Wednesday, June 19, 2019
I Know Which Country the U.S. Will Invade Next
by Lee Camp
May 2, 2018
THIS PRESCIENT ARTICLE WAS
FIRST PUBLISHED OVER A YEAR AGO!
By the end of this column, it
will be clear which country the United States will invade and topple next. Or
failing that, it will be clear which country our
military-intelligence-industrial complex will be aching to invade
next.
We all want to know why
America does what it does. And I don’t mean why Americans do what we
do. I think that question still will be pondered eons from now by a future
professor showing his students a video mind-meld of present-day UFC fighters booting
each other in the head while thrilled onlookers cheer (not for either of the
fighters but rather for more booting in the head).
But we all seem to assume that
America—the entity, the corporation—has some sort of larger reasoning behind
the actions it takes, the actions put forward by the ruling elite. And almost
all of us know that the reasons we’re given by the press secretaries and
caricature-shaped heads on the nightly news are the ripest, most fetid grade of
bullshit.
We now know that the invasion
of Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. We now know that
the crushing of Libya had nothing to do with “stopping a bad man.” If one does
even a cursory check of what dictators around the world are up to recently,
you’ll find that the U.S. doesn’t care in the slightest whether they are bad or
good, whether they’re using their free time to kill thousands of innocent
people or to harmonize their rock garden. In fact, the U.S. gives military aid
to 70
percent of the world’s dictators. (One would hope that’s only around the
holidays though.)
So if it’s not for the stated
reasons, why does the U.S. overrun, topple and sometimes occupy the countries
it does? Obviously, there are oil resources or rare minerals to be had. But
there’s something else that links almost all of our recent wars.
As The
Guardian reported near the beginning of the Iraq War, “In October
2000, Iraq insisted on dumping the U.S. dollar—the currency of the enemy—for
the more multilateral euro.”
However, one example does not
make a trend. If it did, I would be a world-renowned beer pong champion rather
than touting a 1-27 record. (I certainly can’t go pro with those numbers.)
But there’s more. Soon after
Libya began moving toward an African gold-based currency—and lining up all its
African neighbors to join it—we invaded it as well, with the help of NATO.
Author Ellen Brown pointed
this out at the time of the invasion:
[Moammar Gadhafi] initiated a
movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African
nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar.
John Perkins, author of
“Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” also has said that the true reason for the
attack on Libya was Gadhafi’s move away from the dollar and the euro.
This week, The
Intercept reported that the ousting of Gadhafi, which was in many ways
led by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, actually had to do with Sarkozy
secretly receiving millions from Gadhafi, and it seemed that his corruption was
about to be revealed. But, the article also noted, “[Sarkozy’s] real military
zeal and desire for regime change came only after [Hillary] Clinton and the
Arab League broadcasted their desire to see [Gadhafi] go.” And the fact that
Gadhafi was planning to upend the petrodollar in Africa certainly provides the
motivation necessary. (It doesn’t take much to get the U.S. excited about a new
bombing campaign. I’m pretty sure we invaded Madagascar once in the 1970s
because they smoked our good weed.)
Right now you may be thinking,
“But, Lee, your theory is ridiculous. If these invasions were about the
banking, then the rebels in Libya—getting help from NATO and the United
States—would have set up a new banking system after bringing down Gadhafi.”
Actually, they didn’t wait
that long. In the middle of the brutal war, the Libyan rebels formed their own central bank.
Brown said, “Several writers
have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their
rebellion in March to create their own central bank—this before they even had a
government.”
Wow, that sure does sound like
it’s all about the banking.
Many of you know about Gen.
Wesley Clark’s famous quote about seven countries in five years. Clark is a
four-star general, the former head of NATO Supreme Allied Command, and he ran
for president in 2008 (clearly he’s an underachiever). But it’s quite possible
that 100 years from now, the one thing he’ll be remembered for is the fact that
he told us that the Pentagon
said to him in 2002: “We’re going to take down seven countries in five
years. We’re going to start with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, then Libya,
Somalia, Sudan. We’re going to come back and get Iran in five years.”
