Immigration Amnesty is Racist, Sexist, Classist and destructive to the environment

There is a lot of talk about immigration right now. It is a teaching moment. Political candidates who want to be President are talking a lot of nonsense.

Start with the basic facts:

The U.S. is overpopulated and creates more ecological destruction per human than any other country on earth (yes, including China).

The economy can not be expanded infinitely.

There has been growing economic inequality.

Immigration amnesties lead to further illegal immigration.

Illegal immigrants mostly compete for the lowest paying jobs. Even legal immigrants tend to compete for entry level jobs, though some are wealthy or educated enough to join the upper class or upple middle class as soon as they get here.

Who else competes for the lowest paying jobs in America? High-school dropouts, and even graduates, of course. That means mainly children of people who themselves are marginally employed or work regularly, but for low wages. Working class and welfare class women. And, disproportionately, people who have traditionally been discriminated against, including African-Americans, American Indians, etc.

The people who advocate for immigration amnesty, and hence for unlimited future immigration to the U.S., are well-intended. They see it as a human rights issue.

And there are long-term benefits to immigration for the economy. More people means more demand and more workers, and so more GDP. Legalized immigrants can better match their talents to the job markets. That is why the Republican establishment used to lead in advocating for more immigration, including immigration amnesty. That is why the largest single amnesty was put in place in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan.

The immediate impact of new immigrants, whether legal or illegal, is pressure on those jobs that require little skill to perform. They are often hard jobs. This includes childcare, cleaning services, and unskilled physical labor. These are exactly the jobs that unskilled citizens, including poor white, black, and hispanic citizens also want. The competition for these jobs pushes down wages, often to below the official minimum wages. It makes finding full time work difficult, except perhaps during brief economic booms. It makes it even harder for families that have been in the United States for generations to accumulate the resources necessary to climb out of the bottom of the working class.

That is why labor unions, otherwise pretty liberal and supporters of the Democratic Party, have traditionally been for minimal immigration.

The effect on the U.S. and global environment is also negative. Most illegal immigrants come here because they are greedy and want to have a higher standard of living than they would have in their native nation. To the extent they achieve that they are using more energy and other natural resources. They are generating more greenhouse gasses, and they are speeding up global warming.

In an ideal world the idea that "all men are created equal" might mean that men and women could move freely, to live wherever they want. We don't live in an ideal world. We live on a dying earth where most nations are already populated beyond what is sustainable. That is particularly true of the United States.

What we really need is a one-child policy in the United States. Mexico needs a one-child policy. So does Canada. So does nearly every nation on earth.

So what is wrong with my dear liberal and leftist friends? They are mostly herd animals, and they are not much for thinking for themselves. They "buy" a package of positions on issues that make them feel good about themselves. They want an environmentalist merit badge and a human rights merit badge. On many issues those badges are quite compatible.

But not for immigration. Increasing immigration and anything that encourages illegal immigration are positions that have practical consquences. They help rich white employers and bankers. They hurt working class men and women, and disproportionately hurt black workers. And they hurt the environment.

Congress should change the immigration law to allow in a number of immigrants each year that will not have a negative impact on employment for unskilled citizens. Congress should not grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.

Judge nations by per capital carbon emissions

Americans continue to generate carbon dioxide at unfair levels

Since Nationalist Public Radio (NPR) constantly says that China is the world's largest carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas producer, and they pass for liberal in these United States, I assume most Americans have a distorted view of how our nation fits into the problem of global warming.

If all people are created equal, we should set an average target allowance that is safe. Then everyone should work to push down the carbon emissions of those who are, in effect, cheating the rest of humanity (and all living creatures) by consuming more than their fare share.

So let's look at a few national averages, remembering that within each nation there are also high consumption carbon emitting individuals, and below average individuals. The following table is a sample. You can find fuller tables at Wikipedia List of Countries by carbon dioxide emissions.

Nation	kilotons CO2 emitted	tons per person
United States of America	5,334,000	16.5
Russia	1,766,000	12.4
European Union	3,415,000	6.7
China	10,540,000	7.6
India	2,341,000	1.8
Mexico	456,000	3.7
Indonesia	452,000	1.8

Of the nations with large populations the U.S.A. clearly consumes far more than its share of carbon per person. The global average is 5.0 tons per day, so we are at over 3 times that.

There are a few nations with per person carbon emission higher than the U.S.: Australia at 17.3, a coal producing nation; and Saudi Arabia at 16.8 are notable. But the E. U., with a standard of living similar to the U.S., is under half.

China is, on a per person basis, is at 46% of the U.S. Its total emissions are higher than the U.S. because of its much larger population (1.38 billion vs. 322 million).

When you throw in history, the unfairness of the situation is heightened. The industrial revolution started in Great Britain in the late 1700s, in Europe in the early 1800s, and in the U.S. around the mid 1800s. So we have had very long periods of carbon emissions compared to the rest of the world.

In the aftermath of World War II pretty much every factory in the world had been damaged. Except the factories of the U.S. With our vast petroleum fields and array of factories, we dominated the world economy and dwarfed the emissions of other nations. Other nations' factories came on line gradually. By the 1970s Americans had to compete again, and had grown soft, and so began losing the economic competition to other nations. We were just so wealthy by then that it took a while for the truth to sink in.

China made stabs at industrializing going all the way back to the 1800s, but did not really start to grow production faster than America, Europe, Japan and Russia until the 1980s.

The competitive advantages to nations that continue to burn fossil fuels are enormous. Clearly, if it were about fairness, the U.S.A., which has done the most historic damage, should do the most to cut its per capita fossil fuel consumption. Instead gasoline and natural gas are cheap right now, so consumption is increasing rather than decreasing.

Fairness is all fine in a game of tennis or baseball, but in the real world people who are unfairly privileged typically don't want to play fair. I've talked to people across the spectrum of American wealth and poverty, and the response is almost uniform. People want scientists to fix the problem without any substantial personal impositions on themselves.

Scientists can't change the laws of thermodynamics. That is why they are called laws. It takes energy to keep buildings warm in winter and cool in summer. It takes energy to move cars and planes around. It takes energy to fertilize farms, plant and harvest food, and get it to markets. It even takes energy to separate silicon from silicon dioxide to make solar panels, or to extract and transport fossil fuels.

It is clear that their are too many people in the world and that their standard of living is too high. In the United States we should probably do our share by immediately limiting families to one child, turning off all air conditioning systems (except, perhaps, hospitals), and adding a punitive tax to sales of fossil fuels, something like $3 per gallon of gasoline. Also all flying of any kind should be prohibited.

But we won't. The rich will buy Teslas and pretend they have done their part. They will meet with politicians in exotic locations and pat themselves on the back for closing the occasional coal-fired generating plant and putting in a few solar panel. The middle class will continue to aspire to the luxuries of the rich, and the working class will aspire to middle-class luxuries.

The coral will die, and the plankton will die, and sooner or later crops will wilt. Nature will will unleash plague and famine, and balance will be restored. Hopefully when humans die off, it won't be entirely random. Hopefully the humans that survive will give birth to an improved species.

Agree? Disagree? You can comment on this post at Natural Liberation Blog at blogspot.com

Should the U.S. Join the ICC?

The people of the United States of America should force their government to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC is charged with prosecuting people who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is meant to be a global organization, so that no one in the world can get away with these crimes. Currently 123 nations are members.

The United States of America (USA) is not a member. The USA helped plan for the ICC and participated in writing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. But then the U.S. representative voted against the U.N. sponsored convention in 1998. Our government refused to ratify the statute or participate in the ICC. [Strangely, the U.S. had signed the statute after voting against the actual wording].

Why? Because equality before the law is a fine concept when used to hang Nazi or Japanese leaders or African dictators. But the U.S. Congress and Presidents, political parties and generals don't want the laws against war crimes and crimes against humanity applied to them.

This is true even though the statute only allows for prosecution of crimes committed after the treaty came into effect (after a sufficient number of nations ratified it) on July 1, 2002. The vast sweep of American history, and its vast array of war criminals, living and dead, are safe from prosecution for crimes committed before that date.

It is possible that even if the U.S. (and other renegade nations like Russia, China, and India) were to join the ICC, our leaders would continue to commit crimes. The U.S. could also refuse to accept the judgment of the court after a crime is committed. But it seems likely that the crime rate would go down if criminal masterminds thought there was any possibility that they would be prosecuted.

The only way the U.S. will join the ICC is if there is sufficient pressure from below. Most of the USA's ruling elite have committed or condoned war crimes. They are still bent on committing war crimes and crimes against humanity if that should serve their economic or political purposes.

