Occupy Wall Street and the basics of US income inequality

Occupy Wall Street and the European movement of indignados are both very much related to the great increase of inequality in Europe and the US during the last 30 years.

The Congressional Budget Office just released a very helpful study on Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007 (Oct 2011). One thing about these comparisons that can make it easy for polemicists to create sound-bites that fog the water is that there is a lot of room to select data, e.g., which income cohorts to compare, which dates to choose, etc. But this CBO set of bullet-points is one good overview of the basics, dealing with the period 1979-2007:

The share of income going to higher-income households rose, while the share going to lower-income households fell.

• The top fifth of the population saw a 10-percentage-point increase in their share of after-tax income.

• Most of that growth went to the top 1 percent of the population.

• All other groups saw their shares decline by 2 to 3 percentage points.

This concentration of wealth has major implications for democracy. You can have a democracy with significant disparities of wealth and income. But the more extreme the concentration at the top becomes, the more disproportionate the power of the wealthiest to control political outcomes through the direct and indirect power of money becomes.

Conservatives for a long time have attacked any increase for taxes on the wealthy as "income redistribution" and therefore bad. Democrats - do I even need to say it? - have rolled over and played dead in front of such propaganda.

The truth is that every tax is a redistribution of income of some kind. The real question is whether redistribution of fair, just and conducive to the health of democracy. What we have now is none of those three.

As the CBO report points out, tax policies have shaped how the distribution of income has changed since 1977, and shaped it in the direction of increasing concentration of power for the wealthiest:

Government transfers and federal taxes both help to even out the income distribution. Transfers boost income the most for lower-income households, while taxes claim a larger share of income as people's income rises.

In 2007, federal taxes and transfers reduced the dispersion of income by 20 percent, but that equalizing effect was larger in 1979.

• The share of transfer payments to the lowest-income households declined.

• The overall average federal tax rate fell.

Distribution of wealth and distribution of income are closely related phenomena but not identical. The distribution of income alone doesn't fully measure the economic clout of the largest 1% or 10%. But because they are heavily correlated, it certainly gives a vivid picture.

Ryan Chittum recently busted the rightwing AEI for a study purporting to show that there had been no increase in income inequality in The Myth of Income Equality, Courtesy of AEI CJR The Audit 10/26/2011. The following takes five whole sentences for him to say, which probably makes it 4 1/2 sentences more than the average Rush Limbaugh fan would even attempt to listen to:

The poorest 20 percent of households made an average $11,034 last year, $179 less than they did in 1979. The median income rose to $49,445 last year from $46,074 in 1979, while the top 20 percent made an average $169,633, or $48,536 more than in 1979.

But the real blowout hasn't been between the 80th and 99th percentiles. It’s been in the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent, which is why that "We Are the 99 percent" slogan has struck such a chord. The poorest member of the top 1 percent made $347,000 in 2007 (the latest year I can find), more than double the $165,049 they made in 1979.

Paul Krugman in Denial In Depth 10/29/2011 takes off from Chittum's post to point out common patterns in rightwing counterfactual argumentation:

What I found myself thinking about, however, is the way the inequality debate illustrates some typical features of many debates these days: the way the right has a sort of multi-layer defense in depth, which involves not only denying facts but then, in a pinch, denying the fact that you denied those facts.

Think about climate change. You have various right-wingers simultaneously (a) denying that global warming is happening (b) denying that anyone denies that global warming is happening, but denying that humans are responsible (c) denying that anyone denies that humans are causing global warming, insisting that the real argument is about the appropriate response.

I’m not sure there are three levels (yet) on inequality, but we definitely have (a) right-wingers denying that inequality is rising and (b) denying that anyone is denying the rise in inequality, but attacking any proposal to limit that rise.

You might ask, how is it possible to take such mutually contradictory positions? And the answer is, it's very easy if confusing the debate is your job.

Tags: occupy wall street, paul krugman, us economy

What does a famous actual Marxist think of the OWS protests?

A couple of weeks ago, I was quoting some pearl-clutching editorial at even-the-liberal New Republic that was shocked! shocked! I tell you, shocked! that Marxist academic and former Yugoslav democratic dissident Slavoj Žižek had made spoken to the Occupy Wall Street crowd in New York and suggested they try to "imagine the end of capitalism". The New Republic editorialist was horrified.

Žižek did a commentary on the European version of Occupy Wall Street, the indignados of Greece and Spain, Shoplifters of the World Unite London Review of Books 08/19/2011. The immediate topic was this past summer's London riots, which is different the organized protests of the indignados/OWS. But he does discuss the latter. To be fair, his take was more specifically on the anti-austerity protests in Greece and Spain, and this was before the OWS protests as such had started. Here is his comment, which leans toward academicese:

But one should also avoid the temptation of the narcissism of the lost cause: it’s too easy to admire the sublime beauty of uprisings doomed to fail. Today’s left faces the problem of ‘determinate negation’: what new order should replace the old one after the uprising, when the sublime enthusiasm of the first moment is over? In this context, the manifesto of the Spanish indignados, issued after their demonstrations in May, is revealing. The first thing that meets the eye is the pointedly apolitical tone: ‘Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic and social outlook that we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice.’ They make their protest on behalf of the ‘inalienable truths that we should abide by in our society: the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life.’ Rejecting violence, they call for an ‘ethical revolution. Instead of placing money above human beings, we shall put it back to our service. We are people, not products. I am not a product of what I buy, why I buy and who I buy from.’ Who will be the agents of this revolution? The indignados dismiss the entire political class, right and left, as corrupt and controlled by a lust for power, yet the manifesto nevertheless consists of a series of demands addressed at – whom? Not the people themselves: the indignados do not (yet) claim that no one else will do it for them, that they themselves have to be the change they want to see. And this is the fatal weakness of recent protests: they express an authentic rage which is not able to transform itself into a positive programme of sociopolitical change. They express a spirit of revolt without revolution.

In other words, they don't have a clear message! Exactly one of the criticisms that FOX News, Republicans and CNN airhead Erin Burnett made of OWS!

I'm not familiar enough with Žižek to have an idea of which of the million varieties of Marxism most influence him. But that part of his commentary reminds me of a definition I once heard of Trotskyists: they're the people who support revolution everywhere except where there's one going on.

Now, I wouldn't quarrel in this case with the literal meaning of Žižek's judgment, "They express a spirit of revolt without revolution". And the fact that he did show up to speak to OWS presumably indicates he thinks the movement is significant.

But it also illustrates how an elaborate revolutionary ideology can serve an above-the-fray attitude that discourages rather than invites engagement. Gee, they don't have a full-blown political party with long position papers on how they will solve all problems immediately upon taking power! How can a self-respecting, a very self-respecting, important Marxist intellectual take them seriously?

