Daily Kos diarist criticizes Obama and survives…tenuously

Prefatory note by Patrice Greanville

BO: The Untouchable.

BO: The Untouchable.

Anyone halfway familiar with the topography of American political blogs soon recognizes that the gianormous Daily Kos is, by its own admission, little more than an appendage for the Democratic Party establishment, a rich platform for apologetics of the centrist kind, beginning with the man (still) in vogue, Barack Obama. Make any criticism of the current POTUS, let alone a systematic analysis of his betrayals, and all hell is guaranteed to break loose, with all the poisonous, snide and often condescending fury that mainstream liberals are capable of mustering, which, incidentally, is plenty. Take it from me, it’s not an edifying experience. That is one of the many reasons I give this opinion tent a wide berth.

Irrevocably centrist

“Kossacks” tipify the extremists of the center who see nothing wrong with ganging up on Republicans, low-hanging fruit when it comes to picking off scumbags, criminals, and assorted enemies of the people, not to mention that GOPers often waste no time disguising where their true allegiances lie (remember Texas rep Joe Barton abjectly apologizing to BP for being brought to task in the wake of the Gulf fiasco?), while giving a glowing pass to Democrats, in the name of LOTE or whatever other nincompoop reason they manage to contrive.

This is the kind of mind that endorses Rachel Maddow, and her MSNBC confreres’ brand of self-inflicted half-blind journalism; that applauds the likes of Jonathan Alter and Bill Maher’s ludicrous shilling for Obama, and that is ready with invective for anyone who should deviate too far from electoral politics as usual, all this while the world is literally going to hell on account of massive misleadership or (as is the case with the salvation of numerous species) no leadership at all. Meantime, as the examples of Chris Hedges (who even wrote a book about the subject, pronouncing liberalism dead), Michael Hastings, Matt Taibbi, Rob Kall, Michael Green and others indicate, intelligent, principled liberals are abandoning the DLC catechism of permanent obeisance to corporate power in increasing numbers, and moving sharply leftward in what is becoming an embarrassing show of rejection of the American establishment’s chief legitimacy instrument.

DK however retains considerable traffic and commands attention. Like a slowly melting berg, it can still do some damage. That’s why some people take a deep breath and stick around. Their thankless (but politically important) job is to inject solid information and mature perspectives into a large audience that could prove critical in eliminating the Democratic Party as the eternal lesser evil option, and provide some rectification to the self-indulgent dreck that passes for commentary on the site.  A few days back, Tony Wikrent, who uses the handle NBBooks, posted an excellent essay that quickly caused some turmoil.  The snide comments soon arrived, but also some simply memorable defenses.  This is the kind of post that almost redeems the Daily Kos.  (See it all below). I’m not sure what political space Wikrent occupies. My hunch is that he’s currently in the left-liberal trench, still in the ranks of the Democratic party, albeit quickly losing trust.  A final point: Although we do not agree entirely with the author’s positions, his was a brave post and deserves recognition. —PG

PS/ Don’t miss the comments [selection] at the end of the piece. One, I believe, sums up the situation particularly well.

______

WED JUN 19, 2013

Obama did not save the economy. Social Security did.


Some Kossacks are getting pretty upset that more and more of us are coming to the realization that President Obama is a corporatist shill who has done very little to help improve the economic situation for working Americans. There is a recommended diary as I write that asserts “Obama SAVED the US Economy” and argues that it was Obama’s “massive stimulus and jobs package that rescued this country from Soviet-style collapse.”

In a word: bullshit.

It was Social Security — an “automatic stabilizer” that was created to help remedy the First Great Depression — that saved the U.S. economy. Along with a few other “automatic stabilizers” that were created in the same era, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps.

Even before Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, there were a few economists who warned that we needed a stimulus package that was over $1 trillion. And the thing about those economists is that they were the very few and very rare economists who had been correct about the Wall Street bubble economy of the 1990s and 2000s and who explicitly identified the housing mortgage securities market as being the probable fuse for a coming financial collapse, such as Tom Palley, Joe Stiglitz, James Galbraith, and Michael Hudson.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was estimated to be $787 billion at the time of passage, later revised to $831 billion between 2009 and 2019, according to Wikipedia. Of that $831 billion, $288 billion, or a full third, went to “tax relief” which even conservative economists like Mark Zandy admitted provides the least amount of stimulus bang for the buck. Only $144 billion went to assist state and local governments, $111 billion to infrastructure and science, and $43 billion to energy. A mere ten percent,  $81 billion, went to programs that directly assisted the most needy and most destitute of our fellow citizens.

But, let’s be generous and say that Obama’s vaunted stimulus provided $543 billion to actually stimulate the economy  (that’s $831 billion, minus the $288 billion wasted for useless “tax relief.”

By contrast, Social Security paid out $557.2 billion in benefits in 2009;  $577.4 billion  in 2010; and $596.2 billion in 2011. (See 2012 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of The Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds.” United States Social Security Administration, April 25, 2012, page 241.)

