drowining” was called dunking. It was done (judicially of course) to witches in New and Olde England. At some point in the late 18th Century, the practice came to be condsidered a national disgrace -- a disguting barbarity of which we were ashamed. We were taught, then, that mankind -- at least the civilized portion of it -- had progressed and that this sort of thing was no longer tolerated. We could point to the Eighth Amendment which prohibted cruel and unusual punishment even for those who were convicted of something -- the authors of the Bill of Rights evidently considering it superfluous to state that torture of the presumptively innocent was also prohibited.

Given his excuse-making for dunking, Mukasey’s avowed condemnation of torture didn’t float very well. According to Mukasey, the infamous Brybee Memo from the Office of Legal Counsel condoning torture was “worse than a sin, it was a mistake.” A “mistake” is worse than a “sin”? Is that the kind of idolatrization of expediency that passes for a “moral construct” in the U.S. government? One is left to suppose that Mukasey regards the the Crucifixion of Christ as a tactical error. Well... dunkings, hangings, “three-meals and a Koran “ (Mukasey’s describption of Guantanamo’s human kennels) are certainly stepping stones.... Jay Brybee is now a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and there is no mistaking that Mukasey will be confirmed as CLEON.

The Kick-Ass Duo -- Yeeeeeehaw!

While Mukasey was entertaining the Senate with his moral low-wire acts, His Imbecility was appalling the rest of the world with his belligerent blatherings. Perhaps Imbecile was simply trying to show friendliness to our new-found, old ally, La Belle France which has, it would seem, joined in the war against terror sans frontiers.

The election of Nikolas Sarkozy as president of France was generally seen as signalling a raprochement with Washington. Sarkozy’s subsequent appointment of Bernard Kouchner as Foreign Minister could only be seen as an accouchement with the zio-con war hawks in Washington. That Kouchner was openly partial to Israel was one thing; that he not too subtly threatened Iran with war was quite another.

Is it at all surprising that imbeciles rush in where devils are backpedaling out of ? Kouchner’s Jolly Roger was hauled down almost as quickly as it had been run up. To keep it down, Vladmir Putin seized the occasion of this week's conference of Caspian Sea Nations to rebuke Kouchner’s “‘misunderstood” remarks. “We should not even think of making use of force in this region,” Mr. Putin declared. That in turn brought a rebuke from Imbecile himself who took to his podium to declare that Iran was threatening Israel and “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having [the] knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

No one in the mudia saw fit to ask who the hell “you” was. Perhaps Imbecile meant Helen Thomas sitting in the front row? Anyone who can connect dots could see that “you” was none other than erstwhile soul-mate “Puti.” The threat was not directed so much at Iran as it was at Russia. Oh that’s just great. Goes to show Imbecile really has balls.

The dismal week ended fittingly enough with the Administration’s Albrecht emerging from his subterranean cave to scowl and growl and threaten Gotterdamerung should Iran get the fabled ring of nuclear power. Speaking to the converted at the pro-zionist Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an ever-grimacing Cheney said, “We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” To this end, Cheney threatened that the U.S. and other nations were “prepared to impose serious consequences” on Iran.

Although Virginia Senator Jim Webb stated last week that a military strike on Iran, was Cheney's “fondest pipe dream”, the subservient Anglo-Murkan press repeatedly intoned that “The vice president made no specific reference to military action.” But Cheney did not need to say the boogeyword -- certainly not to this audience of war-mongering zionist hawks. It is often the case that to understand the speaker one has to understand the audience, and Cheney’s audience on Sunday was none other than the Israeli promoted war-on-Iran crowd. A wink and a slur would do for them.

While Cheney’s scowling could perhaps be viewed as a “downward correction” of Imbecile’s far greater threat, the core question that has to be asked is what kind of criminal madmen could fondly pipe dream about igniting a regional holocaust, to say nothing of World War III? Does the stunted, infantilized Murkan consciousness even grasp the destruction and suffering such words signal?

Resorting to its tried and trite savant mode, the New York Times reported with detachment that the Bush-Cheney remarks were viewed as ratcheting up the diplomatic rhetoric in what is apparently a game of “hold-me-back!” What ought to be remembered is that war whoops usually lead to war.

©Barfo, 2007

Supreme Shame.

2007-10-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

This week, the United States Supreme Court covered itself with indelible, shame. It prostrated itself before the Imperial Executive's invocation of raison d'etat and denied judicial view to a German litigant who had sued the C.I.A. for kidnapping, false imprisonment and torture.

It would be unright to say that with "a stroke" the Supreme Court undid the very principle of legality upon which this country was founded. The Court was so utterly supine that its "act" of declining to hear an appeal from a lower court dismissal of the suit consisted in assuming a posture of complete judicial passivity and indifference to its own raison d'etre. A crown agent all but walked into the Atrium of Justice, pronounced two words and the court vanished itself like so much water receding into sand.

There was a time when every eighth grader understood that judicial review was the sole bulwark against the evil of secret state security courts like the dreaded Star Chamber. What made the Star Chamber infamous was not that it was irregular or arbitrary. On the contrary, like any inquisitorial court, the Chamber was governed by precise procedures designed to insure the reliability of its judgements. Except, that is, for those special procedures later embodied in the Fifth and Sixth amendments of the Bill of Rights which have been considered necessary to insure fundamental notions of fairness.

What procedures? Nothing more than the right against self-incrimination, the right to be informed of the charges, the right to confront and examine one’s accusers, the right to produce evidence in self-defense and the right to a speedy, full and fair hearing with the assistance of counsel in open court.

Why "fundamental"? Because the justness and necessity of these rights is either self-evident or it is not. These rights are "axiomatic" because they cannot be proved right or wrong. They comprise the Constitutional Faith on which this country was founded. There are arguments that can be made -- and that have been made even by certain Harvard and Yale professors -- in favor of secret proceedings, interrogations in the dark and torture. They are even "reasonable" arguments based practical calculations of risks and benefits. But, for all that, they are not "what we are about." And "what we are about" -- as a People of a certain political faith -- is reflected in the Bill of Rights and the principle of Judicial Review.

There was a time when every eighth grader had read the story of Lord Coke's confrontation with King James I when the Chief Justice approached the Throne and announced that the King himself was subject to the Law. James grew "mightily wroth" and moved to strike Coke who was ushered away. But it was a judicial shot across the bow of executive power. Three years later, in 1610, Coke handed down the decision in Dr. Bonham's Case. The problem in that case was that Bonham was not much of a doctor and had been tried, convicted and fined by the Royal College of Physicians for practicing without a license. Coke and two other judges ruled that the College could not act as a judge in a case in which it was also a party, even if Parliament had given it the "right" to do so. In rendering judgement, Coke announced that "the common law doth control Acts of Parliament, and sometimes adjudge them to be void ... as when an Act of Parliament is against Common right and reason, or repugnant...." By "the common law" Coke unmistakably meant the judiciary. As Chief Justice Marshall would put it near two hundred years later, in Marbury v Madison, "It is emphatically the province of the judiciary to say what the law is."

"What the law is..." is not a question of mere legality. After all, in Bonham's Case Parliament had passed a law authorizing his trial and conviction by the College of Physicians. But for Coke that was not enough because, in his view, that law was "against Common right and reason." To say as much was something of a judicial pun or feint of pen. Because it would have been logically nonesense to state that a law was illegal, Coke subordinated the common law to something higher -- to something he called "common reason". It is this subordination of legality to higher, concepts of due process, reason and fairness that is the foundation of Anlgo-American constitutionalism, and this subordination of law to reason necessarily entails an ultimate subordination of the Executive to the Judiciary.

Later in his career, after consistently making life difficult for his sovereign, Lord Coke went on to draft the Petition of Right one of a long line of English antecedents to the US Bill of Rights. Building on the principles announced in Magna Carta, Coke declared that all men -- not only Lords, Barons and Peers of the Realm -- had a right against arbitrary state actions and exactions. The petition declared unconstitutional certain actions of the king, such as levying taxes without consent, housing soldiers in homes, setting up martial law, and having men imprisoned, disinherited or put to death "without being brought to answer by due process of law."

Lord Coke's career illustrated that judicial review, constraint on executive power, constitutionalism and individual rights, are all strands in one seamless garment. Each implies the other and without any one the fabric unravels. Ultimately, these principles protect our right to breathe free and unshadowed by fear -- fear of unwarranted arrest, night-time detentions, renditions to dark and unknown places and torture. It was not for nothing that the bronze doors to the Supreme Court depict Lord Coke barring King James from sitting as a Judge.

Not for nothing? This week, a crown agent, in effect, pushed through these very doors and with two words -- "National Security" -- barred the Justices from sitting as Judges and denied a man the right to have his case heard in court. This was a case in which the United States Government violated every known principle of "due process" by abducting, imprisoning and torturing a man without even telling him why and on what basis it was subjecting him to such a nightmare. Like all tyrants, the Government condoned itself with the usual spew about safety and necessity. And hiding in their Mausoleum of Justice, Coke's wretched descendants did nothing. There will doubtlessly be those legal hacks who will try to explain away the Court's judicial decadence by blathering about "ripeness of issues" or the need to await the "appropriate vehicle" in the "correct procedural posture." Bullshit.

Tuesday October 9th was a funereal day for the little that was left of five hundred years of constitutionalism. Odious in the eyes of those who apprize liberty, the scum on the court have earned their place in the gutters of history.

©Barfo, 2007

VIVA LA HISPANIDAD!

2006-10-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

New York Times accused of Child Endangerment and Treason for divulging Secret Government Terrorist Spying Program.

2006-06-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

My great aunt was probably the last true American. She took heart-felt umbrage when banks first had the gall to install security cameras, back in the early ‘60’s. “I don’t want anyone spying over my shoulder when I’m about my private business,” she said. It is a measure of how far we have sunk to a level lower than chickens that my great aunt’s notions strike us, not simply as quaint, but as alien.

Those were the days when Americans held to strange notions like “going about your private business in public.” If your business was private -- which it invariably was -- then it was no body else’s business, not even the government’s -- especially not the government’s.

Those were also the days when people spoke of their bankers in much the same sense and tone that they spoke of their pastors or priests. The bank was where you confided your money and it was insulting, to say the least, that your fiduciary should treat you as some sort of common criminal afoot.

Those days have been swept into the dustbins of history thanks to a people hankering for "safety" and a judiciary whoring itself to executive power.

In California v. Greenwood (1988) 486 U.S. 35, the craven lickspittles on the Supreme Court held that my great aunt had no expectation of privacy in her garbage. Having deposited one’s garbage “in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption,” a person “could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded.”

Of course, they had no expectation of privacy in the non-inculpatory items either since a cop can’t tell which is which until he starts pawing through the mess. The court's toss-in of the word “inculpatory” was one of those slimey sophistical tricks courts resort to when they want to add some emotional weight to an otherwise shaky argument -- in this case, the helpful insinuation that the garbage owners were guilty criminals anyways and so we needn't focus to hard on a rummage-rule that applies just as much to the anyways innocent.

Behind obfuscations for the unwary, Greenwood explained that the true reason my aunt had no expectation of privacy in her garbage was that privacy was lost once the garbage was placed “at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through respondents' trash or permitted others, such as the police, to do so.”

Entrusting garbage, the Court intoned, was no different than dialing telephone numbers; and “we doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial” (Smith v. Maryland (1979) 442 U.S. 735.) Say what ?? When was this!? 1979? Yep.

“All telephone users," the Court pronounced, "realize that they must ‘convey’ phone numbers to the telephone company, since it is through telephone company switching equipment that their calls are completed.” Having “conveyed” their numbers a third party, one can hardly complain when the third party happily conveys it to a fourth party, (government cops), on request and without any warrant. After all, the court went on, “when he used his phone, petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company and ‘exposed’ that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business. In so doing, petitioner assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the numbers he dialed.”

In short, if you don’t want to be exposed, lock yourself in your closet.

The Smith and Greenwood cases stand for two inter related propositions. First, that you have no privacy when you “expose” yourself or your effects to public view; and, second, that you have no privacy in things you “convey” to others even if “the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed.” Why throwing away a packet of old love letters is tantamount to reading them out loud in the park; and as for ringing someone up on a phone, well you might as well walk about naked. As for spy cameras in banks -- well if my great aunt did not want to be spied upon in public, she should have transacted her business by mail.....

But wait! Aren’t letters “conveyed” to a third party on the “assumption” that confidence “will not be betrayed”? Anyone who expects the Supreme Court to protect internet privacy or to prohibit the State Security Services from keeping track of international money wires, ought to check into a sanatorium to have his “assumptions” given the once over by men in white coats.

The underlying and truly stinking perversity of Smith and Greenwood is that they invert the positions of "free space" and "prisons". Your locked closet becomes the place where you are free to left alone; whereas out and open in public you are are subject to at will surveillance, just as if you were in prison.

Dissenting in Greenwood, Justice Brennan wrote, “Scrutiny of another's trash is contrary to commonly accepted notions of civilized behavior. I suspect, therefore, that members of our society will be shocked to learn that the Court, the ultimate guarantor of liberty, deems unreasonable our expectation that the aspects of our private lives that are concealed safely in a trash bag will not become public.”

Alas, the public was not shocked at all. For two months, Brennan wrote, “the police clawed through the trash that ...Greenwood left in opaque, sealed bags on the curb outside his home. Complete strangers minutely scrutinized their bounty, undoubtedly dredging up intimate details of Greenwood's private life and habits. The intrusions proceeded without a warrant, and no court before or since has concluded that the police acted on probable cause to believe Greenwood was engaged in any criminal activity.” But not a peep against this violation of privacy was heard -- not from our guardian press; not from an outraged people. On the contrary, in places like California, the people voted to overturn that state’s rule that a person’s garbage was private and beyond search absent a warrant.

Now, long after the ship has sunk, the New York Times reveals that the Government is keeping track of bank wire transfers made on what the high court will undoubtedly call "the open wires” of the telephone network. In the past several months, the press has also revealed, that the Government is keeping track of whom we mail, access or visit on the internet "highway". A feeble whine of protest arises from the so-called “liberal” flank of the political spectrum, while Thug Staat Bush and its congressional brown shirts go on word-punching offensives. Needless to say, the Times and its half-hearted allies will take all this lying down. They will palaver about the public’s right to know when they should instead excoriate the Administration and call for its impeachment en masse

The people's pipers in the press are at last getting around to questioning the so-called “excesses” of the Bush administration. But where were these folks when the Greenwood and Smith cases were handed down? In the modern world “excesses” do not happen overnight. Tipping thresholds may be reached at any moment; but modern states are huge multifarious bureaucracies. They move slowly and only after millions of memos have been written and thousands of regulations and practices put into place and practice. The destruction of our Liberties and the foundations of a police state began long ago with the Nixon Court.

For close to 40 years, repulsive creepy crawly creatures like inJustice Rankquist have been at work in the dank and dark gnawing away at the Bill of Rights and giving the State the “tools” it needed to “protect us” from crime, drugs, pornography, and now “terrorists”. Where was the press before? Where was there an outcry as, case by case, the courts drove a thousand cuts into the Bill of Rights, while a slithering Congress aided and abetted this real treason by establishing secret courts, national security exceptions and a plethora of other state privileges. Oh... no doubt the Times deemed those stories to be news “fit to print” on some back page crowded into the left margin by trendy Bloomingdale ads; but what was evidently not fit was any manifestation of outrage. Certainly nothing that would have given a voice to my aunt.

My great aunt stood with the Founders of the Republic, because she, like them, was able to see the principle involved in small things. That capacity is something lacking from the over-paid, self-adulating, pea brains in the Murkan press. It is also something lacking from a public whose only principles of action are its gluttonous wants and concocted fears. And extensive industries exist to feed both.

In a few days, we will all be subjected to nauseating spectacles of Murkans indulging their “freedom” and “independence.” By now chronically obese denizens will drag their larded bodies to the Washington Mall to listen to loud, trashy, music and to hear Hollywood’s bimbettes du jour squeal about our great land, our great this-n-that and our great everything. The participants will hug their perpetually “at risk children”, gush over our "valianservicemenanwimin” and puff up their sagging bellies to make like a chest while they sing about living in the land of the brave. And they will do all this once they have been granted access to the fenced-off public mall after being frisked, searched, scanned, and identified by armed safety thugs in state employ.

It would be sad were it not so revolting. In the end, history will shed few tears for Murka’s last generations who, like the Romans of yore, have become a nation of slaves while thinking they were masters of the world.

FundiCons Launch Wedge Attack on Episcopal Church

2006-06-24T00:37:00.000-07:00

Capping years of stealth planning, fundamentalist conservatives this past week fired wedge missiles into the Episcopal Church's tri-annual General Convention in an attempt to rupture the Anglican Communion. Though gussied up as a theological and moral issue concerning the role of homosexuals in ecclesiastical life, the attacks were part of a well-financed, neo-con agenda aimed at destroying the U.S. Episcopal Church and stifling the liberal voice of the country's established religions.

Ostensibly at issue was whether the Episcopal Church -- the U.S. branch of the world-wide Anglican Communion -- should formally confess its error in having approved the appointment of an openly gay bishop. Following the investiture of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, in 2003, conservative Anglicans in the United States, Africa and elsewhere, demanded an official repudiation of such appointments as contrary to Scripture.

