“There are certain benchmarks that will be met, such as troops out of the cities by June of ’09.

Oh, you know, you devil. You watch the Daily Show too.

Here’s a question no one is asking: Where did the troops go?

And, those ghost people: Where are the mercenaries?

Dave Budge has challenged me in a number of areas, as usual, and go see Electric City Weblog to get the full dose. NSFW.

The one area I wish to address here is the notion he puts for that I am comfortable with government domestically, but do not trust it with foreign policy.

I quote General Smedley Butler (a widely known citation):

I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912.* I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

That’s only one man’s opinion, but one that I have shared for years, that foreign policy is run at the behest of American corporations, and that all of our foreign policy apparati were formed to advance those interests, among them the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Agency for International Development, the Alliance for Progress, not to mention the Jesuits and the Peace Corps. It is no accident that policy does not change as we switch from Democratic to Republican administrations. The people we elect are not in charge.

Do I trust my government to run foreign policy? Yes. I wish it would.

If these corporations are so big and powerful that they run foreign policy, why not domestic policy too? In large part they do, but there was an intervention of sorts called the New Deal, in which populist and progressive ideas were put in force – Social Security, unemployment compensation, SEC, Glass Steagall, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Those things are slowly being undone. But these things were all done by government, and were good things. They are being undone not by government, but by private power, which has largely taken control of government.

So in answer to the question why do I favor government for domestic policy but not foreign, the answer is that I trust it to do both well, and wish it would.

*Part of the Bush Family legacy, and the source of much of its wealth.

It’s been taken down, replaced by other breaking news, but there was a shocked – shocked! report at Huffington Post over the weekend that the Iranian government had been conducting Gestapo-like midnight raids on the homes of suspected instigators of protests.

Here’s a snippet from Casaveria.com, an independent news-gathering site:

Officially the government will not confirm the allegations that Basij militia have been breaking in to people’s homes and abducting members of the opposition under cover of darkness. Efforts by citizens’ groups to use the fabric of their communities to watch out for, single out and evade or protect against the secret members of the Basij are now being characterized by some as “Basiji hunting”, a development the regime might use to claim a right to military defense.

Yes, indeed, the Iranians are doing some nasty stuff, and they are bad guys.

But the reason this caught my eye – perhaps the reason it was taken down – is the unspeakably grotesque hypocrisy. Huffington was shocked that police would conduct midnight raids on homes in Iran. Huffington doesn’t have a clue that the U.S. has been conducting midnight raids on homes in Iraq for six years now.

It’s policy; it’s standard counterinsurgency practice. U.S. soldiers and mercenaries go out at night and break down the doors, screaming and yelling, forcing the family members to sit and watch as the fathers or brothers or other male occupants are interrogated, humiliated, and taken away to the torture chambers.

As many as 60,000 Iraqis had disappeared by 2005, according to independent journalist Dahr Jamail. Many times they never reappeared – families would appeal to U.S. authorities to know the location of their loved ones. At times they would confirm that they were holding them, but not disclose the location. Most times they just stonewalled.

Abu Ghraib was no aberration, nor an isolated incident. Torture and disappearances and midnight raids were policy. Are policy. It’s going on right now.

Chris Hedges did a piece in the Nation Magazine (The Other War, 7/9/07) where he interviewed fifty or so returning veterans. They talked about it.

And we were approaching this one house,” he said. “In this farming area, they’re, like, built up into little courtyards. So they have, like, the main house, common area. They have, like, a kitchen and then they have a storage shed-type deal. And we’re approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, ’cause it’s doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it. And he didn’t–motherfucker–he shot it and it went in the jaw and exited out. So I see this dog–I’m a huge animal lover; I love animals–and this dog has, like, these eyes on it and he’s running around spraying blood all over the place. And like, you know, What the hell is going on? The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified. And I’m at a loss for words. And so, I yell at him. I’m, like, What the fuck are you doing? And so the dog’s yelping. It’s crying out without a jaw. And I’m looking at the family, and they’re just, you know, dead scared. And so I told them, I was like, Fucking shoot it, you know? At least kill it, because that can’t be fixed….

“And–I actually get tears from just saying this right now, but–and I had tears then, too–and I’m looking at the kids and they are so scared. So I got the interpreter over with me and, you know, I get my wallet out and I gave them twenty bucks, because that’s what I had. And, you know, I had him give it to them and told them that I’m so sorry that asshole did that.

“Was a report ever filed about it?” he asked. “Was anything ever done? Any punishment ever dished out? No, absolutely not.”

Specialist Chrystal said such incidents were “very common.”

According to interviews with twenty-four veterans who participated in such raids, they are a relentless reality for Iraqis under occupation. The American forces, stymied by poor intelligence, invade neighborhoods where insurgents operate, bursting into homes in the hope of surprising fighters or finding weapons. But such catches, they said, are rare. Far more common were stories in which soldiers assaulted a home, destroyed property in their futile search and left terrorized civilians struggling to repair the damage and begin the long torment of trying to find family members who were hauled away as suspects.

