CHOMSKY THINKS GEITHNER BANK PLAN IS MUCH LIKE BUSH/PAULSON POLICY

ONE DAY THE BOTTOM WILL FALL OUT

This week the doomsaying over the world financial crisis became hard to ignore. In a Reuters report, Paul Volcher was quoted as saying, "I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world". George Soros likened the current tailspin to the financial collapse of the Soviet Union, a turbulence more severe than the Great Depression. (Pedro Nicolaci da Casta/Juan Logoria reporting)

According to Soros, the financial system worldwide has "effectively disintegrated".

Topping the list of radical measures to meet this crisis, we have the idea of nationalizing the banks, and the less discussed notion of abolishing the Federal Reserve altogether, and printing "greenback" dollars, as Lincoln did during the Civil War. This was money not borrowed nor beholden to interest payments, but created from whole cloth, so to speak, on the full faith and credit of the USA.

The world today has stepped into a hole, and no one yet knows how deep it is. The terrible danger is in not being able to put a reliable number on the numerous debts and defaults that the banks are holding.

The best argument for nationalization of the banks is that it would make all the "toxic" papers visible. This would act like a formal bankruptcy proceeding; by audit and evaluation of all holdings, examiners could be able to advise as to invalidating the credit swaps or making the necessary markdown of assets. Some debt would be written off in this process.

Without such examination and consolidation, it seems futile to try piecemeal bailouts for banks, on the order of a $trillion or a $trillion-and-a-half, against an occult debt, that may run to the tens of trillions of dollars. But this is the avowed policy of the new administration, plus a supplement of around $800 billion to stimulate the economy.

Abraham Lincoln believed a government had the power to issue its own currency, and was not bound or obligated to borrow it from private sector sources. The Federal Reserve is a collection of powerful banking interests, which have insinuated their way into the status of a "semi-governmental agency", by the power of compound interest. We might want to change that at some point.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled to China this week, with hat in hand, it has been said. And under the circumstances, the Chinese are not altogether happy with the posturing of certain American politicians, who accuse China of manipulating its currency, the yuan. And the Obama administration includes some of those trying to scapegoat China; but the light has not yet gone on in American heads to acknowledge that US lifestyles are to some degree negotiable, contrary to longstanding belief, since all other nations are beset by this calamity. There is undoubtedly a lot Americans can learn from the collapse of the late Soviet Union. Dmitry Orlov recently gave a speech to a small audience in San Francisco, where he outlined what he calls Social Collapse Best Practices, a concise guide to coping with the kind of meltdown the Russians experienced; and he describes how they were able to survive that ordeal. Orlov has long predicted that the US was headed for the kind of breakdown that befell the Soviets.

Thanks is owed to blogger, badger, for catching a translation of this excellent report by Frederico Rampini, from Italy's La Reppublica:

The palpable tension on the upper floors of China's leadership structure is proportionate to the wealth that Beijing has entrusted to its great overseas debtor. Fang Shangpu, the head of China's foreign exchange bureau, makes this very clear: "America must protect the interests of foreign investors. Its currency is China's number one foreign investment". With 2,000 billion dollars in official foreign currency reserves, Beijing's central bank is the richest on the planet. But that war-chest is subject to de facto sterilization. Its destination is obligatory: US Treasury Bonds, yet again, as always. In 2008 China bought a further 700 billion of them. Every US treasuries auction would fail if the Chinese central bankers did not turn up to play the role of kind-hearted creditor. And this situation continues despite the exchange-rate losses they have already suffered : since China's renminbi abandoned its fixed parity to the dollar (in July 2005) it has risen by 21%, thereby decreasing the value of China's dollar investments to an equal extent.

Meanwhile, the social costs of the US locomotive's crash are extremely severe. In the third quarter of 2008, as a result of the fall in exports, China's growth rate was brutally halved: 6.8% in GDP growth as compared to 13% in 2007. Following the mass layoffs in the textile, toys and electronics industries, the unemployed workers forced back into the rural economy now officially number around 27 million. Over a million and a half young college graduates too are unemployed: an even more politically explosive army of discontents. Now that Beijing needs to mobilize all available resource to relaunch its domestic growth, it is frustrating to remember those 2,000 billion dollars "frozen" to finance America.

