In the wake of one of earth's worst man-made environmental disasters, I cannot express my view better than Chris Hedges does for Truthdig in "BP and the 'Little Eichmanns'" (below).
BP and the 'Little Eichmanns' By Chris Hedges for Truthdig
Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die. They ruthlessly exploit the natural world and the members of their society in the name of progress until exhaustion or collapse, blind to the fury of their own self-destruction. The oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, estimated to be perhaps as much as 100,000 barrels a day, is part of our foolish death march. It is one more blow delivered by the corporate state, the trade of life for gold. But this time collapse, when it comes, will not be confined to the geography of a decayed civilization. It will be global.
Those who carry out this global genocide—men like BP’s Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who assures us that “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume’’—are, to steal a line from Ward Churchill, “little Eichmanns.” They serve Thanatos, the forces of death, the dark instinct Sigmund Freud identified within human beings that propels us to annihilate all living things, including ourselves. These deformed individuals lack the capacity for empathy. They are at once banal and dangerous. They possess the peculiar ability to organize vast, destructive bureaucracies and yet remain blind to the ramifications. The death they dispense, whether in the pollutants and carcinogens that have made cancer an epidemic, the dead zone rapidly being created in the Gulf of Mexico, the melting polar ice caps or the deaths last year of 45,000 Americans who could not afford proper medical care, is part of the cold and rational exchange of life for money.
The corporations, and those who run them, consume, pollute, oppress and kill. The little Eichmanns who manage them reside in a parallel universe of staggering wealth, luxury and splendid isolation that rivals that of the closed court of Versailles. The elite, sheltered and enriched, continue to prosper even as the rest of us and the natural world start to die. They are numb. They will drain the last drop of profit from us until there is nothing left. And our business schools and elite universities churn out tens of thousands of these deaf, dumb and blind systems managers who are endowed with sophisticated skills of management and the incapacity for common sense, compassion or remorse. These technocrats mistake the art of manipulation with knowledge.
“The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else,” Hannah Arendt wrote of “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” “No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.”
Our ruling class of technocrats, as John Ralston Saul points out, is effectively illiterate. “One of the reasons that he is unable to recognize the necessary relationship between power and morality is that moral traditions are the product of civilization and he has little knowledge of his own civilization,” Saul writes of the technocrat. Saul calls these technocrats “hedonists of power,” and warns that their “obsession with structures and their inability or unwillingness to link these to the public good make this power an abstract force—a force that works, more often than not, at cross-purposes to the real needs of a painfully real world.”
BP, which made $6.1 billion in profits in the first quarter of this year, never obtained permits from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The protection of the ecosystem did not matter. But BP is hardly alone. Drilling with utter disregard to the ecosystem is common practice among oil companies, according to a report in The New York Times. Our corporate state has gutted environmental regulation as tenaciously as it has gutted financial regulation and habeas corpus. Corporations make no distinction between our personal impoverishment and the impoverishment of the ecosystem that sustains the human species. And the abuse, of us and the natural world, is as rampant under Barack Obama as it was under George W. Bush. The branded figure who sits in the White House is a puppet, a face used to mask an insidious system under which we as citizens have been disempowered and under which we become, along with the natural world, collateral damage. As Karl Marx understood, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force. And this force is consuming us.
Karl Polanyi in his book “The Great Transformation,” written in 1944, laid out the devastating consequences—the depressions, wars and totalitarianism—that grow out of a so-called self-regulated free market. He grasped that “fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function.” He warned that a financial system always devolved, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism—and a Mafia political system—which is a good description of our corporate government. Polanyi warned that when nature and human beings are objects whose worth is determined by the market, then human beings and nature are destroyed. Speculative excesses and growing inequality, he wrote, always dynamite the foundation for a continued prosperity and ensure “the demolition of society.”
“In disposing of a man’s labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity ‘man’ attached to that tag,” Polanyi wrote. “Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed. Finally, the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society. Undoubtedly, labor, land, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organizations was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill.”
The corporate state is a runaway freight train. It shreds the Kyoto Accords in Copenhagen. It plunders the U.S. Treasury so speculators can continue to gamble with billions in taxpayer subsidies in our perverted system of casino capitalism. It disenfranchises our working class, decimates our manufacturing sector and denies us funds to sustain our infrastructure, our public schools and our social services. It poisons the planet. We are losing, every year across the globe, an area of farmland greater than Scotland to erosion and urban sprawl. There are an estimated 25,000 people who die every day somewhere in the world because of contaminated water. And some 20 million children are mentally impaired each year by malnourishment.
America is dying in the manner in which all imperial projects die. Joseph Tainter, in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” argues that the costs of running and defending an empire eventually become so burdensome, and the elite becomes so calcified, that it becomes more efficient to dismantle the imperial superstructures and return to local forms of organization. At that point the great monuments to empire, from the Sumer and Mayan temples to the Roman bath complexes, are abandoned, fall into disuse and are overgrown. But this time around, Tainter warns, because we have nowhere left to migrate and expand, “world civilization will disintegrate as a whole.” This time around we will take the planet down with us.
