"Instead of subjecting the military to the civil power, [a tyrant will make] the civil subordinate to the military. But can [he] thus put down all law under his feet? Can he erect a power superior to that which erected himself? He [can do] it indeed by force, but let him remember that force cannot give right." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774.(*) ME 1:209, Papers 1:134
In an earlier blog ( see below) I outlined the foreign and domestic political situation Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammad Morsi, had to deal with with when he was elected a year ago. In summary his problems were: the Hosni Mubarak old-guard entrenched and barricaded by decades in power remained a powerful force, while the military and the secret service, the real power in the nation, worked to undermine the new president. From abroad Morsi also faced opposition from the White House which had decided that this PhD from the University of California steeped in ideas of "democracy" was too independent and unlikely to be a pliable and complacent "partner". Washington quietly gave the green light to others in the region that he should go. Closer to his home, across the narrow Red Sea, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was unhappy with a democratic Egypt on its western border. It feared its own suppressed Moslem Brotherhood and worried that the very concept of the Egyptian revolution might be "exported" to Saudi Arabia. Saudi money found its way into Egypt to stir up massive demonstrations.
But Morsi faced other just as intractable problems at home in the form of a faltering economy, falling gold reserves, rising unemployment, a fragile political coalition, and a powerful, outsized military establishment with potentially traitorous ties abroad.
The Egyptian economy is long burdened by many "give aways" in the form of food, and fuel subsidies. These were instituted under Mubarak to keep the populous quiet, but which weakened the economy. In the end it turned out to be the heavily subsidized military which was Morsi's greatest threat.
The Egyptian military, the largest subsidized component of the economy, is underwritten by a powerful foreign nation. Each year the generals pocket a hefty $1.3 billion dollars in "welfare" from the USA. These funds, totaling over $70 billion dollars over the years, are a form of insurance-payment designed to keep the army's leadership in line with US interests, and, as well, to help maintain the military as a controlling element of the the Egyptian state. If the US is spending $1.3 billion per year, it wants to be sure it's paying the "top guy", and is getting its money's worth by making sure the top guy stays on top. These US funds were also a handy lever to insure that the Egyptians keep the peace with Israel, and maintain the critical sea-lane through the Suez Canal. Those seventy billions of dollars were well-used in Egypt to pamper the generals, who buy spiffy gold-encrusted uniforms, up-to-date US military hardware (but not too up to date!), and get to go on expensive jaunts abroad to US military installations, war-colleges, and camps where they are duly indoctrinated. The funds are, as well, a boon to the US arms industry, since the money can only be used to purchase American military hardware. In this way it supports and comforts burgeoning militarism on two continents. But money is fungible, and over the long decades the dollars were sidelined by entrepreneurial generals into private industry. Large amounts accrued to the Egyptian Army as investment funds for their own private businesses. It is now claimed that the military "owns" about 40% of the nation's economy. Thus, the continued flow of US funds are a significant investment in propping up elements in the Egyptian economy antithetical to democracy. The result is a weakened general economy, hindered job formation and unfair competition with independent companies which must bump shoulders with the heavily subsidized military which produces all manner of products for the market from water bottles to laptop computers.
In the end, after many unfortunate faux pas by the inexperienced Morsi and company, the powerful, entrenched military and their allies finally took down Morsi, their legitimately elected President. General Abdul Al Sissi called to give Morsi 48 hours to resign, give up all real power and accept a "nominal" presidency in which all real power resided with the generals, or they would arrest him. This was the shameful "deal" which the US Ambassador, Security Advisor Rice and President Barack Obama favored and encouraged Morsi to accept. It was a deal which would give Obama cover but turn Egypt back to despotism. Morsi decided to take a courageous stand, he gave Obama and the generals a one finger salute, forcing a take-over which all the world would see revealed as a crude power play by the powerful...a military coup. The result is that Morsi is now behind bars in a barracks near Tahrir Square. His chief aids have been rounded up as so many criminals. The generals are scouring the City with trumped-up warrants for the arrest of 300 members of Morsi's political Freedom and Justice Party. The new military despots then shut down newspapers they did not like, closed political organizations they found offensive and even arrested journalists from Al Jazeera whom they considered too "pro Morsi". Today, July 8, 2013, our US press has widely reported that the Army and Egyptian Police have "massacred" scores of peaceful sit-in pro-Morsi demonstrators, most of whom were shot in the head at close range.
The US and the rest of the free world wring their hands at the the slaughter and decry what is a clear military coup d'état. The White House has remained silent, unwilling to call the coup "a coup". Western government leaders who were complicitous with the US in helping to out Morsi are now frustrated and unhappy, having their facile ability to talk up "democracy" for third world countries turn too obviously into so much empty hypocritcal rhetoric. Here in the US, supposed leader of the "free world", we continue to conspire against "inconvienient" democracies we do not like and continue to support militarism at home and abroad....at our peril and the peril of the rest of the world. The situation in Egypt and its apparent descent into further chaos is a clear picture of what happens when we unleash the military from its civilian control. Tyranny is the result. We can not let this coup stand! We can not continue to support the despotic generals. As Thomas Jefferson so aptly stated, "....tyrants (will) make the civil, subordinate to the military. (They can do it) indeed by force, but let (them)remember that force cannot give right".
What we should remember as well, something that our own pliant press will not or can not state, is our own nation's complicity in this tragedy. We have supported the militarization of Egypt for decades. We are well-aware of how our funding has crippled their economy. We have supported the tyranny of Mubarak, and now we have underhandedly helped engineer the fall of the first democratically elected president of that nation. Our President hypocritically wrings his hands in public false despair and in private finds ways to support tyranny. We are in good part responsible for the tragedy in that region. Can we not somehow learn to be a more benign super power? Can we not somehow become a force for good in the world as our Founders certainly imagined was to be our nation's course? And too, seeing the chaos in Egypt, should we also worry that our own powerful standing army and the huge military industries which are in league with it are a danger to our own freedoms?
