badweather America produced the first practical photovoltaic cell in 1954. Since then Japan has risen to the top of the photovoltaic producer list and the United States is fifth on the list after China, Germany and Taiwan.
Until recently, the forecast for PV in the US was excellent with the market projected to double in 2011 according to Solarbuzz.com in part it seems because of a rush to install orders due to uncertainties regarding continued tax subsidies going forward.
So instead of increasing our capacity for producing PV panels, republicans have reduced it and maybe ceded PV victory to China as they ramp up production and installation of solar panels and capitalize upon republican stupidity?
I thought republicans were supposed to be all grown up and good for business?
badweather I believe Americans can now clearly see the bankruptcy of the republicans ideas of austerity in the face of calamity.
But let’s be extra clear: The republicans want us on our own against everything with nothing but a prayer between you and I and the next calamity, personal or otherwise. Try and work together (collectively) to make a better world for everyone and you’re a socialist, a dirty hippie, a #%$&ing communist or just un-American.
I’ll tell you who is un-American…
Republicans that want us to vote less. It’s the new Jim Crow! He’s come back to keep the poor, the elderly, the sick, the destitute, the hard working, from election polls in 2012.
They want us to pull ourselves “up by our (individual of course) bootstraps”. Without a single guarantee that there is an agency that will make sure that an opportunity for education exists for everyone, or meaningful work, or judicial fairness, or affordable housing, or health care, or retirement or even roads for that matter… certainly not roads after a disaster if New Orleans (6 years later) is any indication. This is the republican legacy, a world where you’re on your own against the corporations and the corrupt politicians that enable them to plunder our collective future. This is nothing less than economic war, the mega rich against against the poor, the sick, workers, home owners, and even the middle class.
In short, it seems the core republican idea is that helping a person hurts them? That working together as a nation only enables slothfulness? That helping lift the poor out of poverty somehow creates more poverty. That people who believe in working for a better world are naive. That people harmed by a natural disaster would be further harmed by becoming dependant (like stray cats) upon any aid given?
Right wing, christian reconstructionist Ideology and in particular, tea party extremism, has completely blinded the republican party allowing their thoughtlessly ideological bulldozer to accidentally push Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey off the austerity cliff into sounding more like a democrat than a republican for a moment as he excoriated fellow republican Eric Cantor’s idiotic and callous remarks politicizing potential federal funding for disaster aid to states in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reacted angrily to a fight brewing in Washington over whether Hurricane Irene disaster aid may need to be offset by federal spending cuts. “Our people are suffering now, and they need support now. And they [Congress] can all go down there and get back to work and figure out budget cuts later,” the Republican governor told a crowd in the flood-ravaged North Jersey town of Lincoln Park.
Another Republican Rebukes Cantor: Chris Christie Demands Hurricane Aid Without Offsetting Cuts
But then it is often said; “governors have to well… govern.
All this caused Eric Cantor to recant his earlier statements suggesting that any disaster aid had to come at the expense of already strained public budgets. In so many words…
He said;
Eric Cantor regarding disaster aid for Hurricane Irene victims: “we’re going to find the money,” “we’re just going to need to make sure that there are savings elsewhere to do so.”
Cantor: No Disaster Relief Funding For Hurricane Irene Without Budget Cuts
Cantor is not alone in his callousness of course, Ron Paul is also way against helping people in the face of disaster:
After Hurricane Irene killed at least 10 and left 2 million without power and many communities under water, the Texas Republican made it clear that he wasn’t backing off his view that FEMA should be scuttled and that it was time for Americans to, “transition out of the dependency on the federal government.”
Republican Party A Disaster When It Comes To Disaster (Guest Voice)
In short, as we go forward into a world where we will experience more and more events like Hurricane Irene one thing is becoming perfectly clear: Republican extremism and obstructionism is more than just ill equipped to deal with a world on fire, it’s why we’re here in the first place.
badweather 
Egypt Supports Wisconsin Protesters
by David VanThournout
The people of the world have a common enemy: Fear and Greed
I heard that protesters in Egypt were ordering pizza’s from a local Madison Wisconsin pizza place and having them sent over to the protesters at the Capitol building. I ate some of that pizza. Thank you good people of Egypt!
Often we hear statements by the people of the world that think about us here in America. They wonder why we don’t act? You hear it from time to time. They wonder why we don’t stop our government like we did in Vietnam? So when they see us in Wisconsin protesting the same sort of greed that they are struggling against, they know that we really are paying attention.