Raids normally took place between midnight and 5 am …

Any activity by the Iranians must be measured against activities by the Americans in Iraq since 2003 (1991, actually), and citizen indignation at violation of human dignity stifled accordingly.

Americans have no right to judge anyone, and must STFU.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

I haven’t put a bumper sticker on a car since “Keep It Wild” in the 1990’s. Before that was “Wallace 68”, “Impeach Earl Warren”, and before that “I Like Ike”. (Actually, I barely remember Ike.)

Candidate stickers are a mystery to me – can’t they make them removable? All that a “Kerry/LiebermanEdwards (wow – what a memorable campaign!) 04″ sticker tells me is that you are easily pleased and have an old car.

A company called Zazzle” offers somewhat thoughtful bumper stickers. They are for people who are ambivalent about issues and don’t want to put their views in your face. Here’s a few:

I’d rather be engaging in any one one of several activities that I find more engaging than driving.

I attended or am otherwise affiliated with a creditable university, to which I give my continued allegiance.

The benefits of environmental protection measures should thoughtfully be weighed against their costs, and the sound ones enacted.

Some of your bumper stickers make me a little uncomfortable.

Yes, my child might be on board, but I recognize that you are already driving as safely as can be expected, if only to protect yourself.

And my favorite:

In many contexts, “What would Jesus do?” is not a particularly helpful inquiry.

I could not agree more – Jesus was never faced with some of the harder issues of the day – abortion (he was a virgin, no matter what Dan Brown says), never served in the military, never had to vote, and certainly had no clue that he’s ever be referenced on a bumper sticker, since bumpers were a 1,885 years away, give or take.

The notion of “free trade” is not so easy to be “for” or “against”. Depending on the circumstances in which it is implemented, it can be good or bad.

For instance, free trade among the free states of the U.S. yields mostly positive results. We surely would have not grown to be a powerhouse without it. But there is a downside – for years manufacturers (before they ran off to China, Mexico, Vietnam and other exotic locales) ran to the southern states to be free of unions. So free trade tended to keep wages lower than they otherwise would have been. The south is poorer today than the rest of the country, and surely that has something to do with it.

And for states like Montana, resource-rich but far away from population centers, we tend to suffer from a mild kind of colonialism where we sell cheap so that others can make a handsome profit on the natural resources that we have. Years ago we enacted a coal severance tax and put the money in a trust fund. That’s not quite the same thing as establishing a manufacturing base, but it is something – perhaps the only thing we ever done for ourselves to protect from exploitation by wealthy corporations.

Mostly, free trade among equals is a good thing – the U.S. and Canada and Western Europe are mostly equals, and if they eliminate trade barriers, we won’t get hurt.

But among unequals, it is disastrous. For poor countries, it opens the door for rich countries to buy their resources on the cheap and exploit their labor forces. “Third world” countries, as they were once known, have suffered from “free trade” for centuries. For that reason, I prefer to call free trade by its old and more proper name – imperialism. The reason why poor countries tend to stay poor is that they cannot close their borders, install tariffs, and avoid malicious interference by the likes of the United States, Europe and Japan. All of these wars we have fought over the years with Cuba and Latin American and Southeast Asia have been aimed at preventing development. We need, and cannot live without, cheap labor and cheap resources.

When they stand tall, resist, install tariffs, monopolize their control of resources (OPEC), use their own resources for internal development (Cuba and Venezuela), we attack and embargo them, and do whatever necessary to undermine them. It’s an old story – every citizen of every poor country knows about it, and Americans are clueless.

But it’s a two-edged sword, as we are finding out. There was a time when the United States was protectionist – our country imposed heavy tariffs well into the late 20th century even as we knocked them down elsewhere. But under Clinton, those tariffs were removed (except to protect “intellectual property”), and our labor force was thrown to the wolves. We are left to compete with dollar-a-day workers in Vietnam and China and Honduras, and flip burgers for one another.

It’s by design, I suspect, a decision within the upper echelons of our plutocracy who decided that Americans workers had prospered too much. We were, after all, just another work force.

So “free trade” came back to bite us. We can’t complain much – for two centuries we were the beneficiaries of tariffs and imperialism, our jobs and lifestyles protected. But American workers lived off the cheap resources of others while we enjoyed protection. So it makes sense now that we are spiraling downward. Who ever thought, for even a second, that the multinational corporations that control our government and foreign policy cared any more about us than the citizens of Iraq or Vietnam?

This quote, supposedly by Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, was translated into Spanish and then back into English, and was cited by Andre Gunder Frank in his book Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. It was repeated in the New York Times, September 30, 1981 by L.S. Stavrianos, professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University, who at that time taught at the University of California, San Diego. Even if Grant never said it, he should have.

”For centuries England relied on protection, carried it to extremes, and got good results from it . . . . England has found it desirable to adopt free trade because protection no longer offers advantages.

”Very well, gentlemen, the knowledge that I have of my own country leads me to believe that within two hundred years, when America has gotten all that she can from protection, she too will adopt free trade.”

