So Obama has ordered that Camp X-ray be closed. This is the facility located in the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that houses various "enemy combatants" captured during the Bush Administration's War on Terror. This is a positive step, but as I am weary of politicians I will wait and see whether or not the President does what is constitutionally appropriate. By that I mean:

1) Order the immediate release of all prisoners whose innocence is no longer in question. If they are unable to return to their countries of origin for fear of persecution, then they must be offered asylum in the United States.

2) Move all cases, and I mean ALL cases, to civilian courts. The category of "enemy combatant" is extra-legal and has never been recognized by International Law.

3) If the government is convinced that a detainee is a threat, but has no concrete evidence with which to prosecute them for crimes, then they must be released. If they cannot present evidence for fear of exposing intelligence assets they can order a judge to impose a strict gag order on all proceedings. Such an order would prohibit a defendant from communicating with anyone but defense counsel, but would not impede said counsel's duty to investigate the crimes in question to disprove evidence produced by the state. All proceedings could come under judicial oversight without having sensitive information made public.

I'm not a "Moderate." Thank goodness. Being a moderate in the United States means somehow accepting that Americans still have a right on some level to tell smaller countries what kind of government's they're going to have, and what kind of economic system is going to dominate the world.

And what's more sickening about so-called "moderation" is that holding this position requires that you totally ignore the fact that the United States is no longer going to be able to maintain a position as a global hegemon. So really, "moderates" are living in a dream world where Americans open their mouths, and the third world doesn't roll its eyes and say "Oh give me a damn break."

As I waited in line this morning to vote, there were Democratic activists reminding folks in line that Fairfax County allows for paper ballot voting in the event that a voter would like to have a paper record of his/her vote. A man behind me in line kept mumbling that this was solely an attempt by Democrats to "further propagandize". Gee, mister, that kind of "propaganda" seems pretty tame compared to canvassing black neighborhoods and telling residents that it's illegal to vote if you've gotten a traffic ticket.

****

I'm not down with either of the major party candidates. But regardless of one's political affiliations, it is important to take a moment and consider that tomorrow morning a black man could be the president-elect of the United States. If this happens, it will be one of the single most significant moments in the history of this country. In 1908, blacks were being lynched on a regular basis throughout the country. In North Carolina, black men were often arrested on minor offenses, sentenced to years of hard labor, so that political bosses could make money from the private contractors they sold the labor to. The very idea that African Americans were equal to whites was a radical one. In 2008, an African American could very well be chosen as the chief executive and leader of the nation.

Could it be then, that one day the office could be open to anyone? Perhaps one day, just maybe, an Arab Muslim, or dare I dream, an Atheist?

Orwell should have titled his book "2008."

The United States attacked Syria yesterday. There was no declaration of war. There was no speech by the President before Congress. Congress didn't vote on it. It was just done. The American people have no problem with this. All the government has to say is "there are terrorists there", and the people just accept it.

The United States of America is in a state of perpetual war. The American people are so acquiescent to militarism that new conflicts with new countries are regarded as just another soundbite.

A militaristic society is one where decision making power is heavily centralized. The decision to fight wars is not made by the people, but arbitrarily by leaders. To maintain such a system under the guise of a democracy, it must be manipulated and managed so that the formal sphere of political discourse is a tiny one, wherein only a small number of ideas are considered acceptable. To advocate for an end to perpetual war, and end to interventionism, to bring the troops home from all over the world, to cut the military budget, to withdraw from NATO, is to open yourself up to ridicule and accusations of treason.

Random and badly focused thoughts regarding last nights debate:

Only one thing really surprised me in last night's presidential debate: Tom Brokaw's question to the candidates referencing two British military and diplomatic officials who claimed that the U.S. military's strategy in Afghanistan is doomed to failure.

Rarely does the American media ever expose what is regularly reported in the foreign press, and apart from this one question, most of last night's debate reflected that closed-mindedness. My excitement at both candidates having to answer such a direct question dwindled when I heard their responses, as well as most of everything else they said.

The candidates, and clearly those "randomly" selected citizens who were present to question them, are clueless. Totally. On foreign policy, no one questioned, and both candidates clung to, the dogma of interventionism and American exceptionalism. John McCain seeks to put a freeze on spending, except when it comes to "defense" (read "perpetual warfare state"). He and his neo-conservative advisers seem to worship war as an end unto itself. Barack Obama talks openly of violating the sovereignty of Pakistan, a country with a fragile new government. What he seems to be blind to is that every U.S. cruise missile attack and commando raid into Pakistan undermines the legitmacy of that government and pushes them further towards collapse.

