Bombing Syria: War as Therapy

It is the height of adolescent stupidity to take action without thinking of the consequences

By Brendan O’Neil

War used to be the pursuit of politics by other means. Today, if the statements made by the Western politicos and observers who want to bomb Syria are anything to go by, it’s the pursuit of therapy by other means. The most startling and unsettling thing about the clamour among some Westerners for a quick, violent punishment of the Assad regime is its nakedly narcissistic nature. Gone is realpolitik and geostrategy, gone is the PC gloss that was smeared over other recent disastrous Western interventions to make them seem substantial, from claims about spreading human rights to declarations about facing down terrorism, and all we’re left with is the essence of modern-day Western interventionism: a desire to offset moral disarray at home by staging a fleeting, bombastic moral showdown with ‘evil’ in a far-off field.

Easily the most notable thing in the debate about bombing Syria in response to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians is the absence of geopolitical considerations, or of any semi-serious thought about what the regional or international consequences of dropping bombs into an already hellish warzone might be. Instead, all the talk is of making a quick moral gesture about ourselves by firing a few missiles at wickedness. In the words of a Democratic member of the US Foreign Affairs Committee, there might be ‘very complex issues’ in Syria, but ‘we, as Americans, have a moral obligation to step in without delay’. Who cares about complexity when there’s an opportunity to show off our own moral decency?

All the discussion so far has focused, not on the potential moral consequences of bombing Syria, but on the moral needs of those who would do the bombing. US secretary of state John Kerry says failing to take action on Syria would call into question the West’s ‘own moral compass’. Others talk about Syria as a ‘test for Europe’, as if this rubble-strewn country is little more than a stage for the working-out of our values. So intense is the narcissism of the bomb-Syria brigade that that one of its number describes the slaughter caused by the use of chemical weapons as ‘a question mark painted in blood, aimed at the international community’. They’re so vain, they think someone else’s war is all about them. Onepro-bombing commentator says the situation in Syria ‘holds a mirror up to Britain’, asking ‘what sort of country are we?’. Like Narcissus, the beaters of the drum for war on Assad are concerned only with their own image, their own reflection, and the question of whether they’ll be able to look at themselves in the mirror if they fail to Do Something.

Strikingly, not only do bomb-Syria folk fail to think seriously about geopolitical matters – they actively brush aside such pesky complex questions in their pursuit of the instant moral hit that comes from dropping a bomb on evil. One observer says of course military action in Syria is not ‘guaranteed to succeed’, but it nonetheless gives us Brits an opportunity to advertise our moral resolve and principles. Philip Collins, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, has openly admitted that ‘intervention… will mean chaos’. ‘But there is chaos already’, he says, and at least the chaos we might cause will be giving voice to our ‘revulsion’ at Assad’s crimes, a ‘revulsion too profound to be written off as adolescent or unrealistic’. ‘It is important to add weight to our moral impulse’, Collins wrote.

Think about what is being said here: that it doesn’t matter if our attack on Syria doesn’t succeed (at whatever it is meant to do, which no one has spelled out), or even if it intensifies the bloodshed and chaos in that benighted nation. All that matters is that we in the West add physical weight – in the shape of bombs – to our ‘moral impulse’. Such blasé barbarism was taken to its logical conclusion by Norman Geras, co-author of the pro-war Euston Manifesto, when he wrote: ‘Since it is urgent that we respond somehow, out of solidarity, of our “common human heritage” with the victims, action must be taken even if it means meeting chaos with chaos and (by implication) that the chaos we cause turns out to be worse than the chaos we’re trying to bring to an end.’ (My emphasis.)

This is extraordinary stuff. It exposes what lies at the heart of modern Western interventionism – a desire to make a massive, fiery display of our own ‘moral impulse’, of the West’s flagging sense of ‘common human heritage’, regardless of the consequences on the ground or around the world. In our era, Western intervention is increasingly demanded and pursued, not as a specific, targeted thing that might change the shape of a conflict or further the geopolitical interests of Western nations, but as a kind of bloody amplifier of the presumed probity of the Western political class. At a time when both politics and morality at home are in a profound state of disarray, when there’s little of substance that can unite Western elites or populations, we’re seeing a desperate turn to foreign fields in search of the sort of black-and-white clarity and sense of mission that eludes our rulers domestically. That’s why John Kerry says opposing wickedness in Syria is a ‘conviction shared even by countries that agree on little else’. Firing some rockets at Syria might just provide a thrilling if fleeting boost to the ‘moral impulses’ of a confused Western elite. And if it ends up making things worse? Doesn’t matter. Tough shit. At least we’ll have given voice to our collective revulsion.

