Natural Born Killers, Afghan War Vets

Newspapers across the globe are starting to elaborate on the outrageous criminal actions of the newest batch of natural born killers that the US military has produced.  Gruesome details of drug induced homicide, random killings, and the dismembering of Afghan civilians are coming to light.

The Boston Globe has a short summary in its editorial commentary:

SIX YEARS after the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, the Army has another heinous atrocity on its hands in Afghanistan. It has charged five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division with killing three innocent Afghan civilians earlier this year. Moreover, the Army has to answer for the fact that a member of the soldiers’ platoon contacted his father in the United States about his concerns after the first killing and the father did all he could to alert the Army to what had happened — to no avail. The Army must proceed with court hearings, but it should also investigate why the father’s initial warning did not set off an inquiry that could have kept the second and third killings from occurring.

I have already discussed this matter in two previous blog entries (here and here), in which I made comparisons to similar conduct by the Americans in Iraq and Vietnam, as well as previous atrocities committed by the Soviets during their occupation of Afghanistan.

The NY Times has an excerpt of a conversation, from a military interview of one of the main defendant's in the case, Specialist Jeremy N. Morlock:

“[Sgt. Calvin Gibbs] kind of placed me and Winfield off over here so we had a clean line of sight for this guy and, you know, he pulled out one of his grenades, an American grenade, popped it, throws the grenade, and tells me and Winfield: ‘All right, wax this guy. Kill this guy, kill this guy,’ ” Specialist Morlock said in the video.

Referring to the Afghan, the investigator asked: “Did you see him present any weapons? Was he aggressive toward you at all?”

Specialist Morlock replied: “No, not at all. Nothing. He wasn’t a threat.”

It's pretty obvious why only a few outlets within America have sought to present this story until this point.  The recklessness and complete lack of ethics in which these soldiers have acted is not an aberration; rather, it is a symptom of the rot and moral degeneracy that the Af-Pak/Iraq wars have instilled in America's newest recruits to active combat.  Does anyone actually believe that this whole war is somehow ever going to end well for either the people in Afghanistan or America?  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, said today that "America was never going to leave Afghanistan."  If that is true, the intentional and unintentional murder of Afghan civilians by US troops will never end either.

Fat and Lazy: It's Not Just for Americans Any More!

As everyone knows America is not a healthy country.  For example, French fries and ketchup are considered vegetables, and 68% of the population is overweight, with a scale tipping 34% of the overall population obese.  Yet because of America's infatuation with sports, athleticism, and that California "good-look" epitomized on television and the movies, exercise venues and sports clubs are an ubiquitous part of the cultural landscape.

In France, the idea of a thin European smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee or wine still impregnates the imagination.  In 2004, a book was written by Mireille Guiliano titled, French Women Don't Get Fat.  However, the idea of a svelte and upwardly mobile Frenchwomen appears to be more fiction than fact, if one considers what the LA Times had to say back in 2007:

Already, 42% of the French population is either overweight or obese, according to the National Institute for Health and Medical Research, known by its French initials, Inserm. The rate among children and adolescents has quadrupled in the last 25 years and has been growing almost as fast as in the United States.

"If you look at the statistical curve, we're now where the U.S. was in the 1970s," said Olivier Andrault, a food expert with the French Union of Consumers. "It means if we do nothing, in a few years the French will be as fat as Americans."

Like every other Western society, France is seeing an unprecedented acceleration in its health care costs.  The increased girth of the population has put pressure not just on waistbands, but also on the finances of the country.  An obvious solution to the health of its citizenry is for the French to migrate towards the workout routines or fitness lifestyle as seen in America.  However, for both cultural and economic reasons, this solution do not appear likely.

"It appears to me that more people are sitting in cafes smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee than working out ... the French don't see fitness as a lifestyle," says American-born fitness consultant Fred Hoffman, who has lived in Paris for 21 years.

Only 5.4 percent of French people belonged to a health club in 2008, according to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, compared with 9.5 percent for Italy, 11.9 percent for the United Kingdom and 16.6 percent for Spain.

For a society that invented the French kiss and a noon time excursions between the sheets, it strikes me as odd that the French don't like to sweat.  I've had others too, exclaim that they didn't like sweating.  Obviously no likes perspiring in public and looking like a big fatty, but the excuse seems terribly lame given the upside.

A Reuters article describes the economic and additional societal reasons why fitness clubs don't appear to taking hold.  Vive la Fatties!

Penalizing Competence in the US Military

Tom Ricks has posted a couple of articles on Lt. Col Michael Mori.  According to Mori, the Pentagon was unhappy with his defense of an Australian enemy combatant at Guantanamo in 2003 and thus delayed his promotion for three years.

During the trial period, Mori said that the tribunal system was fundamentally flawed and that the government did not want to give his client a fair trial.  Marine Corps Times quotes Mori as stating to an interviewer, “I think his case has become political and … the first military commissions can’t be acquittals. They couldn’t afford that.” 

Today, he is now suing the Navy for what he claims is capricious treatment toward him for zealously executing his duty.

A followup commentary by a former JAG in Ricks' blog underlies the absolute nonsense that the military is the best setting for evaluating the criminality of foreign combatants.

I don't know anything about Mori's case, but I do know that if you want a long and successful career as an Army lawyer, you'd better remember "you are an Army officer first, and a defense counsel second." In other words, don't rock the boat. In fact, I would never advise a JAG to accept a defense counsel post if they hoped for a long career. Too much institutional bias against the necessary work that they are forced to do on behalf of their accused.

