[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Anti-Empire Report

[Bill Totten]

Read this or George W Bush will be president the rest of your life

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org (July 04 2008)


Some thoughts on "patriotism" written on July 4

Most important thought: I'm sick and tired of this thing called
"patriotism".

The Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were being patriotic. The
German people who supported Hitler and his conquests were being
patriotic, fighting for the Fatherland. All the Latin American military
dictators who overthrew democratically-elected governments and routinely
tortured people were being patriotic - saving their beloved country from
"communism".

General Augusto Pinochet of Chile: "I would like to be remembered as a
man who served his country". {1}

P W Botha, former president of apartheid South Africa: "I am not going
to repent. I am not going to ask for favours. What I did, I did for my
country." {2}

Pol Pot, mass murderer of Cambodia: "I want you to know that everything
I did, I did for my country". {3}

Tony Blair, former British prime minister, defending his role in the
murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis: "I did what I thought was
right for our country". {4}

I won't bore you with what George W has said.

At the end of World War II, the United States gave moral lectures to
their German prisoners and to the German people on the inadmissibility
of pleading that their participation in the holocaust was in obedience
to their legitimate government. To prove to them how legally
inadmissable this defense was, the World War II allies hanged the
leading examples of such patriotic loyalty.

I was once asked after a talk: "Do you love America?" I answered: "No".
After pausing for a few seconds to let that sink in amidst several
nervous giggles in the audience, I continued with: "I don't love any
country. I'm a citizen of the world. I love certain principles, like
human rights, civil liberties, democracy, an economy which puts people
before profits."

I don't make much of a distinction between patriotism and nationalism.
Some writers equate patriotism with allegiance to one's country and
government, while defining nationalism as sentiments of ethno-national
superiority. However defined, in practice the psychological and
behavioral manifestations of nationalism and patriotism - and the impact
of such sentiments on actual policies - are not easily distinguishable.

Howard Zinn has called nationalism "a set of beliefs taught to each
generation in which the Motherland or the Fatherland is an object of
veneration and becomes a burning cause for which one becomes willing to
kill the children of other Motherlands or Fatherlands". {5} ...
"Patriotism is used to create the illusion of a common interest that
everybody in the country has". {6}

Strong feelings of patriotism lie near the surface in the great majority
of Americans. They're buried deeper in the more "liberal" and
"sophisticated", but are almost always reachable, and ignitable.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the mid-19th century French historian, commented
about his long stay in the United States: "It is impossible to conceive
a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those
who are disposed to respect it". {7}

George Bush Sr, pardoning former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and
five others in connection with the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages
scandal: "First, the common denominator of their motivation - whether
their actions were right or wrong - was patriotism". {8}

What a primitive underbelly there is to this rational society. The US is
the most patriotic, as well as the most religious, country of the
so-called developed world. The entire American patriotism thing may be
best understood as the biggest case of mass hysteria in history, whereby
the crowd adores its own power as troopers of the world's only
superpower, a substitute for the lack of power in the rest of their
lives. Patriotism, like religion, meets people's need for something
greater to which their individual lives can be anchored.

So this July 4, my dear fellow Americans, some of you will raise your
fists and yell: "U! S! A! U! S! A!". And you'll parade with your flags
and your images of the Statue of Liberty. But do you know that the
sculptor copied his mother's face for the statue, a domineering and
intolerant woman who had forbidden another child to marry a Jew?

"Patriotism", Dr Samuel Johnson famously said, "is the last refuge of a
scoundrel". Ambrose Bierce begged to differ - It is, he said, the first.

"Patriotism is the conviction that this country is superior to all other
countries because you were born in it". -- George Bernard Shaw

"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but
according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -
torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations,
imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of
civilians - which does not change its moral colour when it is committed
by 'our' side ... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of
atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity
for not even hearing about them". -- George Orwell {9}

"Pledges of allegiance are marks of totalitarian states, not
democracies", says David Kertzer, a Brown University anthropologist who
specializes in political rituals. "I can't think of a single democracy
except the United States that has a pledge of allegiance". {10} Or, he
might have added, that insists that its politicians display their
patriotism by wearing a flag pin. Hitler criticized German Jews and
Communists for their internationalism and lack of national patriotism.
Along with Mussolini in Italy, the Führer demanded that "true patriots"
publicly vow and display their allegiance to their respective
fatherlands. Postwar democratic governments of the two countries made a
conscious effort to minimize such shows of national pride.

