According to a federal lawsuit (Morrow v Tenaha) filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, there was “no legal justification” for what happened next. Morrow was stopped by Tenaha Deputy Marshall Barry Washington and asked to step out of his car. Deputy Washington then searched Morrow’s car.

Then Deputy Washington was joined at the scene by Shelby County Precinct Four Constable Randy Whatley who searched the car with a dog.

Following two searches of his car, Morrow was asked by Deputy Washington if he had any money, and he said yes, he was carrying about $3,900 in his wallet. Deputy Washington promptly seized $3,969 from Morrow, confiscated his two cell phones, and arrested him for “money laundering.”

“Washington had no reason to believe Plaintiff Morrow was guilty of money laundering,” says the federal lawsuit.

“Defendants Washington and Russell told Plaintiff Morrow they would hold him prisoner and prosecute him for money laundering unless he would agree to forfeit the $3969. Under this duress and these threats, Defendants Washington and Russell coerced Plaintiff Morrow to execute documents memorializing the forfeiture, and released him, and warned him to not hire a lawyer or try to get his money back.” The “money laundering” charges were subsequently dismissed.

Morrow is a black African American and the lead plaintiff in a case involving eight motorists who claim they were stopped and stripped of their cash for no other provocation than driving or riding through Tenaha while black. The cars they all drove were either rented or displayed out-of-state license plates.

On August 13, 2007, Deputy Washington lifted $50,291.00 from two black African Americans from Washington D.C. and Maryland who were traveling through Texas together.

“Washington threatened Plaintiffs with charges of money laundering and lengthy sentences if they would not execute documents allowing the seizure or if they otherwise contested the seizure,” says the lawsuit. “Washington did not charge Plaintiffs with any criminal offense, nor did he have legal justification to do so.”

On June 11, 2008, Deputy Washington confiscated $13,000 from a black African American from Wisconsin.

“Washington threatened to bring money laundering charges against Plaintiff, and to prosecute him on those charges, if he did not execute documents permitting Defendant Washington’s seizure and forfeiture of the money,” says the lawsuit. “Under this coercion, Plaintiff signed the documents.”

On April 18, 2007, Deputy Washington stopped and detained another pair of black African American motorists, Linda Dorman and Marvin Pearson, both from Ohio. While under detention they were questioned by Shelby County District Attorney Investigator Danny Green. He asked them if they had any money. According to court documents Dorman and Pearson admitted to having $4,500, but after Green confiscated the cash under the usual coercive threats, he handed them a receipt for only $4,000. No charges against Dorman or Pearson were ever filed.

Jennifer Boatwright is a white woman from Texas, but on April 26, 2007 she was driving down Highway 59 near Tenaha with Ronald Henderson, a black African American. They were stopped and detained by Deputy Washington, then questioned by Washington and D.A. Investigator Green.

“Green threatened to bring money laundering charges against Plaintiffs Boatwright and Henderson and to take their children and put them in foster care if Plaintiffs would not sign papers prepared by Defendant Green to authorize the seizure,” says the lawsuit. “Under coercion, Plaintiffs Boatwright and Henderson complied.” They handed over $6,000 in cash. No charges were ever filed against them.

“Now, under Texas law, if you are pulled over and accused of a real crime, police are permitted to take money and other valuables that you might have used in your crime, or received from your crime,” explains CNN correspondent Gary Tuchman in a May, 2009 blog post at AC360.

As Tuchman explains, the forfeiture law is intended to take bad money and put it to good use, but after an extensive public information request, the CNN team discovered that District Attorney Lynda K. Russell has collected an estimated $3 million in forfeiture funds to purchase such things as $195 for Tootsie Pops, Dum Dums, and Dubble Bubble that she contributed to a poultry festival, $524 for a popcorn machine and popcorn, $400 for barbecue catering, and at least two checks totaling $6,000 to a local Baptist church.

“But this one, this check, really stands out,” reports Tuchman in an archived transcript of the story. “This is the check the DA wrote for $10,000 and paid directly to police officer Barry Washington for what are described as investigative costs.”

With camera rolling, Tuchman asks Russell and Washington for comments, but they both refuse on account of pending litigation. In federal court documents the defendants deny the charges, claim to have no knowledge of alleged facts, claim immunity as officials, and ask that the case be dismissed.

Republican D.A. Russell was elected by 53 percent of the vote against a Democrat opponent in 2000, according to official numbers posted by the Texas Secretary of State. In 2004, she increased her general election share to 59 percent against her predecessor, Democrat Karen S. Price, who tried to stage a comeback after a failed effort to get elected in 2000 as a Republican District Judge. In 2008, D.A. Russell ran unopposed. No one that year could have made a campaign issue of the federal suit that was filed after the Spring primary but before the Fall general election.

During the summer of 2009, lawyers battled over discovery motions. Plaintiffs are trying to certify a class action lawsuit and therefore want volumes of video and documentation well beyond the eight named cases. On August 20, Federal District Judge T. John Ward largely granted ACLU requests for more materials and clarified the legal path to possible class action certification.

On the defense side, attorneys argued that they should be allowed to discover “travel itineraries, calendars, journals, or other documents reflecting schedule and/or any travel; all credit card bills/receipts; all receipts for hotel, gas, meals, rental cars; and photographs from any trips and of any items seized.” Judge Ward agreed, but only if the records were “readily available.”

Lawyers for the police and D.A.’s office also wanted plaintiffs to turn over bank records, income tax returns, and employment records; in an apparent attempt to revisit the “money laundering” charges that were never filed in the first place. It was a scary request supported by scary argumentation:

“In other words,” argued lawyers for the Shelby County law enforcement establishment in their federal filings, “even if the initial traffic stop lacked probable cause, the forfeiture action could proceed and the State could still meet its civil case burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence and the property could still be forfeited.”

The authority the cops were seeking was chilling. They could stop people for no reason, take their cash, spend it, meanwhile filing no charges of wrongdoing. All the while, the authorities of East Texas or wherever could count on a federal court order that would allow them to go after the banking, tax, and employment records of their innocent victims if they tried to get their money back. Judge Ward denied those parts of discovery.

The discovery motions also revealed that collection accounts were not always well kept. One front-line collector argued that he kept bulk numbers only and could not provide evidence of how much money was taken on any single occasion. To get your money back from these actors, they may demand that you prove it’s not contraband and then prove how much they took.

But these East Texas law enforcers are not finished grasping at bizarre license to ply their trade as the cash cops of Highway 59. D.A. Russell now seeks to use the forfeiture funds to pay for her defense. In early October, the ACLU filed a brief with the Texas Attorney General’s Office to prevent the forfeiture funds from being spent to defend alleged abuse of forfeiture powers.

“Even if it were determined that, under other circumstances, the District Attorney should be permitted to use forfeited assets to pay for legal representation, such an action in this case should be prohibited because it would give the appearance of impropriety,” argues the ACLU brief.

“The Plaintiffs claim the funds were taken illegally. To permit the District Attorney to use them would suggest that law-breakers may profit from ill-gotten gains, the very problem that the asset forfeiture law was created to prevent.”

Cash is a lucrative temptation. Empowering officials to take cash money from passing motorists and give it to attorneys who can help them keep it is a plain recipe for placing law enforcement powers in the hands of highway forfeiture gangs.

As a theorist of the Elliot Wave, Prechter grounds his forecasts upon a mathematical pattern that tracks impulses of social mood. Everything else is symptomatic.

The background theory of the Elliott Wave is different from the kind of thinking that expects a straight-line series of effects from causes. Instead, the Elliott Wave returns us to pre-modern intuitions of cycles. It must have been clear to anyone caught up in the recent Bear market rally that pure stubbornness had taken hold of buyers. On Prechter’s account, that stubbornness is about to change sides.

If the humming engine of human history rides a geometry of social mood, then downtimes cannot be caused by anything that uptimes do — although consequences of downtimes can be altered by the preparations that uptimes make. As social mood descends into the seventh circle of hell, there will be every temptation to blame the descent itself upon uptime actors. Yet all blaming will miss an important point.

What could the natural purpose of downtime be? In the bullish 1978 book, Elliott Wave Principle, Prechter and A.J. Frost argue that the up and down waves of social mood provide “the most efficient method of achieving both fluctuation and progress in a linear movement” (26). If social mood adjusts the mode of our approach to reality, then we see things differently and engage them differently when we are up. But that means there are things to learn when we are down, too.

On the fractal model of the Elliott Wave, we experience smaller fluctuations of mood within a series of larger patterns. In his bearish book of 2002, Conquer the Crash, Prechter argues that we are on the cusp of a very large degree downward drift. We will be learning hard lessons the hard way, and largely because that’s what down moods are good for. Such lessons will be meant to last more than a lifetime, and we are the generation fated to carry these lessons forward.

We will shortly see which lessons from the high times have any worth in the valley of our shadows. Old man winter is a rock hard grader. There can be no bonus points for students who do not use the warm months to prepare. Get ready for some serious grade deflation.

To begin thinking about the political future that would correspond with Prechter’s crash assumptions, we could turn our clocks back to Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency or the less-remembered panic of 1837. Unlike Roosevelt, who was able to transform depression politics into a winning streak, Democrat Martin Van Buren was not able to win even a second term against the mood of 1840. He was ousted by the “log cabin” Whig candidate William Henry Harrison, who promptly died of pneumonia.

Illness is a fateful consequence of down moods according to Prechter’s systematic theory of Socionomics. Looked into your local flu clinic lately?

Perhaps the most reliable guide to downtime politics will be found in the life—and the curiously timed death—of Huey Long, who argued that American politics had better deliver a Christmas tree after every election if politicians wanted people to prefer the ballot box as their form of political change. Depression politics killed the messenger but not the message. If the Constitution survives the coming crash, it will earn its keep through tangible benefits.

Returning to the crash of 1835 to 1842, I choose to think about Emerson, who opened 1836 with the essay “Nature.” If you want to maintain order in your mind and spirit the thing to do is take long walks in the woods. Interesting how Ken Burns turns our attention this very week to the conservation system expressed in our national parks. There is an American mecca, and it boasts a jobs program that can’t be outsourced.

Reading Emerson’s 1836 text as a downtime crammer gets more interesting when we see that Chapter 2 is about “Commodity.” How poor can we be, Emerson asks, so long as we live upon the earth? “Nature, in its ministry to man,” he writes, “is not only the material, but is also the process and the result.” We live in the arms of a “divine charity.” Commodity cuts a path to Beauty so long as we nurture the inwardness of the work we do. Emerson pulls Thoreau aside in 1837. “Do you keep a journal?” As the nation falls into panic, Thoreau began to write.

On the model of nature that was so important to Emerson and Thoreau during that great depression, I think about a big tree. Part of the tree puts out leaves, reaching up, showing off. We have been through a great leafing time together.

Another part of the tree works ever in the dark, quietly pushing downward in solitary, unforeseeable effort. Of course the deepest roots could blame the highest leaves for making all the dark work necessary. But that would be like blaming Wall Street for the collective turn we are about to make.

Then there is the ugly stuff, the kind of thing that Thoreau went to jail over. As downtime invites the spiritualist to dig deeper within, it also kicks up real dust. Never before have the tools of conflict been so lethally arrayed. Remember the Alamo? That was 1836. Over in Alabama, the Creek nation was driven off its land, again. In Florida, federal troops at Ft. Defiance drew “first blood” in the Seminole War.

If Prechter is right for the right reasons, then in about two more years it should be clear enough to everyone why the peace movement must prevail. Surely, that would be a lesson worth learning once and for all.

Prior to the August recess of 2009, state actors might have done something to alleviate the crush rather than postpone it. Instead, our policy machinery has been spinning away in bubble land. As Mike Whitney sez, “It’s been two years since the crisis began and nothing … NOTHING has been done to fix the banking system.” A public ethic that is prepared to anticipate and seize opportunities for correction might do some good work in displacing the gaps that policy leadership won’t close.

Of course, we should pray to be wrong when we forecast a hurricane headed our way. But we should also get busy making preparations — both individually and socially. What would a progressive response to depression look like? Food, shelter, utilities, health care, education, and opportunities for productive labor — these are a few items to get us started. We certainly won’t be allowed to forget the challenge of peace.

A progressive approach might begin by imagining the correction of workable relationships not yet displaced, whether they are public, nonprofit, cooperative, or profit-seeking. This notion of relationship correction is developed as a first response against popular images of crisis that divide reality into so many warring units of self-preservation. Individualistic — and usually well-armed — imaginations have striking cultural power. They are certainly the kinds of ideas that count for ‘original intent’ in the USA.

Grassroots progressive planning can help to grow another kind of imagination, but it won’t be the dream of all things collectivized. Transforming all relationships from private to public is not the same thing as making the world productive, ethical, or just. Versus agendas for complete nationalization on the one hand or complete privatization on the other, therefore, a progressive agenda might prepare some realistic guidelines for crisis planning that are corrective, liberating, and respectful of the workable past.

Grocery stores and department stores can deliver goods to market. Soup kitchens and homeless shelters can meet basic needs. Schools — with their lunchrooms, classrooms, and gyms — help people to grow in many ways. Progressive planning can try to keep these institutions functioning together even as they are — all of them — corrected.

By rehearsing progressive responses in advance of crisis it may be possible to prevent excesses of panic and conflict that we are just beginning to see. As some forms of assets continue to implode and take productive capacities down with them — putting people into frightened and frightening moods — we might focus on assets that can be preserved, reconstructed, reorganized, and even extended nevertheless. Already some voices are talking of depression as re-education. We might think of a great depression as a great teacher and then throw ourselves into the learning and unlearning that great education requires.

Against the already growing conflicts between one-sided responses, I think progressive plans for depression might anticipate the blame game. One side is prepared to blame socialism. Another side will blame capitalist greed. Progressive reformers can perhaps strike a mediating position that looks for corrections both in the buildup and misuse of state power and in the pursuit of market growth. While some voices would have us learn the neglected value of personal responsibility, others will encourage nurturing communal interdependence. A progressive agenda might remind both sides how neither can speak the whole truth.

On questions of capital, I have been drawn to San Francisco economist Henry George because of the way he thinks about public and private coordination. He has a strong sense of public responsibility and a keen respect for entrepreneurial talent. A progressive approach to corrections in capital development would be neither public nor private en bloc. Our right to commons does not have to overturn our right to private properties — or vice versa.

Right wingers focus on workers’ dependence upon capital growth and earnings, while left wingers point out there can be no capital without labor first. A progressive agenda schooled in market theory might be able to transform these colliding interests into a more humane and more flexible economy. Capital is like seedcorn as right wingers claim, because capital contributes to next year’s harvest. But capital is also something very different from seedcorn, as left-wingers can demonstrate, because the collective organization typically demanded by capitalists prevents actual harvesters of seedcorn from calling it their own next year.

Perhaps the great opportunity of the correction challenge is to work out a more progressive approach to the relationship between capital and labor such that the seedcorn we all help to harvest throughout the work-day is treated as a resource worthy of intense public concern. This doesn’t necessarily mean that capital is taken out of private hands, but it does mean that private holders of returns on investment have real obligations to the social labor that makes all earnings possible.

It can’t hurt to deliberate progressive plans and principles for a coming correction. Even if the crisis never comes, the exercise will help us to discover how real peace can be fought for.

The workers were likely justified in their calculations of job cuts. From the point of view of American experience it just seems like common sense to worry that a capital enterprise is going to eventually fire half or more of its workers. Why would privatization behave any differently in China than it does here?

There are exceptions of course. Jim Cramer recently introduced his television audience to the CEO of USA steel producer Nucor who has cut capacity in half without laying-off any workers. At Nucor workers have been kept on payroll, but hours have been drastically cut. Nucor is a remarkable exception to the rule of private capital.

Shifting our point of view to Chinese workers, we can read statements by Communist Party officials exhorting the people to imitate methods of efficiency that are studied by every B-School MBA: mergers, capacity cuts, new “efficiencies” of technology. Now that the Communist Party has primed the pump of capital development, there are certain objective laws that must be obeyed.

I don’t recall reading where a Communist Party official called for layoffs outright, but anyone who has studied Capital Volume One can figure out what results from mergers, downsizing, and technology upgrades. Marx snidely called the beneficiaries “free workers” which is exactly what the workers of Tonghua steel decided not to be.

In the USA we have some rules about layoffs and shutdowns which require some employers to give proper notice in the form of time or money. Despite these rules, a half million workers per month are being “set free.” In many cases the employers express genuine regret as they appeal to objective laws of sustainable business plans.

On both sides of the Pacific, capital is undergoing development in ways that workers well understand. The Tonghua steel workers simply did the math.

What appears to be missing on both sides of the Pacific is some sort of regulation of the labor market such that jobs lost at one site are correlated in real time to jobs created at another. Or to put the question more carefully, when capital development in one place subtracts a labor cost, what coordinates the addition of an equal labor cost somewhere else?

We are hearing so much these days about the heroic expansion of monetary and sovereign balance sheets. Where is the heroic balance sheet for labor costs, whether in America or the People’s Republic?

Taking a cue from the logic of cap and trade, such a balance sheet for labor might be called catch and trade. Get a license to carry capital only if you take out an obligation to return a portion of labor costs. This is only fair, since capital is no good to anyone without the jobs that will be needed to employ it. You just promise to pay for those jobs so long as your capital permit shall last. If your business plan later calls for capital development to eliminate jobs, then you either keep paying the labor costs you agreed to earlier or you trade that labor cost off to some other capital carrier.

This system would not necessarily transfer the worker, but it would seek to keep the total labor costs of the capital-carrying marketplace at a level that would enable workers to enter a robust labor market at any time.

As it stands in conception so far, a catch and trade system would be indifferent to whether an employer is private or not. What difference does it make to a worker whether the capital that he brings to life is financed by private or sovereign credit?

In the crisis we face today, it is still an open question whether capital will be better managed by capitalists or communists. At the Tonghua Steel plant, the question was not academic. 25,000 precious jobs were at stake. The Chinese steel workers were saying something important for all of us. They were saying that employment should be taken much more seriously by the folks who would carry capital around these days. They saw a jobless recovery in their future and they said hell no.

The same general logic applies to credit and debt. Our current crisis of labor and capital in the USA was produced by a wealth implosion that followed from certain objective laws of credit. Individuals and corporations helped to overheat the credit structure from below, happily assisted by financiers whose business it should have been to more responsibly coordinate the total credit picture.

In many cases, the debt load is still sustainable and credit scores are good. But many other individuals and corporations got caught “under water.” I don’t think of all the victims as a foolish class. There was a zeit-geist which had so many people thinking that they were part of a system that could keep going. What was more difficult to see, although it was pointed out plenty of times, was how the sum of our actions added up to a toxic level of credit and debt.

The helpful thing about cap-and-trade logic is that it recognizes some system-wide quantity that is a matter of public concern and provides some real-time market pressure on that basis. A cap on system-wide credit might have helped to keep development sustainable.

From China the daily news brings us a headline that expresses the collective fear of labor markets around the globe. Joblessness is not the road to recovery. How else can we say it loud and clear?

“I would much rather own equities at 9000 on the DOW than have a long investment in govt bonds or a continuously rolling investment in short term money. Now, again I don’t know where it’s going to go next week or next month,” said Buffett in a quote archived at Huffington Post.

“But you still think equities is the place to be?” asked Becky Quick.

“I own them myself,” chuckled Buffett, putting mouth where money is at.

For my part–ignoring for the moment how “media savvy” the Oracle from Omaha can be–I have been paying attention to Buffett because I think what he says can be helpful in trying to understand a way upward in the direction of job growth. Also, with my brief experience in market trading, I think he does have the more sustainable long-term view of market investment. If the market crashes next week, he will still have plenty to work with.

Although I have NO IDEA what people should do with their savings this month, I do think that whenever more people decide to truly invest in equities there will be a greater chance of a recovery based on jobs. The term “jobless recovery” to me has all the charm of fingernails scraping a blackboard. Anyone who speaks seriously about a jobless recovery is only declaring that he belongs to the class which has no Real Jobs to lose.

For the rest of us, the combination of depression and joblessness cannot suggest images of anything resembling recovery. Already the image of Skip Gates in handcuffs warns us how suddenly ugly things can get.

So I am looking for a way to think about the requirements of a recovery “with jobs” and I am following the guidance of San Francisco economist Henry George who argues that workers will create value on the spot so long as they are provided proper tools. From this cue I go looking through Google News for signs of capital expenditures and investments. What’s up with tool development these days?

Notice that I did not begin my search for recovery with “consumer spending,” because I think that the mainstream chatter about this is another way of capitulating to depression. In other words, please tell me why consumers are going to increase spending while they are losing jobs? A labor-centered discussion of recovery would change the language of “jobless recovery” into “capital stagnation” so that we may more forthrightly name the thing that needs to be directly confronted.

The run-up in technology-sector equities these past few months gives us something to work with. This is a prime tooling sector for advancing development along broad dimensions of opportunity. Jim Cramer makes a compelling case that the tech sector is also more free to refresh itself compared to other sectors plundered by pirates of finance. Yet the tech sector is beginning to quiver and quake upon rocking foundations.

The first item I find when looking for “capital investment” is a press release from the National Venture Capital Association announcing that the Biotech sector has attracted a 67 percent increase “in Seed and Early Stage fundings” during Q2. Clean Technology is the next fastest growing venture sector, followed by Software and Medical Devices. Although the raw numbers look hopeful because of very recent increases, the historical levels of capital at play take us back more than a decade, “close to what we saw in 1997 before the Internet bubble.”

Next item on the Capital expenditure front is a pep talk by Andy Rowsell-Jones at Gartner, Inc., who is telling IT directors not to capitulate to cuts in IT budgets.

“While IT expenditure may be a small proportion–ranging from 1.7 percent in the construction and engineering industry to 12.6 percent in the banking and finance sector–budgets have been cut in light of the economic situation. Rowsell-Jones said IT spending has risen every year from 2003, but is being cut for this year, according to a recent Gartner survey.” The banking sector is not even upgrading its own computers? Hold your expletives, and pass the subpoenas..

The third item is from Stockholm, reviewing the quarterly report from Ericsson Telephone: “Several telecom operators have announced plans to reduce investments in order to maintain cash-flow in the economic downturn, a trend that can hurt companies like Ericsson that supply network equipment.”

From this short sample of findings we may draw a preliminary hypothesis that capitalism is in no great position to deliver the tools that will be needed for a speedier economic recovery. And this is why so long as Capitalism Knows Best we are staring at a chasm that is called the jobless recovery.

What is called for is something we might call pinpoint socialism where public resources are put to use injecting support for tool-making in precise contexts. In the case of IT upgrades and telecom network equipment, the needs are “shovel ready.” They have been planned and budgeted. Suppliers are at hand. Only a vicious cycle of “free market cash implosion” has trickled down. If active and sensible agents of public trust were to get busy in these areas, putting our debt bubble to productive use–instead of taking August recesses–jobs could still be “saved or created” in the near term.

As a preliminary parameter for public injections of funds to make new tools, there could be a simple baseline requirement that qualifying companies must state the need in their SEC filings. If the companies are caught lying about their capital investment needs, theoretically there is an agency that could send in the Cambridge Police.

Along a second line of analysis offered by Henry George, successful experiments are taking place in Pennsylvania and Michigan regarding a different approach to land policy. Wikipedia has a good orientation to Land Value Tax (LVT) that gives brief credit to Henry George. The basic idea is to shift the burden of taxation away from capital (capital gains) and labor (income tax) — both of which we need more of — and place the taxation onto land (which is ever in fixed supply).

According to reports archived at earthrights.net the experiment with LVT has been underway in Pennsylvania since the 90s. The process begins with a “split tax” that separates property improvements from land itself, and then gradually shifts the tax burden away from improvements and onto land itself. What the land tax is supposed to do is discourage land accumulation beyond the capacity to put it directly to productive use. Land at the margins will therefore be ready for the next person who can actually make it pay.

In a paper titled, “Can the Land Tax Help Curb Urban Sprawl? Evidence from Growth Patterns in Pennsylvania,” H. Spencer Banzhaf from the Georgia State University Department of Economics and Nathan Lavery argue that, yes, the land tax can effectively counteract the nefarious magnates of sprawl, too.

In Genesee County Michigan, home of the legendary city of Flint, alternative land use practices have also been developed. If you live next to an abandoned property you adopt it from the County Land Bank (LBA) for $25. All you have to do is promise to take care of it. Now here’s what the executive director says to any of you non-Genesee residents:

“Any non-Genesee County residents may acquire LBA property only with an enforceable plan to place the property into immediate productive use (meaning the property is to be occupied immediately or with the immediate commencement of some form of development project that fits our stated mission). This applies to vacant lots as well as properties with structures, residential and commercial properties.”

The LBA principle of land liberation is right out of “Progress and Poverty” by Henry George, which argues at length that labor and capital will keep each other more productive if all unused land is set free. Need we remind ourselves there will never be a cheaper time in our lives to liberate the land monopolists?

Finally, while we’re at it, may I venture to suggest, that wherever today you find people complaining about “Mexican illegals,” tomorrow–with fresh tools and liberated land–everybody will marvel at the rise of cities of gold.

This week may give us a chance to put some big questions onto the table about the way things work and the Real Meaning of the stresses we’re about to undergo, together. Let’s talk about the Real Market, shall we? And the Real Deal that we’re all in the process of cutting.

For five months I’ve been cramming market analysis the way I used to cram geometry the week before college boards. And for strictly educational purposes I have taken some advice from John Dewey by making my study “hands on” by putting a few hundred bucks into an online trading account. Thirty nine trades later, my portfolio is outperforming the dollar, so I haven’t lost any Real Money yet, but I’ve learned a few things.

Dewey was correct. What you learn is different depending on whether you are watching or participating. Put just a little money in an active market account and suddenly things go pop and start dancing all around you. Right away you lose your sense of what’s really up or down.