Elizabeth Warren Takes the Reigns of CFPB

There has been an enormous amount of talk regarding the appointment, by President Obama, of Prof. Elizabeth Warren towards the establishment of the Consumer Financial and Protection Bureau (CFPB).  The new agency will have a budget in excess of $400 million annually and its policies will not be subject to presidential oversight.  The appointment bypasses the contentious issue of having her stand at the sidelines waiting for Republican opponents to permit her audience and confirmation within their royal chambers.
 
The crony-capitalists, financial sector lobbyists, and the banks have for the past year been leveling aspersions about Prof. Warren and her scathing criticisms of their business practices. The US Chamber of Commerce engaged in a multi-million dollar campaign last year to scuttle the idea of a CFPB from being even discussed in Congress. Indentured corporate servant Sen. Gregg Judd (R-NH) recently stated that it was his, "concern... that she would use the agency for the purpose of promoting social justice." The crony-capitalists and belligerents who were midwives to the great recession, refuse to cede any ground, even on the scorched earth they created.

Progressives and liberals on the other hand, have been touting her sensible, people-first approach to finance and banking regulations and as an ideal candidate to run the newly minted CFPB. The NY Times ran a piece in their business section underlying the grassroots feelings about Ms. Warren:

“The best way to explain it is that she speaks truth to power,” Ms. Abaunza continued. “She speaks about how people have been ripped off in a way that everybody understands. Although she is a Harvard professor, she doesn’t speak in an elitist way. She is a grandmother. She is from Oklahoma. I like the fact that she says ‘golly.’ She engenders this trust immediately. Because she is very honest.”

Paul Krugman outlined the underlying political landscape regarding the Warren appointment in his NY Times opinion piece :

The debate over financial reform, in which the G.O.P. has taken the side of the bad guys, should be a political winner for Democrats. Much of the reform, however, is deeply technical...

But protecting consumers, ensuring that they aren’t the victims of predatory financial practices, is something voters can relate to. And choosing a high-profile consumer advocate to lead the agency providing that protection ... is the natural move, both substantively and politically.

Simon Johnson, former IMF Chief Economist, also believes that there is enormous long-term value to Prof. Warren's appointment for the Obama administration:

the president finally has an adviser who understands the financial sector and who has healthy skepticism about its intentions and actions.  As we documented at length in 13 Bankers, too many top policy people – both in this administration and all its recent predecessors – have been overly inclined to accommodate the interests of finance, particularly the big banks.  In this regard, putting Ms. Warren directly into the White House with the highest possible level of access is exactly the right thing to do – much better, for example, than making her purely a Treasury appointment.

This is truly one of the more intelligent decisions the Obama Administration has made in a long time.  Consumers, average citizens, and a vast number of people -on both sides of the political divide- who are fed-up with the crony-capitalists manipulating the legislative process to their explicit benefit, all consider this to be a sound decision.   Hopefully, this is more than a token attempt to placate the Democratic Party's liberal base.   Given the departure of the Larry Summers, the Obama administration will have the opportunity to jettison its Clintonesqe neo-liberal policies and engage in sensible and progressive practices that will be in the interest of all Americans and not just the folks on Wall St.

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Additional blog entries and links on Elizabeth Warren can be found below:

• Warren discussing with Rachel Maddow, the benefits of a CFPB: here
• Warren analyzing problems with the US economy and the banking sector: here, here, and here.
• Warren sparring with CNBC hosts and Jack Welch on the virtues of the CFPB: here

Quote of the Day: On Pat Tillman's Death

The one thing that’s definitely true is there’s certainly a cover-up. I mean, I wouldn’t speak on whether they had some CIA operative waiting in a bush to shoot his ass … I think it’s criminal for sure.

- Richard Tillman, brother of killed soldier Pat Tillman, about his brother’s death. Real Time with Bill Maher

I too have written my opinion of Pat Tillman's death and of the documentary movie that came out last month in cinemas across North America. It should be the duty and moral obligation of every American to understand who Pat Tillman was and under what circumstances he died.  None should ignore his death or that of many other soldiers, during the Bush years, who enlisted to serve their nation, but were used as political pawns in the geo-political machinations of the neo-conservatives and American military-industrial complex.

Quote of the Day: Now the Rich are Victims!

We don't hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, compared Obama's tax hike to "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries.

- Bill Maher on "New Rule: Rich People Who Complain About Being Vilified Should Be Vilified "

On the whole, who should pay for the Bush tax cuts, two failed and utterly unpaid for Middle Eastern wars, Medicare Part-D, more tax cuts, increasing the already bloated military-industrial-surveillance state, and failing to invest in America's infrastructure for the past decade?  Well if you're making top-dollar and are part of the top 0.1 percentile, you apparently don't care as long as it's not you or any of your friends who you go with to golf games in the Hamptons or ski with in Vale.  The problem is that unless Americans as a whole are going to embrace cutting defense spending and hacking Medicare and Social Security to its bare bones, then someone is going to have to pay more.  If you're really pissed off that you had a ten-year tax vacation and now have to pay 3% more on your top earnings, then let's face it: you're just a greedy motherfucker.

The Dismal Science Redefined

Current economic theory is less a science than an ideology peculiar to a certain period of history, which may well be nearing an end...

[Economists are] the jilted lovers of the science world – the more rigidly they approach their subject, the more it mocks them with spurious and headstrong behaviour.

