Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio’s 9th District lays it out on the floor of the House in plain English…

And, for kicks, a video that you probably don’t want to see. Just a hunch, but I don’t think God wants to see it either.

Norman Solomon adds devastating perspective to the realities of “too big to fail and too small to matter”…

“These times provide a crash course on the corporate state:

If a company like AIG is too big to fail, the government will rescue it. Mere people — too small to matter — are expendable.

The insurance industry is too big to fail. A person’s health is too small to matter, so — when it fails due to the absence or loopholes of insurance coverage — that’s tough luck.

The Defense Department is too big to fail. The people it’s killing in Iraq and Afghanistan are too small to matter.

The U.S. nuclear arsenal is too big to fail. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, undermined by Washington, is too small to matter.

Overall, the warfare state is too big to fail. The virtues of peace are too small to matter.

Agribusiness is too big to fail. Family farmers are too dirt-small to matter.

The leverage for the U.S. Treasury to subsidize Wall Street is too big to fail. The leverage to subsidize mothers and children kicked off welfare is too small to matter.

The political momentum for bailing out corporate America is too big to fail. The political momentum for funding adequate payment rates from Medicaid to reimburse healthcare providers is too small to matter.

The oil conglomerates are too big to fail. Global warming is too small to matter.

The prison industry is too big to fail. The need for preschool is too small to matter.

Corporate power is too big to fail. The ordeals of working people and want-to-be-working people are too small to matter.

Human worth as maximized by dollars: too big to fail. Human worth as affirmed by humanistic values: too small to matter.”

I’m going to do my damndest to sleep in tomorrow morning, so I thought I would post a few articles of interest for those of you in other time zones that will be up well ahead of me.

First, an article by the Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi which includes an opening that could have been penned by Bruce Springsteen…

“When you are too big to fail, you are bailed out.

When you are too small to save, you are down and out on the street.”

The second article, entitled Why does the US think it can win in Afghanistan?, is by The Independent’s Robert Fisk. Fisk is easily one of the most educated journalists in the world when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs, having been The Independent’s foreign correspondent in that region (based in Lebanon) for more than 30 years. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend his masterpiece - The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Nighty-night.

On the flight home today I got my hands on a copy of yesterday’s Guardian and wanted to bring attention to an article by Larry Elliott about the ongoing economic crisis that I thought incredibly well written…

“This was the week the world changed. It started with the US authorities trying to rescue Lehman. It ended with the US taxpayer preparing to pick up the tab for the mistakes of Wall Street’s elite.

It started with the prime minister sipping cocktails with financiers in Canary Wharf. It ended with the government slapping a ban on short-selling and Gordon Brown pledging to clean up the City. Britain’s biggest lender was rescued, and the Chinese government lined up to take a 49% stake in Morgan Stanley, one of the last US investment banks left after a week of carnage.

Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Hank Paulson, the Goldman Sachs tycoon who became US treasury secretary, have done more for socialism in the past seven days than anybody since Marx and Engels.

Over and above the extraordinary individual events, there was the capitulation of the prevailing economic model. History will show that the great postwar experiment with financial deregulation lasted from the first oil shock in 1973 to the third oil shock in 2008.

Between those years the constraints on capital imposed after the Great Depression were whittled away, leaving a world of easy credit, complex financial instruments, stratospheric salaries and supine regulators.

Like a spoiled child, what big finance wanted, big finance got.”

For Those That Were Wondering

For those wondering what I was doing in Toronto this weekend, I was playing a private show on Toronto Island. The weather was nice, it was a good time.

As Amy Goodman aptly put it this morning…

“The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver’s seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.”

You can socialize Wall Street but not healthcare. You can socialize Wall Street but not the oil industry. You can socialize Wall Street while, in the same breath, condemn nations that actually do socialize programs for the benefit of all people – labeling it counter to those dominant free market philosophies that supposedly keep the world grinning from ear to ear - until, that is, banks and insurance giants and investment firms start filing for Chapter Eleven. Then it’s okay for the government to step in and rescue them.

You can analyze the current economic crisis until you’re blue in the face, but the fact remains that good old fashioned greed is ultimately to blame. The United States is very lucky right now that its currency is the market standard, because were that not the case it would be, for lack of a better term, utterly fucked.

Billions of dollars do not materialize out of thin air to solve crises like this. That money has to come from somewhere, and it sure as shit ain’t from trees.

As the folks over at Crooks And Liars have been pointing out, Chris Matthews, like him or dislike him, has been rightly admonishing Republicans supporting Mr. McCain for distancing themselves from the responsibilities of the current administration, and the Republican party itself, regarding the current economic crisis. In a recent interview with Congressman Eric Cantor, Matthews said…

“The way we keep score in American politics is the party that’s in power for eight years and runs the White House — and 3/4 of the time runs the Congress and the White House — takes the heat when things go bad. Congressman Cantor, you’re trying to change the rules now and saying, ‘oh, if we take off our uniforms and don’t say we’re Republicans this week, the people will be fooled.’ I’ve never heard of that happening in politics.”

