Sunday, August 21, 2011

UPDATE ON LIBYA -- WHAT WE DON'T HEAR

I just found out, or was told, that the U..N. resolution allowing for NATO activity against Libya expires in September.  This would explain all the NATO bombing of Libya lately, the escalation.

It is a certainty that Russia and China would veto any continuance of this resolution as it has be violated and exploited far in excess of "protecting civilians".

Friday, August 19, 2011

Capitalism and the Mildde East



CAPITALISM AND THE MIDDLE EAST




          Perhaps it is time to reflect on what unifies policy, U.S. policy, and in fact western policy, in the Middle East, as it is confusing to so many people.  The major issue, surprisingly enough, is not religion, human rights, or even oil in itself.  It is capitalism.

          Capitalism is the accumulation of wealth and nothing more.  Usually this is done by selling things to others and hence the importance of markets.  However, it can also be done by charging interest on a loan.  As a matter of fact, if the capitalist interest could simply take the money outright, it would be quite happy.  Any sort of service or product involved is purely incidental to the main objective.  Very important to this system is growth for, without ‘growth’, there is no further accumulation.  This is almost a tautology.

          Socialism, on the other hand, is an interest in the welfare of society.  It is quite clear that there is a tremendous potential for conflict between these two systems.  While those living in a socialist system are quite happy to exist under it, the capitalist interests find Socialism as very contrary to their single objective and therefore as an obstacle to be eliminated or at least overcome. 

We can observe the so-called “Arab Spring,” which is another idiotic word as the phenomenon is not a season, and point out the U.S. and European reactions to it in these terms. 

Tunisia came first.  There was not much reaction to it other than some hand wringing about how poor the country has become and how the educated cannot find employment.  However, this is also quite true of the United States and other capitalist countries, so we did not react other than to show some mob scenes on television.  The leader went to Saudi Arabia (as did Idi Amin earlier) and that was pretty much the end of the story.  After all, Tunisia never interfered with anything; especially capitalism, and its leader enriched himself as much as possible before he left in a fine capitalist spirit.

Egypt followed in what is called the #Jan25 revolution.  Now the United States did not want any changes in Egypt because it followed our orders in respect to Israel and had an ill-advised treaty with Israel.  However, as the US makes quite a show of being “pro-democratic,” it had to allow things to play out without interference.  The demonstrators were also quite pragmatic as they embraced the Army, a huge capitalist enterprise (mainly real-estate and tourism), when it intervened.  Mubarack made a big show of never leaving Egypt, so he is still on trial although many still think he is running the country.  There have been few changes in policy since his departure and what there have been have all been pro-capitalistic.

The first country that we jumped on was Libya.  Libya was a socialist with free medical care[1], free education, a high literacy rate, fairly liberal attitudes towards women’s rights, and it is founded on the “Green Book,” written by Gaddafi, a book that reads much like a pamphlet from the Fabian society and could have been written by Sidney Webb, H. G. Wells, or Bernard Shaw.  It was also quite wealthy because of its oil.  That was not a problem, but the wealth from the oil was distributed to the people and that is always a problem.  It sets a bad example; rather, it becomes the crime of setting a good example.[2]  The fact that Gaddafi is a colorful character and says things that can be attacked is helpful to US interests as that is used to justify attacks against him. 

Perhaps the most obvious violation of human rights has happened in Bahrain and there is a revolution there.  Any doctor who treats anyone is punished.[3]  To assist them in maintaining their rule, Saudi Arabia sent troops to occupy the territory.  Bahrain sees no western interference as it is home to the United States’ Sixth Fleet (which is used to protect “liberty” another euphemism for Capitalism).  Furthermore, a majority of citizens of Bahrain would like to ally with Iran, another anti-capitalist force.

Yemen is another country seeing a great deal of “unrest”.  In fact, the people have tried to assassinate their leader, but merely wounded him.  He is currently recovering in, you guessed it, Saudi Arabia.  We like him because he allows us, even takes credit for, our drone attacks in what we call Al Qeada locations.  Bin Laden, as you know, led that organization, and now that we have killed him, we still need to attack them.  After all, who has come out in support of them or it?  Besides, there is not much money to be had from Yemen.

Syria is another country we love to hate because, after all, it is socialist as well.  Fortunately for it, it is not very wealthy and it does cooperate with us in dealing with Israel and torturing the occasional prisoner we send there.  So, we will not attack it militarily (it also has a fairly disciplined military), but we can make all sorts of statements about how horrible it is and that Assad has lost his legitimacy as a leader.[4]  Hillary, especially, enjoys asserting her manhood by verbally attacking him.  She does want more sanctions against him, but then we do not do any business with him so she is a bit at a loss.  

There are other examples, but only one thing unifies all Arabs and their leaders – they are in favor of a Palestinian state.  Israel demands, among many other things, the recognition of its right to exist AS A JEWISH STATE.  I know of no other religious state in that manner with the possible of the Vatican, one square mile in Rome, which has existed for centuries and has no nuclear weapons.

