it’s a nice piece of writing, whoever it is & yes alex i think it is precisely for an american audience
but the beauty of the moon for me is simply the breadth & constance of b’s work – whic covers not only economics, but also geopolitics in a way that is simply not covered anywhere else
b was the first to pick up on baluchstan, lots of stuff on the old soviet republics – with b real – the coverage here on africa is exceptional to many of my african comrades here – the moon has become a necessary resource
& b has honoured the arc of opinion that was there at the whiskybar – which is not consensual & is necessarily conflictual. it is not a church, there are no gods, & false pieties belong in the dustbin
but any writer putting their shoulder or even their forehead to the wheel to analyse our slaughterhouse of a world is a particular kind of grace

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 31 2008 21:22 utc | 4

seconded r’giap.

Posted by: CP | Jul 31 2008 21:40 utc | 6

billmon’s wikipedia entry includes mention of today’s post:

On July 31, 2008, Billmon returned to Daily Kos to post a diary entry in regard to John McCain entitled “The Great White Hope”.

Interesting. Hope his McCain critique makes the rounds.

Posted by: Hamburger | Jul 31 2008 21:45 utc | 8

Yep, that is billmon alright.
Funny, I always had just a little suspicion that “b” was billmon. Well, if he is not, he is as good in his own way.

Posted by: buckaroo | Jul 31 2008 22:13 utc | 10

Billmon was active in printed media in mid-1980s from what I gathered from his blog. And since it’s clearly his account, and the style looks good enough, I don’t see any reason to doubt.
As for Billmon coming late, maybe was he too busy before. He may be in vacation right now, changing job, or something like this, which would allow to blog a bit since a couple of days, but not 2 weeks ago. We just can’t know, he’s been MIA since so long.
Whatever, it’s good to have him back at least for some time.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Jul 31 2008 23:38 utc | 12

mmm, the B above is meant to be b
.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 1 2008 0:16 utc | 14

I wandered to MoA while in a billmon swoon. b’s hosting is more tactful. b’s comments carry more insight, and draw important viewpoints from minute discrepancies in reporting. Billmon had a stilletto, b has a scalpel. Heck, b’s occasional satire and humor are on a par with some of billmon’s. This site teaches. I hold b and the commenters here in the highest regard.

Posted by: Browning | Aug 1 2008 1:09 utc | 16

441 comments on Billmon’s article on KOs thus far. I’ve missed him. but B, you are a God send. I’ll drink with either of you any time. Come up to Northerm Maine1

Posted by: Diogenes | Aug 1 2008 2:59 utc | 18

furrythug, hahahaha… I write, ‘lol’ in text a lot, but that really did make me burst out in laughter, tanks for postin that & thanks 4 the memories, billmon…lol

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 1 2008 5:47 utc | 20

He’s busy, here is his next posting on dKos:
Daily Kos: First time as tragedy, second time as farce

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.

Posted by: Fran | Aug 1 2008 7:22 utc | 22

EU agrees to go beyond U.N. sanctions on Iran

The European Union has agreed to go beyond United Nations sanctions on Iran, instructing its financial institutions to exercise “restraint” on export credits and allowing its navies to inspect all Iran-bound cargoes, a senior diplomat said on Wednesday.

When the EU puts this practice into action, the EU will have, in effect, declared a naval blockade against Iran, which is an act of war.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 1 2008 8:28 utc | 24

@Uncle @24 – that Reuters piece is based on a “diplomat in Brussels” who may well be from the U.S. or Israel …

Posted by: b | Aug 1 2008 10:11 utc | 26

Grand to read Billmon again. Marvellous writer.
AFP puts it this way: “EU nations held a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday and are keen to apply existing UN sanctions against Iran more robustly, an EU diplomat said Wednesday.” AFP 1 Aug. Resol. 1803 dates from March and has not been applied by the EU.
EU business: “In the end they (EU) agreed to go beyond the letter of the resolution, which tightened measures aimed at persuading the Islamic republic to suspend..”
Vague language:
“The resolution notably urges states to “exercise vigilance” in entering into new commitments for public-provided financial support for trade with Iran, including the granting of export credits. It also urges vigilance in dealing with “all banks domiciled in Iran, in particular Bank Melli and Bank Saderat and their branches and subsidiaries based abroad.”
The EU text will go further by urging European nations to exercise “restraint” in its dealings with Iran in these areas, the diplomat said.” EUB 31 Jul.