An abstract lesson that the market teaches you is the distinction between judgment and theory. You take or sell a position at so-and-so a price. That’s judgment. You base the decision on what? After your first few killer trades you begin to feel a gut-level desire for some theory that will help you to keep your head from spinning and your palms dry. Yes, a few hundred dollars means that much to me. So you have to go looking for market theory.

One of my early favorites in market theory was Investor’s Business Daily, because it identified a fairly consistent set of criteria for buying and selling, and then was considerate enough to remind me to breathe. IBD offers advice you would expect to hear from Ben Franklin. One rule that stuck with me is to never take more loss than eight percent.

Gradually I have become less interested in individual stocks and more interested in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) which allow me to make a little money from China or India while losing money in Real Estate or the Middle East. Websites such as Google Finance, MarketWatch, and stockta.com allow you to track stocks through online portfolios. Another nice free service is investmenttools.com. For a quick glance at overall trends, I also like the market overview page at stockcharts.com or some of the “view all funds” lists available at ETF providers such as iShares or PowerShares. Of course, the Wall Street Journal offers an excellent market data page.

In the hard times that are coming, newspapers will likely continue their downsizing and dispersion. But I don’t think this will affect investors very much. Outfits like Standard and Poors, Thomson-Reuters, Bloomberg, and Murdoch seem like they will be able to continue delivering robust information to premium customers. When you go looking for information that has cash value, you discover that the information sector is booking plenty of first class seats.

Plato’s Republic teaches that justice is a matter of everyone minding their own business, because each occupation has its urgencies. So let’s clear up first things first. Real Investing is a full-time occupation. If the market calls, you’d better be there to answer. Meanwhile, you’d better keep watching out. Once you get a taste for the daily risk of the market life you can see why so many people with Real Money still prefer to take out U.S. Treasury notes. When someone says China is buying U.S. bonds for chiefly political reasons, please ask them where they’d find a less risky place for Real Big Money today.

Therefore, anyone who wants to make a national policy of retirement funding via personal market accounts is simply asking everyone to drop what they do best, because you cannot expect everyone to be an excellent investor on the side. Retirement funding is a craft unto itself. Besides, imagine your tax dollars going into someone else’s market bets.

There are three basic families of market theory. The first one is represented by Jim Cramer, the bouncing host of Mad Money. I like the guy, because there is something pleasing about anyone enjoying his work that much. Plus, if you actually have “skin in the game,” his daily presence on television is a kind of exorcism against the dread-mongering that fills so much market chatter. He didn’t succumb to the great “head and shoulders scare” of early July.

As for market scares in general, I started this story on a Friday evening when all was quiet. Now that I’m doing final revisions on Monday morning, I find myself thinking, who knows? A crash could come any day. Or a pop. Or a bomb somewhere. Or a bad number out of Korea. So as of this minute in time it appears that Cramer’s short-term bullishness has been vindicated. Right now, Cramer’s keel is still attached.

Cramer’s theoretical model is “fundamentals.” For the most part, he likes to buy stocks in individual companies. He likes to study the balance sheets, read the SEC docs, listen to the conference calls, and figure out if there is really a productive business priced at a bargain level. Sometimes he gets it wrong, but mostly he wraps his recommendations inside reasons that help you to think about the way the market is working. Like a good teacher, Cramer presents his own choices in ways that help you to think on your own. He offers a market theory.

Along with the other two families of market theory that I will discuss below, the “fundamentals” camp assumes the perspective of the investment class. Cramer can discourage wage raises for Wal-Mart workers because they would raise the price of goods for customers, which will drive down store sales, which will, you guessed it, hurt the stock price that investors need most. We’ll come back to this problem later.

Fundamental analysts such as Cramer, Peter Schiff, H.S. Dent, or Warren Buffett have market theories grounded in the study of earnings, demographics, economic, and yes, investment trends in the Real World.

The second family of theorists can be called “chart technicians.” What they study is the price and volume action as it can be pictured in hundreds of ways. The vintage form of technical analysis–the candlestick chart–is attributed to an 18th Century rice trader in Japan.

The classic school of modern-day chart technicians goes under the name of Dow Theory because it was founded by the first editor of the Wall Street Journal, Charles H. Dow, who became the Dow of Dow-Jones. In its classical form, Dow Theory compares the movements if two indexes, the Dow Industrials and the Dow Transportations, which according to Jack Schannep and the editors of thedowtheory.com, yields a buy or sell signal about once a year. To catch more short-term trends, all kinds of charting devices have been invented.

I think the most popular technical tool of the modern trader is the Moving Average Convergence/Divergence indicator or MACD (pronounced Mac-D). At the Wall Street Journal for example the MACD is a default feature of every dynamic chart, reflecting market movements into a graph that helps gauge probable short-term trends in price.

During the head-and-shoulders scare of early July, technical analysis dominated market chatter. Investors have plenty of fundamental reasons to worry about another downturn, so technical signals can really spook the herd. The head-and-shoulders pattern was a pure technical signal that things could get very bad quickly. It spooked me. As it turned out, either there was no head-and-shoulders or the pattern was more of a signal that something big was about to happen up OR down.

The head-and-shoulders pattern, if it was one, actually signaled a breakout or sudden uptrend–which is not the first opportunity I have missed (in the market as in life) because of caution poorly timed.

This week the technical question becomes whether the breakout has established a new floor for a short-term trading range. The fundamental school seems cautiously optimistic that data will continue to come in “less bad.” And many of the technical chart analysts–including the ones who spooked us before–seem to think we’re going to be trading a new level up, at least for the near term. Technical signals don’t take all the chaos out of the market, but they do help you to feel as if you are not gambling on absolute randomness.

The third great family of market theory, The Elliott Wave, could be placed under technical analysis as a subset of Dow Theory, but I’m going to place Elliott Wave Theory in its own camp, because it seems like another order of technical analysis altogether.

Once upon a time a fellow named Ralph Nelson Elliott became so ill that he did nothing but study stock charts. He came up with astonishing results. He found a wave with a complex construction in which advances were related systematically to declines. He theorized that each wave was a wave of waves in which the basic structure was repeated in fractal form. The closer you get to the shorter time frames the tinier the waves become.

The contemporary master of the Elliott Wave Theory is Robert Prechter, who does not offer much advice for free. If you want Prechter’s analysis in detail you will have to pay for it. I think of him as the modern-day Pythagoras. As a market trader, I’m paying for his opinion and glad about it.

Well let me qualify that. To know Prechter’s approach is to know a vision of the next decade that is not gladdening in outline. The long-term wave we seem to be on right now is the yin to that yang we were riding during the good times. If Elliott was correct about the underlying form of market waves, and if Prechter is correct in the application, then prices are really deep disclosures of a psychic life that buoys our collective consciousness. And no, dear reader, you are not reading a Pynchon novel just now.

The Elliott Wave school strikes me as Jungian in flavor, so it will be an acquired taste for most. Something about Jungian archetypes runs counter to mainstream thinking, so we shall soon see who teaches whom the greater lesson. For my part, the older I get the more sense Jung makes. And the Elliott Wave has a serious following among Real Investors.

Related to market theory is an emerging trend in “social investing.” A visit to the KLD website will give you the essential orientation to social consciousness as it has been monetized by the investment classes. Also, a brand new ETF trading under the ticker symbol JVS brings a new style of valuation to the American investor by way of principles mandated by Sharia Law. I have written a little more about these items under a project called abetterorder.com. I own some JVS.

Even with only a few hundred bucks in play these are the things you begin to learn as if your fortune depended upon it. The market is a game–and you want to win. Which brings us back to something that I promised to discuss–the perspective of the investing class. This is a class of folks that for the most part have saved money that they are trying to grow and protect. They appear to be very smart and decent people, even downright likeable. And they have some very practical experience in how the market game works and how to win it. But I used to have a neighbor named Paul who worked all his life for the city parks department.

“Never was a rich man who didn’t get his money off a poor man’s back,” is what Paul would say. Which is another way of claiming that all Real Value comes from labor. If we extend Paul’s intuition to the investment classes as such we might say that all great wealth is already a kind of redistribution.

On the one hand I wonder if Paul could have done better in the wealth department if he had applied his eighth-grade education and not assumed that investment potential belonged to other people. No doubt there are a billion people asking that question right about now. Better choices are always possible. Nobody can say they weren’t warned. So I can see how value belongs not only to those who produce it but also to those who treat it best.

Therefore, I can understand why so many smart investors take a hard line when it comes to the kind of respect we should pay for value. I can see why they have a passion for gold as a standard. A devotion to standards of valuation has allowed many of them to see clearly how our loose regards would steer us into the ditch we’re in. When you start watching your money closely in a trading market, these perspectives accrue practical value.

On the other hand, market trends are thoroughly social if not absolute manifestations of collective (un)consciousness. The problems of market cycles have dimensions that exceed the sum of individuals. As my neighbor Paul implied, strictly speaking there is no such thing as individual wealth. All wealth in some sense is held in trust. Likewise, individuals don’t create market cycles, it takes a market to go boom and bust.

I can understand why some of the great artists of the market are outraged by our social responses to market crisis. They call it socialism. Yet, no matter which family of theory you belong to–whether fundamental, technical, or E-wave–you are dealing directly with a social movement.

At some level each and every individual choice gets subsumed into a dynamic relation to other choices such that “the market” comes to exist with a life of its own. Every investor wants to know, what will the market do today? So there is something that troubles me about investor perspectives that seem to take for granted that “the market” is the only motive force worth respecting, as if the social reality of our lives could be so one-dimensional.

The investment-class perspective shows through when Cramer discourages higher wages at Wal-Mart. This is a perspective that overvalues existing savings to the detriment of new savings that could be made possible if “the market” were enabling more opportunity for all. If existing savings accounts were willing to take a little less return, perhaps new savings accounts could be more easily started downstream.

In the case of my old neighbor Paul, why shouldn’t a worker expect a social order in which every productive life is rewarded with decent wages, benefits, and pensions? But Frederick Douglass long ago advised Americans not to gnash our teeth at spectacles of unfairness. Struggle is the Real Cure.

As corporate capital rebuilds its structure from the current bust to the next boom, why shouldn’t some higher expectations of performance be costed in right now? I think I understand how these labor costs will make additional demands upon the structure of recovery, but if decent health benefits and pensions are made a universal condition of corporate earnings perhaps the regeneration of corporate health this time will help to raise up a new generation of investors who understand that money not budgeted toward labor’s livelihood is at risk of being gambled away.

Finally, I have an intuition that the bias of the investor class leads to a skewed desire for a gold standard, but I’m not altogether sure about this. It may be that my impression is colored by a context in which most of the talk about gold is by people who are thinking chiefly of wealth in individual terms. In five months of investing I too have gone from “gold, what’s it good for” to “give me thirty shares of silver trust please.” I’m up eleven dollars thanks to that call on SLV.

In thinking about gold, I have drawn the distinction made by San Francisco economist Henry George who talked about the difference between wealth for personal use and capital that is put back into new tools. The good people at Lew Rockwell point out that if I hold my personal wealth in a Real Bank it will be leveraged into Real Capital, therefore there is no Real Difference between wealth and capital. Yet even if this were also true for holdings in Real Gold, I think we can still distinguish between wealth and capital. But I’m willing to grant that Real Gold held by a Real Bank may be somewhat more productive than fear itself.

As for the assumption that Real Banks will take Real Savings and turn them into Real Capital, I think this is the problem. From what I understand, banks are not producing capital investments at any kind of usual rate. And they are not doing it because of the damage done by the great evil that Henry George warned against—land speculation. Therefore, the dramatic increase in American savings is not now being leveraged into new tools for American workers. The pressures of the current economy will keep labor compensation low on one side while disrupting on the other side the assumption that increased savings by labor should be leveraged into capital investment. Instead, Real Banks are gouging labor further on the debt front. Prechter has more to say about what has happened to Real Banks in his July newsletter.

Which brings us to the last word in successful investing, Warren Buffett. No doubt his influence has sometimes weighed down upon wages from time to time as he seeks to maximize earnings from Dairy Queen or Geico. Last week he admitted that he had to cut the jobs of 500 people. Yet Buffett says that it may be time to think about a second stimulus which would be a Real Stimulus this time. What interests me about Buffett’s position–all puns intended–is that he speaks as an exceptionally engaged investor who follows carefully how his wealth, and therefore his capital, has effects on precise productive labors.

If Buffett can stomach the idea of a stimulus then we should raise the question of costing into the new generation of investment a better life for labor in long-term salaries, benefits, and pensions. We are the workers upon whose labor the power of U.S. Treasury notes depends–and we have been valued in this crisis as worthy enough to carry the world’s savings accounts on our backs. Therefore cost us in at the full value of a whole life.

Maybe there is nothing that can be done about a future that is already written by the finger of God. Just save yourself if you can. But when it comes to the problems faced by the investor classes and their personal wealth preservation in this sick economy, at least Buffett still talks as if the investor classes are in the same boat with the rest of us and how we need to pull together and share some of the risks. While we’re at it, we should not be afraid to discuss the opportunities that this crisis holds out for labor. Discussing it today will be cheaper than discussing it tomorrow.