In response, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as historical head of the Anglican Communion, commissioned an inquiry to look into the matter and to find "ways forward in this situation which can preserve our respect for one another and for the bonds that unite us." (Aug 2003) A year later (Oct 2004), the so-called Windsor Report found that developments in the Episcopal Church (USA) had strained the "bonds of affection" which united the Anglican Communion. Refraining from "judgement" but looking forward to a process of "healing and reconciliation", the report recommended that the Episcopal Church "express its regret" for the "consequences" of its actions and for having "breached" the "proper constraints" of Anglican unity. The report also recommended that the Church abide a moratorium on such ordinations until a general consensus had evolved, and that the bishops involved in approving Robinson's ordination recuse themselves from further "representative" actions.

Windsor was pretty strong stuff. It basically stated that the Episcopal Church in the United States had breached Anglican unity by approving ordinations and acts which were outside the existing consensus and that the Church should cease and desist from further such actions if it desired to remain within the Communion.

But this was not enough for the conservatives who denounced the Windsor Report as so much namby pamby hogwash. Diane Knippers of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, stated that the report had failed to lay down "clear standards" and that "every delay of sending clear signals simply allows revisionist theology to become more firmly entrenched in the Anglican Communion." Kippers added that "false teaching is an infection, we want to see it quarantined."

The American Anglican Council, an ad hoc grouping of conservative bishops, adopted the role of good cop. It welcomed the conclusions of the Windsor Report but only as establishing a "minimum" threshold of what was needed in the circumstances. It went on to call for the equivalent of a guilty plea by the Episcopal Church to the report's conclusions. This exercise in punitive "healing and reconciliation" was followed by a series of demands for doctrinal pledges of allegiance, acts of conformity and, lastly, that the Episcopal Church, as an institution, withdraw itself from the worldwide Anglican Council. In this way, the AAC deconstructed the Archbishop's call for "ways forward" together with "respect" into a suicide platform for the church errant.

If this battle over doctrine and morals were being waged by individual conservatives stating their points of view in open and candid debate, it could be accepted as a legitimate episode in the systole and diastole of people defining their faith together. However, that is not what is taking place. The so-called conservatives are in fact well-greased, neo-con attack groups funded by the likes of A.H. Ahmanson (Home Savings & Loan heir), Adolf Coors, and the Olin (Winchester Rifles) and Scaife foundations (Mellon banking and oil). The point is not that conservative philanthropists fund conservative causes but rather that their funding of these causes is part of a broader political agenda aimed at instituting obedient, religious conformity as an adjunct to predatory capitalism.

A quick recherche pour le banquier will show what's afoot.

The American Anglican Council was founded in 1996 with the stated purpose of opposing gay ordinations and unions. Former Reagan Justice Department officers Richard Campinelli and James Wooton were among the founders. Ahmanson is a major financial backer of the AAC, contributing half a million dollars in one year alone and listing the AAC as 5th on his list of over 15 principal, charitable recipients. AAC works with a variety of UK and African conservative advocacy missions to which Ahmanson also contributes heavily.

Ahmanson himself favors the creation of a strong, centralized form of church governance, an evangelical approach to Biblical interpretation and the defense of traditional teachings on human sexuality. To this end, he is willing to effect a schism in the Anglican Communion. In the run up to the 2006 General Convention, the AAC and its allies worked to remove the Episcopal Church from the Communion and went so far as to threaten Archbishop Rowan Williams with schism if he refused to de-recognize the Episcopal Church and replace it with the Anglican Network, a grouping of conservative churches also funded by Ahmanson that towed the AAC line.

The American Anglican Council is in fact a retail designer offshoot of the broader scoped Institute on Religion and Democracy, founded 1981 as a counter to the World Council of Churches. The IRD targets all three mainline American denominations: The United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Episcopal Church. The IRD's goal, in its own words, is to "restructure" the governing structure of "theologically flawed" protestant denominations and to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left []".

In fact, the IRD's sights are broader still. Its founders were particularly outraged by liberation theology, the Catholic pastoral movement that sought social justice for the poor in Latin American. The IRD waged a media campaign in favor of Reagan's Contra strategies in Central America. The campaign included spreading false rumors about "left wing" religious charitable missions. These lies, which included allegations that the missisions were US government fronts, put the charity workers at personal risk and ultimately caused the missions to fail.

Richard Mellon Scaife is a major bank-roller of the IRD, donating $1.6 million between 1985 and 2001. In 2002, the Scaife Foundation forked over $225,000 to help launch the IRD's "Reforming America's Churches Project". Among the Project's stated goals is the elimination of the United Methodist Church's General Board, the squelching the church's justice and peace programs and the discrediting UMC pastors and bishops by instigating variously pretexted church heresy trials.

Other bank-rollers of the IRD are the John M. Olin Foundation, which backed the IRD in the amount of $489,000 "to counter the political influence of the Religious Left"; the Coors run Castle Rock Foundation, which donated $90,000 to "challenge the orthodoxy promoted by liberal religious leaders in the U.S."; and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, whose donors are linked to the John Birch Society, and which gave $1.5 million to IRD between 1985 and 2001.

What is critical to note is that the largesse of these reactionary money banks is not motivated by a single "hot button" issue. On the contrary, their targeting of so called "liberal churches" is simply a component part of a wider totalist political strategy.

The Bradley Foundation's stated objective is none other than to return the U.S. to the days before government regulated business and corporations were required to negotiate with labor unions. You know, the days when Pinkerton Guards and local police gunned down, truncheoned and imprisoned people for demanding such outrageous things as a 12 hour work day.

Mellon Scaife is a tad tonier. Over a 30 year period as of 1999, Scaife foundations have donated an approximate $620 million to conservative causes and institutions, including: the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, the Free Congress Foundation, the Hudson Institute, Judicial Watch, American Spectator, and National Empowerment Television the ultraconservative cable network.

Ahmanson, Olin, Scaife, Bradley, and Coors are also heavy contributors to the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, and right wing polemicists like Dinesh D'Souza and Charles Murray (The Bell Curve). Last but not least in the beneficiary list, is PNAC, the zio- and neo-con think tank that gave us info-war in cyberspace, preemptive aggression, shock and awe and Action Democracy in Irak.

The IRD itself can hardly be characterized as a bona fide religious organization but is rather a political organization that targets religious groups. The IRD's efforts, alone or in tandem with collaborators, include: pressing the Bush administration to take a harder line on North Korea (2003), supporting Republican tax cuts for the rich (2001), slashing of government services for the poor and disabled (2003), defunding reproductive choices, opposing land mine treaties (2001) and working to roll back environmental protections. The IRD was virtually the only "religious" group in America that backed the idea of a preemptive war on Iraq.

Ahmanson, who is himself a nominal Episcopalian, is a believer in Christian Reconstructionism, a hard-line Calvinist movement that advocates replacing American democracy with a fundamentalist theocracy under strict biblical codes. In this vein, Ahmanson, funds the promotion of Intelligent Design and has advocated stoning as penalty for adultery and homosexuality. Needless to say, as always, there is a silvery lining: Ahmanson also asserts that minimum wage laws go against Bible

There is an idiotic tendency in the United States to think that political views are "OK" when they are personally and sincerely held. Somehow, the fact that Ahmanson may truly believe that Deuteronomy should be incorporated into the United States Code makes it alright. But this is to confuse the right to say what one wants with the merits of what is said; and this confusion simply serves to avoid examining the merits. Hitler may truly and sincerely have believed in his Aryan theories; he may even have had a legal right to advocate them in the "market place of ideas" -- but that certainly does not mean that the rest of us should ignore the defects of the idea or the role it played in a larger political (and military) agenda.

Ahmanson's Christian Deconstructionism is not simply a "personal religious choice" or a "personal opinion about gays". It is the religious wedge of a broader and truly reactionary geo-political and economic agenda. Ahmanson and his fellow FundiCon bank-rollers have set out to destroy the Episcopal Church, and bring the Methodists and Presbyterians to heel in order to promote a totalitarian christo-capitalist state -- in short, in order to destroy Liberalism.

This destructive agenda brings us to a political crucible; for, at bedrock, the United States is a liberal nation. Over the past 40 years fundamentalists and neo-cons have so successfully distorted that foundational political fact that people have been brainwashed into thinking of "liberal" as a mere life-style or policy option. This is absolutely wrong. Liberalism is not an option within a system; it is the system.

Once it is accepted that the United States can be not-liberal, as an option, then the United States as we have known it ceases to be. The way is then clear for the United States to become a fundamentalist, conservative corporate police state rigidly adhering to "authoritative" truths and marginalizing anyone who does not fit the approved mold.

To understand why these groups are gunning for the Episcopal Church, it is necessary to recount what it means to say that the Episcopal Church is a bastion of liberalism and how the Episcopalian brand of liberalism is interwoven into America's very constitutional fabric.

Throughout its 200 year history, the Episcopal Church has been a key voice of liberalism in the United States. This liberalism was less a position on any given topic than a necessary concomitant to the Anglican tradition of accommodation and tolerance. The Church of England --- from which the Episcopal Church derives -- was built on theological and political compromises which sought to still the blood stained waters of the Protestant Reformation. Thus, while its ceremonial and organization remained evocatively Catholic, it gave explicit recognition to Calvinist doctrines on predestination while yet striking a middle and equivocal ground on the theologics of the Eucharist. Although the English Reformation was not without violence and upheaval, the overall and commendable attitude was that it was better to mince words than people.

In ecclesisastical parlance, this accommodating attitude became known as latitudinarianism. This latitudinarian propensity was so intrinsic that there even emerged three flavors of Anglicanism: low, broad and high. Those parishes which were "low church" hewed to such Protestant norms as sermonizing, simplicity of style and only an occasional eucharist. High churches were at the other end of the spectrum, offering a more elaborate liturgy and frequent communion. There were even "spikey" Anglo-Catholics who were more Catholic than the Pope, except for the fact that they didn't have one. Under this wide tent, people were content to call themselves "Anglicans" without too much inquisition and recognizing that they somehow shared a common ground. The fact that this common ground was something felt in the heart rather than explainable from the head was seen as a plus rather than a minus.

Particularly in the United States, this latitudinarianism has significant political implications that lie at the root of our constitutional system of government. From a purely historical point of view, the compromises that went into the making of the Church of England went hand in hand with a complex of political accommodations that went into the making of post feudal Britain. Broadly speaking, these compromises formed part of what the English call "The Settlement" -- that unwritten arrangement of Things English that has provided inexhaustible grist for the likes of Evelyn Waugh and Monty Python. In fact, Waugh's son once wrote that England was not divided into classes, really, but into those who understood "The Total Joke" and those who didn't. The pillars of this joke, according to Waugh, were the Monarchy, the House of Lords, the Tory Party and the Church of England -- all of which was a way of saying that the English Constitution (unwritten) was an intricate array of "Yes, buts" followed by "and anyways..."

Politically speaking, the Settlement of 1688, which established a constitutional monarchy within a restricting framework of individual rights, independent courts and a popularly elected parliament , ultimately became the point of departure for the "Great Compromises" that went into the making of the U.S. Constitution. But what counted more than the pieces of the puzzle -- those "three branches" and two parties everyone learns about in grade school -- was the by then established habit of puzzling together over things in common.

More than the Settlement, what the English are most proud of is English -- the pleasure and use of that sonorous, infinitely malleable, majestic language that gave us the Cloverdale Psalms, Shakespeare, the Bill of Rights and the Gettysburg Address. Beneath the Settlement's arrangement of the pieces, lay a cultivated habit of compromising and a willingness not simply to "talk things out" but to understand ourselves as "we who talk about things in a certain kind of way." This more than anything else, is the salient essence of English and American liberalism.

Let us ask, on what basis we call ourselves Americans? What do Catholics and Buddhists, Republicans and Democrats, football lovers and bridge players have in common? What is it that enables us to say we are "one" notwithstanding the vast catalogue of our often vehement differences?

The essence of "being American" is not some diminished lower common denominator of the few, unimportant things we all agree upon or do. Nor is it a trite and phantasmagorical "celebration of diversity". What unites us is that we have agreed to talk about things in a certain way through our press, from our pulpits, in city councils, legislatures, congress and in our courts. There are rules about how we talk. There are stock phrases, buzz words and fudgy terms that we use to signify importance, urgency, patience or the need to agree while not being quite sure we do.

Viewed this way, it can be seen the Constitution is not simply an organizational chart for government but, more profoundly, the organizational chart for an ongoing conversation. It is a conversation that is necessarily latitudinarian because were it not it so, it would be no more than the responsive cadences of those self trumpetting "people's democracies" that define themselves by their unity of mind and purpose. In contrast, our Constitution (not unlike Anglican doctrine) was not the singular product of a triumphant party that had won the day but the cobbling of a multitude of factions neither of whom could accomplish anything on its own.

Perhaps the most salient political example of this latitudinarian tradition can be seen in the judicial custom and practice of publishing dissenting opinions. Why should dissenting opinions be published at all given that by virtue of being dissents they do not reflect what the law is? Why in the world do we go to the expense and confusion of publishing what the law is not?

We do so because if the Anglican tradition adheres to any one operative directive it is that "there are many witnesses to what The Word is". One man's view may be out of synch. It may even be crazy....or, who knows, one day it may be seen to have been correct after all. "We see now darkly" and so we make room for dissenters, rather than cast them out. Is this logical? Not in the least. But as Justice Holmes said, "the life of the Law is not logic but experience." The historical experience that molded the Church of England and, at the same time, give birth to the English Constitution was the practice and habit of finding ways to accommodate; and this custom and practice became the true fundament of the American Experience.

The one time, we failed to accommodate was during the terrible time of the Civil War when the country was unable to heed Lincoln's appeal not to "break our bonds of affection" or to forget "the mystic chords of memory" that held us together. As Lincoln warned, if we could not continue our conversational disagreement as one nation we would necessarily split and become enemies, which is what happened. But for all that and although the passions stirred were the deepest and most violent our nation has experienced, two institutions were not torn asunder: the Post Office and the Episcopal Church.

Liberalism, as we have understood it for 200 years, presupposes differences as a fact of life. Fundamentalism aims to eradicate them. In the wake of the Windsor Report the Episcopalian "liberals" wanted to continue talking about differences, preferably in as fuzzy terms as possible. To the fundi-con wedge groups this was a weasling, delaying anathema. The fundi-cons are absolutely wrong. Fuzzy talking is the very core of Anglicanism.

Likewise, factional and disputatious talking is also the very core of Americanism. As Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 10, one would no sooner abolish liberty because people wrangle loudly and stupidly over trivial things than one would abolish air because it also gives life to a conflagration.

Our history of accomodating talk within sensed but indefinable bounds is the common essence of both Anglicanism and Americanism. In non-English speaking countries, the word "liberal" refers to the political economy of capitalism with a secondary meaning of "generous" and "tolerant". In the United States the meanings are just the reverse: "liberal" primarily means lax, tolerant, giving and forgiving. It was the homiletics of this usage, rather than the dialectics of social democracy, that Franklin Roosevelt, himself an Episcopalian, used to build what once passed for the U.S. social safety net. Unfortunately, his identification of liberalism with a specific policy, also gave Reaganites, fundamentalists and neo-cons the excuse they needed to launch a war of defamation against the one word that most truly defined what America is. They twisted meanings in order to equate "liberal" with loose, libertine, wacky and perverse. That accomplished, it was easy enough to attack social programs as crazy, indulgent, give-aways to the undeserving. In so doing they struck lethal blows not simply at social programs or cultural fads, but at the words and concepts that are absolutely indispensable to understanding what America is truly about.

The view I have propounded, sees the defining essence of American Liberalism, as having its historical roots in the accommodating, conversational process that gave form to Church of England. However, the view that a Faith is defined by the evolving customs and usages of the faithful together is itself an idea firmly rooted in Thomist theology, which holds that the Traditions of the Church over time are a source of divine unfolding co-equal with Sacred Scripture itself. This view, transposed to the secular sphere, is equally the essence of Anglo-American law. The Constitution may be a quasi-sacred scripture of sorts, but constitutional law is a certain ongoing, adversarial, conversation about it.

This living and peremuting traditionalism is utterly rejected by fundamentalist Protestants. They reject any source of faith or truth or justice that is not in a written text; and in lieu of an experience, with all its lack of clarity, conflicts and fudging, the life of the Church is reduced to a collection of mandates. Of course few words under the sun are unambiguous in the manner of "1" or "3" and so what the Bible "demands" must be pronounced by someone. Far from being any foundation to a conversation, that "biblical demand" leaves someone dictating and the rest obeying. To live that kind of faith is anyone's personal choice, but as a public matter and as a political paradigm it is as antithetical to American Liberalism as those self-proclaimed "democracies" of one folk, one mind, one leader.

As presented by the mainstream media, the controversies over the ordination of a gay bishop and the blessing of homosexual unions appear to be routine and almost clich?d protests by morally rigid, conservative, traditionalists versus morally lax, liberals. However, to accept that contextualization is to tacitly accept the very fundamentalist intellectual construct at issue. The Episcopal Church is fundamentally a liberal institution that has always rejected the persecution and exclusion which inevitably attends biblical literalism and doctrinal finality. What is really at issue is not the ordination of a gay man as a bishop or the blessing of gay unions, but whether the Episcopal Church will remain a bastion of liberalism or be reduced to a redundant conservative, fundamentalist tag-along.

Sadly enough, the FundiCon wedge attack launched at the General Convention comes close to being a win/win strategy for them. If the so called "liberals" knuckle under, they are destroyed. If they fight back aggressively, they risk further painting themselves into a corner as caricature, flakey, out-of-bound liberals. It will take skill and dogged determination to shift the debate away from specific issues on to the true question of Anglicanism's essentially liberal nature.

