So Obama really is a flaming socialist. No surprise here. Also no surprise, the "media" didn't break this story... a single guy with a computer did.
Ben, So what is your point? Do you seriously think for one microsecond that Obama a socialist or anything remotely close? Gimme a break. His campaign received huge amounts of money from corporate elites. In the plutocratic political system that defines US politics, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. The rank and file of the US population is miles to the left of both major political parties anyway. Both parties preferentially represent vested interests and those with concentrated wealth and power. That's the way its been for decades and its not going to change with the election of either candidate. The mainstream media in the US, as well as over here in Europe for that matter, is no different: Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model nails it: 'the aim of the media is to inculcate and defend the political, social and economic agenda of the rich and privileged groups that dominate domestic society and the state'. There's volumes of empirical evidence to back the model up, as well.
So ben really is a flaming idiot.
Socialism doesn't mean taxing the rich and using to help the country as a whole and the poor in particular (see the new deal). Socialism means nationalizing the major industries (see the Bush administration, comrade). Just because you don't know what a word means doesn't mean everyone else is an idiot as well.
The rank and file of the US population is miles to the left of both major political parties anyway.
Good luck proving that. I claim that what you claim is untrue.
Socialism means nationalizing the major industries (see the Bush administration, comrade).
True! However, in the common lingo, that is what socialism has been taken to mean. The term has effectively been redefined, just like the terms "gay" and "discriminate". Obama is a welfare-statist, more in line with Marxisms "from each... to each..." mantra. However you slice it, it's highly un-American.
Funny also how the MSM sends out its armies to dig up dirt on Palin and "Joe the Plumber" but won't raise a finger to do anything in depth on Obama.
And yes, Bush is a major idiot. His economic policies are terrible, especially when combined with a Democrat congress and Fannie/Freddie. Socialization of risk and all that.
Oh noes! Obama is a SOCIALIST!!!
Seriously, dude, nobody cares. Real people are struggling with real problems on their hands -- job insecurity, not enough money to buy stuff, money tied up in busted stocks -- and nobody cares about whether Obama can be described by some moronic label or other.
Go screw yourself.
Also, Obama is a MUSLIM!!! He's a FOREIGNER!!! He's an ELITIST!!!
Guess what? Nobody cares about this one-word adjective crap now. Not anymore.
He's neither a Muslim nor a Foreigner. Everyone with a brain knows that. Elitist? Probably, just like FDR. And also just like FDR, "Real people are struggling with real problems on their hands -- job insecurity, not enough money to buy stuff, money tied up in busted stocks" and for that we'll get more New Deal bullshit that will prolong our suffering rather than fix the problems.
"Go screw yourself."
So no one word adjectives, but three word insults are OK?
Anyway, I'm voting for Obama this year. I traded my inconsequential vote for Obama (He's got a lock on Washington State) for a consequential vote for Rossi for governor. I will probably puke after I vote for Obama though. We deserve it, 4-8 years of his crap and I think we'll swing pretty hard back to the right.
> but three word insults are OK?
You're feeling insulted? Oh, sorry for bursting your political correctness.
Meanwhile, you can have sex with yourself, if that sounds better.
> we'll get more New Deal bullshit that will prolong our suffering rather than fix the problems.
Yeah, the New Deal thing ought to have been a total failure, because it's SOCIALIST!!! Unfortunately, it didn't end up being a total failure, so Ben the Patriotman will have to come up with ad hoc explanations for why this big bad SOCIALIST!!! programme didn't crash down like the Soviet Union did.
Remember, it's SOCIALIST!!!
After all, as we've repeatedly been asked in the context of climate science, if data disagree with models, what's the correct thing to do?
Model: FDR was a SOCIALIST!!! and an ELITIST!!!
Data: The US got out of the Depression.
Conclusion: The data must have been fudged.
Now, if we follow the scientifically correct advice on disagreement between models and data, we get this:
Model: FDR was a ââââââââââ!!! and an ââââââââââ!!!
Data: The US got out of the Depression.
Conclusion: Hey, whatever FDR did was actually sort of working. Now, is that so bad?
So why should anyone care whether Obama's a ââââââââââ!!! (for whatever values ââââââââââ)? And indeed, nobody cares.
Socialist? Damn, just when capitalism was doing so well they're going to put in a socialist? Next they'll be nationalising stuff, screwing the environment, waging aggressive wars, torturing people they don't much like and all that totalitarian shit.
Lowell E. Gallaway and Richard K. Vedder argue that the "Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of New Deal programs." They suggest that without Social Security, work relief, unemployment insurance, mandatory minimum wages, and without special government-granted privileges for labor unions, business would have hired more workers and the unemployment rate during the New Deal years would have been 6.7% instead of 17.2%.[55]
As an example, during the depression there were extreme food shortages and widespread famine. To solve this, the government enacted legislation in the form of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. This sought to increase the prices of food, to benefit farmers, by reducing supply. It did this by destroying over 10 million acres (40,000 km2) of crops, slaughtering 6 million pigs, and leaving fruit in the fields to rot. The result was even more widespread famine.[56]
Yeah, Awesome! Let's do more of that!
Say, can someone point me to Jennifer Marohasy's explanation of how to graph temperatures? It's been exactly two months since she promised that she would "soon" teach us this valuable skill: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/the\_australians\_war\_on\_science\_19.php#comment-1071688
I'm really looking forward to this helpful lesson.
Bruce - "Say, can someone point me to Jennifer Marohasy's explanation of how to graph temperatures? "
Apparently she has her own methods that show what she wants to show. Like the no warming for the last 10 years thing. She has still to show me the graph that backs up this statement she made on 60 minutes.
I am taking a break from that blog - Bird is just to looney for me.
well, to play the devil's advocate, you do have to admit that obama is black.
Huh?...a BLACK PANTHER!!!!
And a SOCIALIST!!!
A BLACK SOCIALIST PANTHER. Arrgghhh!!!!!
And don't forget the TERRORIST FIST JAB.
Ben, do you check under your bed every night before going to sleep?
Seriously, by your definition many well-functioning democracies are in fact socialist states. Curious thing is, when one considers many quality-of-life indicators, these same countries leave the US eating their dust.
How does that work?
The link you point to, Ben, makes it clear that the view that the New Deal lengthened the great depression is a minority view even among economists. Since the current financial crisis has exposed much of the right wing of economics as currently taught as being ideological claptrap, as even Greenspan has been forced to admit (now being referred to as the "Alan Shrugged" moment), I think the minority are even more embattled now. But you keep on fighting the battle of new orleans if it makes you feel better.
Obama is not necessarily a "welfare-statist". Increasing the top tax bracket and lowering the middle and lower tax brackets redistributes wealth without changing government spending. Inasmuch as lower taxes in lower tax brackets mean people need less welfare (both because they lose less from taxation and because they can put themselves on the market for a lower wage), Obama's policies would reduce welfare dependency. The idea that in a republic, the rich should pay the taxes that pay for the wars goes back to the Roman republic and was a big part of their early success. It wasn't dreamed up by Karl Marx.
Redistributing the wealth is probably the best thing American capitalism could do to save it from itself. Since the deregulation era of Reagan, real wages in america have stayed flat, and profits have boomed. The result has been a failure of effective mass demand which has been made up for by the capital holders lending their money (in the form of cheap-credit) to the wage-earners to buy consumer goods, rather than paying them higher wages. As their wages have stagnated, the wage-earners have eventually been unable to pay back those loans. Cue sub-prime meltdown and financial crisis. Rather than pay higher taxes to fix the decaying republic, the profit-takers have also invested in one ponzi bubble after another which have sucked the genuine entrepreneurship and dynamism out of the system.
Significant research in behavioural and hedonic economics also indicates that redistributive tax systems are a good idea. Most current research shows that the utility or satisfaction derived from money is not fixed; somewhere around what is usually thought of as a "middle class" income, an extra dollar starts giving you much less satisfaction than it does someone who is poor (this is intuitively obvious to anyone anyway). Particularly above that flexion point, Humans rank ourselves comparatively not absolutely. As a result, the rich will be happy as long as they are richer than someone else (which tax won't change) while the poor will be much, much happier (not to mention better fed, clothed, housed, healthy, etc) with a bit more money.
American conservatives are the leading destroyers of the free market. I suggest you go and read "The conservative nanny state" http://www.conservativenannystate.org/ (it's free) before jumping in with your "gotcha" next time. And read up on what the Founding Fathers (especially Jefferson) and de Tocqueville said about the wide, egalitarian distribution of property being vital to a free republic while you're at it.
Bruce Sharp:
> Say, can someone point me to Jennifer Marohasy's explanation of how to graph temperatures?
well, to play the devil's advocate, you do have to admit that obama is black.
Actually, Obama is white. At least he's as white as he is black.
Alright then, James. Why how much should we tax? 99% of every dollar earned over $100k? And instead of going after income, which is not necessarily an indicator of wealth, why don't we go after the wealth itself? Take some of fat-cat Kennedy's stockpile for example?
Also, why not tax windfall profits on actors and actresses? They work for a year and if a movie hits make a gazillion dollars. That's a windfall if ever I've seen one.
All joking aside, why not go for a national sales tax? Cost of compliance would be much lower, since we could scrap personal and corporate income taxes. There aren't any loopholes. And you are taxed on consumption, which gives "the rich" (and, incidentaly, everyone else) incentive to save and invest. I'm all about that.
Ben,
I don't know nearly enough about the US' budgetary priorities, etc, to suggest what the tax rate should be. I'm just telling you that progressive income taxes aren't particularly inequitable (due to the psychological effects mentioned), certainly aren't "socialist", and contribute to redistribution, which america needs, without "welfare statism".
The flexion point (I can't look it up right now) is clearly a good point to start kicking income taxes in, since above that point people value money less anyway. Another natural tier is the 97th percentile or so where wealth distribution shifts from a thermodynamic distribution to a power law distribution (see the work of Yakovenko and the other econophysicists).
IIRC, the US used to have wealth taxes on inherited wealth, called estate taxes. Bush cut them, somewhere in between stealing elections, running up the biggest federal debt in history and abusing the constitution.
If you want to tax unearned (as opposed to earned) windfall profits, you would be better off embracing some form of Georgist resource value tax.
Consumption taxes tax the poor disproportionately compared to the rich, because the poor spend a much larger portion of their income on consumption. Unless they're also Pigouvian or "sin taxes" (on e.g. alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, waste generation, carbon emissions) I'm opposed to them, and even then you need redistribution, since it's not the poor's fault that e.g. they rent poorly insulated houses. There are also many more transactions than there are incomes, meaning that the cost of gathering the taxes goes up.
In any case, if ben will indeed be voting for Obama, this means that whether Obama is a SOCIALIST!!! isn't exactly that big of a factor to himself.
And I'm guessing that the Joe the $250,000 Plumber Tax isn't that big of a factor either.
somewhere in between stealing elections...
See, BS like that and you lose me.
When they tell me, "Obama is a socialist," or "Obama is the most liberal person ever nominated," etc., all I can say is "I wish."
> "It's true that most Americans, when asked by pollsters, think that it's emphatically not the government's job to redistribute wealth. But are people so stupid as to not recognize that when politicians talk about a 'right to health care,' or 'equalizing educational opportunities,' or 'making the rich pay a fair share of taxes,' or 'ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college,' and so forth and so on, that they are advocating the redistribution of wealth? Is it okay for a politician to talk about the redistribution of wealth only so long as you don't actually use phrases such as 'redistribution' or 'spreading the wealth,' in which case he suddenly becomes 'socialist'? If so, then American political discourse, which I never thought to be especially elevated, is in even a worse state than I thought."
Of course, as Palin has shewn us, it's possible to
1. reduce taxes across the board, and
2. avoid "wealth redistribution" which is the source of all evils under the bed, and
3. get government out of the way, and
4. reduce government spending, and
5. channel more troops and resources into Iraq to win the War, and
6. improve on public education, and
7. increase government oversight over financial institutions, and
I don't know how this is possible, but it probably involves ponies.
Ben, part of the 'proof' is that polls consistently show that the vast majority of the US population support a national government funded health care system, where no one is excluded. By 'vast majority' I mean always more than 80%. But will it happen? Not on your life, not under Obama any more than under McCain or anyone else. Kerry summed it up in 2004 when he said that it was not 'politically possible'. What did he mean by this? If 80% of the American public want it, why is it not possible? Because the huge private insurance companies don't want it. Nor do the huge pharamceutical companies. They don't want it, so it's not 'politically possible'. Forget that 80% of the US public want it. They don't count.
Moreover, Obama has been accused of being 'elitist', hardly a tag one would hang on an avowed socialist. The "elitist" charge against Obama could have demolished if he had voted against the recent bailout of the banking sector by the US taxpayer. That could not happen because he is, in fact, quite elitist. Moreover, the elitism of both parties would have been exposed if the televised debates did not render other candidates, such as Ralph Nader, invisible. The so-called 'liberal' media did just that.
I'm voting for Obama because I think his energy/infrastructure policy will do more to combat global warming than McCain's, and will create jobs besides. I was for Hilary originally because I thought her energy/infrastructure policy was even better, and ditto her health care ideas, but Obama is orders of magnitude closer to her than McCain is.
"Lowell E. Gallaway and Richard K. Vedder argue that the "Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of New Deal programs.""
And virtually every other academic economist who has studied the issue argue the exact opposite.
If supporting redistribution of income via progressive taxation makes you a socialist, then every US President since World War I has been a socialist - and so is John McCain.
Of course "Barack Obama is .01% MORE socialist than John McCain "doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Tell me Ben to you ever wonder about the possible consequences of spreading lurid nonsense about Obama?
And virtually every other academic economist who has studied the issue argue the exact opposite.
This claim is false.
Tell me Ben to you ever wonder about the possible consequences of spreading lurid nonsense about Obama?
Nonsense? I think not. So the mere act of disagreeing with Obama is encouraging violence? Are you just trying to silence your opponents?
Ben,
Feel free to go beyond wikipedia to find and cite economists who HAVE ACTUALLY STUDIED THE ISSUE AND PUBLISHED ON IT who support their view.
> Tell me Ben to you ever wonder about the possible consequences of spreading lurid nonsense about Obama?
But you see, while ben has nothing to say about Obama except negative things, and he makes a big fuss over the revelation that Obama is a SOCIALIST!!! ... yet he's still voting for Obama.
ben is still voting for Obama.
This one little fact, as we all know, means that ben is obviously the most nuanced, most sophisticated, most maverickest voter in the whole United States of America.
> So the mere act of disagreeing with Obama is encouraging violence?
The White Man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism. And the McCarthy witch-hunt is the Winston Churchill of Liberal Fascism.
For those with an interest, Philip Adams interviewed David Michaels yesterday. Nothing especially new under the sun, but for the lurkers here who might not be familiar with Michaels, from the ABC promo...
The 'scientific' arguments marshalled in support of the tobacco industry may be the most famous misuse of science by commercial interests, but according to David Michaels, the tactics of Big Tobacco have spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards in the United States.
He argues that scientific smokescreens have been raised around the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials -- all with the aim of keeping the public confused and the government compliant.
And whilst we're lurking in the corridors of the ABC, they screened a documentary tonight on network theory, titled 'How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer', which outlines the growth of the science behind 'six degrees of separation'.
I'm sure that Tim has much more to say about the subject than I could, but I mention it because two idle questions popped into my head during the show - firstly, has anyone figured out the longest minimum route between any two people on the planet; and secondly and perhaps a little more pertinently for this blog, has anyone looked at the network in the AGW denialosphere, with particular emphasis on where the hubs are?
You can disagree with Obama all you want.
However if rather than rational argument you offer slanderous lies about how he's a radical Marxist out to destroy American democracy you'll get called on your bullshit.
Bruce Sharp.
I too am still very interested in Marohasy's explanation of her scaling of that graph printed in the Australian. I argued ad nauseum with several denialist/graph-apologists on her blog that the scale not based in scientific convention, and I would dearly love to know what scientific justification she had for selecting it as she did.
I am avoiding that pigs' wallow at the moment though, because there comes a point where one has to peel one's eyes from the train wreck and drive on...
Although having said that I did drop in a couple of weeks back to snipe at the HIV deniers there, to ask them if they thought the Nobel committee was in error to award a prize for the discovery of the human immunodificiency virus. There was nary a sqeek in reply for several days at least, so I finally shook the dust from my head, woke up, and left.
And gawd, do I feel cleaner for having done so!
Feel free to go beyond wikipedia to find and cite economists who HAVE ACTUALLY STUDIED THE ISSUE AND PUBLISHED ON IT who support their view.
you are suggesting that you've done a comprehensive survey of ALL economists on the issue? I find that highly unlikely.
ben is still voting for Obama.
Right, because my vote for Obama makes no difference. I'm trading something of NO VALUE for something of VALUE, i.e. a vote for Dino Rossi in our gubernatorial election.
However if rather than rational argument you offer slanderous lies about how he's a radical Marxist out to destroy American democracy you'll get called on your bullshit.
Unless they aren't lies. His history begs to differ with his retoric.
"His history begs to differ with his retoric"
And how exactly did you research his "history"?
Tell me, if the first post on this thread had been me announcing that McCain was a senile, bribe-taking, racist, baby-killing boozehound would you have regarded that as a a useful and constructive contribution to the debate?
And yet the evidence for those allegations is at least as strong as that for "Obama is a Socialist!".
OK, let me try to parse ben's 'logic' again:
1. When conlibertarians go around calling liberals "treasonous", then it's the liberals who are being intolerant!
2. He's voting for Obama the SOCIALIST!!! because, for some reason unbeknownst to us, it's a necessary step towards him voting for Rossi. Though given that Rossi's apparently more important to him, it might've been more logical for ben to attack Christine Gregoire instead... but that's ben-style 'logic' for you...
> has anyone looked at the network in the AGW denialosphere, with particular emphasis on where the hubs are?
I'm currently looking at this. Now, the site isn't very forthcoming about who's maintaining it, which makes it all the more mysterious.
Bi- given that the list of members includes a bundle of fruitbat right wing market worshippers and their astroturf think tanks (Do I get an award for combining lots of words together?) it is perhaps hardly worth worrying about.
"you are suggesting that you've done a comprehensive survey of ALL economists on the issue? I find that highly unlikely."
Actually Ben I'm suggesting that in the course of my studies for my Bachelor's Degree in Arts (International Business Studies) I had to do achieve a passing grade in a course called Economic history which involved inter alia a survey of peer-reviewed papers in the Economics journals on the issue of the economic impact or Roosevelt's policies.
From memory, I got a 7 on a 1-7 marking scale.
> it is perhaps hardly worth worrying about.
I'm still curious. I'm always interested in the Man Behind the Curtain. :)
Socialism:
1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
So the term covers the gamut from production to distribution. Therefor Obama really is a socialist, at least from the distribution point of view. And yes, so are McCain, Bush, Pelosi, and most of the rest of congress. This is a sad state of affairs.
Ian, while your grade on your paper is swell and all, it does not prove that your sources and instructor were not biased. So maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, but there are at least a couple Nobel Laureate economists (Friedman, for example) who agree with me. I'll take their word over yours.
bi, you are making no sense. I am voting for Rossi over Gregoire, that was always the plan. I have a buddy who tells me that he will vote for Rossi instead of Gregoire if I vote for Obama instead of McCain, Mickey Mouse, or some other third party candidate. I consider the facts:
1. Obama will win Washington State no matter how I vote.
2. Rossi is in a very close election.
3. Me voting for Obama GAINS a vote for Rossi. I'm effectively getting a vote for Rossi by taking one for the team, holding my nose, and voting for Obama.
Savvy?
> Therefor Obama really is a socialist, at least from the distribution point of view. And yes, so are McCain, Bush, Pelosi, and most of the rest of congress.
That wasn't what you said. You said "Obama really is a flaming socialist" and then whine about how the mainstream media aren't covering this World Exclusive News (as they say at WorldNutDaily).
Then again, who cares except one-word ideologues such as ben?
Obama is a SOCIALIST!!! He's an ELITIST!!! He's a REDISTRIBUTIST!!! Big deal.
> I have a buddy who tells me that he will vote for Rossi instead of Gregoire if I vote for Obama instead of McCain, Mickey Mouse, or some other third party candidate.
You didn't mention that before. Well, at least now it makes _some_ sort of sense.
So Ben, what you're saying is that you don't have any substantive arguments against my economics, but because you disagree with my beliefs about the way recent elections have been conducted, you're going to dismiss the economic question anyway.
Oh, and your opening "gotcha" quote is carefully edited and decontextualised BS. Obama was NOT advocating that the courts be used to redistribute wealth or that the constitution be overruled. He was explaining WHY the courts COULDN'T be used for that purpose.
Still, if you didn't hang around here, I have to wonder who we would argue with.
Really James, next you'll be saying that the "redistributive action" he was talking about was redrawing school district boundaries to make it easier for poor students to leave bad schools.
Ben, citing Friedman as a credible source for anything is a tad disingenuous. The current state of the world's economy demonstrates he was singularly clueless, I would have thought (Bank of Sweden prize for Invisible Hand-waving notwithstanding).
The reason I wondered about hubs in AGW denialist networks is that similar hubs are targeted in order to manage disease transmission (in an epidemiological context), and to disable threats to security (in a terrorist context). There are many more examples of course, but the upshot of it is that by analysing the denialist network I thought that it might be possible to determine objectively where the major nodes are, and by inference what/who the most significant drivers are, and how these might be addressed.
After all, the denialists already seem to have a de facto network-focussed campaign for spreading their FUD by targeting the significant players in AGW, so is it possible to reverse the attacks and address the FUD at the points where their network is most vulnerable?
Just an idle musing, really...
People, do not feed the troll. Apart from anything else trolls are ineducable.
Bernard J.:
Interesting thought. The data at hand are pretty murky, however...
(I'm still looking at the CSCCC list. No idea who's behind the CSCCC site itself, but the list rules.)
But if we know where the hubs are, then what do we do? Sue them till they get bankrupt? Flood them with phone calls? Take photos and spread them around? ... :)
On hubs:
Well, since the republicans are doing DOS attacks on democracy (ACORN anyone? anyone? Bueller? Bueller?), hitting the hubs with DOS might be poetic justice - but digging up the dirt (there's always dirt...) on the people who run them and publishing it in the MSM, forcing them to put up or shut up, would be best. We haven't heard anything from Tim Ball since his multiple falsehoods were exposed. Do the same for the current sources and the feeder network of Bolts, Marohasys, etc will dry up.
Ben, if you wish to retain any shred of credibility in this and other threads, then I'd suggest that you stop making inane comments like, "So the term covers the gamut from production to distribution. Therefore Obama really is a socialist, at least from the distribution point of view. And yes, so are McCain, Bush, Pelosi, and most of the rest of congress. This is a sad state of affairs".
I am sure all of ther corporate CEOs whose companies ploughed tens of millions of dollars into the koffers of Obama and McCain's election funding to ensure that their interests are a priority will be shocked to find out that both presidential candidates are 'socialists'. Especially those in the arms industries who see the US government like an ATM machine at a bank; when they need money, they can count on their government and the supine corporate media to inflate foreign threats and then cash in big time on contracts doled out to them. Also surprised will those 85% of Americans pushing for an efficient government funded health care system that doesn't exclude close to 50 million Americans - you can bet your bottom dollar that it ain't gonna happen. So indeed will be labor leaders, trade unionists and environmental campaigners in third world countries who have seen successive US governments support corrupt elites that oppose any kind of 'bottom-up' democracy and wealth redistribution. Instead, your so-called 'socialists' encourage capital flow from the poor nations to the rich nations, and appear to have no qualms about wealth and power being concentrated. James Madison I think it was once famously remarked that power should be in the hands of a 'more capable set of men', meaning those with wealth. In spite of your musings, I don't see any fundamental shift in affairs.
Ben, I suggest that you read the book, 'The Age of American Unreason', if you seriously think that many, if not most US politicians are 'socialists'.
"Actually, Obama is white. At least he's as white as he is black."
Yeah and I'm as much Irish as I am Jewish.
Funnily enough the Irish bit never got me spat on or inspired people to spray-paint swastikas on my school locker.
Bruce Sharp.
I blame you for luring me back to see what was happening at Marohasy's latrine. The excursion did grubby me up somewhat, but it was worth it to see that there is now an ocean-acidification denial thread (initiated, sadly, by comments from Ian Plimer), and complete with a cast of characters who believe that there can be no 'acidification' at all if the pH remains above neutrality.
I think that once more I vomited a little bit in my mouth, although I spat it out quickly enough what with the laughter...
Ben, if you wish to retain any shred of credibility in this and other threads
Ahem. Test, test, test. Ahem. Test.
Earth to Jeff Harvey...earth to Jeff Harvey. How do you read?
The International Panel on Credibility Committee made the following announcement four years ago...
;o)
Best,
D
Bernard, I like that term: "Marohasy's Latrine." If I were gonna open a really crappy pub in some run-down corner of Phnom Penh, I think I'd name it Marohasy's Latrine. Of course, I don't drink, so the likelihood of me opening a pub is pretty slim. Maybe Tim can use the name for one of Deltoid's standing categories.
we'll get more New Deal bullshit that will prolong our suffering rather than fix the problems...
Along with the debunking above, it's a bit hard to measure the actual effect of Roosevelt's New Deal since:
1. He was not able to get all of it through Congress
2. A substantial part of his New Deal that was enacted was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
So we'll never know just how much more effective his New Deal would've been, if it had been fully put into place.
As it was, full recovery was the result of massive intervention by the federal government starting in late 1940 and increasing rapidly in late 1941 ... triggered by events that even Isolationist Republicans couldn't ignore.
Sorry to keep floggin' the ol' dead horse, but Sarah Palin, Proud Socialist.
Palin is basically Chavez in very attractive drag.
Folks overseas may not enjoy/understand the political intrigue of Mr Haughton's linky, but nevertheless any country's election season would enjoy the fine entertainment value of the running mate openly sabotaging the candidate's (slim) remaining chances to better position themselves for the next election. At least other countries can rest easier knowing that our crazy time is just about over...
Best,
D
Insults from right-wingers are the Galileo treatises of Liberal Fascism.
I thought Joe Cumbria was banned?
I love spring cleaning!
(said he, cryptically)
I'm trying to decide whether or not to invest the time into reviewing the economic consensus regarding the impact of New Deal programs on the Depression. Intuitively, I find it hard to believe that economists would think that FDR's programs were effective in bringing us out of the depression. But, of course, I can't argue just on my intuition.
The results could be that they made things worse, had little to no effect or successfully ended the Depression. No one's seriously argueing that anything other than WWII ended the Depression are they?
And, bi-IJI... you're an idiot. Anyone wanting to retain their credibility should disassociate themselves from you.
The best I can do on short notice is this. U.S. News and World Report is mainstream enough to not dismiss out of hand right?
Seems like it's about 50-50. Anyway, I have a hard time seeing a program that eight years later still had an unemployment rate of 14% as a raging success.
Anyway, I have a hard time seeing a program that eight years later still had an unemployment rate of 14% as a raging success.
Again, only part of his program was put into place due to resistance in Congress and unfavorable SCOTUS rulings (I should think that googling "FDR supreme court packing" would bring you up to speed quickly).
And, no, the New Deal alone didn't end the depression. It helped people survive the depression. I don't know if FDR imagined that full implementation of the New Deal would end the depression or not. We have no way of knowing since it was never fully implemented. But personal pain was diminished for countless people. Unless you think, for instance, that older people who lost their entire life savings would've been better off without social security checks.
No one's seriously argueing that anything other than WWII ended the Depression are they?
No. Will you seriously argue that WWII (which I alluded to above) was NOT the largest federal intervention into the economy in our history? Will you argue that the result of that intervention is evidence that intervention doesn't work?
The latest from Lubos Motl is the claim that solar cells contribute significantly to global warming because Nitrogen Trifluoride(NF3) is used in its manufacture.
A recent post on johnquiggin.com puts these claims into proportion:
"Annual production of NF3 is around 600 tonnes (the 5400 tonne figure bandied about is the current total estimated amount present in the atmosphere.)
600 tonnes of NF3 translates to 10.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
In reality solar panels are probably responsible for less than 10% of that amount. (For starters NF3 is used in the production of thin-film silicon solar cells but not in the older ingot-style cells,)
But let's attribute all the NF3 production to solar panels. Now let's assume a 100-fold increase in solar panel output.
That'd increase the annual emissions of NF3 to an amount equivalent to 3% of current annual GHG emissions."
A further thought - isn't it wonderful how people who deny carbon dioxide can cause warming via the greenhouse effect seem only too happy to accept the NH3-AGW hypothesis.
BillBodell revealed:
I'm trying to decide whether or not to invest the time into reviewing the economic consensus regarding the impact of New Deal programs on the Depression.
Well, I encourage almost everyone to learn a bit more economic history so I'm a tad biased in that respect. However, should you decide to invest your time reviewing the consensus on this, what will you do after your coffee break is over? Whaples 1995 survey in JEH is just about it, and there isn't much detail there. In addition, economists' opinions can change over time -- we saw that a few months ago regarding your question about economists' opinions on minimum wage laws.
I'm going to play Jeff Harvey for a moment:
Ha! Ben you think that those government officials are all socialists? Don't you know that they're really all in the pockets of the corporations who are secretly running the world??? Those corporations are so powerful that you can't even put your underwear on in the morning without their say-so and they are the puppet masters of Bushco and even the majority of Democrats in congress. If you'd read the book "blah blah blah" by "so and so" you'd know this! It's there in the book! It must be true!
It's always the same old thing, very predictable, and laughably absurd. Jeff, you still probably think that Hugo Chavez is all fluffy bunnies. Are you still blind to the fact that he is an aspiring dictator and commie thug?
Looks like we got ourselves a reader...
Know-nothing-ism is the Normandy D-Day of Liberal Fascism.
Also, book-reading is the book-burning of Liberal Fascism.
See Ben this is what I mean by anti-intellectualism as one of the key elements of the Right wing authoritarian personality.
But that's just something I read in a book.
I disagree frequently with Jeff on political issues - however I never dismiss his argument with this sort of hand-waving.
"Palin is basically Chavez in very attractive drag."
That's wildly over the top.
"Moderately attractive drag" woudl be mroe appropriate.
"Seems like it's about 50-50. Anyway, I have a hard time seeing a program that eight years later still had an unemployment rate of 14% as a raging success."
Bill, I don't have time to find a link at the moment but you need to look at the unemployment rate in the 1920s.
contrary to popular memory, unemployment before world War II was consistently higher than in the 1950's and 1960's.
The US economy actually recovered strongly from 1933 to 1935. The return to recession from 1935/6 was partially due to the dust bowl and related climatic effects.
But once again, that's just something I read in a book.
Kinda like the fact that most of the tax increase under Roosevelt came not from raising tax rates but from ending Prohibition and taxing alcohol sales.
As a libertarian, I'm sure Ben is outraged at this Big Government attack on self-made businessmen like Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luchiano.
"Palin is basically Chavez in very attractive drag"
Right, she puts political adversaries in prison. Next you'll claim she's Castro in drag because she jails librarians and gays and has children shot in the head.
"Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it..."
From the link above... yes there is quite a difference. Who exactly "owns" the oil in the ground on public land? A good guess would be that its the public. The oil companies get paid to extract the resource. On the other hand, who owns the products of the work I do? It sure as hell isn't Obama. How generous of him to want to share something that belongs to someone else.
"Right, she puts political adversaries in prison".
More nonsense from Ben. Please tell me all of Chavez's opponents that are in prison in Venezuela, Ben. Heck, the guy even paradoned most of the US government-National Republican Institute-National Endowment for Democracy-Sumate backed criminal mob that briefly overthrew his democratically elected government in April of 2002. Have you read Greg Wilpert's book, 'Changing Venezuela by Taking Power' Ben? Or Niklas Kozzloff's latest book? No. Of course not. You rely on the good old corporate US media for your world view.
Latinbarometro, the largest polling organization in South America, and based in Chile, regularly polls Latin American nations on how the feel about democracy in their countries. Which country has come out on or near the top in the last several of these polls? Venezuela. Along with Uruguay. This pretty well demolishes all of the hostile media reports emanating from the west. Chavez's real crime is not fulfilling his traditional service function for US investors and the established order in Venezuela. In truth, his reforms have been pretty modest, but he has taken the reins of power out of the hands of the Venezuelan elites who have traditionally been closely allied with the US, hence the constant drip, drip, drip feed damning him and his government.
Have you read Greg Wilpert's book, 'Changing Venezuela by Taking Power' Ben? Or Niklas Kozzloff's latest book? No. Of course not. You rely on the good old corporate US media for your world view.
And you rely on a plethora of books by liberal crackpots. Why should I trust them? And who says I rely on "corporate media"? That's a buzz-term if I've ever heard one. And didn't I already mock you for asking if I'd read your dumb books?
And I suppose this is a corporate media lie? That, and how do we know that people are answering these surveys honestly? For all I know they are answering favorably because they are afraid that they are being monitored by Big Brother Chavez and are wary of answering "incorrectly".
'...who owns the products of the work I do?'
Surely not the people who helped you get an education, or made your society safe enough to work in, or clean enough, or healthy enough (on a public health vaccination, water, food quality level). Not them. Not a bit of it.
"who owns the products of the work I do?"
Your employers, duh. That's capitalism. if you think it's you, then you're a socialist. seriously.
Your employers, duh. That's capitalism. if you think it's you, then you're a socialist. seriously.
Not unless they pay me first for my work. My employer is merely my customer, since I'm a consulting engineer. Obama, on the other hand, didn't do shit for me and is welcome to take a hike, rather than a chunk of my earnings.
Surely not the people who helped you get an education
And who were they? My education cost me a lot of money, and I'm going to be paying for it for a long time. And the vast majority of my student loan interest is not tax deductible.
That, and the Canadian government paid for a lot more of my education than did the American government (people, that is). Most of my student loans are Canadian, from the years that I lived there. Maybe I'll threaten to move back to Canada should Obama get elected on Tuesday. None of the American celebrities threatening same in 2000 and 2004 didn't follow through. Canada has a pretty good, mostly conservative, government right now. I could do worse...
And that "pretty good, mostly conservative government" hasn't touched the Canadian health care system or the tax system and is supporting the Kyoto Protocol.
Why do you think that is, Ben?
So, you earn significantly more than $250,000/year Ben? Or are you another Joe the Plumber? and how would you have paid for your consulting engineer degree if you'd had to pay upfront, rather than the SOCIALIST canadian government giving you a loan?
I say "significantly" because I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the US (like Australia) only money earned above a tax threshold is charged at that rate; so you will be paying less tax on the money you earn below $250k under Obama.
I was thinking more about primary educaiton actually. And the whole clean water thing which meant not dying of diarrhoeal illness, and the state funded jabs which meant not getting polio (apart from the nasty socialised risk of jab induced polio). I suppose one might decide to take out a loan and buy these things in one's childhood. It would be a wise investment for an infant.
"My employer is merely my customer, since I'm a consulting engineer"
Well then you're both the capital and labor part of your own business. But it's the capital part which is making the money from selling your labor, as is sepcified in various legal precedents, and as you would discover if you should ever do something like sell your company and try to take the products of your work with you when you leave.
But if you really want to pursue this topic, how much would you pay if you had to provide your own systems to communicate with your customers and vendors, transport objects to and from your customers and vendors, prevent criminals from theft of your physical property, prevent criminals from theft of your intellectual property, prevent violation of the terms of contractual agreements with your customers and vendors and any employees you may have, prevent your building from burning down, make sure that your building will not fall down around your ears from improper construction, provide utilities, insure your bank accounts should you desire not to risk your hard-earned gains in other investment vehicles, etc. etc. etc.? Because there are many countries where these services are not supplied by the government and thereby your tax load is substantially reduced, and you can decide whether or not to acquire them or save the money. thing is, in most of them it's pretty hard to make a success out of yourself unless you start with enough wealth and/or power (e.g. being the president's brother) to provide them a priori. the third world is generally characterized by a lack of government compared to the US, rather than an excess of government.
And that "pretty good, mostly conservative government" hasn't touched the Canadian health care system or the tax system and is supporting the Kyoto Protocol.
Because of political expediency. The Canadians are too far gone to change in that matter. But they are a far less sparsely populated country with excellent hunting. Sometimes you have to give something to get something.
...so you will be paying less tax on the money you earn below $250k under Obama.
If you believe that, then I have a nice bridge in Seattle to sell you. Obama is a lying sack of shit. Mark my words, he will have to raise taxes to pay for all his bullshit, it's either that or print money.
z, all that could be provided for much less than the government currently collects in taxes. A 5% flat tax would probably suffice, or possibly a 5% sales tax. ...and the state funded jabs which meant not getting polio (apart from the nasty socialised risk of jab induced polio).
I like how the Canadian government did such a nice job of protecting the population from thalidomide... oh, whoops, they didn't. Imagine that. So trustworthy, those governments.
Robert,
You're right. In the second post (25 minutes after wondering if I should spend the time) the reference I linked to quoted Whaples 1995. It's not that I don't have an opinion already, it's just that if one is to carry on a debate with the "opposition" it's pointless to exchange references from one side's publications or the other's. It's getting in deep enough to sort out the biases that take the time. And I also prefer using references from sources that have some credibility with the "opposition".
Ian,
Most of the early hits reference rates since 1948, so that seems to be when the government first started formally compiling the data. But I did find this which goes back to 1920 and indicates that an unemplyment rate of 14% was indeed unusual.
Also, Libertarians would have welcomed the end of alcohol prohibition (just like they'd be in favor of ending drug prohibition today). And Roosevelt did create a top income tax rate of 91%.
Maybe I'll threaten to move back to Canada should Obama get elected on Tuesday.
** waves hand ** This is not the nation you're looking for.
Ben is being a bit strident in the use of "Socialist". We're all socialists now, it's just a matter of degree. He also makes the mistake of thinking using "socialist" on this blog is going to carry any weight. My guess is that most regulars here are all over the "spread the wealth" thing.
As it happens, I think the more socialist the country, the worse for that country's poor and disdvantaged. And the arguements against it should focus on that and not that "some rich guy will have to pay too much in taxes". I'd be happy to tax everybody making over $100,000 at 99% if it would improve the lot of everyone, But it won't.
Based on the economic opinions expressed here. Most of the AGW "alarmists" seem to oppose capitalism (not that there's anything wrong with that). But why? If it was all about the "science" of AGW, wouldn't one expect to see as many capitalists as socialists on each side? Or is it that Socialists (not that there's anything wrong with that) believe in Science and Capitalists don't? Kinda makes me think there might be something to the idea that the left has seized upon AGW as an issue to further their political agenda. I don't think that's all there is to it or that every alarmist is a "commie", but there is something to it.
Ben, Obama is going to tax people who have lots of money. I understand that the idea that it might be easier and more efficient to get money from the people who have money rather than the people who don't have money might be hard for you to grasp. It's only been around since the Roman republic after all.
BillBodell,
There are more settings on the policy dial than "socialist" and "capitalist".
It's more like the right has refused to make global warming part of their policy agenda - abandoning the field to the left by default. There are a few ecocapitalists, geo- and green libertarians out there who will make the point that global warming is a kick-arse reason to shift taxes away from income/payroll/etc and on to Pigouvian taxes (eg on carbon dioxide emission, or land use) which reflect market externalities, but they are lonely canaries in the coalmine.
Ben, Obama is going to tax people who have lots of money.
Uh, no. He's going to tax people with annual incomes that are higher than some arbitrary amount. That arbitrary amount is currently set in his retoric at $250k. If you believe that in four years it will still be there, I have a bridge to sell you.
Now remember, having a seemingly "high" income does not equate to having lots of money. Some people with little or no income have "lots of money." And some people with "high" incomes do not have particularly large sums of money. Obama is not taxing wealth, he's taxing income. So all the limousine liberals get to keep their giant wads of cash, while I with my massive debts will get to pay high tax rates on my "high" income. Oh joy.
BillBodell wrote:
It's not that I don't have an opinion already, it's just that if one is to carry on a debate with the "opposition" it's pointless to exchange references from one side's publications or the other's. It's getting in deep enough to sort out the biases that take the time.
Hmmm. BillBodell, you've already admitted you weren't trained as a climate scientist. I'm thinking that you weren't trained as an economic historian either.
"Because of political expediency. The Canadians are too far gone to change in that matter."
Yes, disagreeing with you clearly means they're "too far gone".
It couldn't possible be because, for example, they've made a rational comparison between the US and Canadian health systems and decided they prefer the Canadian version.
"If you believe that, then I have a nice bridge in Seattle to sell you. Obama is a lying sack of shit. Mark my words, he will have to raise taxes to pay for all his bullshit, it's either that or print money."
Yeah and McCain is elected you Ben wil lbe one of the millions drafted to fight his endless wars of aggression.
Sure he SAYS he won't but it's much more fun toi construct one's own reality, isn't it?
"Based on the economic opinions expressed here. Most of the AGW "alarmists" seem to oppose capitalism"
I can't speak for others but for my part I most emphatically DO NOT oppose capitalism.
What I oppose is criminally irresponsible fiscal policies based on high spending and insufficient levels of taxation.
Since the political reality is that spending cuts of the magnitude required to bring the US budget back to something approaching equilibrium aren't going to happen, I support modest tax increases as part of a program to reduce the deficit.
Yeah and McCain is elected you Ben wil lbe one of the millions drafted to fight his endless wars of aggression.
You know, I made over $100 on bets with my goofy friends who thought that we'd see a draft under Bush. Funny how that didn't happen. Care to put your money where your keyboard is should McCain win? Similarly, care to put money on Obama and no tax increases for folks making under $250k/year over the next eight years? I'm game.
What I oppose is criminally irresponsible fiscal policies based on high spending and insufficient levels of taxation.
I also oppose that. Nice to be in agreement with you for once, Ian.
Since the political reality is that spending cuts of the magnitude required to bring the US budget back to something approaching equilibrium aren't going to happen, I support modest tax increases as part of a program to reduce the deficit.
How about we meet in the middle? Cut some spending. No new spending without cutting something else, and modest tax increases to make up the difference? Better yet, how about we scrap the income tax and go with a national sales tax on anything but food and medical care? That way the big consumers pay a much greater share, right? And me with my "high" income and huge student loan debt to pay such a massive penalty until I've cleared my debt burden.
Ben, where is your evidence? When you write crappy nonsense like, "Are you still blind to the fact that he is an aspiring dictator and commie thug?" you are, as Ian said, hand waving. No substance, just rhetoric. Basically, its the typical strategy of someone whose lack of knowledge is caught out. So they rely on abusive dismissal.
In fact, your response is nothing more than comic level book analysis. How many elections does the guy have to win? Have you read the new constitution of Venezuela? Have you paid any attention to the Latinbarometro polls?
Let me create an imaginary scenario for you. Let's say there was a coup to overthrow the Bush regime in 2002 that was backed by, let's say, Iran, in which a number of prominent American conspirators were identified. Let's suppose that Bush was whisked out of the country by his captors, but, for some unknown reason, popular revolt amongst the general US population led to him being restored to the presidency within 72 hours. What do you think the US government would do to the conspirators? Would Bush pardon them? And what if it was clear that Iran was involved. What would the US response be? Given clear US involvement in the 2002 coup in Venezuela that briefly put Carmona in power, this is all relevant.
Basically it comes down to this: methinks you don't have much of a clue what you are talking about. Thus I expect more hollow hand waving.
One footnote: Note how Ben dismissed books he's never read as being written by 'liberal crackpots'. Unbvelievable, or perhaps not. Dano nailed it in his last post to me. Dano, may thanks for the wake up call.
"Care to put your money where your keyboard is should McCain win? "
Do you actually think I was serious there? I was satirising your extreme rhetoric about Obama.
"How about we meet in the middle? Cut some spending. No new spending without cutting something else, and modest tax increases to make up the difference?"
Yeah, we can withdraw US troops from Iraq and thereby cut around $100 billion a year.
Then we can increase the top marginal rate of tax by 4 cents in the dollar.
Bush 41 and Clinton kept growth in discretionary spending to less than the growth in real GDP. I suspect Obama will either match or exceed that spending restraint.
"That way the big consumers pay a much greater share, right? "
Because the poor spend virtually all of their income (or in the case of pensioners actually spend MORE than their income as they draw on their savings), they pay proportionately more under a sales tax regime than the rich who save more.
As I've pointed out before, existing US indirect taxes already mean that the total tax burden is barely progressive at all. Indeed in Texas and in some other states people on 20-30K pay a higher proportion of their total income in taxes than do millionaires.
"And Roosevelt did create a top income tax rate of 91%."
When Roosevelt came into office, the top marginal rate was 63%. Hoover raised it from 25% in an attempt to keep the budget in surplus (and maintain the gold standard).
Roosevelt kept the top marginal rate at 63% from 1933-1936. The funding for the initial New Deal programs came from borrowings and, as I said, alcohol taxes.
In 1936, when it appeared the Depression was easing, Roosevelt raised the top marginal rate to 79% in an attempt to reduce the deficit.
The tax rate stayed at 79% until 1940 when it was raised to fund increased military spending.
Truman cut taxes post-war until the Korean War and the military build-up forced him to raise it back to 92% - then that Republican icon came in and delivered a massive cut to 91%.
Funny how the 50's are remembered as a time of prosperity and classic American values.
My statement about unemployment was wrong and am angled misremembering of a quite different point - that the economic recovery from the Great Depression (including reducing unemployment) was actually faster than from the previous depression - the Panic of 1893.
The peak of unemployment in the 1890's wasn't as high as in 1930's but the rate of decline was a lot slower in the 1890's.
By the standards of both the 1890's and the 1930's, all subsequent US recessions have been mild and short-lived.
I believe that can be attributed to what coudl be broadly described as Keynesian economic policies (in which category I'd put Bush's 2001 tax "rebate" cheques.)
Ben, I for one do hope that you start making plans to return to Canada first thing Wednesday morning.
I'm serious.
Is it possible to be off-topic on an open thread?
