Bah, Humbug!

Thanks to the word of the year, austerity, the weeks leading up to Christmahanukwanza saw riots on the streets of London, Rome and Athens with images that we more easily associate with Dhaka, Nairobi or Quito. Brits woke up to photos of their terrorized prince and um, what do you call Camilla, splashed across the tabloid covers. Italians to scenes of scuffles in parliament overflowing to the streets. Meanwhile, the Greeks got another round of union protests devolving into street battles. Austerity, with its 14th century roots and feel of "enforced or extreme economy", is the price were being told we have to pay for an economic crisis that we now know was mostly caused by income inequality. In the perfect world, the IMF report detailing the mechanics of how a financial landscape overpopulated by the obscenely wealthy and desolately poor led to our problems should dovetail with the spirit of the season. Instead we get the farcical reality in which our attitudes have been hardening over the decades according to the British Social Attitudes Report, making us more likely than ever to blame someone for finding themselves poor and needy than we are to pity them while we proclaim the virtues of Christian charity by giving each other ever more extravagant gifts. And this. And whatever this is:

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics - Plutarch

Debt is stealing from the future to provide for present needs. Sometimes this is a rational decision as the benefits of spending now accrue into the future and wind up providing a net gain for society. Much like in the run up to the Great Depression however, this latest round of debt binging since around 1980 has only enabled the majority of the population to feel like they were keeping up with the ultra rich. The evidence that this borrowing was the cause of the Great Recession has been mounting recently and now even the IMF has released a report titled Inequality, Leverage and Crisis (PDF) which documents how giving the top percentile of the wealthy a greater slice of the pie resulted in them lending their excess wealth to the rest of the population which in turn caused the financial industry to explode in size to facilitate this borrowing. It wasn't the banks per se who were the evil actors. Although they did take advantage of the situation to engage in rent-seeking, it was the policies that led to unequal distribution of wealth which in turn practically forced the financial industry to grow in order to keep up with the demand to cycle the wealth from top to bottom. The consumption gap was kept 'artificially' small through lending to help soothe the populace as they felt like they were doing better despite the fact that their real incomes were shrinking. Real hourly wages of the top 10 percentile increased sharply by a cumulative 70%, the real hourly wages around the median declined by 5%, while the wages of the bottom 10% declined strongly, by around 25%. The masses were pacified as long as they could buy a 50" flat screen in order to better see the details of the elite lifestyles without bothering with the small print in the loan arrangement with EZ Credit.

From 1980 to 2005, the richest 1% took 80% of all income growth in America (PDF)

Knowing this caused the crisis, the next question becomes "what caused the inequality?". The obvious answer is the economic policies of the past which in turn should lead us to change them if Plutarch's argument is true as it should be in the system's best interest to pay attention and change the structures that have created the present imbalance. That is of course unless zombies have already eaten our brains and the evidence they have is all around us. Supply-side economics became dominant only about 30 years ago but it already has the feel of a relic from another century. This trickle down or voodoo economics promises that we will all see benefits as a society if the rich can be given enough money for their wealth to reach a saturation point and thus begin to shower the rest of us with gold. Instead, we've been given a blinding golden shower with the press, or MSM, there to cheer on their paymasters. Debt, war and oil feed the fire as we are bombarded with an information blitzkrieg to win the battle for our hearts and minds. Stories will abound over the next few weeks of encouraging signs of recovery as evidenced by strong Christmas sales all the while ignoring the lesson of the past two years that our economy is but a Ponzi scheme primed for total collapse.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
 - Joseph Goebbels

As the Reagan revolution heralded the present catastrophe we've had lots of time to observe the disastrous results yet we still don't heed the call to arms thanks in large part to Agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth. More information discordantly leads to less knowledge in a world that is hard to keep up with as ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth - or drowning it out - or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not. We are living through a disinformation revolution where Orwellian doublethink, cognitive dissonance, epistemic closure, repetition and confirmation bias form a toxic brew of apathy. We're screwed if we don't pay any attention but even more so when we do as exemplified by the Internet's inherently agnotological side effects. People graze all day on information tailored to their existing worldview leading to epistemic closure. Even when bloggers or talking heads actually engage in debate, it often consists of pelting one another with mutually contradictory studies they've Googled: "Greenland's ice shield is melting 10 years ahead of schedule!" vs. "The sun is cooling down and Earth is getting colder!" allowing us the luxury of confirmation bias to avoid cognitive dissonance. War has become peace, ignorance strength and freedom slavery as we hurdle toward agnotological Armageddon where we argue about what the facts are instead of debating what they mean, allowing the status quo to be maintained as we slowly destroy the world around us. Have a listen to this as you read on:

You can donate to the Ku Klux Clan with Mastercard but you can't give money to Wikileaks

Once upon a time in America you had to justify your FCC broadcast license by providing news as part of your community responsibility. However, when the US government agency charged with regulating the communications industry was gutted in the 80's under the Reagan administration, the fairness doctrine was jettisoned, transforming news into an appendage of entertainment companies. Information consumption was further mutated by the 24/7 feeding tube of CNN and later Faux News, Headline News and MSNBC with their news, stock and terror level crawlers. Meanwhile the battle for truth and fairness was being lost in the Supreme Court as their rulings became increasingly pro-business. Sparked by the urging of then future-SCOTUS justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. in 1971, American business interests have coordinated their actions through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, filing and winning an ever increasing number of briefs and decisions. The resulting frenzy of deregulation has not only affected the financial industry, it has increased media ownership concentration, blunted environmental laws and turned corporations buying elections into citizens exercising free speech. What was once a counter-balance to the partisanship of Congress has become a right wingnut tool to advance their agenda; Justice Antonin Scalia will speak at a Tea Party seminar next month, Justice Clarence Thomas' wife headed a nonprofit group, Liberty Central, dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist "tyranny" of President Obama. A judiciary captured by the same people who pay for the political campaigns to install legislators to make the laws and take us to war. Lucky for Hollywood endings!

