Four Out of Five Americans Agree

…that the United States has come off the rails. A New York Times/CBS News poll has found that 81% of Americans believe that “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.”

Only one in five believes the US economy is in good shape. Two thirds believe their country is already in a recession.

40 per cent blame government regulators for the current credit crisis. 28 per cent blame lenders. Just 14 per cent lay the blame on borrowers.

An interesting point is the resurgence of populism. Those interviewed were willing to support government assistance for beleaguered borrowers (53-41%) but opposed bailouts for lenders, even if that would deepen the recession.

For the first time in the two decade history of this poll, less than half of respondent parents, 46%, expect their children to enjoy a better standard of living than themselves.

These sound like the conditions that could begin to shake the American people out of their democratic torpor. Wouldn’t that place look different if the American people demanded that their leaders served the people instead of the lobbyists?

 

America’s Racist Media Laid Bare

They spent the better part of a century and a half warning us that “the South will rise again” and the decent world didn’t listen. Yet since the days of Lyndon Johnston the South has indeed arisen and a lot of the ugliness it once championed has been resurrected.

Under George w. Bush, in particular, racism and bigotry have crept back. Even America’s media, wittingly or otherwise, are getting into the act. Look at the way they’re focusing on Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Then look at the way they’re abjectly ignoring those other preachers – the white boys – and their political allies.

This article is from Alternet. It’s long but it deserves to be read:

Rudy Giuliani’s priest has been accused in grand jury proceedings of molesting several children and covering up the molestation of others. Giuliani would not disavow him on the campaign trail and still works with him.

Mitt Romney was part of a church that did not view black Americans as equals and actively discriminated against them. He stayed with that church all the way into his early thirties, until they were finally forced to change their policies to come into compliance with civil rights legislation. Romney never disavowed his church back then or now. He said he was proud of the faith of his fathers.

Jerry Falwell said America had 9/11 coming because we tolerated gays, feminists and liberals. It was our fault. Our chickens had come home to roost, if you will. John McCain proudly received his support and even spoke at his university’s commencement.

Reverend John Hagee has called the Catholic Church the “Great Whore.” He has said that the Anti-Christ will rise out of the European Union (of course the Anti-Christ will also be Jewish). He has said all Muslims are trained to kill and will be part of the devil’s army when Armageddon comes (which he hopes is soon). John McCain continues to say he is proud of Reverend Hagee’s endorsement.

Reverend Rod Parsley believes America was founded to destroy Islam. Since this is such an outlandish claim, I have to add for the record, that he is not kidding. Reverend Parsley says Islam is an “anti-Christ religion” brought down from a “demon spirit.” Of course, we are in a war against all Muslims, including presumably Muslim-Americans. Buts since Parsley believes this is a Christian nation and that it should be run as a theocracy, he is not very concerned what Muslim-Americans think.

John McCain says Reverend Rod Parsley is his “spiritual guide.”

What separates all of these outrageous preachers from Barack Obama’s? You guessed it. They’re white and Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not. If it’s not racism that’s causing the disparity in media treatment of these preachers, then what is it?

I’m willing to listen to other possible explanations. And I am inclined to believe that the people these preachers go after are more important than the race of the preacher. It’s one thing to go after gays, liberals and Muslims – that seems to be perfectly acceptable in America – it’s another to accuse white folks of not living up to their ideals.

I think there is another factor at play as well. The media is deathly afraid of calling out preachers of any stripe for insane propaganda from the pulpits for fear that they will be labeled as anti-Christian. But criticism of Rev. Wright falls into their comfort zone. It’s easy to blame him for being anti-American because he criticizes American foreign and domestic policy.

If Rev. Wright had preached about discriminating against gay Americans or Muslims, there probably would not have been any outcry at all. That falls into the category of “respect their hateful opinions because they cloak themselves in the church.”

But one thing is indisputable – the enormous disparity in how the media has covered these white preachers as opposed to Rev. Wright. Have you ever even heard of Rod Parsley? As you can see from what I listed above, all of these white preachers have said and done the most outlandish and offensive things you can imagine – and hardly a peep.

If the disparity in coverage isn’t racist, then what is it?”

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/80253/

 

First Kosovo, Then Israel and Can Texas Be Far Behind?

Kosovo, or at least its ethnic Albanian majority, has declared its independence from Serbia. The seminal words there are “ethnic Albanian.” Kosovo has historically been Serbian through and through. It’s cherished by the Serbian people. But, mainly as a result of centuries of wars between the Slavs and the Ottomans, they allowed ethnic Albanians into the area and those folks settled in and bred themselves into a tidy majority. A dust up ensued and “bingo” they’ve taken the place as their own.

Israel is facing a similar demographic problem. Can’t live with the Palestinians but not prepared, at least not yet, to live without them. The window may be closing on the two-state option and that’s terrifying to a lot of Israelis. If the situation defaults to a one-state solution, the Palestinians would quickly be the majority, capable of voting their interests – if they were ever given a vote. Israel would have to maintain a South African-style apartheid or lose Israeli control of their homeland. Yikes!

Best of all there’s the American southwest. A lot of Americans are becoming alarmed at the demographic explosion of the Latinos. It’s believed that Latinos could become an ethnic majority in various southwestern states before too long. What then? What if they use their voting power to “have it their way”? It’s not too hard to imagine that “their way” wouldn’t be entirely comfortable for America’s caucasian majority.

Hasta la vista, Yanquis! You’re not the only ones who “Remember the Alamo.”

 

Canada Won’t Scuttle NATO But America Might

A report in The Times indicates that tempers are flaring among some NATO members in response to angry demands by US defense secretary Robert Gates for them to contribute soldiers to the combat zone of southern Afghanistan.

“An unusually stern letter from Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, to his German counterpart about the role of Germany’s troops in Afghanistan caused anger not just in Berlin but elsewhere in the alliance.

Washington has taken the lead in putting pressure on Nato with a warning that the credibility of the alliance is at stake. But Mr Gates’s latest intervention seems likely to cause more division.

His letter to Franz Josef Jung, the German Defence Minister, went to the heart of the problem that has faced Nato since its mission expanded throughout Afghanistan, and in particular to the southern provinces where the Taleban are concentrated.

German diplomatic sources said the letter from Mr Gates had been harsh, although they would not divulge the contents. Mr Jung replied in similar mode with a “direct and stern” letter to Mr Gates, according to Suddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper.

The whole question of burden-sharing in Afghanistan — in particular sharing the burden of combat — is due to come up at Nato’s next summit in Bucharest in April. One Nato diplomat said: “I think Mr Gates’s intervention is more about domestic politics than anything else but sometimes I wonder whether the US realises the negative impact these spats have outside America.”

The Guardian reports that the dispute has gotten so bad that Condoleeza Rice has been dispatched to Europe, “to tackle an escalating row over Nato troop reinforcements for Afghanistan, amid worries that the entire international stabilisation strategy is in danger of failing.”

“Conservative MPs are starting to question the wisdom of continuing to support the president [Karzai]. Ministers are braced for another critical report from the Commons international development select committee amid concern that popular support for the war will start to wane, especially as Karzai adopts an increasingly independent view.”

NATO is ill-suited to the role in Afghanistan now foisted on it by Washington. It was never intended to be America’s Foreign Legion and the grousing of its member states isn’t helped at all by the incompetence of the White House and Pentagon leadership. This is a particularly bad time to be asking countries like Germany to make commitments that could serve as obligational precedents when a presidential election looms that could see the United States take a sharply different course in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

The End of the World As We’ve Known It

These are fascinating times and we just may be witnessing a geopolitical power shift of seismic proportions; the decline of the West and the ascendancy of the East. The vehicle for this could be the looming recession.

There’s an excellent analysis of how empires rise and fall in a book I reviewed earlier, “American Theocracy, The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.” It’s author, a prominent Republican named Kevin Phillips, examined the consistent patterns found in the rise and fall of previous dominant states including the Dutch, the Spanish and the British empires and applied those patterns to his own country to conclude that America was approaching the end of its glory days.

One of Phillips’ key observations was how mighty nations fell into decline when they abandoned their own manufacturing base in favour of offshore production, thus using their wealth to grow another nation’s economy. Sound familiar? Accompanying this phenomenon, Phillips identified the shift from a production-based economy into a financialized economy (see “The Bubble Up Economy – Part Deux” posted here yesterday).

This transition is also discussed by Fareed Zakaria in his latest article in Newsweek entitled “The World Bails Us Out” in which he observes, “The United States is in the beginning of a period of relative decline. This is not defeatism, it’s math.”

“As the American economy slows down, there are no indications that other countries are tumbling. In particular, the fastest-growing big economies in the world – China, India, Brazil—appear set to continue with their robust growth. While a sharp American downturn will surely slow them down somewhat, those emerging markets will all continue to expand—to buy, sell and trade—and this will help the United States.

The quarterly results of many large American multinationals (other than banks) show how. Their profits are growing extremely slowly in the United States—at best a few percent—but are surging by 15 or 20 percent abroad. Adding all these companies together, we can see why America’s trade deficit—which ballooned for decades—has begun shrinking dramatically, by $100 billion over the past year. This trend will accelerate as the U.S. dollar’s decline continues to make American exports more affordable across the world.

