An interesting take on the Neo-Cons

An interesting description/analysis of the Straussian Neo-Cons (the gang that is in power now in the Executive branch) by someone on the libertarian Right -

"America's Jacobin Ideologues" by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

I've never looked at Lincoln this way, but there's no denying the truth in a lot of points he makes about the Neo-Con Gang.

Very educational.

This one speaks for itself....

....or, I should say, drools for (all over) itself -

Paul Krugman - A Test for Democrats

080307 -

It’s been a good Democrats, bad Democrats kind of week. The bill expanding children’s health insurance that just passed in the House makes you want to stand up and cheer. Reports that Senator Charles Schumer opposes plans to close the hedge fund tax loophole make you want to sit down and cry.

Let’s start with the good news: The House bill, which the Congressional Budget Office says would provide coverage to five million children who would otherwise be uninsured.

The bill is so good that it has Republicans spluttering. “The bill uses children as pawns,” declared Representative Pete Sessions of Texas. Yes, the Democrats are exploiting children — by providing them with health care.

The horror, the horror!

What’s especially encouraging is the way House Democrats were willing to take on the insurance companies. The bill pays for children’s health care in part by cutting subsidies to Medicare Advantage, a privatization scheme that yields big profits for insurers, but that the budget office estimates would cost taxpayers $54 billion in excess payments over the next five years.

Earlier this year I worried that many Democrats would be taken in by the insurance industry’s disinformation campaign in support of its subsidies, which included the pretense that Medicare Advantage offers big benefits to minority groups. In the end, however, House Democrats refused to be rolled.

All in all, the bill is both a fine piece of legislation and a demonstration that Democrats can stand up to special interests. Happy days are here again.

Or maybe not.

The hedge fund tax loophole is a crystal-clear example of unjustified privilege. Because of a quirk in the law, the people who run these funds don’t pay taxes like ordinary mortals.

For example, the salaries that pension fund employees receive for managing other peoples’ money are taxed as ordinary income, at rates up to 35 percent. But if that money is invested with a hedge fund — and 40 percent of the money in hedge funds comes from public, corporate and union pension plans — the fees the hedge fund manager receives for his services are mainly taxed as capital gains, with a maximum rate of 15 percent.

The arguments usually made on behalf of this unique privilege make no sense. We’re told that the tax rate on hedge fund managers has to be kept low to encourage risk-taking. But the managers aren’t risking their own money. The only risk they face is the uncertainty of their fees — and as any waitress who depends on tips or salesman who depends on commissions can tell you, most people with uncertain incomes don’t get any special tax breaks.

We’re also told that management fees would rise, reducing returns to investors, if the privileged status of fund managers is eliminated — as if someone with a $100-million-a-year hedge fund job would walk away if his take-home pay fell from $85 million to $65 million.

And we’re talking about a lot of lost revenue here. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the hedge fund loophole costs the government $6.3 billion a year — the cost of providing health care to three million children. Of that total, almost $2 billion a year in unjustified tax breaks goes to just 25 individuals.

If being a Democrat means anything, it means opposing this kind of exorbitant privilege. Yet according to a report in The Times earlier this week, Mr. Schumer says that he opposes any increase in hedge fund taxes unless tax breaks for the energy and real estate industries are also eliminated, and pigs start flying. Seriously, his claim that he really would support closing the hedge fund loophole if other, deeply entrenched tax privileges were eliminated at the same time is a fig leaf that hides nothing.

Mr. Schumer, who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, insists that the large financial contributions that hedge funds make to his party aren’t influencing him. Well, I can’t read his mind, but from the outside his position looks remarkably like money-driven politics as usual. And that’s not acceptable.

Look, the worst thing that could happen to Democrats is for voters to conclude that there’s no real difference between the parties, that when you replace Republicans with Democrats, all you do is replace sweet deals for Halliburton with sweet deals for hedge funds. The hedge fund loophole is a test — and it’s one that Mr. Schumer is failing.

Paul Craig Roberts - The New Robber Barons

Return of the Robber Barons

By Paul Craig Roberts

As the Bush Regime outfits B-2 stealth bombers with 30,000 pound monster "bunker buster" bombs for its coming attack on Iran, the US economy continues its 21st century decline. While profits soar for the armaments industry, the American people continue to take it on the chin.

The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the real wages and salaries of US civilian workers are below those of 5 years ago. It could not be otherwise with US corporations offshoring good jobs in order to reduce labor costs and, thereby, to convert wages once paid to Americans into multi-million dollar bonuses paid to CEOs and other top management.

Good jobs that still remain in the US are increasingly filled with foreign workers brought in on work visas. Corporate public relations departments have successfully spread the lie that there is a shortage of qualified US workers, necessitating the importation into the US of foreigners. The truth is that the US corporations force their American employees to train the lower paid foreigners who take their jobs. Otherwise, the discharged American gets no severance pay. [See, for example, BofA: Train your replacement, or no severance pay for you By David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle, 2006 ]

Law firms, such as Cohen & Grigsby, compete in marketing their services to US corporations on how to evade the law and to replace their American employees with lower paid foreigners. As Lawrence Lebowitz, vice president at Cohen & Grigsby, [send him mail] explained in the law firm’s marketing video, "our goal is clearly, not to find a qualified and interested US worker."

