Presently there is a hot war in Iraq while there is a cold war going on between Iran and the United States who are strongly allied with Israel. It is an unending story of aggression and conflict as long as the Conservatives are in charge. Plus, the Conservative will demand that you love them for their war making even though you have a catalog of reasons on why they should stop. Maybe the Conservative won’t take the time to absorb a catalog of reasons to stop their ongoing aggression with the world however I would like to hear them answer Elvis Costello: ‘What is so funny about Peace, Love and Understanding?”
The Conservative will always come up with a reason why we must fight to cloak their base desire of greed and the will to power. During the first cold war, the Russian opponent was godless so they must be stopped. Now, the opponent is an Islamic Theocracy that has set up shop in Iran yet they are too much into their god. How much god is the right mix dear Conservative? Oh yes, that’s right, the Conservative has all the right answers and we should just kick back and let them manage the entire world.
The motivation of the American Conservative has nothing to do with ‘god’ or doing ‘good’. ‘God’ is too mysterious of a question to be certain, especially when modern American bombs are to be deployed in the name of ‘God’ and ‘Good’, and the nature of ‘Good’ always depends on your point of view–how much ‘Good’ has been done for the millions of Iraqis who fled their homeland due to mass murder becoming the everyday experience in their neighborhoods due to American inflicted upheaval? The removal of Saddam Hussein may have been a ‘Good’ if you isolate that factor and it has worked as political rhetoric to justify their ongoing war once it was discovered that Iraq was void of Weapons of Mass Destruction. However, the United States military is not better off, the American soldier is not better off, the United States Treasury is not better off, nor is the geopolitical situation in the Middle East better off unless you are interested in escalating aggression and conflict in a bet that the American Conservative will prevail at the end no matter the cost in blood and treasure. Conservatives will talk about the ‘Good’ until they are blue in the face however if you try to contrast their ‘Good’ with the ‘Bad’ that they have done they will attack you, they will call you terrible names so that you become the story instead of the story you are trying to tell being the focus, and the Conservative will work hard to marginalize your point of view in order to sustain their power.
‘God’ has always been a handy excuse to let the muscle bound war boys trot out their guns in the name of ‘Good’. The Pope used the name of ‘God’ and ‘Good’ to fire up the Crusades in order to recapture the holy lands. Currently religion has found a new bed fellow in the Chamber of Commerce–just look at the demographics of the Republican caucus–or has the Chamber of Commerce used the tried and true rhetoric of the past to whip American democracy into a war making froth of war generating profit. Neither statement fully captures the Conservative matrix, however both statements are good means to articulate the Conservative mumbo jumbo that attempts to keep the American people on the Conservative path.
The word ‘Conservative’ includes the ideological desire to use the blunt force of the military and covert actions of the CIA in order to capture larger markets for capitalist multinationals to pilfer in there never ending search for surplus product. They will say that this is necessary to preserve the American way. If we are not making war in Iraq and Iran today, then freedom of speech in North America will suddenly disappear. This is the clear logic of idiots and it is clear that the idiots are in charge.
Remember the long boom which followed the opening of markets in East Europe after the fall of the Soviet empire? Yes indeed, those were the good old days for the expansion of American Markets and the idiots will tell the greedy that it must be replicated in order to let the good times roll once again. Should we go further back in history to find another example of conservative ideology, an ideology which always needs to find new wealth in order to make war so that there can be even more wealth? Here is a good one: Christopher Columbus discovered new natural resources–gold was the main prize–for the Catholic Spanish Monarchy to make war in Europe.
It’s time to stop being conservative. It is time to grow up and be accountable for our collective actions as human beings instead of hiding behind abstractions like ‘God’ and ‘Good’. Stop being greedy, just as the words that represent the god who the Conservatives worship suggests. Forge peace, love and understanding with your neighbor instead of relentlessly drawing up new ways of conquering them.
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Mixed Reactions to Report on U.S. Moves Against Iran
New York Times
June 30, 2008, 12:10 pm
By MIKE NIZZA
More than two years after his reporting stoked worries that there might be another American war in the Middle East, Seymour Hersh is getting a lot of attention with another installment in this week’s New Yorker titled “Preparing the Battlefield.”
In 2006, his major revelation was that the United States had accelerated military planning against Iran. His new article focuses on a “major escalation” of covert activities against Iran following a finding, or declaration, signed by President Bush late last year. The operations are detailed by anonymous sources (read the full article below in this post), including one who provided the big picture:
“The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and it involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.”
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The Neo-Liberal/Conservative Economist and another guy are stranded on a desert island and they have had no food for several days. While exploring, they come upon a few cans of unopened Pork and Beans. The guy says “Let’s look for a sharp rock”. The Neo-Liberal/Conservative Economist says “Let us assume a can opener”.
New York Times
June 30, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It’s feeling a lot like 1992 right now. It’s also feeling a lot like 1980. But which parallel is closer? Is Barack Obama going to be a Ronald Reagan of the left, a president who fundamentally changes the country’s direction? Or will he be just another Bill Clinton?
Current polls — not horse-race polls, which are notoriously uninformative until later in the campaign, but polls gauging the public mood — are strikingly similar to those in both 1980 and 1992, years in which an overwhelming majority of Americans were dissatisfied with the country’s direction.
So the odds are that this will be a “change” election — which means that it’s very much Mr. Obama’s election to lose. But if he wins, how much change will he actually deliver?
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By Ahmed Rasheed
Reuters
Monday, June 30, 2008; 12:32 PM
BAGHDAD - Iraq opened its giant oilfields to foreign firms on Monday, putting British and U.S. companies in pole position five years after U.S.-led troops invaded the country to oust Saddam Hussein.