Pressure from below has been scant because most Americans think all our national actions are justified in some way. If you remind them of what was considered a war crime at the Nuremberg Trials of German leaders in 1945 (or of the Japanese in the Far East Tribunal), they have no problem with it. Try then reminding them of American historic actions that clearly would be considered war crimes under the Nuremberg rules. Watch them weasel out reasons (they are repeating from USA propaganda mills) why the USA is excused in each and every case.

It is hard to say which political party is worse, the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Republican rhetoric tends to dismiss the ICC and any suggestion that Republicans have ever committed war crimes as internationalist communist U.N. conspiracy theory. Many Democrats give lip service to the ideal of peace, and won't admit that the three worst American war criminals of the 20th century were Democratic Party leaders: Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson.

A little-known aspect (in the USA) of the Nuremberg rules is how a political party is designated as a war-crimes organization. The court's guideline was that if one of the leaders was convicted of a major war crime (notably invading another nation), then the entire party was a war crimes organization and was to be outlawed. Thus the Nazi Party was outlawed in Germany after World War II. [See also: War Crimes Organizations and Nuremberg Article 9]

That is the only precedent on the subject. In other words, if it is proven that Lyndon Johnson invaded Vietnam, or Truman ordered unrestricted bombings of cities, or even the invasion of Panama by George H. W. Bush, then their political parties should be banned. According to the one good precedent. Note that the USA set up the Nuremberg trials and made the rules.

The ICC does not seem to be strictly following the precedent of Nuremberg. But since it is not under the absolute control of U.S. war criminals and their organization, there is always the possibility that the current rules could be made more strict.

Each and every citizen of the USA (and the world) should ask: do I understand what actions constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity? Understanding that, should all war criminals be brought to justice, including those of powerful nations like the USA?

Be sure to ask every politician you meet if they support the USA joining the ICC. If one says no, for whatever reason, know you are dealing with a criminal.

Be aware that by registering as a voter in the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, you have joined a war crimes organization and are condoning war crimes and crimes against humanity.

American Prosperity 3.0 Coming Soon

"Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt

As lamely as their manners!"

William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene I

There are more job openings listed today in the United States of America than there are (officially) unemployed people. That does not mean it is super easy to find a job, but it is certainly a lot easier than it was in, say 2010.

There is no obvious bubble in the American economy. Sure, houses in some areas of California have become pricey again. Sure, a few stocks like Tesla stand out like sore thumbs. But on the whole housing is priced reasonably and so are stocks.

Even at the bottom there are glimmers of brightness, as a few states and cities raise their minimum wages.

But don't worry, if Congress or the Fed does not screw things up, at some point some group of greedy, shortsighted people will. Enjoy Prosperity 3.0 while it lasts. Tuck some savings away, if you are smart.

Looking at American history, you would almost believe that Americans prefer a roller coaster economy to steady improvement. It is a manic depressive economy. It was so manic depressive during the 1800's that the Great Powers — bankers and politicians and friends — set up the Federal Reserve in 1913 to try to dampen the economic cycles.

That did not work, as illustrated by the economic boom of the 1920s, followed by the Great Depression. Millions died in the Great Depression, although you won't hear mention of that from the Hoover Institute, which is too busy blaming Mao for every death that took place in China when he was in power. The New Deal probably helped, at least at first. In many ways the New Deal resembled Fascism as much as it resembled Socialism, but in any case it kept the economy going until World War II.

World War II was the best thing that ever happened to Americans. President Roosevelt wanted to get us into the war early, but between the Catholics in the Democratic Party (who liked Roman Catholic leaders like General Franco, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Marshal Philippe Petain) and the Isolationists (some Democrats, mostly Republicans), we waited until it was optimal. By the time the Battle of Pearl Harbor forced us to admit we were already fighting Japan (in China) and Germany (in the Atlantic), the old empires were in trouble. Our farms and factories fed their war effort; their farms and factories were mostly destroyed.

World War II was great if you were an American worker. My high school drop out mother got a job in a war industry, and even my poker-losing lazy-ass grandfather deigned to take a job.

Which led to the 1950s and 1960s, the high tide of America relative to the rest of the world. It was a party! African-Americans were allowed in, even in the Democratic South, and not just to play banjo and serve drinks.

Sadly, while America was on a cocaine binge, the rest of the world mostly still had their belts tight and were rebuilding their factories and economies.

Which brings us to the 1970s. They sucked big time. In many ways they were as bad as the Great Recession. After the U.S. helped Israel beat up the Arab countries again, we had the Oil Embargo, an astonishing increase in fuel prices, and Stagflation, and Disco. Jobs were scarce. Factories started moving overseas.

Some of us muddled through to the 1980s, many died along the roadside. But the Hoover Institute doesn't rant about Ronald Reagan being a mass murderer for turning the mentally ill out into the streets. After the 70s the later 80s felt prosperous. The stock market began to go up as capitalists and their politicians began pushing more and more of the economic pie into their own mouths. Oh, and PCs (just spreadsheets and word processing back then) made people more productive, which meant lots of them got laid off, then retrained as part-time big box store employees.

The PC and Internet thing seemed to be turning out well by the late 1990s, as the usual gang of privileged college grads were hired into the dot com boom. Followed very quickly by the dot com bust. Followed by the housing boom, as the Federal Reserve failed to take the dot com money out of circulation, even after the companies themselves zeroed out.

Which led to the Great Recession, which unless this blog is being read more than 20 years from now, you know about.

You would think the American people would boot out both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, hang the people at Goldman Sucks, and stop wasting their money on iPhones and AT&T contracts.

But no. We are about to have Prosperity 3.0. Grab what you can while you can, because if history teaches us anything, the party will come to an end when the alcohol and blow run out. No one is likely to be around to help you when this party is over, unless you are a major political donor.

Barack Obama's Idiotic Foreign Policy

"For Every Sad Fly, There is a Happy Spider "

—Joseph P. Kennedy

You might think from the title of this essay that I am a right-wing hater of President Barack Obama. I don't hate the President. If you have read enough of my opinion pieces you might categorize me as "leftist" if you had too, but you know "left," "right," and "center" have all become pretty meaningless terms. "Modern," "Orthodox," and "Ultra-orthodox" are the three big categories of people in the 21st century.

I am "Modern." And as a Modern, I think Barack Obama's foreign policy is idiotic. It is a product of a man, and an establishment, that are trapped in the Orthodox political webs they have spun. The flies they were supposed to catch have mutated into zombies that multiply faster than they can be killed. Except they are really human beings, endowed by nature with all the rights of human beings.

I am beginning to think that Barack Obama was too busy studying law, trying to get ahead, to crack open a history book before he became President. Well, actually, to learn enough history to be an effective President, which might require careful study of 50 to 100 history books.

Let's start with the American Revolution. In 1770 most American colonials wanted to remain part of the British Empire, even if they had some complaints. The more Americans complained, the more the idiots in London tried to use the force of law, and then military force, to remain in control. How did that work out for the Brits? Not too well.

True, revolutions have been successfully put down by force more often than not. And nations have been conquered by force. But mostly force has not worked out as an option since the colonial era blew up into World War I and World War II. Force can be used to install a puppet when manipulation and bribery fails, but if the puppet is to obviously a foreign stooge, sooner or later nationalists seize power. Example: how well did America's puppets in the "nation" of South Vietnam work out? Not too well.

More recently, how did the overthrow by military force of the old regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq work out? It looks like Afghanistan will become another kingdom of warlords by the end of 2015. In Iraq the nation is now mainly divided between anti-U.S. ( and anti-Modern) ISIS/Sunnis and pro-Iranian Shia tribes.

Elections? Obama and the U.S. establishment don't need no stinking elections when they elevate Orthodox or Ultra-orthodox Islamic parties to power, as happened in Algeria, Palestine, and Egypt. And how well did the deposing of the old Libyan government work out? And if we are against Ultra-orthodox Islamic dictators, why don't we help the internal opposition to the Saud dictatorship?

To some extent President Obama and some of the establishment know this. They know using force just pisses people off. The force option only works if you exterminate people or ethnically cleanse areas. Obama may execute people without trial, but he is no Hitler, or at least would want to hear back from the pollsters before building ovens for tribes aligned with Islamic radicals.

So, using force to kill Islam is not going to work. Justice, kindness, education, and some economic relief would probably work in the long run to lure people towards the Modern end of the social-political spectrum, but that would take time. What about the short run?

In the short run, the first thing the President could do (if he could get the establishment to go along with him) is to end the various punitive economic measures that have been imposed on various states, notably Iran and Cuba. I'm not saying sell fighter jets or plutonium to either country, I'm saying just resume ordinary trade with everyone. Even North Korea.

