TheMillerCircle.org

Power Generation in Liberty (Zucotti) Park

William Blum has a lot to say about the conduct of American foreign policy and the deceit with which we communicate our international behavior to our citizens. To say we are duplicitous does not quite explain the true situation. We describe how we are doing God’s work abroad and then hide the numbers and details of those who have died and suffered as a consequence of carrying out His wishes–but it’s all in the best interests of “spreading democracy.”  Blum has an excellent bullshit detector and that’s why I read his blog with some regularity. Ordinarily, you don’t go to his website if you are searching for an uplifting message about America, but in his most recent blog, he actually has one! It’s all about the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and, as explained therein, Blum is pleasantly surprised and uplifted by their message and their persistence in delivering it.  My son and I had a similar experience when we visited Zucotti Park   a few weeks ago (now renamed by the OWS movement as Liberty Park–its original name) and absorbed the culture of those promoting these ideas.

When you think about the major protest activities we have historically engaged in, against the wars we have entered, beginning with the Vietnam war, they have all been time-limited by the event that initiated them. When the war ended, protests stopped and everybody went home–issue over, if not forgotten, though that event in particular left a deep national scar. Sometimes, as in the case of the war in Iraq, we don’t even wait for it to end before putting it out of our mind–we simply don’t have a way of dealing with wars we start without a good reason. Bury it in a file but in which file cabinet does it belong? The OWS movement is different; it addresses another kind of issue, something that is more inter-generational, more longitudinal in scope and more fundamental, like the backbone to our culture. Yet it began with too much subtlety for us to detect and it remains an insidious force waiting to be full fleshed out. Yes, it’s neoliberalism that we are against,  and while it may have started as an economic change of course, it has become far more than an economic blueprint for a more divisive future–it has crept into every pore of our cultural being and has overtaken the central values of our society. And the politics of neoliberalism are draining to our culture–we get exhausted too easily imagining what the country was like before. Multinational corporations now effectively run governments, in fact they own them.

With the current economic meltdown, we’re beginning to perceive the real core of the problem as an encompassing social, spiritual and economic disaster–a long national nightmare of sorts.  The financial disaster that led to the “Great Recession” (let’s face it, for young people the unemployment picture is at depression levels) was initially viewed as something we could do nothing about–we were too “financialized” to confront the political and social power that controlled our government and made the rules. But the OWS movement has been courageous enough to put up the first STOP sign and begin the process of inoculating the country against this festering contagion of corruption and economic despair.  We can all hope that the movement will continue to grow until its mass reaches a critical threshold such that the  majority of Americans will recognize  we cannot continue with a system that dehumanizes us with too much poverty and too few opportunities to develop and grow as humans–there must be a better way. And so there is! But as the long struggle begins to right our ship, it is only beginning to take shape in our brains and not through identifiable objects around us.

It may have started off as a lack of good paying jobs and high unemployment, but, like the Populist movement of the 1870s, it will hopefully grow until we create a more democratic country, something like the one we quit on in the 1970s. We must radically change our system of government to make it more responsive to our social needs. Then too, we have the additional urgency of saving the planet we live on. We will not do away with our financial system, but one hopes to tame it and make it subservient to the needs of society, rather than the other way around. The neoliberal experiment is over. It didn’t work. It produced too much poverty, destroyed our national creativity, hollowed out our economy  and is completely indifferent if not hostile to the environment–that is just one more arena for corporate exploitation. Those for whom the country does work seem to be the least deserving and least imaginative members of our culture–they must become the new workers in a revised  economy that works better for all of us, including them, though they don’t see it that way right now. It’s more than just hitting the restart button. We can no longer tolerate a system in which our national assets are sold off at fire-sale prices, as employees are stripped of their retirement–that is robbery–we are now confronted with the new robber barons, who are far more sinister than the predecessors for whom they are named. They are on automatic pilot and will not cease until we stop them. One of the best things we can do to tame Wall Street is impose a small tax on every stock market exchange which will not only raise money but also inhibit the rapid, electronic stock exchanges that continue to pose a risk to our economy. America is not broke. In fact the Institute for Policy Studies has outlined several changes in our tax and subsidy policy that could create seven times the amount of money that the failed Super Committee was trying to achieve. And most of us wouldn’t know the difference. The idea that we are broke is simply another example of how the neoliberals have fashioned a corrupt tax code with advantages to the super rich and subsidies to industries that are generating huge profits, for providing energy that does not reflect the true cost of doing business. A sensible Congress could solve these issues simply and effectively.