WTF - actual acronym of the task force set up by the CIA to appraise the impact of WikiLeaks 

The 80's not only saw us overwhelmed by the non-stop news cycle, we were further weakened by a sudden explosion in obesity incoherently coupled with a health consciousness kick driving a cost explosion only to see the disinformation coup de grâce delivered by the Internet. Even before the East Anglia email scandal, oil companies had succeeded in turning climate change into a boogie man invented by evil scientists so they could become as rich and powerful as oil company executives. Never before has so much been available to make people so uninformed in order to take away their power. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case for Wal-Mart which has the potential to change antitrust law forever and could lead to abolishing class action law suits altogether forcing individuals to fight mega-corporations alone. Imagine how easily big tobacco would have swatted away all those nasty health lawsuits without the class action option, or worse, a world without Erin Brockovich! Human rights and independent media websites are being attacked with impunity but when the same Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are directed at the heart of corporate power in an act of protest, they are hunted like dogs by the authorities and vilified by the public for disturbing their Christmas shopping. More ominous is the control being sought and wielded by the Obama administration to silence voices they don't want heard. Net neutrality, what's that? Sounds like another unkept Obama election promise traded to big business in exchange for their compliance.

"It has served us well, this myth of Christ" - Attributed to Pope Leo X by John Bale

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised by the renewed attacks on the first amendment. The new messiah of 2008 has turned out to be another democratic deception to pacify us into believing in hope and change for another four years. The Obama meaning of an Iraqi withdrawal is 50,000 uniformed troops and something like 100,000 mercenaries. The reduction in camouflage there has only meant an increase in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen where death falls indiscriminately from the sky thanks to the "liberal" president. Wasn't his first act to sign an order to close Guantanamo? Hmmm, funny more "detainees" there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing real charges than the day Obama was elected. Nobel Peace prize winning stuff in today's world! He has allowed the Bush Patriot Act provisions to be strengthened, encouraged government snooping on American citizens and authorized assassination of Americans accused of supporting terrorists - no arrest, nor rights or trial - just witch hunts, detention and murder. Successes like the health care and financial industry regulation bills? Don't make me laugh as the health care deal was simply a recycled Republican idea from the 90's guaranteeing an insurance company and big pharma bonanza while the Frank-Dodd big bank gift guarantees the next financial crisis will be bigger than the last. The 2300+ pages of financial regulation and 2409 pages of the new US health care bill may have been a "big f#cking deal" in size but they are perfect examples of complexity creating cover for confusion and corruption. Glass-Steagall provided financial stability for 80 years in 53 pages. How soon we forget the financial meltdown was driven by ignorance. Credit-default swaps were designed not merely to dilute risk but to dilute knowledge; after they'd changed hands and been serially securitized a few times there was no telling what they were worth or the risks they entailed.

10% of casualties in WWI were civilians, 50% in WWII, 70% in Vietnam and 90% in Iraq
 - John Pilger, The War You Don't See

The dumps by Wikileaks and the Fed cast a dim light on the underbelly of the beast but if enough people can be convinced its all for their good the music will keep playing. Arguing about Julian Assange's rape allegations and calling Obama names distracts us from the fact that he has expanded the Bush/Cheney war on civil liberties as well as the wars abroad. Stories about Obama defending whistle blowers in NPR don't jive with the fact that his Justice Department is looking for new ways to prosecute them while Private Bradley Manning sits in solitary confinement 23 of every 24 hours for the 8th month while still awaiting charges. It's all just lipstick on a pig. We hear of progress being made in Afghanistan while according to reports in The Nation and elsewhere, Blackwater, which is now known as Xe, has contracted to send personnel into Pakistan to fight with the Joint Special Operations Command. They are just one part of a 225,000 strong contract army staffed by vigilantes to ensure the world order. US led forces have been in Afghanistan longer than the Russians were yet we're still fed the meme of progress being made. Meanwhile stories of prominent protesters chaining themselves to the Whitehouse gates to raise public awareness of the futility of the war are ignored by the MSM who prefer to feed the frenzy of fear of the other. We won't miss how corrupt the Russian legal system has become watching the nightly news but we need the 'fake' news of Jon Stewart to point out the hypocrisy of politicians who turned 9/11 into a catchphrase only to ignore the plight of 9/11 first responders. Step out a line, the man comes and takes you away while we fixate on empty symbols; bright, pretty lights and words like democracy and female emancipation can be so distracting, plus at least were not in Belarus, right?

Next time some Alex P. Keaton wannabee tells you over 40% of Americans (ie. poor people) don't pay any taxes, remind him/her that working Americans pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes starting with very first dollar they earn and as the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded in a 2003 analysis, "three quarters of filers pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes." Then to piss them off let them know that 2/3 of US corporations paid no taxes from 1998 through 2005.

Most progenitors of what John Kenneth Galbraith termed Innocent Fraud are not deliberately in its service, unaware of how their views are shaped, how they are had. We've even renamed the economic system; capitalism, with it's potentially negative Marxist reference to the owners and managers of capital is now more often referred to as the "Market Economy" or simply the faceless free market. Capitalism evokes images of exploitation by the Rockefellers of the world over a century ago while the free market enables GE to earn over $10.3 billion and ExxonMobil $45.2 billion in profits while paying nothing in taxes to Uncle Sam (In fact, GE recorded a $1.1 billion tax benefit, the magic of a 24,000 page tax return). The widespread belief a hundred years ago that capitalism was not only exploitative, particularly after WWI where behind the slaughter were those who, for profit, made the guns, but also self-destructive after the great crash of 1929, led to war and revolution in Europe and legislation in America.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
 - John Kenneth Galbraith

In his final book in 2004 at age 95, Galbraith, who served in four presidential administrations and even as ambassador to India, was ultimately trying to warn of the uncontrollable nature of private/public power. The term innocent fraud is applied here as the conventional wisdom (a term he popularized in The Affluent Society) of how the American economic system works and the reality of its workings have drifted apart leading to a collective self-delusion - "The myths of investor authority, of the serving stockholder, the ritual meetings of directors and the annual stockholder meeting persist, but no mentally viable observer of the modern corporation can escape the reality. Corporate power lies with management — a bureaucracy in control of its task and its compensation. Rewards that can verge on larceny. This is wholly evident. On frequent recent occasions, it has been referred to as the corporate scandal." With such an oxymoronic title, much of his argument is based on semantics, how we describe phenomena in misleading ways, but there are concrete causes such as the failure of our education system as well as tangible results. The arms industry is but one example of the public realm being effectively controlled by the private sector - "While the Pentagon is still billed as being of the public sector, few doubt the influence of corporate power in its decisions." He also looks at the financial world which "sustains a large, active, well-rewarded community based on compelled but seemingly sophisticated ignorance" and in particular the Federal Reserve System, "our most prestigious form of fraud, our most elegant escape from reality."