Obama set for holy Tomahawk war

Mix Kosovo with Libya and voila!

By Pepe Escobar 

The ''responsibility to protect'' (R2P) doctrine invoked to legitimize the 2011 war on Libya has just transmogrified into ''responsibility to attack'' (R2A) Syria. Just because the Obama administration says so. 

On Sunday, the White House said it had ''very little doubt'' that the Bashar al-Assad government used chemical weapons against its own citizens. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry ramped it up to ''undeniable'' - and accused Assad of ''moral obscenity''. 

So when the US bombed Fallujah with white phosphorus in late 2004 it was just taking the moral high ground. And when the US helped Saddam Hussein to gas Iranians in 1988 it was also taking the moral high ground. 

The Obama administration has ruled that Assad allowed UN chemical weapons inspectors into Syria, and to celebrate their arrival unleashed a chemical weapons attack mostly against women and children only 15 kilometers away from the inspectors' hotel. If you don't believe it, you subscribe to a conspiracy theory. 

Evidence? Who cares about evidence? Assad's offer of access for the inspectors came ''too late''. Anyway, the UN team is only mandated to determine whether chemical weapons were deployed - but not by who, according to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's spokesman. 

As far as the Obama administration and UK Prime Minister David ''of Arabia'' Cameron are concerned - supported by a barrage of corporate media missiles - that's irrelevant; Obama's ''red line'' has been crossed by Assad, period. Washington and London are in no-holds-barred mode to dismiss any facts contradicting the decision. Newspeak - of the R2A kind - rules. If this all looks like Iraq 2.0 that's because it is. Time to fix the facts around the policy - all over again. Time for weapons of mass deception - all over again. 

The Saudi-Israeli axis of fun

The window of opportunity for war is now. Assad's forces were winning from Qusayr to Homs; pounding ''rebel'' remnants out of the periphery of Damascus; deploying around Der'ah to counterpunch CIA-trained ''rebels'' with advanced weapons crossing the Syrian-Jordanian border; and organizing a push to expel ''rebels'' and jihadis from suburbs of Aleppo. 

Now, Israel and Saudi Arabia are oh so excited because they are getting exactly what they dream just by good ol' Wag the Dog methods. Tel Aviv has even telegraphed how it wants it: this Monday, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper headlined with ''On the Way to Attack'' and even printed the ideal Order of Battle. (see photo) 

Months ago, even AMAN, the Intelligence Directorate of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) concluded that Assad was not a fool to cross Obama's chemical weapon ''red line''. So they came up with the concept of ''two entwined red lines'', the second line being the Syrian government ''losing control of its chemical weapons depots and production sites''. AMAN then proposed different strategies to Washington, from a no-fly zone to actually seizing the weapons (implying a ground attack). 

It's now back to the number one option - air strikes on the chemical weapons depots. As if the US - and Israel - had up-to-the-minute intelligence on exactly where they are. 

Bernanke: Maestro of misery

Obama and Bernanke's model offers a perfect model of chaos and misery

By Noureddine Krichene 

The US enjoyed two decades of prosperity initiated by Ronald Reagan's policies. Come Ben Bernanke, the top economic policy maker of the George W Bush administration, and prosperity ended and was succeeded by falling real incomes; financial chaos spread in the United States and elsewhere. 

Bernanke's cheap money policy set off housing, stocks, and commodity booms; all these booms had to crash in 2008 leaving behind bankruptcies; millions of foreclosures; inflation and poverty; debt crises; massive unemployment in the US and Europe; record fiscal deficits; and rapidly rising public debts. With all this lousy record, Bernanke should have retired as Federal Reserve chairman in 2008, along with Bush and the Bush team, or even rightly been dismissed by the US Congress.

No surprise, Barack Obama entrusted Bernanke to restore prosperity and full-employment. The CEO of Asiana would never retain the pilot of the recent doomed 214 flight; nor would the owner of the Costa Concordia retain the captain of the doomed cruise liner. 

Yet Obama wanted a most extreme fiscal policy, which relied on Bernanke's most extreme policy of near-zero interest rates and rivers of money called quantitative easing for its financing. Fanatical about their ideologies, both men were confident that ultra-expansionary policies would yield prompt prosperity and full employment. 

Unfortunately, these policies are failing now as they did in the past; economic growth is slow; unemployment and inflation remain high; stock prices have shattered records amid economic stagnation; a housing boom is underway; a currency war is raging; crude oil prices remain high; and massive wealth redistribution is under way via asset speculation, credit, and welfare. Europe and Japan are forced into producing cheap money. 