I admit my reaction to that essay is colored by having read this account of a conference where Professor Žižek appeared: Michael Sayeau, The Fifth International: n+1 covers the London Conference, "On the Idea of Communism" n+1 04/22/2009. But here is how he concludes his London Review essay:

The situation in Greece looks more promising, probably owing to the recent tradition of progressive self-organisation (which disappeared in Spain after the fall of the Franco regime). But even in Greece, the protest movement displays the limits of self-organisation: protesters sustain a space of egalitarian freedom with no central authority to regulate it, a public space where all are allotted the same amount of time to speak and so on. When the protesters started to debate what to do next, how to move beyond mere protest, the majority consensus was that what was needed was not a new party or a direct attempt to take state power, but a movement whose aim is to exert pressure on political parties. This is clearly not enough to impose a reorganisation of social life. To do that, one needs a strong body able to reach quick decisions and to implement them with all necessary harshness. [my emphasis]

It's true that the Spanish indignados and the larger indignado movement that OWS represents aren't the same as a set of Leninist parties ready to seize power and expropriate the expropriators. But apart from the non-insignificant matters of the desirability and the feasibility of such a seizure of power, in this context it becomes a doctrinaire way of dismissing a protest movement that has changed the political dialogue in the Western democracies, at a moment in time when the mass political parties of left and right  proved incapable of defending the interests of the working majority against the plutocrats.

If OWS and the democratic movement generally can block destructive actions by parties left and right, such as cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits in the United States, that will be a substantial progressive achievement.

It is obvious that to have a government that can represent the majority interest effectively against the Money Power, as the Jacksonians called it, the majority would have to have a political party or party coalition working effectively on their behalf.

But that doesn't mean there's no role for protest movements outside the political party structures proper. As dogmatic as today's Republican Party is, wealthy factions like that of the Koch brothers do represent a kind of inside-outside strategy; if they decide that the Party establishment is insufficiently subservient to their interests, they have various organizations, think tanks, donation channels, etc., that can bring pressure on recalcitrant members. (Even in the most rigid authoritarian party, a Marxist intellectual like Žižek would presumably be the first to recognize that there would still be contradictions among the supporting factions.)

What the United States and the European democracies need right now is a progressive movement that is substantially independent of the left parties but which can bring effective pressure to bear on them in the form of lobbying, mass mobilizations like OWS, and primary challenges to Blue Dogs such as the challenges Blue America promotes.

Žižek's August comments are a reminder that even people with a worldview that emphasizes the inevitability of social and political changes can be taken by surprise by the ones that actually occur. Some are more disappointed than others when that occurs. Some are actually glad to see it!

Tags: democratic movement, occupy wall street, slavoj žižek

"Off with their heads!" (New York Times op-ed/Qaddafi version)

Historian Simon Bebag Montefiore has an op-ed gushing over the edifying spectacle of disposing of dictators by lynch-murder in the respectable Gray Lady, the New York Times, Dictators Get the Deaths They Deserve 10/26/2011. His flimsy justification:

The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes. As Churchill put it, "dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount."

Only death can end both the spell to bewitch and the prerogative to dominate - and sometimes, not even death can snuff out power. "The terror inspired by Caligula’s reign," wrote Suetonius, "could be judged by the sequel." Romans were so terrified of the emperor that it was not enough to assassinate him. They wanted to see him dead: fearing it was a trick and lacking cellphone footage, they had to be convinced. The mile-long line of Libyans who were keen to see Colonel Qaddafi'’s cadaver in its shop-refrigerator-tomb would understand this perfectly.

If what one wants is to strenthen the rule of law, as opposed to providing opportunities for the voyeurism that has always drawn eager crowds to public executions, the approach Argentina has taken toward officials who committed gruesome crimes during El Proceso, the military dictatorship of 1976-83, works much better. They give them the kind of fair trials they denied their victims. And if they are convicted in a court of law that produces sufficient evidence of their crimes, they are sent to prison. For a very recent example, see Argentina's "Angel of Death" sent to prison CBS News 10/26/2011. Here's a report on the case from Euronews (YouTube date 10/27/2011):



Glenn Greenwald has some useful thoughts about the corrosive effects of disposing of our Bad Enemies through summary execution in A remaining realm of American excellence Salon 10/22/2011.

Simon Montefiore obviously prefers the spectacle of lynch-mob justice.

I prefer to see the Argentines in the Euronews video above cheering for justice being done under the rule of law.

I hope one day that we also see those American officials responsible for torture crimes and illegal assassinations face justice in US courts.

Tags: argentina, assassination, libya war, rule of law

Georges Sorel (1847-1922) (2 of 2)

[Continued from Part 1 yesterday] As one may imagine, this lead to a lot of conceptual and rhetorical hair-splitting. This can be seen in his most famous work, the Reflections on Violence (1908), first published as a series of newspaper articles. Sorel railed through various political transformations against philosophical idealism and utopianism. Yet in Reflections, he spells out a theory that sounds like some mixture of Utopia, Christian eschatology and idealism (at least in the more colloquial sense).

He contrasts two kinds of general strikes. One is the "political" general strike, which he views as bad because in the end it preserves and strengthens some form of the existing system of law and the Socialist Party politicians, who he denounces as a bunch of careerists and cynics in terms that an employers' association could easily adapt to their distinctly non-socialist, non-syndicalist purposes.

The "proletarian" general strike, on this other hand, he sees as virtuous in the extreme. The working class will conduct this happy event in the most highminded way, without the normal human failings of leaders and political movements:

The Syndicalist general strike presents a very great number of analogies with the first conception of war: the proletariat organises itself for battle, separating itself distinctly from the other parts of the nation, and regarding itself as the great motive power of history, all other social considerations being subordinated to that of combat; it is very clearly conscious of the glory which will be attached to its historical rôle and of the heroism of its militant attitude; it longs for the final contest in which it will give proof of the whole measure of its valour. Pursuing no conquest, it has no need to make plans for utilising its victories: it counts on expelling the capitalists from the productive domain, and on taking their place in the workshop created by capitalism. (From the authorized translation by T. E. Hulme; 1914)

This tract could be read – and was – as a glorification of redemptive social violence. But when you start digging into Sorel's arguments, it can quickly come to feel like an infinite spiral that leads nowhere. Violent doesn't actually mean committing acts of violence. All systems of law are based on violence, and replacing them will another system of law is violent, even if the change doesn't require acts of violence, because all law is based on violence. But the eschatological Proletarian General Strike is nonviolent even if it is accompanied by acts of extreme violence, because it will abolish all law and produce a golden age of disciplined cooperation, and because it abolishes law that is inherently violent, the Proletarian General Strike is in its very essence nonviolent.

