Look Ma, No Hands!!

   

As reported by the BBC "outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US has played an indispensable role in working to establish a credible opposition coalition in Syria."'

Translation:  See all that death and destruction over there...? That's US!!!  Look Ma,  we did it!!!!  No hands!!!

It is truly amazing.  Counting on Americans' unsurpassed ability to swallow both sides of a fish at once, Clinton now brags about what she once hotly denied.

Grope & Thud - The Battle of the Failed Records

It was all so tediously predictable.  President Obama looked a little livelier than hung-over and the press was gaga about how he had regained and recovered momentum and footing. Whatever news story one read, the talk was about "biting attacks" as the candidates "slugged" it out in "fiery" debate.  And so it has come to this: that in America's epoch of Haute Empire, a presidential debate was inescapably indistinguishable from the contrived Grope and Thud of World Wide Wrestling.  It was all so tediously depressing.

Within this slippery farce, the press valiantly sought to retrieve some peanuts of substance -- peanuts provided, we might add, only from the gallery.  "I'm glad you asked that, Sally...."  But no peanut was big enough to obscure the fact that what we witnessed was the Battle of  Failed Records.

And it is for this reason that we think Romney won the second debate as well as the first. Romney failed as an entrepreneurial "job creator" and governor but Obama has failed as a president.  It was ironically distressing that Romney's attacks on Obama's record should sound like they were cribbed from the leftish likes of Counterpunch, Truthout and (even!) Socialist Worker.  But, howsoever cribbed, contrived and oozing in crocodile tears, the fact is that things today are as lousy as they were four years ago.  That was, and remains, an albatross from which Obama could not free himself.

Gasoline prices were emblematic.

Under Wonderous Boy George, Romney cried, gasoline was $1.86 a gallon!   Yeah, replied Obama, with incisive sarcasm, only because the economy was in the tank.  (Actually, the bon mot was missed in Obama's leaden performance, but that was the gist of his reply.)  The only problem with Obama's ripost is that the economy is still in the tank and gasoline is upwards of $4.00 a gallon.

Neither candidate, it appears, has any desire or willingness to tackle the real bete noire of gasoline prices including speculative abuse of futures trading and (we do suspect) price manipulation.  Since neither of them disagree on the fundamentals of oil and gas production, the net distinction is the fact of $4.00 which ends up being Obama's loss.

We do not deny that there are differences within the fine print of the candidates' otherwise identical boilerplate contracts with America.  A case in point was the Administration's termination of preferential and profitable use-licenses for companies that didn't use the rights except as a paper asset or tradeable derivative. While Obama's executive action was not a bad thing, it left the fundamentals unchallenged and it is the fundamentals that are killing families at the pump.

Both candidates are in agreement that all will be well if we tweak and tinker with the tax code and let "Market Magick" do its miraculous work.  But all will not be well if that is all we do. 

Given that things are as lousy as they were four years ago; that Obama does not propose to do anything different from what he has been doing, and that he refuses to go grind the obstructionist opposition into the pink slime they are, it is hard to see how Romney does not come out the winner.  After all, all Romney has to do is "look presidential" and provide some plausible chimera for hope and change. 

It is here that come to the real substance -- albeit the psychological substance -- of the debate. Romney certainly looks presidential, given our normative socio-racial and cultural expectations.  It may be illogical and unfair, but Obama looks like a "black" Dennis E. Kucinich and is not what we expect to see on dollar bill.  Romney's height, his ease on stage, his stentorian grey at the temples and his healthy pancake all look the part.  To be objective, he has a bit of the F.D.R. air about him.

Romney also sounds presidential, as is proved by Chipster's Kitchen Test :  Turn on the debate and go fry something in the kitchen so that you can't hear what the candidates are saying but only the modulation, inflection and cadence of their voices.   What you will hear is that Obama is not a good speaker.  His delivery is interrupted by clipped sentences, abrupt pauses and unusual punctuations. His voice is down-beat and protesting.  Romney's delivery is fluid, commanding, rapid and upbeat even when accusatory. He urges utter bullshit and lies with earnest sincerity and facile argument-- a skill he no doubt acquired early in life during his two years of missionary work.

