Dropping Euro: Doh Curse of the Homer (Simpson)?

The Mindlessness is Total

Are You Ready for Nuclear War?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Pervez Musharraf, the puppet installed by the US to rule Pakistan in the interest of US hegemony, resigned August 18 to avoid impeachment. Karl Rove and the Diebold electronic voting machines were unable to control the result of the last election in Pakistan, the result of which gave Pakistanis a bigger voice in their government than America’s.

It was obvious to anyone with any sense -- which excludes the entire Bush Regime and almost all of the “foreign policy community -- that the illegal and gratuitous US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon civilians with US blessing, would result in the overthrow of America’s Pakistani puppet.

The imbecilic Bush Regime ensured Musharraf’s overthrow by pressuring their puppet to conduct military operations against tribesmen in Pakistani border areas, whose loyalties were to fellow Muslims and not to American hegemony. When Musharraf’s military operations didn’t produce the desired result, the idiotic Americans began conducting their own military operations within Pakistan with bombs and missiles. This finished off Musharraf.

When the Bush Regime began its wars in the Middle East, I predicted, correctly, that Musharraf would be one victim. The American puppets in Egypt and Jordan may be the next to go.

Back during the Nixon years, my Ph.D. dissertation chairman, Warren Nutter, was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. One day in his Pentagon office I asked him how the US government got foreign governments to do what the US wanted. “Money,” he replied.

“You mean foreign aid?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, “we just buy the leaders with money.”

It wasn’t a policy he had implemented. He inherited it and, although the policy rankled with him, he could do nothing about it. Nutter believed in persuasion and that if you could not persuade people, you did not have a policy.

Nutter did not mean merely third world potentates were bought. He meant the leaders of England, France, Germany, Italy, all the allies everywhere were bought and paid for.

They were allies because they were paid. Consider Tony Blair. Blair’s own head of British intelligence told him that the Americans were fabricating the evidence to justify their already planned attack on Iraq. This was fine with Blair, and you can see why, with his multi-million dollar payoff once he was out of office.

The American-educated thug, Saakashkvili the War Criminal, who is president of Georgia, was installed by the US taxpayer funded National Endowment for Democracy, a neocon operation whose purpose is to ring Russia with US military bases, so that America can exert hegemony over Russia.

Every agreement that President Reagan made with Mikhail Gorbachev has been broken by Reagan’s successors. Reagan’s was the last American government whose foreign policy was not made by the Israeli-allied neoconservatives. During the Reagan years, the neocons made several runs at it, but each ended in disaster for Reagan, and he eventually drove them from his government.

Even the anti-Soviet Committee on the Present Danger regarded the neocons as dangerous lunatics. I remember the meeting when a member tried to bring
the neocons into the committee, and old line American establishment representatives, such as former Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, hit the roof.

The Committee on the Present Danger regarded the neocons as crazy people who would get America into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The neocons hated President Reagan, because he ended the cold war with diplomacy, when they desired
a military victory over the Soviet Union.

Deprived of this, the neocons now want victory over Russia.

Today, Reagan is gone. The Republican Establishment is gone. There are no conservative power centers, only neoconservative power centers closely allied with Israel, which uses the billions of dollars funneled into Israeli coffers by US taxpayers to influence US elections and foreign policy.

The Republican candidate for president is a warmonger. There are no checks remaining in the Republican Party on the neocons’ proclivity for war. What Republican constituencies oppose war? Can anyone name one?

The Democrats are not much better, but they have some constituencies that are not enamored of war in order to establish US world hegemony. The Rapture Evangelicals, who fervently desire Armageddon, are not Democrats; nor are the brainwashed Brownshirts desperate to vent their frustrations by striking at someone, somewhere, anywhere.

I get emails from these Brownshirts and attest that their hate-filled ignorance is extraordinary. They are all Republicans, and yet they think they are conservatives. They have no idea who I am, but since I criticize the Bush Regime and America’s belligerent foreign policy, they think I am a “liberal commie pinko.”

The only literate sentence this legion of fools has ever managed is: “If you hate America so much, why don’t you move to Cuba!”

Such is the current state of a Reagan political appointee in today’s Republican Party. He is a “liberal commie pinko” who should move to Cuba.