That’s $1.73 trillion in Social Security benefits in three years.

That’s what saved the economy, not Obama’s relatively paltry $543 billion. Say another $600 billion for 2012, and you’re looking at over $2 trillion in Social Security benefits over four years. What do you think would have happened without that  $2 trillion in Social Security benefits? What if there had not been the New Deal legacy of Social Security — that no conservative ideologue could stop, obstruct, or derail — to act as an automatic stabilizer for the economy?

Then we’d be looking at a “Soviet-style collapse.”

And now the economic dolt we have as a President wants to impose a cut in the one automatic stabilizer program that was most responsible for saving his sorry excuse for a Presidential administration?

At this point, anyone who believes it was Obama’s stimulus program that saved the U.S. economy is such an imbecile and simpleton on real economics that it borders on moral turpitude.

 

There were some other claims in that recommended diary that defy belief. The U.S. a leader in “clean energy technologies”? Really? I want to see what moron put together a report laying out that fanciful claim. As the MIT Technology Review article on the April 2012 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, “Who’s Winning the Clean Energy Race?”, the U.S. is leading the world in the amount of money invested in clean energy technologies. So what? The U.S. is the world’s biggest economy. As the MIT Technology Review article noted, the U.S. is lagging in getting new technologies into production and to market.

Saving the auto industry, is one thing Obama can take credit for. But read the inside account of the debate between Obama’s advisers (such as that provided by Ron Suskind in Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President), and it was a very close thing. Had one particular adviser not interjected a crucial argument — “How will it look if we let hundreds of thousands of auto workers lose their jobs, while we hand hundreds of billions of dollars over to save Wall Street bankers?” — it could easily have gone the other way. In the end, the decision was made because of the damn optics, not because Obama and his economics team had any real sense of the economic struggles and everyday life of working Americans.

People who defend Obama at this point, I dismiss as people who are comfortably ensconced in nice, middle class professional jobs. The professional class. They are complete and I am coming to believe, nearly irredeemable idiots on questions of economics.

You want a good litmus test to judge someone on economics? Ask them what they think of free trade. And if they say they are opposed to it, ask them what specifically are they going to do to put that opposition into effect.

I was part of a radical splinter group that tried to confront the UAW leadership on its support for Bill Clinton’s NAFTA. (I write “Bill Clinton’s” because though it was formulated and negotiated under Papa Bush, Bill Clinton took full ownership of it.) So if you want to know what went wrong with organized labor in the 1980s and 1990s, I think I can tell you.

They forgot what it was like being poor.

And that’s exactly the problem with Obama and those who don’t see what a disaster his economic policies have created out here in flyover country. From what I can sense, anyone who fails to distance themselves from Obama’s economic record is going to get creamed in 2014.

That does not mean that people are going to embrace the Republicans. Most people know that the Republicans have been obstructionist dickheads. They laugh bitterly about how comical is the Republicans knee-jerk opposition to anything Obama. But they also laugh bitterly when they see Wall Street banks and oil companies making record busting profits, while they search desperately for a job that pays more than nine or ten dollars an hour.

I think the political answer lies in a full-throated attack on the money power and a remorseless repudiation of all Democrats beholden to that power. The first candidate that declares war on Wall Street, with a viable plan for restoring the primacy of Main Street, wins.

_____________________________________________________

SELECT COMMENTS (good, bad and mediocre)—

  • * [new]  This DIARY is excusing Republican behavior? (108+ / 0-)

    A big part of why we’re all in this fucked up mess is that the president you are intent on running interference for spent virtually his entire first term excusing Republican behavior.

    President Obama rescued their sorry asses time after time after time. A political party that an ever growing majority of the people had come to recognize as bad actors was rehabilitated as responsible governing partners by this cynically manipulative or hopelessly naive president. (Pick either. For whatever reason, Obama breathed new life into these destructive fucks, and for THAT history will judge him harshly.)

    WTFWJD? LOTE? I sincerely doubt that.

    by WisePiper on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 12:37:32 AM PDT

    Parent ]

  • * [new]  President Obama has … (40+ / 0-)

    … managed to negotiate the Republican Congress into the worst poll ratings in the history of Congress. At the same time, he has ended DADT, provided a stimulus that revived the economy, got us out of one war, is moving us out of another, destroyed terroism’s worst actors, come out in support of marriage equality, saved the automobile industry, helped to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, jump-started health care reform, slapped down billions of dollars of money spent against him in two elections, has changed a million regulations dealing with such diverse topics as emissions standards to mortgage lending, settled a  multi-billion dollar case with banks, and on and on and on.

    Oh, and did I mention, while the President was accomplishing all of that, it is the Tea Party GOP that has ended up with the worst polling in history? He’s given you, if you are the least bit interested, an opportunity to help rid Washington of the Republican economic saboteurs ruining our economy and our discourse. You never seem interested in that, though, but I thought I’d bring it up.