Posted by: Tangerine | Aug 1 2008 11:21 utc | 28

Well with crude in the low 120’s it was inevitable that the good old boys crank up some new rumour about Iran. No doubt most have seen this article already:

As political heat rises over high oil prices, Exxon Mobil yesterday announced the biggest quarterly profit of any corporation in U.S. history, breaking its own previous record with $11.68 billion in earnings during the second quarter. The company’s revenue surged 40 percent, to $138.07 billion for the quarter. If it were a country, the company would have the 18th-largest economy in the world.
The engine behind those results was Exxon Mobil’s oil and gas production. Exxon Mobil produces about 2.4 million barrels a day of oil and natural gas liquids worldwide. It sold that output for an average of $119.28 a barrel, more than $50 a barrel higher than the price a year earlier, essentially riding the wave of world oil prices that has boosted prices at the pumps.
Profit from oil and gas production accounted for the overwhelming majority of the company’s earnings, which rose 14 percent compared with the second quarter of 2007.

Dutch english conglomerate shell along with french oil monopoly Total have also set new record profits out of the world’s misery.
I suspect too many peeps have been attributing to cheney a quality that is sadly lacking in amerikan bred corporate greedheads. That is the ability to think past the next quarter’s bottom line.
Just as the evidence points to cheney’s spruiking for an invasion of Iraq being motivated by little more than the desire to maximise Halliburton profits, the same claim can be made about his continual, plaintive now rather than bellicose ,bleating and beating the Iran war drum.
Every time cheney or some paid lackey in amerika or israel cranks up the notion of a blue with Iran, crude oil shoots up by $5 a bbl.
The news that Iran was talking to the great satan had oil on a downward blip but these fresh renderings of stale arguments have put the price back on an upward increment.
b questioned the identity of the anonymous informant and as some of us have been saying here for a while so many of these iran stories just don’t fit they cloash with other known facts.
If europe were to blockade iran exceeding the sanction approved by the UN – un giving the sanctions a legality they otherwise lack, how could europe legally counter Iran putting it’s own blockade on european ships going past Irans doorstep? Europe has a hell of a lot more to lose in the blockade game than iran does which is what makes that rumour so facile and totally unrealistic.
Even more so when considered in the light of Germany’s deal. In fact the stories may be that classic counter move of blowing a heap of smoke around so amerikan peeps don’t notice the german deal and still think everyone is 100% onto war with iran and not just the neo-zi french prez ably assisted by gordon brown-nose.
I see all the pols are hurrumping and threatening ‘hearings’ on the inordinate profits that the oil compamnies are making.
How much longer are peeps gonna tolerate that bullshit before they recognise that hearings do nothing other than allow pols free advertising and that peeps need to force the pols to institute price controls?
Real price controls where any increase must be approved by the price control authority who will only do so after a real cost increase on the product has been demonstrated. Natch an increase in the spot price doesn’t make the vast majority of oil which companies purchase, that had it’s price fixed years ago on long term contract, cost any more. Not that many peeps are aware of that but a price control authority would be in the know.
If the profits have increased as much as they have, the oil companies claim, that they are just passing on an increased cost, is plainly a lie.
The oilers have done what any greedy guts would do when faced with politicians incompetent shilly-shallying. For too long pols everywhere have been mumbling about the neccessity to increase the tax on oil products to decrease demand and then use the tax to help ameliorate the damage done by hydro carbon products, subsidise public transport pay for alternative sustainable energy sources and all the other projects too many pols discuss and too few pols implement.
They took so long, the oil companies decided they would rather push the price up as high as the market would bear, and that way prevent governments from siphoning off any of ‘their’ revenue.
Of course the price was pushed much higher than governments were going to go; so as to ensure that a tax increase or new tax became impossible. This way the energy corps get fully rewarded for any drop in consumption. assholes
Maybe John Hopkins need to do one of their mortality projects on exactly how many have died around our rock as a result of the insupportably high oil prices which have been passed on to consumers by way of a rise in all prices especially that of food which has risen 200%.
The next time a pol or an oil company lackey near you starts spouting about the cost rises being the fault of china and or india’s burgeoning middle class, ask em if that is the case why has the cost of foodstuffs only increased dramatically in the last couple of years? China and India have had an exponential increase in middle class humans at least since the mid 90’s. That didn’t put any pressure on food prices for a decade. prices only went up when speculators buoyed by all of the iran war stories, pushed up fuel prices a couple years back. Those increases flowed on to us all. Of course many food corps have done the same as the oil companies and kept pushing their prices higher using the alleged increase in transportation costs caused by fuel increases as an excuse.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 1 2008 12:11 utc | 30

