Threats to the Dollar

China.org posted an article about the recent pact between Russia and China to use their own currency for trade rather than the dollar, long the reserve currency for international trade. There have been other rumblings of other countries making such a threat, Iran, Iraq under Saddam for example. This is a long term threat to the Dollar because it is the fact that it is a reserve currency. Once that status is removed the US dollar will be about is valuable as valuable as the Jamaican dollar (1:86)

Our esteemed comrade in arms from the Deskrat Chronicles has valuable commentary on the matter:

"The fed ploy of dumping that additional $600 billion into the Us economy has backfired badly --apparently the straw that broke the camel's back --but you know this option was quietly on the table a long time ago between china an...d Russia. How soon will other nations start to make the switch away from the dollar to conduct trade between themselves?

The Saudis still need the protection of the Us military umbrella and the house of Saud will likely remain loyal to their pledge of oil sales only in dollars --but what's clear is that nothing is written in stone anymore.

The euro is in trouble because of the bailouts of Ireland and Greece and potential bailouts of Portugal and Spain . It may be too weakened to compete for the dollar's old position as world's reserve currency. the Germans are also loudly pissed at the Us over this devaluation of the dollar by the fed.

In Portugal,the workers were said to have shut the country down with a type of general strike today over the bum economy . The French are pissed because their retirement age got raised due to economic woes. And the 'European debt crisis' just seem to worsen daily.

Back to the China, Russia deal, the Yuan is in a stronger position than the ruble and after this deal will emerge as more of a world currency to begin openly rivaling the dollar-- likely more among the Asian economic community first, then later among the rest of the world.

Putin in Russia no doubt, still bitterly remembers how the Us busted the ruble back in the 90s and looted Russia when they went 'free market' shortly after 'the fall of communism'. He's also pissed about the expansion of NATO and the proposed 'missile defense shield' supposedly to protect Europe and the Us against Iran --a nation which is Russia's neighbor and trading partner and no credible or logical military threat to Europe or the Us.

Putin and Russia still rely on oil production and selling other natural resources for hard currency, and the old Russian military sector and the selling of weapon systems to the rest of the world are still the mainstay of Russia's economic muscle--but how long can that situation last?

He's got to modernize his infrastructure and present the image of an more democratic environment, safe for business and individual rights to lure more investment funds into Russia. He's also got to crush the mafiya and at least appear to be rooting out all the corruption if he wants to draw in more outside capital to do business in Russia--also his labor force though highly educated and skilled is still being siphoned off by the lure of higher wages and opportunity over seas. Russia's population has been shrinking.

Of course it's china that's clearly the power in this Russo/Chinese play.

The Chinese were grumbling about issuing a gold backed yuan a few years ago to challenge the dollar ,and compared to the Us, the Chinese have been building hi-speed rail lines and modernizing economic infrastructure like-- a national with the objective of soon leading the world economically .

Meanwhile over here Obama can't even give away money to republican governors to build hi-speed rail and new infrastructure projects to unravel existing transportation knots and relieve key transport bottlenecks and lessen the Us over dependence on air and highway travel.

China is playing the game with skill, while the Us is performing like a drunk trying to play chess . It makes no economic sense at all the way the Us has sold out the best interests of its own economy and people --screwing up the most powerful engine of production that the world has ever seen.

In terms of Us interests and nationalism it makes no sense what they have done to their own country in the name of cheap labor and quick profits .

That 'hissing' sound you hear is the Us slowly sinking in the west."


I will add to this that the only reason that China has not pulled the run out from under the US is because it would have a disasterous effect on their holdings. To that end the Chinese have been reported diversifying their currency portfolio as to not me so heavily dependent upon the US dollar. Secondly, China still needs the US consumer to buy it's manufactured goods. Their home market and the "emerging markets" abroad have not matured to the point that they can give the US consumer the finger but there are far more people outside the US than in the US, eventually they are going to be the consumers that matter most. When that time comes, as my boys and I used to quip:

"Then yuh will know!"

If you Opt Out You Are a Terrorist

“TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the full body scanners and the enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into custody. Once there the detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as suspected terrorists . . . One sheriff’s office said they were already preparing to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror suspects.”

You cannot make this stuff up

Counterpunch

North Korean Missiles

And so this morning I awoke to news that the North and South Koreans have exchanged fire yet again. No really, this is common:

While skirmishes between the two countries have not been uncommon in recent years, the clash appeared to have been the most serious in decades and came amid heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear program.

Oh, so the real reason this is in the news because of that new nuclear facility. Alrighty then. Forgetting that for a minute, I'm wondering why anyone on this side of the earth has the nerve to say things like:

called on North Korea to “halt its belligerent action,”

I mean, not to be an apologist for North Korea, but has anyone else noted that the Korean War is, umm, not over?

Anyone?

There are thousands of US troops in South Korea over this. There is a whole demilitarized zone over this. Seriously folks; this is a war zone. Why would South Korea, knowing that they are still technically "at war" with North Korea, do military exercises in a "disputed area" and fire missiles or any other munition in any direction that could even remotely be thought of as headed towards North Korea?