Second, stop the obvious interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. We don't want foreign nations stirring up trouble in the U.S.; we should reciprocate.

Third, recognize the State of Palestine. Just do it. Let the Palestinians govern themselves. If Israel objects, stop using U.S. taxpayer money to supply them with fighter jets and plutonium.

Fourth, let's get our own house in order. Let's make sure there really is liberty and justice, including economic justice, for all Americans. Let's prosecute our own war criminals, rather than running around the world accusing others of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Oh, the list is long, I won't repeat the details here, you know the details (unless you are in the oblivious 1%). Instead of pretending to be a shining light, let us actually do the work needed to shine brightly.

Should the U.S. Arm Syria to fight ISIS?

ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is no ordinary group of rebels bent on becoming a new government. ISIS is ultra-violent and ultra-orthodox, and worse still, ultra-competent in both military and economic matters.

Sometimes the least bad choice is the best choice. ISIS is clearly (from our secular, freedom-and-equality oriented American perspective) the worst choice for governance of the Arabic/Islamic nations.

It could be argued that Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally, and that the rulers of Saudi Arabia are as religiously oppressive and dictatorial as ISIS. We believe the U.S. should not be allied with the Saudis, but then again they have grown soft on their oil money and don't represent a regional threat. We should continue to recognize the de facto, if democratically illegitimate, government of Saudi Arabia.

When it come to ISIS we have choices, both short term and long term. In the short term the only realistic choices are supporting the de facto governments of Iraq and Syria.

The Syrian government has long opposed U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, but for good reason. The Arabs have been beat up by European nations and the U.S. for about two centuries now. People are angry, and that anger has now been distilled into ISIS.

The Syrian government is headed by Bashar al-Assad, and in some ways resembles a dictatorship. But opposition parties are allowed to participate in elections, and Assad seems to be genuinely popular among much of Syria's population. In particular, when it comes to religion Assad has been non-sectarian, more so than most U.S. politicians.

ISIS was able to grow in strength in Syria because of the civil war against the Assad regime that broke out after the Arab Spring. That civil war has devastated the country, but it has not lead to the pro-U.S. rebels replacing the current government. At this point in time the pro-U.S. rebels are rapidly being squeezed between ISIS and the government of Syria.

President Obama, in consultation with those few members of Congress who are not suffering from hardening of the brain, should make a dramatic change in U.S. policy.

By giving support to Assad, including both military and economic support, the U.S. could put a stop to ISIS before it gets further out of control. ISIS running Syria, or Iraq, or Syria and Iraq, would be a disaster and would probably lead to an ISIS takeover of Jordan and then Saudi Arabia. With all those resources, global Islamic jihad would certainly be on the agenda.

U.S. support for Assad could be contingent on his government pardoning the pro-U.S. rebels and encouraging them to participate in the next election. The U.S. could give economic aid to compensate for the damage done. U.S. military aid would go a long way towards defeating ISIS. Done right, this might even eventually swing Syria into the U.S. camp, or at least into a tolerant neutrality.

Human rights activists will protest that the Assad regime has committed crimes against humanity. That might be true, but in a civil war it is hard to separate out civilians from resistance fighters. The U.S. failed to make that separation in its wars against Vietnam and the Philippines, and when it dropped firebombs and atomic bombs on the cities of Japan, and many, many other times. When the big fish have been fried, including George W. Bush, perhaps then we can go after the small fry.

If Assad defeats ISIS without U.S. aid, that would be fine, but it would create a long-term dynamic where Syria remains unfriendly to the U.S.

I simply would not bet on Assad' crew beating ISIS. It is too dangerous of a bet.

[Originally published at Mendoday]

Terrorism Trial Asserts Global U.S. Jurisdiction

The conviction of British Cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri (legal name Mustafa Kamel Mustafa) for terrorism in a U.S. federal court today is not the first example of the government of the United States of America claiming the right to apply U.S. law to anyone, anywhere in the world, but it is a good example.

Consider what you would think of a court in another country (say Iran) convicting U.S. citizens of breaking Iranian law, even without leaving the U.S., or ever setting foot in Iran. Not too much, I would think. But Americans rarely conceive that our government's bullying of foreigners goes beyond all reasonable bounds.

It is not clear that Abu Masri is a terrorist. Certainly he believes people who subscribe to Islam should fight to protect Islam from attacks. Certainly his rhetoric is inflammatory.

But I want to focus on a particular problem created by his case (and prior cases like it): the assertion by the U.S. government that everyone in the world is under its jurisdiction.

What that means is that a law passed in America can be applied to anyone in the world. Talk about "taxation without representation;" this is policing without representation. This goes beyond the U.S. tradition of policing Latin America, and later the world, by assassinating national leaders or otherwise installing pro-U.S. puppets to rule countries.

The Supreme Court should throw out the entire case, but they won't.

Looking at the specifics, Abu Masri spent the entire period during which he was supposed to be a terrorist mastermind in the city of London, Great Britain. Born in Egypt in 1958, he first moved to Britain as a student in 1979. He did not leave Britain during the period during which his alleged crimes took place. Each of his alleged crimes took place outside of normal U.S. jurisdiction, the jurisdiction any non-imperialist nation would claim. After much legal wrangling Abu Masri was extradited to the U.S. on October 2012.

The main charge was that Abu Masri masterminded the kidnapping of 16 Western tourists (4 were killed) in Yemen in 1998. He was in Britain at that time. One of his sons was in Yemen, and may have been involved in the kidnapping, but was in a Yemen jail at the time. Suppose Masri was involved. Where did the crime take place? In Yemen. Which government has jurisdiction? Yemen. Case closed. The U.S. has no jurisdiction. Send Masri to Yemen, where I believe they have the death penalty for murder.

The charge closest to home is that followers of Abu Masri attempted to establish a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon. But this was 1999, before the attack on the World Trade Center, and the training was to fight against the (pro-Soviet) Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Since we have the right to bear arms, and again Masri was in Britain, this seems like the kind of case setting a precedent to arrest anyone (in the U.S. and in the world) bearing arms that the government does not like. The U.S. might have jurisdiction over anyone actually in Oregon, but not over the guy in London.

Finally, there is the charge of recruiting (speaking in favor of) young Islamic males to go fight with the Taliban and al Qaeda. That means fighting against U.S. troops. What this judgment seems to say is that it is against the law for anyone, anywhere, to even think about fighting U.S. troops. Tell it to the Viet Cong. Tell it to American Indians. Tell it to the Canadians of 1812. We can kill you, and you can't fight back. No one can fight or bear arms without the permission of the President of the United States.

See what people mean by the term Imperial Overreach?

If someone walked up to Mr. Masri and shot him in the head, I would not take offense. It is the idea that U.S. courts have jurisdiction over everyone in the world that is just plain crazy.

It is a bad precedent, too, because the Superpower status of the U.S. is rapidly slipping away. The U.S. government is bankrupt. Already the wiser people in the U.S. government are trying to cut the fat out of the military budget, only to be hamstrung but corrupt members of Congress.

Will some foreign nation arrest George W. Bush, Barack Obama and crew for war crimes and crimes against humanity, once the U.S. collapses (maybe not full chaotic collapse, but certainly loss of superpower status)? Will some nation declare it is illegal to criticize them in the U.S.? Will the U.N. start bossing us around?

Let's stick to the traditional system. A nation's jurisdiction ends at its borders. Americans don't want to be bossed around by other nations, and other nations don't like being bossed around by the U.S.

The Bataan Death March v. the Trail of Tears

The War of 1812 almost saw the demise of the nation still known as the United States of America. Miscalculating America's military capabilities, members of Congress initiated the war with the British Empire with an aim to conquering Canada and Florida, if not the entire continent of North America. Towards the end of the war the New England states nearly revolted (see Hartford Convention). After the war was over the U.S. won a single battle, near New Orleans, and that is what we are trained to remember.

General Andrew Jackson, a man noted for his cruelty towards slaves and animals, was credited with winning the Battle of New Orleans. With other friends in high places he compensated for failing to grab Canada by grabbing vast expanses of Native American Indian lands, essentially all of what are now the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Jackson created the Democratic Party, dedicated to the principles of genocide, slavery, and hoodwinking the the common voter, and then got himself elected President of the United States in 1828 and again in 1832.

Back in the state of Georgia the Cherokee Nation had built up a civilization and used the federal court system to defend their property from appropriation by the white racists who ran the state. President John Adams had defended the Cherokee, but Jackson would not. He signed a law "exchanging" Indian national lands east of the Mississippi River for lands to its west. The actual death march of the Cherokee, along the Trail of Tears, took place in 1838, after Jackson was dead and the Choctaw (1831-1833), Seminole (1834), and Creek (1836) had been "removed." About 4000 Cherokee died during their death march, which was accompanied by U.S. Army troops.

