African-Americans, This is Your Day

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Barack Obama is POTUS.

Hundreds of thousands of people were already converging on Grant Park in Chicago before the election was called. Wow, that must have been an incredible sight to behold. I wish I could have been there. I love to be part historic crowds like that. The crowd that heard Barack's speech was estimated at 500,000.

I thought at first that they would almost all be Black people, but the crowd contained just about anyone you could possibly imagine - including a very large number of Whites. His speech was very good, he called McCain a war hero and complimented him in other ways he probably does not deserve, and so was the crowd, as nary a boo was heard. But it's easy to be magnanimous in victory.

The election had not been called yet, and I was driving around town running errands. The radio was on again, and they were going to John McCain speaking in Arizona. This early, with the polls in California just closed, there could only be one reason for that.

I listened intently as John McCain got to the punch. Congratulating Barack Obama for winning the election to POTUS. A chorus of boos flooded out McCain's voice and he tried to hold them back, but they kept on booing. Later, he mentioned that Obama was now McCain's President, and McCain was ready to serve him. Boos again. Every time he mentioned Barack's name, the boos poured out.

I think McCain is going to resign his Senate seat. Despite a charitable and honorable concession speech, I feel that at core, he's still a nasty little man. He reminds me of some folks close to me I can't name.

He wants the ultimate, and if he can't get it, he quits. Daddy was an admiral and John McCain always wanted to be an admiral. He couldn't get admiral, so he quit the Navy. He immediately ran for Barry Goldwater's Senate seat in Arizona, with an eye towards running for President. Although an effective Senator, he always really wanted to be POTUS. Now that he can't get it, I figure he quits the Senate. Any thoughts?

I used to have some respect for McCain for being the Republican version of a maverick. He's not a wingnut, and he never was. He hates those people, he has for years, and they know it. That's why the base has always hated him as a RINO. He especially despises the White Christian fundamentalist wingnuts, since he's a secular and reasonable man. This election, he ran as the as Wingnut Supreme, and I lost all respect for him.

At some level, you have to at least respect a man who has principles, even if it's Hitler. Give them less than 1% for that at least.

George W. Bush is what he is. He's a real wingnut. He really believes all that crazy religious crap. None of the traditional noblesse oblige of his family's, and his father's, white-bread East Coast Episcopalian elite for him. He moved to Texas and grew spurs from his shins. Bush is no pretender. He's the God of the Republican Base made flesh.

For running as the wingnut is not, never was, and never will be, McCain showed me that he ultimately has no values and no shame. In particular for running this uber-sleazy Rovian campaign. We expect it from W.; he's never made any pretensions to respectability or decency. McCain always acted like he was above all that. Guess not, when the throne itself is at stake. Too bad.

Soon after Barack was declared winner, thousands of Blacks were parading through the streets of West Philadelphia, the Black part of town. Good for them. It's certainly more commendable than rioting.

This is your day, African-Americans. Savor the historic moment.
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Conservative Math: Liberals = Nigger Lovers = Queers

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated October 24:

In the comments section, huy, a Leftish Brit, is stunned by the weirdness and stupidity of American conservatism, and really White American society as a whole:

I'm still amazed by the American right wing.

According to them:

Liberal = sexually liberal = faggot.

Liberal = left wing = socialist = Commie.

Thus Commie = faggot.

Rich Texan Oil tycoons who wear cowboy hats and drive SUV's and only date blond women and drink jack Daniels, or violent redneck skinheads on crystal meth or Harley Davidson gun loving biker gang members are the only real men in America.

The more individualist and selfish you are, the more manly you are.

In Europe, its the homosexual men that are most individualist with their fancy clothes etc.

Interesting stuff. I have noticed that the Democrats = liberals = socialists = Communists = fags thing is worst of all with the White racists, I mean White nationalists, excuse me!

This seems to be a standard line of their discourse. Not only are we queer because we are liberal - Democrat - socialist - Communists, but there is something uniquely faggoty, unmanly and queerish about a White man being a nigger-lover. After all, that is the White racists one and only beef against the Left. We support their racial enemies (anyone not White) and we supposedly oppose White folks.

The image they have constructed is of an ubermasculine White man as super-racist. If you're White and you're not a racist, you're not much of a White man, therefore not much of a man. It's a most interesting construction, and I wish more people wrote about it.

It's a bit beyond me why the pinnacle of masculinity is to be a racist shit, and why the commanding heights of faggotry are reached by loving humanity before one's tribe, but I'm trying to get my mind around it.

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A Primer on Mark to Market

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated October 24:

Some conservatives, of course, are blaming the current economic chaos on too much regulation instead of the obvious cause of it that any moron can figure out, lack of regulation. This is especially popular on White Nationalist websites, where the line is that all regulation of business is evil for White people.

I would like to point that although the conservatives are reeling from this latest economic meltdown and their philosophy is in tatters (rejected by the media elite who used to support them to the hilt more than anyone else), some conservatives are starting to fight back.

The market meltdown was not caused by the lack of regulation that everyone knows caused it; instead, it was caused by the conservative bogeyman of too much regulation. But this is not going over very well. Outside of the Fanatics' Bullpen and the Republican Party, no one is buying. Even the US rightwing media is not so stupid as to buy into this one.

The "mark to market rule"* controversy is an interesting one.

But nevertheless, mark to market is being put forward as one of the stupider regulations that supposedly either helped bring this mess on or is making it worse. So says Paul Craig Roberts (unapologetic Reaganite incredibly featured on Counterpunch) here, here and here, and Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek columnist and apologist for neoliberal globalism and US imperialism disguised as reasonable and thoughtful analyst.

Mark to market was put in to keep these corporate rats from lying about their assets and their bottom lines. Amid the catastrophes caused by the rampant accounting fraud and crime accompanying Enron and the other messes, the mark to market rule was instituted. What it means is simple: corporations have to list assets and debts as they really are, not as they think they are in their fairy tale fantasies.

What corporations were doing was this: Suppose I have assets that are worth $10X. That looks pretty bad for my bottom line, so I "re-evaluate them" with the help of some friendly local accountant firm criminals, and now automagically they are actually worth $100X. Why?

Because my accountant criminal buddies and I decided that my assets are actually undervalued, and are worth much more than the market says they are worth. So I get to fool investors, inflate my bottom line and pretend that my insolvent company is actually rolling in it.

Seems like an obvious abuse, no? Seems like a reasonable regulation, no?

Turns out after all that mark to market is sheer government evil. Evil big government is forcing angelic corporations to tell the truth about their net worth instead of lying as they always do, even in their sleep, and this harming the glorified US economy.

Nowadays, banksters and other financial criminals are holding all sorts of assets that are said to be worth, say, $100X. In truth, no one even knows what they are worth, and there is no way to figure it out. Their true value is so low that the banksters act like these assets are toxic waste.

Mark to market means they have to mark them at $30X or $2X or whatever the market says this crap is worth. But what they really want to do is lie and pretend that it's worth $100X.

Why? Because if the corporations tell the truth about how much their assets are really worth, instead of how much they lie and inflate their worth at, investors will pound their two-bit penny stocks into the ground where they deserve to be pounded.

But that's bad for the economy. We can't afford to have the stocks of insolvent companies pounded into the dirt on the basis of honest accounting of assets and debits. Instead, it is necessary to lie, paint a turd to look like a Michelangelo, and keep the sucker/investors marching in the door and laying out the cash. To tell the truth will wreck the economy. To save the economy, we must legalize lying once again.

Does any of this make sense in any rational world? Of course not.

These are the rarefied debates that occupy our ruling elites in these trying times.

*I am not an economist, and I may not have correctly characterized the mark to market rule or the arguments for or against it. If you think I have this wrong, head to the comments or email and let me know.

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On Spotted Owls

There are three subspecies of spotted owls in the US. The Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) ranged from Oregon and Washington down into the California coast ranges and over into the Siskiyous and Cascades. The California Spotted Owl (CASPO) lives in the Sierra Nevada, down into the Tehachapis and and into the mountain ranges of Southern California.

The Southern California population is isolated in mountain ranges that are not connected and is projected to go extinct over at most 100-200 years. Before mass settlement of Southern California, CASPO may have moved from range to range via river corridors, but now that is not possible. The Techachapi CASPO is probably not sustainable either. CASPO also lives in the Coast Ranges south of San Fransisco.

The Mexican Spotted Owl lives in the Southwest, mostly in Arizona and New Mexico. It was listed as threatened recently and recently had a huge amount of critical habitat set aside. It seems to be threatened by cattle grazing, but I forget how. Serious overgrazing in the Southwest seems to be devastating the grass and forb understory of the old growth pine forests.

This overgrazing has promoted heavy stands of small trees that are susceptible to drought and fire. The truth is that the Southwest should not even be grazed in the first place; it's too dry and cows just devastate arid regions.

Cows evolved in cold, moist England and they are not well suited to arid regions. During the hot, dry months, they congregate in riparian areas, which they utterly devastate. The Eastern US is much moister, and cattle grazing causes few problems there.

The NSO was declared a threatened species in 1990, setting off the timber wars in the Pacific Northwest. Clinton pushed through a crappy Northwest Forest Plan, which sold out way more to industry than was necessary. Logging in the region declined by 80%, but they had been horribly overcutting for decades.

As one might expect, the new regulations did not save the NSO, and it has continued to decline at 3.5% per year. The continuing decline of the NSO means that it may soon have to be uplisted from Threatened to Endangered.

In the far north, in northern Washington and British Colombia, the NSO is declining at about 7% per year. In southwestern B.C., there are only about 50 owls left and they are going to go extinct in the past few years unless something is done.

All spotted owls have selected for old growth forests. A new threat is the Barred Owl, which is a relative of the Spotted Owl, coming down from the north. The Barred Owl is much more tolerant of the open conditions created by massive clearcutting, and is displacing Spotted Owls in many places. In particular, it is interbreeding with them, creating a new hybrid type.

Loggers claim that the Barred Owl invasion is the true cause of the NSO decline, but they are lying as usual. The Barred Owl invasion is due to the more open conditions created by out of control clearcutting for decades in the Northwest.

The CASPO was petitioned twice for listing, in 2000 and 2004. I haven't read the petitions, but I have read hundreds of pages of studies on the CASPO. The CASPO, last I heard, was declining at a greater rate than even the NSO. In 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the CASPO as an endangered species.

That strikes me as a wrong decision, but Bush is listing species at a rate even 85% lower than his rightwing father, George Bush. Bring back George Bush Sr.! As we can see, with the years, the US Republican Party, and consequently the US Whites they represent, have gotten increasingly virulent in the attitude of hatred and destruction towards our precious environment.

Next to the immigrant hordes flooding our shores, our precious slice of American Gaia has no greater enemy than White Americans.

What is curious about this is that White nationalists insist that only Whites are altruistic enough to care enough to be environmentalists in any way. It's an interesting argument, but it's sure not true in the US, and almost everyone making this odd argument is voting for the party of Nuke Gaia. Go figure.

Socialism On Trial

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

This really is a delightful video. It highlights the fight of the Liverpool Labor Councilors fighting to defend Labor socialism in Liverpool in the mid-1980's during Thatcherism. What I found so heartwarming about it was seeing the majority of the White working class in this city rallying in the streets with red flags and signs saying socialism.

Here in the US, that sight is almost incomprehensible. No way will any group of White working class Americans anywhere march in the streets with red flags defending any kind of socialism. The interviews were also very uplifting. These working class Whites defended the Labour Party and its socialist project.

Why? Because they lived in a totalitarian Communist state and had to say that? No, because the socialist Labourites on the council had actually been making their lives better in real and tangible ways for decades.

This didn't happen by accident. The Labourites finally started winning big after WW2, possibly because the Right in the UK was discredited by the defeat of fascism.

Over 60 years, a very strong socialist movement, in the Labour Party, built its own Gramscian cultural hegemony in the UK. This succeeded to the point where your average Brit is a social democrat. There are large papers such as the Guardian, run by corporations, that are pro social democrat. Publicly financed broadcasting in the BBC is also probably pro-social democrat.

It is hard for non-Americans to understand how incomprehensible this is. The notion of huge broadcasting stations and newspapers supporting social democracy in the US is comical. The notion of your average American supporting socialist anything is a product of science fiction. The White working class in particular is irredeemable hostile to anything with the word socialist in it.

But this video shows that it is possible in the West for a socialist political party to win the hearts of White working class people. That notion right there shows that there is hope after all.

This interesting website highlights something else about US culture. Since Reagan in 1980, we have had almost 30 years of hardcore Gramscian cultural hegemony working like madmen to inculcate the market virus in our brains and make us hate anything government with Pavlovian unthinkingness.

In particular, an effort has somehow emerged, apparently cultivated by the Republican Party, that Democrats are fags, wussies, sissies or metrosexuals, and only Republicans and conservatives are real men. The Democrats are for the niggers, the Mexicans and the faggots*.

In White working class communities in rural and suburban California, it seems most of the young men vote Republican. If you're White, working class and say you vote Democrat, people will say, "Well you're not Black or Mexican, so what is your problem? Are you a queer?"

If you're a real man, you're a conservative. You love capitalism, you hate environmentalism, you hate towelheads, Islam, Europeans (especially France) and foreigners in general. You love global warming and plans to stop it are a Democrat socialist faggot plot against capitalism.

If you're a Democrat, your masculinity is suspect. If you're not a queer, at least you're not much of a man. Maybe you're a metrosexual. Reagan was real man. Jimmy Carter was a wuss. Bill Clinton, despite all the bimbos, was some sort of faggy not real man type. George Bush is a man. His father was supposedly a man too, but Bush Sr. actually has a pretty wimpy voice and mannerisms.

Basically, any Republican is automatically a big man and any Democrat is automatically a wussy metrosexual possible faggot.

You love globalization because it's capitalism on steroids, but say buy American (don't ask for coherence). You hate Palestinians for being dirty fighters and love Israel for fighting like real men. You love imperialism and colonialism for their manliness and cynical, real-world hardened views of the globe. And it's very manly and studly to be a neoconservative. You hate health food and love meat, especially red meat.

Socialism of any type, either in health care or social security, is for pussies and fags.

The love of capitalism is because all real men can supposedly become "successful" and "make good money" in the US, or, I guess, anywhere. Assuming 100% of US men decided to become he-men and make it to the upper middle class, how all 100% of them could somehow manage to squeeze into the top 20% is not explained.

If you're a liberal or a Democrat, you're not only a queer, but you're also a loser. If you're a liberal or a Democrat and you have some money, you're considered to be an insane person, working against your own interests.

Money is very much tied in with masculinity in our culture. American women, despite all the feminism, continue to judge a man's masculinity on his earnings. Somehow feminism managed to push equal pay for women while still winking at "take the man for everything he's got" game, giving "oppressed" women the best of both worlds.

An American woman's contemptuous, snarky, "You don't make enough money" is another way for her to call you a faggot or a pussy. So in addition to being called a loser, a low-income man is also told he's not a man. No wonder so many guys go postal.

Since money is equated with masculinity, the new conservative White guy does the same. He may not make much, but some day he will. Or he envies the guys who do. Or something. Or whatever.

It's interesting that in other parts of the world, particularly Europe, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Arab World, the Muslim World, and Asia in general, an identity has been constructed in which a socialist man can be as real of a he-man that ever existed.

The ultra rightwing macho man is very much a US invention, but US politics cannot be understood these days without taking it into account.

