[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Glenn Greenwald: What collapsing empire looks like

[Jenifer Cartwright]

In case you haven't already seen this... --Jenifer
























    
        


            
                
            
        



        
            

            
            

            
    salon
Friday, Aug  6, 2010 12:07 ET



    What collapsing empire looks like







    By Glenn Greenwald
    







    

  




    


        
        

iStockphoto


    






        
  


    (updated below)
  




        
  

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an 
escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an 
endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the 
Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, 
Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay.  But a new New York Times article
 today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire 
looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities 
around the country are being forced to make.  This is a sampling of what
 one finds:




        


  


    

Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren.
 Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past 
school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in
 the nation.


    

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but 
Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, 
and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.


    

Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In 
Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a
 dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 
streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police 
force and auctioning off its police helicopters.


  


            


            


                Continue reading

            


            


        
  

There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including 
one showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of
 not being able to afford street lights.  Read the article to revel in 
the details of this widespread misery.  Meanwhile, the tiniest sliver of
 the wealthiest -- the ones who caused these problems in the first place
 -- continues to thrive.  Let's recall what former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson said last year in The Atlantic about what happens in under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial crises ensues:





        


  


    

Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice
 among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of
 the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help
 from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, 
or maybe a nice tax break, or -- here's a classic Kremlin bailout 
technique -- the assumption of private debt obligations by the 
government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many 
innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most 
emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk -- at 
least until the riots grow too large.


  


        
  

The real question is whether the American public is too apathetic and trained into submission for that to ever happen.




        
  

 




        
  

UPDATE:  It's probably also worth noting this Wall St. Journal article from last month -- with a subheadline warning:  "Back to Stone Age" -- which describes how "paved roads,
 historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across 
rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as 
counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal 
revenue."  Utah is seriously considering eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional.  And it was announced this week that "Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its library system
 by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the 
impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a 
library book free."




        
  

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford 
schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or 
once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State
 -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone 
seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent 
inevitability?  Anyway, I just wanted to leave everyone with some light 
and cheerful thoughts as we head into the weekend.



          
    





 







      
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