Is Iran Safe From Attack?

So, the latest is that the Iran War may be off the table. That seems to be the proper inference from the latest NIE. Of course the hard right won’t give it up and claims that even knowledge of nuclear weapons for Iran is intolerable. Such a claim is ridiculous as history teaches us that information spreads like wildfire. The key to the nuclear war dilemma is cooperation and control: treaties and inspections, including the United States. Not Iran but the 500 lb. gorilla of the west needs taming. The real peculiarity of the current situation is “What happened?”. In the words of the immortal Nero Wolfe: In a world of cause and effect, coincidence is always suspect.

The situation is reminiscent of the VietNam war. Widespread protests certainly played a role in ending that war but only after the general citizenry’s dissatisfaction filtered up to the heavy hitters in business and politics. When the majority of our ruling class finally figures out that continuing a war is more costly than ending it then the denouement begins. In other words, the string pullers behind the throne, seeing the abyss into which the US and world economy is sinking, have decided that a pullback and realignment is in order. They haven’t lost their greed for controlling the world; they just are swerving to avoid the cliff. All of which means that we have a coming respite, not a conclusion.

After the VietNam war with all the dissension, even among the troops, the Military drew the obvious lesson that a professional, not a citizen army was needed, and the draft was ended. That was precisely the wrong conclusion. More properly, the proper understanding would have been that if the citizens won’t support a war, including with their (children’s) lives then that war should not be fought. This would mean that only the most extreme cases of self-defense would move people to taking up arms. And that is how the world should be. For more than half a century the US has been involved in imperialistic wars to control the world and many, many millions of people have died. Pollution, resource constraints, global warming, growing impoverishment, widespread deployment of very deadly weapons — all these are telling us that the era of capitalistic greed needs to end before those insidious and invidious wackos kill us all.

But even putting Iran’s destruction on the shelf won’t work long term. Capitalist hegemony will never surrender. They only intend to consolidate their position and bulk up their mideast and central Asian presence. And one day the violence will spread again. The people, not the “leaders” need to learn the proper lesson to take control over the country, the resources, the economy, and start to build a nation and world of peace and prosperity for all. The people need to reject the national, racial and religious chauvinism that produces death and destruction planet-wide. For the “seeming” deferral of the Iran War is only a short time to get our breath back and prepare for the bigger battles ahead, and we need to remember that with the “Decider” in office, and compliant, fully imperialistic Democrats waiting in the wings anything might happen.

Is America Going Fascist?

Among some groupings of the oppositional left there have been recurring discussions and warnings that the Bush regime is moving the USA towards a fascist dictatorship. The model, and the fear, are based upon Nazi Germany, our most recent and horrendous example of a democratic and capitalist nation that transformed to imperialistic war abroad and severe repression at home. There are many similarities. During Hitler’s consolidation of power the Reichstag became irrelevant and the government came to be run by decree. The Gestapo and Propaganda Ministry were formed to dominate the culture and populace both in the large and in minute detail. Patriotism and racial purity became guides, seemingly different from the aiding
and abetting terrorism crackdowns of contemporary America, at least at first glance. The law became whatever Hitler or the Nazi Party or the Ministries claimed law to be. One difference is the perspicacity of our new totalitarians who pass laws – with a still extant though seemingly extraneous legislature – and issue decrees that exempt themselves from legal sanction. On the other hand, Hitler’s extreme chauvinism and extermination campaign (5.1 out of an estimated 11 million European Jews, 2.5 out of an estimated 4 million Roma (Gypsies), and his hatred of subhuman Slavs, over 20 million Soviet citizens killed) seems unique. Depending upon one’s standards or perspective, the USA has not yet begun wholesale slaughter of brown-skinned Muslims.
The United States does have a history, however, of chauvinistic suppression, murder and rule: Indians and slaves. It took until the 20th century for the voting franchise to be extended to all adults 18 and over. And the US’s treatment of other countries, their sovereignty, has usually been in name only, as on Indian reservations or that newest big one: the Iraqi reservation. The imperialistic chauvinism of the USA is so deep and wide that it becomes unquestioned; witness Congressional calls for replacement of Iraq’s Prime Minister, or Obama’s and Edwards’ commitment to bombing Pakistan. Bombing another country is an act of war, yet for all the carping about Bush, the Democratic candidates only want to do the warmaking themselves. And the neo-cons are quick to push the
Islamofascist threat bucked up by polemics such as The Clash of Civilizations and the idea of  generational warfare: the latest 1000 year Reich. Of course fascism is merely a variant of capitalist rule and historically grew out of liberal democracy and economic crisis, not religious fundamentalism. But that is a different essay.
What distinguishes fascist rule from its more liberal counterpart is its overt brutality and its disdaining the “cover” of the legitimacy of law. And there have been many fascist dictatorships in the past 60 years. Greece post-WW II with the Colonels. Most of Central America: this is what the Somoza (and then the Contras) vs. the Sandanistas  was about. Battista in Cuba. Pinochet in Chile. The Shah in Iran; even Saddam when he was “our” boy in the
Iraq-Iran war. Even today US pundits talk of the Salvador option for Iraq: kill all the agitators and community leaders and terrorize the population into submission. Fascism really has been the norm in US client states, particularly in the Americas. But it takes a deep crisis for the rulers to turn to fascist brutality in the homeland. And such a crisis seems to be looming. When circumstances and historical trends heighten the conflicts, the contradictions within a capitalist country, rulers seek out other
means of fortifying and extending their domination. Repression of the populace and destruction of the productive forces, i.e., war, are the
norm.
Hitler didn’t begin his rule in 1933 with war or extermination or even separating and expropriating the Jews. The rhetoric was there but it took some years before going to war or even the widespread use of concentration camps. Given the state of the state in the USA, with its draconian laws and decrees, a legislature which is either as warmongering as the current junta or totally bankrupt both morally and politically, a citizenry propagandized into total confusion and feeding off chauvinism against Arabs and Muslims and even Mexicans, it would seem that the USA is already fascist. What awaits us are the complete collapse of electoral democracy, perhaps through a coup, severe repression at home and the extension of the wars abroad. If a
further crisis occurs or the worst elements simply get their way, the fangs and claws will be exposed and the fascist question will be moot. None of us can foresee the future; otherwise, man-made disasters would never happen. And just as the Germans didn’t have it together to stop Hitler it is unlikely that people in the USA will get it together to stop fascism here.

The point being that totalitarian rule has begun in the USA; it has been immanent in our political culture since McKinley’s seizure of the Philippines during the Spanish-American war and then the growth of Presidential power under Roosevelt and his largely command economy during the depression and the build-up to WW II. Having produced an economy that now looks to make money from money and where money has become debt and that debt spirals ever higher awaiting major collapse and economic dislocation affecting the lives andlivelihoods of many millions of Americans, the financiers and their henchmen, the elected officials, need to grab for global domination of resources through destruction and mayhem. Just think of all the money to be made rebuilding a destroyed world.

An Unraveling?

Our masters are having problems these days, particularly in the United States.
Engaged in disastrous, unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an economy
that verges on collapse, a leadership with no legitimacy and an opposition that
won’t oppose, the country just sinks deeper into the muck. The US model of
political economy has outlived its usefulness. Caught in the dilemma of a
paradigm that is moribund but unwilling to change to a sustainable model they,
our Dear Leaders, are following Dylan Thomas’ advice to “not go gentle into
that good night.” Change will never come from the top; they will fight to the
last drops of our blood to maintain their power. History shows that our masters
care not much for us. Consider the following statistics.
                 _____________________________________________
                |Year|CPI1_|GDP/cap.2|Consumer_Debt3|Debt/cap.|
                |1960|88.7_|13,847___|60_B__________|330______|
                |1970|116.3|18395____|131.5_B_______|645______|
                |1980|246.8|22716____|351.9_B_______|1550_____|
                |1990|391.4|28493____|808.2_B_______|3249_____|
                |2000|515.8|34788____|1,722.4_B_____|5939_____|
                |2004|565.7|36627____|2,204.1_B_____|7600_____|
1- CPI base year 1967=100
2- Per capita GDP in constant year 2000 dollars
3- Consumer debt does not include mortgages, merely cars, tv’s, vacations,
latte grandes etc. and are in “current, nominal” not yearly-adjusted “real”
dollars.
The above figures could have been expanded through 2nd quarter of this year and
recalculated for common base years but the trend is so huge that the meaning
wouldn’t change. From 1960 to 2000 the CPI increased by a factor of 5.8, GDP/
cap. increased by a factor of 2.5, while debt increased by a factor of 28.7,
and per capita debt increased by a factor of 18. Today,(non-mortgage) consumer
debt is about $8000 for each and every one of us, even the tiniest newborn, and
the National debt is an additional $30,000+ for each of us. So, if you are an
intact family of four then:
        ______________________________________________________________
       |Year|”Nominal”_share_GDP|Family_consumer_debt|Debt_%_of_income|
       |1970|_________202601____|___________25801____|_________12.7___|
       |2000|_________139152____|___________23756____|_________17.2___|
       |2004|_________146508____|___________30400____|_________20.7___|
1- These are 1970 dollars.
If we tack on the National Debt (using 2004 as a baseline) then that works out
to 84.7% of “nominal” family income and added to current consumer debt that
totals more than 105% of your family’s share of GDP. This not only doesn’t
include housing costs, it also doesn’t fill your gas tank in the morning or
your belly at lunch. And while debt must be paid out of income not all GDP is
dispersed as income and most of us (nearly all, in fact) never get “our” share
of this national income. Since these days debt is commonly paid through new
debt this digs our hole deeper each year. Financial counselors and book authors
are famous, and rather trite, in preaching us to live within our means but
living on borrowed money is the norm for all, including governments, banks and
corporations. Debt’s a “funny” thing. Consider this from Financial History of
the United States by P. Studenski and H. Krouss ©1952:
     Who owns the debt is much more important than its size, for if the
     debt were divided among the citizens in proportion to their tax
     liability, each individual would be paying to himself the interest on
     his bonds and the whole debt would lose all meaning and could be
     canceled. On the other hand, once debt is distributed in different
     proportions from taxes, it involves a burden on taxpayers for the
     benefit of bondholders.
The above quotation describes national debt but in a large sense the same
people who own Treasury bonds also own corporate bonds and municipal bonds and
consumer and mortgage debts as well. We are beholden to a class of rentiers and
these parasites have bought the best government they can afford. Not to get too
far ahead but we basically live in a deflationary era where productivity is so
high that production growth outstrips market growth, commodity prices fall, and
with many decades of the assault on labor, ordinary workers can’t afford to buy
so our masters advance us credit to keep the production line moving and sales
growing and, hey!, they make money on the back end too through interest. Thus
rises debt and our further impoverishment with each passing year.
The Financial Times wrote recently that corporate profits are at their highest
level in more than half a century and that last year those profits totalled
$1.35 trillion pre-tax and that companies retained $460 billion rather than
disburse them through dividends. Some of these retained earnings have gone to
buy back stock to prop up exchange prices and a lot of it has been invested in
financial instruments, some being in those types currently in the news as they
crash and burn around us. Back during the dot.com boom there was the book Dow
at 36,000 or some such name. Most who heard of it (this writer included) were
astounded and wondered if stock prices could go so high and the forecast was
dismissed as unrealistic if not silly. Upon further thought, however, what
would it mean if the index did balloon that high? Recently, an analyst named
Henry Liu wrote in the Asia_Times that at the end of 1994 the total dollar
value of all US stocks was $5.3 trillion and at the end of 2006 that same value
had ballooned to $35 trillion. Anyone old and literate enough to read a
newspaper knows that the real economy didn’t grow more than 600% over those 12
years. We don’t have 6 times the wealth or jobs or cars or even computers. What
happened was asset inflation; stock prices lost their tether to reality and
today have little relationship to underlying real value. And just as millions
are losing their homes through foreclosure so too the reckoning for the economy
and the country is coming due. Not only the degenerate gambler doubling down to
get back the bookie’s stake has to pay the piper; at some point reality
crunches us all.
The other day Fed chairman Bernanke cut the discount rate to increase liquidity
to forestall the collapse of mortgage lenders and other financial companies.
Ensuing days produced paeans to Bernanke’s acumen as he cut his academic teeth
on the Great Depression and the lack of liquidity that brought the economy to a
(virtual) halt. Problem is, today’s world is different. First, in the 20’s
money was tied to gold; thus, the dollar more or less moved in lockstep with
commodities. Today we have fiat money, constantly inflated since WWII days and
particularly since 1973. Today money is debt and that debt was created through
constant injections of liquidity into the system, with worse money chasing bad
money. This Fed move can only delay, not avoid, the day of judgment. Today it
is almost a truism that everything is connected to everything else. So, let’s
unravel these threads and see if they all lead to the same source, if all roads
lead to Rome.

