Democratic Socialism & Social Democracy - Is There A Difference? YES!

It has come to attention that there is now some debate about whether Bernie Sanders really needs to remotely identify as a democratic socialist and wouldn't it be better to just call himself a "social democrat". The argument is twofold; 1) an emotional appeal that "Americans hate socialism" and will avoid anything that smacks of it or uses the name, and 2) Social Democrats are already the same as democratic socialists so why doesn't Sanders just use the first term - which is far less likely to appall, make heads spin or explode?

First, the emotional appeal argument doesn't wash. Whether in fact most Americans really believe (stupidly) that socialists are boogeymen is neither here nor there. Americans are ignorant of a wide panorama of things and issues but that doesn't mean we kowtow to their ignorance now, does it?   Many Americans still believe Hitler's henchmen were "socialists" despite the fact they actually sought out and killed socialists! See Ian Kershaw's 'Hitler Hubris' for much more on this, including how the term "National Socialists" was cynically misused by Hitler.

Other Americans have shown an inability to distinguish between Marxist-Leninist socialism and the democratic form- but we often give them the benefit of the doubt because of their (lack of) education in political philosophy.   One might also offer this explanation in terms of conflating social democracy (which is really Rhine -style capitalism) and democratic socialism.

Let me make it clear then that democratic socialism really seeks to replace market capitalism, not merely "work within it" to expand the welfare state via expansion of the tax base as social democracy seeks to do (as in the context of Rhine capitalism). Indeed, one of the propositions of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is to replace market capitalism with a thoroughgoing socialist structure that would include: nationalization of healthcare, nationalization of banks, and nationalization of many key industries - including energy-utilities and postal service (already nationalized but the capitalists want to privatize it).

There are a number of reasons for doing this:

1) Capitalism is simply unsustainable. Its enormous consumption of resources and energy is vastly contributing to the greenhouse effect and driving our planet to perdition.

2) Capitalist energy production - even now in the oil shale era- shows absolutely no rational or logical basis - continuing to pump the stuff (actually kerogen) when there is an oil market glut and the losses are already a staggering $30b.

3) Part of the reason for this is that capitalism isn't content unless growth is significant and continuous but it can't be in a finite world with  finite resources. (Also the low EROEI or energy return on energy invested for kerogen is designed to be a 'losing wicket')

4) Capitalism uses bogus indices for growth measure such as "GDP" when Hermann Daly's 'Index for Sustainable Growth' is the one to more accurately use.

5) Capitalist markets are no longer even "free" but rather demand markets, which plunder and debase the social and civil sphere for the primacy of capital and also replace competition with vast monopolies. Look at telecommunications: is more competition leading to lower prices?  Check your cable bill - assuming you're not cutting the cord - and tell me with a straight face.

6) Capitalist stock markets are themselves rigged with every manner of device from 'flash trading' to fractional trades and even re-arranging the DOW when it suits the green eye shade types (In 1997, 25% of the DOW was chucked and replaced, unknown to few of the febrile folks who follow its every move today)

7) The size of capitalist banks (e.g. Wells Fargo) are already overly large and too many forget it was their size that led directly (along with the cavalier use of credit default swaps) to the 2008 financial meltdown and the need to bail them out. Nationalized small banks (or credit unions)  means less risk of either financial meltdown or bailout. Nationalizing also ensures banks can't gamble with your money in risky mortgages, student loans or other dicey markets.

8) Giant capitalist concerns and multinationals - such as Monsanto- are undermining the quality of our food supply using GMO foods and pesticide -laden crap,  spiking not only cancers but Alzheimer's disease.

9) Giant capitalist PhRma is roasting us all with drug prices totally out of whack with research and production costs. NO American ought to pay $10,000 a month for a damned cancer drug! OR have to chose between meds and food.

