This Month in Wingnuttery

Format changes continue with a tweak to my promised semi-regular feature on wingnuttery; by making it monthly it'll give me a chance to do a piece on schedule and allow me to use the far more convenient shotgun rhetoric those nutters love to use. What, with the oil gushing top kill reaching Cousteau shock and awe, it's time to set things right before it's too late. Who knew the term wingnut had so many different meanings? According to dictionary.com it's a nut having two flat, widely projecting pieces such that it can be readily tightened with the thumb and forefinger; the first definition on the urbandictionary is "An outspoken, irrational person with deeply-held, nominally conservative, political views. A person who chooses on principle to be flagrantly ignorant. A "right-wing nut". And wingnuttery? Well, for our purposes let's take it to be anyone who's parsimonious with the truth, often disguising this fact with allusions to god, guns and (smaller) government in order to advance a conservative agenda. Unbeknownst to me when I started this semi-regular (woohooo 2 editions!) feature, CNN has been running a similarly named feature for the past year, but they take a more "balanced" approach, naming a left and right wing freakshow of the moment. Here we don't need to maintain the faux illusion of fairness. We better hurry though, lots of ground to cover, from the Empress of Alaska down to the Gulf, duh, and then over to the home of wingnut civilization, the cradle of the big three Abrahamic religions, the Middle East and Israel.

America has of course become the capital of wingnuttery, or New Jerusalem if you will. Anywhere that someone of Sarah Palin's type can so easily stir a populist frenzy by flashing some MILF thigh and screeching some internet mined redneck jokes is in trouble. Coming within a heartbeat of being a heartbeat from the presidency was scary enough, but she seems to be on track for another run in a couple years, this time at the top of the Republican ticket. Wouldn't surprise me if she won as the very corporations that are busy destroying the world will be able to spend unlimited amounts on future elections thanks the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Money is speech for corporations with guaranteed freedom but the people whose lives they destroy don't have the money to buy voices.

The demi-governor of Alaska has been busy during this mid-term election primary season, throwing her support behind anyone willing to pay her appearance fees. With the attention span of a hummingbird on a nectar jag, she probably misses the hypocrisy and cruel irony of her choices. The Palin of 2008 pledged to "stop multi-million dollar payouts and golden parachutes" for executives who run their company into the ground. So why not support Carla Fiorini for Senate, a woman who oversaw the loss of over 50% in the value of Hewlett Packard only to walk away with a $45 million payout. Where did she run her company and what color was that parachute? Or Vaughn Ward, her choice to be the Republican congressional candidate from Idaho. Besides fulfilling the Palin geography requirement calling Puerto Rico a country, he also happened to lift a speech given by Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic convention. Teleprompter anyone? Plagiarize much? How about Clint Didier for Senate in Washington blasting government intervention while taking $140,000 in federal farm subsidies. Not sexy enough? Ok, take Palin's pick for governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, who had an affair with a former co-worker in the governor's office.

Of course every time these stories come out, it's not the lack of proper vetting, exactly what allowed her to join the McCain ticket in '08 and launched her into the national spotlight, it's the 'lamestream' media's fault. These are somehow personal attacks which are "a violation of our press freedom", a curious claim coming from someone who supposedly studied journalism in college. Sure, she could've served out her term as governor and tried to leave a public service legacy while boning up on the issues in order to take a run at the presidency in 2012. God bless America, however, where the pursuit of wealth and fame trumps intellect and democracy every time. In order for a two-party system to function properly it's essential to have some kind of balance between the two choices. It's gotten to the point where the wingnuts have enough influence to grind the legislative process to a near halt, where 'no' isn't about belief but dogma. However, if the Palins and teabaggers have their way, come November the Republican slate of candidates will be so wingnut heavy as to be poisonous to democracy.

Check out the ad for the aforementioned Carly Fiorini against her FCINO (Fiscal Conservative in Name Only) opponent, really watch it to the end if you want to learn that good Republicans are sheep and don't have glowing red eyes. It only gets worse in Alabama where teacher's unions sponsor attack ads against gubernatorial candidates who believe in evolution and don't believe in the infallible truth of the bible. Or maybe you prefer a candidate who made her fortune specializing in blood, seminaked women and scripted subplots featuring rape, adultery and familial violence. Sounds like a surefire way to get elected in a NASCAR friendly state like Alabama, but it was the Connecticut Republican party who chose Linda McMahon to be their candidate for the senate. Rand has even come back, no not a brain-eating zombie named Ayn, this time as a first name as Rand Paul took a step to joining dad Ron in the senate. Sure they call themselves libertarians, but they're just racists who want to repeal civil rights and abolish the department of education while keeping medicare cheques rolling in, after all, an optometrist needs to earn a living, right? These are the people who will be screaming for deregulation as the world eats itself up and if you dare to blame a corporation, you are un-American.

Palin and her ilk's drill baby drill bit is the reason the Gulf of Mexico is witnessing the craziest shit we've seen in awhile. A wingnut's job in times like this is to call this Obama's Katrina to try to take the blame off of our society's insatiable need for a black-gooey resource that is getting harder and harder to extract, oil sands anyone? Even wingnuttier is the fact they'll still be holding the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival, for which I will grant them the honor of being my first wingnuts of the month. Even as the new oil ecosystem hovers and splashes onto their coasts wiping out the entire fishing industry with it, they still plan to celebrate the 75th edition of the festival. It is the diamond jubilee after all. Who knows, maybe oil-dipped shrimp will be the wake up call to the fact that despite the states pro-business policies, they somehow still remain one of the poorest states in the union where the rich get richer while the poor, well, die. Too bad the media damage control spin has been more effective in dulling the outcry than the effort to control both the leak and the damage done to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. By low-balling the original estimates, much of the public has been softened up to the real amount of oil that is oozing relentlessly into the gulf.