What Happens In The Next Depression?

  Will there, in fact, even be another depression? One must think so given thetenuousness and overreach of the world financial structure. There is always somuch discussion about the state of the US economy and prospects for growth andso much hype about the dynamism but what most people really want is confidenceand reassurance about the future and stability. The current world economy isruled by finance capital which is always looking for profit and quick turnaroundand telecommunications and computers make that a very fast-moving process. Our masters thrive on instability: that is where the gaps for quick profits lie. Sothe interests of finance capital are at odds with the needs and desires of mostpeople. And finance capital can’t claim to offer jobs and increasing incomes asthe modern trend with automation is to eliminate labor from the productive process and that is what “jobless recovery” is all about. This is not a temporary phenomenon. We, in large part, no longer have a US economy, we are just one of the states of the world economy, and just as factories were moved from Michigan to Tennessee, then to Mexico, Indonesia, China and even then to Vietnam, all moves to lower costs (hint: it wasn’t transportation costs!), a system designed for maximizing profits by minimizing costs isn’t suddenly about to return to home-base in our lifetimes. With the wealth and productivity extant we should all have jobs and be on easy street, though perhaps we might only have to work 20-30 hours each week with any more hours giving a surfeit of goods. But a capitalist economy is run by exploiting workers in production and selling to those with money (=jobs) so don’t hold your breath waiting for Citibank or Goldman Sachs to fund your lifestyle! At different times, for varying reasons, in varying industries, the past 40 years have been a time of systemic crisis, with productivity so high and consumers with greenbacks so few that the system has teetered for decades on the brink of collapse. This happened in the Great Depression and Keynesian job creation through government spending was a response but in the post-WW II era this was replaced with the Military-Industrial Complex which gave capitalists a profitable area for investment with high and guaranteed profits and some jobs. With the Iraq war all those “bombs bursting in air” need to be replacedand the bombs’ targets need to be rebuilt (Halliburton and KBR). Even so, there has not been, and there is not, enough places for profitable real investment in factories and housing to use the available capital and find paying customers. Currently worldwide auto capacity is 70 million units/year but the market can only absorb 50 million units. Given the availability of cheap labor in poorer countries there is not likely to be a resurgence of industrial investment in the US. China is the hot place these days and India may soon join it. It seems India is developing a new land policy for agricultural development that eerily brings to mind the Enclosures centuries ago in England. Apparently the Indian government is planning on displacing 400 million peasants!  So, what does all this have to do with a survivable depression? With too many goods chasing too few customers the drive for profits has found its outlet in financial markets which is all about making money from money. But while many “intangibles” have value — the service economy which has been the reality since 1940 in the US — the real world mostly runs on “hard” goods; the service economy is mostly about servicing the hard goods economy. Unless at sometime a market is found for real investment the overextension of the credit markets will collapse and the inability of people and companies to pay their debts will bring the economy to a halt. This past weekend BearStearns was in the news because of a threatened collapse of one of their hedge funds in the subprime mortgage market, a market created to keep the housebuilding industry alive when 20% downpayers had disappeared. BearStearns took in $600Min funds and lent out $6B and that fund is threatened with default. So they’ve had to step in to rescue, if possible, that fund and stem the fear and reality of contagion. The “collateralized” and “securitized” financial markets are built on debt, with debts having come to be considered assets. Sort of like a store which borrows using not a building or inventory for collateral but its accounts receivable. If those accounts aren’t collectible then the bank can’t collect from the store. From Chrysler to the Savings and Loans to LTCM (an oxymoron: Long Term Capital Management that traded in milliseconds!) Localized defaults can always be handled — usually at the taxpayers’ expense — but if a cascade occurs therewill be the crunch of depression. And with the continued advance of automation and markets growing more slowly than productivity it becomes difficult to believe such magic with money can be practiced infinitely. Being attuned only to short term profits it becomes a matter of “damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead!” The “notional” amount of money leveraged worldwide surpasses $130 trillion, or more than Earth’s gross product! The Great Depression, signalled in the US by the stock market crash, was a catastrophe in all the Western countries and led to WW II. Unemployment in the US was 25% and many fortunes were wiped out. Yet, many corporations survived; in fact, AT&T payed dividends throughout the depression. And, as with AT&T, companies with mothballed real assets (a machine shop, for example) can go back into production when the “downturn” with its destruction of assets hasrun its course and conditions for new profitable production and investment return. But with the relocation of industrial jobs outside the US and other industries simply disappearing there may not be any industry to return to. After the depression those with both real assets and legal title enforced by the state could renew production. But if the “new world order” collapses will GM still “own” or “control” even those assets it built in China? Having spent decadesabandoning basic industry in the US, could even a “socialized” post-depression US easily or quickly rebuild middle income jobs and lifestyles? The deindustrialization of the US in the hunt for lower costs might put us in a pickle after a collapse.  