• Continue reading Comments Off

Iran Hostage Crisis U.S. Embassy Nov 4, 1979

It is the DNA of our foreign policy apparatus that forces us, perhaps in sync with some kind of diplomatic circadian rhythm, to periodically promote the idea that Iran is secretly building a nuclear bomb, in addition to the fact that they are the greatest satanic threat to world peace since the rise of fascism in Europe. Though we don’t officially use the term anymore, GW Bush’s characterization of Iran as part of the axis-of-evil is still emblematic of how we view and diplomatically treat Iran today. We can’t say enough bad things about the country and we are always looking for ways to tighten the sanctions against them we have already imposed (we are going to strengthen our sanctions since the British closed their embassy in Tehran terminated Iran’s foreign office in London). Yes the Iranian regime is a brutal dictatorship and no we don’t want them to develop a nuclear weapon. In fact, we want to eliminate all nuclear weapons. But ever since radicals overthrew the Shah and took our embassy members as hostages (we installed the Shah by overthrowing their democratically elected leader Mossadegh in 1953, as a favor to British oil interests and what eventually became BP (British Petroleum) and is now bp (beyond petroleum)), we cannot shake the fact that we once had the Middle East oil situation fairly well worked out, with rulers who generally did our bidding, especially in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait until Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah and established an Islamic Republic in 1979. We just can’t accept the humiliation we suffered in that episode and we want and need the current regime to topple. It’s obvious that the United States will not be happy until Iran goes through a change in leadership and we would obviously prefer someone more compliant with our own interests compared with the today’s intolerable situation: we demand regime change. But the reactionary posture we unavoidably display towards Iran, and refresh with predictable synchrony, is aided by our partner in sinister delusions, Likudian Israel, who shares in this paranoia and regularly feeds us information reinforcing our satanic interpretation of the country. But a definite pause was recently injected into the conversation about Iran: a recent report by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the watchdog of non-weapons nuclear technology transfer, claimed “the possible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran.” This was new because the same agency had reported in 2007 that there was no evidence for a nuclear weapons program in Iran (see below). But, that’s all it took. A lead story in the New York Times the day after the IAEA report came out advanced the idea that “United Nations weapons inspectors [IAEA] have amassed a trove of new evidence that they say makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device.” You know that when the New York Times comes out with a forceful article like that, the story has legs and war chants begin, typically originating on Faux News (I didn’t check). Yet, later on the same day, the Times came out with a second, more cautionary report admitting “It is true that the basic allegations in the report are not substantially new, and have been discussed by experts for years. Many of them appear to be those first uncovered in the laptop stolen in 2004, said Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Southern California who has written extensively on Iran’s nuclear program.“