Based on what I’ve learned after five months as an active trader, I don’t think it’s a question of whether hard times are coming. The question is how can we best work on this social trauma individually AND together to address risks and opportunities system-wide? The thing that strikes me about Buffett’s position on the second stimulus is this. If the ship’s going down, Captain Buffett talks as if he’s prepared to go down with it. Any Real Captain would surely toss Real Gold overboard now in order to bring more Real Lives safely to port later.

To turn the picture right side up, we begin with the biggest lesson from the financial sucker punch hitting workers of the world this year–human value comes from having real work to do.

Today’s value crisis hits hardest where profits–and this is why they are called earnings–are failing to produce new tools. This is the demand crisis. Our demand that leaders take better care of the people’s tools has not been heard.

Of course, as the great London philosopher sez in Capital Volume One, tools are contradictory things. The better tools get, the fewer workers needed per unit. Hence the labor-management contradiction. Hence the iron law of social revolution. Dearborn, then and now. Once you start making better tools you can’t help but create–what shall we call it? Change?

And the big problem with change is that people try to go around or over or under or WITHOUT the progressive re-production of tools. No new tools, no real change.

Capitalism is of course the holy system which speaks the language of the Gospel and promises to keep tool making dynamic and efficient so that value flies up from work. And it does have a metaphysical charm owing to our impression that profit and tools derive from some conjoined living form.

The great San Francisco economist Henry George said interest payments are legitimate social demands because the wealth we put back into tools needs to grow like anything else. Of course any living thing can demand disgusting amounts of fodder and grow to obscene proportions on that basis, but it should not use the words of Henry George as an excuse for that.

Now, if we are consistent in our terminology here, we could say that anyone who kills the living conjunction between earnings and tools can be considered anti-capital. But if we were consistent in just this way, we would demand triple damages from Wall Street for a trillion or more anti-capital crimes.

Instead of consistent terminology, however, what we are getting fed these days is nonsense soup. For example, in my home there is an electric soap box where people sit for hours yammering about how outraged they are at outsized cash payments going to workers at institutions who once made a contest of stashing wages and profits into silos that nobody can find.

Well, who was it let go of that money in the first place? Who should demand it back? Predatory lending is piracy. Predatory lending that inflates a mortgage bubble is piracy. To find pirates, you don’t have to go all the way to Tortuga or Mogadishu.

Today there is some question about how to value “toxic assets” that derive from predatory debt. But there’s a simple way to value the cost of such piracy. How much would it cost to give every penny back?

We can solve this demand crisis in at least two ways. First, we could demand that all the pirate trunks of “toxic assets” be loaded onto flatbed trucks and driven back to California where they belong. Overnight, California would need no more I.O.U.’s.

Or second–because to be honest about it we secretly admire pirates and sometimes find ourselves dreaming that we could join them–we can demand that all these big-bonus banking houses show us how they are putting their talents to work funding the next generation of tools that we have been needing as a nation since about this time last year.

We demand that they assist California, too.

Meanwhile, we know what the yammering soap boxers want us to believe about the demand crisis. They want us to believe anything really that will keep us from connecting the dots. In that direction there’s a demand crisis, too.

On the other hand we could recover the wisdom of the legendary Jubilee by placing the lending class on notice that every seven years we’re going to have a write-down party, beginning with the summer of 2009.

I offer this as a “mustard seed” (with kudos to Larry Kudlow for the Gospel term that he applies to the salvation of capitalism). Jubilee Vouchers could be sown into “green shoots” and harvested as part of the next stimulus plan. If such debt-relief were offered directly to all the people, all at once, you would surely short the future of any politician who tried to get in the way.

The only moral problem with this idea is how to respect and reward all the good people who didn’t get caught up in debt mania. We should acknowledge their moral superiority and sacrifice.

Therefore, the Federal Reserve Bank shall distribute to each taxpayer a book of Jubilee Vouchers totaling $10,000 which shall be accepted by any creditor in return for debt relief. Any unused Jubilee Vouchers held by people of moral superiority and good sense may be presented to the IRS for tax credits that will be good for as many years as the balance may last.

We’ll let the big brains at the Federal Reserve Bank work out the technicalities of what happens next. Maybe they can open up a $2.25 trillion jubilee line of credit to be paid down with interest from the lenders they support. They could call it The People’s Bank.

Or the Fed could refuse to redeem Jubilee Vouchers from lenders who have proven to be predatory, forcing them into immediate bankruptcy. Where the Fed is concerned the world has full faith that when it comes to credit, if there’s a will, there’s a way. (Cap and trade on the national debt anyone?)

Perhaps there is a moral concept of modern economics that will be transgressed by the revival of Jubilee wisdom, but since we’re borrowing our financial language from the Gospel, why not invite those without financial sin to cast the first stones?

For example, there are people who get paid by huge broadcasting conglomerates who sometimes puff themselves up as saints–as if the whole credit scheme never leaks into the advertising budgets that fund their creditable livelihoods. We could invite them to stone us, but they’d stone us anyway.

The point is that credit mania became a thoroughgoing social mood that ate and fed all of us with the same collective spoon. Nobody stopped it why? Because we were all hooked into the accelerated experience of the leveraged life.

Since we haven’t got the appetite to prosecute debt pushers or their officious collaborators, and since it is probably true what Greenspan says–that we will never outlaw greed–at least we might offer some meaningful ritual comforts to all the addicts who get left with nothing but the spasm of withdrawal.

In addition to Jubilee Vouchers, two other fronts need funding–which we can visualize via that odd couple at CNBC, Cramer and Kudlow.

Jim Cramer says we need a real New Deal jobs program. Kudlow says we need business tax cuts. Publisher Mortimer Zuckerman has joined issue with Cramer in calling for a real job-stimulus program. And any number of old supply-siders are lining up along the Kudlow-Laffer axis to fight for Capital first.

But enough of the bickering already. Do we need labor or capital? Cramer or Kudlow? Why not both?

At any rate let’s not do as a nation what the readers of the Wall Street Journal did in their online responses to Zuckerman’s sober proposal. Zuckerman stayed focused on the needs of the people and how the government might do its duty. The readers of the Wall Street Journal diverted precious pixels into a childish blame game of whose fault?

Fact is, there are very few of us behaving like part of the solution these days, and Congress could probably get all this done in early August if we make it a condition of their summer break. Get Zuckerman to print the bill, roll it down the aisle in a wheelbarrow, and nothing of the usual diligence or transparency of American democracy would be sacrificed

But if we don’t get a serious world-historical plan in place before the real Bear Market hits we’ll soon be thinking of “mere unemployment” as the good old days.

Born in India in 1945, Patel–according to his official bio–earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering from Bombay University, then emigrated to the USA where he became a citizen in 1965. He earned masters degrees at Stanford and Johns Hopkins before embarking on a business career in 1976 as a hotel owner and operator.

By 1987 Patel’s ambitions had become cramped by Dallas-area bankers who seemed to understand neither the hotel business nor the Indian community, so he put together a bank with about $2 million of family money.

From the time Patel opened the State Bank of Texas (SBT) in late 1987, he has steadily grown the enterprise into three suburban locations in Irving, Garland, and Richardson.

Then, on July 2, with the acquisition of the short-lived Millennium Bank of Texas–which was closed by the FDIC and sold to Patel’s bank–the Indian-born entrepreneur finally put his banking footprint down inside the Dallas city limits.

Ironically enough, reports the Dallas Business Journal’s Chad Eric Watt, Patel will soon be losing his Irving bank headquarters. It will be razed by the Texas Department of Transportation in order to widen Airport Freeway.

With the closing of Georgia’s Haven Trust Bank in late 2008, Patel’s SBT became the third largest “Indian Bank” in the USA, behind two billion-dollar operations in Chicago: Mutual Bank and the legendary National Republic (see an excellent overview of the players by Lavina Melwani).

According to FDIC figures, SBT reported first quarter average assets of $589 million. The Millennium acquisition will add $118 million in assets, says the FDIC, bringing the value of Patel’s bank to over $700 million.

Patel’s Fourth of July gambit into Dallas banking says something doubly remarkable about his business skills and the role of immigrant entrepreneurs in the recovering economy of the USA.

On the matter of Patel’s business skills, the prudent observer will want to wait about two more years to see how he fares a widely predicted cyclone in commercial real estate and the hotel sector.

Just a day before the FDIC announced the transfer of Millennium’s assets to Patel, the entire hotel sector was downgraded from “Neutral” to “Negative” by Barclay Capital analyst Felicia Hendrix.

“While the industry declines should be less negative next year, we do not expect to see positive growth until at least 2011,” said Hendrix in a report filed by the AP.

A good example of Patel’s challenge can be found in a February dispatch out of Florida in which Patel’s bank was reported to be filing a foreclosure lawsuit against a $13 million dollar property east of the Tampa Convention Center.

The lawsuit was filed against Indian entrepreneurs who–like so many others those days–thought they were picking up property at bargain rates in 2006, before the real estate bubble burst.

The report from the Tampa Bay Business Journal implies that Patel has worked out a modified agreement with the Tampa entrepreneurs.

Another report from Chad Eric Watt of the Dallas Business Journal indicates that Patel is still scouring the hotel business for promising leads. In a June 26 story, Watt reports that the Texas Patels are being sued for unscrupulous bidding practices by the Georgia Patels–the same Georgia Patels who lost the Haven Trust Bank last year.

According to federal court documents, the Texas Patels outbid the Georgia Patels by $20,000 for a note on a property that the Georgia Patels owned and operated. But this was after the Texas Patels said they could not finance the lower bid that the Georgia Patels were planning to make. Federal Judge Robert L. Vining, Jr. has given the Texas Patels until July 22 to answer the charges.

It seems that the Texas Patels–who by the way are not without their J.R.–have never been too proud to earn money the old fashioned way. As Michael Davis of the Dallas Progressive Blog is fond of remembering, the Texas Patels have admitted to the Dallas Morning News that they sometimes charge hotel fees by the hour.

As I recall, it was a license plate study of Dallas motels back in the 1950’s that first revealed the hot data that most Dallas motel customers were in fact from the Dallas area. In attempting to verify my memory I checked a prestigious academic database for key words “sex, motel, Dallas” and only came up with one hit–a plot summary for the Mike Judge classic, Beavis and Butthead Do America.

Which brings us back to the Fourth of July in all of its red, white, and blueness. Somehow a code is working itself out in the symbolic collision of Patel, Millennium, State Bank of Texas, and the Fourth of July. You see, it’s not Cowboys leading the charge for the New American Dream anymore, it’s the Indians.

In contrast to the frozen giants of global finance who drag us every day down closer to the next bottom rather than up to the next top, the Texas Patels are moving their Dallas banking enterprise into competition with billion-dollar Chicago houses, actually making finance possible for one of the toughest sectors of the 2009 depression.

By the light of the Patel example we have a right to ask: how many more immigrant entrepreneurs are out there who only need a respectful certificate of citizenship to begin hauling this country up again by its own financial bootstraps? The spirit of independence, remember?

On the other hand, whether you are listening to pro-dollar or anti-dollar partisans today, there is an eerie agreement between Marxist and Friedmanite alike that return on capital is the main thing. What we need to hear more often from both sides of the global mouth is how capital will only grow through labor.

With the help of Google translate, the average monolingual yankee can cross the ocean and listen to the official pronouncements of ministers for the Communist Party of China (CPC) who have a thousand throats exhorting the masses to keep on the scientific path.

What the scientific path sounds like in China today is a lot like what you hear weekdays over the chatterbox at the Capitalism-Knows-Best Channel (CNBC). For instance, the Chinese “socialist market economy” is being redefined scientifically into a “modern market economy under rule of law,” which is exactly the way they like it at CNBC.

From both sides of the Pacific you get pretty much the same news: double-digit downturns in profits across the board, dozens of gigantic projects suddenly scrapped and unplugged, trade routes collapsing, pages snatched from memories of capitalism past, the better to remind us how to survive.

Even on the question of climate change there is a convergence of policy conviction that “the construction of ecological civilization” will help our damaged economies to “cope with the international financial crisis” through the material re-production of green technologies.

Tuning into the thoroughly capitalized culture at CNBC — coming at you “live from the financial capital of the world”–bust is generally accepted as the price of boom. Mad Money man Jim Cramer said recently that if the stock market were to take another 150-point dive on the S&P 500 Index, investors from the boo-yah land of Cramerica could consider it a gift — “A GIFT!!”

But over on the Chinese mainland, ministers seem to be talking to masses that haven’t quite learned how to appreciate the opportunities of economic collapse. This is the time, say the ministers, to vigorously seek innovations in technology, reconfigure business models, bury dead capacities, and evolve the community through decisive calculations of “M&A.”

In the chatter of Chinese ministers sounds a worry that the “socialist market economy” could come out of the economic crisis fatter than it needs to be and therefore vulnerable to all the lean dogs that global capital is breeding as we speak.

Of course every Wal-Mart shopper knows how much is owed to the enormous Chinese factories that punched out a dozen or so shopping seasons. But Chinese ministers know better how the tiny “Made in China” labels were not attached to Chinese-branded logos. And whereas the great logos of the global economy will likely recover on top of factories somewhere or anywhere (thank you Naomi Klein) there is no guarantee that the factories of China will be serving the logo powers next year.