Uncertainty is very high. Bernanke keeps reassuring speculators that near-zero interest rates and rivers of money are to stay around forever (though occasionally hinting at the prospect of a change in tack). He considers money printing a panacea for all: firing up stock and home prices; depreciating exchange rates creating full employment; financing deficits; growing corn; pumping oil; constructing houses; and so on and so on. 

Obama and Bernanke have created the most unmanageable fiscal and money disequilibria. US government debt, at 120% of GDP, is still building up due to exceptionally large fiscal deficits; domestic debt, at about 400% of GDP, is rising fast. Bernanke has tied himself to no exit except push forward with more inflation. 

Bernanke is like a man who jumps from a tall building and thinks he can stop anywhere he wishes in mid-air. Gravitation forces work differently. He is out of control. If interest rates rise, as in 2005, all credit will tumble; stocks, already highly overvalued, will crash. 

To avoid a gigantic collapse, he has to keep printing trillions of dollars. Moreover, Obama has created a large dependency on welfare programs; any cut will severely affect the livelihoods of 100 million or more people who depend on these programs and will be met by ferocious opposition. It is difficult to roll back government spending once it has been put in place.

U.S. Once Again Flouts Russian and Chinese Interests

Both myopic and counterproductive 

By Ted Galen Carpenter

The apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war has produced shrill calls for launching air strikes on the regime of Bashar al Assad. Even the inconvenient detail that the source of the chemical attack is not clear has not deterred advocates of a U.S-led military response. Some proponents have latched onto the 1999 NATO war in Kosovo as an ideal precedent. Kosovo is a precedent all right-an object lesson for why going to war in Syria would be morally dubious and strategically unwise.

Adopting that approach especially has the potential to cause serious tensions in Washington's already delicate ties with China and Russia. Policy regarding Kosovo has been a festering sore on U.S. relations with those countries since the original crisis in the late 1990s. The supposedly inadvertent U.S. bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade in 1999 was only the most spectacular example of the diplomatic carnage.

Indeed, for Chinese and Russian leaders, Kosovo has become a symbol of Washington's contempt for international law and disdain for the prerogatives of other major powers in the international system. No rational person should wish to replicate that outcome by pursuing the same high-handed strategy in response to the Syria conflict.

President Bill Clinton and his supporters insisted that adequate international support was sufficient authorization for U.S. action against Serbia over the Kosovo issue, even absent congressional approval. International support typically meant a UN Security Council resolution-an argument that George H.W. Bush made before belatedly deciding, under domestic public pressure, to seek congressional authorization for the Persian Gulf War.

The Kosovo conflict, though, posed a problem for pro-war internationalists in the U.S. foreign policy community. Both Russia and China vehemently opposed intervention against Serbia, and there was, therefore, no chance of passing a Security Council Resolution authorizing the use of force. Clinton administration officials overcame that impediment by simply bypassing the Council just as they bypassed Congress. "Sufficient international support" now meant support from the U.S.-dominated NATO alliance.

Washington's subsequent actions under the administration of George W. Bush further antagonized Beijing and Moscow and undermined international security cooperation. Bush took the Kosovo precedent one step further with the invasion of Iraq. Once again, Russia and China believed that military action was unwarranted and threatened to use their Security Council vetoes. This time, even NATO was divided, so U.S. leaders could not use the alliance's imprimatur as supposed sufficient justification for an armed intervention. Washington overcame that problem by arguing that endorsement by an ad hoc "coalition of the willing" (or as cynical wags described it, the coalition of the bribed and bullied) constituted adequate international support. Seething leaders in Russia and China disagreed.

The Bush administration was not done showing its contempt for the views and rights of its fellow permanent members on the Security Council. Although the Council had reluctantly authorized the NATO-led postwar occupation of Kosovo under nominal UN auspices, Beijing and Moscow assumed that the province would not be granted independence from Serbia without another Council vote. But the United States, Britain, and France adopted a markedly different course. They recognized Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence in February 2008-once again over the strenuous objections of China and Russia.

Golden Rice, Green Idiocy

The Marie Antoinette crowd strikes again

By Walter Russell Mead

On August 8th, 400 protesters ripped out seedlings of a new genetically modified plant called golden rice at a testing ground in the Philippines. Genes from bacteria and corn have been added to the rice to make it a source of vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency can lead to blindness and weakens the immune system, contributing to 2 million deaths every year. (Golden rice is being developed by a non-profit organization, not Monsanto.) As the Philippine government prepares to rule on whether or not to allow farmers to grow the wonder-crop, the anti-GMO movement is digging itself in for a fight. The New York Times reports:

If the rice gains the Philippine government’s approval, it will cost no more than other rice for poor farmers, who will be free to save seeds and replant them, Dr. Barry said. It has no known allergens or toxins, and the new proteins produced by the rice have been shown to break down quickly in simulated gastric fluid, as required by World Health Organization guidelines.

