Ok so ... Kermit Roosevelt Jr.
This week saw much pain, stitches and medicated, ice-packed reading for me, which resulted in a convergence of things probably only kind of interesting to myself.
Plus, teh dot-edu internets is magic.
Paul Ryan wants 1950 back and wimmens makin' babies and mens deciding health stuffs for them because 1950's Daddy Knows Best. Conservative politics wants to steal your money and finish gutting the US economy. Democrats want to continue not doing anything much all that progressive or useful.
Friends of mine are still convinced that we went into Iraq because of the Terror, because Glenn Beck's deranged schizophrenic dysfunctions talked to him and said so. Nevermind that.
I mean when we hired Saddam Hussein to help the CIA organize a coup in 1963 and help us assassinate the Democratically elected Iraqi president, then set up the Ba'ath Party as the ruling power and then made Saddam head of their Secret Service - well all that was just in the name of spreading democracy and Light and Hope and shit like how we do - right? I'm sure it had nothing to do with US and Corporate interest.
Just like in 1953 when the US sent Kermit to head up the CIA action overthrowing the Democratic Leader of Iran and installed the Shah as ruling power. Nothing but Humanitarian interest there.I mean to be fair, we were busy anyway. We'd just come off of crushing an independence rebellion in Puerto Rico, we had that thing in Korea... Over the next four years we had Nuclear threats to or Military in Vietnam, Guatemala, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq (we were warning them against invading Kuwait. Ironic, isn't it?), China, Panama, then a freaking war in Vietnam... It's like, why do they hate us for our Democracy imposed on them?
But I digress.We do good work. We kill a million people in Indonesia by way of CIA assisted Army coup in 1965, we invade the Dominican Republic the same year, the Army kills 43 POC in Detroit. I mean the American Freedom Train is really humming along.
Sure - we carpet bomb Cambodia and destroy the government for ten years, killing 2 Million people through explosions and starvation, but you have to break some eggs, right? Besides if we hadn't smoothed the road for Democracy and Freedom there, you never would have gotten that cool movie about Pol Pot with Sam Waterston. Dude won an Oscar for that. He was on Law & Order - he's legit.
Then there was that Wounded Knee siege against the Lakota in South Dakota in '73... but this is getting away from the point - Which is: The US... it does God's Work all the time with its Armed Services, defending the Nation, never putting them in harm's way for profit, making it safe for roasted hotdogs and black powder displays of the Nation's Moral Purity once a year.
Oh yeah and Chile. Don't forget we killed the President of Chile. Shit we had a lot going on.
ANYWAY MY POINT is how shocked I was to discover how the financial system works with regard to IMF/World Bank and Debt forgiveness.
See it works like this:A bunch of really well meaning people get together and they say, SURE third world developing country, we will loan you money via the World Bank to build infrastructure so your peeples can has electric if you hire say, Bechtel or Halliburton to do all the work. Nice deal.
Then the country has a shiny building or two in the square, maybe some electric grid, and the work is done by US or Multinational companies so they profit, maybe one half of one percent of the native population gets very rich and invests that money in international currency markets and Swiss bank accounts so it's completely out of the country. Good deal. Only one drawback, really, and its not a big thing, just... nobody can really afford the electric at the rates that Foreign company is charging, because none of the population got any work or learned any trade since Bechtel imported their own contractors. Oh and the debt. The dirt-poor people still have the debt... and no water treatment facilities, because most of the GDP goes to paying down the debt.So what's to be done?
Le Sigh... The International Monetary Fund looks at them and says, "Silly goose! You ain't got no monies!" Well, they can approve a loan AGAIN but they can't do it with all that debt riding ... Instead we get some celebrities like Bono, and they do videos and stuff, and we all talk about how awesome cancelling that debt would be, because debt forgiveness sounds really super charitable... So that's what we do.Conditional Debt Forgiveness.
Conditional on Privatization of the water treatment (because honestly third world country, you already can't manage your electric grid) So a company like Halliburton or Bechtel comes in and uses up all the money building and then privately running the only water treatment facilities at something like three times the previous cost, but I mean, they have to make a profit, right? They don't do this stuff for free. They have kids to feed.
What else you got third world country? Besides life-threatening poverty for 80% of the country and crazy preventable disease and child mortality rates? You need roads? You got Oil? You got mining we could do? We could do this all day!
