Friday, January 08, 2010

The Imperial Origins of Feudal America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Any politician can cook up a run o' the mill recession, but it requires the GOP to revert an entire people to feudalism. Our status as vassal of China is the evidence and result of our feudal status. GOP policies from which a ruling elite of just one percent benefit are responsible; the results may be seen at the CIA's 'World Fact Book' which lists China at the very top with the World's largest positive Current Account Balance and the U.S. on bottom with the world's largest negative Current Account Balance. Related to this is China's support for the U.S. dollar, a situation that China tolerates so that American consumers can buy Chinese product at Wal-Mart. If China should find this arrangement inconvenient, as many have said it is becoming, then China may 'pull the plug' and the dollar will collapse.

The economic decline of America is behind and the result of U.S. imperialism, a path about which we were well warned by a man that I have called the 'last honest Republican' ---Dwight David Eisenhower.
The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only ineffective cooperation with fellow-nations.

Third: Any nation’s right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

--Ike's Cross of Iron speech
My facebook friend, calling himself Abbie Hoffman, points an accusing finger at 'military Keynesianism', also called 'barracks socialism':
"One could argue that the US got addicted to it after WWII, that we haven't resolved the issues and problems of the postwar era. Maybe that's obvious?"

That said, we have a long history of war-profiteering stretching back to the American Civil War, and a war about ever generation of our history.

--"Abbie Hoffman"(FB id),
The recovery from the Great Depression was slow. World War II created a fully employed economy seemingly overnight. New industries sprang up, new products invented, most memorably the Higgins Boat, the landing craft, manufactured in Louisiana remembred primarily for the drop down front that allowed US troops to disembark on the heavily fortified beaches of Normandy.

The lesson learned was the wrong one. A war time economy like that created in response to Pearl Harbor cannot last. Perpetual prosperity via Orwellian perpetual war is not possible.
It [military Keynesianism] unfolded primarily during George W. Bush's administration with legislation signed in to law by William Jefferson Clinton and the bills to continue this trend are still on the books! Scary, hey? This is why we have to break from spending our energy fighting the left vs. the right fight because it's just an illusion of smoke and mirrors and is taking our focus off of the real culprit; the super class, those who posses over 80% of the world's money supply and ehat needs to be done to reverse the ugly economic trends we now suffer.

--Nancy My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Oligarchy ~ Purchased By ‘The MIC’

Many colonial businesses, including Shipbuilders, made a good living off the 'Revolutionary' war. Rome, arguably, had been bankrupt long before the Praetorian Guard auctioned it all off to Didius Julianus for Greek currency --not worthless Roman sesterces. Much earlier, Rome invaded Dacia for its gold. Rome makes for thrilling movies and gripping TV series. But actually living in it was not nearly so glamorous. Like the U.S. today a tiny and shrinking aristocracy alone benefited from Roman conquest. The currency was all but worthless. Poverty was rampant and growing as 'aristocrats' seized small farms!

Empire is surely the last step toward feudalism --at least in the 'empire' scenario. A 'feudal' Europe filled the vacuum resulting from the fall of decadent Rome. A 'feudal America' may arise amid the ruins of the huge, flashy skyscraper-filled corporate empire of America. In his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire', Gore Vidal puts a date upon the fall of the American Republic --1950. The 'imperial system', the 'security state' resulting, became the self-reinforcing mechanism by which the US would justify intervention against its 'interests' in far flung reaches --Korea, Viet Nam, the Middle East. The last President to eschew American interventions in various crises was JFK who refused US air cover for a CIA operation called the Bay of Pigs.

Many believe that one motive of several for his assassination, his cold blooded murder in Dallas on November 22, 1963. And Mr. Bugliosi, please don't try to tell me that Mr. Zapruder's camera movements 'explain' the apparent motion of JFK's head backward. I have practiced high-level, exacting photography with still cameras of all formats from 8mm motions picture to 4x5 large format product photography for commercial clients in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and Houston. Put me on the stand as an expert and I will testify, based upon my own frame by frame analysis of high rez Zapruder images that there is simply no way that camera movement will account, i.e, explain the movement of JFKs head backward upon being hit on Z -313. More on that in a future article.

