A Fine Mess

Stan Laural on occasion would proclaim “Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into, Ollie.” Well we are on a whole new level of ‘fine messes.’ It involves a confluence of two globalized processes that are maliciously feeding off of each other bringing ever day closer to the point of no return. Capitalism, our preferred mode of production and distribution is seriously malfunctioning. And at the same time we face the looming catastrophe of global climate change with unknown consequences. These two interlocking crisis’s besiege and confuse us and lead many into a deadly combination of denial and toward embracing reactionary political and cultural ideologies. Simplistic dogmas in both religion and economics are becoming increasingly appealing to masses of the poorly educated and semi-literate. Both in the US and in the Muslim world, our quasi-adversary, religio-political demagogues allied with opportunistic political parties offer easy, simple and very dangerously wrong solutions from 10th Century holy war to 19th Century lassiez faire capitalism. Despite an abundance of well-researched books, periodicals and Internet blogs, serious objective thinkers seem powerless to permeate this horrendous confluence of ignorance and rigid dogma.


Respected scientists worldwide plaintively warn us that we are irreversibly damaging our biosphere with runaway industrialism, yet nothing substantive is done with the US being the leading recalcitrant. In fact in the US an entire political party has based its platform on almost total denial. Industrialism that seemed to have given us so much has now reached a point of seriously diminishing returns. But a ruling class of billionaires and multi-millionaires, who continue to financially benefit handsomely from this state of affairs and control powerful interlocking corporate interests, conspire in a multitude of ways to keep things rolling right along (or more recently just sputtering along as a nasty global recession lingers.) And so we slither toward the dreaded point of no return in which self-perpetuating feedback loops become unstoppable. This while most of world’s population blithely contends with business as usual. This ‘business as usual’ ranges from simply survival all the way up the food chain where the comfortable and well fed but existentially dissatisfied are absorbed in varying degrees of banal but expensive forms of avaricious competition and conspicuous consumption.


To make matters worse an ill-fitting frame of reference, is constantly reinforced through a hegemonic, seamless 24/7 corporate owned media. Its dependence on advertising profits degrades the news with endless spectacle and allows for precious little real information. Providing understanding and clarification of complex issues is left to an underground of alternative sources. Yet on some visceral level everyone feels things are coming apart at the seams. A sense of hopelessness, resignation and cynicism reigns. With our beloved capitalist mode of production bogged down with overcapacity and under investment and unemployment at record levels, resorting to the usual materialistic consumerist solutions becomes ever more out of most people’s reach. ‘Shopping to the point of dropping’ is now as out of fashion as the leisure suit.


And a hapless president watches as his party now devoid of credibility despite significant achievements fall prey to a pack of fools without answers or even common sense, and they move ever closer toward retaking the levers of legislative power. The ensuing political dialogue is led by the some of the most intellectually dishonest, disingenuous and opportunistic individuals ever to suck air. Analysis using the best science, statistics and objectivity is ghettoized and pilloried as propaganda while the real propagandists commandeer a vast interlocking array of electronic and print media.


Suggestions of rationale approaches or even comprehension of these two interconnected world-historical emergencies - economic and environmental, rarely see the light day. Too many wars and too many individual acts of violent desperation cloud our collective mind and consume our national budget. And many are direct results, “blowback”, from previous geopolitical blunders. This again as hordes of the illiterate, semi-illiterate and minimally educated embrace the most retrograde versions of pre-medieval monotheistic religio-cultural traditions. Ironically as we move deeper into this new millennium the appeal of superstition and atavistic urges becomes evermore compelling. And most unconscionably here in the US a large portion of the population, presumably educated at least through the high school level, have joined into this retreat into the past with their leaders railing against science as ‘humanist’ ideology.


With the election only weeks away both parties are now engaging in the most demeaning forms of political advertising to try to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the electorate. Complex issues are watered down to a thin gruel or else abandoned altogether. It is no wonder than many turn away from politics altogether to avoid being collaterally soiled. It is indeed an ugly spectacle. We are indeed in a Fine Mess.

Is this what ecocide looks like?

Ecocide is defined as murder of the environment. It is now happening and its being broadcast 24/7. I consider myself someone who can steel myself to view unpleasant things if I have to. But I cannot look at another miserable, dying, oil soaked pelican such as this. The horror show coming out of the marshes and beaches comprising the Mississippi Delta and the adjacent states has become unbearable. I grew up on the west coast of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico so I feel a special affinity for that body of water - swimming, fishing, snorkeling (and getting sunburned) there. It is absolutely heartbreaking for 50 days and counting to see on the news the grainy live image of ugly black matter uncontrollably spewing forth cloud-like, raw petroleum that was once safely sealed a mile below the sea in a layer of solid rock now gushing out uncontrollably destined to turn huge swathes of the Gulf into dead zones and poison the largest wetland in North America.

