We all like to think of ourselves as kind, honest, and benevolent. In our hearts, we are convinced that should we ever attain personal power, whether through building our own business, rising to the corporate executive office, becoming extraordinarily influential in our area of expertise, or in winning public office, we will continue to be honest and ethical, incorruptible to the end.

The action of wielding power varies greatly with the individual involved and the extent of power obtained. We are all familiar with the petty tyrant at work who rules a tiny business empire with greed and self-indulgence, bullying underlings without any sense of fairness or mercy. We have seen the research scientists who have forged a reputation over a lifetime fall into disgrace through subverting results to support their theories and their sponsors.

As the extent of power increases, we see the Enron and Lincoln Savings brand of tableaux unfold. Not only does that same greed and self-indulgence hold sway, but the concept of being above the law arises and accountability and trust are jettisoned from the boardroom. The more esoteric the lifestyle becomes, the greater the disconnect between the powerful and the rest of the world. Those who lack power are to be cheated, manipulated, and drained of their possessions – surely only just desserts for their failure to rise to the top.

In a world where hereditary monarchies are an anachronism, the most absolute power lies in the political sphere whether wielded by a military-backed dictator or by those who have been so repeatedly elected to office that they no longer see themselves as public representatives but as entitled oligarchs of a system they control.

The presumptuous ambition of one man, Julius Caesar, led to the destruction of a republic that had guided Rome to the heights of civilization. The empire he created held the seeds of its own destruction in its descent into the unrestrained autocracies of a string of less than illustrious rulers who wielded their absolute power with caprice and personal whim.

The framers of the Constitution had a vision of a government where no such unconstrained power could arise because of the checks and balances inherent in the system they devised. No one could be above the law because the rule of law was paramount. The advise and consent required from different branches of government ensured that a multitude of voices and philosophical ideas were involved in any major decision.

But those who drove the development of our constitutional law were giants in their own right. Washington’s refusal to accept the title of king, advocated by several of his supporters, signaled his rejection of too much power concentrated in one individual. His peers – Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Madison, and many more – followed the same course: divide power to ensure that the needs of the many can be met through a myriad of representative voices.

Over the centuries, the checks and balances they built have kept the ship of state afloat. Occasionally listing to port or starboard, the sheer multiplicity of participants in the political process have been repetitively able to pull it back to an upright middle course. Certainly, there have been many dark periods of corruption and incompetence. We face such a darkness now: individuals in office for too long, with too much power within their grasping fingers; too many officials who have forgotten that they are public servants, developing a mindset of entitlement and the conviction that they know, better than anyone else, what is good for the public who, after all, elected them.

Only the rule of law, so carefully crafted more than 200 years ago, can keep them in check. The lawful prosecution of a congressman accepting millions of dollars in bribes, of a congressional leader who used election money as he saw fit rather than as the law required, and administration officials who destroyed a womanÂ’s career and jeopardized the lives of covert operatives all over the world, restores balance in a world rife with corruption, greed, and overweening pride.

Ongoing investigations into the honesty of leaders in evoking the need for military intervention and the rising voice of dissent against financial favors for the rich and powerful at the cost of cutting services to the powerless poor, offer a glimmer of hope that the corruption will be curbed and the hubris of our leaders punctured and exposed.

The embattled defendants cry foul, claiming that the only transgression is the political ambition of their critics. They have moved so far beyond the pale of the common citizen that their own corruption and misdeeds seem entirely ordinary and acceptable to them.

Happily, unlike the impotent rubber-stamp Roman senators, we can face our would-be Caesars without threat of bodily harm and we can cast them out of their cozy nest with the most powerful weapon ever devised: the ballot box.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of two interactive workbooks: The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual and Diet With An Attitude: A Weight Loss Workbook, she can be reached at her Social Psych Blog drvirginiabola.blogspot.com

DETROIT — Those were the days of Nixonian madness — the hopeless war in Vietnam, the illegal invasion of Cambodia, riots on college campuses, secret police, break-ins, enemies lists, IRS audits, the White House leak-plugging “plumbers unit,” and on and on. But Nixon’s paranoia, crimes, abuses of power, trampling on civil liberties and the Constitution are tame, almost benign, by the standards of the Bushevik regime.

“These guys make Nixon look like a Cub Scout,” says John Sinclair, a poet, musician, journalist, veteran radical, cultural icon and professional disturber of the establishment peace. The native of Davison, Mich., near Flint, became an international cause celebre in 1969 when a fascist-leaning judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana joints. “They gave him 10 for two,” John Lennon wrote in his song about Sinclair’s draconian sentence.

The sentence — right out of Stalin’s guidelines — had nothing to do with the gravity of his offense, but had everything to do with his political views. Sinclair founded the White Panther Party and included among his radical and freethinking friends Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Timothy Leary. He, along with photographer Leni Arndt, his partner and later wife, organized the Detroit Artists’ Workshop, a communal group of artists from all disciplines.

His love of music further branded John as a dangerous subversive and put him under the eyes of the FBI creeps J. Edgar Hoover assigned to watch every move he made. Sinclair used music as a conduit for his poetry. Until his imprisonment, he was the manager and Svengali of legendary Detroit rockers the MC5, who made sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll a national pastime.

It was for his thoughts, poems, music, politics and passion that Sinclair was deemed a dangerous enemy of Nixonian Amerika, and he paid a horrible price for his revolutionary ways.

Sinclair did hard time for his soft crime at Michigan’s infamous Jackson State Prison. “Jack Town” was, and still is, a hellhole, the largest walled prison on earth, an American gulag where the goal is to degrade and dehumanize the inmates and expect that society will improve as a result. Sinclair spent his time reading and writing, but most of all just surviving.

I met Sinclair on Thursday, Dec. 8, the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder. We met at Agave, a fine Mexican restaurant near the campus of Wayne State University. His presence in Detroit on that day was entirely serendipity. He was in town for a poetry reading and concert at the university honoring the poets and music of Katrina-battered New Orleans, a town Sinclair loves and where he lived for 10 years.

I asked where he lives now.

“Amsterdam, for obvious reasons,” he replied, with a laugh and a twinkle in his eye. But his voice softened and his eyes moistened when we talked about John Lennon.

“I always remember him on this date every year. It was so close to the date where our lives intersected, because it was Dec. 10 when he came here to Ann Arbor and got me out of prison,” Sinclair said.

He shook his head, thinking about his friend John Lennon.

“For any artist to be assassinated in his prime, on his way home from work, going into his home, it’s horrifying. For it to be a guy like John Lennon, who represented and believed in peace, love and communications between human beings, probably more than anyone else in the music world, you just shudder to think of this,” he said.

Sinclair had been rotting in Jackson State Prison for nearly three years when his life intersected with John Lennon’s. Sinclair’s lawyers had challenged his sentence and the constitutionality of Michigan’s marijuana laws. The case went before the Michigan Supreme Court and Sinclair won, but a lower court refused to grant an appeal bond, claiming he was a “danger to society.” He remained in prison.

Friends and supporters organized a rally at the Chrisler Arena on the campus of the University of Michigan set for Dec. 10, 1971. The organizers hoped the “Free John Now Rally” would be a major event, drawing attention to the grave injustice that kept Sinclair locked up.

But filling the 15,000-seat arena worried Sinclair.

“So I was very concerned. I thought it would be awful if we staged this huge thing and nobody came, and then they’d say, ‘Oh, man, this guy ain’t nowhere. Nobody cares about him,’” Sinclair recalled.

Then, one of his lawyers from Ann Arbor visited Sinclair at Jackson and told him about a surprising phone call he had just gotten.

Sinclair’s lawyer told him, “Oh, man, I really got good news. John Lennon is going to come. He’s written a song for you.”

Sinclair scoffed at the claim, saying, “Man, don’t mess with me. I’m already at my wits’ end here.”

The lawyer went back to his office, called Lennon, tape recorded his offer to help, then went back to the prison the next day and played it for Sinclair.

“It was just unbelievable. You’re in prison. People in prison are pretty much abandoned. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” Sinclair laughed.

Lennon showed up and sang his new song “John Sinclair” to a sold-out crowd.

“Immediately, the whole complexion of my situation changes,” Sinclair recalled. “Instead of people saying, ‘Why doesn’t he just shut up and serve his 10 years?’ all of a sudden, they’re saying, ‘Well, jeeze, John Lennon says this is wrong; maybe we ought to think about this. You know, the Beatles are coming here to look into this guy’s case.’ Everything changed. Ten days later, I was out. It was like a miracle.”

Out of the slammer, Sinclair went to New York to meet and thank John Lennon.

“He wasn’t above anyone, even though he was probably the greatest popular creative artist in the world at the time. He was just a regular guy, a beautiful cat. We hit it off pretty good.”

Lennon and Sinclair thought of a project to go on a concert tour following Nixon on his 1972 re-election campaign. They’d sell tickets for three bucks and give the money to community organizations.

“The poor guy wanted to have songs, and tell people to make peace. You know, really ugly stuff like that,” Sinclair said. But J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and Attorney General John Mitchell’s Justice Department were going to put a stop to those plans. Hoover and Mitchell, both serial felons, by the way, got the Immigration and Naturalization Service to tell Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, both foreign nationals, that they were going to have visa problems unless they stopped mixing politics with pop music. “First, the government hounded him out of public life. And then, when he decided to come back, some nut blew him away,” Sinclair said. “You just shudder to think of this. He was my age. He would have had another 25 years of productivity, genius, works of art. It’s so sad.”

Sinclair finds the violence and gun culture of America appalling.

“You’d think, at one point, they’d rethink the concept of everybody being armed. It’s so stupid. And now they’re taking this kind of thuggery to an international level,” he said.

Sinclair believes Lennon would have found the Bushevik regime “frightening,” and if he were alive, he would be doing everything he could to end the war in Iraq. Sinclair finds Bush’s appeal and ability to sell the war in Iraq disgusting and more harmful than Vietnam.

“This is the worst, in my view. This is the one that took America out of the realm of civilized nations and put us in with Hitler, bliztkrieging some poor little nation because you want their oil. Lying. It’s just so ugly. How long are the American people going to put up with this?” he said.

Sinclair watched the BBC in Europe as American democracy unraveled in the 2000 presidential election.

“It was frightening to me. You expect the right wing to do bad things. You don’t expect the people to endorse this and cheer them on. You expect them to have more sense. This is a democratic country with a long history of intelligent, informed citizenry, and now they don’t have a clue,” he said.

We talked about the mainstream media, the American Pravda that helped sell Bush’s war in Iraq and failed to question the phony reasons for invading the country. But beyond the propaganda, Sinclair sees a disturbing need in the American people for a leader with such horrible traits and instincts.

“I finally understand what Hitler was all about,” Sinclair said, sipping black coffee. “You know, all my life I wondered, how did Germany let this little weird guy gain power? How did they give him everything? He spoke to something in them and that’s what this guy does. He doesn’t speak to me. I look at him and can’t believe someone would follow him across the street. But they like this guy for some reason. He gives them what they want and I don’t understand it. I guess I’ve lost any understanding of mass psychology.”

Sinclair still performs with his band, the Blues Scholars, and he loves traveling around the country in an Amtrak train. He hosts a weekly radio show from Amsterdam on the Internet at www.RadioFreeAmsterdam.com. It’s also available as a podcast, and his radio show archives are found at www.johnsinclair.us.

“I’ve never been a big fan of the way our country organizes itself socially. I think that’s on the record,” he chuckled, “but now more than ever. That’s why I spend most of my time in Amsterdam. It’s the opposite of here.”

Sinclair acknowledges Europe has “right-wing religious fanatics.” But unlike the fundamentalist Christianity the Busheviks are trying to impose as a state religion, the European zealots “aren’t trying to get into your home. They really don’t care what you do in your bedroom. They don’t really care what you do to alter the inside of your head, which is as it should be, in my view. And they aren’t armed.”

Touring with the Blues Scholars is a haven for Sinclair. “I present a moving target,” he said. His beard is gray these days and he’d love to experience another miracle like a MacArthur grant or the appearance of some wise and inspired patron to help fund his work and art. His laugh is hearty and contagious. But he is perplexed and saddened that the nation and culture he began challenging more than 40 years ago is in the worst state of his lifetime.

Asked about Lennon’s song, Sinclair said, “I light up. I love to hear that song. The ironic thing about it is, I’m a blues man. It’s about the closest thing to a blues song he ever made, with the snare drum and slide guitar. So I enjoy it on several levels. But most of all, it was my ticket to freedom.”

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@sbcglobal.net.
Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com Dec. 13 2005

Ours is a unique society. We are made up of people from almost every other nationality in the world. We were originaly formed by immigrants seeking religious and other freedoms. Our ethics and moral codes were formed mainly from Judeo-Christian ideals, ie: The Old And New Testaments, The Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Our form of government is mainly secular but our way of living, our body of law and our way of thinking is, for the most part, Judeo-Christian.

Ours is not an insular society. All Americans, with the possible exception of Native American Indians, are decended from immigrants. These immigrants have come from all over the world. These immigrants brought, with them, differing ideas, customs and ways of doing things. Many of these ideas, customs and ways of doing things have been melded into our way of life. The foregoing has made us completely different than any other country in the world and people, due to the nature of humans, don’t always like other people who are different.

Ours is a wealthy country, not only in resources and land but also in our varied citizenry and our freedoms. This makes other people jealous or envious. They don’t have what we have, so they say that they don’t like us or that they hate us. Some of those same people, however, can’t wait to immigrate to this country, in order to have what we have.

Our people, for the most part, are loving, caring and generous. This may very well be one of our biggest problems. We want to give to and help others. Many people think of our giving and help as pure interference while others feel that no one would give or help without expecting something in return. No other country in the world is guided by Judeo-Christain principles so no other country in the world thinks or believes as we do. We can’t understand how they think and they can’t understand how we think.

We deal with other countries and their people as we deal with each other. We don’t understand that, in most parts of the world, fear and hatered are more powerful than love, greed and envy are more powerful than kindness and generosity, wanting to win is more powerful than a sense of fair play and that all of the foregoing are considered by many people to be weaknesses.

When France helped us during the Revolutionary War, the facts that the were already at war with England in the Caribbean, that we had to pay them for their help and that they did not come to our assistance untill they were sure that we had already won the war, did not stop us from being grateful. When During the Civil War and The War of 1812 a few French helped the Union, again for pay and again after they believed that the Union had won or would win the war, we were grateful. We we helped the French during their Civil War and in the First and Second World Wars, a few French were grateful but many more hated us. After all, we had humiliated them by helping them. We had shown them that they could not succeed with out our assistance. When the French believed that, Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to the world, they refused to help us or to join with us because their profits were more important than the live’s of others. They believed that they were safe because they were trading partners with Hussein. In addition, they feel that we have too much power so, they oppose us every chance they get (Don’t tell me about Desert Storm, the French did and contributed very little. The main thing they did was to help talk us out of going into Bagdad and ending the problem in Iraq, thereby saving their trading partner Saddam Hussein.). On the other hand, they want our money from tourism and trade so they invite our citizens to visit and to buy their goods. The French do not do anything unless it is in their own best intrest (By the way, I hate to admit this, but I have been told that, much to my regret, I am part French.). I know that the foregoing paragraph makes it sound as if I am a biggot. I am not a biggot, I just do not like being used, abused and lied to and I feel that that is what has been happening ever since the French Indian War or as it is also called, The Seven Years War, which took place before we were even a country.

