Review: The End of America (Naomi Wolf)

Remember the mid-2000's when President Bush really was running roughshod over the laws of the United States of America, and working real hard to establish the basis for a real fascist regime over the United States? Maybe you did not know about this, but I'd written a bunch of posts on this which you can access via the category tags at the top of this post. The End of America is a 2008 movie by journalist Naomi Wolf which was at the time a strident urgent warning against the illegal excesses and overreach of the Bush II administration. Today, with Obama being slimed right and left as a 'Fascist' it's worth watching this movie as a reminder of our recent past.

The movie is structured around 10 steps Ms. Wolf has identified which dictatorial governments around the world use to put their population under autocratic rule. To explain each of the steps, Naomi uses examples of Bush II Administration actions that implement the steps.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

Today, it would be a useful yardstick to compare the Bush II Administration excesses with the actions of the Obama Administration, to determine just how close Obama is to being an actual proto-Fascist as people are claiming.

The thing that I've noticed about the right wing blowhard Republicans is they tend to accuse others of the things they themselves are doing. Accusing Obama of Fascism would be par for the course, given the sort of autocratic tendencies the Republicans have followed since the Bush II years.
It's also true that the overreach by the Bush II Administration established principles of Presidential Behavior which the Obama Administration could be making use of. As one of the speakers in The End of America said, lost freedoms are like sand slipping between your fingers. The freedoms lost under the Bush Administration won't be automatically returned to we the people, instead we the people must fight to regain them.

One thing I'm wondering from watching this movie is to what extent it acted to inspire the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party people are activisting for a return to Constitutional Rule, and The End of America closes with a call for a return to Constitutional Rule. I suspect that the Tea Party people may have a different idea of Constitutional than does Naomi Wolf.

Interview - Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty - is a video interview of Ms. Wolf in 2008 discussing the movie, the book, the above stuff, etc

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

In a stunning indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, best-selling author Naomi Wolf lays out her case for saving American democracy. In authoritative research and documentation Wolf explains how events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century‚'s worst dictatorships such as Germany, Russia, China, and Chile.

The book cuts across political parties and ideologies and speaks directly to those among us who are concerned about the ever-tightening noose being placed around our liberties.

In this timely call to arms, Naomi Wolf compels us to face the way our free America is under assault. She warns us‚-with the straight-to-fellow-citizens urgency of one of Thomas Paine‚'s revolutionary pamphlets‚-that we have little time to lose if our children are to live in real freedom.

The End of America: Director's Cut

This two-disc director's cut is jam packed with never-before-seen bonus material, including: an exclusive interview with Anthony Romero, president of the ACLU; a detailed interview with Daniel Ellsberg, former military analyst; a featurette with New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof, and much more. Along with the rest of America, best-selling author and feminist Naomi Wolf was overwhelmed by the swell of conflicting information and the sudden march to war after 9/11. Wolf looked to history to help her understand the dramatic changes she believed she was witnessing, and discovered the disturbing similarities between post-9/11 US policy and that of historically fascist regimes such as Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Wolf authored her next book, THE END OF AMERICA, which demonstrated that the United States was on a remarkably certain path toward ending democracy. Taking the thesis of her book to the streets, Wolf set out on a national tour to discuss the evolution of America from a functional democracy into a closed, fear-driven society with a terrifying absence of due process. In this profound and eye-opening film, Award-winning veteran documentarians Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK, THE TRIALS OF DARRYL HUNT) accompany Wolf as she discusses America's dangerous passage towards becoming a society of fear and surveillance, and expresses her plea to restore our nation's most cherished values.

Review: I.O.U.S.A. - America's big debt crisis told through a skewed lens

How much is the Federal Debt as a percentage of GDP? Do you understand why that's a critical problem? What does it mean that China is the worlds biggest exporter, and the U.S. is the worlds biggest importer? What do you think is the real cause for the current economic mess? Just how fiscally irresponsible was George W Bush and the other Republicans since 1980?

I.O.U.S.A. is a movie that goes over these questions and go. It's an excellent movie in many respects that I largely agree with. It is also a partisan movie which means I expect it's presenting a slanted point of view, especially considering the main person, David Walker, was President Bush's Comptroller General. The movie focuses on a nationwide Fiscal Wakeup Tour with David Walker and the Concord Coalition going around the country teaching what they said to be a message of fiscal discipline both for the national government and for individuals.

I.O.U.S.A.

The movie begins with a voice saying "I would argue the biggest threat facing the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility". Of course at the moment I'm writing this is after the death of Osama bin Laden. We know he wasn't hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, but in a well off lifestyle in a fancy home in Pakistan.

Immediately after that quote, with "fiscal irresponsibility" still hanging in your ears, it launches into a series of statements by U.S. Presidents about the need to conquer the national debt. The first being Pres. Reagan, who was one of the most egregious of the national debt builders we've had.

In that series of quotes was Pres. Clinton who, upon signing the first balanced Federal Budget, declared the U.S. was on track for budget surpluses for the next 25 years. Later in the movie they talked with Robert Rubin, Clintons Treasury Secretary, who explained this further. He claimed that they had found a political consensus around fiscal discipline, and when he left office in 1999 he thought it (fiscal discipline) had become a permanent part of Washington. But the next President, GW Bush, threw that all out the window.

