The Discomfort of Thinking That, Yes, It Can Happen to Us. Watch This...

With all the closed door negotiations going on in Washington D.C. concerning the debt ceiling and the national budget, it's easy to side with your favorite political party of choice. As a matter of fact, it's easy simply because it's intentionally designed for you to do so. The co-mingling of terms, with divergent meaning, has purposely created confusion and anxiety within a population that looks for order and assurance and security. It's Sunday, two days before the presupposed deadline, and still no deal has been met with sufficient compromise. Each side has dug its heels into the ground, from what the media tell us, and it's going to be a fight to the finish. 

But consider the possibility that this is all for show. Consider for a moment that this run to an eleventh-hour agreement, which I'm betting will be the outcome, is all grandstanding and political spectacle. Is this is all street theater -- Wall Street theater -- carefully choreographed and acted out in order to extract more blood from a turnip, as the saying goes? Will the perpetrators congratulate themselves in canned and unauthentic somber impromptu speeches late Monday night, and claim a bipartisan effort pulled us back from the precipice of economic chaos, while the true congratulatory champagne cork-popping will be out of camera range when, unbeknownst to the American public, they'll exult with glee that they've bamboozled and duped us again?

Naomi Klein, the author of The Shock Doctrine, premised that "[f]rom Chile in the 1970s onward...right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society." It can be argued, and the evidence supports the idea, that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was, and is, the latest example of "shock doctrinism" in play -- that is, before the methodology was let loose on the American people. Are we the Chile of 1973? Are we witnessing a complete privatization like the crumbling Soviet empire did in the 1990s? And, was Iraq only a dress rehearsal to ensure that all the details of the performance were prepared, refined, and coordinated -- before commencing with the biggest and most elaborate attempt to exploit a perceived fiscal crisis in this country's history? Is our economy being held hostage -- in order to destroy the last major counterbalance to the political power of corporations and the wealthy? You tell me.

If you haven't read The Shock Doctrine, you owe it to yourself to do so. There are few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is definitely one of those books. Even if you have read it, watch this embedded video of the film based upon the bestseller. At almost an hour-and-twenty minutes, it's a film, remember, not a short skit or flash-video, so get comfy and be ready to explore how shock doctrinism works, how it was conceived, and how the resultant predatory and mutant malignancy of disaster capitalism has been used over and over again to impose privatization over the commons and the lives of millions already. After viewing, ask yourself whether The Shock Doctrine has been unleashed on this unwitting nation, bit by bit, and think about whether this perceived crisis is just another step toward total privatization of everything. Tuesday's only two days away. It's my guess we'll be less a pound of flesh, if not more, by then, although the exact details may not be forthcoming for several weeks. Let's see.

Permanent War is a Racket

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." ~~  Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (USMC), from his book War Is a Racket (1935)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The French novelist and critic, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, didn't live during the American militarism of the twentieth century, and certainly wasn't speaking of perpetual and permanent war, but his oft translated "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose", accurately describes the nature of imperialism and the expansion of empire by the United States during the last century and up to the present. General Smedley Butler couldn't have refined the business of expansionism better than in his controversial, War Is a Racket, when he summarized:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

General Butler knew the theatrics of war: the propaganda and lies that are useful to inciting and continuing war; the pain and suffering inflicted, not only upon those unfortunate enough to be within the direct path of the carnage of war, but also those who pay an economic cost through the depletion of their nation's treasury. No nation is rich enough to pay for war and the betterment of society, although Lyndon Johnson tried.

Greg Coleridge cites six very lucrative ways that corporations profit from war. One is the control of strategic resources. "[O]il, natural gas, and other physical resources (water in the future) are the aim of business corporations to either control or gain access to. US- and UK-based transnational energy corporations initiated the drive for war in Iraq for oil and in Afghanistan for natural gas." It's not just coincidental that Exxon/Mobile and other Big Oil corporations recorded record profits recently. Another way corporations profit, obviously, is through the sale of weaponry. The Pentagon’s top three contractors are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. Their projects usually operate on a cost-plus arrangement, so the more expensive the implement of war, the more profitable the company.  

The profits from waging war are obvious. Merriam-Webster defines mercenary this way: "One that serves merely for wages; especially a soldier hired into foreign service." Mercenaries are motivated to take part in hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain. Because the term, "mercenary", retains so many negative connotations, the new term used internationally is Private Military Companies (PMCs). To further dilute and confuse, the mainstream media usually refer to these simply as "contractors".  You know them well: Xe Services, LLC, formally Known as Blackwater. Their name became synonymous with Fallujah in 2004, when four of their own were killed and hung from a bridge by Iraqi insurgents.
 
At least ninety percent of its revenue comes from government contracts, two-thirds of which are no-bid contracts. From CorpWatch: "In 2003, Blackwater landed its first truly high-profile contract: guarding civilian Administrator L. Paul Bremer in Iraq, at the cost of $21 million for 11 months. Since June 2004, Blackwater has been paid more than $320 million out of a $1 billion, five-year State Department budget for the Worldwide Personal Protective Service, which protects U.S. officials and some foreign officials in conflict zones. In 2006, Blackwater won the remunerative contract to protect the U.S. embassy in Iraq, which is the largest American embassy in the world." To understand the enormity of the costs involved, every U.S. soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. War is big business. 

After war devastates and destroys, reconstruction reaps billions of dollars for large construction contractors such as Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton. War reconstruction, as Mr. Coleridge compares, is similar to what conservatives disdained about "make work" projects of FDR's Works Progress Administration, except they're beneficial to a select few corporate entities as opposed to society at-large.  Instead of participating in the building of infrastructure, such as the construction of Hoover Dam back in the 1930s, for example, companies such as Bechtel are awarded prime cost-plus contracts to rebuild torn apart countries -- inept and as inefficient as they may be. As disaster capitalism dictates, for-profiteers are dispatched to privatize previously publicly owned and controlled infrastructure -- all at taxpayer expense. Amazingly, greater than one-third of Bechtel's and Haliburton's revenues came from sweetheart no bid contracts to rebuild Iraq, as reported by The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), an independent and non-profit research and media organization based in Montreal. From the article: 

"Apart from Halliburton the Bechtel Corporation was immediately singled out for a no bid contract by USAID, for the repair and rebuilding of destroyed power generation facilities, electrical grids, municipal water systems, sewage systems, airport facilities, dredging and repair of Umm Qasr seaport before the seaport was occupied; and for reconstruction of schools, ministries, irrigation structures and transport links, after the deliberate destruction of a substantial part of the civilian infrastructure by targeted precision bombing only with a view to justify these reconstruction contracts. Never before in history has one company been granted a contract for the reconstruction of an entire country which will eventually be worth up to $100 billion. Since 2003 more than one third of the annual revenues of Halliburton and Bechtel are derived from the no bid contracts in Iraq, conclusively establishing the real objective of the war."

War is big business; reconstruction is also big business. But what is even more lucrative, more profitable, and easy money for the banking syndicate is government debt. War costs money -- masses amount of money. More money than any country, or empire, can generate from normal tax revenue streams. So, of course, debt accrues...and accrues...and accrues. That's the problem we face now. Deficits have spun out of control, adding more debt to an already beleagued budget. Not only have we bailed out the "too big to fail" banking system, but we're now paying interest on war debt (along with the interest to bail them out, among other things). As Coleridge correctly points out, "[t]he government allows banks to literally create money out of thin air to purchase US Treasury notes. Governments are on the hook for not only the principle of the loans but interest. Thus, banks profit from receiving interest payments and whatever principle may be repaid for money they never had to begin with. This is profit of glorious proportions to banking corporations. Wars, thus, create government dependency to banks – which explains why throughout history banks have encouraged Kings and other royalty to war with each other." 

And of course, next comes the privatization part -- the part that's hanging over our heads like the sharpened blade of an already bloodied guillotine. If you've read Naomi Klein's brilliant The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, you already know what this means and how it works. From Ms. Klein's introduction:

"I call these ochestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catatrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, 'disaster capitalism'."

The "catastrophic event" we're experiencing is that there's not enough money to pay for domestic programs and war at the same time. It's the old, and very true, economic truism that's anything but a cliché: "guns or butter". Any economist will tell you that a nation can have one or the other, but not both -- at least not for long. We've reached "the long", and it hasn't been by accident. It was purposeful and carefully arranged. Just as a it takes all the musical instruments in a symphony orchestra playing their individual parts, the current push to privatize Medicare, for example, took an assault on many fronts in order to get the traction that it has. Under a relatively stable economy with manageable yearly deficits, topics such as the Paul Ryan's privatization plan would never see the light of day. But wars and occupations, and the preparations that accompany them, costing $6 trillion (one trillion is a million millions) since 2001, the business of war has tapped us out. And that's just the business of war! It doesn't include the notorious Bush tax cuts that were extended for two years by our sitting president, and which he's considering making permanent, or the TARP to bail-out the "too big to fail" investment banks in the fall of 2008. The meter's still running on this debacle.

So whether the provocations and pretenses for war, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, were legitimate or not; whether they were retaliatory for actual injustices or only purported as such, Naomi Klein's book title provides the essential understanding of how contemporary capitalism -- disaster capitalism -- works. It was the classical economist, Milton Friedman, who observed that "only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable." We saw this in Wisconsin earlier this year, in Ohio, and in so many other states that instituted austerity measures while selling off public assets to corporate interests.  

Yes, General Butler was right -- war is a racket. Today it's a permanent racket. It's the fastest and most convenient way to alter a society economically. The financial ramifications have been devastating for most, but for a select and elitist few, the riches are unimaginable.

The embedded trailer for Why We Fight (2005 film) is an amazing documentary describing the rise and maintenance of the military-industrial-[congressional] complex that President Eisenhower warned us about during his farewell address in January, 1961 -- fifty years ago. Download it, rent it, borrow it, or watch it at a friend's house. Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki offers an in-depth look at how the United States has become a permanent-war machine and empire.    

Corporate New Deal

"For economic shock therapy to be applied without restraint -- as it was in Chile in the seventies, China in the late eighties, Russia in the nineties and the U.S. after September 11, 2001 -- some sort of additional major collective trauma has always been required, one that either temporarily suspended democratic practices or blocked them entirely. This ideological crusade was born in the authoritarian regimes of South America, and in its largest newly conquered territories -- Russia and China -- it coexists most comfortably, and most profitable, with an iron-fisted leadership to this day." ---- The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein

Just four years ago, Naomi Klein's best selling book, The Shock Doctrine, accurately and vividly described what's going on in America today. It was four years ago, but she was able to predict the future; she saw the writing on the wall. What we've been witnessing in Wisconsin the last couple of weeks is the Shock Doctrine -- "disaster capitalism" -- occurring on a smaller scale.  

It's not a coincidence that last week's revelation that the U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war in Afghanistan. The program for CIA psychological torture techniques originally developed after the Second World War and extended into the 1960s. In the U.S., at least two lines of thought converged; one was about how to alter people's minds without leaving marks and scars, and the other was about what was the best way of organizing a given economy. The first grew out of experiments in psychological torture (electroshock therapy). The second came from the mind of Milton Friedman. Both embrace working from a "blank slate" and starting all over again.  

The premise of Ms. Klein's book, brilliant and fascinating, and at the same time painfully simple in its argument and revelation, argues that free market fundamentalism has risen to distinction in some countries because it was pushed through while the citizens were reacting to disasters or upheavals; that some crises may have been created with the intention of being able to push through unpopular reforms in their wake. In other words, taking advantage of a major disaster -- natural, as in the case of Hurricane Katrina, or manmade, as with the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- to adopt radical economic policies that the population would be less likely to accept under normal circumstances. The well-rehearsed and carefully arranged attacks on the public domain in the aftermath of catastrophic events, combined with the "treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities", Ms. Klein coined as "disaster capitalism". 

Milton Friedman, an economist and professor at the University of Chicago, and economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan, observed that "only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable." This is exactly what has been happening in Wisconsin.

Public union employees, their friends, families, and students sympathetic to their cause, have been demonstrating for weeks because the newly installed governor, Scott Walker, claimed he needed to deny them their collective bargaining rights in order to balance the state budget -- despite the fact the workers expressed their willingness to concede completely to the governor's wage and benefit concessions. With several budget crises consuming the country, and Governor Walker's own state budget in arrears due to giant corporate give-aways just weeks before, this planted the seeds for the quintessential rock 'em sock 'em, kick 'em while they're down, corporate-government forcible takeover that's so quintessential disaster capitalism. As economist Paul Krugman observed, "What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside." Let's take a peek. 

Aside massive cuts in health coverage for low-income families, there's this: “Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).” In other words, the bill would allow for the selling of state-owned power plants without bids and without concern for the legally-defined public interest. Privatize what's owned by the state...the people...and sell it off.

In other words, Governor Walker took Professor Friedman's legacy to heart, acted swiftly and decisively, and attempted to ramrod a bill through the state legislature that would eliminate public unions in the state and, at the same time, impose by law rapid and irreversible change. It's a microeconomic version of what occurred in the aftermath of the U.S. Iraqi invasion, essentially no different than what happened in the soggy remains of New Orleans after Katrina, and so similar to the predatory capitalist racketeering that devoured the former Soviet Union after its collapse in the early '90s. 

The conservative trademark priorities to eliminate collective bargaining, privatize public-owned infrastructure and commons, and the slashing of social spending to the detriment of those who need it most, is all here. This is how the Shock Doctrine takes control, and unless it's stopped in its tracks and prevented from spreading beyond the boundaries of Wisconsin, you can bet it's coming to a town near you.
 

Hail to the Corporatocracy!

Mr. Obama's "negotiation" made it very apparent whose side he's on -- and it "ain't" ours. A few years from now -- which could be as early as the next election cycle or as far off as...well, it really doesn't matter -- Social Security will be derided by pundits and opponents alike, as being in default (which they already do, but is a total lie) and in need of elimination. Any proponent seeking to shore up the program due to the 33% funding decrease, cumulative over the years, will be debased as being a tax hiker. Remember this year...this month, because this is the date Social Security took a fatal hit from its detractors. The bleeding starts in earnest now. The pronouncement of death is imminent.

Besides adding over $850 billion to the deficit over the next two years, the extended Bush era tax-cut package will include and divert $112 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund, with a reduction in the FICA tax under the pretense of providing economic stimulus and creating jobs. Horrific enough on its own, the new law also mandates that the government borrow $112 billion, much of it probably coming from China, to repay the Trust Fund. This sets a dangerous precedent that opens up Social Security to attacks from those seeking to dismantle or privatize it, and is not the type of investment that will create jobs or put people back to work. Hearkening back to an earlier time when a similar scenario was proposed and the American public was browbeaten by the obsolete idea of supply-side economics (trickle-down economics, or "Reaganomics"), it would appear that our president is firmly in charge of holding the hose as we're showered with the most up to date version, called "piss-on-omics".
 
Mr. Obama is a turncoat; he's a traitor to the American people. He's a Trojan Horse of extraordinary proportion. He's selling out We the People, and the vast majority of Democrats seemingly don't see this, or refuse to acknowledge it. The heretofore, behind-the-scenes, coup d'etat has taken on a new reality. It's coming out into the open and becoming more visible by the day. But one has to look in order to see, and right now America's citizens are truly diverted by the proverbial bread and circuses. Naomi Klein's "Chicago Boys" are in town (ironic...or is it?) and the push to privatize every social safety-net, and what remains of the commons, has accelerated.

The Bilderberg Group (and, who knows, the CIA?) must be extremely happy with their "plant-of-choice", don't you think? My goodness, he's on the verge of accomplishing in two short years what the conservative caucus has attempted to do in over sixty-five -- bring Social Security to its knees. Undoubtedly, case upon case of Dom Pérignon had been ordered and the corks must have been flying high! Final victory is at their threshold, and Mr. Obama, code name: "the socialist" -- the crown prince of their creation, was their guest of honor. Mr. Obama, the son of the oligopoly, the chieftain of the corporatocracy, reigns high and sits at the right-hand of his makers now. He's accomplished what Messrs. Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, and G.W. Bush couldn't do (but they certainly paved the way).
 
Just the threat of austerity programs brought tens-of-thousands of protesters into the streets of Greece, France, and Ireland. What's going to happen here, next year, when the threats become reality? When cuts in programs affect the lives of millions in this country, will we see the same reaction? Or will people even notice? 

The hammer is poised and ready to come down -- while the vast majority of Americans are right underneath. How long will it be before they see the shadow and turn to look up? Unfortunately, it'll be too late by then.

(The embedded video was recorded June 6, 2008 on Obama's chartered campaign plane. Apparently, the press-corps following the "presumptive nominee" was boarded and awaiting Mr. Obama's arrival. It's assumed, and I believe the assumption is correct, that Mr. Obama went from his campaign kick-off at Nissan Pavilion in Manassas, VA, directly to Dulles International Airport, and then after the press was securely locked away, diverted to where the Bilderberg Group was having their annual conference in Chantilly. Coincidence? I hardly think so.)