    The fact that you’d come in to defend this drooling-and-yet-still-somehow-shrieking diary says a lot about you. On a final note, thanks for the rational words, NedSparks! I enjoyed reading them.

    I would tip you, but the man took away my tips.

    by Tortmaster on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 01:26:42 AM PDT

    Parent ]

    • * [new]  All true. (52+ / 0-)

      But, objectively speaking — many Democrats thought they were voting for the anti-Bush.

      They really thought the wars would end, the killing would stop, the bankers and war criminals would be spanked, education would get on the right foot, the middle class would stop being crushed, Social Security would stop being threatened, and many other good-government things people fantasize about.

      I have never blamed President Obama because I don’t believe that presidents have much power at all. But, I can see why people feel frustrated or disillusioned.

      I can empathize with disappointment based on unrealistic expectations.


      Denial is a drug.

      by Pluto on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 01:43:08 AM PDT

      Parent ]

      • * [new]  I knew he wasn’t a liberal. (14+ / 0-)

        He campaigned on focusing on Afghanistan, for one thing. People heard what they wanted back in ’08. And now their sad that all those things they imagined aren’t true. But he’s still doing a decent job, under the circumstances. Reality based community? As if.

        Welcome To The Disinformation Age!

        by kitebro on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 03:52:26 AM PDT

        Parent ]

        • * [new]  Step 1: Order us to vote for the lesser evil (32+ / 0-)

          Step 2:  Mock us when we remind you that the evil remains.

          There are several variations of this but they all include ordering the DFH to fall in step and march off to the polls and then ridiculing us after the election for voting against our beliefs.

          I’m coming to the place where it’s more fun to be ridiculed for actually voting for something I believe in.

  •  

    •  AKA (1+ / 0-)

      SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!!

      Evidence that contradicts the ruling belief system is held to extraordinary standards, while evidence that entrenches it is uncritically accepted. -Carl Sagan

      by RF on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 08:42:03 AM PDT

      Parent ]

      •  Mentioned Republicans in maybe 35 words and (75+ / 0-)

        spent hundreds of words criticizing the President. Didn’t discuss how Bush wrecked the economy in the first place. No, he blamed Obama, didn’t talk about how Bush placed two wars on America’s credit card and didn’t even put them in his budget. No, blamed Obama. Didn’t talk about how the Republican congress won’t pass jobs bill after jobs bill after jobs bill…. No, blamed Obama. Doesn’t talk how Republicans don’t even want to raise the minimum wage, for working people….No, blame Obama. Doesn’t talk about Republicans want to sabotage the healthcare law so that people will have to force to do without healthcare….No, blamed Obama.

        What does this say? This is excusing Republican behavior, this is showing how hatred of Barack Obama is the most important thing for some of these people. When someone can ignore the really hurried despicable behavior of Republicans who are against women’s’ rights,  gay rights, the rights of the poor, against the environment, and this individual comes on a website to call Barack Obama all kinds of dirty names….. This individual is disingenuous at the very least and I have to wonder if this realy Rhince Prebus….

         

        by NedSparks on Thu Jun 20, 2013 at 12:12:33 AM PDT

        •  Actually, I read through all the comments (56+ / 0-)

          and I think the responses to this diary fit the description of ‘hijacking a diary.’ Any time anyone wants to do a hit job on a posting that criticizes Obama, they line up the same people to ridicule and taunt the writer.

          Just look at the names, and think about the number of times you have seen them swoop in together to attack a diary that they dislike. It’s not about making a cogent argument, it’s about shutting down the diary.

     

     




    The presstitute media: strutting around as if it were free

    By Patrice Greanville, TGP

    Snowden: Universally reviled by the American media. Coincidence or design?

    Snowden: Universally reviled by the American media. Coincidence or systemic control?

    The constantly denied propaganda content of the American media, the long defended conceit that it is free from both government or corporate interference, that it does not serve their interests slavishly, that it packs no bias, is seen practically everywhere. Yet, even a cursory examination promptly yields a different reality. Thus, while it might be possible to trust a weather or sports report in the US,  it’s foolish to step outside those harmless parameters, particularly anything dealing with political, historical or economic matters, and above all the central taboo of American mass communications: direct criticism of the capitalist system, ooops! the “Free Enterprise System.”

    In order to hide this pervasive contaminating connection, the American media lose no opportunity to denigrate their counterparts, to remind their audiences of how unfree other media systems are. Quite often they mock as untrue what in effect is true. To the knowledgeable eye the bias is fairly easy to spot. Most people, however, are likely to miss such signs.
    [pullquote] American journalists often mock what is undeniably true but threatening to the US elites in order precisely to cast doubt on its credibility. [/pullquote]

    A case in point, picked at random. In a piece today on the NYTimes, China Brushes Aside U.S. Warnings on Snowden, by veteran journos Jane Perlez and Chris Buckley, the writers begin by offering a tolerably useful picture of a complex diplomatic situation (we quote in some detail):

    According to a Chinese journalist who often talks with Hong Kong government and mainland Chinese officials in Hong Kong, the Chinese authorities organized an ad hoc group, led by Yang Jiechi, a former foreign minister and now a state councilor, to handle the Snowden matter. The group answered to President Xi Jinping, the journalist said.