But the facts haven’t deterred the misinformed from campaigning against the technology. Greenpeace flatly rejects any and all biotech advances in agriculture, a Luddite and ludicrous position that is distorting the public debate:

“There’s so much misinformation floating around about G.M.O.’s that is taken as fact by people,” said Michael D. Purugganan, a professor of genomics and biology and the dean for science at New York University, who sought to calm health-risk concerns in a primer on GMA News Online, a media outlet in the Philippines: “The genes they inserted to make the vitamin are not some weird manufactured material,” he wrote, “but are also found in squash, carrots and melons.”…

“A lot of the criticism of G.M.O.’s in the Western world suffers from a lack of understanding of how really dire the situation is in developing countries,” he said.

With golden rice, we have a real, cost-effective way to safely provide millions of people with healthier food. The anti-GMO crowd is doing its best Marie Antoinette impression, saying the world’s poor should get the vitamin A this new rice provides by eating more fruits and vegetables. A well-balanced diet is a luxury many can’t afford. Cheap, nutrient-rich golden rice can save lives. 

10 Immutable Laws Of Money

If you live like no one else today – you will be able to live like no one else tomorrow

by Lance Roberts

Money – we all want it, but few of us are willing to sacrifice to get it. Those that have it generally don't understand it, and those that don't have it come up with excuses why they can't get it. If this sounds confusing – it is.

For all that we have accomplished in the United States in the last 200+ years we have failed miserably at teaching our children the basics of money management. I am not talking about stock and bond portfolios but rather the basics of spending less than you make, understanding of credit, and how to balance a check a book.

We are inundated daily with credit card commercials that show how great life can be – just charge it. We are enticed to buy things that we don't really need though the use of zero percent financing – but only while it lasts. We are motivated to consume anything and everything in pursuit of the American dream but no one ever talks about the consequences of our actions.

The Secret To Wealth

I could literally be kicked out of the financial community for divulging the one secret that has been so closely guarded by the credit card companies, the mortgage companies, the banks and Wall Street for so many years. This secret, of course, is the true road to wealth and happiness. It is irrefutable, undeniable and absolutely achievable. If you implement this one secret in your life – you will be rich and you won't be able to stop it.

The Secret: Spend Less Than You Make

That's right. This is the one secret that no one wants you to know because the more you save – the less the credit card companies make.  The more you save the less in fees that Wall Street makes.  The more you save the wealthier you get.

The 10 Laws Of Money

1) Money Doesn't Grow On Trees

My father used to always tell me several things – all of which I am beginning to find out weren't exactly true – such as; "When I was your age I had to walk uphill to school in the snow – both ways!", "I could go to a double feature and eat all the popcorn and soda I wanted for a nickel and have change left over!" and, of course, my personal favorite; "Where do you think that comes from – money doesn't grow on trees!"

What my father was trying to teach me was to respect the effort that goes into making money in the first place. My whole life my father worked two jobs, and sometimes three, to support me and make sure that I had everything I needed – not always everything I wanted – but always what I needed. As a young boy, of course, I didn't fully understand the impact of what he was trying to teach me until I got a family of my own.

Financial Times: "World Is Doomed To An Endless Cycle Of Bubble, Financial Crisis And Currency Collapse"

A stable international financial system has eluded the world since the end of the gold standard.

by Tyler Durden

It's funny: nearly five years ago, when we first started, and said that the world is doomed to an endless cycle of bubble, financial crisis and currency collapse as long as the Fed is around, most people laughed: after all they had very serious reputations aligned with a broken and terminally disintegrating economic lie. With time some came to agree with our viewpoint, but most of the very serious people continued to laugh. Fast forward to last night when we read, in that very bastion of very serious opinions, the Financial Times, the following sentence: "The world is doomed to an endless cycle of bubble, financial crisis and currency collapse." By the way, the last phrase can be written in a simpler way: hyperinflation.

So ok then: we are happy to take that as an indirect, partial apology by some very serious people. Partial, because the piece's author, Robin Harding, doesn't explicitly come out and state that this cycle of boom and bust is a direct function of ever encroaching central-planning being handed over to a few economists with zero real world experience, whose actions result in ever more devastating blow ups once the boom cycle shifts to bust. Instead, it is their admission that this is what the world has come to. But, being economists, they naturally fail to see that it is all due to them. Instead, just like pervasive market halt, flash crashes, and everything else that now dominates a broken New Normal, this cycle which eventually culminates with currency collapse, or said otherwise, hyperinflation.

