The Mound of Sound

The corporatization of America has spread far and wide under the Bush administration. Industry leaders get placed in charge of the government departments that regulate their industries; oil companies rake in tsunami-scale profits yet still receive billions in federal subsidies; the military has been partly privatized and handed over to the likes of Haliburton; and so much more.

That depressing trend makes even small victories seem wonderful, inspirational. News of one of those came out today, from California. There, state regulators have come down with both boots on Blue Cross, a leading health insurance provider.

Blue Cross has been pulling health coverage out from underneath policyholders whenever possible, often for anything they could claim was an undisclosed, pre-existing condition, regardless of whether the failure to disclose was clearly unintentional.

In a previous post I wrote about a young girl who developed a potentially-fatal tumor on her jaw. Blue Cross paid the first $20,000 of her medical costs but then cut her off on discovering she had a “bump” on her chin at the time her parents applied for insurance. Her parents didn’t pay any attention to it, neither did the girl’s doctor. No one could say that, at the time the policy was purchased, the bump was even cancerous. That didn’t stop Blue Cross from forcing the parents to scramble to fund the rest of their daughter’s medical treatments. They sued, just like about 70-other shafted policy holders.

Those suits got settled, and they were all settled at once, and the former policy-holders are said to all be quite pleased with the outcome. What happened was that California state regulators stepped up and did what regulators are supposed to do – regulate – in the public interest. They made it clear to Blue Cross that its conduct was unacceptable and they warned it that big fines were coming down. Suddenly, Blue Cross had a change of heart. Good news for all the policy holders who were shafted and all those who would have been shafted on claims to come.

This time you’ll be playing for the patio furniture. Name this creature and the reason, if any, we should even remember her name.

We all know the word “fascism” because our leaders like to bandy it around, especially to excoriate other leaders they don’t like. Now we all know that fascists and fascism are bad. After all, that’s what WWII was all about, right? Unfortunately, not many of us have ever spent much time pondering just what fascism really is. In fact, it defies any precise definition mainly because it’s not some sort of code based on some ideological manifesto, some statement of principles and concepts. No, fascism is something much more obscure than, say, communism and is inevitably defined by its characteristics.

The following is a useful examination of these traits, published by the Council for Secular Humanism –

“There is one archetypal political philosophy that is anathema to almost all of these principles. It is fascism. And fascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for. The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm.

“We are two-and-a-half generations removed from the horrors of Nazi Germany, although constant reminders jog the consciousness. German and Italian fascism form the historical models that define this twisted political worldview. Although they no longer exist, this worldview and the characteristics of these models have been imitated by protofascist regimes at various times in the twentieth century. Both the original German and Italian models and the later protofascist regimes show remarkably similar characteristics. Although many scholars question any direct connection among these regimes, few can dispute their visual similarities.

“Beyond the visual, even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi. This, of course, is not a revelation to the informed political observer, but it is sometimes useful in the interests of perspective to restate obvious facts and in so doing shed needed light on current circumstances.

“For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

“Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.

5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.

6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.

9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.

14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.”

Does any of this ring alarm bells? Of course not. After all, this is America, officially a democracy with the rule of law, a constitution, a free press, honest elections, and a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils. Historical comparisons like these are just exercises in verbal gymnastics. Maybe, maybe not.

Note
1 Defined as a “political movement or regime tending toward or imitating Fascism”—Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.

References

Andrews, Kevin. Greece in the Dark. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1980. Chabod, Frederico. A History of Italian Fascism. London: Weidenfeld, 1963. Cooper, Marc. Pinochet and Me. New York: Verso, 2001. Cornwell, John. Hitler as Pope. New York: Viking, 1999. de Figuerio, Antonio. Portugal—Fifty Years of Dictatorship. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1976. Eatwell, Roger. Fascism, A History. New York: Penguin, 1995. Fest, Joachim C. The Face of the Third Reich. New York: Pantheon, 1970. Gallo, Max. Mussolini’s Italy. New York: MacMillan, 1973. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler (two volumes). New York: Norton, 1999. Laqueur, Walter. Fascism, Past, Present, and Future. New York: Oxford, 1996. Papandreau, Andreas. Democracy at Gunpoint. New York: Penguin Books, 1971. Phillips, Peter. Censored 2001: 25 Years of Censored News. New York: Seven Stories. 2001. Sharp, M.E. Indonesia Beyond Suharto. Armonk, 1999. Verdugo, Patricia. Chile, Pinochet, and the Caravan of Death. Coral Gables, Florida: North-South Center Press, 2001. Yglesias, Jose. The Franco Years. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977.”

A telling op/ed piece in today’s New York Times by Jeff Stein, national security editor of Congressional Quarterly.

After five years of the Global War Without End on Terror, Stein set out to ask key figures in his government if they knew the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims:

“But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?