Get the picture?
rjk
Monday, July 8, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
WHITE HOUSE HYPOCRISY ON EGYPT
The White House loves to talk up "Democracy" but they don't really like to see it implemented (here or) in other countries. It's too messy. They much rather have their good ole boy dictators who take money and orders from the US Imperium and smile while they are going to the bank. This has been the story in US foreign affairs for all of the post WWII years, and in other imperial nations for thousands of years since the Roman Empire.
In 2006 the Palestinians were nudged by the west to have a "free and fair" election to decide who would lead that aborning nation in its quest for legitimacy. The results surprised all when Hamas won handily. Hamas was the more recalcitrant, less controllable, and the stiff opponent of Israeli rule. Its election was unpalatable to the Israelis, and their chief sponsor, the USA. The result was that the Israelis illegally held back tax receipts from the provinces, starving the Hamas government for funds, while the White House did not "recognize" the Hamas government and pulled every string in its "marionette set for the world" to upend the legitimate results of a free and fair election. In the end, a civil war broke out between Hamas and Fatah, and after many deaths, and destruction, a stalemate was reached in which Fatah (the more malleable and controllable group) supported by the US, eventually took control over the West Bank or those small parts of it that the Israelis let them control, and the Hamas remained in control of Gaza. The result has been economic decay, political instability, several armed conflicts, and thousands of Palestinian deaths.
History has repeated itself in Egypt, a US client state par excellence, with $1.3 billion in military aid for the last thirty years. The White House, the CIA and the Pentagon have close ties with the Egyptian military (and secret service) many of whom were trained right here in the USA. It is well known that the CIA has that nation so "wired" that nothing happens in Egypt that the US does not know about (or had control over). We are the puppeteers in Egypt and they are the stringed marionettes. Well, that was so until the chief puppet and dictator Hosni Mubarak met a startling and surprising fate when he was overthrown in a fire-storm revolution. We lost a key ally. That made us unhappy. As soon as all the hand wringing was over and we realized we had to let of Mubarak go, we began playing the "democracy" tape again and again to the Egyptians to encourage them to have "fair and free" elections. In time the US style fair and free election took place and lo and behold....a member of the formerly outlawed Moslem Brotherhood and head of the Freedom and Justice Party led by Mohammed Morsi won the Presidency, taking a whopping 52% of the vote. Morsi was the first democratically elected President of Egypt. But he had many enemies. The Saudi Arabians were unhappy with a real democracy on their western border. Perhaps their citizenry would begin to get the idea that they could spend that Saudi oil money much better and equitably than the Abdullah family could. The US lost a powerful client whom they could control right in the heart of the Middle East. Morsi was his own man and would not fill that bill. The Egyptian military and their secret service were long time opponents of the Moslem Brotherhood, many of whom they had jailed and tortured. Then too the Mubarak old guard were still around and still in positions of power. The sotto voce word went out from Washington..."this guy must go".
Right after Morsi's election, the disgruntled military tribunal of generals which ruled Egypt after the overthrow of Mubarak, shut down the Parliament and locked out the legitimately elected ministers. From that point on it was a fierce battle of wills between Morsi, the legitimately elected president, and an array of enemies including the Mubarak old guard, the Egyptian secret service and the military, as well as foreign enemies such as the CIA, the IMF ( which refused a much needed loan), the USA, which threw stumbling blocks in this president's way, and not the least, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who with the green light from Washington sent money and activists to stir up riots and unrest against Morsi. The Egyptian President was an idealist, was not going to be bought, was not able to be swayed by offers of money or power, and had immersed himself in the ideals and theory of democracy while taking a Ph D degree at USC in California. So the fact that Morsi held out for a whole year, and Egypt had one whole year of democratic rule is truly remarkable.
We love to talk democracy here in the world's self proclaimed top "democratic" nation, but we don't like it to crop up in our client states. It makes them so hard to control. These tin pot upstart leaders begin going off on their own, doing things that are actually beneficial for their nation as a whole, sometimes actually attempting to make laws or decisions that are counter to the wishes and imperatives of the USA. That ain't no way to run a world!
But in seriousness in the end we must face the facts. Our foreign policies of interventionism and control encourage despotism. Dictators exert power through brutality and repression. They keep the lid on the human need for free expression for a while, but soon, as we have seen around the world in the Arab Spring, people rise up and overthrow these pliable and greedy men we seem so determined to set up as despots over and over again. So here we go again in Egypt, which appears set for another round of phony leadership tied by strings to Washington. Why must we attempt to poke our nose into every little nation around the world....let's embrace their differences and their individuality and let's live together in respect and peace.
Get the picture?
rjk
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
OBAMA: LOFTY ORATORY AND BLOODY DEEDS
OBAMA: LOFTY ORATORY AND BLOODY DEEDS
On May 23, 2013 President Obama gave a lofty speech in which he finally seemed to be grasping the reins of control of government to reduce our military excesses. In it he described his intention to "sharply curtail the unmanned aerial vehicle killing program" and close up Guantanamo. Or did he say that? The truth is that the"Obama kill list" and drone program were beginning to look like domestic political liabilities. It is a program which Obama radically expanded and made more secretive and world wide (and deadly) upon taking office. (The British Bureau of Investigative Journalism says drone attacks in Pakistan have killed up to 3,549 people since 2004 including up to 890 civilians.) But it is clear his "drone war" has been a success only the way General Westmorland's "Vietcong body counts" were a "success" in the Vietnam War era. Counting up dead enemies may have bolstered the President's short term domestic political agenda, and staved off Republican attacks, but in the end were and remain a brutal sign of America's inability to win decisively and a mark of futility and ultimate failure. Just tally up the cost to benefit ratio. Trillions of dollars in expenditures and what are the benefits? We all know it...we are leaving Afghanistan with our tails between our legs one way or the other. But no politician wants to admit it.