Thanks anon. That (ctrl+p) didn’t work for me but found another way.

Posted by: beq | Aug 1 2008 12:42 utc | 32

Billmon digs at the Great White Hope, I wonder how some potshots at the Bringer of Light will go over with da Kos crowd. There is less of a past to resurrect, virginity has its uses.
Politicians of course care nothing for historical truth, it is not their role, and assessing character by flip flops is a vain exercise – they are media creations, stand ins, spokesmen, follow the advice of strategists, the past is but a map that can be reinterpreted.
Flip flopping, past sins, mistakes, crimes, shoddy morality, is something that one accuses one’s lover or neighbor of. A lack of honor, consistency, poor ethics, faulty memory may be pertinent in the personal sphere – but in politics?
Lacking a party system (in the real sense) the US is thrown into considering candidates as an emblem, of what exactly is not clear, and second, as a person. It is a popularity contest, very similar to TV survivalist type shows, or the fame, popularity, of actors (and pols are actors), judged both by ‘the roles they played’ and ‘their personal life’, melded into a eerie, composite, shifting picture. Rock bands trumpet personal political opinions, actresses have to show compassion for fly-infested expiring children to get good roles.
The anticipated outcome of the US election depends on how one judges the divide or link between popular culture and hard-headed geo-politics.
Imagine, for a moment, a TV series, where Obama, Hill and McCain, play parts. Obama will be the most popular, his strange but cool name, youth, savvy lines, good looks, mixed ancestry, skin color, mild rebellion conventional outsider thing, are huge assets. He’s da hee-ro. The series would collapse without him. Hillary has her supporters, in the sense that when asked questions like “who do you like best..what character do you identify with most, whose actions do you approve of…” etc. some smallish % of responders, very steady thru time, express heartfelt allegiance to her. The viewers, asked whom would be the best prez, if (:: this tv show was a reflection of real life) would answer McC, to the tune of at least 70%.
His true nature is irrelevant. His past, ditto. Popular culture replicates geo politics and magnifies it. A hawkish, white, elderly, Republican figure is the only one who can defend America and Americans, kill others for resources in the most efficient way. Do the right thing.

Posted by: Tangerine | Aug 1 2008 14:03 utc | 34

i welcome anybody that speaks out – billmon amongst them – but as tantalus – i find dkos a useless research source – atfiredoglake – only siun & emptywheel – consistently offer something other than a juvenile fascination with ‘jurisprudence’ & ‘politics’. other than that – as has been encouraged here – is to work wide on the sources – wherever they come from – even the most conspiracy laced sites – still offer some useful info amongst their manias – & manias are not so unusual in a culture that excacerbates & activates & encourages mania through its own maniacal discourses
however, for all the heat here – the moon is a calmer bar – where it is possible to listen – i would not be so angry with slothrop if he simply provided evidence, facts, empirical proofs – he does not – he offers ideas & metaphysics – while sometimes engaging are not useful in themselves

