Monday, May 31, 2010

Endless War Memorials

Nine years fighting in Afghanistan, seven years of occupation in Iraq, a trillion dollars spent, thousands killed, wounded and maimed, and the lives of hundreds of thousands forever changed.

Happy Memorial Day. Slap another burger on the grill, crack another beer, pass the potato chips.

Counting private military contractors paid for by the American taxpayers, and UN personnel, there are upwards of 150,000 foreigners in Afghanistan. In the middle of this onslaught, Stanley McChrystal, the American commander, claims that the safety of Afghan civilians is his top priority.

Memo to Stanley: Civilians are the first casualties of armed conflict. The more of them you kill, the more their survivors will want to kill you.

Iraq is now a “democracy,” but so fractured that a government cannot be assembled. The weakness of the government leads to anger or opportunism among the populace, which leads to shootings and car bombings and suicide attacks, which leads to calls for increased security. U.S. “combat” forces are due to depart Iraq this summer (wink, wink), but don’t fret, the Americans aren’t going anywhere – not with billions of gallons of proven oil reserves under their semi-permanent and permanent military facilities, not to mention the largest embassy complex on the planet.

As author Kevin Phillips said, the U.S. military is now an “oil protection force.” Spread your world map out and notice where U.S. military facilities or rapid deployment resources are positioned, and the correlation between oil supplies and America’s “strategic interests” become sickeningly clear. “Strategic interests” is a euphemism the U.S. employs to give itself the right to use force wherever it deems appropriate.

In other words, where there is oil there are U.S. forces. This is the true fight for freedom and the American way of life.

Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are undeclared. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the authority to declare war. Dick Cheney still laughs about how easy it was to get around that minor stipulation.

Nine years in Afghanistan, seven years in Iraq. Do you feel safer? Has the sacrifice in blood and coin been worth it?

Meanwhile, the source of much of the conflict between the Arab world and the west is ignored: Israel and the Palestinians. Today, in fact, Israeli defense forces attacked a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing between ten and nineteen people depending on what news sources you believe. Naturally, the Israelis claim they were fired upon by the civilians in the flotilla, or battled at close quarters by humanitarian activists armed with knives and clubs. Right. We’re expected to believe that a group of humanitarian activists would choose to take on the Israeli army.

World leaders – with the exception of the U.S., of course -- have been quick to condemn Israel’s latest actions as disproportionate. This is the same condemnation that was leveled when Israel launched a brutal attack against Gaza in 2009. More than 1,000 Palestinians were killed and much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed during that campaign – the point of which was to demonstrate to the people of Gaza the futility of siding with Hamas.

Israel has since blockaded Gaza, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that the world would not tolerate were it happening anyplace else, but when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, all bets are off, and the political and diplomatic justifications for saying and doing nothing become as contorted as the lengths taken to ignore all moral questions.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Poem - Flag Burning

I sat with my buddy Dave
In his manicured back yard
The Weber grill smoked and our New York steaks
Hissed and dripped

We drank our bottles of Corona in silence
A dove cooed and the wind danced in the
Chinese elm above our heads
And old Vin Scully called the Dodgers-Cubs game

Dave used to talk a lot, laugh a lot
But that was before Jimmy joined the Army
And got posted to Iraq

Jimmy was a decent kid, tall and skinny
With his father’s strong hands and his mother’s green eyes

Dave was against Jimmy joining
I remember him saying,
“There’s no reason for this war.”

Twenty-seven days after he landed in Iraq
Jimmy got blown to bits by an IED
They found his dog tags and a bloody boot

The Army major that came to Dave’s door
Said the nation owed Jimmy a debt of gratitude
Dave told the man: “Get off my porch.”

