Get Over It - Electing Obama Ended Racism in the US

Really, that's the gist of Raphael Alexander's piece in today's National Toast defending the New York Post cartoon depicting a monkey, lying on the sidewalk dead from gunshot wounds, as President Obama. Raphe says it's time to get over that silly old racism nonsense;

...they can unify in enough numbers to elect a black President [or half-black, or whatever you wish to call him], but they can’t let go of the racial sensitivity that has marked their long history of friction between whites and blacks. The best example of sensitivity turned to insanity has been during this whole “chimp cartoon” flap, and the resultant fallout that is reminiscent of the prophet Muhammad cartoons.

I guess from his perch in comfy Vancouver, Alexander hasn't noticed what's still going on in the American south. Maybe he didn't hear about New Orleans or its black communities. There was an article on the weekend about a resurgence of the KKK.

Alexander betrays his abject ignorance of the condition of many African Americans in not grasping that the term "monkey" is a racial perjorative used to denigrate blacks in today's America. Instead he dismisses this as an historical anecdote. Besides, aren't we all descended from apes?

There’s even an evolutionary correlation that is even more apparent, and important here. Most adults who aren’t devout in their faith will probably admit to the fact that humans evolved from hominids, and our closest genetic ancestors are chimpanzees [96% similar actually] so there is a cultural paradigm to referencing lower primates and human beings. Nobody wants to be seen as a lower primate, which is primarily why George W Bush was referred to as the “smirking chimp”. Calling a black person a chimp is seen as more offensive only because of the historical associations of racism.

Raphael, stick to something you understand, at least even vaguely. There must be something else you can mine out of the Vancouver olympics.

Oh Good, We Got a Book! "How to Fix Afghanistan"

Canada's defence department has just issued its very own, 241-page, counterinsurgency manual. From the National Toast:

A compendium of modern military thinking informed by colonial misadventures and successes, the manual calls for a co-ordinated attack by both political and military forces. "Insurgency is a political problem," reads the introduction. "The mere attrition of insurgents is highly unlikely to result in [their] defeat."

Though the manual urges troops to reject Western absolute values, uses postmodern words such as "meme" and "heuristic," and likens insurgencies to communicable diseases, such approaches are commonly advocated in defence circles, said Prof. Hoffman, a former advisor to U. S. Army Chief of Staff George Casey when he was commanding general in Iraq.

The book also features citations that range from Greek historian Herodotus to Mao Zedong to Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden.
Prof. Hoffman, whom the book references, said that several allies have already produced similar manuals with much of the same philosophies, most recently the United States.

Now there's a breakthrough. Insurgency is a "political problem." So, tanks and artillery barrages and airstrikes really don't do the trick, eh? Quelle surprise!

Like its U. S. counterpart, Counter-insurgency Operations takes issue with the conventional notions of the victors and the vanquished. "Military forces do not defeat insurgencies; instead they create the security conditions necessary for the political resolution of the conflict," it says.

And how do they "create the security conditions necessary for a political resolution of the conflict"? They do it by securing the local population from the insurgents. That means flooding the countryside with enough troops to keep the insurgents from infiltrating the villages and imposing their will on the populace. That means lots and lots of troops. That means not hunkering down in garrisons. That means doing everything that we're not doing because we don't have more than a tiny fraction of the force required in Kandahar province.

Understanding the root of the grievance, Prof. Hoffman says, helps the military separate the enemy combatants who are fighting for ideology, or those who signed up for money. "You identify and isolate the extremists, and bolster the moderates."

A common pitfall, it explains, imposing one's own values on others. "Such an assumption and situation risks creating or exacerbating the perception that foreigners are trying to impose values and beliefs at odds with those of the indigenous population."

Foreigners? Who, us? We're not foreigners in Afghanistan, we're aliens. We're ethnically different, culturally different, socially different, linguistically different, religiously different, economically different, technologically different and politically different. We're pretty much everything that's not them. Yet we went in there expecting them to embrace secular democracy and our notion of human rights. Brilliant!

And then there's this closing bit of wisdom from the article.

It also cautions against demonizing or delegitimizing one's foes as thugs, a time-honoured mistake made by former U. S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and others. "The classification or dismissal of a nascent insurgency as a criminal or some other movement will only fuel the insurgency through inappropriate responses," it warns.