Most of this has happened. We
have, of course, added some countries to the list, such as Yemen. We’re helping
to destroy Yemen largely to make Saudi Arabia happy. Apparently our
government/media care only about Syrian children (in order to justify regime
change). We couldn’t care less about Yemeni children, Iraqi children, Afghan
children, Palestinian children, North Korean children, Somali children, Flint
(Michigan) children, Baltimore children, Native American children, Puerto Rican
children, Na’vi children … oh wait, I think that’s from “Avatar.” Was that
fiction? My memories and 3-D movies are starting to blur together.
Brown goes even further
in her
analysis of Clark’s bombshell:
What do these seven countries
have in common? … [N]one of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the
Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the
long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland. The
most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually
been attacked.
What I’m trying to say is:
It’s all about the banking.
So right now you’re thinking,
“But, Lee, then why is the U.S. so eager to turn Syria into a failed state if
Syria never dropped the dollar? Your whole stupid theory falls apart right
there.”
First, I don’t appreciate your
tone. Second, in February 2006, Syria
dropped the dollar as its primary hard currency.
I think I’m noticing a trend.
In fact, on Jan. 4, it was reported that Pakistan
was ditching the dollar in its trade with China, and that same day,
the U.S. placed it on the watch list for
religious freedom violations. The same day? Are we really supposed to believe
that it just so happened that Pakistan stopped using the dollar with China on
the same day it started punching Christians in the nose for no good reason? No,
clearly Pakistan had violated our religion of cold hard cash.
This leaves only one question:
Who will be next on the list of U.S. illegal invasions cloaked in bullshit
justifications? Well, last week, Iran finally did it: It switched
from the dollar to the euro. And sure enough, this week, the U.S.
military-industrial complex, the corporate media and Israel all got together to
claim that Iran is lying about its nuclear weapons development. What are the
odds that this news would break within days of Iran dropping the dollar? What.
Are. The. Odds?
The one nice thing about our
corporate state’s manufacturing of consent is how predictable it is. We will
now see the mainstream media running an increasing number of reports pushing
the idea that Iran is a sponsor of terrorism and is trying to develop nuclear
weapons (which are WMDs, but for some strange reason, our media are shying away
from saying, “They have WMDs”). Here’s a 2017
PBS article claiming that Iran is the top state sponsor of terrorism.
One must assume this list of terror sponsors does not include the country that
made the arms that significantly
enhanced Islamic State’s military capabilities. (It’s the U.S.)
Or the country that drops
hundreds of bombs per day on the Middle East. (It’s the U.S.) But
those bombs don’t cause any terror. Those are the happy bombs, clearly.
Apparently, we just drop 1995 Richard Simmons down on unsuspecting people.
Point is, as we watch our
pathetic corporate media continue their manufacturing of consent for war with
Iran, don’t fall for it. These wars are all about the banking. And millions of
innocent people are killed in them. Millions more have their lives destroyed.
You and I are just pawns in
this game, and the last thing the ruling elite want are pawns who question the
official narrative.
Bernie Sanders Campaign Manager Faiz Shakir on Skewed Polls, Corporate Media Conflicts
In 2016, Bernie Sanders’
campaign was akin to a start-up: scrappy, understaffed, and flying by the seat
of their pants.
The only difference: most
start-ups don’t spark a nationwide movement in just a few months; a movement
met with as much negative pushback—from the corporate media and the entire
federal, state, and local Democratic Party establishment—than otherworldly love
and adoration from millions of believers across the country.
Three-and-a-half years later,
Bernie 2.0 is being run by campaign manager Faiz Shakir, 39, a former National
Political Director at the American Civil Liberties Union, and the first
Muslim-American to run a presidential campaign.
“A lot of the movement that
was generated in 2015 and 2016 is still strong and growing stronger, but this
time, and this campaign, you’re also seeing far more organization happening earlier
in the schedule,” Shakir told Status Coup in an interview.
That organizing includes
Sanders’ campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and
California—and building up the state-level structures in each one of those
states—months earlier than he did in 2016.
“This time around you’re
seeing heightened levels of volunteer activity at an earlier point in time
which are affirming that the work of 2015 and 2016, which was powerful, remains
in place today and is benefiting this campaign—obviously with the goal of
having a different result this time around,” Shakir said.
