Showing posts with label loss of democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loss of democracy. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

America the Banana Republic by Neal Gabler



"Thanks to Trump the tinhorn dictator and those who elected him, this country is no longer a beacon of freedom, but a laughingstock......There is no longer even the pretense of concealment as there was in the good old days of Republicanism. Sure sounds like a banana republic to me. "

I take the liberty of sharing this article by Neal Gabler because, well, I think he's right. 

I know this has nothing to do with art, with consciousness, with synchronicity or myth..........but it has everything to do with the dismantling of the country I have lived in, and for all my activism and criticism, loved. 

In one short year I've watched the EPA removed and all environmental controls left to the wisdom of big oil and other polluters who seem determined to destroy everything in sight at the expense of future generations.  I've watched the NEA and NEH dismissed, as if the great Arts and Humanities of America are nothing.  I've watched us become the only nation not part of the Paris Accord, a president ridiculing the greatest threat to life humanity has ever faced.  I've watched a president laud Nazis, even as a World War was fought to defeat them, and relatives of mine died in it.  I've watched national monuments destroyed.  I've watched the war on education, medicine, health care,  intellectuals, and science.  I've watched NASA  become under the control of an evangelical, climate denying man who has no background in science.  I've watched our "ambassador to the Vatican" be replaced with the wife of  Newt Gingrich just to "get even" with the Pope.   I've watched a sexual predator, proudly proclaiming his right to "grab women's pussy" become president, along with his former sex worker wife as "first lady".  I've watched my tax dollars now increase, even as school lunches, tuition waivers, food stamps, aid to disadvantaged children, heating help to seniors freezing to death in  cold climates are scheduled to be removed removed from the budget.  Yet we pay to benefit  Trump's vacations, and an ever increasing military budget.  Corporate lobbyists are no longer even trying to disguise their contempt for people like me, the American public. 

In a land of refugees,  I've watched the most desperate of  refugees refused compassion.  I've seen the Constitutional separation of church and state dismissed  offhand, to benefit vicious, oppressive religious fanatics who, in my opinion, profane the  name of "Christianity".   I've watched efforts to  deny the rights of Muslims, Jews, Gay People, Women............ 

America.  What are you anymore?  For all our faults, you were also a place of hope, inspiration, innovation.    I'd pray that somehow "America" can recover from this, but I no longer trust what some people call "prayer".  I wonder:  is "America" over now?  Has it been replaced with an evolving tyranny of cruel mediocrity, the slow creeping banality of evil?  

Below is a picture of immigrants at Ellis Island, turn of the Century.  Any of them could look very much like I imagine my round-faced Swedish great  grandmother looked, just off the boat, so bravely seeking a  new life in the new world  at just 17 years of age.  Or my French Huguenot great grandfather, fleeing religious discrimination in his Catholic homeland.  Or my grandson's Jewish great-great grandparents, fleeing the violent pogroms of Russia.  Or my friend Susan's parents, arriving in New York and not knowing that they were each the last of their families as they fled  Nazi occupation of Poland.  Or my friend Mark's Irish great grandparents, their faces so desperate for work and maybe  just a good meal as they left behind  the potato famine of Black '47.  Or.........you name it.  For all the problems, and yes, slavery, yes, the genocide of the native people, yes, the omission of women in the plan.......... this was still a place of hope.   And in my small lifetime, I've seen that go forward, believe it or not, I've seen so many things change for the good.

Yes, I'll go back to art.  And beauty.  And Gaia.  And the Goddess.  Because that is what we all have to do, the best of what we each have to offer.  I'll share what I love, and what little  I know, and I'll adapt.

Because many, most people on this planet, it seems to me,  have to live with tyranny, with inequity, with endless corruption,  and somehow, in the impoverishment of it, they still have to strive to find meaningful lives. I've been fortunate.  Very fortunate.   Maybe people like me have  been naive, or overly idealistic in a world too damn  full of Trumps and Putins and the rest, and somehow we've managed to dream other dreams.   Maybe now is our time to come to terms with the "real world", if only briefly - because a truly  vast global tragedy of environmental destruction  awaits all of those who will follow us.  But for this moment, it helps to acknowledge, as Neal Gabler has, the reality. 

