Thursday, October 10, 2013
Spielberg's "Lincoln," Justice, and other topics....
Once more: Civil Wars are not good, and should not be glorified or perpetuated...
Most people simply don't understand (or perhaps misunderstand) Justice. What is justice? Many seem to think it is fine as long as it can be used against others. It never applies to one's own actions or policies.
That's clearly what most people - especially our current President and most of Congress, the Judiciary, etc - believe, today. In other words, they do NOT believe in "the Golden Rule", Categorical Imperative, or other principles of universality and identity - "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," to quote a famous feminist whose name has been lost to history.
I was watching the recent Spielberg version of the final months of Lincoln's life and work. I suppose it is all as historically accurate as could be reconstructed from journals, letters, etc. Do we really know people before the days of sound and visual recordings? Of course, there were crude photographs, carefully posed and created at considerable expense, but before that, there were always artists to record history (and mythology).
One of the most controversial parts of Daniel Day Lewis's portrayal was the high-pitched conversational voice - nothing like the voice of a tyrant or other strong leader. Maybe it was Lincoln who TR was thinking of when he said, "Speak softly, and carry a big stick." In any case, it was thought to be historically accurate, and fits the psycho-analytic account of Lincoln as a kind of anally-retentive adolescent, or what we would now call "an Old Boy".
Of course, they were all cigar-smoking, whiskey-swigging barbarians by today's standards, but in Montana, they'd fit right in - even now. Lincoln had but a few years of any kind of formal education, yet read widely (or at least deeply) on his own - not by today's standards, but when you only have a few books, you read and re-read them carefully, even adopting that style of thinking and writing. The King James Bible and Shakespeare are all one really needs to re-create the mind of Abraham Lincoln (in a literary sense, anyway). Being some sort of backwoodsman or frontiersman accounts for the rest of what he was, which included Indian fighting. I'm not sure he was as personally friendly with Black soldiers as is shown in the film, either. But the prevailing attitudes of the time were much more racist, on average, than they are, today - although maybe not 50 years ago.
I bought a DVD of "Lincoln" at my local pawnshop (for $2) shortly after it was released - some good soul having quickly recycled his or her retail purchase. I had also read several reviews and essays on the film (and saved a lot more). So, I wasn't suprised, but found it difficult to watch, so put it aside until last week, when I watched it carefully in several installments.
Lincoln was the most important president in the Stephens family tradition (having long before divorced ourselves from the memory of "Little Aleck" Stephens, who is well-portrayed in this film). Yet, the women, at least (many of whom were trained as teachers) tended not to like him so much, and there are several books from my grandmother's library which are clearly anti-Lincoln (as most of the press and East Coast society were - a point brought out very clearly in the film).
In his own lifetime, Lincoln was widely hated, not only by Southerners and other elitists, but by his own party, the military, and, it's safe to say, nearly all common soldiers. Only a small percentage thought they were fighting to free the slaves, for example, and Lincoln was certainly a compromiser on that, caving into the "Radical Republicans" who held the government hostage, much as the Neo-Cons do, today (while it is all blamed on the "libertarian" TEA's, who are identified as today's "Secessionists").
If it was meant to be a parable for Pres. Obama, it is well-done - even down to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performing in the soundtrack. I hope he watched it two or three times with some learned advisors - he could have learned a lot from it, and perhaps he has.
In the film, Lincoln asks an engineer if he studied Euclid, the answer being that he'd studied it in school, but remembers little of it now. Lincoln quotes something - basically, the Law of Identity - one of the Postulates or Theorems (which he called "common notions") which says that if a=b, and b=c, then a=c. It's also a basic rule of Aristotelian logic, which was supposed to "superceded" by Frege and Russell-Whitehead, among others. The Logical Positivists, Vienna Circle (Verein Ernst Mach), and even the General Semantics movement continued this crusade against Aristotle and the "tyranny" of his logic and naivete of his science.
In fact, such criticisms are nonsense, as those who studied the history of ideas pointed out - especially Popper. The fine points of logic and epistemology have nothing to do with the larger revolt against reason and science, which is destroying our world before our very eyes. And part of it is the idea that knowledge is bound by a priori rules, which are somehow to be "enforced" by academia, and the police powers of the State.
And so, Justice depends on Reason, but not in an authoritarian, deterministic sense. It depends on critical or "evolutionary" Rationalism, which includes everything, and does not categorically reject certain things because they are "immoral" or even "contrary to the public interest." Knowledge, as well as Justice, is an open-ended game.
The only real good is a good Will - the desire to help and respect others, rather than oppressing, attacking, or destroying them. And that is the great sin of our times - to treat people equally (badly), rather than according to what they are and what they have done, or what they can become with better treatment. Criminals are made, not born, as are every kind of sociopath, which used to be the very definition of "criminal." Whoever tries to exploit or enslave others is the criminal, not the persons who are so exploited and enslaved.
Lincoln probably understood this. But most of today's political power brokers clearly do not. As I've often said, we don't have political parties, anymore. We have corporate crime syndicates. And until we get rid of them or remove them from their controlling positions over every branch of government, we are more or less doomed - to poverty and slavery, if not nuclear or environmental catastrophe.
===========
I'm still amazed at the residual racism in Montana, even in those a generation younger than my own - and it's directed not only at Native Americans, but Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, and now more often, Muslims. Montana has good trade and investment relations with Korea, Japan, and the several China's - Hong Kong, especially. And with Southeast Asia - Thailand, Indonesia, etc. They all buy our grain and want to buy our coal. But most of the Blacks and Asians here, came with the military, although large numbers of Chinese came as laborers in the railroad and mining camps, and as soon as one job was done, and they had accumulated a little capital, they went into business - laundries, restaurants, gardening, etc., just like California.
At the same time, the Black regiments from the Civil War - called "buffalo soldiers" by the Indians because of their skin color and bushy hair - were stationed here, along with many freed slaves who became cowboys and businesswomen in various frontier town pursuits. WWII brought in a new generation of Black soldiers, and I'm told by some of their descendants that Malmstrom was actually designated as suitable for mixed-race couples who would have fared badly in the South back in the 1940's and '50's. Still, there were only a handful of black students out of some 2000 enrolled at Great Falls High School which I attended from 1962-65. And aside from a few Metis with French names, there were virtually no Native American high school graduates in those days. I used to take one in the cab who graduated in 1969, and he claimed to be the first one, ever.
A slight exaggeration, but not much. How ironic that the GF made of whitewashed rocks on Hill 57 also marked the home of the Indian shanty-town where people lived in the most abject poverty. (Hill 57 was so named because it had an improvised sign for Heinz products, "57 varieties" also formed of whitewashed rocks. Nobody said we weren't a steakhouse town!).
I spent my really formative years (birth-6 years old, and on through high school, although we lived "in town" during the school year) on a mid-sized wheat and cattle ranch - one of the oldest in that community - Upper Highwood - still in the hands of the original homesteaders' descendants. My grandfather Stephens was revered - by everyone, it would seem, but his own sons, who more or less did the opposite of what he would have counseled, and drank themselves to death in the process. My father did understand it intellectually, though. He was a very learned and refined man, without most of the vulgar bullying and other vices common to the peasantry who surrounded him in his early years (many of whom are quite accomplished and distinguished, now).
He was also a man of peace. His father, my great-grandfather, actually voted for Lincoln in 1864 - the first vote he ever cast for President. So, we were real "Lincoln Republicans", and from the same general location, Kentucky and Illinois at the same time Lincoln flourished. Some of my ancestors fought in the Blackhawk Wars, too - perhaps even as Lincoln's commander, since one was a Colonel Yocom, who was my great-grandmother's father. I even have a Bible in my possession which she gave to my uncle Charles when he was a small boy.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Tester on Nuke politics and economics
Jon Tester's class
Nobody said Jon isn't a great teacher. And part of a great family or clan. So, I always push him forward as "one of the good guys" even while I revile some of the positions he has been forced to take.
What he has done, apparently, is separated his supporters into sheep and goats. It's like splitting the class in a small country school by year, or in this case, by temperament. Some people think for themselves. Put them together, or mix them judiciously with the sheep - who just do and think what they are told. Get every student on a growing, exploring, learning track - finding out things that are important to them. And never forget the Big Picture - global capitalism, a rapidly collapsing environment, constant wars over oil and religion - hey, it's getting to sound a lot like Montana, isn't it?
So, he is the man for the moment. But he's got to start talking more sense. He needs better speechwriters and advisers. He needs his own "brain trust" or think tank, which I would be happy to help organize (don't pack it with a lot of hacks and expect me to work with it, though). Etc.
Montanans never understood Baucus, or what he was about. As I've said, before, he was an Oligarch, created for the part. And that was disastrous - not only for us, but for the nation and the planet. And by supporting him, Montana's best and brightest have condemned themselves to eternal infamy. We told them a thousand times and in a thousand ways - this is wrong. Corporate capitalism is not the answer. But, they didn't listen, and now we're on the verge of extinction - something we have always been since Baucus's predecessors made us into a Doomsday Machine.
