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Empire versus Democracy: Why Nemesis is at the door of the USA
Last night I went to bed comparatively early. Having switched off the light, on went the radio – very softly – when I’m too tired to read I like to be talked to sleep. The time was 10:05pm, the program Late Night Live, a repeat of the program originally broadcast on 15 October 2007. In that program, Is America engaged in imperial over-reach?, Phillip Adams and Chalmers Johnson talked about Johnson’s latest book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, in which he compares the US’s present military behaviour with that of the Roman Empire, and warns that financial bankruptcy could herald the breakdown of constitutional government in America. Part of the conversation included a discussion of possible implications for Australia.
For anyone unfamiliar with Chalmers Johnson, he is a retired professor of Asian Studies at the University of California, San Diego. From 1968 until 1972 he served as a consultant to the Office of National Estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency. Nemesis is the final volume in his Blowback trilogy.
I have not yet read Nemesis, but Johnson’s The Sorrows of Empire (the second in the Blowback trilogy) has pride of place in my bookshelves. I would recommend anyone who didn’t hear LNL, either when it was originally broadcast or yesterday/today, to download the podcast and listen at leisure. Somewhat to my surprise, my partner, whose politics differ markedly from mine, heard the rebroadcast this afternoon and seemed to find some of the points made by Johnson compelling. In the meantime, here is Chalmers Johnson’s summary of his main arguments:
Empire v. Democracy
Why Nemesis Is at Our Door
By Chalmers Johnson
History tells us that one of the most unstable political combinations is a country -- like the United States today -- that tries to be a domestic democracy and a foreign imperialist. Why this is so can be a very abstract subject. Perhaps the best way to offer my thoughts on this is to say a few words about my new book, Nemesis, and explain why I gave it the subtitle, "The Last Days of the American Republic." Nemesis is the third book to have grown out of my research over the past eight years. I never set out to write a trilogy on our increasingly endangered democracy, but as I kept stumbling on ever more evidence of the legacy of the imperialist pressures we put on many other countries as well as the nature and size of our military empire, one book led to another.
Professionally, I am a specialist in the history and politics of East Asia. In 2000, I published Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, because my research on China, Japan, and the two Koreas persuaded me that our policies there would have serious future consequences. The book was noticed at the time, but only after 9/11 did the CIA term I adapted for the title -- "blowback" -- become a household word and my volume a bestseller.
I had set out to explain how exactly our government came to be so hated around the world. As a CIA term of tradecraft, "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to, and in, foreign countries. It refers specifically to retaliation for illegal operations carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. These operations have included the clandestine overthrow of governments various administrations did not like, the training of foreign militaries in the techniques of state terrorism, the rigging of elections in foreign countries, interference with the economic viability of countries that seemed to threaten the interests of influential American corporations, as well as the torture or assassination of selected foreigners. The fact that these actions were, at least originally, secret meant that when retaliation does come -- as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 -- the American public is incapable of putting the events in context. Not surprisingly, then, Americans tend to support speedy acts of revenge intended to punish the actual, or alleged, perpetrators. These moments of lashing out, of course, only prepare the ground for yet another cycle of blowback.
A World of Bases
As a continuation of my own analytical odyssey, I then began doing research on the network of 737 American military bases we maintained around the world (according to the Pentagon's own 2005 official inventory). Not including the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, we now station over half a million U.S. troops, spies, contractors, dependents, and others on military bases located in more than 130 countries, many of them presided over by dictatorial regimes that have given their citizens no say in the decision to let us in.
As but one striking example of imperial basing policy: For the past sixty-one years, the U.S. military has garrisoned the small Japanese island of Okinawa with 37 bases. Smaller than Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, Okinawa is home to 1.3 million people who live cheek-by-jowl with 17,000 Marines of the 3rd Marine Division and the largest U.S. installation in East Asia -- Kadena Air Force Base. There have been many Okinawan protests against the rapes, crimes, accidents, and pollution caused by this sort of concentration of American troops and weaponry, but so far the U. S. military -- in collusion with the Japanese government -- has ignored them. My research into our base world resulted in The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, written during the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
As our occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq turned into major fiascoes, discrediting our military leadership, ruining our public finances, and bringing death and destruction to hundreds of thousands of civilians in those countries, I continued to ponder the issue of empire. In these years, it became ever clearer that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their supporters were claiming, and actively assuming, powers specifically denied to a president by our Constitution. It became no less clear that Congress had almost completely abdicated its responsibilities to balance the power of the executive branch. Despite the Democratic sweep in the 2006 election, it remains to be seen whether these tendencies can, in the long run, be controlled, let alone reversed.
Until the 2004 presidential election, ordinary citizens of the United States could at least claim that our foreign policy, including our illegal invasion of Iraq, was the work of George Bush's administration and that we had not put him in office. After all, in 2000, Bush lost the popular vote and was appointed president thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. But in November 2004, regardless of claims about voter fraud, Bush actually won the popular vote by over 3.5 million ballots, making his regime and his wars ours.
Whether Americans intended it or not, we are now seen around the world as approving the torture of captives at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Bagram Air Base in Kabul, at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at a global network of secret CIA prisons, as well as having endorsed Bush's claim that, as commander-in-chief in "wartime," he is beyond all constraints of the Constitution or international law. We are now saddled with a rigged economy based on record-setting trade and fiscal deficits, the most secretive and intrusive government in our country's memory, and the pursuit of "preventive" war as a basis for foreign policy. Don't forget as well the potential epidemic of nuclear proliferation as other nations attempt to adjust to and defend themselves against Bush's preventive wars, while our own already staggering nuclear arsenal expands toward first-strike primacy and we expend unimaginable billions on futuristic ideas for warfare in outer space.