(Oddly enough, the American Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis
Bellamy, a founding member, in 1889, of the Society of Christian
Socialists, a group of Protestant ministers who asserted that "the
teachings of Jesus Christ lead directly to some form or forms of
socialism".)

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, we could read that
there's "now a high degree of patriotism in the Soviet Union because
Moscow acted with impunity in Afghanistan and thus underscored who the
real power in that part of the world is". {11}

"Throughout the nineteenth century, and particularly throughout its
latter half, there had been a great working up of this nationalism in
the world ... Nationalism was taught in schools, emphasized by
newspapers, preached and mocked and sung into men. It became a monstrous
cant which darkened all human affairs. Men were brought to feel that
they were as improper without a nationality as without their clothes in
a crowded assembly. Oriental peoples, who had never heard of nationality
before, took to it as they took to the cigarettes and bowler hats of the
West." -- H G Wells, English writer {12}

"The very existence of the state demands that there be some privileged
class vitally interested in maintaining that existence. And it is
precisely the group interests of that class that are called patriotism."
-- Mikhail Bakunin, Russian anarchist {13}

"To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by
geography". -- George Santayana, American educator and philosopher


Dr Strangelove

There have been numerous books published on the 1962 Cuban missile
crisis. I have not read one of them. There's another one just out: "One
Minute to Midnight", by Washington Post writer Michael Dobbs. I will not
be reading it. The reason authors keep writing these books and
publishers keep publishing them is obvious: How close the world came to
a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union! Arthur
Schlesinger Jr, historian and adviser to President Kennedy, termed it
"the most dangerous moment in human history". {14} But I've never
believed that. Such a fear is based on the belief that either or both of
the countries was ready and willing to unleash their nuclear weapons
against the other. However, this was never in the cards because of MAD -
Mutually Assured Destruction. By 1962, the nuclear arsenals of the
United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated
that neither superpower could entirely destroy the other's retaliatory
force by launching a missile first, even with a surprise attack.
Retaliation was certain, or certain enough. Starting a nuclear war was
committing suicide. If the Japanese had had nuclear bombs, Hiroshima and
Nagasaki would not have been destroyed.

Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was only looking for equality. The
United States had missiles and bomber bases already in place in Turkey
and other missiles in Western Europe pointed toward the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev later wrote:

"The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and
threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what
it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you; we'd be doing
nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine ... After
all, the United States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadn't
given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their
allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans. Our
conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules and
limits as the Americans." {15}

Virtually every president from Truman on has been exhorted by one Dr
Strangelove or another, military or civilian, to use The Bomb when
things were going badly, such as in Korea or Vietnam or Cuba, or to use
it against the Soviets directly, unprovoked, to once and for all get rid
of those commie bastards that were causing so much trouble in so many
countries. And not one president gave in to this pressure. They would
have been MAD to do so. Which is why all the scary talk of recent years
about Saddam Hussein and Iran and all their alleged and potential
weapons of mass destruction was just that - scary talk. Hussein was not,
and the Iranians are not, MAD. The only modern-day leaders I would not
make this assumption about are Osama bin Laden and Dick Cheney. The
latter is a genuine Dr Strangelove.

In a few weeks we'll once again be marking the anniversary of the two
nuclear bombings of Japan. Remarkably, the bombings are still highly
controversial. I believe that the evidence clearly shows that the
Japanese were already defeated and trying to surrender, thus obviating
the need for the bombings. My essay on this can be found at
http://members.aol.com/essays6/abomb.htm

The Cold War was a marvelous era for Armageddon humor. Here is US
General Thomas Power speaking in December 1960 about things like nuclear
war and a first strike by the United States: "The whole idea is to kill
the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one
Russian, we win!" The response from one of those present was: "Well,
you'd better make sure that they're a man and a woman". {16}


Economics 101 remedial

The economists who defend the perpetual crises of the capitalist system
- the sundry speculative bubbles followed by bursting bubbles followed
by a trail of tears - most often turn to "supply and demand" as the
ultimate explanation and justification for the system. This provides an
impersonal, neutral-sounding, and respectable, almost scientific, cover
for the vagaries of free enterprise. They would have us believe that we
shouldn't blame the crises on greed or speculation or manipulation or
criminal activity because such flawed human behavior is overridden by
"supply and demand". It's a law, remember, "the law of supply and
demand" is its full name. And where does this "law" come from? Congress?
Our ancestral British Parliament? No, nothing so commonplace, so
man-made. No, they would have us believe that it must come from nature.
It works virtually like a natural law, does it not? And we violate it or
ignore it at our peril.