What Happens In The Next Depression?

  Will there, in fact, even be another depression? One must think so given thetenuousness and overreach of the world financial structure. There is always somuch discussion about the state of the US economy and prospects for growth andso much hype about the dynamism but what most people really want is confidenceand reassurance about the future and stability. The current world economy isruled by finance capital which is always looking for profit and quick turnaroundand telecommunications and computers make that a very fast-moving process. Our masters thrive on instability: that is where the gaps for quick profits lie. Sothe interests of finance capital are at odds with the needs and desires of mostpeople. And finance capital can’t claim to offer jobs and increasing incomes asthe modern trend with automation is to eliminate labor from the productive process and that is what “jobless recovery” is all about. This is not a temporary phenomenon. We, in large part, no longer have a US economy, we are just one of the states of the world economy, and just as factories were moved from Michigan to Tennessee, then to Mexico, Indonesia, China and even then to Vietnam, all moves to lower costs (hint: it wasn’t transportation costs!), a system designed for maximizing profits by minimizing costs isn’t suddenly about to return to home-base in our lifetimes. With the wealth and productivity extant we should all have jobs and be on easy street, though perhaps we might only have to work 20-30 hours each week with any more hours giving a surfeit of goods. But a capitalist economy is run by exploiting workers in production and selling to those with money (=jobs) so don’t hold your breath waiting for Citibank or Goldman Sachs to fund your lifestyle! At different times, for varying reasons, in varying industries, the past 40 years have been a time of systemic crisis, with productivity so high and consumers with greenbacks so few that the system has teetered for decades on the brink of collapse. This happened in the Great Depression and Keynesian job creation through government spending was a response but in the post-WW II era this was replaced with the Military-Industrial Complex which gave capitalists a profitable area for investment with high and guaranteed profits and some jobs. With the Iraq war all those “bombs bursting in air” need to be replacedand the bombs’ targets need to be rebuilt (Halliburton and KBR). Even so, there has not been, and there is not, enough places for profitable real investment in factories and housing to use the available capital and find paying customers. Currently worldwide auto capacity is 70 million units/year but the market can only absorb 50 million units. Given the availability of cheap labor in poorer countries there is not likely to be a resurgence of industrial investment in the US. China is the hot place these days and India may soon join it. It seems India is developing a new land policy for agricultural development that eerily brings to mind the Enclosures centuries ago in England. Apparently the Indian government is planning on displacing 400 million peasants!  So, what does all this have to do with a survivable depression? With too many goods chasing too few customers the drive for profits has found its outlet in financial markets which is all about making money from money. But while many “intangibles” have value — the service economy which has been the reality since 1940 in the US — the real world mostly runs on “hard” goods; the service economy is mostly about servicing the hard goods economy. Unless at sometime a market is found for real investment the overextension of the credit markets will collapse and the inability of people and companies to pay their debts will bring the economy to a halt. This past weekend BearStearns was in the news because of a threatened collapse of one of their hedge funds in the subprime mortgage market, a market created to keep the housebuilding industry alive when 20% downpayers had disappeared. BearStearns took in $600Min funds and lent out $6B and that fund is threatened with default. So they’ve had to step in to rescue, if possible, that fund and stem the fear and reality of contagion. The “collateralized” and “securitized” financial markets are built on debt, with debts having come to be considered assets. Sort of like a store which borrows using not a building or inventory for collateral but its accounts receivable. If those accounts aren’t collectible then the bank can’t collect from the store. From Chrysler to the Savings and Loans to LTCM (an oxymoron: Long Term Capital Management that traded in milliseconds!) Localized defaults can always be handled — usually at the taxpayers’ expense — but if a cascade occurs therewill be the crunch of depression. And with the continued advance of automation and markets growing more slowly than productivity it becomes difficult to believe such magic with money can be practiced infinitely. Being attuned only to short term profits it becomes a matter of “damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead!” The “notional” amount of money leveraged worldwide surpasses $130 trillion, or more than Earth’s gross product! The Great Depression, signalled in the US by the stock market crash, was a catastrophe in all the Western countries and led to WW II. Unemployment in the US was 25% and many fortunes were wiped out. Yet, many corporations survived; in fact, AT&T payed dividends throughout the depression. And, as with AT&T, companies with mothballed real assets (a machine shop, for example) can go back into production when the “downturn” with its destruction of assets hasrun its course and conditions for new profitable production and investment return. But with the relocation of industrial jobs outside the US and other industries simply disappearing there may not be any industry to return to. After the depression those with both real assets and legal title enforced by the state could renew production. But if the “new world order” collapses will GM still “own” or “control” even those assets it built in China? Having spent decadesabandoning basic industry in the US, could even a “socialized” post-depression US easily or quickly rebuild middle income jobs and lifestyles? The deindustrialization of the US in the hunt for lower costs might put us in a pickle after a collapse.  

Our Greatest Danger?

For all the trouble that Iraq is causing worldwide and all the murderous deaths in Iraq itself, it is obvious that Bush has no intention of pulling out and one would be very hard-pressed to find any other politicians, Democrat or otherwise, who would, in fact, pull out of Iraq. That is why there has been no move for impeachment. Our politicians are, effectively, paid agents of finance capital and those “coupon clippers” want to smash any opposition to their international expansion and rule. Control of natural resources, open borders for investment invasion, compliant colonial governments. For all the Bush hooey about radical Islamists hating “our (ever diminishing) freedom” Osama was clear about opposing our presence in Saudi Arabia and our interference in Arab life. For a few thousand deaths on 9/11 we have managed so far to kill about one million Iraqis. As in felony murder we are responsible for deaths subsequent to our crime and our Iraqi invasion was a clear violation of international law. Thus, supporting Bush is supporting and condoning mass murder.