And then Dave quit talking and started dying
His grief eating him the same way we ate our steaks
One bite at a time, chewing slowly

Dave soaked the folded flag the Army gave him
With gasoline and put a match to it
In his peaceful American yard
On Memorial Day

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Poem - Calamity

Caused by the greed of man
The insatiable desire for profit
At any cost

Millions of gallons of oil
Flowing
Oozing
Seeping
Toward the pristine marshes
Along the Louisiana coastline

BP talks
The US Government talks
The media tries to explain
A golden chain of deceit stretches from one corporate
Boardroom to the next;
The best lawyers in the land seek
To minimize the damage;
PR flacks spin like ice dancers

The oil keeps flowing
But even staring down disaster
The oil barons seek to drill and pump and destroy
And our cowardly government can’t say no

The barons and the government regulators
Have slept in the same bed for too long

We the People and our planet
Are treated like pawns
In their great game

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Kill the Golden Bear, Once and for All

Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are slugging it out in California with fistfuls of cash and platoons of campaign consultants.

At stake is the GOP nomination for the Governorship of a state that is reeling under the weight of a $19 billion budget shortfall – and zero new ideas for how to close that stifling gap. All the Schwarzenegger administration can muster is a plan to slash health care services for children and shut-ins, and continue to fund public education at a level where it can only produce Mississippi-type mediocrity – ideas that are sure to be stymied by the Democrats.

Meaning the state budget will be held hostage as it usually is, with much posturing, lies, fabrications, wild speeches and threats of IOU’s and shuttered parks, all through the hot summer and probably into the early Fall.

While that goes on, Whitman the political neophyte and Poizner the nerdy wannabe, argue about who will be tougher on illegal immigrants, who will tame the evil “unions” that pull the Democrats’ strings, and who will create thousands of new, green, good paying jobs. Both candidates harp on their experience in the private sector – as if the for-profit arena is the Holy Grail. The logic goes something like this: “If I can run a company like E-Bay then I can surely run the State of California, and I promise you I will run it like a business.”

Business, you see, is always efficient, cost-effective, fair, just, color blind, mindful of the environment and focused on delivering the products and services people want at a price they can afford.

Government, in contrast, is slow, wasteful, inefficient, unfair, bloated and populated with slackers who can’t cut it in the free market.

That logic is fatally flawed, of course, but truth is elusive on the campaign trail, and in a 30 second TV ad almost anything goes. So Poizner claims that Whitman supports Obama’s immigration policies (which are, what, exactly?) and Whitman claims that Poizner is really a closet liberal who once voted for – hold on here – Al Gore!

Every time I think politics can’t get any dumber up pops some Tea Party spokesperson yammering about taking our country back. I still don’t know whose iron grip the Tea Party folks want to break. I think they mean Barack Obama, but that’s so nonsensical given the Obama Administration’s limp policies that it can’t possibly be true.

But back to California, the steadily expiring Golden Bear. Republicans will fall on their swords before supporting tax increases of any kind. Democrats, on the other hand, face ostracism if they dare support cuts to social services. Talk about stalemate. The state’s structural deficit will never be addressed, Proposition 13 will remain the most sacred of sacred cows, and the oil industry will continue to extract oil from California without paying a dime in severance taxes. The more the state flounders, the more desperate voters become, with the end result being that wing-nut politicians, professional or novice, begin to look attractive, even reasonable.

The Golden Bear is blind in one eye, minus a hind paw, and lame in its front leg; it can barely shuffle along let alone run as it once did from the high sierras to the coast, from the redwoods to the desert. Nobody messed with the Golden Bear back in the day, but that day ended a long time ago.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Goliath vs The Pygmies

Glory to the French and the Greeks. May Americans learn something from our feisty European friends.

When the governments of France or Greece try to screw their people with austerity measures and unravel the social safety net, the people have enough gumption to pour into the streets and make some racket.

By contrast, Americans display all the fire of tree sloths. We’ve been getting screwed for decades, and for the most part have taken our screwing silently and on our knees. Oh, we get exercised about abortion and illegal immigration, make no mistake about that, but when it comes to having our pockets picked clean by corporate greed heads, we can’t be bothered to lift a middle finger in protest.

As the crime goes down we listen to fools like Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh and O’Reilly, swallow the rot they spew about the evil federal government; we watch network news anchors who rarely connect the dots between economic policy and the fate of average Americans; and we routinely vote against our self-interests because we believe the “free” market gibberish peddled from the corporate media.

