Psychopolitik 2.0

Three examples of the result of our foreign policy:

-Backlash from The Great Iraqi Snipe Hunt, combined with the stress on the US armed forces from engagement simultaneously there & in Afghanistan — where the Taliban took advantage of the distraction — leads to weaker recruiting standards, resulting in bloodthirsty mentally-imbalanced whackjobs ending up in Iraq, where they can rape and kill civilians.

-Our symbiotic relationship with Israel, which includes military aid, leads to missiles with american flags on them landing in Lebanon.  For that, a reporter of ours relays back to us the following exchange from a mass burial site:

A Shiite sheik arrives and begins talking to members of the media. I pull him aside and ask him one question: “What message would you send to the people of America?” “Israel?” he asks. “No,” I reply. “America.”

“I love the people of America. It’s the government I hate. Tell the American people that we received their gift. The missile that they gave to Israel - we have received it, and this is the result,” he says, motioning to the coffins.

I thank him, but he says nothing to me - just glares, turns abruptly and walks away. (emphasis mine)

-Double talk and sabre-rattling leads a South American populist & a middle eastern theocrat into each others arms:

The presidents of Iran and Venezuela, leading U.S. critics, pledged Saturday to support one another in disputes with Washington, with the Iranian calling Hugo Chavez “a brother and trench mate.” […]

Chavez pledged that his country would “stay by Iran at any time and under any condition.” Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, said he saw in the Venezuelan president a kindred spirit. […]

Chavez, who peppers his speeches with mentions of assassination plots and purported U.S. efforts to oust him, said he admired the Iranian president for “his wisdom and strength.”

He invited Iranian oil companies to invest in Venezuela. Venezuelan state TV also reported that the countries are considering having Iran participate in a natural gas project off the Venezuelan coast.

Reflect on these for a moment.

BTW: in case anyone is wondering why the abundance of content on foreign policy lately, I personally feel this issue is the key to virtually everything else at the moment.  Basically if someone can look at the direction our foreign policy is going and not have a problem with it, they’re on the other team.

The drugs are wearing off:

U.S. economic growth slowed and inflation rose in the three months ending in June, the government reported yesterday, confirming earlier signs that consumers are hunkering down in response to higher energy prices and interest rates. […] All totalled, the gross domestic product, which measures the value of all goods and services produced, rose at a below-average 2.5 per cent annual rate in the second quarter, a sharp drop from the rapid 5.6 per cent pace of the first quarter, the U.S. commerce department said.

Meanwhile, consumer prices shot up at a heated 4.1 per cent annual pace in the quarter according to the department’s inflation measure. That was more than double the rate in the previous quarter, and matched the rate of the third quarter of last year, when energy prices rose after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The inflation rate was much higher than the increase in workers’ wages, salaries and benefits, according to the U.S. labour department’s employment cost index, which was also released yesterday. The index rose 0.9 per cent in the last quarter, up from a 0.6 per cent increase in the first quarter. “It adds up to an economy heading into a fairly significant slowdown,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for Global Insight, a financial analysis firm. (emphasis mine)

High energy prices & interest rates.  Basically the (other) costs of war.  No wonder people are finally coming around to opposition, the wallet effect is too big for even the most ignorant to ignore.

I’d like to point out something that we don’t normally take note of: notice how a slower rate of growth is considered so bad in the corporatist economy?  Because of the extent to which force holds up this entire system, the rate of return sinks into negatives quicker than the statistics would reflect.  The corporate economy cannot survive hanging around a certain spot for more than a second, everything has to grow and FAST otherwise the enablers of this mess lose money.  If you went back and removed the numerous spots where the cost of large-scale business has been folded into government, the actual market order left behind would be just fine with hovering in place on occasion.

Typical Bush Administration behavior:

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment. […] Language in the administration’s draft, which Bradbury helped prepare in concert with civilian officials at the Defense Department, seeks to protect U.S. personnel by ruling out detainee lawsuits to enforce Geneva protections and by incorporating language making U.S. enforcement of the War Crimes Act subject to U.S. — not foreign — understandings of what the Conventions require. (emphasis mine)

First of all, I’m not surprised that the legislation referred to was passed a decade ago. It has become fact in modern U.S. politics that no matter how similar the two “major” parties act their members see their own party as being infallible & the opposition to be pure evil — hence the “concern” over war crimes during the Clinton Administration and reversal under Bush.

So this is what they do. Simultaneously while claiming unquestionable moral superiority, loopholes and exceptions are carefully placed to make undermining the claim that much easier. Yet common sense begs the question of why the contempt for restraint* results in nibbling around the edges, rather than tossing the entire thing. For example, instead of making exceptions at every turn, why not just withdraw entirely from the Geneva Conventions?

If you’ve been paying attention, you know this one already: the trappings of “international law” are a convenient excuse for whatever you were going to do anyway, nothing more.