The straw that has broken the camel's back is the revival of protectionism in Washington. First Treasury secretary Tim Geithner accused Beijing of "manipulating" its currency. Then came the Buy American clause in the 787 billion dollar public expenditure package launched by Congress, with Chinese steel as its number-one target. Xi Jinping, China's vice president and designated heir to the supreme leadership position, is furious. He too briefly abandons the language of diplomacy: "Even in this crisis", says Xi, "certain westerners seem to have nothing better to do than pick on us. I would like to remind them of some of our merits. Firstly, China does not export revolutions or hostile ideologies. Secondly, we do not export poverty or hunger. Thirdly, we do not export armed conflicts".

The seething resentment in these words does not yet mark the end of Chimerica. With Mrs Clinton the regime's leaders will rehearse the continuation of a constructive dialogue, convinced as they are that aggravating the global recession would benefit no-one. But in the light of mainstreet America's increasing hostility towards them, the leadership of the People's Republic is studying a "Plan B". Its most audacious moves include using the country's massive currency reserves for new purposes: to finance buy-ups of deposits of raw materials in other countries, ranging from Australia to Africa to Latin America. A reconversion that would have heavy consequences: a blow to the stability of the dollar, a worrying shortfall in treasury funding for Washington. However, the decision to step over this fatal threshold has not yet been reached: "We hate you but we can't do without you" is still the key sentiment in the present phase. But even Confucian patience has its limits.

What should we make of the power relationship between China and the US? One is the ascendant power, the other a power in decline. The world's manufactured goods are being made by the lender, while the borrower is the world's most strung out consumer and debt addict. Grab those dollars till they scream, for one day the bottom will fall out.

grayson harper TERRORISTS

Those red devils that whipped
Custer at Little Big Horn
rode into battle spangled and costumed
or stripped naked painted
red yellow charcoal black the color of death
Some decorated their faces with dragonflies
they put handprints on their horses' flanks
drew rings around their horses' eyes
dangled human scalps from spears.
They were terrorists. They flew
screaming through the blue coat troops
unhinging them so they could scarce think
how to work their carbines
scared so bad they shit themselves
then shooting, stabbing,
bashing out their brains with stone clubs.
So there's nothing new about our folk
feeling entitled to invade and murder
darker skinned people in their homes
or slaughter their women and children
while they sleep in their beds,
only these particular ones apparently
weren't interested in our brand of
democracy
but instead decided
maybe they should give the stupid
fuckers something to think about.

ISRAEL MASSACRES CIVILIANS IN GAZA

The carnage Israel is committing in Gaza is entering its third week. This is more of a mass murder than a war, with Palestinian deaths now numbering over 900. Israeli deaths will add up to only 15 or so as things stand now. What is happening is a disproportionate destruction of the weak by the strong. The Israeli Air Force is bombing what is essentially a vast ghetto of one-and-a-half million people. This ghetto is cut off from most outside aid, and has been under economic siege by Israel long before the present hostilities broke out.

American congressmen and US media giants are endlessly versatile when it comes to marketing a case for the Israelis, no matter what cruelty is visited on women and children in Gaza by the IDF. It appears as a novelty whenever any instance provides the Palestinian side of the story.

The Israeli blockade of the necessities of life, supplies they have held up and limited to an insufficient trickle of humanitarian goods, has choked life in Gaza, and made it impossible for the local generators to run, which provide water for a great many families. How often has it been reported that such a strangulation of humanitarian goods is itself an act of war against Gaza and its people?

And what is the sin that the Palestinians committed? Not the unguided rockets which one can say are insignificant compared to the US armaments that the Israelis are using on schools and ambulances, and on neighborhoods where they have wiped out whole families. No this is not a very credible pretext for Israel. The real offence for which the Palestinians are so harshly condemned to death, is that they refuse to renounce the Hamas government they themselves elected. This is what the Israeli leaders will not tolerate.

