Burmese Military Junta Gaining Upper Hand

You gotta hand it to those sinister beasts whose fangs are sunk deep into Burma, the SLORC, that horrible military junta ruling Burma. (Or “Myanmar,” as these tyrants would have it, in a faux-“anti-Imperialist” gesture.) The UN’s envoy is already calling for the lifting of sanctions. Why? Because they FINALLY let the long-suffering Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the Burmese democracy 

movement and a beacon of hope for the Burmese people, out of house arrest and allowed her party to run for a tiny fraction of the seats in “parliament.” Thus she is virtually totally powerless.  They still won’t let her assume the presidency, which she won fair and square in elections over 20 years ago.

Aung San Suu Kyi is being used as a stooge and a beard for the junta. In desperate economic straits, the junta needed to con the international community, and found in Aung San Suu Kyi the perfect foil. With her face fronting for Burma, the junta can still rule the country, pretend to have instituted democracy, and break the sanctions regime.

Now the regime is setting up the Burmese people for disillusionment with Aung San Suu Kyi when she can’t magically deliver reforms she has no power to institute.

Furthermore, she just caved in to the junta’s demand that to assume the meaningless parliamentary seats her party won, they have to take an oath swearing to “defend the Constitution,” the document written by the military that “legalizes” their continuing unchallengeable rule and that Aung San Suu Kyi is committed to rewriting. So as soon as they tries to tamper with it, they’ll said she “violated her oath of office” and can remove her or, better still, leave her in place but remove her party members from parliament. 

4/30/12 noon NPR reporter Anthony Kuhn on the  dispute  over the oath of office required by  the Burmese military junta of Aung San Suu Kyi’s parliamentarians, to “defend the Constitution.” The Constitution needs to be amended, and she intended to do so. So she caved on the oath, and Kuhn sniffs that it is petty “bickering over the wording of the oath.”

No, she’s being set up. As soon as she tries to reform the Constitution, she’ll be guilty of “violating her oath of office,” Kuhn.

Professional Panglossians Confounded Again

A headline at the top of the Business Day section of the New York Times (Saturday, April 28, 2012, p. B1), “Economic Growth Slows Unexpectedly to 2.2%,” reminded me of a thought I have had often over the years. Namely, the role, attitude, and ideological perspective of “economists” in capitalist societies. 

As usual, the professional panglossians, aka “economists,” looked at the U.S. economy through rose-colored glasses and put an optimistic spin on things. As usual, they overestimated how well the “recovery” is going. (To be fair, since the close brush with economic death of the housing market crash and near-collapse of the finance-capital sector house of cards, a few voices of realism or pessimism are now allowed to be heard from, as splashes of cold water to keep overexuberance in check.)

“Economists” are no mere technicians. They are also ideologues. In addition to their function as numbers-crunchers (a sort of glorified clerk job) their role is to act as  boosters of the capitalist economic system. Capitalist economics is called simply “economics.” (Similar to how the corporate oligarchy’s  media is referred to as “the media.”) This of course has the effect making what it actually is invisible, and presenting it as some kind of value-free, neutral, objective “science,” which it most certainly is not. 

Most of the people called “economists” are ideological cheerleaders, professional shills for capitalism. 

On the other side are Marxists who see every recession as the Final Crisis of Capitalism. But the public never hears from them, because they’re barred from the media. (So what is this “free speech” we hear so much about?) Of course, such views have to be excluded, to maintain the illusion that capitalist economics is simply “economics,” and that the current economic setup is merely natural reality, not a man-made construct. 

Lest someone draw an incorrect inference about my own views, I do not see socialism per se as the answer. For one thing, “Lord” Acton was on to an important truth when he said that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Having government own all economic enterprises fails on that ground alone. Also it is grossly inefficient. And markets do provide necessary signals about demand and prices. Just look at the Soviet Union, which manufactured shoddy goods no one wanted based on quotas issued by bureaucrats in Moscow. Or Cuba, where shops run by unmotivated government employees have no interest in customer service. At least under capitalism, while there is indeed rotten customer service, and shoddy and dangerous products, there’s a possibility because of market pressures for satisfying consumer demands. Of course, the scandal of untested medical devices maiming people [see Consumer Reports  May 2012, e.g.] and dangerous drugs allowed on the market shows that U.S. capitalism at least is UNDERREGULATED. (Try telling that to the Republican OR Democratic Parties.) More example sof underregulation: repeated BP oil installation “accidents” (in Alaska, Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caucasus) and Massey coal’s chronic criminal conduct over years, virtually unchecked by sham government “oversight.” Corporations like BP and Massey should be designated as RICO entities and disbanded. (Massey was bought out at a premium price by another coal company AFTER its last lethal mine disaster. Guess they figured that they wouldn’t have to bear much of a burden, like Dow Chemical figured when it bought the murderous Union Carbide corporation of Bhopal infamy. But then “Dioxin Dow” is no more scrupulous than UC, so what the hell, they must have figured.)

What is really needed is serious regulation, not sham regulation as mostly exists in the U.S. This in turn somehow requires that the power of capital to control government be greatly limited. There is no prospect of this happening under the current U.S. political system.

Taboo-truths.blogspot.com

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U.$. Media Lies, Big and Small

NPR 4/23/12 6:38 am: Quill Lawrence, NPR’s man in Kabul, Afghanistan, being incestuously interviewed by the NPR morning anchor, repeats for the umpteenth time the lie that “Korans that were accidentally burned” in the big U.S. prison in Kabul. The lie that the burnings were “accidental” or “inadvertent” (the other adjective NPR hacks routinely parrot every single time the incident is mentioned) is now thoroughly embedded in the pseudo-reality and pseudo-history created by the U.S. propaganda system.

The Korans weren’t accidentally mixed in with other garbage. They were taken off the shelves, searched, and a decision was made to burn them. Stealth was employed to hide the burning from the Afghans. (You have to go to Aljazeera to find this out. The Iman at the prison told Aljazeera- on camera- that the day before the burnings, the U.S. military told him to take the next day off. Afghan workers asked the U.S. personnel where the truck was going, and were told the books were being taken to “storage.” Of course the truck was then driven to the burn pit. Afghan workers in the vicinity saw the activity and came over to help, upon which they saw the Korans burning and grabbed them from the flames.*

Stupid, bone-headed, callous, insensitive, counterproductive, whatever you want to call it, the burnings weren’t “inadvertent” or “accidental.” They were deliberate and intentional. The people burning them knew what they were burning. They didn't think they were empty egg cartons or something.

What NPR and the rest of the U.S. propaganda system has never answered is who gave the order. Funny how the details are all swept under the rug. What is so much worse that they’re hiding?

I would be surprised if the order came from general rank level, but it’s possible. It seems that the camp commander probably had foreknowledge at least.

What the incident shows to me is how disconnected the top U.S. military and political bosses are from their subordinates. The rhetoric  that constantly flows from the mouths of the top generals and bureaucrats, the tired old “winning hearts and minds” shtick we were fed during the criminal Vietnam war, during which the worst atrocities were routinely committed by the U.S. military, the country was devastated with poisons, 6 million tons of bombs were dropped-  three times the tonnage dropped in World War II in a far larger geographical area, according to official U.S. Air Force figures-  and millions of Vietnamese were killed, including huge numbers of defenseless noncombatants. The bosses spewing this gush, like the disgusting Leon Panetta, lifelong political apparatchik, a made member of the nomenklatura, who started out as a hack Democratic party pol, then went on to power appointments, like CIA director and now Secretary of “Defense” (he loves assassinating people, by the way), either are too obtuse to notice or feign not to notice the glaring contradiction between their avowed strategy and tactics and the reality of the mindset, attitudes, and behavior of their troops.  Apparently the message about the need for “cultural sensitivity” and understanding the Afghans and winning their hearts and minds somehow never filtered down to the ground.

I don’t think the Koran burners were clueless. They knew enough to try and deceive the Afghans and hide what they were going to do from them. (In order to claim it was “accidental” and “inadvertent,” the U.S. media needs to black out the facts that Aljazeera reported. Damn that Aljazeera!) But unless you pretend that the U.S. soldiers didn’t know they were burning Korans, it’s still nonsensical to use those lying adjectives, even based on what the U.S. media is willing to let us know. (Thank God their monopoly on information is breaking down!)

Every time another “incident” comes to light- pissing on corpses, posing with body parts, whatever- Panetta and the chorus of top officials and generals gasp that they’re “shocked, shocked” at such behavior, which “don’t reflect our values” “don’t reflect American values” as Panetta avers after every single “incident.” (And obviously the incidents that become public knowledge are just the tip of the iceberg. Soldiers don’t take photos of every single questionable thing they do, don’t post the photos they do take online every single time they take photos, the posted photos are not publicized every single time they’re posted, for example. Far, far from it.)

In sum, calling the Koran attempted incinerations “accidental” is an example of a small lie with a definite political and ideological purpose. The purpose seems to be to say “We meant no harm.” Which is besides the point, really. It caused great offense, and could reasonably have been predicted to cause great offense, and it occurred in the context of a foreign troop presence unappreciated (at the least!) by most Afghans that is over a decade old, and that follows many, many other “incidents,” like bombing wedding parties, killing innocent civilians, raiding people’s homes, etc.

Other official/media lies are larger. Sometimes there are entire campaigns of lies, a propaganda fabrication, an ideological confection, sinisterly designed with political-ideological goals in mind.

Some lies vanish without a trace after they’ve served their purpose- the bogus propaganda campaigns “Yellow Rain” and “Pope Plot” (both political theater produced by the CIA). “Yellow Rain” portrayed bee excrement as Commie biological warfare. “Pope Plot” pretended that a Turkish fascist terrorist from the notorious Grey Wolves was a KGB-Bulgarian assassin. You never hear a mention of either media show these days. But there were no retractions of the “Pope Plot,” and only some media “corrected” the “error” of “Yellow Rain.” (Not the fascistic Wall Street Journal, which in its self-appointed role as Ideological Commissar viciously attacked scientists like Matthew Meselson for not toeing the CIA’s line and blowing the fabrication up with honest science. This same rag of course likes to condemn enforced ideological conformity in socialist regimes past and present. Hypocritical or cynical? You make the call.)

By the way, the media propagandists aren’t naïve or dupes. They aren’t such naïfs as to be fooled by the secret police. They are willing, conscious stooges. Just like in any country where the secret police use the media for propaganda operations. The naïve ones are the media “critics” who portray the media accomplices as dupes- or pretend to think they are.

Then there are lies about specific events that must be desperately reinforced over and over. The pesky truths about the CIA assassinations of the Kennedys and King just won’t stay buried, so for example the Warren Commission fraud must be reasserted over and over, while anyone refusing to genuflect before that hoary pack of absurd lies is ridiculed, ridicule being the only recourse when the facts are against the propagandists. Honest discussing, debate, search for truth- fuggettaboutit! The propagandists evidently know they’d lose.

Ridiculing one’s opponent is  an example of an ad hominen argument, that being Latin for “to the man.” Instead of arguing one’s case on the merits, one attacks one’s opponents personally to discredit the opponents, instead of refuting their arguments with facts and logic. It’s a technique often resorted to by people who don’t have a good case to make. The crudest form of an ad hominen attack is ridicule, which is what the corporate propaganda system has been reduced to when it comes to protecting the CIA in the JFK assassination. (Shamefully, The Nation magazine is one of the worst offenders in this regard, as they recently demonstrated just a couple of months ago. Such behavior as accomplices in a never-ending cover-up of state murder raises the gravest questions about the bona fides of The Nation.)

Other, bigger, permanent lies are cornerstones of the propaganda and official mythology edifice, key to the ideological indoctrination of the populace- such as portraying the U.S. as World’s Freest Country, U.S. as Spreader of Democracy Around The World, like some Johnny Appleseed of Liberty. Which ignores actual fact and history- the history of U.S.-instigated coups, numerous military dictatorships backed up and kept in power by the U.S., U.S. providing lists of victims for the death squads of those countries to torture and “eliminate,” and on and on. The U.S. has destroyed democracy in many more countries than it could plausibly claim credit for reinstalling (not creating) it in- if by “democracy” we mean bourgeois class dictatorships that stage elections. Let’s see, after World War Two, there was Germany, Italy, and Japan. Any others? Hmm… (Japan was effectively a one-party dictatorship from after the major war until recent years.  In Italy the CIA secretly funded the “Christian Democrats” to keep them dominant. It also manipulated German politics and funded right-wing media there. In France the CIA was very active to make sure the politics came out the “right” way. In Spain and Portugal fascist dictatorships were left in place for decades until their own people finally managed to free themselves, no thanks to the U.S., the Big Defender of Freedom And Democracy.)

*We can see once again why the U.S. elites hate Aljazeera so much. Aljazeera complicates their efforts to deceive people and manipulate events. Aljazeera is committing the worst crime in the eyes of the U.S. power-elite- it is interfering with U.S. POWER.

No wonder the U.S. military kept bombing Aljazeera, murdering their journalists. No wonder they kidnapped an Aljazeera employee and kept him in Guantanamo Bay for years, where they pumped him for information about Aljazeera they could use for malign effect and tried to force him to be their mole inside Aljazeera or else rot for life in their military dungeon.

Oh yeah, the U.S. really stands for human rights.

You’all who believe that, have I got a fabulous deal for you! I own a bridge in Brooklyn I need to sell quick!