Hmm. Remember the guy who brokered our combat mission to Kandahar, General Rick Hillier? Remember who he described the mission as going into the province to "kill scumbags?" That seems to have set the tone for troops and commanders who went there. I guess Rick hadn't read the memo.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/afghanistan/story.html?id=1321612&p=2

A Setback in the Fight Against Global Warming

Nine years of work to fight global warming is sitting on the bottom of the Antarctic ocean today. NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) failed to reach orbit after launch yesterday.

OCO was supposed to map carbon dioxide emissions around the world. It was to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and where it was being absorbed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/24/oco-satellite-nasa

Wanted - Cops With Guts

Four fit, young men equipped with ballistic vests and mace versus an out of shape, middle aged guy who's plainly stressed out. With those odds, it's fair to expect cops to be able to subdue the guy (if even that was truly necessary) without resort to deadly force.

The inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski has heard from the first of the four officers that he "was fearful" of the traveller when the cops descended on him at Vancouver airport. What made him so petrified of Dziekanski? Why the guy had the temerity to raise his hands, something that apparently struck fear into the heart of RCMP constable Gerry Rundel.

The witness went on to say that, "it's resistant behaviour where he directly disregarded a command," and he was trained that, when a individual becomes resistant, it's time to whip out the Taser.

RCMP spokesman, Sgt. Tim Shields offered this. "Of course this is a tragedy for everyone involved . Those officers will gladly do things differently if they could bring Mr. Dziekanski back." Guess what, Tim? That's not going to happen, they killed the man, he's not coming back.
Four of your guys, Tim, had to go for the Tasers to subdue a guy who hadn't even taken a swing at them.

Anyone who's watched the video knows these guys had no reason to Taser Dziekanski, not once and certainly not five times. At the end of the day I think it comes down to bad training, bad judgment and four gutless cops. Do we need mounties like this? Does the RCMP?

Americans of All Stripes Rally Behind Obama - Republicans Look Like Losers

The Republicans gambled that blind opposition to Obama's stimulus/recovery plans would pay off - and it backfired. From The New York Times:

A majority of people surveyed in both parties said Mr. Obama was striving to work in a bipartisan way, but most Americans faulted Republicans for their response to the president, saying the party had objected to the $787 billion economic stimulus plan for political reasons. Most Americans said Mr. Obama should pursue the priorities he campaigned on, the poll found, rather than seek middle ground with Republicans.

Americans are under no illusions that the country’s problems will be resolved quickly, but the [New York Times/CBS] poll suggested they would be particularly patient when it comes to the economy, with most saying it would be years before there was significant improvement.

A month into Mr. Obama’s term, with his first big accomplishments, setbacks and political battles behind him, more than three-quarters of Americans said they are optimistic about the next four years with him as president. Similar percentages said they think he is bringing real change to the way things are done in Washington and that they have confidence in his ability to make the right decisions about the economy.

Obama reached his hand out to the Republicans - and they tried to bite it off. Tried, but didn't succeed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/us/politics/24poll.html?_r=1&hp

Another Free Market Fix Fails - Carbon Trading

It was a nice idea. Bring the free market and environmentalism together and let them solve global warming through - carbon trading.

The idea is that major emitters are given a carbon emissions quota. If they don't meet that quota, they're allowed to sell (trade) the surplus. If they exceed their quota, they can avoid fines and penalties by purchasing unused quotas from cleaner companies.

The cap and trade scheme treats carbon as a commodity of trade and it works, sort of, except for one little snag - any commodity price can plummet. From The Guardian:

All this only works as the carbon price lifts. As with 1924 Château Lafite or Damian Hirst's diamond skulls, scarcity and speculation create the value. If permits are cheap, and everyone has lots, the green incentive crashes into reverse. As recession slashes output, companies pile up permits they don't need and sell them on. The price falls, and anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so. The result is a system that does nothing at all for climate change but a lot for the bottom lines of mega-polluters such as the steelmaker Corus: industrial assistance in camouflage.

"I don't know why industrials would miss this opportunity," said one trader last week. "They are using it to compensate for the tightening of credit and the slowdown, to pay for redundancies."