• Continue reading Comments Off

William Blum

No matter what you believe about the objectives and methods used to conduct American Foreign policy, especially since WW II, you need to check in periodically for an oil and filter change with author William Blum, whose most famous book is “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II“; I didn’t know the full scope of our outrageous foreign policy intrusions around the globe until I read Blum’s book. Americans were not supposed to know about these things. Thanks to a few insightful journalists, we have slowly assembled the story of our past. When you mate Blum’s book with Chalmers Johnson’s Trilogy, including “Blowback,” it is hard to feel good about what we are doing, in almost any region of the globe. Conducting America’s business abroad you say?  Granted, American Imperialism is not the old fashioned colonialism that we lightly denounced; what we have is a military imperialism in which we establish bases and “com” divisions that are responsible for maintaining American Hegemony throughout the world, including North America. Indeed, we are hoping that AFRICOM, which is currently centered in Stuttgart Germany, will find a base home in Libya once the dust settles down.  We discovered a long time ago that the easiest way to exploit a country is to make sure you have an obliging dictator in charge (if not do the installation work yourself), allow him and his entourage to accumulate some wealth and then grab all you can until some revolution comes along, which you then denounce as anti-democratic or communist, or nowadays, theocratic. That mobilizes forces at home and buys you some more time to pursue your exploitation in God-granted perpetuity. Does anyone really believe that we will be out of Iraq or Afghanistan in our lifetime? We have already committed ourselves to “the long wars” and not even a serious recession/depression can prevent our military from maintaining a global commitment which rhymes with support of the global economy and the Neoliberalism that got us there. In the meantime, we march ever more steadily towards a theocracy ourselves, as the Republican slate for the Presidency is shaping up to be dominated by fundamentalist wackos.

You only have too look at our astonishing record in Haiti, including this story if you believe we are out to improve the lot of some other country. If you’ve forgotten the rules or the history, Blum maintains a blog at www.killinghope.org where you can access much of our past Foreign adventurism since the close of WW II and, in his most recent blog, he challenges your understanding of what we are doing in Libya. If you are not fully informed, be prepared to see a long list and since we cannot fully access the involvement of the CIA, whose actions are largely outside the scope of conventional journalism, we can expect that the list Blum provides, if anything, is shorter than the real thing. Fortunately,  Wikileaks seems to be filling in at least some of the gaps. Blum’s most recent blog describes an alternative view of our engagement in Libya. One of the statements on his blog is the following that summarizes the disparity between what we say we are (to ourselves and others  who will listen) and how we actually behave when the rubber meets the road:

• “It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: “You were our heroes after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was ‘to be as rich and as wise as an American’. What happened?”

That is my impression–going fresh into countries in which we had a good reputation, based on the history we have composed about ourselves, a sense of replenishing idealism,  the movies we made and the books we wrote about our history and aspirations. But when idealism clashes with corporatism, you know who wins and that’s what happened to America. So, once the true nature of our policy was known–to exploit resources and install and support dictatorships, one after the other, without ever supporting conditions more favorable to a democratic government, it becomes much easier to understand why so many in the Middle East and around the world hate Americans and distrust our intentions.  There is an additional element to all this: what the Michele Bachmann’s and her ilk have given us is the complete absence of those that hate us making a distinction between the actions of our government and the American people. Thanks to them foreigners hat us and our government!  The Arab Spring surely aroused American sentiments in their souls towards those seeking our idealistic sense of freedom. I think the Arab Spring had something to do with the ignition process in Madison. But the polls show that we are deeply mistrusted throughout the Middle East. Why, if going after Gaddafi was to protect civilians, haven’t we done the same for Syria, where the brutality of Assad seems to be far greater and has been carried out against peaceful demonstrators, not revolutionaries? As for Libya, it is a general principle, as Blum points out, that a country leader has the right to overthrow an insurrection. You can never eliminate the oil factor and what about finding a home for AFRICOM?

I have quoted Blum previously on his alternative message to the inductees into our Armed Forces. Who can argue? Do we have a mercenary army recruited out of the economic despair we create in neighborhoods where there is little hope of regional employment and unemployment is generational?

While you’re at it check out the faces of those protesting against the Canadian tar sand oil pipeline. It’s still going on. You are welcome to visit DC and get arrested, meet Bill McKibben (350.0rg) and Naomi Klein, who will help lighten the load. This looks pretty significant to me, but what will Obama do? It’s his call and his alone. I imagine the decision is already made, don’t you? And, if so, which way will Obama move? Many of the demonstrators were staff members for Obama’s 2008 campaign. He has already relaxed the tougher clean air standards that the EPA was going to implement.

RFM

• Comments Off