Earlier, Iraq was a horrible place as it allegedly was responsible for 9/11.  Now anyone remotely familiar with the Mideast knows full well that Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden hated each other.  Saddam would have gladly killed him if he had the opportunity.  We supported him when he was warring against Iran (an impediment to capitalism).  However, as he had universal free health care, free education, free housing, etc., he became an anti capitalist force so we needed an excuse to dispose of him.  We also wanted a military base there as he was no longer acting as our proxy.  Therefore, we invaded and occupy the country to this day.  We have promised to leave by December 31, unless they ask us to stay.  The more violence there, the more likely our servants there will be to ask us to stay, so there will be increasing violence. 

If we stray from the Mideast, we can see that this is a universal practice of capitalism.  Today, in lands to the south of us, Chavez is the leader of Venezuela and a Socialist, who therefore does a great deal to benefit his people.  It is for this reason that we carried out a coup against him and recognized immediately the new government.  However, pesky as he is, Chavez reads and learns from history.  He hid out for a day and then retook his place as leader.  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Co. were very unhappy with that.  He vastly helped his people, especially in the area of healthcare, mainly by importing many Cuban doctors.[5] 

If you ask anyone in South America about 9/11, they are most likely to think of Salvador Alliende, the elected leader of Chile.  He announced that he was a socialist or, even worse sounding, a communist, so Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, and others[6] overthrew him, killed him, and installed Pinochet in his place.  To this day, Kissinger dares not travel overseas openly because of a World Court indictment against him, the same one that got Pinochet into so much trouble a few years ago.

Nicaragua is another case in point.  Daniel Ortega was elected President and was a socialist, so Ronald Reagan[7] make a deal with Iran to deliver arms to Honduras where we had a mercenary army to overthrow Ortega.  Ortega won a lawsuit against the US at the World Court, but we do not recognize it (it is not pro-capitalist enough).  He was ousted, but is back again.

Oh yes, Cuba.  We have to go way back in time for this one.  Fidel Castro ousted Battista, our capitalist and mafia friendly puppet in Cuba.  He wanted to be friends with the United States at first, but things did not work out.  First, he nationalized our corporations.  Well, this is hardly Capitalism-friendly behavior.  He did offer to pay the owners the valuation, however.  They said that the property was worth far more than the listing.  He agreed and would pay their requested amount, provided they pay the back taxes at that rate.[8]  They refused, so he just took them.  That led to the Bay of Pigs and his alliance with the Soviet Union.

It is no wonder, then, that Chavez choose him as a friend.  He also gave Obama one of Noam Chomsky’s books that explains all of this far better than I am doing here, but Obama didn’t read it, or so I am led to believe.

One final observation: for years, Al-Jazeera has covered all of the middle east very well and thus been a target for the capitalist states.  It is now available in English, fairly easily, and even Hillary Clinton has praised it.  It is no secret that its integrity has declined and many staff have resigned.

   


         
         



[1] And it is obviously a good one as the man set free from Scotland with only six motnhs to live has survived almost four years now.
[2] He was also evil enough to support the Irish Liberation movement.
[3] This also happens in capitalist countries, but they are simply deprived of part of their income.  In Bahrain, they are incarcerated and tortured.
[4] Assad, an opthamologist, is reported to have said that this is unfair talk about his mother.
[5] Remember Cuba?  More about that soon.
[6] Notably, Coca-Cola and the US phone company.
[7] Also know as Ronnie Ray-Gun.
[8] Has anyone ever told you that he went to law school?  Also, if the New York Yankees had signed him as a pitcher, all this could have been avoided.  But live and not learn.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Coming -- The Middle East

We are asking our readers to bear with us.  We are trying to put together a unified commentary on the Middle-East and it will take a bit to get it all down.

Right now, preliminary results explain why Iraq, Lybia, and Syria are welcome targets while Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, among others, still have as much support as we can get away with.

Monday, August 08, 2011

Why not go back to the axis of evil?








We're a bit late to this story, but it's too good not to pass along: A Swedish man was arrested late last month, after he tried to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen.
The AP reported, yesterday:
Richard Handl said he had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his flat in southern Sweden when the police showed up.
He said on Wednesday he had always been interested in physics and chemistry and "just wanted to see if it was possible to split atoms at home".
Handl never tried to hide what he was doing. In fact, according to The Local, an English-language news site from Sweden, police went to his apartment after he contacted the Swedish Radiation Authority to ask if it was legal to build a nuclear reactor.
A picture posted on Richard's Reactor blog.
A picture posted on Richard's Reactor blog.
A picture posted on Richard's Reactor blog.