Our Common Cause: Equality
I feel there is a common thread running through everything we all do in this wave of freedom encircling the earth as we speak. The people of the world are all fighting for the same basic things in this wave of protest: Equality
Our common enemy is fear and greed and the multi-national corporations that prey upon our communities. The David Koch’s, Scott Walker’s and the Mubarak’s of the world. Those that would work to enslave us all to an ideology based entirely upon fear, and greed.
This is the common thread that joins us all together: the struggle for equality. Only through this common cause of equality for everyone will we ever defeat these power drunk money whores like Scott Walker. Only through direct and continuous occupation of the edifice of government will real change occur.
The real point I’m trying to make is this: a wave of greed and oppression is meeting a wave of people power the likes of which it has never seen before. Brother and sister power. The power of a people united around compassion and yes love.
And the spark? There is no doubt, WikiLeaks was a major catalyst. A slap to the owner of a fruit stand owner was another. An innocent man blowing the whistle on police corruption was another. Scott Walker attempting to eliminate the right of workers in Wisconsin to collectively bargain was the spark that lit up America and put us on the revolutionary map.
I hope that in this seemingly small gesture of pizza from Egypt, that the protesters in America can feel the solidarity that I now feel with my fellow workers in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and beyond. I hope that our movement can expand to realize that the real fight is actually equality for everyone on earth. I hope that my fellow Americans wake up to the fact that our American Republic and the American Empire are two different things, and that we can shut this war machine down without giving up our real values! That in fact our war machine is killing not just our fellow workers of the world, but that it’s destroying our true values and our democracy at home too. What’s happening in Wisconsin, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa is the proof that the true core conservative value: Fear and greed, is what is really destroying America!
The revolution now taking place around the world was caused by truth. It is the same one happening in America now. It flies on the wings of hope, determination, brother and sisterhood, courage and love. It is good to have had this moment. This powerful moment of solidarity in something as simple as a single slice of pizza.
The protesters in Wisconsin thank the courageous people of Egypt for the pizza and also thanks for the most excellent example of solidarity recently. Congratulations on the ouster of your own tyrant Mubarak. We’re working on Scott Walker over here. We may need a few more pizza’s before we’re done here though.
Viva la Jasmine Revolution!
The Revolution is Here Thanks To WikiLeaks
Leader of Egyptian Unions to Wisconsin Protesters: ‘We Stand With You As You Stood With Us’
badweather
Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
By D. VanThournout
I only write because of all the lying. I don’t think I’m a good writer at all. I think I’m terrible. What I’m convinced of is that my viewpoint is one of the few sane and objective views left in America or on the Internet.
I read so much non-fiction that I’m chronically depressed these days. The massive de-funding of the left that has occurred in this country started long before we even began to be America. At least that’s what I gathered from reading history professor Thadeus Russell’s new book “A Renegade History Of the United States”. Do you know what they used to call us Irishmen before we stopped dancing and fiddling around and became “white”? They called us “white niggers”. That’s right, look it up if you doubt me. According to professor Russell, our founding fathers were puritanical prudes that didn’t think a bunch of drunks, slackers, pirates, homosexuals, Indians, Blacks and prostitutes could ever win a revolution. Maybe if they hadn’t purged the fun stuff we wouldn’t have our panties all in a knot over a few spilled secrets today.
Eventually fear and hate reached a fever pitch with Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the purging of communists from the labor unions. More recently I could hear them shouting; “Cut your F%@#ing hair and join the human race you F%#*ing hippie!
This marginalization of liberals and our politically informed art over the last century or more has continued into my own era at such a pace that in hindsight, I realize that my own life and the lives of so many others have been squelched by poverty and right wing marginalization and fear mongering from the very beginning. It’s as if I’ve been in a kind of prison all my life. Never having enough money to quite realize your dreams has taken a huge toll upon not only myself but every man woman and child in this country. If you don’t believe me, just sit and think for a while about what we could do, and what we could have done with the annual pentagon budget for the last 60 years. We’ve all been ripped off, liberals, conservatives and independents alike! Worse than that, they’ve stolen our children’s future for mere billions and for all intents and purposes, crowned themselves kings of the world. In fact no kings in the history of the world held nearly as much power as feudal lords David and Charles Koch hold over us today. Their tyranny is based in corporate personhood and their stranglehold upon America’s politics could mean the death of half the world by war or by climate change driven famine.
badweather By David VanThournout
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
Now that we’ve improved the civil rights of those serving their country in the most dangerous capacity, as soldiers defending our constitution, don’t you think it’s time we extended this acceptance of who we are to the Civilian population?