Freund notes, "Schon Sombart nannte die Syndikalisten die Gourmets der sozialistischen Theorie. Sie erschienen als die sozialistische Gnosis." ("Sombart had already called the syndicalists the gourmets of socialist theory. They seemed to be the socialist Gnosis.")

If this were the only place Sorel made such arguments, one might wonder if it weren't some kind of convoluted way to avoid official censorship. But as Freund’s account makes very clear, he argued this way all the time. Thus, in the last few years of his life, he admired Lenin as the regenerator of the Russian nation and admired Mussolini for much the same reason, though he heavily criticized key aspects of both phenomena.

Some of this may have been an over-cautious attitude of the intellectual and polemicist in him, trying to work lots of alibi arguments into his texts to make it difficult for critics to pin down particular weaknesses. But it's hard to avoid the impression that the result is a confusing eclecticism. As Freund discusses, even though Mussolini described Sorel as a direct and important influence on his Fascist political outlook, it's impossible to say definitively what Sorel's view of Italian Fascism really was. Because there are places in his postwar work where he seems to argue for Fascism, and other places where he seems to be arguing against it.

Freund's argument about Sorel's core conservatism gives us the unifying threads: a sentimental notion of the virtues of Old France; opposition to progress accompanied by a horror for the decadence of civilization; reverence for the role of Catholic Church in French history; belief in the need for a heroic national myth to motivate a country’s people to discipline, modesty and sexual chastity.

A dusty-minded thinker, in other words, who nevertheless couldn’t help being fascinated and engaged by the social dynamics of the world in which he lived. As Freund writes:

Sorel war ein konservativer Denker. Der Verkünder des Ruhmes Lenins war vielleicht der größte konservative Denker unserer Zeit. Der konservative Untergrund Sorels ist unzerstörbar.

[Sorel was a conservative thinker. The herald of Lenin’s glory was perhaps the greatest conservative thinker of our time. The conservative underground of Sorel is indestructible.]

Tags: georges sorel, michael freund

The latest euro rescue plan

Kevin Hall reports on the guarded good news of the EU/eurozone emergency summit midweek. Markets reacted positively to news that a deal was struck. but as Michelle Bachmann might say, the devil is in the details. Or, in this case, the lack of them. Here's a report from Aljazeera English's Inside Story, Buying time in the eurozone YouTube date 10/28/2011:



The best news is that the deal recognizes that the banks that hold Greek paper have to take as much as a 50% "haircut" (loss of principal). That means that the EU is finally recognizing the reality that all the players have known for months that Greece is only going to be able to pay back half or less of its current debt load.

More precisely, it's potentially misleading to say banks will have to take the haircut. The arrangement is voluntary. So even the best news is only qualified good news. But as one of the guests in the Inside Story program points out, that voluntary 50% haircut applies only to Greek debt held by private banks, not the large amount held by public institutions like the European Central Bank (ECB) or by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). So it's not a writedown of 50% of all the Greek debt, which means even if the voluntary writedown works out, it's just a stopgap.

It's also encouraging that the EU plans to raise capital requirements for the banks. This should provide more stability.

It's hard to tell what is the worst news. The ECB is still unwilling to assume the role of lender of last resort, which is a necessary element of any permanent euro solution. The provisions for the bailout funds are tentative; they actually expect Brazil and China to participate in it! How much of a sweetheart deal the banks will get has still not been determined. There is certainly no indication that the EU will abandon its destructive, anti-democratic insistence that Greece and other countries with credit troubles impoverish themselves and dismantle critical elements of their social benefits systems.

And hanging over it all is a big unknown. We don't know how much interconnection there is between the financial commitments of the major international banks. As David Freedman helpfully explains in the Nov 2011 Scientific American, "A Formula for Economic Calamity" 10/26/2011, regulators don't know the extent to which derivatives and re-insurance arrangements interlink the risks of various financial institutions, a critical blank spot which left the US and other governments unprepared for the effects of the Lehman collapse in 2008. It was a critical risk factor that was not well understood, and our understanding of it has essentially improved since 2008. Nor has regulation of those risks.

In this case, writedowns of Greek debt by European banks may trigger interest-rate swaps and insurance provisions that will spread weakness to the institutions providing that relief. And financial companies that hold significant amounts of Greek debt may also be on the hook to other companies that hold Greek debt via those other financial instruments. In other words, a company getting hammered my losses on Greek debt may also wind up having to pay money to other companies simultaneously writing down Greek debt.

Kevin Hall reports on the deal for McClatchy Newspapers in Europe averts financial disaster, but much remains to be done 10/27/2011:

However, wild mood swings on Wall Street have become the norm, so whether the relief rally has legs is an open question.

What's clear to experts who follow Europe's economy is this: There's less to the EU compromise than meets the eye.

"I'm totally downbeat," said Nicolas Veron, a senior economist for the European think tank Bruegel in Brussels. Veron and other experts are particularly unhappy with the European move to require banks to build a big buffer against future losses, but then giving them until June to do so.

"They're sort of admitting you don't have enough capital in the system," Sebastian Mallaby, a senior fellow for economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, said during a conference call with reporters. "You are admitting that for the next eight months, when the markets are in high panic, you don't have enough funds."

The move to raise bank reserves came after an earlier round of so-called stress testing was criticized for simulating economic scenarios that were hardly stressful. Thursday's agreement shows that criticism was correct, yet it gives banks a long lead time to get to safer ground.

German financial firms that may be especially vulnerable to Greek debt problems include Commerzbank, DZ Bank (the holding company for Raiffeisenbank and Volksbank), Hypo Real Estate, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg and NordLB. (Stefan Kaiser, Euro-Gipfel: Jetzt müssen die Banken bluten Spiegel Online 27.10.2011) Some large French, Spanish and Italian banks could be put under big pressure by this. And Greek banks are in bigtime peril with their own holdings of Greek public debt along with the week economy being made disastrously weaker by the Herbert Hoover economics being forced on Greece by the EU on behalf of the big German and French banks.

Whether the financial lobby is making rational calculations on behalf of their own industry's cupidity in pushing for such destructive austerity measures is another question. But aside from their short-term focus, does anyone who remembers the 2008 collapse really seriously think the financial industry is dominated by rational thinking? Or that they can't be gulled by ideology when it comes to public policy?

This rotten performance by European leaders is way beyond normal routine political mediocrity. This is failure of leadership on a 1914 scale, though fortunately without the immediately apocalyptic military implications.

