Maybe

"At least three suspected al-Qaeda militants have been killed by a US drone strike in Yemen ... On Friday, two suspected militants were killed in eastern Hadramout province, while at least five were killed by two strikes on 24 December." (BBC) 

What is wrong with this story? 

Websters Unabridged Dictionary: Suspect, v. t. - (1) To imagine to exist; to have a slight or vague opinion of the existence of, without proof, and often upon weak evidence .... 

So... the United States is killing persons on the surmise that they may be terrorists and upon the vague opinion, without proof, that being terrorists they may have done something criminal or might be planning it ... maybe, perhaps. 

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Preferential Options for the Rich

   

The budget negotiations which have taken place over the past weeks in Washington could not have arisen at a more ironically suitable time.  Set against a background of Yuletide trees and Mangers, they allow us to see that the ghoulish gamesmanship taking place in the nation’s capital has pushed the country off a moral cliff.

It is typically said that, at Christmas, those Christians, who have not delivered themselves unto shopping, celebrate hope, renewal and family. While those elements are not untrue, they have been turned into a kind of sentimental kitsch and moral treacle which obscure and soften the in-your-face challenge of the Christmas story. 

At the risk of being overly homiletic, I would to take a step back and contextualize the Nativity so as to bring out its more vivid colors and original impact. For what Christmas really commemorates is the birth of beauty in humility and poverty. 

Each of the Gospel writers emphasize different aspects of Jesus's life according to their audience. The story of Christmas comes to us almost entirely from the Gospel of Saint Luke and it is his account which has the Son of God being born of wayfarers in a manger.

Luke's biography of Jesus was written for the non-Jewish inhabitants of the Greco-Roman world. Not surprisingly, it followed the expected, standard-form pattern of classical biographies: noble lineage, portents at birth, prodigies in youth, career accomplishments, acts of generosity, interesting sayings, public works, portents of death and, if one happens to be an Emperor, an apotheosis, to sit among the gods on Olympus. 

Luke's account is clearly structured as a parody of the expected Roman biography.  But although he follows the form, he inverts the substance. The inversion first takes place in the emblematic Magnificat in which Luke has Mary announce her unexpected conception by saying,

“God has hath regarded the humility of his handmaid... He shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts; he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away. (Luke 1:51-53)

No self-respecting Greek or Roman would have said such a thing.  The Greeks worshipped excellence and the Romans worshipped success.  Divinity manifested itself in the youth of noble bearing and in the magnus vir.  But Luke is unrelenting.

 “And while they were there, in Bethlehem, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger...” (Luke 2:6-7)

Although the Nativity Scene has benefited from the beautification of the world's most skilled painters, the naked facts are not pretty.  To all appearances Mary was homeless. She is first portrayed going "with haste into the hill country" where she enters Elizabeth's house to announce her pregnancy. (Luke 1:39-40)  According to St. Matthew, Joseph contemplated breaking off his engagement to Mary because she was pregnant by no known man. He changed his mind, and the couple are next seen wandering at night, in the middle of winter, 80 miles from Nazareth, while Mary is close to term. (Matt. 1:18-24)

St. Matthew adds that Mary and Joseph put up in a manger because there was no room at the “inn” making it sound to us as if it was all a question of missed reservations. (Matt 2:1-6) However, this is an inaccurate translation because, in those days, there were no inns.  There were no roadside restaurants or even rest areas either.  To travel was to camp out on foot, without the benefit of freeze dried scrambled eggs.  You managed with what you could bargain or carry.  If you were lucky, the locals might offer you hospitality -- a floor to sleep on, some shared morsels to eat. 

By all accounts, Joseph and Mary weren't very lucky.  They are not said to be travelling in a group.  They are living out of the "back of the burro"  and, just as they get to Bethlehem, Mary goes into labor and has to give birth in a cow stall.  What in the world did they use for water?

Luke makes no attempt to mask the wretchedness. Instead, he astonishingly proclaims that, on cue, the Host of Heaven suddenly appeared to a bunch of shepherds to announce the birth of "a Savior, who is Christ the Lord!" The shepherds take off running toward the stables, behold the infant Jesus and return hence “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.” (Luke 2:8-14)

Two thousand years later, it is hard for us to imagine the kind of jaw-dropping astonishment with which  average, everyday,  Gaius would have reacted to the story.

Luke foists his listeners on a series of contradictions.  Jesus is descended of nobility; but born in a filthy cow stall a probable bastard of homeless wanderers. As the Host of Heaven sounds its trumpets a Delegation of the Most Honorable Shepherds of the District comes to proffer their good wishes and salutations.  Not till Don Quixote does literature string together such a pile of absurdities.

