Signs of Life

My last couple of posts haven't been monuments to the Power of Positive Thinking, but that's nothing new. At my college graduation, Norman Vincent Peale, who coined the phase, or at least made a ton of money from it, nearly caused me to throw up when he spoke at the baccalaureate service. Even then, I had little stomach for militaristic expositions of American exceptionalism. Not wanting to end what had been four good years on an openly bitter note, I resisted the impulse to walk out in protest. Maybe that was the kind of mistake that people of my generation made too often.

Barack Obama is still sounding like Norman Vincent Peale. Nevertheless, there have been signs of hope recently. I can recall from trips to Florida, long before my college years, seeing rugged men wrestling alligators.

They would turn the alligator over and rub its belly, inducing a sleep-like trance. Those gators still had big sharp teeth but for the moment they were rendered innocuous. Last week Vladimir Putin seemed to pull off the same trick with President Obama, tranquilizing Obama's inner Fascist just as he was about to launch another ill-considered attack in the Middle East. In addition to Putin's firm hand, the President may have felt the weight of the polls which showed that his imperial appetite had the backing of fully 8% of the American public. Whatever it took, we can all be relieved that the gator sleeps.

Now we've gotten the news that President Obama has been on the phone with Iran's new president, Hassan Kouhari. That makes Obama the first American president to speak with an Iranian chief of state since 1979 when Jimmy Carter spoke with the about-to-be-deposed Shah.

In other upbeat news, the Senate has removed the extension of the Monsanto Protection Act out of an appropriations bill. It's still in the House version of the bill but there has been so much public outrage at this stealthily inserted provision, which had granted Monsanto immunity from all legal action brought against it, that the chances of killing it remain fairly high.

Larry Summers, President Obama's favorite financial adviser and one of the chief architects and beneficiaries of the Great Recession of 2008, removed his name (or had it removed) from consideration for the position of Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the post Ben Bernanke is stepping down from in January. Although he had his supporters in the White House and on Wall Street, Summers faced opposition from politicians in both parties, as well as from virtually all non-comatose members of the general public.

The other big story of the week is that the Tea Party Taliban is plotting a terrorist attack on the US Government through its Congressional jihadis refusing to fund all government activities (already approved by Congress). Their main target appears to be Obamacare, but some seem determined to cripple Social Security as well. Better to collapse the government than to see the masses having access to health care. If they get as lucky as the nineteen terrorists of 9/11, they could manage to reverse the slow economic recovery and plunge the nation into a sea of rising debt and accelerated collapse. The 9/11 guys probably exceeded their wildest dreams when they brought down the twin towers. Do you suppose that any of them could have imagined that they would end Constitutional democracy in the USA as well? When terrorist strikes begin, it's hard to know where they will end or where they will lead to. Even McConnell and the Congressional loner, John Boehner, seem a little spooked by the jihadis in their midst, but they've lost control.

This story may not appear to fit in with the upbeat nature of the earlier items. I may be simply succumbing to a bout of irrational optimism. The crocuses are coming out of the ground; I've recently experienced a wonderful new jazz festival growing out of the ashes left behind by the “austerity” ordered up by the plutocracy; and despite the planet being under unremitting attack environmentally, economically and politically, I've received the news that I have another grandson on the way. Unprecedented optimism or not, I'd like to believe that the GOP jihadis will just blow themselves up (politically speaking that is) without too much collateral damage. I doubt that Ted Cruz will set himself aflame on the Capitol steps if Obamacare isn't repealed, and if his fiery rhetoric does cause him to ignite, he'll get the best health care the country can provide.

It seems that even without this debt limit bomb going off, Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader of the Senate, has only about a 50-50 chance of being returned to the Senate in the next elections. If the bomb creates unanticipated havoc, he and his co-conspirators are toast. With people like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor still on the loose, the defeat of one McConnell won't restore the country to political health but it would be a start.

Please take a moment to call or write your Congressman to urge that the Republican National Committee be added to the State Department list of terrorist organizations.

The Wreck

It's a good time to be in Umbria. It's festival season and people are visiting from all over the world, setting off a long cycle of dinner parties, concerts and varied food fests. We also have to prepare for our our village festa. I have lines to learn for the play in the piazza and an art show to organize. That's more than enough to fill my day, even without a paying job to make demands on my time, but somehow it's been hard to find enough time to get these things done. I just can't break away from my computer. Getting through my emails these days is like creeping along on a highway past a particularly gruesome series of car wrecks. You feel bad about gawking but you just can't bring yourself to turn away. Should you stop and help or would you only be getting in the way? Among the things that have grabbed our attention in just the past few days are the following:

• Daily Kos reported that on July 12^th as the Texas State Senate voted on an anti-choice measure, state troopers ordered all women seeking to attend the session to surrender their tampons and diabetic supplies. Guns were permitted inside as long as their owners held a concealed weapon permit.
• The trial of self-appointed security man George Zimmerman, who fatally shot unarmed 17 year-old Trayvon Martin, ended with an acquittal on second degree murder and manslaughter charges.
• CNN reported that in another case in Florida, a young black woman, Marissa Alexander, had fired a warning shot into the ceiling to discourage her husband from attacking her again (she'd already had a restraining order against him after prior assaults). She was denied the “Stand Your Ground” defense afforded Zimmerman and was convicted of aggravated assault, for which she is now serving a 20 year term in prison.
• Also in Florida, a 51 year-old black man named Alan D. Hicks suffered a stroke while driving along a highway. His car came to rest against a guard rail and police arrived at the scene. When asked for his documents, he couldn't manage a reply but tried to point at the compartment where he had put his wallet. He was dragged out of the car, hand cuffed and deposited in a jail cell overnight lying face down in his own body fluids. He was taken to a hospital the next day, where he fell into a coma and died three months later.
• The defense rested in the Bradley Manning trial, conducted in a partial news blackout due to the judge denying access to real reporters, as well as to the unwillingness of the main stream media to cover the story.
• Edward Snowden remains in a transit lounge of the Moscow airport after being granted asylum by a number of countries, but not the means to get to them, since the US has threatened retribution on any country assisting the whistle-blower's movement.
• The list of jailed and/or persecuted whistle-blowers grows. The ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou, now in prison, wrote an open letter to Edward Snowden advising him to never, never trust the FBI.
• The official plane of the President of Bolivia was hijacked and illegally searched in Vienna after a coterie of European states, including France, Italy, Spain and Portugal were cowed into denying the plane entry into their airspace. This act of war (or piracy if you prefer) was initiated by President Obama.
• Student loan interest rates in the US have been doubled from 3.4% to 6.8% as Congress failed to act to avoid the increase.
• The Iowa Supreme Court upheld a ruling that a dentist acted legally in firing an assistant when he found her too attractive to resist and claimed she was a threat to his marriage.
• The New York Times reported that the nation's Surveillance Court (FISA) has created a secret body of laws giving the National Security Agency (NSA) the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans.
• Bloomberg News reports that all eleven members of the FISA Court have been appointed by one man, Chief Justice John Roberts, without a confirmation process conducted by Congress or any other body. All but one member are Republicans and they serve seven-year terms. From 2001 to 2012 the court approved 20,909 surveillance and property search warrants while rejecting ten.
• Der Spiegel reported an interview with Edward Snowden, in which he claimed that despite protesting US espionage against their country, the German intelligence service works closely with the NSA. Indeed, the NSA has a special department, the Foreign Affairs Directorate, to coordinate spying activities with other nations, most notably Germany and the UK.
• Salon reported that a 38 year-old optometrist, Sal Culosi, was killed by a SWAT team in a raid instigated by Detective David Baucum, who had talked Culosi into raising the stakes on friendly sports betting. When Baucum arranged a meeting at the victim's house to collect his winnings, he brought along the SWAT team.
• It's come to light that back in 1998, another Virginia SWAT team had killed a security guard, Edward Reed at a private club being raided.
• Dave Lindorff reported that according to a Houston FBI document, in October 2011 as Occupy Houston demonstrators took to the streets, the FBI had obtained knowledge of a plot to kill leaders of the movement (by sniper attack). None of the targets were warned. Nor was anyone named or charged in the plot.
• 80% of processed foods sold in the US are banned in other nations, for using ingredients such as Olestra and brominated vegetable oil.
• Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared to testify under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on March 12^th, 2013. When asked by Senator Ron Wyden “Does the DSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Director Clapper replied “No Sir”. Although we now know from documents released by Edward Snowden that this was an unambiguous lie, no perjury charges have been lodged against Clapper.
• From William Boardman we hear that a working 18 year-old in Texas, who was a bit of a wise-ass, was jailed for making a tasteless joke on Facebook. Bail is set at $500,000 and he's been charged with making a “a terroristic threat” with a potential penalty of two to ten years in prison and/ a $10,000 fine.
• Journalist Barrett Brown faces 105 years in prison for reporting on files hacked from private intelligence firms.
• A 20-year-old female student at the University of Virginia was arrested in a near fatal mix-up with police. Alcoholic Beverage Control agents thought the sparkling water she was carrying out of a store was a six-pack of beer. One agent jumped on the hood of her car and another pulled a gun as she tried to flee in panic. She grazed two agents with her car, was charged with three felonies and jailed overnight. The charges were dropped the following day.
• Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling had his sentence reduced from twenty-four to fourteen years. His company went from No. 7 on the Fortune 500 to bankruptcy amidst waves of fraud.
• According to Bloomberg News, the big banks are being subsidized by the federal government to the tune of $83 billion per year by way of the lower interest rates that they pay due to their “too big to fail” status. The food stamp program, which feeds tens of millions of hungry Americans, receives $76 billion.
• Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US Government more than $150 billion every year, i.e. more than ten times what Obama's proposed cuts to Social Security, via the chained CPI, would save the Treasury.
• The Environmental Protection Agency is to allow consumption of toxic fracking wastewater by wildlife and foodstock. The proposed permits ignore the EPA's own rules requiring the listing of the types of wastes to be treated or dumped.
• Paul Buchheit writes that while the US is near the top of the developed world in average wealth, median level adults get a lower percentage of their country's wealth than in any countries other than China and India.
• The Treasury Secretary of the US is lobbying on behalf of the big banks to persuade European countries not to levy a financial speculation tax, despite overwhelming public support for such measures.
• Private corporations in the security/intelligence/surveillance field make up a growing sub-sector of the Military Industrial Complex, and it's now a $56 billion a year industry. The leading contractors are all heavy contributors to politicians from Barack Obama to John McCain.
• Corporate tax rates are now at a 60 year low. Corporate profits are now at a 60 year high.
• More news keeps emerging of the the “leukemogenic” properties of the pesticides found in many of the foods that Monsanto, with the help of the Department of Agriculture and the State Department, is trying to force into the diets of people all around the world.
• Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks although its subsidiary Wachavia admitted to laundering more than $378 billion for Mexican drug cartels. None of the bank's officers have been charged or prosecuted.
• The exact proposed location of the KeystoneXL pipeline is not known to the State Department, where approval of the pipeline is currently under consideration.
• The Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Several states, including Texas and Florida, immediately moved to restore voter suppression laws that had been considered unconstitutional prior to the decision.
• The TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) is being secretly negotiated by the US and eleven other countries to give more money and power to corporations while threatening food and environmental safety regulations of the sovereign states.
• The City of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy, in what is by far the largest US city bankruptcy is US history.
• On July 18^th, in the Bradley Manning trial, despite Manning's guilty plea to releasing classified information, Judge Denise Lind refused to drop the “Aiding the Enemy” charges against him.
• At a meeting in Atlanta sponsored by Atlantik Brueche, a German association established to create stronger ties between Germany and the US, former President Jimmy Carter said that “America at the moment does not have a functioning democracy”. His remarks were not picked up in the American media but were reported by Der Spiegel.