Meanwhile, US colleges and universities continue to graduate hundreds of thousands of qualified engineers, IT professionals, and other professionals who will never have the opportunity to work in the professions for which they have been trained. America today is like India of yesteryear, with engineers working as bartenders, taxi cab drivers, waitresses, and employed in menial work in dog kennels as the offshoring of US jobs dismantles the ladders of upward mobility for US citizens.

Over the last year (from June 2006 through June 2007) the US economy created 1.6 million net private sector jobs. As Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services reports each month, essentially all of the new jobs are in low-paid domestic services that do not require a college education.

The category, "Leisure and hospitality," accounts for 30% of the new jobs, of which 387,000 are bartenders and waitresses, 38,000 are workers in motels and hotels, and 50,000 are employed in entertainment and recreation.

The category, "Education and health services," accounts for 35% of the gain in employment, of which 100,000 are in educational services and 456,000 are in health care and social assistance, principally ambulatory health care services and hospitals.

"Professional and technical services" accounts for 268,000 of the new jobs. "Finance and insurance" added 93,000 new jobs, of which about one quarter are in real estate and about one half are in insurance. "Transportation and warehousing" added 65,000 jobs, and wholesale and retail trade added 185,000.

Over the entire year, the US economy created merely 51,000 jobs in architectural and engineering services, less than the 76,000 jobs created in management and technical consulting (essentially laid-off white collar professionals).

Except for a well-connected few graduates, who find their way into Wall Street investment banks, top law firms, and private medical practice, American universities today consist of detention centers to delay for four or five years the entry of American youth into unskilled domestic services.

Meanwhile the rich are getting much richer and luxuriating in the most fantastic conspicuous consumption since the Gilded Age. Robert Frank has dubbed the new American world of the super-rich "Richistan."

In Richistan there is a two-year waiting list for $50 million 200-foot yachts. In Richistan Rolex watches are considered Wal-Mart junk. Richistanians sport $736,000 Franck Muller timepieces, sign their names with $700,000 Mont Blanc jewel-encrusted pens. Their valets, butlers (with $100,000 salaries), and bodyguards carry the $42,000 Louis Vitton handbags of wives and mistresses.

Richistanians join clubs open only to those with $100 million, pay $650,000 for golf club memberships, eat $50 hamburgers and $1,000 omelettes, drink $90 a bottle Bling mineral water and down $10,000 "martinis on a rock" (gin or vodka poured over a diamond) at New York’s Algonquin Hotel.

Who are the Richistanians? They are CEOs who have moved their companies abroad and converted the wages they formerly paid Americans into $100 million compensation packages for themselves. They are investment bankers and hedge fund managers, who created the subprime mortgage derivatives that currently threaten to collapse the economy. One of them was paid $1.7 billion last year. The $575 million that each of 25 other top earners were paid is paltry by comparison, but unimaginable wealth to everyone else.

Some of the super rich, such as Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, have benefitted society along with themselves. Both Buffet and Gates are concerned about the rapidly rising income inequality in the US. They are aware that America is becoming a feudal society in which the super-rich compete in conspicuous consumption, while the serfs struggle merely to survive.

With the real wages and salaries of American civilian workers lower than 5 years ago, with their debts at all time highs, with the prices of their main asset--their homes--under pressure from overbuilding and fraudulent finance, and with scant opportunities to rise for the children they struggled to educate, Americans face a dim future.

Indeed, their plight is worse than the official statistics indicate. During the Clinton administration, the Boskin Commission rigged the inflation measures in order to hold down indexed Social Security payments to retirees.

Another deceit is the measure called "core inflation." This measure of inflation excludes food and energy, two large components of the average family’s budget. Wall Street and corporations and, therefore, the media emphasize core inflation, because it holds down cost of living increases and interest rates. In the second quarter of this year, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a more complete measure of inflation, increased at an annual rate of 5.2% compared to 2.3% for core inflation.

An examination of how inflation is measured quickly reveals the games played to deceive the American people. Housing prices are not in the index. Instead, the rental rate of housing is used as a proxy for housing prices.

More games are played with the goods and services whose prices comprise the weighted market basket used to estimate inflation. If beef prices rise, for example, the index shifts toward lower priced chicken. Inflation is thus held down by substituting lower priced products for those whose prices are rising faster. As the weights of the goods in the basket change, the inflation measure does not reflect a constant pattern of expenditures. Some economists compare the substitution used to minimize the measured rate of inflation to substituting sweaters for fuel oil.

Other deceptions, not all intentional, abound in official US statistics. Business Week’s June 18 cover story [The Real Cost Of Offshoring, by Michael Mandel] used the recent important work by Susan N. Houseman to explain that much of the hyped gains in US productivity and GDP are "phantom gains" that are not really there.

Other phantom productivity gains are produced by corporations that shift business costs to consumers by, for example, having callers listen to advertisements while they wait for a customer service representative, and by pricing items in the inflation basket according to the low prices of stores that offer customers no service. The longer callers can be made to wait, the fewer the customer representatives the company needs to employ. The loss of service is not considered in the inflation measure. It shows up instead as a gain in productivity.

In American today the greatest rewards go to investment bankers, who collect fees for creating financing packages for debt. These packages include the tottering subprime mortgage derivatives. Recently, a top official of the Bank of France acknowledged that the real values of repackaged debt instruments are unknown to both buyers and sellers. Many of the derivatives have never been priced by the market.

