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The Parallels of the S&P Downgrade and Libya

Last Friday, the ratings agency Standard and Poors (S&P), in an odd episode of semi-sanity, decided to stand firm against the United States government and downgrade American debt from the golden AAA to AA+. The empire, being caught naked yet again, went into a fit of fury. President Obama dismissed the downgrade, not considering it an indictment of America’s economic condition. Rather, he said the downgrade occurred “because after witnessing a month of wrangling over raising the debt ceiling, they [S&P] doubted our political system’s ability to act.” Tax cheat Tim Geithner blasted S&P’s “really horrible judgment” and “lack of knowledge.” And former economic adviser to Obama, Christina Romer, spoke the truth saying that the US is “pretty darn fucked.”

While the state of America’s finances is certainly not worthy of even a AA+ credit rating, all of America was woken up. There is something terribly, terribly wrong with the USS America and if reforms are not instituted quickly, the ship will quickly sink to banana republic status. But despite the downgrade which could have been much, much worse, America’s politburo had a conniption. Why?

S&P dared to go where no credit rating agency has gone before. It defied the US government. Because of this audacity, the cozy relationship between S&P and D.C. all but vanished. Besides the toothless Levin and Coburn Senate report that effectively resulted in a matriarchal chastising of Goldman Sachs and the ratings agencies, and was published before the downgrade, not much was said:

It was not in the short term economic interest of either Moody’s or S&P, however, to provide accurate credit ratings for high risk RMBS and CDO securities, because doing so would have hurt their own revenues. Instead, the credit rating agencies’ profits became increasingly reliant on the fees generated by issuing a large volume of structured finance ratings.

Of course the SEC and other comical regulatory bodies “missed” these rampant abuses and frauds in the lead up to the housing bubble; it allowed for the show to go on. The gravy train was going to keep on chugging until it ran out of fuel. The American economy was fine and dandy, until the day of reckoning came. However, even in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the American economy, the relationship of convenience was maintained. The quid pro quo lived on: rating agencies were free to keep the American people and investors under the illusion that everything was AAA-OK as long as that meant the people stayed off the streets. The Oracle of Omaha and Whore of Wallshington St., Warren Buffett, absolved the rating agencies:

I am much more inclined to come down hard on the CEOs of institutions that caused the United States Government to come in and necessarily bolster them than I am on somebody that made a mistake that 300 million other Americans made.

The ancient Oracle truly outdid himself this time. Holding people accountable for failing to do their job or doing it poorly? Forget about it!

Such sleazy alliances of convenience permeate American foreign policy. Libya is perhaps the most glaring example of the new Millenium. The Gulf of Sidra incident and the Lockerbie bombing ended all hopes of normalized relations between America and Libya. Then, in December of 2003, Libya, in hopes of not being the next Iraq, announced that it would cease and destroy all weapons programs that the international community deemed unacceptable. The Great Resistor of Imperialism in the Maghreb folded without much of a fight. By May of 2006, an American embassy in Libya was opened and Libya lost its designation of state sponsor of terrorism. Moammar Gaddafi even went to far as to helping the United States fight the “War on Terror.”

But then the Arab spring came. Libyans from all walks of life rose up against dictator Moammar Gaddafi. Just like Syria’s Assad, Egypt’s Mubarak, and Bahrain’s King Khalifa, this thug acted brutally, repressing the people’s peaceful calls for social, political, and economic reform. America, desperate to actually look like they stood for human rights, decided to act. Little did Washington know, much of the world watched as America turned a blind eye to brutal repression in Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, all allies of the United States. NATO and the US, however, had to do something about pesky Moammar Gaddafi. They finally got their chance with Operation Odyssey Dawn.

Civilians, Gaddafi loyalists, and rebels alike were bombed to bits by NATO and US planes in hopes of regime change. The Libyan Transnational Council was quickly recognized as the rightful representatives of the Libyan people. The mission was pretty much complete, although Gaddafi still remains at large.

While S&P remains in business, their offices are being raided in Italy. Perhaps the same fate awaits S&P’s Washington bureau. Only time will tell. One thing is for certain, however. Moody’s will continue to be Washington’s right hand man until they, too, bite the hand that feeds.

Egyptians Have the Audacity to Harbor a Grudge

AP:

The Obama administration is expressing concern about what it says is a tide of anti-Americanism in Egypt.

The State Department says criticism of U.S. aid and motives as the country transitions to democracy are inaccurate and unfair.