A lot of the blame lies with governments that signed up to carbon trading as a neat idea, but then indulged polluters with luxurious quantities of permits. The excuse was that growth would soon see them bumping against the ceiling.

Instead, exchanges are in meltdown: a tonne of carbon has dropped to about €8, down from last year's summer peak of €31 and far below the €30-€45 range at which renewables can compete with fossil fuels.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/23/glover-carbon-market-pollution

Like medieval pardoners handing out unlimited indulgences, governments have created a glut. Reformation must follow. Wanted - a modern Martin Luther to nail a shaming truth to industry's door: Europe's whizz-bang carbon market is turning sub-prime.

Lorne Gunter Has His Eye On The Future

Lorne Gunter, loudmouth columnist with the National Toast, flagship of the soon to be defunct CanWest media circus, has written a piece on how to enjoy life on a lot less during this recession. I wonder if Grunter's been pondering his own future:

If we're not eating out as much, perhaps we're eating home more often, maybe even as families.
Sure you can talk together as a family over some spinach and artichoke dip and a thin-crust, brick-oven pizza at a restaurant. But without all the noise and clatter and would-you-like-fresh-ground-pepper-with-that interruptions, you might chat together even more.

You might have to dust off your playing cards and board games rather than hurrying to stand in line at the neighbourhood megaplex to see a movie no one is really happy to see, but which everyone has compromised on. (I make way better popcorn than those high school concession workers at the theatre, anyway.)

Maybe your vacation this summer will involve driving your van further than the airport park-and-ride. Maybe it will involve camping at a nearby provincial park or setting up in your cousins' backyard (provided the cousins don't object, mind you). You may have to be more Clark Griswold than Paris Hilton when planning your summer getaway.

My parents saved up for three or four years for good road-trip vacations --Expo '67, Disneyland--but in between we made do with sites closer to home. The vacation we still talk about the most was the camping trip to Saskatchewan's 1971 Homecoming. We have more funny, shared stories from that summer than any other.

Read a book. Read a newspaper (please, read a newspaper). Invite the next door neighbours over for burgers on the deck. Go for a walk instead of a workout. Rediscover the joy and excitement in conversation.

Relearning to appreciate the simple things -- playing with the box prosperity came in -- can be the silver lining in austere times.

Good advice for anyone facing the pinch in this recession, from a guy who should know.

UnDemonizing Iran

Doug Saunders has an excellent op-ed piece in today's G&M detailing how Bush rejected a comprehensive peace offer from Iran, undermined a moderate leader and left the way open for a rabid radical, Ahmadinejad.

Saunders points out that the path to peace with Iran begins when we stop demonizing it:

The pro-American demonstrations, by all reports genuine (and unpunished), took place over several days in 2003. In that spring, Mr. Khatami sent a Swiss official to Washington to make the peace offer. In exchange for recognizing Israel, cutting off Hamas and proving it had abolished any nuclear-weapons plans, Iran wanted an end to sanctions, normal diplomatic relations with the U.S. and recognition of its role in the region.

So what happened? Well, nothing. George W. Bush was president, the Iraq war was just approaching the "mission accomplished" phase, and nobody in the White House thought it would look good to make peace with Iran, a country that only the year before had been made a rhetorical component in Mr. Bush's "axis of evil."

As one State Department official directly involved with the Iranian offer told me, "It was like we missed the biggest Middle East peace opportunity of the decade, just so we could keep saying 'axis of evil.' "

So the offer was stuck in a drawer. That diplomatic snub was one of several humiliations, diplomatic and economic, that led to the defeat of Mr. Khatami's reformists in subsequent elections and the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's neo-conservative zealots. Mission accomplished, indeed.

A friendly relationship with Iran would solve a number of problems: The Afghanistan war would be much, much easier; Iraq would be more manageable; and prospects for Middle East peace would be energized. As Ms. Albright said, there are useful alliances with far less democratic, far more Islamic countries that are far less capable of changing for the better - notably, Saudi Arabia.

Most of the objection to this scenario, of course, is based on our belief that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. But that, too, is almost ready to vanish into vapour. Our most authoritative source of information about Iran's nuclear program is the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, which stated categorically, based on voluminous sources, that Iran had abandoned its nuclear-weapons program in 2003. Intelligence officials acknowledge openly that the past two years have not added a single new piece of information to that assessment.