Russia hates us for causing the breakup of the Soviet Union. The governments of Russia, Mainland China, North Korea, most Moslim countries, many African countries, some Central and South American countries and certain other countries hate us because they are afraid that their citizens might try to emulate us and rise up and take away their power over those citizens. Additionally, most Moslim countries hate us because our country does not follow Islam, ‘the one true religion’. According to them we are Satanists for not following the ‘one true God’. Since all of these governments control, in large part, the information sources in those countries, the majority of the people of those countries believe the lies and propaganda that are reported about us. Notice, however, how when many, not all, of those citizens make it into this country, they learn about us and they become, not only good citizens but, assets to our country. Some of our most contributing citizens came from countries that hated or fought against us at one time or another.

People that can recieve or hear news about our country, listen to our loudest and most strident voices. Voices from people like Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Al Sharpton, etc.. Since many people, in other countries, don’t understand the true meaning of freedom of speech, they think that these people are speaking for all of us. They think that all of us hate President Bush, they think that our country is filled with prejudice and hatred, they think that crime is out of controll and they think that every one of us carries guns and shoot each other for no reason, they think that we all feel that the war in Iraq is immoral or already lost, they think that all Republicans and most whites hate minorities and all non Jewish or Christian religions.

These people in other countries don’t understand that the voices that they are hearing come from a very loud and vocal minority of hard line left wing zealots and that those voices do not speak for all of us. These people also hear from a few loud and vocal far right wing zealots, however the right wing zealots are not celebrities so these people don’t pay as much attention to them. What the people in other countries don’t understand is that the majority of people in this country are moderate to slightly left or right wing and don’t really agree with either the far left or the far right. The majority of people in this country are hard working, kind, caring and generous people. However, moderate views are not exciting and therefore do not sell a lot of newspapers or garner a lot of television viewers, so moderate views do not get much coverage here or in any of the free or fairly free foriegn press.

Finally, most of the people in the world don’t like each other, many Chinese consider anyone not Chinese to be a barbarian and less than human, Indians and Pakastanis hate each other, Russia and all of the old Soviet Union members fight or feud with each other, many Muslims hate Jews and Christians, most Arab countries seem to hate Isreal, Muslim sects hate and kill each other, the French think that everyone else is beneath them, some Irish hate the British, in Ireland Catholics and Protestants fight each other, many Chinese and Koreans hate the Japanese and many Japanese hate the Chinese and the Koreans, Africans hate and kill other Africans, Argentines feel superior to citizens of other South American contries, etc, etc.. If so many people in the world hate or dislike each other, how can we expect them to like or love us?

Isn’t it about time that we quite worrying about being liked and instead started worrying about being respected or even a little feared. Fear usually generates a certain amount of respect. I’m not suggesting that we become another Soviet Union or a China. I am saying that perhaps we should stop worrying what the world thinks of us and instead stand up for ourselves. Use our financial clout, sacrifice a little, or a lot by not buying oil and goods from our enemies, cancell free trade agreements with our detractors, etc.. Sure many things will cost us more, but aren’t our way of life and our dignity worth something. And, if we do need to use military force, maybe we should use it without first trying to get everyone else’s permission. Help from countries like France, Germany, Russia and China would cost us more than it would help us. Help from the United Nations always seems to cost us more, in money and problems, than it helps us. There are a few countries, Australia, England, Israel, Taipei and a few others that usually stick by us, however, we may not always be able to count on them. Even now many people in England are trying to have Tony Blair removed from office and if we don’t start doing a better job of helping our friend and ally Israel, they may, someday, cease to exist.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

David G. Hallstrom, Sr. is a retired private investigator and currently publishes several internet directories including www.resourcesforattorneys.com a legal and lifestyle resources directory for attorneys, lawyers and the internet public. For more lifestyle information see lifestyle.resourcesforattorneys.com, the Lifestyle directory from Resources For Attorneys.

And not only there.

In Russia, billions (3 to 5) were transferred to secret off shore bank accounts to be “portfolio managed” by mysterious fly-by-night entities. Many paid with their jobs when the trail led to the incestuous Yeltsin clan and their byzantine court.

Convoys snake across the mountainous Kosovo, bringing smuggled goods at exorbitant prices to the inhabitants of this parched territory – all under the avuncular gaze of multinational peacekeepers.

In Romania, Hungary and Greece, UN forces have been known to take bribes to allow goods into besieged Serbia. Oil, weapons and strategic materials, all slid across this greasy channel of the international brotherhood of cash.

A lot of the aid, ostensibly intended to ameliorate the state of refugedom imposed upon the unsuspecting, harried population of Kosovo – resurfaced in markets, white and black, across the region. Food, blankets, tents, electrical equipment, even toys – were on offer in bazaars from Skopje to Podgorica and from Sofia to Thessaloniki, replete with the stamps of the unwitting donors. Aid workers scurried back and forth in expensive utility vehicles, buzzing mobile phones in hand and latest model, officially purchased, infrared laptops humming in the air conditioned coolness of their five star hotel rooms (or fancy apartments). In their back pockets they safeguarded their first class tickets (the food is better and the stewardesses …). The scavengers of every carnage, they descended upon this tortured land in redundant hordes, feeding off the misery, the autoimmune deficiency of the syndrome of humanism.

Ask yourselves: how could one of every 3 dollars – 50% of GNP – be stolen in a country the size of a tiny American state – without the knowledge and collaboration of the international organizations which ostensibly manage this bedlam? Why did the IMF renew the credit lines to a Russia which cheated bold-facely regarding its foreign exchange reserves? How was Serbia awash and flush with oil and other goods prohibited under the terms of the never-ending series of embargoes imposed upon it?

The answer is that potent cocktail of fear and graft. First came fear – that Russia will collapse, that the Balkans will spill over, that Bosnia will disintegrate. Nuclear nightmares intermingled with Armenian and Jewish flashbacks of genocide. The west shut its eyes tight and threw money at the bad spirits of irredentism and re-emergent communism. The long arm of the USA, the “international” financial institutions, collaborated in constructing the habit forming dole house that Eastern and Southern Europe has become. This conflict-reticence, these approach-avoidance cycles led to an inevitable collusion between the ruling mob families that pass for regimes in these parts of the planet – and the unilateral institutions that pass for multilateral ones in the rest of it. An elaborate system of winks and nods, the sign language of institutional rot and decaying governance, took over. Greasy palms clapped one another with the eerie silence of conspiracy. The world looked away as both – international financial institutions and corrupt regimes – robbed their constituencies blind. This was perceived to be the inevitable moral cost of stability. Survival of the majority entailed the filthy enrichment of the minority. And the west acquiesced.

But this grand design backfired. Like insidious bacteria, corruption breeds violence and hops from host to host. It does not discriminate, this plague of black conscience, between east and west. As it infected the indigenous, it also effected their guardians. They were all engulfed by raging greed, by a degradation of the inhibitions and by the intoxicating promiscuity of lawlessness. Inebriated by their newly found powers, little ceasars – natives and financial colonialists – claimed their little plots of crime and avarice, a not so secret order of disintegration of the social fabric. A ghoulish landscape, shrouded in the opaque mist of the nomenclature, the camaraderie of the omnipotent.

And corruption bred violence. The Chicago model imported lock, stock and the barrel of the gun. Former cronies disappeared mysteriously, bloated corpses in stale hotel rooms – being the only “contracts” honoured. Territories were carved up in constant, unrelenting warfare. One billion dollars are worth a lot of blood and it was spilled with glee, with the enthusiasm of the inevitable, with the elation of gambling all on a single spin of the Russian roulette.

