Psychopolitik 2.0

In the “things could be worse” department:

Mirza Kunduzai, 58, a slight man with a short white goatee, had almost reached his house after a day of trading in the capital’s open-air currency market when his taxi was forced to stop by six heavily armed men dressed in Afghan National Army uniforms.

For the next week, Kunduzai recounted, he endured one horror after another — beaten unconscious, hooded and handcuffed, strung up by his wrists and ankles, dumped in a filthy latrine — while his family frantically tried to raise the kidnappers’ astronomical ransom demand of $2 million.

“I was 95 percent sure I was a dead man,” Kunduzai said last week. “They said if my family went to the police, they would chop off my fingers and send them to my wife. I begged them to be reasonable. I offered them my house and my farmland back home. Finally, they agreed to settle for $500,000 and released me. I am poor again, but I am thankful to be alive.”

While Taliban insurgents stage increasing attacks in the Afghan countryside, equally fast-expanding violent crime — kidnappings, carjackings, drug-related killings and highway robberies — is plaguing the capital of 5 million and the vital truck and bus routes that connect the country’s major cities. It is making some Afghans nostalgic for the low-crime days before 2001, when the Taliban sternly ruled most of the country.

Today’s problem, which experts say is intertwined with widespread official corruption, opium trafficking and the get-rich-quick boom of postwar aid and reconstruction, is threatening to destroy public confidence in the government of President Hamid Karzai and drive away what little investment the desperately poor country is attracting. (emphasis mine)

Y’know, I was inclined to make a statement about how perhaps if they had a semblance of foundation of liberalism to fall back on this wouldn’t be the case, but some drunken thought dragged me to the conclusion that that would be bullshit.  That thought was that despite the US’ own history — or maybe because of it, depending on how you look at it and/or how forgiving you choose to be — we in our own young, soft, western way have the same issue.  Conveniently forgetting the bubbles involved, romanticism of the Clinton years has been up, at least until the recent threat of an impending Nelson Muntz moment for Austrian economists came about (if I believed in an afterlife, I’d be inclined to suspect Murray Rothbard was laughing his ass off somewhere).  Eh, at least back then we had the emergence of Wu-Tang Clan as a salve of sorts, now we’re stuck with Soulja Boy & his fellow ringtone rappers, & Carlin & Bernie Mac are both gone on top of that.

Look on the bright side: once it’s shit-obvious that we can no longer afford to engage in global military domination, the argument can shift from bickering about how to fuck nations most of us can’t find on a map to whether we should even do it.  The timetable for acknowledging reality has moved up.

BTW: for a good drink I recommend this.  It’s kinda steep, but for the price you’re getting a combination of intense flavor and ghetto-brew level alcohol.  It’ll do ya.

Barack “uppity liberal elitist hippie peacenik secret-radical muslim” Obama, from an excerpt of an interview with Bill O’Really to be played in full later:

“Look, look here’s where you and I agree. It’s unacceptable for Iran to possess a nuclear weapon. It would be a game changer and I’ve said that repeatedly.”

Three possible meanings for that description:

1) If “game changer” = “would make invasion go from being a merely stupid and dangerous idea to a REALLY stupid and dangerous idea”, then of course.  But that’s two tears in the Atlantic.

2) if “game changer” = “concern for Israel”, it begs the question of why that is somehow our issue.

3)  If “game changer” = “serious threat to the US”, you’re full of shit.

Props.

Sullivan, this morning:

Some encouraging news from the terror war: the U.S. is now raiding into Pakistan to pursue the Taliban and al Qaeda…

Robert Pelton, 2003, as written on page 43 of “Licensed to Kill“:

Officially, the Pakistani Tribal Police has jurisdiction over the tribal areas on their side of the mountains, while the U.S. military handles things on the Afghan side.  Unless my GPS is wrong however, this American outpost, armed by Afghans, is technically about five miles inside Pakistan.

So basically what they did was take the plausible deniability they paid those contractors — with our money — for, and blow it to smithereens.  Anybody got a receipt?

