Iran? North Korea? Cuba? China?
No – the United States of America.
If President Obama and the Democratic Party aren’t willing to prosecute the people responsible for torturing and imprisoning a 12 year-old child, without a trial, without hope of defense, then what does that say about the current American administration?
Following on from yesterday’s story about Goldman Sachs as the root of all evil, today we get the information that:
Nine banks that received government aid money paid out bonuses of nearly $33 billion last year — including more than $1 million apiece to nearly 5,000 employees — despite huge losses that plunged the U.S. into economic turmoil. … The nine firms in the report had combined 2008 losses of nearly $100 billion.
And if you think things are going to change, don’t be deluded. Here’s what the Obama White House had to say:
"The president continues to believe that the American people don’t begrudge people making money for what they do as long as…we’re not basically incentivizing wild risk-taking that somebody else picks up the tab for," said White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs.
What happened to Obama’s feigned outrage last year before the election? It’s all gone, baby. It disappeared to the same place as his promises about Gitmo, prison camps, climate change and health care.
If the NBA has a salary cap, why can’t American corporations? One of the key problems with capitalism is the open-ended nature of the upside. It breeds unlimited greed. Surely we can combine the good aspects of capitalism – eg incentives for creativity and effort – but restrict the upsides? I know we have tiered taxation, which effectively acts as a way of channeling some of that upside back into the system, but it doesn’t stop companies and individuals trying to bleed the economy for as much money as they can get their hands on, despite the negative consequences.
It still seems to me that we need another system, one that limits the greed but retains the incentives.
Zombie Time has this great report on a book co-authored by Obama’s new science ‘czar’ John Holdren (with Paul and Anne Erlich) back in 1977 called "Ecoscience" which predicted that the world is going to become overpopulated which will in turn lead to massive famines.
A snippet from the post:
In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:
• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who "contribute to social deterioration" (i.e. undesirables) "can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility" — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational "Planetary Regime" should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.
This reminds me of a talk I heard on the ABC a couple of years ago by Melbourne neuroscientist Dr John Reid where he talked about overpopulation and what we are going to have to do about it. ABC host Robyn Williams actually quoted Paul Erlich’s most famous book, The Population Bomb, in the introduction to the show.
Reid quoted Elliot Morley, Britain’s Special Representative on climate change, by saying the human race is on a ‘sleepwalk to oblivion.’ I like that phrase.
He goes on to say:
If we do not delude ourselves, and if we accept the calculations made by the Global Footprint Network and WWF (and I know of no scientific analysis that refutes the basic validity of the model) there is only one ineluctable conclusion. The population of the world must be very quickly reduced to 5 billion (that is, if 6 billions equals 120% of capacity, then 5 billions equals 100%). And then, as the average level of affluence rises, fairly quickly reduced further to, say, 2 to 3 billion.
The urgent discussion then becomes, how do we achieve these targets? Leaving aside uncontrollable natural events, such as a collision with a large asteroid or comet, or the eruption of a super-volcano, there is only a limited number of ways population decrease can be achieved. These ways are all painful, and most are brutally painful in their effect.
He has some pretty scary recommendations. I remember bring horrified when I listened to the talk but then again, he’s right – unless we significantly change the size of our global footprint, it’s hard to see how the human race is going to survive the 21st century. Perhaps Kurzweil is right and nanotech will save us. I hope so.
A great summation by David Swanson on AfterDowningStreet on his post about all of Obama’s broken promises so far:
The lesson is not that you voted for the wrong guy, given the choices. The lesson is not that rightwingers who hate Obama are right about anything. The lesson is not even that Obama has betrayed you. The key lesson should be that change does not come from electing someone. Change comes from forcing our culture to change, creating better communications systems, and disrupting the pleasant existence of our representatives in Congress. But we’ll never stop cheering for nonviolent activists in other countries and become them ourselves as long as we believe our role consists of loving or hating an elected official, and one whose job was supposed to consist of merely executing the will of the legislative branch.
Seymour Hersh writing in The New Yorker magazine, July 2008:
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
"… designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership".
The article goes on to say:
The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change.
Now think about the activities of the last couple of weeks. Starting to add up for you?
And who was running JSOC? General Stanley A. McChrystal, President Obama’s recently anointed Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan.