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Total number of comments: 5 (since 2009-08-11 07:17:23)

Glenn Condell

Hand-wringing, tree-hugging debt slave from Australia.

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• Ron Paul and the liberal interventionists
  • Glenn Condell January 9, 2012 at 6:47 pm

    This is a good companion piece to David Samel's excellent takedown of Jerry Slater yesterday. The key sentences there were:

    'Slater’s perspective clearly assumes the awful premise of American exceptionalism, that the US is entitled to take actions that would be forbidden to other nations, because of our superior military capability, our superior morality, or both.'

    The shoe never visits the other foot (to use a Dershowitticism) in Slater's world, buried as he is in the insular van, unable to imagine himself or his loved ones at the business end of US/Israeli power projection. Nations and people have crossed the line when war can be 'deemed' appropriate. That decision should never be an abstract, debatable 'choice', it must be an existential necessity.

    And...

    'Paul is unique among Presidential candidates, and in a tiny minority of US politicians, who are willing to challenge the prevailing poisonous atmosphere of military glorification disguised as super-patriotism.'

    In other words, despite his warts, on the issue that matter more than any other and in fact shapes to a large extent every other concern, he is all we've got. From afar I find myself thinking, Jesus, is a 76 year old Hayekian states-righter the best America can come up with? Apparently, it is.

    Phil has said he'd rather hold his nose and vote for Obama, but boil away the boilerplate and Obama is Bush without cojones, a foot soldier for the forces that are destroying America (as opposed to one of it's scions). Whether he is a fool, a knave or simply the weakest man ever to hold that position in the end doesn't matter. A vote for him keeps the wheels pointed at the wall, and this goes for domestic policy as well as foreign. All candidates bar Paul represent simply changes of gear or perhaps a belated turn this way or that. Paul is the brake... an old and slightly dated brake perhaps, but the only brake in the race. That is who I'd be holding my nose for.

    'the hysteria about Paul being "anti-Israel" is no less contrived than in the case of Obama. Obama is simply the scapegoat for larger historical forces he has nothing to do with'

    Yes but if he wasn't such a vacancy, such dead and now rather fetid air, he would have something to do with them. He is after all the President of the United States of America. Roosevelt (take your pick) or Eisenhower or Kennedy would have had something to do with them. Even the Bushes you can imagine clearing their throats (they'd be talking to their own kind after all). Obama's complete lack of agency with regard to the interests of US citizens generally (rather than in particular) makes a vote for him a vote for the worsening status quo.

    But more than that, a vote for Obama is a vote for more murder of innocent brown people in countries most Americans couldn't find on map, for indefinite detention perhaps involving torture for (again mostly innocent) US citizens and foreigners alike, 1984 style surveillance of everyone on the planet, for the continued looting of the 99% by his 1% backers.. really the list is too long to haul out in every blog post or comment. Glenn Greenwald's selection here (from paragraph 12 on) of Obama's actual crimes against decency (ridiculing liberals' fear about Paul's potential analogues) will do me as a starting point: link to salon.com

    Read that list and tell me which of these outrages Ron Paul would use the office to support or continue. Of course, we have been down that path of 'hope' and 'change' a few years ago (and I admit to some misgivings about Paul's economic panaceas, but at least they haven't had ample opportunity to fail miserably as the regnant dictums have) , but the masses are a little more conversant with reality now, and more finely attuned to the governing bullshit and if Paul turned on a dime as Obama did I think all bets would be off in the US for the present political arrangements.

    Obama came from nowhere to betray us, Paul has been there from time immemorial it seems and it is the prospect of a crusading outsider (a genuine rather than manufactured one) cleaning up the stables that scares the shit out of those who have their hands (or even just a pinky or two) on the levers of power, in both wings of the governing elite.

    Washington 2012 reads like Rome 69; it needs a Vespasian, not another Nero.

• Ron Paul challenges liberals on love of 'big finance' and 'big-ass wars'
  • Glenn Condell January 1, 2012 at 1:37 am with 3 replies

    Those differences loom large in good times but matter less and less the deeper we descend into hell. At a certain point - let's say when it becomes clear that you won't be able to feed your family next week, or when your house is foreclosed upon by a bank that has forged documents in order to do so, or maybe it's when 'the law' fails to provide redress for this and in fact permits your arrest on the basis of your dangerous dissenting remarks on the net, or perhaps it's when you are tasered by a robocop along with your children or your parents while marching in the town square about these outrages - at some stage surely you will not only feel such differences reconcilable, but rather beside the point. Food and security trump ideas and preferences, and the right wing bigot next to you who loves NASCAR will eventually feel the same way. You have more in common with him than the people who run the Democratic party.

    Those differences (abortion, gun ownership, gay marriage, tax rates, church/state separation and the rest) are largely a mirage anyway - cui bono from half the people hating the other half ? How real are the divisions? They are the circuses and my view is that when there is no bread they will not be enough on their own to maintain the corrupt status quo. Of course what comes next may be even worse, but something will come next.

    In your previous comment you say: 'They (centrist Dems), as a group have strong civil rights credentials, good environmental instincts ' but what does civil rights really mean for people who consented to more than a million deaths by our hand plus four milion refugees in Iraq, not to mention wiretapping all of us, permitting our wealth to be stolen by the banks and not enforcing the rule of law for the insiders who did it, while zealously prosecuting everyone else for mere bagatelles? Yeah, they worked for coloured rights 40 years ago, that's great, but precisely how much resonance does that have for what we face today? As for the environment, just look at it, and not just in Iraq but on our own doorstep. Fine words, no results. That might disappoint or even upset you and I, but if you think the Democrat power elite shed tears at their 'failure' I have some land in the Mohave I'd like to sell you.

    'What is not really acknowledged is that once McGovern was nominated, the traditional Democratic Party power centers abandoned his campaign.'

    It sounds like you are shocked by this. Well I'm shocked too, but not surprised.

    'This included those groups around traditional labor (AFL-CIO), party machines in Chicago, NY and California and, of course, some of the big donors that supported campaigns in the past.'

    Right cast, wrong order. The power of the latter is responsible for the treasons of the former. And Bill Clinton and his Rubinites must shoulder much of the blame for that.

    I have a few ideas for solutions - involving compulsory paper trail publicly funded elections and abolition of the Electoral College; ending wars, closing bases, apologising to victims of our imperialism and bringing troops back home to be retrained by the Army Corps of Engineers to refit American infrastructure; cutting ties with Israel altogether absent a return to 67 borders or one state; making credit creation a public rather than private function, with the Fed run along Bank of North Dakota lines, allowing TBTF banks to fail, reinstalling Glass Steagall, imposing a Tobin tax, banning high frequency trading, forcing all derivatives on to a transparent clearing desk, laying charges against the thousands of FIRE sector miscreants who have defrauded their countrymen and women, bailing out out the debtors rather than the creditors to the tune of trillions and guaranteeing a job for all so that aggregate demand recovers in the wake of higher employment, leading to higher tax receipts and therefore better schools and roads and hospitals (with so much debt overhang this move would not be inflationary), and then sending the armed forces and the intelligence services into the offshore tax havens to audit and then close them. The cancer of Mexico's drug cartels could be addressed in this way too but far easier just to make drugs a medical rather than a legal issue.

    Aim at equality for a change and leave liberty to bring up the rear so that the horse is finally before the cart, and make a commitment to transparency instead of the secrecy that has corrupted and disfigured the last decade and more. I'd also like to see an electorate based, government backed Google rank style software developed to allow each citizen to raise issues or more likely indicate their preferences so that the mood and opinions of the nation can be mapped and presented publicly in something like real time. This would have no legislative power but woe betide the pol who ignored his constituency. Would Iraq have been invaded had such a thing existed in 2003?

    Oh and allow the Dems and GOP to die off, with individuals elected on platforms their voters approve, entering Congress to form coalitions for action on each issue according to the imperatives they and their constituency share. It would be messy to begin with, but it is hard to imagine it being worse than what we have.

    All that would do for starters, but if you want a more comprehensive attempt to limn a way out I heartily recommend a series of 6 posts by Dan Kervick at Naked Capitalism (a blog which ought to be required reading for all sentient beings in these times) - this is the last:

    link to nakedcapitalism.com

  • Glenn Condell December 31, 2011 at 7:49 pm with 5 replies

    'Ron Paul supporters came to Occupy Wall Street. They wanted a part of that radical movement. Is there nothing the left can learn from them?'
    Phil, I feel this is legacy thinking, framing thru political boxes. Using those boxes for a moment in order to explain, the 'left' could learn to forget about being 'left'. The Paulites don't want 'a part' of that movement, they recognise themselves as belonging to it. They don't see themselves as 'right' - certainly not the more recent converts. The whole thrust of OWS is non-partisan, because those that get it understand that there is no hope in the US any more of actual political representation for either of the old school poles, or for the great centre either for that matter. They know the Democrats are at least as likely to send them into an impoverished, police state 1984-style future as the GOP, perhaps more so, now that money corruption has turned them into simply the other wing of the ruling elites' political duopoly. Both OWS and the Paul resurgence are evidence that citizenry of the US, facing tsunamis of depression and war enabled by elite capture of government and media, is finally waking up and clearing their collective throat. It is not a left or a right thing any more.
    They will return of course, and an increasingly desperate elite will, through the media and political machiney they have a lock on, try to make sure the great centre cannot hold (or even form) - this is nakedly obvious in the treatment meted out to both Paul and OWS. But for now a truce on all the relatively minor issues that divide them should be called so that this existential battle, the incipient loss of freedom (let alone prosperity) for the great majority can be fought, and won.
    The siamese-twin headed US political system looks more an more like Robert Mugabe, once effective and even respected but now sclerotic, self-dealing, self-absorbed and self-destructive - heading for the dustbin and the opprobrium of history. To continue in the left/right, Dem/GOP paradigm is to provide support, however unwitting, to this claque which is both unwiling and unable to effect any change worth pursuing. Only a new Centre can manage this, and if Ron Paul and his followers can share the open mic, there is at least hope, if not expectation.

• The internet is destroying the idea of the nation
  • Glenn Condell February 2, 2011 at 9:19 pm with 1 replies

    I don’t know whether it’s the idea of the nation that’s disintegrating so much as the power it has historically had to compel and control its citizens. After all, the protestors are not after a dissolution of Egypt per se, just the people who currently run it. People all over the world, even the most connected, including (and perhaps especially) Americans, are as nationalistic as they ever were, maybe more so. USA!! USA!!

    And let’s not forget the raison d’etre of this blog, concerned as it is to push back against Jews who consider themselves Jews first, human beings second, and Americans a distant third, and because of this and the unique power they enjoy, are putting the interests of everyone else in jeopardy in their blind support of the Jewish nation. Blood and belonging are not going to be dissolved by the wireless and since the nation replaced the tribe a few hundred years ago, nations in most cases are the repositories of this feeling.

    The internet (not just the connectivity but the capacity of a Wikileaks to put meat on the bones of what would otherwise be dismissed as conspiracy theory) is of course key in the weakening of nations but it is a means rather than a motive; it catalyses movements of mass emotion, but the emotion is what ultimately matters. Most internet usage after all is still for porn, or Amazon or talking shit with your mates on Facebook. And then we must consider the potential for governments or other elite actors to utilise the technology to pervert these mass movements via the sort of hasbara ministry Israel has established but which let’s face it most major nations (and corporate interests) have operated since the web began.

    Even more chilling is the potential for elites (via government) to control the content of the net, or even shut it down. Mubarak’s efforts here seem fairly clueless and half-hearted but I can think of other governments acting for elite interests which I’m sure would make a better fist of it. The Kill Switch Bill is chilling but if push came to shove, would Obama or Petraeus or whoever even need such a fig leaf?

    Still, the biggest threat to the empowerment the internet offers might end up being the requirements of the technology itself. We are running out of energy, capital, arable and liveable land as AGW heats up (quite apart for the food we need to keep us all alive). If things get out of hand with Depression 2.0 (a more than negligible possibility) and nations (which are after all temporal ‘human conceptions’ too) are destroyed, how do we know what comes next will or even can support the massive infrastructure and power needed to keep it all going?

    On holiday down the coast a few weeks ago the power went down in the whole region. Only a few hrs but not long after a day long outage. Another region lost power yesterday for a while. Aging infrastructure, bankrupt local and state governments and progressively less energy to go around, with attendant rising costs – what happens if/when blackout becomes the rule rather than the exception?
    I agree that the net has made mass murdering purges a thing of the past for any remotely civilised nation. That I concur is a great leap forward (!) But if nations are to wither away we ought really to have some idea of what we are going to replace them with. Nations have often been defined as state organisations which have the power to compel those within their borders, that is, to have a (legitimate) monopoly of violence in that space. The nub of the issue is whether those with stewardship of that power are exercising it legitimately.
    So we either stick with nation states but ensure we have some reverse mechanism of control that forces them to behave within generally accepted norms, or we go down one of two other roads. The first is a genuine international body of governance which enforces (with violence if necessary - and there are always some situations which require it) the basic norms necessary for interactions between states, corporations, individuals, etc. This is the dreaded NWO and while I’m not one of the tinhats who see the Bilderbergers behind it all, I do think any sane person would have reason to doubt the efficacy or advisability of such a comprehensive undertaking. UN anyone?
    The other avenue is the Resilient Community concept, where groups of like-minded individuals, reacting to a backdrop of an increasingly globalised system of governments unable to ensure the basics of life (food/water, shelter, security, justice, energy, transport and communications, etc) pool their talents and resources in order to do so. The excellent John Robb sums it up as well as anyone: link to globalguerrillas.typepad.com
    Thing is, Robb’s vision involves communication between these communities to promote fast and widespread dissemination of the best innovations so that you don’t get the haves\have nots situation occurring – and guess what that requires? Seems to me some sort of vestigial state control of infrastructure must remain if the internet is to power post-national communities or they won’t be very resilient.
    But the idea is attractive because as well as providing shelter from the globalised shitstorm, it would if widespread enough work toward a reduction of the drivers causing the storm in the first place . While it’s true that this greater connectivity has facilitated political change, it has also facilitated much more instability in essential global systems such as finance and food production. The olden days where we didn’t hear about purges for years were also times where the dramatic failure of one component did not endanger the entire system. Even as late as the S and L, LTCM Mexican or Asian crises, there was enough slack in the system that other areas could continue, take up the slack so that even the affected ship could eventually right itself. This is no longer the case – unfortunately, everything is now as Robb says so ‘tightly coupled’ it’s one in all in. (This borrows heavily from Joseph Tainter’s notion of the diminishing returns of increased complexity) If we live in communities with a measure of independence from the global grid and therefore some protection from the shocks of system collapse, when anything untoward does arise in one area it is less likely to take down the rest.
    Thanks to the net and the crisis any form of governance nowadays needs legitimacy to survive, and this can only come from the provision of political goods – those basics of life above. Mubarak didn’t just suddenly become a tyrant and the internet didn’t just arrive – ditto Yemen, Tunisia, et al. What’s changed is that the price of food generally and wheat in particular has skyrocketed - freedom from hunger is the first political good. All of these factors – the repression, the net, the crisis - are necessary but not sufficient on their own, to force real change. It’s their convergence now that makes now the time.
    It’s often said that the best form of governance would be an enlightened despot, a philosopher-king or queen. Egypt has suffered under a despot without a tincture of enlightenment and his ouster is (or will be) a wonderful thing. But the day after he goes, the real work begins. Getting rid of the tyranny might end up being the easy part. Democracy is as Churchill said the worst form of government, except for all the others. It’s hard, not easy, particularly with the prospect of the army and the police and the Brotherhood sitting across the table from the students and the unions and the ubiquitous bankers.
    Whatever leader, whatever government Egypt is left with, it won’t be enough not to torture dissidents and not to censor the press, it will still have to provide those political goods or risk following Mubarak into history, hopefully this time and from here on via the ballot box.