There’s also been heightened
levels of criticism, and in some cases, downright smears, coming from corporate
media outlets that have a clear disdain for the type of big-scale reform Bernie
Sanders stands for.
Shakir noted that elite media
journalists are already declaring Sanders campaign dead, which is actually
something the campaign feeds off of. But many of these time-of-death
pronouncements have been based off of polling that, as Status Coup has reported, has been
oversampling voters over the age of 50 while sampling less voters under 50.
Unsurprisingly, these polls have found former Vice President Joe Biden having a
wide lead over Sanders, who has disproportionate strength among younger voters.
“You’re exactly right,” Shakir
said. “Obviously we know the senator’s strength tends to come from younger
voters, and those younger voters are often underrepresented in these
landline-based polls. And if those polls are not doing a good job of trying to
account for young people, or figuring out different ways to reach them, then
those, by our own estimation, should be deemed a bit suspect”
Shakir added that these skewed
polls are eaten up by corporate journalists, who just look at the top line of
the poll rather than reviewing the methodology. These journalists then
propagate the skewed polling into the daily news cycle “without really anyone
questioning some of these basic factors that you and I are discussing.”
Many of the corporate
journalists pushing these polls without context or caveats work for parent
companies with clear conflicts of interests when it comes to the 2020
campaign—and Sanders.
For example, both workers for
and the corporate pac of CNN’s parent company AT&T
have combined to donate close to $51,000 to Senator Kamala Harris’
campaign thus far; Comcast, which owns NBC News and MSNBC’, had one of its
VP’s host
a fundraiser for Joe Biden; and of course, there’s The Washington
Post, owned by Amazon and Jeff Bezos, who were on the receiving end of Sanders’
months-long social media ire before ultimately deciding to raise Amazon’s
minimum wage to $15.
The fact that many of these outlets
have offered a steady stream of attacks on Sanders—without disclosing their
financial support for other candidates or previous conflict with Sanders—isn’t
lost on the man at the helm of Sanders’ 2020 campaign.
“Those kind of disclosures are
really important to make…structurally, it is important for people to understand
and know how their media is funded, what they decide to cover, and why they may
have certain biases about what they’re covering,” Shakir said, stressing that
he didn’t want to call out each individual reporter for their bosses political
ties.
Ultimately, Skakir thinks, an
iconoclastic reformer like Sanders—who is explicitly charging at corporate
power— will predictably be met with fierce resistance from that corporate
power: “Those kinds of things are exactly the issues that many in the corporate
elite world are deathly afraid of and would understandably would want to
influence in any way that they can.”
One powerful entity
progressive Sanders supporters are concerned about is the Democratic National
Committee, which was exposed as having worked to sabotage Sanders’ 2016
campaign while propping up Hillary Clinton’s. Despite DNC Chair Tom Perez’
repeated pledge of neutrality, the chair just hired Chris Korge as Finance
Chairman—a man that Status Coup reported was
a major donor to Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (and publicly
disparaged Sanders just a few months ago).
“They [the DNC] did gave us a
call, we had a conversation about it,” Shakir said about the DNC calling
Sanders’ campaign as they were about to announce Korge’s hiring. Shakir said
the DNC has taken steps to fix some of the problems that sprung from 2016, but
the campaign is keeping a “very cautious eye out” for any impropriety coming
from the party. And if they come across shenanigans, Shakir vowed to raise the
issue publicly.
He understands progressives’
natural concern over fairness during the primary process, but also made it
clear—2020 is a different ball game.
“This race is nothing like
last time; we shouldn’t fall into the trap of believing that it’s going to be
the same…the context of this race is so different that I’m constantly trying to
make sure we don’t fall into the wrong assumptions of where this race is.”
America's Suicide Epidemic
It’s Hitting Trump’s Base Hard
By Rajan Menon
We hear a lot about suicide
when celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade die by their own hand. Otherwise, it seldom
makes the headlines. That’s odd given the magnitude of the problem.
