further to this post about selfishness as a motivator for the criminal enterprises we see before us, mike in the comments said:
"When I think of people who engaged in treasonous activity for profit I think of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen?i replied
Maybe I'm wrong but I don't get the sense that this huge criminal enterprise is all about guys like Richard Perle wanting to be able to pay cash for their summer house.
Al Martin (conspiracyplanet.com) has suggested one motive is concentration of wealth. So there is a profit motive but there is also a larger motive to get rid of the American middle class and have something along the lines of rich vs. poor. He suggests the plan is to eventually crash the economy and the moneyed interests will buy capital on the cheap."
"maybe you are right. as you know - my tendency is to assume that its all about money and/or power. i think it was donald trump who said 'its just a way of keeping score'.having said all that - i accept mike's main question, and i struggle with it. i'm intentionally trying to take a hardline on profit-as-motive as a way to explore the concept - and i'm trying to test the limits of that argument. take the iraq war for example - does anyone have a clue why america invaded iraq? i'm still mystified - and i've followed just about every possible twist for more than 3 years and i still don't have a fucking clue. 'follow the money' seems as simple a rule as we can find to help us understand.
perhaps one way to think about it is not to look at those convicted of treason and ask what their motives were, but rather to look at criminal enterprises and ask where they'd draw the line. would gotti and gambino draw the line at 'state secrets' because it was illegal? would viktor bout refuse to deal in arms becuase someone might get hurt?
you seem to think that treason is a special sort of crime - but that is only true if the perpetrator is a 'patriot'. if the perp considers themselves a global citizen, then 'treason' is just another word, another crime - and 'patriotism' is just for the rubes, something quaint like religion or the geneva conventions.
i assume that you accept that these people start wars just for fun/profit - but isnt starting wars (aka mass murder) much worse than treason?
or take a look at the entire egadministration - do you really think that they are tearing up the constitution 'to keep us safe'? do you really think they spy on people for the sincere benefit of others? do you think they kidnap and torture people offshore for anything that resembles 'patriotism'? do you think they lied about aluminium tubes for otherwise noble reasons that they can't tell us about?
i imagine that you think that cheney and rumsfeld and gonzales and rice and bush and yoo and powell (yes, him too) deserve the worst punishment available in the CJS - surely they are all guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. are these crimes any 'better' than the crimes that you seem reluctant to ascribe to perle, prince of darkness? (i accidentally typed 'price of darkness' - let's hope they pay a heavy price for their darkness). surely cheney deserves a heavier penalty than Ames or Hansen.
as for Martin's argument (as you describe it), i accept that argument is a nearly-reasonable position that an observer might make. their fiscal behaviour is so extraordinarily irresponsible that we might be tempted to believe that their explicit goal is to disastrously fuck everything up completely - and the only conceivable reason they would do that intentionally is so that they could buy assets on the cheap. i must admit that there was a time when i thought the same - 3 years ago, when the amdebt and budget looked completely outta control (it looks even worse now, but it looked miserable then, too) - before katrina, before the cost of the iraq misadventure was apparent - and Blinky announced that he was gonna send people to mars. i was nearly certain at the time that the only possible conceivable logic was that they wanted to destroy the ameconomy (if Blinky says anything remotely similar in this upcoming sotu, congresscritters will demand their bribes in pesos and/or rubles rather than USD). but the logic of an engineered crash for the purpose of scooping up cheap assets in america doesnt make any sense in a global economy. i'd consider the possibilty if we were dealing with anything other than the american economy - but otherwise it doesnt make any financial/economic sense.
further, it doesn't make any sense to 'get rid of the middle class' - nobody wins in that scenario - certainly not in the longer term, which is the underlying premise of the argument (i wont make the case here, now, but i can if you like). and even if Martin's argument is valid, then the purported ultimate goal - "moneyed interests will buy capital on the cheap" - is exactly what i've been arguing - self-interested profit."
i have had a weird bunch of careers - including corporate strategy and gambling - perhaps the gambling element of my background colours my perspective - leading me to presume that everything is about greed (and fear). i must admit, i wouldn't quite know how to think about these issues if i really thought that people like perle and bolton were legitimately religious, or zealots or ideologues - i simply don't have a framework for understanding that sort of nonsense - which may be why i resort to trying to understand these issues through an apparently narrow window.
in fact, thats perhaps a pretty good frame - if i wanted to play poker, my ideal opponent would be a religious, ideological zealot. send me as many of these people as you can find - i'll play them all day long (and i dont even play cards) - but don't send me richard perle. i wont play.
5 comments:
Bush's religious beliefs are of the self-serving, unintellectual kind obtained by those who look in a mirror and don't like what they see, so they tack themselves on to a set of beliefs to handle the deficiencies. If those beliefs include unlimited self-validation - even a central messianic role - then so much the better.
Here's a couple of articles about this religious influence. (They're written from a Christian beliefs perspective so you have to wade through them a bit). This merely shows the intellectual bankruptcy of these religious beliefs and how they lead to the demonisation of the poor.
Here is an exegesis of Bush's second inaugural address in which he is the first American President to assert that the United States is NOT free.
Bush is never quite sure whether his religious beliefs are leading him, or he's leading them. Which is understandable because he's basically just holding a conversation with himself and hasn't figured that out yet.
gday damien - thnx for dropping by.
yep - i totally agree that Bush's religious beliefs are a self-serving escape. i remember someone recently said that when you talk to god, it's called prayer - but when god talks to you, it's called shizophrenia.
Lukery, I love all your stuff on Sibel Edmonds. Very helpful. The subtext of her guarded statements suggest systematic disinformation from the US administraton in regard to its real aims, geopolitical and larcenous.
I agree entirely with your claim that we still don't know why the US has gone into Iraq. This is remarkable. It seems like the MSM and the public intend to live by the soundbite de jour. No thinking here at all. It's a very simple question, and no answer.
I won't press you if you would prefer not to say, but do you have any views on 9/11 as an inside job that you can put publicly? I believe it was, but I have problems with a range of evidence produced from conspiracy sites, so I restrict myself just to the fake bin Laden confession video of Dec 2001. As I take this to be fake, I simply discount EVERYTHING the Bush administration has to say - unless they prove otherwise. Same standard as a court of law.
These guys are really phi-beta-kappa for lying, aren't they?
cheers damien - glad you like the sibel stuff. it was great that she contacted me to let me know i was on the right track - even though she has laid it all out before with the awesome chris deliso and the awesome scott horton and a few others.
re 911, i'm happy to take sibel's word for it. i agree with you that osama has been convicted on very little evidence. sibel points to the ISI in conjunction with certain americans - or perhaps the other way around. i still havent worked out most of the details which is very frustrating.
and yep - i can hardly remember a single occasion when anyone in the radministration opened their mouth and anything approximating the truth fell out. about anything. as driftglass said the other day - they're probably lying right now.
Here's the other factoid that has simply never registered with the American public the way it should have (link):
Senator Bob Graham, Head of the 911 Commission, has admitted that a foreign nation was complicit in the events of 911.
"I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States."
".... I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government"
".... It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now."
The country is almost certainly Pakistan. Damn! Oh well, we'll just put them in there somewhere on the invasion list...
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