Steve's Politics Blog

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The Hill has the article Gabbard to repay cost of Syria trip.

Democrats and Republicans alike were critical of the decision, with members of both parties voicing concerns with the trip in light of Assad’s human rights record.

What The Hill failed to tell you is that “Assad’s human rights record” has been tampered with by our government and its “intelligence” agencies. There are a number of reporters and Syrian residents who will attest to the views that our corporate press refuses to report. Whether the corporate press thinks these people are right or wrong, why won’t they even tell you that these people exist? Is there only one side of the story they want you to know? Is that called reporting all the news so you can make up your own mind? Or is it that the responsibility of the corporate press is to keep you from knowing what they think you shouldn’t know?

The corporate press has no problem telling you of the tiny number of scientists who dispute global warming. In this article they have no trouble taking a dig at the facts in the story by telling you the propaganda line that they want you to believe about Syria.

And speaking of David Petraeus in my previous post here is the Washington Post article David Petraeus: Anti-Muslim bigotry aids Islamist terrorists mentioned in that post. Leave it to the Washington Post to publish something like this.

While Islamist extremist networks do not pose an “existential” threat to the United States in the way that Soviet nuclear weapons once did, their bloodlust and their ambition to inflict genocidal violence make them uniquely malevolent actors on the world stage.

No irony here for Petraeus to go on and say the following:

For that reason, I have grown increasingly concerned about inflammatory political discourse that has become far too common both at home and abroad against Muslims and Islam, including proposals from various quarters for blanket discrimination against people on the basis of their religion.

I suppose the words “bloodlust” and “genocidal violence” are not thought of as inflammatory. Sorry David, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t use inflammatory language and then profess your concern over people using such language.

I think David Petraeus should read his own advice

But it is precisely because the danger of Islamist extremism is so great that politicians here and abroad who toy with anti-Muslim bigotry must consider the effects of their rhetoric. Demonizing a religious faith and its adherents not only runs contrary to our most cherished and fundamental values as a country; it is also corrosive to our vital national security interests and, ultimately, to the United States’ success in this war.

So why did Petraeus choose to use words that were “corrosive to our vital national security interests’?

CNN has the article Why ISIS is celebrating Trump’s immigration ban.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, retired US Army Gen. and former CIA Director David Petraeus said he has grown increasingly concerned about anti-Muslim rhetoric in the United States.

“As policy, these concepts are totally counterproductive,” Petraeus said. “Rather than making our country safer, they will compound the already grave terrorist danger to our citizens. As ideas, they are toxic and, indeed, non-biodegradable — a kind of poison that, once released into our body politic, is not easily expunged.”

In the spirit of being fair and unbalanced, CNN goes on to add the following to their article:

The number of American Muslims who radicalize is small, especially when compared with other Western countries, said William McCants, director of the Brookings Institution’s Project on US Relations with the Islamic World.

Law enforcement experts estimate that about 250 Americans have tried to join ISIS, far fewer than the thousands who have flocked to Syria and Iraq from countries such as France and Belgium.

“I would argue that American Islam is doing something right in contrast to these other countries,” McCants said.

I would argue that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans provide somewhat of a barrier for American Muslims wanting to go to the Caliphate compared to those lining in Europe. Perhaps it is not only American Islam is doing something right but America (USA) that is doing something right, Well, that is until Trump arrived upon the scene. In the USA, we have far more acceptance of diverse people that some countries in Europe. We do not ban the wearing of religious garb as they do in France. We do not insist on English being the official language. There are a lot of things we do right that Trump wants to start doing wrong.

Counterpunch as the article Celebrating Dr. King with the Departure of Barack Obama by Ajamu Baraka.

It is not too late, even with the election of Donald Trump, but it will take courage and clear thinking in order to shake ourselves free from the strange, hypnotic trance that has gripped liberals and progressives of all stripes. Dr. King pointed us in the right direction just before he was assassinated when he reminded us that we were living in revolutionary times. King argued that the U.S. needed to get on the right side of the world revolution and that required a revolution of values in U.S. society. With the U.S. gripped in an unsolvable capitalist economic crisis that has deepened poverty, exacerbated racism and xenophobia, intensified class contradictions and struggle, and produced a Donald Trump, the liberated knowledge and experience of the black liberation movement in the U.S. is actively creating new ways of living and seeing the world that will liberate all of us.