It's serious, folks. Tester's greatest mistake thus far is siding with the fanatical "missiliers". The issue has never been the Base (Malmstrom), or "the local economy" and "5000 jobs", and depending on the source, anywhere from 25-46% of this "local economy". I keep telling them: that's the figure for percentages of FEDERAL SPENDING in Cascade County or whatever. And it may or may not include other military spending like pensions and Vet's benefits (which should, of course, be the same for everyone, and not depend on military service or anything else - least of all one's financial resources, or lack of them). But even if it does, you'd find that military spending for the nation as a whole is less than 8% of the national economy, and if Great Falls has 46% military economy, there are lots of other places with less than the average (and whose bases have already been closed) who will want to know why.
Face it. We've developed a cult of nuclear terrorism. We ARE the nuclear terrorists, and have been since Vietnam, which at the time was out of Minuteman range. When our mission was seen as "resisting Communist aggression" (of which there actually was none - it was all part of the same revolutionary, anti-colonialist struggle which gave birth to the USA), they could find people to support it. But now that it's clearly fighting over nothing but religion and oil, and the mechanisms of "Disaster Capitalism", leading to frequent wars and a vast increase in deaths and suffering, as well as destruction of the environment - well, we're done with it. The main focus of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) has become anti-development, anti-intellectual, anti-intelligence, anti-culture, and like always, anti-peace and prosperity. You don't get rich off of a missile farm no matter how much fertilizer you spread on it.
Worse, in violation of all American political tradition, it has propped up imperialism and "globalization" (One World Government) at the costs of 10's of millions of lives and probably $10-20 trillion in present money. People who still defend Vietnam and the "sacrifice" our nation made to destroy another nation must be counted as Imperialists. Most of the rank and file soldier-veterans who were there understand. But their leadership so often seems to be still obsessed with blaming Jane Fonda or "Peaceniks" for our defeat. The short answer is "Our defeat was just. It was an unjust war we started, and we deserved to lose."
In WWI, the Germans lost after the British tricked and maneuvered the US (under the Southern Anglophile president, Woodrow Wilson) into joining the war against Germany (and the Ottoman Empire, which included the so-called "Jewish Homeland" which the Zionists had already planned to settle and seize by some sort of under-the-table deal). After the War, with Germany in ruins and forced to accept terms dictated, not by Wilson and his fairly sensible "14 points", but by the vindictive French and British, who were then expanding into Ottoman Territory which they then claimed as "protectorates" (still the basis for the nations and conflicts raging today). The German Veterans organized what they called "Freikorps", right-wing militias led by people who blamed the Jews and Social Democrats for "back-stabbing" in the Reichstag, and in the Jewish-owned press, and that's what gave rise to the Nazis and, arguably, WWII and the Holocaust.
NATO was supposedly organized after the Soviet Union organized the Warsaw Pact for mutual defense against attacks from the capitalist-imperialists (as well as religious anti-communist crusaders) of Western Europe, always controlled by the US, which had ended WWII unscathed, and as the totally dominant global economic superpower.
But of course NATO already existed, as the Allied Forces in Europe, which later evolved into the EU as well as NATO. The only mystery here is why the US continues to have a "Euro-focus" in its military and economic organization. In fact, large militaries are no longer needed. And we certainly don't need nuclear arsenals, which along with nuclear power generation, have proven to be the most catastrophic technologies ever devised.
So, why are we still in NATO? What is the purpose of a vast military alliance based on utterly destroying other nations and people, and even making them unfit for future habitation, not to mention destroying the whole global ecosystem which many want to deny even exists. NATO was directed against some alleged "threat" which the Soviet Union posed to Western Europe (even though most of Western Europe didn't feel threatened or want our "protection" - only their capitalistic elites). Finally, due to Gorbachev and Reagan having maintained some desire for peace and reconciliation, the Cold War ended. No more nukes. No more Doomsday Machine.
There's a great 60 Minutes episode from back in the 1990's (I have both tape and transcripts of this, somewhere) called "The Missiliers", in which they interview missile crews, officers, and generals in command in Russia as well as the US, basically asking the question, "Why are these still here?" Needless to say, most of the military people interviewed had the same question, with nothing but the "official answer" used by lobbyists for contractors and suppliers, as well as a few extreme "consultants" who were ex-missile officers, themselves. It's deterrence. It's our careers. It's local jobs, It's to prove we won't be bullied by "the other side", etc. The usual pattern.
To his credit, Dan Rather is suitably shocked when he finds that virtually nothing has been done beyond buying or securing a lot of the Russian arsenal, by turning it into reactor fuel, etc. So, we're down to something like 3600 lanchable warheads per side, and Start II has just been blocked in the Senate, which would have halved this number down to some 1600. Needless to say, Baucus and the other "Missile Senators" were key votes in this and every other treaty. And, the treaties themselves were deeply flawed. Old warheads weren't being destroyed. They only needed to be warehoused and defused.
The danger of an all-out nuclear war is no less, now, than it was 30 years ago - in fact, it's more likely with several new and "rogue" nuclear powers - starting with Israel. Iran has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and is quite open about its lack of nuclear weapon ambitions. So, all the punishments, sanctions, etc. were for nothing, and they were and are serious violations of international law. Embargos (like we still maintain against Cuba, as well as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and a number of other countries designated as "terrorists states") are equivalent to an act of war - you can't stop other nations from trading, or tell them who to trade with except as acts of war.
Meanwhile, India and Pakistan now have substantial nuclear arsenals - the 200 or so thought sufficient by rational smaller countries - as a "deterrent" or whatever in hell they are supposed to do. Create jobs, I guess. Or make us feel more "secure." Yeh, right. Let me warn you - there's a lot of religion involved in it, and this can go in any direction at any time.
Any nation with a substantial (or even a small) nuclear power industry is only a few months away from building a plutonium bomb, which is what most of the warheads are. The higher-yield thermonuclear warheads we use on the Minuteman and Tridents use tritium, which decays and is hard to produce, as well as being very corrosive and toxic. The nuclear weapons production and maintenance industry is huge in the Western US - particularly Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and to a lesser extent, Montana and its neighbors actually housing the land-based strategic nuclear missile arsenal. Malmstrom and FE Warren (Cheyenne, WY) vied for leadership in this "power bloc", and for a long time, we had 200 missiles while FE Warren had the only MX squadron of 50 missiles, each carrying up to 10 warheads, allegedly to "counter" a Russian missile of similar capacity. Such was the strategy of MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction, which guided Cold War policy. It was largely our revulsion at the idea of building an arsenal for mutual destruction that finally ended the Cold War - just to get rid of it.
So now, Sen. Tester seems to be telling us something like this:
"Sorry, guys. We still have the missiles, and we're not getting rid of them. We have a kind of direct democracy in the Military. Them that's got the guns, got's the gold. Or plutonium-tritium, in this case. Do you know what a working Minuteman missile with a 320 KT warhead is worth on the open market? We could even provide the launch service. Just tell us where to point it, and pay the money. How much? How about $20 million, the same price some of you pay to spend a few days in a Soyuz space station, or a round-trip to the International Space Station (another $100 billion boondoggle with no benefits to the taxpayers). When everything else is gone, we'll still have the Missiles of Montana, or at least the holes they came out of. You can count on it...."
Nobody said Jon isn't a great teacher. And part of a great family or clan. So, I always push him forward as "one of the good guys" even while I revile some of the positions he has been forced to take.
What he has done, apparently, is separated his supporters into sheep and goats. It's like splitting the class in a small country school by year, or in this case, by temperament. Some people think for themselves. Put them together, or mix them judiciously with the sheep - who just do and think what they are told. Get every student on a growing, exploring, learning track - finding out things that are important to them. And never forget the Big Picture - global capitalism, a rapidly collapsing environment, constant wars over oil and religion - hey, it's getting to sound a lot like Montana, isn't it?
So, he is the man for the moment. But he's got to start talking more sense. He needs better speechwriters and advisers. He needs his own "brain trust" or think tank, which I would be happy to help organize (don't pack it with a lot of hacks and expect me to work with it, though). Etc.
Montanans never understood Baucus, or what he was about. As I've said, before, he was an Oligarch, created for the part. And that was disastrous - not only for us, but for the nation and the planet. And by supporting him, Montana's best and brightest have condemned themselves to eternal infamy. We told them a thousand times and in a thousand ways - this is wrong. Corporate capitalism is not the answer. But, they didn't listen, and now we're on the verge of extinction - something we have always been since Baucus's predecessors made us into a Doomsday Machine.
It's serious, folks. Tester's greatest mistake thus far is siding with the fanatical "missiliers". The issue has never been the Base (Malmstrom), or "the local economy" and "5000 jobs", and depending on the source, anywhere from 25-46% of this "local economy". I keep telling them: that's the figure for percentages of FEDERAL SPENDING in Cascade County or whatever. And it may or may not include other military spending like pensions and Vet's benefits (which should, of course, be the same for everyone, and not depend on military service or anything else - least of all one's financial resources, or lack of them). But even if it does, you'd find that military spending for the nation as a whole is less than 8% of the national economy, and if Great Falls has 46% military economy, there are lots of other places with less than the average (and whose bases have already been closed) who will want to know why.