While the proximate outcome of this battle is of concern to Episcopalians, the rest of us should harbor no illusions. The Episcopal Church stands as an impediment to the FundiCon agenda for America, and the attack at the Convention should be seen in its true political light as a proxy attack on America's essential liberal nature. America is Liberal or it is not.

©Barfo, 2006.

Some Links of Interest

http://thewitness.org/agw/webster101504.html (Power Money Control)
http://www.post-gazette.com/printer.asp 99/23/2003 (Region Funds Episcopalian's Move to Divide)
http://www.zionsherald.org/Jan2004_specialreport.html
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004/
Episcopal News Service (May 2006) "Following the Money"

Supreme Court Drives Dagger into Corpse of Fourth Amendment.

2006-06-15T16:36:00.001-07:00

In a 5-4 decision, with Justice Scalia in the lead, the Republiscam majority of the Supreme Court held today that non-compliance with constitutional “knock notice” rules did not require suppression of subsequently seized evidence. In practical effect, this means that Murkans have now attained the same status as Iraqis under U.S. liberation.

A little background for those who may have been ignoring the Fourth Amendment for the past decade or two. The amendment requires a judicially issued warrant before government agents can forcibly enter your home, make a mess of it, and seize what they say is evidence of a crime. After all, we all can remember the melodramas of Wehrmacht soldiers stomping around in hobnailed boots, kicking down doors, and we wouldn’t want that in God’s Country now, would we?

As ancillary to the warrant requirement (have-warrant-can-enter), the high court held, in Wilson v. Arkansas, (1995) 514 U. S. 927, that police are also required to knock and give notice of their entry before kicking in doors. The reason is as simple as it is obvious: a warrant to search for evidence of crime is not a license to act like a thug. For this reason, the Court has held that the “reasonableness” of a search and seizure depends as much on the “method of an officer’s entry” as it does on the grounds for entering at all.

As most people have heard, at least from the raving hysterics on Fox News, a violation of the Fourth Amendment requires suppression of the illegally seized evidence. This has been the rule since Weeks v. United States, (1914) 232 U. S. 383. The reason is also as simple as it is obvious: Why have a constitution at all if it can be violated with impunity?

The Constitution requires a president to be 36 years of age when elected. If a 12 year old were elected would it be so absurd to say he should be excluded from taking office? What is not constitutional simply ought not to be, and ought not to be recognized “in contemplation of law” as the quaint but incisive phrase used to have it.

However, in the 1960’s, when the high court was all gaga with this thing called sociology, it invented more scientific sounding reasons for the exclusionary rule. It held that exclusion of illegally seized evidence was required because by loosing otherwise good evidence, cops would be taught an object lesson in good behavior. The prospect of loosing their case because they failed to comply with the constitution would act as an incentive to follow the law.

Of course not only is that sort of heteronomous reasoning a lot of stuff and nonsense, it is also a sword that cuts both ways. Needless to say court conservatives, in lockstep with their boys-in-blue, were quick to argue that evidence should be suppressed only “where its remedial objectives” would be “most efficaciously served,” United States v. Calandra, (1974) 414 U. S. 338, 348) and “where its deterrence benefits outweighed its ‘substantial social costs.’” (United States v. Leon, (1984) 468 U. S. 897, 907.) What these marbles in-the-mouth meant was that if judges could think of some plausible sounding reason why cops did not need to have their knuckles wrapped, the evidence need not be suppressed.

So now we come to today’s decision in Hudson v. Michigan (June 15, 2006) No. 04–1360. Looking to maximum efficaciousness, the Republiscam majority held that suppressing evidence on account of police failure to give knock notice was outweighed by the “social costs” of doing so.

Hudson was not a case involving terrorism. Why it was not even a case involving code purple Kiddie Porn. It was a garden variety drug seizure case. If the social costs of loosing a routine drug case outweigh unconstitutional behavior, it is hard to see what kind of misbehaviour the cops have to commit in order to warrant a constitutional sanction.

The majority was evidently troubled by the subjectivity of this how high is too high approach; and so it fashioned a test which was just as bad. It held that evidence should not be suppressed unless the illegality complained of was the “but for” reason for the seizure. In plain language, if the cops lied in order to get the warrant and if the warrant was the basis for seizing the evidence, then the exclusionary rule would take effect. On the other hand, if the police used a SWAT team to blast away the front of a house as the method for serving the warrant, that misbehaviour would not call for a constitutional sanction. How the warrant is served is something different from why the warrant was served, and the Bill of Rights protects only the “why” not the “how”. At least, thus sprach Scalia.

Every day, Iraqis are subjected to having their homes burst into without so much as a knock... at least not that kind of knock that doesn’t come from the heel of a boot. Without an effective deterrence on thug-behaviour, Murkans can expect little more from the Kevlar Boys patrolling their streets.

But not all hope is lost. The Republiscam majority did continue to recognize that the primary reason for the “knock notice” rule “is the protection of human life and limb, because an unannounced entry may provoke violence in supposed self defense by the surprised resident.” Supposed? There is little to “suppose” about a smashing sound at the door. The court recognizes that people who smash down doors court the risk of being blown away by people on the other side who have a natural, human and constitutional expectation of security in their own homes.

©Barfo 2006.

Meanwhile Back At Camp I-Rock

2006-06-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

Marines held a hoot n' hodown singing and laughing over their exploits in wasting iraqi women and children. According to BBC News (14 June 06), a video of the performance was posted on the web. Needless to say, the Marine Korps was investigating....

Will Any Senator speak out against Torture?

2006-06-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

The world cries out in protest against US brutality at Guantanamo, but Congress lies supine and silent.

Dear Senator,

In March of 2004, before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, I wrote you a letter calling your attention to the abuse of detainees at Guantanamo. I noted that information leaking out from the camp plus reports of attempted suicides coupled with the officially admitted facts and decrypted government double-talk, all pointed to the conclusion that people who had never be shown to be guilty of anything were being institutionally and routinely abused and tortured.

Since then you have said nothing... not even on your web site, not even read into the Congressional Record at 3.45 a.m. The International Red Cross has broken its 100 year tradition of non-comment and has condemned the mistreatment of the Guantanamo detainees; but you have said nothing. The United Nations has called for the closure of this infamous torture center; but you have said nothing. Our own and only ally in this sordid affair has called for the release of the detainees; but you have said nothing. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has condemned the illegality of the detentions; but you have said nothing. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, scores of NGOs, legal organizations and the Holy See itself have cried out against the infamy taking place at Guantanamo; but you and your supine colleagues in Congress have remained silent.

It now turns out that after five long years of degradation, torture and hopelessness three detainees have committed suicide; and, in a shocking statement that bespeaks the moral putrefaction that rots throughout the United States Government, Rear Admiral Harris has dismissed these suicides as “acts of war.” The Government has called them a “PR” move that shows “no regard for life”. The depravity and perversity of these remarks is without rival in the annals of history, except perhaps for the SS guards who may have laughed at Auschwitz prisoners who electrocuted themselves on the barbed wire while trying to escape.

Suicide horrifies because it goes against the most fundamental grain of all living things, which is to live. Suicides are not “playing games” nor are they “attacking” anyone. They are simply and pathetically ending a life that has been filled only with the certainty of pain and despair.

As the Vatican statement reminds us, even criminals and even enemies are human beings that warrant fair and humane treatment. Even more, detainees who have never been charged must less shown to be guilty of anything.

Ignoring these fundamentals of decency, the United States tortures people to suicide all but openly in the global forum. It does so indifferently to the universal outcry against it. It shrugs off the suicides with a moral depravity and lack of humanity that is beyond belief.

When are you and your supine colleagues going to show some impulse other than craven ambition and political cowardice? When will you recover a sense of shame? When will rise up and speak out against the depravity of this Administration and the culture of thuggery that has seized Washington?

©Barfo, 2006

Language as Mugging

2005-08-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

How did the Bush cancer get started? To answer this question we have to look at the most deep rooted and symptomatic characteristic of the Bush regime: it’s eristic use of language.

The Phenomenon.

For those unfamiliar with the word, “eristic” derives from the Greek for “strife”. The dictionary assigns the meaning of “disputatious” but the root meaning is the truer sense. Eristic goes beyond sophistry, it is simply language in the employ of war --- language as war.

A person who engages in eristic has no desire to win a debate, even if by deceit and trickery. He has no such desire because he is not debating any more than a mugger is “boxing”. The eristic punk is only interested in bludgeoning. If he does so in the non-physical safety of a debate context, he does so only because he lacks even the punk’s courage of putting his teeth where his mouth his. If he could punch without risk of getting punched back, the eristic punk would be brass knuckling it. And this is the reason why listening to them is like listening to the thud and crunch of brass and boots.

According to the zioCon, William Kristol, a “conservative is simply a liberal who has been mugged.” Perhaps; but in so saying, Kristol concedes that his craft consists in mugging back.... no more.

These word-thugs begin by lying and confuting. They then proceed to smear and insult and ultimately to defame and destroy. Witness their conduct toward Cindy Sheehan. There are arguments that could be made against Sheehan’s political position and conduct. But the word thugs don’t make them. They simply fling abuse and verbal offal at her.

These punks have been at it vehemently for over a decade now. One would think that they would eventually exhaust themselves, but they don’t. A normal person would get exhausted by this expenditure of negative energy. But these creatures aren’t normal. They feed on the expenditure of negative energy... paradoxical -- para-real as that might be. Far from ever reaching some sort of plateau, in the past several days they have warped into hyper shrieks...not only accusing Sheehan of “betraying” her dead son but howling from Hell that Christ wants Chavez assassinated. These monstrosities are only human in form.

A Punk Culture

What gave rise to this eristic phenomenon? Although the phenomenon in the fullness of its realization is the swell of many streams, the common source is Calliclean Cynicism -- the Real Politik school of governance, the Hobbsian school of life. The salesman and business manager is taught that “only the bottom line” matters and the bottom line is PROFIT. The law student likewise is taught that law is nothing but a collection of pre-cut bullshit, all that matters is the outcome: WINNING. In the case of the press, the Calliclean cynicism is actually born of laziness. It is one of the chief functions of the press (in “watchdog mode”) to ferret out the crimes, vices and follies of mankind. Of course, this takes leg work and the press corps would rather be munching canapés at some press-release buffet. So instead of doing the hard research and leg work, they cultivate a jaded, jejune “hardness” which they then fob off as being “in the know” and “no one’s fool”. In fact, they are the biggest fools of all.

Uh’Murka has long made a cult of this sort of thing: “Nice guys finish last” and Nothing Succeeds Like Success. Up to a point the cultivation of this attitude is no more than an adolescent society trying to appear sophisticated and worldly. But as the adolescent grows up, the feint becomes a habit and the habit becomes a disease.

For all time and everywhere, the politics of brutishness was distilled by Plato and put into the mouth of one of Socrates’ interlocutors, the Athenian entrepreneur, Callicles. It is the enduring genius of Plato that his stylus could perfectly turn and polish such a thuggish collection of lusts and scorns as those uttered by Callicles. Plato so guilds the mud that Callicles almost seems to espouse something that might be called a political philosophy. There is at any rate no better or more paradigmatic text of why might makes right and why governance consists in the art of duping and exploiting the many.

Needless to say, Socrates butts heads with Callicles, and academics titillate themselves with the fact that “in the end” Callicles is made to blush....all of which supposedly proved that Socrates was right and that decency held the field at the end of the day. Actually not. Plato was not able to come up with any argument that would defeat Callicles, for if he had he would have stated it. No, philosophy was in fact powerless against brutality, and in the end, Plato could only achieve a fools victory by going to the end of the stage and offering narrator’s aside to the effect that, “in his heart of hearts, Callicles knew he was wrong.”

The draw... like other Platonic draws is one of those stalemates that approach the tragic. At very bottom, Callicles was not a truly bad man and, in the end, the Philosophy of decency and humanity is not able to prevail. What could be more tragic than that?

But the whole grotesque legion of zioCon cynics from smirking Kristol to leering Rumsfeld to sneering Cheney, to whining Wolfowitz and gurgling Perle - to say nothing of the think tanks where they fester -- is not tragic. Unlike Callicles, these thugs don’t blush.

©Barfo, 2005

Political Cancer

2005-08-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

I have said many times before, that Bush and gang are a monstrous excrescence. They are beyond being simply politicians pursuing misbegotten or bad policies. Johnson was a bad politician but even he held to some genuine good. There is nothing redeeming about the Bush gang. They are distilled evil. They are repugnant thugs whose sole purpose -- whose lust -- is simply to pillage and destroy... everything: the earth, the economy, the rule of law, civil rights and even language itself. Not even animals howl like these things whose every utterance is shriek from the bowls of hell. They are Satan’s shit.

But even this doesn’t reach the core of the matter. My epithets and hatred fall short. Two days ago it occurred to me: Bush is a political cancer that corrupts and consumes everything.

The correlative to the disgusted loathing I feel for that Sack of Diseased Shit is the vexing question why the country is so powerless against him Why is congress so supine, feeble and corrupt? So pimped and fucked that they can’t even formulate the question much less stand up principle? Sixty percent of the country is against the war, and all you can hear from the demorats is that they will prosecute it better. The rest, if they think about it all are like timid mice wondering if they “can dare” “be seen” to come out against a war that the majority has resolved against.

Yes -- congressoids are whores and the press a bunch of pimps but to say as much is to focus on personalities not systemics. The more systemic question remains: why is the country so powerless against the onslaught of the Bush effluence and sewage? Because Bush is a cancer and, by definition, the body has no immunity against it. It corrupts and consumes and devours and destroys, and Murka wastes and dies. That is what’s going on.

©Barfo, 2005

Pulpification

2005-05-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Two months after it was reported in the UK press (Independent.UK, 3/27/05), the news finally reached Murka’s isolated shores that some of our boys -- against the express and explicit orders of Donald Rumsfeld, to be sure -- had pulpified a 22 year old Afghani cab-driver.

For those not familiar with this latest addition to Murka’s moral lexicon, let me elucidate. Bagram is a place where Murkan interrogators -- trained army thugs -- make hog-tied prisoners kiss their boots or, as the New Jerk Times reported, “pick plastic bottle caps caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water.” The Times did not see fit to print how the picking was done, but a little imagination will paint the picture.

It was into this sadistic Murkan jail that all of Dilawar’s 122 lbs were dragged and hanged from the ceiling, like so much meat, for four days straight, while he was “interrogated” with boots, clubs and fists. Guards thought it was funny to strike his knees just to hear him shout “Allah”.

After a couple of days, Dilawar began to babble. When he said he didn’t feel good, guards checked his pulse by jabbing their nails into his writs. His legs spasmed so badly he couldn’t walk or stand. A guard choked him with his hood and forced his head into a puddle of “water” to “hydrate” him.

After four days of this relentless “stress”, Dilawar went into cardiac arrest. The coroner reported that he had been beaten so badly the muscles in his thighs "had basically been pulpified." (You know, like orange juice....)

A day after this story broke on Murka’s shamed & sullied shores, CNN ballyhooed,

"BUSH PRAISES PROGRESS IN AFGHANISTAN!"

The article reported that the Sado-Punk-in-Chief was looking forward to meeting next week with Afghanistan's leader "to discuss freedom's remarkable progress" in the country that once harbored the al Qaeda terror network. President Punk, noted that the terrorists had been "dealt.. a series of devastating blows. In Afghanistan, we have brought to justice dozens of terrorists and insurgents [sic].” “We're helping Afghanistan's elected government solidify these democratic gains and deliver real change,” he said. “A nation that once knew only the terror of the Taliban is now seeing a rebirth of freedom, and we will help them succeed.”

CNN did not carry the Dilawar story.

Oh yes... Dilawar’s crime? He had a current regulator in the trunk of his car. They’re used to stabilize the current from electric generators.

©Barfo, 2005

THUG POLITIK -- The Neo Con Agenda for a New American Century, Part III

2003-09-15T21:23:00.000-07:00

The image of the State in 1984 is that of a boot in the face

Brian to Winston, in Orwell's 1984

In human affairs, nothing arises in a vacuum but rather develops from a pre-existing kernel. Neocon doctrine is no different and is what might be called an “historical inference.”

Within the U.S. foreign policy establishment, the phrase “zones of democratic peace” had a pre-existing usage, the ultimate effect of which was simply that it was considered beneficial to the United States to extend the capitalist free-trade system to as many countries and regions in the world. In Ancient Athens, the same hegemonic doctrine might well have been labelled, “Zones of Hellenic Co Prosperity” What is new is the meaning the Neocons have given to “hegemony.”

Even here, the brutalization of american hegemony is not without antecedents. Through the Korean War, it can be said, in a general way, that the United States pursued its hegemonic interests by fairly conventional means. That changed with Vietnam, where turning South Vietnam into a U.S.-friendly zone of democratic peace, entailed participation in a civil war and, hence inescapably, participation in a war against civilians. The most notorious aspect of this war was the U.S. “pacification” program, which involved turning villages into mini-concentration camps and murder, code named Phoenix. Even here, the actions were not without antecedents in the German administered Generalgouvernment and Nazi occupation policies in “the eastern” territories.

But to say that the neocon Thug Staat is not without antecedents is not to say that it is simply more of the same. It is not. It is a progression by degree beyond a threshold that has resulted in something qualitatively and dangerously new. In the New American Century, the exercise and enjoyment of the means has become an end in itself.