Since this blog started, I've been constantly commenting on the dearth of empirical evidence that lies behind many of the attributed economic theories of our time and the persistent irrationality, if not complete fraud, of proponents of modern economics.  Many noted persons who are economists, like Paul Krugman and J. Brad DeLong, have likewise stated how the field has become a self-serving entity, that is in many cases polluted beyond the point of usefulness.  The above quotes, culled from a Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece by Brian Milner titled "Economists and their fairy tale world of prognostication," is another indictment of the dismal science's ability to actually be a science.  The central basis of any science is its ability to factually explain natural phenomenon, testability of theories, reproducibility of experiments, and its ability to predict future events.  Economics, or at least that set of dogma pedalled in the MSM, doesn't pass any of the above criteria. 

If economists want their profession be taken seriously, then they should start actually calling out those on their side who have perennially gotten it wrong and banish them.

The entire fable of sustainable capitalism is disintegrating all around us like the dreamscape in the movie Inception.  The communists of China, through their mercantile and corrupt practices, are acquiring natural resources across the globe and buying friends everywhere.  The new globalization that peaked in the last decade is slowly devolving.  The financial system that imploded in 2008, has only been patched together with band-aid remedies and awaits further paralysis in the near future.  China, Europe, and America are all betting against the odds, that growth will magically return and the masses will defer sharpening their pitchforks until another day.

On the Irrelevence of Keynesian Economics

h/t Leftytoons

Bruce Bartlett Calls Dubya's Tax Cuts Virtually Useless

Bruce Bartlett, a former Republican who served in both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations, has put forward a critique of the tax cuts implemented under Dubya (aka. George W. Bush)

To summarize, the original Bush tax cuts, although widely stated as a stimulative supply side tax-break, were in fact designed to offset the revenues the federal state was obtaining during the final years of the Clinton administration in the 1990's. A conceit articulated most prominently by Alan Greenspan, who at the time claimed that fiscal surpluses had grown too large.  Instead of creating sound fiscal policies, Mr. Bush's first term tax-cuts, rebates, and tax code "reforms" were determined by the Republican party to create, according to Bartlett, constituencies that would be grateful to the Great Leader's leadership. He outlines:

Bush proposed a doubling of the child credit to $1,000; higher limits on education savings accounts; a new deduction for two-earner couples; allowing a deduction for charitable contributions by those that don’t file itemized returns; a $400 deduction for teachers who buy unreimbursed school supplies; Individual Development Accounts to allow people to save tax-free for retraining; a refundable tax credit for health insurance; and a tax credit for financial institutions that matched savings by those with low incomes. The only supply-side element was a modest reduction in the top statutory income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent — higher than it had been during Bush’s father’s administration — that would be phased-in over a number of years.

However, in reviewing the actual impact of those tax cuts, Bartlett concludes that it is clear that:

there is virtually no evidence in support of the Bush tax cuts as an economic elixir. To the extent that they had any positive effect on growth, it was very, very modest. Their main effect was simply to reduce the government’s revenue, thereby increasing the budget deficit, which all Republicans claim to abhor.

As my previous post explains, everything the Bush-bots claimed that they were doing and predicted about the country's fiscal situation turned out to be incorrect.  Despite the hysterical reporting by the toadies of the Republican party and Wall Street in the MSM, the tax cuts provided limited or no economic value.  It is therefore complete nonsense that if America's wealthiest and most affluent aren't given even more perks through the extension of the tax breaks, that the entire country will disintegrate.  The plutocrats are the one's who have destroyed the American middle class through their low tax, militaristic, pro-China globalization trade policies.  In the wake of their recklessness, they have increased poverty, diminished social mobility, and promoted a culture of debt that will retard US economic growth for another decade.  Since they are the one's who have felt the least pain in an economic collapse caused by their antics, they should at least bear some of the burden in returning the nation to solvency.

Dan Gross on Tax Cuts

Daniel Gross over at Slate, has a few key words for those on the kool-aid about retaining the Bush junta's tax cuts.  He makes a number of points on why the entire "discussion" is but an election gimmick executed by Republicans, who have no interest in either fiscal solvency or reasonable management of the federal government.

Barry Ritholtz points out on his blog, The Big Picture, how ridiculous the whole debate has become and highlight's Gross' most salient point:

The bold and confident assertions made about the links between tax rates and economic growth, market performance, and prosperity are almost certainly wrong. Turn on CNBC or look at the Wall Street Journal op-ed page these days, and you'll learn that we must keep tax rates on capital gains, dividends, and income precisely where they are because shifting them to different levels will retard economic growth. Keep this in mind: The people who designed the current, unsustainable tax system promised us that lower marginal rates, and lower taxes on capital and dividends, would boost the economy, promote investment, create jobs, spur market performance, and raise everybody's income. They were wrong. (It's no coincidence that these same people also warned us that raising taxes in 1993 would kill market returns and the economy. They were wrong then, too. They're pretty much always wrong.) As I've pointed out, the years under the current tax regime have been a lost decade. Pick your metric—median income, employment, stock market returns, economic growth—the low-tax '00s sucked. Yet proponents of keeping the tax cuts persist in making the argument: To avoid a repeat of the past decade, we must have the exact same tax policies as we did for the past decade.

In other words, the economic svengali's of the Bush junta and the dimwits of the Republican Party didn't know what they were doing when Clinton was in office, they didn't know what they were talking about when their man Dubya was hectoring us on the benefits of supply-side economics, and they certainly don't have any meaningful insights into the economy now that their very policies and lack of regulation have thrown the entire financial world off kilter.

March of the Palin Clones, or is Clowns?

Be afraid, be very afraid!

(h/t Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish)

The Lunacy of the Tea-Baggers!

Lindsey Beyerstein, a prominent left-wing blogger, excoriates the mind-numbing idiocy of newly minted GOP Senate candidate for Delaware in her posting "Anti-Masturbation Crusader Christine O'Donnell is Master of Her Domain in Delaware."

In it she outlines Ms. O'Donnell's predilection with sexuality and her bizarre notions that persons who have AIDS deserve no sympathy, because they've brought that ailment upon themselves by not adhering to strict Biblical tenants.

Good Laugh here:

Anti-masturbation crusader Christine O'Donnell beat establishment favorite Rep. Mike Castle last night in Deleware's GOP senate primary, with a helping hand from the Tea Party Express.

O'Donnell first rose to national prominence as the founder and president of the SALT, an anti-masturbation youth ministry. In 1996, she and her fellow salteens appeared on MTV's series "Sex in the Nineties" to explain why masturbation is a form of adultery that will render your future married sex life irrelevant. "[I]f he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?” O'Donnell asked earnestly.

The following year, while representing SALT on C-SPAN, O'Donnell argued that people with AIDS didn't deserve to be called "victims." A guy called in to say that he had a hard time feeling sorry for people with AIDS because their disease was their own fault. In his opinion, feeling sorry people with AIDS was like feeling sorry for "bank robbers who get shot in the head" while they're robbing banks. "He makes an excellent point," O'Donnell replied.

Lest you think SALT was just some youthful indiscretion, O'Donnell is still listed as the contact for the group in this internet directory, which was last updated in 2009.

I hope Democratic senate candidate candidate Chris Coons cracked open a bottle of Astroglide to celebrate O'Donnell's victory. With any luck, the wankers of the great State of Delaware will grease his path to Washington.

The Huffington Post also posts a segment Ms. O'Donnell did on Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" in the 1990's, where she is posed with a hypothetical situation if she would lie to Nazi soldiers seeking whether she was hiding any Jews.  Using the false consistency argument, she states that it would be wrong to lie and that she implicitly would side with the Nazi's seeking to exterminate Jews!  I suppose she never realized that by hiding the Jews in the first place she would be lying to the Nazi's to begin with, and secondly her admission to those roving death squads would certainly have lead to her and her family's death.

Welcome to Fascist America!  Please check your frontal cortex at the gates, if you intend to visit.

***

Update: MSNBC's Rachel Maddow highlights O'Donnell's youthful "don't touch myself" campaign from the 1990's (h/t Crooks and Liars).  Ugh!

Although I don't take this seriously, there has been studies done that indicate a correlation between increased access to pornography through the internet, and a decrease in sex crimes. If this is the case, Ms. O'Donnell's earlier campaign would if given national scope, in fact increase violent crime and decrease public safety.

Peak Oil: The Germans and British Understand the Outcome

A series of recent reports have been released by both the German and UK governments on the implications of Peak oil.  Jeff Rubin, former chief economist of Canada's CIBC World Markets, discusses both reports in his Globe and Mail blog.  In it he summarizes that the emerging global consensus amongst policy makers and long term government planners is that deficiencies in accessing and utilizing petroleum will lead to severe economic disruptions, social instability, and a collapse of the current global trade arrangements.

Rubin disputes the reassurances made by governments and industry supporters that peak-oil is not a concern.  As I've outlined in previous blog entries (here and here), many persons who have had a close examination of the situation believe that we reached peak-oil in 2005.  The German study states that there is "some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later."  Rubin concedes that while we may not have reached "geological peak-oil" from the economic perspective we certainly have.  As global oil prices maxed out at near $150/bbl it became abundantly clear that our current economy and way of life is completely incapable of sustaining these costs.  Furthermore, it is only at these very high levels of crude that many of the untested extraction technologies and difficult to obtain reserves can be made to be profitable.  Hence, in reality, accessible global oil reserves are not growing any further.

Der Spiegel International, outlines a series of potential situations that may arise:

1. Oil will determine power
2. Increasing importance of oil exporters
3. Politics in place of the market
4. Global market failures
5. Relapse into planned economy
6. Global chain reaction
7. Crisis of political legitimacy

Altogether, the implications of this fact are severe.  Rubin summarizes:

The German study paints a bleak picture of the post-peak world: political power quickly shifts from major oil-consuming economies to major oil-producing economies. Less and less oil is traded on the open market, while more and more is traded between nation states, with national oil companies entering into long-term supply agreements that are tied to broader political and military considerations. And military alliances coalesce around the security of energy supply, rather than between countries with shared political or economic principles.

In the UK, the Guardian newspaper also heralds the dangers associated with a post-peak oil world in an article titled "Peak oil alarm revealed by secret official talks."  Previous estimates by the International Energy Agency indicated that there would be "sufficient reserves to meet demand till 2030 as long as investment in new reserves is maintained."  However, major industry players, economic skeptics, and government analysts believe the situation could be considerably less solvent.

But an internal IEA source said: "Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible, but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources."

Coupled with climate change concerns, which includes the possibility of severe drought, famine, resource scarcity based conflict, and socio-economic collapse everywhere, we are not just talking about a realignment in global powers, but the possibility of wholesale disintegration of human civilization.

Why are Americans such Assholes?

Yesterday a 23-year old woman bicycler was killed in a traffic incident in NY city.  The rider was clipped by a female driver who recklessly opened her car door, causing the bicycler to fall into traffic and be run over by a city bus.

The female driver, pictured in the above photograph, decided to flee the scene and instead go to a baby shower.  This asshole, too caught up in her useless life, decided that, "Hey, she's dead anyway! Why the fuck should I ruin my evening?"  You should stay, because you just assaulted another human being and that action directly led to her death, jackass!

Despite the obvious immorality of the situation, many online commentators on the New York Post (another quality rag owned by the asswads at News Corp.) decided it was pile on the dead-biker night.  Somehow, these degenerate posters felt that the assault and manslaughter of this poor woman is just-deserts for not being a pompous, self-righteous fatty who is incapable of lugging their decrepit ass without the assistance of car, like themselves.

The article:

A careless woman, whose open car door caused a bicyclist to get run over by a city bus in Brooklyn, left the scene to attend a baby shower, cops and witnesses said.

The woman then had to be escorted back to the scene by police, who later arrested her for driving with a suspended license, officials said.

The tragedy unfolded when the 23-year-old bicyclist was riding along Atlantic Avenue at around 8:30 p.m. and the driver's side door of a white Dodge Stratus clipped her as she neared Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights.

The bus then hit her and rolled over her.

"I heard the screams coming from inside the bus," said one horrified witness. "The bus driver was crying hysterically on the side of the street."

The bicyclist, whose name was withheld pending family notification, died on the scene.

The name of the 24-year-old Dodge driver, who was taken to Kings County Hospital, wasn't released yesterday.

She claimed she had nothing to do with the accident, but passengers on the bus disputed that claim, witnesses said.

A friend of hers at the party said, "There was another car behind her that caused the whole accident."

"She had nothing to do with it," said the pal, who declined to give his name.

War Crime Allegations Threaten to Harm America's Image

Der Spiegel International has a good description and analysis of the Afghan war crimes incident, that I wrote about yesterday, in which American soldiers have been charged with murdering civilians and extracting trophy body parts during active duty.

The article outlines what is at stake:

It involves more than a court imposing a just penalty for brutal murders, and more than compliance with the military code of honor and the Geneva Conventions. At stake is the reputation of a country that, after eight years under the administration of former President George W. Bush, had set out to liberate itself from charges of moral failure. Indeed, the Seattle case raises the question of whether the United States has really turned its back on the days when it gambled away its reputation with images of naked Iraqis forced to form human pyramids in Abu Ghraib prison.

It discusses how this situation will make mockery of the entire narrative under the Obama administration that there has been a clean break from the sordid eight years under George W. Bush.

They allegedly fired at their victims with gusto, collecting trophies that included finger and toe bones, and even a tooth. The charges outline senseless, horrific acts reminiscent of a former America, an America of waterboarding, torture scandals and Guantanamo Bay. They also raise the question of what exactly has changed since the election campaign in which then-candidate Barack Obama promised so much, including a more responsible approach to warfare and the closing of the military prison in Cuba, an important symbol of America's moral failings under former President George W. Bush.

The article also reviews the fact that Soviet forces in their earlier conflict with the Afghan population, also engaged in horrendous criminality:

Feeling helpless in their inability to counter the resistance of the Afghans, Moscow's troops turned to drugs and alcohol. Having lost their inhibitions, they committed atrocities they would never forget. In September 1982, a group of Russian soldiers burned 105 villagers alive in an irrigation canal south of Kabul. Women were thrown naked from helicopters. In a particularly horrific incident, soldiers doused a boy in kerosene and set him on fire in front of his parents

US Troops Harvesting Afghan Body Parts for Souvenirs

According to international newspapers US Army soldiers have been charged in the premeditated murder of Afghan civilians, the beating of one or more fellow soldiers, wrongfully taking and/or possessing photographs of dead bodies, and "keeping trophy body parts from Afghan corpses, including a skull and fingers!"

The soldiers, all from the same company in the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, are charged with a total of 76 crimes.

McClatchy Press elaborates on what they describe as "one of the most serious war crimes cases to emerge from the nine-year war in Afghanistan."

The accused soldiers are with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Wash., Some 3,700 soldiers in the brigade were deployed throughout southern Afghanistan, involved both in combat and in wide-ranging efforts to open schools, train Afghan forces, improve agriculture and take other measures to win the support of civilians.

Vietnam Redux?

This behaviour was also found in the Vietnam war.  The Toledo Blade, in 2003, ran a comprehensive series of reports about Tiger Force, a task force of the United States Army, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade (Separate), 101st Airborne Division.  Investigations conducted by journalist Michael Sallah into the actions of this group during 1967, resulted in the disclosure that members of the task force had engaged in "the routine practice of intentionally killing unarmed Vietnamese villagers including men, women, children, and elderly people" and collecting body parts, which they used in necklaces and personal talismans.  The Blade journalists won the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting.

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Is this what happens when soldiers know that torture and the liquidation of whole swaths of brown skinned people is acceptable?  Where is the outrage from the American population?  Where are the so-called moral leaders of America in proclaiming that this type of activity is not acceptable anywhere, anytime, period? From the very beginnings of the Afghan-Iraqi conflicts, more than just bad-apples have been observed.  Constant, predictable, and enduring levels of violence perpetrated by US forces on foreign populations has occurred: CIA contractors murdering detainees; torture at Guantanamo and black sites across the planet; the shocking and disturbing events at Abu Ghraib; the rape and murder of Iraqi women and children by US troops; helicopter gunships and automated drones liquidating unarmed civilians at weddings and villages in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

What type of victory can be salvaged in this moral wasteland?

Thomas Friedman on Why America is Floundering!

Thomas Friedman comments in his op-ed piece -called "We're No. 1(1)!"- on why he thinks America no longer is the world leader that it once was.  While I think he skirts some of the obvious contributing factors, he does hit the nail on the head in referring to American society as one that has become intellectually incurious, slothful, and where individuals are driven towards instantaneous gratification in both their careers and personal lifestyles.

With regard to why American children consistently score so low internationally, despite the enormous sums of money to reform and improve the education system, he refers to another piece written by the Washington Post's Robert Samuelson in Newsweek.  Samuelson contends that the dearth of progress on the educational frontier emanates not from lousy teachers and administrators, but from lazy, coddled, and unmotivated students, who no longer attempt or even care to achieve academic excellence.

The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If the students aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a “good” college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school “reform” is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers...

Motivation has weakened because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don’t like school, don’t work hard, and don’t do well. The conflict between expanding “access” and raising standards goes against standards. Michael Kirst, an emeritus education professor at Stanford, estimates that 60 percent of incoming community—college students and 30 percent of freshmen at four-year colleges need remedial reading and math courses.

The best part of Friedman's analysis relates to the wretched Baby Boomers, who I call "The Greediest Generation!"  In contrast, as he points out to the World War II generation who sacrificed, struggled, and saved to overcome the Great Depression, defeat both Nazi German and the Japanese Empire, and rebuilt Europe and expanded America's industrial prowess, the baby-boomers:

leaders never dare utter the word “sacrifice.” All solutions must be painless. Which drug would you like? A stimulus from Democrats or a tax cut from Republicans? A national energy policy? Too hard. For a decade we sent our best minds not to make computer chips in Silicon Valley but to make poker chips on Wall Street, while telling ourselves we could have the American dream — a home — without saving and investing, for nothing down and nothing to pay for two years. Our leadership message to the world (except for our brave soldiers): “After you.”

When India, China, and many developing countries are turning out more ambitious, fit, and intellectually competent students, employees, and businessmen, how far does anyone think the fatties and professional victims of America's culture wars are going to get in the great competition of life?  As conservatives like to bemoan, "Culture matters!"

Chillout Session: James Blunt

Quote of the Day: Tom Ricks on 9-11

Tom Ricks is an author and a Pulitzer award winning journalist who has covered the Pentagon and military affairs for the WSJ and the Washington Post.  In his Foreign Policy blog he succinctly summarizes the whole post-9/11 and Iraq debacle in one paragraph:

I've long thought that this country was knocked off balance by 9/11, and that instead of steadying us, as leaders should, President Bush and Vice President Cheney led the panic, and so intensified and lengthened the period of disequilibrium. The Iraq war was one result -- and also a cause -- of the length of this period, because the hundreds of billions of unnecessary spending led to a huge borrowing splurge by the federal government. Essentially China paid for the war, and our children and grandchildren are on the hook to pay it back.

Maybe the sheeple will remember that it was was their own intellectual laziness and dismal understanding of world affairs and economics that led to the election of a president who previously had never left the country, and permitted that same president to pursue two Middle eastern wars while cutting taxes; the latter a first in the history of the republic.  This morasses is as much the fault of the belligerents and corporate toadies in the White House and US congress, as it is the idiotic and feeble minded dolts who consistently failed to ask the right questions and hold those in power in check.  These red-baiting dunces, who decades ago were shrieking of the terror of global communism, have handed the butchers of Tiananmen Square and the communist hierarchy in Beijing the financial and political leverage that forty years of cold-war posturing could not accomplish.

Quote of the Day: Sullivan on Obama

Andrew Sullivan is one of the few persons who has constantly and unequivocally condemned Republicans and Democrats, under the Bush junta and the Obama administration, of condoning and actively participating in the torture and murder of war on terrorism detainees.  In a blog entry that addresses the Machiavellian undercurrent to American politics, he condemns Mr. Obama for his recent cowardliness in preventing those who have been wrongly "extraordinary renditioned" and tortured by American forces to seek redress in court.

Aggressively trying to prevent torture victims from having their day in court merely using unclassified evidence is active complicity in the war crimes of the past. And such complicity is itself a war crime. Either we live under the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions, or we don't. And when Obama says we don't - as he unmistakably is - the precedent he is setting all but ensures that torture will come again, that there will never be consequences for it, and that the national security state can cloak itself in such a way that the citizenry has no way of penetrating its power. Bush and Cheney remain the real culprits here; but watching Obama essentially surrendering to their trap is a betrayal of a core rationale for his candidacy.

You know It's a Depression When...

According to the blog the Big Picture, David Rosenberg, who as of recent has been prominently featured in front of the business news cameras, is talking down the US economy and firmly states that he is in the "we're in a long term Depression" camp.

Despite one of the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus packages in the history of the nation, the US economy remains moribund and appears to be drifting into deflationary territory, with potential increases in unemployment and greater economic upheavals (i.e. known as the double-dip).

The following statistics indicate that the US economy is in very poor health and worst is foreseen.

• Wages & Salaries are still down 3.7% from the prior peak
• Corporate profits are still down 20% from the peak
• Real GDP is still down 1.3% from the peak
• Industrial production is still down 7.2% from the peak
• Employment is still down 5.5% from the peak
• Retail sales are still down 4.5% from the peak
• Manufacturing orders are still down 22.1% from the peak
• Manufacturing shipments are still down 12.5% from the peak
• Exports are still down 9.2% from the peak
• Housing starts are still down 63.5% from the peak
• New home sales are still down 68.9% from the peak
• Existing home sales are still down 41.2% from the peak
• Non-residential construction is still down 35.7% from the peak

Given that autumn is approaching it is only fitting that our fleeting summer fling with conceptions of growth should come to and end and usher in the cold harsh reality that a return to the wonder-years of high growth are gone. The great deleveraging will continue for years. The global economy will continue to limp, stagger, and depending on what happens in China, may even collapse next year.

