War Criminal

In a previous post I criticized Israel's fundamentally corrupt policy of keeping the occupied territories in a perpetual limbo, denying the residents freedom, independence, prosperity or any sense of certainty about the future.

Add to that the indiscriminate slaughter of children.

Gaza is an area little more than twelve miles to a side into which over 1.8 million people are trapped, literally, like fish in a barrel, with borders that are closed and no square inch of the territory safe from Israel's guns.

So, Benjamin Netanyahu knows that launching mortars and 100 lb. explosive rounds into Gaza is going to create unbelievable carnage and result in the death of many innocents. But he doesn't care, which makes him a war criminal.

Clearly, there are a large number of very angry men residing in Gaza who are hell-bent on seeing Israel pay. But, this fact does not justify the use of weapons what will inevitably cause collateral damage on a massive scale. Nor does it justify the inadequate review of targets that has resulted in the shelling of an outdoor market and U.N. shelter. Never mind that the average age of the occupants of Gaza is 18 years old and that the vast majority are women and children.

If Israel wants to dismantle the underground shops where the bombs and crude missiles are assembled, they will have to send troops and armor into Gaza and search, block by block, until every workshop is shut down and every tunnel destroyed.

In any event, Hamas and most Gazans are so demoralized by decades of a virtual prison camp existence that they have literally stopped caring. So, if Israel thinks they can bomb Gazans into submission they are going to have to keep bombing until everyone is dead.

Which, 21 days into the assault and with well over 1,000 Palestinians dead, seems like it might just be the plan.

Honor The Tiananmen Square Martyrs by Helping the Falun Gong

Twenty-five years ago I was an optimistic college grad still fresh from commencement when I watched in horror the drama unfold in Beijing. Tragically, Chinese born after that date know little of went on during those dark days.

However, there is one group in China that is actively working to subvert the police state: the Falun Gong. There is little one can do to directly help dismantle the Orwellian machine that is the Chinese Government, but helping the Falun Gong is a good place to start.

Is this How it Starts?

Neville Chamberlain shakes hands with Mussolini at the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, which officially recognized the German annexation of the Sudetenland. Standing behind Mussolini is Hermann Gohring, the founder of the Nazi Gestapo.

Russia has annexed the Crimean Peninsula and blockaded its harbors. The Ukrainian Army is not mounting any defense and it looks as if the annexation will hold. Will this be an event that leads Europe on a path that ends in a Third World War, as I have warned? The answer is maybe, and it all depends on how The West responds to Moscow's actions.

Notably absent from the mainstream news coverage of the conflict, and from the comments of Western leaders, is any perspective on how the Crimean Peninsula came to be part of Ukraine. No where in the commentary is how the Crimean Peninsula was part of Russia between 1783 and 1954, almost two hundred years, or that about 60% of its occupants are ethnically and linguistically Russian.

In 1954, Krushkchev transferred the Crimean Peninsula to the Ukraine, where he had served as governor during Stalin's "purges", although at that time only about 22% of the inhabitants identified themselves as Ukranian. This "gift" by the Russians was designed as an act of good faith, to show "unity" between the Russians and the ethnically diverse Soviet satellite states, and undoubtedly was influenced by Krushchev's experiences in the Ukraine, the fact that he was born in a Russian village not far from the border with the Ukraine, and the fact that the acting Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukraine at that time was ethnically Ukranian. This was commorated in a Soviet propaganda poster showing a Russian and a Ukranian standing behind the same shield and gazing in the same direction.

"Eternally Together"

At the time, the majority of Russians bemoaned the transfer of land to Ukrainians. However, the USSR acted as one entity, and so this "gift" had little impact on Russian, or Soviet, activities. For example, Soviet ships still made use of the warm water Black Sea port of Sevastapol (which the Russians recently blockaded by towing large hulls and sinking them in the mouth of the port). However, when the USSR disintegrated it did so along the lines of Soviet maps, not along ethnic lines, leaving the Crimean Peninsula in the hands of the Ukranians. This was viewed by the majority of Russians, especially Vladimir Putin, as a great injustice, and has been a sore point for them ever since. When the Ukrainian pro-Russian puppet leader was toppled, Putin felt compelled to act or (in his mind, anyway) lose any chance of recovering the Crimean Peninsula.

The interim Ukrainian goverment issued a decree that the Ukrainian Army would not resist the imminent Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula for good reason: it has only been part of Ukraine since 1954 and the majority of the inhabitants there don't even speak Ukrainian. When the USSR disintegrated and current-day Ukraine was formed in 1991, the Crimean Peninsula probably should have stayed with Russia.

My advice to the West is to let the Crimean Peninsula go, and focus on the rest of the Ukrainian land mass. If Russians indicate that they want to annex any more land, or further destabilize the Ukraine, we should be prepared to provide military support to the Ukrainians as a deterrent.

We should NOT use this conflict as an opportunity to resort to a Cold War mentality, which is what many in the Military Industrial Complex are hoping for. If we do that, then the likelihood of a Third World War as envisioned will be much closer to a reality.

Regulate the Credit Ratings Agencies

The Obama Administration Prefers Fishing Expeditions to Structural Change

Looking to refinance your mortgage with a shiny, new rate, but your FICO score is a few points shy of the minimum requirement? Why, just hire Experian to review your financial details and they will find ways to tweak the results on your behalf. For a few hundred dollars you can save thousands in interest costs!

Wait! You can't do that, can you? Isn't that illegal??

