'Ajami': The Dark Ages

Excellent summary of what’s happening in the Maghreb, and analogy to ‘LA wildfire’ or wildfires in general. As in a wildfire, there’s not much fire departments can do. They’ll make a brave show of it, but their biggest partner in ultimate success is either concrete or a squall. Summary excludes the firebrands. We are looking forward and wondering how the chaos will end. Speculation in the middle going forward is never helpful. It’s like crossing a busy street with one’s eyes closed.

The same thing happened (and is still happening to some extent) with regard to our own housing meltdown. Our chronicle of same invariably starts in the middle, with the banks. Mention of the government’s role still lies buried in the bin of unmentionables (unless it’s Bush, of course).

Who stands to benefit from the chaos in the Maghreb and elsewhere? Who started it? Answer those questions and you arrive at the solution to the riddle of how it is likely to end. Who is the most organized; the most brutal? If the timeline going forward is predictable, the start and finish of the thing is apt to involve the same player(s).

For those who still believe that nothing has essentially changed; that things will return to some semblance of stability; that the next U.S. president will restore us to our former selves, take heed. Events, both here and abroad, are not unrelated or reversible. Houses burnt in a wildfire remain burnt. Rebuilding is arduous and there remains the question of whether homeowners would even retain an appetite for risking going through the whole thing again. Many will, of course. But many others will decide to relocate, leaving a scar of abandonment on the land.

Saw “Ajami” (2009), a film by Scandar Copti (a Christian Israeli Arab) and Yaron Shani. Critics compare this film to ‘Boyz N the Hood’ (LA), ‘The Wire’ (Baltimore) of ‘City of God’ (Rio de Janeiro). I’ve only seen the latter. All are said to be about gangs and gang justice. “Ajami“ happens to be set on the outskirts of an Arab ghetto in the Israeli city of Jaffa.

“Ajami” is not a great film, but certainly better than average. What jumped out at me was that it represented what many fear will be the “new world order” in which there still are people, money, and crime. Whereas in our system, the value of money is based on work, talent and the ability to innovate, in the “new world order” money will be based on protection. It will be a violent world and not one in which most of us can easily compete. It is the world of brutality, domination, oppression and ever changing players. This does not bode well for the individual, for human rights, dignity, and progress. The Dark Ages come immediately to mind - and, once initiated, it can last for a very long time.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Nothing Left To Cut

Must be nice for grown, well-dressed men to sit around a long shiny table and wax importantly about worn swatches of their academic expertise, trying to get all the pieces to fit. No matter how much cutting they do, I can guarantee, they will come up short. We’re essentially broke, but let no one even whisper it. They are now down to trading IOU’s in the burnt patches. We’ve long since scraped economic and political bedrock; there’s basically no where left to go.

A while ago the bankers tried the same thing. And it blew up in their faces - as it should.

It’s like having entered a cul-de sac. Only the turning radius of the car we’re driving does not permit us to turn around. The only way out is in reverse.

It’s always difficult to give a shape to something. It’s even harder to abort. There are always egos involved. Sometimes a lost driver will drive hundreds of miles before admitting he had taken a wrong turn back in Omaha. All the issues on the table right now involve destruction - everyone is crying out to be saved. And there are only so many lifeboats.

There are basically two camps at work here. One seeks to promote the illusion that nothing is impossible - that gravity can be reversed; that ice can be made not to melt or water not to freeze. (Stranger things have happened: Just this week, NASA scientists announced they had found a life form that lives on arsenic.) The other seeks to return to an acceptance of traditional cures - like bloodletting. The cynic says it’s already gone to far, that nothing we can do will fix it; that the patient will die in any case. So, let’s just grant him a pain-free passing.

Every one of these points is debatable. Time, however, remains the rub - and it’s egos that time has a habit of suffocating. We should have thought of all that before - while there still was time. Not too long ago it seemed a good idea to kill the economy in favor of votes; as it was a good idea to kill God. Now, we find that all the things we’ve killed off - all that lies scattered in ruins around us - still has the capacity to sting.

The only answer, of course, is to keep cutting; to stay abreast of the rapidly spreading disease. Often, taking a knife to a cancer has the effect of making it more aggressive. …we cut more and more until there is nothing left to cut.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Pay-Off

I’m not surprised that the administration has decided to bail out European banks. Europe still sees Obama as the bright, young articulate; noble descendant of slaves who has come (back) to exact his revenge. They don’t yet see him as the radical bomb thrower - too lazy to do his homework - most of us have now come to know.

European bankers are not stupid. They know exactly that the whole financial mess started in the U.S. with the housing crisis; which in turn affected bank balance sheets; which then caused bankers to spread the damage around by disseminating toxic IOU’s all over the world - including Europe - hoping that no one would notice.