This is the reality of a new world that Dr. King could see from the mountaintop – and that is a world that a visionless, opportunist technocrat like Obama and a moribund liberalism could never imagine.

Wow, what a powerful statement this article is. In his own book, Barack Obama stated that he decided to go to Harvard University to learn where the levers of power were. I guess he learned his lessons well, and he worked those levers of power mercilessly.

New Economic Perspectives has the short article When will the EU and the ECB Stop Torturing the Greeks?

The International Monetary Fund believes Greece’s debt is “highly unsustainable” and will reach 275% of gross domestic product by 2060 unless the country’s loans are significantly restructured, according to a draft confidential review of the country’s economy.

I have found some of the worst enemies of Greece among USA citizens with a Greek background. The ones to which I refer blame the laziness of the Greek people, and refuse to understand what the international financial community is doing to Greece.

The Dallas News has the opinion piece How we Americans can turn the tables on Steve Bannon’s shock event.

What Steve Bannon is doing, most dramatically with the ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries — is creating what is known as a “shock event.”

Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.

For “corroboration” of this take on events, I hark back to some earlier posts of mine The Shock Doctrine. In her book and lectures, Naomi Klein gives a thorough exposition of the shock doctrine. It is shocking.

There is another very valuable short YouTube video Unemployment Is Created By Government And Can Only Be Solved By Government. This video is true to its headline, but did not lead to where I expected.

YouTube has a short video Real Terms Of Trade: Imports Are Good And Exports Are Bad with excellent written introduction to support the video. I’ll just quote the first paragraph of the introduction.

Warren Mosler and Professor Stephanie Kelton discussing the real terms of trade. When we import something from a foreign country, we get the thing and they get dollars. When we export something to a foreign country, they get the thing and we get their currency. Which one is better for us? Imports are goods and services that we can consume but didn’t have to work to produce, while exports are goods and services that we had to work to produce but don’t get to consume. So from the point of view of our society as a whole, exports are a cost, while imports are a benefit.

We need to stop buying the major baloney that our politicians want to feed us about trade, and start thinking about and understanding the reality.

If you are tempted to reject what this video is saying, I suggest you read the article in my previous post Ignore the Trade Balance: Concentrate on Full Employment.

The Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity has this fabulous paper Ignore the Trade Balance: Concentrate on Full Employment.

Do not attempt to discuss this unless and until you read, understand, and accept the limitations expressed in the words in the excerpts below that I have chosen to emphasize.

Monetary sovereignty involves having your own currency and central bank, not being on a gold standard, not being on any kind of fixed exchange rate system, and not having significant foreign currency debt. Under these circumstances, it is no longer clear that a current account surplus is beneficial and a deficit costly, and indeed, the opposite may be true, however provocative though the claim may appear.
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The currency in which a country accumulates net foreign liabilities over time is of vital importance. If public and private foreign debt is denominated in foreign currency, this creates the risk of national insolvency and a costly financial crisis. It also implies that the government of that country does not enjoy full monetary sovereignty, especially if the foreign currency debt is public debt, or effectively guaranteed by the public sector.

If the rest of the world has chosen to net save in the currency of a country, however, it is not clear that the resulting net foreign liabilities are a debt which needs to be repaid using real resources at all. This is at most potentially the case. The accumulation of domestic currency financial assets by the foreign sector is a portfolio decision of the foreign sector , and not something that the government can control precisely, or arguably should seek to control, except in so far as speculative c apital flows are viewed as destabilising to financial markets.

For those of us who understand the accounting identity that underlies Modern Money Theory, this result should be no surprise. However, for those of us who did not go through the process of figuring out MMT’s implications on trade balances, this is a particularly nice result to read about.

You won’t find an inkling of this logical conclusion in any of the standard wisdom about trade policy. You certainly won’t find it in the idiotic ideas of Trump or Obama or Clinton. Here they are negotiating trade deals without a clue as to the consequences of whatever agreement they are trying to get.