10) The capitalist media has proven totally untrustworthy to deliver anything near factual or objective truth on everything from the Kennedy assassination (Google 'Operation Mockingbird') to global warming. Already the capitalist corporate MSM has succeeded in brainwashing at least half the populace to buy into their bunkum -  forcing us to waste time arguing with them when we all ought to be on the same page. The worst part is that these opponents believe they're articulating their own thoughts when they're merely regurgitating the MSM's canned sound bites. They have become brain-dead, capitalist PR-zombies!

Second then, and most important, as a democratic socialist I would no more use the term "social democrat" than as an atheist I'd use the term "agnostic". And I damned sure am not going to do it to appease the hoi polloi or allow someone else to feel more comfortable with me! I'd advise Bernie to do likewise as the media will bring the dreaded s-word up anyway. The best antidote is to repeatedly explain what a democratic socialist is and hope some of it will sink in among the great 'unwashed', sometime.

As for Bernie Sanders, in the end it matters not whether he calls himself 'democratic socialist' or 'social democrat', because: a) the  MSM media vipers will still call him what they choose, to make their own framing of him easier to sell what they wish to sell, and b) His political philosophy is already subsumed under the banner of the Democratic Party, so that takes priority in the political arena. Hence, once one allies with a party and is running under that political umbrella, his or her specific political philosophy is secondary. (If elected, after all, he will still have to work with a Democratic congress - not a democratic socialist one!)

The main issue, is that Bernie Sanders has become the most serious candidate out there to fight economic inequality, certainly more so than the splenetic clown Donald Trump.

Ukrainians Better Be Careful What They Wish For

"Necessitous men cannot be free men",  

-----  Franklin D Roosevelt,

"At the heart of neoliberal narratives are ideologies, modes of governance, and policies that embrace a pathological individualism, a distorted notion of freedom, and a willingness both to employ state violence to suppress dissent and abandon those suffering from a collection of social problems ranging from dire poverty and joblessness to homelessness" - Henry Giroux, 'The Politics of Cruelty - America's Descent Into Madness' (smirkingchimp.com)

With the news that former Ukraine President Viktor F. Yanukovych has abruptly left his opulent mansion behind, Ukrainians are elated now at the prospect of "freedom" and stronger ties with the European Union.  There is now a vacuum left by Yanukovych's departure and that means varied interests will contend for ultimate control.

But that's not the biggest concern. The biggest worry, according to a Sunday New York Times piece (p. 14, 'With President's Departure Ukraine Moves Toward a Murky Future') is "who will help fill the depleted coffers of a country on the brink of bankruptcy and crippled by arguably one of the most troubled economies in the world".

Well, Russia had stepped up, offering $15b in cash infusion as well as cheap natural gas (ibid.). But the Ukrainians, who glance at the European Union and behold all its  material offerings and apparent freedoms, want more, They want to be part of the EU and on their own terms.

They are dreaming.

No one in Europe or the EU wants the "red headed" poor stepchild. A point also made clear in the article. 

Ukraine’s democracy fighters ought to be very careful before they jump head first into the Western Neoliberal orbit. As the Times noted, quoting Mark Leonard, the Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations :

 

"Nobody (in the West) wants to end up owning all the problems that Ukraine faces. The country is bankrupt. It has a terrible, broken system of government and insane levels of corruption”

The article goes on to say that with this in mind, Europe and the U.S. have “largely contracted the job out to the IMF with a package that – unlike the money offered by Moscow – has numerous strings attached”

The piece mentions requirements to cut up all kinds of regulations, and cut subsidies that keep domestic energy prices low – oh and “cripple the government’s finances”.  If it’s anything like what Barbados is experiencing, it ain’t gonna to be sweet bread. We’re talking about sky high food and oil prices, as well as pensions privatized or cut and thousands of workers let go. Y’all really want that? Go for it then! And good luck, future necessitous men...and women... of the Ukraine.

Hey, Ukraine! Welcome to the Neoliberal Imperative!

In other words, the path to the future of the Ukraine, if they choose the Neoliberal imperative, is not only murky  - but likely impoverished for most of their people. If they need some fact checks on what they're in for they can Google "Greek Sovereign Debt crisis"  or examine what happened to Mother Russia after Neoliberalism crept in and replaced communism.