I can recall radical regime changes in Cuba, Iran, Chile, Spain, Portugal, the Soviet Union, South Africa and more recently in Iraq, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. I've watched them all with curiosity but not very much involvement because they were not my countries and I had little contact with them. After abrupt government changes, with the notable exception of the Soviet Union, most countries kept their names, languages and their territory. Some of these coups, revolutions, wars and revolts have been bloody, others not so much, but although life goes on in the affected countries, the changes have been real and often dramatic. Now it's my country's turn. I have no idea how it will turn out, any more than I can know the future of Syria. I only know that the government of my country, like that of Syria, has lost all credibility, and appears to have been taken over by sociopaths, intent on its self-destruction. There is no longer an operational constitution; the three branches of government are all now in the hands of the multi-national corporations; the regime is the most heavily armed in history and it can track our every move and communication. The USA has become unrecognizable to anyone who has grown up there more than thirty years ago. We can expect to experience growing pressure for revolt as the country's spiral into Third World status accelerates, but the fantasies of gun enthusiasts, who worship the Second Amendment while having little regard for the other parts of the Constitution, will prove small consolation in dealing with the military might of the corporatist regime. The landmass isn't likely to change soon, except perhaps for the immersion of the southern half of Florida, but what will emerge in the post-Republic phase of the United States of America remains to be seen.