“We in the lucky countries of the West now regard our two-century bubble of freedom and affluence as normal and inevitable; it has even been called the ‘end’ of history, in both a temporal and teleological sense,” writes Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress.” “Yet this new order is an anomaly: the opposite of what usually happens as civilizations grow. Our age was bankrolled by the seizing of half the planet, extended by taking over most of the remaining half, and has been sustained by spending down new forms of natural capital, especially fossil fuels. In the New World, the West hit the biggest bonanza of all time. And there won’t be another like it—not unless we find the civilized Martians of H.G. Wells, complete with the vulnerability to our germs that undid them in his War of the Worlds.”
The moral and physical contamination is matched by a cultural contamination. Our political and civil discourse has become gibberish. It is dominated by elaborate spectacles, celebrity gossip, the lies of advertising and scandal. The tawdry and the salacious occupy our time and energy. We do not see the walls falling around us. We invest our intellectual and emotional energy in the inane and the absurd, the empty amusements that preoccupy a degenerate culture, so that when the final collapse arrives we can be herded, uncomprehending and fearful, into the inferno.
Libertarian Michael Ostralenk of the Campaign for Liberty helped put together the coalition It was also signed by Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, Duane Parde of the National Taxpayers Union, Larry Greenley of the The John Birch Society and yes, Grover Norquist. At least the attacks on Jane from the left, which I will call the Establishment left are for the most part not as bad (yet) as the attacks by the establishment right against the libertarian and paleo-conservative right during the second gulf war. I have not seen her called a traitor or unpatriotic but its interesting to note that the establishment on both sides of the aisle share mostly the same perspectives on the ‘how’ of politics and they both have similar means of either dismissing voices outside of their mainstream or of attempting to co-op them. > He’s right that the corporatist politicians who dominate both parties are equally hostile to grassroots activists on both sides who challenge the money train. But I would argue that Robert Cruickshank’s response to Glenn Greenwald was correct: the right, whose numbers are relatively small and whose views are generally far outside of the main stream, has dominated politics for the past 30 years because they made an alliance with the corporations. It’s only natural that Democrats have sought power by replicating that model, even at the price of destroying the illusion that they’re the “party of the people” and fracturing the support that put Obama in office. The Democrats are trying to secure their political ascendance by tying up the money, no different than Tom DeLay did. But whereas the Democratic Party represented a net to collect and unite those disaffected with the kleptocracy of George Bush, the actions of the Democrats since securing the White House this time around have dimmed the hopes that the Democrats present a real alternative. The Bush Republicans flogged social issues in order to obviate the need for populist economic measures. They satisfied the base by treating them to a banquet of God, guns and gays while they looted the taxpayer trough. The Democrats, however, are making a sacrifice play on social issues and enabling corporatism by triangulating against their own base. Thus, so-called “fiscally conservative” Blue Dogs can justify a radical vote forcing people to pay almost as much to private insurance companies as they do in federal taxes because it strikes a blow against pro-choice women. Likewise, the White House positioned themselves as “centrist” after the widely popular public option was dispensed with, simply because it was something “liberals” seemed to want too. What they’re forcing, however, is a situation where there is no place for populist liberal discontent to rationally go. The Democrats assume that the “base” will stay with them because the President is popular and the GOP is worse, but the GOP was never able to achieve the kind of raid on the public sphere that the Democrats are enabling in the health care bill. Social Security privatization was defeated because the Democrats joined with unions, blogs and other liberal institutions to oppose it. The Republicans were never successful in channeling Social Security taxes into the coffers of Wall Street. The annual individual contribution to Social Security is 6.2%, to a maximum of $6,621 per year for someone making $106,800. But the health care bill passed by the Senate mandates that 8% of your annual income be channeled to private insurance companies, and the cap is the cost someone is willing to pay for a policy. Thus, as Marcy notes, a family of 4 making $66,800 per year will be mandated to pay $5,243 for a policy that only covers 70% of their medical expenses. But the average cost of an insurance policy for a family of four right now is $13,375 per year. The cost of that plan is not going to go down if the Senate bill passes — in fact, it will continue to increase at an average rate of $1,000 per year. The only difference this bill will make is that people from 130% to 400% of poverty level on the individual market (12% of the population) will get some assistance from the government in buying those policies in the form of subsidies. But that money will still go straight to insurance companies. I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don’t understand is the nonchalance with which we’re about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so. George Bush couldn’t pull off the great Social Security robbery because of opposition from the left. But Obama has neutralized liberal institutional pushback by locking them in the veal pen, holding EFCA hostage to sideline the unions and relying on his own personal magnetism to keep member organizations like MoveOn or the Sierra Club from making a strong move without fracturing their own ranks. With no place to go for refuge from corporatist entrenchment, populist opposition from the left and right will continue to have no choice but to work together in order to oppose it. No doubt the demonization for doing so from party loyalists on both sides who don’t want their control of the kleptocracy to be challenged will only get more fierce.
