Defaultgeddon: More good articles

The articles I post here pretty much show for certain that there wont be a default but still, for ease of lumping the topics together I've kept the same title

Yesterday I posted a short FAQ that was one of the best explanations of the debt ceiling farce so far. In a discussion on Buzz I was caused to ask if there are any longer form articles that give a description of a similar quality. Thanks to a mix of hanging out in a Something Awful thread and checking various sites I regularly do a day later I have an embarrassment of riches on the subject.

This fairly short article by Dean Baker explains how the debt ceiling arguments are just being used as a cover by both Republicans and Democrats, especially Obama, to force austerity measures on America and gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security at the behest of their corporate overlords.

Given the stealth Bi-partisan support for this Americans really are screwed.

Michael Hudson has written a longer piece that focuses on the great amount of effort Obama has put in to destroying as much of FDR's legacy as he possibly can.

Speaking of FDR, Richard D Wolff has written an article examining the nature of the Keynesian softening of Capitalism that was required to save Capitalism. Essentially the Welfare State and the New Deal were part of a system to keep Capitalism going and protect the rich from popular anger when the system is experiencing one of its' major crisis. However in order to maintain this buffer and protect the rich governments incurred greater deficits because the rich and powerful didn't want to pay the tax necessary to maintain it. Now public debt has gotten so large the elite want deficit reduced. Thus the buffer that keeps people relatively safe and relatively quiet is being removed. Interesting times loon.

Defaultgeddon: a couple of points.

Firstly I would like to thank Amber for bringing something important to my attention. I had assumed renaming welfare programs as "entitlements" had been a slow creeping shifting of the narrative. Amber however pointed out the shift has occurred very rapidly only starting earlier this year with Paul Ryan's slash and burn budget. And I quote:

first instance of "Roadmap for America" plan being introduced: May 21, 2008 with a revision in January 2010.
check this google trends data:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=entitlement&date=all&geo=usa&ctab=0&sort=0&sa=N
Talk about controlling the narrative...

It is pretty terrifying how much and how rapidly the right wing control the narrative.

Secondly I found this LA Times article that sums up how much damage the Gang of Six proposals and other compromises Obama is willing to back will do to America. He really has sold us down the river.

As an aside there is an article by Jeffrey Sachs doing the rounds at the minute explaining why America is in such a bad state and it is fairly trenchant but thanks to someone in the comments (comments are weird like that, a lot of dross and then some very worthwhile stuff) pointed out Sachs is one of the creators of shock doctrine and was personally responsible for turning Russia into the Oligarch run hellhole it is today.

There are a lot of false friends out there.

The far right is the majority's worst enemy.

I feel a little uncomfortable writing this, am I simply emulating the worst of the right wing commentators by bandwagoning on a tragedy. Nonetheless I feel that such a tragedy as the bombing and shooting spree in Norway need to be looked at in wider terms than the narrow context of a lone mad man doing a bad thing that can be quickly ignored.

The far right are useful to economic elite and thus the mainstream media are not going to be asking probing questions about the nature and ideology of this attack. Take this analysis from the BBC and reflect on how it ends:

Following the attacks in Oslo and on Utoeya, it will be interesting to see whether many in the country develop a more sophisticated view of where the greatest threats are coming from, amid a growing realisation that extremism is deadly regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religion.

Which marvellously combines an entreaty to support the status quo as much as possible with an equivocation that the Muslims are just as bad. No questioning of if the motives of a marginalised and victimised group in Europe's are any different from a comfortably off man who was a member of the accepted majority in one of the most pleasant places to live on Earth.

Fascists are useful to the elite for the simple reason of their not being Socialists. Socialists might tax them more heavily, ask questions about the distribution of wealth and so on. Fascists will target ethnic minorities and homosexuals which the majority of the elite aren't and those that are are rich enough to be well protected. Best of all Fascists will target Socialists and indeed all social and political movements the elite like least.

So we can expect plenty of condemnation of this particular act but there will be limited attempts to tie this into a wider context and at the same time this good looking white mass murderer gets his picture plastered everywhere, to encourage the others and you better bet the mainstream right will start to ask questions about whether our immigration and asylum policies are causing actual problems. I mean of course killing people is bad but maybe there is something to what he was talking about, we can't let the violence of his actions blind us to the real problems immigrants cause in society. etc etc.

