Freedom and Tyranny

Living High on the Hog — the Feral 1%

2011-11-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

Amid the hoopla and media frenzy surrounding these exciting “occupy” social movements the question arises — how feral is the top 1%? How is it that the hyper-wealthy Americans have gotten so very much richer since 1970, and no one in our social democracy has protested until now, in the jobless aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008? A deeper question is why did it take so long for this “American Spring” movement to launch itself?

A dictionary definition of feral reads “having reverted to the wild state, as from domestication”. I would liken the term “wild state” to a libertarian economist’s dreamy vision of an early “classic” capitalist economy with almost no taxes, no financial regulations, and paltry government services. The libertarian ideologues from the Cato Institute would accept only “the watchman state” where the government simply pays for an army, police, public transportation, and some public health.

The economics editor of the British newspaper The Guardian recently wrote that you have to go back over 80 years to find another English decade like this one when living standards failed to rise over a 10-year period. Here in America you have to go back over 50 years. He adds, “It is worth reminding ourselves at this point that those people at the very top — those complaining about the injustice of the [British] 50% tax rate — have had more than three decades of living high on the hog.”

I am reminding us that our American tax rates are far below this 50% rate about which the parastic British hyper-wealthy whine so loudly. Bush gave the American hyper-rich a massive tax cut in 2002 even while they supported his waging ruinously expensive and idiotic military adventures he conjured up out of the 9/11 tragedy. The hyper-wealthy reveled in this and their slogan might be, “all in it together — until the rich want out.”

The Gini coefficient is an international yardstick used to measure the “inequality index” in a country. As historian Tony Judt has shown in his book Ill Fares The Land, economic inequality in the USA was much less between 1945 – 1970 (meaning money poured into the middle), but began to get much worse from 1970 – 2007. Sometimes clichés make sense: the rich got richer after 1970, and the poor got much poorer and the middle class also lost buying power. In a sea of overpowering statistics of which many readers are aware, here is just one: in 2007 the top 1% of Americans earned 21% of the national income, and they owned a ginormous 35% of this country’s total wealth, figures far higher than in 1970.

Given this startling and growing wealth inequality between Americans, the hyper-wealthy class’s categorical refusal to accept any tax increase has caused the outrage leading to the burgeoning “occupy” movement. The plutocratic Republicans in the House and Senate, who simply serve as bought mouthpieces for the hyper-wealthy, have already won their campaign to stop the Joint Congressional Deficit Reduction Committee from making any formulations involving revenue increases (taxes). It is well-known that almost all of our Congressional representatives belong to the elite 1%, and that concealed crony capitalism serves this elite (think Abramoff).

We need the special “Buffet” tax on the super-wealthy, a windfall-profits tax on big oil (we have done such a tax before), Obama’s jobs bill, and some kind of cap on the top end of federal entitlements. McConnell, Cantor, and the other Republican crony capitalists working for the feral rich will honor their unholy “no tax increase ever” pledge to a private individual, Grover Norquist, over their sacrosanct loyalty oath to the U.S. Constitution and the prosperity of American working people. The poverty level in the USA has risen to 15.1% — neither wealth nor jobs have been “trickling down” to the majority.

Of course our economy requires banks, but in effect the banks have socialized risk but privatized profits, and they refuse to pay higher taxes on their profits as they reward themselves with sickening bonuses. The conservative former editor of UK’s The Daily Telegraph (Charles Moore) wrote honestly that, “It turns out — as the left always claims — that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few.” While Karl Marx’s predictions about the future were way off, his analysis of mid-19^th century capitalism with its horrendous abuses was spot on: without social legislation benefiting the majority of citizens and protecting them from the hyper wealthy the gap between rich and poor, and hyper rich and the middle class, will widen dramatically (this is what the Gini coefficient shows).

Many of the hyper wealthy, the 1%, are indeed ‘feral’ because they want to revert to unfettered “wild” capitalism of the 19^th century. They enjoy flaunting their insanely increasing wealth — just look to the profligate existence of Frank McCourt, the bankrupt owner of the L.A. Dodgers who has siphoned off over $189 million for his sybaritic lifestyle (since 2004). The hyper wealthy 1% truly are un-American because they do not accept restoration of their original 39% tax rates of 2001, AND they refuse to pay up for imperialistic wars they supported that have failed. The restoration alone, which is NOT a tax increase, would help alleviate the national debt, along with a wealth tax that should extend down to the $400,000 range (not Obama’s too-high one million dollars). Of course, some reduction in Medicare costs is inevitable.

It may be that the major question facing middle-class voters is whether they trust Wall Street OR the government to provide jobs and reduce wealth inequalities. In 1912 that great Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, when the hyper-wealthy truly loved their country, stated the goal of his new “Progressive Party” this way: “to destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the day.”

One hundred years later, the 99% realizes this task still stands before us and we now begin to confront the feral 1% and their libertarian ideologues on the streets.

The feral hyper-wealthy Americans

2011-10-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

After three September 2011 weeks in Europe, reveling in the relative openness of the liberal press here, which has refused to wallow in the homeland’s over-the-top 9/11 frenzy, gives a traveling American a much different perspective on the economic messes in Europe and especially in the USA homeland itself.

A September 10^th Guardian column re-quotes the conservative former editor of The Daily Telegraph (Charles Moore) who writes honestly that, “It turns out — as the left always claims — that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few.”

Another Guardian writer, economics editor Larry Elliott, wrote on Sept. 13^ththat you have to go back over 80 years to find another English decade like this one when living standards failed to rise over a 10-year period. Elliott adds, “It is worth reminding ourselves at this point that those people at the very top — those complaining about the injustice of the [British] 50% tax rate — have had more than three decades of living high on the hog.” Let’s remind our American selves that our tax rates are far below this 50% rate about which the parastic British hyper-wealthy whine so loudly. Bush gave the hyper-rich a massive tax cut in 2002 even while waging ruinously expensive and idiotic military adventures he hid beneath the 9/11tragedy. Economist Elliott’s revealing title: “All in it together — until the rich want out.”

