The recent decision of the Supreme to allow unlimited coporate spending on issue ads prior to elections was absurd.

Who speaks when a corporation “speaks?’ Whose opinions are being expressed? It  will not be the opinion of the workers, customers, shareholders or suppliers.

Who decides when a corporation will “speak?” Obviously, it will be the management. So, will the opinion of the managers be expressed. No, it is illegal for management to use corporate resources to express personal opinions. So, when a corporation “speaks”, it will not be expressing the personal political opinion of any of the people who are involved.

What type of opinion will be expressed by the corporation? Management can be challenged in court if they make decisions that cost the coporation money. They are legally obligated to see that their decisions always attempt to increase the corporate profits. So, therefore, we can assume that the only political opinions to be expressed by a corporation will be to try to influence our political system to increase their profits.

This can only lead to disaster for the citizens of our country.

Some time back I read that the most realistic people were the pessimists. The optimists were happier but were less realistic than their confidence in their abilities and situation would suggest. 

Then I read about some research that suggested that people will forgive a leader who is wrong some of the time if only that leader is really confident. Apparently people prefer confidence to competence.

It turns out that groups with confident leaders do better than groups whose leaders are not as confident. So even with incompetence in leadership, those groups prosper.

The Peter’s Principle states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Now it has been found that the more you pay someone, the less competently they perform. This would explain Ken Lay who was “unaware of what his subordinates were doing” even with the huge salary that he was drawing.

So, it would seem that though our over-confident leaders may be overpaid and incompetent,  we will still follow them.

There are new nations in some areas where humanity has lived in cities for thousands of years. A lot of these are in the news lately.

Iraq is home to the ruins of ancient cities such as Babylon and Sumer but it has only existed as a nation since the British drew the boundaries after WWI. India and Pakistan also hold many ancient ruins but it was the British again who drew their boundaries very recently.

Around 1846, a war between the British and Sikh resulted in the consolidation of 22 small states into the State of Jammu and Kashmir. After partition in 1947, Pakistan and India both brought pressure on the State of Jammu and Kashmir to accept being merged with one of the two. Several wars were fought over the Kashmir with the first taking place right after partion and ending with a truce in 1948. The “Line of Control” became the border between the area controlled by Pakistan and the area controlled by India. The Kashmir has continued to be a bone of contention between the two countries down to the present.

The North Western border of Pakistan is the “Durand Line” which was drawn by the British in 1893 as a truce line in a stalemated war with Afghanistan. It divides the territory of the Pushtuns. The tribal people living in that area do not recognize the legitimacy of that border. This is in the headline regularly as fighters pass back and forth across the Durand Line in a batter with Afghan and US forces.

Pakistan was severed from the British India colony in 1949. The “Radcliffe Line” was drawn to separate new Muslim and Hindu countries when the British granted the former colony independence.  The Radcliffe Line runs down the middle of the Punjab territories. Millions of people of Muslim faith moved to Western Punjabe in Muslim Pakistan and millions of people of the Hindu faith move to East Punjab in Indai.

South East Pakistan is the territory of the Sindh people. The ancient Indus valley sites of Moenhodaro and Harappa flourish between 2500 BC and 1500 BC and are hailed as “one of the most developed urban civilizations of the ancient world.

South West Pakistan contains part of the tribal lands of the Balochistanis. They also live in South Eastern Iran and Southern Afghanistan. Like the Kurds, they are a people divided by arbitray borders who desire a homeland and peace. The Pakistan central government has committed many atrocities againt these people with little attention of the Western media. The Iranians have also treated them harshly.

Pakistan is a patch work quilt of  peoples who do not care for  each other and who do not get along. They are divided by ancient hatreds and disputes. And they are connected to their ethnic brothers across arbitrary borders recently drawn by colonial powers and recent wars. This is a recipe for strife.

There are new rivalries as well. Karachi is a port on the coast of the tradional land of the Sindhis. People who came from the Eastern Punjab in what is now India are clashing with Pushtuns who have come down from the NW Tribal territories. I am sure the native Sindh in Karachi appreciate these recent arrivals murdering each other.

There are stories floating around that the US intends to redraw many boundaries in the Middle East including Pakistan.

“The US State Department has rejected suggestions that Washington is planning to redraft the boundaries of the greater Middle East, including Pakistan, along ethnic and religious lines.

The purported plan appeared recently in the US Armed Forces Journal along with two maps showing the new boundaries.