It was reported this week, based on a new IAEA report, that Iran has produced "enough low-enriched, reactor-grade uranium to make a bomb." This, as former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Cheryl Rofer has carefully documented, is scientific nonsense: Yes, that uranium contains enough U-235 to make a bomb. To get it out, you would need to kick all the inspectors out of the country, reconfigure thousands of closely watched centrifuges and engage in years of enrichment.

It was physicist Werner Heisenberg who found that the act of observing can affect the nature of the thing being observed. It is likely that simply by looking at Iran as a threat, we've made it one. Look again, and it might change.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090221.DOUG21/TPStory/Focus/
There are still forces in the United States and especially Israel that would bomb Iran in a heartbeat. You can spot them when they distort Iran's actual weapon-making capacity, spinning half truths and infusing fear. Fortunately there seems to be a new American administration that sees Iran as a possible opportunity, not an inevitable adversary.

Food for Thought - From MLK

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time ... We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words:

"Too late."

- Martin Luther King

PTSD Anyone?

PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a well recognized affliction common in soldiers returning from tours of combat abroad. Our militaries look for signs of it and try to treat PTSD victims. The Vietnam aftermath showed what happens when PTSD is left untreated.

Switch now to Guantanamo where the US government faces the difficult challenge of releasing detainees swept up years ago but against whom the American military authorities have no case. You have people who were swept off the streets and flown halfway around the world to undergo years of psychological and physical manipulation, even torture.

America is manufacturing its own, "made in Gitmo" terrorists. The Washington Post has a story of one of these, a Kuwaiti named Abdallah Al-Ajmi, who spent four years at Guantanamo before being sent home.

...U.S. government officials were deeply disappointed -- they had hoped that Kuwait, an American ally, would find a way to detain Ajmi for years -- but they refrained from any public criticism. At the very least, the officials figured, Kuwaiti authorities would keep a close watch on him. And they expected Ajmi to move on, to put his Guantanamo experience behind him, to get a job and settle down after his time in one of the toughest prisons on the planet.

Ajmi chose a different path. Last March, he drove a truck packed with explosives onto an Iraqi army base outside Mosul, killing 13 Iraqi soldiers and himself. It was the denouement of a nihilistic descent that his lawyers and family believe commenced at Guantanamo.

When Ajmi returned to Kuwait, "he was a ticking time bomb," said Mansur Saleh al-Ajmi, one of his younger brothers.

"Before he went to Afghanistan, he was a normal teenager. He spun the car around in circles. He smoked. People liked him," Mansur said. "After he came back from Guantanamo, he seemed like a completely different person. He stared all the time. You could not have a normal conversation with him. . . . It seemed as if his brain had been washed."

...When Thomas Wilner [Ajmi's Gitmo lawyer] learned that his client had become a suicide bomber, he said he felt physically ill. He thought of the victims, and he thought of Ajmi. "Here was this poor, dumb kid -- I really don't think he was a bad kid -- who was thrown into a hellhole of a prison and who went mad," he said. "Should we really be surprised that somebody we treated this way would become radicalized, would become crazy?"

Curiously absent from the American commentary is any suggestion that the US should give inmates psychological screening and, where necessary, treatment before they're returned to their homelands. It's a horrible Catch-22. Hold them to treat them for PSTD or other mental maladies and you're essentially admitting that you've tortured them out of their minds. Ignore reality and release them and you're unleashing several that you've conditioned to retaliate violently. This is a "lose-lose" situation for America, and for the detainees.

Touch Wood - Canadian Consumer Confidence Climbs

CBC News reports that the latest Harris-Decima poll shows Canadian consumer confidence in an upswing.

27 per cent of respondents said they expect to be better off in 2010 compared to just 13 per cent who expect 2010 to be worse. 41% said now is a good time for major purchases.

With Canada among the countries least impacted by the global meltdown, it seems logical that our people would be more optimistic about the future. Our optimism may be misplaced but it's a welcome break from the fiscal gloom and doom anyway.

A Force Someone Might Just Harness

Protest, discontent, rage. Around the world, ordinary people are taking to the streets to protest the global meltdown. They're angry at their governments, they're furious at their financial institutions and they're carrying a rage that breaks out in mass demonstrations.