There is enough worry to go around. In the USA we don’t know if the unemployment numbers will stop in time to provide the baby boom a respectful retirement. In China, the ministers don’t know if plants and projects will stop shutting down in time to prevent a more colossal sacrifice in capital spending.

Matching the positive image of the Chinese minister atop his nearly $2 trillion mountain of dollar reserves is the precise negative image of the average American consumer down in his valley of debt. And where the images should be joined at the middle term is across the rubbed glass surface of the Wal-Mart checkout counter, courtesy of MasterCard and Visa.

Of course, there was a time not too many months ago when the era of dollar-fed arrogance seemed to be stalking the world with unchecked power as “dollar hegemony” rolled around the globe with tsunami force. These days however the dollar gets pulled up off its knees by other currencies at the most curious times, exactly in moments when the whole flow of things seems to shudder with collapsing pipes.

What the dollar needs most right now is a national emergency declared in behalf of jobs. Enough diddling with yield curves and balance sheets already. Whatever it takes, we need folks back at work. Until we are busy creating value through labor, every dollar will stay busy shrinking.

Which brings us to the final correspondence between CNBC and the ministers of China. By and large all these voices fail to inflect the urgency of the single outcome that will count most toward economic health — getting everybody back to work. If you are holding a pile of dollars the immediate question should be how to transform that cash into tools of productivity for workers of the world. Wealth today is paralyzed from not knowing how to become productive. This is the real problem.

So whether you grew up on one side of the Pacific listening to warnings about the Midas touch or you grew up on another side of the Pacific sneaking lessons from Mencius you should know. When you mistake the real value of human economy for dollars, gold, or profit, you shall kill the order of things.

Something about the discourse of crisis is chilling to the ear. Neither side of the ocean is talking early or often enough about how to forge wealth into tools that can be put to work. There is still time perhaps to put jobs first.

The Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area was nearly alone among USA cities for its ability to report year-over-year job growth in April, 2009 (up by 3,400 jobs). And it was the only major metro area (out of 38) to report an increase in the employment rate (+0.4 percent). To believe that this slim green shoot is the first sign of economic Springtime in America requires a bit of the Oat Willie determination to go “Onward thru the Fog.” Which, actually, is what I intend to do.

But first a note: more notice should have been given to Odessa-Midland which, unlike Austin-Round Rock, gets split into two separate metro areas. Odessa employment was up by 1,800 over the year, while Midland was up by 1,500. Why these sister cities don’t get hyphenated into a single metro is curious.

Still, these Texas numbers look like boutique novelties in a warehouse of national economic crisis. The volumes are crushingly large. Los Angeles has lost 240,000 jobs, the New York metro area is down by 234,000. Chicago down 190,400, Detroit down 143,400, Phoenix and Atlanta down by 129,700 and 123,600.

How all these jobs will get re-started is not easy to see. Where are the new paradigms of labor to come from?

Stock watchers are reading reports about large dollar supplies stored up by investment managers and standing ready to flow back into a wary market of stocks and bonds as soon as things get more steady. But the dynamic reminds me of Truman’s exhortations on fear. Don’t things continue to fall harder the longer the investment managers wait?

In some circles one hears a constant drumbeat for buying gold, which may be a way to own something that won’t crash in value this year. But what use is gold, really?

In the great classic of American political economy, Progress and Poverty, Henry George defines capital as that part of wealth which is put back into productive use. He encourages a view of capital as something which enables labor to be more productive and he therefore discourages taxation on capital.

Taking a Georgist view, I would think that gold is wealth that serves very little productive purpose. To the extent that gold is a way of holding some savings for retirement or rainy days, I don’t see how it should be valued much differently than any other form of savings.

But to the extent that gold is hoarded up as a pile of fear, doesn’t it become its own effect, pulling wealth out of productive equity investments, drying up more jobs, etc.?

From my armchair view of internet chatter, it seems to me a wise thing for policy makers to devalue the dollar in the near-term as a means of coaxing cash into markets. But if devalued dollars simply get transmuted into gold shares, then the alchemy gets dark.

A Georgist approach to systemic reform begins with tax policy. Capital and labor should be taxed last. Then property values should be clearly divided between improvements and the land they rest upon. Let the improvements also move to the back of the tax line. This leaves land value at the head of the line for taxation.

George’s reasons for land tax could be summed up in a Kudlow motto: “tax it and you get less of it.” But with land, there is no danger of taxation reducing the supply, there is only the promise of land monopolists unloading every acre that they are not already putting to productive purpose.

Thus, under the Georgist model, the land tax — as the only tax — could never result in an absolute decrease in land supply. The land tax would only tend to decrease the amount of land that is held, like piles of gold, for unproductive use. As for gold and other means of piling up unproductive wealth, I can’t see right away why a tax on such things wouldn’t hasten the development of a more productive economy for all.

George says that supply and demand are misleading terms to use when trying to understand the causes of the unemployment cycle. Workers are not quitting their jobs because they have earned all they need. They are not refusing to produce or to consume. We never have all we want, and the example of Austin in April proves that we are ever willing to earn the next leg up. So why do so many workers find themselves at massive rates closed out of productive opportunity?

The problem lies at the door of unproductive wealth, because there is still plenty of it. Yet for some reason unproductive wealth is encouraged and allowed to pile up, even sometimes as an excuse for “real value.” If we taxed land, unproductive wealth, and gold supplies, I wonder, wouldn’t we quickly motivate and incentivize tons of wealth into capital that would eagerly call for full employment now?

In the official language of the International Monetary Fund report for April 2009, “the crisis was largely caused by weak risk management in large institutions at the core of the global financial system combined with failures in financial regulation and supervision.”

After “the crisis” was caused, the weak risk managers along with their failed regulators and supervisors came back to loot the national debt.

In essence, the mortgage of the American Worker has been preyed upon to inflate the wealth and power of financiers. Twice.

From the IMF point of view, more debt looting or “fiscal adjustment” will be necessary to keep the world economy from worse channels of trouble. And so long as the money makes genuine entry into the credit system at lenient rates (if not terms), then it seems like sensible advice. I believe the IMF when it claims that worse trouble is possible.

Says the IMF: “Key transmission routes [of worse trouble] include deep corrections in national housing markets, especially but not exclusively in advanced economies; corporate stress, especially but not exclusively in emerging economies; deflation risks, mainly in advanced economies; and increasing vulnerabilities in public sector balance sheets, especially but not only in emerging economies.”

Sure as sewage runs downhill, downside risks remain.

And yet, behaving like crash victims who climb from wrecks and run around for awhile, whole classes of boosters may be seen doing double flips of joy because they think they feel the world bouncing off its bottom.

There are many gloomy charts in the IMF report on the global economy, but the one that chills me most shows how each economic region of the globe is expected to contribute to the world recovery that (we hope) will begin later this year.

When it comes to the crucial turning point for that recovery, the US is the only portion of the global economy that completely disappears from the bar graph. The US will make zero contribution to global growth in the 4th quarter of 2009, then a bit of a negative contribution in the 1st quarter of 2010, before slacking to zero again in the 2nd quarter of 2010.

As for “other advanced countries,” you will find them colored in dark blue below the line of recovery, indicating that they will be worse than no help. Above the line of positive Purchasing Power Parity, all the heaving lifting at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st Century will be upon the shoulders of China and the “rest of the world.”

This, my friends, is how you win a cold war without knowing the least reason why.

Along with my favorite storm watcher these days, Larry Kudlow, I also have faith that democracy and capital will figure out how to keep each other alive through this deluge, but I disagree with his forecast model.

For the past several decades capital has taken advantage of weakened democracy in the US. It is now time for democracy to return the favor. As US capital returns from subzero on the IMF recovery scale, democracy has to insist on new parameters.

If the Chinese can lead global growth in 2010, what happens to the claim that big governments must be incapable?

Therefore, health care coverage for all people, cap and trade for all creatures, a path to citizenship for every neighbor in the neighborhood, and a genuine national youth program, all of these things will elevate the US to a place we should have been 30 years ago.

When we voted for change last November we weren’t talking about pennies on the dollar. Bankers of the world, untie!

Laffer’s rationalizations for low taxes became very popular as banners for the Reagan counter-revolution. And the results of the Laffer idea can be seen quite clearly in a chart of the national debt posted at usgovernmentspending.com. Whenever the Laffer idea takes hold, as it did in 1980 and 2001, taxes are generally cut to a level below their ability to keep up with actual costs of government. The result is a combination of easy money and a mountain of public debt.

Now that the Laffer idea has been run out of town by the current federal administration, you can’t say he didn’t see it coming. In a series of policy studies, some of them done for Texas clients, Laffer has been sandbagging his case for low taxes and small government.

In the latest installment of the Laffer attack, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) paid the Laffer associates to produce a rationalization for the state of Texas to send back federal money that was to be funneled through state agencies. Here’s a link to the pdf at the TPPF website, texaspolicy.com, which, if you have the Netcraft toolbar, you can see is hosted on a server in Canada.

Now the most charming thing about Laffer is that he gets along well with Larry Kudlow the financial evangelist who can be seen preaching the gospel of wealth most days at CNBC. It’s difficult not to like Kudlow, even when he’s shouting over his liberal guests. But you’d have to get up very early in the morning to find cable news shows these days where the host does not shout over the guest, so in this context the shouting doesn’t seem to harm Kudlow’s charm (that is, until he starts trying to shout over the host of the show that comes after his).

Furthermore, I think we should agree that there is a kernel of truth to the gospel of wealth. If there is such a thing as an American spirit then the gospel of wealth was there at its birth, if only to insist on a quick c-section to get the thing done.

But what happens when the gospel of wealth meets the Laffer Curve is that you get something like the Laffer Cathedral Arch. Instead of placing the curve into a complex field of economic and social analysis, you get led to a place where you have to face private wealth and bow down every time.

On Monday night the Texas Governor appeared as a guest on the Kudlow show. True to form for a member of the Laffer posse, the Governor denounced federal stimulus money as counterproductive to state’s rights and private property. The Governor has been speaking in Lafferese most earnestly since he found out that he will have a real fight for re-election against incumbent US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. He is pulling what is known in Texas as the Gramm maneuver, which positions each and every opponent as a big-spending liberal.

So these days the Texas Governor is all about the kind of state’s rights that come heavily backed by private wealth. And yes, this is the same Governor who loyally hosted Operation Close the Border or whatever it was called when National Guard troops on Pentagon orders came marching from up North, out West, and back East on down to the Rio Grande. Press two for English if you want to know how that operation worked out.

According to the Governor’s lingo, the stimulus money can only serve to keep more people unemployed longer. And you can see his point insofar as the federal money will not be delivered to some payroll office where it could get right to work making a fortune. What the Governor prefers to brag about is the money he gives directly to entrepreneurs for capital that “creates jobs.” Of course he has to tax somebody to raise that capital. Then the person he gives the money to taxes a bunch of workers, calls it profit, and you have real freedom in the making, not some dreary social oatmeal.

The annoying thing about the Laffer posse is not that they are completely wrong, but that they are so single minded. You give them a chart with a curve on it and they turn it into your one and only train of thought.

In the hands of charming Kudlow, who cannot hide his kitty-cat heart, the Laffer curve can be a healthy counterpoint to big spending liberalism. There is a line we all need to watch. But when the only line that can never be moved is the tax that needs to be paid to do the people’s business, then what we’ll get is more Reaganesque-Bush2 growth that does not, in the words of Mary McLeod Bethune, “Lift as we climb.”

Fran’s partner at the podium, Doug Zachary, is looking pleased already. The house is full. The program is printed. The act is together. A banner hanging large to stage left says “Winter Soldier” and Zachary with his whitening beard, angle-bent hat, and Palestinian scarf, is looking like a perfected instance of the eternal type.

Zachary has been a Winter Soldier for 37 years. In 1970 he won an honorable discharge after convincing the Marine Corps that he took the words of Jesus seriously. In 1971, as Zachary was seeking alternative paths through Texas, the Winter Soldier Movement was born in Detroit where 109 veterans of the War on Viet Nam turned out the truth of what they’d done as war criminals in a criminal war. Not many years later, of course, that war was ended.

After three more decades of aggressions upon foreign soils, brigades of Veterans for Peace (VFP) and Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW) have been joined by Iraq Veterans against the War (IVAW). Testimonies today from this new generation of “boots on the ground veterans” will carry echoes blown in from Vietnam and Detroit ‘71.

A Winter Soldier, says Zachary, is “loyal, steadfast, faithful, resolute, conscientious, scrupulous, and unafraid of painstaking work.” On this last day of February, 2009, with north winds howling out back along San Jacinto Boulevard, Zachary is here to declare that the movement– in these “times that try men’s souls”–shall not quit resisting the ongoing “imperialist, racist, and anti-democratic” wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Zachary yields the podium to the chaplain of the Austin IVAW, Hart Viges, who will be moderating the first panel of speakers. Viges looks like a lanky pastor with his trimmed hair, spectacles, dark blazer, white shirt, and blue jeans, not to mention the mighty large cross hanging on the wall behind him.