Vidal points out that the USA has intervened aggressively, waging at least 300 wars in every part of the world despite the fact that the US Constitution requires a Declaration of War by Congress. The last time an American president sought and obtained congressional approval for a war was in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Today --US Presidents don't bother. My first recollection of the word 'intervention' was the use of US troops in Lebanon by Dwight David Eisenhower. It was not a war, we were told. It was just an 'intervention'.

Later, the US would intervene in Viet Nam, a failed and lost war, a perpetual war by Orwellian standards, a tragic loss of thousands of American lives for no good purpose whatsoever. When the US eventually withdrew, the 'two Viet Nams' united, predictably and what had been a killing field is now a prosperous and peaceful nation. We, America, lost that war but from the ashes a prosperous nation flourished. But --it must be pointed out --that result is an effect of our leaving Viet Nam --not our staying. Based on the facts of history, I will wager that when the U.S. leaves the middle east and the CIA is, likewise, muzzzled or, better, smashed 'into a thousand pieces, that part of the world, too, will rebound and prosper.

It is time that someone speak the unspeakable and painful truth: American citizens, some of them my classmates, were sacrificed for nothing in Viet Nam! American citizens, primarily those who could not afford to stay in school and thus 'earn' a deferment, were sacrificed for vainglorious, imperial ambitions. I deny that 'right' of nations and/or empires to to sacrifice its youth, its talent, its wealth for the benefit of the very, very few, an 'elite' few.

Viet Nam was the crime of murder committed by arrogant, vainglorious empire upon its people. It was a crime upon the people by the privileged which makes up just one percent of the US population. Shame! It is time that a real revolution --not a focus group approved, cooked up, top down bullshit propaganda stunt called 'tea baggers' --to put an end to his Leviathan called 'empire'!

'Tea Baggers' will not solve the problems of America

They are, rather a part of the problem.Tea baggers embrace a panoply of lies and various forms of bigotry to include racism at home and the demonization of 'Islam' abroad. Tea baggers are wrong, wrong-headed, mis-informed, perhaps, just plain stupid. They are not the solution; they ARE the problem, a cancer, a sore, an open wound, a scab that was picked.

Keynes himself would not have approved of 'Military Keynesianism' which follows from misconceptions about Keynes, often thought of by 'conservatives' as being just short of communist if not communist outright. It must be pointed out however, that it was a Republican --Richard NIxon --who opined "We are all Keynesians now!"

NOT!

Militarists, by way of the lobbies who benefit most from military spending, 'hijacked' Keynes and drag out his corpse to justify increases in the huge US military budget. Keynes, himself, would have known better. Keynes would have supported expansions of the economy but, as Gore Vidal pointed out, military spending actually represents a contraction --not an expansion, certainly not an expansion that benefits anyone but the rich ruling elite of just one percent of the total US population.

A 'tank', Gore says, is an economic black hole. And so it is returning nothing but 'booty' benefiting only the ever shrinking elite. During the Reagan years, an elite of just 20 percent benefited from the highly touted but unfair and unjust tax cuts. Everyone else lost ground as wealth trickled UP --not down! Things are worse now! Last time I checked, just one percent of the total US population owned more than about 95 percent or more of the rest of us combined. That is called an 'L - curve' in contrast to the normal distribution curve commonly referred to as a 'Bell Curve'. This outcome is the opposite of Keynesianism --an effective contraction of moneys spent, a contraction of the economy as a whole. The L - curve is the result.