Fuelling the Clash of the Civilizations Meme!

Despite the fact that few persons on either side of the so-called Clash of the Civilizations divide actually want a "clash", there are those zealots who feel that wholesale planetary warfare is a positive course of action for the species. 

I've already discussed the rationals, why Bin Laden and his Islamist cohorts felt compelled to engage in their terrorist actions in previous posts (here and here).  The nature of the Islamist mind frame, generally speaking, is that of a victim seeking vengeance to mollify either actual or perceived attacks upon him and his metaphysical being.  To further the socio-political aims of its leaders, it requires a population, or at least a subset, to use the process of psychological transference, where their existing angst, anger, and inadequacies can be directly attributed to an externality that can be understood as the "other." In this case, the other is America or more generally Western civilization. For example, in an attempt to create a focus point in which they can blame the nation's inherent failings upon, the Mullahs inveigh against the "Great Satan". By transferring their own failures to America, they draw distinctions for their loyal followers of the high mindedness and virtue of their cause.  As the Green Revolution of 2009 has shown however, the majority of educated Iranians and youth, which form the majority of the population, find this decades old form of propaganda tiresome and repressive.

One has to remember, that across most of the Islamic world, their rulers are little more than quisling satraps whose existence is dictated by their utility to American hegemony. With the end of the cold war and advent of a more multipolar world, these nations offer America either oil reserves or strategic geopolitical use.  Equally, the governments of these nations are intimately aware of their own dependency on America's military, financial, and technical resources to exist. Weak failed states like Iraq -which has now been occupied by American forces for 19-years- and Afghanistan -occupied by NATO and Western forces for nine years- would most certainly degenerate into further civil war or complete disintegration without a firm military presence in the region; American or otherwise. Thus, while the specter of American hegemony may rankle the masses in many Islamic countries, those in control understand that if left to the demented illogic of absolute religious divinity over regional politics as espoused by factional leaders, these nations would combust into fratricidal violence and destabilize whole swaths of world.  For a thousand years, these people have been ruled and governed by others, and for good reason.

On the other hand, America's religious buffoons are hopped up on pushing humanity towards Armageddon and driving a war with the Kings of the East to validate Biblical prophecies.  For example, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida has proposed that on the 9th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist assault on America, that his flock will burn Qu'rans (aka. the Koran).  The moral equivalence argument has been made that Muslims are attacking American Christianity through the construction of the Cordoba Cultural Center in New York.  The response by this lot, to this perceived slight, is to engage in a classic book burning exercise.  America's Republican party through their coy electoral race-baiting strategies have unleashed the most bigoted and unstable element of its confederacy of dunces.  General Petraeus, the Pentagon, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and numerous religious and national leaders across the world, including even PM Stephen Harper of Canada, have denounced the racism and brutal stupidity of this action, which they insist will further marginalize those who support American objectives in the Middle East and across the world. 

While the military-industrial complex and the mandarins of war need and demand that this segment of idiots ferment a rational for the Pentagon's exorbitant budgets, the rest of the world needs to contain, quarantine, and sterilize these maladroits before we are further dragged into their dystopian and self-destructive fantasies.

A Sign of Things to Come: Rare Minerals & Made in China

China's prominence as the world's second largest economy now poses a substantial threat to the continued growth and development of Western economies.  Over the past two years, the Chinese government has been developing policies that "prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybrid cars and catalytic converters, to superconductors, and precision-guided weapons," according to news reports.

Nearly 95% of the world's rare earth minerals are extracted and processed in China.  A year ago, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology called for a complete ban on trade to foreign nations of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium.  A subset of other metals, such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum, would be limited to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year; a value substantially below current global needs.  An article published last week in Chemical and Engineering News elaborates:

China has maneuvered effectively since the mid-1980s to establish a worldwide monopoly on rare-earth resources. Aiding its effort to corner the market is China’s tremendous rare-earth mineral wealth. U.S. Geological Survey reports indicate that China possesses roughly 52% of the world’s known rare-earth reserves. By comparison, the U.S. is believed to have the second-largest share, at about 13%. Russia and Australia each have 5–6% of the known reserves. India, Canada, Greenland, and a few other countries also have appreciable quantities of rare-earth minerals.

A summary of current uses of rare earth metals is listed below:

Each Toyota Prius uses 25 pounds of rare earth elements. Cerium and lanthanum are used in catalytic converters for diesel engines. Europium is used in lasers... Blackberries, iPods, mobile phones, palms TVs, navigation systems, and air defence missiles all use a sprinkling of rare earth metals. They are used to filter viruses and bacteria from water, and cleaning up Sarin gas and VX nerve agents.

A couple of months ago, the Chinese People's Daily reported that the Chinese government had created an internal cartel to prevent the undervaluing of minerals.  Peng Bo, an analyst at Guosen Securities, states, "The pricing mechanism, if put into practice, will effectively buoy rare earths' undervalued prices and give Chinese producers more say on the global market."  The Chinese newspaper bluntly states that prices in rare earth minerals, such as neodymium, have skyrocketed and that Japanese and American markets are completely dependant on China for their needs.