A Reuters’ “Breakingviews” piece appearing in the Sept. 14 issue of the International Herald Tribune makes the point, one Americans should be thinking of amid our own financial woes, that a wealth tax for the richest 10% would “do the trick for Italy.” Hugo Dixon shows how a one-time 10% tax on the wealthiest Italians would raise 400 million euros and “cut national debt from 120% of GDP to below 100% of GDP.” Much of Italy’s crushing debt problem would be resolved, and this would significantly reverse the broader euro crisis in Europe, a looming catastrophe certain to impact the feeble US recovery. Dixon writes, “The Italians are so wealthy, they could afford it.” Some Italian hyper-wealthy, a la Warren Buffet, like this seemingly crazy idea since such a resolution of Italy’s debt problem would change the market psychology, and equity and bond prices would likely rebound. Investors losing on the wealthy tax increase could gain more on market savings than they lose on the special tax on the hyper-wealthy.

Another Sept 14 International Herald Tribune article by J. Calmes and B. Appelbaum, titled ‘Drums start to roll for stimulus,’ reviews growing support for Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill, but notes the surge is only for certain parts of his massive effort to help average and poor American workers. Whereas Congressional Republicans at first expressed openness to the jobs plan, this support, that many of us felt was politically expedient anyway, has turned sour when on Monday (9/12) the President proposed to offset the jobs bill’s short-term costs “with future tax increases on wealthy tax-payers.” This has become his important “millionaires’ tax” proposal, following the Buffett Rule.

Independent forecasters like Moody’s Analytics and Macroeconomic Advisers, quoted by Calmes and Appelbaum, assert that Congressional approval of Obama’s plan will spur US growth and get unemployment down: Moody’s believes it would add 1.9 million jobs.

However, the plutocratic Republicans in the House and Senate who simply serve as mouthpieces for the hyper-wealthy, have already begun their campaign to stop Obama’s plan. Oh, they’ll loudly vote for minor portions of the bill, but key elements, especially the special tax on the super-wealthy, including a windfall profits tax on big oil (we have done such a tax before) and closing other loopholes will pass over their foaming dead bodies. McConnell, Cantor, and the other crony capitalists working for the feral rich will honor their unholy “no tax increase ever” sacrosanct pledge to a private individual, Grover Norquist, over their loyalty oath to the U.S. Constitution and over the prosperity of American working people. The poverty level in the USA is at 15.1%, neither wealth nor jobs have been “trickling down” to the majority.

Ah, these hyper-wealthy Americans have indeed been “living high on the hog” since 1970, when the inequality between Americans began to grow tremendously (using the international yardstick, the Gini coefficient) — they vociferously supported Bush/Cheney’s insane military adventures believing they would gain access to cheap oil, but also having no intentions of paying increased taxes to fund these expensive catastrophes. They are feral, and un-American, because they do not accept restoration of their original 39% tax rates of 2001 AND they refuse to pay up for imperialistic wars that have failed. The restoration alone would help alleviate the national debt, and some reduction in Medicare costs is inevitable.

It may be that the major question facing middle-class voters is whether they trust Wall Street and business OR the government to provide jobs and reduce wealth inequalities. The rich have been getting much richer in the USA since 1970 (see Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land), and while the top 1% of Americans earned 21% of the national income, they owned a ginormous 35% of the country’s total wealth (for 2006-07).

That great Republican president Theodore Roosevelt stated the goal of his new “Progressive Party” this way: “to destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the day.” [1912]

The true puzzle in all this is two-fold: the supine and gutless American journalists who have failed to research and disseminate how unpatriotic our wealthy have been; and the sleepy, strategically ignorant American masses who won’t use the internet’s resources to figure this travesty out for themselves.

Let Bush Tax Cuts Expire in January!

2010-09-13T04:27:00.000-07:00

Congress must allow the George W. Bush administration’s unfair federal tax cuts to expire this January — and let's not call the result a tax increase!

I am not a socialist. But I am a social democrat. In the 1890s a wonderful politician from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, three-time candidate for President, preached “the Social Gospel.” He was against too much Wall Street, too much paper wealth, and especially against the increasing concentration of the country’s growing wealth into too few hands.

I’m not “against the rich”—my concern is not simplistically focused on the rich getting lower taxes. Rather, I’m in favor of a better life for all Americans.

In Tony Judt’s seminal 2010 book, Ill Fares the Land, we read reliable graphs proving how income inequalities have grown enormously since about 1970. In 2005, 21.2 percent of U.S. national income accrued to just 1 percent of the earners. America’s “Gini coefficient” (the conventional measure of the gap separating the rich and the poor) is about that of China. While the income inequality gap was shrinking between 1870 and 1970, in the last American generation it has widened greatly, unlike in most European Union countries.

The federal government’s massive tax-cuts, set to expire this January, cannot legitimately be called tax increases as Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and some Republicans now try to label them. It’s just not true.

Condensed, the expiring Bush tax-cuts will significantly affect the top two percent of American households — holding perhaps 40 percent of all U.S. wealth — by reverting to a 39.5 percent tax rate rather than the 36 percent rate they’ve enjoyed from 2001/2003. Remember, they paid this 39.6 percent rate before; the 39.6 percent is not new, and when restored in January it is therefore not a “tax increase.” Further, the expiration restores (does not create) the 20 percent tax rate on capital gains, and taxpayers in the top two brackets will also pay 20 percent on dividends. Finally, the estate tax on inherited wealth imposes a 45 percent tax of inheritances above $7 million for couples.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, among others, favor an inheritance tax. Getting $3.5 million from your mom or dad seems plenty generous to most of us middle-income Americans who will not be getting over $500,000 from our long-living parents, god bless them.

If any of these amazingly wealthy two percent of citizens supported either of our crazed military adventures in Iraq or Afghanistan, or enhanced their paper fortunes by profiting from the recent financial bubble, they might be pleased to be able to make up for their lack of judgment by ruefully paying more to the government beginning in January. How can plutocratic Republicans support two losing and insanely expensive foreign wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), and a very expensive prescription drug benefit given to older Americans on Medicare, yet moan about the extension of the recent jobless benefits bill? Their math doesn’t compute at all.

As others have pointed out, the deeper question that begs to be asked is: “Who counts as rich?” There’s an entire group out there, whom James Surowiecki calls “the lower upper class,” who have fallen short of the to one-to-two percent of earners.

In order to be consistent, let’s look at the expiration of tax cuts for the “middle class,” realizing it’s a slippery label at best. A July 25 New York Times financial analysis did not go into the additional money the middle class would have to pay if their tax cuts expire — but it could amount to as much as $1.6 trillion over several years. Since this issue is so political, what with the November Congressional elections looming, conventional wisdom holds that neither party would dare eliminate this “middle class” tax cut.

