Just Making A Buck

 

It seems that every time I look at a news media site, there's yet another announcement of a giant arms deal between the U.S. and some foreign country.

Maybe I should feel all aflutter that at least some things are still being manufactured in the U.S., instead of China or Bangladesh.

America is the main supplier of arms to the world.  I don't mean prosthetic arms.
Guns, bombs, bombers, fighter jets, ammunition, artillery, tanks, attack helicopters, attack and reconnaissance drones, rockets -- you name it -- just about every killing device and deadly combat technology, except nuclear weapons, is in the catalog.  Last year our foreign sales of military equipment reached a record high of $46.6 billion!

Recognizing that making money and bolstering the economy are main drivers for most of our foreign policy decisions, I still can't help but wonder why two obvious questions never get asked:

1. As an allegedly Judeo-Christian nation, is this really the best way to honor those values we claim are the core of our beliefs?  "Do unto others ..." and "Thou shalt not kill ..." are a couple phrases that immediately come to mind.
2. Is flooding the world with weapons which may, given the apparent volatility of political loyalties, be ultimately pointed right back at us, really a very smart thing to do?

 

I realize that these are secondary and tertiary considerations -- if they ever come up at all -- in the boardrooms of military companies and their mirrored think tanks, and the decision making forums of our government, where profit and raw power are more important than people's lives, reducing and eliminating human suffering, or even embracing basic human decency.

But how can we claim to be advocates for a peaceful world if any Tom, Dick, or Abdul can arm their countries to the teeth by simply buying the ingenuity and efficacy of American killing machines, instruments of war, technological marvels that erase human life?  Or do we even bother worrying about such inconsistencies anymore?  Frankly, it doesn't seem that in the raucous din of saber-rattling and incessant beating of war drums we now must endure 24/7/365, peace ever gets even passing mention by our congressional leaders or White House spokespersons.

It's quite obvious to anyone not under the ideological spell of neocon lunacy . . .

The aggressive promotion of our war industries and pursuit of profit through arms deals is mind-bogglingly self-sabotaging, whatever the pecuniary rewards.  It's like pulling up with a truck full of assault weapons in downtown Cambden, NJ and selling them to anyone who forks over the bucks, hoping that all these folks will use good judgment and not cause any undue harm.  It is an understatement to say this approach is patently stupid and suicidal!

President Obama himself, a man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based purely on the rhetoric of his presidential campaign and speeches made in the first few months of his presidency, most notably his A New Beginning address to Muslim nations June 4, 2009 in Cairo, has outpaced George W. Bush with accelerated approvals of lethal weapons sales to foreign buyers, and has significantly relaxed or done away with altogether the regulatory framework intended to safeguard against those weapons getting into the wrong hands.

 

To put this in perspective, President Obama has sold more armaments than any president since World War II, and thus we are daily treated to scenes in the media of all sides of a conflict blasting away at one another with high-end U.S. manufactured equipment.  Much of it initially goes to legitimate, approved buyers but then gets stolen, captured, even intentionally passed along, so that terrorists groups who represent our worst nightmares, who are anti-American to the core and willing to do anything to destroy the "Great Satan" and supreme infidels we are judged by them to be, then are in a position to mount astonishingly successful military campaigns, conquer and control huge swaths of territory, forcing millions of refugees to flee to Europe and other areas of the globe, creating the worst such crisis in seven decades.

Many political analysts on the left -- ones I happen to agree with -- say this is all actually entirely preplanned and deliberate, that the U.S. has mutated into the Empire of Chaos, one maintaining its supremacy as the world's only remaining superpower by seeding and feeding disarray and destruction.  This is entirely consistent with the Wolfowitz Doctrine, a landmark policy embedded in Defense Planning Guidance recommendations issued in 1992.  This paradigm-shifting proposal in short order established the tone and substance for America's application of power over the subsequent two-and-a-half decades:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.  This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

So America is to reign supreme and anyone who appears to threaten that arrangement will have to be dealt with accordingly.  Even the slightest challenge can trigger overwhelming opposition by the U.S.  The list of countries bombed into submission, functionally erased as nations, or whose leadership has been replaced by regime change if formidable and still growing. 