Don't worry though you true believers in the capitalist system, as always, there's money to be made from tragedy. After all, the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska brought us the credit default swap who knows what weapon of financial destruction will be unleashed as a result of this latest disaster. The spill has already opened the opportunity to bet on the first species to become extinct in addition to creating a whole new reality TV genre, truly hypnotic, let's hope they don't get any ideas for spin-offs. Maybe the wingnuts truly believe that corporate rights should win out over human rights and that big oil would never knowingly do anything to endanger the planet. No, corporations should be just left on their own to do as they please like Chevron in Ecuador or Shell in Nigeria. If we could just get tort reform poor big oil wouldn't have to worry about silly environmental lawsuits and could back to the serious pursuit of profits.

Oh, in case you missed it, this tragedy reminds of another wingnut misconception. The one where all regulation is bad. The fact is bad regulation has the potential to be bad times two whereas none has infinite badness potential. Too bad the double bad in this case may turn out to be an unstoppable force of destruction of gooey destruction where top kills and junk shots don't relieve the pressure. Funny, the regulators charged with overseeing the oil and gas industry were doing the same thing as the financial regulators - jerking to porn while writing the rules that decide how you're buddies play the game. The MMS, or Interior Department's Minerals Management Service was staffed predominately by Dick Cheney's Dubya administration, yes that helps explain why Halliburton is so involved in this fiasco (they're a huge company thanks to government war and oil contracts my friends, let's hear it for the free market, yeah!). Obama was at the helm when this went down and had an opportunity to, pardon the expression, blue ball those bastards before blowing their bunk, but as with the financial oversight authorities, the old boys network was allowed to develop thanks to Dubya.

Anyway, the MMS collects royalties and writes the rules for the BP's and Exxon's and Chevron's sorta like Fitch's, Moody's and Standard and Poor's charges the financial industry for the ratings they provide. Do you think this opens the door to corruption? Well, gifts and cushy jobs are nice but it's the porn link that is almost too much, hey, these guys were all buddies, financial and oil good ol' boys, they naturally shared porn links. At work, oh, and the meth. One handers took down finance and now the gulf. Instead of focusing on why the BP spill response plan for the gulf seemed to be lifted directly from other plans we get the wingnut leader lord Limbaugh grunts towards those who may now question offshore drilling "what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just saying." A wingnut doesn't want us to know that deregulation and lax oversight is what allows the BP's and Halliburton's to fill in inspection forms in pencil for the MMS inspectors to write over in pen.

Those like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal want less government involvement except when they want more government involvement. Yet it's the Reagan in them that limited the liability of big oil corporations like BP after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, until just a few days ago America's worst environmental disaster, to $75 million. It might piss us off if we knew about BP's hand in exacerbating that Alaska mess back in 1989. Or, maybe even remember the 2005 BP refinery explosion in Texas killing 15 in 2005 or the 200,000 gallons leaked out of their Alaskan pipeline just a year later. It might upset people to know that the lives of those men in Texas could've been saved if BP had sprung for the more expensive facilities instead of penning them like pigs. Our blood would boil if we found out that even more egregiously, BP was using dispersant to break up the giant oil slicks that look so bad on TV which is only making the disaster worse and putting clean up worker's health at risk. It would be a public relations disaster, just like acknowledging there is a respiratory danger, so BP prevented fisherman helping in clean up efforts from wearing respirators. People would get angry if they knew this was all just the cost of doing business, right? Especially if they found out that the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by BP, Transocean Ltd., decided to insure the rig for about twice what it was worth (don't ask me how they have more sense than insurance companies) and made a $270 million profit from insurance payouts thanks to the disaster.

The best way to keep stuff like this happening is to keep 'em dum (sic), Texas dumb that is. The Texas school board are doing their bit to keep the country ignorant, having finished it's ten year review of the history curriculum and deciding they didn't like it. History that is. So they've made some minor adjustments. Minor, if you consider Oscar Romero being bumped off by right-wingnuts for the second time because an ignoramus had never heard of him or omitting the achievements of a Founding Father because he believed in a strong central government as minor. A March refresher:

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Well, the bad news is, the changes officially passed into the books just last week to little fanfare, unless watching a purchased school board discussing the UN takeover of America being taught in the classrooms is exciting (Don McLeroy a name to remember - not, I love that second guy though). No, the bad news is that they'll be teaching kids that the founding fathers never intended complete separation of church and state. No wait, the really bad news is that changes made to Texas history books will affect what much of the nation will have their children taught as publishing companies cater to the state's needs seeing as its such a big customer.

Don't let us forget neighbor Arizona is making matters even worse rallying to the Faux News banner of illegals stealing jobs and killing white folk turning the state into a Goebbels' paradise. Am I using a wingnut jedi nazi trick? Um, does the Catholic Church protect paedophiles? Wingnut supporters of their new anti-immigration law wrap themselves in the Constitution while taking away the cover the document offers society's most vulnerable. SB 1070 requires cops in Arizona to stop anyone appearing Latino on reasonable grounds that they are committing a criminal act because if they are undocumented they have been redefined as a criminal by merely being in the state. Isn't racial profiling through circular arguments fun!