A picture posted on Richard's Reactor blog.
Handl even kept a blog about his adventures. He wrote about how he got radioactive Americium from a smoke detector and he posted a picture of a vial filled with glowing tritium.
In another post, he featured a picture of the remains of what he called "a meltdown" in his kitchen.
He wrote:
No, it not so dangerous. But I tried to cook Americium, Radium and Beryllium in 96% sulphuric-acid, to easier get them blended. But the whole thing exploded upp in the air...
In a post dated July 22, he writes that because of his arrest, his project had been cancelled.
Handl gave an interview to the Swedish Helsingborgs Dagblad (HD) newspaper. He was released from jail and told the paper he spent a little over $1,000 to build the reactor but he "got it going.
"I had just bought what was needed, so I do not know if it had worked," he told HD, according to a Google translation of the piece. "It's probably pretty hard to get it to work. But they took all my stuff, so now I'm done. Now I'll keep it at the theoretical level," he said.

A letter to a radio station:

To KCBS radio:

I listen to KCBS all the time with appreciation for all that you do, but this morning I was surprised and offended by an advertisement by “AJC,” which contained a highly distorted view of the Palestinians and Israelis, presenting the Palestinians as “the party of ‘No.’”  (There were valid reasons why the Palestinians could not agree to the peace proposals set forth by the American or Israeli governments.)   Most disturbing, however, was the fact that “AJC,” which sponsored the ad, was never identified.  I assume it was the “American Jewish Community” or something like that.  It was biased and bigoted, and under the guise of innocence, blamed the Palestinians – the victims of Occupation – for the lack of progress in terms of a just peace.  Identifying “AJC” would have at least allowed your listeners to know the bias of the “advertisement,” so that they could hear it in context.   It was the most subtle – disgusting - piece of deception I’ve heard in a long time, disguised, even, to make it sound like a KCBS editorial or news item.  I have been to Israel & Palestine many times – just returned from 18 days there in May, and continue to work with peacemakers on both sides.  Believe me, there is no truth to the AJD ad.   The American people already receive very narrow reporting from the Middle East, almost always slanted in Israel’s favor – much different news than the European community receives, along with the rest of the world, Arabs included.  Please don’t add to the misunderstanding and distortion.  Insist that your advertisers honestly identify themselves, not hide behind mere letters that most people would not recognize.  I’m surprised and disappointed that you let such a thing slip through.  I am copying this note to many interested people in the area, so they can be alert to any other deceptions in the advertisements of KCBS.  The nation’s oldest broadcasting station should be better than this.

The Reverend Ernest W. Cockrell
Episcopal Priest
San Jose, CA
I was a bit intrigued by the designation claimed as the country’s “oldest radio station” so I checked it.  The results are below.  The main reason for interest is that most stations started East of the Mississippi River and therefore start with a “W”.  I’ve also noticed a few west of the river that start with a W, but none East that start with a K.  This is important stuff, you know.

List of oldest radio stations

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  (Redirected from Oldest radio station)

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The title of oldest radio station is disputed by several in Europe (UK and Germany), and in the United States and Canada.
Several potential contenders for the title of "oldest radio station" are listed below, organized by sign-on date:

[edit] Stations

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.


Table of Experimental Radio Stations (AM/Mediumwave/Longwave)
Radio
Call-sign
(Original)
Radio
Call-sign
(Current)
City/Location
On Air
Broadcast Frequency
(AM Radio / FM Radio)




(Reginald Fessenden experimental alternator station)

December 21, 1906 (Audio tests from various locations from as early as 1900)
AM 50 kHz (approximately)
 ? W




9-BC, 9-XR, 9-BY, WOC-AM
1907

Class-B




FN/SJN/6XF/6XE/KQW/"San Jose"
1909, 1921 (officially granted experimental license as KQW, become commercial in 1921, and KCBS in 1949)
AM 740 kHz (Originally used 15 watts modulated with Carbon microphone)
Class-B




2XI
1915?
AM 810 kHz
Class-A




9ZP, 9CLS
1915–present
Various frequencies, 1060 kHz today
Class-B





1916
Unknown
Unknown




1916
AM 1020 kHz
75 watts (1916), Class-A (1920–present)




2RN/RTE (First radio studio)
April 24, 1916
morse code only (Despite this claimed by some to be "world's first broadcast" as transmission not aimed at specific target)
converted ship transmitter




December 4, 1916 (regular Morse code weather broadcasts; first voice broadcast in February 1919; regular programming January 1921)
AM 970 kHz
Class-B




(Experimental Czech tests)

Petřínská rozhledna (Petřín Lookout Tower), Prague, Czechoslovakia
October 28, 1919 (Experimental),
May 20, 1920
AM ??? kHz
 ?? kW




N/A
November 6, 1919 - November 11, 1924
N/A




December 1, 1919 - January 29, 2010
AM 940 kHz (Not original frequency). Considered by many Canadians to be "First scheduled broadcast station;" prior callsign CFCF stood for Canada's First, Canada's Finest.
Class-A (Clear channel)




2MT (Marconi experimental station with a regular news service)

February 23, 1920
AM 107 kHz
15 kW




LOR
August 27, 1920
Continued daily commercial broadcast up to 1997
AM 857KHz[1]
5 Watts initially, 500 Watts by 1921




6ADZ
Summer 1920, granted license 1922
AM 930 kHz
Class-B




October 27, 1920 (May have aired as 8ZZ that night)
AM 1020 kHz
Class-A (Clear channel)




