I haven’t blogged the primaries, mainly because so many other first-class bloggers have been doing that job very well. In a few more days, however, John McCain and Sarah Palin will become the official nominees of the Republican Party and the battle will be joined in earnest.

In the absence of a coup or massive vote theft, Barak Obama and Joe Biden will be president and vice-president of the United States come next January 20.

I’ve always felt that Biden had many good qualities, but I have been concerned for many years at his support of U.S. imperialism in South America (and yes, imperialism in exactly the correct word for a century of military and economic support of right-wing dictators friendly to U.S. business interests). He supported the corrupt and oppressive bankruptcy act that, while allowing millionaires to discharge their debts, forces middle class debtors into Chapter 13 plans, keeping them in bondage to credit card companies for as long as 5 years.

Given the realities, however, Biden is as good a running mate as Obama could have gotten. Biden is the ultimate insider and his senate seat is not in danger of falling to a Republican when he leaves. Besides, given Obama’s relative youth and good health, Biden is very unlikely to become president in the next 4 or even 8 years.

McCain, in announcing his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, certainly managed to upstage Obama the day after the close of the Democratic convention, but I think he will pay a heavy price for it. The closest I can come to a similar choice was George H. W. Bush’s choosing Dan Quayle or perhaps Ronald Reagan’s choosing Richard Schweiker as his running mate in his attempt to unseat Gerald Ford as the incumbent in 1986. Palin has virtually no qualifications to be president, and preliminary reports on her background reflect very little interest on her part in Federal governance prior to McCain’s inviting her to be his running mate.

It is hard to believe that McCain is even serious about running for president, having chosen a running mate with such patently obvious limitations.

But I thought Ronald Reagan’s limitations were obvious. Boy, was I mistaken!

I’m considering switching to an iPhone in a couple of months when my current contract runs out. If anyone in the Jackson area has experience using an iPhone here and in south Mississippi, I would appreciate some comments on how well it worked out.

Yesterday, I noticed that my web authoring application was missing the two most recent posts, and it turned out that a new version of the software had completely zeroed the source file and I had to reconstruct the blog from a backup and the web site.

As it turned out, the only unrecoverable losses are a single laudatory comment on HaloScan from george8. Sorry, George.

It appears that the Bush administration has encouraged strongman Saakashvili of Georgia to invade South Ossetia, perhaps even promising support in the event of a Russian military pushback. If so, it was another betrayal in a long list of Bush family betrayals, and the Georgians were fools to believe for one second that the U.S. would come to their aid. Georgia is not worth a nuclear war, or even the risk of one, however slight.

If one assumes, however, that Bush had a purpose in bringing this disaster upon Georgia, it is likely that he has done it with the intent to poison U.S. relations with the Russians, and thus present President Obama next January 20 with the gift of a new Cold War that he will find extremely difficult to abate.

It’s a variation of the scorched earth policy.

Via Dean Baker, The Economist notes that an increasing number of Americans are travelling abroad for expensive medical procedures and discovering that they receive equal or better care in places like Singapore or India than here, often for less than the deductables and copayments that their domestic healthcare insurance requires.

Real competition can have some good effects. I wonder how the increase in air fares will affect medical tourism? Perhaps someone will convert a cruise ship into a first-class hospital. Recuperate while sailing to France — or back home. There are many opportunities to capture American medical dollars.

The Economist: Operating profit

It was predictable that India and China would refuse to play along with the usual trade liberalization game. They know what the western nations--especially the U.S.--are up to and they are big and powerful enough to tell the Bush administration to take a hike. China, in particular, is not about to allow a flood of subsidized farm products from the U.S. to wipe out their farmers, as happened in Mexico and a host of African and South American nations. Moreover, as one of the major holder of dollars, China can laugh at the IMF's prescriptions for "structural adjustment" that have plunged so many Asian nations into dire poverty as the price of being bailed out. Instead, it's been lending to us by accepting our dollars in return for low-cost manufacturing products. Now the U.S.—that's us--is the debtor and we get to pay the interest.

It would have been nice to know exactly what each side proposed in the trade talks, but apparently our government does not have much confidence in the ability of Americans to understand the fine points of international trade. Or perhaps it's the opposite fear--that the people will understand all too well.