Think of derivatives as a mutual fund of debt, a combination of good mortgages, subprime mortgages, credit card debt, auto loans, and who knows what. Not even institutional buyers know what they are buying or how to evaluate it. Arcane pricing models are used to produce values, and pay incentives bias the assigned values upward.

Richistan wealth may prove artificial and crash, bringing an end to the new Gilded Age. But the plight of the rich in distress will never compare to the decimation of America’s middle class. The offshoring of American jobs has destroyed opportunities for generations of Americans. Never before in our history has the elite had such control over the government. To run for national office requires many millions of dollars, the raising of which puts "our" elected representatives and "our" president himself at the beck and call of the few moneyed interests that financed the campaigns.

America as the land of opportunity has passed into history.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

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From David Bromwich's post at huffpo 080407 -

"Wanted: a Constitutional Democrat"

(....)

"In a recent talk with liberal journalists, Nancy Pelosi offered a second kind of prudential reservation: impeachment or censure, of either Cheney or Bush, would "divide the country." That is the same species of wisdom that prevailed with Al Gore when he withheld his support from the late petitions charging voter fraud in Florida in the election of 2000. He was choosing not to divide the country.

The trouble is that Cheney and Bush are happy to divide the country. They mean to play their terrible hand to the end; and they do not take no for an answer. Compromise with them, and you are the one who is compromised. The statement by Dick Cheney in January 2007, about the impact of the election on his plans for the Middle East, showed the curious streak of frankness that marks his political character. "It won't stop us," he said.

Now, in a constitutional democracy, there are two ways of stopping the claims of a leader out of control. One is by an appeal to the voters; the other is by an appeal to the laws. The vice president (and, therefore, the president) having declared his independence of the people, it would seem that the best remaining protection is the laws. If, on the other hand, the opposition are unwilling to resort to the laws--if, from a combination of timidity and tactical reasoning, they refuse to defend their own function as lawmakers--for what purpose do they exist?"

Net Neutrality Explained

The master of cinematic minimialist modern/postmodern enigma and spiritual malaise has left us

I found out from a friend that the Great Antonioni passed on the same day as Bergman. Strange, but fitting. Another of the six greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. "Il Deserto Rosso" is my favorite. Here is a clip from the ending of his "L'Eclisse" -

Free Markets are free of rational holism

John Derbyshire on the lunacy of faith-based "free marketers" (gratis thismodernworld.com)

"Ron Paul is one of those “free market” zealots (a scary breed of faith-based politician) who honestly believe unregulated capitalism is the cure for all of society’s ills. We tried that in the late 1800’s and we ended up with the Gilded Age, steel monopolies, children working
in factories, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, etc. This “Invisible Hand” bullshit would lead us back to that awful time. Ron Paul’s rhetoric sounds good when you’re trying to get a crowd of people to pump their fists, but in terms of actually solving problems, it’s lunacy."

Amen. Nicely put.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Ingmar Bergman

1918-2007

R.I.P

One of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

One of the six greatest filmakers of all time. Artist of alienation and the pain of the mind body schizm in modern times. Transcendent camera as with all six great ones.

From his greatest work IMO, "The Silence" - genius of cinema, a still contemplative witnessing camera - poet of mid-20th century modernist alienation: mind divorced from body.



A landmark film - pure breakthrough cinema from Bergman - not just depicting, but living inside the existential dread-abyss of Modernity and its loss of mythic meaning. Two sisters' polarized answers to that dread - one deadens herself - the other seeks escape in mindless sensuality - while the son is abandoned to wander in an empty hotel with only absurd characters to play with, all in a stifling, gray, nameless, tank-ridden, Soviet-Kafkaesque-Eastern block industrial- waste, oppressive city. (I'd be very surprised if this film wasn't a seminal influence on David Lynch.) Brilliant performance by Ingrid Thulin as the cerebral, repressed sister. Startling and beautiful imagery and montage (visual and aural), brilliantly depicting the alienated inner and outer worlds.

Masters of War and Death - Thanatos and Filthy Lucre

Read this excellent NEWSWEEK article by Eleanor Clift on Cheney -

--------

Alternet - link -

Two Trillion Spent on Healthcare Each Year: A Sick Way to Prop Up an Ailing Economy -

I had kind of given up on Carlin, or, at least hadn't been paying much attention to him, but he's baaaack, with a vengenace - get 'em George!

why yoga is GOOD GOOD GOOD

a turn of the Spiral -

hatha yoga in the modern world -

When you a) re-connect the body to the mind, i.e. repair/heal the European dissociation of the 17-18th cent. enlightenment, and b) focus on the body on TOP of the mind, which is already on top of the body, you are now learning to be aware of your BODYMIND, which is a higher actualized form - a snyergy (you're higher, biigger and deeper) - you are growing and transforming in your the potential always already.
perfect

What it IS

The political/social problem is simply greed - VALUING SHORT TERM MATERIAL PROFIT OVER EVERY OTHER CONSIDERATION AND REALITY AND VALUE in a person's and a society's self/life/world. How much simpler can it get?

Watching "Live Earth" on tv notes

Melissa Ethridge - performing "I Believe" - see a video of it - she is 100% impassioned and backing it up with all her bodymind - as good, the good, true rockers do, - her message - she talks a message as part of the performance, or adds lyrics about change and transformation and healing now, and specifically about global warming.

She is dipping, coasting, and soraing into , pre- , modern, and trans- - it's the usual muddle that's unfortunate but the trans- asepcts are great. For instance, she said all these differences have opporessed us - we are all AMERICANS - that chauvinism is pre-pluralistic - but of coursethere is integral pluralistic that's the real vision. She also said "sexual preference" not orientation.

Her populism and emphasis on truth is good enough for me, now.

--------

Watching Alicia Keys perform - some sentimentality from the low orange level - that's ok - but more sincerity in the high orange would be nice - it really depends on your kosmic address - Ken Wilber's system of mapping levels, etc. It sounds dry, but it's anything but...and Alicia is a near gem - very nice passionate warm voice - a solid B+. I can't help the critic in me - shoulda been one.

--------

Read these two together

A Letter On

Mythical Thinking

America and Iraq

Ray Harris

As I write this America is reeling from two shocking events. The revelation of the extent of abuse of Iraqi prisoners and the beheading of Nicolas Berg in retaliation. How did it get to this?

As we enter the second year of the war we now know that it was based on lies and myths.

1. We now know that there was no imminent threat and no WMD. The main coalition governments (the US, UK and Australia) have been rocked by allegations of a general intelligence failure and of particular concern, intelligence agencies distorting information to suit the political ideology of their conservative leaders.
2. We also now know that rather than defeat terrorism the war in Iraq has actually helped fan the fire. The US claimed that the war was a necessary part of the more general war against terrorism. Instead terrorists have flocked to Iraq to attack coalition troops. Spain has suffered a devastating attack and attacks continue within Saudi Arabia.
3. Now the US has lost the moral high ground. As the extent of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is revealed we find that the US has systematically breached the Geneva convention. The US was supposed to be rescuing Iraq from tyranny. Now we find that Abu Ghraib, the prison used by Saddam, is now notorious for abuse at the hands of the US.

At the beginning of the war I was one of the many who protested. I did not protest to protect Saddam. I was well aware of the nature of his regime. I protested because I did not trust the US. I protested because I feared that the US's unilateral action would make things worse for Iraqis, the Middle East and the world.

I know it sounds like hubris – I told you so. But I did tell you so. In previous articles I raised doubts about the WMD argument and the lie of the connection of Saddam to the events of 9/11. Why did I know this a year ago? This is the real issue. The reason I was able to predict the outcome was that we have seen it all before. There is an often quoted maxim – those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. What I did was extrapolate from the past performance of US foreign policy and understand what Bush was really about. It wasn't difficult.

The question is why wasn't Wilber able to see this? Integral theory ought to be a clarifying lens. There were warning signs all over the place.

The nature of the Bush presidency

Both Wilber and Beck have mentioned that there have been consultations with Bush's people, including consultations with Jeb Bush. I don't know the extent or nature of these consultations, or why they thought it important to mention the fact. However, we can surmise by the outcome that these consultations had no effect.

It was probably worth a try but unfortunately at the same time Bush was also consulting with the Christian right. In the lead up to his nomination it has been revealed that George Bush attended a secret meeting chaired by Tim LaHaye and attended by several luminaries in the fundamentalist Christian political movement known as Dominionism.

Tim LaHaye is an interesting character. He is the religious authority behind the 'Left Behind' series of novels. LaHaye believes in the literal truth of the Bible and that the literal reading of the Book of Revelations means that the world will face an end times 'tribulation'. Yes folks, Satan will arise – where? Babylon. And then Jesus will return for the much predicted and anticipated second coming.

At this point we need to pause and realize that this is crazy - this is plain irrational. But the really scary part of this lunatic narrative is that George Bush, the president of the US, met with a crazy man to seek his approval. That alone should have been reason to dismiss Bush out of hand.

The way to find out what constituencies are being appeased by a president is to look at the nature of his appointments. When you investigate the Bush administration you find it peppered, not with integral thinkers, but with right-wing, even fundamentalist, Christians. John Ashcroft and Condolezza Rice are perhaps the most high profile, but there are others, particularly in the health field, as part of a pro-life campaign to reverse Roe vs Wade. Politicians are also recruiting interns from colleges that openly promote fundamentalism.

But really, none of this should be surprising. Recent Gallup polls show that around 46% of the US population describe themselves as 'born again' Christian. Some of this is copy cat behaviour. There is a trend in America to embrace God. Celebrities and aspiring stars on reality shows thank God and remark that He has answered their prayers – as if winning American Idol is something God would take a personal interest in (let alone select one believer over another – or is it all about how hard you pray?).

The USA is a schizophrenic place. It was colonized by a range of religious refugees. In Salem they burnt witches. Joseph Smith claimed to be visited by angels and to be given a golden tablet – thus founding the Mormon religion. In the Appalachian mountains a small sect handles serpents, and despite several being bitten and some dying, continue to argue that their faith protects them. In other parts of the country the Amish reject modernity and travel by horse and buggy. Yet the nation was founded by men who embraced the ideals of the European Enlightenment, a movement that rejected the types of stupidities that spawned a hundred religious cults.