The Choice Ahead
By the time I came to write Nemesis, I no longer doubted that maintaining our empire abroad required resources and commitments that would inevitably undercut, or simply skirt, what was left of our domestic democracy and that might, in the end, produce a military dictatorship or -- far more likely -- its civilian equivalent. The combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, an ever growing economic dependence on the military-industrial complex and the making of weaponry, and ruinous military expenses as well as a vast, bloated "defense" budget, not to speak of the creation of a whole second Defense Department (known as the Department of Homeland Security) has been destroying our republican structure of governing in favor of an imperial presidency. By republican structure, of course, I mean the separation of powers and the elaborate checks and balances that the founders of our country wrote into the Constitution as the main bulwarks against dictatorship and tyranny, which they greatly feared.
We are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation starts down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play -- isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.
History is instructive on this dilemma. If we choose to keep our empire, as the Roman republic did, we will certainly lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates. There is an alternative, however. We could, like the British Empire after World War II, keep our democracy by giving up our empire. The British did not do a particularly brilliant job of liquidating their empire and there were several clear cases where British imperialists defied their nation's commitment to democracy in order to hang on to foreign privileges. The war against the Kikuyu in Kenya in the 1950s and the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 are particularly savage examples of that. But the overall thrust of postwar British history is clear: the people of the British Isles chose democracy over imperialism.
In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt offered the following summary of British imperialism and its fate:
"On the whole it was a failure because of the dichotomy between the nation-state's legal principles and the methods needed to oppress other people permanently. This failure was neither necessary nor due to ignorance or incompetence. British imperialists knew very well that 'administrative massacres' could keep India in bondage, but they also knew that public opinion at home would not stand for such measures. Imperialism could have been a success if the nation-state had been willing to pay the price, to commit suicide and transform itself into a tyranny. It is one of the glories of Europe, and especially of Great Britain, that she preferred to liquidate the empire."
I agree with this judgment. When one looks at Prime Minister Tony Blair's unnecessary and futile support of Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, one can only conclude that it was an atavistic response, that it represented a British longing to relive the glories -- and cruelties -- of a past that should have been ancient history.
As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.
The Road to Imperial Bankruptcy
The American political system failed to prevent this combination from developing -- and may now be incapable of correcting it. The evidence strongly suggests that the legislative and judicial branches of our government have become so servile in the presence of the imperial Presidency that they have largely lost the ability to respond in a principled and independent manner. Even in the present moment of congressional stirring, there seems to be a deep sense of helplessness. Various members of Congress have already attempted to explain how the one clear power they retain -- to cut off funds for a disastrous program -- is not one they are currently prepared to use.
So the question becomes, if not Congress, could the people themselves restore Constitutional government? A grass-roots movement to abolish secret government, to bring the CIA and other illegal spying operations and private armies out of the closet of imperial power and into the light, to break the hold of the military-industrial complex, and to establish genuine public financing of elections may be at least theoretically conceivable. But given the conglomerate control of our mass media and the difficulties of mobilizing our large and diverse population, such an opting for popular democracy, as we remember it from our past, seems unlikely.
It is possible that, at some future moment, the U.S. military could actually take over the government and declare a dictatorship (though its commanders would undoubtedly find a gentler, more user-friendly name for it). That is, after all, how the Roman republic ended -- by being turned over to a populist general, Julius Caesar, who had just been declared dictator for life. After his assassination and a short interregnum, it was his grandnephew Octavian who succeeded him and became the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar. The American military is unlikely to go that route. But one cannot ignore the fact that professional military officers seem to have played a considerable role in getting rid of their civilian overlord, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The new directors of the CIA, its main internal branches, the National Security Agency, and many other key organs of the "defense establishment" are now military (or ex-military) officers, strongly suggesting that the military does not need to take over the government in order to control it. Meanwhile, the all-volunteer army has emerged as an ever more separate institution in our society, its profile less and less like that of the general populace.
Nonetheless, military coups, however decorous, are not part of the American tradition, nor that of the officer corps, which might well worry about how the citizenry would react to a move toward open military dictatorship. Moreover, prosecutions of low-level military torturers from Abu Ghraib prison and killers of civilians in Iraq have demonstrated to enlisted troops that obedience to illegal orders can result in dire punishment in a situation where those of higher rank go free. No one knows whether ordinary soldiers, even from what is no longer in any normal sense a citizen army, would obey clearly illegal orders to oust an elected government or whether the officer corps would ever have sufficient confidence to issue such orders. In addition, the present system already offers the military high command so much -- in funds, prestige, and future employment via the famed "revolving door" of the military-industrial complex -- that a perilous transition to anything like direct military rule would make little sense under reasonably normal conditions.
Whatever future developments may prove to be, my best guess is that the U.S. will continue to maintain a façade of Constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it. Of course, bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the U.S. any more than it did for Germany in 1923, China in 1948, or Argentina in 2001-2002. It might, in fact, open the way for an unexpected restoration of the American system -- or for military rule, revolution, or simply some new development we cannot yet imagine.
Certainly, such a bankruptcy would mean a drastic lowering of our standard of living, a further loss of control over international affairs, a sudden need to adjust to the rise of other powers, including China and India, and a further discrediting of the notion that the United States is somehow exceptional compared to other nations. We will have to learn what it means to be a far poorer country -- and the attitudes and manners that go with it. As Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, observes:
"U.S. global power, as presently conceived by the overwhelming majority of the U.S. establishment, is unsustainable. . . The empire can no longer raise enough taxes or soldiers, it is increasingly indebted, and key vassal states are no longer reliable. . . The result is that the empire can no longer pay for enough of the professional troops it needs to fulfill its self-assumed imperial tasks."
In February 2006, the Bush administration submitted to Congress a $439 billion defense appropriation budget for fiscal year 2007. As the country enters 2007, the administration is about to present a nearly $100 billion supplementary request to Congress just for the Iraq and Afghan wars. At the same time, the deficit in the country's current account -- the imbalance in the trading of goods and services as well as the shortfall in all other cross-border payments from interest income and rents to dividends and profits on direct investments -- underwent its fastest ever quarterly deterioration. For 2005, the current account deficit was $805 billion, 6.4% of national income. In 2005, the U.S. trade deficit, the largest component of the current account deficit, soared to an all-time high of $725.8 billion, the fourth consecutive year that America's trade debts set records. The trade deficit with China alone rose to $201.6 billion, the highest imbalance ever recorded with any country. Meanwhile, since mid-2000, the country has lost nearly three million manufacturing jobs.