The article, by Ralph Peters, was the work of an individual and did not reflect the views of the US government, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.”

The articles suggests that the NW tribal territories be shifted to Afghanistan and that Balochistan region of S Pakistan be combined with other Balochistani regions in Afghanistan and Iran to create a Balochistani autonomous homeland. This would leave Pakistan much diminished with just the Western Punjab and the Sindh regions.

I agree in priciple with the author of the article  that:

“International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.”

“Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s “organic” frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected. “

Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Ralph Peters, Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look, Armed Forces Journal (AFJ), June 2006.
Peters’ Article

Discussion of Peters’ Article

Peter’s article is definitely is food for thought but would be very difficult to implement. But without the changes that he discusses, further bloodshed and suffering are inevitable.

The Bush gang has been applying a lot of pressure to the Iraqi government to sign some sort of Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).

The Iraqis want all of our troops back to their bases by June 2009. And all of our troops out of Iraq completely by 2010. But we got them to accept 2011.

The main sticking point seems to be that the US wants immunity for troops on active duty and the freedom to carry out any attacks anywhere at any time and to arrest anyone.

The Iraqis want the US to ask permission and coordinate military activity. They want to be able to enter the Green Zone at will and examine records and emails.

The discussion was stalemated for months but recently a draft agreement has surfaced.

Iraq has said that it will need to be approved by their parliment. Bush says that it is not a treaty so our Congress does not need to see it.

Bush wants to get something in place that will commit the next president to the situation in Iraq but the Iragis are not so eager. They have their own election coming up and it won’t help their popularity to be seen cooperating with the US.

Al Sistani, the revered Iraqi Shiite cleric had been in favor of an agreement if the Iraqi parliment passed it. However, he recently came out against it.

Muktada Al Sadr put 100,000 followers in the Iraqi street recently to protest the agreement.

Al Hakim, a rival of Sistani for most influential Shiite in Iraq recently issued a Fatwa that it would be against the Koran for Iraq to sign a SOFA with the US.

Now comes the US attack inside Syria. Senior US officials have said that we reserve the right to attack targets in other countries when ever we deem it necessary. And that the Syrian attack was a “warning” to Syria to do more to prevent Al Queda from coming into Iraq. After a furious reaction by Syria, Iraq demanded that a provision be added any SOFA agreement with the US to the effect that if the US EVER attacked another Middle Eastern country from bases in Iraq, the SOFA would be immediatly cancelled.

The CIA organized the Syrian raid to kill a key provider of soldiers, weapons and money to Al Queda in Iraq from Syria. Considering the inevitable reaction by Iraq and Syria to the raid, you have to wonder what the CIA was thinking. Did they really believe that Syria would be intimidated or did they deliberately sabatoge the SOFA negotiations?

And finally, the US just issued an ultimatum that if Iraq does not hurry up and sign the agreement, the US troops would pull back to the US bases in Iraq and stop any assistance as of Jan 1st.

It seems to me that they may just call our bluff. After all, they did want us back in our bases by June 09 and January 09 is just a few months earlier. And, in any case, in a few months there will be a new US president and they might get a better offer than Bush’s.

There is a story from the Bible about Samson who was chained to pillars in the palace of his enemies after being robbed of his legendary strength. When his strength returned, he pulled the temple down killing himself and his tormenters.

When the Jews rebelled against the Romans in 70 AD, Rome destroyed Jerusalem, crushed the Jewish resistance and pursued the remanants to the mesa of Masada. There the Romans lay siege for months until they were able to build a ramp up the side of the mesa. When they finally breached the defenses on top of the mesa, they found that all of the rebels had committed suicide rather than be captured. A rallying cry for the Israeli army is “Never Again” which refers to what happened at Masada.

I am sure that every new US president receives a visit from an Israeli official who says something like “You can support us or leave to our fate but if they come for us and all hope is gone, we will turn the Middle East into a radioactive wasteland until the end of time.”

Since it is generally accepted that Israel has about 200 nulcear bombs and the planes to deliver them, the new president can only reply, “What do you want?”

What is not being so loudly trumpeted in the media is the downside of the Chinese Miracle. 17 out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China. They are building coal fired power plants at the rate of two a week and the pollutions sometimes reaches all the way to our West Coast. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying each year because of pollution.

