The murderous attack in Libya was a tragedy, and the loss of life is deplorable.

So too is the attack on the U.S. Embassy and the four Americans killed. But it pales in comparison.

It’s all ugly. What the U.S. did to that country was barbarism.

If you’ve ever wondered why American journalists are so timid (most are honest but uninformed), read this.

Amber Lyon was courageous in attempting to get on-the-ground facts about repression and violence by the American-backed Bahraini government. She and others delivered award-winning coverage. When her bosses at CNN International refused to air it she challenged them.

She got fired. Laid off, they said, as her only firing offense would have been “journalism.”

She is talking now, and CNNi is still trying to get her to shut up. They have threatened to cut off her severance package. She doesn’t care.

“I look at those payments as dirty money to stay silent. I got into journalism to expose, not help conceal, wrongdoing, and I’m not willing to keep quiet about this any longer, even if it means I’ll lose those payments.”

In case you listen to American news and do not recognize that attitude, it’s called “integrity.” Courage and unemployment go hand-in-hand here in the home of the brave.

I was pleased to see an Occupy Wall Street march in Charlotte in advance of the Democratic Party convention. At least some folks have their eye on the ball. Protesters highlighted Obama’s murderous attacks on innocent civilians via drone technology and his Wall Street sycophancy.

However, it was disappointing to see only one thousand or so turn out. Two possibilities come to mind: Perhaps even OWS participants are lured into lesser-evil somnambulance, or worse yet, Obama’s brutally violent response to OWS has had its intended effect. People don’t feel like getting their head bashed by paramilitaries masked as police officers.

And then, of course, there are the “Free Speech Zones.” If there were an award for oxymoronic excellence, there would be no competition. Protesters who voluntarily allow themselves to be coralled deserve to be in the prison that free speech zones represent.

A crime so monstrous as 9/11 can become an obsession, a time sink, so that merely for reasons of personal serenity and happiness, it is best not to dwell on it. Further, it is dwarfed in comparison to the crimes that the US has committed in the wars that 9/11 enabled, the very purpose of that crime. So even though 9/11 pales in comparison to maybe 1.2 million killed in Iraq (probably more and ongoing), millions more forced to flee to other countries for safety, 9/11 itself was the trigger. Exposure of that crime explains all that follows, and will perhaps bring some sanity to our crazy existence before the madmen who run the country bring the world to its knees in violence.

Writings such as this are greeted with silence, of course. The assumption is that I have gone off some tangent, had hallucinations or have become cynical and world-weary, perhaps even paranoid and delusional. Since I, of course, am not the best judge of those matters, I cannot say “not so!” with any authority. I can only assure the reader that I believe in the essential goodness of my fellow humans, almost all of us. I know the many weaknesses of our individual makeups. I share those weaknesses. I am capable of envy, avarice, arrogance and false conclusions based on misread evidence. Confirmation bias is a riding companion for all of us. I see how we form groups based on personal prejudice to reinforce our own beliefs. We are, all of us, works in progress. We all want to move forward, understand better, and live in a community where our own rights are respected as we respect those of others. No one is out to “get” me personally or conspiring to harm me in any way. I’ve led a charmed and fortunate life. If it all goes away tomorrow, that’s life. Nothing is ever guaranteed, and billions of other people would take my life over their own, would love to be so fortunate.
Continue reading “The sting” →

I wish to address the idea of conspiracies and conspiracy “theories.” They are two different subjects but have an element in common. A conspiracy is something we are all experienced and familiar with, while a conspiracy “theory” is an idea that threatens religious faith. Those who do not believe in conspiracy theories are people who trust excessively and who fear being marginalized. They are both credulous and fearful.

Here’s a common conspiracy we are all familiar with: The car dealership. When we walk on a lot, we are walking into a trap. The people who sell cars for a living have studied us and our habits. They have an automatic advantage. They know what they want; they know what we want. We, on the other hand, though distrustful, are not privy to their inside knowledge of how we normally behave. Ergo, a conspiracy exists, and the trap is relatively easy to spring.

But it gets a bit more complicated. The dealership wants to preserve its reputation for honesty so that future customers are not scared off. So they allow us our illusions. When we fall into the trap, we should emerge thinking we negotiated cleverly, were forceful and that we got a good deal. Otherwise, the car dealership will not long prosper.
Continue reading “A subject of ridicule” →

I think that’s not going to spill more broadly into the economy and so I think we’re going to have a normal kind of housing cycle through the middle of the year. (Lewis Alexander, economist, speaking in early 2007)

I ran across the above quotation in an old column by Andrew Cockburn, The Wall Street White House, and just out of curiosity wondered where such failure would take a man after so misreading the then-coming crisis that would bring our economy to its knees. Was that him I saw trimming a hedge?

Quite not. President Obama appointed Alexander Counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in 2009 where he served until …

New York, September 19, 2011 – Nomura, the global investment bank, is pleased to announce that it has hired Lewis Alexander as Managing Director and US Chief Economist.

Damn! I think all of us chose the wrong career path. There is no failing in neoclassical economics! There is only a phenomenon known in the field of scatology as the “floater”, where an excessive amount of gas in excrement causes it to rise to the surface in water.