It would be quite nice if Marcus du Sautoy's appointment to Richard Dawkins' old job could get some coverage on Scienceblogs. There was lots of coverage when the opening was announced but nobody seems to want to report it now it's filled. Thanks
Ben, I for one do hope that you start making plans to return to Canada first thing Wednesday morning.
Nah, not gonna happen. While the hunting is good there, they don't allow CCW, and that's a deal breaker.
Look, Jeff, I don't know anything about these authors you cite, and you cite a lot of them. Why would I have possibly read all of that? I have no time for it. I have many better things to do. You apparently have a lot of free time on your hands or read at a rate of a page per second.
Robert,
You are correct. I am neither a Climate Scientist or an Economic Historian. Is this thread restricted to only those that meet these criteria?
Jeff, your books are wonderful and all, but there seems to be evidence that they are full of crap. Chavez is a real nice guy, eh? Suppressing the media, ruling by decree, removing judges, using the state police to intimidate opponents. And it doesn't look to me like the US had much to do with the 2002 "coup" if you can even call it that:
On 11 April 2002, chaos erupted in Venezuela, with huge protests of over half a million people organized demanding the immediate resignation Chávez. Chávez ordered the military to control the riots instead of the police "Plan Avila", possibly with orders to fire upon the protesters; the military refused to carry out Plan Avila, forcing Chávez to leave the capitol and resign, which was announced on 12 April 2002. A vacuum of power ensued and Pedro Carmona was placed in power; however due to missteps even in his first day of power, many who had supported the removal of Chávez now refused to back Carmona, forcing his resignation and the restoration of Chávez to power.
I suppose the US orchestrated the half million person protests? Not likely.
Ian,
This is an interesting topic.
While hardly the final authority, wikipedia does have this list of recessions. 1893 seems to have lasted about 3 years with "10 years of rapid growth following the election of McKinley".
Other than the "Long Depression" (interesting, I'll have to read more about that), The Great Depression seems to fare rather badly against other depressions 100 years either way of it.
Ian,
My, you are stimulating. I knew the tax rate was 91% in the 1950's and pretty much figured that the wealthy just got around it somehow. But, you motivated be to look into it a bit more.
If you don't want to the trouble of checking it out, the most interesting paragraph is:
But in fact, the tax rates of the 1950's didn't necessarily reduce CEO consumption; it just reduced their reported taxable income. The high income tax rates in the 1950's were paired with a corporate tax system that allowed companies much more generous deductions for things like business lunches, business-travel-with-spouse, and so forth. Right now you pay Rick Wagoner a squillion dollars, and he entertains important people on his own dime; in 1955, you paid him less, but he expensed all his entertaining to the company. Descriptions of 1960's expense account procedures for even entry-level management are enough to make this journalist rather faint with envy.
Sorry, I can't stop.
Ian, you said
In 1936, when it appeared the Depression was easing, Roosevelt raised the top marginal rate to 79% in an attempt to reduce the deficit.
In 1937, the recession deepened again. I know correlation does not equal causation, but interesting none-the-less.
So the government taxed more and got less. Isn't that a lesson that we learned long ago, and that Obama ignores for issues of fairness?
BillBodell asked:
Robert, You are correct. I am neither a Climate Scientist or an Economic Historian. Is this thread restricted to only those that meet these criteria?
Ah. Sorry. I'd forgotten that you don't have much of a sense of humor.
Robert,
Maybe little winking emoticons will help out the humor challenged. I've reread your post a couple of times and still haven't gotten it. But give me a few more days.
"But in fact, the tax rates of the 1950's didn't necessarily reduce CEO consumption; it just reduced their reported taxable income. The high income tax rates in the 1950's were paired with a corporate tax system that allowed companies much more generous deductions for things like business lunches, business-travel-with-spouse, and so forth."
So was the tax system in the 30's and 40's more like that in the 50's or that in the 60s?
Right now you pay Rick Wagoner a squillion dollars, and he entertains important people on his own dime; in 1955, you paid him less, but he expensed all his entertaining to the company.
No, he still entertains on the company's dime. The only difference is that the company can "only" deduct 50% rather than 100% in many (but not all) cases.
If ever there was a good argument for a flat-tax or sales tax, dhogaza... your link provides it. Cost of compliance with our idiotic tax code produces no useful wealth and takes away funds that might be spent productively somewhere else.
ben, the cost of compliance with sales taxes is far higher than for income tax. POS collection has a cost.
Really? How much? Where can I look up what the cost is?
"I like how the Canadian government did such a nice job of protecting the population from thalidomide... oh, whoops, they didn't. Imagine that. So trustworthy, those governments. "
your argument is quite compelling, in favor of more government regulation of pharmaceuticals. note that not only did the US regulatory agencies ban thalidomide outright, but those nasty socialists in Europe banned it several months before Canada did.
what side did you say you were arguing in favor of again?
"The Canadians are too far gone to change in that matter."
they can't have gone far, Sarah Palin can see them from her house.
Let's check in on what the American right has to say in response to the death of Barack Obama's grandmother:
"Seriously, has anyone actually seen this woman in recent years? If Obama has some of his thugs guarding her (and if there is, indeed, a body) I hope they do an autopsy to make sure Granny's passing was a natural event."
"So Barry goes and see's granny. Granny dies day before election. She is probably one know who really knows where he was born. Well as the church lady used to say."isn't that special""
Makes Ben's attempt at exploiting crippled children for political advantage look positively civil by comparison.
Ben, speaking of crap, where did you get that information? The fact is that pro-Chavez rallies dwarfed by a 3 to 1 margin anti-Chavez marches (estimates of pro-Chavez marches numbered up to a million). Second, Chavez was returned to power because mass protests ensued that crushed short-lived Carmona's corporate regime. Third, the anti-Chavez marches did not consist of 'ordinary citizens', but most were strongly connected with the Venezuelan elites - rich white families who controlled most of the country's wealth. Fourth, the US was up to its neck in the coup - anyone with half a brain acknowledges that. The Orwellian named National Endowment for Democracy, along with the National Republican Institute and USaid had been stirring up trouble in Venezuela for three years leading up to the aborted coup. The problem for the political and corporate establishemnt was the same old one, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine and continuing up to this day: the threat of independence and indigenous nationalism. This explains why the US has traditionally seen Latin America as a sort of 'workshop' for its global economic designs (see Grandin, 2006, for a thorough analysis of Latin American-US relations in an historical context). It also explains why the US government sent gunboats into Latin American ports more than 6,000 times between 1860 and 1900 (to maintain 'order') and General Smedley Butler's now infamous remark in 1936 that while he was in the Marine Corps he acted as a 'high class muscleman for big business , Wall Street and the bankers - a rackateer and gangster for capitalism' who 'helped in the rape of half a dozen Central Americal nations'.
Considering your knowledge of the country and Latin America in general is, in my humble opinion, so infintisimally small, Ben, why do you even bother? You clearly don't know much about the continent, except bits and pieces from Fox News and CNN. Ever heard of John Wagelstein? Or Thomas Carrothers? Or Charles Meachling? Or Dmitri Simes? Or Gustavo Alvares? Ben, I read a helluva lot about history. Your comments reveal a clear lack of depth. Basically I am wasting my breath with you.
Comment by ben blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
Comment by BillBodell blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
Comment by ben blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
Comment by BillBodell blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
ahhhhhh....
Best,
D
Ian,
In the 1920's and 30's, Income Taxes were only paid by the very wealthy (over $200,000 / yr). So the rates didn't matter all that much.
I don't have a problem with progressive taxes. Taxes should be designed so that the wealth of the country is maximized while funding the expenditures of the government. Slapping a 90% tax (for example) on all income over $200,000 isn't going to do that. To the extent that high earners can't find loopholes, they will essentially stop producing once they reach that level and very little of that tax will be collected. If the tax rate over $200,000 is 35% and 10% of those earning $200,000 now work hard enough to make $500,000, that's an extra $105,000 in taxes per person.
In 2001, before the Bush tax cuts, the top 1% paid 33.89% of all federal income taxes. In 2006, after the tax cuts, they paid 39.89% Sure, they were making more money, but if they didn't, the difference of 6% would have to be picked up by the rest of the taxpayers (and remember, roughly 38% of filers pay no income tax). Does that help the middle class?
Or you could decide that everybody should make between $50,000 and $100,000 and tax everything above $100,000 and give it to those making less that $50,000. Income equality would be achieved, but at a level somewhat equivalent to Albania.
I consider Capitalism to be a clever way of tricking talented, smart and energetic people into devoting themselves to making my life better by providing be with better, cheaper and more efficient products and services. I'll let them work 80 hours a week, ignore their families and live in the big houses. I think I'm getting the better end of the deal.
Let's check in on what the American right has to say in response to the death of Barack Obama's grandmother:
Ian, a sampling of comments from any blog will show that kind of crap. Just look at Democratic Underground and Kos. They are vile cesspools with comments much worse than what you posted. You only succeed in showing (with my help) that some people on all sides of the political spectrum are complete assholes. People here aren't that bad at least.
And then there's Best D, who's comments are only slightly less annoying than a loud soup slurper.
On a different note: today's the day! I'm off to vote for Obama, and then to the gun store to buy a couple EBR's before it's too late :)
Jeff Harvey writes:
The problem for the political and corporate establishemnt was the same old one, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine and continuing up to this day: the threat of independence and indigenous nationalism.
Jeff, Venezuela has been independent for a long time now.
You clearly don't know much about the continent, except bits and pieces from Fox News and CNN.
True, I do not know much about the continent, but what I do know I did not get from Fox News nor CNN. I don't have cable TV and I don't rely on "corporate media" for my news, as they are in general much too biased to the left of myself.
Ever heard of John Wagelstein? Or Thomas Carrothers? Or Charles Meachling? Or Dmitri Simes? Or Gustavo Alvares?
No.
Ben, I read a helluva lot about history. Your comments reveal a clear lack of depth. Basically I am wasting my breath with you.
Maybe true. The only problem I have is that your point of view seems to be tremendously biased. Do you only read books by leftists? Are you like my wife's father who thinks Castro was the greatest leader in modern times? Do you think Che Guevera was a hip dude even though he lined up children in front of firing squads?
I have a question/request - does anyone know about Dr. Heinz Hug and his idea that there is no known mechanism for CO2 to cause warming?
Somebody has posed this link as ¨proof¨that CO2 isn´t responsible for warming
If anyone has some time to spare and give a brief refutation of this bunkum it would be reatly appreciated ;)
Well, Connor, just for starters the "independent scientist" you cite writes:
And water vapor is highly variable, which means it swamps anything carbon dioxide does.
The guy is a goofball hack and should be dismissed out of hand. He certainly isn't doing the skeptic side of the AGW argument any favors.
Hi Ben,
It's certainly true that politicians can't necessarily be trusted not to raise taxes. But this argument applies to McCain as well. Given that he wants to cut taxes to a greater extent than Obama, AND have a more aggressive military foreign policy, the gap between taxation and spending is going to be even bigger under his policies ("earmarks", while annoying, are about 0.1% of the budget - not going to make a difference). Which implies he is more likely to backtrack and raise taxes than Obama is. Remember 2000, when McCain called the same tax cuts he (says he) wants to keep "fiscally irresponsible"?
On this topic of can people be trusted in the future; now you've (claimed to) vote for Obama, how do you know your friend will hold up his/her end of the deal? You can't go into the polling place with them.
I've already pointed out that wealth taxes, in the form of estate taxes, were abolished by Bush.
What is a "limousine liberal"? Is that like a cadillac driving welfare queen? or more like one of hundreds of federal bureaucrats administrating one indian?
"now you've (claimed to) vote for Obama, how do you know your friend will hold up his/her end of the deal?
I assume that he will as a matter of honor. True, I'll never know for sure, just like he doesn't know for certain that I voted for Obama. I did write in "Barack Hussein Obama" rather than simply filling in the Obama oval. My own pathetic attempt at dissent.
A limousine liberal is a wealthy do-gooder who doesn't ming high taxes that spend someone else's income, since they're already wealthy and wealth is not taxed.
" Dr. Heinz Hug "
as long as nobody else takes up the question
well that page at nov55.com that references Hug is breathtaking in getting everything else possible wrong so that's not a good omen, but re the linked essay by Dr. Hug:
It's tough sledding, but at first glance he appears to be on a quest to determine what the change in temp per doubling of CO2 would be without feedback from H2O, and then uses that smallish figure to shed doubt on the IPCC estimates, which of course do explicitly include H2O feedback. He references Kondratjew and Moskalenko's estimate in "The Global Climate" that 7.2 degrees of the current "background" 33 degree global warming is due to CO2, but that is an attempt by them to separate the CO2 effect from the H2O effect, which they estimate at 20.6 degrees; if you accept that the H2O level in the atmosphere is affected by the temperature, as you must, and is therefore a feedback of whatever sign and value, then you have to admit that calculating the effect of a change in the CO2 in the atmosphere alone, neglecting feedback, is kind of an empty exercise. Which Hug obliquely addresses in the rest of the paragraph, where he notes the wide variation in the estimates of CO2 forcing in the absence of feedback; because deconvoluting the H2O feedback from the observations is both difficult and kind of wrongheaded if the interest is in what will happen given the current atmosphere, rather than finding the absolute CO2 effect which can be applied to water-free atmospheres.
In case you aren't familiar with it, the quantitative effect of water vapor is the part of the whole picture most shrouded in mystery and is widely discussed n the serious literature, despite the constant affirmations by the skeptiks that "scientists ignore the much bigger effect of water vapor". There is far from universal consensus as to the exact figures, but the greatest consensus is that it's positive, and I think the most popular estimate these days is that it about doubles the effect of CO2 changes. Which wouldn't quite overcome Hug's estimate that the effect of CO2 is 1/80 what the common estimate is, but I haven't yet digested his math.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth, and it's overpriced at that.
Heinz was a great favorite of the late John Daly. Eli made the mistake of reading his foolishness a long time ago. Anyhow, Hugs basic mistakes were to not realize that CO2 (and water vapor) emit IR as well as absorb it and that the energy absorbed by CO2 is rapidly thermalized through collisions with N2 and O2. In short Hug is clueless.
From the link:
Carbon dioxide absorbs all radiation available to it in about ten meters. More CO2 only shortens the distance, which is not an increase in temperature. In other words, the first 20% of the CO2 in the air does most of what CO2 does, and it doesn't do much. (Heinz Hug)
Eli, did you just refer to yourself in the third person? Bob Dole?
Ben writes, "The guy is a goofball hack and should be dismissed out of hand".
Talk about calling the kettle black.
I am just saying that Niklas Kozloff, Greg Wilpert, Greg Grandin, Paul Farmer and Forrest Hilton etc aren't 'flagrant lefties' - they are intellectuals who comment as they see it, and who have lived in Latin America for many years. To reiterate, the reason Chavez was returned to power in 2002 was because the general population stormed the Miraflores palace demanding that 'their president be returned'. This was one of the greatest shows of solidarity in recent history, and must have come as a shock to those who traditionally hold the reins of power. If you bother to read the various tenets of the Venezuelan constitution - as I have done, although its a long read - you'll find that it is one of the most progressive constitutions in the history of democracies, empowering women, indigenous peoples, and the poor, thus those who have often been excluded from power. Its little surprise that the corporate media pay scant attention to this. In 2005, 6.9 billion dollars of PvDSA (the now state oil company) was distrubuted to various programs, including Mission Ribas, Mission Robinson, Mission Guainapara and others that have provided free health care, education, illeteracy eradication and housing to Venezuela's poor. Its no small wonder that the poor love Chavez and his government. If they had one criticism, it is still that there is some corruption and cronyism in the country, and that his government has not gone far enough in its reforms. But only populations in 3 countries in Latin America have, according to Latin barometro polls, shown that their people feel 'more empowered' by their democracies: Venezuela tops the list. I think this is quite some achievement.
Eli, after some quick looking, I found this: http://dor.wa.gov/content/aboutus/statisticsandreports/retailers_cost_s… that discussed the cost of collecting sales taxes in the state of Washington. They did a study and came up with the cost of collecting state sales taxes at about 1.4% (weighted by dollars). About half of that is the fees that the retailer must pay to the credit card companies for the 'tax amount'. Presumably, the other expenses won't go up (if the POS equipment handles sales tax, it seems unlikely that the retailer will have to purchase another register if the % charged on each transaction goes up). I'm guessing you were saying that it would cost a lot more than that if they were to start collecting an additional sales tax. Maybe you missed my earlier question where I asked if you could point me at the study that compares the actual costs of our current tax system with a POS costs of a consumption tax? Thanks.
Jeff, just had a quick look at those books on Amazon. All I've got to say is: Oh brother.
...in other news, Michael Crichton passed away yesterday. De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est and all that.
Dano, if you have all those people in your killfile, why do you feel the need to make sure that the rest of us know that you have those people in your killfile?
"A limousine liberal is a wealthy do-gooder who doesn't ming high taxes that spend someone else's income, since they're already wealthy and wealth is not taxed."
So basically in Ben's America the rich, the poor and the midle class alike don't pay taxes.
Makes yo uwonder why he's so upset about the tax rates.
Incidentally Ben, ever heard of capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes?
Funnily enough it isnt the limousine liberals who are so keen to abolish them.
Ben, What? After reading the jacket cover or reading a few comments from readers at Amazon you dismiss Kozloff and Wilpert's books? Kozloff did his PhD at Oxford and is a NACLA Senior Research Associate in Washington. Wilpert's book is a comprehensive analysis, warts and all, of the Venezuelan constitution.
As I expected, more comic level book analysis. Totally expected. Dano is correct: I need to install a spam filter for your posts on Deltoid, Ben.
Dave, Dano does this to remind us that there are some who contribute to this and other threads with a kindergarten child's view of the world. I am glad he does this. I need to install a killfile too.
Incidentally Ben, ever heard of capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes?
Yep, which still doesn't tax their capital, only the gains, and since you can't take it with you, the inheritance tax doesn't hurt them directly.
Funnily enough it isnt the limousine liberals who are so keen to abolish them.
Well, how about the ones who want to abolish those taxes simply donate more of their wealth to the government? Why are they so keen to shackle the rest of us?
Thanks for the replies everybody, a big help!
why do you feel the need to make sure that the rest of us know that you have those people in your killfile?
Who says I was doing this?
I was reveling in the faster screen loading time, not having to paint the bytes of the babbling of certain ideologies. And sharing my feelings of the joy in the reminder that there are some people who are unswayed by facts - we can enjoy their truculence in the face of facts, or not.
------
I have mixed feelings in Jeff addressing the need for [killfile]: I fear that I'll get fewer of
his regular thundering comments here. It is here I get reminders of PopBiol (use it or lose it, as they say).
OTOH, there is always a new denialist popping up, isn't there, like some flashy Amanita rising up out of the horsesh-t, ready to show off their new-found knowledge gleaned from the Google 5 minutes ago, thinking their words make them intoxicating. These denialist mushrooms, preferring horsesh-t, don't need the Jeff Harveys of the world, but we do.
Best,
D
Ben,
I don't see how you reconcile your criticism of unearned wealth with support for sales taxes, which, as has been pointed out, tax the poor. If you want to be consistent, you'd do best to join the geolibertarians and support land and resource taxes, which do tax unearned wealth gains.
Also, as a matter of fact, most of the US's tax revenue is raised in heavily Democrat states, so if liberals are supporting high taxes, they are also the ones who are paying them.
unswayed by facts...
uh-huh.
I don't see how you reconcile your criticism of unearned wealth...
Did I criticize unearned wealth?
Ah, I see, what I criticized was persons who possess large amounts of unearned wealth voting for high INCOME taxes.
Jeff, I'm sorry, I misunderstood Dano. When he did that it reminded me of that guy in third grade that you really hated who walked around humming and saying "I can't hear you". Then as he would walk away, he would stick his tongue out. So you're saying that the resemblance is purely accidental, then?
Jeff, this is my America. I know what yours is. And we are entirely incompatible.
Ben, this is actually your America, as told by none other than Ralph Nader:
"What we're seeing is the highest level of resignation and apathy and powerlessness I've ever seen. We're not talking about hoopla. We're not talking about hope. We're not talking about rhetoric. We're not talking about rock star Obama. We're talking about the question that is asked everywhere I go: 'What is left for the American people to decide other than there own personal lives under more restrictive circumstances year after year?' And the answer is almost nothing, because there is no powerful organisation that turns the most powerful branch of government around, the Congress - 535 people, put their shoes on every day like you and I do - against the 1500 or so corporations that get their way."
Thats says it all.
J
Funny isn't it that the same people who complain about "hyphenated-Americans" and accuse others of disloyalty are currently seemingly determined to divide "Real America" from the fake America and talk about "their" America.
Personally I suggest the fake Americans give these people a reservation somewhere and let them sink into the ignorance and squalor they so richly deserve.
Ben, I just read the comic book link you cited. I fell out of my chair laughing when this was written:
"The far-left radical who gained the Presidency on Tuesday".
Far left radical??? What planet is anyone on who believes this garbage? Now its time to GET REAL. Paul Street lays out the facts in the following article he wrote for ZNet:
Note the difference, Ben, between the 'substance' of your article (= none) and Street's. There's a light year of difference.
The speaker of these words is Deddrick Battle, a black janitor who grew up in St. Louis's notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing projects during the 1950s and 1960s.
Said notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing project courtesy of your local liberal do-gooders.
You know, for all your hatred of corporations, you never mention unions nor organized crime (which are often related). The 'big dig' in MA is widely held to have gone over budget and time due not to the eeeevil corporations, but due to the involvement of organized crime that is so common on the east coast and Chicago.
Wasn't organized crime a big part of the corruption of Cuba before Castro as well? And yet, Jeff, you never have it out for them. You probably think the Mob and corporations are one and the same.
And hey, that article you cite refers to the "elite" and their involvement in elections. But others here mocked the use of that term so I guess your article is a bunch of bullshit, right?
And "the moneyed establishment"? Give me a break. Obama raised a huge pile of cash from puny individual contributions. The rank and file of America have enough spare cash to elect anyone they want provided they can 1. get organized, and 2. agree on a candidate. Further, the "moneyed establishment" (whatever that is) doesn't owe anyone anything.
Nader had his shot, had plenty of exposure, and anything he had to say could be found by anyone who was interested. What you are really saying is that the majority of the electorate are a bunch of simps who will buy what they are sold. Well, that's just tough f*cking sh*t. I have to deal with that and so do you. If the electorate were better educated and in posesion of something resembling objectivity and wisdom neither Obama nor McCain would have even been nominated for president in the first place.
Dave,
I like the idea of replacing the income tax with the a sales tax but, I think it would just lead to an huge underground economy. Also, we'd have to come up with some way to refund taxes to low-income people. Nice idea, but I can't see any way to make it work.
Jeff Harvey,
Dano does this to remind us that there are some who contribute to this and other threads with a kindergarten child's view of the world. I am glad he does this. I need to install a killfile too.
I'm having a weird reaction to Dano's including me with Ben in his killfile. On the one hand, if I were to have a killfile, Dano is one of the people I'd include. Even dhogaza occasionally says something worthwhile. I don't think Dano ever has. So, considering the source, I shouldn't care. But, he's lumping me in with Ben (who I probably agree with most of the time) but who's main point seems to be saying inflamitory things that he knows will rile up the usual suspects. Has anyone that disagrees with Ben ever said "good point Ben, I'll think about that?".
When I can't help myself from wasting my time posting on message boards, I try to make reasonable arguements and have an actual conversation in the hope that some additional understanding (on both side) might occur (sigh).
Everyone on the board jumps at Ben's bait and my comments are largely ignored. I flatter myself into thinking that people don't engage me as often because it's more of a challenge or that they might have to actually think through what they say. However, I'm open-minded enough to realize that there's a real possibility that I'm just boring everybody.
I rarely post on sites that share my point of view, that's just a circle-jerk. If you're not going to try to reasonably engage in debate with people having different opinions, what's the point?
All that said, I can't help but take a bit of offense at being referred to as someone that "contributes to this and other threads with a kindergarten child's view of the world".
I suspect I'll get over it soon enough.
But, he's lumping me in with Ben (who I probably agree with most of the time) but who's main point seems to be saying inflamitory things that he knows will rile up the usual suspects.
True, I do act like a troll sometimes. Given the nature of our differences here I find it a challenge to do otherwise. That's interesting in and of itself. But I get as good or better than I give so oh well.
Has anyone that disagrees with Ben ever said "good point Ben, I'll think about that?".
It has happened. They do like my sister better though.
I rarely post on sites that share my point of view, that's just a circle-jerk.
They seem to like it that way here. The thing is, and I've freely admitted it many times, that I've learned a great deal here. I've been proven wrong many times about many subjects, and that makes the exercise worthwhile for me. Seems that really ought to make it worthwhile for everyone else too. Not for Dano of course, but he never adds anything constructive. And Jeff and I are diametrically opposed in our points of view, so we're unlikely to be of any value to each other. The only place where I feel like I've ever won an argument is on gun topics. But that's not too difficult since facts are easy to find and they mostly support my position.
Ben, the problem with you is that you actually believe that you live in a functional democracy. In spite of piles of evidence to the absolute contrary, you really believe it. Yet you don't seem to have much of a clue about the main players in US foreign policy circles over the years. I named just a small sample of them the other day (I could n ame dozens more, whom yopu obviously would not know either), and, as expected, you responded by saying that you didn't know a single one of them. This tells me a lot - especially considering I am a Canadian-Brit - in fact, all that I need to know. Paul Stree's excellent article was quite comprehensive. Of course all of the corporate lobbysists and 'elite players' who clearly supported the Obama presidency for some yhears now you have never heard of either. The bulk of his campaign financing - like it or not - did not come from the ordinary citizen but from powerful vested interests. They have groomed him. Do you think these powerful people would fund a socialist for a second? Anyoen who believes this is living in a fairy tale land of make believe. But because you know little of the power structures that effectively run the world you dismiss them. Your strategy is that 'the best defense is a good offence' because your lack of knowledge is exposed time and time again. Not just be my, but by others on Deltoid.
I'd be interested to know what kinds of books about political history that you do read. As a scientist, I see a clear link between western foreign policy and environmental degredation, as well as the maintenance of poverty for the bulk of humanity. Why do I call it 'maintenance'? Because I have read numerous declassified documents from primartily UK (but some US) government planners over the years and there is constant theme to all of them: they do not talk much at all about promoting democracy, freedom or human rights, but instead repeatedly express a fear of indigenous nationalism amongst populations in countries which possess resources that our corporate and political elites covet. Why do the planners fear nationalism? It is made clear: because countries that embrace nationalist governments via 'bottom-up' democracy (e.g. 'real' democracy, not limited forms of top down democracy promoted by western elites who control power) may attempt to use the resource wealth to benefit all of their own populations, and not just a few 'at the top'. This will 'conflict with the business interests of werstern corporations'. So our governments must do 'all they can to influence internal making decisions in these countries', thus opposing any form of nationalism. Given that you don't have a clue about any of this, and aren't willing to get off of your backside to go to any major public library and read some of these documents for yourself, I expect your usual refrain to be (said out of the usual ignorance). "It's all b*s".
Furthermore, it has always been important for me to be able to link the continued decline if the health of our global life support systems and elite policy making decisions by the developed world, all at the behest of the privileged few. You are actually quite a brave dude to wander into this site and to espouse the rather embarrassing nonsense that you do, considering how little you know about the world and the power structures that maintain it as it is. John Pilger nailed it when he wrote in June: "In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: 'The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.' What has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor have passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W. Bush finally steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest of humanity will diminish". He concludes: "It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic [and Republican] tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates".
Says it all, really. I deeper look at history - something I do a lot, to place current events in context - reveals that scribes like Paul Street hit the nail on the proverbial head. Its no small wonder that you won't be reading him in any corporate MSM outlet.
Bill: I would just say that I personally find Ben's lack of knowledge about - well much of anything in my opinion, especially US history - justifies Dano's killfile. My problem is that I wasting my breath on people who see the world based on a very narrow amount of information and yet espouse all kinds of utter nonsense - such as 'Obama is a flaming socialist', which was the catalyst for me to enter this thread. What Dano is saying is that he doesn't have time for comic level book analysis. For that matter, nether should I. Why I bother, I don't know.
Bill, One last point. You wrote: "Has anyone that disagrees with Ben ever said "good point Ben, I'll think about that?".
Perhaps this is possible on topics unrelated to politics and power structures. But anyone who believes for a microsecond that 'Obama is a flaming socialist' is living in another dimension. Moreover, Ben did answer 99% of the points I made re: Chavez. He parroted the usual Fox-network type line but hasn't read one iota of information about the new constitution and the way it is aimed at creating a socially just society in the country, nor of the many polls conducted by the biggest polling agency in South America (Latinbarometro) that show Venezuela at or near the top in ever category with respect to the way the populations of Latin American countries view democratic progress in their countries. Instead I am greeted with garbage like 'Chavez is a commie thug' and similar gobbeldegook. And I am supposed to say, 'good point Ben'?????????
Its not just a question of seeing the world differently, but it is apparent that Ben and I base our opinions on a profoundly different intellectual resource base. I will let you read from that what you will. We can agree to disagree politely, but for Ben to dismiss intellectual opinion as 'liberal crap' whenever it is inconvenient, please don't expect me to reply by saying 'good point Ben'. As for the power of organized crime (e.g. Mafia) and organized trade unions, I WILL concede a very minor point. But these entities possess a very tiny fraction of political power at the global level compared with corporations, which are undemocratic amoral tyrannies, to partially quote both Joel Bakan and Noam Chomsky. Again, there's piles of evidence to show this, but Ben appareantly doesn't read any of it. Again, I reiterate that anyone doubting this should consult declassified government planning documents. They make what I say quite clear.
Ben, the problem with you is that you actually believe that you live in a functional democracy.
Any difference between such and what we actually have is purely the fault of the electorate.
I'd be interested to know what kinds of books about political history that you do read.
Few. I've read "Why Lenin, Why Stalin" and "All the Shah's Men". Both excellent and enlightening reads. I will agree that the US/UK screwed up Iran on a massive scale. I do agree that the US should not meddle in the affairs of other nations unless they pose an actual violent threat.
But anyone who believes for a microsecond that 'Obama is a flaming socialist' is living in another dimension.
By American standards, as a major American politician, he's a flaming socialist. By European/Canadian/South American standards maybe not. I exaggerated, but he is far to the left of any president since... all of them. Tell me which president was further left on the economy than Obama.
Ben and I base our opinions on a profoundly different intellectual resource base.
The resource base has little to do with it. The primary difference is in our opinions of which political/economic system is best. I prefer political and economic freedom over political and economic equality. My primary goal in life is to simply be left alone by the government. And I grew up dirt-poor, so don't give me any crap about being privileged. My only privilege was that I was born in America where people have a chance.
Bill,
I think you are overestimating the difficulties in a national sales tax. For example, lets pretend that as of today, there is no form of income tax in place in the US (Social Security, federal/state income tax, you name it). Now, lets pretend that we want to start one tomorrow. How should we implement it? Well, lets make every company track every dollar that each employee makes (something they are probably already doing). Then, lets ask them to withhold a particular amount from each of those dollars. Some dollars are taxed at one rate, others taxed at another. Some taxes stop at a certain income level, others do not. Also, depending on where each employee lives/works, there may be an entirely different set of rules regarding each of those dollars. Then, lets set up a big bureaucracy to oversee/audit that collection. Then, for people who are self employed, everyone who writes a check to anyone who does a little work for them will also have to track that and report it to that newly created agency. Then, at the end of the year, basically everyone who touches any money for someone else will have to fill out a bunch of reports regarding interest earned, penalties paid, expenses, etc. and mail that not only to each individual, but to that agency. Then, each individual who makes any money will then have to fill out a separate set of forms tracking not only all the money that they earned, but also money that they spent, what it was spent on and any tax status of that money. This doesn't even address the hoops for people who may have bought and then sold something during the year (capital gains, short term/long term, washes, investment expenses, etc.). Then, we can make up a few arbitrary rules regarding some types of purchases so that people can pay less taxes. Of course, those rules will have nothing to do with the original rules that governed how the employers withheld money from paychecks in the first place. Oh, yeah, and we'll make the rules for filling out the forms so complicated that the agency responsible for enforcing them won't even be able to answer the same question regarding those rules the same way when asked the question multiple times. Finally, the original agency will have to audit all of those different forms to make sure that no one cheated. Finally, if there is any difference between the amount of money withheld from the paychecks and the number on the form, either the individual or the government will have to cut a check. I wonder how many checks have to get managed that way? I wonder how well that will work. I wonder if an underground economy that involves paying people cash for work will grow up so that taxes can be avoided? I wonder if there are any costs to the economy from a system like that?
Now, lets contrast that with a system where stores that are already tracking local sales tax rules (which I am guessing are maybe 1/1000 of the complexity of our current income tax rules) now just get a government mandate to tack on an additional 15% to 25% in taxes that they collect and just send that money to the government. Its possible that a black market could spring up, but most people wouldn't bother. With all the extra money flooding the economy after the removal of all the income tax burdens, it wouldn't be worth the effort. Most people will still just go to the same stores they alway shopped in and buy from the same stores that gave them good service/warranties/support in the first place.
Now, do you really think that a national sales tax is really more complicated than the current system? I'm still hoping that if Eli is reading he can show us the study where he got the information that a national POS tax would be more expensive than what we have now (I think his exact words were "the cost of compliance with sales taxes is far higher than for income tax").
Its possible that a black market could spring up, but most people wouldn't bother.
There already is a sizable underground economy that avoids income taxes. The government could potentially do better with a federal sales tax in that regard.
I think I finally get it. Jeff, tell me if this is correct: You're not upset with me for offending Obama by calling him a socialist, you're upset with me for offending socialists by calling Obama a socialist. Is that right? If so, I understand you better.
Ben writes:
"By American standards, as a major American politician, he's a flaming socialist. By European/Canadian/South American standards maybe not. I exaggerated, but he is far to the left of any president since... all of them. Tell me which president was further left on the economy than Obama."
1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2. Harry S Truman
3. Lyndon B. Johnson
All three were far to the left of BHO on domestic policy issues. Both FDR and HST supported national health care, for example (which in the 1940's, was not considered to be a particularly far-out left position.)
Ben writes:
"Tell me which president was further left on the economy than Obama."
In my last post I listed FDR, HST, and LBJ, but I forgot to mention the most egregious example:
Richard Milhous Nixon: Wage and Price Controls, ~ 1970.
By American standards, as a major American politician, he's a flaming socialist. By European/Canadian/South American standards maybe not. I exaggerated, but he is far to the left of any president since... all of them. Tell me which president was further left on the economy than Obama.
As Robert P. posts above: Nixon.
Who dallied with the idea of the negative income tax, which would guarantee a minimum income to all Americans regardless of their work status, work income, etc.
Even Eisenhower might be considered to the left of Obama. Or not. However, far to the left of McCain, without any doubt. Eisenhower prevailed over a massive public works project totally in the Roosevelt style - the Interstate Highway system. The Interstates, which have led to such an increase in internal commerce, travel, and recreation/tourism.
Kennedy - a massive public works project named "NASA - man on the moon in 10 years". Didn't give us teflon, as was so widely reported (it actually came from the engineering of the uranium hexafluoride diffusion plants built in WWII but under top-secret conditions), but it did give a lot of people work. Others hope. International prestige. And added to our aerospace engineering expertise at a time when it was greatly needed.
One can actually go on for years about this kind of stuff.
Hell, even Lincoln was to the left of Obama, on economic issues.
Ben - consider this an exercise for the reader.
Consider learning some American history before continuing to make obvious your ignorance?
If I'm not mistaken, we've had this discussion before, in other threads.
All three were far to the left of BHO on domestic policy issues. Both FDR and HST supported national health care, for example (which in the 1940's, was not considered to be a particularly far-out left position.)
I'll give you LBJ. Obama, whatever he says in the media, personally supports national health care. He just doesn't think he can get it done and so seeks to do what he can. That's my opinion.
As for the others, I disagree with you. You may be right based on Obama's rhetoric, but I think history will prove you wrong. It's too soon to tell anyway, since he hasn't served a day in office. Maybe we could resurect this thread in 2012 or 2016 and compare. We've unfortunately gotten into comparing the political leanings of a president-elect with the policies of past presidents. Apples to oranges, and I shouldn't have brought it up.
Jeff Harvey writes:
As a scientist, I see a clear link between western foreign policy and environmental degredation, as well as the maintenance of poverty for the bulk of humanity.
Was the USSR good for the environment? How about the PRC? Rumania? Was the massive environmental destruction they caused due to western foreign policy?
Fro that matter is it even meaningful to speak of a single "Western foreign policy"?
I wonder if Jeff considers the Malayasian logging companies responsible for the bulk of illegal logging across South East Asia and the south Pacific to be western?
Some aspects of some policies of some western governments really do contribute to environmental destruction, but that's a far cry from Jeff's blanket claim.
Dhogaza writes:
"Even Eisenhower might be considered to the left of Obama. Or not. However, far to the left of McCain, without any doubt. Eisenhower prevailed over a massive public works project totally in the Roosevelt style - the Interstate Highway system...
Kennedy - a massive public works project named "NASA - man on the moon in 10 years".
Hmm, that's pushing it a bit too far, I think. The Interstate Highway system and NASA both started out as essentially military projects - explicitly in the case of the Interstate (I'm old enough to remember when it was called the "National Interstate and Defense Highway System") and implicitly in the case of NASA. And the US government has always been ready to toss free-market principles aside where the military was concerned.
Nevertheless, your point is well taken - the fact that I have to think for a couple of minutes before concluding that Barack Obama is indeed slightly to the left of Eisenhower and Kennedy points up the absurdity of the attempts by the 2008 Republican party's attempts to portray BHO as a "radical leftist".
This (Harvey/Levenson/Gould) shows signs of degenerating into an interesting discussion.
I'd observe to Ian that you don't need a unitary foreign policy, just a set of policies that are broadly consistent, and agree with Barton that the communist bloc's environmental management was terrible.
I'd generalise Jeff's statement to say that an imperial foreign policy contributes to environmental devastation. If you are (directly or indirectly) ruling over territory that the locals (rightly or otherwise) consider belongs to them, not you, and you don't answer to the locals but to your home shareholders/voters, then your long term occupation of that territory is always in doubt. This means that a rational strategy is to strip the territory of assets, since the fruits of long term, cautious husbandry are likely to go to some future nationalist movement, rather than to you, whereas the prospects of being forced to pay reparations for colonialism/asset stripping at some future date are exceedingly remote.
The communist countries, being dictatorships, didn't answer to their own "locals" and thus the communists (and other dictators) asset stripped their own environmental bases (or did it in peripheral areas, e.g. Tibet, Siberia, populated by locals that couldn't threaten the centre). They were auto-colonialists.
Western civilian populations have developed the capacity to object to their environments being asset-stripped at home. Those seeking fast bucks hence turn overseas - e.g. the oilfields of Iraq or the Coltan mines of the DRC. So I would say that western foreign policies are often environmentally destructive, not because we are worse than the communists but because we are better.
"I'd generalise Jeff's statement to say that an imperial foreign policy contributes to environmental devastation. If you are (directly or indirectly) ruling over territory that the locals (rightly or otherwise) consider belongs to them, not you, and you don't answer to the locals but to your home shareholders/voters, then your long term occupation of that territory is always in doubt. This means that a rational strategy is to strip the territory of assets, since the fruits of long term, cautious husbandry are likely to go to some future nationalist movement, rather than to you, whereas the prospects of being forced to pay reparations for colonialism/asset stripping at some future date are exceedingly remote."
I broadly agree with this and suspect that Jeff would too.
However Jeff would probably take the view that after formal decolonisation in the 50's and 60's the former colonial powers maintained de facto control over the reosurces of many of their former colonies and continued to exploit the resources.
I'd argue that in many cases there is an element of truth to that. However I'd argue that it is a vast oversimplification and ignores the role of local elites in said exploitation.
Environmental degradation is arguably worse in many countries that have been at the forefront of resistance to "western foreign policy" (e.g. China, Burma, India) than in a number of countries that are essentially pro-western.
It seems to me that the key preconditions for environmental protection especially in the developing world are democracy and a free press; low levels of corruption; rule of law (i.e. a state capable enforcing the law equitably) and secure property rights (including the communal property rights of indigenous groups over their traditional lands).
To the extent that the policies of western countries advance those conditions, then they are helping to slow or prevent environmental degradation.
Conversely, to the extent that the policies prevent or retard these conditions from developing they're promoting environmental degradation.
Hmmm... Ian and BPL piling on Jeff! Maybe you're not all commies after all.
I'd contribute that the primary precondition for environmental protection is wealth. All of Ian's conditions are important, but it's hard to ask people to protect the environment when their families don't have adequate food and shelter.
That's why proposals to improve the global environment can't have a negative affect on wealth creation.
Obama a Socialist? We don't know yet.
Also, these days it isn't enough to label someone a Socialist (it doesn't scare people like it used to), you have to actually make a case for why socialism might be a bad choice.
I suspect Obama could go either way. The economic consensus (at least the "Economist"'s view) is that it's probably time for tax cuts to avoid/reduce the oncoming recession. Obama might be pragmatic enough to postpone any tax hikes (especially on corporations) but he'll have problems controlling the Democratic congress.
Obama is also in a unique position to improve the situation with old industries with massive pension and health care costs due to giving in to unions repeatably over the years (GM, Ford esp.). He might be in a position to get concessions from both unions and the companies in return for their slice of the bail-out pie. McCain or a less popular Democratic president could never do this. Sort of like Nixon and China.
On the other hand, he could start rolling out a bunch of left wing socialist policies that will deepen and lengthen the recession with congress gleefully going along.
This is really a fork in the road. Obama could be great or he could be a disaster. I'm exited and scared to death at the same time. I guess we'll know which way it's going in 6 months or so.
"On the other hand, he could start rolling out a bunch of left wing socialist policies that will deepen and lengthen the recession with congress gleefully going along."
Wow, what a maroon.
Bill, what you seemed to have missed is that in the last 8 years, all of your economic theories have been tried and they have all been proven false. That is how we got in this mess in the first place. Using what got us into this mess isn't going to get us out of it.
I think we will be better off listening to the people who aren't being paid to lie to us.
Krugman for example. Both smarter and much more honest.
Bill, what you seemed to have missed is that in the last 8 years, all of your economic theories have been tried and they have all been proven false.
The only thing that has been "tried" is tax cuts. If they had also "tried" some fiscal responsibility, flushed fannie and freddie down the toilet, punched the fed in the face, privatized social security, stopped federal abuse of the commerce clause, etc, and still failed, then you might be able to claim the "tried and failed" mantra.
bi:
Also, Obama is a MUSLIM!!! He's a FOREIGNER!!! He's an ELITIST!!!
Guess what? Nobody cares about this one-word adjective crap now. Not anymore.
Ian:
However I'd argue that it is a vast oversimplification and ignores the role of local elites in said exploitation.
So bi indirectly insults/mocks Ian. Hooray!
elspi,
That's a nice line from one of my favorite thinkers, Bugs Bunny.
What I'm saying is that tax cuts are being recommended NOW, because of the current economic problems. Bush hasn't been trying tax cuts for the last eight years to avoid a serious economic recession.
If one is truly concerned for the middle class workers, raising taxes on "Rich Corporations" might be the worst thing you can do. "Rich Corporations" are largely owned by pension funds and 401k plans. The "Excess Profits" are either re-invested to expand business and hire new employees or given as dividends to the owners (your pension or 401k plan). Raising corporate taxes may well end up costing jobs, reducing investments and reducing you 401k.
It seems simple enough to take money from "Rich Corporations" and give it to poor people, but it doesn't work that way.
And... what ben said.
BillBodell: "Wealth" can be measured a number of different ways. Having a healthy environment that produces an abundance of subsistence goods and services (as many people in developing countries still live off the land directly) can be a lot more relevant than a fistful of dollars; especially since the dollars are likely to be seized, one way or another, by the local elites Ian talks about (here's a hint. The difference btw third world elites and American 'elites' is the difference between Robert Mugabe and Barack Obama. geddit?).
On those local elites; though they have agency of their own, of course, they are often the glove for the commercial interests of the former colonial powers. And as I said, China, Burma et al colonise themselves.
I'm not all that sanguine about "secure property rights". They're great in theory. But having studied a few land titling programs in SE Asia, what usually seems to happen is that the newly issued bits of paper somehow show that the land is "really" the property of the local officials, the planning officers, and their wives, cousins, cousins' wives' cousins, etc. Titling usually becomes an excuse for tossing traditional owners off land. Even when courts rule against this "primitive accumulation" as we old-time marxists call it, rulings are ignored or unenforced, or if they're enforced, the people are already gone and the land clear-felled.
"I'd contribute that the primary precondition for environmental protection is wealth. All of Ian's conditions are important, but it's hard to ask people to protect the environment when their families don't have adequate food and shelter."
I'll right more abotu this later but I think you are incorrect here.
The Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union were much richer than many developing countries but had appalling environmental records.
Costa Rica isn't a lot richer than most of its central American and Caribbean neighbours but has a far better environmental record - which I believe can be attributed largely to the fact that it's virtually the only stable democracy in the region.
Finally, I'll point out that many (not all by any means) indigenous groups have quite limited environmental impacts despite being poor by western standards and that often it's precisely the attempt at economic development that causes the environmental harm.
For example, the market for bushmeat in Africa is largely driven by poachers supplying markets in the rapidly-growing cities and using roads built for mining or forestry projects to access rain forests.
here's a hint. The difference btw third world elites and American 'elites' is the difference between Robert Mugabe and Barack Obama. geddit?
What? Obama's only half black? Obama hasn't ordered anyone to be murdered yet?
Ian: Costa Rica is puny and has little industry, compared with the former Soviet Union and its satellites. They built up much of their industry as a result of wars, and Costa Rica doesn't have that history. So it's not a fair direct comparison in my opinion.
often it's precisely the attempt at economic development that causes the environmental harm.
Very true. So instead of wasting gazillions of dollars on aid to Middle Eastern/African countries like Egypt who hate us, we would do better to invest in countries that are poor but developing in order to help them develop with less impact to the environment.