The Obama Administration and their allies in Congress are not socialists as they are commonly derided as being by the right wing press. At least not in terms of the policies they have been promoting to date. If the medical reform bill that just passed the Senate is any indication of their political preferences, I would have to use the word ‘corporatists’ with a liberal bent to better describe them. They don’t call for State control of the means of production, and they obviously do not take kindly to a free market or even a freer market, but they support establishing significant government control over business and labor in collusion with labor and big business interests. It’s nothing new, it’s pretty much a continuation and expansion of the policies under Bush the Younger.
During the weeks of uncertainty, Godolphin and Dubai representatives of Sheikh Mohammed assured the racing community that the problems of Nakeel (a subsidiary corporation of Dubai World) would not affect his racing operation nor would it affect MGM's bid to run Aqueduct's racino
It will not affect the Emirates National Oil Company takeover of Dragon Oil, London-listed £2.3 billion Caspian Sea producer.
Citizens of Dubai and the UAE have been hurt and shocked at the media frenzy which exaggerated the liquidity problems of Dubai World and portrayed the country as being in free fall.
Much of that frenzy appears to have been generated by Rupert Murdoch's various international media operations. The Times of London in particular skewed their reports to exclude positive reports from official international financial services organisations.
Instead it published comments from dissident British former Dubai residents and Durham University professors who called for Sheikh Mohammed's removal from office.
Murdoch has several country leaders on his hit list and he is using his media against Barach Obama, Gordon Brown, Silvio Berlusconi and now Sheikh Mohammed.
He published Sarah Palin's book and is financing her sales/political-campaign tour through his media enterprises, i.e., Fox News, and employees.
Dubai World had the $4.1 billion on hand which was due today for payment and is meeting with bank creditors to negotiate a standstill on debt. It will eventually sell some of its foreign assets.
Abu Dhabi loaned Dubai World a further $10 billion to cover Dubai World's business needs until the end of April and bills owed to creditors and contractors.
Confidence had returned to the Middle Eastern markets last week, but they jumped 10% yesterday after Abu Dhabi's announcement.
The delay in making the loan and an odd, early announcement that Abu Dhabi would not temporarily cover the debt has damaged both Dubai's and the UAE's credit worthiness.
One has to wonder why it took the oil-rich Emirate so long to change its mind.
Susan's Views http://www.susansviews.com
Assoc. Professor, Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City; Sr. regulator during S&L debacle
Posted: November 23, 2009 10:43 AM on Huffington Post
Tom Frank's book, The Wrecking Crew explains how the Bush administration destroyed effective government and damaged our social fabric and our economy. The Obama administration has chosen to reward two of the worst leaders of Bush's crew -- Geithner and Bernanke -- with promotion and reappointment. Embracing the Wrecking Crew's most destructive members has further damaged the economy and caused increasing political and moral injury to the administration.
Last week was a bad one for Geithner and Bernanke. Senator Dodd said that Bernanke's confirmation was no longer a done deal. The House Financial Services Committee revolted against the administration, the Fed, and Chairman Barney Frank. It voted for a strong bill to audit the Fed. Senate Banking Chairman Schumer went to a conference at Columbia University -- where a generation of students salivated at the prospects of Wall Street wealth -- and was overwhelmed by an audience denouncing the continuing stranglehold of the finance industry over successive administrations and the Congress. Neither Barney's blarney nor Schumer's schmooze was any avail before an outraged public.
The Washington Post article then offers a metaphor that serves as an apology for the Bush Wrecking Crew. The metaphor is driving over a cliff: "'Secretary Geithner has helped steer the American economy back from the brink, and is now leading the effort on financial reform,' White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said." Geithner pushed back against Republicans who questioned his performance, telling them, "you gave this president an economy falling off the cliff."
The administration apologists praise Geithner and Bernanke for "steer[ing] the American economy back from the brink." Greenspan, Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner were the leaders of Bush's financial Wrecking Crew. They were the guys blinded by their pro-Wall Street ideology that drove the car 120 mph down an icy mountain road and lost control of it. They took us to the "brink" of running "off the cliff" and creating the Second Great Depression. The bizarre claim is that we should praise them because they, and Wall Street, only wrecked the economy -- they haven't (yet) utterly destroyed it. Under their metaphor, we're supposed to cheer Geithner and Bernanke because once they finally figured out that they were careening toward the cliff, they decided to sideswipe a row of trees in order to avoid going over the edge. They wrecked the car but they walked away from the crash without a scratch. If your teenager gets drunk, speeds, crashes into a school bus (injuring dozens of kids), and flips the Ford Focus -- but walks away from the crash -- you don't praise him, give him the keys to the family minivan, and have him drive the soccer team to practices. You take all the keys away from him and ground him.
The Obama administration promoted Bush's architects of the financial disaster and demands that we hail them as heroes. President Bush was ridiculed for saying: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." FEMA administrator Michael Brown stood by while Hurricane Katrina reduced a single large city to ruin. Geithner and Bernanke stood by while scores of large cities were devastated.
Susan's Views http://www.susansviews.com