But only a few days after this high flutin' misleading example of Obama's golden throated oratorical skills and obscurantisms, the CIA conducted deadly strike on June 7, in North Waziristan, killing nine people...presumably one or more "terrorists" among them. But who knows who was killed. We're they women and children? What was their ages, sex, or actual political affiliations--or if they had any? Furthermore, this deadly drone strike occurred only a few days after Pakistan's newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had specifically requested in his post election speech that the USA respect his nation's sovereignty and desist from any further drone strikes. Perhaps the strike was a mistake? Or it was planned before Sharif made his request and being in the "drone pipe line" the attack took place anyway. But it was not intended as a slap in the Pakistani's PM face. Sharif vociferously complained and the UN initiated an investigation. Some in the UN noted disconcertedly that the authorization for use of force by the US was getting stale, it was issued twelve years ago under the Bush administration.
Then as if ignoring Obama's speech, Sharif's plea, and the UN objections, on July 3, 2013, the CIA hit a compound in a market town of Miranshah in the northwest part of Pakistan in Waziristan with multiple war heads killing 17 or 18 people belonging to the Haqqani network. The Haqqani clan are nationalists and islamists who oppose foreign intervention in Afghanistan. Ironically, they were nurtured and armed by the CIA in the 1980s insurgency against the Soviet Union. Their contact with the Taliban make them our "enemies" today. They are certainly no existential threat to the USA and are concerned with simply getting us to leave Afghanistan. That is what we all seem to want. But how will Sharif respond to this obvious hard slap in the face. To an ally whom we actually need to help us extricate ourselves from this mess. Perhaps Sharif will close off the vital passes into Afghanistan again?
But the question remains, what was President Obama's intentions in this attack? To send a message to Sharif, who was democratically elected and who championed the idea of limiting US intervention in its northern border region and who strongly opposed the CIA use of drones against its citizenry. Sharif is a new man who replaced the former Prime Minister Ali Zadari who was much more compliant to US pressure. It was during Zadari's administration in which the number of drone attacks surged and large numbers of Pakistani civilians were killed. Was this last attack a way to get Sharif to back down? Or is Obama simply not in control? Or more likely is he simply acting like a normal Washington pol...saying one thing to his base and doing just the opposite to satisfy the powerful elites in the military-industrial-complex (MIC) to whom he is both financially and politically obligated. Obama, who at one time seemed to be our last best hope, seems today in the early part of his second term, sad to say, on the road to a failed presidency. As his actions, decisions and motivations are slowly revealed by the likes of Snowdon, Assange and Wikileaks the glittering robes of myth are falling away to expose a man who could not rise above his roots as a small time Chicago politician. He has essentially kept the course of his failed predecessor. He has not wrested the great spokes of the wheel of the ship-of-state from Bush. His face is darker, his smile is brighter but his countenance is beginning to look a lot like our former VP Cheney. This is a sad commentary on our modern way of politics. Who can progressives support?
Get the picture?
rjk
Sunday, June 30, 2013
OBAMA IN SOUTH AFRICA, GUANTANAMO TURNKEY VISITS ROBBEN ISLAND
"The world is grateful for the heroes of Robben Island, who remind us that no shackles or cells can match the strength of the human spirit." President Obama (comment in guest book of Robben Island, South Africa June 2013)
On his trip to Africa President Obama, took the time out to take his family to notorious Robben Island, the Guantanamo of South Africa. I wonder did the staggering irony of his presence there give him a start as he gazed out of the iron bars of the tiny cells in which Nelson Mandela and other so-called "terrorists" of the past spent decades of their lives under the heavy fist of the Apartheid rulers of that sorry nation. I wonder did he shudder as the realization dawned on him that like the Apartheid rulers of South Africa he was too the perpetrator and facilitator of similar inhumane treatment on another island---Guantanamo. Did his hands tremble as he grasped the worn iron bars when he realized he is responsible for keeping other men in other tiny prison cells half way around the world? Did he think of the suffering and deaths in that place he is personally responsible for? One can not but hope that his visit to Mandela's tiny cell, where that exceptional man, the world's embodiment of courage, silent inner strength and conviction, survived for two decades. Perhaps the powerful emotional vibrations of that cell might have some effect on our President. Perhaps the example of Mr.Mandela's courage and conviction might give our President a tiny bit of the inner strength he needs to actually do something to clean up the embarrassment of our own Robben Island in Cuba where inhumane treatment including shackles and cells are used to suppress human dignity and smother human spirit, which Obama claims to support.