It is this very violence that the west tried to drown with its credits. But unbeknownst to it, this very violence thrived on these pecuniary fertilizers. A plant of horrors, it devoured its soil and its cultivators alike. And 120,000 people paid with their lives for this wrong gamble. Counting its losses, the west is poised to spin the wheel again. More money is amassed, the dies are cast and more people cast to die.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

It seems that academe suffered the most during the numerous shock therapies and transition periods showered upon the impoverished inhabitants of Eastern and Central Europe. The resident of decrepit communist-era buildings, it had to cope with a flood of eager students and a deluge of anachronistic “scholars”. But in Russia, the CIS and the Balkans the scenery is nothing short of Dantesque. Unschooled in any major European language, lazily content with their tenured positions, stagnant and formal – the academics and academicians of the Balkans are both failures and a resounding indictment of the rigor mortis that was socialism. Economics textbooks stop short of mentioning Friedman or Phelps. History textbooks should better be relegated to the science fiction shelves. A brave facade of self sufficiency covers up a vast hinterland of inferiority complex fully supported by real inferiority. In antiquated libraries, shattered labs, crooked buildings and inadequate facilities, student pursue redundant careers with the wrong teachers.

Corruption seethes under this repellent surface. Teachers sell exams, take bribes, trade incestuous sex with their students. They refuse to contribute to their communities. In all my years in the Balkans, I have yet to come across a voluntary act – a single voluntary act – by an academic. And I have come across numerous refusals to help and to contribute. Materialism incarnate.

This sorry state of affairs has a twofold outcome. On the one hand, herds of victims of rigidly dictated lectures and the suppression of free thought. These academic products suffer from the twin afflictions of irrelevance of skills and the inability to acquire relevant ones, the latter being the result of decades of brainwashing and industrial educational methods. Unable to match their anyhow outdated knowledge with anything a modern marketplace can offer – they default on to menial jobs, rebel or pull levers to advance in life. Which leads us to the death of meritocracy and why this region’s future is behind it.

In the wake of the downfall of all the major ideologies of the 20th century – Fascism, Communism, etc. the New Order, heralded by President Bush, emerged as a battle of Open Club versus Closed Club societies, at least from the economic point of view.

All modern states and societies must choose whether to be governed by merit (meritocracy) or by the privileged few (oligarchy). It is inevitable that the social and economic structures be controlled by elites. It is a complex world and only a few can master the knowledge it takes to govern effectively. What sets meritocracy apart is not the number of members of its ruling (or leading) class, usually no larger than an oligarchy. No, it is distinguished by its membership criteria and by the mode of their application.

The meritocratic elite is an open club because it satisfies three conditions:

1.. The process and rules of joining up (i.e., the criteria) are transparent and widely known.
2.. The application and membership procedures are uniform, equal to all and open to continuous public scrutiny and criticism.
3.. The system alters its membership requirements in direct response to public feedback and to the changing social and economic environment.
To belong to a meritocracy one needs to satisfy a series of demands, whose attainment is entirely up to he individual. And that is all that one needs to do. The rules of joining and of membership are cast in iron. The wishes and opinions of those who happen to comprise the club at any given moment are of no importance and of no consequence. Meritocracy is a “fair play” by rules of equal chance to derive benefits. Put differently, is the rule of law.

To join a meritocratic club, one needs to demonstrate that one is in possession of, or has access to, “inherent” parameters, such as intelligence, a certain level of education, a potential to contribute to society. An inherent parameter must correspond to a criterion and the latter must be applied independent of the views and predilections of those who sometimes are forced to apply it. The members of a committee or a board can disdain an applicant, or they might wish not to approve a candidate. Or they may prefer someone else for the job because they owe her something, or because they play golf with him. Yet, they are permitted to consider only the applicant’s or the candidate’s “inherent” parameters: does he have the necessary tenure, qualifications, education, experience? Does he contribute to his workplace, community, society at large? In other words: is he “worthy” or “deserving”? Not WHO he is – but WHAT he is.

Granted, these processes of selection, admission, incorporation and assimilation are administered by mere humans and are, therefore, subject to human failings. Can qualifications be always judged “objectively, unambiguously and unequivocally”? Can “the right personality traits” or “the ability to engage in teamwork” be evaluated “objectively”? These are vague and ambiguous enough to accommodate bias and bad will. Still, at least appearances are kept in most cases – and decisions can be challenged in courts.

What characterizes oligarchy is the extensive, relentless and ruthless use of “transcendent” (in lieu of “inherent”) parameters to decide who will belong where, who will get which job and, ultimately, who will enjoy which benefits. The trouble with transcendent parameters is that there is nothing much an applicant or a candidate can do about them. Usually, they are accidents, occurrences absolutely beyond the reach or control of those most affected by them. Race is such a transcendent parameter and so are gender, familial affiliation or contacts and influence.

In many corners of the globe, to join a closed, oligarchic club, to get the right job, to enjoy excessive benefits – one must be white (racism), male (sexual discrimination), born to the right family (nepotism), or to have the right political (or other) contacts (cronyism). And often, belonging to one such club is the prerequisite for joining another.

In France, for instance, the whole country is politically and economically run by graduates of the Ecole Normale d’Administration (ENA). They are known as the ENArques (=the royal dynasty of ENA graduates).

The privatization of state enterprises in most East and Central European countries provided a glaring example of oligarchic machinations. In most of these countries (the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Serbia and Russia are notorious examples) – state companies, the nation’s only assets, were “sold” to political cronies, creating in the process a pernicious amalgam of capitalism and oligarchy, known as “crony capitalism” or privateering. The national wealth was passed on to the hands of relatively few, well connected, individuals, at a ridiculously low price. The nations involved were robbed, their riches either squandered or smuggled abroad.

In the affairs of humans, not everything falls neatly into place. Take money, for instance. Is it an inherent parameter or an expressly transcendent one? Making money indicates the existence of some merit, some inherent advantageous traits of the money-making individual. To make money consistently, a person needs to be diligent, resilient, hard working, to prevail and overcome hardships, to be far sighted and to possess a host of other – universally acclaimed – traits. On the other hand, is it fair when someone who made his fortune through corruption, inheritance, or luck – be preferred to a poor genius?

That is a contentious issue. In the USA money talks. Being possessed of money means being virtuous and meritorious. To preserve a fortune inherited is as difficult a task as to make it in the first place, the thinking goes. Thus, the source of the money is secondary.

An oligarchy tends to have long term devastating economic effects.

The reason is that the best and the brightest – when shut out by the members of the ruling elites – emigrate. In a country where one’s job is determined by his family connections or by influence peddling – those best fit to do the job are likely to be disappointed, then disgusted and then to leave the place altogether.

This is the phenomenon known as “Brain Drain”. It is one of the biggest migratory tidal waves in human history. Capable, well-trained, educated, young people leave their oligarchic, arbitrary, influence peddling societies and migrate to less arbitrary meritocracies (mostly to be found in what is collectively known as “The West”).

This is colonialism of the worst kind. The mercantilist definition of a colony is a territory which exports raw materials only to re-import them in the form of finished products. The Brain drain is exactly that: the poorer countries are exporting raw brains and buying back the finished products masterminded, invented and manufactured by theses brains.

Yet, while in classical colonialism, the colony at least received some recompense for its goods – here the poor country is actually the poorer for its exports. The bright young people who depart (most of them never to return) carry with them an investment of the scarce resources of their homeland – and award it to their new, much richer, host countries. This is an absurd situation, a subsidy granted reluctantly by the poor to the rich. This is also one of the largest capital transfers (really capital flight) in history.

Some poor countries understood these basic, unpleasant, facts of life. They extracted an “education fee” from those emigrating. This fee was supposed to, at least partially, recapture the costs of educating and training the immigrants. Romania and the USSR imposed such levies on Jews emigrating to Israel in the 1970s. Others despairingly regard the brain drain as a natural catastrophe. Very few countries are trying to tackle the fundamental, structural and philosophical flaws of the system, the roots of the disenchantment of those who leave.