Today this is not a "hidden" part of U.S. history. The federal government even established a Trail of Tears National Historic Trail. But it is ignored in the moral calculus of most Americans' thinking.

Compare the Bataan Death March. It too may fade from the memories of most Americans, but from World War II until today its memory is kept alive by our institutions. They need it; it is a lynchpin of the psychology of the American empire (which is mainly an empire of commerce, backed by the U.S. military and administered by puppet leaders of other nations).

In 1898 the U.S. government decided it wanted some of the remaining territory of the Spanish Empire, including the Philippines. The people of the Philippines had almost finished throwing out the Spanish, but the Spanish sold the Philippines to the U.S. anyway after losing the Spanish-American War. The U.S. proceeded to slaughter any Filipino who objected. The sugar plantations were profitable, and Manila provided easy access to China, but brown people were not wanted as American citizens, so they were eventually forced into a "commonwealth." Which is an American word for colony.

When Asian people finally got tired of being bullied by white people and revolted in 1941... Scratch that. Unacceptable to Americans. Try this: General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the U.S. forces in the Philippines, was given the go ahead by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) to attack the Japanese in Formosa (now Taiwan) a couple of weeks before the Battle of Pearl Harbor. But the General was planning to run for President, and did not want to precipitate war with Japan without authorization by Congress (because most Republican voters, until a few days later, were Isolationists).

Anyway, a huge fleet of reinforcements had already left San Diego, heading for Manila, and MacArthur thought the Japanese could be defeated in a few weeks. MacArthur at that time was best known for slaughtering unarmed U.S. veterans who had been protesting in Washington D.C. during the Great Depression, explicitly disobeying the orders of President Hoover.

The great military strategist put his air force on a runway, with the planes as close together as possible. When he heard about Pearl Harbor, he left them that way. The next day Japanese planes came in and destroyed them all, on the ground. MacArthur awoke from his stupor and realized maybe the Japanese were not such bad fighters after all.

They were not, not even the second-rate tier, old men fighters given to General Homma to capture the Philippines. American resistance (the larger part of MacArthur's army consisted of poorly equipped Filipinos. The U.S. was afraid if they were well-equipped they might try for independence) quickly collapsed. The U.S. forces retreated to the Bataan Peninsula, while MacArthur and his staff his out in the safety of the island fortress Corregidor.

MacArthur had no way to supply his troops. He told his superiors who told FDR. The President lied (well, that is what Presidents do best, and FDR was a master of lies) and said reinforcements were on the way. They were not. The troops in Bataan were low on ammunition, and reduced to 3/4 rations, then 1/2 rations, then whatever they could scrounge. The commanders in Bataan begged MacArthur to evacuate the troops or allow them to surrender. FDR said no; he wanted Japanese troops tied down, and to use the tragedy to whip up the American people against the Japanese.

Under orders from FDR, General MacArthur turned tail and ran for Australia (in a submarine) on March 12, 1942. The Japanese army, reinforced, started their final attack on April 3rd. U.S. resistance largely collapsed by the 5th. General King surrendered his troops on April 9.

About 60,000 Filipino troops and 15,000 American troops surrendered. Many were wounded or sick, almost all were starved to near death.

General Homma was prepared for the U.S. surrender. He had established a POW camp at Capas, which ironically had been a U.S. military base. The POWs would gather in Balanga, then march to San Fernando, about 80 miles, and would go the rest of the way by rail.

It was not a good plan, but it was not a bad plan either. Some of the Japanese troops who had just been fighting the Americans purposefully mistreated them, which is a war crime. It is the most common war crime, and a different sort of crime than commanders ordering mass executions of POWs. It is the kind of crime U.S. soldiers committed against American Indians, and against each other all too often in the Civil War. Not respecting POW conventions is to be condemned, no matter which soldiers are committing the crimes.

But consider the state of the POWs at the time of capture. Normal, healthy troops should have had no trouble walking the 80 miles to San Fernando.

In the chaos of war it is hard to say exactly how many troops died after surrendering. Many tried to escape; some succeeded, some were shot while trying to escape (not a war crime).

The high estimate for American (excluding Filipino) deaths is 650; it is unlikely less than 100 died. That may be appalling, but these were sick and starving men who had been betrayed by their own commanders. It is a testament to both the soldiers themselves and the Japanese military that over 14,000 white U.S. troops survived the march. In detailed interviews with the marchers, many reported acts of kindness by their Japanese guards. The Filipinos fared worse, probably because they were discriminated against within the U.S. forces prior to surrender (given inferior equipment and rations). Thousands of Filipinos died during the march, but again over 50,000 lived.

In short, the Bataan March was not a death march for most involved. There was Japanese brutality, but it was mostly ordinary bad soldiering brutality, not an organized slaughter.

The combination surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and propaganda about the Bataan Death March became an excuse for wide range of U.S. atrocities, many of them ordered by FDR himself. The U.S. engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare, which the U.S. had claimed was illegal when the Germans did it during World War I. The U.S. bombed Japanese cities; before the war FDR had condemned nations that bombed cities because, in fact, targeting civilians is a war crime. U.S. soldiers often killed Japanese soldiers that surrendered, particularly in the campaign in which MacArthur recaptured the Philippines. It also led to American citizens of Japanese descent being placed in concentration camps in the U.S. for the duration of the war.

Finally, there was the demand for unconditional surrender (which was unprecedented, and prolonged the war both in Germany and in Asia) and the Atomic Bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These are usually rationalized as "saving the lives of American soldiers." But the basic idea of war crimes is that civilians are not to be killed for military advantage. The U.S. could have saved the lives of American soldiers by negotiating a peace with Japan.

I know very few Americans think of the Trail of Tears and the Bataan Death March as related in any way. But they are more than just two sad instances of historic inhumanity. They are a test of how well people are trained to make excuses for the behavior of national governments. They are also a test of racist sentiments.

Note too that the Bataan March involved soldiers, who were moved a short distance to POW camps. The Trail of Tears involved forced removal of civilians, including children who were forced to march over 1000 miles to their new concentration camp. Soldiers are professional killers. The agreement among the world's nations to treat each other's professional killers nicely if captured is a bit difficult for some of the soldiers themselves to comprehend.

The Philippines was granted official (but not real) independence by the U.S. in 1946. They had declared independence, encouraged by the Japanese, on October 14, 1943. Most Filipinos cooperated with the Japanese. Later, after MacArthur reconquered the islands, a legend grew that large numbers of Filipinos guerillas fought the Japanese during the war. In fact very few did. Jose Laurel, President of the Philippines, cooperated closely with the Japanese during the war, as did most upper-class Filipinos. Laurel also ran for President of the Philippines in 1949, but lost to Elpidio Quirino.

Why America Can't Afford Another Cold War

Russian national debt, 2012: $253 billion [source: CountryEconomy.com]

U.S. national debt, end of 2013: $17 trillion

A trillion is a thousand billions. Russia's debt was about 1/4 trillion.

America's debt is (or was recently) about 68 times as large as Russia's.

The American economy is also larger, so could service more debt.

Russian GDP (gross domestic output), was $2 trillion in 2012, per the IMF.

U.S. GDP was 15.7 trillion in 2012 so about 8 times as large as Russia's.

In other words, in relation to the size of their respective economies, the U.S. had about 8 times as much national debt as Russia.

Using other statistics, the debt of the Russian government is just 11% of its annual GDP. The The debt of the U.S. government is 101% of its annual GDP. [per Wikipedia, economy of Russia and economy of United States pages]

By my figuring, the U.S. government is already bankrupt, but no one wants to admit it. It cannot raise taxes significantly, its budget can't be cut further without widespread social unrest, and it cannot pay down the national debt, and won't even be able to pay the interest if rates rise to normal levels.

The U.S. is not exactly a paper tiger, but it is a deeply indebted tiger. If anyone blows a few U.S. aircraft carriers out of the water, there would be no money to replace them. Russia is one of the few nations that can blow U.S. vessels out of the water. The carriers should be saved to bully developing nations, their traditional role.

We can't even afford military posturing or a buildup in our number of troops. We have to keep the peace.

This essay is in response to Why Russian Can't Afford Another Cold War by James B. Stewart in the New York Times.

National Self-determination, Crimea, and Ukraine

What ever happened to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's principle of national self-determination? Shouldn't President Obama being standing up for this right for the people of Crimea and the eastern Ukraine?