Our problem isn’t too much government; our problem is too little government. Ever since Ronald Reagan rode into Washington D.C. determined to restore America’s faith in its own myths and fables, corporate power has grown while the countervailing power of government has declined. The results are visible in almost every industry: energy, food, telecommunications, transportation, banking, and finance, health care. Corporations are bigger and more economically and politically potent than at any time since the Gilded Age and the heyday of big trusts. Tea Party faithful constantly evoke the Founding Fathers, but what that rabble conveniently forget is how wary the Founders were of power – particularly power concentrated in too few hands. This is one reason why we have (or had until Bush Jr’s imperial presidency) three co-equal branches of government. Each branch has certain powers along with limits to those powers, all designed to check and balance one another.

Balancing power is the same reason we had anti-trust laws and the Glass-Steagal act.

But the anti-trust laws that helped crack Standard Oil and other trusts have been systematically weakened ever since Reagan set his jellybean jar on the desk in the Oval Office. Regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor have been systematically gutted or neutered, tilting the balance of power in favor of the wealthy and corporations. Size and capital equate to political power, lobbying power and campaign contribution (bribery) power. Corporations are not only too big to fail, they are also too big to regulate and control.

It’s not David vs. Goliath anymore – it’s Goliath vs. an unarmed pygmy.

This revolution of power happened right in front of us and with our silent consent. Trade and monetary policies eliminated our jobs and sent them to Mexico, Thailand and China; tax policies favored capital over labor; labor laws were diluted, overturned or ignored without penalty, and our entire economy became dedicated to the enrichment of corporations, investors, speculators and stockholders. Government services that were designed to help ordinary people live better lives were outsourced to corporations who always place profit first and people second. In the brave new universe of the infallible free market, the inherently fair and just free market, the efficient free market, wage earners no longer mattered, and neither did the public’s interest.

The Greeks and the French take to the streets; Americans retreat to the safety of their living rooms, hunker down in front of plasma TV’s with a bucket of fast food and lose themselves in trivia. The corporations and the wealthy have nothing to fear from us; they know how accustomed we’ve become to living on our knees, pygmies in Goliath’s shadow.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Voices: Chet Walker, Escondido, California

My son is all into politics. Campaigned for Obama, plastered his Toyota with bumper stickers, the whole bit. I’m getting old and cynical. I tell him not to waste his time trying to make the country better. The only way to clean a cesspool is to drain it, know what I mean? Jeff complains that the whole system is corrupted by money, well, no kidding, Sherlock! I’ve been a plumbing contractor for 38 years, never spent a minute in a college classroom, and I know that money talks – and big money talks really loud. Jeff seems surprised that congressmen and senators and judges are bought every day. It’s like he believes these people get into politics for pure motives or something, or that once they get elected or appointed they become saints. Jeff’s educated, but he’s not smart, know what I mean? Understand the difference? Brains, yes, smarts, no. Jeff wants me to call my congressman about this, my senator about that, as if those people give a rat’s behind for my opinion. I tell him to put himself in their place. Are you going to listen to some schmuck back home or the corporate lobbyist who pays for your TV ads? No brainer, right? Might as well vote for Donald Duck. Rich people own this country, always have and always will. Don’t get me wrong, though – Jeff’s heart is in the right place – it’s just that his head is buried in the sand. You want to know what politics does? I’ll tell you. When you get right down to it all it does is make robbery legal. What the hell do I need it for? Like I don’t have enough aggravation in my daily life? What I care about is whether or not my Mexican crew will show up tomorrow, on time, sober, prepared to do a day’s work. Dumb as posts, some of these Mexicans, but in the plumbing business that’s what you work with. Jeff says I’m racist, but it’s not true. I could pay my guys less, squeeze them a little more, but I don’t and never have. Give me the choice between a Mexican and a white redneck, I take the Mexican every single time. I care about customers who don’t pay my invoices on time and don’t seem concerned about it, like I’m some sort of charitable organization. I care about sub-contractors who cut corners and make me look bad. Yeah, I got plenty to worry about without taking on politics. My son’s a bleeding heart, just like his mother, my first wife, who slept with my partner and screwed me but good in the divorce. Don’t get me started. Politics, OK, that’s one thing, my ex-wife’s a whole different story. I’d rather spend a day digging a trench in hell than talk about her. Know what I mean?