Recently, America's Government Accountability Office (GAO) prepared a report on rare-earth materials as it pertains to America's military preparedness.  The report found:

that rare-earth materials play important roles in numerous defense technologies, including radar, missile-guidance systems, lasers, and night vision equipment. The Department of Defense is now conducting an internal assessment and is expected to devise strategies to protect against rare-earth supply interruptions.

It's not just the minerals per se that China will now limit, but also the development, production, and distribution of the attendant technologies that are dependant on these minerals. The indolent and short-term thinking of America's leaders in government and business, have created a untenable situation, in which a foreign government now has the ability to limit and control the development of not only the West's existing technologies, but future technologies, such as "green-tech," that were supposed to transform America's depressed manufacturing landscape.  If innovation is the source of future prosperity, then that wealth will be exclusively controlled by the communists in Beijing.  Coupled with America's need for the Chinese to continuously purchase Treasury bills and flood their markets with cheap disposable consumables, the future has become substantially more complicated for those in Washington D.C.

Climate Change may be Causative Agent in Bee Decline

Research conducted by scientists at the University of Toronto indicate that declines in bee population may be in part due to incongruencies that have emerged due to climate change.  Temporal mismatches arise between when the flowers are accessible and open to pollinators and when bees emerge from hibernation.  The seventeen year study indicates a "progressive decline in pollination over the years."

The research and article is summerized below from EurekAlert!

TORONTO, ON - Widespread reports of a decline in the population of bees and other flower-visiting animals have aroused fear and speculation that pollination is also likely on the decline. A recent University of Toronto study provides the first long-term evidence of a downward trend in pollination, while also pointing to climate change as a possible contributor.

"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor," says James Thomson, a scientist with U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Thomson's 17-year examination of the wild lily in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is one of the longest-term studies of pollination ever done. It reveals a progressive decline in pollination over the years, with particularly noteworthy pollination deficits early in the season. The study will be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on September 6.

Three times each year, Thomson compared the fruiting rate of unmanipulated flowers to that of flowers that are supplementally pollinated by hand. "Early in the year, when bumble bee queens are still hibernating, the fruiting rates are especially low," he says. "This is sobering because it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a relatively pristine environment that is free of pesticides and human disturbance but still subject to climate change."

***

Thomson began his long-term studies in the late 1980s after purchasing a remote plot of land and building a log cabin in the middle of a meadow full of glacier lilies. His work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Unfunded Liabilities: A Cost Profile of the Iraq War

Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia University) and Linda J. Bilmes (Harvard University) wrote in 2008, "The Three Trillion Dollar War."  It was an attempt to examine and describe the full costs of the Iraq war to the general public and contextualize the implications of the American public's decision to allow the Bush junta unfettered war making authority.  Although the original figures were met with usual hostility from cultural managers and propagandists on the right,  additional studies completed by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, concluded that the war would cost American taxpayers at least $3.5 trillion or between $1.4 and $2.2 trillion respectively.

Today they update the assumptions and cost profile of the cost of the Iraq war in a Washington Post opinion piece labelled, "The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond." They briefly expand on four areas that have developed over the past two years: Afghanistan, the Oil market, the Federal debt, and the financial crisis. I've highlighted the most illuminating sections of the article below.

Afghanistan

The Iraq invasion diverted our attention from the Afghan war, now entering its 10th year... It is hard to believe that we would be embroiled in a bloody conflict in Afghanistan today if we had devoted the resources there that we instead deployed in Iraq. A troop surge in 2003 -- before the warlords and the Taliban reestablished control -- would have been much more effective than a surge in 2010.

Oil

We now believe that a more realistic (if still conservative) estimate of the war's impact on prices works out to at least $10 per barrel. That would add at least $250 billion in direct costs to our original assessment of the war's price tag. But the cost of this increase doesn't stop there: Higher oil prices had a devastating effect on the economy.

Federal Debt

There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.

Financial Crisis

Saying what might have been is always difficult, especially with something as complex as the global financial crisis, which had many contributing factors. Perhaps the crisis would have happened in any case. But almost surely, with more spending at home, and without the need for such low interest rates and such soft regulation to keep the economy going in its absence, the bubble would have been smaller, and the consequences of its breaking therefore less severe. To put it more bluntly: The war contributed indirectly to disastrous monetary policy and regulations.

Employee Health Insurance Changes

Kevin Drum at his blog over at MotherJones.com unloads the statistics related to the unsustainable increases in worker health insurance, for both the employer and employee over the past decade in America.  With individual increases in deductions, co-payments, and other ancillary charges, coupled with the fact that the average person's income has flat-lined or worst decreased during the past decade, America's middle class and low wage earners are seeing more of their income shunted towards paying for health care.

The problem with this arrangement, which I've discussed to some depth in a previous blog entry, is that the system is broken and without meaningful cost controls, strict penalties on those who engage in slothful and/or unhealthy lifestyles, and a shift towards re-aligning the American market to one that which exists in other Western nations, costs will continue to increase, the quality of service and the level of coverage will decrease, and the insurance companies in collusion with big-Pharma will reap the excessive profits.

Like everything in America these days, little attention is made towards reasonable and intelligent discourse.  Instead the dunces prattle on about imaginary enemies, irrelevant conflicts, and absurd realities in their Quixotic journey through life.  Attention to meaningful policies that affect all Americans, is jettisoned to make way for everyone's two-minutes of hate.  The right attacks liberal institutions, environmentalists, and all the secular evils for depriving them of their non-regulated Christian Eden.  The left bickers amongst themselves about gay-politics, token policy gestures made by the Obama White House, and the deceit of Democratic Party, while rarely challenging or stopping the crony-capitalists.