Obama Versus The Historical Trend
So Clinton and Barack are fighting for the heart of the workers by denouncing the damage done by policies that let companies move factories and jobs out of the country. I think if Clinton wants to have her time as first lady count toward her vaunted "experience," then she should take some credit for the shape the "free trade" agreements have taken. The worst case scenario for continueing this path is the construction of the privately financed 'super highway' the expansion of our border to create a North American Union, and the establishment of the Amero as the new regional currency to compete with the EU.
I talked to a socialist about this, and his response was that all borders should be abolished, but this is different. This exacerbates the problems of immigration and makes it easier for corporations to legally exploit cheap labor. This would create a legal body that transcends US legislative bodies and oversight making it easily able to avoid transparency. Being the evolution of a trade agreement that is already above any influence by the people, it would be beholden only to corporate interests and institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, organizations which have a history of using predatory tricks to get nations to accept insane loans so as to wield gratuitous control over economic policy, always to the detriment of the county and to the benefit of multi-national corporations.
The fear is that a single world government--or at least just a few big governments--is a lot easier for the big banks to control, so they will do what is in their power to shape the world in that way. I don't think it will pan out the way it is intended, but the pot of water we're all in could just be coming to a boil too slowly for me to notice. As crazy as a North American Union or a New World order sounds, it fits with the historical trend. Things definitely have been getting crazier and crazier for a long time.
The big bankers backed Hitler, or at the very least backed both sides so they couldn't be stranded on a losing side. IBM built the best computers of the day to work out the details of the holocaust, Bayer made Zyclon B for the gas chambers and the front line, and Coca Cola made Fanta for Nazi's to celebrate with. The bankers were quite pleased with the way the trains ran on time in the fascist countries of Hitler and Mussolini, and learned to prefer a stable strong man government over democracies and other forms of government which always left open the possibility that people could stand in the way of profits. Prescott Bush (George Bush Sr.'s father and George Bush Jr.'s grandfather) invested heavily in the Third Reich, and after the war he was made an example and stripped of large sums of money by congress for aiding the enemy. None of the subsequent Bush's have condemned the actions of their grandfather, saying it was only business, and I think it's telling that the house built with Nazi money has stayed in the family. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some Nazi memorabilia stashed away.
During the buildup of fascism that ushered in WWII, General Smedley Butler had done work for the bankers in the past, leading important pro-business operations in Nicaragua, Honduras, and China. Being a hero of The War To End All Wars, he was popular with veterans who were extremely dissatisfied with the way they had been abandoned by their country after winning America's first great victory. The bankers came to him, their loyal stooge, and offered him their financial support in a coup after he demonstrated his sway with the angry veterans during the Bonus March. Luckily, he decided this was a bad idea and informed congress of The Business Plot. Congress carried out an investigation which corroborated his accusations, and though nothing was done, at least the coup was prevented.
So the bankers know that they can't buy a coup and they learned that can't pay foreign armies to take over the whole world. So they settled for the next best solution, a plan for world domination that was an act of real long term thinking. Using simple tricks, their control of the media, and endless streams of money, they have controlled the topics of national debate and the candidates available to the public as much as possible, so that as the pendulum swings, the definition of 'middle ground' or 'centrist' has shifted to the right. And the right has used a playbook of 'dirty tricks' to poison the natural swing of the historical pendulum; Nixon made secret overtures to the South Vietnamese government to wreck Johnson's all-party peace talks to in order to win the election against VP Humphrey, Reagan beat Carter because of the Iran hostage crisis which ended six minutes after Reagan's inauguration and just before illegally selling them guns (kicking off the Iran-Contra scandal), and Bush has aggravated and even created a terrorist threat by detaining Iraqi's without charge or trial, using an unprecedented amount of mercenaries which have gravely damaged our reputation, and expertly crafted exactly the kind of "quagmire" that Dick Cheney warned in 1996 that an Iraqi occupation would be.