We really do need to look into what kind of utterly corrosive ideology makes a comfortable and affluent man who faces no real threats kill nearly 100 people. We can over no grandiose excuses like Western Imperialism in the Middle East, nor the sociological and economic explanations of competition with immigrants for jobs driving working class whites towards the right wing. No this guy lived with his mum in an affluent part of Oslo, had enough money to set up an agricultural company, that admittedly may have been a front to buy fertilisers for bombs, and lived in Norway, one of the best damn places to live on Earth.

The malignancy of an ideology than even in the most comfortable circumstances can drive someone to commit such horrific crimes is something we in the West truly have to confront, in full force and quickly. However we simply cannot expect the political class to lead us in this regard. As I said before the elite have little to lose from supporting the far right. Indeed they are already doing so quite openly. Back in February of this year David Cameron just happened to give a speech attacking Multiculturalism hours before a big march by the EDL, the biggest Fascist group in the UK.

The EDL, an alliance of football hooligans and other extremely unpleasant groups in society was allegedly an inspiration for the Norwegian terrorist. The EDL has other friends beyond Norwegian Mass Murderers and the British Prime Minister though, The Daily Star, a less reputable tabloid than the Sun but with a decent circulation, also tested the waters for backing them earlier this year.

Also quite by chance while finding that story on the New Statesman website I stumbled on this article about how the architect of "Blue Labour" a plan to move New Labour even further to the right, which Ed Miliband was smiling upon, is at best a xenophobe and may well be a racist.

The political mainstream simply will not save us from Fascism. This atrocity in Norway must be a rallying cry for the majority to push against a growing Fascism in the western world, to defend values most people support and prevent the elite from having an army of remorseless thugs to keep them in power by attacking any positive political and social movements that may emerge from the current economic crisis. Make no mistake the elite will be doing everything they can to take advantage of this with fleet footed "well maybe he had a point" statements and articles.

"Anything but Socialism" has been the mantra of the Western elite for over a century and regardless of whether you are left wing or not it is imperative that we as a majority do not make supporting Fascism the path of least resistance for the elite.

Oh bugger, I meant to incorporate this article into the body of the text because it is very good and was the inspiration for this whole entry. I shall highlight it here instead, please read..

Also it had the best advert for a magazine I've ever seen:

The decline of Canada continues

Last year Al Jazeera English ran an opinion piece explaining Canada's deepening ties with Israel and it would seem Stephen Harper is now switching his pro-Israeli policies into the domestic arena.

The Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) has come to the conclusion that criticising Israel is a new form of anti-Semitism even going as far as to say that criticism of Israeli policy in greater amounts than criticism of other countries is an anti-Semite. Policy specialisation is racism if the Right doesn't like the policy you focus on.

The members of the committee must be praised for the insightfulness, they managed to work out the motives and ideas of those who campaign against Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and other crimes without even talking to them. I suppose all the pro-Israeli groups they spoke to filled them in. Better that way, not to waste the campaigners' time.

This, in a way, can be seen as a positive sign. As a short headline on Exiledonline.com pointed out regarding the Israeli outlawing of supporting the boycott it must actually be hitting profits if the Knesset is being forced to acknowledge the opposition and publicly oppose it. With so many things regarding Israel's crimes we see the mainstream media try to ignore it completely (as they did with reporting the boycott law).

It is somewhat trite to mention this specific Gandhi quote these days but still

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

does have a ring of truth. One of the most powerful prerogatives of the powerful is the ability to ignore those below, their complaints and their aspiration. When they actually have to start addressing issues those below them are putting forth then those issues are having some effect.

If organised opposition to Israel and elsewhere wasn't having an effect then there would be no need to start aggressively expanding the idea that criticising Israel is anti-Semitism. Rhetorically this been attempted for years already with Jews such as Chomsky and Finkelstein who criticise Israel being labelled as "self hating Jews" (what a farce). Whether the notion of self hating Jews will be legislated for is yet to be seen in Canada. They will likely just be marginalised "for their own good." No true Jew opposes Israel.

In a war the time you advancing without meeting opposition can be the most dangerous because at that time you don't know where the enemy is. That the Israel lobby is resisting popular organising and boycott so hard suggests it is having an effect.

Pressure on Peston and News Corp Counter-Intelligence hacking.

Tom Watson MP, one of the two Labour MPs who have been pushing for greater scrutiny of the phone hacking scandal for years has become the first prominent person to openly call out Robert Peston as a News Corporation patsy.

He is "close friends" with Will Lewis, who was Rebekah Brooks' deputy until she stepped down. He also broke the story the Telegraph sting operation on Vince Cable (the business secretary) had revealed Vince Cable was openly opposed to Rupert Murdoch gaining control of BSkyB. Cable was overseeing the merger at the time , the Telegraph realised what a boon this would be for Murdoch and kept it quiet, Peston broke it and got Cable removed from overseeing it.