Tomorrow, some of us, acknowledging that, will figure out where to go from here.  Those dreams are still good dreams.


America the Banana Republic

BY NEAL GABLER | NOVEMBER 29, 2017
When people call Donald Trump an authoritarian, it almost gives him more credit than he deserves.
You don’t think favorably of authoritarians; they are despicable. But you do think of them as monstrously large, grievously terrifying, as somehow taking the measure of the polity they control and drawing on its stature to puff themselves up, even as they destroy their nation’s moral core. Despots like Mussolini and Hitler epitomized evil on the grandest possible scale. To call them clowns would trivialize the unconscionable horrors they inflicted.
Trump is certainly an authoritarian, but he is more of a tinhorn dictator, a tiny, negligible man who, rather than inflating himself with the nation’s grandeur, has managed to deflate the nation with his own insipidness. Thanks to him, America is now a banana republic. It is no longer a country of soaring ideas and idealism, a beacon to the world, an example of freedom at home and a protector of freedom abroad, an anchor of sanity in a world often bouncing on the waves of madness.




Whatever her failings, America was once majestic. Now she is hopelessly diminished — a wealthier version of the corrupt nations in the developing world that we used to ridicule. And we owe it all to Donald Trump for making America small again.
The meme of America withering into a banana republic is not a new one. Some observers made the claim after the 2000 presidential election, when Republicans successfully wrested the presidency from Al Gore, just the way cabals do in those banana republics. And it was toted out again in 2008 during the great financial meltdown when the economy was revealed to be not some great dynamo but a façade hiding a giant swindle, banana republic style. Citing the inability of the congressional Republicans to do anything but dither in the face of crisis, Paul Krugman called us a “banana republic with nukes.”
In Vanity Fair, the late Christopher Hitchens was more expansive. He enumerated the many ways in which America, the last great hope of mankind, had become a banana republic — primarily the way the government was willing to bail out the oligarchs while letting the general public suffer.
The chief principle of banana-ism is that of kleptocracy, whereby those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it.
Hitchens added that there is absolutely no accountability for the thieves. This all should sound very familiar this week, as Republicans retool the entire tax system to rob from the poor and middle classes and give to corporations and the wealthy. If that isn’t a banana republic, I don’t know what is.

But Krugman and Hitchens were writing before we had a bona fide banana republic dictator to rule our kleptocracy. And while America long has had the economic and social characteristics of a banana republic, it took Trump, who has the instincts and temperament of a gangster, to finish the transformation. There is no disguising it now. We are what we are.
Tick down the list. If kleptocracy is the hallmark of a banana republic, Trump is the kleptocrat-in-chief. He not only appears to be using the presidency as his own personal ATM, now promoting a tax-cut scam by which he stands to gain tens of millions of dollars, he also has been petty enough to steer business to his hotels and hawked his “Make America Great Again” tchotchkes. Check.
Apparently not satisfied to have enriched himself at the public’s expense, Trump has brought unprecedented nepotism to the presidency in a way that only tinhorn dictators do, giving his family access to the public trough while placing his unqualified cronies in positions of power. In this administration, everyone may be on the take. Check.
Just about every Trump directive, from health care to the environment to so-called tax reform to trade policy, seems expressly designed to give benefits to a small coterie of the wealthiest Americans while the rest of the country goes to hell. There is no longer even the pretense of concealment as there was in the good old days of Republicanism. Sure sounds like a banana republic to me. Check.
Like other tinhorn dictators, Trump has no use for the essentials of democracy.
Like other tinhorn dictators, Trump has no use for the essentials of democracy. He openly attacks a free press and has a house press of his own, Fox News, and soon, quite possibly, Time Inc., the acquisition of which has been partially financed by the Koch brothers. More, there are allegations that he may using the levers of government to punish his press opponents, using the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against the proposed AT&T purchase of Time Warner to try to force the divestment of CNN.
This, too, is unprecedented in an American democracy, but not in a banana republic. Meanwhile, the Voice of America has placed on administrative leave (a reporter whose bias has leaked into his stories and who on the side has been advancing Trump’s right-wing agenda and casting racial epithets at others in the media. Check.
Trump has taken aim at the electoral process itself, not only claiming that his loss of the popular vote was a fraud, but empaneling a government commission whose sole purpose is thought to be the disenfranchisement of voters who might oppose him. This is pure banana republicanism and an affront to democracy. Check.

