Ask any question about geopolitics, broadly defined. We — and others reading the FM website — will attempt to answer it in the comments. All answers welcomed!
Contents
- Questions received so far
- Quote of the week
- To start the discussion: interesting sources of information
- Dumbest comment of the week
- Some useful insights about our political economy
(1) Questions received so far
From the home page click on the title to see the full post. Click on the link to go directly to that thread. Please use the REPLY button when replying to a previous comment, to keep threads together.
- What could Fox news do to help or hinder the situation in Iran?
- Important, unanswered: Is there any way to explain to the warmongering sections of the American public how difficult a war with Iran would be?
- Why do so many warmongers care more about fetuses than full grown soldiers?
- Why are they talking about down sizing the military if they want to start all of these new wars like Iran?
- Are the proposed US sanctions against Iran an act of war?
- Interesting, unanswered: The US military frequently refers to US soldiers as “warriors”. Does this suggest the military sees itself as a class apart?
- What do you think of this panel discussion with Heinberg, Kunstler, Foss, Orlov & Chomsky?
- Will Iran look like a replay of the lead-up to the Iraq war, with exxagerated claims of Iraqi WMD’s? Can the same process repeat?
- Please read; this is your future: When do you expect the smart, well educated Mark Steyn to produce his first intelligent article?
- Interesting, unanswered: What do the European countries have to gain by going along with the Iran sanctions?
- Can someone other than a government build an atomic bomb?
- What role does Israel play in our policy towards Iran? Can we limit that role somehow?
- Please outline the criteria by which you gauge a reliable source.
- Can the western nations bending Iran to their will, short of military action? Will they dare military action?
- What do the Europeans have to gain from sanctioning Iran?
- Video of Marines Urinating on Dead Taliban
(2) Quote of the week
Inspiring words that were true in 1968. Then we grew better. Now we’re regressing, so these words are again true.
{T}ime is neutral. It can be used constructively or destructively. And I am sorry to say this morning that I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation — the people on the wrong side — have used time much more effectively than the forces of goodwill. And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.”
Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
— “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution“, a sermon by Martin Luther King delivered on 31 March 1968 at the National Cathedral, Washington, DC
(3) To start the discussion: interesting sources of information
(a) Some economic lessons:
- Margaritaville, episode 3 from season 13 of South Park
- “Eleven telling charts from 2011“, an economic snapshot by John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute, 21 December 2011
(b) Articles and reports:
- The leading edge of America: “The Great Recession and Distribution of Income in California“, Sarah Bohn and Eric Schiff, Public Policy Institute of California, December 2011
- Our leaders are easily fooled: “Ahmed Chalabi: Conning America“, Barry Lando, Huffington Post, 19 December 2011
- “Failing Up With Joshua Foust: Meet The ‘Evil Genius’ Massacre-Denier Who Shills For War Profiteers“, By Mark Ames, the Exiled, 31 December 2011 — Cross-posted at Naked Capitalism. See these posts discussing Fousts’ work.
- Glenn Greenwald’s excellent new column “End of the pro-democracy pretense“, Salon, 2 January 2012 — His columns should be on your must-read list.
- Recommended: “The Banality Of Racism“, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, 3 January 2012
- Nicely said: “Iowa and Beyond: ‘Common Sense’ Racism and the Tea Party GOP“, Chauncey DeVega, Salon, 4 January 2012
- Another step away from the rule of law in America: “The Restatement of Property and the Road to Mortgagocracy“, Adam Levitin, CreditSlips, 5 January 2012 — Lawyers changing long-held contract law to help the banks, screwing the homeowner
- To be an American geopolitical expert, one must have a total lack of self-awareness: “Why Islamism Is Winning“, John M. Owen IV (Prof Politics, U VA), New York Times, 6 January 2012 — Does he describe the Republican presidential candidates as “Christianists”?
- One of the few sensible articles in English about developments in Egypt: “The unexpected rise of Salafists has complicated Egyptian politics“, Omar Ashour, The Daily Star (of Lebanon), 6 January 2012
- Another good one: “Egypt on the Edge“, Yasmine El Rashidi, New York Review of Books, 12 January 2012
(4) Dumbest comment of the week
From a smart, well-educated guy (everybody has bad days; see his website): “The Torch Has Been Passed to a New Generation“, Mark Steyn, National Review Online, 21 December 2011 — Red emphasis added. That’s almost too stupid (ie, ethnocentric) to believe, even for the readers of NRO (except for the first sentence, which applies nicely to the US as well). Excerpt:
If you’re going to turn your country into a squat of theocratic totalitarianism, a stupid population is indispensable. Washington’s most basic problem in Afghanistan, for example, is that most of its upcountry villagers are too ill educated even to be aware of the existence of countries such as the United States. When, after 9/11, a bunch of guys in the full Robocop showed up and started blowing stuff up, your average rural Pushtun simply had no more idea who they were or where they came from than the Americans vis a vis the space aliens in Independence Day.
(5) Some useful insights about our political economy
Excerpt from “Debtors’ Prison“, Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect, 6 June 2011:
Creditors — the rentier class in classic usage — are usually the wealthy and the powerful. Debtors, almost by definition, have scant resources or power. The “money issue” of 19th-century America, about whether credit would be cheap or dear, was also a battle between growth and austerity.
… History’s two great negative and positive examples of how to deal with unsustainable debt are the periods after the two world wars. At the 1919 Versailles peace conference, the creditor mentality prevailed, and Europe’s postwar recovery was aborted. Britain and France imagined they could bleed defeated Germany to pay off their own immense war debts (mostly to the United States). Britain also pursued tight money to keep its own currency valued at prewar levels, in order to protect the creditor class. The policy wrecked the German economy and kept British unemployment above 10 percent for two decades. The great critic of Britain’s folly was John Maynard Keynes, then an adviser to the British Treasury. Keynes’ 1919 book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, prophetically warned that the policy of squeezing Germany until “the pips squeak” would cause depression and a second war.
After World War II, history gave Keynes a chance do it right. His Bretton Woods system emphasized domestic recovery in the defeated as well as the victorious powers and created a global monetary system in which private financial speculators were denied the power to compel nations to pursue deflation. Our own Federal Reserve combined loose money with tight regulation, so that low interest rates could fund the huge war debt without inviting destructive speculation. Cheap money and expansive investment kept America from sinking back into depression.
Today, that expansionary logic has been reversed and creditors are once again hegemonic. Banks want cheap money for themselves, draconian terms for others. The banker-afflicted European Union is punishing Greece rather than finding a way to let it grow. In the United States, relief is denied to underwater homeowners because debt contracts are sacred, even as the policy prolongs the agony. Everywhere, budget austerity is advertised as the road to growth — though it denies the economy its productive potential.
These issues are treated as either impossibly technical or as non-debatable. They are neither. We need to democratize the money issue once again.