In 2017, 47,173 Americans
killed themselves. In that single year, in other words, the suicide count was
nearly seven times greater than the number of American
soldiers killed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2001 and 2018.
A suicide occurs in the United
States roughly once every 12 minutes. What’s more, after decades of decline, the rate
of self-inflicted deaths per 100,000 people annually -- the suicide rate -- has
been increasing sharply since the late 1990s. Suicides now claim two-and-a-half
times as many lives in this country as do homicides, even though the murder rate gets so much more
attention.
In other words, we’re talking
about a national epidemic of self-inflicted deaths.
Worrisome Numbers
Anyone who has lost a close
relative or friend to suicide or has worked on a suicide hotline (as I have)
knows that statistics transform the individual, the personal, and indeed the
mysterious aspects of that violent act -- Why this person? Why now? Why
in this manner? -- into depersonalized abstractions. Still, to grasp how
serious the suicide epidemic has become, numbers are a necessity.
According to a 2018 Centers
for Disease Control study, between 1999 and 2016, the suicide rate increased in
every state in the union except Nevada, which already had a remarkably high
rate. In 30 states, it jumped by 25% or more; in 17, by at least a third.
Nationally, it increased 33%.
In some states the upsurge was far higher: North Dakota (57.6%), New
Hampshire (48.3%), Kansas (45%), Idaho (43%).
Alas, the news only gets
grimmer.
Since 2008,
suicide has ranked 10th among the causes of death in this country. For
Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, however, it comes in second; for those
between 35 and 45, fourth. The United States also has the ninth-highest
rate in the 38-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development. Globally, it ranks 27th.
More importantly, the trend in
the United States doesn’t align with what’s happening elsewhere in the
developed world. The World Health Organization, for instance, reports that
Great Britain, Canada, and China all have notably lower suicide rates than the
U.S., as do all but six countries in the European Union. (Japan’s
is only slightly lower.)
World Bank statistics show that,
worldwide, the suicide rate fell from 12.8 per 100,000 in 2000 to 10.6 in 2016.
It’s been falling in China, Japan (where it has declined steadily for nearly
a decade and is at its lowest point in 37 years), most
of Europe, and even countries like South Korea and Russia that have a significantly higher suicide rate
than the United States. In Russia, for instance, it has dropped by nearly 26%
from a high point of 42 per 100,000 in 1994 to 31 in 2019.
We know a fair amount about
the patterns of suicide in the United States. In
2017, the rate was highest for men between the ages of 45 and 64 (30 per
100,000) and those 75 and older (39.7 per 100,000).
The rates in rural counties
are almost double those in the most urbanized ones, which is why states like
Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, and North Dakota sit atop the suicide list.
Furthermore, a far higher percentage of people in rural states own guns than in cities and suburbs, leading to a higher
rate of suicide involving firearms, the means used in half of all
such acts in this country.
There are gender-based differences
as well. From 1999 to 2017, the rate for men was substantially higher than for
women -- almost four-and-a-half times higher in the first of those years,
slightly more than three-and-a-half times in the last.
Education is
also a factor. The suicide rate is lowest among individuals with college
degrees. Those who, at best, completed high school are, by comparison, twice as
likely to kill themselves. Suicide rates also tend to be lower among
people in higher-income brackets.
The Economics of Stress
This surge in the suicide rate
has taken place in years during which the working class has experienced greater
economic hardship and psychological stress. Increased competition from
abroad and outsourcing, the results of globalization, have contributed to job
loss, particularly in economic sectors like manufacturing, steel, and mining
that had long been mainstays of employment for such workers. The jobs still
available often paid less and provided fewer benefits.
Technological change,
including computerization, robotics, and the coming of artificial intelligence,
has similarly begun to displace labor in significant ways, leaving Americans
without college degrees, especially those 50 and older, in far more difficult straits when it comes to finding new jobs that pay well. The lack of anything
resembling an industrial policy of a sort that exists in Europe has
made these dislocations even more painful for American workers, while a sharp
decline in private-sector union membership -- downfrom nearly 17% in 1983 to 6.4% today -- has reduced
their ability to press for higher wages through collective bargaining.