Thedeafening march of blackboots is almost enough to drown out the screaming contortions caused by having a Miss USA with Palestinian roots. Releasing the hounds and screaming "Git (sic) her, she's different!". Aaah, fear of the other combined with a little intolerance and you've got the perfect wingnut recipe. Take the proposal to build a Muslim cultural center a couple blocks from ground zero. Somehow they still don't get the fact that being able to build it was what made America great, instead they're calling on 'true Americans' to blow it up if it's built. Better yet, instead of the community center, a monument should be built to "victims of hundreds of millions of years of jihadi wars, land enslavements, cultural annihilations and mass slaughter." Ah yes, the classic wingnut response, treating numbers like putty, turning history on its head and oblivious to the irony of being suggested as the cost of their crusade-like response to 9/11 passes the trillion dollar mark.

Right wingnuts don't even have to answer questions, simply make baseless accusations to stun and distract the public. Easy enough when they're playing to an audience where educated might mean graduating from a place like Liberty University which bans Democrats, campus organizing, distribution of unapproved literature, viewing most movies and playing of music that's "offensive to Liberty's Christian stand". The kind of place that  invites Glenn Beck to give commencement speeches where he can take his president's words out of context. At least he avoided hawking gold while fomenting distrust in the central government and left out the part where he rails against the social justice preached in the gospel or that socialist Jesus, guess they don't have that kind of stuff in his Book of Mormon.

See, wingnuttery preys on the believers' naivety, finding fertile ground in religious belief. Politicians trumpeting social conservatism will always play well to some, never mind that their homophobia most likely stems from same-sex arousal, or that their family values preaching doesn't seem to jibe with their adulterous ways. Yes, I'm talking to you Rep. Mark Souder, Sens. John Ensign and David Vitter and Gov. Mark Sanford and, well, you get the picture. Right-wingnut hypocrisy when it comes to sex is even worse than the libertarians who would have the government's hands all over the uterus but it all makes sense when you realize the congregation is led by preachers who believe they can cure homosexuality that take jaunts to Europe with rented boy toys. I know, that ain't nothing, if we we're only reviewing March's wingnuttery we could go after the Rat and his minions a bit, but we're not, and I'm chomping at the bit for Israel, the land where the neoliberal meets the neocon.

Why? Well, again, in case you missed it, we now have proof that the Israeli wingnuts hooked up the South African apartheid nutters with nukes. Yeah, I know, Israel hasn't signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty so that means they can't even have nukes. What? That doesn't mean they don't? Yike! Well, shouldn't it freak us out then that Shimon Peres was dealing them to PW Botha all the way back in the 70's? Shouldn't Israeli's themselves find it awkward remembering that their country welcomed a Nazi sympathizer, former South African Prime Minister John Vorster, back in April of 1976 to iron out the details. Well, after visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where he laid a wreath to the victims of the German Reich he once extolled. Does no one care that Israel aided the oppression of the black majority, nuclear missiles no less, um, do you think maybe it's Israeli wingnuttery that is getting in the way of dealing with Iran honestly. Why is it that the Israeli lobby has been so successful? Guilt and obfuscation. With rhetorical flourishes any anti-Israel statement is turned into an anti-semitism. Somehow questioning how a nation whose very existence is due to atrocities committed can commit those very same atrocities makes one an anti-Semite. In order to keep the truth hidden, wingnuts must also keep those who speak the truth silent, or at least quiet.

The likes of Noam Chomsky can be denied entry trying to cross the Allenby Bridge from Jordan with his daughter to deliver a scheduled lecture at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. Silencing a critic who had spoken at Israeli universities in the past most likely because of his saying "supporters of Israel are in reality supporters of its moral degradation" after the 2008/9 war in Gaza seems a little anti-freedom. I mean this is Noam Chomsky. My English students only know him for his linguistics books, after all he was and is one of the smartest men of our times. How do the wingnuts keep his political views so silent? Oh yeah, the entry denial thing. Totalitarian regime thing. Oh, and the wingnuts supporting the guys selling them the bombs who want to keep tensions ratcheted up in the region to guarantee a steady flow of profits from killing innocent people along with a few crazies. Keep illegally building in East Jerusalem and the occupied territories, quietly balancing the numbers, putting up an illegal concentration camp fence barrier in the West Bank and building apartheid road networks and eventually people won't even remember that two national groups claim the right to self-determination in what used to be Palestine. All the nutter faithful see are towel headed terrorists, not a people being methodically exterminated by a more powerful master. Doesn't seem like Apartheid South Africa at all, no reason for an Israel Apartheid Week every year.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's chief wingnut, er, foreign minister, wants to require Israeli Arabs to sign a loyalty oath. Loyalty to a government that has maintained a stranglehold over Gaza for more than two years, a blockade to slowly starve and dehumanize the population. Slower and more painful than the gas chambers I guess. The Gaza War that bridged 2008 and 2009, or Israeli Operation Cast Lead, not only saw Israel commit war crimes, but was preceded by the sealing of all entry points to Gaza, severely hindering efforts to deal with the injured. Unbelievably this situation has continued until today, and if heaven forbid you call a spade a spade and compare Gaza to a concentration camp, you get called a Palestinian propagandist, even if you're a Catholic cardinal. Another flotilla is trying to break the siege, this time number six ships, 700 activists, over 10,000 tons of aid and one Nobel laureate, but will most likely be stopped by the Israeli navy. It has somehow become normalized over the last three years that Israel determines what the 1.5 million citizens of Gaza can and can't have. Frozen salmon yes, cilantro no. Of course Israel fears the latest flotilla attempt as it never looks good for soldiers to block people trying to bring the essentials of life, but what are they gonna do? Once a wingnut, always a wingnut.