“My curiosity about our policymakers’ grasp of Islam’s two major branches was piqued in 2005, when Jon Stewart and other TV comedians made hash out of depositions, taken in a whistleblower case, in which top F.B.I. officials drew blanks when asked basic questions about Islam. One of the bemused officials was Gary Bald, then the bureau’s counterterrorism chief. Such expertise, Mr. Bald maintained, wasn’t as important as being a good manager.

“A few months later, I asked the F.B.I.’s spokesman, John Miller, about Mr. Bald’s comments. ‘A leader needs to drive the organization forward,’ Mr. Miller told me. ‘If he is the executive in a counterterrorism operation in the post-9/11 world, he does not need to memorize the collected statements of Osama bin Laden, or be able to read Urdu to be effective. … Playing ‘Islamic Trivial Pursuit’ was a cheap shot for the lawyers and a cheaper shot for the journalist. It’s just a gimmick.'”

“Of course, I hadn’t asked about reading Urdu or Mr. bin Laden’s writings.

“A few weeks ago, I took the F.B.I.’s temperature again. At the end of a long interview, I asked Willie Hulon, chief of the bureau’s new national security branch, whether he thought that it was important for a man in his position to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. ‘Yes, sure, it’s right to know the difference,’ he said. ‘It’s important to know who your targets are.’

“That was a big advance over 2005. So next I asked him if he could tell me the difference. He was flummoxed. The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following,’ he said. ‘And the conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shia and the difference between who they were following.’

“O.K., I asked, trying to help, what about today? Which one is Iran — Sunni or Shiite? He thought for a second. ‘Iran and Hezbollah,’ I prompted. ‘Which are they?’
He took a stab: ‘Sunni.’

“Wrong.

“Al Qaeda? ‘Sunni.’

“Right.

“AND to his credit, Mr. Hulon, a distinguished agent who is up nights worrying about Al Qaeda while we safely sleep, did at least know that the vicious struggle between Islam’s Abel and Cain was driving Iraq into civil war. But then we pay him to know things like that, the same as some members of Congress.”

Stein then related his encounter with Terry Everett, a 7-term Republican Congressman and vice-chairman of the House intelligence sub-committee on technical and tactical intelligence.
Everett also didn’t know Shia from Sunni:

“To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni.

“’Now that you’ve explained it to me,’ he replied, ‘what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.’”

Before any of us start chuckling, maybe we should ask how many of our leaders know the difference either? Maybe we should ask.

George Bush is at his very best when he gets into his comedy mode. It makes him almost seem likeable.

Today the president signed into law his bill authorizing “tough” interrogation of suspects and allowing their trial before military tribunals but which does not afford them a right to legal counsel or to challenge the very legality of their detention. This was clearly a situation that called for some levity as in these lines from President George Bush himself:

“With the bill I’m about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice.” Is he talking about bin Laden? Has he got Osama? Did he finally do it? What do you think?

“It is a rare occassion when a president can sign a bill he knows will save American lives.” He could’ve saved an awful lot of American lives, even without a bill, if he’d just stayed out of Iraq.

“Those who kill the innocent will be held to account.” Sure, unless the “innocent” include the tens of thousands of Iraqis the Americans have killed. Best we leave them out of this.

Mr. Bush said his bill sends a clear message: “This nation is patient and decent and fair…” The American Civil Liberties Union thinks the bill’s message is more along these lines: “The president can now.. ..indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions.”

I figured it out. If you just add the words “as I wanna be” after ‘patient’ and ‘decent’ and ‘fair’, Bush and the ACLU are both right. There, now don’t you feel better?

The Achilles Heel of this bill is that it places so much arbitrary power and discretion in the judgment of a man who, for six years, has repeatedly and consistently demonstrated horribly bad judgment.

Once again the editorial staff of Canada’s self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” have shown that there are not many great minds wasted in the newsroom of this paper. This time, they claimed that the NATO mission in Afghanistan, “…is a sensible use of the Right to Protect, a United Nations policy pushed by Canada.

I don’t know what, if anything, these people had in mind but there is no “right to protect” policy and the actual policy, the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, has no application to the Afghan situation. Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, is narrowly aimed at preventing two horrors: ethnic cleansing and genocide. That’s it. Afghanistan’s many troubles do not, fortunately, include genocide or ethnic cleansing. Surely the senior editorial bosses of Canada’s newspaper of record ought to understand that.

The editorial, addressing yesterday’s story about 13-year olds being traded like cattle by their fathers and being thrown into prison if they refuse, then says, “..it’s fair to ask: Is this the new Afghanistan that Canadians are dying for?”

That, of course, is the fundamental question. That also explains why the editors threw it out as a closing line without making any attempt at answering it. They don’t want the answer because they know it totally undermines their paper’s wholehearted endorsement of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan.

President Karzai’s government doesn’t actually govern. His countrymen remain in the grip of a feudal state ruled by tribal custom. Karzai’s government, police and military are so shot through with corruption that they oppress rather than protect the tribesmen. This enables the Taliban to recruit from the same fields our troops patrol. Karzai’s government is fueling the very insurgency that we have to battle to defend Karzai’s government.