August 20, 1920
AM 950 kHz
Class-B




WRR
August 4, 1921 (Unlicensed broadcasts date back to 1920)
AM 1310 kHz





KYW
Chicago, Illinois (1921)[2]
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1934)[3]
Cleveland, Ohio (1956)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1965)[4]
November 11, 1921
AM 560 kHz, 570 kHz, 1020 kHz (Chicago)[5]
AM 1020 kHz (Philadelphia)
AM 1100 kHz (Cleveland))
AM 1060 kHz (Philadelphia)
Class-A (Clear channel)




January 13, 1922
AM 770 kHz
Class-D




February, 1922[6], some sources cite March 18, 1922
AM 833 kHz
Class-A




March 17, 1922
AM 610 kHz
Class-B




4XD
December 18, 1920, License granted April 10, 1922
AM 1110 kHz
Class-A




May 11, 1922
1 hour daily tests on 350 metres (857 kHz) AM. Full service opened: November 14, 1922





May 17, 1922
Test TXs: 350 metres (857 kHz) AM. Full service opened Nov 15, 1922: 375 meters





DN
October 4, 1922
originally AM 1431 kHz, now AM 1305 kHz and FM 99.8 MHz





9BT
October 7, 1922
now FM 101.9 MHz





November 15, 1922
Not known





November 25, 1922
AM 570 kHz





December 3, 1922
AM 580 kHz
Class-B




1923 (experimental), 1925 (official launch)
 ?
 ? W




WKBV-AM
William Knox BrookVille
WKBV-AM
1923
AM 1000 kHz 24/7
Class B




Regular Czech service - Radiojournal
May 18, 1923
"Long wave"
292 kHz (1025 m)




Radio Journal de la Tour Eiffel
(Eiffel Tower Newsreel)
1921
"Long wave"
115 kHz (2600 m)
N/A




N/A
June 15, 1924
originally AM 1500 kHz (200m)
later AM 1223 kHz (245 m)
currently AM 1116 kHz (269 m)
various




N/A
Summer 1925 - 1927 (experimental), license granted March 1928, Regular broadcast from November 1, 1928
"Long wave"
N/A




September, 1927
AM 630 kHz
Class-B




JODK
1927
AM 711 kHz





GOW, ZBW
1928






1XE, 1CDP
off the air - later as WGI (and WARC until 1925)
mid 1920
 ? - later on 833 kHz






1913; 1920







1916








And here is a longish piece on Anti-Semitism, a very strange term, originally posted on the Daily Kos and reprinted in the Jewish Voice for Peace.

It is worth noting that the editor of the Daily Koz was banned from MSNBC for a failure to apologize to Joe Scarbourough, or however he spells it.  “Rabbit Ears” Joe is our new name for him.  Keith has him back on Countdown at Current TV.

 **********************
Guide:

Main article: Nuclear weapon design
There are two basic types of nuclear weapons: those which derive the majority of their energy from nuclear fission reactions alone, and those which use fission reactions to begin nuclear fusion reactions that produce a large amount of the total energy output.

Fission weapons

All existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is exclusively from fission reactions are commonly referred to as atomic bombs or atom bombs (abbreviated as A-bombs). This has long been noted as something of a misnomer, however, as their energy comes specifically from the nucleus of the atom.
In fission weapons, a mass of fissile material (enriched uranium or plutonium) is assembled into a supercritical mass—the amount of material needed to start an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction—either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method) or by compressing a sub-critical sphere of material using chemical explosives to many times its original density (the "implosion" method). The latter approach is considered more sophisticated than the former and only the latter approach can be used if the fissile material is plutonium.
A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of less than a ton of TNT upwards of 500,000 tons (500 kilotons) of TNT.[8]

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

The Washington Rip-off


          This is a very confusing and irritating time for almost everybody except major corporations. 

          To understand what is going on requires an understanding of Macroeconomics.  Unfortunately, the only people who think they understand that are Micro-Economists who do not know anything about reality, history, psychology, or any other discipline.  They are happiest with their computer programs and formulae and do not want to be bothered with such irrelevant concerns as humanity or the like.

          We have already posted enough information on the subject.  You can go to the main site at http://www.absurdtimes.blogspot.com and search for Stiglitz, Krugman, Klein, or Nobel Prize, etc. and find all you need there.  Wikipedia also covers it fairly well.

          So, to avoid repetition, here are a few bits of interest.  The first is from our past illustrator, the second are some profound sayings by Abert Camus [KA-MOO].   Finally, a discussion on the coup of our government made official in the name of corporate interests and a further victory against the wisdom of the FDR administration.  The discussion features a near neighbor of mine whom I’ve never met, so close, in fact, that I could probably drive to his house in fifteen minutes and yet, not once, ever, has he invited me to dinner.  This is really a thankless undertaking.  You can visit him at Michael-Hudson.com. 