Author Naomi Klein gives the key information in her book 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' (2007).   In  her chapter on the Russian capitalist "experiment" (pp. 282-87) she documents how a cabal of gangster capitalists under the IMF and the "Chicago gang of Milton Friedman" attempted to brutally re-make the existing Russian centrally planned economy into a Neoliberal free market outpost of  the West. The process was long and painful, entailing first getting rid of Mikhail Gorbachev - who through his glasnost and perestroika did far more than Reagan to render the world more peaceful, never mind the propaganda.

Klein makes no bones about the fact that the Friedman "school of economics" - tracing its lineage to Friedrich von Hayek (the same creep that was responsible for bringing about the economic collapse of  the Weimar Republic - opening it to Nazi takeover) was responsible largely for the ideological ruthlessness that laid waste to Russia in the early 1990s.  They only needed (Boris) Yeltsin to help dissolve the former Soviet Union.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz (p. 283) called Russia's pro-capitalist market experimenters "market Bolsheviks". As Klein put it (ibid.):

"However, where the original Bolsheviks fully intended to build their centrally planned state in the ashes of the old, the market Bolsheviks believed in a kind of magic: if the optimal conditions for profit were created - the country would rebuild itself- no planning required."

U.S. Neoliberal puppet Boris Yeltsin, meanwhile, made reckless promises that things would only be hard "for six months"  and "very soon" Russia would be an economic titan. Never happened! As Klein notes (ibid.):

"The logic of so-called creative destruction resulted in scarce creation and spiraling destruction"

Newspapers, magazines from the period (which I still have and can peruse anytime) depict horrific suffering by ordinary Russians as they had to beg, borrow or steal to survive - thanks to the Neoliberal market barbarians. Is this being an "American traitor" to reveal this, probably something most Americans don't know? Nope, because one can't be a traitor to an economic paradigm he never accepted in the first place! (And which he further condemns as itself being a betrayal to the aspirations of most people in the world.)

The sad facts?  After only a year of Neoliberal thuggery and "market therapy" millions of Russians had lost their life savings when the ruble lost nearly all its value (similar to what happened to Germans and their Deutsch mark, thanks to von Hayek). Adding insult to injury, abrupt cuts in government subsidies meant that millions of workers had not been paid in months. Consumption? The average Russian consumed 40 percent less in 1992 than 1991 - and they weren't even consuming that much in '91!

Basically, to survive, the Russian middle class was forced to sell all or most of their belongings - setting up card tables on the streets to do so. As Klein describes this travesty:

"Desperate acts, that the Chicago School of Economics praised as 'entrepreneurial' and proof that a capitalist renaissance was indeed under way."

Wonder why the Russians of today are deeply skeptical and affronted by the Neoliberal rogues and puppets of the West?   Look no further than recent Russian history and how the uber - capitalists twisted and perverted the country's whole economic foundation in order to force it into a globalized capital new world order.

If the Ukrainians are prepared to jump to the EU side and the promised "freedom" they have so yearned for, they  better look at it too!

Why Russians Hate Neoliberal Imperialists - And Americans Should Too! (2)

"At the heart of neoliberal narratives are ideologies, modes of governance, and policies that embrace a pathological individualism, a distorted notion of freedom, and a willingness both to employ state violence to suppress dissent and abandon those suffering from a collection of social problems ranging from dire poverty and joblessness to homelessness" - Henry Giroux, 'The Politics of Cruelty - America's Descent Into Madness' (smirkingchimp.com)

In the previous installment I examined how Russia was brought to its economic knees using the "shock doctrine" of the Neoliberal capitalist imperialists, documented in excruciating detail in Naomi Klein's book,  'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' (2007).    But as Klein describes, the shock doctrine's basis of "disaster capitalism" was to deliberately use assorted confected crises - whether military  or economic- to justify subverting the will of many other nations and their citizens to make the world "safe" for global capital. In one chapter where Klein coins the term "disaster capitalism" she analogizes it to the electric shocks delivered via certain tortures, say to a person's head & genitals. The shocked victims became so mentally incoherent, terrified -  that they were ready to accept just about anything demanded of them.


In the aftermath of what the Neoliberals did to Russia, it perhaps wasn't surprising they'd turn their eyes to the U.S. itself. But how to do it? Capitalism in a way was already entrenched, at least in terms of a mixed economy, i.e. which also had aspects of mild socialism (for example, inherent in social insurance). But the Neoliberals and their military shock troops ensconced in a de facto shadow government (exposed in Kathryn Olmstead's Challenging the Secret Government, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996) needed a way to: a) keep citizens hostage to the Neoliberal imperative, which demanded ever increasing removal of economic security - especially in "entitlements", and b) demanded an ever expanded military  -surveillance structure to halt  anti-capitalist protests in the country, as well as establish global capital beach heads in others. This meant dramatically inflating the military-  surveillance budget. The problem was how to do it, given the old enemies had been brought to heel.

The ideal way to instill shock (in an already market-hostage consumer nation) if one wished to ramp up surveillance and defense budgets (at the cost of entitlements),  would be an attack on American soil - which would then be milked for all it was worth as justification for increased security-defense spending. The attack would be such that 99% of Americans would be so traumatized that they'd be prepared to give up anything (except maybe shopping), even long established rights- liberties, just to be protected from further attacks. If the attack was large enough or spread out, the putative security state could exploit it to instill more fear, paranoia by subsequent use of color coded "alerts". The media would help by replaying the images which would then permeate every neuron of every sentient citizen in every state - much the same way the public slaughter of John F. Kennedy has been emblazoned in the minds and eyes of later presidents to make them understand they aren't the real heads of state, only puppets. If the enemy was also demonized enough, it might rival the Cold War boogeyman of "Reds under the bed" confected by the McCarthyites and their latter-day  clones.

Whether one is a "9/11 Truther"  or shares a milder perspective (like me, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-responsible-was-bush-for-911.html) it is indisputable that the Bushite regime - shoehorned into power by five Supremes - benefited enormously by the 9/11 attacks. Not only did Bush's approval rating soar from the toilet (35%)  to over 90% in days, but within barely five years the defense budget had doubled, from 2.4% of GDP to 4.9% while the surveillance budget had exploded even more - thanks to the provisions in the "the Patriot Act" which most of our dutiful reps didn't even bother to read before they signed it into law.

Worse, these reprobates rolled over like beaten whelps as the Bushites pumped the false basis for invading Iraq - seeking to validate a nearly 10 -year long invasion that would suck our own nation dry in its domestic resources, as it ramped up deficits - which of course, was the plan. It was part of the shock doctrine to generate monstrous debt,  the better to justify cutting those nasty entitlements as the Neoliberals demanded.

Thankfully, at least one true patriot and courageous citizen, Joe Wilson, had the guts to expose the Bushie's "yellowcake- Niger" fakery (part of what they claimed was the reason to attack Saddam, since otherwise we'd all be incinerated in a nuclear cloud). However, his wife Valerie Plame paid the price by being outed by the Bushies as a CIA agent. Talk about treason! But some Americans- who now blather about Ed Snowden - seem lost at sea as to who are true traitors and who are patriots.

Amidst all this changes were being made in terms of mass surveillance. Though the Bushies were caught red-handed illegally going around the 1978 FISA law to get illegal wiretaps - of those terrible 'terrists,  at least suspects- a wimp congress looked the other way and actually approved the illegal wiretaps by CHANGING the law! Never in the history of these United States has a bigger consortium of treasonous rats been exposed. And to make it even worse, a subsequent congress actually approved the extension of the bastardized law several years later.

The seeds of the shock doctrine applied to the U.S.. were already well in hand. In her Chapter 15 ('The Corporate State') Naomi Klein describes in detail how the U.S. was transferred into a massive corporate state with the security apparatus to back it up. (Red flags about too many energetic citizen protests to globalization had already appeared with the anti-WTO Seattle protests in 1999, made famous in the movie, 'The Battle of Seattle'). So the privatization forces (who also at the time were making a full court press to privatize Social Security based on the Bush Texas plan)  needed mass surveillance to identify would-be trouble makers, and they also needed something more: a martial law fallback position to lock up anyone they deemed too 'activist".

Thus does Klein, in the opening paragraphs of Chapter 15, introduce us to the continuity of government (COG) program I'd blogged on earlier, i.e. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/between-skeleton-key-and-cog-how-close.html

She writes (p. 390):

"In the heat of the mid-term elections of 2006, three weeks before announcing Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, George W. Bush signed the Defense Authorization Act in a private Oval Office ceremony. Tucked into its 1400 pages was a rider that went almost completely unnoticed at the time. It gave the president the power to declare martial law and 'employ the armed forces' - including the National Guard - overriding the wishes of state governors in the event of a 'public emergency' in order to 'restore public order' and 'suppress disorder'"

Klein added that the declared emergency could  'be almost anything' including "mass protests".  Obviously, the Seattle 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protests had given the Neoliberal imperialists a wake up call and they weren't about to take it any more. Hence also, the way they bore down on Occupy Wall Street in 2011, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/12/national-security-state-spied-on-occupy.html  to the extent of even aiming sniper rifles at them in Houston.

Klein notes that before Bush's treachery martial law could only be enacted in a time of actual insurrection. Worse, deploying military on American soil violated the Posse Comitatus law.

As time went on, the corporate gangster war-surveillance state was consolidated in multiple ways. But like the proverb about the frog who jumps from boiling water when dumped into it, but is boiled alive while immersed if the water temperature is increase only 1 degree at a time , Americans (most) were oblivious as their nation was slowly transformed into a fascist police state. Or maybe they were still too shocked from the events of 9/11 to do anything, especially with the Bushies manipulating them with a series of yellow, orange and other "alerts".

Because in 2006, right under their noses, the Military Commissions Act was passed which effectively removed the age old right of habeas corpus. Not long after the National Defense Authorization Act (of 2011, then 2012, then 2013, and soon 2014) which codified the indefinite military detention of American citizens without requiring they be charged with a specific crime or given a trial. (See also: http://truth-out.org/news/item/17070-indefinite-surveillance-say-hello-to-the-national-defense-authorization-act-of-2014

In Klein's examination we also learn that the Bush martial law insertion via hidden rider to implement continuity of gov't could be traced back to John Foster Dulles who defined a two -pronged priority for the country: 1) defeating communism, especially as manifested in Russia, and 2) protecting multi-national corporations - through whatever means necessary including coups staged in non-cooperative nations, who refused to allow resources to be exploited. Thus, the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala using the CIA to protect the profits of United Fruit.

Dulles made it clear that "coups and military interventions were the means to the end" of corporate hegemony- to thereby arrive at stable environments for business to prosper. Translation: make every country with ripe resources plum for the taking and be prepared to put down any nation or its government that got too uppity. Oh, and kill any upstarts!


But why worry? After all, we now know actual American citizens can be killed at the will or discretion of the executive.  Anyone paying attention? Maybe the shock doctrine has indeed worked because it has imposed shocks that benumb the populace into ceding everything away as they mutate into consumers - away from citizens.

Interested readers may then ponder the 14 characteristics of fascism, noting in particular: Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -because of fear of enemies and the need for security, Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - people rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe, Supremacy of the Military (Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding);  and Obsession with National Security -- Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

See more at: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/10/14-characteristics-of-fascism.html

Why Russians Hate Neoliberal Imperialists and Their Lackeys (1)

The "free" market rat descendants of Friedrich von Hayek were largely responsible for destroying the lives of millions of Russians with their gangster capitalism, as von Hayek was for destroying the Weimar Republic with his austerity remedy to make room for capital markets.


I have to thank Dr. Gregory Stam and his wife, who taught Russian at Loyola University in the 1966-67 academic year, for introducing our small class to Russian history - as well as teaching a terrific language course. Their enrichment using Russian history made the course much more palatable despite having to learn a new alphabet (Cyrillic) as well as more conjugations, declensions and cases since I took Latin in high school.

This provided a background into another nation most Americans lack, and plus, it was provided during the Cold War. Why did I take Russian? Clue one: Not because I was a "commie sympathizer". I needed an additional language to German on the math-science-engineering track. A second reason was I wanted to gain further insight into a nation that had been so demonized from the end of WWII - despite the fact the Russians made way more sacrifices than we did, losing millions  of their own as they fought the Nazi onslaught on their own soil. (If you need a hint: check out the Battle of Stalingrad, including documentaries of that mammoth battle!)

The other reason is that one whole branch of my family ancestry is Slavic in origin, and my grandfather spoke Russian, as well as other languages. (He came from what is now Cabuna, Croatia).  Thus, I wanted to become more fluent in that language and indeed, I did have a few brief Russian exchanges with Grandpa before he passed.  I also admired him for being a conscientious objector when it wasn't popular, in the WWI era. He had come to this country just before the U.S. entered the war, escaping the then war torn Austrian-Hungarian Empire - and having escaped he sure as hell wasn't going to join the conflagration from this side of the pond! Instead he worked as a lumberjack in Wisconsin,  giving alternative service, much like I did in Peace Corps.

Sadly, a certain "brother" seems to know nothing of this, because if he did he would surely realize that when he slanders me for "not serving in the military" he slanders our grandfather too!

Anyway, the topic of this blog is why the Russians detest the Neoliberal, hyper-market imperative and why they evolved to be the suspicious nation they are today - distrustful of most of the crap the West (including its secondary agents like the IMF) tries to foist on them. Author Naomi Klein gives the key information in her book 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism' (2007).  I had referenced Klein in an earlier blog, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-military-industrial-complex-still.html

and noted how the "Chicago school" of faux economists - led by Milton Friedman- have been using multiple shocks or intermittent crises (military and non-military or economic) over the past 30 years to try to turn our world into a capitalist pig whore house.


Well, in her chapter on the Russian capitalist "experiment" (pp. 282-87) she documents how a cabal of gangster capitalists under the IMF and the "Chicago gang of Milton Friedman" attempted to brutally re-make the existing Russian centrally planned economy into a Neoliberal free market outpost of  the West. The process was long and painful, entailing first getting rid of Mikhail Gorbachev - who through his glasnost and perestroika did far more than Reagan to render the world more peaceful, never mind the propaganda.

Klein makes no bones about the fact that the Friedman "school of economics" - tracing its lineage to Friedrich von Hayek (the same creep that was responsible for bringing about the economic collapse of  the Weimar Republic - opening it to Nazi takeover) was responsible largely for the ideological ruthlessness that laid waste to Russia in the early 1990s.  They only needed (Boris) Yeltsin to help dissolve the former Soviet Union.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz (p. 283) called Russia's pro-capitalist market experimenters "market Bolsheviks". As Klein put it (ibid.):

"However, where the original Bolsheviks fully intended to build their centrally planned state in the ashes of the old, the market Bolsheviks believed in a kind of magic: if the optimal conditions for profit were created - the country would rebuild itself- no planning required."

U.S. Neoliberal puppet Boris Yeltsin, meanwhile, made reckless promises that things would only be hard "for six months"  and "very soon" Russia would be an economic titan. Never happened! As Klein notes (ibid.):

"The logic of so-called creative destruction resulted in scarce creation and spiraling destruction"

Newspapers, magazines from the period (which I still have and can peruse anytime) depicts horrific suffering by ordinary Russians as they had to beg, borrow or steal to survive - thanks to the Neoliberal market barbarians. Is this being an "American traitor" to reveal this, probably something most Americans don't know? Nope, because one can't be a traitor to an economic paradigm he never accepted in the first place!

