The King and His Lament

Maybe when the battle is over I can pity the man

Whose Armies marched into my country

Raped and pillaged across my lands

But for now I must steel my heart.

 

I look at the army arrayed on this hill

Proud flying banners young naive soldiers

Brave, they don't know how brave, till they die

And already I can see them in the places they will lie.

 

I see them where they are standing, and I see them where they lie

Bent and broken things and blood every where.

They call this romantic, but for this grizzled hair I've had it.

I feel no glory, only shame. I sigh.

 

Maybe when the battle is over and the dead are buried

And this man and his armies are running, defeated and hurried.

I'll be able to try and understand his anger and his hate.

But I am standing with my army and the hour is drawing late.

 

And I must sound the horn to charge.

And now I go to my fate.

 

By Christopher H. Holte, channeling someone elses memories

Population Growth and Disaster, Rebirth of Malthus or Time for Enlightenment??

Review of Scientific American Article

Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People?

This article in Scientific American is comprehensive and deals with the subject really well. I think anyone who is savvy on the subject would agree with their thesis that:

"Slowing the rise in human numbers is essential for the planet--but it doesn't require population control"

It is worth reading though I have a few critiques on some of the points.

Three Dead Fingers

The dead don't care

Whether death came from a firing squad

Or from the air.

 

The dying don't care

Whether their enemies are religious

Or mindlessly shooting targets from a drone

 

The dead don't care

Whether the bombs that killed them:

Are stamped "made in the USA,"

"Russia,"

Home Grown,

Or made in China.

 

This old game

Is neither fun

nor Good for anyone

Or the least bit fair.

 

I hear the old ones

The fat, gray haired ones

In stuffed shirts,

Wearing uniform ties

and gray coats

Presenting their bombs in brief cases

As footnotes in floods of paper

Drowning the dead in words.

 

In rhetoric

About fanatic religion

And rebels

And no fly zones.

Pontificating

and pointing fingers

At each other

 

Like bombs of misunderstanding

Or wands of curses and imprecations

 

As if those words were the jet planes

RPGs and drones,

Rocks being thrown

Delivering up death.

 

They point

As if they were speaking spells

and they weren't all of them liars

And guilty instead.

Each revealing his own guilt

With three fingers.

 

These old Greybacks

Hominid standing gorillas

Send children to fight their battles

While playing at rhetoric

And objectifying the dead.

The dead are ISIL and rebels

Are Shia and Sunna

Yazidi, Christian and Jews

Tossed in makeshift trenches

In ecumenical horror

With lime thrown in to reduce the stench.

 

All the While the greybacks pontificate from the bench

And partisans rant and rage

At who is at fault

and who built this cage?

That is tearing people apart

And throwing the pieces in graves

Where they bury their own pretenses

To civilization.

Remember the three fingered thing

When you point.

 

Bombs of misdirection

Lies piled upon lies

And meaningless facts

Piled in manilla stacks

On bureaucratic tables!

 

Pooh pooh, the food won't reach you

We bombed the convoy

So your benefactors can number among the dead!

We send you our bureaucratic condolences instead!

Our cordon will kill the rebels

And their families, children, relatives, neighbors, friends

And enemies

In deadly efficiency

 

The machine of war has been unleashed

In all its efficient confusion

Assumptions leading to contusions

Well meaning horror

Generating even more misery

As folks use bullets to stop bullets

And bombs to stop bombs.

 

How much better to escalate?

Than to build mountains

Of mindless hate?

"I want revenge because I am scared of you."

And you want revenge on me too!

We have harmed one another

What else can we do?

We fight near magiddo

Yet another Armageddon!

And centuries of antichrists

 

3 fingers accuse me too.

And my ancestors.

We survive on grace

In hopes of atonement

But not merit.

 

The dead can't point fingers

Only the living can do that

Their fingers have been severed

And tossed in trenches

By guilty survivors

Who will point at one another

And say

"This is your fault"

That they were buried to day

 

And the three fingered principle

Says yes it is ours

 

I can only look on in horror

As once again mixed intentions

Spin out in insanity.

The Accuser does his job

Hoping someone will stop him

The Satan is a prosecutor doing his job

With a jury of angels

None of us humans can lie to.

It is just facts.

Bones in the ground

That tell a story of injury and fear

Hunger and privation

And cannibal violence done by man

Human graybacks mindlessly fighting

Over resources and power

Using fear.

 

The dead don't accuse us

But their spirits do

Each was a person

Not a skeleton

A friend maybe

Or a lover

Someone to get to know

Objectified in death

 

Only the suffering is left

In echos and waves of hurt and fear

In us, their relations.

That three fingered thing

Is also our hope for salvation.

 

When we no longer feel

For what we have done

We are numb

And we are dying.

 

It is the living who suffer

And we are fools

Because we see these things

Time and again

Yet we keep pointing at ourselves

Instead of pointing all our fingers

In outstretched hands

And clearing the rubble.