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 1 2008 18:35 utc | 36

Just went to take a look, and I came upon this post-Katrina billmon post on Whiskey Bar Sept. 6 2005.
Must have missed it the first time around, it’s a fine example of snark:
Dead or Alive

… Then Dick Cheney would have to go on Meet the Press and promise Tim Russert that Operation Cyclone Liberation would be a piece of cake, because the waves in the Indian Ocean would greet us as liberators, allowing our troops to walk on water.
…
Then Kerry would get pissy and demand that Bush dump even more troops into the Indian Ocean, and Bush would get even more defensive, and babble some feeble lie about how he relies on his generals to tell him how many troops they need to dump into the Indian Ocean in order to make sure we fight the cyclones there instead of in New Orleans. …

There’s more. I’m still laughing … on the inside.

Posted by: jonku | Aug 1 2008 20:14 utc | 38

& in the prolixity of discourses – as i think the admirable pessimist foucauld said – i offer my own voice to the tiny resistances we must make with every breath. so much here demands the honor of guests to build barricades of words to defend against the assault of reason. & grazing on metaphors today – which i do every morning after dismounting my baguette – my struggle is a kind of infinite hopscotch grid of intelect – my ego is a small girl in a whispy sunday dress skipping from here to there and every square she lands upon is an idea of terrible beauty – as plekhonov said during lunch on the last day of trhe internationale – the first & final revolution is ‘benign heroism of inaction’. & to have such friends here who value my old groaning of verities nothing can dislodge me from the happinbess of my compounding certainties – not even slothrop and his almanac of numbers and names.this game of hopscotch is interminible and played only by me.
& as blind blond willy moonbite sang – gonna go downtown/gonna see my gal / gonna sing her a song / gonna show her my ding dong
venceremos……….

Posted by: rememberingiap | Aug 1 2008 20:30 utc | 40

slothrop
satire was never your strongest suit

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 1 2008 20:57 utc | 42

You wouldn’t know “empire” if it delivered you your next dose of methadone.
I was right about the war. I said here in 2003 that you underestimated US power. You were wrong about iraqi nationalism, the modern history of internecine conflicts there; wrong about the mobilization of anti-US insurgency throughout the arab diaspora. There’s not one thing in what passes for analysis in your feverish bullshit that even came close to truth about the war.
And the “empire”–your grand idea–is just that. Anyone who claims the US is “empire” while illyric france is peripheral congenial land, is risibly stupid.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 1 2008 21:31 utc | 44

u s power has been revealed to one & all as a paper tiger – it is in defeat & the invasion of iras was the sign the most certain of that defeat
you have absolutely no understanding of what constitutes a nationalist struggle in iraq nor its strategy. five years is a short time in history & in that small time they have reduced the empire to its knees
your comments on the ‘intrinsic’ nature of the ‘internecine’ conflict are the commentary i remember from both you & billmon. a complete rejection on your part that any form of ‘salvador option’ was a possibility marked you as the fuzziest of centrists
i’d say that the configurations against u s imperialism have never been so strong in my life, qualitatively different even than during the vietnam war. even your elite’s media cannot hide the fact that u s imperialism is the most despised force on earth & the convrete oppossition to it is permutating everywhere
‘satire’ in the sense it is uttered avove represents solely a socialism of the stupid

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 1 2008 22:27 utc | 46

i do not see it because – while you are an academic – you seem to know very little about economics, you seem to not know how transnational corporations function, you have an even sloppier understanding of speculation & the stockmarket – i think that is perhaps because you are from a discipline only concerned with language. perhaps that is why you don’t understand figures, numbers & dates
what is more perplexing in the american exceptionalis you share with billmon – is that he is supposed to be a financial reporter in the belly of the beast, itself. at one time he worked for u s a today – some soft pornographic imperialist rag – so i’d be under the impression he understands the little cogs of capital well
but then, when idealism is turned on its head becomes a breathtaking form of misanthropy

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 1 2008 22:59 utc | 48

though a child talking to the smart men with the big sticks, i hope, sloth, you have been granted a spot in the borderless bunker where the mighty global capitalists shall await the culling of herd.
if you have not been granted that level of access, your malicious sputtering places you squarely in a special kind of hell reserved for those incapable of relating to their fellow human brethren in a civil manner. hopefully you will one day realize the finite spark that is your wasted life is being spent by agitating forums like MoA where honest work towards understanding the complexities of a fucked up world is undertaken.

