brainiac conspiracy

Light Blogging Day

Went to the downtown library to return a book. Forgot it was a holiday. So, two hours shot to hell, basically. Now it's off to the market to buy a fat pig. Or something.

---Baron V

Been There Before

Just when you think Americans have grown too obsessed in the post-9/11 era with kicking foreign ass, you realize that we've gone down that road many times in the past. Support for the Vietnam war was still pretty high when that horrendous massacre took place, even after the Tet Offensive and even after it had become apparent that the Pentagon had gone to great lengths to keep it covered up. I and my family members were mortified, but most of my schoolmates (I was in middle school at the time) were gung-ho pro-war and pro-Rusty. As one of them so memorably put it to me not long afterward, "Blast the kids at Kent State and fuck you." Guess this means we have always had our 27-percenters; the difference between then and now is, they've got a nationwide media apparatus to spread their bile.

---Baron V

Sunday Night Music Blogging

Because if reincarnation is really true, our future selves will have problems when the food runs out.

---Baron V

Saturday Night Music Blogging

Because we still need MOOOOOOAR WARRRRRR against evil Commies everywhere. Don't we always?

---Baron V

Not Their Job

There is a real arrogance that some Americans have when it comes to foreign governments. That is, when the government of some other country behaves in a way we don't approve of, we demand that all right-minded persons rise up and unambiguously condemn that government, even if it poses no threat whatsoever to us. When did we ever get so bossy, anyway?

---Baron V

Friends in Freedom

We really know how to pick 'em.

This list, while appalling, could be a bit more accurate in terms of how our relationships with each of these nations affects our relations with others. I mean, our relationship with the government of Djibouti only alienates us from the Djiboutian people who suffer under it, but our relationship with the government of Israel alienates us from tens of millions of people across a huge swath of the globe. But either way, whenever we sidle up to these awful people in exchange for oil or a drone base or a fueling station, it kinda undercuts what we used to call our "moral authority". I know you sometimes have to make devil's deals in foreign policy to achieve a greater good, but it has always seemed to me that our government has nearly always been too eager to make them without taking the time to contemplate what future impact they might exert on the commonweal. That's kinda how 9/11 happened, now, isn't it?

---Baron V

Why They Hate Us

Shit like this, basically:

A study by the government's Council of National Monuments on the impact of an earlier race in 2011 revealed that the event affected 44.5% of the 283 protected historical sites that it evaluated.

It lists damage to geoglyphs, villages, cemeteries, middens and lithic or stone-tool workshops in the regions of Tarapacá, Antofagasta, Atacama and Coquimbo. Among the worst-affected archeological archaeological sites was a former fishing village in Coquimbo that may date from 2000 BC, in which 50% of the area was degraded.

To be fair, this is much more of an Ugly Euro deal than it is an Ugly American deal, but Americans do compete there---in Hummers, no less---and we can be certain that they are going out of their way to endear themselves to the locals. People in other countries have devised some clever ways to show their gratitude to the racers. You wonder how long it will take the Chileans to figure it out.

---Baron V

If Our Friends in Freedom Want Another War

Then obviously, we need to have another war.

I don't blog much about Israel or AIPAC because it's an intractable hornet's nest that invites nothing but misery upon people who write about it, but let's just say this: However Israel and its lobbying arm want to manage their affairs, I'm fine with it. What I'm not fine with is subsidizing them with our money so they can pursue policy objectives that put American lives at risk. If they want to avoid criticism, all they need to do is return the annual welfare checks, and bloggers like yours truly will shut up for good.

But more to the point, all pro-war Democrats are evil amoral people who need to be primaried because (a) more war is not in the national interest, and (b) we should have been talking to the Iranians for decades. Their government may still peddle the "Great Satan" crap to gird the loins of the true believers, but their people are probably the most Westernized of any nation in central Asia. Which is to say, if we talk to them, we might find that we have as much in common with the Iranians as we do with, say, Israel. And maybe, just maybe, that's what the Israeli lobby, and their water-carriers in Washington, find so threatening. (Not to mention the fact that inventing endless enemies, and waging endless wars, is a proven profit center for the greater D.C. metropolitan area, so there's that.) But regardless, all pro-war Democrats still deserve to lose their jobs.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Matt Yglesias.