And then there is the cynical timing of this slaughter to consider. And the veto by the US ambassador to the UN, blocking a cease fire resolution. Here we are at a moment in the US where presidential power is about to be transferred to a new administration. The Bush administration in its last days in office is rushing sophisticated weapons to the leaders of Israel, bunker busting bombs supposedly meant to target Hamas fighters.

And very little light is shed in America upon the tactics Israel pursued against the lawful Hamas government, the habitual use of extrajudicial murder, in what are called its "targeted assassinations", orchestrated as a political front of war against Hamas leaders, the arrest and incarceration of parliamentarians and holders of executive office, or the real campaign of terror against municipal government, the murder of policemen and police cadets.

How should responsible people outside this tragedy react when they learn that half the population of Gaza are only children?

Under international law Israel bears the responsibility, enumerated in that body of law, since it is acknowledged to be an occupying power, with respect to the Palestinians. Under these laws occupiers are expected to behave as if they were the responsible grownups. This ongoing massacre in Gaza exposes the lie of all of Israel's professed humanitarian language and talk of self-defense. There is no self-defense that can be claimed by a powerful oppressing nation over subject peoples.

An article by Nir Rosen, Gaza: the logic of colonial power, exposes the hypocrisy under which the powerful get to name terrorists and define what constitutes terror:

I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose. [...]

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.

2009: A NEW YEAR LIKE THIS CALLS FOR DYLAN THOMAS

"DON'T BEND YOUR HEAD DOWN...THE ONLY WAY IS RESISTANCE"

Woman in front of Greek Parliament, in protest, shouts at riot police.

The killing of a 15 year old boy, Andreas Alexis Grigoropolous, by an auxiliary policeman, put the match to a fire of uprising that has spread all across Greece. We don't know whether these unleashed furies will lead to a full insurrection that changes the political landscape fundamentally, or if there will be a repressive backlash, or if the right-center government of Prime Minister Karamanlis will fall, or resign, prompting new elections. But a poll taken in the shadow of this violence shows that the vast majority of Greeks believe this revolt has broad support and is not merely a rebellion of a fringe element. There is a long standing animosity not only against police brutality, but against the collusion of the two major political parties, where crimes committed by those in uniform ultimately go unpunished.

The revolt also seems to address the ruinous impact of privatization upon education, and a dearth of employment for 25% of young people, after they leave school and try to find jobs in their own country. There is also the situation, familiar to us in America, of a government whose agencies have so withered from corruption, that there is little evidence of governing at all, while the enrichment of the rich drives the middle class to a state of desperation. The ravages of class war can no longer be ignored as these kids watch the lives of their parents reduced by debts and overwork. "Graft, of course, goes hand in hand with incompetence," as Maria Margaronis writes, in The Guardian. The uprising has been identified as a burden carried mostly by the very young, who have occupied hundreds of schools in protest throughout the country, and come out bravely into the streets.

It is a revolt of schoolchildren and students, most on the street for the first time. There are reports of children as young as 12 battling riot police, shouting "Cops! Pigs! Murderers!"

The teenagers and twenty-somethings who have come close to toppling the Greek government are not the marginalized; this is no replay of the riots that convulsed Paris in 2005. Many are the sons and daughters of the middle classes, shocked at the killing of one of their own, disgusted with the government's incompetence and corruption, enraged by the broken promises of the education system, scared at the prospect of having to work harder than their exhausted parents. [...]

Police violence is not new, it is just that previous victims have been immigrants or Roma and so do not make the media. As usual when there is social dislocation, the far right has gained strength: the populist Orthodox Rally won 10 seats in parliament for the first time last year, and the neo-fascist Golden Dawn organization is known to have supporters inside the police. Now that the lid has blown off the pressure cooker, repression may take more blatant and more violent forms.

Andreas Alexis Grigoropoulos, 15 years old.

On the walls in front of the Greek Parliament, there is graffiti that reads "Alexis, these nights are for you." Throughout the country there is a revolt against the very alienation that the corruption of government has made possible. There is revulsion not merely at police excesses, but at the toleration of those excesses, that reach the highest offices. What the world witnesses in Greece is cause for wonderment, just as Greeks have been a cause of wonderment in times past; and today the coming together of people in the streets, both young and old, reveals much about human solidarity, and a democracy that is still capable of vitality and honesty at the grassroots. People from all walks of life are willing to meet face to face, students and teachers, trade unionists and ordinary laborers, professionals, artisans, and even some from the privileged class. And like Greeks from all times, they have a built-in suspicion of authority.

For example, Indymedia has reported a statement of protesting citizens, who briefly took control at a TV station:

Our action is a response to the accumulated pressures that ravage our lives, and not simply an emotional outburst in the wake of the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the Greek police.

We are yet another spontaneous collective that forms part of the social uprising in progress.

In a symbolic move to prevent the media from subduing us, citizens & civilians, we interrupt the newscast of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (NET). We believe that the media systematically cultivates a climate of fear, promoting misinformation as information, and portraying a multi-faceted uprising as an outburst of reckless violence.

The explosion of civil unrest is explained in criminal rather than political terms. Crucial events are selectively brushed under the carpet. The uprising is served up as entertainment, something to watch until the next soap opera comes on. The media are being used as a means of suppressing free and original thought on a daily basis.

Let us organise ourselves. No authority can provide solutions to our problems. We must rally together and turn our public spaces – streets, squares, parks, and schools – into areas of unhindered expression and communication. Let us come together, face to face, side by side, to formulate our cause and our course of action as one.

Let us overcome the fear, switch off our television sets, come out of our houses, continue to assert our rights, and take our lives into our own hands.

We condemn police violence and call for the immediate release of all protesters held in custody.

We stand for emancipation, human dignity, and freedom.

GAS DRILLING NOT A GAS

by Barron Harper

When I was growing up in Odessa, Texas in the 1950s, I remember with no particular fondness the considerable oil and gas drilling going on in the Permian Basin. Big oil literally transformed the economies and populations of my town and neighboring Midland 20 miles to the east. Business catered to it. Drillers and suppliers reeked of the smell of it. And the locals tolerated the changes it produced.

But some of us remember that where oil was being drilled gas was being burned off. For years in fact gas burning in West Texas sent up pinnacles of smoke and fire that nightly lit up the landscape of those high plains. Seen from long distances, onlookers over time grew somewhat accustomed to these fiery spectacles among scores of unsightly wells. But to astute observers in the ‘50s and ‘60s, closer inspections of these towering infernos would have portended catastrophic reckonings for peoples caught up in the explosive growth of intractable global societies.

Some 30 years later in the heart of Guadalajara, Mexico’s downtown district, ten massive gas explosions occurred over a two hour period due to gas leaking in the sewer system. Measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, the explosive quakes damaged and destroyed over 1,000 buildings and created an enormous nine mile ditch down the middle of a major thoroughfare that measured 80 feet wide and 25 feet deep. The blast killed 200 people, injured 2,000 local inhabitants and left 20,000 homeless. Buildings suffered over $300 million in damages. The suffering of the people could not be measured.

Gas is volatile, inflammable, explosive. The production, transport and storage of this diminishing resource in spite of due diligence destroy property and lives due to inevitable accidents. In the drilling process, hazardous chemicals are injected into the ground. Radioactive materials, arsenic and hydrogen sulfide in the ground are disturbed. These and other toxic substances contaminate the ground and the air, gradually poisoning the environment and the people. But should any gaseous substances be ignited as demonstrated in Guadalajara, the consequences will be felt in less than a heartbeat.

While my childhood was giving way to adolescence in West Texas, my grandparents, Joe and Mary Clarke, were leading lives as prominent citizens in Fort Worth. He was the executive vice-president of the Fort Worth National Bank and she was a noted historian and author. The two of them cared about the welfare of the city, belonged to influential organizations, received favorable publicity, and in general supported causes that were fair and open-handed. They resided near Texas Christian University in an unpretentious home made beautiful by their patient and loving care.

Joe and Mary possessed an integrity that tolerated no deception or manipulation. Generous with their time and resources, they were blessed by their inherent goodness. Rather than being somehow compromised for their generosity, they prospered. They appeared to understand that deprivation in the end is the consequence of coveting.