Posted by: Lizard | Aug 2 2008 7:21 utc | 50

I think what Lizard meant is that you are a boring wanker, Slothrop. And if he didn’t, I do.

Posted by: Tantalus | Aug 2 2008 13:23 utc | 52

& again what is perplexing with someone who has studied language & rhetoric to become a sort of meyer-lansky-menshevik that you have not understood history
transnational movements of capital are themselves no stranger to imperialism – both british & french imperialism benefited from them
you wuld do well to reread baran & sweezy – though being sophistaces you would find them too crud. the students of baran & sweezy have done the world a great service in making clear – how exactly – u s imperialism retains control even in its dying moments
but the dying moments of that imperialsm have been noted in one of the posts of billmon a long time ago reminiscing about a chilhood memory. as i remember it it was a kind of pastiche of james agee & upton sinclair – describing a piece of road & the business that used to pass on it. it was in its way as eloquent statement on the moral collapse of empire as the more polemical pieces tried to articulate

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 2 2008 14:43 utc | 54

“Empire” has reduced efficacy in any analysis of globalization for the simple reason IT and financial “innovations” have made it possible for capital to expand and deflate regional economies in the restless pursuit of profit. The old imperialism was a workhorse for a n historically situated moment in the development of globalizing capital. world systems core/periphery north/south dichotomies were useful in the moment of decolonization and analysis of comprador exploitation of the “3rd world.”
It’s a different ballgame now. Global Capital is in many ways a post-nationalist power bloc whose policies are promulgated by institutions and less by states. This is not “empire” but the successful configuration of monopoly TNCs and finance advancing in a stunningly coordinated way the interests of a global capitalist class.
And the “empirics” for this are prodigious.
I await your damning rebuke cloaked in a personal insult.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2008 15:19 utc | 56

Language is the stuff of empire: a language can circulate just like capital, and also belong (as a mother tongue) to some communities rather than others.
The ongoing action in Iraq can be seen as the effort of an Anglophone community to further the place of English by in Arabic-speaking community. How else, indeed, to understand the injecting, into Iraqi politics, of 1000 monoglot, anglophone, “diplomats”?
It rather disturbs the positivist binary of “national” and “global,” and in a most empirical way.

Posted by: alabama | Aug 2 2008 16:11 utc | 58

sloth@56: that was actually an interesting post which you are obviously capable of making and i neither intend to rebuke it or insult you. i know this will sound simplistic to an intellectual such as yourself, but it’s pretty obvious to anyone with a modicum of sense that “globalization” is a heartless process that will ultimately enslave much of the global population, and anyone who defends this process is equally heartless and, furthermore, an enemy to the regular folk who are being purposely kept stupid and poor and fearful so this global scam can continue.

Posted by: Lizard | Aug 2 2008 18:02 utc | 60

sector by sector – u s imperialism & its minions dominate
i am not surprised that countries that allow real research & development are making great steps – the reality of research & development under the empire is tht the people pay for it & then it is utilised by capital in all its forms
knowing you have not read lenin’s ‘imperialism – the highest stageof capitalism’ – i wonder why you think the u s empire invaded iraq, why that same empire is trying to control the ground in afghanistan & the area around the caspian sea, i wonder why you think the empire has defended israel at all cost – even in front of their collection of crimes & ignorance & rejection of internalional law(a law they yelp for when they want their ‘enemies’ isolated), why does slothrop think that the empire wants to invade or dominate iran. implicitly, slothrop believes their so called moral imperatives for doing so because that is the only argument left open to him
how slothrop interprets what has happened in asia, latin america & africa in the last fifty years is quite beyond me. in fact his argument against empire are empty. slothrop would make much of the fact that the object of the long war – china – in fact ‘lends’ money to the empire – but then i am sure he is famiiar with chinese rhetoricians, ancient & modern
in fact, i cede nothing in my critique of the us empire & the so called empirics/metrics slothrop uses here don’t amount to a hill of beans
though i agree with lizard at least that post tries to ‘analyse’ something without needing to wounding anyone