Get the picture?
rjk
On his trip to Africa President Obama, took the time out to take his family to notorious Robben Island, the Guantanamo of South Africa. I wonder did the staggering irony of his presence there give him a start as he gazed out of the iron bars of the tiny cells in which Nelson Mandela and other so-called "terrorists" of the past spent decades of their lives under the heavy fist of the Apartheid rulers of that sorry nation. I wonder did he shudder as the realization dawned on him that like the Apartheid rulers of South Africa he was too the perpetrator and facilitator of similar inhumane treatment on another island---Guantanamo. Did his hands tremble as he grasped the worn iron bars when he realized he is responsible for keeping other men in other tiny prison cells half way around the world? Did he think of the suffering and deaths in that place he is personally responsible for? One can not but hope that his visit to Mandela's tiny cell, where that exceptional man, the world's embodiment of courage, silent inner strength and conviction, survived for two decades. Perhaps the powerful emotional vibrations of that cell might have some effect on our President. Perhaps the example of Mr.Mandela's courage and conviction might give our President a tiny bit of the inner strength he needs to actually do something to clean up the embarrassment of our own Robben Island in Cuba where inhumane treatment including shackles and cells are used to suppress human dignity and smother human spirit, which Obama claims to support.
Get the picture?
rjk
Monday, June 17, 2013
OBAMA CHANNELS BUSH USES PHONY CHARGES TO ENTER SYRIAN CIVIL WAR
Majority Doesn't Trust Obama, Approval Rating Suffers Severe Drop As Obama Morphs Into A Clone Of George Bush.
The very first evidence of the recent morphological changes in our first Black President has been in his golf game. The President’s play has altered recently from phlegmatic to frenetic. His game has sped up dramatically. The Presidential “concertina” which normally built up behind Mr. Obama's golf party is gone. Some thought at first it was the “golfing tip” he got from Tiger. But the length of time he takes to complete his weekly 18 Hole “round” has dropped from a stately and “Tigerly” four-plus hours to a speedy Bush-family style two hours. But there are other signs. White House servants report that our man has taken to noisily clomping around in the West Wing wearing Tony Lama hand-tooled cowboy boots, jingling rowel spurs, and a big floppy Stetson. Furthermore, more ominously, one of the White House gardeners reported that the carefully tended grape vines in the First Lady’s grape arbor were mysteriously hacked down to the ground one night. The word is that the President has been secretly “cutting brush” on the White House property under the cover of darkness. The First Lady’s “prevent obesity” garden was apparently on the President's new “brush clearing schedule”. White House officials claim it helps to “relieve tension”. But others fear it is an infection, perhaps a slow-acting virus, left on the old, porous-leather seat, of the Oval Office Presidential chair by the previous occupant. A gene-altering virus may have infected the new guy by this route. No one knows for sure, disease transmission in such rarefied circles is little studied and understood.
But one thing is clear...the POTUS seems to be morphing into a Cleavon Little type character from Mel Brook’s “Blazing Saddles” right before our eyes. In these last few weeks, he has been “off his feed” and the result is that the administration seems blindsided and sidetracked by the several scandals which have hit the White House early in the second term. Obam’ instead of the “smartest guy in the room” is acting more like a dyslexic dunce. Instead of his usual professorial air he has been uncharacteristically silent, instead he has been observed taking a lot of whispered advice from his much more slow-witted VP, Joe Biden. The results are telling---the administration has wavered and wandered into dark political and policy corners. As a consequence the Nation has been uncertain, and tentative. The results are evident in public opinion. The President's approval rating has fallen dramatically.
According to a new CNN poll published by Newsmax Media (newsmax.com) June 17, 2013: “President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped a shocking 8 percentage points over the last month -- one of sharpest, fastest plunges in his presidency,......" They add: “For the first time in Obama's time in office, more than half of the public doesn’t feel that the president is honest and trustworthy, the CNN/ORC International poll showed.”" See: Newsmax Media newsmax.com June 17, 2013?
But the latest “bushization” of the Obama White House has been his recent foreign policy pronouncements on Syria. He is (I can't believe it) actually replaying the old Bush “weapons of mass destruction” ploy. This time with Syria as the target. How stupid do they think we are? Well it IS TEN years ago that Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice cooked up the "weapons of mass destruction" story to divert and borrow tax dollars to prosecute a terrible war. I guess ten years is ancient history in this political era. So let me remind you. The charge that Saddam Hussein had “WMD" was the causus belli for our disastrous three-trillion-dollar foray into a bloody conflict of "nation deconstruction and building" in Iraq. That war, fought on borrowed funds, also contributed mightily to the Great Recession. Now our President is attempting to repeat a sordid part of our history with unproved claims of Syrian WMD. The so called "evidence", poo poohed by the Germans and Russians as "not substantive" consists of urine and blood samples collected by the CIA from two reputed Syrian fighters. These samples are the analogs of the phony Iraq "rocket tubes" of the Bush era. The physiological samples, of uncertain provenance, were tested in the US and (what else? ) they "proved" positive for sarin gas. But the question of who released the gas, what was the real identity and political association of the victims, and where exactly were the samples obtained--- is still an open question? Others claim the samples were rigged by the Syrian insurgents...a very likely possibility. As Americans paying with blood and money for such intervention should we not all have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence, particularly after the Iraq fiasco? And before Obama slides the nation onto a bloody slippery-slope leading into another war. But the Obama crowd has only offered their conclusions (conclusions rejected by Russia and Germany) with no intention of sharing any "hard evidence" cited.
I know our government thinks we Americans are real stupid, but we ain't that dumb! On this issue Mr Obama has turned the corner and is figuratively pumping the pedals of his mountain bike with his long legs as he heads into west Texas, his Stetson blown back off his head and a oil-painting kit under his arm. He is pouring the concrete which will become the footing for his permanent and official legacy: OBAMA: The Second George Bush".
Good bye Obama! You couldn't be yourself somehow. That Bush virus got you. Too bad. You had such potential. But at least you salvaged something for yourself. You will still make the history books as the first black President with an undeserved Nobel Peace prize! And will also generate records as the first president elected twice by a big majority only to morph (with no reason) into a predecessor from the opposing political party right before the eyes of the nation. Too bad we won't be able to say the Obama presidency and the efforts of all those who elected him put at least a tiny inflection in the erroneous course this nation had charted under the Bush leadership. Sad to say it appears Mr. Obama has turned out to be more of a deck hand than a ship captain. He has moved the deck chairs around a bit on the ship of state, but did not manage to wrest the great spoked steering wheel from the Bush faction. His actions in this Syrian affair prove it.
Get the picture?
rjk
The very first evidence of the recent morphological changes in our first Black President has been in his golf game. The President’s play has altered recently from phlegmatic to frenetic. His game has sped up dramatically. The Presidential “concertina” which normally built up behind Mr. Obama's golf party is gone. Some thought at first it was the “golfing tip” he got from Tiger. But the length of time he takes to complete his weekly 18 Hole “round” has dropped from a stately and “Tigerly” four-plus hours to a speedy Bush-family style two hours. But there are other signs. White House servants report that our man has taken to noisily clomping around in the West Wing wearing Tony Lama hand-tooled cowboy boots, jingling rowel spurs, and a big floppy Stetson. Furthermore, more ominously, one of the White House gardeners reported that the carefully tended grape vines in the First Lady’s grape arbor were mysteriously hacked down to the ground one night. The word is that the President has been secretly “cutting brush” on the White House property under the cover of darkness. The First Lady’s “prevent obesity” garden was apparently on the President's new “brush clearing schedule”. White House officials claim it helps to “relieve tension”. But others fear it is an infection, perhaps a slow-acting virus, left on the old, porous-leather seat, of the Oval Office Presidential chair by the previous occupant. A gene-altering virus may have infected the new guy by this route. No one knows for sure, disease transmission in such rarefied circles is little studied and understood.
But one thing is clear...the POTUS seems to be morphing into a Cleavon Little type character from Mel Brook’s “Blazing Saddles” right before our eyes. In these last few weeks, he has been “off his feed” and the result is that the administration seems blindsided and sidetracked by the several scandals which have hit the White House early in the second term. Obam’ instead of the “smartest guy in the room” is acting more like a dyslexic dunce. Instead of his usual professorial air he has been uncharacteristically silent, instead he has been observed taking a lot of whispered advice from his much more slow-witted VP, Joe Biden. The results are telling---the administration has wavered and wandered into dark political and policy corners. As a consequence the Nation has been uncertain, and tentative. The results are evident in public opinion. The President's approval rating has fallen dramatically.
According to a new CNN poll published by Newsmax Media (newsmax.com) June 17, 2013: “President Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped a shocking 8 percentage points over the last month -- one of sharpest, fastest plunges in his presidency,......" They add: “For the first time in Obama's time in office, more than half of the public doesn’t feel that the president is honest and trustworthy, the CNN/ORC International poll showed.”" See: Newsmax Media newsmax.com June 17, 2013?
But the latest “bushization” of the Obama White House has been his recent foreign policy pronouncements on Syria. He is (I can't believe it) actually replaying the old Bush “weapons of mass destruction” ploy. This time with Syria as the target. How stupid do they think we are? Well it IS TEN years ago that Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice cooked up the "weapons of mass destruction" story to divert and borrow tax dollars to prosecute a terrible war. I guess ten years is ancient history in this political era. So let me remind you. The charge that Saddam Hussein had “WMD" was the causus belli for our disastrous three-trillion-dollar foray into a bloody conflict of "nation deconstruction and building" in Iraq. That war, fought on borrowed funds, also contributed mightily to the Great Recession. Now our President is attempting to repeat a sordid part of our history with unproved claims of Syrian WMD. The so called "evidence", poo poohed by the Germans and Russians as "not substantive" consists of urine and blood samples collected by the CIA from two reputed Syrian fighters. These samples are the analogs of the phony Iraq "rocket tubes" of the Bush era. The physiological samples, of uncertain provenance, were tested in the US and (what else? ) they "proved" positive for sarin gas. But the question of who released the gas, what was the real identity and political association of the victims, and where exactly were the samples obtained--- is still an open question? Others claim the samples were rigged by the Syrian insurgents...a very likely possibility. As Americans paying with blood and money for such intervention should we not all have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence, particularly after the Iraq fiasco? And before Obama slides the nation onto a bloody slippery-slope leading into another war. But the Obama crowd has only offered their conclusions (conclusions rejected by Russia and Germany) with no intention of sharing any "hard evidence" cited.
I know our government thinks we Americans are real stupid, but we ain't that dumb! On this issue Mr Obama has turned the corner and is figuratively pumping the pedals of his mountain bike with his long legs as he heads into west Texas, his Stetson blown back off his head and a oil-painting kit under his arm. He is pouring the concrete which will become the footing for his permanent and official legacy: OBAMA: The Second George Bush".
Good bye Obama! You couldn't be yourself somehow. That Bush virus got you. Too bad. You had such potential. But at least you salvaged something for yourself. You will still make the history books as the first black President with an undeserved Nobel Peace prize! And will also generate records as the first president elected twice by a big majority only to morph (with no reason) into a predecessor from the opposing political party right before the eyes of the nation. Too bad we won't be able to say the Obama presidency and the efforts of all those who elected him put at least a tiny inflection in the erroneous course this nation had charted under the Bush leadership. Sad to say it appears Mr. Obama has turned out to be more of a deck hand than a ship captain. He has moved the deck chairs around a bit on the ship of state, but did not manage to wrest the great spoked steering wheel from the Bush faction. His actions in this Syrian affair prove it.
Get the picture?
rjk
Friday, June 7, 2013
JOHN DINGELL, TOO LONG IN CONGRESS
JOHN DINGELL A RAVENOUS BIRD OF PREY?