Furthermore, the
inflation-adjusted median wage has barely budged over
the last four decades (even as CEO salaries have soared). And a decline in
worker productivity doesn’t explain it: between 1973 and 2017
productivity increased by 77%, while a worker’s average hourly wage
only rose by 12.4%. Wage stagnation has made it harder for working-class Americans to get by, let
alone have a lifestyle comparable to that of their parents or grandparents.
The gap in earnings between
those at the top and bottom of American society has also increased -- a lot.
Since 1979, the wages of Americans in the 10th percentile increased by
a pitiful 1.2%. Those in the 50th percentile did a bit better, making a gain of
6%. By contrast, those in the 90th percentile increased by 34.3% and
those near the peak of the wage pyramid -- the top 1% and especially the
rarefied 0.1% -- made far more substantial gains.
And mind you, we’re just
talking about wages, not other forms of income like large stock dividends,
expensive homes, or eyepopping inheritances. The share of net national
wealth held by the richest 0.1% increased from
10% in the 1980s to 20% in 2016. By contrast, the share of the bottom 90%
shrank in those same decades from about 35% to 20%. As for the top 1%, by
2016 its share had increased to almost 39%.
The precise relationship
between economic inequality and suicide rates remains unclear, and suicide
certainly can’t simply be reduced to wealth disparities or financial stress.
Still, strikingly, in contrast to the United States, suicide rates are
noticeably lower and have been declining in Western European countries where income inequalities
are far less pronounced, publicly funded healthcare is regarded as a right (not
demonized as a pathway to serfdom), social safety nets far more extensive,
and apprenticeships and worker retraining programs more widespread.
Evidence from the United States, Brazil, Japan, and Sweden does
indicate that, as income inequality increases, so does the suicide rate. If so,
the good news is that progressive economic policies -- should Democrats ever
retake the White House and the Senate -- could make a positive difference.
A study based
on state-by-state variations in the U.S. found that simply boosting the minimum
wage and Earned Income Tax Credit by 10% appreciably reduces the suicide rate
among people without college degrees.
The Race Enigma
One aspect of the suicide
epidemic is puzzling. Though whites have fared far better economically
(and in many other ways) than African Americans, their suicide rate is
significantly higher. It increased from 11.3 per 100,000 in 2000 to
15.85 per 100,000 in 2017; for African Americans in those years the rates were
5.52 per 100,000 and 6.61 per 100,000. Black men are 10 times more likely to be homicide victims than white
men, but the latter are two-and-half times more likely to kill themselves.
The higher suicide rate among
whites as well as among people with only a high school diploma highlights
suicide’s disproportionate effect on working-class whites. This segment of the
population also accounts for a disproportionate share of what economists Anne
Case and Angus Deaton have labeled “deaths of despair” -- those caused by suicides plus opioid overdoses and liver diseases linked to alcohol
abuse. Though it’s hard to offer a complete explanation for this, economic
hardship and its ripple effects do appear to matter.
According to a study by
the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the white working class
accounted for 45% of all income earned in the United States in 1990, but only
27% in 2016. In those same years, its share of national wealth plummeted,
from 45% to 22%. And as inflation-adjusted wages have decreased for men without college degrees, many white
workers seem to have lost hope of success of any sort. Paradoxically,
the sense of failure and the accompanying stress may be greater for white
workers precisely because they traditionally were much better off economically than their African American
and Hispanic counterparts.
In addition, the fraying of
communities knit together by employment in once-robust factories and mines has
increased social isolation among them, and the evidence that it
-- along with opioid
addiction and alcohol
abuse -- increases the risk of suicide is strong. On top of that, a significantly higher proportion
of whites than blacks and Hispanics own firearms, and
suicide rates are markedly higher in states where gun ownership is more widespread.
Trump’s Faux Populism
The large increase in suicide
within the white working class began a couple of decades before Donald Trump’s
election. Still, it’s reasonable to ask what he’s tried to do about it,
particularly since votes from these Americans helped propel him to the White
House. In 2016, he received 64% of the votes of whites without college degrees;
Hillary Clinton, only 28%. Nationwide, he beat Clinton in counties where deaths of despair rose significantly
between 2000 and 2015.