If you are gay and an employee of a conservative company, coming out can be dangerous to your career. Or your life even. This I believe is effectively a form of don’t ask don’t tell in action.
If you are among the more than 40% of Americans that have used cannabis at least once, you probably live in a don’t ask, don’t tell situation as well.
If you’re an atheist and you say proudly, I’m an atheist, you can rest assured you will not win any elections from then on.
You can be a liberal and since we don’t generally wear our religion on our sleeves we might be safely ensconced within the confines of a work environment populated mostly by conservatives and if you start wearing your progressive spirituality on your sleeve like the others, you’ll find out pretty quickly that you shouldn’t talk about religion or politics at work (or anyplace else for that matter). But only because you’re a liberal.
So it appears the military is a comparative liberal paradise when held against the back drop of the rest of the fairly conservative whole of American culture. If you ask me the military is way ahead of the rest of us on social issues.
Every single issue I just listed are civil rights issues. Gays, weed heads, atheists, progressive Christians, etc., all are wrongly and manipulatively marginalized. Marginalized within our communities, our churches, our schools, and even our families. Marginalized by a vocal minority who have nothing to offer the conversation but fear. Fear of the other.
It often leaves a gay person today in a situation where they feel completely alone and unable to find anyone to reach out to. They suffer disenfranchisement and depression. They sometimes in despair even take their own lives.
Weed head parents sometimes are charged with child endangerment when they get caught growing a few plants. That seems more than a little extreme to me.
Think of what the parents must feel that find out their son or daughter is gay when they receive a telephone call from the police informing them that their child has killed themselves because of bullying in school.
I’m not normally taken by nationalistic tendencies and I do say that I love my country. I love America not because I think it’s better than other places because it isn’t. America to me means diversity. Diversity of people means we will never want for interesting conversation, food, and there is always a celebration going on. Our collective knowledge of solutions from so many cultures coming together and working toward the common good of everyone is something to be proud of. That’s what I think of when I think of America. And this vision of ours is alive and well.
We should bring this compassionate view of our diversity to main stream America and affirm federally that:
- Marriage is a pact between people who love each other regardless of their sex.
- People should be free to use safer alternatives to alcohol one of the most toxic drugs known.*
- Everyone has the right to be included in the “moral” conversation including atheists.
Obviously we can’t make a federal law that says the people have to elect atheist representatives. But a federal law guaranteeing that people have the right to marry regardless of their sexual orientation is possible. It’s also possible that we could pass a federal regulation guaranteeing Americans have a better choice when it comes to recreational drugs.
I bring this into the conversation for one reason. The push to make Marijuana illegal was driven entirely by hate. Anti-Hispanic racists in California passed the first state law against marijuana in 1913. [1] Racism towards African-Americans was used in the south and by 1937 it had gone federal. By 1961 it was being made illegal world wide through the U.N Single Convention Treaty on Narcotics. [2]
The legalization of marijuana is clearly a civil rights issue,
According to a study done by National Development and Research Institutes, Inc found:
This article examines the growth in marijuana misdemeanor arrests in New York City (NYC) from 1980 to 2003 and its differential impact on blacks and Hispanics. Since 1980, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) expanded its use of arrest and detention for minor offenses under its quality-of-life (QOL) policing initiative. Arrest data indicate that during the 1990s the primary focus of QOL policing became smoking marijuana in public view (MPV). By 2000, MPV had become the most common misdemeanor arrest, accounting for 15% of all NYC adult arrests and rivaling controlled substance arrests as the primary focus of drug abuse control. Of note, most MPV arrestees have been black or Hispanic. Furthermore, black and Hispanic MPV arrestees have been more likely to be detained prior to arraignment, convicted, and sentenced to jail than their white counterparts. [3]
This is only going to be resolved by legalizing marijuana for adults just like alcohol is now. More and more evidence is piling up that marijuana is more than just the safest drug ever discovered, it is also a strongly medicinal plant that is quite possibly the most therapeutic drug ever discovered as well.
Most research on this plant occurs outside the US because of our antiquated public policy regarding marijuana. What is currently being discovered in other countries is nothing short of amazing. Recently, on top of the already long list of ailments cannabinoids (the active drug in marijuana) actively and safely treats, it has also been shown to be active as an anti-cancer drug.