Exceptionally well-liked and respected in the community, they would have been horrified to learn that gas drilling was being contemplated in some 15 neighborhoods in their beloved city. They would have unhesitatingly considered the consequences to public health and safety as eclipsing any benefits to the city from the discovery of gas or the enrichment of coffers. So like me they would never have compromised human security for a fickle prosperity.

-Barron Harper is a U.S. international tax advisor residing in France.

copeland morris NEW LIGHT

The roof and wall subsided with storm
For a miracle in your grasp, still being alive.
Prepare then a way for me by cloud
And by rain. The new light. It enters
The broken half of a house. You won't
Give up on me too soon, I hope,
By way of Jordan, pale jasmine.

This is how you enter a sacred place
On brittle stalks, the soothsayer's white
Miniatures. This is how you have prolonged
Your embrace, beckoning to me: absorbed
In the perfumed letter that took so long
To catch my attention. The crease in the envelope
Turning my eye to the long curve of your fingers.

Artwork by anna missed, New Light (oil on wood)

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR NEW PRESIDENT-ELECT, BARACK OBAMA

It should not be forgotten that the US has elected the first African-American to be president. Virginia voted for Obama, the flagship state of the Old Confederacy. The new electorate could be seen dancing and getting rowdy on Pennsylvania Avenue. The million American faces who were cheering in Grant Park in Chicago must indeed offer a new testimony about the core character of our nation.

It was transcendent to hear Obama evoke the words of Lincoln.

“As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

My friends and I felt the inspiration of election night. There were tears around the television. Grayson Harper, my friend of some twenty years, exclaimed "Now we won't have to flee [the country]".

We are not the same nation we were. Democracy is not static, as President-Elect Obama said in his acceptance speech. It's no mystery to me why he stood alone on that stage to give that speech, or why Jesse Jackson was weeping. It would not occur to me that these last years of national humiliation and crime in high places would not in some crucial sense transform the way Americans think.

We are walking on Cloud Nine right now, and understand that the world as it would have been under McCain & Palin's control has passed away. Our friends across the world should be encouraged that a more responsible, and civic-minded administration is coming to Washington.

The nightmare world is crumbling. Bush and Cheney will soon be out of office.

We have won a victory over a certain kind of tribalism, and a we have seen the groundswell of democracy. This democracy is about accepting American life with all its diversity. And our newly elected president made a point of touching on that , as he acknowledged the will of the people.

McCAIN AND OBAMA ARE SIMPLY AWFUL IN FIRST DEBATE

I watched the presidential debate last night with dear friends; and in no time we were screaming at the television. The debate was a great outing for many of the nation's delusions, and its twisted priorities, in the never-ending war, to which the leaders in both parties sadly subscribe. We felt at times enraged by the agreed upon myths, with which both candidates bind us to the weapons makers, the imperial plunderers, and the whole sick notion of the Pentagon's Long War. For this reason the debate around foreign policy was difficult to listen to.

A few days before the debate, McCain announced that he was "suspending his campaign", and flying off to Washington to fight a rear-guard action against the Wall Street bailout. In the newsrooms there began some speculation about him fleeing the scene of the debate, pundits wondered if he was goofing about, or showboating, pulling some stunt; and drama was built up around the idea that McCain's behavior was unsteady. Obama might be expected to show up in Mississippi, and perhaps John McCain would be AWOL.

This was a set-up; and the McCain who has been consistently ridiculed for his senior moments, and the gaffes that have undeniably marred his campaign, showed up in full possession of his faculties. And while Obama handled him with kid gloves, McCain smirked throughout his opponent's comments, and almost continuously avoided looking at Obama.

McCain was well coached, it seems to me, and had made intensive preparation for the debate; while a diversion was presented to the Democratic side of an old man who was coming unglued and would arrive, less than prepared, to meet a statesmanlike Obama.

But this was not the worst of the debacle. Obama studiously avoided challenging the emotional appeals to those popular US myths surrounding our supposed enemies and the widening of the war. Our myth that portrays Iran as an existential threat was touched upon: this narrative that is agreed to by leaders of both parties. The lies about Iran. And the lie about the Russian-Georgian war,--just who the aggressor was,--got tossed like a softball by Obama, and McCain hit it out of the park.