He was also at the Chipping Norton set party just hours before the Milly Dowler story broke.

True to form when two prominent ex-News International employees accused James Murdoch of lying in his testimony to the select committee this Tuesday Peston broke the news a low level editor who'd been in his job only six months had been fired.

This lead Watson to attack Peston on Twitter:

Watson accused Peston of being spoon fed stories by News International to distract the public's attention from the more dramatic development about James Murdoch's evidence to parliament.

Watson tweeted: "Why Sun story now @Peston? More spin to deflect Myler/Crone statement? Where's your dignity?"

Peston responded: "@tom_watson Tom, this is an outrageous and untrue allegation."

Watson shot back: "I'm sorry @Peston but you are being spoonfed stories. The Myler statement creates a crisis at NI. You have form. Stop being a patsy."

To which Peston replied: "@tom_watson That is not worthy of a response."

Nice to see Peston is following the standard News Corporation line of pretending there is no crime to answer for.

In addition News Corporation have plumbed yet deeper depths, BBC's Newsnight have accused the News of the World of hacking the phones of three lawyers for phone hacking victims.

11.27pm: Three solicitors representing phone hacking victims were themselves targets of the News of the World, according to Newsnight. They included Mark Lewis, the lawyer for the family of Milly Dowler and Gordon Taylor, the former head of the Professional Footballers' Association. The programme reported that the solicitors were not put under surveillance for the purpose of writing stories about them.

Which strongly implies News Corporation were running counter-intelligence against hacking victims, either trying to find out legal information to undermine the victim's cases or blackmail material to make the lawyers back off. By God these motherfuckers are dirty.

Defaultgeddon, the bright side?

With a US default looking increasingly likely in the face of the Tea Party rejecting Operation kill all poors. What are the benefits of this, not for non-millionaires like you but for the politicians who'll be fine whatever happens?

We'll leave endemic corruption aside because apart from "they're being paid to shit on us" what more is there to say?

The reason the Tea Party want a default is fairly simple, they think big government is bad thus they causing it to shut down will be great. They assume the treasury will be forced to maintain debt payments thus everything else will take catastrophic cuts and free market magic will fix everything. Of course if anything goes wrong (and hoo boy will it) all the right wing press and politicians will scream how willing to make a deal they were but Obama just wouldn't be reasonable.

Obama wants a default because while the President will take the blame for a bad economy it looks like the economy is going to be bad whatever. At least this way he'll be able to point to GOP intransigence and the fact he made huge offers of compromise (which he also supports because he really doesn't care about the poor) which might just work. Polling consistently shows the US public hate congress more than the president so having a tangible way to put the blame for the economy on congress would be no bad thing for him.

Democratic congresspeople to my mind have the most to lose, their constituents are going to blame them directly for the loss of vital services and reductions in social security and medicare /medicaid. If there were anything like justice in the world the tea party members of the house who are making default seem ever more likely would be the ones to be punished for that but that is rather a weak reason for Democratic congresspeople to want a default.

Now the big problem with these positive scenarios is that while maybe politically one faction or another may gain somewhat from a default the nation as a whole loses so badly the political loses will be far greater.

For the Tea Party their arguments for small government will be undermined by a recession that may well become a depression. A weak and faltering economy simply will not be able to handle the sudden withdrawal of the direct contribution public funds make to the economy and the indirect contribution public institutions and the spending power of public sector workers bring. I have no idea if the super rich assholes behind the Tea Party will benefit economically or otherwise but in terms of politics the GOP will not be vindicated.

For Obama the ability to blame congress for the economy would be nice but the collapse of US prestige and power after the dollar stops being the reserve currency ( I don't honestly know what will replace it, maybe the Yuan?) will give his opponent in 2012 ample chance to attack him on nationalistic grounds. As will the increased price of borrowing for the US, foreign wars will become even more expensive. Plus presiding over a major economic turmoil doesn't tend to make voters like you much even if they do blame congress.

I don't tend to think Democratic congresspeople have any reason at all to want default so there's little contrast with for them.

I think the Tea Partiers may actually want a default whereas Obama sees some benefits in it for him so as to prevent him caving in completely. Still though, what a silly mess we're in that a wholly artificial accounting process, the debt ceiling, is coming so close to causing a global economic crisis.

Obama, the Tea Party President.