In short, the psychological substance of the matter is that Romney comes across as the Alpha Male and Obama does not -- and he does not because he is not.   The sad fact is that Obama is an arriviste. No one wants to say it because it hearkens to America's Ugliness.   But race in the United States is what gentility of birth used to be in Europe.

No one could have been more nouveau tout than Bill Clinton.  But he could expect and count on being forgiven all because, in Metternich's inimitable phrase, he fell into "baron and above."  Obama does not.  That is not his fault but it does not change the result.  In virtually every picture we have seen of Obama either golfing with Bohner or dining with executives, he has a looks that says, "I can't believe I am actually here."   And the "I" of the matter comes burdened with a lot of history that has nothing and everything to do with Obama. 

No one will get anywhere in the United States unless they are willing and able to accept "the system" on its terms.   A person goes to law school to learn the rationales and excuses that buttress the political structure.  A person goes to business school to learn the accepted theories  and  modalities of "generating" wealth.  For sure,  America has been gracious in allowing non-conformists a more or less free space at the sidelines to carp and cavil.   One can even make a living out of being an irrelevant pest.  But if you want to play the game, you swallow the oyster --and no oyster is swallowed in halves.  

In swallowing, Obama is no different than Clinton or anyone else.  But in arriving at the table Obama won a far, far, far harder struggle.   Thus, when Obama says he does "not begrudge"  Blankfein his huckstered millions he really, really means it and is (evidently) not about to jeopardize his place at the table.  In contrast, a man like F.D.R. (who swallowed oysters at birth) would have had no problem in calling Blankfein a disgrace to his class.  

In Romney's case, the "alpha" in the male stands for more than just "top".   The ostentation of his car-elevator is exceeded only by the obscenity of his off-shoring, tax-evasion, asset plunder, job destruction and -- lest we forget -- appalling hypocricy.   But rather than rip this monster a new Alpha hole,  Beta Bama will simply not begrudge "governor" Romney his tissue of decency.  That is a failing that lost the debate and could  cost the president his reelection.

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Persia and The Euphrates Sturgeon

Taking their lead from the New York Times, most of the American media excoriated Iran's president Ahmadinejahd for remarking that Zionist Jews were a blip in the history of the Middle East. " 'They have no roots there in history,'  Mr. Ahmadinejad said of the Israelis," reported the Times, " 'They do not even enter the equation for Iran.' " 

The Times went on to report that "The New York Post, which has made no secret of its hostility toward Mr. Ahmadinejad, said it had tried to deliver a gift basket over the weekend to the Warwick [Hotel] filled with items including Gold's Borscht, Manischewitz gefilte fish, Murray's Sturgeon Shop whitefish, Zabar's cream cheese and a free ticket to the Off Broadway show 'Old Jews Telling Jokes'. The Post said Iranian officials at the hotel declined to accept it." 

The irony apparently escaped the Times, and just in case it might escape anyone else, neither borscht, gefilte fish nor sturgeon have much of a history in the Middle East. 

But whether by design or omission, the Times and certainly the Post appear to have missed Ahmadinejahd's more significant Olive Branch. 

Whether the vast bulk of Ashkenazi Jews who comprised the impetus for Zionism had any actual antecedent presence in the Middle East, it is clear that Ahmadinejahd believes they did not and that, in his mind, they are an isolated ethno/genetic subgroup arising out of Central and Eastern Europe. 

As reported in the Western media, Ahmadinejad has also previously threatened to drive  this Zionist "regime" from the map and, by implication, to expel the so-called European foreigners from the Middle East.  Not surprisingly,  Israel considers such remarks to be an "existential threat."

However, there is a chasm between vowing to drive "foreigners" from the land and saying that their presence is evanescent blip which does "not even enter the equation."  Israelis may feel insulted to learn that they are "beneath an equation" but insulting or not Ahmadinejad could not have made it more clear that Iran has no belligerent intentions against Israel. 