As Brian explained to Winston in the torture chambers of the Ministry of Truth, prior to 1984, governments and tyrants always sought to justify their power in terms of some ulterior good. Whatever that good was asserted to be, power was exercised in the name of bringing that good about. Likewise the exercise of power was limited by what was justifiable in terms of the asserted good. No more. The Party in 1984 had learned that power could and would be exercised entirely for its own sake no more, without need to justify it by anything other than the self justification of the pursuit of dominance.

It was thus useless for Winston to scream “why?” -- the answer was simply “because”. It was useless for Winston to argue that what the State was doing was self-defeating, because what the State was engaged in was was self-asserting for its own sake. Power projection for its own sake was the beginning and end of existence.

To say that the goal of US policy is to project power, and preserve preeminence through “full spectrum dominance” is simply to say that there is no ulterior goal -- that power is a good in and of itself. But power in and of itself is simply the smashing if things; and smashing things...smashing countries, people... is what the neocon agenda is all about.

This is not to say, that no ulterior justification is ever used in the PNAC Manifesto. From time to time there is some tepid allusion to “American interests and princoples” whatever those “principles” might be. These are simply linguistic holdovers on the march toward a simpler, purero NeoSpeak. What is astonishing how little ulterior good is ever mentioned.

The Manifesto never talks about erecting schools, economic development, culture, infrascturcture, Peace Corps in zones of democratic freedom. In fact the Manifesto hardly ever speaks of American interests, other than the interest inhaving more control, more power, more hardware more destructive weapons.

To say that there is an ulterior purpose of “safety” is simply to use labels to play havoc with cause and effect. At some level of generality “purpose” becomes de facto meaningless. Safety through Dominance is no more than I’m safe because I’m bashing you. Peace through Rubbleizing.

Once it is understood that the Neocons are engaged in a purely Orwellian pursuit of power and dominance for its own sake, it can also be understood that their brutality will not be confined to “America’s security perimeter” On the contrary, it will of necessity be extended inward to The Homeland itself.

This follows first from the fact that once power projection is the self-justifying goal it really doesn’t matter where it is exercised. The point is to project and for this Kansas is as good as Khandahar. It follows also from the fact that once the American populace become inured to brutality, they will be indifferent to it when it pummels some “terrorist” in the Homeland; and it will in fact be considered a good thing that a potential terrorist was caught and rooted out.

It also follows fom the entire “security-based” mentality. “Security” begins at home and since the Homeland is the preeminent zone of democratic peace, it requires its security environment to be shaped as much as any other. Already the neoscum administration is seeking to dispense with constitutional limits on data mining all currently available information on U.S. citizens. It is already seeking to “organically” penetrate certain “suspect” and “target” groups, without ever specifying exactly what makes them suspect. It is already seeking to build security perimeters and walls all around the country, always pointing to the alleged inchoate threat outside and always ignoring that walls and controls and checks work both ways. The notion that the the State should “control” the internet and wage net-war on it, basically extends power projection and security shaping into the realm of information and thought.

Last but not least, it follows from the project to turn U.S. soldiers into drugged up killers. If the neocons are willing to turn U.S. soldiers into drugged up killers, they will see no objection to pharmaceutically enhancing domestic security forces. The images we see in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq today are a foretaste of the Homeland tomorrow. It will be so.

©Barfo, 2003

THUG POLITIK -- The Neo Con Agenda for a New American Century, Part II

2003-09-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

II.

Constabulism: Degrade, Brutalize, Terrorize.

If unilateral and preemptive power projection is fundamentally irreconcilable with the stuff of civilization, what can one expect in its wake? Only anti civilization. “Zones of democratic peace” is simply Neospeak for national concentration camps in which civil society has been brutalized, terrorized and degraded to a sub-social level.

Not only does this follow implicitly from the policy premise of power projection, the neoscum actually brag about it and lay the program in fairly specific terms under the newly minted rubric of Constabulary Missions.

If there were nothing more to the neocon weltanschauung than kicking butt it could perhaps be said that it propounded nothing that different from Hobbesian realism or Calliclean cynicsm -- although even in those case the exercise of power was presupposed to subserve some ulterior good. But even that slim saving grace is removed by the neocon doctrine of constabulary operations. Under this quaint and archaic term -- reminiscent of the avunvular, moustachioed Bobby in his tall hat -- the neocon collapse ends into means and means into routinized bullying and oppression. Constabulism is the essential sarcoma of the Neocon vision for Hell on Earth.

Waging Peace & Maintaining War

After setting forth constabulary operations as one of the four critical missions for the U.S. military, the neocon Manifesto goes on to describe this mission with a string of catch phrases and slogans asserting that the new mission requires the U.S. military to,

• be equipped for “long term constabulary operations”, which
• “secure and amplify zones of democratic peace”; and
• “shape the security environemnt and the early stages of any conflict.”

These constabulary missions are something apart from traditional full-scale theatre wars. Accordingly, the Manifesto declaims that it is necessary to ensure

“that [the army] is equal to the tasks before it: shaping the peacetime environment and winning multiple, simultaneous theater wars”

With respect shaping the peacetime environment,

“the first order of business ... is to establish security, stability and order[,]

and to do so,

“American troops, in particular, must be regarded as part of an overwhelmingly powerful force.”

However, establishing order is only one prong of the constabulary’s two prong mission of “securing and extending” zones of democratic peace. The execution of these constabulary missions requires military forces which are,

"configured for combat but [i.e. “and”] capable of long-term, independent constabulary operations.”

Combat against whom? Whenever a military amplifies a zone, it necessarily invades, incurs into and wages war against an adjacent zone, whatever it may called, although “terrorist zone” seems to be the current label. Thus this constabulary task requires one and the same forces to engage in peacekeeping and war-making at the same time in the same general region.

What the PNAC envisions is “an American led security order” consisting of ongoing zonal wars along what it calls the “American security frontier.” This frontier is not our border with Canada or Mexico, but Eastern Europe and the Middle East

“[T]he new opportunity for greater European stability offered by further NATO expansion will make demands on ground and land based air forces [a]s the American security perimeter in Europe is removed [sic] eastward...”

and

“The Pentagon must retain forces to preserve the current peace in ways that fall short of conduction major theater campaigns. such [constabulary] forces must be expanded to meet the needs of the new, long-term NATO mission in the Balkans, and other missions in Southwest Asia, [i.e. “the Middle East and surrounding energy producing region”]

Madcap as this policy is, it is only half the lunacy, because the PNAC explicitly rejects traditional notions of "peacekeeping" which is why they coined the word “constabulary.” As the Manifesto itself states,

“Constabulary missions are far more complex and likely to generate violence than traditional ‘peacekeeping’ missions.”

Here, for anyone with eyes to read, the Manifesto tips its hand. What kind of constable generates violence? What is so “more complex” to normal “peace patrols”? To answer these questions, one must take a step back and examine historically accepted norms of international conflict.

Traditional peacekeeping operations fell into two broad categories. : (1) restoring civil order and services following conquest and occupation; or (2) acting as a buffer between belligerents. The German occupation of France and the subsequent Allied occupation of Germany are examples of the first variant, and the rules of this kind of peacekeeping are well established in international law. Generally speaking, the occupying army guards key installations in a low key fashion while it works with and relies upon pre-existing police departments and bureaucratic institutions to provide security and services as near to normal as possible. While the full convention of civil rights are not fully restored, the aim of a successful peacekeeping occupation is to be as unobtrusive and invisible as possible while yet maintaining control over the conquered State.

Buffer peacekeeping is the inverse. The goal is to remain as visible as possible to but to retain as little control (or responsibility) for the work of governing the territory in question. This is left to the contending parties in their respective spheres and is supervised only to the degree necessary to prevent further hostilities. In practice, this type of peacekeeping has proved problematic, but overall it has achieved some notable successes.

In light of these concepts, the dual task of securing and amplifying would ordinarily be interpreted as requiring both non-combat and combat missions; even if, as a practical necessity, these two distinct missions would usually be accomplished by one and the same military force. To be sure, this heteronomous dual-task is fraught with mission-confusion and screw ups which is why many traditionalist officers rankled at being required to do a job they saw as fundamentally non-military. Nevertheless, it is not such a dual task as has not been done before. Peacekeeping in conquered territory while “advancing the front” is nothing armed forces haven't done before.

However, this dual-tasking presented a problem for the PNAC authors because, in traditional terms, it required the military to discharge the fundamentally distinct missions of peace-keeping and war-making. Traditional peacekeeping was of no interest to the PNAC, which is the PNAC Manifesto explicitly rejected the concept of a post-combat peacekeeping mission, rather,

“these [constabulary] missions demand forces basically configured for combat.”

because the purpose of these missions is to

"remove [“hostile”] regimes from power and conduct post-combat stability operations. In purposes [sic], constabulary missions could be considered “lesser included cases”.

Lesser included of what? “Lesser included cases” was a term borrowed from law, where a simple assault with fists is said to be a “lesser included offence” of aggravated assault with a gun. Thus what the Manifesto explicitly states is that these peacekeeping (“constabulary”) missions are a lesser form of war.

Thus, constabulary forces

“will need sufficient personnel strength to be able to conduct sustained traditional infantry missions”

and

“They will need sufficient personnel strength to be able to conduct sustained traditional infantry missions, but with the mobility to operate over extended areas. They must have enough direct firepower to dominate their immediate tactical situation,”

The PNAC wanted a military that would “shape” the peacetime environment. Of course, the mission has nothing to do with “shaping peace” as a viable reality in itself. The word “peace” was thrown in here and there to lubricate the swallow. What is really at issue is “shaping the security environment” by which is meant shaping the conditions of those areas in which traditional military fighting is not taking place.

That is why “shaping the security” and “shaping the initial stages of conflict” could lie seamlessly along the the same spectrum. They weren’t distinct missions but different levels of the same mission.

That is also why “constabulary” non-peacekeeping was likely to generate violence. The phrase is uttered like a commonplace that ought to be accepted. Would anyone have thought otherwise? Actually, yes.

Customarily, it is not expected that traditional peacekeeping forces will generate violence. In fact it has not even been expected that they were likely to “meet with” more than occasional and isolated violence. The reason is simple. Victor and vanquished alike have an interest in resuming normal life once the battle is over. This does not mean that love and friendship reign; in fact, more than likely, hate and resentment will fester. But anyone who has experienced it hates war even more. War represents a disruption of normal life and hence a threat to life itself. People cannot live in a state of ongoing disruption and thus have a greater interest in the reestablishment of order, of fuel supplies, of food deliveries, of water, of medical services, of schools.

The only reason “constabulary non-peacekeeping”could be expected to generate violence was if it did not seek to restore normal life. Instead, the PNAC Manifesto anticipates ongoing hostilities both inside the newly acquired zone of democratic peace and outside it in seeking toe extend it. In other words, Constabulisim is simply ongoing war at another level. A lesser included case.

This is the first indication that the New American Century has made a radical departure from the structures of international law and conflict management evolved laboriously since Grotius. Everyhting the PNAC Manifesto says indicates that “constabulary” operations are to be regarded as simply a penumbra of war -- an ongoing violence generating “security shaping” within a zone of democratic peace.

Fighting A Lesser Included Peace

How does an army “shape” a peace? What does it mean to “shape the security environment.” The answer to this question is as nauseating as discovering the true meaning of “constabulism”.

Shaping a security environment is something that prison wardens do. It consists in prescribing lock-downs, conducting unannounced searches, the infliction of summary “lesser included” punishments, the imposition of conditions for minor benefits, and so on.

It was no lapse that PNAC talks of the army (constabulary) as “shaping the peace” and “shaping the security environment”. What is meant is that the military is going to control the parameters of existence outside any theatre of actual conventional war and the the “zone of democratic peace” is to be conceived as nothing more than a regional lock-down.

When the PNAC Manifesto speaks of a military capable of “long-term, independent constabulary operations” it means two things;

1) that the mission is not a temporary peacekeeping/ order maintaing operation until such time as civilian authority can be reestablished but rather that

2) it is an occupation which is independent from, unreliant upon and not answerable any civilian institution or authority.

The constabulary units are preeminent, supreme, and they alone decide what is to be. It also means that these military stompers and shapers are not dependent on our own related institutions which might be encumbered by statutory obligations or a feeble concern for norms of law. Constabulism is a law unto itself.

In order to shape the security environment,

“These forward-based, independent units will be increasingly built around the acquisition and management of information. This will be essential for combat operations – precise, long-range fires require accurate and timely intelligence and robust communications links – but also for stability operations.”

thus they should have,

“ have their own human intelligence collection capacity, perhaps through an attached special forces unit if not solely through an organic intelligence unit“

and should be configured with

"combat service support personnel with special language, logistics and other support skills."

because the units involved

“will require the ability to understand and operate in unique political-military environments, ...

and will be

“required to maintain peace and stability in the regions they patrol, provide early warning of imminent crises, and to shape the early stages of any conflict – precise, long-range fires require accurate and timely intelligence and robust communications links – but also for stability operations."

Once again it is necessary to unravel, the unique blend of contradictions the PNAC mavens have brewed up.

When the Manifesto makes reference to “forward-based, independent units” it is not talking, in the first instance, of forward striking forces landing, penetrating and invading new territory. The matrix of “zones of democratic peace” are themselves the “forward based” new “American security perimeter.” Thus, while the mission of the forces entails extending the security perimeter, what the Manifesto is here talking about is “security” operations within the forward based perimeter.

Of course, as has been shown, “secure and extend” are seamlessly connected operations; so seamless in fact as to result in weirdly constructed phrases like:

"shaping “the early stages of any conflict – precise, long-range fires require accurate and timely intelligence and robust communications links – but also for stability operations."

Striking out the part that refers to early stages of an extending operation, it becomes clear that what is called for is acquisition of sufficient intelligence “for stability operations” within the “peace” zone. To understand what this entails, we have to again pause to think about the meaning of words.

The word “intelligence” signifies a creature’s ability to use its mental faculties in an efficient, versatile, creative, and useful manner. In the 19th century the word began to be applied metaphorically to institutions which of course have no brain and cannot be said to be either intelligent or stupid. In this metaphorical sense, “intelligence” became practically synonymous with “knowledge of something” or “information”. However, the original sense was not entirely lost so that the word could also refer to an institution’s ability to gather information. -- which is the closest a corporate entity can come to having an IQ.

Traditionally speaking, military intelligence is concerned with acquiring information as to the location, size and battle plan of opposing theatre forces. As war became more industrialized, military intelligence also brought within its purview information as to armaments, production capacity and sustainability. But in all events “intelligence” was directed at an identifiable combatant enemy and sought specific types of information.

In the sense of “information” corporate, police, military intelligence also seeks knowledge of something specific and usually from specific parties or classes of people. Just as military intelligence seeks specific information about an identified opponent, so police intelligence plants undercover agents and spies upon specific people or groups reasonably suspected of engaging in specific crimes for information about those crimes.

Assuming that this traditional definition (more or less widely construed) fits with the task of "amplifying" zones of democratic peace, It has nothing to do with with the separate and distinct task of "securing" (i.e. traditional peacekeeping). Who is the enemy in a non-battlefield zone? Traditionally speaking there is no enemy; there is only a civilian population that is no doubt demoralized and resentful, but is not engaged in hostilities.

What is the “intelligence” to be gained? Certainly not “battlefield” intelligence because there is no battlefield within the zone of democratic peace. So, then, information about what and from whom?

When the Manifesto talks about “organic” intelligence units, it means that kind of intelligence acquired by penetrating into society; through infiltration on the one hand or extracting (detaining) people on the other. When it speaks of gaining an “understanding” of the “politico-military” environment what it means is acquiring information from anyone about anything. In contrast to the word “knowledge” -- which is always of something -- the word “understanding” is broader and encompasses awareness of a random range of variables. The term “politico military environment” simply means anything in the surroundings which could have a political or military implication -- i.e. anything.

Under the PNAC constabulary regime, information gathering is total and free form, encompassing anything of potential interest to brewing conflicts, (to be shaped) to an understanding of who is connected to whom in a given neighborhood. This is not “intelligence” in the traditional sense of finding answers to specific questions it is rather simply data mining. General free form information gathering.

The difference is critical because data mining means interrogating anyone in the security zone as a “potential suspect” not because he is a potential suspect or even an an actual one, but rather because anything he knows might be potentially useful, or as they say, is potentially usefully.

The difference is critical also because data mining -- once accepted -- simply destroys the concept of arbitrariness.

In traditional military or criminal intelligence there is always a specific suspect and question in mind. Rounding up people without a specific suspicion or specific question is consider “arbitrary” and unlawful. Who would want to live in a society where he or his wife or children could be yanked off the street and hauled off for questioning without specific cause much less notice, advisement?

But in the world of data mining no specific information is sought. What counts is is the possible relation between apparently unconnected and insignificant pieces of data. Since any person in the security zone can possess such a piece of connect able data no arrest is “arbitrary” and every one is a potential “suspect” in “possession of potential information” .

And of course since anyone is suspect of having potentially useful information howsoever useless it might seem to be at the moment, it is easy to forget why we are interrogating him altogether, and just simply beat him up by way of affirmative pacification.

As a result of the hybrid task, military intelligence gets twisted into meaning general unfocused intelligence run by the military in non-battlefield zones. in order to maintain occupation and prevent the eruption of resistance. “Intelligence” is metamorphosed into data mining which becomes the excuse for wholesale door smashing, draggings, detentions, interrogations and in general boot-stomping, boot smashing, ass kicking, terrorization of the population in general.