Banana republics are often agent states — that is, they operate at the behest of larger states. In fact the phrase “banana republic” first was coined by the writer O. Henry back in 1904, to describe the dependence of Central American countries on American businesses like United Fruit, which ran plantations in those countries and exported bananas.
Now, America itself is one of those agent states, thanks to Trump’s troubling obeisance to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Let’s not pretend otherwise just so we can save some face. There is no more face to save. American elections interfered with by Russia and a president intimidated by a Russian dictator? Check.
In banana republics, ideology is nothing, policy is nothing, ethics are nothing. Power is everything. Trump is notoriously nonideological. He has no policies or any interest in them. His sole desire is to feed his own inflated ego. In this, he stands with other banana republic potentates. Check.
Tinhorn dictators do everything they can to dismantle a system of checks and balances. Trump has done everything in his power to do the same.
Tinhorn dictators do everything they can to dismantle a system of checks and balances. Trump has done everything in his power to do the same — from dismissing FBI Director James Comey, who was investigating Trump, intimidating the Justice Department and taking over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to…. well, you name it. Untrammeled power is his goal. Check.
In a banana republic, power is concentrated in the hands of one man or a small coterie. Trump has been openly contemptuous of any delegation of authority, even calling himself the “only one that matters,” which is dictator talk, not the talk of a democratically elected chief.
What’s more, he actively has worked to damage any countervailing authorities, essentially gutting the entire diplomatic corps, to cite just one example. Check.
In a banana republic, the dictator makes his own rules and lives by his own reality. Clearly, Trump thinks he is above the law, be it legal or moral. He boasts of it. He also is above fact. The latest example of the thousands of his presidency: According to The New York Times, he privately has declared that the Access Hollywood tape was not actually him! Banana republic time. Check.



And last but not least, there is the tragi-comic state itself — a kind of laughingstock of governance. America has joined that company of buffoonish nations that keep tripping over their own feet. By one account, when Trump took his first world tour in May, other leaders were aghast at Trump’s ineptitude. One foreign expert commented on how “rapidly the American brand is depreciatingover the last 20 weeks.” Check.
Donald Trump has demeaned himself, but he has also demeaned the country that was deranged enough to elect him. These characteristics speak to a corrupt and desiccated nation, one that is staggering into oblivion.
The “alt-right” insist that until Trump, America was going the way of Rome — rotting from the inside. They are wrong. It is not decadence that is destroying America, but petulance. We are going not the way of Rome but the way of Guatemala or Zimbabwe or the Philippines — the way of banana republics. Thus does this once great nation tumble.
Check and double check.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

The End of Democracy and the TPP - GREAT Australian video!



I would call this a brilliant satire, if it wasn't so tragically true.  Like he says, we may not have much in the way of global democracy any more, and our tax dollars will soon be going a lot more into the pockets of corporations, and say goodbye to anything like environmental protection, anywhere.......but heck, at least we have ranch dressing.

https://youtu.be/M4-mlGRPmkU

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Goodbye to Democracy and your Tax Money: "The Monster Lurking Inside the TPP"


   "And when states lose, the fines can be enormous: the report notes that 2012 saw the highest monetary award in the history of investor-state dispute resolution: $1.77 billion to Occidental, in a dispute with Ecuador.