Except for its confrontation with the Soviet Union during the five decades of the Cold War, the U.S. has typically limited itself to smaller, more easily bullied countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Libya.  Despite its abysmal record of both military and diplomatic failure in almost all of its interventions, America's recklessness and hubris continues to escalate, as this cycle's presidential candidates, divorced from the realities on the ground, competed in bluster and bombast, promising bigger and badder explosions and wars.  No country, large or small, is to be given a pass. For example, Russia and China just recently were identified as major national security threats.  They are now prime targets for either military action or chaos and crippling by whatever means the U.S. chooses to enlist.  Of course, neither has attacked nor shown any intention of attacking America.  BUT they are both growing more powerful and have proven unwilling to play a submissive vassal state role, determined to meet their own needs and national priorities.  And even more horrifying in the view of the hegemonic America-first neocons, Russia and China are now cooperating on many fronts and appear to be entering into a full-on military and economic alliance, inviting countries from the rest of the world who are fed up with Washington's imperialism and truculence.   

Not only Russia and China are in the cross hairs.  It seems on a more perspicuous analysis that the Wolfowitz Doctrine applies not just to hostile powers, but any power, as the U.S. manipulates and bullies even its allies to exclusively serve American interests.  Recently, we've seen aggressive interference by the U.S. to prevent any pursuit of independence by EU/NATO countries.  Japan, of course, has been under America's thumb for seventy years, and despite some grumbling from Japanese citizenry, has remained a good lapdog for the Empire.  With Obama's "pivot to Asia", which is built on intensified deployment of military assets in the region, while stirring up longstanding rivalries among the Asian countries, divide-and-conquer is alive and well.  Though the Chinese have a longstanding history of non-aggression and have made it clear they would rather work out any disputes at a conference table rather than on the battlefield, it is now the primary boogeyman.


For our "friends" often much of this meddling and manipulation comes down to money.  It's such a win-win situation -- unless, of course, you happen to be an American citizen.  The U.S. guarantees the security of other nations against both real and imagined threats, and foots the bill for much of the military equipment and deployment of U.S. troops.  The countries are effectively subsidized for being an American protectorate, quite generously so.  Pax Americana gets to be king of the mountain.  You and I foot the bill.  The defense industries pocket the profits.

All I can say is this:  What a colossal waste!

What a waste of our tax money.  What a waste of our leadership role in the world.  What a waste of our generosity.  What a waste of our resources.  What a waste of the energy that once went into building a great nation and maintaining a functioning society.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben, activist Naomi Klein, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, and countless others have proposed that America immediately take the lead in creating a green energy world.  We can still make a buck — billions and billions of them, far more than we make on weapons of war — manufacturing and selling the necessary equipment and technology, and providing training and infrastructure for a global green energy revolution. 

Is it so far-fetched to imagine a world covered with wind turbines and solar panels, instead of missile launchers and tanks?  Is it so extreme or quixotic to want to transform the surface of the planet into a vast sustainable community instead of a killing field?

Where would you have America invest its vast economic resources and wealth?  Creating a harmonious future and habitable planet, or promoting chaos, death, destruction, and the inevitable collapse of civilization?





[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Just Making A Buck

The Case For Female Circumcision

There is no case for female circumcision.

But we live in a very sick world.

We've come to expect the worst.

So here you are . . . reading this.

I’m not being judgmental. I would have clicked on the link too.

Curious . . . confused . . . offended . . . appalled . . . outraged . . . sickened!

I would absolutely have to see what some psychopathic individual had to say
about such an inhumane, degrading and completely offensive practice,
what twisted justification some misguided misanthrope was proposing for
perhaps the ultimate assault on the dignity of females __ the mutilation
of their genitals.

But isn’t that the way things work these days?

There’s always some outrageous headline, some teaser being dangled, some
grotesque manipulation of our reality using loaded phrases and
press-your-hot-buttons language.