It’s good to ask these important questions. It’s completely disingenuous to then close one’s eyes to the obvious answers.

Some good news, finally, on the environmental front. A report is due out later this month prepared by the former chief economist to the World Bank and the British treasury. In it, economist Nick Stern is said to demonstrate that the cost of slashing greenhouse gas emissions will be far cheaper than the price we’ll pay for the ensuing devastation if global warming continues.

Stern is said to have spent a year going through the science and economics of climate change in the course of preparing his British government-funded study. It seems his conclusions depict this to be a “no brainer”.

The Stern report follows on the heels of a PriceWaterhouse Coopers study that showed it is possible to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% from today’s levels at a cost of just one year’s economic output – but only if the developed world takes the initiative and acts aggressively, now.

A Greenpeace spokesman said of the Stern report, “Now we know there’s a moral imperative, an environmental imperative and an economic imperative.” This should give the critics something to chew on. Let’s hope it does.

To many Liberals, Frank McKenna has long been their dream candidate for party leader and prime minister. I never could get very enthusiastic about the guy. He always struck me as the type who couldn’t be counted on to be ready to stand up for Canada in tough situations.

Comments made in a paper McKenna released today confirm my doubts. He claims Canada blundered by abjectly refusing to join America’s anti-missile defence scheme. McKenna claims we weren’t very good at communicating our position. Let’s see – he was our ambassador to the United States. Wasn’t it his job to see the message was properly communicated? McKenna, according to reports, seems to think we should revisit that decision, a position recently echoed by the Canadian senate.

McKenna misses the point. Putting weapons in space should be opposed by every sensible nation on the planet. Once one nation puts weapons in space, other will feel the need to do the same. There is no way, utterly none, that space weapons will be confined to defensive systems only. As surely as night follows day, defensive weapons will soon give way to dual-purpose weapons that will, in turn, be followed by offensive weapons.

The risks of a space-based weapons race far outweigh any slim benefit that could possibly accrue to American security. The risk to the planet of those weapons ever being used could be cataclysmic.

Thank God McKenna isn’t going to be leading the Liberal Party or this nation.

There’s a massive development underway in the U.S. and elsewhere to produce “bio-fuels” as a renewable alternative to petroleum resources. In theory it sounds good: grow corn and then transform it into fuel. Grow corn, make gas, grow more corn, make more gas and on it goes.

Would that it were that simple but it’s not. A couple of days ago I posted an item entitled “When the food runs out” based on a Gwynne Dyer piece about the earth’s inability to produce enough food for the existing population. Dyer touched on the bio-fuel craze and pointed out that, if we don’t have enough farmland to feed our people, how can we take lands out of food production to make fuel. He drove the point home by noting that to make enough ethanol to fill up an SUV once requires enough grain to feed a person for a full year.

Turns out there’s another looming problem, one much more likely to doom this corn-based biofuel project. America’s corn belt is located in a handful of states that all rely on what’s known as the High Plains Aquifer. Mid-western farmers have been dependent on the HPA for decades. Its bountiful supply allowed them to turn prairie grasslands into productive farmlands.

For more than a decade stories have been coming out about the drop in the High Plains Aquifer from excessive irrigation demands. There were forecasts of eventual water disruptions. That dire warning is now coming true.

In some parts of western Kansas, the aquifer has been sucked dry or so nearly dry that farmers are having to shut down their wells. One local paper quotes an official of the Kansas water office as saying, “It’s a big, complex problem. …We can’t have near the amount of irrigated corn and alfalfa that we have. We don’t have the water.”

The paper quoted another fellow who has been involved with state water issues for decades as saying the agricultural depletion of the HPA, “..is like a drunk running a liquor store.”

The question is how much farmland can the United States lose before it has to walk away from using the fields for fuel production instead of food?

This is a problem the United States is going to have to tackle aggressively. It is going to require compromises and sacrifices. I expect it will also draw renewed attention to Canada’s apparently bountiful fresh water resources. That is a genuine Pandora’s Box issue that remains unresolved in the scheme of our free trade arrangements.

The High Plains Aquifer problem isn’t unique. Around the world burgeoning populations are overtaxing ground water resources. Part of the problem is that it’s “out of sight, out of mind.” Compounding that is the fact that we don’t tend to deal with the dwindling supply problem until it’s too late, until the wells start running dry. That makes planning and adjusting much more difficult.

Compared to some parts of the world, the United States is relatively fortunate. India’s aquifers are draining even faster. The same situation is going on in China. Investors are eagerly looking forward to stepping in to these enormous emerging markets for commodity water.

Lets learn from what so much of the rest of the world is experiencing or will soon face and begin to grasp the significance of Canada’s water resources. If we don’t understand it, it’ll be much harder for us to stop those who would sell it elsewhere.