Taken from Emerging Clinical Applications For Cannabis and Cannabinoids:
Investigators are also studying the anti-cancer activities of cannabis, as a growing body of preclinical and clinical data concludes that cannabinoids can reduce the spread of specific cancer cells via apoptosis (programmed cell death) and by the inhibition of angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels). Arguably, these latter trends represent far broader and more significant applications for cannabinoid therapeutics than researchers could have imagined some thirty or even twenty years ago. [4]
I believe Americans, who pay the highest prices in the developed world for substandard medical care, would be interested in a plant which they could grow in their back yard very cheaply, which could treat a large number of our most common diseases, as well as possibly preventing various cancers. Here are some of the diseases that cannabis is known to be effective against:
- Neuropathy
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
- Chronic Pain
- Diabetes mellitus
- Dystonia
- Fibromyalgia
- Gastrointestinal disorders
- Gliomas
- Hepatitis C
- Human Immunodeficiency Virus
- Hypertension
- Incontinence
- Methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus (MRSA)
- Multiple sclerosis
- Osteoporosis
- Pruritus
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Sleep apnea
- Tourette’s syndrome
So, this one comes with a bonus, we stop the hate, and we gain a medicinal / recreational drug that is far safer than alcohol.
I keep hoping that in the end our diversity will inform our national outlook and result in compassionate American policies both foreign and domestic. Policies that represent our diversity and our values and addresses all the grievances of the people we have harmed in our ignorance, by not knowing what our country was turning into over the last several generations. Our American Empire has nearly destroyed any chances of a favorable outcome and yet I still believe that we can win this game. And I’m not alone. They say it is darkest before the dawn, and I expect the right wing to go kicking and screaming all the way. But clearly compassion won the day on capitol hill when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell went into the dust bin of history where it belongs.
Compassionate Americans will continue to fight for the rights that each and every one of us deserve regardless of our race, sex, sexual orientation, religion (or lack thereof), or even if we choose a recreational drug proven far safer than alcohol.
And we are clearly slowly but surely winning this fight.
* Alcohol is actually just a poison which has drug like effects. Drugs in general are all much safer than alcohol with very few exceptions.
[1] When and why was marijuana outlawed?
[2] U.N. Single Convention Treaty on Narcotics 1961
[3] THE RACE/ETHNICITY DISPARITY IN MISDEMEANOR MARIJUANA ARRESTS IN NEW YORK CITY
[4] Emerging Clinical Applications For Cannabis & Cannabinoids
badweather By David VanThournout
I think that if President Obama wants to try and use tax cuts to win hearts and minds out there it has some traction. I’m not entirely convinced but I do believe having a black president is a new thing for America. I’m not at all surprised that it appears that our first black president does things differently, he is a shrewd negotiator and anyone that doesn’t understand that has not been paying attention.
If the left thinks that Obama has made a mistake fine, but progressives will lose big in 2012 if we think we can field a democrat candidate that will win in a primary against Obama.
Just wanted to clarify that point. So lets just put this talk of lefty suicide in 2012 all the way to rest. Sorry, politics is the art of the possible. And we need unity going all the way out to 2012. So even though I’m not happy at all about various details of the Obama Administration, I like to do a little thought experiment to make sure I and all American progressives are awake… Imagine you’re only a heart beat away from having Sarah Palin as your president… Now imagine it’s 2012 and we’ve cratered our own support for Obama who was certainly able to win against Palin but because we attempted to “keep Obama’s feet to the fire” by running an alternative in the Democratic primary… After the massive sucking sound from the siphoning of Obama votes, we wake up on the Wednesday following the election with not vice president Palin but President Palin….
Because that thought experiment was so damn scary, I highly recommend understanding that President Obama is smarter than we think. I’m convinced that We needed to hear from Bernie Sanders about how bad these tax cuts really are and the fact that on capitol hill they’re “all worried about the deficit” but not enough to stop giving rich people free money they don’t even need.
I will vote for President Obama in 2012 and that is 99.9% certain. The only way I won’t vote for Obama is if I am completely incapacitated for an entire month prior to the election. I would have to be in a coma, if I’m laying on my death bed I will have already voted early no doubt.
badweather By David VanThournout
Oh My God!
I’m officially a card carrying Independent starting today. I think that President Obama really is suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
Why don’t people understand that rich people are the free loaders that Michele Bachmann and all the other political extremists would like to see kicked off the dole?