But it is a pile of absurdities which ultimately transformed the fundamental values of western society.  Luke very intentionally turned the Roman Order on its head. Wealth and Power and Success do not ascend to an Olympus of elite heroes and gods but rather the Most Powerful God of the universe is to be found descended into the womb of failure and hunger and weakness.

It is this descent which became the cornerstone of the Christian creed: “...and He came down from Heaven....”  That filthy, homeless person with a cardboard sign, snivelling in the cold on the curb?  There is your god.

The Romans did not want for symbols of motherhood, family and prosperity.  The Augustan Ara Pacis or Altar of Peace depicts Mother Rome, nurturing her twin sons, flanked by symbols of prosperity -- sheaves of wheat, an ox, a sheep and the winds of commerce between East and West. Luke takes the symbolism and sets it in a cow-stall in one of the most insignificant towns in the entire Empire.

It is from this inversion, that the  Catholic Church derives its  doctrine of the Preferential Option for the Poor which states that in our thoughts and deeds God demands a preference be given to the well-being of the poor and powerless of society.  Saint Augustine, put it this way:

"God does not demand much of you. He asks back what he gave you, and from him you take what is enough for you. The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. When you possess superfluities, you possess what belongs to others." (Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 147, 12).

and

"Christ who is rich in heaven chose to be hungry in the poor. Yet in your humanity you hesitate to give to your fellow human being. Don't you realize that what you give, you give to Christ, from whom you received whatever you have to give in the first place."  (Commentary on Psalm 75,9)

This then is what Christmas is about.  It is about recognizing Christ in poverty and giving to the poor.

And yet, at this very Christmas time, what is the spectacle that Washington presents to the world?  It is the spectacle of powerful, well-stuffed, hypocrites arguing over preferential options for the rich.

House Speaker Boehner wants to limit tax increases to persons making over one million dollars a year, while the President is willing to “compromise” on incomes of $400,000.  What is seldom explained is that the “increase” is not on the full $250,000, or $400,000 or $1 million but only on the excess over those amounts.  In other words, a person who earns one million and ten dollars would only see a 2% increase on the ten dollars above the million.

While the Speaker and the President are haggling over how little to tax the rich and super-rich, House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, is busy telling people that her party has no problem with cutting back on so-called entitlements for the poor. 

In particular, Pelosi has no problem with reducing social security adjustments for inflation, so that, over a ten year period, the average monthly social security check would be reduced by 3%-5% per year. The “chained CPI” -- as the reduction is called -- means that as a person gets older his social “security” life support shrinks.  Last week Pelosi, whose net worth is estimated at 90 million dollars, stated that the chained CPI was not a “cut” in benefits. "I consider it a strengthening of Social Security,” she said.

Social Security does not contribute to the budget deficit which is the spawn of astronomical defense and war spending coupled with tax cuts for the rich.  But even if Social Security contributed to the deficit, the chained CPI “savings” would only amount to $122 billion.  Last year’s defense budget was $680 billion.

This Christmas we would do well to note that the face Washington presents to the world is that of a bloated, snarling, ogre.

The Obamba Shuffle

Obambi, Obamba, Obamaaaaha! here we go again.  Just over a month after being elected on a promise to fight for the working class, President Obama has signalled his willingness compromise with Republican demands  (1) by reducing Social Security cost of living adjustments; (2) by not extending the payroll tax cut and (3) by not raising taxes on household incomes in excess of $250,000 a year.  In Obamaland, "negotiate" means: meet the enemy 90% of the way and then compromise on the rest.

Enemy? Absolutely yes.  The Republicans are waging furious class war against everyone who works for a living wage or who, having worked all his life, depends on Social Security to survive.  We don't care what chants the acolytes of Moloch sing, taking from the poor to give to the rich makes you an enemy of mankind... at least in the Christian guidebook.

Absolutely not. No, no, and again, no.

According to the New York Times' newscast (121218), the negotiations are being held behind closed doors.  So much for Obama rallying the public for the public good.

According to Jeremy Peters of the New York Times, the adjustment to the CPI index for Social Security is sort of "an accounting trick" which will take place "down the line" while helping massage the negotiations through now.

How come such "accounting tricks" aren't played on the rich or on the Pentagon or on corporations like Apple and Google who avoid taxes by setting up phony offices in the Orfice Islands?

The Social Security cost of living adjustments are not tricks.  They enable social security payments to somewhat keep pace with inflation.  When social security barely allows retirees to keep head above water, not adjusting the index downward results in drowning.