*used sardonically

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The Institute on Religion and Public Policy

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated August 23:

Joseph Griebowski is one odd fellow. He's head of a very strange organization called Institute on Religion and Public Policy. It will be discussed in an upcoming post. Griebowski himself is some sort of a hardline Zionist. He's also a weird, Strangeglovian-looking character. It's apparently got some kind of big neoconservative and possibly Jewish money behind it.

He goes up on Capital Hill and travels all over the world agitating for "religious freedom", generally in lands that are being targeted by the neocons and International Zionism. He's also apparently waging US imperialism's war of words with China. His specialty is humanitarian intervention bullshit as my commenters have been discussing lately. His particular angle is "religious freedom".

If your country is not allowing enough religious freedom (which, frankly, is none of our Goddamned business) then he's going to wage fake human rights war on you in service of International Zionism or US imperialism. Lately his targets have been South Sudan, Darfur, China and Kosovo. Imperialism doesn't care about S Sudan or Darfur, but Zionism does. Imperialism hates China though.

For Kosovo, imperialism supports them, but probably hard right Zionism hates them for being Muslims in Europe. Looks like they have conned all sorts of suckers into going along with this scam. Looking through the officers and staff, I can't see any reason why most of these people give a flying fuck about "religious freedom".

Furthermore, they for the most part seem to be serving US imperialism in one way or another. So I figure this is just some bullshit "religious freedom" garbage to push the interests of US imperialism and Zionism. On their Board of Directors is a motley collection of Christians (almost all rightwing Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants or Baptists), Jews of various types, wacky New Age kooks, etc.

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The Cutting Edge: New Internet Publication

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated August 23:

This is a new online magazine on the Net. I just noticed it; they've only been online for 4 months and they already have high readership of around 45,000 readers a day. Actually, this magazine is pretty scary, and it definitely has big money behind it. A very large number of the authors are extremely hard rightwing Zionist Jews, and some of them have CIA and probably Mossad connections.

Lets take a look at the authors:

Gal Luft is an Israeli or possibly Jewish "American" author who consorts with former CIA director James Woolsey and seems to have deep connections to the Israeli state.

Anne Korin, (photo) Jewish "American" author and pundit, is a hard-Right Zionist. A mysterious woman, she is a co-director with Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS). IAGS seems to have deep ties US and Israeli intelligence. She is also an agent of the weird ultra-rightwing seminal neoconservative group the Committee on the Present Danger.

Part of their agenda (Korin is the director of the weird, neoconservative and far rightwing Set America Free Coalition and editor of Energy Security) is the demonization of Arabs and Iran and concomitantly, urging the US and Israel to get off of oil in order to bankrupt the Arabs and probably also to sever the alliance between the US and Gulf Arab big money.

Cindy Hurst is a US naval commander who has deep ties to International Zionism and the CIA via IAGS. She works for the Foreign Military Studies Office, which is just a research office for US imperialism, armed branch. Quite a few high-ranking naval officers, often Gentiles, have deep connections to International Zionism.

Edwin Black, though the name does not seem to be Jewish, is a hard-rightwing Jewish "American" writer for the New York Times with deep connections to Israel.

Howard Kohr, the Jewish "American" director of the spearhead of the treasonous Jewish Lobby in the US, AIPAC, authors many pieces.

Walid Phares, is a Lebanese "American" scholar. He is a reactionary Lebanese Maronite Phalangist exiled from Lebanon because he is too reactionary for the current political situation there. The remaining Maronites in Lebanon are for the most part the saner ones - the real nutjobs have long left the place.

He is deep with USCFL, the neoconservative Phalangist arm in the US that has deep connections with far right Zionism in Israel and the US. In particular, he is in deep with Daniel Pipes, discussed in a previous post.

Sam Orez is a little known "American" author, but the name is Jewish and he writes for the Israeli press and on AIPAC and American Jewish Committee issues.

Jewish "American" David Harris, another contributor, is the director of the American Jewish Committee.

Benedict Rogers is deeply involved with the Tory Party of the UK. His purpose is to attack the admittedly horrible Burmese regime, not because it is awful, but because US and apparently British imperialism is waging war on the place because the economy is largely state-owned and the regime has not fully opened itself up to multinational corporations yet.

Joe Eskenazi is a hardline Zionist Jew and a reporter for j, a Jewish weekly. He profiles Jewish "American" gazillionaire Larry Ellison of Oracle (probably one of the world's most arrogant and unpleasant humans) on his trip to Sderot to commiserate with Jews living under largely ineffective rocket fire. Ellison is probably a big bucks money guy in the Jewish Lobby in the US, and it might be useful to investigate this.

Micah Halpern is an extreme rightwing Jew, the usual dual-loyalty type, born in the US and moved to Israel, probably treasonously holding dual citizenship. He frequently writes for far Right Israeli papers.

Ronald Kessler is a big editor at the far rightwing Newsmax.com website.

Gary Rosenblatt is the Editor in Chief of New York Jewish Week.

Aaron Klein is an "American" Jewish journalist who spends his time working out of the extreme rightwing Worldnetdaily's Jerusalem Bureau, often reported wild, insane and ridiculous Israeli propaganda. He did go out and interview the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade though, but he seems to have turned that into a book-length hit piece on armed Palestinians.

Klein is behind the "Obama is a 1960's Weatherman terrorist radical bomber" bullshit. He's currently waging jihad against Obama, apparently on the grounds of being soft on Israel and supportive of Palestinian terrorism, which is dubious. Syria and Jordan both refused him entry to their countries, supposedly for being a Jew, but I think it was mostly for being a Zionist agent and an asshole to boot. Good call.

David Brog is the insane Protestant fundamentalist Zionist connection. He's the Executive Director of Christians United for Israel, chaired by ultra-nutcase Pastor John Hagee.

Armstrong Williams is an ultra-rightwing Black Oreo talk show host and token House Negro serving tea for massa. He was thought to have fallen to infamy recently, but I guess he's resurfacing on this weird website and his radio station is either back on the air or never left the air. Armstrong peddled himself as an ultra-rightwing Black Christian ranting and raving about liberals and liberal values destroying America.

Truth is that Williams is fucking gay, and he's been known to have sexually harassed over 100 men to try to get them to fuck him in the ass or let him suck their dicks or whatever. The media properly buried this story, since it involves a far rightwinger, but it's all true. I don't mind gay men, but I really hate hypocrites.

He's still totally closeted and a liar, and if you look on his website, you have to admit he looks awfully queer. Armstrong loves Israel too, by the way, but probably not as much as a big White cock.

James Quinn is a economist and a professor and Senior Director of Strategic Planning, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He certainly doesn't serve imperialism or the US ruling class. He's some kind of far rightwing "buy gold and silver" sky is falling nutcase economist type of whom we've always had plenty in the US.

Nonie Darwish is some kind of a crazy person, a Palestinian raised in Gaza who moved to the US and decided to shill for Israel! What the Hell? Who's signing her checks anyway?

Joseph Griebowski is an odd fellow. He's head of a very strange organization called Institute on Religion and Public Policy. It is discussed in another post.

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Russia and the Jews, 1795-1916

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated August 23:

A review of Solzhenitsyn's Two Hundred Years Together, a history of Russia and its Jews from 1795-1916. It's the best thing I have ever read on the subject, and I've read a lot of crap about this area from all sides. The author is Richard Pipes and it's published by Benador Associates.

Benador Associates is Neocon Central, home of all manner of rightwing, Zionist, pro-Terror War and pro-Iraq War nasties. From the About US page:

Among the experts are James Woolsey, A.M. Rosenthal, Richard Perle, Amir Taheri, Kanan Makiya and Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

It's supposedly run by some reactionary Peruvian ruling-class woman named Eleana Benador who I've never heard of before. Her photos are here. I hate to make fun of people's appearances, but I will make an exception in here case and call her a hunchbacked dwarf. Why? Because I don't like her, that's why.

Her biography shows you what kind of nasties make up the horrible Peruvian ruling class. Such a malignant bunch of gangsters could only have produced equally malign revolutionaries like the Shining Path. Like creates like; politics is a mirror.

Ms. Benador is also apparently in deep with International Jewry of the nastiest sort, but that's not unusual, because I understand that some members of the Peruvian ruling class are in with them. These folks are fabulously rich, care nothing at all about their country, and don't even spend much time there, they are so busy jet-setting around.

They spend most of their time in foreign cities or on jetliners and they put most of their money in the US, often in the New York Stock Exchange. They're afraid to invest in their own country because it's so "unstable". The reason it's unstable is due to their existence.

I figure she's fronting for some big money lurking somewhere in the background?

I always thought Richard Pipes was a complete prick. He spent most of his life working for the CIA, more or less, as a Sovietologist. Most prominent Sovietologists like Condoleeza Rice were always pretty much just glorified CIA employees. He's another Robert Conquest. Plus, he produced, from the spawn of his loins, an abhorrent ultra-Zionist maniac son named Daniel, he of the fascist Campus Watch.

Pipes was one of the original neocons, along with Frank Gaffney, James Woolsey and Richard Perle. He even worked for Henry Jackson in the 1970's, and you can't much more seminal neocon than that (the neocons were birthed by a largely-Jewish group operating out of Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's). Of course he wrote for Commentary - that's another classic neocon steppingstone.

He opposed detente, served on Reagan's National Security Council in 1981-1982 and teamed up with Paul Nitze and Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the Team B "Beware the Bear!" liars.

He dedicated his whole life to US imperialism's war with the USSR. He lied all day, went to bed, dreamed a bunch of dishonest dreams, got up the next morning, poured some liar crystals into his brewing coffee and started off another day of lying. That was his life; every time he opened up his mouth, it was just the voice of the CIA.

Pipes' work as a Sovietologist, while quality scholarship, was also a politically motivated pack of lies, propaganda and bullshit from the very start, though he did have his moments. Check out his thesis on the cause of the Russian revolution, which I agree with:

Pipes is famous for arguing that the origins of the Soviet Union can be traced to the separate path taken by 15th century Muscovy in a Russian version of the Sonderweg thesis.

In Pipes' opinion, Muscovy differed from every state in Europe in that there was no concept of private property in Muscovy, and that everything was regarded as the property of the Grand Duke/Tsar. In Pipes' view, this separate path undertaken by Russia ensured that Russia would always be an autocratic state with values fundamentally dissimilar to the values of Western civilization.

Nice, huh? It's true in part, but avoids the crucial role of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Anyway, like many of these one-sided characters, once you get them away from the subject of their feverish obsession (in his case, the USSR), they can be surprisingly level-headed, because they're extremely smart and they are finally thinking clearly for once.

Since he is Jewish, I expected the usual Jewish bullshit pile of invective towards the Czar, the Russian people and Russia in general, but this nice review is fair to all sides and sums up the role of the Czar, the Church, Russian nationalists, Jews both traditional and assimilating, revolutionaries, etc superbly.

Check it out and learn something.

I assume his evil spawn Daniel will just go on being an asshole for the rest of his life.

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World O' Crap, Meet World O' Lies

Super-commenter James Schipper responds to the Problems of Democracy Under Capitalism post with this insightful comment. My comments follow:

James Schipper: There are two serious restraint on capitalism: competition and the need to make a profit.

Competition between capitalists insures that the power of capital over consumers and labor is limited. Capitalists have a common interests in the preservation of the capitalist system, but at the same time, capitalists compete against other for the favors of the consumer and to get the best employees.

Always remember that what makes capitalism work is not so much private property but competition. Private property without competition combines the worst of socialism and capitalism.

The need to make a profit sets a limit on what the corporate media can do. Newspapers have to find readers and radio and TV stations have to find listeners and viewers. This implies that they can't be too overtly propagandistic, otherwise the readers, listeners and viewers will stay away.

Commentators like Rush Limbaugh have a large following but only because they primarily discuss non-economic issues. If they spent most of their time defending business, their popularity would quickly plummet. Imagine the reaction of Limbaugh's fan's if he started to extol CEO's who make stratospheric incomes while their companies lay off workers. It is far safer to extol the uniformed heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Plutocracy is a cause that can't be truthful about its aims. That's why the Republicans want ordinary working Americans to worry about college professors who have an elitist lifestyle rather than about executives and capitalists who have an elitist income.

It is ridiculous to suppose that latte-drinking, opera-watching, Volvo-driving eggheads who read foreign novels and watch foreign films are somehow a danger to working stiffs. A party that represents the rich has to be deceitful or else condemn itself to insignificance. The Republicans are such a party.

Robert Lindsay: James makes some excellent points above, especially about how "pointy-headed intellectuals who can't even park their bicycles straight", as George Wallace famously put it, into a sort of populist enemy by the Republican Party, and also about how conservatism is always, by its very nature and necessarily, dishonest.

Here the Republican Party is playing into the anti-intellectual nature of US populism. We have never been a European-style cafe society, and probably never will be.

Also Republicans are taking an increasingly popular critique of their own sure elitism into a critique of fake elitists called "limousine liberals". Problem with limousine liberals being, I guess, that they are hypocrites. Similar diatribes have been launched against something similar called the "Hollywood Left".

This point is superbly made by Philip Agre in a seminal 2004 essay, What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It? As Agre succinctly and immaculately:

Q: What is conservatism?

A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.


Q: What is wrong with conservatism?

A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

Increasingly here we have what are more or less monopolies, James. We have cable and telephone monopolies that were supposed to be regulated, but the government has basically given up regulating them. We have computer monopolies in the form of Intel on chips and Microsoft in apps and OS's.

Starbucks comes into a town, sells at a loss to drive all competition out of town and then jacks up prices. Walmart comes into town, sells at a loss to drive everyone out of business, and then keeps on selling at low cost. However, Walmart mostly sells crap. Here Walmart is violating the monopoly principle of driving up prices while adhering to the monopoly principle of selling crap.

We are now having higher-end stores opening up that charge a lot more than Walmart but at least do not sell crap. As long as there is competition in a market, prices and quality are typically relatively good.

However, the government now operates in the interest of monopoly capital, and, insanely, "free market" economics is opposed to all antitrust regulation. Traditionally, there was bipartisan support for antitrust legislation.

The new bipartisan opposition to antitrust legislation is one of the legacies of Milton Friedman's "Chicago School of Lies" free market fundamentalism snake oil that has created a Gramscian cultural hegemony in US economic thought in the past 35 years.

The Friedmanites published all sorts of nonsense, lies and BS. They went down to Chile, used it as a testing ground for their insane theories, blew up the economy, and then covered their tracks and lie about it to this very day.

They published papers and books on antitrust that overturned nearly 3/4 of a century of perfectly valid economic and legal scholarship that showed unequivocally that prices rise and the quality of services and goods nosedives as markets become more consolidated. These works made up a bunch of fancy-sounding crap that made a dishonest case that all of this proven science was not true.

Monopolies do not produce high prices and crap service and goods. Everything we know is wrong. Instead, reality is inverted and monopolies cause low prices, great products and superb services.

What we are seeing in the US is the move to more and more consolidated markets and more and more monopoly-type markets. The moves by Yahoo and Google and Microsoft on the Internet foretell an Internet that is increasingly monopolistic.

The one good thing about capitalism is competition.

Capitalists love to talk about how much they love competition, but the truth is that they hate it. Competition only benefits the consumer. All businessmen secretly want to be monopolists. All of those businesses dishonestly taking Microsoft to court for being a monopoly actually want to be monopolies themselves.

There are natural monopolies. In the US, those include phone, cable, power, water and some others. Those natural monopolies must be regulated by the state, other wise they will turn into natural unregulated monopolies, which are disastrous for consumers and society.

It's highly dubious that corporations compete for the best workers anymore in the US, except at the highest levels. Corporations and business are perfectly happy to replace good workers with illegal aliens and H-1B and H-2B guest workers from other lands.

Both types of workers are usually much inferior to native US workers, but business no longer cares about quality in the US. Computer companies and homebuilders are perfectly happy to produce crap code and homes that fall apart in a few years. No one really cares about quality anymore in the US, and no one cares about workers either.

The whole culture is centered around getting rich, and that usually means being an employer and hiring labor. To be a worker is to be a schmuck, soon to be taken out by illegal aliens, machinery, a computer program or guest workers from India or Ecuador.

Fordism is progressive type of capitalism named after Henry Ford.

Ford found out his own workers could not even afford to buy his cars, and he was outraged. He resolved to pay his workers enough to buy his cars. This became a progressive strain in capitalism - to pay workers enough so that they would be well-heeled consumers able to buy plenty of products, while at the same time preserving high profits for business. Fordism is done and gone; it's history.

Everything is now globalized, and no one worries about whether or not people can afford to buy your stuff. If labor in one place costs too much, just outsource, move the plant overseas, hire illegals or bring guest worker scabs from India. If workers in one land can't afford your stuff, ship it to some rich people overseas. As long as enough people somewhere can afford your stuff, there's no need to pay workers enough to buy your stuff.

Furthermore, James misinterprets the degree to which Rush Limbaugh is a reactionary. I believe he does extol high corporate salaries. You now have the phenomenon of the low income, working class or middle class, White, usually younger, male, who will defend plutocracy and the politics of the rich to the hilt, despite the fact that it is against his interest.

In this way, the plutocrats have actually been honest about their project and have created a Gramscian cultural hegemony of "plutocracy is good" whereby tens of millions of suckers swallow this crap whole and spout it right back at you without thinking. They did this by saturating the media with pro-plutocrat messages and making it seem reasonable.

They also did it by creating a Lottery mindset, which was unfortunately always a part of US culture (see the Horatio Alger books). Your average White male working stiff will tell you that he too is going to become rich one day. Anywhere from 25-50% of Americans say that they will be millionaires one day. Fully 25% of Americans already describe themselves as "rich". Almost all of these people are White.

The problem with James' media model - that media outlets must compete for readers - is that there is no competition.

There is no Left alternative to Time, Newsweek and US News and World Report. On TV, there is the ultraright Fox News and MSNBC and the rightwing CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. All of these are corporate-owned and spout one pro-corporate line.

It is true that CNN now has Lou Dobbs, who spouts a sort-of progressive populist line. It really is against CNN's interests to keep Dobbs on there, but I guess he is there because enough folks want to hear the message.

What you get instead is a pro-corporate message increasingly draped in fake populist clothing. On Fox News today, they went on and on with a fake populist message about lowering gas prices. Incredibly, they denounced speculation in oil prices, but of course, they did not offer the reasonable thing to do to remedy this - regulation of commodity markets.

Instead, they argued for massively increasing domestic oil production - in the ANWR, in the oil shale of the US Rockies and in offshore deposits. They said that the increased production would so glut the oil market (!) with new supply that this would force the commodity market to drive oil prices downwards, and this would "beat the speculators".

What is interesting is that Fox News was forced to admit that the problem in oil prices is almost entirely due to speculation. What they left out is that increased oil supply probably would not do anything to drive down prices, because the price is not being set by supply-demand anyway. So here you see the fake populism of the Republican Party - sell a fake populist but actually wildly pro-corporate message - "Open up the oil fields!"

Even if this project passed and we able to drill in all these new deposits, it would not put a dent in oil prices. But the US public is so stupid that they would have forgotten about that long ago. If a bunch of Republicans got into office on this fake promise, this is all that matters.

The US public is like a kid with ADD - no attention span. Politicians are never held accountable to promises or projects because no one ever follows promises through for years to see if they come through or not. Politicians get elected on a pile of bull, and then no one is ever there to call them on it later on.

Bush has substantially caused these oil prices by failing to regulate commodity markets (and they will never regulate those markets), but the Repubs are going to stick Obama with it. Bush caused the Iraq mess, but Obama will be stuck with that too. And both of those things are catch-22's with few non-painful ways out.

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Giovanni Gentile on Fascism

Gentile is one of my favorite rightwing intellectuals, not because I agree with him of course, but because he is a true intellectual, and I respect that even in my ideological enemies.

Beats fake intellectual clowns like Jonah Goldberg any day of the weak. The fascists were not liars peddling bullshit and crap like so many of today's rightwing intellectuals. Classic fascist doctrine held a lot of important truths and was not dishonest at all. Instead of being a pile of crap and lies, it merely peddled repugnant truths.

The Doctrine of Fascism, by Gentile (supposedly by Mussolini himself, but Gentile actually wrote it) from 1932, is the clearest evocation of Mussolini-type fascism, which was different in important ways from the biological racism of the Nazis. Let's take a look at some excerpts from this seminal essay. In particular, we will note how Mussolini's fascism differs from Marxism, because the two are often confused.

Mussolini came to power after the "March on Rome" in 1922, and was appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel.

In 1932 Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism.

Let us now examine Leo Strauss, the father of the neocons. A woman named Shadia Drury has done an excellent job of explicating his work. Strauss operated very much in a Mussolini fascist tradition.

Two Drury articles are here - the first, by Drury herself - Saving America: Leo Strauss and the Neoconservatives - is an analysis of Strauss and the Straussians. The second is an interview with Drury - Noble Lies and Perpetual War.

I have read this material are recommend it highly. It's a bit hard to get through, but it's not Marx. If you read it carefully and really think about what you are reading, you may finally figure out what these neocons are really all about.

Drury notes some other authors who ply the same waters as Strauss - in particular Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt. All of these have influenced the neocons. The unmistakable conclusion is that the neocons are fascists.

Astute reader James Hajduk sees Gentile as a "rightwing Hegelian". I agree with that odd analysis.

Gentile follows, in blockquotes, followed by my analysis.

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice.

War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death....

This is very Straussian. These guys believe in war for the sake of war and for no other reason. When man does not go to war, he becomes soft, decadent, depraved, cosmopolitan, and...democratic. He sits in cafes and becomes effete, devotes himself to pleasure, and develops a fear of death to the extent that he will hardly fight for anything anymore.

...The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after...

This is very "organic" blood-and-soil type stuff here.

...Fascism [is] the complete opposite of…Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production....

Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect.

More organic blood-and-soil type stuff here.

And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied - the natural progeny of the economic conception of history.

And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society....

Fascism actually arises when there is a severe crisis in capitalism such that the workers or the Left is about to seize power. As a last-ditch effort to save their power and money, the elite resorts to fascism. It's not ideal, but it's better than the alternative.

In 1921, Italy was semi-feudal. Peasants were rising up all over the land against the landlords who held almost all the land. The peasants worked on the land as farm laborers or rented land in debt bondage in a semi-feudal system. There was a Left revolution in the rural areas all over Italy.

This is when Italy started to go fascist, as the landed oligarchy in the countryside mobilized working class men as an army to attack the rural peasantry. The upshot was Mussolini's March on Rome the next year - 1922. Italian fascism needed a crisis, and they got one in 1921.

Note the use of working class, especially thuggish, young male, working class elements to attack the their brothers, the peasants. In the same way, Salvadoran fascism in recent years made use of young working class men as an army for the oligarchy - they constituted a significant portion of the death squads.

After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application.

Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....

Fascism at its core is simply elitist. That is all there is to it. It opposes democracy because they think that the masses are asses. Rule by the common man is the ultimate horror, not because he doesn't know what he is doing and will be persuaded to harm himself, but because this will lead to the pleasure society and the softening of men.

Further, the elite fears it will lead to a loss of power and money on their part. By denying the obvious existence of class struggle, fascism actually cements ruling class rule forever. It allows class struggle on the part of the elite, of course, but denies it on the part of the workers.

The business class is allowed a good profit, but Italian fascism may ask that they produce for the state instead. Producing for the state usually produces high profits for business in all varieties of fascism.

...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absurd conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress....

Fascism is actually opposed to the notion of the progress of men. Things are cemented and in some ways are timeless. We are the same as we were 100 or 1000 or 2000 years ago. Class relations, male and female roles, etc., are cemented forever in the name of tradition. Liberalism and even science is regarded with contempt.

Varieties of fascism similar to Italian fascism sprang up all over Europe in the 1920's and 1930's and were often very powerful. Note that conservatism is also generally opposed to the notion of progress of man. Man is man, he is the same as he will ever be, and all attempts at moving forwards are "social engineering" designed to upset the "natural order of things".

Conservatism often tosses in the notion that this "natural order of things" is ordained by whatever Deity is worshiped by the people.

The "natural order of things" usually means something like a few rich people owning just about everything and most everyone else having hardly even anything, but both conservatism and fascism regard this as "normal" and attempts to change this natural order as unnatural, doomed to failure and against human nature itself.

...Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority...a century of Fascism.

For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State....

However, this collectivism preserves profits. It collectivizes workers and owners as one coherent mass with "mutual interests". This is quite the opposite of Marxism.

The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State.

The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....

It is true, from its foundations in the Dark Ages, when society continued to exist without the state, liberal society has always seen the people as being first and then the state.

The people create the state and run it. The state is run by the people themselves for their interests and is subordinate to them. The state and society are separate. This is the root structure of all Western liberal democracy, and it is in opposition to fascism and also to Russian thinking, where the state and society have always been one.

...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....

...For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death.

Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude.

But empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime, the character of many forces in the State, and the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of Italy in the twentieth century, and would oppose it by recalling the outworn ideology of the nineteenth century - repudiated wheresoever there has been the courage to undertake great experiments of social and political transformation; for never before has the nation stood more in need of authority, of direction and order.

If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it.

This is classic stuff here. All fascism is imperialistic and expansionistic, because this is the natural and normal tendency of the tribe or nation as state. Fascism takes different ethnicities and molds them into one in the form of the state.

Fascism is Phoenix-like - a society used and abused for foreigners, fallen into decadence, enslavement and weakness, will rise again, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of its own abasement, mining the glory of the nation's past (in Mussolini's case, there were constant evocations of reclaiming the ancient glory that was Rome) to once again rise in the tradition of the elders to the greatness that is the destiny of the people of that nation.

There is an ethnic (or at least national) supremacism here, no matter how much folks try to say Mussolini was not racist.

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Illegals, Unions, TINA and National Sovereignty

Excellent commenter Uncle Milton notes presciently about illegal immigration. Comments at the end:

Uncle Milton: Unions didn't gain any real power in this country until the immigration doors were slammed shut in the 1920s. In the modern era (the last three decades) you don't have to look very far to see how cheap Latino labor has suppressed the wages of meat packers, janitors, construction workers, etc.

When critiquing illegal immigration, I find it much more productive (and appealing or at least tolerated) by a wider audience when you bring up what it has done to wages and how employers have profited.

Now with the globalization of computer technology many things can be done overseas: accounting, programming, tech support, architecture. In theory, this is done for lower costs, but I know multiple cases were companies brought labor back to the US.

We hear all the time about how the US isn't producing enough engineers. What you don't hear as much is that the average engineer only stays in the field for about a decade instead of a 30 to 40 year career. Quite a bit of ageism in the field.

Our country's currency is being debased, our technology distributed (and frequently "borrowed" with no recompense in the process) to other nations, and unrestrained immigration (and attendant high birthrates of "migrants" subsidized by US taxpayers) are straining resources.

It's generally profitable to those in top 1/10 of 1% of wealth but not so great for everyone else. The concept of national sovereignty being the source of ones wealth seems to have been tossed out the window. At least Japanese and Chinese people seem to have a better grasp on the concept that a stable cohesive nation is your most important source of wealth.

Uncle makes a fantastic point here! The US labor movement only really got going after we seriously restricted immigration in the mid-1920's. We then massively loosened up immigration in 1965, at least racially speaking. At some point after that, we began to experience mass immigration.

Frosty Wooldridge notes that the 1965 Immigration Act resulted in immigration going from 170,000 - 1.1 million per year. That's a damn good reason to oppose it right there, even if you care nothing about the racial angle.

Mass illegal immigration from Mesoamerica started under Reagan in 1980, picked up tremendous speed after 1990 and has exploded since 2000.

The US union movement began to go into a serious decline around 1973 (Any relation to the 1965 immigration act?), about the same time that US wages started to seriously stagnate and wealth began being distributed upwards. Yes, even the Jimmy Carter "Atari Democrats" were in on this bullshit. We've now had 35 years of this insanity.

Plunging wages have combined with wildly increasing inequality, a flood of illegal immigration, an evisceration of our social democracy and what little Social Contract we ever had to produce 28 years of varying degrees of reactionary politics, with a brief intercession for a Eisenhower Republican Democrat named Clinton (actually, Ike was much more progressive than Bill Clinton).

Does any of this make sense? Of course not.

Why does a population where the bottom 60-80% are getting eviscerated march off and vote for the eviscerators every year? Well. They do it in the 3rd World. They used to do it in Latin America. Can you see where we are headed?

The ageism in IT is disgusting. You get about 10 years and then no one will hire you anymore because you are too expensive. 90% of new IT hires are going to H-1B job thieves anyway, and one of the Senate's paragons of Democratic liberalism, Barbara Mikulski, recently introduced a bill to greatly increase the number of H-1B job thieves to the US in order to destroy even more US jobs and lay off even more US workers.

Does that make sense? Of course not.

It only makes sense in a Democratic Party whose liberal wing has utterly abandoned US workers.

I disagree that the illegal immigration flood is only beneficial to the top .1%. Sure, they love it, but I think the entire top 20% benefits, and further, the entire US business class, from small business all the way to corporations, just loves it to death. Hispanic-Americans generally don't benefit a bit, and I insist that most of them are actually harmed by illegal immigration, but they line up on racial grounds anyway.

One of the worst things about Reagan-Thatcherism's TINA (There Is No Alternative) neoliberalism is that everywhere on Earth it has been tried, it has generally benefited only the top 20% of the population. The bottom 80% gets screwed no matter what. From 1980-1992 in the US, the top 80% gained a lot of money and the entire bottom 80% of the US population lost money!

It's been this way everywhere and as regular as clockwork. That's why Latin America is turning their back on this shit. They've had a couple decades of this poison and they are not buying anymore. These "dumb Latinos" are not as stupid as Gringos think they are! Hell, they are smarter than most White Americans.

Anyway, this nasty 20% bastard class has been created everywhere, and everywhere it has done quite a bit of damage. This class is deeply invested in neoliberalism and makes up the overwhelming majority of the professionals and movers and shakers in society. They seek to keep neoliberalism in place forever by whatever means they can.

Even in the UK, a nasty 20% elite has been created since Thatcher. They have nice new foreign cars and second homes in the country. The result has been the rightwing Labor governments of Blair and Brown. In Latin America, the masses actually voted these professional and business elites out, but it hasn't happened everywhere.

The notion of national sovereignty being the source of a nation's wealth is an interesting one, but I do not know where to start on that subject. Maybe someone else can chime in.

It's clear that in Corporate World, there is no national sovereignty anymore. The corporation is the ultimate traitor - it has no national allegiance whatsoever. How do drive around that nasty speed bump is a pretty difficult question.