It’s not just the sensational stuff either. It’s often fluff, feel good blather which
plays on sympathies or compassion, fantasy or nostalgia, offering
hearts-and-flowers stories or syrupy melodrama, maybe patriotic anthems
and tales of alleged bravery and heroism    __ which dramatically slant
and obscure the truth.

Anyway . . . here we are: “The case for female circumcision.” 

Yup . . . that’s how it reads.  Sucked you right in!  I do understand . . .

 

You wanted to see some demented asshole try to stick up for grotesque and degrading mutilation. What would he look like? Maybe you wanted to both disdain and savor his depravity?

Why?

So you could gag? Hate someone for being so pathologically and sadistically ignorant?

Then share it on Facebook? Send out indignant Tweets?

Really show that bastard!

Yes, letting people know how we feel gets the job done, and more importantly, establishes that we're morally superior . . . because you and I could never support something so foul and inhumane and repulsive, right?

How about these photos? You and I paid taxes and that money went toward this . . .
 
I rest my case.

We all live in a glass houses. I’m not going to pretend I’m any different.

But that’s not the end of the matter, is it?

I am confident that most of you __ like me __ would like to do better.

We’d each like to turn things around and become the person we always 
believed we could and would be.
But to do that, we must first answer this question . . .

How did we become so numb?


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Conscious . . . Conscience

 
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, being 'conscious' means being "awake
and able to understand what is happening around you."

And 'conscience' is defined as "the part of the mind that makes you aware of
your actions as being either morally right or wrong."

People who have no conscience because they are unconscious due to no fault of
their own can hardly be criticized for their lack of morality __ e.g. the brain dead, 
coma victims.

People who are fully conscious but have no conscience are often referred to as sociopaths.

People who are fully conscious but choose to have no conscience might be categorized 
as full-blown psychopaths.

My quandary is how do we deal with people who are fully conscious,
basically stable and mentally sound, have a conscience, but who ignore
what that conscience is saying to them.

# Native Americans slaughtered and dispossessed of their land:  Tens of thousands.

# Vietnamese killed in unnecessary and unsuccessful Vietnam War:  882,000

# America soldiers killed in unnecessary and unsuccessful Vietnam War:  58,220

# innocent citizens killed by death squads of U.S. backed El Salvador government: 35,000.

# innocent citizens killed by death squads of U.S. backed Guatemala government: 60,000.

# Iraqi children starved to death by U.S. sanctions 1993-2000:  500,000.

# Iraqi citizens killed in illegal and unjustified Iraq War:  Over 460,000.

# innocent citizens killed in illegal drone warfare (Pakistan, Yemen):  400-600

# innocent people killed (so far) in Eastern Ukraine by U.S. installed coup government, one which includes neo-Nazis:  Almost 2600.

# innocent people about to be killed in Iraq War 3:  To be announced.
 
"No man is an island . . . ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." 

Riiiiight! No man is an island.  Great stuff.  Ha ha.  Totally!  I hear ya, babe!
Boo hoo hoo. Anyone with a violin up for playing "Hearts and Flowers"?

"Exactly what's your point, John Rachel? . . .

. . . are you in the running for this year's Bleeding Heart Liberal Award?
Mother Theresa and all that cow poop. Maybe you and Bono can do tequila
shots in the back of his limo."

Hmm. What's this about?

Oh, now I remember!

I'm not in a coma.



[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Irony Deficiency Anemia

Our government has become oblivious to the ignominious irony of its policies and actions. Therefore, it blunders on, never questioning why often much of what it does produces the very opposite of either its stated or actual intentions.

Without intended irony, it arms the rest of the world to make it safer. Anyone with a checkbook can obtain weaponry from America. The U.S. is by a huge margin the biggest supplier of military hardware to the international community. We are then shocked when these same weapons end up pointing at us, now in the hands of bin Laden, al Qaeda and other militant extremists.

