Super-committee looks bleak...

[stone]

The film "four lions" is a fabulous view on the madness of the whole terrorism/war on terror we are in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Lions

"Morris spent three years researching the project, speaking to terrorism experts, police, the secret service, and imams, as well as ordinary Muslims, and writing the script in 2007.[2][3] In a separate interview, he asserts that the research predated the 7 July 2005 London Bombings:

  It was an attempt to figure it out, to ask, 'What's going on with this?' This [the "War on Terror"] is something that's commanding so much of our lives, shaping so much of our culture, turning this massive political wheel. I was wondering what this new game was all about. But then 7/7 hit that with a fairly large impact, in that we were suddenly seeing all these guys with a Hovis accent. Suddenly you're not dealing with an amorphous Arab world so much as with British people who have been here quite a long time and who make curry and are a part of the landscape. So you've got a double excavation going on.[4]

The project was originally rejected by both the BBC and Channel 4 as being too controversial. Morris suggested in a mass email, titled "Funding Mentalism", that fans could contribute between £25 and £100 each to the production costs of the film and would appear as extras in return.[5] Funding was secured in October 2008 from Film 4 Productions and Warp Films, with Mark Herbert producing. Filming began in Sheffield in May 2009.[6][7]

Morris has described the film as a "farce", which exposes the "Dad's Army side to terrorism".[8] During the making of the film, the director sent the script to former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg. Begg has said that he found nothing in the script that would be offensive to British Muslims. The actor Riz Ahmed also contacted Begg, to ask whether the subject matter was "too raw". When the film was completed, Begg was given a special screening and said that he enjoyed it.[9]

[stone]

Another driver for military spending that is important not to overlook is the "best of the best, gear freek, toys for the boys" aspect. Some people love cool gadgets and awesome kit. They gravitate towards jobs that entail cool gadgets and awesome kit. They either derail science programs towards being gadget programs or get stuck in to developing/procuring some light speed megadeath contraption for the military. They don't want to protect or to kill. They just want to build the baddest bit of kit.

[MediumTex]

Another driver for military spending that is important not to overlook is the "best of the best, gear freek, toys for the boys" aspect. Some people love cool gadgets and awesome kit. They gravitate towards jobs that entail cool gadgets and awesome kit. They either derail science programs towards being gadget programs or get stuck in to developing/procuring some light speed megadeath contraption for the military. They don't want to protect or to kill. They just want to build the baddest bit of kit.

This topic raises the fascinating issue of the post-WW2 U.S. defense industry's battle with itself.

In the book "The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive" it discusses how a review of secret Soviet Union cold war records reveals that much of what the U.S. thought of as "the arms race" was really just a process of U.S. defense contractors developing a new weapons technology, the Soviet Union stealing it through its intelligence gathering apparatus, and the Soviet Union then reverse engineering the stolen technology into similar weapons systems.   

When the post-WW2 arms race is seen in this light, much of what passed for conventional wisdom in the cold war era looks very foolish.  The idea that Congress must always fund any weapons program with any promise at all on the theory that if it is not funded the enemy will develop it and get ahead of the U.S. only makes sense if we believe that the enemy has its own defense industry that is capable of competing with the U.S. defense industry.  What you see from reading "The Sword and the Shield" is that the Soviets figured out early on that they were much better at spying than they were at keeping up with the U.S. defense industry juggernaut.  Thus, rather than even attempting to match U.S. defense prowess through independent research, the Soviets just waited for the U.S. to develop a weapons system and then figured out the easiest way to steal it.  It appears to me that this is exactly what China is doing today.

The overall impression one takes away from the book is that what Eisenhower warned us about with respect to the military industrial complex was actually much worse than even he imagined.  What we were doing as a nation was plowing massive amounts of wealth and productive capacity into a bizarre process of the U.S. defense industry trying to outpace what was essentially a slightly distorted mirror image of itself.  The Soviets simply went along with the process, never suspecting that the U.S. would never fully understand what was actually happening.  In the same way that trying to outrun one's shadow is futile, so too was this process, and it simply guaranteed ever higher levels of U.S. defense spending, while gradually creating a more and more dangerous world as the new weapons technology developed by U.S. defense contractors gradually seeped out across all the militaries of the world.

There is a quality to this process that is even more Orwellian that even Orwell could have probably ever imagined.  Orwell imagined a state of perpetual war as a pretext for consolidation of power by the state, with this process being the outgrowth of the human desire for power and control over others.  What seems to have actually happened is that this process of perpetual war was simply the by-product of an industrial malignancy in the form of defense contractors that existed within a society with political leaders who didn't have enough sense to realize that once WW2 was over it was no longer necessary to continue building the most destructive weapons imaginable. 

Where Orwell imagined that perpetual war would come from a lust for power by the politicians and bureaucrats, the reality may be more mundane, and we may have actually stumbled into this state of perpetual war as a by-product of good old private sector greed and the failure of any other agent in society to reign in this process.  If you haven't read Eisenhower's military industrial complex speech, you should.  It wasn't so much what was said, but who was saying it that made it so powerful.  When the general who led the largest military effort in the history of the world tells you that the role of the weapons makers in society ought to be reconsidered, it's a message people should have taken seriously.  No one did, of course, and that's unfortunate.

[moda0306]

MT,

Your post is completely incorrect... ever seen/read The Hunt For Red October?

If Jack Ryan can't be trusted, who are we to believe?

[MediumTex]

MT,

Your post is completely incorrect... ever seen/read The Hunt For Red October?

If Jack Ryan can't be trusted, who are we to believe?

In the mind of Tom Clancy, the Ruskies were no doubt always close on the heels of the U.S.

It probably never occurred to Clancy that what was close on our heels was our own shadow, which is exactly where it was supposed to be.

