The year 2000 was a fine boundary, because of the mathematics of dates. 2010 seems a little more mathematical, in that the century count is double that of the year count. 2000 however exposed a hole in thinking shared by everyone who entered a two figure date into their computers. Time marches on, and it is necessary to record the details.

The 2000 decade was the decade that Tony Blair and GW Bush decided that the Geneva Convention prevented them from dealing with the threat of Iraq. There is a movement to bring them to justice as their actions were not legal or desirable. They appear to have been politically driven to protect energy consumption by Americans as that was the “engine of the world” economically. How wrong could they be? Far from being an engine, the West was empowering China and India by overextending greed.

And that is why the war in Iraq was a mistake of epic proportions. If a war was to be fought in Iraq, it’s timing was wrong. Iraq was the barrier between Israel and Iran, and two “dangerous” countries who were at war with each other for years seems more threatening than one tamed and one restricted. By weakening Iraq militarily, there is a weaker buffer zone separating Iran and Israel.

It is an imbalance of credibility to claim that certain countries have a “right” to nuclear weapons, and others do not. Nobody has a right to murder all life on the planet.

And when the US withdraws from Iraq, Iran is far more likely to try and annex the Shi’ite zones of Iraq and thus raise the stakes by presenting a more polarised fundamentalist Sunni and Shi’ite division. Iran lies between the two GW Bush war zones. The Taleban are anti-Shia, therefore America has strengthened Iran and is in essence attempting to defeat Sunni fundamentalism with its continued war against the Taleban. Afghanistan is 99% Sunni, therefore acceptance of the Taleban is a very likely consequence of the failing war effort. That is why the Obama administration are ramping up the war against Sunni extremism. Iran is being defended by America. The rational however for Iran’s nuclear capability is clear.

The cause of international law and justice continues to be of terrible importance. The injustice of the Iraq invasion is reflected by a new generation of terrorists, some home grown. The unpredictable threat of a suicide bomber on air-plane flights is inviting Western governments to screen the skin surface of all passengers, so Al Qaeda has now managed to terrorise huge numbers of Muslims.

This insensitivity is due to the nature of Islamic militancy: most evident in the Teleban movement. Young men controlled the government of Afghanistan with ultra strict Sharia law enforcement. When the toll of continuous war is considered, it is no wonder that the Taleban arose. They were the children of the war with the USSR.

The absence of justice for reckless or ill considered actions by these leaders implies that they were infallible and somehow above all that. Remember, justice is a balance and if Blair or Bush were to be found not guilty of war crimes, at least it would explain their rationale. And if they were found guilty?

What we really learned from 9/11 is that it is possible to outsmart the “security” systems which instead of making us safe (like a community) make us suspicious of everyone. Let’s face it, conspiracy, complicity or outright being suspended in lollyland, the Bush adminstration spent more on security and for the most extraordinarily bad result.

Nobody likes terrorism what ever its source. Most would surmise that the GWB complicity factor is probably one of convenience rather than planning. GWB’s intent was to go to war with Iraq, I think formed about the time of the end of the first Gulf War. In the sense that was a an act of policy that required collusion, three is evidence of conspiracy. But the notion that they met with bin Laden first is less credible than Al Qaeda – acting from their own cruel insane agenda. The Taleban are children of the dead. They are deadly serious, reactionary and brooding in the extreme. Militantancy is their way of living. So they fit right in. Should the USA consider this a military or political force? Therein lies the real problem. They seem to be attempting to be both guardian and philosopher. The Taleban’s future is uncertain, but what is the alternative to being at war with them?

It seems more likely that that Al Qaeda simply took advantage of GWB in the White House, an ideal time to slip in a few harmless looking individuals who were on NSA’s radar perhaps, but cost reductions were the name of the game, and who is going to waste budget on insignificant assets? Foreign nationals in flight schools are not unusual. Rich idiot children from Middle East emirs seem not unlikely.

9/11 was designed by Al Qaeda to change the USA according to their belief system.