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 2 2008 18:44 utc | 62

& your ‘comprehension’ of economics remains consistently crude – a few footnotes not withstanding

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 2 2008 21:06 utc | 64

So the Chinese are the global capitalists? Huh, what about the Swiss? Or Cheney, etc?
No doubt, Blackie. New and old money shaking hands under the table.
I’ll grant you the projection of US power is justified at the same time as the defense of “an American way of life.” But so much of this is rhetoric aimed at winning domestic legitimation of policies benefiting the capitalist class. And even US political class are mystified by the same rhetoric so that decisions are made that seem irrational (tariffs on trade, anti-immigration, rejection of FDI in US by sovereign wealth funds, etc.). That is, the US leaders often make decisions which imperialists would make which actually harm the interests of the capitalist class. There are hiccups. But nevertheless it is astonishing the continuity of policy and purpose aligning global capitalist class interests.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2008 21:31 utc | 66

And you are a fuckhead.
I did a lot to honor your intelligence, and for whatever reason, I think perhaps to enhance your following among some of the dim bulbs here, you threw it back in my face. It was convenient for you to do so.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 2 2008 21:39 utc | 68

this is not a church, slothrop & none of us is in the conversion business. we live the lives we live & i doubt even b seeks a ‘following’.
i do not know why you use menace & often – even if only rhetorically – but that is your business but it is tiring nonetheless
if once, once you would provide a real context to your discourse then i wouldn’t feel so combatitive with you. you do not use theory – you hide behind it & again that is your business – but when you rewrite the history of the middle east, of iraq particularly – you do history a disservice
& when yr on yr global capital rave – you are just like yet another american elmer gantry, pat robertson or todd bentley

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 2 2008 22:03 utc | 70

It’s funny, no matter how much time passes, this argument is permanent around here.

Posted by: Rowan | Aug 2 2008 22:58 utc | 72

“sucking somebody else’s dick”
“shove it into your ass”
“fuckhole”
slothy, if u’re not concerned about this, ur parents shall be

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 3 2008 2:06 utc | 74

Huh, I didn’t know the origin of Moon of Alabama.
*
So who’s the big baddies running the show, Global Capitalists or Fascist America? It was my understanding that the answer is ‘both’. Dick Cheney certainly is both. The aggressive industrialized warfare of the latter is a huge profit center for the former.
Nationalism is good for corporations — when they want ’em their lobbyists have only to write the law for protective tariffs, subsidies, “free trade”, whatever they need for a given situation.
Neither of the mud-slingers provides any context since I’ve been reading; I’d have to go read years of archives to figure out what the fight is over, if indeed it is over anything beyond one subscribing to Marx and one not. Which I doubt it is.

Posted by: Cloud | Aug 3 2008 4:31 utc | 76

So the interests of global capitalism were deemed to be less important than the interests of the relatively small population-wise
I wouldn’t get too carried away on this point. “Concessions” on food subsidies do not undermine the globalization project. The issue of food security is necessary to any political legitimation even for capitalist totalitarians like the CCP.
Also, the intellectual property rights regime (TRIPS) is largely supported by the BRIC countries for reasons which are obviously central to the massive maldistribution of global wealth.
the interests of mass-market capitalists are forced to play second fiddle to the ancien regimes, the landed gentry?
What do you mean by this?
Debs, I enjoy your earnest screeds, but you suffer from the same problem as rgiap. The assiduous condemnation of US tends to displace more analytical rewards of critique of capital. And though you are not guilty as rgiap, the end of the road in the journey of misapprehension is best expressed by rgiap in his occasional exultation of CCP-cum-capitalist “empire” (a view shared by Chomsky, for chrissakes). And less direct but just as harmful is the argument offered by countless liberal reformists that a more purified form of capitalism, or some tamed version of it, will make everything beautiful. One only has to look at the skyrocketing inequality everywhere to know the endpoint of such reforms.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 3 2008 15:00 utc | 78