The FT's read on the paradox of modern finance and central banking is surprisingly accurate: in fact, it is almost as if it comes not from the FT but from a textbook on Austrian economics, or a Zero Hedge article:

All [the central bankers'] discussion of the international financial system was marked by a fatalist acceptance of the status quo. Despite the success of unconventional monetary policy and recent big upgrades to financial regulation, we still have no way to tackle imbalances in the global economy, and that means new crises in the future.

Indeed, the problem is becoming worse. Since the collapse in 1971 of the old fixed exchange rate system of Bretton Woods, the world has become used to the “trilemma” of international finance: the impossibility of having free capital flows, fixed exchange rates and an independent monetary policy all at the same time. Most countries have plumped for control over their own monetary policy and a floating exchange rate.

The rest of the article is also like reading early Zero Hedge. Or middle. Or late: in a world of instantaneous fungibility and global capital flows, the Fed is in charge of hot money everywhere, which incidentally is why it is the Emerging Markets that are getting destroyed (first, for now) as the global Fed-funded carry trade slowly but surely unwinds.

Obama's Bad Syria Bluff

He never thought al Assad would be so reckless

By George Friedman

Images of multiple dead bodies emerged from Syria last week. It was asserted that poison gas killed the victims, who according to some numbered in the hundreds. Others claimed the photos were faked while others said the rebels were at fault. The dominant view, however, maintains that the al Assad regime carried out the attack.

The United States has so far avoided involvement in Syria's civil war. This is not to say Washington has any love for the al Assad regime. Damascus' close ties to Iran and Russia give the United States reason to be hostile toward Syria, and Washington participated in the campaign to force Syrian troops out of Lebanon. Still, the United States has learned to be concerned not just with unfriendly regimes, but also with what could follow such regimes. Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have driven home the principle that deposing one regime means living with an imperfect successor. In those cases, changing the regime wound up rapidly entangling the United States in civil wars, the outcomes of which have not been worth the price. In the case of Syria, the insurgents are Sunni Muslims whose best-organized factions have ties to al Qaeda.

Still, as frequently happens, many in the United States and Europe are appalled at the horrors of the civil war, some of whom have called on the United States to do something. The United States has been reluctant to heed these calls. As mentioned, Washington does not have a direct interest in the outcome, since all possible outcomes are bad from its perspective. Moreover, the people who are most emphatic that something be done to stop the killings will be the first to condemn the United States when its starts killing people to stop the killings. People would die in any such intervention, since there are simply no clean ways to end a civil war.

Obama's Red Lines

U.S. President Barack Obama therefore adopted an extremely cautious strategy. He said that the United States would not get directly involved in Syria unless the al Assad regime used chemical weapons, stating with a high degree of confidence that he would not have to intervene. After all, Syrian President Bashar al Assad has now survived two years of civil war, and he is far from defeated. The one thing that could defeat him is foreign intervention, particularly by the United States. It was therefore assumed he wouldn't do the one thing Obama said would trigger U.S. action.

Al Assad is a ruthless man: He would not hesitate to use chemical weapons if he had to. He is also a very rational man: He would use chemical weapons only if that were his sole option. At the moment, it is difficult to see what desperate situation would have caused him to use chemical weapons and risk the worst. His opponents are equally ruthless, and we can imagine them using chemical weapons to force the United States to intervene and depose al Assad. But their ability to access chemical weapons is unclear, and if found out, the maneuver could cost them all Western support. It is possible that lower-ranking officers in al Assad's military used chemical weapons without his knowledge and perhaps against his wishes. It is possible that the casualties were far less than claimed. And it is possible that some of the pictures were faked.

The folly of striking Syria

Obama’s third war

By RALPH PETERS

You might as well try to teach a snake to juggle as hope the Obama administration will think strategically. The “peace president” is about to embark on his third military adventure, this time in Syria, without having learned the lessons of his botched efforts in Afghanistan and Libya. He hasn’t even learned from the Bush administration’s mistakes — which he mocked with such delight.

Before launching a single cruise missile toward Syria, Team Obama needs to be sure it has a good answer to the question, “What comes next?”

If Obama does a Clinton and churns up some sand with do-nothing cruise-missile strikes, it will only encourage the Assad regime. But if our president hits Assad hard and precipitates regime change, then what?