  Having said in my previous post that there are times one must stop reading the news, I find myself thinking about exactly that this morning.   As many interests in Congress try now to fast track the TPP, most Americans are barely aware of it if at all.  But the repercussions could be terrifying,  continuing to widen the gap between super wealthy and poor, and locking in a government that is virtually controlled by multi-national profiteering.  We used to have labor unions, anti-trust laws, industry and jobs.  What is evoving is a corporate "aristocracy" - which is ironic, considering the beginning of this country.  Among other things, this "partnership" will enable corporate entities to sue a state, or the country, for "lost income", such as, for example, labeling of foods that are genetically modified. 


  In other words, pretty soon, you may not have the right to know what you are eating.  Because this law will give entities like Monsanto the right to sue for billions of your tax dollars because of "lost profit".  Think it can't happen?  Read - Mexican citizens had to pay millions to Coca Cola because they wanted the sugar content changed.  Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, is currently suing Canada for $100,000 because Canada won't give them a new patent yet.   And how about $1.77 billion dollars to the Occidental corporation from Equador?  How much could that could that country  do to help its citizens with $1.77 billion?

It's bad enough that the military absorbs 60% of all our money.  If this law passes, and corporate greed is given total control in this way.........what's left for humanity and the environment is going to be very little.

  Under the pending, secret #TPP “free trade” deal you would be in trouble for sharing internet content, while big foreign corporations could sue your government for any domestic law that compromises their expected future profits.Get the facts and take action at: www.ExposeTheTPP.org.

 Investor-State Dispute Resolution: The Monster Lurking Inside Free Trade Agreements : from the be-very-afraid dept

  by Glyn Moody

"Unfortunately, against a background of almost total lack of awareness by the public that supra-national structures are being put in place that allow their governments to be overruled, and their laws to be ignored, it is highly unlikely we will get that debate."

 We wrote recently about how multilateral trade agreements have become a convenient way to circumvent democratic decision making. One of the important features of such treaties is the inclusion of an investor-state dispute resolution mechanism, which Techdirt discussed last year. The Huffington Post has a great article about how this measure is almost certain to be part of the imminent TAFTA negotiations, as it already is for TPP, and why that is deeply problematic:

Investor-state resolution has been a common component of U.S.-negotiated pacts with individual nations since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. But such resolution is not currently permitted in disputes with the U.S. and EU, which are governed by the WTO. All trade deals feature some kind of international resolution for disputes, but the direct empowerment of corporations to unilaterally bring trade cases against sovereign countries is not part of WTO treaties. Under WTO rules, a company must persuade a sovereign nation that it has been wronged, leaving the decision to bring a trade case before the WTO in the hands of elected governments.

Traditionally, this proposed political empowerment for corporations has been defended as a way to protect companies from arbitrary governments or weakened court systems in developing countries. But the expansion of the practice to first-world relations exposes that rationale as disingenuous. Rule of law in the U.S. and EU is considered strong; the court systems are among the most sophisticated and expert in the world. Most cases brought against the United States under NAFTA have been dismissed or abandoned before an international court issued a ruling.

As this rightly points out, investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms were brought in for agreements with countries where the rule of law could not be depended upon. That makes no sense in the case of the US and EU, both of whose legal systems are highly developed (some might say overly so.) The Huffington Post article quotes Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, who explains what she thinks is really going on here:
"The dirty little secret about [the negotiation] is that it is not mainly about trade, but rather would target for elimination the strongest consumer, health, safety, privacy, environmental and other public interest policies on either side of the Atlantic," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "The starkest evidence ... is the plan for it to include the infamous investor-state system that empowers individual corporations and investors to skirt domestic courts and laws and drag signatory governments to foreign tribunals."
One recent example of the kind of thing that might become increasingly common if investor-state dispute resolution is included in TAFTA and TPP is provided by Eli Lilly and Company. As Techdirt reported earlier this year, the pharma giant is demanding $100 million as compensation for what it calls "expropriation" by Canada, simply because the latter's courts refused to grant Eli Lilly a drug patent on the grounds that it didn't satisfy the conditions set down in law for doing so. A new report (pdf) from the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), pointed out to us by IP Watch, reveals just how widespread the use of investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms has already become:
The Issues Note reveals that 62 new cases were initiated in 2012, which constitutes the highest number of known ISDS [investor-state dispute settlement] claims ever filed in one year and confirms that foreign investors are increasingly resorting to investor-State arbitration.