Well, yes, if you are a consumer, where credit ratings are regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), but not if you are a corporation who is planning a bond issue.

But, isn't that a serious conflict of interest? I mean, shouldn't the credit rating agencies be working for the institutions and individuals who rely on their ratings to decide whether or not to subscribe to the bond issue?

Of course it is, but there is no FCRA for credit ratings agencies like S&P, Moody's, Fitch, or even Dun & Bradstreet, which tracks small and medium-sized business credit-worthiness. They operate in a completely unregulated environment where they can say whatever they want, with legal impunity.

Wait, they completely missed the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, among others. Pension funds lost millions, but they are not liable for their mistakes?

Nope. If you ask them, they are simply expressing "opinions" which are shielded by the First Amendment, and a long series of court decisions has supported them in this position. And, now the Obama Administration is taking them back into court on a $5 billion dollar fishing expedition, alleging that S&P knew more than it told and so are therefore liable to those who lost money by following their advice.

However, what the Administration should be doing instead of seeking to hit S&P with a slap on the wrist or extract some face-saving settlement is to radically alter current public policy and give the Treasury Department or the Securities and Exchange Commission the authority to regulate any company that wants to provide credit ratings on U.S. institutions.

Why is the credit worthiness of households important enough to have regulations on how the information is collected and disseminated, including how this process is financed, but money market investors are left to the wolves? Why are our pensions less important to our government than our credit card accounts? Why is the process leading up to the mortgage loan highly regulated, but when an investment bank packages these mortgages and sells them to investors is the process without oversight?

Failing to regulate the commercial credit reporting agencies led to bad decisions and a financial perfect storm. If we don't draft new authorities to structure these businesses, change how they collect their fees, and make them responsible for the reports they issue it is just a matter of time before it is 2008 all over again.

Where is Our Peace Dividend?

Faced with a gargantuan federal budget deficit, the U.S. government will have to find ways to trim the budget by cutting discretionary spending. And, what discretionary spending category tops the list? The budget of the Department of Defense. The Pentagon commanded $683 Billion discretionary dollars in the 2012 budget, nearly TEN TIMES as much as any other discretionary spending category (the Dept. of Health and Human Services, including Medicare and Medicaid, was a distant second at $84 Billion).

Why, at a time when one could argue that we are not really in open war with anybody, anywhere, are we spending over $2,000 per man, woman and child in America for our nation's defense? Is this level of spending during peacetime not a form of tyranny of which our Founding Fathers warned us? And, aren't we at MUCH GREATER RISK OF WAR AND CONFLICT in the future if we maintain such a large military complex WITH NO GOOD WAY TO OCCUPY ITSELF APART FROM WAR?

I do not question the patriotism of the men and women who volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces, but I do question a paradigm that makes cycles of war and conflict a self-fulfilling prophecy while not truly advancing U.S. economic interests in any significant way.

It is my opinion that, if there ever were a time when we should reap a "peace dividend" by making major cuts to our defense budget, that TIME IS NOW.

Note: People will argue that I am wrong here, that we ARE at war, in fact the "War on Terror", which includes Operation Enduring Freedom (currently in the Phillipines, Afghanistan, Horn of Africa, Trans-Saharan Aftrica), and Operation Freedom Eagle in North-West Pakistan. However, these operatinos, which are as much CIA intelligence and drone operations as military engagements, and which are open-ended without any clear timetable or measurable objectives, do not rise what I would classify as "open war", which is defined as "any overt and demonstrative combat employing conventional forces and legitimate resources, as opposed to covert or clandestine operations."

Where We Are Today

 

"In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."

-- James Madison, Addressing the Constitutional Convention
Philadelphia, June 1787

How Best to Accessorize for the Upcoming Assault Weapons Ban

At the same time that the U.S. government is pushing to disarm the general population, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is dramatically increasing the hardware and firepower that it has at its disposal to use in domestic federal law enforcement operations:

• DHS has acquired at least 16 MRAP vehicles, such as the one displayed above, and has outfitted them for use on U.S. streets, courtesy of the U.S. Dept. of Defense (DoD). The DoD has another 2,700 of these that are going to be out of work after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, so I suspect more will be getting a new paint job and heading to DHS.
• DHS has ordered over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition of various calibers, or five rounds for every American citizen.
• DHS has ordered over 7,000 "Assault Weapons", the same exact weapons they seek to ban, except these are "select-fire" which means they can fire semi-auto, 3-round burst, or full-auto, while civilian models are limited to semi-auto only.

It seems that the President, and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, are concerned about "righwing extremism", and are arming themselves in anticipation of armed conflict with large groups of disgruntled American citizens. Some insight into their reasoning can be found in this unclassified April 2009 DHS report, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment".

As I mentioned in the previous post, I would add that DHS is also concerned about their ability to enforce U.S drug policy when more and more states are legalizing the recreational use of marijuana.

Either way, this helps explains the virulent backlash to gun control legislation this time around, something that was largely absent in 1994 under Bill Clinton.

Update 3/6/13: My original report that DHS had acquired over 2,700 MRAP vehicles for use in their domestic operations seems to be false. The original total was based on a Business Insider report by Paul Szoldra. Paul, in turn, had based his article on a propagandized report by Russia Today, which I believe was essentially a twist on an old Firedoglake blog report. I contacted Paul Szoldra when I became suspicious of the 2,700 number; he followed-up with his DHS contacts which is how we came up with the new number of DHS MRAPs in service.