But rather than defeat religious quackery in the US and establish a solid secular, Enlightenment culture, American culture created a strange, hybrid creature. A creature that mythologized democracy.

This was brought home to me as I was contemplating writing this. I was up early one morning and turned on the TV. To fill the space at that hour one of our commercial channels broadcasts the televangelist Benny Hinn. This particular morning he was interviewing Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson is connected to the Bush family and is one of the leading figures in the fundamentalist political movement. His father was Senator Willis Robertson who was a friend and mentor to Prescott Bush, Dubbya's grandfather. This particular morning Robertson and Hinn were waxing lyrical about how God had given America a sacred purpose – and then Hinn dropped the real bombshell. Hinn is an immigrant and he began to talk about how impressed he was with the Constitution. Then he said rather emotionally, that when he reads the constitution he sees the hand of Jesus. Again we need to pause and reflect on that statement. The Constitution was not the work of the Enlightenment and secular values, it was really the work of Jesus.

This is what is happening in the US today. It's culture and history is being reinterpreted through mythic eyes. A personal God answers contestants prayers and ensures they win everything from boxing matches, lottery prizes and reality television games – and he directs the US in His quest to bring 'freedom' to the rest of the world.

The problem is that this is all mythic thinking. The problem is that the world's hyper power has a significant percentage of its population still at the mythic level – they haven't ever, really engaged the Enlightenment and the rational stage. Dangerously significant numbers of the American population are still pre-rational.

The real culture wars

Certain sections of America have always wrestled with modernity. The only place that seriously challenged Darwin's theory of evolution was America. The Scope's monkey trial is infamous. The problem is that this conflict is still raging. The US is the home of creationism and fundamentalists still continue to argue that it should be given equal standing to evolutionary science.

This still continues to amaze me. Why aren't people falling about laughing? Evolution is a fact. The last nail in the coffin of creationism was genetic mapping. Both the human and chimpanzee genome have now been mapped and the results show that we share about 98% of the same sequencing. Genetic mapping is now revolutionizing taxonomy and we are able to show with greater accuracy the family tree of each species.

But mythic thinking, despite all the evidence to the contrary, persists. And it has always fought modernity. The concern of the fundamentalists has always been what they regard as the corrupting influence of secularism. In the US the religious conservatives quite happily conflate secularism with a range of so-called corrupting influences such as liberalism, communism and minority rights. In the most outrageous rhetoric secularism is seen as Satanic.

All of this would be laughable if it wasn't actually affecting the way Americans perceive themselves and the rest of the world. Unfortunately many rational and post-rational people turn a blind eye to just how powerful and influential pre-rational thought really is.

Throughout his work Ken Wilber has commented on what he calls the culture wars. This is the marked battle between conservative and liberal worldviews, particularly in academic circles. Wilber has chosen in particular to cast a critical eye over the clear excesses of postmodernism and the fads that permeate cultural studies. His has been one of many voices now rightly declaiming the excesses and stupidities.

The excesses of postmodernism are now in retreat and a new conservatism permeates the US.

And while all this was happening the religious conservatives have been growing in strength. The number of fundamentalist colleges and universities in the US have been growing. The advances of a positive liberal and progressive agenda are in fact being wound back.

The real threat to Enlightenment values is in fact not an aberrant post-modernism but a resurgent pre-modernism.

Saudi Arabia, oil and the US

There are a complex set of links between the Saud dynasty, capital derived from oil profits and the Bush family. The links are public knowledge. There are even financial links between the bin Laden dynasty and the Bush dynasty.

This is nothing surprising. The oil industry needs capital to invest in new explorations and the Saud dynasty was awash with spare cash. Why wouldn't Dubbya seek Saudi capital to help float his oil business?

It's one of the ironies of history that a president captured by the 'born-again' narrative is waging a crusade against fundamentalist Islam.

As I have argued before the origins of Islamic fundamentalism lie within the narrative of Arabic culture. The Saud family made an alliance with Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab in 1745. The Arab tribes have always embraced a strictly puritan Islam. When the modern Saudi state was rebuilt in the early 20th Century it was due to the military strength of the combined tribes known as the Ikwhan. But after the Saudi state was established the Ikwhan campaigned against the introduction of modernity, including, of all things, the telegraph – an infidel technology (some Wahhabi clerics taught that the earth was flat up until the late 1990's). The Saud dynasty had to turn against the Ikwhan – but the deep puritanism of the desert tribes never left Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden is simply the latest manifestation of a long standing tendency of Islam that dates as far back as the assassination of Ali at the hands of Kharijite fanatics. The real agenda of radical Islam is to overthrow the decadent Saud dynasty and establish a true Islamic state.

As is well known today the Wahhabi sect have used Saudi wealth to establish a missionary network throughout the Islamic world building mosques in places as far away as Cambodia and funding fundamentalist Islamic schools, madrassas, in every Muslim community. Part of that money has gone to the al Qaida network to fund jihad. When the planes attacked the WTC it was a direct attack on the symbol of the financial system that links Saudi capital with western investment and the oil industry. It was an attack on the Satanic system of capitalism – and here it must be noted that the Koran forbids usury, the charging of interest.

So here we have the US as the source of Christian fundamentalism, funding missionary activity throughout the world, in a strange alliance with Saudi Arabia, the main source of Muslim fundamentalism, similarly funding missionary activity throughout the world.