By the end of 2012, the total number of known cases reached 518, and the total number of countries that have responded to one or more ISDS claims increased to 95. The overall number of concluded cases reached 244. Out of these, approximately 42 per cent were decided in favour of the State and 31 per cent in favour of the investor. Approximately 27 per cent of the cases were settled.
Although that suggests that states are winning more often than investors, the cost of doing so is a drain on public finances, and ignores cases that never come to arbitration because governments simply give in. And when states lose, the fines can be enormous: the report notes that 2012 saw the highest monetary award in the history of investor-state dispute resolution: $1.77 billion to Occidental, in a dispute with Ecuador. As an accompanying press release from UNCTAD points out, this growing recourse to international arbitration
amplif[ies] the need for public debate about the efficacy of the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism and ways to reform it
Unfortunately, against a background of almost total lack of awareness by the public that supra-national structures are being put in place that allow their governments to be overruled, and their laws to be ignored, it is highly unlikely we will get that debate.
  Follow Glyn Moody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

   https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130411/09574122678/investor-state-dispute-resolution-sleeping-monster-inside-free-trade-agreements-begins-to-stir.shtml

Monday, May 12, 2014

Vermont Defies Monsanto, And They Want To Sue The State!

 

While GMO's are illegal in a number of countries, including Mexico, Poland and France, in our country the Big Corporations are going to take the state of Vermont to court (and if they win, presumably the taxpayers themselves can Pay Monsanto Even More Money)................for insisting on the right to let people know what's in their food, and labeling products GMO if they are.  Just think:  you can not only be NOT ALLOWED to know if you're eating GMO corn, or salmon, but you can end up paying taxes to reimburse Monsanto, Bayer, and other corporations for any profits they may have lost as a result of people not wishing to purchase their products.

Support Vermont, and support what's left of democracy.

IN VERMONT, the GMO battle between the people and corporate greed rages on. Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin signed GMO Labeling Bill H.112 into law 2 days ago. But the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), made up of companies like Kellogg's, Nestlé and Monsanto, seems to be allergic to the democratic process - and fearing that consumers will reject genetically engineered foods - has announced that it will sue Vermont to overturn the law. This suit is in addition to their attempts at the federal level to outlaw states' rights to pass laws mandating GMO labeling.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

False "Realism" and a Culture of Possibility



 Thanks to my friend Barbara Jaspersen for forwarding this article by Arlene Goldbard to me, and I was so struck by what she had to say that I felt like sharing it here.  Struck because that spirit of resignation is to be found in me as well, that inner virus she calls the “internalization of the oppressor”.  Certainly confronting the proposed  loss of ACCESS TUCSON, which has served the community for over 30 years,  (see below) makes this article all the more relevant.  

“Realism” and Its Discontents

by Arlene Goldbard

 "I focused especially on the way Corporation Nation has consigned artists to a trivial and undernourished social role, instead of understanding artists as an indicator species for social well-being......................What does it mean that in many places cultural allocations are less than a hundredth of a percent of prison budgets? Who are we as a people? What do we stand for? What do we want to be known for: our stupendous ability to punish, or our vast creativity?"

This has been a strange time in my little world: I’ve been traveling for work while my computer stayed home and lost its mind.  I’m glad to say that sanity (i.e., memory, software, and general order) has been restored, and while I still have the sort of compulsive desire to tell the tale that afflicts survivors of accidents, I will spare you most of the saga. 
What both journeys—mine and the computer’s—have given me is the opportunity to reflect on the workings of human minds, including my own. In particular, I’ve had a close-up look at the desire to believe, especially to believe the reassuring drone of those in authority.
Earlier this month, I gave a talk at Harvard that focused on some of the key ideas in  "The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & The Future" (http://arlenegoldbard.com/books/two-new-books-by-arlene-goldbard/the-culture-of-possibility-art-artists-the-future/). 


