Father’s Day Dreaming

 

An Open Letter to My Son, Demian

June 15, 2008

 

By: DI Foreign Policy Editor, Robert Rodes (Dusty) Schoch

 

 (With Trailing Contributions from

Virginia Attorney, Mike Murphy and

Notre Dame Law Professor Robert E. Rodes III)

 

I woke up today and made a mistake. I read the newspaper. It was supposed to be a day of quiet celebration for us …as fathers. But, reading the paper made me question whether I made a mistake 35-years ago helping to bring a child into this world…this world crumbling around me.

 

Don’t get me wrong – I hated that Armageddon story when I read it the first time – in the Bible’s “Revelations”.  But I suspect the author of that work was more than a little mad. He described seeing “visions” of things that clearly weren’t there.  What I’m dealing with this morning are visions of what IS.  I made the mistake of reading the news. With the paper now in the recycling bin, let me share with you my concerns with what … stuck – this Sunday, June 15, 2008:

 

A metaphorical image for what I see in the news today is America in the form of its prior NY Twin Towers – right at the moment the news casters showed us pictures of flames in the first tower. Because I know now what happened next back on 9/11, 2001, I see America now itself as those Twin Towers. The North tower in my metaphoric vision stands for American industry, and the South for its soul (it’s morality).  One is on fire and soon both will be, and soon thereafter both will come crashing to the ground. It’s not going to be slow, like with Rome. It’s going to be faster than anything that’s ever happened to the world’s strongest nation in any point in history.  The speed is evident in everything I saw today in the news.

 

I won’t give the stories in any preconceived or rationally-constructed sequence. I want my Father’s Day stream of consciousness simply to flow. Foremost in my newly-downloaded dad’s databank, is the picture of our bully President Bush, in the company of cohorts from Russia, France, Germany and even China plotting a war with Iran wholly oblivious of the fact they are simply kindling evil and danger by embodying evil and danger.  Of course Iran has just as much right to play with uranium as the already-nuke nations. Of course the mob of the strong justifies its bullying by conjuring the word “evil” to describe the weaker outsider (non-nuclear nation).  We already have 7 irresponsible nations armed with nuclear arsenals and yet are more concerned with proliferation than elimination. We want to secure our positions among the self-selected bullies with permission to walk about in the nuclear neighborhood.

 

Next I see our second largest brewery fixing to sell itself to Bavaria—casting thousands more American bread-winners into future bread lines.  Miller already belongs to England; so why shouldn’t Bud join the industrial bailout of America’s toppling twin towers. The twin towers epitomized, housed and  embodied American corporate industrial might. Since 9/11 I have watched the fat-cat corporate mongols (I used to honor them with “mogul” monikers, but they are clearly today’s barbarians…this time storming OUT of the gates to the city they set on fire) export its workers’ jobs to slave-driven third-world nations while “we the people” sit blithely by, condoning the treason by buying the exported product at Wallymart , a.k.a. The China Store. No more furniture made in High Point where furniture in America was born and raised. No more electronic hardware made in California’s silicon valley where it was conceived and fostered.  The North Tower of America – its industrial core is now pretty much up in flames; the fat cats of industry who are exporting her piecemeal to China and India are moving into new digs in the new global gangster hole in the Middle Eastern wall… a little vacation spot for escapee global billionaires called Dubai. A few feet off the coast of Dubai you’ll find them in an Arab-fabricated little archipelago called “The World”–the brave new world of the bandits who sold America and escaped to their new “water world”. The parallels in this and the  apocalyptic Costner movie are creepy scary.

 

As for America’s South tower…its morality…the newspaper was even more pregnant with pictures of flames that will fuel the on-coming collapse. In the midst of our oil crisis, our mortgage foreclosure crisis (one-tenth of our population will suffer the loss of their homes under the collapse of the mortgage bubble’s bursting), we still have featured in the auto section of our news a big spread on Mercedez Benz’ newest gas guzzler that gets 12 MPG and makes up for it by paying a “gas guzzler’s surtax” that puts money back into the tills of a government (America’s) more concerned with corporate profits than saving the Earth from globally-warmed extinction.  Shame on the corporate-owned newspapers that publish for profit that fat-cat car obscenity.  But how can there be “morality” without some vestige of intelligence?  The “conservative” pundit in my paper’s news today is blaming the whole problem of gas prices on liberals who keep Exxon-Mobile from drilling for more oil off our North Carolina shores.  As if more oil is  going to save us…when it was oil that motivated the toppling of the twin towers and literally oil that exploded them, and oil that is pumped and burned by 6 billion of us to the end that when the twin towers of America’s industry and soul are finally flush upon Earth’s ground zero, it will probably be curtain calling time not only for the world’s formerly foremost nation but for the world itself.  It is we who today say “yes” “yes” Yes!” to pornographic and sadistic reality TV in lieu of art; it is we who say yes to a leadership which has said no to earth-saving Kyoto protocols; It is we who have not insisted on the impeachment for the greatest candidate since Hitler for the moniker of “Anti-Christ”.

 

My father’s day ruminations were/are the result of my concern for the future of my 35-year old son who this morning came in and gave me a hug for having taken part in bringing him forth to this day.  I will probably be here when the twin towers of America’s former industry and morality resoundingly reach ground zero. That’s going to happen faster than anyone can imagine. The only reason our present stage of economic depression isn’t declared is that we’re living in a state of denial pretty much identical to the one we were in when we were gazing at the flames in both the North and South towers in NY  wondering how long it would take the NY firemen to put them out.

 

These fires I’ve cited in the news paper today aren’t going to be put out. America has allowed its corporate fat cats to sell its industrial heart to foreign slave traders; America has allowed its fear and greed to sell its soul to those who would invade nations and kill hundreds of thousands of people to preserve a status quo that puts America’s commercial interests and aspirations above the priority of preserving life on earth…the only life we know for sure exists in this universe of ours.

 

I wish my little sojourn into global circumspection this day might have ended on a happier note. I’m constrained to borrow my concluding surmise from Robert Frost –

 

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

 

By the way, Demian, my son: Thanks for the hug. I really needed it. I wish only I could be here when you’re 65 to return it, because I know you’ll be needing it  then much more than I now. So know now I’ll be thinking of you then, and if Einstein was right about the warping of time and space, you will still be feeling that hug if between now and then you’ve managed, as I know you will, to have hung on to your soul. It’s going to be a hell of a ride for you because of the choices made by your ancestors in their handling and husbandry of your earth.  And as clear as we can see the tsunami’s, tornadoes and apocalyptic horses  heading our way, it’s clear that there’s never a time to abandon either hope or your pursuit of happiness.  I wish I could give you a map to help you steer around the hurdles and pitfalls of your future. But at this point, I can only give you this, as a father’s day ray of hope:

 

    God has given us both a map and a compass to guide us. The map is the design and fabric of the earth and the universe beyond. The compass is the heart. The heart beats with the pulse of all life.  Our minds are free to choose the roads we take on our journey of life, and if we keep and follow the compass, it will be a good trip. 

 

Love, Dad.

 

 

Michael K. Murphy

DI Contributor and Virginia Attorney

Comments:

Dusty:

 

    I imagine that as 300 A.D. slid toward the 400s there were certain to be some Roman fathers who must have sat quietly with their thoughts outside their homes on many a warm summer’s evening, a glass of wine to sip and a bowl of olives and a bit of bread to pick at by their sides as warm Mediterranean breezes stirred their thoughts while their wives and children readied themselves for the night inside, secure for the moment.