Saturday, May 01, 2010

It's Just Brown People Dying

Imagine for a moment that in the last three years the murder rate in Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver, Canada had shot up 300%, and that by official government statistics more than 20,000 people had died at the hands of drug traffickers, small-time drug dealers, run-of-the-mill thugs and corrupt local, state and federal police. Imagine that Canada’s army now patrols the streets of the three cities, but despite the presence of armed troops, the murder rate continues at the same relentless pace. Some citizens claim the army itself is implicated in the killings. The government insists that the police and the court system are turning the tide, winning the war, but few arrests are ever made, even when murders happen in broad daylight on a crowded avenue. Everyone seems to know who the killers are, but nobody ever sees a thing.

If this were happening in Canada, what would the response be on this side of the border? Would the American media devote some precious airtime – say a quarter of the time devoted to Tiger Woods and his many mistresses -- to report on the killings? Would Diane Sawyer from ABC News or Katie Couric from CBS jet across the border for a hard-hitting interview with Canada’s Prime Minister? Would Anderson Cooper report live from the scene of a killing?

If this were happening in Canada, would it merit more than passing attention from the politicians and pundits in Washington D.C.?

Not to worry -- Canada is as peaceful as ever. It’s Mexico, our southern neighbor that is awash in violence and death and at a risk of becoming a completely failed state, though if you depend for information on the American news media, you’d hardly know it.

Why the selective myopia? Is it because most of the people being murdered are brown-skinned? Is this simply racism, writ large? Given the draconian law recently passed in Arizona – and let us hope the courts strike this perversity from the books - one wonders about the racist bent in the American character.

According to author and journalist Charles Bowden, the U.S. gives Mexico around a half billion dollars a year to fight the drug war. The money is used for training and equipment, logistics, and so on. Half a billion dollars in annual aid, but the war goes on and the murders continue at a pace that makes the U.S. death toll in Iraq look frivolous by comparison. The major drug cartels battle one another for control of territory and routes. Local, state and federal police are supposed to stop the cartels, disrupt supply lines and make arrests, but the “authorities” seem bent on capturing a piece of the business rather than shutting it down.

And, of course, drugs continue to flow across the border, arriving on schedule for those that want or need them.

Everything related to Mexico and the drug business is upside down, Alice in Wonderland style. The cartels are as well armed as the Mexican army, the police act like drug lords, the courts never convict anyone, and trust is the scarcest commodity in the country.

The drug trade has replaced foreign factories as the employer of choice for young Mexican men. Why slave in a maquiladora for peanut wages when you can make real money in the drug business? What’s the incentive to lead a virtuous life when everyone around you is living on the dim side of what law and order remains? The desire for a long life might lose currency when all seems destined to get worse, never better.

What is behind all this death and suffering? Sure, the American appetite for illegal drugs has played a supporting role, but isn’t it more systemic than that? What role has NAFTA played in changing Mexico’s economy? The trade treaty obliterated small farmers and sent thousands, perhaps millions, of people in search of work. When manufacturing jobs began to dry up because production moved to China – whose workers were willing to slave for even less than Mexicans -- millions of Mexican workers had little choice but to make the trek to El Norte. Hard to blame them: on one side, unemployment, drug killings, lawlessness, endemic official corruption, failed institutions; on the other, the unknown in a country that has grown increasingly inhospitable to Mexican immigrants, even though the economies of border states depend on a steady supply of Mexicans willing to do difficult, dangerous, dirty, tedious and low-paying jobs.

Today in Los Angeles it’s estimated that 100,000 people will march to protest Arizona’s new immigration law. Will this demonstration and others like it lead the U.S. to begin asking deeper, more fundamental questions about Mexico?

Don’t count on it.