“Without (limits on terms) every man in power becomes a ravenous bird of prey.” John Adams.
In a laudatory piece on the “longevity” of our representatives in Congress, the NY Times (June 5, 2013) highlighted the career of Representative, John D. Dingell, of Michigan, who if he serves out his present term will become the longest serving member of Congress in history. Why the Times author seems to suggest that this is something our nation, the State of Michigan, and the 15th (12th) District voters should be proud of is what puzzles me. Dingell, is by all accounts a fine gentleman, patriot and a competent politician who served honorably in WWII, and has devoted his long life to Washington politics. But Dingle is also an example of one of the things wrong with politics in Washington. Representative Dingle, a Democrat born in Colorado Springs in 1926 is an octenagenarian who has served nearly sixty consecutive years representing the 15th (later 12) District in Michigan, a district formerly represented by his father, John Dingell Sr. The elder Dingell served twenty-two years as the representative of that district and upon his death in 1955 his seat was taken over by his son. A classic case of Washington nepotism which is so common now that no one seems to notice or comment. Thus, the people of the 15th (and its subsequent permutations by redistricting) have been represented by the same family of Dingells since 1933! For the last eighty years the 15th CD has has kept Mr. Dingell in his office at the Capitol. Like octenagenarian Mr. Dingell, now in his 87th year, the Congress is an old, creaky, hide-bound institution which can not get out of its own way to meet the needs of a vibrant 21st Century nation. Our present state of affairs in Washington where little of the people's business gets done, and where grandstanding,name calling, and politicking all underscore the charge that it is a vessel of old and rotted wood. Change and new ideas are desperately needed. But how can they ever arise if congressmen have a sinecure on their jobs, and we must wait until they die in office?
The Times seemingly without realizing it, published a story underlining the sad state of affairs in Congress which the Founders established to represent and further the will of the people. The Founders, who envisioned a Congress of "citizen legislators" not “career politicians” must be spinning in their respective graves, aghast at what successive generations have done with their finely tuned and carefully written plans for representative government. (James Madison in Federal Paper #39, stated that for best government office holders should “hold their offices... for a limited period”. While George Washington opined that: “The people must be ever vigilant against tyrants masquerading as public servants”. Thomas Jefferson stated that he favored “fixing (office holders) in a term of office, rather than for life” so that they must eventually return to the mass of the people to become part of the “governed instead of the governors”. John Adams’ opinion is found at the head of this essay.)
Mr. Dingell who the NY Times characterizes as a “Child of the House” was indeed a youngster of only six or seven years when his father was first elected to Congress and the family journeyed east to Washington in 1933. When the younger Dingell was sixteen in 1943 he first appeared on the floor of the House in Washington DC as a Page. In effect, he never left, except for those years he served in the US Army during WW II and attended college on the GI Bill earning a law degree. At the tender age of 29, upon the death of his father, Dingell won a special election for the 15th CD and has been there ever since. He is now an elderly man of 86 years.
Corruption in Congress is the result of entrenched interests. It is a truism that the longer a politician serves in Congress the more that person begins to serve their own interests rather than those of the nation and of the district they represent. Although this may not be applicable to Mr.Dingell, just his near sixty years in office and cozy relations with the industries in his district do make one suspect.
When a politician has a “safe seat” (and most of them do when 94% of all incumbents are reelected every cycle) he or she is more likely to have close financial and personal ties with big corporations, specials interests and other powerful and wealthy donors. In the case of Mr. Dingell, though I suggest no improprieties here, it is well known that he maintained a close relationship with and been an avid supporter of the motor industry in Detroit, and in turn they have provided strong financial support for all of his many reelection campaigns. Whether that relationship has been good over the long haul for the nation as a whole or for the motor industry itself, is a question frequently asked. Would Mr. Dingell’s tenacious opposition to CAFE standards (those federal rules that would control automobile gasoline consumption) and so hated by the car industry, would they have been good for that industry? Or would it have been better that the industry faced the facts early on and built cars which could better compete with more efficient imports? Perhaps had not Mr. Dingell been in office so long, and has such close relationships with this industry other voices and ideas would have been heard and we may have not had to pump the billions of Federal dollars into the faltering auto makers as we did to save that industry.
Because of name recognition and the advantage of money raised from cozy relations with special interests, incumbent members of congress find it easy to remain in office once elected, as noted above. In 1933 when the 15th CD was first created (as well as three others) and the when the senior Dingell was elected to the open 15th, that was a one-time event. That circumstance is unlikely to happen again. Today seats open when an incumbent dies. But without legitimate competition among office seekers, what incentive is there for the incumbent to serve the nation and the public, rather than his or her own interests? The answer is: there is little incentive. And the result is the nature of Congress we have now.
So perhaps if the Times had reminded us, of the commendable good attendance and longevity of Mr. Dingell, as well as the perceptive warnings of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and others that a man in power too long becomes a “ravenous bird of prey” we would have been better served by the great gray lady.
Caution---voters of the 15th! There is a grandson lurking out there in the hustings named Christopher Dingell. Please don't make a laughingstock of yourselves by permitting the 15th to become permanent property of the Dingell family by electing this kid next, and putting your district in the Guinness Book of World Records! Give someone else a chance as Adams, Jefferson and Madison would have wanted.
Get the picture?
rjk
Thursday, June 6, 2013
GLOBAL WARMING OR RETURNING TO THE AGE OF AMPHIBIANS
GLOBAL WARMING OR RETURNING TO THE AGE OF AMPHIBIANS
The geological perspective.
In a few words what is happening to the earth's atmosphere as a result of global warming is that we are facilitating the return to a more primitive state:the Age of Amphibians some 400 million years ago. The earth began its history with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide...a result of “outgassing” a process in which volatiles formed by natural lithologic processes within the earth’s interior are naturally voided to the surface such as by volcanoes, fumaroles, and lava plain basalt flows. Over geologic time earthly and biological processes have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere and reduced the concentration of carbon dioxide gas, a heat absorbing gas, from the atmosphere by sequestering it underground in the form of coal, petroleum, natural gas and limestone. In the last few centuries man has reversed that process, by burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere and returning the formerly stored CO2 back to the atmosphere. To make matters worse, at the same time our industries and farmers are cutting down our forest and “ungreening” the planet at a rate of 16 million hectares each year (almost 40 million acres). It's that simple! The earth started out with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide and a humid, warm climate in which giant amphibians thrived and now man is undoing eons of earthly evolutionary processes in a few hundred years...returning it to a more primitive state, to a condition in which amphibians like frogs, toads, salamanders would best survive.
Carbon dioxide gas has a unique property. Its absorbs long wave earth radiation or heat waves. Gas molecules exposed to such radiation, as that generated by the sun-warmed earth surface, causes the gas to heat up and to warm the atmosphere as a whole. The more of this gas in the atmosphere, the warmer the atmosphere gets. Venus, an earth-like planet close to us in space, has an atmosphere composed mostly of CO2 (97%) which causes a “run away” greenhouse gas problem which traps the suns heat and generates a surface temperature of over 800 degrees F (or @ 470 deg C) or hot enough top melt lead. In comparison, the earth has only a very small percentage of CO2 in its atmosphere (@3/100 of one percent by volume) and a temperature of 57 deg F or 14 degrees C.
The early Earth atmosphere was primarily composed of methane, CO2 and water vapor, probably mostly derived from the earth’s interior. As the planet cooled, the water vapor condensed into water to eventually form the world oceans, but the carbon dioxide simply continued to accumulate. For these reasons during its the early history, the earth’s atmosphere was much warmer than it is at present due to the larger percentages of heat absorbing (greenhouse) gases. Throughout the last half-a- billion years of earth history, the planet has experienced a generalized downward trend in both temperature and carbon dioxide levels. The decrease in CO2, not possible on other planets in our solar system, was the result of the evolution of living things on its surface.
The accumulation of CO2 continued and with it the continued warming of the atmosphere, until nearly 400 million years ago (mya). At that time green plants evolved and began to spread over the earth surface. These plants use carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis to form carbohydrates (sugars, starches, cellulose). That process absorbs CO2, converts it into mostly insoluble plant matter and produces O2 oxygen as a waste product. The process of removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the cooling of the atmosphere began with the evolution of green plants and especially with their expansion and flourishing on the formerly barren continents.
The initial “greening” of the continents occurred more than 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period (420-360 million years ago). Before that time, there few or no green land-plants to sequester carbon dioxide. The period is characterized by barren continents, while sea level was high, as were atmospheric temperatures. During the Devonian period the carbon dioxide level has been inferred to have been nearly six times what it is today, or about 2200 ppm (parts per million). At that time the earth’s average surface temperature was about 20 degrees Celsius or about six degrees higher than it is today. Sea level was nearly 180 meters above its present levels or almost 600 feet higher than it is today.
But by the end of the Devonian and beginning time of the subsequent Carboniferous Period (360 to 300 mya) the CO2 level had dropped by half, to three times (3x) the present level and the earth's average surface temperature fell to about 14 degrees C or about (57 F) what it is at present late in the Industrial Age. In the Carboniferous Period (named for the vast coal seams found in the rock record of that time) the climate was warm and humid with vast forests of lush vegetation. Sea level was well above the present level with most of the present East Coast and Gulf Coast under a shallow sea similar to that of today's Florida Bay and Bahama Banks, while the remaining eastern half of North America was mostly low land covered with extensive swamps and marshes. This was the Age of Amphibians, and dense vegetative growth of green plants such as ferns, scale trees, cycads, and giant club moss trees covered the continents. The great quantity of lush green plant growth absorbed vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis. In the process forming enormous quantities of insoluble plant matter as leaves, tree trunks, bark, seeds, etc. In the swampy terrane typical of the time, the forest detritus, dead trees, spent leaves and fallen trees (all composed of carbon taken from the air)settled into the shallow acidic swamp waters where they underwent partial decay. Much of the carbon in these plants was preserved ( some as magnificent fossils) and eventually were entombed forming thick coal seams (giving the period its name). The carbon stored as coal, bitumen and other deposits remained buried underground and sequestered from the atmosphere for four hundred million years. The earth cooled slowly with a few fluctuations, eventually to arrive at conditions which approximate the present.
This ancient carbon, formerly in the atmosphere, remained safely isolated underground until the industrial revolution in geologically recent times, when man began to exploit coal, and eventually other forms of sequestered carbon such as oil and gas, for fuel. Today, we extract huge amounts of formerly stored carbon from the earth’s interior, burn it with atmospheric oxygen and them dump the resulting CO2 back into the atmosphere from which it had been removed over periods of hundreds of millions of years. What we are accomplishing as a world society is in effect reverting the earth to a more primitive “carbonized” atmosphere. We are in effect returning the earth to a time when the great primitive amphibians of the past thrived. But the high earth temperatures, humidity, swampy terrane, and inundated shores of that period which would limit our living space would not be conducive to us as advanced primates, or to the plants we rely on for our agriculture and our sustenance, or to our modern way of life.
Get the picture?
rjk
The geological perspective.
In a few words what is happening to the earth's atmosphere as a result of global warming is that we are facilitating the return to a more primitive state:the Age of Amphibians some 400 million years ago. The earth began its history with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide...a result of “outgassing” a process in which volatiles formed by natural lithologic processes within the earth’s interior are naturally voided to the surface such as by volcanoes, fumaroles, and lava plain basalt flows. Over geologic time earthly and biological processes have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere and reduced the concentration of carbon dioxide gas, a heat absorbing gas, from the atmosphere by sequestering it underground in the form of coal, petroleum, natural gas and limestone. In the last few centuries man has reversed that process, by burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere and returning the formerly stored CO2 back to the atmosphere. To make matters worse, at the same time our industries and farmers are cutting down our forest and “ungreening” the planet at a rate of 16 million hectares each year (almost 40 million acres). It's that simple! The earth started out with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide and a humid, warm climate in which giant amphibians thrived and now man is undoing eons of earthly evolutionary processes in a few hundred years...returning it to a more primitive state, to a condition in which amphibians like frogs, toads, salamanders would best survive.
Carbon dioxide gas has a unique property. Its absorbs long wave earth radiation or heat waves. Gas molecules exposed to such radiation, as that generated by the sun-warmed earth surface, causes the gas to heat up and to warm the atmosphere as a whole. The more of this gas in the atmosphere, the warmer the atmosphere gets. Venus, an earth-like planet close to us in space, has an atmosphere composed mostly of CO2 (97%) which causes a “run away” greenhouse gas problem which traps the suns heat and generates a surface temperature of over 800 degrees F (or @ 470 deg C) or hot enough top melt lead. In comparison, the earth has only a very small percentage of CO2 in its atmosphere (@3/100 of one percent by volume) and a temperature of 57 deg F or 14 degrees C.
The early Earth atmosphere was primarily composed of methane, CO2 and water vapor, probably mostly derived from the earth’s interior. As the planet cooled, the water vapor condensed into water to eventually form the world oceans, but the carbon dioxide simply continued to accumulate. For these reasons during its the early history, the earth’s atmosphere was much warmer than it is at present due to the larger percentages of heat absorbing (greenhouse) gases. Throughout the last half-a- billion years of earth history, the planet has experienced a generalized downward trend in both temperature and carbon dioxide levels. The decrease in CO2, not possible on other planets in our solar system, was the result of the evolution of living things on its surface.
The accumulation of CO2 continued and with it the continued warming of the atmosphere, until nearly 400 million years ago (mya). At that time green plants evolved and began to spread over the earth surface. These plants use carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis to form carbohydrates (sugars, starches, cellulose). That process absorbs CO2, converts it into mostly insoluble plant matter and produces O2 oxygen as a waste product. The process of removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the cooling of the atmosphere began with the evolution of green plants and especially with their expansion and flourishing on the formerly barren continents.
The initial “greening” of the continents occurred more than 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period (420-360 million years ago). Before that time, there few or no green land-plants to sequester carbon dioxide. The period is characterized by barren continents, while sea level was high, as were atmospheric temperatures. During the Devonian period the carbon dioxide level has been inferred to have been nearly six times what it is today, or about 2200 ppm (parts per million). At that time the earth’s average surface temperature was about 20 degrees Celsius or about six degrees higher than it is today. Sea level was nearly 180 meters above its present levels or almost 600 feet higher than it is today.
But by the end of the Devonian and beginning time of the subsequent Carboniferous Period (360 to 300 mya) the CO2 level had dropped by half, to three times (3x) the present level and the earth's average surface temperature fell to about 14 degrees C or about (57 F) what it is at present late in the Industrial Age. In the Carboniferous Period (named for the vast coal seams found in the rock record of that time) the climate was warm and humid with vast forests of lush vegetation. Sea level was well above the present level with most of the present East Coast and Gulf Coast under a shallow sea similar to that of today's Florida Bay and Bahama Banks, while the remaining eastern half of North America was mostly low land covered with extensive swamps and marshes. This was the Age of Amphibians, and dense vegetative growth of green plants such as ferns, scale trees, cycads, and giant club moss trees covered the continents. The great quantity of lush green plant growth absorbed vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis. In the process forming enormous quantities of insoluble plant matter as leaves, tree trunks, bark, seeds, etc. In the swampy terrane typical of the time, the forest detritus, dead trees, spent leaves and fallen trees (all composed of carbon taken from the air)settled into the shallow acidic swamp waters where they underwent partial decay. Much of the carbon in these plants was preserved ( some as magnificent fossils) and eventually were entombed forming thick coal seams (giving the period its name). The carbon stored as coal, bitumen and other deposits remained buried underground and sequestered from the atmosphere for four hundred million years. The earth cooled slowly with a few fluctuations, eventually to arrive at conditions which approximate the present.
This ancient carbon, formerly in the atmosphere, remained safely isolated underground until the industrial revolution in geologically recent times, when man began to exploit coal, and eventually other forms of sequestered carbon such as oil and gas, for fuel. Today, we extract huge amounts of formerly stored carbon from the earth’s interior, burn it with atmospheric oxygen and them dump the resulting CO2 back into the atmosphere from which it had been removed over periods of hundreds of millions of years. What we are accomplishing as a world society is in effect reverting the earth to a more primitive “carbonized” atmosphere. We are in effect returning the earth to a time when the great primitive amphibians of the past thrived. But the high earth temperatures, humidity, swampy terrane, and inundated shores of that period which would limit our living space would not be conducive to us as advanced primates, or to the plants we rely on for our agriculture and our sustenance, or to our modern way of life.
Get the picture?
rjk
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