 

    These fathers felt a powerful connection to the past greatness of the Roman Republic — as they were its natural and lineal heirs and as their children would be; yet they had become only mute witnesses to Rome’s evident decline from the legitimacy that the Republic had conferred upon Rome while the Republic was still alive.  Now, many years after the Empire had supplanted the Republic, the internal decay that the Empire brought would be evident, not at first, not for many years, but by now.  Maybe not all understood what was happening, but certainly some did; some could see very clearly that Rome’s days of glory and legitimacy had passed and what was left of it were only the old forms in society and government, for example, that many would desperately cling to for security.  Others, these men, would just sip their evening wine and pick at some food and smell the warm air off the Sea and dream of what might have been for their children but which they could no longer give them.   

 

Professor (of Law) Robert E. Rodes III

University of Notre Dame

(and Dusty’s esteemed cousin)

Conclude Dusty’s Father’s Day Lament with

Some back and forth discussion about

History and current events.

(Professor Rodes in Blue, Dusty in red)

 

 

Dusty:

 

Thanks for this. It is a pleasure to find you still fighting the good fight. But it came just after the Supreme Court Guantanamo case, so I see rather more glimmers of hope than you seem to. Indignation is simple, and rightly so, but history is complicated.

 

 I am simply indignant with that which is about to become history. History is complicated by the same process that makes religion subject to dogmatic debate: the myopias and dysgraphias of men as observers and reporters. With Guantanamo,little and late beats nothing at all. I concede it. But in the case of Guantanamo’s belated judicial scrutiny – it soothes me solely with the relief I feel when I cease smashing my toe with a hammer. Those poor souls have been in our torture chambers the better part of a decade. A decade of immutable and historically iconic disgrace. If all nine Justices drank world-transcending cool-aide  on the Supreme Court steps in a ritual show of collective American judicial contrition, I believe the scales of justice might tip again towards the horizontal.     

 

When your son was born 35 years ago, did you think you would live to see the end of apartheid in South Africa?

 

I did in fact, because I’d been to school and confidently debated the issue with sons of Africaners. All slaves eventually find freedom because their state is the most unnatural. What I didn’t expect is what I have since found – i.e. that the sequelae of that disease of disparities is—at least for an evolutionary period of adjustment– more malignant that the disease. But most healings come with crises.

 

Did I think I would live to see a black Catholic priest presiding over an all white congregation in the middle of Tennessee?

A book just surfaced in our motley collection, The Proud Tower, by Barbara Tuchman, which I hadn’t looked at for many years. It’s about the period from 1890 to the First World War. Things were bad then too. There were terrorist incidents then too. The suspects weren’t imprisoned; they were hanged. The fat cat industrialists didn’t outsource their work to cheap labor abroad; they kept a supply of cheap labor at home by busting unions. We fought a war with rather less justification than this one, and involved ourselves in a  similar fight to make the spoils safe for American business.

 

Our history as invasive genocidal self-righteous raiders of the lost arc of God began at Plymouth Rock, and at the same time I assert such, I salute you for your more moderate appreciation of the yin/yang  flow of everything. I suppose I’m simply “stuck” with the belief that our oscillations from yin to yang are now (with corporately-connived denials and continuities in globally-warming policy) are a quantum leap ahead of what has gone before. Before either of us were fathers, the nation’s # 1 sage said quite accurately, “Everybody talks about the weather but no one DOES anything about it.”  Twain would be blushing at his own shortsightedness. We were steaming down and ecologically damning rivers even in his day. But there were no corporations capable of dictating the global execution of their dollar-driven ethic/policy. Every civilization’s wealth has been derived from slavery. Plus ca change. What I rue is the death/dearth of America as a beacon/paradigm/template/model of perceived “good”. My father’s day lament was more for the loss of my country as a world lantern in the new dark age of environmental and economic Armageddon.  When the Euro and the crude barrel jointly displace the Dollar, the axis of the world will likely spin from eccentric to chaotic.  The “big brother” defender of the downtrodden and bullied is now the worst bully on the block. There’s nothing (quantitatively) like our taking over 660,000 Iraqi civilian lives in America’s history from Columbus. There were veritable villains in WWI. We were both victims and perps in the Civil War, saviors in WWII, justifiably (?) red scared in Korea and Nam, but without excuse…or even the pretense of it in Iraq. And an infinitely more circumspect and savy world knows it. And the world will never forget. And if we are able to get “philosophical” about having waged unprovoked wars of unadulterated acquisition and  aggression, we are building up momentum for another holocaust and justifying—in fascistic style– the first one in the process.  The dream of America as big-brother guardian of the meek and friend of the Earth is no more. It’s time for America to declare peace and mea culpa so that the healing process can begin. Scarred forever, we could confess, recover and make amends. Am I far off when I characterize the bottom line of your position as…”We’ve been bad before so… what’s the harm of  a little reprise of a perennial play” ?  Bob, I simply can’t get out of my own mind the historic fact that Hitler’s seminal battle cry was “Onward, Christian soldiers”. The Vatican has to this day never withdrawn its concordance with that proclamation. My fright on that account is revived today by the fundamentalist Christian Right currently continuing to condone the Bush war in Iraq as divine mission. When minds such as yours find philosophical (or theological) solace for our current sins in our past sins, my fright soars into a jet stream of awfulness. 

 

Happy Father’s Day…to all.

 

When Will We Ever Learn?

 

Pete Seeger asked the Question Long ago…

 

Peter, Paul and Mary echoed it…

 

Bob Dylan answered the question and

 

Today, DW College Contributor, Brad Clinard

 

Asks us again…

 

From Viet Nam to Iraq, how far have we come?

 

Have we learned anything? And … finally…

 

Why not?

 

Preface: By: Dusty Schoch, DW Foreign Policy Editor:

 

Before you read young Bradford Clinard’s thoughtful and provocative diatribe against the present war in Iraq and those who are sponsoring it,  brought fearfully in focus by his having soon to say his goodbyes to a friend now destined to serve in that “current” theater of American-generated war, let’s all take a look at what might be the only glaring difference between our war “against the Reds” in Nam a half century ago and our present “war on terrorism” in Iraq…

 

…the music, and our cultural historians who asked the perennial questions with the perennially-obvious answers that,  perennially,  none of us ever seems to heed…

 

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

 

Composer: Pete Seeger

Performers: Peter, Paul and Mary

 

 

 

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?
Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone for husbands everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?
Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?
Where have all the husbands gone?
Gone for soldiers everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

 

Bob Dylan Had Two Answers:

The First was:

 

THE ANSWER IS…

 

BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

 

(Dylan’s Second Answer follows

Brad’s essay…because it Echoes

What Brad says)

 

Composer: Dylan

Performer: Dylan

 

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, n how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, n how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before theyre forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, n how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before its washed to the sea?
Yes, n how many years can some people exist
Before theyre allowed to be free?
Yes, n how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesnt see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

 

 

Brad Clinard’s Take on America’s

Democracy and Its Wars

 

 

Make Love, Not War ! This sign held by up a hippie caught my eye and captivated my attention the other day. Thinking about the simplicity but parallel depth of this concept I began to wonder:  The majority of people throughout the world have very similar dreams, desires and needs. One of the most universal desires is for Peace. Why then, in a world in which democracy has “won”,  is this peace not found?