The MIC will always create isolated pools here and there. For example, every half-assed town in TX used to compete, lobby and scramble for a 'military base'. Local businesses love it until the base closes down at which time the localized bubble bursts. It is a phony prosperity based upon a bubble that, of late, is created by war crimes. I always hated base towns where merchants always raised prices upon news of military pay raises and cut back jobs upon news of troop reductions.

As odious as are the 'military economies' found in base towns, congressmen exploit local fears of base closings, 'baracks' economics at its worst. Almost every congressman I knew in Texas would campaign on promises of new bases and/or expansion of current bases. Clearly --the modern Praetorians were not, are not content with a one-time sell-out; rather, they conduct an an on-going auction of empire. It's called Congress. Are we beyond reform? We will have to begin and/or restore some of the industries we've lost to China and Japan from scratch. Who will invest in us? Can we trust the liars and clowns who created all this mess to reform themselves? I doubt it.

My friend Abbie wrote: "The rich are going to be holding monopoly money". Indeed, and that is yet another way in which the rich will have screwed us over. The rich will sellout short and thus get even richer. That will, of course, result in a monetary collapse that will swamp everyone. Right now, we are all playing chicken. Millions --who bought into this while thinking themselves rich --will learn otherwise and quickly. As Billie Holiday sang: God bless the child that's got his own!
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Monday, January 04, 2010

How China Partnered with the GOP to Screw America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Chinese rulers and the US elites partnered to enslave US workers and consumers. As a result, the US became a vassal state of China, a huge population which props up the buck so that it can sell us junk via Wal-Mart.

These deals were all worked out with China by Bush Sr et al in the years following Nixon's infamous visit to the forbidden city. In these talks, US leaders, primarily the right wing/GOP, the US consumer and laborer was sold out. The US would become a vassal state, a slave state, a consumer society whose raison d'etre was to buy Chinese junk. The big losers are US workers and consumers.
I work at Wal-Mart (I'm involved in the UFCW's effort to organize W-M). One day, right after I was hired, I went around on my lunch break and just sort of randomly looked at where a whole bunch of products were made.

I think I found a blender that had been made in Malaysia. EVERYTHING else had been made in China.

I wonder how the typical US consumer would feel about Wal-Mart if it were named, say, US Corporate Capital & Chinese Slave Labor Coooperative?
--John Carter, on Facebook
The US used to make some of the products --appliances, electronic gear et al --that are now dumped on the US via an economic blight called Wal-Mart! The US ruling elite resented the high wages paid to unionized workers in affluent America. Nixon, Reagan et al solved the US labor 'problem'!

The solution: EXPORT US JOBS TO CHINA!

China pays slave wages and dumps the resulting cheap product on a US which produces very little these days. Concurrently, there are fewer futures, fewer opportunities, declining hope, rising despair --all the result of some thirty or forty years of right wing bullshit, lies, crookery and outright fraud. The GOP, for example, is not a political party. It is a crime syndicate and a kooky cult to boot!

