Soviet tank a roadside landmark outside Kabul
That is, they believed it was unseemly for the hoi polloi to go on behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The behaviour of the first caste wasn't questioned seriously then, nor is it now as it uses the banks, the stock market, and the Long War itself to plot the undermining of the global economy. Now, there is little talk of insufficient sacrifice, as millions are thrown out of work, and the home front becomes increasingly homeless. There is also little talk of why the world's greatest economy is failing so many.
This past week, as president Obama's administration quietly announced the introduction of a new weapon into intransigent Afghanistan, the
International Monetary Fund, in concert with the European Union's Central Bank dropped a bombshell of their own, deciding they would open another theatre of operations in the endless and boundless war on the poor.
All those bombs and their replacements must be paid for, and with the U.S. treasury downgrading its currency to counter China, the money has got to come from somewhere. Is it possible the IMF and EU Central Bank's tough medicine can be brought across the pond to aid ailing America?
Former Wall Street economist and distinguished research professor at U. of Missouri, Kansas,
Michael Hudson sees some parallels. In his recent CounterPunch article, 'A Flat Tax for the Rich?' he posits the next logical move by the new Republican controlled congress. He sees a European-styled VAT, or Value Added Tax brought in to shore up revenue shortfalls after Obama reluctantly cedes his bully pulpit and signs off on a Flat Tax. He reminds how millionaire heir to the Forbes magazine fortune, Steve Forbes tried to use Flat Tax as the central plank of his 2000 run for president. The people saw through the massive gift to the massively well-to-do then, but maybe Steve was just ahead of his time?
Hudson explains the flim flam this way;
"The details are much more regressive than seem at first glance. The flat tax actually would tax wage earners much more steeply than the wealthy, whose income it would largely exempt! The flat tax is supposed to fall on employment, not returns to wealth. Employees and their employers would pay the tax, as they pay today’s 12.4 per cent FICA paycheck withholding, but the flat tax would not be levied on financial and property income. The flat tax is supposed to be accompanied by a European-style regressive value-added tax (VAT). By taxing “value,” it essentially falls on labor – as in “the labor theory of value.”"
And what's the result of the new American tax paradigm? Hudson predicts;
"The wealthy want just what bankers want: the entire economic surplus (followed by a foreclosure on property). They want all the disposable income over and above basic subsistence – and then, when this shrinks the economy, they want the government to sell off the public domain in “privatization” giveaways, and they want people to turn over their houses and any other property they have to the creditors. “Your money or your life” is not only what bank robbers demand. It is what banks themselves demand, and the wealthy 10 per cent of the population that owns most of the bank stock. And of course, the wealthy classes want to free themselves from the share of taxes that they have not already shed. The flat-tax ploy is their godsend."
What is clear here is the rapaciousness of those a-perch the tippy top of the current economic system is not only depraved, degenerate, and ultimately destructive, but is also insatiable. As it has done with arms in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, and through the force of the banks in Ireland and Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, the real Long War is no less than the endless predation by the few who write the rules of the international banking cartels against the rest, regardless of where they reside.
The tyranny employed by these actors to get what they want, no less than everything, only differs by degrees; for now. But that difference is disappearing fast, as Rio de Janeiro's growing urban war zone begins to resemble
Haiti's Port-au-Prince and other occupied territories, and threats from nationalist groups like the
Real IRA to target bankers as enemies of independence begin to resonate more broadly.
Wars abroad and war at home; when the Long War* was less weary than it is today, scribes and opinion pundits excoriated everyday Americans for their unwillingness to sacrifice. It was thought, these wise worthies believed, unbecoming of a nation to party like it was 1999 while soldiers were in the field doing the dirty work of empire. 
America's move to up its "devastating firepower" is seen in the Capitol as part of a larger effort to move the war along. The 