White workers will remain
crucial to Trump’s chances of winning in 2020. Yet while he has spoken
about, and initiated steps aimed at reducing, the high suicide rate among veterans, his speeches and tweets have never highlighted
the national suicide epidemic or its inordinate impact on white workers. More
importantly, to the extent that economic despair contributes to their high
suicide rate, his policies will only make matters worse.
The real benefits from the
December 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act championed by the president and
congressional Republicans flowed to those on the top steps of the economic
ladder. By 2027, when the Act’s provisions will run out, the wealthiest Americans
are expected to have captured 81.8%of the gains. And that’s not counting the
windfall they received from recent changes in taxes on inheritances. Trump and
the GOP doubled the annual amount exempt from estate taxes --
wealth bequeathed to heirs -- through 2025 from $5.6 million per individual to
$11.2 million (or $22.4 million per couple). And who benefits most from this
act of generosity? Not workers, that’s for sure, but every household with
an estate worth $22 million or more will.
As for job retraining provided
by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, the president proposed cutting that program by 40% in his 2019
budget, later settling for keeping it at 2017 levels. Future cuts seem in the
cards as long as Trump is in the White House. The Congressional Budget
Office projects that
his tax cuts alone will produce even bigger budget deficits in the years to
come. (The shortfall last year was $779 billion and it is expected to reach $1 trillion
by 2020.) Inevitably, the president and congressional Republicans will then
demand additional reductions in spending for social programs.
This is all the more likely
because Trump and those Republicans also slashedcorporate taxes from 35% to 21% -- an
estimated $1.4 trillion in savings for corporations over the
next decade. And unlike the income tax cut, the corporate tax has no end date. The president assured his base that the big
bucks those companies had stashed abroad would start flowing home and produce a
wave of job creation -- all without adding to the deficit. As it happens,
however, most of that repatriated cash has been used for corporate stock
buy-backs, which totaled more than $800 billion last year. That, in turn, boosted
share prices, but didn’t exactly rain money down on workers. No surprise, of
course, since the wealthiest 10% of Americans own at least 84% of all stocks and the bottom 60% have less
than 2% of them.
And the president’s corporate
tax cut hasn’t produced the tsunami of job-generating investments he predicted
either. Indeed, in its aftermath, more than 80% of American companies stated that their plans for
investment and hiring hadn’t changed. As a result, the monthly increase in jobs
has proven unremarkable compared
to President Obama’s second term, when the economic recovery that Trump largely
inherited began. Yes, the economy did grow 2.3% in 2017 and 2.9% in 2018 (though not 3.1% as the president claimed). There wasn’t, however,
any “unprecedented economic boom -- a boom that has rarely been seen before” as
he insisted in this year’s State
of the Union Address.
Anyway, what matters for
workers struggling to get by is growth in real wages, and there’s nothing to
celebrate on that front: between 2017 and mid-2018 they actually declined by 1.63% for white workers and 2.5% for
African Americans, while they rose for Hispanics by a measly 0.37%. And
though Trump insists that his beloved tariff hikes are going to help workers,
they will actually raise the prices of goods, hurting the working class and
other low-income Americans the most.
Then there are the obstacles
those susceptible to suicide face in receiving insurance-provided mental-health
care. If you’re a white worker without medical coverage or have a policy with a
deductible and co-payments that are high and your income, while low, is too
high to qualify for Medicaid, Trump and the GOP haven’t done anything for you.
Never mind the president’s tweetproclaiming that “the Republican Party Will Become
‘The Party of Healthcare!’”
Let me amend that: actually,
they have done something. It’s just not what you’d call helpful.
The percentage of uninsured adults, which fell from 18% in
2013 to 10.9% at the end of 2016, thanks in no small measure to Obamacare, had risen to 13.7% by the end of last year.
The bottom line? On a problem
that literally has life-and-death significance for a pivotal portion of his
base, Trump has been AWOL. In fact, to the extent that economic strain
contributes to the alarming suicide rate among white workers, his policies are
only likely to exacerbate what is already a national crisis of epidemic
proportions.
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