An angry crowd of 100,000 marched in Dublin over the weekend. Similar scenes have taken place in Greece, France, even China. The Guardian reports that British police are getting ready for their own large-scale riots:

Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become "viable targets". So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.

The police intelligence service warns that the coming crop of protestors don't merely want their anger heard, they'll ensure it's felt. The police claim "known activists" are moving in to agitate the protestors and the police are likewise gearing up to suppress unruly mobs.

All of this should be manna from heaven for the left. It'll be interesting to see if left wing parties find a way to harness the force of protest to revitalize themselves and shift the political centre.

100 Years Later - The Silver Dart Flies Again

If all goes well, a handbuilt replica of Alexander Graham Bell's Silver Dart will mark the centennial of powered flight in Canada with a short hop over Baddeck Bay, Nova Scotia.

The replica Silver Dart was the brainchild of a bunch of aviation buffs from the Welland area. They're a terrific story in their own right. I've known one of them since the 60's, a friend of my father's.

These fellows, who include a retired 747 captain, are recreational flyers who own their own hangar in which they store their small fleet of vintage and homebuilt aircraft. It's been their habit every now and then to fuel up their planes and take off on trips to places like Alaska or Florida.

To build the Silver Dart replica these guys created the Aerial Experiment Association. They've got a web site that explains what they had to do to make the Silver Dart centennial flight a reality.

http://www.silverdartreplica.com/

Final Exams for America's Ailing MegaBanks

America's major banks - including CitiBank and Bank of America - are being scrutinized this week by Washington regulators to determine if they're beyond saving. From the New York Times:

These reviews of the banks’ books, known as “stress tests,” are heightening a dilemma for Obama aides about how candid they should be about the health of banks like Citigroup and Bank of America. The tests are expected to take several weeks.

Bank shares were pummeled last week, partly because of rumors that the government might nationalize some of the banks. Officials consider many of the top 20 banks “too big to fail.”

Still, the big banks say they remain relatively healthy and that, with time and support from the government, they will regain their footing. But many economists, Wall Street analysts and even some bank executives contend that some of the banks are already effectively insolvent.

NYT columnist Paul Krugman says the Obama administration needs to find the courage to nationalize the big banks, what he calls "zombie banks" unable to provide credit to the US economy.

The case for nationalization rests on three observations.

First, some major banks are dangerously close to the edge — in fact, they would have failed already if investors didn’t expect the government to rescue them if necessary.

Second, banks must be rescued. The collapse of Lehman Brothers almost destroyed the world financial system, and we can’t risk letting much bigger institutions like Citigroup or Bank of America implode.

Third, while banks must be rescued, the U.S. government can’t afford, fiscally or politically, to bestow huge gifts on bank shareholders.
Let’s be concrete here. There’s a reasonable chance — not a certainty — that Citi and BofA, together, will lose hundreds of billions over the next few years. And their capital, the excess of their assets over their liabilities, isn’t remotely large enough to cover those potential losses.

...But here’s the thing: the funds needed to bring these banks fully back to life would greatly exceed what they’re currently worth. Citi and BofA have a combined market value of less than $30 billion, and even that value is mainly if not entirely based on the hope that stockholders will get a piece of a government handout. And if it’s basically putting up all the money, the government should get ownership in return.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/23bank.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=1

National Geographic Slams Tar Sands

This isn't going to help Tar Sands fans in Calgary or Ottawa. The march edition of National Geographic will have a photo spread of the Athabasca Tar Sands. According to CanWest, the feature will include several pictures of Athabasca's enormous black tailing ponds.

The Alberta government is - on what has become a regular basis - in a pitched struggle with environmentalists and the media over control of the thorny climate change issue.
And the politics surrounding the oilsands - and the world's understanding of Alberta's oil reserves - may define the current Alberta government's time in power.

Earlier this week, Premier Ed Stelmach said comments that Alberta has the dirtiest oil on earth are ``most unfortunate. It's obviously disconcerting, but that's part of the misinformation that continues to roll out quite often from self-interest groups, painting Alberta and the country of Canada with a picture like that.''

But Simon Dyer, oilsands program director for the Pembina Institute, an environmental think-tank, said from the Stelmach's government's point of view, ``there still seems to be the perception that this is a public relations battle. ''

Dyer added, ``industry and government need to take responsibility for the environmental performance of the oilsands.''

After years of promising site remediation and environmental clean ups, especially the repeated promise of carbon sequestration, people are beginning to call Alberta's and Ottawa's bluff - and finding they're holding losing hands. It was good while it lasted but it's finally put up or shut up time for the Tar Sands.

What Does "Progressive" Mean to Michael Ignatieff?

I've been pretty forthcoming in my criticisms of interim Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. I've been disappointed in his endorsement of the illegal war on Iraq after 9/11. I've felt really let down that a Liberal leader could take such an unbalanced, one-sided position on the Israeli-Palestinian problem, tantamount absolution for all and any Israeli excesses. I've been troubled by his contradictory support of the Athabasca Tar Sands and his apparent lack of understanding of the environmental dimensions of that catastrophe. I've been worried by this nagging sense that the interim Liberal leader will pander for votes.

Several months ago I read Mr. Ignatieff's self-description as "progressive" yet what I've seen in him so far has been bereft of anything progressive and disturbingly close to neo-conservative.

But could I be wrong? Is there something genuinely liberal about the interim Liberal leader, something unquestionably progressive? I'm looking for more than just a little shiny bauble here or there. Is Michael Ignatieff truly liberal? Is he truly progressive? Is he really in the right party?

What do you think? All supporters and defenders of Michael Ignatieff, here's your chance to come to his aid.

A Nice Pat on the Back for Canada

According to the National Toast, flagship of the doomed CanWest empire, fiscally at least, Canada is being heralded by Western nations, particularly the US, as a paragon of virtue.

Canada has also become a useful proxy for officials in the Obama administration that hold the country up as a model of how "regulation can work."
Paul Volcker, a White House adviser and former chairman of the Federal Reserve, this week sketched out a vision for the future of the banking system that would look "more like the Canadian system than it does the American system."

President Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, also expressed a broad affinity for Canadian ethos -- ranging from the financial to the health-care system--during a recent stopover that he described as a "warming up for the visit of the President."

It's great to watch Harper's clown car cabinet try to bask in Paul Martin's sunshine knowing, had Canada suffered the setback of a Harper majority three years ago, we too would have been beset with all the fallout of American-style financial deregulation. The credit Harper is claiming today exists only because the Libs and NDP succeeded in holding his Conservatives at bay.

The Rebirth of Populism

Rachel Maddow and Bill Maher and 100,000 Dubliners may just be right. We may be about to witness the restoration of populism.

The Dubliners turned out in an angry protest over inadequacies in their government's stimulus initiative. The comments reported in The Guardian and other papers suggested a depth of anger that won't be going away soon, the fuel to drive change.

Give white and blue-collar Americans a chance to let the reality of what's hit them sink in and they too might come to see the economic elite for what they have wrought on working Americans. Big Business, Big Capital has left the United States in tatters and it was all through a toxic brew of greed and incompetence.

The factories of wealth raked in trillions of dollars through cannibalizing America's industrial base and flooding world markets with bad paper. Right wing news organizations ran interference for them, distracting the working classes with xenophobic anger and fears of terrorism. What happens if blue and white-collar Americans discover that they were indeed terrorized - from within? What fate awaits the oligarchs if the American people throw off their blankets of fear?

I'd bet that the populist revolution in the United States will break out when their government moves to "reform" Social Security. Having saddled working America with two, likely three-trillion dollars in debt on stimulus spending and bailing out Wall Street and American banks, it's going to take a lot of brass to stare down those workers and tell them the government can't afford to honour its Social Security promise to them.

That pitch falls apart as soon as someone asks "why?" The only reason why is that the federal government has, for decades, stolen the money working Americans entrusted to it for their retirement. It simply appropriated each year's Social Security surplus, money that was supposed to be safely invested to grow the fund necessary for the wave of Baby Boomer retirees. It siphoned off much of that surplus and wrote IOUs in exchange. Remember Bush talking about a file cabinet full of worthless IOUs?

What if working class America stomped its collective foot and demanded "government of the people, by the people and for the people," the deal enshrined in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address? My, my, my - the possibilities are endless.