The theme of the movie is to discuss four deficits: Budget, Savings, Balance of Payments, Leadership

Budget Deficit: There's a history with federal budget deficits going back to the Revolutionary war, and every war has been funded by running a debt. In the past the government had enough fiscal discipline to pay down the debt after the war was finished. Starting in the 1960's the government stopped that policy. And more egregiously, President Reagan was the first U.S. President to run big deficits for a reason other than war. His theory was the idiotic trickle down give tax cuts to the rich and eventually it'll make us all rich idiocy.

The important measure is the Deficit as a percentage of GDP, or Gross Domestic Product. Essentially that ratio is what determines how sound the economic situation is, and the ability of the country to handle the debt load.

Again the history of Deficit/GDP is that the percentage rose during war-time, and after the war it would drop again. Beginning with Reagan the percentage began climbing, and climbing, with the only pause being the Clinton years. The GW Bush years were a precipitous rise in this percentage.

Low Savings Rate: Much of the movie centers around a low savings rate in the U.S. In the past we were encouraged to have a high savings rate but since WWII the mantra has been to spend, spend, and spend some more. Consumption is what drives the economy today. As a result many people are living paycheck-paycheck with very little savings. Silly people.

David Walker is quoted saying the high rate of foreign ownership of the national debt is because of the low savings rate. Uh... I thought this was because of the high imbalance of trade but I suppose a high savings rate would mean more of the national debt is owned by Americans.

This is a national security issue - the high rate of foreign ownership of the national debt.

Balance of Trade / Payments: This is the ratio of exports and imports. A factoid tossed out during the movie is to list the countries by their trade balance. China exports the most, hence imports the most money, and the U.S. imports the most, hence exports the most money.

A factoid said right after that is: Buying more than you're selling results in your trading partners owning you.

This was demonstrated by an article written by Warren Buffet - Squandersville versus Thriftville. In Squandersville the mantra is spend spend spend, whereas in Thriftville the mantra is Live beneath your means and a high savings rate.

Basically the U.S. is Squandersville and China is Thriftville. The pattern is that Squandersville is exporting money and will eventually run out of money and will have to start selling parts of its hard assets like land and buildings. Eventually Thriftville will end up owning every square inch of Squandersville.

For a practical example they went to a scrap yard showing machines grinding up cars to make scrap metal of the sort used in mills to make new metal. The owner of the scrap yard explained they used to send the metal to domestic (U.S.) mills but nowadays they're sending it to foreign mills in China and elsewhere. In other words, the U.S. has killed off its industrial base and the only export we have is scrap metal.

Another assertion made is the immorality of one generation to spend the next generation's money. That's what happens when the government runs up such a big debt. This generation, us, we who are enjoying the fruits of that debt, we cannot pay off that debt. Who will pay it off? Our children?

Leadership Deficit: The movie talks a lot about the lack of political will to do anything about this. The responsibility lies with everyone involved in government. Earlier I mentioned how it's Republican Presidents who've been the worst about this, and they have, but really it's the whole set of people in Washington. They've become addicted to wasting our money.

The movie was filmed before the crash of 2008.

Given that the main person in the movie, David Walker, was GW Bush's Comptroller General, and hence in charge of the General Accounting Office, it strikes me that this guy has quite a bit of responsibility for the crash of 2008. He spoke a great line of reasoning in the movie about fiscal responsibility, but the GW Bush Administration was anything but fiscally responsible. In fact the movie itself does point a finger at the Bush Administration and while it doesn't outright say they were fiscally irresponsible, it strongly implies this.

Somehow the movie does not lay any blame on David Walker, however. But that could be because the whole thing is an infomercial for the Pete Peterson Foundation and a project which David Walker was hired by the Peterson Foundation to lead. In other words, one slant in the movie is to present the Concord Coalition and the Peterson Foundation and David Walker as saviors of mankind with a mission to educate us on fiscal responsibility.

I personally support having more people educated on fiscal responsibility. I just have a hunch that this movie is slanted towards a partisan message of some sort. In particular I hear in the movie some echo's of some of the Tea Party nonsense.

A recommended movie - just take it with a grain of salt.

Review: This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Do you ever think about how they determine movie ratings? Neither do I. What if the movie ratings system were being used to skew our society in a certain way? The movies are a large part of the national conversation in the U.S. and the content of the movies in some way influences the course the country takes. What if the movie ratings were awarded by a secretive board of people, with almost no right of appeal, where the head of the organization was a high ranking former Washington insider (an assistant to a U.S. President), and determined directly how widely a movie will be distributed (or not)?

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a deep look at the MPAA, the motion picture ratings system, and the effect it has had on certain movies.

Primarily however the movies being affected were highly sexual. But a question asked several times was, why are the movies with sex in them given tough ratings when the movies with extreme violence do not? Why is it bad to show sex scenes to children, and not bad to show violence to them?

The U.S. already has an extreme culture of violence. Maybe the movies reflect that culture of violence, as does the ratings system, or maybe the movies and the rating system is skewing the country into more violence?