Thus have we all been raised. But great cracks in the levee have been
appearing in recent years, in unlikely places, such as the Senate of the
United States, which issued a lengthy report in 2006 (when a gallon of
gasoline had already passed the three dollar mark) entitled: "The role
of market speculation in rising oil and gas prices". Here are some excerpts:

"The traditional forces of supply and demand cannot fully account for
these increases [in crude oil, gasoline, et cetera]. While global demand
for oil has been increasing ... global oil supplies have increased by an
even greater amount. As a result, global inventories have increased as
well. Today, US oil inventories are at an eight-year high, and OECD
[mainly European] oil inventories are at a twenty-year high.
Accordingly, factors other than basic supply and demand must be examined."

"Over the past few years, large financial institutions, hedge funds,
pension funds, and other investment funds have been pouring billions of
dollars into the energy commodities markets ... to try to take advantage
of price changes or to hedge against them. Because much of this
additional investment has come from financial institutions and
investment funds that do not use the commodity as part of their
business, it is defined as 'speculation' by the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission (CFTC). According to the CFTC, a speculator 'does not
produce or use the commodity, but risks his or her own capital trading
futures in that commodity in hopes of making a profit on price changes'.
[Futures contracts gamble on the price goods will fetch on a particular
date in the future; the contracts are traded like stocks.] The large
purchases of crude oil futures contracts by speculators have, in effect,
created an additional demand for oil, driving up the price of oil to be
delivered in the future in the same manner that additional demand for
the immediate delivery of a physical barrel of oil drives up the price
on the spot market ... Although it is difficult to quantify the effect
of speculation on prices, there is substantial evidence that the large
amount of speculation in the current market has significantly increased
prices."


The prices arrived at daily on the commodity exchanges (primarily the
New York Mercantile Exchange - NYMEX), for the various kinds of oil are
used as principal international pricing benchmarks, and play an
important role in setting the price of gasoline at the pump.

A good part of the Senate report deals with how the CFTC is no longer
able to properly regulate commodity trading to prevent speculation,
manipulation, or fraud because much of the trading takes place on
commodity exchanges, in the US and abroad, that are not within the
CFTC's purview. "Persons within the United States seeking to trade key
US energy commodities - U.S. crude oil, gasoline, and heating oil
futures - now can avoid all US market oversight or reporting
requirements by routing their trades through the ICE Futures exchange in
London instead of the NYMEX in New York ... To the extent that energy
prices are the result of market manipulation or excessive speculation,
only a cop on the beat with both oversight and enforcement authority
will be effective ... The trading of energy commodities by large firms
on OTC [over-the-counter] electronic exchanges, was exempted from CFTC
oversight by a provision inserted at the behest of Enron and other large
energy traders into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000." {17}

A tale told many times. While you and I go about our daily lives trying
to be good citizens, the Big Boys, the Enron Boys, are busy lobbying the
Congress Boys. They call it "modernization", or some other eye-rolling
euphemism, and we get screwed.

The Washington Post recently had this to report on the Enron and
Congress Boys: "Wall Street banks and other large financial institutions
have begun putting intense pressure on Congress to hold off on
legislation that would curtail their highly profitable trading in oil
contracts - an activity increasingly blamed by lawmakers for driving up
prices to record levels ... But the executives were met with skepticism
and occasional hostility. 'Spare us your lecture about supply and
demand', one of the Democratic aides said, abruptly cutting off one of
the executives ... A growing number of members of Congress have reacted
to public outrage over skyrocketing gasoline prices by introducing at
least eight bills that restrict the ability of financial companies to
buy futures contracts, [require companies to] disclose more about those
investments or stiffen federal oversight of energy trades." {18}