Social security outlays are not the cause of the deficit. The cause of the deficit as any idiot ought to know are the Bush Tax cuts for the corporate rich and military spending.  You don't fix an injury to the left foot by cutting off the right.

There is no need to increase the social security "payroll tax" because Social Security is in fact quite solvent. Nor will this increase do zip to solve the deficit problem. The increase on this tax is simply gratuitous and vindictive class warfare.

There is a need to restrain Medicare spending; but, once again, Obama and his GOP Buddies punish the wrong party. 

There was a time when medical care was not big business.  It was conducted on a "not-for-profit" basis, as it should be and is almost everywhere else save Molochland.  Today, illness is the sweet calf of corporate profit.  Since illness scares people, they can be easily blackmailed into whatever ransoms "health" care harpies demand.

It is correct to put limits on Medicare subsidies for corporate health care providers. But what is not correct is to impose cost controls and at the same time let health care providers opt out of the system and not accept Medicare patients at all.  Such a way out will result in a two-tier health care system: one for Obama and his HinWi pals the other, like deteriorating ghetto schools, for everyone else.

Washington is a cesspool of filthy lucre and lies. 

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Cacaphony of Ego

The Church of England has voted against the ordination of women bishops.  As expected, the denouement of a nine year debate has been met with expressions of shock, grief and doom.  Really.

There is, first off, something ludicrous about a form of decision which is so blatantly political and which reduces doctrine to legislation being voted on by upper and lower parliamentary houses.  I do not mean to say that the laios should have no say in shaping of church doctrine and custom.  But there is a difference between laios and demos.  What is needed is a more meditative framework which restrains desire and induces greater reflection on the source and course of tradition.

Would we put science "to a vote?"  Whether we accept or reject the analogy says a lot about what we think religion is in the first place. 

But in all events the whole fracas is nothing more than a cacophony of ego.  All the talk about equality of opportunity and granting women the means to achieve or express their "full potential" is just a lot of genteel tiptoeing around naked ambition. People don't seek to be bishop because they are humble.

Of course, one would have to be a donkey not to realize that the Church has been the chariot of male ambition for millenia.   But equalizing a bad habit is hardly good news.

All the strife and anguish boils down to whether a very small handful of otherwise quite comfortable women get to ride to the top.  On the scale of global priorities such preferential options are rather low on my scale.

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Another Slaughter in Canada

Canada proposes to kill 70,000 grey seals "in order" to revive depleted stocks of cod.  In other words, sweet, pacific, multi-culutral kanada proposes to slaughter one creature so that it can hunt and plunder another. 

Why is the human race so fucked up?

Fortunately a group of marine scientists have publicly called into question the dipshit thinking of the Kanadian Senate's Standing Committee on Fish which concluded with brazen stupidity that since seals eat "fish" they are the cause of diminished stocks of "cod".

This is about as stupid and fucked up as saying that since a pig is an animal and a cow is an animal therefore a pig is a cow.

Do seals eat cod?  Answer: noooooooooooo.

If you happen to read this, write the Canadian government and tell them they have shit for brains.


See Article.

A Shifting Tone

The Eurozone has "slipped" back into recession, following two quarters of negative contraction.

According to Saxo Bank's chief economist, Steen Jakobsen, the dip "was totally expected because of austerity policies combined with world growth slowing down."  Jakobsen added, "The last couple of days have created a new momentum for a major change in policy input, because up until this week, social tension was not part of equation. It seems like the tone has shifted dramatically."

Translation: We bankers knew that our cut of flesh would wound Europe's economic health and we really didn't give a shit if people howled in pain.

Paul de Grauwe, a professor at the London School of Economics agreed, saying that the return to recession was the predictable result "of excessive austerity" imposed by Germany. "The degree of austerity has now put so many people in terrible conditions that they reject all of this. That's a very dangerous situation."

Translation: people are thinking of revolution.

Good.

The system needs a trashing. "Austerity" is just a cute word for balancing banker books on empty stomachs.  All the double talk is simply this:  banks lent money to Southern Europe and they want it back, with interest and fuck the "social tension" that might ensue.  Human needs of food, shelter, and purpose are "not part of the equation."   A person who thinks that way should be shot and a system which is built on such a premise needs to be destroyed.

If people "reject all of this" - that might be "dangerous" to banksters, but it is not dangerous to the people who have awoken to the cause of their miseries.

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Why Romney Lost

The aftermath of the election has seen a good deal of posgnosticating as to why Romney was defeated.  At bottom, the answer is simple:  Romney lost because he was born with a silver shoe in his mouth.