But the press should examine this complicated issue, because the explosion in wealth at the top of the pyramid (particularly in the very top one tenth of the top one percent) has meant many doctors, lawyers, accountants, and investors making more than $150,000 a year (or $200,000 per household ) do not feel “rich,” and desperately want to retain their lower tax rate. Yet I favor ending my own “middle class” economic group’s tax-breaks in January, along with those of the wealthier tax brackets. Its part of the Social Gospel that those of us actively working should contribute to the welfare of others — the elderly, the disabled and ill, the poor, and the homeless.

Without the restored revenues from all the expiring tax cuts, our federal government, which we expect to do so much, will lose around $3 trillion ($3,000,000,000) over the next decade. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Wall Street insider if there ever was one, said last month that the expiration of the tax-cuts would not harm the economic recovery. Recent Nobel Prize winner in economics Paul Krugman agrees. Yet all we hear from conservatives is, “Don’t raise my taxes!” (See: Tea Party.) We have to ask: Where is the gratitude from the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans for their nine years of fabulous tax cuts, given out in 2001 and 2003 during the financial bubble? It’s like the political leaders of the city of Bell [LA] paying themselves outlandish salaries.

Digital Maoism -- A Review

2010-09-13T04:21:00.000-07:00

Digital Maoism — a review of Lanier's You Are Not A Gadget

In his book You Are Not a Gadget, a collection of columns previously published online, digital pioneer Jaron Lanier considers how “cybernetic totalism” destroys creativity on the web, while the anonymous character of online trolls limits true debate.

Lanier is an Internet pioneer, credited with coining the term “virtual reality.” He’s also been a leader in developing the software for immersive virtual reality applications. This former net enthusiast now inveighs against a variety of digital phenomena: from the now-standard, locked-in web designs that he derides as Web 2.0, to belief in “the Singularity,” which is the notion that computer intelligence and competence—their fitness to lead—will at some point surpass that of humans.

Lanier notes that Google co-founder Larry Page is not alone among the cloud lords in believing the Internet will literally come alive. Others think this may have already happened: The “blogosphere” is a living cosmos in the minds of some. Students of world religions will resonate with Lanier’s comparison of the techies’ “faith” in the Singularity, and orthodox Religion. Or Maoism, for that matter.

We once had an IT guy at my school who enthusiastically touted our 21st century students as digital natives compared to veteran teachers who were digital barbarians. But Lanier argues that the once-beautiful digital dream of intense, creative individuality has been suffocated by the conformity-creating “hive mind.”

It is fair to say that Lanier, who calls his book a “manifesto,” has humanistic concerns about the diminishing sense of hope and promise in the vision of an international community instantly linked together. He talks about how the individual human participants in the web end up as “peasants” working for the “lords” of technology—Google, Yahoo, and hedge-fund managers with vast analytic resources. Lanier has the courage to show how the cloud lords profit from our volunteer labor; how we’re letting our kids become liquid-crystal serfs. Yes, a young person may have hundreds of “friends,” but practically all of them are on Facebook. When a web design is so locked-in that an actual human’s definition of friend gets deeply altered, Lanier writes, the “idea of friendship is reduced.”

Lanier is surely onto something when he states that a culture of sadism has gone mainstream online. He refers to the nasty edit wars on Wikipedia as well as on Slashdot, both of which accept pseudonymous comments, as “drive-by anonymity.” When my own on-line feature article appeared in the Santa Barbara Independent’s Voices column under the title “Open Carry at Starbucks [July 1, 2010]” it quickly developed a fascinating, long tail of corrosive digital comments—soon numbering 100—signed with pseudonyms. After reading Lanier’s fine book, I realize that it shouldn’t have surprised me how few of the writers really took up the question I raised, which was: Should people be able to swagger around Montecito Starbucks openly displaying handguns, even if they are unloaded?

No one picked up on my quotation from the Constitution’s famous Second Amendment, which involves Americans’ notorious gun rights; and no one directly addressed my question asking if “Arms” meant long weapons of the 1791 type or today’s extremely powerful handguns like Glocks? (I had written, “The Second Amendment to our great United States Constitution, in order to ensure ‘the security of a free State,’ guarantees citizens the right ‘to keep and bear Arms.’”) Dominating the long thread were commenters with such names as Major, Jarhead, gravedigger, and Edukder, using terms like “Eurotrash,” “snot-nosed journalist,” or “this coward who is so against guns.” (That last epithet was bravely signed by Against Cowardly Writing.)

Readers who need further proof of the nastiness of on-line anonymous commenting need look no further than the response to Matt Kettmann’s cover article A Mosque Grows in Goleta. Or the long tails of amazingly nasty meta-comments during the endless healthcare debate.

I believe Lanier’s book should be carefully read and its warnings heeded. In 21st century America I see a digital flattening and reduction of the self. After 36 years of teaching, I am deeply concerned that our kids are far too wired-up, far too “electronified.” They sit in front of various screens too many hours per week, prefer sitting to running. They need to get out more. Back to outdoor sports and active, experiential learning. Back to dinner at home with the family. Back to nature!

Lanier’s book gives us an insider’s critique of Internet technologies today. He’s a humanist in Silicon Valley drag, an apostate from the Singularity, a cybernetic Jeremiah warning us against where we’re going. All that being said, Lanier mentions three potential solutions in Chapter 8—read the book to find out what they are—and still feels the Internet holds genuine promise for humanity and for the planet. Let us hope so.

John McCain and U.S. foreign policy

2008-04-23T17:44:00.000-07:00

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has been highly rated in the vital areas of national defense and security for Americans, higher than either of his two Democratic rivals for the White House. Since our president serves as “commander in chief” of the armed forces, he or she wields incredible power in the world, so the foreign policy questions are crucial for America as well as the entire globe.
With deep respect for the Senator’s prior military service for this country, his inspiring survival story, we must consider that neither flying combat aircraft over Hanoi nor suffering five years’ captivity in an enemy prison necessarily make the sufferer wise on defense. The nuclear-powered carrier USS Reagan’s recent port call in Santa Barbara reminds us that the young Navy pilot John McCain took off from such a lethal offensive weapon before he was shot down. Like his Admiral father, Sen. McCain is very accustomed to projecting US power far overseas.
Despite his military record, Sen. McCain’s published foreign policy views reflect a continuation of our current President’s inept global strategy. McCain simply continues George Bush’s rash belligerence abroad. Consummate true believer, he’ll stay there as long as it takes to “win.”
McCain feels we have failed in Iraq ONLY because we didn’t go all out in the first place when we invaded Iraq. But the good Senator forgets “shock and awe” in March and April 2003, and the later battle of Fallouja — this was our battle of Algiers. He trumpets his early support of Bush’s “surge” believing these reinforcements have turned the tide there. Recent reports indicate this is not the case, and the surge has also been reduced by British and Australian pull-outs. Now we’re stuck in the fifth year of an unsavory, bloody occupation.
Sen. McCain won’t consider the competing geo-political idea that the next president could choose NOT to go harder in Iraq — we could pull out of the Mesopotamian mud by the end of 2009. McCain falls into more of the deadly Cheney-Bush illogical thinking when he stresses how the sacrifices of our 4000 war dead mean we have to stay. We can expect waves of surges for the next hundred years from the Arizona Senator.
Withdrawal from Iraq by late ’09 dishonors only the executive branch incompetents who thoughtlessly hurled our men there; while a judicious withdrawal will restore some of our moral stature around the world and give our armies time to heal. Pulling out of Iraq does NOT require leaving the entire Middle East nor does it have to feel like a defeat. Often we have two stupendous nuclear carriers cruising off the Strait of Hormuz guarding oil lanes (intimidating Iran?), or even three, and friendly Israel is a staunch military ally.
What does “win in Iraq” really mean to the Cheney-Bush-McCain troika and their followers? The neo-cons chose to disband Saddam Hussein’s army, but then banned these Sunni Baathists from participation in the political process of the “new” Iraqi government. John McCain did not protest this. After finally getting rid of Saddam Hussein, Bush suddenly said America next had to “install democracy” in Iraq. John McCain did not protest this policy.
Today we can ask, ‘how do you force a democratic government down the throats of traditionally competitive Arab desert tribes?’ Today, the new democratically-elected Iraqi leaders openly thumb their noses at us by lavishly welcoming the crazy Iranian President into Baghdad, while the past few days witness mortar attacks on our Green Zone redoubt. Can Sen. McCain see that our true contest is in the global war on terror (GWOT), not these posturing puppets on the Euphrates? Our enemy is NOT a country. Our enemy uses the internet and cell phones and text messages to communicate, and he hides openly among us all across the globe. McCain’s sadly simplistic to contend that “winning” in Iraq equates to victory in the GWOT against the West.
To continue trying to “win” in Iraq sustains an incredible strain on the US economy, already reeling for other reasons. This three trillion dollar war has to stop not only because of the unbearable cost of American and Iraqi lives, but also because we are borrowing the war-funding from our own children. Twelve billion dollars a month is too much. The current Iraqi occupation is unsupportable financially and inexcusable morally.
In every US war we’ve ever had, we have had to raise taxes in order to pay for it. This is logical, and usually the government has also borrowed vast sums of money from the banks and the people. The Cheney-Bush crowd, however, not only CUT TAXES for the very wealthy, those most able to pay, but they also failed to ask sacrifices from the American people. We gave up tax revenues for the government while waging an unbelievably expensive war, yet asked for no sacrifices from the people! If they really believed this attack on one country would win the GWOT they’d demand parallel sacrifices from “the people” — how about gasoline rationing like W.W. II?
Sen. McCain would prolong our unsuccessful Iraqi occupation, and send more of our increasingly exhausted army there to fight. He’s such the Bush foreign policy clone that he’s incapable of cognizing the COSTS of our occupation debâcle. He also seems to have no ideas about how to pay for the NEXT three trillion dollars of expenses, and he doesn’t dare demand sacrifice from the people to help the war. Sen. McCain has also spoken recklessly about Iranian impudence and nuclear intransigence, and recently kept saying “Iran” when context demanded “Iraq.” These are not senior moments, and many think a President McCain would countenance invasion of Iran.
With no new foreign policy ideas on how to wage the GWOT, or pull-out plans for Iraq, Senator McCain should remain in the U.S. Senate dispensing his wisdom as an elder statesman. America will be much stronger if we elect a leader who will extract our men from Iraq as expeditiously as possible, certainly by December 2009 as Barack Obama has promised.

Open Letter to US Rep. Lois Capps (D Calif):

2008-04-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

Considering your status as a “super delegate” to the Democratic Nominating Convention, and given your strong stand against our continued occupation of Iraq, I hope you will speak out stridently against the McCain-Bush-Petraeus strategy to keep the “surge” reinforcements in Iraq longer.
Maintaining current troop levels, i.e. NOT bringing the 30,000+ surge soldiers back as promised, damages American interests and uses up our soldiers. The US armed forces, especially the infantry and the armored battalions, need to regroup and heal themselves. We have to replace thousands of Humvees and many Apache gunships, etc. And asking our young warriors to go for third tours while the leadership has no overall reasonable goals in Iraq — this is wrong. This is criminally inept. The intolerable costs of this misguided mistake, almost $12 billion a month, bankrupt the nation. Our national economy may be our strongest defense.
We need to get out of Iraq and much of the Middle East (not Afghanistan), so I urge you, Mrs. Capps, to haggle with both the Obama and the Clinton campaigns to push them into harder anti-war stances. The stated goal of mostly withdrawn by Dec. 2009 is too far off — how about pledges to have 90% of American forces out of Iraq by August 2009, with the last 10% out by year’s end? Both Democratic candidates need to stop hedging about leaving “a few troops” within Iraq; please use your super delegate status to press our candidates to publicly call for withdrawal from Iraq NOW!