 

Many of our leaders would like “us” to believe it is because the jihad suicide extremists are going to be on your doorstep to punch you in the face, and thus they must be preemptively thwarted from “evil”. Let me just ask: How many of you have ever seen a terrorist or even anybody being shot for that matter? I would venture that with the exception of media coverage, war veterans, and public police servants,  our society in America has very little exposure to real world-class violence. Granted there are occasional incidents such as 9/11, Virginia Tech, and gang violence, but compared to worldwide death tolls for other inhumane deaths, (i.e. starvation, dehydration, and easily curable diseases) we are very safe and I might  venture, spoiled.

 

If we are relatively safe then why are we not a more peaceful country as the people want? I propose there are two distinguishing characteristics that have lead to our country’s current sickness: Greed and Fear.

 

First, a word on democracy. I understand and notice regularly that I am a very small pawn in the chess game our country plays, politically. However, there is something wrong with our Democratic system if the will of the people is not heard. The  muted shout of the people is clearly a desire for universal peace. Since recently reaching voting age, I now feel responsible to hold accountable the people who represent me and subsequently run our country through policy creation or by non-action. Clearly, the people have been misrepresented and we should be mad. The major issues our country and world face should be the prime concern of our politicians. They should not waste their “talents” deciding what office wallpaper should be, what pork barrel project can be passed, whether steroids in baseball are illegal, and every other ridiculous issues they fret over to appear busy until the next election. Exactly how this occurs  is a very complex question, but one that must be addressed before social change can proceed.

 

As a student of economics I am confronted with a dilemma. Economics teaches us to place a value on everything, even peace. The price of peace or the price of forgoing war may be very costly for some, especially if daddy owns stock in the  military industry (think USA). On the other hand, peace can be equally profitable for a larger group as it creates stability that allows global business and free trade to flourish. Regardless, in a democracy, society’s desire for peace should triumph regardless of economic consequences of a few.

 

Ironically, it was one of the greatest five star generals our country ever had, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who tried to warn us about the danger of our military growing out of control. He coined the term,  “Military Industrial Complex” to describe the dangerous state we find ourselves in today, wherein corporate special interests groups buy politicians and our country wages war after war after war.

 

I calculated  our 2008 budget for Military and Homeland Security to be approximately 665 Billion dollars. (^{http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/budget.html}) By comparison, the rest of the world combined will spend only slightly over 500 Billion. Our economy as we know it survives on the fact that we are the leading manufacturers, hence purveyors of war.

To discover why we are fighting is relatively simple in theory… Follow The Money. Who is profiting off war in our country? Halliburton and Blackwater come immediately to mind. Trouble is these firms are the most strategically positioned entities  in Washington with lobbyists, congressman, labor unions, and financial investors (not to mention inside fifth-column employees like Dick Cheney) all giving an open ear to imperialistic agendas.

 

Fear has become a way of life in daily America. The “Fear Culture” we are enslaved to makes us more vulnerable to propaganda and thus the agenda of the greedy. The all-pervasive propaganda that we see today has accomplished  its calculated goal with  anesthetizing the populous into a state of confusion and, from the overuse and abuse of “9/11”, mindlessly championing “freedom and democracy”, the “war on terror” and my personal favorite–the color-coded terror warning levels.

 

The most dangerous thing I can think of is someone or a country afraid  of everything. This has long been one of the contended bases for why we have one of the highest murder rates in the developed world. The most disturbing part is the results of the propaganda machine. With an at-best ambiguous enemy and No Possibility for “victory” in its Middle Eastern campaign, our incumbent administration  has become unaccountable and can not be challenged. This is a violation of our basic civil liberties.

 

The anomalously-named “Patriot Act” successfully removes many of the protections we were guaranteed by our founding fathers to ensure our country would remain the land of the free. Maybe there is a reason to be afraid. It has long been said, “People should not fear their governments, governments should fear their people.” It is clear this idea has been lost and I am sure our founding fathers would be appalled—I surely am. It is also perfectly clear this is the time my generation needs an old fashion revolution, at the least a loud protest. Yet the call to action is silenced and pushed to the background by the deafening noise of reality TV and the busy non-relenting quest for an illusion known as success. 

 

In closing, I must confess the subjective motivation of my ranting.  In three weeks, a good friend of mine will be sent to Iraq—assignment: “road patrol.” (a.k.a. “insurgent target practice”)  While I have the utmost of admiration for the courage he shows in fighting for good old Uncle Sam, I am sad inside for the loss he will certainly face—if not his life then surely his gentle temperament. War is Hell for all it touches, and in today’s global society it touches all.

 

 

BOB DYLAN LYRICS

“Masters Of War”

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion’
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand over your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead.

 

 

 

 

In passing..…

 

Echoing Brad’s sentiments, Dylan’s and our own, let’s get busy and realize that it’s never too late to start changing these times…..

 

The Times They Are A Changing

By: Bob Dylan

Come Gather round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

 

 

 

 

 

“Is it too late to make
peace with England?” 

By: Michael Kevin Murphy*

12 10 07

For years Gore Vidal has been arguing that the U.S. ought to adopt a parliamentary system of government along the lines of the United Kingdom’s, and as each year passes for me I have come closer to seeing the wisdom of having such a system in the U.S.  Maybe the Queen would take us back — if we asked nicely that is.

It seems to me that some Democrat and Republican partisans have lost their practical bearings and moral compasses as each side lurches toward someone, anyone, to “save us” from the many messes in which we now find ourselves.

The Republicans held fire for awhile waiting on Fred Thompson to make his grand appearance on the campaign trail but when he finally arrived he seemed lucky to stay awake at stump speeches let alone have any positions that he was able to express or the discernible vigor to advance if he ever got around to forming a few.

Giuliani is, in my judgment, far a more dangerous neocon than Bush “The Younger” because Giuliani actually has his own brain to serve him and the stump speaking skills to make him sound competent but not appear too much the idealogue, and if he the becomes the presumptive Republican nominee I also fully expect a daily crisis to erupt until election day as he will be forced to explain and defend all of the back room deals, Mafia connections, payoff scandals, and yada, yada, yada that either propelled him into office as Mayor of New York in the first place or kept him there; and I’m sure every Democratic candidate’s strategist has a filing cabinet full of that stuff just waiting for the right moment to let fly. 

Romney?  Something tells me he might not make a bad President — more the chief executive office of a large corporation, the U.S., but too many people simply cannot get past the fact that he’s a Mormon. 

McCain is I believe a man with the character to stand by his positions, but it’s a shame too many of us don’t happen to agree with some of his more important ones.  Anyway, I think McCain’s hold on hope will be entirely dependent on World events at nomination time if he’s not effectively out of the race before then.  

Huckabee?  He’s a great salesman but I would not even listen to him after he expressed considered doubts about Darwin’s “theory” on evolution.  

On the Dem side, Obama is just too young in my opinion to handle the job, but there is much to like and admire about the man. 

Edwards, I rather like but is liable to be swallowed up whole by a Congress that’s far closer to the center than he is.  Kucinich, Richardson, and those at the bottom of the statistical heep are just unelectible at this stage and show no prospect for advancing quickly like Huckabee has.  And then there is Hilary.  I ditto all Len has said about her in previous commentaries  and would not even try to gild his lilly.