Creating a Banana Continent

 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the other day that the United States would bring to bear a more sophisticated spectrum of mili-cop responses to illegal trafficking in elephant tusks and other endangered species.  Such trafficking, she said, was not being done by the lone poachers of yore but was being conducted by sophisticated criminal organizations,  which necessitated an  equally organized and sophisticated response.  The announcement was met with happy applause from the Green part of the political spectrum.

A more cynical ploy could hardly be imagined.  Since when has Hillary be concerned about the environment?  Not once in her lengthy and quite talkative career has she sounded off on the environment, much less given the ecological equivalent of "I Have a Dream..."

If Hillary has suddenly seen the light, how come the light doesn't shine on Japanese whaling, on Asian tiger poaching, on Mexican turtle slaughter  on the decimation of bees or on any other bloody, murderous aspect of Man's poaching on his fellow creatures?  How come the "response" is carefully tailored to fit what is primarily an African activity?

Let's be clear.  Since Carter, the United States has cast its imperial eye on Africa.  As implemented by Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Africa policy was primarily geo-political, aimed at thwarting the Soviet Union and its proxies.  However, under Bill Clinton, America's "concern" for African health and human rights was a cover for economic penetration and exploitation.  This policy is in full swing now.  The United States wants to "open" up Africa to Western "development" -- i.e.  it wants to plunder the shit out of its resources with the use of  a cheap and plentiful pool of labour.

Tired of Central America, the United States has now focused on creating a Banana Continent.

Of course, to do this, it is necessary to remove all those so-called terrorists organizations that just might want to control resources for their own national ends.  In other words the Neo Con strategy of bringing full spectrum mili-cop devastation and control is being brought to bear on Africa.

The pogey bait being tossed to the environmental left is tantalizing.  It is certainly technologically true that Chinook helicopters and infra-red cameras can be used effectively to detect and blow away caravans of poachers sneaking under jungle cover with the cargo of their slaughter.  It was certainly juridically true that once pro-Western institutions were established in Afghanistan in place of the Taliban, women would be freed from the veil and allowed the full spectrum of Western Opportunities for social equality and economic advancement.

But somehow what is "certainly" true in theory never materializes in fact.  Has America's very technological, very militarized "War on Drugs" stopped the cultivation, harvesting, packaging, running and street sale of narotics?  No. No. And No again.  It is a total failure on all fronts. 

America's solutions are in fact poisons.  They have a deceptive allure that operates only on a simplistic, mechanical level without any appreciation of the nuances and subtleties of actual and more fundamental causes.

The devastating failure of America's "Wars On..." is so obvious one has to ask if American leaders really fall for their own rhetoric?  To a certain extent the leadership within any system is intellectually nurtured and limited by the system's modus intellecti.   But while some colonel or general might truly think that peace can be obtained at the tip of a rifle barrel, Ivy Boys in think tanks and policy boiler rooms can't all be that stupid. They are bright and they are cynical. Our fellow creatures will not benefit from this policy any more than our fellow humans benefitted from "Enduring Freedom".  Pray for the elephants.

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Legitimacies (Or Not)

At the request of the Ecuadorian government,  Argentina has frozen about 16 billion dollars of assets owned by Chevron Oil Company,  which  Chevron was ordered to pay as a result of the environmental damage it wreaked in the Amazon rain forest.    A talking asshole for the oil company said that if Ecuador had a "legitimate" claim it would have sought enforcement of its judgement in a Murkan ccourt.

As usual, the corporate fart stank.  If National Capitalist America had a legitimate government which was not constitutionally engineered to suck corporate butt its courts might be relied upon to work for equity and justice.   

A Slower Death

     

The entire noisy fracas of has been called an election boils down to this:  the middle class has chosen a slower form death.   The same might be said of the environment.

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Grope & Thud - The Battle of the Failed Records

It was all so tediously predictable.  President Obama looked a little livelier than hung-over and the press was gaga about how he had regained and recovered momentum and footing. Whatever news story one read, the talk was about "biting attacks" as the candidates "slugged" it out in "fiery" debate.  And so it has come to this: that in America's epoch of Haute Empire, a presidential debate was inescapably indistinguishable from the contrived Grope and Thud of World Wide Wrestling.  It was all so tediously depressing.

Within this slippery farce, the press valiantly sought to retrieve some peanuts of substance -- peanuts provided, we might add, only from the gallery.  "I'm glad you asked that, Sally...."  But no peanut was big enough to obscure the fact that what we witnessed was the Battle of  Failed Records.

And it is for this reason that we think Romney won the second debate as well as the first. Romney failed as an entrepreneurial "job creator" and governor but Obama has failed as a president.  It was ironically distressing that Romney's attacks on Obama's record should sound like they were cribbed from the leftish likes of Counterpunch, Truthout and (even!) Socialist Worker.  But, howsoever cribbed, contrived and oozing in crocodile tears, the fact is that things today are as lousy as they were four years ago.  That was, and remains, an albatross from which Obama could not free himself.