John McCain and U.S. Foreign Policy

2008-04-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has been highly rated in the vital areas of national defense and security for Americans, higher than either of his two Democratic rivals for the White House. Since our president serves as “commander in chief” of the armed forces, he or she wields incredible power in the world, so the foreign policy questions are crucial for America as well as the entire globe.
With deep respect for the Senator’s prior military service for this country, his inspiring survival story, we must consider that neither flying combat aircraft over Hanoi nor suffering five years’ captivity in an enemy prison necessarily make the sufferer wise on defense.
Despite his military record, Sen. McCain’s published foreign policy views reflect a continuation of our current President’s inept global strategy. McCain simply continues George Bush’s rash belligerence abroad. Consummate true believer, he’ll stay there as long as it takes to “win.”
McCain feels we have failed in Iraq ONLY because we didn’t go all out in the first place when we invaded Iraq. But the good Senator forgets “shock and awe” in March and April 2003, and the later battle of Fallouja — this was our battle of Algiers. He trumpets his early support of Bush’s “surge” believing these reinforcements have turned the tide there. Recent reports indicate this is not the case, and the surge has also been reduced by British and Australian pull-outs. Now we’re stuck in the fifth year of an unsavory, bloody occupation.
Sen. McCain won’t consider the competing geo-political idea that the next president could choose NOT to go harder in Iraq — we could pull out of the Mesopotamian mud by the end of 2009. McCain falls into more of the deadly Cheney-Bush illogical thinking when he stresses how the sacrifices of our 4000 war dead mean we have to stay. We can expect waves of surges for the next hundred years from the Arizona Senator.
Withdrawal from Iraq by late ’09 dishonors only the executive branch incompetents who thoughtlessly hurled our men there; while a judicious withdrawal will restore some of our moral stature around the world and give our armies time to heal. Pulling out of Iraq does NOT require leaving the entire Middle East nor does it have to feel like a defeat. Often we have two stupendous nuclear carriers cruising off the Strait of Hormuz guarding oil lanes (intimidating Iran?), or even three, and friendly Israel is a staunch military ally.
What does “win in Iraq” really mean to the Cheney-Bush-McCain troika and their followers? The neo-cons chose to disband Saddam Hussein’s army, but then banned these Sunni Baathists from participation in the political process of the “new” Iraqi government. John McCain did not protest this. After finally getting rid of Saddam Hussein, Bush suddenly said America next had to “install democracy” in Iraq. John McCain did not protest this policy.
Today we can ask, ‘how do you force a democratic government down the throats of traditionally competitive Arab desert tribes?’ Today, the new democratically-elected Iraqi leaders openly thumb their noses at us by lavishly welcoming the crazy Iranian President into Baghdad, while the past few days witness mortar attacks on our Green Zone redoubt. Can Sen. McCain see that our true contest is in the global war on terror (GWOT), not these posturing puppets on the Euphrates? Our enemy is NOT a country. Our enemy uses the internet and cell phones and text messages to communicate, and he hides openly among us all across the globe. McCain’s sadly simplistic to contend that “winning” in Iraq equates to victory in the GWOT against the West.
To continue trying to “win” in Iraq sustains an incredible strain on the US economy, already reeling for other reasons. This Three Trillion Dollar War has to stop not only because of the unbearable cost of American and Iraqi lives, but also because we are borrowing the war-funding from our own children. Twelve billion dollars a month is too much. The current Iraqi occupation is unsupportable financially and inexcusable morally.
In every US war we’ve ever had, we have had to raise taxes in order to pay for it. This is logical, and usually the government has also borrowed vast sums of money from the banks and the people. The Cheney-Bush crowd, however, not only CUT TAXES for the very wealthy, those most able to pay, but they also failed to ask sacrifices from the American people. We gave up tax revenues for the government while waging an unbelievably expensive war, yet asked for no sacrifices from the people! If they really believed this attack on one country would win the GWOT they’d demand parallel sacrifices from “the people” — how about gasoline rationing like W.W. II?
Sen. McCain would prolong our unsuccessful Iraqi occupation, and send more of our increasingly exhausted army there to fight. He’s such the Bush foreign policy clone that he’s incapable of cognizing the costs of our occupation debâcle. He also seems to have no ideas about how to pay for the next three trillion dollars of expenses, and he doesn’t dare demand sacrifice from the people to help the war. Sen. McCain has also spoken recklessly about Iranian impudence and nuclear intransigence, and recently kept saying “Iran” when context demanded “Iraq.” These are not senior moments, and many think a President McCain would countenance invasion of Iran.
With no new foreign policy ideas on how to wage the GWOT,or pull-out plans for Iraq, Senator McCain should remain in the U.S. Senate dispensing his wisdom as an elder statesman. America will be much stronger if we elect a leader who will extract our men from Iraq as expeditiously as possible, certainly by December 2009.

A Celebration of Threats: comparison of carrier USS Reagan's 2008 Santa Barbara Visit with that of the 1908 Great White Fleet

2008-02-21T18:00:00.000-08:00

Recent public commentary praising the Navy League for welcoming the nuclear-powered carrier REAGAN to Santa Barbara last month misses the point by failing to understand our global position. Blinded by pure nationalism, these "patriots" wanted us to celebrate the sailors from this enormous warship that also carries nuclear bombs and missiles along with 80 combat aircraft. However, most of the paeans to honor brave sailors immediately morphed into the pageantry and blazing power of the USS Reagan itself. The new science-technology religion in our military democracy requires orgasmic exuberance whenever we behold our best weapons. What does such fervent celebration of our mobile naval nuclear weapon imply? Did the sailors also visit the crosses at Arlington West?

For global geo-political understanding, let's look at the context one hundred years ago when President Theodore Roosevelt ordered his new fleet of battleships to steam around the world, setting off in 1907. TR had recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping settle the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, but he was still worried about Japanese military moves in the Far East. Having just seen construction of 16 state-of-the-art new battleships, Roosevelt realized it was basically an Atlantic Ocean fleet, and that we were weak in the Pacific. He had the vessels deliberately painted an un-warlike white, and they set off in December of 1907 around South America. It was a technical feat to get the 16 ships safely through the Strait of Magellan and up to California on a showy world circumnavigation. TR's global goal was to forestall Japanese aggression by a peaceful show of force in the Far East, including a provocative fleet visit to Yokohama. Always contradictory, TR did love the pageantry of American power abroad but his chief goal was to prevent war. Indeed, we avoided hostilities with Japan until December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor).

The thunderous cheers for the 1908 Great White Fleet's visit to southern California reflected a jubilant nation at peace. By contrast, the USS REAGAN's 2008 port call in Santa Barbara reflects a worried and aggressive America. The behemoth boasts incredible firepower, dwarfing that of all the 1908 battleships combined, and will eventually return to the Persian Gulf region again to support our assault on Iraq. The never-ending-war has become a never-ending-story for our children.