Better cut this rambling rant off now before I lose some readers (sigh, resigned laugh here). We've clearly entered a new phase of the culture war, where guns, gays and god still have their part to play, but this time in a battle for the survival, not just economic and political, but as a species. Even recent history has seen momentous turning points as witnessed in Berlin, Tianamen and Pretoria about 20 years ago. It only takes a pebble to start an avalanche and the pebbles being kicked around seem to be getting bigger and bigger from the financial meltdown through to the gulf disaster. When faced with overwhelming evidence that something no longer works, a rational person changes tack, tries something new, whereas it's clear that a wingnut only wants to maintain the status quo in order to enrich himself. America is truly the Wingnuts-R-US of the world, wielding so much influence over so many that nothing short of armageddon will get them to change their ways as seen by the chart on the right. Yet it's hard not to notice that the scale of crises has become too big and if we don't find a way to get through to the wingnuts of no, the next one could prove to be the big one and it'll be too late. This is a teachable moment to remind us that "the role of government is to do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves." After all, even hillbillies can learn a new tune.

This Week in Wingnuttery

A new semi-regular feature for my 5's of regular readers: a quick(ish) rundown on the thought process of those on the right - as in opposite from left - side of the political spectrum. As today's internet has enabled users to coral the shotgun blast of information into their own RSS'd version of reality, it's good to take a minute and try to understand where the beliefs that the other side of reality get their information. The 24/7 news cycle that has been thrust upon us in the last couple of decade has evolved into something even more dangerous as the deluded right has an even greater capacity to isolate themselves from reality. As more and more pay walls go up, we'll increasingly need this kind of insight to understand how misinformation gets passed onto an unsuspecting public.

We'll start with the Wall Street Journal where March kicked off with:

Milton Friedman has been dead for more than three years. But his spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile in the early morning hours of Saturday. Thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse.

I'll save you the trouble of reading the rest of the WSJ article. After rattling off a few stats about the power of the latest Chilean earthquake, the writer, one Bret Stephens, goes on to thank none other than Milton Friedman, Uncle Milt, for the low death count in Chile relative to Haiti who sustained a much more powerful earthquake. Why? Well, according to the deluded, it was thanks to the Chicago Boys that Chile adopted strict building regulations which resulted in their housing being built of bricks instead of straw. According to rightwing mythology all the concrete and rebar came thanks to the economic policies adopted by the Pinochet regime under the advice of Uncle Milt.

Without knowing the reactionary press victim's condition it would seem inexplicable that one could think the man partially responsible for the slaughter of thousands is in fact owed thanks because he made building codes stronger in Chile. Responses to this assertion should begin with reminding the nutter of Richard Nixon's response to the democratic election of Salvador Allende - "make the economy scream" (hard to read copy here, 8th line of the semi-legible scribble). This was Tricky Dick's order September 15, 1970 to his CIA director Richard Helm, launching the soft line campaign to undermine Allende which paralleled the hard line Pepsi fuelled military coup.

But I digress, read more here. Back to Friedman and Chilean building codes. Even if we ignore the fact that the Chilean seismic building code was adopted in 1972, the year before the CIA assassination of Allende, there's the matter of Uncle Milt's view on government legislated building codes. Hint: He didn't like them. In fact, Chile's earthquake had the curious effect of destroying a disproportionate amount of modern buildings and highway overpasses. So, if anything Friedman is to blame for much of the destruction as building code standards and enforcement degenerated after Pinochet took power. Whether you're building highway overpasses or entire economies with only private sector oversight, both tend to collapse when the big one hits.

Next up, McCarthyism is in again. Last week's 'news' cycle featured media stalwart whore Wolf Blitzer giving air time to Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's view that lawyers who aided Guantanamo Bay prisoners legal defense are unpatriotic. They went even further, suggesting the Department of Justice be renamed the Department of Jihad (get it DOJ, J for Justice or Jihad, sigh). Of course this is nothing new for the likes of Kristol or Cheney, but it gets ugly when it spills over to the main stream of CNN. The Kristol's and Cheney's of the world need to be kept in their boxes, not given forums to create perceptions of American patriotism. The hubbub arose when Liz's Keep America Safe propaganda unit made this ad which instead of getting them tarred and feathered has even reached the floor of the Senate:



If you're a NY Post reader, you don't read that as a lawyer, John Adams defended British soldiers accused of brutal crimes committed during the Boston Massacre calling it "one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country." Instead you get 9/11 scaremongering day in, day out. Oh, and they conveniently forget that the Bush/Cheney DOJ and Rudy Gulliani's firm also employed these same horrible types of people providing constitutional protection. Hat tip to Glen Greenwald, the timeline of events showed he was most prescient in his warning over watching how the media would play this story. Unfortunately, the (brain)damage is already done for readers of the Weekly Standard, they think witchhunts are a good thing, but don't hear about how 34 of America's 50 largest law firms represented detainees or filed amicus briefs on their behalf as Senator Grassley had to be reminded. Thanks to Wolf, while passively watching CNN many were exposed to the contamination. I hate Wolf Blitzer. Oh, and anyone named Cheney. There I said it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Seeing as the Jim Bunning crusade to kill the unemployed is over, just one more shocker this week. Bunning may have had some success making people forget that the nation's debt problem is mostly due to Bush and Republican congress era unfunded wars and Medicare prescription drug benefits that came along with two of the biggest tax cuts for the rich in history (all of which he voted for). If people can be made to forget all that along with the fact that the bank bailout was mostly Bush's, they will also now believe Sarah Palin is smarter than Barack Obama. Yes, it was only Sean Hannity saying it, but remember Faux News controls the minds of many zombiefied conservative neanderthals you may run into. Sorry, I know it's painful, but you gotta get to just past the 2:00 minute mark:


Keep in mind that their definition of smart is obviously different than the traditional one. For them, smart means writing down answers to supposedly unscripted questions on your hand. You're smart when you can only name one of the founding fathers of your nation while claiming to revere their ideas. Yes, smart is calling single payer health care socialist and then admitting that your family used to slip across the Alaskan-Canadian border in order to receive some of that commie medicine. I don't even know what to say, no matter, Zirgar says it better here. Just remember how the Inca were proved right when American's are mulling over the Palin/Cheney vs. Obama/Biden decision come 2012.

The misinformation rolls around the planet with Tsunami-like destruction. Is there any wonder why Canadian officials support torturing brown people in Afghanistan? How the only way Obama can improve national security standing among much of the electorate is to kill more people in a country he's not at war with remote control indiscriminate killing toys. You have to remember the information that these poor creatures are fed with the goal of retarding society. Gnashing your teeth about illegal Israeli settlement construction will get you nowhere without remembering why the right hates brown people. In a world where America is destroying itself like 18th century Poland while I'm living in a 21st century Poland still trying to imitate the States, it's not only the language that's hard to translate. Having a dictionary can help you understand the words coming out of the right-wingnutter's mouth but you'll never comprehend the meaning oozing out of their mind without remembering they get most of their 'information' from Rupert Murdoch controlled sources. Wow, didn't even mention Rush Limbaugh once in the inaugural installment of wingnuttery. D'oh!

A Pact With Which Devil?

"Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune."
- Plutarch

Well, it took just over 206 years, but Haiti has finally climbed to the top of the world's most cursed nation charts. Ever since rising up and defeating the forces of Napoleon to become the first nation to grow out of a slave revolt, gaining independence on January 1st 1804, it has become a place where the apocalypse wears the trappings of the norm. It's one of those places that seems to be dealt one disaster after the other. The big question is how can the death-toll resulting from a 7.0 earthquake that stuck near Port-au-Prince, the same magnitude that hit Northern California in 1989 killing 63 people, be well on it's way to surpassing 100,000?  Is it as Pat Robertson said because the Haitian people "got together and swore a pact to the devil"? Why is it that Rush Limbaugh is forced to vacation on the eastern half of Hispaniola to find luxury resorts and not worry about getting AIDS from young boys? The truth of why we owe the poorest nation in the western hemisphere all the help we can is written in the pages of history and unfortunately is indeed a witches' brew of politics, economics and natural disaster.

While Rush claims the latest disaster in Haiti is simply a made to order excuse for Obama to improve his image with the "light-skinned and dark-skinned black community", comments such as his are intended to obfuscate the problem of racism that has been the cause of much of Haiti's ills. There is good reason why much of the world owes Haiti more than just their taxes . It's hard to imagine, but at the end of the 18th century Haiti, or Saint-Domingue as it was known then, was considered by many to be the most valuable colonial possession in the Americas, referred to as the Pearl of the Antilles. Unfortunately for the French, their revolution in 1789 also resonated throughout the Caribbean. The Jacobins' cry of "liberty, equality and fraternity" was taken up by rebels on the island and the "Black Jacobins" were born as the slaves rose up in 1791.

"My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Domingue (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

The Haitian Revolution didn't follow a standard script. Out of the uprising came a self-educated slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture who emerged as the revolution's leader through skill on both the battlefield and in the complexities of politics. Realizing the greed of the competing imperial powers and that the ongoing European war would drain their strength, L'Ouverture consistently outflanked his adversaries. In a complex web of emancipation, guerrilla warfare, alliances and broken promises involving the three major colonial powers, France, Spain and England, the end result was Tousaint dead in a French jail in the Jura, having been tricked by Napoleon and 100,000 of the 500,000 blacks and 24,000 of the 40,000 whites inhabitants dead. The new leader of the rebels, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, proclaimed the nation's independence January 1, 1804 after defeating Napoleon's brother in law General Charles Leclerc and 43,000 French troops at the Battle of Vertieres on November 18, 1803 and reverted the name to its former native monkier - Haiti; it became the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion.

"Dear me, think of it? Niggers speaking French"
- US Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan

And what was America's role in all this? Well, nothing short of the Louisiana Purchase. America's 3rd president was in office, Thomas Jefferson, a man afraid of his own shadow due to its dark appearance (though he had no problem with the darker female outline). Regarding the prospect of a free black nation he said: "If something is not done, and soon done we shall be the murderers of our own children." Alarmed that a slave uprising may spread north he threw his support behind the upstart French leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, in his quest to reassert French rule of his prized Caribbean possession. So when Napoleon asked Jefferson if the United States would help a French army traveling by sea to St. Domingue, Jefferson replied that "nothing will be easier than to furnish your army and fleet with everything and reduce Toussaint [L’Ouverture] to starvation." Of course his word proved to be as worthless as his morals when he learned that Napoleon planned on moving his forces to the North American mainland, basing a new French empire in New Orleans and settling the vast territory west of the Mississippi River. The rest is, as they say, history, without resupply and dealing with a determined enemy as well as an hitherto unknown threat, a pesky female mosquito carrying yellow fever (taking Leclerc's life along with 20,000 of his men), Napoleon's forces were routed and he was eventually forced to sell the Louisiana territories for a song in order to raise a new army to deal with the British.