“I’d like to give a quote from Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus)” says Viges. “He said, ‘Blessed are the ones who have undergone ordeals, for they have entered into life’.” After this refreshing translation of a beatitude the IVAW chaplain reminds us that even the things we will hear today can be transcended.

They Built Hanging Gardens without Strange Fruit

First to speak today is Dr. Dahlia S. Wasfi, M.D. whose grandparents include a Sunni Muslim, a Shia Muslim, and two Holocaust Jews. She therefore begins her story with a memory of the Abraham who once upon a time walked with Allah in Iraq. Dr. Wasfi’s cousins will sometimes boast that they walk the same ground as Abraham, but it has been hard ground lately. There was an 8-year war with Iran, a 42-day bombing of the First Gulf War, and of course the Shock and Awe campaign of 2003. In such a land it would be miraculous not to be living out some disorder of post-traumatic stress.

A film clip pulls us into the streets of Fallujah where two children carry small bags to a cemetery. A tiny grave marks the burial of a child’s arm. A grown man weeps. Another declares that “our enemy” is anyone who had any part in these killings. Clicking between slides, Dr. Wasfi shows us two more children from Iraq and Philadelphia joined together through an extended family that spans half the world and several religions. Shouldn’t we be working to build a world where these children can enjoy a common future of peace and prosperity?

Consider the example of Babylon. Dr. Wasfi presents a slide of what the Hanging Gardens must have looked like when they counted among the Seven Wonders. Do we seriously think that such a people from such a land actually need our outside assistance to figure out how to be great or to do great things? Well there is one thing the Iraqi people could use that we could give them, says Dr. Wasfi, and that is immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

HUMINT Unit

Winter Soldier testimony begins with Ronn Cantu, who steps to the podium with trim dark hair, a bare shadow of beard and mustache, dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt that identifies him as an Iraq Veteran Against the War. In 2003, he believed so strongly in “the war on terrorism” that he re-joined the Army after two years out. The Army sent him to Iraq once, then twice. So 2007 found him back in Iraq.

“During my second tour I served as a human intelligence collector,” says Cantu, looking over his notes. “A lot of people know that as an interrogator, but interrogation is only half of what a HUMINT DIR does. The other half is source operations where we look for Iraqi citizens to give us information willingly and thereby become sources.”

Cantu explains the method of “dual source reporting” which requires two written statements before a suspect can be detained. The database assigns each report a number, but the number does not reveal whether a second report comes from a second source. Two reports from a single source could therefore qualify as “dual source reporting.” Database numbers could also be entered without any real sources behind them.

One of his first assignments was to help round up four members of an IED cell. It seemed like a “success” but Cantu wondered: “Does a flock disperse when you detain the shepherd?” As a HUMINT operator, Cantu was working for the “new body count,” and under these circumstances his unit could do what’s ethical or please the masters. “We did the latter.”

From questionable database practices that could barely count to two, the operation soon degraded into detain first, dual source later. From one suspected “al Qaeda” mosque Cantu’s unit detained every male and then looked for reasons to keep them. Thirteen qualified.

“Then the worst thing happened,” said Cantu. “We accidentally caught somebody big.” Congratulations came sliding down the command chain. What was there to do but to repeat the whole method next week. By this time the people in the neighborhood were convinced that the Army had declared war against Islam. To show how that wasn’t true, the Army got the Iraqi police to handle the next mosque roundup. Since the neighborhood was Sunni and the police were Shia, the operation worked perfectly to divide and conquer.

When detainees were sent to confinement with boot-shaped bruises, missing teeth, or broken arms, military handlers got nervous and started rejecting them. Once again, Iraqi police could help with backup detention facilities. But when Cantu attempted to report questionable detention practices on the basis of seeing a man with an eye swollen shut he was asked: “Did you see him being tortured?” What he heard was: “If you didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.” When a Warrant Officer assured Cantu that he did not have to carry out duties he considered to be illegal and discomforting, he began to pull away.

Gitmo Grand Opening

Brandon Neely was born into a military family in Georgia and he turned to the military when he reached working age in Texas. He still keeps a military haircut that he wears today with his IVAW t-shirt. Like Cantu’s before him, Neely’s confessions have been made in previous venues. He opens by explaining how military guards sent to the Guantanamo Bay prison were never trained in the Geneva Conventions because they were taught that Gitmo was an exceptional place where the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply.

We’ve seen pictures of Gitmo prisoners arriving at Camp X-Ray, dressed in bright orange jumpsuits, knit orange caps, surgical masks, goggles, earmuffs, and gloves; hands strapped together. What we didn’t see was the first guy who hopped off the bus on one leg as he was screamed at to move it. Nor did we see how after he had hopped so many yards someone bothered to toss from the bus his prosthetic leg.

We’ve seen the cruel pictures from Iraq of naked prisoners piled on top of each other, but we haven’t seen the pileup that Neely describes when a bunch of Gitmo guards jumped on top of a prisoner who called one of them a bitch.

And we’ve heard the hype about the Gitmo prisoners being certified homicidal maniacs, but we haven’t heard how the first prisoner that Neely took charge of was trembling with all his might under a fear of everything he expected to experience when ordered to kneel. He was slow to get into that position because he believed it would be his last. What Neely reflexively took to be killer resistance was only one mortal’s attempt to steal an extra breath from this life, sucking it down from behind a surgical mask that he was convinced he would never be able to remove. From their separate places across the globe, two distraught men were ordered to collide at Gitmo, each brainwashed into thinking that he was meeting a killer of instant resort.

Wake Up Call

“He knew how to sleep as only the innocent and the dead could dig,” says Rooster Romriell, opening his testimony with a poem made from fragments of razor-edged memories. Long hair covering his right ear is mismatched by a buzz cut on the left side, as if to say once you get that military cut, it can never be outgrown. His black t-shirt declares an imperative: “Support GI Resistance.”

Rooster transports the sanctuary to a home in Sadr City where an American squad has just discovered an AK-47, which is a legal weapon to keep at home. We watch horrified as “an old woman with an infant in her arms” falls to the ground “weeping inconsolably” as two shots ring out. The bullets crash through an innocent man’s face. With a quivering chin, Rooster tells us that the woman still screams in his head at night when he’s trying to sleep.

Then comes the dump truck. American troops fire upon it and watch it burn. A man comes “waving a white cloth and yelling ‘baby, baby,’ trying to tell us that we were destroying nothing more than children and garbage.” Rooster’s flesh quivers again with the pain of a conscience that dares him not to cry on the spot. He exhales into the sanctuary and we barely breathe. He has more stories to tell.

“Obama claims that he wants to withdraw the troops from Iraq—at least he did prior to gaining the presidency—all the while saying that Iran is a constant threat, allowing troops to be increased in Afghanistan, turning his sights on Russia, claiming they were delivering nukes to the terrorists, and now he’s confronting China for currency manipulation and monetary policy. He’s calling for a civilian security force and mandatory service. We cannot allow a blind eye to be turned on these things. Obama is no friend to the veteran.” As Rooster withdraws from the podium, Cantu offers a handshake.

“Bring the Troops Home Now”

“I’m a little overwhelmed by some of the testimony that’s been shared with us today, as I imagine many of you are,” says the next speaker. Greg Foster is president of the Austin IVAW. He is a panelist during this part of the program. Later he will serve as moderator. His black t-shirt bears a familiar script: “We the People.” Picking up the general theme of the day, Foster declares that Winter Soldiers are responsible citizens.

“We know the reality of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan,” says Foster. The testimonies may be difficult to speak and difficult to hear, but the truth is important and it should be shared. The US owes compensation and reparations for damage done on foreign soil, but the country also needs to provide full benefits and adequate health care to “soldiers and Marines.”

Foster, like Rooster, spent time in Sadr City. He recalls fighting street by street to secure a zone of operation, then watching burned-out awnings replaced with fresh cloth. “I saw Sadr City slowly start to rebuild itself.” After his unit was transferred out, the new unit had to start all over again with another street-by-street battle to reassert the “hegemony” of American power. Says Foster: “When I say bring the troops home now, it’s not a slogan.”

The FOBulous Life

After a crowded and chattering intermission in the basement Fellowship Hall, the afternoon program resumes with two videos by Casey J. Porter. As far as Porter was concerned, one tour of duty in Iraq would have been enough. After returning from his first year in Iraq he joined the IVAW in 2007. Yet that same year he was “stop-lossed”– instead of getting out on schedule he was ordered back to Iraq. This time around, Porter posts short anti-war videos to his YouTube channel.

The first Porter film today is “The Deployment Game: Livin’ FOBulous,” a satirical presentation of Camp Taji, a forward operating base (FOB) north of Baghdad that boasts 29,000 square feet (count ‘em) of retail space, complete with comfort foods from back home (listed in order of appearance): Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Cinnabon, and Taco Bell.

Cut to a car salesman seated behind a laptop, discussing the price of a Mustang GT fully loaded with leathers, then to a segment about KBR–the corporation that announced 2007 revenues of $8.7 billion, down a hundred million dollars from 2006 because of “lower Iraq-related activities in the Government and Infrastructure business unit.” From a faucet in Iraq we watch a dingy yellow liquid fall into a sink and down a drain. If it’s not a picture of the clean water KBR is supposed to be providing, then it’s a perfect image of something.

“It’s going to take a lot of stuff to kind of fix this bruise that we put on the whole earth,” says a fully jacketed combat soldier in the Porter film Deconstructed. A hand-held camera follows soldiers through a home raid, lingers over a twig that a soldier uses to poke through human remains, records passing scenes of Iraqi life as viewed from a moving patrol vehicle, and occasionally shows a tender moment between an American GI and an Iraqi child. “Going out into these neighborhoods and really helping to reconstruct, we’re not you know,” says the GI. “I don’t see that happening. I don’t see a true reason for us being here.” The video has racked up 46,000 confirmed views.

A Woman in the War System

After “Deconstructed” comes an awkward pause, as if the fog of war leaked into the sanctuary upon images of IED dust. Greg Foster gets things back on track by introducing the first speaker of the second panel, Navy veteran Marie Combs. Although Combs has been featured at Winter Soldier events before, this is her first appearance since leaving the Navy two weeks ago. As a military translator, her experience begins at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where she learns how women in the military are treated to health care. At every visit to the doctor every woman is asked to take a pregnancy test. Apparently when it comes to women, pregnancy is the only “medical condition” that the system is prepared to see.

At a deployment base near Iraq, there is one woman physician, but she is frequently sent away on the medevac transport with women in labor. And wherever they are taken, stories come back that women are made to walk on days when they should qualify for transport, such as when they’ve just had a c-section or when they are visiting the hospital to nurse their infants. If war is something only real men do, then women soldiers also have war done to them, even though they wear the war’s uniform. Combs herself suffered from depression after the birth of her daughter, nor was it easy to find help for that.

“The more wars we start, the more countries we invade, it’s breaking all of us down,” warns Combs. She recalls a newscast where the war in Iraq was dubbed a “detour” that would soon be finished on our way back to a fresh start in Afghanistan. But how can we start this kind of thing again? “It’s hard to speak,” says Combs, “when nobody is listening. No one’s paying attention to war.” Now that Combs puts it that way, a kind of coherence emerges. Wherever terms of power are deployed by real men, the voice of peace counts precisely as the voice of a woman.

The Art of Peace

“I’d really like to speak about the strategies that I feel would really bring an end to this war quicker,” says Austin IVAW Chaplain Hart Viges, who has changed roles from moderator to panelist. “So I look to peace and try to find my definition of peace, and the best thing I can come up with (and I think there is influence from other sources) is that peace is conflict without violence. In this life that we live we cannot escape from conflict or the rubbing of parts or ideas. This is our life and it is the struggle. Buddha says that life is suffering, then so be it. So I go to war,” says Chaplain Viges, holding up a book. “Sun Tzu, The Art of War–this is a very important book that every peace activist should read and soak in. It may sound confusing, but really the same strategies that we apply to war can be applied to peace.”

Viges takes special interest in Sun Tzu’s advice that victory in war depends upon seizing something that the enemy holds dear. And so what do the makers of war need? They need people and money. But “if there’s no one to pull a trigger and if they don’t have any money to spend on a trigger they cannot make war.”

Strategy number one for the art of peace: deprive the warmakers of people. To do his part, Viges hangs out where young soldiers can be talked to. He also helps to staff a local GI Rights Hotline. Viges declares that there is no better satisfaction than taking calls from people with stress in their voices. They have been told they cannot say no to military service. When they are advised how to remove themselves from that matrix, Viges can hear their voices change from stress to relief. In hearing that change in voice, Viges gets the best feeling.

Viges also works with the local counter-recruitment group, Nonmilitary Options for Youth, where he takes credit for deterring ten young people from signing up for military service. “That’s a body count I can live with,” he smiles. Already, the local group has won a public complaint in the form of a newspaper quote from military recruiters. If local recruiters can feel the impact of a half-dozen organizers working on a shoestring, what would happen with a steady budget and expanded staff?