So election day comes, and the companies send in representatives and they meet the new guys after inauguration, and everyone shakes hands and says hey congratulations. Then the Company men reach in a pocket and say, "Hey yo - here's 200k to play ball. That's the left pocket. You don't want the right pocket because that's everything that could happen to you and your family when no one is looking." Now, imagine you're a president, and you're wondering if you really appreciate what's happening here. Maybe you even want to have some integrity, but besides being thrown out in a CIA backed coup, or dead along with the whole of your family, what's the guy after you going to do? It kind of sets a bad tone, getting murdered.
So now you're corrupt! Shame on you, Mister or Madam President! What your people say they needed was a strong leader to manage their resources in a sound way - not IMF/WB loans and debt to foreign companies siphoning natural resources! In fact that's what two generations of South American Presidents have been saying and they keep getting elected being socialist and anti-corporate and the US has to talk about what an enemy to Good, Clean, Pure US Interests they are.
And occasionally we kill people in the name of Democracy. It just happens.
So, at the end, what I found really disturbing is that we have this really clear history of Humanitarian Righteousness when it comes to US Foreign relations, yet for so long the US has been left out of it's own Democracy Parade.
We started out good in Iraq setting up a puppet dictatorship. Then they got mouthy and we flexed a bit. Then years later they acted like they didn't like our trade agreements and we sent in some CIA guys to... actually shit - we couldn't, because that crazy ass Saddam guy had tons of loyal guards and body doubles. So we had to invade... a little. because at the end of the day we figured he'd keep Iran in check, and play ball, and know who the top dog was because the US is WHAT!?!?!? His crazy ass was still not doing what we wanted... and we had to invade ALL OVER AGAIN. My God.
Now we had to fold that into our Afghanistan thing (which actually was really convenient because we had a closed meeting about how to design new currency for Iraq after wrapping up our plan for killing the leader in the first week of Bush's term, and then some crazy people blew up stuff and it was party time), and we sent troops and we privatized as much as we could with independent contractors and Halliburton built showers for our troops that had uninsulated wiring and electrocuted a few, and they built cisterns of stagnant water that made a bunch of troops sick, and ... well you get it right?
Why do they hate our Freedoms? Cheney got 34 Million out of the deal from Halliburton ... it's not like he had anything to gain from funneling them money.
Why do WE hate our Freedoms?
But wait - what is that Siren Song of Righteous freedoms I hear???
Now Conservative America wants to spread that Dream of Democracy to the shores of... that's right! AMERICA!!! It's finally our turn! We'll Privatize school, and prison for profit, and Social Security, and Medicaid, and just about everything that can bleed money.
I mean Social Security? That's a HUGE drain on the national budget - Paul Ryan just said so, while joking that he hoped the sixty-five year old dude he'd directed police to wrestle to the ground had taken his blood pressure medication (see because he was mad that Ryan was calling Medicaid and Social Security an entitlement program, which clearly it is, if you consider that paying for something out of your own pocket in the US entitles you to get it).
Just think it's money, right, that private people and their employers pay in over a lifetime that is also reinvested for a profit for the Government. Christ on a Cracker. Leaving money that people put themselves into an account that is ostensibly set up just for them, that the Government collects the interest on all alone? They pay in for fifty years and then take it out for ten? HELL YES that has got to be a drain on the economy, leaving all that money that's already theirs in their Government kept pockets. Let's get a Privatized company in here to empty that shit post haste!
Because stealing your money - hey that's Conservative.
Now if we could only focus on Iran, and it's human rights problems, and the horrible, sticky condition for women under the brutal dictatorship that we set up on purpose after killing their president in the 50's?
Or solve the corruption problems with these Banana Republics that we pay off or threaten with death if they don't get corrupt right quick? I mean, our politicians don't have a problem removing impediments to multinational Corporate interests donating the GDP of Brazil for an election. OUR politicians don't balk at the hard work of limiting human rights within our borders. OUR politicians are saying they're totally cool with stripping women of their rights (and presumably everything else).
Is this not the glorious One World the United Nations was conceived for?
The world would be a better place if they accepted the Dream of US Democracy and embraced us as Liberators instead of taking the money we buy them off with or dying from the bullets we put into them in the middle of the night. Or maybe all of the above.
Oh Shit! Maybe we get to shoot Senior Citizens now?
Women hanging from a crane in the public square for being raped...? Hey America, you swiped the credit card to rent that boom truck. That enemy is still us. Semper Fi.
