Anyone paying close attention to international events over the decades implicitly understands that the United States is not interested in either democratic rule or human rights. Quite the opposite. In addition, the US media only directs our attention to places where the US military industrial complex wants that attention directed.

So when we learn that the US supports the protest movement in Syria, a concerned citizen has to ask the question “Why?” Obviously there are strategic reasons, as generally the US seeks to surround the oil fields of the Mideast. Pervasive anti-US sympathy throughout the region eliminates the possibility of self-rule. Democracy and human rights are not in the best interest of the US. Ergo, dictators like Mubarak, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and the House of Saud are installed, supported, and replaced as necessary.

I merrily went along assuming that the answer is that the US doesn’t tolerate independent governments anywhere in the region for any reason, but the following words from Paul Craig Roberts do offer some illumination:

“The United States is bold in stirring up the opposition and in arming it. They used the cover of the Arab Spring and Arab protests as they did in Libya,” he said. “These are not spontaneous protests, and certainly in an authoritarian state like Syria you wouldn’t find people in opposition able to readily supply themselves with arms, with military weapons.”

What’s involved here is that the Russians have a naval base in Syria, and the Americans don’t want a Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean. And, just as in Libya, the problem was the Chinese oil investments. If Syria goes, Iran is in the target sites, and Lebanon.

I started running at age forty, and after working myself up to a five-mile habit, began to notice knee pain. I kept at it, and ended up with sore knees. So I moved indoors, and ran on a treadmill, five miles still my benchmark. That ended in knee surgery and sound advice from a doctor: Stop doing that.

All the while my weight was increasing. It was almost as if there were no correlation between exercise and body fat, because I was surely in the upper percentiles in terms of physical exertion.
Continue reading “Getting off the treadmill” →

I wrote with some trepidation that President Obama, despite public posturing, would sign the Defense Authorization Bill that includes a clause allowing for indefinite detention of Americans without due process. I played a card there, betting that overall I have a good measure of the man. I assumed that his professed opposition was merely a tactic to prevent real opposition from crystallizing. Obama’s got our back, you see.

Well, that turns out to be correct. Obama not only is not opposed to that provision, but according to Senator Carl Levin, the provision was put in the bill at the insistence of the White House.
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I’ll link this later, but I’ve been visiting an English-language Russian web site, rt.com. Some of the best reporting I’ve seen on the web is going on there.
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This link is troubling. But things must be kept in perspective – the compounds used to house Japanese citizens after Pearl Harbor did not materialize out of thin air. People were rounded up by teams of agents who knew who they were after and where they lived. The iron fist under the velvet glove has been there at least since the turn of the twentieth century, when the first professional use of agitprop to send the nation to war was used. There is nothing new under the sun. The only thing different now with the use of “terrorism” as the new “Hun” or “communist” is that the government is openly changing the laws that shield us rather than quietly ignoring them. And that is nothing more than the product of a frightened and dumbed-down population and a non-existent fourth estate. As any psychologist would note, no one can abuse you without your permission.

The most significant piece of union-busting legislation passed in recent years is the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act of 2006. This is the law that is crushing the postal service. It requires them to pre-fund pensions 75 years out by 2016 – to the tune of $5-6 billion per year. No other firm has such stiff requirements. Add this to the other problems it faces – inability to adjust prices where it competes with UPS and FedEx, the subsidy of advertising and other junk mail by first class mail, and the natural slow-down it is facing as people more and more use the Internet to pay bills and correspond, and it’s looking bleak. But take out that pension requirement, and the USPS would be in much better shape, perhaps approaching solvency.
Continue reading “A future bailout in the making” →