On the economy, I could not fault the candidates for not being able to dictate a reasonable solution to the coming currency collapse, because the questions being posed to them were based on flawed assumptions. One man asked what the fastest road to recovery is. I suppose it would be irrational to expect a politician to say something like "well, if by road you mean 'massive spending reductions' and by fast you mean 'generation'....". Such honesty isn't really an option. Earlier in the CNN broadcast, an undecided voter in a pre-assembled focus group told Soledad O'Brian that she wanted to know how the candidates were going to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Again, the honest answer of "by turning the Dollar into kindling" would probably have sounded bad.

But the night still had interesting moments. I watched the debate in a bar in Adams Morgan, where I ended up chatting with a friendly German guy about the candidates. We agreed that the vilification of Russia (click here, scroll down) by the United States government is not something that resonates with most Europeans, who are not fearful of a Russian invasion. Russia's current trade surplus is dependent on its energy exports and a good amount of that ends up being consumed in Europe. Such dependency on foreign markets for their current growth would make hostility towards the EU entirely counterproductive. He made another interesting point about how he finds it odd that some Americans deride Obama as a socialist, when in Germany he would be more closely aligned with the center-right Christian Democratic Union, as opposed to the nominally socialist Social Democratic Party. I told him that our political process is tightly controlled, and while we don't have the coalition style government-building the Germans have, we do have an informal coalition of Democrats and Republicans, who agree to keep the electoral process rigidly controlled and tightly managed.

So who am I voting for? Well, I just can't answer that. McCain and Palin do frighten me, there's no way around that. But Obama leaves me feeling flat. I took a look at his website, and I am glad that he and Joe Biden are pledging to support the Employee Free Choice Act, and to reverse rulings by the National Labor Relations Board that classified thousands of nurses as supervisors, hence inelligible for union membership. But my views on workers rights are directly connected to my views on war, in that war kills workers, their families, and their children, and strips the economy of resources that can be invested into basic services and community building.

I suppose I have to stay optimistic. Maybe the increased number of people that will be voting in this election could mean a more politically and economically aware electorate in the future. That would be a positive step. But only time will tell....

Ok. Rant's over. Nothing to see here.

NOTE:

This seemed somewhat relevant to what I wrote about the vilification of Russia:
I Survived the Georgian War

WOULD PEOPLE PLEASE START GIVING A SHIT THAT THE U.S. ECONOMY IS GOING TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET!?!?!?

DOES ANYONE NOTICE THAT WALL ST. IS TRYING TO GET AWAY WITH A MASSIVE PIRACY SCHEME?! FOR LIKE THE SIXTH TIME IN FOUR WEEKS??!?!?!?!?!

THIS ELECTION IS AN IRRELEVANT DISTRACTION FROM THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE DILDO BEING JAMMED UP OUR COLLECTIVE ASSES! HOW THE HELL CAN THIS COUNTRY BE SO BLIND?!?!

I'm no economist. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete moron when it comes to money, but I tend to keep things pretty simple in my life. I've never invested in a mutual fund, much less owned a credit card, or lived off of what I don't have. I have taken out one loan in my life, for my car, which I bought from my mom. If I can afford a luxury, I'll buy it. If I can't, I won't.

But when it comes to the current economic collapse of U.S. financial markets, I'm kind of speechless. I know how this crisis started. I remember thinking back in the 1990's that our economy couldn't be healthy if it was based on real estate speculation and people living beyond their means. I knew that a government that dumped $300 billion dollars a year down the pork-barrel of military spending (that was the military budget of the Clinton years) was wasting money that could actually have been invested at home to create tradable services and industries domestically. I knew that a population so consumed with consumerism, a generation so convinced that prosperity was their right, not their privilege, was bound to destroy itself.

Nonetheless, I have no idea how my generation should proceed. If it were up to me, I would never reward bad asset management by buying bad assets off of bad managers. I would let the market take the hit that it's going to take anyway, and not prolong a crisis. The American people have to start facing a fundamental reality. This economic crisis has been caused by overspending, by our government on war, and by the people on everything. Individual citizens, and their government, must realize that in order to weather this storm, they will have to stop spending more than they have.

EDIT:

I want to make really clear what I mean by "stop spending more than they have", because what we're all going to have in the coming years is going to be very little. We are entering a period of total economic meltdown, regardless of what stupid shit the criminals in congress and wall street do. Double-digit unemployment, a drop in living standards, and the inability to feed and clothe ourselves, these could be realities for not just the poorest of the poor. We blew it America, and we're going to pay.