Without intended irony, it incentivizes corporations to export America's jobs, reasoning that the healthier these corporations are, the sounder will be the economy of the country, evidence of spreading poverty and grotesque income inequality be damned. TPP and TTIP are the latest virulent initiatives toward transferring national sovereignty to multinational corporations, strengthening America by draining it of its self-determination and economic vitality. These so-called trade agreements are NAFTA on steroids. We just hope there's an open seat at future Third World economic
conferences and those countries don't despise us for plundering their natural resources all these years.

Without intended irony, the President declares himself the "environmental president" while promoting the greatest surge in domestic oil and gas production in our history, including the use of fracking and opening up vast stretches of pristine land and fragile offshore sites to ruinous exploration and drilling. The U.S. still refuses to sign the Kyoto Treaty, only marginally participates in world conferences on the environment, and most certainly fails to provide much-needed leadership on issues like climate change and the rapid and dramatic decline in the health of the oceans. The only environment we have protected is a business environment which worships plunder for profit.

Without intended irony, America holds itself up as the beacon of democracy in the world while supporting ruthless despots and grotesque tyranny throughout the world, likewise tolerating the corruption of the electoral system in America itself. Welcome to a world where money buys politicians and the voice of the common citizen is silenced both by oligarchical monopoly of the national conversation and voter disenfranchisement.

Without intended irony, the U.S. promotes democracy in the Ukraine by encouraging the overthrow of an elected government and replacing it in a coup with neo-nazi thugs and plutocrats, who then rig the next election which they of course claim validates their rule, then training and supplying the neo-Nazi National Guard with weapons. As we should suspect, this is part of a bigger plan
which has nothing to do with spreading democracy, and in fact reignites
old antagonisms with Russia and puts us all at risk for World War III.
Nice work, eh?

Without intended irony, the U.S. affirms its commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons by spending more now on upgrading our existing stockpiles and R&D on new more destructive nuclear devices, than we did at the height of the Cold War.  With over 4,800 nuclear warheads in its current arsenal __ enough to destroy life on Earth many times over __ we negotiate agreements with our allies to expedite the efficient use and deployment of our bulging arsenals of collective mass suicide.

Without intended irony Obama promised to foster transparency in his administration, yet has increased secrecy, prosecuted whistle blowers at a record rate, has fanatically clamped down on leaks, drastically curtailed freedom of the press by attempting to force journalists to reveal their sources, classified more government documents and communications than any president in our history, has overseen massive and intrusive surveillance by the NSA and other national security agencies of innocent Americans, foreign nationals and even heads of state of America's allies, and continues to
expand the capacity of government agencies to unconstitutionally monitor and record every interaction by U.S. citizens.

Without intended irony, it honors its "responsibility to protect" by attacking other nations, killing a lot of innocent people, creating fear and animosity in the rest of the world, and as a result it fails
its responsibility to protect the people it is most responsible for, American citizens. With our cavalier use of military force, we are more feared, resented, despised than ever. Serious blowback is inevitable. How ironic, eh?

Without intended irony, we scold other countries, like Russia and China, for being bullies, while we ignore resolutions and concerted efforts of the United Nations, refuse to join the ICC or acknowledge its legal authority over us, reserve the right to use our military at any time and place of our choosing, skirt the Geneva conventions by using torture, harass and bomb countries we are not at war with using drones and special ops troops, and talk about needed cooperation among members of the international community while economically strangling with sanctions any country which does not bend to our unilateral dictates.

Yes, we fail to see the irony in all of this. We choose to turn a blind eye to the deceptions and self-sabotaging contradictions. This has indeed made our country sick, an anemic and feckless nation of sheeple, vis-a-vis the noble ideals we once held and now unconvincingly espouse. We struggle with buckling knees in an increasingly futile attempt to prop up the political house of cards we've built of self-deception and delusions.

No house of cards can rise forever. The longer we pile rationalizations and faulty logic on imperialistic hubris and sociopathic fantasies, the closer we come to its ultimate collapse.

It's no longer a question of 'if' but 'when'.

It will collapse.

Let's hope it doesn't take the foundations of our once great nation with it and we are still left with something upon which to rebuild.


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

What if . . . ?

 

I love reading stories to kids.

How about you?

Here's one of my favorites.

A modern classic.

Ha ha ha. I love that story!

It's so thought-provoking.

Can you imagine a world like that?

Sadly I can't find any kids that want to sit down and listen to a story any more.

Hmm.

[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Compassion Is The Fashion

 

Compassion is the love muscle of caring.

But a lot of the muscle flexing I see going on these days is more like body
building than world building. It looks great and makes the "flexer" feel
darn good about him or herself, but other than putting on an impressive
show, it doesn't get much done. And it actually may do some real harm.

Look at all of the crocodile tears over the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370.

Granted that this is a tragic, highly unexpected event. Whether pilot error,
pilot meltdown, mechanical failure, a vibrational burp in the harmonic
spectrum, or some hairline gash in the condom of the space-time continuum, 
it happened and represents a tragic loss for the families of the passengers.

But shit happens. None of us caused it. None of us can bring back to life the 
victims of this bizarre malfunction. None of us particularly needs this reminder 
that the world we live in, even those things we so fastidiously design and 
meticulously create, are not and never will be perfect. Certainly none of us 
can even do anything to prevent it from happening again. We have no idea 
even what happened.

So why themedia drama and obsessive news reports? And why the disproportionate
and OCD level of attention to a fluke, affecting 239 people who 99.9999%
of us didn't and will never know?

Well . . . we do know why the media gave this particular event so much attention. 
Yes, if it bleeds it leads. But now since the spurting of blood is down to a trickle, 
we find the story consignedto the "back pages" of the 24/7 cyber river of pseudo 
news and hand-wringing, gut-wrenching, love-muscle flexing. And like the switch
man at the local railway yard, we can send our trail of tears down another track. 
The Compassion Express is off to some brand new destination of manufactured grief.

During the unfolding of the Malaysian airliner crisis though, we really cared. 
We really felt for those victims __ the dead and their surviving relatives and friends. 
It really felt good to care about others. It really showed what a good space we were in. 
It really let those families know what a big concerned family the 7 billion of us are 
here on Earth.

Really?

Did anyonecheck with the families to see if they really wanted all that
attention? Did we forget about something called "privacy" or "solitary
mourning"? Do we actually think that mass, anonymous sharing of their
grief made any of those poor, sorrowful individuals feel any better? Did
anyone stop to think it might actually make them feel worse? Maybe a
big group hug from millions of television voyeurs wasn't such a great
idea?

During the sanctions imposed on Iraq for their invasion of Kuwait, lasting  
for twelve years from 1991 until 2003 when Saddam Hussein was finally 
toppled by the U.S. invasion, it is estimated that over 500,000 children died 
of malnutrition and lack of medical supplies and proper health care.

Articles reporting this horrible tragedy startedon the back pages and 
stayed there, or they disappeared entirely. There certainly was no outpouring 
of shared grief for the millions of Iraqi casualties resulting from our insidious 
foreign policies, including the death of over a half million children. 
No crocodile tears were shed outside of some very dedicated, truly caring 
on-the-ground aid organizations who saw first-hand the genocidal results 
of our cruel punishment of innocent civilians.

But there should have been.

What's the difference between Flight 370 and sanctions on Iraq?

While we had nothing to do with the vanishing of Malaysian Flight 370, 
we were directly responsible for the death of those innocent children. It 
was our government perpetrating this horror. We could have stopped it. 
We can  and should stopthings like this from ever happening again, because 
each one of us is implicitly involved. As citizens of a democracy, we are directly 
and personally responsible for the policies and actions that come out of our
often misguided representatives in Washington.

And when we murder 500,000 innocent children, that's something to cry about.

Unlike disappearing jetliners, it's something we could have done something about.

There is something we could do about right now.
 