The Brain Drain is so serious that some countries lost up to a third of their total young and educated population to it (Macedonia in South-eastern Europe, some less developed countries in South East Asia and in Africa). Others were drained of almost one half of the growth in their educated workforce (for instance, Israel during the 1980s).

Brains are an ideal natural resource: they can be cultivated, directed, controlled, manipulated, regulated. They are renewable and replicable. Brains tend to grow exponentially through interaction and they have an unparalleled economic value added. The profit margin in knowledge and information related industries far exceeds anything common to more traditional, second wave, industries (not to mention first wave agriculture and agribusiness).

What is even more important:

Poor countries are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this third revolution. With cheap, educated workforce – they can monopolize basic data processing and telecommunications functions worldwide. True, this calls for massive initial investments in physical infrastructure. But the important input is the wetware, the brains. To constrain them, to disappoint them, to make them run away, to more merit-orientated places – is to sentence oneself to a permanent disadvantage and deprivation.

This is what the countries in the Balkans are doing. Driving away the best part of their population by encouraging the worst part. Abandoning their future by dwelling on their past. Caught in a fatal spider web of family connections and political cronyism of their own design. Their factories and universities and offices and government filled to the brim with third rate relatives of third rate professors and bureaucrats. Turning themselves into third rate countries in a self perpetuating, self feeding process of decline. And all the while eyeing the new and the foreign with the paranoia that is the result of true guilt.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

The West has grossly and thoroughly violated Thompson’s edict. In its oft-interrupted intercourse with these forsaken regions of the globe, it has acted, alternately, as a Peeping Tom, a cynic and a know it all. It has invariably behaved as if it were holier-than-thou. In an unmitigated and fantastic succession of blunders, miscalculations, vain promises, unkept threats and unkempt diplomats – it has driven Europe to the verge of war and the region it “adopted” to the verge of economic and social upheaval.

Enamoured with the new ideology of free marketry cum democracy, the West first assumed the role of the omniscient. It designed ingenious models, devised foolproof laws, imposed fail-safe institutions and strongly “recommended” measures. Its representatives, the tribunes of the West, ruled the phlebeian East with determination rarely equalled by skill or knowledge. Velvet hands couched in iron gloves, ignorance disguised by economic newspeak, geostrategic interests masquerading as forms of government characterized their dealings with the natives. Preaching and beseeching from ever higher pulpits, they poured opprobrium and sweet delusions on the eagerly deluded, naive, bewildered masses. The deceit was evident to the indigenous cynics – but it was the failure that dissuaded them and all else. The West lost Eastern and Southeast Europe not when it lied egregiously, not when it pretended to know for sure when it surely did not know, not when it manipulated and coaxed and coerced – but when it failed. To the peoples of these regions, the king was fully dressed. It was not a little child but an enormous debacle that exposed his nudity. In its presumptuousness and pretentiousness, feigned surety and vain clichés, imported models and exported cheap raw materials – the West succeeded to demolish beyond reconstruction whole economies, to ravage communities, to bring ruination upon the centuries-old social fabric, woven diligently by generations. It brought crime and drugs and mayhem but gave very little in return, only an horizon beclouded and thundering with eloquence. As a result, while tottering regional governments still pay lip service to the Euro-Atlantic structures, the masses are enraged and restless and rebellious and baleful and anti-Western to the core. They are not likely to acquiesce much longer – not with the West’s neo-colonialism but with its incompetence and inaptitude, with the non-chalant experimentation that it imposed upon them and with the abyss between its proclamations and its performance.

In all this time, the envoys of the West – its mediocre politicians, its insatiably ruthless media, its obese tourists and its armchair economists – continued to play the role of God, wreaking greater havoc than even the original. While knowing it all in advance (in breach of every tradition scientific), they also developed a kind of world weary, unshaven cynicism interlaced with fascination at the depths plumbed by the local’s immorality and amorality. The jet-set Peeping Toms resided in five star hotels (or luxurious apartments) overlooking the communist shantytowns, drove utility vehicles to the shabby offices of the native bureaucrats and dined in $100 per meal restaurants (”it’s so cheap here’). In between sushi and sake they bemoaned and grieved over corruption and nepotism and cronyism (”I simply love their ethnic food, but they are so…”). They mourned the autochtonal inability to act decisively, to cut red tape, to manufacture quality, to open to the world, to be less xenophobic (while casting a disdainful glance at the sweaty waiter). To them it looked like an ancient natural phenomenon, a force of nature, an inevitability and hence their cynicism. Mostly provincial people with horizons limited by consumption and by wealth, they adopted cynicism as shorthand for cosmopolitanism. They erroneously believed it lent them an air of ruggedness and rich experience and the virile aroma of decadent erudition. Yet all it did is make them obnoxious and more repellent to the residents than they already were.

Ever the preachers, the West – both Europeans and Americans – upheld themselves as role models of virtue to be emulated, as points of reference, almost inhuman or suprahuman in their taming of the vices, avarice up front. Yet the disorder in their own homes was broadcast live, day in and day out, into the cubicles inhabited by the very people they sought to so transform. And they conspired and collaborated in all manner of corruption and crime and scam and rigged elections in all the countries they put the gospel to. In trying to put an end to history, they seem to have provoked another round of it – more vicious, more enduring, more traumatic than before. That the West will pay the price for its mistakes I have no doubt. For isn’t it a part and parcel of their teaching that everything has a price and that there is always a time of reckoning?

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

Ever since the time of Abe Lincoln, Democrats and Republicans have been fighting for control of the United States Of America. In the beginning, both political parties contained liberals, moderates and conservatives. As time wore on the Democratic Party moved more to the left or ‘liberal’ and the Republican Party moved more to the right or ‘Conservative’. This left room for fewer and fewer moderates.

Over the last several years, however, the far, far left has been taking over control of the Democratic Party and now the coup is almost completed. The far left zealots have virtually pushed most of the slightly left, the moderates and the conservatives out of the Democratic Party. Most of the moderates and conservatives left have learned to keep quiet and go with the tide in order to stay in office. Now the battle, for control of this country, has changed, it is now the far left against everyone else. People like Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Joseph Biden, Robert Byrd, Barbara Boxer, etc. (I don’t include Edward Kennedy because, in my opinion, he lost touch with reality long ago and just talks in order to see and hear himself on the news.) along with their Hollywood friends, Barbara Streisand, Susan Saranden, Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, Martin Sheen, Spike Lee, etc., now run the Democratic Party and more moderate people, like Joseph Lieberman, are being ignored or vilified by the party, the party’s supporters and a large part of the press. The far left only wants people, that think like they do or will do what they tell them to do, in the Democratic Party. They fear and dislike moderates, conservatives, moderate liberals and anyone that they can not control.

The far left has gone so far left that, in my opinion, they make liberals seem like hard right wingers. I don’t believe that the far left cares about America, the American people or anyone else except themselves. The far left politicians want power and they will do anything to get and keep that power. They claim to support our troops in Afganistan and Iraq, yet they do everything they can do to ruin the troops moral and aid the terrorists. They use their Hollywood friends and the ultra liberal press to spread half truths, lies, rumors and ridiucule about anyone who does not agree with them. They have even taken to giving responses to President Bush’s speeches before he makes the speech. They have learned from President Clinton how to take credit for anything good that happens and how to lay blame on others for anything bad that happens. They use people like President Carter, one of the kindest, most caring, most honest and most trusting men to ever hold public office, to critcize the present administration’s policies.

President Carter, does not have an agenda, he is just, as always, slightly naive about and too trusting of the good will of others. He believes that there would be peace on earth if people followed the dictates of the far left, so the far left uses him as a front.

