Well, Suck on this, okay? : Thomas Friedman’s Flat World

I am recounting a post from Think Progress, a liberal blog. They made reference to an interview conducted by Charlie Rose with Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist, in 2003. In the interview, Friedman made the argument that Americans needed to get over a terrorist bubble, a kind of intimidation caused by the 9/11 attack. And the way that Americans would get over that bubble of intimidation is by seeing soldiers, here referred to as American boys and girls, go house to house in large Iraqi cities and point a gun in the face of Iraqi citizens:

“And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand? You don’t think, you know we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck on this, okay?” That Charlie is what this war [in Iraq] is about. We could of hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. Could of hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.”

From this very frank statement, it is obvious that Friedman has decided to embrace a kind of brutal animality in service of American feel-good. He is not advocating justice. If the reader thinks somehow that Friedman is entitled to his raw feelings, consider the fatalities from our war with Iraqi; Iraqi war dead is greater by an order of magnitude than what resulted from the 9/11 attack. So are Iraqis entitled morally to go from house to house and put in a gun in the face of Americans from New York to Los Angeles? Or maybe that is the Flat World that Friedman champions: one end of the gun for some people and the other end for others.

It is worth thinking about as America is on the fence over a further commitment to its war with Afghanistan, the first site of American revenge after the 9/11 attack.

Frontline: A Death in Tehran

Since Frontline, the TV news series, is doing a story about the death of Neda Agha-Soltan this week, I thought I might give my take on this incident and the larger issues of Iranian politics.

The news reports of the incident that took place seem to have a variable quality to them. For example, the scene of the murder:

From Telegraph: Miss Agha Soltan was shot in the chest after she joined a protest near Azadi (Freedom) Square.

From Times online: ”… [she] got stuck in traffic. She stepped out of the car for some air, gunshot rang out and Miss Soltan collapsed.

From the BBC: She was near the area, a few streets away, from where the main protests were taking place, near the Amir-Abad area.

From USA Today: The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street…

The reporting of simple details of the incident change from news story to news story. And yet, the event was captured on video by two cell phones and reported widely by major news media. Doubts about the actual video–it really seems a bit too high quality for a cell phone, more like a DV camcorder–and the patterns of blood seeming inconsistent with a gun shot wound– can be found here.

I don’t want to engage in doubt at that level. I think it is enough that the reporting is so poorly done—probably because news organizations have little presence in Iran—that doubt of the incident is reasonable. One thing that should give pause to even the most gullible of news readers are the different pictures of Neda Agha-Soltan. The visual representations are like the news accounts: variable.

On to larger issues: This woman supposedly is a martyr for the cause of Iranian freedom that was being impinged upon by election fraud that resulted in the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Well, to the contrary, it does not seem that there was fraud in the election.

From Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty:”The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin — greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.”

If the election was not stolen and the martyr was not martyred, what is going on here? A major issue during the election was the liberalization of section 44 of the Iranian Constitution. It reads in part:

“The economy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is to consist of three sectors: state, cooperative, and private, and is to be based on systematic and sound planning. The state sector is to include all large-scale and mother industries, foreign trade, major minerals, banking, insurance, power generation, dams and large-scale irrigation networks, radio and television, post, telegraph and telephone services, aviation, shipping, roads, railroads and the like; all these will be publicly owned and administered by the State.”

Principally, it is the financial sector of Iran that Moussavi, Ahmadinejad’s opponent, was arguing should be liberalized. If this sector was not state run, then it would be open to international investment and manipulation. This is the liberalization that he has in mind. It is not to lighten up the restraints on social control of the population; In fact, Moussavi is much opposed to a freer society in Iran. From Alexander Cockburn:

“…Moussavi, who was Iran’s prime minister from 1981 to ‘89 and one of the foulest of that foul gang in the Council of the Cultural Revolution, charged with the Islamization of Iranian society. It was Moussavi who sent murdering squads of thugs into every university, purging secularism and religious minorities. This was in the early ’80s, when batches of hundreds of accused “leftists,” many of them scarcely in their teens, were hanged from cranes in Tehran in a single day. And behind Moussavi is the billionaire Rafsanjani. Compared with this vicious duo, Ahmadinejad is relatively wholesome…”

So an opponent of the United States who stands in the way of liberalizing his economy is discredited. A symbol is produced, a martyr, as part of a psychological warfare strategy. And there you have it. And you get to watch it on TV. If you read history, nothing new here.

Pull up a chair and let’s talk about debt

Don’t panic! I know nobody wants to discuss their credit card debt or their second mortgages.

First, I want to look at some data. Here is a chart that shows the share of income that those folks who are in the top 10% of income earners. You will notice that right before the roaring 1980’s, this top 10% of wage earners had about 33% of the total share of income. In 2007, the top 10% of income earners have 50% share of the total pool of income. A lot less of a share for the rest of us, uh?

Income distribution is a function of US government activity; it is a result of monetary policy, tax policy and social policy. This jagged line of the above chart tells a story of how previous generations in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s, who had working class or middle class jobs, could live decent lives. They could afford to buy a house, send the kids to college and live without something that regular folks are suffering from now. We are talking about debt. From a report issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco:

“U.S. household leverage, as measured by the ratio of debt to personal disposable income, increased modestly from 55% in 1960 to 65% by the mid-1980s. Then, over the next two decades, leverage proceeded to more than double, reaching an all-time high of 133% in 2007. That dramatic rise in debt was accompanied by a steady decline in the personal saving rate.”

To clarify for those who do not enjoy numbers: in 2007, if your yearly income was, for instance, $80,000, then your debt would typically be 133% of that or $106,400. By contrast, debt in 1960 was about 55% of income—so if your income was again $80,000 and you had debt like in 1960, then your debt would be typically about $44,000. The charts below tell you what your common sense should: that if you have less income you want to maintain your standard of living and will go into debt to do so. The middle class borrow to compensate for lost income. The poor can’t and the rich don’t have to.

Now to quote again from our friends at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco:

“The combination of higher debt and lower saving enabled personal consumption expenditures to grow faster than disposable income, providing a significant boost to U.S. economic growth over the period.”

That is to say, that middle class and working class people went into debt at the encouragement of business via advertising and other media, since it was good for business. There could have been another response to declining income. People could have cut back on expenses. The business community as a whole did not want regular folks to take on austerity measures. Such self-imposes austerity would have contracted the economy and caused many businesses to fold. So consumer debt was to the benefit of business.

To summarize: From the 1980’s to the present, regular people have less income and wealthier people have more income. This change is the result of US government polices. The response of regular people has been to go into debt which expanded the economy.

Now, let’s talk about your credit card debit. If you’re anything like most Americans, it is significant. It worries you. Your credit card debt as well second mortgages causes you a lot of anxiety. But your financial state is a private matter. Your workweek is long and demanding. Between the anxiety of debt and exhaustion of work, you concentrate mostly on family, church and the small pleasures that you can still afford.

Such a lifestyle is apolitical. This is where we are today in America. There is no resistance to this income distribution. Regular people can barely get their head above water to see what is happening to them. You may have noticed that since the 1980’s, there have been many changes in the control of congress and the White House and there has been no change for the better in terms of income distribution.

To change things requires a mass movement. And where will that spark come from to start that prairie fire?

Sometimes I feel like I been tied to a Whipping Post: