Ron Paul's economics: a very toxic brew indeed

It appears that Ron Paul did well in the Iowa caucuses tonight.  On one hand, I am rather delighted by this, but on the other, I am also very concerned that a lot of people are seeing only one side of Ron Paul's ideology.  There is, however, a much darker side to Ron Paul, one which we all must have the courage and intellectual honesty to look at and not kid ourselves about its nature.

Now, before all of you Ron Paul fans get mad at me for posting this, I want to assure you of two thing:

a) I like Ron Paul's views on foreign policy and civil rights

b) I like and respect Ron Paul as a person

However, I always considered his 'Austrian' and 'Laisser Faire' economics as utter nonsense at best, or absolute lunacy at worst.  But now they are gaining more and more traction with the US public and I think that it is therefore time to honestly discuss these ideas here.

As a theory, 'Austrian' economics are fantastic.  But so are Marxism and Anarchism.  These theories all suffer from the same problem: highly loaded assumptions.  In the case of 'Austrian economics', the flaw is basic, but huge: the concept of a free market.  The fact is, of course, that there never was such a thing and that it will never exist.  Markets are always, by definition, regulated by somebody.  In the words of the brilliant economist Michael Hudson:

Every economy is planned. This traditionally has been the function of government. Relinquishing this role under the slogan of “free markets” leaves it in the hands of banks. 

One might wonder why a political and economic theory based on a so self-evidently flawed idea has so many followers.  The fact is, of course, that this theory has followers in significant numbers only in the USA.  Why?  Because of three uniquely American circumstances:

The evil nature of the state in US history:

It is a fact that throughout the history of the USA the state as always been on the side of the rich and powerful and not of the masses.  Not only that, but the US state has spent trillions of dollars in waste, mismanagement and fraud.  So it is no wonder that most Americans instinctively dislike a state which has almost never done anything useful for them.  Why would Americans care for a state when they never lived in a society in which the state did care for the common folks?  From its very inception the US state was both multi-genocidal (extermination of numerous Indian nations), slave-owning (Black slavery), plutocratic (Robber Barons) and oligarchic (Masonic).  There is a good case to be made that the US state has been one of the worst ones in mankind's history, so its no wonder that it is also distrusted and hated by so many Americans.

The insular nature of the US society:

The vast majority Americans are hopelessly insular.  Not to offend anybody here, but this is an undeniable fact.  Not all Americans, of course, but the vast majority.  They know only one language, they have rarely, if ever, been abroad.  When they are abroad they don't really interact with the locals and, last but not least, they are largely ignorant of world history.  I have yet to meet a US libertarian who could even pronounce "laisser faire" correctly, nevermind understand why this idea has been universally rejected by the rest of mankind.  This is why Americans have these bizarre views about Obama being a 'socialist' or why they don't realize that civilized mankind has, for example, rejected the death penalty and adopted universal health care as a right for all.  No,  Americans will still passionately argue about issues which have already been settled pretty much everywhere else on this planet.

Then there are those Americans who are aware of the bigger planet out there, but still fall back on some form or another of 'American exceptionalism" (let them Euroliberals have their health care, this is not the American way!).  The fact that what US libertarians call "statism" has been accepted and adopted by the rest of mankind therefore has no influence inside the USA at all.  As the lyrics of a song which was popular in the late eighties say: "if it's good enough for Texas it's good enough for me"... 

The unbridled power of US corporation:

It is well established that the "Tea Party" has been largely financed by the Koch brothers.  But this is just the tip of the iceberg.  The roots of this corporate libertarianism go back much further, to Ronald Reagan and his famous words in his first inaugural address:

Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem

That statement was the slogan under which US corporations marched into a real crusade against any form of control over them.   We all know what happened after that: massive deregulations crippled entire sectors of the economy and nation, worker's rights collapsed, social safeguards were wiped-off, unions all but died, and every bit of the power vacuum left by a retreating state was immediately filled by US corporations.  The difference being that while the US people had at least a modicum of control over their government, they had none over the corporations.  Corporate America recognized that, and ever since it has backed anything on the spectrum going from Reaganomics to Austrian libertarian theories.

Compare these factors with the situation in Europe where most Europeans did, at one time or another of their lives, get real, valuable services from their government, where corporations are carefully controlled and regulated and the consumer thereby protected, where civil and worker's rights are considered "social achievements" (acquis sociaux in French) never to be rescinded (although under US pressure politicians like Merkel, Papanderou, Sarkozy, Blair and Co. are now trying hard to dismantle them).  Sure, there were plenty of incompetent, corrupt and outright evil governments in Europe, but there were always enough counter-examples sufficiently nearby (geographically or historically) to always remind Europeans that the solution to bad government is good government, not no government.

So we are really dealing with a misnomer here.  Austrian Laisser Faire economics should really be called "US Turbocapitalsm" (term concocted by Ed Luttwak), or "US hypercapitalism" or even simply plutocracy.  

Coming back to Ron Paul, I invite you all to listen to the interview of Webster Tarpley recorded by Bonnie Faulkner for her show Guns and Butter.  Tarpley and Faulkner take a close look at Ron Paul's economic program and what it would mean if implemented.

For the direct link to the audio click here.

For the web page with the interview, click here.

The real danger:

Having said all these highly critical things about Ron Paul and his delusional and outright dangerous economic views, let me say that I understand that it is a fact that a US President has far more influence on foreign policy than in internal politics where he must contend with a Congress which can block the implementation of his economic policies and a Federal Reserve which will fight with everything it has to prevent Ron Paul from abolishing it (let me add here that this idea, to abolish the Fed, is an excellent and fundamentally sound economic idea of Ron Paul!).  Finally, there is no doubt in my mind that if Ron Paul was elected President he would be simply murdered by the US "deep state".

So my concern is not that Ron Paul would instantly create millions of starving Americans by giving them a maximum of 15 dollars per week in food stamps or that he would wreck WIC, but that his ideology can be used by Corporate America to further weaken the state and strengthening the power of Wall Street.  All this libertarian nonsense really serves only one practical purpose: to turn citizens of a state into corporate subjects/slaves.

Michael Hudson is quite correct.   What we are witnessing in the USA (and, to a lesser degree, in Europe) is a return to feudalism, where the 99% serve the 1%, a society in which the people become simply a means of production for their corporate overlords.  Laisser Faire indeed...

So ask yourself this question: do Ron Paul's economic ideas strengthen or weaken the power of Corporate America over the US people?

The answer is, I think, sadly obvious.

The Saker

PS: please do listen to the Tarpley interview before commenting here, as it makes no sense to discuss vague declarations of intentions.  What we must do is fully fathom is what a Ron Paul Presidency would mean for the US economy.

The Saker interviews Scott Horton

Its been a long time since I wanted to ask Scott Horton about his political ideas. I have to confess that ever since I discovered his fantastic radio show and his blog I have been listening to it on a daily basis. Never before had I heard a radio show with such a more interesting list of experts invited or with a more knowledgable and free thinking host. Scott, whom I now consider being a friend (even though we never met personally) interviewed me for his show already three times and now I can finally "retaliate".

While there are many current issues that I could have asked Scott about, I decided to center my questions on his political beliefs. I have to admit here that before discovering his show I had never been exposed to US libertarian ideas. Being a European myself I do not agree with a wholesale rejection of any form of government, nor do I agree with the idea that government regulations are inherently bad (I personally consider the existence of a government regulated economy essential to protect the people from the power of the corporations and I believe that the main purpose of a government is to protect the poor, the weak, the unemployed and the sick from destitution). Nevertheless, I have come to respect and admire American libertarians for their total rejection of violence and wars (except in self-defense) and their uncompromising commitment to civil rights and freedoms.

Following my interview with Joel S. Hirschhorn, it was also timely to get the point of view of a person who believed that voting still makes sense, at least voting for a person like Ron Paul. As I have written before, short of a miracle the USA will have an openly fascist president in 2008 and Ron Paul is the best, if not only, chance for the USA to remain a republic, however imperfect, and not turn into a Neocon Fascist Empire. Whether having a libertarian president would be good or bad for the USA is for Americans to decide, not for foreigners like me. But one thing is certain, having a president like Ron Paul would be incomparably better than any other option for the rest of the planet.

I can only recommend to all my readers to listen to Scott's show (streaming daily on radio KAOS and whose archives are posted on his blog) to judge the man and his ideas for themselves. Also - check out his excellent stickers.

Lastly, anyone interested in understanding the Ron Paul phenomenon should check out the Ron Paul library which features a large collection of his speeches, articles and book (including several in PDF format for free download)
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Q: first, tell us something about yourself: how did you end up hosting what is, in my opinion, the best radio talk show in the USA? What is the link between you, Radio KAOS and antiwar.com? What did you do before you became a talk show host?

A: Well, I've done pirate radio in Austin since the end of 1998. First was Say it Ain't So on Free Radio Austin 97.1 FM (Thanks Reckless, etc.!) which was raided twice by the FCC. The second time was the day of the election in 2000. That was it for FRA.

Then Shauna Kaye started KAOS 95.9 to be the place for punk and metal in town. Since I'm lucky, she let me do a politics show. It was called The Way Shit Is, The Best I Can Tell with Col. Edward Mandell House. KAOS was started in December 2001 and I guess my show got going pretty soon after that. Probably January or February, 2002. Then on the eve of the war at the beginning of 2003, Shauna suggested I start getting interviews and my friend Jon gave me a computer if I would promise to use it. So I started the Weekend Interview Show and PhilipDru.com for a place to post the archives.

Of course, I interviewed the Antiwar.com guys all the time, since they are the best, and they started posting the mp3s. In 2004-2005 I took the show over to the 9/11 kook network RBN, and in the meantime started and sold LibertyStickers.com. I had a few months worth of living money so I started writing articles for AWC to go along with the interviews. From there I was hired as assistant editor. After leaving RBN, I came back home to KAOS and eventually set up the daily interview show as it exists now.

To be clear, there is no link whatever between KAOS and Antiwar.com, other than that Antiwar.com runs the archives of my KAOS interviews.

Q: while most Americans have a pretty good idea what libertarian ideas are in the US context, most Europeans do not. Could you please summarize the basic ideas and values of libertarians ideals and please tell us what the core reading list should be for somebody wanting to understand US libertarian ideas?

A: I'm not sure that most Americans get it, but a libertarian is what I understand is still referred to as a liberal by Europeans. Here in America, the socialists weren't brave enough to call themselves what they were and stole the name liberal. So Rothbard refashioned the old right classical liberals as the libertarians to distinguish the genuine classical liberals from the socialists on the left and nationalist war mongers and conservatives on the right.

Specifically, libertarianism is belief in the non-aggression principle. It is not okay to initiate force against another person. Most people believe this, parents, Yoda, karate class, old west hero, etc., but the libertarian applies it to politics as well. If it's wrong for me to steal from you, it's wrong for me to hire a cop to steal from you. Once you recognize that government simply means the people who are allowed to commit all the crimes that we are not allowed to commit and that the same moral laws ought to apply to them, things begin to seem a bit different. Lysander Spooner said government was like a highway man only the highway man has the decency to leave you alone after he mugs you, the state follows you home, bosses you around, steals more of your stuff everyday and then tells you he's your security guard there to protect you from the highwayman.

Shoot. Just check LewRockwell.com for the politics and Mises.org for the economics. The Mises Institute has an incredible amount of literature online. And bibliographies galore.

Q: what exactly is anarcho-capitalism and how is it different from libertarianism? What is the "Austrian School" you often mention in your shows?

A: Anarcho-capitalism is what a libertarian believes in when he stops being a hypocrite and recognizes that a tax funded monopoly on security and litigation issues is as immoral and unworkable, and for the same reasons, as a monopoly on anything else. See, left anarchists think that private property only exists due to the (socialist) state protecting it with everyone's taxes and monopoly force, but they got it all wrong. If you get rid of the state and it's control over "public" property, what's left? Private property. Which happens to be the basis of civilization.

There are many, many people much, much more qualified than myself to discuss Austrian economics, but what I know is that Ludwig Von Mises posited that man is an individual and that individual man acts. From there he deduced a great many things such as all the Keynesian charts, algebra, and whathaveyou is a bunch of crap. As Alan Greenspan told Jon Stewart, he hasn't learned a thing or improved at all in his "forcasting" in 50 years on the job. People are free they do what they want for reasons that can't be computer modeled; That whenever government introduces force into the market - always on behalf of capitalism-hating millionaires - it produces dislocations, bad investments, and lost liberty. He explained that the boom and bust cycle was not the natural result of capitalism, but the result of the central banks creating new money out of nothing in the name of smoothing out the booms and busts. Mises also explained way back in the 20's - I think - that socialism can't work because it was based on Adam Smith and Marx's flawed labor theory of value and showed that value comes from the customer's view, and since the socialists were trying to be the rationer and the rationee at the same time, they would have no way to accurately determine prices and therefore no way to accurately determine which resources should go where or when.

This, I think, was a big part of why Rothbard and them rejected the Cold War. They looked at the USSR and said "Threat? Where? These jokers are doomed." They were right. Time was on our side, not theirs.

Q: the US political system has turned into a tragic farce in which when people vote for the "liberal" Clinton they get a wholesale dismantlement of the social security and when they vote for the "conservative" George W. Bush they get a huge deficit, imperial wars, and a huge deficit. As a result, some, such as Joel S. Hirshhorn conclude that the only solution is to refuse to vote (check his excellent article on this subject here). You, on the other hand, call for voting for Ron Paul even though you once created a sticker with the words "voting is for suckers" but you are now calling to vote for Ron Paul. What made you change your mind?

A: Ron Paul is the greatest congressman in American history. I've been reading much of what he's written for about 10 years now, had the honor of meeting him a few times, and I think he's one of the best teachers of liberty around. The whole point is that the only time anyone pays attention to politics is when people are running for president. Dr. Paul is teaching them about liberty in numbers unheard of in all history. In a world where Republicans aren't evil and stupid, which we don't live in, they would all rally around him, since he's the only one who could possibly beat Hillary in the fall of '08, and in that case, there is no one I would trust more than him to hold that power, to restore the Bill of Rights and bring this empire home in a soft landing instead of catastrophe.

Also, I am ashamed that my last vote on earth was not for Harry Browne. Now I will be proud to cast my last for the good doctor. Lysander Spooner makes a decent case for anarchists voting in self defense in No Treason, but, no, ultimately it's important for people to understand that Alexander Hamilton was a fascist who led an evil counter-revolution against the results of the Great Secession from Britain, that his Constitution has been a disaster and that the state should be abolished - yesterday.

Q: Do you really believe that Ron Paul could get elected and, even more importantly, that if elected the political elites who run this country would let him change anything? It not the real problem the fact that the USA is no more a democracy but that it is in fact a country ruled by an elite which has turned any real democracy into a sham? In your opinion, does the current political process have any legitimacy left and do you believe that this system can still be reformed?

A: Democracy sucks. It is based on the collectivist myth of popular sovereignty and majority rule. We do have a democracy. That's why our system sucks so bad. The minority with the power can always manipulate a majority into thinking whatever they want them to think. Even when the majority disagrees with the elite, they're usually wrong then too.

I think that if Paul were elected president that he could do a great many things to restore the structures of the law which somewhat serve to protect our liberties. He could immediately rescind hundreds of executive orders, order torturers brought up on charges, repudiate the unitary executive theory, bring the army and navy home, unsign treaties, ask Congress to pass an omnibus restore the Bill of Rights Act, veto any budget he wished, and he could teach people that the president ain't liberty, liberty is where the president ain't.

Q: coming back to anarcho-capitalism, can you name a society in history which has ever implemented this kind of socio-political system or which came as close as can be to what you want?

A: These are questions best left for Roderick T. Long, I'm afraid, but I do know that Iceland had a system much like the anarcho-capitalism of Rothbard and his successors. There were cops, but no territorial monopolies on their jurisdiction. It worked great for 350 years. A hell of a lot longer than Hamilton's constitution, maybe even this society, will. Also, in Conceived In Liberty, Rothbard writes of anarcho-Pennsylvania which was out of the control of the crown for I guess about 100 years or so and worked things out in a very private property anarchy kinda way. And, of course, the old west had may examples of stateless people working things out themselves just fine. Though obviously that didn't last very long with the national government set on dominating the whole continent.

Q: if I understood you correctly you believe that government regulations are a highly ineffective way of resolving differences in a society and that the best way would be to litigate differences in a court of law. Is this correct and, if yes, how would the courts force anyone to accept their jurisdiction and how would the courts enforce their rulings absent a police force? Also, in your society what kind of penalties could the courts impose of offenders? Would there be jails and who would be in charge of them? Would there be fines and who would collect them? Lastly, who would pay for the costs of creating and maintaining a judiciary?

A: Yes, the regulations exist to protect the the regulatees from the people. Always have. I'll duck the how exactly would the anarcho-libertarian court system
might work and direct you to those much more qualified to answer, such
as http://mises.org and http://praxeology.net/molinarisoc.htm.

Q: what is your analysis of who has the real power in the USA? The most often mentioned are the Oil Lobby, the Israel Lobby and the Military-Industrial Complex. Do you agree and, if yes, how would you rank them. Do you rather agree with Greg Palast who says that oil is the key force, or would you rather agree with James Petras who believes that the Israel Lobby has become the overwhelming force in US politics.

A: Don't forget the money men, though it looks to me like the banking/oil establishment has been largely supplanted by the MIC-Neocon-Israel Lobby groups, though these things are fluid. They're all still in there fighting it out. As Lew Rockwell once wrote: "It's a heck of a note... to have to root for the Rockefellers."

Q: the future looks very bleak and, barring some kind of miracle, Hillary will become the next US President. What do you think will happen if she is elected? Give us your sense of what 4 years of a Hillary Administration would bring?

A: Death. Pain. Tyranny. Blood. Just like when her husband was president. Just like now.

My conversation with Scott Horton about the Middle-East

Yesterday I had the true honor and pleasure of being interviewed by Scott Horton, the fantastic Libertarian radio talk show host from Austin, Texas. His shows for Radio KAOS 95.5 in Austin are also streamed live the Internet through Antiwar Radio and are available on Scott's excellent blog.

I highly reccommend Scott's show (his list of guests is simply fantastic) and his blog to all those who want to listen to a different, truly American and freedom-loving, perspective on political events inside the USA and the US Imperial policies aborad.

Listen to my conversation with Scott here.

(For those who might not now about it, I also want to highly reccommend the website Antiwar.com which provides both excellent original contents (check out the list of columnists) and reprints of intersting information found elsewhere)

(audio in ogg format here)

The value of the lone dissenter

Originally, this was posted on Scott Horton's blog

For all its intrinsic merits - and God know they are numerous - it is unclear how big an audience Scott's show reaches and, even more importantly, how much of an impact it has on anyone. Surely in a country which re-elected, scratch this, which elected Bush the Lesser in the midst of two lost wars any voice for reason and decency is lost in the ocean of stupidity? Not so. Here is why:

Social psychologists have done a lot of work on the issue of conformity. In particular, the experiments of Sherif, Asch and Milgram have looked deeply in the the mechanisms which make people agree to seemingly obviously mistaken and outright evil concepts and actions. One of them (Asch) centered on the effect of the group on an individual's judgment. Basically, he showed that most people tend to agree with other's obviously wrong judgments usually to the point of kidding themselves in to sincerely believing whatever the group says. That's the bad news. The good news is that it only takes ONE dissenter to dramatically decrease this phenomenon. In fact, if ONE sole dissenter's common sense makes him openly challenge the unanimity of the rest of the group members the number of people who choose to conform against their best judgment falls by 75%!

Unanimity is what the Imperial rulers need from their population. This is one of the mains reasons why most authoritarian and all totalitarian regimes spend a truly phenomenal amount of resources trying to silence even a very small minority. For example, in the Soviet Union the so-called 'dissidents' had very little popular support, if any. But the KGB had an entire Main Directorate (the 5th if I remember correctly) only to deal with them. Often this is explained away as "paranoia", and sometimes it is so. But it is also a reflection of an acute understanding by those in powers that only a unanimity (even only a seeming one, an external one - that's all that's needed) can secure the passive compliance of a population.

So this is why Scott's work is truly invaluable: it allows anyone listening to his shows who would otherwise nod his/her head and shut up to think "yeah, that makes sense, and its the others who are full of shit!" and break the psychological barrier of the need to conform.

Even Scott's "rant shows" are hugely valuable because he shows that somebody can get on the air not just somewhere, but in Texas of all places, and speak freely without fear or self-censorship.

I strongly encourage everybody to *totally* cut any contacts with the corporate media. Don't watch TV, don't read the paper, don't listen to the (non-pirate) radio. Not ever, not once. Get all your information ONLY from independent and free media (God knows with the Internet you can get enough of top quality info and analysis - see links poster on the lower left of this page) and re-direct ALL the money you would be spending on corporate propaganda to truly free and independent media. And then - spread the word, tell all your friends, download sample shows and burn them unto CDs and give them out. That will be *your* way of puncturing the ugly bubble of unanimity.

A huge 'thank you!' to you Scott - you are the real patriot ;-)

Libertarian bumper stickers

Bumper stiker politics are truly an US speciality, at least judging by the quantity of cars on the road with bumper stickers, most of which reflect an appaling lack of originality or even thought of any kind: "support our troops" (how? why?), "united we stand" (for what?), "proud to be an American" (why? ever been abroad? have any idea at all about the rest of the world?), or the inevitable "911 terrorist hunting permit". There are, however, some really nice exceptions, at least on the internet (I have yet to see them on an actual car). Some rather original ones can be found on the Scott Horton section of the website Liberty Stickers.