The Republicans will get us into more wars. Indeed, they live for war. McCain is preaching war for 100 years. For these warmongers, it is like cheering for your home team. Win at all costs. They get a vicarious pleasure out of war. If the US has to tell lies in order to attack countries, what’s wrong with that? “If we don’t kill them over there, they will kill us over here.”

The mindlessness is total.

Nothing real issues from the American press, which is about demonizing Russia and Iran, about the vice presidential choices as if it matters, about whether Obama being on vacation let McCain score too many points.

The mindlessness of the news reflects the mindlessness of the government, for which it is a spokesperson.

The American media do not serve American democracy or American interests. They serve the few people who exercise power.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US and Israel made a run at controlling Russia and the former constituent parts of its empire. For awhile the US and Israel succeeded, but Putin put a stop to it.

Recognizing that the US had no intention of keeping any of the agreements it had made with Gorbachev, Putin directed the Russian military budget to upgrading the Russian nuclear deterrent. Consequently, the Russian army and air force lack the smart weapons and electronics of the US military.

When the Russian army went into Georgia to rescue the Russians in South Ossetia from the destruction being inflicted upon them by the American puppet Saakashvili, the Russians made it clear that if they were opposed by American troops with smart weapons, they would deal with the threat with tactical nuclear weapons.

The Americans were the first to announce preemptive nuclear attack as their permissible war doctrine. Now the Russians have announced the tactical use of nuclear weapons as their response to American smart weapons.

It is obvious that American foreign policy, with its goal of ringing Russia with US military bases, is leading directly to nuclear war. Every American needs to realize this fact. The US government’s insane hegemonic foreign policy is a direct threat to life on the planet.

Russia has made no threats against America. The post-Soviet Russian government has sought to cooperate with the US and Europe. Russia has made it clear over and over that it is prepared to obey international law and treaties. It is the Americans who have thrown international law and treaties into the trash can, not the Russians.

In order to keep the billions of dollars in profits flowing to its contributors in the US military-security complex, the Bush Regime has rekindled the cold war. As American living standards decline and the prospects for university graduates deteriorate, “our” leaders in Washington commit us to a hundred years of war.

If you desire to be poor, oppressed, and eventually vaporized in a nuclear war, vote Republican.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Dropping Euro: Doh Curse of the Homer (Simpson)?

The recent and rather dramatic fall in the value of the euro from heights previously uncharted is attributed by pundits to any number of things: (1) the Eurozone looks like it's about to enter recessionary waters, if it isn't there already; (2) the commodity price boom which has favoured the euro is coming undone as global demand for commodities slows in response to ebbing consumption in the world's #1 final destination market, the United States; (4) the US stock market has regained its footing somewhat, bolstering the beleaguered dollar. Certainly, sensible arguments can be constructed out of one or more of these points.

On the wackier side of things, however, have I got one for you. Curses are most often spoken of in sports, where superstition is rife. For the Chicago Cubs, you have the Curse of the Billy Goat. For Japan's Hanshin Tigers, there's the Curse of the Colonel. As you would expect, currency trader are generally a less superstitious lot. While the business world has its own set of rituals like the opening bell that augurs a new trading day and whatnot, out-and-out superstition does not feature much. However, I recently came across a fairly amusing article in Reuters about a Spanish shopkeeper who, while tallying up his day's labours, came across a doctored euro coin. One of the interesting things about euro currency is that EU members can place their national symbols on one side of locally minted notes and coins even if they are usable elsewhere in the Eurozone.

Lo and behold, the image of the generally well-liked Spanish King Juan Carlos had been replaced on the one pound coin by the likeness of that famous American icon, Homer Simpson [!] In the report, it is said that the shopkeeper told of his finding last Friday. If you look at the chart above, the looooong red line represents Friday's trade when the euro lost a whopping 3.3 cents in a single day. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

The discovery of this act of desecration may have set off forces beyond the reach of monetary officials or currency traders. Superstition aside, I lie in wait for a good opportunity to rid myself of my remaining dollar holdings as I am a firm unbeliever in the monetary and fiscal policies of the United States (more on this later). The euro may take some lumps in the meantime that will enable me to find a good price at which to sell dollars and buy euros. Maybe a cartoon character had something to do with it:

A one euro coin has turned up in Spain bearing the face of cartoon couch potato Homer Simpson instead of that of the country's king, a sweetshop owner told Reuters on Friday.