Geopolitics is complicated. Ethnic (and religious & other) minorities within a nation are often majorities within a smaller region, and often aspire to have their own nation-states. Right now the Scots are getting ready to vote on independence from Great Britain, the Palestinians want independence from Israel ... the list is quite long.

Who gets a nation, and who does not? The strong get nations; the weak do not. But often the strongest nations, like the United States, do a lot of the decision making. Right now Russia looks like it is determined to help do some decision making in parts of the Ukraine, particularly in Crimea. To have a fair position on this specific application of the principle of national self-determination, it helps to have a historic perspective. Tweets from 3 microseconds ago are hard to interpret if you don't know the history of the past hundred years or so.

After making sure the British Empire won World War I (thereby protecting U.S. banking loans to London and Paris), Woodrow Wilson went to Europe with a lot of big ideas about permanent world peace. Best known for advocating the creation of the League of Nations, President Wilson proposed the principle of national self-determination. His specific territorial recommendations made in his Fourteen Points were supposed to derive from this principle.

Self-determination, the right of people to choose their sovereignty and political status, to be "governed only by their own consent," got off to a bad start. Woodrow Wilson himself was the architect of modern racism in the United States and within the Democratic Party. This was reflected in his attitude towards non-white people. He wanted self-determination for Poland, a state that did not exist before World War I, because that would weaken both Germany and Russia. But when the Japanese proposed that national self-determination should mean all the colonies of Britain, France, Belgium, Italy (and presumably the Japanese colony of Korea) should be granted independence if they wanted it, Wilson blocked that proposal in a committee which he chaired.

Putting aside Wilson's personal hypocrisy, consider the problem of trying to apply national self-determination to the real world, with its actual real human beings on the ground. Consider some 20th century examples.

Wilson did not grant independence to the American colonies of Puerto Rico or the Philippines. While Puerto Rico is still a possession of the United States, the Philippines became independent under Japanese tutelage during World War II. Then the U.S. recaptured the Philippines in an exceptionally brutal campaign notable for the massive execution of POWs by U.S. soldiers, a war crime. Only when the Philippines leaders agreed to permanent U.S. military access to the islands did the U.S. grant independence, of sorts, in 1946.

The basic principle the U.S. has operated under is democracy and national self-determination is fine as long as pro-U.S. governments end up in control. If anti-U.S. people want independence, or win an election to control a nation, that is another matter entirely.

Vietnam is perhaps the best example, although it is just one of many. Vietnam was a French colony [actually 3 colonies, collectively French Indochina] starting before World War I. It had an independence movement throughout its colonial history. Japan took over Vietnam during World War II, but the French [who were controlled from fascist France] continued to work with the Japanese. The Vietnamese independence movement fought for national self-determination during World War II, and tried to convince the Allied Powers (notably the U.S.) to support Vietnamese national self-determination.

American policy makers (ultimately President Truman) flirted with the idea of an independent Vietnam. Then they decided keeping France happy was more important. The French re-conquered Vietnam. The Vietnamese fought a bloody war for independence, and won. As part of the peace & independence deal the French and those Vietnamese loyal to them (mainly Roman Catholics) concentrated in southern Vietnam. They then refused to allow for national elections because they knew the Viet Minh, who had fought the French, would win. Instead, with U.S. backing, the French set up a regime in South Vietnam that was universally despised from its inception. The U.S. fought the Vietnamese War to try to keep Vietnam from being united and independent.

Even as President Obama scolds Russia for using military intervention in Crimea rather than diplomacy, the U.S. is paying anti-gay rights nations like Uganda to fight in Somalia. The U.S. has not even withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan. France has troops in several African nations, helping to decide who will rule there.

So why is the Ukraine so special? Well, first of all it is white people. Second of all, it has a large pro-Western following. But the pro-Russian faction won the last election. Why are the people violently protesting the last elections, including many young men who admit to being nationalist thugs, given the Democracy label? Can't Americans just admit that our leaders are not for majority rule democracy, they just want the Ukraine to join the European Union and be allied with the U.S. and NATO? Why can't we just wait for the next round of elections to see if sentiment has shifted and power can be transferred peacefully?

Why are Russian police actions bad, but U.S. and French and Brit police actions good?

Because Americans, the vast majority of them, or us, have a misinformed sense of right and wrong.

Is Vladimir Putin an asshole? Sure. But that is not the issue for Obama and the American corporate security state. The only question they ask is: Is Putin our asshole? As long as he is our asshole, as Saddam Hussein once was, and as Osama bin Laden once was, being an asshole is no problem. In politics Putin can be a friend of the U.S. on one issue, an enemy on another.

Self-determination for the Crimea would mean an election to see if the people of Crimea prefer to be part of the Ukraine or part of Russia. Or maybe even independent. I hope such an election is held so the rest of the world can know what Woodrow Wilson would think.

And how about independence or statehood for the U.S. possession known as Puerto Rico? What about Kurdistan for the Kurds, and ... list almost every ethnic minority that does not have its own nation here. There are literally hundreds of them.

Yasukuni Shrine and Arlington National Cemetery

Chinese nationalists get upset when Japanese government figures visit the shrine to Japan's war dead at Yasukuni. China got into a war with Japan over control of Korea in 1894. To everyone else's surprise, Japan won that war. This led to increasing predation on China by other imperialist powers, cumulating in the Chinese trying to defend themselves in what we in the West call the Boxer Rebellion. Japan, the U.S., and a number of other Western powers invaded and established that China was no longer a sovereign nation, despite diplomatic niceties to the contrary.

Japan did establish an independent state in Manchuria (aka Manchukuo), the alternative being Russian dominance there. China descended into bickering regions ruled by warlords. Asserting the Japanese equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, in the 1930's Japan intervened in China proper. The Japanese called it a policing action to restore order to China; the Chinese called it a war of aggression.

By any reasonable measure, the Japanese were invaders and committed war crimes. They should have let the Chinese muddle through their own mess. The Chinese tend to forget their own long history of military aggression (which is why China is the size it is today) and grow outraged when they think of the Japanese invasion. Yasukuni has become a symbol of Japanese militarism for the Chinese.

But the Japanese (with the exception of a few ultra-right wing nut jobs) say they are just honoring their ancestors. They are not celebrating the age of Japanese imperialism.

Meanwhile, no one seems to get upset about the honoring of America's war dead at the Arlington National Cemetery. Even though more than a few war criminals are buried there, including Americans who fought against various Asian nations including China, the Philippines, Japan, and Vietnam.

Not every soldier is a war criminal. Some are lucky enough to live in times of peace. Others are unlucky enough to be ordered to commit war crimes. But in addition to committing war crimes under orders of Class A war criminals (typically political leaders), some soldiers commit war crimes despite explicit orders against doing so. Such individual war crimes typically are killing civilians and killing prisoners of war. The traditional don't ask, don't tell policy about these extra-legal killings means almost anyone buried at Arlington could be a war criminal.

In the probably-not-a-war-criminal category at Arlington, but worth discussion in the Japan v. China context, we have Claire Lee Chennault. Retired U.S. Air Force Captain Chennault arrived in China in 1937 and began working for the war lord Chiang Kai-shek as chief air force advisor. In 1941 President Roosevelt provided Chennault and Chiang with fighter planes and former U.S. Air Force personnel to fight the Japanese in China. They were flying in China at least as early as November 1941, well before Pearl Harbor, thus showing the U.S. was engaged in an undeclared war. One might ask the Communist Chinese: is Chennault a scoundrel for aiding Chiang Kai-shek, or a hero for fighting the Japanese? In either case, his body lies in grave 873-3-4, Section 2.

From the U.S. war on China aka the Boxer Rebellion, or Yihetuan Movement, we have Vice Admiral Clark H. Woodward, who also served in the Philippine-American War. He is in grave 699-A-B, Section 1. Given the number of soldiers the U.S. sent to attack the Chinese, quite a number of them are likely to be buried at Arlington.

As to the atrocities of the Philippines, several soldiers directly connected to them are buried at Arlington (and given the genocidal nature of the conflict, probably most U.S. soldiers who served there were complicit or participants in war crimes). We have the leader, General Arthur MacArthur himself, in grave 856-A, Section 2. Colonel William Henry Bisbee, who was told not to report his destruction of civilians to his superiors, lies in grave 1872, Section 3. Edwin Glenn, convicted by a courts martial of torturing civilians, suspended from duty for one month, and fined $50, lies in 3103-ES. For more on war crimes by the U.S. in the Philippines see Honor in the Dust.

Harry Truman, who by ordering the atomic bombing of Japan committed the most famous war crime in history, is not burried at Arlington, but likely research would put some of the men who fire bombed Japanese cities in graves there.