Bachmann told conservative host Sean Hannity:
“I think we’re back in a conundrum. I think the compromise would be extending the rates for two years and not permanently, but not tying it to massive spending. We cannot add on something like a year of unemployment benefits.”
They want to strip that out calling it massive spending! I try to imagine their reasoning on this: is that well, these rich people, at least they’re not free loaders. They have money. So we’ll give them more, but these poor people down here, can’t they just die or something? I mean, we can’t afford them so can’t we make a law or something against being poor?
Right
Why can’t they see that these billionaires are the ones sucking most furiously at the government teat? Most of us little people pay taxes. These people offshore, and play any number of shell games with their money until it all goes either in their pockets or ends up paying the wages of goons like Rush Limbaugh. They lose it by the billions down rat holes like the Washington Post which make zero return on its investment. For instance. When rich people spend that extra income they’re getting from the Obama Tax Cuts for the Rich they’ll be putting it into things like oh, subverting elections, selling us all off as slaves via elimination of minimum wage is something the billionaires are looking at, what else, lets see let me count the ways.
They re-invest their money subverting democracy in America. Getting us to believe crap like democracy is a commodity that could be exported to the world at the tip of a bayonet. And we bought that shit. And apparently we still are.
I’m guessing that Obama is going to take the consolation prize and leave the presidency early and accept the somewhat lucrative parting gifts that all presidents past receive, ample speaking gigs, etc. He may even believe that he can do more as a former president than as president. We probably shouldn’t judge him too harshly, after all, the super secret spy army may have explained all this to him and when faced with the threat of assassination via the secret private army you have, well, I can understand why a loving father would convince himself that cooperation with your captors is in the best interest of having a reasonable outcome here.
Dismantling the empire will happen haphazardly at best going forward and the weakest in our society will pay the steepest price. That’s capitalism, for you. Survival of the fitest beasts in the jungle. And though it’s more like a chemically induced desert here in the Midwest, I’m sure we’ll see very little of anything but some seriously hard times ahead.
badweather
Joshua Holland posted a very interesting article on Alternet.org making what I think is the most important point yet. His argument is that Wikileaks is in fact not breaking any laws at all and is just doing what real news outlets do every day. Talk to insiders, publish the information, protect their sources identity. Merely the lifeblood of an informed electorate. Nothing else.
More importantly, getting “creative” as has been suggested by the Obama administration as a solution to Wikileaks is an extremely dangerous foray onto the slippery slope of fascism.
In Josh’s article it mentions that; State Dept. spokesman P.J. Crowley told CNN that the idea that Assange is a journalist is nonsense.” “Julian Assange is an anarchist and we’re not going to let him succeed,” Crowely said. And Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson said on Thursday that in his “personal opinion” Wikileaks “is not media”.
I’m not surprised by this belief at all. In the last ten years or so no real reporting has gone on at CNN anyway, it would look radical indeed if an outlet really started giving us a raw feed like Wikileaks, I imagine if I was a right wing neocon bent on eternal war I’d want to kill Julian Assange as well. I’m not though, I’m just an average citizen that cares where my country is going and would like some real information for a change. Julian Assange is a hero plain and simple. The charges levied against Mr. Assange in Sweden are very likely trumped up and there is every indication that there are large institutions pushing behind the scenes to make a mountain out of a molehill.
There is a very real danger here. If we as a nation come to the conclusion that Wikileaks is a criminal activity then virtually any news outlet can be labeled as such and hounded out of the conversation and put in prison for treason or worse, assassinated for telling the truth. Does that sound at all like democracy? I didn’t think so.
Are people going to suggest that Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow of MSNBC be assassinated next? If we vilify the truth tellers and whistle blowers we will no longer be living the American dream, we will be dying at the hands of an American lie. And that would be a win for the terrorists.
This is an assault that no terrorist could possibly accomplish. That we as a nation would prefer fantasy over truth. There is more earth shattering, game changing, news in 4 years of wikileaks than there has ever been from Fox, and CNN isn’t much better in my opinion. So yeah, while I understand that the big media outlets would like us to believe they’re different and “more responsible” than Wikileaks, I can easily and handily point to the fact that they have been asleep at the wheel and now they’re simply unable to grasp that they’ve been just beaten to the scoop and are going the way of the old rags like the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Both rat holes right wing billionaires run their mega wealth down in order to dominate the public discussion on anything and everything. I’m sure they would love to silence that horrible truth telling man Julian Assange.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again; “Liars always sound better than someone telling you the truth.
