CantonDailyNewsBlog

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/577

Yeah, like he said.

America is a bastard society, composed of mongrels and sports.
We have no basis for tribal, racial or ethnic loyalties, like those healthy societies in the mid-east and Africa.

Instead, we are a ‘rising tides float all boats’ sort of operation where everyone’s self-interest is somehow tied to the general well-being of the entire country. We are ‘the melting pot’, for better or worse.

If the country degenerates into feudalism, then the middle class dies. If the middle class dies, then the source of creativity and innovation that has made us US will also die.

I like making enough money that I can spend time philosophising and puttering around on the farm.
But I see many many people around me in (and am just a few paychecks away from myself,) the state where they cannot afford the luxury of self-expression.

Life carries us along, like leaves downstream, whether we want to go or not.
We do what we can to help our kids and grandkids survive, what more can we do?
We can try to select and promote a system that provides reasonable benefits and safeguards to a reasonable number of people.

In the past, in other countries, this meant fighting alongside your tribe against all outside groups.
This is the biological imperative. In this country however, there is no tribe. If we tried to follow our strictly glandular instincts, we would fractionate into a thousand warring factions. We only have to look at Yugoslavia, Burundi or Iraq to see what happens when a sense of common identity is lost. Is this what we want America to become?

What is the alternative?

Let’s admit that economic classes DO exist.
Let’s get back to the idea that a ‘level playing field’ that favors good ideas over entrenched, inherited, political and economic power, is the best mechanism that we know of so far to engender technological and economic progress.

What does this mean in terms of real decisions?

1) restrict the influence that lobbyists have over legislation
2) restrict the influence that political advertising has over the electorate
3) break up media conglomerates and encourage regional media that are sensitive to regional needs
4) devise an uncorruptable, unfalsifiable, efficient method for voting and mandate its use

Now I know that these goals are vague, and would require actual participation and thought by large numbers of citizens.

The alternative? Line up here, fellow serf, to get your serial number tattoo.

All the bullsh!t we hear every day about the ‘fight against terror’, ‘bringing democracy to Iraqi people’, stopping WMDs before we see ‘mushroom clouds over Cleveland’, is just that: BULLSH!T.

Why are we in Iraq? To get the OIL. To make sure we can continue to GET THE OIL in the future. To prevent China from GETTING THE OIL.
Let’s stop the crap and acknowledge what this war is about. It’s not like this is the first war fought to control a vital natural resource. Economic warfare has a long and admirable history. But until we get clear on why we are there, and what our goals really are, we have NO F^CK!NG CHANCE of ‘winning’, whatever that means.

Every time you hear some tv putz bemoan the fact that the ‘war seems unwinnable’, ask yourself WHAT WOULD WINNING THIS WAR LOOK LIKE?

We need to do two things right away in order to improve the situation in Iraq.

1) acknowledge that we’re in it for the oil. Everyone else in the world knows this, it’s only the US public and the robot media crap-spielers who cannot bring themselves to admit this.

2) devise a plan to share the oil income with the Iraqi people. Enlightened self-interest and greed have solved many internecine struggles in the past, why is Iraq different?

The CR could take the lead by announcing this plan to the world, if they weren’t so busy pushing human interest blather, while waiting for the right to come up with Plan B.

Here is my plan for Iraq.

1) Use existing political subdivisions, or create new ones based on religious majorities, to partition Iraq into semi-autonomous ‘states’ or provinces.

2) Identify leading civic or religious groups within each political subdivision.

3) Promise a population-based share of Iraq’s oil revenues to the local authorities if and only if they can accomplish the following within their own subdivision:

a) stop street violence

b) improve the delivery of basic economic services such as electricity, water, waste disposal

c) organize local public services such as police, fire, ambulance, roads and health care

d) begin weapons confiscation programs

e) ban inflammatory religious or political rhetoric

These local authorities will be funded from Iraq’s oil revenues. If human nature has not changed, this promise of a fair share of the enormous (and yes, still only potential) wealth that could be generated from Iraq’s oil reserves will motivate the people of Iraq to get their act together as no “shock and awe” or “hearts and minds” campaign has been able to do so far.

Has this solution been tried yet? NO. Big oil, and their political lapdogs in the US, have prevented any discussion of this type of solution. Give peace a chance? Naw, let’s give money a chance!

Steve

politics at cantondailynews dot com

Anyone paying attention knows the war in Iraq is, will be, and always was about one thing. Oil.
Iraq is sitting on top of the second largest proven oil reserves in the world. And if the geologists’ guesses are right, the oil under the western desert should make Iraq’s oil supply the largest.

WMDs? Democracy? The end of terror? Horsehockey! This war was never about anything but oil. Ask Dick Cheney and the un-named folks who took part in his energy task force meetings that were held back in early 2001.

So what to do? If we bail from Iraq as George McGovern suggests, we lose control of the oil. And we need it. Hmmm… this could be a problem.

What if we decided to stop ripping off the people of Iraq, (and the gasoline consumers in the US) and actually produced and sold the Iraqi oil at a fair price.

And gave the people of Iraq their fair share of the profits?

And put an end to the unspeakably obscene profits enjoyed by the Anglo-Anerican Oil Company and its descendents?

(all of whom, by the way, are friends ((and sometimes relatives)) of the current administration.)

Would this be so wrong? To actually treat another country and its people fairly? I know it would break a two hundred plus year history of exploiting the rest of the world, but it just might solve two problems: our short-term need for oil, and our long-term need for stability in the middle east.

I think it would be a serious mistake to abandon the oil to our newest and biggest economical competitor, China. A big push by the new Democratic majority in congress to ‘cut and run’, to coin a phrase, will simply hand over a resource that we still need to our competition. (long term – we need alternative energy sources – but short term we drive gasoline-powered cars!)
Why won’t anyone in Washington ‘fess up and admit that our economic well-being (and the obscene profitability of big oil) is the real reason why we are in Iraq. We can’t hope to remedy this situation and get our troops out of harm’s way without a better understanding of why they were sent there in the first place.

Steve

politics at cantondailynews dot com