Then again, it must be pretty awesome for a guy who could afford to attend Harvard and who apparently makes enough money to purchase a $1.2 million condo in downtown D.C. before his 32nd birthday to spend a few hours slumming with single mothers who will work 40 hours a week and still qualify for food stamps. More to the point, the reason why big cities like mine have resisted Wal-Mart isn't because we don't believe in free-market competition or because our big bad unions are so powerful---we're opposed to Wal-Mart because they are turning the Republic into a nation of paupers, where a single family controls more wealth than 150 million Americans. Yes, I know, only an unvarnished Marxist would claim that these big-box mega-marts extract profits from forced impoverishment and the spreading of human misery, but the fact is, they do, and there's nothing cool about it.

---Baron V

Where All The Money Goes

Into the smelter, basically:

The armored trucks, televisions, ice cream scoops and nearly everything else shipped here for America’s war against the Taliban are now part of the world’s biggest garage sale. Every week, as the U.S. troop drawdown accelerates, the United States is selling 12 million to 14 million pounds of its equipment on the Afghan market.

Returning that gear to the United States from a landlocked country halfway around the world would be prohibitively expensive, according to U.S. officials. Instead, they’re leaving behind $7 billion worth of supplies, a would-be boon to the fragile Afghan economy.

But there’s one catch: The equipment is being destroyed before it’s offered to the Afghan people---to ensure that treadmills, air-conditioning units and other rudimentary appliances aren’t used to make roadside bombs [...]

That policy has produced more scrap metal than Afghanistan has ever seen. It has also led to frustration among Afghans, who feel as if they are being robbed of items such as flat-panel televisions and armored vehicles that they could use or sell---no small thing in a country where the average annual income hovers at just over $500.

And if the Afghans don't want a weekly ration of 12 million pounds of junk? Too bad for them! And to think that people in this country are mystified at why we're so hated around the world.

---Baron V

Ugly Americans

It's amazing how people in Latin America still cling to this hoary old stereotype, now, isn't it.

I mean, what could they have possibly learned regarding policy that couldn't have been discerned by simple logic? It's simple: The Mexican government will promote policies that further its economic interests, just as ours will. A competent policy shop could handle this chore, but I guess there's a lot more money to be made selling the government lots of shit we don't need in the name of freedom.

---Baron V

Pirates of the Caribbean

So many economies to destroy, so little time:

Puerto Rico has been effectively shut out of the bond market and is now financing its operations with bank credit and other short-term measures that are unsustainable in the long run. The biggest concern is that the territory, which has bonds that are widely held by mutual funds, will need some sort of federal lifeline, an action for which there is no precedent.

Nice payday they earned for themselves: And even in our age of austerity, I am guessing the Federal money needed to make them whole will somehow, magically, materialize. I mean, we own Puerto Rico---offensive as it is to say---so it's hard to see how we wriggle away from the obligation, legally. So, pad the Fed's balance sheet with it, throw out the incompetents in the territorial government (I have no idea if we can actually do this; probably not, though maybe we should if we're still going to retain ownership) and rewrite the tax code. The job creators will continue on in search of fresh plunder, or at least until we decide to break the racket up.

---Baron V

Today in Freedom

We honor our guardians of liberty, keeping us safe from dangerous terrorists:

Noemi Romero, who came to the U.S. illegally at age 3, was arrested in January working at a Phoenix grocery store, where she used someone else’s name to get the job.

Romero, a 21-year-old who likes to draw and dance, spent the next four months behind bars, almost half of it in a cramped cell at a 1,596-bed detention center in Eloy, Arizona, run by Corrections Corp. of America. The company, with Geo Group Inc. (GEO) and other for-profit prison operators, holds almost two-thirds of all immigrants detained each day in federally funded prisons as they face deportation, U.S. data show.

Under law, taxpayers must pay to keep 34,000 people like Romero in jail, at a cost of about $120 each per day, even as the number of immigrants caught sneaking across the border has fallen by more than half since the past recession began.

In other words, policy. Which yields the following outcome:

Prisons are one of the few institutions that states and the federal government have moved to privatize, creating a booming business for Corrections Corp. and Geo, the two publicly traded companies that dominate the market. Both actively lobby Congress. Serving as government jailer has been a hit on Wall Street, as Corrections Corp. and Geo have each about doubled in value since mid-2010.

A deranged Trotskyite might insinuate that our peculiar system of free enterprise deliberately extracts profits by imposing misery and suffering on others, and that our government only exists to provide the money and the muscle for it. But I'm not a deranged Trotskyite, so you didn't read it here.

---Baron V

No Money For Housing Vouchers or Legal-Aid Services

Because the price of freedom is eternal junketing:

Viewing the deadly siege at a shopping mall in Kenya as a direct threat to its security, the United States is deploying dozens of F.B.I. agents to investigate the wreckage, hoping to glean every piece of information possible to help prevent such a devastating attack from happening again, possibly even on American soil.

