Left I on the News  

As if it's not impossible to hold a democratic election in a country under foreign occupation, and is it's not absurd to call an election "democratic" when thousands of people have been ruled ineligible to run (a practice rightfully denounced in Iran but actually initiated in Iraq by the United States), today the news is filled with stories about Iraqis voting in the United States (as they have before). One story featured a man who left Iraq 19 years ago. This undemocratic practice (imagine letting people who left California 19 years ago vote on our next Governor) was also initiated by the U.S., as a way of weighting the vote towards "Western-friendly" voters.

Incidentally, right-wingers in Israel have introduced similar legislation there, partly because they think it will add even more of a right-wing bias to Israeli voting, and also to give a little extra "insurance" against the possibility, however remote, that a one-state solution comes to be and they need more "Jewish" votes to overcome Palestinian votes.

Gordon Brown testified yesterday at the British commission investigating the invasion of Iraq. Brown insists that the invasion was "the right thing and was done for the right reasons." Interestingly enough he says the "right reasons" were that Iraq had systematically ignored 14 U.N. resolutions. So I guess we can look for the British invasion of Israel any day now.

But to me the most interesting part of his testimony, in light of what's going on in the U.S. (and in the U.K. and elsewhere right now) with cuts to education, health care, mass transit, libraries, and every possible social service, was this:

"I told [Tony Blair] I would not – and this was right at the beginning – try to rule out any military option on the grounds of cost. Quite the opposite. He should feel free, because this was the right course of action, to discuss the military option that was best for our country and the one that would yield the best results. We understood that some options were more expensive than others but we should accept the option that is right for our country."

"If you look at the question of expenditure in Iraq you have got to start from the one fundamental truth: that every request that the military commanders made to us for equipment was answered. No request was ever turned down."

And really, that pretty much sums it up. When it comes to war, no expense spared. When it comes to people's needs, cue the claims of "there's just no money to pay for X, Y, or Z." Also cue the bake sale.

Take a good look at the graph above. See that last little tic downwards on the right end? Squint if you have to! As a fluctuation, it's about the same size as the fluctuation every single week since 2005 represented in the graph. Well, that's what I see. AP sees it differently:

New claims for jobless benefits fell last week in a sign that layoffs may be easing as the economy slowly recovers.

The truth, to any scientist or for that matter anyone with two eyes, is that what the graph shows is that while initial jobless claims surged throughout 2008, peaking around March, 2009, and then declined, they have been at a plateau since November, 2009 and are for all intents and purposes unchanged since then (if anything, they're on a slight upward trend in those past few months).

They also show something else, by the way, and that's that layoffs might be leveling off at a rate 50% higher than they were from 2005 through 2007.

In September, 2008, I wrote:

I'm increasingly convinced that the events taking place in Washington around the financial "crisis" are a complete charade.

We were told then that the problem was the financial system was "blocked," and that banks weren't lending money, and if they didn't start, the world as we know it would end (or something like that).

It's now a year and a half later. And, as it turns out, lending by the banking industry fell in 2009, the largest annual decline since the 1940's. Did the bottom fall out? No, it did not. Don't get me wrong. We are in the middle of something they've actually had to stop calling a "recession" and start calling a "great recession" (which sounds suspiciously like a "depression"). Actually the government and economists pretend that the "recession" is actually over, which to the rest of us is a complete joke. But the idea that the massive transfers of money to the wealthy was necessary in late 2008 to avoid catastrophe? It was a lie, every bit as much as the "Iraq has WMD" lie.

We're told this about Karl Rove's new book:

Karl Rove...says in a new memoir that his former boss probably would not have invaded Iraq had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction there.

Mr. Rove adamantly rejects allegations that the administration deliberately lied about the presence of weapons in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The second lie I've dealt with many times. In a nutshell, if the Bush administration had claimed they thought there were probably WMD in Iraq, it might not be a provable lie (though personally I believe it still would have been). However, when they said there were WMD, that was and is a provable lie. And that distinction was important, because only by saying they knew there were WMD could they get the American public (and the entire American ruling class) behind their invasion.

But the other assertion, that Bush "probably would not have invaded Iraq had he known there were no WMD there," is a very clever lie as well (aside from being hypothetical and speculative and basically irrelevant). Why? Because it was never possible, and still isn't even today, to "know" there are "no WMD" in Iraq, or anywhere for that matter. For all we know there are WMD hidden somewhere in Poughkeepsie, or Oshkosh. Unless you simultaneously search every possible location (including underground) in a city, or a country, you could never be 100% sure that something you're looking for isn't there. So Rove knows very well that Bush could never have "known" a negative like that, and therefore, his claim is completely, utterly irrelevant.

I wanted to make the title of the post into an epithet, but I couldn't figure out what punctuation to use (so I've had to resort to this description instead). Running for Governor against a right-winger (Meg Whitman) who thinks the solution to unemployment is laying off 40,000 workers and another right-wing ex-CEO (Steve Poizner) who claims to be the only "true conservative" in the race, along comes Jerry Brown, campaigning as "Republican lite": shrink state government, no new taxes ("unless the people vote for them"), casting himself as "nonpartisan," "running an independent campaign." And not only is he the "best" the Democrats can do, he's the only thing the Democrats can do - Brown has no opposition in the Democratic primary at all, not even token. One reason he doesn't is that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who at least qualifies as a moderate if not some sort of liberal, dropped out of the race, ostensibly for "family reasons" but really because he couldn't raise the multi-millions needed to be "credible" in capitalist elections.

There will be a real progressive (and socialist) on the ballot in the election - Carlos Alvarez, running on the Party for Socialism & Liberation ticket and, if he wins the primary, on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket as well. Running for Mayor of Los Angeles last year, Alvarez won more votes for that office than any socialist since 1957. He won't be spending multi-millions. He will be campaigning for a social system encapsulating real democracy where one doesn't have to spend money to win election - socialism.

The comment system has been slightly modified due to the passing of Haloscan, one of the original comment support systems for blogs. The big difference you'll see, which confused me at first, is that posts with no comments no longer show "Comments(0)", they just show "Comments". But just click on "Comments" to add a comment, as before.

Speak up!

First, Chris Hedges on the need to break from the Democrats:

"Isolation and ridicule is the cost of defying power, speaking truth and building movements. Anger at injustice, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the political expression of love. Social change does not come through voting. It is delivered through activism, organizing and mobilization that empower groups to confront the hegemony of the corporate state and the power elite."

Second, on a completely different subject, last week, a hunger striker died in a Cuban prison, becoming an instant celebrity in Western media. Granma explains just who Orlando Zapata Tamayo was, and what happened.

Maybe we ought to try it sometime. It's not enough we have billionaires and multi-millionaires spending money like water in an attempt to buy themselves political office, or companies spending millions to influence votes on ballot measures, with both phenomena employing appeals to voters' "intelligence" on about the level of a Coke vs. Pepsi ad. No, I take that back, Coke and Pepsi don't typically lie about either their own product or their competitors product, they just pump up the hype (or flash sexy women at the viewers, whatever works).

Then we come to Congress, where we find out that a majority of 100 is 60, not 51, and now we learn that, not just 41 people, but just one person in the Congress can affect the course of legislation.

And all these people will no doubt go on at length about how this is the "greatest democracy in the world."

A week without a post; where does the time go? Working, among other things. Imagine that.

Anyway, I spent this morning at the DMV renewing my driver's license (something you have to do every 5 (?) years here in CA). Nothing more than paying money and getting a new picture taken. You can make an appointment online, but when I tried to do that a few days ago, it turns out you can get an appointment for...a month from now, in this case, after my license would have expired, so I had to face the music.

So you show up, get a number, and...wait. For nearly two hours. Having done this before, I was well-prepared, with my laptop and some work to do. But a loud-mouthed guy sitting near me just would not stop complaining to all who could hear about government inefficiencies and how, if government takes over health care (which readers will understand isn't remotely on the agenda in the U.S., despite the vivid imaginations of Tea Partiers), this is just how it's going to be, long waits.

Now no one is happy having to wait two hours, obviously. But does it really take that much to ask yourself, and figure out, just why it is that we have to wait? To begin with, state workers, including DMV workers, are "furloughed" several days a month, so right off the bat there are going to be more people there on any given day than there used to be. But I've been to this office before furloughs, and there were waits then too. Are the workers sitting around drinking coffee? That might make for a typical sitcom plot, but it isn't reality. Most of the workers are on their feet, working all day long (except for breaks, I presume). The numbers are being called out every few seconds, which means that people are being processed with regularity. There is just too much work for too few people! Gee, does that sound familiar? For example, after I got through the paperwork portion, I had to get my picture taken. Another 15 minutes in line, because there was one guy taking pictures.

The obvious solution is more employees and, in this particular instance, probably another DMV office somewhere up the Peninsula. The nearest office to the north of me is 18 miles away, which might not sound that far in some parts of the country, but in a densely populated urban area, it means one heck of a lot of people need to be serviced by the office I went to today. Too many. But would Mr. Loud-Mouth acknowledge that solution to his problem? Chances are he wouldn't, because he'd be too busy complaining about "the government" to recognize that his unwillingness to vote for any politician who even breathes the word "tax increase" is what causes the problem in the first place.

And, as I've written before, all this applies to health care as well. Mr. L-M may well be right that health insurance "reform" being contemplated in the Congress may lead to increased waiting times in some cases. But why? There's only one reason it would happen, and that's because people are currently going without necessary health care, and once those people are in a position to receive treatment, there won't be enough doctors. But the solution to that problem isn't to deny people treatment, it's to train more doctors, just like the solution to the DMV problem is to hire more people.

If the U.S. government's sponsorship and protection of one terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, wasn't enough evidence that the "war on terror" is a complete fraud and that the United States, even without properly labelling U.S. wars against Iraq and Afghanistan as terrorism, is one of the prime sponsors of a war of terror in the world, along comes another case: Abdolmalek Rigi, the leader of a anti-Iran terrorist group named Jundallah. A group which has carried out numerous acts of terrorism in Iran, including bombings, assassination attempts, and terrorist attacks in Iran, one of which killed at least 40 people in the southeastern city of Pishin (by the way those aren't jus "claims"; Jundallah has taken credit for the acts).

Rigi was arrested today by Iran, which claims he was at a US base in Afghanistan 24 hours before his capture and had a forged Afghan passport issued by the US in his possession when he was detained. He had also met with the NATO military chief in Afghanistan in April 2008.

So read today's headlines, bizarrely relying on a privately maintained website instead of anything official. The Pentagon is pushing back, claiming that "It's significantly less than 1,000 in Afghanistan."

Well, let's see, shall we? iCasualties says that 930 Americans have died "in and around Afghanistan," with the remaining 75 fatalities of "Operation Enduring Freedom" in "Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen." OK, we can argue if 930 is "significantly less" than 1000; personally I'd say when it comes to counting dead people, the two numbers are more or less indistinguishable.

But the real nonsense, of course, is the jingoism inherent in talking about only Americans. After all, "OEF" is a "NATO" operation (so we're told), not an American operation. And not 1000, but 1661 coalition troops have died in that operation, which by any definition is "significant more" than 1000. 264 Britons have died, 130 Canadians, etc. I'm not even going to get into Afghan resistance fighters defending their country against a foreign invasion, or even into Afghan civilians, but since we're told that we're "partners" to the Afghans, surely we should add in Afghan police and army who are also part of the "coalition" and who have been killed. I'm afraid I can't do that, though, because that number is completely unavailable.

Have 1000 Americans died "in Afghanistan"? No. Have the fatalities of the occupying force and their Afghan allies (who pretty much qualify as mercenaries since they're really soldiers working for a foreign command, the classic definition of mercenary) significantly exceeded 1000? Without any question, and for quite some time.

Headline in today's New York Times:

Gates Calls Europe Anti-War Mood Danger to Peace

On a serious note, whenever there are antiwar demonstrations in the U.S., politicians and unfortunately plenty of liberals as well like to pretend how ineffectual they are. Headlines like this make plain that nothing could be further from the truth. On March 20, off the computer and into the streets to let Gates know there's an antiwar mode right here in the U.S. as well.

Update: By the way, this is yet another reminder of why I insist on being part of the antiwar movement, not the "peace" movement.

Another day, another 33 Afghan civilians down, thanks to a "mistake" of firing missiles at cars who the pilots "believed" were carrying insurgents. That's what they say, anyway. The truth is that they believed the cars might be carrying insurgents, and that was good enough for them. After all, if they might be carrying insurgents, then there's a chance they might eventually kill Americans, and, given the relative value of the lives of Americans and Afghans, better not to take the chance. So fire away. Standard U.S. policy, and, we're told, this latest "offensive" (what a good word) will produce another 12-18 months of such carnage. Oh wait, they just said the offensive will last another 12-18 months. I added the part about the carnage.

In the meantime, cue the latest "apology" from the U.S. military, and cue the latest whine from "President" Karzai. Correct me if I'm wrong, but technically speaking aren't U.S. troops now in "his" country and killing Afghans on his invitation?

If you have a problem with this, get off the computer and into the streets on March 20.

Commenting on the revelation that Toyota lobbied to narrow the scope of some recalls to save the company money:

Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, said the documents raise questions on "whether Toyota was lobbying for less rigid actions from regulators to protect their bottom line."

Nothing like faux outrage over capitalists being capitalists, especially from especially pro-business Republicans. I mean, when has this kind of thing ever happened before? Other than in the pharmaceutical, oil, weapons, banking, and insurance industries (and every single other industry I can think of)?

I titled this post "gambling in the casino," but for industries bribing legislators and regulators to better their bottom lines, it's really not a gamble at all, just an investment. The only "gamble" is what they're doing with the lives of their customers.