To try to cope with these imbalances, on March 16, 2006, Congress raised the national debt limit from $8.2 trillion to $8.96 trillion. This was the fourth time since George W. Bush took office that it had to be raised. The national debt is the total amount owed by the government and should not be confused with the federal budget deficit, the annual amount by which federal spending exceeds revenue. Had Congress not raised the debt limit, the U.S. government would not have been able to borrow more money and would have had to default on its massive debts.
Among the creditors that finance these unprecedented sums, the two largest are the central banks of China (with $853.7 billion in reserves) and Japan (with $831.58 billion in reserves), both of which are the managers of the huge trade surpluses these countries enjoy with the United States. This helps explain why our debt burden has not yet triggered what standard economic theory would dictate: a steep decline in the value of the U.S. dollar followed by a severe contraction of the American economy when we found we could no longer afford the foreign goods we like so much. So far, both the Chinese and Japanese governments continue to be willing to be paid in dollars in order to sustain American purchases of their exports.
For the sake of their own domestic employment, both countries lend huge amounts to the American treasury, but there is no guarantee of how long they will want to, or be able to do so. Marshall Auerback, an international financial strategist, says we have become a "Blanche Dubois economy" (so named after the leading character in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire) heavily dependent on "the kindness of strangers." Unfortunately, in our case, as in Blanche's, there are ever fewer strangers willing to support our illusions.
So my own hope is that -- if the American people do not find a way to choose democracy over empire -- at least our imperial venture will end not with a nuclear bang but a financial whimper. From the present vantage point, it certainly seems a daunting challenge for any President (or Congress) from either party even to begin the task of dismantling the military-industrial complex, ending the pall of "national security" secrecy and the "black budgets" that make public oversight of what our government does impossible, and bringing the president's secret army, the CIA, under democratic control. It's evident that Nemesis -- in Greek mythology the goddess of vengeance, the punisher of hubris and arrogance -- is already a visitor in our country, simply biding her time before she makes her presence known.
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Thanks Craig
Thanks for the recommendation Craig - I'll look out for Habermas' The Divided West. Should come into the shop eventually.
I read the synopsis you linked to and it looks seriously fascinating. Come to think of it I don't know why I haven't read any Habermas yet.
The Divided West
Collapse of US and USSR
This is a comparison of the collapse of the USSR with the situation in the US.
The conclusion is that the US is less prepared for the collapse than the USSR was.
While we eat our Sunday roast spare a thought for the starving.
Remember you are what you eat. I'm just as guilty as anyone I love my meat. Currently I am on a low carbohydrate diet (trying to lose those extra kilos). Low carb. more protein means more meat. I think like the US we really have to change our culture. We are eating ourselves to death, and in the process taking millions of others with us. We have taken the American dream to its limit.
Not US
Actually our affection for meat goes back to the convict era. Letters from migrants to their families back home often extolled the wonder of meat five times a week. This was extraordinary luxury for the rural poor.
Once we get back in touch with our bodies we usually find that we need less meat (esp. as we age). Red meat can be very important for women. Tofu can cause thyroid problems. If you are vego and eat a lot of soy watch for problems with weight gain and temperature regulation.
The problem as I see it is more animal feed than human food.
Just musing
You never know - when the Chinese run out of cheap labour they could build factories in the US; made easier by investing in (bailing out) US banks. The Chinese also hold enough US debt to build many a factory.
These Chinese built factories would of course employ local labour and pay them Chinese wages and such. But the US factory fodder working in the Chinese factories could get their Chinese made goods even cheaper; no or considerably less shipping costs. This is good is it not?
The American Government of course would welcome such investment in their nation as it would keep the tribes occupied and their banker happy. Remember many members of the tribe are now enslaved to the (Chinese owned) US bank paying off a $400,000 mortgage on a $220,000 dollar home. Can't let all those stupid subprime investors down now can we?
If the tribes decided to show their dislike for their foreign employers then the Government could simply lock them up in the Halliburton built detention centres (which are from all reports (?) popping up like wildflowers) and feed the bludgers two minute noodles.
This is good for if the tribes were restless in the homeland of their employer they may well be shot and their families humiliated.
So folks if we are going to end up as factory fodder then it would be best to be so in a democratic country.
I bet GWB and many leaders of democratic nations just envy the power and control of the Chinese communist/capitalist oligarchy.
Slowly, slowly...
Justin, if power-junkiesm was purged from politics we might lose a few politicians. I believe their are many people in Australian politics today who, in these supposedly enlightened political times, are primarily occupying their seats in order to obtains as much "power" as they can.
IMHO fixed terms would be the way to go. By the time they've learned the tricks of the trade there's little time to ply them in feathering their nests. China's an admirable machine, but rue the day when it becomes "in the national interest" to legislate for a similarly mandatory level of subservience.
Exhibit A: Dick Cheney. He's had to bounce from governance to corporate support and back again to put his plans into place. Now, if he was the US equivalent of Dr Hu? Lets just say that a few more checks and balances might be useful.
China has a slave-based economy - not so good for the long haul
PF Journey: "Hey Eliot, when the stock market goes up, it means there is more money in the bank for me so I don't think that would be an annoyance. But I do wonder if you got a life."
If the bubble in China bursts, and it will, you may wish you'd invested everything in property or collectibles. Also, the growing labour shortages in China suggest that excess capacity in their economy is fast running out.
Here's how they've paid for the Chinese economic miracle so far...
"More than a quarter of the country's estimated 140 million migrant workers received their pay packets late or not at all last year, a new report by Fudan University in Shanghai says. Most of the 30,000 migrant workers in the survey sample received only one day off each month, or less. Only 8 per cent said they were satisfied with their social status, with two-thirds saying they faced discrimination."
And yet...
"Mainly, however, workers are becoming more valuable because China's seemingly endless supply of cheap peasant labour is starting to dry up."
More expensive, rather than more valuable, I'd say. Though they're very cheap by comparison - especially if they don't get paid.