Yes, it was certainly important to support the visiting sailors during their port call here—they are the young we've chosen to sacrifice in order to continue our occupation—but we could have worn black and kept a sober mien mixed with sorrow. A global outlook reveals that America is the aggressor in the Middle East, and now we're enmeshed in a bloody occupation. Writers who extol the REAGAN's unbelievable firepower and go through these techno-enthusiasm orgies usually add the noun "defend." Since Iraq did not attack the USA, how can offensive maneuvers by our gargantuan carriers be in defense of America? Jingoistic nationalism celebrates offensive weapons and blitzkrieg air strikes.

We currently have over 150,000 soldiers plus an unknown number of mercenaries occupying Iraq, with many thousands more in Afghanistan (as well as NATO forces), and mighty naval forces cruising off the Strait of Hormuz. Why shouldn't Iran be terrified? Like wealthy and powerful Athens in her Classical Age, we're off on belligerent military adventures around the globe, and the rest of the world see the REAGAN as an offensive, threatening weapon. Why can't US military forces be applied to globally rather than to occupy? How could true patriots celebrate the recent visit like the 1908 Californians when they know where the REAGAN goes and what it will do "for us" in the Persian Gulf?

Let Islam be Islam and America be America!

2007-11-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

Allowing Islam to be Islam is an important new principle that can help change U.S. foreign policy and reduce warfare in the 21st century. Since I’ve been teaching about Islam and other world religions to sixth graders since 2001, this focus on Moslem beliefs and practices is a familiar subject. Every fall I begin the year studying ISLAM partly because American kids have great curiosity about it and also because of its great complexity and depth.
If the United States wants to avoid that ‘clash of civilizations’ Samuel Huntington warned us about — and which Bush and Bin Laden are bringing closer — we have to figure out “what IS Islam?” This question is more vital than “why do they hate us” and answering it will help us deal peacefully with Moslems globally. The Prophet Muhammed, may his name be blessed, received some explicit instructions from Jibril (Gabriel) — including praying 5x per day, making the hajj to Mecca, and fasting during Ramadan month. Many individual Moslems will actually obey these and other prescriptions from the Islamic pillars of practice. The US consistently enrages some Moslems when our foreign policy prevents them from carrying out these sacred actions prescribed in the holy Qur'an. Islam is by far the youngest of the three “western” Abrahamic religions that actually began in the Near East. Still without a “Reformation,” many Moslems are determinedly serious about carrying out the prescriptions of the Prophet, and this intensity is difficult for non-Moslems to appreciate.
The bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report stated that “the American homeland is the planet,” meaning an attack on American interests overseas is the same as a terrorist assault in North America [p. 362]. But if we have to consistently intervene to protect our “foreign” homeland — call it empire! — using military force, we encounter significant opposition by uprooting Moslem daily life. Thrusting troops into Panama, or stationing divisions in Germany or South Korea, works out globally, but having troops anywhere in Saudi Arabia near the Ka’aba becomes a problem. Our invasion of Iraq and ongoing bloody occupation there disrupts required Moslem daily practices. What about the mosques we’ve accidentally damaged, the civic destruction in the two battles for Fallouja, and the tens of thousands of Moslem women and children killed as collateral damage? We need to review our foreign policy principles, cease imagining the whole planet as part of our “homeland,” and admit to limits on our enormous power.
Andrew Bacevich, author of the acclaimed The New American Militarism (Oxford, 2005), recently posited 5 principles to guide American actions abroad; one of them is to husband your economic and military resources. Steering clear of reckless invasions or selective airstrikes (Cheney’s plotted cruise missiles vs. Iran) does not mean passive isolationism. As von Clausewitz famously stated, the THREAT of using force is usually more influential than outright attack. When we do attack this squanders our advantages, reveals the shocking limits of power, and damages the American planetary empire’s longevity.
Bacevich also advocates our need to reinvent that “containment” strategy which was so successful against the USSR. Thus we see the necessity of letting Islam simply be Islam, a 1300 year old “younger” Abrahamic religion with all the monotheistic aspects that go with that tradition. A new strategy of CONTAINING Islam by forgoing military intervention allows Moslem moderates time to calm the stresses of western modernity on their belief system. It gives the 1.4 billion Moslems the security to know they can carry out their sacred activities without an external threat, and WE can husband our resources.
Just as my students find Islam quite mysterious and complex, so do many Mohammedans find America enigmatic, violent, and imperialistic. As we struggle to understand them, let’s give them time to develop and to co-habit with a restrained American influence on our shared planet.

Fighting the Real Fight

2007-11-12T04:54:00.000-08:00

Scholar Andrew Bacevich’s fine piece “Fighting the real fight” matters [LA Times, Nov. 6]! He’s absolutely correct — the USA has to move forward with a new foreign policy based on principles AND on a global “containment” strategy. George Kennan’s containment strategy won the Cold War for us, so perhaps we need to look at isolating, outwitting, and out-creating what Bacevich terms “Islamic radicalism.”
One of Bacevich’s five new international principles begins with this idea: “Let Islam Be Islam” We have to try to do this, and accept that the peoples of the earth aren’t waiting with bated breath for Americans to “fix” their problems. It isn’t the western civilized white man’s burden to cram democracy or modernity into the Middle East. Why should we ever imagine we can understand, much less change, the minds and hearts of 1.4 billion faithful Moslems??
Let us husband our resources and redeploy our men out of Iraq!

Open Letter to my Santa Barbara Representative to Congress, Lois Capps (D)