Confidence is the foundation of all civil society which cannot function without expectations of integrity, confidentiality and security “in one’s person, papers and effects.” Data-mining is under-mining. A society that is “organically” penetrated by spies, informers and extraction-actions is not society that has been “rebuilt” to be democratic and prosperous but one that has been subverted and consumed.

Under the PNAC’s new Constabulary Order the secured zone of peace is just as much in a state of violence as the extended zone of peace. The only difference is that the “enemy within” is more pathetically helpless than the “enemy without”.

Safety is War. Total Safety is Total War

It is not for nothing that the Russians have called the neocon manifesto another Mein Kampf. Forthrightly and without shame its sets forth a goal of global domination for its own sake. But next to neocon megalomania, Mein Kampf seems almost restrained and philosophical.

According to the Manifesto, the American led security-order will require the United States to

maintain multiple full theatre wars in conjunction with
long term constabulary operations
that secure and amplify zones of democratic peace
and shape security environment

and what this means has now become clear. But it is still only half the story. In in paroxyms of truly Strangelovian Joy, the PNAC mavens go on to declaim that the New American Security Order requires, us to

“CONTROL THE 'NEW INTERNATIONAL COMMONS" or SPACE AND “CYBERSPACE,”

Not only does the Manifesto call for” the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control” The PNAC’s goal of “space control” is to prevent anyone else from having access to outer space and to use outer space for the placement military weapons that can strike anywhere on earth from the push of a button in some bunker in Wyoming.

But even more lethal is the Neoscum’s call for military missions to be extended to the new “battlefield” of the internet.

The Manifesto begins by complaining that terrorist groups (including by its own count the EZLN peasant autonomy movement in Chiapas, Mexico) use the internet for “propaganda” and “recruitment”. The notion that “terrorists” are having applicants sign up through e-applications is, of course, inane. In reality, any recruitment occurs through the fact of propaganda, and propaganda is what free speech is all about. Although there are always problems when a Government starts to exercise so-called free speech, it can be assumed for the present that it would be equally legitimate for the United States or any other party to use the internet to make its own and contrary propaganda.

However, the “competitive market place of idea” as Justice Brandeis put it is not how the PNAC conceives of “cyberwar” None other than Donald Scumsfeld, signatory to the Manifesto, and currently Secretary of War, has stated that the U.S. military needs to engage in disinformation campaigns.

Just as data-mining is not the same as intelligence gathering, so too disinformation is not the same as propaganda. All propaganda is interpretative. It argues an interpretation of and from given facts. Almost everyone’s propaganda engages in some “fact-massaging” -- playing up those facts that are helpful to the argument and omitting facts that are inconvenient. Disinformation is far more toxic. It consists in planting false facts under false identities, or using false identities to generate conflict or confusion and to induce social disorientation. . Like a person spun around to the point of staggering dizziness, disinformed society is one that simply cannot function as social organism; it is simply humanoid putty.

Thus, in addition to destroying language so that “words no longer have their original and intended meaning” the neocons want to destroy information in general so that none of us any longer can say for sure that what is reported as fact was really a fact or only a lie. This is the ultimate heteronomy that destroys everything.

Not quite... there still remains your young son on the cusp of manhood.... The neocons call for radical reconfiguring of the Army in terms that exceed any Stangelovian orgasm

"Future soldiers may operate in encapsulated, climate-controlled, powered fighting suits, laced with sensors, and boasting chameleonlike “active” camouflage. “Skin-patch” pharmaceuticals help regulate fears, focus concentration and enhance endurance and strength."

The PNAC plan for Neocon Youth calls for our sons to be turned into doped up murderous Borg units.

It is a fatal mistake to think of the Neocon movement as a political opposition that can be met on the customary field of polemical and electoral give and take. For only the brain of a monster, and not that of a man, could misconceive such a “Project” whose workings must finally bring about the collapse of human civilization and turn this world into a desert waste. No - this movement is an invasive disease and every single goddamn, misbegotten neocon, von kopf zum fuss, is a malignant, infected, stinking shit in vaguely human form. The devil himself would be revolted.

©Barfo, 2003

THUG POLITIK -- The Neo Con Agenda for a New American Century, Part I

2003-09-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

Introduction

In several previous posts, I have reported on the Neocon agenda for the so-called “New American Century” as embodied in the PNAC report, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, (Sept. 2000). Although this Neocon Manifesto has antecedents in Pentagon position papers drafted by Cheney in 1991-1992 (see U.S. Strategy Plan calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop, New York Times, 8 March 1992) and was later re-packaged into a tonier official verison (The National Security Strategy of the United States, Office of the President, September 2002.), the PNAC report remains the core expression of Bush Administration policy.

On its face, the Neocon agenda is merely an extension by degrees of existing US policies and geopolitical practices. Since its founding, the United States has pursued a policy of extending its zones of hegemony (viz., the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, etc..) But that difference of degree is one that now produces a difference in kind. The Neocon Manifesto does more than call for a continuation and “advancement” of existing policy, it insists on an enhancement of the means by which that that policy is to be accomplished. This “enhancement” is so encompassing and indifferent to other values that it metamorphoses into an end in itself so that the neocon agenda becomes a radical departure from existing practices and constitutes a threat to civilization itself.

Distilled to its infected essence, the Manifesto sets forth a nihilistic theory of might as the basis for “global” policy. According to the Manifesto, the goal of U.S. policy should be “preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. .military forces.” While “might is right” is an old and tiresome adage, what is new is the technological scope, purview and penetration of means by which power is to be exercised.

To “preserve and enhance this American peace” the Manifesto sets out four core military missions: (1) to defend the American homeland; (2) fight and decisively win multiple, (3) simultaneous major theater wars; perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions; (4) and to transform U.S. forces to exploit the technological advances.

In reality, however, the Manifesto’s ideological structure is much simpler. As shall be seen, it’s core principle is simply to project-power. From this it necessarily follows that the United States must seek to extend its hegemony . It also follows, of necessity, that U.S. policy (i.e. power projection) has to be exercised preemptively and unilaterally since there is nothing to negotiate or consult about. Lastly, it follows, that areas over which the United States has gained control must continuously be subjected to ongoing constabulary “shaping” in order to maintain U.S. dominance. This “Pax Americana” has nothing to do with lifting the world into a new era of shared prosperity and peace. It is simply an Orwellan nightmare of routinized state aggression and terrorisms.

Thug Staat was conjured up well before 9/11 and has nothing to do with the so called fight against terrorism or meeting an actual geopolitical threat. Although this agenda is framed in terms of geo-political policy, of political and practical necessity it has domestic applications and consequences. It is something Americans should be concerned with and which they ignore at their own peril.

The ensuing analysis focuses on the the Neocons themselves say explicitly in their Policy Manifesto and what the meaning and implication of their words is. But this linguistic analysis should be read in context of ongoing realities currently taking place.

I bring it up again, because altohugh the Report’s tenets are becoming more broadly known, it is sitll being treated as simply a think tank paper among many and as essentially a proposal for more defense spending. It is not generally seen as an encompassing policy paper whose objectives are being unfolded before our eyes. And it is not seen as a civil policy paper the aims of which is to revolutionize the US into a frank and unfettered police state

Power Projection, Preeminence and Preemption

Although occasionally and thinly masked as a crusade to bring the gospel of “American Values” to parts of the world languishing in despotism and darkness, the Neocon’s core policy objective is simply to project US power and “extend” so-called zones of democratic peace..

There is only one way to “project power” and that it is to use it -- to punch someone in the face. Power is not an idea and cannot be argued. Power is a physical substance in action -- in mathematical terms, mass x acceleration. While power can be alluded to and threatened, its “projection” requires exercising force against an opposite or yielding mass.

Power projection requires a projectee, something or someone against which power makes itself known. It is an interesting question whether power (as opposed to pure motion) can exist in a vacuum; but supposing it can, it is meaningless because in the absence of opposition there is no effectiveness to gauge. Even when we speak abstractly of “power” as a thing in itself, we necessarily imply its effectiveness over or against something. Power may subsist in a state of latency like a relaxed bicep; but to say “his arm is powerful” means nothing and conveys without envisioning even in the most general way the arm’s power overcoming the resistance of something.

Thus, if the Neocons had said no more they would have said it all. Everything else in PNAC doctrine is contained within and unfolds from the core premise of power projection, once that concept is fully contemplated and its brutal essence comprehended. Their core policy from which all else flows is simply to go about kicking ass. It is beside the point to speak of a “strategies” because power projection is not conceived as a means but rather stated as an end itself.

However, if there were any doubt that this was the intended meaning, such doubts were laid to rest by the PNAC Manifesto’s own repeated coupling of “power projection” with phrases such as “extend zones of democratic peace”.

In fact, stripped to its naked core, the Manifesto is a roll-call for Global Conflict and War. It calls upon the United States to be able to conduct multiple full theatre wares while also engaging in regional “stability” operations and while “deterring” “rogue states that might be able to resist while at the same time pushing America’s secuirty perimeter “eastward” against Russia.

“the first order of business in missions such as in the Balkans is to establish security, stability and order. American troops, in particular, must be regarded as part of an overwhelmingly powerful force."

In the Caucasus

“U.S. Army Europe should be redeployed to Southeast Europe, while a permanent unit should be based in the Persian Gulf region.”

In Europe

As the “American security perimeter in Europe is removed eastward, this pattern will endure, although naval forces will play an import ant role in the Baltic Sea, eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea, and States should seek to establish – or reestablish – a more robust naval presence in Southeast Asia, marked by a long-term, semi-permanent home port in the region,”

All of these places are considered to be the new “American security frontier” and although, when talking about military “capacities” the Manifesto appears to imply simply being prepared for potential conflict, its stated goals of “power projection” and its enumeration of specific “security zones”, make it abundantly clear that the PNAC Manifesto envisions a permanent state of global war.

When PNAC speaks of power projection it does not do so metaphorically. It does not mean the “power” of the American Example or the “projection” of ideas. It does not mean extending democracy through a shining example others will want to imitate; nor does it mean extending democractic values through coordinated work with and within international institutions and structures. It means none of that.

It also does not mean “projecting” power by way of demonstration as in the test exploding of an atom bomb or the proverbial shot across the bow. Strictly speaking such actions are simply threats rather than projections; but even assuming that the word “projecting” could be understood to include mere boasting, chest thumping and flag waving, the fact remains that the word “project” includes much more. In geo-political terms, the projection of power necessarily includes the projection of that power into other places.

The Manifesto unmistakably means to extend our zones of control by military means. That can only be done by projecting into someone else’s zone, which is what used to be called “war”.

It follows from the predicate principle of power projection, that diplomacy as a means of adjusting conflicts is irrelevant. The premise bears repeating. The neocon Manifesto does not subordinate the exercise of power as a means to some ulterior good; rather, power projection is the desired state. Once it has been decided that the goal is to project & extend, there is noting to consult about and nothing to negotiate. Unilateralism is the necessary correlative of power projection.

In fact, even as a means of collaboration, diplomacy is displaced because working with others presupposes accommodating their interests and accepting their advice. However, such collaboration can only serve to diminish the goal-state of U.S. preeminence. This does not mean that other countries may not be enlisted, like privates in an American Army, to do as we say. But for the U.S. to project its power, other countries as considered partners simply stand as a detraction.

The so-called Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes also follows as a necessary correlative. The logic is simple. Dominance requires submission. Power projection, necessarily entails diminishment of another. Full spectrum dominance requires a correlative full spectrum impotence. It follows that anyone else’s mere capacity to possibly resist us (however pathetically) is an afront to out full spectrum dominance and must be dealt with summarily as a matter of course -- i.e. preemptively.

“... weak states operating small arsenals of crude ballistic missiles, armed with basic nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction, will be a in a strong position to deter the United States from using conventional force, no matter the technological or other advantages we may enjoy. Even if such enemies are merely able to threaten American allies rather than the United States homeland itself, America’s ability to project power will be deeply compromised.”

“Potential rivals...and adversaries ... are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they [sic] seek to dominate.”

“If the American peace is to be maintained, and expanded, it must have a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military preeminence.”

It is an amusing question who is the party seeking to “expand” or acquire dominance over any given region. What is clear is that the Manifesto sets out a policy of striking at any so-called “rogue regimes” that may “may wish to develop deterrent capabilities” by “cobbling together a minuscule ballistic missile force.” American preeminence demands no less!!

Of course, in any given case, a demand may be made before hand. But this is not the opening gambit for negotiations but simply the preliminary to a preemptive strike. In fact, as often as not, the demand for something impossible and alleged non-compliance is simply a preliminary designed for Homeland consumption.

The Manifesto does not rule out alliances but makes clear that they are only for the short term as they advance power projection. In other words cynically use others or institutional only as they are useful and utterly subservient to the demands of US power projection.

While here and there in the Manifesto traditional strategic and policy language can be found concerning American “interests”, the expansion of prosperity (for whom?) or the “prudent” use of force, these are mere retrograde hold-overs. The volume and tone of the PNAC report as a whole makes clear that diplomacy has been replaced with demand. The unecessariness of this substitution is beyond belief.

Following upon the earliest years of the Cold War, the United States was extraordinarily adept at using international institutions to advance its (corporate) interests. The whole rest of the world understood this perfectly. Only the ignorant morons that comprise the Amurkan electorate could come to the deranged conclusion the United Nations detracted from and infringed upon our interests. The UN and its agencies, the OAS and NATO, the World Bank, the IMF and scores of NGO’s all but do our bidding the world over. From time to time the U.S. has had to make minor adjustments of its bidding to accommodate the sensibilities of others. From time to time it has had to allow a bit of another’s bidding. For the price of such trivial and occasional compromises, international structures but serve to advance American (corporate) interests.

The Neocon dementia (and it is truly a psychotic derangement) is that even this is too much. Any give is weakness and detracts from “pre-eminence”. Such Anglican notions as primus inter pares, is alien to most of the neocons who have tortured the idea into primus supra omnes.

Are they right? If these institutions almost always do our bidding anyway, why bother with the pretence? Because manners are everything and pretences like manners serve useful purposes.

The fundamental pretence of diplomacy and international law is that all states are co-equal members of the Comity of Nations. Of course, on a positivist basis, it is utter nonsense. Gambia (wherever the hell it is) is nowhere near an equal of Holland, much less China. But receiving the Gambian ambassador with equal ceremony and listening with respect to the position of the Government of Gambia reminds us that right is not coterminous with might and that as often as not is to be found among the weak, the despised and the rejected among men.

Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae; et Esurientes implevit bonis.

Pretence requires us to listen to others’s concerns and to widen or narrow our own scopes to accommodate them. We will have to listen to the advice of others which may (mirabilis dictu) actually furnish us with something that ought to be considerd and which we in our preeminence have overlooked. Most importantly, keeping up the pretences requires us to dress our interests in rationales and arguments that acknowledge and conform to certain social principles, generally accepted ultimate goods and so on.

The punks of Thug Politik may think that this is just a matter of sound-good sound bites for a well full of applauding morons or tinsley lies to keep French Foreign Ministers at bay. It can be reduced to that, but well done the “rationale” implicitly accepts the the principle it argues.

Pretence is at the heart of the Rule of Law. As Aristotle put it two millenia ago, language enables us to “decide the just and unjust, the expedient and the inexpedient.” It enables us to come to conclusion by some means other than the growl, the tooth and the fang. We have language so that we can explain to others and listen to their complaints and in so doing we accept certain ineffable princples of equity, cooperation, respect. These foundation blocks of civilization require manners and are diametrically opposed to unilaterally kicking ass and preeminently doing what you want. But the neocon attitude is that power projection “is nothing to be ashamed about;” [sic] manners are a pansy Frenchie sort of thing.

Not only are unilateralism and preemption implicit in power projection, power projection as policy is fundamentally antithetical to the cellular structure of civilization.

Toney Yellow

2003-08-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

In its inimitable affectation of magisterium, the Times has pronounced that it is disappointed and unhappy with Mexico’s President Fox who has -- tsk tsk -- failed in the high hopes he led others to have of him. Mexico remains mired in unaccountability and lawlessness, supporting tyrants like Castro, while potential statesmen like Carlos Castañeda are shunted to the side. When will Mexico ever join the ranks of civilized nations? -- It may be toney, it may be the Times, but the drumbeat of misleading and misinformative yellow journalism is unmistakable.

The ostensible point of the editorial is deferred to its concluding sentence in which the Times intones that : “If Mexico's people are to have a decent chance to prosper in the 21st century, they badly need the far-reaching economic, political and legal changes [Fox] promised but has yet to deliver.” That is predictably good enough as far as neo-liberal blandishments go, and anyone vaguely familiar with issues and events in Mexico would understand the editorial as calling for a reinvigorated push toward privatization and free trade. A person more particularly acquainted with current hot-button issues in Mexico might read the conclusion as code for opening up Mexico’s state-run energy sector to private investment and for quashing talk in Mexico about modifying NAFTA free-trade schedules until the U.S. ends its state-subsidized agricultural system.

Well, it’s a free world and anyone, even the Times, can trumpet its nostrums of choice. What was discreditable was how the Times digressed and meandered through a thicket of falsehoods and equivocations to get there.

Had the conclusion been stated up front as a thesis, one would expect the editorial to explain or at least touch upon what “far reaching economic” changes were necessary in order to bring about a decent chance at prosperity. The article might then go on to tie in what political and legal changes were needed to bring about, if not prosperity then at least an improved pursuit of happiness... or just more restless busy-ness without purpose, as for instance in California.