For every Chinese rising to the middle class there are tens of thousands still mired in poverty. In one recent year, millions of people took part in 80,000 protests, many of which turned violent. Money which should have gone to villagers in the countryside for rice is being diverted by the provincial governors for development projects, many of which drive the peasants off the land. People are being enslaved in the countryside to work in the mines. Corruption is rampant in the government and the people are well aware of it.

The infanticide of female babies because of the one child per family law has led to an imbalance in the birth rates of male and female children resulting in tens of thousands of poor men who have no hope of a wife and family. The teeming millions working the factories have little to no protection from job hazards, abuse, and exploitation.

The air pollution in Beijing is terrible and even shutting down manufacture and most transportation in Beijing for the Olympics may not do much to reduce it. One million peasants have been brought in to clean up Beijing for the Olympics and their working conditions are terrible.

The recent earthquake that devastated China brought demonstrations by distraught parents bitter about the substandard building practices that had contributed to the deaths of many children. And many of the dams that are damaged and threatening to burst were built over objections that they were sited in a seismically active area. The government is under heavy and much deserved criticism for these failures to protect the welfare of the people.

Mao came to power because he promised the peasants that they would have enough to eat and would be treated fairly. The current rulers of China could care less about ideology and they have broken Mao’s pledge to the peasants. China is going to have to pay some very heavy dues before they because a stable and prosperous society.

There is a government commission called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that is supposed to regulate investment in commodities so that speculators who neither produce nor consume don’t come along and make the prices go crazy. From the US Commodity Exchange Act (CEA)– “Excessive speculation in any commodity under contrasts of sale of such commodities for future deliver…causing sudden or unreasonable fluctuations or unwarranted changes in the prices of such commodity, is an undue and unnecessary burden on interstate commerce in such commodity.” The CEA directs the CFTC to establish such trading limits “as the Commission finds are necessary to diminish, eliminate, or prevent such burden.” Obviously they are not doing their job.
Unfortunately, this commission is a little too friendly with the industry it is supposed to be regulating.

The explosion of “over the counter” futures investment vehicles and trading methods has left any serious regulation far behind. They are exempt from CFTC by a provision insert into legislation by Enron and other large energy companies. (Gone but not forgotten!)

In addition to oil, basic foods such as rice, wheat and corn are being hammered by price increases of up to 100% in the last year driven by rampant speculation.. People can’t eat and commerce is grinding to halt while the speculators are having a ball (and making a lot of money!)

Now food riots are breaking out all over the world. When a family in the third world is spending half their income on food and the food prices double, there is no money left for fuel, medicine, rent, etc. Unless the US and other governments steps in and reasserts regulation of the commodities markets, this mess could bring down the world economy. Worse yet, a lot of people will suffer and some will die to feed the greed of these speculators.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

There was a serious flirtation with fascism in this country prior to World War II. Some prominent people in the US were supporters of Hitler and his philosophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_as_an_international_phenomenon#United_States

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a satirical book about the development of a fascist government in the US titled “It Can’t Happen Here”.

http://reactor-core.org/cant-happen.html

In the mid-80s, I came across the book “Friendly Fascism” by Bertram Gross. He said that the US could be heading toward fascism but that it would be a uniquely American version. He laid out a lot of interesting information about the wealthy few, their managers and the rest of us. He also drew a very interesting diagram that showed the connection between universities and think tanks, government offices and corporations. The book was written in 1976 in order to alert people to possible developments in the future. I was disturbed to notice that many of the things that he was concerned about seemed to be on the agenda of the Republican Party.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Friendly_Fascism_BGross.html

Not long ago, a study was conducted on seven fascist dictatorships in the Twentieth Century. Various political aspects of these governments were collected and subjected to cluster analysis to derive a list of fourteen common traits found to varying degrees in these political systems.

These fourteen features are:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism — Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights — Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to ‘look the other way’ or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause — The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military — Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism — The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and antigay legislation and national policy.

6. Controlled Mass Media — Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or through sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security — Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined — Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected — The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed — Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts — Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment — Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses, and even forego civil liberties, in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption — Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions, and who use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections — Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against (or even the assassination of) opposition candidates, the use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and the manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/14_Characteristics_Fascism.html

As I read thru this list for the first time, I was upset to realize that the current Bush government had managed to hit every one of them.