Imagine the different outcome if 9/11 happened when Clinton was in office. His revenge was brief hard and focused and nearly took bin Laden out after the Cole attack. You can not admire failure; but, the USA would have won the battle and war before 2001, and maybe now would not be facing financial chaos (which may indeed be the second attack, self inflicted – but probably privately claimed by bin Laden).

Times onLine article

The last laugh – well – look back in horror at GW Bush’s top 20 gaffes. I am sorry, it is both an unhappy memory, a nightmare and far too funny, even this soon after he is gone. Man is he gone.

A question in The Guardian (UK) was – will we miss GW Bush?  My answer…

“Bush did his best against odds that his imagination had no room to consider. His stern resolve resulted in near total collapse of the world economy, the peace forged from WW1 has been damaged and America is seen in a completely different light. Miss him? In a “grizzly beat took my eye out but I still feel for the old beast” sort of way.

See: The Guardian

The memories of the last eight years are not complete without an understanding that a person was controlling things in the White House that did not understand economics but treated the entire game as a machine he could manipulate.  I agree with the sentiment of another opinion piece – why have a rich person in control – they generally got there due to the actions of others.  Why not a genius?  Perhaps GW Bush has simply enabled democracy to take the next fabled leap – without GW Bush millions of Americans would still be moderately well off.  His economic policies seemed aimed at subjecting everyone to substantial economic risk.

That article, from April 2008 shows the start of the end for 1.5 million American taxpayers who queue for backruptcy protection then.  Made it easier for families to bankrupt themselves.  Interesting form of herd management.

From the blogs:

“Bush has not bequeathed us a shining city on a hill in Afghanistan, but a crippled state in need of billions of dollars of investments that we no longer have because of Bush’s kleptomaniac buddies, whom he enabled.”

Juan Cole

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/washington/30labor.html?_r=1&hp

President Bush continues to try and cement into place his right wing utopia where abortion is illegal, where business takes precedence over human life, where harming people is considered normal, in a frantic legislative last breath – 20 or so regulations that Obama will waste precious time undoing.  

Impeachment is less expensive.

NZ Herald reports on New Zealand’s fresh prime minister John Key who just won an election and has formed a progressive doubled valved powerhouse with Right Wing and Maori support – a clever prank or a progressive miracle?

It could be an opportunity for Maori to find new identity as a treaty partner (the Treaty of Waitangi was unlike other British colonial constitutions – it was a power sharing agreement, and maybe, just maybe, that is what is evolving now); or, it could become an impossible machine that just consumes energy instead of providing it. It is new ground, politically, but with the highly intelligent Dr Pita Sharples as Minister of Maori Affairs there is hope that genunine political traction in his hands will help transform Aotearoa, New Zealand.

In true business leader fashion, Key’s first act once forming this unusual government is to leave them to it while he meets at APEC with the rest of the worlds’ leaders. And he instantly is trying to get his view heard on centre stage – his voice is on the same side as GW Bush (who wants to meet with Key) – that the world markets need to be stabilized. Alan Garcia – the leader of Peru – and host to the conference has descibed the world market glitch as “growing pains”. Key seeks to increase regulation around times of economic growth. Good idea? We think so.

Meantime, American business leaders have warned that if the 60 trillion dollars worth of derivatives are not “deleveraged” from the market, we are facing “absolute carnage” on the market.

This APEC meeting is the last chance for the world’s leaders to:

a) override the legality of multiple insurance bets on assets not owned by the owner of the contract. By override, I mean cancel, burn, reduce to no value.

b) get honest about world trade, make it an even playing field with unbiased referees.

c) undertake a rewrite of the financial system to reduce the additiction to “growth” as the sole goal of economics. Stop labelling those, who oppose the logic of continual growth, communists.

Downside economics are not like upside. It is the opportunity for Governments to fix the broken veins and arteries so that productivity does has its rewards.

The 60 trillion dollars worth of speculative derivatives are simply of no real value. They do not represent growth of anything but the bank accounts of the henchmen. And the draining of all blood from the unwitting mortgage holders.