The move to invite bids for the development of Iraq’s largest producing fields should mark the return of the oil majors, whose cash and expertise Iraq needs to restore its oil infrastructure that has been hard hit by sanctions and war.
But any awards to U.S. and British firms could anger opponents of the invasion, who have said the 2003 war was designed to give Western oil companies control over Iraqi oil reserves. U.S. and British officials have denied the charges.
By allowing international firms to help raise output at its key producing oil fields, the Iraqi government is breaking with the policy of major oil-producing neighbors such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates where national firms keep tight control of foreign investment in their oil sectors.
“The six oilfields that have been announced today are the backbone of Iraq’s oil production,” Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani told a news conference.
“With its massive proven reserves, Iraq should not stay at its current level of production. Iraq should be the second or third largest oil-producing country.”
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This article is posted to contrast how the Fed and Treasury are bending over backwards–just look at how the Fed has allowed banks to borrow their good securities just to keep the system liquid to help bankers-while congress and the President fail to do anything on the ‘demand’ side of the equation.
New York Times
June 29, 2008
By VIKAS BAJAJ
When Congress started fashioning a sweeping rescue package for struggling homeowners earlier this year, 2.6 million loans were in trouble. But the problem has grown considerably in just six months and is continuing to worsen.
More than three million borrowers are in distress, and analysts are forecasting a couple of million more will fall behind on their payments in the coming year as home prices fall further and the economy weakens.
Those stark numbers not only illustrate the challenges for the lawmakers trying to provide some relief to their constituents but also hint at what the next administration will be facing after the election. While the proposed program would help some homeowners, analysts say it would touch only a small fraction of those in trouble — the Congressional Budget Office estimates it would be used by 400,000 borrowers — and would do little to bolster the housing market.
“It’s not enough, even in the best of circumstances,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. The number of people who will be helped “is going to be overwhelmed by the three million that are headed toward default.”
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Bear Market
from Wikipedia
A bear market is described as being accompanied by widespread pessimism. Investors anticipating further losses are motivated to sell, with negative sentiment feeding on itself in a vicious circle. The most famous bear market in history was after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and lasted from 1930 to 1932, marking the start of the Great Depression. A milder, low-level long-term bear market occurred from about 1967 to 1982, encompassing the stagflation economy, energy crises in the 1970s, and high unemployment in the early 1980s.
Prices fluctuate constantly on the open market; a bear market is not a simple decline, but a substantial drop in the prices of a range of issues over a defined period of time. According to The Vanguard Group, “While there’s no agreed-upon definition of a bear market, one generally accepted measure is a price decline of 20% or more over at least a two-month period.” However, no consensual definition of a bear market exists to clearly differentiate a primary market trend from a secondary market trend.
Investors frequently confuse bear markets with corrections. Corrections are much shorter lived, whereas bear markets occur over a longer period with typically greater magnitudes of loss from top to bottom.
U.S. Stocks Slump, Pushing Dow Average to Brink of Bear Market
Bloomberg
By Michael Patterson
June 27 (Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks fell, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the brink of a bear market, on concern subprime-related writedowns at banks will worsen and record oil and a slowing economy will prolong the worst profit decline since 2002.
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Financial Times
By Michael Mackenzie in New York, Javier Blas in London and Andrew Wood in Hong Kong
Published: June 27 2008 18:58 | Last updated: June 27 2008 19:17
Global equities on Friday were heading for their worst first-half performance in 26 years after a week when oil surged to a fresh record and there were renewed worries about the health of the financial system and global growth.
A high of $142.54 a barrel for oil sparked a tumble in Asian markets and selling in Europe and in early trading on Wall Street.
Fears about inflation and slower growth as companies and consumers endure higher energy costs are weighing heavily on equities. Yet as stocks suffer, the surge in oil and other commodities during 2008 has the Reuters-Jefferies CRB spot index (a commodity price index) on track for its largest gain in 35 years. The index has risen 30 per cent since January, the largest increase since the 30.2 per cent gain in the first half of 1973.
Evidence of renewed financial stress as banks prepare to close out the second quarter and report earnings next month is also fanning fears.
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The case is Chamber of Commerce v. Brown, 06-939.
Washington Post
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 19, 2008; 10:58 AM
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a California law that blocked use of state money for anti-union activities.
The court ruled on the state’s first-in-the-nation law that bars employers from using state money to influence employees’ views on unions in their workplace.
The justices decided by a vote of 7-2 that federal labor law bars California from regulating union-related activities.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, backed by the Bush administration, said the state was trying to silence employers from weighing in on organizing efforts. Federal labor law allows employers to be involved as long as they don’t threaten reprisals.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the court, agreed that the state ventured into territory that belongs to the federal government. Congress already has rejected “California’s policy judgment that partisan employer speech necessarily ‘interferes with an employee’s choice about whether to join or be represented by a labor union’” Stevens said.
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Agency Was Responding to Ruling About Clean Air Act
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 26, 2008; 8:42 AM
White House officials last December sought to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from submitting a proposed rule that would limit greenhouse-gas emissions on the grounds they pose a threat to public welfare, agency sources said yesterday. And upon learning that EPA had hit the “send” button just minutes earlier, the White House called again to demand that the e-mail be recalled.
The EPA official who forwarded the e-mail, Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett, refused, said the sources, who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.
The proposed rule was EPA’s response to an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling that the agency had violated the Clean Air Act by refusing to take up the issue of regulating automobile emissions that contribute to global warming.
Burnett, who resigned from the agency this month, sent the e-mail to the White House Office of Management and Budget at 2:17 p.m. Dec. 5 and received the call warning him to hold off at 2:25 p.m., the sources said. The EPA is expected to release a watered-down version of its original proposal within a week, highlighting the extent to which Bush administration officials continue to resist mandatory federal limits on emissions linked to global warming.
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