    The Chinese decided to keep a distance from Mr. Snowden personally to ensure that if Mr. Snowden eventually ended up in American hands he would not be able to disclose what Chinese officials said to him, the journalist said.

    Beijing determined early on that Mr. Snowden would have to leave Hong Kong, and should not be allowed to stay to go through a protracted legal battle in the Hong Kong courts to resist the United States extradition demand, the journalist said. “That would have lasted years, and then the United States would also wonder what he was telling China,” the journalist said. “What would the United States prefer?”

    The Chinese authorities timed Mr. Snowden’s departure for Moscow to match their own interests, he said. Beijing decided not to let him go too quickly, he said, because that would have made China look weak. He believed there were communications between Beijing and Moscow to ensure that Mr. Snowden landed in Moscow without surprising the Russian government.

     

    So far so good, but then suddenly the article turns foul (keep an eye on the bolded parts):

    Hong Kong said that the request did not fully meet its legal requirements, and after that China gave the green light for Mr. Snowden to fly to Moscow. The Chinese government decided that he had to leave before Washington made a request that might be acceptable to the Hong Kong courts, the journalist said.

    An editorial published Tuesday by the state-run Xinhua news agency reflected the Foreign Ministry position, but went further, saying the Snowden case “might not be a completely bad thing after all.”

    “Beijing and Washington can actually use the case to facilitate ongoing efforts to deal with the issue” of cybersecurity, it said. “The two sides can sit down and talk through their mutual suspicions.”

    The Chinese state-controlled press continued Tuesday to roll out a barrage of praise for Mr. Snowden.

    “The world will remember Edward Snowden,” said People’s Daily, the chief mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party. “It was his fearlessness that tore off Washington’s sanctimonious image.”

    Of course, while the American corporate-controlled press would want us to believe that the People’s Daily, hmmm…because it is a “mouthpiece” of the Communist Party (as if  the Washington Post and New York times, were not mouthpieces for the American bourgeoisie, the corporate party),  is advancing some absurd or untrue notion with that statement, the opposite is correct. The Daily is simply saying what any fair and decent and knowledgeable person would say under the current circumstances, in fact what is being said in such quarters, even if the corporate & government-controlled media “professionals” will never admit it.  Sanctimony, long one of the shields used by the US propaganda system to deflect truth from its captive audiences, deserves to be exposed.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    OPEDS: Be Careful. Do Not Make Excuses for Obama

    Wherein the editor of OpedNews, a longtime liberal and former Obama supporter, adds his voice to alert the country about the infamous fraud currently sitting in the White House. 

    robKall
     By Rob Kall, OpedNews
    I believe that those who make apologies about Obama– blaming his bad acts on his failure, weakness, incompetence or the Republicans are wrong. Obama is not weak and doesn’t make mistakes. He intentionally, consciously betrays the middle class in the service of the bankers, the Robert Rubins of the world. He has repeatedly appointed corporate insiders– from Monsanto, the big banks, Goldman Sachs– the foxes in the henhouse. 
     [pullquote]  If you’re still making excuses for Obama, or excusing his actions, policies and appointments because of his flaws or other people, please wake up. He is doing exactly what he intends. He is not your afflicted friend. He is a partner of the one percent– of the corporatists. He is one of them, not one of us.   [/pullquote]
    Now, we find out that Obama has ramped up a massive program to prevent leaks– directly contradicting his professed intention to increase government transparency.  Michael Collins brings us up to speed on how Obama’s dark side is coming out more and more into the open, with his article  Captain Queeg Commands the Good Ship Obama?
    Frankly, I have, on multiple occasions, caught myself making excuses for Obama, saying things like– “he’s a failure as a leader,” or, “He’s incompetent.”  Then I catch myself and remind myself that this Harvard grad is extremely intelligent and it is far more likely that he has not failed and  is not incompetent, but rather, is doing exactly what he’s chosen to do.
    Liberal Democrats who still haven’t figured out that Obama is stabbing them and their values in the back usually blame the naughty Republicans. I’m sorry. Obama has incredible executive powers– more than any previous president– and he uses them, just not for main street, the 99% and the middle class. He uses them to murder US citizens, to kill innocent women and children and to spy on ALL of us.
    If you’re still making excuses for Obama, or excusing his actions, policies and appointments because of his flaws or other people, please wake up. He is doing exactly what he intends. He is not your afflicted friend. He is a partner of the one percent– of the corporatists. He is one of them, not one of us.
    I know, this is a disappointment. It flies in the face of the promises he gave, the hopes he raised. Get over it. Face the reality. The man you thought could save America is accelerating its becoming a totalitarian, corporate, police state.
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and website architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), and publisher of Storycon.org, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and an inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com




    Trafficking in Lies about Syria

    by Stephen Lendman

    Syria's Assad: Washington wants him to end up like Gaddafi.

    Syria’s Assad: The Washington mafia wants him to end up like Gaddafi. He’s not interested in obliging them.

    Media scoundrels substitute lies for truth and full disclosure. They violate core journalistic ethics doing so. They threaten world peace. They’re waging war on freedom. They do it shameless, recklessly and unapologetically. They continue ad nauseam. Victims are called war criminals. Aggressive wars are called liberating ones. Western state terrorism is called humanitarian intervention. 

     

    Media scoundrels front for power. They support imperial lawlessness. Syria’s being ravaged and destroyed. Assad’s vilified for defending his nation responsibly. He’s routing death squad invaders in the process. New ones commit massacres and vast destruction. Conflict continues daily. Ordinary Syrians suffer most. Media scoundrels turn a blind eye to who’s responsible.

    [pullquote] Now that the CIA/Pentagon death squads and fanatical mercenaries have failed to topple the Syrian government, media scum like the editors of the Washington Post are urging a “Yugoslavian solution” to the Syrian crisis. This would involve a replay of the cynical attack on Serbia and the emergence of the puppet state of Kosovo. What else could be expected from such scoundrels manning the corporate media? [/pullquote]

    Washington Post editors urge war on Syria. They’ve done so in numerous editorials. They continue irresponsibly. They betray their readers in the process. On June 20, they headlined “Kosovo offers United States a roadmap for Syria,” saying:

    “IT’S BEEN 14 years since the United States, defying Russian obstruction in the UN Security Council, launched an air campaign to stop a tyrant’s bloody aggression in his own country.”

    “With US support, the rebels of Kosovo, then a province of Serbia, were able to repel the army of Slobodan Milosevic and take control of the province.”

    “Critics warned at the time that US intervention would sow chaos or empower radicals. Instead it paved the way for the democratization of Serbia, independence for a democratic Kosovo and, at last, the beginning of a reconciliation.”

    Hashim Thaci led “the Kosovo Liberation Army. (He’s) now the country’s prime minister.”

     

    Fact check

    US-led NATO waged lawless aggression. It did so against a nonbelligerent country. It ravaged and destroyed it in the process. Crimes of war and against humanity were committed.  Ruthlessness defines US policy. At issue is unchallenged imperial dominance. Human carnage is a small price to pay. So is vast destruction and ecocide. Fundamental rule of law principles don’t matter.

    It’s the American way. It’s longstanding. It’s worse than ever today. Milosevic was attacked for governing independently. Managed news misinformation preceded aggressive war.  Serbia’s sovereign Kosovo territory was lost. It’s now Washington/NATO occupied territory. It’s run by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. He’s an unindicted drug trafficker. He’s known to have organized crime ties.

    He’s nicknamed “the Snake” for good reason. He founded the “Drenica Group.” It operated secretly. A December 2010 Council of Europe report said it trafficked in Serbian prisoner organs.  Thaci and other KLA commanders committed horrific human rights abuses. They were involved in prostitution, arms smuggling, and other criminal activities.

    Thaci’s a US installed puppet. He’s a Madeleine Albright protege. She has her own cross to bear. She shares responsibility for Yugoslavia’s destruction. She remains unaccountable. Thaci’s feted on visits to Washington and other European capitals. He belongs in prison, not high office. He heads Kosovo’s so-called Democratic Party (PKD).  It’s a puppet regime. It represents US interests. Don’t expect WaPo editors to explain. They urge a Yugoslavia solution for Syria. They called destroying its sovereignty a “limited US military intervention.”

    Obama should draw a lesson from history, they say. They claim doing so “can save lives and stabilize troubled regions – even when Russia and the UN Security Council don’t approve.”

    Saying so turns truth on its head. Former Yugoslavia no longer exists. Middle East countries suffer enormous turmoil. Wherever America shows up, crimes of war, against humanity and genocide follow.

    WaPo columnist Charles Krauthammer represents the extreme far-right. He’s paid to lie. Hyperbole substitutes for verifiable facts. He supports lawless imperial wars. He wants Syria targeted and destroyed.

    On June 20, he headlined “America sidelined, barely relevant,” saying:

    He blames Assad for US-sponsored death squad crimes. He blames Russia for wanting peaceful conflict resolution. Washington bears full responsibility for initiating conflict in Syria.  Krauthammer called it “a spontaneous, secular, liberationist uprising.” He accused Russia and Iran of “reach(ing) for regional dominance – the ayatollahs solidifying their ‘Shiite crescent.’ ”

    Putin, he says, aims to “dislodge America as regional hegemon.” Russia and China represent the best chance for world peace. Achieving it depends on challenging Washington’s imperium.