Try not to kill (literally) the messenger America, these truths are our last best hope to end our empire well.
Is the Crackdown on Wikileaks and Threats of Julian Assange’s Arrest Exactly What He Was Planning?
badweather By David VanThournout
Peace depends upon justice and justice never walks quietly.
If you have no justice, you will have no peace.
Neither peace of mind, nor peace and quiet.
I’ve aways known myself to be a poet. I take an idea and I work it and work it and work it until it’s boiled down to nothing but bones. sometimes it seems like this pot has been boiling away in my head for thirty years or more. Sometimes it has. What remains is the simplest of the simple truths.
Peace Is Noisy.
You can have “peace and quiet” or you can have peace of mind. Do not confuse these similarly named beasts for each other for only one of them will carry you through every conversation faithfully. Only one will actually roll up it’s sleeves and get anything done. Peace and quiet only serve to hold the moment hostage and blame the victim for the violations. Peace and quiet in the face of the madness that is American politics is insane. I’m all for a dignified end but I will not go quietly as I watch the American dream die this death of a thousand cuts.
Here’s another one for you, liars always sound better than someone telling you the truth. Always. Try to keep that in mind as you read this.
America is a nation of immigrants. It’s real strength is in this very diversity. And for every person out there in the world advocating violence against America for its corruption, there are a thousand that say No! Our families are there and it is a place of freedom like no other. Unfortunately I think that perhaps they both have a truth they hold dear and close. Though I do not and never will agree with those that would do violence to further their political aims, I recognize the truth of what they are saying.
America the empire can not last much longer in this state. For most of my life the United States was aligned against the Soviet Union and it seemed to me that the world stood by and angrily watched us wage aggressive war by proxy in the poorest nations on earth. When this war ended and America declared itself the victor, we Americans missed several important facts. As Chalmers Johnson suggested on page 32 of his book “Blowback”, like two scorpions in a bottle, they [the Soviet Union and The American Empire] succeeded in stinging each other to death.”
We can not be the worlds shining hope and an empire at the same time.
With the recent release of even more secret documents through wikileaks we can see the vast beast wince.
The Obama administration now says it is considering taking criminal action against wikileaks. These are not the acts of one of the worlds greatest democracies. Great nations can handle the truth, empires cannot.
Great nations protect its whistle blowers, empires throw them to the lions. Why? Because great nations are built upon the truth and empires are built upon lies.
And now instead of embracing the accountability and transparency that wikileaks represents, we attack our own heroes. We attacked Daniel Ellsberg when he released documents during the Vietnam war as well. We were wrong as a nation then and we are wrong as a nation now. Bradley Manning is a hero, not a villain. Unless we’re an empire and then he’ll be wrongly vilified. But when I say that he’s a hero, that is not a narrative, it is a fact. Daniel Ellsberg saved our country and many other people and Bradley Manning is attempting to do the same. The only difference is this time the stakes are much higher. Losing this fight will mean losing our democracy.
Recently one of the American Empires most articulate critics passed from this earth. We will miss his clarity. Chalmers Johnson has left us with a final plea to “Dismantle The Empire” as the last best hope of a free America.
America has a choice; Worlds Great Democracy? or Empire? We can’t be both.
We must begin as a nation to see the opportunity that wikileaks presents to re-examine our society’s entrenchment with the military industrial complex and begin to dismantle America’s dependency upon war for our economic survival. The world will work with us on this and we can regain the moral high ground we once had. We will be more secure as a nation that values democracy and fairness among nations rather than an empire bent on world domination.
Wikileaks is actually making it easier to dismantle the empire which according to Chalmers Johnson is imperative to America’s remaining a free republic.
Chalmers Johnson suggests three reasons we should dismantle the empire or else watch it liquidate us:
1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech announcing several members of his new cabinet, stated as fact that “[w]e have to maintain the strongest military on the planet.” a few days later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington D.C., the president again insisted, “Now make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance. We will have the strongest armed forces in the world.” And in a commencement address to the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22, Obama stressed that “[w]e will maintain America’s military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever seen.”
What he failed to note is that the United States no longer has the capability to remain a global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster.
According to a growing consensus of economists and political scientists around the world, it is impossible for the United States to continue in that role while emerging into full view as a crippled economic power. No such configuration has ever persisted in the history of imperialism. The University of Chicago’s Robert Pope, author of the important study Dying to Win; The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, typically writes:
America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today’s world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as the death knell of American Hegemony.