The past few years have been very good to the world’s energy-rich lands—Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Norway. Add to the list China and Singapore; they may not be big oil exporters, but they still have huge surpluses. These vast savings have to go somewhere, and sovereign wealth funds—the investment arms of these nations—have provided infusions of cash to otherwise desperate American financial firms. Imagine what the U.S. economy would look like without these investments. Many of its most illustrious banks and financial companies would have gone bankrupt, triggering cascades of gloom and doom across America.

These trends represent a large, ongoing shift in the global economic order. Power is moving away from the traditional centers of the global economy—the Western nations—to the emerging markets. To put it more bluntly: the United States is in the beginning of a period of relative decline. It may not be steep or dramatic, but the fact that it’s happening is clear. Even if one assumes a slowdown, the other big economies will still grow at two and three times the pace of the West.

All this means that the political and economic clout of the West—and centrally of the United States—is waning. You can see this reality in the discussions at Davos, where Indian businessmen, Russian officials, Saudi investment advisers and Chinese academics are moving to center stage.

On the American campaign trail, the candidates talk about a world utterly unrelated to the one that is actually being created on the ground. The Republicans promise to wage war against Islamic extremists and modernize the Middle East. The Democrats deplore the ills of globalization and free trade, and urge tougher measures against China. Meanwhile Middle Eastern fund managers and Asian consumers are quietly keeping the U.S. economy afloat.

 

The New World Order

Forbes.com, which calls itself the “home page for the world’s business leaders” says the battered US dollar isn’t coming back to its former glory any time soon.

One of the greenback’s travails is OPEC. Confidence in the US dollar took a hit last week when a technician plugged the wrong line into the wrong socket and inadvertently broadcast a full half hour of OPEC deliberations and debate. It was only when the first stories hit the Reuters web page that officials realized what was going on and pulled the plug.

The brief window into OPEC revealed both Iran and Venezuela arguing to dump the American dollar as the currency of oil trading. Saudi Arabia vetoed any further discussion, warning that word of OPEC uncertainty in the dollar could send it crashing. All of this, of course, was being broadcast live to the world.

Kuwait has already moved to switch from a dollar-peg to a basket of currencies and the ongoing malaise in the dollar may force others to follow suit. Then there’s the 800-pound gorilla, China, and its trillion-dollar holdings of American currency.

The United States is vulnerable and it appears destined to remain that way for another year at least. Right now the US has its hands full just trying to ride out the storm of the housing market collapse.

 

The Sleeping Bear Awakes

There’s an arms race underway, maybe it’s more than one.

On the side of the West, it’s pretty much limited to the United States where George Bush has been picking up the pace of testing and development of new aircraft, nuclear weapons, anti-missile systems and a myriad of advanced technologies. Looking at all of the lethality rolling out of American factories the one word on everyone’s mind but almost no one’s lips is – China.

China is seen as a competitor to America as a natural result of it’s newfound wealth and industrial might. Along with new factories, China sought to modernize its military. The Chinese have been whittling down the size of their massive army but making rapid strides in developing their air and naval forces. To do this the Chinese have relied heavily on fairly modern, highly capable weaponry purchased from Russia but lately a new generation of Chinese-made ships and aircraft has begun to emerge.

Because China is a good sea voyage away from the US and because the American military presence in that region has been shrinking ever since the fall of South Vietnam, Washington has sought to find other means of containing the People’s Republic. This has been accomplished by developing an alliance with another emerging industrial power, India.

The United States is rearming, China is rearming, so is India. India already has a highly capable army and air force. Like China it has equipped its forces with the best the Russians sell, along with a smattering of aircraft, etc. from the West. The big deal for India is the rapid expansion of its navy to become a true “blue water fleet.” The Indian navy is looking to add about 40-warships to its fleet in order to allow it to maintain a region of influence extending all the way over to the Sakhalin islands which, entirely coincidentally, would mask China’s entire coastline.

A powerful Indian navy presents China with several problems. One is the challenge it poses to China’s sea routes to the Middle East and the dwindling oil bounty for which the two are competing. Another is having a foreign and not entirely friendly navy establishing a maritime blockade threat. India doesn’t have to do anything to provoke China with that one.

America, China and India – all racing in the quest for more and better. Bad as that is, it’s about to get worse. Russia, flush with new found oil wealth and an increasingly autocratic government, has decided it wants in. Moscow has announced plans to begin acquiring new ICBMs (in case you’ve forgotten – intercontinental ballistic missiles), new submarines and even possibly new aircraft carriers.

The Russian military has languished on a scrap heap since the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 and we all breathed a sigh of relief for that. For all its woes, Russia still maintains 1.13 million in uniform.

Where is this headed? Who knows? As Gwynne Dyer noted in his book Future Tense the Bush administration has worked very hard to undermine the United Nations and the international treaties and protocols associated with it, paving the way for a return to 19th century secret alliances, hostility, distrust and even paranoia.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is the true Bush legacy.