A Russian Professor has a theory that 2010 will see the end of the USA. The pieces of what was once the greatest nation on Earth seem to simply go to the closest neighbour.

See Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

After continued daily rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, and after a warning by the Israeli PM Israel bombs Gaza killing 280 people.

The attack on Hamas targets are, according to reports from Israel, destroying rocket launching silos. That civilians are killed in this non surgical intervention is absolutely guaranteed. Gaza is the most populated place on the planet. People have to live somewhere.

Disproportionate responses like the Iraq war and this, seem aimed at the deconstruction of the enemies ability to retaliate, no matter the cost. It is the Bush doctrine post 9/11, to drop hand grenades into the nest of scorpions so they pose no danger. It has always been an American doctrine, to devastate enemies; a lesson learned from WWII.

Are these acts of war that effective in the “war on terrorism”? The problem is that the disease spreads in all directions. In an ancient sense, yes, Israel certainly had a right to the lands of the Levant. But so do the Palestinians. A dominant country dominates in order to prevent control slipping; the weaker force attempts to find a chink in the armour.

What strikes one as rather horrific is he confinement of a people. The echoes of the Holocaust can not be ignored; Israel can not stain itself in this way. The confinement of millions of people to a sub-state that can never have an economic sway is not civilized.

A treaty is required. Hamas may be deconstructed by Israel’s military actions. Huge force is a reflection of the fate the USA had for Iraq, but Hamas were reported to be firing rockets into Israel. There is some justification and a clear warning was given.

Any hope of Tony Blair’s passive diplomacy making progress or Bush’s active aggression bringing change are now irrelevant history. The world has progressed to the next move. What comes next?

If Israel can indeed remove Hamas from the political equation by an act of war will it improve matters? Seems highly unlikely. Israel claim to be forced into this situation. Israel at war, Hamas seem likely to now be a political martyr.

Links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/27/israelandthepalestinians-terrorism

The path that GW Bush has set the United States upon is inverse socialism. It is regression. It has produced an incipient depression in the world economy by creating a inverse bubble. A huge cash vacuum has removed 2 trillion from the American federal reserve.

To reduce the treasury into a funding agency for the seriously wealthy, bankers and those who take a cut from everyone, is grand scale theft.

It is a brutal feudal solution to the problem of the masses. The enormous populations of the world are increasingly applying economic pressure to the social competition between “races”. It is interesting that in English at least we choose the same word “race” to depict each strain of humanity, each wild attempt by God or Nature at maxiumising survival odds; and, the mad dash for the finish line of runners, horses or companies in the stock market. The implication is that in our frenzied dash toward death we are in competition. The leemings that do not fall off the cliff live to try again another day.

Social evolution could see human communities feeding each other due to their cooperative understanding and mutual wealth and living within its means. Trade was the connective tissue of the late twentieth century.

Consider a mad bear, thrashing about on the ice floe bent on the destruction of the reflection of that “other” bear mirrored in the sunlight – isolationism can lead to war. Destruction to remove elements of the economic equation as in the image of Nero and a burning Rome or Nakasaki or the WTC – flatten the old order to bring in a new order – this is the product of the Bush world. Like that game where you hit moles. Keep paying the banker like this, and ten more will arrive needing “bail out”.

Now it is the automotive industry asking for tax payers funding. The great American Auto Industry is so symbolic and such a huge employer that the new Government may prop it up until it starts to produce a product that people want and does not corrupt the environment by burning hydrocarbons, then it will no longer need support.

But just giving them dosh to support their largesse is simply bad management. The oil corporations and the consumers of their product rely on the social cost their product exacts. If we, the tax paying inhabitants of the world were to charge the oil/vehicle industry what they cost, it would cost more than the bail out.

One expects Barack Obama’s administration to do something smarter than paying for supplication. Like attach new non-polluting technology to the loans to the auto makers. It is a first step away from the antediluvian end game that GW Bush is playing out.

Roger Cohen in a NYTimes opinion piece suggests that America is built upon the survival of the fittest and that has to involve the death of the unfittest as in the case of Pan Am. Recent times has seen an unnatural injection of capital into an engine that does not want to start. Why is the response to 0% interest so slow? Because of fear?

Fear of death drives us to do something about survival. As the indulgent soon learn – cash will simply run out. That is because it is merely a reflection of effective productivity. The great failing of the Bush years was that America effectively stopped being productive. Completely indulged in the wild fantasies of a meglomaniac who could not protect America because the facts did not line up with his thinking.