In one scene of the movie they show a clip of the Columbine killers roaming their high school, and then discuss the connection between movie violence and real life violence. While the exact mechanism isn't 100% clear they asserted that it's widely recognized by experts that the repeated viewing of graphic violence affects behavior.

Many of the film makers interviewed had made movies with intense sexual content, in some cases earning NC-17 ratings for very beautiful movies which happened to show women having extreme pleasurable orgasms. It seemed to them that the ratings board's problem was with the extreme pleasure. Again, this is backwardsly weird unless the point of the board was to encourage violence and downplay other memes and images.

One track of the movie is interviews with several film-makers about their experience with the rating of their movies as well as the appeals process. For example the maker of one movie described how her movie earned an NC-17 because it showed pubic hair, and puzzingly asked how in Basic Instinct they got an R rating while showing Sharon Stone's vagina full on. Over and over the film ratings board was described as fickle, and arbitrary.

They also explained how while the rating board is kept secret from the public supposedly to prevent undue influence, the rating board members do have direct contact with film makers.

In the other track in the movie, a pair of private detectives were hired to conduct an in-depth investigation. They parked outside the MPAA building, took license plates numbers, placed phone calls, went to lunch at places raters were having lunch, raided the trash cans of raters, and so on. Over time they were able to learn the identities of many raters, get background information, show pictures, and so on.

Supposedly the raters are "parents" of children, but in practice many of the raters either don't have children or their children are grown. Supposedly because raters are parents, that their ratings will act to protect children. But it's clear this is bogus.

A string of facts are strung throughout the movie about Jack Valenti, the chairman of the organization. He had been a high level Presidential staffer and was suddenly sent by Washington to work in Hollywood and to set up this ratings board. The implication is that Valenti was sent by Washington to establish political control over the movies Hollywood produces.

In short the movie presents a censorship board that does their best to present an image of helping movie makers understand how the content of their movies affect the audience the movies will find. That strikes me as I write it as a very curious phrasing, but hearing it in the movie sounded more natural. The affect of a rating (NC-17 for instance) is to limit when/where the movie can be shown. An NC-17 and it simply won't be showable in most theaters and be limited only in places that specialize in THOSE movies. While it's movies about sex which usually earn these ratings, and our society has strange issues around sexuality, it's a really important question to ponder... why doesn't violent imagery receive the same treatment?

What do you think? Please leave a comment below.

Buy: This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Review: The Economics of Happiness

A new movie to burst on the scene, The Economics of Happiness, gives one the opportunity of an hours contemplation on the role of local economies, global economies, the mad rush of modern life, the simplicity of rural traditional villages, happiness, contentment, feelings of well-being and connection with our fellow travelers through life, etc. Does globalization make us happy or unhappy, give us security or insecurity, etc? Do all the gadgets and gizmos of modern life bring happiness, or are they a false panacea leaving us wanting more?

One major theme the movie revisits over and over is the people of Ladakh, in Tibet. The main narrator explains she's been working with the people there for a couple decades. When she first arrived the people were happy, they all had plenty of food, plenty of free time, large houses, etc. Then the Chinese built a subsidized road to their area, brought in subsidized food in subsidized trucks with subsidized fuel, and the local economy collapsed to become subservient to the global economy.
In essence that's what has happened everywhere over the last 500 years beginning with the European colonization of the world. That colonization led to the giant mega transnational corporations we have today and today's demand for deregulation and globalization is simply a lather-rinse-repeat cycle of the global economic powers subverting local economies and entrapping the people into global economic relationships.

This is how the movie makers interpret e.g. the colonization era. In the colonized nations, whether they were African or South American or Asian etc, there were local self-reliant communities, world-wide. Each were able to feed themselves and each had local cultural practices and languages which fit the local conditions. But the colonizers purpose was to build global economic power systems, just as todays transnational corporations still work to build and maintain global economic power systems. What's different are the mechanisms and scale, but it's the same pattern.

The movie makers suggest that this pattern is bad in many ways. It destroys local connections, local values, local self reliance, and so on. It makes us unhappy, breeds insecurity, accelerates climate change, destroys livelihoods, etc.

Globalization is defined as: 1) The deregulation of trade and finance in order to enable businesses and banks to operate globally; 2) The emergence of a single world market dominated by transnational companies. It is said to be the most powerful force for change in the world today.
Globalization would not be so horrid if it weren't for the massive scale world-side shipping industry that can whizz stuff around the world in a flash. A bit of ridiculosity the movie discusses is some of the globalized transactions that seem utterly ridiculous. For example Tuna that's caught in the U.S., shipped to China for processing, then shipped back to the U.S. Or Apples grown in England, shipped to South Africa to be waxed, then shipped back to England.

Because of this transportation system we're now sitting in each others laps. One reason traditional local economies worked is due to the inefficient transportation of former times. But as transportation became global, especially over the last 20-30 years, it would naturally affect local economies. Transportation technology is what puts us in contact with our brethren on the other side of the world.
The last third of the movie presented many leading figures in the relocalization movement talking about the value of local economies, local food, local culture, and so on. Many of the people preaching relocalization came to it via peak oil or climate change, but the movie discussed it as a reawakening of traditional culture.

What does humanity lose when it loses a local tradition, or a local language? Just as biodiversity helps forests etc be more resilient, so too would cultural diversity help our global society be more resilient. In theory. What are we losing by heading towards a monoculture where every place is the same as every other place?

The Economics of Happiness is on a world-wide tour at this time, and local screenings are being arranged around the world. Visit the web site for more information.

Links: 

http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/

Review: Waiting for Armageddon - Fundamentalists believing literal words in the Bible

Over on Amazon.Com they summarize the movie thusly: "Waiting for Armageddon explores the culture of 50 million American Evangelicals who believe that Bible prophecy dictates the future of mankind and that Israel and the Jewish people play pivotal roles in ensuring Christ's return. The film raises questions regarding how this theology shapes U.S. - Middle East relations and may encourage an international holy war." Let's unpack this and ponder the mind-set which see's the events going on around us as proof that the end times prophecies in the Bible are not only accurate predictions of the future, but are unfolding right now. Ponder the mind-set of a 15 year old young lady unhappy that she won't have a chance to marry and have children, because Armageddon will happen before she has a chance.

There are people in the U.S. and elsewhere with that mind-set. For that matter the mind-set isn't new, as there have been apocalyptic end-times cults for a long time. I grew up in a church with a similar mind-set, The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. At Church meetings we had plenty of discussion about how the world was going to end soon, and the church taught its youngsters things we should do to prepare for the time after the Apocalypse. Our church saw its role as being leaders in the rebuilding of the U.S. because some kind of Holy Aura would protect the land around Independence, MO because our church was headquartered in that city.

Today this apocalyptic end-times is not the province of tiny non-mainstream cults, sects or churches. Today it's a widely accepted point of view and there are plenty of political leaders openly espousing belief in the end-times.

The movie, Waiting for Armageddon, takes an up-close-and-personal look at quite a few of these people from individual believers to Pastors etc in the movement. They're speaking openly and clearly in this movie on their beliefs.

One of them is shown speaking before an audience at a "Pre-Tribulation" Conference saying that Post Modernism has at its core Atheism. That when someone reads the Bible and doesn't take the words literally, but instead has an open mind to interpreting the words, that they're engaging in the atheistic post modernism approach. That such people are simply completely wrong-headed. Others are shown saying that America's special role is to Christianize the rest of the world, and that they're supposed to start by Christianizing the U.S.

This goes a long way towards explaining how it came to be that the fundamentalist Christian viewpoint is being steam-rolled over us.

This mind-set strongly reminds me of an earlier blog post: Establishing control over a society. It was an inspired idea which came to me one day several years ago which goes like so:

I want to share a realization that recently came to me. It is a way of establishing control over a society, allowing you to bend them to your will. However in practice this will take generations to really lodge into society, so you probably won't have direct benefit but your heirs will.

1. Step 1: Beg, borrow, steal or forge a set of spiritual writings
2. Step 2: Present those writings as the Word of God
3. Step 3: Present the writings as being the infallible source of truth
4. Step 4: Appoint a group of people as the official interpreters of Gods Infallible Words as written in those writings

Step 1 - the Bible - the history of the Bible is one of politically motivated manipulation of its content, politically motivated use of that book and the Church (what's now Catholicism) to subjugate peoples. Steps 2-4 are analogous to the demand to accept the Bible as literal words, no interpretation, no questions, etc.

Prominent in this Tea Party nonsense is this same fundamentalism and ideas to convert America into a theocracy. That is, America being ruled by Christianity. America, the country where Separation of Church and State is one of the supreme principles of our governance.

What if these ideas are being manipulated by political powers for political ends? It wouldn't be the first time that Christianity (or other religions for that matter) were abused for political games.

The movie shows several people saying the Bible tells accurately the future. Really? This strikes me as a complete misunderstanding, because it's apparent one can only accurately tell what happened in the past and that the future has a wide range of possible outcomes depending on the decisions we make today. To proclaim there can be only one future is to discount our power of choice and the ability of our decisions to shape results.

The movie is rather unbalanced in that the fundamentalists are given free reign to speak without their statements being overtly questioned. There are speakers in the movie with other points of views that do a fairly good job of undermining the fundamentalists. But, I came out of watching it thinking the other points of view were completely overwhelmed by the crushing weight of the fundamentalist position.

It is a good movie, well put together, good information, and it's valuable to see directly what these people are saying to one another.

Hunting around on YouTube I found an amazing dissection of the movie by a fundamentalist Evangelical who shows a dozen ways the movie is confused or gets it wrong. Videos below

Cool Tool: 1491

Cool Tool: 1491 -- What happened to the native peoples of this land after Europeans arrived can only be described as genocide and ethnic cleansing. There were advanced civilizations, cities, culture, everything. All wiped out because of the arrival of Europeans. Some of it was accidental, due to diseases the Europeans carried for which the native peoples did not have biological immunity. But in many cases it was ruthless cold-blooded murder.

1491 : New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Amazon.com

1491 is not so much the story of a year, as of what that year stands for: the long-debated (and often-dismissed) question of what human civilization in the Americas was like before the Europeans crashed the party. The history books most Americans were (and still are) raised on describe the continents before Columbus as a vast, underused territory, sparsely populated by primitives whose cultures would inevitably bow before the advanced technologies of the Europeans. For decades, though, among the archaeologists, anthropologists, paleolinguists, and others whose discoveries Charles C. Mann brings together in 1491, different stories have been emerging. Among the revelations: the first Americans may not have come over the Bering land bridge around 12,000 B.C. but by boat along the Pacific coast 10 or even 20 thousand years earlier; the Americas were a far more urban, more populated, and more technologically advanced region than generally assumed; and the Indians, rather than living in static harmony with nature, radically engineered the landscape across the continents, to the point that even "timeless" natural features like the Amazon rainforest can be seen as products of human intervention.

Mann is well aware that much of the history he relates is necessarily speculative, the product of pot-shard interpretation and precise scientific measurements that often end up being radically revised in later decades. But the most compelling of his eye-opening revisionist stories are among the best-founded: the stories of early American-European contact. To many of those who were there, the earliest encounters felt more like a meeting of equals than one of natural domination. And those who came later and found an emptied landscape that seemed ripe for the taking, Mann argues convincingly, encountered not the natural and unchanging state of the native American, but the evidence of a sudden calamity: the ravages of what was likely the greatest epidemic in human history, the smallpox and other diseases introduced inadvertently by Europeans to a population without immunity, which swept through the Americas faster than the explorers who brought it, and left behind for their discovery a land that held only a shadow of the thriving cultures that it had sustained for centuries before. --Tom Nissley

A 1491 Timeline

Europe and Asia	Dates	The Americas
	25000-35000 B.C.	Time of paleo-Indian migration to Americas from Siberia, according to genetic evidence. Groups likely traveled across the Pacific in boats.
Wheat and barley grown from wild ancestors in Sumer.	6000
	5000	In what many scientists regard as humankind's first and greatest feat of genetic engineering, Indians in southern Mexico systematically breed maize (corn) from dissimilar ancestor species.
First cities established in Sumer.	4000
	3000	The Americas' first urban complex, in coastal Peru, of at least 30 closely packed cities, each centered around large pyramid-like structures
Great Pyramid at Giza	2650
	32	First clear evidence of Olmec use of zero--an invention, widely described as the most important mathematical discovery ever made, which did not occur in Eurasia until about 600 A.D., in India (zero was not introduced to Europe until the 1200s and not widely used until the 1700s)
	800-840 A.D.	Sudden collapse of most central Maya cities in the face of severe drought and lengthy war
Vikings briefly establish first European settlements in North America.	1000	Reconstruction of Cahokia, c. 1250 A.D.* Abrupt rise of Cahokia, near modern St. Louis, the largest city north of the Rio Grande. Population estimates vary from at least 15,000 to 100,000.
Black Death devastates Europe.	1347-1351
	1398	Birth of Tlacaélel, the brilliant Mexican strategist behind the Triple Alliance (also known as the Aztec empire), which within decades controls central Mexico, then the most densely settled place on Earth.
The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.	1492	The Encounter: Columbus sails from Europe to the Caribbean.
Syphilis apparently brought to Europe by Columbus's returning crew.	1493
Ferdinand Magellan departs from Spain on around-the-world voyage.	1519	Sixteenth-century Mexica drawing of the effects of smallpox** Cortes driven from Tenochtitlán, capital of the Triple Alliance, and then gains victory as smallpox, a European disease never before seen in the Americas, kills at least one of three in the empire.
	1525-1533	The smallpox epidemic sweeps into Peru, killing as much as half the population of the Inka empire and opening the door to conquest by Spanish forces led by Pizarro.
	1617	Huge areas of New England nearly depopulated by epidemic brought by shipwrecked French sailors.
English Pilgrims arrive at Patuxet, an Indian village emptied by disease, and survive on stored Indian food, renaming the village Plymouth.	1620

*Courtesy Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Collinsville, Ill., painting by Michael Hampshire. **Courtesy Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, N.M. (Bernardino de Sahagún, Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, 1547-77).

Review: Bankruptcy 1995

This book Bankruptcy 1995; the Coming Collapse of America and how to stop it is about an event that never happened. Namely, the numbers presented in the book formed a prediction, that in 1995 America's income and expenditures would become unbalanced and head into an exponential debt spiral.

That didn't happen, but the scenario described in the book appears to be well founded, and highly alarming. And, the scenario is even more apropos for consideration today with the tremendous debt GW Bush has saddled America with.

The author of Bankruptcy 1995 is Harry Figge (with ghostwriting assistance, no doubt). He's an engineer turned CEO of a fortune 500 company. One claim to fame beyond that is that in the early 1980's he was co-chairman of President Reagan's Private Sector on Cost Control, also known as the Grace Commission. The Grace Commission is the ones who infamously found the $500 toilet seats and other forms of "waste" in defense spending.

He explains in the book that his motivation for writing the book was to explore an alarming scenario he saw forming in the U.S. At the time several countries, primarily in Latin America, went through throes of hyper-inflation driven by huge debt loads. He witnessed the runup of debt brought on us by Presidents Reagan and GHW Bush and wanted to determine whether the same hyper-inflation scenarios were possible in the U.S. And, if they were possible, how to deal with them in the best way.

He begins by laying the blame at the feet of President Johnson. He claims that before Johnson the country operated on a "pay-as-you-go" basis, that generally meant a balanced budget and little debt. The only time debt would build up is in war-time (a.k.a. "War Bonds") and would be quickly paid off.

From my perspective of having grown up with a country always in debt, that seems a little foreign. However it is an ideal to which I would love for this country to follow. It makes too much sense, because debt involves spending extra $$'s on interest. As I explained in my personal finance recommendations, that extra money spent on interest directly corresponds with our life force.

Johnson's failing was to try and fight two wars at once. The first being Vietnam, and the second being a "war on poverty" that apparently involved lots of aid to poor folk.

But let me remind the reader that the contributions by Presidents Reagan, GHW Bush and GW Bush to our national debt eclipses President Johnson's debt by several orders of magnitude. Where Johnson ran up a few billion in debt, Reagan and both Bushes have added Trillions in debt.

BTW, if you want to view information about the U.S. Public Debt, here's a few web sites:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/ - primarily shows information about the how to buy U.S. bonds and treasury notes.

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opd.htm - Office of Public Debt - and http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm - the current debt to the penny. Note that the debt is broken down into two figures, that held by the public and intragovernmental debt. The latter is when a government agency (e.g. Social Security) buys U.S. bonds.

Back to the book ... His charts show that Reagan ran a total deficit in his 8 years of $1.34 trillion. GHW Bush ran a total deficit of $1.04 trillion, in only 4 years in office. His prediction was that the "next president" would run a total deficit of $3.17 trillion in four years. Oofda!

As I said, fortunately Bill Clinton's term did not run that much of a deficit. But, to be fair, we probably can't give Clinton all the credit for not running that much of a debt, just like we can't place all the blame on specific Presidents in the past. The President is only one piece of this game, because it is Congress who creates the budget, and it is the people who create the economic activity from which the government siphons off dollars (taxation).

For example, the debt saddling GW Bush's reign is partly due to the economic downturn that shrank tax receipts. Of course all the stupid tax cuts and the stupid war have a lot to do with it, but if the economy had remained strong then the tax cuts and war would have been more easily handled. See? It's not all GW's fault, much as I like to complain about him.

The part of this book that's alarming is, what does the debt mean in practical terms? To understand that we have to consider a bigger picture than the debt, namely the income and expense structure of the U.S. Government.

Basically when we run a debt it's because income didn't cover the expenses in some year. This is true for a government just as it is for individuals. It's just that the debt a government can run is enourmous, and any problems the government runs into in debt repayment eventually effect us all.

Income comes from taxation and fees the government collects. When the economy does well, there's more money flowing around that can be taxed, and when it's doing badly there's less. Hence income fluctuates with the health of the economy.

It's the expense side of this which was very alarming. The expenses can be divided into three groupings: a) interest on the debt, b) required expenses, and c) semi-optional expenses.

Groups (a) and (b) are really the same thing, because if you don't pay the debt payments then the worlds lenders will get highly pissed off at the U.S. The U.S. debt is highly rated as the safest debt in the world, because it's always paid off. We can't afford to lose that status, can we?

In any case I split them into two groups for a reason. The stuff that falls into (b) are things like defense spending and "entitlement programs". The entitlement programs are (?were?) things like "welfare", and involved government payments that are required by law to be made, and whose amounts are tied to the rate of inflation. There are several other things that fall into required payments but the essential characteristic is that the government must make those expenditures.

The point made in the book is that if the sum of (a) and (b) remain less than the income then it remains possible to run the game simply through raising more debt. But if (a) and (b) were to exceed the income, then that means you're having to raise more debt to pay the required expenses. If the budget were to ever get into that configuration, then it becomes a vicious loop. By borrowing money to pay required expenses, that just expands the debt even more, which then increases the interest payments, making the required expenses even larger the next year. The technical term is "debt spiral".

Let's look at some current debt expense figures: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdint.htm

As we can see, the interest payments have been in the $300-400 billion per year range for a decade. That's a lot of money, and it's our tax money that pays for it.

http://www.federalbudget.com/ - This site shows the budget split out by department, and how the total budget is swamped by expenditures through the Defense Department, Health and Human Services, and the Interest on the National Debt. Obviously the proprietor of that site has an axe to grind (e.g. "want to kill the IRS") but the information is useful nonetheless.

What would happen if the U.S. were to enter the debt spiral? There's approximately two choices: hyper-inflation, and reneging on the debt. Since the U.S. would never renege on the debt, then it would be hyper-inflation, and the stories I've heard about living in hyper-inflating countries are not pretty.

While this book is hopelessly out of date, the scenario it paints can still happen. This book is worth reading if only to understand the scenario.

The 9/11 attack a conspiracy?

While glancing through the Project Censored 2005 report, one item stuck out.

#9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11

RICO is the "Racketeering" law, normally used against organized crime. This woman, Ellen Mariani lost her husband, Louis Neil Mariani, and launched herself into an investigation. The more she connected the dots, the more convinced she became that the highest levels of the Bush administration knew about the attack beforehand, and purposely allowed it to continue.

The suit documents the detailed forewarnings from foreign governments and FBI agents; the unprecedented delinquency of our air defense; the inexplicable half hour dawdle of our Commander in Chief at a primary school after hearing the nation was under deadly attack; the incessant invocation of national security and executive privilege to suppress the facts; and the obstruction of all subsequent efforts to investigate the disaster. It concludes that compelling evidence will be presented in this case, through discovery, subpoena power and testimony, that defendants failed to act to prevent 9/11, knowing the attacks would lead to an international war on terror.

http://www.911truth.org/

http://www.911forthetruth.com/

http://www.911visibility.org/

http://www.septembereleventh.org/

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/

http://www.911independentcommission.org/

http://www.911citizenswatch.org/

http://www.unansweredquestions.org/

http://www.askquestions.org/

Project Censored: 2005 report

Project Censored (projectcensored.org/) is a research organization based in Sonoma County CA dedicated to exposing newsworthy stories that do not get covered by the mainstream press. Every year they publish a list of 25 under-reported stories.
Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2002-2003

(http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html)

#1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy

In the late 1700s, issues of fairness and equality were topics of great debate—
equality under the law, equality of opportunity, etc. Considered by the framers of the Constitution to be one of the most important aspects of a democratic system, the word “equality

#1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy

#2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Holds Corporations Accountable

#3: Bush Administration Censors Science

#4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians

#5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources

#6: The Sale of Electoral Politics

#7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments

#8: Cheney's Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy

#9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11

#10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits

#11: The Media Can Legally Lie

#12: The Destabilization of Haiti

#13: Schwarzenegger Met with Enron's Ken Lay Years Before the California Recall

#14: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies

#15: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses

#16: Law Enforcement Agencies Spy on Innocent Citizens

#17: U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq in Quest for Business Privatization

#18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies

#19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming the World's Supermarket

#20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN

#21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs

#22: Censoring Iraq

#23: Brazil Holds Back in FTAA Talks, But Provides Little Comfort for the Poor of South America

#24: Reinstating the Draft

#25: Wal-Mart Brings Inequality and Low Prices to the World

Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties

"Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties" is a new movie sponsored by Robert Greenwald. This time the director is Nonny de la Pena.

"We created Unconstitutional to show Americans the extent to which our civil liberties and our freedoms have been trampled upon by our government since 9/11," said Robert Greenwald, the film's executive producer. "The more Americans understand what is at stake, and what has already been lost, the more determined we become to protect our rights."

Website: http://UnconstitutionalTheMovie.org/

AASIN: 

Unconstitutional - The War On Our Civil Liberties

Review: Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War

This documentary, Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, is a very powerful indictment of the George W Bush administrations actions which led the U.S.A. to invade Iraq in the Spring of 2003. So powerful that as I left Farenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's documentary on the same subject, I wished that Moore had done his movie in the style of Uncovered. However the two movies appeal, and are powerful, on two different levels.

Fahrenheit appeals to the audience at the gut level. Much of that film shows gruesome images of war, and in particular the actual attacks on September 11, 2001 are shown with great cinematic style focusing the viewer on the emotional reactions and overwhelm of the witnesses of that attack. As an emotionally powerful movie, that covers the lies and deceit of the Bush administration, Fahrenheit works very well.

Uncovered covers largely the same material, but focusing on a factual dissection of Bush administration statements versus the verifiable truth. As a factually oriented documentary it is also very powerful. The style is to present two stories that play off one another. Story "A" is the statements by the Bush administration made in the propoganda leadup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Story "B" is told with interviews of an all-star cast of former Washington insiders each with 15-30 years experience in the Weapons Inspection, Intelligence, Defense and Diplomatic corps. These interviews served as counterpoint to the statements by Bush administration officials, and demonstrate the lies that were said at every turn by these officials.

The documentary was filmed in the summer of 2003, shortly after the invasion of Iraq. Looking back from a years time since it was filmed, some of the interviewees were very prescient in their remarks. One in particular discussed how this attempt to "install democracy" at the point of a gun was very unlikely to succeed, and instead very likely to infuriate the ones we are attempting to democratize, with the likely result that any democratic government in Iraq would likely be exceedingly antagonistic to the U.S.A. and that the whole incident would likely serve only to recruit more soldiers for the terror organizations. Which is exactly what's happened over the past year.

In short, I give this film many thumbs up and urge all American Citizens to see this movie. Especially to do so before November 2, 2004, so that you understand clearly the importance of your vote in the upcoming election.

Review: Farenheit 9/11

Michael Moore got his start in movies with muckraking pseudo-journalism, and he's only gotten better at this gig in the fifteen years since Roger and Me was released. In Farenheit 9/11 Moore has seemingly mastered the art of this type of story-telling, and has timed its release perfectly for the greatest effect in this years election cycle (late June, 1 month before the conventions).

Also of interest to viewers of this movie should be The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader by Michael Moore. This book presents all the fact-checking behind the movie. The movie, after all, is a non-stop whirwind of facts that were not well covered by the mainstream media. Much of the movies claims clearly are shocking to most of the audience, but to those of us who have been researching the truth for awhile none of the claims were at all outrageous.

The movie makes a series of assertions which will not be a surprise to readers of this web site. In fact the movie is pretty mild compared to the various assertions that were available for Moore to make in the film. On the other hand, a purely factual movie would not have been so gripping emotionally, and as we know the emotions are much stronger than the mind.

In this movie we witness the horror of the September 11, 2001 attack not directly through watching the airplanes hit the building, but indirectly through the eyes and anguish of the people on the scene. Their horror and overwhelm at watching people leaping to their deaths is very moving. And, as typical of the rest of the movie, the viewer is shifted from that horror to watching what President Bush was doing at that same moment. Namely, making a visit to a elementary school classroom, having just come off a month-long vacation during which he was briefed that al Qaeda was planning an attack using airplanes. Upon being told of airplanes hitting the World Trade Center did the President immediately leap into action? No, he sat there for many minutes listening to the teacher conducting the reading program. People were dying in the streets of Manhattan, and the President did "nothing" for several minutes. Of course, one wonders, what could he have done anyway?

Very emotionally moving and serves to underscore Moore's theme. That this President is a bufoon, that the wrong man was given the Presidency, and that this President's policies have led America greatly astray.

The entire movie is in this vein. Going back and forth between shocking images primarily of the fighting in Iraq, fact-telling, and humor. In one gross-out scene we see Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's favored grooming techniques. Moore must have excellent access to the camera-persons in the news media, for he shows dozens of short clips of the People of Power in moments of embarrasing humanity. Such as the makeup artistry in the moments before appearing on television (hence Wolfowitz's gross grooming techniques).

Some of the facts are interesting, so I will briefly recount them:

• On September 13, 2001 a large number of private airplane flights were sent across the U.S. to collect high level Saudi's and ferry them out of the country. In the movie this point isn't carefully laid out, and many of the reviewers think that Moore is claiming all aviation was still canceled at the time these flights were ferrying Saudi's out of the country. Craig Unger, who is featured prominently in Moore's movie, is the source of this information and in his book House of Bush, House of Saud details that these flights happened while private aviation was still grounded. Most of these flights were on private aircraft, not commercial, and had to be approved by the White House. What's alarming is that many of these Saudi's were members of the bin Laden family, and in general many of them should have been of interest to the FBI for questioning. Yet none of them were detained for questioning, and the White House is complicit in ferrying them out of the country.
• In the infamous flap over George W Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard, he spent a year of that time AWOL. During that AWOL period he was suspended from service. The Bush Administration released his service records in an attempt to prove that George W had done his service, and on the sheet detailing Bush's suspension from service one name was blacked out of someone else who had been suspended at the same time. However Moore already had a copy of that document, and in his copy the name was not blacked out. That name? James R. Bath, who went on to become a financier, handling the investment activities of Saudi Royals in Texas, one of whom is Osama bin Ladens half-brother. Some of those investments were in the string of failed businesses which George W Bush ran into the ground before going into politics (just like his father). Moore claims the link between the Bush and bin Laden families was formed soley through the James R Bath connection.
• George H W Bush's involvement in The Carlysle Group is detailed at some length. This company is a major world conglomerate, largely specializing in Defense Industries. It has on staff many former world leaders such as John Major and George H W Bush. George W Bush had worked briefly for this company as well. The bin Laden family had been a major investor in the Carlysle Group, and coincidentally the Carlysle Group was holding a meeting in Washington DC on September 11, 2001. The bin Laden family pulled out of the Group shortly after the attacks. This company is very secretive and steeped in controversy.

A question asked over and over again is Why are we attacking Iraq? The Iraqi's clearly had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks, yet on September 12, 2001 President Bush and others told Richard Clarke in no uncertain terms to find justification to attack Iraq (Against all Enemies). Moore proposes that it is the oil, of course, since Iraq has the second largest reserves of oil in the world (behind the Saudi's).

A little side story to the oil deal is the Oil Pipeline which had been proposed to go through Afghanistan. Central Asia has a large reserve of Oil, but there is no good way to get it to the ocean and thus on the world market. The straightest route is through Iran, but taking the pipeline through Iran would be dangerous to American interests and thus the pipeline has to take a different route. But none of the other routes were particularly interesting either. The agreement reached in the mid 1990's was to take the pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan, which meant that business negotiations were being conducted with the Taliban even while the Taliban was "harboring" Osama bin Laden who was known at that time to be conducting terrorist attacks against the U.S. such as the bombing of our embassies and of the U.S.S. Cole.

And who was placed into power in Afghanistan? Harmid Karzai, an advisor to the oil pipeline deal with Unocal which would have gone through Afghanistan. And what has been the major accomplishment of the Karzai government? Finalizing the agreements to route the pipeline through Afghanistan. And who else was involved with those negotiations? Why, a who's-who of the George W Bush Administration.