Notice that interwoven in the bleatings of loyalists over the “war on terror” are references to others violating “international law”? Despite that never being legitimate reason to do anything, it’s used as an excuse: “well they don’t follow it!” Funny thing is, on that charge they’re correct….and beside the point. If others violating it makes it pointless to follow (which it does), then it is the same way for everybody. The collective actions of much of the rest of the world destroys any foundation that it ever stood on, the only reason this is not completely acknowledged in the US is because without the window dressing of globalism all the portrayal of it as a clash of civilizations — or “World War 3″, as the neos are pulling out — rather than the US versus some nutjobs would sound even dumber than they do now.

You cannot have it both ways. Either the rules are legitimate and should be followed, or they’re bullshit and should be dropped entirely.

(* - I would withdraw from all such pacts — for different reason, obviously.)

File this one under “well NO DUH!“:

The multibillion-dollar surge in federal contracting to bolster the nation’s domestic defenses in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been marred by extensive waste and misspent funds, according to a new bipartisan congressional report.

Lawmakers say that since the Homeland Security Department’s formation in 2003, an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of trained government contract managers have created a system prone to abuse. Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have “experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement,” according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.

The value of contracts awarded without full competition increased 739 percent from 2003 to 2005, to $5.5 billion, more than half the $10 billion awarded by the department that year. By comparison, the agency awarded a total of $3.5 billion in contracts in 2003, the year it was created.

Y’know, if I didn’t know any better I’d suspect that this was the entire point to the “homeland security” bill.

Wait, did I say “if I didn’t know any better”?  I meant “if I were breathing”.

That dead horse of “we have to manage trade to free it” gets clubberized yet again:

Global commerce talks at the World Trade Organization collapsed Monday as top powers failed to agree on steps toward liberalizing trade in farm and manufactured goods.

Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath said the talks had been suspended and added that “it could take anywhere from months to years,” to restart the negotiations. “This is a serious setback, a major setback,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim.

That the WTO even exists is the real setback. But hey, let’s humor them for a moment: “why did the talks fail?”

EU trade chief Peter Mandelson blamed the failure on the United States. “The United States judged that it would be better for the process to be discontinued at this stage,” he said. “This action has led to the round being suspended.”

But U.S. officials said the fault lay with other countries. […] [U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns] blamed Brazil and India for being inflexible on their refusal to cut barriers to industrial imports and the EU for refusing to open up its farm markets. “There was just simply nothing there,” Johanns said.

Johanns said the United States indicated it could increase its offer to cut subsidies to American farmers, but he would not say whether the U.S. team had made a concrete proposal.

“You cut your subsidies first!” “No! You first!” “Kiss my ass, you cut yours or we’re not cutting ours!”

I’ve seen more civil behavior on elementary school playgrounds…

Anyone with half a brain who looks at how international trade has gone since the creation of the WTO would realize its real purpose is not to liberalize trade but to provide bickering grounds as cover for keeping it as restrained as it already was, while loking like they care. You don’t cut subsidies to humble american family farms corporatized agribusiness by having “talks” or trying to wrench concessions out of people who don’t have the luxury of leisure, you do it by cutting the f$@%ing subsidies. The reason we don’t is pure politics: despite the government interference being a sop to corporate socialism, when election season rolls around interest groups tug at heartstrings to make people think ADM is “the little guy”.

The United Nations apparently doesn’t think we pay enough in taxes:

Should the U.N. be able to tax you? Over the last several years, officials at the U.N. and other international organizations have been hatching schemes to directly tax the world’s people. […]

The U.N. and other international organizations have largely depended on their ability to extract dues or other payments from their sovereign members.

Naturally, officials at the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation nd Development and other organizations hate the present system because it limits their ability to spend other people’s money on themselves and their various schemes. The U.N. crowd has proposed an international tax on aviation fuel, a tax on airline tickets, taxes on international currency transactions, carbon use taxes, including a 4.8-cent tax on each gallon of gasoline, and other taxes on an extensive range of transactions, goods and services.

Legislation is going through congress at the moment proposing a partial witholding of UN dues if they keep this shit up.  It’s a start, but considering how long this charade of globalism has gone on, nothing short of withdrawal from the UN entirely would really say it all.  Keep an eye on that legislation though, because anyone who opposes even such a modest measure is holding up a large sign saying “I need to be kicked out of office”.
Props.

As has already been explained elsewhere, reasonable people have no dog in the current
flare-up over Israel. It goes without saying though, that many folks are not that astute:

I find myself inescapably drawn to the notion that not only is the Israeli action warranted, I now think there is no good reason the IDF should avoid attacking targets of strategic value to Hezbollah which are located in non-Hezbollah areas. Moreover, I would urge them to follow the logic of that position and start striking targets in Syria and (above all) in Iran in order to impose a cost on those governments for their actions in enabling Hezbollah.

Much as I support the idea of a modernist secular Lebanon, perhaps that is simply not within the power of non-Islamists in Lebanon to deliver until military realities have altered the political realities. In short, if the other factions within Lebanon do not want Israel to completely demolish the national infrastructure that Hezbollah also uses, they need to realise that they, as well as Israel, need to declare war on Hezbollah. As long as ports, roads and airfields in Lebanon can be used by Hezbollah, neutrality is simply not an option for anyone. (emphasis mine)

Uh, yeah, because that is working so well in Iraq…

What isn’t realized by hawkish types is that relations are never as obvious as they think. It’s not a matter of some middle easterners being super-liberal & others being stereotypical bloodthirsty animals of some sort, there’s a spectrum. Hezbollah actually has enough support in Lebanon that it holds seats in the Parliament there, as if they were a regular political party. Ask yourself: is that because the Lebanese are a bunch of jihadist whackos? There are some, but anyone who remembers the sea of cleavage visible in photos from the much-publicized protests of Syrian influence knows they don’t rule the roost.