Strategy number two: take away the warmakers’ money. According to the current pie chart at WarResisters.Org more than half of our federal tax payments in 2008 will help to fund wars past and present. “And since I’ve been downrange,” says Viges, “I know what those dollars turn into. They turn into real bullets and real bombs that kill real people.” The Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act would allow citizens to opt out of war spending as a matter of conscience. During the last session of Congress, legendary peacemaker John Lewis (D-GA) was able to gather more than 40 co-sponsors for the bill. Watch for the bill to come up again this session, then “saturate them with communication.”

Keep Yourself Right

It takes Oklahoma farmer John Scripsick about seven seconds to draw cheering applause: “After listening to you talk about recruiting, I think it should be a law that a recruiter cannot go into a high school.” Dressed in plain clothing and ball cap, Scripsick tells the story of his son Bryan who joined the Marines right out of high school and served for three years and three weeks before being killed in Iraq.

“I often wonder if my son had lived if he would have joined your cause,” says Scripsick. “I was told that in a training exercise in California a higher up gave Bryan an order and Bryan just stood there. The higher up gets in Bryan’s face and asks him if he is going to obey his orders and Bryan just stood there and said, ‘No sir!’ The guy got louder and asked Bryan, you know, ‘Why aren’t you going to do that?’ And Bryan said, ‘Because. That’s. Stupid. Sir!’”

The week before Bryan left for Iraq, Scripsick told his son that although he was going to some dangerous places, if he kept himself right with the man upstairs, he would have nothing to be afraid of. “You who see wrong and speak out,” says Scripsick nodding to the Winter Soldiers, “you’re speaking the truth, and you don’t have anything to be afraid of.” As the audience rises for a standing ovation, Scripsick collects his notes from the podium.

We are not Dollar Signs

As Scripsick walks slowly away from the podium, past the first chair at the panel table, Bobby Whittenberg rises to give the Gold Star Father a big hug and a hearty slap on the back. Whittenberg is introduced as a new member of the IVAW with an impressive passion for the cause of peace. “Hey thanks a lot for being here everybody,” says Whittenberg leaning forward into the mic. Over his black t-shirt, Whittenberg wears a camouflage shirt filled with counter-insignia, sleeves rolled up past elbows. His cap, too, is decked with pins, and he looks out with intensity from behind a trim brown beard as he checks his watch for the starting time.

It was the way his John Wayne commander wanted his men to come swaggering into that Iraqi town that is to blame for Whittenberg getting shot with an AK-47 in some foreign war. “But what happened after that blew my mind even more,” he says. “I became a pariah.” Whittenberg found himself fighting for medical attention then fighting to get out. By the time he won his freedom, he was virtually bed sick and the Veteran’s Administration was explaining to him why he couldn’t get the latest drug to address his medical condition. As soon as he switched to a civilian doctor, his health improved within weeks.

“And the reason is this:” explains Whittenberg, “when you live in a hierarchical capitalist system, the little guy on the bottom, everyone, every one of you, is assessed not by your value as a human being, but by your market value. My market value was not very much at the Department of Defense and was not very much at the V.A. But we’re not dollar signs,” says Whittenberg pointing upward with his left hand. “We’re not weapons. We are not a means of spreading capitalism and greed around the world. We are human beings,” he declares. As Whittenberg says “human” he raises his right forearm to flash the tattoo that says “HUMAN” in bold, all-cap font, written from elbow to wrist.

Soon enough the sound system is quavering and popping as Whittenberg raises one arm and another in passionate declarations that, “Each one of us is born into this world in the same way. We live the same way. Breathe the same air. They can try to commodify food, they can try to commodify water, they can try to commodify health care, but they will never commodify our lives!” Whittenberg shouts into a commotion that drowns his voice, so he pauses. “Your power is not at the ballot box. Your power is in your voice. We need no representation. We can speak for ourselves. We are all equal.” As Whittenberg brings the hall to a crescendo, a man stands fist-up to echo his final refrain: “All power to the people!”

Gazing Upon the Future

“That’s Bobby,” deadpans Greg Foster, raising a swell of laughter as he prepares to introduce the last speaker on the program, Mike Corwin. “When I was talking to some local IVAW members about the program and they saw Mike’s name on the program they said, ‘Is that that one guy who’s smiling and always friendly?’ I said, yeah, that’s Mike, so here he is.”

Corwin has been a socialist a little too long to get qualified as a Winter Soldier, but if we think about the qualities that Doug Zachary says a Winter Soldier should have, then Corwin clearly counts as a steadfast activist against imperialist aggressions. A civilian for peace was the first panelist of the day; another civilian for peace will be the last.

“Why is it that we are spending trillions of dollars already on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and being told at the same time that the money is not there to bring badly needed relief to people here at home,” asks Corwin. He wants to frame an answer in the context of Obama America. On the one hand, Obama’s election seemed to signal a “total rejection of ideas popular for a generation.” On the other hand, as far as the interests of the “American corporate class” are concerned, the new administration offers “a great deal of continuity.”

In fact, says Corwin, “Obama’s goal is to salvage and rehabilitate U.S. military power for the ruling class.” Tactical decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan are still being governed by an overall strategic priority to prop up a permanent global reach for US empire, which means the withdrawal from Iraq is getting slower, the buildup in Afghanistan bigger, and the legacy of the endless war on terrorism clings to its spending priorities.

But there are “chimes of freedom flashing,” says Corwin with Dylan on his mind. Chicago workers occupied their workplace to win severance pay. Students at New School University occupied their cafeteria to gain influence in university leadership. And on college campuses across the country, students protested Israel’s attack on Gaza. At the University of Rochester, a student occupation drew concessions regarding institutional spending in the Middle East.

Corwin wins a passionate burst of applause as he takes his seat. After a round of Q&A, folks head outdoors into the wind for a spirited march through downtown Austin, chanting, “They’re our brothers, they’re our sisters! We support war resisters!” As marchers round the corner in front of the homeless shelter at 7th and Neches, they chant, “Money for Jobs, Not for War!” At Sixth Street the “Not for War” chant draws a heckler: “Ain’t gonna stop the war, get used to it!” But nobody misses a step.

At the sundown rally on West Cesar Chavez St., three generations of war resisters hold up an American flag, an IVAW banner, and the day’s Winter Soldier banner that Heidi Turpin made. Casey Porter’s mother greets the group with smiling support and appreciation from Casey’s extended family. And Arizona Winter Soldier Adam Kokesh punctuates the day with his ex-Marine conclusion that there is no such thing as a good war.

Tonight there will be fellowship in famous Austin fashion, and tomorrow up the road there will be a grand opening of the “Under the Hood” coffee shop for soldiers near Ft. Hood. But right now as the sun glows into the evening wind, pretty much what you hear are the birds gathering in the Live Oak trees, chattering insistently about their Saturday. Yes of course it is–no it must be–a conference of the birds preparing themselves to see in the Colorado water below everything they’re looking for when nothing but the ultimate answer will suffice. Perhaps there are no more than thirty left at the rally after all, but why should any more be needed to set the universe right side up?

Out of the recent Caucasian (sic) war, a clear winner rises. Whether you look to Russia, Georgia, Poland, or the USA, the victor stands waving flags. His name is nationalism. And in the face of this victory, what are the chances that the people of the USA will be able to choose internationalism instead?

George Bush betrays USA commitments to internationalism, but he could not act alone. What he goes for is nationalism in alliance. What he calls coalition should be more properly termed a cartel, because a coalition is something you put together to fight a cartel, if you want language that respects liberation.

The Georgian (was the pun intended?) assault on South Ossetia was a repudiation of internationalism, and in that sense, it worked perfectly well. Prior to the Georgian glare of rockets, there was an international arrangement in place for the peace of South Ossetia. It was a weak arrangement, as we see. And it was dominated by Russian influence. Nevertheless, the peace of South Ossetia was formally monitored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). And compared to this week, we can see that it was working in important ways.

The war over South Ossetia makes official what George Bush has been telling us all along. The cold war cannot be over, so long as there is an unstoppable nationalism on the loose. The cleverness of last week’s gun show was how it (once again) transferred the reality of that nationalism over to one side. My god! Look at what the Russians are doing!

What Russia’s doing is criminal. It counts as collective punishment of the Georgian people. But the problem is finding any principle of wrongdoing that George Bush has not already shredded. What Georgia did on Aug. 7 was criminal also, in violation of tautly stretched peace agreements. And when Georgian troops were retrieved from Iraq, who could not be reminded of the criminal-in-chief?

In place of this never-ending spiral of gang violence, I think there is a real and present yearning for a global neighborhood that thugs don’t shove around. Which brings us back to the roots of the Alinsky dream and the half-conscious attempt by the Obama movement to globalize it.

As Socrates once said to sweet Phaedrus, before you can persuade a person to do anything good for himself, you have to figure out how to speak to his particular kind of soul. In the language of the political battlefield last week, we learned something we might have thought we could ignore about the soul of America until November, 2008. Something, dare we say it, that Jeremiah Wright was on to.

The textbook answer to cycle of national belligerence, of course, is to get back in the business of international power and peace. A textbook answer won’t work, you say? In fact, the American voters have for the past several elections desired something other than a Bush-whacking nation. Getting who you vote for is difficult enough these days. But then getting why you voted for them? That’s the ultimate challenge that the movement for “change” faces in the world today.

“After all,” writes Arutnyan, “the Communist Party functioned more like an opposition party than the liberals ever did.” Today the CPRF “stands for nationalizing the country’s natural resources, making the country’s stabilization fund available for social betterment, guaranteeing free medicine, housing, and education, and reviving the country’s scientific and industrial standing.”

For Americans who know very well how such an agenda would get you branded and run out of town quick, Arutunyan reminds us that in Russia, “the CPRF’s program is an honest reflection of what independent polls show. According to an ongoing study by the Levada Center, a steady 34-48% of respondents support a Soviet model of government — nearly twice as many as those that support a Western-style democracy.”

Arutunyan points to these features of Russian politics in order to caution Western hardliners against pushing Putin into a corner because, in the larger view, he is the leader who continues to prioritize “economic integration” over “democracy” and who, therefore, is the force most likely to deliver what the West most wants from Russia, all grade-school language about freedom aside.

Although Peter Charles Choharis can denounce “Kremlin Capitalism” in the August 16 Wall Street Journal, his blue-faced impatience seems not to consider the living alternative within a Russian context. If you don’t like “Kremlin Capitalism,” then join the crowd in Russia. Opt for Communism instead.

Taking a tip from Arutunyan, and getting some help from Google translate, I’ve been reading the freshly updated web pages of the CPRF (kprf.ru). What they demand as a consequence of the Caucasus war is nothing like a return to status quo. Russia has established its power in Georgia, and the CPRF leadership would like to see that power translated into real changes on the ground.

First of all, Communist leadership demands immediate recognition of independence for the breakaway states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

“After the Georgia regime’s attack on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, the world should fully understand why Russia would recognize the independence of Ossetia and Abkhazia and enter into security alliances that would reliably guarantee the security of the long-suffering populations of these republics,” says Communist Party chief G. A. Zyuganov.

“The aggressor should be punished,” says Zyuganov. Yet, “We are encouraged to pretend that nothing happened.”

Yuri A. Kvitsinskim, first deputy chairman of the Committee on International Affairs of the State Duma (KPRF faction) echoes Zyuganov’s denunciation of any return to “status quo.” He says the French President is acting like the Uncle you send over in your behalf, and once he gets the best deal he can, you say, oh but I wanted even more. My Uncle doesn’t speak for me.

“Now everything should be done to break the aggressor, punish the guilty in an act of aggression, war crimes and crimes of genocide, provide effective assistance to victims, begin to rebuild South Ossetia,” says Kvitsinskim. ” We must immediately recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia and take them under their protection.”

As the Communist Party analysts see it, the Georgian incursion was based upon a gamble that the Geogian-led army could close the Roksky tunnel in time to prevent a Russian response.

“Not coincidentally Western media during the first night ‘didn’t notice’ the invasion of Georgian troops in South Ossetia and the UN Security Council refused to consider our appeal regarding aggression, ostensibly because it was too late and members of the Council very much like to sleep,” grumbles Kvitsinskim. “But the Council quickly awakened once Russian tanks went through the tunnel, and our aviation began to strike at Georgian aggressors.”

As for the threatening statements coming from the USA?

“They just need to make noise, otherwise the damage to U.S. prestige will be even more sensitive,” answers Kvitsinskim. “This is only an attempt to ’save face’.”

Writing for the August 11 edition of the Eurasia Daily Monitor, Jonas Bernstein reported that, “Some veteran Russian human rights activists have criticized Russia’s attack on Georgia unequivocally.” Bernstein sourced his report to the Russian news site grani.ru, which may be the most balanced news agency to report on the conflict.

Working backward from the reports at grani.ru, we find an August 7 statement posted at memo.ru, the website for the Memorial International Society founded by Sergei Kovalev. The statement was apparently composed in the first hours of military outbreak, while the Georgian army was advancing northward toward the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.

The Memorial statement reminded readers that the territory of South Ossetia was officially under the peacekeeping purview of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe).