The far left uses celebrities who are not only naive but insulated from the real world. Celebrities who are surrounded by yes people telling them that they are smarter and better than the rest of us, celebrities who are wealthy, do not have to go to a supermarket to do their shopping, who fly first class, drive whatever kind of car they wish, live in expensive homes or apartments and pay people to do most everything for them. These celebrities can afford to be idealistic and fight for ideals that can’t work. They can talk about raising taxes, after all, they can’t spend all the money they already have, demand rehabilitation for drug addicts, after all, the only drug addicts they actually deal with are other celebrities, rage against nuclear power plants and new oil drilling, after all they can afford to pay their electric and gas bills, no matter how expensive they are, fight for the rights of criminals and gun control, after all, they have bodyguards, many of whom are armed, and expensive security systems, to protect them so why should they worry about a storeowner who has been robbed three or four times or a woman who is raped and killed in her home. Most of these celebrities mean well, they just don’t know what it is like to live in the real world. Don’t tell me that many of these same celebrities had bad or poor childhoods. That was then and this is now.

Celebrities that do have an idea as to what is really going on and speak out against criminals, or support the war against terrorism, or fight for cheap utilities or heaven forbid support acknowledging god or who back moderate politicians or even worse support President Bush are ridiculed and ostracized. Some, no matter how talented, even have trouble obtaining work. Michael Moore, produces a poorly made anti administration movie and is lionized by Hollywood while Mel Gibson makes a well made movie about Christ and is ridiculed and put down by Hollywood. The fact that the people greatly prefered Gibson’s movie didn’t matter to Hollywood.

I am a slightly conservative moderate with many slightly liberal beliefs, however the far left is pushing me more and more to the right. I used to believe that you should vote for the person not the party. Now I am forced to vote straight Republican because I can’t trust any Democrat to stand up to the far left. I like Joe Lieberman but would not vote for him because the odds are that the far left will eventually push him out of office or force him to support them. I disliked and never trusted President Nixon but today I would have to vote for him rather than any Democrat. I consider President Kennedy to be one of our best modern Presidents but could not, today, vote for him.

Pleople say to me “What about Hillary Clinton? She is a moderate.”. I say “baloney, as far as I can tell, Hillary Clinton does not believe in anything. She says and does whatever, she thinks, will get votes and help consolidate her power. I don’t believe that she cares any more for this country or it’s people than her husband did. If she believes that the far left can get her what she wants she will become one of their most rabid members.

The far left has hijacked the Democratic Party and they are at war with anyone and everyone who does not follow their dictates. They hide under the title ‘Democrat’ and claim to want to change America for the better. What they really want to do is to rule this country and make it over into their own image. They want us to be free to do what they think is best, not what we think is best. They believe that the end justifies the means and in order to gain their rule they will lie, cheat, support our enemies, spend whatever amount of money they have to and do anything else that may help them.

As far as the far left is concerned, their biggest enemy, at this time, is President Bush. They hate him and fear him, so they are doing everthing they can in order to ruin him. They blame him for everthing that has gone wrong in the world. Their celebrity spokespeople have people believing that the problems caused by hurricane Katrina are all his administration’s fault. The fact that, both the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana were extremely slow to act in calling in the Federal Government doesn’t matter, the fact that it appears that several crooked politicians spent money given to them, prior to the hurricane, for levy repairs, on themselves, doesn’t matter, the fact that the people of New Orleans never bothered to prepare themselves for a category 5 hurricane, doesn’t matter. All that matters is if they keep telling everyone that it’s the President’s fault, pretty soon everyone will believe it. People like Jay Leno, David Letterman and other celebrities and comedians constantly joke about how stupid the President is. The fact that he was smart enough to earn a university and a post graduate degree, doesn’t matter, thefact that he was smart enough to become Governor of Texas, doesn’t matter, the fact that he was smart enough to become President of the United States doesnt matter, the fact that he was smart enough to marry Laura Bush, doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Leno and Letterman joke about his being stupid, therefore he must be stupid (This country has elected many Presidents that may have done a bad job at running this country but, I don’t believe that we have ever elected a stupid President, and if we did elect a stupid President, doesn’t that make us stupid for doing so.). I could list numerous other examples but this article is already to long, so I won’t.

The citizens of this country better wake up and start fighting back or soon we will no longer be a two party system or have a democratic republican form of government. We will have one Party, the far left, and they will rule us. They will be telling us what to think, when to think it and how to think it. I don’t know about you, but I like my freedom. I want a country with liberals, moderates and conservatives. I want to have a choice in who to vote for. I want to be able to think for myself. I don’t want to be ruled by the far left anymore than I want to be ruled by the far right. I want a country that represents everyone, a country that is “one country, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

David G. Hallstrom, Sr. is a retired private investigator and currently publishes several internet directories including www.resourcesforattorneys.com a legal and lifestyle resources directory for attorneys, lawyers and the internet public. For more lifestyle information see lifestyle.resourcesforattorneys.com, the Lifestyle directory from Resources For Attorneys.

In my opinion (Note: These are all strictly my opinions. I am not not an expert and I don’t know everything.), Hillary Clinton, cares for nothing, other than her own desires for power over the rest of us, and I don’t trust her any further than I can throw the White House. She is very intelligent, probably far more intelligent than I am, and she can be very charming when she wants to. She talks the talk, but I have never seen her walk the walk. She talks about dealing with the rights of women, but as far as I can tell, she has never done anything other than talk. She talks about helping minorities, but again, the only thing, that I can tell that she has done is talk about it. She talks about supporting the war effort, however, she always adds a ‘but’ to her statements and by the time she gets through explaining the ‘but’ you don’t know what she really thinks. She seems to leave everthing open to interpretation. The only person, that I know of, that is better at ‘doublespeak’ than she is, is her husband.

If Hillary Clinton runs for the Presidency, she will have liberals voting for her because they will believe that she is a liberal, not as liberal as they are, but liberal enough. She will have moderates voting for her because they will believe that she is a moderate, not as moderate as they are but moderate enough. She will have some conservatives voting for her because they will believe that she is a conservative, not as conservative as they are but conservative enough. Some people will vote for her solely because she is a Democrat and others will vote for her solely because she is a woman. No one, however, will really know what she truly believes in or stands for. I believe that no one can know because, the only thing that she believes in or stands for is herself.

Hillary Clinton, in many ways, reminds me of President Nixon. The main difference, as far as I can see, is that she is better at hiding her arrogance, ruthlessness, lack of respect for the American people, etc., than he was and she is smoother and much better at fooling the American people into believing that she stands for whatever they stand for, no matter what they stand for. Additionally, she probably will not be foolish enough to tape her White House conversations.

She also reminds me, very much, of her husband, except that she appears to be smarter, considerably more ruthless and I doubt if she is a womanizer. She is, however, just as good at fooling the people, just as good at taking credit for good things done by others, just as good at laying the blame for bad things, that she may have done, on others and just as hungry for power.

I believe that if Mrs. Clinton does run for the Presidency, she will make whatever behind the scenes deals that she has to, make any promises that she has to and step on any people that she has to in order to assure herself a place in history as America’s fourty fourth President. I also believe that when she leaves office she will, like her husband, leave this country is worse shape than, it was in, when she took office.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

David G. Hallstrom, Sr. is a retired private investigator and currently publishes several internet directories including www.resourcesforattorneys.com a legal and lifestyle resources directory for attorneys, lawyers and the internet public. For more lifestyle information see lifestyle.resourcesforattorneys.com, the Lifestyle directory from Resources For Attorneys.

A failed state is a country whose government has no control and cannot exercise a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a substantial part of its territory or citizenry. It is continuously and successfully challenged by private military power: terrorists, warlords, or militias. Its promulgations and laws are futile and inapplicable.

With the exception of the first criterion (hostility towards Pax Americana), some scholars claim that the USA is, itself, a rogue state (q.v., for instance, William Blum’s “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” and “Rogue Nation” by Clyde Prestowitz).