Matthews did the same thing in another recent interview with McCain Senior Policy Advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer…

“Matthews: But I don’t understand - John McCain is the nominee of the Republican Party.

Pfotenhauer: Yes.

Matthews: He’s going to stand in that debate next Friday night on the 26th, because he is the nominee of the Republican Party. That’s why he has a 50/50 chance of winning this election. Because he is the nominee of the Republican Party and the other guy is the nominee-Barack Obama-of the Democratic Party. How can you run away from the party whose platform you’re running on? I don’t understand how you can deny that you’re the in party, you’re the incumbent party.”

They’ll argue it until they’re blue in the face – the US economy isn’t in trouble. That would probably be why four of the nation’s major banks have failed in the last 6 months, there’s been seven straight months of job losses, inflation is at a 17 year high, there’s a massive housing crisis, and there have been bankruptcies across the retail sector.

The national deficit is outrageous, defense spending has grown cataclysmically out of proportion, and the power of foreign investment and ownership is unprecedented.

But everything’s fine.

Today, Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the country, filed for bankruptcy after being unable to recover from losing billions is the mortgage market. Of course, the Federal Reserve will increase its emergency lending program to help cover their ass. There is also a very real possibility that AIG [1] could also be facing collapse, but none of that should worry the average American, nor those in nations that do a considerable amount of business with the United States, such as Canada.

It’s just a bump in the road, everything’s fine.

Next to lawyers and politicians, there is surely a special place in hell for those that make a living playing economic silly buggers at the expense of others. I sincerely hope that as this crisis worsens the return of leased luxury cars goes through the roof and the individuals that have long profited from economic folly will find themselves having to abandon their luxury condominiums and houses in droves. Mind you, the real victims will remain those that can’t afford to be victimized further, as is always the case.

Here in Vancouver, property sales plummeted almost 54% between August of 2007 and August of 2008. The reason? The market is so over inflated that no one can afford to buy. So much for all those predictions that it would be remain steadfast through 2010. As it stands now, many of this city’s real estate hobbyists that thought it brilliant to jump into the game of flipping properties for profit are going to find themselves with considerable monthly mortgage payments to make and no one interested in buying. Again, I sincerely hope that they end up over extending themselves to such a point that Kraft dinner replaces their usual fare at the Blue Water Café. Who knows, maybe decent hard working people will be able to afford homes again without sacrificing their financial futures in the process.

It’s election season here in North America. The Americans are on deck, due up on November 4th. Here at home we’re at the plate, with Canadians going to the polls on October 14th.

In both elections, as far as I’m concerned, citizens will once again be faced with choosing the lesser of evils. Here at home I do not believe that any of the candidates represent what I would describe as a truly national leader. In the United States the stakes are higher, primarily with regards to the future of US foreign policy, which, whether you like it or not, affects the people of this nation more than most realize. Given that, if John McCain’s platform includes an extension of the Bush Doctrine, even if under some other guise, then Barack Obama seems the obvious choice. Unfortunately, the reality remains that if he is elected he will face the task of repairing the damage caused by the most damaging US foreign policy doctrine in the nation’s history, something that I believe will result in a one term presidency.

According to IPS, in a recent BBC poll conducted in 22 different countries on six continents, only one in four respondents claimed that they would rather see McCain in the White House than Obama. Of course, the world has little interest in the outcome of our upcoming federal election, and for good reason – the Prime Minister of this country is not the most powerful person in the world, nor has Canada led a destructive global charge over the last seven years that has seen an astonishing increase in arms proliferation, a global declination in human rights standards and the sanctity of international law (though we’ve contributed), and the adoption of a foreign policy doctrine that espouses the tenets of unilateral preemption. We have, of course, bent over for the Americans during that time, but that’s to be expected from a Tory Prime Minister that believes that by placating the Americans this nation will someone secure a stronger standing in the world’s elite ‘inner circle’.

Rather paradoxically, lost in all of this is the disastrous state of the US economy and its continued decline, the affects of which will also be felt here at home. When the US government is bailing out financial institutions left right and center, gifting them nothing short of ‘corporate welfare’, then one has to seriously examine those issues that are important to the common man, such as the state of healthcare, social welfare, and so forth.

The United States and the UK have today warned Iran that if they do not comply with UN resolutions regarding its nuclear program then tougher economic sanctions will be implemented, including oil and gas sanctions. The Bush Administration has also employed rhetoric suggesting that tougher measures are also a consideration and that ‘all options are on the table’.

In completely related news, oil hit a record high today, reaching almost $140 dollars a barrel before falling off at the end of the day to $134.57. Some experts have speculated that at some point during the summer, prices could climb as high as $200.00. Iran, of course, is the fourth largest producer of crude oil in the world, and while economic sanctions against its oil exports might hurt the Iranian populace, their affects will most certainly be felt globally, driving oil prices higher. With that, of course, comes the adverse affect that it will have on other commodities, as oil is required to produce them, causing their prices to increase. Ultimately, that will only push the United States closer to a recession, no matter how adamantly the government and the Fed claim otherwise.

It’s a dangerous game, especially given the fact that the Iranians know they have a card up their sleeve – that China, a permanent member of the UNSC, is one of Iran’s larger oil importers, and that in 2004 Iran and China’s Sinopec Group signed an agreement that it would purchase 250 million tons of liquefied natural gas over thirty years from the Iranians to develop the Yadavaran field. Given the precedent set by China with regards to Sudan and its oil exports from that country, it is a stretch to think that the Chinese would lend their weight to a unanimous UNSC resolution that, in any significant way, would seriously damage the Iranian oil sector.

Like it or not, the Iranians have room to maneuver. As The Telegraph reported today, the Iranians are not completely rejecting out of hand the recent overtures of the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. While many in the country have called the package a waste of time; others have claimed that its merits should be debated as a method with which to keep channels of negotiation open. But one message that does remain very steadfast is that the Iranians consider their right to develop nuclear power an internal matter and not one that should be decided by foreign powers, especially the United States given its military occupation of Iraq, threats of military action, and support of Israel. Of course, the flip side is that the Iranians are well known supporters of Hezbollah, and that (in the post 9/11 climate) the West fears that the Iranians might gift such a group a nuclear device or simply use one themselves to directly strike Israel. That, of course, is territory that I have covered exhaustively in previous entries, so use the search feature if you’re at all interested in my thoughts on the matter.

It’s no secret that former President Jimmy Carter has his detractors. His more recent attempts to confront the problems plaguing Israeli - Palestinian relations have drawn scorn from many quarters, with many labeling him anti-Israeli. And now, during remarks made at the recent Hay-on-Wye festival, he has done what no American President has ever dared to do – openly state that Israel possesses nuclear weapons.

Despite the fact that within the international intelligence community it is widely known that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal that ranges somewhere between 100 to 300 weapons, no major Western power has ever broke faith with Israel’s official policy of claiming that they do not possess one.

The Whistleblower

The existence of Israel’s nuclear program was made public in 1986 by The Sunday Times who ran an exclusive story based on information provided them by Mordechai Vanunu, once a nuclear technician at Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center. Numerous leading nuclear weapons experts, including former nuclear weapons designers Theodore Taylor (US) and Frank Barnaby (UK), substantiated the information provided by Vanunu to The Times prior to the piece being published.

Vanunu had left Israel in 1985, disenfranchised with his work and personally tormented by the realization of what it was producing. He traveled to South East Asia for a time before briefly relocating in Australia where he met journalist Peter Hounam of The Times. In the fall of 1986, Vanunu left Australia for the UK, where he relayed his story to Hounam and also provided personal photographs he had taken while working at the site.

In late September of 1986, the Israeli Mossad employed a female agent posing as an American tourist to lure Vanunu out of the UK rather than directly involving the British government in his detention. Vanunu traveled with Cheryl Bentov, who was known to Vanunu as Cindy, to Rome, where he was seized by Mossad agents, drugged, and smuggled out of Italy on a freighter. Once in Israel he was tried in secret for treason and then spent a decade in solitary confinement. In all, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Vanunu was not executed because, according to former Mossad director Shabtai Shavit , “Jews do not do that to other Jews.”

After Vanunu’s release he did what any man of conscience would do – he spoke out again, reiterating his position on Israel’s secret program. Despite the fact that Vanunu’s knowledge of the program was by that time technically inconsequential, he was placed under house arrest. Following that, his movements would be restricted and he was closely watched.

On the 15th of this month…

“The Norwegian Lawyer’s Petition called on the Norwegian government to urgently implement a three-point action plan within the framework of international and Norwegian law, to grant Vanunu asylum and permission to work and stay in Norway.”

Vanunu had applied for asylum in Norway in 2004 following his release. It was later learned that while approval for his initial application for asylum was sought by then Prime Minister Kåre Willoch, it was ultimately rejected to protect Norwegian – Israeli relations.

There are those that consider Vanunu a traitor, just as there are those that considered Daniel Ellsberg a traitor. I believe that what Vanunu did was vital for Israeli democracy in that he revealed something not just to the world, but to the people of Israel itself that had been kept from them by their elected officials. Because no matter the reasons, disclosure is one of the most crucial elements in any true democracy.

That said; it would seem that ‘true’ democracy isn’t something that any of us are all that familiar with.

Flat Out Hypocrisy

According to the government of Israel, the State of Israel does not possess nuclear weapons, nor has it ever possessed them. That is, no matter how you slice it, a flat out lie. Were the same scrutiny applied to Israel as is being applied to Iran, the IAEA would quickly discover that the government of Israel has been lying for decades. And even if the UN were allowed to inspect Israeli facilities and found evidence of a nuclear weapons program, the truth is that not a damn thing would be done about it.

Now, ask yourself a question. How is it that one nation can get away with lying about the possession of a significant nuclear weapons program for decades while others are attacked relentlessly before proof even exists that they have one? Why is it that the UN’s watchdog can be set upon, for example, Iran or Syria, and not be equally persuaded to scrutinize Israel? Where exactly does that sort of hypocritical power and protectionism come from?

Before even entering into the corrupt and wholly one sided protectionist stance that the Western world provides Israel, let’s state the obvious excuses used by those that ignore blatant contradictions.

First, because of a mistranslation that was then used to produce sensational headlines the world over, the government of Iran has claimed that it wants to ‘wipe Israel off the face of the map’. Of course, given their position on the existence of the Israeli state, the Iranians are easy targets. Mind you, that’s not to say that if some reasonable Israeli – Palestinian agreement could be reached that Iran wouldn’t ultimately back it, just that they’re viewed by most of the Western world as lacking what we refer to as ‘a sense of morality’. As far as we’re concerned they’re terrorist sympathizers and if they ever did get the bomb, would use it without hesitation or any consideration of the inevitable and utterly devastating consequences (I have written extensively about this subject, so use the search engine if you’d like to research past entries). Of course, throughout history, most of the world’s foremost powers have supported terrorist organizations, not to mention used militant groups and financial organizations to overthrow governments – such as the democratically elected government of Iran in the 50’s. But that’s of little consequence as it applies to the world post 9/11. The presentation of all things black and white to the public at large is a time honoured tradition, such as the removal of Mosaddeq in 1953 (Operation Ajax). He dared to attempt to nationalize the Iranian oil industry and for that he was painted a Communist by the West and removed from power. The Shah was then reinstated and British Petroleum’s stranglehold over Iran’s oil conveniently continued.

The support of military proxies, whether large or small, is nothing new. Israel represents such a proxy with regards to Western interests in the region, its nuclear arsenal included. It is a nation whose transgressions are widely overlooked while the transgressions of others are not, a hypocrisy that continues unabated precisely because of foreign interests and the protections that they are able to provide.

On September 11th one of the most repeated questions was - “why do they hate us?” The answer to that question, while technically complex, can also be viewed in a rather simplistic light. What have we done in the Middle East in a spirit of equality that has ever provided counter balance? The reality is – nothing. We have exploited natural resources, supported despotic regimes when they have suited out purposes, such as that of Saddam Hussein, and watched from the sidelines while such support has led to the degradation and suffering of societies. We then have the gall to claim that we champion freedom and represent beacons of global liberty and conscience. To think that those watching on the other side of the fence aren’t aware of our hypocrisy is more than ignorant. And, if we’re to cut the shit and be honest with ourselves, the people of New York and Washington paid for it seven years ago. And since then, troops involved in the subsequent wars promoted and produced in the wake of 9/11, along with countless civilians, have been made to suffer the fruits of that ignorance as well.

Why do they hate us? It is, in truth, more a question of why we believe we have the right to play God with others? And that’s not merely limited to Western powers, but others as well. The answer to that question is as old as the ages – arrogance bolstered by economic power and military might. That is the foundation on which every major empire in human history has sat, and the very same that always, without exception, has cracked and ultimately crumbled under the weight of its own excesses and senses of invulnerability and superiority.

Jimmy

So President Carter did the unthinkable – he spoke the truth. In doing so he will be labeled numerous things I imagine. This is, of course, the same President who was in power during the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis, and who, despite that experience, is currently urging the US to start talking to the Iranians rather than continuing their current policy of isolationism.

I’ll not deny that I believe Carter to be one of the better Presidents in US history. Despite those things that plagued his one term in office, he remains a man of considerable worth to the cause of repairing the damage done by the Bush Administration with regards to global perceptions of the United States. I am also one of those ‘nut jobs’ that believes the claims of former Reagan White House staff member Barbara Honegger, not to mention those of former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, that the October Surprise was not fantasy.

If the Israelis can still claim, with a straight face, that they don’t have a nuclear weapons program (and get away with it) then I see no reason to start discounting something as plausible as the October Surprise, despite the conclusions of investigations to the contrary.