Reading a couple of articles today I am becoming increasingly pessimistic about that a compromise on raising the debt ceiling can be reached (I am, of course, wholly pessimistic about what the content of any possible compromise would be).

This first article by a hedge fund manager who seems to at least pay lip service to being liberal gives this entry its title, examining how Obama increasingly seems to agree with the Tea Party on savage cuts. Now this would seem to suggest a compromise is more likely, not less, but as I have argued with Tony, who is clearly vindicated by this piece, it isn't Obama so much as Democratic legislators that are an obstacle to total GOP victory on this issue.

Obama's seeming desire to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is so unappealing to the voters that the selfish pragmatism of many Democrats will prevent them from agreeing to a capitulation. Defending these three broadly popular programs is a big vote winner, attacking them is a vote loser as Paul Ryan learnt a couple of months ago.

Further at this piece by Will Hutton asserts, basic human interaction requires some give and take. For reasons of pride and for the ability to tell angry constituents they at least put up a fight Democratic legislators may not be willing to throw cherished welfare programs under the bus. Even if Obama explains in a soaring and wondrous speech why the poor should go die in a fire and why people under the age of 55 expecting to retire at some point are unreasonable.

But while it will be the political reality of legislative politics that prevents absolute capitulation by the Democrats it is Obama who is preventing any other outcome. If he had fought for anything near a middle ground rather than agreeing to make major concessions on social programs on day one then there would be some impetus for compromise, something for Democratic legislators to hang their hats on and, much more importantly, an opportunity for more moderate House republicans to push for compromise too. Sure the Tea Partiers are happy to drive straight off the cliff but older GOP hands will probably not want to see the end of the American empire, even if only social programs and civilian jobs are lost following a default with more expensive credit the American war machine is that much harder to maintain.

There are other signs a default is becoming a more likely scenario. A look at the business press, Fox News and others shows you the increasing suggestion that a default wouldn't be so bad. Some people have taken away from this the belief that big business and the super rich want a default. This is highly unlikely, I mean they'd be better off than the rest of us sure but the potential upheaval is unlikely to be appealing to them.

What instead this "default aint so bad" rhetoric is for is a form of spinning a very bad scenario into being Obama's problem. You plant the seed that a default really need not be that bad if you're smart, you're competent and then when the inevitable major problems occur you scream as loud as you can it is Obama and the left's fault for not being competent. Thus you attempt to shift the blame from the debt ceiling debate, where GOP intransigence might get blamed to it being wholly an issue of presidential control. Default as a controllable thing gone bad lays the blame solely at Obama's door.

Still given I don't think anyone beyond the Tea Party really wants default the fact the business press have shifted from trying to prevent a very bad thing to damage control on that very bad thing is not a good sign. Of course maybe the rich will profit from a default in a way I don't understand or perhaps the business press are just idiots, both are entirely plausible.

I still think there is a very good chance we'll get some kind of settlement on the debt ceiling before August 2nd but I will reiterate that the mainstream view that there is nothing to worry about is incorrect. We'll have to see I suppose.

America's Pooey pants moment.

One of my favourite teachers introduced me to the concept of a pooey pants moment. She described how her son in an A-level exam had described Lenin's position after the October revolution as such. He got an A in that exam and not unreasonably. While the term is crude it does rather accurately reflect the nature of having a military of around 500 dedicated amateurs (the red guards) against standing remnants of the Tsarist military numbering about 20,000 men who have much more material and expertise. On top of that even the majority of the left intelligentsia / political class that had emerged following the February revolution opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power. The Bolsheviks eventually won out, mostly because of how badass a dude Trotsky was, although there were of course other factors. Nonetheless early on in the civil war if I were in Lenin's position my pants would likely have been rather pooey.

But why should America's pants collectively be pooey? The absurd argument over the raising of the debt ceiling of course!. As you are likely aware this is not a thing most other countries have, it should be linked to the budget with the amount of debt the nation takes out linked to the budget that was passed. But America is exceptional

But others have commented on this and far better explanations exist elsewhere. This shouldn't be a pooey pants moment but it is because of the nature of Republican Party at this moment in time. 538 lays out the nature of this very well.

Most commentators and economists and so on aren't very worried about a US default, technical or otherwise because logically it is very much in the GOP's interest to raise the debt ceiling, sure they'll push for cuts that'll hurt the poor, that's what they do, but at the end of the day they'll compromise and the ceiling will be raised. The problem is the Tea party is so far to the right and so ideologically driven it doesn't appear to be looking to its' own (or big business's) self interest anymore. Indeed Nate Silver demonstrates that the ideological gap between the House GOP and GOP voters is bigger than the gap between GOP and Democratic voters.