Face it. We've developed a cult of nuclear terrorism. We ARE the nuclear terrorists, and have been since Vietnam, which at the time was out of Minuteman range. When our mission was seen as "resisting Communist aggression" (of which there actually was none - it was all part of the same revolutionary, anti-colonialist struggle which gave birth to the USA), they could find people to support it. But now that it's clearly fighting over nothing but religion and oil, and the mechanisms of "Disaster Capitalism", leading to frequent wars and a vast increase in deaths and suffering, as well as destruction of the environment - well, we're done with it. The main focus of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) has become anti-development, anti-intellectual, anti-intelligence, anti-culture, and like always, anti-peace and prosperity. You don't get rich off of a missile farm no matter how much fertilizer you spread on it.
Worse, in violation of all American political tradition, it has propped up imperialism and "globalization" (One World Government) at the costs of 10's of millions of lives and probably $10-20 trillion in present money. People who still defend Vietnam and the "sacrifice" our nation made to destroy another nation must be counted as Imperialists. Most of the rank and file soldier-veterans who were there understand. But their leadership so often seems to be still obsessed with blaming Jane Fonda or "Peaceniks" for our defeat. The short answer is "Our defeat was just. It was an unjust war we started, and we deserved to lose."
In WWI, the Germans lost after the British tricked and maneuvered the US (under the Southern Anglophile president, Woodrow Wilson) into joining the war against Germany (and the Ottoman Empire, which included the so-called "Jewish Homeland" which the Zionists had already planned to settle and seize by some sort of under-the-table deal). After the War, with Germany in ruins and forced to accept terms dictated, not by Wilson and his fairly sensible "14 points", but by the vindictive French and British, who were then expanding into Ottoman Territory which they then claimed as "protectorates" (still the basis for the nations and conflicts raging today). The German Veterans organized what they called "Freikorps", right-wing militias led by people who blamed the Jews and Social Democrats for "back-stabbing" in the Reichstag, and in the Jewish-owned press, and that's what gave rise to the Nazis and, arguably, WWII and the Holocaust.
NATO was supposedly organized after the Soviet Union organized the Warsaw Pact for mutual defense against attacks from the capitalist-imperialists (as well as religious anti-communist crusaders) of Western Europe, always controlled by the US, which had ended WWII unscathed, and as the totally dominant global economic superpower.
But of course NATO already existed, as the Allied Forces in Europe, which later evolved into the EU as well as NATO. The only mystery here is why the US continues to have a "Euro-focus" in its military and economic organization. In fact, large militaries are no longer needed. And we certainly don't need nuclear arsenals, which along with nuclear power generation, have proven to be the most catastrophic technologies ever devised.
So, why are we still in NATO? What is the purpose of a vast military alliance based on utterly destroying other nations and people, and even making them unfit for future habitation, not to mention destroying the whole global ecosystem which many want to deny even exists. NATO was directed against some alleged "threat" which the Soviet Union posed to Western Europe (even though most of Western Europe didn't feel threatened or want our "protection" - only their capitalistic elites). Finally, due to Gorbachev and Reagan having maintained some desire for peace and reconciliation, the Cold War ended. No more nukes. No more Doomsday Machine.
There's a great 60 Minutes episode from back in the 1990's (I have both tape and transcripts of this, somewhere) called "The Missiliers", in which they interview missile crews, officers, and generals in command in Russia as well as the US, basically asking the question, "Why are these still here?" Needless to say, most of the military people interviewed had the same question, with nothing but the "official answer" used by lobbyists for contractors and suppliers, as well as a few extreme "consultants" who were ex-missile officers, themselves. It's deterrence. It's our careers. It's local jobs, It's to prove we won't be bullied by "the other side", etc. The usual pattern.
To his credit, Dan Rather is suitably shocked when he finds that virtually nothing has been done beyond buying or securing a lot of the Russian arsenal, by turning it into reactor fuel, etc. So, we're down to something like 3600 lanchable warheads per side, and Start II has just been blocked in the Senate, which would have halved this number down to some 1600. Needless to say, Baucus and the other "Missile Senators" were key votes in this and every other treaty. And, the treaties themselves were deeply flawed. Old warheads weren't being destroyed. They only needed to be warehoused and defused.
The danger of an all-out nuclear war is no less, now, than it was 30 years ago - in fact, it's more likely with several new and "rogue" nuclear powers - starting with Israel. Iran has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and is quite open about its lack of nuclear weapon ambitions. So, all the punishments, sanctions, etc. were for nothing, and they were and are serious violations of international law. Embargos (like we still maintain against Cuba, as well as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and a number of other countries designated as "terrorists states") are equivalent to an act of war - you can't stop other nations from trading, or tell them who to trade with except as acts of war.
Meanwhile, India and Pakistan now have substantial nuclear arsenals - the 200 or so thought sufficient by rational smaller countries - as a "deterrent" or whatever in hell they are supposed to do. Create jobs, I guess. Or make us feel more "secure." Yeh, right. Let me warn you - there's a lot of religion involved in it, and this can go in any direction at any time.
Any nation with a substantial (or even a small) nuclear power industry is only a few months away from building a plutonium bomb, which is what most of the warheads are. The higher-yield thermonuclear warheads we use on the Minuteman and Tridents use tritium, which decays and is hard to produce, as well as being very corrosive and toxic. The nuclear weapons production and maintenance industry is huge in the Western US - particularly Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and to a lesser extent, Montana and its neighbors actually housing the land-based strategic nuclear missile arsenal. Malmstrom and FE Warren (Cheyenne, WY) vied for leadership in this "power bloc", and for a long time, we had 200 missiles while FE Warren had the only MX squadron of 50 missiles, each carrying up to 10 warheads, allegedly to "counter" a Russian missile of similar capacity. Such was the strategy of MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction, which guided Cold War policy. It was largely our revulsion at the idea of building an arsenal for mutual destruction that finally ended the Cold War - just to get rid of it.
So now, Sen. Tester seems to be telling us something like this:
"Sorry, guys. We still have the missiles, and we're not getting rid of them. We have a kind of direct democracy in the Military. Them that's got the guns, got's the gold. Or plutonium-tritium, in this case. Do you know what a working Minuteman missile with a 320 KT warhead is worth on the open market? We could even provide the launch service. Just tell us where to point it, and pay the money. How much? How about $20 million, the same price some of you pay to spend a few days in a Soyuz space station, or a round-trip to the International Space Station (another $100 billion boondoggle with no benefits to the taxpayers). When everything else is gone, we'll still have the Missiles of Montana, or at least the holes they came out of. You can count on it...."
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Punishment, Justice, and good government
Punishment Creates Criminals
It's a proven fact: punishment only REINFORCES bad behavior. One cannot be terrorized or coerced into being honest, ethical, obedient, or whatever. And certainly not free, sane, self-reliant, or any other imagined "good" social or political status.
Almost any lawyer or prosecutor will tell you that the police, courts, and prisons are NOT to punish anyone, but to minimize and prevent future crimes and conflicts. Yet, the average person believes absolutely in the value of extreme punishment including torture and execution in order to "deter" or otherwise prevent or minimize crime. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First rule of good government:
Don't accustom your constituents to corruption. And by that, we don't mean food stamps, Medicaid, or unions. The corruption lies in our minds and understanding - mostly originating with the corporate media, but our public media, under the false banner of "neutrality", gives the true and beneficial equal standing with the most outrageously ignorant and oppressive views, and their practitioners, and then presents us with "compromises" between them. It is our "public consciousness" which may be damaged beyond repair, as evidenced by a nuclear holocaust, climate holocaust, or just plain poverty and starvation holocausts - all of them imminent, and probably unstoppable.
2. Organize! It's the only way to accomplish anything. To do this, you must step outside the corporate parties. The Democrats, as we've seen over and over again, are no different (and often even worse, in a passive-aggressive pattern) than their Republican "counterparts." They are, in short, two sides of the same base-metal coin. They are "value-less", whether we mean "worthless" or having no moral or even epistemological values.
As Ayn Rand often reminded us, most people don't accept "the proposition that existence exists." They think they can "fake reality" at will, much like a magician or other conjurer or laboratory Frankenstein. We can actually make and patent new life-forms, and we're being killed by them on a daily basis. Do we blame God or do we blame the hubris of scientists, or the greed of the corporations which employ them?
Thus, we encounter the interface between the physical and virtual worlds - a kind of body-mind dualism, I suppose. Whim worshippers. Whatever they think, have been taught, or believe - it must be true, just because they believe it. This is the real "egoism" - not the noble pride which Rand tried to make it into. This is the selfishness of a hog, with the hunger of wolves, and often taking pleasure from inflicting pain and punishment on others.
3. We have little or no control over the external world outside of our own heads. The best we can do is try to understand it, and gain some sort of platform from which we can warn and advise those in power.
4. Facebook is such a hit because it gives people all over the world the opportunity to share thoughts and opinions with self-chosen "friends" and political allies. We are the advocates of freedom and a free, diverse, pluralistic, open society. We want to learn and trade with others, not enslave and exploit them. We want to improve humanity, not destroy it.