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

Recently, Joe Conason, a progressive political commentator and writer, published a book about political trends in the US with the title, “It Can Happen Here”, an obvious reference to the Sinclair Lewis book. I attended a book signing for “It Can Happen Here” where Conason talked about Sinclair Lewis and his book.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/48246/

When I asked Conason whether he thought that the word “fascism” could be applied to the Bush administration, he was very reluctant. I mentioned the article with the 14 points and asked him if he had read it. He said that someone had sent it to him but he had not read it. I pointed out that it was an academic study of common features of fascism and that the Bush administration was guilty of every single one of them. To my way of thinking, we were entitled to use the term, not in a pejorative sense, but simply as an appropriate label. He still refused to apply the word to our current executive branch.

As we were driving home, I told Barbara that I thought Conason’s refusal to overtly use the word “fascism” in relation to our current situation probably rose from his desire not to be labeled a “left-wing nut case” and a “Bush hater”. I later read an interview with his publisher that confirmed my theory. I cannot fault him for wanting his book to be taken seriously, but I would have chosen a different title if I were him. Seems to me he was being a bit coy.

In any case, as the old saying goes, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck… An author recently interviewed some old Germans who had lived thru Hitler’s rise to power. They were asked why they allowed such a thing to happen. They said that they could not conceived of what the future would bring. Each change was incremental and not too upsetting. They figured that if something really bad were to happen, people would rise up in protest. But, like the frog being gradually cooked, when they finally realize what was happening, it was far too late to stop it.

I am afraid that we may be in the same boat. This country has been drifting in a fascist direction for some time and the current is picking up. It may already be too late to do anything to stop it. A general recently said that the US is about 1 terrorist attack away from loosing the constitution. If we suddenly wake up in a police state, I will be angry but not that surprised. How about you?

2) In the Mid 90s, Michael Ledeen of the conservative American Enterprise Institute said that the US needed to go into the Middle East and foment conflict between tribes, religions, ethnic groups, nations, etc. to use as an excuse to establish a major miliary presenct. This would allow us to insure  our access to ME oil.

3) In 1998, the Project for a New American Century issued a position paper urging attacks on Iraq. Many of the signers went on to positions in the Bush administration.
 
4) In the Spring of 2001, the Cheney energy taskforce was pouring over maps of Iraqi oil fields with representatives to divide up Iraqi oil.

5) “Rumsfeld wants the – best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] ?” This is from notes taken by Rumsfeld’s aide at 12:05 on September 11, 2001.
 
6) Bush broadcasts a statement to the citizens of Iraq on the eve of our invasion in 2003, telling them to not torch the oil fields.

7) When US forces invaded Iraq, they did not secure the weapons depots, they did not secure the nuclear facilities but they did occupy the offices of the Oil ministry

8) Number 1 benchmark for the current Iraq government is to pass the oil bill which is about giving US oil companies 30 year production sharing agreements where they would own the oil in the ground in Iraq, would not be obligated to hire and train Iraqies to work in the oil fields, would not be obligated to share technology with the Iraqis, would be able to repatriate oil profits immediately, etc. Majority of Iraqis are against this bill being passed.

9) Iraq may have the biggest reserves in the world, the oil is cheap to extract, the value of the known reserves has risen from 2 trillion before our occupation to 9 trillion today.10) In criminal investigations, you look for motive, means and opportunity. 

Motive = desire to secure major new reserves in the face of the decline of existing reserves to generate gigantic profits

Means = the US armed  forces
 
Opportunity = 911 attacks.

Things just got a lot more interesting today when the ambassador from Turkey informed the White House that the Kurdish rebels in Turkey have been caught using American weapons against the Turks. This is especially ironic when you consider that we have been criticizing Iran because we found Iranian weapons on Iraqi resistance fighters.

The Kurds are the third largest ethnic group in the Middle East and the largest ethnic group in the world without any independent homeland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds

The Kurds consider parts of their rightful homeland to be controlled by Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.

Kurdish rebels are causing problems in Turkey and Iran which have a mutual assistance treaty with respect to Kurdish rebels. The Kurds in Iraq have been quasi-independent since the US enforced no-fly zones in Iraq after Gulf War 1. The Kurds would like full independence but Turkey has stated that they would immediately invade Northern Iraq if the Kurds there declare independence. Lately, the Turks have been massing troops on the Iraqi border and insisting that, if the US does not curb the Kurdish rebels there, Turkey will enter Iraq. Now comes the report of the US weapons. The US needs to be on good terms with both the Kurds and the Turks. We are in a no win situation and it is escalating.

Stay tuned