It’s a mistake to ask whether this is wealthy people defending their financial interests or wealthy people expressing their ideology, or which motivation is really in the driver’s seat. The triumph of modern conservatism is that it has collapsed the distinction. The interests of the wealthy are the ideology. Fossil fuels are the ideology. They’re bubbling in the same ethno-nationalist stew as anti-immigrant sentiment, hawkish foreign policy, hostility toward the social safety net, and fetishism of guns, suburbs, and small towns. It’s all one identity now. The Kochs (and their peers) are convinced that their unfettered freedom is in the best interests of the country. There’s no tension.

Concentrated wealth wants political results congenial to concentrated wealth. It has shaped an entire movement to that end, and the movement has absorbed all ancillary institutions, including supposedly independent, knowledge-producing institutions like academia and think tanks and supposedly public-interest-serving institutions like NGOs. The money flows from the wealthy and their corporations to PACs and foundations, to nonprofits and advocacy groups, to PR firms and activists. It’s like an electric charge going through a field of iron shavings, orienting them all in the same direction.

Policymakers are surrounded by the worldview of the wealthy; it comes at them from think tanks, lobbyists, activists, media, and their own social circles, becoming like water to a fish.

—David Roberts
What We Can Learn From Dr Evil’s Attack on Obama’s Carbon Rules

H/T: DR Tucker

Union busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on the truth. As such, it is a war without honor. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack. The law does not hamper the process. Rather, it serves to suggest maneuvers and define strategies. Each “union prevention” campaign, as the wars are called, turns on a combined strategy of disinformation and personal assaults.

When a chief executive hires a labor relations consultant to battle a union, he gives the consultant run of the company and closes his eyes. The consultant, backed by attorneys, installs himself in the corporate offices and goes to work creating a climate of terror that inevitably is blamed on the union.

Some corporate executives I encountered liked to think of their anti-union consultants as generals. But really the consultants are terrorists. Like political terrorists, the consultants’ attacks are intensely personal. Terrorists do not make factories and air strips their victims; they choose instead crippled old men and schoolchildren. Likewise, as the consultants go about the business of destroying unions, they invade people’s lives, demolish their friendships, crush their will, and shatter their families.

—Martin Jay Levitt
Confessions of a Union Buster

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material — the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another star in glory.” The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders “is become the chief of the corner” the real “corner-stone” in our new edifice. I have been asked, what of the future? It has been apprehended by some that we would have arrayed against us the civilized world. I care not who or how many they may be against us, when we stand upon the eternal principles of truth, if we are true to ourselves and the principles for which we contend, we are obliged to, and must triumph.

—Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America
“Corner Stone” Speech

You can believe NASA and you can believe what their satellites measure on the planet, or you can believe the Senator with the snowball. The United States Navy takes this very seriously, to the point where Admiral Locklear, who is the head of the Pacific Command, has said that climate change is the biggest threat that we face in the Pacific… you can either believe the United States Navy or you can believe the Senator with the snowball… every major American scientific society has put itself on record, many of them a decade ago, that climate change is deadly real. They measure it, they see it, they know why it happens. The predictions correlate with what we see as they increasingly come true. And the fundamental principles, that it is derived from carbon pollution, which comes from burning fossil fuels, are beyond legitimate dispute… so you can believe every single major American scientific society, or you can believe the Senator with the snowball.

—Sheldon Whitehouse
Climate Skeptic Senator Burned after Snowball Stunt

The US media just got done deluging the American public with mournful stories about the Jordanian soldier, Moaz al-Kasasbeh, making him a household name. As is often the case for victims of America’s adversaries, the victim is intensely humanized. The public learns all sorts of details about their lives, hears from their grieving family members, wallows in the tragedy of their death.

By stark contrast, I’d be willing to bet that the name “Mohammed Tuaiman al-Jahmi” is never uttered on mainstream American television. Most Americans, by design, will have no idea that their government just burned a 13-year-old boy to death and then claimed he was a terrorist. If they do know, the boy will be kept hidden, dehumanized, nameless, without the aspirations or dreams or grieving parents on display for victims of America’s adversaries (just as Americans were swamped with stories about an Iranian-American journalist detained in Iran for two months, Roxana Saberi, while having no idea that their own government imprisoned an Al Jazeera photojournalist, Sami al-Haj, in Guantanamo for seven years without charges)…

It’s worth considering the extreme propaganda impact that disparity has, the way in which the US media is so eagerly complicit in sustaining ongoing American militarism and violence by disappearing victims of US violence while endlessly heralding the victims of its adversaries.

—Glenn Greenwald
The US Media and the 13-Year-Old Yemeni Boy Burned to Death Last Month by a US Drone

Key fact about foreign-fighter stats: More jihadis in IS are from Belgium than from Indonesia.

Now that is a weird stat. How is it even possible? I’ll tell you in one quick quote:

Remember that line. It was spoken by a typical jihadi who left his boring Belgian life, sheltered by the pious, bland welfare state, to kill and die in Syria. Boredom and easy travel sent these guys on their way, not oppression. A hard look at where the foreign fighters come from will show that.

Take Indonesia, by far the biggest Muslim-majority country on the planet. There are about 238 million people in Indonesia, and 88% (209 million) are Muslim. The Indonesian population skews very young, and when you break it down by age and gender, you end up with at least 40 million males of military age from Muslim backgrounds. That’s the available pool of jihadi recruits.

So, how many jihadis has Indonesia contributed to Islamic State?