The pendulum shifts to the left, but can't go too far because the Democrats are always fighting to look comparably tough on Communism, humanitarian crisis, or terrorism, so when it swings to the right we end up with someone slightly more willing to consolidate power into the executive branch, to weaken the checks and balances of power built into the constitution, and all too eager to set dangerous precedents... military adventures that make lots of money for a few of the fabulously wealthy.
This election is no different, and of course none of the candidates will sever the choking tentacles of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us of in his farewell address. The best chance we have is to try and push the shift as far left as we can, which unfortunately still isn't far. The powers that be allow Barack to run and get as far as he has because he supports ethanol from corn, will not cut military spending, won't ask Exxon to share the wealth, does not support universal health care, will not outright end NAFTA, and won't abandon the plan to defend the massive embassy that is being built in Iraq.
But he demands accountability to US military contractors which currently operate beyond the UCMJ and Iraqi law. He's proposed a reform in the way we handle taxes, where instead of us having to scramble for W2s and figure out how much we owe they'll tell us what they already know we owe and we can simply agree or not (would save me a lot of time and the government a lot of money). He has authored more bills than Hillary, more of his bills received bilateral support, and more of his bills have passed. His campaign is better run than Hillary's, using 'bottom up' strategies that only Dean tried, but doing them better and really proving a skill for organization, delegation, and leadership (and such praise from The Economist is so much more impressive given their conservative alignment). Active duty and retired military commanders said they would prefer to work with Obama because "his highs aren't too high and his lows aren't too low -- he's even keel" especially compared to McCain, who has a famously explosive temper. He's a Democrat that would lose less votes to Cynthia McKinny or Nader than Clinton, and that more Independents, Republicans, and other swing voters have said they would vote for. Most importantly, he is the Democrat that would beat McCain.
A McCain victory means the pendulum will be continuing a shift to the right. We will leave Guantanamo Bay open, build and maintain more permanent bases in the Middle East that cost us money and make a lot of money for a few, and continue strong-arm policies that effectively poke a stick at a hornets nest, thus forcing us to pay businesses lots of money for the security that we must trade our freedom for. We will not leave Iraq for at least another 4 or 8 years, and in the mean time the Kurds to the north will continue to drift away from the rest of Iraq. McCain has already suggested he would continue the policy of allowing the Kurds to violate Iraqi law and allow certain US companies to help the Kurds sell their oil giving them independence from the rest of the country which is not yet able to sell its oil, and eventually giving them the strength to become their own country; Turkey will not stand for a free Kurdistan because it knows it's Kurds would annex the south of Turkey to it, and a civil war will undoubtedly break out. Remember that World War 1 started in what is now Turkey. Instability in Turkey could lead to a new flare-up of war with Greece, which would cause problems in Eastern Europe and major economic uncertainty in all of Europe since most of the oil that it gets goes through there. There's no telling what will be going on in Pakistan by then, but if McCain is president then we better hope that they're on good terms with India; Turkish war with 'Kurdistan' would send shock waves through Iraq, Afghanistan, and the region, worsening that governments problem with refugees and increasing the ranks of malcontented and displaced extremists in the north, straining their resources and consequently relations with India to the East. Now, if India avoids some recent upsurge of xenophobia that's threatening to poison their elections, then everything would end there. BUT, if they elect someone who maybe wants to reunite Pakistan with India in order to be better suited to compete with their dangerous neighbor China, then they could take advantage of the situation and organize a first strike to neutralize Pakistan's nukes. They could then easily knock down the beleaguered Pakistani army. In this scenario, the Indians would not even want the tribal area to the north of Pakistan where Bin Laden has been hiding all this time. This remaining region would be left as a stateless territory to be listed as Pakistan on maps but called a different name by every tribal leader growing increasingly angry at what will be perceived as a growing war against Islam.