The sad facts?  After only a year of Neoliberal thuggery and "market therapy" millions of Russians had lost their life savings when the ruble lost nearly all its value (similar to what happened to Germans and their Deutsch mark, thanks to von Hayek). Adding insult to injury, abrupt cuts in government subsidies meant that millions of workers had not been paid in months. Consumption? The average Russian consumed 40 percent less in 1992 than 1991 - and they weren't even consuming that much in '91!

Basically, to survive, the Russian middle class was forced to sell all or most of their belongings - setting up card tables on the streets to do so. As Klein describes this travesty:

"Desperate acts, that the Chicago School of Economics praised as 'entrepreneurial' and proof that a capitalist renaissance was indeed under way."

Wonder why the Russians of today are deeply skeptical and affronted by the Neoliberal rogues and puppets of the G20?  Look no further than recent Russian history and how the uber - capitalists twisted and perverted the country's whole economic foundation in order to force it into a globalized capital new world order.

Next: How the U.S. was itself deformed based on the shock doctrine used on Russia

The Military-Industrial Complex Still Needs to Be Pared Down to Size!

The "fiscal cliff" approaches and all manner of Repukes are running for cover even as Ben Bernanke also seeks to stoke the hysteria (reminding legislators recently of the nearing due date). In this milieu it is well to ponder the basis of Naomi Klein's "disaster capitalism". In her book 'THE SHOCK DOCTRINE' Ms. Klein reminds us that the "Chicago school" of faux economists - led by Milton Friedman- have been using multiple shocks or intermittent crises (military and non-military or economic) over the past 30 years to try to turn our world into a capitalist pig whore house - with all the takers on the side of the plutocrats. In one chapter she coins the term "disaster capitalism" and analogized it to the electric shocks delivered via torture, say to a person's head & genitals. The shocked victims become so mentally incoherent that they are ready to accept just about anything demanded of them.

You would think that most sensible people would understand and see this, and hence that the solution of any spending problems is really cutting the military -Pentagon budget down by one- half but evidently not. Seems some brain dead goobers on the Right, on their blogs, actually want to see nothing done. These brain- damaged fools (probably after having their brains beat in by some drill sergeant) actually want to assert that we - who served our country in other ways (as in Peace Corps) - have no right to speak out on the disposition of precious tax dollars. They assert we are n'er do wells who "never held a job in our lives" (transl.:  they are jealous of the jobs we had compared to theirs) and "never served a day in the military" (transl.:  we never scrubbed out pans and pots from a military mess hall like they had to). These idiot fools can't seem to see their own interests, even as they yap about "socialists" and "commie" takers. This as they themselves wait for handouts compliments of the VA for some "disability" (probably from a DI kicking them in the balls and neutering them). Of course this confirms the stats that show all the "takers" of the federal tax dollar are in the Red States - with the Blue coughing up endless $$$. The little fuckers ought to be grateful, but they aren't.

Anyway, let's be sure we grasp what's going on: The Pentagon's money grubbers will not go quietly into the sequestration night, as they have loads of Repuke rats ready to fight against even a pitiful $600b cut over 10 years, when it ought to be about $4 trilllion. What fuels this Beast that's laying waste to the land and exacerbating political polarization - even as the wealthy get to keep on getting their tax cuts, while the military-Pentagon can continue to avoid "pay-go" in any manner, shape or form? The short answer is MONEY. Follow the toxic money trail and you will find who is benefitting from this cancerous malignancy Ike warned us about, and who are the agents for spreading the malignancy.


At the very source of this toxic and malignant sewer of influence one finds lobbyists, more than one thousand one hundred of them representing 375 clients - mostly profiteering defense contractors. This is according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CPR). In 2010 alone, these vermin spent $145.9 million to influence our politics - skewed as it already is toward legalized bribery. In fact, nearly $24 million was contributed in 2008 to the campaigns of political candidates.