For months there have been worried stories about when and in what manner the US will bomb Iran, and one may suppose that it will occur. However, in some ways such an act of aggression is but a small part of the picture. Official US policy is to tolerate no equals or serious rivals anywhere. The US insists on being the world despot, all the while trying to convince the people that it pursues democracy. To Dubya, Hilary, and the rest, democracy is what Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, ExxonMobil, et al, want. If corporate America were patriots they wouldn’t export jobs overseas, and if politicians were patriots they would tax the hell out of corporations that abandoned US towns leaving a wake of immiseration. The US was born with genocide against the native population and built up through slavery, mostly of Africans, and those who think those were merely aberrations in a history of freedom and equality are, at best, ignorant. And for those who think “it can’t happen here” with the rise of fascism in America, well, fascism was born in the United States. The term fascism was coined by Mussolini and he called it the corporate state, an alliance between capital and politics and that idea came from the end of WW I where the US became Europe’s creditor and replaced a world of mostly private lending to governments by government to government lending. The US of Woodrow Wilson pretty much began the era of the fusion of finance capital with political government. Benito and Adolf just pursued it with a passion born of necessity by the insistence of debt repayment to the US from devastated European countries.

So, recently, we have been plied with news stories critical of Russia. Putin just today called the US’s bluff by offering to accept a shared radar/missile site with the US in Azerbaijan and dropping Poland/Czech Republic. Madame Rice quickly responded that the US doesn’t want to share! And that is the real danger we face: thermonuclear war against Russia. The US will brook no rivals, so a well-armed Russia  must be destroyed. Yes, Bush and his cronies are that crazy. And if Americans want to put their money where their mouths are they will act to take control of politics and government in their own interests and not let those greedy, wealthy bastards destroy our very world.

Limbo Anyone?

 

            As one raised a Catholic (a veneer that moulted over the years) I was shocked, shocked, to read this week that the Pope wants to hold that limbus  at least at limb’s length.  Standard Catholic, and even broader Christian, tradition holds that baptism is required for admission to heaven.  Evidently the Church(es) has taken the “must be born again of the spirit” stuff seriously. Ever since Augustine condemned the unbaptized to hell in the 5^th century theologians and their administrative overseers have wrestled with the idea of a merciful God sending the innocent babes to eternal damnation. So the Vatican invented Limbo: not hell, not purgatory, not heaven, but a peanut gallery just outside the pearly gates where the unwashed, I mean, unbaptized (infants only? How about 8-year olds?) can bask in the holy glow and pick up the crumbs that fall their way. Limbo was sort of an unwanted orphan, accompanied as it was with baptism by desire and baptism by blood. Supposedly one who had never heard the Good News might still somehow know about and desire the one-and-only’s grace and redemption. Do you suppose that after death people still grow older? Younger? Will infants learn to speak? In Esperanto? 

            Apparently, while I wasn’t paying attention (most of the past 40 years), the Catholics closeted limbo in the ’90’s (i.e., the 1990’s). It was never a reputable idea, having no biblical reference. But it was soothing for all those believers who wanted their god to be a just and merciful one. Given the fascistic trends in contemporary capitalistic countries (of which both the current and previous Popes have been staunch supporters) some may fear that, pace Augustine, these innocents may once again be consigned to hell. A consulted theologian held open the possibility of their being saved as we don’t seem to have enough information to form firm conclusions. This is a step in the right direction though it might put preachers in a bind. No word if such a change would be retroactive. But since these innocents have never returned to tell us what limbo is like, or even sent us picture postcards, it’s not likely we’ll ever hear about their having been swept out of the Light into the Darkness.  

            Personally, I’m all for the reincarnation of paganism. Christianity grew as a city religion and having taken over the one-and-only jealous Jehovah from the Jews they took off into the countryside, the pagus of the Romans, and worked tirelessly and creatively to crush the idols and the beliefs of those bumpkins. And for about two millenia it almost looked like a good idea. “I am Who am” gave his followers dominion over the whole world – at least planet earth – to do with what they wished with an injunction to be fruitful and multiply. Now, in the 21^st century the Ice Cap is melting, the climate is changing, the air and waters are polluted, we’re so puffed up on antibiotics that we’re one pandemic away from decimation, the oil is running out, wars are increasing, global warming is waxing, et cetera. Many, including Gibbon in his Delcine and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote that people get the gods that suit their temperament. Monotheism has had a nice run. It certainly was a unifying (dominating) force for development. But it’s time for a change. O Tempora, O Mores. 

            Paganism’s virtues included its ability to deal with misfortune and evil. Pagans had many, many gods: some good, some bad, some jestful, some wicked, and since they were tied to natural phenomena it was easy for different cultures to incorporate another’s gods into their own pantheon. In those days people didn’t have to confuse their material greed in a coating of war theology, as in the Crusades of the Middle Ages or the modern Crusade of Bush and his ideologues. Arising in nature these  beliefs caused people to pay attention to their natural environment. Not that the ancients were environmentalists. Not at all. Lacking knowledge and analytical skills and tools they were even more destructive than moderns. That is why they moved about so much and founded so many colonies: Soil turned infertile? Move along. Need another forest? Move along. There were no noble savages; there was no Garden of Eden. Today we know the consequences of our behaviors. The days of selfishness, of unbridled egotism and greed no longer sustain us or help us develop. Time for the new paradigm. In terms of political economy, this fits in well with Karl Marx and the need for class-based socialism. But we need a new religion, a new opium of the people, unlike today where the opiates are the religion of the people. Do you suppose that bumper crop in Afghanistan lowered the price of Rush Limbaugh’s Oxycontin? 