    Sorry for long post - day off.

• A Jewish focus won't end a more-than-Jewish problem
  • Glenn Condell October 30, 2009 at 8:56 pm with 2 replies

    Quite beautifully said, especially this:

    'A purely Jewish focus on a more-than-Jewish problem causes many leftist Jews to take a paternalistic view of Palestinians. Rather than equals whose inalienable rights form the crux of the case against Zionism, the Palestinians are the clay of Jewish humanism, waiting to be fully actualized by thoughtful and reflective Jewish hands. Instead of insisting that Palestinians are human beings whose existence is the repudiation of Zionism, some Jews on the left argue that Zionism violates Jewish ethics. I am not suggesting that the two streams of thought are mutually exclusive, only that the focus on one may inhibit the realization of the other.'

    This chimes with Mr Barghouti's emphasis on the Daily Show; not so much on the crimes of the aggressor, or even the injury he causes, as the inalienable equal rights of the victim. This approach neatly deploys our freedom-loving, democratic rhetoric against the reality of our actions, or lack of action. We talk the talk, this quiet strategy forces us to walk the walk, or failing that, to STFU. The focus on Israeli chauvinism and brutality shifts over to our complacent and/or craven acceptance of it.

    Whereas before we were urged to agree that Israel's behaviour was unacceptable, which left some handy wiggle-room for evasion, we are now being invited to consider our own responsibility, in a frame of reference that we almost religiously aver is the very bedrock of our civilisation, and the basis of our notion of what distinguishes us. Mr Barghouti is almost respectfully, certainly not spitefully, holding this mirror up in front of us, and asking us to overcome our natural tendency to look away.

    Danaa said: 'I sometimes think that the main difference between the jews of new york and those of israel is that the former – by virtue of living in america – recognize, and indeed fight for equal rights under the law for all. '

    I don't know about that. Did you see Max Blumenthal's videos on some of the pro-Israel marches of recent times? The participants may only have been a sample, but I find it hard to believe they were unrepresentative of a very large proportion of the Jewish community there. These were not settler-style fundie-weirdos, they were the prosperous mainstream, uttering the sort of racist inanities Max also encountered often while in Israel - many of these being from visiting mainstream American Jews!

    You only have to read the racist bile of the dwindling band of sad hasbarites you see at places like this to understand how 'living in America' doesn't appear to laid the groundwork necessary for recognising or indeed fighting 'for equal rights under the law for all'. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that Israeli Jews are probably in general less likely, in their hearts, to host the sort of double standards that American Jews such as Richard Witty can manage, simply by virtue of their being actually over there, on the ground, in the reality of the situation. If they are racists, they are clear-eyed, self-aware, even proud racists – not racists who kid themselves that their attitudes can’t be prejudiced because they grew up in freedom-loving America, goddamit!

    Most American Zionists have apparently never been to Israel and live secular and even intermarried lives, are fed a news/info diet carefully screened to be free of the ugly quotidian detail of occupation, and from this insulated distance, can afford to entertain grossly chauvinistic fantasies of tribal dominance in a mythic homeland, all within the blameless rubric of American progressivism.

    Todd says: 'The Palestinians are 100% in the right, but their struggle is no more my struggle than was the struggle in Rwanda between Hutu and Tutsi. '

    That may be true from a moral standpoint, but not from a practical one. Bluntly, we could afford to ignore millions of black people in Africa killing each other and pass on the effort required to make a difference. It could plausibly be argued that most of us in the West have been utterly unaffected by the upheavals of sub-Saharan Africa (which by the way appear to have been going on for thousands of years). But how can anyone argue that the ME conflicts don't impact upon our present and especially our future? The lives of our children will probably be as unruffled by Africa as ours were, but what happens in the ME is crucial to the chances of their enjoying anything like the relative peace and prosperity you and I grew up in. Perhaps it shouldn't be that way, but it is.

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