I think in the final analysis we would all be better off — as would our children —- if we had a chief executive who is as non ideological as Roosevelt was said to be, who seems determined to govern from the center, and who has considerable administrative ability and an inquisitive and open mind.  I hate to say this but Mitt Romney seems to me to fit this bill better than anyone in the game.

I believe this upcoming election will turn on the state of the economy and “the war”, and while a lot of water has yet to go over those dams, people will, I think, end up by choosing between the lesser of two evils.

Mike

12 10 07

*Mr. Michael Kevin Murphy is an attorney in Virginia, and a B.E.A. correspondent  of long standing. Mike served in  the U.S. army and is a decorated Viet Nam veteran.

 

 

WHAT IS, IN FACT…

COMING TO AMERICA?

IS IT ANOTHER CRASH AND DEPRESSION?

THE ANSWERS….THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

 

Preface: On Sept. 20, DI Foreign Policy editor, Dusty Schoch posted on this site an article asking…and answering the question: “Is a Depression and Collapse of America in our Offing? You can bet Barbie’s Butt  it is.” That article is linked here: 

In this two-part follow-up article, by Leonard Carrier (DI In-house Historian and Philosopher), Len shares with us his short “pessimistic take on the New World Order” by commenting on the (much) longer article by Scott Thill (AlterNet writer) which trails.

In his “short take”, Len advises us to heed the warnings and prepare for the worst. In his “long take”, Thill explains the complex and convoluted corporate and stock corruptions which  are heading us to a repeat of America’s Stock Market Crash of 1929, making apt comparisons of our stock market’s machinations to  Las Vegas crap tables.

For all of you who’ve still got stock in
American corporations, this is a must-read.

For those of you who own no stock in
American corporations, this is a must-read.

           

LEN’S VIEW OF “WHAT TO DO”

We could all see this coming.

 

We all know that “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” But for the past seven years we have been behaving as if we do. As soon as the Bush Administration started giving away our budget surplus so that multi-millionaires could enjoy tax cuts, and as soon as we increased our billions-of-dollars borrowing from China and Japan to fund an oil war in Iraq, we knew we were in trouble. Yet what did we do about it? We re-elected the Shrub so he could keep doing what he was doing.

 

Pre-Bush one could go to Paris and enjoy getting a euro for 94 U.S. cents. Now it’s $1.43 for a single euro, and about $9 for a bottle of Coca Cola. That’s the real measure of how our dollar has eroded, not the phony statistics the government puts out. Look at the price of gasoline, the price of milk, the price of housing–despite the credit crunch. The day of reckoning is coming when, instead of pulling up the rest of the world to our living standard, we will be pulled down to the average–just another nation trying to get by selling weapons to other countries so they can make war against one another, trying to keep cool as the planet gets hotter.

 

What’s the solution to living in such a dreary, globalized world? Get yourself a secluded house in the mountains, dig a well, and plant a vegetable garden. Ride out the storm by bartering with the gold and jewelry you’ve traded your ever-devaluing dollars for. And stock your cellar with lots of fine wines. You’ll have plenty to drink about in the new world that’s coming.

 

 

THILL’S SHRILL WARNING

 

 

The Crash of 1929: Are We on the Verge of a Repeat?

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted July 26, 2007. http://www.alternet.org/story/56443/?page=4

 

 

Hedge funds have helped create a counterfeit economy that some experts say could lead to another full-blown economic depression.

 

[A senior adviser to President Bush] said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” — Ron Suskind, “Without a Doubt,” New York Times

The hypermarket beckons

News flash: The American economy is a hyperreality engineered by Ph.D.s working hand-in-hand with colluding media multinationals, political officials and some of the biggest names in business — and the banks that invest in them. In other news, greed is still good.

Of course, the idea that Wall Street is corrupt is as old as Wall Street itself. After all, the immortal “Greed is good” aphorism was muttered by a white-collar criminal in the 1987 movie named after Wall Street, which was directed by a guy, Oliver Stone, who made his name in postmodern cinema and political agitation. In fact, a film of the same name came out in 1929, the year of the stock market crash. And so the narrative replicates.

Speaking of replicants, Oliver Stone is a man who tackled not only labyrinthine presidential conspiracies in the 1991 film JFK but also the numb pathos of 9/11 in last year’s World Trade Center. Indeed, Wall Street indirectly tackled the junk bond and insider trading economic screw-jobs that riddled the ’80s like so many overpriced, overly puffy hairdos. Stone envisioned the film as Crime and Punishment on Wall Street, which was only partially fitting for the time because there was a ton of crime and very little punishment.

And the more things have changed, the more they have stayed the same. Indeed, only the nomenclature has been altered. Instead of junk bonds and insider trading, we have hedge funds and private equity takeovers. And instead of Gordon Gekko and Wall Street, we have Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch and, soon, the Wall Street Journal.

In the 1980s, guys like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky — who anticipated the “Greed is good” phrase with a 1986 commencement speech at Berkeley in which he stated, “Greed is all right. … I think greed is healthy” — were riding high on schemes that failed. Both served as inspirations for Stone’s Wall Street scumbag Gordon Gekko, but both got off with a few years in prison and a few hundred million dollars lost. Milken shaved a 10-year sentence down to two, and in 2007, still had a net worth of about $2 billion. Roll the happy ending.

But the hyperreality does not end there, and by hyperreality I mean simply a reality that exists outside the one you live in, whoever you are. It can come in many forms. Film is one such simulation, network and cable news is another, and our two-party political machine, as Ron Suskind explains in the quote at the top of this article, is a finer-tuned one still. But they all collide and collude in the social space of Wall Street and its various markets, on the internet and on the trading floors of the New York Stock Exchange and onward.

Take Milken’s favored high-yield junk bonds, for example, which are basically bonds that are rated below investment grade by ratings organizations like Standard and Poor’s or Moody’s and therefore subject to not only a much higher risk of default or other cash-sucking crashes but also higher paydays if you can make them work. To do that, you need a little help from your friends and unsuspecting investors, which is why Boesky and Milken went to jail for suckering friends and strangers into dense schemes that went nowhere.

And if that whole scam sounds familiar, that is because, as is always the case with hyperreality, it is happening again. Yet this time, it is happening in an information age in which 97 percent of stock transactions are conducted electronically. And this time it is not because of junk bonds, but because of hedge funds, mortgage-backed securities, subprime loans and a bizarro virtual scheme known as naked shorting, which has been around as long as — and played a role in — the 1929 crash, and according to some, could trigger the next one any day now.

“We’ve divorced the system from paper,” explained Overstock.com CEO and hedge fund activist Patrick Byrne to me by phone, “and since then it’s become easier to divorce it from reality. But the problem is that so much has been drained out of the system using these tools that the money is not there. If this gets exposed, the money is not there. It’s been turned into Ferraris and mansions in the Hamptons. It can’t be paid back. The system is going to vapor lock.”

Nailing subprime’s number

The recent implosion of the subprime housing market — in which people with little or no significant savings of their own are offered huge loans for little or no money down for houses often but not always located in fast-track developments — shares similarities with the junk bond burnout of the 1980s.

Indeed, the subprime loans that carved America’s cash cow for the last few years were rated just as poorly as Milken’s junk bonds and ended up pretty much the same way: with the scattering of investors and players from a hailstorm of collapsed debts, besmirched reputations and impending government oversight. While Milken’s house of cards was built on leveraged buyouts (LBOs), where an acquirer issued a bond to pay for an acquisition that he would pay back with funds yet to be earned, the engine that made subprime’s train roll off the tracks are collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which are intricately structured and packaged strategies pooled together to decrease the risk generated by the fact that they are usually home equity, car and credit loans so poorly rated that they promise only collapse for those who get them and seized assets for those who offer them.

Like I said, same scam, different name.

But this time the outlook is worse. For one, the subprime housing implosion has been a disaster for the market as a whole. Consider the case of Bear Stearns: Their hilarious hedge holes — the CDO-heavy High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund and its sister, High-Grade Structured Credit Fund — cratered in early June, going from about $10 billion to a few hundred million in assets within a matter of months, even though the hedge fund itself had been barely up and running for more than 10 months.

But here’s the thing about hedge funds that makes them so lucrative: You can play both sides against the middle — the middle class, come to think of it — and still win. Huge. So it was no surprise when the Wall Street investment titan decided to bail out its own hedge fund, to which it had committed only around $35 million, with over $3 billion and counting. As Bear Stearns Chief Financial Officer Sam Molinaro explained in a conference call, “There continues to be significant value in it.”

For those who work there, maybe. Meanwhile, those who invested in Bear Stearns’ hedge funds are out of money, and those crushed beneath their so-called high-grade structures are out of their homes and cars, which are in turn seized and put back into the asset pool. Not a bad business if you can get it.

And while Molinaro’s estimation of Bear Stearns hedge fund may sound rosy, the hemorrhaging of the housing market is anything but. Open up any newspaper to the business section and look for any headlines involving plummeting home sales or declining property values, and you’ll taste the bitter pills, because Bear Stearns is by no means alone. Swiss wealth management powerhouse UBS shuttered its Dillon Read Capital Management hedge fund after losing over $120 million invested in the subprime Kool-Aid. Then there was Amaranth Advisors, which pulled off the biggest hedge fund collapse in history when it blew almost $6 billion of its $9 billion in assets in a mere week after a highly leveraged bet, although it threw its chips down on the price of natural gas

That’s not the housing market, you say? Good point. In fact, the point altogether. As we shall see, hedge funds spread their bets across the entire economic table, and they are armed with that most virtual of investment strategies. It is called the naked short.

Getting naked with shorts

For those who don’t know how hedge funds work, consider the casino table favorite known as craps. And for those who make their living or leisure playing it, forgive this short introduction.

Craps is a game that’s been with us, to get hyperreal about it, since the Crusades, which itself was a series of highly risky but also highly lucrative takeovers. It is played on a table littered with numbers and any number of betting strategies, but rolls are governed by what is called the point, which is decided by the first roll of the session known as the come-out and is usually 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 or 10. These are the numbers the dice have the greatest chance of repeating on subsequent rolls, although the one they can hit the most is 7, given all the possible combinations. For this reason, if you roll a 7 when the point is any of the aforementioned numbers, the session is ended and the casino takes all the money off the table, pockets it and then hands the dice off to the next roller. Sucker.

If you want to join a craps game, you have to put your money down on the Pass Line, which is governed by the point. If the point is 8, and the roller hits it again, everyone wins and all the bets on the table are paid out. In other words, when you play craps, you are usually betting that you will hit another number besides 7 and make a ton of dough before you eventually do in fact hit it. That is called Pass Line play.

But there is another way to play craps, and that is to play the Don’t Pass Line, which is basically a bet on 7. So there you are, throwing down your money and hoping that everyone at the table rolls a 7 while they’re hoping to roll anything but. If they lose, you win. Not very popular, but since you’re betting with the house, and the house always win, not a bad betting strategy.

But there’s an even better one and that’s playing both lines at the same time, which was frowned upon the last time I did it in Vegas, but was nevertheless legal. By playing the Pass and Don’t Pass Line off of each other, you let your place bets make all your money for you, and let the line bets offset each other. If you live long enough in the game, you can make buckets of cash in advance of the end that always comes.

Hedge funds are pretty much the same thing. They play both sides of the market, going long on stocks they feel will pay off in the end, and going short on those they don’t. Except for one glaring difference, according to Overstock.com CEO and hedge fund activist Patrick Byrne.

“Craps is a good analogy,” he told me via email. Except that hedge funders “are also the croupier and own the casino management and the gaming regulators.”

Byrne isn’t the only activist convinced of the analogy. Engineer, investor advocate and InvestigatetheSEC.com webmaster David Patch took it much further in an email exchange. “Hedge funds are more and more becoming a craps game,” he assented via email, “but the problem is more than just those sitting at the tables become the losers. The industry pools their bets in such concentrated levels that the funds begin to drive the markets to levels beyond the values that would normally be dictated by the fundamentals.”

But according to Robert J. Shapiro, Clinton undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs and senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council’s Progressive Policy Institute, it’s not the hedge funds or more particularly their both-sides-against-the-middle strategies that are the problem per se. “The ability to hedge investments encourages investment,” he told me by phone. “You get more of it because you can hedge it. It reduces the likelihood that financial institutions are going to find themselves in trouble if the markets go against them, if they guess wrong.”

What brings Shapiro, Byrne, Patch and a growing legion of investors, scholars and politicians together is the hyperreal practice known as naked shorting. Recall craps and the Don’t Pass Line: In it, you are betting on failure, or as the stock market would term it, devaluation. Well, Wall Street has a Don’t Pass Line of its own, and it’s called shorting. Just as the Don’t Pass player is waiting for a 7 roll and the house to clean you out, short investors are literally banking on the collapse of some stocks. As Shapiro explained it, it’s a perfectly legal — if not, as in craps, uncool — way of preying on those companies living on borrowed time.

“Short sells are fine because just as you buy a share on the belief that the stock is going up, you short a company on the belief that the price is going down,” Shapiro said. “In both cases, you inject information into the market. Short sales are a way of injecting negative information into the market. There’s nothing wrong with them; they’ve been around for a long, long time.”

Forget for a moment that we are talking about injecting information, rather than actual money, into the market. Information, as anyone born in the era of the personal computer or Internet understands all too well, is easily manipulated. But if Shapiro’s first proposition rings a bit hollow, at least the second one is true. In fact, as Shapiro clarified, it was massive if unregulated short sales, known as naked shorts, that gave the infamous 1929 crash (which in turn spawned the Great Depression, its long, long legs).

“There were a lot of unregulated short sales in the stock market crash; that’s true,” Shapiro confirmed. “And regulating short sales were part of the initial regulation from the SEC in 1936.”

Byrne is a bit more colorful on the subject. “I do think it played a role. Hedge funds were called pools back then. Rich guys got together, pooled their capital and manipulated the stock market. And, in fact, newspapers covered the pools like they would cover sports teams; it was public entertainment. It wasn’t too dissimilar from the way the New York Times is trying to make rock stars out of hedge funders today.”

In other words, naked shorts are a final confirmation that hyperreality has been with us as long as the Bible. They are virtual transactions, ones that never actually occur.

“In short sales,” Shapiro explained, “you don’t own the share you sell; instead you borrow it. Then you replace it when you cover the short. If you’re right and the price has gone down, you replace it at a lower price, and the difference between what you sold it for and what price you replaced it at is your profit. The problem with a naked short is that you don’t borrow the share you sell. You sell it without ever borrowing it. In effect, you invent a share.”