How do poachers drive the market for bushmeat? Do you mean to say that they supply it? The rapidly growing cities would be the driving force... that is, the consumers. Or do they have guys standing on street corners pushing bushmeat on unsuspecting children?
the question of how to fix the economy raises the question of where things are blocked. given that for quite a while now, industrial production has exceeded consumption, requiring companies to idle factories, feeding them more cash won't fix things. they'll just use it to buy up their own stock, thereby raising their stock price without actually getting the economy moving again. Exxon Mobil, for instance, has put the bulk of all the tax breaks it's received for "exploration" in the past few years into buying up its own stock. and of course, now that stock prices are way down, a corporation can buy up a lot more stock, and it makes even less sense to spend the money hiring people to make stuff that can't be sold.
for the money to get the economy going, it has to be injected where it will be the most likely to start circulating; and at this time, at least, it's certainly at the level of the consumer; particularly the lowest rung of the ladder, where any dollar will immediately be put into circulation to buy food, shelter, clothing, energy, etc.
take the aforementioned GM, for instance, hurting because of accumulated debt; if it could actually sell cars, that debt wouldn't mean anything. that's been the case for decades. does anyone believe that it can be fixed by giving it a big chunk of change, so that it can build more cars that can't be sold? it's not like GM cars are overpriced and would sell if they were more economical; they already are the low priced end of the market. people aren't buying Toyotas and Hondas because GM cars are just too expensive.
or take the mortgage meltdown; people can't pay their mortgage or sell the house, they lose the house, the mortgage company loses the income, the folks with shares of the mortgage company lose money, etc.; how exactly does sending a trillion dollars to the end of the chain represent an improvement over putting the money into the front end of the chain, letting the folks pay their mortgage and keep their homes, the mortgage company keep their incomes, and their investors keep their stockholders happy?
(OT: re the unions crushing the car companies with their benefits, although there is some truth in that picture, the auto companies have historically been quite adept at weaseling out of it; witness the most recent deal a year ago, wherein the union took over $70 billion of GM's healthcare debts in return for $50 billion of GM stock. as great a bargain as that may seem, consider how fine it seems now. oh, but in return, the union got assurances that GM wouldn't cancel medical benefits for retirees for two years. let's see, that was one year ago.... good thing we require employers to cover health care for employees rather than the government, like those backwards places like Japan or Korea.)
James Haughton,
By "Wealth", I was talking about standard of living for the masses (not whatever might be in the ruthless dictator's Swiss bank account).
Ian,
I don't think it's a matter of moral "purity". Almost no one would give the environment a second thought if their children were hungry. Few would trash the environment for no purpose (although there would, no doubt, be the occasional mindless vandal).
If an indigenous group has a short life expectency and high infant mortality, it is probably unable to effect the environment significantly either way. Increase the life span and reduce infant deaths and they'll be plundering the environment as soon as they are capable. But, I'm not willing to say that they have to keep dying young for the environment's sake.
We need to get them past that and to a point where they can afford to presereve the environment. To do that they need a stable legal environment, property rights and a stable, honest government. Far from an easy task, but it ought to be our top priority.
...good thing we require employers to cover health care for employees rather than the government, like those backwards places like Japan or Korea.)
I'm not aware that there is any such requirement.
z, your analysis is interesting but presents only one side of the economy. Similar arguments can be made for providing stimulus to the production side of the economy rather than the consumption side. Likely neither are correct. Probably the economy would do better if left alone to sleep for a while and recover naturally. What countless "experts" in the economy adeptly demonstrate is that nobody really has a clue about the economy, and anyone's guess is as good as any other. And these first-order analyses don't help much either. The economy is certainly higher order and much more complicated.
I will probably come back and respond at more length later but time is short so I'll confine myself to a couple of quick points:
Ben at 189: "Ian: Costa Rica is puny and has little industry, compared with the former Soviet Union and its satellites. They built up much of their industry as a result of wars, and Costa Rica doesn't have that history. So it's not a fair direct comparison in my opinion."
"You're misreading what I wrote Ben.
Me at 188: "Costa Rica isn't a lot richer than most of its central American and Caribbean neighbours but has a far better environmental record - which I believe can be attributed largely to the fact that it's virtually the only stable democracy in the region."
I wasn't comparing Costa Rica to the Soviet Union (referred to in the preceding paragraph) but to countries such as Honduras and Nicaragua. If I'd wanted to make a similar point about the Eastern Bloc I would have used East and West Germany not Costa Rica.
As for bushmeat - the bushmeat market first grew up to supply forestry and mining camps and developed not because of any particular local preference for bushmeat but because it was the cheapest source of meat. Much the same principle applies in the cities.
John @ 191: "I don't think it's a matter of moral "purity"."
Neither do I and and I'm at a loss to how you came to the conclusion that I did.
Economics is an innately amoral field, the link between democracy, functioning markets, effective and equitable legal systems on the one hand and economic growth and environmental protection on the other is an empirical observation which economists then seek to explain.
(At the risk of stating the obvious, the correlation is most definitely not 100%).
You also appear to be misunderstanding my statement about indigenous people. Indigenous people (In general) are best-placed to understand the resources of their land and how best to exploit them in a sustainable fashion. Squatters and illegal loggers have no property rights in the land and have every incentive to maximise their short term return before they're moved on.
ben writes:
privatized social security,
Oh, yeah, that was a great idea! Let's put it all in the stock market! That sure would have worked out well. Let me see, 14,000 decreasing to 9,000 is what percent growth?
Ben writes, "So instead of wasting gazillions of dollars on aid to Middle Eastern/African countries like Egypt who hate us, we would do better to invest in countries that are poor but developing in order to help them develop with less impact to the environment".
Ben, oh Ben, where on Earth do you learn this grade school level nonsense? Africa's leading economist, at the World Social Forum in Port Alegre, Brazil, 2003, put it bluntly: "Developed nations do not aim to manage societies of the planet in order to integrate them into a coherent capitalist system, but aim only at looting their resources." Economist Patrick Bond provides similar evidence in his book, "Looting Africa", as does Tom Athanasiou in his book, "Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor". There's stacks of evidence to suggest that western governments only provide aid with immense strings attached, such as the recipients must convert their economies to an absolute free market doctrine and privatize their resources. They must also allow for captial flow to western investors - hence why the rate of capital drain from the poor south to the rich north has actually increased since 1970: at that time, it was a 3:1 dollar south-north ratio in dollars going from the underdeveloped south to the industrialized north; by 2003 the ratio had actually increased to 7:1. The 'development model' never works because the proceeds of development are largely appropriated by the rich.
A study by Edward Herman in 1982 revealed that the US government provided more 'aid' to governmenbts with appalling human rights records. Why was this? It was not because the Reagan administration supported torture and murder, but because countries that murdered or tortured trade unionists, environmentalists, priests etc. etc. tended to be good countries for business investment because overheads (wages and regulations) are kept low. Nothing at all has changed.
And lets not forget old Henry Kissinger, who, apprarently along with other senior members of the government in 1974 wrote notorious National Security Study Memorandum # 200, which said, "Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries." http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/kiss_nssm_jb_1995.html
Throw in comments by people like Kenna, Sumemrs, Butler, Schlesinger et al. over the years and the agenda becomes even clearer.
How much clearer do you want the mnessage to be, Ben? You write as if western governments, and theuS in particular, are serious about promoting democracy and alleviating poverty. The truth couldn't be more of a polar opposite. Western elites support their counterparts in the south and only advocate limited 'top-down forms of democracy' when it is in their interests. When it isn't democracy is downplayed or ignored. FYI, these words are not mine, but came from Tom Carrothers, a member of the Reagan cabinet whose job was 'democracy promotion'.
"The 'development model' never works because the proceeds of development are largely appropriated by the rich."
I suspect the Japanese, the south Koreans; the Taiwaneese, the Thia and the Malaysians would be surprised to hear this.
Ian, it works differently in these countries. You should read Noam Chomsky's take on it. He argued that, while the rich world exports primarily luxury goods to the south, the Asian tigers were smart: they bought machinery and equipment in which to build their industrial economies along the lines of western countries during the industrial revolution. This now makes them strong competitors with the west. The fact is that there is no concerted effort to alleviate poverty in much of the south on the part of westen planners; western planners aren't dumb. They realize that there is only so much resource wealth to go around and they also know that as countries become more affluent they will impact their own land masses and demand a greater share of their nations capital, which is currently being controlled by the north. Its no small coincidence that the US has traditionally seen South America as 'service function economies' for western corporate interests and investors. Its all no coincidence that populists like Chavez, Morales, Correa, etc. aren't looked on favorably by western elites and their counterparts in the south. The corporate MSM constantly demonizes leaders who attempt to develop their economies independently from the 'Washington Consensus'. Yet little mention is made of undemocratic regimes - such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia - that 'play ball', nor of regimes like Uribe's that have amongst the worst human rights records on the planet.
I suggest you read some of the declassified US or UK planning documents I alluded to ina ripose to Ben last week. Mark Curtis writes at length about them in his books, 'Web of Deceit' and 'Unpeople' (and also on his web site). They make quite alarming reading.
There's some new stuff from Curtis that is definitely worth a read:
Oh, yeah, that was a great idea! Let's put it all in the stock market! That sure would have worked out well. Let me see, 14,000 decreasing to 9,000 is what percent growth?
Yes, in the short run, and with government help, the stock market suffers from high variability in the short term. In the long term it outperforms all other forms of investment. In 1998 the Dow was at 8300, so now at 9000 there is at least some improvement. Not to mention that there are other investments that could be used that are highly secure and return around 5%.
What you're saying is that the governments approach, to put the money into a "lock box" that isn't really there, from which it extracts the money into general revenue to be spent, leaving a worthless IOU in the "lock box" is a better method of saving?
In the government model, then, you put your money in and it dissapears with a promise from the government to come up with the dough when you retire. With the privatized model, the money is really there, in an investment of some sort, which adds much needed capital to the market that can be used to grow the economy.
I fail to see how anyone can be so averse to privatization of SS. Heck, at least give some of us a choice. Let those who don't mind the "risks" take the private method, and let those who are scared of maintaining control of their own money rely on the promises of the government. That would be fair.
Ian Gould #196- the point you are trying to make misses the mark, because the development model of the countries you mention is different from the one Jeff Harvey is talking about. Basically (I am not an expert caveats apply) they followed the known historical path to economic success- protected markets, investment in new technology and education, either borrowing as little as possible or keeping money circulating internally, focusing on value added goods etc. Protectionism and state intervention being very important. Whereas the model Jeff is talking about is the open your borders to everything, thus driving your farmers and clothing and local industry out of work but leaving insufficient capital to invest in training and upgrading of skills etc, that are necessary to bring the country up to a level where it can mix it with the big boys.
The market worshippers can whine all they like, but I can't think of any country which has successfully modernised since WW2 using their prescription.
I fail to see how anyone can be so averse to privatization of SS. Heck, at least give some of us a choice. Let those who don't mind the "risks" take the private method, and let those who are scared of maintaining control of their own money rely on the promises of the government. That would be fair.
funny view of "fairness".
in health care, your suggestion puts all those with lots of money (and often little health care problems) into a private system, while those with little money (and often MASSIVE health problems) remain in the public one.
sounds very fair to me!
let the poor pay for the sick!
sod, your comparison is apples/oranges. All of us who work pay into SS. Then the government SPENDS that money on SS and a whole lot of other completely non-related things. The SS tax that is collected from our paychecks goes into general revenue.
How is it a bad thing for the workers in America to have their money go into an actual account that will grow over time compared with going into the SS "lock box" that isn't really there, so that all you have instead is an IOU from the government? And the government could smartly require that the funds be invested "safely" as in only a portion into higher risk investments, say index funds at the most, and then the rest into secure investments. Either way, the money is actually there, rather than in the nebulous ether of future government provided entitlements.
Further, you could tax the gains on those private retirement accounts to provide retirement funds for those who did not work enough or save enough during their lifetimes. Either way, there would be more retirement money available to everyone. Instead we have what everyone knows is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme.
sorry ben, but your answers show little understanding of social security systems.
you spoke of "privatization", not of investing current surplus in your first post.
some sort of partial privatization (basically the state giving incentives to safe money in some, at best, secure way), makes a lot of sense.
it is a good addition to the current system, but will hardly replace it. it is not that easy, to change the current "pay as you go" system to one based on private accounts.
We already have some incentives for retirement savings, e.g. 401k and all that. I do think there should be full privatization but in the form of FORCED savings that the individual contributor still owns. Rather than phony money in a fake "lock box".
I don't mind the compulsory aspect, but I do mind that the money does not get invested, it simply gets spent and a new IOU gets tacked onto the pile. The problem with the current system, of course, is the baby-boom generation and the fact that income earners will have to support all those retirees. Far as I can tell, there are few if any economists who regard the looming social security crisis as anything other than a ticking time bomb.
"You should read Noam Chomsky's take on it."
I have, I was unimpressed. Time's still short here I may reply in more detail later.
As a quick suggestion, Jeff, you might want to read some more mainstream development economics as opposed to polemics.
Ian, you are officially my favorite person in the whole world right now.
"Ian Gould #196- the point you are trying to make misses the mark, because the development model of the countries you mention is different from the one Jeff Harvey is talking about. Basically (I am not an expert caveats apply) they followed the known historical path to economic success- protected markets, investment in new technology and education, either borrowing as little as possible or keeping money circulating internally, focusing on value added goods etc. Protectionism and state intervention being very important."
Guthrie, this is a popular argument from peopel on the left but it has one major problem.
Several of the East Asian economies (e.g. Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan) did virtually none of those things.
You also forget to mention that South Korea and Japan, the two principal East Asian practitioners of dirigism, severely reduced the living standards of whole generations in the name of national development, suppressing wages, hiking the price of consumer goods and limiting union rights.
You might also want to reflect on the quite staggering levels of corruption and cronyism in both countries and the very imperfect state of democracy in both as well.
Oh and let's not forget the countries that followed your preferred presciption to the letter with wretchedly miserable results - Burma for a start and to a lesser extent Philipines.
You might also want to ask yourself why dirigist policies produced forty years of economic stagnation in India and why their end led to rapid economic growth. While you're at it, you might want to ask yourself why the Indian electorate have repeatedly demonstrated their support for liberal economic policies.
Jeff Harvey writes:
A study by Edward Herman in 1982 revealed that the US government provided more 'aid' to governmenbts with appalling human rights records.
Compared to what? If you look at 1982, there's a strong correlation between dictatorial governments and poverty-stricken economies. (And Milton Friedman would say that's not a coincidence.) The exception back then would be the Communist world, which of course we didn't give aid to (except for the occasional shipment of wheat to Russia when they had a crop failure).
The UN Human Development Report classifies Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama and several of the Caribbean states as falling into the "High Human Development" category.
Since Jeff and Guthrie have already declared South-east and East Asia as anomalous, the global "south" starts to look like Subsaharan Africa and the countries of the Andean Pact.
The subsaharan African countries as a group suffer from a series of problems which have relatively little to do with current patterns of economic trade - they were fucked over by European colonialists to an even greater extent than South America and most of Asia. The major states of medieval Africa - such as the Kingdom of Kongo - were effectively destroyed by the Europeans in the course of the expansion of the slave trade. (Anyone who wants to pull the "The wicked Africans FORCED the poor innocent Europeans to buy slaves" line is invited to go read up on Afonso the 1st of the Kongo and his wars with the Portugese over the issue of slavery.)
The colonialists (especially the French) prevented the development of political institutions within the Afrcian colonies and this contributed to the post-independence political instability as did the fact that colonial boundaries completely ignored pre-existing ethnic and political boundaries.
Jeff, actually if you look at the pattern of American foreign aid, even excluding the special cases of Egypt and Israel; the disposition of aid is pretty irrational and has precious little to do with the poverty of the recipients.
South Africa, a relatively prosperous country with an abnormally high profile in the US, gets far more aid that such much poorer neighbours as Angola and Mozambique. That's probably attributable to politicians trying to buy domestic popularity.
Jordan, a relatively prosperous country does EXTREMELY well - mainly as a pay-off for its policies towards Israel and Iraq.
Barton, Look at the countries that get the biggest amount of 'aid' from the US at present. Aside from Israel, the next in line are Colombia and Egypt. Both have horrific humans rights records, amongst the worst on Earth. Equatoral Guinea also gets a fair share of 'aid'; it also has a horrific regime with flagrant human rights abuses. The bottom line is that the US does not promote democracy in its foreign policy and never has, unless there is immense pressure for it, and even then only limited 'top-down' forms are promoted (read what Thomas Carrothers had to say about it). Before you sound off again you should also read some of the declassifed planning documents, many of which are probably available in your local library. The MSM hardly ever discusses these, perhaps because they lay bare western foregin policy agendas.
Ian: I expect better of you than to dismiss Chomsky as simply a 'polemicist'. Chomsky was recently voted the world's leading intellectual by a margin of two to one over the second placed individual (Umberto Eco). Besides, Patrick Bond and Samir Amin, whom I do read, ARE economists, and their views largely echo Chomsky's. So do those of Partha Dasgupta, a British economist. I read quite a bit of literature from economists, as a matter of fact, but I will admit I tend to ignore many of the neoclassical variety who somehow believe that the human economy and the natural economy are independent of one another.
As for dear old Ben and his grade-school view of the world, I find it hard to actually believe my eyes with some of his views as expressed here. Pretty well every point I've made has not (and apparently cannot) be addressed by him. I have read such gobbledegook as "Obama is a flaming socialist", "Chavez is a commie thug", and "American aid should not be given to countries that hate us" (e.g. that includes most of the planet, unfortunately, given the appalling and murderous policies of one administration after another - the average US citizen may not know much about the outcomes of US foreign policies but the victims don't forget quite so easily). Anyone who writes articles with perspectives that differ greatly from Ben's view of the world is dismissed as a "liberal", with comments like "Oh brother" and the like. It doesn't matter that some, like Nikolas Kozloff, are scholars who did their PhDs on the subject of Latin America (and who have lived in the region and traveled extensively there), that large polling agencies like Latinbarometro (based in Chile) show that people in Venezuela feel better about the state of their democracy than people in just about every other nation in Latin America, and so on. It is dismissed without a shred of empirical evidence by Ben, or else it is ignored. Ditto for the many hundreds of tenets of the Venezuelan constitution, which I have read in detail. Ben hasn't, of course, so he ignores it. There are many other examples that I have discussed over the past week or so: George Kennan's 1948 memo, Kissinger's 1974 State Department memo, comments by highly influential figures like Carrothers, Charles Maechling, Zbignieuw Brezinski and others. They have made it pretty clear what the foreign agenda of US policy makers has been for the past 60 or so years.
As I have said before, I have better things to do than to argue politics with people like Ben who wear very large blinkers that convey a narrow world view.
As for dear old Ben and his grade-school view of the world, I find it hard to actually believe my eyes with some of his views as expressed here. Pretty well every point I've made has not (and apparently cannot) be addressed by him. I have read such gobbledegook as "Obama is a flaming socialist", "Chavez is a commie thug",
A true Patriot-Murrican tax-cutter, surely. Welcome to Murrica Jeff.
Best,
D
Funny thing is Dano, I love your country. I spent two great years there as a post doc and would dearly love to return at some time in the future. In 2001 I gave lectures at Princeton (NJ) and Stanford (California) Universities and in-between I rented a car and drove coast to coast, exploring the land. I had a fantastic trip, and people were ever so friendly. I have a lot of friends in various parts of the country and one of my brothers lives there with his family (he's been there for 7 years now). Most of the critics of US foreign policy I read are Americans - and not, as Ben would pre-suppose all 'liberals' (as if that is a terrible thing anyway). The important thing is accountability, and this explains my perspective of things. I am half Brit and I criticize the government and its policies all of the time. Some of the greatest patriots do the same, if they think they feel that things are being done in their name that they find repulsive.
Jeff, too bad you didn't have a chance to stop by the Hoover Institute while you were at Stanford to talk to Thomas Sowell. He's probably my favorite non-fiction author these days, and every bit as credentialed as Kozlof et al, if not more so.
Ian #208- yup, thats right, development into a major capitalist country at high speed comes with major problems in terms of civil liberty restrictions and short term issues of lower standard of living. A bit like the UK after WW2, where rationing continued well into the 50's because of paying off war debts and re-making the economy.
Furthermore, Hong Kong doesn't exactly count due to its anomalous position of being developed by the British as a colony for trade, if it wasn't for the anomalies of history it would have been another local port in South China, part of the peoples non-democractic republic of China.
Burma is not a fair example, being under the control of a frankly bonkers dictatorship which has no interest ni developing the country. I don't know enough about Thailand to comment, but would have included taiwan in the countries that myself and Jeff were talking about. As for India, it doesn't look to me like it stagnated that badly. That growth takes off when you liberalise stuff is well known given the unmet demand of billions of people; the point here is that firstly the growth is not necessarily accompanied by democracy, see China; that the growth can only take place given levels of education and government structures I believe India has plenty of, and that as mentioned before you can get pretty good growth by means of oppressive policies. There is no 1:1 correlation of growth and 'freedom' and capitalism.
BPL #209- but the question would be what exactly is being given to the poor countries that happen to have horrible military dictatorships? Is it food aid? Military aid?
Nobody is saying that all US aid was evil, rather that an appreciable fraction of it was used to support regimes that the gvt found useful, which at that point happened to be military dictatorships who seemed to be anti-russia. When they were no longer any use, they were dropped.
As for India, it doesn't look to me like it stagnated that badly.
IIRC, economic growth in India took off after the government got the heck out of business. For example, I remember that businesses used to have to get government permission before they could buy equipment, such as computers, that were necessary for operations. They finally cut the red tape and business is booming.
Striking out again for the middle ground: Having worked in development quite a bit, I am very skeptical of mainstream "development economics", which has tended to emphasise heavy industry and large infrastructure (e.g. dams) with massive social and human costs. More recent models emphasising light, labour intensive industry (eg TCF, consumer electronics) for export have done better, but are hardly without problems.
There are significant differences between the policies of Dirigisme (state direction, quasi-nationalised corporatism of the private sector) and infant industry/tariff/import substitution (state support of the private sector) that Guthrie and Ian are talking about. c.f. Ha-Joon Chang, "Kicking Away The Ladder". As Krugman would tell you, even mainstream economics no longer considers protectionism bad in all cases; they just think that working out which are the good cases is so complex, and likely to cause trade wars, that free trade is a least-worst strategy. CF his new shiny pseudo-Nobel for putting a mathematical gloss on dependency theory.
But what the comparison between Japan, Korea, Taiwan and India chiefly shows is the vital importance of land reform policy. The first three (chiefly as the result of war) undertook major land reform, breaking up large estates into independent farms owned by those who were formerly tenant/serfs, in the 40s and 50s. India didn't (save for Kerala, which is doing well). As a result half the population of India stagnates as share croppers, tenant farmers, etc (and their education and health policies are awful; half of India can't read or write). The major reason the Congress Party got voted back in over the Hindu Nationalists was that the Nationalists were not doing anything to spread the wealth that was being generated by a freer market, but only accruing in the top 10% or so of the population.
Hong Kong and Singapore are special case entrepots; you can't seriously consider "countries" with effectively infinite reserves of cheap labour (China and Malaysia/indonesia) just across the border, who can be incorporated and disincorporated at will, to be stand-alone economies.
Thailand was a lot more dirigiste than most people think (not to mention being a military dictatorship which ardently suppressed labour rights for most of its modern history); the massive amounts of foreign exchange that flowed in after it became the Vietnam war's "R&R" area, then as counterinsurgency funding, and then from sex tourism are also significant. It may have free markets but it also has major structural problems (low levels of education, lowest productivity agriculture in SE and E asia, high levels of corruption) that are sticking sticks in the spokes at the moment.
Burma initially considered themselves out and out socialist/communist and nationalised most industries. No question that that rarely, if ever, works. They then decided not to accept any aid from the USSR or China, that the best way to make decisions in their nationalised industries was astrologically, and to go to war against a third of their population. I don't think even the most hardened commie would argue that this was a good thing.
Re: Obama
Is any Obama supporter put off by the fact that he chose known warmonger Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff?
Pointing this out got me banned over at Tamino's blog, where Obama is called a "peace-loving man". It seems a lot of people have their hopes tied up in this next president and don't want to hear about what he's actually doing.
"As for India, it doesn't look to me like it stagnated that badly. "
GDP per capita growth in India since 2000 has averaged over 4% a year back in the 1980's it was closer to 2%.
This time series doesn't go back beyond 1980 but I'm pretty certain the rate was even lower prior to 1980. (Sanjay Ghandi took over after his mother's assassination and started the process of reform.)
"There is no 1:1 correlation of growth and 'freedom' and capitalism."
I never said there was.
What I have been saying and will continue to say is that democracy; respect for the rule of law and property rights; and a generally non-interventionist economic policy combined with targeted assistance for the poor and investment in education and infrastructure is the policy approach most likely to achieve both growth and environmental conservation.
Oh and failure to follow those guideliens has much mroe to do with continuing poverty in Africa than any American conspiracy.
"As Krugman would tell you, even mainstream economics no longer considers protectionism bad in all cases; they just think that working out which are the good cases is so complex, and likely to cause trade wars, that free trade is a least-worst strategy."
Precisely
"Thailand was a lot more dirigiste than most people think (not to mention being a military dictatorship which ardently suppressed labour rights for most of its modern history); the massive amounts of foreign exchange that flowed in after it became the Vietnam war's "R&R" area, then as counterinsurgency funding, and then from sex tourism are also significant. It may have free markets but it also has major structural problems (low levels of education, lowest productivity agriculture in SE and E asia, high levels of corruption) that are sticking sticks in the spokes at the moment."
Yes but it was only after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980's that the economy really started to take off.
To those problems, we can also add the current political crisis in which the rural Thai majority seem to be in semi-permanent conflict with the urban middle class and the various ethnic minorities.
Despite all those problems, the Thai trebled GDP per capita between 1980 and 2006.
They must be doing something right.
What I have been saying and will continue to say is that democracy; respect for the rule of law and property rights; and a generally non-interventionist economic policy combined with targeted assistance for the poor and investment in education and infrastructure is the policy approach most likely to achieve both growth and environmental conservation.
I'm 100% with that.
With regard to Chavez Morales et al, I'd like Jeff to explain how, in measurable objective terms, Chavez's period of government in Venezuela has produced better outcomes for the Venezuelan population than Lula Da Silva's roughly contemporaenous government in Brazil has for the population of Brazil.
Jeff, you might also want to explain your preference for Castro over Daniel Ortega - who also took power in a revolution but who eventually held free elections; handed over power to the Opposition and was eventually returned to power in free elections.
In both cases, as far as I can see, the deciding factor seems to be the volume and shrillness of their anti-American rhetoric not any actual achievements.
(Costa Rica managed an improvement in living standards and life expectancy comparable to that over Cuba over the period of Castro's rule. They did it without torturing and murdering their political opponents and without massive Russian subsidies. They also refrained from sending thousands of their people off to die on Russia's African proxy war and avoided the resultant HIV epidemic amongst the survivors and their families.)
"Is any Obama supporter put off by the fact that he chose known warmonger Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff?
Pointing this out got me banned over at Tamino's blog, where Obama is called a "peace-loving man". It seems a lot of people have their hopes tied up in this next president and don't want to hear about what he's actually doing. '
Or maybe they're sick of mindless hysteria and think it wise ot wait until he's actually in office before pronouncing him a dirty-commie/whore-to-corporate-interests warmonger/weak-kneed-appeaser black-supremacist/cryptomuslim/Black-Christian-Fundamentalist.
I'm sure come January 20th, there'll be plenty of time to tell us all how that pause for breath at 3.24 minutes into his inaugural address is a clear sign that he plans to anally rape every boy scout in America.
As for Emanual, ever stop to think that given the horseshit spread by the likes of Joe "A vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel" Wurzelbacher, Obama picked Emanuel precisely to reassure Israelis and Jewish Americans that there isn't going to be a radical overnight shift in US policy.
But hey if we start considering the absurd possibility that Democrats aren't both evil and moronic we'd start entertaining all sorts of wild ideas - like maybe Obama who has known Emanuel for over a decade, worked with him on politicla campaigns and repeatedly entertained him in his home has a better understanding of the man than you do.
But hey, the closet anti-semites on the libertarian fringe are probably getting tired of recycling "George Soros bought the election", so I guess "Obama is a puppet of the Zionists who really run the White House" makes a nice change of pace.
"With regard to Chavez Morales et al, I'd like Jeff to explain how, in measurable objective terms, Chavez's period of government in Venezuela has produced better outcomes for the Venezuelan population than Lula Da Silva's roughly contemporaenous government in Brazil has for the population of Brazil".
Ian, good point. But there's really no comparison, at least since 2004 when Chavez abandoned his admittedly cautious manifesto and began to institute real changes. First of all, the statistics speak for themselves: there has been much more wealth redistribution in Venezuela than in Brazil - the share of the wealth distrubted to the poorest half of the population has increased by a staggering 65% (whilst the rich, though still rich, have seen their share of national wealth decline by more than 30%). To be fair, Lula has been a disappointment in this regard: he promised much but has delivered little for the poor of Brazil. He has stuck with now discredited neoliberal reforms and has succumbed to a lot of the political pressure from the US. Also, you should look at the success of illetracy eradication programs in Venezuela, as well as the huge numbers of people receiving free health care, eye operations and the like. Venezuela still has a long way to go but it is getting there, in spite of constant demonization from the US and ther MSM. Again, Brazil lags well behind Venezuela. And to reiterate: Latinbarometro polls suggest that Venezuelans feel a lot better about their democracy than Brazilians do. Lula is better than many of his predecessors, but his deference to the 'master of the hemisphere' has held his government back in many meaningful ways.
Also Ian, when did I ever say thyat I preferred Castro over Ortega? Methinks that you are putting words into my mouth. But, for the record, I think that you shouold look at a bit of history with respect to Cuba. Also look at the US Institute for Foreign Assets Control. The US has waged a war of attrition against Cuba for close to 50 years. When John F. Kennedy instructed his attorney general, his brother Robert Kennedy, to "Bring the hells of the Earth to Cuba", he initiated a policy that has continued unabated until this day. Successful defiance is not tolerated, hence why Cuba has been under a blockade like a medeivel siege for so long. One can only wonder how affluent the country might have been had it not been forced to live under a 'siege economy' since Castro took power. As for Nicaragua, I think that you should look over recent history - at least what Reagan's government did to the country during the 1980s. By 1984 the Inter American Development Bank refewrred to the Sandanista reforms as 'creating a model economy for Latin America', but of course one that was independent of the United States. George Schultz said that there was a cancer in Latin America in Nicaragua that had to be 'cut out', and 'cut it out' they did. They ostensibly waged a terrorist war against the Sandanista's that left 35,000 dead and the country's infrastructure in ruins: moreover, the US was found gulity of 'unlawful use of force' at the World Court in 1986 and ordered to pay 5 billion dollars in reparations. Of course they dismissed the charge and continued to wage a war against the tiny nation, bringing it to its knees by 1990, when the US client candidate, Charmorra, finally won the election by a narrow margin. The NY Times trumpeted faithfully that Charmorra's win was a triumph for US fair play.
As for Ben's Hoover Institute, I tend to avoid corporate funded think tanks as well that endlessly promote libertarian agendas. For ben's sake, Dano naioled it in his last post.
Jeff Harvey writes:
Chomsky was recently voted the world's leading intellectual by a margin of two to one over the second placed individual (Umberto Eco).
He's still a crackpot who blames everything bad in the world on the US and Israel. Not to mention his defending the Khmer Rouge, writing a preface to a book by a Holocaust denier, and weird anti-Semitic comments (yes, I know he's nominally Jewish).
Is any Obama supporter put off by the fact that he chose known warmonger Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff?
Of course, we already knew that Republican supporters weren't put off by criminal warmongers so no need to ask about them.
Note how Barton creates straw men when there's no substance to his arguments; Ben does it too. They don't debate the issues because they don't have the evidence to do so; they just shoot the messenger with slurs and innuendo.
Barton, I agree with you arguments re: climate science. But on issues dealing with US foreign policy, if this is the best you can do, you are all out to sea.
First of all, Chomsky is hardly the only person who lambastes Israel's appalling record with respect to the rights of the Palestinians. Many Israeli's themselves are pretty horrified, including a number of quite eminent historians. But you appear to rely on the old, discredited chestnut that anyone who is highly critical of Israel is an 'anti-Semite'. The same kind of crap is used to smear people who rightfully criticize the foreign policy record of countries like the US and Britain. It is quite interesting that the Nazi regime used the same trick to smear those, including many Germans, who expressed anger at their quite horrific policies.
As for Chomsky supporting the Khmer Rouge, this is utter bull****. Edward Herman deconstructs that myth here:
The Khmer rouge in fact only came to power because the US bombed the smithereens out of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973 (on Nixon's infamous 'Anything the flies on anything that moves' order to Kissinger) that drove Sihanouk out of power, creating a vacuum that was filled by Pol Pot. As many as 600,000 civilians died under the relentless US barrage, a bombing campaign which must have literally driven people crazy. This narrative is conveniently ignored by those who now wring their hearts with anguish over the KRs appalling crimes. And in 1979, when Viet Nam invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge, which countries expressed support for them at the UN? Yup, the usual suspects, the United States and Britain, along with other countries like Canada. Given that Viet Nam was still in the dock for daring resist US aggression, the US would have sided with the devil if he was opposed to the new government in Viet Nam. And side with the KR they did: for several years associates of Pol Pot were given diplomatic support by London and Washington, including by both the Carter and Reagan administrations.
So, Barton, its a bit rich you calling the kettle black. The trouble with many people in the west is that our memories, like the (mis)information dished out by the MSM, generally goes back no farther than last nights 11 o'clock news. Its just not convenient that the memories of the countles victims of western policies tend to last a lot longer.
Chomsky turns 80 in a few days time, and I am gratified to see large gatherings organized to celebrate the event.
Israel's appalling record with respect to the rights of the Palestinians.
And the Palestinians have nothing to do with this? The Palestinian/Israeli conflict today is nearly entirely one-sided. You have the one group preaching even in their schools for small children absolute hatred for the other group. There is no chance of peace until the Palestinians learn to give up the hatred. Ghandi did it, King Jr. did it. The conflict will never end as long as the Palestinians are 100% hate 100% of the time. It's that simple.
Disclaimer: I have no horse in that race. I feel no particular affinity for Israel nor for Palestine. A person has to be blind to miss that this is, whatever the history, a massively one-sided conflict, aided and abetted by the UN and all the regional governments.
Ben, I appreciate your thoughtful reply on this topic. I do agree with you that the conflict is not one-sided, as many argue, but then again, lets not forget that 900,000 Palestinians were forced from their homeland to create Israel in 1947-8 in what is known as the 'Nakba'. Moreover, today one can see the Gaza strip as the largest prison camp on Earth - a place where 75% of the Arab population live in absolute poverty, with no hope.
As for hatred, it is driven not by mere accident but by a history of betrayal and generally horrific policies. It is also not one-sided hatred - it goes both ways.
It is also not one-sided hatred - it goes both ways.
It is very nearly one-sided. The Palestinians only hope in the Gaza strip is to renounce hatred and violence. Then things will have a chance to change. Do you seriously expect the Israelis to roll over and bare their stomaches to people who want nothing less than their total annihilation? No peace is possible in Israel until the Palestinians want it without the destruction of Israel.
Gaza would still be under Egyptian control had Egypt not attacked Israel to start the Six-day war. Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip from 1949 to 1967. Egypt could have given the Palestinian refugees Egyptian citizenship. They could have left Israel alone.
Not to mention that if the Arab neighbors had simply allowed Israel to exist in the first place there would have been no conflict. But hatred is hatred and thus we have what we have. A tiny pocket of Jews in a massive sea of Arabs. And the hatred is almost entirely one way. Ever watched Palestinian or Al-Jazeera CHILDREN's TV? If you don't start wretching after 2 minutes then you aren't human.
Not to mention the faked Mohammed al-Dura martyrdom that gets the Arab world so riled up.
Ian and Chris, who are you responding to? Are you for or against war in the middle east? For me I'm against it, so I'm against guys like Emanuel (and all neo-cons for that matter) who failed to support anti-war democrat candidates. It's really not that complicated.
As for Emanual, ever stop to think that given the horseshit spread by the likes of Joe "A vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel" Wurzelbacher, Obama picked Emanuel precisely to reassure Israelis and Jewish Americans that there isn't going to be a radical overnight shift in US policy.
Which would mean continued warfare, right?
How does this fit in with the claim that Obama is a "peace-loving man"?
As for Emanual, ever stop to think that given the horseshit spread by the likes of Joe "A vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel" Wurzelbacher, Obama picked Emanuel precisely to reassure Israelis and Jewish Americans that there isn't going to be a radical overnight shift in US policy.
So much for "Change".
Jeff Harvey, the Khmer Rouge were, first foremost and to the bitter end, clients of Maoist China. The Vietnamese forewent the Chinese for their by then bitter rivals, the Soviets, (something to do with thousands of years of antipathy and war no doubt). But they still craved influence in Indochina, and a militant Maoist group there happened to be keen on a sponsor. This helps to explain why the ouster of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese resulted in the invasion of Vietnam by China, one might think. That's rather a more important diplomatic act than a vote at the UN, wouldn't you say?
Secondly, the NVA and insurgent forces of South Vietnam did more to weaken the Sinahouk government of Cambodia than US military action there did, (itself prompted by the fact that the NVA and Viet Cong had turned their neighbors into supply routes and staging areas for attacks on US and US backed forces in South Vietnam). The presence in large numbers of a lethally armed foreign military inside their boundaries had some implications on who ate and who went hungry in Cambodia for some time. And that type of thing has political implications too, not least of which was budding antipathy toward the resident Vietnamese population, which boiled over into massacres in the civil war to come. In any case, when Sinahouk's involvement of the Chinese did not make the problem better, and in fact was making it worse by their support for the Khmer Rouge, he turned at last to the US for support, which the US welcomed. The plot thickened when Cambodia was more completely drawn into the war. The US lost. Communist forces in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia won. The rest, as they say, is history.
The fact that you should omit all this and advance the nonsensical notion that the US was directly responsible for the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia because it bombed NVA there raises something of a red flag for me on other things you might say that I know less about. To maintain your credibility more broadly on this front, I suggest you bone up on some other of the details, perhaps where Chomsky isn't the source. You may find that not only was US not the only power in the world covertly conspiring toward self-interested ends via ghastly means in the 20th century, it wasn't even the worst.
A brief comment on Chomsky and Cambodia, and then I'd like to head off on a tangent.
I think Ian Gould's description of Chomsky as a "polemicist" is on the money... but that doesn't necessarily mean that Chomsky is wrong. Of course, it doesn't mean that he's right, either.
I'll admit that I'm biased: years ago, I wrote a long summary of the controversy surrounding Chomksy and Cambodia. ("Averaging Wrong Answers," at http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm). A couple years later, someone on ZNet asked Chomsky about the article, and Chomsky replied with a long, rambling post in which he accused me of "extreme dishonestly" [sic]. He did not, however, bother to cite any actual errors in what I'd written. (Chomsky's post is reproduced below the fold at http://www.radicalreaction.com/blog/chomsky/ and my reply to his post is at http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/reply\_to\_chomsky.htm).
With the articles on Mekong.net, I think I've written enough about Chomsky and Cambodia, and I don't have anything to add here. Ian's comment, however, raises a broader topic, and I'd like to know what Deltoid readers think about it. Specifically, what role should polemics play in public debate, and in science? Is it possible to overturn conventional wisdom without resorting to polemics? Do different rules apply for debates in social sciences, versus debates in physical sciences?
Or, to put it in a more provocative way: Is Chomsky's approach to history fundamentally different than Stephen McIntyre's approach to climate science? Should it be different?
My own "theory" (for lack of a better word) is that there is an inverse relationship between ambiguity tolerance, and tolerance of polemics: people with a high ambiguity tolerance tend to react adversely to polemical arguments. They feel that they're being misled when an argument appears to be one-sided, or lacking in nuance. I'd love to know what others think. I particularly hope to hear from John Mashey, whose articles here in August indicate that he's given a great deal of thought to how we learn new ideas.
Regards,
Bruce
I think Ian Gould's description of Chomsky as a "polemicist" is on the money...
Great post Bruce,
Personally, I think the unwillingness of people with high ambiguity tolerance (good scientists, for example) to sometimes put cases forcefully is, on balance, a bad thing, because it leads to them being drowned out in the public discourse by those who are willing to be polemical to the point of unreason. Cf Barry Brook's posting of George Marshall's provocative piece, Do most scientists really believe in global warming? in which he argues that an attitude of being excessively respectful of the remaining uncertainties, combined with a reluctance to talk about policy or human impacts (because that's "politics"), is hamstringing climate scientists from getting the message of the danger of climate change across clearly. Belief is used in the sense of something that someone is willing to act on or be passionate about.
Historically I wonder if this excessively pure, hands-off attitude might have stemmed from the failure of the British "scientific socialists" (e.g. Bernal, Haldane) in the 30s-50s, after famine, Lysenkoism, purges, etc destroyed their vision of what human society might be or become. Cf Wersky's The visible college and The marxist critique of capitalist science.
Majorajam, Please inform me how many people you think died under the US bombardment of Cambodia circa 1969-1973. Then go on to suggest how many Vietnamese perished under US bombings during that war. The former ranges from 300,000 to well over half a million; the latter represented some 17% of South Vietnams's population; perhaps 2-4 million dead, and the country left in tatters, or 'wreck and ruin' as James Schelisinger, a senior Kennedy aide, referred to it back in 1965. To suggest that ther US is 'not the worst' in what they did in the region is, again, like calling the kettle black, and bastardizes history. I was hardly surprised that the MSM over in the US basically ignored the release of declassified files eight years ago which revealed conversations between President Nixon and Henry Kissinger with respect to Cambodia. I think the 'paper of record' put it into a tiny column near the back page. Nixon basically says 'hit everything, go massive' etc., and then Kissinger obediently relays the message to Congress, "Anything that flies on anything that moves". This was basically an explicit order to commit mass murder; how else could it be perceived? Yet the punditocracy greeted this revelation with collective yawns.
And to reiterate: the US recognized the KR for more than 11 years after they were ousted by Vietnamese forces. I recall the US, British and Canadian ambassadors to the UN cozying up to Pol Pot's right hand man in 1982. This narrative just doesn't fit the pattern you wish to promote, does it? Neither does US support for Suharto, one of the biggest torturers and mass murderers in the second half of the twentieth century, which lasted up almost until the very end of his rule. A Clinton aide called him 'our kind of guy, in 1996. Majorajam, where does Suharto fit into your narrative?
The fact why so many people hate Chomsky (and, before you put words in my mouth, I read a damned site more of history than just from NC) is that he is bloody inconvenient for those who wish to be apologists for often horrific US foreign policies. Individuals like Chomsky, Herman, Pilger, Fisk, Bacevich, Rai, Jamail, Curtis, Mandel, Engelhardt, Street, Blum, Edwards, Cromwell, Vidal, Farmer, Grandin, Goff, Mickey Z and many others are vilified for calling the shots as they see it, rather than merely 'parroting' 'official' history. How often are MSM pundits like Friedman, Krauthamer, Safire, Will and others, who promulgate the elite line called 'polemicists'? If not, why not? I'd like to ask this or Bruce. Why is Chomsky singled out? The real achievement of the 'normalizers' of often quite horrific policies is that they have quite successfully marginalized dissenting views from the mainstream. In effect, they act as a conduit for voices that facilitate appalling crimes against humanity.
As I said the last time, I am not the only one who will be celbrating Chomsky's 80th birthday in a few weeks. And many thousands will also participate. Thank heavens for writers of conscience like Chomskyu, Pilger and others.
I don't think Chomsky is an anti-semite just because he hates Israel and never criticizes things Arabs do. I think he's an anti-semite because he makes remarks about how Jews in the US are "tribal," and how they run US foreign policy; and because he wrote a preface to a Holocaust-denial book by Robert Faurisson, which he then defended on "freedom of speech" grounds (i.e., not that Faurisson had a right to publish, which we all might agree on, but that his right to publish somehow justifies Chomsky's flirtation with Holocaust denial).
Here's a nice rejoinder to the absurd argument that Chomsky and Herman were apologists for the KR by Josh Buermann. No doubt Bruce is aware of it. Moreover, it puts the context of US involvement is the rise of the KR, and support between 1979 and 1991.
236" I think Ian Gould's description of Chomsky as a "polemicist" is on the money..."
I was not exclusively referring to Chomsky nor do I think describing someone as a polemicist is necessarily pejorative. Emil Zola was a polemicist. So were Upton Sinclair and George Orwell.
Chomsky, Klein and various other critics of gloabalisation and American policy often make valid points.
However, they tend to fall into the standard traps that await polemicists such as attributing to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence or indifference and assuming that the plural of anecdote is data.
"Are you for or against war in the middle east? For me I'm against it, so I'm against guys like Emanuel"
Well I'm for war obviously.
Oh wait, no I'm not.
In fact, Nanny, hardly anyone is "for" war.
The Zionist hardliners are fro peace - predicated on the annexation of the Occupied Territories and the forceful expulsion of theri population along with most or all of Israel's arab population.
Others, like me, favor peace predicated on a return to Israel's 1967 borders; independence for Palestine and a massive program of resettlement of Palestinian refugees to the west. (This view BTW regularly gets me abused by supporters of the Israeli right.)
Others again, favor peace predicated on "the destruction of the Zionist entity".
When discussing the internal Israeli politics of peace negotiations I tend to avoid the terms of pro-war and anti-war because,AGAIN, everyone says they're for peace.
So let's rephrase the question: do I believe Emanuel's appointment make the prospect of peace more or less likely?
Well let's see, if Israel thinks the next US administration is likely to be less committed to their defense then it's entirely possible they'll feel compelled to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran while Bush is still in office.
Conversely, if Syria and Hezbollah think that US support for Israel is weakened, they may be emboldened to follow-up on their success in the Lebanon War.
But then maybe Emanuel will convince Israel of the Obama administration's continuing commitment to Israel's existence and therefore encourage them to take a chance on further negotiations with the Palestinians.
Of course, if you believe the sole cause of the Arab/Israeli conflict is the damn Jews, I'm sure the thought of a Judenfrei White House appeals.
Jeff @ 226:
"Ian, good point. But there's really no comparison, at least since 2004 when Chavez abandoned his admittedly cautious manifesto and began to institute real changes. First of all, the statistics speak for themselves: there has been much more wealth redistribution in Venezuela than in Brazil - the share of the wealth distrubted to the poorest half of the population has increased by a staggering 65% (whilst the rich, though still rich, have seen their share of national wealth decline by more than 30%). To be fair, Lula has been a disappointment in this regard: he promised much but has delivered little for the poor of Brazil. He has stuck with now discredited neoliberal reforms and has succumbed to a lot of the political pressure from the US. Also, you should look at the success of illetracy eradication programs in Venezuela, as well as the huge numbers of people receiving free health care, eye operations and the like. Venezuela still has a long way to go but it is getting there, in spite of constant demonization from the US and ther MSM. Again, Brazil lags well behind Venezuela. And to reiterate: Latinbarometro polls suggest that Venezuelans feel a lot better about their democracy than Brazilians do. Lula is better than many of his predecessors, but his deference to the 'master of the hemisphere' has held his government back in many meaningful ways."
First off Jeff I'd appreciate a cite for those figures.
I've also been looking for a source for the Latinbaromtrico claim other than various blogs which faiol to give a primary source.
Secondly, wealth distribution is a reasonably important measure of long-term welfare but short-term changes don;t tell us much at all.
The Gini co-efficient (a measure of income inequality)fell significantly in several SouthEast countries in the late 1990s - because the economic meltdown hit the middle and upper classes and the urban poor worse than the rural poor.
Personally I'd be more interested in outcomes rather than outlays - especially seeing as other Latin American countries have radically reformed their welfare systems to reduce fraud and corruption and increase the amount of benefits that actually reach the poor.
Let's take a look at the 2003 and 2008 Human Development reports.
Between 2002 and 2007, life expectancy in Brazil increased from 67.8 years to 71.7 years; life expectancy in Venezuela DECLINED from 73.5 years to 73.2 years.
Brazil increased adult literacy from 87.3% to 88.6% while Venezuela's only increased from 93.9 to 93%.
Per capita GDP in Brazil increased US$1100 while Venezuela's increased only by $1,000 - despite the massive increase in oil revenue.
Venezuela had a massive and probably never to be repeated windfall from oil prices during Chavez's reign. Chavez has pissed that away on short-term vote-buying programs.
If the current decline in oil prices continues, Chavez is going to be unable to maintain those programs. When that happens we'll see how his relatively benign facade and (limited) adherence to democratic norms hold up.
AS for Castro, Jeff, your potted history omits Carter's offer to lift the embargo in the 1970's in exchange for democratic reforms and the release of politcal prisoners.
Jeff, don't get me started on Pilger.
I have a pretty good idea of events in East Timor, it was a big issue when I was in University doing Asian studies; I was involved with the Timorese refugee community in Australia and have a number of friends who worked in East Timor after independence.
For decades, Pilger sung the praises of Fretilin, Xinana Gusmao and Jose Ramos-Horta. Then came the crisis of 2006 when the Fretilin government faced a mutiny by dicontented former Falintil guerillas. Overnight, Pilger switched to viciously slandering Gusmao et ald as western stooges because they dared to ask fro foreign assitance.
Never mind that had they failed to do so, the country would probably have descended into full-scale civil war.
After reading his garbage about East Timor I was motivated to look further at his work. Apart from anything else, it's riddled with factual errors.
Hell, last time I checked he hadn't taken down or corrected the piece he wrote before the 2006 US elections confidently predicting the Republicans would win as a result of rampant fraud.
Didn't quite work that wat.
"You have the one group preaching even in their schools for small children absolute hatred for the other group."
Yeah, it's shocking what those West Bank settlers get up to.
Ever see the pictures of settler children placing flowers on Baruch Goldstein's grave as part of the annual commemoration ceremonies?
Goldstein was, of course, the perpetrator of the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.
Neither side in this conflict has clean heads.
Ian, I am in the middle of a big experiment (in fact two), but I think this source with respect to Latinbarometro is pretty definitive; I can't see that they just plucked the figures out of thin air:
The other point is that Chavez wins elections and referenda with little trouble, usually with 60% or more of the vote. He lost last years referendum on the constitution by the slimmest of margins, yet accepted the defeat quite gracefully. The MSM and the US government was expecting him to huff and puff and declare the vote invalid - he didn't. And its likely the reason he lost is either (1) that his support base didn't think the vote was an important one, or else (b) that many of his supporters do not think he's gone far enough fast enough in making reforms. This last scenario has garnered much support. Its also a mistake that he did not break down parts of the constitition into separate votes - this would have enabled many of the most progressive measures to be passed.
I haven't much faith in Lula because he is largely still beholden to the IMF/World Bank (in other words, the US Treasury) neoliberal model. He's been a major disappointment to progressives in South America, because he promised much but has actually delivered little. I place much more faith in leaders like Chavez, Morales and Correa who are anxious to break free of the free market absolutist model forced down the throat of South America since the 1980s.
As for Pilger, his latest film, "The War on Democracy", won a slew of awards. Again, he's largely vilified for countering the myths of western benevolence and support for democracy. I admire him and others like Mark Curtis, who dispense with accredited lies.
I'll try to get more information later.
"The other point is that Chavez wins elections and referenda with little trouble, usually with 60% or more of the vote. He lost last years referendum on the constitution by the slimmest of margins, yet accepted the defeat quite gracefully. The MSM and the US government was expecting him to huff and puff and declare the vote invalid - he didn't."
I hope I've made clear here that while I disagree with Chavez's economic policies, I don't buy into the demonisation of him by the US right.
As you alluded earlier, Uribe is far worse than Chavez (although like Chavez he won re-election in internationally supervised elections);.
Re Jeff at #241: Yes, I am aware of Buermann's article: in fact, he was kind enough to allow me to respond in his comments section. The comments don't seem to be there any longer (and Buermann eventually got tired of answering me), but I will point out something you might have missed: in another article at http://www.flagrancy.net/chomsky.html Buermann admits that my argument has some merit:
"Cambodia; Khmer Rouge apologist: I discuss this here. Long story short: the accusation doesn't have merit, and Bruce Sharp's own argument, which does, isn't that Chomsky is an apologist but that if one wants to understand the KR period one should read somebody else, as Chomsky wasn't attempting to understand the KR period but the Western media. Perfectly legitemate point, as discussed elsewhere."
I'd still say that this is much too easy on Chomsky: not only will you not understand anything about the Khmer Rouge from reading Chomsky, you'll misunderstand.
I'm not sure why you think Chomsky is being "singled out" in being labeled a polemicist. If you want to show me something that Charles Krauthammer has written about Cambodia, and you'd like to know whether or not I think it is polemical, feel free to ask. I'm commenting here only because this is one of those rare occasions when I have a good understanding of the subject, and because it raised a broader question that seemed interesting.
Incidentally, on the subject of John Pilger, I believe that the sudden reversal Ian describes with regard to East Timor is a mirror of his trajectory on the subject of Cambodia. To the best of my knowledge, Pilger never wrote anything about the human rights abuses of the Khmer Rouge until after they were overthrown by the Vietnamese.
But to return to the broader question: Jeff, I'd like to know whether or not you agree with my comparison between Chomsky's methods, and Stephen McIntyre's methods, and I'd like to know your opinion on the role of polemics in science. I could easily retask my above comment, regarding Chomsky, for McIntyre: "Not only will you not understand climate science from reading McIntyre, you will misunderstand."
Re James in #238: Really, really interesting links. Thanks for those.
Cheers, Bruce
Oh... just realized that most of my reply to Buermann, which I alluded to above, is actually available on my own site. Damn, I must be getting old!
if you were to read some of the stuff written by the mainstream media pundits, such as Krauthamer, you wouldn't draw such an inane (in my view) connection between the way Chomsky writes and what someone like SM writes in 'Climate Audit'. Because the corporate media system selects certain views over others, the views of actual polemicists like Krauthamer, Friedman and Safire are 'normalized' whereas those of people like Chomsky are made to seem as if they are crazy, or at the very least bizarre. Having read something like 60 books over the past two years, covering a gamut of topics from economics to western foreign policy issues to environmental economics, I don't find that much of what Chomsky writes extreme at all. Had the MSM challenged government lies, instead of amplifying them and taking them at face value, the Iraq War would not have been possible, and other horrific western policies may well have been avoided. In 1997, the election of Tony Blair was greeted in the British media as an 'historic event' of 'staggering proportions' that would 'change the political landscape' in Britain, 'ushering in a new era of human rights'. It was John Pilger, who is clearly the bane of some others writing here, who warned at the time that Blair was a Labour politician who wore decidedly neoliberal clothing, and that the 'new dawn' was an illusion. How right he turned out to be; Blair has more blood on his hands than most of his predecessors.
Out of interest, how many of Chomsky's books have you read? How much of his accounts of history do you challenge? In my view, you are comparing apples and oranges in linking him with climate change sceptics. Thus, I feel that many (though not all) of those who argue that human influence on the current warming is negligible are promoting their own political agenda, irrespective of what the science says. How many of the prominent sceptics are affiliated with corporate-funded think tanks with an axe to grind? How many publish their work in rigidly peer-reviewed journals? In fact, as a senior scientist, what has become clear to me is that science is being twisted and distorted to promote a political agenda by many in what I would call the 'anti-environmental' lobby. This covers a range of other topics: pollution, extinction rates, and general environmental quality. Climate change is but one manifestation of a greater malaise.
Sorry, Jeff that link isn't working.
Hi Jeff --
The only books I've read by Chomsky are Manufacturing Consent and After the Catacylsm. My main interest is not Chomsky; my main interest is Cambodia. I agree with Ian that Chomsky often raises very valid points about American policy. With regard to Latin America in particular, I find that I usually agree with him. However, I'm wary of taking anything he writes at face value, since his writing on the one subject I know very well -- Cambodia -- is woefully misleading.
I believe this represents an inevitable pitfall of a polemical approach. By failing to fairly represent opposing points of view, and refusing to acknowledge contradictory evidence, I'm left with two possible resolutions: either I will make a decision based on incomplete evidence, or I'm forced to find some other polemical argument representing the opposing point of view in order to "balance" the first polemical argument. This is what I was driving at when I entitled my essay "Averaging Wrong Answers." You might wind up a viable answer, but I can't help but think that there is a better way. I feel a little silly making an argument in favor of science to an actual scientist, but what the hell... I'll trot out my favorite Feynman quote again:
"Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can -- if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong -- to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it... In summary, the idea is to give ALL of the information to help others judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another."
I can't help but believe that this is a superior approach to learning, and I feel very strongly that this is at odds with Chomsky's approach.
Finally, I appreciate that you addressed my comparison between McIntyre and Chomsky, but I'm not sure why you think the comparison is absurd. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that it's invalid because McIntyre is serving corporate masters. That's true, but that only tells us why he is making the arguments that he makes. It doesn't tell us anything at all about his rhetorical methods, or whether or not they are similar to the methods Chomsky employs.
cheers,
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
I don't think McIntyre is necessarily serving corporate masters. That's kind of loaded. I didn't say this; what I did say is that you should follow a series of leads when validating (or not) the science promoted by anyone or any group. I wrote about this a few years ago with Stuart Pimm in the journal OIKOS. One lead we suggested is to follow the money; another is to follow the science. One thing I have noticed is that the data trails of the anti-environmetnal crowd - and I lump in many of the climate change sceptics with this bunch - go quickly cold. This suggests that other agendas are at work that have little or nothing to do with science. If you like I can send the article to your email address? I am sure I can find that on Google.
You are right that I didn't address the rhetorical methods used by various so-called polemicists. Its an interesting point that you raise. One of the most tried-and-trusted methods of the anti-enviromental lobby is to shoot the messenger, particularly if their empirical evidence is strong. In his book, 'Green Backlash', author Andrew Rowell details the polemical methods used by a number of generally conservative individuals, lobby groups and think tanks over the years (a kind of 'paradigm shift') in which scientists and environmentalists are called everything from 'doomsayers' to 'potential mass murderers' who are 'assaulting reason'. I am not kidding. You can't get much more polemical than that. I was personally called a 'green harpy' by one pundit on his web site for criticizing Bjorn Lomborg and his book.
I find this discussion interesting, and I will get back to it. I still have some bugs to weigh!
Regards,
Jeff
"To suggest that ther US is 'not the worst' in what they did in the region is, again, like calling the kettle black, and bastardizes history."
That's a pretty sad attempt to change the subject Jeff- you've learned well from the denialists. You attributed the rise of the Khmer Rouge to US bombing, The Khmer rouge in fact only came to power because the US bombed the smithereens out of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973. Now it's been pointed out to you how wantonly ignorant your claim is (or alternatively, to the extent you actually are informed of what you speak, how warped and dishonorable it makes you look to make it), and you'd prefer to discuss what is to your mind at least, the only animating factor in that conflict: body counts attributable to the US.
Did you know the Khmer Rouge killed 1.5 million people, often times by the most brutal means imaginable in torture camps throughout their country? Did you know that the NVA and VC (but primarily the former) trained their military, and fought alongside them against the non-genocide committing forces of Lon Non (or that much of the bombing the US did within that country was tactical support of Lon Non's forces against the NVA and KR)? Did you know that the NVA moved their bases further inside the country, despite the fact that it made their supply lines into South Vietnam longer, specifically to support the KR insurgency against the US friendly government in Phenom Penn? And did you know that the Khmer Rouge would've been a rag tag bunch of nothings without the committed support of the Chinese, who, even after their genocidal killings in the country came to light, continued to be their primary source of aid and diplomatic support to the point of invading Vietnam after the Vietnamese lost patience with the KR and overthrew them? How to explain that in the "narrative you wish to promote", i.e. complete and utter horseshit? Oh yes, I know- the US recognized them diplomatically after they were deposed and they would've ceased to exist otherwise!!!!!! How could I have missed the obviousness of that?
Speaking of US recognition, the fact is it was only after the Khmer Rouge proved less than friendly to Cambodia's native Vietnamese population, and after military skirmishes and other sources of friction between it and Cambodia that the NVA marched in to Phenom Penn. And what did our heroes the communist Vietnamese do then? Set up a puppet government to Vietnam as they'd done in Laos, which was, like their own, deeply respectful of human rights and reeducation camps.
And now you're changing the subject again to Suharto. I'm not going to go chasing you around the globe, but let's get something straight- the only "narrative" I'm trying to promote is one that adheres to the facts, and captures just a hint of the nuance, context and complexity of the real world. As far as that goes, I feel well justified in pointing out that, as with the Khmer Rouge episode, it was not only the US that supported unsavory leaders and insurgencies in the 20th century. The Soviet Union and regional powers such as China were with us every step of the way and with no more scruples, and in many cases to more deleterious ends.
But you keep your US as uber villain cartoon caricature of the world. I only feel sorry for any who might not see through it so clearly as I do.
Ever see the pictures of settler children placing flowers on Baruch Goldstein's grave as part of the annual commemoration ceremonies?
Yes, I know who Goldstein was. As I recall the Arabs killed him (and rightly so) by smashing his skull with a fire extinguisher. Good for them. The primary difference is that nobody in Israel, to my knowledge, called for retaliation against the Palestinians for his killing, since, obviously, he had it coming.
I have never seen the pictures of the settler children you write of. So a small group of kids, probably closely connected to him, put flowers on his grave. That's a lot different than having a nationally televised show aimed at children that calls for mass murder of Palestinians as retaliation etc...
While nobody in the middle east has clean hands, one side is not the same as the other. The conflict is entirely one-sided and would go away overnight if the Palestinians would give up violence. Heck, if they went peaceful on us, the international community would stand up for them if the Israelis really did do anything bad.
The conflict WILL NOT END until the Palestinians reject unprovoked violence.
Majorajam, First of all I don't need history lessons from you. The only narratibe you apparently adhere to is that aggression in US foreign policy is quite acceptable, irrespective of the body count. What was Viet Nam? Aggression. Cambodia? Aggression. Iraq 2003? Aggression. Panama 1989? Aggression. Nicaragua 1980-1990? Let's go with the lesser chanrge of state terror. Satisfied? What is aggression? "The supreme international crime" according to the Nuermburg Proceedings.
What you've done in your reply is a classic bait and switch - by criticizing what was quite simply mass murder by the United States in southeast Asia, suddenly (by default) I am sympathizing with the communist Viet Cong. Isn't that what you are implying? Criticism of mass bombing by the US is tantamount to my being a communist sympathizer.
Some advice: get your head from out of your-you-know-waht and read the link I attached earlier. Here it is again:
Fact: American support for the ouster of Sihanouk (viewed by the rural populace as the father of the country), in a coup by General Lon Nol and the subsequent invasion of Cambodia by U.S. troops in April 1970 prompted a backlash that strengthened support for the insurgent Khmer Rouge (KR) guerrillas.
--Phil Robertson, Foreign Policy in Focus, December 1997.
Fact: Marilyn Young (The Vietnam Wars, p. 283) describes American efforts in Cambodia during the final six weeks of bombing:
An increasingly powerful faction in the Cambodian insurgency, led by Pol Pot, distrusted Sihanouk and despised Hanoi, convinced Vietnam had bought peace for itself at the expense of Cambodia. The longer the bombing continued, the stronger Pol Pot's faction grew, until the space left for a more moderate leftist coalition disappeared entirely. A genteel Congress had expected the intensity of the bombing to descrease in its final weeks; instead, the number of sorties increased: "On Air Force maps of Cambodia thousands of square miles of densely populated, fertile areas are marked black from the inundation." As William Colby, head of the CIA, explained to Congress when asked to justify the ferocity of the bombing, "Cambodia was then the only game in town," and it was about to close down. By the end of 1973, 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people were refugees, although the United States, an AID report observed, "assumed no responsibility for the generation of refugees in Cambodia." Thus only $2.5 million had been made available for humanitarian aid while economic and military aid amounted to $1.85 billion. It cost another $7 billion to bomb the place."
The narrative here differs from your view by quite a wide margin. The US carpet bombing of Cambodia was certainly a factor that helped Pol Pot and the KR to power, if not indirectly. And, whether you like it or not, the US supported KR between 1979 and 1991; this should not even be in dispute. Moreover, who tacitly backed China when nit set out to 'punish' Viet Nam? Yup, the usual suspect.
I can understand why you don't want to globetrot in search of vicious US puppet regimes, the suppression of democracy, and the suppression of inidigenous nationalism by various US governments. The picture gets pretty ugly.
Majorajam,
I didn't see anyone here arguing that the Vietnamese or Chinese were somehow blameless with regard to Cambodia. Jeff has argued that the US were largely responsible for the rise of the Khmer Rouge, and frankly, I don't understand how anyone could dispute that. Were they primarily responsible? Was the US more responsible than, say, the Chinese, or the Vietnamese, or the Cambodians themselves? What about the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion, when the Khmer Rouge were reconstituted as an effective fighting force? Do you want to give the lion's share of the blame to the Thai, or the Chinese, the Americans, or the other ASEAN countries? As far as I'm concerned, those aren't particularly helpful questions: there is plenty of blame to go around, and determining whether the pot or the kettle was more black is pointless.
A couple of your remarks are dubious: the idea that the Vietnamese communists moved their bases deeper into Cambodia solely to help the Khmer Rouge strikes me as entirely unfounded. They moved their bases deeper into Cambodia when the American/SVN invasion chased them out of their bases along the border. Once Lon Nol made it clear that he intended to drive them out of Cambodia, they did the entirely predictable thing, and began waging full-scale war against the Khmer Republic.
I also cringe when you refer to "the non-genocide committing forces of Lon Nol." Compared to Pol Pot, I suppose Lon Nol was an angel... but I don't think the thousands of Vietnamese civilians murdered in Lon Nol's pogroms would gain much solace from that. I have a friend who stood on the banks of the Mekong in 1970 and watched bodies floating down the river. At first he tried to count them; once he was well into the hundreds, he realized that it was a futile task.
Cambodia is indeed fraught with "nuance, context and complexity," and a hell of a lot of it is very ugly indeed.
Bruce
"The conflict is entirely one-sided and would go away overnight if the Palestinians would give up violence. Heck, if they went peaceful on us, the international community would stand up for them if the Israelis really did do anything bad.
The conflict WILL NOT END until the Palestinians reject unprovoked violence."
This is just funny. Yes, ben, it's all one sided, just as you say. Funny that many Israelis, including former government officials like Shlomo Ben Ami (no fan of Arafat) don't see it that way.
I see the usual arguments about Chomsky are in full force. Jeff--as a fellow Chomsky fan, I find it's better just to admit that he didn't get Cambodia right in the late 70's. He knew there were large atrocities going on and said at the time he didn't know how large they were, but he clearly thought then they fell short of genocide, as shown by the fact that he was initially critical of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, changing his mind when the evidence clearly established that there had been a genocide. (A point I've never seen made by the virulent Chomsky-haters as opposed to someone who just tries to be critical of Chomsky when he's wrong and isn't interested in demonizing him.)
I certainly agree that Chomsky is worth reading on most subjects--but he was wrong about Cambodia in the late 70's.
Bruce, your defense of Jeff is wanting. He specifically attributed the rise of the Khmer Rouge to US bombing which is a claim patently fabricated from whole cloth. That this was his claim is undeniable, as per the quote I outlined. This is what I have been disputing from post one, and the mindset of someone like a Chomsky that would find it persuasive simply by peculiarity of their own agenda. And that is what after mountains of bile strewn irrelevancies and invective he still has yet to address whilst ably demonstrating he's been working around too much mercury.
As to what is dubious, the NVA and VC saw Lon Nol as a threat and not because of the instigated pogroms against Vietnamese, or at least certainly not primarily, but because he was allied with the US in a global war between the West and Communism, (which, no kidding now, is how it felt to the players back then, irrespective of what we think of that in the here and now). In any case, one needs only look to North Vietnam's parallel behavior in Laos to get the symmetry. And NVA/VC aggression toward Lon Nol's government began as when he came to power and before the US and South Vietnamese invasion of eastern Cambodia, which was in part prompted by it. It furthermore continued after they had withdrawn, and that government's overthrow was a strategic if secondary objective of the government in Hanoi. Indeed, while only understandable in the context of ethnic rivalries, old grudges and internecine conflict between the world's communist factions, this was still an ideological struggle.
As to Lon Nol's barbarism, I have never discounted it, and in fact made several references to it. He was a tin pot right wing strong man and charlatan who's path to power depended heavily on popular backlash against the Vietnamese military presence in the country, as I mentioned before, and what that meant to who ate, and who didn't. So no one can wash their hands of him. That said, the US clearly backed him and there are unproven allegations that the US endorsed his coup which would make them all the more culpable for his acts. But that's the point I've been making, isn't it? He WAS indeed an angel compared the other guys (that incidentally Jeff would also like to believe came to power because of US bombing, in spite of the fact that they came to power only after the US stopped bombing). I even went so far as to write that: the US was not the only power that supported unsavory leaders and insurgencies in the 20th century, and that, if we allow for a relativist world, they weren't even the worst. How this was missed I don't know.
So yes, plenty of context, complexity and even facts there in historical events, which I'll continue to resolve to stand by notwithstanding the proliferation of demagogues like Jeff on the left and right.
Actually Jeff, I don't want to globe trot because your doing so is a blatant smokescreen. Suharto? What would you say if I pointed out that South Korea is prosperous today because of "US aggression"? Would you argue with me, because, no doubt this would be a mind blowing thing to accept in spite of its indisputability, or might you think I was floating a red herring?
Speaking of which, you're now blaming the Chinese invasion of Vietnam on the US. I wondered how long it would take before we could make the good guys bad actions also the US fault. It looks like two posts will do er. Which brings me to the Chomsky link- like this is going to open my eyes because I've never seen anyone shovel that manure before. You of all people Jeff should know what happens when someone with a severe case of ideological axe to grind sets out to find facts that dovetail with his or her worldview. It doesn't end well.
As for my 'bait and switch' I've done no such thing. I am disputing a patently false statement you've made and pointing to the fact that there are other people out there who's decisions have consequences outside the CIA and White House. I am furthermore throwing out the communist government of Ho Chi Minh as an example. And you will have to reveal the extent of your sympathies for these actors because I am not making the argument that Human Rights Watch having all the facts would have condemned the Vietnamese and not the Americans. I am and have been explicitly making a relativist argument, because this is the real world, and relative judgments matter too, not least because those are the metrics most people evaluate in their decision making 10 times a day.
Anyway, I should have to correct what is some horribly revised history on Cambodia before I go. The was no moderate left in Sihanouk's government. Sihanouk was a Chinese client who the Khmer Rouge used to gain favor with their countrymen. He sold his name to their militancy at the behest of the Chinese (from Beijing no less), abetted by his anger at having been betrayed by Lon Nol. He and his loyalists were figureheads anathema to the KR, who never had any real power within that movement and who were all gradually eliminated. It is difficult for me to contemplate the degree of credulity required not to accept that and to somehow believe that the KR wouldn't have dominated Democratic Kampuchea short of US bombing, but so far you have shown yourself extraordinarily capable in that regard, so I won't hold my breath.
PS Bruce, I don't know how I missed this, but you said Once Lon Nol made it clear that he intended to drive them out of Cambodia, they did the entirely predictable thing, and began waging full-scale war against the Khmer Republic. Are you suggesting that Lon Nol's big provocation was determining to throw a foreign army that was leeching off its people out of its soverign territory? Talk about dubious.
Majorajam,
I'm not sure if you are talking about Sihanouk before the coup, or after; he was not by any stretch of the imagination "far left." Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be saying that if there had been no coup, and Sihanouk had remained in power, the Khmer Rouge would have still have taken control of Cambodia and the genocide still would have taken place. Counterfactuals are always open to question, but that one seems totally ridiculous.
Re your question: "Are you suggesting that Lon Nol's big provocation was determining to throw a foreign army that was leeching off its people out of its soverign territory?" Yes, that is what I am saying. (Except for the bit about "leeching off its people"; I don't see how Vietnamese bases in the middle of the jungle could be construed as "leeching" off of the Cambodian people.)
Please understand: I'm not a pacifist. Sometimes war is called for. But war is only a good option if you can win. Cambodia would have been far better off if Lon Nol had pursued the same policy as Sihanouk. What, exactly, do you think Cambodia gained by going to war with a vastly superior enemy?
Lon Nol had every right to insist that the Vietnamese communists leave. Similarly, if a thief puts a gun to my head and asks for my wallet, I would have every right to tell him no. But I'd be a fool to do so.
Bruce, I was referring to Sihanouk's subsequent embrace of the Khmer Rouge, and doing so in the context of Jeff's assertion that US bombing after he was deposed drove the Sihanouk government not quite in exile into the arms of Pol Pot. That's another one of the historical rewrites he's run up the flag pole.
I am aware that Sihanouk was not far left, at least until he embraced the far left. I agree that Lon Nol was a disaster for Cambodia, that he was a charlatan, and a tin pot right wing strongman. My point is that Lon Nol didn't just pop a coup from his prior position as street vendor. He was elevated to his position of prime minister largely by consequence of Sihanouk's ineffectualness at to do anything about the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia, and the very real antagonisms that it was stirring, e.g. the fact that they were indeed usurping sparse Cambodian rice to feed their vast army, most of which is not grown in Phnom Penn, and that the KR were basing their insurgency in Vietnamese occupied areas, and in collaboration with them. Sihanouk was, in fact, out of the country lobbying the Russians and Chinese to get their clients to better behave when he was deposed. I don't think that was a capricious move on his part.
Sihanouk was the center that couldn't hold in a time of war and attendant human degradation. The story of the Vietnam War and its ancillary conflicts and mass murders is a tale of just how dreadful and unpredictable war is once unleashed, and how quickly it can spiral out of control. But circling back to the original point, does it not seem curious to you that Jeff would claim the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia, and by consequence was able to commit the Cambodian genocide, "only" because of a country that was actively fighting it, rather than on a country that was its biggest benefactor (China) or the country that fought alongside it (the government in Hanoi)? Maybe that's just me, but I find that peculiar.
It's not my intention to defend Jeff, since he's perfectly capable of defending himself. Nonetheless, I think you've misinterpreted that "only" remark: you seem to think he meant that the US was exclusively to blame for the Khmer Rouge victory. I think he meant that US involvement was essential to a Khmer Rouge victory. Those are two very different things.
A similar example: I can only watch Full Metal Alchemist if my kids aren't watching Spongebob Squarepants. However, that doesn't mean that Spongebob is the only thing that determines whether or not I can watch FMA. After all, my wife might be singing karaoke. :-)
She has a beautiful voice, for what it's worth, but I dunno if I really need to hear another song about someone's lost love from Battambang.
cheers,
Bruce
Fair enough Bruce. That interpretation is far better supported by the facts, though definitely debatable. Certainly, the US was culpable for the existence of civil war inside Cambodia by its culpability for civil war in Vietnam, which was legion. But it's a much different thing to postulate that Nixon's decision to bomb and invade were the essential ingredients, that the war in Vietnam itself was insufficient.
Of course, it's ultimately impossible to definitively evaluate such a counterfactual, but I don't think the evidence is favorable. Was there going to be a civil war in Cambodia with or without Nixon's escalation? No doubt. Would Sihanouk still have been deposed by Lon Nol? Perhaps not, though it is not known for sure whether the US was responsible for that. Would that have mattered? Doubtful at best. All the evidence is that communist forces were going to be victorious in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam by the wishes of their benefactors in Moscow and Beijing, and their military capability to do so. It is pretty difficult to believe that diplomatic pressure brought to bear by a pacifist Cambodian government and its allies would've staved off that conclusion. Would the communist victors have been the Khmer Rouge, and the precise Khmer Rouge as they materialized in the real world? On the former almost assuredly- the KR and the monarchy wasn't exactly a natural fit. On the latter impossible to know. Certainly the US escalation inflamed the situation, and accelerated the descent into barbarism there, but these were after all the Khmer Rouge. They were very unlikely to've been benevolent dictators.
So, I'm not persuaded personally, but I am happy to acknowledge at least that's it's a point on which reasonable people can disagree.
"Certainly the US escalation inflamed the situation, and accelerated the descent into barbarism there, but these were after all the Khmer Rouge. They were very unlikely to've been benevolent dictators"
The argument I've seen from Ben Kiernan among others is not that the Khmer Rouge became brutal because of US bombing, but that US bombing acted as a recruiting tool for the Khmer Rouge.
Donald, you are arguing the past. I am talking about the present and the future. I do not know much about Israeli settlers, but it does seem that mainstream Israelis are decent people, that is, the vast majority of Israelis. They do not teach their children to hate, and they do not create vile television programs with which to indoctrinate their children. Neither do they send their children on suicide missions to INTENTIONALLY kill pregnant women, children and anyone else in their way.
The conflict is ALMOST entirely one-sided at this moment in history. The conflict will not go away until the Palestinians renounce violence. This worked for King in the United States and for Ghandi. Both of whom had legitimate grievances against their oppressors, at least to the degree that the Palestinians have them against the Israelis. Ghandi did not teach hate. King did not teach hate. Look at the results.
"I have never seen the pictures of the settler children you write of. So a small group of kids, probably closely connected to him, put flowers on his grave. That's a lot different than having a nationally televised show aimed at children that calls for mass murder of Palestinians as retaliation etc..."
No, thousands of heavily-armed settlers march through the city where the families of his victims still live proclaiming him a hero and a martyr of the Jewish people.
"The conflict is entirely one-sided and would go away overnight if the Palestinians would give up violence. '
This is, to put it simply, horseshit.
Every year more Palestinians are killed by West Bank settlers alone than all Israelis who are killed by Palestinians.
No settler has ever been charged with murder.
The militant wing of West Bank settlers, quite simply, won't stop until the West Bank is annexed to Israel and the Palestinians are either killed or expelled.
Even you have probably heard about the illegal settlements they've set up all over the west bank, what you probably haven't heard of is their general shoot on sight policy at those illegal settlements.
"... the vast majority of Israelis. They do not teach their children to hate, and they do not create vile television programs with which to indoctrinate their children. Neither do they send their children on suicide missions to INTENTIONALLY kill pregnant women, children and anyone else in their way."
And how many Israelis do you know Ben?
I'll take it you'ce chosen to ignore, for example, the story of the teen-aged Gaza settler who was filmed by Israeli TV repeatedly smashing in the head of a Palestinian who was lying unconscious on the ground with a rock so large it took him two hands to lift it.
He was actually tried - a very rare event and probably only because he was caught on camera - acquitted of attempted murder, convicted of assault and sentenced to time served.
Then there was the IDF officer who shot a six year old Palestinian girl in what his own men claimed was unprovoked murder. I believe he was tried by a military court and acquitted.
Then there was the case widely reported in the Israeli media where hundreds of Israeli border guards were routinely robbing and beating Palestinians at check-points on a daily basis.
Again, the only reason it got any coverage was because an Israeli TV channel used hidden cameras to film it.
Funny how the western media never picked up on the story.
"This worked for King in the United States and for Ghandi. Both of whom had legitimate grievances against their oppressors, at least to the degree that the Palestinians have them against the Israelis. Ghandi did not teach hate. King did not teach hate. Look at the results."
It's always cute when warhawks demand that their opponents adopt pacifism.
Donald, both Bruce and Jeff have made that point. It's one that I reject the significance of. There was copious quantities of violence creating unhappy Cambodians of dead relations on both sides of the civil war. Far more encouraging to their recruiting effort would've been the fact that they were on the stronger side and about to come in for the big win (and the alliance with King Sihanouk no doubt helped too). That matters. People are not stupid- and people in war zones far less so. They pick winners because it is the best way, in many cases the only way, to survive when the world about you turns into a boiling cauldron of death.
The critical data point is understanding that communist victories were worked toward and achieved in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Each mattered considerably to China and Russia looking to kick the United States out of any foothold in South East Asia. And I don't think it's remotely legitimate to argue that Cambodia wouldn't have fallen had its central government remained more neutral vis a vis the PAVN presence in their country, nor do I think that half-measures would've placated the Chinese, Vietnamese or the Khmer Rouge for that matter, who's fanatical desire it was for power and to overhaul the entirety of Cambodian society. It would take something of a pretty compelling story to suggest otherwise.
As I see it, the recruiting angle is a significantly less persuasive for anyone pushing the line of US culpability in the rise of the Khmer Rouge by way of Nixon's bombing. However, because they glow in the dark, no one will touch any line of inquiry that could be seen as having overtones of excuse making for them. And it may be the case that I'm 180 degrees wrong too- it wouldn't be the first time. But my reading of history makes me think that coincidence of genocide and gruesome wars is not coincidence, and my reading of this history is that this war would've been far shorter and less ghastly had the US never attempted to keep the Cambodian Republic afloat. Presumably though, the US was unaware of any preordained outcome before they waded in.
Ian Gould:
> It's always cute when warhawks demand that their opponents adopt pacifism.
The tenor of the whole conflict could've been different if the Palestinians had accepted the Israelis' offer to appear at town hall meetings.
Jeff Harvey writes:
What was Viet Nam? Aggression.
Yes, on the part of the North Vietnamese, using both military force and terrorism. Some would assign the former to the NVA and the latter to the Viet Cong, but I'd call it terrorism to haul an old village chief and his family outside and make the whole village look as the chief et al. were tortured to death. I mean, the idea was certainly to create a climate of terror.
Funny how the western media never picked up on the story.
Right, because they're too busy filming total BS. Given the coverage of the obviously faked al-Dura event in MSM, why weren't these other incidents so widely reported? The media is no friend of Israel so I honestly do not believe you. Give me some links, please, Ian.
"But my reading of history makes me think that coincidence of genocide and gruesome wars is not coincidence, and my reading of this history is that this war would've been far shorter and less ghastly had the US never attempted to keep the Cambodian Republic afloat. Presumably though, the US was unaware of any preordained outcome before they waded in."
First, I apologize for making a point already made--sometimes I read threads closely, but in this case I'm just skimming. I think I agree with what you say in the quote above, which confuses me a bit--my skimming must have given me the wrong impression.
As for the I/P debate--Ben, if you have any real interest in learning about atrocities committed by the Israelis and not just the Palestinians you'd already know about them, especially since we've all had this argument before and you've had plenty of time to go to libraries and bookstores or just google things. Still, maybe you've been busy, so here's a
place you can visit--
That, plus the links I provided above to articles or statements by Shlomo Ben Ami, an Oxford-trained Israeli historian who has participated in peace talks and written a history of the conflict ought to be enough to make you rethink your position.
As for terror in Vietnam, it was obviously used on both sides--
On the theory that US bombing recruited for the Khmer Rouge, Kiernan does have some anecdotal evidence where villages were destroyed by the bombing and some of the survivors then chose to join the Khmer Rouge, though you probably know this already.
Thanks Donald. I have been busy and I do not take sides (as in I don't care who 'wins') in that conflict because I have no interest except in seeing peace there. I will have a look at that link this weekend.
Here's one of the headlines from that link:
On 4 Oct. '08, Border Police officer Tomer Avraham killed Iyad Abu-Ra'iyeh, who was found in Tel Aviv without a permit, after severely beating him. Tel Aviv District Court judge Oded Mudrik sentenced Avraham to one year imprisonment for manslaughter, referring to the crime as "a hapless, lethal act incidental to military or police activity."
This illustrates part of the difference in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: when was the last time the Palestinians subjected any Palestinian to any sort of justice/punishment for crimes against Israelis? Maybe I'm wrong, but my guess would be that this has never happened.
Donald, after initial perusal of the btselem website I am not impressed, especially when considering such things are the Pallywood shenanigans. Seems to consist mostly of "testimonies" that are difficult to believe and strange seeming news reports.
For example, in this report the Israeli defendant "cocked" his M16 rifle before supposedly unintentionally firing it at the victim (google search turned up different account that indicated the rifle was an M16). How exactly do you "cock" an M16? You cock a pistol by pulling back on the hammer with your thumb, which makes sense if the pistol already has a round in the chamber. An M16/M4 whatever has no such mechanism. There is no way to "cock" an M16. Is this simple media ignorance, or was it a made-up story that includes an incorrect or impossible description of events?
An uncocked M16 does not have a round in the chamber and cannot fire. Why would these conscript policeman carry an un-ready rifle in the first place when confronting suspects? It makes no sense. Further, does corroberating evidence exist for any of these reports or testimonials?
"cocking" a rifle by pulling the charging handle may be used as a visible and accustic warning, before other measures are taken.
it could be a simple error, by a soldier under stress as well.
i think you are making too much out of it.
ps: i wonder, how ben would think about "decent people" who drove him from his land twice....
Ben, if I understand you correctly you're dismissing the value of the B'Tselem website because you found a possible inaccuracy in one of the reports. Which is odd, because the website is quoting an Israeli judge's verdict. Perhaps the judge was using inaccurate terminology. Or maybe you're saying that the website simply invented the quote.
B'Tselem is composed of Israelis and Palestinians interested in a peaceful solution who collect evidence of atrocities and other misdeeds committed by both sides--it's exactly the sort of group I would expect people interested in a peaceful solution would support and the picture they paint is consistent with what you can find in numerous other sources, both American and Israeli. But if you think there's a conspiracy to make up Israeli atrocities, and I gather some Israeli "supporters" think that, then you may be inclined to filter out any evidence that goes against your preconceptions.
Ben, if I understand you correctly you're dismissing the value of the B'Tselem website...
I did not dismiss it, I was only calling in to question the accuracy and honesty of the "testimonials" and reports. I do not see any links or backup information there, so I have to take their word that it is correct. I am hesitant to do so. Especially given the history of Pallywood and al-Dura, etc.
More evidence on how the US bombing of Cambodia - more than 2.7 million tons of it - which led an enraged population to support the Khmer Rouge:
In particular: "The Cambodian bombing campaign had two unintended side effects that ultimately combined to produce the very domino effect that the Vietnam War was supposed to prevent. First, the bombing forced the Vietnamese Communists deeper and deeper into Cambodia, bringing them into greater contact with Khmer Rouge insurgents. Second, the bombs drove ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, a group that seemed initially to have slim prospects of revolutionary success. Pol Pot himself described the Khmer Rouge during that period as "fewer than five thousand poorly armed guerrillas . . . scattered across the Cambodian landscape, uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty, and leaders."... and,
"Years after the war ended, journalist Bruce Palling asked Chhit Do, a former Khmer Rouge officer, if his forces had used the bombing as anti-American propaganda. Chhit replied:
"Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched . . . . The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on co-operating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them. . . . Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge".
Enuff said. A co-author of this article, Ben Kiernan, is a professor of history at Yale University and the author of 'How Pol Pot Came to Power' and 'The Pol Pot Regime'.
Barton, gimme a break. The aim of the 1954 Geneva conference was the eventual unification of North and South Viet Nam. The US knew that a combined vote would lead to Hoh Chi Minh forming the government, hence why they ultimately refused to acknowledge the 1954 conference. Moreover, most of the Sotuh Viet Nam's population didn't support the US, hence why it was so heavily bombed in the initial stages. Later, when the US began carpet bombing northern Laos and Cambodia, it was clear they'd lost the propaganda war. What is remarkable is how much some peoplke defend the indefensible. The US Indochinese wars were clear acts of aggression of the part of the US. Millions dead; countries almost obliterated.
Donald, beware the normative history of emotive subjects with positive applications to current events. Notwithstanding, I don't discount that American bombing, its offensive, and civilian casualties caused by the AVRN or government of Lon Nol had positive impacts on recruiting for the Khmer Rouge. My doubts apply to the lack of evidence that those civilian casualties were decisive factors in the Khmer Rouge's recruiting effort, let alone their broader war effort. And even if you accept that American provocation was the largest motivating factor for growing the ranks of the Khmer Rouge, which I don't, (the monetary and military support from foreign benefactors, principally China, alliance of convenience with Sihanouk, and sponsorship by the most powerful military organization on the ground in Cambodia were all considerably important as well), you still have to show that whatever difference it made was determinative of the war effort. Just because A therefore B, does not mean A therefore C.
As regards A therefore C- i.e. American bombing therefore KR Victory via its effects on recruitment- I should dredge up the obvious here that the monomaniacal focus on American violence is a surefire tell, in poker speak, of the anti-American lemmings in the educational establishment. I notice that we don't hear much about errant shelling nor terrorization of villages nor usurpation of property and food by the Khmer Rouge and NVA. Perhaps that's because it didn't happen? Perhaps, but how then to explain why the Republic of Cambodia's own recruitment efforts yielded such a bumper crop- 250,000 I think it was, at its peak, against 50 or 60 thousand Khmer Rouge? I guess American bombs were falling on them too only first Nixon had the planes and bombs dressed up to look like Mao Zedong.
Irrespective of whether the NVA and Khmer Rouge were saints, and the massive ranks of the ROC racists, there is, indeed, all manner of data here to suggest that Cambodia was destined to be a communist state. And in that, they were very unlikely to be, as the wild-eyed Jeffs of this world pawn off as reasonable, the first communist monarchy. Not the least of these were the fact that Vietnam was by the late 60's if not before, a serious regional military power due both to the extensive experience of its armies and the swelling of its coffers by Soviet and to a lesser extent Chinese benefactors. It is furthermore the case that they had no qualms in projecting their military power regionally, (see for example Hanoi's control of the entirety of Indochina).
And I don't believe for one second that the purpose of the PAVN's deployments deeper inside of Cambodia was in response to the US/South Vietnamese incursion. Immediately following Lon Nol's coup, they threw their considerable weight behind the Khmer Rouge's effort overthrow him, despite the fact that the KR were not fond of the Vietnamese nor were their benefactors the Chinese. In March of 1970, a month before the US/ARVN invasion, the NVA overran a number of provinces in northeastern Cambodia. The act was a classic in the genre of preemptive aggression. In any case, it was no response to US actions. The same academics asserting that NVA/VC activities in support of the KR were in response to US aggression in Cambodia are those who would tell you that the VC & NVA had no hard infrastructure or command and control in the east of that country. What I don't get, is why then why did they see it necessary to occupy a third of the country? And why did they do so even after the US withdrew from its offensive?
I think, after all of these posts, I've said all that I have to say. Some people, like Jeff and Noam C and the battalions of bile-filled buffoons on the right, are just too invested in cartoon caricatures of the world to think independently. I don't recall whether I read it in a column of his or saw an interview, but Chomsky's reaction to Mearsheimer & Walt's 'Israel Lobby' was priceless in this regard. Of course, he was bound to be sympathetic to it, but he mainly rejected the thesis in the end because he couldn't account for two distinctly independent uber villains dictating the same US government behavior (and of course there's the Bonesmen who own the oil companies to account for too). It was a real conundrum for ol Noam, like watching one of those 70's sci-fi tv series robots whirring and flailing about, "Does not compute! Does not compute!": how to recognize two prima facie true things in disagreement with one another? And that's the same reaction I'd expect to get from Jeff if someone threw out the Korean War for discussion. It's a testament to the limitations of human understanding at the crossroads of emotion and chaos.
For the record, I also think that Barton is wrong both in tone and substance, and for some of the same reasons Jeff is. And now back to the day job.
When Majorajam writes, "anti-American lemmings in the educational establishment", the argument is lost. End of story. FYI M, this has nothing to do with 'anti-Americanism', which is such a convenient straw man to dredge up, but accountability. Most importantly, your posts reek of self-righteous hypocrisy, claiming that anyone who dares cite examples of horrific US foregin policy - and there are legions of them - is "anti-American".
Basically, with one hollow swipe at many intellectuals who dare challenge the 'official record', and by making frankly absurd remarks like, "It's a testament to the limitations of human understanding at the crossroads of emotion and chaos", you reveal your hand. Historians like Ben Kiernan are summarily dismissed with your hollow pen. In effect, M. you've reached the depths when you have to resort to the 'anti-American' cherry to describe academics who tend to discagree with your world view. Is game, set and match.
I'd like to ask you where you feel you rank on the global hierarchy of intellectuals - just wondrin'. Given that Chomsky comes out on top by a country mile, I wonder where you rank yourself?
As far as Cambodia is concerned, you'll have to do better than to dismiss pieces like that by Professor Kiernan as another example of how left wing intelelctuals have infiltrated academia. Let's get something straight: by 1975 Cambodia was perhaps the most bombed country on Earth, helped in no small part by the 115,000 sites targeted in 231,00 U.S. bombing sorties flown over Cambodia between 1965 and 75, that dropped 2.75 million tons of munitions. What effect did this have on the populace, M? How many perished under this onslaught, or is this just a footnote in your personal log? How did this affect recruitment fot the KR? It was mass murder, for sure, Phase I that was supe3rceded by Phase II under Pol Pot. Sure, PP may have come to power eventually, but there is little doubt that the mass US bombardment that began under Johnson, but was escalated by Nixon, played a significant role.
As far as conundrums go, your "70's sci-fi tv series robots whirring and flailing about, 'Does not compute! Does not compute!' appear to reflect a lot of your own rambling posts. Little substance. Lots or rhetoric. Most importantly, denial. Bags of it.
So Obama really is a flaming socialist. No surprise here. Also no surprise, the "media" didn't break this story... a single guy with a computer did.
Ben, So what is your point? Do you seriously think for one microsecond that Obama a socialist or anything remotely close? Gimme a break. His campaign received huge amounts of money from corporate elites. In the plutocratic political system that defines US politics, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. The rank and file of the US population is miles to the left of both major political parties anyway. Both parties preferentially represent vested interests and those with concentrated wealth and power. That's the way its been for decades and its not going to change with the election of either candidate. The mainstream media in the US, as well as over here in Europe for that matter, is no different: Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model nails it: 'the aim of the media is to inculcate and defend the political, social and economic agenda of the rich and privileged groups that dominate domestic society and the state'. There's volumes of empirical evidence to back the model up, as well.
So ben really is a flaming idiot.
Socialism doesn't mean taxing the rich and using to help the country as a whole and the poor in particular (see the new deal). Socialism means nationalizing the major industries (see the Bush administration, comrade). Just because you don't know what a word means doesn't mean everyone else is an idiot as well.
The rank and file of the US population is miles to the left of both major political parties anyway.
Good luck proving that. I claim that what you claim is untrue.
Socialism means nationalizing the major industries (see the Bush administration, comrade).
True! However, in the common lingo, that is what socialism has been taken to mean. The term has effectively been redefined, just like the terms "gay" and "discriminate". Obama is a welfare-statist, more in line with Marxisms "from each... to each..." mantra. However you slice it, it's highly un-American.
Funny also how the MSM sends out its armies to dig up dirt on Palin and "Joe the Plumber" but won't raise a finger to do anything in depth on Obama.
And yes, Bush is a major idiot. His economic policies are terrible, especially when combined with a Democrat congress and Fannie/Freddie. Socialization of risk and all that.
Oh noes! Obama is a SOCIALIST!!!
Seriously, dude, nobody cares. Real people are struggling with real problems on their hands -- job insecurity, not enough money to buy stuff, money tied up in busted stocks -- and nobody cares about whether Obama can be described by some moronic label or other.
Go screw yourself.
Also, Obama is a MUSLIM!!! He's a FOREIGNER!!! He's an ELITIST!!!
Guess what? Nobody cares about this one-word adjective crap now. Not anymore.
He's neither a Muslim nor a Foreigner. Everyone with a brain knows that. Elitist? Probably, just like FDR. And also just like FDR, "Real people are struggling with real problems on their hands -- job insecurity, not enough money to buy stuff, money tied up in busted stocks" and for that we'll get more New Deal bullshit that will prolong our suffering rather than fix the problems.
"Go screw yourself."
So no one word adjectives, but three word insults are OK?
Anyway, I'm voting for Obama this year. I traded my inconsequential vote for Obama (He's got a lock on Washington State) for a consequential vote for Rossi for governor. I will probably puke after I vote for Obama though. We deserve it, 4-8 years of his crap and I think we'll swing pretty hard back to the right.
> but three word insults are OK?
You're feeling insulted? Oh, sorry for bursting your political correctness.
Meanwhile, you can have sex with yourself, if that sounds better.
> we'll get more New Deal bullshit that will prolong our suffering rather than fix the problems.
Yeah, the New Deal thing ought to have been a total failure, because it's SOCIALIST!!! Unfortunately, it didn't end up being a total failure, so Ben the Patriotman will have to come up with ad hoc explanations for why this big bad SOCIALIST!!! programme didn't crash down like the Soviet Union did.
Remember, it's SOCIALIST!!!
After all, as we've repeatedly been asked in the context of climate science, if data disagree with models, what's the correct thing to do?
Model: FDR was a SOCIALIST!!! and an ELITIST!!!
Data: The US got out of the Depression.
Conclusion: The data must have been fudged.
Now, if we follow the scientifically correct advice on disagreement between models and data, we get this:
Model: FDR was a ââââââââââ!!! and an ââââââââââ!!!
Data: The US got out of the Depression.
Conclusion: Hey, whatever FDR did was actually sort of working. Now, is that so bad?
So why should anyone care whether Obama's a ââââââââââ!!! (for whatever values ââââââââââ)? And indeed, nobody cares.
Socialist? Damn, just when capitalism was doing so well they're going to put in a socialist? Next they'll be nationalising stuff, screwing the environment, waging aggressive wars, torturing people they don't much like and all that totalitarian shit.
The New Deal was great eh?
Yeah, Awesome! Let's do more of that!
Say, can someone point me to Jennifer Marohasy's explanation of how to graph temperatures? It's been exactly two months since she promised that she would "soon" teach us this valuable skill: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/the\_australians\_war\_on\_science\_19.php#comment-1071688
I'm really looking forward to this helpful lesson.
Eli Rabett argues that ben is a credulous fool
Eli Rabett argues that ben is a credulous fool
I fail to see any argument.
Bruce - "Say, can someone point me to Jennifer Marohasy's explanation of how to graph temperatures? "
Apparently she has her own methods that show what she wants to show. Like the no warming for the last 10 years thing. She has still to show me the graph that backs up this statement she made on 60 minutes.
I am taking a break from that blog - Bird is just to looney for me.
well, to play the devil's advocate, you do have to admit that obama is black.
Huh?...a BLACK PANTHER!!!!
And a SOCIALIST!!!
A BLACK SOCIALIST PANTHER. Arrgghhh!!!!!
And don't forget the TERRORIST FIST JAB.
Ben, do you check under your bed every night before going to sleep?
Seriously, by your definition many well-functioning democracies are in fact socialist states. Curious thing is, when one considers many quality-of-life indicators, these same countries leave the US eating their dust.
How does that work?
The link you point to, Ben, makes it clear that the view that the New Deal lengthened the great depression is a minority view even among economists. Since the current financial crisis has exposed much of the right wing of economics as currently taught as being ideological claptrap, as even Greenspan has been forced to admit (now being referred to as the "Alan Shrugged" moment), I think the minority are even more embattled now. But you keep on fighting the battle of new orleans if it makes you feel better.
Obama is not necessarily a "welfare-statist". Increasing the top tax bracket and lowering the middle and lower tax brackets redistributes wealth without changing government spending. Inasmuch as lower taxes in lower tax brackets mean people need less welfare (both because they lose less from taxation and because they can put themselves on the market for a lower wage), Obama's policies would reduce welfare dependency. The idea that in a republic, the rich should pay the taxes that pay for the wars goes back to the Roman republic and was a big part of their early success. It wasn't dreamed up by Karl Marx.
Redistributing the wealth is probably the best thing American capitalism could do to save it from itself. Since the deregulation era of Reagan, real wages in america have stayed flat, and profits have boomed. The result has been a failure of effective mass demand which has been made up for by the capital holders lending their money (in the form of cheap-credit) to the wage-earners to buy consumer goods, rather than paying them higher wages. As their wages have stagnated, the wage-earners have eventually been unable to pay back those loans. Cue sub-prime meltdown and financial crisis. Rather than pay higher taxes to fix the decaying republic, the profit-takers have also invested in one ponzi bubble after another which have sucked the genuine entrepreneurship and dynamism out of the system.
Significant research in behavioural and hedonic economics also indicates that redistributive tax systems are a good idea. Most current research shows that the utility or satisfaction derived from money is not fixed; somewhere around what is usually thought of as a "middle class" income, an extra dollar starts giving you much less satisfaction than it does someone who is poor (this is intuitively obvious to anyone anyway). Particularly above that flexion point, Humans rank ourselves comparatively not absolutely. As a result, the rich will be happy as long as they are richer than someone else (which tax won't change) while the poor will be much, much happier (not to mention better fed, clothed, housed, healthy, etc) with a bit more money.
American conservatives are the leading destroyers of the free market. I suggest you go and read "The conservative nanny state" http://www.conservativenannystate.org/ (it's free) before jumping in with your "gotcha" next time. And read up on what the Founding Fathers (especially Jefferson) and de Tocqueville said about the wide, egalitarian distribution of property being vital to a free republic while you're at it.
Bruce Sharp:
> Say, can someone point me to Jennifer Marohasy's explanation of how to graph temperatures?
She probably needs to ask Ron Rychlak, who seems to be the source of the idea in the first place. (There's a talk to go along with the slides, too...)
well, to play the devil's advocate, you do have to admit that obama is black.
Actually, Obama is white. At least he's as white as he is black.
Alright then, James. Why how much should we tax? 99% of every dollar earned over $100k? And instead of going after income, which is not necessarily an indicator of wealth, why don't we go after the wealth itself? Take some of fat-cat Kennedy's stockpile for example?
Also, why not tax windfall profits on actors and actresses? They work for a year and if a movie hits make a gazillion dollars. That's a windfall if ever I've seen one.
All joking aside, why not go for a national sales tax? Cost of compliance would be much lower, since we could scrap personal and corporate income taxes. There aren't any loopholes. And you are taxed on consumption, which gives "the rich" (and, incidentaly, everyone else) incentive to save and invest. I'm all about that.
Ben,
I don't know nearly enough about the US' budgetary priorities, etc, to suggest what the tax rate should be. I'm just telling you that progressive income taxes aren't particularly inequitable (due to the psychological effects mentioned), certainly aren't "socialist", and contribute to redistribution, which america needs, without "welfare statism".
The flexion point (I can't look it up right now) is clearly a good point to start kicking income taxes in, since above that point people value money less anyway. Another natural tier is the 97th percentile or so where wealth distribution shifts from a thermodynamic distribution to a power law distribution (see the work of Yakovenko and the other econophysicists).
IIRC, the US used to have wealth taxes on inherited wealth, called estate taxes. Bush cut them, somewhere in between stealing elections, running up the biggest federal debt in history and abusing the constitution.
If you want to tax unearned (as opposed to earned) windfall profits, you would be better off embracing some form of Georgist resource value tax.
Consumption taxes tax the poor disproportionately compared to the rich, because the poor spend a much larger portion of their income on consumption. Unless they're also Pigouvian or "sin taxes" (on e.g. alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, waste generation, carbon emissions) I'm opposed to them, and even then you need redistribution, since it's not the poor's fault that e.g. they rent poorly insulated houses. There are also many more transactions than there are incomes, meaning that the cost of gathering the taxes goes up.
In any case, if ben will indeed be voting for Obama, this means that whether Obama is a SOCIALIST!!! isn't exactly that big of a factor to himself.
And I'm guessing that the Joe the $250,000 Plumber Tax isn't that big of a factor either.
somewhere in between stealing elections...
See, BS like that and you lose me.
When they tell me, "Obama is a socialist," or "Obama is the most liberal person ever nominated," etc., all I can say is "I wish."
SOCIALIST!!! OH NOES!!! OH NOES!!!
> "It's true that most Americans, when asked by pollsters, think that it's emphatically not the government's job to redistribute wealth. But are people so stupid as to not recognize that when politicians talk about a 'right to health care,' or 'equalizing educational opportunities,' or 'making the rich pay a fair share of taxes,' or 'ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college,' and so forth and so on, that they are advocating the redistribution of wealth? Is it okay for a politician to talk about the redistribution of wealth only so long as you don't actually use phrases such as 'redistribution' or 'spreading the wealth,' in which case he suddenly becomes 'socialist'? If so, then American political discourse, which I never thought to be especially elevated, is in even a worse state than I thought."
Of course, as Palin has shewn us, it's possible to
1. reduce taxes across the board, and
2. avoid "wealth redistribution" which is the source of all evils under the bed, and
3. get government out of the way, and
4. reduce government spending, and
5. channel more troops and resources into Iraq to win the War, and
6. improve on public education, and
7. increase government oversight over financial institutions, and
I don't know how this is possible, but it probably involves ponies.
Ben, part of the 'proof' is that polls consistently show that the vast majority of the US population support a national government funded health care system, where no one is excluded. By 'vast majority' I mean always more than 80%. But will it happen? Not on your life, not under Obama any more than under McCain or anyone else. Kerry summed it up in 2004 when he said that it was not 'politically possible'. What did he mean by this? If 80% of the American public want it, why is it not possible? Because the huge private insurance companies don't want it. Nor do the huge pharamceutical companies. They don't want it, so it's not 'politically possible'. Forget that 80% of the US public want it. They don't count.
Moreover, Obama has been accused of being 'elitist', hardly a tag one would hang on an avowed socialist. The "elitist" charge against Obama could have demolished if he had voted against the recent bailout of the banking sector by the US taxpayer. That could not happen because he is, in fact, quite elitist. Moreover, the elitism of both parties would have been exposed if the televised debates did not render other candidates, such as Ralph Nader, invisible. The so-called 'liberal' media did just that.
I'm voting for Obama because I think his energy/infrastructure policy will do more to combat global warming than McCain's, and will create jobs besides. I was for Hilary originally because I thought her energy/infrastructure policy was even better, and ditto her health care ideas, but Obama is orders of magnitude closer to her than McCain is.
"Lowell E. Gallaway and Richard K. Vedder argue that the "Great Depression was very significantly prolonged in both its duration and its magnitude by the impact of New Deal programs.""
And virtually every other academic economist who has studied the issue argue the exact opposite.
If supporting redistribution of income via progressive taxation makes you a socialist, then every US President since World War I has been a socialist - and so is John McCain.
Of course "Barack Obama is .01% MORE socialist than John McCain "doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Tell me Ben to you ever wonder about the possible consequences of spreading lurid nonsense about Obama?
http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/10/20/the-price-of-encou…
And virtually every other academic economist who has studied the issue argue the exact opposite.
This claim is false.
Tell me Ben to you ever wonder about the possible consequences of spreading lurid nonsense about Obama?
Nonsense? I think not. So the mere act of disagreeing with Obama is encouraging violence? Are you just trying to silence your opponents?
Ben,
Feel free to go beyond wikipedia to find and cite economists who HAVE ACTUALLY STUDIED THE ISSUE AND PUBLISHED ON IT who support their view.
> Tell me Ben to you ever wonder about the possible consequences of spreading lurid nonsense about Obama?
But you see, while ben has nothing to say about Obama except negative things, and he makes a big fuss over the revelation that Obama is a SOCIALIST!!! ... yet he's still voting for Obama.
ben is still voting for Obama.
This one little fact, as we all know, means that ben is obviously the most nuanced, most sophisticated, most maverickest voter in the whole United States of America.
> So the mere act of disagreeing with Obama is encouraging violence?
The White Man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism. And the McCarthy witch-hunt is the Winston Churchill of Liberal Fascism.
For those with an interest, Philip Adams interviewed David Michaels yesterday. Nothing especially new under the sun, but for the lurkers here who might not be familiar with Michaels, from the ABC promo...
And whilst we're lurking in the corridors of the ABC, they screened a documentary tonight on network theory, titled 'How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer', which outlines the growth of the science behind 'six degrees of separation'.
I'm sure that Tim has much more to say about the subject than I could, but I mention it because two idle questions popped into my head during the show - firstly, has anyone figured out the longest minimum route between any two people on the planet; and secondly and perhaps a little more pertinently for this blog, has anyone looked at the network in the AGW denialosphere, with particular emphasis on where the hubs are?
You can disagree with Obama all you want.
However if rather than rational argument you offer slanderous lies about how he's a radical Marxist out to destroy American democracy you'll get called on your bullshit.
Bruce Sharp.
I too am still very interested in Marohasy's explanation of her scaling of that graph printed in the Australian. I argued ad nauseum with several denialist/graph-apologists on her blog that the scale not based in scientific convention, and I would dearly love to know what scientific justification she had for selecting it as she did.
I am avoiding that pigs' wallow at the moment though, because there comes a point where one has to peel one's eyes from the train wreck and drive on...
Although having said that I did drop in a couple of weeks back to snipe at the HIV deniers there, to ask them if they thought the Nobel committee was in error to award a prize for the discovery of the human immunodificiency virus. There was nary a sqeek in reply for several days at least, so I finally shook the dust from my head, woke up, and left.
And gawd, do I feel cleaner for having done so!
Feel free to go beyond wikipedia to find and cite economists who HAVE ACTUALLY STUDIED THE ISSUE AND PUBLISHED ON IT who support their view.
you are suggesting that you've done a comprehensive survey of ALL economists on the issue? I find that highly unlikely.
ben is still voting for Obama.
Right, because my vote for Obama makes no difference. I'm trading something of NO VALUE for something of VALUE, i.e. a vote for Dino Rossi in our gubernatorial election.
However if rather than rational argument you offer slanderous lies about how he's a radical Marxist out to destroy American democracy you'll get called on your bullshit.
Unless they aren't lies. His history begs to differ with his retoric.
"His history begs to differ with his retoric"
And how exactly did you research his "history"?
Tell me, if the first post on this thread had been me announcing that McCain was a senile, bribe-taking, racist, baby-killing boozehound would you have regarded that as a a useful and constructive contribution to the debate?
And yet the evidence for those allegations is at least as strong as that for "Obama is a Socialist!".
OK, let me try to parse ben's 'logic' again:
1. When conlibertarians go around calling liberals "treasonous", then it's the liberals who are being intolerant!
2. He's voting for Obama the SOCIALIST!!! because, for some reason unbeknownst to us, it's a necessary step towards him voting for Rossi. Though given that Rossi's apparently more important to him, it might've been more logical for ben to attack Christine Gregoire instead... but that's ben-style 'logic' for you...
> has anyone looked at the network in the AGW denialosphere, with particular emphasis on where the hubs are?
I'm currently looking at this. Now, the site isn't very forthcoming about who's maintaining it, which makes it all the more mysterious.
Bi- given that the list of members includes a bundle of fruitbat right wing market worshippers and their astroturf think tanks (Do I get an award for combining lots of words together?) it is perhaps hardly worth worrying about.
"you are suggesting that you've done a comprehensive survey of ALL economists on the issue? I find that highly unlikely."
Actually Ben I'm suggesting that in the course of my studies for my Bachelor's Degree in Arts (International Business Studies) I had to do achieve a passing grade in a course called Economic history which involved inter alia a survey of peer-reviewed papers in the Economics journals on the issue of the economic impact or Roosevelt's policies.
From memory, I got a 7 on a 1-7 marking scale.
> it is perhaps hardly worth worrying about.
I'm still curious. I'm always interested in the Man Behind the Curtain. :)
Socialism:
So the term covers the gamut from production to distribution. Therefor Obama really is a socialist, at least from the distribution point of view. And yes, so are McCain, Bush, Pelosi, and most of the rest of congress. This is a sad state of affairs.
Ian, while your grade on your paper is swell and all, it does not prove that your sources and instructor were not biased. So maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, but there are at least a couple Nobel Laureate economists (Friedman, for example) who agree with me. I'll take their word over yours.
bi, you are making no sense. I am voting for Rossi over Gregoire, that was always the plan. I have a buddy who tells me that he will vote for Rossi instead of Gregoire if I vote for Obama instead of McCain, Mickey Mouse, or some other third party candidate. I consider the facts:
1. Obama will win Washington State no matter how I vote.
2. Rossi is in a very close election.
3. Me voting for Obama GAINS a vote for Rossi. I'm effectively getting a vote for Rossi by taking one for the team, holding my nose, and voting for Obama.
Savvy?
> Therefor Obama really is a socialist, at least from the distribution point of view. And yes, so are McCain, Bush, Pelosi, and most of the rest of congress.
That wasn't what you said. You said "Obama really is a flaming socialist" and then whine about how the mainstream media aren't covering this World Exclusive News (as they say at WorldNutDaily).
Then again, who cares except one-word ideologues such as ben?
Obama is a SOCIALIST!!! He's an ELITIST!!! He's a REDISTRIBUTIST!!! Big deal.
> I have a buddy who tells me that he will vote for Rossi instead of Gregoire if I vote for Obama instead of McCain, Mickey Mouse, or some other third party candidate.
You didn't mention that before. Well, at least now it makes _some_ sort of sense.
guthrie: Still no clues on who's behind csccc.info, but this is definitely Total Winnage.
So Ben, what you're saying is that you don't have any substantive arguments against my economics, but because you disagree with my beliefs about the way recent elections have been conducted, you're going to dismiss the economic question anyway.
Oh, and your opening "gotcha" quote is carefully edited and decontextualised BS. Obama was NOT advocating that the courts be used to redistribute wealth or that the constitution be overruled. He was explaining WHY the courts COULDN'T be used for that purpose.
Still, if you didn't hang around here, I have to wonder who we would argue with.
Really James, next you'll be saying that the "redistributive action" he was talking about was redrawing school district boundaries to make it easier for poor students to leave bad schools.
Ben, citing Friedman as a credible source for anything is a tad disingenuous. The current state of the world's economy demonstrates he was singularly clueless, I would have thought (Bank of Sweden prize for Invisible Hand-waving notwithstanding).
The reason I wondered about hubs in AGW denialist networks is that similar hubs are targeted in order to manage disease transmission (in an epidemiological context), and to disable threats to security (in a terrorist context). There are many more examples of course, but the upshot of it is that by analysing the denialist network I thought that it might be possible to determine objectively where the major nodes are, and by inference what/who the most significant drivers are, and how these might be addressed.
After all, the denialists already seem to have a de facto network-focussed campaign for spreading their FUD by targeting the significant players in AGW, so is it possible to reverse the attacks and address the FUD at the points where their network is most vulnerable?
Just an idle musing, really...
People, do not feed the troll. Apart from anything else trolls are ineducable.
Bernard J.:
Interesting thought. The data at hand are pretty murky, however...
(I'm still looking at the CSCCC list. No idea who's behind the CSCCC site itself, but the list rules.)
But if we know where the hubs are, then what do we do? Sue them till they get bankrupt? Flood them with phone calls? Take photos and spread them around? ... :)
On hubs:
Well, since the republicans are doing DOS attacks on democracy (ACORN anyone? anyone? Bueller? Bueller?), hitting the hubs with DOS might be poetic justice - but digging up the dirt (there's always dirt...) on the people who run them and publishing it in the MSM, forcing them to put up or shut up, would be best. We haven't heard anything from Tim Ball since his multiple falsehoods were exposed. Do the same for the current sources and the feeder network of Bolts, Marohasys, etc will dry up.
Ben, if you wish to retain any shred of credibility in this and other threads, then I'd suggest that you stop making inane comments like, "So the term covers the gamut from production to distribution. Therefore Obama really is a socialist, at least from the distribution point of view. And yes, so are McCain, Bush, Pelosi, and most of the rest of congress. This is a sad state of affairs".
I am sure all of ther corporate CEOs whose companies ploughed tens of millions of dollars into the koffers of Obama and McCain's election funding to ensure that their interests are a priority will be shocked to find out that both presidential candidates are 'socialists'. Especially those in the arms industries who see the US government like an ATM machine at a bank; when they need money, they can count on their government and the supine corporate media to inflate foreign threats and then cash in big time on contracts doled out to them. Also surprised will those 85% of Americans pushing for an efficient government funded health care system that doesn't exclude close to 50 million Americans - you can bet your bottom dollar that it ain't gonna happen. So indeed will be labor leaders, trade unionists and environmental campaigners in third world countries who have seen successive US governments support corrupt elites that oppose any kind of 'bottom-up' democracy and wealth redistribution. Instead, your so-called 'socialists' encourage capital flow from the poor nations to the rich nations, and appear to have no qualms about wealth and power being concentrated. James Madison I think it was once famously remarked that power should be in the hands of a 'more capable set of men', meaning those with wealth. In spite of your musings, I don't see any fundamental shift in affairs.
Ben, I suggest that you read the book, 'The Age of American Unreason', if you seriously think that many, if not most US politicians are 'socialists'.
"Actually, Obama is white. At least he's as white as he is black."
Yeah and I'm as much Irish as I am Jewish.
Funnily enough the Irish bit never got me spat on or inspired people to spray-paint swastikas on my school locker.
Bruce Sharp.
I blame you for luring me back to see what was happening at Marohasy's latrine. The excursion did grubby me up somewhat, but it was worth it to see that there is now an ocean-acidification denial thread (initiated, sadly, by comments from Ian Plimer), and complete with a cast of characters who believe that there can be no 'acidification' at all if the pH remains above neutrality.
I think that once more I vomited a little bit in my mouth, although I spat it out quickly enough what with the laughter...
Ben, if you wish to retain any shred of credibility in this and other threads
Ahem. Test, test, test. Ahem. Test.
Earth to Jeff Harvey...earth to Jeff Harvey. How do you read?
The International Panel on Credibility Committee made the following announcement four years ago...
;o)
Best,
D
Bernard, I like that term: "Marohasy's Latrine." If I were gonna open a really crappy pub in some run-down corner of Phnom Penh, I think I'd name it Marohasy's Latrine. Of course, I don't drink, so the likelihood of me opening a pub is pretty slim. Maybe Tim can use the name for one of Deltoid's standing categories.
Along with the debunking above, it's a bit hard to measure the actual effect of Roosevelt's New Deal since:
1. He was not able to get all of it through Congress
2. A substantial part of his New Deal that was enacted was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
So we'll never know just how much more effective his New Deal would've been, if it had been fully put into place.
As it was, full recovery was the result of massive intervention by the federal government starting in late 1940 and increasing rapidly in late 1941 ... triggered by events that even Isolationist Republicans couldn't ignore.
Sorry to keep floggin' the ol' dead horse, but Sarah Palin, Proud Socialist.
Palin is basically Chavez in very attractive drag.
Folks overseas may not enjoy/understand the political intrigue of Mr Haughton's linky, but nevertheless any country's election season would enjoy the fine entertainment value of the running mate openly sabotaging the candidate's (slim) remaining chances to better position themselves for the next election. At least other countries can rest easier knowing that our crazy time is just about over...
Best,
D
Insults from right-wingers are the Galileo treatises of Liberal Fascism.
I thought Joe Cumbria was banned?
I love spring cleaning!
(said he, cryptically)
I'm trying to decide whether or not to invest the time into reviewing the economic consensus regarding the impact of New Deal programs on the Depression. Intuitively, I find it hard to believe that economists would think that FDR's programs were effective in bringing us out of the depression. But, of course, I can't argue just on my intuition.
The results could be that they made things worse, had little to no effect or successfully ended the Depression. No one's seriously argueing that anything other than WWII ended the Depression are they?
And, bi-IJI... you're an idiot. Anyone wanting to retain their credibility should disassociate themselves from you.
The best I can do on short notice is this. U.S. News and World Report is mainstream enough to not dismiss out of hand right?
Seems like it's about 50-50. Anyway, I have a hard time seeing a program that eight years later still had an unemployment rate of 14% as a raging success.
Again, only part of his program was put into place due to resistance in Congress and unfavorable SCOTUS rulings (I should think that googling "FDR supreme court packing" would bring you up to speed quickly).
And, no, the New Deal alone didn't end the depression. It helped people survive the depression. I don't know if FDR imagined that full implementation of the New Deal would end the depression or not. We have no way of knowing since it was never fully implemented. But personal pain was diminished for countless people. Unless you think, for instance, that older people who lost their entire life savings would've been better off without social security checks.
No. Will you seriously argue that WWII (which I alluded to above) was NOT the largest federal intervention into the economy in our history? Will you argue that the result of that intervention is evidence that intervention doesn't work?
The latest from Lubos Motl is the claim that solar cells contribute significantly to global warming because Nitrogen Trifluoride(NF3) is used in its manufacture.
A recent post on johnquiggin.com puts these claims into proportion:
"Annual production of NF3 is around 600 tonnes (the 5400 tonne figure bandied about is the current total estimated amount present in the atmosphere.)
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/nitrogen-trifluoride-ghg.php
600 tonnes of NF3 translates to 10.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
In reality solar panels are probably responsible for less than 10% of that amount. (For starters NF3 is used in the production of thin-film silicon solar cells but not in the older ingot-style cells,)
But let's attribute all the NF3 production to solar panels. Now let's assume a 100-fold increase in solar panel output.
That'd increase the annual emissions of NF3 to an amount equivalent to 3% of current annual GHG emissions."
A further thought - isn't it wonderful how people who deny carbon dioxide can cause warming via the greenhouse effect seem only too happy to accept the NH3-AGW hypothesis.
BillBodell revealed:
Well, I encourage almost everyone to learn a bit more economic history so I'm a tad biased in that respect. However, should you decide to invest your time reviewing the consensus on this, what will you do after your coffee break is over? Whaples 1995 survey in JEH is just about it, and there isn't much detail there. In addition, economists' opinions can change over time -- we saw that a few months ago regarding your question about economists' opinions on minimum wage laws.
I'm going to play Jeff Harvey for a moment:
Ha! Ben you think that those government officials are all socialists? Don't you know that they're really all in the pockets of the corporations who are secretly running the world??? Those corporations are so powerful that you can't even put your underwear on in the morning without their say-so and they are the puppet masters of Bushco and even the majority of Democrats in congress. If you'd read the book "blah blah blah" by "so and so" you'd know this! It's there in the book! It must be true!
It's always the same old thing, very predictable, and laughably absurd. Jeff, you still probably think that Hugo Chavez is all fluffy bunnies. Are you still blind to the fact that he is an aspiring dictator and commie thug?
Looks like we got ourselves a reader...
Know-nothing-ism is the Normandy D-Day of Liberal Fascism.
Also, book-reading is the book-burning of Liberal Fascism.
See Ben this is what I mean by anti-intellectualism as one of the key elements of the Right wing authoritarian personality.
But that's just something I read in a book.
I disagree frequently with Jeff on political issues - however I never dismiss his argument with this sort of hand-waving.
"Palin is basically Chavez in very attractive drag."
That's wildly over the top.
"Moderately attractive drag" woudl be mroe appropriate.
"Seems like it's about 50-50. Anyway, I have a hard time seeing a program that eight years later still had an unemployment rate of 14% as a raging success."
Bill, I don't have time to find a link at the moment but you need to look at the unemployment rate in the 1920s.
contrary to popular memory, unemployment before world War II was consistently higher than in the 1950's and 1960's.
The US economy actually recovered strongly from 1933 to 1935. The return to recession from 1935/6 was partially due to the dust bowl and related climatic effects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl
But once again, that's just something I read in a book.
Kinda like the fact that most of the tax increase under Roosevelt came not from raising tax rates but from ending Prohibition and taxing alcohol sales.
As a libertarian, I'm sure Ben is outraged at this Big Government attack on self-made businessmen like Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luchiano.
"Palin is basically Chavez in very attractive drag"
Right, she puts political adversaries in prison. Next you'll claim she's Castro in drag because she jails librarians and gays and has children shot in the head.
"Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it..."
From the link above... yes there is quite a difference. Who exactly "owns" the oil in the ground on public land? A good guess would be that its the public. The oil companies get paid to extract the resource. On the other hand, who owns the products of the work I do? It sure as hell isn't Obama. How generous of him to want to share something that belongs to someone else.
"Right, she puts political adversaries in prison".
More nonsense from Ben. Please tell me all of Chavez's opponents that are in prison in Venezuela, Ben. Heck, the guy even paradoned most of the US government-National Republican Institute-National Endowment for Democracy-Sumate backed criminal mob that briefly overthrew his democratically elected government in April of 2002. Have you read Greg Wilpert's book, 'Changing Venezuela by Taking Power' Ben? Or Niklas Kozzloff's latest book? No. Of course not. You rely on the good old corporate US media for your world view.
Latinbarometro, the largest polling organization in South America, and based in Chile, regularly polls Latin American nations on how the feel about democracy in their countries. Which country has come out on or near the top in the last several of these polls? Venezuela. Along with Uruguay. This pretty well demolishes all of the hostile media reports emanating from the west. Chavez's real crime is not fulfilling his traditional service function for US investors and the established order in Venezuela. In truth, his reforms have been pretty modest, but he has taken the reins of power out of the hands of the Venezuelan elites who have traditionally been closely allied with the US, hence the constant drip, drip, drip feed damning him and his government.
Have you read Greg Wilpert's book, 'Changing Venezuela by Taking Power' Ben? Or Niklas Kozzloff's latest book? No. Of course not. You rely on the good old corporate US media for your world view.
And you rely on a plethora of books by liberal crackpots. Why should I trust them? And who says I rely on "corporate media"? That's a buzz-term if I've ever heard one. And didn't I already mock you for asking if I'd read your dumb books?
And I suppose this is a corporate media lie? That, and how do we know that people are answering these surveys honestly? For all I know they are answering favorably because they are afraid that they are being monitored by Big Brother Chavez and are wary of answering "incorrectly".
'...who owns the products of the work I do?'
Surely not the people who helped you get an education, or made your society safe enough to work in, or clean enough, or healthy enough (on a public health vaccination, water, food quality level). Not them. Not a bit of it.
"who owns the products of the work I do?"
Your employers, duh. That's capitalism. if you think it's you, then you're a socialist. seriously.
Your employers, duh. That's capitalism. if you think it's you, then you're a socialist. seriously.
Not unless they pay me first for my work. My employer is merely my customer, since I'm a consulting engineer. Obama, on the other hand, didn't do shit for me and is welcome to take a hike, rather than a chunk of my earnings.
Surely not the people who helped you get an education
And who were they? My education cost me a lot of money, and I'm going to be paying for it for a long time. And the vast majority of my student loan interest is not tax deductible.
That, and the Canadian government paid for a lot more of my education than did the American government (people, that is). Most of my student loans are Canadian, from the years that I lived there. Maybe I'll threaten to move back to Canada should Obama get elected on Tuesday. None of the American celebrities threatening same in 2000 and 2004 didn't follow through. Canada has a pretty good, mostly conservative, government right now. I could do worse...
And that "pretty good, mostly conservative government" hasn't touched the Canadian health care system or the tax system and is supporting the Kyoto Protocol.
Why do you think that is, Ben?
So, you earn significantly more than $250,000/year Ben? Or are you another Joe the Plumber? and how would you have paid for your consulting engineer degree if you'd had to pay upfront, rather than the SOCIALIST canadian government giving you a loan?
I say "significantly" because I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the US (like Australia) only money earned above a tax threshold is charged at that rate; so you will be paying less tax on the money you earn below $250k under Obama.
I was thinking more about primary educaiton actually. And the whole clean water thing which meant not dying of diarrhoeal illness, and the state funded jabs which meant not getting polio (apart from the nasty socialised risk of jab induced polio). I suppose one might decide to take out a loan and buy these things in one's childhood. It would be a wise investment for an infant.
"My employer is merely my customer, since I'm a consulting engineer"
Well then you're both the capital and labor part of your own business. But it's the capital part which is making the money from selling your labor, as is sepcified in various legal precedents, and as you would discover if you should ever do something like sell your company and try to take the products of your work with you when you leave.
But if you really want to pursue this topic, how much would you pay if you had to provide your own systems to communicate with your customers and vendors, transport objects to and from your customers and vendors, prevent criminals from theft of your physical property, prevent criminals from theft of your intellectual property, prevent violation of the terms of contractual agreements with your customers and vendors and any employees you may have, prevent your building from burning down, make sure that your building will not fall down around your ears from improper construction, provide utilities, insure your bank accounts should you desire not to risk your hard-earned gains in other investment vehicles, etc. etc. etc.? Because there are many countries where these services are not supplied by the government and thereby your tax load is substantially reduced, and you can decide whether or not to acquire them or save the money. thing is, in most of them it's pretty hard to make a success out of yourself unless you start with enough wealth and/or power (e.g. being the president's brother) to provide them a priori. the third world is generally characterized by a lack of government compared to the US, rather than an excess of government.
And that "pretty good, mostly conservative government" hasn't touched the Canadian health care system or the tax system and is supporting the Kyoto Protocol.
Because of political expediency. The Canadians are too far gone to change in that matter. But they are a far less sparsely populated country with excellent hunting. Sometimes you have to give something to get something.
...so you will be paying less tax on the money you earn below $250k under Obama.
If you believe that, then I have a nice bridge in Seattle to sell you. Obama is a lying sack of shit. Mark my words, he will have to raise taxes to pay for all his bullshit, it's either that or print money.
z, all that could be provided for much less than the government currently collects in taxes. A 5% flat tax would probably suffice, or possibly a 5% sales tax.
...and the state funded jabs which meant not getting polio (apart from the nasty socialised risk of jab induced polio).
I like how the Canadian government did such a nice job of protecting the population from thalidomide... oh, whoops, they didn't. Imagine that. So trustworthy, those governments.
Robert,
You're right. In the second post (25 minutes after wondering if I should spend the time) the reference I linked to quoted Whaples 1995. It's not that I don't have an opinion already, it's just that if one is to carry on a debate with the "opposition" it's pointless to exchange references from one side's publications or the other's. It's getting in deep enough to sort out the biases that take the time. And I also prefer using references from sources that have some credibility with the "opposition".
Ian,
Most of the early hits reference rates since 1948, so that seems to be when the government first started formally compiling the data. But I did find this which goes back to 1920 and indicates that an unemplyment rate of 14% was indeed unusual.
Also, Libertarians would have welcomed the end of alcohol prohibition (just like they'd be in favor of ending drug prohibition today). And Roosevelt did create a top income tax rate of 91%.
** waves hand ** This is not the nation you're looking for.
Ben is being a bit strident in the use of "Socialist". We're all socialists now, it's just a matter of degree. He also makes the mistake of thinking using "socialist" on this blog is going to carry any weight. My guess is that most regulars here are all over the "spread the wealth" thing.
As it happens, I think the more socialist the country, the worse for that country's poor and disdvantaged. And the arguements against it should focus on that and not that "some rich guy will have to pay too much in taxes". I'd be happy to tax everybody making over $100,000 at 99% if it would improve the lot of everyone, But it won't.
Based on the economic opinions expressed here. Most of the AGW "alarmists" seem to oppose capitalism (not that there's anything wrong with that). But why? If it was all about the "science" of AGW, wouldn't one expect to see as many capitalists as socialists on each side? Or is it that Socialists (not that there's anything wrong with that) believe in Science and Capitalists don't? Kinda makes me think there might be something to the idea that the left has seized upon AGW as an issue to further their political agenda. I don't think that's all there is to it or that every alarmist is a "commie", but there is something to it.
Ben, Obama is going to tax people who have lots of money. I understand that the idea that it might be easier and more efficient to get money from the people who have money rather than the people who don't have money might be hard for you to grasp. It's only been around since the Roman republic after all.
BillBodell,
There are more settings on the policy dial than "socialist" and "capitalist".
It's more like the right has refused to make global warming part of their policy agenda - abandoning the field to the left by default. There are a few ecocapitalists, geo- and green libertarians out there who will make the point that global warming is a kick-arse reason to shift taxes away from income/payroll/etc and on to Pigouvian taxes (eg on carbon dioxide emission, or land use) which reflect market externalities, but they are lonely canaries in the coalmine.
Ben, Obama is going to tax people who have lots of money.
Uh, no. He's going to tax people with annual incomes that are higher than some arbitrary amount. That arbitrary amount is currently set in his retoric at $250k. If you believe that in four years it will still be there, I have a bridge to sell you.
Now remember, having a seemingly "high" income does not equate to having lots of money. Some people with little or no income have "lots of money." And some people with "high" incomes do not have particularly large sums of money. Obama is not taxing wealth, he's taxing income. So all the limousine liberals get to keep their giant wads of cash, while I with my massive debts will get to pay high tax rates on my "high" income. Oh joy.
BillBodell wrote:
Hmmm. BillBodell, you've already admitted you weren't trained as a climate scientist. I'm thinking that you weren't trained as an economic historian either.
"Because of political expediency. The Canadians are too far gone to change in that matter."
Yes, disagreeing with you clearly means they're "too far gone".
It couldn't possible be because, for example, they've made a rational comparison between the US and Canadian health systems and decided they prefer the Canadian version.
"If you believe that, then I have a nice bridge in Seattle to sell you. Obama is a lying sack of shit. Mark my words, he will have to raise taxes to pay for all his bullshit, it's either that or print money."
Yeah and McCain is elected you Ben wil lbe one of the millions drafted to fight his endless wars of aggression.
Sure he SAYS he won't but it's much more fun toi construct one's own reality, isn't it?
"Based on the economic opinions expressed here. Most of the AGW "alarmists" seem to oppose capitalism"
I can't speak for others but for my part I most emphatically DO NOT oppose capitalism.
What I oppose is criminally irresponsible fiscal policies based on high spending and insufficient levels of taxation.
Since the political reality is that spending cuts of the magnitude required to bring the US budget back to something approaching equilibrium aren't going to happen, I support modest tax increases as part of a program to reduce the deficit.
Yeah and McCain is elected you Ben wil lbe one of the millions drafted to fight his endless wars of aggression.
You know, I made over $100 on bets with my goofy friends who thought that we'd see a draft under Bush. Funny how that didn't happen. Care to put your money where your keyboard is should McCain win? Similarly, care to put money on Obama and no tax increases for folks making under $250k/year over the next eight years? I'm game.
What I oppose is criminally irresponsible fiscal policies based on high spending and insufficient levels of taxation.
I also oppose that. Nice to be in agreement with you for once, Ian.
Since the political reality is that spending cuts of the magnitude required to bring the US budget back to something approaching equilibrium aren't going to happen, I support modest tax increases as part of a program to reduce the deficit.
How about we meet in the middle? Cut some spending. No new spending without cutting something else, and modest tax increases to make up the difference? Better yet, how about we scrap the income tax and go with a national sales tax on anything but food and medical care? That way the big consumers pay a much greater share, right? And me with my "high" income and huge student loan debt to pay such a massive penalty until I've cleared my debt burden.
Ben, where is your evidence? When you write crappy nonsense like, "Are you still blind to the fact that he is an aspiring dictator and commie thug?" you are, as Ian said, hand waving. No substance, just rhetoric. Basically, its the typical strategy of someone whose lack of knowledge is caught out. So they rely on abusive dismissal.
In fact, your response is nothing more than comic level book analysis. How many elections does the guy have to win? Have you read the new constitution of Venezuela? Have you paid any attention to the Latinbarometro polls?
Let me create an imaginary scenario for you. Let's say there was a coup to overthrow the Bush regime in 2002 that was backed by, let's say, Iran, in which a number of prominent American conspirators were identified. Let's suppose that Bush was whisked out of the country by his captors, but, for some unknown reason, popular revolt amongst the general US population led to him being restored to the presidency within 72 hours. What do you think the US government would do to the conspirators? Would Bush pardon them? And what if it was clear that Iran was involved. What would the US response be? Given clear US involvement in the 2002 coup in Venezuela that briefly put Carmona in power, this is all relevant.
Basically it comes down to this: methinks you don't have much of a clue what you are talking about. Thus I expect more hollow hand waving.
One footnote: Note how Ben dismissed books he's never read as being written by 'liberal crackpots'. Unbvelievable, or perhaps not. Dano nailed it in his last post to me. Dano, may thanks for the wake up call.
"Care to put your money where your keyboard is should McCain win? "
Do you actually think I was serious there? I was satirising your extreme rhetoric about Obama.
"How about we meet in the middle? Cut some spending. No new spending without cutting something else, and modest tax increases to make up the difference?"
Yeah, we can withdraw US troops from Iraq and thereby cut around $100 billion a year.
Then we can increase the top marginal rate of tax by 4 cents in the dollar.
Bush 41 and Clinton kept growth in discretionary spending to less than the growth in real GDP. I suspect Obama will either match or exceed that spending restraint.
"That way the big consumers pay a much greater share, right? "
Because the poor spend virtually all of their income (or in the case of pensioners actually spend MORE than their income as they draw on their savings), they pay proportionately more under a sales tax regime than the rich who save more.
As I've pointed out before, existing US indirect taxes already mean that the total tax burden is barely progressive at all. Indeed in Texas and in some other states people on 20-30K pay a higher proportion of their total income in taxes than do millionaires.
"And Roosevelt did create a top income tax rate of 91%."
94% actually - in 1944 and 1945.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213
When Roosevelt came into office, the top marginal rate was 63%. Hoover raised it from 25% in an attempt to keep the budget in surplus (and maintain the gold standard).
Roosevelt kept the top marginal rate at 63% from 1933-1936. The funding for the initial New Deal programs came from borrowings and, as I said, alcohol taxes.
In 1936, when it appeared the Depression was easing, Roosevelt raised the top marginal rate to 79% in an attempt to reduce the deficit.
The tax rate stayed at 79% until 1940 when it was raised to fund increased military spending.
Truman cut taxes post-war until the Korean War and the military build-up forced him to raise it back to 92% - then that Republican icon came in and delivered a massive cut to 91%.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213
Funny how the 50's are remembered as a time of prosperity and classic American values.
My statement about unemployment was wrong and am angled misremembering of a quite different point - that the economic recovery from the Great Depression (including reducing unemployment) was actually faster than from the previous depression - the Panic of 1893.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whitten.panic.1893
The peak of unemployment in the 1890's wasn't as high as in 1930's but the rate of decline was a lot slower in the 1890's.
By the standards of both the 1890's and the 1930's, all subsequent US recessions have been mild and short-lived.
I believe that can be attributed to what coudl be broadly described as Keynesian economic policies (in which category I'd put Bush's 2001 tax "rebate" cheques.)
Ben, I for one do hope that you start making plans to return to Canada first thing Wednesday morning.
I'm serious.
Is it possible to be off-topic on an open thread?
It would be quite nice if Marcus du Sautoy's appointment to Richard Dawkins' old job could get some coverage on Scienceblogs. There was lots of coverage when the opening was announced but nobody seems to want to report it now it's filled. Thanks
Ben, I for one do hope that you start making plans to return to Canada first thing Wednesday morning.
Nah, not gonna happen. While the hunting is good there, they don't allow CCW, and that's a deal breaker.
Look, Jeff, I don't know anything about these authors you cite, and you cite a lot of them. Why would I have possibly read all of that? I have no time for it. I have many better things to do. You apparently have a lot of free time on your hands or read at a rate of a page per second.
Robert,
You are correct. I am neither a Climate Scientist or an Economic Historian. Is this thread restricted to only those that meet these criteria?
Jeff, your books are wonderful and all, but there seems to be evidence that they are full of crap. Chavez is a real nice guy, eh? Suppressing the media, ruling by decree, removing judges, using the state police to intimidate opponents. And it doesn't look to me like the US had much to do with the 2002 "coup" if you can even call it that:
I suppose the US orchestrated the half million person protests? Not likely.
Ian,
This is an interesting topic.
While hardly the final authority, wikipedia does have this list of recessions. 1893 seems to have lasted about 3 years with "10 years of rapid growth following the election of McKinley".
Other than the "Long Depression" (interesting, I'll have to read more about that), The Great Depression seems to fare rather badly against other depressions 100 years either way of it.
Ian,
My, you are stimulating. I knew the tax rate was 91% in the 1950's and pretty much figured that the wealthy just got around it somehow. But, you motivated be to look into it a bit more.
I found this nice link
If you don't want to the trouble of checking it out, the most interesting paragraph is:
Sorry, I can't stop.
Ian, you said
In 1937, the recession deepened again. I know correlation does not equal causation, but interesting none-the-less.
So the government taxed more and got less. Isn't that a lesson that we learned long ago, and that Obama ignores for issues of fairness?
BillBodell asked:
Ah. Sorry. I'd forgotten that you don't have much of a sense of humor.
Robert,
Maybe little winking emoticons will help out the humor challenged. I've reread your post a couple of times and still haven't gotten it. But give me a few more days.
"But in fact, the tax rates of the 1950's didn't necessarily reduce CEO consumption; it just reduced their reported taxable income. The high income tax rates in the 1950's were paired with a corporate tax system that allowed companies much more generous deductions for things like business lunches, business-travel-with-spouse, and so forth."
So was the tax system in the 30's and 40's more like that in the 50's or that in the 60s?
No, he still entertains on the company's dime. The only difference is that the company can "only" deduct 50% rather than 100% in many (but not all) cases.
Cry me a river.
If ever there was a good argument for a flat-tax or sales tax, dhogaza... your link provides it. Cost of compliance with our idiotic tax code produces no useful wealth and takes away funds that might be spent productively somewhere else.
ben, the cost of compliance with sales taxes is far higher than for income tax. POS collection has a cost.
Really? How much? Where can I look up what the cost is?
"I like how the Canadian government did such a nice job of protecting the population from thalidomide... oh, whoops, they didn't. Imagine that. So trustworthy, those governments. "
your argument is quite compelling, in favor of more government regulation of pharmaceuticals. note that not only did the US regulatory agencies ban thalidomide outright, but those nasty socialists in Europe banned it several months before Canada did.
what side did you say you were arguing in favor of again?
"The Canadians are too far gone to change in that matter."
they can't have gone far, Sarah Palin can see them from her house.
Let's check in on what the American right has to say in response to the death of Barack Obama's grandmother:
"Seriously, has anyone actually seen this woman in recent years? If Obama has some of his thugs guarding her (and if there is, indeed, a body) I hope they do an autopsy to make sure Granny's passing was a natural event."
"So Barry goes and see's granny. Granny dies day before election. She is probably one know who really knows where he was born. Well as the church lady used to say."isn't that special""
http://wonkette.com/404084/mccain-palin-wingnuts-mourn-obamas-granny#mo…
Makes Ben's attempt at exploiting crippled children for political advantage look positively civil by comparison.
Ben, speaking of crap, where did you get that information? The fact is that pro-Chavez rallies dwarfed by a 3 to 1 margin anti-Chavez marches (estimates of pro-Chavez marches numbered up to a million). Second, Chavez was returned to power because mass protests ensued that crushed short-lived Carmona's corporate regime. Third, the anti-Chavez marches did not consist of 'ordinary citizens', but most were strongly connected with the Venezuelan elites - rich white families who controlled most of the country's wealth. Fourth, the US was up to its neck in the coup - anyone with half a brain acknowledges that. The Orwellian named National Endowment for Democracy, along with the National Republican Institute and USaid had been stirring up trouble in Venezuela for three years leading up to the aborted coup. The problem for the political and corporate establishemnt was the same old one, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine and continuing up to this day: the threat of independence and indigenous nationalism. This explains why the US has traditionally seen Latin America as a sort of 'workshop' for its global economic designs (see Grandin, 2006, for a thorough analysis of Latin American-US relations in an historical context). It also explains why the US government sent gunboats into Latin American ports more than 6,000 times between 1860 and 1900 (to maintain 'order') and General Smedley Butler's now infamous remark in 1936 that while he was in the Marine Corps he acted as a 'high class muscleman for big business , Wall Street and the bankers - a rackateer and gangster for capitalism' who 'helped in the rape of half a dozen Central Americal nations'.
Considering your knowledge of the country and Latin America in general is, in my humble opinion, so infintisimally small, Ben, why do you even bother? You clearly don't know much about the continent, except bits and pieces from Fox News and CNN. Ever heard of John Wagelstein? Or Thomas Carrothers? Or Charles Meachling? Or Dmitri Simes? Or Gustavo Alvares? Ben, I read a helluva lot about history. Your comments reveal a clear lack of depth. Basically I am wasting my breath with you.
Comment by ben blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
Comment by BillBodell blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
Comment by ben blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
Comment by BillBodell blocked. [unkill]â[show comment]
ahhhhhh....
Best,
D
Ian,
In the 1920's and 30's, Income Taxes were only paid by the very wealthy (over $200,000 / yr). So the rates didn't matter all that much.
I don't have a problem with progressive taxes. Taxes should be designed so that the wealth of the country is maximized while funding the expenditures of the government. Slapping a 90% tax (for example) on all income over $200,000 isn't going to do that. To the extent that high earners can't find loopholes, they will essentially stop producing once they reach that level and very little of that tax will be collected. If the tax rate over $200,000 is 35% and 10% of those earning $200,000 now work hard enough to make $500,000, that's an extra $105,000 in taxes per person.
In 2001, before the Bush tax cuts, the top 1% paid 33.89% of all federal income taxes. In 2006, after the tax cuts, they paid 39.89% Sure, they were making more money, but if they didn't, the difference of 6% would have to be picked up by the rest of the taxpayers (and remember, roughly 38% of filers pay no income tax). Does that help the middle class?
Or you could decide that everybody should make between $50,000 and $100,000 and tax everything above $100,000 and give it to those making less that $50,000. Income equality would be achieved, but at a level somewhat equivalent to Albania.
I consider Capitalism to be a clever way of tricking talented, smart and energetic people into devoting themselves to making my life better by providing be with better, cheaper and more efficient products and services. I'll let them work 80 hours a week, ignore their families and live in the big houses. I think I'm getting the better end of the deal.
Let's check in on what the American right has to say in response to the death of Barack Obama's grandmother:
Ian, a sampling of comments from any blog will show that kind of crap. Just look at Democratic Underground and Kos. They are vile cesspools with comments much worse than what you posted. You only succeed in showing (with my help) that some people on all sides of the political spectrum are complete assholes. People here aren't that bad at least.
And then there's Best D, who's comments are only slightly less annoying than a loud soup slurper.
On a different note: today's the day! I'm off to vote for Obama, and then to the gun store to buy a couple EBR's before it's too late :)
Jeff Harvey writes:
Jeff, Venezuela has been independent for a long time now.
You clearly don't know much about the continent, except bits and pieces from Fox News and CNN.
True, I do not know much about the continent, but what I do know I did not get from Fox News nor CNN. I don't have cable TV and I don't rely on "corporate media" for my news, as they are in general much too biased to the left of myself.
Ever heard of John Wagelstein? Or Thomas Carrothers? Or Charles Meachling? Or Dmitri Simes? Or Gustavo Alvares?
No.
Ben, I read a helluva lot about history. Your comments reveal a clear lack of depth. Basically I am wasting my breath with you.
Maybe true. The only problem I have is that your point of view seems to be tremendously biased. Do you only read books by leftists? Are you like my wife's father who thinks Castro was the greatest leader in modern times? Do you think Che Guevera was a hip dude even though he lined up children in front of firing squads?
I have a question/request - does anyone know about Dr. Heinz Hug and his idea that there is no known mechanism for CO2 to cause warming?
Somebody has posed this link as ¨proof¨that CO2 isn´t responsible for warming
http://nov55.com/gbwm.html
If anyone has some time to spare and give a brief refutation of this bunkum it would be reatly appreciated ;)
Well, Connor, just for starters the "independent scientist" you cite writes:
The guy is a goofball hack and should be dismissed out of hand. He certainly isn't doing the skeptic side of the AGW argument any favors.
Hi Ben,
It's certainly true that politicians can't necessarily be trusted not to raise taxes. But this argument applies to McCain as well. Given that he wants to cut taxes to a greater extent than Obama, AND have a more aggressive military foreign policy, the gap between taxation and spending is going to be even bigger under his policies ("earmarks", while annoying, are about 0.1% of the budget - not going to make a difference). Which implies he is more likely to backtrack and raise taxes than Obama is. Remember 2000, when McCain called the same tax cuts he (says he) wants to keep "fiscally irresponsible"?
On this topic of can people be trusted in the future; now you've (claimed to) vote for Obama, how do you know your friend will hold up his/her end of the deal? You can't go into the polling place with them.
I've already pointed out that wealth taxes, in the form of estate taxes, were abolished by Bush.
What is a "limousine liberal"? Is that like a cadillac driving welfare queen? or more like one of hundreds of federal bureaucrats administrating one indian?
"is global warming on the wane?"
-Farmer's Almanac 2009
dem ol' kozmic rayz agin.
http://www.digital-almanac.com/digitalalmanac/2009/?folio=68
"now you've (claimed to) vote for Obama, how do you know your friend will hold up his/her end of the deal?
I assume that he will as a matter of honor. True, I'll never know for sure, just like he doesn't know for certain that I voted for Obama. I did write in "Barack Hussein Obama" rather than simply filling in the Obama oval. My own pathetic attempt at dissent.
A limousine liberal is a wealthy do-gooder who doesn't ming high taxes that spend someone else's income, since they're already wealthy and wealth is not taxed.
" Dr. Heinz Hug "
as long as nobody else takes up the question
well that page at nov55.com that references Hug is breathtaking in getting everything else possible wrong so that's not a good omen, but re the linked essay by Dr. Hug:
It's tough sledding, but at first glance he appears to be on a quest to determine what the change in temp per doubling of CO2 would be without feedback from H2O, and then uses that smallish figure to shed doubt on the IPCC estimates, which of course do explicitly include H2O feedback. He references Kondratjew and Moskalenko's estimate in "The Global Climate" that 7.2 degrees of the current "background" 33 degree global warming is due to CO2, but that is an attempt by them to separate the CO2 effect from the H2O effect, which they estimate at 20.6 degrees; if you accept that the H2O level in the atmosphere is affected by the temperature, as you must, and is therefore a feedback of whatever sign and value, then you have to admit that calculating the effect of a change in the CO2 in the atmosphere alone, neglecting feedback, is kind of an empty exercise. Which Hug obliquely addresses in the rest of the paragraph, where he notes the wide variation in the estimates of CO2 forcing in the absence of feedback; because deconvoluting the H2O feedback from the observations is both difficult and kind of wrongheaded if the interest is in what will happen given the current atmosphere, rather than finding the absolute CO2 effect which can be applied to water-free atmospheres.
In case you aren't familiar with it, the quantitative effect of water vapor is the part of the whole picture most shrouded in mystery and is widely discussed n the serious literature, despite the constant affirmations by the skeptiks that "scientists ignore the much bigger effect of water vapor". There is far from universal consensus as to the exact figures, but the greatest consensus is that it's positive, and I think the most popular estimate these days is that it about doubles the effect of CO2 changes. Which wouldn't quite overcome Hug's estimate that the effect of CO2 is 1/80 what the common estimate is, but I haven't yet digested his math.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth, and it's overpriced at that.
Heinz was a great favorite of the late John Daly. Eli made the mistake of reading his foolishness a long time ago. Anyhow, Hugs basic mistakes were to not realize that CO2 (and water vapor) emit IR as well as absorb it and that the energy absorbed by CO2 is rapidly thermalized through collisions with N2 and O2. In short Hug is clueless.
From the link:
Eli, did you just refer to yourself in the third person? Bob Dole?
Ben writes, "The guy is a goofball hack and should be dismissed out of hand".
Talk about calling the kettle black.
I am just saying that Niklas Kozloff, Greg Wilpert, Greg Grandin, Paul Farmer and Forrest Hilton etc aren't 'flagrant lefties' - they are intellectuals who comment as they see it, and who have lived in Latin America for many years. To reiterate, the reason Chavez was returned to power in 2002 was because the general population stormed the Miraflores palace demanding that 'their president be returned'. This was one of the greatest shows of solidarity in recent history, and must have come as a shock to those who traditionally hold the reins of power. If you bother to read the various tenets of the Venezuelan constitution - as I have done, although its a long read - you'll find that it is one of the most progressive constitutions in the history of democracies, empowering women, indigenous peoples, and the poor, thus those who have often been excluded from power. Its little surprise that the corporate media pay scant attention to this. In 2005, 6.9 billion dollars of PvDSA (the now state oil company) was distrubuted to various programs, including Mission Ribas, Mission Robinson, Mission Guainapara and others that have provided free health care, education, illeteracy eradication and housing to Venezuela's poor. Its no small wonder that the poor love Chavez and his government. If they had one criticism, it is still that there is some corruption and cronyism in the country, and that his government has not gone far enough in its reforms. But only populations in 3 countries in Latin America have, according to Latin barometro polls, shown that their people feel 'more empowered' by their democracies: Venezuela tops the list. I think this is quite some achievement.
Eli, after some quick looking, I found this: http://dor.wa.gov/content/aboutus/statisticsandreports/retailers_cost_s… that discussed the cost of collecting sales taxes in the state of Washington. They did a study and came up with the cost of collecting state sales taxes at about 1.4% (weighted by dollars). About half of that is the fees that the retailer must pay to the credit card companies for the 'tax amount'. Presumably, the other expenses won't go up (if the POS equipment handles sales tax, it seems unlikely that the retailer will have to purchase another register if the % charged on each transaction goes up). I'm guessing you were saying that it would cost a lot more than that if they were to start collecting an additional sales tax. Maybe you missed my earlier question where I asked if you could point me at the study that compares the actual costs of our current tax system with a POS costs of a consumption tax? Thanks.
Jeff, just had a quick look at those books on Amazon. All I've got to say is: Oh brother.
...in other news, Michael Crichton passed away yesterday. De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est and all that.
Dano, if you have all those people in your killfile, why do you feel the need to make sure that the rest of us know that you have those people in your killfile?
"A limousine liberal is a wealthy do-gooder who doesn't ming high taxes that spend someone else's income, since they're already wealthy and wealth is not taxed."
So basically in Ben's America the rich, the poor and the midle class alike don't pay taxes.
Makes yo uwonder why he's so upset about the tax rates.
Incidentally Ben, ever heard of capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes?
Funnily enough it isnt the limousine liberals who are so keen to abolish them.
Ben, What? After reading the jacket cover or reading a few comments from readers at Amazon you dismiss Kozloff and Wilpert's books? Kozloff did his PhD at Oxford and is a NACLA Senior Research Associate in Washington. Wilpert's book is a comprehensive analysis, warts and all, of the Venezuelan constitution.
As I expected, more comic level book analysis. Totally expected. Dano is correct: I need to install a spam filter for your posts on Deltoid, Ben.
Dave, Dano does this to remind us that there are some who contribute to this and other threads with a kindergarten child's view of the world. I am glad he does this. I need to install a killfile too.
Incidentally Ben, ever heard of capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes?
Yep, which still doesn't tax their capital, only the gains, and since you can't take it with you, the inheritance tax doesn't hurt them directly.
Funnily enough it isnt the limousine liberals who are so keen to abolish them.
Well, how about the ones who want to abolish those taxes simply donate more of their wealth to the government? Why are they so keen to shackle the rest of us?
Thanks for the replies everybody, a big help!
why do you feel the need to make sure that the rest of us know that you have those people in your killfile?
Who says I was doing this?
I was reveling in the faster screen loading time, not having to paint the bytes of the babbling of certain ideologies. And sharing my feelings of the joy in the reminder that there are some people who are unswayed by facts - we can enjoy their truculence in the face of facts, or not.
------
I have mixed feelings in Jeff addressing the need for [killfile]: I fear that I'll get fewer of
his regular thundering comments here. It is here I get reminders of PopBiol (use it or lose it, as they say).
OTOH, there is always a new denialist popping up, isn't there, like some flashy Amanita rising up out of the horsesh-t, ready to show off their new-found knowledge gleaned from the Google 5 minutes ago, thinking their words make them intoxicating. These denialist mushrooms, preferring horsesh-t, don't need the Jeff Harveys of the world, but we do.
Best,
D
Ben,
I don't see how you reconcile your criticism of unearned wealth with support for sales taxes, which, as has been pointed out, tax the poor. If you want to be consistent, you'd do best to join the geolibertarians and support land and resource taxes, which do tax unearned wealth gains.
Also, as a matter of fact, most of the US's tax revenue is raised in heavily Democrat states, so if liberals are supporting high taxes, they are also the ones who are paying them.
unswayed by facts...
uh-huh.
I don't see how you reconcile your criticism of unearned wealth...
Did I criticize unearned wealth?
Ah, I see, what I criticized was persons who possess large amounts of unearned wealth voting for high INCOME taxes.
Jeff, I'm sorry, I misunderstood Dano. When he did that it reminded me of that guy in third grade that you really hated who walked around humming and saying "I can't hear you". Then as he would walk away, he would stick his tongue out. So you're saying that the resemblance is purely accidental, then?
Jeff, this is my America. I know what yours is. And we are entirely incompatible.
Ben, this is actually your America, as told by none other than Ralph Nader:
"What we're seeing is the highest level of resignation and apathy and powerlessness I've ever seen. We're not talking about hoopla. We're not talking about hope. We're not talking about rhetoric. We're not talking about rock star Obama. We're talking about the question that is asked everywhere I go: 'What is left for the American people to decide other than there own personal lives under more restrictive circumstances year after year?' And the answer is almost nothing, because there is no powerful organisation that turns the most powerful branch of government around, the Congress - 535 people, put their shoes on every day like you and I do - against the 1500 or so corporations that get their way."
Thats says it all.
J
Funny isn't it that the same people who complain about "hyphenated-Americans" and accuse others of disloyalty are currently seemingly determined to divide "Real America" from the fake America and talk about "their" America.
Personally I suggest the fake Americans give these people a reservation somewhere and let them sink into the ignorance and squalor they so richly deserve.
Ben, I just read the comic book link you cited. I fell out of my chair laughing when this was written:
"The far-left radical who gained the Presidency on Tuesday".
Far left radical??? What planet is anyone on who believes this garbage? Now its time to GET REAL. Paul Street lays out the facts in the following article he wrote for ZNet:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19343
Note the difference, Ben, between the 'substance' of your article (= none) and Street's. There's a light year of difference.
The speaker of these words is Deddrick Battle, a black janitor who grew up in St. Louis's notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing projects during the 1950s and 1960s.
Said notorious Pruitt-Igoe housing project courtesy of your local liberal do-gooders.
You know, for all your hatred of corporations, you never mention unions nor organized crime (which are often related). The 'big dig' in MA is widely held to have gone over budget and time due not to the eeeevil corporations, but due to the involvement of organized crime that is so common on the east coast and Chicago.
Wasn't organized crime a big part of the corruption of Cuba before Castro as well? And yet, Jeff, you never have it out for them. You probably think the Mob and corporations are one and the same.
And hey, that article you cite refers to the "elite" and their involvement in elections. But others here mocked the use of that term so I guess your article is a bunch of bullshit, right?
And "the moneyed establishment"? Give me a break. Obama raised a huge pile of cash from puny individual contributions. The rank and file of America have enough spare cash to elect anyone they want provided they can 1. get organized, and 2. agree on a candidate. Further, the "moneyed establishment" (whatever that is) doesn't owe anyone anything.
Nader had his shot, had plenty of exposure, and anything he had to say could be found by anyone who was interested. What you are really saying is that the majority of the electorate are a bunch of simps who will buy what they are sold. Well, that's just tough f*cking sh*t. I have to deal with that and so do you. If the electorate were better educated and in posesion of something resembling objectivity and wisdom neither Obama nor McCain would have even been nominated for president in the first place.
Dave,
I like the idea of replacing the income tax with the a sales tax but, I think it would just lead to an huge underground economy. Also, we'd have to come up with some way to refund taxes to low-income people. Nice idea, but I can't see any way to make it work.
Jeff Harvey,
I'm having a weird reaction to Dano's including me with Ben in his killfile. On the one hand, if I were to have a killfile, Dano is one of the people I'd include. Even dhogaza occasionally says something worthwhile. I don't think Dano ever has. So, considering the source, I shouldn't care. But, he's lumping me in with Ben (who I probably agree with most of the time) but who's main point seems to be saying inflamitory things that he knows will rile up the usual suspects. Has anyone that disagrees with Ben ever said "good point Ben, I'll think about that?".
When I can't help myself from wasting my time posting on message boards, I try to make reasonable arguements and have an actual conversation in the hope that some additional understanding (on both side) might occur (sigh).
Everyone on the board jumps at Ben's bait and my comments are largely ignored. I flatter myself into thinking that people don't engage me as often because it's more of a challenge or that they might have to actually think through what they say. However, I'm open-minded enough to realize that there's a real possibility that I'm just boring everybody.
I rarely post on sites that share my point of view, that's just a circle-jerk. If you're not going to try to reasonably engage in debate with people having different opinions, what's the point?
All that said, I can't help but take a bit of offense at being referred to as someone that "contributes to this and other threads with a kindergarten child's view of the world".
I suspect I'll get over it soon enough.
But, he's lumping me in with Ben (who I probably agree with most of the time) but who's main point seems to be saying inflamitory things that he knows will rile up the usual suspects.
True, I do act like a troll sometimes. Given the nature of our differences here I find it a challenge to do otherwise. That's interesting in and of itself. But I get as good or better than I give so oh well.
Has anyone that disagrees with Ben ever said "good point Ben, I'll think about that?".
It has happened. They do like my sister better though.
I rarely post on sites that share my point of view, that's just a circle-jerk.
They seem to like it that way here. The thing is, and I've freely admitted it many times, that I've learned a great deal here. I've been proven wrong many times about many subjects, and that makes the exercise worthwhile for me. Seems that really ought to make it worthwhile for everyone else too. Not for Dano of course, but he never adds anything constructive. And Jeff and I are diametrically opposed in our points of view, so we're unlikely to be of any value to each other. The only place where I feel like I've ever won an argument is on gun topics. But that's not too difficult since facts are easy to find and they mostly support my position.
Ben, the problem with you is that you actually believe that you live in a functional democracy. In spite of piles of evidence to the absolute contrary, you really believe it. Yet you don't seem to have much of a clue about the main players in US foreign policy circles over the years. I named just a small sample of them the other day (I could n ame dozens more, whom yopu obviously would not know either), and, as expected, you responded by saying that you didn't know a single one of them. This tells me a lot - especially considering I am a Canadian-Brit - in fact, all that I need to know. Paul Stree's excellent article was quite comprehensive. Of course all of the corporate lobbysists and 'elite players' who clearly supported the Obama presidency for some yhears now you have never heard of either. The bulk of his campaign financing - like it or not - did not come from the ordinary citizen but from powerful vested interests. They have groomed him. Do you think these powerful people would fund a socialist for a second? Anyoen who believes this is living in a fairy tale land of make believe. But because you know little of the power structures that effectively run the world you dismiss them. Your strategy is that 'the best defense is a good offence' because your lack of knowledge is exposed time and time again. Not just be my, but by others on Deltoid.
I'd be interested to know what kinds of books about political history that you do read. As a scientist, I see a clear link between western foreign policy and environmental degredation, as well as the maintenance of poverty for the bulk of humanity. Why do I call it 'maintenance'? Because I have read numerous declassified documents from primartily UK (but some US) government planners over the years and there is constant theme to all of them: they do not talk much at all about promoting democracy, freedom or human rights, but instead repeatedly express a fear of indigenous nationalism amongst populations in countries which possess resources that our corporate and political elites covet. Why do the planners fear nationalism? It is made clear: because countries that embrace nationalist governments via 'bottom-up' democracy (e.g. 'real' democracy, not limited forms of top down democracy promoted by western elites who control power) may attempt to use the resource wealth to benefit all of their own populations, and not just a few 'at the top'. This will 'conflict with the business interests of werstern corporations'. So our governments must do 'all they can to influence internal making decisions in these countries', thus opposing any form of nationalism. Given that you don't have a clue about any of this, and aren't willing to get off of your backside to go to any major public library and read some of these documents for yourself, I expect your usual refrain to be (said out of the usual ignorance). "It's all b*s".
Furthermore, it has always been important for me to be able to link the continued decline if the health of our global life support systems and elite policy making decisions by the developed world, all at the behest of the privileged few. You are actually quite a brave dude to wander into this site and to espouse the rather embarrassing nonsense that you do, considering how little you know about the world and the power structures that maintain it as it is. John Pilger nailed it when he wrote in June: "In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: 'The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.' What has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor have passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W. Bush finally steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest of humanity will diminish". He concludes: "It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic [and Republican] tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates".
Says it all, really. I deeper look at history - something I do a lot, to place current events in context - reveals that scribes like Paul Street hit the nail on the proverbial head. Its no small wonder that you won't be reading him in any corporate MSM outlet.
Bill: I would just say that I personally find Ben's lack of knowledge about - well much of anything in my opinion, especially US history - justifies Dano's killfile. My problem is that I wasting my breath on people who see the world based on a very narrow amount of information and yet espouse all kinds of utter nonsense - such as 'Obama is a flaming socialist', which was the catalyst for me to enter this thread. What Dano is saying is that he doesn't have time for comic level book analysis. For that matter, nether should I. Why I bother, I don't know.
Bill, One last point. You wrote: "Has anyone that disagrees with Ben ever said "good point Ben, I'll think about that?".
Perhaps this is possible on topics unrelated to politics and power structures. But anyone who believes for a microsecond that 'Obama is a flaming socialist' is living in another dimension. Moreover, Ben did answer 99% of the points I made re: Chavez. He parroted the usual Fox-network type line but hasn't read one iota of information about the new constitution and the way it is aimed at creating a socially just society in the country, nor of the many polls conducted by the biggest polling agency in South America (Latinbarometro) that show Venezuela at or near the top in ever category with respect to the way the populations of Latin American countries view democratic progress in their countries. Instead I am greeted with garbage like 'Chavez is a commie thug' and similar gobbeldegook. And I am supposed to say, 'good point Ben'?????????
Its not just a question of seeing the world differently, but it is apparent that Ben and I base our opinions on a profoundly different intellectual resource base. I will let you read from that what you will. We can agree to disagree politely, but for Ben to dismiss intellectual opinion as 'liberal crap' whenever it is inconvenient, please don't expect me to reply by saying 'good point Ben'. As for the power of organized crime (e.g. Mafia) and organized trade unions, I WILL concede a very minor point. But these entities possess a very tiny fraction of political power at the global level compared with corporations, which are undemocratic amoral tyrannies, to partially quote both Joel Bakan and Noam Chomsky. Again, there's piles of evidence to show this, but Ben appareantly doesn't read any of it. Again, I reiterate that anyone doubting this should consult declassified government planning documents. They make what I say quite clear.
Ben, the problem with you is that you actually believe that you live in a functional democracy.
Any difference between such and what we actually have is purely the fault of the electorate.
I'd be interested to know what kinds of books about political history that you do read.
Few. I've read "Why Lenin, Why Stalin" and "All the Shah's Men". Both excellent and enlightening reads. I will agree that the US/UK screwed up Iran on a massive scale. I do agree that the US should not meddle in the affairs of other nations unless they pose an actual violent threat.
But anyone who believes for a microsecond that 'Obama is a flaming socialist' is living in another dimension.
By American standards, as a major American politician, he's a flaming socialist. By European/Canadian/South American standards maybe not. I exaggerated, but he is far to the left of any president since... all of them. Tell me which president was further left on the economy than Obama.
Ben and I base our opinions on a profoundly different intellectual resource base.
The resource base has little to do with it. The primary difference is in our opinions of which political/economic system is best. I prefer political and economic freedom over political and economic equality. My primary goal in life is to simply be left alone by the government. And I grew up dirt-poor, so don't give me any crap about being privileged. My only privilege was that I was born in America where people have a chance.
Bill,
I think you are overestimating the difficulties in a national sales tax. For example, lets pretend that as of today, there is no form of income tax in place in the US (Social Security, federal/state income tax, you name it). Now, lets pretend that we want to start one tomorrow. How should we implement it? Well, lets make every company track every dollar that each employee makes (something they are probably already doing). Then, lets ask them to withhold a particular amount from each of those dollars. Some dollars are taxed at one rate, others taxed at another. Some taxes stop at a certain income level, others do not. Also, depending on where each employee lives/works, there may be an entirely different set of rules regarding each of those dollars. Then, lets set up a big bureaucracy to oversee/audit that collection. Then, for people who are self employed, everyone who writes a check to anyone who does a little work for them will also have to track that and report it to that newly created agency. Then, at the end of the year, basically everyone who touches any money for someone else will have to fill out a bunch of reports regarding interest earned, penalties paid, expenses, etc. and mail that not only to each individual, but to that agency. Then, each individual who makes any money will then have to fill out a separate set of forms tracking not only all the money that they earned, but also money that they spent, what it was spent on and any tax status of that money. This doesn't even address the hoops for people who may have bought and then sold something during the year (capital gains, short term/long term, washes, investment expenses, etc.). Then, we can make up a few arbitrary rules regarding some types of purchases so that people can pay less taxes. Of course, those rules will have nothing to do with the original rules that governed how the employers withheld money from paychecks in the first place. Oh, yeah, and we'll make the rules for filling out the forms so complicated that the agency responsible for enforcing them won't even be able to answer the same question regarding those rules the same way when asked the question multiple times. Finally, the original agency will have to audit all of those different forms to make sure that no one cheated. Finally, if there is any difference between the amount of money withheld from the paychecks and the number on the form, either the individual or the government will have to cut a check. I wonder how many checks have to get managed that way? I wonder how well that will work. I wonder if an underground economy that involves paying people cash for work will grow up so that taxes can be avoided? I wonder if there are any costs to the economy from a system like that?
Now, lets contrast that with a system where stores that are already tracking local sales tax rules (which I am guessing are maybe 1/1000 of the complexity of our current income tax rules) now just get a government mandate to tack on an additional 15% to 25% in taxes that they collect and just send that money to the government. Its possible that a black market could spring up, but most people wouldn't bother. With all the extra money flooding the economy after the removal of all the income tax burdens, it wouldn't be worth the effort. Most people will still just go to the same stores they alway shopped in and buy from the same stores that gave them good service/warranties/support in the first place.
Now, do you really think that a national sales tax is really more complicated than the current system? I'm still hoping that if Eli is reading he can show us the study where he got the information that a national POS tax would be more expensive than what we have now (I think his exact words were "the cost of compliance with sales taxes is far higher than for income tax").
Its possible that a black market could spring up, but most people wouldn't bother.
There already is a sizable underground economy that avoids income taxes. The government could potentially do better with a federal sales tax in that regard.
I think I finally get it. Jeff, tell me if this is correct: You're not upset with me for offending Obama by calling him a socialist, you're upset with me for offending socialists by calling Obama a socialist. Is that right? If so, I understand you better.
Ben writes:
"By American standards, as a major American politician, he's a flaming socialist. By European/Canadian/South American standards maybe not. I exaggerated, but he is far to the left of any president since... all of them. Tell me which president was further left on the economy than Obama."
1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
2. Harry S Truman
3. Lyndon B. Johnson
All three were far to the left of BHO on domestic policy issues. Both FDR and HST supported national health care, for example (which in the 1940's, was not considered to be a particularly far-out left position.)
Ben writes:
"Tell me which president was further left on the economy than Obama."
In my last post I listed FDR, HST, and LBJ, but I forgot to mention the most egregious example:
Richard Milhous Nixon: Wage and Price Controls, ~ 1970.
As Robert P. posts above: Nixon.
Who dallied with the idea of the negative income tax, which would guarantee a minimum income to all Americans regardless of their work status, work income, etc.
Even Eisenhower might be considered to the left of Obama. Or not. However, far to the left of McCain, without any doubt. Eisenhower prevailed over a massive public works project totally in the Roosevelt style - the Interstate Highway system. The Interstates, which have led to such an increase in internal commerce, travel, and recreation/tourism.
Kennedy - a massive public works project named "NASA - man on the moon in 10 years". Didn't give us teflon, as was so widely reported (it actually came from the engineering of the uranium hexafluoride diffusion plants built in WWII but under top-secret conditions), but it did give a lot of people work. Others hope. International prestige. And added to our aerospace engineering expertise at a time when it was greatly needed.
One can actually go on for years about this kind of stuff.
Hell, even Lincoln was to the left of Obama, on economic issues.
Ben - consider this an exercise for the reader.
Consider learning some American history before continuing to make obvious your ignorance?
If I'm not mistaken, we've had this discussion before, in other threads.
All three were far to the left of BHO on domestic policy issues. Both FDR and HST supported national health care, for example (which in the 1940's, was not considered to be a particularly far-out left position.)
I'll give you LBJ. Obama, whatever he says in the media, personally supports national health care. He just doesn't think he can get it done and so seeks to do what he can. That's my opinion.
As for the others, I disagree with you. You may be right based on Obama's rhetoric, but I think history will prove you wrong. It's too soon to tell anyway, since he hasn't served a day in office. Maybe we could resurect this thread in 2012 or 2016 and compare. We've unfortunately gotten into comparing the political leanings of a president-elect with the policies of past presidents. Apples to oranges, and I shouldn't have brought it up.
Jeff Harvey writes:
Was the USSR good for the environment? How about the PRC? Rumania? Was the massive environmental destruction they caused due to western foreign policy?
Fro that matter is it even meaningful to speak of a single "Western foreign policy"?
I wonder if Jeff considers the Malayasian logging companies responsible for the bulk of illegal logging across South East Asia and the south Pacific to be western?
Some aspects of some policies of some western governments really do contribute to environmental destruction, but that's a far cry from Jeff's blanket claim.
Dhogaza writes:
"Even Eisenhower might be considered to the left of Obama. Or not. However, far to the left of McCain, without any doubt. Eisenhower prevailed over a massive public works project totally in the Roosevelt style - the Interstate Highway system...
Kennedy - a massive public works project named "NASA - man on the moon in 10 years".
Hmm, that's pushing it a bit too far, I think. The Interstate Highway system and NASA both started out as essentially military projects - explicitly in the case of the Interstate (I'm old enough to remember when it was called the "National Interstate and Defense Highway System") and implicitly in the case of NASA. And the US government has always been ready to toss free-market principles aside where the military was concerned.
Nevertheless, your point is well taken - the fact that I have to think for a couple of minutes before concluding that Barack Obama is indeed slightly to the left of Eisenhower and Kennedy points up the absurdity of the attempts by the 2008 Republican party's attempts to portray BHO as a "radical leftist".
This (Harvey/Levenson/Gould) shows signs of degenerating into an interesting discussion.
I'd observe to Ian that you don't need a unitary foreign policy, just a set of policies that are broadly consistent, and agree with Barton that the communist bloc's environmental management was terrible.
I'd generalise Jeff's statement to say that an imperial foreign policy contributes to environmental devastation. If you are (directly or indirectly) ruling over territory that the locals (rightly or otherwise) consider belongs to them, not you, and you don't answer to the locals but to your home shareholders/voters, then your long term occupation of that territory is always in doubt. This means that a rational strategy is to strip the territory of assets, since the fruits of long term, cautious husbandry are likely to go to some future nationalist movement, rather than to you, whereas the prospects of being forced to pay reparations for colonialism/asset stripping at some future date are exceedingly remote.
The communist countries, being dictatorships, didn't answer to their own "locals" and thus the communists (and other dictators) asset stripped their own environmental bases (or did it in peripheral areas, e.g. Tibet, Siberia, populated by locals that couldn't threaten the centre). They were auto-colonialists.
Western civilian populations have developed the capacity to object to their environments being asset-stripped at home. Those seeking fast bucks hence turn overseas - e.g. the oilfields of Iraq or the Coltan mines of the DRC. So I would say that western foreign policies are often environmentally destructive, not because we are worse than the communists but because we are better.
"I'd generalise Jeff's statement to say that an imperial foreign policy contributes to environmental devastation. If you are (directly or indirectly) ruling over territory that the locals (rightly or otherwise) consider belongs to them, not you, and you don't answer to the locals but to your home shareholders/voters, then your long term occupation of that territory is always in doubt. This means that a rational strategy is to strip the territory of assets, since the fruits of long term, cautious husbandry are likely to go to some future nationalist movement, rather than to you, whereas the prospects of being forced to pay reparations for colonialism/asset stripping at some future date are exceedingly remote."
I broadly agree with this and suspect that Jeff would too.
However Jeff would probably take the view that after formal decolonisation in the 50's and 60's the former colonial powers maintained de facto control over the reosurces of many of their former colonies and continued to exploit the resources.
I'd argue that in many cases there is an element of truth to that. However I'd argue that it is a vast oversimplification and ignores the role of local elites in said exploitation.
Environmental degradation is arguably worse in many countries that have been at the forefront of resistance to "western foreign policy" (e.g. China, Burma, India) than in a number of countries that are essentially pro-western.
It seems to me that the key preconditions for environmental protection especially in the developing world are democracy and a free press; low levels of corruption; rule of law (i.e. a state capable enforcing the law equitably) and secure property rights (including the communal property rights of indigenous groups over their traditional lands).
To the extent that the policies of western countries advance those conditions, then they are helping to slow or prevent environmental degradation.
Conversely, to the extent that the policies prevent or retard these conditions from developing they're promoting environmental degradation.
Hmmm... Ian and BPL piling on Jeff! Maybe you're not all commies after all.
I'd contribute that the primary precondition for environmental protection is wealth. All of Ian's conditions are important, but it's hard to ask people to protect the environment when their families don't have adequate food and shelter.
That's why proposals to improve the global environment can't have a negative affect on wealth creation.
Obama a Socialist? We don't know yet.
Also, these days it isn't enough to label someone a Socialist (it doesn't scare people like it used to), you have to actually make a case for why socialism might be a bad choice.
I suspect Obama could go either way. The economic consensus (at least the "Economist"'s view) is that it's probably time for tax cuts to avoid/reduce the oncoming recession. Obama might be pragmatic enough to postpone any tax hikes (especially on corporations) but he'll have problems controlling the Democratic congress.
Obama is also in a unique position to improve the situation with old industries with massive pension and health care costs due to giving in to unions repeatably over the years (GM, Ford esp.). He might be in a position to get concessions from both unions and the companies in return for their slice of the bail-out pie. McCain or a less popular Democratic president could never do this. Sort of like Nixon and China.
On the other hand, he could start rolling out a bunch of left wing socialist policies that will deepen and lengthen the recession with congress gleefully going along.
This is really a fork in the road. Obama could be great or he could be a disaster. I'm exited and scared to death at the same time. I guess we'll know which way it's going in 6 months or so.
"On the other hand, he could start rolling out a bunch of left wing socialist policies that will deepen and lengthen the recession with congress gleefully going along."
Wow, what a maroon.
Bill, what you seemed to have missed is that in the last 8 years, all of your economic theories have been tried and they have all been proven false. That is how we got in this mess in the first place. Using what got us into this mess isn't going to get us out of it.
I think we will be better off listening to the people who aren't being paid to lie to us.
Krugman for example. Both smarter and much more honest.
Bill, what you seemed to have missed is that in the last 8 years, all of your economic theories have been tried and they have all been proven false.
The only thing that has been "tried" is tax cuts. If they had also "tried" some fiscal responsibility, flushed fannie and freddie down the toilet, punched the fed in the face, privatized social security, stopped federal abuse of the commerce clause, etc, and still failed, then you might be able to claim the "tried and failed" mantra.
bi:
Ian:
So bi indirectly insults/mocks Ian. Hooray!
elspi,
That's a nice line from one of my favorite thinkers, Bugs Bunny.
What I'm saying is that tax cuts are being recommended NOW, because of the current economic problems. Bush hasn't been trying tax cuts for the last eight years to avoid a serious economic recession.
If one is truly concerned for the middle class workers, raising taxes on "Rich Corporations" might be the worst thing you can do. "Rich Corporations" are largely owned by pension funds and 401k plans. The "Excess Profits" are either re-invested to expand business and hire new employees or given as dividends to the owners (your pension or 401k plan). Raising corporate taxes may well end up costing jobs, reducing investments and reducing you 401k.
It seems simple enough to take money from "Rich Corporations" and give it to poor people, but it doesn't work that way.
And... what ben said.
BillBodell: "Wealth" can be measured a number of different ways. Having a healthy environment that produces an abundance of subsistence goods and services (as many people in developing countries still live off the land directly) can be a lot more relevant than a fistful of dollars; especially since the dollars are likely to be seized, one way or another, by the local elites Ian talks about (here's a hint. The difference btw third world elites and American 'elites' is the difference between Robert Mugabe and Barack Obama. geddit?).
On those local elites; though they have agency of their own, of course, they are often the glove for the commercial interests of the former colonial powers. And as I said, China, Burma et al colonise themselves.
I'm not all that sanguine about "secure property rights". They're great in theory. But having studied a few land titling programs in SE Asia, what usually seems to happen is that the newly issued bits of paper somehow show that the land is "really" the property of the local officials, the planning officers, and their wives, cousins, cousins' wives' cousins, etc. Titling usually becomes an excuse for tossing traditional owners off land. Even when courts rule against this "primitive accumulation" as we old-time marxists call it, rulings are ignored or unenforced, or if they're enforced, the people are already gone and the land clear-felled.
"I'd contribute that the primary precondition for environmental protection is wealth. All of Ian's conditions are important, but it's hard to ask people to protect the environment when their families don't have adequate food and shelter."
I'll right more abotu this later but I think you are incorrect here.
The Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union were much richer than many developing countries but had appalling environmental records.
Costa Rica isn't a lot richer than most of its central American and Caribbean neighbours but has a far better environmental record - which I believe can be attributed largely to the fact that it's virtually the only stable democracy in the region.
Finally, I'll point out that many (not all by any means) indigenous groups have quite limited environmental impacts despite being poor by western standards and that often it's precisely the attempt at economic development that causes the environmental harm.
For example, the market for bushmeat in Africa is largely driven by poachers supplying markets in the rapidly-growing cities and using roads built for mining or forestry projects to access rain forests.
here's a hint. The difference btw third world elites and American 'elites' is the difference between Robert Mugabe and Barack Obama. geddit?
What? Obama's only half black? Obama hasn't ordered anyone to be murdered yet?
Ian: Costa Rica is puny and has little industry, compared with the former Soviet Union and its satellites. They built up much of their industry as a result of wars, and Costa Rica doesn't have that history. So it's not a fair direct comparison in my opinion.
often it's precisely the attempt at economic development that causes the environmental harm.
Very true. So instead of wasting gazillions of dollars on aid to Middle Eastern/African countries like Egypt who hate us, we would do better to invest in countries that are poor but developing in order to help them develop with less impact to the environment.
How do poachers drive the market for bushmeat? Do you mean to say that they supply it? The rapidly growing cities would be the driving force... that is, the consumers. Or do they have guys standing on street corners pushing bushmeat on unsuspecting children?
the question of how to fix the economy raises the question of where things are blocked. given that for quite a while now, industrial production has exceeded consumption, requiring companies to idle factories, feeding them more cash won't fix things. they'll just use it to buy up their own stock, thereby raising their stock price without actually getting the economy moving again. Exxon Mobil, for instance, has put the bulk of all the tax breaks it's received for "exploration" in the past few years into buying up its own stock. and of course, now that stock prices are way down, a corporation can buy up a lot more stock, and it makes even less sense to spend the money hiring people to make stuff that can't be sold.
for the money to get the economy going, it has to be injected where it will be the most likely to start circulating; and at this time, at least, it's certainly at the level of the consumer; particularly the lowest rung of the ladder, where any dollar will immediately be put into circulation to buy food, shelter, clothing, energy, etc.
take the aforementioned GM, for instance, hurting because of accumulated debt; if it could actually sell cars, that debt wouldn't mean anything. that's been the case for decades. does anyone believe that it can be fixed by giving it a big chunk of change, so that it can build more cars that can't be sold? it's not like GM cars are overpriced and would sell if they were more economical; they already are the low priced end of the market. people aren't buying Toyotas and Hondas because GM cars are just too expensive.
or take the mortgage meltdown; people can't pay their mortgage or sell the house, they lose the house, the mortgage company loses the income, the folks with shares of the mortgage company lose money, etc.; how exactly does sending a trillion dollars to the end of the chain represent an improvement over putting the money into the front end of the chain, letting the folks pay their mortgage and keep their homes, the mortgage company keep their incomes, and their investors keep their stockholders happy?
(OT: re the unions crushing the car companies with their benefits, although there is some truth in that picture, the auto companies have historically been quite adept at weaseling out of it; witness the most recent deal a year ago, wherein the union took over $70 billion of GM's healthcare debts in return for $50 billion of GM stock. as great a bargain as that may seem, consider how fine it seems now. oh, but in return, the union got assurances that GM wouldn't cancel medical benefits for retirees for two years. let's see, that was one year ago.... good thing we require employers to cover health care for employees rather than the government, like those backwards places like Japan or Korea.)
James Haughton,
By "Wealth", I was talking about standard of living for the masses (not whatever might be in the ruthless dictator's Swiss bank account).
Ian,
I don't think it's a matter of moral "purity". Almost no one would give the environment a second thought if their children were hungry. Few would trash the environment for no purpose (although there would, no doubt, be the occasional mindless vandal).
If an indigenous group has a short life expectency and high infant mortality, it is probably unable to effect the environment significantly either way. Increase the life span and reduce infant deaths and they'll be plundering the environment as soon as they are capable. But, I'm not willing to say that they have to keep dying young for the environment's sake.
We need to get them past that and to a point where they can afford to presereve the environment. To do that they need a stable legal environment, property rights and a stable, honest government. Far from an easy task, but it ought to be our top priority.
...good thing we require employers to cover health care for employees rather than the government, like those backwards places like Japan or Korea.)
I'm not aware that there is any such requirement.
z, your analysis is interesting but presents only one side of the economy. Similar arguments can be made for providing stimulus to the production side of the economy rather than the consumption side. Likely neither are correct. Probably the economy would do better if left alone to sleep for a while and recover naturally. What countless "experts" in the economy adeptly demonstrate is that nobody really has a clue about the economy, and anyone's guess is as good as any other. And these first-order analyses don't help much either. The economy is certainly higher order and much more complicated.
I will probably come back and respond at more length later but time is short so I'll confine myself to a couple of quick points:
Ben at 189: "Ian: Costa Rica is puny and has little industry, compared with the former Soviet Union and its satellites. They built up much of their industry as a result of wars, and Costa Rica doesn't have that history. So it's not a fair direct comparison in my opinion."
"You're misreading what I wrote Ben.
Me at 188: "Costa Rica isn't a lot richer than most of its central American and Caribbean neighbours but has a far better environmental record - which I believe can be attributed largely to the fact that it's virtually the only stable democracy in the region."
I wasn't comparing Costa Rica to the Soviet Union (referred to in the preceding paragraph) but to countries such as Honduras and Nicaragua. If I'd wanted to make a similar point about the Eastern Bloc I would have used East and West Germany not Costa Rica.
As for bushmeat - the bushmeat market first grew up to supply forestry and mining camps and developed not because of any particular local preference for bushmeat but because it was the cheapest source of meat. Much the same principle applies in the cities.
John @ 191: "I don't think it's a matter of moral "purity"."
Neither do I and and I'm at a loss to how you came to the conclusion that I did.
Economics is an innately amoral field, the link between democracy, functioning markets, effective and equitable legal systems on the one hand and economic growth and environmental protection on the other is an empirical observation which economists then seek to explain.
(At the risk of stating the obvious, the correlation is most definitely not 100%).
You also appear to be misunderstanding my statement about indigenous people. Indigenous people (In general) are best-placed to understand the resources of their land and how best to exploit them in a sustainable fashion. Squatters and illegal loggers have no property rights in the land and have every incentive to maximise their short term return before they're moved on.
ben writes:
Oh, yeah, that was a great idea! Let's put it all in the stock market! That sure would have worked out well. Let me see, 14,000 decreasing to 9,000 is what percent growth?
Ben writes, "So instead of wasting gazillions of dollars on aid to Middle Eastern/African countries like Egypt who hate us, we would do better to invest in countries that are poor but developing in order to help them develop with less impact to the environment".
Ben, oh Ben, where on Earth do you learn this grade school level nonsense? Africa's leading economist, at the World Social Forum in Port Alegre, Brazil, 2003, put it bluntly: "Developed nations do not aim to manage societies of the planet in order to integrate them into a coherent capitalist system, but aim only at looting their resources." Economist Patrick Bond provides similar evidence in his book, "Looting Africa", as does Tom Athanasiou in his book, "Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor". There's stacks of evidence to suggest that western governments only provide aid with immense strings attached, such as the recipients must convert their economies to an absolute free market doctrine and privatize their resources. They must also allow for captial flow to western investors - hence why the rate of capital drain from the poor south to the rich north has actually increased since 1970: at that time, it was a 3:1 dollar south-north ratio in dollars going from the underdeveloped south to the industrialized north; by 2003 the ratio had actually increased to 7:1. The 'development model' never works because the proceeds of development are largely appropriated by the rich.
A study by Edward Herman in 1982 revealed that the US government provided more 'aid' to governmenbts with appalling human rights records. Why was this? It was not because the Reagan administration supported torture and murder, but because countries that murdered or tortured trade unionists, environmentalists, priests etc. etc. tended to be good countries for business investment because overheads (wages and regulations) are kept low. Nothing at all has changed.
And lets not forget old Henry Kissinger, who, apprarently along with other senior members of the government in 1974 wrote notorious National Security Study Memorandum # 200, which said, "Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries." http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/kiss_nssm_jb_1995.html
Throw in comments by people like Kenna, Sumemrs, Butler, Schlesinger et al. over the years and the agenda becomes even clearer.
How much clearer do you want the mnessage to be, Ben? You write as if western governments, and theuS in particular, are serious about promoting democracy and alleviating poverty. The truth couldn't be more of a polar opposite. Western elites support their counterparts in the south and only advocate limited 'top-down forms of democracy' when it is in their interests. When it isn't democracy is downplayed or ignored. FYI, these words are not mine, but came from Tom Carrothers, a member of the Reagan cabinet whose job was 'democracy promotion'.
"The 'development model' never works because the proceeds of development are largely appropriated by the rich."
I suspect the Japanese, the south Koreans; the Taiwaneese, the Thia and the Malaysians would be surprised to hear this.
Ian, it works differently in these countries. You should read Noam Chomsky's take on it. He argued that, while the rich world exports primarily luxury goods to the south, the Asian tigers were smart: they bought machinery and equipment in which to build their industrial economies along the lines of western countries during the industrial revolution. This now makes them strong competitors with the west. The fact is that there is no concerted effort to alleviate poverty in much of the south on the part of westen planners; western planners aren't dumb. They realize that there is only so much resource wealth to go around and they also know that as countries become more affluent they will impact their own land masses and demand a greater share of their nations capital, which is currently being controlled by the north. Its no small coincidence that the US has traditionally seen South America as 'service function economies' for western corporate interests and investors. Its all no coincidence that populists like Chavez, Morales, Correa, etc. aren't looked on favorably by western elites and their counterparts in the south. The corporate MSM constantly demonizes leaders who attempt to develop their economies independently from the 'Washington Consensus'. Yet little mention is made of undemocratic regimes - such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia - that 'play ball', nor of regimes like Uribe's that have amongst the worst human rights records on the planet.
I suggest you read some of the declassified US or UK planning documents I alluded to ina ripose to Ben last week. Mark Curtis writes at length about them in his books, 'Web of Deceit' and 'Unpeople' (and also on his web site). They make quite alarming reading.
There's some new stuff from Curtis that is definitely worth a read:
http://markcurtis.wordpress.com/
Oh, yeah, that was a great idea! Let's put it all in the stock market! That sure would have worked out well. Let me see, 14,000 decreasing to 9,000 is what percent growth?
Yes, in the short run, and with government help, the stock market suffers from high variability in the short term. In the long term it outperforms all other forms of investment. In 1998 the Dow was at 8300, so now at 9000 there is at least some improvement. Not to mention that there are other investments that could be used that are highly secure and return around 5%.
What you're saying is that the governments approach, to put the money into a "lock box" that isn't really there, from which it extracts the money into general revenue to be spent, leaving a worthless IOU in the "lock box" is a better method of saving?
In the government model, then, you put your money in and it dissapears with a promise from the government to come up with the dough when you retire. With the privatized model, the money is really there, in an investment of some sort, which adds much needed capital to the market that can be used to grow the economy.
I fail to see how anyone can be so averse to privatization of SS. Heck, at least give some of us a choice. Let those who don't mind the "risks" take the private method, and let those who are scared of maintaining control of their own money rely on the promises of the government. That would be fair.
Ian Gould #196- the point you are trying to make misses the mark, because the development model of the countries you mention is different from the one Jeff Harvey is talking about. Basically (I am not an expert caveats apply) they followed the known historical path to economic success- protected markets, investment in new technology and education, either borrowing as little as possible or keeping money circulating internally, focusing on value added goods etc. Protectionism and state intervention being very important. Whereas the model Jeff is talking about is the open your borders to everything, thus driving your farmers and clothing and local industry out of work but leaving insufficient capital to invest in training and upgrading of skills etc, that are necessary to bring the country up to a level where it can mix it with the big boys.
The market worshippers can whine all they like, but I can't think of any country which has successfully modernised since WW2 using their prescription.
I fail to see how anyone can be so averse to privatization of SS. Heck, at least give some of us a choice. Let those who don't mind the "risks" take the private method, and let those who are scared of maintaining control of their own money rely on the promises of the government. That would be fair.
funny view of "fairness".
in health care, your suggestion puts all those with lots of money (and often little health care problems) into a private system, while those with little money (and often MASSIVE health problems) remain in the public one.
sounds very fair to me!
let the poor pay for the sick!
sod, your comparison is apples/oranges. All of us who work pay into SS. Then the government SPENDS that money on SS and a whole lot of other completely non-related things. The SS tax that is collected from our paychecks goes into general revenue.
How is it a bad thing for the workers in America to have their money go into an actual account that will grow over time compared with going into the SS "lock box" that isn't really there, so that all you have instead is an IOU from the government? And the government could smartly require that the funds be invested "safely" as in only a portion into higher risk investments, say index funds at the most, and then the rest into secure investments. Either way, the money is actually there, rather than in the nebulous ether of future government provided entitlements.
Further, you could tax the gains on those private retirement accounts to provide retirement funds for those who did not work enough or save enough during their lifetimes. Either way, there would be more retirement money available to everyone. Instead we have what everyone knows is the world's largest Ponzi Scheme.
sorry ben, but your answers show little understanding of social security systems.
you spoke of "privatization", not of investing current surplus in your first post.
some sort of partial privatization (basically the state giving incentives to safe money in some, at best, secure way), makes a lot of sense.
it is a good addition to the current system, but will hardly replace it. it is not that easy, to change the current "pay as you go" system to one based on private accounts.
We already have some incentives for retirement savings, e.g. 401k and all that. I do think there should be full privatization but in the form of FORCED savings that the individual contributor still owns. Rather than phony money in a fake "lock box".
I don't mind the compulsory aspect, but I do mind that the money does not get invested, it simply gets spent and a new IOU gets tacked onto the pile. The problem with the current system, of course, is the baby-boom generation and the fact that income earners will have to support all those retirees. Far as I can tell, there are few if any economists who regard the looming social security crisis as anything other than a ticking time bomb.
"You should read Noam Chomsky's take on it."
I have, I was unimpressed. Time's still short here I may reply in more detail later.
As a quick suggestion, Jeff, you might want to read some more mainstream development economics as opposed to polemics.
Ian, you are officially my favorite person in the whole world right now.
"Ian Gould #196- the point you are trying to make misses the mark, because the development model of the countries you mention is different from the one Jeff Harvey is talking about. Basically (I am not an expert caveats apply) they followed the known historical path to economic success- protected markets, investment in new technology and education, either borrowing as little as possible or keeping money circulating internally, focusing on value added goods etc. Protectionism and state intervention being very important."
Guthrie, this is a popular argument from peopel on the left but it has one major problem.
Several of the East Asian economies (e.g. Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan) did virtually none of those things.
You also forget to mention that South Korea and Japan, the two principal East Asian practitioners of dirigism, severely reduced the living standards of whole generations in the name of national development, suppressing wages, hiking the price of consumer goods and limiting union rights.
You might also want to reflect on the quite staggering levels of corruption and cronyism in both countries and the very imperfect state of democracy in both as well.
Oh and let's not forget the countries that followed your preferred presciption to the letter with wretchedly miserable results - Burma for a start and to a lesser extent Philipines.
You might also want to ask yourself why dirigist policies produced forty years of economic stagnation in India and why their end led to rapid economic growth. While you're at it, you might want to ask yourself why the Indian electorate have repeatedly demonstrated their support for liberal economic policies.
Jeff Harvey writes:
Compared to what? If you look at 1982, there's a strong correlation between dictatorial governments and poverty-stricken economies. (And Milton Friedman would say that's not a coincidence.) The exception back then would be the Communist world, which of course we didn't give aid to (except for the occasional shipment of wheat to Russia when they had a crop failure).
http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_20072008_EN_Indicator_tables.pdf
The UN Human Development Report classifies Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama and several of the Caribbean states as falling into the "High Human Development" category.
Since Jeff and Guthrie have already declared South-east and East Asia as anomalous, the global "south" starts to look like Subsaharan Africa and the countries of the Andean Pact.
The subsaharan African countries as a group suffer from a series of problems which have relatively little to do with current patterns of economic trade - they were fucked over by European colonialists to an even greater extent than South America and most of Asia. The major states of medieval Africa - such as the Kingdom of Kongo - were effectively destroyed by the Europeans in the course of the expansion of the slave trade. (Anyone who wants to pull the "The wicked Africans FORCED the poor innocent Europeans to buy slaves" line is invited to go read up on Afonso the 1st of the Kongo and his wars with the Portugese over the issue of slavery.)
The colonialists (especially the French) prevented the development of political institutions within the Afrcian colonies and this contributed to the post-independence political instability as did the fact that colonial boundaries completely ignored pre-existing ethnic and political boundaries.
Jeff, actually if you look at the pattern of American foreign aid, even excluding the special cases of Egypt and Israel; the disposition of aid is pretty irrational and has precious little to do with the poverty of the recipients.
South Africa, a relatively prosperous country with an abnormally high profile in the US, gets far more aid that such much poorer neighbours as Angola and Mozambique. That's probably attributable to politicians trying to buy domestic popularity.
Jordan, a relatively prosperous country does EXTREMELY well - mainly as a pay-off for its policies towards Israel and Iraq.
Barton, Look at the countries that get the biggest amount of 'aid' from the US at present. Aside from Israel, the next in line are Colombia and Egypt. Both have horrific humans rights records, amongst the worst on Earth. Equatoral Guinea also gets a fair share of 'aid'; it also has a horrific regime with flagrant human rights abuses. The bottom line is that the US does not promote democracy in its foreign policy and never has, unless there is immense pressure for it, and even then only limited 'top-down' forms are promoted (read what Thomas Carrothers had to say about it). Before you sound off again you should also read some of the declassifed planning documents, many of which are probably available in your local library. The MSM hardly ever discusses these, perhaps because they lay bare western foregin policy agendas.
Ian: I expect better of you than to dismiss Chomsky as simply a 'polemicist'. Chomsky was recently voted the world's leading intellectual by a margin of two to one over the second placed individual (Umberto Eco). Besides, Patrick Bond and Samir Amin, whom I do read, ARE economists, and their views largely echo Chomsky's. So do those of Partha Dasgupta, a British economist. I read quite a bit of literature from economists, as a matter of fact, but I will admit I tend to ignore many of the neoclassical variety who somehow believe that the human economy and the natural economy are independent of one another.
As for dear old Ben and his grade-school view of the world, I find it hard to actually believe my eyes with some of his views as expressed here. Pretty well every point I've made has not (and apparently cannot) be addressed by him. I have read such gobbledegook as "Obama is a flaming socialist", "Chavez is a commie thug", and "American aid should not be given to countries that hate us" (e.g. that includes most of the planet, unfortunately, given the appalling and murderous policies of one administration after another - the average US citizen may not know much about the outcomes of US foreign policies but the victims don't forget quite so easily). Anyone who writes articles with perspectives that differ greatly from Ben's view of the world is dismissed as a "liberal", with comments like "Oh brother" and the like. It doesn't matter that some, like Nikolas Kozloff, are scholars who did their PhDs on the subject of Latin America (and who have lived in the region and traveled extensively there), that large polling agencies like Latinbarometro (based in Chile) show that people in Venezuela feel better about the state of their democracy than people in just about every other nation in Latin America, and so on. It is dismissed without a shred of empirical evidence by Ben, or else it is ignored. Ditto for the many hundreds of tenets of the Venezuelan constitution, which I have read in detail. Ben hasn't, of course, so he ignores it. There are many other examples that I have discussed over the past week or so: George Kennan's 1948 memo, Kissinger's 1974 State Department memo, comments by highly influential figures like Carrothers, Charles Maechling, Zbignieuw Brezinski and others. They have made it pretty clear what the foreign agenda of US policy makers has been for the past 60 or so years.
As I have said before, I have better things to do than to argue politics with people like Ben who wear very large blinkers that convey a narrow world view.
As for dear old Ben and his grade-school view of the world, I find it hard to actually believe my eyes with some of his views as expressed here. Pretty well every point I've made has not (and apparently cannot) be addressed by him. I have read such gobbledegook as "Obama is a flaming socialist", "Chavez is a commie thug",
A true Patriot-Murrican tax-cutter, surely. Welcome to Murrica Jeff.
Best,
D
Funny thing is Dano, I love your country. I spent two great years there as a post doc and would dearly love to return at some time in the future. In 2001 I gave lectures at Princeton (NJ) and Stanford (California) Universities and in-between I rented a car and drove coast to coast, exploring the land. I had a fantastic trip, and people were ever so friendly. I have a lot of friends in various parts of the country and one of my brothers lives there with his family (he's been there for 7 years now). Most of the critics of US foreign policy I read are Americans - and not, as Ben would pre-suppose all 'liberals' (as if that is a terrible thing anyway). The important thing is accountability, and this explains my perspective of things. I am half Brit and I criticize the government and its policies all of the time. Some of the greatest patriots do the same, if they think they feel that things are being done in their name that they find repulsive.
Jeff, too bad you didn't have a chance to stop by the Hoover Institute while you were at Stanford to talk to Thomas Sowell. He's probably my favorite non-fiction author these days, and every bit as credentialed as Kozlof et al, if not more so.
Ian #208- yup, thats right, development into a major capitalist country at high speed comes with major problems in terms of civil liberty restrictions and short term issues of lower standard of living. A bit like the UK after WW2, where rationing continued well into the 50's because of paying off war debts and re-making the economy.
Furthermore, Hong Kong doesn't exactly count due to its anomalous position of being developed by the British as a colony for trade, if it wasn't for the anomalies of history it would have been another local port in South China, part of the peoples non-democractic republic of China.
Burma is not a fair example, being under the control of a frankly bonkers dictatorship which has no interest ni developing the country. I don't know enough about Thailand to comment, but would have included taiwan in the countries that myself and Jeff were talking about. As for India, it doesn't look to me like it stagnated that badly. That growth takes off when you liberalise stuff is well known given the unmet demand of billions of people; the point here is that firstly the growth is not necessarily accompanied by democracy, see China; that the growth can only take place given levels of education and government structures I believe India has plenty of, and that as mentioned before you can get pretty good growth by means of oppressive policies. There is no 1:1 correlation of growth and 'freedom' and capitalism.
BPL #209- but the question would be what exactly is being given to the poor countries that happen to have horrible military dictatorships? Is it food aid? Military aid?
Nobody is saying that all US aid was evil, rather that an appreciable fraction of it was used to support regimes that the gvt found useful, which at that point happened to be military dictatorships who seemed to be anti-russia. When they were no longer any use, they were dropped.
As for India, it doesn't look to me like it stagnated that badly.
IIRC, economic growth in India took off after the government got the heck out of business. For example, I remember that businesses used to have to get government permission before they could buy equipment, such as computers, that were necessary for operations. They finally cut the red tape and business is booming.
Striking out again for the middle ground: Having worked in development quite a bit, I am very skeptical of mainstream "development economics", which has tended to emphasise heavy industry and large infrastructure (e.g. dams) with massive social and human costs. More recent models emphasising light, labour intensive industry (eg TCF, consumer electronics) for export have done better, but are hardly without problems.
There are significant differences between the policies of Dirigisme (state direction, quasi-nationalised corporatism of the private sector) and infant industry/tariff/import substitution (state support of the private sector) that Guthrie and Ian are talking about. c.f. Ha-Joon Chang, "Kicking Away The Ladder". As Krugman would tell you, even mainstream economics no longer considers protectionism bad in all cases; they just think that working out which are the good cases is so complex, and likely to cause trade wars, that free trade is a least-worst strategy. CF his new shiny pseudo-Nobel for putting a mathematical gloss on dependency theory.
But what the comparison between Japan, Korea, Taiwan and India chiefly shows is the vital importance of land reform policy. The first three (chiefly as the result of war) undertook major land reform, breaking up large estates into independent farms owned by those who were formerly tenant/serfs, in the 40s and 50s. India didn't (save for Kerala, which is doing well). As a result half the population of India stagnates as share croppers, tenant farmers, etc (and their education and health policies are awful; half of India can't read or write). The major reason the Congress Party got voted back in over the Hindu Nationalists was that the Nationalists were not doing anything to spread the wealth that was being generated by a freer market, but only accruing in the top 10% or so of the population.
Hong Kong and Singapore are special case entrepots; you can't seriously consider "countries" with effectively infinite reserves of cheap labour (China and Malaysia/indonesia) just across the border, who can be incorporated and disincorporated at will, to be stand-alone economies.
Thailand was a lot more dirigiste than most people think (not to mention being a military dictatorship which ardently suppressed labour rights for most of its modern history); the massive amounts of foreign exchange that flowed in after it became the Vietnam war's "R&R" area, then as counterinsurgency funding, and then from sex tourism are also significant. It may have free markets but it also has major structural problems (low levels of education, lowest productivity agriculture in SE and E asia, high levels of corruption) that are sticking sticks in the spokes at the moment.
Burma initially considered themselves out and out socialist/communist and nationalised most industries. No question that that rarely, if ever, works. They then decided not to accept any aid from the USSR or China, that the best way to make decisions in their nationalised industries was astrologically, and to go to war against a third of their population. I don't think even the most hardened commie would argue that this was a good thing.
Re: Obama
Is any Obama supporter put off by the fact that he chose known warmonger Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff?
Pointing this out got me banned over at Tamino's blog, where Obama is called a "peace-loving man". It seems a lot of people have their hopes tied up in this next president and don't want to hear about what he's actually doing.
"As for India, it doesn't look to me like it stagnated that badly. "
http://www.econstats.com/weo/C075V014.htm
GDP per capita growth in India since 2000 has averaged over 4% a year back in the 1980's it was closer to 2%.
This time series doesn't go back beyond 1980 but I'm pretty certain the rate was even lower prior to 1980. (Sanjay Ghandi took over after his mother's assassination and started the process of reform.)
"There is no 1:1 correlation of growth and 'freedom' and capitalism."
I never said there was.
What I have been saying and will continue to say is that democracy; respect for the rule of law and property rights; and a generally non-interventionist economic policy combined with targeted assistance for the poor and investment in education and infrastructure is the policy approach most likely to achieve both growth and environmental conservation.
Oh and failure to follow those guideliens has much mroe to do with continuing poverty in Africa than any American conspiracy.
"As Krugman would tell you, even mainstream economics no longer considers protectionism bad in all cases; they just think that working out which are the good cases is so complex, and likely to cause trade wars, that free trade is a least-worst strategy."
Precisely
"Thailand was a lot more dirigiste than most people think (not to mention being a military dictatorship which ardently suppressed labour rights for most of its modern history); the massive amounts of foreign exchange that flowed in after it became the Vietnam war's "R&R" area, then as counterinsurgency funding, and then from sex tourism are also significant. It may have free markets but it also has major structural problems (low levels of education, lowest productivity agriculture in SE and E asia, high levels of corruption) that are sticking sticks in the spokes at the moment."
Yes but it was only after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980's that the economy really started to take off.
To those problems, we can also add the current political crisis in which the rural Thai majority seem to be in semi-permanent conflict with the urban middle class and the various ethnic minorities.
Despite all those problems, the Thai trebled GDP per capita between 1980 and 2006.
They must be doing something right.
What I have been saying and will continue to say is that democracy; respect for the rule of law and property rights; and a generally non-interventionist economic policy combined with targeted assistance for the poor and investment in education and infrastructure is the policy approach most likely to achieve both growth and environmental conservation.
I'm 100% with that.
With regard to Chavez Morales et al, I'd like Jeff to explain how, in measurable objective terms, Chavez's period of government in Venezuela has produced better outcomes for the Venezuelan population than Lula Da Silva's roughly contemporaenous government in Brazil has for the population of Brazil.
Jeff, you might also want to explain your preference for Castro over Daniel Ortega - who also took power in a revolution but who eventually held free elections; handed over power to the Opposition and was eventually returned to power in free elections.
In both cases, as far as I can see, the deciding factor seems to be the volume and shrillness of their anti-American rhetoric not any actual achievements.
(Costa Rica managed an improvement in living standards and life expectancy comparable to that over Cuba over the period of Castro's rule. They did it without torturing and murdering their political opponents and without massive Russian subsidies. They also refrained from sending thousands of their people off to die on Russia's African proxy war and avoided the resultant HIV epidemic amongst the survivors and their families.)
"Is any Obama supporter put off by the fact that he chose known warmonger Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff?
Pointing this out got me banned over at Tamino's blog, where Obama is called a "peace-loving man". It seems a lot of people have their hopes tied up in this next president and don't want to hear about what he's actually doing. '
Or maybe they're sick of mindless hysteria and think it wise ot wait until he's actually in office before pronouncing him a dirty-commie/whore-to-corporate-interests warmonger/weak-kneed-appeaser black-supremacist/cryptomuslim/Black-Christian-Fundamentalist.
I'm sure come January 20th, there'll be plenty of time to tell us all how that pause for breath at 3.24 minutes into his inaugural address is a clear sign that he plans to anally rape every boy scout in America.
As for Emanual, ever stop to think that given the horseshit spread by the likes of Joe "A vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel" Wurzelbacher, Obama picked Emanuel precisely to reassure Israelis and Jewish Americans that there isn't going to be a radical overnight shift in US policy.
But hey if we start considering the absurd possibility that Democrats aren't both evil and moronic we'd start entertaining all sorts of wild ideas - like maybe Obama who has known Emanuel for over a decade, worked with him on politicla campaigns and repeatedly entertained him in his home has a better understanding of the man than you do.
But hey, the closet anti-semites on the libertarian fringe are probably getting tired of recycling "George Soros bought the election", so I guess "Obama is a puppet of the Zionists who really run the White House" makes a nice change of pace.
"With regard to Chavez Morales et al, I'd like Jeff to explain how, in measurable objective terms, Chavez's period of government in Venezuela has produced better outcomes for the Venezuelan population than Lula Da Silva's roughly contemporaenous government in Brazil has for the population of Brazil".
Ian, good point. But there's really no comparison, at least since 2004 when Chavez abandoned his admittedly cautious manifesto and began to institute real changes. First of all, the statistics speak for themselves: there has been much more wealth redistribution in Venezuela than in Brazil - the share of the wealth distrubted to the poorest half of the population has increased by a staggering 65% (whilst the rich, though still rich, have seen their share of national wealth decline by more than 30%). To be fair, Lula has been a disappointment in this regard: he promised much but has delivered little for the poor of Brazil. He has stuck with now discredited neoliberal reforms and has succumbed to a lot of the political pressure from the US. Also, you should look at the success of illetracy eradication programs in Venezuela, as well as the huge numbers of people receiving free health care, eye operations and the like. Venezuela still has a long way to go but it is getting there, in spite of constant demonization from the US and ther MSM. Again, Brazil lags well behind Venezuela. And to reiterate: Latinbarometro polls suggest that Venezuelans feel a lot better about their democracy than Brazilians do. Lula is better than many of his predecessors, but his deference to the 'master of the hemisphere' has held his government back in many meaningful ways.
Also Ian, when did I ever say thyat I preferred Castro over Ortega? Methinks that you are putting words into my mouth. But, for the record, I think that you shouold look at a bit of history with respect to Cuba. Also look at the US Institute for Foreign Assets Control. The US has waged a war of attrition against Cuba for close to 50 years. When John F. Kennedy instructed his attorney general, his brother Robert Kennedy, to "Bring the hells of the Earth to Cuba", he initiated a policy that has continued unabated until this day. Successful defiance is not tolerated, hence why Cuba has been under a blockade like a medeivel siege for so long. One can only wonder how affluent the country might have been had it not been forced to live under a 'siege economy' since Castro took power. As for Nicaragua, I think that you should look over recent history - at least what Reagan's government did to the country during the 1980s. By 1984 the Inter American Development Bank refewrred to the Sandanista reforms as 'creating a model economy for Latin America', but of course one that was independent of the United States. George Schultz said that there was a cancer in Latin America in Nicaragua that had to be 'cut out', and 'cut it out' they did. They ostensibly waged a terrorist war against the Sandanista's that left 35,000 dead and the country's infrastructure in ruins: moreover, the US was found gulity of 'unlawful use of force' at the World Court in 1986 and ordered to pay 5 billion dollars in reparations. Of course they dismissed the charge and continued to wage a war against the tiny nation, bringing it to its knees by 1990, when the US client candidate, Charmorra, finally won the election by a narrow margin. The NY Times trumpeted faithfully that Charmorra's win was a triumph for US fair play.
As for Ben's Hoover Institute, I tend to avoid corporate funded think tanks as well that endlessly promote libertarian agendas. For ben's sake, Dano naioled it in his last post.
Jeff Harvey writes:
He's still a crackpot who blames everything bad in the world on the US and Israel. Not to mention his defending the Khmer Rouge, writing a preface to a book by a Holocaust denier, and weird anti-Semitic comments (yes, I know he's nominally Jewish).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Noam_Chomsky
Of course, we already knew that Republican supporters weren't put off by criminal warmongers so no need to ask about them.
Note how Barton creates straw men when there's no substance to his arguments; Ben does it too. They don't debate the issues because they don't have the evidence to do so; they just shoot the messenger with slurs and innuendo.
Barton, I agree with you arguments re: climate science. But on issues dealing with US foreign policy, if this is the best you can do, you are all out to sea.
First of all, Chomsky is hardly the only person who lambastes Israel's appalling record with respect to the rights of the Palestinians. Many Israeli's themselves are pretty horrified, including a number of quite eminent historians. But you appear to rely on the old, discredited chestnut that anyone who is highly critical of Israel is an 'anti-Semite'. The same kind of crap is used to smear people who rightfully criticize the foreign policy record of countries like the US and Britain. It is quite interesting that the Nazi regime used the same trick to smear those, including many Germans, who expressed anger at their quite horrific policies.
As for Chomsky supporting the Khmer Rouge, this is utter bull****. Edward Herman deconstructs that myth here:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/PolPotKissinger_Herman.html
The Khmer rouge in fact only came to power because the US bombed the smithereens out of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973 (on Nixon's infamous 'Anything the flies on anything that moves' order to Kissinger) that drove Sihanouk out of power, creating a vacuum that was filled by Pol Pot. As many as 600,000 civilians died under the relentless US barrage, a bombing campaign which must have literally driven people crazy. This narrative is conveniently ignored by those who now wring their hearts with anguish over the KRs appalling crimes. And in 1979, when Viet Nam invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge, which countries expressed support for them at the UN? Yup, the usual suspects, the United States and Britain, along with other countries like Canada. Given that Viet Nam was still in the dock for daring resist US aggression, the US would have sided with the devil if he was opposed to the new government in Viet Nam. And side with the KR they did: for several years associates of Pol Pot were given diplomatic support by London and Washington, including by both the Carter and Reagan administrations.
So, Barton, its a bit rich you calling the kettle black. The trouble with many people in the west is that our memories, like the (mis)information dished out by the MSM, generally goes back no farther than last nights 11 o'clock news. Its just not convenient that the memories of the countles victims of western policies tend to last a lot longer.
Chomsky turns 80 in a few days time, and I am gratified to see large gatherings organized to celebrate the event.
Israel's appalling record with respect to the rights of the Palestinians.
And the Palestinians have nothing to do with this? The Palestinian/Israeli conflict today is nearly entirely one-sided. You have the one group preaching even in their schools for small children absolute hatred for the other group. There is no chance of peace until the Palestinians learn to give up the hatred. Ghandi did it, King Jr. did it. The conflict will never end as long as the Palestinians are 100% hate 100% of the time. It's that simple.
Disclaimer: I have no horse in that race. I feel no particular affinity for Israel nor for Palestine. A person has to be blind to miss that this is, whatever the history, a massively one-sided conflict, aided and abetted by the UN and all the regional governments.
Ben, I appreciate your thoughtful reply on this topic. I do agree with you that the conflict is not one-sided, as many argue, but then again, lets not forget that 900,000 Palestinians were forced from their homeland to create Israel in 1947-8 in what is known as the 'Nakba'. Moreover, today one can see the Gaza strip as the largest prison camp on Earth - a place where 75% of the Arab population live in absolute poverty, with no hope.
See link: http://www.robincmiller.com/pales2.htm
As for hatred, it is driven not by mere accident but by a history of betrayal and generally horrific policies. It is also not one-sided hatred - it goes both ways.
It is also not one-sided hatred - it goes both ways.
It is very nearly one-sided. The Palestinians only hope in the Gaza strip is to renounce hatred and violence. Then things will have a chance to change. Do you seriously expect the Israelis to roll over and bare their stomaches to people who want nothing less than their total annihilation? No peace is possible in Israel until the Palestinians want it without the destruction of Israel.
Gaza would still be under Egyptian control had Egypt not attacked Israel to start the Six-day war. Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip from 1949 to 1967. Egypt could have given the Palestinian refugees Egyptian citizenship. They could have left Israel alone.
Not to mention that if the Arab neighbors had simply allowed Israel to exist in the first place there would have been no conflict. But hatred is hatred and thus we have what we have. A tiny pocket of Jews in a massive sea of Arabs. And the hatred is almost entirely one way. Ever watched Palestinian or Al-Jazeera CHILDREN's TV? If you don't start wretching after 2 minutes then you aren't human.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv3dvYhFk_Y
and many others.
Not to mention the faked Mohammed al-Dura martyrdom that gets the Arab world so riled up.
Ian and Chris, who are you responding to? Are you for or against war in the middle east? For me I'm against it, so I'm against guys like Emanuel (and all neo-cons for that matter) who failed to support anti-war democrat candidates. It's really not that complicated.
Which would mean continued warfare, right?
How does this fit in with the claim that Obama is a "peace-loving man"?
So much for "Change".
Jeff Harvey, the Khmer Rouge were, first foremost and to the bitter end, clients of Maoist China. The Vietnamese forewent the Chinese for their by then bitter rivals, the Soviets, (something to do with thousands of years of antipathy and war no doubt). But they still craved influence in Indochina, and a militant Maoist group there happened to be keen on a sponsor. This helps to explain why the ouster of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese resulted in the invasion of Vietnam by China, one might think. That's rather a more important diplomatic act than a vote at the UN, wouldn't you say?
Secondly, the NVA and insurgent forces of South Vietnam did more to weaken the Sinahouk government of Cambodia than US military action there did, (itself prompted by the fact that the NVA and Viet Cong had turned their neighbors into supply routes and staging areas for attacks on US and US backed forces in South Vietnam). The presence in large numbers of a lethally armed foreign military inside their boundaries had some implications on who ate and who went hungry in Cambodia for some time. And that type of thing has political implications too, not least of which was budding antipathy toward the resident Vietnamese population, which boiled over into massacres in the civil war to come. In any case, when Sinahouk's involvement of the Chinese did not make the problem better, and in fact was making it worse by their support for the Khmer Rouge, he turned at last to the US for support, which the US welcomed. The plot thickened when Cambodia was more completely drawn into the war. The US lost. Communist forces in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia won. The rest, as they say, is history.
The fact that you should omit all this and advance the nonsensical notion that the US was directly responsible for the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia because it bombed NVA there raises something of a red flag for me on other things you might say that I know less about. To maintain your credibility more broadly on this front, I suggest you bone up on some other of the details, perhaps where Chomsky isn't the source. You may find that not only was US not the only power in the world covertly conspiring toward self-interested ends via ghastly means in the 20th century, it wasn't even the worst.
A brief comment on Chomsky and Cambodia, and then I'd like to head off on a tangent.
I think Ian Gould's description of Chomsky as a "polemicist" is on the money... but that doesn't necessarily mean that Chomsky is wrong. Of course, it doesn't mean that he's right, either.
I'll admit that I'm biased: years ago, I wrote a long summary of the controversy surrounding Chomksy and Cambodia. ("Averaging Wrong Answers," at http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm). A couple years later, someone on ZNet asked Chomsky about the article, and Chomsky replied with a long, rambling post in which he accused me of "extreme dishonestly" [sic]. He did not, however, bother to cite any actual errors in what I'd written. (Chomsky's post is reproduced below the fold at http://www.radicalreaction.com/blog/chomsky/ and my reply to his post is at http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/reply\_to\_chomsky.htm).
With the articles on Mekong.net, I think I've written enough about Chomsky and Cambodia, and I don't have anything to add here. Ian's comment, however, raises a broader topic, and I'd like to know what Deltoid readers think about it. Specifically, what role should polemics play in public debate, and in science? Is it possible to overturn conventional wisdom without resorting to polemics? Do different rules apply for debates in social sciences, versus debates in physical sciences?
Or, to put it in a more provocative way: Is Chomsky's approach to history fundamentally different than Stephen McIntyre's approach to climate science? Should it be different?
My own "theory" (for lack of a better word) is that there is an inverse relationship between ambiguity tolerance, and tolerance of polemics: people with a high ambiguity tolerance tend to react adversely to polemical arguments. They feel that they're being misled when an argument appears to be one-sided, or lacking in nuance. I'd love to know what others think. I particularly hope to hear from John Mashey, whose articles here in August indicate that he's given a great deal of thought to how we learn new ideas.
Regards,
Bruce
I think Ian Gould's description of Chomsky as a "polemicist" is on the money...
Not to mention that he has no sense of humor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOIM1_xOSro
Great post Bruce,
Personally, I think the unwillingness of people with high ambiguity tolerance (good scientists, for example) to sometimes put cases forcefully is, on balance, a bad thing, because it leads to them being drowned out in the public discourse by those who are willing to be polemical to the point of unreason. Cf Barry Brook's posting of George Marshall's provocative piece, Do most scientists really believe in global warming? in which he argues that an attitude of being excessively respectful of the remaining uncertainties, combined with a reluctance to talk about policy or human impacts (because that's "politics"), is hamstringing climate scientists from getting the message of the danger of climate change across clearly. Belief is used in the sense of something that someone is willing to act on or be passionate about.
Historically I wonder if this excessively pure, hands-off attitude might have stemmed from the failure of the British "scientific socialists" (e.g. Bernal, Haldane) in the 30s-50s, after famine, Lysenkoism, purges, etc destroyed their vision of what human society might be or become. Cf Wersky's The visible college and The marxist critique of capitalist science.
Majorajam, Please inform me how many people you think died under the US bombardment of Cambodia circa 1969-1973. Then go on to suggest how many Vietnamese perished under US bombings during that war. The former ranges from 300,000 to well over half a million; the latter represented some 17% of South Vietnams's population; perhaps 2-4 million dead, and the country left in tatters, or 'wreck and ruin' as James Schelisinger, a senior Kennedy aide, referred to it back in 1965. To suggest that ther US is 'not the worst' in what they did in the region is, again, like calling the kettle black, and bastardizes history. I was hardly surprised that the MSM over in the US basically ignored the release of declassified files eight years ago which revealed conversations between President Nixon and Henry Kissinger with respect to Cambodia. I think the 'paper of record' put it into a tiny column near the back page. Nixon basically says 'hit everything, go massive' etc., and then Kissinger obediently relays the message to Congress, "Anything that flies on anything that moves". This was basically an explicit order to commit mass murder; how else could it be perceived? Yet the punditocracy greeted this revelation with collective yawns.
And to reiterate: the US recognized the KR for more than 11 years after they were ousted by Vietnamese forces. I recall the US, British and Canadian ambassadors to the UN cozying up to Pol Pot's right hand man in 1982. This narrative just doesn't fit the pattern you wish to promote, does it? Neither does US support for Suharto, one of the biggest torturers and mass murderers in the second half of the twentieth century, which lasted up almost until the very end of his rule. A Clinton aide called him 'our kind of guy, in 1996. Majorajam, where does Suharto fit into your narrative?
The fact why so many people hate Chomsky (and, before you put words in my mouth, I read a damned site more of history than just from NC) is that he is bloody inconvenient for those who wish to be apologists for often horrific US foreign policies. Individuals like Chomsky, Herman, Pilger, Fisk, Bacevich, Rai, Jamail, Curtis, Mandel, Engelhardt, Street, Blum, Edwards, Cromwell, Vidal, Farmer, Grandin, Goff, Mickey Z and many others are vilified for calling the shots as they see it, rather than merely 'parroting' 'official' history. How often are MSM pundits like Friedman, Krauthamer, Safire, Will and others, who promulgate the elite line called 'polemicists'? If not, why not? I'd like to ask this or Bruce. Why is Chomsky singled out? The real achievement of the 'normalizers' of often quite horrific policies is that they have quite successfully marginalized dissenting views from the mainstream. In effect, they act as a conduit for voices that facilitate appalling crimes against humanity.
As I said the last time, I am not the only one who will be celbrating Chomsky's 80th birthday in a few weeks. And many thousands will also participate. Thank heavens for writers of conscience like Chomskyu, Pilger and others.
I don't think Chomsky is an anti-semite just because he hates Israel and never criticizes things Arabs do. I think he's an anti-semite because he makes remarks about how Jews in the US are "tribal," and how they run US foreign policy; and because he wrote a preface to a Holocaust-denial book by Robert Faurisson, which he then defended on "freedom of speech" grounds (i.e., not that Faurisson had a right to publish, which we all might agree on, but that his right to publish somehow justifies Chomsky's flirtation with Holocaust denial).
Here's a nice rejoinder to the absurd argument that Chomsky and Herman were apologists for the KR by Josh Buermann. No doubt Bruce is aware of it. Moreover, it puts the context of US involvement is the rise of the KR, and support between 1979 and 1991.
http://www.flagrancy.net/khmerchomsky.html
236" I think Ian Gould's description of Chomsky as a "polemicist" is on the money..."
I was not exclusively referring to Chomsky nor do I think describing someone as a polemicist is necessarily pejorative. Emil Zola was a polemicist. So were Upton Sinclair and George Orwell.
Chomsky, Klein and various other critics of gloabalisation and American policy often make valid points.
However, they tend to fall into the standard traps that await polemicists such as attributing to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence or indifference and assuming that the plural of anecdote is data.
"Are you for or against war in the middle east? For me I'm against it, so I'm against guys like Emanuel"
Well I'm for war obviously.
Oh wait, no I'm not.
In fact, Nanny, hardly anyone is "for" war.
The Zionist hardliners are fro peace - predicated on the annexation of the Occupied Territories and the forceful expulsion of theri population along with most or all of Israel's arab population.
Others, like me, favor peace predicated on a return to Israel's 1967 borders; independence for Palestine and a massive program of resettlement of Palestinian refugees to the west. (This view BTW regularly gets me abused by supporters of the Israeli right.)
Others again, favor peace predicated on "the destruction of the Zionist entity".
When discussing the internal Israeli politics of peace negotiations I tend to avoid the terms of pro-war and anti-war because,AGAIN, everyone says they're for peace.
So let's rephrase the question: do I believe Emanuel's appointment make the prospect of peace more or less likely?
Well let's see, if Israel thinks the next US administration is likely to be less committed to their defense then it's entirely possible they'll feel compelled to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran while Bush is still in office.
Conversely, if Syria and Hezbollah think that US support for Israel is weakened, they may be emboldened to follow-up on their success in the Lebanon War.
But then maybe Emanuel will convince Israel of the Obama administration's continuing commitment to Israel's existence and therefore encourage them to take a chance on further negotiations with the Palestinians.
Of course, if you believe the sole cause of the Arab/Israeli conflict is the damn Jews, I'm sure the thought of a Judenfrei White House appeals.
Jeff @ 226:
"Ian, good point. But there's really no comparison, at least since 2004 when Chavez abandoned his admittedly cautious manifesto and began to institute real changes. First of all, the statistics speak for themselves: there has been much more wealth redistribution in Venezuela than in Brazil - the share of the wealth distrubted to the poorest half of the population has increased by a staggering 65% (whilst the rich, though still rich, have seen their share of national wealth decline by more than 30%). To be fair, Lula has been a disappointment in this regard: he promised much but has delivered little for the poor of Brazil. He has stuck with now discredited neoliberal reforms and has succumbed to a lot of the political pressure from the US. Also, you should look at the success of illetracy eradication programs in Venezuela, as well as the huge numbers of people receiving free health care, eye operations and the like. Venezuela still has a long way to go but it is getting there, in spite of constant demonization from the US and ther MSM. Again, Brazil lags well behind Venezuela. And to reiterate: Latinbarometro polls suggest that Venezuelans feel a lot better about their democracy than Brazilians do. Lula is better than many of his predecessors, but his deference to the 'master of the hemisphere' has held his government back in many meaningful ways."
First off Jeff I'd appreciate a cite for those figures.
I've also been looking for a source for the Latinbaromtrico claim other than various blogs which faiol to give a primary source.
Secondly, wealth distribution is a reasonably important measure of long-term welfare but short-term changes don;t tell us much at all.
The Gini co-efficient (a measure of income inequality)fell significantly in several SouthEast countries in the late 1990s - because the economic meltdown hit the middle and upper classes and the urban poor worse than the rural poor.
Personally I'd be more interested in outcomes rather than outlays - especially seeing as other Latin American countries have radically reformed their welfare systems to reduce fraud and corruption and increase the amount of benefits that actually reach the poor.
Let's take a look at the 2003 and 2008 Human Development reports.
Between 2002 and 2007, life expectancy in Brazil increased from 67.8 years to 71.7 years; life expectancy in Venezuela DECLINED from 73.5 years to 73.2 years.
Brazil increased adult literacy from 87.3% to 88.6% while Venezuela's only increased from 93.9 to 93%.
Per capita GDP in Brazil increased US$1100 while Venezuela's increased only by $1,000 - despite the massive increase in oil revenue.
Venezuela had a massive and probably never to be repeated windfall from oil prices during Chavez's reign. Chavez has pissed that away on short-term vote-buying programs.
If the current decline in oil prices continues, Chavez is going to be unable to maintain those programs. When that happens we'll see how his relatively benign facade and (limited) adherence to democratic norms hold up.
AS for Castro, Jeff, your potted history omits Carter's offer to lift the embargo in the 1970's in exchange for democratic reforms and the release of politcal prisoners.
Jeff, don't get me started on Pilger.
I have a pretty good idea of events in East Timor, it was a big issue when I was in University doing Asian studies; I was involved with the Timorese refugee community in Australia and have a number of friends who worked in East Timor after independence.
For decades, Pilger sung the praises of Fretilin, Xinana Gusmao and Jose Ramos-Horta. Then came the crisis of 2006 when the Fretilin government faced a mutiny by dicontented former Falintil guerillas. Overnight, Pilger switched to viciously slandering Gusmao et ald as western stooges because they dared to ask fro foreign assitance.
Never mind that had they failed to do so, the country would probably have descended into full-scale civil war.
After reading his garbage about East Timor I was motivated to look further at his work. Apart from anything else, it's riddled with factual errors.
Hell, last time I checked he hadn't taken down or corrected the piece he wrote before the 2006 US elections confidently predicting the Republicans would win as a result of rampant fraud.
Didn't quite work that wat.
"You have the one group preaching even in their schools for small children absolute hatred for the other group."
Yeah, it's shocking what those West Bank settlers get up to.
Ever see the pictures of settler children placing flowers on Baruch Goldstein's grave as part of the annual commemoration ceremonies?
Goldstein was, of course, the perpetrator of the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.
Neither side in this conflict has clean heads.
Ian, I am in the middle of a big experiment (in fact two), but I think this source with respect to Latinbarometro is pretty definitive; I can't see that they just plucked the figures out of thin air:
http://xkorpion.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/latinbarometro-venezuelans-hav…
The other point is that Chavez wins elections and referenda with little trouble, usually with 60% or more of the vote. He lost last years referendum on the constitution by the slimmest of margins, yet accepted the defeat quite gracefully. The MSM and the US government was expecting him to huff and puff and declare the vote invalid - he didn't. And its likely the reason he lost is either (1) that his support base didn't think the vote was an important one, or else (b) that many of his supporters do not think he's gone far enough fast enough in making reforms. This last scenario has garnered much support. Its also a mistake that he did not break down parts of the constitition into separate votes - this would have enabled many of the most progressive measures to be passed.
I haven't much faith in Lula because he is largely still beholden to the IMF/World Bank (in other words, the US Treasury) neoliberal model. He's been a major disappointment to progressives in South America, because he promised much but has actually delivered little. I place much more faith in leaders like Chavez, Morales and Correa who are anxious to break free of the free market absolutist model forced down the throat of South America since the 1980s.
As for Pilger, his latest film, "The War on Democracy", won a slew of awards. Again, he's largely vilified for countering the myths of western benevolence and support for democracy. I admire him and others like Mark Curtis, who dispense with accredited lies.
I'll try to get more information later.
"The other point is that Chavez wins elections and referenda with little trouble, usually with 60% or more of the vote. He lost last years referendum on the constitution by the slimmest of margins, yet accepted the defeat quite gracefully. The MSM and the US government was expecting him to huff and puff and declare the vote invalid - he didn't."
I hope I've made clear here that while I disagree with Chavez's economic policies, I don't buy into the demonisation of him by the US right.
As you alluded earlier, Uribe is far worse than Chavez (although like Chavez he won re-election in internationally supervised elections);.
Re Jeff at #241: Yes, I am aware of Buermann's article: in fact, he was kind enough to allow me to respond in his comments section. The comments don't seem to be there any longer (and Buermann eventually got tired of answering me), but I will point out something you might have missed: in another article at http://www.flagrancy.net/chomsky.html Buermann admits that my argument has some merit:
"Cambodia; Khmer Rouge apologist: I discuss this here. Long story short: the accusation doesn't have merit, and Bruce Sharp's own argument, which does, isn't that Chomsky is an apologist but that if one wants to understand the KR period one should read somebody else, as Chomsky wasn't attempting to understand the KR period but the Western media. Perfectly legitemate point, as discussed elsewhere."
I'd still say that this is much too easy on Chomsky: not only will you not understand anything about the Khmer Rouge from reading Chomsky, you'll misunderstand.
I'm not sure why you think Chomsky is being "singled out" in being labeled a polemicist. If you want to show me something that Charles Krauthammer has written about Cambodia, and you'd like to know whether or not I think it is polemical, feel free to ask. I'm commenting here only because this is one of those rare occasions when I have a good understanding of the subject, and because it raised a broader question that seemed interesting.
Incidentally, on the subject of John Pilger, I believe that the sudden reversal Ian describes with regard to East Timor is a mirror of his trajectory on the subject of Cambodia. To the best of my knowledge, Pilger never wrote anything about the human rights abuses of the Khmer Rouge until after they were overthrown by the Vietnamese.
But to return to the broader question: Jeff, I'd like to know whether or not you agree with my comparison between Chomsky's methods, and Stephen McIntyre's methods, and I'd like to know your opinion on the role of polemics in science. I could easily retask my above comment, regarding Chomsky, for McIntyre: "Not only will you not understand climate science from reading McIntyre, you will misunderstand."
Re James in #238: Really, really interesting links. Thanks for those.
Cheers, Bruce
Oh... just realized that most of my reply to Buermann, which I alluded to above, is actually available on my own site. Damn, I must be getting old!
http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/buermann.htm
Ian,
Here's an articel that lays out quite clearly the success of the Chavez economic programme over the past 10 years:
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela_update_2008_02.pdf
Bruce,
if you were to read some of the stuff written by the mainstream media pundits, such as Krauthamer, you wouldn't draw such an inane (in my view) connection between the way Chomsky writes and what someone like SM writes in 'Climate Audit'. Because the corporate media system selects certain views over others, the views of actual polemicists like Krauthamer, Friedman and Safire are 'normalized' whereas those of people like Chomsky are made to seem as if they are crazy, or at the very least bizarre. Having read something like 60 books over the past two years, covering a gamut of topics from economics to western foreign policy issues to environmental economics, I don't find that much of what Chomsky writes extreme at all. Had the MSM challenged government lies, instead of amplifying them and taking them at face value, the Iraq War would not have been possible, and other horrific western policies may well have been avoided. In 1997, the election of Tony Blair was greeted in the British media as an 'historic event' of 'staggering proportions' that would 'change the political landscape' in Britain, 'ushering in a new era of human rights'. It was John Pilger, who is clearly the bane of some others writing here, who warned at the time that Blair was a Labour politician who wore decidedly neoliberal clothing, and that the 'new dawn' was an illusion. How right he turned out to be; Blair has more blood on his hands than most of his predecessors.
Out of interest, how many of Chomsky's books have you read? How much of his accounts of history do you challenge? In my view, you are comparing apples and oranges in linking him with climate change sceptics. Thus, I feel that many (though not all) of those who argue that human influence on the current warming is negligible are promoting their own political agenda, irrespective of what the science says. How many of the prominent sceptics are affiliated with corporate-funded think tanks with an axe to grind? How many publish their work in rigidly peer-reviewed journals? In fact, as a senior scientist, what has become clear to me is that science is being twisted and distorted to promote a political agenda by many in what I would call the 'anti-environmental' lobby. This covers a range of other topics: pollution, extinction rates, and general environmental quality. Climate change is but one manifestation of a greater malaise.
Sorry, Jeff that link isn't working.
Hi Jeff --
The only books I've read by Chomsky are Manufacturing Consent and After the Catacylsm. My main interest is not Chomsky; my main interest is Cambodia. I agree with Ian that Chomsky often raises very valid points about American policy. With regard to Latin America in particular, I find that I usually agree with him. However, I'm wary of taking anything he writes at face value, since his writing on the one subject I know very well -- Cambodia -- is woefully misleading.
I believe this represents an inevitable pitfall of a polemical approach. By failing to fairly represent opposing points of view, and refusing to acknowledge contradictory evidence, I'm left with two possible resolutions: either I will make a decision based on incomplete evidence, or I'm forced to find some other polemical argument representing the opposing point of view in order to "balance" the first polemical argument. This is what I was driving at when I entitled my essay "Averaging Wrong Answers." You might wind up a viable answer, but I can't help but think that there is a better way. I feel a little silly making an argument in favor of science to an actual scientist, but what the hell... I'll trot out my favorite Feynman quote again:
"Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can -- if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong -- to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it... In summary, the idea is to give ALL of the information to help others judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another."
I can't help but believe that this is a superior approach to learning, and I feel very strongly that this is at odds with Chomsky's approach.
Finally, I appreciate that you addressed my comparison between McIntyre and Chomsky, but I'm not sure why you think the comparison is absurd. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that it's invalid because McIntyre is serving corporate masters. That's true, but that only tells us why he is making the arguments that he makes. It doesn't tell us anything at all about his rhetorical methods, or whether or not they are similar to the methods Chomsky employs.
cheers,
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
I don't think McIntyre is necessarily serving corporate masters. That's kind of loaded. I didn't say this; what I did say is that you should follow a series of leads when validating (or not) the science promoted by anyone or any group. I wrote about this a few years ago with Stuart Pimm in the journal OIKOS. One lead we suggested is to follow the money; another is to follow the science. One thing I have noticed is that the data trails of the anti-environmetnal crowd - and I lump in many of the climate change sceptics with this bunch - go quickly cold. This suggests that other agendas are at work that have little or nothing to do with science. If you like I can send the article to your email address? I am sure I can find that on Google.
You are right that I didn't address the rhetorical methods used by various so-called polemicists. Its an interesting point that you raise. One of the most tried-and-trusted methods of the anti-enviromental lobby is to shoot the messenger, particularly if their empirical evidence is strong. In his book, 'Green Backlash', author Andrew Rowell details the polemical methods used by a number of generally conservative individuals, lobby groups and think tanks over the years (a kind of 'paradigm shift') in which scientists and environmentalists are called everything from 'doomsayers' to 'potential mass murderers' who are 'assaulting reason'. I am not kidding. You can't get much more polemical than that. I was personally called a 'green harpy' by one pundit on his web site for criticizing Bjorn Lomborg and his book.
I find this discussion interesting, and I will get back to it. I still have some bugs to weigh!
Regards,
Jeff
"To suggest that ther US is 'not the worst' in what they did in the region is, again, like calling the kettle black, and bastardizes history."
That's a pretty sad attempt to change the subject Jeff- you've learned well from the denialists. You attributed the rise of the Khmer Rouge to US bombing, The Khmer rouge in fact only came to power because the US bombed the smithereens out of Cambodia between 1969 and 1973. Now it's been pointed out to you how wantonly ignorant your claim is (or alternatively, to the extent you actually are informed of what you speak, how warped and dishonorable it makes you look to make it), and you'd prefer to discuss what is to your mind at least, the only animating factor in that conflict: body counts attributable to the US.
Did you know the Khmer Rouge killed 1.5 million people, often times by the most brutal means imaginable in torture camps throughout their country? Did you know that the NVA and VC (but primarily the former) trained their military, and fought alongside them against the non-genocide committing forces of Lon Non (or that much of the bombing the US did within that country was tactical support of Lon Non's forces against the NVA and KR)? Did you know that the NVA moved their bases further inside the country, despite the fact that it made their supply lines into South Vietnam longer, specifically to support the KR insurgency against the US friendly government in Phenom Penn? And did you know that the Khmer Rouge would've been a rag tag bunch of nothings without the committed support of the Chinese, who, even after their genocidal killings in the country came to light, continued to be their primary source of aid and diplomatic support to the point of invading Vietnam after the Vietnamese lost patience with the KR and overthrew them? How to explain that in the "narrative you wish to promote", i.e. complete and utter horseshit? Oh yes, I know- the US recognized them diplomatically after they were deposed and they would've ceased to exist otherwise!!!!!! How could I have missed the obviousness of that?
Speaking of US recognition, the fact is it was only after the Khmer Rouge proved less than friendly to Cambodia's native Vietnamese population, and after military skirmishes and other sources of friction between it and Cambodia that the NVA marched in to Phenom Penn. And what did our heroes the communist Vietnamese do then? Set up a puppet government to Vietnam as they'd done in Laos, which was, like their own, deeply respectful of human rights and reeducation camps.
And now you're changing the subject again to Suharto. I'm not going to go chasing you around the globe, but let's get something straight- the only "narrative" I'm trying to promote is one that adheres to the facts, and captures just a hint of the nuance, context and complexity of the real world. As far as that goes, I feel well justified in pointing out that, as with the Khmer Rouge episode, it was not only the US that supported unsavory leaders and insurgencies in the 20th century. The Soviet Union and regional powers such as China were with us every step of the way and with no more scruples, and in many cases to more deleterious ends.
But you keep your US as uber villain cartoon caricature of the world. I only feel sorry for any who might not see through it so clearly as I do.
Ever see the pictures of settler children placing flowers on Baruch Goldstein's grave as part of the annual commemoration ceremonies?
Yes, I know who Goldstein was. As I recall the Arabs killed him (and rightly so) by smashing his skull with a fire extinguisher. Good for them. The primary difference is that nobody in Israel, to my knowledge, called for retaliation against the Palestinians for his killing, since, obviously, he had it coming.
I have never seen the pictures of the settler children you write of. So a small group of kids, probably closely connected to him, put flowers on his grave. That's a lot different than having a nationally televised show aimed at children that calls for mass murder of Palestinians as retaliation etc...
While nobody in the middle east has clean hands, one side is not the same as the other. The conflict is entirely one-sided and would go away overnight if the Palestinians would give up violence. Heck, if they went peaceful on us, the international community would stand up for them if the Israelis really did do anything bad.
The conflict WILL NOT END until the Palestinians reject unprovoked violence.
Majorajam, First of all I don't need history lessons from you. The only narratibe you apparently adhere to is that aggression in US foreign policy is quite acceptable, irrespective of the body count. What was Viet Nam? Aggression. Cambodia? Aggression. Iraq 2003? Aggression. Panama 1989? Aggression. Nicaragua 1980-1990? Let's go with the lesser chanrge of state terror. Satisfied? What is aggression? "The supreme international crime" according to the Nuermburg Proceedings.
What you've done in your reply is a classic bait and switch - by criticizing what was quite simply mass murder by the United States in southeast Asia, suddenly (by default) I am sympathizing with the communist Viet Cong. Isn't that what you are implying? Criticism of mass bombing by the US is tantamount to my being a communist sympathizer.
Some advice: get your head from out of your-you-know-waht and read the link I attached earlier. Here it is again:
http://www.flagrancy.net/chomsky.html
Fact: American support for the ouster of Sihanouk (viewed by the rural populace as the father of the country), in a coup by General Lon Nol and the subsequent invasion of Cambodia by U.S. troops in April 1970 prompted a backlash that strengthened support for the insurgent Khmer Rouge (KR) guerrillas.
--Phil Robertson, Foreign Policy in Focus, December 1997.
Fact: Marilyn Young (The Vietnam Wars, p. 283) describes American efforts in Cambodia during the final six weeks of bombing:
An increasingly powerful faction in the Cambodian insurgency, led by Pol Pot, distrusted Sihanouk and despised Hanoi, convinced Vietnam had bought peace for itself at the expense of Cambodia. The longer the bombing continued, the stronger Pol Pot's faction grew, until the space left for a more moderate leftist coalition disappeared entirely. A genteel Congress had expected the intensity of the bombing to descrease in its final weeks; instead, the number of sorties increased: "On Air Force maps of Cambodia thousands of square miles of densely populated, fertile areas are marked black from the inundation." As William Colby, head of the CIA, explained to Congress when asked to justify the ferocity of the bombing, "Cambodia was then the only game in town," and it was about to close down. By the end of 1973, 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people were refugees, although the United States, an AID report observed, "assumed no responsibility for the generation of refugees in Cambodia." Thus only $2.5 million had been made available for humanitarian aid while economic and military aid amounted to $1.85 billion. It cost another $7 billion to bomb the place."
The narrative here differs from your view by quite a wide margin. The US carpet bombing of Cambodia was certainly a factor that helped Pol Pot and the KR to power, if not indirectly. And, whether you like it or not, the US supported KR between 1979 and 1991; this should not even be in dispute. Moreover, who tacitly backed China when nit set out to 'punish' Viet Nam? Yup, the usual suspect.
I can understand why you don't want to globetrot in search of vicious US puppet regimes, the suppression of democracy, and the suppression of inidigenous nationalism by various US governments. The picture gets pretty ugly.
Majorajam,
I didn't see anyone here arguing that the Vietnamese or Chinese were somehow blameless with regard to Cambodia. Jeff has argued that the US were largely responsible for the rise of the Khmer Rouge, and frankly, I don't understand how anyone could dispute that. Were they primarily responsible? Was the US more responsible than, say, the Chinese, or the Vietnamese, or the Cambodians themselves? What about the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion, when the Khmer Rouge were reconstituted as an effective fighting force? Do you want to give the lion's share of the blame to the Thai, or the Chinese, the Americans, or the other ASEAN countries? As far as I'm concerned, those aren't particularly helpful questions: there is plenty of blame to go around, and determining whether the pot or the kettle was more black is pointless.
A couple of your remarks are dubious: the idea that the Vietnamese communists moved their bases deeper into Cambodia solely to help the Khmer Rouge strikes me as entirely unfounded. They moved their bases deeper into Cambodia when the American/SVN invasion chased them out of their bases along the border. Once Lon Nol made it clear that he intended to drive them out of Cambodia, they did the entirely predictable thing, and began waging full-scale war against the Khmer Republic.
I also cringe when you refer to "the non-genocide committing forces of Lon Nol." Compared to Pol Pot, I suppose Lon Nol was an angel... but I don't think the thousands of Vietnamese civilians murdered in Lon Nol's pogroms would gain much solace from that. I have a friend who stood on the banks of the Mekong in 1970 and watched bodies floating down the river. At first he tried to count them; once he was well into the hundreds, he realized that it was a futile task.
Cambodia is indeed fraught with "nuance, context and complexity," and a hell of a lot of it is very ugly indeed.
Bruce
"The conflict is entirely one-sided and would go away overnight if the Palestinians would give up violence. Heck, if they went peaceful on us, the international community would stand up for them if the Israelis really did do anything bad.
The conflict WILL NOT END until the Palestinians reject unprovoked violence."
This is just funny. Yes, ben, it's all one sided, just as you say. Funny that many Israelis, including former government officials like Shlomo Ben Ami (no fan of Arafat) don't see it that way.
I see the usual arguments about Chomsky are in full force. Jeff--as a fellow Chomsky fan, I find it's better just to admit that he didn't get Cambodia right in the late 70's. He knew there were large atrocities going on and said at the time he didn't know how large they were, but he clearly thought then they fell short of genocide, as shown by the fact that he was initially critical of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, changing his mind when the evidence clearly established that there had been a genocide. (A point I've never seen made by the virulent Chomsky-haters as opposed to someone who just tries to be critical of Chomsky when he's wrong and isn't interested in demonizing him.)
I certainly agree that Chomsky is worth reading on most subjects--but he was wrong about Cambodia in the late 70's.
Shlomo Ben-Ami on the conflict--
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/14/fmr_israeli_foreign_minister_shlo…
Another link to Shlomo Ben Ami--this is his recent review of Benny Morris's latest book.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080901fareviewessay87511/shlomo-ben-ami…
Bruce, your defense of Jeff is wanting. He specifically attributed the rise of the Khmer Rouge to US bombing which is a claim patently fabricated from whole cloth. That this was his claim is undeniable, as per the quote I outlined. This is what I have been disputing from post one, and the mindset of someone like a Chomsky that would find it persuasive simply by peculiarity of their own agenda. And that is what after mountains of bile strewn irrelevancies and invective he still has yet to address whilst ably demonstrating he's been working around too much mercury.
As to what is dubious, the NVA and VC saw Lon Nol as a threat and not because of the instigated pogroms against Vietnamese, or at least certainly not primarily, but because he was allied with the US in a global war between the West and Communism, (which, no kidding now, is how it felt to the players back then, irrespective of what we think of that in the here and now). In any case, one needs only look to North Vietnam's parallel behavior in Laos to get the symmetry. And NVA/VC aggression toward Lon Nol's government began as when he came to power and before the US and South Vietnamese invasion of eastern Cambodia, which was in part prompted by it. It furthermore continued after they had withdrawn, and that government's overthrow was a strategic if secondary objective of the government in Hanoi. Indeed, while only understandable in the context of ethnic rivalries, old grudges and internecine conflict between the world's communist factions, this was still an ideological struggle.
As to Lon Nol's barbarism, I have never discounted it, and in fact made several references to it. He was a tin pot right wing strong man and charlatan who's path to power depended heavily on popular backlash against the Vietnamese military presence in the country, as I mentioned before, and what that meant to who ate, and who didn't. So no one can wash their hands of him. That said, the US clearly backed him and there are unproven allegations that the US endorsed his coup which would make them all the more culpable for his acts. But that's the point I've been making, isn't it? He WAS indeed an angel compared the other guys (that incidentally Jeff would also like to believe came to power because of US bombing, in spite of the fact that they came to power only after the US stopped bombing). I even went so far as to write that: the US was not the only power that supported unsavory leaders and insurgencies in the 20th century, and that, if we allow for a relativist world, they weren't even the worst. How this was missed I don't know.
So yes, plenty of context, complexity and even facts there in historical events, which I'll continue to resolve to stand by notwithstanding the proliferation of demagogues like Jeff on the left and right.
Actually Jeff, I don't want to globe trot because your doing so is a blatant smokescreen. Suharto? What would you say if I pointed out that South Korea is prosperous today because of "US aggression"? Would you argue with me, because, no doubt this would be a mind blowing thing to accept in spite of its indisputability, or might you think I was floating a red herring?
Speaking of which, you're now blaming the Chinese invasion of Vietnam on the US. I wondered how long it would take before we could make the good guys bad actions also the US fault. It looks like two posts will do er. Which brings me to the Chomsky link- like this is going to open my eyes because I've never seen anyone shovel that manure before. You of all people Jeff should know what happens when someone with a severe case of ideological axe to grind sets out to find facts that dovetail with his or her worldview. It doesn't end well.
As for my 'bait and switch' I've done no such thing. I am disputing a patently false statement you've made and pointing to the fact that there are other people out there who's decisions have consequences outside the CIA and White House. I am furthermore throwing out the communist government of Ho Chi Minh as an example. And you will have to reveal the extent of your sympathies for these actors because I am not making the argument that Human Rights Watch having all the facts would have condemned the Vietnamese and not the Americans. I am and have been explicitly making a relativist argument, because this is the real world, and relative judgments matter too, not least because those are the metrics most people evaluate in their decision making 10 times a day.
Anyway, I should have to correct what is some horribly revised history on Cambodia before I go. The was no moderate left in Sihanouk's government. Sihanouk was a Chinese client who the Khmer Rouge used to gain favor with their countrymen. He sold his name to their militancy at the behest of the Chinese (from Beijing no less), abetted by his anger at having been betrayed by Lon Nol. He and his loyalists were figureheads anathema to the KR, who never had any real power within that movement and who were all gradually eliminated. It is difficult for me to contemplate the degree of credulity required not to accept that and to somehow believe that the KR wouldn't have dominated Democratic Kampuchea short of US bombing, but so far you have shown yourself extraordinarily capable in that regard, so I won't hold my breath.
PS Bruce, I don't know how I missed this, but you said Once Lon Nol made it clear that he intended to drive them out of Cambodia, they did the entirely predictable thing, and began waging full-scale war against the Khmer Republic. Are you suggesting that Lon Nol's big provocation was determining to throw a foreign army that was leeching off its people out of its soverign territory? Talk about dubious.
Majorajam,
I'm not sure if you are talking about Sihanouk before the coup, or after; he was not by any stretch of the imagination "far left." Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be saying that if there had been no coup, and Sihanouk had remained in power, the Khmer Rouge would have still have taken control of Cambodia and the genocide still would have taken place. Counterfactuals are always open to question, but that one seems totally ridiculous.
Re your question: "Are you suggesting that Lon Nol's big provocation was determining to throw a foreign army that was leeching off its people out of its soverign territory?" Yes, that is what I am saying. (Except for the bit about "leeching off its people"; I don't see how Vietnamese bases in the middle of the jungle could be construed as "leeching" off of the Cambodian people.)
Please understand: I'm not a pacifist. Sometimes war is called for. But war is only a good option if you can win. Cambodia would have been far better off if Lon Nol had pursued the same policy as Sihanouk. What, exactly, do you think Cambodia gained by going to war with a vastly superior enemy?
Lon Nol had every right to insist that the Vietnamese communists leave. Similarly, if a thief puts a gun to my head and asks for my wallet, I would have every right to tell him no. But I'd be a fool to do so.
Bruce, I was referring to Sihanouk's subsequent embrace of the Khmer Rouge, and doing so in the context of Jeff's assertion that US bombing after he was deposed drove the Sihanouk government not quite in exile into the arms of Pol Pot. That's another one of the historical rewrites he's run up the flag pole.
I am aware that Sihanouk was not far left, at least until he embraced the far left. I agree that Lon Nol was a disaster for Cambodia, that he was a charlatan, and a tin pot right wing strongman. My point is that Lon Nol didn't just pop a coup from his prior position as street vendor. He was elevated to his position of prime minister largely by consequence of Sihanouk's ineffectualness at to do anything about the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia, and the very real antagonisms that it was stirring, e.g. the fact that they were indeed usurping sparse Cambodian rice to feed their vast army, most of which is not grown in Phnom Penn, and that the KR were basing their insurgency in Vietnamese occupied areas, and in collaboration with them. Sihanouk was, in fact, out of the country lobbying the Russians and Chinese to get their clients to better behave when he was deposed. I don't think that was a capricious move on his part.
Sihanouk was the center that couldn't hold in a time of war and attendant human degradation. The story of the Vietnam War and its ancillary conflicts and mass murders is a tale of just how dreadful and unpredictable war is once unleashed, and how quickly it can spiral out of control. But circling back to the original point, does it not seem curious to you that Jeff would claim the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia, and by consequence was able to commit the Cambodian genocide, "only" because of a country that was actively fighting it, rather than on a country that was its biggest benefactor (China) or the country that fought alongside it (the government in Hanoi)? Maybe that's just me, but I find that peculiar.
It's not my intention to defend Jeff, since he's perfectly capable of defending himself. Nonetheless, I think you've misinterpreted that "only" remark: you seem to think he meant that the US was exclusively to blame for the Khmer Rouge victory. I think he meant that US involvement was essential to a Khmer Rouge victory. Those are two very different things.
A similar example: I can only watch Full Metal Alchemist if my kids aren't watching Spongebob Squarepants. However, that doesn't mean that Spongebob is the only thing that determines whether or not I can watch FMA. After all, my wife might be singing karaoke. :-)
She has a beautiful voice, for what it's worth, but I dunno if I really need to hear another song about someone's lost love from Battambang.
cheers,
Bruce
Fair enough Bruce. That interpretation is far better supported by the facts, though definitely debatable. Certainly, the US was culpable for the existence of civil war inside Cambodia by its culpability for civil war in Vietnam, which was legion. But it's a much different thing to postulate that Nixon's decision to bomb and invade were the essential ingredients, that the war in Vietnam itself was insufficient.
Of course, it's ultimately impossible to definitively evaluate such a counterfactual, but I don't think the evidence is favorable. Was there going to be a civil war in Cambodia with or without Nixon's escalation? No doubt. Would Sihanouk still have been deposed by Lon Nol? Perhaps not, though it is not known for sure whether the US was responsible for that. Would that have mattered? Doubtful at best. All the evidence is that communist forces were going to be victorious in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam by the wishes of their benefactors in Moscow and Beijing, and their military capability to do so. It is pretty difficult to believe that diplomatic pressure brought to bear by a pacifist Cambodian government and its allies would've staved off that conclusion. Would the communist victors have been the Khmer Rouge, and the precise Khmer Rouge as they materialized in the real world? On the former almost assuredly- the KR and the monarchy wasn't exactly a natural fit. On the latter impossible to know. Certainly the US escalation inflamed the situation, and accelerated the descent into barbarism there, but these were after all the Khmer Rouge. They were very unlikely to've been benevolent dictators.
So, I'm not persuaded personally, but I am happy to acknowledge at least that's it's a point on which reasonable people can disagree.
"Certainly the US escalation inflamed the situation, and accelerated the descent into barbarism there, but these were after all the Khmer Rouge. They were very unlikely to've been benevolent dictators"
The argument I've seen from Ben Kiernan among others is not that the Khmer Rouge became brutal because of US bombing, but that US bombing acted as a recruiting tool for the Khmer Rouge.
Donald, you are arguing the past. I am talking about the present and the future. I do not know much about Israeli settlers, but it does seem that mainstream Israelis are decent people, that is, the vast majority of Israelis. They do not teach their children to hate, and they do not create vile television programs with which to indoctrinate their children. Neither do they send their children on suicide missions to INTENTIONALLY kill pregnant women, children and anyone else in their way.
The conflict is ALMOST entirely one-sided at this moment in history. The conflict will not go away until the Palestinians renounce violence. This worked for King in the United States and for Ghandi. Both of whom had legitimate grievances against their oppressors, at least to the degree that the Palestinians have them against the Israelis. Ghandi did not teach hate. King did not teach hate. Look at the results.
"I have never seen the pictures of the settler children you write of. So a small group of kids, probably closely connected to him, put flowers on his grave. That's a lot different than having a nationally televised show aimed at children that calls for mass murder of Palestinians as retaliation etc..."
No, thousands of heavily-armed settlers march through the city where the families of his victims still live proclaiming him a hero and a martyr of the Jewish people.
"The conflict is entirely one-sided and would go away overnight if the Palestinians would give up violence. '
This is, to put it simply, horseshit.
Every year more Palestinians are killed by West Bank settlers alone than all Israelis who are killed by Palestinians.
No settler has ever been charged with murder.
The militant wing of West Bank settlers, quite simply, won't stop until the West Bank is annexed to Israel and the Palestinians are either killed or expelled.
Even you have probably heard about the illegal settlements they've set up all over the west bank, what you probably haven't heard of is their general shoot on sight policy at those illegal settlements.
"... the vast majority of Israelis. They do not teach their children to hate, and they do not create vile television programs with which to indoctrinate their children. Neither do they send their children on suicide missions to INTENTIONALLY kill pregnant women, children and anyone else in their way."
And how many Israelis do you know Ben?
I'll take it you'ce chosen to ignore, for example, the story of the teen-aged Gaza settler who was filmed by Israeli TV repeatedly smashing in the head of a Palestinian who was lying unconscious on the ground with a rock so large it took him two hands to lift it.
He was actually tried - a very rare event and probably only because he was caught on camera - acquitted of attempted murder, convicted of assault and sentenced to time served.
Then there was the IDF officer who shot a six year old Palestinian girl in what his own men claimed was unprovoked murder. I believe he was tried by a military court and acquitted.
Then there was the case widely reported in the Israeli media where hundreds of Israeli border guards were routinely robbing and beating Palestinians at check-points on a daily basis.
Again, the only reason it got any coverage was because an Israeli TV channel used hidden cameras to film it.
Funny how the western media never picked up on the story.
"This worked for King in the United States and for Ghandi. Both of whom had legitimate grievances against their oppressors, at least to the degree that the Palestinians have them against the Israelis. Ghandi did not teach hate. King did not teach hate. Look at the results."
It's always cute when warhawks demand that their opponents adopt pacifism.
Donald, both Bruce and Jeff have made that point. It's one that I reject the significance of. There was copious quantities of violence creating unhappy Cambodians of dead relations on both sides of the civil war. Far more encouraging to their recruiting effort would've been the fact that they were on the stronger side and about to come in for the big win (and the alliance with King Sihanouk no doubt helped too). That matters. People are not stupid- and people in war zones far less so. They pick winners because it is the best way, in many cases the only way, to survive when the world about you turns into a boiling cauldron of death.
The critical data point is understanding that communist victories were worked toward and achieved in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Each mattered considerably to China and Russia looking to kick the United States out of any foothold in South East Asia. And I don't think it's remotely legitimate to argue that Cambodia wouldn't have fallen had its central government remained more neutral vis a vis the PAVN presence in their country, nor do I think that half-measures would've placated the Chinese, Vietnamese or the Khmer Rouge for that matter, who's fanatical desire it was for power and to overhaul the entirety of Cambodian society. It would take something of a pretty compelling story to suggest otherwise.
As I see it, the recruiting angle is a significantly less persuasive for anyone pushing the line of US culpability in the rise of the Khmer Rouge by way of Nixon's bombing. However, because they glow in the dark, no one will touch any line of inquiry that could be seen as having overtones of excuse making for them. And it may be the case that I'm 180 degrees wrong too- it wouldn't be the first time. But my reading of history makes me think that coincidence of genocide and gruesome wars is not coincidence, and my reading of this history is that this war would've been far shorter and less ghastly had the US never attempted to keep the Cambodian Republic afloat. Presumably though, the US was unaware of any preordained outcome before they waded in.
Ian Gould:
> It's always cute when warhawks demand that their opponents adopt pacifism.
The tenor of the whole conflict could've been different if the Palestinians had accepted the Israelis' offer to appear at town hall meetings.
Jeff Harvey writes:
Yes, on the part of the North Vietnamese, using both military force and terrorism. Some would assign the former to the NVA and the latter to the Viet Cong, but I'd call it terrorism to haul an old village chief and his family outside and make the whole village look as the chief et al. were tortured to death. I mean, the idea was certainly to create a climate of terror.
Funny how the western media never picked up on the story.
Right, because they're too busy filming total BS. Given the coverage of the obviously faked al-Dura event in MSM, why weren't these other incidents so widely reported? The media is no friend of Israel so I honestly do not believe you. Give me some links, please, Ian.
"But my reading of history makes me think that coincidence of genocide and gruesome wars is not coincidence, and my reading of this history is that this war would've been far shorter and less ghastly had the US never attempted to keep the Cambodian Republic afloat. Presumably though, the US was unaware of any preordained outcome before they waded in."
First, I apologize for making a point already made--sometimes I read threads closely, but in this case I'm just skimming. I think I agree with what you say in the quote above, which confuses me a bit--my skimming must have given me the wrong impression.
As for the I/P debate--Ben, if you have any real interest in learning about atrocities committed by the Israelis and not just the Palestinians you'd already know about them, especially since we've all had this argument before and you've had plenty of time to go to libraries and bookstores or just google things. Still, maybe you've been busy, so here's a
place you can visit--
http://www.btselem.org/English/
That, plus the links I provided above to articles or statements by Shlomo Ben Ami, an Oxford-trained Israeli historian who has participated in peace talks and written a history of the conflict ought to be enough to make you rethink your position.
As for terror in Vietnam, it was obviously used on both sides--
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/turse
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/turse_web
Majorajam--
On the theory that US bombing recruited for the Khmer Rouge, Kiernan does have some anecdotal evidence where villages were destroyed by the bombing and some of the survivors then chose to join the Khmer Rouge, though you probably know this already.
http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2420
http://www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html
Thanks Donald. I have been busy and I do not take sides (as in I don't care who 'wins') in that conflict because I have no interest except in seeing peace there. I will have a look at that link this weekend.
Here's one of the headlines from that link:
On 4 Oct. '08, Border Police officer Tomer Avraham killed Iyad Abu-Ra'iyeh, who was found in Tel Aviv without a permit, after severely beating him. Tel Aviv District Court judge Oded Mudrik sentenced Avraham to one year imprisonment for manslaughter, referring to the crime as "a hapless, lethal act incidental to military or police activity."
This illustrates part of the difference in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: when was the last time the Palestinians subjected any Palestinian to any sort of justice/punishment for crimes against Israelis? Maybe I'm wrong, but my guess would be that this has never happened.
Donald, after initial perusal of the btselem website I am not impressed, especially when considering such things are the Pallywood shenanigans. Seems to consist mostly of "testimonies" that are difficult to believe and strange seeming news reports.
For example, in this report the Israeli defendant "cocked" his M16 rifle before supposedly unintentionally firing it at the victim (google search turned up different account that indicated the rifle was an M16). How exactly do you "cock" an M16? You cock a pistol by pulling back on the hammer with your thumb, which makes sense if the pistol already has a round in the chamber. An M16/M4 whatever has no such mechanism. There is no way to "cock" an M16. Is this simple media ignorance, or was it a made-up story that includes an incorrect or impossible description of events?
An uncocked M16 does not have a round in the chamber and cannot fire. Why would these conscript policeman carry an un-ready rifle in the first place when confronting suspects? It makes no sense. Further, does corroberating evidence exist for any of these reports or testimonials?
"cocking" a rifle by pulling the charging handle may be used as a visible and accustic warning, before other measures are taken.
it could be a simple error, by a soldier under stress as well.
i think you are making too much out of it.
ps: i wonder, how ben would think about "decent people" who drove him from his land twice....
Ben, if I understand you correctly you're dismissing the value of the B'Tselem website because you found a possible inaccuracy in one of the reports. Which is odd, because the website is quoting an Israeli judge's verdict. Perhaps the judge was using inaccurate terminology. Or maybe you're saying that the website simply invented the quote.
B'Tselem is composed of Israelis and Palestinians interested in a peaceful solution who collect evidence of atrocities and other misdeeds committed by both sides--it's exactly the sort of group I would expect people interested in a peaceful solution would support and the picture they paint is consistent with what you can find in numerous other sources, both American and Israeli. But if you think there's a conspiracy to make up Israeli atrocities, and I gather some Israeli "supporters" think that, then you may be inclined to filter out any evidence that goes against your preconceptions.
Ben, if I understand you correctly you're dismissing the value of the B'Tselem website...
I did not dismiss it, I was only calling in to question the accuracy and honesty of the "testimonials" and reports. I do not see any links or backup information there, so I have to take their word that it is correct. I am hesitant to do so. Especially given the history of Pallywood and al-Dura, etc.
More evidence on how the US bombing of Cambodia - more than 2.7 million tons of it - which led an enraged population to support the Khmer Rouge:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/2582
In particular: "The Cambodian bombing campaign had two unintended side effects that ultimately combined to produce the very domino effect that the Vietnam War was supposed to prevent. First, the bombing forced the Vietnamese Communists deeper and deeper into Cambodia, bringing them into greater contact with Khmer Rouge insurgents. Second, the bombs drove ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, a group that seemed initially to have slim prospects of revolutionary success. Pol Pot himself described the Khmer Rouge during that period as "fewer than five thousand poorly armed guerrillas . . . scattered across the Cambodian landscape, uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty, and leaders."... and,
"Years after the war ended, journalist Bruce Palling asked Chhit Do, a former Khmer Rouge officer, if his forces had used the bombing as anti-American propaganda. Chhit replied:
"Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched . . . . The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on co-operating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them. . . . Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge".
Enuff said. A co-author of this article, Ben Kiernan, is a professor of history at Yale University and the author of 'How Pol Pot Came to Power' and 'The Pol Pot Regime'.
Barton, gimme a break. The aim of the 1954 Geneva conference was the eventual unification of North and South Viet Nam. The US knew that a combined vote would lead to Hoh Chi Minh forming the government, hence why they ultimately refused to acknowledge the 1954 conference. Moreover, most of the Sotuh Viet Nam's population didn't support the US, hence why it was so heavily bombed in the initial stages. Later, when the US began carpet bombing northern Laos and Cambodia, it was clear they'd lost the propaganda war. What is remarkable is how much some peoplke defend the indefensible. The US Indochinese wars were clear acts of aggression of the part of the US. Millions dead; countries almost obliterated.
Donald, beware the normative history of emotive subjects with positive applications to current events. Notwithstanding, I don't discount that American bombing, its offensive, and civilian casualties caused by the AVRN or government of Lon Nol had positive impacts on recruiting for the Khmer Rouge. My doubts apply to the lack of evidence that those civilian casualties were decisive factors in the Khmer Rouge's recruiting effort, let alone their broader war effort. And even if you accept that American provocation was the largest motivating factor for growing the ranks of the Khmer Rouge, which I don't, (the monetary and military support from foreign benefactors, principally China, alliance of convenience with Sihanouk, and sponsorship by the most powerful military organization on the ground in Cambodia were all considerably important as well), you still have to show that whatever difference it made was determinative of the war effort. Just because A therefore B, does not mean A therefore C.
As regards A therefore C- i.e. American bombing therefore KR Victory via its effects on recruitment- I should dredge up the obvious here that the monomaniacal focus on American violence is a surefire tell, in poker speak, of the anti-American lemmings in the educational establishment. I notice that we don't hear much about errant shelling nor terrorization of villages nor usurpation of property and food by the Khmer Rouge and NVA. Perhaps that's because it didn't happen? Perhaps, but how then to explain why the Republic of Cambodia's own recruitment efforts yielded such a bumper crop- 250,000 I think it was, at its peak, against 50 or 60 thousand Khmer Rouge? I guess American bombs were falling on them too only first Nixon had the planes and bombs dressed up to look like Mao Zedong.
Irrespective of whether the NVA and Khmer Rouge were saints, and the massive ranks of the ROC racists, there is, indeed, all manner of data here to suggest that Cambodia was destined to be a communist state. And in that, they were very unlikely to be, as the wild-eyed Jeffs of this world pawn off as reasonable, the first communist monarchy. Not the least of these were the fact that Vietnam was by the late 60's if not before, a serious regional military power due both to the extensive experience of its armies and the swelling of its coffers by Soviet and to a lesser extent Chinese benefactors. It is furthermore the case that they had no qualms in projecting their military power regionally, (see for example Hanoi's control of the entirety of Indochina).
And I don't believe for one second that the purpose of the PAVN's deployments deeper inside of Cambodia was in response to the US/South Vietnamese incursion. Immediately following Lon Nol's coup, they threw their considerable weight behind the Khmer Rouge's effort overthrow him, despite the fact that the KR were not fond of the Vietnamese nor were their benefactors the Chinese. In March of 1970, a month before the US/ARVN invasion, the NVA overran a number of provinces in northeastern Cambodia. The act was a classic in the genre of preemptive aggression. In any case, it was no response to US actions. The same academics asserting that NVA/VC activities in support of the KR were in response to US aggression in Cambodia are those who would tell you that the VC & NVA had no hard infrastructure or command and control in the east of that country. What I don't get, is why then why did they see it necessary to occupy a third of the country? And why did they do so even after the US withdrew from its offensive?
I think, after all of these posts, I've said all that I have to say. Some people, like Jeff and Noam C and the battalions of bile-filled buffoons on the right, are just too invested in cartoon caricatures of the world to think independently. I don't recall whether I read it in a column of his or saw an interview, but Chomsky's reaction to Mearsheimer & Walt's 'Israel Lobby' was priceless in this regard. Of course, he was bound to be sympathetic to it, but he mainly rejected the thesis in the end because he couldn't account for two distinctly independent uber villains dictating the same US government behavior (and of course there's the Bonesmen who own the oil companies to account for too). It was a real conundrum for ol Noam, like watching one of those 70's sci-fi tv series robots whirring and flailing about, "Does not compute! Does not compute!": how to recognize two prima facie true things in disagreement with one another? And that's the same reaction I'd expect to get from Jeff if someone threw out the Korean War for discussion. It's a testament to the limitations of human understanding at the crossroads of emotion and chaos.
For the record, I also think that Barton is wrong both in tone and substance, and for some of the same reasons Jeff is. And now back to the day job.
When Majorajam writes, "anti-American lemmings in the educational establishment", the argument is lost. End of story. FYI M, this has nothing to do with 'anti-Americanism', which is such a convenient straw man to dredge up, but accountability. Most importantly, your posts reek of self-righteous hypocrisy, claiming that anyone who dares cite examples of horrific US foregin policy - and there are legions of them - is "anti-American".
Basically, with one hollow swipe at many intellectuals who dare challenge the 'official record', and by making frankly absurd remarks like, "It's a testament to the limitations of human understanding at the crossroads of emotion and chaos", you reveal your hand. Historians like Ben Kiernan are summarily dismissed with your hollow pen. In effect, M. you've reached the depths when you have to resort to the 'anti-American' cherry to describe academics who tend to discagree with your world view. Is game, set and match.
I'd like to ask you where you feel you rank on the global hierarchy of intellectuals - just wondrin'. Given that Chomsky comes out on top by a country mile, I wonder where you rank yourself?
As far as Cambodia is concerned, you'll have to do better than to dismiss pieces like that by Professor Kiernan as another example of how left wing intelelctuals have infiltrated academia. Let's get something straight: by 1975 Cambodia was perhaps the most bombed country on Earth, helped in no small part by the 115,000 sites targeted in 231,00 U.S. bombing sorties flown over Cambodia between 1965 and 75, that dropped 2.75 million tons of munitions. What effect did this have on the populace, M? How many perished under this onslaught, or is this just a footnote in your personal log? How did this affect recruitment fot the KR? It was mass murder, for sure, Phase I that was supe3rceded by Phase II under Pol Pot. Sure, PP may have come to power eventually, but there is little doubt that the mass US bombardment that began under Johnson, but was escalated by Nixon, played a significant role.
As far as conundrums go, your "70's sci-fi tv series robots whirring and flailing about, 'Does not compute! Does not compute!' appear to reflect a lot of your own rambling posts. Little substance. Lots or rhetoric. Most importantly, denial. Bags of it.
Now, back to the day job.