Tags: eu, european union

Georges Sorel (1847-1922) (1 of 2)

Georges Sorel (1847-1922) was a French philosopher primarily known for his social and political philosophy whose influence flowed many different ways:

Sorel, Konservativer, Marxist, Revisionist, revolutionärer Syndikalist, Nationalist, Bolschewist, Antiklerikaler, Verkünder der Wiederkehr Gottes nacheinander, schien alle Bewegungen der Zeit zur durcheilen, um nur einmal der reinen Flamme glühender Leidenschaft zu begegnen.

[Sorel, conservative, Marxist, Revisionist, revolutionary syndicalist, nationalist, Bolshevist, anti-clericalist, herald of God’s return, one after another, seemed to have rushed through all movements of the time in order to encounter the pure flame of fervent passion at least once.]

That description if from Michael Freund in Georges Sorel.Der revolutionäre Konservativismus (1932) [Georges Sorel: Revolutionary Conservatism]. In another summary reaching to the end of his life, Freund writes: "So ist er nacheinander Konservativer, Sozialist, Revisionist, Syndikalist, Nationalist, Bolschewist gewesen. Die Überzeugengen jagen sich." ("So he was, one after another, a conservative, a Socialist, a Revisionist, a syndicalist, a nationalist, and Bolshevist. The convictions chased each other.") As Freund also discusses, Sorel's work was influential for Benito Mussolini and other Italian Fascists.

Georges Sorel (1847-1922)

Sorel retired from a civil-service position as an engineer in 1892 and devoted himself for the remainder of his life to writing and research. His ideological periods in his publications can usefully be broken down as follows:

• 1886-92: Conservative, published books on the Bible and the trial of Socrates

• 1893-95: Marxist, then the mainstream position in European Social Democracy

• 1896-1901: Advocate of the anti-Marxist Revisionist school of Social Democracy advocated by Eduard Bernstein

• 1902-10: Revolutionary syndicalist and bitter critic of Social Democracy in France and elsewhere; syndicalism is a variety of anarchism and is also known as anarcho-syndicalism

• 1910-14: Nationalist in the general sense of Action Française, a French nationalist organization that contributed significantly to fascist thinking

• 1914-17: Opponent of French participation in the Great War, hoped for a German victory

• 1917-22: Admirer of Lenin and of Bolshevism; at the same time an admirer of Mussolini and the Italian Fascist movement

The Dreyfuss Affair engaged him intensely at its height in 1897-8. He was appalled at the demagogic anti-Semitism used by Dreyfuss' opponents but also by what he say saw as the narrow opportunism of the French Socialist Party. Later, in his nationalist phase, he engaged in anti-Semitic polemics himself.

How do we explain such seemingly erratic shifts in the emphasis of Sorel's work? Or, if we want to be put it more obscurely but generously, what accounts for the remarkable plasticity of his constantly evolving views? Had he, like Alfred Döblin's Friedrich Becker, "herumschlug, um die Wahrheit und den guten Wind zu finden, der sein Schiff treiben sollte" ("floundered around to find the truth and the favorable wind that would drive his ship")? (November 1918: Karl und Rosa [1950] p. 720)

Freund seems to have made his way through Sorel’s works patiently and attempted to "get into his head" to understand this question. And Freund’s narrative makes a plausible case that Sorel's perspective throughout these many ideological metamorphoses was essentially conservative. Sorel's conservatism was defined through by his fear and hatred of democracy, which he viewed as "das Übel der Übel" ("the evil of evils"). (Freund)

Sorel admired the old, aristocratic ruling elite of pre-Revolutionary France. He saw the Catholic Church as an essential defining aspect of the Old France he admired, and Catholic Christianity providing a valuable pessimism toward life that rejected the idea of progress as such. One of his books was called Illusions of Progress (1908). He saw the elite of Old France as providing a heroic attitude toward life, which was part of a broad and effective myth by which the French people had lived. His concept of political myth, by which he meant an inspiring framework for understanding the common political life of a given nation, was one of his most influential and enduring concepts.

This calls to mind elderly men sitting in front of dusty bookshelves in an English gentleman's club, reading old books that were dull and largely irrelevant even when they were new. Yet Sorel's own dusty mind insisted on engaging with the tumult going on outside the men's club.

The fall of Napoleon III in 1870 was a defining moment in Sorel's understanding of politics and philosophy. He saw the Second Empire as having been a form of Caesarism, in which a charismatic figure established his power with broad public support in order to establish his own authority. Sorel believed that too much democracy led to such a result. With the fall of Napoleon III and the establishment of the French Republic, the ruling bourgeois class had lost its competence, and the Republic as it existed would not be able to return to the imagined virtues of Old France.

The Paris Commune of 1871 was also for Sorel a horror show of democracy. Freund explains that Sorel maintained the notion that a "slave revolt" like those in ancient Rome was absolutely destructive to a civilization. He saw the Commune as another of the slave revolts. His decades-long journey through various ways of understanding himself as an advocate for working-class and mass movements was based on his belief that the working class (proletariat) was the rising force of history and civilization and that its rise was simply a fact of modern life that he needed to recognize. But he also carried through that journey an essentially conservative notion that the working class had to take power in the right way so they could become the right kind of people. A slave revolt just wouldn't do.

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2]

Tags: georges sorel, michael freund

Documentary on the Koch brothers' political network

Aljazeera English has a special on People & Power - The Koch Brothers YouTube date 10/27/2011:



Tags: koch brothers

Oakland police honor (?!) Iraq War veteran at Occupy Wall Street confrontation

The Twitter feed for In These Times names the injured man in this video as "Two time Iraq War Veteran, Scott Olsen".



The YouTube information gives the date of the event as 10/25/2011 and links to http://www.ktvu.com/video/29587714/index.html as the original. We don't see in the video what blooded Olsen's face and evidently left him unable to get up and walk away. We do see the police very obviously prevent other protesters from coming to the aid of the wounded man, although other demonstrators eventually do carry him away.

Tags: occupy wall street

Danforth and submission theology

Julie Ingersoll also takes issues with John Danforth's egregious recent op-ed essay on religion in American politics, though she was more generous to him than I'm inclined to be. In Possibility that Bachmann Believes in Wifely Submission Irrelevant? Religion Dispatches 10/24/2011. She focuses on Danforth's argument that it's naughty for libruls to ask about Michelle Bachmann's campaign appeal to conservative Christians that wives should submit to their husbands on career matters:

This isn't to assume that Bachmann's views on submission do necessarily line up with the Complementarians, the Reconstructionists, Gothard, or the Quiverfull Movement. Senator Danforth rightly argues against guilt by association, although "innocence without question" is hardly better for the health of our democracy. When a candidate foregrounds her religion as Bachmann does, and when she may well support a theology that challenges women's equality, and produces family situations that many have come to see as destructive and abusive, asking her how she understands that theology and how it would impact her leadership should she win election, certainly is fair game.