This count of days of unabated oil flow is mounting. And it is moving Barack Obama into hapless Jimmy Carter territory. President Jimmy Carter, also a ‘centrist’ Democrat, and also one prone to listening to the centrist Washington consensus including his hawkish National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. It was Brzezinsk who no doubt encouraged him to allow the disgraced Shan of Iran into the US for medical care when Iran was on the brink of revolution. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards countered by seizing all the employees of the US embassy and keeping them for over a year, until his right wing successor, one Ronald Reagan, negotiated their release. The whole affair totally undermined the Carter presidency as the iconic image of a blindfolded captive American with the numbers of days held so far was shown daily in the national media. Every added day of captivity served to underline in the public’s mind of Carter’s profound ineptitude.

Let’s hope that does not happen to Obama. Let’s hope Obama will not be forever remembered for this monumental environmental catastrophe - that keeps getting worse. If only Obama had learned from the health care reform debacle not to bargain with the ‘corporatocacy.’ But since the whole health care reform effort, once so close to total collapse, finally passed, it was interpreted by him, his staff and the corporate media as “a success.”

Apparently those early deals and sell-outs to the corporate health insurance kingpins and pharmaceutical oligopolies was to serve as a model for the upcoming climate bill struggle in Congress. So Obama several months ago announced that he was in fact supportive of ‘offshore drilling.’ In hindsight what a monumental blunder! Already he was making nice to the Energy-Industrial Complex and the Republican (and Demo) carbon based energy troglodytes in Congress and was perversely embracing his former arch-enemies’ mantra – ‘drill, baby, drill.’ This was of course a huge disappointment to the environmentalist community who had strongly supported Obama. Obama’s appointment of Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior, who had a mixed record on environmental issues, was already been a bad sign. So it was not totally a surprise that Obama would equivocate on offshore drilling. But this typical act of ‘splitting the difference’ with his opponents on the right has now bit him on the ass big time. It has totally undercut his moral authority on this issue as he stands in his rubber boots in a huge, nasty, ever-growing puddle of crude oil mixed with salt water containing dead birds and rotting fish. Indeed he is up to his knees in it. He has truly stepped into some shit!

Had he done the right thing and continued to oppose offshore drilling as he had during his campaign for the presidency, his standing now would be so much better. Had he remained opposed to offshore drilling even as there had been no serious underwater drilling spills in US waters in over 40 years (not since Santa Barbara in 1969) and even as a majority of Americans supported offshore drilling (who foolishly believe it will lead to cheap gas at the pump), he would in so much better shape. He would have a stone solid "I told you so! to throw back at the Repubs. But now the whole thing has made him look like a fool and exposed his strategy vs. the GOP as a peremptory sell out to Big Oil. Furthermore, he simply now looks helpless as BP continues to call the shots and control the information and fails to staunch the bleeding. Sure he now can call for drilling moratoriums, etc. Sure he can now call for reorganization of the pathetically inept and corrupt Minerals Mgt. Service (why didn’t Ken Salazar clean house there as soon as he got in?) And can sympathize until he’s blue in the face with the victims of this “Korporate Katrina’ but it’s too fucking late in so many ways. Even it the oil flow is stopped tomorrow, the damage environmentally and politically is done.

Many are calling for a new Obama to rise phoenix-like from this oil sump and declare a no-holds-barred FDR style a new 100 days of job creating environmental and infrastructure overhaul in concert with a real and robust effective new energy initiative that would be a model for the entire world. Let the Tea Party fools, who will call him a socialist and a left wing radical anyway, go bananas for a good reason. Why not really kick some ass? Not just BP’s ass, the obvious target, but the whole complex network of corporate slimelords who would (and are) feeding like vultures on this dying planet and it’s population - human, plant and animal.

Let them eat oil

Let’s see if we can list all the stuff that is happening, most of it awful, and maybe see how it is all connected:

• The Gulf of Mexico is being turned into a giant oils sump due to BPs breathtaking irresponsibility and the Minerals Management Service’s ineptitude and corruption.

• The European Union (EU) is in economic disarray as the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) sink further into the muck - especially Greece.

• Unemployment in the US is back up again.
  

• The US Senate has passed some kind of financial reform – hope it has teeth.

• A new bear market is reflecting pessimism and fear.

• Thailand is near revolution (or would like to be.)

• North and South Korea are near war with a recent sinking by N. Korea of a S. Korean warship.

• The climate bill in Congress according to most environmental organizations is a dud of the first magnitude (and maybe DOA, anyway.)

Does anyone now doubt this fully industrialized phase of late monopoly capitalism is not lethal to the planet and its inhabitants? As I write this thick black crude oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate equivalent to an Exxon Valez oil spill every three days. They have no fucking idea how to stop it other than drill into it the reservoir from some other location – which will take weeks more! It is a horror show of the first order as the oils seeps into the biggest remaining wetland in the US, the Mississippi Delta, and gets into to a current that will take it to the Keys and on around encircling the entire state of Florida.