Admittedly, the USA’s unilateralist, thuggish and capricious foreign policy represents a constant threat to world peace and stability. But labeling the USA a “rogue state” may be overdoing it. It better fits the profile of a semi-failed state.

A semi-failed state is a country whose government maintains all the trappings and appearances of power, legitimacy, and control. Its army and police are integral and operative. Its institutions function. Its government and parliament promulgate laws and its courts enforce them. It is not challenged by any competing military structures within its recognized borders.

Yet, the semi-failed state – while going through the motions – is dead on its feet. It is a political and societal zombie. It functions due mainly to inertia and lack of better or clear alternatives. Its population is disgruntled, hostile, and suspicious. Other countries regard it with derision, fear, and abhorrence. It is rotting from the inside and doomed to implode.

In a semi-failed state, high crime rates and rampant venality, nepotism, and cronyism affect the government’s ability to enforce laws and implement programs. It reacts by adding layers of intransigent and opaque bureaucracy to an already unwieldy mammoth. The institutions of the semi-failed state are hopelessly politicized and, thus, biased, distrusted, and compromised. Its judiciary is in a state of decrepit decline as unqualified beneficiaries of patronage join the ranks.

The result is social fragmentation as traditional and local leaders, backed by angry and rebellious constituents, take matters into their own hands. Centrifugal politics supplant statehood and the nation is unable to justly and effectively balance the competing claims of the center versus the periphery.

The utter (but insidious) institutional failure that typifies the semi-failed state is usually exposed with the total disarray that follows an emergency (such as a natural disaster or a terrorist attack).

To deflect criticism and in a vain attempt to reunite its fracturing populace, the semi-failed state often embarks on military adventures (cloaked as “self-defense” or “geopolitical necessity”). Empire-building is an indicator of looming and imminent disintegration. Foreign aggression replaces reconstruction and rational policy-making at home. The USA prior to the Civil War, the USSR between 1956 and 1982, federal Yugoslavia after 1989, and Nazi Germany are the most obvious examples.

Is the USA a semi-failed state?

I. Empire-building and foreign aggression

Its neighbors always perceived the United States as an imminent security risk (ask Mexico, half of whose territory was captured by successive and aggressive American administrations). The two world wars transformed the USA into a global threat, able and only too willing to project power to protect its interests and disseminate its brand of missionary liberal-capitalism.

In the last 150 years, the USA has repeatedly militarily attacked, unprovoked, other peaceful or pacified nations, near and far. To further its (often economic) ends, the United States has not refrained from encouraging and using terrorism in various parts of the globe. It has developed and deployed weapons of mass destruction and is still the biggest arms manufacturer and trader in the world. It has repeatedly reneged on its international obligations and breached international laws and conventions.

II. Dysfunctional institutions

Hurricane Katrina (August-September 2005) exposed the frailty and lack of preparedness of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and, to some extent, the National Guard. It brought into sharp relief the cancerous politicization of the crony-infested federal government.

FEMA is only the latest in a long chain of failed institutions. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) coped poorly with virulent corruption and malfeasance in Wall Street. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) capitulated in the face of commercial and political pressures and neglected to remove from the market malfunctioning medical devices and drugs with lethal side effects.

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has sacrificed America’s nature reserves to business interests. A heavily politicized Supreme Court legitimized manifestly tainted election results and made a president out of the loser of the popular vote. The disenfranchisement of minorities, the poor, and ex-convicts is now in full swing. The legislature – the two houses of Congress – are deadlocked and paralyzed.

The organs of the government of the United States now function only when exposed to acute embarrassment and a revolted public opinion. Private firms and charities sprout to fulfill the gaps.

III. The National Consensus

Americans long mistook the institutional stability of their political system, guaranteed by the Constitution, for a national consensus. They actually believe that the former guarantees the latter – that institutional firmness and durability ARE the national consensus. The reverse, as we know, is true: it takes a national consensus to yield stable institutions. No social structure – no matter how venerable and veteran – can resist the winds of change in public sentiment.

Hurricane Katrina again demonstrated the unbridgeable divides in American society between rich and poor and black and white. But this time, the rift runs deeper.

The Bush administration is the first since the Civil War to dare to change the fundamental rules of the political game (for instance by seeking to abolish the filibuster in the Senate and by a profligacy of recess appointments of judges and officials). Its instincts and reflexes are elitist, undemocratic, and violent. It is delusional and its brand of fanatic religiosity is not well-received even among the majority of Americans who are believers. Additionally, it is openly and unabashedly corrupt and ridden with nepotism and cronyism.

Yet, Bush, unlike Nixon, is not an aberration. He is unlikely to be impeached. He was overwhelmingly re-elected even as his quagmire war in Iraq unraveled and the self-enrichment and paranoia of his close circle became public.

This is the new and true face of at least half of America, to the horror and dismay of the other half, its liberals. If the history of the United States is any judge, these two camps are unlikely to sit back and navel-gaze. Semi-failed states typically disintegrate. A bloodied (perhaps even nuclear) second civil war is in the cards.

Should the United States devolve into its constituent states, the world will breathe a sigh of relief. A European Union (EU)-like economic zone between the parts of the former USA is bound to be far more pacific and to contribute to world stability – something its malignant former incarnation had so signally failed to do.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

Judaism and its offspring, Christianity – though heavily involved in political affairs throughout the ages – have kept their dignified distance from such carnal matters. These are religions of “heaven” as opposed to Islam, a practical, pragmatic, hands-on, ubiquitous, “earthly” creed.

Secular religions – Democratic Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Socialism and other isms – are more akin to Islam than to, let’s say, Buddhism. They are universal, prescriptive, and total. They provide recipes, rules, and norms regarding every aspect of existence – individual, social, cultural, moral, economic, political, military, and philosophical.

At the end of the Cold War, Democratic Liberalism stood triumphant over the fresh graves of its ideological opponents. They have all been eradicated. This precipitated Fukuyama’s premature diagnosis (the End of History). But one state ideology, one bitter rival, one implacable opponent, one contestant for world domination, one antithesis remained – Islam.

Militant Islam is, therefore, not a cancerous mutation of “true” Islam. On the contrary, it is the purest expression of its nature as an imperialistic religion which demands unmitigated obedience from its followers and regards all infidels as both inferior and avowed enemies.

The same can be said about Democratic Liberalism. Like Islam, it does not hesitate to exercise force, is missionary, colonizing, and regards itself as a monopolist of the “truth” and of “universal values”. Its antagonists are invariably portrayed as depraved, primitive, and below par.

Such mutually exclusive claims were bound to lead to an all-out conflict sooner or later. The “War on Terrorism” is only the latest round in a millennium-old war between Islam and other “world systems”.

Such interpretation of recent events enrages many. They demand to know (often in harsh tones):

- Don’t you see any difference between terrorists who murder civilians and regular armies in battle?

Both regulars and irregulars slaughter civilians as a matter of course. “Collateral damage” is the main outcome of modern, total warfare – and of low intensity conflicts alike.

There is a major difference between terrorists and soldiers, though:

Terrorists make carnage of noncombatants their main tactic – while regular armies rarely do. Such conduct is criminal and deplorable, whoever the perpetrator.

But what about the killing of combatants in battle? How should we judge the slaying of soldiers by terrorists in combat?

Modern nation-states enshrined the self-appropriated monopoly on violence in their constitutions and ordinances (and in international law). Only state organs – the army, the police – are permitted to kill, torture, and incarcerate.

Terrorists are trust-busters: they, too, want to kill, torture, and incarcerate. They seek to break the death cartel of governments by joining its ranks.

Thus, when a soldier kills terrorists and (”inadvertently”) civilians (as “collateral damage”) – it is considered above board. But when the terrorist decimates the very same soldier – he is decried as an outlaw.