“Georgia, as an OSCE member, has an obligation to resolve conflicts with peaceful measures,” said the Memorial statement. “Restoring the territorial integrity of the government cannot be grounds for the dismissal of such responsibilities. War operations in South Ossetia should be rapidly halted. The path of negotiations will be long and difficult, but this is the only way can lasting peace be attained.”

Of course, the statement did not stop the Georgian attack, and Russia soon entered the battlefield of South Ossetia from the north.

As soon as Russia expanded is military operation beyond South Ossetia, Kovalev joined a coalition of human rights activists in Georgia to denounce the aggression in strong terms.

“We call for the immediate stop of aggression against Georgia,” said the statement of August 10, translated into English two days later by theotherrussia.org. “We consider that Russia’s leadership, having set another bloody stain to the country’s reputation, finally made its presence in the Group of Eight unacceptable from a moral point of view.”

On August 11, another statement denouncing Russian military actions came from a Russian opposition party led by Garry Kasparov.

“Today, it is short-sighted to concentrate solely on criticism of [Georgian President] Saakashvili,” said the statement by the United Civil Front (again translated by theotherrussia.org). “To demand an immediate cease-fire and start of talks is correct, but insufficient. If we want to eliminate the risk of repeating similar tragic situations in the future, the Russian authority must bear responsibility for its actions before its citizens.”

Kasparov’s party wants to hold Moscow accountable for longstanding policies that have served to perpetuate a conflict in South Ossetia.

“As a first step,” says the party statement, “the president and prime-minister would do well to explain why the government is issuing tens of thousands of Russian passports in the territory of a neighboring country, with which we maintain normal diplomatic relations? Why are the key posts in the South Ossetian government and security services occupied by career Russian civil servants and military personnel? Why, after an attack on Russian peacekeepers by the superior forces of the opponent in Tskhinvali, did the official establishment stand in a state of stupor for several hours, and didn’t rush to provide military assistance? What does the Kremlin want to achieve by escalating the conflict with Georgia and expanding the theater of military operations?”

These critical words from Russian human rights activists and politicians offer a framework for peace activism in the USA. As we read the Russian activists’ recollections of Russian mistakes and crimes, we may find ways to join grievances against the misadventures and illegalities of our own aggressive state.

As the USA prepares to introduce a militarized humanitarian mission into Georgia, the words of Russian dissidents apply: “Historical experience shows that the interference of our country in someone else’s affairs inevitably, and contrary to any claims of ‘assistance,’ leads to innumerable misfortunes. “

Isn’t there an eerie echo for American activists in the following paragraph by Russian human rights activists?

“The incursion into Afghanistan led to many years of unceasing widespread violence and human rights abuses, as well as flare-ups of war again and again. The historical development of Afghanistan turned completely around: from a secular government it turned into a theocratic one. The actions of the Soviet leadership led to a sharp rise in the popularity of Islamic fundamentalism not only in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan and Arab countries as well. (Remember the alliance between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda).”

As our nationalist media on both sides whip up the fighting spirit in terms of either/or, Russia or USA, the level voices of Russian activists remind us: “Politics not based on the principles of international law does not serve the true interests of the Russian people and can in no way work to resolve national-territorial conflicts in this region.”

From a perspective of USA peace activism, can’t we say “ditto” to much of this?

Now Chossudovsky is concluding that the South Ossetia operation, by putting Russian troops in check, is one last step in the encirclement of Iran. All pieces are practically in place for a blockade, including plans to use a warship from Brazil. The anti-Iran coalition, which is global and bi-partisan, will be considering the use of pre-emptive nuclear strike.

And because of Iran’s strained relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which continues to express worry about Iran’s “transparency and full disclosure,” Iran now finds itself not only encircled but virtually friendless.

Markets, they say, hate uncertainty. Since this is what WWIII looks like, Dow futures this morning were up.

But speaking of “transparency and full disclosure” where is the international agency that will demand an answer to this question: were the civilian populations of South Ossetia and Georgia deliberately sacrificed to achieve these military ends?

“Will Russia get away with it?” asks the beaming columnist for the New York Times, his smile winking at you as if no way he could be talking up death and disaster.

On one side of the world, writes the propagandist, you have “the United States and its democratic allies.” On the other side, you’ll find “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes” who “seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.”

“The United States, of course, is not without resources and allies to deal with these problems and threats,” hints the propagandist. “But at times we seem oddly timid and uncertain.” Which brings us around to his winking question again: “Will we let Russia get away with it?”

But what if we paraphrase a famous movie hero and remind the propagandist that aggressive is as aggressive does. Then, we may ask, which side of the propagandist’s world last Thursday picked up its guns and blasted a path through the Caucasus Mountains to the city of Tskhinvali, killing as many local militia as possible and quite a few others who somehow got in the way?

Was it the enemies of the US and its allies who did this thing? Was it the Russians? Who was it who sent 30,000 refugees fleeing northward for their lives, some of whom stayed North just long enough to catch their breaths before heading South again to fight for their homeland?

Maybe the propagandist means to ask if we will let Russia get away with letting so many refugees flee into its country so quickly? I mean, by comparison, how does that make the US immigration police look in the eyes of the world?

As it turns out, the Russians were not only watching, but waiting, says Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Global Research. “The Russian response,” he writes, “was entirely predictable.”

Against the predominantly Georgian military (who were at least accompanied by Israeli advisors, and very likely other nationalities, too, although the New York Times was good enough to minimize embarrassing gossip of American involvement over the weekend) the Russians let go an onslaught of tanks, driving the Georgian coalition backward as quickly as they had arrived.

Does the propagandist mean to ask whether we will let the Russians get away with that tank attack? It’s a curious question, because it seems to accept the premise that “the United States and its democratic allies” should certainly be allowed to get away with marching on Tskhinvali next time, only without anyone else “happy to work together” against it.

The Russians did go farther than just pushing back the Georgian coalition. Their leaders exercised a right to “retaliation” which is a little broader than a right to “protect and defend.” It would be better if we lived in a world where nobody was allowed to “retaliate.” But I live in Texas, and the movement against retaliation isn’t going to start here, so maybe the propagandist thinks it should begin in Georgia? We can see plainly that it won’t begin at the New York Times.

In the end, I wonder if the propagandist has read any Jung lately, because he seems to have a very immature conception of himself, completely unable to recognize that he has become his own shadow: “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical.” But in this regard he serves his social function perfectly as a perfect reflection of the mind of New York Times readers everywhere.

Well, not to be too harsh, there is some helpful reporting that slips through the teeth at the Times. On Monday morning we can also read how that wearily retreating Georgia coalition was expressing bitter disappointment that more of the US and its allies were not there when, apparently, they had been expected to show up.

After the traumatized soldiers from the Georgia coalition get home and have a little more time to think about what they have lost forever, they may wish to take up the question of the propagandist, who knows? Make it their life’s work, for pay. Or they may do what many young men have done among the US and its allies, that is, start a local chapter of veterans against war.

My contribution toward a people-centered solution: concede independence to the breakaway republic of Tskhinval. Here’s why.

According to background materials available on the internet, some of which have already been broadcast as news, it appears that South Ossetia has long enjoyed a relatively autonomous position, even under Soviet rule. North Ossetia is part of the Russian Federation, so South Ossetians are kin to Russians. Reports claim that most South Ossetians hold citizenship in the Russian Federation, and that 99 percent of South Ossetians favored independence from Georgia in a 2006 referendum.

On Nov. 12, 2006, South Ossetians aligned with the breakaway republic of Tskhinval, re-elected their independent president, Eduard Kokoity. But this is only half the story.

As Irina Kelekhsayeva reports for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), on the same day that Kokoity was re-elected in Tskhinval, there was a parallel election among a cluster of ethnic Georgian villages in the region, resulting in the confirmation of Dmitry Sanakoyev as the “alternative president” of an “alternative administrative unit” created by Georgia’s central government. South Ossetia has two Presidents, but Kokoity usually gets called the “de facto” one (CRS No. 392 17-May-07).

Although Russia had agreed to withdraw its military bases from Georgia, reports continued to hint that weapons from Russia were continuing to flow into Tskhinval. Meanwhile, from the other side, Georgia got lots of help from the USA and achieved the highest growth rate of military spending in the world. Says the 2008 yearbook from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): “Georgia in particular had a very high level of military spending in comparison to the size of its economy.”

On both sides, the arms built up and up. On the ground, people of the region did their best to live under the tensions of dual Russian-Georgian peacekeeping forces, who periodically blocked and unblocked travel along key roads. Last week, in an effort to unfreeze the frozen conflict, the Georgian Army rolled into the region from the South. The Russian Federation countered with a swift and surprising attack from the North.

Already, voices in the USA, echoing the policy posted at the State Department web site, talk about a need to maintain the “integrity” of the border that keeps South Ossetia clearly within the domain of Georgia. This is the position to rethink.

Most ominous for peace lovers is the presence of the Caspian pipeline that runs near the Georgia capital of Tbilisi, just south of South Ossetia. This is the same pipeline that is now in flames in Turkey from a reported attack by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), another “separatist” group that analysts will no doubt consider when evaluating any concession to the South Ossetia “separatists.”

On the Russian side, there are similar considerations of geopolitical posturing. Some analysts say an objective of the Russian incursion this week will be to strengthen the Russian influence over terms of conflict resolution. The Russian gambit may also work to keep Georgia out of NATO forever.

Which brings me to the tentative, people-centered solution: In consideration of the longstanding “de facto” independence of Tskhinval, the boundary of Georgia’s “integrity” should be rethought to exclude that portion of South Ossetia known as the breakaway republic. The “Georgian villages”, on the other hand, should be allowed to reunite.

No doubt, a certain kind of geopolitical logic will not shirk the prospect of drawing Russia into a protracted war with Georgia. As the Georgian arms buildup comes from USA aid and manufacturers, geopolitical ambitions will still be whetted by profit. But if we think about geopolitical peace that respects traditions of autonomy and self-definition, then the people of South Ossetia deserve a defensive retreat of the Georgian Army to concede the independence of the breakaway republic of Tskhinvali.

Peace for South Ossetia means relinquishing hardline claims that it falls within the “sovereign” borders of Georgia. If Georgia concedes quickly, then world opinion can next focus on the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops, whose stated purpose for invading Tskhinval will have vanished.

In the above, tentative suggestion, I have tried to apply a people-centered, rather than a bloc- or state-centered strategy of peace. This is a deliberate attempt to think outside of the Cold War box. In the event that people of the world are prepared to think and act with independence, we may find something in our future besides World War III.

Further Reading:

• An Associated Press report attributes US interests in Georgia to the Caspian pipeline. However a quick check of a map seems to indicate that the pipeline runs well south of South Ossetia, a fact strangely missing from the AP report. “Georgia as a whole means quite a lot,” says a strategist to the AP. No doubt. But if the pipeline is going to draw our thoughts to the region, then what would be the point of prolonging the conflict over a small northern province of Georgia, when US oil interests lie further south?

• Michel Chossudovsky explored the impact of the Caspian pipeline during the bombing of Lebanon in 2006:

The Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) pipeline totally bypasses the territory of the Russian Federation. It transits through the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia, both of which have become US “protectorates”, firmly integrated into a military alliance with the US and NATO. Moreover, both Azerbaijan and Georgia have longstanding military cooperation agreements with Israel.

• The US State Department position: The United States supports the territorial integrity of Georgia and a peaceful resolution of the separatist conflict in South Ossetia. Note how the State Department’s own account of the conflict points to provocations against the Ossetians by the Georgia authorities:

The cessation of hostilities brought on by the Sochi Agreement held fast into 2004. At that point, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze had been replaced by Mikheil Saakashvili, who expressed a renewed interest in reintegrating Georgia’s separatist regions. In keeping with this policy, the Georgian Government placed a special emphasis on the regulation and monitoring of trade within and through South Ossetia, closing down a particularly large South Ossetian market which had been used for unregulated trade. South Ossetian forces retaliated by closing highways and detaining Georgian troops within South Ossetian borders. Tensions between the sides escalated, and exchanges of mortar fire in late July and August 2004 killed dozens.

• Recent trends in military expenditure (SIPRI): Military spending is rising rapidly in the South Caucasus — Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia — largely due to the region’s three ‘frozen’ conflicts and the involvement of external actors. The rises have been made possible by economic upswings largely based on oil and gas revenues.

• Ossetians.Com: In this labor of love by an Ossetian expatriate living in Canada, we can see how the local experience of Ossetians appears to be more aggravated by Georgian than Russian dominion.

• In any event, there is always a question of minority populations, whose rights should be respected. Here is a 2005 report:

Residents of villages in the Didi and Patara Liakhvi districts, point to continuing instances of suspected kidnapping and torture of Georgians, as well as an increasing number of complaints about discrimination, as indicators of what life under an autonomous South Ossetia would be like.

• Notable Ossetians: Akhmet Tsalikov (Tsalykkaty) (1882-1928) Founder of the theory of Islamic socialism. A book by Tsalikov, published in Prague in 1926, appears to be available in Serbian: Brat na brata : roman iz revoliutsionnoi’ zhizni Kavkaza