Oh, really? So it’d be inaccurate to say that the U.S. propped up the Mubarak dictatorship for decades, receiving the most economic and military aid of any other state besides Israel? Is it “inaccurate” or “unfair” to resent U.S. leadership for condoning the Mubarak regime’s torture, which was systematic? Is it out of line for Egyptians to be soured at the fact that the crimes for which Mubarak is now facing criminal trial were committed with U.S. diplomatic support, U.S. money, and U.S. weapons? And I guess Egyptians are just being overly sensitive about the ongoing U.S. support for the transitional military council which has been continuing many Mubarak-style crimes and hindering the path to democracy?

If any of the above had been done to Americans from an outside power, you can bet we’d be more than peeved. In Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo, he said “No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by another.” I suppose he meant that only to apply to The Chosen People of America.

The Obviously False Objections to Palestinian Statehood at U.N.

Harry Siegman has a brilliant takedown at the National Interest of U.S.-Israeli objections to a September bid for Palestinian statehood at the U.N. I wrote a bit about the false arguments against Palestinian statehood last month. As I did, Siegman explodes the rationale that the U.N. is not the right venue for unilateral bids for state recognition. Not only is that, in part, explicitly the purpose of the U.N. – to help end colonialism and give rise to independence for indigenous nationalist movements – but it is also precisely the route taken to secure Israeli statehood. So either the U.S. and Israel admit that different rules apply to them than apply to the rest of the world, or they drop this phony argument.

But Siegman astutely goes much further. First, there is the falsehood that a unilateral attempt to get U.N. recognition represents a stubborn abandonment of the so-called “peace process.” This falls flat on its face. As I’ve highlighted before, the peace process is futile and the deck is inherently stacked against Palestinians. As Siegman writes, “So far, this ‘peace process’ has enabled the transfer of over half a million Jews from Israel into Palestinian territory and East Jerusalem, but not one square inch of Palestinian sovereignty.”

And then, more fundamentally:

The United States and Israel have warned Palestinians to abandon their UN initiative on prudential grounds as well, for even if they were to succeed in obtaining UN recognition of their right to statehood in the Occupied Territories, nothing would change on the ground, for Israel’s government would be as indifferent to such a UN declaration as it has been to countless other UN directives. Indeed, Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has threatened that in those circumstances Israel would feel free to annex far more West Bank territory than it already has.

But if were true that UN action would have no effect whatever in advancing the Palestinian cause, except perhaps to spur an even greater Israeli land grab, why is Israel engaged in such frantic efforts to prevent a UN showdown? Indeed, why does it not welcome the Palestinian initiative?

The answer is that what the Netanyahu/Lieberman government fears most is an international confirmation that the 1967 border is the point of reference for Israeli Palestinian territorial negotiations, for despite Prime Minister Netanyahu’s alleged acceptance of a two-state solution, he remains as committed to the retention of most if not all of the West Bank as are most other members of his government, most of whom belong to the “Whole Land of Israel Caucus” in Israel’s Knesset. (Imagine what would have been the U.S. reaction to a Palestinian parliamentary caucus for the retention of the “Whole Land of Palestine.”)

And there we have it. The fundamental objection to Palestine seeking statehood at the U.N. is that it is actually constructive for Palestinians to do so. Israel has had virtually full reign to gradually encroach upon Palestinian sovereignty for decades, but a U.N. recognition of the 1967 borders seriously limits Israel’s ability to ignore that basic assumption of this conflict. Hopefully, they’ll only be able to keep it up for another month or so.

HuffPo Sad Hackers Don’t Want to Work for Government

This Huffington Post article on the government seeking to recruit hackers into its ranks to “defend [the] nation in cyberspace” — their title — has a creepy, banally approving tone. In it, we see the US government wants to spark another “Manhattan Project”-style initiative — again, their words — which makes one wince in blinding light of the recent anniversary of the nuking of Nagasaki.

America’s bumbling spies also seek to attract adoring loyal employees them when they’re young — just like North Korea does, the article points out unironically.

The article also seems to lament that most hackers naturally distrust the government, what with jailing them all the time and the fact that they tend to be arrested anyway because they have attacked the state for some other reason related to justice.

Pentagon Claims to Kill Very Man Who Shot Chinook

CNN-watching pays off every day. Every day there is something so utterly insane and unbelievable about the war or the economy that I can’t help but stare in disbelief at the screen, or just laugh my ass off. This morning, it was that second thing.