This week saw much pain, stitches and medicated, ice-packed reading for me, which resulted in a convergence of things probably only kind of interesting to myself.
Plus, teh dot-edu internets is magic.
Paul Ryan wants 1950 back and wimmens makin' babies and mens deciding health stuffs for them because 1950's Daddy Knows Best. Conservative politics wants to steal your money and finish gutting the US economy. Democrats want to continue not doing anything much all that progressive or useful.
Friends of mine are still convinced that we went into Iraq because of the Terror, because Glenn Beck's deranged schizophrenic dysfunctions talked to him and said so. Nevermind that.
I mean when we hired Saddam Hussein to help the CIA organize a coup in 1963 and help us assassinate the Democratically elected Iraqi president, then set up the Ba'ath Party as the ruling power and then made Saddam head of their Secret Service - well all that was just in the name of spreading democracy and Light and Hope and shit like how we do - right? I'm sure it had nothing to do with US and Corporate interest.
Just like in 1953 when the US sent Kermit to head up the CIA action overthrowing the Democratic Leader of Iran and installed the Shah as ruling power. Nothing but Humanitarian interest there.I mean to be fair, we were busy anyway. We'd just come off of crushing an independence rebellion in Puerto Rico, we had that thing in Korea... Over the next four years we had Nuclear threats to or Military in Vietnam, Guatemala, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq (we were warning them against invading Kuwait. Ironic, isn't it?), China, Panama, then a freaking war in Vietnam... It's like, why do they hate us for our Democracy imposed on them?
But I digress.We do good work. We kill a million people in Indonesia by way of CIA assisted Army coup in 1965, we invade the Dominican Republic the same year, the Army kills 43 POC in Detroit. I mean the American Freedom Train is really humming along.
Sure - we carpet bomb Cambodia and destroy the government for ten years, killing 2 Million people through explosions and starvation, but you have to break some eggs, right? Besides if we hadn't smoothed the road for Democracy and Freedom there, you never would have gotten that cool movie about Pol Pot with Sam Waterston. Dude won an Oscar for that. He was on Law & Order - he's legit.
Then there was that Wounded Knee siege against the Lakota in South Dakota in '73... but this is getting away from the point - Which is: The US... it does God's Work all the time with its Armed Services, defending the Nation, never putting them in harm's way for profit, making it safe for roasted hotdogs and black powder displays of the Nation's Moral Purity once a year.
Oh yeah and Chile. Don't forget we killed the President of Chile. Shit we had a lot going on.
ANYWAY MY POINT is how shocked I was to discover how the financial system works with regard to IMF/World Bank and Debt forgiveness.
See it works like this:A bunch of really well meaning people get together and they say, SURE third world developing country, we will loan you money via the World Bank to build infrastructure so your peeples can has electric if you hire say, Bechtel or Halliburton to do all the work. Nice deal.
Then the country has a shiny building or two in the square, maybe some electric grid, and the work is done by US or Multinational companies so they profit, maybe one half of one percent of the native population gets very rich and invests that money in international currency markets and Swiss bank accounts so it's completely out of the country. Good deal. Only one drawback, really, and its not a big thing, just... nobody can really afford the electric at the rates that Foreign company is charging, because none of the population got any work or learned any trade since Bechtel imported their own contractors. Oh and the debt. The dirt-poor people still have the debt... and no water treatment facilities, because most of the GDP goes to paying down the debt.So what's to be done?
Le Sigh... The International Monetary Fund looks at them and says, "Silly goose! You ain't got no monies!" Well, they can approve a loan AGAIN but they can't do it with all that debt riding ... Instead we get some celebrities like Bono, and they do videos and stuff, and we all talk about how awesome cancelling that debt would be, because debt forgiveness sounds really super charitable... So that's what we do.Conditional Debt Forgiveness.
Conditional on Privatization of the water treatment (because honestly third world country, you already can't manage your electric grid) So a company like Halliburton or Bechtel comes in and uses up all the money building and then privately running the only water treatment facilities at something like three times the previous cost, but I mean, they have to make a profit, right? They don't do this stuff for free. They have kids to feed.
What else you got third world country? Besides life-threatening poverty for 80% of the country and crazy preventable disease and child mortality rates? You need roads? You got Oil? You got mining we could do? We could do this all day!
