The 2012 election is now in play, and the Republican wing of the war party is gearing up to blame President Obama for America’s failed wars (who, while not entirely blameless, is hardly the architect of defeat) and the accompanying national humiliation. This email is about an opening shot that just appeared in the Weekly Standard.
One of my closest friends, retired Marine Colonel XXX, forwarded the attached analysis of the US defeat in Iraq. (I use the word ‘analysis’ charitably) It was written by Fred Kagan, his wife, and another person, neocons all. The Kagans are among one of America’s most vocal advocates preventative war, especially the invasion of Iraq, and were “architects” of the so-called “surge” (which is Versailles-speak for a relatively modest, time-consuming escalation, whereas in traditional military parlance, the word ‘surge’ implies a massive increase, like a doubling or tripling, of effort over a very short period of time).
Below is an excellent interview with Anthony DiMaggio in Counterpunch. DiMaggio author ofThe Rise of the Tea Party, due out in November 2011. He uses the “propaganda model” developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their bookManufacturing Consent to document and explain the Tea Party’s organizational dynamics for manufacturing dissent, and he compares these dynamics to those of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Before reading the interview, consider please the following: The forces powering the rage of the Tea Party — the stagnation of incomes and the increasingly unequal distribution of income — were around long before the Tea Party erupted on the national scene.
Click on Image to Enlarge
That the distribution of income had shifted in a very fundamental way toward the wealthy and especially the super-wealthy at the expense of the bottom 80% of the working population was clearly demonstrated in a classic study by Emanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty (Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2003, updated in 2009), and subsequently confirmed by many other others, including just last week, on 25 October 2011, by the Congressional Budget Office.
It has also clear for years that inflation-adjusted wage growth that underpinned the improved living standards of great American dream machine sputtered out during the 1970s (see chart below).
So, it is simply beyond dispute that a fundamental change in the income distribution has taken place since the late late 1970s. That change is also correlated with the wave of deregulation, tax cutting, defense spending increases (with a slight interregnum following the Soviet Union’s collapse), and deindustrialization/globalization that took off after 1980 during the Reagan Administration and accelerated during the Clinton and Bush II Administrations.
Below are two eye opening reports/analyses by two of the best counterpunchers in Alexander Cockburn's and Jeffrey St Clair's stable of bomb throwers. The subject is Greece: its political/economic crisis and the myths surrounding average Greeks being the cause of its crisis.
In the first, Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People: The Myth of Greek Profligacy, my friend Marshall Auerback, argues that the masses of the Greek people (the bottom 80% of a highly unequal income distribution) are being set up as scapegoats to pay for a neo-liberal austerity plan that aimed producing income deflation (instead of a currency devaluation) to improve export competitiveness. Auerback explains why this is really a plan of collective punishment that is guaranteed to fail while shredding what is left of Greece's social contract.
In the second, Naxos Hangs On By Its Fingernails: How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land, Patrick Cockburn presents the reader with a micro-case study of what is happening to average Greeks (i.e. part of the lower 80%) on the island of Naxos, the largest and my favorite island in the windy Cyclades.
Chuck Spinney
Barcelona
Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People The Myth of Greek Profligacy
by MARSHALL AUERBACK, Counterpunch, OCTOBER 24, 2011
Phi Beta Iota: One reason why the Electoral Reform and BigBatUSA endeavors are so important NOW, is because if they succeed in the USA, where Internet connectivity, cognitive surplus, and Occupy awaking have converged, the model can be scaled globally very quickly. At root this is about secular corruption. Pope Benedict XVI had a chance to use Assisi creatively but chose the low road.
The triumphalism in the US surrounding the liquidation of Qadaffi may be short lived. That is because most Americans do not appreciate how the legacy of anti-colonialism shapes the contemporary cultural DNA in North Africa or how influential that legacy has been in shaping the revolts of what is now called the Arab Spring. There is more going on in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya than Jefferson's vision of revolution fertilizing the natural rights of man.
The coming elections in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya may well result in victories or strong showings for the Islamic parties in each nation’s politics. The U.S., U.K., France, and Italy will not like such results, should they occur, and may will be tempted to intervene to contain or reverse them by influencing the elections either before the fact or overturning them after the fact. Further intervention would be certain to produce yet more unpleasant blowback.
As Peter Osborne argues below, before doing anything, we would do well to remember what happened to Algeria after the 1991-2 election and leave well enough alone. In what is widely regarded to have been a free and fair election, the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut or FIS) won a stunning victory in Dec 1991 on the first ballot, just short of an outright majority. It was clear that the FIS would win a majority on the second ballot scheduled for Jan 1992, and perhaps even enough votes to amend the Algerian constitution. The Algerian army, aided (incited?) by France and the CIA, intervened to cancel the second ballot. The cancellation triggered a chain of events leading to a nightmarish civil war that ultimately killed over 100,000 people and left a state that is still ripe for revolution.
We may not like the consequences of elections in North Africa – but we must not repeat the mistakes of the past.
By Peter Oborne, Telegraph, 22 Oct 2011
The extra-judicial execution of Colonel Gaddafi has been greeted with international elation, and understandably so. There was very little to be said in favour of that gnarled torturer and war criminal. Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, who masterminded the campaign against him, have some excuse to take the view that with the killing of Gaddafi, and today’s elections in Tunisia, the Arab Spring appears to be entering a hopeful stage.
Core of Corruption is a documentary film series which details a comprehensive investigation into clandestine intelligence operations and conspiracies. The project is surfacing exclusive whistle blowers, insiders and critical evidence for the very first time. Over 2,000 hours of credible network news clips have been surfaced for this ground breaking event, most of which have never been seen since they aired and have never been available on the internet. Some of the video news segments for this project, when requested from the networks, were denied access to and corporate representatives would say that the information sought does not exist or has been misplaced. Someone doesn’t want the public to see these stories, that when put together, establish a conspiracy of the magnitude that could change the way one views the world. Countless millions of people are being manipulated and lied to by a network of individuals within government that work on behalf of private interests. The individuals were involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Many of those same figures are are connected to historical events that have shaped our understanding of government crime. For instance, the Iran Contra affair involved many figures that showed up in the 9/11 attacks
Yesterday, the Nieman Watchdog journalism group at Harvard asked me to evaluate how well the press is scrutinizing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Basically, it's not; instead, Panetta seems to be free of informed, skeptical questioning; he must be absolutely delighted with the treatment he is receiving.
The defense secretary likens budget-cutters to Nazis and makes assertions that simply aren't true — but the media don't seem to care, writes Winslow Wheeler.
The silence in the press about the overheated rhetoric and dubious myths from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta makes for a very unhappy comparison of today’s defense journalism compared to previous eras when, for example, SecDef Casper Weinberger was the subject of serious critical analysis.
Phi Beta Iota: Leon Panetta, like Bob Gates before him, is a posturing pimp for the military-industrial complex that pays 5% bribes to get 95% discounts on the taxpayers treasure. He could not stand up to fifteen minutes on the same stage with any one of us–Chuck Spinney, Winslow Wheeler, Ralph Peters, Bob Scales, etcetera.
