Lining Up for the Wall Street Gravy Train

British economist John Maynard Keynes, believed in capitalism, but he was also sharply critical of its structural flaws. He summed it up succinctly like this:

“Our analysis shows… that long-run development is not inherent in the capitalist economy. Thus, specific ‘development factors’ are required to sustain a long-run upward movement.”

What Keynes was alluding to is the fact that mature capitalist economies tend towards stagnation. What happens, is that the rate of return on investment begins to dwindle as overcapacity builds. That causes declining profits which lead to belt-tightening, rising unemployment and falling demand. As investment drops off further, growth slows correspondingly and the economy dips into a protracted slump. This corrosive stagnation is the challenge that all advanced capitalist economies face. The solution–as Keynes notes–lies in “specific development factors”, which in today’s terms means “financial innovations”.

Financial innovation, like derivatives contracts and securitization, have created vast new opportunities for investment and profitmaking. This complex netherworld of highly-leveraged debt-instruments and off-balance sheet operations, constitutes a shadow economy where the process of capital accumulation persists despite pervasive inertia in the underlying economy. This is why the Fed and the Treasury have been doing their best to stitch the system back together without changing its basic structure. The same is true of Congress, which has gone to great lengths to preserve the profit-generating instruments which brought the global financial system to the brink of disaster. This is from the Wall Street Journal:

“Lobbying by Wall Street has blunted efforts to step up regulation on derivatives trading by carving out exceptions or leaving the status quo in place. Derivatives took blame for some of the worst debacles of the financial crisis. But a year after regulators and critics began calling for an overhaul in the way they are traded, some efforts have been shelved and others have been watered down.

The two main issues concerning regulators were trading and clearing of swaps, which allow investors to bet on or hedge movements in currencies, interest rates and many other things. Swaps generally trade privately, leaving competitors and regulators in the dark about the scope of their risks. In November 2008, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee proposed forcing all derivatives trading onto exchanges, where their prices could be publicly disclosed and margin requirements imposed to insure that participants could make good on their market bets.

But a financial-overhaul bill passed by the House of Representatives on Dec. 11 watered down or eliminated these requirements. The measure still allows for voice brokering and allows dealers to use alternatives to public exchanges.” (“How Overhauling Derivatives Died” Randall Smith and Sarah Lynch, WSJ)

“Voice brokering” is Wall Street parlance for making a deal over the phone. It makes a joke out of the anemic regulations passed into law by congressmen who are essentially agents of Wall Street.

The bottom line is that financial institutions will not be forced to trade trillions of dollars of derivatives on public exchanges where margin requirements would protect taxpayers against potential losses. Instead, Congress has given Wall Street the green light to continue selling products that are insufficiently capitalized so they can keep raking in gigantic profits. That means it’s only a matter of time before another one of the financial giants keels over from its bad bets. It will be AIG all over again.

But derivatives are just part of the problem. The real issue is a financial model that doesn’t really work and offers no tangible benefit to society. In its present form, the system–with its exotic OTC markets, its off-book SIVs and SPEs, and its opaque Dark Pools and High Frequency Trading– is more snake oil than high finance. It does not “efficiently allocate capital to productive activity” as advertised, but–more often than not–diverts it away from production altogether into paper claims on all manner of financial exotica. So called “innovations” have had less to do with increasing the overall vitality of the economy or improving living standards than they do with circumventing regulations to enhance earnings by maximizing leverage. Deregulation has utterly transformed the system; creating a financial Frankenstein that hides its activities off public exchanges, that transfers the risk of losses onto the taxpayer, and that requires explicit government guarantees just to attract investment. It’s a mug’s game where only a small group of high-stakes speculators come up winners.

The same is true of the Fed’s emergency lending programs. They’re just another swindle wrapped in fancy public relations ribbon. Ostensibly, the facilities are supposed to provide cheap capital in exchange for dodgy collateral. But that’s not a loan; it’s a subsidy, and it helps to obscure the true, market price of the assets. As systemic regulator, the Fed has every right to provide liquidity during times of market stress or turbulence. But it does not have the right to help financial institutions conceal their losses by paying exorbitant prices for downgraded junk bonds. That’s picking winners and losers, which is far beyond the Fed’s mandate.

Quantitative easing (QE) is another Fed boondoggle. The program has been hyped as a way to get the banks to increase lending to businesses and consumers by creating over $1 trillion of excess bank reserves. But instead of increasing lending, QE does the exact opposite; it creates generous incentives for not lending. The banks who qualify have been taking the Fed’s zero-rate reserves and exchanging them for safe, 10-year Treasury bonds which yield 3.5%. What a deal! Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has promised to maintain this policy for “an extended period” which means the banks will continue to reap the benefits of this stealth bailout for the foreseeable future.

This is the real reason the banks aren’t lending, because the Fed is paying them not to. It’s not a matter of creditworthy applicants. It’s a matter of hopelessly mangled monetary policy. The ongoing credit contraction can be blamed on one man alone; Ben Bernanke.

Even though QE is mainly a backdoor way to recapitalize the banks; some lending has continued, although not to consumers and businesses. So where has the money gone? Here’s part of the answer from the Wall Street Journal:

“Former Salvadoran finance minister Manuel Hinds points out in the latest issue of International Finance that banks have indeed been shirking on their day job of transforming increased deposits into increased private-sector credit. But they haven’t quit entirely. In fact, they’ve funneled significant new funds into nonbank financial institutions—which have not lent them on. What’s happening is that U.S. banks have been behaving exactly like developing country banks during earlier crises, such as Indonesian banks in the late 1990s—raising lending to their worst borrowers to keep them alive, lest the banks themselves collapse from their borrowers’ defaults.

For U.S. banks, these zombie borrowers are their affiliated financial entities set up to manage so-called off-balance-sheet activities—such as the famous SIVs (structured investment vehicles) created by Citigroup and others during the boom. Thus, the massive fiscal and monetary bailouts of the banks have served to worsen the credit misallocation that led to the general economic collapse in 2008.” (“Prepare for a Keynesian Hangover”, Ben Steill, Wall Street Journal)

So the banks are not only taking depositors money and using it in high-risk derivatives transactions and currency “carry trades”, they’re also propping up the long daisy-chain of insolvent creditors whose default could domino Lehman-like through the entire financial system. Funny how the media skips little tidbits like this when they give their rosy evening roundup.

And then there’s this; on Christmas Eve, the Treasury Dept announced that it would lift existing caps on the mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two GSE’s will no longer be limited to a ceiling of $200 billion in losses each. Although, the Treasury’s action looks like it was designed to support the housing market, the real beneficiaries are the banks whose balance sheets are coming under greater pressure from the relentless uptick in foreclosures. It is widely believed that Treasury is laying the groundwork for a major revision of the Obama’s mortgage modification program which has, so far, been a dismal failure. If the critics are right, the administration is planning to slash the principle on millions of mortgages sometime in 2010, thus shifting the sizable losses onto the US taxpayer. Otherwise, the banks will face potential losses on another 4 million foreclosures in the next year alone. (according to Credit Suisse)

Economist Dean Baker says that the Treasury’s surprise announcement is an indication that Fannie and Freddie may have paid too much for the mortgage-backed securities they bought back in 2008 when the GSE’s were used as a dumping ground for distressed bank assets. Here’s Baker:

“This would mean that they were paying too much for mortgages and mortgage-backed securities bought from banks after the financial meltdown was already in full swing. This was the original purpose of the TARP program. Of course, TARP came with at least some restrictions and disclosure requirements. If Fannie and Freddie are overpaying for mortgages, then there are no conditions whatsoever put on the banks that get the money.” (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Just a four Letter Word, Dean Baker, Huffington Post)

The Treasury’s action is tantamount to another stealth bailout by industry reps working within the Obama administration. All policymaking seems to revolve around two fundamental tenets: Increase the profit potential for the big Wall Street banks, and crimp the flow of credit to the real economy to increase privatization, crush the labor movement, and reduce the population to third world poverty. That’s Neoliberalism in a nutshell and, apparently, Obama’s economic dogma. In fact, as economist L. Randall Wray points out, Obama’s new health care bill is just more of the same; another ginormous handout to Wall Street disguised as public policy. Here’s Wray:

“There is a huge untapped market of some 50 million people who are not paying insurance premiums—and the number grows every year because employers drop coverage and people can’t afford premiums. Solution? Health insurance “reform” that requires everyone to turn over their pay to Wall Street. Can’t afford the premiums? That is OK—Uncle Sam will kick in a few hundred billion to help out the insurers. Of course, do not expect more health care or better health outcomes because that has nothing to do with “reform” … Wall Street’s insurers… see a missed opportunity. They’ll collect the extra premiums and deny the claims. This is just another bailout of the financial system, because the tens of trillions of dollars already committed are not nearly enough.”(Healthcare Diversions Part 3: The Financialization of Health and Everything Else in the Universe” L. Randall Wray)

It’s no wonder that the Obama administration’s appeal to China to “expand its domestic market” focuses exclusively on health care and retirement programs. Wall Street is just lining up for the next gravy train.

Yeswecanistan

All the crying from the left about how Obama “the peace candidate” has now become “a war president” … Whatever are they talking about? Here’s what I wrote in this report in August 2008, during the election campaign:

We find Obama threatening, several times, to attack Iran if they don’t do what the United States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st state.

Why should anyone be surprised at Obama’s foreign policy in the White House? He has not even banned torture, contrary to what his supporters would fervently have us believe. If further evidence were needed, we have the November 28 report in the Washington Post: “Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.” This is but the latest example of the continuance of torture under the new administration.

But the shortcomings of Barack Obama and the naiveté of his fans is not the important issue. The important issue is the continuation and escalation of the American war in Afghanistan, based on the myth that the individuals we label “Taliban” are indistinguishable from those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, whom we usually label “al Qaeda”. “I am convinced,” the president said in his speech at the United States Military Academy (West Point) on December 1, “that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.”

Obama used one form or another of the word “extremist” eleven times in his half-hour talk. Young, impressionable minds must be carefully taught; a future generation of military leaders who will command America’s never-ending wars must have no doubts that the bad guys are “extremists”, that “extremists” are by definition bad guys, that “extremists” are beyond the pale and do not act from human, rational motivation like we do, that we — quintessential non-extremists, peace-loving moderates — are the good guys, forced into one war after another against our will. Sending robotic death machines flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop powerful bombs on the top of wedding parties, funerals, and homes is of course not extremist behavior for human beings.

And the bad guys attacked the US “from here”, Afghanistan. That’s why the United States is “there”, Afghanistan. But in fact the 9-11 attack was planned in Germany, Spain and the United States as much as in Afghanistan. It could have been planned in a single small room in Panama City, Taiwan, or Bucharest. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? And the attack was carried out entirely in the United States. But Barack Obama has to maintain the fiction that Afghanistan was, and is, vital and indispensable to any attack on the United States, past or future. That gives him the right to occupy the country and kill the citizens as he sees fit. Robert Baer, former CIA officer with long involvement in that part of the world has noted: “The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. They simply want us gone because we’re foreigners, and they’re rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters.” ¹

The pretenses extend further. US leaders have fed the public a certain image of the insurgents (all labeled together under the name “Taliban”) and of the conflict to cover the true imperialistic motivation behind the war. The predominant image at the headlines/TV news level and beyond is that of the Taliban as an implacable and monolithic “enemy” which must be militarily defeated at all costs for America’s security, with a negotiated settlement or compromise not being an option. However, consider the following which have been reported at various times during the past two years about the actual behavior of the United States and its allies in Afghanistan vis-à-vis the Taliban, which can raise questions about Obama’s latest escalation: ²

The US military in Afghanistan has long been considering paying Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul, as the United States has done with Iraqi insurgents.

President Obama has floated the idea of negotiating with moderate elements of the Taliban. ³

US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, said last month that the United States would support any role Saudi Arabia chose to pursue in trying to engage Taliban officials. ⁴

Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban in various ways.

A top European Union official and a United Nations staff member were ordered by the Kabul government to leave the country after allegations that they had met Taliban insurgents without the administration’s knowledge. And two senior diplomats for the United Nations were expelled from the country, accused by the Afghan government of unauthorized dealings with insurgents. However, the Afghanistan government itself has had a series of secret talks with “moderate Taliban” since 2003 and President Hamid Karzai has called for peace talks with Taliban leader Mohammed Omar.

Organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as the United Nations have become increasingly open about their contacts with the Taliban leadership and other insurgent groups.

Gestures of openness are common practice among some of Washington’s allies in Afghanistan, notably the Dutch, who make negotiating with the Taliban an explicit part of their military policy.

The German government is officially against negotiations, but some members of the governing coalition have suggested Berlin host talks with the Taliban.

MI-6, Britain’s external security service, has held secret talks with the Taliban up to half a dozen times. At the local level, the British cut a deal, appointing a former Taliban leader as a district chief in Helmand province in exchange for security guarantees.

Senior British officers involved with the Afghan mission have confirmed that direct contact with the Taliban has led to insurgents changing sides as well as rivals in the Taliban movement providing intelligence which has led to leaders being killed or captured.

British authorities hold that there are distinct differences between different “tiers” of the Taliban and that it is essential to try to separate the doctrinaire extremists from others who are fighting for money or because they resent the presence of foreign forces in their country.

British contacts with the Taliban have occurred despite British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly ruling out such talks; on one occasion he told the House of Commons: “We will not enter into any negotiations with these people.”

For months there have been repeated reports of “good Taliban” forces being airlifted by Western helicopters from one part of Afghanistan to another to protect them from Afghan or Pakistani military forces. At an October 11 news conference in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai himself claimed that “some unidentified helicopters dropped armed men in the northern provinces at night.” ⁵

On November 2, IslamOnline.net (Qatar) reported: “The emboldened Taliban movement in Afghanistan turned down an American offer of power-sharing in exchange for accepting the presence of foreign troops, Afghan government sources confirmed. ‘US negotiators had offered the Taliban leadership through Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil (former Taliban foreign minister) that if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, they would be given the governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast … America wants eight army and air force bases in different parts of Afghanistan in order to tackle the possible regrouping of [the] Al-Qaeda network,’ a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net.” ⁶

There has been no confirmation of this from American officials, but the New York Times on October 28 listed six provinces that were being considered to receive priority protection from the US military, five which are amongst the eight mentioned in the IslamOnline report as being planned for US military bases, although no mention is made in the Times of the above-mentioned offer. The next day, Asia Times reported: “The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan [or Nooristan], on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles.” Nuristan, where earlier in the month eight US soldiers were killed and three Apache helicopters hit by hostile fire, is one of the six provinces offered to the Taliban as reported in the IslamOnline.net story.

The part about al-Qaeda is ambiguous and questionable, not only because the term has long been loosely used as a catch-all for any group or individual in opposition to US foreign policy in this part of the world, but also because the president’s own national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, stated in early October: “I don’t foresee the return of the Taliban. Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling. The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.” ⁷

Shortly after Jones’s remarks, we could read in the Wall Street Journal: “Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al-Qaida is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. … For Arab youths who are al-Qaida’s primary recruits, ‘it’s not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,’ said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.” ⁸

From all of the above is it not reasonable to conclude that the United States is willing and able to live with the Taliban, as repulsive as their social philosophy is? Perhaps even a Taliban state which would go across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has been talked about in some quarters. What then is Washington fighting for? What moves the president of the United States to sacrifice so much American blood and treasure? In past years, US leaders have spoken of bringing democracy to Afghanistan, liberating Afghan women, or modernizing a backward country. President Obama made no mention of any of these previous supposed vital goals in his December 1 speech. He spoke only of the attacks of September 11, al Qaeda, the Taliban, terrorists, extremists, and such, symbols guaranteed to fire up an American audience. Yet, the president himself declared at one point: “Al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same numbers as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border.” Ah yes, the terrorist danger … always, everywhere, forever, particularly when it seems the weakest.

How many of the West Point cadets, how many Americans, give thought to the fact that Afghanistan is surrounded by the immense oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions? Or that Afghanistan is ideally situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of Europe and south Asia, lines that can deliberately bypass non-allies of the empire, Iran and Russia? If only the Taliban will not attack the lines. “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south …”, said Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs in 2007. ⁹

Afghanistan would also serve as the home of American military bases, the better to watch and pressure next-door Iran and the rest of Eurasia. And NATO … struggling to find a raison d’être since the end of the Cold War. If the alliance is forced to pull out of Afghanistan without clear accomplishments after eight years will its future be even more in doubt?

So, for the present at least, the American War on Terror in Afghanistan continues and regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists, as it has done in Iraq. This is not in dispute even at the Pentagon or the CIA. God Bless America.

Although the “surge” failed as policy, it succeeded as propaganda.

They don’t always use the word “surge”, but that’s what they mean. Our admirable leaders and our mainstream media that love to interview them would like us to believe that escalation of the war in Afghanistan is in effect a “surge”, like the one in Iraq which, they believe, has proven so successful. But the reality of the surge in Iraq was nothing like its promotional campaign. To the extent that there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq (now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation), we must keep in mind the following summary of how and why it “succeeded”:

• Thanks to America’s lovely little war, there are many millions Iraqis either dead, wounded, crippled, homebound or otherwise physically limited, internally displaced, in foreign exile, or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons. Many others have been so traumatized that they are concerned simply for their own survival. Thus, a huge number of potential victims and killers has been markedly reduced.
• Extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place: Sunnis and Shiites are now living much more than before in their own special enclaves, with entire neighborhoods surrounded by high concrete walls and strict security checkpoints; violence of the sectarian type has accordingly gone down.
• In the face of numerous “improvised explosive devices” on the roads, US soldiers venture out a lot less, so the violence against them has been sharply down. It should be kept in mind that insurgent attacks on American forces following the invasion of 2003 is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place.
• For a long period, the US military was paying insurgents (or “former insurgents”) to not attack occupation forces.
• The powerful Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire for his militia, including attacks against US troops, that was in effect for an extended period; this was totally unconnected to the surge.

We should never forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their friends, their families, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge.

The War against Everything and Everyone, Endlessly

Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 and wounded some 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in November reportedly regards the US War on Terror as a war aimed at Muslims. He told colleagues that “the US was battling not against security threats in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Islam itself.” ¹⁰ Hasan had long been in close contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric and al Qaeda sympathizer now living in Yemen, who also called the US War on Terror a “war against Muslims”. Many, probably most, Muslims all over the world hold a similar view about American foreign policy.

I believe they’re mistaken. For many years, going back to at least the Korean war, it’s been fairly common for accusations to be made by activists opposed to US policies, in the United States and abroad, as well as by Muslims, that the United States chooses as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that in 1999 one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns ever — 78 days in a row — was carried out against the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia: white, European, Christians. Indeed, we were told that the bombing was to rescue the people of Kosovo, who are largely Muslim. Earlier, the United States had come to the aid of the Muslims of Bosnia in their struggle against the Serbs. The United States is in fact an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become an American bombing target appear to be: (a) It poses a sufficient obstacle — real, imagined, or, as with Serbia, ideological — to the desires of the empire; (b) It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack.

Notes

1. Video on Information Clearinghouse ^↩
2. For the news items which follow if not otherwise sourced, see:
   • The Independent (London), December 14, 2007
   • Daily Telegraph (UK) December 26, 2007
   • The Globe and Mail (Toronto) May 1, 2008
   • BBC News, October 28, 2009 ^↩
3. New York Times, March 11, 2009 ^↩
4. Kuwait News Agency, November 24, 2009 ^↩
5. Pakistan Observer (Islamabad daily), October 19, 2009; The Jamestown Foundation (conservative Washington, DC think tank), “Karzai claims mystery helicopters ferrying Taliban to north Afghanistan”, November 6, 2009; Institute for War and Peace Reporting (London), “Helicopter rumour refuses to die”, October 26, 2009 ^↩
6. IslamOnline, “US Offers Taliban 6 Provinces for 8 Bases“, November 2, 2009^↩
7. Washington Times, October 5, 2009, from a CNN interview ^↩
8. Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2009 ^↩
9. Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007. ^↩
10. Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2009 ^↩

Dr King Spanks Obama: Part 4

Some months ago, at the 23rd Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Celebration in San Francisco, attendees were asked to answer the question, “What would Dr. King want to say to Barack Obama?” [1] This article series is an effort to provide Dr. King an opportunity to answer that question for himself from the pages of a book he wrote in 1967 entitled: “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”. But more than a mere contrast between two persons, this article series seeks to compare recent American history with contemporary struggles, and to explore visions of a more desirable future. This is the spirit of Dr. King’s book title and of Obama’s campaign slogan, “Change We Can Believe In”. At this point, we’ve reached chapter 5 of Dr. King’s book, which advances the following centerpiece of his philosophy:

“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income… This proposal is not a “civil rights” program, in the sense that that term is currently used. The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds of them who are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to effect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1967 [2]

Now termed the “Basic Income Guarantee” (BIG), this measure doesn’t receive quite the discussion or popular acclaim that it did 40-years ago. But it has been advanced by a historic list of prominent supporters, including Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman, John Kenneth Galbraith, and more recently, Richard C. Cook. [3] This essay will argue that higher levels of economic democracy are a prerequisite, not a byproduct, of such a measure. Meanwhile, with a vast body of contemporary support, Barack Obama has recently advanced a similar proposal:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14-percent — 14-percent of its gross national product — on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim’s talking about when he says ‘everybody in, nobody out’, a single-payer health care plan, universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately, because first we’ve got to take back the White House, we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.” — Barack Obama, 2003 [4]

At first glance, Barack Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might seem to be on the same page, or at least somewhere in the same ballpark. But now that Democrats have finally taken back the White House and Congress, Rob Kall asks an essential question: “Who would have thought that Obama’s health care plan would enrich big Pharma and raise profits for health insurers while raising taxes on small businesses and threatening to jail people who were uninsured?” [5] As Progressives Democrats of America complain, “the one option that would produce enough savings to include every single American, contain rising costs, and ensure no one ever faces a medical bankruptcy again was never seriously considered despite the fact that 86 members of Congress have co-sponsored HR 676, The Medicare for All Act. Congress has failed to debate the one option that nearly 60% of doctors and nurses support, most Americans want, along with a growing number of unions, cities and towns” — single payer health care. [6]

In my home state of Washington, the Spokesman Review reports: “The 1 in 5 adults lacking insurance stand to sink the financial stability of the state’s health care providers… Many health care providers have softened the losses by charging more for those with insurance… We’re reaching a point where we can’t sustain this system”. [7] Even from a strictly “free market” perspective, this continuing trend is a market failure [8] that the Obama administration now seeks to mandate for every US citizen instead of a more sustainable single payer system that was originally proposed. According to Stephen Lendman: “If Obamacare is enacted, it will cost more, deliver less, leave millions uninsured, millions more underinsured and leave a broken system in place. It will enrich the insurance, drug and large hospital chain cartels at the expense of universal coverage. It will solidify a class-based system delivering the best care money can buy. Others will get sub-standard treatment, and for millions none at all.” [9] Kate Randall adds, “Obama’s health care counterrevolution is of a piece with his entire domestic agenda. It parallels the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, the imposition of mass layoffs and wage and benefits cuts in the auto industry, and a stepped-up attack on public education and on teachers.” [10]

Nonetheless, public support for Barack Obama and his alleged “centrist” approach appears to remain fairly high, as for some reason he was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. According to the Nobel committee, Obama has created “a new climate in international politics.” But Paul Craig Roberts remands:”Tell that to the 2 million displaced Pakistanis and the unknown numbers of dead ones that Obama has racked up in his few months in office. Tell that to the Afghans where civilian deaths continue to mount as Obama’s “war of necessity” drones on indeterminably. No Bush policy has changed. Iraq is still occupied. The Guantanamo torture prison is still functioning. Rendition and assassinations are still occurring. Spying on Americans without warrants is still the order of the day. Civil liberties are continuing to be violated in the name of Oceania’s ‘war on terror’. Apparently, the Nobel committee is suffering from the delusion that, being a minority, Obama is going to put a stop to Western hegemony over darker-skinned peoples. The non-cynical can say that the Nobel committee is seizing on Obama’s rhetoric to lock him into the pursuit of peace instead of war. We can all hope that it works. But the more likely result is that the award has made ‘War is Peace’ the reality.” [11] So the Nobel committee has essentially discredited themselves and the Peace Prize itself by awarding it to a warmonger like Barack Obama. This should raise serious questions about how they were coerced into doing so, and by whom.

When Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he responded, “I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder. Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize. After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.” [12]

Meanwhile, the violence driven by American imperialism continues to spread throughout the world while most black Americans are still chained to the “lowest rung of the economic ladder” as Dr. King lamented more than 40-years ago. While they are joined by a growing population of whites, Hispanics and other races, it is significant to note that an inordinate proportion of African Americans still find themselves living in poverty. In fact, Professor David Harvey suggests the recent mortgage foreclosure crisis is largely a racial phenomenon, “a financial Katrina”, with its devastation focused mainly in the inner-city of places like Cleveland, Detroit and Baltimore where the concentration of ethnic minorities is typically highest. [13] [14] The Chicago Tribune reports that “deep recession is hitting African-Americans more severely than the overall population”. As the nation’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate nudged toward 10 percent, the African-American jobless rate was 15.5 percent with Illinois blacks at 18.6 percent in the third quarter, according to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute.

The Tribune goes on to say: “The United States historically has seen higher unemployment rates for minorities, but the gap has widened in this recession, in part because of job losses in the manufacturing and auto sectors. And the jobless growth, coupled with the predatory lending that flourished in segregated neighborhoods during the real estate boom, have led to dramatic spikes in mortgage foreclosures, sending home values into a downward spiral. The bottom line: A silent depression for African-Americans”. [15] According to Larry Pinkney, “the underbelly of this nation is the black underclass. Instead of becoming smaller and moving out of poverty and disenfranchisement, the black underclass has grown much, much larger and become even more impoverished and disenfranchised”.

In chapter 5 of his book, Dr. King implores the American black population to educate themselves and to become more actively involved in politics. [2] While some have successfully heeded this call to action, Pinkney further observes, “The relatively small black elite has shamelessly, in complicity with the elite of its white counterpart, helped spawn an insidious new form of racism and economic apartheid. Moreover, members of the black underclass are themselves chastised and blamed by this insidious black elite and intelligentsia for being the economic and social victims of a callous, avaricious, capitalist system which now finds itself in deep trouble nationally and globally”. [16]

But is it any surprise that a black rise to power under capitalism would be proportionately similar to a white rise to power under the same system? Is it any surprise that the interests of “black power” would closely match and collaborate with the interests of “white power”? Under capitalism, is it any surprise that the interests of power are directly opposed to the interests of the remaining population regardless of skin color? Is it any surprise that a black President would advance an agenda very similar to most of his lily white predecessors?

In chapter 2 entitled, “Black Power”, Dr. King argues, “The problem of transforming the ghetto is, therefore a problem of power — a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to preserving the status quo.” With this, Dr. King obviously understands that opposing interests are involved. But until this antagonism is dissolved, any personal transition from one pole to the other merely erases one’s sympathetic relationship with the opposing pole. There is no incentive for any President of the United States to “transform the ghetto”, as his position of power is contingent upon the powerlessness of others. So the goal of “equality”, which Dr. King so fervently pursued, is not for any individual or group to rise to power over others, but to dismiss the existing power structure as much as possible in all human activity in order to maximize democracy and to minimize opposing interests. “Are we seeking power for power’s sake? Or are we seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live? If we seek the latter, violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.” In chapter 2, Dr. King goes on to say:

“Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice… There is nothing essentially wrong with power. The problem is that in America power is unequally distributed. This has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. It is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in white. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.” [17]

Many argue that one year is not nearly long enough for any President to effect “change” in these regards. And granted, President Obama probably didn’t intend “Change We Can Believe In” to suggest he could solve all the world’s problems overnight. But it does seem entirely reasonable for us to expect him to at least initiate a “change” of direction in the most damaging trends. Instead, Barack Obama continues to deliberately fortify those trends in the same direction they have been headed for the past 40-years since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by his own government. [18] “For the first time in humanity, over 1 billion people are chronically hungry”, says a United Nations World Food Programme online video. The US Department of Agriculture reports recently that in 2008, one in six US households were “food insecure”, the highest number since the figures were first gathered in 1995. [19] Once again, these aren’t static snapshots, they are dynamic and growing economic trends.

How is it that citizens of the wealthiest nation in human history increasingly find themselves living in tents and under bridges and without adequate nourishment? At the same time, how is it that 75-percent of all American youth aged 17-24 are too fat and stupid to pass a military entrance exam? [20] [21] Is all this due to irresponsibility amongst the lower classes, or is it because of upper class greed? The best answer is probably that our class-based socioeconomic system is inherently is designed to channel economic wealth and political power away from producers and into the hands of non-producers. Whether we are aware of the fact or not, each of us consent to this antagonistic relationship and actively contribute to its predominance through daily participation.

One argument against this conclusion is that increasing numbers of workers, involuntarily displaced by technological advancement and other economic developments, qualify as “non-producers” who have no share in the wealth and power generated by production. But the result of their displacement is increased competition for jobs at the individual level, which tends to drive aggregate wages down. So the active role of rising unemployment and a growing “underclass” is to reduce and discipline the remaining workforce, to increase its productive output and to drive wages down, thereby delivering more wealth and power into the hands of a shrinking upper class. While some analysts might refer to this as “economic efficiency”, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. presents another view:

“Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will… We have come to the point where we must make the non-producer a consumer or we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer goods. We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution… The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other… The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking. The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.” [2]

While Dr. King’s vision is both admirable and perhaps attainable, he also anticipates “fierce opposition”. Moreover, he seems to realize his suggested measures are impossible without “deep structural change” implemented through “some form of constructive coercive power”. [22] For example, in chapter 5 of his book, King states: “It was not the marching alone that brought about integration of public facilities in 1963. The downtown business establishments suffered for weeks under our almost unbelievably effective boycott. The significant percentage of their sales that vanished, the 98 percent of their Negro customers who stayed home, educated them forcefully to the dignity of the Negro as a consumer.” [2]

It might be surmised from this that Dr. King merely advocates consumer activism whereby people “vote with their dollars.” But consumers can’t vote with dollars they don’t possess. Moreover, unemployment and poverty are structural features of the predominant economic system, not a mistake or an aberration that can be corrected through some kind of reform. So effective withdrawal of mass consent for the existing wage-based system involves more than a mere “boycott” or failure to participate. Structural transformation of the decision-making process involves the construction of an entirely new socioeconomic system where human beings are no longer enslaved by either masters or wages. Further study indicates that Dr. King not only understood the severe limitations of his prior campaigns but that he also had much higher goals in mind:

“We must frankly acknowledge that in past years our creativity and imagination were not employed in learning how to develop power. We found a method in nonviolent protest that worked, and we employed it enthusiastically. We did not have leisure to probe for a deeper understanding of its laws and lines of development. Although our actions were bold and crowned successes, they were substantially improvised and spontaneous. They attained the goals set for them but carried the blemishes of our inexperience… The future of the deep structural changes we seek will not be found in the decaying political machines. It lies in new alliances of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, labor, liberals, certain church and middle-class elements.” [2]

Here, Dr. King describes what David Harvey has more recently termed The Right To The City: “The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the question of what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of daily life we desire, what kinds of technologies we deem appropriate, what aesthetic values we hold. The right to the city is, therefore, far more than a right of individual access to the resources that the city embodies: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city more after our heart’s desire. It is, moreover, a collective rather than an individual right since changing the city inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power over the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake ourselves and our cities is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” [23]

Both Dr. King and Professor Harvey go on to suggest that transforming our social relations to effect deep structural change involves far more than mere labor movements or consumer uprisings or civil rights activism or ecological arguments or mournful cries from the unemployed, homeless and starving. Instead, a unified cooperative alliance amongst all these common interests is essential to effect the needed transition from capitalism toward a more equitable and sustainable socioeconomic system. David Harvey insists that democratic control of productive surplus is imperative, and Dr. King is very explicit in defining his view of cooperative alliance:

“A true alliance is based upon some self-interest of each component group and a common interest into which they merge. For an alliance to have permanence and loyal commitment from its various elements, each of them must have a goal from which it benefits and none must have an outlook in basic conflict with the others.” [2]

So a truly cooperative “alliance” involves a set of “common interests” with no “basic conflict”. There is nothing complicated about this, as most human interests are generally held in common and are best managed democratically. The most obvious exceptions are any sort of personal drive for financial independence or political power, derived through private accumulation and exclusive individual control of capital surplus. These pursuits tend to promote hostile relations with others and establish opposing sets of interests. Everyone wants control of capital surplus — and everyone should have it — democratically. For the very essence of capital is social improvement, and there is no justification for that power to be concentrated in the hands of an exclusively entitled minority. Economic democracy and political service are collaborative, not individual, pursuits, and the wreckage of our dying system is potentially fuel for more universal and sustainable levels of human cooperation. Unemployed capital and unemployed labor living side-by-side is always an opportunity to transform the system. So there is no reason Dr. King’s dream of racial equality through the abolition of poverty can’t materialize. But there is also no reason to expect such blessings to be delivered from the President of the United States or his floundering Congress. As Dr. King further suggests:

“When a people are mired in oppression, they realize deliverance when they have accumulated the power to enforce change. When they have amassed such strength, the writing of a program becomes almost an administrative detail. It is immaterial who presents the program; what is material is the presence of an ability to make things happen. The powerful never lose opportunities — they remain available to them. The powerless, on the other hand, never experience opportunity — it is always arriving at a later time. The deeper truth is that the call to prepare programs distracts us excessively from our basic and primary tasks… Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power so that government cannot elude our demands. We must develop, from strength, a situation in which the government finds it wise and prudent to collaborate with us. It would be the height of naiveté to wait passively until the administration had somehow been infused with such blessings of goodwill that it implored us for our programs. The first course is grounded in mature realism; the other is childish fantasy.” [2]

The abolition of poverty will begin here and now — in the United States of America — with a deliberate and aggressive expansion of the cooperative business sector supported by a network of publicly owned banks. [24] For higher levels of economic democracy are a prerequisite, not a byproduct, of programs like Basic Income Guarantee and Single Payer Health Care. To demand progressive programs from a conservative government is “the height of naiveté”. To expect a conservative government to magically become progressive with the election of a black man to the Presidency is “childish fantasy”. The challenge and the responsibility for the pursuit of progressive measures belongs to individuals and firms at the community level who already understand the root of the problem and the potential solutions. Lots of people simply “don’t get it”, and that’s okay. The responsibility of those who do understand is not to persuade or convince those who stubbornly object, but to transform social relations at the community level by providing a superior living example of economic democracy [25] to others who are more receptive.

Michael Moore recently distributed a list of “15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now” in these regards. [26] But as stated above, the most urgent measures on that list involve democratizing the workplace and capital investment: 1) Fire your boss and reorganize the workplace cooperatively. 2) Close your bank account and deposit your money in a credit union or some other form of publicly owned bank. That is, any kind of system that does not feed back into the currently predominant debt-based monetary system. The combination of both measures is a large-scale dismissal of the current socioeconomic system. Instead of money being loaned into circulation at interest from a fractional reserve and exclusively controlled by a handful of private bankers, cooperative firms will pool some portion of their productive surplus into an investment fund which is democratically ploughed back into the economy in the form of grants, specifically for the purpose of expanding the cooperative business sector.

Thus, money is earned, not loaned, into circulation, and economic growth for the sake of political power is no longer an imperative. The newborn economy will deliberately operate parallel to — and in direct competition with — the existing system, and it will steadily grow from within it. The main criteria for success is a transfer of popular consent from the old system to the new. So transition will most likely be slow and painful, and the new system must constantly innovate to develop and maintain competitive advantage without compromising the basic principles of the democratic local cooperative. Laws and customs will eventually change. But until they do, the challenging cooperative economy must be led voluntarily by a growing body of individuals and organizations who already understand the urgent need for deep systemic transformation. Without this fundamental understanding in mind, any movement against capitalism will certainly fail.

In summary, British philosopher James Allen (1864 – 1912) wrote a short volume called “As A Man Thinketh” during the turbulent Industrial Revolution of late nineteenth-century England. In that small book he presents the following overview of human cooperation: “It has been usual for men to think and to say, ‘Many men are slaves because one is an oppressor; let us hate the oppressor.’ Now, however, there is among an increasing few a tendency to reverse this judgment to say, ‘One man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves.’ The truth is that oppressor and slave are cooperators in ignorance, and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves. A perfect Knowledge perceives the action of law in the weakness of the oppressed and the misapplied power of the oppressor; a perfect Love, seeing the suffering which both states entail, condemns neither, a perfect Compassion embraces both oppressor and oppressed.” [27]

Notes:

[1] Staff. (February 02, 2009). “What would Dr. King want to say to Barack Obama?”. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/news/article/what_would_dr_king_want_to_say_to_barack_obama/

[2] King, Dr. Martin Luther (1968). “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”. New York, NY: Beacon Press. Excerpts from chapter 5. ISBN 0807005711

[3] Wikipedia. (11-23-2009). “Economic democracy: National dividend”. Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy#National_dividend

[4] Obama, Barack. (2003). “Obama on single payer health insurance”, speech to the AFL-CIO. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE

[5] Kall, Rob. (11-10-2009). “Top-down blowback; The GOP Discovers that the Grassroots Bites Back”. OpEd News. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Top-down-blowback-The-GOP-by-Rob-Kall-091110-686.html

[6] Progressive Democrats of America. (07-23-2009). “The Mad as Hell Doctors Road Tour”. PDA Web site. http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/alliances/2009-07-23-09-33-18-alliances.php

[7] Stucke, John. (11-20-2009). “Ranks of uninsured swell in state”. Spokesman Review. Spokane, WA. pg 1. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/nov/20/ranks-of-uninsured-swell-in-state/

[8] Kendall, David. (09-03-2009). “Health Care and the Free Market”. OpEd News. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Health-Care-and-the-Free-M-by-David-Kendall-090830-360.html

[9] Lendman, Stephen. (11-18-2009). “Universal Single Payer Health Care Coverage: An Economic Stimulus Plan”. Countercurrents. http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman181109.htm

[10] Randall, Kate. (07-28-2009). “Obama’s health care counterrevolution”. World Socialist Web Site http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/pers-j28.shtml

[11] Roberts, Paul Craig. (10-10-2009). “Warmonger Wins Peace Prize “. Countercurrents. http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts101009.htm

[12] King, Dr. Martin Luther. (12-10-1964). “Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech”. Nobelprize.org. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html

[13] Harvey, David. (11-21-2009). “Race and the Mortgage Crisis”. WordPress. http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/race-and-the-mortgage-crisis/

[14] Harvey, David. (10-29-2008). “A Financial Katrina – Remarks on the Crisis”. City University of New York Graduate Center: Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey. http://davidharvey.org/2008/12/a-financial-katrina-remarks-on-the-crisis/

[15] Bergen, Kathy. (11-06-2009). “African-Americans hit inordinately hard by recession”. Chicago Tribune. Chicago, IL. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-black-jobs-nov06,0,2759566.story

[16] Pinkney, Larry. (11-05-2009). “And What of the Black Underclass?”. The Black Commentator. http://www.blackcommentator.com/349/349_kir_black_underclass_printer_friendly.html

[17] King, Dr. Martin Luther (1968). “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”. New York, NY: Beacon Press. Excerpts from chapter 2. ISBN 0807005711

[18] Douglass, James W. (March 15. 2000). “The King Assassination: After Three Decades, Another Verdict”. Christian Century. http://www.precaution.org/lib/09/prn_king_assassination_another_verdict.000315.htm

[19] Goodman, Amy. (11-19-2009). “Hungering for a True Thanksgiving”. Information Clearinghouse. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24016.htm

[20] Wallace, William S. (06-01-2009). “Most young people don’t meet standards for military service”. Spokesman Review. Spokane, WA. pg 1. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2008/jun/01/most-young-people-dont-meet-standards-for/?print-friendly

[21] Davenport, Christian, and Emma Brown. (11-06-2009). “Most young unfit for military”. Washington Post-ABC News poll reported in the Spokesman Review. Spokane, WA. pg 1. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/nov/06/most-young-unfit-for-military/

[22] King, Dr. Martin Luther (1968). “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?”. New York, NY: Beacon Press. Excerpts from chapter 4. ISBN 0807005711

[23] Harvey, David. (2008). “The Right To The City”. Text: http://davidharvey.org/media/righttothecity.pdf. Video Lecture: http://www.a0n.com/medellin/righttothecity.htm

[24] Dorrien, Gary. (05-15-2009). “A Case For Economic Democracy”. OpEd News. http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=A-Case-for-Economic-Democr-by-Gary-Dorrien-090513-750.html

[25] Wikipedia. (11-23-2009). “Economic democracy”. Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy

[26] Moore, Michael. (10-22-2009). “Michael Moore’s Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now. MichaelMoore.com. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/michael-moores-action-plan-15-things-every-american-can-do-right-now

[27] Allen, James. (B 1864 – D 1912) (published 1992). “As A Man Thinketh”. Barnes & Noble. pg 37

Obama’s Prelude To Martial Law – ‘Swine Flu Emergency’

THE MILITARIZATION OF CIVILIAN LIFE in a seamless unity with Zionist-Jewish interests, continues on its unhindered path. For last weekend, Barack Hussein Obama, pure puppet of the Military/Zionist Complex, declared a ‘Swine Flu National Emergency.’

Under the powers designated by the Emergency Powers Statutes and by his declaration, Hussein Obama gave himself the authority to institute martial law, seize property, control all communication (INTERNET TOO!) and restrict travel in any area he may choose.

As observed in the piece, Seizing Power On The Weekend, whenever the government decides on a potentially unpopular move, it is done late on Friday so that normal news cycles can be avoided. That Obama did this on a Friday night and did not announce it until the following day, a Saturday, should be sufficient warning that Obama is up to no good.

The Jew-owned New York Times jumped right on Obama’s announcement with their lies & propaganda, reporting that the Swine flu is “widespread in 46 states as vaccines lag.” What do the Jews mean by widespread?

They won’t tell us. For nowhere in the article is proof shown of a “widespread” pandemic. On closer examination, the careful reader will notice that the Jews of the NY Times insert a hyperlink under the word “vaccine” but not under the word “widespread.” Read How The NY Times Jews LIE Here.

The fact is, there is no “widespread” contagion of the Swine flu and millions of Americans have stated they will refuse to have a needle with squalene poison injected into their veins if coerced. The beginnings of mandatory shots have emerged in Boston when on September 19, 2009, those who received an H1N1 vaccination got an ID bracelet with a barcode listing name, age, gender, address – all entered into an electronic database.

A three-month-long investigation by a white Gentile reporter of CBS News released on October 21, 2009, revealed that Swine flu cases are not as prevalent as the Federal government and their Jewish accomplices in the media would have us believe:

“If you’ve been diagnosed probable or presumed 2009 H1N1, odds are you didn’t have the Swine flu. In fact, you probably didn’t have any flu at all.

The vast majority of cases reported by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), (which forbade CBS access to files violating the Freedom of Information Act), were negative for H1N1 despite the fact that many states were specifically testing patients deemed to most likely have the flu, based on risk factors such as travel to Mexico.” Read CBS Report & Comments Here, Here & Here.

THE GOLDMAN SACHS CONNECTION

ON APRIL 26, 2009, OBAMA RELEASED 50 million courses of Tamiflu, a drug touted to be effective against the Swine flu virus, as reported by ABC news. The Pentagon has allotted 7 million of the courses for military personnel.

Tamiflu, developed by Gilead Sciences of California and manufactured & marketed by La Roche Pharmaceuticals of Switzerland, has deep US government ties and to the Pentagon in particular.

Gilead had big slabs of pork thrown to it through Bush’s Project Bioshield Act of 2004, an enormous bioterrorism scam, which authorized US Homeland Security to make anti-virus vaccines available. Not coincidentally, it was in 2004, that the patent for Tamiflu was procured by Gilead and then licensed to Roche in 2005. And now, NOT COINCIDENTALLY, Obama is in talks with Roche to increase production.

Donald Rumsfeld was the Chairman of Gilead before he joined the Bush administration. Gilead Sciences stock went through the roof upon Rumsfeld appointment as Defense Secretary in 2001 and successfully lobbied for $1 billion in procurements. In what became known as the “Tamiflu Controversy” in 2005, Rumsfeld refused to sell his stock.

On October 16, 2009, Goldman Sachs announced that it had quadrupled its profits in the third quarter compared with last year, driven by strong returns on its own corporate investments.

Then on October 20, 2009, Gilead Sciences reported that quarterly profits rose 36 percent on increased royalties of Tamiflu as agreed with Roche at 10% of sales. What then is the connection between the two announcements?

Simple. Goldman Sachs owns stock with large shareholdings in Gilead Sciences and serves as Gilead’s financial advisor. At Goldman Sachs’ Annual Health Care Conference in June 2009, Gilead was a featured participator as it had been in previous Goldman Sachs Health Care Conferences. Indeed, the Jews with global ties to Big Pharma have MUCH to gain by a Swine Flu pandemic coupled with Obama’s prelude to martial law.

PRELUDE TO MARTIAL LAW

LET’S CONNECT THE DOTS beginning with an unprecedented event that took place on October 1, 2008.

For the first time in the history of the peacetime military establishment and by an Executive Directive, the US Northern Command based 80,000 active troops recalled from the Iraq war to “help with crowd control due to a biological emergency.”

Then in June 2009, the Northern Command distributed their Legislative Proposal for Activation of Federal Reserve Forces for Disasters which would authorize the Defense Secretary to order Military Reserves into service for a major emergency.

On July 29, 2009, the Pentagon announced that it was preparing to “make troops available to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) tackle a potential outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall.” This “fall?” What did the Pentagon know that we didn’t know? Ask their puppet, Barack Hussein Obama.

On August 12, 2009, Secretary Robert Gates asked Congress to grant him authority to post 400,000 military personnel throughout the US in times of “emergency.”

On August 13, 2009, the National Guard began practice drills of mock takeovers of public schools in the event of an “H1N1 riot.” What kind of riot could arise out of a flu that has only killed 1,000 worldwide?

The CDC, in response to Obama’s request in mid August 2009, finalized quarantine regulations that provides for quarantining those “suspected” of having swine flu or other illnesses listed in an executive order. This means that Hussein Obama can quarantine *anyone* he determines to be a political enemy infected.

These new regulations even permit “provisional” quarantine of persons not actually carrying any virus. In one section, the regulations empower the president to quarantine anyone who does not agree to be vaccinated.

In other words, the SWINE FLU, that is, the MILITARY/ZIONIST COMPLEX, brought to you by Barack Hussein Obama, is coming to a military theater near you…

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=459

Is Capitalism on the Ropes?

Interview with Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff…

1. Mike Whitney—In your new book, “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know”, you allude to right wing think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which promote a “free market” ideology. How successful have these organizations been in shaping public attitudes about capitalism? Do you think that attitudes are beginning to change now that people understand the role that Wall Street and the big banks played in creating the crisis? (“The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” By Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates, Monthly Review Press)

Michael Yates: Corporate America began to wage what turned out to be a one-sided war against working people in the mid-to late-1970s, when it became apparent that the post-World War Two “Golden Age” of U.S. capitalism was over. As profit rates fell, businesses began to develop a strategy for restoring them. This strategy had many prongs, and one of them was ideological, that is, a struggle for “hearts and minds,” to use a military term now being applied to Afghanistan. The presumed failure of Keynesian economics, marked by the simultaneous existence of escalating inflation and unemployment, gave the ideological struggle its foundation. Maybe there had been too many restrictions placed on the market, and these restrictions (minimum wages, health and safety regulations, laws facilitating union organizing in labor markets; public assistance in the form of money grants, housing subsidies, and the like; restrictions on the flow of money internationally) had led to results opposite those that liberal Keynesians had thought most likely. If these complex arguments could be tied to simple cliches, like “get the government off our backs,” “the unions have gotten too powerful” (with always a hint that they are too radical thrown into the argument), and “welfare queens” (with that always popular whiff of racism), they could provide ideological cover for what was really a matter of corporate economics, namely the making of money.

This ideological attack bore fruit quickly. President Carter appointed Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Volcker, under the guise of fighting inflation, immediately began to snuff the life out of working class communities by forcing interest rates up to nearly 20 percent. Today, Volcker is treated like a hero by Democrats and above reproach (though ignored by President Obama’s more right-wing economic advisors), which shows just how far to the right economic discourse has moved. What Carter began, Reagan completed, firing the Air Traffic Controllers and putting the nail in labor’s coffin. Behind the scenes in all of this and growing in strength for the next twenty years (funded by wealthy business leaders) or so were the right-wing think tanks you mention. Just as retired generals go to work for military contractors and defeated politicians become lobbyists, government economic advisors get jobs at Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute or the Cato Institute. The staffs of these ideological centers churn out endless position papers and studies, which find their way into our newspapers and the offices of our congresspersons. A gigantic network of professors, journalists, politicians, lobbyists, and, today, a television network (Fox) bombard us with right-wing propaganda. That all of this has been successful is seen by the fact that the shibboleths of neoliberalism—such as the needs for privatization of public entities, the free reign of markets, the obviousness of the success of welfare reform, the evils of raising the minimum wage—are all commonplaces today.

While the public now knows that something is rotten, I am not sure that neoliberal ideas are so under attack that they will lose their sway. I think that the tenacity of these ideas owes something to the lack of an ideological alternative, which, in turn, is due to the abject failure of organized labor to provide one. For example, we need universal health care. Labor, however, has not consistently argued in favor of this or supported it at all. Now Congress is poised to enact healthcare legislation that might well be worse than the profit-driven system we have all come to hate. Labor should refuse to support this legislation, but I doubt it will. Then, when the new healthcare plans fail to deliver the goods, the right-wing will be lying in wait, ready to pounce and say, “See, we told you so. The government always makes things worse.” In other words, until there is a radical ideology to replace right-wing thinking, the latter is unlikely to lose its drawing power.

Fred Magdoff: Although these institutions were very successful, along with a number of other forces, in shaping public attitudes toward the economy, the reality of the current severe economic conditions are causing many, including some economists, to rethink their views of how “efficiently” markets function in the real world (as opposed to their ideological make-believe world) and that some different approaches may be needed. People seem to understand that the “big players” played a major role in the crisis, but most of the anger has been placed on the outrageous salaries of the top echelon. Of course, this is just “chump change” compared to the massive amounts at that are transferred to the wealthy through the speculative casino that our economy has become.

2. MW—Socialism has a huge public relations problem. Wouldn’t you agree that socialism has been effectively discredited in the U.S. media and that, even now–with unemployment soaring at 10 percent and more than 300,000 foreclosures per month–the average American worker still believes in the virtues of capitalism? How do you explain this phenomenon?

Michael Yates: Part of my answer here can be seen in my response to your first question. Socialism has, indeed, been discredited here, partly due to its rejection by its natural supporter, namely the labor movement. The CIO expelled in the late 1940s and early 1950s the left-wing forces who built the great industrial unions. When it did this, it abandoned the worker-centered ideology that might have laid the basis for support here for at least the kind of social democracy we find in the Scandinavian nations. This left the ideological field to the enemies of social democracy and socialism. Of course, we cannot ignore the long and inglorious history of police-state repression of those persons and organizations that championed socialism. Our government has never hesitated to arrest, imprison, and even kill the enemies of capitalism. So it has been dangerous to be a radical here, though not so much today when radical ideas aren’t taken seriously and there are no powerful radical organizations left. Suppose that after the Second World War, the left in the labor movement had grown, and the left-led unions had continued to successfully organize workers and win good collective bargaining agreements. Suppose that they had built upon their impressive worker education programs, made inroads in the South, and fought hard against U.S. imperialism and the Cold War. We might have a much different political terrain on which to fight today.

Two other factors that must be considered in the attachment of the working class to capitalism are racism and imperialism. In the past, employers routinely pitted white workers against black, and one weapon they used was to associate black workers (and the civil rights movement) with communism (It was interesting to note in this connection the attempts to make Obama out to be a radical socialist). The claim that black union supporters were reds helped to solidify white support for capitalism. By the same token, anti-imperialist struggles in the poor nations of the world (often former colonies of the rich countries) were typically led by political radicals. These could be made out to be anti-American, and then those in the United States who allied themselves with these struggles could also be labeled anti-American, despite the fact that they might also be supportive of policies that would benefit working people. The schools and the media could be counted out not to try to set anyone straight on any of this.

Now, having said this, I must also say that to the extent that left forces in the United States identified themselves uncritically with the former Soviet Union and its extremely undemocratic political system, they sometimes played into the hands of those opposed to socialism. And I must also admit that socialist forces were, at their strongest, never powerful enough here to force their best ideals permanently into the consciousness of the working class majority. Finally, in the past, the success of capitalism in the United States allowed for some sharing of the wealth with workers, and this, too, made people less willing to entertain radical ideas.

Old and deeply ingrained ideas die hard, and unless there are forces at work to develop new ones and unless there is at least widespread experimentation with new ways to organize production and distribution, little is likely to change, even in the face of economic catastrophe, such as so may working men and women are facing right now. Quite the contrary, workers might be persuaded that actions detrimental to their long-term self-
interest need to be taken, such as, for example, draconian measures against immigrants.

Fred Magdoff: There is no question that the term socialism has a public relations problem. But while it’s true that most people don’t fully understand the basic workings of the capitalist system nor what socialism is, there are indications that many people are ready to talk about alternatives—and that includes socialism. The positive public response to Michael Moore’s movie, “Capitalism,” is one indication. But a Rasmussen poll last spring found that only 58% of American’s say that capitalism is better than socialism. For adults under 30, 37% preferred capitalism and 33% preferred socialism. It’s not clear what the poll results really mean. But it does indicate that people are willing to hear about and talk about alternatives to capitalism.

3. MW—In a chapter titled “Neoliberlism” you focus on the disparity of wealth in the US today. Here’s an excerpt:

“By 2006 the top 1 percent of households received close to a quarter of all income and the top 10 percent got 50 percent of the income pie. In 2006, the 400 richest Americans had a collective net wealth of $1.6 trillion, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 150 million people. This degree of income and wealth inequality was last seen just before the beginning of the Great Depression.” (pg 50)

Let’s ignore the moral issue for now, and focus on the supply/demand question. Is it possible for an economy to produce sufficient demand when more and more of the wealth and income goes to the upper 5 or 10 percent of the population? (isn’t this proof that capitalism is inherently crisis-prone?)

Michael d. Yates: If a certain amount of output is produced, an equal amount of income is generated. So, conceptually, there could be enough demand to buy the output, no matter that the incomes generated are getting more unequally distributed. It certainly has been the case that the rich people now getting such a large share of the pie spend gobs of money. And rich foreigners spend a great deal of money in the United States as well. However, the rich also save a lot of money (the more they get, the more they save), and this money does not enter immediately into the spending flow. Working people, on the other hand, can be counted on, by virtue of the limited income that they command, to spend all of their income. Therefore, the more income the rich have, the more savings there will be, and, unless some way is found to convert all this saving into spending on newly-produced goods and services, the more likely it is that there will be a crisis caused by not enough spending (and its corollaries of unsold goods and services and unemployed labor). If we understand that growing inequality is the normal trajectory of capitalist economies, a trajectory only mitigated by the power of organized working people to win a bigger share of the pie for themselves and to compel the government to intervene in the marketplace on their behalf, then it is correct to say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone for this reason alone.

Growing inequality also creates other potential problems for the system. Sometimes it can generate a political crisis, a crisis of legitimacy so to speak. The rich exert tremendous political power, and this power grows as those at the top command a larger and larger share of a society’s income. To the rest of us, the game looks increasingly rigged, with us having little chance to improve our circumstances through individual efforts. More inequality also has harmful social and economic consequences that we don’t normally think of. Recent research has shown that if we compare two entities (two states in the United States, for example) with equal average incomes but different degrees of inequality, then the place with more unequal incomes will also have higher rates of infant mortality, arrest and imprisonment, school dropouts, low infant birth weights, and many other measures of social well-being. Growing inequality actually kills some of us, makes some of us sicker, and puts some of us in jail.

I want to add an important point. To say that capitalist economies are crisis-prone, because of a tendency toward income inequality or whatever other reason, is not the same as saying that these economies are on their deathbeds, no matter how severe a crisis may be. It is possible for an economy to exist in a crisis or a prolonged period of slow growth (stagnation) without it being ready to collapse. In the end, it is political struggle, that is, class struggle, that truly destabilizes an economy and generates conditions in which it is possible to imagine the birth of a new system.

Fred Magdoff adds: It is one of the many contradictions of the system. If ordinary folk are paid well they can buy a lot of stuff and help keep the system going. So from the point of view of the system as a whole, higher paid workers would help the economy. However, there is only one driving force for individual capitalists–and that’s to make as much money as possible. What might be better for the overall economy can be of no concern to the individual trying to maximize profits. For an analogy, let’s take a look at ocean fishing. Almost every fish species is being fished to the point at which the population crashes. It would make sense for all of the companies operating the large trawlers to cooperate and fish less in order to preserve the resource on which they depend. So what’s good for their long-term future is sacrificed as each individually tries to maximize their catch and therefore profits.

4. MW—Here’s another excerpt from the book: “In 2006, the financial sector employed about 6 percent of the workers but ‘produced’ 40 percent of the profits of all domestic firms.”(pg 56) A few paragraphs later you add that, “Making money without actually making something turned out to be the largest growth sector of the U.S. economy from the early 1980s to the present crisis.”

This seems to imply that as manufacturing and other parts of the “real” economy have become less lucrative, the trading of paper assets has become Wall Street’s new profit-center, the Golden Goose. What impact has the “financialization” of the economy had on ordinary working people?

Michael Yates: I think that an answer here has two parts. First, it was the neoliberal “revolution” begun in the 1970s that did immense harm to working people. For example, unionization rates began to fall dramatically in the 1980s, as Reagan began his “magic of the marketplace” assault on the working class. Real wages (the purchasing power of our paychecks) began to stagnate in the 1970s and are not much higher today than then. Relatively high-wage public employment began to endure a long period of privatization, which also damaged working class living standards. The move toward “free trade” did workers here no good, as manufacturing began to flee our shores for low-wage havens abroad. None of these things had to do with financialization per se.

Second, however, once the neoliberal attack on working class living standards took hold and incomes began to flow upward, those with a great deal more money began to look for ways to put this money to work. The corporations that they owned also had higher profits, and they did the same. The United States has always had a robust financial sector, though in the past, it was not the tail that wagged the dog as far as our system of production and distribution was concerned. Neoliberalism brought with it a deregulation of international movements of money and goods and services. [It is important to note that we see neoliberalism as a political response to capital’s quest for restored profits beginning in the mid-1970s when the post-Second World War two economic boom ended and the slow growth (stagnation) common to mature capitalist economies reasserted itself.] These, in turn, required a certain amount of financial innovation, to reduce, for example, the risks of fluctuations in currency exchange rates and sharp changes in political conditions that could threaten investments. From these innovations came still more, until finance began to take on a life of its own. And while neoliberalism and direct corporate actions inside workplaces did reduce costs and raise profits, they did not create nearly enough capital spending opportunities (investment) to absorb the growing individual savings and business profits. Finance of one kind or another then began to be seen as a place to dispose of surplus and make still more money. Leveraged buyouts, stock market speculations, real estate “investments,” all took off from the 1980s on, absorbing money that could not find enough opportunities in the real economy of production. As these things happened, financial “innovation” exploded, with all of the alphabet soup of financial instruments we describe in our book.

This explosion of finance proved detrimental to working people in a number of ways. Leveraged buyouts inevitably resulted in the hollowing out of what were often perfectly viable businesses. Companies were saddled with debt, assets were stripped and sold, and workers were furloughed by the tens of thousands. The inflation of asset values gave rise to the notion that it was the job of managers to increase the share price of their businesses—in any way possible. Businesses came to be thought of as mere collections of assets rather than entities that produced things. Asset inflation gave rise to asset speculation and the development of ever more complex financial instruments, all leading sooner or later to financial bubbles and the inevitable bursting of the bubbles. As we have seen, the bursting of financial bubbles has had tremendously negative impacts on working people: shuttered workplaces and unemployment to name but the primary ones. The last bubble, in real estate markets, was harmful to workers not only after it burst but also as it was developing. In the aftermath of the dot.com bubble, Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed Board of Governors, directed Fed policy to pressure interest rates down to very low levels. This helped to push loose money into real estate. As house prices began to rise, banks and brokers started to encourage working people to do two things: borrow money against the appreciated value of their homes and buy homes, either as first-time buyers or as purchasers of more expensive homes (after selling old ones). Working people were eager to do both because they saw houses as sources of cash to compensate for stagnating household incomes and as a form of wealth that could help secure them against the hazards of ill health, lost pensions, or college-age children needing money for school. Working class households began to take on large amounts of debt, making themselves more vulnerable, even as they thought they were making wise financial decisions. Ironically, those who saw their incomes rise so high because of neoliberalism were now, in effect, loaning money to those who didn’t fare so well. As banks accumulated mortgages, farsighted Wall Street swindlers saw golden opportunities to develop a slew of new financial instruments based upon the packaging and repackaging of mortgages into new and exotic instruments. Greenspan played their shill, arguing that they had uncovered the secret of hedging infallibly against risk. From here it was but a short step to the criminal schemes of Countrywide and a host of other financial institutions. The billions of dollars made were used not only to finance a new gilded age of revoltingly lavish consumption but to corral the most tractable politicians money could buy.

Fred Magdoff adds: Financialization of the economy created the possibilities for people to take on more and more debt—credit cards, new cars, 2nd mortgages, etc. It was the selling of a lifestyle way beyond people’s ability to pay for it plus the easy access of loans that created the bind that many people find themselves in today. In essence, it allowed people to live beyond their means. They were encouraged to take on debt as their house values seemed headed up forever, and the great rise in foreclosures and bankruptcies is the unfortunate result of the financialization of the economy. Also, those people who had retirement money in individual accounts or with pension systems and thought that they had become very wealthy, now found themselves with much less to rely upon.

5. MW—In the last couple of decades, consumer debt has skyrocketed, as you note, “doubling from 1975 to 2005, to 127 percent of disposable income.” (pg 60) Have we gone as far as we can without deleveraging and paying down debts? What happens to a credit-dependent economy when the consumer can no longer increase his/her debt-load? Is this just the beginning of a decades-long down-cycle?

Michael Yates: Certainly no entity—not a person, a family, a business, even a government— can take on rising levels of debt (relative to income) indefinitely. Sooner or later, the piper has to be paid. Working-class consumers took on large amounts of debt, to compensate in part for stagnating wages and incomes, and, it is important to note, to pay for health problems and other household traumas. This meant that the burden of the debt rose, since income wasn’t rising as fast as the debt, and also because the interest rates charged on credit cards and subprime mortgages were so high. We at Monthly Review have been decrying the rise of consumer debt for many years, and we said that the debt chickens would come home to roost sooner of later. I must say that I was surprised that debt could be broadened and deepened for so long. The ingenuity of creditors in extending loan periods and devising so many new forms of debt has to be admired for its audacity. Then, the ways in which these debts were packaged and sold so that more debt could be extended was truly breathtaking. Unfortunately, consumers ultimately couldn’t pay and all hell broke loose. Now, with so much unemployment, workers are truly strapped. They will not be borrowing so much or spending so much anytime soon. [One interesting recent development is that, as some households have defaulted on debts or simply stopped making payments, consumer spending has showed a bit of an upward tick!] So the question arises: what spending will fuel a sustained recovery? It won’t likely be consumer spending. Capital spending was stagnating to begin with and was the root cause of the crisis. There are no new “epoch-making” innovations on the horizon that would generate the amounts of investment that were brought forth by the automobile. U.S. exports seem a very unlikely demand support. That leaves the government. In a capitalist economy, especially one like the United States with its lack of a history of generally accepted public spending, it seems very unlikely that public spending will make up for shortfalls in aggregate demand. Already, there are widespread entreaties (and not just from the far right) urging the federal government to wind down in spending programs—well before, I might add, the economy has recovered. As we see it, the United States is, indeed, in for a long period of stagnation, a “down cycle” as you put it.

Fred Magdoff: This is one of the major constraints on the system. The economy is in a process that economists call “deleveraging,” which is just another way of referring to somehow getting rid of debt. Some are able to pay off what they owe, a few are able to renegotiate down some of their debt, many are losing their homes, and some are going bankrupt. Until this works its way out, and a lot of debt is shed one way or another, there will be a drag on the “consumer” portion of the purchases. This is particularly significant to the U.S. economy because it is so dependent on consumer purchases—in 2007, these absorbed approximately 70% of the goods and services produced.

6. MW— “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” is as lucid and compelling summary of the financial crisis as any I have read. In the closing chapter you state that capitalism is undergoing a “crisis of legitimacy” and that “the system can never deliver what is needed for us to realize our capacities and enjoy our lives…That “instead of private gain” the purpose of society and the economy is “to serve the needs of people, by providing the necessities of life for all, without promoting excessive consumption (consumerism) while protecting earth’s life support systems.”

All of the things that which kept capitalism in check–progressive taxation, crucial regulations, and the power of unions–have either been reversed, repealed or greatly eroded. More and more people are beginning to see the greed which governs the system, and it scares them. But is the country really ready for structural change or will the vision of an economy which “serves the needs of its people” be dismissed as “pie-in-the-sky” Utopianism?

Michael Yates: Well, first thank you Mike for the kind words. They are much appreciated. Typically, the best we have been able to hope for from the public in the United States has been an amorphous populism; people are willing to say that the system is corrupt and that it is biased in favor of the rich. But proposals for change, much less a radical transformation of the economic system, are rare commodities. I think things would be different, however, if we had a real labor movement, one that was rooted in communities, broad in its composition, and not afraid to have principles and stand by them come hell or high water. This should be the lesson that progressives learned from the right-wing. The talking heads of Fox may seem insane to us, but they and their intellectual gurus almost never deviate from the set of reactionary principles with which they began to transform the “common sense” of the nation. We suggest at the end of our book that we ought to ask ourselves if a return to the pre-economic crisis status quo is what we want. In the best of times, there is plenty of unutilized labor, a degraded environment, poverty, dead-end jobs, and much more that is not so desirable. So we chose a number of alternative outcomes to what we have now that we think have mass appeal, from universal healthcare to basic food guarantees. However, as you say, these might well, and I think will cause people to react with a pie-in-the-sky indifference. What might make working men and women stand up and take notice would be for these goals to have a mass-based advocate, one that would make these goals matters of rigid principle and begin to fight for them through mass actions. We might think that the right-wing ideologues we see on television are insane. Yet, come hell or high water, they stick to their guns. Their political and economic adherents have wielded tremendous power for a long period of time, and even today when they seem to be losing their grip on the national “common sense,” they can still mobilize the faithful. The left needs to take a lesson from this. More particularly, the labor movement must take a firm and rigid stand on issues like national health care, food security, environmental degradation, full employment, good and cheap housing, U.S. war-making and imperialis, racism, and a host of others. Then it must educate members rigorously and constantly about such principles. Most importantly, it must begin to actively fight to achieve them, activating its millions of members and allies, wherever it can find them. It is through action, bold and unafraid, that people’s minds will get changed and a new “common sense” developed.

Having said this, I think it is clear that the labor movement, as currently constituted, is not up to the tasks at hand. Too many unions are moribund, stuck in the failed labor-management cooperation mind set of the past and run by people too old and infirm to do much of anything. So, not only will we have to have a worker-led opposition to the status quo, fighting to change it radically, but this opposition will have to be built on a new basis. There are some hopeful signs, such as the development of community-based worker centers, mainly in immigrant communities. These may be models for the labor movement of the future.

Fred Magdoff: Just getting what should be the most reasonable reforms through Congress is a major effort, which usually fails or is corrupted in the process. Look what’s happening with health care “reform.” Even if a “public option” is finally part of the bill, it will be a bill that helps some people, but is primarily a boon to the health care industry, which will get a lot of new revenue. It’s not a bill designed with the single purpose in mind: how can we supply medical care for everyone at reasonable cost. Rather it’s a bill designed with significant input from the for-profit sector that will end up supplying them with extra profits. It is clear that government-run systems (and there are a variety of ways to do this) are far cheaper and more efficient and can actually cover everyone. SO, it seems as though piecemeal reform is a) very difficult to obtain and b) can be reversed as the power of the wealthy increases. A system is needed that can break the power of the wealthy and create a real political and economic democracy in order to be able to meet the basic needs for all the people.

Michael D. Yates and Fred Magdoff, “The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know” Monthly Review Press, New York

How long before we become a nation of 50 Californias?

While you discovered the dreary reality of Detroit, Michigan—that’s only one American city! Commensurately—Miami, Chicago, Houston, New York, Los Angeles and others follow toward a range of similar futures.

Ask yourself, with 15 million Americans unemployed and 35 million subsisting on food stamps, does it make sense to import 160,000 legal immigrants into this country every 30 days and a total of 1.5 million plus annually? Especially when those immigrants cost American taxpayers (you) a total of $346 billion in resettling services across 15 federal agencies annually?

At this point in time, with 10 million legal and unlawful immigrants, California suffers a $24 billion debt. It cannot pay its bills. It sinks deeper into collapse as it adds 1,700 people per day, every day of the year.

Next question: what if all of our states turned into Californias? Given enough time, they will! Remember that U.S. population projections show immigration adding 100 million people to the USA in 26 years. (Source: Fogel/Martin March 2006, “US Population Projections”, www.fairus.org)

In a brilliant expose’ famed economist Edwin Rubenstein wrote, “As California Goes – Facts behind California’s Fiscal Meltdown.” (Volume 19, Number 4, summer 2009, www.thesocialcontract.com)

In it, Rubenstein illustrates California’s plight as the canary in the coal mine.

Why California?

“The state’s top income tax rate—10.3 percent—is the highest in the nation, and this surely explains why the richest 1 percent of residents end up contributing half of all the personal income taxes the state collects,” Rubenstein said. “Even the state sales tax rate—a poor man’s levy—is well above the national average.

“The usual suspects—high spending and low taxes—are not to blame. In their place stands something far more fundamental: demographic change. An ever-growing share of California residents are immigrants. The vast majority of immigrants are from Latin America (56 percent) and Asia (35 percent). They are generally young, poorly educated, and mired in low-income jobs that do not provide health insurance. Their English is often rudimentary. They depend on state social services at far higher rates than natives or earlier immigrant cohorts.”

A whopping third of California’s immigrants entered unlawfully! At least half of them work off the books thereby not paying any taxes into the system, but their children tap into education, food and health care at an astounding cost to the state. In the last eight years, 86 hospitals and ER wards bankrupted out of business.

“Latino families are larger than those of other immigrant groups. Their children swell elementary schools but are less likely than other groups to graduate high school or finish college,” Rubenstein said. “Second-generation Latinos are also less likely to grow up with two parents, and more likely to go to jail or become teenage mothers.

“Many observers—including prominent Latin Americans—have concluded that the same traditional values that lie behind Latin America’s difficulties in achieving prosperity and political stability are being substantially perpetuated among Hispanic immigrants and their descendants in California. This implies that the problem is primarily cultural, not economic, and that fiscal measures alone will not suffice to solve it.”

California’s Immigration Tsunami

“Between 1970 and 2006 the number of California residents born abroad increased by more than five-fold, from 1.8 million to 9.9 million,” said Rubenstein. “Currently the state has a much higher share of immigrants in its population than the U.S. as a whole.”

For more than a century California has set the immigration trend for the nation:

“Using official state figures, demographer Leon Bouvier concluded that immigration accounts directly and indirectly for 98 percent of California’s population growth between 1990 and 2002. Direct immigration contributed 57 percent of the rise, while the rest came from births to foreign-born women,” said Rubenstein. “Behind the headline statistics are two telling factoids. First, net migration from other states has virtually ceased. Traffic congestion, schools, the water crisis, the state’s fiscal meltdown, are all a big turn-off to citizens of other, less troubled parts of the country.

“Second, the average California mother is expected to give birth to 2.1 children over her lifetime. This is the so-called “replacement” fertility rate which, if sustained over time, will result in a stable population. The devil is in the details: established residents and immigrants from non-Hispanic groups —Asians, Blacks, Whites, American Indians, and Pacific Islanders—are all reproducing at below replacement rates. Hispanic mothers, by contrast, are on course to have 3.25 children over their reproductive lifetimes.”

The Immigration Deficit

Once upon a time political correctness did not prevent Californians from discussing the fiscal burden imposed by illegal aliens. In the early 1990s California faced a sinking economy not unlike today’s. Social welfare caseloads exploded, state revenue declined by more than 25 percent, and the state’s budget deficit was an unprecedented one-third of total general fund spending.

“Caseloads continued rising even after the recession ended, a trend many officials blamed on illegal immigrants,” said Rubenstein. “In 1993 California Gov. Pete Wilson sued the federal government for the costs of state services to illegals—widely estimated at $2 billion ($2.9 billion in 2009 dollars)—arguing that Washington mandated the provision of such services while failing to prevent the illegal influx. Five other magnet states—Arizona, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Texas—joined the suit.

“The issue propelled the drafting of Proposition 187, a state initiative denying certain services to illegal aliens. A firestorm ensued. Besides racism and anti-Latino bias, immigrant groups charged the Wilson administration with grossly exaggerating the net cost of illegal aliens on the state’s budget.”

The 1994 study found that the 1.7 million illegal aliens then residing in California and their U.S.-born children:

• Received $4.3 billion in state services
• Paid $739 million in state taxes
• Received about $3.6 billion more than they paid in taxes.

“K-12 education is the largest state expenditure, accounting for 40 percent of the budget,” Rubenstein said. “Enrollments have increased dramatically since 1994, swelled primarily by Hispanic immigrants and their U.S.-born children. Consider this: between 1994 and 2005 California K-12 enrollment grew by 1,054,806; Hispanic student enrollment rose by 1,009,489, accounting for 96 percent of the total increase. White enrollment declined by 246,220 students over the same period.” (See article.)

California Is Our Canary

California still has the nation’s largest immigrant population. But its lead is shrinking: In 1994 32 percent of the nation’s foreign-born lived in California; today about 26 percent do. Only 17 percent of immigrants arriving in the U.S. between 2005 to 2006 settled in California.

“Unfortunately, the same social pathologies that attend the foreign-born in California travel to other U.S. destinations,” said Rubenstein. “In every instance immigrants are, on average, poorer than natives, more dependent on public largesse, more likely to require remedial education, less likely to finish high school, and more likely to evade taxation and to be incarcerated. Throughout the nation native-born citizens are digging ever deeper into their pockets to subsidize public services for immigrants.”

Interesting to see what happens with the projected 70 million new immigrants to be added within 26 years at current immigration rates!

Will Obama Have Veto Courage?

Odds are pretty good that after some tortuous meetings and awful compromises by House and Senate bigwigs whatever health reform law is passed by Congress will not be close to what most thoughtful people want. Especially not what progressives and liberals wanted from a Democrat controlled Congress. Will President Obama act with integrity?

Whatever goes to President Obama for his signature will probably do very little to curb the countless excesses by the health insurance industry and, therefore, do next to nothing to curb personal and national health spending. It will almost certainly impose some new taxes that ultimately will impact a large fraction of the population, possibly by taxes on health insurance benefits or through higher insurance premiums and/or copayments and deductibles, or even worse coverage. Even if there is some type of government option, which does not now seem likely, it would likely be constructed so cleverly that few would take advantage of it.

This and more deceptive actions will result because of the huge amount of money spent by the health insurance industry and its allies on both lobbying and countless ways of funneling money to members of Congress.

This much is now obvious. Even many Democrats, especially in the Senate, have been thoroughly corrupted by health industry money. Brain dead and callous Republicans, of course, have behaved as badly as they possibly could to protect their industry friends.

So it comes down to this: Considering his lackluster behavior during the reform debate, if the long awaited but disastrous health reform law reaches the White House will President Obama have the courage to veto it? Will his thirst for health care reform and unbounded desire for accomplishing what others have failed to do overwhelm the inescapable truth that next to meaningless reform is worse than no reform? Will he be brave enough to tell not just the millions that supported him to begin with but the whole population that Congress failed to do what justice demanded? Will he have the moral determination to tell the truth that corruption of Congress by industry wrecked the democratic process and failed to give Americans what they sorely need?

At this point I am betting that Obama will not have the courage to do any of this. No, I think Obama will behave like all the other lying politicians and claim victory and find all kinds of ways to eloquently describe how the stinking congressional action moves the nation in the right direction. He will look right into the camera and tell his fellow Americans that he has not given up the fight for all necessary health care reforms, but right now this is the best and most that can be done.

If my prediction is correct, then I can only hope that many, many Americans will see the ugly, disappointing truth and become committed to not reelect Obama to a second term, especially progressives and liberals and especially those that know in their hearts that real health care reform would have produced a single payer government insurance plan open to all Americans, like Medicare for everyone.

There should be a limit to what compromises are embraced when it comes to something as deeply personal and critical as health care. Health care reform really should be seen as the ultimate test for President Obama and whether he gives us the change we have been waiting for and what millions believed he would deliver. If genuine health care reform is not produced by Congress, then it should become crystal clear to even the most distracted, devoted and dumb Americans that our democracy is definitely delusional. That’s what President Obama should think about. A corporate-owned democracy is no democracy at all.

Anti-Empire Report

Ridding The World of the Sickness of Pacifism…

Picture the scene: Afghanistan, two hijacked tankers filled with highly inflammable fuel, surrounded by a crowd of Afghans eager to syphon off some for free … What’s the last thing you want to do? Right — drop bombs on the tankers. That’s what a German military commander signaled an American drone airplane to do September 4. Kaboom!! At least 100 human beings incinerated. This incident has led to a lot of controversy in Germany, for Article 26 of Germany’s post-war Grundgesetz (Basic Law/Constitution) states: “Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense.”

But NATO (aka the United States) can take satisfaction in the fact that the Germans have put their silly pacifism aside and acted like real men, trained military killers; although prior to this incident the Germans had engaged in some aerial and ground combat, there hadn’t been such a dramatic and publicized taking of civilian lives. Deutschland now has more than 4,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent in the country after the US and Britain, and at home they’ve just finished building a monument to fallen members of the Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces), founded in 1955; 38 members (so far) have surrendered their young lives in Afghanistan.

In January 2007 I wrote in this report about how the US was pushing Germany in this direction; that circumstances at that time indicated that Washington might be losing patience with the pace of Germany’s submission to the empire’s needs. Germany declined to send troops to Iraq and sent only non-combat forces to Afghanistan, not quite good enough for the Pentagon warriors and their NATO allies. Germany’s leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, reported the following:

At a meeting in Washington, Bush administration officials, speaking in the context of Afghanistan, berated Karsten Voigt, German government representative for German-American relations: “You concentrate on rebuilding and peacekeeping, but the unpleasant things you leave to us.” … “The Germans have to learn to kill.”

A German officer at NATO headquarters was told by a British officer: “Every weekend we send home two metal coffins, while you Germans distribute crayons and woollen blankets.” Bruce George, the head of the British Defence Committee, said “some drink tea and beer and others risk their lives.”

A NATO colleague from Canada remarked that it was about time that “the Germans left their sleeping quarters and learned how to kill the Taliban.”

And in Quebec, a Canadian official told a German official: “We have the dead, you drink beer.” ¹

Ironically, in many other contexts since the end of World War II the Germans have been unable to disassociate themselves from the image of Nazi murderers and monsters.

Will there come the day when the Taliban and Iraqi insurgents will be mocked by “the Free World” for living in peace?

The United States has also engaged in a decades-long effort to wean Japan away from its post-WW2 pacifist constitution and foreign policy and set it back on the righteous path of again being a military power, only this time acting in coordination with US foreign policy needs.

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

“In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” — Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, 1947, words long cherished by a large majority of the Japanese people.

In the triumphalism of the end of the Second World War, the American occupation of Japan, in the person of General Douglas MacArthur, played a major role in the creation of this constitution. But after the communists came to power in China in 1949, the United States opted for a strong Japan safely ensconced in the anti-communist camp. It’s been all downhill since then. Step by step … MacArthur himself ordered the creation of a “national police reserve”, which became the embryo of the future Japanese military … Visiting Tokyo in 1956, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Japanese officials: “In the past, Japan had demonstrated her superiority over the Russians and over China. It was time for Japan to think again of being and acting like a Great Power.” ²… various US-Japanese security and defense cooperation treaties, which, for example, called on Japan to integrate its military technology with that of the US and NATO … the US supplying new sophisticated military aircraft and destroyers … all manner of Japanese logistical assistance to the US in its frequent military operations in Asia … repeated US pressure on Japan to increase its military budget and the size of its armed forces … more than a hundred US military bases in Japan, protected by Japanese armed forces … US-Japanese joint military exercises and joint research on a missile defense system … the US Ambassador to Japan, 2001: “I think the reality of circumstances in the world is going to suggest to the Japanese that they reinterpret or redefine Article 9.” ³ … under pressure from Washington, Japan sent several naval vessels to the Indian Ocean to refuel US and British warships as part of the Afghanistan campaign in 2002, then sent non-combat forces to Iraq to assist the American war as well as to East Timor, another made-in-America war scenario … Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2004: “If Japan is going to play a full role on the world stage and become a full active participating member of the Security Council, and have the kind of obligations that it would pick up as a member of the Security Council, Article Nine would have to be examined in that light.” ⁴…

One outcome or symptom of all this can perhaps be seen in the 2005 case of Kimiko Nezu, a 54-year-old Japanese teacher, who was punished by being transferred from school to school, by suspensions, salary cuts, and threats of dismissal because of her refusal to stand during the playing of the national anthem, a World War II song chosen as the anthem in 1999. She opposed the song because it was the same one sung as the Imperial Army set forth from Japan calling for an “eternal reign” of the emperor. At graduation ceremonies in 2004, 198 teachers refused to stand for the song. After a series of fines and disciplinary actions, Nezu and nine other teachers were the only protesters the following year. Nezu was then allowed to teach only when another teacher was present. ⁵

Which brings us to Italy, the remaining member of the World War Two Tripartite, or Axis. Article 11 of the 1948 Italian Constitution says in part: “Italy rejects war as a means for settling international controversies and as an instrument of aggression against the freedoms of others peoples.” ⁶

But Washington laid claim early to Italy’s post-war soul. In 1948 the United States all but took over the Italian election campaign to insure the Christian Democrats (CD) defeat of the Communist-Socialist candidate. (And the US remained an electoral force in Italy for the next three decades maintaining the CD in power. The Christian Democrats, in turn, were loyal Cold-War partners.) ⁷ In 1949, the US saw to it that Italy became a founding member of NATO. This was not seen as a threat to Article 11 because NATO has always painted itself as a “defensive” organization, even in 1999 when it carried out a 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia as both Italy and Germany supplied military aircraft and a NATO air base at Aviano, Italy served as the main hub for the daily bombing runs. For decades, Italy has been the home of US military bases and airfields used by Washington in one military adventure after another from Europe to Asia.

There are now some 3,000 Italian soldiers in Afghanistan performing a variety of services which enables the United States and NATO to engage in their bloody warfare. And 15 Italian soldiers have also lost their lives in that woeful land. The pressure on Italy, as on Germany, to become full-fledged combatants in Afghanistan and elsewhere is unrelenting from their NATO comrades. ⁸

The Berlin Wall — Another Cold War Myth

Within a few weeks many of the Western media can be expected to turn on their propaganda machines to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989. All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don’t like people to be free, to learn the “truth”. What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returned to the East in the evening. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. The wall was built primarily for two reasons:

1. The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: “West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin.” ⁹
2. During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country’s economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from terrorism to juvenile delinquency; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions … all this and much more. ¹⁰

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets’ erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West.

Let’s not forget that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union and wipe out Bolshevism forever. After the war, the Soviets were determined to close down the highway.

In 1999, USA Today reported: “When the Berlin Wall crumbled, East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.” ¹¹

About the same time a new Russian proverb was born: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth.”

Health care: ignoring the huge red elephant in the room

In the frenzied search of recent months for a better way of delivering health care to the American people, the American media has often discussed health-care systems in other countries, particularly Europe. Usually, little, if anything, is mentioned about Cuba’s system, where everyone is covered, for everything, where pre-existing conditions do not matter, and no patient pays for anything; i.e., nothing at all. The reason the Cuban system is seldom mentioned in the mass media is probably that it’s kind of embarrassing that this otherwise poor country, laboring under the awful yoke of (choke, gasp) socialism, can deliver health care that most Americans can only dream of.

Now we have a new book by T.R. Reid, former correspondent for the Washington Post and commentator for National Public Radio. It’s called “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care”. Reid does not avoid giving some credit to the Cuban system, but he makes sure that the reader knows that he’s not taken in by any commie propaganda. He refers to the Cuban government as “a totalitarian Communist fiefdom”, and adds: “In every country (except, perhaps, a police state like Cuba) there is one group of citizens who are not bound by the unified health care system: the rich.” ¹² Thus, the fact that Cuba has an egalitarian health care system is made to seem like something negative, something one could expect to find only in a police state.

In discussing the World Health Organization’s giving Cuba high marks for fairness in its system, Reid points out: “Of course, fairness and equal treatment extend only so far; when Fidel Castro himself fell ill in 2007, medical experts were flown in from Europe to treat him.” ¹³ Aha! I knew it! Americans, and not just the right-wing crazies, would never accept a medical system where everyone got completely free care for all ailments if the president ever got any kind of special treatment. Would they? We could at least ask them.

Speaking of the right-wing crazies, there was a report in the New York Times which said: “Tomorrow night, getting right into the thick of the battle,” the president will “carry his message to the people in a nationwide television and radio speech” fighting for enactment of his health reform bill, which opponents tagged as “socialized medicine” and “an entering wedge for the takeover of private medicine by the federal government.” The president was John F. Kennedy, the program was Medicare, the Times story was published on May 20, 1962. Despite the speech, the effort failed until passage in 1964. ¹⁴

And speaking of the totalitarian communist socialist fascist Cuban police-state dictatorship, Mr. Reid and others might be interested in an article I wrote which demonstrates that during the period of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human-rights records in all of Latin America.

But how to get past a lifetime of conditioning and reach the American mind with that message? At the recent convention of the AFL-CIO, the country’s leading labor organization, there was a very progressive resolution put forth calling for the right of all Americans to travel to Cuba and for an end to the US embargo against the island nation. But at the end of the resolution the authors reminded us that they’re Americans, calling upon Cuba “to release all political prisoners”. ¹⁵

To appreciate what’s wrong with that resolution one must understand the following: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government officials, particularly in Havana through the United States Interests Section. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States, evidence gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba’s “political prisoners” are such dissidents.

Notes

1. Der Spiegel (Germany), November 20, 2006, p.24 ^?
2. Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1994 ^?
3. Washington Post, July 18, 2001 ^?
4. BBC, August 14, 2004 ^?
5. Washington Post, August 30, 2005 ^?
6. Wikipedia: “Article 11 of Italian Constitution” ^?
7. William Blum, “Killing Hope”, chapters 2 and 18 ^?
8. For further discussion of US opposition to Post-WW2 Axis pacifism, see “Former Axis Nations Abandon Post-World War II Military Restrictions“ ^?
9. New York Times, June 27, 1963, p.12 ^?
10. See Killing Hope, p.400, note 8, for a list of sources for the details of the sabotage and subversion ^?
11. USA Today, October 11, 1999, p.1 ^?
12. p.234 of Reid’s book ^?
13. Ibid., p.150-1 ^?
14. Washington Post, September 9, 2009 ^?
15. PDF of resolution ?

America Sees Red

There is a Jewish tale, in which a man is promised that he will be granted any wish he chooses, so long as his neighbour will get twice as much. After some thought he states his wish: please put me out one of my eyes! This is a very American attitude. An American refuses to get free medical care, if the condition is that others will get it, too. This we learned from the rallies against Obama’s health reform. The slogans and ideas of the demonstrators were just too weird!

A little girl asks how she will pay the bill for the reformed health services. This little girl — or rather, her parents – did not go out and ask how she was going to pay off the bills for the Iraqi and Afghani wars, how she was going to pay for the US involvement in Palestine, how she would repay the trillions given away to the bankers. Up until now, Big Government was good. It provided billions for AIG – ok. Billions for a new fighter jets – great. Billions to Blackwater to kill more Afghanis and Pakistanis – fine. Billions to Israel – perfect. But funding for health? What a communist notion!

The US health insurance problem is something we foreigners can’t understand. All of us, whether in England or Russia or Israel or France, have a national health service; we regret only that it is not as good as it used to be. But how can normal people prefer turning their health into a commodity and making it dependent on their bank accounts? This strange attitude is rooted in America’s older ills.

The US is an experimental ‘project’ – to see what would happen when a rather empty space is colonized by people of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities and affiliations, all moved by the desire to get rich and knowing no moral inhibitions but the Smith and Wesson. At first, they destroy the natives and the neighbours, afterwards they turn to cannibalism. If the Americans do not eat each other, it is only because they have found somebody else to eat together.

America was informed by love of profit and by hatred of communism. Her anticommunism is visceral, brutal, basic, inherent. The United States was created as the supreme sheriff, as the bastion of staunch individualism, of ‘homo homini lupus est’, of rejection of the notions of solidarity and mutual help. This was the plan of project designers.

Human nature being what it is, this satanic plan was partly upset by the inherent goodness of men and women. There are many wonderful Americans, rebels against crass materialism and unbridled greed, but they are isolated in their milieu; the best American characters are living and fighting alone. Such is Thoreau in his Walden. Such is Ishmael aboard the Pequod. Such is the Old Man at the Sea. Solidarity – togetherness – is conspicuous by its absence from American literature.

Every European state, from England to Russia, has its National Health, for every nation considers self a living body, and every member of the nation is as valued as a body part. All these nations are or were Christian and solidarist. Their citizens were embraced by one church. The US is different because of the anti-solidarist and anti-Christian spirit of her founders. Her Manifest Destiny did not connect to the faith. The US founders openly denied she was a Christian nation when concluding the Tripoli treaty, and their denial was sincere, because solidarity is a basic tenet of the Christian faith.

Every part of American society – Left, Right, churches, parties – are touched by this lack of compassion magnified by envy. The US Right is obsessed with anticommunism. This goes without saying for the imperialist Right of Ronald Reagan and George Bushes Junior and Senior. What is upsetting is that even the traditional anti-imperialist, nationalist American Right (the “paleocons”) are equally anti-communist and anti-Christian. I, for one, hoped they would understand their mistakes of yesteryear and become allies of other anti-imperialist forces including China, Russia and Iran. Alas, while they do not like neocons, and this is all to the good, they are no better themselves: Instead of fighting Arabs, they would rather kill Russians.

In a recent essay, Patrick Buchanan glorifies Adolf Hitler’s Germany and vilifies Communist Russia. He is sorry that the US allied with the Russians against the Germans, and not vice versa. Though Russia is no longer Communist, he would like to fight it anyway.

Mind you, I do not need smelling salts every time Hitler’s name is mentioned. I do not think everyone has to hate Hitler. I am at peace with people who admire Hitler for sentimental reasons: they like his solidarism, or German greatness or his vegetarianism, or his treatment of banks and bankers or unification of German lands. But there is a red line: people who admire Hitler because he attacked Russia and/or massacred civilians are my enemies too. In the battle of Stalingrad, I know which side I am on. And Buchanan is on the other side.

Similar anti-communist and anti-Russian notes prevail in other far-right white-nationalist writings. Be on the look out for the telling word “hordes”. For neocons, there are Muslim hordes, for the white-nationalists, these are Russian hordes, as in Patrick Buchanan: “By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin”. He forgot to explain that this happened because the people of these great capitals had decided to try their luck in Moscow under Hitler’s banners, and it may well happen again if this lesson is forgotten.

Our erstwhile friend Tom Sunic came from his search for a New Right to the Old Hitlerism: “The last shot in the European capital of Berlin was fired by a drunken Soviet soldier, killing the young French Waffen SS volunteer.” Well, God bless the Soviet soldier, drunken or sober, for his steady mark, and to hell with the SS-man, young or middle-aged, especially if he volunteered to do that butcher job.

Buchanan writes of “the most barbarous tyranny in history: the Bolshevik regime of the greatest terrorist of them all, Joseph Stalin”. Hatred of Stalin, the man who stopped Hitler, created modern Russia and resurrected the Russian Church after the Trotskyite excesses, is the common ground of these anticommunists. If they care at all about the Russian people as they pretend they do, they can ask them and find out that despite decades of anticommunist propaganda, Stalin is much loved by Russians. In the huge recent poll run by the Russian TV, Stalin was chosen ‘the most important personality in the whole history of Russia’ next to St Alexander Nevsky. The Russians remember that Stalin became the leader of an illiterate country devastated by civil war – a country of no industry, of dying agriculture, of no money and of plenty of debts, surrounded by enemies. He created industry, built housing and roads, created full free health care and comprehensive free education for all; he made Russia the best educated country in the world.

Unprejudiced Americans may find Stalin’s simple attitude to life and business rather to their liking. He’d have solved the current financial crisis by dispatching the bankers to chop wood somewhere deep in Oregon and by canceling all debts. The automobile plants of Detroit would be saved. When Stalin discovered a Zionist Lobby in his country, he smashed it on the spot instead of surrendering to them, while ordinary Jews who were loyal to Russia retained their positions. That is why his name is besmirched by anticommunists.

This is neither the time nor the place to deal with impossible exaggerations of alleged Soviet crimes. It is enough to state that they are fantastic. Nobody, even Stalin, could have killed one hundred million people out of one hundred sixty million, won a war and yet found himself with two hundred fifty million at the end of it.

This sick hatred of communism pours out of a column by another anti-imperialist right-winger, Chuck Baldwin. This “alternative candidate” fumed against the Chinese national flag, which is red, being hoisted at the White House’s South Lawn for an anniversary of the Chinese national holiday. He speaks of “the extreme offensiveness of flying the Communist Chinese flag”. This is “unbelievable, unreal, horrific, obscene, even traitorous… for the communist leaders of Mao’s China are the Butchers of Beijing, and this proves … the communist leanings of President Barack Obama”.

Further, Baldwin spreads the heart-rending story of the Chinese people’s suffering under the cruel leadership of Mao. If Communist leadership is so bad, how come the US is indebted to China to the tune of a few trillions? Before Mao, China was an impoverished semi-colony of the West, ‘the Chinese and dogs were not allowed’ into some parts of Shanghai, famines were annual, and Anglo-American navies studiously supplied the people with opium when they weren’t busy burning Beijing Palace. Now, after so many years of Communist tyranny, the Chinese are a shining example for the rest of the world.

In any case, flying the Chinese national flag at such events is not a proclamation of Communism as state doctrine, it is just a normal sign of courtesy. Likewise, flying the Israeli flag over the same lawn was not considered by the sane as a sign of submission to the Elders of Zion, nor flying the British flag as cancellation of Declaration of Independence. It is pity that the Obama administration allegedly got cold feet and decided to cancel the event. This suppleness of Obama’s back is not a good sign, as we have already learned in the Middle East.

The US Left is afraid of communism as well. In many, many articles and responses to the anti-Obama rallies, left-wing authors invariably stress the racism of the demonstrators. William Rivers Pitt called the “white, middle-aged, overweight, pissed-off right-wingers… a Klan rally minus the bedsheets and torches.” Susie Day pretends that the rallies were formed by those whites upset by Obama’s mouthing off to a white cop.

I am not a great believer in racism. Reputation of this sin is largely overblown, to the best of my knowledge. The Russians, who are supposed to be racists, loved Stalin, a Georgian. The French and the Germans, presumably also racist, had a Jewish prime minister and a foreign minister respectively in the last century. The Americans had no problem electing the black Obama. So much for racism. The American leftists who explain everything by racism are barking up the wrong tree, and they know it – but they dare not speak about the real problems.

This sick fear of human solidarity is American society’s knee-jerk reaction. It was activated by the Lobby in order to undermine President Obama. Because he spoke against Israeli expansion, because he mentioned Palestinian rights and sorrows, they fight against him on every possible occasion – even on the issue of national health. If Obama would just do everything they want in the Middle East, his domestic initiatives would pass as easily as a steamer through the Golden Gate.

Obama is attacked at every step. Look at the Middle East: Israel wants to bomb Iran. The President refused Netanyahu’s pleas to attack Tehran, but the Lobby doesn’t take no for an answer. In the Voice of the Lobby, a.k.a. The Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens impossibly claims: Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War. How? Obama’s refusal to attack Iran is “pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran”. The Voice of the Lobby does not hide the fact that such a strike could well usher in a “price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between.” For a normal reader, the conclusion is clear: that’s why Obama forbade the Israelis to attack Iran. But the Lobby’s sophist offers another solution: let Obama’s America attack Iran instead of Israel. Obama’s refusal to interfere with Iran is presented as “Obama’s pushing Israel toward war”. Begorrah!

While the enemy is active, no friends are forthcoming to help the embattled American President. Many of us received and forwarded an email claiming that Obama supported the coup d’etat in Honduras. But much less attention was paid when Obama actually cut off US aid to Honduras in response to the coup.

Sensing this loneliness of the President, Netanyahu ridicules his mild and limited demands. There is no other word for Israel’s response – that they will freeze some settlements’ construction work for a few months. Such a response is only marginally better than “shove it”. This was followed by an announcement that some five hundred new Jewish homes will be built in the teeth of Obama’s demand. Obama does not dare to push intransigent Israel any more, for Congress and the Senate are in the Jewish pocket, and these powerful Jews prefer Zionism to Communism.

What a pity! Once upon a time, the Jews were all for Communism and none for Zionism, and the human lot markedly improved. In a remarkable article, Winston Churchill wrote in 1920s: the Jews are choosing between Communism and Zionism, let us direct them towards Zionism so they will isolate themselves and stop bothering us. His plan was realised: Jews were seduced by the Zionist idea, parted with communism and became its enemies. The result was quite sad: the positive contribution of Israeli Jews to mankind’s welfare is next to zero, unless you count the development of new torture and surveillance techniques. Jews elsewhere waste their abilities and time on the same rotten Zionist project, instead of helping their fellow countrymen to improve their lives. Winston Churchill lit a candle, and its light attracts the butterflies who die in its flames. The daring report of Judge Richard Goldstone is a first harbinger of a weather change: despite his pro-Israel sympathies he condemned the recent Zionist atrocities in Gaza.

Now it is time for Obama to move forward fearlessly. He should listen to his fellow- Americans. If they are so upset and worried by immigration, stop immigration completely. Send away illegal aliens, or legalise those who have lived long enough in America. Show people that you care about them.

Proceed with the health care. This field is ripe for revolution. Only in a time of crisis can a great leader enact radical reforms:

• Borrow the script from Illich’s Medical Nemesis, and minimise the cost of medical care. Do it the Cuban way.
• Treat health care like fire brigades – human bodies are no less important than buildings. Nobody is amazed that the fire brigades are not private. Turn health care into a public service, and make all doctors public employees.
• Ban private medical care.
• Provide medical help for everyone, at the state’s expense.
• Stop expensive life-saving, life-supporting devices. No transplantations, no complicated infertility treatments, no reproductive technology, no heart-and-brain operations, no abortions.
• Cut down research. Let incurable diseases remain incurable.
• Allow people to get born and to die; this is normal, as opposed to this morbid fear of death.
• While he’s at it, nationalise pharmaceutical companies. Let them sell medicine to the national health service at the cost of production.

Thus the national health system will become good, simple, comprehensive and inexpensive. Communism? Yes! Good for you? Yes, unless you are a wealthy gynecologist. And Comrade Stalin would approve of it! J

Obama’s BIG Health Care LIES

AMERICANS DON’T LIKE A CON MAN — neither do they like being lied to. In just nine short months Barack Hussein Obama has revealed himself to be what he really is: a con man who lies to get what he wants.

Obama and his enablers (Soros-Brzezinksi-Wall Street Jews) are determined to turn Americans into vassals of an all-powerful federal government presided over by an all-powerful president, a corps of Jewish czars, and a Congress dominated by Zionist-bought political hacks.

Con men like Obama invariably resort to strong-arm tactics. An example is Obama’s Cap and Trade Bill – his first major attempt to impose his authoritarian will on Americans by strong-arming opponents through his Zionist Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel.

It narrowly passed the Zionist controlled House only after Emanuel applied the Zionist bludgeon to wavering Democrats whose “no” votes would cost them re-election in 2010.

Emanuel’s connections to Jewry’s media and money masters who smear offenders and finance those who play ball with them, is a large enough threat to put the ‘fear of the Jews’ into all of the political patsies on Capitol Hill.

ON THE HEELS OF THIS POWER GRAB, Obama presented to Congress last month a demand that it pass his Healthcare Bill before its recess. Obama left it up to the hated Nancy Pelosi and her colleague in Capitol Hill crime, Zionist Jew Henry Waxman, to design a health care program that would give the federal government TOTAL CONTROL of one-sixth of the US economy and TOTAL RULE over the health of the American people.

But the American people would not allow the ‘messiah’ Obama to take control of their money and their well being. For when Obama started using local town meetings as his venue, Americans struck back by expressing their ire at their representatives in Congress who hosted the meetings.

Neither were Americans surprised when Obama showed his utter lack of knowledge of what the Pelosi/Waxman Bill is all about. AND they are still in a backlash mode in response to Obama’s contempt toward them who dared to question his utopian health care deceptions.

ANOTHER SPEECH? ‘YOU LIE!’

OBAMA THREATENED TO “CALL OUT” all those who “misrepresent” what’s in his Health Care Plan during his speech to Congress on September 9, 2009. Obama made the very same threat in his staged speech in Minneapolis to bused-in groupies and swarming swooners on September 12, 2009.

But Americans are now calling out Obama for his list of lies just as Congressman Joe Wilson did during Obama’s speech to Congress, shouting to the would-be messiah, “You Lie!”

Wilson’s censure was in response to Obama’s statement on illegal immigrants: “There are those who claim that my reforms will insure illegal immigrants. This is false — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” View Entire Speech Here.

But indeed illegal immigrants would be permitted participation in Obama’s health care plan because the Bill does not include a mechanism for verifying US citizenship. Thus, illegal immigrants would receive basic coverage at no or little cost using the public option.

A CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE REPORT issued August 25, 2009, states that Obama’s Health Care Plan “does not contain any restrictions on participating non-citizens — whether the non-citizens are in the US temporarily or permanently.” While hospitals worry about recouping their costs for treating illegal immigrants, America’s legal citizens will be the ones to pick up the tab. View Entire Report Here.

Obama then told us that he can insure millions more without adding to the already record-breaking deficit. But how is it that after the Congressional Budget Office demonstrated this to be impossible, Obama willfully ignored the findings? And how is it that the very same Congress applauded Obama throughout his speech? (They’re all bought by Zionist Jews who wish to weaken America, that’s why.)

IN SUMMATION, a list of the top six GOVERNMENT CONTROLS on our lives via Obama’s Health Care Plan are in order: 1) We Will Have No Choice In What Health Benefits We Receive 2) No Chemo For Older Medicare Patients 3) Illegal Immigrants Get Free Health Insurance 4) Federal Government Will Set Doctors’ Wages 5) Death Panels Will Decide Who Lives & Who Dies 6) Federal Government Will Have Electronic Access To Everyone’s Bank Account. View Newsweek Report Here.

Obama, liar that he is, denies all of the above. He especially denies that “death panels” will be in place in his Health Plan. The “death panels,” as Sarah Palin calls them, are actually the bureaucracies that Obama is establishing which will make the decisions on who gets health care, how much health care, and whether it is time for us vassals to die.

And who will be the bureaucrats who will decide if we live or die? Jews, Anti-Christian Jews, that’s who. (Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, who is Obama’s health care czar and author of Obama’s Health Care Plan, will be one of them.)

BOTTOM LINE: We’ve penetrated the facade and seen the real Obama — a con man with a pack of lies to sell to a fed-up American people…

http://www.realzionistnews.com/?p=443

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