5. New Rules: Anti-Statism
Our existing legal systems were designed for the Roman Empire, and authoritarian, elitist regimes ever since. The English Common Law and other evolved, empirical systems are better, because they evolved in a tribal, local, and indigenous culture well-attuned with nature and natural processes. And that is probably why the British were so successful in spreading their language and knowledge around the world - it was generally humane and beneficial in intent, even if not in practice. The Common Law was like the People's Law, while the Roman Law, Code Napoleon, etc were designed to protect large estates, and enforce the dictates of a global empire, dominated by soldiers and war profiteers and plunderers.
6. The US today has abandoned all pretext at being ethical and humane, which returns us to the first point. The existing system has run its course. "Absolute power having corrupted absolutely ceases to be felt, and becomes, instead, omniscience." (That's actually a quote from me, circa 1972, in a letter to one of my fellow philosophy students).
7. It's time for a real "New Deal." Red + Green = Brown. We'll start over from scratch, with nothing held out from scrutiny, or maintained by "entitlement." As Hobbes said, "No better way to mend an ill game than with a new shuffle."
Conclusion:
Unfortunately, it's the very worst time in history for revolutions or coups d'etat. With dozens of isolated nuclear arsenals scattered around the world, it becomes a very complex exercise in game theory. That we have survived this long without a nuclear exchange of devastating magnitude is semi-miraculous. Nature, it would seem, must compensate with periodic "accidents-on-purpose" like Chernobyl or Fukushima. We simply must be reminded what the risks and dangers are, and start reversing or mitigating them.
The ability of the corporate puppet-states and their leaders to steer us away from any sane course is another minor miracle. But the only power they have is what we give them. Pres. Obama said as much the other day. You voted for me, gave me four more years, so we'll "stay the course" (and do all the same bad things we did, before, apparently).
But does this really require drone strikes, gutting the economy for bankster bailouts (L'economie, c'est moi) and being totally oblivious to all the other principles of a liberal state which people thought they had voted for? Does anybody really know this guy? He has been psycho-analyzed a lot lately. Perhaps he's trying to establish an insanity defense ahead of time. Stranger things have happened.
It's a proven fact: punishment only REINFORCES bad behavior. One cannot be terrorized or coerced into being honest, ethical, obedient, or whatever. And certainly not free, sane, self-reliant, or any other imagined "good" social or political status.
Almost any lawyer or prosecutor will tell you that the police, courts, and prisons are NOT to punish anyone, but to minimize and prevent future crimes and conflicts. Yet, the average person believes absolutely in the value of extreme punishment including torture and execution in order to "deter" or otherwise prevent or minimize crime. Nothing could be further from the truth.
First rule of good government:
Don't accustom your constituents to corruption. And by that, we don't mean food stamps, Medicaid, or unions. The corruption lies in our minds and understanding - mostly originating with the corporate media, but our public media, under the false banner of "neutrality", gives the true and beneficial equal standing with the most outrageously ignorant and oppressive views, and their practitioners, and then presents us with "compromises" between them. It is our "public consciousness" which may be damaged beyond repair, as evidenced by a nuclear holocaust, climate holocaust, or just plain poverty and starvation holocausts - all of them imminent, and probably unstoppable.
2. Organize! It's the only way to accomplish anything. To do this, you must step outside the corporate parties. The Democrats, as we've seen over and over again, are no different (and often even worse, in a passive-aggressive pattern) than their Republican "counterparts." They are, in short, two sides of the same base-metal coin. They are "value-less", whether we mean "worthless" or having no moral or even epistemological values.
As Ayn Rand often reminded us, most people don't accept "the proposition that existence exists." They think they can "fake reality" at will, much like a magician or other conjurer or laboratory Frankenstein. We can actually make and patent new life-forms, and we're being killed by them on a daily basis. Do we blame God or do we blame the hubris of scientists, or the greed of the corporations which employ them?
Thus, we encounter the interface between the physical and virtual worlds - a kind of body-mind dualism, I suppose. Whim worshippers. Whatever they think, have been taught, or believe - it must be true, just because they believe it. This is the real "egoism" - not the noble pride which Rand tried to make it into. This is the selfishness of a hog, with the hunger of wolves, and often taking pleasure from inflicting pain and punishment on others.
3. We have little or no control over the external world outside of our own heads. The best we can do is try to understand it, and gain some sort of platform from which we can warn and advise those in power.
4. Facebook is such a hit because it gives people all over the world the opportunity to share thoughts and opinions with self-chosen "friends" and political allies. We are the advocates of freedom and a free, diverse, pluralistic, open society. We want to learn and trade with others, not enslave and exploit them. We want to improve humanity, not destroy it.
5. New Rules: Anti-Statism
Our existing legal systems were designed for the Roman Empire, and authoritarian, elitist regimes ever since. The English Common Law and other evolved, empirical systems are better, because they evolved in a tribal, local, and indigenous culture well-attuned with nature and natural processes. And that is probably why the British were so successful in spreading their language and knowledge around the world - it was generally humane and beneficial in intent, even if not in practice. The Common Law was like the People's Law, while the Roman Law, Code Napoleon, etc were designed to protect large estates, and enforce the dictates of a global empire, dominated by soldiers and war profiteers and plunderers.
6. The US today has abandoned all pretext at being ethical and humane, which returns us to the first point. The existing system has run its course. "Absolute power having corrupted absolutely ceases to be felt, and becomes, instead, omniscience." (That's actually a quote from me, circa 1972, in a letter to one of my fellow philosophy students).
7. It's time for a real "New Deal." Red + Green = Brown. We'll start over from scratch, with nothing held out from scrutiny, or maintained by "entitlement." As Hobbes said, "No better way to mend an ill game than with a new shuffle."
Conclusion:
Unfortunately, it's the very worst time in history for revolutions or coups d'etat. With dozens of isolated nuclear arsenals scattered around the world, it becomes a very complex exercise in game theory. That we have survived this long without a nuclear exchange of devastating magnitude is semi-miraculous. Nature, it would seem, must compensate with periodic "accidents-on-purpose" like Chernobyl or Fukushima. We simply must be reminded what the risks and dangers are, and start reversing or mitigating them.
The ability of the corporate puppet-states and their leaders to steer us away from any sane course is another minor miracle. But the only power they have is what we give them. Pres. Obama said as much the other day. You voted for me, gave me four more years, so we'll "stay the course" (and do all the same bad things we did, before, apparently).
But does this really require drone strikes, gutting the economy for bankster bailouts (L'economie, c'est moi) and being totally oblivious to all the other principles of a liberal state which people thought they had voted for? Does anybody really know this guy? He has been psycho-analyzed a lot lately. Perhaps he's trying to establish an insanity defense ahead of time. Stranger things have happened.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
9-11 & military spending
Obama, War Crimes, and the Holy Right to Punish
There should be a strategy already mapped out for this - we see it everyday. Those who are doing bad things either say that "I'm just following orders" [from whom?], or "the Devil made me do it," or in the case of national politics, "the Party (or AIPAC, ALEC, etc.) made me do it."
What is Obama's excuse? That Harvard (or Pepperdine) made me do it? But Kerry went to Yale (maybe Harvard law afterwards?) Why is he saying the same bad things - total non-sequiturs, total petitio princippi's?
They just assume that because they say they have "evidence" that Assad is "killing his own people" - that favorite line of GW Bush, that's a good reason to launch another "pre-emptive strike" on a country that is both civilized and rational, as its leader proved in his recent interview on Charlie Rose (a truly courageous act, backed by both CBS and PBS, to their credit). We don't have to see the evidence. It's a children's game of "hide the button" or "Truth or Dare." Just say it. If you don't believe them, you can be locked up or assassinated. If you're not with them, you're against them. We heard it all from Bush, and the press laughed, and said "We'll get a Democrat next time." And so they did. And he is going to do everything that Bush did, and more. It's all about ego and "not backing down." We keep hearing that.
All the evidence indicates that Syria's only interest in "weapons of mass destruction" is to have a deterrent against Israeli-Saudi aggression. As Assad pointed out, Israel already occupies Syrian territory, and has done so illegally since 1967. Since Israel refuses to acknowledge it has nuclear weapons (illegally), Syria should have the same rights to keep its arsenals secret.
And Israel has launched several unprovoked attacks on Syria in recent years, allegedly as part of the "war on terror" or against the Muslim fundamentalists (Jihadists) who are actively attacking both Israel and the secular government of Syria (Assad). Because of a really "unholy" secret alliance between (nuclear-armed) Israel and Saudis (and of course the Bush family and various NeoCons like Richard Perle), all fueled by oil and the "merchants of death," the "Assad regime" has been targeted for destruction - not because it is "anti-western" or "backward," but precisely because it is a progressive, secular society unlike the rest of the Middle East.
The weapons merchants (of which Israel is now a leading player) need a war every year or two in order to promote sales and the necessity for "upgrades" and "improvements" - "more bang for the buck," along with "new missions" (like anti-genocide, protecting women and other human rights), mostly just to keep "the war on terror" simmering. These, it is thought, will be more palatable to the voters.
Well, guess what? The voters are sick and tired of it, and the Zionist puppet, Obama, can no longer get away with it. He is sealing his own doom with this fanatical insistence that it is his "right" to attack anyone anytime he pleases, no matter what Congress says. If you're not outraged by that, what more can I say?