About 60, maybe 70. Not 70 thousand, you understand; 70 guys. A miserable two-digit total, about a platoon and a half. Hell, let’s be generous and double that figure, make it 140 men. Triple it! Fine with me! It’s still going to amount to something very close to zero-point-zero Indonesian volunteers in Iraq/Syria…

Everything about Belgium says it shouldn’t be making any significant contribution to the jihad in Iraq/Syria. First, the total population is tiny, less than 11 million people, and unlike the Indonesian population it skews very old. The total number of males of military age in Belgium is less than one million, or about two percent of the equivalent in Indonesia. And unlike Indonesia, Belgium is not a Muslim-majority nation. In fact, only six percent of Belgium is Muslim — call it 600,000 people. Let’s say that the Muslim minority in Belgium skews younger than the general population, as recent immigrant minorities usually do. That still means a total pool of something like 70,000. But from that tiny pool, Belgium has sent at least 350 volunteers to Islamic State.

Of course, that’s still a tiny number. It’s worth repeating that all these numbers are ridiculously small, considering the pool of Muslim young men who could be taking up jihad. But Belgium is still an anomaly, producing way too many IS volunteers. Never mind what’s wrong with Kansas, what’s up with Belgium?

Two things: first, that comment “it’s boring in Belgium.” Why is it boring? Consider the huge change in Europe after the great de-fanging of 1945. For certain countries, going o’er the waves to kill and die had been part of the national tradition for generations. Look at which countries relied most heavily on those foreign imperial ambitions in the early 20th century, and you get a surprising match-up with the non-Muslim majority countries with the highest rate of Islamic State volunteers. The states with the highest per capita rates are the ones that formed part of the most aggressive overseas empires of the last century: Turkey, England, France, and Belgium. All these countries have suffered a sudden shrinkage, from ruling distant outposts to maybe, if you’re lucky, getting an office job in the boring ol’ home country, such as it is, what’s left of it…

It’s easy to miss this persistent cultural trend, because it’s taboo in contemporary Western Europe, at least in polite society. But researchers are starting to realize that the myth that countries like Belgium were “reluctant imperialists” is, uh, crap — that in fact, most people, and especially the young males who would get to go abroad and shoot people, loved the idea.

Compare that dream with the less aggressive European states of the 20th century, like Spain and Italy. Their contributions to Islamic State has been tiny, especially in view of the huge Muslim community in those countries. How many IS fighters have come from Italy? Fifty. Five-zero.

Italy has a population of 1.5 million Muslims, poor humble people who are glad to get across the Mediterranean without drowing. Poor humble people are not jihadis; that’s an arrogant, middle-class phenomenon. Those 50 IS volunteers means that only one out of every 30,000 Italian Muslims has made jihad to Syria. You see the same low rates in the European countries without the tradition of recent, aggressive overseas Imperial careers.

—Gary Brecher
Islamic State and American Narcissism

Also, lest we forget, journalists are not entirely immune to the seductions of affluence. While they are not nearly as well paid as the nation’s corporate, legal, or medical elite, high-level Washington and New York journalists do make considerably more money than most Americans. They have spouses who do too, and hence, live pretty well. According to a study conducted by the sociologist David Croteau, 95 percent of elite journalists’ households earned more than $50,000 a year, and 31 percent earned more than $150,000. He points out, “High levels of income tend to be associated with conservative views on economic issues such as tax policy and federal spending.” And journalists are no different. The journalists’ views on economic matters are generally consistent with their privileged position on the socioeconomic ladder, and, hence, well to the right of most Americans. They are more sympathetic to corporations, less sympathetic to government-mandated social programs, and far more ideologically committed to free trade than to the protection of jobs than are their fellow citizens.

—Eric Alterman
What Liberal Media?

The Middle East peace process is finished. It did not die: it was killed. Mahmoud Abbas was undermined by the President of the Palestinian Authority and humiliated by the Prime Minister of Israel. His successor awaits a similar fate. Israel continues to mock its American patron, building illegal settlements in cynical disregard of the “road map.” The President of the United States of America has been reduced to a ventriloquist’s dummy, pitifully reciting the Israeli cabinet line: “It’s all Arafat’s fault.” Israelis themselves grimly await the next bomber. Palestinian Arabs, corralled into shrinking Bantustans, subsist on EU handouts. On the corpse-strewn landscape of the Fertile Crescent, Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and a handful of terrorists can all claim victory, and they do. Have we reached the end of the road? What is to be done?

At the dawn of the twentieth century, in the twilight of the continental empires, Europe’s subject peoples dreamed of forming “nation-states,” territorial homelands where Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Armenians, and others might live free, masters of their own fate. When the Habsburg and Romanov empires collapsed after World War I, their leaders seized the opportunity. A flurry of new states emerged; and the first thing they did was set about privileging their national, “ethnic” majority — defined by language, or religion, or antiquity, or all three — at the expense of inconvenient local minorities, who were consigned to second-class status: permanently resident strangers in their own home.

But one nationalist movement, Zionism, was frustrated in its ambitions. The dream of an appropriately sited Jewish national home in the middle of the defunct Turkish Empire had to wait upon the retreat of imperial Britain: a process that took three more decades and a second world war. And thus it was only in 1948 that a Jewish nation-state was established in formerly Ottoman Palestine. But the founders of the Jewish state had been influenced by the same concepts and categories as their fin-de-siècle contemporaries back in Warsaw, or Odessa, or Bucharest; not surprisingly, Israel’s ethno-religious self-definition, and its discrimination against internal “foreigners,” has always had more in common with, say, the practices of post-Habsburg Romania than either party might care to acknowledge.

The problem with Israel, in short, is not — as is sometimes suggested — that it is a European “enclave” in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a “Jewish state” — a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded — is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.

—Tony Judt
Israel: The Alternative (2003)
In When the Facts Change: Essays 1995-2010