            In general, Pagans had the good sense not to develop a theology. In primitive tribes there was a belief in a Creator but noone claimed to know what this Creator was like and they doubted this “being” even had any interest in human affairs. This interest, and meddling, was left to the lesser gods (Zeus, Minerva, et al.) who were not the Creator and were not really immortal. It took a Semitic tribe to conjure up an all-powerful being interested in human affairs, and the rest truly is history. Aquinas, the “dumb ox” (though a very clever one), was the first Intelligent Design propagandist. I didn’t find St. Thomas convincing 40 years ago, but he was more sophisticated than his contemporary clones.  

            The news article regarding Limbo quoted an unnamed theologian: “God wants us to go to heaven.” That is the nub of the problem. Want means lack, or need, and an immortal, omnipotent and omniscient creature cannot by definition    want anything. A God who wants is only a god, otherwise known as an alien tyrant (or an occasionally useful figment of the imagination). Even those early primitives were smart enough to know that. Or, in Wittgenstein’s terms: Whereof one does not know, thereof one cannot speak. But speaking from ignorance was useful and served power and today’s millenarians are loony enough to hope for thermonuclear war to bring about that second coming. These people, with their money and support for fascism are much more dangerous than the statistical fluke of a mass murderer in Virginia.  

            So I’d say we need a religious renascence, one based on nature worship, respect for the world that nurtures us and our compatriots who share our burdens (billionaires need not apply; they can be our apostates, the anathemata).Some decades back James Lovelock tried that with the Gaia hypothesis: the idea that the earth itself is a living, sentient being. Unfortunately it suffers from the same problem as the Judaic-Christian-Islamic tradition: it attempts to describe the indescribable with some pretty far-fetched ideas. Fancy fictions are fine but not to be taken seriously. Ecology is a science; theology is mental masturbation and is never a liberating exercise. As there are no atheists in foxholes (my favorite prayer was always: Lord, save us from Christians!) we all wonder, at times, how all this came about and what it all means. But this doesn’t require us to “accept Jesus into our hearts” or require us to kneel facing Mecca. More to the point, our bowing to the ineffable doesn’t require us to proselytize others. The new counterinsurgency manual of the US Army claims that they, the soldiers, fight for the free enterprise system. That is a part of our theology we need to suppress. Suppose the Iraqis want to continue with a state-owned oil industry. Whose country is Iraq? Does it exist only to sate the insatiable greed of western capitalists?  

            That we are all born into this “vale of tears” and need to work (most of us) to meet our needs is the reality. That it is caused by Original Sin and that because two individuals screwed up billions and billions of their progeny need to be saved (often at the point of a bayonet) is not merely fiction, it’s perverse. Even pagans learned not to punish children for the sins of the fathers. In a highly rationalized world – officially at least – we’re unlikely ever to recapture the awe of believing in alien beings who control our fates or who have a personal interest in our behaviors. But we have the modern equivalent: statistics! Einstein couldn’t believe that God plays dice with the universe. Tell that to a meteorologist! Reports from a few centuries ago related that Indians of northern North America had a word in their language – rendered “Edthin” by the investigator – for the Aurora Borealis. The word means “deer” because their experience was that a hairy deer hide rubbed vigorously by hand on a dark night produced sparks. Some might call that poetic; I call it astute. What we need is a new paganism that brings the sky down to earth, that integrates the mysterious with the rational, that allows us to develop tools and techniques that serve and enhance our lives and prepare us for the future. What we can no longer live with is a jealous, vindictive god that requires us to convert the heathens and to bring the free enterprise system to the unwashed masses.

Why?

Why do we in the United States have a $1,000,000,000,000 – that’s a trillion dollars – military establishment? Our government likes to play games with us by hiding parts of the military budget (the parts for black projects and spying) and putting part of it into other departments’ budgets. But if you add it all up: Defense authorizations + Supplementals (Iraq and Afghanistan) + Nuclear Weapons (Dept. of Energy) + Veterans Affairs + who knows what = a trillion dollars minimum. Whatever happened to the peace dividend after the end of the Cold War? Why has the United States withdrawn from nuclear arms limiting treaties? Why are we installing anti-missile defense systems in Eastern Europe? (Just this week the Senate voted to spend money to “ease” the process of incorporating Georgia and the Ukraine into Nato.) Why is the United States expanding Nato after Bush I promised Gorbachev that Nato would not expand if the USSR allowed German reunification? Why is Russia feeling the need to develop their Topol M missile which apparently maintains rocket propulsion throughout flight rather than a ballistic trajectory in order to evade missile defense? Why is Putin saying that Poland and the Czech Republic will become targets if they install American missiles? What kind of maniacally criminal elements are running the US government? 

A report claims that last year 3100 soldiers deserted from the Army. During the VietNam war there were as many as 30,000 per year! That is one reason why the draft was eliminated and an all-volunteer force instituted. From desertion to killing (known then as fragging) of junior officers the Army had serious problems. Unfortunately the powers that be drew the wrong lesson. If Americans are unwilling to go overseas and fight wars, unwilling to kill and be killed, then the right lesson to learn was that we shouldn’t be fighting those wars. The people, if left to decide, would rarely fight any wars. And oh, how sweet that would be. In addition to the franchise for 18-year-olds and floating exchange rates with permanent inflation, the VietNam experience totally divorced the military establishment from the citizenry and today the military  controls our country.  

We have a war that was brought on through lies and deceptions to fuel an imperialistic, criminal, and utterly incompetent regime that is bent on world domination and which doesn’t care how many of us are killed or impoverished. And all the new Congress does is haggle over non-binding resolutions for some troop withdrawal sometime in the future. We are creating enemies all over the world and devastating our economy. But the fat cats keep getting richer. If we truly had a government of, by, and for the people we would be out, totally out, of Iraq by the first day of summer. We would have single payer nationalized health care. We’d have restraints on the movement of capital. Instead of using our tax dollars to build stadiums for billionaires while our libraries shrink their hours and services we’d make corporations accountable to the communities where they operate and make them fund our needs, and not our funding their greed. The people ruling over us are not really of us nor are they for us. And if we’re waiting for them to just wake up one day and apologize and make things right then we’re watching too much fantasy tv. We will get what we need, what we’ve worked for and what we deserve only when we force the issue and take back democratic control of our lives and our society.