Neoclassical economics is the showcase toilet bowl for floaters.

American elections are a painful spectacle, a release of pent-up emotions, sound and fury signifying nothing. And yet if we don’t bother with them, if we merely continue the transfer of apparent power from one neocon to the next without a public referendum, people might get suspicious.

The hardest part of watching this spectacle is the apparent cluelessness of the American media. They ride around with the candidates transcribing every word, rarely attempting to connect speeches and deeds. To rise to prominence in this circus people have to demonstrate an inability to grasp the obvious, or at least to live in bondage and keeping real insight private. I’ve seen contentious exchanges between presidential press secretaries and reporters, and at the same time realize that a reporter doesn’t enter that room without first checking his balls at the door. It’s theater, and a sad spectacle. There are real journalists among them, but if they practice their trade they’ll never make it.

Obama is now playing the role of “liberal,” and Romney the other, whatever the hell that is. Neither has any intent of ever following through on any vague ambition for positive change. But the ring matters – both really want the job and the privileges that go with it. Even if there is no real power there, even if the office is long captive of private power centers, these men want it. They get to have high profiles, ride in amazing batmobiles, have every word first written for them and then transcribed by others. They have personal chefs and doctors, vacation retreats, personal security and private schools for the kids … what’s not to want? It’s a real prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for narcissism.

Here’s Sibel Edmonds, a woman who lost her job under Bush for reporting FBI misdeeds to superiors and who will go to jail if she ever speaks publicly about the crimes she witnessed:

How would Senator McCain have acted on … issues if he had been elected? How would Senator Hillary Clinton? Do you believe there would have been any major differences? Weren’t their records virtually identical to Senator Obama’s on these issues? If you are like me and answer same, same, no and yes, then why do you think we ended up with these exact same candidates, those deemed viable and sold to us as such?

With too much at stake, too many uninished agendas for the course of our nation, and too many skeletons in the closet in need of hiding for self-preservation, the permanent establishment made certain that they took no risk by giving the public, by means of their MSM tentacles, a coin that no matter how many times flipped would come up the same – heads, heads.

Hillary Clinton will soon leave public life, but will likely haunt us as has her husband. She’ll be a featured speaker, perhaps a media pundit or recipient of an academic position at a prestigious university. Her opinions will be sought out by the media, she’ll sit on panels, and bore us to death with profound utterances of uninspired banality. John McCain is an old man, and will step down from the senate when it appears he’s too addled to give a good speech. He’ll not be sought out thereafter as, like Reagan, there ain’t no there there.

In the meantime 2012 is here and we’ve got to do it all over again. We’re given two more heads, so to speak, an old money aristocrat and a newbie upstart. Both really, really want the job. They each knows somewhere deep down that it is all for show, as if when we need a doctor, we ask for Dr. George Clooney because he is so damned good looking. That’s as deep as American politics ever goes.

All of this talk about Bryan Schweitzer as a potential presidential or VP candidate … knock it off please. It’s about as likely as a snow storm in the Sahara.

I like Governor Schweitzer, by the way. He ain’t perfect by any means, but he leads, he fights, he’s clever. I wish such a man would use is skills to progressive ends more often, but at least with him we get a few things.

But he needs to be an executive. I don’t see him as a Senator, what with endless meeting and hearings … he’d go crazy. So forget about that.

And president? VP? He’s from Montana, fer chrissakes! He wears bolo ties and jeans. He’s essentially honest, for a politician. (It’s a profession where lying is necessary, a tool of the trade, essential for binding diverse constituencies, so I give him great leeway in that regard.)

Obama is a natural for president. He has charisma, and is dishonest to the core, a con man and a tool of power. Honestly, you think Schweitzer would be good in that role? You think that little of him?

h/t: Debt Watch

I have an iMac computer, and feel really stupid about it. I used at get angry with my PC, as if it were a person. It was slow revving up, and sent me messages every time it did something. “I am backing up your files.” “I am updating your software.” “I am crashing now.”

I bought an iMac. It too is slow and annoying. If it goes to sleep and I wake it up, it snaps to attention! So it appears. But the keyboard doesn’t work. The network is not connected. That takes a couple of minutes. Just like a PC.

Apple has created the illusion of the superior computer. And I bought in. They totally got me with their slick ads and all of the product placement and all of these people who swear by Apple products.

Here’s an interesting post. Progressives and Democrats are aligned in objectives. In this case, we all want to see a strong minimum wage. And yet here we are fighting.

Don Progreba swears by the Democratic Party, and that is why we fight. He gets annoyed with progressives because he assumes we cannot see the objectives. Because we do not support Democrats, he thinks we are the problem. We are smug, he says, intellectuals who are lost in wonkiness and don’t offer practical solutions.

I would like to work with Don in fighting for a just minimum wage. He’s a nice guy, a smart guy, a teacher who is well-read and has depth and knowledge. But Don has laid down a gauntlet: In order for progressives to work with him, we must support the candidates of the Democratic Party. They are slick, like iMacs.