Jose Martinez was counting the cash in his till in the city of Aviles, northern Spain, when he came across the coin where Homer's bald head, big eyes and big nose had replaced the serious features of King Juan Carlos.

"The coin must have been done by a professional, the work is impressive," he told Reuters.

The comical carver had not taken his tools to the other side of the coin displaying the map of Europe. So far, no other coins of the hapless, beer-swilling oaf have been found in circulation.

Marxism, Opiate of the Japanese Masses?

In these days of rising economic inequality as well as chronic episodes of financial manias and panics, many have come to revisit these evergreen themes through the refracted light of Karl Marx's works. In the past, I have discussed how these current economic convulsions would be interpreted via a Marxist perspective [1, 2]. Marxism has, in diffent times, found appeal in various parts of the world. For instance, Marx was voted the "greatest thinker of the millennium" in a 1999 BBC online poll. Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and St. Thomas Aquinas? They were all overhauled by the bushy-bearded one. With Japan headed into another bout of economic stagnation, a 1929 book with Marxist overtones is currently all the rage with Japanese readers, Takiji Kobayashi's Kanikosen. This book concerns a mutiny on board a crab-canning ship: an abusive captain exploits his crew and cheats them on their wages. They eventually fight back, and this serves as a metaphor for class struggle.

What is seemingly odd is that unions have long since gone out of fashion in Japan. How are contemporary Japanese supposed to take it to the Man? Still, in these times of economic insecurity, there is a growing backlash against "neoliberal" practices which are accused of eroding traditional Japanese ideas about loyalty and equality. While "lifetime employment" was never as widespread as commonly believed, the less certain economic picture of Japan does invite more angst over future employment, especially among the young. Indeed, the rising consciousness about the plight of temporary workers was magnified when 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato went on a murderous rampage in the Akihabara electronics district. Notable too is Japanese curiosity about Marxist themes without necessarily buying the idea of class struggle. Marx once said that religion was the opiate of the masses. Perhaps Marxism is performing that very same role in modern-day Japan. With demographic challenges steadily increasing, matters can only become more pointed. Many feel...alienated. From Reuters:

A Marxist novel written in 1929 has climbed to the top of Japan's best seller list, reflecting growing anxiety about job security and widening income gaps in the world's second-biggest economy. "I think people are feeling keenly that the economy is starting to slow down and things are getting more difficult," said 27-year-old Sota Furuya, a marketing consultant who recently read the book. Furuya is one of the many Japanese readers who have put "Kanikosen", or "A Crab-Canning Boat", on bestseller lists in recent months. It is near the top of several of Japan's leading bestseller lists, almost unheard of for a book of this genre.

"A Crab-Canning Boat" tells the tale of a crab boat crew working in harsh conditions under a sadistic captain. It was written by Takiji Kobayashi, a communist who was tortured to death by police at the age of 29 in 1933. Most of the novel is devoted to the crew's struggle to unite and coordinate a strike, and the story ends with their vow to topple their capitalists masters. The book has long been a favorite of scholars of Marxist literature, but it gained mainstream attention after an advertising campaign linked it with the concept of working poor, said Tsutomu Sasaki of Shinchosha Publishing Co, which reprints the pocket-sized book. The book has been on bestsellers' lists since around May.

Experts say the novel's popularity reflects anxiety over job security, widening wage gaps and the hardships suffered by growing ranks of low-paid part-time and contract workers. "I think the keywords here are sympathy and similarities," said Hirokazu Toeda, a professor at Tokyo's Waseda University. "Young people are sympathizing because they see themselves and today's situation today in the novel."

But while the story resonates, the novel is unlikely to hold practical lessons for workers in present-day Japan, where labor union membership has been in decline for decades and only a tiny minority of voters back leftist political parties. "The sympathy is sporadic and I don't think it will lead to organized movements," Toeda said. "The readership is too fragmented."

Once famed for its life-time employment system, Japan has seen the number of workers hired by the day and on short-term contracts, often without medical or pension benefits, grow in the years since its economy slumped in the early 1990s. Critics say economic reforms introduced during the 2001-2006 term of prime minister Junichiro Koizumi sped up the trend.