Gasoline prices were emblematic.

Under Wonderous Boy George, Romney cried, gasoline was $1.86 a gallon!   Yeah, replied Obama, with incisive sarcasm, only because the economy was in the tank.  (Actually, the bon mot was missed in Obama's leaden performance, but that was the gist of his reply.)  The only problem with Obama's ripost is that the economy is still in the tank and gasoline is upwards of $4.00 a gallon.

Neither candidate, it appears, has any desire or willingness to tackle the real bete noire of gasoline prices including speculative abuse of futures trading and (we do suspect) price manipulation.  Since neither of them disagree on the fundamentals of oil and gas production, the net distinction is the fact of $4.00 which ends up being Obama's loss.

We do not deny that there are differences within the fine print of the candidates' otherwise identical boilerplate contracts with America.  A case in point was the Administration's termination of preferential and profitable use-licenses for companies that didn't use the rights except as a paper asset or tradeable derivative. While Obama's executive action was not a bad thing, it left the fundamentals unchallenged and it is the fundamentals that are killing families at the pump.

Both candidates are in agreement that all will be well if we tweak and tinker with the tax code and let "Market Magick" do its miraculous work.  But all will not be well if that is all we do. 

Given that things are as lousy as they were four years ago; that Obama does not propose to do anything different from what he has been doing, and that he refuses to go grind the obstructionist opposition into the pink slime they are, it is hard to see how Romney does not come out the winner.  After all, all Romney has to do is "look presidential" and provide some plausible chimera for hope and change. 

It is here that come to the real substance -- albeit the psychological substance -- of the debate. Romney certainly looks presidential, given our normative socio-racial and cultural expectations.  It may be illogical and unfair, but Obama looks like a "black" Dennis E. Kucinich and is not what we expect to see on dollar bill.  Romney's height, his ease on stage, his stentorian grey at the temples and his healthy pancake all look the part.  To be objective, he has a bit of the F.D.R. air about him.

Romney also sounds presidential, as is proved by Barfo's Kitchen Test :  Turn on the debate and go fry something in the kitchen so that you can't hear what the candidates are saying but only the modulation, inflection and cadence of their voices.   What you will hear is that Obama is not a good speaker.  His delivery is interrupted by clipped sentences, abrupt pauses and unusual punctuations. His voice is down-beat and protesting.  Romney's delivery is fluid, commanding, rapid and upbeat even when accusatory. He urges utter bullshit and lies with earnest sincerity and facile argument-- a skill he no doubt acquired early in life during his two years of missionary work.

In short, the psychological substance of the matter is that Romney comes across as the Alpha Male and Obama does not -- and he does not because he is not.   The sad fact is that Obama is an arriviste. No one wants to say it because it hearkens to America's Ugliness.   But race in the United States is what gentility of birth used to be in Europe.

No one could have been more nouveau tout than Bill Clinton.  But he could expect and count on being forgiven all because, in Metternich's inimitable phrase, he fell into "baron and above."  Obama does not.  That is not his fault but it does not change the result.  In virtually every picture we have seen of Obama either golfing with Bohner or dining with executives, he has a looks that says, "I can't believe I am actually here."   And the "I" of the matter comes burdened with a lot of history that has nothing and everything to do with Obama. 

No one will get anywhere in the United States unless they are willing and able to accept "the system" on its terms.   A person goes to law school to learn the rationales and excuses that buttress the political structure.  A person goes to business school to learn the accepted theories  and  modalities of "generating" wealth.  For sure,  America has been gracious in allowing non-conformists a more or less free space at the sidelines to carp and cavil.   One can even make a living out of being an irrelevant pest.  But if you want to play the game, you swallow the oyster --and no oyster is swallowed in halves.  

In swallowing, Obama is no different than Clinton or anyone else.  But in arriving at the table Obama won a far, far, far harder struggle.   Thus, when Obama says he does "not begrudge"  Blankfein his huckstered millions he really, really means it and is (evidently) not about to jeopardize his place at the table.  In contrast, a man like F.D.R. (who swallowed oysters at birth) would have had no problem in calling Blankfein a disgrace to his class.  

In Romney's case, the "alpha" in the male stands for more than just "top".   The ostentation of his car-elevator is exceeded only by the obscenity of his off-shoring, tax-evasion, asset plunder, job destruction and -- lest we forget -- appalling hypocricy.   But rather than rip this monster a new Alpha hole,  Beta Bama will simply not begrudge "governor" Romney his tissue of decency.  That is a failing that lost the debate and could  cost the president his reelection.