Americans have a rich history of populism marked by the rise of the Progressives in the late 1800s through the 1920s. It was a democratic balancing, a movement to set right the excesses of the oligarchs, to reclaim political power for the public.

Keeping Joe Lunchpail in line hasn't been easy but it's been accomplished by feeding him the lie that progressivism = liberalism = socialism = communism = godless political slavery. It's a powerful lie but a lie nonetheless. It's a lie that's going to become harder to sustain. Once working Americans come to see it as a lie and realize how it's been used against them it must just spark a counter-offensive in the class war that's been quietly waged on working America going back to the Reagan years.

The Foot Connects

Need proof that academics can be as craven as industrialists? Check out this link posted at Foot's:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02202009.html

Obama and Israel, a Strained Friendship?

I don't buy "biblical inerrancy," the strange notion that every word in the bible is the literal Word of God. The Bible, whatever else it may be, is a book written by a bunch of very mortal human beings a long, long time ago reflecting a very early understanding of the world and deities.

In his book American Fascists, Chris Hedges utterly dismantles the notion of biblical inerrancy as patently false given the numerous contradictions in its text and something we only chose to rely on when it suits us:

A literal reading of the Bible means re institution of slavery coupled with the understanding that the slavemaster has the right to beat his slave without mercy since "the slave is his money" (Exodus 21:21). Children who strike or curse a parent are to be executed (Exodus 21:15, 17). Those who pay homage to another god "shall be utterly destroyed" (Exodus 22:20). Menstruating women are to be considered unclean, and all they touch while menstruating becomes unclean (Leviticus 15:19-32). The blind, the lame, those with mutilated faces, those who are hunchbacks or dwarfs and those with itching diseases or scabs or crushed testicles cannot become priests (Leviticus 24:16). And "if the spirit of jealousy" comes upon a man, the high priest can order the jealous man's wife to drink "the water of bitterness." If she dies, it is proof of her guilt; if she survives, of her innocence (Numbers 5:11-31). Women, throughout the Bible, are subservient to men, often without legal rights, and men are free to sell their daughters into sexual bondage (Exodus 21:7-11).

But one little bit of lunacy we cling to in modern geopolitics is the fantastic notion that God bequeathed the "land of Israel" to the Israelites in perpetuity. If you believe that (and so many do) you should rush home, put your wife in her place, sell your daughters, beat your slaves and execute that pesky kid who won't get off the X-Box.

This little fantasy got a free ride during the Bush-era, the Era of Darkness, but it's turning into jello now that Obama has taken the reins. Asia Times Online reports that storm clouds are gathering between the US and Israel:

Iran, with which President Barack Obama has pledged to engage in a "constructive dialogue", and the future of its nuclear program will no doubt be the greatest source of tension between the two allies. The new president's commitment to achieving real progress on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict may also provoke serious friction. This will particularly be the case should a reunified Arab League launch a major new push for the adoption of its 2002 peace plan, which provides for Arab recognition of Israel in return for the latter's withdrawal from all occupied Arab lands.

Last week's election produced a clear majority for right-wing parties led by the Likud Party of former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly declared his opposition to a settlement freeze, territorial concessions and the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Obama and his Middle East Special Envoy George Mitchell may indeed be willing to exert pressure on Israel - among other things, by tabling their own views about a final peace agreement and how precisely it might be achieved - especially if ongoing Arab efforts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah in a new coalition government succeed.

If all goes well on that front, the Arab League, fortified by a developing rapprochement between Syria and Saudi Arabia, could announce the latest version of its 2002 peace plan at next month's summit in Doha, according to Marc Lynch, a George Washington University specialist on Arab politics.

"If you have a unified Palestinian government and a unified Arab move for peace," added Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, "then it's much more likely that Obama will step up his own efforts - ideally, working with an Israeli government that's ready to go along with a serious peace process, but, if not, being willing to make his disagreement [with that government] known."

The result could be a serious test between the next Israeli government and its influential US advocates. The Obama administration clearly believes that real progress toward resolving the 60-year-old conflict is critical both to restoring Washington's credibility among the Arab states and curbing the further radicalization of the region's population - particularly in the wake of Israel's recent military offensive in Gaza.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KB21Aa01.html