Something we should and must do. That's ending the illegal, immoral,
and self-sabotaging murder of innocents with drones. It's estimated that  
just during the Obama presidency 2400 individuals have been killed by these 
impersonal weapons of our errant, self-defeating foreign policy. Estimates 
which run as high as 37% say many are completely innocent people, having 
absolutely no interest or role in terrorist activities against the U.S. or its allies, 
mere victims of our paranoid and extralegal campaign of assassinating militants. 
Often these folks were just attending weddings or other family events. 
A lot of the dead again are children.

The harsh truth is that we are all complicit in these murders. It's our government. 
It's our trigger-happy Congress and President who perpetuate this carnage.  
This is something we should be crying about.

Crying and yelling and screaming.

Do you feel it?



[ This originated at the author's personal web page . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Real News

 

Over the past few weeks, we have endured the build-up to a major political charade, the unnecessary shut down of the government, and a totally manufactured kamikaze crisis over raising the debt ceiling. There may have been other newsworthy things going on but good-luck finding them in the monotonous, ever-vacuous reality show presented to the American public by the mainstream media.

As anyone with a functioning brain would suspect, a lot was happening. I've cherry-picked, by way of illustration, a few items that would seem in the long view relatively important.

Never making the short list for the annual Mr. Congeniality Award, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raged on before the whole world that "Iran is building now ICBMs that the United States says could reach this city (New York) in three or four years," went on to call Iranian President Hassan Rouhani a blatant liar, and then topped off his rant by claiming "in the last three years alone, Iran has ordered, planned or perpetrated terrorist attacks in 25 countries on five continents." He offered no supporting evidence but he's a great guy so we can be confident he knows what he's talking about. Bibi then went on to say that Israel was prepared to mount a military attack against Iran to prevent them from building a nuclear weapon __ again he offered no supporting evidence of a nuclear bomb in any stage of actual development __  and was prepared to "go it alone" if necessary, meaning I guess, to start World War III without assistance from anyone else.

Ignoring a stunning speech at the United Nations and overtures from Rouhani indicating a desire for peace and a pledge of full transparency and cooperation regarding Iran's nuclear energy programs, President Obama and the bellicose Bibi joined spittle for a bad cop-bad cop number on Iran when the two met at the White House on October 1st. While many if not most nations prefer to error on the side of peace, America apparently is completely baffled by any initiatives aimed at diplomatic discussions and stands firmly behind its current drones-and-bombs approach to solving any and all disputes.

Speaking of drones, Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai's visit to the United States was actually given decent coverage in the media, but the prevailing narrative was the violent harassment heaped on her by religious fanatics who oppose her "liberal" views. She was shot in the head by the Taliban for suggesting that women have equal access to education. What was given very short shrift, if mentioned at all, was her message to President Obama when she met face-to-face with the drone-killer-in-chief: "I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees ... I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education, it will make a big impact." Was he listening?

TPP negotiations continued in high gear. This abominable "trade agreement" __ which in fact is not so much a trade agreement as a blank check for transnational corporations to be able to: trump the authority of national governments; dismember labor unions; capitalize on slave labor and inflict other forms of worker abuse; institute a form of trans-sovereign legal proceedings with no oversight or appeal; institutionalize a corporate race to the bottom in terms of human rights, worker safety, environmental safeguards, community control, and food standards; and completely destroy regulatory mechanisms for assuring the integrity and reliability of international financial systems __ has met with increasing opposition in a number of countries, Japan being foremost among them. TPP is almost completely unmentioned in the American press, so if you don't know about it, you don't have to feel guilty. It's so secret that even members of Congress aren't allowed to see the draft document. So don't tell anyone, okay?