If al Qaeda and local Islamists seize Damascus, what will we do? The enfeebled “moderate opposition” we back rhetorically couldn’t dislodge hardcore jihadis, no matter how many weapons we sent (the jihadis would simply confiscate the gear).

What if we weaken the regime to the point where the fanatics rev up their jihad to drive out Christians and other minorities? What’s your plan then, Mr. President? After your night of explosive passion, will you still love the opposition in the morning?

Exactly which American vital security interests are at stake in Syria, Mr. President? Your credibility? Put a number on it. How many American lives is your blather about red lines worth?

Chemical weapons use? Horrible and illegal, a war crime. So is the mass slaughter of civilians. Is it really so much worse to be gassed than tortured to death by al Qaeda or burned alive in your church? Which is more important, the number of dead, or the means that killed them?

Islamist terrorists have killed tens, if not hundreds, of thousands, of innocent Muslims. Aren’t they the real enemies of civilization?

Mr. President, do you really think it’s wise to send our missiles and aircraft to provide fire support for al Qaeda? That is exactly what you’ll be doing, if you hit Assad.

Assad’s an odious butcher, filth on two legs. But in the world of serious strategy, you rarely get a choice between black and white. You choose between black and charcoal gray.

Employing our military assets to support either side in Syria would be a mistake. Employing them without a worst-case plan for what might follow would be criminal.

We just can’t seem to learn, though. Invading Iraq, the Bush team, egged on by ideologues who never served in uniform, refused to allow our military to plan for an occupation. That sure worked out. Then, in Libya, the Obama administration deposed Khadafy, but refused to plan seriously for the aftermath. Welcome to Benghazi.

There are wars worth fighting. It was essential to go to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 (although staying there was idiocy). There will be future conflicts that demand our blood to defend vital interests. But we’ve now had a decade of do-gooder wars that haven’t done much good.

For the record, I don’t regret getting rid of Saddam or Khadafy. I regret the ineptitude with which we did these things. When you propose a war, don’t ever expect a cheap date.

Now there’s an unholy alliance pushing for attacks on Syria. We have liberal zealots, such as our UN ambassador, Samantha Power, who believe that our military’s primary purpose is to protect people who hate America. We have a few Republican senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham who support any war, any time. We have a president who thinks that, “Gee, maybe, well, gosh, I said I’d do something, so maybe I should...” And we have elements in the defense industry who long for a return to our free-spending years in Iraq and Afghanistan and view a war in Syria as a great way to beat the sequester.

And the one thing every member of that bomb-Syria-now coalition has in common? Not one will have to fight. 

A Disappearance Act for Italy

Entire Factories Are Shipped Out of Italy Overnight

by Pater Tenebrarum

One day you see it, the next you don't. Fabrizio Pedroni's Firem Srl., a maker of electrical car components, that is. According to a report at Bloomberg late last week, the owner of the factory just had the entire thing packed up, lock, stock and barrel, and had it secretly shipped it to Poland overnight, a place where capital is evidently treated better than in Italy.

It is interesting to read why exactly he decided to act under the cover of darkness:

“Earlier this month, Fabrizio Pedroni wished his employees a happy summer holiday and told them to return to work in three weeks. That night, he began dismantling his electric component factory in northern Italy and packing its machinery off to Poland.

“Had I told them earlier about any plans to shift the production abroad, they would have occupied my factory and seized all my stuff,” Pedroni said in an Aug. 21 telephone interview from Poland. “The plain truth is that I wanted my business to survive and there weren’t the right conditions for me to operate in Italy any longer.”

The news that Firem Srl, based in Formigine near Modena, was shifting to Eastern Europe reached the 40 employees too late. On Aug. 13, 11 days after Pedroni activated his plan, a group of employees suspicious of the movements around the plant rushed to its gates just in time to stop the last of 20 lorries packed with machinery. Firem’s move became a national controversy and the fate of its workers is still unclear.

The loss of the factory highlights the struggle Italy faces to revive manufacturing and its economy, which remained in recession in the second quarter even as the broader euro area returned to growth. Italy ranks 128th in the World Economic Forum’s global pay and productivity table, one place behind Burkina Faso, compared with 39th for Poland.”

The fate of the workers is in fact clear: they are now jobless. Pedroni had to do what he did to escape the inevitable blackmail and violent disregard of private property of militant Italian unions, as his tale reveals. Meanwhile, Italy's appalling productivity ranking (behind Burkina Faso? That really takes some doing) proves one of our main contentions when we discussed Mario Monti's so-called 'reforms'. There were no reforms. All he did was raise taxes and put pressure on the citizenry with intimidation tactics (his financial police took pride in terrorizing the citizenry and regarded it as a major objective). Obviously, Italy's labor market reform has at best been cosmetic.