My bet is that labour productivity, however, won't be growing amongst the vast Chinese laboring underclass, and that means if Chinese labour is getting expensive by their standards, then it's about used up as a means of growing the Chinese economy.
Really, if it pops (and it must), the result is going to be very ugly indeed.
Imagine what will happen with hundreds and hundreds of millions of ripped off Chinese workers thrown on the scrap-heap, now concentrated in the big cities, if they don't get paid?
And they won't....
Such is Life
Pop goes the bourse
"When they pop, down will come Kevin, Julia, Wayne and all... "
Pop they will but I'm sure Eliot would just hate to see that; however, you may be disappointed in the Kevin, Julia bit.
This is the beginning of a new political cycle. Fortunately for Kev baby he can claim to have played no part in this present debacle. Had this all happened 12 months down the track then feelings may be different; as such Kev baby has opportunities exploit the insecurities of the electorate to his advantage.
If he does this in a mutually beneficial manner then good; but if he seeks to simply manipulate public perception then that would be unfortunate, a return to the Howard era?
Time will tell I suppose and in the mean time we can all sit back and watch people lose money.
Afghan police killed by American forces.
In yet another example of why the US will not win the war in Afghanistan, more friendly Afghans have been killed by American forces. The US is losing the confidence of the Afghans. It is up to the Afghan government to bring peace and stability to its people. The US is providing more and more reason for Afghan's to support the Taliban.
The East is in the Red
Keep your eyes on the bubbles on the Hang Seng and the Shanghai bourses. When they pop, down will come Kevin, Julia, Wayne and all...
Thanks Paul
"The Albatross will survive and thrive; that's what an Albatross does!"
Thanks Paul old chap, I'm feeling much better now; anyway this old albatross is now as liquid as ever (hic) - I've always been oldfashioned when it comes to debt and saving and all that; it always pays off and saves a lot of tears.
BTW - the albatross is under threat of extinction, so they say, but I refuse to believe "they".
The Frenchie Albatross
Justin Obodie: "In short, the two main reasons the Yanks are in the shit is because of the sublime (very sic) president and the sub (but all too clever) prime sublime securities debacle, which now threatens the globe at large. A house of cards? Hopefully not, for this has the potential to get ugly, real ugly."
Well yes and no. Things are bad, I would bet though; there has been a worse scene? My own favorite scene is in a movie called the Shawshank Redemption; beautiful music will always get one through - all of us should all believe!
The Albatross will survive and thrive; that's what an Albatross does!
Albatross may not survive.
From the ridikulus to the Subprime?
George Bush would have little understanding of subprime, but what about the rest of us?
Unfortunately the Yanks are in the shit. Some of us may be tempted to feel good about that, others not.
Sadly for America GWB has in his own sublime (sic) way been encouraged to use the vast military resources of the American (taxpayer) Empire to reconfigure the "Heartland". This has been discussed at length and in all its shapes and sizes in this forum, so I will not reiterate, just recklessly summarise.
In short, the two main reasons the Yanks are in the shit is because of the sublime (very sic) president and the sub (but all too clever) prime sublime securities debacle, which now threatens the globe at large. A house of cards? Hopefully not, for this has the potential to get ugly, real ugly.
The hens are (and some already have) come home to roost; the damage from this debacle is not going to be fixed easily; many ordinary people are going to feel the heat and investors are going to be left embarrassed, embarrassed indeed holding what they thought were AAA securities when in reality were all subprime derivatives. You never hear the bullet that kills you.
How could Moodys Fitch, S&P have rated them as such? They get paid by the lenders, and creators of these mortgage backed securities and debt obligations (the banks) to do so. That mob have a lot to answer for. If things get really ugly then the legal people could make a killing.
For those interested in how the subprime things work then do the Google thing, then ask yourself how better informed than GWB are you. I didn't have a clue until a year ago then did some homework. Oh deary me, no wonder some of my clients are packing death.
Believe you me there is a lot of fear out there and huge undisclosed (and still unknown) losses to be reported. Hens everywhere; I hate hens.
Now there are those other hens. The hens of war. Looks like OBL (alive or dead) has played a significant part in realising his dreams of sending America broke; just as he did (with America's help) to Russia. The subprime president and the galoots who thought Leo Strauss was cool got sucked into two wars they can never win. Wars draining the taxpayer of funds that should be used for healthcare and education. The tricked up effect.
Remember, if you thought those wars were for democracy and freedom then one should hope by now reality has set in. These wars, in reality, were all about the Heartland, Eurasia and geopolitical control, along with the interests of a greedy domestic Military Industrial Complex. War is a racket and for some extremely profitable, just ask the Bushes.
Oh well, looks like we are in for the ride of our lives, The Empire is feeling the strain of its (extended) taxpayer funded wars and along with what could be the death of the debt bubble will mean that America will simply have to wake up to reality and get back to basics.
I may talk more about "basics" later, but let's say it has something to do with prudent, honest and commercially encouraging financial management. And relying less on the production of bombs and bullets - tractors and solar collectors could be an alternative. In short, the Yanks will have to reinvent themselves to get through this. I'm sure we all hope they do (good luck to them) so long as they do it in a responsible, peaceful and creative manner.
Yep, interesting times ahead. Could this be the precursor to the crash we had to have or just an aberration that can be controlled by the world's central banks?
straight talk and McCain attracts our Future Fund cradlerocker
Wow Justin, waxing lyrical. Guess you read Smedley's War is a Racket.
The thing that concerns me is what happens when the MIC becomes a true multinational? Is it then war without end, hardware to the biggest private army? Halliburton moving the UAE is something to chew upon.
Another thing of interest to those who like details about their money is again relating to the Future Fund currently in the crib of Northern Trust, at the Singapore Branch of this Chicago base group known for mixing supers up to parcels of investment. Why, what a coincidence – NZ also chose them to manage their Super billions. Heck!