The average number of non-permanent workers rose to 17.3 million in the year to March 31, 2007, government data show. That was up 19 percent from five years earlier and more than 50 percent from a decade ago. The plight of such workers grabbed headlines in June after a 25-year-old temp worker stabbed seven people to death in a popular Tokyo shopping district, after posting messages on the Internet complaining about his work and loneliness.

For decades, a majority of Japanese considered themselves middle class. As employment conditions change, economic inequalities are widening, although the gap between rich and poor is still much narrower than in the United States. Many Japanese are also anxious about their future pensions, given the growing costs of a fast-ageing society in which two in five people will be 65 or over by mid-century.

The economic angst among younger Japanese is reflected in the readership of "A Crab-Canning Boat." About 30 percent are in their 20s, 30 percent in their 30s and 40s, and another third in their 50s and 60s, Shinchosha's Sasaki says. Fans of similar classics in the past have been mostly students or retirees.

"Things are different now from the stable employment conditions of Japan's period of high economic growth," said Waseda University's Toeda. "Life-time employment is gone and it's uncertain whether people will receive their pensions. "I think such insecurity attracts people to this text."

That said, readers agreed they were unlikely to take to the streets against their capitalist employers. "The novel's like a dream ... everyone uniting, fighting, and winning together," said Toru Sakai, a 24-year-old blue-collar worker. "But I doubt we'll see that type of reaction now." Marketing consultant Furuya agreed. "Society today is too diverse so there isn't one thing that people can bond over," he said. "It isn't as simple as it was in the novel."

The Great Depression Hoax

By TODD G. BUCHHOLZ

I slapped the side of my television in April when economist Joe Stiglitz called this the worst recession "since the Great Depression." But now the economy is not only hurting homeowners; it's apparently harming parakeets, too! An AP item reports that pet owners are abandoning their furry and feathery friends to animal shelters because they can no longer afford to feed them. Never mind that GDP is puttering along in positive terrain. Headlines still scream that we're closing in on 1929, not 2009.

Are we a nation of whiners, as Phil Gramm put it a little while ago, getting himself kicked off John McCain's advisory team? No, the American public is not whining. One reason may be that consumers are swallowing $13 billion of pick-me-uppers like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil. (A doctor friend who volunteered at a sleepaway camp said that, every morning, 20% of the kids lined up for their psychomeds.) More likely, though, Americans are just leaving the whining to pundits and trend reporters. The fellow who filed the pet story did not bother to point out that, in this alleged new Great Depression, the Pet Products Manufacturers Association says that Americans have spent 5% more this year on their pooches and pussies than last year.

Where are the Hoovervilles camped out under the Washington Monument? Where are the soup lines? Willie Nelson is still on tour, beseeching us to save the family farm. But it must be tougher for him to gin up support when the typical American farm, thanks in part to ever expanding ethanol subsidies, has see its annual income surge 50% past its 10-year average. Apparently Willie is traveling on a biodiesel, soybean-fed bus. So now we know at least what Willie's bus is smoking.

The fact is that most Americans get up in the morning to work hard, feed their families and pay for soccer uniforms and maybe a vacation, if they can stand the security lines at the airport. Most Americans don't let whining get in the way of work. That separates us from the French, who would join a picket line to protest against picket lines. The problem with whining, as with socialism, is that it requires too many evenings. And forget about the organized whining that we know as social activism. That requires too many meetings and too many covered-dish dinners too. I'm still not sure what Barack Obama accomplished as a professional "community organizer." I doubt he was another Martin Luther King, but I'm pretty certain he carried a lot of macaroni salad.

Sure, we gripe about higher food prices and shaky home prices, but we are still living "La Vida Latte," lining up every morning before a barista and otherwise indulging in the imperatives of the good life. Yes, the share price of Starbucks has sunk of late, but Americans spent more, not less, at Starbucks last year than the year before. And if you add premium coffee sales at McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, the growth rate of this liquid luxury has soared. I should point out that the price of a Starbucks latte is about $1,200 a barrel. Makes that SUV fill-up a little easier to swallow, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, Prius cars are flying off the Toyota lots, even though they cost $3,700 more than a similarly sized gasoline-fired Toyota and it takes 3.5 years to pay back the investment in fuel savings. The ageless Paul McCartney's spanking new Lexus LS600h will take him 102 years. Rock on, Sir Paul.