Skipping the U.S. war against Korea, which was not without its issues, we have the honoring of the Vietnam War criminals. Among those buried at Arlington is General Creighton Abrams, who supervised the slaughter (and who was a proponent for the war, not someone just carrying out orders), in grave S-33, Section 21.

A thorough search could probably find thousands of soldiers buried at Arlington who gave offense to some nation.

I would argue that the problem is not Americans honoring our war dead, but our failure to hold ourselves to a high standard of accountability. The dead can do no further wrong to anyone, but the living can. Both Japanese and American war criminals shared the belief that what they were doing was right and necessary. We should be clear they were wrong.

But you should not ask people not to visit the graves of their ancestors. The Chinese do it, and the Chinese are not exactly a nation of innocents.

Every responsible person should work to tone down nationalist sentiments that could lead to military conflict. Don't forget the past. Don't dismantle Yasukuni or close Arlington. But work for peace. Because what the Chinese are really complaining about is a past breach of their peace and sovereignty. All nations should pledge to respect each other's sovereignty. All nations should maintain a knowledge of their past crimes to help them stay on a peaceful path.

Agree? Disagree? Comment on this post.

2014, A Crowded New Year

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people living in the United States of America today is around 317.3 million. That is up 0.7%, or 2.2 million, in the year.

When the U.S. had genocided the natives and filled up the continent, in 1870, the population was 38 million. Today California alone has 38 million residents.

On a dollar basis the U.S. no longer produces enough food to feed its own population. This is a major historical change. For centuries we were one of the breadbaskets of the world. While we still export large quantities of grain, we import more than enough food to make us a net importer. There are many reasons for that, but the main reason is population growth.

America could be more self-sufficient in food production. We could forbid raising corn for ethanol production, but that would mean we would have to cut back on driving or import more oil from abroad. We could import water from Canada and grow food in the western deserts, but pumping water also takes energy and the cost of the infrastructure would probably dwarf the cost of conquering Canada.

Americans have never experienced a nationwide famine. During the Great Depression many went hungry because they could not afford food, so farmers had to cut back on production, but it was not a famine. During World War II there was rationing so we could feed the British, but again that was nothing like a famine.

In many ways American food production now more resembles a factory than a field. The bulk of crops are on constant intensive care. Water is sucked from where ever it can be found. Fertilizer is manufactured and applied by the trainload. Enough pesticides are pumped in to exterminate every bug that lived in this world in 1900: but 2014 bugs (insects, fungus, weeds, even rodents) have evolved to meet the challenge. Just trucking the food to market requires enough petroleum to suck oil fields dry. Even "organic" food requires fracked oil to get it to market.

Take away any aspect of this intensive care, and we will have food shortages, perhaps famine. Or we can do what the Brits did in World War II: confiscate (or buy) food in less economically fortunate nations (See Bengal Starvation).

At the same time the native flora and fauna of North America are largely in danger, with extinction a likelihood for many species. Farms, cities, and suburbs have crowded out wildlife.

Wouldn't it be easier to just stop breeding so much? [I'll leave the issue of immigration, both legal and illegal, to another day.]

We don't need authoritarian methods like forced sterilization or hard limits on the number of children a woman can birth. We need to take away incentives to have children; we need to reward those who have 2 or less children.

In addition to providing free birth control and abortions, we need to stop subsidizing families with children. First, take away the tax benefits of having children. Take away the welfare benefits too. These changes should be done in a reasonable way, not ex post facto. Eliminate the standard deductions for children after the first child. Starting with children born a year after the law is passed.

To get the human population in the U.S. and on earth back to a sustainable level culture can be more important than government. It is important for people to understand, from various sources that they can trust, that for the sake of themselves, their child, and the world:

One And Done

is the new social standard. And None And Done people should get a bonus, like a special tax deduction for women while they are in the fertile age category, and extra Social Security for childless men and women upon retirement.

Learning from Ho Chi Minh

Like most of my fellow Americans, I associate Ho Chi Minh with the Vietnam War. Having recently completed William J. Duiker's rather detailed biography of Ho [Ho Chi Minh, A Life], I found much that is worthy of study by Americans, indeed by anyone in the world who thinks politics should be about positive change.

Ho was the son of a peasant-scholar. The closest American equivalent to his father would be someone with a tiny farm that produced food but not money, and a teaching (or tutoring job) that provided middle-class status without the money that accompanies it in the U.S. Because his father continued to pursue his studies (in the only topic considered worthy in 19th century Vietnam, Confucian philosophy), he migrated to the city of Hue and Ho was exposed to the reality of French control of his country. It was a grim picture. After failing to convert the Vietnamese with Roman Catholic priests and commerce, the French had come in with guns blazing. They taught a few people their piggish language and culture, but were mainly there to extract wealth, no matter how many Vietnamese died in the process.

If did not matter who was in charge of the government of France over the decades: conservatives, moderates, liberals, progressives, fascists (Petain and the Vichy regime) and even Socialists all insisted that once conquered, the Vietnamese had to remain in the French empire.

Ho Chi Minh, of course, was not the only one to revolt against French rule. The story of his becoming the leader of his country has some resemblance to that of George Washington in the U.S., but Ho started with less, worked much harder and longer, and accomplished more.

While in theory Ho could be said to be a Marxist, a Leninist, even a Stalinist and a Maoist, he compares well to those men of totalitarian bent. While the Vietnamese did fight the French and eventually the Americans, Ho was by nature a peaceful guy. He negotiated continuously with his friends and enemies alike. Constantly gave both the French and the Americans (and domestic opposition parties) an easy out: withdraw peacefully, and let us govern ourselves, was his only message.

Duiker sums up how Ho operated: "be thrifty, be friendly but impartial, resolutely correct errors, be prudent, respect learning, study and observe, avoid arrogance and conceit, and be generous."

To be thrifty means resources are available for the good of others, or for a good cause. Ho lived in what only could be called poverty for his entire life. Unlike Washington, who was rich and owned slaves, and Mao and Stalin, who lived luxuriously after obtaining power, Ho really just did not feel a leader should live better than the people he served.

To be friendly but impartial is a difficult dance, in my experience. Friends want you to give them breaks you would not give to non-friends. But impartiality is important for many reasons, including that it keeps you from being deluded by your friends. People who hold your impartiality against you are corrupt. They are the problem, not the impartiality.

To resolutely correct errors is a bit more than learning from your mistakes. A lot of people don't even notice when they are making mistakes. In the corporate world the quality control principles used at Toyota, which have spread to many other manufacturers, are a system for resolutely correcting errors. In politics people tend to stick to positions no matter how counterproductive they are in reality. That is how you get organizations like the Democratic Party and Republican Party, and for that matter the dysfunctional communist parties of the 20th century.

Hopefully the benefits of prudence and respecting learning don't need to be explained, though they are often absent or minimally present in American life.

"Study and observe." How often have you seen someone fly off the handle because they misunderstand a situation? How many disasters have occurred because people oversimplify something complex, or don't bother to understand the materials they are working with at all? In particular, Americans don't know their own history, much less world history, and not knowing history, cannot see what will result from various actions or inaction.

"Avoid arrogance and conceit." Not only are these characteristics off-putting, but they prevent you from learning from others. I would note, however, that pretending to be ignorant in order to avoid being accused of arrogance is also a no-win situation for everyone.

Finally, be generous. Generosity can take many forms. I don't think Ho had a lot of money to give away at any point in his life. He was generous, however (considering the circumstances) with people who disagreed with him politically. In retrospect his whole life might have seemed like an endless meeting in which he tried to persuade people to do the right thing. He tried to persuade the French and Americans to give the Vietnamese their freedom. But he also spent countless hours trying (and to some extent succeeding) to get his younger, more ideological communist comrades to not think their job was to boss peasants (or intellectuals, or even business people or other party members) around.

Duiker's book fleshes out how Ho Chi Minh tried to put these guidelines into action. It also sheds a lot of light on the psychology and workings of imperialism, which is still a problem in the world today. Leninist-style communism may no longer be the best way to fight (or peacefully oppose) imperialism, but the lessons from Ho's life are now our common human heritage.

Defund Republicare

Republicans in the United States House of Representatives are using the federal deficit and national debt, and coming need to authorize a higher ceiling for the debt, as an excuse to try to defund Obamacare (Affordable Care Act).

How about a little fight from the Democratic Party side? How about a little offense, instead of the usual half-hearted defense?

How about defunding Republicare, the vast system of federal spending and tax breaks that is the millionaires' equivalent of the Food Stamp program?

How about refusing to fund the debt ceiling unless the military budget and homeland security budgets are cut by, say, 75%? How about a mean, lean, U.S. force that just defends U.S. territory and leaves the rest of the world to mind its own business?