Have all heard of the Carlyle Group? Guess who the Northern Trust CEO is in with? Come on this is fun! The initial decision to send our money to this group was with Osborn in charge, Wardell had recently replaced Conover as President in 2006. In October there was a coup and now we have Wardell in charge.....his memberships include:
The Financial Services Roundtable
National Conference of Christians and Jews Board of Directors
Straight Talk America
Now, what is Straight Talk America? Well, have a look at the membership (good old Sole there too) and guess whose election site one is moved to – McCain.
Members include: Carlucci(Carlyle Gp fame), Catto, Kissinger, Kravis ,Lehman, Dinh, Mayer, McCain himself, Peter Peterson (CFR), and quite a few other Republican notables like Boon Pickles (Swift Boat funder and Peak Oil trumpeter) and certain media bosses etc. Bit like a Bilderberg mob. And what of the policies of their candidate, Manchurian or not? Well, here is his response to a question about Iran:
So when you think of our future fund and the people holding it, think of McCain and the MIC and Carlyle and Bomb bomb Iran and the corporate media bosses with him..
Time to cut the Reaganesque umbilical cord that Howard tied us with. Money is the main step. All else follows.
Still predict a lame duck Dem candidate and McCain Lieberman ticket with a surprise to cement the deal.
Ron Paul for President. Notice he is never named by the media despite coming second and even looking like winning Alabama....yet always McCain is named despite being always, except maybe once, behind Paul. Giuliani the same. So transparent. Straight talk for curly deeds.
Cheers
The Dow Jones
Last night's recovery on Wall Street must have been annoying for you, then.
The Dowager Jones and Other Derivatives
Eliot, so in fell swoop GWB has fixed America's problems. How gullible are you?
The subprime is not the only crisis of fiscal stupidity under President Moron's watch. What about $1.2 trillion dollars of real money spent in Iraq? Has America received quid pro quo yet? Not on yer Nellie.
Will they? Ask the British; they fell into the same imperialistic trap at the start of last century. They have only recently paid the last installment under the Lend-Lease plan of WWII. The effects on Britain for overreaching were the loss of empire, prestige and wealth. The country was effectively bankrupt until the mid-1960s.
President Buffoon will leave a poisoned chalice just like John Willful Hubris has left to this current government and perhaps the next.
John Willful Hubris
I really like that, Roger.
John Willful Hubris, indeed. Someone should do an unauthorised biography and make that its title.
The great leap forward. A seductive illusion....
My guess is that the best that the heads of state can do is encourage lots of small experiments in sustainability and localism. Top down stuff is unlikely to work in my view."
Evan, what makes you think that "localism" could achieve the efficiencies needed to reduce ecological impacts in ways that aren't already being better achieved by "globalism"?
Isn't "localism" merely another name for "autarky", or a system of closed, non-trading economies, such as in Burma and North Korea, and so according to the economic principle of "comparative advantage", likely therefore to lead to an even less efficient use of resources?
Also, wouldn't it ceteris paribus, compound diseconomies of scale, and even further reduce efficiencies.
As the Chinese found to their enormous cost during the so called Great Leap Forward?
Efficient for What?
Hi Eliot,
1. Ceteris paribus doesn't exist in real life. It is a useful theoretical principle but not useful for decision making.
2. There is no guarantee efficiency will deliver ecology - until some way is found to come up with the 'real price' of goods and services. Even economists speak of 'externalities',
3. No, localism isn't another name for autarky.
Economists may find efficiency compelling. For me the survival of our planet and those we love is more compelling.
Subprime and Dubya
I woke up this morning with the insight on how appropriate, how accurate, how timely, how apt, etc etc the word "SUBPRIME" is to describe the intellect, the legacy and the quality of the presidency of one GW Bush.
You cannot, even if you try, to invent a better word than "SUBPRIME" to describe everything about GW as a person or as a president. Only the USA themselves can do that and it is entirely appropriate.
"SUBPRIME" for all its miseries and troubles that it has brought to the American people and the rest of the World. Ditto for GW, so SUBPRIME and GW are a synonym.
The latest CJ.
Not for the first time for either Tomdispatch or Chalmers Johnson, here is CJ's latest article. Lots of internal links to keep readers occupied.
Corporate Government
The decision to exempt BAE Systems from anti-discrimination laws shows that the bastardisation of law for private business is complete. When the rights of a corporation - no matter what hoary excuse is used - take precedence over other citizens, fascism has scored an almighty goal.
As usual, the phoniest excuse under the sun is used to justify these actions. Jobs will be lost is the claim. This has been rolled out every time the monster Wal Mart arrives in a US provincial town - jobs will be created. The opposite is true. Local businesses shut down by the dozen, town centres become ghost towns while hundreds lose their employment in small business while a smaller number find work in the anti-union conglomerate that is destroying US manufacturing.
The US Republicans, like Australia's Coalition under Howard, were traitors to their own mantra - the support for small business. Everything they do is from the text book of creeping fascism. Will Rudd and Labor be any different? If various state governments are anything to go by, we shouldn't hold our breath. The move to the right has been so cemented that the slightest step back looks like an improvement.
The real crimes of John Howard will be revealed the longer we distance ourselves from his term in government. Unlike Bush, who serves purely corporate interests, Howard like Tony Blair served only one master - his own wretched ambition.
The subsumption of Adelaide into the Empire
I hope, Michael, that while the SA Treasurer is negotiating in the US, he's cutting off this loophole I wrote of in a Webdiary piece two years back. There's a mandatory requirement in the US that a certain percentage of defence contracts goes to small business. The big companies invented small subsidiaries of themselves and took the contracts. This has already begun here, especially in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The development to this scenario this week is now BAE has acquired Tenix' (small business) JSF projects.
BAE will now also have Tenix' job of marketing the DSTO's research.
The SA Liberals went down this path believing that they were creating a truly Australian defence industry, along the lines of Spain's Navantia. Suckers!
These companies are going to cost the US dearly. In the process of doing its dirty work, they're becoming independent of "mother". Halliburton's move to Dubai should serve as a warning that should the Empire fall, the corporations will survive as empires without borders.
Thank God for Global Warming. It may be the catalyst we need
Mr Brown may just be the first of many international leaders with enough vision to change the world. Thank God for Global Warming.