She's being generous in saying that "Danforth rightly argues against guilt by association", though she seems to be using that generous interpretation to point out how ridiculous it is for Danforth to apply it to Bachmann's public campaign appeals to voters.

Here is Danforth's ludicrous guilt-by-association argument:

One would hope that the tactic of guilt by association so aggressively practiced by Sen. Joseph McCarthy had died a welcome death in the 1950's. But it lives on in the efforts of both right and left to connect politicians to the most outrageous statements of religious personages. This was so in the 2008 presidential campaign as Republicans tied Barack Obama to the excessive rhetoric of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is true today, as critics try to identify Republican candidates with religious extremists.

The term guilt-by-association refers in American English - as Danforth surely knows - to guilt by irrelevant association. In the McCarthy context, people could lose their jobs and have their careers derailed and suffer social ostracism for being falsely accused of being Communists. Saying someone was a Communist because he signed a petition that Communists also signed would been imputing guilt by (irrelevant) association. If someone published articles under their own name in Communist Party publications and appeared on stage with Communists who were endorsing a rally starring the person, then it would have certainly be entirely legitimate to ask how the person stands on the Party's major positions. That latter issue arose in practice with Henry Wallace's Progressive Party Presidential campaign in 1948, when he accepted the Communist Party's endorsement and activists from the Party played a significant role in his campaign. In fact, Wallace himself was not a Communist but it was an issue he had to address. [Clarification: Technically, being a member of the Communist Party was not illegal in the US in the 1950s, though the Communist Control Act of 1954 could be argued to have had something close to that intention. So guilt in this context doesn't mean guilt in a legal sense.]

It is not "guilt by association" to associate Michelle Bachmann with her own words. It is not guilt-by-association to point out the political and theological position of the major sponsors of the public prayer event that Rick Perry used as the informal launch of his Presidential campaign. I found the Clinton campaign's use of the Wright issue in the 2008 Democratic primaries to be annoying and silly because I didn't find Wright's rhetoric alarming. But Obama campaigned explicitly as a Christian, as Jodie Kantor reported in January 25, 2008, 3:25 pm Obama’s Christian Campaign The Caucus/New York Times 01/25/2008:

As Mr. Obama traveled around South Carolina this week before Saturday's Democratic primary, his campaign took on a Christian glow, with shout-outs to Jesus by the candidate, warm-ups by gospel choirs, and glossy leaflets that showed Mr. Obama speaking from a pulpit and clasping hands with a minister, his head bowed in prayer. "Answering the Call," one piece of literature said in large type. "Committed Christian," said another — language a bit reminiscent of the kind Mike Huckabee, a Baptist pastor, used to win the Republican Iowa caucus.

Here and everywhere else, Mr. Obama is countering false claims that he is a Muslim. But even if those rumors never circulated, say campaign officials, Mr. Obama's appearances would look and sound the same way in this state, where 64 percent of Democrats attend church a week (nationally, 47 percent of Americans do). [my emphasis]

Yes, he had to counter rumors that he was Muslim. But, regardless of the reason, if a candidate campaigns with his religious faith as a major element of his appeal, he can't realistically expect that opponents are not going to look at what kind of religion is practiced as his longtime church. Obama addressed the issue effectively, though it was a sign of his concept of loyalty that he wound up straight-out disavowing the pastor who had been his long-time associate. In retrospect, that was a sign of how quickly he was willing to sacrifice some supporters who came under fire from opponents.

But it should be obvious to even a phony "moderate" like John Danforth that there's a big difference between holding a candidate responsible for what candidates actually say in public about their own beliefs and pointing out that they heard sermons from a pastor who used melodramatic language. And in fact Danforth's essay criticizes writers for addressing candidate's own publicly stated positions, before he doubles back at the end and mealy-mouths that it's really okay to do that.

Julie Ingersoll pegged his concern-troll schtick correctly. Despite the alibi weasel words he worked into the article, Danforth's piece was aimed at delegitimizing critical analysis of Republican Presidential candidates own campaign positions on government and religion.

I see that Bruce Wilson of Talk to Action has posted a couple of comments after the end of Danforth's article on 10/23/2011. The first one asks:

Dear Mr. Danforth,

Do you believe that Rick Perry bears no responsibility for those who speak at his events?

No one forced Rick Perry to appear onstage, before 20,000 people, at an event broadcast nationally, along with pastors who have identified Hitler as sent by God to persecute Jews. Perry himself chose to speak at The Response, and he invited pastors John Hagee and Mike Bickle, who each have made such a claim, to speak at The Response as well.

In May 2008, after I posted audio from a sermon in which John Hagee identified Hitler as a "hunter", McCain did the right thing and rejected Hagee's endorsement. Do you believe that was a mistake?

The second asks:

In addition, there is no question as to the extremity [sic] of the American Family Association, which funded Perry's "The Response" prayer rally, that served as the de facto launch for Perry's 2012 presidential bid.

Chief spokesperson for the AFA Bryan Fischer has openly called gay rights activists "Nazis" and claimed that Native Americans deserved to have their lands seized, because they were not Christian.

People For The American Way's Right Wing Watch has extensively documented the torrent of hate speech flowing from Fischer and the AFA. The Southern Poverty Law Center's identification of the AFA as a "hate group" is well supported.

Do you think Perry bears no responsibility for partnering with the AFA, in producing The Response?

Very relevant questions.

Tags: christian right, john danforth, republican party

John Danforth says libruls shouldn't look at Republicans' religious claims

Former Republican Sen. John Danforth is considered a "moderate" within the Republican Party, though "moderate" scarcely has any meaning in that context. Among his other memorable accomplishments in public office, he was the Senate sponsor of Justice Clarence Thomas' nomination, who is now both consistently reactionary and corrupt. Thank you, Republican "moderate".

Danforth recently published an op-ed piece, What is fair comment on a candidate's religion? St. Louis Beacon 10/21/2011, in which he assumes a concern-troll stances about the excesses of Both Sides, but really is an argument that we should all ignore the Christian dominionist extremism in the current Republican Party.

Danforth makes a remarkable set of claims. He argues that it would "divide America according to religion" and be "destructive to civil discourse" to: question Michelle Bachmann's publicly stated position that she is required by God to submit to her husband in her career choices; to be mildly irreverent about religious claims of Christian denominations; to question Gov. Goodhair Perry's sneering at separation of church and state; to challenge Bachmann's public statement about God using a hurricane as a political message; to look at the theocratic ideas and leaders with which candidates have associated themselves; or, to question Gov. Goodhair's public association with John Hagee, who even Maverick McCain rejected his support in 2008 because of Hagee's public anti-Semitism.