          A few things worth noting: the entire debt limit discussion had to do with paying bills for things we already did.  Nothing in it raised taxes from corporations or the very rich.  Finally,  Joe Biden said that Obama was prepared to use the 14th Amendment if nothing else worked.  This last is enough to abandon him.

          I will comment as we go along, trying to use a different font.


          So, our illustrator sent the following:

Hi, I just got another call from the DNC- this time a genteel sounding
woman - We want to thank you for your support and let me just tell you
quickly what is going on now.- I interrupted to say- I am not
supporting the Democratic party anymore - (Oh!)- You are all a bunch
of corporate whores. The only difference is the Republicans are
expensive call girls and you are cheap street walkers. Oh, well have a
nice day, she says. I say- I hope you got all that down, (click on her
end).  I don't think so. Must be a new category for them.
If you want to put this out there for me, maybe they will stop wasting
money calling me- but I doubt it.

After that, I had sent out the song rendition of DILLIGAF by Michael “Bloody” Wilson and got this in return:

And then:



Here's what I see; Obama caved before so the Reptiles know he will
always cave if they stonewall long enough and spout their absurdist
philosophy with Fux news and Rush Limbo backing them. So I think Obama
will lose and lose big on re-election. So the only small hope is if
congress goes Demogogic and they play the stonewall game on whoever is
the Reptile Prez- which means 4 more years of inactivity. But you can
bet the Rep will be more forceful and do the interum decision thing
and every little nuance Obama was too good to do. Obama used to say
it's not about me, it's about you. But after election it all became
about him and nothing about me. So really, what's the good of 4 more
years of him? Let the shit hit the fan and maybe these imbecile voters
will wake up. Only it may be too late and what choice will they have
anyway?  It's a lose, lose proposition. But I can't say I don't give a
fuck about it.

At first, these seems contradictory, but they are not.  The common thread is that there is an enormous disappointment and anger with our politicians.  To quote one of these politicians, a D senator from Florida, “The politicians won and American lost.”  This pretty much sums up the country’s opinion of the whole mess.  Or, to quote another famous American patriot, Willie Nelson, “Americans are worried about the roof over their heads, not the ceiling on the debt.”



By the time this issue is over, we have had it with taking these jokers seriously.  After all, they only run our lives accourding to the wishes of large corporations.


The following are a number of thoughts I have often had myself, but I was surprised to have them sent to me by one of you and that they had already been written.  I realize that just about every thought has been uttered already, but it is amazing to seem them all at once:


An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
    --Albert Camus 


Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous amounts of energy merely to be normal.
    --Albert Camus 


Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.
    --Albert Camus 


He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hopes for the human condition is a fool.
    --Albert Camus 


Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
    --Albert Camus 


The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
    --Albert Camus 


When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid, it can't last long." But though a war may be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting.
    --Albert Camus 


The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.
    --Albert Camus 


It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.
    --Albert Camus 


The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.
    --Albert Camus 


It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
    --Albert Camus 


Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future--and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.
    --Albert Camus 


We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love--first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
    --Albert Camus 


The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
    --Albert Camus 


Freedom is nothing else but the chance to do better.
    --Albert Camus 


At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
    --Albert Camus 


If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
    --Albert Camus 


We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives...inside ourselves.
    --Albert Camus 


And here is/are the final word(s) on the subject:


After Months of Partisan Wrangling, Wall Street & Pentagon Emerge Victorious on Debt Deal