European bankers are not lapdogs of the American government. They are free to speak out and expose certain truths, especially in regard to who might have been involved in the initial fraud; and they could name the names of the corrupt institutions (Fannie and Freddie) and politicians (Frank and Dodd among many others) who perpetuated and protected these schemes to their own advantage. These have not gone away and crawled under rocks in abject shame. They are still with us and, in many instances, still formulating policies that rob the American worker of the fruit of his labors - all, in name of some half-baked anti-capitalist notion of ‘social justice‘.

Our paying off the Europeans amounts to a tacit admission that none of it has worked as advertised; that we were essentially at fault for having promoted such claptrap under questionable guise. We are paying them off to buy their continued silence and thus save the skins of our guilty. If they (European bankers) were to talk, the revelations would put even Wikileaks to shame.

The global financial meltdown (which we started) can no longer be blamed on capitalism alone. Socialist and communist countries have not been immune. I am not one to blame America at the drop of a hat, but this has been our fault from the start. If we are to apologize for anything, this is it; if we are on the hook for reparations, this is it. If we should not be able to afford the cost of making amends, or if there is a political price to pay, so be it. What we have done to get this slime ball rolling is criminal - entirely worthy of Interpol investigation and subsequent World Court proceeding - and the Europeans are well aware of it. And we know that they know.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Wikileaks: Promoting Shame

Of course the Chinese knew what N. Korea was up to. N. Korea is a Chinese proxy. N. Korea could not exist without China. The idea that N. Korea would do anything behind China’s back is ludicrous.

Iran too has its proxies that are hyperactive in the Middle East. JB has spent many hours detailing how it works. Our State Department, for public consumption, points fingers at N. Korea, Syria, Hezbollah, etc. to keep from pointing fingers at Beijing and Tehran. What exactly is gained by this strategy remains unclear.

The Wikileaks matter is quite fascinating in this regard. Washington too has its proxies many of whom have dried up (or are in the process of drying up) particularly since our current president has been in office. He is now claiming that the Wikileak document dumps represent a security risk. This is pure lip service on his part. His actions speak otherwise. Obama has done nothing to reign in Wikileaks. The military is screaming that it has put our soldiers at risk. True enough, but Obama has done more to put them at risk than Wikileaks ever could. No need on this website to go into details. Everyone is pretty much up to speed on how our own rules of engagement - threat of court martial right here at home - have undermined our military effort.

Now, that the leaks are beginning to put the lie to the public face of our diplomatic goals, Washington is starting to make noise (in protest). “It’s embarrassing,” goes the refrain from the State Department. Embarrassing? Quite.

The global consensus, fueled in large part by Washington itself, has been that anything Washington does is in many ways self-serving, duplicitous, and essentially evil. That is why U.S. aid to the starving or sick in Africa is routinely re-packaged as to erase any sign of its origin. Embarrassed too is anyone who may be exposed as having collaborated with Americans on any level.

Obama does nothing. We can assume Wikileaks serves his purposes. The next leaks are said to pertain to our banks. More nails to hammer the coffin lid on capitalism shut.

Finally, the common denominator in all this frantic leaking is America. There are no leaks with regard to Beijing, Moscow or Tehran. Oh, there are leaks alright, but they're not splashed all over the NYT which is only interested in America’s sins and in promoting its shame.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

Taxation Is Theft

Truth be told, nobody has any idea of what all lies buried in this toxic landfill we loosely refer to as our ‘economy‘. Even as far back as WWII there wasn’t enough honest money to fight the war. Every metric concerning our debt and spending is bogus. I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would still accept paper money for goods and services rendered. JB is generous when he says this might take years to unravel - try decades or never.

Every dollar in our wallets should have I. O. U. printed on it in large letters. We’ve been drifting, running on fumes for so long and nobody remembers anymore where the anchor is. And, honestly, Obama’s contribution to the whole mess has been minimal. His sole failing was the result of his political bent which caused masses of people to stop working, which then exposed the whole thing as a fraud.

Not capitalism, nor communism, no ism at all can take root on what we’ve managed to build here. It’s turnrd into pure, unadulterated quicksand, this pathetic ponzi scheme; this pitiful house of cards; this colossal failure that has yet to fully reveal itself. Banks are guilty only insofar as they’ve colluded with their political masters of both parties ever since Wilson.

It’s finally dawned on us that we’re dealing with outright theft. Taxation has become theft.

Even the most corrupt and heartless among us would hesitate to enslave certain demographic groups for a second time. And that is just how it’s worked out. To maintain the illusion of impartiality, the plan going forward is to beggar us all.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/