There is something absurd, even Kafkaesque, about our military empire. Jay Barr, a bankruptcy attorney, makes this point using an insightful analogy:
Whether liquidating or reorganizing, a debtor who desires bankruptcy protection must provide a list of expenses, which if considered reasonable, are offset against income to show that only limited funds are available to repay the bankrupted creditors. Now imagine a person filing for bankruptcy claiming that he could not repay his debts because he had the astronomical expense of maintaining at least 737 facilities overseas that provide exactly zero return on investment required to sustain them…He could not qualify for liquidation without turning over many of his assets for the benefit of creditors, including the valuable foreign real estate on which he placed his bases.
In other words, the United States is not seriously contemplating its own bankruptcy. It is instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with insolvency.
Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, calculates that we could clear $2.6 billion if we would sell our base assets at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and earn another $2.2 billion if we did the same with Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. These are only two of our over eight hundred overblown military enclaves.
2. We Are Going To Lose The War In Afghanistan And It Will Help Bankrupt Us
According to Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, experienced Afghan hands and coauthors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story:
If Washington’s bureaucrats don’t remember the history of the region Afghans do. The British used air power to bomb these same Pashtun villages after World War I and were condemned for it. When the Soviets used MIG’s and the dreaded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships to do it during the 1980’s, they were called criminals. For America to use its overwhelming firepower in the same reckless and indiscriminate manner defies the worlds sense of justice and morality while turning the Afghan people and the Islamic world even further against the United States.
3. We Need To End The Secret Shame Of Our Empire Of Bases
In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted, “Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing.” He continued:
New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults -2,923- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them.
The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located cheek by jowl next to civilian population and often preying on them like foreign conquerors. For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GI’s has been out of control in Okinawa, Japan’s poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers, Marines, and airmen some sixty-four years ago.
Chalmers continues:
It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. I believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army and bring the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.
I know that Chalmers must have been en-heartened by whistle blowers who bravely have released secret US military documents through wikileaks. It is only through something like this, a massive truth telling, that we as a nation can go through the next to impossible task of willingly giving up our status as an empire and trading it for just being a great nation of earth. Our great hope is that we can prove that Americans are smart, brave and compassionate people who truly care what our country does to the rest of the world and would rather join it as a peer than as its wrongful master.
Any other course will quite certainly bankrupt America, culturally, morally and financially. There will be no recovery from this. So who knows, maybe wikileaks has just in the nick of time saved our democracy.
Chalmers Johnson
Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope
Daniel Ellsberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
badweather Stephen Moore, economist writing for the wall street journal said on MSNBC recently that he thinks “the few” people on the left that regard Julian Assange of wikileaks as a hero are reprehensible.
I have to say Stephen, what’s reprehensible is you coming on television claiming to be an economist. People don’t want employment checks indeed. Try spending a little time unemployed before you suggest such silly things.
Lets get one thing as clear as possible, while we the people have worked away at our lives doing the best we could at making the American dream real, we’ve been sold out by people like Stephen Moore who as an economist should know that stopping unemployment benefits for 2 million people will negatively effect the recovery essentially slowing it by one half a percent. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor at the peak of the great recession unemployment benefits actually protected 1.8 million jobs from being shed by the private sector. In other words, unemployment benefits are directly a stimulus upon the economy as virtually none of the finds find their way into savings accounts.
Enough about that (and more later I’m sure) the thing I really want to say is that whistle blowers are patriots and heroes. It was a whistle blower, Daniel Ellsberg, that revealed a document (the pentagon papers they later came to be called) to congress and the American people that ultimately is credited with toppling the Nixon administration and ending the Vietnam war.
As for the transparency and accountability that may result from Wikileaks revealing various uncomfortable facts well, this is merely the lifeblood of a true democracy. The fact that the state dept. has become just another arm of the CIA, our military venture in Afghanistan is now certifiably unwinnable, and now perhaps a “few bad apples” in the financial industry might find their assets hanging in the wind are the kinds of things we need to know in order for our society to actually be a democracy.