So, it seems America, France, Spain and Britain owe the impoverished nation a little help, but why does Venezuela seem so prepared to lend a hand? It must be an evil plot to establish a foothold for Chavez' anti-American screed outside of Cuba in the area, right? Nope, it's called historical debt, debt for their freedom from slavery in which Haiti played a crucial role. After initial success in New Grenada (Colombia today) and Venezuela, Simon Bolivar was eventually pushed out by royalist forces in his quest to liberate South America from the Spanish oppressors. After first being denied help in Jamaica, El Liberator found support from Haiti and its president Alexandre Petion who granted him asylum and helped in outfitting him for his triumphant return to Caracas on his way to becoming the liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and founder of Bolivia. In return for six schooners and a sloop - 250 men, mostly officers, and arms for 6,000 troops, Petion's only request of Bolivar was the freedom of all slaves in the countries that Bolivar was going to set free.

Sadly, independence hasn't been a smooth ride for Haiti. One wonders how different things may have turned out if Tousaint L'Ouverture had been allowed to lead the nation into its new era, perhaps they may have even achieved some sort of stability. Instead, Haiti has lurched from one leader to the next, suffering 32 coups, along with one disaster followed by another - in the span of 30 days in the fall of 2008, Haiti was hit by four hurricanes and tropical storms. The newborn nation quickly learned that being the first free black state wasn't exactly a passport to diplomatic acceptance. Isolated internationally during its national infancy, Haiti wasn't recognized by the Vatican until 1860 or the US until 1861; even Simon Bolivar turned his back on them, refusing to invite Haiti to the Congress of Panama, saying "The government regards with repugnance the idea of treating Haiti with the same etiquette generally maintained between civilized nations". In order to gain conditional French recognition and to gain relief from the embargo enforced along with Britain, Spain and the US, Haiti was forced to pay reparations of 150 million francs in gold (about $20 billion today) and a 50% reduction in import duties in 1825 to compensate for French slave losses. By the turn of the 20th century, 80% of the national budget was going to pay off the loan and its interest - the country was locked into the role of perpetual debtor nation.

"I wrote Haiti's Constitution myself, and if I do say it, it was a pretty good little Constitution."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Meddling in internal Haitian affairs has continued unabated to the present day. Beginning in 1860, the waters around Haiti were the home for over 50 years of gunboat diplomacy as Germany, France, England and the U.S. competed for influence. Between 1849 and 1913, US Navy ships entered Haitian waters 24 times to "protect American lives and property". This led to the first US invasion and ensuing occupation of the island in the early days of WWI in 1915 on the pretext of subduing bandits threatening American property and fears that Germany might occupy the island. The result turned out to be 19 years of often brutal occupation. While there, the assistant secretary of the Navy in the Wilson administration, a certain Franklin D. Roosevelt, took the opportunity to write a constitution for the people of Haiti. It only got worse post WWII as the US threw its support behind Haiti’s (and one of the world's) most notorious president, Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, in the 1950's through to his son, Jean-Claude, or Baby Doc, in the 70's. The evil perpetrated by their regime with their Tonton Macoutes is almost beyond compare. "During his first four – and bloodiest — years in power, Papa Doc received $40 million from Washington, much of it in the form of outright gifts. The U.S. even went so far as to send Marines to protect this regime from any popular movement that might threaten its rule." Oh, and then we come to Aristide.

Who knows if the US directly orchestrated the coups (yes, plural) to remove the twice-elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, winner of the first free and fair election, what is important is to view the events in context. The nation had survived 30 years of brutality under the Duvalier family, a time that witnessed around 30,000 political opponents eliminated. Enter Aristides, a slum priest in a land of right-wing death squads, trumpeting a message of liberation theology, a message the Reagan brain trust declared less Christian than Communist. "US policy," they said, "must begin to counter (not react against) . . . the 'liberation theology' clergy."

The moment Aristides won over 2/3 of the vote on December 16th,1990 in a field of 12 represented the second great shift away from imperial power in Haiti and therefore the wheels of regime change turned their focus once again to the western third of Hispaniola. The administration of Bush I turned to funding the opposition and the military. Declassified records now make it clear that the CIA and other US groups helped to create and fund a paramilitary group called FRAPH, which rose to prominence after the first military coup that ousted Aristide in September 1991, six months into his five year term. A more brutal version of the Macoutes rose, known as the zinglando, terrorizing in an era when thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled overseas or across the border into the Dominican Republic.

For the next three years Haiti was run by military-civilian juntas as ruthless as the Duvaliers. With the nation immersed in anarchy and violence, and a flood of refugees trying to float stateside, the Clinton administration had Aristides reinstalled with the help of 20,000 marines in 1994. Moving quickly this time, Aristides abolished the army who had overthrown him. Yet, before much else could be accomplished, fate once again stepped in. Events outside of Haiti's power once again moved against the country as Republicans gained control of Congress that same year, sealing her doom as the senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman was now Jesse Helms and House Speaker Newt Gingrich ensuring that the flow of US help would slow to a drip. Even though previously promised aid dried up, the country managed to limp to a successful transition of power when Aristide's 5-year term expired as Rene Preval was elected in December 1995. Future catastrophe was foreshadowed as Aristides was accused of rigging parliamentary elections, something frowned upon by the US if your name isn't Karzai, and encouraging armed groups of his supporters in the absence of an army.