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Begging & Begging the Question

Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons

Faced with massive beggary in Europe, the New York Times met the issue head on by begging the question. The Times reported that, despite austerity protests, Greece and Spain were proceeding with further budget cuts. In Greece, the government "agreed on an austerity package that includes some of the most severe cuts in public pensions ever imposed in a developed country." In Spain, the government "introduced one of the most draconian budgets in the country’s history."

"The markets need reassuring," the Times explained and the cuts were "intended to reassure international investors and demonstrate the fiscal discipline that the euro zone was demanding..."

foto per N.Y. Times

Unlike Greece which had slashed pensions 10 percent, Spain took its cuts of flesh from other parts of the body. "Politically, it is understandable that Mr. Rajoy would want to put a protective bubble around the country’s 10 million retirees at a time when people are marching in the streets," the Times sympathetically intoned before going on to warn that "the fact that Spanish public pensions are being enhanced is a reminder of one reason European debt and deficit problems have proved so difficult to resolve."

What deserves note is not that budget cuts are being made but rather that the Times simply assumes that the "deficit problems" can only be "resolved"  by starving pensioners.   Entitlements  (i.e., people entitlements) are the problem and once pensions are cut the difficulty will be solved.  Never once does the Times question whether perhaps people -- and not "markets"-- need reassuring. Never once does the Times question the Moloch that demands the sacrifice of babies.

For the past nine months or so we have been thinking about Marx's Fetish of the Commodity and have been whittling away at a chip on the subject, but the Times report -- which is simply a reflection of what the Establishment thinks -- about sums it up. And what the New World Order demands is a Shylockian "economy" on a ferocious scale. We are in need of a Portia or a Parsons. 

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Persia and The Euphrates Sturgeon

Taking their lead from the New York Times, most of the American media excoriated Iran's president Ahmadinejahd for remarking that Zionist Jews were a blip in the history of the Middle East. " 'They have no roots there in history,'  Mr. Ahmadinejad said of the Israelis," reported the Times, " 'They do not even enter the equation for Iran.' " 

The Times went on to report that "The New York Post, which has made no secret of its hostility toward Mr. Ahmadinejad, said it had tried to deliver a gift basket over the weekend to the Warwick [Hotel] filled with items including Gold's Borscht, Manischewitz gefilte fish, Murray's Sturgeon Shop whitefish, Zabar's cream cheese and a free ticket to the Off Broadway show 'Old Jews Telling Jokes'. The Post said Iranian officials at the hotel declined to accept it." 

The irony apparently escaped the Times, and just in case it might escape anyone else, neither borscht, gefilte fish nor sturgeon have much of a history in the Middle East. 

But whether by design or omission, the Times and certainly the Post appear to have missed Ahmadinejahd's more significant Olive Branch. 

Whether the vast bulk of Ashkenazi Jews who comprised the impetus for Zionism had any actual antecedent presence in the Middle East, it is clear that Ahmadinejahd believes they did not and that, in his mind, they are an isolated ethno/genetic subgroup arising out of Central and Eastern Europe. 

As reported in the Western media, Ahmadinejad has also previously threatened to drive  this Zionist "regime" from the map and, by implication, to expel the so-called European foreigners from the Middle East.  Not surprisingly,  Israel considers such remarks to be an "existential threat."

However, there is a chasm between vowing to drive "foreigners" from the land and saying that their presence is evanescent blip which does "not even enter the equation."  Israelis may feel insulted to learn that they are "beneath an equation" but insulting or not Ahmadinejad could not have made it more clear that Iran has no belligerent intentions against Israel. 

To be sure, in the Israeli view, Iran is already aiding and abetting alleged hostile terrorist organizations and/or tyrants.  But it behooves diplomats not to slip and slide on the jelly of confused issues.  The "existential" issue is whether Iran has a geopolitical purpose and military design to destroy the State of Israel and disperse its Jewish inhabitants elsewhere.  As to this question  -- the Titus Question --  Ahmadinejad has stated that Israel doesn't enter into Iran' calculations.

Whether Iran supports a monarch in Syria or whether the United States supports a misogynist dictator in Saudia Arabia; whether Iran sends arms to Hamas or whether Israel sends advisors to Kurdistan or whether the United States supported Al Qaeda against Assad,  are distinct issues involving non-existential geo-political gambits of an entirely different order of magnitude.   

It will hardly come as a surprise that the word "diplomat" is "hypocricy" by another name but neither the United States nor Israel can complain that Iran plays the same game they do.    As to the existential game,  if anyone came bearing gifts to New York, it was Iran. 