On October 2nd, two days into the government shutdown, President Obama met with America's top bankers, who were conveniently attending a conference in Washington DC. Included were Jamie Dimon (CEO, JP Morgan Chase), Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Brian Moynihan (Bank of America), and Michael Corbat (Citigroup). This certainly comes as no surprise, considering Obama's campaign coffers brimmed from the money donated by these same gentlemen. What was telling was that this meeting of gigantic wallets with our President was barely mentioned in the mainstream press, and certainly the details of the high-level discussions were never revealed. We can safely assume that Obama and the fifteen banksters nodded and agreed that the meltdown of the American government was bad and defaulting on the nation's debt obligations would be worse __ as in catastrophic! It most definitely wasn't mentioned in the press that several of these too-big-to-jail bank CEOs were under investigation for uncompetitive manipulation of LIBOR rates, and one in the middle of negotiating a settlement with the Department of Justice for mortgage fraud. My mom used to tell me that people are judged by the company they keep. But she's dead.


 

Speaking of too-big-to-jail, Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase walked away with a $100 million slap-on-the-wrist fine from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for the $6.2 billion London whale debacle. As part of the modest settlement, they had to admit wrongdoing __ as in disastrous mishandling of investors money and the concealment of their astronomical losses from their stockholders and regulatory agencies. Whew!! Sure glad that's over so they can get back to more casino banking, an unregulated high stakes game known as derivatives roulette. Yes, another day, another dollar! Or million dollars. Or is it billion? Wait! How many zeroes in a trillion?

While we're on the subject of derivatives and the dizzying heights of risk and stupidity, as the U.S. tottered toward the brink of default and bankruptcy, the total notional exposure of the world's banking system to derivatives continued to grow precipitously. No one knows for sure what the exact figure is, but it's estimated at somewhere between $700 trillion and $1.2 quadrillion, horrifyingly 10 to 17 times the value of the ENTIRE WORLD ECONOMY. What does this mean for you and I? Let's just say that it was these same exotic financial instruments responsible for the economic crisis in 2008, which wiped out savings, pension funds, investment portfolios, ultimately costing Americans an estimated $12.8 trillion, in destruction of assets net value, massive loss of jobs, home foreclosures, crippling of GDP growth and overall productivity, on and on. These financial weapons of mass destruction themselves took a huge hit in the economic collapse five years ago. But with Wall Street and investment bank addiction to gambling still pathologically entrenched as the de facto operating business model, derivative trades have since been steadily accumulating and now exceed the level at the time of the collapse in 2008. We won't have to wonder how bad it will be this next time. We can just watch it on TV __ assuming of course, we each still have a TV and electricity in our homes when this house of cards comes tumbling down.

As criminal negligence of the nation's well-being was passed off as democracy in action on the floors of Congress, accused traitor Edward Snowden addressed European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. His statement was read to the committee by Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack, and included this highly salient remark: "A culture of secrecy has denied our societies the opportunity to determine the appropriate balance between the human right of privacy and the governmental interest in investigation. These are not decisions that should be made for a people, but only by the people after full, informed, and fearless debate. Yet public debate is not possible without public knowledge, and in my country, the cost for one in my position of returning public knowledge to public hands has been persecution and exile." Did you hear about this? I saw no mention in the MSM. I guess he forgot to include a video of Miley Cyrus twerking him.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  (IPCC) released their fifth and final report on global warming and definitively confirmed what we already knew, though many continue to deny it. Dude! Elvis is still alive. The Holocaust never happened. There is a Santa Claus! But the simple truth is, these scientists have been wussy whining about the Earth-turning-to-a-pile-of-ash-and-cinders thing for decades now. Time to move on! This is our Thelma & Louise moment. Why spoil a great ending with a lot of wringing of hands and crybaby bawling about something as minor as the extinction of the human race.

In related news, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature released their IPSO review on the dismal state of the oceans. The bad news is that "the anthropogenic stressors on the ocean go beyond the conclusion reached last week by the U.N. climate change panel the IPCC," and that "the ocean is absorbing much of the warming and unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide." Meaning the world's oceans are experiencing the deadly three-pronged effect of de-oxygenation, acidification, and catastrophic warming. These combined with gross overfishing don't bode well. In a phrase, 'the oceans are dying' and we're the ones killing them. The IPSO report doesn't even take into account the vast amount of toxic pollutants and trash that we dump into them. Damn! Anyone hungry? Let's get a McFish sandwich while we still can.

Speaking of poisoning the oceans, the damaged nuclear facilities at Fukushima continued to pour tons of radioactive isotopes into the sea and local environment. Whatever! Refer to the Thelma & Louise remark above. Pedal to the metal. Don't look back. No fear. Right on.

Chinese President Xi Jinping pressed on with his China's Silk Road initiatives. In case you aren't familiar with this __ most Americans aren't __ this enormous economic strategy is a "supremely ambitious, Chinese-fueled trans-Eurasian integration mega-project, from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea; a sort of mega free-trade zone." This region contains "close to 3 billion people and represents the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential." So while the congressional three-ring circus further damaged our faltering economy, now growing at a sluggish rate of 2.5%, and made America look like a bunch of bumbling idiots, China was building on their already impressive growth rate of 7.8% by "bringing about a new multipolar international order."

This is perhaps redundant to mention, but Chinese President Xi Jinping also dazzled the attendees at the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Besides presenting brilliant new prospects to attending nations for even more lucrative trade deals with China, he led a "Happy Birthday" for Russian President Vladimir Putin, with Indonesian President Susilo Yudhoyono on acoustic guitar. Obama canceled his own trip there, presumably because he was busy buying non-chafing Kleenex in case Boehner had another blubbering fit during their budget negotiations. Obama's no show in Bali, Indonesia was the icing on the cake for the rest of the world. America has long been perceived as a bull in a china shop and a force to be reckoned with. But as the crisis with our insane Congress unfolded, we were looking more like a church mouse on LSD. In a much-debated but certainly well-received editorial published by The Xinhua News Agency __ which is the official press agency of the People's Republic of China __ writer Liu Chang called for the de-Americanization of the world economy. Hey guys! It's not too soon to start learning to eat with chopsticks.

Last and at least theoretically not least, during the 17 days of the government shutdown, over 350,000 people in our lovely world died of starvation. At the same time, speculators pumped up on testosterone and panting over the prospect of making a totally awesome killing, continued to drive the prices up on huge stockpiles and surpluses of food.

So what's the point?

Granted, the shutdown of the government and the debt ceiling crisis was much more consequential than Miley Cyrus' twerking or even Gloria Steinem's comments a few days ago about the place of eroticized-objectified-commodified pop stars in the greater scheme of things, specifically Ms. Cyrus.

But it's still a matter of perspective. It should come as no surprise when somewhere down the road, America devolves into a second or third-rate power and the rest of the world has passed us by. Because while we immerse ourselves in our petty dramas and obsess over the ridiculous machinations of our pea-brain politicians, there are a multitude of other things going on across the globe __ and even in our own country __ which ultimately will destroy America's capacity for leadership and undermine our own ability to function as a society and a nation.

It comes down to this . . .

The rest of humankind wrestles with all sorts of challenges. It struggles to make sense of the manipulations, the posturing, the militarization, the privatization, the corporatization, the countless day-to-day clashes between authority and the common citizen's forthright and simple desire for a decent life. It's difficult anywhere for anyone to keep up with and deal with in a constructive way. America has no monopoly on distraction and confusion.

But the other people on this tiny planet are also very aware of our own special American brand of folly __ our breathtaking ignorance of the rest of the world; our un-Christian and hypocritical lack of compassion for others, even fellow-Americans; our infantile fairy-tale "exceptionalism"; our inability to put our own house in order, while we make pompous declarations about how everyone else should live their lives, preferably just like us.

The world sees our divisiveness, our indecision, our insensitivity, our superficiality, our paralysis, and this recent self-destructive congressional tomfoolery exactly for what it is.

Boehner cries. Obama high-fives. Miley shakes her firm little butt.

Got it.

We in America can sit on the edges of our seats glued to the boob tube all we want.

We can wring our hands, cheer for our side, and yell expletives at the other.

We can watch this reality show like we watch professional wrestling.

We can pretend these travesties are what's really important.

But someday we're going to have to face the facts.

The real world actually has real news.



[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]