In 2000 he became president once again in elections boycotted by the opposition. Amid all the accusations of abuse the country was once again hit by a triple whammy from the outside world: the UN cut back its mission, the EU suspended its aid program and of course Dubya came to power in the US. The new administration blocked all forms of assistance, including World Bank loans, a policy of economic strangulation that reflected the longstanding anti-Aristide views of the Republican Congress. The result was disastrous. From 2000-04, Haitians sank deeper into poverty, and their government became dysfunctional setting the scene for yet another coup. The example of the four promised loans from the Inter-American Development Bank (the IDB) for health, education, drinking water and road improvement paints a picture of the politicization of aid. The US asked to block the loans until the electoral disputes had been resolved. Yet even after all eight of the senators in question were out of office, the freeze on aid remained in place throughout Aristide's tenure. The State Department later claimed that the freeze was decided on by a consensus of the members of the Organisation of American States in something called the Declaration of Quebec City. Yet somehow the declaration is dated April 22nd 2001, and the letter from the US representative asking that the loans not be disbursed was dated April 8th. To quote the conclusion of one of the few journalists to find this scandal worthy of inquiry, ‘it would seem that the effort became concerted after it was made.’

The officially disbanded army along with murderous paramilitary groups seized control of much of the country forcing Aristides to request international aid. France agreed to help on the condition he step aside while the US declined to help in the absence of a "political solution". By failing to send troops earlier, the United States effectively gave a green light to the second coup d'etat against Aristides, despite having intervened a decade earlier to reverse the first one. Finally, on the night of February 29th, 2004, a team of US Navy Seals kidnapped him and his wife and they woke up 20 hours later in Africa, where they remain in exile, trapped without passports, to this day.

Of course this latest natural disaster would have occurred no matter what happened in the past. Yet, it is the economic policies of the rich towards the impoverished half island which have exacerbated the situation in Haiti - as always, it comes down to the dollar. Remember as you watch the relief efforts controlled at gunpoint by a foreign aggressor army that Haiti had been reduced to dependence on aid organizations for almost every function usually paid for and controlled by the government. 10,000 private organizations perform supposedly humanitarian missions in Haiti, however many projects seem to serve the people administering the projects as much of the money flows back stateside and American pockets. A nation is made to be dependent in may ways.

Rice, that most basic of foodstuffs provides the clearest example. Haitian import of US grown rice increased from 0 to 200,000 tons between 1980 and 2000 making the nation of 7 million the 4th largest importer of US rice. Coincidentally, per capita income has dropped from around $600 in 1980 to $369 today over the same time. Why? Under IMF tutelage, the nation learned it is better to have farmers move into the slums of Port-au-Prince to fight with laid-off government employees for 30 cent-an-hour jobs in sweatshops owned by U.S. clothing manufacturers. Additionally, through a series of structural adjustment programs, beginning in the 1980s, the IMF encouraged Haiti to adopt some of the lowest tariffs in the Caribbean. The predictable outcome was an explosion of urban slums such as Cité Soleil, Bel Air and Martissant, scenes of food riots in April 2008 (resulting in another ousted prime minister), where building conditions helped amplify the death toll of the past week to tsunami-like numbers. In November 2008, after a school collapsed in the wealthy district of Pétionville, the Mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated that 60 per cent of the city's buildings were shoddily built and unsafe. If the presidential palace couldn't hold up, it was clear what would happen to shacks built on the hillsides. Free market theories of comparative advantage were applied to justify the structural changes in the economy causing massive human suffering while American rice growers receive subsidies through a wide variety of mechanisms. Well, at least American Rice Inc. got rich.

In overthrowing me, you have done no more than cut down the trunk of the tree of the black liberty in St-Domingue - it will spring back from the roots, for they are numerous and deep.
- Toussaint L’Ouverture

For the same reason American soldiers disappeared from Haiti after 9/11, the world's attention has been drawn to the prosecution of the 'global war on terror'. Therefore no one even notice the story in 2006 when it was claimed that the US had caused the 2004 coup. (Read the 11-pages that we all missed in the NY Times!). While trying to impose democracy as far away as Afghanistan and Iraq, Dubya did another finish-what-daddy-started, this time in Haiti, mostly with the help of groups like the International Republican Institute playing the Haitian role of Blackwater. While the head of Blackwater just had his men rape and kill, the Institute's leader in Haiti, Stanley Lucas, an avowed Aristide opponent from the Haitian elite, was a little more subtle, counseling the opposition not to work with Aristides, fermenting the inevitable coup. Active in 60 countries they saw their federal financing nearly triple in three years, from $26 million in 2003 to $75 million in 2005. Meanwhile, there is never any slack in the financial noose tightened tag team style as the $125 million that Haiti gets each year from the States (as of 2000) is contingent on a passing grade from the IMF. Again, context: Haiti's government, which serves 8 million people, has an annual budget of about $300 million, comparable with a US city of just over 100,000.