In 1953 the top marginal tax rate in the US was 92%

Citing Murray Edelman's Symbols and Political Quiescence, Arnold Kling argues that the Insiders occasionally let us Outsiders win battles to give themselves cover for ever greater rent-extraction. We are allowed to win small progressive battles like the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell but the reality is they've just expanded their pool of war fodder. Able bodies are at a premium seeing that 75% of America's 17 to 24-year-olds are ineligible for military service due to lack of education, obesity and other physical problems, or criminal history. Outnumbered but in firm hold of the controls, the Insiders, having more precise information, were rational enough to realize that offering the carrot of extending unemployment benefits would appease enough people while they not only extended the deficit busting Bush tax cuts (which will now be even harder to get rid of in two years time) but also paved the way for the elimination of the estate tax all within the framework of a thoroughly regressive tax deduction system. Since we live in a democracy, the ability of elites to use the government to their advantage requires our political institutions to have some minimum level of credibility. If everyone believed that government was simply a tool for the rich and powerful, the entire system would break down and would have to be maintained by force, if at all.

25 US hedge fund managers earned over $25 billion last year and had a lower tax rate than you

But really, how can the incoming chairman of the US House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus, get away with saying "My view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks"; Scott Brown taking in behind the curtain donations from the financial industry while toiling to weaken the financial regulatory bill; Obama's former budget director, Peter Orszag, following the egregious example of his predecessors, mentors and colleagues such as Robert Rubin through the revolving door between government policy makers and financial industry titan, by moving from the White House to a job at Citigroup only four months after leaving government service; Republican members splitting from the once-thought-righter-of-wrongs from the financial meltdown, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, to issue their own report on what caused the crash. Hint: they eliminated any mention of derivatives, executive compensation, failed regulatory agencies and even the words “Wall Street” so the whole debacle could be pinned solely on government (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) and deadbeat Americans who took on predatory mortgages. Guess it's lucky for the powers that be that more Americans get there news from Faux News than anywhere as Rupert Murdoch's minions are the most misinformed segment of the population.

Silvio Berlusconi controls 90% of the Italian media

Remind you of anyone?

Murdoch is attempting to bring his media grip over the UK to Berluconian proportions by acquiring BSkyB, a move sure to be accepted by authorities now that Vince Cable has been shoved aside thanks to a sting operation mysteriously leaked to the BBC. He plays kingmaker while Berlusconi simply rules as king and is able to bribe opposition members to maintain his grip on power. Political parties make no difference to Rupert Murdoch, Conservative Thatcher one day and Bliar the next only to throw off Labour for Cameron knowing David would invite him to 10 Downing his first week in residence to help plot the end of the BBC. Sports, sensationalism and gossip have driven Murdoch's empire which preys on our narcissistic vanity as we celebrate the individual, the rights of each to pursue his or her own ends, the primacy of satisfying our personal needs regardless of the costs. Yet in the same way as the exponential growth of informational access the Internet has done, the explosion in TV channels has had the result of lessening our knowledge of the world around us while convincing us of the opposite.

British forces train death squads in Bangladesh

Orwell seems to be around every corner as the battle for control of the message is waged in an information confrontation between freedom and security. New tools are always being invented and old one's evolving in the hands of Sith lords like Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi and Joe Lieberman. The Internet and its infrastructure, from ISPs, hosting companies, credit card and other payment intermediaries are nothing but landlords who can evict any of us renters at a moment's notice it seems. This imbalance in power allows the Insiders to use overt political dramas as symbols that placate the masses while using covert political activity to plunder them. What we now call rent-seeking succeeds because Outsiders are dazzled by the symbols while Insiders grab the substance. Lending any credence to states' faked outrage over whistle blowers creates smokescreens around those murderers, torturers, and downright criminals whose crimes were exposed making it less likely our governments prosecute war criminals instead of giving them awards. The media - and much of the public - falls for this, and so Julian Assange becomes the front page story, not the criminals.

In 2009, there was $1.53 trillion in global military spending, a 5.9% increase

Democracy has been reduced to a popularity contest in which the public are nothing but the audience as the puppet masters horse trade favours among themselves while throwing us crumbs in an attempt to jockey for poll position (did I just make a punny? Yike). Obama's election promises and calls for national sacrifice upon entering office have turned out to be as empty as the national coffers thanks to tax cuts and spending increases. With all the evidence that the game is almost up, from peak oil to debt collapse, both Insiders and Outsiders are more and more desperate to believe the story line, but even the house loses a rigged game now and then. This explains the increased military spending in times of austerity. When enough people find themselves with no choice but to rise up or a large enough percentage are able to see the social contract has been broken, the last line of defense is force. Pinning the blame for riots in London, Rome and Athens on hooligans and slackers with a sense of entitlement while claiming they have other avenues of protest is disingenuous at best. In London, as it has begun to dawn on the youth that it was their future the current generation mortgaged in order to live beyond their means and knowing they face a bleaker future with less access to education caused them to rise up which brought the full force of the law and the propaganda machine down on them. They are painted as no-gooders bent on wanton violence when in reality their motive is easy to discern and provocation came in the form of a Rolls Royce Phantom VI and its occupants whose maintenance is being paid for by stealing their future.

42% of American children live in low income homes; family income is a strong predictor of educational achievement; educational achievement is the strongest predictor of future income - do I need to draw a picture?

Hating what we have let democracy and capitalism become isn't anti-American/Christmas/the rich or pro-Socialism/Fascism/Authoritarianism, it's the result of realizing we are achieving less as a civilization than we are capable; potential social energy is lost as poor decisions affecting the available net social energy over time are made thanks to the machinations of those who would prefer to stay in power. Human capital is wasted by stuffing prisons full of people, bellies with Big Macs, and heads with garbage. Revolutionary movements have a lot of potential energy but need a social contract to build up the net social energy needed to force us onto a better decision making vector. Fundamentalists see financial crashes, peak oil and the prospect of peace much as they see evolution, alternative energy and the necessity for revolution thanks to our old friends confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance and epistemic closure. One chooses, they can see the steady rise in CO2 in the atmosphere as a good thing much like McDonald's advertising total burgers sold - Now over 390 parts per million! The fact is winter is still cold and most clients don't have a heart attack while they're eating the burger so it's hard to draw the connection.