Of course, those fine points have made the difference between the industrial powerhouse this nation was before Reagan and his wrecking crew took power and starting sending manufacturing overseas and concentrating the wealth of the nation into the hands of the superrich, and what it is today, a declining power, foolishly squandering its diminishing resources on a colonial war intended to make a few people rich and to establish control of oil production in the middle east. Fine points, indeed!

I would like to believe that an Obama presidency would at least attempt to encourage capital formation in the U.S., but I don't have much faith that it will.

Without a robust industrial capacity, we are destined to loose our economic and technological preeminence, if, indeed we have not already lost it.

Will Bush attack Iran? Will Israel attack Iran as a surrogate for the Bush administration? In either case, it would bring about military disaster in Iraq and probably Afghanistan. Look at the map of Iraq the JP posted years ago. Note that Iraq and Iran share a very long border. Note also where Iraq meets the Persian Gulf. Supplies must be offloaded near Basra and trucked north over the desert to the troops. For our troops to survive, those supply lines must be preserved not only against insurgents, including the Shiite population of the southern provinces, but in the event of an attack against Iran, it must be defended both on both land and sea against Iranian interdiction. Our forces are already stretched thin.

I've recently been reading Lucian Prices's dialogues with the English philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead. Speaking of the Great War (WWI), Whitehead recalled:

"They [historians] conscientiously examine state papers, but what do state papers have to do with it? The condition of fear that reigned from 1900 to 1914 was unspoken, almost unconscious. People forbore to mention it, hoping thereby not to detonate the explosive, but the dread was always there. Only for a few years after 1870, when it was evident that France would not attack, was there a sense of security in England. The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains, but in their nerves and vitals." 1

The passage reminded me of psychologist Carl Jung's pre-war dreams of Europe being drenched in blood:

In October [1913], while I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood. This vision lasted about one hour. I was perplexed and nauseated, and ashamed of my weakness.

Two weeks passed; then the vision recurred, under the same conditions, even more vividly than before, and the blood was more emphasized. An inner voice spoke, "Look at it well; It is wholly real and will be so. You cannot doubt it." That winter someone asked me what were the political prospects of the world in the near future. I replied that I had no thoughts on the matter, but that I saw rivers of blood.2

This writer is no clairvoyant, but it often seems to me that we are now being sucked into an insane vortex, much like the vortex that in 1913 seemed to be inexorably drawing Europe into a war that would shatter the civilization that countless numbers of workers, thinkers and dreamers had built since the beginning of the Dark Ages. Small 19th Century minds, equipped with 20th Century technology, initiated a war the horror of which they could neither comprehend not control, once it had begun.

The Cold War could have been such a vortex, but the men in charge clearly understood that nuclear weapons simply were not an option and that there could be no victor in a nuclear exchange. They drew back from the nuclear abyss, but they were also lucky, because the world came close to war several times.

The vortex has not gone away, though. Until January 20, 2009, this country will be in the hands of some very stupid, arrogant and vicious people that seem bent upon drawing the entire world into a flaming vortex. Such a catastrophe would represent the third and final phase of the Great War that began in August, 1914, and resumed in September, 1939. It would complete the work of destruction and end western civilization.

It is beginning to look more and more likely that such an outcome is likely.

It is possible to avoid disaster, but the opportunities are diminishing every day. It is easy to despair, but to give into despair now is suicide.

Tom Lowe

Footnotes:
1. Price, Lucien, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, p. 20, Boston 2001.
2. Jung, Carl, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 175-176, New York, 1989.

Links:
http://www.worlddreambank.org/J/JUNG-WWI.HTM
http://www.nndb.com/people/910/000031817/
Israel, Iran and the Bomb

The Guardian (UK) has an article on a new film made by numerous Palestinians of how Israel treats those unfortunate people. If you entertain any illusions about the rightness of the occupation, read the article and watch the vider.

Shooting Back: Israeli occupation filmed by 100 Palestinian cameras (Via Editerette)

Amy Goodman interviews Oren Yakobovich who coordinates B’Tselem’s video department. B'Tselem is an Israeli human rights organization that furnished cameras to Palestinians for the purpose of documenting Israel's abuses.

B'Tselem English home page