Moreover, the misbehavior of some countries – not least the United States – led to the legitimization of terrorism. Often nation-states use terrorist organizations to further their geopolitical goals. When this happens, erstwhile outcasts become “freedom fighters”, pariahs become allies, murderers are recast as sensitive souls struggling for equal rights. This contributes to the blurring of ethical percepts and the blunting of moral judgment.

- Would you rather live under sharia law? Don’t you find Liberal Democracy vastly superior to Islam?

Superior, no. Different – of course. Having been born and raised in the West, I naturally prefer its standards to Islam’s. Had I been born in a Muslim country, I would have probably found the West and its principles perverted and obnoxious.

The question is meaningless because it presupposes the existence of an objective, universal, culture and period independent set of preferences. Luckily, there is no such thing.

- In this clash of civilization whose side are you on?

This is not a clash of civilizations. Western culture is inextricably intertwined with Islamic knowledge, teachings, and philosophy. Christian fundamentalists have more in common with Muslim militants than with East Coast or French intellectuals.

Muslims have always been the West’s most defining Other. Islamic existence and “gaze” helped to mold the West’s emerging identity as a historical construct. From Spain to India, the incessant friction and fertilizing interactions with Islam shaped Western values, beliefs, doctrines, moral tenets, political and military institutions, arts, and sciences.

This war is about world domination. Two incompatible thought and value systems compete for the hearts and minds (and purchasing power) of the denizens of the global village. Like in the Westerns, by high noon, either one of them is left standing – or both will have perished.

Where does my loyalty reside?

I am a Westerner, so I hope the West wins this confrontation. But, in the process, it would be good if it were humbled, deconstructed, and reconstructed. One beneficial outcome of this conflict is the demise of the superpower system – a relic of days bygone and best forgotten. I fully believe and trust that in militant Islam, the United States has found its match.

In other words, I regard militant Islam as a catalyst that will hasten the transformation of the global power structure from unipolar to multipolar. It may also commute the United States itself. It will definitely rejuvenate religious thought and cultural discourse. All wars do.

Aren’t you overdoing it? After all, al-Qaida is just a bunch of terrorists on the run!

The West is not fighting al-Qaida. It is facing down the circumstances and ideas that gave rise to al-Qaida. Conditions – such as poverty, ignorance, disease, oppression, and xenophobic superstitions – are difficult to change or to reverse. Ideas are impossible to suppress. Already, militant Islam is far more widespread and established that any Western government would care to admit.

History shows that all terrorist groupings ultimately join the mainstream. Many countries – from Israel to Ireland and from East Timor to Nicaragua – are governed by former terrorists. Terrorism enhances social upward mobility and fosters the redistribution of wealth and resources from the haves to haves not.

Al-Qaida, despite its ominous portrayal in the Western press – is no exception. It, too, will succumb, in due time, to the twin lures of power and money. Nihilistic and decentralized as it is – its express goals are the rule of Islam and equitable economic development. It is bound to get its way in some countries.

The world of the future will be truly pluralistic. The proselytizing zeal of Liberal Democracy and Capitalism has rendered them illiberal and intolerant. The West must accept the fact that a sizable chunk of humanity does not regard materialism, individualism, liberalism, progress, and democracy – at least in their Western guises – as universal or desirable.

Live and let live (and live and let die) must replace the West’s malignant optimism and intellectual and spiritual arrogance.

Edward K. Thompson, the managing editor of “Life” from 1949 to 1961, once wrote:

“‘Life’ must be curious, alert, erudite and moral, but it must achieve this without being holier-than-thou, a cynic, a know-it-all or a Peeping Tom.”

The West has grossly and thoroughly violated Thompson’s edict. In its oft-interrupted intercourse with these forsaken regions of the globe, it has acted, alternately, as a Peeping Tom, a cynic and a know it all. It has invariably behaved as if it were holier-than-thou. In an unmitigated and fantastic succession of blunders, miscalculations, vain promises, unkept threats and unkempt diplomats – it has driven the world to the verge of war and the regions it “adopted” to the threshold of economic and social upheaval.

Enamored with the new ideology of free marketry cum democracy, the West first assumed the role of the omniscient. It designed ingenious models, devised foolproof laws, imposed fail-safe institutions and strongly “recommended” measures. Its representatives, the tribunes of the West, ruled the plebeian East with determination rarely equaled by skill or knowledge.

Velvet hands couched in iron gloves, ignorance disguised by economic newspeak, geostrategic interests masquerading as forms of government, characterized their dealings with the natives. Preaching and beseeching from ever higher pulpits, they poured opprobrium and sweet delusions on the eagerly duped, naive, bewildered masses.

The deceit was evident to the indigenous cynics – but it was the failure that dissuaded them and others besides. The West lost its former colonies not when it lied egregiously, not when it pretended to know for sure when it surely did not know, not when it manipulated and coaxed and coerced – but when it failed.

To the peoples of these regions, the king was fully dressed. It was not a little child but an enormous debacle that exposed his nudity. In its presumptuousness and pretentiousness, feigned surety and vain clich̩s, imported economic models and exported cheap raw materials Рthe West succeeded to demolish beyond reconstruction whole economies, to ravage communities, to wreak ruination upon the centuries-old social fabric, woven diligently by generations.

It brought crime and drugs and mayhem but gave very little in return, only a horizon beclouded and thundering with vacuous eloquence. As a result, while tottering regional governments still pay lip service to the values of Capitalism, the masses are enraged and restless and rebellious and baleful and anti-Western to the core.

The disenchanted were not likely to acquiesce for long – not only with the West’s neo-colonialism but also with its incompetence and inaptitude, with the nonchalant experimentation that it imposed upon them and with the abyss between its proclamations and its performance.

Throughout this time, the envoys of the West – its mediocre politicians, its insatiably ruthless media, its obese tourists, its illiterate soldiers, and its armchair economists – continue to play the role of God, wreaking greater havoc than even the original.

While confessing to omniscience (in breach of every tradition scientific and religious), they also developed a kind of world weary, unshaven cynicism interlaced with fascination at the depths plumbed by the locals’ immorality and amorality.

The jet-set Peeping Toms reside in five star hotels (or luxurious apartments) overlooking the communist, or Middle-Eastern, or African shantytowns. They drive utility vehicles to the shabby offices of the native bureaucrats and dine in $100 per meal restaurants (”it’s so cheap here”).

In between kebab and hummus they bemoan and grieve the corruption and nepotism and cronyism (”I simply love their ethnic food, but they are so…”). They mourn the autochthonous inability to act decisively, to cut red tape, to manufacture quality, to open to the world, to be less xenophobic (said while casting a disdainful glance at the native waiter).

To them it looks like an ancient force of nature and, therefore, an inevitability – hence their cynicism. Mostly provincial people with horizons limited by consumption and by wealth, these heralds of the West adopt cynicism as shorthand for cosmopolitanism. They erroneously believe that feigned sarcasm lends them an air of ruggedness and rich experience and the virile aroma of decadent erudition. Yet all it does is make them obnoxious and even more repellent to the residents than they already were.

Ever the preachers, the West – both Europeans and Americans – uphold themselves as role models of virtue to be emulated, as points of reference, almost inhuman or superhuman in their taming of the vices, avarice up front.

Yet the chaos and corruption in their own homes is broadcast live, day in and day out, into the cubicles inhabited by the very people they seek to so transform. And they conspire and collaborate in all manner of venality and crime and scam and rigged elections in all the countries they put the gospel to.

In trying to put an end to history, they seem to have provoked another round of it – more vicious, more enduring, more traumatic than before. That the West is paying the price for its mistakes I have no doubt. For isn’t it a part and parcel of its teachings that everything has a price and that there is always a time of reckoning?

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com