Where From; Where To?

 As the great Maynard Keynes noted: In the long run
we’re all dead. And history is  very long indeed. Over how many thousands or even millions of years did humanity develop before artifacts were even created, such as sharpened stone tools? No one is around to tell and our speculations are without much foundation. Perhaps in those primitive times small groups
lived in communal harmony. By the time of written records we have entered the era of kings and warlords. Early in the history of writing the struggle for democracy (more accurately, a democratic oligarchy) arose, caused, we may suppose, by the establishment of settled communities and an agricultural surplus with the wealth being more evenly spread than from the hunting or pillage where the strong man ruled. Of course the trick then was to distinguish those deserving citizenship and suffrage, with
kinship, residence and some minimum of property as criteria. With the arrival of coined money and its spread through trade money itself came to satisfy the wealth criterion, and speculation was born. Universal suffrage and the elimination of property criteria
are very recent developments, even in the United States, and the definition of democracy varies both between and within societies. As a minimum we might say it requires laws regulating social behavior which are written and chosen by the mass of the people (perhaps through elected representatives) and where
each person has a vote. In this regard, Dear Leader Dubya (if he gets away with it) has chosen to destroy democracy in the United States, and throughout the entire world, in his rather bald assertions that he is beyond the law, or, even that he is the law. Palestine, Iraq, Iran: they get the government
that Dubya dictates. And in the US, our liberty will be increased and ensured through its curtailment with things like the Patriot Act. We have surpassed satire. One doesn’t want to get carried away, but I, for one, wouldn’t bet my life that there will even be a Presidential election in 2008. Thus far, the US Congress hasn’t evinced any spine for reining in the clearly impeachable and even criminally indictable acts of the Dear Leader and his henchmen (and women). Even with our supposed democracy in the US the great
mass of the people are pretty much voiceless as the rules of the political game are set by the moneyed interests (as designed by our founders, who perhaps read too much Roman history and too much Montesquieu) and these same moneyed interests send out the invitations, police the pearly gates and even own the
town criers. Tribunes of the people need not apply; even blogs such as this are lost in the noise.Imperial Rome allied itself with the Papal Catholic church and a
millenium of feudalism was upon us, with emperor and pope feeding off each other in their centralized autarchies. There was never anything democratic about an episcopal church; even the great Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian order, was a warrior to stamp out Christian democracy as represented by the Irish Church and monasteries. (As an aside, I’ve recently
read paeans to Britain’s “willingly” giving up their empire; yet, over 8 centuries after landing the British still control one-fourth of Ireland. What would world opinion have been if the Brits in Rhodesia had insisted on keeping 25% of that country and allowed the remainder to become Zimbabwe? In our
sensory-overloaded and thus desensitized modern world it seems that only the most blatant of imperialistic chauvinism can be recognized, as in skin color discrimination).

As we move along towards the 15th century we
encounter nascent capitalism, revolts against Rome, agitation against despotic rule of kings. This was the return of oligarchic democracy in bourgeois garb and while there have been many changes over the centuries this is still where we reside: a world of bourgeios sort-of-democracies. Nothing very humanitarian about
bourgeois democracy: it enshrined the ownership and control of property including the right to its alienation and its protection against the “predations” of the masses. Few writers over the centuries had anything other than contempt for the “people” as such. Most certainly Romans such as Cicero didn’t; the
Jesuits spreading the gospel in the Americas didn’t; Montesquieu didn’t; certainly our US founding fathers didn’t. Men of the Enlightenment weren’t fond of democracy, considering it to be mob rule; the people, if sufficienty free and legally endowed, would take the wealth from the wealthy. Their best hope (they being Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln) was that we would become a nation of yeoman farmers, where all had independence-guaranteeing wealth. This also was the dream of citizens of the early Roman republic, but even then the big fish ate
the little fish or, as a 1980’s edition of the American Heritage Dictionary defined capitalism: an economic system characterized by the increasing concentration of capital. (Notice how Ma Bell is back? Actually, Lily Tomlin notwithstanding, I was always fond of pre-divestiture, regulated monopoly
AT&T). In modern America home ownership is the measure of wealth but with real estate and the mortgage industry about to collapse, well…. In any event, owning one’s home isn’t being a yeoman farmer: farms produce income; homes don’t. In the USSR the housing stock was depreciated as is normal with capital
assets but in America, where inflation is the elephant in the room noone talks about, as it’s both a no-no and permanent policy, houses are supposed to appreciate in value. Given the fickleness of human nature great works of art
grow more valuable over time but why would a suburban tract home do the same? Remember the updated wiring and that new roof: capital depreciation.

Mr. Lincoln was quite open in his contempt for wage slavery as it was then known. For the essence of
capitalism is a proletariat, a group of available workers dispossessed of property or other wealth which is forced to work for wages to survive and which can be pushed out the door into unemployment as capitalists deemed necessary. The great Theodor Mommsen, in his magisterial History of Rome, composed essentially at the same time as the Communist Manifesto, refers to
capitalists and proletarians. But his designation therein is mostly rhetorical for it took the development of industrial capitalism, the creation of parliaments and courts to enforce property laws, and mass impoverishment and
destruction of peasantry through things such as the English Enclosure Acts to create a mobile, penniless class of (un)willing workers. Mature capitalism developed with its own laws concerning capital and profit and surplus value
and rates of return: an entire political economy so elegantly and insightfully analyzed by Karl Marx. The rise of finance capitalism, the loss of money’s official ties to precious metals, and the total legal victory of finance in the late 20th century where capital has lost its tether to real property has
in its way also dispossessed capitalists of property as well. Historically, the one weapon the proletarians had against capital was to withhold labor but now even capitalists are no longer tied to the soil. They too can simply move on. A world battle for socialism between propertyless proletarians and
propertyless capitalists (investments having become recently only parking spaces, not permanent abodes) can unfold. The Marx-Engels dictum, Workers of the world, Unite, now applies to the capitalists as well. Finance capital knows no country as home; it feels and acknowledges no patriotism. Otherwise it wouldn’t move factories from America to China, and even, as reported in a late 2006 NY Times story, from China to Vietnam to save labor costs, or even Veep the Creep Cheney’s Halliburton move from Texas to Dubai. Obviously this loosening of ties to real property has its limits for it is within the real that we create reality’s tokens and representations. For without factories there are no products, no sales, no profits, no capital.
 