Whenever I hear someone complain about polarization in US politics, I reach a level of annoyance that, if allowed to sit for too long, could only be alleviated by applying LSD directly to my exposed brain.  One example of just how small the difference between parties is comes amid a Glenn Greenwald post about foreign policy hypocrisy: someone at Kos — y’know, that site that the self-proclaimed Serious minds out there constantly refer to as a rabid left-wing fever swamp — posted a video clip of Joe Biden endorsing the view that questioning a war makes one a pussy.

The Kossack who put it up saw it as a positive, and endorsed Biden for the Democratic veep slot.

The kicker: he’s actually being considered for it…

See, the acceptable range of discourse has long been narrow, especially on foreign policy.  It’s to the point where you can either outright express love for the concept of indiscriminately raining down death, or complain about strategy while not questioning the reasoning that led to the conflict in the first place — and you’ll still get called a damned dirty hippie for holding the latter view.  But arguing that it’s pointless to police the world is automatically fringe, and gets no representation.

I’ve long had my issues with surveys, and don’t see majoritarianism as any sort of salve, but I’d be willing to bet that if the global dominance strategy were put to a public vote it’d lose.

Clearly, the problem is not polarization, but the amount of things both halves of the ruling class agree with on which they are both dead wrong.  The portrayal of deep division is a tool to encourage the unintentional co-signing to what they REALLY want to do to continue, by making it seem like everyone has their stake in the outcomes.  These things aren’t normally aired in public because the cumulative effect of such questioning is to undermine politics itself — which I’d argue is and should be the point.

Roughly overheard a moment ago on “Late Edition”, during a discussion about Iraq:

“They’ll be a thriving democracy, and a US ally, the first Arab nation on our side.”

-John Cornyn

Well, if that’s the case Senator, what was all that money we’ve been sending to Saudi Arabia for?

A public service announcement:

When I say that the behavior of the US government towards Iran might as well be encouragement for them to build a nuke, I’m not just blowing smoke.  Turns out they have a template to go off of, thanks to North Korea.

Props.

…to really bang home that the concept of the modern nation-state SUCKS.

Part of Georgia (the eastern European country, not the southern state) doesn’t want to be part of Georgia.  They want to either become independent or merge with a related region that’s politically part of Russia.  The (political leadership of the) rest of Georgia doesn’t like this, so they sent troops to peacefully argue their case crack down on the separatists.  Russia didn’t like THAT, so they sent in troops.  Predictably, the result is a heap o’ death.

Why do they do this?  Simple: because the State by its nature can’t accept division.  The just thing to do when someone doesn’t want to be part of your particular group is to not require them to be, but if a government does this then in the long run it concedes the argument against their legitimacy.  The political leadership of Georgia thinks that if that group splits then everyone’s going to want to do it.  I doubt their particular reasons for separation make any sense, but in principle it’s not up to anyone else.  If they don’t want to stay, then let ‘em go, fuck it.

Considering the obscurity of the region of the world where this is happening, and the numerous hard to pronounce names involved, this would actually be amusing if only it didn’t involve loss of innocent lives.  Like a nightmare Monty Python skit.

Somewhere, an Israeli hawk is spanking the monkey to this:

U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama said on Wednesday a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a “grave threat” to the world.

Obama told reporters during a visit to Israel that if elected, he would take “no options off the table” in dealing with the Iran issue and said tougher sanctions could be imposed.

“A nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat and the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Obama told reporters after visiting the Israeli town of Sderot, which lies close to the border with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. (emphasis mine)

Sound familiar?  It should…

In a stern warning to Iran, President Bush said “all options are on the table” if the Iranians refuse to comply with international demands to halt their nuclear program, pointedly noting he has already used force to protect U.S. security.

For the few partyarchs who bother to read this site sharpening their pitchforks at this comparison, it’s not like he’s alone in agreement with this.  Your 2nd and 3rd options said the same thing.

Honestly, whenever some winger tries to paint Obama as if he’s an uber-leftist it’s a struggle to not laugh maniacally.

On a serious note, what has happened thanks to the constant drumbeat of war & the psychological footing crammed down our throats is that within “mainstream” politics the center has been dragged right.  Since the “mainstream” right-wing position is essentially that Ahmadinejad is a violent version of the Underpants Gnomes (step 1: build nukes, step 2: ????, step 3: profit!), the quasi-officially sanctioned Middle view is “yeah, they’re nuts, and we might have to destroy them, but let’s talk a little more first”.