    It requires red line intolerance against further US aggression. Hopefully both countries are up to the challenge.

    Krauthammer want greater US intervention. He wants Obama to “do something that will alter the course of the war.”   He wants Syria’s conflict turned into catastrophe. He wants it entirely ravaged and destroyed. He wants another US regional vassal state. He blames Obama for not pursuing it straightaway.

    New York Times editors asked “Why Is Russia Still Arming Syria?” Why don’t they challenge Washington’s proxy war? Why don’t they explain it was planned years ago?  Why don’t they say Obama bears full responsibility for enlisting, arming, funding, training and directing extremist elements? The State Department designates them foreign terrorist organizations.

    They’re drawn from dozens of countries. They’re sent to Syria lawlessly. They’re committing crimes of war and against humanity. Times editors don’t explain.

    They pretend Syria’s conflict is a liberating one. They turn truth on its head saying so. They willfully lie to readers. “As long as Mr. Assad can count on military and political support from Russia,” they say, “he has no incentive to agree to a cease-fire or a political transition.”

     

    Fact check

    Assad forthrightly prioritizes ending conflict diplomatically. He said so numerous times. He didn’t just say it. He means it.  Times editors have no right to call for “political transition.” Syria’s a sovereign independent country. Syrians alone may decide who’ll lead them. International law prohibits outside interference.  Times editors support it. Doing so violates core rule of law principles. They do it repeatedly. They call Russia an “obstacle to a successful outcome in Syria.”

    It’s Syria’s best chance to achieve one. In puts Syrians in charge of their own futures. The alternative is a US-dominated vassal state.

    It eliminates another independent sovereign nation. It puts Islamofascists in charge. It assures continued charnel house violence. Times editors apparently approve. They’re in lockstep with imperial US viciousness.

    Former Times executive editor Bill Keller claims Syria’s insurgency “is genuine and indigenous.” He lied saying so. There’s nothing civil about ongoing conflict. Syria was invaded. Washington-sponsored death squads are US foot soldiers.

    So are Wall Street Journal editors. On June 15, they headlined “Syria’s Cease-Fire of the Grave,” saying:

    “Assad, Russia and Iran are rolling over a timid West.  This is the same Russia that has protected Mr. Assad from even the mildest UN sanctions.”

    Perhaps Journal editors forgot. Syria’s under heavy pressure. It’s punished by multiple rounds of sanctions. They target government officials. They freeze assets and ban travel. They one-sidedly embargo arms. They prohibit importing Syrian controlled oil. They impose fines on firms investing in Syria’s oil industry.

    They sanction Syria’s main mobile phone operator, Syriatel. They target its largest private company, Cham Holding. They penalize Addounia TV, three construction companies, and investment firms linked to Syria’s military.

    Other sanctions target Syria’s financial sector, state oil marketing firm Sytrol, and General Petroleum Corporation.  Surveillance equipment, precious metals, and other exports are banned. Cargo flights are prohibited. Relations with Syria’s central bank were suspended.

    US companies and citizens are barred from investing in or trading with Syria. Its technology companies are targeted. They include computers, software and cell phones.

    Obama’s gone all out to isolate Syria. He’s done it against Iran. He’s done it lawlessly. Journal editors didn’t explain. They blame Assad for Western-sponsored death squad crimes.  They want him forcibly removed from office. They want Washington controlling Syrian policy. They want another country ravaged and destroyed. They mischaracterize Assad viciously.

    Arabi Souri explains. It’s a pseudonym he uses for protection. He’s a native Syrian. He lives in Germany. He supports Syrian sovereignty. So-called Free Syrian Army fighters destroyed his property. They threatened his life.

    “Who is Bashar Assad,” he asked? He is wrongfully vilified as “a brutal dictator. (He’s) a reformer. (He’s) done much to further the causes of democracy and freedom.”  Violent opposition elements threaten what most Syrians support. Foreign-backed “revolutionaries” harm their interests.

    Assad introduced important reforms. He challenged “old guards who opposed them.” Many defected and left. They’re allied with Western interests. They betrayed their own people in the process.  In February 2012, Syrians overwhelmingly approved new constitutional provisions. Despite opposition boycotts and violence, 89.4% of eligible voters approved it. Another 9% opposed, and 1.2% of ballots were declared invalid.

    Overall, 57.4% of Syrians participated. Given the risks taken to vote, turnout was impressive. Reforms instituted are important. They include political pluralism, presidential term limits, and press freedom.  On May 7, first time ever parliamentary elections were held. It was a milestone political event. Independent candidates participated.

    Despite ongoing insurgent violence, turnout was high. Voting went smoothly. Independent monitors supervised the process. They included intellectuals, legislators and judicial authorities from other countries.

    For Syrians, it was historic. Ba’ath party members won a 60% majority. Previously they held just over 50% control. With support from independent MPs, they comprise 90% of Syria’s parliament. Opposition party members were also elected.

    Washington called elections farcical. US and other Western reports mocked them. They vilified legitimate democratic change. They want subservient puppet governance running Syria. They want Syrians having no say.

    Souri said Syria’s “crisis is not a civil war or rebellion, but a foreign aggression against a sovereign nation.” Assad’s responsibly defending his nation to defeat it.  Around 70% of Syrians support him. They do so for good reason. They want Syrian sovereignty respected. They want outside interference stopped. They want Syrians alone to decide who’ll lead them. International law supports them.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

    Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached atlendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

    http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

    Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

    Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

    It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

    http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour




    Things Fall Apart

    One Step Removed From Full-Blown Fascism
    by ROB URIE

    NSA director Keith Alexander has continued to defend the agency's surveillance programs as necessary. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

    NSA director Keith Alexander has continued to defend the agency’s surveillance programs as necessary. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

    The conspicuously nonsensical efforts by President Barack Obama and NSA spy chief Alexander to assure Americans massive corporate-government spy operations had prevented terrorist attacks were supported by only a few easily disproved lies. More broadly, the history of recent decades has government spy agencies hiring ‘private’ companies to carry out the activities they are legally prohibited from carrying out. This makes government assertions regarding spying on citizens a game of three-card monte—the testimony of government officials is calculated to be irrelevant to actual activities.

    In a narrow sense the implied purpose of the spy program that remains—political-economic domination and control by corporate and government technocrats, suffers from the internal paradox of too many spies having too much spying power. In the effort to ‘monetize’ information gathered through spy operations, which good capitalist will forego using spy capabilities against competitors? Which bureaucratic climber will forego the advantage of catching his / her competitor in flagrante delicto with an under-aged prostitute? Which political Party will forego certain knowledge of the strategies of its ‘competitor?’

    But internal paradox doesn’t mean the spy programs aren’t incredibly dangerous—left unstated is why the corporate state feels the need to surveil and control the populace? And like the surveillance technocracy, from the Bill Clinton era to today, Wall Street has gotten absolutely everything it asked for—deregulation, increased leverage, bankruptcy ‘reform,’ freedom from legal culpability, rights of predation through Federal supercedence of local laws, and of course, large and ongoing public subsidies. The result, following its near self-immolation in 2008, is a larger, more inter-connected, and ultimately more fragile financial system than existed before its wish list was fulfilled.

    While the idea of ironic justice—the consequences to Wall Street of the next financial meltdown or corporate-government spies turning on one another, has a certain appeal, actual human lives are finite and the unwinding, following from history, will cause harm and misery in inverse proportion to existing social power. The (rapidly) disappearing middle class is evidence of the consequences of political passivity. The (rapidly) disappearing concept of freedom from corporate- government intrusion into, and intermediation of, all social relations is another. And the well-sold notion of corporate-consumer ‘partnership’ is seeing its political fruition as the telecom and Internet companies to whom paying large monthly bills was previously seen as a virtue reveal themselves as child-hipster fronts for unimagined totalitarian power.

    That Mr. Obama has apparently lost some of his competence at lying, as illustrated by his domestic spying apologetics, has consequences beyond incrementally awakening the perpetually zombified ‘dismal center’ that constitutes his base. How many fewer citizens this week still imagine a political leader from either Party ever acting in the public interest? How many more charismatic charlatans—Party hacks acting in plutocrat interests against those of the citizenry, can successfully manage the fifth, sixth, seventh… terms of the George W. Bush administration? Americans have always had a genius, possibly our dominant skill, for creating better iterations of bullshit, but how many more times will we dance in the streets, as occurred in Cambridge, MA upon Mr. Obama’s election, knowing the infrastructure of the spy-murder state remains intact?

    Put another way, at what point does the abject refusal of the American people to act politically become a liability for the corporate state? It was the relative balance of political-economic power Franklin Roosevelt achieved with the New Deal that saved capitalism from itself. And it was the internal and external threats to the political-economic order that led the plutocracy of that day to give a little to keep a lot – the wisdom to do so was not self-generated by corporate titans and financiers. With all of the political institutions of today dedicated to giving the plutocracy—financiers, corporate executives, and their partners in technocratic totalitarianism, what it wants, where is an FDR to tell it what it needs?

    And where does this leave the internal contradictions of the existing corporate-state? Wall Street is a bigger and ‘better’ finance-bomb just waiting to go off. How many more times will a stock market crash leave the citizenry fearful not saving Wall Street is more destructive than saving it? Corporate executives are ever more effectively impoverishing their customers to pay themselves. At what point is the inflection hit where executive self-enrichment leads to diminishing returns for even themselves? And where does that leave a political leadership that perceives itself immune from political retribution because it can always find personal redemption by moving to the ‘private’ sector? Again, the ironic justice of corporate-state cannibalism leaves contrived and real dependencies—the mutual dependence of citizens and corporate state institutions, to drive us down a totalitarian path until a functioning political economy can be recovered from the ruins.