The Soviet Union did, of course, develop some of its own weaponry and technology, but if you look at the overall arc of cold war Soviet defense technology, it was basically reverse engineered western technology and/or Soviet innovations based upon western defense system designs.

One area in which the Soviets were probably superior to the U.S. was in their ability to do things cheaply.  If you read about the various technologies used in the Soviet space program, some of their methods seemed very primitive compared to what they were doing at NASA, but a lot of it worked just as well and was a lot cheaper.  Of course, not all of it worked as well, and that's why a whole bunch of cosmonauts and other members of the Soviet space program died compared to relatively few U.S. astronauts.

[stone]

I'm not sure that the military industrial complex is purely driven by simple greed. There is a "military Keynsianism" aspect to it IMO. Military spending creates jobs as well as profits. WWII cured the Great Depression. Apparently it is politically OK to employ people to create hydrogen bombs (that are then reverse engineered by our enemies) inorder to keep the economy churning. It doesn't seem politically OK to simply pay out a citizen's dividend to achieve the same end.

[Storm]

Harry Browne made the point after 9/11 that the terrorists didn't seem interested in attacking countries like Switzerland, and how an activist foreign policy and military presence in other countries can easily begin to undermine national security rather than enhance it.

It is sort of a bizarre irony, but the U.S.'s two principal military opponents of the last 20 years (Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden) would never have been a threat to the U.S. if the U.S. government hadn't trained, funded and equipped them in the first place in the 1980s (Hussein in his fight against Iran and bin Laden in his fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan).

When I hear of a terrorist being blown up in a drone attack on the other side of the world I think of his 7 sons and how each of them will now feel an obligation to avenge their father's death and I don't really feel all that much safer.

This brings to mind the famous Star Wars quote:  The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

[FarmerD]

Wouldn't it be neat if they changed the name of the "Department of Defense" to the "Department of Attack"?

Right now we would be talking about possible "attack cuts".

Let's just change all references to the the word "war" to "Defense."  World War I could be renamed World Defense I.  General Sherman's quote could be changed to "Defense is Hell."

True Story: When I was first assigned to USSTRATCOM I was told their motto was "Death is our Profession."  My response?  "Whose death, ours or theirs?"

BTW Colonels have no sense of humor. 

[Reub]

"Latest update on the lack of progress for Dems and Republicans to reach a tax deal. Yesterday Democrats of the Super Committee rejected Republicans' offer to "raise federal tax collections by nearly $300 billion over the next decade."

Senator Rand Paul exclusively has JUST told Sean that not only are Democrats rejecting offers put on the table, but now they won't even continue to negotiate and have "walked away from the table...refusing to talk to the Republicans."

Paul warns the American people that this is all about Obama's reelection, and the taxpayers livelihood is of no concern to Obama and the Democrats."

http://www.hannity.com/article/breaking ... ttee/14602

[moda0306]

Considering Obama is proposing lowering taxes by 3.1% on all earned income for everyone up to $110k in the form of a payroll tax cut, the same for employers' share up to $5 million in payroll, and both combined for self-employed individuals, the ability to expense fixed assets to a huge extent, the utter unreliability of anything Hannity or Rand Paul have to say, and the fact that taxes are lower than they've been for most of the past century, I think I'll wait for a bit more perspective on this issue.

I really don't trust the way the media or politicians stage these issues of "who's playing unfairly."

[Reub]

Nevertheless, this US Senator is saying that the other side, Obama's side, is refusing to compromise and is playing politics with our future. There is plenty of evidence supporting this argument over the past few years. Don't you agree?

"Obama in campaign mode on swing-state jobs tour"

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-campaign-mo ... 57160.html

[moda0306]

There's tons of politicking going on now as well as in the past.  I'd say the republicans are playing much ore politics with our future than the dems (at this point in time).  I think that because 90% of their rhetoric is along the lines that deregulation, drilling, deep spending cuts and deep tax cuts will spur employment, when I simply don't think the evidence bears this out at all.  I think they're simply serving their class of voters and contributors and are shrouding it in terms of unemployment and economic growth.  Nothing more than the debt-ceiling debate shows a complete lack of perspective on behalf of the hard right influence in congress, IMO.

I like the Obama plan as it doesn't attempt austerity and uses solid wage tax cuts... I'd quit with the "it'll be paid for" bs as I don't think deficits really matter right now (my humble MMT opinion).

When I hear, though, that we have-have-have to balance the budget lest we suckle at the teat of hyper-inflation or default but in the same breath that we have to cut taxes, especially on passive income, I feel like I'm being lied to.  Modifying the long-term tax code is a small factor in terms what our economy needs right now, which is demand.  This is my opinion... but I'm just giving some perspective on why I think at this point in the economic debate the republican candidates and congress is just lost.  I think if we deregulate, reform the tax code and drill for oil we'll still be just about as effed as we appear to be now.

[Storm]

"Latest update on the lack of progress for Dems and Republicans to reach a tax deal. Yesterday Democrats of the Super Committee rejected Republicans' offer to "raise federal tax collections by nearly $300 billion over the next decade."

Senator Rand Paul exclusively has JUST told Sean that not only are Democrats rejecting offers put on the table, but now they won't even continue to negotiate and have "walked away from the table...refusing to talk to the Republicans."

Paul warns the American people that this is all about Obama's reelection, and the taxpayers livelihood is of no concern to Obama and the Democrats."

http://www.hannity.com/article/breaking ... ttee/14602

Oh yeah, Sean Hannity... The bastion of unbiased news.  You'll have to forgive me for not clicking on the link... My poor liberal heart couldn't possibly withstand such "truthiness"...

[Reub]

Storm, I love you, but you are ignoring what the Senator is saying.