Gold is up over 300% in the past decade; other precious metals up five fold

A key factor in the completion of the transfer of wealth from the sovereign states and people to the corporations, banks and their trans-governmental debt collecting agencies (your IMFs) is how will these masters of the universe keep those whose job it is to protect them on their side as they slowly strip away the protectors pay, benefits and dignity? Charlie Skelton thought he saw a chink in the wall behind the tear in the eye of the police comisario charged with protecting Bilderbergers making decision behind closed doors to cut their jobs, salaries and pensions to pay for their excesses. No, maybe it was just a coincidence they met in Greece last year and Spain this as the public sees no problem with spending millions in public funds to protect them while planning the host nations' debt-driven dooms. After all, it costs over $1 billion to do it in the open, like, say a G20 meeting in Canada. This summer Spain, next in line along with Portugal for the PIIGS roasting, saw firefighters march into Madrid's stock exchange carrying signs that read "The people pay for you greed" and "Markets caused the crisis" as they were among the first victims in the new world of austerity. Even having seen what has happened to Greece and Ireland hasn't tripped the wire yet because enough people think clicking a like button makes them politically active as we've been fooled into thinking the Internet in itself has given us some kind of magic knowledge/influence power. There's no all-encompassing conspiracy at play here, we're simply living in a fairy tale enough people are choosing to live in.

2009 was the deadliest year for NATO forces in Afghanistan until this year, the tenth year of the war, which has seen over 700 killed

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialist
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Never Turn Your Back on a Bear

Sounds like pretty sound advice, but as usual, we in the west are doing just that. Not that there isn't good reason to be preoccupied with other matters. Seems these days the volume has been turned up a notch on the global crisis amplifier from the natural, financial and political spheres. Volcanoes, oil spills and floods threaten to destroy the world or at the very least disrupt our lifestyles; the menace from the contagion of crumbling debt ponzi-schemes has moved from companies and global capital markets to nations and continents; meanwhile those very markets are determining who will ultimately govern nations, making ascots cool again while taking wild 1000 point 20 minute drops only to bounce back. So, it's with with little hope of exciting curiosity that I'll try to shift your gaze for a moment to the dancing bear of the east, Russia. Almost a couple of years on from the Georgian adventure, Moscow has returned to the quiet reordering of what it considers its sphere of influence.

We're not going back to the USSR mind you seeing as NATO soldiers marched on Red Square last weekend to commemorate the Russian (or USSR) victory in WWII, the Victory Day parade. Most of the west has their ideas about the end of that war, the Russians their own that gave them the right to dominate Eastern Europe for half a century. Hu Jintao of China and German Chancellor Angela Merkel watched as over 11,000 troops marched, planes zipped while tanks and missiles rolled by. Medvedev had to defend inviting serving US, British, French and, you guessed it, Polish troops to some skeptics, particularly the communist remnants of the country. While the wild stories about the Russians being responsible for Kaczynski's plane crash last month seem to be just that, wild yet plausible stories, you never forget the communist past in this part of the world. Yet neither do they in America, where they're still hunting Commies too while the geopolitical map is being redrawn for them.

The signing of the Black Sea rent deal last week between Russia and the Ukraine re-cemented more than the bond they feel sharing Victory Day along with Belarus and other former Soviet countries a day later than Western Europe. As the German Instrument of Surrender was signed at 23:01CET, the west celebrates on the May 8th, while being well after midnight Moscow time, they celebrate on the 9th. The Ukrainian parliament may have had a screaming argument to pass the new lease which allows the Russian Black Sea fleet to be based in Sebastapol, but it slipped by unnoticed by most of the MSM. The Russian fleet's rental agreement had been due to expire in 2017, but has now been renewed for 20 years in exchange for cheaper gas, from $330 to 230/1000 cubic meters, about 30% off. Rent to keep the Black Sea fleet at Sevastapol had been $98 million per year, while the Ukrainians had complained it was worth between one and two billion annually. Cheap gas for docking rights is one thing, but the bear is now looking to swallow the entire distribution network, with  Russia's Gazprom absorbing the Ukrainian Naftogaz. With 80% of Russian gas to the EU flowing through the Ukraine, much of the continent would be even further at the mercy of Moscow. Not everyone was happy with the agreement, as eggs and smoke bombs were thrown during the ratification in parliament. Ukrainian democracy in action thanks to the February presidential election which saw a Russian favourite re-installed as Victor Yanukovich won out over Orange Revolution darling ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and now ex-president Viktor Yushchenko who managed to garner 5% of the vote. Seems the new Russian warmth also includes shifting the press and the official stance of the nation to forget about the past, or at least move towards the bad old days of lies and obfuscation of subjects such as Holodomor; moving away from terms like genocide toward the more blameless painful 'restructuring'.

Eight and a half million of the 27 million Soviets killed during the Second World War were soldiers while between three and ten million Ukrainian civilians died in the mass starvation known as Holodomor. Sure, there's a bit (read: a lot) of an unknowable factor in the equation, namely, was it just the Stalinist policies that were responsible for those starvations or a direct order from Josef himself - the fact is it was a lot of death thanks to Russian, um, Soviet domination. Yankukovich's first move as president was to remove the section dedicated to Holomodor on the Presidential website. In a speech to the Council of Europe (who do call the event genocide) the new and improved Victor said he considered the famine "a shared tragedy" of all the people who were all part of the Soviet Union. Potato, potahto - genocide, herbicide, that's what big powerful neighbors are for, to shift the burden of guilt I suppose. Oh yeah, and ruining the idea of communism and therefore socialism forever, cocksuckers.

Living here in Poland it's not too hard to feel those same effects. It's not just the neoliberal attitude of the people, but the common fear of Russia. Can't blame them either. I mean, Poland was wiped off the map for 123 years thanks in most part to that damn Catherine, the Great One. It was a kick in the nuts to give the Poles about 30 years of inter-war independence before the next big war saw them practically wiped off the map only to be handed back to Moscow once again. The only wonder then is that there aren't more conspiracy stories flying around following the Polish presidential plane crash on the way to the site of yet another Stalin era massacre, Katyn. Oh yeah, there are elections coming here next month that could see Lech Kaczynski replaced by his brother Jaroslaw, but that's a story for another day.

While I don't understand the allegiance Poland feels to the western powers after being left to the Soviets after WWII, it's easy to understand their distrust of their neighbors, well the Kaliningrad bit at least. Experience has taught the Poles that Pan-Slavism is simply code for Russification, where Rus dominates little Lech and Czech, which has helped NATO become strongly entrenched here, a fact the F-16s flying out from just north of where I live remind me on a daily basis. I still catch myself looking up as they fly by while the locals don't even notice. Eastern NATO encroachment, which seemed an unstoppable force just a few years ago, is something the Russians have put off indefinitely in Georgia and the Ukraine, both critical geopolitical hinges, the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Meanwhile, it seems Hillary's pressing of the reset button for the Obama administration in US relations with Russia after they stepped on the Georgian rose, didn't prevent the Kremlin from poisoning the tulip. Along with the squeezed orange in the Ukraine, it seems the colour/flower-coded American created revolution victories of the early zeros have been for not. Nation  building in Afghanistan, especially with the upcoming Kandahar offensive, could become even tougher if the airbase north of the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek becomes unavailable to the Americans.