So why are they so far out in to right field? Do they have some strategy to bring down Obama that the mainstream media hasn't picked up on? It could possibly be, but as Silver points out it is very difficult to predict who could win out of this. Given how Gingrich's shutdown in 1995-6 didn't play out well for the GOP, either their strategists have some amazing insights everyone is lacking this time around or they're not behaving in a sound manner.

So have the lunatics taken over the asylum? Is it time to poo our pants and eat the barrel of a gun? Well maybe but the GOP's behaviour isn't quite as mad as it may seem or at least it isn't aimless madness. The article about the ideological gap between the House GOP and GOP voters is mildly misleading because the gap between likely GOP voters and the House is much smaller. As this third article explains the GOP are not in a position to compromise. Jonny linked it me last week and my only response was welp.

Essentially the GOP is seemingly on the ropes it has haemorrhaged the middle ground to the Democrats (whatever the hell the middle ground in the US even is these days) and the only thing that allowed them to win so comprehensively in the 2010 midterms was a motivated minority of extreme right wingers and the apathy of the larger more moderate groups of voters. They are just trapped in a morton's fork (Catch 22) situation, they can't alienate the Tea Party because if they do they seemingly face extinction but appeasing the Tea Party drives them further from the mainstream and leads them to take absurdly hard lines on issues they have no public support on.

Will the debt ceiling be raised in some form before August 2nd? Probably. The calm assurance it will happen is definitely misplaced however.

The Singularity movement as Eugenics 2.0

With the total failure of the May 21st rapture to come to pass I decided to have a look at the atheist/nerd version of the rapture, that is the Singularity and while I am in no position to judge how plausible it is I did notice something odd. A lot of the people who are ardent believers are noticeably right wing. Vernor Vinge, the guy who coined the term Technological Singularity is an Anarcho-capitalist. Another prominent speaker in the movement, Robin Hanson is a professor of economics at George Mason University (a Koch Brothers controlled institution) and his views on the economics of the Singularity is very much along Libertarian lines. Then theres the corporate sponsorship of the Singularity University which according to wikipedia: "Corporate founding partners and sponsors include NASA, Google, Nokia, Autodesk, IDEO, LinkedIn, ePlanet Ventures, and the X-Prize Foundation."

This seemed odd to me hey, nerds tend to libertarians and heck corporations sponsor everything these days. However while drifting around Wikipedia trying to get a better insight into the whole movement I was lucky enough to stumble upon a brief mention of David Correia as strident critic of the movement and a footnoted link to this Counterpunch article which expands greatly upon what had caused me to be suspicious and highlights links to US military funding via DARPA. At the very least this article makes a strong argument for much greater suspicion about the movement and its' actual, rather than stated, goals.

http://www.counterpunch.org/correia09152010.html

Some excellent opinion pieces.

Al Jazeera has put up a number of excellent opinion pieces today.

Dominic Strauss Kahn
I had some suspicion that DSK being charged with Rape might be politically motivated, though I had assumed it was more likely to be Sarkozy's doing than anyone else's. Now I do not suggest the victim is lying, just that the timing is suspicious, Elliot Spitzer was found to be a user of prostitutes at a very fortuitous time for the GOP but he had actually committed that crime for instance. These two pieces examine this possibility from different angles:

Danny Schechter looks at The Financial world as a hypsexualised environment and examines how intelligence agencies and banks who were not fond of some of the things DSK was saying might have exploited already known about "foibles" to shut down a potential threat.

Pepe Escobar expands on just why DSK could have needed neutralising pointing out that he was trying to make the IMF slightly less of a machine designed to carve up the world for the benefit of a plutocratic elite. As Escobar highlights the endorsement of Joseph Stiglitz could well have lead the financial elite to get rid of him.

This does not of course mean DSK did not commit rape, it just means a lot of very powerful people had reason to have him disgraced. On a more positive note it strongly suggests Noam Chomsky is a really decent guy, hes been a thorn in the right's side for decades and they haven't gotten anything to stick to him.

Obama's Speech
I haven't read or watch the whole speech so I can't really offer much comment but reading around the apparent Israeli chagrin at the 1967 borders proposal (something the UN has always endorsed) one realises that Obama has given Israel all they could really want in that speech. Still no harm in acting angry and hoping for more.

Richard Falk looks specifically at how the speech favours Israel and examines within this context what Palestinians can do.