The sarin gas precursors have been documented to have been sold to Syria by British firms - they did it openly and legally, so the burden is now on the Foreign Office or whatever for approving it. That's no doubt one big reason why Britain bailed out of the attack plans. Do Obama and Kerry know this? If so, they are certainly keeping quiet about it.
http://www.popularresistance.org/revealed-britain-sold-nerve-gas-chemicals-to-syria-10-months-after-war-began/
(For references and sources, see a 3-part article in Counterpunch which deconstructs and refutes every step of the Obama-Kerry case for war.)
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/09/flooding-the-zone-with-bullshit-on-syria/>
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/11/syria-immodest-proposals-naked-emperors/>
We don't know if any sarin was produced by the Syrian government. It is easy to produce anywhere. And we certainly don't know if it was the official Syrian government or military authorities who used it. All the evidence seems to indicate it was brought in from elsewhere - by Israeli- or Saudi-financed elements, including Al Qaeda-like groups. Gadaffi said the same thing in Libya - it was Al Qaeda allies which NATO was supporting in overthrowing his government - after he had paid reparations for the Pan Am bombing and other things which weren't his fault. Instead, he was being punished for his Marxism and support of African revolutions.
We have a real test here of AIPAC, ALEC, and the other big war and weapons lobbies. Can they actually force our leaders to engage in a war which is no different from the original Gulf War, Afghanistan, and the subsequent "War on Terror"? All were "manufactured" for the benefit of the multinational oil companies and the "defense" industry whose only mission, these days, is to expend as much ordinance as possible in some whitewashed way like "stopping genocide" or "defending human rights."
It was the women's vote that got us into a war against the Taliban (religious teachers) in Afghanistan - the same people who were our allies in fighting the Russians, and whom we abandoned to Osama bin Laden when the Cold War ended. Now, they are joined by the Black vote, the Veteran's vote, the Blue Dogs, and everyone else who thinks that "war is good for business" and "the economy".
Here in Great Falls, we are told over and over, again, that Malmstrom (perhaps including the National Guard and pensions, Vet's health care, etc., but they don't say that) constitutes "46% of the local economy." Even if all those things are included (and many of them would continue if Malmstrom were closed), it's probably not even 20% of the "local economy" - whether considered as Cascade County, where most of the money is spent, or the whole of Montana, most of which gets no military spending whatsoever (beyond pensions and Vet's programs). The federal budget is about 25% of GDP (the national economy). The military is about a third of that, including pensions. interest on the debt, Vet's benefits, etc. So, nationally, we spend about 8% of GDP (this is higher than the figure usually given) on the military.
Why is Great Falls any different? I suspect that Peter Johnson's $200 million figure (see below) would be about 8% of "the local economy" (Cascade County). There are 4500 military people (active and reserve) getting checks in Cascade County, and another 3-400 civilians. The active duty soldiers are counted as "jobs" - clearly a mis-representation. And there are those whose jobs in bars, car dealers, construction, etc. are dependent on military customers (estimated to be 5% of local business in these areas). Do we count students, prisoners, or other institutional clients as "jobs"? No. If we had a draft and a real "service" instead of mercenary army, we wouldn't even think of calling them "jobs."
How far do we take this? The so-called "multiplier" effect counts such spending several times over. They never mention that the same jobs and income would be doing something else if the base weren't here. The important thing is whether or not we are actually benefitting from this spending, which in most cases is clearly not the case. It's called "the marginal efficiency of capital." Does an investment bear a return, or does it merely entail more taxes, more remedial expenditures, and more destruction? Clearly, the MEC of a nuclear arsenal is profoundly negative. Indeed, it might cause the very end of human civilization, never mind the local economy.
Peter Johnson, the veteran Trib reporter who covered military affairs for 20+ years, puts the direct economic impact figure at $200 million. That sounds about right. We know what the Minuteman program has cost the taxpayers over the past 50 years (at least $80 billion), and how much of that was spent in Montana. Very little, and no mention is ever made of "opportunity costs" - there are thousands of ways the same money could be spent with much better returns, whether public or private.
Congress guarantees that every state will have a major military facility. Ours is Malmstrom. And it would continue as large or larger without the Minuteman nuclear strategic missile mission.
We have open air space for training. We have vast landscapes in which any kind of troops could train. About the only thing we don't have is an ocean. So, there's no reason that we can't have just as many troops and federal dollars here doing something else. Except that it's the nukes that people here actually want (or fear or are addicted to). They're power-mad. They actually enjoy having the capacity to destroy human civilization. And one of these days, they'll do it, if the ability to do so is not removed from here (and everywhere).
That's the simple answer to 9-11. It's our own fault. It's the chickens coming home to roost, just like Ward Churchill and a number of others clearly said. It's a whole part of the world which has suffered and died at the hands of oil imperialists and the war profiteers. If we didn't trade them weapons, we couldn't get any Middle Eastern oil. We don't have the money. So we basically force them into wars by arming both sides, and then provoking them to attack each other.
A few, who were once our friends and allies (like Osama bin Laden) finally had enough. With the CIA's help, they trained and carried out 9-11, hoping it would bring us to our senses. But no. We're still blaming the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Note: See my essay from last year, in which I made Churchill a general in the Royal Waldegren Navy.
http://paul-stephens.blogspot.com/2012/06/waldegren-ward-churchill-and-julian.html
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Labor, Healthcare, and the Corporate State
Labor, Health Care, and the Corporate Media
Or, What Happened to Alternative Radio on Labor Day?
Can anyone explain to me WHY our health-care system, one of the vital systems of society, the state, the community, and/or the species, is somehow turned over to the profiteers and politicians of the "insurance industry", better called "the Health Insurance Protection Racket" or "Health Extortion, Inc."? Why do the media and all political candidates (except Greens and a few socialists) insist on keeping the discussion focused on "health insurance" and how to subsidize it, rather than "providing quality and appropriate health care for everyone."
I'm sorry. I just don't get it. Is there some RESPONSIBLE person in government, academia, or the media, who can actually make an argument why this should be happening? We've seen the discussions and the process totally subverted by people like Max Baucus, who is unashamedly and totally sold out to the corporate racketeers, even while he pretends to be a "Democrat."
They will not answer the questions; they will not listen to the experts in health care administration and policy; they will actively arrest and suppress the real advocates for free, universal medical services, or at least a system where everyone is included, with health care services being defined as a human right and the most fundamental function of good government.
We also need vigorous consumer protection laws so that no one can be made to pay inflated prices for unnecessary or inappropriate services -which some of us would claim is just about all that our present "health care system" provides. The irony of terminally-ill patients being treated for the last few weeks of their lives at costs which will more than liquidate a life-time's work and savings in their estates is not lost on us. But if these people are elderly or poor, they are "covered." Yet, the rest of us still have to pay for it, at the same fictional or vastly inflated prices.
The present system "rations" by means of income or ability to pay (or have someone else pay) for the treatment. But it also excludes millions from easy minor and preventive treatments which will save 10-fold what they cost. Instead of passing a whole ACA which pretends to correct these problems while actually making them worse (and more profitable for the medical, insurance, and Pharma monopolies), all they needed to do was provide all the basic health care services free, or at (real) cost, rather than shifting all the tremendous costs of a monstrous and unworkable system on to the taxpayers, insurance buyers, etc.
Remember, real insurance is by its very nature, gambling (and "discriminatory" according to risk or probability of loss). "Health insurance" isn't really insurance at all. It was originally intended only for the wealthy, or those who wanted to use it as an incentive to attract healthier employees by guaranteeing that they would not go broke if they were injured or made ill in the workplace or anywhere else. No one's health is being "insured," technically speaking. All that Health Insurance provides is a legally-enforceable guarantee that someone will receive health care from certain providers. There is no guarantee that anyone will stay healthy or be cured, which is the obvious sense that most people understand by "insurance."
In fact, you're insuring your property and estate against confiscation by the medical bill collectors (of which there are more than doctors). Even then, unless you have the most expensive policies, there will be co-payments or exemptions which will probably result in your paying more out of your own pocket than the services actually cost, in addition to having to pay for the original "insurance." A totally unworkable system unless enforced by the state and its legal and police power. No one would voluntarily pay for such a system, which costs at least 4 times more than the socialist alternative.
The idea that "insurance" (which was a very good deal for the healthy people who had it in those days) would cover all the health care costs of the country was never dreamed of, until some politicians decided to reframe "socialized medicine" (unpopular in the McCarthy era) by calling it "national health insurance," and fund it with a payroll tax. (Again, working people paying disproportionately to cover everyone else's health care expenses) So long as it remained free and consumer-driven, it worked. Most of the providers remained in private practice, working at public or non-profit hospitals and clinics, but regulated as to the price and quality standards they had to meet.
This is the so-called "Single Payer" system. It is not "socialized medicine," but a hybrid. Some people on the left still don't like that. They claim that "payment for service" (treatment) greatly expands the number of unnecessary or inappropriate treatments, and that is certainly the case, today. And that is why insurance companies rarely pay the inflated, false prices which people not covered by insurance (but with recoverable assets) are forced to pay - often through their estates. Still, the laws are continually being revised in favor of the medical collectors - in many states, medical bankruptcies aren't even permitted, and where they are, they're the single largest category for bankruptcy proceedings.