Considering how crucial the US airbase in Manas is in the supply chain to keep the war machine killing brown people in Afghanistan having moved 50,000 coalition forces into the war zone in March alone, it's amazing how little news is coming out of the Central Asian country. Sure, the airbase is once again operational, but the rental agreement is feeling even less firm than the beginning of April, before the coup. You see not only is Kyrgyzstan the lone country in the world to maintain daylight saving time all year, it's also the only country in the world to be hosting both a Russian and US airbase! The Russians were quick to throw their support behind the new government, having tired of former president Bakiyev's antics. After saying he'd evict the American base in exchange for writing off $180 million in debt, a $2 billion loan, subsidies and $150 million in direct aid from Moscow, he then changed his mind when the US agreed to triple the Manas base rent last June and rename the facility a 'Transit Center'. Hmmm, could all this cash be what convinced Bakiyev to get out while he could taking up to $200 million with him? Well, the US lease was set to run out in July again, but an announcement saying it will be automatically renewed was issued, so we may have to wait awhile to find out how much the new leaders will cost.

Last Sunday was also Mother's Day in parts of the world including the US where Sarah Palin tweeted: "U.S. Moms: we are thankful 4 freedom! Despicable treatment of women in Iran(setting U.N.policy on women’s rights)make U.N.credibility a joke". So thoughtful. Yeah freedom. Boo Iran. Yeah US moms. Boo UN. At least it's better than listening to her voice plus her populist propaganda did serve to remind me to mention Russia's hole card in the present geopolitical deal where the ace of spades in the deck has the unmistakable shape of a warhead. From the beginning of his candidacy through two speeches in Prague almost exactly a year apart it's been made clear that the centerpiece of the Obama administration's foreign policy is a nuclear weapons-free world. While the flurry of activity regarding this noble cause has been impressive, it's clear that the main goal isn't to rid the world of nuclear arms, but to make sure regime's America doesn't like don't get hold of them. Well, not counting North Korea. It doesn't take a genius to see that today this means one country, Iran, and being the other major nuclear power, Russia again has a huge role to play as together they hold 95% of the world's nuclear weapons. In rapid succession we've seen: the release of the US Nuclear Policy Review defining both the number of ready nuclear arsenal (5113 functioning, around 4500 retired) and posture, or who they would attack; the signing of a new START Treaty which committed the US and Russia to a 30% reduction in the number of deployed strategic warheads; a two-day Nuclear Security Summit in Washington of 47 world leaders that saw a pledge to secure the world's stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium; the revival of the US-Russian civilian nuclear deal; and the ongoing month-long review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Unsurprisingly, it's all been smoke and mirrors.

The new US policy rules out using nukes on non-nuclear powers - as long as they abide by treaty obligations - specifically pointing out Iran as a potential target. Worried about this and not being invited to the security summit, Iran had it's own meeting called "Nuclear Energy for all, Nuclear Weapons for none". All this was capped off by the childish behavior of the UN delegates walking out on Ahmadinejad's speech at the start of the NPT review last week. The month-long NPT review conference began inauspiciously as the delegates from the US, Britain, France, Canada, Hungary, New Zealand and the Netherlands walked out on the opening speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Oops, sorry, that link was when they walked out last year, here they are walking out, oops, last year again, here's last week. Guess the only country in the world to have used nuclear weapons on their enemy don't like to hear that the bargain struck by the treaty they are trying to improve which came into effect in 1970 was that non-nuclear states would refrain from building weapons so long as those that already had them would make credible moves toward disarmament. All this activity has served to show that it won't occur overnight, the changes are gradual rather than transformational, after all, many Americans actually prefer president who wants to use nuclear weapons, not waste them.

Energy price hikes were enough to spark the coup in Bishkek, but in Tehran the green revolution couldn't bring down the regime as they're sitting on so much gas, oh, and that little nuclear power plant the Russians are helping to finish. Meanwhile, America is stamping her feet, trying to get Russia (and even less likely, China) on board to support a fourth round of sanctions against Iran for their supposed nuclear weapons program. Never mind that this program is yet another of the fires that the US itself set in the past only to have the shifting winds of time blow it back on her face. Blowback, the Russians are pretty good at that too, did we get into the Turkish or Syrian nuclear power plants they're now going to build? Back when the Shah was running things, the US in fact helped start the program it now wishes to see shut down. Thanks to the US and her allies, particularly the West Germans, we've had 30 years of scaremongering about Iran's pursuit of the bomb. In the meantime, Russia agreed as far back as 1995 to help the Iranians complete a power station in Bashehr that was started when there was still a West Germany, who were paid for work never completed.

In a similarly embarrassing reminder of the curtailed power wielded by Washington to the Israeli announcement of plans to build housing in East Jerusalem during Vice President Biden's visit there, the Russians announced that the Bashehr nuclear power plant would be completed this August during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Moscow in March. While this affront may not have derailed the successful completion of talks to replace the START treaty, it does signal that Russia may not be ready to back UN sanctions against Iran. Even more awkwardly for America, as highlighted by Egypt's proposal for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East, is the fact that Washington's closest ally in the region is probably sitting on a couple hundred warheads and aren't even participating in the NPT conference as they along with India and Pakistan never even signed the original agreement. Weapons of Mass Disruption, heh, heh. They have no plans of signing anytime soon either. Little known fact of the day learned while writing this - Israel helped the South Africans build their bombs.

Yikes, that's what happens you start watching dancing bears, we we're talking about Russia weren't we? It's not like the US are the only ones with problems, Russia has their share. Chechnya has been replace by other North Caucasus republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia. As we near the ten year anniversary of the regions first suicide attack in Chechnya June 7, 2000, there's no sign of peace in site for the region. Two wars in Chechnya only served to spread the violence beyond its borders, spawning stories of Black Widows along with untold misery and slaughter. Terrorist bombs blow below journalists and activists being gunned down while oligarchs remain indefinitely on trial. Oh yeah, we didn't even get into the China angle, after all they've got a few nukes too and their volatile Xinjian province, home of the Uighur minority, is a mere 200 miles from Manas and feel a little uncomfortable with US encirclement when combined with their cooperation with Taiwan, Japan and India. Did I mention they've also got a few (two or four) new nuclear subs to play with and are winning the game anyway? Or that the leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are both in their 70s and in dubious health having between them five daughters and not one son (well, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev reportedly has a son from his third wife). Oh boy, don't they know we've got enough on our plates to worry about some silly bear playing with energy strings, nuclear weapons and naval ports. Give them a puck, now that's more like it.