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Romney & the 47%

In a closed meeting with his supporters, Governor Romney disclosed his less than charitable feelings about 47% of the country which, he said, were too poor to pay taxes and felt they were entitled to hand outs. His remarks reminded us of a thought that came into our mind  but a mere week ago.

I am a Calvinist. I believe God adores me. I adore me. Me for Me. I deserve what I can steal because I am full of Grease. Screw others if they starve. God hates them. So do I.

Sometimes i think that the present floats about in some ether of some sort.

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The Political Howl

We had better things to chip at than to watch the Republican Party convention; however, short of living in a remote cabin, it is impossible to isolate one's self from the "news stream" that has become something of an Orwellian ether which is omni-present and all-permeating.

So it was we read that the media were not happy with Ryan's speech which was strewn with lies -- not seeming lies, not plausible lies, but lies which lay beyond the pale.  . .  . [continue reading]

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Self Defence & The Pussy Riot

The Russian Orthodox Church claims that the Pussy Riot performance in St. Basil's Cathedral was an assault on Christian sensibilities. So?

Jesus offered no defence against his accusers and suffered every injury and indignity before and, most probably after, his Crucifixion.

Christ's absolute sufferance led his earliest followers to espouse an uncompromising passivism. It was a rule of the Early Church, that a Christian was not allowed to defend himself. Even St. Cyril Constantine (d. 869), who advocated "just defence" of neighbours, accepted the passivist premise against self-defence.

What did this mean? It meant very simply, that if struck you were to turn the other cheek; if thrown to the lions you were to offer neck to fang. A Christian was committed to suffer whatever evil God sent his way.

Now there are those who would like to engineer a more convenient result by resort to casuistry, which "resolves moral problems by extracting theoretical rules from particular instances and applying these rules to new situations." (Wiki)

Typically, this case-based rationalism seeks to manoeuvre between a thicket of supposed goods and not-goods by asking "how do we?" and "what is the purpose of?". The injunction to put aside the sword, these rationalists say, is a command to avoid violence. Self-defence without violence is permitted and indeed even "Christian."

Thus it is that AIKIDO is popular among those who wish to have their defence and be pacific too. The martial art of Aikido is based on receiving the force of violence but deflecting it mirror-like against its source so that the attacker end up attacking himself.

Clever but not Christian. There is nothing wrong with aikido as a martial art and as a martial art it is perhaps the most ingenious. But pacifism and Christianity are not co-terminous. Put another way, pacifism and submission are not the same thing. Jesus did indeed enjoin living by the sword but the crucified Christ went beyond that. The Christian who thinks he is emulating Christ by practicing non-violent Aikido deludes himself. The only way to emulate Christ is to suffer whatever crucifixion God bestows as one of his dubious graces.

Which leads us to the Pussy Riot. The Russian Orthodox Church is scandalized by what it calls the salacious and satanic performance of the female punk rock group within the sacred precincts. We did not have the benefit of seeing the performance ourselves and may accept that it was so grotesque and blasphemous as to be deeply offensive to orthodox religiosity. But so what?

There is a degree of palaver in the Russian and Western press about the unduly close ties between Church and Kremlin, about the unduely repressive response to an "inappropriate" exercise of nonetheless free speech, about the public relations disaster of the whole affair, on the one hand, and the substantial popularity of the prosecution on the other. We have also read that the Pussy Performers were put up to it by nefarious agencies seeking to stir up trouble in Russia. But none of this is here or there.

The Church should emulate its Founder and bear the injury with patience and gratitude. Had patriarch Kirill truly followed his Saviour he would have suffered through the performance and then invited the Pussy Girls to tea.

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Transparency Redux - Crystaline Clarity in Syria

       

A year ago this month, we noted  [1] the candor with which Western businessmen flocked to Libya on the very afternoon of Col. Qadaffi's murder. 

A provisional government we had never heard of in the news was there waiting to greet deplaning German and French businessmen with contracts and pens in hand.  The New York Times reported that at U.S. instance and request the Security Council had unfrozen $1.5 billion in seized Libyan assets in order to provide "aid" to the country.

So it was with some bemusement that we read in the New York Times today  [2] that,

"The State Department is considering positioning additional food and medical supplies in the region and is studying how to dismantle the raft of American and European sanctions against Syria quickly to allow investment to flow in and business to resume, avoiding further deterioration of life for ordinary people. "

One has to be an incurable moron not to realize the game afoot. What is amusing, in a contemptuous way,  is how the Western "leftishts" fall a-sucker over and over.  It apparently suffices to label the targetted ruler an ogre, a tyrant, a monster who stockpiles weapons of mass destruction, oppresses women and tortures dissidents for the left  to line up like good dumbfucks cheering on the latest Crusade for Democracy (and Reproductive Rights).

