No news is good news, therefore all news is bad news

Second Dark Age: And so the fall has begun. Bites awoke this morning to news that the Federal Reserve, in an unprecedented emergency measure, had cut its overnight lending rate by 75 basis points in a last-ditch effort to stave off a cataclysmic global stock-market crash. President George W. Bush promised to add to a proposed $150 billion economic-stimulus package designed to jump-start the stalled U.S. economy. Wall Street responded by rallying from dramatic early losses to post a more sedate 128 by final close, temporarily restoring calm to jittery markets at home and abroad.

It will not last. Despite the president’s ongoing denial, the economy, such as it is, has been in recession for months. Trillions of dollars of risky home loans and consumer debt—repackaged as investment devices and then used to leverage even more bad credit—are unraveling as borrowers walk away from financial obligations they no longer have the incentive and/or the wherewithal to pay. Skyrocketing energy and commodity prices have led to the highest rate of inflation in 17 years, even as real wages have declined or remained stagnant. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place, with no easy way out.

If the Fed continues to cut interest rates, it will exacerbate inflation and further devalue the U.S. dollar, already in danger of ceding its role as the preferred medium of global exchange to the euro. If the Fed doesn’t cut rates, credit will dry up and the stock market will plummet. Either way, the global economy threatens to fly apart. Meanwhile, the rising demand for energy, coupled with increasingly crimped energy supplies, is rearranging the global economy into two camps: those countries that have petroleum, and those that don’t. Guess which one we fall in?

Good times.

Dropping the bomb: In case you’re a little slow on the uptake, we’re in the camp that uses more oil than it produces. Far more. Fortunately, we’re also in the camp that has pledged to preemptively nuke regimes that, say, don’t see the distribution of natural resources quite the same way we do. Ironically enough, the use of weapons of mass destruction is necessary, five top NATO officials told the British Guardian this week, in order to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The nuclear option also will come in handy in the case of “climate change and energy security entailing a contest for resources and potential environmental migration on a mass scale.”

Suddenly, new world order conspiracy theories by the likes of Alex Jones that posit the extermination of billions of people don’t seem so far-fetched, at least to Bites. But cooler heads prevail at the top of the food chain. Consider former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who understands the hard work of genocide must be divided equally among free nations. For example, if it’s not politically expedient for the United States to invade Iran with no good reason, then Israelis should take the colonization of the Middle East into their own hands, Bolton advised a recent meeting of high-level Likudniks.

And suppose someone should object to the ongoing slaughter and abuse of Arabs? Well, SN&R contributor Seth Sandronsky knows all about that. In addition to writing for this paper, Sandronsky also has edited Because People Matter, the local leftist monthly news sheet. He’s been a fierce critic of Israel’s harsh treatment of its Arab neighbors, and for that, he’s wound up on the shit list—literally! A friend recently informed Sandronsky that his name appears on the Jewish SHIT (“Self-Hating” or “Israel-Threatening”) List at Masada2000.org, a hardcore Zionist Web site dedicated to the memory of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

The list is a compilation of Jewish journalists and activists who’ve been critical of Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East. If you’re not on it, don’t feel left out. In the future, there’ll be a list for everybody. The only thing you’ll have to do is make sure you’re on the right one.