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After months of a bitterly partisan stalemate, the U.S. House of Representatives has voted 269 to 161 in favor of raising the federal borrowing limit and avoiding a default on the national debt. The final count showed 174 Republican ayes, with Democrats split evenly—95 on each side. The vote came just hours before a Department of Treasury deadline that potentially would have seen the United States run out of cash and default for the first time in its history. The bill is expected to be approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Obama today. The deal includes no new tax revenue from wealthy Americans, provides no additional stimulus for the lagging economy, and will cut more than $2.1 trillion in government spending over 10 years, while extending the borrowing authority of the Treasury Department. The debt deal was a victory of sorts for the Pentagon. Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, it trims just $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade. We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, and Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. [includes rush transcript]
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Guests:
William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of the book Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.
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AMY GOODMAN: After months of a bitterly partisan stalemate, the U.S. House of Representatives has voted in favor of raising the federal borrowing limit and avoiding a default on the national debt. The final count showed 174 Republican ayes and 66 Republican nays, with Democrats split evenly, 95 on each side. The vote came just hours before a Treasury deadline that potentially would have seen the U.S. run out of cash and default for the first time in its history. The bill is expected to be approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Obama today.
The deal includes no new tax revenue from wealthy Americans and will provide no additional stimulus for the lagging economy. It will cut more than $2.1 trillion in government spending over 10 years while extending the borrowing authority of the Treasury Department. The deal will also create a new joint congressional committee to recommend broad changes in spending to reduce the deficit.
The compromise deeply angered right-wing Republicans and progressive Democrats alike. Republicans were upset the bill did not further curtail government spending. Meanwhile, both the Progressive Caucus and the Black Caucus rejected the deal for placing the burden of deficit reduction on poor people. Democratic Congress Member Jim McGovern of Massachusetts said, quote, "I did not come to Washington to force more people into poverty." Congressional Black Caucus chair Emanuel Cleaver blasted the final debt deal on his Twitter account, writing, quote, "This deal is a sugar-coated Satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see."
Several other senators said they were struggling with how to vote but suggested if it became a matter of their yes vote or default, they would back the measure. The White House dispatched Vice President Biden to lobby congressional liberals, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also urged her colleagues to come off the fence.
REP. NANCY PELOSI: It’s hard to believe that we are putting our best foot forward with the legislation that comes before us today. I’m not happy with it, but I’m proud of some of the accomplishments contained in it, and that’s why I am voting for it. Please think of what could happen if we defaulted. Please, please, please come down in favor of, again, preventing the collateral damage from reaching our seniors and our veterans.
AMY GOODMAN: Enough Democrats and Republicans reluctantly joined forces to see the proposed legislation through by a vote of 269 to 161 last night.
In a stunning emotional moment during the extended roll call, Democratic Congress Member Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona received a standing ovation as she voted yes on the bill, her first vote since a near-fatal shooting in Tucson, Arizona, in January.
REP. NANCY PELOSI: Her presence here in the chamber, as well as her service throughout her entire service in Congress, brings honor to this chamber. We are all privileged to call her colleague, some of us very privileged to call her friend. Throughout America, there isn’t a name that stirs more love, more admiration, more respect, more wishing for our daughters to be like her, than name of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Thank you, Gabby, for joining us today.
AMY GOODMAN: Congress Member Gabrielle Giffords was among the 95 Democrats who voted for the bill.
White House spokesman Jay Carney called the deal "a victory for the American people." The debt deal was also a victory of sorts for the Pentagon. Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims only $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had expected over the next decade. Speaker John Boehner had met earlier with the House Armed Services Committee to assuage alarm about the potential spending cuts from the Pentagon.
For more, we’re joined in studio by William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
We’re also joined by Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Michael Hudson, what about this vote? What does it mean?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, it’s an anti-stimulus package, primarily. The feeling among the Democrats that I’ve spoken to, I’ve never seen them so depressed. And what depresses them so much is that the irony is it could probably only be passed under a Democratic administration. Yves Smith has called it a "Nixon goes to China moment in reverse." And that’s because only a Republican could have made an opening to a communist country and not be accused of communism. Only a Democratic president could have drawn along a Democratic Congress in supporting a law that is going to essentially ad tax deflation to the debt deflation we already have in the economy.
AMY GOODMAN: What does that mean, "tax deflation to the debt deflation"?
MICHAEL HUDSON: That means that the government is going to be sucking money out of the economy. Normally, government is supposed to provide the economy with money, provide it with purchasing power. By government running a deficit, this is what, traditionally, for 5,000 years, in every country, has supplied money. And now the government isn’t going to do it. There’s a kind of junk economic belief that governments shouldn’t run a deficit, and yet it’s by running a deficit that an economy expands. That’s what injects the purchasing power in it. That’s why a few years ago Mr. Obama had the $700 billion stimulus package. The idea was government spending will stimulate employment and make it more than it otherwise would have been, and you stop the unemployment.
Right now, the economy is shrinking. It needs some kind of spending to overcome the shrinking. And since the government can’t supply the credit, that means that the economy is going to have to rely on commercial banks. And they’re going to charge interest. And it means that all of the growth that does occur in the economy is basically going to be paid to Wall Street, not to the people who produce the wealth, not to industry or its employees. The economy is going to shrink. Industrial corporations will shrink. Real estate will shrink. And the government isn’t doing anything to prevent this shrinkage into a deeper and deeper recession.
AMY GOODMAN: So, why did Obama go this route? What were his alternatives?
MICHAEL HUDSON: He had many—