What one does not get in Danforth's long column is any description of what a major role organized conservative Christian political groups play in today's Republican Party. No mention of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) figures who played such a major public role in launching and supporting Gov. Goodhair's Presidential campaign.

And, in classic mealy-mouthed "moderation", Danforth toward the end of his long article then concedes that several of the writers he scolds for raising religion-related issues about Republican candidates actually raise legitimate issues! No, it doesn't make jack for sense logically. But it let Danforth take both sides of the issue and stand above the fray, while at the same time giving emphasis to how the wicked libruls are questioning the faith of Real Americans like Gov. Goodhair and Michelle Bachmann. And in a long essay, he manages to duck the issues about Presidential candidates' theocratic positions that have been highlighted and researched well by sites like Talk to Action and Religion Dispatches and the excellent investigative piece by Forrest Wilder in the Texas Observer, Rick Perry's Army of God (08/03/2011).

Danforth first tut-tuts the Republicans on issues like abortion:

The not very subtle message of practitioners of this sort of politics is that one's position on an issue such as abortion or stem cell research is God's position, and one's political campaign is a religious crusade.

The Republicans, of course, are going to keep right on doing that, as Danforth surely knows. They've spent decades developing that political and religious branding.

But it's those naughty libruls who are the real problem:

However, just as politicians can use religion divisively, so critics of religiously oriented politicians can be divisive. When religious people think they are being treated unfairly by their critics, and when they think that their religious beliefs are under attack, the same "us against them" mentality brought about by wedge issue politicians is fostered by the critics. The question, then, is when commentary about the religious orientation of politicians is appropriate and helpful to our understanding of politics and when it is unfair and destructive.

He clucks his op-ed tongue at New York Times' editor Bill Keller for making mildly irreverent comments about Mormonism in the context of defending Mitt Romney against anti-Mormon talk. He disapproves of anyone questioning Michelle Bachmann on her beliefs, which she articulated in public as part of a campaign appeal to the Republican base, about the obligation of a woman to submit to her husband. The woman's running for President of the United States. And if her weird husband has the divine right to give her commands she is required to obey, which is the plain meaning of her public description of wifely submission, people who may be voting for her really need to know that. But the nice "moderate" Mr. Danforth says it's "unrelated to public policy".

Danforth's column is even inspiring me to defend Dana Milbank, for which I'll probably be grinding my teeth in my sleep all night tonight. Danforth:

A broader attack on a theological position, made without reference to any supposed connection between belief and politics, is in a Washington Post column by Dana Milbank critical of Perry:

"Perry has no use for those who 'want to recognize Jesus as a good teacher, but nothing more.' Of those non-Christians, Perry asks, 'Why call him good if he has lied about his claims of deity and misled two millennia of followers?'"

Milbank is a high-level hack. But Danforth doesn't dispute his characterization of Gov. Goodhair as having "no use for those". If Perry is unwilling to work with non-Christians, which is how I read über-hack Milbank's words, that certainly is a very legitimate political issue in a democratic election!

The Milbank column in question is this one (though Danforth's op-ed doesn't give the citation or a link, which is actually standard practice for op-eds), Rick Perry is no libertarian 08/30/2011. Here's the Milbank quote with more context:

Perry’s politics are religious in a way not seen before in modern-day mainstream presidential candidates. "Either faith in Christ can cleanse all people of their sin, or none, but not some," he writes. "The truth of Christ's death, resurrection, and power over sin is absolute. . . . What we believe about it does not determine its truthfulness."

Perry has no use for those who "want to recognize Jesus as a good teacher, but nothing more." Of those non-Christians, Perry asks, "why call him good if he has lied about his claims of deity and misled two millennia of followers?"

The governor forecasts divine punishment for those who hold different political views. "Shall they stand before God and brag that they fought to scrub His glorious name from the nation's pledge?" he asks. "Shall they seek His approval for attacking private organizations merely because these organizations proclaim His existence?"

You know, I don't have the privilege that Perry's supporters in the New Apostolic Reformation do of receiving messages and direct visions from God. But I'm just guessing that whether the US Pledge of Allegiance to the flag includes the word "God" is pretty low on the list of the Almighty's moral concerns.

Remarkably, given the tone of his article, when he gets down to the mealy-mouthed "moderate" section of his long essay, Danforth pretty much says the same thing: "It is difficult to imagine that when we stand before God, as Perry envisions, God will judge us on whether his name is in or out of the Pledge of Allegiance."

And who are these people Gov. Goodhair complains about "for attacking private organizations merely because these organizations proclaim" the existence of God? Is there a wave of atheist-backed church bombings going on I haven't heard about?

Grinding down more teeth, I'll point out here that Milbank was looking at Gov. Goodhair's own published words with books listing him as an author. And he cites a number of principles based on his religion that strongly suggest he would be intolerant and downright hostile to significant segments of American society. Milbank, at least in this column, wasn't relying on the word of some Sunday School class member from Perry's church.

Danforth's piece is a long one, and is filled with more along these same lines. To sum it up, its early focus is to scold those bad libruls from wicked publications like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker and even-the-liberal New Republic. The latter part of the piece, which fewer readers will persist to read, provides alibi positions to let Danforth be cited as a "moderate". And his above-the-fray stance let's him avoid passing judgment on the real existing theocratic politics of his Republican Party.

Tags: christian right, john danforth, republican party

Troubles of Europe

I hope the European Union can be saved, for the sake of peace and democracy in Europe. I hope the euro can be saved, because in practice the failure of the euro would be a tremendous setback to the EU itself.

Seeing the disaster that now seems to be accelerating into a new phase in Europe is truly sad. Here are some of the latest traumas.

The EU leaders have yet another emergency summit on Wednesday. (Didn't they just have one this past weekend?) You would think they might take the hint that with every new solution seemingly falling apart more quickly than the last one, they might want to re-examine their basic approach. But they don't won't to upset their main constituency, the giant banks, who are lobbying hard to squeeze every euro they can out of the taxpayers while imposing austerity policies that even bank CEOs should be able to see are disastrous. The banks are basically threatening to trigger another Lehman Brothers event that could set off a new world financial crash if they don't get their way. (Arthur Beesley, Banks threaten to derail EU debt crisis strategy Irish Times 10/26/2011)

The obnoxious Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Rupert Murdoch but also its Prime Minister, faces a Wednesday deadline to knuckle under to new austerity demands from Germany and France. Berlusconi's coalition includes the nasty nationalist group the Northern League headed by Umberto Bossi, which is threatening to pull out of the coalition if Berlusconi gives in, which could bring down Berlusconi's government. (Fabian Reinbold, Berlusconi in der Krise: Italien schimpft auf Merkel und die Deutschen Spiegel Online 25.10.2011)