From here, it looks like Hezbollah has the position it does because some of the lebanese think they’re serving a defense purpose — despite them obviously being inadequete for such. In effect, they’re running a protection racket. Think about it: when something happens on the border between Lebanon & Israel — even if they in fact started it — they point to it as proof that they’re needed. It works similar to how the mafia would send some thug to a store they wanted to extort to rough up the owner, after which their people would show up to offer “help”.
Now, considering their role, would escalating attacks on Lebanon’s infrastructure & increasing the amount of collateral damage innocent people caught in the crossfire convince people in the middle of that spectrum that they should toss Hezbollah? Or would they say to themselves “sure, Hezbollah kills innocent people over there, but the Israelis are killing innocent people here”?

A note: I am NOT — NOT!!! — in any way whatsoever saying that they are justified, nor that rating lebanese lives over israeli lives is morally correct. If it were me….well, I’d be getting the hell out of Lebanon. All I’m saying is, the way people tend to think they underrate what their neighbors do to them and overrate what “outsiders” do. Ideally, Hezbollah would be destroyed by the lebanese, leaving israel completely out of the matter: needless to say, it’s kinda too late for that. However, considering it some sort of aid to the liberals of their society is ridiculous, since the side effects may well discredit them in the eyes of fence-sitters on the matter.

So, Bush used his veto pen for the first time his entire reign. Supposedly, if you listen to the media portrayal, he did it to oppose embryonic stem cell research, which he thinks is morally no different than murder. If you agree with him on that, chances are you aren’t reading this, or you stopped right now. If you don’t, then you probably reacted to the veto with something like this:

An administration that has shown itself over and over again to have trouble telling the truth is now telling Americans in wheelchairs, those with damaged hearts, babies who are diabetic and those left immobile by Parkinsonism not to worry. The president, whose grasp of science left him unable to identify creationism as a fundamentally religious idea, and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, rarely seen in a white lab coat but who knows something about rats, having been in Washington for some time now, claim to know best which medical research is most likely to benefit diseased Americans in the future.

Now, within the narrow spectra seen as “mainstream opinion”, this is understandable reaction. If you think the research requires public government funding or it simply will not be done, then of course you’re angry! Why, he’s standing in the way of scientific progress!

Problem is, “mainstream opinion” on this is yet another example of where government interference encourages lying to ourselves.

Here’s some facts: the lack of federal funding does not translate to a block on the research. it can still be (and already is to an extent) done at lower levels, and — wait for it — by private means. Also, the embryos referred to are leftovers from fertility clinics, and whether used for research or not the majority of them will be destroyed anyway. As such, no “life” is being saved by Bush’s veto.

I saw something rather illuminating the other day in the course of reading news about this online: there was this article about how an evangelical group formed a foundation that “adopts” unused embryos from fertility clinics and saves them for later use. Far as I know, it is a completely private endeavor. Along with this type of action, there exist private means of doing the embryonic stem-cell research. So the problem is obvious: “it’s the government, stupid.”

This issue is a prime example of where statism turns issues of personal morality into tribal political wars. Because of the status-quo of funding scientific research through tax dollars, it pits religious folks & pro-science types against each other, fighting over crumbs. Though culturally I couldn’t possibly be more “liberal” (IMO the only thing we should be “old-school” about as a culture is disciplining children), I understand the point of view of the religious types on this: they see themselves as potentially being forced to pay for acts they see as reprehensible. I just wish they would extend that logic to things like war & the “Patriot” Act…

-When keepin it real goes wrong: the rap version

-You can’t make this up: Samuel L Jackson is playing God in an audiobook version of the bible.  “Thou shalt have no muthafuckin gods before me!”

-Michelle of Hammer of Truth gives Dubya’s folksy outburst ham-handed stunt the (dis)respect it deserves:

I think it is great that we are able to hear the private thoughts of the president. It kind of makes me feel even about that phone tapping garbage.

-Cynapse reminds us all that reasonable people have no dog in this fight.

-Shorter Jim Henley: “Iran becoming more of a regional problem proves it: benevolent hegemony is just Keynes w/ missiles.”

-Cunning Realist observes what else Bush said at the G8. Yep, Russia & China are big, China’s got a lot of people too. Georgie want another cookie?

-Newt Gingrich: “It’s World War 3!!” Brad Spangler: “You’re jumpin the gun, porky. Don’t splooge yourself yet.”

-Newt: “But…it’s World War 3!!!” Glenn Greenwald: “If Bill Kristol & co don’t STFU it will be…”

-Last but not least, Andrew Sullivan gets an email that gives an international flare to the uselessness of our tax dollars: apparently the US government is charging for evacuation of american civilians from Beirut, and dumping them off in Cyprus.