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Prophets Shouting in the Wilderness

From some responses to a post of mine, More Illegal Immigration Madness. I'm amazed at how apathetic the rest of the country is about this Mesoamerican mass illegal immigration that has swamped us in the Southwest.

Some of us, like me, are angry at those who say, "No big deal, let them all in," while they live in places in which few illegals have yet swarmed. So we do take a bit of shaudenfruede enjoyment out of the near future that you all will be experiencing in the next 20 years or sooner, assuming you live that long and still live in the Lower 48.

What's truly sick is that to remark on this idiocy of mass invasion by what amounts to an occupying army of enemy soldiers in any way is considered to be grotesque racism, and an example of White Power, Nazi or White Supremacist tendencies (!).

The Mexicans run the show around here and they police things very well. If they think you are a White Power, excuse me, an opponent of illegal Mexican mass invasion, then they will shun you, glare at you, spit at you, threaten you, bang things and make loud noises until you move away, threaten to beat you up, try to ban you from their establishments, on and on.

If you mention illegals in public, the Hispanics all start glaring at you and your friends start kicking you and ordering you threateningly to shut up. People are actually scared of the illegals here.

They are like a teeming Latin American Underclass in a revolutionary situation south of the border, and one gets the feeling that they could take up guerrilla warfare of some sort of another at any time, just like in a non-US banana republic.

In some ways, maybe they already have.

Funny thing is Mexicans are pretty damn racist themselves and they are incredibly ethnocentric. You know, those handy little caveman weapons that come in handy during the sort of Hispanic-non-Hispanic ethnic warfare that we currently live under. On the contrary, if one hates being invaded like this, it's a sign that they still have a bit of sanity left and haven't drunken too much of the multicultural Koolaid yet.

There's no space at all on the Left or in the Democratic Party for views like those below, and that has to be the biggest tragedy of them all. Way to go, concede more space to the Right.

Neither of these posters is the slightest bit racist, I am convinced. Or if they are, I don't care anymore. There's really no other sane way to react in this situation.


Real America, from Winnetka, California shouts in the wilderness:

Wait until you people in states other than California see what it is really like to live in a Mexican city in the former United States. Your co-workers will be speaking Spanish, not English, and receiving food stamps even though they earn as much as you, while you will be called racist for speaking your mind on anything that offends anyone Hispanic.

Your children will be sidetracked in school, and the little gang-mentality foreigners will cause you and your children grief and money. When you have a fender bender, you will find that the person that hit you has no insurance and does not speak English (conveniently) and the court will refuse to do anything about it. California is now a horrible place to live, and it won't be long until all of America is like California.


Transplanted Texan, Sun City, CA, howls back, coyote-like: Gee, I believe they are starting to get the picture. The best is yet to come, sorry to say. They will grow accustomed to living in a 3rd World culture. Gangs, Mexican graffiti on all the fences, walls, schools, etc. Oh, and the daily drive-by shootings, murders, thefts and threats to their children at school. Just to name a few treats to come.

Whatever it takes, Mexico's chief export, narcotics, will play a part in their lives. Murdered police officers, drug dealers, wars. Our country is in such trouble, we all need to pray for what is still our county and the generations of Americans to come.

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Can't Make It Without Immigrant Scabs? Just Go!

We hear over and over again about all these businesses that supposedly are going to go out business if they can't hire immigrant scabs. And that's what every single illegal alien is in this country - a scab. Let's make that loud and clear here.

And H-1B "non-immigrant guest workers" that have totally destroyed the computer industry for US engineers and programmers are nothing but scabs too. Indian nationalists tell me that without H-1B's, all US computer corporations will have to go out of business. Well, first of all, that is complete nonsense. It's not going to happen.

This is all based on the premise that there is such horrible competition from those great computer corporations in INDIA that are, you know, going to put Microsoft and Intel out of business.

I've also heard it from a fish processing plant in New England that now hires all illegal aliens. Back in the 1980's, this was a union shop paying high wages. Bottom line is they broke the union. Now they pay crap wages and the only people dumb or desperate enough to work there are illegals. I suppose they are treated just wonderfully too.

So they need to hire illegals. As always, Americans will do the horrible, smelly and dirty work, but you need to pay them a good wage. This is what happened to our meat packing plants too, exactly. This is also what happened to the US construction industry. One by one, they broke the constructions unions.

In the 1970's and 1980's, my friends were working union construction. It paid good money, enough to buy a home and raise a family. That's all pretty much gone now. The jobs that once paid the equivalent of $30-45/hour in today's wages are mostly history. There are still union jobs around, but not that many, and they have to wage continuous war against illegals.

There's also a serious problem with legal immigrants from Mesoamerica who we have insanely allowed to flood in here. The result has been a complete glut in unskilled labor, such that many legal Mesoamericans are happy to work construction for $10/hr.

These jobs used to pay $30-45/hr. One would think that with a 30-75% decline in the cost of labor, even including inflation, that the cost of a house would have gone down. Forget it. Instead, we have seen insane increases in inequality and lopsided returns for those at the top of the heap.

I blame the Left in part for all of this. For the destruction of the US middle class and working class, for the crime and gang wave among young Americans in our cities (all the unskilled work goes to illegals, so young men turn to crime, gangs and dope).

For the mad increases in inequality, for the decline in wages for US workers, for workers have to work two and three jobs to get by, for the entire rightwing and Republican revolution (created in part by the empowerment of a 20% upper to upper middle class that benefited tremendously by massive wealth redistribution), for the ruination of US unions.

There were many factors at play in the development of these sorry reactionary and backwards trends over 35 years, but the US Idiot Left cheering on mass legal and illegal immigration into the US, especially in the past 20 years, has played its own sorry and significant role.

The American worker doesn't really have any friends anymore. Both parties are supporting his total and absolute replacement by a never-ending tidal wave of immigrant scabs.

There have been some posts lately about a particularly gratuitous, outrageous and in your face abuse of immigration law in a town called Postville, Iowa in a plant that was managed by Orthodox Jews.

They came into Postville, took over the plant, got rid of all the Americans, and hired all illegal aliens. They are now polluting the water supply. I doubt they have paid much taxes either. Apparently they were also allowing the plant to be used to manufacture methamphetamine! How low can you go?

This incident has been written up a lot, including a book by a Jewish author that was quite critical of these Orthodox Jews - Steven Bloom - Postville - A Clash of Cultures in the Heartland. They came into the town, would not talk to or be friendly with anyone not Jewish, filled the town with illegal Mesoamericans, and basically created a lot of havoc.

This particular Jewish family - the Rubashkins - have been crooks for a very long time. They've been not only ripping off the Gentiles in the traditional Orthodox manner, but they have also specialized in ripping off their own people. That's actually a violation of Jewish dual morality, and it may explain why they got some fellow Jews after them.

The Jewish press, as usual, wrote glowing articles about this wonderful situation in this small Iowa town, and Jewish Hollywood made a stupid documentary narrated by Glen Close and sponsored by Hallmark that lied and said how wonderful everything was in Postville, Iowa.

Here is Steve Sailer's excellent article on this situation. The comments are also enlightening. There is a Jewish commenter (apparently) on there defending the Lubavitchers running the slaughterhouse (the Lubavitchers are the very worst of all ultra-Orthodox Jews). His line is that if they shut down the plant, it will be an economic disaster for Postville.

I get to the point of my post.

So shut it down already! Seriously, just shut down the fucking plant. They aren't hiring any Americans anyway. Just move it to Mexico and take the 800 Mexican scabs with you.

That's basically my response to all these idiots who say we need to bring in Indian H-1B job thief scabs and illegals to do all this work that supposedly Americans just won't do. Supposedly it's going to harm US business too much to get rid of all the immigrant scabs, legal and illegal.

Look man, if you can't make it paying American workers the wages that they want (not too high, actually) just take the fuck off. Go overseas. Offshore. Move your damn business to a foreign country. What good is a business in the US that isn't even hiring Americans anyway?

Who's making money off that, besides the criminal owner? A bunch of immigrant scabs, that's who. And they are worthless. They add nothing to this country, they and their jobs can go in a NY minute without a tear to be shed. These businesses are nothing but parasites in our country. If all a business can do in our country is just be a parasite, then just move your damn operation offshore and get the Hell out of the country.

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Jonah Goldberg, Intellectual Lightweight and Hack Journalist

I guess my main issue with this guy is that he fashions himself as some sort of a scholar. Not that the Right lacks scholars. William Buckley, Ludwig von Mises, Frederick Hayek, Winston Churchill,Hell, Giovanni Gentile (!), are all at least welterweight intellectuals. You might disagree with them, but they don't write garbage.

Jonah Goldberg is a pretend scholar. He drifted into fame on the back of his ultra-right wing Momma, Lucianne Goldberg, a very rich lady who ran a rightwing publishing house. She put sonny boy in charge as vice president anyway through no talent or degree of his own.

Lucianne was the charmer that helped use Linda Tripp to publicize the completely preposterous charges that led to the near-impeachment of a US President on one of the corrupt episodes of US politics since the election of Grover Cleveland by a fraudulent Electoral College in the 1870's. Before that, Dred Scott. Before that, Aaron Burr murdering a fellow politician while a nation cheered.

Modern conservatism has been a process of sinking lower and lower morally to the point where they are about as close to the ground as slugs and worms. And Jonah Goldberg.

This book is just stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Now, mind you, I don't mind stupid. Give me pro wrestling and a beer anytime. I just want it properly labeled as such. This is pro wrestling stupid labeled as serious intellectual discourse. Instead, it's just right-wing Kuru. Like Kuru, modern conservatism pretends to be a tasty intellectual dish while secretly rotting your brain.

This book is all about why fascism is really a leftwing philosophy. You know, how leftists, liberals, Communists and all the rest are really fascists. Yeah, he says that.

Throughout the book, he explicitly denies the long-standing connection that sane historians and political scientists have long established between fascism and the rightwing movement. As in, fascism is a movement of the far right wing. As in, Communism is a movement of the far left wing. As in, conservatives have as much in common with fascists as liberals do with Communists.

All of these distinctions are lost on Goldberg in his quest for the Holy Grail or Rightwing Propaganda. Goldberg wasted three years of his life writing this book, which is useful for lining bird cages but for little else.

What is truly sad is that this book shot to #3 on the New York Times best-seller list. That means that lots of Americans, many of whom think they are intellectuals, actually bought this book and ate intellectual Alpo as they consumed its 400 pages.

This book has turned into a modern day opus among conservatives. I am on a list with many conservatives, and it is clear that many are highly intelligent. But something has happened. Conservative kuru has set in and their brains are starting to rot. They don't make much sense when they write. They think Jonah Goldberg is a great intellectual thinker of our time. All the signs are there.

Some reviews of this immensely sad and frightening book here, here, here and here.

Oh Hell, just gimme Giovanni Gentile. He's horrible, but at least he's a real and even great thinker. You've got to have a list a trace of respect for a guy who counted Fichte, Marx, Hegel and Nietzsche among his influences, and Croce calls him the most rigorous neo-Hegelian in modern philosophy.

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Cow Farts Cause More Global Warming Than Humans?

The latest rightwing crap.

I was on a rightwing blog a couple of years ago and decided to ask how many believed in global warming. The vast majority did not. A few said it was happening, but it was natural. One or two said it was happening, but no one knew what was causing it, and we needed to study it more.

This blog has unfortunately become infested lately with some young White male 20-something reactionary-to-libertarian trolls who are lurking in the comments section.

It's quite simple to be a libertarian when you are young, dumb and full of cum. I voted Libertarian at age 22. I'd never do it again, but that's how you learn. People that age just haven't been fucked hard enough and enough times by life yet. By the time we are 40, most of us have had about a million horrible things happen to us, and narcissism is on sharp decline. That's why age and wisdom are traditionally synonymous.

They're causing a lot of dissension, but echo chambers are boring. Comments rules forbid me from banning folks based on ideology, so for the moment, they are sticking around.

It's kind of interesting to have some pet rightwingers to play with, because like a lot of pets, they do a lot of stupid shit. Since rightwingers can talk unlike all other pets, rightwingers also say stupid shit.

Debating rightwingers is like debating ultranationalist Jewish Zionists. Most of their arguments are absolute crap. The reason is because what they are arguing for is perfectly horrible to most folks.

Hence I really admire Zionists like Samson Blinded who just tell it like it is. I admire libertarians like Entitled to an Opinion who just lay it out in all of libertarianism's heartless nastiness. Plus TGGP and Obaidah Shoher and really bright guys, and I have to admire that, if they are pushing something pretty awful.

Since conservatism and Zionism are unpalatable to most folks as they actually exist, conservatives and Zionists always have to lie to try to get decent people to go along with their programs, which most folks find repellent.

Anyway, it looks like the rightwing has moved on on global warming. Only 6% of the US says it doesn't exist, but about 50% of Republican Congresscritters say so.

But the new line is that global warming exists, but it's not caused by people, it's caused by cow farts!

Well, if that were so, as a totalitarian, I would just say fine, so kill all the cows, serve the whole world steak for a month and be done with it. If that's too radical, make a beef hamburger at McDonald's cost twice what a chicken or turkey hamburger does. Soon every fast food joint has beef and non-beef options and profits are blasting right along.

This rightwing argument, like most of them, is ultimately devious. The rightwingers know that this hamburger-munching Americans will never tax their beloved burgers even one penny.

So they throw up their hands and say nothing can be done, especially about reducing auto emissions, which is really what they have their butts smoking about anyway. How dare you order me to ride a bike!

Cow farts cause global warming, so what business do we have trying to reduce car emissions? Let global warming continue apace.

Problem is that they are playing games with figures.

It is true that the cattle industry, in the totality of its effects, does account for 18% of global warming. However, cow burps and farts only account for 12% of that 18%, and that 12% is 98% burps and only 2% farts. So cow farts actually account for .04% of global warming. That is something like 1% of all transportation (mostly vehicle) emissions. Cow farts and burps in total account for 2.1% of global warming.

If cow burping and farting is only 12% of cow global warming, what's all the rest? All the land, especially tropical forest land, that is cleared for cattle. All of the fossil fuel burning that goes into the production of fertilizer, feed and growing cattle. All of the transportation costs involved in the cattle industry. And on and on.

One would think that any livestock or animal husbandry is as capable of producing this problem as any other. Not so. Cattle cause the overwhelming majority of the global warming from animal husbandry.

Therefore, we could continue to eat meat, but just switch from beef to lamb, turkey, chicken, pork, goat, etc. I'd love to turn a lot of the cattle lands on the Great Plains back to buffalo and then harvest them for food. We had great herds of buffalo roaming our Midwest for thousands of years with no problems for the ecosystem and no global warming issues. I am told that rabbits are an excellent food.

A great way to do this would just be to tax beef and probably even milk based on the amount of damage it does to the ecosystem. My brother (I won't go near the place) informs that hamburgers at McDonald's cost from $1-4. Double the price. Make them cost $2-8 instead of $1-4, as I mentioned above. It's probably politically impossible, but that's why I have totalitarian tendencies.

Cattle also cause a tremendous amount of other damage above and beyond global warming. I will just let the article summarize:

Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world's emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.

Ranching, the report adds, is "the major driver of deforestation" worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert. Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.

Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.

The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating "dead zones" devoid of life. One is up to 21,000 sq km, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.

The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases.

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