It's all conjecture, a complete "what if" sort of thing. But when you follow the money, and the money is in oil and war, then there it is. This keeps demand for machines of war up, maintains a demand for troops which allows for the excuses needed for continued military contracting though it neither saves us money nor accomplishes peace, and is not even the worst case scenario of a McCain presidency. McCain would continue Bush's pressure on (infamously and undiplomatically saying "I don't care what they think about our missile defense system!") Russia with the astoundingly dangerous and unnecessary missile defense system being built in Eastern Europe. War with Iran, in the face of this pressure and mounting uncertainty about who owns the oil under the North Pole, might convince Putin (and his sidekick Dmitry Medvedev) to use all the new aircraft and tanks they've been building and use all the new training they've been doing with China. Russia has already given surprising amounts of missiles and planes in exchange for a permanent Russian Naval base there, possibly in response to our decision to provocatively modernize Poland's military, itself in exchange for agreeing to attract the ire of Russia by hosting one of our missile defense sites.
No, we should not have McCain with his finger on the button. Who ever becomes president, it should be someone who has a talent for diplomacy and not be someone who has a famously hot temper and is itching for a war. That McCain has said he "doesn't disagree" with Bush's North American unification plans is the very least of our worries. I'm more concerned with modern slavery used to pick tomatoes for Taco Bell than our porous borders, but I'm way more concerned with the fact that we will be too distracted with the waves of war around the world to pay proper attention to civil rights or the economy, which McCain would also continue to decimate because the bankers are the only winners in a recession or depression. Since they have all the money, they're the only ones that can afford all the suddenly cheap land, so they are more than happy to support a candidate that will continue to fund a military we can't afford and cut taxes for the rich so the only way we can afford to pay what interest we must is by printing more money.
It's important. Remember that the German people, beaten, forced to pay reparations for a foolish war, with an economy so bad it was cheaper to burn money than buy fuel, voted for Hitler by 90 percent. A fair economy--where everyone has a piece of the pie, there is a large middle class and a small gap between the rich and the poor--is vital to the health of a democracy and endurance of a society. Barack Obama stands out as a candidate who will examine the effects of the NAFTA created by Clinton and emboldened by Bush, and knows that an economy that makes less than it spends is doomed.
I talked to a socialist about this, and his response was that all borders should be abolished, but this is different. This exacerbates the problems of immigration and makes it easier for corporations to legally exploit cheap labor. This would create a legal body that transcends US legislative bodies and oversight making it easily able to avoid transparency. Being the evolution of a trade agreement that is already above any influence by the people, it would be beholden only to corporate interests and institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, organizations which have a history of using predatory tricks to get nations to accept insane loans so as to wield gratuitous control over economic policy, always to the detriment of the county and to the benefit of multi-national corporations.
The fear is that a single world government--or at least just a few big governments--is a lot easier for the big banks to control, so they will do what is in their power to shape the world in that way. I don't think it will pan out the way it is intended, but the pot of water we're all in could just be coming to a boil too slowly for me to notice. As crazy as a North American Union or a New World order sounds, it fits with the historical trend. Things definitely have been getting crazier and crazier for a long time.
The big bankers backed Hitler, or at the very least backed both sides so they couldn't be stranded on a losing side. IBM built the best computers of the day to work out the details of the holocaust, Bayer made Zyclon B for the gas chambers and the front line, and Coca Cola made Fanta for Nazi's to celebrate with. The bankers were quite pleased with the way the trains ran on time in the fascist countries of Hitler and Mussolini, and learned to prefer a stable strong man government over democracies and other forms of government which always left open the possibility that people could stand in the way of profits. Prescott Bush (George Bush Sr.'s father and George Bush Jr.'s grandfather) invested heavily in the Third Reich, and after the war he was made an example and stripped of large sums of money by congress for aiding the enemy. None of the subsequent Bush's have condemned the actions of their grandfather, saying it was only business, and I think it's telling that the house built with Nazi money has stayed in the family. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some Nazi memorabilia stashed away.
