A case study of a corrupt occupation.

John Dolan is one of the good ones. He is a bitter and pessimistic man but such are the wages of speaking truth to power. People far better informed than me have suggested he has a further curse, he is an unrecognised artistic genius, doomed like Van Gogh or Nietzsche to have his literary work recognised only after his death. I mean sure you can be high minded and stuff but I'd imagine all things being equal those with gifts would like to be recognised in their lifetime, especially by young attractive people and rich people of any shape size or colour. I mean damn, who wouldn't?

He was one of the main people behind The Exile and is still an occasional contributor to The Exiled. While he did a lot of good work under his own name his most popular stuff was probably when he posed as http://exiledonline.com/cat/war-nerd/>The War Nerd where he did quite probably the best analysis of modern conflicts you're likely to read, stripped of jingoism and bolstered with the context we're seldom provided with. To actually make a living, for the powers that be make sure dissent isn't profitable, he worked in academia all over the world until a few years ago while at the University of Victoria he was fired for encouraging students to criticise George Monbiot. Now I'm not sure of the specifics and since I like Monbiot I'd like to hope he didn't personally push for the dismissal but who knows. He wrote of the trials of extreme poverty in North America and one can thus understand how he came to be employed at the corrupt right wing institution that is the America University of Iraq.

He got fired after working there for little over a year but he experienced enough to write a lengthy article about how messed up the place was. I feel little need to criticise a formerly destitute man for selling out in order to eat. The way things work you either sell out or start off rich enough not to need to worry about an income, the game is rigged. Indeed the concept of selling out seems to me to mean you get nice and rich off of betraying your ideals but you don't go into academia to get rich (except maybe if you're an American sports coach):


Bear that in mind when reading the article for if an institution like a university which one generally wouldn't associate with a bonanza of graft ("suck on it losers, I got three of my monographs bought by the library!") you can begin to guess how terrible the corruption and fraud is in occupation institutions that are associated with fabulous wealth. That is not to say the American University of Iraq is simply a cautionary hint to the wider Iraq situation, it the people who are paying considerable amounts of money to learn there are being shafted by the cronyism and blind right wing ideology touting of a faculty so cowed and intellectually timid as to no longer really be able to call themselves academics.

Still when it comes time to bomb Iran we will likely sell the Kurds out to gain Turkish support, and dead Kurds wont need universities.

Things are going to get a lot worse part II

normally when I post a link jonny sent me I thank him, it is after all only polite and it is important to cite your sources. on this occasion I'm not really sure I'm grateful for finding this out, it is terrifying.

So what is an America of "limited government" under resurgent superfunded Republicans in serverly cash strapped times going to look like? Well bearing in mind the obvious caveat that limited government never applies to the military or apparatuses of control (CIA, FBI, DHS etc) it means unless you're very rich things are going to get worse and the poorer you are the more things will get worse. This is Reagan's legacy and in abstract terms middle class people have known it was bad and had to rely increasingly on credit since real wages haven't risen since the 80s but they got by just about. With the credit crunch that perception is shifting but it looks like a sledgehammer blow of reality is about to hit.

In the past , the glorious past, with an article entitled Ayn Rand Conservatism at Work -- Firefighters Let Family's House Burn Down Because Owner Didn't Pay $75 Fee Americans could shake their heads at the Libertarian insanity of a small township or whatever but slowly but surely this horrific logic is being applied to whole states such as Arizona:

Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s response to her state’s fiscal crisis. Earlier this year, Brewer signed a budget that eliminated the Children’s Health Insurance Program, denying health care to 47,000 low-income kids in Arizona. She also proposed a hike in the state sales tax—the most regressive tax, whose burden falls disproportionately on working people.

Tennessee:

which cut 100,000 people from its Medicaid rolls, including 8,000 children. One of those people was Jessica Pipkin, who lost the use of her arms and legs in a car accident in 2005. Pipkin requires round-the-clock care—at $37 per hour—but was told she would lose her benefits because she and her husband earn too much to qualify. Are they rich? Well, her husband makes $19,000 as a satellite television repairman, and Pipkin receives another $14,000 in Social Security benefits.

Minnesota

In Minnesota, Governor Tim Pawlenty, a contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, submitted a budget that slashed funds from student aid, financial assistance to counties and municipalities, a job program for the blind and the mentally ill, low-income housing programs, mass transit in the Twin Cities, and a state insurance program that helps cover people with costly preexisting medical conditions. It was approved by a Democratically controlled legislature; lawmakers justified their budget by pointing out that they’d rejected Pawlenty’s proposals for deeper, even more painful cuts.

Georgia, Oregon, Florida, New Jersey and Maryland:

Clayton County, Georgia, a mostly African American suburb of Atlanta, eliminated its bus service into the city, leaving tens of thousands of Georgia’s working poor without a way of getting to their jobs. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” a 57-year-old worker told the Los Angeles Times. “So many people here, they’re going to be sure enough messed up. We need this bus bad.” Oregon, Florida, New Jersey, and Maryland are also looking at deep cuts to public transportation systems to make up budget shortfalls.

and to round it all out Ohio:

Perhaps the most striking vision of the libertarian utopia comes from Ashtabula County, Ohio. It reduced the number of sheriff’s deputies patrolling the 720-square-mile county from 112 to 49 and cut the number of prisoners in detention from 140 to 30. More than 700 people were put “on a waiting list to serve time in the jail.” Some were facing relatively minor charges, but the list also included, according to Sheriff Billy Johnson, violent offenders

So even local policing is subject to cuts under limited government, as long as the status quo isn't affected for the elite then poors can wallow in crime and with the number of Americans in poverty rising dramatically that means a whole lot of people just having to suck up dealing with crime.

That said a Judge from the county offered this advice for citizens:

“Arm themselves ... Be very careful, be vigilant, get in touch with your neighbors, because we’re going to have to look after each other.”

Advice I would strongly endorse although not for the same reasons the Judge did. Americans are going to have to band together as best they can because no one else can help them and the elite are even more openly than usual out to get them.