Instead the article began by decrying “seven decades of highhanded one-party rule.” Were this Wagner, the phrase would be known as the PRI -leitmotif. Or perhaps one should say, leidmotif ....because the import of the theme is always that the PRI was heavy-handed bordering on oppressive. Indeed, the Times’s devotees of this emotive figure can’t contain themselves and do in fact burst forth into yabber about decades of repressive iron handed one party domination....thus conjuring up images of a Stalinist Mexico.

But what exactly does “high-handedness” refer to? The sullen arrogance of a low level bureaucrat? Like a French post office perhaps? The epithet seems to imply that the PRI did what it wanted and ignored the Will of the People. -- another stock-in-trade from the propagandist’s barrel. But that is precisely what the PRI did not do, throughout at least 50 years of its rule. It is perfectly true that, for the greater part of the period in question, the duly cast and reported election results were a laughable fraud. But if they were laughable -- if people said with broad smiles that “You know, it was reported the PRI won 96.78.....” -- it was because the fraud was irrelevant. In actual social fact, beneath the forms of politics, the PRI did represent the will of the vast majority of Mexicans.

It did so because as of the late ‘20’s and early ‘30’s the party represented the emergent or, perhaps better put, the exhausted net compromise between the conflicting class and ideological interests that had convulsed the country during the multi-sided “Revolution” that began in 1910. Precisely because it was a compromise, it could never satisfy all of the people all of the time; rather it trimmed and tacked between the tugs and pulls of irreconcilables, at different times “emphasizing” industrialization, or land distribution, or monetary stability or labor rights. That hardly seems “high-handed;” rather it would seem to be what most successful political systems do irrespective of whether they follow a two-party format.

It was rumored back in the early ‘60’s that the PRI had foot the bill for the opposition PAN to run a candidate. The National Action Party was as broke as it was disillusioned. Given the overwhelming and repetitive will of the people, it never won an election anyways, so what was the point? The PRI would have none of it. The word went out from the presidential palace: Thou shall front a candidate. Cheque under the table. The story may be apocryphal, but the sense of it is nonetheless true; and, when one considers the matter, it belies the falseness of the images worked up by the smear of “one party rule”

The PRI, as the one-man Porfiriato that ruled from 1875 to 1910, was a great respecter of formalities. Before resorting to high-toned huffiness, the Times would do well to take a glance at the substance of the matter. It can be conveniently forgotten what a disaster the so-called “Revolution” was. While portions of the country went unscathed, vast productive parts were left in ruins. Near 2 million out of a population of 12 were killed in a decade of warfare. The leaders of the Revolution: President Madero, Zapata, President Carranza, Pancho Villa, President Obregon were each of them shot in their turn, the last assassination serving as the opening salvo to a post-revolution conflict over land and religion in which 30,000 “priests and nuns” and an equal number of “atheist government operatives” were mutually murdered. There was ample reason the vast majority of people supported what the Times calls “high-handed one party rule.” What was needed was stability and recuperation with due regard for the formalities of that sort of two-party fol de rol that is America’s fetishistic obsession.

For all that, the PRI was open to all and afforded avenues of action for those who were seriously interested in politics. As in all parties, anywhere, there were groupings, alliances, cloakrooms and clubs; but the PRI was never the rule of a family or clan or Officer’s Club. It’s ideology was essentially European style social-democracy -- what, during the ‘50’s led likes of the Chicago Tribune to scream that “reds” had taken over south of the border.

Was it “high-handedness” that President Cardenas took control of Mexico’s gas and oil, the proceeds of which -- despite corruption -- are a major source of funds for the country’s social programs? What would one call the attitude of American oil companies that furiously lobbied FDR to invade Mexico because they were not satisfied with the amount or schedule for compensation offered?

Was it high handedness that presidents Cortinez and Mateos likewise nationalized telephones and electricity, as was policy in most social democracies at the time? Was it high handedness to distributes millions upon millions of hectares of land to dispossed peasants? Or to create a nation-wide grid of primary and secondary schools which together with night-class programs turned a country that was 80% illiterate in the 1940’s to being 95% literate by 1960? Was it high-handedness to bring maternity care, child care medical care and old age pensions to millions?

No one in Mexico would assert that all the PRI’s policies were infallibly well conceived or well implemented or unqualified successes. No one would claim that Mexico has not faced daunting problems not least of which is the catastrophic demographic explosion which threatens to cancel out the PRI’s successes even as it renders them more astonishing.

Neither would anyone claim that President Fox was not elected on a tide of disgust. But what the Times, along with virtually all the American media, studiously omit to report is that the revulsion was directed at the other PRI.

Other? Yes, other, because following the first 50 years of the “seven decades of one party rule” and beginning with the administration of president de la Madrid in the 1980’s the PRI was taken over neo-liberals who received their impulse and nihil obstat from the anti-regulationist, free-market, monetarist crowd in the United States. The coup within the PRI culminated and was consolidated with the presidency of Salinas, a devotee of privatization who had been cultured at Harvard Business School.

What with their penchant for privatisation, it is a mystery why the Reagan-Bush neo-liberals aren’t simply called privateers because grabbing it all up is what it’s all about once one puts aside the ideological pap served up as excuse. Be that as it may, it is hardly surprising that under privateur Salinas corruption in Mexico reached all time highs, as he sold off state assets to the lowest bidders among his buddies, while his brother cut deals with drug lords.

As the Salinas administration came to a close, social-democrat elements within the party sought to engineer a come back with the candidacy of Donaldo Colosio, who had hoodwinked Salinas into supporting him. The full story has yet to be told but what is known is that Salinas was furious and withdrew his support. Colosio was assassinated by the proverbial “deranged, lone gunman” and Erenesto Zedillo, a neo liberal technocrat assumed the mantel of office.

Zedillo was not as corrupt as Salinas, but the difficulty with neo-liberalism is that if your only economic plan is to let the invisible hand work miracles, there really isn’t much you can do when the invisible hand doesn’t. It also doesn’t help matters when the other hand is at work invisibly pilfering and “privatising”. The upward momentum that had begun in the 30’s and that had perdured up to the ‘80’s had levelled off and was spiralling down. Mexicans were indeed demoralized and disgusted. Taken in by a glitzy propaganda that misdirected attention away from economic realities and on to political forms -- the crying need for vigorous two party follies -- Mexicans voted for a change by electing a man whose free-privateer economic program was basically just more of the same.

Without doubt, the PRI came to reflect de la Madrid’s policy and the Salinas Brothers acted under the PRI name and used the party apparatus for their own ends; but to equate that with the party that had ruled for since the Revolution is pure sophistry. And it is a sophistry which allows one to talk spuriously about Fox’s “new” economic program when it has in fact been in place for 20 years.

But the Times editorial doesn’t talk about economics at all. In fact, it brushes away a hornets nest of cross-border trade, tariff, environmental, work-condition, safety regulation and migration issues under the rubric of “Washington's post 9/11 immigration fears.” Save it for Oprah.

But not to be outdone by tabloid journalism, the Times intones that harder to excuse than Fox’s failure to deal with Washi-fobias is his “diminished effort to follow through on crucially needed reforms.” As for instance? As for instance “establishing accountability and the rule of law” and investigating “serious human rights abuses” as well as “an army massacre of student protesters before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.”

It is as if a Mexican newspaper were to sniff and huff that before tackling its health care crisis, or social security crisis, or infrastructural decay and faltering economy, the United States “urgently” needed to investigate the “army massacre” at Kent State. What were one to make of such studious and serious journalism? The only people who are in need of a clarifying investigation into the Tlatelolco massacre are those imbeciles who need to be un-lied to by the same subservient press that lied to them in the first place.

To add insult to inanity, the Times wraps up its reformist nostrums in one of the mainstays of Anglo-Saxon affectation and hypocrisy -- the notion that the natives need to be taught about accountability and the rule of law; or, as Wilson sniffed the need to “teach Latin Americans to elect good men”. Ah yes, as Harding’s ambassador sniffed, Mexicans needed “to be taken over and civilized by the sons of Mother Yale.”

Such righteous condescension all but begs to countered by a dollop of the shameful reality, the sum and substance of which is that the U.S. has plen’y of law, most of which serves as an elaborate Potemkin Village covering up endemic police bullying, brutality and lying, government bribery (aka “lobbying”) and corporate pilfering, pollution and every imaginable form of irresponsibility.

But even on the merits, the Times seems woefully ignorant of the investigations that have in fact taken place. Most importantly, Pemex and the PRI have both been the subject of intense judicial scrutiny and the PRI was fined millions upon millions of pesos for having engaged in illegal campaign financing.

Equally a-begging is the astonishing ignorance which spills into fitfull print, with: “Mr. Fox began boldly, ... [his] first foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, turned Mexico into a champion of international human rights, challenging the behavior of tyrants it had long excused, like Fidel Castro.” Where does one begin in order to rectify the historical illiteracy which spawns such pontifications? With the refuge given my Mexico in the 1920’s to poets and dissidents who fled U.S. backed henchmen in Cuba? With the refuge given to the fleeing Spanish Republicans after their defeat and betrayal in that civil war? With, alone among the Western nations, Mexico’s absolute and unaltering refusal to recognize a fascist government imposed with the help of such paladins of human rights as the Hitler, Mussolini, the Condor Legion and the bombing of Guernica? With (if 1938 is too far back) Mexico’s condemnation of the assassination of a duly elected Salvador Allende and the imposition of a US backed ..... well, what exactly would the Times call Pinochet?

Mexico stands in no need of lessons on human rights from either the United States or its semi-official mouthpiece, the Times. Is it really necessary to remind the Times of multiple US invasions of Mexico, of discrimination against its citizens, of the fact that in this nation of “accountability” and “the rule of law” armed vigilantes are this moment “hunting down” (their words) impoverished Mexicans who come here to do work no one else in this country will do?

Mexico’s foreign policy is based on the principle of non-intervention. It recognized Fidel Castro’s Cuba because, for better or worse, his government was the result of an internal conflict in Cuba. It recognized Castro because it does not admit that the U.S. has the right to invade and topple whatever it doesn’t like anywhere in the hemisphere or in the world. It was and remains as simple as that. And the U.S. might do better if it renounced its imperious unilateralism and espoused a similar policy.

President Fox was the “man of the hour” for those fools and connivers who believed that political reform and “true democracy” consists in emulating the wretched dysfunctional circus that is U.S. two-party politics. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that such a game is worth the candle, Fox was not the man to bring it about. That his “high-hopes” election should have fallen flat within two years of his election can be of no surprise to anyone who has as much as a pea for a brain. He had virtually no political experience, he had no apparatus, no network of political alliances. He was quite literally a lone rider. The opposition PAN, which sort of backed him up, was itself more of a club than a true political party. The PRI had indeed “institutionalized” itself and what was required was a decade more of grassroots building, gaining control of local offices and building up a shadow government. For anyone who knows anything about how states are actually run, Fox could only be a candidate for those who wanted to bring about political chaos.

Now that the Times decides that it has been let down by its man of the hour, it apparently seeks to peddle its latest fair haired adoptee of Yale.... a hippie litterateur turned yuppie functionaire. Where did this Lohengrin come from? The splash of clinking martini glasses in some uptown townhouse? It is no secret that Castañeda wants to be president; but it is a fool’s reverie. He will never be president of Mexico. It would take another US led democracy crusade cum coup to seat Castañeda anywhere but at the café table where he belongs.

None of this is to deny the serious and multi-faceted shortcomings that imperil Mexico. What it is to say, is that the Times serves up no half serious considerations on any of them. From the start, it sweeps any complex issue to side while it spews forth a string of diversionary trivialities and sophistical ad hominems mired in ignorance. Of course, this being the Times, it is all very toney, but toney as it may be it remains yellow.

©Barfo, 2003

And the Whirlwind Swept the Land

2003-03-19T13:47:00.000-08:00

©Barfo, 2003
.

Turning Talibans into Turnips

2003-03-10T21:14:00.000-08:00

Following upon twenty suicide attempts by prisoners at the naval detention center in Guantánamo, military authorities have decided to set up a psychiatric ward for detainees suffering from mental problems.

The decision was taken after one of the prioners tried to kill himself by bashing his head against the wall of his cell. “He’s lost his ability to function,” said Captain Alber Shimkus, Chief Medical Officer at the base, “we don’t anticipate he will get better.”

In addition to the Taliban Turnip, the ward will lodge approximately 70 other detainees who suffer from various mental problems. Some are being treated with drugs; others are simply kept shackled.

Military authorities deny that their methods of intererogation had anything to do with causing these conditions. “The majority of these psychiatric cases arrived here already suffering from mental problems,” Shimkus said.

It’s hardly surprising considering that they arrived at Guantánamo after being locked up for a month in fetid metal shipping containers without light, fresh air, water, sanitation or adequate food.

It is hardly surprising considering that the “containees” were threatened, immobilized, beaten and in some cases simply or simply randomly shot.

It is hardly is hardly surprising considering that they were shipped to Guantánamo shackled, blindfolded, gagged, earplugged, immobilized, and drugged “so that” -- according to Donald Scumsfeld -- that they could not disable the transport plane by “chewing” through its electrical cables.

Yeah, Shimkus was right... many of the detainees arrived half crazy.

©Barfo, 2003

A War for Bananas? - Part VIII, ThugPolitik -- Full Spectrum Dominance

2003-02-23T11:35:00.000-08:00

Following the election of President Clinton, Dick Cheney and his cohorts in the Reaganite bureaucratic infrastructure went to work preparing for the day of the eventual resumption of power. As previously reported (Fear and Loathing in the New American Century) the doctrine was given an initial airing in a “white paper” put out by the New American Century Org., a think tank rustled up {ie. founded} by conservative publisher William Kristol, (with defense industry money), for the specific purpose of promoting the Cheney/ Rumsfeld/ Wolfowitz doctrine of "full-spectrum dominance".

Stated simply the doctrine hold s that the US should control military, economic and political development worldwide by whatever means necessary and convenient, from cyber to nuclear war and all methods in between. In other words, “I’m the boss around here, and no that’s that.” In the words of the white paper, the United States "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." In other words, the doctrine regards any “potential” rivalry as an “actual” threat and calls for the use a full spectrum military response as needed, from secret infiltrations, dirty wars, to nuclear blasts to keep other nations humble. It also calls for disinformation and the use of the internet as a weapon, presumably to keep everyone ignorant.

Published in September 2000, two years before Bush’s first State of the Union Address, it branded Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil.” Its authors recommended that the Pentagon take preemptive measures to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in such countries as North Korea, Iraq, and some of the former Soviet republics. The document made no mention of collective action through the UN, stating that "we should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted...."

But the paper was not even principally concerned with the Axis of Evil, hidden in the text of ThugPolitik was a concern for resurgent Russian and Chinese power. It described Russia and China as “potential” threats and warned that Germany, Japan, and other industrial powers might be tempted to rearm and acquire nuclear weapons if their security was threatened, and this might start them on the way to competition with the United States.

In September 2002, the Kristol “white paper” was put on White House paper and became official U.S. Policy under the title “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America”. Although the paper added some rhetorical embellishments about promoting democracy and finding the fountain of youth, its principle premise and objective was simply to maintain the United States in a position of sole global power.

Uri Avneri and Israeli leftists in the peace movement complain that the U.S. is using Israel for its own geo-political purposes. Neo-nazi right wingers in the U.S. and elsewhere complain that the new Youngers of Zion are using the U.S. to advance Jewish aims. Whatever the case, there is an undeniable parallelism between Israeli/ Likud policy in the smaller universe of the Middle East and the US/Bush policy in the greater universe of the world. As Israel must be the sole power in the Middle East, so the U.S. must be the sole global super-power, including the Middle East. The authors of America’s New Century would not deny the parallelism, they would only dispute that it presents any problem. To them, What’s good for Israel is good for the U.S. and vice versa. In a curious way, they speak the same talk as Saddam Hussein or the most fervently anti- Zionist Arab.

This was hardly Bush senior's view of America's role in the world.

Qui Bono?

Is the looming war a “war for oil” as the placards say? The existence of oil fields in the area, the deals that have been made with respect them thus far, the undeniable importance of oil in the modern world and the evident interests various parties have in gaining access and or control to it -- all these factors render it absurd to answer anything but “yes”. But there is little evidence so far that American oil companies (Big Oil) are pushing the Administration to seize Iraqi oil production facilities, in the way they once were pushing Franklin Delano Roosevelt to invade Mexico in order to seize-back nationalised oil.

On the other hand there is ample evidence that circles within the U.S. political establishment have elaborated Israeli security interests (as perceived by the Likudists) into a more General Theory of Hegemony, that resonates with American jingoists while providing an ideological “security umbrella” to Israel.

But while that may well be the case, it also has to be said that it takes many tugboats to push a big liner. Rarely is policy in the mass imperial state the result of any one qui or any one bono. It is usually the result of a confluence of forces, in which various players succeed in cajoling and co-opting one another. More important that asking which singular who is benefited is understanding who the who’s are, what interests and weaknesses they have and how they stand to use or be used.

©Barfo, 2003

A War for Bananas? - Part VII, Oil and Water - The Israeli Factor

2003-02-22T12:27:00.000-08:00

No story on the Middle East can be complete without taking Israel into account. While peace groups in Israel favor compromise and coexistence with moderates in the Arab world willing to do the same, Israeli government policy for the past 20 years has been dominated by the irredentist Likud, the successor to so called Revisionist Zionism with its frankly racialist and colonialist ideas. Given this premise, Israeli security is based on a stark equation: Israel must be strong and the surrounding countries must be kept weak.