2007-09-25T20:58:00.001-07:00

“MRS CAPPS, WHY WON’T YOU SUPPORT IMPEACHMENT PROCESS AGAINST BUSH AND CHENEY?”
AN OPEN LETTER TO U.S. Rep. Lois CAPPS, Sept. 26, 2007 —
Dear Mrs. Capps,
Recently I’ve been getting numerous emails from you and your office. One of them offered an online survey to rate how you and this Democratic 110th Congress are doing. Like many of your constituents, I dare to predict, I rated this Congress’s performance as “poor.” And today the national approval rating for this Congress hovers around a very low 22%.
Mrs. Capps, I’ve voted for you in every Congressional election. I’ve supported your generally effective representation in the House, and you have been a “good” representative for us living in Santa Barbara. However, like Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, you seem to be unaware that this President ignores you, and actually scorns your third branch of the U.S. government, the U.S. Congress. Only direct and constitutional action by Congress will control our incompetent and belligerent leaders. Even the initiation of the simple process of impeachment proceedings against Mr. Bush and V.P. Cheney will hamper these neo-imperialists from lashing out at some other country. Iran of course immediately comes to mind.
In response to my email, you have declined to cosponsor a House bill that would begin a path to impeachment proceedings. In a recent email to me you wrote, “I believe Speaker Pelosi is acting in what she believes is the best long term interests of our country… I have decided to respect the Speaker's decision on this issue and not cosponsor any impeachment legislation at this time.”
I believe you read polls which indicate that more and more Americans have gotten resigned to the war issue, and that they’re waiting for the Nov. 2008 elections to deliver us a new president. But you and the Democratic majority have been elected to pull our army out of Iraq now, and to constrain Mr. Bush for the rest of his 16 months in office. You also wrote me how you “completely share that frustration” most of us have with our continuing bloody occupation of Iraq. Yet you remain opposed to beginning the impeachment process, which can only start in your House of Representatives, according to the U.S. Constitution.
As our representative, many Santa Barbarans and I look to you for moral as well as political leadership. The people want their army out of Iraq, and our military leaders are telling us we’re wearing out the armed forces. It’s cruel to ask our brave soldiers to make THREE deployments to Iraq, and extend the third tour to 15 months!
I am dismayed that you and most of the Democrats, including most of the contenders for the presidential nomination, are deceiving the American people with an anti-war sham. You, and the new Democratic majority in the 110th Congress, were clearly elected to get us out of our odious occupation of Iraq.
Like most Americans, I don’t care about the “200 hearings” you Democrats have held about the “quagmire” of Iraq. As the co-equal third branch of government the Constitution assigns you the task to “balance” the power of the executive branch. Your only effective tool to constrain this President and his bellicose Vice President is the wholly legal and measured move to begin impeaching him in the House now. Mrs. Capps, I beg you to reconsider your decision NOT to cosponsor impeachment proceedings. American constitutional democracy requires a separation and balance of powers, but our current executive branch is wildly out of control, and may well strike militarily at Iran without Congressional approval. Only Congress is given the power to declare war on another country (U.S. Constitution, Article 1).
Without the check of impeachment, the useless killings will go on uncontested, and our soldiers will continue to die for political considerations at home. This is a failure of our constitutional democracy. I hope you will reconsider your refusal to act directly against the illegal war policies of this imperial executive branch by supporting the impeachment process.

Rep. Capps and Democrats Won't End this War!

2007-09-09T20:02:00.000-07:00

“AN OPEN LETTER TO U.S. Rep. Mrs. Lois CAPPS, 23rd Congressional District, Democrat California
I have voted for you in every Congressional election, and for your late husband, Walter Capps, before that. I’ve supported your good work and generally effective representation in the House. However, because of your honest Sept. 7 email reply to my August 31st email, quoted below, I will now vote against you in November 2008, and I’ll try to convince fellow citizens that you and the Democrats now endorse Bush’s futile Iraq occupation policy. The Democratic Party will not lead us out of this conflict.
My email was basically a copy of my Letter to the Editor printed in the Santa Barbara News-Press on August 30, as I indicated to you, and it had the tiny subheading, “That [Iraq] war is lost DOES parallel Vietnam.”
I asked you straight out to support the twin impeachments of VP Cheney and Mr. Bush. You responded in a thoughtful but cautiously guarded way, mentioning how you “completely share that frustration” most of us have with the continued senseless occupation of a foreign country which never attacked the USA. But you remain opposed to beginning the impeachment process, which must originate in your House of Representatives.
You defend your pro-occupation position by cowering behind Speaker Pelosi’s reiterated commitment not to go after the President or the true warmonger, Mr. Cheney. You wrote to me that, “I believe Speaker Pelosi is acting in what she believes is the best long term interests of our country… I have decided to respect the Speaker's decision on this issue and not cosponsor any impeachment legislation at this time.”
My beef with you, and with most of the Democrats including all the contenders for the presidential nomination, is this anti-war/anti-occupation sham. You, and the new Democratic majority, were clearly elected to get us out of our odious Middle Eastern morass. I’m also very disappointed that you allow Mrs. Pelosi to make moral choices for you. Currently, Mrs. Clinton and most Democratic Party leaders openly admit we will have our men fighting and dying for nothing until at least 2009, and this means we should assume 2011 at best.
In my Aug. 30 letter, I pointed out to you that after the 1968 election, in which Nixon, like you Democrats, also had promised to end a war paralleling our current imbroglio, Kissinger and Nixon drew it out for several extra years to 1974: “thus killing off even more of our soldiers as well as Vietnamese citizens.” You do not address this point at all.
Just like Vietnam, there is now tacit but complete admission that we’ve lost this war. The administration no longer speaks of installing a friendly democratic regime in Mesopotamia. Mrs. Capps, does Mr. Bush realize this isn’t a football game, we’re not “kicking ass” as Bush recently claimed in Australia, rather, we’re losing Britain’s help, the vaunted “surge” isn’t really working, and we admit we’ve LOST when the president cautiously speaks of “drawing down” our troops to about 130,000 in mid-2008. Uh, that’d be just in time to help Republican pro-war candidates in the November ’08 election, and would actually just be a return to the original occupation number of 130,000 before the surge. PM Howard of Australia will keep just 500 fighting soldiers in Iraq, but the administration spin machine plays this up as a victory while PM Brown of the UK wants out very badly. The UK just pulled out of Basra Palace; Brits will be out of Iraq by mid-2008.
Like most Americans, I don’t care about the “200 hearings” you Demos have held about the “quagmire” of Iraq. Bill Moyers and others have shown that “impeachment” is not revenge or anger, it’s a Constitutionally-approved means for the Legislative Branch (that’s you) to check the power of our Executive Branch, i.e. this imperial presidency. American constitutional democracy requires a separation of powers, right now the bellicose executive branch is unconstrained and runs amok across the planet. Even without conviction, a serious impeachment process will harness Cheney-Bush belligerence and restrain them from attacking Iran, which they’re certainly dying to do. Without impeachment, the useless killings will go on, our soldiers will continue to die for political considerations at home, our constitutional democracy fails, and the moral stain on America’s soul continues to grow.