@ Debs #77’s “total incompetence of the imperialists and global capitalists. If the greedy guts hadn’t shot their wad too early they may well have had the world fall into their laps.”
Not incompetence, are in endgame and know it. Shooting wads is orgasmic, profitable, and teasing/torturing of we cattle.
Owners of big corps also own much land, especially inland land.

Posted by: plushtown | Aug 3 2008 15:11 utc | 80

@anon while I’ll concede that USuk is indeed a cliche it is far from unhelpful, the relationship between old and new power of the english speaking white dominated population is covered in a form of shorthand that is both accurately descriptive and expressive.
That northern based coalition of greed has sucked the lifeblood from too many societies leaving chaos, hunger and misery in it’s wake. Virtually the whole south of this planet from Latin America across the pacific through southern asia and across to Africa then back again through the Malvinas to southern America has been and still is subjected to parasitic USuk hegemon. No wonder so many of those states including the english speaking white dominated ‘allies in the minds’ of USuk are currently cosying up to and cavorting with the totalitarian regime of China. Anything must be better than the falsehood piled upon falsehood as they pick yer pockets of the USuk ‘alliance’. England and amerika have combined their one-two hit on too many countries for it to be a coincidence. Since the end of ww2 the imperialists in both nations have worked together to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
The other northern cabals have largely faded from view.
USuk is a geat cliche almost onomatopoeic I wish I had thought it up, I didn’t but shall continue to use it until something better comes along, unless of course the complaints about it’s usage reach the level of the whining about amerika then I suppose I shall be stuck with it as well.
As for the comments about the way the WTO failure shaped up. Put simply the private ownership of land is the oldest and still the biggest determinant of real wealth and power. The old cliche about ‘them not making any more’ is just as true now in the era of global corporatism as it ever was back when the elite’s ancestors squatted in their redoubts on top of a hill over-looking their holdings.
If the sub-prime debacle has shown anything it that owning bits of paper that say you own an entity that owns a share in a piece of land is useless, worthless if the moment in time passes, not so with land.
Any of the toys that the ‘pseudo rich’ hold, be it stock or intellectual property rights, or any of the other ‘investment vehicles’ mean nothing compared to those who own the ground the rest of us have to use to eat, sleep, and shit upon.
The struggle between humans and those who oppress them rarely focuses on land ownership. Zimbabwe would be one of the few exceptions. The reason is simple whenever people start talking about land as an asset or even worse as a currency those with lots of it get very nervous indeed. Every dispute I have been involved with where indigenous people argue for reparation for what was stolen, one subject has been absolutely inviolable. It is never returned. Land that has moved from the indigenous people into a private holding. The fact that is usually the matter at the core of the dispute means nothing. Land which belongs to the peeps ie state owned or crown land and usually the dog ends of unwanted land left by the great exploiters, that can be wrested back and that takes effort, but land stolen by privateers ,some of it in recent history and whose title isn’t in doubt, the means of sequestration plainly illegal, that is never given back. Rather give back millions of dollars of ordinary peeps hard earned tax money than require a Vestey or similar to give up a square foot.
The point I was trying to make with my WTO observation was that when the debate on global capitalism boiled down to an internecine fight amongst the elite, the global capitalists on one side and the private groups who control land ownership on t’other side a strange thing happened. We need to remember that landowners depend on subsidised returns from the mug taxpayers in the country to carry the operating cost of that ownership. Of course they can use their own money to acquire more land. The latest scam refined to an art form is to describe themselves as the planet’s best environmentalists, that if they weren’t running exotic flora and fauna on their swathes of chemically sprayed acreage the planet would be truly fucked. Surely that agrarian socialism should be spat upon by the eggheads. Although socialism does insinuate that there is some sort of egalitarianism in the largesse which there isn’t, the methodology (cross subsidy using tax momey) is usually desribed as socialist by economic rationalists, and should appal the technocrats who usually call the shots on world trade or globalism or whitey rules or USuk fucks or whatever cliche fits.
The so-called masters of the universe, the global capitalists, lost out to the land owning groups. I would have thought that should make some peeps kinda go “Hmmmm”.
ps had to laugh at the purveyor of old marxist dialectic calling my rants “earnest”. Lol good one Slothy.
I used to enjoy your tirades also but there appears to be a refusal to evolve, a lack of progression. Although I didn’t agree with it I did think the enforced holiday would have helped you move on a bit.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 3 2008 22:23 utc | 82

