Saturday, March 22, 2003

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

Over on his site The Gamer’s Nook, Scott talks about taking down a sign that had been displayed on his blog for awhile.

It’s interesting that he took down his sign at this time.  On Thursday morning, I walked into my office and discovered that the “Attack Iraq?  No!” bumpersticker I’d taped to my door—the same one that Scott just removed—had been taken down.  As I walked around the corner to get some coffee, my manager called me into his office and informed me that HR had received complaints about the display of my political statements (I’d also drawn a flag at half-mast and upside-down on the whiteboard outside my office, which had been erased early that morning).

I note that neither my manager nor the HR director personally disagrees with me about Dubya’s war.  And I also note that the company—which obtains the majority of its income as a federal contractor—does have policies which probably support the removal of my materials.  On the other hand, that bumpersticker had been on my door for months, and I’d drawn the flag on Monday morning after the Azores meeting.  BTW, that flag was more of an impressionistic US flag than a faithful copy.  For instance, my hand-drawn stars were blue dots on a white field, and there were fewer than 13 stripes.

What bugs me in this incident is that whoever it was who complained took it right to HR instead of saying something to me.  I probably would have taken down the (no longer really meaningful) bumpersticker and erased, or at least revised, the flag.  Maybe not half-mast, maybe right side up.  I would have asked the complaintant whether he/she knew that an inverted flag indicates distress.

One of the people I deal with at work quite often is a former intelligence operative with US forces in Europe.  He certainly disagrees with many of my opinions on the war and on politics in general.  We’ve talked and argued and agreed to disagree about current events while sitting in my office, with the bumpersticker and flag right there.  He has never uttered a word of objection to the existence of my displays.  Why couldn’t the anonymous complainers have shown me the same level of respect?

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

A fable for our time?

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed.

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation’s leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn’t have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language—reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state—and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he’d joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn’t know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that some of the nation’s most prestigious buildings were ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.  He used the occasion to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.

Just weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.

Within six weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation’s now-popular leader had pushed through legislation—in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it—that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people’s homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.  Legislators would later say they hadn’t had time to read the bill before voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public—and there were many—quickly found themselves fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader’s public speeches.

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He began to refer to the nation as “The Homeland.” As hoped, people’s hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was the homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the “true people,” he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation’s concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it’s of little concern to us.  Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn’t act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful.

His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation.

Soon after the terrorist attack, the nation’s leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist sympathizers.  He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.  He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.

Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation’s leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, soon faded from the public’s recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors.  Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out—a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn’t enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation’s largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow.

But voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him, and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man—a master at manipulating the media—he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation’s most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. In a speech broadcast around the world, he publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar’s Rome or Alexander’s Greece.

It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, the leader noted that the invaders were marching into that nation not as tyrants, but as liberators.

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn’t think they’d succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only “one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief”, and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself.  It was suggested that domestic critics of the leader were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation’s valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the “intellectuals and liberals” who were critical of his policies.

Voices of opposition continued to be raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist cells wasn’t enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent.

Adapted (but not all that extensively) from Thom Hartmann’s essay on the
70th anniversary of the Reichstag fire.  Please know that I am in no way equating, or even comparing, George W. Bush with Adolf Hitler.  Similarity in circumstances does not in the slightest imply similarity in motivations.

As requested in Hartmann’s article, I include the following credit:

Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including “Unequal Protection” and “The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.” This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

Monday, March 17, 2003

Words shouting inside my head

And not only because even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked...

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you’d just be
One more person crying.

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.

Bob Dylan
It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
from Bringing It All Back Home (1965)

Saturday, March 15, 2003

Another domestic stealth attack

Are your thoughts glued to Baghdad, the Azores, and the UN Security Council?  Are you worried about the outcome of the Bush-Blair-Aznar meeting, or considering the next diplomatic maneuvers by Chirac, Putin, and Schroeder, or wondering which bunker Saddam is hiding in tonight?  Are you counting the days and hours until all hell breaks loose in Iraq, when our brave soldiers (and orders of magnitude more Iraqis) begin dying in the desert?

Well, good!  That’s the way we like it! So say the ghouls operating the Bush administration’s stealth attack on that which is good, that which is positive, that which is noble in government. 

While our attention is riveted to the very scary, very important, and very immediate crisis in southwestern Asia—a crisis largely resulting from Dubya’s pathological obsession with crushing and humiliating a two-bit petty dictator who had already been defanged (but we needn’t go into that right now)—the onslaught on decency in governmental operations continues apace.  Even over the weekend.

This time, I’m not speaking about John Ashcroft’s overbearingly fundamentalist McCarthyism.  Oh, I’m sure he’s sharpening his talons somewhere in preparation for more outrages, but this time it’s an attack on America’s elderly and its disabled, an attack manifested through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Stumbling onto something?

Boy, who’da thunk it?  After reading Tuesday’s entry on the valuation of the euro relative to the dollar, my sister passed along a couple of interesting URLs, containing essays that amplify and perhaps explain the phenomenon I illustrated.  The sources of the two pieces are of particular interest. 

The first of the articles she sent me definitely doesn’t arise from the Democratic left, not by a longshot.

Why War With Iraq? Follow the Money was written by Richard Ebeling, an economist at Hillsdale College and a vice president of the libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation.  In this March 5 publication, Ebeling paints the background on the dollar’s importance as the world’s principal currency:

For all of the post-World War II period the U.S. dollar has served as the reserve currency for international trade. It is estimated that about $3 trillion is in circulation around the world. Almost all oil transactions and numerous other globally traded commodities are bought and sold with dollars. In some cases, dollars are hoarded by the citizens of other countries because of a lack of confidence or trust in their own governments. In Russia, for example, as much as $30 billion is held as cash money by thousands of people instead of rubles.

The world demand for dollars and the worldwide use of the dollar have served as an important cushion to maintain the value of the dollar on foreign-exchange markets, which has enabled the U.S. government to print money and run trade deficits that might otherwise have put downward pressure on the international exchange rate of the greenback.

The demand for dollars has also enabled Washington to fund the federal budget deficits of the past because foreigners have used the dollars they own to purchase U.S. Treasury securities. With so many dollars in use for so many international transactions, parking some of those dollars back in the United States in the form of U.S. government securities for a period of time has usually seemed the safest, easiest, and most logical way of putting one’s cash to work.

With that in mind, it’s plain that the implications of Ebeling’s next couple of paragraphs strike directly at the heart of Bush’s house of cards.  In a more internationalist/multilateral American administration, these potential changes might be seen as an opportunity for sharing and expanding mutually-beneficial collaboration.  To the America-firsters and self-anointed instruments of God’s will in the Bush White House, however, these are fightin’ words:

But a number of European newspapers, including the London Observer, have pointed out that the world has been slowly shifting into an alternative currency to use for international transactions: the euro. Not long ago, the Iraqi government made it official policy that Iraqi oil, two-thirds of which is purchased by American oil companies, had to be paid for in euros.

Last year, a senior Iranian oil representative suggested in a speech in Europe that European oil purchases might be increasingly traded in euros in the future. China and Russia have hinted that they may begin to hold more of their foreign currency reserve assets in euros in place of dollars.

If the euro were to increasingly become the alternative international currency of choice in competition with the dollar, the global demand for greenbacks would fall, the value of the dollar would decline, and the U.S. government would find it far more difficult both to export inflation and to finance its budget deficits. The financial clout and muscle of the American government would be dramatically undermined over time with the dollar increasingly no longer the only global reserve currency in town.

Ebeling goes on to suggest that one of the first actions by the post-war American regency in Iraq will be to revert to denominating Iraqi crude in dollars rather than euros.  Undoubtedly, macho American fists would be shaken in the faces of other members of OPEC and other petroleum producers to keep them in line too.

The second essay sent to me by my sister appeared in, of all places, EVWorld Update, a website for devotees of electric-powered vehicles.  (My sister recently bought a hybrid Honda Civic ... hmmm, on further thought, perhaps a site touting electrics over gas-guzzlers isn’t such an unusual place to see such an article.) In any case, the EVWorld essay turns out to be a reprint of an article that’s been circulating on the web for a month or two.  Written by one William Clark, who says he’s “currently working as a healthcare manager at a well-known east coast university” and is not an economist though he has an MBA, the entire essay can be found here.

Clark’s paper is quite long, and quite involved.  Suffice it to say that it goes over much the same ground sown by Ebeling, then extends and enlarges the analysis.  According to Clark, combat between the dollar and the euro for dominance of the world currency system may underlie the entire geopolitical structure of the modern world.  Iraq, then, is merely a pawn being shoved around the world’s economic chessboard by Grand Masters Bush, Chirac, Putin, Blair, et al.

In his short comment on my previous entry on the topic of euro vs. dollar, Scott alluded to this literature, though he didn’t reference anything specific.  As a non-economist, I’m not really competent to judge the full depth of these connections between the euro and the war.  If the world is truly a plaything to be cynically manipulated by bloodless powerbrokers, the scenarios laid out by Ebeling and Clark do make sense.  And even if the euro-dollar conflict is merely a sideshow, I don’t doubt for an instant that the connection has escaped the minds of all (any?) of the nations on this stage.