Anchor Don Lemon cut into his newsreading timeline to announce that the Pentagon was saying that it had killed the man who shot down that Chinook on Saturday in Afghanistan.

Yes, the VERY man holding the grenade launcher, whose projectile struck the chopper and took it down. Forgive them for at first not knowing what exactly was used to take it down. Forget that the presence of this anonymous man wasn’t even known by the very elite units that were killed in the crash. We’re supposed to believe that the same people who couldn’t find Osama bin Laden for ten years, a man whose identity, among many other facts, we knew inside and out, somehow found some rag-clothed fighter with a shoulder-fired thing and successfully KILLED HIM? And can say so with such certainty they could report it to news agencies?

Yes, ok.

Government is a fiction in so many ways, not least of all in how it literally just spins utter lies for the consumption of its useful rubes. Just think that for each of us who raised an eyebrow in disbelief — or total bemusement that they could think anyone would believe such a good-vs-evil fairytale so obviously crafted for the consumption of above rubes — there are 10 others going “America! F*ck Yeah!”

Update: More clarification comes this afternoon, with the Pentagon claiming that “intelligence gained on the ground” helped them find and kill the specific Taliban fighters. This is in a valley that was just shown to LOATHE the occupation more than the Taliban. And so, what, JSOC troops just sauntered around kissing the hands of the tribal leaders who hate their guts? And the locals just helpfully pointed in the direction of the hiding place of this shooter, whom they also witnessed actually shoot the Chinook down? Uh-huh.

Al-Qaeda and Affiliates Remain Determined to Bleed America Dry

One of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s goals was to destroy America economically by waging a “War of a thousand cuts.” The goal was to cause as much economic pain as was possible. No attack better exemplified this than the 9/11 attacks which struck right at the heart of New York City, the financial capital of the world. Not only was the attack symbolic, but the markets tanked, exacerbating the recession that plagued America. Additionally, the US began to engage in a global effort to fight terrorism, much like a bull in a China shop. Afghanistan, initially fought to find those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, slowly morphed into a nation building effort in a fruitless attempt to make the country hostile to al-Qaeda and a beacon of democracy. Iraq was invaded because terrorists, along with former US ally Saddam Hussein, were said to be the proud owners of Weapons of Mass Destruction that posed an existential threat to the American way of life (of course, the WMD’s never came to fruition). Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia also quickly became theaters in America’s never ending war on terrorism.

The American “anti-terrorism” apparatus became gargantuan with its tentacles extending to every state and country in the world. Dana Priest and William Arkin, in their much underreported Top Secret America report for the Washington Post, said of Uncle Sam’s KGB:

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

Who would’ve thought that in an age where everything is quantifiable and downloadable, not even the almighty federal government could keep track of this burgeoning monster. Perhaps more dizzying and enraging are the cold hard facts that they present:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

America quickly turned into a police state with airports becoming the symbol of the horribly, anti-American War on Terror. Freedom was promptly traded away for security. Human dignity and privacy went to the wayside as TSA agents were free to touch and harass grandmothers, cancer patients, and 3 year old girls. The immense cost is probably incalculable, although some have tried. What cannot be denied is that Osama bin Laden’s strategy has worked. America traded its values for a false sense of security, and by doing so, sold their souls and economic futures away.

In a new development in the war in Iraq, the Islamic state in Iraq, is yet again trying to bleed America to death both physically and economically. As America will remain in Iraq well past the 2011 non-deadline, ISIQ is asking for former members to come back and reengage the Shi’ite government. The statement read,

“As for you, satanic Awakenings, we strive to guide you more than you strive to kill us. If you come to us in repentance, we will accept your repentance even if you killed a million people.”

“Do not stand in the way between us and the (Shi’ites) … We will not get bored or tired; rather, we will continue until the Day of Judgment, and we will kill from amongst you only those who we see will never return.”

It almost sounds as if ISIQ is desperate and in need of numbers, but their threats ought to be taken seriously. ISIQ has proven themselves to be more than capable of launching deadly assaults against Iraqi and American officials and government forces. Coupled with the threat, which may or may not be a bluff, from Moqtada al-Sadr to attack American “hard targets” if the United States does not withdraw by the end of 2011, a renewed assault on American targets is becoming a much more real possibility.

America remains vulnerable to being dragged into yet another quagmire in Iraq. If Obama does not have the resolve to say enough is enough, the blood and money will continue to flow, and al-Qaeda will continue to celebrate despite the death of its leader.