It’s a sentiment is understood by all on the receiving end of free trade policies, and denied by all who profit therefrom.

P.S. I fell into the trap of using the language of the right, saying “free trade”. Better to say “unregulated” trade. “Free”, by definition, sounds like something desirable. People get paid for dreaming up names like that.

Wow – that election outcome surprised a lot of people. We had a moderate challenger to a hard right winger, and the challenger almost pulled it off, and now his supporters are screaming “Election fraud!” But prominent Democrats are saying to back off – that the outcome is legitimate. In the meantime, no one talks about how the real power in that country lies elsewhere – that it is not in the presidency.

I’m talking, of course, about the U.S. election in 2004. I hear they had one in Iran recently too.

P.S. It’s a big complicated world full of good and bud guys, and Iran, like our own country, has many bad actors. But the agitation before the election and riots and agitprop after has CIA destablization written all over it. We interfere freely in the elections of other countries, and the “fairness” of those elections depends only on if we like the outcome.

Later this summer, my wife and I are going to move from our beloved Montana down here to Colorado. We are renting our home in Bozeman, kind of an escape clause in case we want to go back, but the move is meant to be permanent.

We are down here on a visit right now, and several differences jumped out at me:

1) I had to pee, and we stopped at a gas station south of Estes Park. There was only one unisex bathroom with one pot, and four people ahead of me in line. The guy in the stall had apparently been in there quite a while, and when one person in line knocked on the door, he yelled “I’m in here!” I don’t recall ever having to wait for a bathroom in Montana. I finally left, and peeing behind a tree down here will get you in trouble. I endured.

2) Bozeman is going to have a 4th of July tax protester rally, bringing people down from Noxon, I assume. This coming Sunday there will be a nude bike ride rally in Boulder. I assume most of the participants will be men, sadly, so I won’t be watching. The local police have threatened to arrest participants, and if they are arrested, they will have to register as sex offenders. As far as I know, exhibitionists are not the same as pedophiles, but I yield to the better judgment of the local constable.

3) Denver has charter schools, and a controversy is brewing as it becomes apparent that the charter schools are subtly, cleverly avoiding kids with disabilities. One school openly asked applicants if they had ever had special ed, and said lying about it would be grounds for dismissal. Montana doesn’t have charter schools. Bozeman has very good schools, but most public schools in Montana reflect the parents – mediocre. I like the idea of charter schools, to allow bright kids to escape. But they should not be allowed to turn down kids who are more challenging. That’s the private health insurance model applied to education.

4) Driving down through Wyoming these past two days – we came down through Dubois and Laramie – it was very green, but those forests we saw were devastated by pine beetle, as are the forests of Montana. Colorado forests that I have seen are lush and green and largely unaffected. But I haven’t seen enough to know this is universally true – I doubt it is.

5) Bozeman’s Daily Chronicle, for all its faults, is a much better newspaper than the Boulder Daily Camera, which is awful. When given a choice at the coffee shop, I always choose the Onion. The Denver Post is a very good newspaper. My vote for the best newspaper in Montana: Billings Gazette, simply for the fact that it carries more news than the others.

6) Traffic traffic everywhere – we drove down from Boulder to Morrison yesterday around 4:30 – every light back traffic up for blocks. But travel on the freeways is fast. We are going to have to adapt to that fact of life.

Our objective is to move someplace in the foothills like Evergreen where we don’t have to travel much – a self-contained community. We are looking at houses for the next few days.

As a lifelong Montanan, I’ll be able to reflect on the good and the bad about that state, and I will be in the coming weeks. I still have a mother and two brothers and a daughter in Montana. I will be traveling back frequently, but come August 15 forward, I will be a nude bike rider.

There was an interesting Supreme Court ruling yesterday – Caperton vs Massey.

A West Virginia coal company, Massey Energy, suffered a $51 million damage award to a competitor, and appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. Judges to that court are elected, and Massey, using various methods of skirting campaign contribution laws, poured $3 million into the campaign of Brent Benjamin, who won the election to the bench. The $3 million equaled 60% of his total campaign costs.

Benjamin then refused to recuse himself, and sat on the Massey case, casting the decisive vote in a 3-2 ruling overturning the $51 million award.

The Supremes ruled that the conflict of interest was so blatant that Judge Benjamin had to recuse himself. They did not, however, lay out any guidelines on what an appropriate threshold is for conflict of interest.

I have never understood the reasoning behind allowing private contributions to judicial campaigns. Doesn’t that invite corruption? Any significant amount of money (say $1,000 or more) can create an apparent conflict.

Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas all voted against the overturning of the verdict for various reasons. But the bottom line is that they do not believe that the apparent conflict had any bearing on the outcome.

That seems absurd, but I need a better word. My Roget’s suggests ridiculous, silly, strange, illogical, meaningless, bizarre, incongruous. I’ll go with the latter two.

P.S. As Ladybug reminds me below, these four judges are ACTIVISTS!!!

This is what we accountants do in our spare time – we put on a dark suit and tie and take our laptops up to a high perch and daydream.