Month: October 2008

Naomi Wolf has accused the Bush administration of orchestrating a coup d’etat. She relies on evidence for which I have no other explanation. First, in what appears to be a clip from C-Span video of the floor of the House of Representatives, Representative Brad Sherman (Democrat–California, 27th District) complained that some members of Congress were threatened with huge drops in the Dow Jones (which appear to be happening anyway) and with martial law if they did not vote for the pork-laden $700 billion bailout for the financial industry and concentration of new powers for the Secretary of the Treasury. Second, the Army Times has reported that for “the first time an active unit [the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team] has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.”

According to the Army Times, the unit “may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.” But Army Col. Michael Boatner, USNORTHCOM future operations division chief partly denied this, saying, “This response force will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control, but will be used to support lead agencies involved in saving lives, relieving suffering and meeting the needs of communities affected by weapons of mass destruction attacks, accidents or even natural disasters.”

This posting comes late in hurricane season. The troops are only beginning training. According to the Army Times,

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose.

This is clearly contradictory information. If the first brigade to be specifically assigned to U.S. territory is not to be used for law enforcement, then why in the wake of brutal police suppression of protests at the Republican National Convention, are they being trained to use this “nonlethal package?”

Another possible explanation is that due to the Arctic ice melt, “the Pentagon is eyeing the expanding navigable waters as possible entry points for security threats that must be monitored more closely.” However, this would seem to dictate a posting in Alaska rather than in Fort Stewart in Georgia. Moreover, the Arctic patrols appear to be largely an Air Force mission.

Given the Bush administration’s threats of martial law, Naomi Wolf argues that a coup has effectively occurred. This is a time when the least charitable explanations of developments have proven closer to the truth.

“Horrified motorists on the A55 road near Bodelwyddan said the police officer went for his Taser without even trying to herd the ram, who was meandering in the roadway.”

In a biting reminder that only US citizens are restricted from visiting Cuba, a British naval vessel made a port call in Havana. It could be taken as insult added to injury. In what appears to be a shift to a multilateral world, the “top analyst” in the US intelligence community is forecasting “a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.” This estimation appears not to consider the financial upheavals that have focused the world’s attention and led to passage of a $700 billion bailout. Jennifer Barry at the Market Oracle looks at all the debt swirling around and forecasts doom for the dollar; she writes:

Many commentators claim that the former GSE’s [government secured enterprise’s] liabilities are not like usual government debt, as the mortgages are backed by homes. However, Catherine Austin Fitts indicates that many of the Fannie, Freddie and FHA loans are actually fraudulent, as the same property is sold repeatedly to phantom buyers or the property does not actually exist. At least $1 trillion of Fannie and Freddie’s mortgages are already in trouble, and the data on mortgage resets indicates the problem will not end until 2012. This bailout effectively doubled America’s publicly traded debt overnight.

On September 14, the Fannie and Freddie bombshell was followed by the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America for $50 billion. Paulson admitted he was involved with the Merrill Lynch purchase at a steep premium to the market price. Bank of America is hardly a bastion of stability however, as over half its builders loans “are considered troubled.” The institution is a leading issuer of consumer credit cards, and with the U.S. in a recession, much of this debt will default. Bank of America already bought subprime lender Countrywide earlier this year in a curious deal where the firm refused to take on many of Countrywide’s liabilities.

Perhaps I missed it in the actual article, but from her headline, it is clear she thinks the dollar is doomed. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told a business group in the United Arab Emirates on June 2nd that “The U.S. dollar has been the world’s reserve currency since World War Two and there is a good reason for that. The United States has the largest, most open economy in the world, and our capital markets are the deepest and most liquid.” Since then, it has become quite clear that U.S. capital markets are nowhere deep nor liquid enough; and the “open economy” seems to be undermined by opaque financial instruments and “toxic assets” whose value cannot be determined. If I’m understanding all this even close to correctly, it is now hard to see how the value of any US debt can be determined, which would seem to mean that the value of the dollar cannot be determined. Compounding the problem, this would mean that the dollar cannot be a “reserve currency,” that is, the currency which “the world’s central banks must acquire and hold . . . reserves in corresponding amounts to their [own] currencies in circulation” in order to defend against “speculative and manipulative attacks.” Even worse, oil producers will decide they can no longer accept the dollar, which will mean that the most oil-hungry nation in the world will have to sell dollars and purchase some other currency in order to buy oil.

Clearly the US is headed for a fall. I can’t forecast how hard. But there is nothing any longer sensible about US global military, economic, or political hegemony. And nothing is any longer sensible about our prosperity. We simply cannot afford it and even if Bush hadn’t antagonized the entire world, I don’t think there’s anyone big enough to bail us out. Greed has won, defeating even the greedy.