When one recalls the to-Heaven shrieking furore that surrounded the American sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia in the 1970’s it is easy to see how Iraq would be the bete noire in Israeli strategizing. Keeping Iraq weak is not simply a matter of reducing its army or constraining its armaments. More fundamentally it is a question of depriving it of its major geo-political asset. A petro-servient Iraq is not a threat to anyone.

One does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand Israeli interests in the situation. According to the Asia Times, an active promoter of Israeli interests is a so-called "former" Israeli intelligence agent, Yousef Maiman, president of the Mehrav Group Maiman is a "Special Ambassador", to Turkenistan as well as a citizen [!] of the same gas republic by presidential decree. According to the Times, nobody knows where Mehrav's money comes from; but the Times quotes the Wall Street Journal, as reporting that it is actively involved in advancing the "geopolitical goals of both the US and Israel" in Central Asia.

What are those goals? Maiman is quoted as saying: "Controlling the transport route is controlling the product." That certainly dovetails with statements by the EIA. The Mehrav Group itself has accordingly joined in promoting the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which provides the further advantage of being easily extended to bring oil directly to “thirsty” Israel. Magal Security Systems, an Israeli company, is also set to provide the security for the 2,000 km long

Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline Picking up a story disclosed by Israel peace groups, the Times also reports that Mehrav is involved in a “murderous project” to reduce the flow of water to Iraq by diverting water from the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers to southeastern Turkey.

In an article in the New York Review of Books, Frances FitzGerald (9/02) argued that Israel and its lobbyists in the United States want the destruction of Iraq on pure geo-political grounds independent of oil issues. He points out that “years before the Bush administration took office Rumsfeld and [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz were calling for [Hussein’s] overthrow on the grounds that he posed a danger to the region, and in particular to Israel”

In January 1998 they, along with the neo-conservative William Kristol and others associated with Kristol's Project for a New Century, wrote President Clinton that if Saddam acquired the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction, he would pose a threat to American troops in the region, to Israel, to the moderate Arab states, and to the supply of oil. Four months later they went to capitol hill to beat this drum before congress.

In June 1999 Wolfowitz complained that “the containment of Iraq is failing. The United States needs to accelerate Saddam's demise if it truly wants to help the peace process." Wolfowitz was implying that with Saddam Hussein eliminated, Israel could choose the peace it wanted with the Palestinians. The cabal kept it up past the elections. Since September 11, William Kristol and associates have been urging Bush to see Israel's fight against terrorism as America's battle to make war on Saddam Hussein, as both Sharon and Peres have urged.

On April 15 2002 Kristol and Robert Kagan wrote that Bush should not play any role as Middle East peace negotiator. "The road that leads to real security and peace—the road runs through Baghdad." One week later, a senior Israeli official confirmed that “Pentagon officials” [i.e Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz] were pushing the White House to bring down Hussein before anything else. With Hussein out of the picture, they argued, Israel could solve the Palestinian problem on its own terms.

As documented in an article in Counterpunch e-zine, Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Bolton have strong affiliations with the Likud. Feith and Richard Perle collaborated in authoring a 1996 study for then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which Hussein’s overthrow (aka “regime change”) was described as “an important Israel strategic objective in it own right -- [and] as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” The study urged a preemptive strike. (See. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (http:// www. israeleconomy. org/strat1.htm).)

Nothing has changed since. In August 2002, Israeli Deputy Interior Minister Gideon Ezra told the Christian Science Monitor that a U.S. attack on Iraq would help Israel impose a new order without Arafat. “The more aggressive the attack is, the more it will help Israel against the Palestinians.” he said.

According to Independent columnist Robert Fisk, Jewish American leaders talk about the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm, although Bush and Blair keep this aspect of the issue carefully under wraps. According to Fisk, Rumsfeld’s allusions to the “old” Europe were a thinly veiled reference to French antisemitism and collaboration with the Nazis.

Whether they were or not, it was hardly surprising that in a Wall Street Journal article, following Powell’s UN speech, Professor Eliot Cohen, of Johns Hopkins University, suggested that European nations' objections to the war might – yet again – be ascribed to "anti-semitism of a type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a malignant intent.” What kind of intent is it that would seek to divert Iraq’s water to the Levant? “The France and Germany that oppose this war,” Fisk says, “are the "new" Europe, the continent which refuses, ever again, to slaughter the innocent.”

©Barfo, 2003

A War for Bananas? - Part VI, When First You Fail, Try.... What?

2003-02-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

The question raised by the foregoing denouement is whether the crisis in Iraq is simply an oil-grab. The evidence points to an affirmative answer; but it is by no means a question of “simply” since private prospects -- to the extent they are actually urged by the oil companies -- must be pieced into and justified by an over-arching national strategy and it is not entirely clear that a national strategyhas been coherently resolved upon.

At the end of 2002, leading oilmen, exiled Iraqis and lawyers met behind the closed doors of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, in London. The meeting was entitled "Invading Iraq: dangers and opportunities for the energy sector".

According to the Guardian which ran the story, “One delegate said the entire day could be summarized with: "Who gets the oil?" If America changes the regime you might expect US companies to get it.” But, as the Guardian noted, “it maybe more complicated than that.”

The Iraqi oil industry was built up by Iraq Petroleum Co. (IPC) a consortium owned by BP, Exxon/Standard Oil, Mobil, Shell, and Partex. In 1972, IPC was nationalized by the revolutionary Iraqi regime. Negotiations over nationalization were fierce. Negotiators for IPC team had some extraordinary clashes with Saddam Hussein and Iraq's vice-president, wh0 threatened “any battle with the companies that was necessary" The Iraqis also threatened IPC with loss of Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti oil due to Arab solidarity. In February 1973, the IPC finally signed the nationalization agreement. IPC was compensated for its lost oil-fields, and by 1975 operations were taken over by the Iraq National Oil Co and the Northern Petroleum Organization.

Normally, IPC’s compensation would be deemed to terminate its rights. It is also a rule of international law that valid contracts survive regime changes. "The majority opinion is that if a government creates a [legal] title, it survives a change of government," Prof. Thomas Wäld told the Guardian. Doak Bishop, vice-chair of the Institute of Trans-national Arbitration agreed: "Regime change does not change the acquired rights companies have in the area. If the Russians and the French have legal rights in those fields, then a regime change would not oust them of those rights, but it could well get pretty messy."

The Americans, apparently, are of another view. Former CIA director James Woolsey, who is close to the Iraqi opposition groups, recently told the Washington Post: "It's pretty straightforward. France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq towards decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure the new government and American companies work closely with them. If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult, to the point of impossible, to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them."

In light of such belligerence, French complaints about “unilateralism” acquire a new accent.

No one, not even an upstanding oil company, could be expected to toss away manna from heaven (or from the bowels of the planet, as the case may be.) But it seems to be a characteristic of corporate culture that companies are as cautious as they are avaricious. American oil companies certainly understand that a destructive war would make it more expensive to rebuild Iraq’s oil facilities. They also understand that an unstable peace would make it more problematic to pump and transport it. Lastly, oil companies are not adverse to dealing with whatever regime it happens to be easiest to deal with be it Maoist Chinese, Fascist Chileans, Fundamentalist Muslims or Saddam Hussein. That unspecified “oilmen” might have met in London to discuss hypotheticals does not prove that oil companies are pushing the present policy.

Part of the difficulty in figuring out qui bono, is figuring out how to contextualize President Bush’s thuggish pronouncements. The one group to whom Bush’s public tantrums (“I’ve had it” “The Game is Up” “Saddam is finished” etc.) will not sound shocking is that class of American lawyer that deals in what is known as “settlement negotiations”. The claims of super-human patience, the feigned exasperation, the two-hour ultimatum coupled with an angry threat -- these are all the sorts of antics that go on behind the highly polished brass on front doors of “blue chip” law firms. The half of the conversation which the public hears sounds like some kind of “settlement negotiation” is taking place.... But with whom? The difficulty in assessing Bush’s ridiculous antics is that one does not know what offers and counter-offers have been made and rejected. It is a near certainty that the conversation we hear has nothing to do with weapons inspections which is little more than a noisy side-show, employing many, urged with earnestness and signifying nothing. That leaves us in the unenviable Thomist position of “knowing God by saying what he is not.”

While the anecdotal and symptomatic evidence points to the conclusion that the Bush Administration is resolved on war for the sake of oil, that same evidence also points to the bizarre fact that the Administration is at something of a loss as to what to do with the oil once it gets it. Complicating matters is the curious backward way the Administration as well as the Press speak about things.

In mid December 2002, about the same time oilmen and lawyers were meeting behind the closed doors of the Royal Institute, the U.S. State Department issued a communique stating that, the first session of the “Future of Iraq project working group on Oil and Energy” would convene on December 20-21, 2002 in Washington, DC. At this session, the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs would be hosting approximately 15 “Free Iraqis” for discussions regarding the current state of Iraq’s oil and energy sectors, scenarios for the restoration and modernization of Iraq's oil fields and other essential energy infrastructure; and management of the energy sector to meet the needs of the Iraqi people in the post-Saddam era. The meeting would be closed to the press.

A month later, at the beginning of January, the Houston Chronicle circulated a New York Times article on the Administration’s plans for the occupation of Iraq which, it said, “would amount to the most ambitious American effort to administer a country since the occupations of Japan and Germany at the end of World War II.” Although many elements of the plans were classified or still being debated, the occupation had two objectives: "preserve Iraq as a unitary state, with its territorial integrity intact," and "prevent unhelpful outside interference, military or nonmilitary.”

Buried in the middle of the long report, dealing with a pot-pourri of military and social issues, the article noted: "There is no more delicate question for the administration than how to deal with Iraq's oil reserves ... and how to raise money from oil sales for rebuilding without prompting charges that control of oil, not disarming Iraq, is Bush's true aim.”

One would think that the primary “story” was whether one should make war for oil not how the administration has to deal with a “delicate” appearance Nevertheless, in this oblique and almost buried way, the article went on to disclose that “Administration officials have been careful always to talk about Iraqi oil as the property of the Iraqi people.” At the same time, the White House was haunted by the nightmare that Saddam Hussein might deprive them of the desired prize, by destroying the fields. Administration officials were quoted as saying, “It's a big source of concern, and we are trying to take account of it as we plan how to use our military forces.”

Indeed. Speaking on 29 December, Secretary of State Collin L. Powell stated, "If coalition forces go into those oil fields, we would want to protect those fields and make sure that they are used to benefit the people of Iraq, and are not destroyed or damaged by a failing regime on the way out the door."

Once again, as almost every day, one has to pause to make sense out of the Administration’s extremely bizarre way of speaking. “If coalition [i.e. predominantly American] forces go into the oil fields” would they want to blow them up? Hardly. But if one “would want to protect those fields” going into them would not be a matter of possibly happening to be there (“if”). Why does Powell speak as if American forces might stumble into custody of oil fields and then have to do their fair and honest best to be good custodians? He speaks that way in order to avoid speaking truthfully, that the “true aim” of the Administration is to make a bee-line to those oil fields and seize possession of them. Hussein, apparently understood it that way, because in January the Iraqi government stated publicly it had plans to blow the fields up. Of course it was “a big source of concern.”

Once it is seen that the administration (and its echoes in the press) speak backwards, it is understood that seizing the oil fields is not the result of happening to have occupied Iraq, which is the result of going to war; rather, seizing the oil fields is the reason for occupying Iraq which is why the U.S. would go to war. Nevertheless, still talking as if control of oil is one of those collateral “effects” of war which would have to be managed somehow, as best one could, the Houston Chronicle/New York Times article continued “it is unclear how the administration plans to finesse the question of Iraq's role in the OPEC countries and who would represent occupied Iraq at the organization's meetings. [¶] The administration is already anticipating that neighboring Arab nations may accuse occupied Iraq of pumping oil beyond OPEC quotas. One official said Washington "fully expects" that the United States will be suspected of undermining the oil organization, and it is working on strategies, which he would not describe, to allay those fears.

One reason the official might not have described these strategies is that the administration is again deadlocked by a split that has plagued it since it took office. According to a 22 December 2002 story by the Los Angeles Times,the administration’s hawks want the United States to militarily seize, possess and control the oil fields whereas its doves “believe that it should be up to the Iraqis to decide how to rebuild their battered industry -- and which foreign oil companies will get to take part.”

It will hardly come as a surprise that the “hawks” are led by Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, along with Richard Perle, among the chief protagonists of unilateral pro-consularity of American foreign policy. A report prepared by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, in December 2002, and delivered to Wolfowitz’s office, concluded that “the cost of the occupation, the cost for the military administration and providing for a provisional [civilian] administration, all of that would come out of Iraqi oil.” Another source told the press that a number of officials in Cheney’s officer were also urging that Iraq's oil funds be used to defray the cost of occupation. Yet another unnamed source stated that many senior administration officials were of the view that "It [the oil] is going to fund the U.S. military presence there. .... They will charge the Iraqis for the U.S. cost of operating in Iraq. I don't think they're planning as far as I know to use Iraqi oil to pay for the invasion, but they are going to use it to pay for the occupation."

Nor will it surprise that the doves are headed by Collin Powell who reflects the views of the Council on Foreign Relations and Rice University's Baker Institute which, the Los Angeles Times states, “is believed to represent the thinking of many U.S. officials.” One of said “officials” is Baker Institute energy analyst Amy Myers Jaffe, who told the Times that "A lot of us have confidence in people who were professionals in the Iraqi oil industry and left the country, and in people who are still there." In other words, these so-called “U.S. officials” are really the oil-company folks who want to be left alone to their own free-market devices dealing with “capable” neo-liberal Iraqi “counterparts”.

Also arrayed against the hawks are bureaucrats in the National Security Council, Justice Department and Federal Reserve banking system. Mike Anton, a National Security Council spokesman denied the existence of any plan to use oil funds to pay for occupation stating that the oil revenues would be used “not so much to fund the operation and maintaining American forces but for humanitarian aid, refugees, possibly for infrastructure rebuilding, that kind of thing.”

Justice Department lawyers are unsure whether any of the oil funds could legally be used to defray occupation costs or whether, on the contrary, they had to be held in trust for the people of Iraq. Laurence Meyer, a former Federal Reserve Board governor, who chaired a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference in November on the economic consequences of a war with Iraq, said that conference participants deliberately avoided the question of whether Iraq should help pay occupation or other costs. "It's a very politically sensitive issue," he said. Meyer did say however, that those officials who believed Iraq's oil could defer some of the occupation costs may be "too optimistic about how much you could increase [oil production] and how long it would take to reinvest in the infrastructure and reinvest in additional oil."

Indeed, a CFR-Baker report estimated that even if Iraq emerged from war with no additional damage to its oil infrastructure, its annual oil revenues probably wouldn't exceed $12 billion a year whereas the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of an occupation would range from $12 billion to $48 billion a year, lasting for one and half years or more. In other words while the bureaucratic infighting continues, Bush continues to speak publicly of administering Iraqi oil “in trust” for the Iraqi people.

It is astonishing to think that at this late date the increasingly belligerent pronouncements of the administration doves might in fact mask a continuing split over what to do with the oil once it is seized -- in other words, what the objective of an invasion is in the first place. And yet it the public symptoms bespeak an internal confusion. It will be remembered that, last Summer and Fall, along with Jim Baker and other former Bush I advisors, Brent Scowfcroft took the unusual step of publicly criticizing Bush Jr.’s reckless unilateralism. In August 2002, Scowcroft weighed in against the war whoops of the Rumsfeld-Kristol- Wolfowitz-Perle crowd arguing that a unilateralist attack would “turn the whole region into a cauldron” and that, with nothing left to lose, Saddam might unleash his weapons of mass destruction and attack Israel. Since this latter option was somewhat far fetched, Scowcroft might have meant to say that Saddam that a unilateral attack might result in Hussein blowing up his own fields. Whatever the case, Scowcroft was adamant that the Administration’s policy should be built on a multilateral focus on terrorism ...not a unilateral war with Iraq

The Administration heeded at least half the advice and, as a result, it administration deviated back to the Security Council chamber where it labored to achieve Resolution 1441. In a joint interview this Friday (2/14), with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on Public Television, Scowcroft was asked whether, in view of the unprecedented applause which greeted the French Foreign Minister’s remarks to the Council, he was “receiving any heat from within the administration”. What was interesting was not Scowcroft reply (he refused any)but rather the little squeak-like “Ha!” that involuntarily emitted from Albright.

©Barfo, 2003

A War for Bananas? - Part V, Politics on the Stump and the Politics of the Pump

2003-02-20T14:38:00.000-08:00

Like the sun and the moon, the politics and the economics of the Iraq situation stand in an inverse but reflective relation. The geo-political face of the conflict is simple and fairly constant. Saddam Hussein is a brutal, belligerent dictator who must be got rid of or at least disarmed and “neutralized”. The geo-economic face of the conflict is complex and extremely fluid. The general premise here is that Saddam can be negotiated with and that the stability he affords is better than the chaos. The political face is characterized by periodic and much publicized “crises” followed by long intervals of quiescence in what is supposedly a steady effort to get rid of Saddam. The economic face is ever silent covering steady attempts to trade with Saddam while surfacing from time to time in order to deny doing any such thing. An example of these dual constellations is that, in 1996, while director of Central Intelligence, John M. Deutch headed up American efforts to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein; but as of February 2000, Deutch sat on the board of Schlumberger Ltd., a multinational “shell” for US companies that was helping Baghdad service its oil rigs.

