January 7, 2012

Yes, this is the third OP in this "Meta" fight

Someone posted Swanson's article about the NDAA. ProSense did the usual purity-test harrassment of that thread. This prevented simple discussion of the NDAA but unfortunately failed to cause that thread and/or Swanson and/or all deviationists from party line to disappear into the black hole of heresy forever, amen. So ProSense started a call-out thread with zero content, just howling, a la the two-minutes hate. (The ROFL smiley rarely signifies actual laughter, just wordless contempt.) So now this thread is complaining about ProSense's behavior. Her strategy is successful in marginalizing discussions that actually focus on the intended subject of an OP, and instead turning everything into a purity test or a battle of false dichotomies.

January 7, 2012

Textbook study in the rhetoric of propaganda.

Is the United States' head really as far up its ass as the AFP (CORRECTION: not "AP&quot reporter imagines, that nations of the world cannot be viewed as anything other than US "foes" or "friends"? They cannot even be identified as independent nations, they can only be referenced in terms of their relation to the US.

Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Ecuador are not my "foes" and they are not foes to the American people. Even if they were, it would be wrong to reduce them solely to such a definition, as the writer does.

Is this what we learned about "objectivity" and "neutrality" in reporting, to use that headline instead of the literal description, "Iranian president to tour four Latin American states"? Not sexy enough?

I daresay the mentality that motivates a reporter to write this trash is more "foe" to us all than any of these countries.

January 7, 2012

Thanks for showing the culmination of this sorry trend.

A statement that forthrightly rejects war and interventionism, and acknowledges that people around the world do not want foreign military in their countries, is now... racist. (No need to say why based on the statement itself; it comes from the tainted people, and is therefore automatically so.)

Again, illustrating the tragedy of which I speak:

Once Obama commands the war machinery that was thought so odious under Bush, and the opposition to it comes not from liberals but from the left and in part from palecons like Paul, the cognitive dissonance is intolerable to those who need their team to be good team and the other team to be bad.

Thus war becomes peace, opposition to it becomes racism. It shouldn't be surprising, since it's only the mirror image of the language-reversals practiced by the neocons under Bush, whose dichotomous simplifications rendered all opponents of Bush's wars into friends of the "terrorists." It shouldn't be surprising, except to those who expect better from Democrats and liberals.

January 7, 2012

Here's an example of the tragedy.

The Paul campaign released a video based on one of his speeches that condemns wars for empire and military occupation categorically, as inexcusable wrongs that kill people and that generate the hatred and "terrorism" (a catch-all term that also includes insurgency) that then threatens the US and is used as the excuse to wage more wars for empire, in an endless cycle.

I consider it nothing less than tragic that no national political leader on the left represents this truth in what is indisputably the most important issue. It is not an endorsement of Paul to say that the above words are true and important, regardless of how regressive his politics is otherwise. I do not endorse Paul. Those who react by claiming this is "support for Paul" rather than support for peace and an end to empire are engaging in sophistry.

Many liberals are reacting absurdly. They should be clamoring for peace and an end to empire regardless of who is president. Instead, this issue, which they understood was central under Bush, is suddenly considered a peripheral matter, a "special interest." Wasting more than half of the US discretionary budget for spreading destructive potentials around the world is supposed to be a triviality, a concern only for an intransigent antiwar minority. (So is the imprisonment of two million people, mainly for dealing or possessing drugs, and the support for murderous narcostates abroad.)

It gets even worse. Liberals who condemned Bush's interventionism discover that interventionism is good.

Here's one example of where it leads: a horrid piece of sophistry in The Nation in which the writer tries to deflect leftist interest in Paul's foreign policy by urging leftists to consider the merits of... Huntsman's! Which is indistinguishable from the "centrist" pro-imperial consensus that already has the US intervening worldwide in pursuit of evanescent "strategic interests" and hunting 99% fictional "terrorists."

http://www.thenation.com/blog/165483/huntsman-better-foreign-policy-alternative-paul

That's the impression I get here too. That people really do prefer the imperialism of a Romney because he falls within the "bipartisan" foreign policy consensus, even though objectively he'd be the greater threat to Obama in the fall.

Standing up for principle should be more important than avoiding the appearance of agreeing with Ron Paul.

January 7, 2012

So why'd they do it?

The UK Liberals are not the first or last party to commit suicide for the interests of capital (always called "the national interest.&quot It never seems to take much pressure. The Spanish socialists, the Irish left and even long-running dynastic or oligarchic survivors who'd never otherwise give up power, like Berlusconi and Papandreou, have since readily done the same. Fascinating.

(The Democrats have taken damage for the same cause but that's an old story and US politics seems to be more forgiving thanks to its up-is-down logic and six-second memory.)

January 7, 2012

Military spending will remain at or above current levels.

The only question is whether the military and war budgets will be slightly lower after accounting for inflation. The absolute spending in dollars is supposed to rise.

In Obama's words, the military budget will remain larger than at the end of the Bush years and larger than at least the next 10 nations combined.

This means that the military and war supplemental budgets, plus the costs that follow from war (such as higher veterans benefits and higher interest payments), will continue to make up the majority of the federal discretionary budget.

In Panetta's words, the military will be built to engage in a major land war in Korea and then deal with the simultaneous blocking of the Straits of Hormuz.

I find it hard to make statements more hyperbolic than these.

And yet: They are just facts.

In combination with the expansion of the drone and other largely remote-based programs, the escalations of hostilities on several fronts (Afpak, Yemen, Somalia), and new legalisms defining the homeland and the rest of the world as battlespace and allowing indefinite detention without charges, lawyers or even notification, it is no exaggeration to speak of a leaner, tougher imperialism.

One would have to intentionally distort to compare such factual statements to the defactualized monologues of a Glenn Beck. (What's with the strawmen? Is that how it's going to be when we disagree? Always accuse those deviating from a simplistic D-party line of being R's, or Freepers, or Paulites, or Becks?)

And if something has changed at FDL and indeed at DU, then I submit it's that we've crossed the threshold where there is any rationale for supporting the Obama administration other than lesser-evilism. Consider what that means; and as a supporter you shouldn't be so intent on rapping everyone who says it on the knuckles, because lesser-evilists and not full supporters are going to make up the bulk of his voters come November.

January 6, 2012

Brutal repression of the protests has already set an important agenda item...

The right of the people, peaceably to assemble, must be restored and protected.

All else must and will follow.

On the big agenda, I think stopping foreclosures and forcing renegotiations of underwater mortgage debt (as well as other forms of injust personal debt) are the intermediary goals with the highest legitimacy, clarity and attainability. MERS can still turn into the badly-needed legal Waterloo for the criminal banks.

Otherwise, the points all along have been that many issues are related in one highly dysfunctional system and that the normal channels and institutions long ago lost legitimacy, forcing "occupy" as a strategy to be heard. (Without OWS, the public discourse and corporate media would have continued to indefinitely suppress the issues of poverty, wealth concentration and economic injustice.)

The most important thing of all is to come back in larger numbers as the weather improves and keep it growing the year round.

When the insolvency of the TBTF banks becomes obvious again - it's a question of when, not if - there is an excellent chance that OWS will explode in size and stop further bailouts. From their failure, massive changes to the system necessarily follow.

January 6, 2012

So to quote you, which is it, "cut spending" or "slow growth"?!

Obama said yesterday:

"Still grow," "still be larger." As he says, this is not a cut. Who am I going to believe, his words or your spin?

Cuts in planned future growth are not cuts in actual spending. Spending will stay the same or possibly grow, depending on supplementary war budgets and the rate of inflation. The absolute dollar amount will not be cut.

Note: Pretend incomprehension is not an answer. "Hmmmm?" and "What?" and other items of miscellaneous snark are not answers. Engage the facts. Earn your snark.

January 6, 2012

There's downsizing and then there's "downsizing"

Just like there's banking regulation and "regulation." The difference with the cosmetic "regulation" is that the next crash happens anyway.

The difference with the PR downsizing of the military as opposed to the real thing is that the next war happens anyway.

The Pentagon remains sacrosanct. This "cut" is actually an increase in absolute terms. Obama underlined in his speech that the Pentagon budget will remain higher than in 2008, and that's not counting war spending. Cutting back on future planned spending is not an actual cut. (Example: I spend 100. In two years I plan to spend 120. But wait, I'm going to cut that. In two years I will spend only 110. That's a cut!)

Panetta gave you a laughable two-war scenario: Why should we ever want such a thing?! How in the world do you believe "US security" would ever necessitate wars with both of these nations on the other side of the globe? That's not a question of security, it's a question of empire and the drive to be the one who settles all major questions for everyone.

The countries he's talking about taking on simultaneously are not coincidentally the two remaining targets in Bush's "Axis of Evil." This is how the US military-industrial complex works. It's independent of administrations.

January 6, 2012

Love the spin, kentuck: I am not fearful that...

Obama is going to the left! Thanks for the laugh, though.

The recess appointments are good.

The new military policy is merely an adjustment of the same old military policy that attempts to project dominance everywhere in the world and foresees the continuation of perpetual war. Panetta laying out in detail plans for having a land war in North Korea while simultaneously bombing Iran cannot be anyone's credible idea of "moving to the left."

In Obama's own words, which I just heard on the radio to confirm, the military budget is not being cut. It will remain higher than at the end of the Bush term.

The "cuts" are against projected increases.

They do not include the Afghanistan war.

Your "center" is a fiction. In the present economic depression, the people of this country would welcome not having their wealth wasted making more trouble and generating the next generation of wars all over the planet.

And regardless of where you think the fickle "center" may be right now, what about reality?

The end of the empire is inevitable. Will the United States effect an orderly and friendly withdrawal of its attempt to project its force everywhere? Or does it prefer the road of bankruptcy and eventual defeats?