Democracy’s Dog Days

We all want democracy to thrive and flourish, but can it?

By Victor Davis Hanson

The Obama administration was quite pleased that the anti-democratic Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood had come to power through a single plebiscite. That confidence required a great deal of moral blindness, both of the present and past.

Like other once-elected authoritarians who believe that democracy is similar to a bus route — in the words of Mr. Erdogan of Turkey, once you get to your stop, you get off — Morsi had no intention of fostering the sort of consensual institutions so necessary for republican government. Almost immediately he gave a de facto green light to cleanse the government of his opponents, to Islamicize a once largely secular society, and to persecute religious minorities.

Like a Hitler, Mussolini, Mugabe, or Hugo Chavez, Morsi was counting on the legitimacy from a once-in-a-lifetime largely free election, and then the use of state power, if not terror, to institutionalize his authoritarian rule. Morsi’s legacy is that he was both a beneficiary of the Arab Spring in Egypt and almost singlehandedly ended it.

Unfortunately, there seem to be no signs of democracy’s revival elsewhere in the Arab world or, for that matter, all that many recent vibrant examples in the world at large these days.

In contrast, after the end of the Cold War there was a giddy “end of history” moment. By the new millennium, “democratic” government and free market capitalism were accepted as the natural — indeed, the foreordained — final stage in civilization’s evolution. And why not? The Soviet Union was in shambles. Eastern Europe was democratizing. Latin American democracies were starting to crowd out both communist and right-wing dictatorships. The European Union was ushering in the euro to self-congratulatory proclamations of a new social democratic heaven on Earth. The betting was when, not if, a newly capitalist China democratized. Bill Clinton, under duress, had moved America to the democratic center, and was helping to balance budgets.

Only the Islamic Middle East resisted the supposedly inevitable democratic urge. As the world’s regional holdout, the region was seen as well overdue for its turn at majority rule. Democratization, we Americans argued, might force the Muslim world to emulate those consensual systems with far better records of stable governance and widespread prosperity. With freedom and affluence, the age-old Middle East pathologies — misogyny, religious intolerance, tribalism, fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and statism — would fade along with terrorist-driven violence. Or so it was thought.

Now, in the second decade of the new millennium, democracy is not just having a rough time, but failing in a way that its harsh critics so often predicted, from Plato to Nietzsche and Spengler.

Often the recent world confused plebiscites with democracy, as if the two were synonymous.

The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history

Congress Should Veto Obama’s War

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

“Congress doesn’t have a whole lot of core responsibilities,” said Barack Obama last week in an astonishing remark.

For in the Constitution, Congress appears as the first branch of government. And among its enumerated powers are the power to tax, coin money, create courts, provide for the common defense, raise and support an army, maintain a navy and declare war.

But, then, perhaps Obama’s contempt is justified.

For consider Congress’ broad assent to news that Obama has decided to attack Syria, a nation that has not attacked us and against which Congress has never authorized a war.

Why is Obama making plans to launch cruise missiles on Syria?

According to a “senior administration official … who insisted on anonymity,” President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his own people last week in the two-year-old Syrian civil war.

But who deputized the United States to walk the streets of the world pistol-whipping bad actors. Where does our imperial president come off drawing “red lines” and ordering nations not to cross them?

Neither the Security Council nor Congress nor NATO nor the Arab League has authorized war on Syria.

Who made Barack Obama the Wyatt Earp of the Global Village?

Moreover, where is the evidence that WMDs were used and that it had to be Assad who ordered them? Such an attack makes no sense.

Firing a few shells of gas at Syrian civilians was not going to advance Assad’s cause but, rather, was certain to bring universal condemnation on his regime and deal cards to the War Party which wants a U.S. war on Syria as the back door to war on Iran.

Why did the United States so swiftly dismiss Assad’s offer to have U.N. inspectors — already in Damascus investigating old charges he or the rebels used poison gas — go to the site of the latest incident?

Do we not want to know the truth?

Are we fearful the facts may turn out, as did the facts on the ground in Iraq, to contradict our latest claims about WMDs? Are we afraid that it was rebel elements or rogue Syrian soldiers who fired the gas shells to stampede us into fighting this war?

With U.S. ships moving toward Syria’s coast and the McCainiacs assuring us we can smash Syria from offshore without serious injury to ourselves, why has Congress not come back to debate war?

Lest we forget, Ronald Reagan was sold the same bill of goods the War Party is selling today — that we can intervene decisively in a Mideast civil war at little or no cost to ourselves.