To solve the financial crisis, connect productivity to wealth. Tax capital accumulation and reward work. The Bush way was to allow rampant accumulation, which in turn leads to excessive speculation as has occurred with the property market distortion. People do not see this rush on capital as growing pains, but when you expand the effective capital base of the community without any actual exchangable accumulating, the sound of the bubble popping is inevitable.

A social correction is about to occur. If governments raise taxes from consumption and capital, but returns it for productivity and we find a way to stabilise our population, we have a chance of living in a real nice, if somewhat degraded world. Carry on like we are, it will be far less wonderful for our grandchildren.

Tax transactions, especially speculation. The “free market” seems to be a very unfair mechanism when the bankers carry no risk as well as no cash. Taxing income vs expenditure stifles progress and ultimately provides cause for speculation. Ecomonic systems work due to exchange. Encourage profitability, reduce consumption. Invest in education.

Reducing world population would then be possible without the mad house of cards falling over.

Guardian Article

Dick Cheney has said that he believes that the Bush Administration has done “pretty well”. Considering the circumstances.

One does not expect the likes of Cheney to talk himself down from a mountain of justification for disasterous policies.

The Bush administration’s illogical framing of Saddam Hussein being briefly accepted as a good enough reason to go ahead and invade, the billions that Halliburton has reaped, and the trillions invested in a financial industry that is failing says enough about how well they did.

Cheney appears unable to contemplate how much better they would have done – if they had simply done their jobs with balance and skill, and not undermined American democracy with an illegal war – the world would not be having a financial crisis of unbelievable proportions.

I give Cheney F-

From The Guardian

Final reckoning

“Bush’s midnight regulations will:

• Make it easier for coal companies to dump waste from strip-mining into valleys and streams.
• Ease the building of coal-fired power stations nearer to national parks.
• Allow people to carry loaded and concealed weapons in national parks.
• Open up millions of acres to mining for oil shale.
• Allow healthcare workers to opt out of giving treatment for religious or moral reasons, thus weakening abortion rights.
• Hurt road safety by allowing truck drivers to stay at the wheel for 11 consecutive hours.”

So, why does America put up with this?

Is Bush not committing acts calculated to waste time so Obama is left not just with a disaster of unpredictable proportions – directly attributable to the actions and deicisions of this terribly destabilising leader of the once most successful country on Earth. The Great Decider and His Ignorance and Ineptitude have ensured a new reckless economics that has undone the individual wealth of the common man.

I still think there is more and worse to come. Impeach for goodness’ sake!

Juan Cole’s excellent blog summarises the years with Bush in the White House.

In the real world, biological terrorism seems to fit the equation better than nuclear. The flaw with the nuclear theory is they violate the rationale behind war – the aquisition of terroritory. More us, less them.

Biological warfare is happening all the time, anyway. But the gross release of pathogens into the population to sow terror drives disconnection between the knowledge people have of each other, social dependencies can no longer be relied upon and so, they start to fail.

The aftermath of a biological attack may not however be containable. The act, once done, would contaminate the land. If the purpose of Al Qaeda is to destroy the land – then they are more insane than they may appear. What is the point? Why create enemies of America when it was America that armed them and provided funding for both the oil and heroin trades? If it was not for the Western philosophy of greed, there would be no money for the oil and the price would go down. To philosophically attack that greed is also without social merit.

It makes no logical sense that Al Qaeda wages war on America – but it continues to inspire small groups of terrorists (probably calling themselves something else like Jihadis or freedom fighters or even professional soldiers) to commit acts of war on civilians knowing they will die when confronted by Government forces. A group that is not a group that survives on chaos may not be all that logical.

The attacks in Mumbai, India were acts of military precision. What did they achieve apart from fear, death and excess cost, especially in tourism? The civilian protests at election fraud that delayed 300,000 international passengers may have been equally as poisonous to their tourist destination appeal, but people were not indiscrimately killed. Protest is really far more devastating that acts of terror.

Compare the cost in lives of young Muslim Al Qaeda followers – its probably far worse than the cost in Western lives from acts of terrorism. The sick calculation would be mutiplied by indulgence and fail as an act based upon “faith”. Biological terror may seem attractive to those wanting havoc but its even less controllable than nuclear damage, ultimately it merely defeats everyone including what they worship.

Or once GW Bush is out of the White House, perhaps such ideas will no longer float.

After much hesitation, the comment filter has been applied. Near on 50 spam posts – have been filtered today – so after much pacing it was decided that the comment filter would be applied. Suddenly there is time for content. Better, really. But it is possible your comment gets caught up, and if it does just email it to info@disturbingtrends . org – cheers.