Some further testimony from the 2006 Senate hearing:

"There has been no shortage, and inventories of crude oil and products
have continued to rise. The increase in prices has not been driven by
supply and demand." -- Lord Browne, Group Chief Executive of BP
(formerly British Petroleum)

"Senator ... I think I have been very clear in saying that I don't think
that the fundamentals of supply and demand - at least as we have
traditionally looked at it - have supported the price structure that's
there". -- Lee Raymond, Chairman and CEO, ExxonMobil

"What's been happening since 2004 is very high prices without record-low
stocks. The relationship between US [oil] inventory levels and prices
has been shredded, has become irrelevant." -- Jan Stuart, Global Oil
Economist, UBS Securities (which calls itself "the leading global wealth
manager")

In 2008, when a gallon of gasoline had passed the four dollar mark, OPEC
Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri stated: "There is clearly no
shortage of oil in the market". El-Badri "blamed high oil prices on
investors seeking 'better returns' in commodities after a drop in equity
prices and the value of the dollar". {19}

Finally, defenders of the way the system works insist that the oil
companies have been experiencing great increases in their costs, due
particularly to oil running out, so-called "peak oil". It costs much
more to find and extricate the remaining oil and the companies have to
pass these costs to the consumer. Well, class, if that is so, then the
companies should be making about the same net profit as before peak oil
- X-dollars more in expenses, X-dollars added to the price, same amount
of profit, albeit a lower percentage of profit to sales, something of
interest primarily to Wall Street, not to ordinary human beings. But the
oil companies have not done that.  Their increases in price and profit
defy gravity and are not on the same planet as any increases in costs.
Moreover, as economist Robert Weissman of the Multinational Monitor has
observed: "While the price of oil is going up, these companies' drilling
expenses are not. Oil can trade at $40 a barrel, $90 a barrel, or $130 a
barrel. It still costs ExxonMobil and the rest of Big Oil only about $20
to get a barrel of oil out of the ground." {20}

The above is not meant to be the last word on the subject of why our
gasoline is so expensive. Too much information is hidden, by
speculators, oil companies, refiners, and others; too much activity is
unregulated; too much is moved by psychology more than economics. The
best solution would be to get rid of all the speculative markets -
unless they can demonstrate that they serve a human purpose - and
nationalize the oil companies. (Oh my god, he used the "N" word!)


Notes

{1} Sunday Telegraph, London (July 18 1999)

{2} The Independent, London (November 22 1995)

{3} Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong (October 30 1997), article by
Nate Thayer, pages 15 and 20

{4} Washington Post (May 11 2007), page 14

{5} Passionate Declarations (2003), page 40

{6} ZNet Magazine (May 2006), interview by David Barsamian

{7} Democracy in America (1840), chapter 16

{8} New York Times (December 25 1992)

{9} "Notes on Nationalism", pages 83, 84 in Such, Such Were the Joys (1945)

{10} Alan Colmes, Red, White and Liberal (2003), page 30

{11} San Francisco Examiner (January 20 1980), quoting a "top Soviet
diplomat"

{12} The Outline of History (1920), volume II, chapter XXXVII, page 782

{13} Letters on Patriotism (1869)

{14} Washington Post Book World (June 24 2008), review of "One Minute to
Midnight"

{15} Khrushchev Remembers (London, 1971) pages 494, 496

{16} Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (1983), page 246. For many
other examples of Cold War absurdity, see William Blum, Freeing the
World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (2004), chapter 12:
"Before there were terrorists, there were communists and the Wonderful
World of Anti-Communism"

{17} "The role of market speculation in rising oil and gas prices",
published by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations - Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate (June
27 2006)

{18} Washington Post (June 19 2008), page D1, "Wall Street Lobbies to
Protect Speculative Oil Trades"

{19} Washington Post (May 10 2008), page D3

{20} "What To Do About the Price of Oil", Multinational Monitor (May 28
2008) http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/editorsblog


William Blum is the author of:-

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two
(Common Courage Press, 1995)

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Zed Books, 2002)

West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press, 2002)

Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Common
Courage Press, 2004)


Portions of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at
http://www.killinghope.org and previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read
at this website.

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