But if Saudi money is funding the expansion of terrorism why didn't the US invade Saudi Arabia? After all, al Qaida fought alongside the Taliban and if they succeeded in toppling the Saud dynasty then they would establish an even harsher form of Islam than already exists. The reason they would not, and could not, invade Saudi Arabia is simple – oil. During the embargo of the 70's the US learnt a harsh lesson, they were dependent on keeping Saudi oil flowing. Plans were made by Kissinger to invade but fortunately the Saud's were persuaded to stop the blockade. Since that time Saudi capital has become an integral component of the world oil industry.

The US knows that oil is running out. In 1999, when he was chairman of the oil company Halliburton Dick Cheney warned about the looming oil crisis stating that,

“The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil, is still where the prize ultimately lies…Even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.”

The reason Saddam was a target was because he was perceived as a long term threat to Saudi Arabia and its precious oil fields. During the first Gulf war he was poised to invade Saudi Arabia. If the US conquered Iraq then it would have control of alternative oil fields and to have removed a threat to the Saud dynasty.

The crazy plan of the end times

I don't believe that American foreign policy is based on crazy ideas. It is based on the age old system of national self-interest. America is not alone in this – it's the same game the French, Germans and Russians played in opposing the war. But there is a background of pure craziness to this all – a nagging whisper in the cultural gestalt.

Whilst the followers of Islamic fundamentalism are playing out their violent narrative the followers of American Christian fundamentalism are playing out their own lunatic fantasies. According to the prevalent 'end times' doctrine as interpreted by Tim LaHaye, the Antichrist will rule from a restored Babylon.

We need to pay attention to this nonsense because fundamentalist Christians are supporting conservative Jews in the hope that the Third Temple will be restored. When it is restored the Messiah will come. I have covered this before, but now the Iraq war adds an additional, perverse twist to this modern myth. In the first Gulf war Saddam was able to launch scud missiles into Israel.

Some Americans, those most caught up in the fundamentalist narrative will be supporting the war because they see it as fulfilling prophecy.

Could it be that Dubbya, who was vetted by Tim LaHaye, is influenced by this mythic narrative, at least in the back of his mind?

Isn't it dangerous to have such crazy people so close to the White House?

America in Iraq

I said at the beginning that many people protested against the war simply because they did not trust the US. It would seem that they were right – the US seems to have botched the job.

Why?

A good part of the reason is that the US believes it's own myth. It believes that it has a manifest destiny to bring democracy to the world. They have an inflated view of their capabilities and an inflated view of the importance of their version of democracy. One of the myths of this war is that the US believed its troops would be welcomed as liberators, welcomed with flowers. Instead they have been welcomed with road side bombs and a mounting death toll.

I had thought to call my first article on the war 'Poking a Stick in the Hornet's Nest', because I thought that was exactly what the US was doing. And now the hornets are swarming all over the place stinging the US.

There is no doubt that Saddam was evil and nasty. He was truly the epitome of the Terrible Father archetype. But what must replace a Terrible Father is a Good Father. The Good Father would then start the steady transition to democracy and individualism. But the US has simply removed a Terrible Father, disrupted civil society and offered no viable replacement. The Iraqi Governing Council has little credibility – it is full of opportunists who fuelled the misinformation campaign.

Before the US invaded they should have had a popular figure ready to take control. They should also have invested more money and more troops in the rebuilding effort. Instead the rebuilding effort has been slow and tainted by accusations of corruption, involving a subsidiary of the vice-president Cheney's former company, Halliburton.

What has happened is what I feared would happen.

I don't know what will happen in Iraq. Like many I fear a civil war and the rise of fundamentalism. The worse case scenario is a unified Shi'ite state (Iran and southern Iraq) and a collapsed Saudi state falling into the hands of Ikwhan fanatics. This would mean that fundamentalists will control the worlds three largest oil fields.

I hope that moderation finally wins. – and it still has a chance.

After the attacks on the WTC many good Americans asked, why do they hate us? After the revelations about Iraq, the absent WMD, the increase in terrorist activity and the atrocities of Abu Ghraib – that question should now be answered.

Walking in the shadows

The great achievement of the US was the adoption of Enlightenment principles and the creation of a powerful Constitution and Bill of Rights. Along with the French revolution the American revolution inspired the growth of democracy and the spread of Enlightenment ideals.

The shadow side of that achievement was the steady corruption of that same rational ideal at the hands of mythic America. The idea that the US was the promised land invaded US thinking and created the myth of a manifest destiny, a special, God given purpose for the US, and a cultural arrogance. This doctrine has reappeared as the Neocon fantasy that Iraq would embrace the US as liberators and that they will be able to bring democracy to the Middle East. This is increasingly becoming conflated with some truly disturbing and insane religious doctrines.

A year ago I happened to watch a program in which the well known journalist Larry King interviewed the children of the fundamentalist preacher, Billy Graham. King referred to Graham as a great American and not once did he question Graham's fundamentalist doctrine. He should have. In fact he should have avoided having them on his show.

The problem here is that the Enlightenment principle of freedom of religion has been replaced with a simple minded acceptance of plain stupidity. Religious tolerance has come to mean tolerating stupidity. Wilber has correctly drawn a distinction between genuine compassion and idiot compassion. It is time Americans made a distinction between genuine tolerance and idiot tolerance.

It's about time we realized that large sections of the American population are yet to undertake the Enlightenment. This is the major project in the decades ahead.

The world cannot afford a hyper power that is influenced by mythic thinking. It cannot afford to have a president who gives legitimacy to crazy people.

Ray Harris, May, 2004

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June 11, 2007
Authentic? Never Mind
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Rich liberals who claim they'll help America's less fortunate are phonies.

Let me give you one example -- a Democrat who said he'd work on behalf of workers and the poor. He even said he'd take on big business. But the truth is that while he was saying those things, he was living in a big house and had a pretty lavish summer home too. His favorite recreation, sailing, was incredibly elitist. And he didn't talk like a regular guy.

Clearly, this politician wasn't authentic. His name? Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Luckily, that's not how the political game was played 70 years ago. F.D.R. wasn't accused of being a phony; he was accused of being a ''traitor to his class.'' But today, it seems, politics is all about seeming authentic. A recent Associated Press analysis of the political scene asked: ''Can you fake authenticity? Probably not, but it might be worth a try.''

What does authenticity mean? Supposedly it means not pretending to be who you aren't. But that definition doesn't seem to fit the way the term is actually used in political reporting.

For example, the case of F.D.R. shows that there's nothing inauthentic, in the normal sense of the word, about calling for higher taxes on the rich while being rich yourself. If anything, it's to your credit if you advocate policies that will hurt your own financial position. But the news media seem to find it deeply disturbing that John Edwards talks about fighting poverty while living in a big house.

On the other hand, consider the case of Fred Thompson. He spent 18 years working as a highly paid lobbyist, wore well-tailored suits and drove a black Lincoln Continental. When he ran for the Senate, however, his campaign reinvented him as a good old boy: it leased a used red pickup truck for him to drive, dressed up in jeans and a work shirt, with a can of Red Man chewing tobacco on the front seat.

But Mr. Thompson's strength, says Lanny Davis in The Hill, is that he's ''authentic.''

Oh, and as a candidate George W. Bush was praised as being more authentic than Al Gore. As late as November 2005, MSNBC's chief political correspondent declared that Mr. Bush's authenticity was his remaining source of strength. But now The A.P. says that Mr. Bush's lack of credibility is the reason his would-be successors need to seem, yes, authentic.

Talk of authenticity, it seems, lets commentators and journalists put down politicians they don't like or praise politicians they like, with no relationship to what the politicians actually say or do.

Here's a suggestion: Why not evaluate candidates' policy proposals, rather than their authenticity? And if there are reasons to doubt a candidate's sincerity, spell them out.

For example, Hillary Clinton's credibility as a friend of labor is called into question, not by her biography or life style, but by the fact that, as The Nation recently reported, her chief strategist -- a man Al Gore fired in 2000 because he didn't trust him -- heads a public relations company that helps corporations fight union organizing drives.

And where do you start with Rudy Giuliani? We keep being told that he has credibility on national security, because he seemed so reassuring on 9/11. (Some firefighters have condemned his actual performance that day, saying that rescue efforts were uncoordinated and that firemen died because he provided them with faulty radios. ''All he did was give information on the TV,'' said a deputy fire chief whose son died at the World Trade Center. ''He did nothing.'' And the nation's largest firefighters' union has condemned his handling of recovery efforts in the weeks following 9/11.)

But he's spent the years since then cashing in on terrorism, and his decisions about Giuliani Partners' personnel and clients raise real questions about his seriousness. His partners, as The Washington Post pointed out, included ''a former police commissioner later convicted of corruption, a former F.B.I. executive who admitted taking artifacts from ground zero and a former Roman Catholic priest accused of covering up sexual abuse in the church.''

The point is that questions about a candidate shouldn't be whether he or she is ''authentic.'' They should be about motives: whose interests would the candidate serve if elected? And think how much better shape the nation would be in if enough people had asked that question seven years ago.

Lil Devil!

A fitting image (not my handiwork) for one of the demonic unevolved (Boschian imp-demon) CheneyRoveBushCo. criminal gang -

19th century blues

More Pompous Prose: Neo-hippie-new age

We're living in another Republican fueled Gilded Age plutocracy, when we should be living in a pluralistic integral beyond the small self (ego) mutually interdependent and interdependently caring planetary community or at least up to the level of green (environmental) prioritzation and re-enlargement of green values and priorities - aiming to renounce the isolated afraid contracted self - the harmony green flow gateway to the transpersonal.

Just because Ken Wilber said that transpersonal psychology is dead doesn't mean that it is, but if it is, the word still has tremendous value.

The pathological green level ceiling

As opposed to the healthy green level gateway to second tier -

Notes on contemporary culture -

Science fiction and myth (for instance on tv, the series "The 4400" and "Heroes") is in place of true transformed characters - transformed to trans-egoic big mind and big heart - instead we have super human heroes that are mythic which is actually a level down from modern real humanism. the pre-trans fallacy at work - there are not viable models of second-tier people, because of the rift of the European Dissociation. When we see contemporary realistic characters, we find the same alienation characterized the late modern period now with a large dose of narcissism brought in my the pathological (not healthy) postmodern era ("The Starter Wife" "Desperate Housewives" "Brothers and Sisters"). When I get well, I intend on writing stories of second tier characters.

Paul Krugman gets it right, as he usually does

PAUL KRUGMAN: Fear of Eating

(Homogenous GOP presidential contenders or e Coli? You make the call.)

Yesterday I did something risky: I ate a salad.

These are anxious days at the lunch table. For all you know, there may be E. coli on your spinach, salmonella in your peanut butter and melamine in your pet’s food and, because it was in the feed, in your chicken sandwich.

Who’s responsible for the new fear of eating? Some blame globalization; some blame food-producing corporations; some blame the Bush administration. But I blame Milton Friedman.

Now, those who blame globalization do have a point. U.S. officials can’t inspect overseas food-processing plants without the permission of foreign governments — and since the Food and Drug Administration has limited funds and manpower, it can inspect only a small percentage of imports. This leaves American consumers effectively dependent on the quality of foreign food-safety enforcement. And that’s not a healthy place to be, especially when it comes to imports from China, where the state of food safety is roughly what it was in this country before the Progressive movement.

The Washington Post, reviewing F.D.A. documents, found that last month the agency detained shipments from China that included dried apples treated with carcinogenic chemicals and seafood “coated with putrefying bacteria.” You can be sure that a lot of similarly unsafe and disgusting food ends up in American stomachs.

Those who blame corporations also have a point. In 2005, the F.D.A. suspected that peanut butter produced by ConAgra, which sells the product under multiple brand names, might be contaminated with salmonella. According to The New York Times, “when agency inspectors went to the plant that made the peanut butter, the company acknowledged it had destroyed some product but declined to say why,” and refused to let the inspectors examine its records without a written authorization.

According to the company, the agency never followed through. This brings us to our third villain, the Bush administration.

Without question, America’s food safety system has degenerated over the past six years. We don’t know how many times concerns raised by F.D.A. employees were ignored or soft-pedaled by their superiors. What we do know is that since 2001 the F.D.A. has introduced no significant new food safety regulations except those mandated by Congress.

This isn’t simply a matter of caving in to industry pressure. The Bush administration won’t issue food safety regulations even when the private sector wants them. The president of the United Fresh Produce Association says that the industry’s problems “can’t be solved without strong mandatory federal regulations”: without such regulations, scrupulous growers and processors risk being undercut by competitors more willing to cut corners on food safety. Yet the administration refuses to do more than issue nonbinding guidelines.

Why would the administration refuse to regulate an industry that actually wants to be regulated? Officials may fear that they would create a precedent for public-interest regulation of other industries. But they are also influenced by an ideology that says business should never be regulated, no matter what.

The economic case for having the government enforce rules on food safety seems overwhelming. Consumers have no way of knowing whether the food they eat is contaminated, and in this case what you don’t know can hurt or even kill you. But there are some people who refuse to accept that case, because it’s ideologically inconvenient.

That’s why I blame the food safety crisis on Milton Friedman, who called for the abolition of both the food and the drug sides of the F.D.A. What would protect the public from dangerous or ineffective drugs? “It’s in the self-interest of pharmaceutical companies not to have these bad things,” he insisted in a 1999 interview. He would presumably have applied the same logic to food safety (as he did to airline safety): regardless of circumstances, you can always trust the private sector to police itself.

O.K., I’m not saying that Mr. Friedman directly caused tainted spinach and poisonous peanut butter. But he did help to make our food less safe, by legitimizing what the historian Rick Perlstein calls “E. coli conservatives”: ideologues who won’t accept even the most compelling case for government regulation.

Earlier this month the administration named, you guessed it, a “food safety czar.” But the food safety crisis isn’t caused by the arrangement of the boxes on the organization chart. It’s caused by the dominance within our government of a literally sickening ideology.

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My comment -

Paul Krugman gets it right-on as he usually does. He covered all the bases in the right way.

These anti-government zealots are delusional, if they think the "free market" will protect our safety, health, and environment. The so-called "free market" has only one value: maximum short-term monetary profit for the plutocracy and shareholders.

It should be noted, as someone was saying in a comment at welcometopottersville, jp's blog, that Ayn Rand isn't so bad, that Milton Friedman was a fawning acolyte of hers in his early years.

The wonderful fruits of "free trade" and anti-regulation

Every day we're treated to new news items about discoveries of new food items imported from China containing highly dangerous drugs (such as antibiotics), pesticides, and other chemicals toxic to human health. The latest is farm-raised catfish containing several of these that have serious conseqences for human health, including (according to a report today on "The Loud Dobbs Report") cancer, liver and kidney failure.

The FDA is asleep at the switch, as directed by the Bush administration.

The maleovolent negligence of this speaks for itself.

Why are the bees dying? The best candidate, according to a report on "360" is a new pesticide introduced within the last few years. And which administration was in charge? Bees are essential to 40% of our food crops and they are dying out at an alarming rate.

I hope the shareholders in imported Chinese food and pesticide companies are happy. They might be able to buy a yacht soon and enjoy themselves before they and their children die of god- knows-what affliction.

This is unreal.

I mean it should be the stuff of nightmares, not reality.

January 21, 2009 might be too late, but it can't come too soon.

If people would wake up, these eveildoers would be impeached.