Joseph Massad looks at how the speech impacts US Imperial policy in the middle east depressingly but not surprisingly he finds it to be a lot of hypocrisy and a continued pursuit of the status quo. The point about Obama giving a speech for the West and specifically for America is an interesting one. Sure the US has always been insular but given Obama's popularity and prominence as a non-white Western leader and the clear political awakening going on in the Middle East to be so tone deaf to the views and opinions of Arabs is unwise. I mean sure he probably assumes he can use violence and financial coercion to force the Arabs back under dictatorships but it never hurts to at least pretend not to be a monster.

Miscellaneous

I probably wont link this unless I do it here so here we go. Jonny sent me this and it's an article in an Indian newspaper about how China has pledged to protect Pakistan from future US incursions. Now you'd think that would be big news, but no, the western media obviously don't want to get too stuck into the regional political situation. America and friends are saving Afghanistan from Muslims or something and no other nation really exists in that scenario.

Tarak Barkawi examines how accusations of "radicalisation" are being used to attack freedom of speech at universities. He also broaches the subject of neo-liberalisation of University management.

Finally there is a review of a book by Francis Fukuyama, he who is mocked over the misinterpretation of his statements regarding the "end of history". It is a critique of the anti-state sentiment of right wingers in both the US and the UK. Such a prominent conservative making such a strong case against neo-liberal ideology is I think noteworthy and worth keeping an eye on. Then again, maybe he'll be arrested for an embarrassing crime within the next couple of weeks.

Whoa there, back up a moment.

I know you're all Ron Paul 2012 boosters but I think maybe voting for him might be a bad idea

Why the right hates the TSA

Following up on a previous article which gained the ire of Glenn Greenwald Yasha Levine and Mark Ames now give a more in depth explanation of why the negative actions of the TSA suddenly became a conservative cause celebre last year.

I don't like what the TSA does but I do not labour under any illusion that right wingers care about civil liberty issues at all. They simply would prefer to return to privatised airport security at which point they would immediately become deeply concerned about the need to maintain security, even at the cost of civil liberties if necessary.

This is just another issue of shooting the messenger. The people who work for the TSA deserve decent working conditions just like everyone else. Yes they are the ones on the front line doing embarrassing and unpleasant things to everyday air travellers but they aren't the ones setting DHS policy or passing legislation that restricts civil liberties. If liberals and leftists were smart they'd direct their anger at the politicians and senior civil servants pushing these policies, not the low paid grunts on the front line.

So really do give the new article a read.

Liability Palin sinks from view.

No one who had any understanding of how the GOP works thought Palin was going to get the nomination for 2012 but still, it got bandied about a lot in the media. I guess her being an awful person AND a woman made her an ideal hate figure.

So anyway, as predicted Palin is being quietly withered away. The easy Obama victory a few liberals hoped for is sensibly dealt with.

Weekend Watch 07/01/11

The excuse this time is me getting into twitter but thats irrelevant, excuses aren't good enough.

So anyway, here is part 3 of the power of nightmares:

Adventures in wikipedia bias.

For reasons that are beyond me I decided to look at the wikipedia page for Libertarianism: this page. I noticed that there is no mention of any criticism of Libertarianism nor a link to a page that does cover criticism. I thought this odd because I was sure the page for communism did have such a link, entirely reasonably, its important to know the flaws of every ideology. So I checked the communism page. Yes, theres a whole section dedicated to criticism AND links to other criticism pages.

Not a huge deal, afterall Communism isn't the most popular ideology and different wiki pages have different formats anyway. So I looked at the socialism page (it was linked at the top of the communism page and I'm lazy). Of course Socialism's failings also have their own little section. at this point I stopped and went in a different direction but we'll come back to that. Lets look at other ideologies' pages on wikipedia. Anarchism... no, theres certainly no section and a ctrl + f of the page doesn't turn up anything. Liberalism sort of has a criticism section but not really. Conservatism has no section or links. Fascism, perhaps unsurprisingly, does have a section one in need of expansion no less.

So from a brief sampling of ideology pages it seems the only pages to escape mention of criticism in their summary are Conservatism and Libertarianism. While I readily admit the Liberalism criticism isn't quite the same it is mightly convenient for right wingers only their articles don't directly mention criticism at all.

Anyway, back when I first discovered this I mentioned it to a friend and he jokingly suggested editing the page. I decided to first look at the talk page to see if this was an issue. At the top of the talk page is this:
and absolutely no mention of a criticism section on the talk page. So it seems that wikipedia is a site anyone can edit as long as it doesn't affect right wing interests.