Reagan listened and ordered our Marines into the middle of Lebanon’s civil war. And he was there when they brought home the 241 dead from the Beirut barracks and our dead diplomats from the Beirut embassy.

The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. Congress should cut short its five-week vacation, come back, debate and decide by recorded vote whether Obama can take us into yet another Middle East war.

The questions to which Congress needs answers:

·                     Do we have incontrovertible proof that Bashar Assad ordered chemical weapons be used on his own people? And if he did not, who did?

·                     What kind of reprisals might we expect if we launch cruise missiles at Syria, which is allied with Hezbollah and Iran?

·                     If we attack, and Syria or its allies attack U.S. military or diplomatic missions in the Middle East or here in the United States, are we prepared for the wider war we will have started?

·                     Assuming Syria responds with a counterstrike, how far are we prepared to go up the escalator to regional war? If we intervene, are we prepared for the possible defeat of the side we have chosen, which would then be seen as a strategic defeat for the United States?

·                     If stung and bleeding from retaliation, are we prepared to go all the way, boots on the ground, to bring down Assad? Are we prepared to occupy Syria to prevent its falling to the Al-Nusra Front, which it may if Assad falls and we do not intervene?

The basic question that needs to be asked about this horrific attack on civilians, which appears to be gas related, is: Cui bono?

To whose benefit would the use of nerve gas on Syrian women and children redound? Certainly not Assad’s, as we can see from the furor and threats against him that the use of gas has produced.

The sole beneficiary of this apparent use of poison gas against civilians in rebel-held territory appears to be the rebels, who have long sought to have us come in and fight their war.

Perhaps Congress cannot defund Obamacare. But at least they can come back to Washington and tell Obama, sinking poll numbers aside, he has no authority to drag us into another war. His Libyan adventure, which gave us the Benghazi massacre and cover-up, was his last hurrah as war president.

Guilty as charged

Re-education at George Mason

By Walter E. Williams

This week begins my 34th year serving on George Mason University’s distinguished economics faculty. You might imagine my surprise when I received a letter from its Office of Equity and Diversity Services notifying me that I was required to “complete the in-person Equal Opportunity and Prevention of Sexual Harassment Policies and Procedures training.” This is a leftist agenda for indoctrination, thought control and free speech suppression to which I shall refuse to submit. Let’s look at it.

Ideas such as equity and equal opportunity, while having high emotional value, are vacuous analytical concepts. For example, I’ve asked students whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them when they graduate. To a person, they always answer no. If they aren’t going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what’s fair about forcing employers to give them an equal opportunity to be hired?

I’m guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism. Back in 1960, when interviewing people to establish a marital contract, every woman wasn’t given an equal opportunity. I discriminated against not only white, Indian, Asian, Mexican and handicapped women but men of any race. My choices were confined to good-looking black women. You say, “Williams, that kind of discrimination doesn’t harm anyone!” Nonsense! When I married Mrs. Williams, other women were harmed by having a reduced opportunity set.

George Mason’s Office of Equity and Diversity Services has far more challenging equity and diversity work than worrying about the re-education of Professor Williams. They must know that courts have long held that gross racial disparities are probative of a pattern and practice of discrimination. The most notable gross racial disparity on campus, and hence probative of discrimination, can be found on GMU’s fabulous men’s basketball team. Blacks are less than 9 percent of student enrollment but are 85 percent of our varsity basketball team and dominate its starting five. It’s not just GMU. Watch any Saturday afternoon college basketball game and ask yourself the question fixated in the minds of equity, diversity and inclusion hunters: Does this look like America? Among the 10 players on the court, at best there might be two white players. In 2010, 61 percent of Division I basketball players were black, and only 31 percent were white.

Allied with the purveyors of equity, diversity and inclusion are the multiculturalists, who call for the celebration of cultures. For them, all cultures are morally equivalent and to deem otherwise is Eurocentrism. That’s unbridled nonsense. Ask your multiculturalist: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan Africa and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Sudan and Niger; is that a cultural equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits on women — such as prohibitions on driving, employment, voting and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to those of the West?

Western values are superior to all others. Why? The greatest achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights. The Western transition from barbarism to civility didn’t happen overnight. It emerged feebly — mainly in England, starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 — and took centuries to get where it is today.

One need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It’s no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person.

Western values are under ruthless attack by the academic elite on college campuses across America. They want to replace personal liberty with government control and replace equality before the law with entitlement. The multiculturalism and diversity agenda is a cancer on our society, and our tax dollars and charitable donations are supporting it.