So, the first step is to re-define our terms:
It's not about "coverage" or being accounted for in some bureaucrat's ledgers. It's about anyone being able to walk (or be carried) into a health care facility, and being able to receive the best possible health care commensurate with their needs and resources available. And for those who are terminally ill, they won't have to sign away their homes and future income streams.
The lowest priority for a public health care system is those about to die. That's why we have hospice. That's why doctors use triage in emergency situations. It's simple economics. We must make the best use of the resources available - something "liberals" never seem to understand. We can no longer waste expensive treatments and services on those who cannot benefit from them.
And, conversely, the young, the working, and the HEALTHY need these services most of all - to keep them that way. So, call it "throwing grandma under the bus" or whatever - it's a necessary survival strategy in this case. Instead, the "insurance model" insists that the healthy continue to be forced to pay the unrealistic and unaccountable (and most expensive) services for those who are both poorest and sickest. If this is "socialized medicine" (and no one would honestly claim that it is), then it's no wonder that people don't want "government health care" - especially not those who are already on Veteran's, Indian, or other government-provided health care systems, right?
Instead, everyone is promised "good insurance" which covers all the costs of quality health care - something which is impossible for more than a small minority. It's the INSURANCE MODEL which is fundamentally wrong, and it's obviously a much worse disaster after being made compulsory. It's the difference between a numbers racket and a protection racket. You don't have to play the numbers, but it pays off well enough so that people like to play them (unlike the state lotteries designed to replace it, which are actually another tax on the poor and stupid.) That's like the original health insurance policies - you only want to pay for one if you're actually going to need that much health care, or somehow feel "safer" or "more secure" having it.
A protection racket, on the other hand, is pure extortion. It demands "Your money or your life" (or at least your knee-caps or your daughter's virginity). And that's exactly what our "health insurance" racket does, today. The ACA is like telling local storekeepers - 'Yeh, there's nothing we can do about the mob, but we'll help you pay your protection money if you're below a certain income level or number of employees." Seriously. Am I the only person in this universe who understands?
We need to start over. If we're going to spend taxpayer's money on health care, we'd better be damned sure it's being spent in the most cost-effective ways. We want to save the most lives with minimum suffering. We must re-dedicate ALL of our healthcare dollars and resources to actually providing health care, rather than paying off any number of wealthy racketeers - whether insurance extortionists (who make the Mafia look benign in comparison), drug pushers, and the thousands of other Iatrogenic Specialists in every area of our present health care system. (Iatrogenic = doctor-caused).
"We sicken 'em, you cure 'em". It's like a variation on the old undertaker joke - "You stab 'em, we slab 'em." We know this happens, and some (like the saintly Ivan Illich) actually claimed that the medical profession is the single greatest threat to public health. It certainly needs to purge itself of these tendencies. Instead, the "profiteers and monopolists" wing of the profession now rules unchallenged. It's only a matter of time until they completely eliminate any sort of natural remedies, holistic medicine, acupuncture, and homeopathy.
So far, we've stayed safe by NOT accepting (or being given) the same status for insurance payments or govt. programs as aliopathic medicine receives. No mystery - they write all the legislation, and have a monopoly on the very term "medicine" - something which we, along with the Blackfeet and other traditional belief systems, strongly contest. But the recent crackdown on medical cannabis indicates that they will not rest as long as there are profits to be made by eliminating the competition.
Let's put it in the Constitution. First, we have the right to self-medicate, and select and utilize any alternative methods and philosophies of medicine and health care. This is especially true of natural and traditional treatments which do not involved patents and high-tech equipment. Although there are many problems with that, too, which can be easily resolved in a nationalized, public health care system, we don't have to worry about that, here. Just recognize our right to treat ourselves, and use whatever we think best and appropriate in our treatments.
Occupational licensure is another related issue that needs to be addressed, but suffice to say that a license should not be used to create or enforce monopolies, or prevent people from using the products or services they think best, and at a fair price.
All government expenditures on health care should be spent in public clinics and hospitals, laboratories, etc. And all such facilities should be defined as "public" ("nationalized" or some operational equivalent). Those who don't use government funds are, of course, free to do whatever they like within the usual limits of common law.
If they are public or non-profit, there are no stockholders or other "owners" to reimburse. Non-profits with a legitimate history and policies may continue under present staffing, with only their rates and access policies having to conform to national or regional norms. For-profit medicine is over (at least insofar as it collects tax-payer money and enjoys other special privileges) and those companies engaged in it can sell their assets to the new system or its local components for whatever the market will allow, and their employees find an honest job where they are free to actually put the patients' well-being ahead of political and economic interests..
This is really the only answer left. Until we start talking straight about this issue, and listen to people who know what they're doing, things will only get worse.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Why military spending is a black hole
Military Keynesianism's Reductio Ad Absurdum
The bizarre reasoning behind vast and wasteful military spending - the F-35 program (which keeps getting cut back, and might finally be eliminated), and NPR's report last week on the politics of Egyptian military "aid."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/08/209878158/egypt-may-not-need-fighter-jets-but-u-s-keeps-sending-them-anyway
Egypt has been supplied with about 1000 front-line Abrams tanks, and more are being shipped every year, kept crated in warehouses, because there is no use for them. F-16's, no longer considered "modern" enough for the US Air Force, are still being manufactured for the "foreign aid market", as well as those countries paying for them with oil or other resources, and Egypt gets a lot of them, giving them one of the largest Air Forces in the Middle East.
"The U.S. started sending M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt in the late '80s. In all, the U.S. sent more than 1,000 tanks to Egypt since then — valued at some $3.9 billion — which Egypt maintains along with several thousand Soviet-era tanks.
Several billion dollars a year is spent on weapons for these two largest recipients of American "aid" - all American weapons, of course, and these programs have political constituencies in every state and Congressional District so that the money keeps being spent, regardless of the actions or intentions of the regimes receiving them.
The victory of the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt overthrowing the Mubarek dictatorship more or less marked the end of this program, except that the weapons are still going to the two countries, requiring a counter-coup by a military government which will continue to "play ball" with the Americans and Zionists. So, not only are these weapons unnecessary, unwanted, and dangerous to America's goals of peace in the Middle East. They are immune from any budget cuts which support them - for exactly the same reasons that Malmstrom's 50-year-old Minuteman strategic nuclear missile "deterrent" is "safe" from budget cuts. Because each District, Senator, and Representative is abolutely held at gunpoint by local business interests like our "military affairs committee" to keep wasting money on war and destruction, or the "deterrence" thereto - a deterrence, incidentally, which no one believes in or can explain and justify under any sort of cross-examination.
Such are the "long-term objectives" of the war mongers and profiteers. Naomi Klein had it right. Disaster Capitalism - destroy and build again, making profits every step of the way..
And it's like that "by proxy" syndrome among doctors - they cause illnesses so they can feel good about curing them (and demand more outrageous payments from "insurance" or whatever).
Then there's simple bellicosity - these guys like to fight and destroy. Sort of like the caricatures of the Vikings, but most cultures had them. We'd now call them "sociopaths", although some would never hurt a fly outside of the battlefield. Yet, even the worst wars a century ago were wholesome in comparison to the wholesale mindless slaughter of civilians with carpet-bombing, white phosphorus, Hellfire drones, DU shells, and countless other weapons regularly deployed by we "leaders of the civilized world," all the while threatening a nuclear holocaust if anyone objects or wishes to deny our hegemony over their lives and resources.
Pretty good racket. One thing I learned of great importance from Shirer's work on the Third Reich was that the Nazis modeled their organization on the Prohibition Era American gangsters - especially Chicago, with a large German population. Since Shirer was himself part of that, he understood the Nazis and the logic of their actions probably better than anyone else, German or American.
Now, NATO has taken up where the Nazis left off. Instead of being a defensive alliance against the supposed threats from "the Evil Empire" Soviet Union (which no longer exists), they have decided to adopt the Ostpolitik of Hitler, not Willie Brandt. Its goal is to once again establish Full Spectrum Dominance over everything, and what will be the outcome? Why, World War III, of course, but it's their own fault if they don't surrender first, right?
Whatever happened to the Fulbright's, the Dulles's, the Kissinger's, and others who got away with all this stuff? Well, they didn't flaunt it. They didn't keep outraging world opinion by wantonly slaughtering innocent people. That only works with the most brutalized and irrational people - like the American voters, maybe.
We need to reset. Start over. Dissolve the Federal Government and whatever states are dependent on it. If we want a new federation of sane, peaceful, civilized countries, we can "unite" whatever states want to join whatever federations. But we've got to "de-Nazify" our government and leaders, first. And remove the sociopaths from power - those who think nothing of killing thousands or millions of people for money, or simply because they are "different", branded as "militants" or "Jihadists."
Some of our leaders are merely political cowards, and claim that "they (lobbyists, AIPAC, etc.) made me do it." Obama may be in that category. But God doesn't take excuses. If what you are doing fundamentally violates the most sacred laws of God and Man, you will be punished, along with your family and country. Please don't condemn us to any more Hells on Earth, Mr. President...