During the buildup of fascism that ushered in WWII, General Smedley Butler had done work for the bankers in the past, leading important pro-business operations in Nicaragua, Honduras, and China. Being a hero of The War To End All Wars, he was popular with veterans who were extremely dissatisfied with the way they had been abandoned by their country after winning America's first great victory. The bankers came to him, their loyal stooge, and offered him their financial support in a coup after he demonstrated his sway with the angry veterans during the Bonus March. Luckily, he decided this was a bad idea and informed congress of The Business Plot. Congress carried out an investigation which corroborated his accusations, and though nothing was done, at least the coup was prevented.
So the bankers know that they can't buy a coup and they learned that can't pay foreign armies to take over the whole world. So they settled for the next best solution, a plan for world domination that was an act of real long term thinking. Using simple tricks, their control of the media, and endless streams of money, they have controlled the topics of national debate and the candidates available to the public as much as possible, so that as the pendulum swings, the definition of 'middle ground' or 'centrist' has shifted to the right. And the right has used a playbook of 'dirty tricks' to poison the natural swing of the historical pendulum; Nixon made secret overtures to the South Vietnamese government to wreck Johnson's all-party peace talks to in order to win the election against VP Humphrey, Reagan beat Carter because of the Iran hostage crisis which ended six minutes after Reagan's inauguration and just before illegally selling them guns (kicking off the Iran-Contra scandal), and Bush has aggravated and even created a terrorist threat by detaining Iraqi's without charge or trial, using an unprecedented amount of mercenaries which have gravely damaged our reputation, and expertly crafted exactly the kind of "quagmire" that Dick Cheney warned in 1996 that an Iraqi occupation would be.
The pendulum shifts to the left, but can't go too far because the Democrats are always fighting to look comparably tough on Communism, humanitarian crisis, or terrorism, so when it swings to the right we end up with someone slightly more willing to consolidate power into the executive branch, to weaken the checks and balances of power built into the constitution, and all too eager to set dangerous precedents... military adventures that make lots of money for a few of the fabulously wealthy.
This election is no different, and of course none of the candidates will sever the choking tentacles of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us of in his farewell address. The best chance we have is to try and push the shift as far left as we can, which unfortunately still isn't far. The powers that be allow Barack to run and get as far as he has because he supports ethanol from corn, will not cut military spending, won't ask Exxon to share the wealth, does not support universal health care, will not outright end NAFTA, and won't abandon the plan to defend the massive embassy that is being built in Iraq.
But he demands accountability to US military contractors which currently operate beyond the UCMJ and Iraqi law. He's proposed a reform in the way we handle taxes, where instead of us having to scramble for W2s and figure out how much we owe they'll tell us what they already know we owe and we can simply agree or not (would save me a lot of time and the government a lot of money). He has authored more bills than Hillary, more of his bills received bilateral support, and more of his bills have passed. His campaign is better run than Hillary's, using 'bottom up' strategies that only Dean tried, but doing them better and really proving a skill for organization, delegation, and leadership (and such praise from The Economist is so much more impressive given their conservative alignment). Active duty and retired military commanders said they would prefer to work with Obama because "his highs aren't too high and his lows aren't too low -- he's even keel" especially compared to McCain, who has a famously explosive temper. He's a Democrat that would lose less votes to Cynthia McKinny or Nader than Clinton, and that more Independents, Republicans, and other swing voters have said they would vote for. Most importantly, he is the Democrat that would beat McCain.