However, while searching the archives of the libertarianism talk page I did find a link to the Criticism of libertarianism page so its nicely well hidden but it does have some good information:

Of particular interest to economists is the "New Zealand Experiment," which began in 1984 when Roger Douglas became Minister of Finance and began radically restructuring the country's economy to fit the libertarian model.[10] Over the next 15 years, New Zealand's economy and social capital faced a steady decline: the youth suicide rate grew sharply into one of the highest in the developed world;[11] the proliferation of food banks increased dramatically;[12] marked increases in violent and other crime were observed;[13] the number of New Zealanders estimated to be living in poverty grew by at least 35% between 1989 and 1992;[14] and health care has been especially hard-hit, leading to a significant deterioration in health standards among working and middle class people.[15] In addition, many of the promised economic benefits of the experiment never materialised.[16]

which is pretty darned damning. You can find it with the footnotes etc here

Another Hero Sullied.

Please note nearly none of this is original research and just me parroting stuff Mark Ames and Yasha Levine dug up in case that wasn't obvious.

I liked Glenn Greenwald... maybe I still do, I'm not sure. He certainly has done some good stuff in the past but recent events have certainly raised some questions.

Lets go back to the beginning. About a week ago self described Libertarian John Tyner wrote a blog post about an unpleasant encounter with the TSA that he just so happened to have set record devices up on his person before it occurred. This post got a surprisingly large amount of coverage very rapidly. This wasn't especially suspicious because the TSA are far from popular and from time to time the internet does throw up unlikely success stories.

Alas Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of Exiled.com dug up the fact those trumpeting this issue had alterior motives. In short various libertarian Koch Brothers minions were using this as a chance not to push for less security at airports, but privatised security at airports. Their article (which you should read) attracted an awful lot of criticism very quickly. Not just from right wing flaks either; renowned liberal luminary, techno-fetistist and Steam Punk fan Cory Doctorow was among the liberal voices screeching about at the duo for daring to question the narrative of their little pet project. Alas though the most prominent and widely heard critic was Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald's article is full of very annoyed accusations of baseless criticism on Levine and Ames's part. He then goes on to accuse them of being hardline democrat supporters moved into action by anger at Tyner upsetting Barrack Obama, their favourite person ever's plans.

With a Koch-related mind like that, the next thing you know, Tyner will be calling for endless war in the Muslim world, escalated civilian-slaughtering drone strikes, a covert war in Yemen, war crimes trials for child soldiers, and due-process-free life imprisonment and presidential assassinations. Then maybe he'll decide he can become a Good Democrat and will be able to remove the cloud of suspicion that, in the eyes of these Nation writers, hangs over him.

to quote one of several instances.

Yet if one were to do the most cursory of research, say a single search on their website for the word Obama you would realise that they are in no way democratic party allies, fans or even well wishers. Still this isn't the end of the world, Greenwald is a busy man and while Exiled.com is cool they're hardly big fish in the media pond. It is a shame he is wholly unaware of the fact Ames and Levine, through journalistic hard work, were the first to break the news that the Tea Party is an Astro Turfed movement, a sham funded by Billionaire libertarianism proponents the Koch Brothers but you can't expect him to know everything.

Ames and Levine provided a response to Greenwald's letter on The Nation's website which Greenwald then responded to again in Update III of his article. In this Greenwald defends his strident attack on the origianl article and his ignoring the wider facts of Libertarian influence on the anti-TSA movement by claiming he merely wanted to defend the innocence of John Tyner. Which is kinda nice if rather myopic, sure the inference Ames and Levine made about Tyner is perhaps questionable but the wider issue of the right's support for the anti-TSA movement being about privatisation and not loosening of security is noteworthy and perhaps something he should've noted in his attack?

Well it turns out Glenn Greenwald has good reason to be unwilling to criticise the Koch Brothers in regards to Airport Security issues. He wrote a report for the CATO INSTITUTE about Airport security. You can read the report by Glenn Greenwald of the CATO Institute here: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/08/09/glenn-greenwald/the-digital-surveillance-state-vast-secret-and-dangerous/. Just in case you are unaware the CATO institute is one of the Koch Brother's principle propaganda mills and sources of succour for academics shills who'll spout the glories of Libertarianism. Greenwald has taken their dime at least once before too.

So what conclusion can we draw from one of the most prominent liberal voices in the US being willing to take at least a sip from the Koch Bros' teat in regards to his strident defence of John Tyner (and just so happening to poo poo the other important criticisms of the Kochs by association?). Well essentially I think theres two main possibilities. Firstly his pride and desire to appear academically consistent have caused him to persist with the CATO point of view and defend other proponents of it, nobody likes to be called on their mistakes and Ames and Levine's usual offensive tone doesn't bring out the best in people generally.