    The role of Internet companies in developing the technocracies of totalitarianism provides a different shade of irony. Current framing has the government forcing tech companies to comply with government demands they provide ‘private’ data. But who incubated these tech companies from infancy, delivered products developed in government labs for them to commercialize, subsidized the ‘math and science’ curriculums in their support, subsidized the building of the telecommunications infrastructure on which tech depends and winked and nodded at fraudulent employment schemes to underpay immigrant labor in their service? More directly, who subsidized these companies as they grew? And fundamentally, who built the Internet? From the bowels of the Pentagon to the playground idiocy of Silicon Valley, there exists nary a tech millionaire or billionaire not by degree living on the people’s dime.

    So far this framing posits the single direction of government subsidizing tech for its own nefarious intent—paying for the privilege, but extracting its due in blood. But what commercial genius lay behind convincing several generations of children, the dependents whose psychologies aren’t yet developed by history and experience to beware the intentions of cynical technocrats bearing toys, that delivering their life-secrets to self-serving capitalists would leave them safe? Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs thought nothing of using the advantages of history and strategies of planned destitution to squeeze those making ‘his’ computers for everything he could take. The major Internet companies span the globe to find captive workforces to labor in slave conditions to program their technologies of global domination, or more likely, the latest moronic ‘app’ that notifies one of the need to use the toilet. These are the capitalists and capitalist enterprises bravely standing between ‘the government’ and totalitarian intrusion? And who, exactly, do they run to to protect their privilege?

    Were ‘the government’ in control, why would all of ‘its’ power and resources be dedicated to making the lives and bank accounts of this technerati, public largess dependent financiers, and the sociopathic tools occupying executive suites, so remunerative and comfortable? There is tension, no doubt, between the self-interest of plutocrat tools in government and their plutocrat masters—the largest neighborhood of the largest houses I ever saw being built was in suburban Washington, DC at the very height of the most recent economic calamity. But given the theorized power of government, why don’t self-interested bureaucrats take what the plutocrats have for themselves? This question is for my friends with anarchist and libertarian tendencies. As Lenin had it, and the late Hugo Chavez understood, the way to restrain totalitarian government is to restrain capitalist imperialism. The NSA and CIA are but tools, aspects, of imperialist capitalism.

    Framed differently, it requires improbably separating method from purpose to argue ‘private’ and government data mining and statistical analysis developed from the symbiosis of government and business serve fundamentally different purposes. ‘Private’ data collection and use, e.g. stores that use ‘store cards’ to track and analyze customer purchases, is intended to provide economic advantage. Given the NSA can only give implausible and absurd explanations for why it tracks and uses similar data from the citizenry, what possible explanation, aside from mindlessly squandering public resources, is possible than to gain political advantage from it? Again, if the claim they’ve interrupted terrorist plots is demonstrably bullshit and bluster, what use value does the data they’re collecting have?

    If giving self-interested sociopaths—the definition of successful capitalists, everything they wanted the roaring twenties and debt-fueled 2000s would have led to self-sustaining economic outcomes. But they led instead to financial and economic crashes. The move to consolidate political-economic power through the technocratic corporate state is likewise leading to increasing political dysfunction. One of the only political leaders in the U.S. with retained credibility, Barack Obama, appears to be losing his ability to serve as front for plutocrat interests. And technocratic overreach is leading to increasing skepticism of the corporate state nexus. The right-wing revolution started in the 1970s worked by demonizing government to the benefit of global capital. With both government and capital losing credibility, technocratic control and police repression are the tools remaining to sustain corporate state power.

    The capacity for FDR style rejuvenation of Western capitalism probably existed when Mr. Obama first entered office as President. The crisis of confidence the financial meltdown and related Great Recession initially caused, if used in conjunction with the delivery of public resources, provided the opening for reframing government as the solution to unstable—and destabilizing, unfettered capitalism. The problem of leadership was, and remains, Mr. Obama and Congress are tools for narrow plutocrat interests when restoring political-economic stability requires understanding plutocrat interests, not serving them. Even were a competent leader to arise, a modern day FDR, the question of what historical opportunity remains is prominent.

    The existing corporate state, complete with the infrastructure of totalitarian surveillance and control, is currently one step removed from full-blown fascism. The prevailing wisdom is the corporate-state technocracy has capabilities derived from economic interests overtaking the mechanics of modern democratic governance. This view requires isolating the technocracies of surveillance and control from changes in laws and interpretations of laws designed to consolidate political-economic control behind walls of impermeability. It also presumes the locus of totalitarian control is singularly political when by all evidence the state serves plutocrat (economic) interests. The willingness of top spy agency officials to openly lie about agency goals, intentions and practices suggests perceived vulnerability by those at the top. As history has it, perceived vulnerability by those in power is not necessarily fact and misplaced perceptions rarely lead to socially constructive outcomes.

    Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York. His book, “Zen Economics,” will be published by CounterPunch / AK Press in 2014.