McCain took over where Obama left off, and commanded the debate with a politically resonant (if wrongheaded) appeal to American fears about big, bad, resurgent Russia. McCain did more than appeal to the gut; he smirked dismissively at Obama, dissed him smartly, treated him like some pathetic well-meaning novice, untested by life, and too green to be president.

And it's true that Obama, like McCain, also lures us into the dangerous misconception that Georgia's president, the war criminal, Saakashvili, is a great guy and a paragon of the West's democratic values. So it goes that the republican lion shall lie down with the democratic lamb, declaring that Iran, a nation whose GDP is equivalent to Finland, is an existential threat to Europe, the United States, and nuclear-armed Israel.

There were news reports yesterday that the regular Pakistan army and American forces had exchanged small arms fire, along Pakistan's border.

Of 9/11, THE ELECTION, AND THE COMING FASCIST STATE

Been having some dark thoughts, lately, which is generally the kind I tend to have when I allow my mind to wander at will. I see no reason not to share them and spread a little cheer.

The attack of 9/11 struck me at the time as the logical result of a whole series of hubristic behaviors of the U.S. around the world. A week before the attack--I swear this is true--I was having a discussion with a guy in which I argued that it would not surprise me if we found ourselves attacked within our borders at some point. He dismissed the idea almost laughingly, saying our air and naval security were far too sophisticated and strong for that to happen. I said the attack would not be by traditional means, that it would be easy as pie for someone to simply slip into the country and blow up one of our cities with a nuclear device or sabotage a nuclear facility or a train hauling toxic chemicals--that we were vulnerable to a thousand different scenarios. Thus, a week later, when I was watching the events in New York in real time, I was sweating bullets because I was certain that the two planes flying into the Trade Center were just diversionary attacks in advance of the real thing.

I agree with Scott Ritter that If we continue our present course--and I see little reason to think that we won't--that we can expect to lose a city. The Bush Doctrine (that Sarah Palin blanked on in her interview with Charles Gibson) has opened the door for the same to be done to us. Thus, the day McCain takes office, Putin, Iran, others, will have this to think about: that the U.S. is no longer playing by the old rules, that they (Russia, Iran, whoever) are subject to attack by us in advance of any perceived threat. I'm sure they've already considered it, given that Bush and Cheney are still running loose, but once McCain and Palin--two certified lunatics--are installed, the countries we have been threatening so recklessly will have to carefully weigh how long they think they can afford to wait to hit us before we hit them.

Can Obama win? Somehow, I think not. The day before Sarah Palin appeared on the scene, everyone was holding their nose at John McCain. The day after, when I saw the mob's eyes roll back in their heads and foam issue from their mouths, I remembered again what country I'm living in, a country so simple minded and childish that it will get in the car with almost any strange man (or woman) offering goodies with a winning smile. And I find little comfort in the fact that the very things that are drawing so many to Sarah Palin are not all that different from the ones that have been drawing those on our side to Barack Obama--i.e., less issues than charisma and magical thinking. Even now, I know that Americans, having grown weary of the current war (but not tired of war), would gleefully march off to another one on the mere suggestion of a McCain, an Obama, a Hillary, or a gun-toting Sarah Palin. Makes no difference. Hell, we're already in Pakistan and nobody's squawking.

In other words, something is fundamentally broken here--always has been--and I doubt seriously that it can be repaired. One way or another the Neocons are going to win the election. If they don't win it outright, they'll steal it; the voting machines are still broken and easily hacked into. Or they'll kill our candidate. They'll do whatever they have to do.

By the end of McCain's first term in office, the U.S. will have completed its fascist mission and we will be living in a police state. The terrorist watch list--already bloated with over a million names--will have swelled to several million, and by then, no doubt, some mechanism will have been triggered allowing for more aggressive action against all those perceived enemies beyond merely detaining them at airports or relieving them of their laptops and cell phones. For a list of possibilities, I refer you to the Pinochet regime.

Am I discouraged? You're damn right I am. I hope I'm wrong. I hope, come November, I will be looking back on what I've written here and I'll be laughing. I sure as hell hope so.

But in the meantime, anyone who is still somewhat enamored of the idea of democracy might want to get their passports in order.