Well, here's a laugh for you. The US is setting up, or will "roll out" as the Wall Street Journal puts it, it's new anti-corruption task force. I know well enough that a government agency of this type would be its opposite, its purpose would be to protect the perpetrators. Sure, a few mavericks that threaten the well orchestrated organized plunder the various sections of the capitalist class are engaged in would be sacrificed for the good of the cause, but the victims would remain victims.
Nevertheless, I thought that some of the worse offenders might get nabbed, but as I read on I see that this anti-corruption task force, named, Task Force 2010 is not being set up in order to avoid the blatant plunder of FEMA funds that went on after Katrina reoccurring with the $20 billion BP has been forced to set up due to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. It is not being set up to deal with the trillions of dollars that have changed hands in the sumptuous feast that speculators had prior to collapse of the financial services industry. It is not being set up to prevent the bribing of politicians in Congress.
This anti-corruption corruption task force, Task Force 2010, is being set up in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan. Oh well. But perhaps I should not be surprised that the masters of corruption are concerned about corruption when it is carried out by forces in competition with them.
US capitalism is in crisis politically, economically and militarily. There is no doubt it still has the world's strongest military in the sense that it can blow the rest of the world to bits, but it is indisputable that its global influence has declined. The relations between the powers has shifted---the threats to dollar domination and its position as sole reserve currency continue. US capitalism's predatory wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not going well. The Taliban assassinated an important US ally last week and the administration's account of the situation there came under criticism from friend and foe alike.
Former presidential contender John McCain claimed that there was a "mounting crisis" in the Afghan adventure, "The larger trend that underlies all the others is the mounting loss of confidence in America's commitment to succeed that seems to be shared by both our friends and our enemies in Afghanistan as well as its neighbors.", McCain said. This does not bode well for the US, and the events in Kyrgyzstan, not simply ethnic conflict but a result of the new "Great Game" being played in the Central Asian corridor between the US, Russia and China in particular, only compounds matters.
It's no wonder that the top commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus, feinted during questioning about the state of the Afghan fiasco during hearings in Washington last week; things are not going well. Can it be that, the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are in the hands of a guy that feints under questioning? Iraq, the Gulf of Mexico, financial uncertainty; its a mess alright.
The last but certainly not least concern, and something they tell us very little about but surfaces with a vengeance when it reaches critical mass, is the mood among US troops, the young working class men and women that they use to do their fighting for them. The absence of a draft places tremendous strains on these young men and women. My personal view is that, given the lack of support for the wars, one of the main reasons there has not been more widespread protests is that the burden of these ventures falls on a relatively small section of US society, and while increased unemployment helps, as for many the military becomes the only option, the degeneration of morale among troops becomes an issue as it was in Vietnam.
Readers of this blog are aware of what this blogger thinks of the role of the Trade Union hierarchy in all of this so I will not belabor that point as you can search this blog for many posts referring to their role. But suffice it to say that objectively we are in a period more open to change than we have been for a long time and the leaders of the workers' organizations refuse to take advantage of it.
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