The tragic truth can be found in black and white at the CIA's World Fact Book which lists the US at the bottom of the list with the world's largest negative current account balance, formerly called the balance of trade deficit.
While the US was spending time, resources and personnel in running 'elections' for its corrupt clients in Afghanistan and Iraq, and participating in pointless mediations between its intransigent Israeli partner and its impotent Palestinian client, the South Korean government backed a consortium headed by the Korea Electric Power Corporation in its successful bid on the $20.4 billion dollar nuclear power deal, opening the way for other billion-dollar contracts in the region (FT - page 13).
...
In contrast, the US is a declining world power with a deteriorating society resulting from its military-driven empire building and its financial-speculative centered economy:
  1. Washington pursues minor military clients in Asia; while China expands its trading and investment agreements with major economic partners - Russia, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.Washington drains the domestic economy to finance overseas wars. China extracts minerals and energy resources to create its domestic job market in manufacturing.
  2. The US invests in military technology to target local insurgents challenging US client regimes; China invests in civilian technology to create competitive exports.
  3. China begins to restructure its economy toward developing the country's interior and allocates greater social spending to redress its gross imbalances and inequalities while the US rescues and reinforces the parasitical financial sector, which plundered industries (strips assets via mergers and acquisitions) and speculates on financial objectives with no impact on employment, productivity or competitiveness.
  4. The US multiplies wars and troop build-ups in the Middle East, South Asia, the Horn of Africa and Caribbean; China provides investments and loans of over $25 billion dollars in building infrastructure, mineral extraction, energy production and assembly plants in Africa.
  5. China signs multi-billion dollar trade and investment agreements with Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, securing access to strategic energy, mineral and agricultural resources; Washington provides $6 billion in military aid to Colombia, secures seven military bases from President Uribe (to threaten Venezuela), backs a military coup in tiny Honduras and denounces Brazil and Bolivia for diversifying its economic ties with Iran.
  6. China increases economic relations with dynamic Latin American economies, incorporating over 80% of the continent's population; the US partners with the failed state of Mexico, which has the worst economic performance in the hemisphere and where powerful drug cartels control wide regions and penetrate deep into the state apparatus. --Information Clearing House, The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning, James Petras
The US right wing robbed the US population with "trickle down theory" and other nonsense utterly unsupported with fact or evidence:

In the late 1970s, the top one percent of the US population held 13 percent of the wealth; in 1995 it held 38 percent. [Source: Source: Levy, Frank. The New Dollars and Dreams ].


  • The top ten percent of the US population owns 81.8 percent of the real estate, 81.2 percent of the stock, and 88 percent of the bonds. [Source: Federal Reserve Bank data in Left Business Observer, No. 72, Apr. 3, 1996, p. 5].
  • One percent of the US population owns sixty percent of the stock and forty percent of the total wealth. [Source: Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. New York: Harper Business, 1993].
  • The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent....
  • Since 1973, every group in society except the top 20 percent has seen its share of the national income decline, with the bottom 20 percent losing the most. They have just 3.6 percent of national income, down from 4.4 percent a quarter century ago.
  • Indeed, the top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined...Rebecca Blank, who recently left the President's Council of Economic Advisors, pointed out, ‘We've gone back to levels of income and wealth inequality that this country hasn't seen since the teens and 1920s.’" [Source: Merrill Goozner, Crash of '99?, Salon.com, Oct. 1, 1999; addendum: since 1999, the date the source was published, the situation is much, much worse. Today --just ONE PERCENT own more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. GOP incompetence and criminality moves so fast these days, it's hard to keep up!].
The top one percent of Americans receive more income than the bottom 40 percent. [Source: Korten, David. When Corporations Rule the World, p. 108].
Federal Reserve median family net worth by percentile for 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001 (Federal Reserve Bulletin January 2003, pp. 1-36). Note the small gains for the bottom 75% of the population and larger gains for the upper 25% and that the 1998 to 2001 gains were largest. 
--US Wealth Distributions 1989-2001
Republicans bought the scam because it made them feel good about being greedy, shallow bastards. The appeal is obvious: trickle down rationalized greed but only after the fact; it made one feel good about one's worst impulses, motives, and elitist bigotry.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

BBC: Al Qaeda NEVER Existed!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The BBC had revealed that Al Qaeda is a creation of US propaganda, in fact, a term never used by Bin Laden until after 911. The implications of the BBC documentary are enormous. It means that the US government of George W. Bush is guilty of the crimes of mass murder, high treason with respect to 911 and war crimes with respect to the mass murder of Iraqi civilians who had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. The specific crimes are violations of U.S. Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 which prescribes the penalty of death for violations thereof!

Bush --you and your administration are in deep shit! An ever angrier American population will --one day --bring you and your CIA co-conspirators to justice. In the meantime, I suggest that all members of the Bush administration look up the relevent federal laws, some of which prescribe death. Start with US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441.

(a) Offense. - Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--U.S.C. § 2441 : US Code - Section 2441: War crimes
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