Moving right along. The European Union is in trouble. Its poorer members like Greece rode high while the whole global economy was living off of an inflated US housing marker, are now is hitting the skids. The bubble popped and trillions of euros, dollars, rubles, shekels, yens whatever vanished into cyberspace (just like your long winded email note does when your email word-processor acts up.) After all it was really never was any more than bits and bites in bank leased 'server farms.' No doubt the banks that financed Greece and the other major debtor states during the gravy years also invested in heavily in lots of BP common and preferred stock. After all BP was/is making billions in profit in 2009. The irresponsible financing of runaway expansion in the PIGS is all a part of the financial complex’s lust for easy money led by what we fondly call “Wall Street.” The banks European and worldwide are understandably in cahoots with the carbon extraction energy giants (like BP and Exxon-Mobil, Massey Coal) because they are so profitable. It is very profitable to kill a planet. When the oil corporations lobby Congress for regulatory leniency and (appallingly) subsidies they are only fronting for their real owners, the banks and investment houses.


No one really knows what the US banks are now worth. Since all of the high tech financial instruments, derivatives and various collateralized packages containing 'underwater 'mortgages are still owned by the banks and are still part of their reserves, their value is what the banks claim their value is. The big bailout that everyone resents so much merely put the US government in as co-signer on all this bad debt. Once confidence was restored between the banks, they could again return to making business as usual. With credit restored they can borrow from the Federal Reserve at nearly zero interest and buy US bonds essentially loaning money back to the government at interest. Kind of a good deal, huh? Obviously the EU is left out of this subterfuge to some extent and must support their poor sisters, like Greece, all by themselves. The EU, which mainly means Germany, is the most prosperous of the EU members but is hardly happy about the prospect. Economists say the EU crisis calls into question the whole concept of a unified Europe economy with one currency for rich and poor countries alike. Exacerbating the situation are currency speculators who make big money by ‘shorting’ (betting on the euros decline) thus making a bad situation worse by creating inflation forcing up interest rates.

The instability in Europe has had deleterious effects on the US stock market with the Dow Jones falling over a thousands points since late April – remember all the financial giants are hooked together is various ways. Also adding to the pessimism of the investor class is the fact that the Republicans have been unable to beat back the Democrat-led financial reforms since even the GOP’s own Tea Party base also wants the Wall Streets boys’ heads on poles. Also unemployment numbers went back up after months of improvement possibly indicating the 2009 stimulus may be petering out. A southward bound stock market leads to a consumer reluctance to spend, this fear of layoffs in turn actually creates said layoffs, which loops back as increased unemployment and feeds additional sell offs in the stock market. Paradoxically they in aggregate could create the dreaded ‘double dip’ they so fear. Such a self-perpetuating recessionary loop can only to be arrested by another deficit-increasing stimulus which is becoming ever more unlikely as comparisons of the US to Greece abound by both Republican and Democratic party 'deficit hawks' (see Paul Krugman and his commentators in the 5/21/10 NY Times.)

How does poor Thailand fit into all of this? Thailand is part of the global economy so times are hard there, too. Apparently the ‘Red Shirts” causing all of the turmoil are angry to the point of insurrection as a reaction to a 2006 military coup. In 2006 a putsch ousted then-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, a folk hero among the urban poor, a new-money business class and millions of Thais in northeastern farming country. They’re angry and want an election. - not unreasonable. It’s a typical class struggle situation.

And then there is North and South Korea and their lingering cold war. It was temporarily alleviated by a liberal government in the South making overtures to the North. But now that the conservatives are back in power in the South, the hostility is again making a comeback. The conservatives probably got back in because of dissatisfaction with their economy's performance. North Korea, a pariah state that is the best argument against police state socialism that ever existed, is by all accounts a basket case in every respect. Whatever could be done with them as far as integration into the world order never is done and they stay outside looking in. No doubt N Korea would love to emulate “Red China’s” economic takeoff. They hate being ignored and neglected so they cause some ugly incident every so often. My guess is that it is tacit and unstated in US foreign policy circles, Demo and Repub alike, to keep them permanently out in the cold and unhappy so we will have an on-going ‘serious threat’ as an additional justification for our massive military machine which props up to some our much or our economy.


Finally, climate legislation seems to be on everybody’s back burner. But this mother of all problems is not going away because 40% Americans don’t think it’s a problem; or that the carbon based energy complex (BP et al) has more money than God to buy off Congress; or that the Senate’s Kerry Lieberman bill sucks (”Kerry Lieberman”! doesn’t that say it all?); or that the Markey Waxman bill passed by the House strips the EPA of the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The beltway boys are predicting the Gulf spill will undermine passage of Climate legislation. Maybe that’s good since doing a half-assed job (like they did with the Health Care bill) might cause more harm than good. At least with health care the problem can’t be ignored and if it fails to perform it can be fixed. With climate legislation our program is as much a signal to the world as it is an effective policy. If we set up something that looks inadequate, it will take on a life of its own for better or worse.

Let’s hope this unfolding world historical disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will be the catalyst for bold, robust, effective, visionary climate and energy legislation. The energy behemoths like BP now appear to the public as do the financial behemoths of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs as big, evil and greedy. Will Obama and the Demo controlled Congress respond or will they disappoint us again?