Prorogue 2: Electric Boogaloo

Yes, I know, I used the theme for a previous post title, but this time it's so much more fitting; the most ridiculous movie title ever together with the most ridiculous "democratic" trick ever. Maybe "Prorocracy" would be better? Doesn't really work as a snappy title, does it? Whatever, kinda proves a point though, as the words prorogue and democracy don't go together. Democrogue? Nope, neither. Except of course if you live in the Great White North where that wonderful leader who isn't at all creepy, Stephen Harper, has once again decided that the country works a lot better without all those elected people around trying to run the government. Yes, Prime Minister Harper has progrogued Parliament for the second time in two years.

What's a prorogue? Well, I guess you missed it a little over a year ago when Harper prorogued Parliament to avoid losing power and I wrote a post where I compared the Prime Minister to Robert Mugabe. Well it seems I was being a little harsh on Robert, at least he's pretending to get along with the 'unity' government. Canada, will once again be without any kind for a couple of months as Harper has suspended the parliamentary session. Sure, the prorogue has been used in the past when the legislative work of the session has been completed and everyone wants a little more holiday time. However, this move comes at a time when only half the work is done and much that had been begun will have to be restarted. Obviously, if you are Stephen Harper, King Charles I, Napoleon, Victoriano Huerta, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco or Augusto Pinochet, you've probably got a more devious motive than simple vacation time. A year ago, Harper did it to maintain power; a truly Machiavellian ideal. This year it seems so much more mundane, he simply wants to hide the truth from the people and above all avoid embarrassing questions while the world's spotlight is on Canada for the Olympics. Oh, and stack the senate while he's got a bit of extra time.

Once again, it's all about torture, this time in Afghanistan. When will we learn not to mess with that place? The strange part about the story is that it's not about Canadians torturing, it's simply about ignoring the facts and choosing not to do anything about it, eventually putting yourself in a position of being forced to either lie or shut the voices off. The key to Harper's move is that this procedure will also shut down parliamentary committees, from which a few questions are sure to be raised about Canadian troops handing over detainees to Afghan officials to be tortured. In late November diplomat Richard Colvin made the accusation, which was followed by the predictable shoot the messenger playbook - the old 'this guy is crazy or a terrorist or worse yet a liberal trying to get in the elected governments way'. Unfortunately for Harper and the rest of his theocratic leadership, Richard Colvin turns out to be one of those guys we should all admire. I mean heres a diplomatic staffer who volunteered to go into Afghanistan as a civilian representative with Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar after the previous worker had been killed by a suicide car bomber. Instead of retreating under a barrage of personal attacks from the government, he responded with a 16-page letter discrediting claims that the politburo hadn't known anything about the situation one by one. So, what's the deal, why not just fess up, wash their hands, fix the oversight error and move on?

Herein lies the heart of darkness or some alternate reality Three's Company plot. Yes, it could be as simple as non-competence which led to mistakes that have spun out of control to the point where they fear being embarrassed under the international spotlight during the Olympics. Yes, the Olympics, the timing of the announcement of prorogation even smells of Olympic fever. Not only did Harper hope that no one would be paying attention between Christmas and New Year, he made the announcement on the day when the Canadian national Olympic hockey team was announced. For all the non-Canadian readers, this is slightly more important than the announcement of the Nobel peace prize, the English World Cup squad and the Academy Award nominations all rolled into one, so Harper knew which story would lead the news that night.

Yet, still the campaign of misinformation along with the flood of talking points from "support our troops" to needing an elected senate (which we do need) and now the stalling tactics of the prorogation taken all together smell of something more insidious. Ranging from the banal - simply knowing the lemming-like, 'lead us to economic growth', apathetic populace will have forgotten everything come March, to the truly disturbing - that the maple leaf is being used as a tool to promote hatred in the Muslim world to help ensure the global "war on terror" (how do you have a war against an idea?) will continue indefinitely. Voters are more likely to care that a psychic has foretold a Conservative majority this year than the fact that the government is turning a blind eye to the Canadian contribution to the perpetual war on terror. In Mr. Colvin's own words, "Instead of winning hearts and minds, we caused Kandaharis to fear the foreigners. Canada's detainee practices alienated us from the population and strengthened the insurgency." Imagine being an Afghani, knowing that if you run into a maple leaf you may wind up being turned over to be tortured and, unfortunately, the Canadians did a lot of torture delivery for the Afghans - six times the British and twenty times the Dutch (yeah, not exactly high value targets: "They were picked up ... during routine military operations, and on the basis typically not of intelligence [reports] but suspicion or unproven denunciation."). What would your feeling be toward the occupying soldiers from the nation turning you over to be tortured? What would your friends and family think? The district...the nation. Once you begin thinking this way, maybe then you can begin to understand how not fixing this problem is but a small cog in the machine that ensures this "war on terror" continues forever (well, that or someone gets their hands on a bomb, or the west financially implodes - Osama's plan all along).

But when added to the Maher Arar story you don't need to be an Amnesty International worker to worry about how far we fallen so fast. Similar story, smaller scale but it demonstrates the shift in morals that has occurred over the past decade - the acceptance of torture. Oh, yeah, Maher Arar, you may have forgotten the Canadian citizen that the RCMP set  up to be sent to be tortured for over a year, yawn, didn't a US federal appeals court just rule that he had no rights? oh, but Omar Khadr, zzzzzz, the others? The population has become desensitized to the topic to the point they've simply turned off, at least while it's only brown people being tortured. In the 'war on terror' the question's no longer whether or not it's acceptable, which it hasn't been since everyone signed the Geneva Conventions, but where is the line, or who's doing it.

Who would have thought ten years ago that democratic nations would even be discussing their role in torture? It's truly frightening to see the moral decay that has eaten away at our core values, debating the semantics of torture; is this torture or that? is it our fault if we were only complicit in knowing about it? when can it be justified? there's more important things to worry about, like saving banks and growing the economy. While the Canadian electorate has been sleeping, their government has mutated into a truly Cheney-esque monstrosity. Sabotaging progress on climate change negotiations while creating the largest man-made ecological disaster in the world, moving to eliminate the national gun registry implemented to prevent massacres like this, an anti-drug strategy aiming at a US style prison culture, a new citizenship guide that rebrands Canada away from peacekeeping and diversity toward intolerance and hate. No, no and no.

Canada's situation is perhaps even more perilous than  it's southern neighbour's. Imagine if the tea party fringe of the conservative party were in charge, yeah, you get the picture. Still spending like drunken soldiers on important things like killing brown people, but also shaving taxes. Now, by the time Parliament sits again in March, yes, after the Olympics, Harper will have had time to pass Michaëlle Jean the names of five new senators, giving the Tories a majority in the upper house of the unelected senate, meaning the gestapo will be in full control. Actually, seeing as Harper only needed to call Jean to suspend democracy, maybe the senate choices will be posted on Jean's Facebook wall, after all it's the only forum poor Canadians seem to have these days. This will give the Conservatives the elusive majority in the upper house and thus a majority on the newly formed Senate committees and greater control for passing their own legislation, which means Harper won't have any roadblocks to implementing his agenda, yippee! If it weren't so predictably sad and dangerous it would be funny. It's almost hard not to feel sorry for my Canuck brethren, they don't really have a choice. Last time Harper prorogued, he did it because he feared the opposition taking power, this time he can do it because he doesn't fear them, there is no credible opposition to challenge him in the next election.

The country has become some kind of alternate reality version of America without the Barack Obama show to help them at least pretend that they're good guys, not meaning to hurt anyone. Ain't no thing, we're just less than halfway through our workload for the parliamentary session, it's best if we shut things down and get the Crown speech and budget ready, everybody go home, or more likely, stay in Arizona, California or your Mexico whatever it may be. Yeah, blame Canada, and France and the US and Poland and you name it, just consider us lucky that at least reporters can tell us what's really happening above the 49th...oh yeah, forgot about that Amy Goodman detention at the Peace Arch a month ago, even made MSNBC apparently:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I wouldn't worry though, it seems to be just the Olympics they're worried about, so as long as you're not coming to ask about the quality of the ice or question the hockey team selection you should be OK. Careful though, I dunno where they draw the line on issues surrounding the games, environmental destruction around Whistler, development on indigenous land? Canada's going into lock down for the Winter Games, only the right kind of people or stories are wanted. It makes perfect sense that it's all about the Olympics, after all the games capture the holy trinity of the right wing mantra - greed, fear and prejudice. Again, all I can say is: Canada! Canada! Canada!

The Decade of Nothingness

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;

         -Shakespeare Julius Caesar Act III, Scene 2

I heard, or rather read, the decade that's now coming to a close referred to as the aught's the other day. Looking back at the disastrous past ten years makes we think we need a more descriptive moniker. The Brits say noughties but maybe we should have something with zero in it seeing as the world hasn't put any points on the scoreboard over the decade, I guess the double zeros would do, or double oh's, the oh-oh's. (Is it the teens next before the 20's, the tens?) For a variety of reasons no one seems to even try to understand the problems we face anymore, instead they rely on some talking head's opinion or blogger's spin. Ten years ago we had the Kyoto Protocol, hopes for a final Mideast peace agreement and an economic boom with no end in sight. How did it all go so wrong? Fear could be one explanation. Fear that our beliefs are wrong, fear that our lifestyles are destroying our world and fear of the other. Fear, the old fight or flight, paralyzes and poisons as it confuses, robbing us of our self-control. Most frustrating of all, faced with the triple threat of climate, finance and terrorism, instead of focusing on facts and solutions, the rhetoric of fear has driven us onto a self-destructive path through lies and misinformation.

The decade of fear brought many global threats, from SARS and swine flu to Jenny McCarthy and Osama Bin Laden. The shadow of 9/11 pushed terrorism into our everyday lives with threat level updates and two intractable, open-ended conflicts. While acknowledging that we were dealing with a new kind of enemy, our leaders responded in the traditional manner, war and increased defence spending. The jingoistic fear factory pumped up the rhetoric as Dubya and his cronies fed a nation's desire for revenge with the Bush Doctrine which imperceptibly altered an entire country's mindset, guiding a bloodthirsty nation to war.

Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

-Otto von Bismarck

In Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein describes the window that opens between a shock and analysis, a disorientation gap where a new set of beliefs find fertile ground. When planes hit the WTC on September 11th, 2001, that window was blown wide open and a new narrative was created. First in Afghanistan, the "With Us or Against Us" doctrine provided the justification for not only pursuing Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but also for deposing the Taliban. If you ever wonder why no one knows the reason we're still in Afghanistan, don't worry you're not alone, that was the idea. While Condi Rice first came up with the "no distinction" idea, it was Darth Cheney who first started calling it the "Bush Doctrine" in public. Blurring the lines between terrorists and states that harbour them was a propaganda coup. In a November 2001 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney offered this definition: "We will hold those who harbor terrorists, those who provide sanctuary to terrorists, responsible for their acts."

It wasn't until the anthrax and smallpox threat hysteria broke out that the justification for war in Iraq achieved critical mass. With a leap of faith, and a huge dose of fabrication (think WMD's and "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."), Iraq was linked with every terror plot ever hatched against the US, giving birth to the war of preemption. Even today, many would link Saddam and Osama in their minds as one and the same threat. Only now, after Obama has picked up his Nobel Peace Prize, do we realize the extent to which the public have become disoriented. Instead of seeing the honour as an incentive to change and repudiate the disastrous actions of the last decade, the US press and public responded like a wounded animal, lashing out, forcing Obama's hand into escalating a war he cannot win.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Unwinnable War in Afghanistan
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

We've entered the truly bizarro world where putting an end date on a war is wrong after having wasted more that 8 years ensuring there can be no resolution to the conflict. The cognitive dissonance involved when claiming to promote liberal democracy on the one hand while supporting a corrupt leader who stole an election with the other at a cost of a million dollars per soldier must be painful (yes, 30,000 extra troops will cost about $30 billion a year). I guess it's nothing having fundamentally shifted from the knowledge that torture was wrong with even Reagan signing the UN Convention on Torture to a society that produces Abu Ghraib and believing torture can now be justified and certainly not prosecutable.

Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist
-Warren Buffett

The efficacy of fear as a manipulator has been further tested in the financial world, selling us the need to put capitalism on permanent life support. Taking a page out of the terrorism playbook, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson played a little game of fear tag team with Geithner, Bernanke, Bush, the IMF and Warren Buffet to pull off the greatest transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to the rich in history. Somewhere between $4.7 and $23.7 trillion in the US alone. Buffet, the world’s sometimes richest man, threw his weight behind the programme in order to avoid "an economic Pearl Harbour", then going further, saying "...we were at the brink of something that would have made anything that’s happened in financial history pale...I’m not saying the Paulson plan will eliminate the problem but it’s absolutely necessary, in my view, to avoid going off the precipice." Wasn't there a line about fear during the real Depression, yeah, some Roosevelt quote, er, what was it again? Oh yeah, "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself". How adorable, so folksy, but then again, that was another time. A time when instead of handing the economy over to those who ruined it, rules and policies were implemented to try to ensure it didn't happen again.

This time, normal legislative procedures were bypassed as congressmen were warned of civil unrest, martial law and stock market collapse if they failed to pass the bank bailout. Never mind the true cause of the failure of the economic model, an over-concentration of wealth and power brought about by globalization, tax-policy and focus on short term profits. Instead of fixing the inequity brought about by the failed policies of the past, the world was hoodwinked into transferring trillions over to those who caused the problem. A decade that began with the internet bubble and merger between AOL and Time Warner is ending with their quiet divorce and the entire financial world on life support. The warnings were there all along if we'd of just paid attention and connected the dots from WorldCom to Enron, Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff, Tyco to Parmalat (a list of corporate scandals in 2000-2002 only!), putting power in the hands of the few as the world rushed to embrace the madness of the markets. Instead, every action seemed to reinforce bad behaviour; as CEO pay and bonuses grew, taxes were sliced for the privileged few. Those left behind saw their power shrink along with their wages until a breaking point was reached, inequality not seen since the Great Depression. The top 1% of earners now earn a higher percentage of income than anytime since 1928 while income mobility, the chances of being born poor and becoming rich, has shrunk to pre-Horacio Alger levels. Somehow though there isn't enough evidence to convince the true corporate shills, those Ayn Rand dreamers, who wholeheartedly believe in the superiority of the rich, that their financial pyramid is all an illusion. Fear of collapse seems to be enough to keep us all chasing our tails.

"They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent… Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now…”
- Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936

Fear has been the sales tool of the decade. It's worked great for the military industrial complex, selling us two wars. It's worked even better convincing us that we need to have rich, large, powerful corporations controlling our lives. Sadly, we can be fooled into killing foreigners and giving money to bankers but we can't be 'tricked' by those pesky fear-mongering scientists into any kind of real action to prevent a global catastrophe resulting from climate change. It's become clear that this marketing tool doesn't always work as witnessed by the dismal failure to sell the world on the need to save it from ourselves. We've been inundated with stories of melting glaciers, shrinking ice caps, sinking islands and polar bears eating their cubs for the past decade in an attempt to convince the world that we're hurtling towards disaster. So why has shock and awe environmentalism failed so miserably? Why does it seem more important to the deniers that Al Gore may profit from green energy than Goldman Sachs profited from the bailout or Blackwater and Haliburton from the wars of preemption? How can we justify subsidizing an oil based economy that enriches kings in Saudi Arabia over investing in new technologies at home to lessen our reliance on others and spark a real economic recovery? Why is Obama labeled as 'dithering' for delaying a decision to send young men to die in a futile effort while the reality is he's playing the part of the prototypical Danish procrastinator Hamlet in his native land, trying to sell us some more smoke and mirrors wrapped in hope and change and carbon trading, driving us all to the inevitable tragic conclusion of the play?

God, time and money. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein claims to be "doing God's work while the same deity guided Dubya "'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did.". Meanwhile, those pesky scientists are once again questioning the divine by saying that man may actually be influencing his environment. Typical human arrogance, thinking we hold god-like influence over our planet. Fear also fails here due to the time scale, to work it cannot be an implied threat of something too far in the future, or people will lose interest. This is especially true as climate gets mixed up with weather all too easily in people's minds and there are too many cold winter days between now and the tipping point for people to feel any urgency. Given enough time and resources one can convince the majority of folks just about anything. The most remarkable aspect of the deniers success is that they've convinced a large segment of the population that they are really smart because they can recite the rhetoric the global plutocracy has tricked them into believing instead of actually believing in science. Such beauties as: "Remember global cooling", "Medieval Warm Period", "No warming since 1998", "Faulty evidence", "Solar energy output", "Plants need CO2", "Water Vapour is a greenhouse gas"; most have truth to them, but all have been misused and disseminated to the public in order to confuse the masses.

All the while the ultimate fear card is played over and over. "Climate-change policies will destroy jobs and growth". It's here that the real irony starts to hit home. Not only can sharp reductions in emissions be attained with limited impact on growth at low costs, but an agreement in Copenhagen could have been the recipe for real economic recovery. But here's the real kicker. The fear factory may have already cost itself its place at the top of the global pecking order by refusing to see the obvious. Climate change feedback loops are self-reinforcing cycles; problems that echo off each other and quickly spiral out of control. Here’s how it goes: Melting tundra in Siberia releases methane into the atmosphere, which raises the water temperature, which melts sea ice, causing more solar heat to be absorbed by the oceans. As the Arctic has been melting and America has been acting the part of a 2-year old who can close his eyes and make the world go away, Russia and China have put themselves in position to reap the resource rewards, a sort of global power feedback loop. The last lie has been that we'll run out of cheap oil soon enough forcing the market to solve the problem for us. But the effects of a warmer planet are not only making it easier to dig up northern Alberta, it's also thawing the cover off of the final poisoned payload. Not only will we be sailing across the pole, a quarter of the world's mineral wealth will also be accessible, ensuring that we'll keep burning until we're truly burning. At the same time, China has positioned herself to lead the world, if not through some kind of carbon treaty, then she has at least bought up enough of Africa and South America to feed herself during the coming droughts and to maintain a steady supply of resources. Droughts? Let's not even get started on freshwater.

And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought 

-Shakespeare Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

Put it all together with the latest "Climategate" (nice name-calling propaganda technique wouldn't you say?) scandal involving the hacked emails and public confidence in climatology is probably at its lowest point in at least the past decade. The facts are simple though. The planet is warming; for 150 years we've known that CO2, even in low concentrations, acts as a greenhouse gas; man is contributing to the increase in CO2. No, we don't know for certain that we are driving the warmth, but as then-Vice President Dick Cheney said when faced with concerns that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear-weapons expertise to Al Qaeda "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response." Well Dick, I'd say that we're at least 1% sure about us playing a part in global warming, so, shouldn't we respond?

Cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? About $1 trillion to date
Cost of the financial bailout? About $5 trillion
Cost to save the planet? You guessed it...priceless