To be sure, in the Israeli view, Iran is already aiding and abetting alleged hostile terrorist organizations and/or tyrants.  But it behooves diplomats not to slip and slide on the jelly of confused issues.  The "existential" issue is whether Iran has a geopolitical purpose and military design to destroy the State of Israel and disperse its Jewish inhabitants elsewhere.  As to this question  -- the Titus Question --  Ahmadinejad has stated that Israel doesn't enter into Iran' calculations.

Whether Iran supports a monarch in Syria or whether the United States supports a misogynist dictator in Saudia Arabia; whether Iran sends arms to Hamas or whether Israel sends advisors to Kurdistan or whether the United States supported Al Qaeda against Assad,  are distinct issues involving non-existential geo-political gambits of an entirely different order of magnitude.   

It will hardly come as a surprise that the word "diplomat" is "hypocricy" by another name but neither the United States nor Israel can complain that Iran plays the same game they do.    As to the existential game,  if anyone came bearing gifts to New York, it was Iran. 

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Romney & the 47%

In a closed meeting with his supporters, Governor Romney disclosed his less than charitable feelings about 47% of the country which, he said, were too poor to pay taxes and felt they were entitled to hand outs. His remarks reminded us of a thought that crossed our minds, but a mere week ago. [ HERE ]

Sometimes i think that the present floats about in some ether of some sort.

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Self Defence & The Pussy Riot

The Russian Orthodox Church claims that the Pussy Riot performance in St. Basil's Cathedral was an assault on Christian sensibilities. So?

Jesus offered no defence against his accusers and suffered every injury and indignity before and, most probably after, his Crucifixion.

Christ's absolute sufferance led his earliest followers to espouse an uncompromising passivism. It was a rule of the Early Church, that a Christian was not allowed to defend himself. Even St. Cyril Constantine (d. 869), who advocated "just defence" of neighbours, accepted the passivist premise against self-defence.

What did this mean? It meant very simply, that if struck you were to turn the other cheek; if thrown to the lions you were to offer neck to fang. A Christian was committed to suffer whatever evil God sent his way.

Now there are those who would like to engineer a more convenient result by resort to casuistry, which "resolves moral problems by extracting theoretical rules from particular instances and applying these rules to new situations." (Wiki)

Typically, this case-based rationalism seeks to manoeuvre between a thicket of supposed goods and not-goods by asking "how do we?" and "what is the purpose of?". The injunction to put aside the sword, these rationalists say, is a command to avoid violence. Self-defence without violence is permitted and indeed even "Christian."

Thus it is that AIKIDO is popular among those who wish to have their defence and be pacific too. The martial art of Aikido is based on receiving the force of violence but deflecting it mirror-like against its source so that the attacker end up attacking himself.

Clever but not Christian. There is nothing wrong with aikido as a martial art and as a martial art it is perhaps the most ingenious. But pacifism and Christianity are not co-terminous. Put another way, pacifism and submission are not the same thing. Jesus did indeed enjoin living by the sword but the crucified Christ went beyond that. The Christian who thinks he is emulating Christ by practicing non-violent Aikido deludes himself. The only way to emulate Christ is to suffer whatever crucifixion God bestows as one of his dubious graces.

Which leads us to the Pussy Riot. The Russian Orthodox Church is scandalized by what it calls the salacious and satanic performance of the female punk rock group within the sacred precincts. We did not have the benefit of seeing the performance ourselves and may accept that it was so grotesque and blasphemous as to be deeply offensive to orthodox religiosity. But so what?

There is a degree of palaver in the Russian and Western press about the unduly close ties between Church and Kremlin, about the unduely repressive response to an "inappropriate" exercise of nonetheless free speech, about the public relations disaster of the whole affair, on the one hand, and the substantial popularity of the prosecution on the other. We have also read that the Pussy Performers were put up to it by nefarious agencies seeking to stir up trouble in Russia. But none of this is here or there.

The Church should emulate its Founder and bear the injury with patience and gratitude. Had patriarch Kirill truly followed his Saviour he would have suffered through the performance and then invited the Pussy Girls to tea.

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Transparency Redux - Crystaline Clarity in Syria

       

A year ago this month, we noted  [1] the candor with which Western businessmen flocked to Libya on the very afternoon of Col. Qadaffi's murder. 