The so-called masters of the universe, the global capitalists, lost out to the land owning groups.
I just don’t understand what you say. I don’t see the contradiction in the interests of “land owners” and “global capitalists.”

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 3 2008 23:44 utc | 84

Thanks to anonymous @ 31 for resolving a long-standing issue for me.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Aug 4 2008 9:03 utc | 86

slothrop’s insult to debs are unworthy of even his recent cretinous ‘conversations’ – which are not conversations because i do not think he ever listens
debs offers with great rigour & generosit contexts & links which is more than i can say for slothrop who behaves more & more like that barbarous bishop cardinal law from boston . slothrop just seem to engage in his encyclical with all the rhetorical flourish o the inquisition
the two situations he dicsusses in relation to debs – the military capàacity of sadr & the situation in colombia are far from clear & it does not help that slothrop just repeats the talking points laid out by his hero general petraeus & the girld & boys at the state dept
vietnamese resistance to the french & american was multiple – & at the time of the 1968 tet offensive the viet cong were no more than 170,000 people – the resistance in iraq in all its configurations are enormous, flexible & perhaps still at the beginning of their war. slothrop’s rush to historical closure & judgement is a little too early
mulling over the insult laden posts of slothrop – i wonder why he never, never, never – offered analysis of the situation in the occupied territories, why he never offered a real analysis of the succesful repulsion of israeli forces in lebanon – combined with all the intrinsic elements he ‘gave’ the arabs – in relation to war & slaughter – it amounts to an arabaphobia which is indeed a part of american exceptionalism & an integral element to the empire’s project
you & i we are one question
but why do you not respond fully to other people’s post – instead of invective

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 4 2008 17:56 utc | 88

And I’ve never attacked anyone, sfaik. I only respond to baseless insults with insults. I’m only guilty of disagreement.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 4 2008 18:36 utc | 90

To read rubin’s stuff about afghanistan/pakisdtan, the notion of coordinated resistance is somewhat far-fetched. There are many groups “resisting” for different reasons–everything from defense of drug trade, taliban ideological defense of whack caliphate, tribal insurgencies against paskistan in defense of autonomy, etc. etc.
Maybe if china/russia fed some new generation of mujahedeen to oppose nato, maybe. But that’s not likely to happen.
No. I think if you want to slay your “empire” you should start by convincing french pensioners to demand that retirement funds no longer be invested in GWOT. It’s a start.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 4 2008 18:59 utc | 92

ban away

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 4 2008 19:18 utc | 94

slothrop
i think facts & contexts are the only thing people have demanded. you only provide circular arguments that endlessly excupate the u s empire of any crimes or wrongdoing. you earnestlt want to share these crimes around – whether they were visited on filipinos, indonesians, vietanmese, greeks latin americans or arabs
& what i find personally strange – is that your arguments across the board mirror those talking points of the elites that are best represente by zrebeniski – a manageable clean theft of the worlds resources & american dominance

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 4 2008 19:38 utc | 96

some things never change.

Posted by: annie | Aug 4 2008 19:52 utc | 98

tangerin offered you the fortune 500 & i think that spoke for itself

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 4 2008 20:11 utc | 100