Roger, maybe just a little optimism now.
We Surely Need It
As our current global society is rapidly killing the planet we surely need a new one.
My guess is that the best that the heads of state can do is encourage lots of small experiments in sustainability and localism. Top down stuff is unlikely to work in my view.
It is also my view that the heads of state have enough vision and courage to try this. It will be up to us and probably require fighting the bureaucracy and state imposed idiocy.
Time to build a new global society.
With the imminent collapse of the US, Gordon Brown is on the right track. It is time to forget super powers and build a new global society. This is the future and it is great to see Gordon Brown take the first steps. Lets hope Kevin Rudd also supports this new global society.
Naomi Wolf
Wolf's new book The End Of America draws upon all the parallels of fascist states like pre-WW2 Germany to describe what is happening in the USA today. It's a race to the end - will the US collapse before or after it becomes a fully fledged fascist country?.
As someone who for years has studied the rise of the Nazis , it's quite frightening to see virtually the same incremental steps taking place in America. The only major difference I can see is that the Nazis, in the end, controlled the media whereas the most influential media now is totally compliant with the aims of partisan forces in the US.
And it's been happening here to some degree under the previous Howard government. The rise of the AFP into an unaccountable secret police force was amply demonstrated with the Haneef case. To its credit The Australian exposed that shambles but it looks more than likely that there be no recriminations for the vindictive AFP. The lesson here is next time they just won't get caught.
The horror of record foreign investment levels
That level of foreign investment could be the sort of monetary stimulus the US needs as it moves into recession. What do you think the folks selling the assets do with all that foreign capital, John?
They usually invest it in new ventures. Also, foreigners won't usually invest in an economy unless they expect to make a gain.
Music from Heaven
I know they say there are 76 virgins up in heaven, but to start the 2008 political year without the sound of Howard, Costello, Downer (especially), Abbott, Hockey, Ruddock, Andrews, Nelson, Minchin etc etc in charge of country is kind of heaven to me.
Meanwhile, a musical tribute from Crikey.
The fall of Adelaide
When I wrote that last post I hadn't read this:
[The Australian Paul Maley | January 19, 2008]
Nearly three years ago, when Margo and Hamish invited and helped me to start a blog on Your Democracy (the "primary piece" has now had more than 20,000 page visits) I opened it with these words:
Thursday's news had been depressing enough
[ABC Regional]
What he really meant to say was this:
It's typical that the BAE takeover of Tenix has been presented to us as a British takeover even while Foley has been finalising contracts. Says it all, really. And how do you think that this is being presented to the SA public in the local Murdoch? The answer is - not at all.
Australia, at least in military/industrial matters, has become symbiotically subservient to the US Empire. If everything is as Chalmers believes, we will fall with it when it goes. I hope the former Liberal ministers consider their dividends worth the cost of what they've done.
Remember Defence Minister Reith's first job out of cabinet? Tenix consultant.
Defence contractor gets exemption from discrimination laws
Richard Tonkin, there is just a chance you may be interested in this story: Defence contractor gets exemption from discrimination laws.
Fait Accompli
I'd been waiting for that one for a couple of years, Mark, since the same sort of thing was passed in Victoria. It was reported in the Age, though I haven't the piece at hand. I'm pretty sure that NSW had already passed something similar. Listeniing to BAE's argument that it would be forced to move interstate without such a waiver, though, is now pretty unconvincing given the announcements of the last few days. My radio is lucky that I like it.. I felt a brief temptation to throw it out the window.
At one stage the Advertiser made an editorial edict that defence business would not be discussed as part of the war debate. Gee, I wonder why?
I'll say one more thing before I stop murdering the thread. BAE were described in our local Murdoch for years as a local company participating in international projects... good parochial stuff. In spite of my good strike rate in letter publications, any attempt to "reveal" them as an international corporation failed miserably.
A BAE factory in the US is making components for the missile launchers on the Adelaide ships. Obiously nobody at all over here is allowed to know the workings of that sort of stuff.
Did I mention that we used to be the global infrastructure headquarters of Halliburton? That was rhetorical. After that, they put that VP, Andrew Fletcher, in charge of the warship project. Fletcher was one of three HAL cohorts amongst the five people that comprised a state government appointed Major Projects Facilitation Group that laid out the future development of the state.
It's been a long, slow media stageplay, and today's announcement suggests it's nearly over. Foley will have a few things to crow about from LA to ice the cake, you can be sure.
A letter of mine, titled "Defence State" was published in the Advertiser on May 6, 2004. In it I wrote
Fat lot of good that did. Austin Texas didn't have a port. It does now.
Correction
And then?
Hamish's comments are insightful and accurate I think. Chalmers' history and political analysis aren't terribly good.
If America goes my worry is what fills the gap. I can't imagine China being a great global citizen - it's human rights record is really awful.
And the UN?
It may be somewhat better. But where would it's funding come from? The contradiction is that its funding comes from nation states who are unlikely to fund the ceding of their sovereignty to a greater government. I'm not optimistic.
Perhaps there will be a retreat from the global and a re-growth of the local due to oil prices. If this was very radical (which would be scary I think) it may be possible to grow a more global governance from a different base (but that would be a huge ask I think).
US profits are now going overseas. Bush has broke the bank.
Soon the question will be who owns the US? The problem is the fact that the US spends nearly 20 percent of its federal budget on defence.
The US keeps at lot of military spending hidden, for example:
The eight years of the Bush presidency has left the US in serious financial trouble, with the wolves of China, Russia, Japan, Europe and the Middle East at the door. As the situation worsens, the end of the United States is almost assured. For Australia we had better be looking for other partners.
Nationalism Exposed?
Nationalism is not the result of any conscious effort on the part of a country's population. The citizen is a creature of comfort and petty concerns, dealing with the challenges of procreation, child-rearing and material well-being.
Nationalism is instead the tool of unfettered world financial hegemony. It belongs to, and is exploited by, those with the means to turn the business of carnage into the world's most profitable business.