Some recent critics, on the left but within respectable opinion (unlike myself), of our current imperium have woven into their writings some not-too-subtle warnings that we should avoid looking to socialism, for example, in shifting our nation’s priorities. Some say socialism is dead! Not only the Pope
pontificates. Actually, as important as the economy is, it remains but one aspect of our lives and to say we cannot choose and make workable socialism is tantamount to claiming that democracy itself is unwise, unworkable and impossible. In fact, we don’t have a democracy;  we have an oligarchy (soon to change to dictatorship?) with many unsubstantiated claims of democracy. We don’t have a democracy, not because it is indirect but because our government
doesn’t represent our interests and we don’t have, as those poor businessmen like to complain, a level playing field. Our masters deal from a marked deck and we’re the suckers. As social unrest grows in a deteriorating economy and we become further impoverished, those who act should be brave and think up
their own solutions to their problems and avoid “experts” like the plague they are. Most countries in the past 25 years who followed “expert” western advice got screwed. And everytime Bush mentions freedom, liberty and our style of life I look over my shoulder and grab hold of my wallet. Be forewarned.
 

History: Slow or Repeating?

<p><blockquote>Programs of world domination by great powers that would have left Napoleon, or even Hitler, aghast are now presented with a straight face as international crusades for freedom, peace, sweetness and light.</blockquote> So wrote Henry Elmer Barnes, a noted historian, in a volume under his editorship called <em>Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace</em> published in 1952. This volume was about the drive towards WW II and FDR’s privately pursued though publicly denied policy of involving the United States in that conflict (by provoking a Japanese attack upon US interests thus justifying a declaration of war). The rest, as they say, is history: the Cold War; the military-industrial complex (sort of socialism for the rich and free market competition for the workers and poor); the domination of US-based finance capital. Historically, the crusade against the “Red Menace” began with Woodrow Wilson in the immediate aftermath of the Bolsheviks’ coming to power. It just heated up after WW II. A disinterested viewer from the outside might have concluded, from vast evidence, that interference in other countries, the waging of war and the pursuit of domination, was much greater in the capitalist west than in the communist east. And with the demise of the USSR in 1991, this greed for world domination has not lessened; only the need for new enemies has arisen. People familiar with Cheney-Rumsfeld’s Project for a New American Century see all too clearly how 9/11 played so well into these imperialistic hopes and dreams. </p>
<p>One might think that religious crusades ended in the Middle Ages; in fact, they did. But Bush and his backers need some tool to whip up hysteria and war support among the home population and “Islamo-Fascism” and a new Caliphate have been chosen to fill the bill. Aside from the disgusting chauvinism involved, this propaganda campaign is downright silly. Obviously the right-wingers know no shame; sometimes they seem to possess no brains either. That the Arc of Instability which Bush wants to dominate contains so much oil and gas is merest coincidence, right? I suppose that in addition to asserting dictatorial powers, Cheney’s refusal to release information from his energy task force was likely based on hiding that he and his energy oligarchs were divvying up middle eastern oil even before the Iraq war. Now, <em>that</em> would constitute evidence of a criminal conspiracy (and the conspiracy is about to bear fruit with the proposed new Iraqi Oil law and its PSA’s, the law and sharing agreements having been written by the oil industry in the US). The regime, and a compliant Congress, have been only too quick to claim and legalize dictatorial powers and secrecy and <em>exemption</em> from laws and accepted norms. If the Nazis had been perspicacious enough to pass laws exempting themselves from war-crimes prosecutions, might Nuremberg not have happened? Would the victorious powers have thrown up their hands in frustration that they had been cut off at the pass? A silly enormity: now that’s an oxy- for all the -morons out there. </p>
<p>And is this murderous drive for domination for the benefit of the home population? If it were, income inequality would be lessening, not growing, high-paying jobs would be increasing, not declining, promises of “wealth beyond the dreams of avarice” would be offered to the people. Roman Legions got to share in the booty; English soldiers sent to Ireland were promised (Irish) land. Average Americans are offered only more lost jobs, more poverty, more crime in the streets. In the State of the Union Bush claimed the United States has the greatest health care in the world. That was a lie, a demonstrable lie. America’s people might not be sure what to do to right things but they no longer fall for the propaganda. The problem is they are only offered occasional elections where we get to choose twixt tweedledum and tweedledee and the war goes on. Pressure on the Congress to throw the bastards out and then prosecute them for their crimes is our only short-term option and very few elected representatives have the backbone to do that. Most officials get elected by money from business interests and if business wants to control the world’s economy and its resources, well, it’s dangerous to bite the hand that feeds you. It takes both brains and courage to jump off the gravy train, and courage, at least, has never been a politician’s forte. Such is the current state of leadership.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, back at the “Red Menace” ranch, in Russia, the home of Bolshevism, how has the return to capitalism changed the country? An article in <a href=”http://english.pravda.ru”> Pravda</a> states that per capita GDP in 2006 is lower than in 1991, that 15% of the population receives 57% of incomes (2005 US stats: 20% get 50%), that industrial output has fallen from 38% to 28% of GDP, that manufacturing is only 45% of 1991 levels, and 40% of the population is officially below the poverty line. Welcome to America, Comrades!</p>