The bizarre reasoning behind vast and wasteful military spending - the F-35 program (which keeps getting cut back, and might finally be eliminated), and NPR's report last week on the politics of Egyptian military "aid."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/08/209878158/egypt-may-not-need-fighter-jets-but-u-s-keeps-sending-them-anyway
Egypt has been supplied with about 1000 front-line Abrams tanks, and more are being shipped every year, kept crated in warehouses, because there is no use for them. F-16's, no longer considered "modern" enough for the US Air Force, are still being manufactured for the "foreign aid market", as well as those countries paying for them with oil or other resources, and Egypt gets a lot of them, giving them one of the largest Air Forces in the Middle East.
"The U.S. started sending M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt in the late '80s. In all, the U.S. sent more than 1,000 tanks to Egypt since then — valued at some $3.9 billion — which Egypt maintains along with several thousand Soviet-era tanks.
"There's no conceivable scenario in which they'd need all those tanks short of an alien invasion," Shana Marshall of the Institute of Middle East Studies at George Washington University, told me.
A thousand tanks would be helpful for large land battles, but not for the threats facing Egypt today, such as terrorism and border security in the Sinai Peninsula, according to Robert Springborg, an expert on the Egyptian military at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. In fact, he said, at least 200 of the tanks the U.S. has sent to Egypt have never been used.
"They are crated up and then they sit in deep storage, and that's where they remain," he told me."
"The story with F-16 fighter jets is similar. Since 1980, we've sent Egypt 221 fighter jets, valued at $8 billion. "Our American military advisers in Cairo have for many years been advising against further acquisitions of F-16s," Springborg said. Egypt already has more F-16s than it needs, he said.
I asked the State Department why the U.S. is giving Egypt weapons against the advice of its own military personnel. (The State Department, along with Congress, gives final approval on the weapons we send to Egypt.) Regarding those unused tanks, an official told me via email, it's not usual for a country to "maintain a portion of its equipment in reserve in the event of security contingencies." The U.S. decides which weapons to send to countries like Egypt "in consultation with our partners' own determination of their strategic and force structure requirements," the email added."
This is the legacy of Carter's Camp David, which increased military aid to both Israel and Egypt, hoping they would henceforth peaceably co-exist and oppose the Muslim fundamentalists who wanted to removed "the Zionist Entity" from Palestine. Several billion dollars a year is spent on weapons for these two largest recipients of American "aid" - all American weapons, of course, and these programs have political constituencies in every state and Congressional District so that the money keeps being spent, regardless of the actions or intentions of the regimes receiving them.
The victory of the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt overthrowing the Mubarek dictatorship more or less marked the end of this program, except that the weapons are still going to the two countries, requiring a counter-coup by a military government which will continue to "play ball" with the Americans and Zionists. So, not only are these weapons unnecessary, unwanted, and dangerous to America's goals of peace in the Middle East. They are immune from any budget cuts which support them - for exactly the same reasons that Malmstrom's 50-year-old Minuteman strategic nuclear missile "deterrent" is "safe" from budget cuts. Because each District, Senator, and Representative is abolutely held at gunpoint by local business interests like our "military affairs committee" to keep wasting money on war and destruction, or the "deterrence" thereto - a deterrence, incidentally, which no one believes in or can explain and justify under any sort of cross-examination.
Such are the "long-term objectives" of the war mongers and profiteers. Naomi Klein had it right. Disaster Capitalism - destroy and build again, making profits every step of the way..
And it's like that "by proxy" syndrome among doctors - they cause illnesses so they can feel good about curing them (and demand more outrageous payments from "insurance" or whatever).
Then there's simple bellicosity - these guys like to fight and destroy. Sort of like the caricatures of the Vikings, but most cultures had them. We'd now call them "sociopaths", although some would never hurt a fly outside of the battlefield. Yet, even the worst wars a century ago were wholesome in comparison to the wholesale mindless slaughter of civilians with carpet-bombing, white phosphorus, Hellfire drones, DU shells, and countless other weapons regularly deployed by we "leaders of the civilized world," all the while threatening a nuclear holocaust if anyone objects or wishes to deny our hegemony over their lives and resources.
Pretty good racket. One thing I learned of great importance from Shirer's work on the Third Reich was that the Nazis modeled their organization on the Prohibition Era American gangsters - especially Chicago, with a large German population. Since Shirer was himself part of that, he understood the Nazis and the logic of their actions probably better than anyone else, German or American.
Now, NATO has taken up where the Nazis left off. Instead of being a defensive alliance against the supposed threats from "the Evil Empire" Soviet Union (which no longer exists), they have decided to adopt the Ostpolitik of Hitler, not Willie Brandt. Its goal is to once again establish Full Spectrum Dominance over everything, and what will be the outcome? Why, World War III, of course, but it's their own fault if they don't surrender first, right?
Whatever happened to the Fulbright's, the Dulles's, the Kissinger's, and others who got away with all this stuff? Well, they didn't flaunt it. They didn't keep outraging world opinion by wantonly slaughtering innocent people. That only works with the most brutalized and irrational people - like the American voters, maybe.
We need to reset. Start over. Dissolve the Federal Government and whatever states are dependent on it. If we want a new federation of sane, peaceful, civilized countries, we can "unite" whatever states want to join whatever federations. But we've got to "de-Nazify" our government and leaders, first. And remove the sociopaths from power - those who think nothing of killing thousands or millions of people for money, or simply because they are "different", branded as "militants" or "Jihadists."
Some of our leaders are merely political cowards, and claim that "they (lobbyists, AIPAC, etc.) made me do it." Obama may be in that category. But God doesn't take excuses. If what you are doing fundamentally violates the most sacred laws of God and Man, you will be punished, along with your family and country. Please don't condemn us to any more Hells on Earth, Mr. President...
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Film Review: A Bridge Too Far & Military History....
A Bridge Too Far - Directed by Richard Attenborough
released 1977
I recently picked up a DVD of this flawed masterpiece. I'd seen it a few times before, but didn't have a clear recollection of what I'd thought of it. Having spent much of the past 15 years studying World War II and the culture and politics of war in general, I am much better-prepared to say something about it than I ever was, before.
For the 1st hour or so, it seemed OK. Although there was some weak and confusing dialogue, the main point seemed to be the common humanity of the German forces and generals - a theme often seen in the NATO Cold-war environment, where the Germans are now our allies while the evil Communists (Soviets) pose all the threats and moral hazard.
The film is based on the Cornelius Ryan best-seller of the same name. I've known people who thought it one of the best military histories ever. I haven't read it, but the film merely said "based on" Ryan's book. I have little doubt that Ryan might have repudiated many aspects of the film - at least in its final form.
There is also evidence of internal strife between the screenwriter and director, with the producer having his own agenda of what he wanted the film to "say." Not that I know anything specific about this, but as I said, I can see evidence of it. There are also conflicts between British (and surely German) ideas of military humor, if any, and the Norman Mailer or Joseph Heller type of American WWII bitterness and sarcasm. Even though Jews might have been the biggest losers of WWII, in terms of percentage of population and horrors experienced, it doesn't seem to have deterred them from perpetuating similar racist, fascist behavior towards their own "occupyees".
But of course this doesn't define the Jewish character or anything else. It's simply a validation of the principle that victims of past discrimination and persecution are not in a mood to forgive and forget. Few Jews that I know are happy about WWII or the Zionist domination of their history and culture. And they're especially upset by Israel's rogue nuke capability, and the fact that 40% of their economy (GDP) is military-related. Israel (as well as Sweden) are giants in producing the means for small, poor countries to kill each other in large numbers.
Contrary to what most Americans think, we don't act "defensively" at all - in SW Asia or anywhere else. Instead, our stated mission in the world is much like the Nazis - being the only "Superpower" (the Uberland), and exerting "full spectrum dominance" (including economic and cultural) over every other country in the world - friend and enemy, alike. Like, hey, this is our show. The rest of you peons have to follow our lead, even though we have the worst schools, the worst health care, and the worst environmental policies in the world. Aren't we great?
THAT, of course, is exactly what I spend most of my time opposing or debunking, often at risk to self and others. Even though I was not a "peace activist" during the Vietnam War, I was by the time it ended, and I always loathed LBJ and the "military Keynesians" who thought that war and military spending were "good for the economy." By the mid-1970's, prevailing sentiments were very anti-war, although in Montana, we expressed our opposition to war by ordering new weapon systems. It was a huge fight by the few Enlightened Ones among us even to show up and tell the Air Force that we really didn't want any. We thought it was all a conspiracy by the Republican fascists and war profiteers. Well, they had an answer to that: the Blue Dogs. Now we had to fight them for control of the Democrat Party, or else leave and be Voices in the Wilderness. In Montana, that's not a difficult choice..
Unlike the present, where every Republican poseur thinks he has to act like Rambo or the Terminator, this was a very anti-war environment in the mid-1970's. There weren't any good guys who supported or pursued mindless wars over ideologies or territorial conquest. So, the original idea of the book - to dissect and clarify one of the Allies' worst tactical disasters in WWII - ended up serving a different purpose. Once again, the Poles were sold out; the Airborne forces were told to follow the tactics and spirit of Custer in a cavalry charge (or better, Thomas Meagher, Montana's Irish hero who lost more men than any other Brigade commander in the Civil War), and everyone acted like they were in Catch 22 instead of a serious historical event.