A brief and somewhat superficial summary of the past six years will give an idea of the curious dynamics surrounding Iraqi oil.

In 1996, the United Nations initiated the so-called oil-for-food program, which allowed limited and monitored sales of Iraqi oil in exchange for non-military and non dual-use goods. As of 1997, the Security Council removed any ceiling on the amount of oil Iraq could sell. However, it maintained a limit on the amount of spare parts Iraq could buy. As of June 1998 Iraq was allowed to buy only $300 million in spare parts every six months.

Complicating the situation, the United State government imposed sanctions on Iraq, which meant, in effect, that it prohibited American companies from doing business with the outlaw regime. But whereas Iraq could sell oil to anyone, it could only get the spare parts in needed from American sources which had built the original infrastructure. And if it could not get spare parts, it’s ability to pump and sell would be reduced. And so it stood; at least officially. According to U.S. government figures, American firms accounted for only a tiny share (about $400 million) of the nearly $10 billion in trade that has been conducted under the oil-for-food exemption. In reality, diplomats, industry officials and UN documents indicate that, between the summer of 1998 and Spring of 2000, American companies, operating through subsidiaries and affiliates, were buying oil and selling parts furiously, although they denied it in order to “comply” with the law.

One such company was Halliburton, the Dallas-based maker of oil equipment of which Dick Cheney was chairman and CEO until his election as vice-president. While the United States and Britain waged almost daily air strikes against military installations in northern and southern Iraq, Halliburton and other U.S. companies, were doing business with Saddam Hussein's government and helping to rebuild Iraq’s battered oil industry. Two such other companies were Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump Co., in which Cheney had major stock interests.

Prior to his election Dick Cheney was a long time critic of United States’ sanctions against Iraq which, he said, “penalized” American companies. They did not, however, greatly penalize Halliburton & Co. Although Cheney denied that Halliburton had business dealings “with” Baghdad, UN records showed that Halliburton held stakes in two “affiliates” that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq.

Much the same obtains on the oil-buying side of the equation. In a speech to San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, in November 1998 ,Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Chevron Corporation , Kenneth T. Derr, criticized US imposed unilateral sanctions against various countries. Derr went on at length belaboring the obvious fact that (unless there is only one source) unilateral sanctions “don’t work”. On the other hand, Derr said “It might surprise you to learn that even though Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas -- reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to -- I fully agree with the sanctions we have imposed on Iraq. Why? Because .Iraq’s conduct has been so egregious that ... other countries have been willing to join the United States by adding sanctions of their own.” What he did not say was that at the very time, without “access to” the reserves themselves Chevron was purchasing oil from the reserves” via middlemen.

A month later, the United States initiated Operation Desert Fox and bombed Iraq. Baghdad retaliated by prohibiting U.S. oil companies from directly purchasing Iraqi crude. " Any company found supplying Iraqi crude to a country in a state of war with Iraq will be put on the blacklist and there will be a partial or full ban in dealing with it," said Iraqi Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh.

Yet despite multi-lateral sanctions imposed against Iraq and despite unilateral sanctions imposed by Iraq, Chevron and Exxon managed to increase their purchases of Iraqi crude in 1999. According to Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, Iraqi crude was the fastest growing source of imported crude amount to about 700,000 of the 2 million barrels of oil exported daily by Iraq or nine per cent of total U.S. oil imports. "The Chevrons and the Exxons of this world have to buy from the Russians, the French and the Chinese traders," said Goldstein. But, he added, "the U.S. spare parts industry is too dominant to ignore."

“Where does Iraq think its oil is going to go if it doesn't go to the U.S.?” asked one trader with a U.S. major oil company. Saudi Arabia, vowed to fill any disruption from Iraq, Iraq’s sanctions failed and Baghdad's penetration of the U.S. oil market soon surpassed pre-Gulf War levels.

In September 1999, more than 50 foreign companies attended an oil and natural gas technology exhibition in Baghdad, the first such gathering in 10 years. Most of the firms were from Canada, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. No U.S. firms attended, although a high-level Iraqi oil official stated that Iraq was ready to deal with U.S. oil companies.

How Iraq was prepared to deal with foreign companies was another matter. A U.N. “Expert Report,” issued in March 2000, obliquely indicated that someone had floated the idea of foreign companies entering into “production sharing agreements” and/or “participating” in Iraq’s oil production. The Report states that the expert group “was advised, at Ministerial level, that in the current political environment...there would be no discussion on the matter of options for involving foreign oil companies in Iraq’s oil sector.”

The Report went on: “To sustain and increase oil production and export capacity it is the view of the experts that involvement of foreign companies would be helpful and, in principle, the Ministry of Oil welcomes this. .... However,... the Ministry of Oil declined to take part in discussions on this matter and was only willing to discuss the involvement of foreign companies through the use of short-term technical service contracts (“TSC’s”), such as well logging, pipeline pigging, and the drilling and work over of wells.” It would appear, however, that by the end of the following year the Ministry had modified its position at least to a point satisfactory to the companies, although getting there was a tad bumpy.

In October 2000, the Iraqi Oil Ministry expressed frustration with the slow pace of progress by Russian and Chinese firms; and, in January 2001, Shell announced that it had held talks with the Iraqi Oil Ministry regarding "potential opportunities". In March 2001, the Deputy Oil Minister announced that Iraq might terminate contracts with the Chinese and Russian companies. In July 2001, angered by France's perceived support for the U.S. "smart sanctions" plan, Iraq announced that it would no longer give French companies priority in awarding oil contracts, and would reconsider existing contracts as well. Iraq also announced that it was inclined to favor Russia, which has been supporting Iraq at the U.N. Security Council.

In October 2001 a joint Russian-Belarus oil company signed a service contract and Lukoil was granted its concession to spend $4 billion to develop a "super" oil field in southern Iraq In December 2001, the Turkish Petroleum International Corporation won a U.N.-approved contract to drill for oil in northern Iraq. It would appear that Iraq and France also resolved their difference as a recent (Fall 2002) report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs states that France Russia and China all have “potentially massive oil pacts” with Iraq and that “Saddam [Hussein] is believed to have offered the French company Total Elf Fina exclusive rights to the largest of Iraq's oil fields.”

In short, twists, turns, bumps and bombs, by the end of 2001 Iraq appeared poised to solve its oil problems and U.S. companies were not part of the solution. As of March 2000, the U.N. Expert Report had concluded in the direst of terms that Iraq was wasting its assets in order to sell them. “Although the effort of the Iraq oil industry has been enormous, and is notable for its effort to reinstate production after severe damage in a very short time, the lack of means to keep this industry in good shape in terms of capital, equipment and material, and also from the point of view of human resources, is very apparent. .... The oil industry is degrading, safety is below conventionally accepted standards, the environment is endangered, and the ultimate recovery potential of oil and gas in the fields is jeopardized. The current situation, if left unchanged, will lead inexorably to the demise of the oil industry.” In short, Iraq was engaged in the petro-equivalent of slash and burn agriculture.

But by the end of the following year the issues were resolved. Although nothing prevented U.S. companies from continuing to be passive end-buyers of crude, they were not in on the big deals. Moreover, it would appear that U.S. companies also stood to loose on the spare parts business because new infrastructure developed by France, Russia or China would not typically use American machinery.

Little is known of the negotiations in Baghdad, but it much of the blame for the last place showing by American companies can be laid at Washington’s door. As Cheney complained throughout the Nineties, U.S. regulations had hobbled American companies. These policies did not prevent end-runs, but neither did put wind in anyone’s sails. Diplomats interviewed for the Washington Post in February 2000 said Washington had been a greater obstacle for American businesses than Baghdad. The United States had placed "holds" on more than 1,000 contracts valued at $1.5 billion under the oil-for-food program, including some held by American companies. The March 2000 Expert Report Appendix likewise showed that over and over again repairs and construction were blocked by US objections that a screw or an adhesive had “dual use” capacity.

A War for Bananas? - Part IV, Iraq

2003-02-19T11:48:00.000-08:00

The Pools

With proven reserves of 112-billion bbl and probable reserves of 214-billion bbl, Iraq has the second largest crude reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia. It also has 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Two-thirds of Iraq's production comes out of southern fields in the Shi’ite zone of the country. Although much of the southern oil infrastructure was damaged during the Gulf war, the oil potential of this region alone is huge. More huge, still, is the untapped Western Desert region under which lie an estimated additional 100 billion barrels.

The Pipes

The presently proven reserves are serviced by four pipeline networks:

1. Iraq-Turkey. The 600-mile, 40-inch Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline is Iraq's largest operable crude export pipeline. It services the European market. This Iraq-Turkey link has a fully-operational capacity of 1.1 million bbl/d, but is working at about 900,000 bbl/d. A second, parallel, 46-inch line has an optimal capacity of 500,000 bbl/d but at last report was inoperable.

2. Iraq-Syria. The 50-year-old, rusting Banias oil pipeline from Iraq's northern Kirkuk oil fields to Syria's Mediterranean port of Banias (and to Tripoli in Lebanon) was considered defunct; but, as of October 2002, the pipeline reportedly was being used (see above), and there also was talk of building a new, parallel pipeline as a replacement.

3. Persian Gulf Outlet. Iraq has three tanker terminals in the Persian Gulf. These terminals are linked to a reversible, 1.4-million bbl/d North-South pipeline built by Iraq in 1975. The system allows for export north through Turkey or south to the Persian Gulf. However, the entire system was severely damaged during the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars.

4. Iraq-Saudi Arabia. Iraq has also pumped oil through Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea port of Yanbu (Mu'jiz) . However, in June 2001, Saudi Arabia announced that it had confiscated the line included pumping stations, storage tanks, and the maritime terminal. Iraq insisted that it still owned the pipeline, and in May 2002, stated that the line was "ready for export." (In addition to these transportation networks, Iraq trucks oil to Jordan, but this arrangement is of local benefit only.)
Production Problems

Iraq’s entire oil infrastructure was seriously degraded during the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars and Iraq has resorted to old technology and questionable techniques (i.e., over pumping, water-injection or "flooding") to maintain production even though the questionable techniques could permanently damage some reserves. Notwithstanding the obvious need for serious capital improvements, the U S government Energy Information Agency (EIA) states: “Iraq's oil production costs are amongst the lowest in the world, making it a highly attractive oil prospect.”

However, as of the moment, Iraq deals with just about everyone except American companies who are out of the prospects largely on account of unilateral sanctions imposed by the US government.

Sales

An estimated 30% of Iraqi oil is sold initially to Russian firms. The remaining 70% of Iraq's oil is sold to a grab-bag of countries including Cyprus, Sudan, Pakistan, China, Vietnam, Egypt, Italy, Ukraine, and others. Iraqi oil is normally then resold to a variety of oil companies and middlemen before being purchased by end users, among them: Exxon/Mobil, Chevron, Citgo, BP, Marathon, Coastal, Valero, Koch, and Premcor. In this indirect manner the United States imported an average of 566,000 bbl/d from Iraq in the first half of 2002.

Thus, although U.S. companies do not deal directly with Baghdad and although they are not, at present, involved in production, the United States has become the greatest single end-purchaser of Iraqi oil.

According to ABC News, as of mid 2000, the U.S. refiners largely obtained their crude oil from Russian firms, or middlemen working through Russian firms. However, an authoritative Iraqi source says that as much as 90 percent of the actual amount of Iraq's estimated 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) are going to U.S. Gulf coast refineries. This was confirmed by the authoritative oil journal Middle East Economic Survey. There is such demand for Iraqi crude in the United States, the report says, that Saddam is banking on it to mitigate the Bush administration's enmity toward his dictatorship in Iraq, and therefore, any attempts to oust him.

Official sales are effected through the United Nations, oil-for-food program. Until early2000, the transactions were posted on a public web site. However, when the Washington Post began to trace deals to companies run by members of the Bush II team, the U.N. closed the site down claiming the information was proprietary. According to the Post, the veil of secrecy allows the U.S and Iraq to engage in their respective public posturing while dealing under the table.

In addition to the above official and U.N. approved sales, the U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that, from 1997 to 2001 Iraq earned $6 billion dollars from illegal oil sales using small tankers sailing under Persian or other false cover.

Development

Russia, which is owed several billions of dollars by Iraq for past arms deliveries, has a strong interest in Iraqi oil development, including a $3.5-billion, 23-year deal to rehabilitate Iraqi oil-fields. The other major development player is China. Another grab-bag of countries from Indonesia to Spain are involved in lesser degrees.

1. Southern Fields:

Iraq hopes to counter production declines in this area by a large-scale program to drill new wells most of which are to be carried out by Russian, Chinese, Iraqi, and Rumanian companies. In October 2001, a joint Russian-Belarus oil company, Slavneft, signed a $52 million service contract with Iraq on the 2-billion-barrel, Suba-Luhais field in southern Iraq, and expecting to sign a service contract to begin drilling later this year. Another Russian company, Lukoil, has a concession to spend $4 billion to develop a "super" oil field in southern Iraq with reserves estimated at 15 billion barrels or the equivalent of the recovery from the North Sea. In October 2002, Lukoil's Chief Executive (Vagit Alekperov) said his belief that the West Qurna contract would "be upheld no matter what happens" in Iraq, and that he had received "guarantees" on this matter from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

2. Northern Fields

The Kirkuk field, with over 10 billion barrels in remaining proven oil reserves, forms the basis for northern Iraqi oil production. In December 2001, the Turkish Petroleum International Corporation won a U.N.-approved contract to drill for oil in northern Iraq, near Kirkuk. Two Russian companies -- Tatneft and Zarubezhneft -- have won U.N. -approved upstream contracts at the Bai Hassan fields.

3. The West & Smaller Fields.

Smaller fields with under 2 billion barrels in reserves also are receiving interest from foreign oil companies, among them Eni (Italy), Repsol (Spain), Pertamina (Indonesia), PetroVietnam, Noor (Syria) and others . Italy's Eni and Spain's Repsol appear to be strong possibilities to develop Nassiriya. Indonesia's Pertamina signed an exploration contract for Block 3 in the Western Desert. Other companies reportedly interested in the Western Desert region include: Repsol, Lundin, Sonatrach, MOL, Petronas, Ranger, and TPAO.

In total, Deutsche Bank estimates that international oil companies in Iraq may have signed deals on new or old fields amounting to nearly 50 billion barrels of reserves, 4 million bbl/d of potential production, and investment potential of more than $20 billion.

©Barfo 2003

A War for Bananas? - Part III - An Afghanistan Sharing Our Values

2003-02-18T10:42:00.000-08:00

A bleaker prospect than Afghanistan’s craggy mountains is hard to imagine; but whereas the country may be poor in resources it is rich -- as it has been since Alekhandars’ time -- in routes. As stated a few days before September 11 by the (official) U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian sea.” Kazakhstani oil and gas do not need to transit Afghanistan to reach Europe; for that the Caspian or Northern pipelines suffice. But Europe is a bit market. The big oil market in the 21st century is Asia and the major player in getting oil there is Unocal.

Experts expect the Asian oil market to double by 2010 whereas Western oil demand is expected to grow at between 0.5 and 1.2 per cent. The American Conference Board calculates that China’s economy grew 8% in 2002 and that her economy will eclipse that of the European Union between 2010 and 2020. Not without reason, Unocal has pursued plans for the construction of a northern gas pipeline through Kyrgyzstan to feed China, a southern line through Afghanistan tofeed India and an oil line to the Arabian Sea, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to feed both.

John Maresca, vice president of international relations for Unocal states: “At Unocal, we believe the central factor in planning these pipelines should be the location of the future energy markets. Unocal foresees a pipeline which would become part of a regional system that will gather oil from existing pipeline infrastructure in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.” The 1,040 mile-long 42-inch pipeline would extend south through Afghanistan to an export terminal on the Pakistan coast. The project would cost $2 billion, but the profits would be enormous.

To complete these projects, Unocal began negotiating with the Taliban in 1995. The company's scheme required a single administration in Afghanistan, which would guarantee safe passage for its goods. It has been said by knowledgeable observers that American policy was written by Unocal and that the dream of securing a pipeline across Afghanistan was the main reason the US was so supportive of the Taliban. Doing the honors, Unocal invited Taliban leaders where they were royally entertained and wooed with offers of 15 cents for every thousand cubic feet of gas pumped through Taliban lands. Said a US diplomat (1997) “the Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be Aramco (the former US oil consortium in Saudi Arabia) pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.”

However, the Clinton administration could not live with Ossama Bin Laden’s bombing of American embassies. Clinton withdrew support for the Taliban and Unocal had to shelve its pipeline dreams due to the “instability” of the situation. It’s chief consultant on the project Zalmay Khalilzad moved on to the Rand Corporation think tank.

Everything changed again after 9-11. With the Taliban gone, the situation has (at least officially) “stabilized” and Unocal is back in the running. On Dec. 31, Bush appointed Zalmay Kahililzad as his special envoy to Afghanistan. “This is a moment of opportunity for Afghanistan,” Khalizilzad said. Certainly for Unocal. Pakistan's Frontier Post reports that U.S. ambassador Wendy Chamberlain met in October with Pakistan's oil minister to discuss reviving the Unocal project. The Asia Times reports that many industry experts consider Unocal's revived Afghan adventure fatally flawed and expect the U.S. to ultimately wise up and pursue an Iran deal. As of the present, that does not seem to be the case.

Of course, changed events produce changed accents. According to Unocal, “We have worked very closely with the University of Nebraska at Omaha in developing a training program for Afghanistan which will be open to both men and women.” A penny for Unocal is a penny for women’s advancement!