Of course, these are high-end luxury items, the kinds you see at the Kennedy compound when you look at it from Martha's Vineyard, hoping never to see a windmill blocking your view. But even the situation for middle-class Americans is not all that dire. In July the jobless rate among college graduates was just 2.4%, drifting up from 2.1% in March. That is miles away from the 1981 recession and, of course, you'd need scientific notation to compare it to the Great Depression, no matter what the Obama campaign says. The job market, while weak, has not collapsed.

Each Thursday morning I look at weekly jobless claims -- how many people trudged up to state unemployment offices, pink slips in hand. That number has hovered under 500,000. To match up to the level of 1981-82 layoffs, it would have to explode to 1.2 million. It won't. Moreover, a big proportion of the layoffs are coming among 16-24 year olds, who are not yet supporting a household.

So, no, we are not whining -- in part because we do not have much to whine about, whatever the hysterical headlines might say. But don't pop champagne corks yet. For some, it still feels lousy out there. But lousy is not a technical synonym for recession. On the lower end of the income spectrum, we have deep problems, both economic and sociological.

Back in the '60s a high-school graduate could still make good money, especially if he learned a trade. That's because almost every other adolescent in the world lacked a high-school degree. We were about the only country that educated teenagers. But now the rest of the world has caught up, and Americans are undereducated or ill-educated. High schools don't teach what they used to, and so students who don't go to college are left without the skills necessary to compete in a global economy. Forget the Beijing Olympics. In math-science competitions, the U.S. is the Jamaican bobsled team of education.

Most Americans who suffer layoffs do not deserve blame. It is more likely that their incompetent, often overpaid, bosses do. Still, no president, Democrat or Republican, can create prosperity for those who decide to forgo even a basic education. Our problem is not whining. It is persuading young people that, with baby boomers retiring, entitlement programs bulging and the world economy growing ever more competitive, now's the time to roll up the sleeves for something other than tattoos.

As for hysterical journalists, I'm waiting for a reporter to tell us that pet owners can't even afford the paper to line their animals' cages. That would be a shame, because it's about all those papers are good for.

Mr. Buchholz, an economic adviser to President George H.W. Bush, is managing director of an investment fund based in San Diego and the author of "New Ideas From Dead CEOs" (HarperCollins).

Violence mars Bolivian protests

Acts of violence on the streets of Santa Cruz, Bolivia

Anti-government protesters in Bolivia have clashed with supporters of leftist President Evo Morales, during a general strike against his policies.

Hundreds of police officers took to the streets of the city of Santa Cruz to break up violent confrontations.

Activists in five of Bolivia's nine regions went on strike, protesting over Mr Morales's plans to share natural gas revenues with poorer provinces.

Some provinces have recently campaigned for greater autonomy from La Paz.

The bubbling crisis led to a national referendum on the positions of Mr Morales and the governors of the five provinces opposed to the president.

Voters gave overwhelming backing to Mr Morales in the 10 August ballot.

But they also approved the opposition governors - doing nothing to ease the political deadlock.

Growing concern

Police fired tear gas into the crowds during clashes in Santa Cruz, the nation's business capital.

Anti-government demonstrators carrying baseball bats and shields fought with Morales supporters in a poor neighbourhood of the city.

Local television showed pictures of youths clashing with police and journalists in other parts of the city.

In Tarija, the province holding much of the country's natural gas reserves, a small group of protesters was reported to have stormed and occupied a government building.

One-day strikes were held in Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, Tarija and Chuquisaca provinces.

Bolivia's four other provinces, where Mr Morales enjoys huge popularity, did not hold strikes.

The governors of the five provinces opposed to Mr Morales want him to stop taking energy revenues previously earmarked for their provinces to pay for a national pension scheme.

But he argues that they can afford to help with anti-poverty programmes because their coffers swelled after he increased taxes on energy companies in 2006.

Repeated attempts at dialogue between the government and the governors have failed to produce any agreement.

The strikes are another indication that the current deadlock is no nearer a solution, says the BBC's Latin America analyst James Painter.

Concern is growing that without compromise by both sides, Bolivia will be trapped in a debilitating crisis, our correspondent adds.

The latest violence comes just days after another anti-Morales march in Santa Cruz saw police fire tear gas at protesters.

The province's governor, Ruben Costas, said the president was responsible for the clashes, accusing him of being "the real criminal".