How about defunding the capital gains tax break. Rich people, truly rich people, get almost all of their money through inheritances and capital gains. When they can't evade capital gains taxes altogether, they only pay 15%. Is that fair? Is that right, when working people making $50,000 per year pay 30%, and families making between $50,000 and $100,000 per year pay a much higher tax rate?

Why do the Democrats always fail to stand up to the rich bully boys who fund the Tea Party and even the mainstream Republican politicians? You know why. Democratic Party politicians use rhetoric to get working class and middle class votes, but they are almost all on the business lobby payroll.

How about defunding the agriculture programs that were set up to help Depression Era small farmers and now funnel hundreds of billions of dollars to corporate farmers, many of whom actually just sit in urban penthouses, collecting government welfare checks?

How about defunding DEA anti-marijuana operations? They just drive up the price of marijuana, creating black market profits, a sliver of which are sufficient to bribe Republicans and Democrats alike to keep Marijuana Prohibition on the law books.

How about defunding Israel? Why are American taxpayers sending vast sums of money to a weathy nation that abuses women, subsidizes a vast welfare scheme for ultraconservative cults, takes the private property of Palestinians without due process of law, and generally causes about a billion people in the world to hate the U.S. government?

There are a lot of other smaller programs that waste money subsidizing America's richest citizens, and even foreigners. Each program should be looked at. And no matter how loud the campaign donors scream, the subsidies should be eliminated. In many cases, like the federal transportation program, the same dollars could alternatively go much further if the profits of contractors were limited to a fair rate.

But Democratic Party politicians are as bad as Republicans when it comes to protecting their own rivers of corruption. Democrats like to call something a program to help the poor, then use it to subsidize giant construction and real estate companies that kick back to urban Democratic Party machines. So while we're in liposuction mode, let's eliminate all but the regulatory functions of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Unlike most Democrats, I believe the nearly 17 trillion dollar federal debt is a serious problem, and is going to be more of a problem going forward. History shows that nations that overburden themselves with debt eventually fail. [See Bankruptcy and Beyond]

But don't expect Democrats to show any backbone. The Democrats have used their backbone to help ordinary citizens for only 8 years of the 200 year history: 1932 to 1936 and 1964 to 1968. Barack Obama and most of his faithful are politically to the right of Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower. The main use of Democratic Party backbone between 1824 and 1964 was to protect slavery and then segregation.

But the real problem, perhaps, is not the politicians. Like thieves, they mostly just get away with whatever the citizens leave laying around loose and unguarded. The American working class is lame. The high hopes of the Marxists for the class came to naught. A surprising number of working class people spout Tea Party nonsense, often because their minds are rotted out by Christian doctrines. But even those who see the problems won't fight for their rights, and are mostly afraid to speak out. They are afraid to unionize, they are afraid to vote for better democrats in primaries or leftist parties when the Democratic candidate is useless.

And what of the middle class? Normally a reservoir of energy and intelligence, the American middle class was corrupted by easy living during the golden age of American imperialism. People expect to inherit a middle class lifestyle. That isn't going to happen much anymore. You are going to have to fight for your living, and not just in the economic arena, or by getting a college education. And if the middle class does not learn to fight in the political arena, and fight the right people (the robber barons, not the working folk) this nation's historical descent will be even more rapid than its rise.

Defund Republicare!

Late Stage Imperialism, Class, and America's Future

"Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.
Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
And there is no sin but to be rich;"
—William Shakespeare, King John, Act II

I was an infant in the late 1950's, and in the early 60's I was sure the world was about to end. I lived in Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If that were not bad enough, I was still a pre-teen when I heard predictions that even if there were no nuclear war, there would be an ecological crisis that would surely destroy civilization.

Half a century later the nuclear weapons are still at the ready. The world's population has climbed, species have disappeared, and global warming has been added to the potential ingredients for catastrophe.

In the seventies I hoped for a political revolution in the U.S. with the working class coming out on top, but not led by a dictator. When I graduated from college the world was deep in recession. Jobs were hard to come by, so I took ones that no one else in their right mind wanted. I sure as hell would rather have starved as a bum than move back in with my parents. But even at minimum wage, even at part time, I could get by on my own, often living in a group house with a bunch of roommates.

For a few years it has been obvious that the U.S. economy is in trouble, and with a kind of trouble that no political party wants to admit to. The trouble is in history itself, and history cannot be changed, nor can politicians or most citizens face it honestly. The trouble is complex, but not so complex that it cannot be outlined in this essay. The solutions offered by the main political parties (and the wings within these parties) are not going to work, because they refuse to admit to the essential features of the problems facing us. I include here the Democratic Party, Republican Party, Green Party, and Libertarian Party.

Let's just suppose you want to know what is going on, even though you won't be able to do anything about it, because 300 million of your fellow American citizens are wandering around a circus of mirrors, wondering why good times are getting scarcer no matter how hard they pray to Jesus, Keynes, Ayn Rand or Rachel Carson.

Most Americans today think Brits are a cutely accented people with a very sweet Queen leading them in High Tea. But from roughly 1500 until shortly after World War II the Brits ran the largest, most brutal, most barbaric empire in global history. Which brings us to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR.

Imbued with schooling in the Latin classics, even before the American Revolution some members of our ruling class longed to be the center of a new, global empire. FDR today is beloved by Democrats and hated by Republicans for New Deal economic policies and bureaucracies that never die, but that was and is a side show. FDR's true importance was that he fulfilled the imperialist dreams of the founding fathers.

FDR was quite clever. He had learned much from his uncle, former President Teddy Roosevelt, and from the architect of modern American and global racism, President Woodrow Wilson. FDR served as Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913 to 1920), which traditionally was the front-line post for U.S. imperialist plotting. From uncle Teddy he learned how to prepare to take advantage of a situation, and from uncle Woodrow he learned how to wait until other imperialist powers were exhausted fighting each other before committing American troops.

Hence, Britain, Germany, and Russia bombed each other's factories pretty well before Japan finally recognized a war that already existed (American soldiers were fighting Japanese soldiers in China before Pearl Harbor) and forced FDR's hand. FDR had already been building a vast armada to invade China and Japan, but much of it was sunk at the Battle of Pearl Harbor. With ten times the industrial capacity of Japan and with Communist Russia having already stopped the German advance, it was mainly a matter of time and willingness to spill blood to capture Germany, China and Japan before the Red Army could.

Russia did pretty well during World War II, but the British Empire collapsed. So did the Dutch Empire (did you even know the Netherlands had a empire, also know for its cruelty to natives?) and the French Empire. But in all the world only one nation had not lost a single factory to bombs. It was the United States of America. Thank you FDR.

In 1946 everyone wanted American food and other aid, and so no one could afford to set protective tariff barriers against U.S. goods. U.S. factories and corporations went wild. We took over French and British colonial puppet governments by offering them higher bribes than their old oppressors could. We lost China and Eastern Europe to communism, but by 1950 the effective American Empire was larger than the British Empire had ever been.

Working class Americans benefited. Corporations could be generous to newly-recognized unions because profits were flooding in from all over the world. Still remembering the Depression, workers and business people alike worked hard to push Prosperity to greater heights. Almost everyone (except for some oppressed minority groups) could own a suburban home, a car or two, a television, telephone, stereo, lawnmower, and the usual furnishings. College education became the rule, not the exception.

The Unions attributed prosperity to their forcing the Bosses to pay higher wages; they did not want to look at imperialism. The Business guys (this was pre-feminism) attributed prosperity to the Free Markets and their own cleverness. They did not want to look at imperialism. The Democratic Party and Republican Parties did not want to look at imperialism's effects on the American economy, they just wanted credit for prosperity. Within the U.S. everyone could agree that U.S. global dominance was a kind, protective sort of dominance. Our dictators were good men who were protecting their people from the horrors of Communism. We sent aid packages to show our benevolence. Anything said to the contrary was Communist propaganda.

The only people who talked about imperialism were the American Communists. Until around 1960 they were almost all in the Communist Party U.S.A., a pro-Stalin organization, and few people listened to them. In the 1960's a bunch of smaller communist, anarchist, and socialist groups thrived for a while, but they mostly collapsed after the end of the Vietnam War, and with them any analysis of imperialism.

Meanwhile, due to improvements in medicine and agricultural science, the human population of the world mounted rapidly. It was great for business. Each newly added human was a consumer and potential worker.

New trends emerged between 1970 and 2010 that gradually changed the global balance of power. The U.S., although defeated in Vietnam, maintained much of its economic empire and military clout, but was unable and uninterested in overtly conquering the entire world even after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and its allied regimes. But the most important trend was re-industrialization both inside and outside the Empire, and a coincidental relative de-industrialization of the U.S. It was simple: producing profits became easier outside the U.S. than within as each decade passed.