The Warburgs, for example, were on both sides of the WWII conflict. Switzerland has remained immune from the devastation visited on other European nations since the 1300's by becoming the home of the financiers of every war.
Nationalism raises its ugly head on the back of every imagined threat. It is shamelessly exploited as in the case of the "war on terror". Let's face it, blood lust is ferociously expressed in the human species. The masters of the world exploit this at every opportunity. Business cannot exist without "ritualistic" killing. Every human advance is predicated on someone else's attendant degradation and misery.
There is no cause for optimism, short of a flight into the spiritual, because we face the same outcome until the earth ceases to exist.
Cause for optimism
Roger, there is always hope. By looking at history we can learn from the mistakes of others. Nationalism is a scourge used by corrupt leaders to control through fear. We must always question those that use fear as a method to take back hard won freedoms. We must educate our children so that they can learn from the mistakes of others. We must value all human life, not just those of our nation.
Always remember that the first cities were built only about five or six thousand years ago. We are very new at organizing worldwide organizations. We must strengthen human rights legislation and the United Nations. It is only by recognizing that we are all part of one fantastic world. There is no them and us only us. We are running out of time with the threats of climate change and peak oil. There is an urgency for all mankind to unite. But unite we must and only by treating all humans as equals will we be able to survive and move on to a sustainable world.
We should envision a world where all can live in peace. Where all can obtain an education so that all can achieve their full potential. If the money now spent on weapons was instead spent on health and education we would be well on the way to a brilliant future. We are very inexperienced at building worldwide organizations understandably because of our limited experience, so we must learn to crawl before we can walk. We must never give up hope, we must encourage everything thats brings us together as one humanity and reject all that divides us. That is why democracy is so important - it gives the average peace loving human a voice. It is the only way we can control all those would be tyrants.
We must find ways to limit the wealth of those who lust after money and power. Money and power is what is used to create fear and fear is the enemy of democracy.
Hope Is Our Only Refuge
John, you are correct in as much as the lessons of past mistakes should be an inspiration for us to change. However, my pessimism continues unabated.
The opportunities for effecting change are not in your hands or mine except in the general sense of our being able to vote and change governments.
This unfortunately does little to to abate the horrors that are inflicted the world because governments are not the originators. We cannot change the Carlyle Group's, Martin Marietta's, Northrop Grumman's, Bofors' and all their fellow travelers in nearly every nation on earth. These organisations and their hidden financiers are immune to our votes, pleadings and best-hearted efforts. These men (very few women are involved) are the unchanging dynasties that control the world's wealth and what happens to us.
... or buggering up the Carlyle "Gravy Train."
Ahh, Roger....
[extract]
[extract]
Rudd's edict on Ministerial investment portfolios is a good start, if it follows through.
Ancient Metaphors
I haven't read Chalmers' books but I enjoyed this article. Just a couple of comments.
It is not self-evident that a democracy can not be imperialist and remain a democracy ("A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.") When a democratic polity becomes nationalist, imperialism can come quite naturally. Quoting the opinion of a famous political philosopher doesn't help (respect to Arendt), and it doesn't add for me that the rise of fascism in Europe, say, was the result of the institutional and economic pressures of Spanish, Italian and German empire. In fact given the thesis that dictatorship may be brought about by democracy's contradiction with imperialism, one might have expected other nations to go first. It is curious that the revolutionaries fighting Franco in the first real war against fascism, the Spanish Civil War, did not give up Spain's imperialist policies.
Athens in the Peloponnesian War is a better metaphor than the Roman Republic in this respect. For the Greeks, the harbingers of what we today call 'The West', non-Greeks were not even capable of polity, let alone democracy, so there was no contradiction whatsoever between Athenian democracy and foreign wars, slavery being a happy concomitant of the latter. Our historian (Thucydides) has painted the Peloponnesian War for us as a battle between democratic Greek poleis led by Athens and tyrannical Greek poleis led by Sparta, but is modern (dare I say 'Western') enough to give us this story in a tapestry of moral ambiguity and irony of the human spirit. In some respects the war intensifies Athens' democracy and makes it self-conscious. After a brief period of Spartan-led tyranny after the war (in which Athens was finally defeated) the democratic institutions survive, and continue to do so right into Christian times.
We could ponder the apparent expansion of democracy, in terms of the actual institutionalisation of public participation in policy creation, in California, through the time of America's greatest imperial reach. No problems from Hollywood about the Iraq War.
Our problem is that democracy and imperialism are actually quite a neat fit, as long as nationalism is part of the democratic package.
My second point is to do with Chalmers' use of the Roman Empire metaphor. In the book that will be written by someone as yet unborn and be famous and read in schools in thousands of years, The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-American Empire, we are way past the Republican period, and furthermore the period of Empire was not tyrannical over American citizens. The end of the Republic meant greater distance between the citizen and administration, but it did not mean tyranny.
Unlike Australians, Americans in their institutional as well as cultural history, are a revolutionary people, and the origins of America (by which I mean its institutional structure) are truly republican. There's a number of moments in American (and British) history we could pick on as the point at which the republic became empire (the mobilisation for WWII and the McCarthy era is the most recent possibility), but I suggest that Chalmers is way off by suggesting it hasn't well and truly happened and that we aren't well and truly in the era of Trajan and the extremities of Empire (The Roman invasion of Parthia - modern Iraq - is the allegory) and that the next Democrat administration will play the roll of Hadrian, overseeing a defensive attempt to consolidate existing Empire, hopefully with a degree of wisdom but, due to absence of fresh imperial loot which had made the whole structure possible in the first place (bankruptcy, as Chalmers puts it), will also be overseeing the beginnings of contraction and division.
Chalmers should keep in mind that the rise of Caesar and the Empire was not the rise of tyranny. Roman citizens - the apostle Paul being the most famous example - were afforded great privilege. The flipside of this mindfulness is that although we are casually referring to 'American democracy', it is a democracy in spirit more than in practice, as the sheer distance between citizen and administration is far greater than the ancient world could conceive of, and the American citizen, despite their historic universal franchise, is probably less in touch with the administration of their society than just about any before.