For contrast, could you imagine during the cold war, or even now, a warship from the former Soviet Union rolling up off the East Coast and "testing missiles"? Can you? I can't. I cannot imagine NORTHCOM noting that and saying: "Oh it's just the old Ruskies testing shit they might send our way one day. No worries."

C'mon son.

Let me make it clearer. Imagine for a minute you have a house and you have a problem with your next door neighbor. Say that neighbor decides one day to take out one of his big guns and march around in front of your house. Say he decides to aim that gun of his at some of your windows, doorways, perhaps your car or even people sitting in your house. Exactly how would you feel about that?

Say that this neighbor then starts firing his weapon in the air. If you say you would be fine with all that, I call you a liar. A damn liar. Now just to add to the scenario: Imagine you asked the man to stop and he said: "dude I'm not on your property so you can't tell me shit."

How would you take that?

That's essentially what South Korea did. The belligerent party here is the South Koreans. However; since they are Allies of the US, they don't get called out for that stuff.

Garvey's Ghost TV 11-22-2010

What to do With the Men

I had a brief discussion yesterday in regards to the situation of black males in America. I won't recount it here but I wanted to speak on something that has bothered me for a while.

As indicated on the right side of the blog I micro-lend via Kiva to Africa. When I see discussions about micro-lending (or other aide) a lot of it is about women. I follow Kiva on twitter and most of the tweets in regard to lenders is around women. When I read about people lending a hand to developing countries it is invariably about women. Now you may think that I have a problem with lending to women. Absolutely not. What I have a problem with is this apparent attitude that men have it made (or fucked up so badly) that they don't need/want help.

One needs to ask the question: What are these men to do? One of the most dangerous things one can have in any society are men who have no connection to anything. Men who are unable to or do not see themselves as a necessary part of the family or society become a danger to themselves, to the women and children around them and to society at large.

One paper I read yesterday said that the wars were fought and caused by men and that was why women needed to be funded. The statement is factually true. There is no disputing that men have been the primary causes of war. The problem is that we must look at the circumstances. Why are so many men, say in the DRC, killing? What alternatives do they have? I don't ask that question lightly. In reality what employment can they get that has any reasonably rate of income and "benefits" do these men have? If they wanted to start their own businesses how many of them could qualify for a loan? And IF they had wives and children, how many of them could actually earn enough for all?

How many of the men in these areas are actually teenagers and young men whom their society has created no productive space for them and for whom the military (which is nothing but a gang) is the only place they perceive to be somewhere where they are valued (for as long as they can survive)?

How many of these men had been under brutal regimes and therefore resolved that the only way for a man to rule was through violence? How do we condemn them and yet not offer a meaningful alternative?

It is clear that where men have a stake in society and feel that they can provide for their families without resorting to crime, that those societies are able to flourish. Women are relatively safer and children are better educated. They are less likely to to have power trips and rape women and abuse children.

Personally I micro-lend to males and females equally (as possible). It makes no sense to me to brag about how I helped 1/2 the gender pair. It is to our benefit to anchor a man to his family and society and to provide help for him to do so.

Systems

Our comrade Dr. Welsing tells us that upon figuring out her unified theory of White Supremacy (racism) it was as if a veil had been lifted from her face and she could see. Like Neo in The Matrix, the truth was all around him but he was simply unable to comprehend what it was he was seeing. I just had one of those moments where a read of an article on one topic reveals to the reader much about the current system under which he or she lives.

The NY Times posted a piece entitled: "No, They're Not a 'Hitler' or a 'Stalin'" where we find all manner of open "secrets" about systems:

Communism has never once arisen — not in the U.S.S.R., not in China, not in Cambodia, not in Cuba, not in Vietnam, not in North Korea — as the cumulative result of social reforms. It was always brought by violent revolution carried out by a fanatical minority, usually during or right after war. Once in power, committed revolutionaries sought to transform agrarian countries such as Russia or China into modern industrial states by oppressing peasants and applying political terror.

Of course this particular author is fixated on Communism but lets be clear, the US "democracy" was founded on bloody revolution (two of them actually). The French democracy was founded on revolution as well. All of these revolutions were carried out by the people who had reached a point where their wish to be free of an unresponsive and oppressive government outweighed the risk of death at the hands of said government (or ruling class). In the case of China, Cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam,etc. we have a clear case of rebellion against the White Supremacist "West" who had colonized their lands and/or greatly disrupted the normal activities of their people. Let's be clear about that. The "fanatical minority" were the most organized and most motivated of a mass of oppressed and marginalized people in those societies. But as is typical of self-serving "western" authors, these people are marginalized and maligned for political ends.

And while the author may gloat about how Russia and China oppressed peasants, he conveniently leaves out the oppressed peasants of America. The same oppressed peasants who were used to build the industrial base of America.



Continuing:

After World War II, wise Europeans and Americans supported social reforms precisely as a way to hinder the spread of Soviet power. The Red Army had brought communism to Eastern Europe; the question was how to prevent its further spread to the nations liberated by the Western powers.

One thing that we learn when studying governments, corporations and other organizational systems is that once they are created they operate with the primary objective of preserving themselves. The persons who run and work for these organizations have a vested interest in seeing them continue. Eventually those persons will do whatever they deem "necessary" to maintain and protect that system. Knowing this the above paragraph can (and perhaps ought to) be read as "Wise Europeans and Americans supported social reforms precisely as a way of protecting their own power against those who could be motivated to remove such power from them."

Continuing on:

In war-torn Western Europe, democratic politicians of the left and right agreed that the extension of state services was the best way to assure democracy and to prevent revolution.Their policies were backed and enabled by the farsighted American aid provided by the Marshall Plan. American statesmen understood that the best way to prevent radical politics was to create contented societies.

Ahh the co-option game. having established that most governments have been established by some sort of revolution. One of the first things these governments do is to enact laws about "treason" and about waging war against the government. I have always thought it highly ironic that any state established by the people who acted in their group interest to remove an oppressive government, to then turn around and criminalize the very same acts they committed in order to free themselves from oppression. The above quote underscores the idea that the state acts to pacify the masses in order to prevent them from being revolutionary.

I recall one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine. The head Vorta was discussing how to rule the quadrant. The worst thing would be outright and direct violence against the population. The best thing would be to convince the population that surrender and life under the new regime is in their own best interest. Save the violence for the most rebellious. This is essentially what the quoted text describes. by expanding social services, the people are unlikely to rebel because they will believe that the their best interests lie in the state. The state does not have to coerce obedience to it, it manipulates it's subjects into subjugating itself to the state interests. This is not to say that providing services is bad. It is to say that if a revolutionary group is arguing for a more equitable solution to whatever the population is bothered by, the powers that be will find some means of co-opting that idea to either implement in a way that serves them, or act to marginalize it.

Lastly:

Comparisons with Hitler are, if possible, even more far-fetched. The ideological foundation of the Nazi regime was racism. Hitler was a racist who believed that some Germans were real Germans and other Germans were not: the Jews, the handicapped, the long-term unemployed, the homosexuals, the Roma, the biracial. He thought that democratic politicians of the left should be placed in concentration camps. Hitler saw the outside world through the prism of a racial hierarchy, with Germans at the top and Jews and Slavs as racial enemies to be eliminated. He began the worst war in history to gain a colonial empire for the people he saw as a racial elite and killed millions of Jews and other Europeans along the way.

Racism as broadly defined by the general public may have been the foundation of Nazism, but to be sure the actual racist ideology of Nazism was White Supremacy. Nazism was in no way different than the common ideology surrounding the African before Nazism. Indeed Nazism is but a logical outgrowth of the White Mans' Burden. What was really different about the ideology of Hitler and the ideology of King Leopold as it regarded the Congo? Or that of the British in East Africa, or the French in West Africa? To be sure there weren't ovens, but the base ideology of the dominance of the white race (however defined) was and is clear.

in any case this piece is a good read for those who's eyes are open.

Truth Hurts

If truth be known, there is more justice in Burma under the military regime than in the USA. The military regime put Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in her own home.

The military regime did not throw her into a dungeon and rape and torture her under cover of false allegations and indefinite detention without charges. Moreover, the military “tyrants” released her either as a sign of good will or under pressure from international human rights groups, or some combination of the two.

But, alas, in America macho tough guys approve the virtual strip search of their wives and daughters by full body scanners and the grouping by TSA thugs of three-year old children screaming in terror.

Paul Craig Roberts via Counterpunch

Government is like...

On This Week a commentator said that the [federal] government is like the city government that puts up a traffic light after there have been four accidents. I thought that was an interesting analogy. I'd like to extend that thought.

If the government is like the agency that puts up a traffic light after 4 accidents then Democrats are like the safety experts that declare that the one traffic light is not enough but that there ought to be traffic lights at every intersection, speed cameras, red light cameras and cops at every intersection. The speed limit ought to be dropped to 5 MPH anywhere a person could possibly be walking and mandatory psychological examinations should be given to anyone caught breaking the rules because clearly those people are maladjusted and need to be properly re-socialized . Because, by God, accidents are happening and we just can't have that.

Republicans are the people who, late to the scene have no clue why there is a light at the intersection and decide that it is a case of big government interfering with the public and therefore have the traffic light removed. When the accidents resume at a nice clip, they then point to the agency as an example of incompetent governing and why that agency ought to be abolished and if they are elected they will solve that problem.

Libertarians are the ones who say that the traffic light impedes on the right of the people to freely move about and therefore not only should the traffic light be removed but the street, sidewalk and related items ought to be removed as well and the citizens will have to pay for road and sidewalk immediately adjacent to their property, if they so choose, and can set whatever rules they want for their piece of road.

Garvey's Ghost TV 11-8-2010 Dred Scott Alert II