Global industrialism, including mechanization of agriculture, has led to the degradation of the environment almost everywhere, but most notably in China. With China now trying hard to clean up its own environment, and labor costs rising, the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy is already slowing down. Other nations will absorb most new factories that are built to serve the global economy.

Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party is willing to tax our non-American subjects to pay for the costs of imperialism. The U.S. federal budget is now in perpetual deficit, yet domestic government services are rapidly disintegrating. Almost all union workers now are government employees. Even the agricultural sector is under constant attack by drought, roundup-ready weeds, global warming, and symptoms like honeybee colony collapse.

The problem is not just that the Democrats and Republicans are deadlocked in Congress, resulting in a do-nothing government. The problem is that even if one party had its way, its solutions would not work. None of the solutions on the table are designed to work to revive a late-stage imperialist economy. Just like nothing the British did could revive their economy as their empire collapsed between 1945 and 1960. The world went on, and eventually the British adjusted, but they were no longer the world's richest rich people with the world's best paid workers.

The first real decision to be made is whether to maintain the empire, downsize it, or abandon it. From a purely economic viewpoint, each option has its merits. Maintaining the empire would work if we admitted we run an empire and imposed substantial taxes on our foreign subjects. Downsizing would work if we could shuck the most expensive and indefensible subjects, but even with a smaller military we would still need impose taxes. If nations rebelled against the taxes, we would probably have to abandon them.

Abandoning the entire empire would likely work out best in the long run, but it also abandons the easy fix of taxing our subjects. Today we still have very significant industrial, agricultural, and educational capacity in the 50 states (I am assuming Puerto Rican independence is an economic no-brainer). As bad as our natural environment is, it is in better shape than that of many other nations. Yet in international competition we have few advantages because of the stupidity of our business class and legacy costs of imperialism (the national debt).

We would still need to either decide on a national course. How can every person capable of work be given a productive role in a post-imperialist scenario? I don't think the welfare-state model, in which more of the pie is doled out to the indolent, can lead to anything but further decline. The goal of full and productive (as opposed to make-work) employment could be achieved within a democratic and largely free-market framework if the government would show a bit of backbone when necessary. Local, State, and federal government should be free to set up businesses as needed to address needs underserved by existing businesses. After an incubation period the ownership of such businesses should be transferred to the employees of the businesses.

It is absolutely essential, however, that the U.S. reduce its population. There cannot be prosperity for all on a limited supply of natural resources when the population keeps climbing, or even at the current level. This policy would doubtless include economic guidance. I would advocate free public education only for 2 children per family, and no tax deductions beyond the 2nd child either. If only a few people have more than 2 children, enough women will have no or only one children, and the population should trend to long-term sustainable levels.

Of course, I know this won't happen. The working class of the U.S. is as infected with fantasies as the capitalist class and the middle class. The leaders of the working class, middle class, and capitalist class are clueless. They were deceived by the easy fruits of imperialism. Those fruits are disappearing. Instead of waking up and learning how to plant an orchard, Americans demand that the fruit just keep appearing on the table. And politicians give them what they demand: pipe dreams.

American War Crimes Organizations and Nuremberg Article 9

Are you a member of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party? Then you had better hope that the military of the United State of America keeps the world at bay. Which is not likely to last forever, given that the U.S. government will become bankrupt if interest rates on its debts ever rise above an average of about 5%.

There is a precedent from the Nuremberg trials that allows Democrats and Republicans to be tried simply for being in those parties. Article 9 clearly states that for Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity:

Article 9.
At the trial of any individual member of any group or organization the Tribunal may declare (in connection with any act of which the individual may be convicted) that the group or organization of which the individual was a member was a criminal organization.

Thus it would only take one conviction of a Democratic Party or Republican Party official, living or dead, to turn all party members into criminals. As criminals they would lose their right to vote, which would allow non-war crimes political parties to gain the ascendancy, much as the Republican Party gained dominance after the Civil War by preventing Democratic Party leaders (who mostly had also been Confederate State leaders) from voting and running for office.

The Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity of the United States Government, and hence of her leaders and citizens, loom large in history, and not just in the distant past. It is too big of a topic to begin to compass in a short essay. But to illustrate, we need look no further than the events that provided the context for the Nuremberg trials of German political leaders, the losers of World War II.

Defendants at Nuremberg Trial, Franz von Papen standing

First, let's touch on the arguments against the legality of the Nuremberg trials, their sentencing and convictions. The U.S. Constitution (in article 1, section 9) prohibits ex post facto laws, but the entirety of the Nuremberg apparatus was created without the traditional legislation involving statutes with clear punishments for clear crimes. The trial was conducted without a jury and with no appeals apparatus, and the trial judges belonged to the injured parties. Despite war crimes being widespread during the period concerned, the charter of the tribunal specifically limits itself to prosecuting members of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Because the very legal propriety of the Tribunal should have been the main question, Article 3 states: Neither the Tribunal, its members nor their alternates can be challenged by the prosecution, or by the Defendants or their Counsel.

Nevertheless, the way of the Law, and particularly Common Law, is that Nuremberg established a precedent. If other nations can hold a kangaroo court and prosecute (and execute) people for war crimes, then the United States of America can legally be subjected to such a court, should our defensive arsenal ever allow it. Or should we have the wisdom to constitute one ourselves.

After the first round of leading Nazi (National Socialist German Workers' Party) officials and government leaders were convicted and hung until dead, the Nazi Party was declared a criminal organization by the tribunal. 8.5 million German citizens had been members, and many were soon tried in the Denazification Campaign, which was also ex post facto in nature.

The Nuremberg Trials were careful to not look too closely at how World War II actually started, repeating the lack of care of Allied historians for the timeline of events leading up to World War I. The judges refused to allow the defense to bring up that it was France that first declared war on Germany or that the German invasion of Norway at the beginning of of the war only managed to get there ahead of a British invasion by a few days. There was some small success, however, in the defense pointing to certain British and American war tactics, notably unrestricted submarine warfare, to push back against certain of the charges.

But, as is so often the case in the law, some mighty big fish got away because they were doing the prosecuting. The level of German bombing of British Empire targets in England was doubtless criminal, but nothing new, and nothing the British themselves had not done in 400 years of empire building. The unprecedented war crimes of World War II were Allied affairs: the complete destruction of cities by bombing, in particular firebombing, and eventually the atomic war waged against Japan.

Americans are so used to excusing their attacks on Japanese cities that they seldom can think clearly about war crimes. They excuse these attacks as military necessities. "Millions of U.S. soldiers would have died if we had been forced to invade Japan." But the U.S. was not being forced to invade Japan. The diplomatic history of the war is one of nearly continuous peace initiatives by the Japanese before, during, and right up to the end of the war, all spurned by President Franklin Roosevelt and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull. [Before the U.S. officially entered the war Roosevelt frequently decried bombing cities as a crime.]

If killing civilians is excused as a war crime because it saves lives of combatants, then the entire Nuremberg prosecution was flawed. The defense lawyers could have argued that Jews, foreign civilians and and German political prisoners who died in or were murdered in the concentration camps were impediments to military success, and that would have been true. The blitz against London could be interpreted as legally justified because it would have saved German lives in the invasion of England, had it taken place.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes plain and simple. President Roosevelt had died, so President Harry Truman made the ultimate decision. His advisors were all members of the Democratic Party. Only General Douglas MacArthur, who was a Republican and no bleeding heart, argued against the use of the atomic bomb on cities filled with civilians. He believed, correctly, that it stained the honor of American soldiers.

I see no reason for there to be a statute of limitations on war crimes organizations. The Democratic Party and Republican Party should be declared criminal organizations based on their past actions. Living leaders, mostly Presidents, who have committed war crimes, crimes of peace, or crimes against humanity should be prosecuted and punished appropriately.

The only real question is: what constitutes membership in these parties? Many more Germans voted for the Nazi Party in elections than actually belonged to the party. Party membership was clear: one paid one's dues and received a membership card. In the U.S. the parties don't keep membership rolls. It is hard to say if registering to vote in the primary of a political party actually constitutes becoming a member of a party. Certainly donating money to a party should be held as the rough equivalent of paying membership dues to the Nazi Party.

I guess we'll have to sort that out when be set up our Peace and Justice Tribunal. I'd like to hold it in Philadelphia, to remind us that crimes against humanity are in the U.S. DNA, and that restitution has never been made for the wars against native American tribes or for slavery, indentured servitude, or the more subtle crimes of the ruling class of this nation.