If this is beginning to sound like a game of Monopoly built on fake money, that’s because it is. By injecting so many invented shares into the market using naked shorting, hedge funds have not only created an economy in which they can manipulate the stocks of companies smaller than Microsoft and Wal-Mart, but they have also created a market in which there are more shares than actual stocks. And that’s about as hyperreal as an economy can get.

“It’s essentially counterfeiting,” Byrne added. “You’re creating counterfeit shares in the system. It works like this. In a normal stock transaction, you give me money and I give you stock. And not paper stock anymore. It turns out that there is a loophole in the system: When I come to give you the stock that you bought, if I don’t actually have any stock, I can give what is effectively an IOU. Now you never know about this unless you know the right question to ask your broker, but it’s possible that all you really have in your account is an IOU from your brokerage account from a different broker working with a hedge fund.”

It is precisely this imbalance between real and invented shares that Byrne and others argue is primed to explode the subprime collapse into a full-blown economic depression.

“There are a lot of us who think we are living on the edge of 1929,” Byrne continued. “When you consider what’s happened with mortgage-backed securities, you get the feeling these might be the first rumblings. There may be more IOUs in the system than there is liquidity, in which case the entire thing is going to vapor lock as soon as it is exposed. One of the healthiest indications of the vibrancy of an economy is capital formation. Seven years ago, America was responsible for 57 percent of IPO capital raised around the world. Now it’s down to 16 percent. A national disaster.”

Greed is God

So what is the remedy for this historical collusion among money, markets and the managed realities of naked shorting and hedge fund buyouts? A political solution may be on the way, according to Shapiro.

“The SEC has just very recently finally agreed that this is a very serious problem that is destroying some companies and undermining the integrity of the markets,” he explained. “They came out with regulations in 2005, which we criticized for having huge loopholes. But this year, the SEC finally said their attempts to address the problem have failed, so they are seriously tightening the regulations. Now we’ll see if they enforce them.”

But history, as always, likely will teach a different lesson. Consider two events in that regard. The first happened after — and because of — the 1929 Crash: The Glass Steagall Act of 1933 mandated the separation of bank types according to their business, after the Senate-led Pecora Commission investigation of the crash found that collusion between commercial and investment banks played a major role in it. That act stood for 66 years, until none other than Bill Clinton repealed it in 1999, and here we are again.

Here’s the other lesson: According to a recent Financial Times story, “Barack Obama received more donations from employees of investment banks and hedge funds than from any other sector, with Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase among his biggest sources of support.” While Obama has already promised to increase regulation on hedge funds and the tax burden on private equity groups (or today’s “pools,” as Byrne explained them), if he becomes president, one can imagine he’ll be singing quite a different tune if he becomes the first black man in history to run the White House.

Throw in the fact that Rupert Murdoch is set to take over the Wall Street Journal, the paper of record for these subjects and scams, and you have more of the same reality programming.

Murdoch’s holdings would probably give the Pecora Commission fits: Not only does he own Fox News and now the Wall Street Journal, to go along with the New York Post, MySpace, DirecTV, HarperCollins, the Sunday Times, TV Guide, the Weekly Standard, 20th Century Fox … Stop me if you’ve had enough, but he’s also slated to unveil Fox Business Network on Oct. 15, which no doubt will team up with all of his other assets to turn Murdoch into something else besides a propaganda arm of the Bush administration or, in fact, the puppeteer who pulls its strings.

And for those of you who think that may be too broad a generalization, consider this: As the Huffington Post explained, “By taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows expanding companies like Mr. Murdoch’s to defer taxes to future years, the News Corp. paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two, it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed. During that time, Securities and Exchange Commission records show that the News Corp.’s domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion.”

Can you say free ride?

For those who argue that Murdoch and hedge funds are miles apart, consider this: He knows how to hedge just fine, thanks. After all, it was none other than current Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Guiliani who in 1996 threatened to run Fox News commercial-free on a city-run access channel if Time Warner Cable didn’t end its 11-month battle to keep Murdoch out of New York households. It’s also important to note, especially if you are Murdoch, that it was Guiliani who implemented RICO statutes to nail Michael Milken with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. But Murdoch is an old hand at hedging: He’s so far funneled $40,000 into Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Whoever loses, he wins.

Like I said, nice business if you can get it.

 

War in Iraq:

 

America Loses

 

Corporations Win

 

By DW Foreign-policy Editor, Dusty Schoch

 

It’s all over – all except for 16 more months of “face saving” inevitably to flow from Bush, using his military patsy (Petreus) to betray us into believing it’s not all over.

 

The saving “surge” is clearly a failure. More Americans and Iraqi’s are dying on all fronts. So how can I contend the corporations are “winning”?  Just look at the numbers—that is the dollars and sense:

 

Ever asked yourself why there is virtually no news coverage on the issue of Iraq’s only source of revenue…oil?  Regardless of the question, the answer is NOBODY KNOWS…for sure. For everybody’s information, although Bush promised us that laws would be enacted in Iraq whereby oil revenues would be shared by all citizens of Iraq, this has not happened and is never likely to ever happen. The question is…what has been happening for the 6 years we have occupied Iraq? Where have the billions in oil revenues gone and where will they go in the future?

 

The only SURE thing is that as America’s armed forces and so-called “insurgents”  continue to die as the war continues to wind down,  we all know it’s just a matter of time before American troops are withdrawn, and hell will break loose in this land of warring Islamic tribes.

 

And in the meantime, American dollars (ours) will continue to flow into Iraq, where the only ones profiting from our presence there are the American and British oil companies (and Halliburton-type “reconstruction” enterprises, and “Blackwater USA-type paramilitary corporations…all on our taxpayer payrolls.)

 

How big are those numbers?  You might think we’re paying just for the 170,000 military troops we presently have over there. But we’re really paying for nearly twice that. There are now 137,000 “contractors” (Blackwater type paramilitary) we’re also paying….such that our  total military occupation (civil and military) numbers 307,000…and that, my friends is one out of every thousand Americans.  Do the math. One out of every thousand of us are now in Iraq, making war.

 

What is that war costing us on a per-capita basis? Well, figuring only what Bush has just asked Congress for the next year ($190 Billion of our money)  it amounts to $633 from every American for next year alone. Money we’re spending on a war we’re losing.

 

But not the Corporations. Halliburton and Blackwater are still raking it in, and will continue raking it in until the bitter end of our inevitable withdrawal, upon which Bush will certainly declare that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but are “stabbed in the back by the peacemakers back home, yadayadaydada”  echoing the same lame lines the politicians handed us when we withdrew from our equally ill-advised war in Viet Nam.

 

But, as much as the Corporations are successfully war-bucking in Iraq, we can also look to their cash flow for the very signs that, while they are “winning” the dollars, we are losing the war. Most salient in the “dollar signs” out there is the story of Hunt Oil.

 

Ray L. Hunt, C.E.O. and President of Hunt Oil Company (of Dallas Texas…surprise, surprise!!), just last month (August, 2007) signed an oil-sharing production deal with Kurdistan.  Think about what that means.  Do you think maybe Hunt Oil has some “inside intel”…and that maybe that “inside intel” is that there will be no Iraq Government, per se, when we leave…and we are certainly in the process of leaving. Even Bush is comparing Iraq to Viet Nam now, though he scoffed at such parallels for each of the first 5 years we were at war in Iraq.