A provisional government we had never heard of in the news was there waiting to greet deplaning German and French businessmen with contracts and pens in hand.  The New York Times reported that at U.S. instance and request the Security Council had unfrozen $1.5 billion in seized Libyan assets in order to provide "aid" to the country.

So it was with some bemusement that we read in the New York Times today  [2] that,

"The State Department is considering positioning additional food and medical supplies in the region and is studying how to dismantle the raft of American and European sanctions against Syria quickly to allow investment to flow in and business to resume, avoiding further deterioration of life for ordinary people. "

One has to be an incurable moron not to realize the game afoot. What is amusing, in a contemptuous way,  is how the Western "leftishts" fall a-sucker over and over.  It apparently suffices to label the targetted ruler an ogre, a tyrant, a monster who stockpiles weapons of mass destruction, oppresses women and tortures dissidents for the left  to line up like good dumbfucks cheering on the latest Crusade for Democracy (and Reproductive Rights).

The United States has gotten quite good at this game, given that its own indpendence was foisted on  the world by twittering "Committees of Correspondence" waxing indignant over contrived atrocities such as the "Boston Massacre."  The United States honed the technique in Hispanic America where it was always able to find some corrupt "liberal-minded" prestanombre ("name-lender") who could recite Jeffersonian talking points by heart and who just needed a few companies of Marines to mow down "bandits" and "insurrectionists."  Why, just last month, the United States engineered a 48 hour impeachment of Paraguay's President Lugo.  Within weeks the "raison de coup" became clear: Monsanto was given the permission which Lugo had denied it to wreak an ecological holocaust on Paraguay with genetically modified seed and pesticides.  

But the Spontaneous Impeachment in Paraguay was child's play -- a mere trip down memory lane -- in comparison to America's newly honed and droned technique for "freeing up" a target country's assets. 

We recently wrote [3] that the core strategy of the U.S. "security wars" is to promote chaos and civil degradation so as to create perpetually fluid conditions for exploitation and control of resources. The strategists and leaders of the "First World" have realized that it is no longer necessary to go through the trouble and expense of installing despot puppets like Augusto Pinochet. It quite suffices to destroy whatever national authority exists and to negotiate contracts with whatever tribal or urban gangs (passing off as a "transitional government) are nearest to the bananas we want to pick.

As Rome created a desert and called it peace, the National Capitalist United States creates chaos and calls it freedom.

©Woodchipgazette, 2012

[1] http://wcg-newsandnotes.blogspot.com/2011/08/transparency.html


[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/world/middleeast/state-dept-and-pentagon-planning-for-post-assad-syria.html

[3] http://wcg-journal.blogspot.com/2011/06/mining-harvesting-and-civil-carcinogens.html

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The Nut Crackens

    

It would seem the United States has perfected the technique of invisible invasions.  Today, all of a sudden, the Guardian UK has started referring to the "Free Syrian Army."  What began several months ago as "democracy protests" (which were, of course "brutally suppressed") then metamorphosed into "armed resistance" aided and abetted from it was never very clear where.  But now at least the egg is hatched and we have a Free Syrian Army.

The difference is diplomatically important because, whereas every government has the sovereign right to crush insurrectionists whithin its borders, foreign governments don't have the right to assist rebels until they have gained enough ground that they can reasonably be considered co-belligerents.  In other words, the importance of a "civil war" is that outsiders can intervene whereas no one can intervene in a domestic disturbance. 

What the United States has perfected is agitating domestic disturbance with tweets and NGO grants until they ripen into a civil war.  From the Ukraine to Libya the technique has been honed and perfected.  To be sure, the United States is happy when it need go no further than suborn a majority in the National Assembly, as happened last month during Paraguays "28 Hour Impeachment" of a "left-leaning" and "pro-peasant" president who managed to offend  land holding "oligarchs" including American corporations and the Bush Family.  But Syria is a tougher nut to crack; but cracked it will be, into an ethnic bantustan of mutually loathing factions that will be unable to resist anything Israel or the United States wants.

Israel?  Look at a map of the Euphrates and trace the route of any pipeline from that great and essential aquifer.

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