 

Christopher H. Holte

Who Fired General Michael Flynn?

I've been trying to figure out Trump's foreign policy. Key to my confusion is listening to Donald Trump. So I turned to Michael Flynn to try to resolve it. His views seem to have "evolved" from when he was still in the military to the present moment. Not too long ago he conceded that the rise of ISIS/Al Qaeda was the responsibility of George W. Bush and the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. At one time he was in charge of our Defense Intelligence Agency. During that time he was in charge of interrogations. He was in charge of "torture lite" while in the military, he did shut down the amateur hour "torture heavy" efforts. Now he says;

"I felt the country was at such risk and I was advising five of the candidates running for president. They all reached out to me … Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker, Ben Carson Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump. … They would ask me about national security, what’s happening in the world, my thoughts on particular issues." CNN_Flynn

Trump firt went to Russia while still:

"in the military [while director of the Defense Intelligence Agency]. I went there on a fully approved trip. I had a great trip. I was the first U.S. officer ever allowed inside the headquarters of the GRU [Russian intelligence]. I was able to brief their entire staff. I gave them a leadership OPD. [Professional development class on leadership] and talked a lot about the way the world’s unfolding." CNN_Flynn

He admits that:

"We were working closely with them on the Iranian nuclear deal." CNN_Flynn

Ultimately with Russian and Chinese cooperation we got a Nuclear Deal. Thanks to Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry's efforts. He, like Kerry, doesn't want to give them any credit for making such a deal for partisan reasons.

Bullying the Arabs

Flynn talks about demanding respect in return for continual aid from the USA. He maintains that we have to demand a relationship with Arab (and NATO) members:

"to be one based on respect and acknowledging that there is a cost for not doing that. There is a cost." CNN_Flynn

In that first part it sounds like he is talking about mutual respect. But he's talking about "respect" mafia style. He literally contradicts himself later in the same interview:

"you can put a different set of demands on these guys. Our conversations have been too polite. Our conversations have been political conversations with political people who try to be politically correct and not with people who can say, okay, what is it we want to have going forward? CNN_Flynn

Flynn is closer to Trump's views than Pence is. Like with Bush signing the Status of Forces agreement they blame Obama for, they criticize our involvement and then call for more involvement. Both seem to want to send in more troops, but bully the Arab states to pay for them. Maybe they want to invade Saudi Arabia next.

Why was he fired?

But I wrote this article as a vehicle for answering the question of why Flynn was fired. The answer is that apparently Flynn had his own ideas about Military Strategy. The Wasington Post reports:

"In 2010, Flynn rankled many of his counterparts in the intelligence community when he published an article that was sharply critical of the information that spy agencies were assembling in Afghanistan. The effort was so focused on tracking insurgents that U.S. military and diplomatic leaders got little to help them understand the political, economic and cultural issues driving the insurgency." [Washington Post]

The reality is that the article illustrated Flynn's frustration with fighting an insurgency that it was obvious the senior brass wanted no part of. The Washington Post reported:

"Flynn clashed with other high-ranking officials, including Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael G. Vickers. Officials said Flynn had opposed Vickers’ efforts to make significant cuts to large intelligence centers established to support the U.S. military’s regional overseas commands. A former CIA operative, Vickers has sought to model the DIA’s training and overseas presence more closely on its civilian counterpart, according to current and former U.S. officials." [Washington Post]

Flynn wanted the DIA to be more involved in the conflict. Not less.

Business Insider shared the "water cooler" arguments:

"Flynn attempted to push DIA analyses and operators into the field and other high-intensity operations. This ran counter to how the DIA saw itself, leading many to believe that Flynn's vision for the agency was disruptive." BI Article

He wanted to make DIA more like the Joint Special Ops Forces he'd run before coming there.

"Flynn's critics also maintained that his management style was chaotic and that his aggressive push for changes often did not include an adequate follow-through." BI Article

If you are going to integrate field battalion level Intelligence with Brigade level and Division level intelligence, then you institute policies to do so with the collaboration and cooperation of the people involved. Flynn wrote an article on the subject, but he doesn't seem to have followed through with his talk. And since he was the man in charge, it was his job to develop a plan and execute. He had taken over an intel operation that was using "Torture Heavy" techniques strait out of the Inquisition or the Russian playbook. He would implement less heavy handed "torture lite" techniques that met the Geneva Conventions (barely). He'd take credit for the "new" methods.

"Flynn previously served as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Special Operations Command. During this time he was credited with creating innovative interrogation techniques leading to significant breakthroughs in counterterrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan." BI Article

I'm not sure what he actually did. But I can guess that he stopped the heavy handed methods and had his interrogators applying more FBI style questioning methods. I'm not sure he stopped the extreme isolation and sensory deprivation techniques, but I know Obama ordered him to.

Michael Flynn seems to have been actually booted for not respecting the chain of command, assuming that the Obama Administration and joint chiefs, had "no strategy" and for pushing for changes that would have required more boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, than anyone wanted to put there. His 2010 report "Fixing Intel" pushed for better intelligence integration, and more focus on understanding the local politics and culture. However, the strategy that the administration is pursuing is to pull out of direct action in Iraq and Afghanistan not to send in more Troops and DIA agents.

Calling Out Islamic Extremism

Of course he says he was booted for calling out Islamic Extremism. In a Washington Times Article:

“As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him,” Gen. Flynn said. “The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.” [Washington Times]

After saying that, he then contradicts himself! Saying we need:

"Iraq-style boots on the ground operation and the same type of coalition Mr. Bush assembled for Iraq is needed to defeat the Islamic State. He stressed the importance of giving Arab nations a leading role in the conflict, but he said Western troops would have to do much of the heavy lifting." [Washington Times]

Essentially he seems to want us to re-invade the Middle East!

Which is of course exactly the strategy he criticized when talking about President George Washington Bush! So the problem isn't that Obama and the Joint Chiefs don't have a clear strategy it is that he has his own ideas and doesn't like any strategy they might come up with. But essentially has no strategy that would reduce the human carnage of folks from the United States.

He also hints at the real problem with our efforts against ISIS:

“if we catch them financing, if they funnel money to IS, that’s when sanctions and other actions have to kick in.” [Washington Times]

He blames Obama for financing ISIL, but he neglects that our real problem is that our Sunni Allies are often on both sides, or ambivalent, about stopping ISIL, that the rebels against Assad are often half in the ISIL camp and that this is a thorny diplomatic subject due to the oil regime. The strategy he seems to want to pursue is to enlist Russia and Assad to help us attack ISIL, while bullying the Sunni Arab Gulf States. I'm sure that would work as well as invading Iraq or toppling Qaddafi. Meanwhile Trump talks about simply stealing the Oil.

Oye Vey!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/08/15/trump-adviser-michael-t-flynn-on-his-dinner-with-putin-and-why-russia-today-is-just-like-cnn/

http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-t-flynn-fired-from-dia-2014-4

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/1/michael-flynn-former-military-intel-chief-iraq-war/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/head-of-pentagon-intelligence-agency-forced-out-officials-say/2014/04/30/ec15a366-d09d-11e3-9e25-188ebe1fa93b_story.html

2010 Report "Fixing Intel: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/AfghanistanMGFlynn_Jan2010.pdf

Sustainable Economic Policy VII

Responsible Fiscal Policy through Functional Finance IS Possible

On April 18 2016, Brookings Institute hosted "the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), in partnership with the Global Economy and Development program", hosted a public discussion on “How can fiscal policy be growth-promoting and an anchor for macroeconomic stability?” They featured remarks by my favorite economists; Joseph Stiglitz, Massimo D’Alema, Jason Furman, Stephanie Kelton, and Ralf Stegner. The panel was chaired and moderated by Brookings Global Vice President Kemal Derviş. The webpage open:

"Fiscal policy has proven to be an effective way to stabilize macroeconomic growth and reduce the amplitude of the economic cycle. When used repeatedly, or excessively, however, it can lead to high levels of public debt that can undermine expectations of macroeconomic stability and so reduce or reverse the impact on growth. Getting the balance right is therefore critical in designing an optimal fiscal policy to support long-term growth." [Brookings]

Fiscal policy is currently restrained by our Privateering Private Banking System, moderated by Central Banks who govern the money supply in the interest of the private banking system -- and of "monied interests" who often wield massive power through their control of credit and ownership of properties directly or indirectly through debt.

Why Quantitative Easing really doesn't work that well

Quantitative easing "works" to a limited degree by easing liquidity through expanding the money supply (monetizing debt). It has the aim of:

"when the Fed buys these financial instruments, the money supply in the economy increases. This is evident when one looks at the U.S. monetary base, which shows that total amount of currency that is in circulation with the public, or held as commercial bank deposits in central bank reserves. (See Figure 3) [Forbes]

Quantitative Easing Cannot Substitute for Fiscal Policy

The Problem is that quantitative easing cannot substitute for fiscal policy. Ultimately the best way to inject money into the system is for the Federal Government to spend it directly on Goods and services. We've known this since Alfred Maynard Keynes wrote his seminal work on the subject. In our current system this is constrained by the need to "balance" budgets by issuing treasury debt to cover the money created.

Vertical / Horizontal Money What is That???

The ideas behind the post Keynesian notions of Modern Money Theory (MMT) hit me by surprise. They seemed counter intuitive given my own education on the history of the Breton Woods Agreement, structure of our Reserve System, etc... And some of the terms used throw me. My mind has to translate them to good Anglo Saxon terminology just to wrap my brain around them. In order to make other points, however, I need to both be able to wrap my head around these ideas and explain them to others. So if you are interested in the subject I invite you to puzzle through it with me. If not you might want to skip this post and come back to it when you are ready.