View of Bush from Britain, late August

2007-08-25T10:09:00.000-07:00

The British publication The Guardian, regarded as one of the finest newspapers in the world, led off its Aug. 23rd international edition with this huge headline: "Bush: there will be no pullout from Iraq while I'm president." The editors were paraphrasing — and mocking — the free world’s leader when he gave a speech to army veterans in Kansas on August 22.
This extremely influential European newspaper added accurate quotations from our leader, also in large-print type: “[US military] The greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known” and “In Vietnam the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of citizens.” The Guardian thereby ridiculed the president for his Vietnam parallel and poured scorn on his intelligence and his leadership. It seems very clear that British Prime Minister Brown, whose reduced forces are taking a hellacious pounding in Basra, will pull out their last 5000 soldiers as soon as possible.
One part of Mr. Bush’s Vietnam parallel does seem to apply: after the 1968 election our shambolic retreat from Vietnam was supposed to be swift, but Nixon and Kissinger drew it out for several extra years, thus killing off even more of our soldiers and Vietnamese citizens. Like Vietnam, WE HAVE ALREADY LOST THIS WAR! As soon as the spineless Democrats in the House of Representatives regain their courage, or look at their deserved 18% approval rating, they must begin impeachment proceedings against our inept president and his wicked sidekick, Mr. Cheney. Where is the Democratic Party leadership on this issue??

Brown, Blair, and Bush

2007-08-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's recent two-day visit with President Bush at Camp David should make it clear to Americans that the "special relationship" between the UK and the USA has finally changed — the Brits want out of Iraq, want out of the Texas cowboy's suffocating embrace, and Americans should be grateful for this significant metamorphosis with our closest ally.
While Mr. Bush vainly tried the "Gordon" gambit, just as he tried to give Chancellor Merkel a backrub at the G-8, he quickly learned the Blair lapdog is reverting to form as a Brown bulldog. After Bush's awkward rant about a worldwide WAR on terrorism, Brown riposted brilliantly with his withering comment that "terrorism is not a CAUSE; it is a CRIME" [my emphasis]. Americans must ponder this critical distinction since the way Bush has framed everything since 9/11 involves this nonsensical mantra, "a WAR on terrorism." This war framework includes running amok over Congress and our system of checks and balances, ripping apart rights of American citizens to have their emails and telephone calls remain private and without government spying, and stretches to torturing suspected "enemies" abducted by the CIA from other countries. It also means tossing anyone who opposes the USA into a catchall category of "evil terrorist," but the world is far more complex than this elementary formula admits.
PM Brown also made it clear he doesn't see Iraq — a colossal and stupid Bush error — as the central front in the misnamed war on terror; Brown noted that Afghanistan is the "frontline." The current struggles against criminals who use "Islam" as a ruse to disguise their thuggery and nationalism can no longer be waged this way. The fantasy that we could cram "democracy" down Arab throats can now be seen for what it really is: Mr. Bush trying to create an imperial Presidency which can invade countries it does not like, and cow domestic critics with the "traitor" charge. Even die-hard Republicans can see the lunacy in this. Following George Kennan on the USSR, "containment" makes sense whereas "conquer" scares all of America's friends.
Bush wants a quick fix with his overt attack on a foreign country, but Osama and Al-Qaida are mostly in other places, namely Afghanistan and Pakistan (Waziristan). The wordplay which Bush worked, identifying "Al Qaida in Iraq" as the enemy deliberately simplifies — there are scores of entities against the US invaders in Iraq, and the splinter group "Al Qaida in Iraq" is simply one of them, not to be confused with the larger organization which had never worked with Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. Brown realizes, after a 38 year protracted struggle in Northern Ireland, that these issues are not simple and will not be solved simply by the unleashing of maximum military force. And since our 160,000 troops can't pacify Iraq anyway, this failure emphasizes to the Iranian rogue regime that brute military force isn't to be feared so much. The true struggle is political and economic, NOT religious and military. Brown is well aware of this in his emphases on global poverty, AIDs, and debt.
Cheers to Brown and the Brits for helping the American people, if not their deluded lame duck leader, realize that terrorism is an abstract noun. The Imperial West terrifies parts of the globe, and as long as the American Congress and people allow our imperial President to do whatever he wants more people will turn against us globally. Prime Minister Brown is showing us a way to reorient our struggle against international criminals and bandits, and as a free people we Americans must get Congress to control our rogue leader! Let's begin by supporting Sen. Russ Feingold in his effort to "censure" Mr. Bush.

Plutocracy and Global Dominance

2007-07-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

University of Munich sociology prof Ulrich Beck writes about the role national leaders need to play in a new and properly anxious world (The Guardian, July 13, 2007, p23). With critical issues transcending national borders like global warming, economic interdependence, massive immigration between countries, and terrorism the old single-nation approaches are doomed. He writes about the 'strait jacket of the nation-based approach,' and we should ponder his suggestion. Just take the warming climate encircling our beautiful planet. Merely reducing emissions and the carbon foot-prints of the G-8 nations will be insufficient to solve this looming catastrophe, even though a new Kyoto-like agreement will help. As, or IF, the major industrial nations manage to reduce their contributions to overheating the planet, the developing countries simultaneously race to industrialize and thereby INCREASE their emissions. Without a balanced and globally managed approach, this and other problems simply won't begin to be alleviated, much less solved.
As an American, I'm keenly sensitive to Professor Beck's comment: "The crucial question then is this: will the rich reduce their emissions so that the poor have enough room for growth?" Here we get into the crux of the intertwined issues of national sovereignty and maintenance of wealth in the mostly western G-8 lands. Many of these plutocrats — hedge managers, trustee babies, dot.com entrepreneurs, the hyper-rich, the 55% of Norwegians who are millionaires — won't stand for the logical answer to Beck's conundrum. What's the point of America's military democracy and high-tech armies if they can't protect the West's massive wealth, the right wing would ask? Transnational charismatic leadership is required — I'm looking for a Gandhi, a Lincoln, a Dag Hammarskjold! Ban Ki-moon and a corrupted UN don't cut it.
There is evidence in California that the middle and upper economic groups simply purchase yet another car — a hybrid — to use part of the time, and then feel smugly responsible. Magnetic and awe-inspiring leadership is critically urgent.
Leaders like new British PM Gordon Brown and the desperately-dreamed of successor to the current madman in the White
House need to adopt transnational economic and social policies in concert with other progressive leaders on our shared planet. All the world's children are begging for this.