As for the view that, since Iran can’t fire a missile and hit the US, and handing off a nuke to a 3rd party would be both too risky and nationally suicidal (Iran would be blasted into glass before lunch the same day, folks), this is a regional matter more than likely neutralized by the fact that Israel has retaliation strike capability out the wazoo?  Oh, that’s just crazy lefty hippie talk.  Never mind that many of the people holding this view aren’t leftists of any stripe.

Things you don’t expect to see:

• Richard Simmons tongue-kissing a woman
• Nuns smoking weed in public
• A Harold Meyerson column that doesn’t deserve ridicule

Waitaminute…what?

According to a report by Keith Bradsher in the New York Times last month, such multinational companies as Canon (the printer and copier maker) and Hanesbrands (the North Carolina-based underwear empire) are expanding or building factories in Hanoi, where they churn out products for Wal-Mart and other American retailers. Foreign direct investment in Vietnam increased 136 percent between 2006 and 2007, while it increased just 14 percent in China.

The reason for the move south is straightforward: Vietnamese factory workers make about a quarter of what their Chinese counterparts earn.

But why Vietnam and not, say, Thailand, where labor is similarly cheap?

Vietnam’s edge, it seems, is political. “Communism means more stability,” Laurence Shu, the chief financial officer of Shanghai-based Texhong, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of cotton fabrics, told Bradsher. This view, Bradsher reports, is common among Asian executives and some American executives, too, though they have the presence of mind never to say so on the record. After all, Vietnam, like China, outlaws independent unions. Absent free speech and free elections, no radical shifts in the government’s economic policies are likely to be sprung upon unsuspecting American businesses. (emphasis mine)

He goes on from this observation to rhetorically ask why the hell the Vietnam war even happened if businesses were going to decide communism was A-OK anyway.  I’d take this as yet another example of how not only is being pro-market not the same thing as being “pro-business”, but big business is actively ANTI-market.  The possibility of someone other than them having bargaining power anytime soon is anathema, and any haggling must go downward, not back and forth.

Found this amusing, re: Iraq & the political status of its oil.  All emphasis mine:

Bush administration officials told Hunt Oil last summer that they did not object to its efforts to reach an oil deal with the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, even while the State Department was publicly expressing concern that such contracts could undermine a national Iraqi petroleum law, according to documents obtained by a House committee.

Last fall, after the deal was announced, the State Department said that it had tried to dissuade Hunt Oil from signing the contract with Kurdish regional authorities but that the company had proceeded “regardless of our advice.” Although Hunt Oil’s chief executive has been a major fundraiser for President Bush, the president said he knew nothing about the deal.

Yesterday, however, Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released documents and e-mails showing that for nearly four months, State and Commerce department officials knew about Hunt Oil’s negotiations and had told company officials that there were no objections. In one note, a Commerce Department official even wished them “a fruitful visit to Kurdistan” and invited them to contact him “in case you need any support.”

That guidance contradicted the administration’s public posture. The Bush administration made an Iraqi national petroleum law, which has still not been adopted, a top priority last year in the hope it would more tightly bind the country’s regions together and open the way for international oil companies to invest in much larger oil fields south of Iraq’s Kurdish region. The State Department said, and continues to assert, that it opposes any contract with a regional Iraqi authority in the absence of a national petroleum law.

The Hunt Oil deal was seen by Kurdish officials as a key victory because the company’s chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, was not only a major backer of Bush but also a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. After the deal was completed, a dozen other foreign firms signed oil contracts with Kurdish authorities.

So the administration lied.  Big Whoop, they always do.

So the CEO of Hunt Oil is a buddy of Bush.  No duh.

What’s the interesting part of this story, you ask?  Simple: the combination of this agreement with Kurdistan and the multiple ones that followed with the public stance of ostensibly keeping Iraq whole show the one area where there was a Plan B.  Since that US-written oil legislation foisted on Iraq has been filing itself under “will be passed when Dr Dre finally releases that damn Detox album”, the oil companies have been preparing themselves in case of a split so they can at least get something.  They clearly have not given up, but strategically they’re light years ahead of the administration.

BTW: right away after clicking that last link, the article starts with this:

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

As someone who knows the real motivations behind much of our foreign policy, all I have to say is this: what took so long this time?