Some thoughts on current events

Can anyone really tell the two factions of the Republicrat Party apart?! I can’t. Its like the choice between (kosher) Pepsi and (kosher) Coke - no difference except the packaging, and all you have inside is corporate-designed crap harmful to your health.

Libertarians, Greens, Nation of Islam, Militias are, as far as I can tell, pretty much the only ideological alternatives to the Imperial Republicrats and none of these have *any* chance at all to get any kind of power as long as the puppet-masters of the “two factions of the Business Party” as Chomsky calls them have 100% control over the mass media.

What you have here is something very similar to the Soviet Union in which an entire class (called the “Nomeklatura”) ran the country. The USA has its own Nomenklatura which currently holds all the power. Sure, there are fake factions (such as the two packages for the Republicrats) and even real factions (Anglos vs. Zionists) inside this Nomenklatura, but that was also the case in the former Soviet Union or, for that matter in Nazi Germany (at least the Republicans to murder all the Democractic leaders the way Himmler’s SS did it to Roehm’s SA in Germany).I wonder when they will begin goose-stepping down the streets

Why has the war on Iran not started yet?

My best guess is that the Old Anglos are loosing to the New Zionists, but the fact is that the war with Iran did not start yet. I had it pegged for March and we are in late April and that did not happen (yet). I really do not think that the peace movement, however well intentioned, has the political power to make the pro-war forces back down, so what happened? Well, for the time being, I think the Old Anglos are waging a rather intense PR campaign against the Neocons (other word for New Zionists) because their $$$ is at stake: the Old Anglos have nothing to win from a war with Iran, and plenty to loose. The Neocons, on the other hand, don’t give a crap about the US or the financial interests of the Old Anglos, and they believe that they have plenty to win by such a war (mind you - what benefits the Neocons is not automatically something which benefits Israel, American Jews or Conservatives. Neocons *use* Zionism as a means towards their power, they are not true believers in the Abba Eban style).

Another big lobby are the Saudis and I think that they know how much at risk their regime would be in a all-out war with Iran. So Anglos+Saudis makes a rather formidable force. Do the New Zinonists have the power to force the USA into a war SOLELY with their pressure on the Imperial Senate (as Scott - correctly - calls Congress). My guess is that yes, they will still prevail. But I might be wrong.

Lemme share a little private thing here. I used to work for one of the well-known conservative think tanks inside the Beltway (yep - I am a former military analyst and “recovering conservative” turned hard-core peacenick anti-war pacifist). Since I was not an American, one of the top guys one day confided in me and told me this thing about Anglos vs. Jews in conservative think tanks. Take, for example, the Heritage Foundation which began as a kind of “Christian” (in a US meaning of the word) think tank, Reganite of sorts. It turned into something like a wannabe-AIPAC. How did that happen. The guys explained the scheme to me. When the “Neocons” realized with Regan that the Republicans were a huge force they decided to join the movement and coopt it. They began by funding major think tanks and soon they began appointing executives and forcing the old (Anglo) guard out. In government, they pushed out the CIA’s old Anglo guard and put the Agency under defacto DoD control. This is a *huge* operation which took, what? at least 20 years to fully realize and now they risk loosing it all over this Iran thing because in many circiles their overt lobbying for the war is seen as the “big coming out” (expression I heard from another top analyst). My guess is that there is even a segment of the Neocons which wants to stop this thing because it could really compromise their achievements so far.Now look at how the Anglos are fighting back: Scott Ritter, Michael Scheuer, Carter, Mearsheimer, articles in the Christian Science Monitor, etc. What?! All these folks just woke up? Maybe some (Ritter). But old foxes like Scheuer or Carter absolutely not. Then the FBI goes after Scooter Libby, the AIPAC trial is scheduled for May, Wolfowitz is blasted even in the Economist (like he is the first one to use World Bank money for sex, LOL!). No, make no mistake - the Anglos are fighting back and they have plenty of punching power left in them.

So why do I still bet on the Neocons winning? Because as long as they control the corporate media and the Imperial Senate they can “manufacture consent” in the general public. No matter how totally idiotic, a “Persian Gulf of Tonkin” decception will be unanimously greeted by the US corporate media and the Imperial Senate with a standing ovation (think Pelosi here). So I say that they will try to get the Angols on board with some promises. If that don’t work - they will just trigger a crisis and bypass the old Anglo guard altogether.