There is no need whatsoever for the American military to mount some take-over of American political institutions. It's just not gonna happen. In a way it's already happened, with overwhelming public support. The massive armed forces are all patriotic volunteers. Although they may or may not vote for America to withdraw from Iraq, Americans will not for a long time be voting for a demilitarisation or for an end to American imperialism.
I wholeheartedly endorse the idea of a "grass-roots movement to abolish secret government, to bring the CIA and other illegal spying operations and private armies out of the closet of imperial power and into the light, to break the hold of the military-industrial complex, and to establish genuine public financing of elections," but not only is it "unlikely" but it remains to be asked, "Would even a radically democratised America reject imperialism?" Even when they fully realise what the stakes are? What they have to lose? I don't think so.
Wait a minute. The metaphors reach their limits. There's a new kid on the phenomenological block. Globalisation has brought the whole saga into new dialectical territory. There's no ancient allegory - none which doesn't have an ironical 'other' alongside 'the whole world' - for the United Nations or the decisive ideological battles of the 20th Century, let alone IT. Can we dream of a Global Republic?
Hamish, read Habermas?
G'day Hamish, you ask: "Can we dream of a Global Republic?"
That's a good question.
Have you considered what Jürgen Habermas says on the subject in The West Divided?
Where is the money come from? The US is already bankrupt.
With the US national debt limit $8.96 trillion, the current debt already at $9.2 trillion, where does the money come from? How can a country already in debt for over $9 trillion contemplate tax cuts or a budget stimulus? Surely the US is already bankrupt. Are China and Japan going to continue to prop up this failed state?
Forget the UN Iraq wants a Washington-Baghdad deal.
Iraq officials say they will not extend the UN mandate - they want to deal with Washington. Strange, isn't it? The puppet government put in place by the US only wants to deal with Washington. The American people have had enough but Bush would like troops in Iraq for at least another decade. There should be no such deal with Washington - all troops in Iraq should be sanctioned by the United Nations. No UN mandate no troops.
The US war machine is driving the American people bankrupt. As the Dow falls again, taking the rest of the world with it, all economies are at risk. Just when we need all our resources to focus on the economic challenges of climate change and peak oil, the US is risking its wealth on battles to dominate the world.
Perhaps the end will be a bankrupt US and another civil war between the have and the have nots.
An interesting offer
Fiona, as a matter of fact I have been drafting a new piece for Webdiary tentatively entitled The Fourth Transition. (Bit of a teaser ad there.) I hope to have it finished soon. I am always interested in new issues, and the Chalmers Johnson book looks interesting. Please email for a postal address, as for some reason best known to the powers that be, the name of our picturesque country road has been changed recently. Probably had something to do with money that had to be spent before the end of the financial year.
I am on a new computer as well, and have not saved your email address to it.
I can make no promises at this stage, mind. If you had something entitled Bathurst Burrs and Their Threat to Global Civilisation, I might be able to relate to it more easily, and in considerable detail. Plant by plant, so to speak.
Even better: Things That Can Go Wrong With a Spray Rig.
Or how about Heading for the Last Roundup (drum of, that is)?
Or maybe In the Burrs Till Santa Comes: How to Hoe Hoe Hoe Your Way to Christmas.
Any of the above would be most welcome.
Fiona: Heading for the Last Roundup has all sorts of interesting and historical connotations - shades of The Man from Snowy River... I shall send you my email address under separate cover, Ian.
Except for the librarians
I'd like to add my thanks to you, Fiona, for what I agree with Ian is an excellent conversation thread starter.
Reading it and then Hazel Rowley's essay in The Best Australian Essay 2007, I came across a passage that connects the two:
Fiona: Wow, Craig, what a powerful comment from Vonnegut. After all, he is one person who can speak of the mindlessness of war from the perspectives of the giver and the recipient... Yeah, Slaughterhouse 5 looks like good bedtime reading tonight.
Thanks ... and a review?
Ian, thank you. I agree: it is an important and interesting matter, although I guess that it won't be too long before accusations of being "anti-American" or - if that could be worse - "leftie" are hurled...
Meanwhile, if we could get a copy of Nemesis to you in the next few days, could you be persuaded to read it in your non-burr-hacking hours with the aim of a review for Webdiary?
An excellent piece of work
An excellent piece for a thread starter, Fiona.
'So my own hope is that -- if the American people do not find a way to choose democracy over empire -- at least our imperial venture will end not with a nuclear bang but a financial whimper. From the present vantage point, it certainly seems a daunting challenge for any President (or Congress) from either party even to begin the task of dismantling the military-industrial complex, ending the pall of "national security" secrecy and the "black budgets" that make public oversight of what our government does impossible, and bringing the president's secret army, the CIA, under democratic control. It's evident that Nemesis -- in Greek mythology the goddess of vengeance, the punisher of hubris and arrogance -- is already a visitor in our country, simply biding her time before she makes her presence known.'
The government of an imperialist country dictates to the people of another what government they will have. This, paradoxically, is compatible with parliamentary democracy in the imperial power, as evidenced by the fact that four major European states: Britain, France, Holland and Belgium, managed in the 19th and 20th centuries to combine parliamentary democracy at home with fervent opposition to it in their colonies. Interesting also is the fact that all of those nations had in their time been subjugated by an imperial power, or by a succession of them.
This apparent contradiction is made possible by the fact that, as a rule, the people who seek parliamentary office are not themselves democrats. One need look no further than to recent Australian parliamentary history for some prize examples of antidemocrats in elected office.
Interestingly, the Scandinavian countries, whose liberal and democratic traditions are quite old and stable, emerged from the European imperial period in better shape economically than the imperialist countries, showing that empire is not essential to domestic prosperity.
Of the US at present one can say that as an imperialist power it finds only limited success. An invasion of Iran would almost certainly stretch it well beyond its financial, military and political capacity, necessitating conscription and a rerun of the domestic issues brought to a head over Vietnam. I suspect that before the US gets involved in any more resource wars, dealing with climate change will involve political and economic imperatives that will divert much of its resources into the enormous restructuring required for that in the narrow time frame available.