Stephen said something to the effect that our secrets are no longer sacred or some such drivel. We the people own those secrets Stephen! We paid (and are still paying) for them with blood sweat and tears and we want them to be revealed so that our republic can survive. You see Stephen, a democracy thrives on truth and justice not lies. Only empires need to protect secrets. It’s not that great nations don’t have them, or protect them, just that when they are revealed, great nations are not destroyed by the revelation. The revealing of these secrets are the best thing to happen to this nation in a long time. Our nation has been waging an aggressive war against the world as an empire for a very long time. It is time it stops. We are about to lose something very real. We have already lost our standing in the world as an empire. It is now imperative that we, as Chalmers Johnson strongly suggests, begin dismantling the massive US empire and its military presence, the 737 bases world wide. By the way, Nick Turce estimates that we could make $4.8 billion by selling Guantanamo Bay ($2.2) and the Diego Garcia ($2.6) base in the Indian ocean. Think of how much of that we could use to pay for unemployment checks, college degrees, bailed out homeowners and lots of community development here at home and abroad stimulating small businesses and real democracy.
Now Mr. Moore is worried because Wikileaks is taking a shot at the banksters. Everyone loves anyone that does that. I say more power to them.
So let’s look at the facts:
No innocent people have been hurt by the revelations in wikileaks to date.
What we have gained from wikileaks:
1. America’s Wars Front And Center, Are we winning? Is It popular? When will the killing stop?
2. Is the state Dept. engaged in diplomacy or are they just another branch of the CIA?
3. What did “some large financial institution” do recently that might put a bankster in jail?
So, Stephen, these are the secrets you speak of wanting to keep hidden?
- That our troops have killed reporters and that the Afghan government is so corrupt that the war in Afghanistan is certifiably un-winnable?
- Our state dept. has been critically compromised by its own policies and can no longer really be taken very seriously in the world and so is unable to really do it’s job?
- And some powerful people in major (too big to fail) financial institutions are now perhaps facing actual investigations and jail time for inappropriate financial behavior?
America the Republic has been built upon truth and justice not lies. Wikileaks is nothing less than a shot in the arm for a nearly fatally wounded democracy. Only the America the Empire need fear the truth. The foundations of our nation run deeper than our wallets and will perhaps shake but they will not fall.
Here’s what Daniel Ellsberg, one of America’s truth telling heroes said to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now in 2006:
I noticed that the House committee spokesman person has said that we have a great problem with illegal leaks, in commenting on these cases. I would say the problem for us in the United States is the illegal actions that only these leaks will expose and possibly stop. After all, the lie detector tests given to Mary McCarthy and to others in the C.I.A. are, after all, designed to find out who leaked the fact that the C.I.A. is indulging in criminal activity, violating the Geneva Conventions, probably violating the U.S Anti-Torture Act of 1996. They’re acting really like the Mafia, cracking down on somebody who is squealing to the press. Now, the Mafia doesn’t use lie detectors, they use the torture that the C.I.A. is using. It’s not as though there’s a great distinction between the Mafia approach and the C.I.A. approach, though the C.I.A. isn’t yet torturing its own people.
He continues:
Harry Truman claims, in a number of times, that he got the Russians out of northern Iran, Azerbaijan, in 1946, by threatening to use an atomic bomb on it. They didn’t. If correct—and he said it four times—that would be the first use of our using nuclear weapons since Nagasaki, and that was in Iran, which is on the border of Russia and has oil fields. We don’t—we never wanted to go to Russia, and now we don’t want to be under the control of Iranians who are not friendly to us.
So, I’m saying that right now we need leaks of documents on these threats and these plans. I think the sources to Sy Hersh in his April 17th New Yorker article should be considering going beyond the oral testimony they gave and anonymous testimony they gave to Sy Hersh and risk their clearances and their careers and risk going to prison to prevent the U.S. from initiating nuclear war over Iran. The people who spoke to Hersh said, some of them said—or reported about others, they are considering resigning. Resigning is not an effective action here. Revealing what they know would be a catastrophic move to the American public and to the Congress, and not only to the Congress, because Congress is—I wasted 22 months on that. Congress is now—even when the Democrats were in the majority. Now, the investigative committees don’t exist. They’re not pursuing any investigation. They should be giving documents to the press and to Congress right now, revealing their reasons for resigning, and they should show the civil courage to be—consider at least to go beyond losing their jobs and going to prison, if necessary. An enormous number of lives are at stake.
More lives are at stake today so lets get this straight:
Truth justice and democracy?
or lies, “American interests”, and empire?
We owe it to our children fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan to hear the truth and find it within ourselves to fight for the justice we know will come from the truth telling.
Put the liars in prison not the truth telling heroes.