A McCain victory means the pendulum will be continuing a shift to the right. We will leave Guantanamo Bay open, build and maintain more permanent bases in the Middle East that cost us money and make a lot of money for a few, and continue strong-arm policies that effectively poke a stick at a hornets nest, thus forcing us to pay businesses lots of money for the security that we must trade our freedom for. We will not leave Iraq for at least another 4 or 8 years, and in the mean time the Kurds to the north will continue to drift away from the rest of Iraq. McCain has already suggested he would continue the policy of allowing the Kurds to violate Iraqi law and allow certain US companies to help the Kurds sell their oil giving them independence from the rest of the country which is not yet able to sell its oil, and eventually giving them the strength to become their own country; Turkey will not stand for a free Kurdistan because it knows it's Kurds would annex the south of Turkey to it, and a civil war will undoubtedly break out. Remember that World War 1 started in what is now Turkey. Instability in Turkey could lead to a new flare-up of war with Greece, which would cause problems in Eastern Europe and major economic uncertainty in all of Europe since most of the oil that it gets goes through there. There's no telling what will be going on in Pakistan by then, but if McCain is president then we better hope that they're on good terms with India; Turkish war with 'Kurdistan' would send shock waves through Iraq, Afghanistan, and the region, worsening that governments problem with refugees and increasing the ranks of malcontented and displaced extremists in the north, straining their resources and consequently relations with India to the East. Now, if India avoids some recent upsurge of xenophobia that's threatening to poison their elections, then everything would end there. BUT, if they elect someone who maybe wants to reunite Pakistan with India in order to be better suited to compete with their dangerous neighbor China, then they could take advantage of the situation and organize a first strike to neutralize Pakistan's nukes. They could then easily knock down the beleaguered Pakistani army. In this scenario, the Indians would not even want the tribal area to the north of Pakistan where Bin Laden has been hiding all this time. This remaining region would be left as a stateless territory to be listed as Pakistan on maps but called a different name by every tribal leader growing increasingly angry at what will be perceived as a growing war against Islam.
It's all conjecture, a complete "what if" sort of thing. But when you follow the money, and the money is in oil and war, then there it is. This keeps demand for machines of war up, maintains a demand for troops which allows for the excuses needed for continued military contracting though it neither saves us money nor accomplishes peace, and is not even the worst case scenario of a McCain presidency. McCain would continue Bush's pressure on (infamously and undiplomatically saying "I don't care what they think about our missile defense system!") Russia with the astoundingly dangerous and unnecessary missile defense system being built in Eastern Europe. War with Iran, in the face of this pressure and mounting uncertainty about who owns the oil under the North Pole, might convince Putin (and his sidekick Dmitry Medvedev) to use all the new aircraft and tanks they've been building and use all the new training they've been doing with China. Russia has already given surprising amounts of missiles and planes in exchange for a permanent Russian Naval base there, possibly in response to our decision to provocatively modernize Poland's military, itself in exchange for agreeing to attract the ire of Russia by hosting one of our missile defense sites.
No, we should not have McCain with his finger on the button. Who ever becomes president, it should be someone who has a talent for diplomacy and not be someone who has a famously hot temper and is itching for a war. That McCain has said he "doesn't disagree" with Bush's North American unification plans is the very least of our worries. I'm more concerned with modern slavery used to pick tomatoes for Taco Bell than our porous borders, but I'm way more concerned with the fact that we will be too distracted with the waves of war around the world to pay proper attention to civil rights or the economy, which McCain would also continue to decimate because the bankers are the only winners in a recession or depression. Since they have all the money, they're the only ones that can afford all the suddenly cheap land, so they are more than happy to support a candidate that will continue to fund a military we can't afford and cut taxes for the rich so the only way we can afford to pay what interest we must is by printing more money.
It's important. Remember that the German people, beaten, forced to pay reparations for a foolish war, with an economy so bad it was cheaper to burn money than buy fuel, voted for Hitler by 90 percent. A fair economy--where everyone has a piece of the pie, there is a large middle class and a small gap between the rich and the poor--is vital to the health of a democracy and endurance of a society. Barack Obama stands out as a candidate who will examine the effects of the NAFTA created by Clinton and emboldened by Bush, and knows that an economy that makes less than it spends is doomed.