In general, support for "Europe" (the EU) has been strongest among left parties like the Greens and among mainstream conservatives and Social Democrats. Up until now, when the EU itself has become a tool for the financial elite to throttle democratic government and impoverish large portions of the European people, opposition to the EU has come from the right. Rightists are happy to take advantage of the current genuine crisis and the appalling failure of leadership in the EU to try to pull their countries out and undermine the whole democratic European project.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, who himself is practicing a brutal austerity program in Britain that is damaging their economy badly, is dealing with anti-Europeans in his own Conservative Party. Rightwing as he is, he's not ready to flush the EU down the drain yet. (Elizabeth Rigby, Cameron pursues risky strategy on rebellion, Yahoo! News/Financial Times 10/24/2011)

Krugman sees a lot of chatter about how things are getting better in Ireland, thus supposedly validating the absurd notion of expansionary austerity. But he says it ain't so. (Irish Reality Check 10/25/2011)

And French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently can't resist making snotty comments about the countries his austerity policies are damaging so badly. He says that people used to talk about Spain being an economic miracle and now nobody wants to be in their place. (Sarkozy: "Se hablaba de España como de un milagro, pero ahora nadie quiere estar en su lugar" EFE/El País 25.10.2011)

It's one of the mysteries of our present time why anyone listens to the crooked rating agencies any more. But Moody's is also threatening to downgrade France's debt. (Moody's warns on France's credit rating BBC 10/18/2011) So maybe it's not really the best time for Sarkozy to be trashing his EU partners.

Tags: eu, european union, nicolas sarkozy

Krugman on the Republicans' all-over-the-map attacks on Occupy Wall Street

Paul Krugman, looking at the strange assortment of attacks the Republicans are directing at the Occupy Wall Street movement, explains it this way (Say Anything 10/25/2011)

The key to understanding this, I’d suggest, is that movement conservatism has become a closed, inward-looking universe in which you get points not by sounding reasonable to uncommitted outsiders — although there are a few designated pundits who play that role professionally — but by outdoing your fellow movement members in zeal.

It’s sort of reminiscent of Stalinists going after Trotskyites in the old days: the Trotskyites were left deviationists, and also saboteurs working for the Nazis. Didn’t propagandists feel silly saying all that? Not at all: in their universe, extremism in defense of the larger truth was no vice, and you literally couldn’t go too far.

Many members of the commentariat don’t want to face up to the fact that this is what American politics has become; they cling to the notion that there are gentlemanly elder statesmen on the right who would come to the fore if only Obama said the right words. But the fact is that nobody on that side of the political spectrum wants to or can make deals with the Islamic atheist anti-military warmonger in the White House.

Strap yourself in; this is not going to be fun.

Tags: occupy wall street, paul krugman, republican party

Derivatives and bonds and crashes, oh my (European edition)

Bob Kuttner writes about the huge piece of the world economic crisis on the other side of the Atlantic in Europe on the Brink Huffington Post 10/23/2011:

Beginning in 2008, the collapse of Bear Stearns revealed the extent of pyramid schemes and interlocking risks that had come to characterize the global banking system. But Western leaders have stuck to the same pro-Wall-Street strategy: throw money at the problem, disguise the true extent of the vulnerability, provide flimsy reassurances to money markets, and don't require any fundamental changes in the business models of the world's banks to bring greater simplicity, transparency or insulation from contagion.

As a consequence, we face a repeat of 2008. Precisely the same kinds of off-balance sheet pyramids of debts and interlocking risks that caused Bear Stearns, then AIG, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch to blow up are still in place.

And he explains the gerbel-wheel on which the EU's leaders decided to place themselves:

The Greek situation reveals the deeper potential for contagion, and the Ponzi scheme that now characterizes the banking system. Europe's banks hold some in $121 billion Greek government bonds that are trading at about 40 cents on the dollar. Europe's leaders, meeting in a summit conference over the weekend, admitted that Greece needs a reduction in its debt load of 50 to 60 percent, and not the 21 percent that was agreed to by the banks back in July.

So Europe's banks will need to take much a bigger hit, and it's not clear that they have the capital to sustain it. But Europe's governments and the European Central Bank are balking at providing this money directly. Instead, they hope to double down with a bailout fund, the $606 billion European Financial Stability Facility that, in effect, borrows against the credit of Europe's soundest economies.

Kuttner comes up with a nice turn of phrase here:

The banks' own shaky condition makes them risk-averse about holding not just Greek sovereign debt, but also the bonds of Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain.

The financial industry has coined the acronym PIGS to denote these nations, implying that the crisis is their own fault for living beyond their means. But the true pigs of the story are the banks.

It gets dizzying, but these bank policies are putting the world's economy at risk. As Kuttner explains, banks holding Greek and other now-dubious sovereign debt have used derivatives (interest-rate swaps, in this case) to insure themselves against losses. When they have to take those losses, the insurance provided by the derivatives will kick in and create new problems for the banks that provided the derivatives. Something very similar to that is what happened with AIG's collapse.

Kuttner is also good on this point:

Euro-skeptics are saying, "We told you so" -- the Euro was always a doomed idea. It's true that creating a monetary unit to be used by 17 separate nations with diverse economic strengths and budgetary conditions was a risky proposition. The Euro was a vessel designed for calm seas, not for once-in-a-century storms.

But to solely blame Europe and its institutions is to excuse the source of the storms. That is the political power of the banks to block fundamental reform.

Democratic government should be providing the offset to the power of the financial institutions. And in that sense, in the US and most of Europe, our governments are failing badly on their responsibilities to the people.

Tags: robert kuttner, world economic crisis

The end of "Europe" (the European Union) continues

This Reuters video, Greek haircut of 50-60 percent that doesn't allow embedding as of this writing, report Jurgen Tritten, head of the German Green Party, saying that Angela Merkel's government has calculated that to put Greece at a point where their debt is manageable, they would have to take a "haircut" (reduction of principal) of 50-60%.

This again emphasizes the bizarre nature of the current situation in the eurozone. It's no secret to the decision-makers there that the Greek debt has to be written down substantially. This Reuters report says that unspecified lenders have agreed to a 21% writedown. But it's not nearly enough.

Meanwhile, the EU continues to insist that Greece and other eurozone countries with debt issues impose more and more drastic austerity policies that empoverish their own people, make their debt problems more severe and discredit the EU and (at least in Greece) representative democracy. And a real failure of representative democracy is what's happening in Greece, where the government refuses to defend its own people against the obviously destructive EU demands that won't solve the problem in any case.