The United States has gotten quite good at this game, given that its own indpendence was foisted on  the world by twittering "Committees of Correspondence" waxing indignant over contrived atrocities such as the "Boston Massacre."  The United States honed the technique in Hispanic America where it was always able to find some corrupt "liberal-minded" prestanombre ("name-lender") who could recite Jeffersonian talking points by heart and who just needed a few companies of Marines to mow down "bandits" and "insurrectionists."  Why, just last month, the United States engineered a 48 hour impeachment of Paraguay's President Lugo.  Within weeks the "raison de coup" became clear: Monsanto was given the permission which Lugo had denied it to wreak an ecological holocaust on Paraguay with genetically modified seed and pesticides.  

But the Spontaneous Impeachment in Paraguay was child's play -- a mere trip down memory lane -- in comparison to America's newly honed and droned technique for "freeing up" a target country's assets. 

We recently wrote [3] that the core strategy of the U.S. "security wars" is to promote chaos and civil degradation so as to create perpetually fluid conditions for exploitation and control of resources. The strategists and leaders of the "First World" have realized that it is no longer necessary to go through the trouble and expense of installing despot puppets like Augusto Pinochet. It quite suffices to destroy whatever national authority exists and to negotiate contracts with whatever tribal or urban gangs (passing off as a "transitional government) are nearest to the bananas we want to pick.

As Rome created a desert and called it peace, the National Capitalist United States creates chaos and calls it freedom.

©Barfo, 2012

[1] http://barfos.blogspot.com/2011/08/transparency.html


[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/world/middleeast/state-dept-and-pentagon-planning-for-post-assad-syria.html

[3] http://wcg-journal.blogspot.com/2011/06/mining-harvesting-and-civil-carcinogens.html

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The Nut Crackens

    

It would seem the United States has perfected the technique of invisible invasions.  Today, all of a sudden, the Guardian UK has started referring to the "Free Syrian Army."  What began several months ago as "democracy protests" (which were, of course "brutally suppressed") then metamorphosed into "armed resistance" aided and abetted from it was never very clear where.  But now at least the egg is hatched and we have a Free Syrian Army.

The difference is diplomatically important because, whereas every government has the sovereign right to crush insurrectionists whithin its borders, foreign governments don't have the right to assist rebels until they have gained enough ground that they can reasonably be considered co-belligerents.  In other words, the importance of a "civil war" is that outsiders can intervene whereas no one can intervene in a domestic disturbance. 

What the United States has perfected is agitating domestic disturbance with tweets and NGO grants until they ripen into a civil war.  From the Ukraine to Libya the technique has been honed and perfected.  To be sure, the United States is happy when it need go no further than suborn a majority in the National Assembly, as happened last month during Paraguays "28 Hour Impeachment" of a "left-leaning" and "pro-peasant" president who managed to offend  land holding "oligarchs" including American corporations and the Bush Family.  But Syria is a tougher nut to crack; but cracked it will be, into an ethnic bantustan of mutually loathing factions that will be unable to resist anything Israel or the United States wants.

Israel?  Look at a map of the Euphrates and trace the route of any pipeline from that great and essential aquifer.

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Nunc Pro Clunk

     

Well... it might be a fun summer after all, what with Obama holding Romney's feet to the fire over his role in Bain Capital's massive "export" of American jobs between 1999 and 2002.   Of course, the whole and entire purpose and intent of a company like Bain Capital is to make a profit by selling off assets and reducing labour costs. Nevertheless, Romney claims that he left the company in 1999 and had nothing to do with the gutting operations thereafter.  Alas, his SEC filings with the government list him as Man In Charge as of 2002.  

Seeking to stem the avalanche of bad publicity falling on Romney's head, campaign spokesman Ed Gillespie has bravely claimed that Romney had "retroactively retired" in 2002.

???

This might not be as odd as it seems.  In lawyer-land, it is a known and accepted procedure to back-date documents -- nunc pro tunc -- or now for then -- to reflect either what really existed or what really should have taken effect on an earlier date.  We suspect that in non-lawyer land this will go over as nunc pro clunk.

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July Fourth's Unsung Prophet

MEMORANDUM FROM THE COUNT  OF ARANDA TO  HIS  MAJESTY KING CHARLES III ON THE INDEPENDENCE  OF  THE  ENGLISH  COLONIES  IN  AMERICA. (1783)

SIRE,

The love which I profess for Your Majesty ... [continue reading]

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