Unaffordable Empire

I have a suggestion for other countries that are getting a bit weary of the American military presence on their soil: cash in now, before it’s too late. Either up the ante or tell the Americans to go home. I encourage this behavior because I’m convinced that the U.S. Empire of Bases will soon enough bankrupt our country, and so — on the analogy of a financial bubble or a pyramid scheme — if you’re an investor, it’s better to get your money out while you still can.

This is, of course, something that has occurred to the Chinese and other financiers of the American national debt. Only they’re cashing in quietly and slowly in order not to tank the dollar while they’re still holding onto such a bundle of them. Make no mistake, though: whether we’re being bled rapidly or slowly, we are bleeding; and hanging onto our military empire and all the bases that go with it will ultimately spell the end of the United States as we know it.

Count on this, future generations of Americans traveling abroad decades from now won’t find the landscape dotted with near-billion-dollar “embassies.”

Chalmers Johnson | CommonDreams.org

July 3rd, 2009 || PermaLink

Toxic Chemicals: A Culpit Behind the Autism Outbreak

Over the past 30 years, toxic chemicals, like Teflon, plastics, and formaldehyde have increasingly invaded our homes. We used to think these substances were harmless, but a rising tide of evidence has turned the spotlight on chemical exposures as a possible poison to our children’s developing brains.

One group of substances of particular concern is a ubiquitous family of hormone twisting compounds, known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). These substances are the focus of intense scrutiny because: 1) they’re found in every home in America 2) they’re increasingly linked to human disease 3) our exposure to them has risen in parallel with the surge in autism diagnoses and 4) they may theoretically affect the developing fetal brain.

In recent years, research has mounted against a virtual police lineup of EDCs, like BPA (in food cans, hard plastic water bottles), phthlates (in soft plastics, cosmetics) and fire retardants (in sofas, computers, flame-resistant clothing). Multiple animal and human studies have linked EDC exposure (during or after fetal development) with a host of hormone-related disorders, like low sperm count, cancer (breast, ovarian, prostate, testicular), congenital malformation of the genitals and even obesity.

Harvey Karp | AlterNet

July 2nd, 2009 || PermaLink

A Celebration of Agitation

The Powers That Be — especially America’s overarching corporate and political forces (often the same) — give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy, autocracy and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive consumers of their economic and political policies. Don’t rock the boat, stay in your place, go along to get along — be quiet, they urge.

Be quiet? Holy Thomas Paine! How could freedom-loving, democratic citizens shrink into quietude, especially when the Powers That Be feel so entitled to run roughshod over us? Even a dead fish can go with the flow. We’ve got to be livelier than that.

July Fourth is a time to enjoy fireworks, flags, hotdogs, ballgames and such — but it’s also a time to remember who we are: agitators!

Jim Hightower | Creators.com

July 1st, 2009 || PermaLink

The Global Warming Lie Detector

The economic harm projected from high levels of military spending is far larger than the damage projected from the Waxman-Markey bill. Given this situation, we would have expected that all the oil and coal industry folks, who are now so concerned about the average family’s well-being, would have been screaming about the economic pain that would result from sustaining the Iraq war levels of military spending.

Did anyone ever hear them raise this issue? Does anyone recall members of Congress giving speeches about how the job loss from the Iraq war levels of spending would be devastating? Does anyone recall any newspaper columns or editorials making this point? How about a news story that analyzed the economic impact of higher levels of military spending?

For some reason, job loss and economic pain associated with the military are just not worth mentioning. These items only become newsworthy when the issue is saving the environment. And the elites wonder why the public has so little confidence in the country’s institutions.

Dean Baker | CommonDreams.org

June 30th, 2009 || PermaLink

Betraying the Planet

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it – and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists – a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.

Paul Krugman | CommonDreams.org

June 29th, 2009 || PermaLink

Q Crisis of Masculinity Run Amuck

Everywhere you look these days, someone is making a case for why the latest economic shake up could be a tremendous gift in the long run. No one is pushing that point of view more enthusiastically than feminists, who see a great opportunity for gender equality in these uncertain economic times. The big boys have been humbled and the women emboldened by the financial meltdown. In fact, a new report by the National Council for Research on Women argues that the economic crisis was caused by a perfect storm of things, but was in part, a result of masculinity run amuck.

As controversial as this claim sounds, it’s been made in the most mainstream of places — including in the New York Times, where Nicholas Kristof wondered if we might all be better off if it were “Lehman Brothers and Sisters.” Barnard College president Deborah Spar even went so far as to call it a “one gender crash” in the Washington Post.

Courtney E. Martin | AlterNet

June 28th, 2009 || PermaLink

Obama contemplates Executive Order for detention without charges

Obama movingly assured us that some of the Guantanamo detainees will be tried in a real court — i.e., only those the DOJ is certain ahead of time they can convict.  For those about whom there’s uncertainty, he’s going to create new military commissions to make it easier to obtain convictions, and then try some of the detainees there — i.e., only those they are certain ahead of time they can convict there.  For the rest — meaning those about whom Obama can’t be certain he’ll get the outcome he wants in a judicial proceeding or military commission — he’ll just keep them locked up anyway. In other words, he’ll indulge the charade that people he wants to keep in a cage are entitled to some process (a real court or military commissions) only where he knows in advance he will get what he wants; where he doesn’t know that, he’ll bypass those pretty processes and assert the unilateral right to keep them imprisoned anyway.

A government that will give you a trial before imprisoning you only where it knows ahead of time it will win — and, where it doesn’t know that, will just imprison you without a trial — isn’t a government that believes in due process.  It’s one that believes in show trials.

Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com

June 27th, 2009 || PermaLink