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the relationship that was touted between Obama and Boehner, ultimately people saying it was the Tea Party that broke with Boehner, and so he just couldn’t follow through for Obama?
MICHAEL HUDSON: It wasn’t the Tea Party. Suppose that a Republican were president, or George Bush. If George Bush would have been president, or another Republican, McCain, and would have proposed this, you would have had the whole Democratic Congress voting against it. And you would have a lot of progressive Republicans voting against it. They’re not going to vote against a Democratic president. And in fact, that’s why it was called a "Nixon goes to China in reverse." Only a Democrat could have imposed so deflationary, so negative, regressive a policy. And that’s why the Democrats felt so frustrated when they were split, as you pointed out, 95 to 95. They felt that they had to support the government.
The reason that they’re disappointed is there were many alternatives. All last week, while all of this fight was building up, you didn’t have a squiggle in the bond market. Wall Street was not at all worried that there was going to be any problem at all. So, as far as the real monetary economy is concerned, there wasn’t a problem. Obama could have invoked the 14th Amendment, saying that the government is going to always pay the debts, it can’t be questioned. He could have issued a $1 trillion platinum coin, worth maybe $50, to the Federal Reserve and retired the government debt. There were all sorts of technicalities that he could have done. He didn’t do any of them. And that’s because, as he explained to the people last week in his speech, he really believes in running a budget surplus. He believes that that’s good for the economy. And that’s the tragedy of all this, that it’s not good.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Obama. Unveiling the deal on Sunday night, he said the agreement was borne out of a need to compromise.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Now, is this the deal I would have preferred? No. I believe that we could have made the tough choices required, on entitlement reform and tax reform, right now, rather than through a special congressional committee process. But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year. Most importantly, it will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of America.
AMY GOODMAN: Your assessment of what President Obama said and how this could have been averted? I mean, there was a person, a journalist at a press conference in December, when he went along with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, saying, why didn’t you attach this, a guarantee of a debt ceiling, if you were going to do that at the time? And Obama said he wasn’t afraid.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the real question is the reverse. How did these tax issues get attached to a debt ceiling issue? Since 1963, the debt ceiling has been raised every eight months, on the average. It’s just automatically been raised. Nobody in any of these 83 times has ever tried to attach a policy rider to the debt ceiling. It’s always been like an accountant just signing off on everything. This is the first time that a debt ceiling has ever been linked to tax policy. That’s never been done before. So there didn’t have to be a compromise. Mr. Obama could have simply said, "Tax policy is tax policy. If you want to argue over that, spend a year in doing that. But a debt ceiling is something all by itself."
AMY GOODMAN: But clearly, people already saw that this might be an issue, because the Tea Party Republican activists were already talking about it.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Yeah. I think that Mr. Obama actually didn’t anticipate that it would be made an issue. He was thinking like a lawyer and thinking this is how it’s normally done, there’s no connection. What he could have done is gone to the people and explained why he believed that. He could have said, "Look, I didn’t anticipate it, because this is outrageous. This has never been done, and I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to let the Republicans link. I don’t have to compromise, because this isn’t the point to compromise." Compromise is when the Senate and the House debate a tax law, but this isn’t the time for debate. This is the time to approve what the Congress has already agreed to spend.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break, then come back. Michael Hudson is with us, author of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. We’ll also be speaking with Bill Hartung of the New America Foundation. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guests are Bill Hartung of the Center for International Policy and Michael Hudson of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, an economist. I want to turn to who won and who lost. Now, let’s be clear on what this commission is and what’s going to happen to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Michael Hudson?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The commission is going to be composed of three people, suggested by the House leader, Republican and Democratic leaders each, and the Senate Republican and Democratic leaders. The Republican—six Republican appointees to the commission are already pledged no taxes, and especially no closing of loopholes, nothing that will increase the money paid by their campaign contributors to the Republican Party. We don’t know who the Democratic appointees are going to be. But in the last commission that Mr. Obama appointed, the deficit reduction commission, they were all Democrats who were in favor of cutting Social Security. They were Wall Street Democrats, or what used to be called the Democratic Leadership Council. So the worry is that the Democrats are going to push their own tax cutters and that really there’s not going to be very much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in what they propose for Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Obama had threatened that there wouldn’t be enough money to send out Social Security checks, and that simply isn’t true. The Social Security Administration has its own holdings of Treasury bills, just like an individual would hold their own savings. Of course they could have cashed in the Treasury bills.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the credit agencies, the rating agencies?
MICHAEL HUDSON: They have played a very bad role in this. Here’s what happened. Under the Frank—the bank reform—
AMY GOODMAN: With Congress Member Frank.
MICHAEL HUDSON: —the credit rating agencies were changed. The government was very angry at them for giving AAA ratings on junk, and their defense in courts saying, "Well, yes, we gave AAA ratings on junk mortgages, but they’re legally only opinions." So the Dodd-Frank bill said, "You rating agencies are liable for your opinions." Well, that—the rating agencies said, "We want to make money on selling our opinions, and we don’t want to have to take any responsibility for them, so we’re going to get you. We’re going to threaten to downgrade the U.S. government, until you say, 'OK, we don't want to hear your risk assessments anymore, because you’re hurting us.’"