So election day comes, and the companies send in representatives and they meet the new guys after inauguration, and everyone shakes hands and says hey congratulations. Then the Company men reach in a pocket and say, "Hey yo - here's 200k to play ball. That's the left pocket. You don't want the right pocket because that's everything that could happen to you and your family when no one is looking." Now, imagine you're a president, and you're wondering if you really appreciate what's happening here. Maybe you even want to have some integrity, but besides being thrown out in a CIA backed coup, or dead along with the whole of your family, what's the guy after you going to do? It kind of sets a bad tone, getting murdered.
So now you're corrupt! Shame on you, Mister or Madam President! What your people say they needed was a strong leader to manage their resources in a sound way - not IMF/WB loans and debt to foreign companies siphoning natural resources! In fact that's what two generations of South American Presidents have been saying and they keep getting elected being socialist and anti-corporate and the US has to talk about what an enemy to Good, Clean, Pure US Interests they are.
And occasionally we kill people in the name of Democracy. It just happens.
So, at the end, what I found really disturbing is that we have this really clear history of Humanitarian Righteousness when it comes to US Foreign relations, yet for so long the US has been left out of it's own Democracy Parade.
We started out good in Iraq setting up a puppet dictatorship. Then they got mouthy and we flexed a bit. Then years later they acted like they didn't like our trade agreements and we sent in some CIA guys to... actually shit - we couldn't, because that crazy ass Saddam guy had tons of loyal guards and body doubles. So we had to invade... a little. because at the end of the day we figured he'd keep Iran in check, and play ball, and know who the top dog was because the US is WHAT!?!?!? His crazy ass was still not doing what we wanted... and we had to invade ALL OVER AGAIN. My God.
Now we had to fold that into our Afghanistan thing (which actually was really convenient because we had a closed meeting about how to design new currency for Iraq after wrapping up our plan for killing the leader in the first week of Bush's term, and then some crazy people blew up stuff and it was party time), and we sent troops and we privatized as much as we could with independent contractors and Halliburton built showers for our troops that had uninsulated wiring and electrocuted a few, and they built cisterns of stagnant water that made a bunch of troops sick, and ... well you get it right?
Why do they hate our Freedoms? Cheney got 34 Million out of the deal from Halliburton ... it's not like he had anything to gain from funneling them money.
Why do WE hate our Freedoms?
But wait - what is that Siren Song of Righteous freedoms I hear???
Now Conservative America wants to spread that Dream of Democracy to the shores of... that's right! AMERICA!!! It's finally our turn! We'll Privatize school, and prison for profit, and Social Security, and Medicaid, and just about everything that can bleed money.
I mean Social Security? That's a HUGE drain on the national budget - Paul Ryan just said so, while joking that he hoped the sixty-five year old dude he'd directed police to wrestle to the ground had taken his blood pressure medication (see because he was mad that Ryan was calling Medicaid and Social Security an entitlement program, which clearly it is, if you consider that paying for something out of your own pocket in the US entitles you to get it).
Just think it's money, right, that private people and their employers pay in over a lifetime that is also reinvested for a profit for the Government. Christ on a Cracker. Leaving money that people put themselves into an account that is ostensibly set up just for them, that the Government collects the interest on all alone? They pay in for fifty years and then take it out for ten? HELL YES that has got to be a drain on the economy, leaving all that money that's already theirs in their Government kept pockets. Let's get a Privatized company in here to empty that shit post haste!
Because stealing your money - hey that's Conservative.
Now if we could only focus on Iran, and it's human rights problems, and the horrible, sticky condition for women under the brutal dictatorship that we set up on purpose after killing their president in the 50's?
Or solve the corruption problems with these Banana Republics that we pay off or threaten with death if they don't get corrupt right quick? I mean, our politicians don't have a problem removing impediments to multinational Corporate interests donating the GDP of Brazil for an election. OUR politicians don't balk at the hard work of limiting human rights within our borders. OUR politicians are saying they're totally cool with stripping women of their rights (and presumably everything else).
Is this not the glorious One World the United Nations was conceived for?
The world would be a better place if they accepted the Dream of US Democracy and embraced us as Liberators instead of taking the money we buy them off with or dying from the bullets we put into them in the middle of the night. Or maybe all of the above.
Oh Shit! Maybe we get to shoot Senior Citizens now?
Women hanging from a crane in the public square for being raped...? Hey America, you swiped the credit card to rent that boom truck. That enemy is still us. Semper Fi.