 

Is it just a “coincidence” that this same owner of Hunt Oil in Texas is a member of Bush’s  “Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board” (and therefore, clearly a friend and crony, because everyone knows Bush hires only cronies)?

 

The fact that Bush cronies are now transacting oil business with provisional governments in Iraq OTHER THAN THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT WE ESTABLISHED, clearly shows the war to establish and empower that “democratic regime” is LOST.

 

But not “lost” in terms of corporate profits and ultimate bottom-line “out-come”. 

 

At this moment (2:20 PM, Sept. 27, 2007), Halliburton, Blackwater and Hunt Oil are raking in huge profits…in the billions, while you and I are paying billions ($633 apiece for the coming year alone) to enable these war criminals to continue their blood-for-oil profiteering.

 

Before writing this piece, I looked and looked for more exact information on who’s been making money from Iraq oil since the American armed forces seized possession of it and the Islamic country in which it is located.  For those interested in digging further into this slimy corporate oil trade…for those of you who remember, as I do, that Halliburton was still doing business with Iran long after Bush declared it part of the “Axis of Evil”, you can look at a few sources of information that corroborate what I’m here contending.  Click here.

 

This is an article written by one Sarah Meyer entitled “Iraq Oil Reality vs the NY Times”.  Sarah Meyer is a researcher living in the UK. She is on the BRussels Tribunal Advisory Committee. This article can also be read on the BRussels Tribunal

I have no prediction to make regarding the future “success” of the corporate quest for oil and other war profits in Iraq when we finally withdraw American troops.  One thing to consider is that if 170,000 of our military troops were withdrawn today, 130,000 American paramilitary troops would remain. Wouldn’t this be sufficient to secure Hunt Oil’s oil deal with Kurdistan?  At present, neither President Bush nor General Petreus have any control over what the paramilitaries do, although they claim they are “working on it”, since recently reported cases show that wholesale murder is part and parcel of their general corporate modus operandum in Iraq.

 

There’s little doubt that Bush and the corporate-driven Neo-cons planned to enter Iraq and commandeer their oil in perpetuity. The diplomatic conclave American Forces constructed in Iraq is the largest and most secure of its kind in the world.  It was not built at the war’s inception because Bush was that determined to democratize Iraq and save its abused women and poor from a tyrant.

 

Let’s celebrate what Hunt Oil has shown us has occurred in Iraq: The war to establish a democratic government is lost.  Let’s celebrate the loss because it means there will soon be an end to American occupation of a foreign country, invaded on false pretenses and with fascistic brutality, a war killing over 4,000 American soldiers and over 600,000 non-militant Iraqi’s.

 

While we celebrate, lets mourn,  and then condemn the corporations who are still, even as I write….winning.

 

Dusty

9 27 07

 

C h I l d h o o d

 

A Viet Nam Warrior’s Ruminations on the

Paradise of Childhood…Lost in a Perceived

Eternity of war

 

By: Michael K. Murphy*

 

          They used to say when you turned seven you’d reached the age of reason.  Now, some people will argue with that proposition.  Some will say that today’s kids reach that watershed event earlier, much earlier than that, maybe as early as six.  Others will argue that in our culture of much delayed and indulgent adolescence that “can” gets kicked down the road to eight or so.  No matter.  Seven is close enough.

 

          On September 11, 2008 — only about a year from now — children born on the same day that terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center will reach that magic adolescent milestone.   All of their brief lives into the threshold of “reason” they will have known only war.

 

          On September, 11, 2001, those kids who turned seven that day as they sat transfixed in front of their parents’ TV sets (or a parent’s TV sets in this most fractured society we have created for ourselves) when those terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center are now thirteen, old enough to have their reason formed by war and threats of war and their judgment tempered by war, only war;  “war” — actual, metaphysical, it makes no difference — war has become their primary emotional and intellectual frame of reference for themselves and to place others in the community of man.

 

          I remember the documentary films of WWII and the faces of those children of Europe.  They would, undoubtedly, be marked by that war all of their lives.  But Hitler committed suicide. The War ended.  And Europe got on with re-building itself.  But despite the positive end to that war those children had their childhood marked by war permanently and they would not forget it.  Never.

 

          Our children may be very different from the European children of WWII.  Worse off.  Much worse off.  Our children may be born, reach the age of reason, and grow to maturity and settled judgment — all with war as a constant presence in their lives.

 

          Many things will transform people from one thing to another,  poverty, great and sudden wealth, persistent discrimination – racial and otherwise — to name a few of the more obvious but I think all of those things will pale in comparison to spending one’s whole life in a state of war.

 

          It may not be the great debate of our times but what is to become of the millions of American children who are now becoming not only children “of” war but “war children” — and soon “war adults” — young boys and girls who will in their immaturity and under social pressure choose up sides early and hold those choosings fast ‘til death?  Will we become a modern “Sparta” or modern “Athens” or neither?  Whatever they become, though, not only will today’s “jihadist” children will carry the marks of a warrior into the next generation; our children will be there too.  And if our children come to match them tit for tat then strive as they must, as all children do, to best them from where will come the wisdom to put a stop to it all?

 

          I have a persistent and depressing image of a young and perfectly normal American warrior a decade from now using computer gaming skills she’s learning today to pilot an unmanned aerial vehicle over some Middle Eastern desert simply looking to kill someone.  And if you are not terrified by that image you are already there and have chosen sides.

 

Mike

 

*Mr. Michael Kevin Murphy is an attorney in Virginia, and a B.E.A. correspondent  of long standing. Mike served with the U.S. Army in Viet Nam during the period which straddled the 1968 Tet Offensive. He was commanding officer of an infantry rifle company in the Mecong River delta and  his badges and decorations  include the U. S. Parachutist Badge, the U.S. Combat Infantryman’s Badge, the Vietnam Ranger Badge (Biet Dong Quan), the U.S. Bronze Star Medal, thirteen Air Medals, and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross.             

 WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

 

 

By: Joseph Cione *

 

      Last March 27, I celebrated the 60th anniversary of my arrival in the United States, and on the 31st of the same month I was delighted to celebrate my 55th year as citizen. Today, as it was then, I can say proudly and loudly that I am privileged to be a citizen of this generous, noble and marvelous land, where  people from every part of the world have continually come in search of a better life.

     

      In the last 60 years I have seen many elected presidents come and go. Some were great; most of them were good and a few turned out to be unworthy of the  honor or plain incompetent. Presently, the United States of America is under the spell of its 41st president : George W. Bush, who has been occupying the White House for the last six years, going on seven. During this time, Mr. Bush has chosen to carry out his many duties and  responsibilities tightly wrapped within a thick cloud of partisan secrecy and a stubborn attachment to personal beliefs often expressed with a tinge of Texan sarcasm and a conspicuous disdain for the rules of the English grammar.

      

      But that’s the least of  Mr. Bush’s problems. His main problem is the quality of his character. So far, he has shown to be a bullheaded individual who does not seem to have any difficulty manipulating the truth to his advantage. He also seems to believe that the meaning of justice is totally dependent on a particular success that one wishes to achieve. In other words, if it works, the aim must be “just”. For Mr. Bush, justice has a physical, palpable component that has very little to do with moral consciousness.  Perhaps, the facts listed below will describe Mr. Bush’s character traits more clearly than I could:   

    

    1. The number of dead American soldiers in Iraq is increasing each month. They’ll be 4,000 by the end of the year. The wounded soldiers are over 20,000, half of whom are permanently disabled. The casualties among the people of Iraq are said to be over 50,000 dead and many more wounded. This number includes innocent men, women and children.  Iraq’s infrastructure has been severely damaged, and the life of its citizens adversely affected.   