This is the English version of a Deutsche Welle report on the Occupy Wall Street movement in Germany, titled a bit sensationally "Occupy Wall Street" - Smash the System YouTube date 10/24/2011:



This is the German version, "Occupy Wall Street" - Aufstand gegen die Finanzindustrie YouTube date 10/24/2011:



The English narration ends with a comment about OWS raising a problem of loss of confidence in "politics"; the German version says "die Politik", which in the context of the video I would probably have translated as "the existing political establishment".

Because the comments from the major parties are pretty clueless.

It shows the current Finance Minister, Woflgang Schäuble of Merkel's Christian Democratic Party (CDU), says that the government has to be more assertive and show that they are not just being driven by the markets. If I didn't know that Schäuble was a conservative prick and if his Party wasn't the leading force in Germany in the austerity disaster in the eurozone, I might be a tiny bit impressed by it. There has been some reporting that that Schäuble is pushing for more realistic approaches to the crisis than Merkel will accept. Actually, what he really says here is that the governing party needs better PR: the classic what-we-have-here-is-a-problem-of-communication empty comment. Merkel herself is shown calling for patience.

Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), the junior partner in Merkel's coalition government and the "right" in "center-right government" in articles about Germany, sounds about like Ron "Papa Doc" Paul talking about the need for clear and fair rules for everybody. I guess in his eyes, German plutocrats are as nervous and lacking in Confidence as their American counterparts.

The spokesperson from the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD), Carsten Schneider, basically just says, heck, we don't know what to do.

Gregor Gysi, head of the Left Party, which is the successor party to the former East Germany Communist Party, sounds a bit more aggressive, demanding that those who caused the crisis should pay for it. But the report shows that the Left Party's support is dropping in the polls, which is a little surprising in this depression. On the other hand, Gysi is the living embodiment of the stereotype of a party bureacrat. He was even the leader of the party, then called the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Plus, in recent years Berlin experienced a municipal coalition of the SPD and the Left, which pretty much governed through austerity measures. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Left Party isn't benefitting much politically from the economic crisis right now.

For some reason, they didn't include a statement from the Greens. The narrator's comment that banks have "lost the support of the German political establishment" is a real head-slapper. What is she talking about? The problem still is that the EU leaders, especially Merkel and her close partner, France's Nicolas Sarkozy, are too deferential to the banks. Their gerbel-wheel race to do the same thing over and over again - provide more money to the indebted governments only to discover its not enough because of the devastation their auterity policies are imposing - is about shifting as much of the risk as possible from big banks bad investment and poor risk management on eurozone sovereign debt and transferring it to the European taxpayers.

That, and they are just too fixated on Herbert Hoover economics to focus on doing what needs to be done.

Tags: eu, european union, german politics

The 2001 antrax attack

Additional information keeps emerging on the still-unsolved 2001 anthrax attacks. Greg Gordon and Stephen Engelberg report for McClatchy/ProPublica Secret reports: With security spotty, many had access to anthrax 10/24/2011. Our infallible generals, it appears, were lax on security when it came to deadly germ-warfare material:

The Army laboratory identified by prosecutors as the source of the anthrax that killed five people in the fall of 2001 was rife with such security gaps that the deadly spores could have easily been smuggled out of the facility, outside investigators found.

The existing security procedures _ described in two long-secret reports _ were so lax they would have allowed any researcher, aide or temporary worker to walk out of the Army bio-weapons lab at Fort Detrick, Md, with a few drops of anthrax _ starter germs that could grow the trillions of spores used to fill anthrax-laced letters sent to Congress and the media.

In theory, the United States hasn't had a program for offensive biological weapons since the Nixon Administration. But when Nixon officially discontinued them, there were still laboratories research defensive measures against biological warfare. Those stocks are where the anthrax spores came from that were used in the 2001 attacks. Since 2001, the amount of defensive research on biological weapons has expanded considerably. Hopefully, the government's security measures are appropriate for the expanded research.

Tags: anthrax attack

Our glorious (?!) victory in Libya

Our humanitarian war, waged ostensibly to protect civilians during a civil war, either came close to ending or has entered a new phase with the death of Muammar Qaddafi. "Death" in this case is a neutral description for lynch-murder, which is nothing worth celebrating. In this case it may have included raping the victim, just like in the "good ole days" in the Deep South. (Pablo Pardo, Gadafi, sodomizado en cuerpo y alma El Mundo 24.10.2011; Global Post has a story and some nasty video: Tracey Shelton, Gaddafi sodomized: Video shows abuse frame by frame (GRAPHIC): An analysis appears to confirm that a rebel fighter sodomized Gaddafi with a knife 10/24/2011.)

This video from Aljazeera English, Video footage shows 'Gaddafi's killer' YouTube date 10/24/2011, reports on the story of Qaddafi's execution while sparing us some of the more graphic video excerpts:



Kim Gamel in an AP report at the Huffington Post, Gaddafi Death Questioned 10/24/2011, quotes Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the interim leader of Libya's National Transitional Council (MTC) offered this statesmanlike comment:

"Let us question who has the interest in the fact that Gadhafi will not be tried. Libyans want to try him for what he did to them, with executions, imprisonment and corruption," he said. "Free Libyans wanted to keep Gadhafi in prison and humiliate him as long as possible. Those who wanted him killed were those who were loyal to him or had played a role under him, his death was in their benefit."

I guess the days of the NTC being represented to the world by exile politicians who sound like cultured gentlemen speaking excellent English are now over. Maybe they've hired someone from the White Citizen's Council to advise them on how to market lynch-murders. It was standard for Klan bombings and attacks in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s for Klan supporters to suggest that the targets staged the attacks themselves to gain public sympathy. This is pretty much from that same playbook. Lynch minds think alike, I guess.

Our allies in the humanitarian war in Libya displayed Qaddafi's corpse for four days. Apparently with no embalming: Hannah Allam, Libyan authorities unsure how to handle Gadhafi's corpse McClatchy News 10/22/2011; Carmen Serna, Un cadáver 'abierto' al público El Mundo 24.10.2011. Amnesty International has found evidence that the new Libyan government, whose victory was facilitated by NATO's freedom bombs, is abusing its prisoners: Hannah Allam, Libyan rebels abuse, torture prisoners, rights group says McClatchy News 10/22/2011. Human Rights Watch reports on what appears to be a mass grave of Qaddafi supporters in Libya: Apparent Execution of 53 Gaddafi Supporters: Bodies Found at Sirte Hotel Used by Anti-Gaddafi Fighters 10/24/2011:

All the bodies were in a similar stage of decomposition, suggesting they were killed at the same approximate time. Some of the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs with plastic ties. Others had bandages over serious wounds, suggesting they had been treated for other injuries prior to their deaths.

And, oh yeah, Libya is adopting a form of Sharia (Islamic law) as the basis of their legal systems, just as Afghanistan and Iraq have.

Tags: libya, libya war