Secondly the money and access his connection to the CATO institute brings to him has lead him to compromise some of his values, maybe he even feels going along with the Libertarian Agenda, with all the media attention and money it is currently getting, can further causes he believes in more than it harms them. In that case attacking relatively minor investigative journalists he hasn't heard of (or at least thats the impression he gives) to further his goals against a creeping surveillance state may be a tradeoff he thinks worth making. Making deals with the devil is seldom wise in any case.

Neither scenario is great but hopefully it is the former.

So in conclusion while I think Greenwald still does a lot of good work my respect for him has dropped considerably and there are major questions hanging over him.

I took two days to write this and in that the hornets' nest seems to have been stirred up even further. Another person mentioned in the original nation article, Peter Eyre, got himself in a tizzy about having some light shined on his activities. He also revealed his ideology is a perverse corporate friendly version of Anarchism oh and he rounds out with a threat of violence against Mark Ames (Yasha Levine is below his notice):

Let me know if you ever want to arm wrestle. And I know Josiah Neff on that page said he’d go a couple rounds of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu if you’re interested.

Sadly the liberal mainstream is siding with these assholes over Levine and Ames because they don't want to acknowledge they got played over hating the TSA.

Le Petit Nicholas and the journalists that wont shut up.

As well as his deeply unpopular pension policies and mini-pogroms French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his government are nursing a couple of major scandals. Firstly there is the Bettencourt affair essentially an allegation that Mr Sarkozy both in his campaign for the presidency and earlier on in his career received illegally large donations from a single donor. Secondly there is the accusation that Mr Sarkozy and others in the UMP (his party) received kickbacks from arms sales to Pakistan in the 90s. Mr Sarkozy and others implicated in these scandals have strenuously asserted their innocence.

Of course Nicholas did what any innocent man slandered and libelled by the media. He set the secret services on them. Oh and also accused journalists of being paedophiles for not revealing secret sources to the government, something which could be construed as a direct threat given the increased monitoring of journalists by the secret services. Further the French government is showing a fondness for the British way of doing things with a number of libel lawsuits threatened (but not yet carried out) against those who are investigating these scandals.

There have also been mysterious burglaries targeting those investigating the aforementioned journalists. Another blow to American Exceptionalism as Europe proves it can do COINTELPRO too.

It would seem that when the Propaganda Model fails supposedly and enlightened and freedom loving "democratic" governments in the west are more than willing to use harsher means to suppress the truth.

Tories announce end to Net Neutrality in the UK

Companies will now not even need to maintain the pretense that all websites deserve equal bandwidth. Websites ISPs don't like will get short shrift and big companies will be able to pay their way to prominence. This means dissenting views can be marginalised on the internet and startup companies will now be even easier for corporate juggernauts to crush or "convince" to join their team so they get decent bandwidth.

I suppose it was inevitable but its annoying to live in a country on the vanguard of the end of the egalitarian internet.

The guardian have a full pdf of the speech where this was announced here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Media/documents/2010/11/17/EdVaizey.pdf

Tories endorse Police Racism.

A couple of months ago it was revealed that black and brown people in the uk are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched. So now the Tories are in power they've decided that the best thing to do is fully back this behaviour and amend stop and search powers so that a person's race can be a legitimate reason to accost them! Along with this the plans also remove the need for the police to record each time they stop and search a person, giving them even greater carte blanche to be racist.

Why is this happening? Well apart from the general fact rightists are pretty much evil to their core and this is just another example it is likely an attempt to appease police officers over the slash and burn cuts the Tories are imposing, especially given the news yesterday Manchester Police are facing 25% spending cuts cuts. This does not reflect well on the police that this would appease them and it doesn't reflect well on the Tories that they would attempt appeasement in this way.

This however should dispell the myth of the Tories being in any way tolerant or decent.

McDonalds franchise owner gives glimpse of America's future.

Just to be extra clear this is not (yet) McDonalds central policy, just one scumbag in Ohio but thanks to corporate power mushrooming the pesky laws preventing this sort of thing will likely be gotten rid of by bought and paid for candidates soon enough. What is this sort of thing? Well employees at an Ohio McDonalds got a note in their most recent paycheck telling them who to vote for or else. So the libertarian dream of those who are richest getting to make all the decisions gets one step closer!



thanks jonny