Nor must one accept here the canard that it was exclusively  the Republicans who profited most, as the pro-war, pro-military "daddy" party. (The Dems depicted as the "mommy" party, e.g. for sustaining social insurance benefits etc.) According to the CPR's statistics, in 2010 the Democrats actually received 54% of all the lobbying largesse, the Repubs, 46%. No wonder, looking at this in retrospect, we see people like Leon Panetta fighting like junkyard dogs to try to protect the Pentagon's spoils from taxpayers.

At the same time, we're being informed almost daily that the forthcoming sequestration will  "cut military spending to the bone". Actually, this is a lie, a bold-faced lie! Most of the "cuts" are not in absolute terms, but rather in the rate of expected Pentagon spending increases. Even a 15% cut in military spending will therefore return the bloated Pentagon budget to what it was in 2007 and still consume 40 percent of all military spending on Earth! This, despite the fact the Pentagon's budget has more than doubled in the past decade and will add on another additional $6 trillion of deficits by 2021.

When will Americans wake up to this and start fighting for their nation?  (I can understand stupid ass Johnny Rebs who proclaim 'the South will rise again' to be indolent and inactive - Rebs have always extolled military first and foremost,  but not the rest of us). That must begin with demanding our own representatives cease propping up this bloated empire and turning us into a 3rd world Banana Republic.


As a cautionary tale of the type of rhetoric we face, one need look no further than Joe Liebermann (purported to caucus with the Dems) who openly said in August, 2011:

"We can't protect entitlements and also have the national defense we need to protect us in a dangerous world"

Translation:

'We can't be expected to deny our lobbyists for the defense industry who contribute to our campaign funds, or our good friends, the defense contractors who keep them and us in business. Let the seniors and others go suck salt. They can afford to die!"


And so this little douchebag prick endorsed that we cut Medicare and Social Security, and to punctuate that, immediately proceeded to co-author a bill (with another asshole, Tom Coburn of OK) to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67, thereby tossing 11 million more people into poverty. But these pricks don't care! All they care about is getting their precious campaign contributions from the vipers who control most of the nation's purse strings.

It's time now to use the coming sequestration to go forward with the planned cuts and then MORE - if the asswad Repugs demand more spending cuts. Let's be clear here that on account of the Budget Control Act passed last year there's already been $1.5 TRILLION in planned cuts to domestic social programs. Meanwhile, the re-turds haven't surrendered a dime in terms of new taxes and keep protecting their precious military. My point is if new spending cuts are needed, then gouge them out of the fat MIC not seniors, and the indigent.

Now, let's recall some famous words from Dwight D. Eisenhower (in his 'farewell address' in January, 1961). Ike was one of the foremost generals of WWII and a Republican President from 1952-1960.

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations -- corporations.


Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Later, in an April, 1953 address, Ike put the issue in an economic context:

“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school for more than 30 cities, …two finely equipped hospitals, or 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million barrels of wheat. We pay for a new destroyer with new homes that could have housed 8,000 people…Under a cloud of threatening war it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

We need to process the above, and be reminded that in today's economic context, the costs to our domestic security are even more as we sacrifice to the gluttonous military -industrial pigs, their lobbyist sycophants and their brain dead worshippers and enablers- mostly Southern Reb, pro -Secession symps and bible- punching morons. (Another reason why many of us, at one level, wish these assholes would secede!)

Keep all that in mind, and further that the 2012 federal budget allocates just under $806 BILLION to the military - which as one wit put it "buys a lot of horses and bayonets".

But in a more righteous context, consider that empire-building waste and the fact that the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that $322 billion is needed now to repair the nation's public schools and $930 billion to repair roads and bridges. We now spend only a fraction of a percent of GDP on our infrastructure while China spends 9%. Process THAT! Then ask, WHO - which nation- has the greater domestic security.

As for the Johnny Reb symps and suckups who defend the mammoth military let them go suck shit. They aren't worth an ounce of doggie lickspittle and hell, if they want to secede so badly I will fucking FIND them a place to secede to! Maybe that dumpster-created island off India's coast loaded with industrial waste from the U.S.