Yet, at a time when the focus after a natural disaster should be on relieving suffering and curing the political and economic ills that have plagued Haiti since its inception, it'll be voodoo and the devil that has gotten Haiti in the minds of many. Of course if by voodoo you mean racism and the devil the western powers you couldn't be more on target. It's not just wacky billionaire American televangelists blaming these demons, it's also Spanish clergymen (sorry, Spanish only), Archbishops of York, and NY Times journalists. Limbaugh will spew hate to turn the tables of blame on those that look to help a persecuted people and all the while Naomi Klein's prophesized Shock Doctrine will be used as a tool to further entrench failed neoliberal economic therapy. The Heritage Foundation wasted no time in issuing a statement calling for economic 'reform' in Haiti to be tied to the aid now flowing into the country (the original has since been taken down and replaced with this lighter version). Well, I've seen a memo for the financial elite who are to blame for making this disaster a thousand times worse than it needed to be: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase combined have set aside $47 billion for bonuses; Haiti's annual gross domestic product in nominal terms - $7 billion.

Well, that's it, a bonus for those of you who made it this far, Stewart ripping on some real devils. Don't forget to check the Amazon stripe on the side, I've updated it with some works by Haitians and a Chomsky about Haiti. Plus a little music to carry you to the next post.

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I Must Be Dreaming

This is far too easy. Way too inviting. Someone pinch me, please. No wait, it's real? Golly, how great is this, I get to write a post about two things I love, NFL football and the joke that is Rush Limbaugh. Cool. Word is the aforementioned sultan of slime, er, pill-popping propagandist, uh, that leader of the lost is joining forces with Dave Checketts, owner of the NHL's St. Louis Blues, to buy the St. Louis Rams of the NFL. A man who has made his living from sowing the seeds of hatred and trumpeting the false propaganda of the right wants to own an NFL franchise. Oh, the sweet delicious irony of it all, where to start?!

He wants to buy the St. Louis Rams, yes the Rams who have lost 15 straight games. At this moment they may be the worst team I've ever seen play, and I remember the first year of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, although admittedly, vaguely. BTW those same Bucs along with the Rams, Tennessee Titans and Kansas City Chiefs are the only remaining teams without a victory so far this year at 0 and 5. Meanwhile, the New York Giants, Denver Broncos, Indianapolis Colts and Minnesota Vikings are at 5 and 0 and along with the New Orleans Saints at 4 and 0, are the last undefeated teams standing.

He wants to buy an entertainment business in a city where he hates, distrusts, reviles and despises over half the population. 51.3% of the population of St. Louis is black. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the assets (players) employed by the team are black. I thought Rush viewed NFL football today as "a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons". Players have already come out to say they would never play for a Rush-owned team. I don't care if Rush claims to be the least racist talk show host, or if some of the quotes attributed to him may be false (try these for starters, then here, or here), there is no denying that he engages in race baiting. It's an tried and true tactic, one that he seems to be perfecting in his anti-Obama campaign. From hoping his president fails to blaming Obama for black kids beating up white kids on buses to stirring up fears of a hidden socialist agenda, it plays on people's fears and it's dangerous.



Despite being so vehemently opposed to Obama's socialist plan, Rush wants to do business in a socialist market. Yes the NFL is socialist, they share about two-thirds of revenues (mostly TV rights) equally among the 32 teams. You see, the NFL understands that capitalism is a beast that in many cases needs to be tethered in order to level the playing field to allow the market to function properly. In order to avoid a world where the powerful elite are allowed to set the rules in order to become even more powerful, the league prefers to see parity amongst the teams, allowing each an opportunity to be successful and thus creating an exciting, competitive atmosphere that attracts a diverse fan base. The analogy this seems to have with the US economy is almost uncanny; if only Reagan (or at least his puppet-masters) and his snake-oil salesmen had known that some controls can actually make for a better product, the entire world would be a much better place today.

Rush can supply all the pain killers the team needs while blaming the users for destroying the country.

He'd also become the only league owner to weigh more than the average of his offensive line.

Oh, I agree with Al Sharpton for once.

Well, actually, on second thought, I don't agree with Reverend Al on much. Sharpton's argument seems to rest on the need for the NFL to hold up to 'standards'. Um, guess he's missed out on what the NFL 'standards' are of late. I mean what kinda crazy juice does Al drink?

A franchise sale would have to be approved by 24 league owners, something that's never going to happen. Think about it, if you owned anything worth over a billion dollars, would you allow anything that could lessen it's value get anywhere near it? Colts owner Jim Irsay came out with this gem, "I myself couldn’t even think of voting for him".

His misogynist attitude will really work well with the NFL's attempt at wooing female fans. Witness the success the league seems to have had promoting Breast Cancer Awareness Month during week 4. I wonder what Rush would have to say about women even watching football, and god forbid they're ugly?

Perhaps the biggest reason Limbaugh's bid will be rejected was his ill-fated short-lived affiliation with the NFL in 2003. He was ultimately forced to resign following comments he made about Philadelphia Eagle quarterback Donovan McNabb on Sunday NFL Countdown that included, "I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there's a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve". At the time, the Eagles had a 36-22 record in games which McNabb had started and he has gone on to lead his team to 5 NFC championship games and one Super Bowl. As usual, Rush's comments were simply racist and he was only trying to stir up controversy. The irony here is that when Limbaugh's bid gets rejected, he'll play the victim card to the hilt. I can already hear his complaints of being victimized by the liberal media. Yet there he was on his show a couple of years back bemoaning the fact that he had turned McNabb into a victim. You reap what you sow Rush, eat it.

The bottom line is the NFL is too smart to let Limbaugh into it's exclusive club. The ultimate irony is that the other owners may agree with 99% or what Rush spews forth, but will reject his application for purely capitalistic reasons. His admittance to the club would bring down the value of the assets of the entire league, he would be toxic debt that would drag down everything around it. Huh, sounds familiar for some reason.