Where will the ground shift in the United States?

Robert Reich, in today's Eurasia Review, has the shortest political article I have ever seen. So good I take the liberty of quoting in full:

You will hear pundits analyze the New Hampshire primaries and conclude that the political “extremes” are now gaining in American politics – that the Democrats have moved to the left and the Republicans have moved to the right, and the “center” will not hold.

Baloney. The truth is that the putative “center” – where the Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” of the 1990s found refuge, where George W. Bush and his corporate buddies and neoconservative advisers held sway, and where Barack Obama’s Treasury Department granted Wall Street banks huge bailouts but didn’t rescue desperate homeowners – did a job on the rest of America, and is now facing a reckoning.

The “extremes” are not gaining ground. The anti-establishment ground forces of the American people are gaining. Some are so fed up they’re following an authoritarian bigot. Others, more wisely, are signing up for a “political revolution” to take back America from the moneyed interests.

That’s the real choice ahead.

As described at Eurasia Review:

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, Supercapitalism, and his most recent book, Aftershock. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes. He is also Common Cause's board chairman. His website is: http://robertreich.org

the world is complex: US, Russia, Ukraine, oil, global economy

Salon has published an article asserting that the crisis in Ukraine and the civil war are substantially the fault of the United States. Skip through the argy bargy slanging off and consider the merits of the arguments, including in the articles to which links are provided. Such as this:

"Why the UkraineCrisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin" in the journal Foreign Affairs, emblematic centre of the American foreign policy establishment.

One of the side issues in this has to be the shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines flight flying above the civil war zone. On a path which the Ukraine government left open. You can limit the discussion to who fired the shot, who owned and supplied the weapon, who controlled the use of the weapon... but if you take the steps further and think about the wider issues of the origins and provocation of cicil war, the puff-chested macho displays towards the Russians become things of dress-up belligerency, the boy with the trumpet following the flag, the antithesis of problem solving.

The general stridency of anti-Russian policy may undo us all...

Four weeks ago, The Guardian argued that the United States and Saudi Arabia were driving the price of oil down as a strategic weapon against Russia.

A month later the situation is much more dangerous for the world economy, as oil prices fall further... More in this here. If indeed there was such an American effort to use oil as a weapon against Russia, it would seem very likely that the weapon will shoot the Americans in the foot, given the risky loan basis of much new oil venturing in the USA, unsustainable at present prices. A dual shock possible: a shock failure of the US to maintain its recent self-sufficiency in oil production and a new shock to the international economy more serious than the last one. Or a triple shock if and as and when oil prices go north again in economically difficult times... Consider also what other damaged countries may do. Russia will depend more on its energy exports to China.

Hello, China. How many countries can you save this month? They expect it of you, you know, but only if you stay meek. An Indian perspective here.

I observed in a news commentary in 1989, actually thoughts offered privately by a Chinese official at the time, that the Chinese leadership did not have the maturity and sensitivity to handle the crisis arising then in Tiananmen Square. How easy it is to hammer the Chinese Government for mishandling that.

By comparison, capacity to handle a coming economic crisis is ... where? This wasn't even on the agenda at the G20 meeting last month and there seems little willingness in political quarters to focus on the situation now. Alarm at the prospects for the Australian economy is constrained by very insular thinking: the general narrowness of the government's perspective, with just a small concession now that contractionary policy is unwise (as it has been throughout the time they imposed it and told everyone to be afraid) and with the financial markets in the hands of people who have no knowledge of history and precious little understanding of strategic matters beyond short-term money-shoving.

power and stubbornness, power and willingness, 'power' and blindness

Four months into the internationally declared Ebola emergency, in December 2014, who leads the world in direct medical support to fight the epidemic?

The answer to this question as discussed in The Guardian today is illuminating, as the country concerned is truly in a situation exemplifying the futility of long term superpower grudges. And illustrates how difficult it is to turn around big battleships, even when they don't work, or should be going somewhere else.


While The Guardian's discussion focuses on that country and the United States, we should note that the United States has committed massively to the Ebola challenge on the ground. Which brings us to consider just how limited the Australian 'contribution' is. And to note again another new moment in United States criticism of the Australian Government... also to note that the also-conservative Labor Party feels safe to use the US view to criticise the poverty of the government's response.

Senator-Dr Richard di Natale, in Liberia at his own expense and informed by the Australian Government that he will have no consular assistance if in trouble, reports also that the decision of the government to close the door to anyone from an Ebola-affected country has done us considerable political damage and impaired the Ebola response more widely. 

Life follows consistent patterns at many levels. I argued years ago that the willingness of the government to go and act with violence in another country in a sense of righteousness fed down to increase community and domestic violence. In my garden blog this week I talked about the permaculture concept of edge and realised what I was writing was very relevant to the incessant clang of this government shutting its mind and doors to people and ideas. Tragically it strengthens an old an negative door-closing quality of Australian community fearful thinking... to break which requires political leadership of a positive kind.

Edge is productive, overlaps are productive, edge is the basis of creativity, not only for plant life but also for human life in community. No edge, no connection – no multiculturalism – no new life, limited creativity and imagination. Perhaps I should also write about this in my strategic directions blog, my country seems increasingly anxious about shoulders that come to rub it in this complex world. Seize the day, not shut the door... Which leads back to Michael [Pollan]'s comment about peoples' concerns about his lawn. The dominant meme being that gardening is about plonking in and then maintaining the barricades with weapons various, to keep permanent all those arrangements you stubbornly want unchanged.
But actually, can't.