But the proper response is to say, look, the rating agencies are just out to make money selling their opinions that are up for sale. The rating agencies are trying to get brownie points with Wall Street for opposing Social Security, for essentially yelling fire when there isn’t any fire. And at the same time, they want to weaken the Dodd-Frank bill so that they don’t have to ever be liable for making a warning about a country and they can continue to go back to giving AAA ratings for junk, which is how they make their money.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung of the Center for International Policy, what happened to the Pentagon in this? They were actually surprised in the other direction, that they did so well.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: They did reasonably well. President Obama, as you mentioned, had talked about $400 billion in cuts over about a decade. That would have allowed the Pentagon to still grow with inflation, so that wasn’t even a real cut. So this is less than that, at $350 billion, and it counts other things. They can cut veterans’ benefits. They can cut the Department of Energy. They can cut international affairs. They can cut Homeland Security. So even down at $350 billion, the Pentagon will not bear all of it. And that was John Boehner’s contribution to the package, was to protect the Pentagon and that larger basket of agencies.
AMY GOODMAN: How powerful were the military contractors, the lobbyists, in what has taken place, in the final deal?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, they weren’t too vocal about it, because they didn’t want to look like special interests, but they worked on the inside. They had Boehner on their side. They had Buck McKeon, the head of the House Armed Services Committee, whose biggest contributor is Lockheed Martin, who’s got big military facilities in his district. They had people like Randy Forbes, whose district is near the Newport News Shipbuilding complex, which builds attack submarines and aircraft carriers. So they used their influence to get people on the inside, their allies in the House, to push their agenda.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you, Michael Hudson, how the debt ceiling was put into place to begin with? In fact, it was linked to the military, right?
MICHAEL HUDSON: It was put in in 1917 during World War I, and the idea was to prevent President Wilson from committing even more American troops and money to war. In every country of Europe—England, France—the parliamentary control over the budget was introduced to stop ambitious kings or rulers from waging wars. So the whole purpose was to limit a government’s ability to run into debt for war, because that was the only reason that governments ran into debt. Almost all governments, for hundreds of years, have been in balance in their domestic spending. War is what pushes up debt, as it has done in the United States.
Now, the irony of all this is that three weeks ago you had Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul trying to stop the Libyan—
AMY GOODMAN: Democrat and Republican.
MICHAEL HUDSON: —the Libyan war by introducing a rule to deny Mr. Obama the funding to continue to wage war on Libya and to enforce the War Powers Act to the president, to say, look, the president can’t go to war for more than three months without getting congressional approval. Mr. Obama said we’re not at a war. When we bomb people, that’s not a war; only if our people are killed while we’re bombing them are we at war. And none of our people are getting killed. Bombing people is not war. And then you had, all of a sudden, this fortuitous budget deficit issue coming up, and that untracked the whole discussion of limiting the budget from the discussion about war, where Mr. Kucinich and his Republican colleague had tried to prevent the American military expansion in the Near East. That worries them, and it worries a lot of the Congresspeople, too, but somehow, despite the fact that war is always the main cause of budget deficits, that wasn’t an issue in this time around.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung, your response to that, and also, the whole issue of how—the kind of lobbying power the Pentagon itself has, not just the military contractors, and when there are cuts, where those cuts go, who is hurt most?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, first of all, I think on the issue of war spending driving the debt, that’s absolutely true. If you look at Korea, you look at Vietnam, you look at the Bush administration, along with the tax cuts, that’s been the huge driver of the deficit. So it’s ironic now we’re dealing with that deficit without touching the Pentagon, essentially.
In terms of the distribution of cuts, if you’re giving more money to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, it’s going to come from feeding programs, from housing programs, from administration of justice, from environmental protection. The whole rest of the budget, other than Social Security and a few entitlement programs, is discretionary. The Pentagon gets 56 cents on the dollar out of that already. And if they suffer almost no cuts, they’ll be a bigger part of the discretionary budget when this is all over.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, in terms of overall what someone wants their nation to be, when you are a first-rate military power—and there’s no question that the U.S. is the most powerful military on earth—but other parts of your country—the economy, the health levels of the people, all of the different aspects that make a country great—are much lower, are second-rate, isn’t this a problem, when it comes to how you approach problems, the first—your first point of attack will be to attack, because it’s your strongest way to deal, Michael Hudson and Bill?
MICHAEL HUDSON: This is what the whole fight of classical economics in the 18th and 19th century was all about. Parliamentary reform was intended to stop the power of the kings and the aristocracy from going to war, and to refocus the economy on developing national industrial power, national power. For hundreds of years, this was the essence of economics. And all of a sudden, this is no longer being discussed now. The war is—ever since the Vietnam War, the military spending has been deindustrializing the American economy. If you have a Pentagon contract—a Pentagon contract is cost-plus. The higher they spend on airplanes, on armaments, the more money they get. So you have them engineering not to cut costs, but to maximize costs, because that’s how they make their profit. So you have a warping of American engineering, American technology, towards the military, and that’s why the industrial core has been shifting to Asia, because they don’t have this military. The economy is being sacrificed to the military. And that’s somehow evaded discussion here. And yet, in Europe, for hundreds of years, this is what economics was all about.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, it’s interesting.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: This year is the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex speech. He talked about the need for a balanced economy, for a healthy population. Essentially, he’s to the left of Barack Obama on these issues. And—
AMY GOODMAN: The general turned president.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Of course, a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: And we’re spending twice as much on the military as we did when Eisenhower gave that speech. So, we’ve got a huge imbalance in our budget. You can’t really defend your country if people are sick, people aren’t healthy, people aren’t educated. So it’s kind of undermining the roots of the ability to defend the country, going forward, to throw money at weapons makers, to throw money at this huge military base infrastructure that isn’t needed for defense proper of the country. So, it’s completely out of balance, and we’re going to pay a price for that if we don’t turn that around.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Bill Hartung, author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, now at the Center for International Policy. And also, Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His website Michael-Hudson.com.



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