 

    2. As far as the military victory that Mr. Bush has been stubbornly adamant about and still is, no one believes it anymore. The lies that Mr. Bush and his friends have continually disseminated during the last several years have seemingly begun to come home to roost. A number of Mr. Bush’s staunch friends and allies have moved away from their servile allegiance to their leader and have begun to adopt a more independent posture on the subject of the Iraq war. Some of them who aspire to the 2008 presidential election have begun to criticize publicly Mr. Bush’s stubborn stance and illogical points of view.

 

    3. Mr. Bush after the “victory” of the year 2000 presidential election declared that he would use all his energy to unite the country. ”I would be a ‘uniter’”- he said. He proceeded  to achieve  the opposite. Our country, in fact, has never been more disunited than it is today. Since when have we had a Red America and a Blue America? I don’t recall any other president who has had the gall to say publicly: “If you are not with me you are against me?” I remember very vividly, during my life in Italy, that Benito Mussolini used  the same expression to remind us of his dictatorial rights. What’s Bush’s excuse? Is it possible that in the  midst of his mental confusion, Mr. Bush has completely forgotten that we are a free and democratic country?

 

    4.Those in the Federal Bureaus who are responsible for the health of the United States’ economy, are presently saying that the economy is in good shape, the inflation is  minimal and the number of those out of work is manageable. Meanwhile the U.S foreign rate deficit has reached billions of dollars as thousands of jobs are being  out-sourced regularly. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. In fact, Mr. Bush, as soon as he became president, got hold of the billions in surplus money he had received from the outgoing Clinton administration, and without hesitation, he distributed, as a tax deduction, 80% of it to 15% of the population–those who earned more than $ 200,000 a year, the billionaires, the steady contributors and the generous friends. The 85% of the  population, on the other hand, had to be satisfied with the remaining 20% of the surplus. Meanwhile, in the Congress, the Republican members made sure that the minimum hourly wage of $ 5.25 would never be increased. Thanks to the Democrats’ majority in Congress, the minimum hourly wage was recently increased to $ 7.25.

       The National Debt has risen to approximately eight trillions. The Consumer Debt (credit cards and car loans) has hit a record $ 2.6 trillion. A gallon of gasoline costs  now more that $ 3.00. Mr. Bush does not seem to worry about it. He and his friends are getting richer by the hour. Ask the EXXON’s CEO about the company’s profits. It couldn’t be any better. 

       

    5. Ever since Mr. Bush, with the blessings of his cronies, Cheney and Rumfeld, decided to thumb his nose at the United Nations organization and all its members,  the word “arrogant” became a label that the rest of the world loved to staple on the forehead of Mr. Bush and the country that he represents. Mr. Bush told the whole world that he decided to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein had WMDs and was ready to use them against the U.S.. As we all know today, Bush had lied through his teeth. Then, when it became evident to him that the WMD fable was no longer believable and acceptable as a valid  excuse for the invasion, Mr. Bush and his cronies changed the tune. The invasion was necessary, they began to blare away for all to hear, because Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator who had abused his own people, and therefore he deserved to be taken out by force.

 

That part of the world, Mr Bush figured, needed to change its way of life, century- old traditions, culture, laws and, perhaps, even the dress code. Why not? A reasonable dose of our present  a-la-Bush- kind of freedom and democracy could give the Iraqi’s all they need to succeed in the modern world.  Let’s face it, we, the United States of America, have lost face, lots of face, not only with the world in general but even with our friends!

Then came Guantanamo, where the word “torture” started to surface at home as well as overseas. Americans engage in torture? Then came the case of the notorious Iraqi prison Abu Graib, with plenty of photos to boot. “Yes, the Americans are torturers!” shouted all those who saw them.  Mr. Bush, however, and the rest of his  comrades did not seem to be too affected by the avalanche of negative comments received. Yes, America and all the Americans came out of that barbarous mess diminished, severely diminished. To all those who cared, it was like watching the fathers and mothers of all the tortured men throw stones into the Articles of our Constitution. Perhaps, the Statue of Liberty in the New York bay might have felt ashamed and its light might have dimmed a bit when the news of the tortures became known. It might be dimmed still.

 

    6. It is a widely perceived fact that Mr. Bush is a devout, practicing Christian. He has publicly declared that he is a “born-again Christian”. His favorite role model is Jesus Christ. He prays every day. The famous journalist Bob Woodward, who wrote Mr. Bush’s biography,  writes that before the invasion took place, he (Woodward) asked Mr. Bush if he had asked his father for some advice about the imminent invasion of Iraq. The answer he received was something like this: ” I don’t ask my earthly father for any advice on the matter. I only take the advice of my Heavenly Father. He has already informed me that I am doing the  right thing.”

 

It must be assumed that Mr. Bush reads the Bible, particularly The New Testament, and most of all what Jesus preached before his death on the cross. I repeat, Jesus Christ was and presumably still is Mr. Bush’s role model of all that is righteous, honorable and moral. Let us not mince words at this point. Mr. Bush’s use of violence against another nation, his addiction to lying, his stubborn attitude over personally-held  convictions, his lack of understanding of what is the true meaning of truth and justice and his lack of compassion for those who suffer make of him an enemy of Jesus Christ, a hypocrite, a Pharisee, one of those who two thousand years ago betrayed Jesus, a God/Man whose life was dedicated to the daily practice of brotherly love, truth and justice. 

 

So, really, where do we go from here?

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE:

   

*Joseph Cione is an educator and author and this is his first—hopefully of many—contributions to Democratswrite.com.  

 

Born in Sicily, Joseph grew up during Fascism’s “golden era” and lived in Palermo Sicily during World War II. Together with his mother and 100 other emigrants, he arrived at New York Harbor on March 27, 1947. He became an American citizen in 1953.

Mr. Cione received his Masters Degree (in French Language and Literature) from Hunter College in New York and was bestowed a minor degree in Spanish  at NYU.   Joseph taught Italian, French and Spanish for 27 years in New York between 1962 and 1983. In 1968 he was the only teacher from NY State chosen to attend the intense course of studies hosted by the renown Institut National des Sciences Appliquees in France.

In 1983, Joseph  retired from teaching and began his career as a writer. Since then,

he has authored four books: SICILY ON MY MIND, (Subtitled: “Echoes of Fascism and World War II”) , YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE, GRAINS OF SANDS AND MURMURS OF THE SEA ( Poems and Essays) and RICORDI DI SICILIA (Translation into Italian of Sicily on My Mind), most of which are available through Amazon.com and other on-line sources.

Joseph presently lives in Apex, North Carolina with his wife of 57 years (Sara) and of all his “accomplishments” in his adoptive country, he values most his family, which in addition to Sara includes six thriving children and 18 grand-children.

It is an honor for me (because Joe is a personal friend) , on behalf of DW to thank Joseph Cione for this wonderful expression of intelligent circumspection and insight and to extend to him our sincere invitation and request to grace us in the future with more of the same, as we struggle along with him to “go on from here’.