I focused especially on the way Corporation Nation has consigned artists to a trivial and undernourished social role, instead of understanding artists as an indicator species for social well-being akin to the role oysters play as bio-monitors for marine environments. I pointed out how arts advocacy has steadily failed (e.g., President Obama asked Congress for $146 million for the National Endowment for Arts [NEA] in the next budget, $8 million less than this year, when he should have requested $440 million just to equal the spending power the agency had 35 years ago). Yet advocates keep making the same weak arguments and pretending that losing a little less than anticipated constitutes victory. There’s an Emperor’s New Clothes flavor to the whole enterprise, a tacit agreement to adjust to absurdity and go along with the charade.***

After my talk, a student asked me what arguments should be made instead. I pointed out that what we are actually spending our commonwealth on seldom gets engaged in this conversation. What does it mean that we spend more than two annual NEA budgets a day, seven days a week, on war?*** What does it mean that in many places cultural allocations are less than a hundredth of a percent of prison budgets? I posed the questions that ought to guide this debate:


Who are we as a people? What do we stand for? What do we want to be known for: our stupendous ability to punish, or our vast creativity?



The student nodded vigorously as I answered. I could see that she was with me: that the curtains of default reality had parted, affording a glimpse of the truths beneath the charade. And then something happened, something I’d seen before: some students’ excited expressions began to fade, shoulders slumped a little, breathing returned to normal. “Realism” had set in. What I mean by “realism” is the self-ratifying notion broadcast by every power elite: the message that the existing order of things is so firmly entrenched, so well-funded, and so effectively guarded that it is pointless to resist. Be realistic: surrender!

This is the real obstacle we’re up against. The pull of “realism” is felt in nearly every mind, even the minds of those whose lives are devoted to righting injustice and expanding liberty. Paulo Freire called it “internalization of the oppressor,” pointing out that when we hear often and insistently enough that we are weak, that we should cede our power to others who know better, we start to mistake that voice for our own.


There is one skill that every power elite possesses, and that is the ability to persuasively assert its own mighty rightness. But there is one power that each of us possesses, and that is to cultivate the ability to recognize and reject this propaganda. It takes awareness, commitment, and choice to hack through false consciousness and begin to see clearly. It takes all those capacities to recognize that the voice of “realism” is generally propaganda for the existing order of power (and powerlessness).


arlenegoldbard.com 
http://arlenegoldbard.com/blog


*** Remember that 59% of the national budget goes to the military, and the corporate interests that profit.  The NEA, along with the Food Stamps administration, is not even 1%.  Not much sustenance for inspiration, or hunger, with those patriarchal priorities.

***
My astirisks.  Currently artists in Tucson are disgusted that the city of Tucson, although raising salaries once again, are proposing doing away with ACCESS TUCSON****, selling the building that has housed it, and ending the program that has enriched the community for over 30 years.  I myself was able to produce and share a video presentation ("When the Word for World Was Mother"") through ACCESS in the late 80's.   We keep losing things, one at a time.  We keep becoming impoverished, and going along with agenda this author speaks of resignedly.  

 Home
*****What is Access Tucson?

Access Tucson was established as an independent, non-profit, membership based organization for the management of public access in 1984. Access Tucson provides the training and facilities for Tucsonans to communicate with the community utilizing electronic media. Public access producers provide the ideas, information, and diversity to create the most visible part of our organization, the programming.
Access Tucson is funded by cable subscribers in the form of franchise revenue fees to the City of Tucson, by corporate and individual donations and fundraising efforts. Public access television is the only forum where individuals can express their opinions and perspectives to the community through cable television. Access television provides the community an important venue for First Amendment rights, the right to free speech. Public access television makes the use of electronic media possible for many groups that are under represented, or not heard or seen at all in conventional broadcast television.

  • Production classes.
  • Youth after-school programs
  • Access to production equipment.
  • Cablecast of programming produced locally or outside of Tucson.
  • Stand-by Scholarships for classes
  • Project consultation.
  • Production opportunities for non-profits.
SIGN THE PETITION: 
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/dont-let-access-tucson