Two things:

(1) Why do we need to send "dozens" of FBI agents to Nairobi? What additional information could they glean that couldn't be gotten by, say, two guys in a one-hour debriefing with the head of the local security forces? Hard to say for sure, but it's a free trip to Africa, and since our terror budget is an ever-flowing money spigot, let's all fly over in business class and go look at the elephants.

(2) There is no conceivable way ever to stop an attack like this from happening at an American shopping mall. Well, actually, there is, but it would involve banning the private ownership of firearms, followed by the confiscation and smelting of the hundreds of millions of guns that are already in circulation. Personally, I think it's a great idea, but our lawmakers have already spoken loud and clear on that issue, so unless you can figure out a way to deploy the National Guard to patrol every mall in America, it's a chance we simply take for living in a society where the only true God-given "right" is the right to own shit that can kill a lot of people in a very short time. It shouldn't have to be that way, but that's the society our political leaders are happy for us to live in, obviously.

(Via.)

---Baron V

Today's Worst Persons

The World Cup job-creator persons.

We should probably give an honorable mention to the various FIFA football persons who are responsible for monitoring this----assuming that anyone there actually is responsible for monitoring it. Of course, if they really cared, I assume they could rescind their award, and pick another country to host the World Cup. There's no shortage of them at this point! But considering what a stupid idea it was to hold the event in a place where summer temperatures can exceed 120 degrees, let alone using conscripted labor, perhaps they'd reconsider?

---Baron V

No Money For Increasing Social Security Payments

Because . . . you know why!

You really have to wonder how it is that our leaders think they can continue to expand their Freedom Agenda, what with 50 million of their constituents living in poverty and tens of millions more waiting to join them shortly. I mean, you can only extract money from poor people to pay for these junkets for so long before the poor people run out of money, and then the empire collapses. Then again, when you live and work in a place where the consensus holds that the only programs that are genuinely "unsustainable" are programs that help poor people, perhaps this policy myopia is to be expected. But their priorities are bankrupting the futures of more Americans just the same!

---Baron V

Evil And Stupid

Sometimes, it's not an either/or binary, it's just insanely bad policy. I mean, can you tell me what these people were thinking when they were brainstorming this? Also too, why were they brainstorming this at all? Serious persons hate to think that any agency that protects their interests is in any way punitive and predatory, but the fact is, that's how the existing social order is upheld.

---Baron V

If We Really Want to Help

We should be working with our friends in freedom to drop some serious money bombs on these people.

This is truly terrible. The population of the entire country is 22 million, so that probably means that roughly a quarter of the developed part of the country has effectively been totaled. So we are talking, like, about another Haiti in the making. The only debate we should be having now is over the size of the aid package, though I realize that's not as revenue-enhancing as dropping freedom bombs is, so I guess that's why we're not debating it.

---Baron V

Why We Fight II

Because, as stated, freedom! Also too, the money:

Petrobras has two supercomputers, used mainly for seismic research---which evaluate oil reserves from samples collected at sea. This is how the company mapped the Pre-salt layer, the largest discovery of new oil reserves in the world in recent years.

There is no information on the extent of the spying, nor if it managed to access the data contained in the company’s computers. It’s clear Petrobras was a target, but no documents show exactly what information the NSA searched for. But at any rate, Petrobras has strategic knowledge of deals involving billions of dollars.

For example, the details of each lot in an auction set for next month: for exploration of the Libra Field, in the Bay of Santos, part of the Pre-salt. Whether the spies had access to this information is one of the questions the Brazilian government will have to put to the United States.

Former Petrobras Director Roberto Villa considers this the greatest action in the history of oil exploration. “It’s a very peculiar auction. The auction of an area where we already know there’s oil, there’s no risk”, he says. What no one else should know, Villa says, is which are the richest lots. “Petrobras knows. And I hope only they know.” He considers that such information, if stolen, could give someone an advantage. “Someone would have an edge. If this information was leaked and someone else has obtained it, he would be in a privileged position at the auction. He’ll know where to invest and where not to. It’s a handy little secret.”

---Baron V

What if He Didn't Do It

It doesn't change my opinion about the stupidity of starting another war, but up to now I've been willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt in terms of their accounting of events in Syria. There's always the chance, of course, that they don't know what they're talking about because they've been misled, or that they're simply talking shit, so before we start bombing people, our Congresspersons should demand solid evidence of atrocities before we try to make the Middle East safe from them. We've been lied into wars of choice before!

---Baron V