I also saw Brewster's Millions for the first time a couple of years ago. It was similar in tone to Bridge, and preceded it, so I guess they thought that kind of "military humor" would sell tickets, and it did. Still, I can't help but feel sorry for the veterans who had to watch A Bridge Too Far thinking they would see something like the book which was so highly regarded.
Of course, that's a perennial battle among film and literary audiences and critics. Some stories make better books than films, and vice versa. I suspect that even Attenborough and the serious side of this production threw up their hands at the scope and logistics of doing what they did, before CGI's. Yeh, they could cut and paste the raw film to make it look like there were lots more people or planes in a scene than there actually were, but they needed a few, and it all had to be realistic, like the glider takeoff's behind C-47 Dakotas. That was really a difficult "stunt" in this day and age, or even in 1977, for that matter, although there were still WWII vets able to fly and otherwise assist, so it wasn't like they had to reconstruct something no one remembered how to do (like, say, the mores of the Belle Epoche as portrayed in James Cameron's Titanic).
Funny I should think of Cameron, but he is today's master of the giant epic with social implications - in fact, he may go down as the greatest thus far in this sort of epic realism over global (or galactic) issues. (Montana Democrats: what part of Avatar didn't you understand? This is the Tar Sands, and Cameron is a leader in the opposition to it).
Does he match Lean at his best (say, Dr. Zhivago?). Again, it's a different era with somewhat different politics, but our common humanity is a big theme in all three. Great film-makers is something we have in abundance, but little support for their work unless it is full of sex and violence....
============
Postscript
It's not exactly on message, but I've been suffering from a minor crisis in my belief that there is a future for the United States and organizations like us - giant nation-states, de-humanized to the point of hardly having any human values or qualities at all. I've also begun to speculate, for the first time in my life, whether or not I'm not one of those early alien-abduction implants, genetically modified with alien DNA. Of course, if they tested mine, I'm sure they wouldn't find anything (except, maybe, that I wasn't the natural son of my acknowledged father, and thus not connected with the Stephens family heritage, rich and interesting as it is - and usually quite admirable).
Although this demotivated me a bit, and made me more cautious about proclaiming what I thought was my real family's views and traditions, it wasn't until I started reading some recent publications on UFO history, which started at Roswell when I was in utero, and continued in Montana and around our nuclear missile base to the extent that the Air Force quit keeping any records or testimony about it, and destroyed some of the crucial evidence which was presented to them. The Little Green Men are real, here in GF, and one of the greatest sitings ever of a UFO was at the very baseball stadium where the Voyagers play, today. So, there!
There's long been talk that the British Royal Family are also aliens - "reptilian," more or less in the manner of the "V" series which was done twice. So, it's been a bit like Rosemary's Baby in these circles - would the new Prince bear signs of alien ancestry? No such luck.
released 1977
I recently picked up a DVD of this flawed masterpiece. I'd seen it a few times before, but didn't have a clear recollection of what I'd thought of it. Having spent much of the past 15 years studying World War II and the culture and politics of war in general, I am much better-prepared to say something about it than I ever was, before.
For the 1st hour or so, it seemed OK. Although there was some weak and confusing dialogue, the main point seemed to be the common humanity of the German forces and generals - a theme often seen in the NATO Cold-war environment, where the Germans are now our allies while the evil Communists (Soviets) pose all the threats and moral hazard.
The film is based on the Cornelius Ryan best-seller of the same name. I've known people who thought it one of the best military histories ever. I haven't read it, but the film merely said "based on" Ryan's book. I have little doubt that Ryan might have repudiated many aspects of the film - at least in its final form.
There is also evidence of internal strife between the screenwriter and director, with the producer having his own agenda of what he wanted the film to "say." Not that I know anything specific about this, but as I said, I can see evidence of it. There are also conflicts between British (and surely German) ideas of military humor, if any, and the Norman Mailer or Joseph Heller type of American WWII bitterness and sarcasm. Even though Jews might have been the biggest losers of WWII, in terms of percentage of population and horrors experienced, it doesn't seem to have deterred them from perpetuating similar racist, fascist behavior towards their own "occupyees".
But of course this doesn't define the Jewish character or anything else. It's simply a validation of the principle that victims of past discrimination and persecution are not in a mood to forgive and forget. Few Jews that I know are happy about WWII or the Zionist domination of their history and culture. And they're especially upset by Israel's rogue nuke capability, and the fact that 40% of their economy (GDP) is military-related. Israel (as well as Sweden) are giants in producing the means for small, poor countries to kill each other in large numbers.
Contrary to what most Americans think, we don't act "defensively" at all - in SW Asia or anywhere else. Instead, our stated mission in the world is much like the Nazis - being the only "Superpower" (the Uberland), and exerting "full spectrum dominance" (including economic and cultural) over every other country in the world - friend and enemy, alike. Like, hey, this is our show. The rest of you peons have to follow our lead, even though we have the worst schools, the worst health care, and the worst environmental policies in the world. Aren't we great?
THAT, of course, is exactly what I spend most of my time opposing or debunking, often at risk to self and others. Even though I was not a "peace activist" during the Vietnam War, I was by the time it ended, and I always loathed LBJ and the "military Keynesians" who thought that war and military spending were "good for the economy." By the mid-1970's, prevailing sentiments were very anti-war, although in Montana, we expressed our opposition to war by ordering new weapon systems. It was a huge fight by the few Enlightened Ones among us even to show up and tell the Air Force that we really didn't want any. We thought it was all a conspiracy by the Republican fascists and war profiteers. Well, they had an answer to that: the Blue Dogs. Now we had to fight them for control of the Democrat Party, or else leave and be Voices in the Wilderness. In Montana, that's not a difficult choice..
Unlike the present, where every Republican poseur thinks he has to act like Rambo or the Terminator, this was a very anti-war environment in the mid-1970's. There weren't any good guys who supported or pursued mindless wars over ideologies or territorial conquest. So, the original idea of the book - to dissect and clarify one of the Allies' worst tactical disasters in WWII - ended up serving a different purpose. Once again, the Poles were sold out; the Airborne forces were told to follow the tactics and spirit of Custer in a cavalry charge (or better, Thomas Meagher, Montana's Irish hero who lost more men than any other Brigade commander in the Civil War), and everyone acted like they were in Catch 22 instead of a serious historical event.
I also saw Brewster's Millions for the first time a couple of years ago. It was similar in tone to Bridge, and preceded it, so I guess they thought that kind of "military humor" would sell tickets, and it did. Still, I can't help but feel sorry for the veterans who had to watch A Bridge Too Far thinking they would see something like the book which was so highly regarded.
Of course, that's a perennial battle among film and literary audiences and critics. Some stories make better books than films, and vice versa. I suspect that even Attenborough and the serious side of this production threw up their hands at the scope and logistics of doing what they did, before CGI's. Yeh, they could cut and paste the raw film to make it look like there were lots more people or planes in a scene than there actually were, but they needed a few, and it all had to be realistic, like the glider takeoff's behind C-47 Dakotas. That was really a difficult "stunt" in this day and age, or even in 1977, for that matter, although there were still WWII vets able to fly and otherwise assist, so it wasn't like they had to reconstruct something no one remembered how to do (like, say, the mores of the Belle Epoche as portrayed in James Cameron's Titanic).
Funny I should think of Cameron, but he is today's master of the giant epic with social implications - in fact, he may go down as the greatest thus far in this sort of epic realism over global (or galactic) issues. (Montana Democrats: what part of Avatar didn't you understand? This is the Tar Sands, and Cameron is a leader in the opposition to it).
Does he match Lean at his best (say, Dr. Zhivago?). Again, it's a different era with somewhat different politics, but our common humanity is a big theme in all three. Great film-makers is something we have in abundance, but little support for their work unless it is full of sex and violence....
============
Postscript
It's not exactly on message, but I've been suffering from a minor crisis in my belief that there is a future for the United States and organizations like us - giant nation-states, de-humanized to the point of hardly having any human values or qualities at all. I've also begun to speculate, for the first time in my life, whether or not I'm not one of those early alien-abduction implants, genetically modified with alien DNA. Of course, if they tested mine, I'm sure they wouldn't find anything (except, maybe, that I wasn't the natural son of my acknowledged father, and thus not connected with the Stephens family heritage, rich and interesting as it is - and usually quite admirable).
Although this demotivated me a bit, and made me more cautious about proclaiming what I thought was my real family's views and traditions, it wasn't until I started reading some recent publications on UFO history, which started at Roswell when I was in utero, and continued in Montana and around our nuclear missile base to the extent that the Air Force quit keeping any records or testimony about it, and destroyed some of the crucial evidence which was presented to them. The Little Green Men are real, here in GF, and one of the greatest sitings ever of a UFO was at the very baseball stadium where the Voyagers play, today. So, there!
There's long been talk that the British Royal Family are also aliens - "reptilian," more or less in the manner of the "V" series which was done twice. So, it's been a bit like Rosemary's Baby in these circles - would the new Prince bear signs of alien ancestry? No such luck.
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